August 1, 2022 • 38 mins
Steve Gregory comes on the show to talk about the 6th Street bridge madness. The leader of Al-Qaeda has been killed in a drone strike by the United States. More on Garcetti still not being in India. LAUSD is going healthy!
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Episode Transcript
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Please play responsible. He must be eighteen years older to
purchase player final. John's got a vacation week. I'm here
with my news presenter, Deborah Mark. He'll be updated every
fifteen minutes with whatever. Here's a quote for you. It's
from Kevin de Leone, Los Angeles City councilman who ran
from mayor and failed, who tried to recite the pledge
of allegiance and failed. He's bemoaning the rude, inexcusable, immature,
(01:11):
self absorbed behavior that has forced multiple closures of the
downtown Los Angeles sixth Street Bridge. He says people need
to act more mature. Apparently Friday afternoon, he spoke to reporters,
We're not going to allow a small group of individuals
to taint the image of the city or the bridge itself,
(01:33):
saying that nine of the folks who've experienced that bridge
loved that bridge. It fills them with a sense of pride.
They're over the moon on that bridge right there. Let's
bring on Steve Gregory to talk about what LAPD has
discovered and what they might be doing to try to
clamp down on this behavior. Steve, Yeah, Hey, Ken, you know,
(01:54):
it's funny listening to talk about daileone's comments from last week.
It's not a single group of people, this is multiple
groups of people. And he was trying to make a
point of saying that these are outsiders coming in causing
this run. Yeah. I keep hearing that one outsiders. Yeah,
and it doesn't I mean, it doesn't really matter at
this point. I mean, their driver licenses say California, and
(02:17):
they say to Los Angeles. It doesn't really matter if
they're from one side of the bridge or the other
side of the bridge. The issue is people are causing
problems on this Sixth Street bridge, which connects Boiled Heights
to downtown Los Angeles. And it opened and reopened, as
everyone might know, in the beginning of July after a
five hundred eighty eight million dollar retro fit and remodel.
(02:40):
Now the problem has been and it was something to
completely caught LAPD off guard, and that was these people,
these vehicle takeovers and then these bizarre acts of like
cutting someone's hair in the middle of the where the
median would be, people standing up on the very top
of the arches, just all kinds of odd behavior and
(03:01):
it was a lot of it precipitated by in his
daily and also mentioned that this is the first time
a bridge is opened in the social media era as
of somehow that you know, we have to blame social media,
but you know how people are, and they see somebody
posting pictures of themselves up there, and someone's got to
top that, want or do that, you know, do something
(03:21):
one better. But a lot of people are going out
there imposing for pictures. It's now become this and it
used to be an iconic landmark for people to make
movies and TV shows and you know, it was an actual,
you know, an artery into downtown LA. Now it's just
turned into this sort of I don't know, this sort
of iconic place to go wreak havoc. Going all the
(03:41):
way back to July twenty second, when the bridge was
first closed after it had opened, and it had to
literally close it down because there were too many takeovers,
too much criminal behavior protests on the bridge. They had,
they had issues with people climbing up the sides of
the bridge, they had all kinds of stuff. They would
have to close it down, which was completely unexpected. The
(04:04):
LAPD now is having to put together of these task
forces Operations Central Bureau along with Holembic Division are having
to put these traffic enforcement programs together. One of the
first big ones happened yesterday from two pm to ten
pm and in just that eight hour period, just in
an eight hour period, fifty six traffic stops on the bridge,
(04:27):
forty four citations issued, eleven warnings issued, four vehicles impounded,
one arrested for having an ATV on the bridge and
one arrested for another vehicle violation. Then they had to
shut down the bridge for at least twenty minutes because
a group of bicyclists and skateboarders overran the bridge and
(04:47):
it got out of control and the cops had to
close the bridge on both sides until those groups got
over to the other side. So that's what's going on. Well,
two to ten pm. They did this yesterday. Now, they
were clearly a presence there. They could they could be
seen the police on the bridge. But these people came
anywhere to do their stunts, to have their stupid fun
and to make their videos. They came anyway to do
(05:08):
this stuff too. I'm looking at a report here that
removal crews have cleaned up an average of one thousand,
two hundred and forty four square feet of graffiti. Yeah,
each day since the bridge opened. They're spending an an
average of twenty one and a half hours a day
at the bridge. It's almost a complete day, to the
tune of a little over seven hundred thousand dollars in
(05:30):
costs to remove that graffiti. And this is money that
was not budgeted for that, And this is something it
wasn't even open a month and they're having to deal
with this. I heard talk the other day. I heard
some of the cops saying that there had been the
term toll bridge being bandied about. I'm not sure if
that's oh yeah, codfruition or not, but that was something
(05:51):
that was being discussed. Perhaps they might be shutting it
down at certain times of the night, certain times of
the day, whatever the case is. But they're reaching a
point now where and here's the big problem, ken, is
that the LAPD does not have the resources to be
assigning a bridge task force. Yeah, not at all. There's
enough crime in this Yeah, they they can't have somebody
just standing around a bridge all day. That's ridiculous. In
(06:13):
in in shifts, you know, in revolving shifts. They can't
afford the manpower to be standing over their watch and
make sure people aren't you know, doing Can't they get
some ambassadors, some bridge ambassadors. Maybe Metro can lend them
some of theirs. Yes, that's exactly right, you know, that's
a good idea. I'm not really sure. The problem is
is that some of these things have turned violent, like
(06:34):
these protests and unruly crowds, so when LAPD tried to
shut it down at one time, or they did successfully
shut it down, they received so much pushback from people
saying that this was racist and that you know, the
LAPD shutting it down was stopping you know, a certain
class of people from being able to access downtown Los Angeles,
and LAPD's like, this is a safety issue, This is
(06:57):
not a racist issue. Plus, we want to make sure
the bridge stays where it is. It's if it's full
of graffiti and people doing all sorts of stunts on it,
something terrible is about to happen. People climbing up those archways,
somebody's going to fall off. The two largest groups right now,
they're most concerned with other these vehicle takeovers, which you know,
obviously full sized vehicles going up there's doing wheels and
(07:18):
driving on the opposite side of the lanes. That's the
number one concern right now. Safety concern, followed by groups
of bicyclists and one of them, you know, on July
twenty sixth, one of the bicyclists had shined a laser
pointer into an officer's eye, causing some damage. Offered anything
to a hospital, and then they've got you know, they're
(07:38):
trying to put these ballards up, these speed bumps and
all this stuff is not going to stop criminal behavior.
It's just a matter of what level and what severity
of criminal behavior will be allowed. Some of the things
I'm hearing is, and you probably saw the Late Times editorial,
they want to shut it down to cars. They think
it should be a pedestrian only bridge. Anybody throwing that idea, Um, well,
(08:01):
and they've talked about that as well. I mean, but
then that can that completely defeats the purpose of the
five hundred eighty eight million dollar investment in that bridge.
And it's for people to walk up right. It was
funny exactly if it was just going to be a
pedestrian bridge, they probably could have saved a lot of money.
But I don't think people realize this was going to happen.
I don't think anyone expected this behavior on a bridge,
(08:21):
no less so now it's been about three weeks since
it opened, it they think this is gonna peter out,
that people are gonna get tired of doing this, and
I know it's not the same people, but eventually will
exhaust the supply of idiots that wants to come and
do something on the bridge. That could happen in a
month or two until the next big shiny thing comes along,
you know, and LAPD is they're going to have to
put a full court press on this, and they will.
(08:43):
They'll eventually crack down hard enough to where it'll be
the deterrent, and then what will happen most likely is
it does in other cases. It's the same thing with
these takeovers that happened in the San Fernando Valley. You know,
they'll they'll be they'll be quiet for a couple of weeks,
you won't hear anything about it, and then things will
die down off there, will be redeployed in other areas.
Then boom, out of nowhere, they'll resurface. And that's the
(09:05):
thing they're going to have to contend with unless there's
a way to put some sort of deterrent or some
sort of mechanical uh, something more permanent or semipermanent on
the bridge. Yeah, that's they say when they were laughing
about saying get told, but that you know that would
never fly because if if they had to pay the
people had to pay for boil hids to come over
to La downtown La and pay a toll that would
not fly. It reminds me of remember sometimes when clubs
(09:27):
get the wrong riff raff coming in, so they start
to charge yeah, fee to come into the club. Yeah,
it's the same thing the riff raff off the bridge.
We charge a toll. Maybe they will try to get
on the bridge. Well, or if you're gonna do it
like the club, then you say, ladies are free till ten.
Right where you come up with some other crazy guys
are free till ten. I don't remember how it is,
you know, guys get in free till ten. I don't
remember how co Did anybody say that this weekend was
(09:49):
better or worse than the previous couple of weekends? Is
it starting to slow down? Or I know they did
that big enforcement operation yesterday and they still ended a
lot of tickets. Yeah. I mean you kind of think
if you look back here and looking at the timeline
line of all the different things that happened, Yeah, there
you've had issues worth people. Ambulance had to be called
in two instances the vehicle takeovers. Two handguns that were
(10:11):
recovered as a part of one of these takeovers. That
was on July twenty third to eleven o'clock at night.
Let's see group of trucks. This one caught me off guard.
On the twenty fourth, at six pm, a large group
of trucks showed up on the bridge, impeding traffic, and
they were setting up for a street takeover, and then
the cops had to end up shutting down the bridge.
Another vaccine protesting. What was that about. The trucks are
(10:34):
back the trucks, yeah, the Semis eighteen wheelers. And then
now the other thing too that they were worried about
is that the bridge was becoming sort of a focal
point of people protesting other things like the abortion rights
issue and those kinds of things. So yeah, you wonder
when that's going to happen. I mean, they showed up
at the museum of the LA Museum of Art the
other day. They're stupid anti abortion by pro abortion protesting.
(10:54):
It's not right. Won't be very long before they show
up on the bridge to do these kind of things.
All right, Steve, thank you very much. Take care. It's
Steve Gregory with a full report about what LAPD is
trying to do about the downtown Los Angeles sixth Street bridge,
which opened up just a few weeks ago and continues
to be a place full of questionable behavior. When I
(11:14):
come back, I'll talk a bit more about this, because
none other than the El Segundo time sent a couple
of writers to talk to people who believe that there's
probably nothing wrong with this. It's our bridge, it's our neighborhood.
More coming up here on the John and Ken Show
on KFI, as you've been hearing, and we will have
Joe Biden taken over KFI around four thirty. He's going
(11:36):
to do it from the balcony of one of the
rooms in the White House because he's tested positive for
COVID again. You probably heard that story over the weekend.
Joe apparently had taken that medication packs Loavid, and as
we heard, in some cases not all after you stop
taking the medication, you can end up testing positive for
COVID again because it's not completely out of your body,
(11:59):
the viral level still high enough to be detected in
a test. So he's isolating, but he's going to appear
before the American people at four thirty to announce this
that they have once again killed the leader of al Qaeda.
Remember that strike. It was May of twenty eleven when
(12:20):
Osama bin Laden was taken out through a military operation.
The announcement today is that his successor, his name is
Ayman al Zawahiri, was killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan.
That's what Biden's going to talk about, because obviously it's
if it's true, it's a victory lap And the reason
(12:41):
I said again is not because we've killed the leader
of al Qaeda twice, that being been Laden and alzur HEII.
They thought that Darhiri was already dead, but he showed
up in a video in the eleventh anniversary of Osama
bin Laden's death, which apparently was just a couple of
months ago, so then they weren't sure though. You know,
(13:04):
with these videos, they could be new, they could be old. Apparently, Biden,
when we pulled out of Afghanistan last year it was
August thirty first to twenty twenty one, he said that
al Qaida was gone. But many believed now that the
Taliban was running Afghanistan, that some of these terrorist organizations
(13:27):
could revive themselves and become stronger again. And maybe that's
the reason that there was a planned mission to take
out this leader, because maybe they thought al Qaida might
get stronger again with Afghanistan being run by the Taliban.
Biden said last year, what interest do we have in
Afghanistan at this point with al Qaida gone? We went
(13:47):
to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of
al Qaida in Afghanistan as well as well as well
as getting Osama bin Laden, and we did. But there
was a warning from the military last September the horror
groups like al Qaeda can grow much faster because of
the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. So around four thirty KFI
will carry Biden's remarks at some sort of press conference
(14:11):
to announce a drone strike that has taken out I'm
on al Zarhiri Zawahiri? Who is And if you've ever
seen this guy's pictures have been around for years. He's
shown many times posing with Bin Laden. He's got the
long beard. I think they used to call him doct
or something. I remember hearing his name back in the
days of nine to eleven, but I may be wrong,
(14:34):
and maybe not the first time they thought they took
him out, So maybe this time for certain. We'll find
out more. In about an hour here on KFI, we're
talking about the downtown Los Angeles six Street Bridge, or
as they call it, the sixth Street Viaduct, which opened
a few weeks ago in July, and ever since then,
(14:54):
particularly on weekends, it's been the scene of takeovers, cars
do when donuts, people doing stunts, making videos, and of course,
really the worst of all is the graffiti, which has
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up. Already
the bridge is probably already looking disgusting. If you look
at the overhead shot, you can see where all the
(15:15):
donuts had made, all the skid marks on the roadway
there the archers look nice. Imagine it's a nice looking bridge,
but it's a bridge. So here's what I'm trying to
tell you. The fact that you know, the Times did
this story. What day was it was last Thursday? It's
our bridge. A night of selfies, modelos, cops, dogs and
(15:36):
a cat on the six Street Viaduct. The point that's
being made by the two writers here for the El
Segundo Times is that people consider the bridge an extension
of their neighborhood. So to them, it's like a park.
It's a place where they want to go and hang out,
and like every place else, there's going to be people
doing crazy things, right, you know, it'll go all the
(15:58):
way from just people partyings, smoking pot and drinking beer
to people doing donuts and people trying to do stunts
on the bridge. But I look at this and I
think people really don't have enough to do. I realize
that we're in the social media era where people love
the idea of trying to put a video on social
(16:19):
media and getting a lot of likes and isn't that cool?
And would you like to one up me? But it
goes beyond that because not everybody's on this bridge making videos.
It's just like sad that people would gravitate to a bridge.
I know it's new, it's a novelty. It's like the
new restaurant that opens in town. Everybody wants to go
to see what it is because it's it's this new gift,
(16:43):
this new shiny thing. But the story in the Elsa
Gondo Times just talks about these people and we're connecting.
Oh yeah, they talked to a a drummer. He goes
up there and beats the drums. I'm connecting with something,
the stars, the elements, the music gods, the drums from Africa.
He's an amateur drummer by the name of Jeff Jackson.
(17:07):
He says, I'm not into the audience part because then
you lose the intent. If they like it, cool, but
it's more about your own experience. I don't need attention.
I just want to play for the bridge Hotly mackerel.
That's really bizarre and sad that a freaking bridge as
god people, What I'm thinking is that they just don't
(17:28):
have enough in their lives to keep them busy. I mean,
you know, even go out and go for a run,
or go for a bike ride somewhere else, or you know,
go hit a golf ball, or go shoot a basketball,
go do something with your friends, go read a book.
You have to all pile up on the bridge to
(17:48):
be seen and to make a spectacle of everything. I honestly,
I don't understand this kind of personality. All Right, We
got more coming up here on the John and Ken
Show on KF Big Story this afternoon, and we're going
to hear more about it in about an hour from
Old Joe himself from the balcony at the White House,
the Blue Balcony. I think it's called because he's in isolation.
(18:11):
It's got the rebound case of COVID nineteen. Yes, the
Blue Room balcony of the White House at about seven
thirty pm Eastern, four thirty hard time. That apparently a
military operation, the US air strike has taken out the
current al Qaida leader. Well, it's really only the second
one took over for Bin Laden. I'm on al Zawahiri.
(18:31):
It happened in Afghanistan over the weekend. So I don't
know what's left of al Qaida or how effective they are,
but I guess the theory was we better rub them
out or rub their leader out before they start to
get stronger again in a country that is run by
the Taliban. So we'll hear more about that from Joe
after four o'clock. That horrible fire up in northern California
(18:53):
southern Oregon. It is the largest wildfire so far in
twenty twenty two, affecting California residence. Alex Stone has the
details on that and other fires affecting the Western States
coming up at four o'clock. Deborah Mark. Apparently the dog
adoption at Dodger Stadium was a hit. I know, isn't
(19:17):
that awesome? Nearly a hundred dogs found homes Dodger Stadium
was opened for a few hours on Saturday for people
to come and take home. But dog Now, it wasn't free.
It cost fifty dollars and you did have to have
them spade or neutered and all the other rules that
come with that. But it was the first ever pet
(19:39):
adoption event at Dodger Stadium. They're calling it a big success,
a hundred dogs. So there you go. I'm so happy
to hear that that's one hundred down at about ten.
I know, what do you think the number of unclaimed
dogs is in La County? Have any idea what that
would be. I don't know how many of the shelters hold.
I was watching I was watching the Saturday morning news
(20:01):
and they have a feature where they have a dog
that they want somebody to adopt. And the woman was
standing there with this big black dog, and that's what
they were saying, because he was big. People don't want
to take the big dogs. I love big dogs. I
just don't have a yard for a big dog. But
I think the dog big dog, no because I don't
have a yard for it. But if I did have
a big yard, I'd love to have a big dog.
(20:23):
All right. Now, this update and this was fantastic news
over the weekend. For those of you who listen to
the show for any amount of time, you know that
one after another, we've had the worst mayors in Los Angeles.
I mean, you have to go back many years to
find anybody that was competent enough to run the city
of la and fix the problems. They just get worse
(20:45):
one after another. Richard Reardon, of course, was the mayor
from nineteen ninety three to two thousand and one, and
it looked like we had come a long way. It
was also that period of the nineties where crime was
out of control, particularly gang crime, and thanks to laws
passed in the state of California, things began to recede.
By the time Richard Reardon finished his term in office,
(21:08):
he was followed by a dud named James Hahn, then
Tony Vlaar, and now the man that has been mayor
for nine freaking years, Eric Garcetti. We're supposed to say
goodbye to him, and we will. There will be a
new mayor elected in November, but we're supposed to say
goodbye to him from the City of LA as he
takes off for his new job as ambassador to India.
(21:32):
But as you know if you've been following the saga,
he has not been confirmed by the US Senate. He
got passed a committee, but the full Senate has not
voted on his nomination yet, so he's stuck in limbo. Well,
the update from the El Segundo Times and something they
call la on the record, Dakota Smith and Ben Orescues
(21:53):
did an update on the Garcetti story, and it's quite revealing.
Apparently the Senate is going to go on recess next week.
They do come back in September, but they probably have
very much a lot of big things to deal with.
You've probably been hearing about this big climate bill that
Biden finally got Senator Joe Mansion on board with. That
(22:14):
includes tax hikes and corporations and the wealthy, and it's
supposedly a big victory from the Biden administration. So they're
gonna be focusing on that. And the thinking is that
the Senate majority leader for the Democrats, Chuck Schumer, will
he take up the vote next week or will he
wait until they come back in September. It says here
(22:38):
that Schumer is less likely to schedule controversial votes and
not ones where an I from every Democrat isn't assured.
So here's the stunner in the story. We've told you
that Garcetti has been going to Washington, DC to lobby
for his ambassador's position because it's definitely in doubt, and
(23:00):
it looks like he's been visiting Republicans. He's trying to
find anybody that would support him. But there's a report
that during his trip last week, he attended the Congressional
Hispanic Caucus's business meeting was the group put out a statement.
The statement noted its full support for Garcetti for the
post to India and included a photo showing the mayor
(23:24):
smiling alongside the group's chairman, who was Congressman Raoul Ruiz
from Coachella. The Hispanic Caucus is largely comprised of lawmakers
in the House, so they have no formal role in
the Senate confirmed positions such as the ambassadorship, so that
was merely for show. Who knows why, or maybe Garcetti
just thought this is a good thing for me to
(23:44):
do because I am going to run for president again someday. Yeah, right, Anyway,
A Congressman from Santa Barbara Salute Carbajal did not attend
the meeting, but told The Times he briefly bumped into
Garca Seti at a social event last week. In addition
to Garcetti talking about his work for La Carba, Hall recalled,
(24:07):
we chatted about his confirmation. What that's looking like, and
by all accounts, I think there seems to be a
positive path forward for the most part. In recent weeks,
the mayor has been spotted by reporters at the White
House and trapsing around the Capital complex, and it does
sound like Garcetti trapsing around like tiptoe through the tulips.
(24:28):
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced Garcetti's nomination in January,
and then The Times reported in May, but several Democrats
are hesitant over backing Garcetti, suggesting by partisans support would
be necessary to get his nomination across the finish line.
You all know by now that this deals with Garcetti's
(24:49):
former top aid, a man by the name of Rick Jacobs,
who was accused of sexually harassing employees in the Mayor's
office and also including his lapd bodyguard, which is a
subject of a lawsuit. Garsetti's involved because he's denied having
any knowledge of this or seeing any of this, and
there are a number of aids to the mayor's office.
(25:09):
Most of the former aids now because you're not going
to stay round long if you don't tow the line
with Garsetti. But a number of them have said that
he indeed saw what was happening, knew what was happening.
So Senator Tim Caine, Democrat Virginia, remember him, Hillary Clinton's
running mate, told The Times on Wednesday that there's an
(25:31):
effort to appeal to Republicans who could support Garcetti on
the Senate floor. He then added, though I've got nothing
to report on the status of the nomination. The mayor
declined to say which Republicans he was courting, saying I
have been open and excited to talk to all, whether
they're Democrat or Republican senators. When The Times reported Dakota
(25:52):
Smith asked whether it was now or never for his nomination,
Garcetti gave the usual response, I'm just focused right now
being mayor. That's my job. The meetings I took, I
wasn't in DC on this issue. I took three different meetings,
he said, about transportation, COVID nineteen and the summit of
(26:12):
the Americas. When the reporter pointed out that will you
all summed up with the Hispanic Caucus and said you're
not being truthful, Garcetti walked away. Look at that. That's
a big deal for the Elsagondo Times to report that
that Garcetti basically lied. He didn't include all the meetings
that he took, and who knows the Hispanic Caucus he
(26:33):
was probably trying, even though they're in the house. He
was probably trying to see if they could help him
get through to some senators to get his nomination passed.
The mayor was seen last week with Brilin Pete. That's
the lobbyists hired by Garcetti's parents, Suki and gil Garcetti,
to advocate for his nomination. The lobbying firm where she
(26:53):
works reported thirty thousand dollars an income during the second
quarter tied to Garcetti's parents. So now we know in
just one quarter how much money they have spent. These
two people are elderly, they're retired. What is Gilgarcetti still
just doing photographs? Is he selling them? Does he have
a big pension? They put up thirty thousand dollars to
(27:15):
try to get his son to be ambassador to India.
The firm did lobby the White House, the Senate, and
the House, according to the firm's filings. The League of
Conservation Voters also reported that it lobbied for Garcetti's India
post in the second quarter. So that's two groups that
are lobbying for Garcetti to get to India. Now here's
(27:37):
an interesting stat Right now, ninety five of Biden's ambassador
nominees have been confirmed. Garcetti is one of thirty four
nominations still being stuck, according to something called the Partnership
for Public Service. So that's a sizeable percentage of ambassador
nominees have been confirmed. Garcetti's on a smaller list of
(27:58):
those who are at uck. If it doesn't happen by
the time they take recess next week, they'll be gone
till after Labor Day, and by then they'll be thinking
about the coming elections. They'll be thinking about getting some
bills passed. It's very possible that Garciti goes bye bye,
(28:18):
and maybe somebody in the Biden administration decided, oh, the
India ambassadorship isn't that important that we can't push for
someone else right now, and tell GARCTI it's over, so,
you know, let him do this thing, let him lobby people.
Who knows, Maybe he'll he'll get lucky, all right, Moore
coming up here on the John and Ken Show on
kf I Am six forty well with Alex Stone, ABC
(28:41):
News for KFI, coming on the show at four oh
five to talk about this fire that is burning in
northern California, pretty much up there near the Oregon border,
Sisku County. It's consumed more than fifty five thousand acres.
It is California's largest fire. Why fire so far in
(29:02):
twenty twenty two, and the bad news two people were
found dead inside a burned out car. He'll have all
the details in this and other fires affecting the Northwest.
Coming up after the news at four o'clock at four thirty.
As we said, if you haven't heard, we're going to
(29:23):
have Joe Biden taken over the KFI airwaves to give
more details on this US military operation. Looks like it
was a drone strike that took out the leader of
al Qaeda. There's a throwback for you. Yes, the leader
of al Qaeda, that is Osama bin Laden's group. They're
(29:44):
still around you don't hear about him much anymore, and
then you don't hear much about Isis either, But these
terrorist groups still exist. His name is Ayman al Zahiri,
and he was killed in a CIA drone strike over
the weekend. So Joe, who's still isolating due to another
positive COVID test, what they call COVID rebound, after he
(30:06):
took medication to treat it, we'll still be speaking from
the Blue Room balcony, and we'll have that way on
KFI whenever it starts sometime around four thirty. Let's getting
late for Joe, so I imagine he'll be quick to
get out there and wrap it up pretty quickly. I
move over to the vegan lady. This story I thought
(30:27):
of you, but I was a little bit confused by it.
Apparently the Los Angeles School District has decided to go healthy,
but when you actually read the story, it's hard to
figure out where that is. And then I started to
look at the details and I thought, Okay, now I
know why they're doing this. As you know, one of
(30:49):
the most dreaded things for kids who go to school
is to eat the school cafeteria meal. Personally never bothered me,
but you know, no offense. My mother wasn't the best cook,
so therefore I didn't I didn't find the food gormand,
but I never really objected to it, and I used
to eat it pretty much every day, whatever sludge they
(31:12):
were putting out. So when I saw the headline of
this story, it's like, well, what about smoothies, m berries?
Oh yeah, ramen? How healthy ramen is? It's pretty salty. Oh,
I get vegan ramen. It's delicious with kale noodles. Yeah,
but why wouldn't ram Ramen isn't vegan to begin with?
(31:34):
Or well, because it's it doesn't have chicken broth or
beef broth. Oh, they're right, they do put their base
or pork broth. Whatever I and I get, I get
it with coconut milk and uh sometimes kale noodles. It's
really yummy. You're missing out. But before I looked into
this story too long, turkey hamond cheese, clissants for breakfast,
(31:57):
Nashville Hot chicken tenders, honey biscuits, meatball sub sandwiches, and
I'm like, wait a minute, that's not healthy, not necessarily,
So I didn't really understand that. But then as you
read along. In the article you find out why, you know,
what kids were doing instead because they didn't like the
(32:18):
school meals, reaching into their backpacks and eating flaming hot cheetos.
They were pretty much just eating junk snack food, candy bars,
potato chips, tortilla chips. So the schools decided, well, if
(32:38):
we try to go too far in the other direction
and just give them vegan food, kale and oh god
of avocados, what they're doing instead is just trying to
give them something more substantive, and that would explain. I
guess the turkey, ham and cheese croissants because of croissant. Man.
I mean, that's a that's full of calories right there,
(33:01):
and I don't think it say it's full of butter.
You can get them vegan. I had one over the weekend.
Then it's not a croissant, Yes it is. No, what
makes a quissant special is the fact that the butter
makes it very tasty and it gets the right crunch
to it. Okay, ken, I will have to bring you
one of these days some vegan croissants that I'll know
the difference. I don't know if you would actually yeah,
(33:23):
you say that everybody every time, because you're gonna know
for sure if I bring you one. So it's your head.
The last time you gave me something vegan, it was
a chocolate chip cookie. It was a freaking hockey puck. No, okay,
I could not chew it. I had to sit here
and smash it with my hand before I could eat
a piece. It got stale while it was way. Your
mouth wasn't bad. No, you put it to work one day,
(33:44):
right from the supermarket. Okay, Well, there are others that
are that are very I'm saying the taste wasn't bad,
but it was hard, as I couldn't believe how hard
it was it was to break a part um. Here's
the usual statistics. Eighty percent of students in LA Unified
are from low income families, and as only the times
(34:06):
we've put it grapple with food insecurity parents, long work
schedules can be an additional challenge for preparing meals, let
alone healthful ones. So every day in LA Unified they
serve more than three hundred thousand breakfasts, two hundred and
eighty five thousand lunches, and seventy thousand early dinners. Man,
(34:27):
you think about that when I went to school, the
only thing there was was lunch, and nobody served breakfast,
and certainly there wasn't early dinners. What time is that
thirty when they get done at school? Wow? One hundred
and eighty million dollars a year. And we've talked before
about how they actually have giveaways where you can drive
through and pick up food. This is what happens when
(34:49):
you build the state that relies on basically low wage
illegal immigrant, unskilled labor. The families can't support themselves, so
you have to come up with programs to feed them,
take care of their basic needs. We drove out the
middle class. All we have left is the very very wealthy,
and the next tier down and then the bottom tier.
(35:11):
During thirteen months of pandemic food for school closures, LA
Unified offered yet is the grab and go food for takers.
But now what they're trying to figure out is it
a way to get kids to eat. They keep calling
them nutritious, healthy food options. Cinnamon rolls. You like cinnamon rolls,
(35:32):
I do, that's but that's not that's kind of junk food.
Cinnamon depends on your icing, and well, I don't think
in this article they're doing them vegan or gluten free
or any probably not Kung paut chicken. Yeah, that's high
in sodium, that's all right. Honey glaze, O, honey glaze
(35:55):
with brown rice and broccoli. Well, there you go. That
got a good review from what the students. But basically
they're still serving food that some people would consider unhealthy
because they were afraid if they went too far, and
they tried to give the kids yogurt and fruit and
(36:16):
stuff like that, and then too many vegetables that would
be rejected too. We talked about how in other school
districts around the country that a lot of that food
gets thrown out. Yeah, I mean I trying to find
that sweet middle between the junk food, the cheetos, and
something that gives them some kind of real nutrition, right,
because you can get protein from from chicken nuggets and
(36:38):
and oh, oh my gosh, black bean burgers, keene wash salad.
Oh that's the list. It said. They did try those
black bean burgers, keenewosh salad, vegetarian curry, and fresh pairs,
but fewer students ate those lunches, and they started reaching
into their backpacks for cans of soda and flame and
hot cheetos. I mean, look when I was a kid
(37:00):
and I didn't love that stuff either, or I didn't
love vegetables, and here I am. My diet consists mainly
of vegetables. I think you just have to be I
don't know, you have to be told about them, you
have to be exposed to them. So I don't know,
it takes a while to develop the taste for those
types of things. But I think when it's exactly right.
So when you're an eight year old or a nine
(37:21):
year old and you get start getting served that stuff,
it's too early. They're probably not going to take to it.
And then they're going to reach into their backpack and
they're gonna eat the cheetahs. They're thinking, all right, if
we put a croissant in front of them with ham
and cheese on it, and we put a sinapon, right,
so it's a little better marginal, all right. Coming up next,
I will be talking to Alex Stone, ABC News for
(37:42):
KFI about the big fire burning in northern California. John
at Kenshaw and KF I am six forty. Debra Mark
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jack bodies of one hundred and seventy five million play out,
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Please play responsible. He must be eighteen years older to
purchase player final. John's got a vacation week. I'm here
with my news presenter, Deborah Mark. He'll be updated every
fifteen minutes with whatever. Here's a quote for you. It's
from Kevin de Leone, Los Angeles City councilman who ran
from mayor and failed, who tried to recite the pledge
of allegiance and failed. He's bemoaning the rude, inexcusable, immature,
(01:11):
self absorbed behavior that has forced multiple closures of the
downtown Los Angeles sixth Street Bridge. He says people need
to act more mature. Apparently Friday afternoon, he spoke to reporters,
We're not going to allow a small group of individuals
to taint the image of the city or the bridge itself,
(01:33):
saying that nine of the folks who've experienced that bridge
loved that bridge. It fills them with a sense of pride.
They're over the moon on that bridge right there. Let's
bring on Steve Gregory to talk about what LAPD has
discovered and what they might be doing to try to
clamp down on this behavior. Steve, Yeah, Hey, Ken, you know,
(01:54):
it's funny listening to talk about daileone's comments from last week.
It's not a single group of people, this is multiple
groups of people. And he was trying to make a
point of saying that these are outsiders coming in causing
this run. Yeah. I keep hearing that one outsiders. Yeah,
and it doesn't I mean, it doesn't really matter at
this point. I mean, their driver licenses say California, and
(02:17):
they say to Los Angeles. It doesn't really matter if
they're from one side of the bridge or the other
side of the bridge. The issue is people are causing
problems on this Sixth Street bridge, which connects Boiled Heights
to downtown Los Angeles. And it opened and reopened, as
everyone might know, in the beginning of July after a
five hundred eighty eight million dollar retro fit and remodel.
(02:40):
Now the problem has been and it was something to
completely caught LAPD off guard, and that was these people,
these vehicle takeovers and then these bizarre acts of like
cutting someone's hair in the middle of the where the
median would be, people standing up on the very top
of the arches, just all kinds of odd behavior and
(03:01):
it was a lot of it precipitated by in his
daily and also mentioned that this is the first time
a bridge is opened in the social media era as
of somehow that you know, we have to blame social media,
but you know how people are, and they see somebody
posting pictures of themselves up there, and someone's got to
top that, want or do that, you know, do something
(03:21):
one better. But a lot of people are going out
there imposing for pictures. It's now become this and it
used to be an iconic landmark for people to make
movies and TV shows and you know, it was an actual,
you know, an artery into downtown LA. Now it's just
turned into this sort of I don't know, this sort
of iconic place to go wreak havoc. Going all the
(03:41):
way back to July twenty second, when the bridge was
first closed after it had opened, and it had to
literally close it down because there were too many takeovers,
too much criminal behavior protests on the bridge. They had,
they had issues with people climbing up the sides of
the bridge, they had all kinds of stuff. They would
have to close it down, which was completely unexpected. The
(04:04):
LAPD now is having to put together of these task
forces Operations Central Bureau along with Holembic Division are having
to put these traffic enforcement programs together. One of the
first big ones happened yesterday from two pm to ten
pm and in just that eight hour period, just in
an eight hour period, fifty six traffic stops on the bridge,
(04:27):
forty four citations issued, eleven warnings issued, four vehicles impounded,
one arrested for having an ATV on the bridge and
one arrested for another vehicle violation. Then they had to
shut down the bridge for at least twenty minutes because
a group of bicyclists and skateboarders overran the bridge and
(04:47):
it got out of control and the cops had to
close the bridge on both sides until those groups got
over to the other side. So that's what's going on. Well,
two to ten pm. They did this yesterday. Now, they
were clearly a presence there. They could they could be
seen the police on the bridge. But these people came
anywhere to do their stunts, to have their stupid fun
and to make their videos. They came anyway to do
(05:08):
this stuff too. I'm looking at a report here that
removal crews have cleaned up an average of one thousand,
two hundred and forty four square feet of graffiti. Yeah,
each day since the bridge opened. They're spending an an
average of twenty one and a half hours a day
at the bridge. It's almost a complete day, to the
tune of a little over seven hundred thousand dollars in
(05:30):
costs to remove that graffiti. And this is money that
was not budgeted for that, And this is something it
wasn't even open a month and they're having to deal
with this. I heard talk the other day. I heard
some of the cops saying that there had been the
term toll bridge being bandied about. I'm not sure if
that's oh yeah, codfruition or not, but that was something
(05:51):
that was being discussed. Perhaps they might be shutting it
down at certain times of the night, certain times of
the day, whatever the case is. But they're reaching a
point now where and here's the big problem, ken, is
that the LAPD does not have the resources to be
assigning a bridge task force. Yeah, not at all. There's
enough crime in this Yeah, they they can't have somebody
just standing around a bridge all day. That's ridiculous. In
(06:13):
in in shifts, you know, in revolving shifts. They can't
afford the manpower to be standing over their watch and
make sure people aren't you know, doing Can't they get
some ambassadors, some bridge ambassadors. Maybe Metro can lend them
some of theirs. Yes, that's exactly right, you know, that's
a good idea. I'm not really sure. The problem is
is that some of these things have turned violent, like
(06:34):
these protests and unruly crowds, so when LAPD tried to
shut it down at one time, or they did successfully
shut it down, they received so much pushback from people
saying that this was racist and that you know, the
LAPD shutting it down was stopping you know, a certain
class of people from being able to access downtown Los Angeles,
and LAPD's like, this is a safety issue, This is
(06:57):
not a racist issue. Plus, we want to make sure
the bridge stays where it is. It's if it's full
of graffiti and people doing all sorts of stunts on it,
something terrible is about to happen. People climbing up those archways,
somebody's going to fall off. The two largest groups right now,
they're most concerned with other these vehicle takeovers, which you know,
obviously full sized vehicles going up there's doing wheels and
(07:18):
driving on the opposite side of the lanes. That's the
number one concern right now. Safety concern, followed by groups
of bicyclists and one of them, you know, on July
twenty sixth, one of the bicyclists had shined a laser
pointer into an officer's eye, causing some damage. Offered anything
to a hospital, and then they've got you know, they're
(07:38):
trying to put these ballards up, these speed bumps and
all this stuff is not going to stop criminal behavior.
It's just a matter of what level and what severity
of criminal behavior will be allowed. Some of the things
I'm hearing is, and you probably saw the Late Times editorial,
they want to shut it down to cars. They think
it should be a pedestrian only bridge. Anybody throwing that idea, Um, well,
(08:01):
and they've talked about that as well. I mean, but
then that can that completely defeats the purpose of the
five hundred eighty eight million dollar investment in that bridge.
And it's for people to walk up right. It was
funny exactly if it was just going to be a
pedestrian bridge, they probably could have saved a lot of money.
But I don't think people realize this was going to happen.
I don't think anyone expected this behavior on a bridge,
(08:21):
no less so now it's been about three weeks since
it opened, it they think this is gonna peter out,
that people are gonna get tired of doing this, and
I know it's not the same people, but eventually will
exhaust the supply of idiots that wants to come and
do something on the bridge. That could happen in a
month or two until the next big shiny thing comes along,
you know, and LAPD is they're going to have to
put a full court press on this, and they will.
(08:43):
They'll eventually crack down hard enough to where it'll be
the deterrent, and then what will happen most likely is
it does in other cases. It's the same thing with
these takeovers that happened in the San Fernando Valley. You know,
they'll they'll be they'll be quiet for a couple of weeks,
you won't hear anything about it, and then things will
die down off there, will be redeployed in other areas.
Then boom, out of nowhere, they'll resurface. And that's the
(09:05):
thing they're going to have to contend with unless there's
a way to put some sort of deterrent or some
sort of mechanical uh, something more permanent or semipermanent on
the bridge. Yeah, that's they say when they were laughing
about saying get told, but that you know that would
never fly because if if they had to pay the
people had to pay for boil hids to come over
to La downtown La and pay a toll that would
not fly. It reminds me of remember sometimes when clubs
(09:27):
get the wrong riff raff coming in, so they start
to charge yeah, fee to come into the club. Yeah,
it's the same thing the riff raff off the bridge.
We charge a toll. Maybe they will try to get
on the bridge. Well, or if you're gonna do it
like the club, then you say, ladies are free till ten.
Right where you come up with some other crazy guys
are free till ten. I don't remember how it is,
you know, guys get in free till ten. I don't
remember how co Did anybody say that this weekend was
(09:49):
better or worse than the previous couple of weekends? Is
it starting to slow down? Or I know they did
that big enforcement operation yesterday and they still ended a
lot of tickets. Yeah. I mean you kind of think
if you look back here and looking at the timeline
line of all the different things that happened, Yeah, there
you've had issues worth people. Ambulance had to be called
in two instances the vehicle takeovers. Two handguns that were
(10:11):
recovered as a part of one of these takeovers. That
was on July twenty third to eleven o'clock at night.
Let's see group of trucks. This one caught me off guard.
On the twenty fourth, at six pm, a large group
of trucks showed up on the bridge, impeding traffic, and
they were setting up for a street takeover, and then
the cops had to end up shutting down the bridge.
Another vaccine protesting. What was that about. The trucks are
(10:34):
back the trucks, yeah, the Semis eighteen wheelers. And then
now the other thing too that they were worried about
is that the bridge was becoming sort of a focal
point of people protesting other things like the abortion rights
issue and those kinds of things. So yeah, you wonder
when that's going to happen. I mean, they showed up
at the museum of the LA Museum of Art the
other day. They're stupid anti abortion by pro abortion protesting.
(10:54):
It's not right. Won't be very long before they show
up on the bridge to do these kind of things.
All right, Steve, thank you very much. Take care. It's
Steve Gregory with a full report about what LAPD is
trying to do about the downtown Los Angeles sixth Street bridge,
which opened up just a few weeks ago and continues
to be a place full of questionable behavior. When I
(11:14):
come back, I'll talk a bit more about this, because
none other than the El Segundo time sent a couple
of writers to talk to people who believe that there's
probably nothing wrong with this. It's our bridge, it's our neighborhood.
More coming up here on the John and Ken Show
on KFI, as you've been hearing, and we will have
Joe Biden taken over KFI around four thirty. He's going
(11:36):
to do it from the balcony of one of the
rooms in the White House because he's tested positive for
COVID again. You probably heard that story over the weekend.
Joe apparently had taken that medication packs Loavid, and as
we heard, in some cases not all after you stop
taking the medication, you can end up testing positive for
COVID again because it's not completely out of your body,
(11:59):
the viral level still high enough to be detected in
a test. So he's isolating, but he's going to appear
before the American people at four thirty to announce this
that they have once again killed the leader of al Qaeda.
Remember that strike. It was May of twenty eleven when
(12:20):
Osama bin Laden was taken out through a military operation.
The announcement today is that his successor, his name is
Ayman al Zawahiri, was killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan.
That's what Biden's going to talk about, because obviously it's
if it's true, it's a victory lap And the reason
(12:41):
I said again is not because we've killed the leader
of al Qaeda twice, that being been Laden and alzur HEII.
They thought that Darhiri was already dead, but he showed
up in a video in the eleventh anniversary of Osama
bin Laden's death, which apparently was just a couple of
months ago, so then they weren't sure though. You know,
(13:04):
with these videos, they could be new, they could be old. Apparently, Biden,
when we pulled out of Afghanistan last year it was
August thirty first to twenty twenty one, he said that
al Qaida was gone. But many believed now that the
Taliban was running Afghanistan, that some of these terrorist organizations
(13:27):
could revive themselves and become stronger again. And maybe that's
the reason that there was a planned mission to take
out this leader, because maybe they thought al Qaida might
get stronger again with Afghanistan being run by the Taliban.
Biden said last year, what interest do we have in
Afghanistan at this point with al Qaida gone? We went
(13:47):
to Afghanistan for the express purpose of getting rid of
al Qaida in Afghanistan as well as well as well
as getting Osama bin Laden, and we did. But there
was a warning from the military last September the horror
groups like al Qaeda can grow much faster because of
the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. So around four thirty KFI
will carry Biden's remarks at some sort of press conference
(14:11):
to announce a drone strike that has taken out I'm
on al Zarhiri Zawahiri? Who is And if you've ever
seen this guy's pictures have been around for years. He's
shown many times posing with Bin Laden. He's got the
long beard. I think they used to call him doct
or something. I remember hearing his name back in the
days of nine to eleven, but I may be wrong,
(14:34):
and maybe not the first time they thought they took
him out, So maybe this time for certain. We'll find
out more. In about an hour here on KFI, we're
talking about the downtown Los Angeles six Street Bridge, or
as they call it, the sixth Street Viaduct, which opened
a few weeks ago in July, and ever since then,
(14:54):
particularly on weekends, it's been the scene of takeovers, cars
do when donuts, people doing stunts, making videos, and of course,
really the worst of all is the graffiti, which has
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up. Already
the bridge is probably already looking disgusting. If you look
at the overhead shot, you can see where all the
(15:15):
donuts had made, all the skid marks on the roadway
there the archers look nice. Imagine it's a nice looking bridge,
but it's a bridge. So here's what I'm trying to
tell you. The fact that you know, the Times did
this story. What day was it was last Thursday? It's
our bridge. A night of selfies, modelos, cops, dogs and
(15:36):
a cat on the six Street Viaduct. The point that's
being made by the two writers here for the El
Segundo Times is that people consider the bridge an extension
of their neighborhood. So to them, it's like a park.
It's a place where they want to go and hang out,
and like every place else, there's going to be people
doing crazy things, right, you know, it'll go all the
(15:58):
way from just people partyings, smoking pot and drinking beer
to people doing donuts and people trying to do stunts
on the bridge. But I look at this and I
think people really don't have enough to do. I realize
that we're in the social media era where people love
the idea of trying to put a video on social
(16:19):
media and getting a lot of likes and isn't that cool?
And would you like to one up me? But it
goes beyond that because not everybody's on this bridge making videos.
It's just like sad that people would gravitate to a bridge.
I know it's new, it's a novelty. It's like the
new restaurant that opens in town. Everybody wants to go
to see what it is because it's it's this new gift,
(16:43):
this new shiny thing. But the story in the Elsa
Gondo Times just talks about these people and we're connecting.
Oh yeah, they talked to a a drummer. He goes
up there and beats the drums. I'm connecting with something,
the stars, the elements, the music gods, the drums from Africa.
He's an amateur drummer by the name of Jeff Jackson.
(17:07):
He says, I'm not into the audience part because then
you lose the intent. If they like it, cool, but
it's more about your own experience. I don't need attention.
I just want to play for the bridge Hotly mackerel.
That's really bizarre and sad that a freaking bridge as
god people, What I'm thinking is that they just don't
(17:28):
have enough in their lives to keep them busy. I mean,
you know, even go out and go for a run,
or go for a bike ride somewhere else, or you know,
go hit a golf ball, or go shoot a basketball,
go do something with your friends, go read a book.
You have to all pile up on the bridge to
(17:48):
be seen and to make a spectacle of everything. I honestly,
I don't understand this kind of personality. All Right, We
got more coming up here on the John and Ken
Show on KF Big Story this afternoon, and we're going
to hear more about it in about an hour from
Old Joe himself from the balcony at the White House,
the Blue Balcony. I think it's called because he's in isolation.
(18:11):
It's got the rebound case of COVID nineteen. Yes, the
Blue Room balcony of the White House at about seven
thirty pm Eastern, four thirty hard time. That apparently a
military operation, the US air strike has taken out the
current al Qaida leader. Well, it's really only the second
one took over for Bin Laden. I'm on al Zawahiri.
(18:31):
It happened in Afghanistan over the weekend. So I don't
know what's left of al Qaida or how effective they are,
but I guess the theory was we better rub them
out or rub their leader out before they start to
get stronger again in a country that is run by
the Taliban. So we'll hear more about that from Joe
after four o'clock. That horrible fire up in northern California
(18:53):
southern Oregon. It is the largest wildfire so far in
twenty twenty two, affecting California residence. Alex Stone has the
details on that and other fires affecting the Western States
coming up at four o'clock. Deborah Mark. Apparently the dog
adoption at Dodger Stadium was a hit. I know, isn't
(19:17):
that awesome? Nearly a hundred dogs found homes Dodger Stadium
was opened for a few hours on Saturday for people
to come and take home. But dog Now, it wasn't free.
It cost fifty dollars and you did have to have
them spade or neutered and all the other rules that
come with that. But it was the first ever pet
(19:39):
adoption event at Dodger Stadium. They're calling it a big success,
a hundred dogs. So there you go. I'm so happy
to hear that that's one hundred down at about ten.
I know, what do you think the number of unclaimed
dogs is in La County? Have any idea what that
would be. I don't know how many of the shelters hold.
I was watching I was watching the Saturday morning news
(20:01):
and they have a feature where they have a dog
that they want somebody to adopt. And the woman was
standing there with this big black dog, and that's what
they were saying, because he was big. People don't want
to take the big dogs. I love big dogs. I
just don't have a yard for a big dog. But
I think the dog big dog, no because I don't
have a yard for it. But if I did have
a big yard, I'd love to have a big dog.
(20:23):
All right. Now, this update and this was fantastic news
over the weekend. For those of you who listen to
the show for any amount of time, you know that
one after another, we've had the worst mayors in Los Angeles.
I mean, you have to go back many years to
find anybody that was competent enough to run the city
of la and fix the problems. They just get worse
(20:45):
one after another. Richard Reardon, of course, was the mayor
from nineteen ninety three to two thousand and one, and
it looked like we had come a long way. It
was also that period of the nineties where crime was
out of control, particularly gang crime, and thanks to laws
passed in the state of California, things began to recede.
By the time Richard Reardon finished his term in office,
(21:08):
he was followed by a dud named James Hahn, then
Tony Vlaar, and now the man that has been mayor
for nine freaking years, Eric Garcetti. We're supposed to say
goodbye to him, and we will. There will be a
new mayor elected in November, but we're supposed to say
goodbye to him from the City of LA as he
takes off for his new job as ambassador to India.
(21:32):
But as you know if you've been following the saga,
he has not been confirmed by the US Senate. He
got passed a committee, but the full Senate has not
voted on his nomination yet, so he's stuck in limbo. Well,
the update from the El Segundo Times and something they
call la on the record, Dakota Smith and Ben Orescues
(21:53):
did an update on the Garcetti story, and it's quite revealing.
Apparently the Senate is going to go on recess next week.
They do come back in September, but they probably have
very much a lot of big things to deal with.
You've probably been hearing about this big climate bill that
Biden finally got Senator Joe Mansion on board with. That
(22:14):
includes tax hikes and corporations and the wealthy, and it's
supposedly a big victory from the Biden administration. So they're
gonna be focusing on that. And the thinking is that
the Senate majority leader for the Democrats, Chuck Schumer, will
he take up the vote next week or will he
wait until they come back in September. It says here
(22:38):
that Schumer is less likely to schedule controversial votes and
not ones where an I from every Democrat isn't assured.
So here's the stunner in the story. We've told you
that Garcetti has been going to Washington, DC to lobby
for his ambassador's position because it's definitely in doubt, and
(23:00):
it looks like he's been visiting Republicans. He's trying to
find anybody that would support him. But there's a report
that during his trip last week, he attended the Congressional
Hispanic Caucus's business meeting was the group put out a statement.
The statement noted its full support for Garcetti for the
post to India and included a photo showing the mayor
(23:24):
smiling alongside the group's chairman, who was Congressman Raoul Ruiz
from Coachella. The Hispanic Caucus is largely comprised of lawmakers
in the House, so they have no formal role in
the Senate confirmed positions such as the ambassadorship, so that
was merely for show. Who knows why, or maybe Garcetti
just thought this is a good thing for me to
(23:44):
do because I am going to run for president again someday. Yeah, right, Anyway,
A Congressman from Santa Barbara Salute Carbajal did not attend
the meeting, but told The Times he briefly bumped into
Garca Seti at a social event last week. In addition
to Garcetti talking about his work for La Carba, Hall recalled,
(24:07):
we chatted about his confirmation. What that's looking like, and
by all accounts, I think there seems to be a
positive path forward for the most part. In recent weeks,
the mayor has been spotted by reporters at the White
House and trapsing around the Capital complex, and it does
sound like Garcetti trapsing around like tiptoe through the tulips.
(24:28):
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced Garcetti's nomination in January,
and then The Times reported in May, but several Democrats
are hesitant over backing Garcetti, suggesting by partisans support would
be necessary to get his nomination across the finish line.
You all know by now that this deals with Garcetti's
(24:49):
former top aid, a man by the name of Rick Jacobs,
who was accused of sexually harassing employees in the Mayor's
office and also including his lapd bodyguard, which is a
subject of a lawsuit. Garsetti's involved because he's denied having
any knowledge of this or seeing any of this, and
there are a number of aids to the mayor's office.
(25:09):
Most of the former aids now because you're not going
to stay round long if you don't tow the line
with Garsetti. But a number of them have said that
he indeed saw what was happening, knew what was happening.
So Senator Tim Caine, Democrat Virginia, remember him, Hillary Clinton's
running mate, told The Times on Wednesday that there's an
(25:31):
effort to appeal to Republicans who could support Garcetti on
the Senate floor. He then added, though I've got nothing
to report on the status of the nomination. The mayor
declined to say which Republicans he was courting, saying I
have been open and excited to talk to all, whether
they're Democrat or Republican senators. When The Times reported Dakota
(25:52):
Smith asked whether it was now or never for his nomination,
Garcetti gave the usual response, I'm just focused right now
being mayor. That's my job. The meetings I took, I
wasn't in DC on this issue. I took three different meetings,
he said, about transportation, COVID nineteen and the summit of
(26:12):
the Americas. When the reporter pointed out that will you
all summed up with the Hispanic Caucus and said you're
not being truthful, Garcetti walked away. Look at that. That's
a big deal for the Elsagondo Times to report that
that Garcetti basically lied. He didn't include all the meetings
that he took, and who knows the Hispanic Caucus he
(26:33):
was probably trying, even though they're in the house. He
was probably trying to see if they could help him
get through to some senators to get his nomination passed.
The mayor was seen last week with Brilin Pete. That's
the lobbyists hired by Garcetti's parents, Suki and gil Garcetti,
to advocate for his nomination. The lobbying firm where she
(26:53):
works reported thirty thousand dollars an income during the second
quarter tied to Garcetti's parents. So now we know in
just one quarter how much money they have spent. These
two people are elderly, they're retired. What is Gilgarcetti still
just doing photographs? Is he selling them? Does he have
a big pension? They put up thirty thousand dollars to
(27:15):
try to get his son to be ambassador to India.
The firm did lobby the White House, the Senate, and
the House, according to the firm's filings. The League of
Conservation Voters also reported that it lobbied for Garcetti's India
post in the second quarter. So that's two groups that
are lobbying for Garcetti to get to India. Now here's
(27:37):
an interesting stat Right now, ninety five of Biden's ambassador
nominees have been confirmed. Garcetti is one of thirty four
nominations still being stuck, according to something called the Partnership
for Public Service. So that's a sizeable percentage of ambassador
nominees have been confirmed. Garcetti's on a smaller list of
(27:58):
those who are at uck. If it doesn't happen by
the time they take recess next week, they'll be gone
till after Labor Day, and by then they'll be thinking
about the coming elections. They'll be thinking about getting some
bills passed. It's very possible that Garciti goes bye bye,
(28:18):
and maybe somebody in the Biden administration decided, oh, the
India ambassadorship isn't that important that we can't push for
someone else right now, and tell GARCTI it's over, so,
you know, let him do this thing, let him lobby people.
Who knows, Maybe he'll he'll get lucky, all right, Moore
coming up here on the John and Ken Show on
kf I Am six forty well with Alex Stone, ABC
(28:41):
News for KFI, coming on the show at four oh
five to talk about this fire that is burning in
northern California, pretty much up there near the Oregon border,
Sisku County. It's consumed more than fifty five thousand acres.
It is California's largest fire. Why fire so far in
(29:02):
twenty twenty two, and the bad news two people were
found dead inside a burned out car. He'll have all
the details in this and other fires affecting the Northwest.
Coming up after the news at four o'clock at four thirty.
As we said, if you haven't heard, we're going to
(29:23):
have Joe Biden taken over the KFI airwaves to give
more details on this US military operation. Looks like it
was a drone strike that took out the leader of
al Qaeda. There's a throwback for you. Yes, the leader
of al Qaeda, that is Osama bin Laden's group. They're
(29:44):
still around you don't hear about him much anymore, and
then you don't hear much about Isis either, But these
terrorist groups still exist. His name is Ayman al Zahiri,
and he was killed in a CIA drone strike over
the weekend. So Joe, who's still isolating due to another
positive COVID test, what they call COVID rebound, after he
(30:06):
took medication to treat it, we'll still be speaking from
the Blue Room balcony, and we'll have that way on
KFI whenever it starts sometime around four thirty. Let's getting
late for Joe, so I imagine he'll be quick to
get out there and wrap it up pretty quickly. I
move over to the vegan lady. This story I thought
(30:27):
of you, but I was a little bit confused by it.
Apparently the Los Angeles School District has decided to go healthy,
but when you actually read the story, it's hard to
figure out where that is. And then I started to
look at the details and I thought, Okay, now I
know why they're doing this. As you know, one of
(30:49):
the most dreaded things for kids who go to school
is to eat the school cafeteria meal. Personally never bothered me,
but you know, no offense. My mother wasn't the best cook,
so therefore I didn't I didn't find the food gormand,
but I never really objected to it, and I used
to eat it pretty much every day, whatever sludge they
(31:12):
were putting out. So when I saw the headline of
this story, it's like, well, what about smoothies, m berries?
Oh yeah, ramen? How healthy ramen is? It's pretty salty. Oh,
I get vegan ramen. It's delicious with kale noodles. Yeah,
but why wouldn't ram Ramen isn't vegan to begin with?
(31:34):
Or well, because it's it doesn't have chicken broth or
beef broth. Oh, they're right, they do put their base
or pork broth. Whatever I and I get, I get
it with coconut milk and uh sometimes kale noodles. It's
really yummy. You're missing out. But before I looked into
this story too long, turkey hamond cheese, clissants for breakfast,
(31:57):
Nashville Hot chicken tenders, honey biscuits, meatball sub sandwiches, and
I'm like, wait a minute, that's not healthy, not necessarily,
So I didn't really understand that. But then as you
read along. In the article you find out why, you know,
what kids were doing instead because they didn't like the
(32:18):
school meals, reaching into their backpacks and eating flaming hot cheetos.
They were pretty much just eating junk snack food, candy bars,
potato chips, tortilla chips. So the schools decided, well, if
(32:38):
we try to go too far in the other direction
and just give them vegan food, kale and oh god
of avocados, what they're doing instead is just trying to
give them something more substantive, and that would explain. I
guess the turkey, ham and cheese croissants because of croissant. Man.
I mean, that's a that's full of calories right there,
(33:01):
and I don't think it say it's full of butter.
You can get them vegan. I had one over the weekend.
Then it's not a croissant, Yes it is. No, what
makes a quissant special is the fact that the butter
makes it very tasty and it gets the right crunch
to it. Okay, ken, I will have to bring you
one of these days some vegan croissants that I'll know
the difference. I don't know if you would actually yeah,
(33:23):
you say that everybody every time, because you're gonna know
for sure if I bring you one. So it's your head.
The last time you gave me something vegan, it was
a chocolate chip cookie. It was a freaking hockey puck. No, okay,
I could not chew it. I had to sit here
and smash it with my hand before I could eat
a piece. It got stale while it was way. Your
mouth wasn't bad. No, you put it to work one day,
(33:44):
right from the supermarket. Okay, Well, there are others that
are that are very I'm saying the taste wasn't bad,
but it was hard, as I couldn't believe how hard
it was it was to break a part um. Here's
the usual statistics. Eighty percent of students in LA Unified
are from low income families, and as only the times
(34:06):
we've put it grapple with food insecurity parents, long work
schedules can be an additional challenge for preparing meals, let
alone healthful ones. So every day in LA Unified they
serve more than three hundred thousand breakfasts, two hundred and
eighty five thousand lunches, and seventy thousand early dinners. Man,
(34:27):
you think about that when I went to school, the
only thing there was was lunch, and nobody served breakfast,
and certainly there wasn't early dinners. What time is that
thirty when they get done at school? Wow? One hundred
and eighty million dollars a year. And we've talked before
about how they actually have giveaways where you can drive
through and pick up food. This is what happens when
(34:49):
you build the state that relies on basically low wage
illegal immigrant, unskilled labor. The families can't support themselves, so
you have to come up with programs to feed them,
take care of their basic needs. We drove out the
middle class. All we have left is the very very wealthy,
and the next tier down and then the bottom tier.
(35:11):
During thirteen months of pandemic food for school closures, LA
Unified offered yet is the grab and go food for takers.
But now what they're trying to figure out is it
a way to get kids to eat. They keep calling
them nutritious, healthy food options. Cinnamon rolls. You like cinnamon rolls,
(35:32):
I do, that's but that's not that's kind of junk food.
Cinnamon depends on your icing, and well, I don't think
in this article they're doing them vegan or gluten free
or any probably not Kung paut chicken. Yeah, that's high
in sodium, that's all right. Honey glaze, O, honey glaze
(35:55):
with brown rice and broccoli. Well, there you go. That
got a good review from what the students. But basically
they're still serving food that some people would consider unhealthy
because they were afraid if they went too far, and
they tried to give the kids yogurt and fruit and
(36:16):
stuff like that, and then too many vegetables that would
be rejected too. We talked about how in other school
districts around the country that a lot of that food
gets thrown out. Yeah, I mean I trying to find
that sweet middle between the junk food, the cheetos, and
something that gives them some kind of real nutrition, right,
because you can get protein from from chicken nuggets and
(36:38):
and oh, oh my gosh, black bean burgers, keene wash salad.
Oh that's the list. It said. They did try those
black bean burgers, keenewosh salad, vegetarian curry, and fresh pairs,
but fewer students ate those lunches, and they started reaching
into their backpacks for cans of soda and flame and
hot cheetos. I mean, look when I was a kid
(37:00):
and I didn't love that stuff either, or I didn't
love vegetables, and here I am. My diet consists mainly
of vegetables. I think you just have to be I
don't know, you have to be told about them, you
have to be exposed to them. So I don't know,
it takes a while to develop the taste for those
types of things. But I think when it's exactly right.
So when you're an eight year old or a nine
(37:21):
year old and you get start getting served that stuff,
it's too early. They're probably not going to take to it.
And then they're going to reach into their backpack and
they're gonna eat the cheetahs. They're thinking, all right, if
we put a croissant in front of them with ham
and cheese on it, and we put a sinapon, right,
so it's a little better marginal, all right. Coming up next,
I will be talking to Alex Stone, ABC News for
(37:42):
KFI about the big fire burning in northern California. John
at Kenshaw and KF I am six forty. Debra Mark
has the news. Now, it's never been more important to
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