Rick Green: 0:12
Welcome to the intersection of... I just wanted you to finish it. You know, if you're a long time listener, you've got it memorized right the intersection of faith and culture. You got it. Listen. This is a great opportunity to take whatever's going on in the world and say, okay, what's the Bible say about it, what's history say about it and what does the Constitution say about it. And when we take that approach, we can actually be optimistic. We don't have to look at all the bad stuff going on in the culture and give up. We have to be like the ten spies that you know said oh, it's too hard, giant's too big. Fortified cities they depress the people. It's not how we are here at WallBuilders, man. We look at the difficult things that are going on. We say, yeah, there's giants in the land, yep, yep, fortified cities. No doubt the left dominates right now. They've taken over most of the major institutions in America. But you know what? God's given us the land, and we have the principles that work. We have the instruction manual that works. We're going to take that land back, and that's why I love Friday so much. I love getting into the good news. Alright, guys, my favorite day of the week is here Friday, and that's because I get to hear all this great news, this good news that is great to hear from you guys. Sometimes it's great news, sometimes it's just good news, but sometimes it's great news. So, David, I don't know what you got A good, great, just as long as it's not bad or ugly, because today's the day you give me that. Pick me up, you know.

David Barton: 1:21
It's good news and there's going to be a little PSA public services announcement here thrown in the middle of it. Alright, so good news. It's good to see what's been happening in Israel in recent days and over the recent week, with some of the ceasefire, that they're getting some hostages back who are actually alive. Now. It's not a good deal for Israel in the sense. Well, let me say it differently it's really good they're getting the hostages back, but what you're seeing is Israel's getting children and women and Hamas is getting hardened terrorists that have been in jail for murder and attempted murder and all the other things. So they're getting more fighters on their side and I know Israel hates giving up more fighters that they're going to have to fight against the face, because these guys that are releasing at the hostage swap are going to be guys that will end up fighting them.

Rick Green: 2:06
But it's really really good, and isn't it like three to one or something they're having to give up? Israel's having to give up two or three of the you know, palestinian, like you're saying literally criminals and people that have committed murder and all kinds of things. They got to give up two or three of those for every innocent person that they're getting back.

David Barton: 2:21
But if they're getting innocent people back and that's really good and we all rejoice in that and the initials has made a really clear look for every ten hostages you release, we'll give you another day on the ceasefire. We'll quit decimating you and destroying you for a day if you'll give hostages back. So this is ongoing. The story is certainly not over, but it's good to see a break. That's gone for several weeks with no break in the hostages negotiations. That's really good. And it's also really good that here we didn't do a real shout out. But a couple weeks ago you had a massive crowd Pro-Israel show up in Washington DC at that Washington DC rally. Several hundred thousand people was the estimate and that's really good. It didn't get the news that you're getting on the pro-Hamas kind of rallies on the campuses, but pro-Israel rally. And you had Democrats and Republicans. It was a problem for Democrats because their caucus is really split over there whether they're pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. But having the leadership out there unified on the mall in Washington DC for Israel was a really good thing. So that was good to see such a public display of unity for Israel at such a high level, with such a large number of people coming together strictly to support Israel driving, flying, getting DC however they could, and being there just to say Israel, we support you, is a really good deal. So a couple pieces of good news on Israel, a little PSA announcement. Tim, you can probably help me with this, but I saw this. I was unaware of it. But if you have an iPhone and you recently updated to the system 17 stuff they've got you just need to know that police are putting out warnings now that there is a feature there and that feature is Name Drop. That allows people to get close to your phone and take information out about your kids and phone numbers and stuff. So police are saying, hey, turn that feature off. Apple thought it was a really good feature. It's a really not a good feature for your children, for the security of your family and you. So just a PSA if you've got iPhone and you updated the system 17, just know you need to go in and turn off Name Drop.

Tim Barton: 4:22
Well, yeah, and that's a recommendation. You know you don't have to, but the idea is that and I'm presuming this was their intent from Apple was that you should be able to. If you have a friend, you can share contact information instantly without having to hit buttons, right, you just kind of bring your phones and touch your phones together. The problem is in the update to iOS 17,. It automatically turned that feature on, and so people that updated it don't know, if you're walking through a crowd, there can be someone with bad intentions and they come up and maybe they just kind of bump up against you. But if their phone happens to bump up against your phone and it's close enough in proximity, then it could share contact information, and that's where that, as you're mentioning, it could maybe even include information about your kids and in your home and details that you would not want a bad person to have. This information or some of the other contacts in your phone. And so that is where we've now seen several articles, different law enforcement individuals and agencies coming out and saying, hey, we recommend you turn this off. This is not a good deal. It would not surprise me if this gets much pushback, if Apple does some kind of new update. You know the 17.01, whatever it is and the update would turn this feature off unless you choose to turn it on. So it's not a problem that it's on your phone. It's a problem that people did not know was there. They didn't know what it did. But bad guys or at least people with bad intent maybe did know what it was and they've taken advantage of this and many people have had issues with kind of identity theft related things from this. So definitely not good if you are not aware of this. If you have an iPhone and you're on the 17 or your iOS and you definitely want to look into that, Maybe turn that off if that's not a feature you want to have on right now.

Rick Green: 6:21
Sorry guys. I was trying to find a feature on my phone to see if I needed to remove it. No, I didn't upgrade yet. I'm always nervous about doing those upgrades. I don't know about everybody else. I'm like what kind of spying software is going to be on the new upgrade? But then again, what have they already got on my old upgrade, since every time we talk about something here on WallBuilders, I end up with 400,000 ads about that topic in the next two days. Right, does everybody else get that? If that's not creepy and cringy, I don't know what is Alright, Tim, how about some good news from you man?

Tim Barton: 6:54
Well, this one's coming from California and there is a recall effort in California over progressive district attorneys. This one specifically is highlighting the one going on in Alameda County. That is where the cities of Oakland and Berkeley are. There's a group that save Alameda for everybody, but they're known as SAFE and they're working to collect signatures, right now.they have 70,000 of the 73,195 signatures that they need in order for this recall effort to go on the ballot. But what I did not know as I was reading this article is that San Francisco already the voters and citizens there successfully recalled the former district attorney Chesa Bowden last year in a 55 to 45 vote. This summer the committee to recall district attorney George Gaskin filed a lawsuit asking for the court to certify its recall petition of the liberal Los Angeles district attorney and that had some issues in court. But it just goes through the highlights that there's a lot of people in California in some very liberal areas. This is not what we would consider the conservative areas necessarily. It's certainly not where there's a large bastion of conservatives in these areas. These are probably people that voted for Joe Biden. But they're now recognizing that with this policy that's been enacted kind of the decriminalizing of theft and drugs and what we have seen California do in this kind of woke ideology. It's producing a really negative result. It's led individuals in California to say, you know, we've kind of had enough of this. Well, the people that they are trying to recall, all of those people received campaign donations from George Soros right, the famous billionaire who's trying to destabilize America in so many ways, and so this is really good news to me that in a place like California, we are seeing even the liberals and I'm saying liberals. I don't know how all these people vote, I don't know what their track record is, but if you're getting the majority of those cities to vote to recall one of these district attorneys the majority of those cities are not conservative, which means that at least a percentage of that was liberals and people who were fed up with the way things are going with these George Soros district attorneys and we're going to say we're not going to prosecute crime. In fact, one of the things is article highlights is that the jail in Alameda County is at the lowest it's ever been for criminals that are being locked up right now. So their jail is not empty, but certainly not full, and it's the lowest it's been in 20 years, which is kind of significant.

David Barton: 9:42
And Tim. I saw some report that they've had a 20 or 25% increase in crime. It's not like crime has gone down and the jails are empty. Crime has gone up and the jails are empty.

Tim Barton: 9:53
In Oakland, crime is up 22% this year just through mid-October, and yet the county jail population has fallen to its lowest level in at least 20 years, according to San. Francisco Chronicle. So crime is up 22% and the jail is at its lowest population in the last 20 years. Because, again, these crazy district attorneys are choosing to not prosecute criminals for certain behavior or if it's below what they deemed to be the threshold needed for someone to go to jail, which is not a matter of did they break the law or not. Did I think the law they broke was bad enough? They were not going to prosecute them. You only sold $999 worth of goods, it wasn't over a thousand. Okay, we're not going to prosecute you. That's the kind of nonsense that is going on. And then when they say, well, they're only stealing because they need to feed themselves, we have actually people in Congress, congressmen and congresswomen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said they only steal because they're hungry and need food Right. But they're actually stealing from places that don't serve food. Like they're not just going to convenience stores although certainly a lot of convenience stores are being robbed. They're going, for example, to the Nike store and we're seeing these groups of thugs going steal from places that don't sell food. So maybe they're not just stealing for food, Maybe they're committing these crimes. Because when you decriminalize this kind of behavior, when you say we're not going to prosecute criminals if you do these things and all you're doing is saying that those things are now acceptable in this society, in this culture. And what's great is that people in California are getting fed up with this nonsense and they're actually pushing back with some of these recall elections. That is a really great news.

Rick Green: 11:38
Alright, guys, we've got a lot more good news to get to. We're going to take a quick break.

Tim Barton: 11:41
We'll be right back, thank you, hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 Project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out, WallBuilders.com the American story.

Rick Green: 12:52
Welcome back to Walbenders. It's Good News Friday. Diving into those Good News stories, David Barton has got the next one, David.

David Barton: 12:58
Descend cups from Oregon. Tim, you recall when we were doing election coverage election night.

Rick Green: 13:03
No, David, you can't do that. We already had a West Coast Good News. It's one per Friday as the maximum, otherwise people will start to think we could actually save California or Oregon and Washington. Oh yeah, we could, that's right. God could using the things that. Yeah, anyway, sorry, go ahead. Or in Oregon, there's good things happening.

David Barton: 13:21
He may save us through our own stupidity of keeping burning our hand on the stove, and we burn our hand on the stove enough that we figure out you know, this is right. Even we liberals don't like the way crime is going up in San Francisco and Alameda and et cetera. So maybe just common sense. God's actually winning with common sense. That would be good too.

Rick Green: 13:41
There's nothing more to it. There's pain and they'll finally turn. Yeah, go ahead.

David Barton: 13:45
Exactly this one's from Oregon, and on election night, Tim, when we were doing election coverage, we were watching all these ballot initiatives and we noted that Oregon became the first state to legalize hard drug use hallucinogens, lsd, et cetera. And so they have legalized all kind of hard drugs all the way through. And man, how do I say this and not be completely mocking? People's live in an Alice in Wonderland place where it never comes true. I mean the stuff, Tim, you were just saying. They believe that if you don't prosecute crime, you'll have less crime, which only they believe that. But that's what they get these guys in there and they stop arresting, they stop prosecuting crime, and crime goes up. And they can't understand it. And so the people say, hey, you promised that it was going to be better that if you didn't prosecute crime and go down. And it never works. And that's what's so wacky about the progressive stuff is they ignore the human nature that God tells us about in the Bible. Human nature is really predictable. We know what they're going to do. If you believe there is a sin nature, you know what sin is going to do. But if you're always in this Alice in Wonderland dream world where everybody's great, everybody's good. Nothing ever goes wrong and they never turn out to be right. I mean, this stuff is always wrong. So what happened in Oregon? Here's what the ballot initiative says. So they legalized heroin, they legalized fentanyl, they legalized every kind of drug there was. And here's what the ballot initiative said. It said quote law enforcement should spend more time on community safety, but Oregon law enforcement officers arrested more than 8,000 people in 2017 in cases where simple drug possession was the most serious offense. In many instances, the same people were arrested for drug possession again and again because they are unable to get treatment. So their logic is if you stop arresting them for drug possession, then they can get treatment. The only reason this is happening is they can't get treatment, so if we stop arresting them, they will go seek treatment. That's the logic and that's what people voted out, and they passed this initiative. Well, now here we are. We're not even to the next election cycle yet and they're trying to repeal this initiative. Law enforcement, it's community leaders, it's all over the state. They're trying to repeal this because I love Eugene. Now, eugene is a really, really liberal city in Oregon, all right. So Eugene police chief, chris Skinner, stated that about 6,000 people have received citations but only 125 have called the hotline. And he said we don't have one successful example of somebody that went from a citation to a place of wellness. So this has not worked a single time in Oregon that they know of. And they're saying, hey, this was really not a good policy. Let's get away from this, because what's happened is drug use has gone up and they're talking about the fact that in all sorts of public places, he said, oregon has own pace to shatter the record for overdose calls for services and shattered the record for overdose deaths. They're having more people killed, more people being injured, more crime, more everything and they're saying, hey, this really isn't a good idea. Yeah, but that's the problem with being a progressive is you think that there is no sin and people will inherently do what's right and given the chance. That is not true. There is a sin nature and if you understand that, then you understand that that's why the Bible also authorizes ministers of justice to be able to prosecute the wrong and reward the righteous. So I love the fact that even Oregon has stubbed their toe enough on this drug use stuff that they're trying to turn around. It goes to Tim, what you were saying even in really liberal, 80%, 90% in Democrat cities they're saying, hey, this sort of stuff is not working. We need prosecutors who prosecute crime and here in Oregon this is really good news that in less than one cycle they're ready to get rid of this new policy. They put in legalizing all type of drugs, believing that people would go seek treatment for it. That's not why people use drugs is because they need treatment. They use it for different reasons and that goes to the sin nature.

Rick Green: 18:07
I'm very confused by one part of that story, David. You said this policy had never, ever worked, not even once, and they actually want to move away from it. I always thought progressives just kept doing policies that never, ever worked, even once, all the time right, like they usually just say Well, we just haven't done it enough or we didn't put enough money into it. So the fact that they would learn in one cycle, guys, there's hope. There's hope for America. I love Fridays. I love good news Fridays. Alright, tim. What's our next piece of good news?

Tim Barton: 18:35
Well, this one is coming from Texas, but interestingly enough, the article comes from MSNBC, which is certainly not a place that we frequent when looking for good news, and even the way they write this they do not write this is really a good news story, but it is a good news story and so I'm going to tell you about it. It the article says Texas rejects science textbooks with too much information about climate change. Now they're writing this as it's bad news, but I'm going to read it to you and as we read it, we'll go. That's really, really good news, even though the author is certainly not excited about this. So the Texas Board of Education they get together every so often and they review standards, they review textbooks that will be approved for public schools in Texas and specifically, they went through and rejected a number of proposed science textbooks for eighth graders, and the article it says that it was Republican majority board raised a range of concerns about seven of 12 proposed textbooks, most of which of their objections had to do with how the books presented the climate crisis, and they go through and point out that the argument was the books had too much information about the climate crisis, that they were published by companies with environmentally friendly policies. Now, this is an SMC saying this, so they're saying they were environmentally friendly policies. So I think what that means? It means that these companies were promoting the woke agenda, because that's what this author of this article is agreeing with. They portrayed fossil fuel as an insufficient or in an insufficiently positive light. So the conservative that the argument was the conservative looked and said that they're saying fossil fuel was really bad, that all this woke environmental is really good. And then the article goes on to point out that the books the conservatives said the books talked about how fossil fuels potentially harm the state's economy. And then they also noted that in these science books they wanted to include the teachings about, or the books included teachings about, evolution, but not about creationism. And the article goes on and talks about how these books were removed because of that and it's a problem, it's a crisis. So this is really really good news and that we are now at a place where we have a state board of education in Texas that is looking at what's happening with education and they're beginning to understand that there is woke ideology, there are woke policies being promoted in these textbooks and they're beginning to review these textbooks. And right now, even though we, as Texans, can look at the people on our state board of education, recognize that, even though MSNBC pointed out that the majority are conservative, we would look and go, you know, the majority might tend to vote for a Republican, but conservative might not be the word we would use to describe some of them. However, even the ones that said to be a little squishy, they acknowledged that what was happening with this woke promotion of this environmental science, environmental justice, is not correct. One of the things that I had a friend send me a couple of headlines from CNN. Back in 2018, cnn was talking about how global warming is causing the barrier reef Australia, the barrier reef to shrink. It's going to dry up, it's going to disappear the barrier, great barrier reef. And then in 2022, cnn had an article where they said that the great barrier reef has grown and expanded by like 36% and so, right in four years, they've gone from it's global warming, it's all going to die and dry. Up to now, it's growing at this incredible rate of expansion. This is the kind of stuff that the state board of education members are able to identify and say what we're promoting right now is not what's actually true scientifically. They're promoting an agenda, saying that fossil fuel will destroy the economy, that is bad for a nation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm just encouraged that there were some people there with backbone standing up and then and this is something that it's literally one, two, three, four, five words in the end of this paragraph about evolution but not creationism. This is something that they throw out and I think it's one of the most significant things there is in this whole discussion because of the Supreme Court overturning of the limited decision with the coach Kennedy decision, the right to football coach who was fired for preying on the 50 yard line by himself silently at the end of the game. When the Supreme Court determined that Bermonton High School was wrong for firing him, they pointed out the reason that the lower courts had thought that the school had a right to fire him for his faith was because of the limit decision back in 1971, lemon v Kurchman, and so they overturned a limit. Well, the limit decision is what said that you can't talk about God in science because that's religious and we cannot have religion in education. There can't be religion in science. But the reality is, if you look at the theory of evolution we use to understand, this is only a theory of evolution and this is not the only theory for the origins of the universe. Right, the idea that over billions or millions or whatever your idea is of the universe, that eventually it just happened. Right, there's some kind of great bang, combustion, and out of nothing came something. I would point out, that requires so much more faith than the idea that there was a divine creator, that there was an intelligent designer. And this idea of evolution actually contradicts the laws of thermodynamics, it contradicts the laws of entropy, that the very idea is not very scientific. And yet this was the exclusive thing that students were taught about the origin of the universe. And now, because the state board of education had some backbone, people stood up and said okay, we can actually go back to acknowledging there are other theories of how the universe began, and one of them is what has been embraced and virtually all of Western civilization for thousands and thousands of years, and it is the idea which, by the way, that's pretty much for all of recorded human history, this idea has been there that there is a God and that God, in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. That is just really encouraging news that we are now at a place that we might see the public schools in Texas go back to teaching creation, contrasting it with evolution and then also getting away from woke environmental science. That is really good news.

David Barton: 25:05
And let me add to that too, that with Texas doing this, Texas and for people who don't understand in the public school world, Texas and California are the two big engines that drive the train, because that's where about 26% of the nation's public school students are. So when publishers come here and they write their textbook for Texas standards, those textbooks end up all over the nation. They're used nationwide, not just in the state of Texas and California. They're used nationwide. So the changes that you're hearing about that Tim was just talking about, this kind of stuff, including intelligent design, is going to be coming into many, many, many states, because that's what Texas mandates as textbooks. And the reason this is there and Tim alluded to this is in the last election we picked up four conservative state board of education members. We have 15 total in Texas. We had been close, we had been down around the eight to seven margin, just barely winning from stuff, and we picked up four conservatives and this is considered the down ballot race. It's not like the governor's race, the US Senate race or the attorney general's race. Who looks at state board of education? Well, this is why you look at down ballot races, because this has a huge impact, and so this is good news coming out of Texas, but it's going to be spreading across the nation as a result of the way education works.

Rick Green: 26:22
See why I love Fridays, guys. See, it's just good stuff, folks, good stuff. Make sure you don't miss next Friday for more good news. And then, of course, all the programs do out the week have some good stuff in them as well. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.