Fresno Frenzy: Are Folks Flooding In or Fleeing Fast?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Two stories published within forty eight hours of each other
on the web pages and maybe the physical pages, although
god knows, it's basically just a pamphlet at this point
of the Fresno be showing the insanity of climate alarmists

(00:21):
and how they talk about climate change and climate problems.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Here in the San Joaquin Valley.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
So here are two stories from June sixteenth Presno bpiece
written by Thadeus Miller. Nearly half of Fresno residents will
flee due to climate risks, report predicts. A new risk
report from a private firm predicts a large exodus of

(00:49):
residents from Fresno County as the effects of climate change
bomb bum bum exacerbate the region's issues and costs of
living in the next three decades. The risk assessing firm
First Street, calculated forty five point eight percent of Presno

(01:09):
County residents, not forty five point seven percent. Forty five
point eight percent of residents were estimating based on this
wildly speculative assessment of how conditions are going to be
in Fresno County in fifty years, which we have no
possible way of knowing. Forty five point eight percent of
Fresno County residents would abandon the county by twenty fifty five,

(01:33):
so in the next thirty years because of rising insurance
rates and decreasing land values.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Point decreasing land values.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Huh, my house is worth like one hundred thousand dollars
more than when I bought it in twenty nineteen. The
report also projected that a nearly fifteen percent impact on
costs in the region as home values decreased and the
costs to ensure them rise. Fresno topped the list of

(02:07):
the areas affected most, above Sacramento County and a couple
of counties in New Jersey topped the list of the
area's affected most. And looks like we misspelled affected here
in the article. It should be affected affe at ected,
not e affected. The firm's prediction showed Fresno's hot weather
and poor air quality could continue to worsen, driving down

(02:31):
the desirability of the homes and pushing up insurance rates.
And this is of course the effects.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Of climate change. Hot Fresno has hot weather.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
We never had hot weather before, but now we have
hot weather why because of climate change? And we didn't
have bad air quality before now we do. And it's
because of quote climate change isn't clear, which seems all confused.
Isn't the bad air quality the result of our evil

(03:08):
human activity which, thereby effects brings about climate change. I
feel like there cause and effect. You know, what is
actually causing climate change is part of the problem, as
opposed to what is the result of climate change. We
don't have bad air quality because of climate change. Our

(03:29):
poor air quality is because of the kinds of human
activity that bring about climate change.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
I thought that was the narrative.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Now, so this report is basically saying that forty five
percent of Fresno is going to move away in the
next thirty years because of hot weather and poor air
quality climate change basically. Now, I wonder if the people

(04:04):
who did this risk assessment had ever met anyone from
Fresno or anyone in Fresno who is thinking of moving,
because there are all kinds of reasons why people in
Fresno are thinking of moving. They're thinking of moving because
of taxes, regulation, difficult to run your business, cost of living,

(04:28):
decreasing quality of life within the city of Fresno, more homelessness,
more you know, deteriorating social services. There's a lot of
reasons to think about leaving Fresno, and I hear it

(04:49):
from also, you know, the state government in California just
getting more and more left wing. Plenty of reasons why people.
I mean, I hear it. I hear it from all
kinds of people. They're like, you know, gas prices, energy prices,
cost of living. I see it every time I go
to visit Indiana. Then I do the inevitable look at Zillow,

(05:12):
and I see that if I sold my house, I
could buy a mansion in Indiana for the same amount,
like right near Notre Dame. Oh my gosh, I could
live in Granger, which is where all the like, all
the rich like people in the South Bend area live.
I could live in Granger. I could have a mansion
in Granger if I just sold my very middle class

(05:36):
California house. One of my employees, Kristen, she went up
to Oregon and came back.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
And she was like, oh my gosh, everything is cheaper
up in Oregon. It's so much nicer there. What are
we doing here? What are we doing here? It's like, yeah,
what are we doing here? Now?

Speaker 1 (06:00):
The natural bonds and ties of home and family and connection.
I think that's the main thing that keeps most people here.
But if family situations change and you're not as anchored here, yeah,
you're thinking about moving and climate change is like the

(06:23):
last reason why. So here's this recipe store.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Now.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
The Bee does note Fatteus Miller in this piece does
note that this report from this risk assessment firm that
they've blown up into a news story. It has a
big flaw in it. While climate change would be expected
to lead to displacement of residence. Again though this idea

(06:51):
that taking so seriously. Oh yeah, all these people want
to leave because of climate change. Nobody is leaving Fresno
because it's hot. Okay, very few people are doing that.
People who grew up here, they know the deal. It's
not like that much. I mean, I remember extremely hot
summers when I was a kid. Like, is it statistically
getting worse? I'm not even sure that it's measurably getting

(07:12):
that much statistically worse.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
And the funny thing is.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
When we have colder winters, that's also blamed on climate change.
Like we had a very precipitation heavy winter last winter,
and that was blamed on climate change. Oh, the extreme fluctuations,
I don't know. Man, at a certain point, I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
This is just weather.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
No one is leaving because of heat, because it's getting
maybe one degree half of a degree on average hotter
in Fresno than it was thirty years ago. While climate
change would be expected to lead to displacement of residents,
predicting the magnitude gets shaky because it includes so many factors.
According to Naomi Bick, a President State professor who studies

(07:59):
climate change in urban politics, let's see her give the
most misguided assessment of climate change and urban politics possible.
It's hard to know exactly how bad the abandonment and
people leaving will be because it depends on how other
areas as because it depends on how other areas are

(08:21):
as well and what they're facing.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
She said.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Oh, so she basically thinks everyone's going to experience climate change,
so why would people live and leave Fresno?

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Actually a fair counter argument.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
And then also what cities and counties and places do
to prepare for climate change again acting as if climate
change writ large, which again, that's the unfair thing about
climate change is that you can literally ascribe any bad
thing that's going on that has to do with the
weather to climate change, like Fresno is poor air quality.

(08:55):
I don't know that that has anything to do with
climate change. Fresno has poor air quality for a lot
of reasons. Number one geographically, because we live in a
bowl in a valley, harder for stuff to escape. My
dad made that this point, also that liberals who tried

(09:15):
to act like Fresno has poor air quality because of
automobiles and tractors or something. If poor air quality was
the result of automobiles, then everyone from like Santa Clarita
to south of the Mexico border would be dead, because

(09:36):
basically the entire Los Angeles to Tijuana area is one
massive parking lot. There are more cars from again, from
like Santa Clarita to Tijuana, there's more cars than can
possibly be fathomed relative to how many cars we have
in the San Joaquin Valley. We have poor air quality

(09:57):
for a lot of reasons that don't have nothing.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
To do with cars.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
All right, anyway, this professor continues, but Bick said the
valley is known to have disadvantaged communities, which could have
greater difficulty adapting. Like Los Angeles doesn't have disadvantage, but
a lot of places have disadvantaged communities along with the
rising temperature from climate change, which we take as a given,

(10:23):
the valley could expect to see wider fluctuations in precipitation.
According to Crystal Colden, a professor and director of the
U Samer said Fire Resilience Center. Oh and so people
will which again, everything that happens with What if we
have drought, that's climate change. If we have a lot
of rain, that's climate change. Everything gets ascribed to climate
change somehow, very conveniently. All right, So there's all that,

(10:51):
and they're basically saying this model is too far out. Also,
the big problem with the survey is that it keeps
assuming that insurance risk will be too high due to fires,
which is a possibly true thing for certain parts of
Fresno County, like up in the mountains like near Oakhurst

(11:12):
or Dunlap or places like that, but that's not really
true of the city of Fresno. There's not a big
fire risk for homes in Fresno and Clovis, which is
where most of Fresno County lives. All right, fast forward
to so the Fresno Bee publishes that story on June sixteenth,
forty five percent of Fresno is going to move away

(11:35):
two days later. Peace in the Fresno Bee by Fernanda Galan.
How big is Fresno? Here's how quickly the city is
growing and why people flock here? It has more people
than Miami in a larger land area than Tampa, Florida.
Just how big is Fresno and what makes the central

(11:56):
Valley city one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in
cal One of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in California?

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Oh so, what is it?

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Are we gonna lose forty five percent of the population
or are we the fastest growing metro area in California.
Fresno has an estimated population of five hundred fifty thousand,
one hundred five people as of July first, twenty twenty four,
according the census data. That's an increase of one point
five percent from April of twenty twenty, when Fresno had
estimated five hundred forty two thousand people. The Fresno metro

(12:30):
area saw a population boost of about two percent over
the same period, growing from one million, one hundred sixty
six forty seven residents in twenty twenty to one million,
one hundred eighty nine thousand, five hundred fifty seven and
twenty twenty four. Between twenty three and twenty four, the
Fresno metro area's population grew by about half a percentage

(12:52):
point the Sacramento be reported. In comparison, Miami had an
estimated population of four hundred eighty seven thousand, fourteen people
in twenty four and Atlanta had an estimated population of
five hundred twenty thousand, seventy residents according to Census data. Wow,
we have more people than Atlanta. According to World Population Review,

(13:13):
Fresno ranked among the thirty five most populated cities in
the nation. In twenty twenty five. Fresno ranked among the
top five largest cities in California in terms of population.
Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco. We're all ahead. We

(13:34):
have more people than Sacramento. I think Sacramento has a
larger metro area. They have more high population suburbs. So
going on and on and on about how we're we're
growing fast. We got a big population. Oh wow, it's
amazing Fresno. People are flocking, flocking, We're flocking birds of

(13:58):
a feather, We're flocking the gather. So what is it
our You know, if forty five percent of our residents
are going to flee in the next thirty years.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
That's a lot.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
In thirty years, we're gonna lose forty five percent of
our population. So our population's got to decrease. Well, you know,
just just doing my math here, we gotta start decreasing
by one point five percent every year over the next
thirty years. If forty five percent of our residents are
gonna leave and we're not doing that, we're growing. Which

(14:38):
this is the bizarre world that the left lives in
that they are so dead set on climate change as
like the defining issue, and like, I don't know, it's
like their end times profits, like every single end times profit.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Who stands up?

Speaker 3 (15:00):
So the world is gonna end. Jesus is coming back
in two in the year two thousand, the second millennium.
That's when Jesus is returning. And then Jesus doesn't come back. Okay, whoops,
I meant two thousand and one, and.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Then he doesn't come back in two thoughts. Okay, really
it was twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
You know how the Mayans they had that weird calendar
that stopped at twenty twelve because that's when the world's ending.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Twenty twelve and then twenty twelve rolls long and doesn't happen.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, but well Barack Obama got elected twenty twelve, so
maybe that was the bad thing. Okay, well we're moving
the date now, it's gonna be twenty fifteen.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
That it doesn't have I feel like that's what these
climate scientists are doing.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
They'll confidently predict that the world is over. I mean,
al Gore did this famously, the world is over, the
world's gonna end by X date. And I remember, I
remember Rush Limbaugh made a whole bit of this where
al Gore had predicted in some book that the that
you know, climate change was gonna lead to disaster by

(16:07):
like a certain date, and Rush started the countdown clock
on his website, okay, the countdown to armageddon, to countdown
to al Gore's armageddon, and he maintained it on his
website like forever. And then you know, we passed the date,
and clearly al Gore was full of it. Now we
have Greta Thunberg doing the same things, but just the

(16:30):
the the notion that climate change is this all important,
all encompassing political issue that lives in the heads of
liberals day in and day out as like the number
one or one of the top or whatever priorities, and
just for.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Most human beings, it just isn't that pressing.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Let me tell you, if people start leaving Fresno, it's
not gonna be because of climate change.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
There are plenty of reasons to leave.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Fresno, the fact that it's hot and that we have
bad air quality. Look, I have heard of people move
in away from Fresno due to allergies and asthma. I've
heard of one family that did that. But that's just
not the real compelling reason why a lot of people move.

(17:21):
People live here often because of family and business and
things like that. They're not moved. They're pushed to move
a lot because of money, because of cost of living, taxes, regulation,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
When we return some more.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Reasons why people might leave Fresno in the next few years,
or why maybe some people won't move into Fresno.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
That's next. On the John Groarty Show.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
There's this two series of two news stories that were
in the Fresno b within two days of each other, which.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Shows just how ridiculous whole enterprise is.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
One that forty five percent of people some report and
in fairness, I should be fair to the Fresno Bee.
While they did push this report as if it's some
significant news story, which I don't think it is, they
did point out some of the flaws with it. This
report from this risk assessment firm saying that forty five
percent of Fresnen's would move away from Fresno County by

(18:19):
the year twenty fifty five. Another story two days later saying, Wow,
Fresno's population is really booming, and hey, did you know
Fresno has a higher population than Miami and Atlanta and
all these other cities. Wow, it's really impressive. Blah blah
blah blah blah. All right, uh, I now, the first

(18:44):
report was premised on people are gonna leave because of
climate change. Here's one reason why Fresno might have trouble
long term. So the state is in really bad financial
shape right now. Jerry Dyer has pinned a lot of hope,
a lot of hope and expectations around the Downtown Fresno

(19:07):
development goal, which is premised around two things. One, getting
a bunch of state financial assistance for building up downtown
Fresno infrastructure like sewage and all kinds of stuff, which
would allow. I think it's something like fifteen thousand more.

(19:29):
He wants like fifteen thousand more people to be able
to move into to live in downtown Fresno. Have an
influx in population, you need a bunch of kind of infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Development in order to make that happen.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
And Two, the crown jewel of all of this downtown
Fresno development, in Jerry Dyer's eyes, is the high speed
rail station, the big high speed rail station that they
want to build in downtown Fresno. Well, two problems with that.

(20:05):
Maybe it's all the same problem. The state is in
terrible financial shape. Gavin Newsom has basically left the larder empty.
Gavin Newsom increased spending commitments by about nine percent per
year over the course of his six years as governor,
while revenues into the state only increased by six percent

(20:27):
per year.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's bad.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
So this three percent delta just kept growing and growing
and growing. That that's the average over the course of
the six years. I think it it fluctuated a lot,
especially I think twenty twenty two we had this surplus
because we had all this federal cash. So Newsom has
left us at a situation where It's not just that
we're facing a budget deficit this year that he's desperately

(20:53):
trying to close. We're going to face budget deficits of
fifteen to twenty blars million dollars every year unless we
radically shift the course with what we're doing. All that
to say, the two hundred million or so dollars that
Fresno is gonna need for downtown infrastructure development may not

(21:18):
be happening, may not be happening anytime soon. That was
promised to Jerry Dyer in the bumper days of twenty
twenty two. Newsom promised it to die. Hey, we'll give
you two hundred fifty million bucks. They gave him the
first chunk of change, I think, the first fifty million,
and then they just keep delaying. They keep delaying the

(21:39):
next two million, one hundred million dollar payments. They keep delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying,
and I just don't think it's ever gonna show up. Furthermore,
the high speed rail station, I don't know if when
that's ever going to get built. I mean, the high
speed rail project has no path, is in desperately bad

(22:04):
financial shape.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
It's billions of dollars short.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
I don't know that they have a path, that they
have a very difficult path towards even just finishing MERCED
to Bakersfield, or are getting the money necessary to finish
MERCEAID to Bakersfield, let alone anything further. And a high
speed rail station in downtown Fresno is just not going
to be super effective as a draw to downtown Fresno

(22:30):
unless it can connect you to La or San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
So I feel like, gosh.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
What a opportunity cost that we have focused so much
energy and attention on downtown Fresno that maybe could have
been better spent in other ways when we return the
worst kinds of arguments for Iran next on the John
Already Show. As anyone who has listened to the show

(23:04):
over the last week can tell, I'm pretty ambivalent about
the United States possibly intervening in Iran. I do not
want the United States to be drawn into a war.
I do not want the United States drawn into a
regime change conflict. I don't want Iran to have a nuke.

(23:26):
I guess I am not sure how close they are
now to having a nuke. I'm not sure if the
United States can sort of dip its toe into the
war with Hey, we'll just do one little bomb strike
at the four Dow nuclear site in Iran. This is
one of their chief nuclear sites. It's something like three
hundred feet underground, built into the side of a mountain.

(23:47):
The Israelis apparently don't have a bomb capable of digging
down that deep to destroy it.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
United States maybe does.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Maybe we just do one little round and we just
blow you upy that one nuclear site, and then we
call it today. I am a little unsure that that's
something America will do. And now we've got all kinds
of US senators talking about regime change and seeing if
we can topple the Islamic Republic itself.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
And get rid of the Ayatola.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
The problem is, regime change is not as easy as
ABC one two three.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
What do you replace it with?

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Are we then going to be expected to support said
new regime if it comes in? Is that even what
the Iranian people want? We keep hearing these news I
keep hearing and seeing these different Iranian experts talking about
how eighty percent of the people don't even like the Ayatola.
They don't even listen to anything that the Islamic Republic says.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
They don't even like the current regime. They would love
to have a new ruler, would they?

Speaker 1 (24:55):
If fully eighty percent of the people don't like the
current regime, then they probably could have affected more more
than the zero meaningful change that they affected those thus far.
If eighty percent of the people don't like the Ayatola,
it probably wouldn't have needed an Israeli airstrike to get
rid of to regime change these folks.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Now you've got the guy.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
He's the son of the former I think he's either
the Sun, he must be the Sun. I don't he's
too old to be the grandson of the former shah
who's on these like Twitter videos talking about, Oh, the
people of Iran need to are are desperately waiting to
rise up. I'm like, well, how desperate are they? I mean,
they got rid of your dad, and there doesn't seem

(25:41):
as much as people keeps are all the noble Iranian
people yearn for freedom? Do they yearn? How much are
they yearning? I feel like I've been hearing about the
yearning of the Iranian people for not the Iyatolas for
like a decade plus, and yet here we are that

(26:01):
they still have them.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
As the Iranians have amped.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Up their lunacy over the last four years, no movement
to not have the Iatolas be in charge.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
So is that really true? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Feels a lot like the whole they will greet us
as liberators, thing from when we invaded Iraq. On the
other hand, I see how tantalizing it is. The Iatolas
are really bad. If there's just one little push over
the edge we could do to topple them and get

(26:40):
rid of them and have something better replace them, that
would be amazing. Problem is there's ninety million people in Iran,
a stat that Ted Cruz apparently didn't know. And by
the way, let me just state this, A lot of
people online are defending Ted Cruz for that. He had
this interview with Tucker Carlson where Tucker carl where Cruz,

(27:02):
who's like supportive of wanting seems to be supportive of
wanting to topple the Iranian regime. Tucker asks Ted Cruz
do you know how many people are in Iran? And
Cruz can't answer it. He doesn't even have like a
rough answer, like I don't know, roughly eighty million, roughly

(27:23):
not He's I can't.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Tell you.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
It's like, all right, look, it's one thing for random
Joe Schmoe on the street corner to not know what
the population of Iran is, Okay, But if you're a
US senator who may be called upon to decide with
your vote questions of war and peace and American military

(27:46):
involvement for regime change in a country, you better dang
well know how many people there are and something about
the stakes involved in how difficult it's gonna be. And
just for scale, I mean, we had enormous problems trying

(28:13):
to secure peaceful, stable government in Iraq. Iraq only has
forty six million people. Afghanistan has only forty nine point
five million people. So you're talking about a country almost

(28:34):
twice as much population as Afghanistan, pretty much fully twice
the population of Iraq. And that's the thing. If we topple,
if we topple that regime and it gets replaced, there's
gonna be tens of millions of people who probably still

(28:55):
liked the old regime better. It's not like one hundred
percent of the populace will rush to embrace the Shah.
Let's I mean they kicked out the Shah in a
popular uprising. Now so I am very skeptical about getting

(29:21):
drawn in. I am very skeptical about regime change. I'm
also afraid that it could ignite a horrible civil war
in Iran that would lead to millions of people dying,
hundreds of thousands of people dying at the same time. Yes,
the Iranian regime leadership is terrible, but I would say,

(29:45):
if there's a magic wand we can wave to just
completely neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, and maybe that's already happened,
then I am satisfied with that.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Well, here's a.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Great piece in National Review written by Michael Brennan Doherty,
who I think is my favorite commentator on all of this.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
If you get National Review and get it just to
read him.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Pretty much, he's the only one at National Review who
is a real dove as opposed to the rest of
their opinion writers who are all real warhawks. So he writes,
he wrote this great piece called Red Flag Arguments for
Joining a War, So he my tone is very of

(30:32):
cautious caution about all this is similar to Doherty's tone.
So he writes, the case that a nuclear armed Iran
would be against US interests is straightforward. Preventing this outcome
doesn't justify any and all sacrifices, but it certainly requires attention. However,
I keep encountering Dherty writing this right now, I keep

(30:55):
encountering what I consider red flag arguments, that is, arguments
that Win made arouse my suspicion or repulse me. First
he as he calls it the return of Condy's kind
Oflese Rice's mushroom cloud. Here's an argument from Benjamin netan Yahoo,
giving an argument that, both to Darty's mind and to

(31:18):
my mind, I think is silly.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Here's what Netanyaho says.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
It's tell Aviv, tomorrow's New York. Look, I understand America first.
I don't understand America dead. That's what these people want.
They chant death to America.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
All right. The core part of that was at the
very beginning.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Today, it's Tel Aviv tomorrow, it's New York. I understand
America first. I don't understand America dead. Darty writes, sorry,
but the threat Iron poses to Israel is orders of
magnitude greater than the one it poses to America. Conflating
them in this dishonest and hysterical way is a giant

(32:00):
red flag. It tells me that statesmen are deliberately lying
to me, trying to excite my emotions and shortcut my
deliberative judgment.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
If you have to do this, I.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Start to also distrust the things you say that seem
more reasonable. Then he shifts to outright insane demagoguery in
the person of Mark Levin. This is from Levin's Fox
News TV show.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
Yeah, so where are they? They're nowhere? How about China nowhere?
How about Russia nowhere? What happened to World War three?
There is no World War three. They all sound like
a bunch of Marxist Islamists. They don't sound like patriotic Americans.
Let me be clear, this is good versus evil. You're
either a patriotic American who's gonna get behind the President

(32:53):
of the United States, the commander in chief. Are You're
not one?

Speaker 1 (32:59):
No, that was Levin criticizing people who are concerned about
being drawn into a broader war. People who are worried
about World War three, Levin says, sound like Marxist Islamists,

(33:19):
and that the only options are being a patriotic American
who's going to get behind the president, who I guess
Levin assumes is going to engage in regime change with Iran,
which I think that is not decided yet, or you're
not or you're not a patriotic American. No, that's insane.

(33:43):
What Mark Levin is saying is insane. You may like
Mark Levin, you may not like Mark Levin. What he's
saying here is insane. That you're not a patriotic American
if you say, hey, regime change is a lot harder
than we think. It was a lot harder than we
thought the last two go rounds we had, And I'm

(34:04):
not sure how much this is in the United States
interests to go full in on regime change.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
I mean I'm not like closed off to the whole idea.
I see the benefit of getting rid of the Iranian regime.
I just don't know that we can affect it without
committing ourselves to a country twice the population of Iraq,
a much larger land mass than Iraq. Darty writes Levin

(34:33):
has wanted conflict with Iran for decades now. His urgent
shouting and appeals to direct loyalty to the president offend
me as a free citizen. Once they finally stop offending
my corporeal being with their volume and shrillness. If this
is how Levin feels and emots as he seeks to
influence the president on Primetime Fox, then I am absolutely

(34:53):
not reassured by those saying this isn't a rock, it's
not regime change, it's one targeted strike. If this is
a battle between good and evil, and if half my
countrymen are Marxist, Islamist, whatevers, then it seems that the
proponents of this war wouldn't be satisfied by one night
of fireworks at the four Dow nuclear facility in Iran.

(35:16):
Then finally there's this argument. You know, I'm gonna save
it for the break. The last argument that I don't
like for this is that this is a divinely appointed mandate.
That is next on The John Girardi Show. There are
some decent arguments for wanting to the United States to
get involved with bombing Iran. There are some decent arguments,

(35:37):
maybe even for trying to do regime change. But there
are also some really stupid arguments that make me that
when they are put forward, make me question the whole enterprise.
And this last you know, we detailed some of them
in the last segment. So the two dumb arguments so
far as one, Benjamin Nutt Yahu's saying, well, tomorrow they're
gonna blow up Tel Aviv. The next day they'll blow

(35:58):
up New York. No, no, it's a greater risk to
Israel than it is to us. Don't equate the two.
It's orders of magnitude of bigger risk is real than
it is to us. Secondly, the argument from Levin that
you're not a patriotic American and if you're concerned about
World War three, then you're a Marxist Leninist, which is
just frankly insane. No, that is not the case, all right.
The last dumb argument is the idea that God is

(36:24):
directly telling President Trump to bomb Iran and engage in
regime change.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
And no, okay.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
First of all, if you think God is talking to
you in the form of dropping a bunch of bombs
on people, then that's usually a good sign that you
got to test.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Those spirits, if you will.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Secondly, I think a lot of this avowedly coming from
Ted Cruz, and I suspect avowedly coming from Mike Huckabee.
The investor to Israel, is rooted in a lot of
sort of weird.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Let me check myself.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Not saying it's weird, I'm saying it's stuff that I
don't agree with, and I think it is relatively recent
in the history of Christian thought developments as far as
what our obligations are as Christians towards supporting quote Israel,
and what that means to support quote Israel. Does it
mean supporting the modern day nation state of Israel as

(37:25):
created in nineteen forty eight? Does it mean being supportive
of the Jews as they exist today? What exactly does
that mean? And that is seemingly being interpreted as the
United States must give full geopolitical support to Israel's aims
and goals and ends. No, I don't think that is
what the Bible tells us to do, Man mandates us

(37:47):
to do. And I don't think there's anything about the
Book of Revelation requiring us to do that for the
Eskaton to happen. So, in short, I think the theological reasons.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
No.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
If you want to say there are moral or strategic reasons, okay,
and if that is God's will, all right, fine.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
But God is not directly telling Donald Trump to bomb Iran. Sorry,
that'll do it. John Jordy show see next time.