Former and future Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu joined me this morning. The audio is available at my podcast

Audio:

11-08hhs-netanyahu

Transcript:

HH: 50 years ago, my next guest stormed an airplane, got shot for his efforts, saved a bunch of passengers, four Palestinian terrorists killed. But you probably better know him as the once and future prime minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu. Mr. Prime Minister, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Great to have you on.

BN: Good to be with you, very much, and with your audience as well.

HH: I have, I have greatly enjoyed Bibi: My Story. Jonathan Carp sent it to me on Friday, and I’ve done nothing but read it and listen to it. And I enjoyed the fact that you recorded the end of the book, but not the beginning. So I got through your accent pretty good at the end there. Let’s start with the beginning, though. And an argument among brothers on a tarmac about who was going to rush into an airplane, I’ve never read that before. That might be familiar to listeners in Israel, but it ain’t familiar to Americans. That’s kind of an extraordinary story.

BN: Well, indeed it was. I can tell you that far from being just an extraordinary story, it was an extraordinary, in many ways, an unbelievable moment in my life. And it’s one where my brother was pitted against me. We had 16 soldiers from our unit dressed as mechanics about to “fix” a hijacked plane. That was a ruse arranged by Defense Minister Dayan to overtake these, this hijacked plane that landed near Tel Aviv. The terrorists demanded that we release 300 jailed terrorists, and if we didn’t, if Israel didn’t agree, they’d blow up the plane with all its passengers. Dayan seemed to acquiesce to their request, falsely, of course. But we have to fix the plane to allow it to fly with the released terrorists to a destination of the choice of the hijackers. We got on the plane. We were to get on the plane as mechanics, situate ourselves in front of these various entrances, and then storm on a prearranged signal, storm the plane and kill the terrorists and release the hostages. No one had ever done that before, so we were all ready to go. We had practiced, dressed up in mechanic’s, white mechanic’s overalls, stuck Baretta pistols in our boots. We couldn’t use our Uzis and Kalashnikov assault rifles which were our normal weapon, because they were too big to hide, and also their firepower could have engaged with the passengers. And now we’re all ready to go, and my older brother, Jonathan, Yoni, who was senior to me in our unit, came to me and he said, well, I’m going, too. And I said you can’t go. He said why not? And I said well, because I’m already there, and you can’t have two brothers in such close quarters, because obviously, one of us could, or even both of us could get killed. We were afraid the terrorists would blow up the plane with prearranged charges that they put on the aircraft. Then he said to me, well, I’ll go in your stead. And I said you can’t go in my place, because these are my soldiers. And he said so, we’ll both go. And I said Yoni, what are you talking about? Think of father and mother. Think of what would happen if one of us got hurt or killed. And he said something to me that was unbelievable. He said very slowly and very deliberately, he said Bibi, my life is my own, and my death is my own. And I saw that iron resolution that he had. And of course, I pushed him off as far as I could, but we had to go to the commander of the unit, and he sided with me. So my brother was left behind. Well…

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Every Veterans’ Day for two decades the wonderful team at TheFund.org have arranged for me to speak with a dozen men and women who have been wounded in the wars and their battles since 2001.  Tune in this morning to hear from some amazing veterans of all the branches and please consider a gift to TheFund.org.

We are past the hot takes and the serious finger-pointing has begun regarding Tuesday’s disastrous election.  In the broadest sense what the election results signal is either 1) there is something about Republicans that people think would be worse than where we are now or 2) people are satisfied with where we are now.  The finger-pointing assumes the first possibility.  But we have to at least examine the second possibility if for no other reason than to eliminate it from consideration.  Naturally Republicans are dissatisfied with the status quo, but that does not mean the nation as a whole is.

Most of the current problems we face stem from the pandemic.  Inflation results from the gross overspending justified by shutdowns.  The crime wave is rooted in racially based anti-police sentiment built upon the energy pent up by the lockdowns.  In other words, so many of the George Floyd riots were fueled by people simply wanting out of their homes.  Educational dissatisfaction is, of course, rooted in teachers, as represented by unions, placing their own perceived (as opposed to actual) health above the well-being of their students.

But if we are honest, pretty much nothing works right anymore.  Air travel is a nightmare due to staffing shortages.  If you deal with virtually any government agency it is generally frustrating, but normal bureaucratic delay and prevarication has morphed into no one in offices, dysfunctional website, we’ll get to it sometime next century hell.  Restaurant service?  Forget about it!  Fine dining prices with less than Waffle House levels of service.  Again no one working.  If you are in business and lucky enough to book work, you are finding your receivables climbing, but your cash flow moribund.  When you finally can get a hold of somebody for collections, they are willing to pay, they just have no way to get a check cut because again, no one is working.  But I am not sure people can connect the dots between all these dissatisfactory phenomena and the pandemic, or more accurately – pandemic response policy.  It is a long, tortuous, and government misdirected route from “this germ will end your life in short order” to the kinds of social, business and cultural dysfunction we are experiencing.  Not to mention an entire generation came of age under the pandemic and simply do not know better.

Then combine that with the fact that we are dealing with several generations raised to never make a stink about anything – that would avoid conflict of any sort at any cost – that would never dream of telling a vendor they were not delivering as promised because they do not want the hassle.  To some extent this stems from simply being beaten down by the brick walls erected by bureaucracies and in many cases absentee parents.  But it also has roots in having witnessed “No Drama Obama” which is a function of enormous levels of self-absorption that simply will not tolerate hassle.  I find this particular problem both interesting and ugly.  It seems graceful that people would rather simply move on that hassle someone, but that apparent grace is so obviously born of self-absorption, not forgiveness of the other, that it becomes off-putting.

There is a lot of shoulder-shrugging “What can I do about it” going on out there – a great number of people that will go along to get along.  As my wife and I prepare to finalize our move to Tennessee in very short order I am running into increasing numbers of people that don’t get it.  I tell them about how well Tennessee, at least East Tennessee, functions post pandemic, how much lower the cost of living is compared to California, how people will accord you the actual grace of their personal attention, and yet they look at me blankly noting how hard I am working to execute the move.

Have you ever noticed when you are in an airplane, on the ground and the pilot starts to taxi how the engines rev very high for just a moment to get the plane moving, then move back to maintain a reasonable speed?  It is a lot harder to get something moving than it is to maintain the motion.  A physicist would call that effect “inertia.”  I do not think people are satisfied with the new broken normal, there is too much bellyaching going on.  But the cultural inertia is enormous.

Finger-pointing does not paint a nice picture of what lies on the other side of the inertia overcoming effort – so why bother.  That’s where we are right now.  It is time for some vision casting, something that will motivate America to put in the effort for a new, functioning normal.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, fresh from a huge win in Ohio, joined me this AM:

Audio:

11-10hhs-dewine

Transcript:

HH: I’m joined by one of the big winners Tuesday night. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is back. Congratulations, Governor DeWine, a million vote margin-plus. You must still be feeling pretty good.

MD: Well, good morning, Hugh. Thank you very much. Yes, we feel good. We ended up with about 63% of the vote, and you know, obviously very, very happy and now looking forward to four more years of working and pushing for Ohio to move forward. We’re a state on the move, and you and I have talked about this before. You know Ohio very well. It’s a manufacturing state. We’re getting a lot of new businesses coming in, and we’re putting a big emphasis on education, early childhood education as well as career prep.

HH: You know, Governor, I don’t know that people will quite understand this who don’t come from my neck of the woods, but Trumbull County, which used to be a deep blue union stronghold, and you know, it’s where John Glenn would run up votes, and John Gilligan would run up votes. You carried Trumbull County by 66.5%. Now that is extraordinary. How did you do that?

MD: Just, it’s been a huge change, I think, in, you know, historically, you can correct me, because that’s the part of the state you’re from, but you know, this has been a blue-collar, you know, highly-ethnic area which I would say was always fairly socially conservative, but you know, certainly voted Democrat. I used to joke, Hugh, that when we’d take a poll in mid-summer, you know, I might be ahead in the Mahoning Valley, but by the time we got to September and October, they remembered I was a Republican. And so we never could carry it. But I think there’s just been a fundamental shift, and you’re seeing this at the local elections there as well. You know, Donald Trump certainly pushed that, but it was something that I think has been coming, frankly, for some time. And this, again, interestingly for our listeners, was the home and is the home of Congressman Ryan who was the Democrat nominee for United States Senate, and did not really do that well in his home area.

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It’s early and things are not fully decided, but it is known for fact it was no red wave – and some races make zero sense to me.  Whitmer won in MI?!?!?  How in the *&^% did that state elect her again?  And Fetterman?  He put his incapacity on display and still won!  I don’t get it.  Here are some early conclusions and hot takes.

People just want to forget the pandemic.

It’s not the “amnesty” that has been widely discussed – if you bring it up, people don’t like it.  But they do not want to talk about it, and they do not want to remember it.  People believe it to be some sort of episode of mass insanity, they are embarrassed by it more than angry about it.  The lesson here is that people do not think beyond the personal; they see it as something they “fell for” not something that was imposed upon them.  Those that really are angry about it moved to Florida and voted for DeSantis.  Not to mention younger generations are quite content to stay in their rooms looking at their screens – a phenomena I have yet to wrap my head around.

We Bear the Trump Brand

For better or worse, people see Republicans through a lens of Trump – and he is a highly controversial figure.  I was in Oregon last weekend and every political ad I saw painted every Republican as “too MAGA.”  I had an argument with a very left leaning friend a few weeks ago in which I contended Republicans were much bigger than Trump, and he insisted that we were the party of Trump.  At Townhall this morning Spencer Brown casts things in a Trump v Republican establishment narrative.  I think there is some wisdom there.

Fundamentals

A very conservative friend of mine, on a very liberal law school faculty, once observed that the faculty got that way because conservatives are too busy doing the job while liberals are busy trying to reinvent things.  If we are honest, liberals have a firm grip on education and media and religion largely does not matter anymore, even though they have a stronghold in a lot of religious expressions.  In other words, conservatives keep running for office while failing to realize that politics is downstream of culture.

Way too many people do not understand this inflation, its sources and consequences.  Way too many people are bamboozled by “climate change” talk.  (Let’s be honest the old adage, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” has come home to roost – people actually think we can do something about it.)  Way too many people cannot sort the news from the nonsense online.

It is time for conservatives to get very serious and very deliberate about dealing with the culture.  To date we have done the “me too”/”alternate” stuff.  That just makes us look foolish.  We need to get serious about creating culture, not copying it with a conservative bent.

All weekend and all yesterday, the President’s remarks from last Friday on coal, when he was supposed to be talking about the CHIPS Act, have been sliced and diced and pundited to death.  But there is a point I have not seen made.  Here is the money quote:

Folks, it’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil.  Literally cheaper.  Not a joke.

I was just — and so we can accommodate that transition.  I was in Massachusetts about a month ago on the site of the largest old coal plant in America.  Guess what?  It cost them too much money.  They can’t count.  No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant.  So it’s going to become a wind generation.

And all they’re doing is — it’s going to save them a hell of a lot of money, and they’re using the same transmission line that transmitted the coal-fired electric on.  We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.

The president does not cite his source for the claim that wind and solar are cheaper, so I can’t double check the figures, but let’s assume for a moment it’s true and ask ourselves why?  Well, wind and solar come without fuel costs, that much is true.  But I doubt seriously you can produce as much power via wind and solar in the same footprint as a coal plant, so you are going to have to find a lot more land – a LOT more – thus driving up your capital costs considerably.

Then there are reliability factors – coal works all the time, wind and solar only some of the time.  Even if we presume battery tech sufficient to store for the non-productive times (which does not exist) your capital costs start to go through the roof.  A major capital expense maintained only for some of the time, in a standby mode, does not amortize well.

I could go on like this for quite a bit, but what should be apparent by now is that Biden’s claim just does not quite add up – unless…

…You consider regulation and government money.  Wind and solar are heavily subsidized and coal is very heavily regulated – very heavily.  In other words, the government, Joe Biden’s government, is making wind and solar cheap while making coal expensive.

That warps the economy significantly and that is bad enough.  But moreover, it puts the government ostensibly in charge of power production.  That is objectionable on two levels.

The first is simple, the government cannot do much of anything well – they just can’t.  We all have enough problems with our local power company now because it is heavily regulated.  How bad will it be when we are dealing directly with the government and there is no free enterprise driven corporation as an intermediary?

The second issue is straightforward tyranny.  Consider this from elsewhere in the speech:

So we’re working with the auto industry to transition to an electric vehicle future, providing tax credits to buy electric vehicles, as well as — any IBEW guys here?  Well, guess what?  You guys are going to install 50- — excuse me, 500,000 charging stations around the country.  So it’s going to be — that’s like 500,000 gas stations.  Not a joke.  Five hundred thousand.  Because people are going to say, “I’m not buying a vehicle because it can only take me X number of miles.”

So now, the government is putting in our “gas stations.”  Not Shell, not ARCO, not Valero, not Mobil, not Chevron – now you are going to be buying your go juice direct from Uncle Sam.  In the end we have the government directly in charge of everything that powers our daily lives – they make and distribute the electricity that runs our homes and our vehicles.  That’s a problem – a big problem.

So, Joe Biden is spending our money to make his lie about the economic realities of wind and solar look true and then levering that into dangerous levels of control.

That speech was stupid politics on the weekend before an election, but it was also a frightening statement of policy.