December 2, 2024 • 28 mins
After promising not to pardon Hunter Biden, who was convicted of gun-related charges and had pleaded guilty in a tax case. President Biden changed his mind. A Bitcoin millionaire hid $2MIL in treasures across the U.S… Here’s how to find them. From Pong to Pokemon: A history of holiday ‘it’ toys. ‘Buy now, pay later’ programs can cost more than you think.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
KF I am a six forty bill handle here. December two,
last month. Boy, this year has zipped by. We always
say that, don't we. Oh my god, it's going so quickly.
I can't believe where this year is gone. And there's
an entire theory about that. Because when you were a kid,
you know, remember when we left, you had three months
off vacation.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
It seemed forever.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now three months goes by in a blink, because it's
a percentage of how long you've lived.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think it is where three.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Months, you know, just is done, and it's what percentage
of your life is a year?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, let's oh, here's what I want to talk about.
This was big news.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
And Neil yesterday texted me seconds after I found out
because I get alerts and you get alerts, and that
is Joe Biden hunt pardon his son Hunter?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And was I surprised?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, because I actually believed Joe Biden when he said,
under no circumstances will I pardon Hunter? Absolutely not. I
mean he said it over and over again. Nope, not
going to do it.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Just is not going to happen. Of course he did it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Now and there's a question I have, and I'm going
to ask this of Wayne coming up at eight thirty,
do they have a case? Because Wayne understands this issue
more than most. I mean, he happens to have been
in the justice system, the criminal justice system of the
Department of Justice for twenty eight years, and boy does
(01:31):
he know his stuff. So what Joe Biden does is
issue a full and unconditional pardon for Hunter. And the
reason is that there was this legal cloud that has
hungover Hunter for several years, and that in fact, the attack,
the criminal attack, the judicial attack.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
On Hunter, was politically motivated.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And here is where comparison is made with Hunter and
President to be.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Donald Trump has always argued that his the attack on
him has been politically motivated, that was it.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
He's done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
The people in that overran the capital did nothing wrong,
and he's gonna probably pardon the vast majority of them,
as a matter of fact, certainly in a pardon the
vast majority of them. Here is the problem is that
if you want to give credibility, I can see where
Donald Trump argues that he was attacked politically, and I
(02:37):
think the severity of what Donald Trump did versus the
severity of what Hunter.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Biden did are night and day. But the argument that
Trump was attacked politically holds water.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
The argument that Hunter was attacked politically, it was Biden's
Department of Justice did this, his own Department of Justice
that politically went after Hunter. I mean, really, now, why
did they go after a Hunter? Well, I'm going to
tell you what I feel about it is that President Biden,
(03:12):
like most other presidents, there was a firewall between the
presidency and the Department of Justice. There doesn't have to be,
but that is simply procedure, and it's the way it's
been for years and years. You stay out of it.
The president does not tell the Department of Justice what
to do in criminal cases. That's going to change completely
come January twentieth and under that a special prosecutor was
(03:37):
named because of the issue alone, the political issue as
a matter of fact, under Merit gar Garland, and the
entire argument that let's not make it political. A special
prosecutor independent goes after Hunter Biden to prove the case.
(03:57):
That is a huge difference, and so Biden saying this
was a political attack.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Of course, there were political attacks on Hunter.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It was a huge political attack, but that was by
the Republicans and it didn't have anything to do with
a department going after Hunter Biden for crimes. He pled guilty.
He pled guilty to tax evasion. He didn't pay one
point four million dollars that he owed on taxes that
he spent on cocaine and hookers and strippers, and I
(04:28):
mean he has had riproaring good time or bad time.
And then he was absolutely guilty of a gun infraction.
He bought a gun and he put on the forum,
I do not use drugs. I am not a drug user,
and he clearly was. He admitted he was, and so
they nabbed him on that. Now, how big a deal
(04:49):
is that, Well, he had that gun for eleven days
and it was never used in any crime at all,
was never used for anything. And so the argument is
he wouldn't have been tagged anyway with that, and the
tax situation was pretty serious. But again here is the
argument between the two, and that is that what Hunter
(05:11):
Biden did, had he not been Joe Biden's son, he
would not have been charged and it would be let
go because people in the same position as he is
guilty of the same crimes. Pleading guilty under the same
circumstances would not be charged. Didn't matter because Dad went
(05:34):
ahead and pardoned him unconditionally. This is why I'm going
to ask Wayne this at eight thirty. Usually as do
they have a case, and Wayne goes through the cases.
But today I want to spend a segment talking about
the legality here. Is any of this true? That Hunter Biden,
but for being the President's son, would never be in
the same position. And the President said in a lengthy
(05:58):
statement the reason he's part of his son. I wish
he had just said because he's my son. You know,
that's the way it goes, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger pardoned
or commuted. That sends of Fabio Nunez, who was the
head of the Assembly, who was Speaker of the Assembly
of California, and he was now outright and he said, hey,
(06:20):
I did it for a friend. It's that simple, you know. Okay,
how do you argue with that? And I wish that
Biden had said, hey, he's my son. I have the
power to piden him, to pardon him. I don't want
him to go to jail. And that's what I can do.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You know, I would do the same for you if
you or my son, but you're not. You know, it's
real simple.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
You know, if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather,
but she's not.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's that simple. Does that analogy work, by the way,
I think it does.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Well. You got to say balls, buddy, I did.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I did balls to the wall.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So anyway this ends up with complete hypocrisy. I can
see him doing it. I would probably do the same
thing for my kid, except just be honest about it,
say hey, too bad, it's my kid and he has balls.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I would do the same for my daughter who doesn't.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
There is a guy by the name of John Collins, Black,
very interesting guy, and he early on got involved in
bitcoin when it was pennies, and obviously he's got a
ton of money, and he's been a lifelong fantasy guy, games,
dungeons and dragons, all of that since childhood. And so
(07:39):
by twenty fifteen is a musician, successful entrepreneur, successful, looking
for a.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Change of pace.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
And he said, I want to do a project and
I want to connect with my younger imagination. I want
to go back to when I was basically a kid.
So he was motive motivated by a treasure hunt launched
in twenty twenty by Forest fen and Forest Finn published
(08:06):
all the clues of this treasure hunt, and obviously they
were obscure enough where it took some real real doing.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
By the way, I don't know if that was found.
Do we know if that was found?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
The story doesn't say if the original single chest hidden
in the Rocky Mountains. Multiple groups of people went across
the country trying to figure this out. In the Rocky
Mountains it was I guess it was found and someone
picked up a million dollars. Well what this guy does,
(08:41):
Collins Black says, Okay, first of all, I want a
bunch of chests, so he five is what he produced,
and that's to give in different parts of the country,
and people know which part of the country a chest
is in.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And what he.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Did is he produced there's measure inside and it is
a book, very clever. And what he does it's even
to entertain people who aren't looking for the treasure. It's
supposedly that good.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I haven't read enough about it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
But and this is the CNN story, The Treasure Box,
the five boxes containing sixty five rare items weird it's
not just money, gold and precious metals, and just what
he thought were kinds of treasures that people would go for,
and what are they. It's really interesting as to what
(09:39):
he has decided. First of all, it's a custom design
puzzle box, and I'm looking at it, and there are
instructions for unlocking.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
The box itself.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And each chapter of the book contains clues leading to
one of the five chests, and he says, anyone can
find the treasure. All the clues you need are in
the book. And to make sure there were no leaks,
he worked with very few strategists and editors to avoid
any leaks. He wouldn't tell his wife where the treasures were.
(10:14):
He said, I couldn't consult with other people because I
didn't want them to have the burden of knowing.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And so there was no clear blueprint for doing this.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
So he experimented through trial and error, and he was
programming the difficulty of the clues. It's almost like the
New York Times crossword puzzle section, where on Monday.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's fairly easy, and then it gets more and more.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Difficult, and by Sunday, very few people can figure out
the entire puzzle.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
By the way.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Just an aside. Bill Clinton huge puzzle fan. He does
crossword puzzles like crazy. John Stewart another one who is
absolutely nuts about crossword puzzles.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
But back to this story.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
And there's treasure inside this book has already created this
huge buzz, thousands of participants gathering on discussion channels to
share their their theories. Some are convinced they've pinpointed the
states where their treasure is located. Uh and he said,
there's no dangerous underwater explanation, there's no climbing, there's no
(11:23):
entering private property, and anyone of average health can travel
to the sites.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
No digging.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
He said, I want the treasure to hunt to be demanding,
and I do hope and think it may take a
little while, but I don't want this to take forever.
And if they are not found for several years, he
will then release additional clues or.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Maybe even a sequel to his book. Ah ha, there's
as madness to his method.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
To his madness, oress to his method, well said, thank you.
There's a sapphire and diamond brooch earned by that was
worn by Jackie Kennedy during her time in.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
The White House.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
What he did Colins Black has meticulously curated the treasures
to create a wide range of interests. So what Colins
Black did is attend a bunch of auctions until he
created this one of a kind collections. And he financed
those pieces because they weren't cheap with money he made
from bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So what does he have in there?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Rare Pokemon cards, a ship wrecked bounty, sports memorabilia, gold
precious metals, items owned or made by Pablo Picasso, George Washington,
items owned by George Washington, Amelia Earhart, and a bunch
of money, gold coins, etc. And the only item on
(12:55):
his wish lists that he couldn't get, as he describes it,
was one of Albert Einstein's pipes, which he lost in
a bidding war. Other than that, he got everything he wanted.
And I am so impressed with his thinking because the
(13:17):
combined prize value is more than two million dollars. Now
is he going to publish more than two million books?
Look at the publicity.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That he is getting. For example, there was an entire
segment on this show.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
That's not to say zillions of people listening to this show,
but certainly you've got well, you used to have over
a million listening to the show, and then it went
down to several hundred thousand, and then it went down
to about seventy thousand. So for all four of you
that are still listening to this show, the book is
called There's Treasure Inside, and you too can go for
(13:58):
two million dollar. Well actually it's over five items, so
no one's going to get all five. It's if you
break it down, it's half a million dollars. That's kind
of fun, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
The treasure hunt.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
I would do that if I had the money. Yeah,
my wife would not be happy about it.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
But that's true.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
That's what I think money is for, to do interesting things.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
That's why he.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Did this, because he's made enough money and he goes, now,
I want to do something interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
We're not talking about playing golf or lolling at the beach.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
He's going back to the time that he was a
kid and was really into these puzzle games. Good for him,
Good for him. Now a little bit of history that
I want to share with you, and that is toys,
toy giving and what do you do for Christmas for
your kids or Hanukkah? And if you look at the
(14:50):
toys and there were it toys, coveted toys that when
they become it's real problem for the toy industry because
all of these toy retailers.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Order months and months in advance, and what do you
I was going to hit or not.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
So today they're sparkly, they're squeezable, they're electronic. But if
you go back, let's start with the nineteen fifties, the
hula hoop and the kushball. Now I never had a cushball,
but I've had everything else. The hula hoop, you know,
it's been around forever. And Whammo Fun Company, I mean
(15:22):
just completely crazy company. It came out with it out
of plastic, and all of a sudden they were selling
millions of them. Everybody had win in the country. In
nineteen fifty two, mister potato Head came out and I
followed a year later by missus potato Head.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
And I remember having one of these, and it.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Turned out they were Originally you actually used a potato
and you would put the nose in the ears.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And plug them in.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And then they went to plastic, and then they become
no fun at all because potatoes are much more fun.
You know, different shapes and you can pretend you've got
an elephant, man and potato depending on the size of
the head, et cetera. Lincoln logs and matchbox cars came
out in the fifties.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Play dough came out.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
In the fifties. Who didn't have play dough if you
were a kid in the fifties. Here's a little sidebar story.
Plato was invented in nineteen thirties as a wallpaper cleaner
until someone discovered oh.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Boy, playto.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
And then in nineteen fifty nine there was a teenage
fashion model doll called Barbie, which may very well be
considered the icon certainly the iconic doll, and maybe the
iconic toy of the time. Also in the nineteen fifties
or this nineteen sixties. Now, remember the easy bake oven.
(16:54):
The easy bake oven was a toy oven that you
could actually bake little cakes, I mean for real, and
the heat was provided by a light bulb, a light bulb,
and you could actually bake something with it. Today you
can't do that because you don't have incandescent lights. All
you have is led lights. And if you try to
(17:16):
bake a little bit, a little tiny cake in an
easy bake oven today, you're baking for eight months and
it still hasn't finished cooking.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Remember etch a sketch and the light bright etch a sketch?
I remember it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That was almost impossible to do an etch of sketch
with any round roundness to it. You could do straight
lines with an etch of sketch.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, you can't do circles.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
It's people actually could Well, you could do something that
might resemble one.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, it's still kind of.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
But yeah, if you don't know what etcha sketch is,
look it up, you know, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And google it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
And Hot Wheel debuted nineteen sixty eight. I didn't know
that long ago. I was not a Hot Wheels guy
because I'm not a car guy. But these little realistic
built to scale and it started with Camaros and Munstangs
and firebirds, and then they came out with everything. Nineteen
seventy seven Pong. Remember Pong, one of the earliest electronic games.
(18:20):
When you look at it and you go, really, this
was the start of video games. Atari went big in
nineteen seventy seven. That was the first home gaming console.
It cost about two hundred dollars then, which is about
one thousand dollars in today's currency. So someone some kid
getting an atari, some parent or uncle or grandparent spend
(18:43):
a thousand bucks on it.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
The equivalent there was the nerf ball. I remember those shrinky,
shrinking dinks.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I'm not even go into that, because I will I
misconstrued that one hundred percent shrinking dinks. I thought it
had to do with weather when it's cold, and I'm
just not interested in explaining that. I do remember the
pet rock, Now, that was marketing genius. Somebody came up
(19:15):
with taking a box and putting straw in it and
putting in a rock, and then instructions on how to
feed your rock, and how to take care of your rock,
and how to be emotionally connected to your rock.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And it sold in the millions.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I think it was an advertising guy that came up
with that, if I'm not mistaken. Speak and Spell that
was Texas Instruments, and it was one of the first
predictive coding speech synthesizer. And the language was with this
talky robotic twist because early days voice were very robotic. Today,
(20:03):
of course, man, I got I'm getting these scam calls
that look that sounds so good that you know you answer,
I don't understand you know somebody who pitched something I
don't understand. Oh you don't understand, well, let me explain
it again. This is a this is an algorithm that's
doing that.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So I answered space spam calls. Hopefully I can talk
to someone.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So Star Wars action figures that was the earliest, earliest.
This is George, George Lucas and his genius. Not only
a brilliant, brilliant filmmaker. By the way, he would take
a year to write his movies, a year to write
those Star Wars movies, and then he would direct them.
(20:51):
And then he discovered early took a wild guess before
the movie was released. He cut deals for action figures
and tie ins before anyone else did that, and the
Star Wars action figures after the nineteen seventy seven release
of the original Star Wars went completely crazy. The Rubik's
(21:13):
Cube came out nineteen eighty and it was a Hungarian
architecture professor who invented in nineteen seventy four. Then, for
you little girls or you little boys who think they're
little girls, my little pony pound puppies care bears. Remember
the craziness with Cabbage Patch kids where mothers would get
(21:34):
into fist fights over cabbage patch kids and.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
They were going for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Chia pets were great where you could actually grow animal figurines.
My favorite was a bald figuring that you planted these
little seeds and then you had this hair of grass.
I was big on thatchia yep. I remember that commercial
the Tamago cheese. The Tamaguccies Beanie Babies was another one
(22:06):
of those where for some reason, limited edition beanie babies
went for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. An artificial market
was created Ferbies, which created an entire group of mentally
ill people who think they are ferbies, dressed like ferbies
and their world is furbies.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I want you to go to for those of you
that do.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
That and you're looking for a job, go into the
job interview dressed as a Ferbie and see how well
that works out for you. And people spend thousands of
dollars on these costumes. I mean, and there's a whole cause,
there's a whole cosplay thing, Pokemon trading cards, PlayStation two,
(22:51):
Xbox three sixty of course, the Razor scooter. I had
one of those.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Juju pets. I think it is that a panda. I
don't know. I remember brats, those little dolls that talk
back to.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
You, And didn't you call that your daughters?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I pretty well do. And so some of these toys
are just great fun. And these are the classics, and
some of them are still around. I think easy bake
ovens are kind of finished. Maybe they have a quartz
filament that the kids put their hands in and get
their degree burns when they're cooking.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
All right, So there's a story now, because well it's
the holiday season and gifts are to be made and
shoppers are to be shopping, and more shoppers than ever
are on track to use the buy now, pay later plans.
You know, isn't that the same as a credit card
payment where you pay it later. Well, there's a little
(23:53):
bit of difference, and more people are doing that because
inflation has hit.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It's not there anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
But there's already record high prices and record high credit
card debt because much like credit card debt, if you
put off or you buy products with plastic or on
a layaway plan.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
You're not paying for it right now. You pay for
it later.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And here is the rub And here is why the
critics are saying this is a bad idea, because one,
you're putting it on your credit card, you know, buy now,
pay later plans. Well, they mean that you don't have
the money. Now, if you have the money, you'd go
in and buy the product. Or what's happening is if
(24:44):
you have the money, you stretch it out and buy
more products, you put them on credit cards, and you
get hit both late payments if your credit card is
maxed out, huge interest on your credit card, and you
get all these late payments and penalties on the layaway
(25:05):
plane itself from the retailer. And I'm thinking, this isn't
a whole lot different than straight out credit card debt,
except they say it's no interest, okay, until.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You miss payments, and then it starts to add up.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And to qualify, you don't need credit, you just qualify
and it's soft credit. You've already have a credit card,
and they don't care. They're not going to say you've
maxed out. They just don't care. And so it's easier
to do this now layaway plans. I remember as a kid,
(25:42):
this was before the advent of the ubiquity of credit cards.
Where everybody uses credit cards. I use credit cards, but
I pay mine off at the end of the month
for two reasons. One is I don't spend that much
on credit cards. I live under my means. And two,
I make a good enough living that I'm able to
(26:04):
pay them off. But a lot of it has to
do with living within your means, which I have basically
my entire adult life.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
And so it used to be the Layoway plans. You
would go to a store and.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
You'd pick out an item, and you would put a
given amount of money down, real cash, not borrowed money,
and six months later, when you've made six payments over
this thing and that was the.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Cost, you take it home. It was a true Layoway plan.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
You paid for it with real cash. The retailer got
the money up front for six months or eight months
or three months, and then you got the product. Well,
today it's you get the product now, and you pay
for it over spell of months and you use your
(26:55):
credit card usually and you are at risk. Hey, you're
at risk anyway. You know, the bottom line is just
be responsible and what you buy.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And I know it's hard not to.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I know when you have kids, g Dad, I'd really
like this, and I didn't have that problem as a kid.
I would get you know, was Honica time ago. G Dad,
here's a list of what I'd like, and I'd get
a stick. Here, go play with this. It's a branch.
So of course I went the other way. And when
my kids were little, I got them way too much.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
And now no, no, not a chance.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
What I say now is, hey, remember when I got
you fourteen, when you were fourteen years old, that was
your Hanukkah present for the next fifteen years. Much easier.
So I don't use this. And I'm going to suggest
that you'd be really careful about these, because not only
are you going to be in debt to the retailer,
(28:01):
to the people that sold it to you, but also
if you use a credit card, it's going to be
a double hit.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And it's happening.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
More and more and more. The firm Adobe Analytics Well
regarded forecasts that from the period November one to December
thirty one, eighteen and a half billion dollars worth of
goods will be people will use the pay now, buy now,
pay later program.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
You just got to be really really careful.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
But then you have to be really really careful anyway KFI.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
KF I am a six forty bill handle here. December two,
last month. Boy, this year has zipped by. We always
say that, don't we. Oh my god, it's going so quickly.
I can't believe where this year is gone. And there's
an entire theory about that. Because when you were a kid,
you know, remember when we left, you had three months
off vacation.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
It seemed forever.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now three months goes by in a blink, because it's
a percentage of how long you've lived.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I think it is where three.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Months, you know, just is done, and it's what percentage
of your life is a year?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Now?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, let's oh, here's what I want to talk about.
This was big news.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
And Neil yesterday texted me seconds after I found out
because I get alerts and you get alerts, and that
is Joe Biden hunt pardon his son Hunter?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And was I surprised?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, because I actually believed Joe Biden when he said,
under no circumstances will I pardon Hunter? Absolutely not. I
mean he said it over and over again. Nope, not
going to do it.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Just is not going to happen. Of course he did it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Now and there's a question I have, and I'm going
to ask this of Wayne coming up at eight thirty,
do they have a case? Because Wayne understands this issue
more than most. I mean, he happens to have been
in the justice system, the criminal justice system of the
Department of Justice for twenty eight years, and boy does
(01:31):
he know his stuff. So what Joe Biden does is
issue a full and unconditional pardon for Hunter. And the
reason is that there was this legal cloud that has
hungover Hunter for several years, and that in fact, the attack,
the criminal attack, the judicial attack.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
On Hunter, was politically motivated.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And here is where comparison is made with Hunter and
President to be.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Donald Trump has always argued that his the attack on
him has been politically motivated, that was it.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
He's done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
The people in that overran the capital did nothing wrong,
and he's gonna probably pardon the vast majority of them,
as a matter of fact, certainly in a pardon the
vast majority of them. Here is the problem is that
if you want to give credibility, I can see where
Donald Trump argues that he was attacked politically, and I
(02:37):
think the severity of what Donald Trump did versus the
severity of what Hunter.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Biden did are night and day. But the argument that
Trump was attacked politically holds water.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
The argument that Hunter was attacked politically, it was Biden's
Department of Justice did this, his own Department of Justice
that politically went after Hunter. I mean, really, now, why
did they go after a Hunter? Well, I'm going to
tell you what I feel about it is that President Biden,
(03:12):
like most other presidents, there was a firewall between the
presidency and the Department of Justice. There doesn't have to be,
but that is simply procedure, and it's the way it's
been for years and years. You stay out of it.
The president does not tell the Department of Justice what
to do in criminal cases. That's going to change completely
come January twentieth and under that a special prosecutor was
(03:37):
named because of the issue alone, the political issue as
a matter of fact, under Merit gar Garland, and the
entire argument that let's not make it political. A special
prosecutor independent goes after Hunter Biden to prove the case.
(03:57):
That is a huge difference, and so Biden saying this
was a political attack.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Of course, there were political attacks on Hunter.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It was a huge political attack, but that was by
the Republicans and it didn't have anything to do with
a department going after Hunter Biden for crimes. He pled guilty.
He pled guilty to tax evasion. He didn't pay one
point four million dollars that he owed on taxes that
he spent on cocaine and hookers and strippers, and I
(04:28):
mean he has had riproaring good time or bad time.
And then he was absolutely guilty of a gun infraction.
He bought a gun and he put on the forum,
I do not use drugs. I am not a drug user,
and he clearly was. He admitted he was, and so
they nabbed him on that. Now, how big a deal
(04:49):
is that, Well, he had that gun for eleven days
and it was never used in any crime at all,
was never used for anything. And so the argument is
he wouldn't have been tagged anyway with that, and the
tax situation was pretty serious. But again here is the
argument between the two, and that is that what Hunter
(05:11):
Biden did, had he not been Joe Biden's son, he
would not have been charged and it would be let
go because people in the same position as he is
guilty of the same crimes. Pleading guilty under the same
circumstances would not be charged. Didn't matter because Dad went
(05:34):
ahead and pardoned him unconditionally. This is why I'm going
to ask Wayne this at eight thirty. Usually as do
they have a case, and Wayne goes through the cases.
But today I want to spend a segment talking about
the legality here. Is any of this true? That Hunter Biden,
but for being the President's son, would never be in
the same position. And the President said in a lengthy
(05:58):
statement the reason he's part of his son. I wish
he had just said because he's my son. You know,
that's the way it goes, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger pardoned
or commuted. That sends of Fabio Nunez, who was the
head of the Assembly, who was Speaker of the Assembly
of California, and he was now outright and he said, hey,
(06:20):
I did it for a friend. It's that simple, you know. Okay,
how do you argue with that? And I wish that
Biden had said, hey, he's my son. I have the
power to piden him, to pardon him. I don't want
him to go to jail. And that's what I can do.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You know, I would do the same for you if
you or my son, but you're not. You know, it's
real simple.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
You know, if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather,
but she's not.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's that simple. Does that analogy work, by the way,
I think it does.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Well. You got to say balls, buddy, I did.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I did balls to the wall.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So anyway this ends up with complete hypocrisy. I can
see him doing it. I would probably do the same
thing for my kid, except just be honest about it,
say hey, too bad, it's my kid and he has balls.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I would do the same for my daughter who doesn't.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
There is a guy by the name of John Collins, Black,
very interesting guy, and he early on got involved in
bitcoin when it was pennies, and obviously he's got a
ton of money, and he's been a lifelong fantasy guy, games,
dungeons and dragons, all of that since childhood. And so
(07:39):
by twenty fifteen is a musician, successful entrepreneur, successful, looking
for a.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Change of pace.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
And he said, I want to do a project and
I want to connect with my younger imagination. I want
to go back to when I was basically a kid.
So he was motive motivated by a treasure hunt launched
in twenty twenty by Forest fen and Forest Finn published
(08:06):
all the clues of this treasure hunt, and obviously they
were obscure enough where it took some real real doing.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
By the way, I don't know if that was found.
Do we know if that was found?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
The story doesn't say if the original single chest hidden
in the Rocky Mountains. Multiple groups of people went across
the country trying to figure this out. In the Rocky
Mountains it was I guess it was found and someone
picked up a million dollars. Well what this guy does,
(08:41):
Collins Black says, Okay, first of all, I want a
bunch of chests, so he five is what he produced,
and that's to give in different parts of the country,
and people know which part of the country a chest
is in.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And what he.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Did is he produced there's measure inside and it is
a book, very clever. And what he does it's even
to entertain people who aren't looking for the treasure. It's
supposedly that good.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I haven't read enough about it.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
But and this is the CNN story, The Treasure Box,
the five boxes containing sixty five rare items weird it's
not just money, gold and precious metals, and just what
he thought were kinds of treasures that people would go for,
and what are they. It's really interesting as to what
(09:39):
he has decided. First of all, it's a custom design
puzzle box, and I'm looking at it, and there are
instructions for unlocking.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
The box itself.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And each chapter of the book contains clues leading to
one of the five chests, and he says, anyone can
find the treasure. All the clues you need are in
the book. And to make sure there were no leaks,
he worked with very few strategists and editors to avoid
any leaks. He wouldn't tell his wife where the treasures were.
(10:14):
He said, I couldn't consult with other people because I
didn't want them to have the burden of knowing.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And so there was no clear blueprint for doing this.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
So he experimented through trial and error, and he was
programming the difficulty of the clues. It's almost like the
New York Times crossword puzzle section, where on Monday.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's fairly easy, and then it gets more and more.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Difficult, and by Sunday, very few people can figure out
the entire puzzle.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
By the way.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Just an aside. Bill Clinton huge puzzle fan. He does
crossword puzzles like crazy. John Stewart another one who is
absolutely nuts about crossword puzzles.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
But back to this story.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
And there's treasure inside this book has already created this
huge buzz, thousands of participants gathering on discussion channels to
share their their theories. Some are convinced they've pinpointed the
states where their treasure is located. Uh and he said,
there's no dangerous underwater explanation, there's no climbing, there's no
(11:23):
entering private property, and anyone of average health can travel
to the sites.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
No digging.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
He said, I want the treasure to hunt to be demanding,
and I do hope and think it may take a
little while, but I don't want this to take forever.
And if they are not found for several years, he
will then release additional clues or.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Maybe even a sequel to his book. Ah ha, there's
as madness to his method.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
To his madness, oress to his method, well said, thank you.
There's a sapphire and diamond brooch earned by that was
worn by Jackie Kennedy during her time in.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
The White House.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
What he did Colins Black has meticulously curated the treasures
to create a wide range of interests. So what Colins
Black did is attend a bunch of auctions until he
created this one of a kind collections. And he financed
those pieces because they weren't cheap with money he made
from bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So what does he have in there?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Rare Pokemon cards, a ship wrecked bounty, sports memorabilia, gold
precious metals, items owned or made by Pablo Picasso, George Washington,
items owned by George Washington, Amelia Earhart, and a bunch
of money, gold coins, etc. And the only item on
(12:55):
his wish lists that he couldn't get, as he describes it,
was one of Albert Einstein's pipes, which he lost in
a bidding war. Other than that, he got everything he wanted.
And I am so impressed with his thinking because the
(13:17):
combined prize value is more than two million dollars. Now
is he going to publish more than two million books?
Look at the publicity.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
That he is getting. For example, there was an entire
segment on this show.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
That's not to say zillions of people listening to this show,
but certainly you've got well, you used to have over
a million listening to the show, and then it went
down to several hundred thousand, and then it went down
to about seventy thousand. So for all four of you
that are still listening to this show, the book is
called There's Treasure Inside, and you too can go for
(13:58):
two million dollar. Well actually it's over five items, so
no one's going to get all five. It's if you
break it down, it's half a million dollars. That's kind
of fun, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
The treasure hunt.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
I would do that if I had the money. Yeah,
my wife would not be happy about it.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
But that's true.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
That's what I think money is for, to do interesting things.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
That's why he.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Did this, because he's made enough money and he goes, now,
I want to do something interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
We're not talking about playing golf or lolling at the beach.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
He's going back to the time that he was a
kid and was really into these puzzle games. Good for him,
Good for him. Now a little bit of history that
I want to share with you, and that is toys,
toy giving and what do you do for Christmas for
your kids or Hanukkah? And if you look at the
(14:50):
toys and there were it toys, coveted toys that when
they become it's real problem for the toy industry because
all of these toy retailers.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Order months and months in advance, and what do you
I was going to hit or not.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
So today they're sparkly, they're squeezable, they're electronic. But if
you go back, let's start with the nineteen fifties, the
hula hoop and the kushball. Now I never had a cushball,
but I've had everything else. The hula hoop, you know,
it's been around forever. And Whammo Fun Company, I mean
(15:22):
just completely crazy company. It came out with it out
of plastic, and all of a sudden they were selling
millions of them. Everybody had win in the country. In
nineteen fifty two, mister potato Head came out and I
followed a year later by missus potato Head.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
And I remember having one of these, and it.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Turned out they were Originally you actually used a potato
and you would put the nose in the ears.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And plug them in.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
And then they went to plastic, and then they become
no fun at all because potatoes are much more fun.
You know, different shapes and you can pretend you've got
an elephant, man and potato depending on the size of
the head, et cetera. Lincoln logs and matchbox cars came
out in the fifties.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Play dough came out.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
In the fifties. Who didn't have play dough if you
were a kid in the fifties. Here's a little sidebar story.
Plato was invented in nineteen thirties as a wallpaper cleaner
until someone discovered oh.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Boy, playto.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
And then in nineteen fifty nine there was a teenage
fashion model doll called Barbie, which may very well be
considered the icon certainly the iconic doll, and maybe the
iconic toy of the time. Also in the nineteen fifties
or this nineteen sixties. Now, remember the easy bake oven.
(16:54):
The easy bake oven was a toy oven that you
could actually bake little cakes, I mean for real, and
the heat was provided by a light bulb, a light bulb,
and you could actually bake something with it. Today you
can't do that because you don't have incandescent lights. All
you have is led lights. And if you try to
(17:16):
bake a little bit, a little tiny cake in an
easy bake oven today, you're baking for eight months and
it still hasn't finished cooking.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Remember etch a sketch and the light bright etch a sketch?
I remember it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That was almost impossible to do an etch of sketch
with any round roundness to it. You could do straight
lines with an etch of sketch.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, you can't do circles.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
It's people actually could Well, you could do something that
might resemble one.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, it's still kind of.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
But yeah, if you don't know what etcha sketch is,
look it up, you know, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
And google it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
And Hot Wheel debuted nineteen sixty eight. I didn't know
that long ago. I was not a Hot Wheels guy
because I'm not a car guy. But these little realistic
built to scale and it started with Camaros and Munstangs
and firebirds, and then they came out with everything. Nineteen
seventy seven Pong. Remember Pong, one of the earliest electronic games.
(18:20):
When you look at it and you go, really, this
was the start of video games. Atari went big in
nineteen seventy seven. That was the first home gaming console.
It cost about two hundred dollars then, which is about
one thousand dollars in today's currency. So someone some kid
getting an atari, some parent or uncle or grandparent spend
(18:43):
a thousand bucks on it.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
The equivalent there was the nerf ball. I remember those shrinky,
shrinking dinks.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I'm not even go into that, because I will I
misconstrued that one hundred percent shrinking dinks. I thought it
had to do with weather when it's cold, and I'm
just not interested in explaining that. I do remember the
pet rock, Now, that was marketing genius. Somebody came up
(19:15):
with taking a box and putting straw in it and
putting in a rock, and then instructions on how to
feed your rock, and how to take care of your rock,
and how to be emotionally connected to your rock.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And it sold in the millions.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I think it was an advertising guy that came up
with that, if I'm not mistaken. Speak and Spell that
was Texas Instruments, and it was one of the first
predictive coding speech synthesizer. And the language was with this
talky robotic twist because early days voice were very robotic. Today,
(20:03):
of course, man, I got I'm getting these scam calls
that look that sounds so good that you know you answer,
I don't understand you know somebody who pitched something I
don't understand. Oh you don't understand, well, let me explain
it again. This is a this is an algorithm that's
doing that.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So I answered space spam calls. Hopefully I can talk
to someone.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So Star Wars action figures that was the earliest, earliest.
This is George, George Lucas and his genius. Not only
a brilliant, brilliant filmmaker. By the way, he would take
a year to write his movies, a year to write
those Star Wars movies, and then he would direct them.
(20:51):
And then he discovered early took a wild guess before
the movie was released. He cut deals for action figures
and tie ins before anyone else did that, and the
Star Wars action figures after the nineteen seventy seven release
of the original Star Wars went completely crazy. The Rubik's
(21:13):
Cube came out nineteen eighty and it was a Hungarian
architecture professor who invented in nineteen seventy four. Then, for
you little girls or you little boys who think they're
little girls, my little pony pound puppies care bears. Remember
the craziness with Cabbage Patch kids where mothers would get
(21:34):
into fist fights over cabbage patch kids and.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
They were going for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Chia pets were great where you could actually grow animal figurines.
My favorite was a bald figuring that you planted these
little seeds and then you had this hair of grass.
I was big on thatchia yep. I remember that commercial
the Tamago cheese. The Tamaguccies Beanie Babies was another one
(22:06):
of those where for some reason, limited edition beanie babies
went for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. An artificial market
was created Ferbies, which created an entire group of mentally
ill people who think they are ferbies, dressed like ferbies
and their world is furbies.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I want you to go to for those of you
that do.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
That and you're looking for a job, go into the
job interview dressed as a Ferbie and see how well
that works out for you. And people spend thousands of
dollars on these costumes. I mean, and there's a whole cause,
there's a whole cosplay thing, Pokemon trading cards, PlayStation two,
(22:51):
Xbox three sixty of course, the Razor scooter. I had
one of those.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Juju pets. I think it is that a panda. I
don't know. I remember brats, those little dolls that talk
back to.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
You, And didn't you call that your daughters?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I pretty well do. And so some of these toys
are just great fun. And these are the classics, and
some of them are still around. I think easy bake
ovens are kind of finished. Maybe they have a quartz
filament that the kids put their hands in and get
their degree burns when they're cooking.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
All right, So there's a story now, because well it's
the holiday season and gifts are to be made and
shoppers are to be shopping, and more shoppers than ever
are on track to use the buy now, pay later plans.
You know, isn't that the same as a credit card
payment where you pay it later. Well, there's a little
(23:53):
bit of difference, and more people are doing that because
inflation has hit.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
It's not there anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
But there's already record high prices and record high credit
card debt because much like credit card debt, if you
put off or you buy products with plastic or on
a layaway plan.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
You're not paying for it right now. You pay for
it later.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And here is the rub And here is why the
critics are saying this is a bad idea, because one,
you're putting it on your credit card, you know, buy now,
pay later plans. Well, they mean that you don't have
the money. Now, if you have the money, you'd go
in and buy the product. Or what's happening is if
(24:44):
you have the money, you stretch it out and buy
more products, you put them on credit cards, and you
get hit both late payments if your credit card is
maxed out, huge interest on your credit card, and you
get all these late payments and penalties on the layaway
(25:05):
plane itself from the retailer. And I'm thinking, this isn't
a whole lot different than straight out credit card debt,
except they say it's no interest, okay, until.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You miss payments, and then it starts to add up.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And to qualify, you don't need credit, you just qualify
and it's soft credit. You've already have a credit card,
and they don't care. They're not going to say you've
maxed out. They just don't care. And so it's easier
to do this now layaway plans. I remember as a kid,
(25:42):
this was before the advent of the ubiquity of credit cards.
Where everybody uses credit cards. I use credit cards, but
I pay mine off at the end of the month
for two reasons. One is I don't spend that much
on credit cards. I live under my means. And two,
I make a good enough living that I'm able to
(26:04):
pay them off. But a lot of it has to
do with living within your means, which I have basically
my entire adult life.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
And so it used to be the Layoway plans. You
would go to a store and.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
You'd pick out an item, and you would put a
given amount of money down, real cash, not borrowed money,
and six months later, when you've made six payments over
this thing and that was the.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Cost, you take it home. It was a true Layoway plan.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
You paid for it with real cash. The retailer got
the money up front for six months or eight months
or three months, and then you got the product. Well,
today it's you get the product now, and you pay
for it over spell of months and you use your
(26:55):
credit card usually and you are at risk. Hey, you're
at risk anyway. You know, the bottom line is just
be responsible and what you buy.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And I know it's hard not to.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I know when you have kids, g Dad, I'd really
like this, and I didn't have that problem as a kid.
I would get you know, was Honica time ago. G Dad,
here's a list of what I'd like, and I'd get
a stick. Here, go play with this. It's a branch.
So of course I went the other way. And when
my kids were little, I got them way too much.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
And now no, no, not a chance.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
What I say now is, hey, remember when I got
you fourteen, when you were fourteen years old, that was
your Hanukkah present for the next fifteen years. Much easier.
So I don't use this. And I'm going to suggest
that you'd be really careful about these, because not only
are you going to be in debt to the retailer,
(28:01):
to the people that sold it to you, but also
if you use a credit card, it's going to be
a double hit.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And it's happening.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
More and more and more. The firm Adobe Analytics Well
regarded forecasts that from the period November one to December
thirty one, eighteen and a half billion dollars worth of
goods will be people will use the pay now, buy now,
pay later program.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
You just got to be really really careful.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
But then you have to be really really careful anyway KFI.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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