Ice Skating in Idaho Falls

One cool thing that Santa gives us every year is the Getout Pass. The kids love it and so do we because we get to keep doing so many fun activities. Ours expires later this month and the new one will start up. The Getout Pass gives us admission to all sorts of different types of things. The Idaho Falls ice skating rink is on the Getout Pass for once a year. We went ice skating at the beginning of our first Getout Pass in January 2024. Last year, we attempted to go in January, but the day we wanted to go was the first day of our GetOut Pass and it was impossible to tell what time it started. That's when we learned that there is one day a year that we should not use this because nobody can know what time it starts at. So on Friday we used our ice skating GetOut Pass a week before it expired. Our kids all loved ice skating this time. Here are some pictures and videos:

This Past Weekend with Theo Von Review

My sixth podcast is This Past Weekend with Theo Von. In this podcast Theo Von interviewed Trevor Wallace. This was a very unfunny conversation between two alleged comedians. They attempt to use shock value and crudeness as a substitute for humor. They weren't political except for a couple jokes about Biden falling off his bike and referencing something weird going on with Somolis in Minnesota. It is pretty ridiculous to be joking about Biden being an old person and ignoring the clown in the White House. Of course the Somoli reference is recent obsession of MAGA as Trump is leading them so they all know the current group they are supposed to hate. This podcast was actually the most torturous to listen to so far. I give it 0/5 for crude, mindless, and unfunny conversation.

The Tucker Carlson Show Review

My fifth podcast is The Tucker Carlson Show. It was number five when I listened to it, it is currently at number four. The title of the podcast was "Megyn Kelly on Venezuela, Ben Shapiro's Treachery, and Mark Levin's Mental Illness." When Carlson started the podcast, I was surprised that it seemed like I was going to agree with him. He was going on talking about the U.S. becoming an empire, how we don't talk about democracy anymore, and instead we just say we are going to take the oil because we want it. I thought these were criticisms but Carlson says that this is refreshing. He says this is what we have done in the past so it is refreshing that we are admitting it. This is one consequence of people lying about past U.S. actions. When people say the U.S. would steal the oil in Iraq despite the fact that the people in Iraq kept the oil, it makes some people think stealing oil from Venezuela is just more of the same. It is immoral to go to war with a country and steal their resources. Tucker Carlson says that supporting democracy is emotional. To Carlson, having morality is not serious, it is a weakness, and it is just being silly and emotional. Carlson spoke without condemnation of Trump wanting to take Greenland. I thought it was interesting that he said it is a waste of time to say whether it is right or wrong because it is done and whether you say it is right or wrong will not change things. So many times he dodges and won't say his opinion on if something is right or wrong when it is some indefensible thing Trump is doing. But somehow he was able to call it murder when Ashley Babbit was shot on January 6. Here he expressed his opinion. He misleadingly states it is murder because Ashley Babbit is unarmed, ignoring the fact that she was breaking into the capitol with a huge mob of people. Carlson withholds judgment when Trump does something indefensible but has no problem providing judgment in the defense of MAGA. Carlson talked about the expansion of executive power without a single criticism of Trump. He talked of Trump doing these things with Venezuela without Congress. He spoke of Trump acting on Greenland without Congress. Carlson says without condemnation that the U.S. is becoming an empire and that taking Greenland would destroy NATO. He wants to abandon our traditional allies and ally ourselves with Russia. He says we have a lot in common with Russia. Megyn Kelly got on and they talked some about free speech. I agreed with some here about the importance of free speech, but Kelly of course is a hypocrite on the issue. She will defend threats to free speech for her team but cheers Trump kicking people out of the country for using speech disapproved by Trump. There was discussion about the MAGA vs MAGA civil war regarding Israel. Apparently, it is Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Jack Prosobiec, and Nick Fuentes who are critical of Israel. And it is Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, and Bari Weiss who defend Israel. Carlson clearly is immoral. He supports empire. He opposes the Constitution. He supports evil. He wants to go back in time where war to steal resources was common. He supports Russia and opposes democracy. I give Carlson's podcast a 0/5.

The Daily Review

My fourth podcast is The Daily. It was number four when I listened to it but it is number five now. The daily is a daily political podcast from the New York Times. Annie Karni and Shane Goldmacher discussed the 2026 Battle for Control of Congress. They seemed to think the most likely outcome of the 2026 election was for Democrats to gain the House and Republicans to keep the Senate. They said the best Democrats could do in the Senate is get 50/50 with J.D. Vance being the tiebreaker. It was nice to listen to a serious political podcast that was fact based and well-informed. I find the horserace politics interesting, though I think the media does too much of it over covering other things. But it is definitely acceptable for a daily podcast to address this especially when I look at the topics they cover on other days. Even though I disagree with Democrats, I am rooting for them this mid-term to bring some accountability to Trump who is acting with unrestrained power. Though as long as Republicans are complicit, his power won't be significantly restrained. I don't believe he will ever be held accountable for anything but others below him will. I'd like the Democrats to be doing investigations and exposing all illegal activity in the Trump administration. I give The Daily 5/5 for its informed analysis of the upcoming election.

The Shawn Ryan Show Review

The Shawn Ryan Show was my third podcast listening to but it has since passed Crime Junkie and moved to the number two spot. He interviewed Mike Waltz, current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. They talked of a lot of Waltz and his military history. Of course, Waltz was praising Trump throughout the show. He liked to spend a lot of time blaming Biden and praise Trump. When he was giving his military background, he was talking about an interpreter he worked with in Afghanistan. He said the interpreter was left behind by the Biden administration but they are still working on it. I could find no information specifically about this interpreter. But blaming Biden for this while praising Trump about everything during the episode is laughable considering Trump's public opposition to helping Afghans who helped us in the war. Here is an example of Trump cancelling refugee flights from Afghanistan including of those who helped in the war. The below picture of an Afghan interpreter arrested by ICE in 2025 comes from this article. He spent years helping the U.S. for years fight the Taliban, but the American electorate unfortunately voted for bigotry so he's got to go. Absolute betrayal.

Waltz also referenced Biden's disasterous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Criticizing Biden on this is fair game but someone who criticizes Biden while praising Trump on Afghanistan is just a partisan. Under Trump, the agreement was made that released thousands of Taliban prisoners who predictably returned to their jihad. Releasing thousands of prisoners who it took years and many U.S. lives to capture obviously made Biden's withdrawal more difficult and dangerous. But the partisans just ignore this obvious fact. A lot of the Trump worship by Waltz was sickening. The episode was Shawn Ryan leaving Trump sycophancy to be unchallenged no matter how absurd the claim is. I don't know whether Ryan knew how ridiculous the claim about the interpreter was. Any listeners who get their information from this show will be misinformed. I give it 0/5.

My Scripture Reading Plan

My plan is to read all of the standard works in chronological order. The website I use as my reading guide is linked here. I use the King James Bible along with these two books:

I use The New Oxford Annotated Bible for its footnotes. I picked this book out because I wanted a scholarly Bible that gave some good historical background. The Complete Joseph Smith Translation of the Old Testament is cool because it contains all of the JST, much better than just using footnotes and the appendix. I have a New Testament one but I am not there yet. Currently, I am at 2 Chronicles 36, which takes place according to the website I use 621 BC and according to my more accurate Bible reference at 609 BC. Pretty soon, I will be at the Book of Mormon. I wish I chronicled the Bible dates mentioned in my Bible to make a more accurate timeline. I am thinking of doing that as we read through the Old Testament in Come Follow Me this year but not sure if I will do that.

Walking on Temple Walkway Ledge

My niece Cassidy got sealed in the Idaho Falls Temple today. As my kids and a cousin approached the temple they fulfilled a dream of mine which is to walk on the ledge. There are a lot of ledges to walk on around the temple and I always want to walk on them but I am unfortunately too mature. There is a much better ledge by the stairs inside the temple that looks quite enjoyable to walk on but as yet nobody dares to because it would never be an appropriate time to do that. Kids get to live their dreams while I have to suffer due to my maturity.

Crime Junkie Review

The number 2 podcast is Crime Junkie. The episode I listened to is titled Surviving: Ernest Pine. This podcast is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. They talked about an attempted murder and sexual assault committed by Ernest Pine against a woman whose name they withheld.

The crime took place in August 2008 and Pine just got out of prison last year. They went into the disturbing details of the case and told the story of how the woman survived by playing dead. Pine tried to shoot her but missed then his gun malfunctioned when he tried again. The malfunction was due to the wrong bullets being used. He then tried to kill her with a knife but she survived, this is when she played dead. They also speculated that Pine may have been the murderer of Elena Sanchez Hawkins who was murdered and had some similarities in the case. I wasn't really convinced on this point but it's possible. One thing I am convinced of and agree with is that Ernest Pine should still be in prison. It's outrageous how short prison sentences can be. One of the hosts said they thought it was dumb that attempted murder gets less of a sentence than murder. You shouldn't get less of a punishment just because you failed. I agree with this. Someone like Ernest Pine should never get out of prison. I thought this podcast told an important story well and showed respect for the victim's courage in surviving her attack. I give this podcast 5/5.

The Joe Rogan Experience review

The number one podcast in America is The Joe Rogan Experience. I started the new year listening to listening to Joe Rogan interview MMA fighter Gable Steveson. They talked about all the ways Gable is a tough dude and Joe Rogan demonstrated how cool of a guy he is to everyone by the appropriate "cool dude" mannerisms and words.After about two hours of discussing how tough and cool Gable, they start to talk about drug overdose deaths. Joe Rogan claimed that overdose deaths had skyrocketed in 2023 and 2024, but in 2025 the death rate did a big drop. He credited Trump for launching missiles at suspected drug boats in the ocean as reducing the overdose deaths. While he was talking, he put a graph on the screen to demonstrate his point. This is the graph:

I looked up the source of this graph. It comes from a peer reviewed article from the JAMA Network published by the American Medical Association. Link to the article here.The study plainly states it took place from January 2015 to October 2024. The explanation of the chart points out overdose deaths start to decline in 2023 and points out the decline gets steeper. It says, "This steeper decline continued through the most recent data point in October 2024." Joe Rogan's entire point that killing people in the ocean decreases overdose deaths is undermined by the fact that Joe Biden was president in 2024 and the U.S. government had not yet implemented a policy of murder on the high seas. My original thought was that Joe Rogan or his staff were maliciously lying because they got this chart from an academic journal, but my friend Elroy pointed out that this chart was probably being spread around without context before Joe Rogan spread it. Sure enough here is a sampling:

It turns out that when you bomb drug boats, American lives are saved.

God bless our military and go eff yourself media that defend the cartels. https://t.co/icdMbschQj

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) December 29, 2025

This post was on December 29, 2025 and Rogan's podcast was released on January 1, 2026. I suspect Rogan or someone on his staff got this chart with the misinterpretation from the right wing echo chamber. That is far more likely than one of them looking up an academic journal. Regardless of how they got it, it is clear that The Joe Rogan Experience is not a good place to get information. It's a bad podcast because it gets people who come to it to listen to an MMA fighter and then they get misinformation from someone they trust about a political issue, and most of them will never check the source. I give this podcast 0/5.

Back to Blogging

I'm back to blogging. I just needed to make sure my many readers were willing to check this blog after a few years of not posting to make sure I had the most loyal readers. Social media killed my blogging but now that I spend less time on social media, I want to get back to blogging. Blog posts may be seen less but I think they are better because you can have more depth and social media is toxic. I will be posting about whatever I want to here. It could be about what Marvel shows and movies I am watching as I have a goal to watch every live action English language Marvel show and movie. I usually will be watching one thing while I exercise and another at night with Sam. Sam isn't always paying attention because she is working so I have to rewind it to be sure she sees awesome parts like this: I am currently watching the 1979 Captain America 2: Death Too Soon. I got the DVD for Christmas! While I exercise, I am watching Ironheart. When I watch movies and shows, I just stop them in the middle of the show like a normal person and start it up again where I left off the next time. Once I am done exercising, the show stops, no matter where I am at. At night, a lot depends on when I need to get to bed. I will also write about Podcasts I am listening too.

I have a goal to listen to every podcast in Spotify's top 100 in 2026. The rule is that I will listen to them in ranking order and need to listen to the most recent one. I am on the third one right now. I will write what I think about each one, but I am behind right now because it took me some time to dust off the old blog.

I might write about Conference talks I am listening to. I have a goal to listen to every conference talk from a prophet of my lifetime. I am currently listening to Spencer W. Kimall. Listened to his October 1970 talk today.

I might write about politics or things I care about. I still care about what's happening in the country as much as ever. I will try my best to be less angry but I won't sacrifice truth.

I might write about my daily life or my family. Though I think I will do family pictures on Instagram. Until next time. First to comment will be acknowledged as the most loyal reader.