The Daily Signal - Deadly Hurricane Milton, Inflation at 2.4%, Israel Continues Operations in Lebanon | Oct. 10

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

TOP NEWS | On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Hurricane Milton takes four lives in Florida.  Inflation hits 2.4%.  A U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon says it was hit by Israeli tank fire.  A University of Kansas professor is caught on camera telling his students that male voters who are not willing to vote for a female candidate should be shot.  “Rings of Power” season 2 film review.  Relevant Links:  https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/10/whats-behind-professors-claim-men-who-refuse-vote-kamala-harris-should-lined-up-shot/  Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca. slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. Hurricane Milton was destructive and deadly in Florida, but fortunately not as bad as was expected. I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal Top News for Thursday, October 10th. Hurricane Milton barreled across Florida yesterday and into today. The storm did head back out into the Atlantic today, but left at least four people dead in Florida. The hurricane knocked out power for about 3 million people in the state. The storm generated about 150 tornadoes in Florida, and the four lives that we know of that were lost were lost due to those tornadoes. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke at a press conference this afternoon and told Floridians

and the press that people are working 24-7 in order to respond to the needs of the storm and in preparation that led up to the storm hitting Florida. There was a lot of concern over the deadly storm surge that was expected to hit Tampa. But fortunately, the situation was not as bad as was expected as the governor explained. The storm did weaken before it hit land. And then it did bear further to the east and south of Tampa Bay. So I think a lot of what they had was the, the wind sucked water out of Tampa Bay. You did have storm surge in Sarasota, Venice, Charlotte Harbor, and all the way down the west coast of Florida, and some significant storm surge,

but not the worst case scenario of what we were looking at. In North Carolina, many people are still without power, and the road to recovery remains very long. The Daily Signal intern, Christina Lewis, spoke with the president of Samaritan's purse, Franklin Graham, yesterday, about their recovery efforts. Samaritan's purse is headquartered in Boone,

North Carolina. That's one of the areas that was hit hardest by Hurricane Helene. And because of the proximity that they have to Asheville, North Carolina and those regions in the mountains, they were able to mobilize very, very quickly. Graham said Samaritan's purse is working with the government to deliver aid and meet needs across the region. And he told one story of how much impact, even a small amount of resources can have on the locals there right now. Our staff gave a lady a gallon of water. And Christine, she cried. Wow.

A gallon of water. And she cried. And that is how desperate some people are. And a gallon of water would mean that much. So there are people that are suffering. If you want to learn more about how you can help in that recovery effort in North Carolina after the hurricane, you can check out the Samaritans Purse website at samaritanspurse.org. The latest inflation numbers are out today, and the prices of goods

are more than what they were forecast to be for the month of September. Inflation hit 2.4% in September, but the prediction was 2.3%. While this is higher than anticipated, it is the lowest inflation level in three years. Director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for the Federal budget, Richard Stern wrote on X today that under the Biden-Harris administration, overall prices are up 19.9 percent, grocery prices are up 21.6 percent. Energy prices are up 29.4 percent. Rents are up 22.9 percent. And construction material prices are up 26.7 percent. The unemployment rate right now stands at 4.1 percent. A UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon says it was hit by Israeli tank fire.

The United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in southern Lebanon wrote on social media that its Nicarra headquarters and nearby positions have been repeatedly hit. This morning two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF, Israeli defense forces. Mercava tank fired its weapons toward an observation tower at the headquarters in Nekora directly hitting it and causing them to fall. The injuries are fortunately this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital. Well, in response to that incident, Italy has now summoned the Israeli ambassador. Italy has a key interest in this situation because Italy is the largest contributor of soldiers to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon. The United Nations said today that Israel has fired at three UN positions in the south of Lebanon over the past 24 hours.

That's according to reporting from the Washington Post. As of Thursday afternoon, Israel had not responded to press requests for comment. Israeli troops did enter southern Lebanon last week. The IDF spokesperson Daniel Higari spoke on a video that was posted on the IDFX page today. In the video, he's standing in a bombed out village in southern Lebanon. that he describes as a Hezbollah stronghold. Hagari walks through several homes in this village, and he shows the gear and the weapons that were being stored in those houses.

According to Hagari, the weapons were being stored for use in another terrorist attack that was planned to take place on Israel that he says would have been even larger than October 7th. Let's take a listen. Already, all of these weapons here were stored. and piled in the house, ready for the big raid. The raid plan called Conquer the Galilee. They planned to do a massacre in a larger scale than the 7th of October or northern Israel. And with this gear over here, I wanted to see what kind of a gear. Hagari walked through the bombed out house, picking up and pointing out boxes of hand grenades,

sniper rifles, and explosive RPGs. Hagari called. the house and village in South Lebanon a tear base. This is a Lebanese village, a Shia village, built by Chisbalah, every house as gear, ready for the raid against Israel, conquer the Galilei plane. We are now going a house through house, raiding each and every house, taking all this gear, dismantling Chisbalah's capability to do the conquer Galilei plane. plan. This is what we do. This is a limited, targeted raid on the northern part of Israel, okay, that we are conducting across the border to take care with the threat that Hezbollah

has built for years. In other Israel news, Israel's security cabinet was set to vote today on its response to Iran following Iran's firing of 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, less than two weeks ago. Well, if you spend too much time on social media like I do, you've probably seen this video. A University of Kansas professor was caught on camera telling his students that male voters who are not willing to vote for a female candidate

should be shot. Guys are smarter than girls. You've got some serious problems. That's what frustrates me. There are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don't think females are smart enough to be president. We could line all those guys up and shoot them.

They clearly don't understand the way the world works. Did I say that? Scratch that from the recording. I don't want the dean's hearing that I said that. The Daily Signals, Tyler O'Neill, reported that the University of Kansas announced yesterday that they have placed this instructor on administrative. administrative leave. The school said the university is aware of a classroom video in which an instructor

made an inappropriate reference to violence. The instructor is being placed on administrative leave pending further investigation. The instructor offers his sincerest apologies and deeply regrets the situation. His intent was to emphasize his advocacy for women's rights and equality, and he recognizes he did a very poor job of doing so. You can check out Tyler O'Neill's full report on this story in today's show notes. Well, today is our last top news until Tuesday. And because we don't have a top news show tomorrow due to our team being out of the office, we are recording our movie review today because you can't end the week without a film review here at the Daily Signal podcast. And speaking of Tyler O'Neill and his great reporting, he is our resident expert on the Lord of

the Rings here at the Daily Signal. And he is back today to talk about the Amazon Prime series, The Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power, Season 2. Season 2 has eight episodes. The last episode dropped last week. Tyler, we talked about episode or excuse me, we talked about season one together. You've been on before to talk about Rings of Power season two, but this is my first time talking with you about it here on the show. We both agree that season one was a disappointment. Yes. So I will say I have not watched season two yet, so no spoilers. Oh, uh-oh. But let me get your overall impression first. Let me ask this.

If J.R. Tolkien watched Season 2 of Rings of Power, would he be proud of it? No. Oh, no. No, I think J.R. Tolkien would be ashamed. The biggest thing, and I'm trying not to spoil too much. But the biggest thing is, you know, we all know Sauron. He's this great villain, you know, really. it's funny, there's so little time spent in the actual Lord of the Rings, both the books and

the films, that, you know, where you actually see Sauron on stage, but he is this menacing force over the whole thing. Rings of Power is focused on Sauron, which is fine. But there are certain things you don't want to do when the villain is later going to be this big, ethereal, imposing presence. Essentially the representation of evil itself. Yes. So I don't know how much of a spoiler this is, but in the very first episode of Season 2, Rings of Power. And this is like right at the beginning, so I think I'm fine spoiling it for you. But like, they have this scene that makes Sauron look out to be

utterly weak and inconsequential. Like, he's about to be crowned by these orcs. And the leader of the York, so it was Adar, which we remember from the first season, Adar is holding the crown that he's about to crown Sauron with. And then out of the blue, with no explanation, Adar takes the crown, flips it on its head, uses the spikes of the crown to kill Sauron. So Sauron dies in the very first episode. When Sauron dies, his blood drips becomes this goo thing. And this goo down in the bowels of Middle Earth starts swallowing

centipedes and rats and all sorts of things, slowly crawls its way out through the mountains and finds a poor woman and like grabs her, eats her and then he can become human again. And so this is like

if you want a villain that your audience is going to be scared of, the worst thing you could possibly do is make this villain appear like he doesn't have any charisma when speaking to orcs who are supposed to be the ones who follow him blindly. Yeah. And portray him as this hapless sack of black goo. I saw people online mocking this by calling it Supron. And I'm like, that's pretty, pretty good. So like,

I have four big problems with season two that I wrote about at a piece. And the number one problem is how they portrayed Sauron. So I want to fact check this. I'm slightly showing my ignorance in the world of Middle Earth and the world that J.R.R. Tolkien created. I made it through most of the Simmeralian. I had to have to admit I got very, very lost very soon into reading the Simerilian. It's a tough one. But is that at all factual? Did J.R. Tolkien write that history of Saran? I don't believe so. I have to do some research on it myself. But so what what the show does actually pretty well in later episodes, it's weird. Sauron is supposed to be this great deceiver master manipulator, right? In season one, you barely get like much of an idea of that. In season two, most of season two, you don't get much of it. People just randomly trust him and there's no explanation. But then there's a moment in season two. And I'm not going to spell it out because it would be a Spoiler. Thank you. But like he uses a power of deception that was really good. Like it's it's the right way to show Sauron being able to deceive somebody. And he he essentially makes one character

see the world entirely differently than the way it actually is. And I'm like, where was this power at the beginning of season one? Where was Sauron depicted? Because like, finally by episode five or six or something of season two, you get this Sauron that's actually a threat and maybe scary. And like, I can start to see where, you know, the Sauron of the Lord of the Rings is coming from. Yeah. But you don't see that through most of this show. And most of the show gives you a sauron that you almost want a pity. Interesting. Okay. So even given that obviously major complaint, is it still, for Lord of the Rings lovers like myself, is it still worth the watch? So I would be a massive hypocrite if I entirely said no because I continue to watch these things.

I'm a junkie. So whenever there's like high profile fantasy, I'm still going to watch it. I think I would warn good Tolkien fans that they might be angry about it. but there are a bunch of my friends on social media who've posted that they really enjoyed it. And part of me feels sorry for them. But I'm also just like, okay, if you like it, like if you like something, I don't really want to take away from your. Yeah, exactly. Good on you for enjoying it.

But there's just so much in it. Like there's a big battle in it. And some of the battle things make zero sense in terms of physics. Yeah. And it's just like when you. when you think that throwing a trebuche at a mountain is going to dam up a river so that people can walk across it, you know, and not stumble immediately in like two seconds. Yeah, but I mean, this is like, this is not just Hollywood. This isn't even like Mulan, which had like a tiny bit of plausibility because that was snow.

This is rocks. And a tributche is just knocking down a mountain. that blocks a river. I'm like, no, this is not... They've gone too far. They've gone too far. Okay, well, I'm expecting that there will be a season three. Will you watch season three? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, there's this guy I really like with Forbes who watches and critiques rings of power. And he has a pretty big audience because he's really good at critiquing it. And he, his name is Eric Kane. And he...

He has this joke where he's like, I love to hate watch this show. Sure. And I'm like, I think I'm there with him. You're right. For any of our listeners that want to watch it, it's on Amazon Prime, if you have thoughts after you watch it, you can always send us a DM on any of the Daily Thetable, social media accounts, send us a comment.

We'd love to know your thoughts if you think it's a good representation of what Tolkien intended as he created Middle Earth in that whole world. But Tyler, thank you for being our resident expert on Lord of the Rings and for bringing us this movie, review this Friday. Thanks for having me. And we're going to leave it right there for today's episode of the Daily Signal's top news. A quick reminder again that the Daily Signal team is out of the office tomorrow and Monday, so we will not have top news episodes, but we will be bringing you our morning interview

additions, but we'll be back with you for Top News on Tuesday. Don't forget to hit subscribe so you never. miss out on brand new shows from the Daily Signal podcast. That's also a huge help when you hit that subscribe button because it helps to spread the word to more listeners. And if you would, leave us a comment, give us some feedback on your favorite podcast app or leave us a comment on YouTube. We love hearing your feedback and would love to know what you think about the show. Have a great rest of your day. We will see you back here tomorrow morning for Rob Louis' interview with Andrew Lewis. And we'll see you back here for top news specifically on Tuesday afternoon.

The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph Von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visitdailySignal.com.