A Taste of America

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote because.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
You were the TV remote.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Remember when music sounded like this, Remember when social media
was truly social?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey John, how's it going today?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Well?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
This show is all about you, only the good die.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
This is fifty plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on
your finances, good health, and what to do for fun.
Fifty plus brought to you by the UT Health Houston
Institute on Aging, Informed Decisions for a healthier, happier life,
and by new promise Neuropathy Lose the Pain and Numbness,

(00:45):
Get your life back, New Promise Neiropathy dot Com And
now fifty plus with Doug Pipe.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
All right, here we go again. What a fantastic fourth
of July our country had. This is my first live
show back. If you'll recall, I take Monday's off. That's
when I go out and make a fool of myself
on the golf course and have a lot of fun
with my friends. So forgive me if you've heard a
lot of other people talk about how the celebration of
our two hundred and fiftieth birthday party went, and gosh,

(01:15):
what better timing could we have had to showcase our
country than during the World Cup between matches, all these
people from all over the world getting a firsthand look
at our country. They're eating our food, and according to them,
meeting some of the nicest people on the planet. One
group I saw interviewed said they were convinced that the

(01:35):
people in New York City are the nicest people on earth.
So first of all, first of all, I think even
a lot of New Yorkers would would disagree with such
high praise being heaped on New Yorkers. And second, those
people clearly hadn't yet vented it the spit it out
Doug hadn't yet visited any of the more southern host cities.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
And so long as.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I'm on this topic, I got a real kick out
of a guy from England I saw reacting to his
first taste of a truly traditional Southern dish, which was
fried catfish and grits. And then the little cafe he
was in his own secret sauce on the side for
the catfish. He'd set a camera on his table and

(02:21):
was explaining to his friends back home what he was
about to try and how he'd heard it was just
oh so good and very skeptical. You could kind of tell.
He was, Yeah, they told me it's good, but I'm
gonna try it anyway. I don't think it's going.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
To live up.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
So he loads his fork with a hunk of fried catfish.
He dipped it gently into the sauce. Somehow managed to
put a dollop of grits on the fork with the
catfish and the sauce, and drop that whole fourth full
fork full. Goy, Liam, my mouth's not working this morning. Apologies, afternoon, apologies. Anyway,
he drops his whole forkful into his mouth. He chewed once,

(02:58):
maybe twice, and then this expression of just of ecstasy
came over his face. And then there was a pregnant pause,
and he looked right into the camera and he spoke,
and what he said was really telling of how he
felt about what he had just tasted. He said, and
I quote, I'm not going back. I'm never going home.

(03:23):
And then he put another bite on the fork and
ate that, and it just the whole thing replayed itself
right there. He had eaten something that he could not
have possibly imagined to be as good as it was.
And we've seen that all over the country, all up
and down our great all of these venues that are
hosting these World Cup Games. There are people coming from

(03:46):
all over the world, truly, and they are being treated
like we treat each other every day. Most of the
stuff that these people are finding to be amazing, awesome,
things that they don't have at home wherever they come from,
are things that we just take for granted, like catfishing grits.

(04:06):
England is not exactly a third World country, and I'm
certain this man who traveled here for an extended stay
to watch soccer matches has sampled the finest that England
has to offer in every regard, but he'd never had
catfishing grits, same as many other people who were equally
unfamiliar with brisket and with banana pudding, or with stores

(04:30):
like Walmart and Costco. They'd never seen so many options
for things that they only might have one or two
choices in their home countries. We've got two dozen choices.
We Americans take all of this stuff for granted too.
Air Conditioning in summer not so common in a lot
of countries. The mayor of Paris, if you'll recall I

(04:52):
talked about this last week, actually tried to blame our
country for the heat wave that clapbored that city of
his recently wrong. He was dead wrong, of course, but
he tried. And as it turns out, according to now
thousands of people who've posted their opinions of our country
on social media for all the world to see in here,

(05:13):
by the way, turns out America's better than anything they've
ever experienced. And so long as they keep sharing everything
that's so great about our country, I'm going to keep
reminding all of us that we do have it better
than anyplace else in the world. It makes me smile
every time I see another foreigner nearly lose their mind
over the size of a shopping center or the taste

(05:35):
of something you can get at any cafe in the
entire United States. In fact, after the show, I'm kind
of feeling like some catfishing grits myself, and I'm going
to go looking for it. By the way, if one
of you could email me on where I could find
catfish and grits in this city, I'd be forever grateful.
Just go to Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com. Quick sidebar too.

(05:56):
On the heels of this country's two hundred and fiftieth birthday,
here's a little stat for you that'll help you understand
just how many people are mostly ignorant when it comes
to our own country. And I'm talking about Americans, who
we are, what we stand for, and why angry idiots
maybe they shouldn't be allowed to vote. This is why
we can't all get along politically, because we're dealing with
too much historical ignorance thanks to busted public education, replacement

(06:22):
at the high higher level education with indoctrination, and an
entire party. I'm willing to engage in calm debate on anything.
They know nothing about American history, but they'll stand on
a street corner screen through a bullhorn, and they'll sit
crisscross apple sauce in the middle of the road to
disrupt honest people's days. They'll do all of that rather
than just have a civil conversation about anything. I may

(06:45):
come back to this later, but right now it's time
to take a little break here. On the way out,
I'll remind you that ut Health Institute on Aging is
a tremendous collaborative of providers, thousands of them in this
area who have taken it upon themselves to get additional training.
Additional training aside from all the years they spent in
school getting that diploma on the wall. What they're learning, though,

(07:08):
is how to apply that knowledge to us to seniors.
Most of them in the med center, as you already know.
All the great medical people around here at least spend
some time down that way, it seems, but many of
them come to outlying clinics and hospitals and whatnot, so
that if you don't want to go down there, you
don't have to. This is an advantage that we have

(07:28):
over almost every other community in the country.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
There are only three or four.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Anything like UT Health Institute on Aging, and I'm confident
in saying that ours is the biggest and the best.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Go to the website, check it out.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
You'll love what you find, and then start looking for
one of those providers UT dot edu slash aging, uth
dot edu slash Aging. And welcome back to fifty plus.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Thank you all for listening.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
I really do appreciate that I want to kind of
lean back into something where I left off in the
first segment for a minute or two and let you
kind of chew on this a second to understand why
some Americans maybe think socialism such a great idea, A
new and well, not the why part here, but just
how many people believe that. Actually, a new national survey

(08:19):
found that forty six percent of Americans don't know why
America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary was such a big deal.
And the reason they don't know why it was a
big deal is because that's the same percentage who couldn't
tell you what that anniversary commemorated. Fifty three percent, Thank goodness,

(08:41):
it's a majority said that it celebrated correctly the adoption
and signing of our declaration of independence from England. It
ought to scare every one of us a little more
than a little bit to realize that forty six percent
of the people in this country had no idea what
we were commemorating this past Saturday. So, anyway, speaking of

(09:05):
wrong and sticking with the Fourth of July theme, there
are conspiracy theory folks. I have to giggle one to
think about this walking among us who actually think that
the heat wave over the weekend, which truly did impact
tens of millions of Americans and possibly even their plans
on how they.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Would celebrate the fourth of July.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
These tenfoil had people actually think that the weather event
the heat wave was geo engineered just to disrupt our
nation's birthday party. And you know, while I'm here, I
mentioned that thing about the mayor of Paris blaming us
for the heat wave over there. I'll stick with the
air conditioning related news for a second. New York City

(09:51):
Mayor Moron Zomdani actually is encouraging city residents there to
set their thermostats at seventy eight degrees all summer long.
This is just another suggestion. He's dipping a toe into
the water to see just how far he can go
to have people actually follow his lead. And if New

(10:13):
Yorkers do that, if they say, oh yeah, well, if
Mayor z Amdani says this thing to do, by God,
we ought to do it, if they are that gullible
in the end, then the mayor is just going to
keep heaping things on there to make it more and
more difficult for the average New Yorker to get by
and through it all. You can take a guess whose

(10:33):
offices and homes are most likely to have their summertime
thermostats set around seventy well, that would be the mayor
and likely most of the people who work for him.
This is how socialism works, How communism works. Suggestions, if
they're not met with strong pushback, become law one by one.
How you set your thermostat what groceries you can buy,

(10:55):
what clothes you can buy, when you can do certain things,
when the erosion of rights shifts into a higher gear
and higher gear, until there's a very small elite ruling
class and everybody else. And if you want to know
what socialism is really like, then ask one of the

(11:15):
millions of people who came here in recent years about it.
They risk their lives to get away from those corrupt
mud holes.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
But not in America, not here.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
No, we've still got plenty of people who've never read
a word about socialism, never talk to anybody who's lived
through it, and think that that sounds like a great idea,
right up until it becomes reality and people have to
pay the piper. I read a story a couple of
days ago about young women being interviewed on what they
thought socialism would do for them, and their honest belief

(11:48):
about socialism is that it will provide them with the
same spit it out doug the same resources, the same
income level that they see all of these social media
influences enjoying. Everybody perceptually is going to get rich from
socialism when the opposite, the exact opposite, has been true

(12:10):
forever and ever and ever in history. You've got the
very small handful of people who are in charge, and
they place their friends and people they may owe something
in positions of power alongside them, and then everybody else, everybody.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Else gets basically nothing.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
And I guess technically, sticking with that theme and speaking
of how socialism works, the tragic earthquakes that absolutely devastated
Venezuela recently have sparked very harsh and long overdue criticism
of the former regime's public housing program under Chavez and Rodriguez.
Years years of warnings over inferior materials, over bad workmanship,

(12:55):
over questions about engineering and construction practices, all almost entirely
ignored by the country's socialist government. And when the earth shook,
those buildings failed one by one, leaving a depth toll
that's rising every day as crews focus. Now that they're
starting to just focus on rebuilding, since it's very unlikely

(13:16):
anymore survivors will be found in the rubble, there's going
to be recovery. Yeah, there's still thousands upon thousands of
people missing in all that debris. Certainly would have been
fatalities behind such strong quakes anywhere, but far fewer than
were killed because of the shoddy construction down there. I'd

(13:37):
be really curious to hear whether anyone within that current government,
at a higher level than dog Catcher, was lost because their.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Home collapsed around them. My gut says no.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
This next little story's been on the news everywhere for
the last i'd say thirty six hours maybe, But I'm
gonna throw my hat in the ring with this part
about Democrat Senate candidate from Maine, Graham Plattner, who has
more than a few skeletons in his closet right. Well,
he's decided now to ease out of the political spotlight
for a while to decide just I guess, to decide

(14:11):
how much dirty laundry he's willing to air in his
attempt to earn that Senate seat in November. There's already
enough concern about this guy in his past to cause
voters to look a little deeper before hitching their wagons
to his And only yesterday a woman doubled down on
her claim that Plattner forced himself on her sexually a

(14:31):
couple of years ago. Platner insists the allegations are untrue,
but she insists she's telling the story exactly as it unfolded.
We've heard false accusations of sexual misconduct a lot in
the past few years, so I'll at least I'll give
Platner the benefit of the doubt so far. But this
one might be a hill he won't want to climb publicly.

(14:53):
Other women are coming forward, there's a Nazi tattoo in
play with him, and now this he said yesterday, he's
going to take some time off to consider what path
he wants to take moving forward. I'll be curious though,
to see if he's really willing to open that closet
of his any wider. All right, shifting back to our

(15:14):
hometown here for one more piece of news before I
have to go to a break. From click to Houston.
Yesterday comes word that the man accused of shooting and
killing a repairman recently was out on bond for several
cases against him. He had drug charges, weapons charges, thefts,
and he was arrested late last year for shooting somebody else.

(15:36):
And liberal judges just keep putting the guy back on
the street. They kept putting him back on the street,
and he kept committing crimes. I got a good friend
who worked HPD homicide for decades. You've probably heard me
talk about him on the Outdoor Show too, and he
explained to me a long time ago that bad guys
these days aren't always in the mood for rehabilitation their

(15:57):
career criminals, many of them, but thankfully not all of them.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
And when these.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
Bad guys do get released by liberal judges, they just
go right back to doing the only thing they know
how to do to raise money, which is robbing, stealing,
and sometimes killing. Cold as ice. They are and they
shouldn't be on the street because they're just gonna keep
doing what they're good at, and what they're good at
is changing people's lives forever, and not in a good way.

(16:23):
I asked that same friend how many times he thought
a habitual criminal gets away with a big crime for
each time he's caught, and he just said something like,
that's going to be a really high number. And by
the way, that's one thing that Houston didn't rate so
highly on. When people were making their travel plans to
come watch World Cup matches over here. Our city's crime

(16:45):
is a problem. It's a big problem too, and the
world knows it, and that saddens me, especially when it
could be remedied simply by just taking habitual offenders off
the streets of our city. That's step one, and that's
the only step one to making any city safer. All right,
out we go for another break here on fifty plus
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(17:54):
them out. All right, welcome back one and all to
fifty plus. Thank you all for listening. I do appreciate
it this afternoon giving up. Well, I guess if you're listening,
I'm hoping you're someplace that's got air conditioning anyway. That
would be nice and make it a lot more comfortable
for us all. And speaking of cooling off, there's a
new trend among the it's the luxury status symbol. Now

(18:17):
it's called a snow room. They're the ying to the
yang of Saunas, I suppose, but instead of sitting on
a wooden bench inside a steamy, hot pit of just
watching all the gunk pour out of your pores, what
you're doing in these snow rooms is experiencing snowfall, icy walls,

(18:43):
and freezing temperatures. Why anybody would really want to have
that in their house, I don't know, but I guess
people just got bored with saunas. People with lots of
money got bored with Saunas and have changed over to
these snow rooms now, and the good in it will Jokingly,
I'll say, the good news is if you want a

(19:04):
snow room. I don't know why they don't call it
a cold room because it's not snowing in there all
the time. It's just cold. It's got icy walls, it's
got all of that. And here's the big kick in
the teeth. If you want one of these, you're going
to have to be willing to shell out about one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars to get one. For a
lot less than that, you could get a U haul truck,

(19:28):
put in all your belongings, drive to northern Minnesota, rent
a little apartment, and then open all the windows. And
if you do that just the right season of the year,
you're gonna get all the snow and icy walls and
frigid temperatures you want and still have about one hundred
thousand dollars left over to get yourself an ice shandy

(19:52):
and go fishing on a frozen lake. One more of
these and then we'll get back to it. And I
apologize up front, since I know it's lunch hour, okay,
but deal from the TMI desk. Each of us adults,
every single day, we all produce between one and two
leaders of nasal mucus every single day. Yeah, I apologize again. Sorry,

(20:17):
We'll move on speaking of snotty nosed brats Iran and
its bad decisions throughout this entire conflict. There was a
great story at MSN dot com about how Iran, which
keeps trying to tell the world that all the ships
transiting the Straight of Horror moves are going to have
to pay a steep toll somehow. Well, increasingly many of

(20:39):
the countries that do move oil through there currently, and
other cargoes whatever moving stuff through that straight, they're looking
at some fresh options, and there are a couple of
good ones being floated. First of all, there's the very
real option for the US and for some other countries
to simply decide to take over control of the Straight,

(21:00):
allowing all the ships to move in any direction they want,
move freely about the country, like the old airline statement
used to go, that catchphrase, wherever they want to go,
wherever they want to come back from, and no tolls,
no nothing, no escorts, And frankly, after Iran's lob missiles
and drones that just about every other country in that region,
I'd be willing to bet that more than a few

(21:22):
mid sized countries over there would be up for pitching
in and seeing if we can get even some of
the bigger players in the world at least to just
sit ily by and let control of the Strait fall
into other hands on a promise that whatever country is
standing by would be would be permitted to do whatever

(21:42):
commerce they wanted to do in and out of that
straight in perpetuity. I'm not sure the leaders of a
run realize how little, how few bargaining chips they still
have in their bank. Most of the world is sick
and tired of what they've done over there, and half
of the Middle East at least maybe more, has been

(22:03):
absorbing drones and missiles for the.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Better part of a quarter of a year.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
If the right handful of world leaders just said, you
know what, we're going to go ahead and we're going
to take over the straight, not you, we and flex
their muscles just right, I think that could be a
very legitimate possibility moving forward. The other option would be
to develop alternate ways to get in and out of

(22:30):
that region by water. And the first thing that comes
to mind is dig a ditch. Wouldn't be the first
big ditch it's ever been built in the world. A
big ditch too, so that ships don't have to sail
anywhere near Iran to get in and out of that region.
It would be a big job, but it wouldn't be
the first one, Like I said so, And I'm not
sure how feasible that idea really is, but it's way

(22:52):
better than paying Iran anything just to navigate international water.
I don't know who they think they are, but in
the end, and I think they're going to find out.
And to bounce back to some good news for a minute,
here a story at the Good News Network I found
blind people have been offered fresh hope.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
This was kind of the lead of that story.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Blind people have been offered fresh hope of seeing again
after lab grown cells restored retinal function in mice in
research at dirt Dirk University Duke University over in the Carolinas,
when special retinal blood cells were injected into mice with
retinal disease. Those special cells integrated into the damage tissue

(23:35):
to regenerate blood vessels and restore retinal function, including in
a model of the leading cause of vision loss in
working age people, which I would guess as cataracts. I'm
not sure. This one's still in very early trials, as
are many of these stories, but it does show great
promise for potentially, at least quite literally, enabling visually impaired

(23:57):
people to see again and want to get to this
story today. I found it somewhat humorous but also potentially interesting.
I guess in the automobile world, Shell is actually testing
what they call a triple ten electric vehicle. That designation
means it can be fully charged in ten minutes or less.

(24:20):
It runs with an efficiency rating of ten kilometers or
more generated by its motor per kilowatt hour, and it
also generates no more than ten tons of CO two.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Throughout its entire life cycle.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
On the plus side, those are all great numbers for
an EV, but then again, there's that minus side that
every plus side comes with. And the car in the
picture that accompanied this story makes a small not a small,
makes a smart car.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Look like an escalade.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
So if you need an electric car for short trip
to the grocery store, and you have no friends that
are ever gonna be in the car with you, and
you just want something that you can be proud of,
I suppose if you're a big fan of evs, keep
an eye out for one of these things soon. And

(25:16):
if you're of average height, you're gonna be looking down,
not up to see it.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Moving on.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
If you like fine art stories with happy endings, you're
gonna love this. Okay, You're gonna be thrilled to know
that law enforcement in Paris. I found this very interesting.
They were conducting a raid on a major drug house.
They knew what they were gonna find going into this place,
but they didn't know everything they were gonna find. And
in addition to plenty of drugs and two hundred and

(25:45):
thirty thousand dollars in cash and a few other things,
they also found in that house a painting by Pablo
Picasso of a woman known as his Golden Muse.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
She was he was his.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
His girlfriend will wrap that in quotes for quite some time,
and painted her in true Picasso form. You'd never know
it was even a person to look at the at
the painting.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
But anyway, they found that, and it had been missing.
I don't remember how many years it's been missing, but
quite a few. And it's worth tens of millions of dollars,
according to the story.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
I do.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
I do appreciate fine art, especially more so by the
early masters than some of the contemporary stuff. I actually
had a fine arts class in my freshman year of
college and the best of the the best of the
best from the period. I like so much. Uh, the
way they paint. It's just it's such detail that if
you can stand a little distance away from many of

(26:46):
the best pieces in that class, you can almost feel
their subjects come to life.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
That it really is.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
That that finally done and how they did that, I
is just beyond me. That's that's a talent that is
extremely rare, and I admire anybody who can do that.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
I really do.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
All Right, one more quickie here and then we'll take
a little break from this one. Rules for thee but
not for me. That's what I titled this one. An
investment firms co founder in this country, by the way,
is being sued, or excuse me, he is suing after
he was fired for ignoring his own company's return to

(27:27):
office mandate that he signed. He argued, or he argues
in his suit that it applies to employees, not owners.
Think that guy's got a little socialist blood in him,
I would suspect. So all you peasants get back here
to the bread factory right away. I'll be at home

(27:50):
in my air conditioning, all right, Jumping out again, taking
another little break here on fifty plus. I want to
remind you that Midway meat Market is family owned and
operator and has been serving Texas hunters for fifty seven
years and counting all the way back to the eighties.
That's how far I'm back. I go going to Midway.
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(28:11):
that prairie every winter. Still got that same country store
feel too. The only difference might be that they've they've
really ramped up the electronics the technology in there to
make everything better, and it has made everything better. But
you're still gonna hear welcome to Midway when you walk
through the door. You're still going to get attention if
you need it, and you're gonna be left alone if

(28:31):
you want that. Midway meat Market's on Old Highway ninety
and Katie, very easy to find, just a couple of
miles west of ninety nine in Old Katie, Texas. Open
eight to seven every day, and there's a lunch counter
in there too. If you get there hungry, you won't
leave hungry unless you make that your choice. Midwaymeetmarket dot Com.
That's Midwaymeetmarket dot Com. All right, and welcome back to

(28:55):
segment four of today's show this Tuesday edition of fifty plus,
Thank you all for listening.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
I certainly do appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
I'm not sure if there's been any new development in
the Fox story from early this morning about a Manhattan
high rise office building that had to be evacuated after
authorities believed it might collapse. There were reports early of
bricks actually falling from the building into the street. You know,
I'm not sure what would cause that, but you wouldn't

(29:26):
have to tell me twice to leave, and I wouldn't
have a problem packing a little bag and getting out
of there if I saw a couple of bricks fall
past my window. And now for I guess one of
the more disturbing stories I told in a while, one
thousand miles away but creeping into every corner of America.
Now word that the Department of Homeland Security used the

(29:48):
word disgusting to describe Minnesota Governor Tim Wall's decision to
pardon an illegal immigrant child rapist. This guy might as
well be the poster child for the walls I'm talking
about for the left, great concern over illegal immigrants, and
far more concern for them than for Americans. This man

(30:12):
was tried and convicted of sexually assaulting a minor, a
ten year old girl, and Tim Walls with agreement from
a Minnesota board, essentially cutting loose worse for all of
us by the way Walls's pardon could enable this guy
to remain in our country. Think about what he's done

(30:34):
to a ten year old girl, guilty as charged and
then pardoned by Tim Walls, governor of Minnesota and former candidate.
Lest anybody forget for vice president in the election, that
likely the way it went saved our country from certain ruin.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
I can't fathom what would have happened around here.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
If the Harris Walls ticket had ended up at the top.
Tim Wallash has been slow playing serious investigation into that
staggering amount of fraud in his state for a year
or more, and now he's letting child rapist walk free.
I have to wonder, I really do have to wonder
why anybody could make such poor decisions so consistently. Well,

(31:16):
maybe there is one more of those people I can
think of offhand. The view has left Sonny hosting in
the kitchen long enough again to cook up another preposterous
dish of anti patriotism. She actually said that when she
goes into neighborhoods where American flags are being displayed, she

(31:38):
suddenly feels afraid, says, the American flag is a symbol
of white supremacy. Really, I'd feel way less comfortable beneath
a bunch of other flags that are beginning to pop
up around our country, But I'd run toward the American
flag in any neighborhood if there was trouble. I would
really like to people who say things like she's saying,

(32:01):
I'd really like to have her give a specific example
of any incident where she truly felt uncomfortable and afraid
beneath our flag. Sounds to me like she's either unfamiliar
with the pride most Americans have not only in ourselves, but.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
We take care of others. We take care of other Americans.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Or maybe she's just trying to stir a political pot
and keep her name in the news, stay relevant. As
they say, how that show continues to draw on audiences
is beyond me. Honestly, It's like it's almost like watching
a tragic comedy five days a week, just over and
over the same. And despite the little issues with the FCC,

(32:42):
the view still can't help itself, but to lean so
far left it almost falls out of the car. And
you know, speaking of real things to be afraid of.
Right now, a very prominent extremist streamer, a guy up
in New York City, has declared that city to be
an Islamic republic, also calling at mom Donnie's New York.

(33:02):
This guy's got more than a million followers to pay attention.
He's got more than a million followers and talked also
about not stopping until Islam is present in every house
in that city. A million followers for this guy, and
he is really stirring a dangerous pot just now. And

(33:23):
to soften things up a little bit, you know how
I like looking at the markets because I just can't
help myself. The Dow and its three best friends pretty
much ran off the chart this past week. But today
I looked again and they were down some, which is
not unusual this time of year given the state of
the world and the issues that are going on. Same

(33:44):
with oil. Oil actually came up a buck and a
half or so, a little bit over seventy dollars last
time I looked, which wasn't very long ago. I am
confident though, that it will start to come back down
again after greater supply comes on board. That's being done
by OPEK and by a couple of other countries around
the world and us. By the way we are, we

(34:06):
are drill, baby, drill. And as long as I'm walking
down this trail, if you're missing my basic weather reports
I used to do at the beginning of the showy,
I might start sharing them a little later in the program,
especially as we get a little deeper into summer and
things start popping up on the National Hurricane Center's map.
Nothing there right now, thank goodness, But if something does

(34:27):
pop up, I want to make sure that you guys
all know about it and plenty of time to go
what go buy a case of water and maybe a
package of toilet paper. It frustrates me, and I know
it frustrates a lot of other people. When storms do
pop up in the Gulf and the TV stations get
hold of them and start telling us the doomsday scenarios,

(34:47):
everybody and their brother rushes out and starts hoarding anything
and everything on the shelves in the grocery stores. There's
really no need to get more than a few days
worth of stuff, or a typical hurricane I've lived through
a bunch of them. It's usually very easy to find
either restaurants that open back up or grocery stores that

(35:10):
open back up pretty much once the wind stops flowing.
Getting electricity back in your house may be another issue. Altogether,
we were out. My family was out nine days. I
think it was nine seven or nine days, I can't remember.
It was a long dog on time though, before we
got our power back after Barrel, which wasn't that big
a hurricane. So anyway, back to the current forecast, what

(35:32):
we're looking at is the next several days are going
to be very similar to the past several days only
actually it may be a few degrees cooler, but you're
not going to notice the change. And I promise I'll
keep an eye on the tropics and let you know
when it says anything other than my favorite thing to
see on that big map that the Hurricane Center has
as its homepage, I love it when I flip that

(35:55):
thing open and it says, quote, tropical cyclone activity is
not expected during the next seven days. Seven more days
without ones. Good enough for me. One more pretty important update.
I would call it from Fox News again. And this
story was huge for what a month or so and
then it kind of fell off the map. But for

(36:16):
the family that's dealing with it, it's still front page stuff.
And that is the kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's mother out
there in California, California, guy accused of writing phony ransom notes,
just right off the bat has pleaded guilty to two
counts of harassment using an electronic device. He had a

(36:37):
lot of other charges filed against him, rightfully so, but
these two. He agreed to plead guilty to those two
in exchange for dropping all the other charges. That's how
the judicial system works all too often in this day
and age. If you can get the bad guy to

(36:57):
sign off on conceive eating guilt for at least something
that then you don't have to You don't have to
impanel a jury, you don't have to pay attorneys, you
don't have to do a lot of things that would
happen if you tried to charge them and convict them
on all the counts.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
It depends on the charge anyway.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
The bottom line at this guy, once he's sentenced to
each of those charges, and he doesn't know what sentence
he's gonna get yet, probably he might have. He might
have cut a deal on that too, but each charge
carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and
up to a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine,
so he better hope his attorneys have worked out a

(37:38):
deal for him on that too. What a scummy guy, though, really,
to write phony ransom notes and just try to make
you talk about an opportunistic extortionist. Holy cow, Okay, I
think I've got just enough time left for this one story.
It's been a while since I shared a story about
an illegal immigrant truck driver killing somebody on our highways.
And it's not because it doesn't keep happening. Quite the contrary.

(38:00):
Actually it does. There's an actual website dedicated to keeping
up with these losses, and we got another one just recently.
A illegal guy up in Pennsylvania driving toward where Trooper
Michael E. Pahira was doing a roadside inspection of another
truck when this thirty three year old Haitian driver left
the road, struck the trooper's vehicle and the truck he

(38:23):
was inspecting, and that collision killed Pahira, who had recently
moved into his mother's home to help her get through
a fight with cancer, and now he's gone because of
an illegal truck driver. I'm being told it's time to
wrap it up, so that's what I'm gonna do. Thank
you all for listening today. I hope you can join
me again tomorrow for fifty plus audio