Money

Kid Rock Is Running For Senate – And Maybe You Should Run For Public Office Too

Would Kid Rock make a good U.S. senator?  When asked if a website promoting his potential run was real, he responded by tweeting that the answer is “an absolute YES”.  Of course no official announcement has been made yet, but Kid Rock says one may be coming very soon.  Many Republicans have been urging him to run against incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow, and it looks like this may actually happen.  Thanks to Donald Trump’s election victory last November, a lot of celebrities are starting to realize that they might be able to be successful in politics too.  Even now, there are rumors that Mark Zuckerberg, The Rock, Katy Perry and Oprah Winfrey may all be considering running for president in 2020, and it would be a shock if we didn’t see at least a few “unconventional candidates” shoot for the White House next time around.

Considering the clown show that the Senate has already become, it is hard to imagine things getting much worse.  If you want to see the website that has been set up for Kid Rock’s campaign, you can find it right here.  Apparently his primary slogan is “Are You Scared?”

Some may dismiss this as a publicity stunt, but apparently Kid Rock is quite serious about running…

Famed rocker and admitted Republican Robert Ritchie — aka “Kid Rock” — tweeted Wednesday that he has been asked repeatedly about whether he is going to run for office, specifically for the U.S. Senate. His response? “Absolute YES.”

Ritchie has been vocally supportive of Republican politicians in the past, including President Donald Trump, whom he endorsed during the 2016 presidential elections. Ritchie recently made headlines when he visited the White House with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and fellow rocker Ted Nugent. The photos that came out of the visit prompted nasty comments from many on the left.

When you go to his website, you will notice that nothing is said about the issues.  This is so typical of what you will find on many campaign websites these days, and that is why I have tried to be completely different.  Instead of playing “hide and seek” with the issues, candidates should come out and tell people exactly where they stand so that voters can make informed decisions.

So where does Kid Rock stand?  Well, apparently he is not really that conservative.  The following comes from Fox News…

Rock, an outspoken conservative, endorsed Mitt Romney for president during his 2012 campaign. He told The Guardian in 2015 that he’s a Republican on certain issues, but leans toward the middle on others.

“I am definitely a Republican on fiscal issues and the military, but I lean to the middle on social issues. I am no fan of abortion, but it’s not up to a man to tell a woman what to do. As an ordained minister I don’t look forward to marrying gay people, but I’m not opposed to it,” Rock said.

Obviously this is not the kind of candidate that a lot of us are going to be able to get behind.

In fact, I have unequivocally stated that I will never support any Republican candidate that does not pledge to vote against any bill that contains even a single penny of funding for Planned Parenthood.

But if good people don’t run, we are going to end up with whatever we get.

If you think that Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Al Franken, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Lindsey Graham and the rest of our Congress critters are doing a great job, then no action is required.

However, if you are sick and tired of the mess in Washington, I encourage you to join us in trying to do something about it.

I am trying to do my part by running for Congress here in Idaho.  I am just an ordinary person that has never run for public office before, but at least I am putting myself out there.

And maybe you should consider running for something in 2018 too.

One of the big things that I am trying to do is to inspire good people to run for public office all over the nation.  Because getting one person elected is only going to have a very small impact, but if hundreds of good people start winning elections all over the country that is really going to start changing things.

There is never any guarantee of success.  When our founders decided to rebel against the mighty British Empire, the rest of the world thought that they were crazy.  But instead of listening to the doubts, they put everything they had on the line, and as a result the United States of America exists today.

And whoever thought that Donald Trump would become the president of the United States?  When he first announced his candidacy, the mainstream media mocked him relentlessly.  They treated him like a huge joke, and hardly anyone believed that he actually had a prayer of winning the Republican nomination.

Jeb Bush had 100 million dollars and nearly the entire Republican establishment on his side, and Trump smashed him because Trump simply had a much better message.

So would you consider getting involved?  If you feel like you absolutely cannot run for something, then at least get involved in the campaign of someone that you do feel like you can back.

If we do nothing, there is no hope for America.  Because if this nation stays on the path that it is currently on, it will crash and burn.

What we need is a second American revolution.  Instead of a revolution with guns and bullets, what we need is a revolution of ideas, values and principles.

So many of us (including myself) have bitterly complained that we never have anyone good to vote for.  And we can continue to do so, or we can take matters into our own hands and start running for these offices ourselves.

A lot of people believe that America is too far gone and that we shouldn’t even try to fight the death of our country.

But I believe that it is never too late to shine a light in the darkness, and I plan to keep proclaiming the truth for as long as I possibly can.

And I hope that as many of you as possible will join with me, because otherwise the clowns will just keep on winning over and over again.

Environmental Nightmare! Dozens Of Highly Toxic Substances Have Been Found In Tap Water All Over America

After reading this article, you will never look at tap water the same way again.  Most Americans have generally assumed that the water coming out of our taps is perfectly safe, but the Flint water crisis and other similar incidents are starting to help people to understand that there are some very dangerous substances in our water.  In particular, I am talking about things like arsenic, lead, atrazine, perchlorate and a whole host of pharmaceutical drugs.  According to an absolutely stunning NRDC report, close to 77 million Americans received their water from systems “that violated federal protections” in 2015.  And even if you get your water from a system that meets federal standards, that still does not mean that it is safe.

Let’s start by talking about arsenic.  Earlier today I came across an article that talked about how levels of arsenic in the water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley “exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times”…

Reef-Sunset Unified School District Superintendent David East is worried about water. Not because of the drought—record rains this past winter ended five years of dry times. Rather, East, whose district encompasses the small towns of Avenal and Kettleman City on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side, is worried about the safety of the water that the 2,700 students in his school district are being given to drink.

That’s because arsenic levels in the drinking water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times. And arsenic is not the only threat to schoolchildren. High levels of pesticides, nitrate, bacteria, and naturally occurring uranium also contaminate groundwater in many rural parts of the state.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer says that arsenic is a “group 1 carcinogen”, and if you get too much of it in your system it can kill you.  Sadly, the EPA has estimated that 36 million Americans are drinking tap water that contains dangerous levels of arsenic.

In addition to arsenic, a very nasty pesticide known as “atrazine” is often found in tap water supplies.  The following information about atrazine comes from the NRDC…

This endocrine-disrupting chemical is one of the most commonly detected pesticides in U.S. waters. NRDC studies have found its contamination is most common in drinking water across the Midwest and the southern United States.

Perchlorate is another very dangerous substance that is commonly found in our drinking water.  According to the NRDC, perchlorate has been discovered in water supplies “in at least 26 states”…

This widespread toxic chemical, used in rocket fuel, explosives, and road flares, can interfere with thyroid hormone production. Perchlorate has been detected in the water in at least 26 states, yet there is no federal standard for its presence in drinking water.

Of course lead in the water has been getting a tremendous amount of attention because of what happened in Flint, Michigan.  The lawsuits that will come out of this case could take decades to resolve…

Flint’s water problems began in April 2014, when the city, in an attempt to save money, switched the town’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. In the switch, officials failed to add a $200-per-day anti-corrosion agent that would coat the city’s antiquated pipes. The omission would prove disastrous as lead from the pipes began to leach into the water that flowed out of the tap, endangering thousands of children. Officials asserted it was “safe to drink,” above the outcry of residents who suspected the brown, odorous water was contaminated.

The first outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease — a serious type of pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria — hit by summer. According to the water crisis interim investigation report released last week, Lyon and others knew about outbreaks for nearly a year before the public was notified and an emergency was declared. In all, a dozen people died from Legionnaires’ disease, though residents suspect there may be other victims who were never tested for the bacteria.

But Flint is far from alone.  In fact, this week there have been headlines about serious problems with lead in the water in Chicago.

Wherever there are old pipes, lead in the water is potentially a massive problem.

On top of everything else, our water systems are becoming increasingly polluted by pharmaceutical drugs.  An EPA study actually found traces of more than two dozen pharmaceutical drugs in more than half of the water systems that were tested around the country…

Conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, it is the largest study of water coming out of wastewater treatment plants.

It looked at samples from 50 large-size wastewater treatment plants nationwide and tested for 56 drugs including oxycodone, high-blood pressure medications, and over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol and ibuprofen. More than half the samples tested positive for at least 25 of the drugs monitored, the study said. High blood pressure medications appeared in the highest concentrations and most frequently.

“We were surprised to find that many drugs occurring across all the wastewater plants,” said Mitchell Kostich, the EPA research biologist who led the study. “We were also surprised to see so many drugs of a particular class—the high blood pressure medications—appear at those levels across the board.”

So those that drink tap water coming from these polluted systems are actually ingesting small amounts of dozens of different pharmaceutical drugs every single day.

No wonder so many of us are walking around like zombies.

So how did all of these drugs get into the water?  The following comes from WebMD…

According to the investigation, the drugs get into the drinking water supply through several routes: some people flush unneeded medication down toilets; other medicine gets into the water supply after people take medication, absorb some, and pass the rest out in urine or feces. Some pharmaceuticals remain even after wastewater treatments and cleansing by water treatment plants, the investigation showed.

Are you starting to understand what an environmental nightmare we are facing?

But in addition to everything that you just read, many water systems around the country actually add toxic substances to the water purposely.

Of course the most prominent example of this is fluoride.  We are told that fluoride “reduces cavities” even though this has never been scientifically proven.  But what we do know is that fluoride is a highly dangerous neurotoxin that can have a very serious impact on early childhood development…

Scientific investigations have revealed that fluoride is an endocrine-disrupting chemical,1 and a developmental neurotoxin that impacts short-term and working memory, and lowers IQ in children.2 It has been implicated as a contributing factor in the rising rates of both attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD)3,4 and thyroid disease.

And we also know that fluoride can cause a condition known as “fluorosis”, and the introduction of fluoride into our water systems has coincided with a dramatic rise in fluorosis all over the nation.  In fact, more than half the children in the entire country have now been affected…

According to research presented at the April 2017 National Oral Health Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 57 percent of youth between the ages of 6 and 19 years have dental fluorosis, a condition in which your tooth enamel becomes progressively discolored and mottled, according to data from 2011 to 2012.1

In addition, studies have shown that fluoride can also contribute to “cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and neurodegenerative disease.”

Because of such overwhelming scientific evidence, fluoride in the water has already been completely banned in many industrialized countries, and if I end up in Washington I will push for a complete national ban on fluoride in the water in the United States.

All of us should be able to agree that we need to do whatever we can to keep the water that we are drinking clean and safe.

But until we can get this done, I would encourage everyone to either filter their drinking water or to get it from a source that they know is pure.

By drinking such polluted water, we are literally poisoning ourselves and our children, and we have no choice but to get this problem fixed.

Dying Middle Class: The Number Of Americans That Can’t Afford Their Own Homes Has More Than Doubled

Have you lost your spot in the middle class yet?  For years I have been documenting all of the numbers that show that the middle class in America has been steadily shrinking, and we just got another one.  According to a report that was produced by researchers at Harvard University, the number of Americans that spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing has more than doubled.  In 2001, nearly 16 million Americans couldn’t afford the homes that they were currently living in, but by 2015 that figure had jumped to 38 million.

When I write about “economic collapse”, I am writing about a process that has been unfolding for decades in this country.  Back in the early 1970s, well over 60 percent of all Americans were considered to be “middle class”, but now that number has fallen below 50 percent.  Never before in our history has the middle class been a minority of the population, but that is where we are at now, and the middle class continues to get even smaller with each passing day.

So these new numbers saddened me, but they didn’t exactly surprise me.  The following comes from NBC News…

Over 38 million American households can’t afford their housing, an increase of 146 percent in the past 16 years, according to a recent Harvard housing report.

Under federal guidelines, households that spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs are considered “cost burdened” and will have difficulty affording basic necessities like food, clothing, transportation and medical care.

But the number of Americans struggling with their housing costs has risen from almost 16 million in 2001 to 38 million in 2015, according to the Census data crunched in the report. That’s more than double.

Sometimes people try to convince me that the economy is doing “well”, but when I ask them how they are doing personally the news is almost always dreary.  I know so many people that are working for close to minimum wage that used to be solidly in the middle class.

One of the biggest reasons why the middle class is shrinking is because paychecks are staying about the same while the cost of living continues to rise steadily.  Of course one of the biggest factors in the rise of the cost of living is health insurance.

There are many people out there that have seen their health insurance premiums double since Obamacare went into effect.  And one health insurance company actually tried to do this to me and my family too, and so at that time I immediately switched carriers.

But even though virtually every single Republican in Congress campaigned on repealing Obamacare, it doesn’t look like it is going to happen.  In fact, on Sunday Senator John McCain told Face the Nation that the effort to repeal Obamacare is “probably going to be dead”…

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare is “probably going to be dead.”

“My view is that it’s probably going to be dead,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Support for the bill has been eroding over the July 4th recess, and McCain said he believes Republicans should work with Democrats to craft health care legislation.

As a voter, this greatly frustrates me.  The Republicans got a bill to repeal Obamacare through the House and through the Senate and on to Barack Obama’s desk in early 2016.  So why can’t they get that exact same bill to Donald Trump’s desk now?

We worked really hard to give the Republicans control of the White House, the Senate and the House, and now they are stabbing us in the back once again.

This is just one example of why I intend to be a “wrecking ball” if I get the chance to go to Washington.

We have got to lower health care costs on the middle class.  There is no other option.  Millions of families all over the country are being absolutely suffocated by rising health insurance premiums.  Sometimes I get so frustrated with these RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) that I want to scream.

So many families are living on the edge right now.  Various surveys have discovered that somewhere around two-thirds of the entire nation is living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time, and one study found that 69 percent of all Americans do not have an adequate emergency fund.

But when you are living on the edge, there is always a danger that you could go over.

Every month, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty.  Even during this so-called “economic recovery”, we are seeing alarming spikes in poverty all over the nation.  For example, the number of homeless people living on the street in New York City has increased by 39 percent over the past year…

Street homelessness in New York increased by 39 percent in 2017, according to the latest annual survey by the Department of Homeless Services.

There were 3,892 homeless and unsheltered people on the night of February 6, 2017, up from 2,794 people at the same time last year, said the report, which is conducted on one night of the year. This is the highest increase since 2005, when Michael Bloomberg was mayor.

And bankruptcies continue to rise as well.  Consumer bankruptcies were up once again last month, and commercial bankruptcies continue their very disturbing climb…

Commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies – an effort to restructure the business, rather than liquidating it – jumped 16% year-over-year in June to 581 filings across the US. Total commercial bankruptcies of all types, by large corporations to tiny sole proprietorships, rose 2% year-over-year to 3,385 filings, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. This was up 39% from June 2015 and up 18% from June 2014.

Since the end of the last recession, the middle class has continued to get smaller and smaller in this country, and now it appears that another economic downturn is upon us.

Are we just going to stand aside and do nothing as the middle class in America dies?

The Democrats don’t seem to care.

The Republicans don’t seem to care.

If we continue to do the same things that we have been doing, we are going to continue to get the same results.

In other words, unless we start doing things differently the middle class in America is going to continue to be systematically eviscerated.

Wake up America.  The middle class is dying and if we want to save it we have to take action now.

14 Facts That Prove That America’s Absolutely Pathetic System Of Public Education Deserves An ‘F’ Grade

One thing that almost everyone can agree upon is that our system of public education is broken.  We spend far more money on public education than anyone else in the world, and yet the results are depressing to say the least.  Considering how much we are putting into education, we should be producing the best students on the entire planet, but it just isn’t happening.  Personally, I attended public schools from kindergarten all the way up through law school, and the quality of education that I received was extremely poor.  Even on the collegiate level, most of the courses were so “dumbed down” that even the family dog could have passed them.  And of course millions of other people all over the country would say the same sorts of things about their own educations.  Many refer to what is happening to our society as “the dumbing down of America”, and if we don’t get things fixed the United States is on course to become a second class nation.

If you believe that I am exaggerating, I would like you to consider the following numbers.  The following are 14 facts that prove that America’s absolutely pathetic system of education deserves an “F” grade…

#1 Somewhere around 50 million students attend public schools in America today.

#2 Education is the most expensive item in 41 different state budgets.

#3 The latest PISA tests show that U.S. students are below average compared to the rest of the industrialized world…

One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

#4 A report from the Educational Testing Service found that American Millennials are way behind Millennials in most other industrialized nations…

Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.

#5 According to one very disturbing study, fewer than half of all high school graduates “are able to proficiently read or complete math problems”.

#6 According to U.S. News & World Report, “inflation-adjusted spending per student in American public schools has increased by 663 percent.”

#7 In 2015, the percentage of students in our public schools coming from low income homes crossed the 50 percent mark.  That was the first time that had happened in at least 50 years.

#8 One study found that a whopping 76 percent of all high school graduates “were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses.”

#9 The following are five numbers which show how far the quality of college education has fallen in the United States…

-“After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.”

-“Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago.”

-“35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone.”

-“50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages.”

-“32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”

#10 Just 36 percent of all full-time college students receive a bachelor’s degree within four years, and just 77 percent of all full-time college students have earned a bachelor’s degree by the end of six years.

#11 One survey found that nearly 10 percent of our college graduates believe that Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court…

#12 Another survey found that 29 percent of all U.S. adults cannot name the Vice-President.

#13 And yet another survey found that only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students knew that the Civil War was fought some time between the years of 1850 and 1900.

#14 Perhaps worst of all, 75 percent of our young adults cannot find Israel on a map of the Middle East.

This is what happens when we put federal bureaucrats in charge of education.

All over the country there are calls to abolish the Department of Education.  For example, the following was published on CNBC…

The DOE currently employs 5,000 government workers and has an annual budget of $73 billion, yet according to the CATO Institute, it has not affected student outcomes in any demonstrable way over its 40-year history . It has successfully created a system that requires educators to teach reams of “politically-correct” content and focus on scoring well on standardized tests. It has created an atmosphere of testing in our schools, putting intense pressure on teachers and students to “ace the test” rather than mastering the material. This promotes a culture of teaching to the test and score tampering.

Unfortunately, abolishing the Department of Education is not going to be easy, because there is a tremendous amount of money at stake.  And whenever there is a tremendous amount of money at stake, there are going to be very powerful interests that are determined to keep things just the way that they are…

The major stakeholders in K-12 public education are at an impasse. Teachers’ Unions are primarily concerned with self-preservation, maintaining extravagant perks for union administrators and exerting disproportionate political influence. A handful of publishing houses sell us $8 billion worth of warmed- over text books every year. Testing companies collectively spent tens of millions lobbying in states and on Capitol Hill from 2009 to 2014. These politically powerful, entrenched special interests are heavily invested in maintaining the failing status quo.

But even though there is going to be a lot of resistance, I am going to try to abolish the Department of Education anyway.  I believe that full control over education should be returned to the state and local levels, but that is just the beginning.

Ultimately, we need to rebuild our system of education from the ground up.  Instead of politically-correct indoctrination centers that endlessly pump progressive propaganda into impressionable young minds, we need to transform our public schools into institutions that focus on the essentials.  We need a renewed emphasis on reading, writing, math and the skills that will enable our young people to function successfully once they get out into the real world.

At one time America’s system of education was the best in the world, and we can get there again.  But of course the left is going to fight against the changes that need to be made every step of the way.

This Is Our Second American Revolution

Nearly six years ago, my wife Meranda and I moved up to north Idaho in search of a better life.  We believed that it would be a place where we could work hard, raise a family and pursue our dreams without constantly having to deal with the long arm of big government interfering in our lives.  But of course big government is everywhere, and we have come to realize that if we do not stand up and fight for our way of life, someday it will be gone completely.

Today, the liberal elite dominate almost every aspect of our society.  Their enormous media corporations control more than 90 percent of the news and entertainment that we watch on our televisions, their dominance of the legal system has resulted in the legalization of abortion and gay marriage, and their relentless grip on public education means that an entire generation of young Americans is being indoctrinated in their ways.

And of course for decades the liberal elite have been accustomed to pulling the strings in both major political parties.  Many had believed that it would be impossible for us to ever take our government back, but the election of Donald Trump showed us that anything is possible if we will just work together.

Today, our Republic is hanging by a thread.  If our founders had not stood up and fought for their way of life, the United States of America would not exist today, and if we do not stand up and fight for our way of life now, there will be nothing to pass on to our children and our grandchildren.

There are many that believe that America is too far gone, and so they are content to sit back and wait for everything to fall apart.

But that is not my choice.

I choose to fight for America.

So today, on the 241st anniversary of our Independence Day, I am publicly announcing that I am running for Congress in Idaho’s first congressional district.

I have been called an “anti-politician” because I am not just another career politician looking for a job.  If I am sent to Washington, I plan to turn the tables over, dismantle the big government institutions that the liberal elite have constructed, and fight to restore our Republic.

If you are not familiar with me or my work, the following are 16 ways that I will be different from a typical Republican politician…

#1 Most Republican politicians tend to protect one another, but one of my campaign slogans is “Every RINO Needs To Go“.  We will never turn this nation in a positive direction until we clean up our own party first.  At this point Congress has an approval rating of about 16 percent, and it is time to flush the toilet.

#2 For decades Republicans have been using the Pro-Life label to get our votes and then betraying our values once they get into office.  If I am elected, I will use the full power of my office to go to war with Planned Parenthood.  I will NEVER vote for any bill, no matter what it says, if it includes even a single penny of funding for Planned Parenthood, and I will actively work to defeat any Republican politician that will not make the same pledge.  But I won’t be satisfied once Planned Parenthood is defunded.  My goal is to completely destroy Planned Parenthood as an organization, and I will greatly rejoice when the final Planned Parenthood clinic in America is finally shut down for good.

#3 I believe that every American citizen has a constitutional right to carry a gun, and I believe that government agencies that have been used to relentlessly harass gun owners such as the BATFE need to be shut down permanently.

#4 Many Republican politicians want to lower tax rates, but like Ron Paul I want to abolish the income tax and the IRS completely.  We didn’t have an income tax from 1872 to 1913, and that was the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

#5 Another thing that I have in common with Ron Paul is that I want to abolish the Federal Reserve.  Since the Fed was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by about 98 percent and the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.  The Fed is at the very heart of our debt-based financial system, and abolishing it is one of the keys to a bright economic future for America.

#6 I want to get the federal government off of the backs of our farmers, our loggers, our miners and our ranchers.  And so that is just one of many reasons why I want to abolish the EPA.

#7 I believe that we need to get the federal government out of the education business. I would abolish Common Core and the U.S. Department of Education, and I would return full control over education to the state level.

#8 I believe that it is time to “shut down Big Brother”.  The NSA has been conducting unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens for decades, and that needs to stop now.

#9 In his budget, President Trump proposed shutting down more than 60 different government programs and agencies.  I say that is a good start.  Instead of asking which government agencies we should close, we should be asking which government agencies should remain open.

#10 I am for a 100% repeal of Obamacare, and I believe that it is a disgrace to our party that half a year has passed and one of the worst pieces of legislation in the history of our nation still has not been repealed.

#11 I want to help Donald Trump build a wall on the southern border, and I believe that the Republicans in Congress that are trying to block the wall need to be held accountable by the voters.

#12 If I am elected, I will push for legislation that would give local communities all over America the option to say no to refugees.  The federal government should not have the right to force us to take Islamic refugees against our will, and the sexual assault of that precious little five-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho by three Islamic refugees is just the tip of the iceberg of what will happen if changes are not made.

#13 I don’t care if it’s not politically correct – I will never be afraid to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism”.  The number of terror attacks keeps rising with each passing year, and those that don’t realize that we are in a war are in a complete state of denial.

#14 When Barack Obama entered the White House the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.  When we gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the national debt was just over 14 trillion dollars.  Now it is close to 20 trillion dollars and we continue to steal more than 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.  In a just society, those responsible for getting us into so much debt would be put in prison.

#15 Today, the federal government controls more than 60 percent of all Idaho land.  If I am elected, this is what my message to the feds will be: “Hand over the keys and get out of Idaho”.

#16 Unlike most politicians, I am not ashamed to say that I am a Christian. This nation was founded by Bible-believing Christians, and the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were birthed out of the values and principles found in the Word of God. If we truly want to make America great again, we need to return to those values and principles.

Every generation of Americans has had to fight for liberty and freedom, and now it is our turn.

This is our time.

This is our second American revolution.

This revolution won’t be fought with guns and bullets.  Rather, it will be a revolution of ideas, values and principles.

We can take our country back, but we have to be willing to work together.  I am asking you to join us, because we are in a battle for the soul of our nation, and it is a battle that we cannot afford to lose.

If you would like to learn more about what I am trying to do, you can visit my official campaign website or my official campaign Facebook page.  Ultimately this is not about winning one election or getting a certain candidate into office.  Rather, this is about a movement to save our country.  My hope is that what I am doing will inspire many others to do the same thing.

2018 may be the most critical mid-term elections in our history, and we need good men and women to run for office all over the nation.  Individually, we can only accomplish so much, but together we can make a world of difference.

Just Like Our Founders 241 Years Ago, We Need To Unashamedly Declare That Our Rights Come To Us From God

Why do we celebrate the 4th of July?  If you were to ask average people on the street this question, many of them would mumble something about “independence”, but the truth is that most Americans would not be able to tell you clearly why it is a holiday.  According to Wikipedia, the 4th of July “is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago on July 4, 1776.”  Unfortunately, most Americans have never read the Declaration of Independence, and if a similar document was authored today it would be banned from our public schools because it mentions God four times.  We have allowed the liberal elite to gain such a stranglehold over our society that even our most cherished founding principles have become politically incorrect.

If you ask most Americans to quote from the Declaration of Independence, almost everyone will give you something from this sentence…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is one of the most famous sentences in the English language, but do most of us still proudly believe this?

And if you happen to be someone that does not believe in God, then where do your rights come from?

If they come from men, then men can take them away.  But if they come from God, then nobody can take them away.  This is a point that President Trump brought up in a major speech that he just delivered to a group of veterans…

“Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago, America always affirmed that liberty comes from our creator. Our rights are given to us by God, and no earthly force can ever take those rights away. That is why my administration is transferring power out of Washington and returning that power back where it belongs to the people,” Trump said.

“Our religious liberty is enshrined in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. The American founders invoked our creator four times in the Declaration of Independence,” said Trump. “Benjamin Franklin reminded his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention to begin by bowing their heads in prayer. Inscribed on our currency are the words: ‘In God We Trust.’”

It is so refreshing to hear a president talk like this, because these days most of our politicians are so careful to be politically-correct.  And I am not just talking about Democrats.  Many politicians that are supposedly “conservative” seem quite uncomfortable when matters of faith come up, and if you can get them to talk about God they usually want to switch topics as quickly as possible.

But in the old days, Republicans and Democrats both acknowledged the importance of faith in our society.  The following comes from an excellent article by Dr. Gary Scott Smith…

Dwight Eisenhower insisted that the Founding Fathers “wrote their religious faith into our founding documents, stamped their trust in God upon our coins and currency, [and] put it squarely at the base of our institutions.” They strove to obey God’s commandments, live in freedom, and create a prosperous country. “The knowledge that God is the source of all power,” Eisenhower maintained, gave birth to and sustained America. Human dignity depended on the God-given rights that were “eloquently stated” in the Declaration of Independence.

Faith in Almighty God, John F. Kennedy contended, “was a dominant power in the lives of our Founding Fathers.” He urged Americans to “dwell upon the deep religious convictions of those who formed our nation.”

Ronald Reagan repeatedly stressed the religious commitments of the Founding Fathers, especially their contention that the United States would flourish only if its people acted morally. The founders, he declared, “believed faith in God was the key to our being a good people and America’s becoming a great nation.” Reagan regularly recounted how the founders, especially Washington, had relied on God in leading the nation. The Declaration of Independence, Reagan claimed, expressed America’s recognition of God’s power and authority. He noted that Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all accentuated God’s providential guidance and the importance of prayer. The Founding Fathers ensured that Congress began each day with prayer, Reagan proclaimed, because they valued prayer so highly.

Of course in our day and time teens are actually being threatened with arrest for praying in school.

If we truly want to restore our Republic, we can’t throw out the principles and values that the Republic was founded upon.  The First Amendment guarantees that there will never be an official state church and that we will always get to worship God the way that we want, but there is absolutely nothing in there that says we must have a godless government.  On the contrary, our founders were more influenced by the Bible than any other book, and they quoted from it more than any other book.  Dr. Daniel L. Dreisbach is the author of “Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers“, and I have used this quote from him previously, but I wanted to use it again here because it fits my point perfectly…

The founders, as I document in my new book “Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers,” lived in a biblically literate society. Their many quotations from and allusions to both familiar and obscure biblical texts confirm that they knew the Bible from cover to cover. Biblical language and themes liberally seasoned their rhetoric. The phrases and intonations of the King James Bible, especially, influenced their written and spoken words. Its ideas shaped their habits of mind.

The Bible left its mark on their political culture. Legislative debates, pamphlets and political sermons of the age are replete with quotations from and allusions to the Bible. Following an extensive survey of American political literature from 1760 to 1805, political scientist Donald S. Lutz reported that the Bible was cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism. Approximately one-third of all citations in the literature he surveyed were to the Bible. The book of Deuteronomy alone was the most frequently cited work, followed by Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of the Laws.” In fact, Deuteronomy was referenced nearly twice as often as Locke’s writings, and the Apostle Paul was mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu.

The biggest reason why our federal government is such a mess today is because it has pushed God completely out of the picture.

So instead of defending life, our nation has murdered nearly 60 million children since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

Instead of defending liberty, the control freaks at the federal level are suffocating us with hundreds of thousands of laws, rules and regulations, and if you throw in the state and local levels, the number of laws, rules and regulations governing us is in the millions.

And instead of promoting the pursuit of happiness, all of us have to work several months each year just to pay the dozens of different taxes and fees that various levels of government impose on all of us.  But we don’t actually have to have such a system.  If we got rid of our debt-based financial system and went to a much smaller federal government, we could abolish the income tax, the IRS and the Federal Reserve.

Government is not the solution to our problems.

As Ronald Reagan once famously said, government is the problem.

If we work together, we can dismantle the monstrous federal bureaucracy that the liberal elite have spent decades constructing, and we can restore the Republic that our founders risked everything to establish.

It won’t be easy, but we can get there, and the first step is getting back to the principles and values that made America great in the first place.

I Need Your Help

I have never been very good at asking for help.  My father was an officer in the U.S. Navy, and he raised me to be very strong and very independent.  So for my entire life, I have been a “pull myself up by my own bootstraps” kind of guy.  From a very early age I came to think of asking others for help as a sign of weakness.  Of course today I know that is not true, but there is still part of me that hesitates to enlist the support of others even when I really, really need it.

But now I have been put into a position where I have no choice but to ask for help.  As many of you already know, I am running for Congress, and there is no way in the world that I could ever do that by myself.  So this is very humbling for me, because I know that if this is not a team effort that I am 100% assured of failing.

The good news is that a number of my readers have already stepped up to help, and I am so thankful for that.  And if you would like to financially support my campaign for Congress, you can do so right here.

Thankfully, I don’t have to raise enormous amounts of money to be successful.  In some areas of the country, candidates for the House of Representatives raise millions of dollars, but in this district candidates for Congress usually only raise a small fraction of that.

And there is going to be no incumbent in this district in 2018, because the individual that is currently holding this seat is running for governor instead.  So the race is wide open, and it doesn’t look like any of my potential opponents are going to raise a great deal of money.

So to win this race, I just need to raise enough money to be on the same playing field as the others.  Because we have already been sharing my message with groups of voters, and after hearing my message many voters that were undecided or that were already committed to another candidate are coming over to my side.

I am going to have the strongest message in this race, and I just need to get it in front of everyone in this district.

Once again, this is not actually going to take very much.  In fact, if every one of my readers were to donate 10 dollars today, I could be done funding my entire campaign by tomorrow.

Over the past seven years, I have published well over 2000 feature articles, and those of you that have been following my work for an extended period of time know my heart.  If you believe in me and what I am doing, then I am asking for your support.  I am asking those that want to see me in Congress to show that you are standing with me by donating at least 10 dollars to the campaign.  Perhaps later you will want to donate more, but right now we are just at the very beginning and we are trying to get things off the ground.  This is such a critical stage, and we have got to raise some funds in order to do the basic things that every campaign needs to do.

And of course 10 dollars is not a lot.  Many of you will spend more than that on coffee this week.  If you have been blessed by me and by my work all these years, would you consider being a blessing to me by helping in this way?

I want to take the same message that I have been proclaiming in my books, on my websites, and on radio and television all over America to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.  I wouldn’t be going there to “join the club” or to be just another spineless politician.  Rather, if I win this election I plan to turn over the tables in Washington D.C. and I plan to be a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness.

So many of us (including me) have complained that we never have anyone good to vote for, and so I am trying to do my part by putting myself way out on a limb.  It is kind of scary out here, but I have faith that those that enjoy my work all over the nation will rally behind me.

In every generation, Americans have had to sacrifice to defend liberty and freedom.  Thankfully we don’t have to do that will guns and bullets today, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t sacrifices to be made.

Over the next 10 months, I will be spending hundreds upon hundreds of hours on this campaign.  I believe that the most pivotal time in modern American history is ahead of us, and we are going to need leadership in Washington that is going to fight for our values.

If you would like to read more about where I stand on the issues, you can do so right here and right here.  But of course most of you all already know my heart.  I have put everything that I have into my articles for the past seven years, and those of you that have followed me for a long time already know that I am a fighter.

But if I try to fight this battle alone, I will lose.

The only way that I am going to win is if you help me.

Like I said, I am not accustomed to asking for help like this, so all that I can do is open up my heart and be completely honest.

I need your help.

If you would like to donate to the campaign, just follow this link.  You can donate by credit card, Paypal or by check if you prefer.  We are going to stretch every single dollar as far as it can possibly go, and we are going to fight for every possible vote.

If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to reach out to me at Michael@MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

Our founders had faith that they could stand up to the mighty British empire, and because of that faith the United States of America exists today.

Now it is our turn to believe that we can make a difference.  If you would be willing to let me know that you stand with me by donating at least 10 dollars to the campaign, that would mean the world to me.

It is during our times of greatest need that we find out who our real friends are, and I am looking for a few good friends to help me now.

Thank you for following my work on a regular basis, and for more information about how you can get involved in this campaign, please check out my official campaign websites…

Michael Snyder For Congress

Michael Snyder For Idaho

CNN Is Dead: Network Loses All Credibility As Producer Admits That The Entire Russia Narrative Is Fake News

Nobody else needs to dig a grave for CNN because they are doing it themselves.  There has been scandal after scandal at the network, and now one of their producers has been caught on undercover video admitting that CNN has been pushing fake news stories about a connection between Donald Trump and Russia in a desperate attempt to get ratings.  In other words, CNN’s entire Russia narrative has been a complete lie all along.  Unfortunately for CNN, they are going to discover that once your credibility is gone it is incredibly difficult to ever get it back.

On Tuesday, Project Veritas made headlines all over the world when it released undercover video of CNN Producer John Bonifield admitting that CNN’s Russia narrative is fake news.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you can view the entire video right here.  Now that this video has been made public, I don’t see how CNN is ever going to recover from this.  When one of your top producers admits that the story you have been pushing for months is basically a load of cow manure, it is impossible to maintain the pretense that you are a legitimate news organization any longer…

Project Veritas has released a video of CNN Producer John Bonifield who was caught on hidden-camera admitting that there is no proof to CNN’s Russia narrative.

“I mean, it’s mostly bullshit right now,” Bonifield says. “Like, we don’t have any giant proof.”

He confirms that the driving factor at CNN is ratings:

“It’s a business, people are like the media has an ethical phssssss… All the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business.”

And of course this comes on the heels of three reporters being forced out of CNN for publishing a false story that attempted to link a Russian investment fund with Trump…

Three CNN employees have handed in their resignations over a retracted story linking President Trump to Russia, the network announced Monday.

The article was removed from CNN.com on Friday after the network decided it could no longer stand by its reporting.

“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignation of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” a network spokesperson told TheWrap in a statement.

President Trump has taken a lot of heat for referring to CNN as “fake news”, but after the events of the past several days he has been completely vindicated.

And once news broke of three reporters being forced out of the network for a false story about Russia, he took a bit of a victory lap with this tweet…

Wow, CNN had to retract big story on “Russia,” with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!

This is such a shame, because I always liked CNN’s election coverage compared to the other networks.  John King always did such a great job breaking things down county by county, and Wolf Blitzer always made things seem so dramatic.

But now it is exceedingly difficult to see any sort of a future for the network after all of this.

And of course other major news outlets have been guilty of pushing fake news about Russia too.  The following comes from the Intercept…

Over and over, major U.S. media outlets have published claims about the Russia Threat that turned out to be completely false — always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between Moscow and the Trump circle. In virtually all cases, those stories involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact, only for it to be revealed that they were entirely false.

But with CNN it has always been on another level, and we now have a top insider on tape admitting that a connection between Trump and Russia is being pushed even though there isn’t any evidence.  In fact, Bonifield says that CNN CEO Jeff Zucker has been personally pushing this angle himself…

“Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with that, let’s get back to Russia.”

I can’t imagine that Zucker gets to keep his job now that this has been revealed.

It may not happen immediately, but look for him to be shown the door in the not too distant future.

All along, Trump has insisted that this whole thing with Russia has been a “witch hunt”, and that is what I have been saying too.  And it turns out that Bonifield feels the exact same way…

“I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the President is probably right to say, like, look you are witch hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof.”

If this doesn’t kill “the Russia story”, I don’t know what will.

This whole thing has been a massive charade from the very beginning, and the big news networks have been endlessly pushing it for ratings.

In their zeal to destroy Trump, they have “jumped the shark” and have destroyed their own credibility instead.

Once upon a time, most mainstream journalists at least attempted to pretend that they were being objective, but those days are long gone.

Today, it is absolutely imperative for all of us to understand that everyone has an agenda.  In other words, every single person that you see on television is trying to get a message across.  So instead of taking in news and entertainment passively, we need to have our filters up and we need to be thinking for ourselves.

Fortunately, episodes such as this one tend to awaken a lot of people, and more Americans than ever are sick and tired of the lies and misinformation that they are constantly being fed.

+ More