* Jack Bergman, U.S. Congressman (R) Watersmeet

Where do you begin with 7 minutes to speak to a man like Congressman Jack Bergman, General Bergman from Northern Michigan, also spent time as a commercial airline pilot, so many of these issues. Right in his wheelhouse on this Veterans Day, thank you for your service, and welcome back to the Airwaves. Michael Patrick, what a great way to start the morning with the Marine hymn. You can thank Tony Cutpert and the orchestra for that, but we thank you for your service, and if you were to bump into somebody, you know, waiting for a flight somewhere, how would you, in a short amount of time, characterize your service in the military? Well, just the word service, because I was raised by a family who believed in service to our country, dad, World War II vet, so my characterization was, I believe it's part of our responsibility as good citizens to serve for a time. Will you do in the Peace Corps, the Marine Corps? Doesn't make any difference, service to your country. I just have to choose the Marine Corps during a real tough time in our country during Vietnam. And if somebody said to you, what did you do as a general? What would you do as a serviceman? Are there one or two anecdotes that are able to characterize your experience? Yes. If you can't think of anything else to do, lead. And bottom line is where the old phrase, lead follower, get out of the way. But I was taught to take responsibility where it was appropriate. It wasn't about me. It was about those Marines who were under my command to keep them trained, ready, go to the fight, and come home to their families. But it's all about the people being trained and ready to go. Quite honestly, that's what I do now is the subcommittee chairman on readiness on armed services in Washington, DC, is make sure all of our servicemen and women are trained and ready to go, and also that their families are trained and ready to have them deploy. What was this business I read about both Russia and the United States, testing their long range nuclear missiles again? Is that something new? No. They're talking about testing. They're actually not testing. And it's really not missiles in flight from what I've read. It's the capability to launch without testing launches. So it's sometimes, I don't want to take it lightly because saber rattling, which is what happens historically between countries who want to extract some kind of concession from others. But we have to be very aware of the nuclear triad that we have and that Russia has. And that Iran would like to have. But we have to be very, very judicious in our chest thumping that causes bad things to potentially even to be discussed, because to use nuclear weapons, let's use nuclear for good. Let's build power plants that give us the cleanest, cheapest, you know, most reliable power in the world. But we do need to still be aware as the United States of what other countries are doing. Is Vladimir Putin in grave health? I don't know about his health physically, but psychologically, he really is, there's no whole for him. You could probably consider him, I don't know, I'm not a psychiatrist, but he probably psychopath could probably be pretty close. That comet or whatever that is, atlas AI1, are you keeping an eye on that at all? Some people are saying it's a comet. Some people are saying it's acting in a very unusual fashion. Yeah, I'm not keeping a daily eye on it. I'm of where it's out there. And I just kind of, I kind of watch to see what's being said. And, you know, again, in the in Congress in the house, we have access to some of the some of the briefings, although with the last goofiness in the last month, with the unnecessary shutdown, we've been focused on getting the government back to get back to work and start serving the American people with what you're supposed to do. There's a documentary getting a lot of attention right now that I think comes out next week that says there's a level of security and information that's available beyond even the president. Do you know about something like that? That I had not heard. Intel that the president doesn't even have access to. Ruby, I was talking about it. No? Yeah, I they you have to when you think about the role of president, there's been some really good movies out there over time that shows in a, you know, for a potentially apocalyptic situation in the world where countries have gone, you know, crazy in the movies, not in real life in the movies. The role of president I would suggest you he does not have all the information on everything because it's you don't want it all in one person, but he is briefed from time to time on the bigger picture so that if a world situation occurred, he could be brought up the speed very quickly. It's a Mr. President, you know, on this capability, I know we haven't talked about this in detail, but it works this way. Now we're going to get into detail with it. That's how it would work. You mentioned the shutdown. It's a scouraging topic to me, but you were an airline pilot. Are people safe flying right now and how hard was it for you to watch the cargo plane crash? Yeah, I tell you what, my heart, I speak into the UPS cargo plane down in low, but that, I mean, I still, my stomach turns having, having seen incidents like that over my, you know, 50 plus years in aviation, but the, it's still safe to fly. We are overdue as a country in modernizing, and when I say modernizing our air traffic control system, think of going from analog of passing pieces of paper around in an air traffic control center or a control tower to totally digitized capability where you're, your controllers are, their workload is decreased, their, their situational awareness on whether they're controlling traffic on the ground, traffic on approaching departure, traffic, you know, going across the skies at 35,000 feet. We as the United States government are overdue in bringing that air traffic in the drill world into the 21st century digital area. That's one place where the government could should must and needs to spend money to advance that, but quite honestly, it was held back by, by, uh, uh, governmental bureaucracy. And we presume the shutdown will end in the house. 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