8/18/25 Blog: Guy Benson Joins Me To Chat Freedom

GUY BENSON IS A SMARTY PANTS And he's one of the many fantastic speakers at this year's Freedom Conference put together by the Steamboat Institute. This event is SPECTACULAR and if you can swing it you should go. Find the complete list of speakers here. Buy your tickets for the event in Beaver Creek here.

IF YOU'RE A DISABLED VET You need to know about the next event with the Disabled American Veterans. Jerry Squyers and Brittany Costa are on today at 1 to talk about the next event in Lakewood August 23rd where they can help you apply for benefits or change your disability rating. The event is from 10:00 a.m to 2:00 p.m. at their Lakewood office at 1480 Hoyt Street, Lakewood, CO 80215 and if please spread the word! Find out more about DAV by clicking here.

OUR BUSTED BUDGET IS NOT TRUMP'S FAULT And Michael Fields at Advance Colorado did a banger of a column here reminding us of all the ways the Democrats have squandered a massive surplus, grown the budget by 50% in five years, and otherwise mismanaged the state. We're doing to do a deep dive on it today.

AND THEY ARE COMING FOR TABOR And House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese writes here about how much the Democrats hate TABOR because it reins in their power. There is no doubt they won't rest until TABOR is done. Elections have consequences.

MARCO RUBIO KILLED IT ON THE SUNDAY SHOWS YESTERDAY And I realize that Margaret Brennan is tryingt to get a scoop, but he made her look really stupid yesterday when talking about Friday's summit between Trump and Putin. Watch this.

But he wasn't done there, he went on This Week on ABC and shut down this idiotic line of questioning.

And there there was Meet the Press.

He may be one of the best Secretary of State's of my lifetime. Zelensky will be at the White House with a bunch of other world leaders today to see if we can get this thing done. No chance they are getting Crimea back, as that ship sailed when they invaded in the Obama admin and Obama did nothing because he said Ukraine was cool with it. Zelensky said upon arriving in DC last night that "Russia has to end it" which is entirely accurate.

HOW MANY OF THESE PEOPLE GOT FREE STUFF FROM DENVER? In Mayor Mike Johnston's zeal to show how "welcoming" he was he gave out tens of millions of dollars in aid to people who came here from Venezuela. I'm wondering if any of that money was used to set up the drug ring that was recently busted? Just curious. And oh look, it appears they took over an apartment complex to do so. Weird.

XCEL IS ASKING FOR ANOTHER 10% And they got a whole bunch of Mayors to say we must do this. Of course we need to do this, but one must wonder if utilities were subject to the free market would this have already been done? I realize that the nature of utilities makes it far more difficult to make it purely free market, but if another company is dealing with an aging infrastructure they just have to fix it. If there is competition they can't just soak the consumer. This seems like a solvable problem to me. This part of the story made me laugh though:

The modernization of Xcel’s infrastructure will help prepare for increased energy needs, which have been fueled by the growing popularity of electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, distributed storage and rooftop solar. Xcel Energy anticipates over 400,000 electric vehicles will be driven in Colorado by 2029.

"Growing popularity" like it isn't just because of rebates and government edicts. Heh.

DID YOU GET LAID OFF FROM THE CITY OF DENVER? I'd love to talk to you if you did. Email me at mandyconnell@iheartmedia.com as I have some questions. Notices are going out this entire week, which I think is cruel. Just let everyone know at once so the workforce doesn't feel the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Even the City Council doesn't know who is going to make the cut.

WANT TO FEEL SAFE WHILE YOU TRAVEL? Here is a list of countries that have been deemed the "safest" and so many of them are so lovely!

WHY DOES COLORADO HATE TECH? And I'm talking about the Legislature, as is Jon Caldara in this column on the subject. Colorado just passed another well intentioned ridiculously vague restriction on AI and our Governor totally caved and signed it even as he essentially called it garbage. They also passed a new law requiring social media companies to slap pop up warnings when kids under 18 log into social media and now social media companies are suing. I'm not sure how Phil Weiser is going to defend all these suits when he's so busy suing Trump over and over again but we'll see.

THE DC CRIME TRAP OF THEIR OWN CREATION My pal David Strom has a great column here about how the Democrat's reflexive hatred of anything Trump does has them on the side of criminals once again. But not all of them are rushing blindly into oblivion, some are starting to realize that they keep putting themselves on the wrong side of all the polling data about stuff, including the geniuses on MSNBC. Read it all here.

FUN FROM THE IMAM I've been seeing more and more of these videos from mosques in the United States and I kind of think it's important to know what is being taught here. I am 100% for religious freedom, to be clear. But let's not be surprised if something bad happens from one of the young men soaking this up.

ZOD IS DEAD A wonderful actor in Terrence Stamp has passed away. He did so many amazing roles, but none bigger than that of General Zod in Superman. Read more here.

HOSPICE WORK CHANGES AN ATHEIST'S HEART This story is so good. In it, a man self described as an atheist, explains how watching people die, and more importantly, seeing them right before they die, gave him a new perspective. Read it here, it's fascinating.

SOCIALISM FAILS AGAIN! This time in Bolivia where two decades of socialism have already come to their foregone conclusion: they ran out of other people's money. Eva Morales was the first indigenous leader elected in 2005 and he immediately began spending money. From the article:

But much like his leftist Latin American contemporaries at the start of this century, government spending under Morales depended on an influx of cash from the global commodities boom. Everything changed after prices for Bolivia’s main export, natural gas, plummeted. Gas exports declined, imports rose and the central bank began running out of dollars. Bolivia, which once supplied half of its own diesel fuel, produced only 12 percent by 2023.

In recent months, Bolivians have been forced to sleep in their cars to wait to fill their tanks amid widespread fuel shortages. Inflation, which until 2023 was controlled at 2 percent, was more than 16 percent in July. Those who depend on government-subsidized food products have had to form long lines to buy bread.

“We’re bankrupt, there are no jobs here, everything is more expensive and the money is never enough,” said Julia Ayala Casa, as she voted for Paz in southern La Paz in a traditional pollera skirt worn by Indigenous Aymara and Quechua women here. “We have to get in line just to buy oil. There’s a line for everything.”

But I'm sure it will work in New York when Mamdani does it. I'm sure. Now a centrist and a right leaner are headed to the General Election and hopefully Bolivia can be brought back from the brink more quickly than Venezuela.

TEEN VAPING LEVELS EQUAL TEEN SMOKING LEVELS IN THE 70S And this is not good news, as some studies seem to show that vaping DOES lead teens to smoking cigarettes which we have been unable to shame out of existence. This article is from the UK where smoking rates have remained higher than here for some time, but I'm sure it holds true here as well. My daughter says when she goes to the bathroom at her high school there are always kids in their vaping. We've known forever that cigarette companies target children as the next generation of consumers to get hooked, so this isn't surprising at all.

NOW A CIGARETTE TAKES 20 MINUTES OFF YOUR LIFE Back when I was a stupid smoker (stupid because I knew it was bad and expensive but I did it anyway) we used to joke that when we went to smoke we were taking 11 minutes off our lives. Now that number has been upped to 20 minutes, but it's not at the end of your life. It takes minutes off your healthspan, which is much more important than lifespan. Read it here.

STOP ASKING KIDS IF THEY ARE DEPRESSED OH MY GOODNESS so much this. Focusing on mental health ALL THE TIME is not good for mental health. We have the most mental health focused generation ever and they are anxious and depressed at record rates. It's horrible Abigail Shrier is sounding the alarm again about new mental health screenings for ALL KIDS every year in Illinois. She's right when she says it's enough. It's more than enough.

CAN WE ROLL BACK AGING? This is so cool. Now mitochondria are being injected with stem cells into people with the hopes that they can reverse the ravages of aging and aging related diseases. It's still a long way off but by the time I'm old hopefully it will be ready for prime time.

AROD GOT TO DO THE COOLEST THING

THE THREE INVITE RULE IS A SOLID ONE With caveats. I always say something like "I can't make it this time but please think of me in the future" to let someone know I'd love to do something, but can't do this. Watch below or click here.

HE JUST SEEMS GROUCHY Watch below or click here.

THIS IS WHY I HAVE THE INTERNET Back in my day we had to make our parents sit on the couch and watch performances like this, and now you can share it with the whole world. Watch below or click here.

HAVE YOU SEEN KPOP DEMON HUNTERS? I have and it's very good, as I mentioned on the show recently, but not nearly as obsessed as this woman. Watch below or click here. One of the songs is now #1 on the Billboard Top 100. This is a great review of the movie and why you should watch it. And you should, it's very entertaining although the first ten minutes are pretty vapid.

GERRYMANDERING IS ONLY BAD WHEN REPUBLICANS DO IT Have you seen this?

And now Larry Elder has done a quick reminder of what former President Barack Obama thought about gerrymandering back when HE did it to win a seat. Gerrymandering is bad but it is up to the states to pass their own laws about it. But the crocodile tears from the Democrats now are just laughable.