Podcasts about blue dogs

Tyler Mills grew up and lives in what he calls “rural America”. His home is about an hour outside Iowa City and is indeed by any standard not an urban environment. Tyler also happens to be a person with a disability: he has Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair. He has a degree in Human Resources Management from Bellevue University.   Tyler, through his company Mills Marketing Services has spent his adult life working to advocate on behalf of persons with disabilities especially in the rural portions of America. Tyler and I talk quite a bit about Rural America which he points out is dying right in front of us. He feels that a significant part of the challenges faced throughout America, especially in the less populated areas, comes from our move away from politically moderate leaders. He points out that this is not a partisan situation. He writes about his beliefs in his book “Death of the Blue Dogs”. The book discusses the political changes we are facing in this country and how those changes are severely impacting the economic fortunes of people in rural America. Of course, he also ties in the ways political changes are negatively effecting persons with disabilities again especially in rural environments. “Blue Dogs” were and still are politicians with relatively moderate views who put community over personal gain. You will hear all about them during our conversation.   My discussion with Tyler is fascinating and far ranging as you can imagine. I think this episode will be quite thought provoking and I hope you enjoy listening to it.       About the Guest:   I am a freelancer writer, the owner of Mills Marketing Services and a 2022 graduate of Bellevue University with a degree in Human Resources Management,  I have also worked in numerous national and local political campaigns.  Political consulting is something that I am passionate about.  I want to try to bring more people together o fix problems, instead of emphasizing our differences.    I am the author of the essay “Death of the Blue Dogs.” The book talks about the impact of the political changes in rural America, and how those recent changes have impacted the economic fortunes of the people that live there. Rural America has to get a realistic chance to win some of the venture capital resources that are out there to compete for economic development projects on a global scale.   I seek to be a voice for people with disabilities, particularly in the area of employment. There are still far too many barriers for the disabled when they seek employment, some of those barriers may have been unintentional when they were first proposed.   Ways to connect with Tyler:   https://www.lulu.com/shop/tyler-mills/death-of-the-blue-dogs-how-the-demise-of-the-blue-dogs-harmed-the-country-created-qanon-voters/paperback/product-42n9wy.html?q=Blue+Dogs&page=1&pageSize=4     Also available on Amazon:   https://www.amazon.com/Death-Blue-Dogs-Explaining-Politics/dp/1312517646/ref=sr_1_14?crid=178TODTDMZ3TR&keywords=Blue+Dogs&qid=1690048552&s=books&sprefix=blue+dogs%2Cstripbooks%2C324&sr=1-14   Abe Books:   https://www.abebooks.com/9781312517646/Death-Blue-Dogs-Demise-Harmed-1312517646/plp   Locally at Burlington by the Book:   https://www.midwestbooksellers.org/independent-bookstore-directory/burlington-by-the-book   Mills Marketing Services Contact Page:   https://www.facebook.com/p/Mills-Marketing-Services-100063553481698/?_rdr   Twitter Account:   https://twitter.com/tmills43   LinkedIn Profile:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-mills-93b14a24/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Well, hi everyone. I am your host, Mike hingson, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here with us.  We really appreciate you coming and spending a little bit of time with us. And today we get to chat with Tyler Mills, who I find to be an interesting soul. Why do I say that? Well, he is a writer, among other things, and I'm really interested to hear about his his book that he's written. He's a freelancer writer. He is also the owner of Bill's marketing services, and he's worked on a whole bunch of political campaigns and in the political world, and I'm really interested in talking about that. I've done some things around Washington in the past, and had a lot of fun doing it, and met some interesting legislators and Congress people and so on. But sounds like he's done a whole lot more than I have, and I'm really interested to to get into that and and I know he's very interested in talking about rural America, and we're going to do that as well. So with all that in the background, Tyler, welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you? Thank you, Michael. I'm doing great. Well. We really appreciate you being here with us. Why don't we start as I love to do? Why don't you tell us about kind of the early Tyler, growing up and some of that stuff? Yeah,   Tyler Mills ** 02:39 basically, I've grown up here in southeastern Iowa. It's, I'm about an hour away from Iowa City, the University of Iowa, and it's a really great community to grow up in. I actually live in Keokuk, Iowa. We're right on the Mississippi River. Our main, our main industry, is a, you know, high fructose corn syrup. So it's a, it's not necessarily everyone's favorite topic or favorite industry out there, but that's what we mainly do in Keokuk, Iowa. And I've actually done a little bit of, you know, work with people that have developed websites for them and in the past. And that's part of what I've done with Mills marketing. And then I've also, you know, lobbied for different causes regarding disability rights and disability employment issues around Southeast Iowa. So what got   Michael Hingson ** 03:37 you interested in dealing with disability rights and advocating as you do.   Tyler Mills ** 03:41 I I realized as I got into the workforce, so many people that are in similar situations as I am, they're they're either not getting the opportunities that or they're afraid to break out and take those opportunities. I think it's a situation where the system is not always as conducive to employment as it should be. I think that, I think that there are a lot of employers who would be willing to employ more people with disabilities, but they don't know how to navigate the different barriers and parameters themselves. And I think they're, I think they're scared. I think they're afraid that, you know, there's going to be a liability on their on their in their facility, I you know there's, there's a lot of different   Michael Hingson ** 04:32 elements there, yeah. Do you have a disability yourself, a cerebral palsy? Okay, so that's, are you and are you in a wheelchair? Or do you have that much CP? Or, yeah, I could   Tyler Mills ** 04:47 find a wheelchair. You are okay.   Michael Hingson ** 04:51 Well, my wife, for her whole life, was in a wheelchair. She didn't have cerebral palsy. She had scar tissue on her spinal cord at the t3 level. So she was a t3 para, and we lost her in 2022 we were married 40 years. So as I tell people, and I will always say, no matter what anyone says, She's monitoring somewhere. And if I'm not a good kid, I'm going to hear about it. So I gotta try to make sure I'm a good kid. Yeah, don't want to get in trouble with her, you know. But anyway, and,   Tyler Mills ** 05:26 yeah, go ahead, I was just gonna say, I, I really, I in the in the last few years, I really started to look at the statistics dealing with employment amongst the disability community, and we've really made a lot of progress. And I don't want to imply that we we haven't made a lot of progress, because we have, but we're still at around 23% of people with what's classified as a disability under the ADA employment, which is not bad, 23% a lot better than I, better than I had previously been. But we really didn't even start charting those statistics until 2008   Michael Hingson ** 06:02 right? So yeah, and I know the unemployment rate among employable blind people is still much higher than that, but still it is progress, and it's not at the 70% where it was when I was growing up and in college and just going from college to the workforce. So we're better, but we're we've got a long way to go. And you know, why do you think that is? Why do you think that we still aren't really in anywhere near the norm, like for people who don't have traditional disabilities, people,   Tyler Mills ** 06:35 people are scared that they're going to lose their health insurance by going out into the workforce. That's that, I think, is the main barrier. And I think employers are scared to offer a full, certainly, a full health insurance package to someone that is disabled, and then if you make a certain amount of money, you no longer become eligible for the program. Or SSI, right? That you need to survive,   Michael Hingson ** 07:01 yeah, well, but the other side of that is that, typically, in a group health environment, disabilities aren't supposed to be a factor.   Tyler Mills ** 07:12 You would like to think so. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 07:15 yeah, as I say, supposed to be what I guess. What I'm getting at is, if you look at the paperwork and you look at the rules of typical group insurance, disabilities aren't included, that doesn't they're not an issue, but that doesn't mean that they're not but group insurance doesn't measure directly whether you happen to have a disability or Not. Yeah,   Tyler Mills ** 07:40 it's really, it's really bad, because I find it, at least, I found in most states, we're down to basically one giant insurer for almost every single state, at least it seems to be in, at least in my research. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but, you know, I do wish there were more options just anyone it was seeking private insurance so they could be, you know, as as self sufficient as they would like to be, yeah, basically we, you know, as as great as the Affordable Care Act is, in many ways, it's still, it really hasn't challenged the monopoly that we still have in the private insurance market. So,   Michael Hingson ** 08:19 yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's why I was real specific in saying the insurance I'm talking about is company group insurance, which is a little bit different in a lot of ways than typical private insurance and life insurance, although none of us could get life insurance policies until the early to mid 1980s because insurance companies plane said we were a higher risk. And it took a major effort and enough consumers rising up to get state legislatures to pass a law that said that you can't discriminate against persons based on a disability unless you can show actuarial statistics or evidentiary data. And nobody's been able to do that yet,   Tyler Mills ** 09:07 which is wonderful, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:09 yeah. Well, there's a whole story I was very much involved in that. I actually led that fight. I was living at the time in Massachusetts, so I led that fight. But there, you know, there are other aspects of insurance that are still issues in a lot of the kinds of other insurance, other than life insurance that we would like, like health insurance and so on. You're right. It's, it's, it's still a major challenge, and it's all really based on prejudice, though.   Tyler Mills ** 09:40 Well, I and I think that some employers also automatically assume that they could only get a half day out of us when we go to work. And depending upon how, you know, physically or mentally straining the work is, they automatically say, Well, I can only get a half day out of them, or maybe three hours. A day out of them, and what I think that we have a well, I mean, obligation is not the right word, but we, I am, during my time in the workforce, I've tried to prove some of these people wrong, that we that we can do a full day's work, at least I and I've been blessed to be able to have that opportunity. So many people that would like to have that opportunity, I'm not, do not have the chance because, yeah, they face a lot deeper challenges than I do, right? Well,   Michael Hingson ** 10:30 and when I asked the question before about why is the unemployment rate so high, another part of the answer that I would give is, and it gets back to part of what you're saying in a different way, but we're not included in the conversation. We are left out. And you're right. Employers and so many people make assumptions, and we've had things like sheltered workshops that have contributed to that, and a number of agencies around the country, so called rehabilitation agencies have contributed to that by not really being strong advocates. And the bottom line is though, that we really can work a full day, and for those people who physically may not be able to to do as much as other people would be able to do, it also may mean that what we really need to do is to look at what the right job for them would be, so that they could do as much work as anyone else. And that's also a big part of it.   Tyler Mills ** 11:29 And we were struggling with my internet and we probably still are. That's that's another issue here in rural America. If you want to be able to work from home, you're still going to be struggling your internet connection a lot of the time. So we've, we that was, Well, part of my book is about, uh, death of the Blue Dogs. I want to to people to understand what, what, regardless of your, whatever your politics happen to be, you should want access to the internet so people can can be, you know, working and be productive and be taxpayers, and, you know, feel good about their day. And there may be some people that don't want to work, but in my, in my experience, I've always felt like work and the dignity of work has given me a purpose, as, you know, as made me just feel better about my day. And I I'm not that may not be for everyone, but it certainly has helped me. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 12:24 I would also point out or submit that maybe for some of those people who don't want to work again, even there they may be prejudice and thinking they can't work and so they don't want to, and I'm sure there are some who just want to use the system, but I think there, there are a lot of people who haven't learned to have the confidence to stand up and really fight for for their right To be in the workforce and in the system.   Tyler Mills ** 13:02 And another aspect of this is, I think at least within rural America, I think right now, our and within the country at large, I think the venture capital dollars are getting spent in they're being too concentrated to one part of the country or the other. And if there was a way that we could convince people to spread that opportunity around a little bit better. I think that would be helpful as well. Yeah, I'm   Michael Hingson ** 13:27 sure, I'm sure that it would be helpful. Well, you mentioned the book. Tell me what? What are Blue Dogs?   Tyler Mills ** 13:34 Blue Dogs are a group of moderate to conservative Democrats, and I didn't really want to write this as a partisan book. What I wanted to do is write this as a book saying rule America needs to elect legislators that care about their constituencies. They go out there and use and appropriate tax dollars to make sure that our roads are functional, to make sure that we have access to internet, clean water, you know, schools with top notch technology so we can learn everything that we need to learn about it with to be able to be competitive in a global economy. Because basically what happened the Blue Dog Democrats were started in the early 1990s as a response to what many people viewed as, you know, Bill Clinton being too liberal. And Bill Bill Clinton did. He did race raise some taxes on some people at the beginning of his administration. So basically, the there was a group of about 30 or 40 Democratic legislators who said, We've got to kind of create our own group, and it could sort of like find the middle ground between what they consider to be too liberal. And Bill Clinton and yet too conservative to to jump to the Republican caucus. So, so they basically said, we're in the middle and we're being squeezed blue. So that's kind of where that term comes from.   Michael Hingson ** 15:13 Got it. You know? It's interesting. I I grew up, went to college in the 1970s and so on. And I've been a member of the National Federation of the Blind since 1972 and I remember going to several national conventions and also being very involved in dealing with things in Washington. And while one party is more conservative than the other, what's really interesting is that the emphasis on disabilities and supporting disabilities, at least to a degree, has shifted from the Republicans, who really were more champions earlier, but are much less so now, just because they've taken a completely different position about spending money and so on, but they're not the champions in general. That is that that the Democrats are,   Tyler Mills ** 16:14 and I would like to see the Republican Party get back to that, because if they if they believe in self reliance and independence and making people feel good about having something to do in their lives and being as functional as they can be. This should. This is a non partisan issue. Yeah, not non ideological, because all you're doing is you're creating you're creating jobs if, if someone with a disability can go out and become an entrepreneur and, let's say, hire three to four people. You know that that really, it may not seem like much on paper, but it can make a big difference in a community. It really can. So I, I and I, I think that you can still have a sense of community and still be, you know, be a rugged individualist at the same time, and I unfortunately, maybe within the Republican Party, they kind of, right now, only want that rugged individualism. And I think in order to have a functional society, you have to have some sort of a sense of community as well.   Michael Hingson ** 17:17 Well, I I agree. I think there's we're losing a lot of of our sense of community, and we become so fractured as a society that it's really difficult to talk and form community. And how do we get back to to that? How do we get back to people being able to share ideas, to have legitimate discourse? And also have different opinions, and people respect that, so we can discuss it and discuss them, but at the same time, we don't just blast everyone because they're different than we are. We get back.   Tyler Mills ** 17:58 We have to realize that our children go to the same public schools together. We still, we still go to the same churches. There's still some people who still go to the bowling allies together. I social media and social media marketing is great. I've been in that industry for quite a while myself, but we've kind of used that technology to go into our own little corners, and we just kind of follow the road we want to follow, instead of considering other points of view, considering what other people in the community might think we just we kind of, at this point, want to hear what we want to hear, and I don't know if we always consider it the other, someone else's perspective. And many of the legislators that were defeated that I write about in my book death of the Blue Dogs, they were kind of those people that were, you know, kind of the cooling saucers of the Congress, and they would kind of consider those different perspectives, and that's what I'd like to see us get back to as a society, not just as, you know, From a legislative, congressional perspective, but as a society, get, get, get that broader sense of community back, talk to each other again, because really, we still go to those same schools, churches, wherever you might line up, and hopefully we can start have that conversation again.   Michael Hingson ** 19:14 How do we get there? Though,   Tyler Mills ** 19:19 you have to realize that we're all just human beings. And I think, I think we, in some ways, we've kind of like going, Oh, that that person listens to different music than I do. I must not like them. Just I don't know where, I don't know where we got off base to where it's good where we go. Oh, that person has a different opinion than I do. I must hate them, I or I must at least dislike them, or not want to communicate with them. I think, I think, I think we just need to really we, we the society and media accentuate the differences. When I think. That even, even though you, Michael, have spent most of your time out in California, and I've spent my most of my time out in the Midwest, I think we'd find out probably quite a few things, regardless of politics or whatever, we'd have a lot of things just to communist, basic human beings. You know, well,   Michael Hingson ** 20:16 I've been fortunate enough to actually have lived in several places around the country and traveled to many more, and I love the richness of this country, and I appreciate the different environments, the different areas and the different points of view. And I think it is extremely important that we recognize that and that we respect it. But that sure breaks down in in our times right now, at least when it comes to politics, you can't have a political discussion at all without somebody just flying off the deep end somewhere.   Tyler Mills ** 20:59 Well, yeah. I mean, if you, if you go to the cable news networks, they reward the people that are saying the most outlandish things, regardless of where one stands. The person that gets the most media attention is the person that says the, you know, the most sometimes unproven thing. And when you reward non factual behavior, or just straight up dishonest behavior that I think that encourages society as a whole to go in that direction. You know,   Michael Hingson ** 21:31 unfortunately we live in a country where, well, I won't say unfortunately we live in a country that provides and allows for free free speech, but unfortunately, we do sometimes see that carried to an extreme, as you're pointing out,   Tyler Mills ** 21:45 well, and I think, I think that they that for some reason we consider, right now we've got people, if you fact check someone, they consider it a form of censorship, yeah, and I don't, I don't think, I don't think fact checking someone and saying, Hey, I have a different I have my research says differently than this. I'm offering this point of view. I don't think that's a form of censorship, but unfortunately, we've kind of gotten to that point where people think that that's censorship   Michael Hingson ** 22:11 well, and it is unfortunate that we've seen a lot of that, and we we do see the whole idea of of fact checking, and some people just totally resent it. But the problem is they don't want to do anything other than do as I say, not as I do. And that's unfortunate too, exactly, exactly. Yeah. So it does make it quite a, quite a pain to deal with, needless to say. Well, so what do we need to do? I know you've sort of alluded to it a little bit, but what do we need to do to kind of bring rural America economically back more into the fold and than it is. You've you've   Tyler Mills ** 22:59 got to have people that don't automatically assume that we don't have the skills to get things done. I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of stereotypes out there about people that then so these stereotypes are true, and we there. Life is about constant improvement, and if you're not willing to make changes and see how you need to improve yourself, how you need to improve your community, then you're not going to progress. But I think that there are a lot of people out there that look at rural America as you know well, they just they don't understand their flyover country. They're not willing to learn. And I think in my in my community, I think we are willing to learn. I think we are willing to get better, but we have to prove ourselves back. We have to prove that to other people. I was watching the Daily Show one night with Jon Stewart, and a lot of people enjoy Jon Stewart. Of course, he's a very funny comedian, regardless of what your politics are. And he was making, he I, he was making fun of the state of West Virginia far too much. And if you know it was like, you know, he's making fun of how they don't, you know, their their teeth, and they don't read enough. And it was just kind of like John, you you consider yourself someone who likes to highlight the plight of the working class from time to time, and then here you are, you know, kind of going off on these people who clearly need help, clearly need assistance, and they need jobs in their communities. And I wish that we would get rid of some of those stereotypes and stop saying some of those hateful things about each other, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 24:42 yeah. And it's and it is so true. Well, if you take West Virginia, for example, and I've read that, you know, there's people there will drink a lot of soft drinks and so on, and their teeth aren't great and all that. Um. And there are, there are issues like that, but there are also other factors that really cause some of that to be the case. Aren't there? There   Tyler Mills ** 25:07 are, there are. I wish that that people would actually go to some of these communities more often. I wish that, you know people were able to travel more and to learn more about why, if you look at the history of West Virginia, Was it really the best place to even put a state you know that that's that's worthwhile to be so can you really blame that on the people that live there now, as far as economic development, as far as you know that, and we're in a lot of these communities, smaller communities. They're They're controlled by one employer. You know, what a what? Once one, one employer gets locked into a community, they kind of dictate whether another employer can come in, because they're afraid that their workforce, they're going to lose their workforce if this other employer comes in and that that's another the monopolistic practices or the, you know, I I'm not sure what the exact wording of it would be, but it's certainly a controlling process for a lot of these communities, because they're afraid to lose that One major employer, and then what do they have?   Michael Hingson ** 26:22 And they're afraid to lose or they think they would lose their identity,   Tyler Mills ** 26:27 absolutely. And I I think work. And some people would disagree with me this. They would say, well, Tyler, you should just find more leisure time. Find more things with your leisure time, and not worry so much about work, but I think that the people that are encouraging a society without work are often some of the most successful people in society that don't have to worry about it anyway. I worry that people, regardless of their politics, they figured the game out, they figured the world out. They know how to make money. They know how to, you know, pretty much get anything they want. And then they're going to say, well, you know, just sort of Pat us on our head, right? And just sort of say, Well, you shouldn't have to work anymore, or you shouldn't worry about that stress anymore. And in some ways that would be a good thing, but in some ways, I need that stress. I need that challenge well,   Michael Hingson ** 27:23 and I think that's the real operative part of it, it's challenge. We as a as a race, tend to like challenge, whether we always admit it or not, we do. We like challenge, and we like to have things that we have to overcome. And for those people who have, quote, made it, that's real lovely, but the problem is they tend to forget along the way what it took to get there. And the result, ultimately, is that they don't really help people like they can to get other people to maybe work like they did, and get there as well. Yeah,   Tyler Mills ** 28:02 and AI and all these different forms of technology are going to be absolutely wonderful for so many people with disabilities. But we've also got to consider, you know, if you've got a bit of a cognitive disability, are you going to be able to catch on to this AI technology as quickly as you should? And are these and are these programs going to be, are there going to be funding for the, you know, to go to the community college in a smaller community where someone could learn how to use this technology better? I think that some of the some of the people that are creating the technology are not thinking of me in rural America, or other people in rural America that have disabilities, it may take us a little bit longer, and that it's going to be, you know, might, we might pick it up four or five years down the road, but those four or five years are going to be rough, you know?   Michael Hingson ** 28:53 Well, yeah, and AI in general is so new that we really miss out on thinking in the more long term approach of what it will and can become. Of course, now we've got so many people who are going, Oh, it's horrible. It's going to take all of our jobs away. Kids are just going to use it to create all their papers and so on at school, so they're not going to learn anything. And from my perspective, hearing those kinds of comments tells me you're really missing it, and you're you're not recognizing the value that AI really brings to the world. So for example, for for for the classroom, if children are writing their papers and just letting ai do all the work, you may or may not be able to tell it when you're grading the paper, but the thing to do is to maybe get creative and think about a little. Bit different way of teaching. For example, when you assign students to do a paper, and especially you're concerned that they just may be letting AI write it, chat, GPT or something, write it, the easy thing to do is take one period of your class and have all of your students individually come up and take a minute and defend your paper, and you'll know very quickly who really understood it and who used it all the right way or not.   Tyler Mills ** 30:34 Yeah. I mean, I mean, when I, when I was going through school, we would, you know, the teacher would kind of read the whole book to us, and instead of having us read out loud, and then, and then you, and then you graduate high school, and then you're like, some of these kids can't read. And then it's like, well, where, where were you in the seventh grade checking to make sure that they could read?   Michael Hingson ** 30:56 Well, yeah, yeah, um, and I think there, yeah, I've had some teachers that all they did was parrot the book, which is not what a good lecturer should do at all. The book is the book, and the teacher needs to really add value to that process. And and that's something that you don't always see, which is also the case. My belief is that a good boss, if they're really exercising leadership skills, a good boss, has to work with each person in their team and figure out how the boss can add value to make them more successful, rather than just focusing and telling them what to do and and not not being involved anymore. That's not leadership Exactly,   31:46 exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 31:49 So I think it is important that you know we need to, again, look at all of that well. So it is. It is pretty clear to me that what you would really like to see us do is shift some of what we're doing in our priorities, like in the political spectrum and so on, to be a little bit more moderate and not be one side or the other necessarily. How do we do that? We how do we convince people that we got to go back to a more moderate environment? We   Tyler Mills ** 32:20 look we look at people's resumes. We look at we look at people who actually consider it different points of view. I back in 20, 2015 2016 I worked for a guy named us, Senator Jim Webb. He was from the Virginia and he was a Vietnam veteran, he ran as a Democrat for president, but he also served in the Reagan administration. And thing about Jim is, when I first met him, you know, basically in the past, so some candidates that I'd met were a little bit hesitant to work with me because of my disability, but because of Jim's background as a veteran, and he dealt with people with disabilities before, he was very, very inclusive, very, very receptive to not only me, but also all points of view. And I think that if people honestly just want to take the time and listen to good, moderate people, regardless of whether they have an RD or anything else behind their name. Part of it is, I think, is our attention span. I don't mean to be insulting the people by saying it's an attention span issue, but I don't think that they take the time to listen and say, Hey, this this individual is considering more than one side of the coin, more than one point of view? Yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 33:46 Well, yeah, it really gets down to you. Got to spend time thinking and strategizing and not just reacting and recognizing there's more to life than just one opinion,   Tyler Mills ** 34:03 exactly i and that's the thing about the the people in this book, they were, they, these were these were people that you know were getting votes from people that didn't necessarily agree with them ideologically. But what they would do is they would take the time to listen to other people and to help people with their social security matters, or help people with, you know, making sure that their son was able to apply for that Pell Grant, or their daughter was able to apply for that Pell Grant. And so even though you didn't necessarily line up with everyone on an ideological basis, a lot of people would still cast their ballot for them, and because they would actually do the work what a congress person is supposed to do, in my opinion, and like we were talking about earlier on Fox News or on any of the cable networks, I think that people again, are rewarded for being loud instead of doing the work of what a member of Congress is supposed to do. I.   Michael Hingson ** 35:00 Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's tough to get enough people together to to deal with that kind of vision. And so the result is that when you get, as you pointed out, people who may be a little bit more moderate, or people who want to really make contributions to society as a whole. They drop out because they feel like they've got just too many things stacked against them, and they're just too many people who don't want to listen.   Tyler Mills ** 35:31 Yeah. I mean, there's a part of my book during the CNN debate and Anderson Cooper was questioning Jim Webb and some of the other candidates about the Americans with Disabilities, act and Senator Webb and made the point in the past about affirmative action, possibly not considering income enough as far as making sure that people had opportunities well. Anderson Cooper implied during that debate that Jim Webb was anti Ada and I kind of went I highly doubt many of these other presidential candidates have people on in wheelchairs, on their in wheelchairs and dealing with a lot of other disability related issues on their steps right now, working on their campaigns. And here's Anderson Cooper telling me that my candidate might be anti Ada, and I was that just kind of it took me back, because I again, I think that it's the responsibility of a journalist to actually dig deeper into someone's writing, their what their public statements, everything about their as much as they can before they make some outlandish question or comment like that. And again, I think it's, it's just some of it is a lack of responsible journalism because you're trying to get ratings. You're trying to, you know, get the headlines there, instead of actually digging into the issues that people are going to need in order to be able to survive.   Michael Hingson ** 37:04 So you've talked about the Blue Dogs being involved in rural America on the question that comes to mind is, aren't they just as important for the big city and non rural America? Yeah,   Tyler Mills ** 37:16 yeah. And that's the thing is, back in the 70s, when, you know, when we people were trying to get the farm bill done, they would make sure that provisions were in there to, you know, create more farming opportunities in urban America. So there weren't food deserts. There are food deserts in urban America too. And I think that when, when you elect people that don't care about a farm bill, that don't want to, they don't want to earmark resources to a community, you know, they want to act like they're just going to save money on this or that, when really, I don't think there's that much savings going on, because I think a lot, a lot of a lot of Countries are running debt. They've always been running debt. And I think it's not that debt doesn't matter. Debt absolutely does matter. But at the end of the day, if, if your people are living in a food desert, because the farm bill is not, you know, the resources there are not properly, you know, allocated, that's an issue that's far deeper than a than a structural, you know, spending deficit,   Michael Hingson ** 38:28 yeah, yeah. And we, well, we've, we've got to figure out a way to bring a little bit more sanity to the process. I guess we've, we've seen these kinds of cycles before, though, and the hope, and the hope is, over time, we'll be able to see maybe the the cycle shift, and we bring a little bit more sanity into the whole structure. But it's going to take somebody who's a really strong leader, who understands that, who can make it happen? And I'm not sure that we are seeing any of that even today in society, we have two political candidates, and I think one is closer to that ideal than the other, but I'm not sure whether we have anyone who really is strong enough or sophisticated enough to outsmart and bring about the kind of changes that we're talking about.   Tyler Mills ** 39:26 Well, the thing that frustrates me, and one of the things that frustrates me, is that some, some of these people that that were that were elected to Congress, are now seeing their communities die out. That they're, they're they're losing population. You can, you can look at the statistics. These are not made up statistics. These are proven statistics that that all a lot of these rural communities are losing population and alarming rates, and yet, you these people are continually getting rewarded by getting elected again and again. Wouldn't they want to see their community? Grow? That's my question. Maybe I don't want it seems like a false way of thinking here, because a lot of these communities are dying out, and yet you're getting rewarded by getting re elected or given a higher position in some sort of organization. And I'm like, You are losing population in your community at an alarming rate, and yet you're bragging about getting, you know, whatever you think done to me, you would want your community to grow and prosper? Well,   Michael Hingson ** 40:31 I would think so. But again, what we find is people's priorities are a little bit different than than I think what we would believe would be the ideal, yeah,   Tyler Mills ** 40:44 and it's, it's, it's frightening, because, you know, I the goal of of any, any society, it should be to help as many people as you can reach their full potential. Yeah? And if, and if rural America and in parts of urban America, absolutely, if they're not getting resources allocated to them, there's always so much you can do completely on your own in this world, in my opinion, and without that sense of community, I think a lot of people are being left behind, and it's just it's extremely unfortunate.   Michael Hingson ** 41:18 Do you think that we'll be able to see a shift, and we'll find more moderates coming back at some point,   Tyler Mills ** 41:25 we have to find a way to punish the media for what they do. They they encourage just out. They want people to start yelling. They want people to start yelling at each other. It's like, it's like a professional wrestling match. Michael, it's not like, you know, we basically got talk radio on in the halls of Congress now. Instead of, instead of saying, Hey, you're a human being, I'm a human being, I have constituents. You have constituents. We literally have members of the United States Senate, you know, threatening union leaders saying you want to fight, you want to have a fist fight, you know, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 42:09 And well again, what do we do to change all of that? And you're right, the media is certainly a part of it. One of the things that really frustrates me is that we have these things. When candidates for president, for example, get together, they call them debates, but they're not debates. No, I'm not sure. I don't remember the Kennedy Nixon debate, and so I don't remember whether it really was a debate, but I bet it was closer to a debate than anything that we see today, because we're not really seeing any kind of good, real, legitimate debate discourse. No,   Tyler Mills ** 42:54 it's, it's sound bite after sound bite and attack line after attack run, and the questioning, the questioning is set up that way, and it's and I understand why they do it, because they want viewership. They want people to be talking about, oh, this candidate said this tan. And now we're going to talk about it for the 24 hour news cycle, and then we're going to move on to the next news cycle. Instead of having a substantive debate where people can discuss issues and actually solve, you know, internet connectivity in rural or parts of urban America, we end up with a debate over I, you know, whatever the you know, space lasers or whatever you know so well.   Michael Hingson ** 43:40 And the other part about it is that, I think, in reality, with a legitimate, real debate, you would have just as much to talk about, and would still allow for all of that to happen. Yeah,   Tyler Mills ** 43:52 yeah. So maybe, again, maybe it's maybe they need to give more air time to it. But again, that attention span that I think partly, personally, because of technology and the way things have changed. For better or worse, people don't have that attention span anymore, and I'm just as guilty as anybody so   Michael Hingson ** 44:13 they don't have that attention span. I hear people talking all the time about making videos to put up on YouTube or whatever, and I am told constantly it's got to be 30 seconds, because people won't pay attention for any longer than that. Yet, what content can you really do in 30 seconds?   44:33 Nothing, nothing,   Michael Hingson ** 44:37 or very little of any substance anyway, which isn't to say that you want to have a video that's 15 minutes or a half hour. It's got to be something that that makes sense. You got to keep people's attention, but I have yet to see if you do it the right way, where you can have a five minute video that keeps. That doesn't keep people's attention, if you do it, right?   Tyler Mills ** 45:03 Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I all listen to a good podcast. I mean, you know, like, just like we're doing right here, and you know, if it really gets my attention, I'm gonna, I know, and then I'm gonna come back for more, you know. And I think people hopefully, you know, hopefully they enjoy that sort of thing still, and, you know, really embrace it. I hope, I certainly hope so.   Michael Hingson ** 45:23 We have typically made these podcasts an hour long, and I've had the opportunity to be interviewed on a variety of different kinds of podcasts, and I've been lectured not about mine so much as other people say, Well, no one's going to listen to a podcast if it's an hour long. That's why we only make ours 15 minutes, or 20 minutes, or at most, a half hour, and yet, when they ask questions, they they don't really ask questions, much less do it in a way that creates content and does does what they really ought to do, even If it's only a half hour long.   Tyler Mills ** 46:00 Yeah, I, I, I think, I, I wish that content could be more substantive. I think, I think you're spot on about that. No doubt about it. So, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 46:16 so what we have, we have seen changes come about, although sometimes it isn't, perhaps in the ways that we ought to I mentioned earlier sheltered workshops, and there's been a big battle in the blindness system about the fact that all too many rehabilitation agencies and other entities push so many blind people into sheltered workshops, and those workshops have a way where they don't have to pay even minimum wage, and they've played some really strong games with that, but there's been a lot of visibility about that, and so a number of those shops have actually changed their model. But what do we do again to get the Congress to really deal with it? Or, you know, or is that asking the same question we've asked so many times already during this conversation? You know,   Tyler Mills ** 47:15 I think, I think it's up to the private sector. I think the private Congress right now is at a standstill, and I think that they prefer their permanent stand. So I, I've spoken to HR professionals, and my degree is actually in the human resources. And a lot of these HR professionals are not aware of the different programs that are out there, and then they're not aware of the tax credits. Yeah, it's not, it's not that they're not well, it says they're not willing to learn. I just don't think that was part of their program. I've worked at a call center now. You know, for over eight years, I'm still, obviously, there are all kinds of disabilities out there, but I'm still the only person in a wheelchair out after over eight years. And I don't know if I hope it hasn't been my own performance that has discouraged them from hiring other people with disabilities, but because that really would upset me, but it would, it would, but I, I You would think that someone else would have come across the line during the time I've been out there, because, Like, even when I got out there, they're like, they're like, you're the only person in wheelchair I've ever ain't out, you know? And they, they'd been working for other call centers before, and I was like, this is call center work. This is one of the most obvious things that people like me can do, yeah, and   Michael Hingson ** 48:35 it's and it's easy, it doesn't require an incredible amount of physical labor. And there are actually some good technological ways that a blind person could do that. It does take, it does take some some additional kinds of things, given the typical call center software, but the technology is there to do that today.   Tyler Mills ** 48:58 Yeah, I, I don't know if you've ever had the chance to work with different call centers about that kind of technology, but apparently some of them still need to help. So   Michael Hingson ** 49:07 oh, they do. I know of some mine, and I've I've dealt with some that actually have put the effort into it, but still, I know what you're saying. But then it gets back again to the whole idea of we're not included in the conversation. And I think that mostly when it comes down to dealing with people with disabilities, we don't think about it that way. We don't think about we're not included in the conversation, and we don't necessarily really deal with that. And when I'm talking about the conversation, why isn't the President every time he, or possibly in the future, she, is talking about one thing or another that they don't just talk about race and gender, they also automatically include people with disabilities and. Use examples. We're not included in any of those conversations.   Tyler Mills ** 50:04 Well, I think, unfortunately, we're, we're given absolutely necessary social programs there, you know, disability benefits, Medicaid, different things are absolutely necessary for survival. But I think people just sort of like, make sure that their tax dollars go to that, and then they don't think, they think, well, we it's not that they think we've done enough, but they think that, you know, well, we are making sure that these people are able to stay alive, and maybe in their minds, that is enough. But for for you and me and other people that think about this on a deeper level, we want more, and are we being selfish? I don't think so. You know, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 50:47 well, so we've talked a lot about work. Does society value work? Is that changing?   Tyler Mills ** 50:53 I don't, I don't think so. And as much as I embrace new forms of technology, I think that there's some. I think a lot of our drug problem, and particularly in rural America, is because you don't, you don't have some of those. You're not giving some of those menial labor jobs to the regular working class anymore. You're letting the technology do which is fine if you want to let the technology do it. That's completely your prerogative and your perspective, do you know to just sort of move, you know, the self checkout thing, and that's that's fine if companies want to go that route. But I think at the same point, there's a value to getting that person who may have been struggling in life, to get them to add a local grocery store, be at a Costco, or whatever the case may be, instead of, you know, having a self checkout, you know, it does, it does it hurt a company's bottom line? Absolutely, in many ways it does. But I think that we've lost a sense of that. Yeah, no purpose of work,   Michael Hingson ** 51:55 yeah, well, um, and you, you, you cut out a little bit. So maybe you can repeat some of that, because you cut out for a few seconds.   Tyler Mills ** 52:04 Yeah, the internet's going out, like we were talking about earlier, just again about how I think, I think it's important to still have part of that is the loss of the sense of the community is because we don't we use the technology now that it can be very, very helpful. But at the same time, if you give that job to a person who was previously struggling and not able to make find their way in life, maybe struggling with a fentanyl or struggling with some sort of drug related issue, now that they can have a job, they feel better about themselves, they can get a paycheck and be it be a larger part of society. Obviously, we'd rather have them, you know, getting an advanced degree and moving on to that larger scale to scale job. And hopefully they would be able to do that in the future. But I think society doesn't value, you know, having a someone to check out your groceries or someone to, you know, wash your car or mow your grass, or some of the menial jobs that are going to be eliminated here in the future, and in many cases, have been eliminated now. So we're as beautiful. Technology is going to be great for us. It's going to work in so many great ways. But we also don't look at the other side of the coin enough either. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 53:30 the other side of that, though, is let's take self checkout here in California, for example, when you talk about if you have to hire somebody, does that affect the bottom line, it does. But what we're also discovering is that self checkout is affecting the bottom line because there are too many people who cheat that system, and the result is that they they're able to get out without paying for everything or whatever. So their their challenges, all around and again, what I'm hearing you say, and I think there's merit to it, is that what we're really not doing is representing enough the value of giving people the opportunity to have jobs and encouraging them. And the companies aren't tending nearly to be as loyal as they used to be for people and working. And you're right. They're going to technology and everything else, and they're not being loyal like they used to be. You don't see the same loyalty. Hence, people move so often from one job and one company to another job and another company.   Tyler Mills ** 54:45 Yeah, when you have people in the investing in your company, they're just looking at the profit at the end of the quarter. They don't look at the you know, they see that profit in their stock portfolio, which is fantastic, because, well, anybody should be able to play the stock. Could do whatever they want, but again, if Walmart turns a massive profit by eliminating 1520, jobs, if they're different operations, what kind of larger impact does that have on a local community? And that's that's a question that should be asked. Now we might come to the conclusion that that's overall a good thing. I I don't come to that conclusion necessarily, but I think, I think it's a conversation that needs to be had   Michael Hingson ** 55:29 all the time, and it's like anything else. How do we get that conversation to occur more often?   Tyler Mills ** 55:36 Well, I think, again, I think we've kind of lost our sense of I don't, but when I, when I was growing up, I think that people were just nicer to each other. I and I, I don't know if it's because people just think they can say whatever they want to each to each other, yeah, now, now that we're behind the keyboard, or we can just be agree or disagree. We should never be as just unkind and be calling each other stupid and uninformed? And you know, we need to consider all different perspectives as much as we can. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:09 you know, we we should, and I really would love to see a world where we could have a lot more discussion without somebody becoming offended, because discussion is always valuable if we really have a discussion, and can if going back to using that term debate something. But you know, so do you think more people with disabilities ought to move and be involved in more rural America? Would that be a beneficial thing?   Tyler Mills ** 56:50 I think would be beneficial. I think if we there are a lot of extremely compassionate people here. I think that just because they people assume, just because a certain community starts to vote a certain way, that they've lost their compassion. I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think you've got a lot of compassionate people here who who love, who love, to help other people. They're not necessarily voting the way. They're not actually voting their values. They're extremely compassionate people, but they're not voting that way. So then people who are voting the opposite way assume that they don't care. I think it's a lack of information. I think we've got we've got as much information as we've ever had at our fingertips. I don't know if we're actually on a search for knowledge within that information, you know? So, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 57:47 we, we don't know how to search. We don't know how to or, oftentimes it seems like we don't want to get that information, because it, it, it's the the usual, don't bother me with the facts, and that's unfortunate.   Tyler Mills ** 58:06 And I also worry about, you know, a lot of these bigger banks and bigger companies are able to swallow up the smaller banks in the smaller communities, and so the, again, the capital dries up. The that's that's really important. I I don't understand completely why, why some people who would consider themselves more conservative aren't worried about anti trust laws if they truly want those rural communities that they represent to survive. The reason why I wrote this book is because I see, again, I see a lot of people who are who are elected to represent rural America, are letting it die out, and I do not understand why that's and that's what I tried to explore in the book. And it just it. It boggles my mind. And I could write 15 books on it, and it would still make me go, Hmm,   Michael Hingson ** 59:00 well, your voice still needs to be heard out there, and people need to hear I think what you're saying, it's, it certainly isn't a very relevant and valuable viewpoint. And we've, we've got to get to the point where we can have good discussion and good interaction with each other. We've lost the art of conversation all the way around.   Tyler Mills ** 59:26 Yeah, it's, it's because we we text each other and we message each other and and shorthand, and we don't really, I don't think we have those same kind of full length conversations that we used to have.   Michael Hingson ** 59:37 One of the things that I do regularly when I'm looking for speaking opportunities, and I've looked at some databases, and I will send out emails and talk to people about becoming or hiring me to be a speaker. I love it when somebody responds to me, and even if they say I'm the. Right person. We're not doing anything right now, but they leave a phone number because I think it's so important to be able to reach out to people on the phone. Email is so insensitive, and texting, of course, is there's nothing like communicating with someone on the phone. And I know that a lot of times I've been able to get speaking engagements because I was able to actually have a phone conversation. And some people have gone so far as to say, most people don't call me. I really appreciate the fact that you called me and took the time to to let me get to know you better, and whether we have anything right now or not, isn't the issue, but thanks for at least initiating the phone call.   Tyler Mills ** 1:00:47 Yeah, you you can talk about why you care about a project more. You can really go into detail as to why you know this. Do you think that this particular situation, whatever you're working on, would would really help benefit everyone involved in a text message. I don't think you can necessarily lay out that kind of emotion, you know, you   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:09 certainly can't lay out the emotion. Yeah, yes, it is just, isn't there? Well, Tyler, this is really been a lot of fun. We have spent an hour doing it, and I have no problem with that, just okay. So I really appreciate your time, and I think I really thank you for being here, and I want to thank you all for listening. This has been a lot of fun, and I hope that you've enjoyed it, everyone out there listening and watching us, I hope you've enjoyed it, and that you will let us know what you think. Please feel free to email me. Michael, H, I m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, and we'd love to hear from you. We'd love if you whenever you're listening or wherever you're listening. If you give us a five star rating, please rate us Tyler. If people want to reach out to you and interact with you more, how do they do that? They   Tyler Mills ** 1:02:07 can find me on LinkedIn, Tyler mills. Type in Tyler Mills, Mills, marketing services. You also my book is on lulu.com that's where I get the most money for it, to be honest, amazon.com wonderful site if you want to get it there, but I only get 37 cents on Amazon. But so if, if you can go to lulu.com death of the Blue Dogs, Tyler Mills, if you want to learn more about my book, any, any of the projects that I have to do with Mills marketing services, you could find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook. Mills marketing services. I'm I'm available. I got my phone number, email everything, so I'm good to go. Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:46 Well, we put links in the cover notes as well, so the show notes, so they'll be there. So again, I want to thank you all. I really appreciate you, Tyler, taking the time. And if you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset. And for all of you out there, if you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest or might be a good guest, I want to hear about it. We're always looking for people who want to come on and tell their story and talk about what they do. So please, by all means, refer people to us. I think it would be great. And we would love to talk with them and explore them coming on the show. So once again, I want to thank you, though all for being here. Tyler, I want to thank you for being here. This has been fun.   Tyler Mills ** 1:03:29 Thank you for the opportunity. Michael, I really enjoyed it. Thank you for letting me speak to your viewers.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:03:40 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

This episode is presented by Create A Video – Some Democrats... okay, very few... are trying to resurrect the old "Blue Dogs" in an effort to win some of the rural voters that the party has been hemorrhaging for years. Subscribe to the podcast at: https://ThePetePod.com/ All the links to Pete's Prep are free: https://patreon.com/petekalinershow Media Bias Check: If you choose to subscribe, get 15% off here! Advertising and Booking inquiries: Pete@ThePeteKalinerShow.com Get exclusive content here!: https://thepetekalinershow.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marc Valentine "Opening Chase Theme" - Basement Sparks www.marcvalentine.co.uk Laurie Morvan "Gotta Dig Deep" - Gravity www.lauriemorvan.com Michele D'Amour & The Love Dealers "Plum Crazy" - Hot Mess www.micheedamour.com Denise La Grassa "Lucy Mae Blues" - The Flame www.deniselagrassa.com Patty Reese "Lift Us Up" www.pattyreese.com Blue Dogs "Big Dreamers" - Big Dreamers www.bluedogs.com Jay Stott "Stuck In Love" - Wreckage Of Now www.jgstott.com ******************************** ALBUM FOCUS: Paradiddle Records presents Uncovering Dylan 4, part of their Bob Dylan Uncovered Series, performed by Long Island (NY) Americana/Roots artists. www.paradiddlerecords.com Tom Moran "Nobody 'Cept You" The Belle Curves "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" Revolver "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" The Lucky Ones "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" ****************** Mary Battiata & Little Pink "Sun That I Could Count On" - The Heart, Regardless www.littlepinktheband.com Cormac O Cairmh "Believe (If You Feel)" - 1999-2012 Volume 1 www.cormacocairmh.com Fred Gillen Jr "When The Ravens Came" - Birds www.fredgillenjr.com Ben Bedford "Leaping" - Valley Of Stars www.benbedford.com Vanessa Lively "Canaries" - www.vanessalively.com Jon McCutcheon & Tom Paxton "Complete" - Together www.folkmusic.com Mike Agranoff "First Kiss" - Ain't Never Been Plugged www.mikeagranoff.com Joel Styzens "Ascendance III" - Resonance www.relax-your-ears.com ********************** Closing music: Geoffrey Armes "Seascape" - Music For Yoga www.geoffreyarmes.com Running time: 3 hours 54 minutes --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiocblue/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiocblue/support

Hear the behind-the-scenes story of a hit songwriter's biggest cut... and biggest bruise! Phillip Lammonds is a songwriter and instrumentalist from the musically rich mountains of North Carolina. He was a founder of The Blue Dogs, a critically acclaimed bluegrass and rock inspired jam band. He then started his family in Pawley's Island, South Carolina while working as a fishing guide, a falconer, and the owner of a real estate company. All the while, he wrote songs and traveled to Nashville to pitch them. After fifteen years, fifty or so trips to Nashville, and cuts on major artists—Hootie and the Blowfish, Josh Turner, Craig Morgan—Phillip moved to music city to pursue songwriting full time. He stepped onto the scene with a publishing deal from Curb Entertainment and a back catalog nearly five hundred songs strong. Phillip's songs have been recorded by artists like Lee Brice, Jerrod Niemann, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Edwin McCain, Craig Morgan, Kellie Pickler, Mo Pitney, and Dylan Scott. Today, he shares the inside story of one of his biggest cuts… and biggest bruises! Full episodes of “The Hang” are available exclusively in the SongwritingPro.com Member Area. If you're a member, log in to watch this and all other episodes. If you're not yet a member, start your 14-day FREE trial today! The C.L.I.M.B. Show is dedicated to helping singers, songwriters, indie artists and industry pros "Create Leverage In The Music Business." We want you to win! About the hosts: Brent Baxter is an award-winning hit songwriter with cuts by Alan Jackson (“Monday Morning Church”), Randy Travis, Lady A, Joe Nichols, Ray Stevens, Gord Bamford and more. He helps songwriters turn pro by helping them WRITE like a pro, DO BUSINESS like a pro and CONNECT to the pros. You can find Brent at SongwritingPro.com/Baxter and SongwritingPro.com. Johnny Dwinell owns Daredevil Production and helps artists increase their streams, blow up their video views, sell more live show tickets, and get discovered by new fans, TV and music industry pros. Daredevil has worked with artists including Collin Raye, Tracy Lawrence, Ty Herndon, Ronnie McDowell and others. You can find Johnny at TheCLIMBshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colt and David sit down with songwriter Phillip Lammonds.Phillip Lammonds is a songwriter and talented instrumentalist from South Carolina.After college, Phillip was a founder of The Blue Dogs, a beloved and critically acclaimed bluegrass and rock inspired jam band. He then started his family in Pawley's Island, South Carolina while working as a fishing guide, a falconer, and the owner of a real estate company.  All the while, Phillip wrote songs and traveled to Nashville to pitch them.  After fifteen years, fifty or so trips to Nashville, and cuts on major artists—Hootie and the Blowfish, Josh Turner, Craig Morgan—Phillip moved to music city to pursue songwriting full time.  He stepped onto the scene with a publishing deal from Curb. Phillip's songs have been recorded by artists like Lee Brice, Jerrod Niemann, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton, Edwin McCain, Craig Morgan, Kellie Pickler, Mo Pitney, and Dylan Scott.Be sure to check out Phillip's new artist project, Cowboy Things, that releases on April 5th.Website: www.philliplammonds.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/phillip.lammondsInstagram: www.instagram.com/philliplammondsArtist Spotify Page: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0l8B9wDkwn8amHscGTTd3I?si=hbk0haGDQ3ee67JOvhNpzgWriter Spotify Page: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1J79YPErnVFK0PVyllT6KPSupport the showCheck out our socials and follow us!Facebook: www.facebook.com/TwangTownPodcastInstagram: www.instagram.com/TwangTownPodTwitter: www.twitter.com/TwangTownPodWe would love your support to continue to bring listeners amazing content!Cash App: www.cash.app/$TwangTownPodBuzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2232176/support

-Stupid country: No debt limit deal, US credit on downgrade watch -Musk, DeSantis team up for disaster campaign launch -Blue Dogs joins GOP to vote down student debt relief -U.S. spies allege concern over Ukrainian covert ops

ALBUM FOCUS: A reoccurring series focusing on new and outstanding concept, compilation and tribute albums. Putumayo Presents African Yoga: A Peaceful Soundtrack For Yoga and Relaxation http://www.putumayo.com In tandem with the beginning of Putumayo's 30th anniversary year, the world music label presents this collection, which draws from the rich musical tapestry of the vast and diverse African continent. Ablaye Cissoko & Volker Goetze "Miliamba" Ami Faku "Ndikhethe Wena" Geoffrey Oryema "Land Of Anaka" ***************** Hymn For Her "Human Condition" - Pop-N-Downers www.hymnforher.com Jesse Stratton Band "A Hot Dog And A Beer" - Family & Friends www.jessestrattonmusic.com Secret Emchy Society "Another Time And Place" - Gold Country/Country Gold www.emchy.com Professor Louie & The Crowmatix "Tick Tock" - Strike Up The Band www.professorlouie.com Blue Dogs "That's How I Knew" - Big Dreamers www.bluedogs.com The Runaway Grooms "Heartwork" - This Road www.therunawaygrooms.com Jon Shain & FJ Ventre "Sinking Ship" - Never Found A Way To Tame The Blues www.jonshain.com Nathans & Ronstadt "Man and a Whale" - Hello World www.nathansandronstadt.com Greg Klyma "Circular World" - Another Man's Treasure www.klyma.com ******************** Daniel Rotem "Wave Nature" - Wave Nature www.danielrotem.com Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim "Paloma E" - www.katherineviolin.com Paula Standing "The More I Give" - The More I Give www.paulastanding.com Jesse Terry "Strangers In Our Town" - When We Wander www.jesseterrymusic.com Rebecca Folsom "In My Little Town" - Sanctuary www.rebeccafolsom.com Chris Smither "Old Man Down" - More From The Levee www.smither.com Peggy Seeger "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" www.peggyseeger.com Karan Casey "The Rocks Of Bawn" - Nine Apples Of Gold www.karancasey.com ******************* Closing music: MFSB "My Mood" - Universal Love Running time: 4 hours, 29 minutes --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiocblue/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiocblue/support

On today's very special Friday show, Crystal welcomes Phil Gardner to spill all the details behind the drama of Washington's Third Congressional District race from his vantage as the campaign manager for now-U.S. Representative-elect Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. As we hear about the nailbiter of a race in Southwest Washington between a rural Democrat and a right-wing fascist, Phil outlines the strategy memo he wrote that propelled an untraditional and underestimated candidate to flip a seat that had been held by Republicans for 12 years. With little to no support for the campaign from the establishment, Phil tells how a scrappy campaign fought for every vote by leveraging volunteer enthusiasm and connecting with voters in every place across the district. He and Crystal then reflect on lessons learned, possible downballot impacts, the need for continued vigilance against anti-democratic forces, and the hope that is manifested by engaging and being active. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Phil Gardner at @gardnerphil.   Phil Gardner Phil Gardner is a Washington state political strategist and the campaign manager for U.S. Representative-elect Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez. He spent this fall working in Southwest Washington but normally lives in Tacoma. Phil's managed successful campaigns for federal, state, and local office, including those of Superintendent Chris Reykdal, State Auditor Pat McCarthy, Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, and State Rep. Jessica Bateman's first campaign for Olympia City Council. Phil previously served as Chief of Staff for Lt. Governor Denny Heck. He also served as Heck's District Director and Communications Director when Heck represented the South Sound in Congress. Phil went to college in Washington, D.C. and worked on Capitol Hill where he developed a strong preference for living and working back home in the better Washington.   Resources “Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler concedes; Perez will face Kent for the 3rd District” by Lauren Ellenbecker from The Columbian   Phil Gardner August 9th Strategy Memo - Can Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez win? Yes.   “Kent, Perez brawl over two different Americas in WA congressional race” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut   Straight Talk bonus round: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent from KGW News   Election To Watch: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on the Verge of Upsetting Pro-Trump Candidate Video edited by Meg Herschlein from More Perfect Union   “Why aren't national Dems bankrolling WA's 3rd Congressional race?” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut   “Congressional candidate Joe Kent wants to rewrite history of Jan. 6 attack” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times   “In Washington state, controversial ties and rhetoric are upending a House race” by Claudia Grisales from NPR-KQED   “How did Marie Gluesenkamp Perez pull off the upset of the year in Southwest WA?” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times   “The Future Is … Doorknocking?” by Alexander Sammon from Slate   “Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Is Going From An Auto Repair Shop To Congress” by Daniel Marans from The Huffington Post   “Party reps say Gluesenkamp Perez won House seat, not Democrats” by Brennen Kauffman from The Daily News   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well, this is an exciting show for me. I'm very excited to be welcoming Phil Gardner to the show. Now, Phil Gardner is known by a lot of people who are in political circles, Democratic circles - but for those who aren't, he is a political strategist and was the campaign manager for Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, who is the newest Congressperson in Washington's Third Congressional District, which a Democrat hasn't won in how long? [00:01:13] Phil Gardner: 12 years. [00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: 12 years. And beat Joe Kent in one of the longest-shot victories that we saw this cycle, if not the longest-shot victory that we saw this cycle in the nation. So very excited to talk to Phil and talk about this race. Welcome to the show. [00:01:33] Phil Gardner: Thank you, Crystal. I'm really glad to be here - appreciate you noticing what we did. [00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely - hard not to notice, but definitely noticed that you were making some moves even before the conclusion of the election. I guess just starting off - getting a little bit more familiar with you - what is your background and what was your path to get to Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez's campaign? [00:01:58] Phil Gardner: Yeah, so I grew up in Pierce County outside Puyallup, graduated high school in Tacoma. So I'm from, consider myself from the state - I was actually born in Texas, but I'm a Washingtonian - and have worked in and out of politics on the Democratic side, both here in the state and back in Washington, D.C. I worked for Lieutenant Governor Denny Heck as his Chief of Staff in Olympia and also back on Capitol Hill as his Communications Director. And then have done a bunch of different campaigns in either manager or general consultant roles, like Superintendent Reykdal's 2020 re-elect for our statewide School Superintendent, the mayor here in Tacoma - I was a part of her first election in 2017, Jessica Bateman - her first run for City Council. So I have had my hand in a bunch of different political and campaign things all over the state. And actually the first federal race I was ever involved with, I was an intern on Denny Heck's 2010 campaign in the Third Congressional District against Jaime Herrera Beutler, which was the last time the seat was open. So it's not quite a full circle moment because - obviously Jaime Herrera Beutler lost in the primary and this - sort of a very different tone than what that campaign was like, but it has been an interesting sort of 12-year journey for me to find myself back down there. [00:03:30] Crystal Fincher: Back down there and in a situation where - for quite some time, Jaime Herrera Beutler looked like a comfortable incumbent. But then this year happened - and after Trump happened and MAGA Republicans - seeing a different blend of Republicans in the district, certainly around the state, and a crowded Republican field. How did you get connected with Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez and how did just starting the campaign unfold? [00:04:04] Phil Gardner: Yeah, so this was an absolutely wild ride that I only got on maybe two-thirds of the way into it for a lot of people that were involved pre-primary - like Marie, most significantly. But I guess to think of the timeline here - for these federal races, they're really two-year affairs at this point just because of the amount of money involved and such. And Joe Kent declared his candidacy against Jaime Herrera Beutler shortly after the January 6th insurrection, so way back in early 2021. And then he got the endorsement of the former president and that sort of propelled him into the leading anti-Jaime Herrera Beutler Republican. And I was watching all of that as anybody checking the news was aware of it. I assumed in the end that Jaime would make it through to the general election one way or another because there were also many, many Democrats running. And I just figured that she's lost a lot of support from within her party, but surely there's enough of a base to get her through against widely divided opposition. But little did I know that Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez had much different plans for what was going to happen. She jumped in the race in February, which is quite late to jump into a Congressional race - February the year of. But as she said many times, she saw a bunch of Joe Kent signs going up around her county where Jaime Herrera Beutler signs used to be. And it reminded her in 2016 when she saw all these Trump signs appearing. And she felt that if this guy really beat Jaime, and there was a good shot at that, that the Democrats didn't have a good candidate who could beat Joe Kent. So she got in in February while she had a - I guess at that point - he was a six-month old at home, running a small business with her husband. But yeah, yeah. But she felt that this was - we needed somebody to go up against this guy if the worst were to happen. And a lot of people didn't really take her very seriously. I think that it's fair to say that - because people didn't think Jaime was likely to lose the primary, they didn't want to do anything to - they wanted her to be able to run the race that she wanted to run. And so I think there was a lot of Democratic establishment players in the state who were not as helpful down their pre-primary. Again, not saying that they were supporting Jaime necessarily, but they just didn't see it as a priority. And there were others who were helpful, but because of that, it was - I think for Marie, it was a kind of lonely primary in a lot of ways - because a lot of people just didn't understand and see the district as she did. And in the end, they were able to clear the field. There was some negotiations and talks between the Democrats down there and that sort of got itself sorted out. And she was the only major Democratic candidate on the ballot in the primary. And she advanced and got 31% of the vote. And then as we all saw, it turned out Jaime was in a lot more trouble than I think any of us really understood. And ended up coming in very narrowly behind Joe Kent, by about a thousand votes, but that's all it took. And again, I didn't see it coming. I was watching this as anybody was - but I did have a friend, Delana Jones, who is a mail consultant, and I worked with her on Victoria Woodards' campaign - and she did Marie's mail as well. And I remember - I think it was the Thursday after the primary, and I was actually sitting in my office at the State Capitol because I was Lieutenant Governor's Chief of Staff at the time - just sort of looking at the numbers. And Joe Kent was not ahead yet, but based on the trend from what was coming in, it was just obvious that he was going to pull ahead once they actually finished counting all these votes. And I texted Marie's consultant and I was like - This is going to happen. OMG, what the hell are we going to do? And we got to talking - and I had actually been planning to take the fall off and reset my career and sort of think about what I wanted to do because I've been doing nonstop Congressional service or campaigns since Trump took office, basically, and was pretty burnt out. But Marie, prior to the primary, had one paid staffer - and she did a great job in what she was able to do, but she had no campaign experience. She just graduated from college. And all of a sudden you're in this tightly, tightly nationally competitive race, if you could get the resources into there. So I said, Well, it's a less than 100-day thing. I know it'll end. And Marie's great - I'd never met Marie before, but I knew Joe Kent was a fascist and we could not let someone like that win a seat in Congress from our state. And we certainly could not do anything less than give everything we could to try and stop it. So I took a detour - I was actually in Taiwan for a lot of August because I had a prearranged trip to do that. So there was a lot of nights of working on candidate questionnaires while I was in Taiwan and then during the day - anyway, so I finally got back onto the ground in Southwest Washington - it was Labor Day weekend. And so for me that - yeah - that is in my mind when my direct involvement began, but that's how I ended up at that point. So it was not a plan, but when Joe Kent wins the primary, you got to scramble the jets. [00:10:09] Crystal Fincher: Got to engage. [00:10:11] Phil Gardner: Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:12] Crystal Fincher: Wow. So looking at just even Marie deciding to run, I completely get feeling the alarm of looking at Joe Kent, feeling that he could win, and the history of the district saying - and he could win it all. What made her think she could win? [00:10:37] Phil Gardner: Yeah. She gets her district, she gets her community. She lives 45 minutes from anywhere, God bless her. I've been out there to that house on that gravel road and it is rural - she gets her water from a well, her Internet from a radio tower. And out there in Skamania County in the Columbia River Gorge, communities are just different when you live that far away from large population centers. And your local government - the resources are just nowhere near what they are in other places. And I think she knew that a lot of communities in the district were a lot like that. And that's true about a third of the population that lives outside of Clark County, and even parts of Clark County are a lot like that. But I also think beyond that dynamic, I think she knew - in this community, but I think all over the country - that Democrats had not done a good job of recruiting candidates who really look like America or really look like their base. The sort of prototypical, let's-go-candidate-recruiting is - Can you find somebody who has won an office before? Can they self-fund? Can they raise a bunch of money from a pre-existing donor network? Do they not have family obligations that are going to get in the way? Can they take time off to work, or do they not even work anymore? And Marie doesn't check any of these boxes, which is why when parties go to recruit, they often - in fact, very, very, very rarely come up with moms who run small businesses, and live out in rural areas, and who have a father from Mexico. But just because of the circumstances of this, she didn't ask for an invite to be the candidate. She stepped up because she saw it needed to be done. And then she won the primary and came up against Joe Kent - and that usual sort of screener for who are we going to run in really competitive races that just didn't occur because it wasn't even on the radar of the folks in DC. But I think she could see that was so necessary in order to connect with people like her - who work in the trades, with Latino voters - who in some parts of the country, we've had a ton of difficulty in the Trump years, with a lot of sort of conspiracies and misinformation that goes around, but nevertheless has struggled in places like Florida and South Texas. But also in the wake of the Dobbs decision, having a woman who had recently had a miscarriage and who was having a family and planning to grow her family, be able to talk about the real consequences and impacts of Joe Kent's nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions. So I think she was - for Joe Kent - a particularly good foil, but she is also, I think, as anybody who has watched her, she is just a very gifted and talented public servant. I think it's wonderful that this is the way in which people have come to learn about her, but she has been down there in Skamania County really doing that work. She ran for County Commissioner in 2016. And Hillary Clinton, I think she outran Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points in a rural red county. So she knows what she's doing. I guess that is one message - I don't want to leave people with this notion that what happened here was a fluke or unexpected or not. It happened because she knew that this opportunity was there and then decided to take advantage of it. And slowly everybody came on board, or at least enough to get us over the finish line. [00:14:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And that was apparent for a while. This - one, it takes a great candidate to win, period. Even if you have a great team around you, if you don't have a candidate who does connect with people, who does understand the district, and who is really - feels a personal responsibility for making things better, it doesn't connect, certainly not at this level. So she was a great candidate - saw the opportunity, stepped up thankfully, and was ready to run. But it absolutely took a great strategy, which you put together. You shared publicly a strategy memo that you put together basically saying, Hey, can Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez win? Yes, she can. And this, in detail, is how. What did you identify? What was in that plan? [00:15:13] Phil Gardner: Yeah. So I wrote that back in August when it was - there were sort of two camps that happened right after the primary. There was a bunch of people who were like, Oh my gosh, this is obviously competitive. We have to jump at this. Let's do this. And then there are others who were like, We've got no shot. This just is not going to happen. And so I said, Okay, then I guess we need to explain to people who I don't think should have needed explanation, but did, that this is how we're going to win this race and just show beyond a doubt that we could. And so there are three components to it. The first is making sure that every Democrat knows who Joe Kent is and turns out in votes. And not just partisan Democrats, but progressives, working class folks, everybody who lives in Vancouver and Clark County - which is the most Democratic area - just very mobilize your base. This is stuff that Democrats, when they're on their game, know how to do - and devoting the resources and the attention to making sure that was going to happen. The second was in the rural areas - the six counties outside of Clark County - which run from where Marie lives in the Columbia River Gorge, all the way out to the Pacific coast, and then all the way up into Thurston County, nearly to the State Capitol. There are some cities in there that we knew we could maybe win, but - and then Pacific County, we thought we could win and we did win. But broadly speaking, we knew in those rural areas - we're probably not going to win a lot of these communities. But it makes a huge difference if we are getting 35% of the vote there versus getting 30% of the vote there. And I think that is something that Democrats have all too often written off about rural areas is - it's sort of, Well, we're going to lose those areas by a lot, so we shouldn't even try. And losing them by 10 points less than you lost them is a bunch of votes that could be your winning margin, depending on the sort of nature of the district or the state. So we wanted to take that really seriously. And we knew that Marie was a really great candidate to connect with those folks. And then the third aspect of it was - and these folks lived in all kinds of geographies - but making this very direct appeal to Republicans and Independents, who - anyone who supported Jaime Herrera Beutler, and just really could not stomach Joe Kent. And that was one of the most apparent things coming out of the primary. And the initial sort of looking at - who can Marie win - started with - who cannot stomach Joe Kent. And that is a very long list of people because Joe Kent often seems like he is intentionally trying to exclude and ostracize. And in fact, he is very intentionally trying to do that much of the time. But people can actually hear what he has to say and don't like the things he's saying. And I still don't think he's really ever caught on to that. But we knew that there were a bunch of people who supported Jaime Herrera Beutler, who maybe voted for Mitt Romney, but really didn't like Trump and the sort of direction the party was going under that. But these were not people who would typically vote for a Democrat, or really even consider a Democrat, unless you went out and made this very specific case to them and made it - not try to trick them, just be very honest, which was that - Look, Joe Kent is terrible. Here's all the terrible things in case you weren't aware. I'm Marie, I'm not a Republican, but I believe in democracy. I am going to listen to you. I'm going to hold town halls. I'm not going to embarrass you on the national stage. And asking those Republicans and those conservatives even to - again, not necessarily become Democrats, but just lend us your vote in this election against this guy, so we can beat him. That's basically what it said on paper. And then of course, the challenge is doing all of that all at once, and raising the money as you're spending it and etc, etc. But yeah, but that was the core. And we stuck with that through the end. [00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: And so that is really interesting. An experience that I went through - you talked about letting people know who Joe Kent is - it is actually hard to do justice to how bad and scary he is by just explaining. And was in a number of situations with - did the KIRO election coverage, right? So talking to people there in the newsroom, another Republican consultant, right? It's just - trying to explain how just problematic he is. And they're just like, Well, maybe well, I heard it was moderating in the general election and he's moving that direction. And I'm like, No, you don't understand. And I had watched a number of his video clips, just researching going into there. It's just like - Okay, I just need you - sit down, watch this. And they watched a clip of him just - it's like he was not in the same reality as other people. Just conspiracy theories - denied - like January 6th was some CIA conspiracy, just all these things. And one, just - my goodness, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez also sitting there next to him and having to debate someone who's not making sense in the same kind of reality that you are, but also trying to explain things. But after watching him directly, they're just like, Oh, okay, I get it. It was so alarming. Even Republicans there were alarmed. And so there absolutely was an opportunity to mobilize people and to get votes from people who traditionally didn't vote for Democrats. Now with that, how did you negotiate and how did you move forward and talk through - Marie is a Democrat, she has Democratic values - making that appeal to Republicans. How do you broaden a base while maintaining consistency with your values? [00:21:13] Phil Gardner: Yeah. And it was a daily balance and a sort of figuring it out as we went. A lot of it was based on - well, it was mostly Marie's instincts. That's another - she did a lot of press during the election and afterwards. And as a communications professional who has prepped a lot of candidates for interviews, she does not require much at all. We chat about sort of the points she may want to make and if there's sort of one way she's explaining something and I'm like that may be misinterpreted, but by and large, she just knows what - she can smell what's good and what's off. And I think she knew what the media in her district was going to be. So using her as a guidepost - you know, she - right to repair, which is this issue that she talks about a lot, which is this sort of basic concept of if you own a piece of mechanical equipment or electronic equipment, you should be able to repair it. And there's home medical devices, tractors, iPhones, there's this long litany of things. And I will admit when I first heard her talking about this, I was like, This is, I don't, this is not a top of mind issue for voters. And it isn't - yet. I think it's becoming, partly because she is talking about it more and more in national media. But what was so interesting about it is people took it seriously. And it was very different from what they'd heard, not just a Democrat, but any sort of candidate talk about. And it did feel, the more they thought about it, more relevant to their day-to-day life than Joe Kent's latest vaccine gene therapy conspiracy or something. She also talked a lot about the dangers of microplastics, which is something that there's a bunch of research that - there's just more and more presence of these almost-permanent plastics in very small quantities in placentas and fish and just anything you can measure. And what better way to replace all that plastic packaging than with paper and cardboard products grown in Washington's Third Congressional District. She took this very, again, not something that was in the headlines or a lot of people were talking about, but managed to connect it right back into voters lived experiences and daily lives, and talk about in a way that was different from Democrats. So she wasn't trying to sound like a Republican. She was just trying to sound and be like a different Democrat. And it is working, [00:23:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, no. And I did notice that - the first thing I noticed was in the broader conversation about how Democrats, how the country sometimes is becoming more polarized - that bluer places are becoming bluer, redder places are becoming redder, and a number of Democrats are not performing well in rural areas. And to your point earlier, lots of times Democrats are not trying to compete in rural areas - thinking, Man, I just saw the margin in these other races when someone else tried to run, there's no way I'm gonna win there. So what's the point? But you saw the point. Hey, if you improve performance and you win in other areas, that's a win altogether. And one, her being a rural resident period and understanding the different context of life in rural areas, which is different. And I think a lot of people who do not live in rural areas, are not familiar with, or haven't spent a lot of time in rural areas - underappreciate just how different day-to-day life can look and be. It can be very, very different. And some of the things that you talk about in a metropolitan context, just there is no context for that thing out there. So talking about it just does not connect. It's not relevant. And I feel like, especially with a lot of Democrats not showing up in rural areas, that they are hearing lots of things from Democrats that they just don't see in their daily lives or that address their specific challenges. And Marie was able to directly speak to that, based on her own experience and really caring about making it better. And showing up and the campaign showing up - showing up is - you can't win without it. You got to do that. You did it well. You got the message out. But also trying to pull together a campaign, a Congressional-sized campaign, without a lot of external help was a challenge you had to deal with. There was lots of coverage about the national party not helping as much as they did in some other close races - whether it's because they didn't consider this being close enough to engage with or not - not receiving the kind of support that you, seeing it as a competitive race, probably hoped for. What was that experience like and how did you manage your way through that? [00:26:31] Phil Gardner: Yeah, it was excruciating at points. It was very frustrating, because we had an internal poll that we released publicly as far back as late August that showed Marie ahead by two. And this was at a time in national politics when the generic ballot was a little bit better for Democrats. And then there was this sort of whole freak out during the fall. And then I guess it turned out to be not quite that bad. But we had polling done by a very reputable pollster - I know people are trained to be skeptical of internal polling, but we hired a very reputable firm that everybody back in D.C. knew. And - [00:27:08] Crystal Fincher: By the way, most campaigns do. [00:27:11] Phil Gardner: Yeah. Like the campaigns - one, they're not going to spend all this money on research that's bunk. But it was, I think, two things. One was this knowledge that this district was - I don't think you'll find this in writing anywhere, somebody will say it on the record - but the district was drawn to elect a Republican. It's part of how our redistricting system works - is there's an incumbent protection that goes on. And this was Jaime Herrera Beutler's district. And in order to forge an agreement, they agreed to keep the incumbent safe. So with that knowledge that this district was drawn to elect a Republican, the notion that it could flip to a Democrat in a midterm with a Democrat in the White House, just - I think no matter what sort of facts you tried to put in front of people, they just could never get past that. But I think also that - I think people didn't - if Marie had been some, a man with a nice haircut - I just think there was something about who she was, and the fact that she was a young mom, and had never run for federal office before that people just thought, Well, surely she can't be putting together a campaign that could actually win. This is a novelty that's happening out there. And that was frustrating. But I could also see, as we were trying to convince people of our credibility, that our fundraising was going extremely well, especially online. We've - driven by a lot of that media coverage, but then also the long list of people who are horrified by Joe Kent. In the end - third quarter, the third fundraising quarter - Marie raised $2.2 million in the third quarter, which was more than any other Democrat challenging for an open seat or against a Republican incumbent, except for the guy running against Marjorie Taylor Greene. But Marie outraised Democratic incumbents in frontline districts. And I thought at that point, surely they will now see that this is not some fly-by-night scam we're running out here - it looks non-traditional because it must be, but surely now. And even at that point - no, Marie was never named one of the DCCC's Red to Blue candidates. And we asked for that - we knew that there was, it was unlikely that we were going to get air support that we can't legally coordinate, but we just wanted the designation so that when we called donors in other states, they would know we were - because there's a lot of these donors who, if you don't, if you're not Red to Blue, they don't think you're a serious candidate. And that would have cost the DCCC nothing and they wouldn't give it to us. And, of course now it's - they're apologetic and such, but I don't know - I try not to dwell on it and be bitter about it because in the end, we won. And I do think there's a silver lining in that because it wasn't on the DCCC's radar, the national Republicans also did not really get it on their radar. The national Republicans never spent anything for Joe Kent, which - we had always anticipated that as soon as we had our big fundraising quarter and started running our ads, they would come in with all these negative ads to slime Marie, and it just never came. And I don't know whether that was because the Republicans never really believed it was competitive, or because they just really didn't actually want Joe Kent in their caucus. And their attitude was - Well, if he doesn't make it, it's not our fault. It's his fault. And we've got a lot of other people who aren't so difficult that we're going to spend on. So I don't know, but it was - and he himself had a terrible, he was basically unable to raise any significant amount of money after the primary. Because I think once he had defeated Jaime Herrera Beutler, there was just not a lot of energy. And he was going around telling people that he had this under control - it was a safe Trump seat. And by the time he tried to pivot, it was too late to get his donors to notice or care. So that is one thing - I actually, I think Joe Kent ran a terrible campaign in the primary. He just had Trump's endorsement and that was enough. And then they continued that terrible campaign into the general and it finally caught up with them. But, yeah, it was still on the inside - it was, and if you were on the ground there, anybody who was able to come - it felt very competitive. We could see that obviously we had all of the Democrats - anyone who voted for Joe Biden was behind us. And we were picking off these - elected Republicans were willing to appear in TV ads to support Marie. And it's - well, surely there's some amount of people who are coming along with this because we can see them. It was just not clear whether it'd be quite enough. But the notion that on Election Night, it leaned Republican - I think if the rankers who had put it in that category been on the ground, I think they would have felt very differently. Because it was not a surprise that it was competitive to folks who were in the picture. [00:32:09] Crystal Fincher: Right. It was absolutely competitive - I think, just looking from the outside, it was - Hey, this is going to be close. Is she going to get enough? But especially in that situation, I think part of my personal frustration with some of the national establishment is that we also have to be willing to fight, and that we can't only engage when we feel like it's a sure thing. And if anything was worth fighting for, surely it was worth fighting - even if you hadn't yet engaged with how good of a candidate Marie was, you certainly could see how terrifying the prospect of having Joe Kent as a Congressperson is and was just unacceptable. And he was so far outside of what so many people consider acceptable or moral or decent. And we certainly have seen Republicans as a whole become more extreme, but he was like tip-of-the-spear extreme and proud of it and resistant to any kind of advice to do anything else. And so I am so thankful that you saw that opportunity, that we don't have Joe Kent as a representative. But also hope that the things that you talked about, the reasons why maybe they didn't support Marie - create a lot of people a lot of reflection - and people who do have the ability to influence the people and the ability to influence where resources are spent locally and nationally, starting from just who an ideal candidate is. We've talked before on this show looking, hearing - Oh man, they're a great candidate. And a lot of times that's code for a guy who's a military veteran, a guy who is a business owner. And really it's code for this person has a profile that could be a Republican, but they're a Democrat. And reality is so much broader than that. The community is so much broader than that. And the things that people are struggling with today just throughout everyday life are felt by so many more people. Even who is considered the working class a lot of times is coded as just white people. And it's so many people. And so having a young mom who is running - family running an auto shop, living in rural Skamania County - was someone who was absolutely relatable. And I hope we learned those lessons - certainly at the legislative level, candidates who look more, who are like Marie, or who are candidates of color or LGBTQ candidates are actually outperforming and increasing turnout to greater degrees than candidates in majority communities are. So I really do hope we take out the filter that sometimes prevents us from seeing the people who are the most connected within their communities and who do understand them the most. Going in and just how you went about defining who Joe Kent was and how you went about defining who Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez was - to people who maybe they realize an election is happening when they get the ballot in the mail, they were not tuned in throughout the months prior in the campaign, and you've got to reach them somehow, maybe not in person. How did you go about doing that? And what was your strategy there? [00:35:41] Phil Gardner: Yeah. In running against Joe Kent, this was one of the challenging things because as you alluded - well, you had said earlier - it's hard to understand how bad he is unless you sit down and really take the time to - Oh my God, he really - he really thinks that. And of course, we don't have the luxury of voters actually mostly having the time or interest to do that. So it was a real - what are the worst things of the terrible things he's said and done that we're going to be able to bring up? And we had some polling to help with this, but we also just used some intuition behind what was easy to explain and what was really going to click. And so we narrowed around a top five hits on Joe Kent because we would spice it up a little. But one is his national ban on abortion with no exceptions, which was his stated stance. Another was he told the New York Times that he wanted to put Anthony Fauci, they wanted Fauci arrested for murder. And there was one part in a Rotary that never got reported because it was a private event - but I was there - and someone stood up and said, Do you really believe this - that Anthony Fauci should be indicted for murder? And Joe Kent's response was, Well, he'll get a trial. This is what this man actually believes. [00:36:52] Crystal Fincher: Geez. Yeah. [00:36:54] Phil Gardner: Then there was the election denial, January 6th stuff - I guess that was actually - we mostly talked about that for the framework of Joe Kent wanting to abolish vote-by-mail. We found that was something that polled very terribly because - and I was a little skeptical to use it because I thought it would just be so unfathomable to people at this point that they wouldn't really believe anybody could or would do that. But it really did click. I'm glad we leaned into that. He wanted to ban immigration for 20 years to establish a white majority. And that's a conversation stopper in a lot of rooms. And what was interesting is that is the one that more than anything else, Joe Kent would react very emotionally negative to. The other stuff, he wouldn't really try to dispute it. But that one he would. I don't know exactly why that is. I think on a certain level, he may know how messed up and horrific and toxic - and he may just know that he definitely doesn't want his brand to actually be associated with the people sort of spending every day of their lives pushing for that policy, which are people who exist in white nationalist circles that Joe hangs out in - but yeah, it was - Oh, and then the fifth one, which he started talking about in the campaign - and he went to the right - was this whole defunding the FBI. Which, as a Democrat running in a Trump district, obviously we thought a lot about how was she going to talk about law enforcement because it's a top issue in any district, but especially when you're trying to win Republicans. And then Joe Kent just comes in and says, I think we should get rid of the FBI. And bunch of moms in Longview and Centralia, if you tell them - Are you going to sleep better at night with the FBI gone? - that's just not something that resonates with a lot of people in the communities that we needed to win over from the Republicans. So that was the sort of cornucopia of awful-Joe Kent. But there was even terrible stuff that doesn't even make that list. He wanted to legalize machine guns. He doesn't believe people should watch professional sports because it's emasculating to watch other men. Yeah, no, this is an actual thing. [00:38:51] Crystal Fincher: I didn't even know this one. Oh my gosh. [00:38:53] Phil Gardner: Yeah. His tweets are just - there's just so many, there's just so much - but a lot of it, it's can we really turn this into a mail piece or a TV ad? Probably not. But it is just so weird. And then with Marie, it was a lot of biography, but then basically just doing the counterpoint to a lot of what Joe was doing. She supports abortion rights. She believes in voting rights. She is not focused on these bizarre cultural conspiracies. And Joe said and did horrible, horrible mailers and statements regarding healthcare for trans people. And there was a debate in Longview where there was an audience participation point and they clearly organized to have his people come up and try to bait Marie on all these sort of cultural things about sports and bathroom. And this part never aired, I think, because the host realized that he had completely lost control of the room. But Marie would not yield an inch on any of those issues, and doesn't on any LGBTQ issues, and doesn't on any core rights issues - because that's who she is and what she believes. And that authenticity is what really matters and not engaging on these things that are so clearly just meant to divide. It was both mirroring him and just not swinging at the pitches that she didn't want to swing at. [00:40:09] Crystal Fincher: And that's so important. One, I think people in rural and even suburban situations that I've been in - there are people who understand that they may disagree with you on some things. But they want to be able to trust you. They want to know that you're going to stand by your word and that what you see is what you get. And so her having the courage to stand by her convictions, I think helped - even with people who - Hey, I'm a Republican, you're a Democrat, but I can see that you seem to want to help, that you seem to understand the challenges that we're facing, and you get things done. Am I going to agree with you a hundred percent? No. But do I think that you understand how to help me? I do. I think you can help. I think that makes a big difference. And just the campaign not taking the bait is a good thing and not engaging earnestly with bad-faith tactics and calling out the bad-faith tactics, instead of trying to fact check or engage in all the minutiae and all that was a smart decision. And one I hope other people see how you handle it, see how others handle it, and do the same thing. So now, we're at the point of the election. You have done a good job communicating who Joe Kent is, which - I really don't think people understand how challenging that is - even, some people think, Well, he's horrible. It must be really easy to run against him. It's hard to convince people - people who are horrible in a special way, impressively horrible, unusually horrible. It's hard to make people believe that someone actually is that horrible. People's first thought - Surely he doesn't believe that, man, this is a misstatement. This is an exaggeration. So you did that very well. Going through, turning out the votes, turning out the base, how did you approach just getting everyone to get their ballot in? [00:41:59] Phil Gardner: Yeah, well, we tried to work the mobilization messaging into those same persuasion messaging that we were doing, like the vote-by-mail. We would say, Hey, not only are we reminding you to get your ballot in and that your ballots coming in the mail, but you should be aware the other guy, Joe Kent - he wants to get rid of this whole system. He wants us to go back to standing in line at polling stations. So if you'd ever like to vote in another election by mail again, we would really appreciate your support for Marie. But it was a mix of very traditional mobilization operations. I guess with the voter mobilization, this was one of the challenges coming in after the primary was - to really do a lot of voter mobilization programs well, it requires money and investment and time. It's always put to the side by a lot of campaigns so they try to start it in July or something. To really have it really effective, you really need to have it in place starting pretty early in the year, depending on the size of the race. That just wasn't really present as much. There was a Coordinated Campaign presence from the State Party because Patty Murray was on the ballot, but there was nothing at the scale that we would have liked or would have been considered proper. But I thought that there was - the only option that – well, another thing is we couldn't really hire staff at this point from other place because any sort of top-field talent is generally already on a campaign at this point. But there was a lot of energy from volunteers, and we noticed that. And so we tried this – it goes by a lot of names – the snowflake model, where you're really taking volunteers and giving them job duties and responsibilities that in a lot of campaigns would really be paid staff - and I think ideally should be paid staff, or at least people should be compensated for work that they're doing that they're not volunteering on. But it's a complicated model because if people just lose interest or don't have the enthusiasm, it doesn't really gel together. But there was enough, I think, both positive enthusiasm for Marie and antipathy for Joe Kent that - our field director had never worked in politics before. He'd never worked on any campaign before. He was a friend of Marie's from college, who had just run a restaurant for five years that had gone under because of some supply chain issues. But he was very, very organized and very good at logistics. We hooked him up with a brilliant strategist in Oregon named Hannah Love, who knows all sorts of field and mobilization stuff, and she transferred knowledge. Eventually, we had 500 people coming out to canvasses. So it was a lot of traditional stuff like that, but in a sort of non-traditional way - mixed with our messaging. And then there were very specific communities who we wanted to go and talk to and make sure that they understood who Joe Kent was. One was the Ukrainian community, which is quite large in the Portland metro area, including on the Vancouver side. A lot of the members of the Ukrainian community here in the Pacific Northwest - it originated with folks who were fleeing the Soviet Union because they were evangelical Christians or Baptists and were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. Not everybody who's come over here since then is also a pastor or something, but they have family or friends - and so it's a very religiously conservative community. But they knew what Joe Kent's stance was on support for Ukraine, which is - Joe Kent doesn't think there should be any. In fact, he thinks it's all sort of a conspiracy theory to start World War III that Biden and Obama are all-in on and such. They didn't agree with Marie on a lot of things, but they knew that. Marie came and showed up and talked to them and looked them in the eye and said, I'm not going to abandon you and your family. And I think that really resonated. And then also up in Pacific County, the Chinook Indian Nation, which has lived in the mouth of Columbia since time immemorial - they have been seeking federal recognition for many, many decades. There's no real question that they have all the necessary paperwork, and people should look into this online if they want to learn more about it, but it really is a travesty that they've not yet been federally recognized. Marie met with the Chairman and learned about this and heard - and we put out a statement making very clear that she supports recognition and would fight for it in Congress. I know that the Chairman and members of the Chinook indian Nation made sure that everybody who lives in the district knew that. It's a lot of this very targeted outreach that - the cookie cutter appeals and mass appeals are necessary and good - but we knew we were going to have to squeeze every - look under every rock or every mountain, whatever metaphor you want to use. It's not just one thing, but it was a mix of things. [00:46:17] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you did a great job. So now we're to Election Night. What did it feel like when you got the results? [00:46:25] Phil Gardner: It felt really good. I guess we all lived through this, but how I was looking at it is - because our results didn't come until 8pm and I think the results from the East Coast were not looking quite as bad for Democrats as I think we had feared. And so I was like, Oh, okay, well, maybe we could do this. Because for all that we did, just so much of this is just national tides that you ultimately don't have first-hand control over, but - [00:46:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I should mention - going up to the results on the East Coast, that there was a lot of talk about races narrowing in the final weeks. There were a lot of internal polls that showed races narrowing in the final weeks of the campaign. So there was a big question about - are things falling out of our grip democratically? And so there was cause for a little bit of relief at least. And especially as we got further from the East Coast, further West - things were looking pretty good. And then 8 o'clock hits. [00:47:20] Phil Gardner: Yes. So we're there in the Hilton - at the Clark County Democrats, their Election Night party usually is. And we knew that what we got on Election Night was going to be the highest that we were going to get. It was going to be our high-water mark - because Joe Kent, one of his conspiracy theories was that everybody should return their ballot on Election Day so then they know, they can't figure out how many fake ballots they need to create if we vote late. It's just bonkers stuff. But as a consequence of that, we knew that he was going to gain in these later counts. So I said, If we're not ahead on election night, then that's probably ballgame, folks. But even so, we needed to be ahead by a big margin. We needed to be ahead in Clark County by more than 10 points. And it came in, and I think we're ahead by 12, 12 and a half. And it's a little more exciting in these districts with multiple counties because there's some suspense where it's - Oh, okay, but what are we going to get in Lewis and what are we going to get in Pacific? And they just kept coming in, and they kept coming in and hitting those marks. And I was just like, Marie was just - we always knew that it could happen, but then for it actually to be happening - it just felt very surreal and out-of-body. And she was just overjoyed. And of course, very quickly composed herself to go get the speech done, and do - I think she did 9 or 10 interviews that night. But it was, it felt really good. But at the same time, we also didn't feel like we could truly celebrate because we did know it was going to narrow. And so the race ended up getting called - Saturday night after the election was when all the media outlets came out. But I personally felt confident that I no longer had worry bugs crawling around my head that we were going to win - I felt that way on Wednesday night. And that was when I knew how many ballots had come in and I could see what the margins were. And I could also see - using these analytic models on the back end, I could essentially see the uncounted ballots - what those were probably going to be like. Because the ballots are roughly counted in the order they're received. So at that point, we know that there's this whole big batch of Election Day votes for Joe Kent, and I knew they would be better for him - but you look at the partisan modeling and I'm like - that's really not going to be quite enough for him. But there's one thing to know that and one thing to actually say it publicly, because you want to respect the process and that tiny chance you could get egg on your face. But that was, that was almost, that was excruciating in a sense. I mean, it was nice to have that internal confidence that we knew, but it was still maddening to go that many days after - but much better than obviously the alternative outcome. And they called that race Saturday night. And Sunday morning we were on a plane to DC. So she got to new member orientation just in time, but - not a day too late. [00:49:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I saw that. I was like, that was quick. [00:50:01] Phil Gardner: Yep, it was interesting. They had invited Joe Kent, but they had not invited Marie at first. [00:50:07] Crystal Fincher: Interesting. [00:50:08] Phil Gardner: Yes. And then what they do in a lot of these races that are close, they invite both of them. And so then we were both invited and then Joe Kent was uninvited. But the materials for him were still lying around - I was at one point accidentally handed Joe Kent's parking pass for Capitol Hill. And I was - I'm sorry, this is actually not the person who won that election. And they were very apologetic and I get their - so it was just odd, almost - seeing the physical artifacts of this alternative reality that could have happened. [00:50:37] Crystal Fincher: I'm glad we are not in that timeline - that would be a very bad timeline. We have more than enough challenges in this timeline that we do have, but that was such an exciting and uplifting race. So now, because no one can ever rest and because Congressional campaigns start as soon as they end - now there's talk about, Okay, so can she hold the district? Can she get re-elected? It's one thing to have an aberration like Joe Kent on the ballot, but maybe that doesn't happen next time. How do you think she should be approaching these next couple of years? How can she hold a seat? [00:51:12] Phil Gardner: Yeah, I think the starting point is to understand that she can. There are Democrats who represent districts that are more Republican or voted for Trump by a wider margin. Mary Peltola up in Alaska is the most recent example, but there's also a member from northern Maine named Jared Golden, who has a very timber-friendly, very rural district that shares some similarities to the Third. So we know it can be done, so we're not trying to do something nobody's ever done. But it's going to require her basically doing what she said during the campaign. There's not going to be some giant pivot - it's the same person she's been. I think without - well, first of all, I think it's quite likely that Joe Kent runs again. I think Joe Kent is her most likely 2024 opponent because Joe Kent was planning on winning and then running again. And we didn't even get into this, but he apparently has no actual job - so he's not busy doing something else during the day other than running for office. So I anticipate he will run again, and I think he may have the name ID to be the Republican nominee again. But even without that, in the eventuality that Marie ends up running against somebody who is less conspiratorial on the Republican side, I think that voters are going to give her a chance. I think a lot of these Republican voters who originally voted for her because they were soured on Joe Kent - I don't think, at least from the conversations I've had with them and then some of the community members who have supported them - they are still with Marie. There will be a Republican. I don't know who it'll be. I don't know exactly how that'll impact how people make their choices down there. But it's at this point an opportunity for Marie to show that she is that independent voice, that rural Democrat, that Democrat from the trades, working mom - and show people what a sort of different kind of politics and different kind of Democrat is. One of the first decisions Marie has made so far - back in Congress, there are these sort of ideological caucuses. There's a Progressive Caucus, and there's the more conservative one called the Blue Dogs, and then there's one sort of in the middle called the New Dems. And Marie's decided not to join any of them. She's joining the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who was supportive during the campaign too. But I think she doesn't feel like she fits into a box really well, and her district doesn't really fit into a box well. And she's gonna need to be seen and be different from the sort of Puget Sound-area Democrats in the delegation and figure out exactly what that path is with her district. Because the nice thing is she showed up not owing anybody any favors, because so few people believed in her. So I'm just very excited to see - she's 34. She's born in 1988. It is just so amazing that we have, from our state, this just incredible public servant who really does represent generational change and change in a lot of ways, and is doing it in a seat where we beat a fascist. I'm just so excited and delighted to see what she's able to do. [00:53:52] Crystal Fincher: I love it. And obviously, you did an incredible job on this campaign. You did great work. What other staffers or volunteers should we be on the lookout for from the campaign who are also superstars? [00:54:05] Phil Gardner: Great question. So we had at maximum five staff. Tim Gowen, who was our Field Director, is going to be joining Marie's district office. Peter Sandifer, who is our Political Director. Julian Chapin, who read Michelle Goldberg's New York Times article, emailed us and said, I'd love to drive across the country and come work for you - and that's how you get to become a Deputy Field Director on our campaign because that's the kind of world it was. And then Madeleine Newton, who was the staffer before the primary and stayed on as the Deputy Campaign Manager. And then a whole suite of consultants from around the Seattle area and some back in DC. I'm also just excited to see a lot of these volunteers who were engaged for the first time - what they end up doing. We had a lot of people who said they voted for Jaime Herrera Butler in the primary and then knocked on doors for Marie - it was the first candidate they ever knocked on doors for. It was, there are certain campaigns - they're usually presidential campaigns - but there are certain campaigns that really just leave a lasting impact on the people who were a part of them. And I think for a lot of people in Southwest Washington, this is going to be one of them. And I'm excited to see where that goes. [00:55:06] Crystal Fincher: I'm so excited about Southwest Washington. It's politically, in my opinion, the most exciting area in the state and the area with the biggest opportunity in the state. Just looking legislatively, there are districts that are so close that have been so close that have been on the other side of 48-52%, 49-51%, 49-50% races over the past couple few cycles. With a Democrat in Congress, new people engaged in the district, people hearing from Democrats and talking to Democrats who maybe just hadn't before - presents so much of an opportunity. What do you see the opportunity being downballot moving forward? [00:55:47] Phil Gardner: Yeah, well, I do think there - in Clark County especially, which this is the biggest county in the district, 61-63% of the vote where Vancouver is. But then there's a band of suburbs right around Vancouver as well. And Marie won by 10 points there. And it is one of those counties, like the suburbs of Atlanta or the Dallas suburbs, that once Trump came on the scene, there was a lot of moderate suburbanites who were - I don't know about this direction that this party's going. And so in addition to Joe Kent sort of accelerating that and Marie being appealing, there has been this phenomenon over the last six to eight years down there, where those Clark County suburbs are becoming much more friendly towards Democrats. And I think that, like you said, we keep getting real close. We redrew two of them pretty significantly and got up to 48%, 47% in a few of these. But I think it will be interesting and I'm optimistic that - there's almost a tipping point in a lot of these communities, where once the sort of prevailing cultural norms become more progressive, become more open-minded, become more friendly to folks on the Democratic side of the aisle - that that just keeps going. And I don't quite know where it stops. I think it'll take some time for it to happen, but I think it's going to keep going in that direction. And I think that's going to create some real opportunities for Democrats in those - in the 17th and the 18th, especially. But also need to run great candidates - candidates who are going to work hard, who know districts. And I will leave that to the folks working in state politics to figure that out. But I think that candidates who fit profiles that we know voters are going to like, we know this person is compelling, we know there's so much about them that fits in with our messaging, really making the person the message. I think we should look more seriously at those sort of opportunities and maybe not so much at what do we think is always going to be the best sort of candidate based on what's always been done. [00:57:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Any parting thoughts that you would leave with people about things that you learned from this campaign or how people should be operating moving forward? [00:57:53] Phil Gardner: Gosh, I both feel like I've learned so much and had no time to really stop and process at all. But I guess I'll go as big picture as we can get because that was a motivator for me in this, which is that I - sure many people listening to this - have felt very deep fear and concern that we're slipping into a sort of very anti-democratic culture and government. And this creeping fascism that we see all around us in different forms - the trajectory is really, really, really concerning. I believe Joe Kent represents that, and that was a big motivating factor for why I was willing to throw up everything to go and do this. And then it turned out Marie was fantastic as well, and so we get sort of a twofer out of it. But I think after this election - because Joe Kent lost, because so many of these election deniers around the country lost, I do think we should feel heartened that there is apparently a bottom for a bunch of voters. And there are consequences to saying these things. But I also still feel that history is a long time and this is just one election cycle and we can't rest on our laurels. So as I look forward into 2024 and beyond, I would love love nothing more than to get back to the days where we're just fighting and trying to advance progressive causes on the sort of traditional D versus R axis that we may have known. But I think at least for the time being, there is also this very dark anti-democratic force that is out there and very present - and it's going to require more than I think what is typically thought of as being necessary. The careerists are not going to be able to solve this. It is a problem beyond the people just clocking in to work on campaigns. And we all work very hard and I think there are many brilliant people, but this is a force beyond what we have dealt with before. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we make sure that doesn't grow and doesn't go on. And again, I think we gave it a good bop on the nose this time, but I think it may be back and don't take our eyes off that ball. So that was a little darker than I intended, but I do think it's important. [00:59:55] Crystal Fincher: But real. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about that. It's real, but there is hope. There is cause for hope. [01:00:04] Phil Gardner: Yes. [01:00:05] Crystal Fincher: And I think that in so many circumstances, I needn't look any further than my own family history - that that has been the only thing that has got people through some of those times - engaging, being active, doing what you can, and just holding onto that hope, and continuing to push. So appreciate so much you joining us today to have this conversation. Thank you for saving us from Joe Kent. And for putting Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez on our radar and in our Congress. Just such a huge win. Such an exciting win. I know some - Election Night - I'm just like, Look at the Third District. People are like, Okay, what were you working on? I'm like, But look at the Third District. And stuff that I was working on turned out really well, I was really excited about that. But this was as exciting, I think, as a result gets because - I'd shared with people before - certainly felt that this race was worth engaging in, and fighting for, and knew it should be close. Didn't know if it could be. So had thought about the reality of Joe Kent and allies having significant control in our country and it was terrifying. So yeah, just so excited to be able to talk about this race with you, and such a great job on both the strategy and execution. And I also love hearing that your Field Director was new to politics and knocked out of the park anyway. And you were just a scrappy bunch who fought through without any - very little establishment support - and just made a way. So really good job, really exciting. And thank you for joining us today. [01:01:43] Phil Gardner: Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. [01:01:45] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Felder, Surber and Hartzell get into removing leaves, taking some voicemails and HVAC talk. Plus fruit flies in the freezer, stealing from a smoothie shop vs stealing from Dairy Queen, catching the belt from your folks and do you have hairy legs? The gang talks AP poll trying to guess the CFP rankings, Blue Dogs and Felder's kid is a Hartbeet. What is your ideal barbecue plate?! If it ain't pulled pork don't even bother!!!Rate. Review. Subscribe.#LETSGROWSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lance Tarrance is one of the founding fathers of modern political polling. In this conversation, he talks what drew him into the world of GOP politics, an inflection point working at the US Census Bureau, going to work for Ronald Reagan's pollster, then opening up his own firm The Tarrance Group. Lance goes deep on several of his interesting races...including beating Bill Clinton in his first gubernatorial re-elect in 1980, the upset Senate win of Mitch McConnell in 1984, his involvement in the California gubernatorial race that gave rise to the so-called “Bradley Effect”, his analysis predicting the rise of a Donald Trump-type candidate & many great stories and insights from his incredible career in politics.IN THIS EPISODE…Barry Goldwater inspires Lance to take his career in a dramatically different direction than he'd planned…Lance helps disrupt Hubert Humphrey in the '68 Nixon campaign…How working for the US Census Bureau changed Lance's life…Lance enters the world of political polling, working with Regan pollster Dick Wirthlin…Lance makes a professional bet on partisan realignment in the South & Sun Belt…The crosstabs that Lance used to help Republicans take the South…Lance helps engineer the defeat of Governor Bill Clinton in his 1980 re-election…Lance's key role handling the polling for Mitch McConnell's 1984 upset Senate win…The story behind the most famous US Senate ad ever for McConnell's '84 race…Lance elects a Republican Governor of California in 1982 amidst the so-called “Bradley Effect”…Lance's prescient writing and analysis that (partially) anticipated the rise of Donald Trump…Lance on what makes an effective pollster…AND academic treatises, John Adams, Roger Ailes, American University, the American Voter Model, backwoods Kentucky, Vince Barabba, Blue Dogs, Bluetick hounds, Tom Bradley, Ron Brownstein, CVS pharmacies, Charlie Cannell, Jimmy Carter, Jack Casserly, the Center for Political Studies, Hillary Clinton, John Connolly, John Sherman Cooper, Mario Cuomo, Dallas-ites, George Deukmejian, Walt DeVries, Eastman Kodak, Tom Edsall, esprit d 'corps, Eureka, Merv Field, flanking moves, GW, Georgetown, Ed Goeas, the Harvard Kennedy School, Hee Haw, Stephan Helgesen, Dee Huddleston, Hubert Humphrey, ivory towers, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Les Kish, Ed Koch, lone wolves, Rocky Marciano, Marielitos, Larry McCarthy, Gale McGee, George McGovern, mea culpa advertising, monocrats, Dick Morris, outsider revolutions, Charles Percy, Ross Perot, Kevin Phillips, pick-up truck license fees, political engineering, port-o-toilets, Sam Rayburn, the RGA, the RNC, Reagan Democrats, Nelson Rockefeller, Larry Sabato, Hugh Scott, Sargent Shriver, the Southern Strategy, Spencer Roberts, Mitt Romney, the Tea Party, technocrats, Bob Teeter, three-piece suits, ticket-splitting, tough dudes, John Tower, toxic waste sites, University of Arkansas, University of Michigan, Malcolm Wallop, Washington & Lee, Frank White, Dick Wirthlin…& more! 

This is Episode 115 and our guests are Bobby Houck and Hank Futch of the band Blue Dogs. Blue Dogs has been around since the late 1980s, y'all. My introduction to the band came with 1999s Letters From Round O. Letters from Round O brought the band to a broader, dedicated audience. The guys slowed down a little in the 2000s. They kept making music and playing shows but limited touring and studio work for a while until this year's Sadler Vaden produced record called Big Dreamers. Y'all I have been a fan of Blue Dogs for twenty plus years and Big Dreamers is my favorite thing they have done. Hank and Bobby are the kind of guess I envisioned when we started The Marinade and this conversation displays why that is the case. 

The Americana group Blue Dogs join us (11-minute mark) to talk music and beer. Band founder Bobby Houck (lead vocals) and Hank Futch (vocals/upright bass) chat with us about going into the studio for the first time in 16 years, why they made a new album, how growing up in South Carolina impacted their sound, their journey in the music industry, creating a beer with Holy City Brewing, and much more. Plus, Jake Sulek joins us (1-minute mark) for Tasting Notes to talk rum on the third part of our Spirits 101 series.For more on Blue Dogs, find them at https://www.bluedogs.com/home or on social media.Don't forget to check out the video on YouTube and our Facebook page. Plus, enjoy our Give It A Try Taste Tests and the Questions & Alcohol podcast, both available at hopsspirits.com.

FTB podcast #518 features 2 new albums, Jabberwockies by Wes Collins and Big Dreamers by Blue Dogs. Also featuring new music from Mary Gauthier,  Pretty Little Goats, The Slocan Ramblers, Charlie Musselwhite, Nicki Bluhm, The Bros. Landreth and more. Full playlist: http://ftbpodcasts.com/?p=8803

Ken Spain, the founder of Narrative Strategies, had worked at high levels in Republican politics and corporate comms before starting his own strategic communications firm. He worked for the Bush/Cheney re-elect in 04, on the Hill for three different GOP members, at a senior position at the NRCC campaign committee, for the Private Equity Council during the tumultuous 2012 elections, & running corporate communications for Koch Industries. In this conversation, Ken talks his path through GOP politics, his perspective as a Hispanic operative,  starting a bipartisan communications firm, and much more.IN THIS EPISODE…Ken grows up in Richard Nixon country in Southern California as the son of Reagan Democrats…Ken breaks into politics working in California legislative politics…Ken talks helping the George W. Bush re-election campaign carry New Mexico in 2004…What Ken's learned from mentor Ken Mehlman, manager of the 2004 Bush campaign…Ken spearheads an effort to help the private equity industry defend itself as it's attacked during the Mitt Romney presidential campaign…Ken talks lessons and tips learned from working for 3 members on Capitol Hill…Ken's breaks down the differences in a well run Hill office versus a poorly-run office…Ken's experience as a Hispanic operative working in GOP politics…Ken's take on why Trump overperformed expectations among Latino voters in 2020…Ken's level of optimism that California Republicans can start winning statewide soon…Ken contrasts working at the NRCC in the Dem wave year of 2008 versus the GOP wave in 2010…Ken talks his time running corporate communications for Koch Industries…Ken's analysis of what's often misunderstood about the Koch Brothers' approach to politics…Ken talks the founding of Narrative Strategies and the firm's growth over the past few years…Ken's best practices for developing a professional network…AND 100 hours of focus groups, the 210 freeway, Americans for Prosperity, arcane business models, Bain Capital, Bernalillo County, Tony Blair, Blue Dogs, John Boehner, Rick Boucher, Brexit, Bobby Bright, British Victorian History, Scott Brown, Lois Capps, classical liberalism, Clovis, Tom Cole, community colleges, Mike Conaway, Charlie Cook, dark money, Gray Davis, Tom Davis, Danny Diaz, David Dreier, Larry Elder, flip-floppers, Fullerton, James Gandolfini, Newt Gingrich, Ari Gold, Barry Goldwater, Scott Jennings, jumpballs, Las Cruces, the Latino Summit, Bob Margett, Mary Queen of Scots, Mike McCaul, Kevin McCarthy, Ken Mehlman, moving down the dais, Gavin Newsom, Jim Oberstar, David Obey, Leon Panetta, pension funds, The Private Equity Council, pumpjacks, Harry Reid, Richard Riordan, Santa Barbara, Steve Schmidt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pete Sessions, John Shadegg, Bill Simon, Ike Skelton, John Spratt, surprise medical billing, Dave Wasserman, Wichita, Pete Wilson…& more!

You can't do the big things if you can't do the little things. A friend of mine used to say this all the time. And it reminds me of the Democratic Party - a party that can't seem to move the needle on the big, meaningful stuff because they're always fighting about procedural issues that prevent the nation from moving forward. Has the right wing lost its fucking mind in this country? Sure. But they're not the reason democrats are so dysfunctional. The Democratic Party is riddled with self-inflicted wounds, some of which we expose in today's episode including a profile of one of the party's worst actors: Josh Gottheimer. Chapters Intro: 00:02:17 Chapter One: Meet Josh: 00:06:40 Chapter Two: No Labels: 00:15:28 Chapter Three: Caucus, meet money. Money, meet caucus: 00:20:34 Chapter Four: Bring it home, Max: 00:26:30 Post Show Musings: 00:31:52 Outro: 00:34:39 Resources Visual Capitalist: All of the World's Wealth in One Visualization United Nations Development Programme: Latest Human Development Index Ranking Open Secrets: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Open Secrets: Election objectors are among the GOP's highest fundraisers ahead of Jan. 6 anniversary GovTrack: Rep. Josh Gottheimer Jacobin: By Backing a Huge Tax Giveaway to the Rich, Democrats Are Giving the GOP a Perfect Midterm Gift The Orange County Register: Porter-backed bill seeks to restore SALT deductions capped under 2017 tax act Politico: Josh Gottheimer is taunting the ‘far left.' He's still unlikely to face a serious primary. The New York Times: Private Equity Funds, Sensing Profit in Tumult, Are Propping Up Oil Commercial Observer: How Blackstone Became the Biggest Private Landlord — And What That Means Open Secretes: Contributors to Josh Gottheimer 2021 - 2022 LancasterOnline: Problem Solvers Caucus parent group was behind $277K in super-PAC spending for U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker and $3 million for others HuffPost: 'No Labels' Needs A Warning Label The Intercept: No Labels Offered Conservative Democrats Hundreds of Thousands to Spurn Nancy Pelosi Fundraiser No Labels Youtube: An Antidote to the Extremes The Washington Post: Trump accepts No Labels prize, as O'Malley calls him ‘racist,' ‘fascist' The Intercept: Who's the mystery man behind the latest Pelosi putsch? It's Mark Penn. Blue Doc PAC New Democrat Coalition The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights: Vote “No” on The FIRST STEP Act The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights: Support Positive Solutions to Keep Children Safe in Schools, Oppose Criminalization of Our Youth U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer Willamette Week: Cryptocurrency-Backed Democratic Congressional Candidate Carrick Flynn Leads Race, Opposing Campaign Poll Found Protect Our Future PAC Report of Receipts and Disbursements Politico: This super PAC is spending almost $1 million in a contentious Democratic primary. They don't want you to know who is funding them. UNFTR Episode Resources The Itsfuckedforsure Bill: And the Ghosts of Spending Bills Past. Midterms, Primaries and Get Out the Vote: Send the Blue Dogs to the Pound. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Subscribe to Unf*cking The Republic on Substack at unftr.substack.com to get the essays these episode are framed around sent to your inbox every week. Check out the UNFTR Pod Love playlist on Spotify: spoti.fi/3yzIlUP. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic is produced by 99 and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is written and hosted by farts and distributed by the wind. Podcast art description: Image of the US Congress ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dems are already in the fetal position crying over races they have yet to lose and blaming progressives for losing them. Fuck that. Today we look at three upcoming races (two Senate, one House) that demonstrate how much the landscape has changed for progressives and the importance of primaries. The Democratic establishment is lining up against very capable progressive candidates in key races in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas. Two of these races are messy, but hold great promise for the balance of power in the Senate. The third is one that we invite everyone to support because it's a no-fucking-brainer. Chapters Intro: 00:00:28 Prologue: 00:01:23 Battleground- Wisconsin: 00:09:44 Battleground- Pennsylvania: 00:21:30 Battleground- Texas: 00:28:06 Closing Thoughts: 00:31:45 Post Show Musings: 00:35:21 Outro: 00:50:35 Resources Ballotpedia: United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2022 Ballotpedia: Alex Lasry Rolling Stone: Can Justice Democrats Pull Off a Progressive Coup in Congress? NPR: The top 10 Senate seats that are most likely to flip to the other party Politico: ​​D.C. Dems get out of frontrunner Fetterman's way in Pennsylvania The New York Times: John Fetterman, Senate Candidate, Revisits Gun Incident Involving Black Jogger Ballotpedia: Jessica Cisneros Jessica Cisneros' Facebook Jessica Cisneros' Website The New Republic: Georgia Is the Midterm Ground Zero for America's Political Future UNFTR Episode Resources From Bullmoose to Jackass. Labor Unions. Peak Oil. New York's Casual White Supremacy. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Subscribe to Unf*cking The Republic on Substack at unftr.substack.com to get the essays these episode are framed around sent to your inbox every week. Check out the UNFTR Pod Love playlist on Spotify: spoti.fi/3yzIlUP. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic is produced by 99 and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is written and hosted by misogyny and distributed by sexism. Podcast art description: Image of the US Congress ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kelly Hall is the Executive Director of the Fairness Project, which works to pass ballot measures on economic fairness issues such as the minimum wage, Medicaid expansion, and paid leave. Before taking the helm at the Fairness Project, she worked in campaigns and as a Hill staffer prior to entering the Obama Administration to focus on implementing the Affordable Care Act. In this conversation, Kelly talks through her own experiences to offer insight about working on the Hill,  passing Obamacare, winning ballot measures, and running a political non-profit.IN THIS EPISODEHow the first campaign Kelly worked shaped her career...Memories of interning for Senator Tom Daschle...Kelly is behind the scenes at the Obama breakout moment at the 2004 Convention...Kelly's memories as a Hill health care aide during the tense moments around the Affordable Care Act…Kelly's time in the Obama administration implementing the ACA and what she thinks has gone right and wrong with 10 years hindsight…Kelly's advice and best practices for Hill staffers...Kelly's path to the Fairness Project and the work it does…Kelly provides case studies from the Fairness Project about expanding Medicaid in "red" states like Oklahoma and Missouri…Kelly talks the need to build cross party coalitions to win ballot measures…Kelly on what she's learned about the nuts and bolts of running a political non-profit...Kelly's advice to people early in their political career…And...Agent Orange, Ann Arbor, Xavier Becerra, Blue Dogs, bullshit detectors, George Bush, Lincoln Chafee, complaining over pizza, constellations of vendors, Joe Crowley, cutting turf, do-gooder lefties, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, marriage counseling, Mindy Myers, monorail salesmen, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Rouse, SEIU, Allyson Schwartz, shouting into the wind, Sheldon Whitehouse, The Simpsons, Zoom culture…& more!

Loretta Sanchez served 20 years in the US House, one of the first Democrats to breakthrough in historically GOP Orange County, CA. She also made history, with her sister Linda Sanchez, as the only two women related by family to serve in Congress. In this conversation, she talks growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in LA, her 1996 upset over GOP fixture Bob Dornan and the election contest that ensued, her 2016 election for Senate ultimately won by Kamala Harris, and memories & insights from two decades in the House.IN THIS EPISODECongresswoman Sanchez talks growing up in the LA-area as the daughter of Mexican immigrants…The candidate who her father walked door-to-door for, even before he could vote himself…Her path to running for office in the mid 1990s…Congresswoman Sanchez talks through the history and politics of Orange County, CA…The great story behind her 1996 upset of GOP icon Bob Dornan, a race dubbed “the upset of the decade” by Time Magazine…The year-long election contest that followed her 1996 victory…Congresswoman Sanchez's memories of lunch with Joe Biden in 1997…She explains what makes Nancy Pelosi an effective party leader…Who Congresswoman Sanchez is keeping an eye on as the next generation of Democratic leaders in the House…The story behind the history-making election of sisters Loretta and Linda Sanchez as part of the same Congress…She recounts her decision to run for US Senate in 2016…Congresswoman Sanchez's advice to Democrats who want to better communicate with Latino voters…The advice that Congresswoman Sanchez would offer AOC…Congresswoman Sanchez talks her current priorities and interests…AND…Pete Aguilar, Karen Bass, Barbara Boxer, Willie Brown, cause celebres, Chapman University, Gil Cisneros, Katherine Clark, Bill Clinton, Barbara Cubin, Blue Dogs, John Conyers, Lou Correa, Tom Daly, Willian Dannemeyer, David & Goliath, Val Demings, John Dingell, Veronica Escobar, Anna Eshoo, Sam Farr, Barney Frank, Georgetown, Dick Gephardt, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, Lindsay Graham, green cards, Kamala Harris, Head Start, David Hobson, Hubert Humphrey, Italian Grandmas, Hakeem Jeffries, the Joint Economic Committee, Patrick Kennedy, Barbara Kennelly, Jerry McNerney, John McCain, George Miller, John Murtha, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, Old Bulls, Colin Peterson, Katie Porter, Ed Rendell, Kathleen Rice, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Harley Rouda, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Rotary Clubs, Ronald Reagan, Tony Rodham, George Stephanopoulos, Univision, the Western White House, Pete Wilson, & more!

The Script Neoliberalism has badly damaged the economy in half of America in order to make a very small percentage of Americans much better off than they once were. Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and rural economy in order to concentrate our economy into a couple dozen hot desirable urban areas and several dozen upscale resort towns. Hot desirable high tech urban areas are doing fairly well though rapidly rising housing costs there are making it impossible for many young people to buy homes without lots of down-payment assistance. High rapidly-rising housing costs are also driving low-income and even lower-middle-income residents out of high-cost cities and resort towns. Metro-Denver where my wife and I live is a good example. Here our non-tipped minimum wage is $12.32/hour and our tipped minimum is $9.30/hour. Both rates will rise in January by 2.5%. Our median household income is $87K. However, our median home sales price has risen to $704K and our median rent to $1825/month. Our current jobless rate is only 4.6%. Retail price inflation here in housing, healthcare, grocery costs, and utility bills is up by about 40% since 2018. Housing cost here is up by close to double since 2012 and by 550% since 1991. (St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's MSPUS chart). In 1991 the Federal non-tipped minimum wage was $4.25/hour. Healthcare costs here including the rise in out-of-pocket costs is up by close to triple since 2014 and by close to 1000% since 2000. Utility costs and numerous other costs are up by 250% since 2000 also. In 2000 the Federal minimum wage was $5.25/hour. I can see why older married homeowners are much more supportive of Biden than younger mainly renters are. Young people have never seen the kind of inflation we are seeing now even though inflation was in the 6-7% annual range from 1987-1991 and even higher in the 1970s. Rents and home prices are skyrocketing in most of America as new housing construction has greatly lagged demand in most of America. A recent real estate industry study found that new housing construction has been about 5 million units less than demand since 2000. Our hottest most-desirable cities and towns are out of land and nothing short of declaring eminent domain over entire suburbs of single-family housing, some of it nearly new, will fix the problem in our most-desirable urban areas, which also have our highest median incomes. Cost-driven outmigration from high-cost cities is driving housing and other living costs up in nearby lower-cost cities too. There are several articles in Kansas City media, the Kansas City Star and others, going back several years, decrying the Denverization of Kansas City. Outmigration from our even higher-cost West Coast cities has been driving home prices up in Boise, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, and Salt Lake City too. There are still bargain cities in our Heartland such as most Southern Great Lakes cities, or many cities in the Deep South, but wages there are a lot lower too. Our older son lives in Valdosta, GA, where the median home sales price was $133K just a year ago, but don't plan on making more than $40K to $50K there either. Tallahassee is almost as affordable. In Metro-Detroit and the Cleveland, OH area there is plenty of affordable housing but both cities suffer high violent crime rates and a paucity of good-paying employment too. Numerous other Southern Great Lakes cities are affordable too. Obviously with Red Joe Manchin and his sidekick from Arizona relentlessly blocking the Democrat agenda on-behalf of Republicans Joe Biden's agenda is going nowhere. It is too bad that liberals and progressives didn't hold out on passing the infrastructure bill until the Build Back Better Act passed, as now Red Joe has reneged on his tacit agreement to the BBB Act before the infrastructure bill passed. Lots of average Americans are hurting but Red Joe like Republicans only cares about rich Americans and about maintaining his coal-fueled lifestyle. Likely absolutely no change is possible on climate change policy with Red Joe blocking every Democrat initiative. So we are in a stalemate hoping to break the logjam in the 2022 election. Republicans are going to vote in force so Democrats had better be ready to vote as close as possible to 100% of the electorate too. We really need at least 55 votes in the US Senate and control of the US House to have any chance of overcoming Red Joe and the other Blue Dogs and passing any of the Democrat agenda. Otherwise, we are going to lose our democracy to the Republican goal of a brutal right-wing rich makes right faux-Christian police and prison state banana republic dictatorship that liberals and progressives should seriously consider migrating away from. Mark Richardson- House of Public Discourse Member    

Dark Waters, the master of YouTube horror, joins Sam again on The Wild Initiative for this special Halloween bonus episode. Dark Waters and Sam have a discussion of American paranormal creatures and monsters and give each a Dark Waters Creature Threat Rating. They discuss the Chupacabra, Blue Dogs, The Jersey/Leeds Devil, Mothman, the Wendigo, La Llorona, Slenderman, The Rake and many more. They also discuss the differences between Bigfoots, Yetis and Skunk Apes as well as talk through some true stories featuring mermaids, vampires and bat-faced humanoids. See more on the show notes page at thewildinitiative.com/podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howie Klein (Down with Tyranny/ Blue America PAC) has done a weekly segment with me for over a decade now. Howie and I actually met long before we both became politically active. I was doing (really good) music radio in Los Angeles, and Howie was president of Reprise Records. I so appreciate Howie's work and am thrilled that he joins me weekly on the air to help promote great progressive candidates who, if elected, will help the people that have for too long been overlooked and certainly not helped by our government. Last week we had a pretty huge difference in opinion. I probably got more complaints about that segment than any I've had in a long time. But that's democracy. We can disagree. And though I vehemently disagree with his stance on the CA Governor Recall plot, I vigorously defend his right to vote in whatever way he sees fit. However, I will ALWAYS speak my mind, and tell anyone who I believe is making an egregious error what I think. I did that last week. I believe both Howie and the audience know how I feel about the vote he cast. I don't plan to bring it up again. However, if the Republicans' scheme to remove a democratically elected governor from office succeeds, I will again speak my mind. Today, we'll talk about other crucially important issues, including the so-called Democrats who are working to derail the $3.5 trillion "Build Back Better" budget plan. There are too many of them... all the more reason why we need loud, persuasive voices from the left to battle the Blue Dogs, New Dems and others from the Republican wing of the Democratic party.

Technically, they're over. But it sure feels like we're getting dogg'd. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a dog person! I love dogs. (I even paint them, as I did all the pups on today's cover photo- and I do take commissions. Just send me a note!) But there are some dogs I don't like, like Blue Dogs. And today, they're threatening to derail the entire Biden agenda, infrastructure, and our chance at getting nice things in the USA. I'll explain. We'll also check in with Courtney Hostetler, lead attorney for Free Speech for People who just filed a lawsuit to stop some of the vindictive voter suppression bills being introduced around the country.

Putting the bloc back in Bloc Party.Freedom Caucus. Progressive Caucus. Blue Dogs. Why do we care?Justice Dems spokesperson and co-host Waleed Shahid sits down with Ruth Bloch Rubin, author of Building the Bloc: Intraparty Organization in the US Congress. Ruth tells Waleed that size matters when it comes to congressional voting blocs, but bigger isn't always better. What can we learn from Congressional ideological factions of the 20th and 21st centuries? Why and how did they succeed and fail in their own goals? Why is collective action exceptionally difficult in the U.S Congress? Amira Hassan, JD's political director, joins Waleed to break down why Congress is the place where solidarity goes to die.Readings & clips:Ruth Bloch Rubin's book BUILDING THE BLOC.Robert McCormick, NBC, on Hon. Lee Metcalfe and Democratic Study Group. 1960.“Meet the Blue Dog Democrats!”“Democrats have grown frustrated with Blue Dogs..” Chris Van Hollen on WAMU 88.5.Washington Unplugged, 07.15.09House progressives are building something new, exciting, and powerful

Today’s guest, Jason Barnard brings an eclectic mix of blue dogs, punk and SEO with this wildly varied and interesting conversation.  Jason is a man who has chased life experiences and is full of amazing stories including many interesting connections with UK 1980’s pop heroes. We also discuss mental health issues and losing the rights to his beloved identity as a blue dog.     The Full Text for this post along with Guest’s Website and Social Links are all available at: www.lifepassionandbusiness.com/jason-barnard-blue-dogs-punk-seo     Life Passion & Business is dedicated to exploring what it takes to be Extraordinary, to face challenges and rejoice in the opportunities they bring, and expand our vision into new ways of thinking and living. There is a lot to gain from listening to other people’s stories, however the real work begins by taking action in your own life. For full details of our Events and Resources visit: www.lifepassionandbusiness.com     Support For Podcasters: Running a podcast is fun, but it takes time and dedication. Whenever you enjoy a podcast please share your appreciation with comments, likes, shares and reviews. It helps other listeners find good content and supports the content creators and their guests. Another way you can support the Life Passion & Business podcast is with small donations: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeandpassion

Dogs are turning blue and pink in Russia. Mystery of the shaved cats in a Virginia neighborhood. Italian hospital employee accused of skipping work for 15 years. // Weird AF News is the only daily weird news podcast hosted by a comedian because I believe your daily dose of weird af stories deserves a comedic spin. Show your SUPPORT by joining the Weird AF News Patreon where you'll get bonus episodes and other weird af news stuff http://patreon.com/weirdafnews  - WATCH Weird AF News on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/weirdafnews - check out the official website https://WeirdAFnews.com and FOLLOW host Jonesy at http://instagram.com/funnyjones or http://twitter.com/funnyjones or http://facebook.com/comedianjonesy or http://Jonesy.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Today on Infinite Rabbit Hole we dive into strange news from around the world for the first quarter of 2021. Bigfoot hunting season, blue dogs, two moons in the sky, and life under Antarctica are the topics we cover in our first iteration of Strange News brought to you by the Infinite Rabbit Hole! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/infiniterabbithole/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/infiniterabbithole/support

This episode is brought to you by Victrola. Visit makingnoisepod.com/victrola Our guest today is a regional Emmy winning composer and musician who now plays with the Charleston based Blue Dogs and in Charlotte with Shelley Ruffin, The Hoodies and on his own. He has also been involved in top projects at Groundcrew Sound, an award winning audio post-production studio in Charlotte. Dan Hood is also one of the most polite people to be around, and we were happy to have him on the show to talk, and had a wonderful time hangin with him! Make sure to rate, share and subscribe our new podcast, as well as our Youtube Channel for exclusive content, which we'll be updating weekly: https:youtube.com/user/toddjohnsonband Follow us on Instagram: Todd Johnson @toddajohnson Jay Connor @Jay_Connor You can always check out past episodes and exclusive content here: www.makingnoisepod.com

In this fine episode:  We mull over the Fortean term “Metaphysical” and why folks are saying “Whenever” whenever they want, vote for our favorite celebrity alien defender, check out some Russian blue doggos, get disappointed over a haunted guitar, and wonder who’s stealing Sasquatches! Welcome to the CreepGeeks Podcast Season 5 Episode 211! In this Episode- Celebrity Alien Defenders, Blue Dogs, a Haunted Guitar, and Stolen Squatches Today's podcast is brought to you by audible - get a FREE audiobook download and 30-day free trial at http://www.audibletrial.com/cheapgeek  -Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.   Thank you to our Patreon Supporters: Dav, Isiss, James, Bobby, John and John, and Adam!  Want to Support the podcast? Join us on Patreon! https://patreon.com/creepgeeks  What is the CreepGeeks Paranormal and Weird News Podcast?  CreepGeeks Podcast is an off-beat news podcast that takes a light-hearted approach to the paranormal, cryptid, supernatural, strange, the silly, and trending tech topics circulating the web. Broadcasting paranormal news and fun stories from our underground bunker in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Hey Everyone! You can call the show and leave us a message!  1-575-208-4025 Use Amazon Prime Free Trial! Did you know YOU can support the CreepGeeks Podcast with little to no effort! Won’t cost you anything!  When you shop on Amazon.com use our affiliate link and we get a small percentage!  It doesn't change your price at all. It helps us to keep the coffee flowing and gas in the Albino Rhino!  CreepGeeks Podcast is an Amazon Affiliate CheapGeek and CreepGeeks Amazon Page's Amazon Page    We’ve got Bigfoot Coffee! Support the Show: CreepGeeks Swag Shop!  Website- http://www.creepgeeks.com  Hey everyone! Help us out!  Rate us on iTunes!  ‎CreepGeeks Paranormal and Weird News Podcast on Apple Podcasts   FORTEAN TERM OF THE DAY: Metaphysical: Derived from the Greek meta ta physika ("after the things of nature"); referring to an idea, doctrine, or posited reality outside of human sense perception. Metaphysics, therefore, uses logic based on the meaning of human terms, rather than on a logic tied to human sense perception of the objective world.  RANDOM WEIRD THOUGHT- WHENEVER- Why are people using ‘Whenever” instead of “When”  Example- Whenever I was young instead of When I was young. Whenever I got my first bicycle. When I got my first bicycle.   NEWS: Study finds Top 20 celebrities who would best deal with an alien invasion  Blue Dogs Discovered Near Russian Factory "Haunted" acoustic guitar goes up for sale on Reverb.com for $666  Stolen Squatches: Yet another Bigfoot Theft in Marion, NC. This is actually the 4th Bigfoot theft in the Marion/McDowell Region. One was recovered...all the way in Avery county   The Mark of the Bell Witch Preorders for Bell Witch + Legacy Blurays are Restocked! — Small Town Monsters  Audible is audio entertainment that entertains, educates, and inspires. For you, the listeners of [CreepGeeksPodcast],  Audible is offering a free audiobook download with a free 30-day trial to give you the opportunity to check out their service. To download your free audiobook today go to www.audibletrial.com/cheapgeek      Again, that's  http://www.audibletrial.com/cheapgeek   for your free audiobook.   Beyond the Fray- Paramalgamation Shannon LeGro and G. Michael Hopf-   https://amzn.to/3iUB1vu    Hunt for the SkinWalker- George Knapp and Colm Kelleher-  https://amzn.to/2QDkejV  The Dover Demon, Hunter Shea. https://amzn.to/2R7NGi1    Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena https://amzn.to/2Yn7L8K  Enjoy this with your free trial:  “Through the Brown Mountain Lights” by Christy Tillery French  https://amzn.to/2MfRZZh   CreepGeeks Paranormal and Weird News is creating Humorous Paranormal Podcasts, Interviews, and Videos!   Looking for something unique and spooky? Check out Omi’s new Etsy, CraftedIntent: CraftedIntent: Simultaneously BeSpoke and Spooky. by CraftedIntent  This Patron-supported episode is brought to you by Dav, Isiss, James, Bobby, John and John!  We really appreciate their Patronage! What to watch:   Currently Free for Amazon Prime   Seth Breedlove Small Town Monsters https://amzn.to/2yemd8x     On the trail of UFO’s https://amzn.to/2Uj5Hwu   Native Bigfoot: https://amzn.to/3a5TCzp    Recommended Reading:  Lyle Blackburn: Sinister Swamp: https://amzn.to/3g0Va0A  Stanton Friedman- Crash at Corona:The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO https://amzn.to/38GkCqd  Shannon Legro -Beyond the Fray: Bigfoot: https://amzn.to/395obok  Ramdas - The One Eyed Turtle by Robert Goerman:  https://amzn.to/2DY5civ John A. Keel: The Man, The Myths, and the Ongoing Mysteries: https://amzn.to/2LHbd7X   Brown Mountain Lights: History, Human Nature, and Science Explain an Appalachian Mystery  https://amzn.to/2TJ2oyR  Get Something From Amazon Prime! https://www.amazon.com/shop/cheapgeek     Cool Stuff on Amazon -Squatch Metalworks Microsquatch Keychain:  https://amzn.to/2Mzc7Ek  Amazon Influencer!  https://www.amazon.com/shop/cheapgeek?ref=ac_inf_hm_vp   Instagram?  https://www.instagram.com/creepgeekspod/   https://www.instagram.com/craftedintent/  https://www.tiktok.com/@creepgeekspodcast?lang=en  Need to Contact Us? Email Info: contact@creepgeeks.com  Attn Greg or Omi  Want to comment about the show? omi@creepgeeks.com   greg@creepgeeks.com   Business Inquiries: contact@creepgeeks.com   https://teespring.com/stores/creepgeeks-podcast-store   Join Us Next Time! 

Episode #145 begins with Louie trying to cook an over medium egg for Matt and Matt learning he may have arthritis. If that wasn’t enough of a life rollercoaster, then they continue with strange news. This week they chat about the guitar made with a skeleton and Russia’s blue dogs!Here’s the skeleton guitar in action […] The post Episode #145 – Death Metal and Blue Dogs first appeared on Odd and Offbeat Podcast.

Show Subjects; If Whoopi Goldberg tells you to wear a mask on the subway, you wear it. 25 famous New Yorkers are now reading Public Service Announcements for the MTA. 'Skinniest house in London' listed for $1.3 million. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry expecting second child. Pack Of Bright Blue Stray Dogs Spotted In Russia. [...] The post #370 – Celebs Do NY PSA – Skinniest House – Russian Blue Dogs – Polar Vortex 2021 appeared first on What Happened.

On today’s episode of Hard Factor… - [5:30] Mark gives an full account of the Texas freeze, and the Ted Cruz Cancun vacation saga, from getting on the plane, getting caught, getting shit for it, and immediately cancelling the trip to come home, it’s been a roller coaster ride for the Senator sporting a fresh mullet - [17:20] Pat tells us all about dogs in Russia that have had their fur turned bright blue by chemicals from an defunct plant. The dogs may not be healthy, but they looks cool as hell - [21:25] Will covers the GameStop hearing where nothing was really accomplished but people asked a lot of dumb questions - [25:40] Pat tells us about 2 young Florida women who got denied for their 2nd vaccine shot after dressing up as old women… they thought it would work since it did on the 1st round of shots... - [29:00] Will gives the final ruling from the South Dakota courts for AG Ravnsbourg who got a max $1500 fine for killing a man while driving in the middle of the night under extremely abnormal circumstances - [33:35] Pat gives the details of a heroic woman who stopped a gas station clerk from getting beat mercilessly by giving oral sex to the criminal in the act. She did this so well, she kept him busy all the way until the cops arrived - [37:00] Will tells us about the latest North Korean to make a daring escape across the border to South Korea - [39:00] Pat shares evidence that there may be compromising tapes of BOTH former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump with young Epstein sex workers… - [41:00] Florida men impersonating US Marshals… 3 in one week! These stories and more.. Brought to you by http://BlueChew.com - BlueChew brings you the first chewable with the same FDA-approved active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis. Get your first shipment on us by using promo code HARDFACTOR at checkout. DOWNLOAD the New Stereo App at http://stereo.com/en for additional Hard Factor Shows on Wednesdays and Fridays - FREE. Download the app and Follow @hardfactormark @hardfactorwill @hardfactorwes @patcassidy and @internbubba to get notified when we go live, and to listen to previous shows.

OH BABY! it sure is cold outside and while we were stuck in the Panda Palace we decided to ask our good friend to be our special guest this episode. In this episode we introduce our guest Stephen Liles A.K.A Stefen Lilies to talk with us about the freezing situation we are facing here in Austin. We also get into some bloody news about the new Mortal Kombat release date and posters, along with getting into Pedro Pascals new role in The Last of Us tv series coming to HBO. This weeks Top 5 all three of us do our top 5 anime movies showing all 3 of our different tastes, then I introduce a new game called Whooooo used to be a drug dealer?. Then for our Creepy Corner segment we talk about the Blue Dogs of Russia and we go back home to good old El Paso to discuss The human remains found in Sunset heights.

Joe speaks with Bobby Houck and Hank Futch, the original founders of the Charleston band Blue Dogs. Since 1987, The Blue Dogs have been blending the genres they grew up with - bluegrass, country, rock, and soul - turning bluegrass on its ear by creating what's now referred to as "Americana" or "Alternative Country" before those terms were commonplace. More than thirty years later, The Blue Dogs continue to serve up that southern stew for happy audiences.

It's happening all over again. Coivd is back.

CONTENT WARNING: Para-Nerds Podcast is a spooky, gross, fun, but also extremely graphic podcast for adults. Topics may include (but are not limited to): child endangerment, sex, and other bodily functions. Jessie and Erica discuss hauntings in and around their hometown of Southern Maryland. Links relating to this episode: The Blue Dog Tavern - https://bluedogtaverngr.com/ Point Lookout State Park - https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/Pages/southern/pointlookout.aspx Follow us on Instagram @paranerdspodcast, on Twitter @paranerdspod and like us on Facebook- www.facebook.com/paranerdspodcast Any questions? Send em' to paranerdspodcast@gmail.com Para-Nerds Theme by Dustin Wyrick

Today we interview fellow democrat Nate Brown, founder of the @moderatedemsofgeorgia instagram page, to hear his thoughts on Blue Dogs, The Georgia Senate races, and The Vice Presidential race for POTUS.

Unsure about us? Well, listen to this 40-second clip to find out a little more about us! No matter how much you know about lacrosse, we want to welcome you to the Blue Dogs family! As we say all the time, we are here to grow the game!

Dr. Charles Handler welcomes former Davidson College classmate John “Buck” Bradberry. Bradberry serves as the Managing Partner of EP Labs. Had his band “The Blue Dogs” hit it big after graduation, the path that led Bradberry through 30 years of organization and executive development work, might have been very different. When life as a bluegrass musician didn’t pan out for Buck, he went on to put his Masters in Psychology from the University of Richmond to good use working with consulting firms, a major financial institution (that was later acquired by Wachovia), along with other stops along the way. Throughout his career, Bradberry had worked to improve the performance metrics of executives and management teams, but it was his work with entrepreneurs and early-stage companies that was most appealing. During which he identified the most common characteristics among those at the helm of successful ventures. He published his findings in the book “6 Secrets to Startup Success: How to Turn Your Entrepreneurial Passion Into a Thriving Business”.Bradberry’s model of Entrepreneurial Talent focuses on three core areas:ReadinessFitPerformanceThe work done on this model, along with contributions from his team at EP Labs, evolved into the creation of the ECCP (Entrepreneur Characteristics Core Profile). The ECCP is an assessment tool that assists entrepreneurs and/or management team members to gain a holistic understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and to identify and focus on the one single area of improvement that will allow them to develop forward.Bradberry debunks the idea that successful entrepreneurs are all “superhero, off the charts, bold thinkers, like Elon Musk”. In reality, his research has shown that resilience, confidence, and risk-tolerance play more of a role in achieving success. Bradberry adds - “Staying power is key. Building a successful venture takes longer than you’d hoped, costs more than you expect and ratchets up the stress level.”Beyond this, the episode provides many discussion points about the intersection of assessment and entrepreneurial success.Science 4-Hire is brought to you by Rocket-Hire - your partner for launching successful talent assessment strategies and solutions. For more information on Rocket-Hire, visit https://rocket-hire.com Related ResourcesFollow John Bradberry on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbradberry/Learn more about EP Labs - http://eplabs.co/ Explore the ECCP - https://learn.startupclarityproject.com/courses/the-startup-clarity-projectOrder the Book - https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Startup-Success-Entrepreneurial-Thriving-ebook/dp/B01N5FGKMB/ Read more on Icarus Qualities - https://www.readyfounder.com/2011/01/icarus-qualities-5-essential-traits-that-can-endanger-your-venture/ Jam out with some bluegrass - https://www.bluedogs.com/

Carson and Sam talk about the recent Johns Hopkins coaching turnover and discuss how to stay drippin' in the lacrosse world. Additionally, the production of the Blue Dogs movie starts now! Note: We are trying to organize our show better. Let us know what you think! Johns Hopkins News: 4:10 Lacrosse Drip: 9:20 Movie Production: 26:35 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Art AppreciationThe importance of Art and the impact it has on personal growth, not to mention it's a great outlet to just let go!Blue Dogs by George Rodrique was our beginning.  So striking and yet so simple.  “What I do know,” Rodrigue says,  “is that Blue Dog, in some form or another, will remain a presence in the hearts of the people who have come to know her – and, I hope, in the hearts of all those who may join Blue Dog in her journeys yet to come”. So I took that to mean Blue Dog could take the form in the students imagination.  "Each one an original, each one a snowflake""The creativity was oozing out without even a thought to interrupt the process.  It was absolutely spectacular."Tom Brokaw says:   “Any appreciation of art is a subjective experience. If it moves you, lingers after you’ve walked away, makes you laugh, or simply infuses you with a good feeling, it passes the test.  Blue Dog does all that. And like the best of dogs, whatever their color, she asks nothing in return. Blue dog is a reminder that there are some things in life that we should just accept on their own terms and never take for granted.”  I loved the initiative of the students.  They were truly blossoming with the “new way” Art Appreciation was taking form.  Chihuly had an exhibit called: The Nature of Glass.  Ansel Adams photography impacted the students who could decide if they wanted their photographs in the Gardens to be in Colour or in Black and White. What was truly interesting was how unique each student captured the beauty of the desert.  The beauty of the desert plants in concert with the reflection of the glass works. The glass works are works of art. We are all born with a gift;We are all born with purpose.Life’s journey is to hone and develop that gift;As purpose changes within.Thank you Nicholas, my sweet son,  for your awesome music composition for the show.  And remember how art always makes you feel.Maya Angelou has a fantastic inspirational quote:  “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel”.  So truehttps://www.Flourish.Mom 

Bolsheviks and Blue Dogs square off as the last semblance of sane moderates fight valiantly, but ultimately in vain, for the heart and soul of the Democrat Party. We cover everything from reparations and racists to socialists and psychic forces. Buckle up for another crazy night from the Democrat debate stage. and thank you to today's sponsors: Simplisafe = SimpliSafe protects your whole home, visit SimpliSafe.com/CHARLIE. You’ll get FREE shipping and a 60-day risk free trial. Vincero Watches = Exceptional watches at a fair price, visit Vincerowatches.com and use code "KIRK" for 15% off your order.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Rich McFadden of Radio America react to the first night of CNN Democratic presidential debates. They discuss the moderate candidates challenging Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the feasibility of their left-wing agendas. They lament the structure of presidential debates and the time constraints placed on candidates. And they respond to Marianne Williamson’s performance with her warnings of “dark psychic forces.”

Why is the American Dream disappearing here, yet due to American policies coming true in China? Housing, health care, education... what happened to the middle class? - Thom reads from The Mueller Report page 94 - Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's most controversial Supreme Court pick, voted to allow foreign agents to interfere with United States elections by interpreting the law in a way that would let foreign nationals get away with electioneering! Did Kavanaugh save Trump and doom Democracy? - Thom reviews "They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer - Patreon Ask - Bob Ney Talk media news report.

Over the last 20 years, American politics have reached apparent historic levels of polarization and partisanship, at least for the modern era. Today, this polarization feels more personal and intractable than in recent memory. Insults abound with blame and scorn for those perceived to have contributed to this environment. The Republican Party has received its share of denigration from, what has come as a surprise to many within their own party, Republican officials criticizing the direction their party is headed under President Trump. Former R.N.C. Chairman Michael Steele has described the G.O.P. as "virtually unidentifiable" from the organization that he led less than a decade ago. The Pew Research Center has been studying American’s public political values since 1994, and the gap between Democrats and Republicans is now wider than it has ever been before. Carroll Doherty, the director of political research at Pew, explains how we arrived at the current acrimony in national politics. Former Tennessee Congressman John Tanner helped found the Blue Dog Democrats in 1995 after his party's major loss to Republicans that swept the G.O.P. to power in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. Does the Democratic Party of today have room for "Blue Dogs" anymore? Tanner offers his perspective. As the midterm elections approach, former political actors of all stripes are lamenting the loss of bipartisan cooperation they endured in the politics of yore. Bruce Reed, former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, Helen Milby, founder and board chair of the progressive organization The New Deal, and John Murray, who served as deputy chief of staff to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, consider whether the aisle can still be cross in 2018.

After a look at the latest news, Nicole talks with Howie Klein of Down with Tyranny and the Blue America PAC about the problem with Blue Dogs and New Dems sabotaging the work of actual and progressive Democrats.

We Discuss: Furniture Delivery, Millenials & Movies, Cough Drop Flavored Kit Kats, Eclipse Effect on Porn Traffic, Blue Dogs in India See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From his work with the Boll Weevils to the Blue Dogs, former Congressman Charlie Stenholm established a reputation for getting things done in Congress through bipartisan alliances - something that's almost unheard of in today's highly polarized political environment. In this Agri-Pulse Open Mic interview, he tells us why he believes a short-term increase in the debt limit and passage of a new federal budget are crucial to getting a farm bill passed this year. And the life-long farmer has some advice to farm organizations about how they need to change to address some of the political and agricultural challenges of the future including food, water and energy. A member of the House Committee on Agriculture throughout his 26-year House career, Stenholm served as the ranking Democrat for his last eight years until 2004. Currently, Stenholm is a Senior Policy Advisor at OFW Law.Charlie Stenholm

This week Adam and I discussed the political fallout from the 2010 midterm elections. We talked about the ongoing debate between the weakened "Blue Dogs" and Progressives about the future of the Democratic Party, along with the St. Louis Tea Party and Ed Martin's refusal to concede to Congressman Russ Carnahan.

[This episode first aired December 5, 2009.]In high school, no one thinks twice about cheering for the Fighting Trojans or the Tigers. But what about the Hickman Kewpies http://service.columbia.k12.mo.us/hhs/about/? Or the Maryville Spoofhounds http://www.maryville.k12.mo.us/? Martha and Grant talk about some of the odder names for school athletic teams. Also, in this episode: If you're queasy, are you "nauseous" or "nauseated"? How do you pronounce the word "sorry"? And why do conservative Democrats call themselves "Blue Dogs"?Grant and Martha discuss strange names for high school sports teams. Know another example? Talk about it in the forum http://www.waywordradio.org/discussion/.How do you pronounce the word "sorry"? SORE-ee? SAHR-ee? A Connecticut woman says her family pronounces this word four different ways, and is hoping her way is correct.Is there a name for those vocal sound we make when shrugging our shoulders or wordlessly affirming something with an "mm-hm"? Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle called "There's An App For That." The challenge is to guess what new word is formed by tacking the letters A-P-P on to another one. For example, what new word appears when you add A-P-P to the word that means "a soothing balm or salve." How'd we get the term "colorblind," and when it did come to be mean "indifferent to race"? "Really???" Really! A college student in Provo, Utah, says he's hearing this expression of sarcastic incredulity more and more—even catching himself saying this to his cellphone when it dropped a call. He suspects it comes from "Saturday Night Live." Does it? Really? Here's a great example of that show's use of the expression. A Connecticut cop says his dad, a retired professor of English and comparative literature at Yale, has been reading his son's police reports. They disagree about whether "complainant" is a legitimate word, or whether it should be "complainer."Here's a riddle: "I'm weightless, but you can see me. Put me in a bucket, and I'll make it lighter. What am I?" Martha has the answer.Grant shares online sites that can help you solve a difficult crossword puzzle"or anagram words to help you get the highest scores in Scrabble. WordNavigator http://wordnavigator.com/ and Wordsmith.org's anagram server http://wordsmith.org/anagram/.A veteranian says her colleague insists that "nauseous" means "contagious." Is that right? And if you're queasy, are you "nauseous" or "nauseated"?A Burlington, Vt. man says his mother and grandmother used the expression "journey proud" to denote being restless, nervous, or excited, especially on the eve of an upcoming trip."I'll be there at three-ish." "That shirt is bluish." "It wasn't a house—but it was house-ish." OK, but what in the world does "ish" mean, exactly?Conservative Democrats are sometimes called "Blue Dog Democrats." Grant explains why. Check out the work of George Rodrigue http://www.georgerodrigue.com/, the Blue Dog artist.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2010, Wayword LLC.

The Morning Show looks at the socalled Blue Dogs in the House. Do they Blue the Shots? Then Alan Boss, author of “THE CROWDED UNIVERSE, The Search for Living Planets" talks about the discovery of amino acids on a comet. In the second hour a discussion of the Sanctuary Policy in San Francisco which is Up for Debate. Wrapping up the program a preview of the Clifford Odets play “Awake and Sing” now at the Aurora Theatre.   The post The Visionary Activist Show – August 13, 2009 at 2:00pm appeared first on KPFA.

The Morning Show looks at the socalled Blue Dogs in the House. Do they Blue the Shots? Then Alan Boss, author of “THE CROWDED UNIVERSE, The Search for Living Planets" talks about the discovery of amino acids on a comet. In the second hour a discussion of the Sanctuary Policy in San Francisco which is Up for Debate. Wrapping up the program a preview of the Clifford Odets play “Awake and Sing” now at the Aurora Theatre.   The post The Herbal Highway – July 23, 2009 at 1:00pm appeared first on KPFA.

Adriana Barbaro discusses her new documentary on child marketing, "Consuming Kids." Plus, the urgent need to block the Blue Dogs from undermining President Obama's budget.