Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-12-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Morning news and headlines, Steve Bonta, publishe of THE NEW AMERICAN talks the constitution, the news and takes on issues of the day...I think New American is a great news source, btw.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Great to have you here. Find your phone Friday, 770-5633-770KM.D. Yeah, we will have a diner 62 quiz, probably around 730 or so. That's when I'm thinking we're going to do that.

I kind of like to move that around, so it's not always the same group of folks that end up getting it, but it'll be a lot of fun. great, great sex scandal political story that we're going to talk about for American history. No, it's not the Monica one. It's another one, a different one that I think a lot of people may have forgotten about. We'll see how good you are on your sex scandal history coming up, all right? No scandals, just more drama in Josephine County. And yesterday they had something pretty interesting go on.

we're not really sure what happened. The Josephine County Board meeting ended up, while the commissioner meeting ended up being canceled unexpectedly. And it was due to security concerns. NBC5 ended up reporting on this one. Everybody that was there was asked to leave. Commissioner Chris Barnett did not arrive. And Commissioner Barnett apparently notified security of an ongoing security threat.

Now, I ended up reaching out to Commissioner Barnett this morning. He said, you want to talk about it? He says, no, I really can't talk about it right now. There'll be more coming. He ended up putting out a statement here recently, talking about how he is definitely going to fight the right. He's not going to resign. He's definitely going to fight.

So, you know, in for the recall. Boy, you know, the very concept, though, that you have a recall going on over the Christmas holiday. Boy, that wasn't designed that way, don't you think? You have everybody all in to elect somebody, county commissioner and then you have a handful of hissie fitters that are actually paying attention and everybody before anybody else is going out there and going oh there was a recall election yeah yeah we were out of town we were you know down over in sun river for a couple of weeks or something

like that i don't know if that's necessarily how it's going to pan out but uh that's the reason that i am not a supporter of recalls in general i really am not and i know some people were yelling at me a few years ago when I said I didn't like the idea when they were trying to recall the grants pass mayor at that point. First, it was going to be an election year anyway. What's the point? And it's just like trying to recall Tina Kotech right now. So what? Okay, so you get Kami Tobias Reid in there. Ooh, boy, that's a big change sort of thing. S-E-I-U would hate him, right? But anyway, so I'm just not a fan of this sort of stuff. give people a chance

and sometimes it takes time for commissioners, mayors, councils to find their sea legs. It's kind of the way I look at it. And especially when you don't have an administrator in a lot of these places. Josephine County is a smaller government, let's say, than Jackson County.

There's somebody who came to the Jackson County meeting. I think it was Holly. Holly, yeah, I think it was. It was Holly Morton. Holly Morton and Jim. They came to the event on Wednesday and said, wow, you know, in Josephine County, we have way more people at our county commission meeting. I said, yeah, because you're filled with drama and controversy. And Jackson County is just kind of just sort of being run.

You know, it's that kind of thing. They're not trying to recall everybody every two weeks. Somebody wakes up and says, well, they're not doing everything that they promised. And so we have to do this. or get the John Riccios and everybody else. And God bless you, John. You know, everybody else right in there. I don't know what it is in the water in Josephine County, but it's been a real challenge.

But, of course, it's also been known that Josephine County has been under attack here and targeted by the Democratic Party. They're looking to, I think, so discontent and to make that happen. So that's just my opinion. But anyway, Chris tells me that he could talk more about this. and we'll have him on next Thursday. So it'll be Thursday. He says he can talk more about it and be more forthcoming. So I don't know any more than that.

And there we go. We move along. Other news we have this morning. Oregon's unemployment rate climbing to 5.2% at September. Newly released data that's in Oregon Live. But the state added jobs thanks to big gains in the health care sector. Big, lots of people hired in the health care sector. Why do I do the dump, dump, dumb, during that?

Because it's not really wealth creators. These are expenses on society. And I'm not, and by the way, if you are in medicine, I'm not, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. but it's not exactly going to be a wealth generator in the in the grand scheme of things ideally we don't have to hire any new people in health care because we're getting healthier and we're not having to bring more people into the obamacare maw well apparently that's not the case whether it's more demand whatever i i don't know what to say but they're saying more health care being hired and the reason why you have to start

looking at it differently every time you hear, well, even look at this. Rogue Valley Times reporting, Phoenix might see new medical office on urban renewal track, three and a half million dollar medical office building might be coming to downtown Phoenix. Anytime you see a new medical office, unless all they do is do directed primary care, or direct primary care, remember every medical office that you see open up is an indicator of another tax drain going on here in the state of Oregon. That's what I was trying to get at. Well, Southern Oregon, we're going to be a big medical community. This and the older, we're going to be fixing people and say, yeah, yeah, I get that.

But remember what I was telling you the other day when you actually go through who is paying for health care here in Southern Oregon? And only one out of three people in Jackson County are able to do well enough that they buy their own insurance or they have employer supplied health care. one out of three. In Josephine County, it sinks to one out of four people. Now, if one out of four people, if only one out of four in Josephine County are able to pay for their health care and have their own insurance or their employer provided insurance, that means the three out of four do not. That means three out of four are on Medicare or the Oregon Health Plan, which are government, when you would say, you know, government-funded health cares in which they tax the one out of four and make the one out of four in Josephine County pay more. So the three out of four

who don't pay or don't pay the full cost of that end up having subsidies, just like in Jackson County. The one out of three who do have health coverage or buy their own or pay cash or have direct primary care, they pay more for their services so that the two out of three who are in the taxpayer-funded wagon, which is losing money. And by the way, this is one of the challenges. The doctors are already saying Medicare, Oregon Health Plan, they pay poorly, et cetera, et cetera. So every time you see, you know, unless you see someone opening up maybe an imaging center that is going to be offering services for very low cost because it's independent of a hospital system,

or if you're seeing doctors opening up, they're going to be a natural path, they're going to be cash on the barrel or a direct primary care where you're, you know, paying a certain amount concierge care, you know, $100 a month or whatever it is to see your doctor, every time you see more people being hired in the current Oregon medical care system, that's more taxpayer dollars draining into that section of the economy. It's like we're taking money out of one side of it in the state of Oregon and just putting it in the other side. But I couldn't really call it a wealth generator you get that ideally we wouldn't need more because we would be making america healthier again and then we wouldn't need quite so many well you know so many

practitioners so many uh therapy animals you know that kind of thing speaking wasn't there another story about therapy animal i think it was on in kobe i think i saved this where was it with his therapy animal over at some apartment complex. Oh, I'll find it. Oh, yeah, here we go. Medford Man facing apartment issues regarding his emotional support animals. He's frustrated after the apartment complex they live in has not cooperated with them over his service dogs. Terry Stewart and his mother began living at Morningside Apartments last December.

Both deal with Parkinson's have two emotional support animals certified by SupportPets.com. now that's an emotional support animal i don't know do the do you have to do you have to take a support animal because a support animal is very different from a service animal isn't that the case tell me if i'm wrong about that in other words love me and by the way with parkinson's i'm very sympathetic to that my father died of that i get that but an emotional support pet is not the same as a service animal i don't think maybe i'm wrong about it that or not reading that carefully but yeah everyone it's therapy dog and therapy ferret nation I guess but like I said I hope they get that figured out but I don't know if an

emotional support animal it should be given the same do kind of like the emotional support forestry therapy what was at the the certified forest therapy trail in Josephine County of the therapy nation everybody is is broken I suppose. So he had that story. All right. And then, every morning, I pray and wake up that I will see the Metford City Council do something simple. And unfortunately, once again, I'll do this after the break, but I don't know what kind of a so-called Jedi mind trick.

I mean, I'm thinking like Star Wars reference, right? You know, what kind of a Jedi mind trick that the Medford City Council is doing when it comes to this main, this main street restoration that they've been talking about and surveying on? We'll talk about that here just a minute. 622. Hi, this is the Bill Meyer show. Hi. Good morning. Who's this?

Hi, Bill. You got me hooked on that ESA topic. Oh, the ESA. Which one's that? ESA. Emotional support animal. Oh, emotional support animal. Okay.

Is the support animal considered the same for the law? as a service dog. Okay. You don't certify an animal as ESA. What the procedure is, is when an applicant or a tenant comes to the landlord and ask for an exception to the rules and no pet policy, what the landlord should do is give the applicant or the tenant a reasonable request and verification form. And so our parent organization, Oregon Rental Housing Association, has a form, and you give

it to the tenant or applicant. They fill out the front portion of it, and it has what the person's name, who their provider is that's giving them, and I call it a prescription for an ESA or companion animal or support animal, whatever you want to call it. But what I'm asking, though, and this is what I'm trying to find into, because emotional support animal, to me, this is kind of one of those things which is nice, but I don't see that as legally binding. Now, if someone has a service dog, as an example, you're blind, and the dog goes on there, it turns on the lights, or the dog is sniffing you and can tell that you're going into diabetic shock, or, you know, of that kind of thing. I think that's a completely different story, all right? It's legally binding the Fair Housing Act under the Fed, under the Fed.

Okay, all right. So the feds have bought into the nonsense. Okay, got you. Because what everybody can do then, I would imagine what a lot of people do then is fake up their process, or they find someone who all I have to do is say, hey, I need this. And then they say, okay, we certify you. Is that what happens? I'd be only a bet so.

Okay. Like I stated at the top, you don't certify the animal. The person has to have some sort of, you know, like an emotional support deficiency. You know, they have an anxiety, and their pet, cat, or dog relieves that anxiety. So they go through a process. They go through a medical, usually a doctor, nurse practitioner, or whatever, counselor. And they, and they, write, and I call it a prescription, they write a note saying, hey, landlord, you have to accept this, and because they have, they don't say anxiety, they just have what meets the criteria, they have an emotional support animal. And it is true, a service animal is different. A service animal is more likely a dog, which has tens of thousands of dollars invested in it. That's right. Now, see, I look at that as so legitimate. The emotional support animal racket to me is just that. I just think it's a racket. Sorry. Well, okay, and that website that the tenant went to, I looked that up, and if I received a request

and they cited that or I got documentation from that website, myself, I probably would not accept it. Yeah, I think it was supportpets.com, right? Right, yeah. It's a ESA churnmill where they take. money from the tenant and they answer a bunch of questions and supposedly you know they're reviewed by a doctor and then you get a certificate you know that your your animal is ESA approved well which to me is I don't think it it doesn't fly all right David I'm glad to hear from you I know that you are up on the landlord things thank you very much for your take on it because okay that's

the part that I that you know what my suspicion was right on this then the supportpetch.com is not considered legit, really. Right. Yeah. The tenant needs to go to a medical, most likely a medical person, and they can get the letter from them saying, this is it. And the other thing. Well, it's kind of like being a mail order reverend, right? That same sort of thing. You send the money, you get the certificate back, right?

Isn't that what's going on? Yeah, the same thing. You know, in my opinion, the tenant wasted their money. they should have went to a medical provider or a counselor or somebody like that to get authorization to have an emotional support animal. All right, fair enough. Thank you very much, David. Appreciate that. It kind of answers some of my questions on this.

Good morning. Hi, this is Bill. This is Bill. Who's this? Welcome. Hi, Bill. This is Vicki from the Applegate. Vicki. FIRE away. What's up? Well, I agree with you. I believe that a lot of people are abusing that they need a support animal for anxiety, but what they really need is they need counseling to deal with their anxiety and learn to manage that. My granddaughter actually was approved for a support animal, but the landlord doesn't want any pets. So it's totally different than a service dog. A service dog is there to provide service.

I mean, they let you know when the phone's ringing. They let you know if there's a fire. They let you know if somebody's at your door. They let you know if you're going into AFib. I mean, I see all sorts of amazing animals that they use to do this. And I look at that as so completely legitimate. I think what it, I think what has bothered me more than anything else, and maybe this is just this diving into.

Everybody's broken emotionally. I guess that's the part. Are we really all that far gone everywhere, Vicki? But I need to also tell you that when my granddaughter, she's been coming to stay at our house during the summer since she was five. She lives in Salem, and she comes since a couple of months during the summer with us. And she's known our dog, Celine, since she was five weeks old. And when she comes during the summer, Celine, you can just tell.

how much Celine helps her be calm, helps her be happy, helps her not have anxiety. So where did all this anxiety come from is what I'm asking, Vicki? Well, I think a lot of it is trauma, drama, whether it's at home, whether it's at school, being bullied. Yeah, but everybody's had to deal with stuff like that. If you look back in the 70s, they never made allowances for kids that had problems home or bullying back then. I mean, you just had to either suck it up and deal with it or you went into counseling to deal with your issues.

Yeah, and I have no problem with counseling. I guess my point is that when you, I jokingly call it Therapy Nation, I think people will rise to the level of resiliency that society demands, and society doesn't demand any resiliency out of anybody. Well, the thing is that we, people, it's such a scammy world out there for everything, for pills, for services, for, I mean, you have people that are walking around that abuse something that could actually be helping somebody else. Yeah, yeah, well, that's a good point. I just thought I'm asking, I don't mean to be unkind, and I'm trying not to be unkind, but it's just like, oh, my gosh, I mean, I'm not one of these guys that, uh, I'm not one of these guys that, uh, just. just wants to smack everybody upside the head, but on the other hand, would you just knock off

everything about the fields, absolutely everything about the feels? And it's, at some point, there has to be a certain amount of, well, I guess maybe it is a little bit of toughen up, and that's been missing in the culture for a while, I guess. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hello. Hello. Yeah. Bill. Jerry. Hi, Jerry. I heard you talking to Vic. you about anxiety. Yes. Well, Bill, now you know why we have some ecotourist trails, you know, so people... No, certified forest therapy trail.

Yeah. There you go. The therapy trail right there. That's what we need. There's the answer. Don't build another building, you know, a medical building. Just go out on the trail. Well, maybe that's going to be the future as Obamacare collapses.

And there's no medical buildings to send anybody to. We send you to the Forest Therapy Trail. And guess what? And it's only a $30 copay at the fee box when you walk in. Oh, I crack me up. All right. Thanks, Jerry. Hi, good morning.

This is Bill. Who's this? Hello? Hello? Hi. Hello. Hi, Bill. It's Francine.

Hi, Francine. Hi. Okay. So, you know, I know that everything's been, they're making this really big deal out of things that seem like they shouldn't be such a big deal. And in some ways, that's absolutely accurate. On the other hand, just look around. Look at the world we're living in now. What's going on in the world? I mean, I just sent you a thing this morning, Lucreta sent it to me and I sent it to you. and um well lucretia lives in a current in a state of obsi or obviously you know it's perpetual anxiety okay no no i that's that's not where i'm going with this oh what i was saying is the article um about what's happening in britain right now did you look at that yet no i have not thousands of tractors have have descended upon london and people are rioting because because uh they're they're they were going to the uh was at an army base or something blocking everything because they're bringing in all the migrants.

People have had enough. They've had enough in Britain. Thank goodness for them. So maybe we are all snapping, in other words. What I'm trying to say is this world, we are being manipulated and pushed into places that are causing people to have a really hard time. In other words, a non-human or an inhuman culture. Is that kind of where you're getting at? Yeah.

I mean, I'm not saying, oh, yeah, everybody needs a therapist. You know, I won't go to a therapist. You couldn't pay me to go to it. with therapists. I'm amazed how many therapists actually have mental issues themselves, I've found out. But they have to do in order to become therapist. What I'm trying to say, though, is this is not the normal world that maybe we knew, you know, 50, 60 years ago. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. And, you know, and people are being pushed into corners. And, you know, I mean, I don't know. Like I say, I'm not.

excusing anything. I'm not, you know, saying, oh, we need this because I don't really know what we need except to get rid of some of the people in charge. You know, maybe that's the takeaway. I appreciate the call. Thank you for that. I'll take one more quick call that I've got to go. I run behind on my schedule here, my mapped out schedule, and then I get undisciplined. Hi, who's this? Good morning. Hi, this is Joe the Ragman. Hello, Joe the Ragman. Welcome. What do you thinking? I'm thinking I just acquired an emotional support animal. You did?

Yes, it's a pig. You did? Yeah, but not the whole pig. It's bacon. Oh, bacon. Yeah. Well, I'm the first to tell you that, you know, having bacon as your emotional support animal is quite tasty. And it kind of reminds you of how great life can be, doesn't it?

Yes, it does. All right. I hope you have yourself a really good day. And I'm hoping, well, I'm going to be going to 9 or 62 later today, and I'm hoping that maybe I'll have an emotional support animal then okay okay have a good day by the way we will have a diner 62 quiz coming up about an hour from now over the last 40 years a lot of very beautiful homes have been built in our if you current find out about their services on clauser drilling dot com hi i'm jessica from pickerspon and i'm on kmED 642 steve bonte joins me he's the publisher at the new american he's a john birch society member

i like the new american i like what you guys do there but it's not just guys it's also women too. Steve, welcome to the show. Good to have you on. Hey, great to be here. For those that have forgotten, and I think that the way I always think of a John Birch Society is like they were conservatives before they kind of got sucked into conservative incorporated. Would that be a fair way of looking at John Birch Society? Yeah, I mean, probably a lot of people, it's also fair to say we're probably a bit ahead of our time. So we're talking about the wisdom of being in the United nations in NATO decades before it occurred to anyone else on the so-called right. Yeah. Think of all those signs on the years they were outside of those harms and said,

get us, get U.S., get us out of the U.N. way back when I was a kid. I remember seeing that stuff. You were right then. Of course, nobody paid attention. We're still in the U.N. if you can believe that, even after all this time, Steve. And we still have that campaign. You'll still encounter those billboards from time to time. So, yeah, we've not given up, and we feel very much vindicated by the course of modern events. And probably most dramatically, I mean, with regard to NATO, one of the U.N. subsidiaries right now, obviously Thomas Massey just proposed withdrawal from NATO. And, of course, we're watching the countdown to World War III in Europe.

And we're going to get dragged into that if we're still part of the NATO alliance, you know. And Bust decides to invade Lithuania or whatever happens over there. Steve, despite all the political hate being directed at Thomas Massey, is he the only real conservative left in Congress? Serious a question. Serious question. I have to ask it. Well, there are quite a few, I think. He's probably the, has the most seniority. He's been in Congress, if I'm not mistaken, 2012.

So he's been there for a while, and he's built up some credibility. But a lot of the, some of the freshmen and the new ones that are coming in are also doing very well, but there are still far too few of them. You know, so we do this thing twice a year called the Freedom Index, where we track the votes of that every, you know, representatives and senators, And, you know, Matthew is consistently at near 100 percent as a constitutionalist. But there are plenty of others as well. Unfortunately, you know, the average, even in the so-called conservative GOP is probably like 60 percent or something like that.

60 percent. Quite a few of them. Yeah, and the Democrats are close to zero at this point. So, you know, that's kind of where we stand. How did Marjorie Taylor Green do on that? Oh, she did very well. She was one of our star performers. In fact, we had a nice interview with her in the magazine.

about a year and a half ago, I believe. We put her in the cover and everything. One of her people interviewed her in her office in Washington. We had a photographer there and everything. So we had a good relationship with Congresswoman Green and very sorry to see her go. She's one of the real, one of the really good ones. But I also, speaking for myself, I certainly understand where she's coming from and why she's kind of tired of the whole thing.

Could you explain why you think she's tired of? I mean, she said she's tired of the whole thing, but what do you think that really means? How does it really translate as, in your view? Well, I suspect that, you know, she, you know, again, not wanting to put words in her mouth, but I suspect she's kind of decided that there's some things that just aren't worth all of the, you know, the Billings Gate and the bile, and particularly when Trump turned on her recently after all the support she's given him. You know, I think that was kind of the final straw. And, you know, she's obviously a very capable woman, you know, business woman, entrepreneur, and all this.

and, you know, quite possibly her family and her people back in Northern Georgia need her more at this point. So I wouldn't second guess her decision. I don't blame it one bit. Steve, I certainly have never thought. I would never consider running for Congress myself just because I couldn't stand that toxic environment. Yeah, I imagine so. But I find it fascinating that when you have a president who runs on conservatism and then when conservatives disagree with him, The response is not to moderate the approach on something.

I'm speaking of President Trump. The thing is, well, we're just going to primary you and get you out. I mean, and maybe there is something to that complaint that Marjorie Taylor Green said that the loyalty goes in one direction only. Is that a fair assessment, you think? Yeah, pretty much. And I think, you know, I mean, I got to say, I like some of the things that Trump has done and stands for, but he's, you know, he's just very inconstant, very unsteady. and he's not terribly well-informed on a lot of issues. And this is the problem that one finds, particularly with a lot of very wealthy men,

is they don't have time to do a lot of reading. You know, they learn how to make deals and make money and, you know, deal with people and all this type of thing. But, you know, I'd be very surprised to find out that Trump has ever read the Federalist papers, for example, or is really that intimately familiar with the text with the U.S. Constitution. And these things are, you know, he's obviously vastly wealthier than someone. like Thomas Massey, but I know for the fact that Massey has done those things. And these are the kinds of things that are most important for, you know, for representatives and, you know, Congressmen

to be legitimate, is that they, you know, regardless of their personal, you know, success at making money or whatever, you know, they should be first and foremost defenders of the Constitution. And you can't defend something you're not familiar with. And you can't be familiar with the Constitution if you're not willing to do a spot of reading. And so many people today don't. And I have to say, Trump kind of embodies that. You know, he's, he's not stupid. He's, you know, obviously a bright guy, but he just, you know, he doesn't give impression, frankly, but he knows who's talking about half the time. And this is, this is the reason for his constant, you know, vacillation, turgiversation, going back and forth. And, you know, the tariffs, for example, and that's going to

be a real disaster, by the way. Why? Supreme Court. Because, well, if the Supreme Court rules correctly that the president does not have any constitutional authority to levy tariffs, which he doesn't, you know, that under Article 1, Section 8, that's a congressional, along with all their taxes. And you know, more can the president levy tariffs, then he can impose taxes. That's supposed to be done by Congress. Tariffs are a form of tax. And the fact that, you know, Congress, you know, ceded that authority in part to the president, you know, laterally. They don't have the right to do that either. You know, the Constitution doesn't allow Congress to cede authority granted to it to the executive branch.

And, you know, so this is a real mess. And I don't know what Supreme Court's going to do. But if they correctly rule that these tariffs are technically unconstitutional, we're in a real mess because then, you know, they're going to be sued. They're going to have to refund, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs or whatever. Who knows? Yeah, I know Costco is it like the head of those lawsuits against that. They say, hey, we want our tariff money back. If that's the case, right?

I mean, that's a perfect example of Trump, you know, trying to do the right thing, but doing it in the wrong way. We should. He's absolutely correct. We should get rid of the income tax and go back to funding the government, such as it is, by terrorist. That's the way it used to be done. And he is correct in that. But, you know, basically saying, and I'm just going to do it, you know, unilaterally without the state of Congress is fraught with risk. And, you know, a lot of what he's doing is, you know, he kind of, I mean, I believe he's sincere and wanting to put America first in all.

all these things, but there's, you know, in a right way and a wrong way to do this. And, you know, he and a lot of the people around him are not as well informed as someone like Thomas Matthew and how the, you know, constitutional government is supposed to work, how the checks and balances are supposed to figure into this. And, and so, you know, we run the very real risk of just, you know, hopelessly discrediting forever and ever, you know, conservatism. I'm hoping that, you know, if President Trump were able to do tariffs and get a tariff regime going through Congress, then it's not going to be taken out by the next president. If the next president's not a Republican, right? That's kind of the way I'm looking at that. I'm hoping so. Right. And, you know, hopefully at some point, you know, the venal souls in Congress on both sides of the aisle will wake up to the fact that, you know, they're making lots of money with tariffs.

And heaven knows they like that. So, you know, I don't know how this is all going to shake out. But I think it's fraught with danger right now because it is being done kind of in the wrong way. And so, you know, another thing to be careful about, that recent presidents have not, you know, at least for the last 50, 60 years, is war powers. And, you know, Congress passed the War Powers Act back in the 70s. And, you know, that's dubious as well. Not every military action needs to be under the Aegis of declared war. I think that's pretty clear. But it's also clear that the founders didn't intend for the president to be able to wage war at whim.

And it is also clear that that is the goal in Venezuela, I would dare say. That sure it does seem to be the look, isn't it? Yeah, that's a fraught question because, you know, Venezuela, I mean, I do believe in the Monroe Doctrine in its original form. In fact, we're going to soon have an article on the Monroe Doctrine by yours truly in the magazine. It's not a topic that covered a lot. And, you know, it basically enjoins a measure of prudence in foreign policy. You know, obviously, you know, the default possible. as Washington and others made clear, is that we don't get involved in foreign entanglements.

We don't go out with their waging aggressive war. You know, war should be, you know, primarily defensive and all that. But there are exceptions. And so, you know, Venezuela is an interesting, is a knotty problem. And I think it's, I think where he's going, I think where he's going wrong on this, by the line, speaking with Steve Bonta, publisher of the new American, I think where the president may be slipping up in Venezuela is that. Ostensibly, this is all about the drugs, because the drugs are poisoning the people.

Well, he just pardoned another Latin American dictator who was a drug dealer with cocaine. Tons of it. Tons of cocaine. Yeah, who was that again? The former Honduran president. Yeah, the Honduran president. Right. And so you pardon one dictator pushing the other drugs, but there's another one you don't like because of other geopolitical tensions, I think, you know, which is going on.

It kind of puts the lie to this is about the drugs. That's all I'm getting at here, Steve. Is that fair? You know, the wonder? Yeah, it's fair. Although I also say that if you're looking for moral clarity and foreign policy, even as far back at the founding era, you'll be hard-pressed to find it. Even back then, you know, the allegiances that we had, you know, one minute we were, we were bosom buddies with the French, and then the next minute we were in the quasi-war with the French. True. Oh, because they had a change of government.

Yeah. Suddenly they were the bad guys. And, you know, so this is not a new thing, and it's difficult to sort out. But certainly, I mean, you know, you look at our involvement in the Middle East, and that's brought us nothing but trouble with very diminishing results. So that's, you know, whatever regardless of what one thinks of the Israel-Palestine issue, and they're, I think, honest people on all sides of that issue, I think the one clear takeaway is we shouldn't be involved. You know, we shouldn't be, you know, committed and having troops over there and all this type of thing as we have been for decades. So, you know, and Trump is... Well, he ran on that, too.

Sometimes he sounds good. Yeah, somebody sounds good, but then, you know, in practice, once he gets into office, as they say, no matter who you vote for, on the right, you always end up with Dick Cheney. Well, others would say John McCain. So I hope it is not where we're going. Well, what I'm wondering about Steve here is that one thing which struck me is interesting is how captured by the tech bros do you believe Washington, D.C. is right? right now. When President Trump came out and he's talking about his executive order that says that

an executive order saying nothing, nobody except D.C. has anything to say about artificial intelligence, which is one of the most potentially interesting and potentially dangerous technologies that we've ever come across in our lifetime here. Is that limited government to say that states can't weigh in on that and we'll just stretch the commerce clause? over that? Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I'm not really well informed in that issue, but from what I can tell, I mean, first of all, AI is just

the latest in a long parade of, you know, innovative technology that can be used for both good or ill. The internet self was such and in their day, you know, atomic weapons and firearms per se on and on and on, you know, modern information, television,

and all the rest of this, you know, things that have been used to propagate good as well as evil. And I see AI is just kind of the latest of that. Obviously, I mean, I happen to have a PhD in linguistics. And so from my vantage point, I don't believe that AI really is comparable to human intelligence and that machine languages really the same as human language. It can masquerade very well, but at root, it's a different phenomenon.

So, you know, I mean, it turns out that a large part of AI, for example, people notice how these AI engines seem to be very, very politicized. Well, that's basically because what they're doing in large measure is, you know, you ask them a question about, say, Donald Trump, and they go straight to Wikipedia. That's their source. And so that, you know, in many cases, AI is nothing more than a really glorified, ultra-sophisticated search engine that goes to certain websites and, you know, gathers the information and, you know, and packages it and delivers it to you. And so I, you know, some of this mystique around AI, this idea, you know, of machines becoming intelligent, you know, Terminator style, the Judgment Day and all the singularity and all this stuff, I think that these are folk tales.

I don't think it will, it will ever transpire. I do find it interesting, though, that I know that we're told, though, that states should not weigh in on this at all, and yet I always thought of us as these United States and even as nutty and crazy as Oregon State is, and believe me, you know it is, that sort of thing. it does concern what i've heard what's that now part of the state is yeah yeah part of very thing you know the part that wants to succeed and join idaho i mean that's it yeah but you know what i'm getting at here and it it looks like everything that's coming out of washington dc is trying to make state government irrelevant in one form or another and that kind of concerns me

and i don't know if that's anything you guys think about over at the new america or not oh well absolutely and again this is another issue that that we you know that we see with Trump, that, you know, in many regards is no different from many of his executive predecessors, that they don't, you know, again, as a result of not really understanding the Constitution and how our system is supposed to work, they don't appreciate the autonomy of the states and want to run rush out over them. And certainly this AI, you know, UK's is just one of many examples of this kind of thing, saying, you know, this is the purview of the federal government, period, and the states have no say. But we can, you know, we could deduce many other examples.

We have the war on drugs is another good example, some of the things that, you know, and it just goes on and on and on. I mean, we have, you know, obviously, arguably, this goes all the way back to the Civil War and the user patients of Lincoln during the Civil War. But effectively from the Civil War onward, we no longer have, you know, we've inverted the, you know, the power structure, authority. Yeah, the pyramid, yeah. In the actual, you know, we haven't really had federalism in the way the Constitution contemplates it since the Civil War. and it's just been a gradual process of accretion of more and more and more of power, as we like to say, at the top. And the fact that, you know, if you were to ask the average American, who's the most powerful man in the world, they would say, well, the president of the United States, and that alone tells you what you need to know. The fact that most people believe that now has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But that was a far cry from what the founders intended, you know, much less the federal government being the most powerful entity in the face of the earth. You know, it was, it was, it was, the whole term federal comes from the Latin word for compact or covenant. And the covenant alluded to was a covenant among the states who were viewed as being, you know, supreme in some sense. I mean, obviously it was stronger than the confederation that existed before that. But it certainly was not a top-down form of government as you see in like the Unitary Republics of Europe, like in France, for example. Yeah. I love, though, how people will say, well, the Civil War, Steve, ended up a settling the fact that your federal government is supreme. It's like, well, not constitutionally, all they settled was the fact that if you try to leave

will kill you. I think that's really what... Well, by settled, they mean basically imposed by force. Right. And so now, of course, we feel that everything needs to be imposed by force, that the empire of reason, as Henry Steele-Comminger, once styled the early United States, no longer exists. Reason doesn't have a role anymore. It's all about who is the most fore full. And so when you hear, you know, a President Biden saying, you know, I just, I'd like to see these people rise up against the federal government. After all, we have S-16 and stuff like that.

Right. That basically suggests that the mentality all across the country is, you know, the important issues are just going to get decided by, you know, decided by force. Yeah, by ultimately, you'll just do it because we'll kill you otherwise. That's it. Right. And obviously, you know, our country came into existence, ultimately, as a result of a of a contest of force that we won by the grace of God, you know. And so then after that, we had the luxury saying, okay, now we're going to have a republic of laws and it's going to be based on reason, you know. Well, until you disagree with us, and then we'll say you either do it or we kill you. Okay. Right. Yeah. And I mean, that state of affairs lasted for a few decades

until the civil war arose, the war between the states. And Lincoln said in the fact, they're going to settle this by force. And that's what happened. And from that day to this, you know, it's been this unequal contest. That's what I appreciate about the John Birch Society and the New American, the New American.com, is the website for your news and opinion and everything else. I think you guys do a great job there. You really do. And now do you...

Well, thank you. We try our best. Yeah. Now, do you still have a paper magazine that you put out over time? Or how does that work for you now these days? Oh, absolutely, yeah, although it's now a monthly. It's a thicker magazine, but it goes out once a month, so 12 times a year. and you can subscribe to that if your preference is to have something

tangible that you can store away for posterity or you can subscribe to the online version. And there's a website also which has lots of other news stories that aren't behind a paywall and all that kind of thing. You can subscribe. If you're a digital age person, you can subscribe to the magazine, the monthly magazine purely as a digital entity.

And in addition to that, we have now a weekly kind of behind the scenes news report called The Insider Report that goes out every Saturdays. And that's a free add-on to anyone who subscribes to the magazine. Because the New American is not really a news magazine per se. We don't always cover all the latest stories in a timely fashion. Well, what I like about it, though, is that you seem to be taking a little time to analyze and give some good thought process working through the stories rather than, oh, here's the latest hot take from, let's say, Breitbart or something like. You

You know what I'm getting at, so much of the journalism world is hot takeitis kind of thing. Fair enough. I think that's what's going on. Yeah, well, I mean, our kind of informal slogan these days is that we regard ourselves as the red pill publication of record. And so, you know, to be that, we need to do our homework and not just jump on every new story. But, you know, the insider report weekly does kind of try to keep up with, you know, with news stories that we think or seen, you know, the latest developed in Ukraine and whatever. But obviously from our perspective, how they affect us, how they're framed in constitutional terms and all of that. In addition to a lot of other stories that frankly aren't on most people's radar screens.

Like, for example, we recently had a team down in Berlin, Brazil, at the COP 30 climate conference. Oh, but that was fun. Yeah, what happened with the COP 30 group? That's going to be interesting. Well, it was interesting. They were actually, they witnessed the fire that broke out on ground. So we got some nice coverage of that. No one actually got hurt, but it was pretty interesting.

And, but we try to have people there every year. And, you know, the media kind of give that event a pass. They usually mention every year, but it's not something that, you know, it doesn't bleed so it doesn't lead in most, you know, most newsrooms. But it's extremely important. I mean, I think now people are realizing just how consequential the radical climate agenda has become. Do you think the climate cult is collapsing or just kind of holding back and wishing to rebuild

and come out a different way. How would you see that? The latter. And in fact, I mean, as much of that was said in Belem, I mean, Alex Newman, our reporter was there, got numerous people saying, in effect, you know, it's actually good that the Trump administration's boycotting this event because we're just going to go ahead and keep passing agreements that are more and more stringent. And the moment we get a more pliant administration back in power in Washington, we'll be back. You know, just like the first time, you know, when when Biden got into the White House, he immediately nullified. He got us back into the Paris Climate Accord and started imposing all the CO2 and bandated

restrictions on American business and all this type of thing. And they're assuming that that will happen again. Well, this is exactly why President Trump needs to be working with Congress getting legislation killing this stuff rather than executive orders, which can then be thrown out by the next person. That's all. Yeah, and unfortunately, his first instinct is not not to do that because, you know, he's, you You know, his big problem because of, you know, because of his ego, frankly, is that he, you know, he never forgives or forgets in a fronds.

And he makes enemies of people that he ought to be making friends with, you know. And then as we've seen recently with his little tete-a-tete with mom, Donnie, he makes friends of people who ought to be his enemies. So very peculiar. And I think that that's the reason, you know, the real reason that led up to the 2020 debacle, electoral debacle, is that, you know, when COVID arose, a lot of people in Washington, you know, who would, you know, Republicans quietly said, you know, let him deal with this, you know, because he's been such a jerk, you know, we're just going to let him fry. And that's kind of what happened. They cut him loose and he ended up, well, we saw the result. And so, you know, I'm kind of seeing history repeat itself now. He's turning on Massey and turning on, you know, Rand Paul and turning on Marjorie Taylor Green, turning on who was the latest. I'm going to be interviewing what was Peter Schiff, you know, the economist who predicted the 2000. made collapse. You know, he just, he can't, he, he seems incapable of saying, well, you know, that's their opinion, but I disagree with that. He has to produce and insult and slander people, you know, in the case of Massey, for example, you know, making fun of the fact that

he recently got remarried and resorting to base innuendo. And it's just, okay, now, now how many times has he been married, President Trump? Exactly, exactly. And so you kind of look at that and you say, you know, people in Washington are flesh and blood, they're humans too. And they're only going to be able to take so much of this before they say, you know, I kind of tired of this guy. Yeah, I get it. He got elected president. He's done some good things. My goodness, you know. Well, there's still time to moderate that. There's still because, you know, and that's just it. The reason it's so serious when we talk about these things, it's not the bash Trump. It's not that at all. It's just that this is going to play in the 2026 midterms. And this is serious as a heart

attack here, Steve. It really is. Oh, absolutely. No, I mean, you don't want Hakeem Jeffries in charge of the House, but that's exactly what we're going to get if the trend lines continue. And then two years from that, you know, we're going to have President Newsom or something like that. If you enjoyed the Biden administration, you're really going to enjoy the Newsom-Jeffrey's era. Don't get me started about that one. But, Steve, I think you guys do a great job at the new American. The New American.com. And, of course, you become a John Birch Society member. I think I've got to re-up that thing. And it's the newamerican.com. The new American.com.

And anything else we should know before we take off, Steve? No, that's fine. Thank you so much for your reception. It's been a wonderful show. Yeah, appreciate the talk. I really do. Just kind of getting all over. We like the noodle sometimes, especially on Friday. This is KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG grants passes where you are. Are you turning 65 and entering Medicare this year?