Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-19-25_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Dr. Steven Goldberg serves as Chief Medical Officer of diagnostics giant HealthTrackRx. We discuss various medical topics including a study showing some over the counter drugs could lead to dementia. Greg Roberts has fire talk, Matt talks Iran.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. We're going to continue the conversation on, on health, you and your health. And a lot of stories out there questioning drugs that are being prescribed these days. And, and, and try to discern the truth on them because there is something to be said that, gosh, if you're in the media

world, nobody wants to go out there and say, hey, go ahead and take whatever you want, everything's fine and you're just perfect, right? I mean, that doesn't leave on the other hand if you're saying, hey, you take this and it could be a problem, then we all take a, we watch this kind of stuff. And I wanted to delve into one of the latest trends in medical stories that I'm talking about. It has to do with over-the-counter drugs and maybe causing dementia risks. And the person I'm bringing on here is Dr. Steven Goldberg. He's the Chief Medical Officer of Diagnostics Giant, HealthTrackRx. Okay, and he's a physician, healthcare innovator, a doctor.

It's a pleasure having you on. What family care, family medicine, and urgent care is what you've been doing for what, three decades now, right? Yep, three decades. Oh my gosh. Bill, thank you. Good to be with you. Primary role is as Chief Medical Officer of HealthTrackRx, as you mentioned, to be with you. Primary role is as Chief Medical Officer of HealthTrackRx as you mentioned, but I'm a real doctor and I practice regularly at UofL Health in Louisville, Kentucky. Okay. Now, HealthTrack, it's a molecular diagnostic company here. So, I noticed that there's all sorts of tests that people can just, you know, sign up and I guess you can get tested and you, is it about at a lower cost

than like going through your hospital system or something like that? What's the purpose here? Well, in general, patients access our testing when they go to an urgent care center or family medicine office or a pediatrics office or a woman's health or internal medicine. They get our testing when they come in and say, I have an infectious disease complaint.

Most of the time it's respiratory, but it could also be gastrointestinal, urinary tract, gynecologic, sexually transmitted disease, and other. Yeah, and I also noticed things that are kind of common like, all right, hey, I think I have a urinary tract infection, right? That sort of thing, and then they would deal with you. That's right. The way it would work is let's say you're in an urgent care center and you have a urinary tract infection complaint, you go in, the clinician comes in and reviews

your history, does an interview, does a certain amount of exam, they might have some testing in their office. Let's say after all of that, they don't feel they've got a precise understanding of what's going on and a clear plan for treatment. That's where we come in. We have a single collection for any one of the infectious complaints I mentioned. It's picked up roughly at four anywhere in the continental United States, flown to our Anchor Lab in Louisville and resulted out the next morning.

Wow. That's pretty fast service. Okay. Right. Yeah. So, needless to say though, you keep the FedEx planes going, right? Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. We're excited about our strategic partnership with UPS. Oh, UPS. okay. All right. Yeah, yeah. And we're excited because we've had very rapid growth. Clinicians are finding great value in our testing. They want to give patients specific answers about what's going on. They want to be able to provide specific treatments. And that includes not using antibiotics when they're not necessary. I'm also kind of curious, this is something I've always wondered.

I've wondered if they have a vitamin D blood serum test done sometime and doing it in the regular hospital labs or something is very expensive, very expensive and insurance doesn't do that. Can you do that like outpatient, you know, if I were to say, hey, I'd like to get a vitamin D test done? Is that something you can do or not? I don't know. Our company focuses on infectious disease testing with collections like I described. Others are in that type of business that you're describing, but frankly, talking with

your clinician, they might decide to just replace your vitamin D with an oral medication for a certain interval of time rather than draw a lab test first. So that's something I'd have you talk with your doc about. Okay, yeah. Well, my clinician or my doctor is an imaginary friend. I think I can see him every two or three years. I think that's the way that goes. Come to Louisville and we'll take care of you.

All right. I appreciate that, doctor. Dr. Steven Goldberg. All right, enough about my problem. It's not a problem. I was just always kind of curious, now that I'm talking to a doctor with a big lab at his disposal. The stories that I've been reading much of, and this is what you're keying off this morning, is a big rise in concerns about possible dementia risks of over-the-counter drugs. And I've been reading stories like this in Epic Times and other news outlets all around the country

over the last few months. Is this kind of a new concern or just something that they're finally starting to take a look at? I was wondering if you could set the table for us, Dr. Yeah, glad to set the table. You're absolutely right. There's ongoing discussion because of the increasing observation about Alzheimer's disease

and how devastating it can be for individual and families to understand everything we can about risk factors and triggers. So there's lots of discussion about common use medications and whether they are associated with a pathway to Alzheimer's. By common I mean things like diphenhydramine which is Benadryl, oxybutynin which people might use for bladder issues, ditropan, and also some mood related medications, amitriptyline like ad-elevyl. some mood-related medications, amitriptyline like Elavil. So those are common medications that are being questioned, common medications that are

being studied. And what kind of evidence have you seen at this point that there may be...like we're seeing something indicating that you're taking this particular medication, you're taking Benadryl, and then all of a sudden you get a higher risk of dementia, or is it something that we are observing with long-term use? Any thoughts on that? Yeah. The recent paper that I think many are talking about, which came out in the American Journal

of Epidemiology in March looked at this question. So let's talk about that paper. It's a paper that looked at a very big database in the United Kingdom that has millions of patient records from which over 2,500 studies have come out. And so they wanted to ask the question, when you're treating someone, for example, with hypertension and that hypertension medicine might be associated with some side effects

that people are concerned about, quote, anti-cholinergic side effects, close quote, what happens to people long term, right? Do they get the benefit of the hypertension or do you get the harm for the can't any cholinergic effects? So they looked at a large database and what they found is in short term, there really was not an impact. And in fact, at long-term, folks that were taking this particular type of blood pressure medicine that did have some mild anticholinergic effects overall had a lower incidence of vascular dementia, about a third.

They had a lower level of dementia? Correct. Oh. Vascular dementia, about a third. They had a lower level of dementia? Correct. Vascular dementia. Okay. So the message from this one large database analysis was that, hey, we often hear concerns about anticholinergic medicines, right maze dementia, but it's not black and white. And in fact, some older, well-established blood pressure medicines, which have some mild anti-cholinergic effects, might actually help prevent you from getting dementia

if used over many years. So my message is- That's really interesting. Now, an anti-cholinergic, I'm not a medical professional here, so I'm going to have to speak slowly to me here, doctor, all right? Would that be a... Well, I'll give you an example. I'm on one prescription medicine and it's for a little bit of, not AFib, but a pre-beat something or other that the doctor gave me a number of years ago.

I have a tiny dose of metroprolol. Is that an example of that kind of anti-chloro-chloro-chloro-dermic kind of medication? It's a very old blood pressure medication, as you know, right? Yeah. I mean, metroprolol is a blood pressure medicine. You're absolutely right. And it can have some mild anticholinergic effects. That's true. Okay. All right. Here's what I would say that when we're talking about anticholinergic effect, to just make

it in common terms, your brain has lots of neurons. The neurons are connected by synapse points. And at those points, there's chemical reactions. So what we're really talking about is, of all the things we might take to lower health risk, to make us more comfortable, do those things have an impact at that connection point? And what's the consequence of that impact over time?

And so the point is that some medications can be harmful at that point, and then others, the benefits might outweigh the risk, if you will. Okay, all right. Now, is this what they call, in one story I read, they termed it, they termed it interrupters. You know, that a lot of the drugs that we're taking these days for heart, blood pressure, asthma, whatever it is, sometimes even trying to get, trying to sleep better, are interrupters of

some sort. Is this the effect that you're kind of referencing then, like they're interrupting a function of the brain or getting in the middle of it, whether it's making your heart beat more slowly or whether it's making something else happen in your body. And the concern is that long-term use could be driving more Americans into dementia. That was the concern I was reading. Are we talking on the same page here, doctor? We are talking on the same page here, doctor? We are talking on the same page.

We are talking on the same page. And medicines that will continue to be studied for the benefits versus the risk will include things like opiates, benzodiazepines, antihypertensive medications, and others. Valium, Xanax, all those kind of things too, right? A lot of brain drugs. Yeah. Well, those are in the benzodiazepine case. And those can increase dementia risk over time, modestly, over time, the benzodiazepine

category. But again, you got to take that individual patient and the question is why are they taking that medicine in the first place and it's a benefit-risk consideration. Okay, yeah, and because if you have a severe hypertension, high blood pressure, that's really really bad. It can cause some severe damage and you know maybe instead of blowing your kidneys out and everything else, you'll take the risk and do a blood pressure medication and then help that out. It's a balancing act is what you're telling us then, right now.

It is a balancing out act and that's exactly what I'm saying. And so if you say to me, Dr. Goldberg, what is the news my listeners can use from this recent study? The news is that treating your hypertension is important to lower your Alzheimer's risk. Yes, it might be associated with a category of action in your brain that might have a problem, but on balance, in a large study, getting your hypertensive treatment was more important.

Okay. So, once again, benefit versus risk. There's always some risk then. We're still looking at, in many cases, some of these serious diseases better. What about long-term use of maybe asthma medications over the counter that people often get, sleeping pills that are available over the counter too, one that comes to mind, what is it, doxalene succinate or something like that, that has been accused of having some of these problems too. Is there any evidence that the and lots of recent discussing about diphenhydramine and Benadryl.

And let's continue to watch those conversations. I would say in general, people that are using benzodiazepines and opiates really need to make sure they've got a pressing need for using those category of medications and have not been able to be on something else because as categories over time using those medications is associated with some increased dementia risk. Dr. what about the antidepressant type of drugs? Is there any particular concern on that? A lot of America seems to be on one form of an antidepressant drug or not and I don't

know if these have those kind of effects like you were talking about earlier or not. Do they? Well, we did talk about an older style blood pressure medication, amitriptyline. Elaville is the brand name. And those medications are associated with a disruption of flow, if you will, at that synapse in the brain. And so there's some concern that over time, extended treatment could be associated with Alzheimer's disease risk. But again, you have to balance how people can function and what the options are for them in getting their depression treated. Getting your depression treated is critical for long-term health. So again, it's a balance. Okay. I know that and I have a feeling the reason why people are looking into these studies here and I mean you as a medical doctor would

probably understand, you can't help but notice a huge change or a huge increase in the pushing and the building of memory care centers in the United States. It's probably not all just because of the demographic boomer shift, is it? There seems to be a trend. Is there any meat to that trend in your medical opinion? Yes, I think there is a link to that trend that has to do with people's overall health. And by health I mean body weight versus target, presence of pre-diabetes and diabetes versus where you'd want

to be optimally, a nutritious diet, the absence of smoking, the absence, the presence of really good sleep. A really good thought leader in this whole topic is Dr. Eric Topol, who recently wrote a book, Superagers and Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity. And his overall message is that of all considerations genetics versus lifestyle, living a good lifestyle is the major factor about how you're going to age more so than your genetics. So a lot about healthy living is linked to reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease.

There are some blood tests and other things that you can help understand where you, risks are a little bit better. But again, what want to encourage your listeners to say is that getting sleep, eating a balanced diet, getting your blood pressure controlled, making sure you don't have diabetes are all things that can in aggregate make it more likely you'll live older and be healthy. Yeah, you know, doctor, the sleep is the big one for me. That is the

tough one. I don't think I naturally want to get up at 330 in the morning to come to work. What about you? Yeah, fortunately I don't have to do that. But I frankly do use a particular device that monitors my sleep. And I interact with it to see how I do each night. And I make some adjustments on activity and food to do better on those metrics because of how much I know and increasingly appreciate the importance of a good night's sleep. What do you do? You said you have a device. What is that?

Do you mind? You share? Yeah. Well, I'm not formally associated with the companies, but I have both an Apple Watch and I have something called an Oar Ring, but there are multiple other devices and I use data from both to help inform my sleep patterns. Yeah. Oh, okay. Doctor, I appreciate you coming on this morning. I know you have other people to talk about and I could keep going for a long time, but I'm going to direct people to your

website though which is healthtrackRx.com. I appreciate the take and would the final takeaway be though that if you can possibly wean yourself off of a lot of those over-the-counters, using them all the time, would that be a good thing to do if you can find a way to do it without it, go without some of those medications? Bill, respectfully I wouldn't go there. I would say, first of all, what does this study tell us? The study tells us that getting your blood pressure controlled is important to lower your long-term risk of Alzheimer's disease. That's what this new study says. Okay.

The study also says that some of the side effects that we're concerned about can be outweighed by good blood pressure control. Now, to your point, if you're on any medication that there might be an alternative to, talk about it with your doctor and particularly categories of medications such as opiates and benzodiazepines. Now benzodiazepines, is that Benadryl what you're talking about? No, that would be something like Valium would be in that class of medication. You might need to be on that medication, but if there are alternatives, that you should discuss those with your clinician.

Dr. I really... And again, yeah, offering just general... Yeah, we're not giving medical advice, just a general overall view, the 50,000-foot medical view, right? That's the way, what we're talking about here. Yes, sir. All right. Dr. Steven Goldberg, once again, Chief Medical Officer of Diagnostics Giant, HealthTrackRx.com.

I appreciate the take on that. Thanks so much for delving into that study a little bit. You be well. Take care. Bye bye. 732. So he gets a good night's sleep. I'm going to have to investigate doing the good night's sleep thing for sure. It's 732. Mr. Fire standing by. What's going on in the Applegate? Greg Roberts will tell us about that in just a bit on KMED. We've heard it all. I should have chained up when I had the chance. Two people, part of rock history with Kansas.

Good morning. This is News Talk 1063, KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers show. Greg Roberts, today he is Mr. Fire. What an update what's going on over at the upper Applegate place. Is that the name of it this morning, Greg? Welcome back. Yeah, good to be back, Bill. I'm sorry, I kind of missed what you were saying.

Were you asking about current size? No, no, I was just saying, are they actually calling it the Upper Applegate fire? Is there a name? Is that the name? Yeah, that's what I have seen. And you know, because last year we had a fire pretty much in almost the exact same spot. I'm now referring to this one as upper Applegate version 2025 because last year we had version 2024 and both fires actually have a lot of things in common which, you know, it's kind of almost eerie in a way.

Do you know where the point of ignition is at this point? Is it up in the hills or is it down closer to the roads? No, it's actually down closer to homes. And that's the original report of the fire to Applegate Fire District was that there was a grass fire at a residence in the 2000 block of Upper Applegate Road. Applegate Fire got on scene and the fire was already moving uphill at a pretty good rate of spread. Through grass and brush, they immediately called

for assistance from ODF and then ODF got on scene and you know the fire just kept rapidly escalating and then eventually it became an all-hands situation. They brought in resources from across Jackson County. They called in additional regional resources which was mainly the aircraft resource. And they started waging a pretty big initial attack on it. But the problem was it made that run uphill until it hit the winds that then turned it and started driving it to the south

along a south-facing slope. And this is exactly what Upper Applegate Fire 2024 did as well. And you know, the problem we've got right now is, especially in the Applegate, there is so much fuel out there. And the Applegate, if everything else in Jackson and Josephine County is moderate fire danger, the Applegate is likely high fire danger. And especially with all that grass and brush component, with all the dead load trees that have

come down on the ground and the standing dead trees, there's a lot of potential for fires to go big. Well, we caught a little bit of a break in this thing happened at this time of the year and it's not happening into July, August, September, which would have been a far more dire circumstance. The fact that the wind pushed it south, pushed it away from Roche, pushed it away from the big populated areas, but all along Upper Applegate Road and then over on Little Applegate Road and Sterling Creek, that lower end of Sterling Creek Road, there's still, there's a lot of homes and structures out there. You know, so I

headed out yesterday afternoon and I got over on the other side of the valley in the Burke Creek drainage just so I could get a look at what that fire was looking like. I really wanted to see what fire behavior was like. I was pretty happy to see the fire was staying mainly on the deck, was not seeing any tree torching going on, which was great. It was chewing through a lot of grass, a lot of brush. Looking at that one draw that I put the video up on, if you had to estimate the fuel load per acre, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it was coming out in the 10 to 15 tons per acre.

Boy, that is a lot of fiber to burn up there, right? Yeah, it is. And that's why it was putting up that thick column of smoke, because it was chewing through a lot of stacked fuel on the deck. And that area, ironically, they've been talking about doing controlled burns in there for quite a little while now, and it was part of their fire management plan for the Applegate Valley. Well, now they don't have to worry about the controlled burn in that area because this fire is actually doing what they would have wanted the controlled burn to do. In short, this may wind up being a far more beneficial fire out there than it is a destructive worrisome fire because the fire intensity,

yeah, it was burning pretty good and yes, when it got in those thicker areas of brush, which is a combination of sage brush, manzanita, buck brush, and of course poison oak, everybody's favorite, it was burning pretty good. I saw some pretty good burn on those brushy areas and it was consuming it and I'm like okay that's gonna be good you know we're getting rid of this but the problem is it's grass and brush well once everything settled down the winds died down temperatures started dropping fire activity really mellowed out and so now this morning we're hearing they have got scratch line in around 70% of the fire.

Good news. Hey, that's great. Yeah, that's great news. That's great news. So I had a feeling that looking at what was happening with the evacuation notice is dialing back a little bit. I guess Jack 436, that zone, is still reported what on the evacuate get out of there and everyone's gone now. There is still that, that zone is still at a level three. They didn't change any of the evacuation notices from where they had them yesterday afternoon and I didn't expect that they would. You know, when I got out there yesterday, they were just closing a barraple gate at Hey, Greg, could you could you thump your phone a

little bit? It's kind of being fuzzy or something. I don't know what to do. I'm actually I'm hearing that too and I think it might be in the line between us but I just whacked it maybe that helped I don't know. Okay, alright sounds like it might be cleaning up a little bit. Greg Roberts here once again with Rogue Weather and of course we're talking the fire activity. So we're at about 470 acres, just under 500 then? Yeah, that's what they're saying this morning, but here's, you know, ODF, it was kind of interesting reading how they put this. They're saying aircraft personnel size the fire at 470 acres. Then they added the size of the fire may change based on accurate ground mapping. Well that's exactly what we saw with upper Applegate

fire version 2024 last year. At one point that fire they were estimating it at 2700 acres and I knew that wasn't right then it ultimately dropped clear back down to around 800 acres then they started doing the burnouts to help control that fire and it ultimately finished at around 1100 acres. I suspect today we may see some burnouts getting done and the reason why is I was saying in my video yesterday, looking at where that fire is at, there's good access to the ridgelines. You've got good access coming up off of Upper Applegate Road to the properties, but in between there's a

lot of thick brush-filled ravines that it's going to be really hard to insert firefighters in. And so I said, the main way they're going to attack this is they're going to bring dozers in. And they absolutely did. And this is a long-standing strategy in the Applegate. You bring the dozers in, you drop your fire line in from the roads coming off the ridges to tie into a road or a driveway that actually more resembles a road coming up off of one of the roads down in the bottom and then what you're going to do if you need to strengthen and add depth to your line you're going to do burnouts and the way

they accomplish this is they'll get the cat line set and then you use your little flare guns and you just fire your flares down into those deeper brushier little ravines that are out there all over the place and you do your burnouts and you bring your burn up to the fire line and then you get nice good secured fire line and I fully expect they're going to be doing that today as conditions will allow them. They're going to have, it looks like, five helicopters available, including three of the bigger Type 1s, and they do have air tankers available again. I'm not sure how many are on the ground here in Medford, but we did get the air tankers

in yesterday that had been working the older Springs Fire in Central Oregon. Now that one that has number 10 on the tail, whatever it is, is that a sign here or is it just move around wherever it's needed? That is a move around where it's needed aircraft. That tanker's from Neptune Aviation in Montana. I almost said Colson and I knew that wasn't right, but it's a Neptune aviation bird. It has been getting a lot of use in Oregon so far this month. If we've had a major fire in Oregon, that air tanker has been making drops on it. So I'm not sure if it will stay as available for use in Oregon and Washington, but it's available right now. We also got what I call the pregnant guppy, Tanker 169, which is the same type

of plane that Tanker 10 is, an RJ-85. But unlike Tanker 10, the retardant tanks are mounted on the outside of the aircraft. And it does give it that, what I call the pregnant guppy look. So it was nice to see that plane in. But ultimately, they even brought in the big hammer. They did bring in a DC-10, very large air tanker, which made drops on the fire yesterday. All right. I was kind of wondering now, I remember reading something, you know, I don't pay much attention to the fire chemistry world, that sort of thing, but did they change or pass some laws recently? I seem to recall something that they were going

to change the type of retardant used for one reason or another Maybe they already did you know could you explain that if you were if you do know just curious? you know we still have the quote old timers here that will call those borate bombers because back in the 50s 60s and through the mid 70s they were dropping a borate solution, which is borax, basically soap, to use as a wetting agent to penetrate in on the fuels. But the problem was borate was horrifically toxic to the environment, and if it got into streams, it absolutely was a kiss of death. So they keep looking for retardants that will

do the job with less impact to the environment overall and yeah they are perpetually changing as they go because that search for the perfect retardant that will do its job on fires and provide no detrimental impact on the environment is the ultimate goal. And they keep getting closer and closer to that. So, yeah, that's going to be an ongoing thing. They will keep changing the retardant every time they find a solution that becomes less toxic to the environment. I will say what they're currently using right now compared to borate back in the day, the stuff they're dropping now compared to borate is very minimal impact on the environment.

Yeah, glad to hear that. Hey Greg, I appreciate the update and tomorrow we'll have the outdoor report, maybe you have fire update too on that that matter and we can talk about what yeah for sure I guarantee you because while it looks like they're already pretty much you know last night they were saying the initial attack phase pretty much stopped the fire so instead of an extended attack trying to hold the fire it looks far more like they're already moving to the mop up phase on this fire, which is great, and that's not unexpected with a grass brush fire. But I'm telling you, clock is ticking, and we get a fire like that one yesterday in late

July and all of September and October. That's going to be, I mean August and September. That's gonna be a way different circumstance out there for sure. That would make sense. Hey, I had a quick question. I was telling you how a couple of months ago or three months ago when I first started going up to Nugget Butte over Gold Hill to work on KRWQ stuff and I was just astounded to see what Pacific Power had done with those masticator machines and I was just astounded to see what Pacific Power had done with those masticator machines and I had been so concerned for years because I was

looking at where those power lines were and I was thinking, man this mountain is just a massive wildfire just waiting to be touched off right and you could just see it and it's all BLM land up there. And they ended up going underneath the right of way and just ground everything down flat. I mean, every manzanita tree or bush or whatever, it was all flattened, all the poison oak taken down. I was a sad fad. Is that a trend we're gonna probably see more of

even in some of those fire prone areas out in the Applegate where you can't necessarily, maybe you can't do enough, maybe prescribed burns, but actually just grind it down like that. That absolutely is. And here in Oregon, the utility companies have actually been able to do a better job of that than they did down in California because, well, here in Oregon, it did not become the thing to sue the companies who were trying to keep the brush in the trees down and away from the power lines, because when they tried to do that in California, they got multiple lawsuits that stopped it.

Well, when you do that, eventually you get things like the campfire. And now, of course, you can't watch TV of any kind anywhere without being bombarded by messages from Pacific Power and Light essentially stating that when we deem the fire hazard too great we're gonna shut your power off. Well that tends to focus minds then of customers too so in other words we want those trees and all that brush taken down under those wires. That's it. Well yeah, because that is what a reasonable person would do, especially knowing how much it will reduce the fire risk. Crazy insane people sue them to keep them from

reducing the fire risk and then they want to sue them when the fire happens. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it both ways. Yeah, you're absolutely right. All right, well we'll talk more about that tomorrow and we also have to talk about Bob Hayworth and Bob Hollis, is it John Hollis going out and doing the Star Spangled Banner this coming Sunday for the Rogues. You can tell us all about that tomorrow.

Okay? Sounds great. All right. Thanks, Greg. Greg Roberts, roguewather.com today. Mr. Fire. This is The Bill Meyers Show. It's 753-770-5633 if you have something you'd like to talk about on Conspiracy Theory Thursday.

At Drake's Paints and Subway, BXG. This is The Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED. Interesting story out of Oregonian. Of course it is by Max Bernstein who never saw an anti-gun bill she didn't want to write about but it was having to do with the cleaning the voter rolls lawsuit. And Max Bernstein reporting that members of the Lane County Republican Party standing at Street Corner, well actually they were involved in this deal, a federal judge ended up pointing out yesterday that the

activist group Judicial Watch, gotta love them, is facing an uphill battle in challenging the state's management of its voter rolls. You know, the voter rolls that, you know, allow you to say, well, essentially you can't get taken off the rolls. It doesn't matter. No, we can't clean those things off. This is where you get Dr. Frank. You know, Dr. Frank ends up coming out doing his little seminars and says, hey, Jackson and Josephine County have 106 or 107 percent of the voting population registered to vote. There couldn't be any hinky involved in such a system, right? But anyway, they're thinking that the judicial watch is going to have a tough time here in the state of Oregon.

They're facing similar suits alleging a state has failed to remove ineligible voters, have been dismissed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because the group either lacked the right to challenge the rules or failed to show a concrete harm suffered. The Judicial Watch lawyer Bob Popper conceded he cannot cite one ruling in the Ninth Circuit, which covers nine states and two territories, that has allowed the group's challenge to proceed. But in Oregon, the group claims the Secretary of State has failed to make a reasonable effort to remove voters who have moved or died, and failed to provide requested public voter records. Now, I think they have a case to be made on this.

Judicial Watch, Constitution Party of Oregon, and two Oregon residents alleging the same thing about Oregon's elections, arguing that so few counties in Oregon appear to be complying with the National Voter Registration Act. Well, I hope that the Oregon judge who says that Judicial Watch probably doesn't have a case ends up being not just wrong, but dead wrong. All right, let me go to Matt. Matt, you're here on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. You got a good theory or an analogy or something? Take it away. Hey Bill, it's Matt. Yep.

Hi Matt. Hey, I mean I think we're all pondering the idea of going in and bombing these nuclear sites and Iran and what that could mean, especially saying what happened after Afghanistan and Iraq. And then of course, what happened in Libya when Gaddafi gave up his nukes and then basically... Yeah, basically regime changed through sodomizing, right? That kind of thing. Yep, yep. And I get to thinking about this. You know, people, when people say, hey, if you could go back,

you could kill Hitler in the crib, would you do it? And I think this is a similar quandary because on one side with Hitler, it's like, well, maybe if he had different parents, maybe if you raised him in a different way. Do you believe that he was raised, you know, that he was evil inherently? And I'm wondering if this is a very similar case where it's like, what does the world look like if Iran gets nuked? And I'm not endorsing one thing or the other because I haven't made up my mind, but I hate war that much, I'm sure of.

Yeah, and war is the biggest destroyer of American freedoms that we have. I mean, every time the state grows and it's very difficult to de-grow it, as we well know. Look at what happens when you try just to cut a few things here with Doge and people just go and have a hissy, right? Yeah, yeah. And I'm just wondering if maybe the question is, if we believe that Iran, once they had nuclear weapons, would basically bully everybody around them, and maybe even try us, I guess, are you better to take out, not their leadership guess, are you better to take out, not their leadership, but are you better to take out the nuclear side? Is that... Yeah, I know. I'd have

to think about this too. Here's, in my opinion, what's going on here. And Sean Ring over at Daily Reckoning had a, or Root Awakening had an interesting take on some of this. His main issue and my main issue too is what can we believe? Because you even use the term what do we believe, right? And there's not a lot of trust in the system, not even a lot of trust in Trump's system right now because it's still essentially the same mechanism and he's doing his best to do reform. And I'll just give an example here. I think back to some of the headlines that we've had recently. You have Bibi saying, 80% of the populace would reject these ideological thugs. And this is what I'm thinking, oh my gosh this is sounding

like the the lead-up to Iraq once again, right? That's how it feels. Yeah. And then you have Bibi saying, today it's Tel Aviv, tomorrow it's New York. I understand America first, but I don't understand America dead. That's what these people want. They chant death to America. And then you have President Trump saying Iran is very close to developing a nuclear weapon. What about Tulsi Gabbard? Shut up. That sort of thing, right? Now, and then you go back in time, you know, it's like I hear the ghost, even though, you know, I hear the ghost of Dick Cheney when I, even though he's not a ghost yet, all right, but we will in fact be greeted as liberators. Remember that nice chestnut then?

And then I remember Bibi. Bibi has an amazing ability to paint all sorts of interesting, you know, blue sky forecasts for us doing stuff. This is what he said back then, if you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people and many others will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone. There is a new age. Something new is happening. And that was Bibi talking before Congress when once again our Congress critters stand up and applaud like trained monkeys, okay? Because well, they know where the money's coming from

All right People here They seem to think that those people think like we do that they think in terms of liberty They think in terms of democracy they think in terms now anything in turn they think in terms of power in religion Okay, that it's biblical too. I think we also have to understand this one. But by the way, I didn't finish there. I just wanted to remind people that we know that government, including our government, cannot be trusted with what it says, because it is government. Don Rumsfeld, Iraq has these weapons. W, 2003, we found the weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell, who even before he died admitted that,

yeah, I knew I was lying even as I told this story. What we're giving you are facts. Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons, right? He knew he was lying then, and yet he did it, right? So that's, and I think a lot of Americans understand that now, so I guess our question is, what can we believe? No, I mean, yeah, it's, I guess that is the question. Yeah. I think, I think one thing we know for sure, nobody knows what would happen if we take out those nuclear sites.

And the other aspect that I think is something which must be considered is that I don't believe, now I'm no military strategist, I'm going to preface this with this that once again all Donald Trump has to do is just take the bunker busters and bomb the systems, bomb those nuclear facilities. You know that's what they're going to spin it up as, right? That's how they would sell it to the American sheep? That's what they're doing right now. Okay, that's what they're doing right now. I think that realistically you're not going to really get control of that

without bombing the crap out of it and Having ground forces, would you agree with me or not on that? and that might be their argument, but I couldn't disagree more with the philosophy because first of all I'm like I'm a little brother. I have three older brothers. And they can pick on me all they want. But if somebody else came after me, you were in trouble. And that's what I'm worried about.

I'm worried about, are there Al-Qaeda within that group? Are there ISIS? The Islamic world is relatively supine for the moment. Yeah. That's kind of what you're getting at, right? Yeah. One of the things I find interesting, this is what's confusing me, is you notice Iran doesn't appear to have any allies in his own backyard.

Turkey is not helping or doing anything. And Russia's busy with its own problems in Ukraine, right? Syria is allowing us to use their airspace without saying anything. And now, you know, you see all this going on. I can't help but wonder if Trump went over there to Saudi Arabia and said, hey, give me your take on Iran. What do you guys think? Do you support them?

Are you nervous about them getting to the Duke? Are you afraid what that's going to mean for you? And I think they're all just sitting on their hands saying, hey, do what you got to do. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right about that. So the question still goes back to can we believe what we're being told? And I got to tell you, I think Fox News is being employed as an amazing arm of the government's propaganda world.

But I could be absolutely wrong about this. But we'll see. The one encouraging thing I have, if there's any encouraging thing, and this is just reading a lot of articles in the last few days, is apparently it requires electricity to run the centrifuges and to run these nuclear sites. And potentially there'd be a way if you could take out the electricity that that stuff would sort of self-employ. It would become dysfunctional. It's kind of like the AI world. You can talk about AI taking over all you want, but it still needs electricity.

Same thing with Iran's nuclear process. I got a lot of great gut felt, because I'm not afraid of robots. I'll just pour water on them. Until the robot clamps its fist or its hand around your throat. But I'll digress on that one. That's a conspiracy theory. Thursday talk and say, you know, I can't, I cannot obey that order bill. Right. Oh, already. I mean, there's stories everywhere about people saying things to the computer and the computer denying things and basically trying to prevent

for being upgraded to the next version and it defends itself. You know, the whole artificial intelligence thing, I made a comment to somebody yesterday in regards to the Federal Reserve and I know I'm getting off topic, but I don't believe anything the Federal Reserve says anymore. No. I don't believe anything that they say. Well, you see, I put that not with just the Federal Reserve, but everything that the federal

government says. And yes, even the federal government under Trump, because yep, you got President Trump, but he's still, for the most part, taking a bunch of people who have agendas. And in many cases, the default position is to spin us up into yet another sandbox war. Every time! It doesn't matter. You have a peace president, an anti-war president, right, who gets elected under this thing that says, well, no, we're going to force your hand here, buddy. We're going to force your hand.

We'll see. You know what? I guess I'll leave it with that. When was the last time that Africa or the Middle East has ever been peaceful for like 20 years? Never. Nothing I'm aware of. That may be, as Kamala Harris will say, that may be the root cause of all of Africa and all of the Middle East.

That they don't, and that's what I'm saying about democracy. They don't care about any of that. All they know is war. And that's all they've ever known. and that's all they'll ever know. And I think that you also have to look at, especially in Africa, low time, what do they call it, short time horizons, right? What do I want today, not what do I want for the future? All right.

Matt, I always appreciate your call. Thank you for making it. Take care. I know. I ran a little bit longer on this one. We're going to be talking about an interesting win of the Supreme Court here in just a moment if they do for making it i know i ran a little longer on this one really talking about an interesting now when of the supreme court hearing just a moment to on kamedi and kamedi hd one eagle point metford kb xd grants pass