TODD: Let me give you the battle of two headlines here. This is in regards to the pipeline being shut down, the hack of this. This is New York Times: “Colonial Pipeline, a vital U.S. fuel artery that was shut down by a cyberattack, said it hoped to restore most operations by the end of the week. Since the shutdown, there have been no long lines for gas” and such.

Then you can go to the Twitter (laughing) and find video of people stuck in long lines for gas and showing gas stations saying, “We’re out of gas.” Then you can go to The Daily Caller on Twitter who has informed us that the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, has signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in North Carolina on Monday. Why?

Because of the gas shortage! Hmm. I think Monday was yesterday, as I recall. If there is an emergency for gas, this would mean of course that it is absolutely time to get a mask. Do you have the woke mask? Do you have them nearby? I mean, wouldn’t it be the case now that you should put those over your gas tank, in the opening therein so you don’t put gas in there — or maybe don’t do this, ’cause someone will do it.

Put it on the exhaust pipes. There has to be some emergency order thing or maybe the car stays home. I guess that’s factual. Something to reflect upon here. The hack is a high-tech endeavor, clearly, to hack it. That should give us all pause that so many things have been hacked.

Adobe, eBay, Equifax, LinkedIn, the Office of Personnel Management at the White House, as Michael D. Brown’s former undersecretary of Homeland Security points out. But U.S. elections? No way! No way. That could never happen. What? Here’s another thing to think about. Is there value in the old ways? Legitimately.

You know, New York during an electrical outage is a different thing than Idaho during an electrical outage. Clearly not many people in downtown Manhattan are gonna have firewood (laughing), and if you do, there’s no place to burn it that’s safe. Those events in other parts of the country have different outcomes. It’s inconvenient to us and we can go out and put wood on the fire.

It’s inconvenient for us and there are such things as natural gas generators for even things like A/C if you need that. It’s inconvenient for us and there’s food sources in our gardens. There’s food sources in the woods and in the lakes. I get it. Not everybody can live that way. Is there value in the old ways?

You know, I had a friend of mine who was an auto mechanic and owned a series of automotive garages or automotive facilities, and he used to give away these bumper strips after people got their cars worked on. He had a roadside service. So if your car broke down on the side of the road and he came and fixed it, you’d get this funny bumper strip that says, “Everybody Hates a Redneck ‘Til Their Car Breaks Down.”

Well, there’s value in the old ways to do these things. I read years ago… I’m sure that they have corrected this now. But it occurred to naval commanders that a good portion of the people in the world’s best navy, the United States Navy, couldn’t steer the ships accurately without GPS. So they undertook to teach the young naval officers how to use a compass and paper and the stars and the old ways.

The old ways were made for us as guides for us. So while the hacking of this thing is high-tech — and, look, I just as well as anybody can marvel at high-tech (I used to work in it) — low tech has value. It really does. I got so frustrated with sometimes in Seattle we’d be out to fancy dinners and conversations would turn to, “I sure wish we could get rid of the fishing boats and processing facilities in northern Ballard.

“Those could be beautiful parks and riding trails,” and then the waiter would come along with their Pacific salmon. “Sir, your Pacific salmon.” “Thanks very much. Just looks great. Thank you.” And I’d say, “Where’d that come from?” “Well, the restaurant.” “No. No, it came from the jobs you just mentally stole, those fishing jobs and people who risk their life to bring me that fish. That’s where that came from.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to take them out of work.” “No, you did, ’cause that’s what you were saying.” I feel like the left hates jobs like that or they want to convince people who have careers like that that they’re not good careers. They’re great careers! I had a cousin who’s a fisherman and now owns several boats himself. They’re great careers.

See, when you listened to Rush, did you ever get the feeling ever that he’d lost touch with Missouri, with the people who fed the folks in Missouri, who clothed them? Did you ever get the feeling he lost touch with them? Neither did I. Rush admired honest work in all its forms.

RUSH: Last night was the annual dinner for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, the annual fundraising dinner. MC-LEF is 23 years old. I was there in the home of one of the founders as the whole idea was being put together in 1993. It was a home in Rockville Centre in New York, and it was a number of great ex-Marines — some now in law enforcement, some were in finance — and they wanted to put together a foundation which would provide college scholarships for the children of Marines killed in action. They later added law enforcement to it, and many of them worked in the FBI, many of them worked in law enforcement, police departments or elsewhere.

And so what was originally a charity to provide college scholarships for the children of Marines killed in action was expanded to include children of people in law enforcement. And on extreme emergencies like 9/11, MC-LEF expanded to all federal agencies where heads of families died and their children needed college scholarships. I became an early donor. I’ve never been an active, practical participant in the actual structure of the charity, but Kathryn and I have been active donors and active fundraisers.

And last night was the annual fundraiser. It was a beautiful setting. It was jam-packed. It’s a black-tie event and formal military attire, and it is a night totally devoted to celebrating the Marine Corps, celebrating the United States military, celebrating the values and traditions of the military which I think form the bedrock of the values and tractions of our society at large.

So it’s Kathryn and me and our six guests — well, three guests and their wives — at one table. We pulled in right as the reception and cocktail period was ending at 7 and everybody was being seated, and it was one inspirational speaker after another. There was a woman who lost her husband in combat. The foundation had provided scholarships for her two kids. She gave a stemwinder of a speech about what it all meant, about what it meant being married to somebody who the families know what’s gonna happen, what can happen in combat.

Without the people that were in that room, the country wouldn’t be what it is. As the closing speaker said — and he was responding to some of the comments I made, ’cause I talked about this divide in the country, and I pulled no punches. I told ’em I’m worried. I told ’em that we’ve got a serious challenge today. We’ve got a great nation at risk in a dangerous world, and I talked about this divide and I talked about — as you’ve heard me say — the theory that I don’t think we have anything that binds us together anymore like we had in World War II.

This guy stood up after I’d finished. There were some other comments, and he referenced it. Not me and by name, but he said, “Look, let me just tell you something. We wearing the uniform here in this room tonight? Don’t worry. We got it. We got it.” But it was the people in the room last night at the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. Not just the uniformed Marines, but the people that were there as donors and who show up every year. It was a microcosm of what I believe is people who make the country work, make the country run.

They had the time of their lives. They had… I mean, they’re ex-military. They have served their country. They had never been to an event like this, and they just… It was so great to have them there, people who genuinely appreciate it. One of these guys wants to go play golf. These people remember everything I said from the time they have been listening, and they’re throwing it at me at dinner.

I’m just stunned and blown away. They remember more than I do, and I have one of the best memories in the world. They remember more than I do about certain things I’ve said and when and how. So it was an invigorating evening, and it was very uplifting, and I wish everybody could participate in events like this for that very reason.

TODD: Clearly people, law enforcement and the military, they’re the people who make the country work. And what with people who work on these pipelines? All this focus, and rightly so, on this major hack of a backbone portion of our energy system, and I would just ask this question of what if there were no truckers? What if there were no pipeline employees?

And what if the pipeline employees and their truckers got so upset that they’re being forced to pay for college for people who snuck into the country illegally, or they’re looking at the numbers, people getting paid 40,000, $45,000 to not work postcovid flu, post-Great Reset (which began, in my judgment, last year), that they said, “Hey, not anymore,” and maybe one of the side effects of all this is that we might get to return to respect for people who can do things with their hands that most of us just have to watch DIY TV to even pretend we could do.

I think that would actually serve us well.