It’s the Deathknell for High Speed Rail

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's a ritual within the Catholic faith. I guess it's
not really the Catholic faith. It's more like a ritual
that developed around the papal household and the papal court
proceedings that when a pope died, the way that you
would actually confirm the pope's death involved one of the cardinals,

(00:25):
with a bunch of witnesses around, going to the pope
dead on his bed or wherever they're laying him, and
knocking him on the head lightly with a silver hammer,
like a couple of times. I think it's like three times.
And after you do that and the pope doesn't get up,
then you can all rest assured. Okay, the pope is

(00:47):
officially dead. Well, we had that moment just yesterday. With
the high speed rail system, it's official, The Fresno Bee,
writes Eric Galicia writes in the Fresno b the Trump
administration has announced it is pulling four billion dollars in
unspent federal grants for California's high speed rail project. This

(01:11):
is California's fault. US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said
Wednesday evening in a statement. Governor Newsom and the complicit
Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Newsom quickly issued
a response to the federal government's decision, describing the defunding
of the California project as quote Trump's latest gift to China.

(01:32):
Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the
central Valley, Newsom said news release. We won't let him. Ah. Yes,
Gavin Newsom, the great hero, defender, vindicator of the San
Joaquin Valley. He he's yes, He's the one who really
cares about us in the San Juaquin Valley. Not Donald Trump.

(01:55):
Not Donald Trump who's fought for years to try to
bring more water provision to the San Joaquin Valley. No, no, no, no, no,
no no, it's Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom is our true
hero who has fought Donald Trump at every step of
the way in Trump's efforts to bring more water delivery
to the saan Juaquin Valley. No, no, no, It's Trump's fault.

(02:16):
Trump wants to hand China the future. I'm not sure
why China is handed the future by us not having
having a high speed rail system, but there we go.
A legal battle over the money may be on the horizon,
of course, it is as both Newsom and im Chudri Chowdry,
the CEO of California's High Speed Rail Authority C Houdri,

(02:38):
They called the recision of the money illegal on Wednesday.
Though the decision was not unexpected, it could create further
delays for the project in the sam Jaque in the
Central Valley. The rescinded grants. A nine hundred and twenty
nine million dollar award from twenty ten and a three
billion dollar award from twenty twenty three were earmarked for
the construction of a downtown Fresno station sorry Jerry Dyer

(03:02):
and extensions from Shafter to Bakersfield and Maderra to merced
They came under threat in February when President Donald Trump
directed Duffy to launch an audit to determine whether the
money should be stripped. In the months since, Trump continuously
signaled his intention to defund the California Project, as he

(03:22):
did during his first term by pulling one billion dollars
that was later restored over its lack of that was
later restored during Joe Biden's presidency. Trump has long criticized
the Californy Project over its lack of progress toward connecting
the state's major urban centers. Well, I mean, this is

(03:42):
a death knell sort of for two things. One, it's
I guess it's not really the deathnell again, it's the
knocking the pope on the head with a silver hammer
after he's already been dead for a long time. Just
so you're you know, this is the final confirmation the
high speed rail is dead. I just don't see any
roadmap to it ever being completed. I mean, unless they

(04:07):
just only can work on it during Democrat administration. During
Democrat administrations and they use up whatever grant money they
get when Democrats are in office. I mean, you gotta
think the real moronic thing was they got this money
in twenty twenty three that they you know, I don't

(04:28):
know nearly enough about the engineering and construction and construction
contracting and blah blah blah blah blah, all those decisions
that were necessary would have been necessary. Why didn't they
get that money spent? Or maybe they wasn't released yet. Anyway,
it seems foolish to me to be hanging out during
the Biden administration and not trying to gobble up and

(04:51):
spend whatever money you have on the table. Knowing as
you do, the distinct possibility that Donald Trump might come
back to the White House now it then, So in general,
high speed rail I think is dead. The article goes on.
It was initially envisioned as a Los Angeles to San

(05:13):
Francisco line that would cost up to thirty three billion
and be operational by twenty twenty, but the project has
been plagued by delays and cost increases in the seventeen
years since California voters first approved a bond for its construction.
The latest estimates indicate completing the project as originally envisioned
could top one hundred billion. I think one hundred billion's
conservative at this point. I think we're probably now realistically more.

(05:38):
I mean, a hundred billion was the estimate we were
getting like a year or two ago, a couple of
years ago, And every year that goes by, by the way,
the cost goes up, So I'd assume the actual cost
is going to be something more like one hundred and
twenty billion. The main focus today is the completion of
a one hundred and seventy two mile Bakersfield to Merced
railway by twenty thirty three. Yeah, good luck, and fully

(06:02):
funded Construction is underway on one hundred nineteen miles between
Shafter and Maderra. Determining whether the state is capable of
completing the Central Valley stretch by twenty thirty three was
also the focus of the federal audit. Its findings were
released last month in a scathing report that concluded the
state's Rerail Authority has made little progress and misrepresented its

(06:22):
ability to finish the Baker's Field to Merced line. So
the report misrepresented the ability of the High Speed Rail
Authority to finish the line. I'm not sure that it
misrepresented anything. In a Wednesday letter to Chowdry, Duffy reiterated

(06:43):
the federal government's position that the state's Rerail Authority has
broken the terms of the two grand agreements in question.
After over a decade of failures, cchsra's mismanagement and incompetence
has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on
time or on budget, Duffy said Wednesday, it's time for
this boondoggle to die. And that's true. I mean, the

(07:06):
high speed rail is dead. It's gonna take until twenty
thirty three just to finish Bakersfield. Marsaid I don't think
there's any chance that it's gonna get done by twenty
thirty three. And I would say that even if this
four billion dollars were coming, I just don't think they've

(07:27):
done the work. I mean, they got they did get
this four billion dollars. Why didn't they use it. Why
didn't they put the pedal to the metal and start
getting moving on construction? What was the hold up? And
whatever those holdups were? I mean, I guess that's, you know,
whatever those holdups were as part of the indication for

(07:47):
why this thing can't get done in a timely fashion.
I mean, they have blown by every single deadline they've
ever set. What makes us think that they're gonna be
on target for twenty thirty three when we have no
idea what can happen between now and twenty thirty three.
The state's budgetary situation is getting worse and worse and worse.

(08:08):
We don't know what. I mean. You have this twenty
thirty three goal, and it's only set on the basis
of is their real federal will to keep funding this thing?
And there just isn't so at the big picture federal level.

(08:29):
I think it's dead. It's also dead because of the
obvious declining need for it and the decline in demand
that I think it's going to experience. There's not going
to be a lot of demand taking this from Mersaid
to Bakersfield or going you know, hopping on the high
speed rail in Fresno just to go to Bakersfield, so

(08:51):
that you still don't have a car. It's not going
to actually save anyone any time. And especially if electric
vehicle mandates in California ramp up and people actually are
driving more and more electric cars, the environmental need for
it is going to evaporate away. I mean, the state's

(09:16):
own estimates of how many people will actually ride the
high speed rail have been going down and down and
down and down the longer the longer the project has
gone on. I mean that it was just a year
or so ago they estimated down by about twenty five
percent the actual ridership that this thing would have. And

(09:37):
it's true, I mean, especially for just Merceaid to Bakersfield.
And that's always been Gavin Newsom's line about it, is
we want to finish mer Said to Bakersfield to establish
the viability of the project as a whole. There's no
way that that's going to establish the viability of the
project as a whole. Nothing about Merced to bakers No

(09:58):
one's gonna ride merceaid to Baker's Field. You're going to
set up the high speed rail system in the least populous, flattest,
most like engineering wise, simplest stretch of the high speed rail.
You're gonna set it up there with the least amount

(10:21):
of likely use. I mean again, what person in Fresno
is going to get a ride to a train station.
Get to the train station at least a half hour
before the train leaves, Buy a ticket, which is going
to cost more than gas. Wait thirty minutes, get on

(10:45):
the train, Ride on the train for an hour. Maybe
maybe it's going to be an hour rather than two
hours to get to Bakersfield on a good day. I
don't know if it's going to stop in little towns
in between. Maybe it's an hour, maybe it's an hour
and a half. They get off in Bakersfield, and then
what do you do. It's not like you can walk.

(11:07):
Bakersfield is a big, sprawled out California city. It's not
like there's a downtown where everything is. It's not like
San Francisco, where there's you know, super great public transit.
You got to get an uber or alternatively, you could
just get in your car and go. Avoid the car

(11:28):
ride you need to take to the train station. Avoid
the car ride, avoid the half hour wait while you're
at the train station a half hour early. You could
just get in your car and drive two hours and
you're in Bakersfield with the car. And that dynamic has
always made me just skeptical, is anyone even gonna ride
this thing? And that's the silliness of it. I just

(11:51):
don't see anyone. I have never seen why anyone is
gonna use em or said to Bakersfield stretch of the
high speed rail. And thus there's no way that it's
gonna demonstrate the viability of the system as a whole,
especially if you know, if there are massive cost overruns, delays,

(12:12):
environmental challenge at this, that and the other, if that
continues to be the case, if it's plagued with that
much cost overrun for the obviously the cheapest stretch, this
is the cheapest stretch of the high speed rail guides
there's not going from Merced to San Francisco or going

(12:38):
from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, either one of those is
going to be more expensive. It's gonna more expense per mile, certainly.
Why well, the property you're gonna be seizing with eminent
domain is going to be more valuable. In both of
those places, the engineering challenges are going to be much greater.

(13:02):
I still have never heard from anybody how the high
speed rail folks, and I don't know that this has
even really been decided how they intend to get over
the Grapevine, because normal rail can't get over the grape
get over the Grapevine. You try to take Amtrak to
southern California, what happens is you stop before the Grapevine,

(13:24):
you get on a bus, you take a bus over
the Grapevine, then you get back on a train. So
I've just never understood what the plan was for getting
over the grape Vine. Whatever the solution is, whether it's
blasting through the mountains or somehow finding a way around

(13:45):
or over them, it's going to be more expensive than
anything you did in the San Joaquin Valley Mercaid to Bakersfield,
which has got to be the flattest stretch of land
on God's green Earth. I mean, the engineering challenges I'm
sure have been immense just from her said to Bakersfield,
they're gonna be harder. I'm sure that the eminent domain

(14:07):
fights that have happened from Merced to Bakersfield have been
onerous and difficult and costly. But taking a corner out
of Farmer McGregor's, you know, you know, one hundred acres
of almonds is not gonna be that. That's gonna be

(14:30):
less expensive than trying to take some prime real estate
in southern California or the Bay Area. The amount you're
gonna have to pay out for eminent domain seizures for
that is gonna be much higher. The litigation is probably
gonna be much more expensive. So you know, there's gonna

(14:51):
be a legal fight over the Trump administration rescinding this money.
I assume it'll be yelled about the next couple of years,
but eventually Trump's going to get his way. I would say,
I would guess at the very least, he's going to
delay this money, and it's going to delay the project.
All right. When we return, I want to talk about

(15:12):
the Fresno angle of what has died, and it's Jerry Brown,
Jerry Dyer's grand vision for downtown that is next on
the John Groarty show. The Trump administration put the final
nail in the coffin of the high speed rail announcing
that it would indeed rescind the four billion dollars worth

(15:36):
of federal grants that had been promised to it by
prior Democrat administrations, three billion dollars that had been allocated
by the Biden administration for the Downtown Fresno station, as
well as a nine hundred and twenty nine million dollar
grant from twenty ten under the Obama administration. Now, specifically,

(16:04):
some of this money was earmarked for construction for construction
of a downtown Fresno high speed rail station. Let's talk
about that, because the downtown high speed rail station is
a big cornerstone of Jerry Dyer's vision for downtown. It's

(16:31):
it's a big, big aspect of it that they wanted.
Jerry Dyer has wanted Downtown Fresno to get revitalized. He
wanted a bunch of state funding in order to help
build up infrastructure for downtown in order for more people
to live downtown. So he needed several billion dollars or
several hundred million dollars from the state in order to

(16:53):
build up Downtown Fresno's infrastructure like sewage and all that
kind of stuff. That's great, and I support Jerry Dyer
wanting to do that. Trying to do that, I have
been making fun of Jerry Dyer and I had to
eat crow on this. Frankly, Dyer got promised two hundred
and fifty million dollars by Gavin Newsom back in twenty
twenty two when things were sunshine and roses because the

(17:15):
state was flushed with a bunch of COVID cash. We
got the first fifty million then and then delay delay delay.
We were supposed to get two more payments of one
hundred million dollars apiece, and delay delay delay by several years.
And I was making fun of poor Jerry Brown, saying,
Jerry Brown's never going to get this money. Gavin Newsom

(17:36):
is never going to follow through. Eventually, Gavin Newsom's gonna leave,
and then a pharaoh who knows not Moses might be
in charge in the governor's seat. And Jerry Dyer's never
getting this money. And I had to eat crow on
that because he did. He got the second installment, not
all of it, but he got so we received fifty million.

(17:59):
We hadn't received anything after that. And we just received
one hundred million right now. So building up downtown Presno
infrastructure looks like it's going to happen. Looks like we're
going to have the money to do that. We're going
to have from the state the money to help build
up our infrastructure downtown. Dire wants more residential housing built downtown.

(18:20):
He wants to build up. In order to do that,
you have to build up sewage systems and all parking,
all kinds of other infrastructure to allow I think he
said like something like ten thousand more people to live downtown.
That's great, that's wonderful. But but another big aspect of

(18:41):
Dyer's plan for downtown Presno revitalization revolved around a big
high speed rail train train station that Dire envisioned would
be a big place, driving a lot of traffic to downtown,
have restaurants in and around it, like have it be

(19:02):
like a meeting point, Like have it be a very
central feature of downtown Fresno. And they had a big
design commissioned for it, an architectural design commission for it.
I think it looked hideous, looked like one of the
one of the sandworms from Dune, This big glass sandworm
basically thought it completely did not fit at all even

(19:26):
one iota with sort of what you would think of
as central California architecture. Okay, all right, my complaints about
architecture aside. I just have always thought though that that
was not a great idea to put your so much
of our eggs into that basket for downtown construction, downtown revitalization,

(19:51):
for two reasons. One is again my skepticism about how
many people will actually ride this train. I just don't
think very many people are going to ride on it.
I think, when it comes down to it, if you
have a car, the likelihood that you will get on
a train to go to Merced rather than just get

(20:12):
in your car and get on the ninety nine and
go there, it just strikes me as implausible. I mean,
I drive for work a lot up and down the
route of the high speed rail system. I go to
Bakersfield a good bit. I go to Merced a lot.
I go to Maderra a lot. For Right to Life.

(20:34):
I do presentations on behalf of right to Life to
all these churches all up and down the San Jaquin Valley.
So I mean I'm on the road a lot, and
I have never thought to myself, you know, this would
be a lot easier with the high speed rail train.
I can't envision myself taking it. One, you're locked into
whatever time the train's leaving. Two, I would need to

(20:55):
get someone to drive me to the train station, get
on the train, and then have the train take me
somewhere where I would need someone to pick me up
or get an uber, rather than just get in my
car and drive up the ninety nine. And that's the thing,

(21:16):
like I continue just not to think that that's ever
gonna be practical. The distances that people drive in the
Sanwaquin Valley are just not long enough for a high
speed rail system to make any sense. LA to San Francisco. Sure,
if you can get LA to San Francisco in two
hours rather than the six or seven hours it takes

(21:38):
to drive it, okay, great two hour plane ride or
a one hour plane flight, and maybe the train is
gonna be a lot less expensive. Yeah, that could be doable.
But if it's okay, well I'll just drive them or
said for an hour. I'm certainly not gonna take a
train and take away all my flexibility I have. Well

(22:01):
and the other so that has always been something that
I thought the downtown train station was not a great
plan because I just don't think very many people will
take advantage of it. The other problem is funding. Dyer
has necessarily been reliant this whole project for downtown revitalization.

(22:22):
It's dire being reliant on other sources of funding that
are outside of his control or outside of the control
of the people of Fresno. We are reliant on federal
and state largs that we can't count on, especially federal Okay,
you can pretty much bank on Democrats running California. We've

(22:45):
flip flopped at the federal level from Obama to Trump
to Biden to Trump. I mean, it's back and forth
between the most pro in favor of a high speed
rail system administrations possible to the most anti and frankly,
even the ones that were pro were not like uh
like megagung Ho enthusiastic about it. They finally gave a

(23:09):
four billion dollar grant after the Biden administration finally gave
a four billion dollar grand a high speed rail after
dragging their feet about it for a couple of years,
and passed over the high speed rail for at least
one big time grant. So this loss of funding I
think is this is a I don't know if it's

(23:32):
the death knell, but it's a big time setback for
dire and for this idea of downtown revitalization as revolving
around a high speed rail station. I've always been skeptical
of it. Our reliance on federal dollars to get it
done has been a weakness of this plan. And we're
now seeing, you know, Donald Trump's elected. This is not good.

(23:57):
I mean, this is going to be a real blow
to that whole plant. All right, when we return, I
want to talk a little bit about entrenched liberal institutions
thinking they are owed your money, and I will start
with NPR and PBS next on the John Girardi Show.
One of the people I follow on Twitter is this
professor at Harvard Law School named Adrian Vermule, who is

(24:18):
really smart, out of the box thinker on liberalism and illiberalism,
like classical liberalism and sort of its problems and failures
with it. And he had this interesting little tweet about
NPR that I thought was amusing, as my wife and

(24:39):
I have been laughing about the possible defunding, federal defunding
of NPR and PBS. He writes this, What I find
puzzling and interesting about NPR is the same thing in
miniature that I find puzzling about liberalism in many contexts,
the utter inability to im pose limits on itself, even

(25:02):
when the failure to do so is obviously self destructive.
If NPR had even pursued its ideological agenda merely to
the eighty percent level, rather than essentially to a one
hundred percent level, it wouldn't be in the position it
is in now. But they just couldn't help themselves. It's

(25:25):
like a dictator who rigs the election at one hundred
to zero rather than the far more plausible seventy five
to twenty five or some such. The same holds mutatis
mutandi's That means, with things that need to be changed
being changed. The same thing holds for many elite universities.
Instead of having somewhere between zero and three conservatives on

(25:48):
a total faculty of many hundreds, why not have say twenty.
But no, even that is too much. I think it
makes a lot of sense basically what the defenses of
NPR and PBS. And I think there's a little bit

(26:09):
of a difference between NPR and PBS. But we'll get
into that. The defenses of NPR and PBS have been
I think laughable. The basically the first first, you have
this sort of like, oh, well, here's mister Rogers talking

(26:32):
back in the seventies, in the sixties or seventies about
why public television and educational programming for children is important.
Oh you do you hate mister Rogers. All that's like
hating you know, rainbows and puppies. And it's like, okay, Well,
if NPR and PBS were run by Fred Rogers and

(26:55):
we're still run by Fred Rogers, we give Fred Rogers immortality.
And Fred Rogers is the man you know, directing and
guiding you know, PBS and NPR to this day. And
Fred Rogers, an honest, decent Christian man, is upholding a general,
genuine political neutrality in reporting, and upholding genuine, decently for

(27:21):
children's programming, et cetera. Sure we would all I would
love an NPR or a PBS curated by Fred Rogers.
But sorry, folks, Fred Rogers is dead. Mister Rogers neighborhood
is dead, and PBS is just not that valuable anymore.

(27:45):
It's children's programming is junk it's the same kind of
junk you can find in a lot of other places.
It has a bit of a bear educational veneer to
it is, says Street good positive. I mean Sesame Street
is a product, a capitalist product that can survive outside

(28:11):
of the structure of a publicly funded system. I mean
that's why Sesame Street. You can watch Sesame Street. I
think a lot of their stuff has moved over to HBO,
like HBO owns it. Yeah, Da da da da da.

(28:33):
It has aired on the United States national public television
provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving
to premium channel HBO on January sixth, sixteenth of twenty sixteen,
and then it's sister streaming service, HBO Max in twenty twenty,
most recently Netflix in twenty twenty five. So set like

(28:53):
whatever programs they have that are useful. If you want
to argue that Sesame Street is still useful, I'm not
sure that it is. I'm not sure that like that
this is the thing. It's like, Is there any like
way to demonstrate that watching Sesame Street versus not watching

(29:15):
it actually has a net positive educational value for a child.
I'm not sure that there is that there are so
many one hundred billion other factors in a child's development
that have that can have more or less of a
positive impact than Sesame Street. My kids have never watched
Sesame Street. I don't think, other than maybe like one

(29:37):
YouTube video of uh Sesame Street like skit and probably
and honestly it was probably when I showed them just
because it was funny, and I remember it being funny
from my childhood, but it probably didn't really have much
of an educational value. I think it was there. I
remember one time showing my kids it's Cookie Monster singing

(29:59):
the du song. It was part of the W Lovers
Club or it's Ernie Ernie and the w Lover's Club.
What is the letter we love? What sound are we
extra fond of? It's not any trouble, you know, it's
a double you when you hear whoa whoa, whoa whoa?
All right? And that was it. So I think the

(30:19):
educational value of a kid watching a screen is minimal.
If anything, it's probably a net hurt. Like there is
no public television viewing material that is positive, more positive

(30:41):
than sitting down and reading a book to a child.
And I will say on behalf of like Fred Rogers,
that probably, like mister Rogers neighborhood was probably much better
than a lot of the stuff that's being produced today.
And he was also very supportive of and recognized the
limits of what television could do. He seemed very much

(31:03):
to put television at the service of a child learning
in the context of school and family, as opposed to
you know, all this is something of immense value all
on its own, whereas I don't know that a lot
of like if you watch old episodes of mister Rogers,
he's talking about families and families being good and reading

(31:25):
and reading being encouraging more reading, whereas I'm, you know,
some of the public television stuff my kids have seen,
I don't necessarily quite get that sense. Anyway. All I'm
saying is PBS could disappear tomorrow, and I don't think
it would be missed that much. I think the good

(31:45):
things on PBS that people like could find a home
on some private sector, non publicly funded venue. And most
of the stuff that NPRPBS does that most of the

(32:08):
other stuff, if it goes away, no one's gonna miss it.
And that's what leads me to this point, which is
the other arguments that people have made about why to
preserve NPR and PBS have been these ridiculous arguments coming
from Amy Klobashar and others that people rely on NPR

(32:32):
and PBS for storm alerts and breaking news. Look, what
are you talking about. No, they don't for information about
natural disasters and storms and things like that. That is
absolutely not true. Nobody relies on NPR or PBS for

(32:52):
that kind of stuff. There are I mean, look, most
PBS stations, they don't don't have a local news thing anymore.
I don't know that VALLEYPBS even has like a local
news broadcast, let alone like even a local weather report.

(33:18):
Like they don't have much local programming anymore. I mean, actually,
I will say VALLEYPBS has some pretty interesting stuff. All
the stuff that Jeffiello does has been I think, really
really good. But it's also this I feel like the
good stuff that VALLEYPBS does and Valid PBS has done

(33:39):
some very good stuff. A lot of their stuff on water,
a lot of Jeffiello's programming that he's created for VALLEYPBS
has been great, and I bet it can find a
home within the private sector. I bet a lot of
it's funded mostly with charitable private charitable support. Anyway, I
just don't see the need for public funding, and especially

(34:06):
given with NPR the horrible, egregious left wing bias both
NPR and PBS. I remember after the Dobbs decision, watching
PBS like their national news thing and just thinking this
is insane, how unbelievably biased. It was all towards in

(34:31):
one direction. And you listen to NPR, and I mean
people have joked about how left wing NPR is for forever.
This is not some new development. So in short, and
again just to reiterate this point about oh well, it's
not so sorry for storm information, No, it is not.

(34:52):
If someone wants information about a storm that's happening, they're
not gonna if they do turn on their TV. I
guarantee you in the San Juaquin value, if someone is
turning on their TV for information about a storm which whatever,
that doesn't happen in the Sanwaque Valley, they're gonna turn
on kmph or KC twenty four or CBS forty seven

(35:14):
or ABC thirty before they go to Valley PBS. And
that's no knock on Valley PBS. They don't have a
local meteorologist. If someone's concerned about a storm and they're
turning on their radio, I guarantee you they're gonna turn
on some other station before they get to the NPR

(35:37):
station they're gonna go to. They're far more likely to
go to power Talk than they are then they're gonna
go to NPR. So, in short, I just find it
that that is insane, the idea that, Like I was
joking with my wife because Amy Klobashar is the Senator
from Minnesota, and my wife's family all lives in Minnesota

(35:58):
in a pretty rural part of Minnesota. They're like an
hour north of the Twin Cities, kind of middle of nowhere,
And I'm like, oh, honey, you're your rural northern folk,
your kin they need NPR to get the news because
definitely they don't have smartphones and they don't have the Internet.
Like well yeah, like they have cell phone towers out there.
It's like, we wouldn't even need NPR. They have like

(36:21):
tornado sirens, like we can figure it out. No one
is relying on Minnesota Public Radio when a tornado hits.
So in short way to go, PBS by being the
most unbelievably left wing entity possible. You cut the branch
off from under you. When we return, I try to

(36:43):
figure out if Elon Musk is a very smart dumb
person or a very dumb smart person. Next on the
Gean Girardi Show, Elon Musk has generated through his Grock program,
which is the AI program tied in with Twitter, and
it's kind of a competitor for Chat, GPT and all

(37:05):
these others. He is put in place different avatar companions,
basically like instead of just talking to a computer screen, like,
have an animated person who is talking back and interacting
with you as a companion. And the first one he
published was this ridiculous pornified like looks like a Japanese

(37:29):
anime girl wearing an incredibly short skirt, and he promotes
it as if this is like funny. He now has
a male version quote. His personality is inspired by Edward
Cullen from Twilight, the trashy vampire novels that were popular
fifteen years ago, and Christian Gray from fifty Shades of Gray,

(37:50):
the trashy slutty romance novels that were popular ten years ago.
Guy who was into BDSM and it makes me ask
is Elon Musk the smartest stupid man in the world
or the stupidest smart man in the world, because at
the same time he's created billion dollar companies, amazing engineering
feat stuff I'll never do, And on the other hand,

(38:12):
his tastes and humor are so dumb that'll do it.
John GARRODIY, showee you next time on Power Talk.