Christmas Gifts

Today, Doug Pike discusses white elephant, gifts for your spouse, and Houston weather.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. 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? This show is all about you, only the good.
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.

(00:42):
And now fifty plus with Doug Pike. All right, here
we go.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Something fell, two paper towels on the roll. Surprised that's
not one of the gifts we have in our little
white elephant gift party over there, going on, the best
part so far of that. Now, I had to designate
someone to pull my little prize for me, because I

(01:09):
put one in so I get one out, and I
trust her. That would be Courtney, who sits right next
to me. And I said, here's the deal. If you
will just pick for me, you can choose from what
you pick for me and what you pick for yourself.
You get the best of the two. And from what
I saw that had already been opened out there, they's

(01:30):
not going to be a best It'll just be the
one she dislikes the least, I think so. Anyway, I'm
a little out of breath. I've been running around here.
I had to run try to figure out why nothing
was printing on the printers, which took a little while,
but I finally got it done. Then I had to
run back and grab my headphones because I'd forgotten them,
which I what would you say, will like once a month?

(01:53):
I do that? Or more more than that? No, no,
five times a month. No, that's more than one a week.
I'm gonna we're gonna have to go back through the
videotape of me coming in here every time, and I
want to say it's maybe maybe twice a month. That's all. Oh, well,

(02:16):
it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. Here we are
on yet another confusing weather day, during our transition from
what sprummer to fleeing and all the craziness we can
pack into a thermometer and a rain gage at once.
Like I said over the weekend over on kbmme for
the next month or so, really, the best thing you

(02:39):
can do if you want to be comfortable, no matter
where you're going or how long it takes to get there.
If you're leaving from Houston and the greater metropolitan Houston
area and not going very far, the best thing you
can do is just bundle up an armload of clothes,
something from every end of your closets, something two or

(03:00):
three things from each drawer in your dresser, and then
just pile them in the back seat and throwing an umbrella.
I think you're gonna have to have one of those
this time of year as well. In fact, it may
come in handy over the next couple of days, possibly
some random thunderstorms tonight according to the forecast, then a
fifty to fifty shot at more rain tomorrow. But the

(03:22):
good news is we're warming up a little bit, and
then on Thursday then cooler again, and then on Friday
and then warmer like maybe by Sunday or Monday, even
creeping up toward eighty degrees again, which means you got
to dig under all the long pants in the back
seat and the sweatshirts and the undershirts and all that,

(03:45):
and find shorts and a T shirt and flip flops again,
or golf shoes. I'm not sure how many years it
takes to get used to this crazy train of Southeast
Texas weather. But I've been riding it myself for more
more than more than a half a century. I don't
get surprised by dramatic temperature shifts at all, not at all,

(04:08):
but they do sometimes annoy me. Here's a prime example.
Just yesterday, this group of older golfers with whom I play,
they welcome me into their group. Probably six years ago,
maybe I don't know, five years ago. Something like that.
Might have been more, might have been less, I'm not
really sure. But since Monday's my day off and they

(04:30):
play golf, they have set tea times on Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday. I was fully prepared to play golf on
Monday morning when it was going to be in the
mid thirties. Scared a lot of guys off. Oh, they
were worried about a frost delay. They were worried about this,
they were worried about that too cold, and came up
with a dozen excuses not to play. Amongst the eighteen

(04:52):
or twenty people who receive that email, maybe it's twenty five,
might even be more. And I hesitated to hesitate to say,
what's wrong with you? Guys? You've lived here long enough,
you know better, And so I didn't and thought, yeah,
I thought, just let it go. We're not going to
play on Monday. That's fine. Nobody, not a one of
them had the not a one of them opted to

(05:16):
sign up and be ready to play on Monday. I
went on out there at about maybe nine nine fifteen,
nine thirty somewhere in there, just to go work on
my game, and and hey, it's you know, it's all
I can do at this point. Really I want to.
I want to at least try to get better. I
went over there basically, and it was in the thirties

(05:37):
okay when I got there. When I went over and
trying to kind of make believe I can still get
better with some smart practice, and honestly, with the sun
shining down pretty brightly on the back of my neck,
I had enough clothes on, which wasn't much. There were
only I started out actually with one, two, three layers,

(05:59):
and when I got there, as soon as I got
out of the car, it felt pretty chilly. So I
put on this one other very thin but wind resistant
layer and went over there and started hitting balls, and
ten minutes later, I'm out of that for I'm out
of that top layer. It was already comfortable enough when
I was standing there hitting balls that I didn't have

(06:19):
any trouble with it at all. And by the time
I got through there and then got through the short
game area and then went over and put it a
little bit, I was fine. I could have. It was
a beautiful day. It was an absolutely beautiful day. It
was the air was a little bit drier than it
has been for a while, sun shining down really nice.
I didn't end up playing because I had things to
do at the house and a little shopping to do, actually,

(06:42):
but then I did spend an awful lot of time
working on my shortcoming, so hopefully I might be I
don't know, one shot better next time I play. Taking
a quick glance at the markets, lots of red, lots
of red on the board this morning. One of the
headline stories at Yahoo Finance shared a dilemma being faced
right now by Ford. They lost a pretty good chunk.

(07:05):
Do they build for the United States market or do
they build for the world, And that's the decision they're
going to have to make at some point because the
world on the whole doesn't really embrace electric vehicles. My
gut tells me that increasing numbers of car makers are
going to have to quietly slow their production of evs

(07:25):
in lessen until more countries around the world climb onto
that little merry go round. My BET's still on hydrogen though,
and the sooner the better, which actually functions more like
a traditional engine and doesn't require super heavy batteries. That actually,
from the research I'm seeing, those super heavy electric cars
are taking a toll on our roads. They're pressing down

(07:48):
a lot harder than a traditional automobile and that's causing issues.
And if you don't believe that, right around Houston sometime
and start counting potholes and see if there aren't more
than when of the lastlast time you went through there,
maybe five years ago, six years ago, ten years ago,
before hardly anybody had electric vehicles. Ah, what a mess.

(08:09):
All kinds of stuff to talk about. We'll start talking
about it when I get back here. Ut Health Institute
on Aging is that fantastic collaborative of providers in every
medical discipline who, in addition to the training that got
them the diploma on the wall, they go back and
get more and more and more and more training so
that when you go see them. They can address your issue,

(08:33):
whatever it may be, with knowledge that goes above and
beyond what the average provider is. Nothing wrong with anybody
who's got MD in front of there or behind their name,
and doctor in front of it, trainer, therapist, whatever they are,
they're qualified. I totally get that. But this group of
more than a thousand of them has gone back and

(08:55):
gotten additional training on their own dime, on their own time,
so that they could help us us get better faster
from whatever's bothering us. Go to the website, check it
out u t H dot edu slash aging, u t
h dot edu slash aging. See what they can do
for you all those crazy resources that cost you nothing,

(09:17):
and then work your way toward a provider who can
fix you up. Eat ut H just fell out of
my head. Ut h dot edu slash aging. Now they
sure don't make them like they used to.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
That's why every few months we wash them, check his fluids,
and spring on a fresh coat of wax. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike. All right, welcome back to
fifty plus. Thanks for listening, certainly to appreciate it. On
this I guess it's pretty nice day. There's no windows
in here, will and I got to just sit here
and quietly stare at the four walls. Do the monitors

(09:51):
even work anymore?

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Will? Yes?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
No?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeh? Maybe that's a that's about right. That's exactly what
I expected. Well, I say, I said, monitors. We started
with three. We only have one now, But that's better
than none, I guess. I wanted to start my walk
through the news today with information from Australia's Bandai Beach
where two men with rifles, it was horrible, killed a

(10:17):
dozen people, injured many more over there. I'm sure you've
heard something about it by now, and if you haven't
looked it up, stories from several sources today share that
local police pretty much froze in their tracks when this
attack began. These armed terrorists just started shooting willy nilly

(10:39):
into crowds of people there to celebrate a Jewish holiday,
a Jewish ritual it was. It was supposed to be
a fun, enjoyable day, and these two, these two just
absolutely ruined that. The police were, as one story put out,

(11:01):
they were front and center when people dared walk their
dogs or pulled down their masks during the pandemic, but
when a bonafide terrorist attack was underway. They just they failed,
They absolutely failed, miserably. Seen the video of the hero
who actually tackled and disarmed one of the bad guys

(11:22):
I have, and it was one of the most selfless,
potentially deadly acts that this man could have started and completed.
He hid behind a car, got up closer and closer
to this guy who was still just shooting into the crowd,
and then he ran and tackled the guy and got

(11:45):
his rifle away from him. And to his credit, he
did not shoot the bad guy. He just he just
held on to the rifle and then looked around and
all of a sudden he's here and put it down.
Put it down. He said, Hey, I'm a good guy.
Don't shoot. Don't shoot. Well, the police shot him. They

(12:05):
shot him twice. And fortunately for the good guy, the
police who were shooting at him weren't very good. They
probably don't get a lot of practice. If I recall correctly,
he took one round in the arm and another in
a hand, So I guess there's some small thing to

(12:25):
be grateful for now. I'm kind of tired of hearing
about law enforcement in many countries around the world, including
ours in some instances not being prepared to stop these shootings.
Now we're way better at it than we were a
few years ago, but there's still I don't know how

(12:45):
you would train for this. I don't know how you would.
That's not what I know. But I do know that
this is just going too far way. Too many jurisdictions
around the world too rely on signs that read gun free.
His own that's supposed to stop people from bringing guns
onto those properties. Tell that to the people at Brown University,

(13:08):
expensive very expensive private private school. Proudly spit it out.
Dude proudly proclaims that it is gun free from from
stem to stern. Nobody carries a gun on this campus,
not even people who have concealed carry permits to carry

(13:28):
those weapons. You can't have it on your person, you
can't have it in your room, you can't have it
in your car. It's a gun free zone, which pretty
much makes everybody in a place like that a sitting duck.
Once somebody loses their mind and decides to do the unthinkable.
Gun free zones are only gun free until some lunatic

(13:48):
shows up with one or two or three, and then
all the people who felt so safe because of a
sign on the wall, suddenly realize that sign is not
going to do anything to keep them safe. This guy,
by the way, the guy at Brown. After all those
shots were fired and two people were dead, many more injured.
The suspect, who they actually have video of, dressed it

(14:11):
head to toe in black, and he just walked quietly away.
Nobody to stop him, nobody to challenge him, nobody to
say put your hands up and get on the ground.
According to police too, there's no pictures of the man's
face because he wore a COVID mask on a university
campus that's gun free. And by the way, even more ridiculous,

(14:35):
I saw this. I couldn't believe that anybody even wrote
this down and then read it into a camera somewhere.
Law enforcement is warning the public that this suspect in
the shooting at Brown University is quote armed and dangerous
end quote. Thank you, Captain obvious. Thank you very much

(14:55):
for telling us something that we knew a long time ago.
We learned it what yesterday, night before last. I don't
remember when the guy was there. Anytime you see one
of those gun free signs as you walk into a building,
just stop and think about it for a minute and
make a very careful note of not just the one
nearest exit, but the two nearest exits, just in case.

(15:20):
Because the police can't get there fast enough to do
anything to stop a guy who walks in with a
loaded gun and decides to turn it on the people
in front of him. It's gonna take police a long
time to get there, even if they're two blocks away.
A whole lot of harm can be done in seconds.

(15:42):
They're not gonna get there. Not their fault either, It's
just the way policing works these days. You're gonna either
have to run, try to hide, or play dead, none
of which is gonna be much good. Unless you're a sprinter,
a magician, or a great actor. Those are your only
three shots, that's it. Or if you dare to, If

(16:06):
you have a concealed carry permit and you've carried your
weapon inside that building and a bad guy shows up,
Now what do you do if you draw that weapon
and fire it to protect yourself and the other people
in that building from a guy who came in there
to kill people. All of a sudden, you're gonna find
yourself arrested for carrying a gun on a place that's
got that sign. That's how topsy turvy this world is

(16:30):
of ours right now. It's a little bit disheartening, a
little bit crazy. I know, it's a lot crazy and
disheartening it it really is. But I do firmly believe
that we're working our way through it and working our
way out of this the hocus pocus that's been heaped
upon us by mainstream media and by progressive politicians who

(16:56):
want to do nothing to stop crime, who want to
do nothing to make this world a better place. By
the way, I'm gonna be talking about something that President
Trump did in the next segment. I think I'll get
to it. Oh goodness, Will wants me to stop. Okay, well, okay.
Elisa Brewster from Brewster Law Firm in sugar Land works

(17:18):
hard every single day to help clients dealing with compliance
issues with healthcare transactions, reimbursement, payer dispuse, all of these things,
even business law. She does a lot of that too.
Works with seniors who need advice on protecting their wealth
and drafting into life documents which are so so important
to make sure that your loved ones don't get taxed

(17:39):
out of everything that you tried to leave for them.
Office is right off fifty nine in Sugarland. If you
need legal help, you can get it Brewster LAWFIRMTX dot com.
Brewster Law Firm TX dot com. What's life without a net?
I suggest you go to bed, sleep it off.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Just wait until the show's over, Sleepy Doug Pike, as
fifty plus continues.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
All right, welcome back. Thanks for listening to fifty plus,
certainly to appreciate it. Third segment of the show where
it starts right now. Amid the chaos and fanfare and
festivity of a Christmas party going on just outside this studio.
We can hear them yelling from time to time out there.
I went to check on my gift that Courtney picked

(18:28):
for me and learned that what I ended up with
was passed on like three times before I got stuck
with it. It's a pillow that's about two feet long,
about a foot tall, and about maybe five six inches deep,

(18:51):
fairly well cushioned. It seems like a halfway decent quality pillow.
But bear in mind, the maximum value of these gifts
was only supposed to be twenty dollars, so somebody found
it somewhere for less than twenty dollars and embroidered in.
There is not some poignant saying, not some meaningful verse.

(19:15):
It's just somebody learned how to. I don't know what
would that be, weaving, knitting, embroidering, Yeah, embroidery, I think
is what. This is a boombox, A boombox on the pillow.
So when I get home this afternoon, as I walk in,

(19:35):
I'm gonna tell my wife I'm going to bring in
my gift that I got at the party, and I'm
gonna bring it in as you can only carry a boombox,
and that would be on my shoulder, and we'll see
how that goes. This should get a little bit of
a laugh. Speaking of laughs, if you're looking for one.
And I do not know or care whether this is

(19:57):
real or AI for starters, it makes no difference. But
it's funny as can be. There's a video out there,
it's only about twenty seconds long, maybe twenty four or
something like that, of these two talking heads news anchors
supposedly sharing on the screen behind them a police sketch

(20:19):
of a wanted criminal. And this thing is it's cartoon
like at best, it looks like a six year old
Drewid and it's got just little wispy curly hair on
the top. The eyes are just these big circles, and
it's just crazy looking thing, it really is. It literally

(20:41):
looks like a child, a very young child, maybe four.
They draw a face and that's what that person drew,
that kid drew, and then they superimpose next to that
character that sketch a photograph because they've caught the guy.
And you will not believe how much he looks like

(21:02):
that sketch. And there's a man and a woman anchoring
the news. The news woman anchor is his laughing, has
been laughing since the sketch came up, and is laughing
even harder now. The guy starts laughing and kind of
spends his chair about ninety degrees and leans back a

(21:22):
little bit and ends up falling backward. He's laughing so hard. Yeah,
it's worth a look. It's worth a look. I'll scratch
that out. I don't want to waste too much time
on it. Back to the news. The weird political stuff
that's going on from Minnesota more evidence that it has

(21:44):
lost forever is a free state among these United States
of America. High school principal there warned parents think about this.
This is a high school principal. It's not a mayor,
it's not a city council person, it's not a state representative.
This high school principal warned parents of students at his
school that they could be punished, including suspensions, for comments

(22:10):
free speech. Be damned, you know, for comments, and suspend
it for any comments that praise ice agents or reference
even our president's deportation policies. You can't even talk about that.
You can't even talk The principal's name is Paul Petzil.
He's from a Dinah High School, a Dinah Adina, I'm

(22:32):
not sure either one. And he's absolutely trampled and spit
on our First Amendment. Last I checked, school authority does
not supersede that of the Constitution in the United States.
And somebody needs to let this principal, Paul know that.
That's just remarkable, just remarkable, the lengths to which the

(22:52):
left will test the power they have. And if every
parent in that school doesn't stand up and voice some
irritation with what he's proposing, that their children be suspended
for speaking their minds, he needs to just be out.

(23:15):
He needs to go, He needs to go get some training,
that's what he needs. On a broader look at Minnesota,
by the way, growing list of politicians from there being
linked to one of this nation's largest money fraud cases
in history. And it all happened under the noses of
three very prominent politicians in that state. That would be

(23:36):
Tim Wats, that would be elin Omar, and that would
be Keith Ellison. If the allegations against them, and hey,
innocent until proven guilty. I'm one hundred percent for that
in every case ever brought, innocent until proven guilty. But
if any of this stuff against them turns out to
be true, they're going to have a lot of explaining

(23:57):
to do, not only to the citizens of their state,
but also to pretty much every one of us who
ended up contributing indirectly to scams that moved millions upon
millions of dollars, millions upon millions of dollars out of
our hands and into the hands of people who should

(24:21):
not have received them, should not have received them. Meanwhile,
some Democrat senators continue to support sending what Republican Representative
Tim Burchett said was about forty million dollars a week
through NGOs over to Afghanistan, which currently is run by
the Taliban, if you didn't know, and the Taliban hates us,

(24:42):
wants us all dead. Lawmakers are keenly aware and trying
to stop that money from falling into enemy hands, but
enough folks on the left are blocking legislation to get
that done that it's becoming a little bit harder to
figure out exactly what side these people are on. If
you're not a against sending forty million dollars a week

(25:03):
through NGOs to the Taliban, what exactly do you stand
for that helps the United States of America in any way,
shape or form. It's really frustrating to watch this. It
really is. It really is. In a move I feel
was long overdue, President Trump signed an executive order to
declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. And although some

(25:28):
people will, oh, that's just crazy, that's just it's a pill.
It's a drug, that's all it is. Well, here's the
problem with that pill. That drug, on average, over the
last several years, it's been killing upwards of two hundred
to three hundred thousand young Americans annually. I have great

(25:49):
respect for that decision, and I really hope we can
use it to bring forth whatever force is necessary now
to come back this drug as a weapon of mass destruction.
Those boats, those I'm want to wrap this in quotes,
just for giggles, those fishing boats leaving Venezuela and headed here.

(26:12):
Those boats are carrying, on average, probably enough fentanyl to
kill every man, woman and child in America. Unfortunately, most
of us are smart enough not to take things we
don't know are what they are, and we are mindful
that we teach our children not to do that. But

(26:35):
all of that said and done, that drug is still
killing a couple of hundred a quarter of a mile,
let's call it. A quarter of a million, go right
in the middle, quarter of a million people a year.
What else could you call it but a weapon of
mass destruction. No bomb could do that. We would take
a significant number of very large explosives to kill a

(26:55):
quarter of a million Americans. And so, well, President Trump,
well done. I hope whatever it takes to stop that,
let's go. And I think the people who are still
making it and still trying to get it in here
are going to be in for some very noisy and
very disruptive awakenings in the very short term. We need

(27:18):
to take a break and head into Well, we'll head
into a break and then we'll come back and wrap
it up on this I think it's a pretty sunny
and nice afternoon. A little bit of rain to night,
like I said earlier, but that's hey, we could use
it that way. I wouldn't have to water my yard.
We'll take a little break here, we'll be right back.
More fifty plus on AM nine k p RC old

(27:40):
guys rule and of course women never get old. If
you want to avoid sleeping on the couch, well, I
think that sounds like okay.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Plan fifty plus continues. Here's more with Doug.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I've heard a lot of discussion over the past week
and a half, maybe more and more as we get
a little closer on air off air, in casual conversations
about what to get the person who seems to have everything.
I think I remember Jimmy talking about it on KTRH

(28:13):
this morning about how he and his wife have just
stopped buying presents for each other because they seldom, if ever,
would get something trying to surprise the other person. It
would seldom be something that was a pleasant surprise. It
would just be a swing and a miss, if you will.
And I'm wondering if there is any if there's anything

(28:37):
that any of you would consider a lock a rock
solid choice for a gift for a spouse when you've
been married at least say twenty years, or in my case,
thirty five, because at this point my wife and I
know each other pretty well, we know what we need.

(28:58):
I didn't even know I needed a new suit until
about three days ago when my wife said, get in
the car, we're going to buy you a new suit.
And the hint should have been when I tried to
put on the last suit I bought, which I believe
may have been bought fifteen eighteen years ago. Maybe it's

(29:22):
been a while. I don't wear suits very often. I
have much more camouflage than I have business attire, and
there's a reason for that. That's just what I do
and where I go. And on the flip side of that,
there's got to be something that the guys in this

(29:42):
audience could buy for their wives. And no flowers, no candy,
just that's so no, that's a big hard no. But
if there's something I would love to know, and if
I get a few answers, I'll talk about them tomorrow
on the program and see if we can get a
agreement or disagreement. I have bought one gift for my

(30:03):
wife this year that she has no idea what it is.
I don't think she does. She actually asked me about
a charge she saw on our credit card and I said,
I don't know, I'll look into it, and we just
kind of left it at that, and then she always
she did yes, she asked me a few days later.
I said it was cool, it was good, and she

(30:26):
didn't ask what it was. She may have had a
hint by the company company name, but hopefully not. Hopefully
she'll be surprised when she opens this one. The rest
of it is probably going to be things that she
kind of halfway knows is coming. She'll drop hints. And
then she also decided, much to my economic dismay, that

(30:48):
since my son is a senior in high school and
will be going off to college next year, probably seven
or eight hours away, which kind of bothers both of us,
my wife and I, my wife and me, but you
know what, we gotta let him make his own decision.
In any event, she's decided that this is gonna be
his final magical Christmas, and by magical she means whatever

(31:14):
it costs. And she actually had him, she actually had
him put together a list because he's eighteen and we
don't really know what's hip and cool in his crew,
his posse. So he made a list of about ten things,
and she told him to just go ahead and order him.
This is all Amazon stuff, ten things, probably half of

(31:36):
which are on the front porch now. And then additionally,
apparently I looked in in the cart last night and
there were five or six more. So he's taking full
advantage of his swan song under the tree. And I
can't blame him. He's a good kid. I don't mind
doing it for him. But he's just at some point

(31:58):
he's gonna understand and when I tell him that if
he likes the lifestyle to which he's become accustomed, he's
going to have to find something that pays him a
substantial amount of money when he becomes a grown man,
which he's kind of. He's eighteen now, and I hope
he's got some plans for working over the holidays and

(32:20):
over the summer, because when he rolls off to college,
he's going to be on a meal plan. But as
any of you know who, especially young men who went
off to college on a meal plan. That's not all
the meal you can eat. It's not like just an
endless buffet. You get meals, but you don't get one
hundred snacks in between. So he's good, He'll be fine.

(32:44):
I'm confident of that, I really am. I'm not worried
about him at all. I just want to make sure
that he understands what he's falling in love with and
what it takes to keep that keep that ball rolling.
Good happen? How much time to have? Will? Oh? Good? Good?
Good good? So if you like animals, you're gonna love this.

(33:04):
I am no fooling. You are gonna absolutely love this one.
And it thrilled me when I saw the headline on it.
I don't even remember what it was, but I started
reading and I took a few notes. In any event,
inter Poll this is the international police and they man
They rule the world basically when it comes to law enforcement.
They can go anywhere. They can do anything with help

(33:26):
from locals, of course. But Interpol just completed one of
the largest raids in history with the intent of dismantling
staggering numbers of criminal shipments of animals. Live animals were
talking about and other just animal parts, the biggest one ever,

(33:50):
four thousand, six hundred and twenty raids in one hundred
and thirty four countries, eleven hundred suspects involved with all
of this, and ultimately this is the the drum roll
good part. Ultimately, the rescue of thirty thousand plus live

(34:14):
animals from varying degrees of horrific conditions. Thirty thousand animals,
some of them kind of small, some of them pretty big.
The good news that came from this, according to the story,
and it is good news really. When they realized how
big this ring of poachers was, and how big this

(34:36):
ring of animals illegal animal sellers this was, they expected
to uncover just warehouses full of ivory, warehouses full of
rhinoceros horns, warehouses full of skins and pelts and whatnot.
All of those numbers were very low, very low, which

(34:59):
means the the bad guys are either being caught or
finding other ways, perhaps through moving live animals. Maybe I
don't know, Maybe that doesn't cost him as much as
moving parts of dead animals. In any event, thirty thousand
animals rehomed, I guess re owned, rehomed, whatever they're in

(35:23):
better conditions now than they were before. AOC still burning
through our tax dollars, kind of more like an entitled
overlord than a humble public servant. She recently went through
about fifty grand in Puerto Rico on luxury hotels, high
end dining, even a venue rental where bad Bunny, who,
by the way, hates America but loves the money he

(35:43):
makes here. She's just such a hypocrite, really plain and simple.
Maybe she's trying to outspend Jasmine Crockett, which I don't
know if necessarily, if that's possible, but I guess because
she's got the federal ties to the purse strings, maybe
she could do that. She and Jasmine are going to
be great friends, I'm sure. Finally, from the Looney Ben,

(36:06):
a high school student in Cobb County, Georgia, expelled for
sharing a potential warning of a threat to the school students.
Student feared the threat was real, which is why he
reported it, but officials who later found out it was
a hoax, decided they ought to suspend this kid and
then kick him out of school. They expelled him for

(36:26):
this for sharing what he thought was a legitimate threat
to those students that despite by the way that, despite
a judge actually sided with the boy and his parents,
they kicked him out of school. He ended up having
to go live with his grandparents to be able to
get transportation to the alternative education he was offered.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Fortunately that decision was recently reversed, but the school plans
to appeal. This is absurd, absolutely absurd. That's it for today.
I'm gonna go look at my boombox pillow. You guys
have fun. Audios.