How To Combat The Censorship-Industrial Complex No Matter Who Wins The Election
We must keep talking and throwing wrenches into the machinery of loneliness. We must keep coming together in love for our neighbor.We must keep talking and throwing wrenches into the machinery of loneliness. We must keep coming together in love for our neighbor.Dems Targeted Trump Official For Past Alcoholism Then Cried Foul On Biden Addiction Stories
Democrats tried to exploit the alcoholic past of a Trump official in the same election they cried foul over critiques of Hunter Biden's crack addiction.Bill W.: Alcoholic who helped himself by helping others
The man known as Bill W. took a liking to drinking as a young artillery officer in the Vermont National Guard. Finally, a cure for his crippling shyness. “I had found the elixir of life,” he later wrote.
His initial delight soon became an ungovernable obsession, even as he married, served in World War I, and attended law school (too drunk to pick up his diploma, he failed to graduate). Modest success as a stockbroker followed, interrupted by regular hospitalizations for alcohol addiction. Eventually, the threat of professional ruin and imminent death motivated him to become sober for short periods of time, always ending in relapse.
During one such period in 1935, a failed business trip to Akron left Bill with the overwhelming urge to head directly to the hotel bar. Desperate to keep his sobriety, Bill decided his only hope was to speak to another alcoholic. He called a local church and was eventually put in touch with a surgeon and fellow drunk today remembered as Dr. Bob. The two met, and soon formed a friendship that led them both to lasting sobriety.
This simple process of helping oneself by helping another became the template for Alcoholics Anonymous, a grassroots, free-of-charge, decentralized fellowship that declined to demonize alcohol and maintained only one requirement for membership: the sincere desire to stop drinking.
Almost 90 years later, millions of alcoholics around the world have found in AA's clear, unyielding principles the key to recovery and the source of deep, unwavering serenity. As Bill W. himself put it:
"Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine."
Bill Maher’s Anti-Theistic Rant Reveals The Spiritual Abyss Of Leftism
Instead of maliciously misrepresenting millions of his fellow citizens, maybe Maher should ponder why they seem so much happier than he is.Can decriminalization fix America’s drug crisis?
It’s no secret America has a drug problem. Last year, there were more than 100,000 overdose deaths in America, largely attributed to fentanyl. Over the past few decades, American cities have struggled to grapple with this crisis. Instead of enforcing existing drug laws and cracking down on crime, some have chosen a different path: decriminalization.
Author and podcast host Christina Dent recently joined "Relatable" with Allie Beth Stuckey to advocate for the decriminalization of drugs as a solution to America’s growing addiction crisis. Dent pushes a “health-centered approach” as opposed to a “criminal justice approach.” The former, according to Dent, addresses the root cause of addiction, while the latter could do more harm than good.
Dent’s opinion was largely formed through her experience with her adopted son’s biological mom, who was an addict. Had her son’s biological mother been imprisoned for her drug use, Dent’s son never would have had a relationship with her, and incarceration would have done nothing to help her addiction.
It’s true that throwing drug users in jail does little to help their addictions and could even harm them due to the availability of drugs in prisons. However, the ambiguous definition of “decriminalization” paired with the troubling results seen in American cities that have attempted such policies raises questions about the efficacy and safety of going this route.
Take Oregon, for example. In 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed a resolution that decriminalized possession of hard drugs. Last month, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) signed a bill that reversed this measure and re-criminalized possessing small amounts of hard drugs, making it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. The original measure failed largely due to botched implementation of mental health and treatment services, sparks in overdoses due to fentanyl, increased homelessness, and worsening public drug use. A recent report shows Oregon is one of the top ten most dangerous states in the country — it’s hard to imagine public drug use did not play a part in Oregon’s worsening crime.
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Is California’s Narrow Homelessness Vote The Beginning Of The End Of ‘Housing First’?
Proposition One garnered a nail-bitingly close victory, but the slim margin signals the tide is turning against a failed housing policy.More than 70% of teens feel more peaceful without their phones while some say it makes them feel lonely, Pew research shows
The latest research from Pew showed that nearly three-quarters of teenagers feel at ease without their phones at times, but half of teens surveyed also said they still feel anxiety without their device.
New data from the Pew Research Center titled "How Teens and Parents Approach Screen Time" explored how teens and parents are reacting to the amount of time they use their devices, how it makes them feel, and how they feel without it.
While four in 10 teenagers said they spend too much time on their phones, just 27% of American teens said they spend too much time on social media.
It is generally girls who are more likely to say they have tried to cut back on their use of their phone or social media, although the majority (61.5%) of both genders said they have not.
However, it is teenagers' emotions regarding how they feel when they are not with their devices that is perhaps most telling. When it comes to what they feel when they do not have their smartphone with them, 74% said they often or sometimes feel happy. At the same time, 72% said that they often or sometimes feel peaceful.
The troubling responses come in the form of feelings of anxiety, which 44% said they often or sometimes feel, while becoming upset or lonely was noted by 40% and 39% of teenagers, respectively.
Older girls are the most likely category to feel anxious without their phones. The majority of girls 15 to 17 years old (55%) have felt this, which was 15 points higher than the next closest demographic of younger teen girls ages 13 to 14.
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The children believe that their phones' benefit outweighs the harms they may cause, however, with 70% agreeing with that sentiment. Why? They say phones make it easier to pursue their hobbies and interests (69%) or be creative (65%), while around half of the responding teenagers said that it helps them "do well in school" (45%).
Teens and parents have different views on adults' cell phone usage, too. Teenagers who say that their parent is often or sometimes distracted by their phone when having a conversation with them totaled 46%. Parents disagreed, with just 31% saying they were too distracted to carry on conversations with their kids at times.
None of this has stopped parents from looking through their teenagers phones, however.
Half of parents surveyed said they look through their teen's smartphone, and most of the kids have noticed, too. It seems 43% of teens seemed to be aware their parents were looking into what they do on their phones, although that figure could also include kids who were suspicious of innocent parents.
According to Pew, 1,453 U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, along with their parents, were surveyed between Sept. 26 and Oct. 23, 2023, for the study.
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Gospel singer Dennis Quaid details his journey from drugs to Jesus: 'I lean on God'
Dennis Quaid has long been a familiar face in Hollywood, starring in hits and cult classics such as "Traffic," "Parent Trap," and "Innerspace." While he continues to appear on celluloid, lately he has also been mounting stages to sing God's praises.
Shortly after releasing his gospel record "Fallen" in June 2023 — which landed in the top 15 on Billboard's Top 200 Christian/Gospel chart — Quaid provided BlazeTV's "Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey" incredible insights into his renewal of faith and road back to an intimate relationship with God.
Quaid, a 69-year-old Houston native, recently expounded on some details of his spiritual revival while promoting a new television special, telling the Christian Post how after a period of disillusionment with his inherited Baptist faith, he "started asking questions that didn't have answers."
The Emmy Award-winning actor apparently looked to the Orient in search of understanding, consulting the Buddhist Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, as well as the Quran. Evidently, he was left unsatisfied.
Quaid revisited the Bible, but he remained spiritually obstinate.
"I read the Bible cover to cover as well, back then, and I got hung up in the Old Testament, how violent it was. God seemed like a punishing God back then to me," Quaid told the Post. "A lot of it just didn't make sense."
Rather than embrace what then appeared to be an omniscient disciplinarian, the actor apparently turned to pleasure and lawlessness, experimenting with drugs. The road well traveled left Quaid addicted to cocaine.
In 2002, the New York Times characterized this period of Quaid's life as his "decade in the Hollywood wilderness."
Quaid hinted at the seed of a return to faith at the time, telling the paper, "Mostly, I was mad at God, you know? Why was I in this predicament? I knew it was all my own fault, but at the same time I wasn't thinking straight. I was caught in a place, living a life that I didn't want to live but couldn't escape."
When speaking last year to Allie Beth Stuckey, Quaid recalled his realization at the time: "I saw myself as either dead or in jail or losing everything I had ... so, I did get myself straight with that, but that still didn't fill the hole that was there — in fact, it was a very deep hole after that."
The actor recently underscored to ChristianHeadlines that to get out of this hole, he had to once again crack open the Bible.
"I got clean in 1990 of cocaine, and I read the Bible again. I'd read it as a kid, and I read it again. And this time, I was really struck by the red words of Jesus," said the actor. "And that's really what started, I think, what I've been looking for all along — and which, you know, my mother told me and other people [told me], but I never really understood, which is having a personal relationship with Jesus. And, of course, that has grown over the years. But I never really understood it until then."
"I lean on God. I talk to Him every day," added Quaid. "I talk to God about problems. ... And gratitude for the blessings that I have."
Quaid made expressly clear that drugs could never satisfy and comfort the way that faith does.
"Everybody has that [void] — they try to fill that with relationships or with drugs or with money or with whatever it is, you know, our heart's desire," said Quaid. "What we're really looking for is to fill that ... God-sized hole."
Quaid told the Post that after reading the Bible through multiple times, he is now particularly fond of the book of Ecclesiastes for its insights into life and morality. The Gospel of John, however, appears to be the actor's favorite biblical text, not least because it underscores Christ is the Logos.
"I think John brings together physics and the Spirit and explains it in a timeless way," said Quaid. "He points to a bigger truth that we have no words for."
Extra to the DVD special for his gospel album, the prayerful actor is set to appear in "Reagan," a feature film about the 40th U.S. president, which will reportedly hit theaters in late August.
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