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These are the kinds of lines that are blared out by various kinds of
right wing licensed you know, for tax purposes, designated as five to one
C three type organizations who are trying desperately to get your money. And I
am here on this the John Girardi Show. I am here to give a
lot of you listening a warning. All right. I know kind of the
demo of who listens to this show, and I think a lot of people
here. Look, there's national polling to indicate that conservatives are more inclined to
give to charity on the whole. And I think a lot of times people
who who are very conservative can have their heartstrings tugged at by conservative sounding causes.
It's why various kinds of people make a lot of money running for Congress
in hopeless races where they know they're going to lose. Okay. For example,
the average successful race for a seat in the US House Representatives winds up
spending about three million dollars in campaign expenditures. There was a about four races
in twenty twenty. In the twenty twenty election cycle, there were four different
people who were running against Democrats in heavily Democrat seats. It was the people
who were running against Kuaisiamfume in Baltimore, ilhan Omar in Minnesota, I think
AOC and New York, and against Maxine Waters and Maxine Waters in California and
those four races. The Republicans who ran in those four races. Again,
the successful average successful congressional campaign spends about three million dollars. Those four races
raised forty million dollars and all four of them lost by over thirty points.
Why do they raise so much money Because Conservatives can be duped, Conservatives can
be had. Conservatives want to help, They're eager to give, and these
people will send out these missives. They'll send out these nationwide text based campaign
ads where some guy will be sitting on his couch in Dallas, Texas,
and he'll get some text. Do you hate Maxine Waters, Help me take
her out of Congress? Do you hate Nancy Pelosi? Help me take her
out of Congress? You hate AOC and ilhan Omar, help me as I
run for Congress to unseat ilhan Omar. And that guy in Texas goes,
oh yeah, brother, I hate ilholdomar, I hate aoc here's twenty dollars.
So all across the right, the political the American political right, there
are people who think of you, you the listener of power talk, as
an easy mark, who think that there's a way to convince you to separate
yourself from your money for some cause that is probably not actually all that valuable
to give to either some political campaign or some charity. It's not necessarily doing
a whole heck of a lot, but it does result in you being separated
from your money. And often the right wing nonprofit world is a real menagerie
of lunatics, oddballs, grifters, dishonest swindlers who are desperately trying to take
your money. And it's kind of a spectrum from the actually respectable, decent
people who do good work to total losers who are trying again just to separate
you from your money and promote a very lazy kind of right wing politics that's
designed to appeal chiefly to baby boomer donors. A guy who's made a big
living off of this is James O'Keeffe. Now, James O'Keefe has probably done
one or two interesting things, but for the most part. What he does
is he takes not consented to clandestine videos of various kinds of liberals talking about
what they actually believe. He is able somehow to go out to dinner with
these people and get them on a clandestine camera revealing what they actually think.
And he has done this with various kinds of tech executives at Google and stuff
like that. And recently he just today or maybe yesterday, Yeah, yesterday,
he released this video of him. I think pretty much catfishing, which
is where you pretend to be romantically interested in someone. This guy named Jason
Beck, who is the associate director with an associate director within the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, so he works within the Department of Defense. He's
not a member of the military. Looks like a thirty early thirties millennial Department
of Defense employee. His Twitter account shows that he's very openly gay, this
Jason beckfellow, and it seems as though James O'Keeffe was like pretending as far
as his mannerisms and stuff. Seemed likely he was taking this guy on a
date to allow this guy to say things that were shocking. So James o'keeff's
tweet about this, you know, blaring out this tweet. The associate director
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense says, why not just have an
open border. Tear down the wall. So he goes out to dinner with
this guy. He takes the guy to an apartment to have, you know,
to chit chat on the couch and have a glass of wine. And
this openly gay guy who's a political appointee in the Department of Defense. Now,
if you tell me the basics of who this guy is, he's a
political appointee within the Department of Defense, he's a millennial, he's openly LGBT.
I would guess this guy is probably extremely left wing. This is not
surprising even if he weren't a political appointee. I would guess that he's probably
extremely left wing. And the big quote revelation that James O'Keeffe elicits from this
man, and which, by the way, some of you might have remembered,
James O'Keefe worked for an entity called Project Veritas. Their board of directors.
I think he had some big falling out with them. So now he's
got his own thing. Well, I mean, Project Veritas was kind of
his own thing. But now he's got another his own thing called James O'Keefe
Media that basically does the exact same thing that he always had done, which
is undercover clandestine video recordings of people getting them to say something embarrassing. So
here's O'Keefe's big tweet. This is the big revelation about what an obviously very
left wing person who works for the Department of Defense believes. This guy,
who's a mid level functionary within the Office of the Secretary of Defense says,
quote, why not just have an open border. We should tear down the
wall. I think we should just repeal the Second Amendment and take the guns
all away. He thinks we should mobilize the National Guard to confiscate guns from
people's homes. He says he wants a monopoly on state violence, that the
government are the only ones with guns. So he also says that we should
pack the Supreme Court, that we should abolish the United States Senate, and
abolish the electoral the electoral College. So this is all and O'Keefe is trying
to present this as like, all it's a shocking revelation about, you know,
and this guy whom he's doing these clandestine recordings with He's a mid level
flunky in the Department of Defense, specifically in the Secretary of Defense's office.
He helps Department of Defense officials with preparing for congressional testimony. His office over
According to O'Keefe's right up here, which is probably not quite accurate, this
office oversees the Department of Defense and acts as the principal defense policymaker and advisor
to the President of the United States. So O'Keefe's trying to, Oh,
this is such a hard, profound revelation. No, it's not, buddy.
Let me tell you something. I don't need to make a donation to
James O'Keefe to figure out that political appointees who work for the Secretary of Defense
who display themselves as being openly gay, I don't need to learn that they're
gay. I mean, I don't need James O'Keefe to do an undercover interview
to figure out that this guy one is gay, two that this guy holds
a variety of While yes, they're very far left, but it's not like
nobody believes these things. A lot of very hardcore left wing people believe this
stuff. Go to law school, you'll meet a bunch of people like this
who believe these things, who think we should abolish a second Amendment, who
think that the Senate is fundamentally an unjust institution, who think that the electoral
College should be abolished. These are all pretty mainstream liberal views. I'm not
saying they're good or they're right. I think most of them are terribly wrong.
But this is nothing surprising at all. But what's happening here, really,
this segment is not really about the revelations that someone This segment of this
radio show that you're listening to right now is not about the revelation. Oh
my gosh, liberal people work in the Department of Defense, no kidding.
The Secretary of Defense, who's a political appointee of the president, who's supposed
to be liberal because the president's liberal and he wants liberal people to advance all
of his liberal policy, believes hired other liberals to work for him. Yeah,
duh. I didn't need to pretend to be a homosexual in order to
go on a date with a mid level functionary of the federal government to figure
out that mid level functionaries of the federal government are pretty liberal. You know,
it's it. You could probably just ask the guy. I mean,
a lot of what he's saying is like the official policy positions of the Democrat
Party, or if not, it's like very obvious to find out. Yeah,
of course, these mid level political appointees of a Democrat administration, these
younger appointees of a Democrat administration, of course they're a bunch of left wingers.
Duh. But you should donate to James O'Keeffe media, to O'Keefe Media
group in order to support groundbreaking journalism like this. That young homosexual staffers of
a Democrat administration are super liberal who who could possibly have predicted this? Donate
now to support our invaluable journalism. That's what I'm saying, Folks, stop
giving to these right wing nonprofits who are flashy and just trying to play to
your emotions. Yeah, a right wing person who watches Fox News all the
time will see this and think that's outrageous. He's uncovered the bombshell. Let
me give you money, And that's what O'Keefe relies on. This is the
clearly, this is the this is his bread and butter, recording these things,
posting things that seem shocking and inflammatory and horrible. Oh, my gosh,
unbelievable to uh, you know, sheltered right wingers who don't come out
of the Fox News bubble ever, when it's like, yeah, like obviously
liberal political appointees of the federal government believe a bunch of really liberal stuff.
Duh, Like you didn't have to pretend to be gay and clandestinely video this
guy and catfishing and take him on a date to find out. Jeez,
Louise. Anyway, when we return the John Girardi standard for assessing when you
should give to a right wing cause next on the John Girardi Show, I've
been laughing all day at this James oak thing. James o'keef, who used
to run Project Very Toss and then clearly had some conflict with his board of
directors, got kicked out of that. Now he's got his own thing,
this O'Keefe media group deal where he's doing the same thing he always does,
where he takes like clandestine, non consensual, which can be a problem to
do that in various states, like I don't think you can legally do this
in California, These non consensual video recordings of various liberals getting them to say
liberal stuff, and his most recent one is him clearly pretending to be gay
in order to go out on a date with a mid level flunky functionary of
the Department of Defense, a political appointee of the Department of Defense, so
someone who's there because the Biden administration's in power, and he gets this guy
to say a bunch of left wing things that, oh, we should tear
down the wall, and I think the Second Amendments to be abolished, and
you know, I think the Senate is should be abolished, and we should
pack the Supreme Court. This is all very conventional left wing stuff, and
he's presenting it as all this invaluable journalism that I, James O'Keeffe, that
I, alone, James O'Keeffe can get for you because I pretended to be
gay and went on a date with this unsuspecting person and recorded him without his
consent, And then let you know that obviously liberal people believe very liberal things.
Obviously very liberal people who work for the Biden administration believe very liberal things
like duh. The guy probably would have told you what he believed without you
non consensually recording him like jeezu little. And so it highlights to me how
many of these right wing nonprofit or political causes are just absolute trash, and
they present themsel. What they do is they try to position themselves to get
baby boomer dollars. Fox News watching baby boomer dollars, that's what they want.
So he'll have this splashy head like, oh, this this official in
the Department of Defense says that we should we shouldn't, we should let all
the illegals in, and then that the Second Amendment should be abolished, and
it's presented as if it's this huge news story and it's not. This guy's
a mid level flunky at best who's obviously very liberal. Like you don't need
an undercover investigation to figure out that liberal appointees Democrat appointees to the Department of
Defense are liberal, no kidding. The military has been paying for transgender surgeries
for a year, Like, you don't need you don't need someone to tell
me that, Oh did you know that Biden appointed liberals to the Department of
Defense? Yeah, no kidding. His views aren't even like that outside of
the norm of what hard left people believe. Like a lot of hard left
people think the electoral college should be abolished. A lot of hard left people
think the Senate is a fundamentally unjust institution. A lot of hard left people
think we should pack the Supreme Court. A lot of hard left people think
we should tear down the wall. We shouldn't have any wall on the southern
border. A lot of far left people think we should have open board like
open borders. This nothing that he said was surprising at all unless you live
in this Fox News. I guess bubble that you don't know that a good
chunk of political left leaning people believe all those things. So here's what I'm
saying. Don't give to these kinds of organizations. When you give, whether
it's to a campaign, to a nonprofit, think about the ROI what is
mind Nation actually getting when you give, for example, to Write to Life.
We're educating thousands of kids about the pro life cause. We're directly assisting
moms to not have abortions. I was helping out a mom just this past
week. This last weekend, I was helping out a mom who had decided
not to have an abortion, had twins. We were getting her hooked up
with Catholic charities for clothes, with social services, for adoption assistants, like
all this stuff. Give to write to life. You're getting that. You
give to our Obria clinic, which, by the way, a week from
today Thursday, March twenty one. The clinic, the pro life obgyn clinic
that I helped get started, the Obria Medical Clinics of Central California, Obria.
We're having a big fundraiser at the Toka Madera Winery in Madera, and
it should be a really awesome thing. You can go to Obria oh b
r i a three six five dot org. That's ob r i A three
six five dot org and you can make a contribution there. You can buy
tickets for the event t one hundred dollars ticket. The proceeds are going to
help support our work at our clinic, where we've delivered one hundred babies over
the last year and we're helping women who are very seriously considering abortion. We're
helping women. We've had referrals from Breaking the Chains, which helps victims of
sex trafficking. Our clinic is doing incredible work helping lower income women with prenatal
care. Okay, that's good, ROI. You give to an organization like
that, you're helping people, You're like doing something concrete to help people to
move the ball down the field. You give to James O'Keefe, what do
you get? You get the grand revelation that obviously very liberal people believe very
liberal things, no kidding. When we return a kind of random Christian theology
thing that I keep seeing everywhere, and it's interesting to me, so I
hope it'll be interesting to you too. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
There's this thing I keep seeing in Christian circles, and I think it's
a lot of it's in Protestant circles. It's sort of starting to infect Catholic
circles, and it's sort of infecting Catholic circles, maybe in different ways.
And it has to do fundamentally with Christian teaching on homosexuality and historic Christian teaching
among Catholics Protestants. Orthodox has been pretty consistent that same sex sexual activity is
immoral, that it violates the purposes of conjugal relations, that it is wrong,
and it's very clearly expressed to be wrong in the Bible, that sexual
acts are reserved for marriage, and that marriage is oriented towards family, towards
children, towards procreation, towards life. So this is fairly universal. I
think if you're intellectually honest, even if you do think the same sex relations
should be viewed as not something immoral, I don't know that you can really
honestly say that that is something that's consistent with Christianity. I just don't know
how you can. I don't know. Maybe there's a certain Protestant lens of
looking at it, that individual interpretation of scripture should be done, and that
my interpretation of scripture I discern that certain value are more important than other values,
blah blah blah blah blah. But I don't know how you I think
it is very hard to try to argue that Christianity is consistent with a modern
day, conventionally liberal ethic with regards to same sex sexual activity. In fact,
with regards to modern ethics regarding cohabitation prior to marriage, sexual activity before
marriage. I think these are just things that we do conventionally now, and
people try to shoehorn our way of doing things into Christianity, and I don't
think it works now. One of the interesting that I've seen two interesting ways
in which this is done. So I'm going to talk about the Protestant way
that I keep seeing this being done, and then the Catholic way I keep
seeing this being done. One has to do with how we percee the Apostle
Paul. The other has to do with how we perceive the story of Sodom
and Gomorrah. So let me start with the Protestant way of trying to quote
contextualize Saint Paul. The problem that liberal Protestants have in trying to somehow reconcile
same sex sexual activity with the Bible. The chief problem they have is Saint
Paul. Because Saint Paul is very clear and very explicit that same sex sexual
activity is bad. The clearest example of this is in the first chapter of
Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans. But Paul has various other points where he's
making where he lists homosexuality among various lists of bad things. Paul likes doing
lists of bad things and lists of good things. He's very clear about it
that sex between persons of the same sex is wrong. So what is now,
I think is becoming more and more popular among liberal leaning Protestant denominations,
is this idea that, well, how divinely inspired is Saint Paul really,
how divinely inspired are the epistles of Saint Paul. Really, And I've seen
pastors, I've seen all kinds of Christian sort of influencer types trying to portray
Paul and Jesus, Saint Paul as being something very separate from Jesus, that
Paul's theology being different from the actual teachings of Jesus. I saw, actually,
like some Christian liberal Christian cartoonist who literally drew a cartoon of a boxing
ring. On one side was Jesus wearing like royal robes and floating on a
cloud, and the other was Jesus sort of dressed in rags with the crown
of thorns on his head. These very simplistic cartoons and like a boxing like
a what is that guy? The let's get ready to rumble that guy?
I can't remember his name anyway, the announcer in the middle of the boxing
ring saying, in this corner Jesus of the Gospels and in this corner Saint
Paul's Jesus. The idea being that Saint Paul's theology is something different from the
theology that's found in the Gospels, that Saint Paul's presentation of Christ is different
from the presentation of Christ found in the Gospels, which I think is laughably
false. Jesus was, I think. I think the presentation of Jesus in
both are pretty similar. Jesus is presented as human and divine in both Saint
Paul's theology and in the Gospels. Jesus is presented as, by our modern
standards, more than a bit of a prude when it comes to sexual ethics
in both the Gospels and in the theology of Saint Paul, which, by
the way, Jesus being apprude about sex ethics, it's because in the Roman
it's because I think this is a correct sexual ethic. But it's also because
in the Roman Empire in which Jesus was born and lived and died, sexual
violence was a very commonplace thing against people. Sexual violence, particularly against people
who were lower in the pecking order, and the violence that originated from sex.
The mistreatment of newborn children who were left to die because they were an
inconvenient child, possibly because a Roman citizen had relations with a slave or with
a prostitute, prostitution, the raping of slaves. This stuff was pretty commonplace
in the Roman Empire and pretty much institutionalized if you were if you were a
slave of a free Roman citizen master, that free Roman citizen master of yours
could basically do whatever he wanted with you, man or woman. This kind
of violence was pretty common in the ancient world in which Christ lived, and
so for Christ to insist upon lifelong marriage, lifelong exclusive marriage, for him
and Saint Paul to present this idea of women and slaves and children as being
persons who are valuable and beloved children of God who should be treated well and
respected and cherished, which was also by the way, promoting ideas and beliefs
that were found in the Jewish scriptures as well, was a critically important moral
breakthrough in the history of the world. Now because Saint Paul, I think,
so basically what's happening in liberal Protestantism is this idea that trying to draw
this big contrast between Saint Paul's theology and the theology of the Gospels. And
I think the reason why they're sort of pretending that it's for other reasons that
Paul is so harsh. Paul is so this view of Christ as this exalted
and foreign, stand offish Jesus, when really the Jesus of the Gospels is
something else, ignoring the fact that the Jesus of the Gospel does some pretty
harsh things to hypocrites and sinners, throwing over the tables of the money changers.
And also, by the way, it's not like Jesus. Jesus flat
out says he's the son of God. He flat out affirms his divinity multiple
multiple times. He affirms his divinity and yet submits himself to being crucified.
That's the unbelievable power of the Christian message. Nothing that Saint Paul says detracts
from that, or lessens that, or or differs from that account that's in
the Gospels, and all these spurious arguments about well, Saint Paul never actually
met Jesus. So we're gonna go with the Gospels over Saint Paul if they're
in conflict, I don't I have a strong sense that this whole thing that
we're seeing more and more in liberal Protestantism is purely because why Saint Paul is
much more explicit on this specific topic of same sexu relations than the Gospels are.
Now this is sort of starting to infect by the way, Catholicism,
and there there's this different line of argument that I'm hearing in Catholicism. There's
this Catholic biblical theologian, this big piece he's got published in some lefty Catholic
rag probably I think it's in America Magazine. I'll go double check on that.
And this guy's making the argument, no, no, no, no,
no, we've misinterpreted the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. What was happening
in Sodom and Gomorrah. Why God judged Sodom and Gomorrah so harshly is because
of a lack of hospitality, that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were being
threatening to Lot and his household, and that's why God destroyed them with fire.
So we because if you read the story of Sodom and Aemora in Genesis
really closely, it never says anything about it never actually says it specifically,
so that they try to carry this argument, but it ignores the fact that
in the Epistle of Saint Jude in the New Testament, Jude very clearly states
what was going on in Sodom and Amora, which was same sex relations.
So you're seeing, Look, if you want to uphold the notion that same
sex sexual relations are unproblematic morally, okay, but I don't think you can
contort all of historic Christianity to do that. All right, When we return,
I want to talk about I had to take a couple of days off.
I want to talk about my father, doctor Joseph Girardi. That's next
on the John Girardi Show. I want to spend the rest of the show
talking about my dad, doctor Joseph Girardi. My dad passed away on Tuesday
afternoon. He was sixty seven years old, and I'm going to miss him
terribly. He died from complications due to cancer, and he had been having
a very difficult The last year or two of his life had been very very
difficult, with lots of complications, lots of pain, lots of suffering from
not so much the cancer itself, but the attempts to treat it and the
ways in which that had harmed his digestive system. And he was in a
lot of pain, particularly in the last few months of his life. So
there's a part of me that is, you know, it's sad but happy.
He was a truly great man. My dad was a surgeon at Valley
Children's Hospital for over thirty years. We moved to Fresno in nineteen ninety one
after he had finished medical school and then his residency served the duration of his
residency as an officer in the United States Navy as a doctor in the Navy,
where he served at Naval Hospital San Diego and Naval Hospital on the Island
of Guam, and did a couple of tours in the South Pacific aboard the
Mighty USS Peoria, which was like a boat for transporting marines around. And
he did a one year fellowship at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, and
he came to Valley Children's in nineteen ninety one and he stayed there for his
whole career, and he was a pillar and an institution at Valley Children's.
He helped build the orthopedic surgery department at Valley Children's into genuinely one of the
finest orthopedic surgery pediatric orthopedic surgery departments in the United States of America, as
has been recognized by a number of entities, including US News and World Report.
He served in all kinds of different leadership positions at Children's and was genuinely
beloved. I'm afraid there's going to be a billion people at his funeral.
He was just incredibly funny, infectiously optimistic, cheerful, good humored, kind
loving. I joke that about over the last thirty years, there's if you
broke a bone, there's a one as a kid, there's one five chance
that my dad took care of you. And I think that's about right.
I mean, he touched tens of thousands of children and families. We actually
I was talking with the head of the Orthow department at Children's and he was
saying that the number might be actually in the sixth figure mark. He was
a truly remarkable man, and he got so much done in his sixty seven
years. He had four wonderful children. He has eight grandchildren. My mom,
doctor Sharon Girardi, whom he met in medical school and who served as
an officer in the Navy with him. They got married in medical school,
has been an absolute superhero over her entire life, I would say, but
particularly over the duration of my dad's illness and his struggle with cancer. Just
the greatest caretaker you could possibly have ever imagined. They were married for over
forty years, and they sort of modeled for me and my siblings what a
marriage is supposed to be what it means to be a husband, what it
means to be a dad. And you know the great consolation that I had,
you know, as a Roman Catholic. One of the our sacs,
one of our sacraments, is called the anointing of the sick, and it's
sort of when someone is very seriously ill or perhaps in danger of death,
priests will come and anoint the person to sort of prepare their soul for the
life to come. And literally the day that my dad died, and he
had been very very ill, his actual death came sort of suddenly, but
earlier in the day before he died, while he was still lucid, my
dear friend and my pastor, father Michael Androtti, from our later perpetual Help,
came to the house, prayed with us, heard my dad's confession,
absolved him, gave him the anointing of the sick, and gave him Holy
communion, and my dad got to receive Our Lord the day that he died.
This is the great virtue of hope that God is faithful to his promises
to those who love him. And I'll just read from John eleven onward.
Jesus said to her. I am the Resurrection in the life. He who
believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever
lives and believes in Me shall never die. So rest in peace, Doctor
Joe Girardi, my dad. I love him so much. See you next
time on The John Girardi Show.