If athletes really want to protest, here are some stories they could focus on...

December 10, 2014

Writer

Well, hello, America, and welcome to The Glenn Beck Program and TheBlaze. I’m Stu Burguiere, filling in for Glenn.

Finally, some big-name athletes are taking a stand. Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, and a few other NBA players wore “I can’t breathe” shirts during warm-ups last night, and in recent weeks, several players have given a nod to the “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra from Mike Brown protesters. I don’t know about you, but I’m all a tingle to see professional athletes finally make a political and social statement like that.

Sports had been one of the few remaining places I could escape from the craziness of our day-to-day, the insanity of the news, and whatever other struggles we have going on in our lives and just sit back and enjoy the show. But thankfully that’s over now, and we can look forward to the game and a message too, a lecture or a political statement. I can’t wait. And who wouldn’t want to get their political messages from people who specialize in bouncing and throwing balls?

Before you get all negative and say sports is finally ruined forever, think of the positives. Okay, there’s really none, but who knows, maybe some good will come of this trend. Since they’re concerned about making black lives matter, maybe we’ll see this very soon. I mean, it’s really possible, right? I mean, I can see this happening.

In New York City, black babies are more likely to be aborted than born. Over 31,000 were murdered, while only 25,000 were actually born. In the past 10 years, 16 million black babies have been murdered. Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, that’s only three individuals, but if abortion were illegal, the black population by some estimates would be 36% larger. That’s more people than the population of every single U.S. state, except four: California, Texas, New York, and Florida.

Here are some other possibilities. What about this? You know, everyone loves the Constitution, right? Can’t you see Reggie Bush coming out with the Second Amendment shirt? Possible, right? Benghazi, I mean, people want to draw some attention. I haven’t seen a lot of the Benghazi shirts. I don’t think people want shirts with Hillary Clinton’s face on it. That might be the possible reason for that one.

How about this one, just a good old classic 'don’t tread on me'? That could happen too. Maybe the story of 22-year-old Chris Lane, who was murdered for simply being white will finally gain the notoriety it deserves. And I know I’m getting a little carried away with my expectations here, but perhaps this trend means we will finally see the day when someone has the courage to stand with the victims you never hear about, celebrity dudes who’ve been raped.

Shia LaBeouf, he held a days-long art exhibit where he sat in silence and let people come talk to him one on one. And during the “performance,” he was tragically raped. Since he wasn’t allowed to say anything, you know, for the art, he had to sit there and endure this rape. That’s a huge problem for celebrity men. The last thing a 20-something-year-old guy expects to deal with when they become famous are herds of gorgeous women who will do anything, literally anything, to hook up with them.

These men just want to focus on their careers and charitable endeavors and of course their art. Can you imagine having to fend off dozens of supermodels everywhere you went? It’s a horrible, horrible life, and it’s time someone takes a stand with Shia LaBeouf and all the male celebrity rape victims out there. I know I’m going to go to a field soon and see this, #Iammalecelebrityrape. We can only hope.

I am getting a little ahead of myself. Little baby steps, baby steps…we’ll take what we can get at this point. Maybe we can get someone to hold this sign up, you know? Oh yeah, “I’m not stoopid,” yeah, that’s kind of a reference to Jonathan Gruber, who was on Capitol Hill today for congressional hearings, and he was thoroughly grilled by Trey Gowdy and others and rightfully so.

He’s the ObamaCare architect who was caught on camera repeatedly bragging about the purposeful lack of transparency and relying on the stupidity of the American voter to get it passed. Remember this classic?

VIDEO
Gruber: …just like lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.

Stu: It was. Most of the mainstream media didn’t pay much attention, but it’s a pretty damning statement. Naturally, Obama and Democrats distanced themselves from him.

VIDEO
President Obama: I just heard about this. I get well briefed before I come out here. The fact that some advisor who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is no reflection on the actual process that was run.

Stu: He’s just a random advisor, barely even knew he existed. Nancy Pelosi said she didn’t even know who he was. Of course, the problem here is, remember, this is 2006, okay? 2006 Obama, he disagrees. He said he stole ideas liberally from Jonathan Gruber at a conference where he spoke with Jonathan Gruber. And look at Nancy Pelosi’s Gruber-induced schizophrenia.

VIDEO
Pelosi: I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill, so with all due respect to your question, you have a person who wasn’t writing our bill commenting on what was going on when we were writing the bill. I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis of what the comparison is to the status quo versus what will happen in our bill.

Stu: So when he was an unknown MIT professor, they loved him. He was the toast of the town. He gave the credibility of MIT. In fact, he even made a comic book starring himself that explained how wonderful ObamaCare really is. Do we have the comic book, please? Thank you. Oh, here it is. I could get you a copy of this really cheap, really, really cheap.

Look at this. You flip through, you get all the superhero…look at them. There’s monsters, and monsters are going to scare you. There’s our hero, Jonathan Gruber. See, he’s the smart one with the glasses, and he’s talking to all the idiot police officers and the stupid ambulance drivers about how they don’t know anything about healthcare and all the dumb voters and the morons, and he’s the smart one telling us all the truth about healthcare.

Of course, he now admits he was lying the whole time. On the back cover, you have endorsements from John Kerry and of course Center for American Progress as well. Now that he’s been exposed as just an arrogant progressive jackwagon, they play dumb. But forget all the politics of it all. Money talks. How much did they think this guy was worth? His salary should give some clues as to whether he was more architect or some advisor we don’t even really know. Here was his answer on Capitol Hill today.

VIDEO
Rep. Jordan: I don’t care what you were informed, Mr. Gruber. I care about what I’m asking you is how much money did the taxpayers, state or federal, pay you to have you then lie to them? That’s what I want to know.
Gruber: Over this fiscal year and the previous fiscal years—
Rep. Jordan: No, total. I mean, look, look, this has been a five-year ordeal with this law. We want to know how much you got from the taxpayer and then made fun of them after you got the money and lied to them.
Gruber: I don’t recall the total.

Stu: Who would know? I mean, if people pay you millions of dollars, you’re going to know? The arrogance really was infuriating. He absolutely knows how much money they paid him, and Americans are absolutely owed an answer, but instead he goes crawling to his attorneys. That’s our money. Just man up and tell us.

Of course the reason goober Gruber didn’t want to reveal how much taxpayer money he received is because he got filthy rich—$400,000 from DHHS, 2 million from NIH, 1.74 million from the DOJ. The DOJ? What the hell is the DOJ paying this guy millions of dollars for, seriously? A hundred thousand dollars from the State Department, and then various states also paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars. All told, we paid this guy $5.9 million to bring us ObamaCare, among other fabulous projects.

Sounds like a high amount for “just some advisor,” but then again, the government has never been accused of frugality. They pay millions of dollars for toilets. Maybe they thought Gruber was a porta potty. I’m not sure. Let’s not forget, by the way, that ObamaCare is a complete and total failure. There are some 40 million uninsured in America. Seven million “allegedly” are enrolled in ObamaCare, but 4 of those 7 million lost the plans they were already having, they are ready paid for, and they liked, and they were told that they could keep. So that means this giant, massive government program designed to cover, I don’t know, 40 million people is covering about three, and we’re the stupid ones. What a waste.

Maybe that’s something we can look forward to seeing future athletes protest. I hope so. Back in a second.

Glenn: What I saw on the ground in Asheville gave me hope

Melissa Sue Gerrits / Stringer | Getty Images

The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care.

I’ve seen a lot of destruction in my life. I’ve walked through war zones and cities torn apart by riots, and I've stood at the sites of natural disasters that leave communities devastated. But what I saw in Asheville, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.

Houses were washed down rivers, upside down and crushed. Train tracks, strong enough to support locomotives, were left suspended in midair after the earth beneath them was eroded away. Semi-trucks, rolled by the force of the floodwaters, now lie like children’s toys, tossed and overturned hundreds of feet from the road. Whole towns have been uprooted and scattered — debris from homes miles away, stacking up like dominoes, bridges that stood for decades washed out by water so high that it flowed six feet over their tops.

'You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.'

I stood there, looking at this idyllic small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I thought, “This will take years to rebuild. Maybe even decades.” But I didn’t just see destruction. I saw something far more powerful than nature’s wrath: the resilience of the American spirit.

My expectations for the government’s assistance were low before I arrived in Asheville, given its failing track record in previous natural disasters, but its response to Hurricane Helene victims — or lack thereof — was a new category of negligence. But the people in Asheville weren’t waiting on FEMA or the federal government to swoop in. They knew no one was coming.

The bridges were out, roads were destroyed, and the mountains had isolated them from outside help. But instead of despair, I saw hope. Instead of panic, I saw action. People were taking care of each other, and that is the America I remember, like in the days after 9/11 when we came together regardless of political party, race, or background. We didn’t care about who voted for whom. We just saw our neighbors hurting, and we asked, “Are you OK? What can I do to help?”

I saw that again in North Carolina. I saw it in the man who turned his Harley-Davidson dealership into a helicopter landing zone, shoveling mud out of his showroom just so rescue teams could land. I saw it in the volunteers flying missions across treacherous terrain, getting the elderly and the injured out of danger. They weren’t asking for government permission. They were doing what needed to be done.

Adam Smith, a retired Special Forces veteran who is coordinating the landing of helicopters in Asheville, told me that the FAA is trying to shut down the operation because it isn’t federally regulated. He told the feds that they’re going to leave because he has a helicopter landing in a few minutes that will actually help people while they are barking orders from Washington.

One story stood out to me. We landed to help evacuate an elderly woman with a broken hip and a severe infection. She just had surgery, but because her family didn’t have insurance, the hospital pushed her out as fast as it could. Her wound became infected, and her leg was on fire. We helped airlift her to get her desperately needed antibiotics and treatment. There were no government resources to help her to an emergency room.

As we loaded the woman into the helicopter, her grandson turned to me and said, “You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.” That hit me hard because it’s the truth. It’s the way America used to be, and it’s the way we need to be again.

As I flew through those mountains in the helicopter, I couldn’t help but think of Billy Graham. I’d visited Asheville about 10 years ago to see him, and I remember thinking how beautiful and peaceful the town was. Today, it’s unrecognizable. The destruction is overwhelming. But the people are stronger than ever.

The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care. I saw it firsthand. We found a FEMA truck parked under a tree, its workers sitting at a card table in the shade. They weren’t doing anything to help.

But we’re Americans. We can take care of ourselves. We don’t need Washington to save us. We need each other. This is the America that Billy Graham spoke to me about — the America that will rise again in times of trouble. And while the government might fail us, we will not fail each other. And that’s exactly what I saw in North Carolina — Americans stepping up, taking care of their neighbors, and rebuilding their communities.

This is what I told the people of Asheville: You are not forgotten. There are millions of Americans who love you, who are praying for you, and who are ready to help. Because that’s what we do. We don’t wait for permission. We roll up our sleeves and take care of our own.

And to the rest of America, I say this: It’s time to remember who we are. It’s time to stop looking to Washington for solutions and start looking at each other. Because when the chips are down, it’s not the government that’s going to save us. It’s you and me, and if we stand together, nothing — no hurricane, no flood, no disaster — can break us.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

UPDATE: Will Florida survive Hurricane Milton?

Handout / Handout / Getty Images

For the second time in two weeks, Florida is in the path of a major hurricane.

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall sometime tonight, Wednesday, October 9th, somewhere near Tampa Bay. This will mark the first time in a hundred years the city has been hit directly by a hurricane, raising concerns about the preparedness of the city's infrastructure. Milton, which was rated a category five hurricane earlier this week, has been reduced to a category four as it approaches land and is expected to make landfall as a powerful category three.

The Sunshine State has already begun to feel the effects of the historic storm, with strong winds and heavy rains battering Tampa Bay this morning. Many are still trying to evacuate or prepare for the storm as conditions worsen. Highways have slowed down, and gas has run short. Residents are preparing for the worst.

The federally recognized "Waffle House Index" is in red, meaning that several Waffle House locations in the Tampa Bay area will be shut down. Waffle House prides itself on being open 24/7, no matter the conditions, so for them to shut down, if only for a brief time, indicates that severe damage to the area is anticipated.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

In short, Milton is anticipated to be a disaster, and as we have learned, FEMA is unlikely to be much help. Fortunately, Floridians have Ron DeSantis, who has continued to prove himself a capable governor, and the aid of good-hearted Americans from across the country. If you want to lend a hand to your fellow Americans you can donate at Mercury One and rest assured that your money will be used to step in to help hurricane victims where the government is failing.

'Call her Daddy'? Kamala Harris keeps dodging important questions

TING SHEN / Contributor | Getty Images

Kamala Harris has been making her rounds on talk shows and podcasts in order to increase her poor recognition amongst voters, but all we're hearing is more of the same.

Just in the past few days, Harris has appeared on "60 Minutes" and the popular podcast "Call Her Daddy" to help Americans get to know her. But instead of bold answers to hard-hitting questions, Harris delivered rambling responses to soft-ball questions and squirmed her way out of the few tough questions thrown at her. Overall, it is unlikely that any voter who tuned in to get a solid grasp on Harris's policies was left with a better understanding after either one of her interviews.

Below is a summary of Harris's most recent interviews:

"Call Her Daddy" podcast

Antony Jones / Stringer | Getty Images

Despite this podcast's unsavory name, it consistently ranks among the most popular podcasts in the world, right up there with Joe Rogan's show, and is especially popular among women. Shortly after releasing the interview with Harris, Alex Cooper, the host of the podcast, received backlash for her extremely soft treatment of the presidential nominee. After watching the interview, it's not hard to see how that impression might have come across.

The interview consisted of several surface-level, gimme-type, questions on common Democrat talking points. Harris said she was—surprise—pro-choice. Who would have thought? She also expressed her desire to dump taxpayer money into student loan forgiveness along with other government "aid" programs, which is pretty standard amongst the Left. Overall, nothing new was revealed.

The rest of the interview was little more than gossip. Cooper and Harris chatted about a comment made by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the "at ladies" comment made by J.D. Vance. This was not the deep dive on Harris that voters wanted.

60 Minutes

CBS Photo Archive / Contributor | Getty Images

On Monday, October 8th, Harris sat down with CBS's Bill Whitaker for an interview on 60 Minutes. While Whitaker defiantly upped the ante in comparison to "Call Her Daddy," Harris still managed to dodge several questions. When asked about foreign policy, Harris parroted the same tired schtick we've heard for the past four years, which clearly hasn't worked. Like Biden before her, she called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, primarily out of concern for the Palestinians, while simultaneously maintaining Israel's right to self-defense.

Harris also deflected Biden's failure at the Southern Border onto the House Republicans, citing a single instance where a border security bill failed to pass. Even Whitaker pointed out the obvious: The Biden-Harris administration has had four years to solve the problem, and the blame does not fall on this single instance. Harris didn't waver, and doubled down on her excuse, again blaming Congress.

Harris went on to repeatedly dodge questions about her three trillion-dollar economic plan and offered little explanation of what might be included in such a plan, or how it will be paid for. These interviews have repeatedly failed to define Harris or her platform in any meaningful way, though they were successful in concealing just how radical of a candidate she actually is. She is still just a vaguely left-wing, Joe Biden replacement in the eyes of many voters, which might be the best she can do.

The Howard Stern Show

Kevin Mazur / Contributor | Getty Images

In her recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, Harris once again demonstrated her signature combination of evasiveness and unreliable platitudes. Rather than offering substantive answers to Stern’s pointed questions, Harris deflected with awkward humor and vague talking points, sidestepping any real discussion on critical issues like the border crisis or inflation. Her attempt to portray herself as relatable felt painfully out of touch, especially when she pivoted the conversation to her fondness for music and cooking.

Harris’s inability to confront pressing national concerns only highlights her growing reputation for evading accountability during her term in the Biden administration. Stern, typically known for drawing candid responses from guests, seemed unable to penetrate the wall of superficiality that Harris maintained throughout the conversation.

"The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert

CBS Photo Archive / Contributor | Getty Images

We saw a similar performance from Harris on Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show." Colbert teed her up for questions about inflation, the southern border crisis, and the administration’s plunging approval ratings, but Harris stuck to her well-worn script of platitudes and vague promises. Instead of addressing the economic pain felt by millions, she laughed nervously through softball questions, leaving viewers with nothing but empty rhetoric about “working together” and “finding solutions,” while the country watches the consequences of ineffective leadership.

Moreover, when Colbert pressed her on issues like the administration's immigration policies or lack of legislative victories, Harris deflected with hollow talking points, refusing to engage in any serious reflection or accountability. Her awkward attempts at humor felt like a shield against real criticism, confirming the impression that she remains detached from the gravity of the crises unfolding under her watch.

PHOTOS: What Glenn saw in North Carolina was INSANE

Sean Rayford / Stringer | Getty Images

Last Thursday, October 3rd, Glenn traveled to North Carolina to join Mercury One as they provided critical aid to those devastated by Hurricane Helene.

What Glenn saw during his brief visit looked like scenes straight out of an apocalypse movie: houses torn from their foundations and tossed to the side, sometimes entire towns away from where they were built, semi-trucks rolled, railroad tracks swept away, bridges washed out. It was a level of destruction Glenn had never before seen.

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But perhaps the most shocking encounter of his whole trip was when Glenn discovered a lone FEMA crew. It was a miracle that Glenn even spotted the FEMA truck, as it was parked away from the main road without any signs or markers to indicate to any passerby in need of its existence. Glenn and Congressman Cory Mills decided to talk to this FEMA crew, the only one they had encountered on their trek, and see what they were up to. As it turns out, not much. The FEMA workers admitted that they had only arrived the day before (nearly a week after the hurricane) and still did not have any sort of supplies. They claimed that people would know where they were located via the local news, despite the fact that most people did not have access to power, cell service, their home, or even their cars. Moreover, there seemed to be confusion about whether they were to go door-to-door in order to render aid to those in need.

.@CoryMillsFL and I spoke with the ONLY FEMA crew we could find in Asheville, North Carolina. It was stationed OFF the main road where NO Hurricane Helene victims could easily see them:

“We got here yesterday.”
A WEEK LATE.

“They could go online, make a phone call, or use our… pic.twitter.com/IU5I6KAL5r
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) October 4, 2024

FEMA dropped the ball on this entire affair, and it is only going to get worse. FEMA is claiming they blew their yearly allowance on aiding illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, another hurricane is approaching Florida and is expected to make landfall on Wednesday. It seems unlikely that FEMA will be of any use to Floridians in need, and they will have to rely on the aid of their fellow Americans.

Want to help out your fellow countrymen where our government has failed? You can donate at Mercury One and rest assured that your money will be used to step in to help hurricane victims where the government is failing.

Glenn's Show Prep