8/31/17 - Life is easy, but people are complex

The Blaze Radio Network

on demand.

Hello, America.

There's a couple of things that you should know about.

If you live anywhere

near Texas,

you probably should fill up your gas tank today.

If you've got a couple of cars, you have a motorcycle, make sure that you get filled today.

Here in Texas, on the way in, four gas stations with signs on the pump out of gas.

Talking to the owner of the last gas station, he said, 90% of the gas that we have, at least here in Texas, and I'm imagining

it's like this around the Gulf States,

90% of it we get from Houston.

There's no gas coming out of Houston.

It's going to be a very long weekend, and what happened in Houston does not stay in Houston.

This is going to affect the entire country and perhaps the world.

There's also another story that I want to start with today, and that is a story

yet again from a misguided media that is saying to us, Houston is not showing us the best of people.

This is not what America really is.

Really?

It is.

And it's important that we recognize it and we share it with our children.

And I begin there right now.

I have made my choice.

We will overcome.

Cause we are one.

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

I want you to listen to this.

I'm not even going to give the publication the

service of

telling you where you can find this article, but it's not a nobody

website.

Katie Waldman has just put out a piece called Misleading to Say Houston Showcases America at Its Best.

The flood, the animals, it all felt so mystic,

so mythic, she writes.

The Washington Times highlighted the many Clark Kent's and Princess Dianas vaulting into action.

Hurricane Harvey brings out the best in America.

There's an adage that adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it.

But does catastrophe illustrate, or does it transform?

What if America is a less glorious nation of do-gooders waiting for their chance to exercise their altruism than a moral junior varsity team just elevated by circumstance.

First of all,

do you want to live in that world?

What's your name, Katie?

Is that the world you live in?

Is that the world you want to live in?

Because I can't imagine it's a happy place to wake up to every day.

We're just, nobody's really good, nothing's really positive, it's all horrible, and you know, once in a while, a catastrophe will elevate us.

First of all, Katie, do your homework.

For thousands of years, men have pondered,

do men really rise to the occasion?

Katie,

I'm a self-educated man.

I probably didn't go to a big fancy school like you did.

So I apologize for not having the name of this high falutin Greek.

But I read something a couple of months ago that is absolutely true, and it's

from ancient Greece.

So it's been around for a while.

That men don't rise to the occasion.

They don't.

They rise to the level of their preparedness and knowledge.

So if you're not prepared to be a decent person, if you're not, if that's not who you are inside, you won't suddenly become altruistic.

It doesn't happen.

Generally speaking, when things go horribly, men turn into animals.

Why do you think so many people like me are worried about a real economic crash?

In 1930, when we went through the Great Depression, and by the way, Katie, while you're there, you should look up and answer this one question.

Why is it called the Great Depression in America, but just the depression everywhere else?

It'll be an interesting sidebar for you.

But

when you look at what happened to us in the 1930s, there were the Nazis here in America.

That's another sidebar you should look up.

The German Bund movement of the 1930s in New York.

But then also look up the communist movement in the 1930s.

See the Antifa movement of the 1930s.

See the ports.

It'd be interesting for you to look into Oakland and San Francisco and see what happened with the riots back then and how people were beaten

and

beaten with clubs and lumber in the street.

Men go bad,

especially when all they're looking for is power and control.

Men go bad.

There's another book out there about our better angels.

I started reading it because I...

I watched Game of Thrones.

Holy cow, is that violent?

And I couldn't believe that's not the way life life was, right?

It couldn't have been like that.

Oh yeah, that's exactly the way life was.

So tell me about the altruistic nature of man.

Man, generally,

they're cowards.

I know I am.

I'm not saying I'm not.

I know I am.

One of my greatest fears in life is

I have prepared myself to

be able to stand up when times get tough, to be able to stand up, God forbid we'd go through another 1930s.

I challenged my own kids at literally the gates of Auschwitz.

Kids, you're old enough now to really understand.

You're in your 20s.

I took you here because I want you to make a decision.

Who are you going to be?

If the world ever goes insane again, who will you be?

My fear is with all the preparation and all the thought and prayer that I have done that I still cave at the last minute.

We're animals

and when we're afraid

we're most likely to become that animal.

Civilization is a very frail and fragile thing.

But there's something

in the West, there's something particularly in the America

that has tamed that wild beast, not always, holy cow.

I'm sure you know slavery.

I'm sure, Katie, though, you also know that the first slave owner, the one who went to court in America, under English law,

to demand that, no, this isn't indentured servitude.

I have a right to own this black man.

I'm sure, Katie, you've done enough homework and you know that that man who was the first slave owner in America that fought for that right to own another human being was himself a black man.

I know things get confusing, don't they?

Actually,

actually, it's not.

Life is easy,

It's people that are complex.

Because you can never really tell

what they're going to do when they're afraid.

But in America, we have always,

we've, I can't even say always,

it may take us decades.

But as again, we found out in the Civil War, we found out in World War II,

After a decade of playing footsie with the communists and the Nazis in our own cities,

having radio show hosts like Father Coughlin, a progressive, by the way, not a

Republican or conservative, but a deep, die-hard progressive,

having him on the air and having 80 million people listening to him a week.

talk about how great the Nazis are.

Yeah, it took us a while, but as Thomas Jefferson said, trust the people.

They may get it wrong first, but

they'll eventually figure it out and get it right.

And we do.

This time, this one time here in Houston, we have been blessed that it didn't take us long to figure it out.

We were those people.

And I'm sorry, you don't just become those people if you haven't prepared to be those people in some way or another.

I wonder if it's this, Katie.

And this is only my personal experience.

But I grew up in a small town called Mount Vernon, Washington.

I don't think you would like it because it's not really diverse.

It's full of just a bunch of white farmers, most of them from Holland.

It's tulip capital of the West.

Not a lot of exciting things happened there when I was growing up.

Well, I was going to say it's not very diverse, so you may not like it, but it's like unbelievably progressive, so then again, you might love it.

But I'm going to let you figure out how you square that.

My dad owned the city bakery.

It was on Main Street.

It was in the hotel lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel.

And downtown Mount Vernon, when it was bustling in the late 60s, early 70s,

was just this great little town.

But then the mall moved in and kind of disrupted that.

And

we became part of this homogenized America where it was all Land Taylors and the Gap.

This is long before those.

But we loved our small town.

And it's right on the bend of the Skagit River.

And once in a while, rarely, but once in a while, the river would flood.

And the downtown,

there were levees that were built, and then the downtown kind of went down a steep hill.

And so if the river ever flooded, the downtown flooded quickly.

I've been thinking about this a lot this week because I wondered,

I wondered if this had anything to do making me into the man that I am today, one that wants to be on the front lines helping.

Because one year our town flooded and I must have been about eight years old maybe.

And we all had to go down and fill sandbags and it was me and my dad.

And we went down to the riverbank and we were filling sandbags.

I'll never forget it.

There's one picture my mom took of everybody.

I don't even know if I'm in the picture or my dad's in the picture.

It was just everybody helping out, the whole town helping out.

And I'll never forget my father about three shovelfuls in of sand.

He had a really bad back, threw out his back.

And I knew it.

I looked up at my dad and he just stopped and froze.

And I said, Are you okay, dad?

And he said, Yep, just keep the bag open.

And he shoveled sand for hours.

That week, my dad couldn't walk,

and he actually had to sleep in our bakery because we couldn't afford to close it.

He had to go to work.

And so he slept in the bakery, and he would get up on the table and a bakery, they're called a bench, and he would get up on the bench, and

he laid down on one of the benches.

And that week, we kept our bakery open because the guy who ran the Magnavox store,

I believe the guy who was our postman,

and another guy who was one of our family's best friends, and I don't even remember what he did for a living,

they all took turns that week baking for my dad.

None of them had any experience.

My dad would just say, okay,

take

a pound of flour

and throw it into that mixer over there.

And my dad was teaching these men how to bake.

And that week, the town came and rallied around my father

after he had rallied around the town.

And I watched that.

And this week I thought of that memory.

I haven't thought of it in years.

And I wondered, I wonder

what impact that had

on me.

Because, Katie, your premise is wrong.

Men don't just rise to the occasion.

They rise to the level of their preparedness and their knowledge.

I think I rise a lot of days

in very small, insignificant ways,

because my father prepared me to.

Because my little small town,

so

lacking in diversity, but yet so unbelievably progressive,

taught me some important lessons.

When push comes to shove,

we do all have to stand together

and help each other.

888727 back.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

I didn't mean to make the opening monologue so personal

to Katie, but I think she needs to

look at things maybe perhaps a little differently.

She's a writer that, I'm not even going to give you the name of the place where she wrote this article because I don't want to give her the clicks.

But

she wrote an article that basically said, Houston's not all that.

I mean, really, it's really not all that.

People are just, you know, they see something and they're pushed into it.

We're not some great country.

We just get pushed into these things.

Events make us.

No.

No.

It's what we make of events that changes us.

It's a progressive flaw in thinking that you don't really have any control over your life.

My life is a blank sheet of paper.

The only one that can write the story of my life is me.

If you allow anyone else to write your story, that's your fault.

That is you

inviting another author in.

But that's the basic point of America.

We all can start all over again.

We can all change our mind and change our life and start all over again.

That's why America likes rags to riches story, because that's our nature.

That's been bred into us.

But Katie, I know I said you should do some homework on the Great Depression to find out why it was called great where everyone else, it's not great.

Please, will you do me a favor?

Get that message to Nancy Pelosi when you figure that out.

Chairman Mernanke is probably one of the foremost authorities in America.

on the subject of the Great Depression.

I don't know what was so great about the Depression, but that's the name they give it.

It's so good.

Really unbelievable.

I can't.

I can't take the level of self-imposed ignorance that we all just accept.

You know what I mean?

Here's an intelligent woman.

Nancy Pelosi is an intelligent woman.

Come on.

It's about as dumb a statement as the Great Depression.

She is living a life of self-imposed ignorance.

She has access to information.

She chooses not to spend the time to open her mind and expand.

She can do it.

She chooses not to.

The Glenbeck Program.

Mercury.

The Glenn Beck Program.

Welcome to the program.

So glad that you're here.

A couple of things you should be aware of.

Anybody who you're hearing talk about, you know,

global warming and climate crisis and how they're glad these oil refineries are shutting down and how these evil oil corporations are getting theirs now.

Let me just say this.

If you live anywhere

in Texas, you should know that 90%

of all of the gas that is in Texas comes through Houston, those oil refineries that shut down a few days ago.

There's no new gas coming out of those oil refineries.

So if you are thinking about going someplace for Labor Day weekend, you might want to reconsider.

Because I don't know, at least in Texas, if you're going to be able to get gas throughout the weekend.

Lines are already starting to form here.

Four gas stations on the way in had signs on the pump, sorry, out of gas.

They don't know when they're going to get gas.

I bet this affects more than just

Dallas and

Texas.

I would imagine, I don't know the supply lines, but I would imagine a lot of the Gulf and Southwest region.

is supported by the oil refineries that were shut down now in Houston, and we again don't know when they'll open up again.

Get gas today, fill your gas tanks, and make sure you have some, and I would highly recommend that you do it today and then re-evaluate your plans.

Also, you should know that 42%

of all jet fuel comes from the Gulf.

So if you haven't purchased a ticket on an airplane,

you might want to purchase it right now, but I would check in to see if they have a fuel surcharge.

Because if you buy a ticket and in a couple of weeks they have no jet fuel or jet fuel is really, really expensive, if they can add a surcharge, they will

because

there's no more jet fuel coming out of the Houston area, at least for a while.

And again,

that

jet fuel services 42%

of the airline industry in America.

It's going to get very expensive to travel.

Next week, we're going to give you

a look at

the

dominoes that something like this cause.

You know,

people think that it was the stock market in 1929 that caused the crash.

It really wasn't.

Look it up.

It was a hurricane.

I don't know how many people really know this history,

but here's what really happened.

Everyone was, they had gone mad.

I read a story about Warren Buffett,

and he was explaining how bubbles work.

And he said, basically, you know, with a housing bubble,

when people understand that because the dollar continues to be devalued, right?

I mean, we know that what we used to buy for $2

can't be purchased for $2

now.

You look at a gold coin, that's a $20 gold piece, and they usually say $1,900, $20 gold piece, meaning in 1900, that $20,

That gold piece was worth about $20.

Today, it's worth about, what, $1,400.

A $20 gold piece would have gotten you the best suit you could buy.

It would have gotten you a great steak dinner, a haircut, and probably a night out at a great hotel.

$20 gold piece.

That's about what a $20 gold piece,

actual value of that gold, will buy you today.

A good suit, a haircut, maybe you can stay at a hotel but you'll go have a great steak dinner and that's about it

gold hasn't changed value

the dollar has lost value to that one thing that is fixed so bubbles happen because people buy their house and they know

when this starts they know okay my house is a fixed commodity.

It's going to be sitting there forever.

It's just, it's an asset.

And I'll be able to sell my house for more

than what I bought it for because the dollar is losing money.

So instead of having money in a dollar, which will continue to lose money in the bank, I'm going to put it in my house.

And I know in 10 years, my house will be worth more

than the dollar that I spent on it.

But once they lose track of the game and they start to say, whoa, wait a minute, I'll look at how much money I'm making.

No,

look how much money the dollar is losing.

Once they lose track and they start to say, Oh my gosh, look, everybody's getting rich on houses.

I've got to have four or five houses, and then I'm going to flip them because they're definitely going to be worth more tomorrow.

That's when things go insane.

And that's what we're going through right now on all fronts.

And what happens traditionally is you have to reset back to normal conditions.

You have to set back to the truth.

And that is the dollar is losing value.

And

some assets are gaining.

But they're usually only the ones that historically always are there because everything is in upheaval now.

I was talking to a guy yesterday who runs a bank.

I said, I am trying to keep up with the pace of change in my industry.

I said, everything,

everything.

I said, I was

four and a half years ago, I won the Disruptor of the Year award for the Tribeca Film Institute.

That had to kill them to give that to me.

I don't even think I'm in the top 10,000 disruptors today.

Four years ago, I won the hammer.

Today, I wouldn't even be considered.

He said to me,

he said, it's true in our line of business.

He said, people don't understand how rapidly the world is changing.

He said, in the banking business, he said, we just had to hire a whole division of people, and we have been working on this software system for two solid years.

He said, just as we were finishing and putting the final touches on all of this, we've spent two million dollars.

He said, Guy came into my office

and said, Here's your solution.

He said, What to what?

He said, Everything you guys have been working on, it's outdated.

This just solved it.

He said, We had two million dollars into it,

and we weren't even finished, and it's already outdated.

That's how fast the world is changing,

And things like the hurricane

will only

add stress to the already stressed

system.

Back in the 1930s, I'm sorry, back in the 1920s, roaring 20s, people got into the housing bubble first.

Everybody buy a house.

Look at how fast.

Look at the houses are going crazy.

Then the stock market.

Look at the stock market.

It's going crazy.

I'm going to take out a second mortgage on my house and I'm going to take that money and I'm going to put it in the stock market because everybody's making money in the stock market.

Then it went too far, as if that wasn't too far.

It went too far.

People went down to Florida.

Now, Florida was a strange and unusual place.

It might as well have been, you know, Cuba or South America.

People didn't go down to Florida.

A, no air conditioning.

Who wants to live there?

But the rich and the famous decided, you know what?

We got to build a place called Mar-Lago.

And they started to build these gigantic homes.

And they did so because the guy who owned the train company built a train to his home there in the ocean in Florida.

And so everybody was coming down and the housing market boomed.

And now everybody who, even those who weren't going to go down to Florida, were buying houses in Florida, you could buy and sell houses before you even left the train station.

They were selling property at the train station.

And things went nuts.

And then what happened?

A hurricane hit.

And a hurricane wiped so much of Florida out.

And now at the train station, all of a sudden, there was water and alligators.

And people were like, wait, wait, what?

This is crazy weather.

This happens a lot here.

And there's an alligator now

next to my alligator bag.

No, thank you.

The market panicked.

The real estate market in Florida collapsed.

Dominoes.

Great Depression.

You have to understand nothing's going to come at you in a straight line anymore.

Somebody's invention on something completely unrelated could change your job

in a year.

A hurricane can now make you look and go, wait, do I have gas?

What are my plans for this weekend?

It's Labor Day weekend.

Can we have the gas to go?

What does that mean for my flight for Christmas and for Thanksgiving?

United is maybe going to go under because they are not going to be able to,

how are they going to pay the debt?

They're never going to be able to make up for all of the lost revenue for the last week for United Airlines that is its hub is George Bush Airport in Houston.

They haven't done anything for a week, and perhaps they will open today.

But all of that money is gone.

And then, where are you going to get the fuel?

Society is more fragile than you think.

But the great thing that we've learned this week: Americans are much more resilient

than I feared.

That's good.

The Glenn Beck Program

Hey, there was a really

there's an interesting tweet that just came in from a listener.

I said, please go to the gas station and fill up.

If you live in the Gulf region, fill up

because 90% of the gasoline comes from Houston.

Yeah, this one comes in.

It says, filled my

car tank and car for mower, can for mower at 8.30.

It was 2.43.

Took my mom's car to fill, same station at 9 o'clock, half hour later, 2.57.

Holy cow.

And that's not even around here.

That's in New York.

So

that's in New York?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, we're in Texas.

He's a Buffalo, New York, Joe.

It's gone up quite a bit here in the last couple of days.

I mean, every time I turn around, it was another 15 cents.

We have Ken Paxton on.

He is the Attorney General of the state of Texas.

And

we just want to find out a couple of things.

A, how we can help.

I want to talk to him about price gouging.

And I want to know the difference between price gouging for water and price gouging here.

What's the difference?

I mean, I guess you can't do it

when you're in a hurricane in town.

I I guess that's the only difference.

But I'm not saying that.

It's not price gouging.

No, no, no, no, no, hang on just a second.

I'm not saying that this is price gouging.

But what I'm saying is that the reason why it's going up is because there's a limited supply.

Well, isn't that the same thing when

a motel says, yeah, I know we're, you know, the motel six and that goes with $6,

but it's now $600

because there's no rooms available.

Why is that price gouging?

I don't know.

Funny because

the story that caused our conversation the other day about price gouging was it was a store that was selling a case of water.

And, you know, we kind of just brushed over it because we got to the more specific, you know, generalized sort of, I guess, conversation on price gouging.

But they were charging $42 for a case of water, which worked out to something like $1.78 per bottle.

Like, that is not, that's not price gouging at all.

What year do you think it is?

And by the way,

the reason why that was priced that way is normally they don't sell by this case.

And so they just added up what we pay for each bottle.

$1.78 is about what you pay for one bottle of water at an office supply store.

That is, it's not even, it wasn't even.

My grandfather would have beaten me to death with a shovel.

if I told him, yeah, in My America, Grandpa, we're going to really have it down.

You're going to be able to buy a little 16-ounce bottle of water for $1.89

at the office supply store.

He would have come at you with a shovel.

You know what, Grandpa?

Figure out the internet and then tell us how great your world is.

Back in a second with Paxton, our attorney general.

Also, coming up, Brad Thor

always has something to say.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

Mercury.

Lots to talk about today.

First, I don't know what it's like in your part of the country, but here in Texas, I think there's going to be a lot of people that are late for work because anybody who

got up this morning and was driving in and saw the little red light go on and went, uh-oh, I got to go get gas.

You are now sitting in a line and that line is getting longer.

We could be out of gas in Texas by

the weekend.

90% of all of the gasoline that fuels the cars, at least in Texas, and I bet it's the greater southwest region, comes out of Houston.

42% of all of the jet fuel comes out of Houston.

Those refineries are now gone, or at least shut down.

We don't know when they will start refining again and when trucks will be replenishing again.

This is going to affect all of us.

We just have to keep our heads about us and we also have to discuss how are we going to get some of the

how is this going to affect the people who are just getting in the road getting on the road with their trucks and their cars and they are going to help.

You can't really drive down to Houston four hours away if you can't get gas somewhere along the way to get you back.

We've had another wrinkle added now to the hurricane in Houston.

We begin there and also talk a little bit about price gouging with the Attorney General of Texas.

Ken Paxton joins us.

We begin right now.

I will make a stand, I will raise my voice, I will hold your hand.

Cause we have won.

I will beat my drum.

I have made my choice.

We will overcome.

Cause we are one.

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

It's a really weird situation.

Because

if I warn you about gas, it's going to make people go and sit in in lines and everybody starts to hoard gas and I got to get my lawnmower filled.

That's really not the right, it's probably not the right move.

But I warn you now because I want you to think about this weekend.

This is Labor Day weekend, especially if you're in the Dallas area or the Texas area.

We get our gas from those refineries.

Yeah, but nobody has to worry until after this program is over.

Right.

Then it's fine.

Once I go get Philip my car

after the show, then they can worry.

Well, we got the tweet from a guy in New York just a little while ago that said, what it was it went up 17 cents in an hour or half an hour?

Yeah, another person writes in, I guess, here in Cincinnati went up 223 to 259

in a day.

I mean, you know, it's going to impact all of us.

This hurricane is going to impact us hard.

But, you know, those oil refineries, it's my understanding these oil refineries were locked down tight.

We didn't have a problem with winds, just flooding.

And it's my understanding that

this can and will come back online as soon as the waters recede.

And they're going to start those plants back up.

Is that your understanding, Stu?

Not really.

Yeah, I'm not.

Can we get, Keith?

Let's see if we can get somebody on from the oil industry.

I know they're probably not busy at all, but to give us some information about these oil refineries and perhaps uh ken paxton knows a little bit about this even though this is not his area of expertise he is our attorney general um ken how are you sir i'm doing well how are you doing this morning i'm good um thank you for all of the hard work and please pass on to the governor uh how proud we are of him and what a good job he is he is doing.

You know, I have to totally agree.

The magnitude of the storm and what they've had to deal with over a long period of time and obviously still continue.

I'm amazed at the job that both the federal and state government have done working together.

You know, I know that there was a disagreement and I would have been on the wrong side of this disagreement, I think.

And I don't know who had what side and it doesn't matter, but there was a disagreement on when to evacuate people.

And I think the city of Houston said, no, no, we're not going to evacuate, which in New Orleans worked out horribly.

The way this is stacking up, it might have been a blessing that we didn't have a a whole bunch of people, a million people on the road stuck in traffic on Houston when this thing rolled in.

Yeah,

it's so hard to know because you get what, seven million people or more down in the Houston area.

And to try to evacuate, we're not talking about evacuating, you know, some small town.

We're talking about a massive effort.

I don't even know how you get that many people out.

So I don't know.

Maybe some could have evacuated.

I don't.

We can look at that later.

I do think overall, it's been a remarkable effort.

And if you look at loss of life, obviously any loss of life is horrible, but it's been amazingly low given the magnitude and the length of the storm and what we're still dealing with.

I have to tell you,

I can't get my arms around how low those numbers are.

Are we concerned that when the waters recede, we're going to just start going through homes and we're just going to find a lot of people?

Are we pretty sure that this is relatively stable?

I mean, we know we're going to find a lot more people, but that we haven't lost

an eye bleed amount of people is astonishing yeah i mean you just think about the the magnitude of this storm coming ashore we could have lost hundreds if not thousands of people and who knows what what the future holds and what we're going to find i can just say i think they've done an amazing job rescuing people they've gotten resources in place the federal government was there early and quick and offered up everything we needed and this and uh abbott and his team have done an amazing job just keeping this thing going and making sure that we get this done right i will tell you that this is where, you know, having the governor and the president and everybody on board come in handy as now cleanup and real big, huge infrastructure pieces need to be moved.

But I have been,

it is proof to me why I moved here five or six years ago when I said on the air, There are going to be tough times and you just have to know that the people around you have the same kind of attitude that when push comes to shove, we're all neighbors.

I mean, we've never been, in my lifetime, I don't remember the 1960s.

I was, I, you know, I was like four.

Me too.

But I, but I, I know those were tough times in our, in our, in my lifetime.

This is the toughest time in my lifetime.

I've never seen our country more divided.

And look at what the people of Texas coming from all over the region just to go in and help without the government, without anybody organizing, just, I got a boat, I'm going in.

Well, not only that, hundreds of people have done that, and it wasn't like it was not risky for them.

They were risking their lives.

You know, there's just so much at stake for them personally.

They didn't have to do it.

You'd think people would want to get out and save their own families, and yet they came back to help.

So, I mean, it does say a lot about the type of people that live in Texas, and it's really encouraging, given what you just talked about, the divisive nature of what's going on in our country and how difficult it is.

And yet, you see, in Texas,

we've had a devastating hurricane, devastating storms, devastating flooding, and yet you know we'll come back.

Ken, I know this is not in your purview, and I'm sorry to hit you with this and even the questions that I'm asking you because this is not what you do for a living.

But have you heard any talk at all about the gasoline situation?

We're seeing, I mean, stopping at four different gas stations here in the Dallas area on the way into work.

Four of them had signs on the pumps out of gas.

90% of all of the fuel coming into Texas is coming in from those refineries that have all been shut down.

Are we concerned at all about running out of gas temporarily?

Do you have any clue as to what's happening with the gas situation?

Well, I do think that we're going to start getting supplies from other places.

So I do think, but I do think gas is going to go up to some degree.

Obviously, you know, there's the supply and demand is going to be affected here.

So, but I do think we're going to have other places that it's going to come from.

The supply chain is going to change a little bit until those refineries in Texas open back up.

And the, you know, 42% of the fuel for jet fuel comes out of Houston.

How long before these refineries can open up?

Do you know that?

That I don't know.

I think it's been so dependent on when the rain stopped.

I think and the water receded.

So, I mean, I believe it'll be, you know, I'm hopeful in the next week they'll open back up, but, you know, that's it's an issue.

But I do think, as I said, I think the supply chain is changing to address that.

It's just prices are going to go up.

Okay, so that brings me to what we actually wanted to talk to you about, and that is price gouging.

We just had a listener tweet in from New York and said, I went, I brought my car in.

It was 241 or 243.

I fill up, I go and I get my mom's car, I come back, and it's 257, 30 minutes later.

And now it's in New York.

You know, it's a constantly that was in New York.

Wow.

It's going to, I mean, look, it's a natural supply and demand.

Prices are going to go up until the refineries are back open.

There's just, that's just reality.

We're going to see higher gas prices for at least the next few weeks.

So I, in my head, can make the leap to things like

water.

I don't want,

I mean, water, you have to have have water to live, but that that stops by not by saying you can't raise the price, that stops the trucker or the somebody else that might live, you know, in another state who says, you know what, I'm going to go buy a bunch of water because I'll be able to make it up and I'm going to deliver a whole truckload of it and I'm going to sell it.

So it actually,

by disrupting the capitalist system or the free market system, it actually can end up hurting the efforts.

How do you balance that?

How do you define price gouging

and know where the line is?

Do you remember when the Supreme Court had to deal with

pornography and they basically say we know it when we see it?

So when I see gas prices at $20 a gallon, I know it's price gouging.

When I see water at $100 a case, I know it's price gouging.

When I see gas at $2.57, it's probably not price gouging.

So

we take a look at it.

we try to figure out based on the historic price, based on what's going on in the market,

are these people taking advantage of people in crisis?

And, you know,

there's definitely some discretion here.

And we're not trying to stop the market from working.

We're just trying to stop people from ripping people off.

Ken, are you at all uncomfortable with, and I know you're trying to do good work here and help people in need, but are you at all uncomfortable with the government making a standard of we know it when we see it?

Well, so, you know, my job isn't to make laws.

I have to deal with the laws I'm given.

Whether I would have passed a law exactly like this, as I know from being in the legislature, I never got to pass any law that I exactly liked.

I get to negotiate laws that were partly what I like and partly what I didn't.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm a free market guy, but I don't think in this case, we're not talking about efficient markets.

We are talking about really inefficient markets, and I don't think we necessarily have a free market right now in Houston.

We have limited supplies, and we've got, we're talking about critical supplies.

So we're not talking about price gouging as it relates to anything other than things that really are critical to people surviving.

You know, Ken, there's an article, and I don't know you're going to mention, where

some,

you know, some person on the left said, you know, what we're seeing in Houston is

not miraculous.

People just rise to the occasion.

And I think that's absolutely untrue.

We have seen other places and other disasters where people don't necessarily rise to the occasion and the bad guys take advantage of the occasion

and

are doing some really horrible things.

Are we missing the stories of the violence and the looting and everything else that is happening in Houston?

Because I know some of it is happening,

but

are we just not seeing a large level of that taking root in Houston?

You know,

I don't think there is a large level.

Look, we could be wrong.

We may find more than there is, but part of it is it's hard for looters to get in and out.

They're limited by the same things we're limited by.

And so it's made it difficult for them to loot.

Now, as the water recede, we may have more of a problem.

But I know that local law enforcement is focused on that, although they're particularly focused on rescuing lives first.

But as the waters recede, we'll see what happens.

Hopefully,

there won't be a lot of that going on.

You know, there was a story that came out that

President Bush just allowed all of the sales or the transfer of, you know, some serious armaments or, you know,

armed personnel carriers, et cetera, to our local police.

And that bothers me.

It bothered me under

George Bush, and it bothered me under Barack Obama.

It bothers me under this president.

I don't understand why that's happening.

I want our police to be effective and to be safe, but why isn't that equipment just being transferred to our National Guard?

Because they're the ones who really need it.

We don't need it to serve a warrant of arrest to somebody.

Why is that happening?

And what are we doing with that and our police?

Do you know?

Well,

I don't know.

I mean, I'm not involved in that transfer.

I don't know that I disagree with you that local police shouldn't be armed like they're the U.S.

military, that that would be better served putting in the hands of the National Guard.

So

I tend to agree with your assessment of that.

I have the same concerns you do.

And one last question.

Besides prayer, what can we do to help

the governor and everybody else in the service the next week or so?

Well, that's a great question.

I think you can pray.

That's obviously really important.

Still people that are in harm's way, still people that we're rescuing, and that'll continue.

But there's also some great organizations on the ground, like Samaritan's Purse.

There's a group called Minuteman out of Texas, actually out of McKinney, Texas, that I'm very aware of that are on the ground.

We have groups like the Red Cross, and there's some really good groups that are down there doing also Texas Baptist men.

So those are at least three or four of the groups that I know of that are down there now that know what they're doing, that are legitimate organizations, and that are trying to make a difference.

So if you can get money to them, I think they will make a difference down there.

Ken, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

By the way, yesterday, I got word that Mercury won, this is about three o'clock in the afternoon, hit a million dollars from this audience.

And we can't thank you enough.

And you can donate.

We have partners on the ground as well.

We also

supply funding to places like Samaritan Spurs, etc., etc.

You can go to mercury1.org, mercury1.org.

The Glen Beck Program.

Morning.

It's

there's another storm coming in, right?

It's forming in the Atlantic right now.

I haven't even gotten over this one yet.

I know.

No.

I know.

There's a lot to get over.

It looks like this might be kind of a tough year after year after year after year of saying, okay, no major hurricane again.

Right.

No hurricane hit landfall again.

This isn't going to be like that.

Was it Joe Bastardi that told us last week that this was going to form and maybe be a potentially dangerous hurricane again?

It's still pretty far out.

The models are showing it hitting the east coast pretty hard.

And

I know his preseason sort of forecast said the drought ends this year.

Like we're no, we've had a 12-year major hurricane drought, drought,

which has been, you know, great.

Really great.

And then the second something happens, that's global warming too.

Okay, what was the last 12 years?

What was the last 12 freaking years?

Global warming with the small case W.

I legitimately saw a story the other day that said, you want to know what global warming looks like?

Look at Harvey.

It's like, so it looks like the last two days, but not the last 12 years.

Just so we're clear here, it's only the last two days where it showed up, but we've had 12 years where it didn't show up at all, and we wouldn't learn anything.

Bingo.

Got it.

I mean, it's ludicrous.

It is.

I don't know how they do it with a straight face, but they continue to.

And the Pope had some words about global warming, too.

We'll have to share those coming up on the Glenbeck program.

Mercury

Mercury

This is the Glenn Beck program.

We welcome to the program Joe Bastardi.

He is from Weatherbell.com.

If you don't know Joe, he's been on with us several times over the last

seems like a couple of decades, maybe three decades, Joe.

But Joe is one of the best weather guys out there, meteorologists.

He is, when it comes to hurricanes, this guy nails it.

He has said recently that

the drought of hurricanes, if you will, these giant storms, this is the year they're going to come to an end.

He is also, his tracking of this hurricane was almost 100% correct, or close enough for people in my business, at least.

And

unfortunately, he is also calling for another hurricane that is now starting to form as a tropical storm.

And he's here to tell us a little bit about that.

But first,

Joe, welcome to the program.

How are you, sir?

Well, I'm pretty good.

I just wanted to call in for a couple of reasons on Irma, okay?

And it's not a done deal that's hitting the United States.

It's Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands I am very, very worried about.

In fact,

in looking at what I'm seeing, it has the classic look for a hurricane that should go to a major hurricane.

What we look at at these analogs are past patterns, for instance, Ike and Andrew, where the path, you see the path come up and bend.

And when it bends off to the left like that, the hurricanes start intensifying because it means that the upper air ridge of high pressure to the north of it is backing west with it to sort of escort it westward like that.

By the way, and I just want folks to understand, I learned that methodology in 1976 at Penn State University from Dr.

John Lee, my tropical professor, who would point out countless storms, countless major storms, because we did have major hurricanes back then.

In fact, quite a few of them in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

That when they came up and then bent to the left, there would be rapid intensification that would follow over the next few days.

And so, what we're dealing with here is a storm that has plenty of time over warm water that appears to me is heading for the Virgin Islands in Puerto Rico.

This is very important that it's going to move slow.

And if we get a good handle on this by Sunday, if it's me and the administration, I would start looking at this as to try to preemptively airlift supplies and get people ready because it may not come in until Wednesday or Thursday, but if you're coming in Saturday or Sunday, even if it's a near miss, it's a bad storm.

If it's a direct hit with a category four or five hurricane coming through the Virgin Islands to Puerto Rico, look what Yugo did, right?

And we just saw a tremendous response in Texas, a reactive response, which was great, but a proactive situation, especially with Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, they're both U.S.

territories.

We have to understand that, would really be a way that you can show how good government can work

with the right preparation.

Joe, what are the odds that

that comes a little farther up north?

Well, what do you mean?

What do you mean?

And

it slams into, it misses Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and it slams into the Carolinas.

Well,

that's certainly in the realm of possibility.

But what I do is I make a forecast.

I think what this is going to do is come very close to Puerto Rico, just north of Hispaniola.

And because I've got clients all in there, and

we're getting the Bahamas on

sort of war footing, getting them prepared.

And then you have the southeastern United States.

If this thing takes a further south track over Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, it will not be able to rebuild major intensity before Florida.

If you look at the tracks of storms into Hispaniola, what happens is this, if they are major hurricanes and they hit, the inside of them get hollowed out and they can't get their core back together for two, three, four days.

You saw that with Ike.

When Ike hit hit in there, it had to get back out over the Gulf for a while.

So you have to understand that there is a way out here for the United States, or it recurves to the east of the United States.

But what we do is, look, we tell people options and we say, this is our most likely forecast.

And right now, the first place I'm worried about and the reason I called in was because of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the idea that, you know, if you're seeing something four or five days in advance,

you'd be able to get ready for it.

What happened with Harvey was everybody was staring at the eclipse on Monday.

I mean, I was amazed at the lack of attention to what was going on.

It wasn't named, but it was,

and, you know, we were warning our clients saying, you know, this is going to be a big deal.

And we warned from quite a, that's not, that's not hindsighting.

It's what we were doing.

And as far as the preseason goes, I'll tell you, I put something on this morning, on Twitter this morning, that showed the pressure patterns when major hurricanes are going to hit the United States.

and the computer models and what has happened over the last 12 years.

And it might be due to the fact that the globe is warmer.

Okay, I argue over what causes that, but I don't argue that the globe

is a bit warmer.

Is it distorts the barometric pressure patterns during the hurricane season, which may make it less likely for hurricanes to hit?

Now, why do we jump on this year?

We knew this year would be different.

Look at how cool it is across the eastern and central United States.

And when it's cool in the month of August, and the ocean, and you're in a warm cycle of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation, we are, okay, bang, it lights up the tropics.

You saw that happen in 2004.

So, Joe, you just brought up global warming and

all of Al Gore's nonsense of

the world is all going to be underwater

by 2016.

And he talked about these great buildup of storms.

We have just gone through an amazing quiet period of storms.

And I would like to get your view.

I don't know where you stand on global warming.

I am on record saying I will look at the temperatures, and if the temperatures are up, that's great.

What you do about it is what we need to actually be discussing.

But for the people to start coming in and saying the storms are global warming, see, we told you, no, this is a cycle that has been quiet for a while and might come roaring to life.

Well, here's the thing.

You know, I believe, first of all, in Ecclesiastes 1.9, there's nothing new under the sun.

You know, as man gets smarter, he observes things more and more.

These cycles in the ocean, what we call the Mariano overturning circulation, centuries in the making.

The way you see the oceans now is a product of back and forth for such a long time.

So

I believe that the cycle is largely warming.

CO2's contribution is minute.

It's only 0.04% of the atmosphere.

But look, here's what starts happening.

Let's say this becomes a big hurricane, but it stays out at sea.

Well, that's weather.

If it happens to come 100 miles further west and hits the United States, well, there's climate change right there.

And that's what you see going on.

You take, if I wanted to see, this is the thing about me, I should probably be like a spy for the other side.

I can give them examples where they could push their point.

For instance, suppose this comes into the Bahamas as a major hurricane.

That'll be three major hurricanes in three years, right?

Which is almost unprecedented in the Bahamas.

Three major hurricanes in three years.

My counter then to myself would be, well, look at what happened in 63, 64, 65, 66 around there, where you had major hurricanes.

You had Nez, Cleo, Betsy, Flora, all coming into the same spot.

And where was that?

And that's the big thing.

Today's the anniversary of Hurricane Carroll, folks, on the northeast coast, 1954.

The wind gusted to 135 miles an hour at Block Island, Rhode Island.

That happens to be stronger than the wind gusted Aransas Pass with this past storm, which was 132 miles an hour.

Now, one could argue, well, there were stronger winds with Harvey, but then again, with Carroll, there may have been stronger wins too, because it pushed 15 feet of water into Providence, Rhode Island.

So, Joe.

So, my point is this: that you are seeing an agenda, and they come out after the fact.

It's Monday morning quarterbacking, and that's what I get all upset about.

That, oh, these people didn't even know what was going to happen in the preseason.

They didn't get out there and hang their tail out to dry like we did at our company.

And then they tell me after the fact that, oh, this is because of CO2.

So, Joe, I have to ask you this question.

And I know you have to run.

You're a very busy man, and I appreciate your time.

Really?

I can hang out with you.

I want to ask you this one question, and that is this.

I have such respect for you because you really know your science.

You know your craft.

You know it.

But I'm listening to you, and I'm hearing the memorization of the dates and the storms and everything else.

Did you, like a lot of kids grew up, they memorized the names of the presidents?

Did you grow up knowing you wanted to do this and memorizing the names of storms?

And

when did you decide, my gosh, I'm passionate about this?

Well, at the age of three, my mom and dad had to keep an eye on me because I'd lie on my back and stare at the sun, the cumulus clouds going in front of the sun because I like to look at the outline of the clouds.

My dad's a meteorologist.

He's 88 88 now.

He graduated out of AM in 65.

And he put me to bed not with the three little bears, but the three big storms of 54.

Carol.

No, listen, I've been with my sons like this.

My great-grandfather was a town weatherman in Bisignano, which is a town in Sicily.

And

it's in the blood and it's in the passion.

And when you, you know what?

We're probably a lot alike in our spiritual beliefs.

When God, God, God gives you something, a passion like that, He's doing it for a reason.

And, you know, I many people, you know,

I see the majesty of the creation in God's hand in the weather every day.

I simply marvel at it.

I'm looking right now out my window.

There's a cloud in one place, no cloud in the other.

There has to be something different going on over that short period, that short area.

How does that happen?

So, you got to understand something that this is all I've ever wanted to do since I was a little kid.

I've been a geek all my life.

I'm still a geek now.

I can't help it.

And

I'll tell you what's bad.

It's a blessing and a curse, folks, because you will see things quite far away, and then you can't sleep because you keep going over it.

You keep looking at maps, looking at maps.

And then what happens when they don't happen?

You learn about being wrong, okay?

And that's the problem I think that climatologists have.

They should be made to forecast the weather for a year so they can see how the models.

go wrong and how they can be wrong because when you're just looking at stuff from behind and you get to come out and say well that that is see it's what we told you a very very different situation from being an operational forecast where your life's on the line joe bestardi from uh weatherbell.com weatherbell.com uh chief meteorologist uh and really one of the most accurate guys uh when it comes to long-range forecasting and a friend of the program for a very long time joe i appreciate it uh god bless

before i go just remember calm down everyone enjoy the weather because it's the only weather you got most of the weather is nice across most of the world.

Okay?

God bless you.

Thanks, Joe.

Optimistic take.

It's actually, you know, the weird thing is,

the hurricane in Houston kind of made the weather in Dallas really nice.

It's been less humid here.

It's been cooler.

It's been great here.

While they're getting just

inundated with this nightmare.

It just shows you how big a stick.

Kind of weird.

This is.

Oh, my God.

We were talking about this graphic the other day that it was with the end, I think it was December of last year, where it it was 91 degrees in one part of texas and seven degrees in another part of texas it was 91 and seven in the same state it really is like this is happening here in in texas it's almost if you live in the east coast it is uh as if the storm is happening in new york city and you're at niagara falls and we're not even all the way across the state

it's like it's like you're in seattle and um you know this storm is happening in Yakima.

There's four growing seasons between Dallas and Houston.

They're only four hours apart.

So

that tells you a little bit about why.

I mean, it's subtropical in Houston, and we're certainly not.

No, that's close.

It's interesting times.

I saw this comedian.

Pat, I told you about him yesterday.

What was his name?

Oh, shoot.

He just did a Netflix special.

He's hysterical.

We have to see if he he can come on the show.

He's hysterical.

He does, what is it, funny face or my

something, happy face?

I can't remember what it is.

Ryan Hamilton.

Ryan Hamilton.

Oh, my gosh, he's funny.

Man, I don't know what I was going to tell you about him.

There was something.

Something about his face.

Was it involving his face?

No, it was involving something we were just talking about.

Now I can't remember.

Oh, well,

watch it because you're going to piece it together.

You're going to go, yeah, that was it.

Interesting times.

He said, it's been a while.

It's been a long time since I've had any kind of conversation with people about politics or anything that hasn't ended.

Well,

it sure is going to be interesting to see how this works out.

That's so true.

Our sponsor, this half hour.

Life Lock.

Malicious malware called Sonic Spy found in over a hundred, sorry, a thousand apps of a popular mobile operating system.

Did you hear about the

warning to people who have, what is it, the St.

Jude Pacemaker, used to be called that, I don't remember what it's called now, affects about half a million people who have pacemakers.

Apparently, somebody left a back door open and worried about hackers coming in and turning your pacemaker off.

Has that ever happened?

I don't think so.

I don't think so, but it was just

the FDA just issued an alert and said, hey, by the way, you might want to update the software on your heart.

How weird is that?

This is the Glenn Beck program.

Sign up for the newsletter and get all the info you need to know at Glenn Beck.com.

Bubby Cruzen's dad, Bubby is the kid that has the disease Charlie Gard had.

We tried to get him to Boston.

You helped out.

Just got a quick email.

Boston went better than we could have hoped, Glenn.

He's been accepted into the drug trial we're shooting for, decided other supplements and meds that we could add.

The only thing we know is this wouldn't have happened without you or your audience giving my son a future and giving us hope.

We couldn't have done anything without your audience.

Thanks.

Glenn Beck

Mercury.

Brad Thor, who is one of my favorite authors, has a new book out called Use of Force.

If you haven't read it yet, you really need to.

But I have a question about it all the way through.

And

if I'm right,

he has just saluted one of the greatest men that the world does not know even exists.

And I want to talk to him a little bit about that.

Also, if you are anywhere in,

well, probably in the United States, I mean, it's happening in New York, but it's really bad here in Texas now.

If you're trying to get gas today, you might see the gas price has gone up 30, 50 cents a gallon.

This in Texas is taking root as gas stations are just closing down.

They have no gas.

Four gas stations on the way in.

My son-in-law just wrote to me and he said uh dad i i'm every gas station i go to it's the pumps are all closed

that's because 90 of all gas comes out of the houston area for this part of the country we talked to uh ken paxton our attorney general he said those lines of supply lines are being rerouted but it could make for a rough weekend More importantly, Brad is here and I want to talk to him about what does this mean for Russia and the instability of the world.

We go there with Brad Thor right now.

The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

Before we get to Brad Thor, let me just give you an update.

Yesterday, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for donating to this from all over the country and indeed the world.

We had some guy in Jerusalem saying, I can't make an international donation.

I don't know why we can't do that, but somebody was trying to help the victims in Houston from Israel yesterday.

And we so appreciate everybody who is trying to help.

And if you're using our portal through Mercury One, every dollar that is raised for these causes goes to the cause, every single dollar.

We're working with six disaster-related partners right now.

These are the main ones we're working for.

I want to give you an update.

Operation BBQ, Houston.

They serve 12,000 meals to those affected and first responders just yesterday.

60 volunteers showed up to help them do it.

By tomorrow, they're going to be serving 25,000 hot barbecue complete meals.

They're supporting the U.S.

Coast Guard.

We have Team Rubicon out a couple of more updates.

The boats are coming in and they're present today in Beaumont or will be tonight, I think.

They plan to be part of the search and rescue efforts until they're no longer needed as the waters go down.

Team Rubicon is continuing the operations with a cleanup.

Also, City Impact, these are church partners that we have from Corpus Christi, you know, all the way up to Baytown.

We have deployed now, I don't even know, 10 tractor trailer loads full of water and everything else.

They are also delivering a huge donation of survival food to victims who have lost their house from MyPatriot Supply.

They are also

MyPatriot is so amazing.

They're also delivering 2,500 water filtration systems.

This, and I'm not kidding you, we've done it.

I haven't done it, but we did it when we were in New York.

When they first did this water filtration system, they said it's the best in the world.

They said, look, come out with us.

We were in New York.

Come to this muddy pothole in New York Street, in the streets.

Would you ever?

I don't even want to touch that water.

It'll kill you.

Drank water from that pothole, and they're still walking today

after it had been filtered through their system yeah yeah yeah yes yeah they didn't just do it

fun it was it was pure yeah yeah it's a alexa pure pro right yes and they're 2500 of those are being delivered somebody cares also these are people that are um helping in um clean up the mud outs putting tarps on the roof etc etc there's a gleaning for the world they're doing the baby products and the water also provisions project this one is really important.

These guys are funding, or we're providing the funding so they can provide the fuel for the search and rescue vehicles, the equipment and the meals.

And they are in not only Houston, but they're also up in Louisiana, one of the parishes up there that was hard hit by Katrina.

Thank you for donating.

MercuryOne.org.

We go to Brad Thor now.

who's written use of force.

And I, Brad, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the hurricane and

the unforeseen consequences at least by the people in the media that you know will never look into these things

with the price of gas uh going up because 20 of our fuel is not being refined now the 20 of that means that we're not buying oil which could make the price of oil globally crash

which if that happens, that makes Vladimir Putin a caged animal.

Are you seeing any ramifications from Harvey that I might be missing?

Well,

that's probably one of the biggest ones you've got to be careful with there, because that is where Putin does

make a good amount of his money is with that.

You know, I have to tell you, I'm concerned, and it is something I'm watching, but part of a larger plague, which involves

basically no sanctions for him taking the peninsula and Crimea.

I'm very concerned for some of those Baltic states, particularly as we go into the winter.

And will he cut off fuel supplies and natural gas as he's done to Ukraine?

But will he make a move on Lithuania or Estonia or something like that with Trump so wobbly on the Article 5 of the NATO Treaty?

If Putin is going to try to expand, this fall, this winter is when he's got to do it.

So, Brett, what am I really concerned about that?

Am I alone in feeling that this, we're approaching the most dangerous fall that I think we've approached since possibly 2001?

Just something doesn't feel right.

This is a dangerous fall.

It feels like the season has changed.

Do you feel that at all?

It's almost like, and

we joke around about Star Wars a lot on the show, but it's almost like you sense that disturbance in the force,

particularly with...

the North Koreans kicking things up with launching that missile.

And by the way, one of the things the media got wrong about the recent launch that they did over Japan was that the North Koreans were very tactical about this.

They sent the missile up so high over that Japanese island that technically they didn't violate their airspace or their sovereignty.

And where it came down was nowhere near Guam.

So they're being very tactical, but make no mistake, it was a big middle finger held up towards Donald Trump.

You know what?

They can hold up middle fingers to Donald Trump and to us for all they want.

Let's do the right thing and not get our egos involved.

This is a dangerous situation.

Well, and they're going to keep going and doing it because winter is coming.

It's like Game of Thrones.

They are going to need heating oil and they're going to need food.

Those are two of the biggest things they are going to be lobbying for.

So you're going to see things get more dangerous, but it only takes one mistake in these provocations to lead us to war.

And the big thing that I'm looking for, and it'll be a big kind of trigger point for me, is if the United States government gives an order to evacuate military families and non-essential diplomatic personnel from South Korea and Japan.

If that happens, we know it's game on, and that's what I'm watching for in that part of the world.

Brad, just to let you know for the rest of the interview, you've already done Star Wars and Game of Thrones.

I will need a pop culture reference for each point that you make.

Now, back to the interview.

So

try to find one here.

Afghanistan, two weeks ago, seems like 100 years ago.

It's like Rambo.

It's like Rambo.

It seems like 100 years ago that the president said, hey, by the way, we're ramping up troops, something that he was dead set against, which really put a chill down my spine because it reminded me of what George Bush said to me in the Oval, which was, don't worry about whoever gets into president, into the Oval Office.

When they sit behind this desk, they're going to do exactly what I've done because they'll see that the president really has no more options left.

Yeah,

that is totally correct.

And I know a lot of people have have been upset with Eric Prince putting forward this idea that maybe we ought to have a greater private military corporation presence in Afghanistan.

I will tell you this.

I'm good friends with a guy named Sean Parnell.

And Sean Parnell wrote a fabulous book about his experience in Afghanistan called Outlaw Platoon.

I highly recommend it.

And Parnell had his team, they had one of the longest combat deployments in the war on terror, 485 days in Afghanistan.

They actually said that as painful as it was being away from home, that that length of time was excellent because the villagers got to know them.

They knew the terrain better than the bad guys.

They knew where the bad guys were.

So this idea that putting people in for longer stretches who can get to know the villagers, can work on some of that counterinsurgency stuff, may not be a bad thing.

I'm a big believer, and I love the Defense Department, but they still buy $600 hammers.

I'm always in favor of considering options that allow the private sector, when held accountable, to try to do things better, cheaper, faster, stronger than the United States government.

So I think it's worth looking at.

Have you read the news?

This was not covered by anyone

going to Iran.

The

head of the Supreme Council came out about four weeks ago and said to the people, I just want you to know that the 12th Imam is here, he is among us, and he is walking among us now, and he will come forth soon.

Is that disturbing to you at all?

It is disturbing when you know as much about this as you do and

your audience does.

I mean, Ahmadinejad had all of the avenues in Tehran widened so that they could celebrate the coming and do a big parade for the Mahdi when he came.

So

this is a disturbing thing

if they are ramping up that apocalyptic rhetoric.

Why else would they be doing it?

Why would they be ginning their people up unless they needed a faith-based reason to prepare them to go through some real serious bad stuff.

And that's what this sounds like.

Last on the

world events, we're seeing people

ginning things up in North Korea.

They're building the giant bridge.

I don't know if you saw the bridge that Russia is building now in Crimea.

It's like 12 miles long.

First land bridge to that area from Russia.

People are starting to really lay claim to things.

And here in the United States, we have Antifa and the Nazis.

And,

you know,

the right is being told, you've got to stand against the communists and kind of just, you know, look the other way about the Nazis.

And the left

is saying, you've got to fight against the Nazis.

And, you know, many on the left are saying, and you've got to join the communists.

What do you make of this?

Well, so it's funny.

I was actually reading back through some of your old articles on Glennback.com, and last year...

You have no life.

You really have no life.

You know, it's like Groundhog Day.

I've asked the same thing over and over and over.

You actually, Glenn, were saying in the spring of 2016 that you thought that summer was going to be like 68.

And I think you were a year too early.

I think we are seeing it now.

I think the stuff that you thought was coming in 16 actually hit this summer with Charlottesville.

And I think it's only going to get worse.

But I am heartened by the fact that even the Washington Post, even though they kind of softened in the end of the op-ed, is willing to go after Antifa.

If you've got to put a mask on to show up and practice your free speech rights, you're doing it wrong if you've got to wear the mask.

So these are bad guys.

The Nazis are bad people.

I hate the Nazis.

I hate the alt-right.

But we're in a very dangerous time in our country where we're not supporting free speech.

We're telling people you've got to pick sides.

And you know what?

I stand on the side of liberty and I want the truth and I want people to be able to discuss differences of opinions and ideas without worrying about getting their heads caved in.

Yeah, this is really, this is this is where you're, here's where the rubber meets the road.

Charlie Ebdo, I don't know if you've seen this, the latest cover of Charlie Ebdo, which, you know, we rallied for and stood with them, you know, I am Jolly.

When they were, you know, being told to sit down and shut up in the strongest of terms by the Islamic extremist community.

We stood up for them.

The world did.

We have to do it again today, but here's where it's really hard.

The cover of Charlie Ebdo is now a cartoon of Americans giving a Nazi salute with just their arms coming out of the water.

And the headline says, what, Pat, Houston?

Or

God exists.

He drowned all the neo-Nazis in Texas.

Something to that effect.

I mean, so, you know, the original reaction, the immediate reaction to people is, oh my gosh, how dare them?

That's just wrong.

Yeah, it is wrong.

I hate that.

But they have a right to say it.

We just have a right not to buy it and not to spread it.

Well, and this is what I've always said.

When I had the Islamic extremists that didn't like my thrillers, I've got a First Amendment right to write whatever I want, and it's equaled by a right just as powerful, the right not to read it.

So listen, this is bad when America is viewed this way internationally.

And I think had Trump handled Charlottesville better that this wouldn't have happened but this is the this is where we are now what you hear from Donald Trump on Twitter and at the rallies is the real Trump when he's off prompter that's the real Trump he is not very adept he's not good at handling this stuff and his instincts are not good he's a pugnacious reality TV star that that does not lend itself towards effective leadership and so you end up seeing this craziness listen it's the French right I mean you know we'll go back to having freedom fries instead of french fries if they want to pull this BS when it comes down to Texas but anybody who's trying to score political points or to do fundraising like that insane woman, Linda Sarsour, on the backs of the tragedy happening in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, you're a bad person.

You're a bad person if you cannot put your politics aside and see that there are black, brown, white, yellow, red, blue, polka dot people that are suffering.

Politics don't matter right now.

This is about human beings, and we need to do all we can to be helping those folks down in Texas instead of trying to score cheap political points.

There it is.

You let the man talk and he always hangs himself.

Do you hear that?

Now he's claiming there are polka dot people.

You heard it here.

You heard it here from Brad Thor.

Similar to episode seven, season two of Carolina the City,

which I think we're all thinking about.

Back in a second with Brad Thor.

One more question for him.

And it regards a hero in your book that I have been reading your book and I'm like, I got to ask Brad Thor this.

And I think I'm right.

And if I am, you need to tell,

you need to tell the story.

This is the Glenn Beck program.

Brad Thor,

the odds are probably slim, but I have to know.

I'm reading your book, One of of the Heroes Named Haney.

Is that the way you're pronouncing it in the book?

Correct.

Yep.

Did you name it after a guy who I don't think anybody in the country really knows who he is, and I believe one of the greatest heroes of our generation?

Phil Haney.

So,

no.

So it's not.

It's not.

There's actually a real-life Mike Haney, and that's who it's named after.

The real-life hero in the book, though, is the Harvest boss, Reed Carlton.

I dedicated use of force to Dewey Claridge, who was a huge CIA spy master, fantastic American.

And the Reed Carlton character, nobody knew it until this book came out, was always based upon Dewey Claridge, who helped set up the counterterrorism center at the CIA.

But I know who Phil Haney is.

Good guy.

Unbelievable, man.

Unbelievable, man.

Maybe we'll get into it next week.

And on this program, just explain who Phil Haney is.

But he's a guy that I think every American should know.

He's remarkable.

And that's what I love about your books, and that's why I thought it might be Phil.

But

I love your books because I learned so much from them.

You have a think I called you, you don't write fiction, you write faction.

And

I love that.

Brad, thank you so much.

We'll talk to you again, my friend.

Thank you, my friend.

You bet.

Brad Thor, the name of the book is Use of Force.

You just want to, you just want to escape?

That's a great place to escape.

Of course, it's not really a happy place.

Brad Thor, use of force, available online at wherever books are sold.

And I say the use of force really tracks the plot arc of season three of Dharma and Greg.

You guys are probably on that.

Or was it Veronica's Closet?

I think it was Veronica's Closet with somebody.

Yeah, yeah.

When I think of Brad Thor, I do think of Veronica's Closet a lot.

Back in a minute.

Mercury

Mercury

This is the Glen Beck program.

Two things to talk about here

before we get going, and that is,

one,

Charlie Ebdo, which I can't even...

Oh, geez.

Yeah,

I'm going to unleash Pat here in a second.

I'm going to take him off of the little...

I'm sure you want to do that.

But some things need to be said, but what needs to be said also is we knew these people were not good people.

We didn't defend them because they were right or they were good.

We defended them because they had a right and they still have a right to do these horrible things that they're doing.

But it's hard and ugly.

We'll get to that here in a second.

And I'm going to unleash, I'm going to take the stake out of the yard.

And so he's going to be off the leash in just a second.

Also, I have to play this audio for you.

This is from Houston.

This is a grandfather

calling for help.

He calls the local Chick-fil-A for help, and he is rescued

with a jet ski.

It sounds like a joke.

Here it is.

Monday morning, we realized we had to evacuate.

We had to get out of there.

And so I called Chick-fil-A.

Now, that sounds kind of funny, but I ordered two grilled chicken burritos with extra egg and a boat.

Can you believe that the manager, one of the managers of Chick-fil-A,

she sent her husband to pick us up?

Come on now.

and uh we are so grateful and so thankful and so karen jumped on the back of the jet ski and i jumped on the back of another one and they evacuated us to higher ground and we are ever so grateful

that's really cool that's great and also it makes me want chick-fil-a yeah um there is that element isn't there

How great are the people at Chick-fil-A?

I mean, what a very, really cool story.

And I guess it's not just them, it's everybody right now.

Yeah.

You really do see that

coming together.

And it's why it's so hard to take the Charlie Ebdo thing today.

Because

that's inconceivable to me.

And again, I keep using that word.

I don't think it means what I think it means.

It's pretty obvious.

It doesn't mean anything anymore.

Because almost everything from the left is inconceivable now, right?

It's just

they

have depicted the drowning victims, the victims in Houston, who have done nothing to anybody

as Nazis.

They put out on their cover

people sticking their hands out of water in the Zig Heil salute.

In the background are Nazi flags, and they're kind of going down in this whirlpool.

And then the headline reads,

let's see.

God does exist.

God does exist.

He drowned all the neo-Nazis in Texas.

It's incredible.

What?

What?

Where are you getting that?

These are neo-Nazi people.

Well, and their point there is: people in Texas are neo-Nazis.

Neo-Nazis,

which is amazing because here,

when they had their incident with Muslim extremism, 13 people were killed, if you remember correctly.

And that's because they mocked the Prophet Muhammad.

And we were totally supportive.

We felt bad.

We are all Charlie Ebdo today, right?

Yeah.

And the idea being, of course, our principle, the American principle, not the French principle of free speech and expression

enshrined in our Constitution, we first said, hey, they should be able to do this, even though it's terrible.

And by the way, at the time, we also said, it's not because it was Muhammad.

What they did with Muhammad was disgusting.

I mean, it was despicable and disgusting.

But they didn't deserve to die.

But they didn't deserve to die, obviously.

And that's what's so crazy about this.

It's really the same thing.

You know, because you could say, well,

they, you know, lay mock Muhammad and now they're mocking Christian religion.

And you can, you can find some level of consistency there, I see, in theory.

The issue being, of course, that if you are an atheist and you're going to mock different religions, mocking Muhammad or mocking Jesus, there's no, that doesn't mean anything to you because you don't believe they're real.

Right.

The people who are dying in Texas are actually real.

Yeah, aren't you guys supposed to be humanists or something?

Aren't you supposed to be, of course, I mean, this is the left, right?

They're not humanists.

They're not diverse.

They're not inclusive.

I hate these people.

And so I just, they're so inconsistent.

They're so

vile.

They're such hypocrites.

I got to say that.

How would they like it if during that Charlie Hebdo thing, we would have said, ah, yeah, 13 extra frogs we don't have to deal with now.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what they're doing here.

Yeah, exactly what they're doing.

It's not what we did.

Nope.

It's what what they're doing.

Wow.

And I got to say,

the screaming Pat Gray we just had a moment with there is really hard to avoid being today.

Because, I mean, it is infuriating what they've done.

It is.

And

we're trying not to go over the top and to bash people and to be better people.

But come on, just this once.

We got to say, I hate these people.

It does feel that way.

It feels right today.

I mean, it's hard to understand.

Can you imagine taking such

a position when what you have already gone through as an organization where the entire world really rallied against your despicable, terrible magazine

and said, hey, you know,

like even though what you do is awful, we still love you as people.

Now, what they're saying is, I mean, because you could say the same thing about neo-Nazis.

You might say, we absolutely despise

who you are.

But if the reverse had happened and Antifa had rolled over some neo-Nazi protesters, we would say the same thing.

The neo-Nazi protesters' point doesn't get any better because they got hit by a car.

But what it would do is we would say, we still

feel for the victims because there's still people, even when they're terrible people.

And what unadulterated stupidity to just blanket label all the people of Houston as neo-Nazis.

It's one of the most diverse, if not the most diverse, large city in America and probably the world.

And it also happens to be Houston proper is a very Democrat city.

And they'd probably find themselves in agreement with a lot of the leadership on the Houston City Council, and yet they disregard all of that.

To give you an example, in 2016, there was a very competitive election between Lori Bartley, the Republican Republican candidate, and someone you might know, Sheila Jackson Lee, the Democratic candidate for the House in District 18.

Yeah, Houston.

That's Houston proper, too, right?

In District 18, that's her.

Sheila Jackson Lee, 73 to 23.

She won.

So I guess all the neo-Nazis are big Sheila Jackson Lee supporters?

That is fascinating.

Oh, that's a fact.

Well, and how about, I mean, Houston had either the first, I think Salt Lake City had the first openly lesbian

mayor, but Houston had an openly

lesbian mayor, right?

Yeah, she was one also that was asking the preachers to turn in their

Sunday home

and wanted the Bibles and everything.

Yes, I remember that.

By the way, let's take a little trip across Houston to District 9 as well, because this District 9 shows

the hardcore right wing that Houston is.

It's a bubbling cauldron of Nazism.

Jeff Martin, the Republican, really competitive with Al Green, the Democrat.

Now, Al did win 81-19 in the race.

But man, those right-wingers in Houston.

Hate them.

He also sang that song, I'm So In Love With You.

I'm not sure if that's the name of it, but 19, what, 71, 72?

Al Green.

Yeah.

Remember, that was the one thing I liked during the Obama

presidency.

Was his rendition?

Was his rendition of the Al Green song?

That was actually

the Obama pregnancy that you liked.

Oh, yes.

No, there really wasn't, except for that one moment when he sang.

By the way, as we're talking about race issues, there is a new article in Sports Illustrated talking to four different executives in the NFL about why they didn't pick up Colin Kaepernick.

Now, this is apparently a big issue because it just shows how much people will not deal with.

He stood up for black people, therefore he's not on a roster in this league with 70-odd percent of black people who are playing it.

Is it Chicago, Miami?

Do you know which?

They did not, they're unnamed executives to speak freely.

Here are their quotes.

Certainly, he's good enough to be a backup, but we have a good number two that fits our system.

We have familiarity with.

We know exactly what we're going to get from the guy.

Physically, Kaepernick's more talented, but familiarity with a backup of that position, knowing exactly what you're going to get, is more important than that wow factor.

It's like Robert Griffin III.

You had him playing a certain way, and he's a hell of a player.

But as soon as defenses figured out what they were and a specific way to play him, that's where they had to be able to start to win from the pocket, and they can't do that.

If they can't do that in this league, it's tough.

So, RJ3, like he's in the NFL right now, right?

No, no.

And here's a guy, RG3, who's been criticized by the left for being potentially the slur of being Republican.

And that's unconfirmed.

We don't know that he's a Republican, but

he's been accused of being a Republican.

But he's definitely friendly with the military.

He's a big supporter of the police and the military.

I mean, all accounts, RG3 is

a huge military supporter supporter and seemingly a good guy.

And nobody asked any questions.

Nobody got drummed out of the league.

And once again,

his best season, far better than Colin Kaepernick's best season.

Oh, my gosh.

Not even close.

Wasn't he rookie of the year when he came in?

Was he?

Yeah, I think he was.

I think he was.

I mean, really, injuries,

a lot of that slowed him down.

Executive number two.

From our end, it never got down to even getting to the level of going to the owner.

To me, the protests, all that wasn't even a factor for us.

It was the ability to fit within our offense.

He doesn't throw the ball great.

He's more of an on-the-move, zone read type of quarterback.

He needs to be in a specific system.

So here's my question.

I understand the Kaepernick deal, why it's news, but nobody's talking about RG3.

I know it's Kaepernick and it's what sells, but the problem that RG3 has getting a job is the same for Kaepernick for a lot of teams.

Executive three, I don't like the guy as a player.

I don't think he can play.

I don't think he can play at Reno.

I don't think he can play now.

You don't think he was a good player?

20 teams would be lining up.

He's inaccurate, inconsistent, reading defenses.

get he needs everything um to be perfect around him and he needs that certain offense when he was rolling they had an unbelievable defense a great running game with an amazing offensive line everything was perfect and you consider that why isn't there a debate about rg3 he wasn't even a consideration and on and on and yet we have the uh kaepernick isn't on the on an nfl team because of his protests and it would be ignorant to think otherwise Aaron Rogers.

Aaron Rodgers.

Yeah, which is interesting.

The Rodgers story.

Very disappointing.

It's disappointing for you.

You know, there's a couple interesting parts of that Rogers story.

If you haven't seen it, it's an ESPN, the magazine.

And it was kind of a weird situation where Rogers just called up this reporter and was like, hey, I want to talk about stuff.

And they just met at her house.

The story is very fascinating.

I know Pat's a huge Packers fan, so he'd appreciate it.

It's kind of weird.

But there's two things.

Everyone's highlighting the Kaepernick thing, where he basically says, yeah, he'd be on a Roger Royal Play protest.

But if you read the whole article, there's an interesting part of where his spiritual journey, which is I think

a scary one for any parent, basically he grew up really like involved in

church and in the faith and met at some point, he started questioning things, met at some point, some progressive pastor.

And the way it reads is basically the guy kind of talked him out of Christianity.

He's

like, not intentionally, I don't think, but like start, and he's now come to this point where he's like, I'm not really part of a faith, and I'm not sure what I believe.

And, you know, I just want to be accepting of everyone.

And it's a kind of an interesting journey.

You're killing me.

You're killing me.

I got gotta say, it's an interesting journey.

He definitely seems like he's uh stop talking.

Oh, geez.

Stop talking.

Pat's going down.

Pat's bum now.

Just trying to suck Pat over to be an Eagles fan.

It's probably a long road, but I'm going to try it anyway.

There's no road there.

Unbelievable.

Triple 8-727.

Beck, 888-727-B-E-C-K.

Glenn Beck.

About an hour ago, we talked to chief meteorologist from Weatherbell.com, Joe Bastardi.

He's a friend of ours that we've known for years and years and years, one of the best meteorologists and climate forecasters in the nation.

He just said a few months ago, this is going to be the summer that ends the drought, if you will, of hurricanes.

He also was the most accurate on calling Harvey.

While everybody was staring at the sun, he was saying, there's trouble coming.

And it's Harvey.

It wasn't even named yet.

He's just announced today.

He called into the show and said, there's another one on the way.

This one probably going to hit the U.S.

Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico.

And he says, this is going to be a really, really bad one.

We need to be acting on it right now.

Please,

things change at the drop of a hat.

There are ramifications to what happened in Houston.

No matter where you are, I got a tweet from somebody in New York York that said gas went up 30 cents

since last night.

One guy said in a half hour it went up 17 cents.

The Glenn Beck program.

So gas shortages, I mean, literally gas stations are out of gas in the Dallas Metroplex.

You have to kind of struggle, apparently, to find

a station that still has a supply of gas.

And by the way, it's not just us.

It's not just a Texas problem.

So don't be thinking that you're completely off the hook.

And for all the lefties who are saying, yeah, this will serve the oil companies right.

Will it?

It'll serve you right too, paying $9 a gallon for gas or not being able to get it.

Not being able to get it's tough.

And already in New York, we heard from somebody whose prices went up, what, 15 cents in half an hour?

Yeah, in Ohio, there's another job.

And we're hearing them from all over the country now.

And, you know, perfect time for it, too, on the Labor Day weekend.

Yeah.

That's a perfect time, right?

This is going to be a tough one.

It's going to be really good.

I sent my wife out to hoard some gas for this weekend.

And she said there's long lines.

Places don't have gas.

People are starting to get angry because places don't have gas.

She said, decided to go against my rule and went home and didn't fill up the tank.

She seems to ignore you a lot,

which is interesting.

But just remember, and I hope you advised her of this, Jeffy.

If she happens to see a price that she believes is too high

or higher than she would like to pay,

remember to report them immediately to the government so they can decide whether if they've seen it or not.

Because you know it when you see it.

Thank you.

Price gouging.

And Ken Paxon, I love Ken.

He's great.

Who is, yeah, he's he is great.

Um, said they, they, the officials know the price gouging when they see it.

That's right, they do.

Oh, is nine dollars price gouging?

Is a hundred yeah, you probably say yes, but no, no, a hundred dollars a gallon.

There is a price at which you will sell a thing, there is a price at which you will buy a thing.

Mr.

Purist, I'm just saying.

Price gouging does not exist, and it's not a thing.

Okay,

this is the Glen Beck Program.

Mercury.

Mercury.