The Olympics

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
How'd it go? Did you miss me?

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I sure did be careful about the way that you
use your sharkasm the.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey no sarcasm, Yeah, no, you know it's I'm sure
you know what. I'm sure it was good for you
to take some time away. I feel like it's been
a while I took.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I had hand foot in mouth disease, like in February
or March, and I missed like two days.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's funny. I've never gotten that I put my foot
in my mouth every single day. Yeah, no, handfoot in
mouth not fun. So I had to take a couple
of sick days, and then I took a personal day
when I lost my dog.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, those are the only days I have taken off
this calendar year. It was mid December when I was
I did that vacation to Branson, right with that with
that jerky salesman, yeah, the jerky guy. Yeah yeah, I
like the beef jerk salesman. I'll be honest. The jerky
was actually pretty good. Glad I bought it, even though

(00:56):
the eyeballs definitely contributed to me, you know, buying the jerky.
There was a lot of pressure in that room. Let's
just say that you didn't walk in there, and you
weren't allowed to leave basically until you bought something.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
So basically what you're saying is the door locked from
the outside and there was one swinging bulb. Yeah, basically
it felt that way. That's not literal, and maybe it's
just me attributing that, but it felt like there was pressure.
And maybe it wouldn't have felt so bad if there
would have been other people in there, But you know,
it is what it is. What did I do last week?
I was in indian Ola, Iowa for the National Balloon Classic.

(01:29):
It was from not this past Thursday or Friday, but
the Friday before and all the way through this past Saturday.
It's nine days of hot air ballooning. There are seventeen
scheduled flights ahead of all of this, but of course
you need specific weather for the flights to occur, even
the night glows to occur. It was the worst weather

(01:51):
in the history of the National Balloon Classic. We got
five of those flights, two of the first thirteen flights. Okay,
it did get three of the last four, but two
of the first thirteen flights.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
It was pain full. Now, I posted a lot of
updates on my social media. If you found them. You
follow me on social media Facebook, x Instagram, you would
have seen me posting and all the posts that are happening.
It was rough man. At the same time, I had
a great time hanging out on the Airbnb, played a
lot of cribbage, enjoyed watching the Olympic Games. More on

(02:25):
that later, hanging out with my wife day tripping around
to the Des Moines area, which was kind of fun,
and just not thinking about anything serious at all. However,
I did see that storm come through. Of course, that
storm eventually would affect us in Central Iowa when we
were there. I also was paying attention to some of
the controversies with the Olympic opening ceremony and the Olympic

(02:46):
Games themselves, because how do you avoid that sort of thing?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
But I kind of stayed away from politics.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Uh was there a lot of political talk on the
show last week? You guys talk about some political stuff. Yeah, yeah,
I'm I'm sure that there was things that came up. Yeah,
well that's good. Let me crack open this thing here,
good old Cola ZeVA. You talk about the opening ceremony all.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
See.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I was out last Monday, Okay, so that would have
been the day.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I think that was probably the day because I was
gonna say no, but then probably that it.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Would have been the day. See did you see that?
I know we're a week late to it, but I
wasn't here on neither of you. So I'm exonerated from
bringing this back up because it's the first day I'm back.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
I didn't personally see it.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, I watched it, and this may be completely unpopular,
and I hate to rehash stuff that people have already
thought about, so I'm just going to keep it brief.
The Okay, here are the things about the opening ceremony
I liked. I loved them floating down the river like
that was such an inventive way to have the parade
of athletes and some of them just marching around us

(03:55):
around the track. I mean, it takes like three and
a half hours to get through all the countries. Anyway,
this at least gave me something else to look at
as the countries are walking through. They have all these
theatrics going on and some of the other stuff that
I liked. I really enjoyed Celine Dion at the end.
She slayed it. If you know Selene's story, Selene Dion

(04:15):
has had incredible health issues which has greatly impacted her
ability to perform, and she nailed it as like the
closing part of the opening ceremony. She's French Canadian, by
the way, so there's that French connection a little bit.
Even though she's not French specifically, she speaks French fluently
because of where she's from in Canada. You look at
the hot air balloon as the cauldron outside of the stadium.

(04:38):
It's not in the stadium, it's outside the stadium. How
awesome is that? A really cool and inventive thing that
they're doing there. Really enjoyed that. I love the scenery
of some of the venues. They have fencing happening inside
the Grand Palais that just finished up, but it's just
a beautiful venue for that. They built a beach volleyball

(04:58):
arena basically or stadium right in front of the Eiffel Tower,
so the Eiffel Tower is just like looking into this
sand volleyball area. So cool, so cool. They did really
good job with a lot of the venues. Some of
the stuff about the beginning that I also liked was
their use of the city around the Sin River, which
allowed them a lot of I don't know, freedom to

(05:20):
do different things with the opening ceremony. Some things that
were kind of uh for me was the go Jira,
the heavy metal doing Ley Miz like a musical number
from Ley Miz. La Miz is maybe one of the
most famous musicals of all time, if not the most
famous or most successful or most notable is one of them,

(05:41):
and it's French. Of course they're going to own that.
But go Jira, a heavy metal, screamy band. It just
felt like a little out of place, Like I'm all
for like trying to, you know, include a bunch of
different styles of music and stuff. But could you imagine
Slipknot at the La Olympics opening ceremony. You think people
would be like, oh, yeah, it was awesome, or they'd
be like, huh, they might say that's a little much.

(06:02):
Not that nothing against slip Not. It's just a weird vibe, right,
hard to understand the lyrics, Oh yeah, yeah, it's for sure,
like why are you yelling at me?

Speaker 1 (06:10):
All right?

Speaker 2 (06:10):
And go jiras French, so you know, that's why they
picked them of any of the other heavy metal bands available.
And they had Marie Antoinette singing while her head was
cut off and she's holding her own head like. It
was a pretty interesting visual, huh, Like she was in
like one of the windows of the buildings that they
were playing on. It was crazy, all right, and I
enjoyed the inventedviness of that. It was just the musical

(06:31):
decision there with the pyro and all that stuff is
like em you know. I wasn't like, oh, this is awesome.
I was kind of like, kind of confused, is this
still the Olympic opening ceremony? Things that I also was
meant about Lady Gaga, incredibly talented person, American not French,
saying a French song that was like in the style
of like the nineteen thirties and forties. It was it

(06:53):
was kind of confusing. I'm guessing it's a famous song
for the people of France, but it just felt like
a waste of Lady Gaga and like six minutes of
my time. I had no idea what the heck was happening.
But it was kind of like a burlesque style musical
number that they would have done in a dance hall
or something in the forties. It felt like I could
be wrong on that, but I don't know. It felt
like kind of a waste of a very talented person.

(07:15):
I'm sure she enjoyed it. I was very mad about
the imagine they do John Lennon's Imagine, which I know
is somewhat controversial. It's like, imagine, there's no heaven, there's
no religion, there's no governments, there's no politics, all that stuff. Right,
It's like, hey, we can truly be unified if we
just take away all of the labels that we have.

(07:35):
That's kind of the overarching message of the song. And
it was the slowest, most quiet version of the song
I've ever heard. It was a piano being played by
a guy while the piano was on fire. A very
soft spoken French girl, a young woman was singing imagine
in a very soft, very touching way. Yeah, imagine there's

(07:58):
no heaven.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Is like that.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
And they're on a rock floating down the sind River
in a van down by that road. No, not in
a van on a rock, okay, And it just felt
like it sucked all the energy out of what they
were doing.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Well, then that might need to be the new on
a rock in the middle of a river with a
piano on fire. If you don't do your homework kids,
you could end up there.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I'm guessing she got some famous hits from people
who at least knew who she was. But to me,
I was like just so boring, Like I fell asleep
halfway through the song. I was just like, this is
the opposite of the energy that you seem to be
wanting to purvey about these games, and now all of
a sudden you slowed it down to a halt for
this specific thing, and all the people who kind of

(08:40):
just had no idea what to react to it kind
of annoyed me.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
It was man, some of the things didn't work for me.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
There is this bit there's a lot of like pre
produced stuff because they were using different parts of town
and they could get away with pre producing a lot
of the stuff. It didn't have to be live and done.
Part of it was a very inclusive thing and the
I don't know why no one's talked about this, but
the Menaje TOI, there was a moment in there where
it basically, if you're an adult, you knew very specifically

(09:10):
what they were talking about. It was two dudes and
a chick and they were basically like going back to
the room and about to, you know, get it on,
and they kicked the cameraman out menaje TOI.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
So they it sounds like they took the college course
Ethical non Monogamy something like that. Four credit hours at
your community college these days. Don't take that class. You
don't need that class. Yeah, that's not a good class.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Look, I'm not gonna judge anybody for what their preferences are.
Why is that in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games?
Am I supposed to believe that all French people just
like that stuff? Is that what that's about? Just you know, like, hey,
we're gonna, you know, have a menase TOI. And if
your kids are in the car and they ask you
what that means, it's not my problem.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
I'm sorry. It's like a ballet thing, right.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, yeah, make something up. I'm not a parent, you
know what I'm talking about. I just couldn't, Like, I
was like, what was the point of that? I literally said,
like out loud to my wife, who was you know,
she's very artistic and she's trying to put all the
pieces together what they're doing here. This is like a
four hour long thing, right, and she's like, you know,
she also was just kind of confused as to why
they would put that in there, Like, what's the point

(10:17):
of that. Nobody's talking about that though. They're all talking
about the runway of the drag queens who either were
impersonating or parodying the Last Supper painting or this Greek
dinner thing that seemingly we have split like people either

(10:37):
defending it by saying it wasn't the Last Supper, some
people saying it was the Last Supper, but it's art.
And I was greatly confused by this as well. And
I will tell you what confused me the most about
it when we come back on news radio eleven to
ten KFAB.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
And were you's songer on news Radio eleven ten.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Kfab the Last Supper Greek? Did you see do you?
Matt Case is my pretty is here? I know that
you know you don't pay super close attention. Do you
at least see kind of like the photo that was
kind of going around with people like saying, this is
what it's looking like?

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Did you at least see that? I haven't really been
very plugged in. I saw a little bit of it.
I'm not going to lie to you. I haven't really
watched the Olympics, and that is kind of part of
the reason why, just to be completely honest, I saw
a little bit of it and it felt like an
influx of like, all of a sudden, a political angle
has entered the chat and it has nothing to do

(11:32):
with any of these athletes. Well yeah, and that to
me was and the athletes have nothing to do with
their decision to you know, or what they did in
many different like you were saying, in different varieties. Yeah,
there were a couple of different things that were in
that opening ceremony that the athletes had no decision making
power over that was in or out. So it's really and.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
I think the International Olympic Committee they get a company
or a group of people to design that from the location, right,
So would LA host the Olympic Games in twenty twenty eight,
It will be Hollywood people probably that are making or
some firm that will put together what I would expect

(12:13):
to be a very highly produced opening ceremony. Now I
don't know how political that may be, but it's four
years away. Who knows. But this was I don't even
know if this was intended to be political. I think
they're going for what like bud Light with the Dylan
mulvaney thing was going for ultimate inclusion to let everyone
know how progressive Paris and how progressive France is. I

(12:37):
don't know for a fact it took. The Vatican didn't
say anything about this until yesterday, like nine days after
it happened. Obviously, I'm talking about it later, but I
have a good excuse I wouldn't hear. I don't know
if it was like a depiction of the Last Supper,
and I don't know if it was a depiction of
the Greek like dinner thingy of Dioceesis or whatever his

(13:00):
name is, right, And I don't care the way that
it was grabbed the way that it was drag queens,
and I don't necessarily even specifically have that big of
a problem with drag itself. I watched Bugs Bunny dress
up like a girl over and over again in Looney Tunes,
and it made me laugh. Right, Like, what I tend
to have a problem with is forcing that kind of
thing on the greater population that isn't looking for it. Oh,

(13:24):
and also going into like schools or having like drag
brunches for kids and stuff like that. That feels weird
to me. It feels really weird to me. If these
are what these people want to do with their lives,
they want to dress up like women or whatever. Like,
I'm not in any position to tell them how to
live their lives. All I know from the organizer's perspective
is you're taking a lot of risk ay decisions and

(13:45):
creating political statements even if you're not intending to to
appease a very small portion of the world's population that,
by the way, are probably not even watching the Olympics
to begin with. And this is what bud Light messed
up on is they did Dylan molvnything to try to
win over the trans population or people who are very
supportive of that LGBTQ plus community, and they didn't realize

(14:09):
that those people aren't drinking bud like to begin with,
whether they're associated with Dylan mulvenny or not. The Olympic
Games try to reach out and show how the verse
Paris is or how diverse they want to Paris to
be viewed as part of the Olympics, when nobody cared
about that, and it took away eyeballs potentially and made
people angry. Despite the fact that we have a ton

(14:29):
of athletes who were really excited to represent America in
sports like trap shooting or skeet shooting, sports like I
don't know, track and field sports like swimming, diving, sports
that don't get a whole lot of shine except for
this time every four years and all of a sudden,
like gymnastics. Right, there's not a lot of people outside

(14:51):
of maybe your basketball players that are in the Olympic Games,
that are going to get a whole lot of publicity
outside of the Olympic Games. And it was unformd to
me that the organizers felt like they wanted to make
these political statements about like menaje twabe and totally okay,
love is love whatever, man and whatever. This runway of
drag queens was supposed to be to show off the

(15:12):
fashion aspect of France while also making some political statement
about inclusiveness and diversity, which I am not opposed to generally.
It just felt completely out of place and completely unwarranted
in this scenario that it was so unfortunately, there is
a large portion of America that's not watching the Olympic
Games because of the political statements that were made by
the people who organized the opening ceremony, and it was

(15:34):
our athletes that are suffering from that. And that's just
a great unfortunate bit because there's so many great stories
that have permeated from the Olympic Games. The one story
about the Olympics that hasn't been so great is the
controversy about a certain boxer on the women's side. I
know that I'm probably close to a week late on this,
but because I was gone, I'm going to go ahead

(15:55):
and briefly tell you how I feel about that coming
up next and stick around. We'll take your calls as well.
On news radio eleven ten kfab.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
And Maurice Songer on news Radio eleven ten kfab. Are
you invest in some bitcoins over there? Not in bitcoins,
but I do have some holdings yeah yeah, like what.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Well, I'm holding this mouse because I'm editing your podcast here, sir.
Oh thanks, thanks, but I do, uh, you know what.
I let the mutual fund managers handle that. And I
want to first off preface everything. I say that I
am not a financial advisor, so do not take any
advice or me, and neither am I. This is why
I talk to you know, my friends over at retire
smart and you know, hey, you know what you want

(16:39):
to know else? You know what else? Huh?

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I get emails from the place that has my four
to one K and it does my investing, and they're
always just like, hey, we made some trades on your behalf,
and I'm like, cool, you know what I mean? Like
I put in like what my strategy is, like how
aggressive I want to be? Yeah, and I just kind
of leave it there. Are you pretty aggressive? It's pretty aggressive?

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah? So you're not bad and for average you're going
for home runs. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
I just like, hey, like, build me up some capital
here and then we can slow it down in fifteen
years when you know, I just want to kind of
sit on an egg.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Find me the next big thing before it becomes that.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, something like that. But we'll talk a little bit
about that, because you know, who the heck knows what
the heck is going. I tried to understand it. I
knew something that was up when I saw that Berkshire
Hathaway pulled out a ton of money here, sold a
ton of their stocks, like two hundred and thirty three

(17:32):
billion dollars worth. That's a lot, you know what I'm saying.
So I don't know, keep that in mind. I wanted
to finish up this Olympic talk. Did you see this
thing about the boxer. I've been hearing about it here
and there. Her name's I'm a Main Khalif, I think
is how you say it. She's twenty five years old.

(17:56):
I need to talk about it. I don't want to
just not talk about it. But here's here. You go
tell me if i'm if I cross a line here
at any point, Matt, and I need to save myself,
please just stop me, all right. A lot of responsibility
on you right now, A lot of responsibility. I do
have a dump butt.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
There you go, there you go.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
If I cross the line here, you just tell me,
and you know, we'll take care of it.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Market zero. That's what I'll do, all market zero. If
you cross a line, whoa, it's a big Lebowski reference.
Whoa or anybody keeping track, take take take notes. A
man Khalif is from Algeria. Algeria is an Arab country.
The if you're unfamiliar somehow with this story, it's that

(18:38):
she is being talked about because she has a very
rare thing that happens to people where she is a female. However,
with like a gender test, she pops up with a
Y chromosome, which is a male chromosome, and her body
produces testosterone as and of estrogen's very rare. It is

(19:00):
a thing now.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
She came into the limelight last week when she defeated
an Italian women's boxer in forty six seconds, and it
wasn't like like true blue knockout. It was like the
Italian boxer basically just said I can't do this anymore
and basically said I quit. It's the Olympic Games. I'm
sure that there's all sorts of people who, you know,

(19:23):
we're going to have an opinion on this one way
or the other. And it's a hard thing to think
about and explain because there's just not a lot of
people that we've heard with this type of thing, right,
this this situation now, Algeria is a place that if
you showed up and you said you are the LGBTQ
plus community, which includes trans transgenderism, right, Algeria is a

(19:47):
place that you wouldn't be there long.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
One way or another.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
You would be either you would move away before you
got persecuted, or you'd be thrown in prison, or potentially
they would you know, I don't know what the practices
are specifically over there, but it is not allowed, like
you cannot, you are banned from doing this. This is
what we talk about with a lot of the people
that are this pro Palestinian types who are walking around

(20:11):
saying all this stuff like free Palestine, you know, all
this Arabic stuff. It's like, hey, you know what, you
go show up there with your outfits and your lifestyle
and see how long you last over there because Hamas, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran,
any of these other people that you feel like you
support somehow, because Israel is the one that you think

(20:32):
commits the genocide. We'll see how long you last over there,
because you won't last more than a few seconds. If
you're a woman, you'll be forced to cover your face
and never be seen outwardly again. Okay, That's just how
it is over there. Nobody wants to talk about that though.
Now Algeria would never have sent this woman. And I
say woman because she has proven to be a woman.

(20:54):
She is a biological female who is she has a
rare thing in her etics that she produces testosterone.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
I think you can and this is what I'm.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Frustrated about this discourse and why I feel like we
need to talk about it. It is unfortunate for her.
Ammine Khalif and lin U Ting, who's a Taiwanese boxer,
both have this thing, and they both were banned from
competing in last year's IBA Championships World Championships. IBA is
the International Boxing Association. The IBA had them take the

(21:30):
gender test thing and they did not pass because of
that y chromosome and the fact that their bodies produced
more testosterone than estrogen. It is what the IBA considered
to be an unfair advantage. They did not allow them
to compete in twenty twenty three. The Olympic Committee does
not observe the same rules about boxing. They say that

(21:50):
this she's a woman, and the IBA they had their
own decisions to make. We have our decisions to make.
An Ammine Khalif and lin U Ting both competed in
the toe Olympics three years ago. They were both there,
but nobody paid any attention because they did not meddle
and they were not a factor. Again, it took this
Italian boxer to quit forty six seconds in and then

(22:12):
to say she was never hit harder in her entire
life than in this fight where all of a sudden,
the entire world decided they were going to get try
to become experts on this as fast as possible and
make a judgment on this. I think here's where I'm at,
and this is where you need to stop me if
I'm wrong, Matt. I think there's a way where we
can be sensitive to a main khalifh her womanhood, if

(22:35):
you will, and her passion for boxing, while also saying
it probably isn't fair for the other athletes in this
tournament to be facing a woman who has some genetic
situation where she naturally produces more testosterone than anyone else.
She has physical features that are more man like. It's

(22:56):
no fault of her own, but her features are more
man like than they are womanlike. It does create a
physical advantage for her against much of her competition to
in a sport where safety is paramount, you want to
keep your competitors as safe as possible. Now, this may
be not the greatest of examples, because she has lost

(23:16):
several times in fights. She was defeated soundly in the
Olympics in twenty twenty one and it didn't matter really
at all. But I think there is a way that
we can say the safety of the competitors and the
fairness of the competition, because if this Italian boxer who
quit forty six seconds in were to test at the
levels of testosterone as a main Khalif, if she injected

(23:40):
that kind of testosterone or HGH in her body and
it wasn't a naturally occurring thing, she would be suspended
in never a passed drug test. So how is it
okay that that genetic makeup or that body chemistry for
a main khalif or even len U ting of Taiwan

(24:01):
if that was why is it okay that it naturally
produces itself and they get to be in the exact
same tournament as all these women who would not have
the benefit of the doubt if they artificially did that
to their bodies. It's a tricky situation. It's not black
and white. It's not easy. But I think it is
fair to be critical of the tournament. When the IBA,

(24:22):
people who you would think no boxing better than the
Olympic committee, said this is not what we want our
tournament for the women to be like and banned these
individuals from competing. I feel bad for them that they
can't take part fairly in a sport that I'm sure
that they love. But for the safety of the competitors
and the fairness of the competition itself, it doesn't seem

(24:44):
like we're on the same playing field, no matter how
good they might be, no matter how many times they
may have lost in the past. I don't think we
should be I don't think we should be hateful about it.
And I don't think the Olympic Committee felt like this
was going to be this big of a deal because guess,
both of these people competed in the Olympics in twenty
twenty one and nobody said a darn word about it.

(25:05):
But I do think that there is room for us
to question the fairness in the safety of the individuals
in this tournament, even though the condition that these two
athletes have that are competing allows them a physical advantage
that is far beyond what we would allow an artificial
human growth hormone or steroid or testosterone injection for some

(25:27):
of the other women who would then no longer pass
a drug test. I don't see how that's any different.
We'll see what happens in We'll let you know what
the situation is. If these two women medal in their perspective.
Weight classes four to forty nine will wrap up the
four o'clock hour coming up news radio eleven to ten KFAB.
The couple hours ago, there is a press release that
was released as far as the IBA is concerned on

(25:51):
the Amin Khalif and Len U ting conversation, right of
these women who are women, They're biological women. We have
proof that they're women. It's just that they have genetic
makeup that does give them physical advantages because their body
produces testosterone and has a Y chromosome, and it definitely
calls into the question the fairness and the safety of

(26:11):
the other competitors. Per the International Boxing Association, following a
gender test, the laboratory detected results that didn't match the
eligibility criteria for women's events for the IBA, but they
did not reveal the results of the test, saying that
they had privacy concerns. They say Khalif and Len's hormonal
imbalance affords them a distinct advantage over their female counterparts.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
There you go now.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
The International Olympic Committee voted a sixty nine to one
to de recognize the International Boxing Association, barring them specifically
of helping judge the Olympics and running the boxing tournament
because of their questions of integrity. Now, boxing certainly has
a lot of integrity issues in and of itself. At
the end of the day, I think we all can

(27:01):
agree there should be some line as to what physical
advantage the testosterone producing, even in a natural way, could
potentially give a competitor versus their female counterparts. We'll keep
you posted, like I said, about the meddling of these
athletes and more, and we'll talk to stock markets next
on news radio eleven ten KFAB