I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon, just a couple of hours away from The American Spectator’s annual Robert L. Bartley Gala — and if I didn’t see you there, it means you have missed out and simply must remedy the void in your personal experience next year.

But walking the streets of northwest D.C., at lunchtime I noticed something that was no surprise: Washington is very much a whitened sepulcher of a place.

The buildings are quite beautiful; the streets are well organized. It’s a marvelous capital city that a great nation can be proud of.

That’s on the surface. Underneath, it’s something else.

Run into a Five Guys for a burger, fries, and a shake and it’ll run you $28. And no sooner do you put your credit card in the slot than some overly aggressive panhandler puts the arm on you for “spare change.” Say no and he’ll demand that you buy him lunch.

This isn’t on the street. This is in the restaurant.

The store employees give you a look as if to say sorry, as they’re embarrassed to have such goings-on at their place of business. But the bums don’t get the bum’s rush at the Five Guys in northwest D.C., because homeless crackheads, and not people with jobs, are the real privileged class in that town.

And they prove it at practically every street corner, where they accost passersby relentlessly. In front of the police. Nobody cares. And yes, there is definitely a racial element to the begging and an implicit, if not explicit, bit of shaming attached to the proceedings.

It’s a sad commentary on America, though not every place is like this. Big blue cities like Washington, D.C., need to be fumigated and foul attitudes corrected. But that won’t be happening any time soon.

Which brings us to…

1. Scalise Ought to Get a Chance to Prove He’s the Right Guy

There was a great deal of diaper-filling by some erstwhile quite good Republican House members after Steve Scalise won a close victory over Jim Jordan within the GOP caucus on Wednesday. I could go through some of it, but I won’t. Most of it was embarrassing, and when word hit that there were 20 hard-no votes and a rumor Thursday Scalise would drop out of the running, things got worse.

Let’s understand that Steve Scalise is not Kevin McCarthy. In fact, the two were not the best of friends. Scalise never stuck a knife in McCarthy because he’s a loyal guy and a team player. But he’s also never dealt foul with the House conservatives, even while serving as the Republican whip over the past nine years.

There were two very good candidates up for the House speakership this week in the aftermath of McCarthy getting tossed out. Scalise won out over Jim Jordan. That should have been it. What’s left is for the deals to be made, and then the job would rightly be his. That’s how governance works.

And if Scalise were to make the same mistakes McCarthy did, then maybe it’d be Jordan’s turn.

But this idea that you’d block Scalise from the speakership to make some “statement?” It’s ridiculous. It validates the Democrats’ gripe that the GOP can’t govern (one might argue that the number one reason the GOP can’t govern is because Democrats do everything they can, legal and otherwise, to insure they can’t). We really can’t have big doses of Hatfield-McCoy brawling inside the GOP caucus right now — though small, occasional doses are fine.

Besides, that dose was delivered with McCarthy’s ouster.

Let Scalise have his shot. If in six months it’s clearly not working, or if he turns out to be wrong about his cancer treatment not getting in the way of doing the job, then fine — move on and we’ll give the next guy a shot.

But at some point Republicans have to come together, because there are real enemies out there.

2. No Power, No Water, No Anything for Gaza

I can’t remember where I saw it, but I read somewhere that the median IQ in Gaza is something like 84.8. The literacy rate is something not to be believed.

We know there’s an enormous amount of inbreeding there.

This isn’t meant to insult anybody. It’s an attempt to explain something most Americans don’t have a grasp on, which is the fact that it’s the Israelis, who just had some 1,200 people, almost all of them civilians, murdered by irregular Hamas combatants who indiscriminately slaughtered people simply for being Jewish at the outset of the very hot war that began last weekend, are the suppliers of water and utilities to Gaza.

So while the Israelis ready an invasion with more than 100,000 troops to hopefully clean Hamas out once and for all, they’ve also turned off the juice, the phones, and the spigot. And Gaza sits dark and dry.

Yes, it sucks to be a Gazan right now. But here’s the thing — if you’re so indolent and primitive that you can’t run your own water system or power plant, then don’t start a war with the neighbor you depend on.

That this was done proves something fairly obvious, which is that Gaza as a statelet attempting some semblance of self-government is an abject failure. The Left in America and elsewhere decries its status as an “open-air prison,” but even the Arab neighbors want nothing to do with the Gazans. The Egyptians don’t want them, the Jordanians won’t have them, the Saudis and Syrians and Lebanese won’t welcome them.

Because who wants 2.3 million people who get billions of dollars in aid every year and can’t even run power and water systems?

There is no good solution in Gaza. The good solution is for the Gazans to live in peace with the Israelis. But it’s clear they won’t have that, and so there can’t be much sympathy afforded them.

Or for the leftists who sing their praises after what Hamas — who they overwhelmingly voted into power — has done.

3. The Plot Thickens in Philadelphia

You’ve heard about Josh Kruger, the “gay and homeless activist” who mocked the idea that Philadelphia was a dangerous shooting gallery of a city before getting himself shot dead.

But you probably haven’t heard about this:

The family of Robert Davis, 19, who is accused of killing local journalist Josh Kruger, said that Davis was just 15 when he and Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs — and that Davis told them Kruger was threatening to post sexually explicit videos of him online before, police say, Davis shot Kruger.

Davis’ family says Kruger was a pedophile who sexually abused Davis.

So there’s a strange irony here — which is that Kruger’s argument might be bolstered in some small way in that it wasn’t senseless street violence that killed him. It was his own sins coming back to haunt him.

One wants to wash one’s hands of the whole thing. There is a lot of that these days.

4. Where Do They Get These People?

I don’t even have words to describe this, nor do I have the desire to try:

Wisconsin State Rep. Dave Considine during debate on a bill to ban boys playing girl’s sports:

“Some parents are concerned their daughter might miss out on a scholarship… That sounds like selfishness.”
pic.twitter.com/ET3tMZ9dIr

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 12, 2023

There is no bottom to the stupidity of that party and its politicians.

5. Behold, a Book Review of Racism, Revenge, and Ruin!

S.A. McCarthy of the Washington Stand, who is also a contributor here at The American Spectator, just popped out a review of my book Racism, Revenge, and Ruin, which is available for pre-order through Calamo Press’ website at present:

“Racism, Revenge and Ruin” proves to be a crucial examination not only of what Obama did while in the White House, but of the anti-American ideologies that shaped him and how each can be found in his actions as president — and beyond. More than this, McKay’s book looks at the results of Obama’s presidency on the broader American culture and populace: the toxic partisanship and division, the rise of racial disharmony and subsequent nationwide race riots, the stranglehold that the LGBT lobby has taken on corporations and institutions, and the weaponization of government agencies and organizations — from local school boards all the way to the FBI.

Obviously, go to the Stand and read the whole thing. And then go grab your copy of RRR; it’s essentially a reference guide to Team Obama/Biden’s wrecking of America, and you’ll want to have it handy!