Podcasts about Ronald Reagan

A 39 años de su estreno, Generación Perdida (The Lost Boys) sigue siendo mucho más que un clásico del cine de vampiros. En este episodio de El Contador de Películas, Daniel Villalobos analiza cómo la película de Joel Schumacher transformó el mito de Drácula para hablar de pobreza, desigualdad y desesperación en la Norteamérica de Ronald Reagan.Desde su origen como una aventura inspirada en Peter Pan y Los Goonies, hasta su reinvención como un thriller juvenil protagonizado por Kiefer Sutherland, el episodio explora por qué The Lost Boys se convirtió en una obra de culto y cómo dialoga con películas como Dirty Dancing, Karate Kid, Rambo, Matewan y The Outsiders.Lo mejor del cine está en Cooperativapodcast.cl 

David Davenport provides a historical overview of how the concept of equality of opportunity has evolved from the American founding to the modern era. The discussion explains that while the Founders initially focused on dismantling European systems of caste and class, later leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson expanded federal power to address slavery and industrialization. As the frontier closed, the government shifted from merely protecting natural rights to actively managing social and economic outcomes. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson furthered this trend by implementing New Deal and Great Society programs aimed at correcting systemic poverty. Conversely, Ronald Reagan sought to revive the original philosophy by reducing government intervention and promoting individualism. Ultimately, the discussion highlights a contemporary shift in language where the traditional ideal of equality is increasingly being replaced by the more ambiguous term equity. (1)1800 BOSTON TREMONT STREET

In this bonus episode of Selective Ignorance, Mandii B is joined by Antoinette, co-host of Around the Way Curls and Can't Afford Therapy, for an honest and humorous conversation exploring friendship, politics, capitalism, relationships, and the difficult choices people make every day. The episode opens with the duo reflecting on their chemistry as self-proclaimed "opposites" before revisiting their memorable interview with Ne-Yo during the rollout of one of his albums, noting the irony that he later faced public cheating allegations after speaking about reconciliation and personal growth [ 00:00 ][ 01:02 ]. They discuss how timing and public perception can reshape conversations, while acknowledging how delivery often determines whether audiences embrace or reject an opinion [ 04:12 ]. From there, the conversation turns toward capitalism, billionaires, and economic inequality, with Mandii and Antoinette debating the role wealth plays in shaping society and public policy [ 06:43 ]. Their discussion naturally expands into politics and personal relationships as Antoinette explains why she couldn't maintain close friendships with MAGA supporters or many Republicans, sparking a broader conversation about ideological boundaries, political values, and whether friendships can survive deep philosophical differences [ 07:52 ]. They also examine the makeup of their personal circles by discussing friend-group diversity, intentionally auditing relationships, and Antoinette's perspective on not having close white friends [ 12:35 ]. The conversation continues into questions surrounding religion, music, and personal dealbreakers, exploring how shared values often shape long-term relationships and community [ 18:53 ]. The second half of the episode shifts into a lively "Lesser of Two Evils" game, where the hosts tackle a series of rapid-fire cultural, political, and everyday dilemmas [ 22:09 ]. They compare everything from Watergate versus January 6 [28:53 ], to navigating political disagreements within families [ 30:53 ], while weighing the ethics and practicality of boycotting Amazon versus Target [ 32:14 ]. The debate continues with conversations about Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Bernie Sanders, and the evolving direction of American politics [34:55 ], before turning to Jasmine Crockett's political approach [ 36:32 ] and broader policy discussions comparing student loan forgiveness, universal childcare, healthcare access, and competing public priorities [ 38:26 ][ 39:50]. Closing out the episode, Mandii and Antoinette reflect on larger philosophical questions about systems versus individual responsibility, using pop culture—including references to Silo and The Odyssey—to illustrate how people navigate complex societal structures [ 44:05 ]. They also joke about the realities of living in New York City, balancing rent costs, transportation, and everyday quality-of-life tradeoffs [ 48:05 ], before revisiting the legacies of Reagan and Trump through the lens of modern political discourse [ 50:44 ]. The conversation concludes with thoughtful reflections on hope, duality, transactional relationships, and the value of maintaining meaningful friendships despite disagreement, while sharing stories from their weekend together [ 55:27 ]. The episode wraps with final laughs and a heartfelt goodbye [ 01:01:45 ], delivering another candid, thought-provoking bonus conversation that blends politics, culture, humor, and personal reflection. No Holes Barred: A Dual Manifesto Of Sexual Exploration And Power” w/ Tempest X! Sale Link Follow the host on Social MediaMandii B Instagram/X @fullcourtpumps Follow the crew on Social Media @itsaking @jaysonrodriguez @mrhiphopobama @antoinettewashere Follow the show on Social MediaInstagram @selectiveignorancepodTiktok @selective.ignoranceX/Twitter @selectiveig_podSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Liderler serisinin yeni bölümünde Ömer Gemalmaz Ronald Reagan'ı anlattı. Ronald Reagan, bir zamanlar Hollywood'da oyuncu, sendika başkanı, “New Deal” çizgisine yakın bir Demokrat. Sonra bir gün Amerikan sağının en büyük ikonuna dönüştü. Peki bu dönüşüm nasıl oldu?Bu videoda Reagan'ın hayatını biyografik bir hikâye gibi anlatırken, asıl büyük meseleleri konuşuyoruz:70'lerin krizinden 80'lerin “Reaganomics” ekonomisineEnflasyon–işsizlik–büyüme dengesi ve vergi indirimlerinin bedeliSoğuk Savaş'ın finali: Sovyetler gerçekten Reagan yüzünden mi çöktü?California'da kampüsler, “law & order” siyaseti ve üniversite harçları tartışmasıIran–Contra skandalı, içeride toplumsal dönüşüm, dışarıda jeopolitik hamleler00:00 Intro00:55 Çocukluğu ve gençliği03:40 Aktörlük yılları07:20 Siyasete giriş08:50 Kaliforniya valiliği11:28 Başkanlığa gelişi17:22 Ekonomi politikaları28:00 Dış politikası32:34 Türkiye'yle ilişkileri33:00 İç politikadaki etkisi35:30 Trump ile benzerlikler farklılıklar42:50 Muhafazakarların eleştirisi44:06 Ölümü ve kapanış

Today, we have Episode 2 of our first season of SNAFU all about Able Archer 83, the NATO military exercise that almost started a real nuclear war. Last week, you met some of our main characters and heard about 1980’s America where tension with the Soviets was a fact of everyday life and we heard about a dauntless sleuth trying to unearth the SECRET CIA files that reveal the entire Able Archer story. Now, in episode 2, we meet the men keeping it all together – aka avoid a nuclear armageddon. This of course is Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov.SIt back and enjoy SNAFU Season 1, Episode 2: "Will the Real Evil Empire Please Stand Up?"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

President Ronald Reagan  once stated: Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for […]

A bestselling computer book and a mayor's office may seem worlds apart, but Dan Gookin's path connects them through curiosity, clear communication, and public service. I talk with the DOS for Dummies author and Coeur d'Alene mayor about making technical writing useful, challenging industries that resist new ideas, and finding success by improving work others do poorly. Dan also shares why he entered local politics, how transparency and community engagement built public trust, and why responsible leadership often means asking the questions others overlook. We close by exploring political division, religious freedom, social media algorithms, and the need to reduce online anger without losing the internet's benefits. Highlights: 00:06:48 - Why leaving your comfort zone creates growth. 00:11:07 - How doing something better can become a business. 00:12:39 - Why writing for beginners changed computer publishing. 00:27:06 - How transparency concerns led Dan into politics. 00:37:30 - Why responsiveness helped Dan earn public trust. 00:54:49 - How social media fuels anger and division. About the Guest: Dan Gookin is the mayor-elect of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, having won election in November 2025 after serving on the City Council since 2011. Known as a fiscal conservative, outspoken advocate for government transparency, and a committed budget hawk who asks tough questions, he is often described as “the lone voice of reason” on the council, consistently championing the public and the “little guy” against bureaucracy. Gookin views his public service as protecting individual rights. He prides himself on listening to all perspectives, welcoming alternative viewpoints, remaining open to new information, and never being a rubber-stamp vote. Professionally, Gookin is known as a writer and online trainer. He has been writing about technology since the early days of personal computing, combining his humor with a passion for gadgets to create informative and entertaining books. He authored the groundbreaking DOS For Dummies in 1991—the world's fastest-selling computer book at the time and the title that launched the iconic For Dummies series, now a publishing phenomenon. With more than 170 titles to his credit, over 12 million copies in print, and translations into more than 30 languages, his popular works include PCs and Laptops For Dummies, Android For Dummies, Word For Dummies, and C For Dummies. He maintains two helpful websites, wambooli.com and c-for-dummies.com. He creates online courses for LinkedIn Learning on diverse topics, and in 2020 published Running for Local Office For Dummies. Gookin graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a BA in Communications/Visual Arts and minors in cognitive psychology and theatrical design. He put his creative talents to work as artistic director of the Lake City Playhouse, where he designed sets, lighting, and directed many productions between 1997 and 2002. First and foremost, Dan considers himself a father who raised four boys in Idaho. Gookin resides in Coeur d'Alene with his wife, Brie, along with various children and pets. In his leisure time, he enjoys woodworking, playing the piano, riding his bike, cooking, gardening, and making lists of things he enjoys doing along with occasionally annoying those who think that they're important. Ways to connect with Dan**:** LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-gookin-46995713/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dangookin 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/ 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  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingston, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hello there, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host, Michael Hingston, and today we get to chat with Dan Gookin. Do you know who Dan Gookin is? Probably not, but you will by the time we're done. But I will tell you one thing about Dan. He was elected mayor of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in November of 2025. I think Dan, you're the first political person as such that we have had on, which is kind of cool. I'm really honored to to have you here, and and we can spend the the whole time picking on on other politicians, but there's no need to do that. I mean, what good does it do? It's a waste of time. But I want to welcome you to Unstoppable Mindset, and Dan, thanks very much for being here. Dan Gookin  01:44 Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me on. Michael Hingson  01:46 Well, this will, I think, really be a lot of fun. I'm sorry that you guys aren't getting a lot of snow up there. My brother-in-law has been keeping me posted on the lack of snow, so today here we're expecting a temperature at about 70 degrees. Last week it got up to 39. So I don't know. There's something going on with the climate. Dan Gookin  02:10 Something. Michael Hingson  02:11 Yeah, whatever it is. Speaker 1  02:13 Well, there was a name for that. Michael Hingson  02:15 Yeah, yeah. If if there were enough people, would only believe it. But that's another story. You are right. Well, thanks very much for being here. Why don't we start? Tell me about the early Dan growing up and all that. Speaker 1  02:31 So I grew up in San Diego, California. Good place. I still say San Michael Hingson  02:35 Diego has the best weather in the country. Speaker 1  02:38 They do. It's changed a little bit as everything has, but I escaped from there back in 1991. Went up to Washington State because I was doing some work with Microsoft, and then decided that that was Seattle was another big city. So we kept looking east and finally landed in Idaho in Coeur d'Alene because it's pretty. Michael Hingson  03:01 It's a nice area. So you you did your schooling and all that down in San Diego. Speaker 1  03:06 Yeah, I graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in communication visual arts. That was in 1983. Michael Hingson  03:13 Cool, wow. I've spent many a a day down in San Diego. I lived in Vista for six years, so I'm familiar with the area. Yeah, I liked Vista. Vista was a nice place to be. You Speaker 1  03:24 did a radio show out of Vista. Did you for a while? Yeah, computer call-in show. So that was way back. Michael Hingson  03:32 What did you discuss, or just anything dealing with computers? I Speaker 1  03:36 was editing a magazine, a local computer magazine at the time, and we purchased an hour, and so I would drive from my home in Tierra Santa all the way up to Vista to be in this little tiny radio station, where we would do call-ins. And sometimes people would call in, and I would help them solve their computer problems. And sometimes I had to talk to myself for Michael Hingson  03:57 an hour. And and and did you get answers when you talk to yourself. Speaker 1  04:02 No, but I got really hoarse. Ah, okay. Michael Hingson  04:04 Well, you know, just just checking. Well, that's cool. Well, I guess we could tell everyone that, among other things, Dan is also the author of a number of books, including DOS for Dummies. I still like DOS. Thank you. I I like DOS. I've just always enjoyed it. Although, I have to admit, Windows has progressed a whole lot more. But I always liked DOS. Speaker 1  04:27 Yes, it was good, and and it was its complexity or its a rudeness, I shall say. Yeah, that's a good. Sold the book because you had to type. You had to know the commands in Windows. You can kind of look and point and do all this stuff, but in DOS, you had to know the commands and type the commands, and people wouldn't-they couldn't remember. There were all these options, and so we sold a lot of books doing that. It's still, like I said, I I like it too. I like the command line because it's faster if you know what you have to type. Yeah, it takes less time to type. Than it does to look around, point and shoot with the mouse. Michael Hingson  05:04 Yeah, there are a number of blind people on some list serves that I am part of that every so often something regarding DOS comes up, which is I think kind of cool. Speaker 1  05:15 Yep, hasn't gone away. It's it's still lurking in there somewhere. Michael Hingson  05:19 It is still a kind of the basic underpinning foundation of a lot of Windows, isn't it? Speaker 1  05:25 Well, Windows actually does run on top of it still. If you if you when you start a program in Windows, you're actually issuing a text command. So inside there is a long text command that is issued that gets everything running. It's just that you're configuring that from a graphical perspective, Michael Hingson  05:44 right? Yeah, but but it is still running. DOS essentially runs under Windows, which is which is something that is is relevant. So I guess we could blame that on Bill Gates, Speaker 1  05:57 or credit him. I don't know. Michael Hingson  05:58 Or yeah, yeah, one of the other. Well, so you you graduated, you moved to Seattle. As you said, it is a big city, although you know it's kind of hard to fight Pike's fish market. Speaker 1  06:11 Well, there's there's the fun and charming parts of of Seattle that I really enjoyed. So I mean, I can't say that you know it was a horrible city. The thing I admired about Seattle the most was that Seattle would occasionally not take itself seriously, and I liked that it had a sense of humor and that people there were generally good natured. San Diego was a little bit more uptight, you know, fair weather fans, that kind of stuff, where Seattle was more of a community, and I admired that greatly. Michael Hingson  06:43 And there used to be a lot of rain up there. Speaker 1  06:45 Not as much as people say. That's kind of their reputation. The Pacific Northwest we do have. So I moved from Southern California where you have 360 days of sun a year to Pacific Northwest where you have 180, so it was kind of a shock from that point of view. It's mostly like today; it's overcast. It's just there's no sun, so that's the big difference. Michael Hingson  07:10 And then you moved up to Idaho, and and how many days of sun or not sun are there a year? Speaker 1  07:16 Oh, still about 180. 180. Uh huh. But it's you know so you get used to it after a while, and when the sun comes out, you're all happy, and it's like, look, the sun's out, everything's pretty. Michael Hingson  07:27 Yeah, fair. Yeah. So when you were in San Diego and so on, what did you want to do or be when you grew up? Speaker 1  07:36 So originally, I wanted to be a doctor, and then I had the misfortune of being in a hospital, and I said I don't ever want to be back here, and changed my mind and figured I would be a writer. So for years I started writing and submitting things to magazines, trying to work on books and stuff. I mean I wrote a few books, and they say that you have to get about a million words of junk out before you actually are a good writer. So I I worked on that for a long time, and got to the point where I I actually had a reputation with some of the editors in the magazines who would write me back personal notes instead of the generic you know dismissal, and so that was working really well. But then what happened in 1984 was I wrote something for the local computer flyer, and they liked that, and it got published, and that was what really started the career for tech because tech wanted people who knew how to write, so that was good timing. Michael Hingson  08:35 Yeah, so many technical manuals are just so boring. I really wish people would learn how to write more interesting books. Of course, I say that about textbooks as well. I am of the opinion that having a master's degree in physics and having read many a physics book, the and there are so few of them. The best books are the ones where the authors have put some actual personal stories in to draw people in with human interest parts of the science, and I wish more people would do that. Speaker 1  09:03 And that was my point too. It was like these books are dull and boring. And the problem I had because I was writing computer books at the time, I had a computer book literary agent. There is such a thing, and it's it's backwards in that industry though, because the publisher says what they want a book on, and then they have you write the book on the topic, and so I was doing that for many years. But I did not like the fact that they would edit my books to make them dry, and the editors would actually complain to me and say, "There's too much personality in here. You can't have this. It was like it was like they thought that was a built-in feature of the book, and my protest was, "Well, no. Let's make them interesting. Let's use real life examples. Let's have some personality in there. Let's have some interaction with the with the reader. And they didn't like that until DOS for Dummies came around, and the publisher was willing to change the paradigm. Michael Hingson  09:55 Jeez, yeah, it's so unfortunate. They they think they know. Everything there is to know, and the reality is they don't. Speaker 1  10:04 That's the way it is with just about any industry. You know that I think the corporate mentality is kind of to resist innovation, even in the most innovative industries, until something crazy comes along. And I think that's why in Silicon Valley you had all these startups. You know, if you look, if you trace the lineage of a lot of the big companies, they started at other big companies that were unwilling to do the crazy ideas these guys had, and so they went off. I mean, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak left Hewlett Packard and started up Apple Computer, and I'm pretty sure there's probably been some engineers from Apple Computer who've left and started up their own company and becoming Michael Hingson  10:43 well. And Bill Gates is essentially the same way. It's it's he started out doing something, but he attracted people's attention by some of the other things that he did. Speaker 1  10:53 Yep. Michael Hingson  10:54 And that was was very relevant. But I I hear what you're saying. It makes perfect sense because people just don't like to be innovative and don't like change, and and that's unfortunate that we have so many people that just, as much as they talk about the fact that change is everywhere, they don't like it. Speaker 1  11:10 No, it's well, I think yeah, we we get in our comfort zone, and you don't grow out in the comfort zone. So I like to challenge myself and do interesting things like become mayor, and you know you leave your comfort zone. And what what can I do here, or how can I do this better? Michael Hingson  11:26 Yeah, well, and that makes makes perfect sense. Well, what got you started writing about technology? Just because you were writing that that one article there, or those articles that got interest on the part of a publisher, or what? Speaker 1  11:41 What got me started was that I got paid. Ah, Michael Hingson  11:44 good point. Speaker 1  11:45 You know, they they paid me, and then you know, as as someone who was you know using a computer at the time, and they were called microcomputers, and they were really primitive compared to what we have today. Oh yeah, I I used it to write. So, and the the problem with that was that the the documents, the manuals that we talk about, were so dry and boring, and eventually, all of a sudden, it would dawn on me: it's like, well, this is what it's trying to say. So why don't they just come out and say it this way, or why don't they use an analogy and try to explain it in that manner instead of coming at it from this hardcore technical? And that was what really turned off a lot of people, so it motivated me to want to do it better, and that's kind of what I tell the kids, like my kids. I say you should start up a business. That's really the best way to get successful is start up your own business and become famous like that. And they're well, what business should I start up? I said that the easiest way is to find something that you like, something that's being done poorly, and just do it better. Yeah, and that's really a lot of the the creative, insanely genius stuff that's happened throughout the world is just someone who does something routine but does it better. Michael Hingson  12:52 And that's really the operative part about it, and and the real key. I think you're you're absolutely right. Find something that people aren't doing well, and by the time you get creative enough to figure that out, you're well on your way. Speaker 1  13:05 Yep. So that's that's what I did. Michael Hingson  13:08 Yeah. And so you started going off and and writing a variety of things. What what actually got you to write Dos for Dummies? What specifically? That's first of all, I love the the title of all the Four Dummies books. I think it makes sense. But what got you started in writing DOS for Dummies directly? Speaker 1  13:27 Well, I I knew that there was an appetite out there for beginner computer books, but the publishing industry would not publish beginning computer books because they said beginners don't buy computer books. And I explained to them, well, your problem is you don't write beginner computer books. You write something and you call it, you know, the easy guide to whatever, but the content of it is not written for a beginner. Maybe the first chapter is very condescending and patronizing, and then the rest of it is just technical garbage. So I said you have to keep that tone throughout the entire text. You have to identify who it is you're writing to, as who's a smart person who may just not get it, and explain it to them, and just keep going. And that was the problem. So I I did originally called it the Idiots Guide for DOS, which was based after the Idiots Guide to Volkswagen Repair. My dad had a copy of that, and I thought, well, what a brilliant idea. Michael Hingson  14:20 Yeah. Speaker 1  14:21 And so the publisher saw me speak at a conference, and where I was bemoaning the fact that the books were so boring, and they kept editing out my personality. And then went to to him, and and he's like, "This is great. Your outline that you have for this book is perfect. Except we want to call it DOS for Dummies. I thought, like a lot of other people, that was condescending and patronizing, but that it's an alliteration, so that's what they go with. And then he said to make it a reference. Don't make it a tutorial because, and this is brilliant, these people don't want to learn anything; they just want to do their job. Yeah, that makes sense. So that was and that was it, and we put a lot of humor in it. You know, people would tell me that they'd read the book on the subway, and you know, you'd see someone laughing reading a computer book. That's weird, but there would just be enough humor, and I'd use Mad Magazine as my inspiration. So it was kind of like us versus the nerds, and and that was what really founded the whole thing, and I tell you what, it caught on. I did not think it would. There was no way we were planning on writing a book that would sell, you know, 8 million copies. We were just thinking, well, this is going to be fun. Let's just do this, get it out of our system, and then go back to writing boring books. Michael Hingson  15:36 Made the publisher very happy. Speaker 1  15:39 Oh yeah, they were printing Gold bricks, yeah. Michael Hingson  15:43 That, of course, was the real key. Well, that started a brand, didn't it? Speaker 1  15:47 Oh yeah, they did. There was no intention to do that, but then they they followed that up with Max for Dummies and a bunch of other titles that were just very popular at the time. AOL for Dummies, you know, Windows for Dummies eventually came out, and that was the King for Dummies book. But yeah, they have and they have it on all topics. I've even so as someone who is you know starting in government, I got Robert's Rules for Dummies, which you know you've been to a meeting, you know they follow Robert's Rules, which is very dry and boring, but it's it's important. And Robert's Rules for Dummies is a good example of a For Dummies book because it explains everything carefully. Lots of humor in there, and so there's a lot of them. Wine for Dummies was another one that I really liked. I thought they did a good job. Golf for Dummies. There's a there's on every topic. There's a For Dummies book. Michael Hingson  16:37 How many of them did you write? Speaker 1  16:40 Only wrote the ones with my names on them, but probably about 40 separate titles. So over the years, most of them have been rewrites. So technology changes. So there have been 16 editions of Word for Dummies, and 13 editions of PCs for Dummies. There were four editions of DOS for Dummies. So you're you're always writing new editions, so all totaled 180 separate titles. But individual titles, without not counting multiple editions, right? About 60. Michael Hingson  17:09 Wow. Speaker 1  17:10 Yeah. Yeah, Michael Hingson  17:10 and I can appreciate that that books like Word for Dummies or even iPhones for Dummies has to change over time. Speaker 1  17:19 Yeah. Well, some of them. I mean, I've been doing a kind of a review on on YouTube. I've been doing short videos highlighting some of the goofy images that I put in the books over the years. And way back about 20 years ago, I think I was updating these titles once a year. They would say, "We need a new version of this. We need a new version of this. And at the time, technology was just. I mean, they were cranking out new stuff all the time. Michael Hingson  17:44 So, who's written AI for Dummies? Speaker 1  17:47 I don't know, but that is a title, so I wouldn't be Michael Hingson  17:50 surprised. Speaker 1  17:51 It should write itself, though. You think about Michael Hingson  17:53 it. Yeah, you you know, they they really should do that. It should write itself. Speaker 1  17:56 Someone told me once that they they they wanted to do a manual in my style, so they directed AI to write something in the style of Dan Gukan, and apparently AI can do that. So, am I going to get paid? I don't know. Michael Hingson  18:10 Well, that's another story, of course. Yeah, but still, it it is a it's a it's a great franchise. It's a great brand all the way around, and I know different people have written different different kinds of books like that, but still, the the fact is we need that in the world, and and I agree with you, especially that it's good to put humor and personality into it. And I really wish more people would do that. I really wish that would go into the the textbook world, but it hasn't yet. Speaker 1  18:37 No, that's that, and that's a different planet. I tried to break into that world, and that academia is is it's different. It is weird. Michael Hingson  18:44 Yeah, there are just not that many people who can get away with it like Richard Feynman did with some of the things that he did in physics, and even there, his his books were a little boring at times. But still, Speaker 1  18:56 he was awesome. His of course, his his autobiography is a lot of fun. Michael Hingson  19:00 Yeah, surely you're joking, mr. Fineman. Speaker 1  19:03 Exactly. Michael Hingson  19:04 Adventures of yeah, it is. I I keep it around. I've got an audio copy of it, and every so often I will go back and read parts of it. It's a it's a great book. Speaker 1  19:14 He's kind of an inspiration to me, especially in the area of government. And one of the parts of his book where he was on the panel that was reviewing textbooks for, I think, the state of California, and he noticed that one of the books was blank; it was empty, and he was the only one on the panel who did it. And I kind of echo that often in government because I'm occasionally the only person who actually reads some of the material they provide. Yeah, and and those kind of moments are classic. I love those. You know, when you can say, "Well, as everyone notices, you know, page 14 is blank, and they all madly flip to page 14, like, "Oh my gosh, how did you find this? Well, I, I did my job. I read the thing. Michael Hingson  19:54 I had a roommate in college, and we at that time we were using the Berkeley Physics series. I don't know. Whether that even still exists anymore, but different professors from Berkeley wrote various books, and the guy who wrote the book on waves, I had a roommate who was reading that book, and he searched vigorously to try to find a single misspelling of a word in the whole book. Wow! He finally found one. He said there really was one in the book. Kind of makes you wonder if that was deliberate, but but he actually found one. But it took him most of the quarter we had the book to find it. But but he did. Speaker 1  20:33 Excellent. Yeah, I got to say that's that's an art form. I used to work in a publishing house, and we would pore over books looking for spelling errors and mistakes and punctuation and all this stuff and of course you don't find them until the book's actually printed. Michael Hingson  20:46 Of course not. Yeah, yeah. Now it's it should be easier, but it's not, and they still don't come out until the book is already published and it's out there, and then you find out what isn't right. Speaker 1  20:58 Right. Michael Hingson  21:00 I suppose that gives the publisher an excuse to republish the book and make more money. Speaker 1  21:05 Well, yeah, it depends. It's if it is selling. If it doesn't sell, then obviously the the mistake's going to linger out there. Of course, with digital copies, they can update it right away, but not with a print book. Michael Hingson  21:17 Yeah, nowadays there's so many print books that are done pretty much on demand, so that if you want a copy, unless it's just something where they're selling literally millions a month, the book is available on demand. Although there's a little bit of a lag time to get it, my book Thunderdog, which is the story of Roselle and me in the World Trade Center, is is still selling pretty well, but it is more printed on demand by Thomas Nelson than now Harper Collins. Speaker 1  21:46 Yeah, Michael Hingson  21:47 and I understand that as long as it's available, I'm not going to complain. Speaker 1  21:51 And they and they they prefer to sell it that way as opposed to printing out 5000 copies they have to store somewhere. So Michael Hingson  21:56 right, yeah, they don't have to pay for storage and they just print it, and so it takes an extra week to get somewhere. That's fine. We can cope with that as long as it's available, and then that's all that really matters. Speaker 1  22:08 Yeah. Michael Hingson  22:09 But you've written a lot of books. How come so many? Because they're not all for dummies. Ah, okay. Speaker 1  22:16 Well, it just you know that was my profession, and that's what I did. And so, and I had a good agent who would find me a lot of work, so yeah, they would come up and they would want me to write a book on this or that, and a lot of it was because at the time in that industry I had a name and a reputation. I'm also very fast, so and that that kind of surprises people. In fact, there's some someone who accuses me of having a ghostwriter, which I do not. It's just I've been doing it so long, and you know, when I started, my agent said that he said the more you do this, the faster you'll get, the better you'll get. So, whereas in the original book, the first book I wrote took about six months to to write. I've written books in less than a month. It really depends. It depends on the topic, how well I know the topic, but also I do a lot of organizing with an outline, and so I will will work with an outline almost until it's down to the paragraph level, and then that makes it really easy to write the book, especially a technology book where there's a lot of cross references, and this sequence, you know, assuming someone's reading it front to back is really important, so you got to make sure that you touch upon things and do it in the right order. And then that's so yeah. I just got really good at it, which annoyed a lot of my fellow authors because as I was writing and I would get faster and faster, the contracts would start demanding the books in a more expedient manner, so other authors would complain to me and say, "You know, I have to write this book, and they're only giving me three months to do it. They're blaming me because I can do it in three months, and they figure everyone can do it in three months. So that was fun. Michael Hingson  23:54 Have you had books that someone asked you to write where you really didn't know much of anything about the subject, and you had to spend more time researching it, or you just spend time researching it, but you still did that very quickly. Speaker 1  24:06 Yeah, when I first started, that was pretty much the case. In fact, I talked with a guy who he had written the like the best-selling DBase three book. So DBase was a database way back in DOS, and it was the most popular database program, and he wrote the number one best-selling DBase three book that everyone who used that that program would buy, and he told me that he knew nothing about it when he signed the contract. So the the process of writing the book involved this intense deep dive into finding out what it is the program does, and then working on that. Of course, in those days, the books, the software came with a manual, so it was possible to go through the manual and see what the thing was capable of, and maybe get a few hints about that. But the books were not just a rephrase. The manual; they were a little bit better, the project oriented, whatever. So there was one one book that I did on a program called Super Card for the Macintosh, and it was the it was the there was no documentation, and I could call up the developer and I could ask him. So that was that was a tool I could use if I had access to the developer. I could call them up and I could say, "Okay, so I'm I'm doing this. What can you tell me that's like a secret or that is not obvious? And they love to share that stuff. Sure, I just write it all down, and then that that'll make the book better. If you could get through the the gatekeepers and get into where the nerds were, then you could get a lot of good information, and they were happy to share it. I did a few books on OS two that were like that, where I finally was able to escape into the lab and ask them. And the the guy they were so friendly, and they're like, "Oh, you got to tell him this, this, this, this. You know, we we couldn't put this in the manual. You have to tell him this, and so you write a great book. But of course, OS two, no one used it, so no one bought the book. Michael Hingson  26:05 Yeah, yeah, OS two was not one of those things that everybody loved. If Speaker 2  26:13 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the unstoppable mindset community. Michael Hingson  26:46 I remember when I was a student at UC Irvine. I wasn't an information computer science major. I was physics major, but several people took ICS one, two, and three, which was a three quarter course, or well, it was a year course, and the the book they used was Introduction to Computer Programming by Ken Ingram. And what was fun about that was that on the first day of class, the professor would come in and he'd say, "Okay, I want you to read chapter one of information of introduction to computer programming by Ken Ingram. It's the textbook we're going to use. I want you to read that before our next class. And of course, most everyone had not touched the book prior to that. And what he didn't say was that that first chapter took up half the book. Speaker 1  27:40 I like it. Michael Hingson  27:43 Yeah, I know. Wasn't that? And I, I, I heard about it. I, I never did get the book, and I didn't get it transcribed into Braille. But I thought that was cute. Chapter one was half the book. Speaker 1  27:53 No one would have suspected chapter one's an easy chapter. It's four pages. Right, supposed to be right. I think it was like Michael Hingson  28:00 180 pages. It was amazing. Michael Hingson  28:03 I'm not sure whether Ingram had a sense of humor or what, but anyway, there you go. But yeah, that that was kind of kind of amazing. So you you wrote all these books and you continue to do that, but somewhere along the line, you got interested in doing things in politics. What was that all about? Speaker 1  28:25 Well, that was frustrating. Not Michael Hingson  28:28 bad, Speaker 1  28:29 because I. So I think a lot of people are kind of interested. They follow politics. If I call up my mom in San Diego, she has to complain to me about you know the mayor of San Diego and what the city council is doing and and it's it's common it's just I think I think the most most people who are active in in their community know a little bit about politics or whatever and in my case I had just moved from the county here near Courtland and then I'd moved into the city, and I had heard that there was someone was buying up properties in my neighborhood, and I thought that was curious, and I wanted to see if this was something that you know are they going to tear down houses? What are they going to do? So I started researching using the the county website to see who was own who owned these properties, and it was a place called the Lake City Development Corporation, and I thought, well, I need to find out what that is, and it turned out that was an urban renewal agency that was formed by the city of Cortland, and I started reading the statutes and I started reading their minutes and finding out what it is they do, and while on the surface it sounded really fun, there were a lot of curious things that I didn't like. A lot of non-transparent things, a lot of things where you know they're spending public money on what I thought were frivolous things, and so I started asking questions. I started coming to meetings, and they're missing. Was that they pushed back, and so I just something triggered me, and I had a red flag, and I just started going after it. We started, we formed a group of people who were all interested in this, and we would meet regularly and go over what was going on with the government. We'd find issues regarding transparency and spending, and lots of interesting stuff. Never really anything nefarious. Never anything that would. But just a lot of stuff that, as we let the public know about what was going on, they would become outraged and they would say, "Wait a second! They're spending millions of dollars on this, and you know, with property taxes so high, and what is this, and why is it affecting me? And and so I went to the city council meetings here in Portland, and I was frustrated because no one else seemed to get it. And I would look at them, and they would have some issue that would come up, and everyone on the council-there were six members on the council-they would all vote in unison, and no one had asked a question. And I would say, "Well, wait a second, why aren't they asking a question about this, or why aren't they concerned about this, or what about the side effects of this? And so I started writing articles for the paper. I eventually did videos and to speak to various groups and such because I was like, we got to hold government accountable. So I ran for office in ran for the city council in 2007, and I lost. And then I ran in 2009, and I lost, but only by like 29 votes. And then I was done at that point. I really didn't want to do it again because running for office is a pain. Michael Hingson  31:33 Yeah. And Speaker 1  31:34 then they had this huge thing where all of a sudden they were going to redo a park without a public vote, and I wanted a public vote. Lots of people wanted to vote on it, but no, they were going to do it, and they didn't care what the public thought. So they made me run. They made me run a third time, and I won. And I've been on the city council ever since. And then, of course, well, since last November when I got kicked up to the mayor seat, which is where I'm sitting Right now, strange journey. Michael Hingson  32:04 Well, yeah, but on the other hand, there is something to be said for transparency, and there's somebody something to be said for somebody who really wants to look out for what what people want and what people are doing. I I got involved. Well, I've not run for public office, but I've been very much involved in political kinds of things because I've been involved in the blindness world since early 1970s, and the National Federation of the Blind has had for well now, gosh, more than 50 years or around 50 years, what used to be called the March on Washington. Now it's called the Washington Seminar, which is a an event that takes place every year, where several 100 blind people descend on Washington and go off and visit legislators. And the idea is to really get them to understand what the needs of blind people are and try to get them to vote on issues that directly relate to issues concerning us, and sometimes they do. Although it's gotten a lot harder to get things passed, especially in the last eight or nine years. But still, that it it has to be done. But I remember, among other things, I was living in Massachusetts when I first started going, and among other things, we we went and saw the Speaker of the House, who was Tip O'Neill at the time, which was kind of fun. And what an interesting, what a charismatic guy! Didn't matter what party he was with; it was a charismatic guy. And we also visited people like Senator at the time Paul Songis, and what was interesting about him was we we talked about our issues, and it was the end of the day, and then suddenly he said, you know, I'm not going anywhere for the next few minutes. Do you guys have time? And we ended up just talking for about an hour and a half about his view of of and our views of what Massachusetts needed to do, not only for blind people but just in general, it was just fascinating. There weren't very many politicians who would do that. Speaker 1  34:08 That's awesome. Yeah, I liked him. I liked Tungus a lot. Michael Hingson  34:12 Yeah, I wish he'd been able to run for president, but he got cancer, and that's that's unfortunate. Yeah, but because I think that he's one of those people who would do what really needed to be done and do it the right way. Speaker 1  34:26 In other words, the people who never win. Yeah, that's unfortunately Michael Hingson  34:31 really the case, isn't it? Speaker 2  34:33 Yeah, Speaker 1  34:33 yeah. Michael Hingson  34:34 But but you got to do that. Speaker 1  34:36 Yeah. Michael Hingson  34:38 So you you know, but you you hopefully you'll make a big difference, and maybe you'll be able to get people to believe in climate change. Oh, did I say that Speaker 1  34:48 this year? Nah, Michael Hingson  34:53 not unless you predict snow when it actually comes. Speaker 1  34:56 That and that and that's the key. Yeah, Michael Hingson  34:59 yeah. No, I understand, but it but it is fascinating. I you know I I enjoy the concept of politics. I enjoy people who really have a vested interest in making government go well, but it is so unfortunate that we don't see that much of it, which is just too bad. Speaker 1  35:18 There are a lot of good dedicated people out there. I think so. Of course, the the problem is is you know, like they say, politics is sports for the uncoordinated, and it's drama for the ugly. But the the thing is, the people who really do a good job, who are out there doing what you want them to do, they don't get the headlines. It's the noisemakers. It's the extremists. It's the people who are going to have some obnoxious opinion because that that gets everyone's attention. You know, the the guy out there who's doing the job, who's putting in the time, representing the citizens, and making his community a better place. You know, you're never going to read that guy in the paper, unfortunately. Michael Hingson  35:59 Yeah, and that's also part of the problem: is that the media looks for all the drama rather than really looking to to represent the the average citizen and what they truly want and need. Speaker 1  36:10 So those don't the actual the things don't make headlines. In fact, it was a it was really funny. There was a guy who was elected to the state house from this county, and one of his campaign platforms, he was going to repeal all the useless laws, all the things that are still on the books. That you know, just we don't need those laws anymore. They're old. They're outdated, and he did that for about a week, and it doesn't make headlines. So here he is, you know, doing this, doing the job that you think they they would want to do and making government more effective, no one cared. I remember there was one year where we actually we cut property taxes here in the city, and I thought, wow, everyone's going to come up and say thank you. No, no one did. So it's like, what's the motivation? If you go, they say, I want you to be I want you to be my mayor and I want you to work to cut that budget and so you cut the budget and then no one says thank you. Michael Hingson  37:08 We got Tom Steyer here in California who wants to become governor and he's talking about all these things that he's going to do. He's going to get electric utility rates lowered by a significant amount. He's going to encourage and bring competition to the electric grid industry, and he talks about lowering housing costs by building a million homes and doing so many things. And every time I hear his campaign commercials, the thing that I keep asking myself is, haven't we learned anything? And no offense to Donald Trump, but Donald Trump made a lot of promises that we're not seeing. Steyer is making a lot of promises that he has yet to say how he's going to pull any of them off. Speaker 1  37:56 Oh yeah, and that's and that's the thing is you got to. There's so much. There's only so much you can do. But you can you when you campaign, they can say anything. Of course, I know they might as well just say free ice cream and ponies for everyone. Michael Hingson  38:07 Yeah, and and that's almost essentially what's happening. And I'm not saying that he'd be a bad governor. I I haven't researched him enough, but the commercials just don't do anything to make me thrilled because he's not saying how he's going to do any of it, and and that's what I really want to know. Speaker 1  38:25 Yeah, I didn't when I when I ran this campaign, I didn't really promise anything that was sexy at all. I said, you know, I'm going to work on a policy manual. I'm going to increase the amount of information and transparency, and it was like nothing that you want to put on a bumper sticker, but I still won. I mean, there were people who were in the race who were promising this and that, and they were going to do this and all this stuff, and somehow I eked it out. Michael Hingson  38:51 Why do you think you won? Speaker 1  38:52 Name recognition, Michael Hingson  38:54 okay, Speaker 1  38:55 and that's and that's pretty much that's a lot of what politics is is is just the the name recognition. You can win on that. I also do have a reputation. I mean, being on council for 14 years and being often called the lone voice of reason, like I said earlier, I'm the one who asked that obvious question. Yeah, and people are in the audience are going, "Well, thank you. Someone's finally asking what what they wanted to ask, and so there was there was that, and and I also, you know, I I do return my emails. I answer the phone calls. I make sure that I'm I'm available. So you know, and I think that that reputation kind of spread itself around that that I would be responsive. It didn't mean that I actually did anything because the you know the powers are really limited. So if someone wanted you know they want to put in a stop sign somewhere, I'll go visit them, and we'll look at the thing, and we'll look at the traffic data, and all this stuff. But there may not be a stop sign there. Still, I showed enough time that I paid attention to them, and I responded to them, and you know, we'll see what we can do. That's the best you can say. Michael Hingson  39:55 And if it didn't happen that there was a stop sign, but there was a good reason for it. I would suspect that you would be the kind of person who would say, "Here's why it didn't happen. Speaker 1  40:03 Right, exactly, and and to explain that for and a lot of people don't understand things like that because it's easy to get defensive with government because sometimes it can be so colossally stupid. Yeah, but but it's just as long as you have that explanation, and sometimes it's it's really it's refreshing because then they hear the answer and they're good with it, so we have a problem here with there's noise on the freeway because they're expanding the freeway, and a lot of people are upset, so they call city hall, but it's not our project; it's the state highway district. So you know, it's like I can do only what I can do, but it's still you know, if you're the only elected official who bothered to reply to them and told them, you know, I hear what you're saying. I'm going to do whatever we can. Sometimes that makes people happy. They may not be happy in the big picture, but at least they got a response. Michael Hingson  40:48 And when you discover something that's relevant, I'll bet you are the kind of person who would then initiate another letter saying, "Here's why it didn't work, or "Here's why it will work. Speaker 1  40:59 Right, and I do follow up. So I did. In that case, I wrote a letter to the governor and said, "You know, is there anything you can do? And then I forwarded the letter on to the person who had contacted me and said, "Okay, this is the best I can do. Let's let's see what he can do. So yeah, Speaker 1  41:14 yeah. Michael Hingson  41:15 I'm I'm curious. You mentioned that property taxes did get lowered once in Cordellane, but nothing. No one ever did anything with that. How come? Speaker 1  41:23 Well, no. It's just we we did. We we kept them. You got you got them lowered. Michael Hingson  41:27 But but why didn't anybody pay attention to that? Speaker 1  41:30 No. Well, see, I'm sure they paid attention to it. We are only one entity on your property tax bill, so there's there's a few. Ah, good Michael Hingson  41:39 point. Speaker 1  41:39 We might have been the the one who kept it down, but the other ones may have kept it up. And then there's all the the formula is really complex, and so it could be that you know their assess property assessment went up, a lot of other things that would have happened that would have affected it. But like I said, I mean we made a big to do about it, saying hey look we worked, we cut the budget. We kept it flat for all you guys, and then no one said anything. But you know that that's it's discouraging, but it doesn't discourage me from continuing to try because I'll always try. Michael Hingson  42:12 You can only do what you can do, but at least at least you're doing it. Yeah. Now, if you want to live in a state where the taxes are very interesting, move to New Jersey, yeah, where we lived, the the taxes every town, every city had its own property taxes. You could live on a street, yeah, you could live on a street where you had a property tax of some amount, and if you walked across to the other side of the street, the property tax would be twice what yours was because the border runs right down the middle of the street. Speaker 1  42:45 That's crazy. Michael Hingson  42:47 We thought it was. Yeah, we thought it was kind of interesting, but we fortunately never had too horrible of property taxes in Westfield. But still, we heard about some other places that had some some horrible property taxes, but you know it's it's what what you have. Speaker 1  43:07 Yep. Michael Hingson  43:08 So you were in the city council for 14 years. What made you decide that you were going to run for mayor? Because you had to do that. You had to make that decision. Speaker 1  43:17 Yeah, didn't want to. You know, wasn't on my on my dance card to like, oh, next step up is going to be mayor. It was more of there was frustration that I had because the the past couple of mayors, good men, good people, but I always wanted to do more. I mean, being on the council, it was frustrating because I wanted a little more leadership out of the center seat wasn't seeing that, and then I worked earlier last year. I called up a bunch of people to see if they'd be willing to do the job. You know, good strong community members who would be provide the leadership and had the name recognition required to do the job, and no one wanted to do it. So I was like, okay, well, I'll I'll see if I can do it. I still have two years left on my council term, so if I lost, I'd still be part of the process. But there ended up being four people in that race, so it was pretty crowded. Which to me, you know, if if you're running if you run unopposed, it's pretty much a sign that people kind of like the way things are going. They're not they're not upset with you. Generally, if you have one opponent, you're considered that you know oh well good you know I get to compete for for the job or someone else is unhappy. But if you have a lot of opponents, it generally means that the public isn't happy with what's going on and they want to see some change. So there were four people in the race. I won with like 38% of the vote, so that's wow, Michael Hingson  44:45 yeah. Well, but clearly you're different than a lot of people. For example, you're a member of the Kootenay County Republican Central Committee, and yeah, and they sued you for defamation. What was all that about? Speaker 1  44:59 Well. So we had an episode here where the first of all the local Republican Party decided that running partisan races wasn't enough; that they wanted to get involved with nonpartisan races. And in Idaho, a lot of the local offices are nonpartisan. So city council is nonpartisan, school districts are nonpartisan. You know, water district, highway district, all these smaller local offices, and we have a community college here called North Idaho College. And the Senate committee decided that they would start to what they call rating and vetting candidates to determine who was the most conservative. And while a lot of Republicans appreciate that and they want to know who the real conservative is. The central committee realized that it was a way for them to exercise political power, because when people would get their recommendations, that would be the person who would win. And so they got power mad, and in my opinion, they hijacked the trustees of our local community college, and pretty much almost ran the thing into a ground. It was the it's the only college a community college in the history of the country that's ever been put on probation for disaccreditation due to board governance. Normally, when you disaccredit a college, you're disaccrediting it because of financial reasons, or something else, but or academics. Never, never has it happened that the board has been so crazy that the the ACL ACCU whatever it is the accreditation agency for community colleges has said, "What we're gonna we're gonna pull away your credentials, and all your students will not be receiving college credit. So, I mean, what what this board did that was endorsed by the local Republican Party, the extremists on the party, they they fired the president for no reason. They they started running up the bills, increasing the athletics budget. The board meetings were just pure chaos. Employees would leave. The local high schools stopped their their co education programs. It was just crazy. Wow! And and a lot of people didn't really understand what was going on. So I did a YouTube channel called Kootenay Rants, and Kootenay is the name of our county. Michael Hingson  47:20 Kootenay, yeah. I said Kootenay. Sorry about that. Speaker 1  47:22 It's no, it's okay. It's it could be either way. Who knows? Up north, they do say Kootenai, so we don't know. But anyway, this really got under the skin of the central committee because I pinned the blame on what was going on at the college on them, which is was justified, and I would not make anything up. Instead, I would just put in highlights from the meetings and say, "Here's what's happening, and here's the crazy stuff. You know, trustees yelling at members of the audience, making fun of them. You know, interrupting people, saying just weird, strange things. I mean, it just-it was odd. It was so bizarre, and so it was easy for me to make these videos. My background is in communications, and I know video production, so I was able to put together these videos on a YouTube channel, and you know, hundreds of people in the county would start watching them, including the central committee that did not like that I was exposing what I consider to be their corruption and their the the fact that I think they were responsible for this and they didn't like that so they accused me of defamation basically mean tweets because I would tweet about them and their nonsense and it was like they they made a big to do out of it because I was running for re-election for city council, so they came to a city council meeting to serve me, and you know recorded it and put it up on the internet and all this other stuff that that was just crazy. But my insurance company fortunately decided to represent me, and they just they thought the the suit was without merit. They don't say frivolous. They say without merit. Without Michael Hingson  49:04 merit. No, yeah. Speaker 1  49:05 And so yeah. And so eventually, now the suit is over, and I figured I would either win in court or it would be dismissed. But the insurance company settled, and I it was against my wishes. I said no. I said don't settle with these people. But the insurance company did settle, and I made sure that, as part of the settlement, that they would not say that I agreed to it, or that I said I was wrong, or I apologized, or anything. No, the insurance company just didn't want to waste any more money, so they decided to settle. They wrote a check. I don't know what it cost the central committee. As a member of the central committee, it has never been reported to the committee how much money they spent on that? Because it's it's pretty much the the Republican Central Committee of Kootenay County is pretty much a tyranny run by one guy and a personality cult, and there are members of the committee. There are some good Republicans such as myself on the committee who do believe in transparency and limited government and all those Ronald Reagan things. But there are these extremists on there who are just nutballs, and so there's a group of us here called North Idaho Republicans who are working to counter their insanity. And we've done a good job, but we need to do more work, and that's the story of the KCRCC. And they sued me for defamation. Michael Hingson  50:21 That's kind of crazy, though. Nevertheless, Speaker 3  50:23 of course. Michael Hingson  50:24 And it's only kind Speaker 1  50:26 of that. I wasn't laying awake. I mean, occasionally someone would call me up and they would say, "So what's the case? What's the what's happening with a lawsuit? And I'd say, "Well, a lawsuit. I said, "Oh yeah, that's right. They're suing me. I mean, it was never really. I was never obligated for it. Michael Hingson  50:39 Yeah. Well, so just out of curiosity, since the Republicans were doing this, where were the Democrats in all of that? Speaker 1  50:47 Well, we don't really have a lot of Democrats. That's Michael Hingson  50:49 what I was wondering. Yeah, Speaker 1  50:51 and so and and I always used to joke. I would say that the the Democrats, the Kootenai County Democrats, are looking for a new meeting location, and if anyone has a spare closet, got it. You let them know. No, they're they're all they're all very nice people. Michael Hingson  51:05 Yeah, Speaker 1  51:05 but they're they are in an extreme minority, and unfortunately, they they do try. So last time they had a body for every seat up for election, but they don't really come close. And it's a lot of it comes down to name recognition, but you also have a lot of red blue state refugees who come here. You have a lot of COVID refugees who came here, and so Idaho is very red. Kootenay County is very red, and it would take a tremendous amount of effort to to have a Democrat win here. We do have Democrats in the legislature, not a lot, but we do have them, and the the National Democratic Party is unwilling to spend a lot of money here because they know they're going to lose. So that's what I hear from them. But they are they are generally nice people. I mean, like you said, you if you wanted to vote for me here and you're a Democrat, I'd happily accept the vote. It's a nonpartisan position. We don't deal with those big divisive issues that you know that you you see on the news. Yeah, we're pretty much community-minded people, and I appreciate anyone who is. I do fight the KCRCC because I don't see them as community-minded, and that's one of the issues. Michael Hingson  52:18 Yeah. Well, it's it's unfortunate that that people are that way, but I I see it all too often in so many different ways. I mean, we face it with even in the blindness world with so many things where there ought to be major improvements and there ought to be defenses of the civil rights of blind people. For example, some of the rideshare programs don't do a lot to train their drivers about the fact that in reality they're obligated to take blind people with guide dogs, and oh, there's there is a fair amount of that, and it's and and the companies aren't willing to do anything about it, and we have to keep fighting it, which is just too bad. But there's just so many stuff, and there are so many people who just have these hidden agendas, or they just what it really comes down to is we don't want anybody telling us what to do, Speaker 1  53:09 right? Michael Hingson  53:11 And that's what it really comes down to. So, do you find that that religion gets into any of it at all, like with the conservative Christian movement or any of that, Speaker 1  53:24 there well, there's I do not like the politicization of the church. Michael Hingson  53:29 Yeah, Speaker 1  53:30 my favorite quote on that is that politics poisons the purity of the church. So I think we should keep the separation of church and state as much as possible, but there are you know politically motivated, politically active pastors, and I just I I think that's that's not the proper role of religion. I know that that there's kind of a battle going on in the far right about you know how much religion or how much that should should should be involved in politics in the public arena. In fact, there's a little across from the Costco up here. There is a little yard sign in front of some business that says "Vote Bible, and I always think that's kind of. I mean, I understand what the sentiment is, and I would always want to think that the people who we elect are good moral people. You know, Adam said that our Constitution is best suited for a moral people. I don't believe that means that there's morality in the Constitution. I believe there's morality in people, Michael Hingson  54:32 right? Speaker 1  54:33 And we do want people who have good ethics and good morals in public office, and it's very obvious when that doesn't happen. But I do not think. I think the purpose of our Constitution and the First Amendment is to ensure that we all have the the right to enjoy whatever religion we want, and we don't want to pick favorites. And so, what I see with a lot of these people is that they want to pick a favorite. Michael Hingson  54:55 Yeah, Speaker 1  54:56 they they not only want to pick the first religion, but they want. Everyone to go to the same church and the same service and sit in the same pew. Yeah, and that's not going to happen in any church. It's not going to happen in any denomination of any church. And then, and see, that's the other question: is if you know if you're going to insist that this is a Christian nation, it's like okay, but which denomination is it? Catholic? Is it Protestant? Is it Mormon? I mean, I you know you tell me because it's just going to be this incredible knot of worms, which is why I think the genius of the founders was that you know the the clause about religion is is two things: it gives you the freedom to exercise your own religion, and it also restricts the government from declaring that there's a religion. Yeah, and I think the far right kind of misses that when they when they take the message of we like moral people in office, but to dictate the morals to someone else is wrong. Michael Hingson  55:52 You know, I and it was Tolstoy who once said the biggest problem with Christianity is that people don't practice it, and I I see that so often. It's it is so unfortunate, but it is Speaker 1  56:03 there. Yeah. So that is a tough one. Michael Hingson  56:07 So if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be? I'd Speaker 1  56:12 get rid of the internet in a heartbeat. Specifically, social media. I think the the problem with social media is it amplifies our immaturities, and that is a huge issue. the The solution to that is to make the the publishers responsible for the content. So, in other words, Facebook could be sued for anything that someone puts on Facebook, and that would terrify Facebook, but it would terrify them to the point that they would actually regulate themselves and and start dialing back. I mean, I can say 20 years ago or so, when I whenever I was first on Facebook, I would go on there and I would see my kids, and they'd be playing a ball game or they'd be over at a friend's house. You'd see birthdays, vacations. It was just kind of like it was a social thing. You go on there now, and it's politics, and it's like this person deserved to be shot, and it's just-it's so-it's so extreme, and it's so rude. And you know, some of the stuff they said about me is not very nice, but I think that if we're going to solve one problem in the world, we really need to dial back all the animosity that's on the inter

For part 1 of Odyssey week here on PDA we discuss the geopolitical implications of Christopher Nolan's decision to film The Odyssey in Moroccan occupied West Sahara but first we talk about Ronald Reagan's hair. SOURCE: https://africasacountry.com/location/western-sahara PATREON + DISCORD PATREON.COM/PODDAMNAMERICA MERCH: poddamnamerica.bigcartel.com

In our 44th episode of This F*cking Guy, Erin and Alyssa analyze the evolution of the clout-chasing chameleon, Megyn Kelly. From her fiery takes and fake*ass feminist days at Fox News, to being humbled by her racist takes at her NBC Morning show, to entering her villain era, launching her alt-right podcast and transforming into a human guitar riff, this may just be our most self-serving psycho guy, yet!Sources:Ronald Reagan: Informant (Salon)Peeping Ron (Book Forum) Ronald Reagan's shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness (Salon)Ronald Reagan's wartime lies: The president had quite a Brian Williams problem (Salon)The Mendacity Index (Washington Monthly)On a wing and a prayer (Alec Nevala-Lee)Tear Down This Myth (Google Books) Reagan & Co. (The Washington Post) California: Credibility in Sacramento (Time) The Lion King: An Exchange (NY Books)Reagan Expresses Horror at Claim That the Holocaust is a Hoax (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) The Myth of Ronald Reagan and the Nazi Death Camps (National Review)The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan (Slate)Paying Lip Service (The Village Voice)The Road to Reagandom (Slate)How Ronald Reagan's Time at General Electric Pushed Him to Conservatism (Lit Hub)Ronald Reagan's Millions (Rolling Stone)How Prop 14 Shaped California's Racial Covenants (PBS Socal)Here's the Rest of Him (Claremont Review of Books) Alla Nazimova (AFI Catalog Spotlight)The Global HIV/AIDS Timeline (KFF)History of the HIV Epidemic (Gilead)When AIDS Was Funny Casts a Harsh Light on the Reagan Administration's Indifference to HIV (HIV Plus Mag)Short film “When AIDS Was Funny,” Reagan Press Secretary laughs off an epidemic (Q Notes Carolinas)‘When AIDS Was Funny': Short film reveals shortfalls of Reagan response to AIDS (MSNOW)HIV/AIDS Timeline (history.com)HIV/AIDS Historical Timeline (Philadelphia Center)Snapshots of an Epidemic: An HIV/AIDS Timeline (amfAR)The Iran-Contra Affair (Bill of Rights Institute) The Iran-Contra Affair (PBS American Experience) 1983 Beirut barracks bombing: ‘The BLT Building is gone!' (Marine Corps Times) H-Gram 080: Paved with Good Intentions—The U.S. Navy in the 1983 Lebanon Crisis (Naval History and Heritage Command)When Reagan Cut and Run (Foreign Policy) 40 Years Later, El Mozote Massacre Victims Vow to 'Keep Demanding Justice' (Common Dreams) The Massacre at El Mozote (Human Rights Watch)Judgment Day's Coming for U.S.-Backed Troops Who Slaughtered Men, Women, and So Many Children at El Mozote (Daily Beast) Pakistan's Nuclear Program Posed “Acute Dilemma” for U.S. Policy (National Security Archive) New Documents Spotlight Reagan-era Tensions over Pakistani Nuclear Program (National Security Archive) New Documents Spotlight Reagan-era Tensions over Pakistani Nuclear Program (Wilson Center)The Pakistan Aid Dilemma (Center for American Progress) Fact Check: It's Rumored that Ronald Reagan Had Alzheimer's Disease While Still in Office. Here's What the Evidence Says (Snopes)Did Reagan Decline? (Sage Journal)Hoover Makes Available the Newly Processed Papers of Nancy's Reagan's White House Astrologer (Hoover Institution)How Nancy Reagan's Secret Phone-In Astrologer Became a Powerful White House Adviser — and Helped Oust the Chief of Staff (People)Nancy Reagan: Controversial Moments During Her Life in the Public Eye (People)Why Ronald Reagan Became the Great Deregulator (JSTOR Daily)Looking Back On When President Reagan Fired The Air Traffic Controllers (NPR)Reagan's Legacy (SFAF)The Other Time a U.S. President Withheld WHO Funds (John Hopkins)How newly discovered audio is reviving debate over Reagan's legacy on race (PBS News)It's Time to End the Racist and Unjustified Sentencing Disparity Between Crack and Powder Cocaine (Civil Rights)Reagan's National Drug Strategy (University of Michigan)The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It and Why We Need It Back (SISYPHUS)Portraits in Oversight: The Iran-Contra Affair (Levin Center)Ronald Reagan Made Central America a Killing Field (Jacobin)Guatemalan Slaughter Was Part of Reagan's Hard Line (The New York Times)Remembering US-backed state terror in El Salvador (Al Jazeera)Ronald Reagan's shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness (Salon)The Key to Welfare Reform (The Atlantic)

Text the show! Last week on Common Sense, Chad asked whether government can ever actually get smaller.This week, a single receipt from California turns that question upside down.When electric vehicles reduce smog inspections, what happens to the fees that funded them? When lottery revenue is promised to schools, what happens when the institution becomes more important than the promise? What do tobacco settlements, prison contracts, and legalized sports betting all have in common?This episode follows the money—not the headlines.Instead of asking whether government solves problems, Chad investigates what happens when those solutions begin threatening government revenue.You'll never look at public policy the same way again.In This Episode California's smog fees and EV incentives  Why gas taxes are disappearing  The lottery promise that quietly changed  Tobacco settlement bonds and shrinking smoking rates  Prison occupancy guarantees  Ferguson's dependence on fines and fees  Sports betting, Kalshi, and the next generation of government revenue  Ronald Reagan's warning about permanent government 

Democrats didn't merely disagree with Trump's press conference. They argued Americans shouldn't even hear it. That's a profound shift. For centuries the Enlightenment ideal was simple. Present competing ideas. Allow free citizens to evaluate them. Today's model often sounds different. Present one idea. Filter competing ideas. Explain why citizens should trust the filter. That's a radically different philosophy of citizenship. That isn't Republican versus Democrat. It's paternalism versus self-government.     Imagine if Ronald Reagan had announced a primetime speech on Soviet espionage and ABC replied, "Nah...we've got reruns." That's essentially where we've arrived. The President announces he's releasing declassified intelligence involving the most sacred institution in our republic, elections, and instead of every network saying, "America deserves to hear this," they suddenly become television sommeliers. "This speech has hints of misinformation with notes of conspiracy and an unpleasant finish. We recommend viewers pair it with three former intelligence officials and Rachel Maddow." The comedy practically writes itself. For nearly ten years the Left insisted Donald Trump represented an existential threat to democracy. Now the supposed threat to democracy wants Americans to see government documents. The defenders of democracy? "Please don't watch." You almost have to admire the accidental irony. Nothing says confidence like begging people not to hear the opposing side. And here's the bigger point. If Trump is completely wrong... Why be afraid of people hearing him? Kevin Jackson has been called, the "white-collar" Joe Rogan. Given their similar backgrounds in TV, comedy, and martial arts, it's easy to see why people enjoy Kevin's show so much. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris.In 2019 the IMF called the increasing adoption of industrial policy: "The return of the policy that shall not be named". No one is scared to name it in 2026. Governments in rich and poor economies alike are intervening to change what their countries produce, and the pace has picked up sharply.Zsóka Kóczán (EBRD) was one of the leads on the Transition Report 2024-25, which draws on a database of more than 31,000 industrial policies in 150 economies. She talks to Tim Phillips about who is using these policies, and the mistakes that happen when they aren't managed well. They multiply before elections, they discriminate against foreign interests, many are firm-specific - and until recently few had an end date, whether they worked or not. Picking winners is hard. Letting go of losers is even harder, she warns. The research behind this episode:EBRD. 2024. "Transition Report 2024-25: Navigating Industrial Policy." London: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The digital edition, with country assessments and interactive charts, is at 2024.tr-ebrd.com.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Zsoka Koczan. 2026. "Navigating industrial policy." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).About the guestZsoka Koczan is Associate Director and Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where she works on the Transition Report, edits the Regional Economic Prospects and runs the Life in Transition Survey. Before joining the EBRD she was an economist at the International Monetary Fund. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge, and her research spans income disparities within countries, migration and inequality.Research cited in this episodeMoving the goalposts. The analysis of industrial policy objectives in the report is developed in Koczan, Zsoka, Victoria Marino, and Alexander Plekhanov. 2025. "Moving the Goalposts: The Changing Objectives of Industrial Policy." EBRD Working Paper No. 311. It codifies the stated objectives of more than 31,000 industrial policies using large language model processing; in the EBRD regions and other emerging markets, around 75% of policies pursue multiple objectives, and more than 10% pursue three or more.The Juhász, Lane, Oehlsen and Pérez dataset. The report builds on the industrial policy dataset assembled by Réka Juhász, Nathan Lane, Emily Oehlsen, and Verónica C. Pérez in "The Who, What, When, and How of Industrial Policy: A Text-Based Approach" (STEG Working Paper No. WP050, 2023), which uses natural language processing to identify industrial policies in the Global Trade Alert repository; the EBRD team extended its coverage of emerging markets.The Global Trade Alert. An independent monitoring initiative that has documented policy interventions affecting international commerce since 2009; it is the underlying source for both datasets above.The policy that shall not be named. Cherif, Reda, and Fuad Hasanov. 2019. "The Return of the Policy That Shall Not Be Named: Principles of Industrial Policy." IMF Working Paper No. 19/74. The title captures how unfashionable the subject was among economists before its recent revival, which is Koczan's point in raising it; the interventions themselves never went away.Reagan's nine words. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan remarked that the nine most terrifying words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Koczan cites the line as a marker of the era when industrial policy fell out of favour, and as a reminder that government failures can replace the market failures these policies are meant to correct.The Industrial Accelerator Act. The European Commission's proposal, presented in March 2026, would introduce "Made in EU" and low-carbon requirements for public procurement and support schemes in strategic sectors. Koczan cites it as evidence that the upward trend in industrial policy adoption is continuing.More VoxTalks Economics episodesEurope in the Middle, recorded at the same forum, in which Pol Antras and Beata Javorcik ask how Europe should make policy when it is caught between the US and China in a realigning world trade system.Addressing Global Imbalances, also from the forum, in which Gita Gopinath and Philip Lane discuss the third wave of global imbalances and what central banks can and cannot do about it.Related reading on VoxEUThe visible hand of the state: Industrial policies in emerging markets, a VoxEU column by the EBRD team presenting the Transition Report's findings on how emerging markets use industrial policy.The new economics of industrial policy, a VoxEU column by Réka Juhász, Nathan Lane and Dani Rodrik summarising the recent empirical literature on when these policies work.The return of industrial policy in data, a VoxEU column introducing the New Industrial Policy Observatory and documenting the recent wave of interventions.

Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.comHow did “biblical manhood” become so tied to aggression, politics, and power? Kristin Kobes Du Mez, professor of history at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne, joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to explain how white evangelical ideas about masculinity helped shape American Christianity and American politics. Du Mez traces the rise of rugged Christian manhood through culture, Cold War politics, the Religious Right, Ronald Reagan, fear of feminism and secularism, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and the culture war machinery that turns complicated issues into loyalty tests. She also connects masculine power to institutional self-protection, including the Southern Baptist Convention's response to women in leadership and sexual abuse reform. This conversation is not just about men. It is about how gender, theology, fear, capitalism, and political power worked together to shape modern white evangelicalism, and why America's 250th raises urgent questions about religious liberty and democracy.Guest BioKristin Kobes Du Mez, PhD, is a historian, New York Times bestselling author, and professor of history at Calvin University. Her work focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, politics, and American evangelicalism. She is the author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, A New Gospel for Women, and the forthcoming Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. She is also a Senior Democracy Fellow with PRRI. In this conversation, Du Mez helps explain how white evangelical ideas about masculinity, femininity, fear, family, politics, and power shaped the modern church and the country around it.Book MentionedJesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du MezBookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781631499050Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made by Kristin Kobes Du MezBookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781324090977Relevant Links & ResourcesKristin Kobes Du Mez Official WebsiteURL: https://kristindumez.com/ Support Sarah Stankorb's work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/Support the showKeep the conversation going.Want to learn more about Faithful Politics, suggest a future guest, or connect with us directly?Visit our website:faithfulpoliticspodcast.comBrowse our bookstore, featuring books from many of our guests:faithfulpoliticspodcast.com/bookstoreSupport the show and help us keep these conversations going:patreon.com/cw/FaithfulPoliticsSubscribe for behind-the-scenes content, reflections, and updates:faithfulpolitics.substack.comContact the hosts:Josh Burtram, Faithful Host: Josh@faithfulpolitics.comWill Wright, Political Host: Will@faithfulpolitics.comFollow Faithful Politics:Instagram: faithful_politicsFacebook: FaithfulPoliticsPodcast

President Ronald Reagan  once stated: Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for […]

  Peter Huessy. The discussion continues with a focus on films like Fail-Safe and The Day After. Huessy highlights how these movies influenced public perception and presidential policy, including Ronald Reagan's drive for arms reduction. They reflect on the devastating human and economic consequences of a potential nuclear exchange. (16)2945 NAGASAKI

SCHEDUKE JBS 7-21-26Elizabeth Peek joins John Batchelor to discuss how rising gasoline prices act as a talisman for consumer sentiment and presidential approval. Despite low unemployment and rising real wages, the public remains fixated on energy costs. Peek criticizes Republican messaging and highlights the massive AI-driven investment boom currently occurring. (1)Elizabeth Peek discusses New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's inability to define the "working class." She argues the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) primarily represent white, college-educated liberals rather than manual laborers. They also discuss Kevin Warsh as a potential Fed chairman and the independence of interest rate decisions. (2)Peter Berkowitz examines Vice President JD Vance's views on restoring Christianity in America. Berkowitz highlights the ambiguity in Vance's stance regarding government involvement in religion. They contrast Vance's rhetoric with James Madison's historical opposition to state-funded religion, emphasizing the constitutional separation of church and state. (3)Ahmad Sharawi reports on Syria's interception of sophisticated Iranian weapons—including cruise missile components—destined for Hezbollah. The weapons were concealed in Iraqi oil tankers. This move is seen as Al-Shara's attempt to gain international trust and investment by demonstrating a commitment to containing Hezbollah's rearmament. (4)Mary Kissel discusses the ongoing conflict with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. She argues there is no diplomatic overlap because Iran views nuclear weapons as essential for survival. Kissel notes the lack of a broad international coalition and warns that regional allies might seek accommodation with Tehran. (5)Mary Kissel turns to NATO's lack of unity regarding the Ukraine war. Kissel argues that while Eastern Europeannations feel the threat, Western Europe focuses on domestic politics. She highlights the emergence of a "new alliance" of Russia, Iran, and China, which poses a significant hybrid threat. (6)Joseph Sternberg analyzes China's struggling economy, noting that official growth targets are likely overstated. Facing a real estate crater and demographic decline, China is reverting to an export-heavy model. Unlike Japan's past recovery, China's adversarial stance makes trading partners less willing to absorb its gluts. (7)Joseph Sternberg discusses the transition to Prime Minister Andy Burnham in the UK. Burnham, who took office without an election mandate, faces a heavily taxed economy and bond market skepticism. Sternberg critiques Burnham's big-government agenda and resistance to market reforms, suggesting it may drive away wealth. (8)Gregory Copley evaluates Prime Minister Andy Burnham's new cabinet, specifically John Healey as Chancellor and Wes Streeting as Defense Secretary. While the government aims to boost defense spending and support Ukraine, Copley questions its legitimacy without a fresh mandate and notes a lack of long-term global strategic planning. (9)Gregory Copley covers the alienation of Canada under the Trump administration. Copley explains how Canada is diversifying its defense procurement—buying Swedish aircraft and Australian radar—rather than relying on the US. This shift threatens the NORAD partnership and results in billions of dollars lost for US aerospace industries. (10)Gregory Copley explores the "balance of ignorance," where declining literacy and social media lead to a loss of national identity. He argues that governments make poor strategic decisions because they no longer understand their own history or adversaries, citing the current US conflict with Iran as a primary example. (11)Gregory Copley explains King Charles III's role in forming Andy Burnham's government. The King's "blessing" provides constitutional legitimacy to the transition. Copley notes Burnham is the first practicing Roman Catholic Prime Minister and highlights the King's departure to Glasgow to open the Commonwealth Games. (12)Former Congressman Thaddeus McCotter discusses how rising gas prices and inflation hurt Republicans in swing states. They also examine the Trump administration's use of the Smoot-Hawley Act to threaten tariffs on Canada. McCotter views these as punitive measures that weaken the broader argument for necessary trade protections. (13)Thaddeus McCotter comments on a recent presidential address regarding the 2020 election. He argues that claiming the system is "rigged" is counterproductive for Republican turnout. McCotter suggests that voters care far more about the "price of gas" and groceries than relitigating past elections that the party lost. (14)John Batchelor and Peter Huessy review classic nuclear war films like Godzilla, On the Beach, and Dr. Strangelove. Huessy argues that while these films highlight the horrors of nuclear use, real-world focus has evolved toward deterrence and sophisticated safety systems designed to prevent accidental or unauthorized missile launches. (15)Peter Huessy continues the discussion of nuclear films like Fail Safe and The Day After. Huessy disputes claims that The Day After motivated Ronald Reagan's arms control efforts, noting Reagan was a committed advocate for nuclear reductions long before the movie's massive 1983 television broadcast. (16)Corrections applied silently: Ahmad Sharawi (4) and Thaddeus McCotter (13, 14) per the log.

The Constitution Study with Host Paul Engel – There's been a lot of talk since COVID about a loss of faith in institutions. Sadly, many of the reasons given for the loss of faith are misguided at best. How will anyone trust the Supreme Court if the justices' families are threatened by those who disagree with them, especially those from the Marxist left? Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify!”

The Constitution Study with Host Paul Engel – There's been a lot of talk since COVID about a loss of faith in institutions. Sadly, many of the reasons given for the loss of faith are misguided at best. How will anyone trust the Supreme Court if the justices' families are threatened by those who disagree with them, especially those from the Marxist left? Ronald Reagan said, “Trust, but verify!”

Ronald Reagan said it best: One of the greatest sources of America's greatness are the people drawn to the country from every corner of the globe, who become American and keep the country young, vital, and modern. But Trump and Stephen Miller are sticking to their absolutist deportation plan without regard to history or its political cost. Meanwhile, we are learning in real time that our trillion-dollar weapons systems are (sometimes) no match for Iran's drones—and that the regime can't resist the opportunity to humiliate another U.S. president. Plus, Laura Ingraham spoke truth, Bibi has turned Americans against Israel, Testosterone Pete is making the Pentagon look weak, and the joy of MAGA tears over The Odyssey.Joe Scarborough joins guest host Sam Stein.Show notes: "Morning Joe" on MS NOW Rahm Emanauel's speech on the U.S.-Israel relationship Head to https://forkfulmeals.com/THEBULWARK for 50% off your first order today Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK #oneskinpod

Text the show! George Washington's greatest accomplishment wasn't defeating Britain.It was giving power back.In this episode of Common Sense, Chad Law explores the forgotten principle that built America: stewardship.From Congress and family businesses to churches, corporations, and even our own homes, institutions don't usually collapse because bad people take over.They collapse because caretakers slowly become owners.Using history, psychology, leadership research, and one remarkable painting hanging inside the Capitol Rotunda, Chad examines why America's institutions struggle to renew themselves—and what every one of us can do to reverse the trend.This isn't really an episode about Washington.It's about every chair we'll someday have to leave behind.Chapters00:00 The Empty Chair: A Symbol of Power and Sacrifice03:11 The Mystery of Institutional Decline06:04 Caretakers vs. Owners: A Fundamental Question15:22 Washington's Legacy: The Chair He Refused18:47 The Science of Leadership and Institutional Health28:29 Congress: A Case Study in Institutional Failure35:56 The Role of Civil Servants36:57 Vidal Sassoon: A Legacy of Teaching and Selling39:48 Understanding Psychological Ownership44:00 The Importance of Stewardship in Institutions48:42 The Challenge of Leadership and Mentorship52:20 Building a Legacy Through Stewardship56:32 The Dinner Table: A Call to Action57:59 Final Thoughts on Stewardship and LegacyConnect with Common Sense

Pour l'Amérique conservatrice, Ronald Reagan est LE président le plus mythique, le plus charismatique. Donald Trump lui a d'ailleurs généreusement emprunté son slogan de campagne de 1980 : "Let's make America Great Again". Avec sa femme Nancy ils ont formé un couple solide et très amoureux à la Maison Blanche. Ils étaient pourtant partis pour faire autre chose : du cinéma, tous les deux, à Hollywood, où ils se sont rencontrés. Un podcast Bababam Originals Ecriture et voix : Alice Deroide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dawid Heyl – portefeuljebestuurder Ninety One Volg RSG Geldsake op Twitter

The credibility war.   Trump's speech wasn't about election fraud. It's about fear. Not Trump's fear. Washington's. "Who Decides What You Are Allowed To Believe?" Notice something interesting. [SEGMENT 1-2] Trump's Speech 2 Democrats didn't merely disagree with Trump's press conference. They argued Americans shouldn't even hear it. That's a profound shift. For centuries the Enlightenment ideal was simple. Present competing ideas. Allow free citizens to evaluate them. Today's model often sounds different. Present one idea. Filter competing ideas. Explain why citizens should trust the filter. That's a radically different philosophy of citizenship. That isn't Republican versus Democrat. It's paternalism versus self-government.     Imagine if Ronald Reagan had announced a primetime speech on Soviet espionage and ABC replied, "Nah...we've got reruns." That's essentially where we've arrived. The President announces he's releasing declassified intelligence involving the most sacred institution in our republic, elections, and instead of every network saying, "America deserves to hear this," they suddenly become television sommeliers. "This speech has hints of misinformation with notes of conspiracy and an unpleasant finish. We recommend viewers pair it with three former intelligence officials and Rachel Maddow." The comedy practically writes itself. For nearly ten years the Left insisted Donald Trump represented an existential threat to democracy. Now the supposed threat to democracy wants Americans to see government documents. The defenders of democracy? "Please don't watch." You almost have to admire the accidental irony. Nothing says confidence like begging people not to hear the opposing side. And here's the bigger point. If Trump is completely wrong... Why be afraid of people hearing him? Kevin Jackson has been called, the "white-collar" Joe Rogan. Given their similar backgrounds in TV, comedy, and martial arts, it's easy to see why people enjoy Kevin's show so much. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Guest host Krish Dhanam reflects on why America still matters as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. Drawing from his journey from India to the United States, he recounts the people and moments that shaped his admiration for the American experiment—from John Wayne's screen portrayals of courage and the Apollo moon landing to Ronald Reagan's optimism and his own arrival with nine dollars to his name. Dhanam argues that gratitude is essential to preserving liberty, especially when political anger, historical amnesia, and cultural division threaten to obscure the nation's founding ideals. He revisits the courage of the Founders, George Washington's victory at Trenton, and the responsibility that accompanies constitutional rights. His warning is direct: Americans cannot allow comfort or complacency to blind them to threats within and beyond the country. Remembering America's history, recovering gratitude, and accepting the responsibility of citizenship are necessary if the republic is to endure.

Guest host Krish Dhanam reflects on why America still matters as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. Drawing from his journey from India to the United States, he recounts the people and moments that shaped his admiration for the American experiment—from John Wayne's screen portrayals of courage and the Apollo moon landing to Ronald Reagan's optimism and his own arrival with nine dollars to his name. Dhanam argues that gratitude is essential to preserving liberty, especially when political anger, historical amnesia, and cultural division threaten to obscure the nation's founding ideals. He revisits the courage of the Founders, George Washington's victory at Trenton, and the responsibility that accompanies constitutional rights. His warning is direct: Americans cannot allow comfort or complacency to blind them to threats within and beyond the country. Remembering America's history, recovering gratitude, and accepting the responsibility of citizenship are necessary if the republic is to endure.

This week on the Mark Levin Show, Senator Lindsey Graham, a loyal friend and loyal ally to democratic and peace-loving countries around the world, has passed away. He was a friend to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and others. He was a counterbalance to naive Woke Reich isolationists who talk about American sovereignty but don't realize you have to fight for it. Graham had a lot in common in national security matters with Ronald Reagan. Not even a nation as powerful as the United States can go it alone, and Graham understood we have alliances for a reason. The left and Woke Reich isolationists wasted no time attacking him, but he was popular in South Carolina and all over the world. He and his sound advice will be truly missed. Then, the infiltration of America by Islamists and jihadis is really in full force, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, is a top donor to his super PAC and a longtime leader on ISNA's founding committee and CAIR Michigan president—both groups are co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial that funneled millions to Hamas, tied to the Muslim Brotherhood mothership responsible for groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas, and funded by Qatar and Turkey. Why do Democrats tolerate these ties? Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) seeks to eliminate the U.S. Senate and Electoral College to advance their agenda, though both require constitutional amendments. These institutions exist to protect smaller, less-populated states, ensuring they have a meaningful say in government so they would join the Union during independence. Similarly, the Electoral College ensures smaller states influence presidential elections, countering domination by a handful of large, populous Democrat metropolitan states and cities. Removing these safeguards would enable mob rule, open borders, non-citizen influence, and a centralized Marxist government. Later, the 2028 Republican presidential primary must be competitive and vibrant, with no coronations. The Republican Party needs to be rooted in the principles of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Reagan, Buckley, Goldwater, and Milton Friedman's free markets—not Democrat-lite nationalism or populism that dismisses history—and we should demand articulate candidates who boldly contrast conservative beliefs with the left. No, we don't want a bold government, which is what the socialists and Marxists desire. We want an effective limited government confined to its constitutional powers, a bold private sector, and individual sovereignty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it mean to have the American can-do spirit — and who best embodied it during the most turbulent century in our nation's history? Author Richard Battle joins Newt to discuss his new book, AmeriCANS Who Made America: 20th Century — The American Century, the fourth volume in his celebrated series. Battle profiles 43 patriots, leaders, and innovators who carried America forward through the Spanish flu, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Space Race. The conversation brings several of them to life: Audie Murphy, the orphaned farm boy who became World War II's most decorated soldier; John Wayne, who used film to inspire patriotism; Ronald Reagan, the everyday American who became president; Martin Luther King Jr., who achieved more for civil rights in 13 years than the previous 350; and Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood star whose wartime invention became the foundation of Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Live July 18, 2026(The Yaron & Nikos Dialogues, Episode 8)Ronald Reagan -- GOAT or Overhyped? | Yaron & Nikos DialoguesReagan Built the Modern Right—But Was He America's Greatest President or the Beginning of Today's Conservative Crisis?Was Ronald Reagan America's greatest modern president—or is his legacy far more complicated than conservatives admit?In Episode 8 of The Yaron & Nikos Dialogues, Yaron Brook and Nikos Sotirakopoulos dive deep into Reagan's life, philosophy, presidency, and enduring influence. They examine everything from Reaganomics, tax cuts, deregulation, the Cold War, and the Soviet collapse to his relationship with Ayn Rand, religion, foreign policy, and the modern Republican Party.Along the way they debate one of the biggest political questions of our time:Was Reagan the GOAT...or is he vastly overrated?The conversation expands into sports, art, culture, classic films, 70s and 80s music, and an extended audience Q&A covering Ayn Rand's criticism of Reagan, Trump comparisons, Ben Shapiro, JD Vance, military duty, Silicon Valley, capitalism, and much more.Watch now: https://youtube.com/live/XkWHWROlbxoMain Topic Timestamps00:00 Introduction00:41 Opening remarks & The Yaron & Nikos Dialogues01:07 Weekend football, finals & celebrations02:13 Sports and art—what do they have in common?02:45 England's strategic mistakes04:00 The Odyssey review & conservative reactions05:27 Reagan: GOAT or Overhyped?07:09 Reagan's personality, leadership & communication10:20 Reagan's early life & political transformation14:55 WWII service & Hollywood career16:04 Union leadership & becoming a national speaker20:34 The Goldwater speech & Medicare debate24:11 Reagan, Ayn Rand & national prominence27:11 California governor: taxes, welfare, abortion & environment31:08 Nixon, Ford & Reagan's presidential ambitions35:38 America in 198041:31 Reaganomics: tax cuts, deregulation & growth49:28 Social Security reform & free trade55:25 Religion, foreign policy & the Cold War1:00:07 Star Wars Initiative & nuclear negotiations1:05:49 Reagan and the fall of the Soviet Union1:12:41 Dissidents, Israel, Lebanon & Afghanistan1:21:30 Reagan and the Religious Right1:24:39 Music review: Simple Minds1:27:27 Favorite music discussion1:30:11 Christopher Burke concert storyLive Audience Questions1:34:39 Why did Ayn Rand oppose Reagan?1:51:51 Mysticism inside the Reagan administration?1:55:39 Nikos reviews The Odyssey1:59:23 Can investors really profit from Trump's Truth Social posts?2:01:55 Was Reagan ultimately a positive or negative legacy?2:02:44 Why doesn't Yaron like The Breakfast Club?2:04:16 Was America healthier during Reagan's era?2:08:06 Reagan vs. Trump—how big is the difference?2:09:39 Ben Shapiro, JD Vance & the new Right2:11:43 AI videos, Messi, Milei & optimism in Argentina2:17:36 Is military duty morally justified?2:19:48 Are you an Urban Achiever?2:20:20 The connection between sports and art2:25:17 Campaign messaging: optimism vs. aggression2:25:19 Heroes, producers & The Odyssey2:34:10 Yaron's favorite songs of the 60s & 70s2:36:04 Joel Osteen discussion2:36:17 Peggy Noonan's Reagan legacy2:36:29 Does The Odyssey celebrate reason?2:37:36 Would Silicon Valley exist without Reagan?2:38:54 Why do New York and California still outperform?More from Nikos Sotirakopoulos: https://www.nikos.org/Support Nikos: https://www.youtube.com/@nikos_1717

In a very special episode of the podcast, our hosts soak up the wisdom of renowned 92-year-old former California Speaker of the House and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a player still at the top of his political game. From jelly bean power plays in front of Ronald Reagan to pressure campaigns to free Nelson Mandela to candid thoughts on how to navigate the Trumpian circus in Washington, D.C., Brown is a well of bipartisan optimism and moral clarity. "I was the guy," Brown told former Atlanta mayor and mentee Kasim Reed, "who could tell you what your bill would do if enacted. And I would support it because it was the right thing to do. And in government, you must always do what is right." "You've laid out so many different examples of doing the right thing," said former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter. "We seem to be somewhat, nationally, dysfunctional these days." "But when you think about Willie Brown," said Citizen Co-Founder Larry Platt, "you think of a happy warrior … someone who fights with a smile on their face. That's what people want." "There's no question, that is my approach," Brown said with a smile. "And besides that, I like to party. No matter where I am, if a party can happen, I'm a participant in that effort." Join us for one of the most memorable and smile-inducing episodes of the podcast, a true masterclass in the art of politics. Remember to subscribe to the podcast to keep up on all the latest episodes. And watch for new episodes on YouTube and Piksel+ as they become available. As cities go, so goes the nation!

This Day in Legal History: The National Minimum Drinking Age ActOn July 17, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the law that effectively set the drinking age at 21 across the entire country. What makes the Act a fixture of law-school classrooms isn't the policy itself—it's the clever, and constitutionally fraught, mechanism Congress used to achieve it.Here's the problem Congress faced. Setting a drinking age is a classic exercise of state police power; the federal government has no general authority to tell states how old someone must be to buy a beer. So Congress didn't order the states to do anything. Instead, it reached for its spending power. The Act directed that any state which failed to raise its drinking age to 21 would lose a percentage of its federal highway funds. States remained technically “free” to keep a lower drinking age—they'd just forfeit a slice of the highway money they depended on. Within a few years, every state had fallen into line.South Dakota challenged the law, and in the 1987 case South Dakota v. Dole, the Supreme Court upheld it. The Court laid out the framework that still governs conditional federal spending: conditions must be unambiguous, related to a federal interest, not otherwise unconstitutional, and—critically—must not be so coercive that they amount to “compulsion” rather than mere “encouragement.” The Court decided that losing about five percent of highway funds was just mild pressure, not coercion. That last piece became enormously important decades later. In the 2012 healthcare decision, NFIB v. Sebelius, the Court for the first time found that a spending condition had crossed the line into unconstitutional coercion, when Congress threatened states with the loss of all their Medicaid funding. The significance of July 17, 1984 is that a law about drinking age quietly established the constitutional playbook for how the federal government leverages its money to steer state policy—and where the limits of that leverage finally lie.A federal appeals court has reinstated the Pentagon's policy requiring journalists to be accompanied by a government escort inside the building, handing the Trump administration a win in its press-access fight with The New York Times. A lower-court judge had blocked the escort requirement in June, but a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit put it back in place. The legal reasoning is worth parsing. The Times argued the escort rule was retaliation against the press in violation of the First Amendment. The panel disagreed—at least for now—finding the Pentagon likely to succeed on its argument that a “generally applicable escort requirement” isn't a “sufficiently adverse action” to support a First Amendment retaliation claim. In other words, because the rule applies to all reporters rather than singling out particular outlets or viewpoints, the court was skeptical it amounts to unconstitutional retaliation. This is an interim ruling on a preliminary question, not a final decision; the Times says it looks forward to litigating the merits on an expedited basis. The significance is part of a broader pattern we've tracked this week—friction between the administration and the press over access and newsgathering. Here the court signaled that neutral, across-the-board restrictions on where reporters can roam are harder to attack than targeted ones, even as the deeper question of press access to the government remains very much alive.US appeals court keeps in place Pentagon's escort policy for journalists | ReutersA federal judge has warned the Justice Department after government lawyers cited a court decision that does not exist—an apparent AI “hallucination”—in an immigration detention case. In the Michigan matter, DOJ lawyers argued that the Sixth Circuit had barred courts from second-guessing an immigration judge's bond decision, and cited a case, Taylor v. Hott, that simply isn't real. Notably, the judge who caught it was appointed by President Trump, and he observed that fabricated AI citations have fueled “a rash of cases” clogging the courts with fake authorities. If this sounds familiar, it should—we covered a nearly identical episode on Monday, when the Eleventh Circuit sanctioned a private lawyer for the same mistake. The rule is the same regardless of who commits it: when you sign a brief, you certify that its legal contentions are grounded in real, existing law, and generative AI tools routinely invent confident, well-formatted citations to cases that were never decided. What makes this one notable is that it's the government's own lawyers doing it, in a case about detaining a human being. The judge declined to impose sanctions but issued a pointed warning that future filings must not contain nonexistent authorities. The significance is that the AI-hallucination problem has reached the Justice Department itself, and the courts' patience—already thin—is not going to extend just because it's the government at the podium.US judge warns Justice Department about AI use in immigration case | ReutersThe Trump administration is reviving the “public charge” rule, a policy that can deny green cards to immigrants deemed likely to rely on public benefits. The rule appeared in the Federal Register on Thursday, will be formally published July 20, and takes effect September 18. Here's the concept. “Public charge” is a very old idea in immigration law—the government has long been able to refuse admission or permanent residency to someone likely to become primarily dependent on government support. The fight is over how broadly to define it. The version being revived, first adopted in 2019, dramatically expanded the definition to sweep in anyone who received a government benefit—things like food stamps, Medicaid, or housing vouchers—for more than twelve months in any three-year period. The Biden administration abandoned that broad approach in 2022 and narrowed the grounds for denial; now the expansive version is back. Immigrant advocates warn of a powerful “chilling effect” beyond the green-card applicants themselves: the fear that using benefits could jeopardize their status leads people—including in mixed-status families with citizen children—to avoid the doctor, skip food assistance, or hesitate to file taxes. The significance is that a technical change to the definition of a single term can reshape the behavior of millions, deterring lawful use of public programs out of fear it will be held against someone later.US to revive rule that could deny green cards to immigrants using public benefits | ReutersAnd finally, DraftKings has sued the city of Philadelphia after receiving a subpoena, arguing that the city's consumer-protection ordinance is preempted by Pennsylvania state law. The dispute is a clean illustration of a recurring structural question: who gets to regulate what. Gambling in Pennsylvania is heavily regulated at the state level, through a comprehensive statutory scheme and a state gaming authority. Philadelphia enacted its own ordinance and issued DraftKings a subpoena as part of an investigation into potential violations. DraftKings' core argument is preemption—the principle that when a higher level of government has occupied a field, a lower one can't layer on conflicting or duplicative rules of its own. The company contends the city ordinance essentially copies Pennsylvania law, and that gambling regulation belongs to the state, not the city, so Philadelphia lacks the authority to investigate and enforce in this space. This is the same preemption logic we've seen play out between the federal government and states—here it's just one rung down, between a state and one of its cities, governed by state law and the limits of municipal power. The significance is both immediate and broad: immediately, it's a bid to quash a subpoena and fend off a city investigation; more broadly, it tests how much room local governments have to police national sports-betting companies when the state has already claimed the field.DraftKings sues Philadelphia after receiving subpoena | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

On a very special episode of How To Really Run A City, our hosts soak up the wisdom of renowned 92-year-old former California Speaker of the House and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a player still at the top of his political game. From jelly bean power plays in front of Ronald Reagan to pressure campaigns to free Nelson Mandela to candid thoughts on how to navigate the Trumpian circus in Washington, D.C., Brown is a well of bipartisan optimism and moral clarity. "I was the guy," Brown told former Atlanta mayor and mentee Kasim Reed, "who could tell you what your bill would do if enacted. And I would support it because it was the right thing to do. And in government, you must always do what is right." "You've laid out so many different examples of doing the right thing," said former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter. "We seem to be somewhat, nationally, dysfunctional these days." "But when you think about Willie Brown," said Citizen Co-Founder Larry Platt, "you think of a happy warrior … someone who fights with a smile on their face. That's what people want." "There's no question, that is my approach," Brown said with a smile. "And besides that, I like to party. No matter where I am, if a party can happen, I'm a participant in that effort." Join us for one of the most memorable and smile-inducing episodes of the podcast, a true masterclass in the art of politics. As cities go, so goes the nation!

In 1912, an axe killed all eight people sleeping in a Villisca, Iowa farmhouse, and the two men suspected of it — a traveling preacher and a business rival — both walked free.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/VilliscaReverendRivalREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84usw4FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Conspiracy theories, while often dark, can also be kind of humorous due to being so outlandishly unbelievable. For example… is the Earth's moon artificial, and actually an extraterrestrial spaceship? We'll look at the strange theory. (Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?) *** In 1912 one of the most brutal slayings in America took place in the small town of Villisca, Iowa… a murder so brutal that numerous documentaries have been made about it, books have been written, and amateur detectives have poured over the facts and suspects still trying to find out who the murderer was that swung the bloody axe. (The Unsolved Villisca Ax Murders) *** The President of the United States, no matter who is in the position at the time, is always in danger from those who would like to see someone else in office. We'll hear on the news of the assassination attempts that came close, but we more often than not are completely unaware of the attempts and plans that have been thwarted – and some of those attempts to kill a sitting U.S. President have been extremely bizarre. (Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents) *** Some Biblical accounts seem unbelievable and we tend to dismiss them as fantasies, or dreams of the person writing the events down. But what if some of the strange creatures described in the bible are actually real – but come from another dimension, or even outer space? (Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible?) *** If you are told there is a city that has been built specifically for the dead, you probably think of some ancient culture that worshipped their ancestors. Personally, I think of pyramids in Egypt… but I never would've thought of the suburbs in California, USA. (California's City of the Dead)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:33.183 = Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?00:08:21.362 = The Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders ***00:20:59.742 = California's City of the Dead00:31:12.990 = Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible? ***00:39:47.780 = Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents00:48:06.915 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdhz5563“The Unsolved Villisca Ax Murders” by Joe Turner for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8mnfp6, and from HauntedRoom.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36b6k2h4“California's City of the Dead” by Hugh Landman for Ranker.com's Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckrxjzd“Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible?” by Ellen Lloyd for AncientPages.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr3d8dpk“Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents” by Richard Stockton for AllThatsInteresting.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/26avtuhr(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness runs from a Cold War theory that the Moon is a hollow alien spacecraft, through the 1912 Villisca ax murders that left eight people dead in a single Iowa night, into the California cemetery city of Colma where the dead outnumber the living a thousand to one, on to a former NASA engineer's claim that the prophet Ezekiel witnessed a UFO, and closing with some of the strangest attempts ever made on the lives of sitting U.S. presidents.It opens with the Spaceship Moon Theory, proposed in July of 1970 by Soviet Academy of Sciences members Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, who argued the Moon is a hollowed-out planetoid engineered by unknown beings and steered into Earth's orbit. Darren walks through the claims stacked behind the idea — the Moon ringing like a bell for more than an hour after the Apollo 12 crew crashed their lunar module into it on November 20th, 1969, craters of wildly different widths that all share the same shallow depth, moon rocks dated older than the Earth itself, and the near-perfect circular orbit that lets the Moon exactly cover the Sun during an eclipse.From there the episode turns to Villisca, Iowa, and the night of June 9th, 1912, when someone entered the home of Josiah and Sarah Moore and killed all six members of the family along with two young house guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger, striking each victim with an axe as they slept. Darren lays out the crime scene that neighbor Mary Peckham and Josiah's brother Ross discovered the next morning — cloth draped over the mirrors, two cigarette butts in the attic, a slab of bacon left beside the Stillinger girls, and a bloody basin in the kitchen — and the suspects who never brought closure, from traveling minister Reverend George Kelly, who spoke of eight dead bodies before the news broke and later gave a confession the court dismissed, to Josiah's embittered business rival Frank Jones. More than a century on, the boarded-up house survives as a museum where investigators report a heaviness on the stairs, drifting fog, and the sound of dripping blood after the 2 a.m. train whistle.Next the show travels to Colma, California, the suburb built for the dead, where roughly 1,600 living residents share the ground with more than 1.5 million graves across 17 cemeteries. Darren traces how San Francisco banned burials in 1900 and evicted its dead, triggering the largest grave relocation in history after the 1906 earthquake, with more than 150,000 bodies hauled south and tens of thousands reburied in mass graves when families wouldn't pay the ten-dollar transfer fee. He points out the famous names resting there — Wyatt Earp, Levi Strauss, William Randolph Hearst, Joe DiMaggio, brain-injury case Phineas Gage, and self-declared Emperor of the United States Joshua Norton — alongside the darker footnotes of looted skeletons, discarded headstones repurposed as gutters and seawalls, and the town's own gallows-humor slogan, "it's great to be alive in Colma."The episode then examines whether extraterrestrials appear in the Bible, centering on the vision of the prophet Ezekiel by the river Chebar and the four winged creatures with human hands, calf-shaped feet, and four faces that rose out of a fiery whirlwind. Darren details how former NASA chief engineer Joseph F. Blumrich, honored in 1972 for his work on the Saturn and Apollo programs, set out to disprove Erich von Däniken's ancient-astronaut claims and instead became convinced, arguing in his book The Spaceships of Ezekiel that the prophet had described a landing spacecraft — rotor blades, fairing housings, landing legs with round footpads, and remote mechanical arms rendered in the only words an ancient man had for them.The episode closes with a run of bizarre presidential assassination attempts, from John Hinckley's 1981 shooting of Ronald Reagan over an obsession with actress Jodie Foster, to the 2013 ricin letters mailed to the Obama White House by a man framing an Elvis impersonator over an online feud, to truck driver Samuel Byck's 1974 plot to hijack a DC-9 and crash it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon. Darren ends on the two women who tried to kill Gerald Ford seventeen days apart in September of 1974 — Manson follower Lynette Fromme, who never chambered a round, and Sarah Jane Moore, whose shot missed by six inches because her replacement revolver's sights were misaligned.

This groundbreaking book chronicles the little-understood evolution of the neoconservative movement—from its birth as a rogue insurgency in the Nixon White House through its ascent to full and controversial control of America's foreign policy in the Bush years. In eye-opening detail, The Forty Years War documents the neocons' four-decade campaign to seize the reins of American foreign policy: the undermining of Richard Nixon's outreach to the Communist bloc nations; the success at halting détente during the Ford and Carter years; the uneasy but effectual alliance with Ronald Reagan; and the determined, and ultimately successful, campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein—no matter the cost.Drawing upon recently declassified documents, hundreds of hours of interviews, and long-obscured White House tapes, The Forty Years War delves into the political and intellectual development of some of the most fascinating political figures of the last four decades. It describes the complex, three-way relationship of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Alexander Haig, and unravels the actions of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz over the course of seven presidencies. And it reveals the role of the mysterious Pentagon official Fritz Kraemer, a monocle-wearing German expatriate whose unshakable faith in military power, distrust of diplomacy, moralistic faith in American goodness, and warnings against "provocative weakness" made him the hidden geopolitical godfather of the neocon movement. The authors' insights into Kraemer's influence on the neocons—will change the public understanding of the conduct of government in our time.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

This groundbreaking book chronicles the little-understood evolution of the neoconservative movement—from its birth as a rogue insurgency in the Nixon White House through its ascent to full and controversial control of America's foreign policy in the Bush years. In eye-opening detail, The Forty Years War documents the neocons' four-decade campaign to seize the reins of American foreign policy: the undermining of Richard Nixon's outreach to the Communist bloc nations; the success at halting détente during the Ford and Carter years; the uneasy but effectual alliance with Ronald Reagan; and the determined, and ultimately successful, campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein—no matter the cost.Drawing upon recently declassified documents, hundreds of hours of interviews, and long-obscured White House tapes, The Forty Years War delves into the political and intellectual development of some of the most fascinating political figures of the last four decades. It describes the complex, three-way relationship of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Alexander Haig, and unravels the actions of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz over the course of seven presidencies. And it reveals the role of the mysterious Pentagon official Fritz Kraemer, a monocle-wearing German expatriate whose unshakable faith in military power, distrust of diplomacy, moralistic faith in American goodness, and warnings against "provocative weakness" made him the hidden geopolitical godfather of the neocon movement. The authors' insights into Kraemer's influence on the neocons—will change the public understanding of the conduct of government in our time.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Longtime listeners of The Remnant know well Jonah Goldberg's hatred of the extremist, oligarchic, necromantic political conclaves holding our nation hostage, otherwise known as primaries. Nonetheless, listeners are left with many questions unanswered: How did populists seize the GOP in 2016? What should replace primaries for candidate selection? What will go down in 2028? Will Yuval Levin be on the ticket?  Here to put an end to all speculation is political scientist Seth Masket, who joins Jonah to talk about the Tea Party, Donald Trump's charisma, Bill Clinton as a precursor to Trump, primaries, county-scale politics, party leadership, democratization, conventions, Trump's influence over 2028, the next GOP presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment. Show Notes: —Masket: The Elephants in the Room: How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders —Masket's Substack —Masket: Learning from Loss: The Democrats, 2016–2020 —E. E. Schattschneider: Party Government: American Government in Action  —DisPod at the 92nd Street Y —Remnant on Weberian charisma The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah's twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you'd like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's AssassinationChristopher Fulton's journey began with the death of Evelyn Lincoln, late secretary to President John F. Kennedy. Through Lincoln, crucial evidence ended up in Christopher's hands—evidence that was going to be used to facilitate a new future for America. But the U.S. government's position was clear: that evidence had to be confiscated and classified, and the truth hidden away from the public. Christopher was sent to federal prison for years under a sealed warrant and indictment. The Inheritance, Christopher's personal narrative, shares insider information from his encounters with the Russian Government, President Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, the Clinton White House, the U.S. Justice Department, the Secret Service, and the Kennedy family themselves. It reveals the true intentions of Evelyn Lincoln and her secret promise to Robert Kennedy—and Christopher's secret promise to John F. Kennedy Jr. The Inheritance explodes with history-changing information and answers the questions Americans are still asking, while pulling them through a gauntlet of some of the worst prisons this country has to offer. This book thrillingly exposes the reality of American power, and sheds light on the dark corners of current corruption within the executive branch and the justice and prison systems.https://amzn.to/44xqWOjBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

On the 147th Episode of Dorm Damage With Tom & Zeus the guys discuss Hollywood's identity crisis, controversies surrounding films like The Odyssey, Supergirl and more. Lately it seems movies are being discussed more for casting controversies, actor's interviews than the movies themselves. With Christopher Nolan's controversial "The Odyssey" about to be released and the "Supergirl" flop now is great time to have an honest discussion about what's going on in movies. So make sure you listen and look for the new trailer for the movie, "Ronald Reagan" starring Emmanuel Lewis! To Purchase Shout It Out Loudcast's KISS Book “Raise Your Glasses: A Celebration Of 50 Years of KISS Songs By Celebrities, Musicians & Fans Please Click Below:   ⁠⁠⁠Raise Your Glasses Book⁠⁠⁠   For all things Shout It Out Loudcast the #1 KISS Podcast check out our amazing website by clicking below:   ⁠⁠⁠www.ShoutItOutLoudcast.com⁠⁠⁠   Interested in more Shout It Out Loudcast content?  Care to help us out?  Come join us on Patreon by clicking below:   ⁠⁠⁠SIOL Patreon⁠⁠⁠   Get all your Shout It Out Loudcast Merchandise by clicking below:   ⁠⁠⁠Shout It Out Loudcast Merch At Printify⁠⁠⁠   Shop At Our Amazon Store by clicking below: ⁠⁠⁠Shout It Out Loudcast Amazon Store⁠⁠⁠   Please Email us comments or suggestions by clicking below: ⁠⁠⁠ShoutItOutLoudcast@Gmail.com⁠⁠⁠   Please subscribe to us and give us a 5 Star (Child) review on the following places below: ⁠⁠⁠iTunes⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Podchaser⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Stitcher⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠iHeart Radio⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Spotify ⁠⁠⁠   Please follow us and like our social media pages clicking below: ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook Page⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook Group Page Shout It Out Loudcasters⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠   Proud Member of the Pantheon Podcast click below to see the website: ⁠⁠⁠Pantheon Podcast Network⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ed Morrissey, Managing Editor at Hot Air, and host of the Ed Morrissey Podcast, joins Seth to discuss the legacies of presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, as well as remember Gerald Ford’s birthday today. Seth and Ed examine the ways in which Nixon's policies, such as his opening of China and his handling of the Soviet Union, continue to influence American foreign policy today. They also touch on the differences between Nixon and Reagan's approaches to communism, with Reagan's more confrontational stance and Nixon's pragmatic approach. Ed talks about President Trump’s upcoming address to the nation and how his leadership style compares to the aforementioned previous Republican presidents. Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-CA) dishonest tale of his recent trip to Israel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I will come out of this very surreal moment in American history and in the story of my own life, understanding the basic truth that our goodness is not determined by a political party. It isn't the politics that make us better than anyone else. We all have our own ideas of what matters. Instead, it is our willingness to preserve our humanity when tested that really counts.We can blame the internet and the algorithms for what has happened to all of us in the last 20 years, to our politics, to our culture, to our relationships. But that can only take us so far. At some point, we all have to reckon with who we are and what we've become.I always thought we were the good guys. We didn't mock, degrade, or dehumanize other people. We were decent and were empathetic. That is, until Donald Trump won in 2016 and all of that changed. What I saw happen to my own side was ugly. It was dark. I wanted nothing to do with it.It's been almost two years since Donald Trump was nearly shot and killed on live television. The way the Left dealt with that shooting was shocking. They diminished it. They said it was staged or just shrapnel. They did everything but wake up to the radicalization on their own side. By then, they'd become consumed by hatred, having tried everything they had in their arsenal to take down Trump, and all of it had failed. How could they pivot back to their humanity?So when Charlie Kirk was assassinated on video, with the clip going viral to millions of views in seconds, they were primed and ready to once again leave behind their humanity and celebrate one more battle against their named evil, a guy who said things they didn't like. It became a thing on TikTok:They all took to X and competed for who could be the ugliest and the cruelest. The more disgusting they were, the more their hate and dehumanization were rewarded. Social media has messed with our perception of what defines love and hate, with those tiny deceptive hearts we press every time someone scratches that sadistic itch.The reaction to Charlie's assassination by the Left was unlike anything I've ever seen or anything I thought I would ever see from my former side. It might have been the people of Salem celebrating watching their friends and neighbors hang because they refused to confess. But this was America in 2025, not 1692. How could they not have been shaken out of their decade-long mass hysteria stupor? My mind goes to Charles Manson and his followers, who showed no mercy, slicing up the bodies of the rich in the Hollywood Hills, a pregnant Sharon Tate among them. To hear the Manson family tell it, they deserved it. They were the establishment. They had been dehumanized, and their lives didn't matter. I bring up the Manson murders a lot because that was the last time we saw that same glint, the same wild-eyed happiness and glee at something as gruesome as a murder or someone's death. I thought that would have been the end of it, back then. It was enough to end the 1960s, keep Richard Nixon in power, and send our society tumbling toward Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. But now, that same kind of bizarre, cult-like fury has overtaken the Left once again, and nothing can shake them out of it, not the near assassination of Trump, not the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk. Not the celebrating afterward.The hate bubbled up inside them so profoundly that even when Barack Obama tried to show some grace in the wake of Charlie's death, his biggest applause lines came after he decided to repeat the cherry-picked, out-of-context lies pushed by the Left that led to the dehumanization of Charlie Kirk in the first place. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took her cue from President Obama and followed the same pattern. She offered a condemnation of political violence, but then launched into the kind of attack that they believe justifies all of what they've been doing for the past ten years.This is a country built on freedom of speech, and yet, the entire Left doesn't believe in it, or they think it's Trump that's doing it. They control the culture, which is why they couldn't even offer a word about Charlie's death, not even at the Emmys or anywhere else. Jamie Lee Curtis had a moment of sorrow for Charlie when she choked up on a podcast. But the activists descended upon her, and of course, she was forced to “clarify” what she meant.All it took was losing one election for my side to transform into monsters who believed that as long as their fellow Americans stood in their way, they could justify anything that happened to them, yes, even an assassination.Even now, I still get twitchy when I see the blind, hot hatred coming from the Left aimed at anyone on the Right. I've never gotten used to it. I've never been able to overlook it. I certainly couldn't be a part of it.I was reminded of that this week after Lindsey Graham's untimely death. I watched the same pattern play out, the same ugliness, the same mocking TikTok videos demanding those inside utopia disconnect from their humanity. Even if Trump danced on the graves of his enemies, Rob Reiner and Robert Mueller, that doesn't mean he spends his days wishing any of them would be murdered or dead. Plenty of people on the Right, even journalists in right-leaning outlets, had no problem condemning Trump for it. Why can't they do that on the Left?Why are we now seeing them once again celebrating the death of a politician for the crime of disagreeing with them? They will keep doing this and as long as they do, someone out there will think picking up a gun will make them a hero. Celebrating the death of evil people should be reserved for mass murderers like Stalin or Hitler. That they believe Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump, or Charlie Kirk are on that level is proof enough that they've lost their minds, and it has taken us to a very dangerous place. Something Wicked This Way ComesWhen Charlie was assassinated, it was like the leg of a pier giving way and the whole thing crashing into the water. He held the MAGA movement together by his optimistic and inclusive nature, but once he was gone, a full-blown war broke out.It all started with the JQ group - the “Jewish Question” white nationalists - who instantly blamed Charlie's death on Israel. This was then picked up and amplified by Candace Owens, who has now become more popular than she's ever been by positioning herself as the anti-Charlie Kirk. She is now attempting to steal his legacy, bully and harass his widow, and destroy everything he ever built.Why? Who knows. Maybe because she's a total zero and her friendship with Charlie was the best it was ever going to get for her. Maybe she was bitter and resentful about being sidelined by Charlie and TPUSA. Either way, she has now done the Left a solid by changing the conversation around Charlie's death. It isn't the rising fanaticism on the Left or their pathological need to control thought and speech. It isn't that they've become so totalitarian that they fantasize about the deaths of their enemies and celebrate when people die?No, it was actually Israel!I didn't think anything or anyone could ever match the level of insanity of the Left, but Candace Owens has done it. For clicks, views, and money, she sold out her so-called friend. Charlie has been dehumanized, yet again, this time transformed into nothing more than a stepping stone to success by a woman who can never get enough of it, who needs people to be talking about her, looking at her, thinking about her, doing anything but ignoring her.She's stolen Charlie's legacy and has now written herself into this story so everyone will notice she was once part of Charlie's world. Not an important part. She was useful, for a time. Maybe she was even his friend, for a time. Now, she has shown her true colors, and it is the most evil thing I've seen in the 30 years I've been online. How lonely and empty does a person have to be to steal someone else's life?That so many have followed her, that there is such a thing as the “woke Right,” that Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones and others have actually indulged this sick fantasy that anyone but Tyler Robinson could have done this, proves that goodness is not about political parties. It is about our humanity, whether we have it or whether we've abandoned it. Charlie's Angels Something real and violent happened on September 10, 2025. The algorithmic, hypnotic churn of the internet, our absurd, pointless Civil War, the obsession on the Right with Israel, none of that could stop what really happened that day.There isn't a person who was there or who was closest to Charlie that Candace Owens hasn't consumed for content and blamed for his death. But she's underestimated the strength of Charlie's widow, his most powerful angel, Erika Kirk. Candace has used her too, laid her out like raw flesh to be consumed by sycophants, but somehow, that has only made Erika stronger, and now, Candace is the one who is about to understand what love really means. And what goodness looks like.Erika is Charlie's angel, but lucky for him, he has a lot of them. They're out there fighting every day to keep his memory alive and the movement he built thriving. And a sculptor is putting a statue of Charlie Kirk in Times Square, New York. We know how that is going to go. We know because we know the Left. The way the Left responded to Charlie's assassination should be something none of us ever forgets. It is something they will all have to reckon with one day, and for many of them, wiping away its shame won't be easy.It will be up to those angels of Charlie's to continue his lifelong devotion to open debate, to talking to those you disagree with, and to preserve our freedom of speech and expression. Above all, let his memory be a reminder of how important it is to hold on to our humanity. The world has changed since Charlie was shot and killed. It's darker, and it's meaner. Holding onto hope is harder than it's ever been. But Charlie Kirk lives on through his widow, his babies, his true friends, and the tens of thousands of young people keeping TPUSA alive.We have his legacy because we still have his voice, and thanks to the internet, it is everywhere, and he will never be forgotten./// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe

On Monday's Mark Levin Show, Senator Lindsey Graham, a loyal friend and loyal ally to democratic and peace-loving countries around the world, has passed away. He was a friend to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and others. He was a counterbalance to naive Woke Reich isolationists who talk about American sovereignty but don't realize you have to fight for it. Graham had a lot in common in national security matters with Ronald Reagan. Not even a nation as powerful as the United States can go it alone, and Graham understood we have alliances for a reason. Marxists/Islamists like Hasan Piker and Woke Reich isolationists wasted no time attacking him, but he was popular in South Carolina and all over the world. He and his sound advice will be truly missed. Also, compare Graham's friendship with Israel to Rep Ro Khanna, who took it upon himself to visit Judea/Samaria, incorrectly called the "West Bank." Khanna didn't bother telling the IDF or police, but he did go with Palestinian activists and NY Times reporters with cameras for good measure. Khanna claims he was "kidnapped" by Israeli "settlers" -- another wrong term, how can you settle on your own indigenous land? -- detained by police and mistreated by the IDF. Video shows Khanna is a liar. Why did he do all this? One, to build support for himself among Jew-hating left wingers and also to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in Israeli elections. Israel needs friends like Lindsey Graham. Then, we can criticize a document without criticizing the President, who is doing a wonderful job. Trump said he only agreed to the MOU as a "test." The MOU never made sense because this regime was never going to live up to it. Why go through all this for a test? As much as we want to believe a deal can be negotiated, you can't negotiate with a seventh-century ideology. If we don't take this regime out now, our children and grandchildren will still be dealing with them. Also, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been arrested reportedly over ties to Mossad. According to reports, Mossad wanted him to possibly lead a new Iranian regime. Another report says Israel has signed an agreement with the son of the Shah of Iran, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, recognizing him as leader of a new Iranian government. It's clear that Israel isn't waiting around to see if any MOU will take effect. Then, there are a lot of mosques in this country that preach anti-American hate, and many of them are celebrating Lindsey Graham's death. But these mosques have a lot of sympathy. A new survey shows almost half of American Muslims - 44% - support Hamas. Only 26% of American Muslims have a favorable view of Israel. Support for Israel is even dropping among younger Republicans. Is Israel losing the PR war among Americans? Finally, Abdul El-Sayed is the left-wing Marxist/Islamist running for the Senate from Michigan. He pushes Medicare for all from cradle to grave, yet his psychiatrist wife doesn't accept Medicare...or any other insurance. Her patients have to pay her out of their own pocket. Furthermore, while El-Sayed hasn't released his tax returns, we find out he and the wife are wealthier than when he first ran for statewide office, and he owns two rental properties worth almost a million dollars. The hypocrisy of the left has to be seen to be believed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this edition of The Federalist Radio Hour, Founder and CEO of American Majority Ned Ryun joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to discuss virtue as the organizing factor in early America, the founders' concept of self-government versus the modern administrative state, and the plan for Republicans to reclaim institutional power through the upcoming election cycles.You can find Ned Ryun's new documentary, The Thread of Liberty: Keeping Our Republic, here.The Federalist Foundation is a nonprofit, and we depend entirely on our listeners and readers — not corporations. If you value fearless, independent journalism, please consider a tax-deductible gift today at TheFederalist.com/donate. Your support keeps us going.

In this powerful conversation, Gene Valentino joins the discussion to examine the growing influence of democratic socialism, the importance of protecting America's Constitutional Republic, and why local civic engagement matters now more than ever.Gene also shares his thoughts on:The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)President Trump's economic and tariff policiesNational security concerns involving Iran, Israel, Cuba, and emerging global threatsWhy America must confront the 'enemy from within'The importance of voting, community involvement, and grassroots leadershipLessons from Benjamin Franklin and Ronald Reagan about preserving freedomThis episode is a passionate discussion about patriotism, leadership, and the future of the United States. Whether you agree or disagree, the conversation challenges viewers to think deeply about the direction of the country and their role in shaping it.

Alice and Doug just finished a heavy weekend of yard saling and record shopping. And now they're ready for their heavy weekend of creaming. Er.It's the seventh annual National Ice Cream Day ice cream crawl!Yes, it's just about time for the greatest time of the year. A day to enjoy all the tastiness that Ronald Reagan would have wanted us to. It's true.Other discussion topics may include:- Why doesn't anybody talk about how great Marie Osmond is?- Farting “regular amounts”- The sad part in a romance novel when the dog dies- What if one of the Hansons left Hanson?- The various health benefits of contrast therapy that can benefit your health and wellness in a beneficial manner

In our 43rd episode of This F*cking Guy, Erin and Alyssa dive deep into the past of the Jelly Bean Jack*ss, Ronald Reagan. From his B-list acting days, to "fighting" WWII from Culver City, to being an FBI rat, to his unforgivable  handling of the AIDS crisis, to mucking up foreign affairs for decades to come, this may be one of our most deluded guys yet.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast, episode title, and episode date.Sources:Ronald Reagan: Informant (Salon)Peeping Ron (Book Forum) Ronald Reagan's shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness (Salon)Ronald Reagan's wartime lies: The president had quite a Brian Williams problem (Salon)The Mendacity Index (Washington Monthly)On a wing and a prayer (Alec Nevala-Lee)Tear Down This Myth (Google Books) Reagan & Co. (The Washington Post) California: Credibility in Sacramento (Time) The Lion King: An Exchange (NY Books)Reagan Expresses Horror at Claim That the Holocaust is a Hoax (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) The Myth of Ronald Reagan and the Nazi Death Camps (National Review)The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan (Slate)Paying Lip Service (The Village Voice)The Road to Reagandom (Slate)How Ronald Reagan's Time at General Electric Pushed Him to Conservatism (Lit Hub)Ronald Reagan's Millions (Rolling Stone)How Prop 14 Shaped California's Racial Covenants (PBS Socal)Here's the Rest of Him (Claremont Review of Books) Alla Nazimova (AFI Catalog Spotlight)The Global HIV/AIDS Timeline (KFF)History of the HIV Epidemic (Gilead)When AIDS Was Funny Casts a Harsh Light on the Reagan Administration's Indifference to HIV (HIV Plus Mag)Short film “When AIDS Was Funny,” Reagan Press Secretary laughs off an epidemic (Q Notes Carolinas)‘When AIDS Was Funny': Short film reveals shortfalls of Reagan response to AIDS (MSNOW)HIV/AIDS Timeline (history.com)HIV/AIDS Historical Timeline (Philadelphia Center)Snapshots of an Epidemic: An HIV/AIDS Timeline (amfAR)The Iran-Contra Affair (Bill of Rights Institute) The Iran-Contra Affair (PBS American Experience) 1983 Beirut barracks bombing: ‘The BLT Building is gone!' (Marine Corps Times) H-Gram 080: Paved with Good Intentions—The U.S. Navy in the 1983 Lebanon Crisis (Naval History and Heritage Command)When Reagan Cut and Run (Foreign Policy) 40 Years Later, El Mozote Massacre Victims Vow to 'Keep Demanding Justice' (Common Dreams) The Massacre at El Mozote (Human Rights Watch)Judgment Day's Coming for U.S.-Backed Troops Who Slaughtered Men, Women, and So Many Children at El Mozote (Daily Beast) Pakistan's Nuclear Program Posed “Acute Dilemma” for U.S. Policy (National Security Archive) New Documents Spotlight Reagan-era Tensions over Pakistani Nuclear Program (National Security Archive) New Documents Spotlight Reagan-era Tensions over Pakistani Nuclear Program (Wilson Center)The Pakistan Aid Dilemma (Center for American Progress) Fact Check: It's Rumored that Ronald Reagan Had Alzheimer's Disease While Still in Office. Here's What the Evidence Says (Snopes)Did Reagan Decline? (Sage Journal)Hoover Makes Available the Newly Processed Papers of Nancy's Reagan's White House Astrologer (Hoover Institution)How Nancy Reagan's Secret Phone-In Astrologer Became a Powerful White House Adviser — and Helped Oust the Chief of Staff (People)Nancy Reagan: Controversial Moments During Her Life in the Public Eye (People)Why Ronald Reagan Became the Great Deregulator (JSTOR Daily)Looking Back On When President Reagan Fired The Air Traffic Controllers (NPR)Reagan's Legacy (SFAF)The Other Time a U.S. President Withheld WHO Funds (John Hopkins)How newly discovered audio is reviving debate over Reagan's legacy on race (PBS News)It's Time to End the Racist and Unjustified Sentencing Disparity Between Crack and Powder Cocaine (Civil Rights)Reagan's National Drug Strategy (University of Michigan)The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It and Why We Need It Back (SISYPHUS)Portraits in Oversight: The Iran-Contra Affair (Levin Center)Ronald Reagan Made Central America a Killing Field (Jacobin)Guatemalan Slaughter Was Part of Reagan's Hard Line (The New York Times)Remembering US-backed state terror in El Salvador (Al Jazeera)Ronald Reagan's shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness (Salon)The Key to Welfare Reform (The Atlantic)

Ralph speaks to historian Omer Bartov about his new book “Israel: What Went Wrong?” with special guest, international law expert Bruce FeinBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.Many of the things that you describe in Israel apply in spades in the United States. We also have an administration that says we're being invaded militarily by Venezuela gangs, so we have to go kidnap their president and annex Venezuela. We've stated that Iran is an existential threat to the United States because at some future time, it's conceivable they may get one nuclear weapon. We have 5,000, Israel probably has 300 or 400. Or make the argument that we are being invaded by defenseless immigrants across the southern border. And it does seem to me that all countries—I don't think it's unique anyway to the United States or Israel, but it's generally true those in power are there to manufacture fear, to inflate fleas into elephants and say “My gosh, tomorrow the sky is falling down. We need to have national emergencies, rule by decree.” Everything is “an imminent danger”, the Communist domino theory. It's a very challenging issue. I say what you've described in Israel is not unique to Israel. We confront it every day right in the United States. And it works.Bruce FeinOmer Bartov is the Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. A historian, Professor Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the German army and the Holocaust, before turning his attention to his native country. His early research concerned the Nazi indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II. He then turned to the links between total war and genocide and interethnic relations in the borderlands of Eastern Europe. His current interest is reflected in his recent books, Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, Israel: What Went Wrong?, and the forthcoming The Broken Promise: A Personal Political History of Israel and Palestine. The whole idea of creating a Jewish state (and it says so in the Proclamation of the State from May 1948) is that it would be a state for Jews—that it would be both Jewish and democratic. And that has proven to be not possible. A Jewish state can be both Jewish and democratic only if the overwhelming majority (if not all) of its citizens are Jews.Omer Bartov[Zionist zealots] believe that history is on their side—so in that sense, they are similar to Communists they're similar to Fascists they're similar to Nazis in that they believe that they can see the way forward, they know the logic of history, and the logic of history as they see it is on their side.Omer BartovIn Israel, since the 1980s (really since after the War of 1973, with the rise of the right wing in Israel in particular) the Holocaust has come to serve a particular purpose. Instead of being commemorated as an event that happened in the past that we should remember and commemorate and research, it's become a kind of image of an imminent danger to Israel. And the farther Israel has moved from the actual event of the Holocaust, and the more the Israeli army has become the military hegemon in its region, the more this alleged threat of an “Auschwitz around the corner” has been used by Israeli governments. Why has it been used? Because Israel actually needs to explain to itself and to its citizens: Why is it bossing it over millions of Palestinians? Half of the population under Israeli control are Palestinians. Two million are citizens, but they don't have equal rights, and the others have no rights at all (they're simply under arbitrary military rule). So how do you explain that? You explain that by telling your population and the rest of the world that those Palestinians—who have no power, who can never pose a threat to you—are an existential threat. And in Israel, that has worked quite well.Omer BartovBecause of the focus on Hebrew—to create Hebrew as a mother tongue for children whose mothers didn't speak Hebrew—because of that, there was a great antagonism towards speaking any other language. And the notion of having bilingual schools (that is, of having schools in Palestine where people would learn both Hebrew and Arabic, the language of the place) is not entertained by the vast majority of educators. Now, if you think about what would have been the result of having bilingual schools already in the 1920s and 30s, that children could speak each other's language and recognize each other's culture—that could have had a huge effect on how Zionism developed and how the state would have developed. But in today's Israel, the only bilingual population are the Palestinians. Palestinian citizens of Israel speak Arabic and Hebrew. Most Israelis don't speak Arabic. And most Israelis who trace themselves (quite large numbers) not to Europe, but to North Africa and the Middle East, where their parents and grandparents spoke Arabic (this was their language) have forgotten that language and were ashamed of their parents speaking it because it associated them with the Arabs. So the loss in this kind of creation of a nation around one language was the ability to imagine yourself as sharing the space with another group.Omer Bartov * Our top story concerns a progressive insurgent running in a must-win Senate race – and not the one you're thinking of. Late last week, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed won the endorsement of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The New York Times notes that this is AOC's first Senate endorsement of this cycle, coming just about a month ahead of the August 4th Michigan primary. El-Sayed is quoted saying that he is “honored for what her support says about what this campaign is building and what we're fighting for,” adding that he thinks that “too many establishment Democrats are…afraid that I will win.” He pointedly attacked Senator Chuck Schumer, charging that the Minority Leader “doesn't want to see me on the inside of the U.S. Senate,” because El-Sayed would “call out the kind of politics where we take money from corporations and AIPAC to run milquetoast campaigns and don't say anything about the problems that everyday people are facing.” El-Sayed has announced that he will campaign with AOC and Senator Bernie Sanders in Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids on July 18th and 19th, per MLive.* Another earthquake occurred in the Michigan Senate race on July 5th, when State Senator Mallory McMorrow announced that she would be withdrawing from the race – turning what was a competitive three-way race into a head-to-head between El-Sayed and the Democratic establishment pick, Congresswoman Haley Stevens. The Detroit Free Press notes that this announcement “comes after absentee ballots have already been mailed out to some voters and too late to remove her name from the primary ballot,” though voters are able to rescind their absentee votes and submit new ones up through Friday, July 24th. In a video statement, McMorrow maintained that “People are crying out for change and we need to listen.” McMorrow once led her opponents in this race but saw her support collapse and was trailing in a distant third place in recent polls. Rumor also had it that outgoing Senator Gary Peters was privately calling for her to exit the race so centrists could consolidate around Stevens. While many of her supporters are expected to go to Stevens, El-Sayed is energetically courting McMorrow's voters as well. The Detroit News reports McMorrow herself has announced that she will remain neutral in the remaining days of the primary, leaving her voters to vote their own consciences.* In more Michigan news, DSA-backed congressional candidate Donavan McKinney is running strong in his primary campaign against incumbent Congressman Shri Thanedar, whom McKinney has labeled “​​Detroit's own Elon Musk,” according to the New York Post. If McKinney pulls it off, he will join the growing group of DSA members in the House, along with Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier and AOC from New York, Chris Rabb and Melat Kiros from Pennsylvania and Colorado respectively, and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan. Another candidate endorsed by his local DSA chapter, Kyle Blomquist, is running for Congress in Michigan but even if he wins his primary he is not expected to flip the deep red 1st congressional district.* In Missouri, Cori Bush has also won the support of DSA for her comeback congressional run against Wesley Bell, who defeated her in the 2024 primary, Andrew Solender reports. Bush had already won the support of her local DSA chapter, along with many other progressive organizations, and has been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and former Congressman Jamaal Bowman. This week though, she won the support of the national DSA. In a statement, Bush wrote “I am honored to be once again endorsed by the Democratic [Socialists] of America as I campaign to return to Congress and keep building our movement to fight for economic justice, Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and a world where everyday people have a real voice in our workplace's neighborhoods and society.” Bush also praised DSA for its “decades of organizing…[mobilizing] thousands of people across the country to demand an economy that works for all of us…[and] take on war profiteers, the for-profit healthcare industry, and the billionaire funded lobbies that subvert our democracy.” There has been little polling of this race, but what there has been appears to show the race in a statistical dead heat. One sign that Bush is being taken seriously is the new $865,000 ad buy taken out by the United Democracy Project, an AIPAC cutout.* Ironically, it would seem that American Jews have a more favorable view of the progressive left than Israel. According to the Forward, a new AP poll found that “44% of American Jews hold a favorable opinion of Zohran Mamdani, compared with 39% who view him unfavorably.” This is in contrast to the 32% of respondents who said they have a favorable opinion of Netanyahu and 59% who said they have a negative view of the Israeli PM. Perhaps more surprisingly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a “staunch supporter of Israel,” garnered only a 41% favorability rating, though far more respondents said they don't know enough about him to have an opinion than said they have a negative view.* Turning back to the Senate, the other major story this week of course is the fall of Graham Platner. Accusations of sexual assault, detailed in a POLITICO article, resulted in a deluge of opprobrium that cascaded upwards culminating in Platner's earliest and highest profile supporter, Senator Bernie Sanders, calling on him to drop out of the Senate race in Maine. In a video message released Wednesday, Platner stated that he would be suspending his campaign effective immediately, later telling staff that he plans to wait until Monday, the final possible day, to formally withdraw from the race, Axios reports. In the same video, Platner categorically denied the accusations calling them “all false,” and maintaining that the “things that have been claimed did not happen.” He implied that the scandal was orchestrated by “those in power“ who would “rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next Senator from Maine.”* Platner's impending, late-stage withdrawal from the race has set off a chaotic blitz primary to replace him as the Democratic nominee. Numerous candidates have announced they are running including former Maine Senate president Troy Jackson, former Director of Maine's Center for Disease, Control and Prevention Nirav Shah, co-founder of Maine beer company Dan Kleban, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and state lawmaker Valli Geiger, along with Jordan Wood and Paige Loud, both of whom ran in the Maine second congressional district Democratic primary. The actual process for selecting a nominee has been the subject of debate – with many progressives arguing for caucuses – but POLITICO reports that by July 27th, “600 delegates must be selected,” including 500 from the state's 16 county parties, and these delegates will decide on a candidate to replace Platner via “an unprecedented nominating convention,” wherein all delegates come in unpledged to any candidate setting the stage for “what could be a raucous and unpredictable free-for-all.” It remains to be seen how this will all shake out, but it is notable that almost all of these candidates poll very strongly against Senator Susan Collins, with many polling higher than Platner ever did, while the Democratic Party's handpicked primary candidate, sitting Governor Janet Mills, still polls lower than Platner even since the scandal broke.* For our final Senate story, we turn to the senior Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell. McConnell was recently found unconscious in his Washington, DC home and has been hospitalized since, and while Republican Senators and media figures like Scott Jennings claim to have spoken with him directly, his being sequestered away from the public has fueled rampant speculation about the severity of his condition and why it is being kept so secretive. Forbes reports that some figures on the right, including Steve Bannon, are “suggesting the Republican establishment is shielding the state of McConnell's health from the public to allow him to remain in office long enough to avoid [Kentucky Congressman Thomas] Massie running for his seat.” Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told TMZ, “Thomas Massie would make a great senator.” The Hill reports that Andy Beshear, the Democratic Governor of Kentucky, sent a letter to McConnell's Senate office strongly requesting an update on the Senator's health, noting that “Over the last several weeks, Kentuckians have grown increasingly concerned about the health and well-being of Sen. McConnell,” and that “Allowing speculation to continue in the media is not fair to the Senator or to Kentuckians, and my hope is that this provides him the opportunity to share the information in a transparent manner, direct from the source.”* In more positive news, AP reports former Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan, who helped an immigrant escape ICE by ushering him through her jury room door was spared prison time in her sentencing this week. After the incident in her court room, Dugan was convicted of felony obstruction in what was widely seen as a political trial designed to exact retribution on behalf of the Trump administration. Dugan resigned her circuit judgeship under this assault; in her resignation letter, she warned that this prosecution threatened “the independence of our judiciary.” Dugan was fined $5,000.* Finally, in spiritual news, a story in the National Catholic Reporter recounts how Pope Leo XIV excommunicated thousands of clergy and followers of the far right, schismatic group, the Society of St. Pius X. While bishops and priests are judged prima facie schismatic for their consecration in the Society, lay followers of the sect will be judged schismatic if they consciously choose “adherence to the society over obedience to the pope,” and “exclusive participation in Lefebvrian ‘ecclesial' acts, without taking part in the acts of the Catholic Church,” a reference to the group's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The proximate cause of this excommunication was the Society creating four new bishops in open defiance of Pope Leo, essentially daring the Church to act. This piece notes that the Society “has long been a thorn in the side of Rome,” and notes that the new papal decree rolls back privileges granted to the sect under Pope Francis, including administering the sacrament of penance and solemnizing marriages.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric broadcasts from Las Vegas at Freedom Fest, where he is receiving the Leonard Read Award for his book Revolution. He talks with Victor Marx about winning the Republican nomination for governor of Colorado, disrupting the political establishment, his extraordinary life story, and why Colorado can still be saved. Then Eric and Chris Himes share incredible stories from their dinner with legendary impressionist Rich Little, including stories involving Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ronald Reagan, Truman Capote, Paul Lynde, and Julie Andrews. Eric also discusses what he sees as an effort to suppress his bestselling book Revolution.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World

July 9, 2026On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the US Constitution for the 14th time, The Fourteenth Amendment brought the principles of the Declaration to life, requiring the Federal government to protect the equal rights of all American men, The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery on the basis of race, but did not guarantee equality for Black Americans, The Fourteenth Amendment took on the Dred Scott v Sandford decision and provided that all persons born or naturalized in the US are citizens of the US, It also overturned the idea that democracy was created at the state level, forbidding states from making laws that were discriminatory, The principles of the Fourteenth Amendment were behind civil rights decisions of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Opponents objected, and called for “originalism,” an idea promoted by Robert Bork who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan, Reaction to the nomination recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

In this special 4th of July episode, Morning Wire's John Bickley and Georgia Howe, along with host Wired In Live, Cabot Phillips, swap the usual interview format for a personal roundtable on what makes America special — from Cabot's moving private tour of Ronald Reagan's humble Santa Barbara ranch, to the viral wave of European soccer fans falling in love with American hospitality during the World Cup, to John's unforgettable conversation with Vietnam veteran and medevac pilot Art Jacobs. Three stories, one theme: why this country, 250 years in, still inspires awe. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 2875- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Alliance Defending Freedom - If you believe in the freedom to practice your religion — this is an opportunity to take action. Visit https://JoinADF.com/WIRE to sign the petition today.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two hundred and fifty years of American history is no small thing to celebrate. And as communities of faith mark this momentous milestone, there is a story worth telling and retelling: the story of a nation whose foundations were laid by men and women who looked to God and to Scripture as the source of true freedom. The Founding Fathers themselves declared that the law of nature was the will of God, binding upon all people in all ages. The Bible was not incidental to America's beginnings. It was central to them. The evidence runs deep. The Great Awakening united thirteen separate colonies in a spiritual revival that prepared hearts for the nation's founding. The Black Robed Regiment, a group of bold patriotic pastors, preached liberty from their pulpits and rallied colonists to stand for their biblically grounded beliefs. The Declaration of Independence drew from Christian sources and the writings of men shaped by Scripture. And public schools were established specifically so that children could read the Bible for themselves, the same foundational text that gave rise to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and William and Mary. As America turns 250, this is a day to praise God with grateful hearts for His hand in establishing this nation, to hold firm to the biblical truths it was built upon, and to ask Him for the wisdom and faithfulness to carry those principles forward into the next generation. Today's Bible Verse "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord."— Psalm 150:6, NIV Ponder Today America's founding was deeply rooted in biblical principles. The Founding Fathers did not view faith as separate from governance. They looked to God as the source of natural law, human dignity, and true freedom, and they built accordingly. Spiritual revival preceded national founding. The Great Awakening was not merely a religious event — it was the spiritual preparation that united thirteen separate colonies and forged a people willing to pursue freedom together. Pastors have always had a role in shaping a nation's conscience. The Black Robed Regiment is a striking historical reminder that the Church has a voice in the public square, and that faithfully preaching biblical truth has consequences far beyond the sanctuary walls. Freedom, rightly understood, is a gift from God. The Declaration of Independence grounded its claims in the recognition that certain rights are endowed by the Creator. That foundation is worth celebrating and defending on this 250th anniversary. Every generation is responsible for passing on what was entrusted to them. Ronald Reagan's reminder still rings true: freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Celebrating America's heritage includes committing to carry it forward with wisdom and faithfulness. A Prayer for You Today Dear Father, we praise You with grateful hearts as we celebrate our nation's 250th birthday. Thank You for the way You guided our Founding Fathers to establish America on solid biblical principles, giving our nation a godly heritage that remains to this day. Fill our lips with praise for Your great and mighty work in establishing this nation. Strengthen America to hold true to the foundational biblical truths it was built upon. Lead us as a people and a nation to yield to Your Almighty guidance, and grant our leaders and citizens the godly wisdom to move forward with steadfast faithfulness and devotion to You. In Jesus' name, Amen. Don't Miss an Episode If today's prayer stirred both patriotism and gratitude in your heart for God's hand on this nation, we'd love to stay connected. Subscribe to the LifeAudio newsletter at LifeAudio.com for daily prayers, devotionals, and more content to nourish your faith and your love for the country God has placed you in. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Newt talks with former Senator Tim Hutchinson about his new memoir, From Spavinaw to D.C.: A Conservative's Journey Through Faith, Farm Life, and the Fight for America. Hutchinson reflects on his upbringing on an Arkansas farm, the faith mentors who shaped him, and how Ronald Reagan's 1964 "A Time for Choosing" speech sparked his political awakening as a teenager. He recounts becoming the first Republican popularly elected to the Senate from Arkansas in 1996, his role in the "Gingrich Revolution" and the Cracker Jacks freshman caucus, and the dramatic phone call that pushed him from a safe House seat into a Senate run. Their conversation covers the cultural differences between the House and Senate, formative trips to Israel and China, and his enduring friendships across the aisle, including with Senator Russ Feingold over golf. Hutchinson closes by sharing his Fourth of July plans with family.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.