RADIOSeptember 15, 2022

4 ways Democrats are RUINING energy & 5 ways we can save it

It’s not just that America needs more energy to run the nation NOW. But we’ll need much more if we actually want to run the technology of the FUTURE. So, it’s a good thing there’s no knowledge OR physical resource deficits to creating more, low-cost energy in thousands of places around the world, Alex Epstein, author of ‘Fossil Future,’ tells Glenn. Rather, he says, today's energy crisis is due to current political reasons instead. In fact, Epstein lists the four steps Democrats seem to be taking — especially within the Inflation Reduction Act — to ruin American energy. Thankfully, Epstein has the answer to save it. He discusses the 5 steps to his ‘energy freedom platform’ and explains how YOU can become involved to help save American energy too...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So last night, I laid out a kind of bleak look for the future of energy. And I don't think most people understand. We don't need just the energy to run things now. We need more energy to run the technology of the future. And Alex Epstein is with us. He's from the Center of Industrial Progress. Founder and president. And also, the author of a book you must read, it's Fossil Fuel.

And he's come equipped with some real solutions to our energy problem, to be able to stave it off. And, really, all you need is support from the American people. Right?

ALEX: Yeah. The great thing about energy, is there's all the potential to produce low cost reliable energy for billions of people in thousands of places. There's no -- there's no physical resource deficit for doing this, and there's no knowledge deficit.

Human beings know how to produce reliable electricity. Right? We know how to produce energy on a scale of billions of people. We're just being prohibited from doing it politically. Which means that there's a political solution, if we are liberated to be able to do it.

GLENN: So we have -- I mentioned that in Colorado -- I mean, people who have these smart thermostats. I've said for a while. Don't do that.
ALEX: That's a euphemism.

GLENN: Yeah. I know. In Colorado, they had to -- they lost control of their thermostats. And I mentioned that and said, you know, if your right to touch your thermostat is only worth $25 a year to you, good luck. But people are bashing back saying, well, that's because the coal-powered plants went down. And, you know, it was an emergency at the coal-powered plants. Because coal is just not stable.

ALEX: Yeah. We're really in this Orwellian world, right? I mean, the inflation act is called the Inflation Reduction Act. Freedom is slavery. And coal is unreliable. And solar and wind are reliable. Despite the obvious.

GLENN: Right. Right.

ALEX: Yeah. What they always point to, they did this with the Texas blackouts too.

They'll point to some individual failure of some fossil fuel plant. And then say, oh, well, this inherently doesn't work.

But we know that we can produce reliable electricity with fossil fuels, because we've been doing it for generations. And we've done it in all weather conditions. You can do it when it's really cold, when it's really hot. So if you know a fossil fuel plant fails, that's just something about the specific situation. That's not the technology. Solar and wind, they do not produce electricity most of the time, and you can't rely on them, almost any time. That's the basic nature of them. And part of what happens when you see fossil fuel failures is often, they have to account for the intermittency of solar and wind. So they have to cycle up and down, or be shut down and restarted more. Much more than they would be if they were on their own.

And -- or what happens is they'll get defunded, the way the whole subsidies just expanded unfortunately. Is that they defund reliable powerplants, including things like weatherization, say, for natural gas in Texas. So we know that we can -- again, we have all the ability to produce reliable electricity at low costs. We're just not using it because of political factors.

GLENN: Okay. So go over can't five-point plan.

ALEX: So I call this the energy freedom platform. And I encourage politicians of all parties to adopt this opinion unfortunately -- I mean, unfortunately right now, Democrats are not being very good in terms of energy. They almost all supported the inflation act. I think basically all of them did.

GLENN: And, by the way, I played the audio from an activist group, that was a part of this inflation reduction bill.

And they admitted, they were talking to their own supporters. And they were like, look, it's not about inflation.

It's really a green bill. Which we all kind of knew, if you were paying attention.

It's a green bill. It's stuffed with stuff about green energy.

ALEX: Yeah. And we can talk about how -- I mean, I consider that a four-step recipe for destroying American energy basically. Because just very quickly.

So it involves increasing dependence on unreliable electricity. If you want to destroy American energy, that's a good step one. Step two is add taxes and restrictions to fossil fuels, during fossil fuel shortages. That's a good -- that's a good step two. What were the other steps? I mean, it's so bad. Oh, yeah. Increase the power of the EPA to shut down fossil fuel projects. We need more of that, obviously. And then increase the power of environmental justice activists to stop all energy development.

GLENN: And you've just done that the lie the DOJ now.

ALEX: Yeah. They have this four-step thing, which if you're trying to destroy American energy, it's hard to think of a better plan. So let's talk about how to improve American energy, with the Energy Freedom Platform. So I'll give the five, and then we can go into depth in any of one of them.

Okay? So number one is liberate responsible development. Number two is end preferences for unreliable electricity. Number three is reform air and water emission standards to incorporate cost-benefit analysis. This is a really important one for EPA stuff. Number four is liberate -- is rather, reduce emissions long-term, through innovation, not through punishing America.

Through liberating innovation, not through punishing America.

And then number five, which I know you will be sympathetic to, is decriminalize nuclear energy. So we can talk about any of those, but they're all crucial.

GLENN: Okay. Let's just take them one by one real quick.

ALEX: Okay.

GLENN: First one.

ALEX: So liberate responsible development. Energy inherently involves developing the world around us. And yet we have an anti-development movement that is setting energy policy, and running many of these agencies. So there's opposition to development even in the investment world. But in particular, just all these antidevelopment policies that are restricting fossil fuel development, nuclear development, et cetera.

GLENN: So ESG is a good example. Well, ESG is a kind of quasi political. But if you just look at how difficult it is, if you take nuclear. Like how difficult it is to start a nuclear plant.

You know, you say, four years.

Now it takes 16 years. Part of that is you have these antidevelopment so-called green activists that can stop things on a dime. So you really need policies that are pro development. And they're responsible development, if they try to stop endangerment. So you don't want to endanger local people, or endanger some national treasure. But you can't have the idea that it's wrong to develop nature.

And that terrible anti-human idea is at the root of so many of our laws and policies.

So when I go into the details, if people go to EnergyTalkingPoints.com, you'll see there's a lot of specific policies that need to be reformed, that are antidevelopment right now.
GLENN: Okay. All right. Number two.

ALEX: So is end -- end preferences for unreliable electricity.

And on that website, there's something called electricity emergency, which goes into the details.

But basically, right now, we do three things. We have mandates for unreliable electricity. We prefer them in that way. Many states have those. Like my state of California, unfortunately has those.

We have subsidies, which we just expanded under the Inflation Act.

Right? So we did that. And then the most insidious that people don't know, is that we have very unfair pricing. Because there's no cost penalty for selling unreliable electricity into the grid. Now, you think about that. Imagine you have a car company, and you got to charge the same for a car that works a third of the time. And a car that works all the time. That's how the grid works. You get the same alternate for selling unreliable electricity. Reliable electricity. And actually, you get more. Because all the subsidies, that we just extended. So you actually get paid a premium for selling something that is not nearly as valuable. And sometimes unreliable electricity is of negative value. Sometimes if you have too much electricity, you need to off-load it. So this is -- if you pay a premium for you be reliable electricity. Guess what, you get unreliable electricity.

GLENN: Okay. Number three.

ALEX: So this had to do with the air and water emissions standards. So right now, let's look at what the EPA is doing. We have in that article, electricity emergency.

I talk about, there's slated to be 93 gigawatts of coal shutting down, in terms of already announced things. That's almost one-tenth of a reliable capacity.

One-tenth. This is by 2030.

But there's also the threat of 92 more.

So almost a fifth of our reliable capacity. There's a reliability bloodbath that's scheduling to happen. The lion's share of this comes from EPA policies.

So it's EPA deliberately trying to do things that will shut down these coal plants, even though as you've talked about, there's no viable replacement in the pipeline. We have almost no nuclear scheduled. Not nearly enough gas.

So how does the EPA justify this? Well, one thing is they don't use real cost-benefit analysis when they're making decisions. So they'll say, hey, wouldn't it be great to have lower emissions? But they don't think about, what is the cost of that, in terms of what is the cost to human life of an unreliable grid. They're almost incalculable. So the EPA is making these decisions, and they're not giving any consideration to the reliability of the great. So that's an example of you need real cost-benefit analysis.

GLENN: These people -- are there any honest people on this side? I mean, I don't understand how an honest person can look at it and not say, yeah, but this will make things more unreliable. And people will either die from heat stroke, or they will either die freezing in the winter. You know, you can't just have an unreliable grid like this? Is there anybody on the other side that is asking these questions that's honest?

ALEX: I think one. I mean, there are some people who are really anti-energy. So essentially, they're honest. They hide it from the public. They want less power. They want to industrialize. That kind of thing. I think one of the challenges is. I talk about this in chapter one, of Fossil Future. We rely on what I call a knowledge system to give us expert knowledge and guidance on all these specialized areas. And what you have is multiple of these specializations are failing, at the same time. But each specialization thinks the other is doing its job. So, for instance, the electricity people have been hiding the electricity emergency.

They're not acknowledging. Many of the companies have not been acknowledging. You talk behind the scenes, yeah. This is a disaster. But publicly, they won't say anything. The regulators are kind of silent. And so the public thinks, oh, there's not that big a threat. And then the EPA people, they'll distort the science about the side effects of coal.

But they'll kind of think, oh, yeah. We don't have to worry about reliability. Because the isn't saying that.

There's dishonesty kind of everywhere.

But one reinforces the other. I mean, we've got a world, that thought legitimately, you could rapidly eliminate fossil fuels by 2050, and it would work well. This was the mainstream view.

And part of it was there were all these false views, that are being combined. And people have this idea. Well, most people -- the experts, so-called.

The people that were told they're experts. They can't be that wrong. But they can be that wrong in part because what we're told the experts think is usually a massive distortion of what actually the researchers in a field think.

GLENN: Yes. That's happening with global warming, all the time.

ALEX: Oh, yeah. Of course. It's the idea that the world is going to end, if it gets one or 2 degrees warmer on a planet where far more people die of cold than of heat.

The researchers don't think that, but that gets distorted by what I call our knowledge system to make it. Oh, it's an apocalypse. And you have to take a crash emergency action and destroy all your energy. And then the planet will be nice to you. And then life will be great.

GLENN: Give me the fourth one.
ALEX: So the fourth one is --

GLENN: Reduce.

ALEX: Reduce emissions long-term. It's very important. It has to be long-term. Because there's no short-term producing of emissions. That's a pipe dream. So it's reduce CO2 emissions long-term, by liberating innovation, not punishing America.

GLENN: When did we lose that in America?

ALEX: Lose which one?

GLENN: The idea that we innovate our way out of problems? Instead, we're just -- we're just dismantling everything. Instead of saying, you know, hey, we've got -- we've got a food storage problem. And somebody comes up with the refrigerator, you know what I mean? We are already seeing technology, that is -- we have reduced greenhouse gases. Better than anybody else.

And a lot of it is because of new technology.

But we just dismiss that.

ALEX: I just there are a couple of things going on. So one of this is there's this idea that CO2 emissions are an emergency. And when you think of something as an emergency, you need to get rid of it immediately.

And if that's your view. The only thing you can do is just massively destroy human life.

I mean, that's the only way you can do it.

To reduce emissions now, in a world where fossil fuels are 80 percent of the world's energy. In a world that needs vastly more energy, 3 billion people using less electricity per person than one of our refrigerators.

Like, the world is going to be using more fossil fuels for a while. So if you think of it as an emergency, the world is going to end, then you are going to do these crash problems and accept these terrible consequences. Which we're just beginning to see. Because we've only reduced fossil fuels a little bit, compared to what has been asked for, in World Economic Forum, and all these other people. So one is this emergency mindset is really bad.

And it's not justified. We're safer than ever from climate. CO2 emissions have a warming impact and a greening impact. It's not a catastrophic impact. If you want to lower emissions. You have to think of it as a long-term thing. That's the only moral way, and it's the only practical way. China and India will not lower their emissions until there's a cost-effective alternative. Now, the greens say they want cost-effective alternatives. They say they want solar and wind. But notice that their approach is to first restrict fossil fuels. I know you've talked about, and then promise a replacement. That's not how markets work. That's not how freedom works.

GLENN: Right. That's not how anything of common sense works. You don't say, I know all the machines in the hospital are keeping your husband alive, but we're going to try something that's never been done before. So we'll turn off all of those machines. And then hope that something works. That's -- that's insane.

ALEX: But that has been the policy. Part of it has been disguised. They said, to take your analogy. They've said the equivalent of, hey, we have this amazing new machine. We're developing green machines. Right?

But what they didn't say, is their main policy is shutting down the machines that worked. Like, what did Biden do first? Shuts down the Keystone XL Pipeline. Bans leasing on federal lands. He didn't come up with some new energy innovation and prove it.

He shut down, what was -- what was working. And that's the huge prison. And so the approach has to be, you liberate innovation, so you get things like cost-effective nuclear.

But you don't dictate inferior alternatives, and call that innovation. Unfortunately, that's what passes for innovation today. That's what the whole inflation act is about. It's about mandating or coercing us to do these things that don't work.

GLENN: All right. Back in just a second. Now, this is five-step platform. However, we need your help on this.

And it's a -- it's a real thing, that could make the -- a significant difference, and turn things around for us. We'll give it to you, in just a few minutes.

Inflation. Hyperinflation. Recession. Depression. The Great Reset.

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GLENN: So you are working with like 100 different legislative offices, correct?

ALEX: Yeah. To various degrees. So two years ago, I was very frustrated by -- I was having success with the public. And I was success with the corporate world. But the political world was just totally ignorant of the kind of pro-human, pro-freedom energy, thinking I had been developing.

And I figured out, like the thing I could do, was I needed to figure out how to give them messaging and policy, in a way that was useful for them.

So I started this website, EnergyTalkingPoints.com. Like, everything on that, can be fit in a tweet. So it's really efficient ways of explaining pro-freedom views.

So if you go there, there's probably thousands of individual talking points, all really well referenced.

And then I found that I got demand for people to get custom help.

So I created something called Energy Talking Points on Demand, where I would have biweekly briefings. And it's just with high-level offices. So it's congressional offices, U.S. Senate offices, and governor's offices.

And so we have about 300 staffers, that are part of it, over 100 offices, and increasing the meetings with the elected officials themselves. I spoke to a group of 20 last time I was in DC. I'm going to DC next week. And what I found there was a real appetite for this. Because many of these offices want to be pro-energy and pro-freedom. But they didn't have the messaging to explain -- to refute all the myths. And also clarity on what to do, going forward.

And that's why I developed the energy freedom platform. Was the clarity on what to do going forward. So what I've been encouraging them to do is, hey, this is a blueprint. You can win on these issues. And you can do something really good. So say Republicans.

Not politically -- not political, really. But let's say Republicans right now, are much more pro-energy. If you guys take over Congress, you need to advocate something positive.

You can't just -- once you take over, you can't just react to negatives.

There's a lot of reacting to negatives, and not a clear having positives. So I would ask your listeners, if they like this, it's really, really simple. Just call your office. Call your office -- oh, are you going to say something?

GLENN: I have got about 20 seconds before we break.

ALEX: Oh, sorry. Just say. Talk to Alex Epstein. Give them my email. Alex@AlexEpstein.com. Just tell the office to email me, and I will set up a call with them, and I'll tell them all about how to use the energy freedom platform.

Why America's "Surveillance State" Has Proven to be a TOTAL Failure

America is facing a shocking security breakdown—from a mass shooting at one of the most heavily surveilled campuses in the United States to a deadly ISIS attack in Syria that exposes the cracks in U.S. intelligence and foreign-policy strategy. As surveillance systems fail, former extremists gain power abroad, and radical Islamist networks globalize their reach, the West is confronting a threat both inside and outside its borders. This episode uncovers the uncomfortable truth behind Brown University’s unanswered questions, Syria’s escalating instability, and why the West may be running out of time to get its own house in order.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I wanted to bring Jason in -- I wanted to bring Jason in because the news that we talked about a minute ago in Australia, then Brown.

There's some weird stuff happening with the Brown shooting. And we -- we don't know much about that. And also, Syria. So let me start with Brown University, Jason. Why is this one weird, as our chief researcher, why is this one weird?

JASON: Well, there comes a point where, you know, as a society, we just end up getting used to the massive surveillance state we live in. And I think we're just like, okay. Fine.

We're never not going to be surveilled 24/7. Maybe there's some benefits to it.

Well, no!

It doesn't seem that way. Because the people were asking the people at Brown. Like, how is it that you have not fully identified the shooter yet? And that's a very good question. Because if you go back to around 2021, there were people writing about how Brown University was one of the most surveilled campuses of the United States.

GLENN: How is it we only have one picture of this guy from the back?

JASON: Right!

GLENN: Apparently the one thing that will help you get away with any crime is a hoodie.

JASON: Yeah. Wear something over your head and a coat.

Apparently, that foils the entire surveillance state. Also, we have nothing to worry about with surveillance. I don't know.

GLENN: Yeah. Right. Right.

JASON: And on top of that, Kash Patel, the FBI director said that they sprung into action. And they activated their cellular monitoring system to help identify the person that has now been let go. Again, that's another layer of this surveillance state that I think a lot of us have been worried about.

And that didn't do anything either. That helped give us the wrong suspect? What is all this stuff for?

It's not keeping us safe, that's for sure.

GLENN: Hmm. I don't want to jump to any conclusions on, you know, what we have, what we don't have. I'm assuming that they have more. They just haven't shown it.

I would like to -- you know, we could help. You show us some pictures.

I think it's odd.

What happened in Syria over the weekend with al-Qaeda.

JASON: Yeah. In Syria.

There's a ton of news, especially involving ISIS, who is very much active and still very much planning attacks.

GLENN: So wait. Wait. Wait. Was this ISIS, or was this al-Qaeda?

JASON: This is ISIS. That's what they're saying. They're saying it's a lone ISIS perpetrator. The location was symbolic as well. The location as in or around Palmyra. Which, I don't know if you remember, that was a scene of a gruesome ISIS video back at the height of their caliphate, where they behead a lot of people in that area.

GLENN: Right. Right. Yes. That's where they lined them up in the orange jumpsuits. Remember everybody was kneeling down in the sand. And they started beheading people. Yes, I remember.

JASON: It was one of those UNESCO sites with ruins all around. And it was very crazy. Brutal video. But another brutal attack. I believe it was three US service members that were killed in this attack. There's a lot of speculation about to go, on if this person was working. I think he was actually at a time working with the security services that are in Syria right now, under the new president. He -- he could have been, you know, a sleeper in that organization. Who knows? But for -- the one thing I do know. And I don't understand the direction we're moving in Syria. I don't understand how a former al-Qaeda guy suddenly is an all right guy because he puts a suit on. And now he's the president of Syria. And he's our ally.

I don't understand that. The Trump administration, maybe they have more information, that I don't know.

I would love to get more of an explanation on this.

As of now, I don't see this going any direction other than a whole lot worse.

You look around that entire area. You have a former al-Qaeda guy now the president of Syria.

You have the rest of Syria, an absolute Dumpster fire. You have Iraq. I hesitate to call these countries.

They're so far down the sectarian, you know, spiral that this is.

But I don't see how this is going to go anywhere, but south, from here on out.

We're in an absolute war with these radical Islamists. And it's not just in the Middle East. It's globalize the intifada has landed on shores all over the world. And while there are politicians that will not denounce that. That is exactly what's happening. Sorry!

GLENN: So I think that's where -- I think that's what -- that explains Trump's thinking. That Trump does not want these everlasting wars to go on.

He does not want to be fighting in the Middle East. He doesn't want to really be fighting anywhere. He will, if he has to. But he's focused more on the American homeland. And the American hemisphere.

And so I think he is -- I think he's letting the Middle East take care of itself.

And as long as they can all get along with each other and Israel.

And recognize that, you know, Iran and the -- the -- the al-Qaeda, the, you know, Muslim Brotherhood. Et cetera, et cetera.

Trying to coax them all into. Hey. These are kind of your enemies here.

You know, ISIS is a big enemy to us and to peace.

And I think he's hoping that they will start to take care of themselves. Whether they will or not, I don't know. You know, it's never happened were. But it's worth trying. We've been playing this other game of us getting involved in everything for 100 years. We know that doesn't work.

So I'm guessing what Trump is thinking is, we know that doesn't work. We're not going to do that. Let's try to give peace a chance, and help them stomp this out, because it will be prosperous for all of them and plant those seeds as deeply as you can to see what happens. But we're not getting involved in any of that. I have a feeling, but there will be a military response to this, I'm sure. Won't you agree?

JASON: Oh, one hundred percent, and to tack on to what you're saying, I would hope that the President would go with his gut on this.

Because the previous ways this has been handled with Islamists, especially in this area. They've screwed it up.

They don't know what they're doing. Although, they think they know what they're doing. I'll go back to history. The Iran and Iraq War. We supported both size on that. In a similar -- in a similar strategy. So we're like, okay. We don't like either one of these groups. Sectarian groups to get too large. Let's fund this country at the same time we fund this country. We'll arm them. They'll fight each other, and they'll be fine. We do that all the time.

So now, the only thing I can think of is that's what they're thinking with the Syria president, this former al-Qaeda guy. Okay. Well, fine. They'll be anti-Iran, so they can counter Iran.

It's literally the same exact strategy, that they're going for. And I get it. That means that we don't have to get involved. I guess in the initial point.

But we always end up having to get involved after the fire erupts and --

GLENN: We know -- look, I think he's trying to buy time, quite honestly. Get us out of that.

Let us recover, and hopefully not go back to it. Try to buy hopefully some real peace.

But we all know how this will end. It's never going to work in the long-term. Because we as the West have to concentrate on our own homelands. You're seeing that with what happened in Australia. We have let the barbarian into the gates. And we've got to focus on that. We've got to get this cancer, cut out of our own societies. Because it's not good.

Why Biden's Corrupt Pardons CANNOT Stand... And Why it STILL Matters!

A new wave of sweeping “pardons” has triggered one of the most urgent constitutional alarms Glenn Beck has ever raised — not because the individuals involved are controversial, but because the actions themselves may not even qualify as pardons at all. Glenn Beck breaks down how these broad, immunity-style declarations can bypass investigations, rewrite laws by fiat, and push executive power into territory the Founders explicitly warned against. With mass clemency increasingly used as a political shield and executive actions replacing the legislative process, America is drifting toward a model of governance that no longer resembles a constitutional republic. This episode exposes how the pardon power is being stretched beyond recognition, why Congress has surrendered its role as a check, and what must happen before the nation crosses a point of no return. The question now is unavoidable: Who will stop this before the Constitution becomes optional?

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

CALLER: I wanted to talk about the pardons. Hunter's pardon was legitimate. He was actually accused of a crime. I know you're plugged in with the president. I haven't heard anybody say this anywhere. I have been watching everything.

These pardons. Forget the auto-pen. The auto-pen doesn't even matter. Because these were immunity deals. These were not pardons. None of these people were under investigation. None of these people had any crimes they were accused of.

So you can't pardon somebody for something they may have or may not have done. That's an immunity deal.

Again, I've watched everything. I don't hear anybody bring that stuff -- I don't think the auto-pen matters. I just think those things are null and void from the jump.

GLENN: Who --

CALLER: Like I said.

GLENN: Who do we have besides Mike Lee? Because Mike is always hard to get a hold of at this time. He's like, I'm working on Senate stuff, Glenn.

Who do we have that is a Constitutional scholar that we can call real quick, and see if we can get an answer on that before the end of the show? At least put a call out to Mike Lee, will you?

But I would like to know that happen at that. Because the president has. And Stu and I have talked about this for a while. This has gotten out of control. These pardons are out of control. Out of control.

It's something Constitutional. It's been there since George Washington. The President has always had this right, and it's a privilege of his. But you're right.

These things where, wait. I can't investigate this? What that does is if you're as a president doing something that you shouldn't be doing, all you have to do then is say, I pardon everyone in my administration for anything that they might have done wrong.

That can't stand. You're absolutely right on that.

STU: Yeah. You have the immunity deal. Which again, I think is -- I don't see -- I don't see how a pre-pardon is even possibly covered.
Like, it's just such an insane concept.

The way that Biden. He's right that Hunter Biden actually committed a crime and pardoning him from that in theory, obviously, outside the family interest was the way that that was supposed to work.

But they also pardoned him for multiple years of question marks, whether he committed crimes or not. Right? That was all included on that.

To go a step farther on this, I am on a bit of a personal jihad against the pardon. I'm done with it. I'm done with it personally. There's reasons the Founders were very, very smart. But the Founders were smart enough to also have a process for Constitutional amendments. And I would support one, getting rid of the part in power completely. I'm done with it.

GLENN: Wait, may I just interrupt for a second. I just want to point out. We now have verification, not only is Stu a Canadian spy, but he's also a hidden Nazi. Noticed the word he used, jihad, which translates to my struggle. Hitler's book, My Struggle, Mein Kampf. I just want to point it out.

JASON: Exposed.

STU: Just to be clear, I'm not planning a genocide on the power of pardons.

But I'm against it, strongly. But the other part I would say that I think is every worse and is never discussed, are these types of pardons where they say, you know, all marijuana crimes. They're -- everyone -- there are 17,000 people.

That is just you legislating. If I wanted to New Jersey and say, hey.

I think marijuana should be legal. I could theoretically be president.

Saying, everyone convicted of a marijuana-related crime is now pardoned.

And that's just you making laws. It's you going completely around Congress. And the entire process we have there.

At the very least. It should be massively restricted from the way it's being utilized. Not only -- several presidents in a row, I would argue.

But it's -- it should just -- I think it should just go away completely. It's the most king-like power the president has. And it doesn't make any sense to me.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

So I'm looking this up here.

Barack Obama did this.

He gave clemency for anybody who was convicted of a non-violent federal drug crime.

With no significant criminal history, while serving extraordinarily long sentences. And anybody who was a violent offender was not eligible.

And it was -- it wasn't a -- a true mass pardon. But it was pretty close to it. You know, it was -- it was mass in scale, but not blanketed.

STU: Right.

GLENN: And I think there were like 2,000 people that he parted on that.

STU: It was a law. Creating a new law.

GLENN: Yeah. You're saying, oh, by the way. That law that I personally disagree with.

We're not going to -- it's gone.

STU: The whole law doesn't count at him. We have a whole process to make laws. When someone -- when they pass a law, you can't say, eh. And shrug your shoulders. And say, I don't particularly like it.

And for some reason, that's the way the pardon power has been translated.

GLENN: The problem is the President can. The President has just always had the restraint not to do that.

STU: Right.

GLENN: Because it was bad for the country. And bad for laws.

You know, you don't just -- you don't do this. We're becoming more and more of a king. In our administration.

And it's not Donald Trump.

This has been about to go for a long time.

Barack Obama I think got really, really bad.

But this was going on before him. Obviously.

But Barack Obama kind of set something off.

And then because we couldn't get any legislation passed. We had Donald Trump try to do executive orders, to combat Barack Obama's executive orders.

Then Biden did it. And Trump. It's got to stop.

Because here's the problem. One of the things I said in our special on Wednesday.

Which was, biggest stories of the year.

And predictions for next year. I said, you will start to see rolling brownouts in places like Texas in 2026. Texans, wake up. Wake up.

But you're going to start to see rolling brownouts. But I also made another prediction. And I've just lost what I was going to say was the prediction.

Oh!

This massive swing. We're getting whiplash.

You can't -- you can't run a country like this.

You can't run a country where it's all being done by executive order.

Because look, we were all the way over to one side. When Trump was here. Then we swung way farther than that. With Biden.

Now Trump is bringing us back this way. If you don't pass laws, it's just going to swing.

And you can't -- you can't run a country like that.

This has got to stop!

We have to pass laws. Congress must do its job.

Why the Australia beach shooting should terrify EVERYONE

Two shooters opened fire on Bondi beach at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration. Glenn Beck reacts to this horiffic act of evil and also to the heroic act of a man who tackled one of the shooters.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So let me just cover the headlines really quickly: Brown University, yesterday, there was a shooter. Two are dead. The only one that has been named so far is the Republican Club Vice President Alec Cook. There have been nine that have been injured. They thought they had the shooter. But turns out, it's not him. He has been released. And there's just some questions on this one that are weird.

Also, al-Qaeda struck and killed US soldiers over the weekend in Syria. There will be a military response to that, I am sure. And yesterday -- yesterday, on the beach, Sydney's eastern suburbs. Sydney, Australia, it's summer there. There's locals. There are people that are coming from all over the country, all over the world, for the warmth of summer and the community celebration of the first night of Hanukkah. The rest of the world is the darkest days of winter. On the other side of the globe, it is still sunlight because it is in the middle of sunlight. But it was a dark, dark day yesterday despite the sun being up.

There were families with children. They were chasing the waves. The smell of grilled food that was drifting across the sand. Music, conversation, laughter in the air. And then around 7 o'clock, laughter was replaced with screams of terror. Two men dressed in black and armed with high-powered firearms positioned themselves atop a small concrete pedestrian bridge. It arched over the Campbell parade near the Bondi pavilion. They stood on top in the center of this bridge and rained bullets as they fired into the crowd. Shots rang out. Astonished the crowd.

VOICE: Get down. Get down. Boys, get down. Oh, my God.

GLENN: It just went on and on and on. Thousands had been gathered for Hanukkah by the Sea. They're now ducking for cover. Some trying to push children to safety, others frozen in disbelief as friends and strangers alike fell all around them.

The carnage was unbelievable. For ten minutes, these guys fired off this bridge. The beach, usually alive with surfers and sun seekers, just transformed instantly. Bodies were trampled. Frantic dash for some sort of shelter and protection, as the waves just continued to lap innocently at the shore while people were screaming for help.

Now, in the chaos, there were acts of individual courage. A fruit vendor, later named by the media as Ahmed al-Ahmed. He saw one of the gunmen firing his weapon. And in a moment of pure resolve, he vaulted from behind a nearby car, tackled the shooter from behind, and wrestled the rifle away. It was an unbelievable scene. Witnesses say -- and it was all captured on tape. There he is. Witnesses say, his bravery likely saved countless lives.

Police arrived, they started shooting at him. They shot at the two that were up on the bridge. They wounded both of them.

15 people had been killed by the time it was over. Dozens wounded. Young children to the elderly. Cherished members of the Jewish community, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a British-born assistant rabbi. He helped organize Hanukkah by the Sea.

The beach won't be looked at the same ever again. As the suspects went down, people from Australia just ran up on to the bridge.

And what I thought was an amazing, amazing moment that spoke volumes of our culture! The police were on top of these men, trying to administer care to keep them alive. While citizens, understandably, came up on the bridge and just started kicking them.
Police jumped on those people and pushed them away. And said, stop, stop, stop. And they did.

Because we're not a culture of death. First suspect, 50 year old, Sajid Akram, 50 years old. He's a dad. The second suspect is his 24-year-old son. Both in critical condition. Now in the hospital under police guard.

Let me ask you to imagine just for a minute, what it must feel like to be Jewish today. Not in theory. Because we -- we had an incident stopped in Amsterdam over the weekend, in Germany over the weekend, in LA, somebody, a drive-by just shot at a Jewish home with the Hanukkah candles in the window, screaming, "F the Jews." You want to know what -- you want to chant, "Bring the Intifada here," this is what it looks like.

It is here now. So what does it feel like to be Jewish today?

I don't know. I can't relate. But I want you to imagine, not as a talking point. But in quiet moments, when the phone would light up with another alert, another headline, another synagogue guarded by concrete barriers, armed police.

There's a particular fear that comes with memory. Jewish people carry history. Not as abstraction, but as inheritance. And it lives in names that are whispered at dinner tables, and photographs rescued from ash. And stories that begin with, "And we thought it would never happen here."

Europe told itself, that very thing once. So did Germany. So did France. So did polite society, everywhere, right before it happened.

And the world has been saying that for decades now. It would never happen here. And here we are again. And here we are, the worst we've seen in America.

Shadows that all of us hoped were buried forever. Hatred with organization, ideology. Hatred with teeth. Violence. Justification.

They're no longer whispers. They're shouting it now in our streets. They're shouting it in the streets of Australia. They're shouting it in the streets of Germany. And England and France. And Norway. They're burning flags. They're firing guns. They're chanting not only death to the Jew, but death to the West, death to Canada, death to the US. Death to Europe. This is no longer confined to the margins anymore. And the West is tolerating it. The west has explained it away. We have minimalized it. We have said it was a lone wolf. Sometimes we even excuse it.

Just for the day, let's just stop and look at Australia for a minute. For years, Jewish communities are warned the officials.

Anti-Semitism isn't theoretical. It's here. We're living it. We're seeing it. It's not just graffiti or angry words.

It's metastasizing into something ideological and organized and deadly. And in Australia, the officials told them, calm down.
Trust the institutions. We've got it.

Somehow or another, multi-cultural harmony would manage itself, but it didn't. Because it doesn't.

Ideology doesn't dissolve when it's ignored. It consolidates. It grows he has and it has across the Western world entirely. Europe, Britain, Australia. Canada. The United States. It's the same pattern!

Violent anti-Semitism rising Jewish schools like fortresses. Your families wondering whether visibility itself is now a liability.

And yet, all across the West, officials hesitate, to name the problem. Clearly!

So let me do it. Precisely. Precisely.

Truthfully.

Islamism.

Islamists. Not Islam. Not Muslim. If you're a Muslim, you want to live peacefully, worship freely. Raise children. Continue to, you know, live and contribute to a society. You know, and you're not an enemy of the West. I'm totally good with that. Look at the fruit cart guy. He apparently didn't hate Jews. He wasn't part of the culture of death.

He stopped it.

And millions do that every single day. But Islamism, Islamists, that's something entirely different.

Islamism is a political ideology.

It's not about faith. It is about power.

It's the belief that society has to be governed by religious law. Sharia law.

That freedom of conscience is illegitimate. That women are subordinate, that dissent is heresy, and that the world and everything in it has to submit. And it's very clear about all of this. It writes it down. It teaches it. It shouts it from the public square. For the love of Pete, it's everywhere. It chants it. It doesn't hide its ambitions. It doesn't hide behind anything. But here's what it doesn't do: It doesn't co-exist with open societies.

It replaces them and has been replacing open societies for centuries.

Any culture built on individual liberty, freedom of speech, equality before the law, it can't survive alongside an ideology that views all of those principles as sins or as an affront to Allah! In that scenario, one side must yield, or one side will be destroyed!

And history is very clear on which one does. You know, we're very different people. Even the difference between us and Canada. And us and Europe.

It might be seemingly starved. It might be we're very different. But when you look at us as a civilization, we're very different. Together, we're very different from the rest of the world.

We don't understand these things. Because we project our values, on everybody else.

We assume that everybody ultimately wants to live. And to compromise. Live side by side. We assume violence is accidental. We assume that it's a lone wolf. We assume that words like to do and dialogue mean the same thing to everybody.

But they don't! And so we tolerate politicians and newscasters and everything else that explain things away. They explain the stabbings and the truck attacks and the shootings and the riots. It's isolated incidents. They're not! We talk about finding the root cause. But we won't -- we won't name the root itself!

We call it extremism, as though it sprang out of nowhere, as though it was a weather event, instead of a worldview that's been around for centuries! I ask you to think about what it feels like to be Jewish today because of the Jewish people.
But also because, you're next. Jewish communities always pay the price first.

They always do. And believe me, you're on the list. You!

Your freedom. Your children are on the list!

And history shows this, with brutal consistency.

When a society begins to rot, from ideological cowardice.

The Jews are always the early-warning system.

They're the canary in the coal mine.

When they're targeted openly. And the state responds with hesitation.

That society is already sick and in the hospital.

It's already in trouble.

And make in mistakes.

The science is not far away.

It is already here.

Synagogues attached. Jewish students harassed on campus. Jewish neighborhoods guarded like war zones. Public celebrations requiring armed protection now. This is not normal, and it's not sustainable. And the West likes to believe and understands freedom.

But freedom is not a five! It's not a comfort. It's not the absence of conflict. Freedom is costly! And it requires moral clarity, and it requires the courage to draw a line and say, this doesn't belong here! And if we refuse to do that work now, our children will have to do it later under far worse conditions! They will have to fight, not to preserve freedom, but to recover it. And history always shows, that's much more costly. America, you're closer than you think to losing not only our country, but countries that took centuries to build!

Not through invasion. But through erosion. Through silence. Through the polite refusal to speak uncomfortable truths.

If not you, who?

If not now, when?

You're running out of time.

"You're being PLAYED": Glenn Beck exposes the TRUTH about Illinois' new MAiD program

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed a bill legalizing "medical assistance in dying" (MAiD) for certain terminally ill patients. Glenn Beck rages against this "culture of death" that is sweeping America, even after it ravaged Canada.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: So JB Pritzker in Illinois signed into law a bill on Friday, that will allow doctors in Illinois to prescribe the deaths of their own patients. First, do no harm. I'm having a hard time with that, doctors. Maybe you can tell us how you're getting around this. First, do no harm.

That is a very important concept, that our doctors are to buy into. And that we all believe.

First, do no harm. If you don't have that, all kinds of things can follow. Especially when they're couched with compassion.

And that is exactly what this is always couched in. Compassion.

Okay. So this new law goes into effect in September of next year. Terminally ill patients over the age of 18 are going to be able to get a suicide drug from their doctor. This is the 12th state in the country, that is allowing assisted suicide. And there are about 25 others that are standing in line for it. What a surprise.

Illinois is the -- is the one -- the first of this -- this batch of them coming in to say, I want to kill people!

It is a culture of death. And we are -- that's what we are battling. No matter what anybody tells you, we're not battling the Republicans or the Democrats.

It's not politics.

It's not Marxism.

It is a culture of death, that we're battling. It is evil. It is evil. A culture of death.

When you look at -- when you look at what people are saying about global warming, what is the solution?

Fewer people. How do you do that? Well, culture of death takes care of that. Right?

When you look at -- when you look at, you know, just about anything now, health care, abortion, culture of death.

Islam, culture of death. Marxism, honestly, it is a culture of death. Why would I say that know.

Well, because it eliminates people who disagree with it. And first, it just pushes them off the sidelines.

But eventually it ends in camps. But also, look what's being taught to our kids. They are killing themselves, because they're so depressed. Because it has no meaning. It completely rejects the you human aspect of humanity.

Culture of death. That's really what we're fighting. Make no mistake.

Now, Illinois and Pritzker, they're saying, well, no. No, no, no. This is going to be -- we're going to be very, very careful. You have to have two doctors. Okay. That's good. That's good.

Germany had three doctors, to give you permission. You're not even up the line of Nazi Germany, but congratulations on that. And they have to be diagnosed with having six months or less to live.

Okay. Okay.

I want you to know, Illinois, America, Western world, you're being played. This is not compassion.

I'm going to be real clear with you.

This is preparation for when the system can no longer afford to fulfill its promises, that's what this is.

They are preparing the system to be able to have the way out. And they're preparing you, so you look at this as compassion and so when it gets worse and worse, up until the very end, you don't recognize it. I mean, they're beginning to a little bit in Canada, to see what's coming their way. And why is it happening? Because they can no longer afford socialized medicine. They can't afford to fulfill the promises.

Let me just say, can America afford to fulfill its promise, that it's made for generations on all of this socialized everything?

No. In fact, there are people now, trying to double down. We can't afford anything. They're trying to double down and expand those programs, which will only collapse us faster.

When they collapse, you know, nobody likes. Well, rich people can get surgery. And as I've said to you before, I don't like that either. I really don't like that. But how else do you do it? How else do you do it? Well, we have a committee. And we -- we ration things. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here's where you're not going to like that. You're not going to like that, because that's not the way humans work. When they ration things, either people with money or the people with power, always find a way to short-circuit so they can get to the top.

So the one that you're saying now is the poor, helpless waif that's not getting anything because of the rich people, when the system changes, that poor lonely waif is still not going to get any help because the powerful, the ones that are connected, they'll get the medical care, and the waif won't get medical care. People will find a way to short-circuit the system because people generally suck.

And when you give all the power to people, it's not good. It's usually not good. So you may not like the, you know, pay for it kind of system, but it is the best one out there. And you really don't want to give a bureaucracy the -- the ability to kill you if you become expensive or inconvenient.

Now, I know that's not what they're saying. That's not what we're doing. We're giving people out of compassion, help them end their lives. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That's exactly what happened in Canada. Let me just tell you. It was called C14. Let me just look up the facts here. C14 in Canada. It happened in 2016.

And it -- what it -- what it meant was, you could get compassionate care, if you had doctors. Three doctors approved.

You had a terminal, I don't remember what they called it.

But basically, you could see the end in sight. Okay?

There was -- there was no way for us to repair your body and heal you.

So we could see that.

Basically, you know, you were terminal.

We could see that.

In the future. Near future.

And three doctors agreed.

And then you had a waiting period after you requested it, the doctors would approve.

And then there were ten days, before you would administer. Ten days before you would back out.

That's what it started as, okay?

That's not what it's become. 2016, that's what it was. And you had to be 18 years or older.

And you had to have full capacity. So you couldn't listen to, you know, friends or family.

You had to make the decision. And you needed full capacity.

Okay.
Then things started to fall apart.

Then we had COVID. Then we had all these expenses. Then we had people move into the country.

This is Canada. Same thing happened here. COVID. Hospitals are overwhelmed.

Medical care goes to hell.

And then you start bringing in people from all over the world.

And now you don't have hospital care. Everybody is crowded. The doctors are overwhelmed.
And so in 2021, they decided the Quebec court decided, well, you know, death in the foreseeable future. Is that really necessary?

Excuse me?

I mean -- I mean, the reasonable foreseeable natural death requirement. Do we really need that?

The court said, no, we really don't.

There are two tracks! Those who have natural death in the foreseeable future. We're going to make it a little easier for them. So beyond the request, the three doctors and the ten-day waiting period. We're going to get rid of some of that because it's not necessary.

I mean, if you're in the reasonably foreseeable future, you don't need all those safeguards. And then people whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable. Well, we're going to make them do all of those things. Oh, okay.

And, by the way, we're removing the ten-day waiting period too. Once the doctor says, you're good, you're good.

Okay. All right.

That wasn't far enough. Now, they have a new bill, C7.

Canada bill seven.

When they -- when that removed the foreseeable requirement, they added a temporary exclusion for people whose sole medical condition was a mental disorder.

Oh, wow. So now we're into mental illness.

So your death isn't in the foreseeable future.

But you really want to die.

So does this apply to mental.

People with mental problems?

Oh, no, no, no. No. We're not going to ban it. We're just going to put a temporary ban on that one?

Why would you put a temporary ban on that?

Why would you put a temporary ban on something like that?

Let me give you the answer and you tell you what else it's done and bring it home for you here in just a second.

Okay. So why would you -- why would you remove the restriction on the mentally ill?

Remember, the first thing was -- the first thing was, you've got to be -- you've got to be fully there.

You have to be competent and aware of what you're doing.

Then they said, well, the foreseeable future thing.

Your death is inevitable. We're going to take that away.

But we're going to put a temporary restriction on mental illness.

The only reason why you would make that a temporary restriction, is because you're just trying to get the rest of the society to catch up with what you're going to do.

That's the only reason.

And that's why, it has been extended.

Okay?

It was supposed to end in 2023.

Then it was extended to March 2024.

And now, it has been pushed to 2027.

Okay?

So you're not eligible for MAID until March 2027, if you have a mental illness.

Hmm.

Huh! Now, they may push it forward again, to give it more time to convince everybody that that's what they have to do.

And how do you convince people?

Well, you convince people, because there's shortages and be that person doesn't have the capability to think they're mentally ill. They might want to tie. They're very, very depressed. They're very depressed, and so they want to die anyway.

They want to die. I need the doctor. Okay?

That's what's going to happen. That's what's going to happen.

Unless we remember who we are. Unless all of a sudden, we -- we're like, you know what, that's -- you know, that's not who we are.

That's not the West. The West is not defined by its technology.

Even by its freedom or its wealth.

Everybody thinks, oh, the West. They're wealthy.

No. That's not it.

What makes us unique in the West. The entire West Canada, included. All of Europe. This radical idea that the individual has inherent value.

That nobody is expendable.

And not because they're useful, not because they're productive, not because they're convenient.
They have an inherent right to exist, to live.
If you look at the past, you look at Athens and Rome.
Oh. I mean, they just put you -- you this put babies that were not boys, that were girls. Where they were deforming.

They throw them on a garbage barge. These barges would go down the river. With screaming babies on them. They just let them die, okay?

That's the way it does. But West through Judeo Christian ethics taught us, that's not right!

And we build hospitals before skyscrapers.

We put limits on -- on force. We teach doctors to heal. Not to calculate.

When a society like ours stops choosing life, it does not become more compassion.

It becomes more efficient. Not compassionate! Efficient!

And efficiency has never given birth 20 moral virtue.

Efficiency kills it. If that's your goal. It kills it.

Fighting this culture of death, it is the most important thing we can focus on.

A lot of people will focus on politics and everything else.

And what JB Pritzker is doing here, there, and everywhere else.

I don't even care about politics.

We have to convince one another, we have to start standing up for the principles that made the West, the West.

Because without the choice to protect life at its most fragile, we are no longer a civilization worth saving! We're just another system deciding, eh, I don't know, is that worth the trouble? And history is very clear where that society ends. That's why, last week, to me, it was so personal, and so important.

To help this woman, not just because it's the right thing to do. And because every life matters. And this happened to be a life that came across my path.

And I'm like, we've got to stop that! But because, this goes to something bigger! And it is infecting us right now. And if we buy the lies, that this is for compassion. Look! I understand. I understand pain. I understand end of life. I don't want to be in that situation.

I know, you don't want to be.

I mean, I know what it feels like with my dog, putting my dog down. It kills me. It kills me to put my dog down. So I get it on the dog level, let alone, you know, a parent level or a spouse level. I get it.

But you cannot as a society go down this road. Because once you open this door, all the other doors just start to swing open. When there's trouble!
The first sign of shortage, all those doors open up. And guess what we're headed for. Shortages.