05-28-25 FULL SHOW - How's Things On 16th Street For Business, And Weather Wed

Mandy talks about rainy days on Weather Wednesday, NPR taking tax payer money, she has a chat with 16th Street business owner Derek Friedman about how things are going downtown, free boob jobs for trans women but not actual women, Derrick Wilburn's accuser Bernadette Guthrie joins to explain why she's so upset, and the President of France is an abused husband.  

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock,
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, it's Mandy Connell, Andy.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Tonk FM, god Way.

Speaker 4 (00:18):
And the Nicety three.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Andy Connell keeping your sad day.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to.

Speaker 5 (00:28):
A Wednesday Feels Like Tuesday edition the show.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
I am your host for the next three hours.

Speaker 5 (00:33):
Mandy Connell joined again by my right hand man. Back
from the brink of death. He has pulled himself together
to make it back into the office today. That's Anthony Rodriguez.
You can call him and rod Is that how you
feel today?

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Reaccurate? I chose that one randomly. That is just perfect,
you guys.

Speaker 5 (00:54):
I I was running late get into the office, and uh,
I feel it. You know how when you're you have
See here's the thing. I've had jobs where you could
be late before, and then I've had other jobs where
you cannot be late.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
I e.

Speaker 5 (01:09):
I was a flight attendant and one of the things
I tell you in flight attendant training is the plane
isn't going to wait for you to show up, and
if the plane leaves without you, well you're on your
way to being fired. That's just the way it is,
which seems reasonable in the grand scheme of things. So
today I my daughter had a dentist appointment, YadA, YadA, YadA,

(01:29):
and I was racing to get here, not really racing, officers,
if you're listening, but I was moving with purpose to
get here in time. And just I walked in at
twelve fifty four.

Speaker 4 (01:40):
Which I never do. It's like anxiety. So I'm just
like in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Speaker 5 (01:50):
I usually get here in plenty of time, like Kibbitts,
and you know, do some stuff. Let's go to the blog,
shall we, because boy, how doy do we have a
lot of stuff to talk about. And as I come
down off the anxiety ledge from almost being late, I'm
sure it will be a great show. Find the blog
by going to mandy'sblog dot com. That's mandy'sblog dot com.
Look for the headline in the latest post section that

(02:12):
says five twenty eight to twenty five blog How's things
on Sixteenth Street for business and weather Wednesday. Click on
that and here are the headlines you will find within
tick Tech.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Two A winner, I Do you Do?

Speaker 6 (02:24):
We's hosting office half of American all with ships and clipments,
A sea that's going to press play.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Today. I'm the blog.

Speaker 5 (02:30):
We are practically a rainforest these days. How's business on
sixteenth Street? Derek Wilburn's accuser is on at two thirty.
We've got to talk about this today. Free boob jobs
for dudes in Colorado. Now, this wasn't a playful slap scrolling. Okay,
seventies kids, what you got? Demarius Thomas is going into
the ring. DPS responds to its creative financing scheme. George

(02:55):
Brockler's social media posts have him in hot water kept
killing Lewis's family files suit. NBR has a right to
free speech, but not my money. Why I'm a no
on Douglas County's home rule initiative. Southwest is ruined starting today,
Let's plan the perfect staycation. An Air Force Academy cadet
is killed by an illegal immigrant. Be a part of

(03:17):
historically bad baseball Land. Acknowledgments are the dumbest thing ever.
Great Divide is leaving downtown. John Cena is coming for
the Fan Expo.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Stop reading Whindy Mommy bloggers. For one.

Speaker 5 (03:30):
The ticks are bad this year. Government is the reason
housing is so expensive. Racist Chicago mayor rips Trump, Kyle
Clark nails the rebrand, the truth about alcohol. Those are
the headlines on the blog at mandy'sblog dot com. And no,
I'm sorry, eleven fifty four is when I got in here.

(03:52):
Thank you Texter. Eleven fifty four. That's that's kind of
too close for me. That's just that's unlike the afternoon,
like that Dave Logan who strolls in like he owns
the joint because he kind of does, like wanders into
the studio after the show has already started, kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
I don't have that luxury.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
Oh, the guy that thinks you cheat of the day,
I am so salty about that right now. I'm still mad.
You could ask my husband. I do not cheat. I
don't cheat it board games. I don't cheat at card games.
I don't cheat it golf. I have not one, but
two different golf rule books in my golf bag, one

(04:31):
from the USGA, one from the PGA. We can decide
whose rules we want to play with. So the fact
that Dave Logan has been spreading falsehoods about me of
that nature I find especially egregious. I'm thinking about writing
a season assist letter, you know, just whipping one off,
leaving it all right over there in his space.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Dear mister Logan. Yep, well the comments out there already,
so the damage has been done.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (05:01):
Anyway, we've got weather Wednesday coming up at twelve thirty.
I'll try and move past that a little bit of nonsense.
And uh boy, we've had a lot of rain. We
got record breaking rain this past weekend. Did you guys
get a crap ten at your house?

Speaker 4 (05:13):
Hey, Rod, Mandy.

Speaker 6 (05:15):
I sat and rain delay at the Colorado National Speedway
for five hours on Saturday, and yeah, I got.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Home close to midnight. Oh no.

Speaker 6 (05:24):
We had a good half hour of a really good
feature race and then we waited five hours.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
It was like three three, four, five hours. It was crazy.
I got two things.

Speaker 5 (05:32):
For people after all the rain we've had over the
past few days. If you've noticed that you have a
roof leak, I just want to send you a golden
spike roofing. We noticed we had a roof leak. I
called golden spike roofing. We had a leak around one
of our our skylights and they came over, bought it
being bought a boom, got it fixed. And if you've
realized that your gutters are hopelessly clogged, don't just clean them.

(05:56):
Called my friends at gutter Helmet Denver dot com and
get gutter pert to keep all that crappty heir gutters.
Because guess who's gutters were not clogged?

Speaker 6 (06:04):
Yours worked like a champ anthony, but holy green grass.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah, yeah it does. See we got a lot, Mandy.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
Can I give my free boob job to my wife
asking for Mike? Well, Mike, I'm going to assume that
I can call you Mike. We're going to get into
that a little bit later. I did not know that
we just passed a bill that is we should this
bill should have been named the Patriarchy Wins, okay, because
with everything that women are having to put up with

(06:35):
right now in our sports from men who have decided
they are women. Now, in Colorado, if you're a man
and you've decided you're a woman, you can have the
taxpayers of Colorado pay for all sorts of plastic surgery
in order to make you look more feminine and more female. Now,
as a fifty five year old woman, who you know,

(06:57):
I got a few years on me, I think I
still look really good for fifty five I'm not gonna
lie when people are visibly shocked when.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
I say I'm fifty five.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
I'm like winning, but at some point I would like
to remain an attractive female and I can't get my
plastic surgery paid for by the State of Colorado. We're
gonna get in that a lot, a lot later in
the show, because it's infuriating, absolutely infuriating, Maddy. My mom
always said, if you're cheating, you're not trying hard enough.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
She was joking.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
Of course, I don't like cheating because I like to.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
Win fair and square, right Like.

Speaker 5 (07:30):
I like to know that when I have achieved a victory,
I have done so fair and square. Otherwise it's a
hollow victory. And what's the point. So when someone else
cheats to try and undermine my fair and square victory
or a fair and square butt whoopan butt whoopan Because
if I lose, and I lose to someone that is

(07:50):
better at whatever I'm doing than I am, I'm like,
hats off, my friend, you kicked my boutet. I am
a gracious loser. I am a gracious winner for the
most part, and it just it bugs me when I
you know what, Q my daughter's gonna be in the
in with me tomorrow because she's got I got to

(08:12):
take her to an appointment right after the show, So
she's coming to work with me tomorrow. I'm gonna have
her explain what it was like to play candy Land
against me as a small child. You know, all parents
are always like, it's okay, you can just do this,
and you don't.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
Have to go all the way back to the cookie.

Speaker 7 (08:26):
You can just stay.

Speaker 5 (08:27):
Where you are, not in our house. I was like, sorry, sister,
stop crying. Go all the way back to the beginning.
Toughen some up, make them realize.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
You know what I mean. You gotta fight for what
you want, but you got to do it the right way. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (08:39):
I'm not saying I don't hate bankers because of my
father and Monopoly, but you know.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, yeah bankers. I hate Monopoly. Despise the game it
takes for ever. Hate it now.

Speaker 6 (08:54):
I bet you haven't, even while you wouldn't because you
hate Monopoly, But they have the in person life size Monopoly,
know it?

Speaker 5 (09:00):
What would you stand there for seven hours something to happen?

Speaker 6 (09:04):
I say, with all due respect to their creativity and
the work that they did on the set.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
God, it was terrible. Oh no, really, it was.

Speaker 6 (09:12):
So terrible because you made they made you feel so dumb.
Why the challenges were brutal? H like two minutes to
do these like calculus level challenges and bam you're out.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
We still came in second place because we landed on
no one's property. But hey, whatever, terrible, really fun but terrible.
Uh to the person.

Speaker 5 (09:34):
Who asked, Mandy, are men now eligible for free breast
reduction surgery? I could stand to lose a few pounds.
I don't believe that move removal is covered. Just move
and or just move enhancement. Now, if you wanted to
make them bigger, get yourself a nice set of double
d's that will be paid for as long as you
say you're a woman. Now, my question is if I

(09:55):
say I'm a man, and then I say, but I'm
a man who'd like to become a woman, and I'm
gonna need something done to this chess area. Can I
get plastic surgery then? Or even more, let me just
get into that story. Let me just jump on in here,
because this is so annoying and I want to play
our friend of the show and like kick booty mom.

(10:18):
Aaron Lee as she talks about Colorado HB twenty five,
thirteen oh nine, that was just signed into lab with
great flourish by our governor Jared Polis.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
What does it do? Well, listen to this.

Speaker 8 (10:32):
Okay, let's talk about Colorado House Built thirteen oh nine,
which was signed into law by the worst governor in history,
Jared Polis, on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. What
thirteen oh nine does is it forces all of us,
the Colorado taxpayers, to pay for any trans affirming elective
procedure that any trans individual months. Within the bill, they

(10:54):
describe eye lad lifts, nos job bone restructuring, boob jobs,
genital surgery, hormone therapy, laser hair removal, and anything that
any one doctor or behavioral therapist deems as medically necessary
for a transidentified individual. So yes, your insurance premiums are
going to go up and insurance companies are going to

(11:16):
leave the state of Colorado. But that's not all. They
also wrote in the Healthcare Affordability cash Fund, which is
just a slush fund of your hard earned tax dollars
to pay for elective procedures for trans identified people. But
that's still not all. They also took testosterone off of
the drug use monitoring program, so you're not just going

(11:39):
to be paid for paying for wrong sex hormones for children.
That's going to be done in secret. And to add
insult to injury, they also added as safety clause which
makes this law take effect immediately and prevents we the
people from overturning the law through referendum process.

Speaker 5 (11:57):
Not only that, here's the g and Aaron points this
out in an ex post very very nicely. A woman
who needs skin tightening after having kids will have to
pay for it out of pocket.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
A man does not.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
A woman who needs hormone with therapy after going through
pregnancy and menopause will pay out of pocket.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
A man will not.

Speaker 5 (12:18):
A woman who would like hair removal surgery will pay
out hair removal. Laser hair removal will pay out of pocket,
a man will not. A woman who's recovering from breast
cancer will not be guaranteed insurance coverage for breast reconstruction.
A man who wants a boop job will be guaranteed coverage.
Once again, I said this yesterday. If this isn't the

(12:38):
greatest win for the patriarchy in the history of the patriarchy,
I don't know what is and what's super frustrating to me,
And I realized that this is petty and small even
as I'm about.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
To say it.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
What's super frustrating for me is that after having to
deal with all manner of crap my entire life, when
it comes to I'm gonna say sexual discrimination in radio
in the field that I'm in, or sexual discrimination at
my first managerial job at a restaurant where I found
out that the male manager who was doing the exact

(13:11):
same job that I was, was making more than I was.
I mean, these are things in my life, and I
don't sit around and complain about him because why, right,
why I was lucky enough to find a home here
at KOA who didn't care that I had girl hearts?

Speaker 8 (13:24):
Right?

Speaker 5 (13:24):
A lot of other radio program directors do, trust me.
And the frustrating thing is that now I a woman
who has dealt with years, decades of all this crap,
and don't even get me started on how many periods
I've had in my life and dealing with menstrual.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Type stuff, all of this stuff. Now I am.

Speaker 5 (13:41):
Supposed to sit down and shut up because a man
who has decided he is a woman wants to play
sports against my daughter. You know what, being a woman
is chock full of disappointment. Now, if you really want
to be a woman, be disappointed, be told you can't
do something, be discriminated against.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
Because of who you are. But no, that's not what happens.

Speaker 5 (14:03):
When a man decides he's a woman, will bye gush,
bye golly. We better make sure that man has everything
they need to feel like the woman they want to be.
This is so infuriating. I'm thinking about this. I wonder
if I could find a passive, aggressive, saucy lawyer who
would take the case so I can sue the state
of Colorado to cover my plastic surgery procedures so I

(14:26):
can feel more feminine. Any takers out there, anybody know,
anybody know any particularly surly lawyers who would do this
for free. Just to make a point, because if all
this stuff is covered for men, how in the world
is that equal protection under the law for me, a woman.
I can't get this stuff done. I can't get my

(14:49):
hormones for free. I can't do any.

Speaker 4 (14:52):
Of that stuff. It's absolutely.

Speaker 5 (14:57):
I'm telling you, this is like the men wan. The
men absolutely won. Mandy, How can we fight this crazy,
crazy thing Poulus is done on free med for anyone
I want a boob job.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Well, let's see. I think my strategy of.

Speaker 5 (15:12):
Declaring myself a man before declaring myself a man who
wants to become a woman might be the way to
go because in Colorado I can change my gender three times.
So if I go down to the DMV and I
say I'd like to change my gender on my driver's
license to mail, and then I call my insurance company
and say, oh no, no, I'm mail now, and they're like, okay,

(15:34):
we'll check all those boxes. Now you're mail, blah blah blah.
And then like two weeks later, I come back and
I say, oh wait, no, I've decided that I'm going
to become a woman. So I go to the driver's
license and I say I need to change my gender.
I'm going to be back to being a woman. And
then I call my insurance company and say, I am
now a trans woman and I want you to cover
all of these services for me. I mean, as dumb

(15:55):
as that sounds, I think legally I could get away
with it in Colorado because of the new laws that
they passed. I think legally the bar for doing such
shenanigans is so low that I'm pretty sure I could
get away with that.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
I could argue in court that that is justifiable in
the state of Colorado. Mandy, who sound like a whitey
woman from a man totally joking. No, And you guys,
here's the thing. There are so there are so many
instances in my life where I objectively and I try
to remain objective about this because sometimes when you don't

(16:31):
get a job or something doesn't go well, it's not
because of your gender, right, it's because you weren't right
for the job, or or the person didn't like you,
or things of that nature. But there have been absolute
times in my life where I one hundred percent know
that I didn't get a job because I was female.
I absolutely know it, and I had a couple options.

(16:52):
I could have sued, right, I could have said that's unjust,
that's unfair, and instead I was just like, you know what,
I'm just going to be better. I'm going to be
or I'm gonna work harder, I'm gonna try harder, and
I'm gonna be undeniably good. So another person is going
to be able to hire me and get the benefit
of that hard work instead of whining about it, because
I don't think whining about it ever changed anyone's opinion.

(17:14):
The only thing that changes people's opinions is demonstrating what
can be done. And even now, you guys, I mean,
the frustration with talk radio, specifically for me, is off
the charts right now because I've been doing this. I
started in radio in talk radio. I've done music radio
for like seven months. It was long enough. It's not

(17:36):
my jam.

Speaker 4 (17:37):
I don't love it.

Speaker 5 (17:38):
I know people, especially in this building, that are in
music radio, that it is everything to them.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
It was not to me. I've always been in talk radio.

Speaker 5 (17:46):
And the frustration that I have, after almost thirty years
in this industry that there are still so few women
in talk radio just it honestly makes me viscerally angry
at this stage in my life, and I'm just not
sure what to do about it. I'm really not the
Only thing I can keep doing is try to kick
butt so you guys will enjoy the show and keep listening.

(18:10):
And again, I need an attorney who will work pro
bono to sue the State of Colorado to get me
a boob job. I'm dead serious. I don't want to
pay for the lawsuit, but man, it would be fun.
If you know any attorneys who are looking for fun,
pr let's do it.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
I mean, could you imagine an interview.

Speaker 5 (18:29):
Where I stand up on CBS four and I turned
sideways and say, look, wouldn't they be better if.

Speaker 4 (18:33):
They were up here? You know, just kind of give
them the old lift.

Speaker 5 (18:38):
It would be a hoot, an absolute hoot. Speaking of hoots,
we're gonna have a hoot and holler. Our chief meteorologist
Dave Fraser from Fox thirty one joins us next for
Weather Wednesday. Keep it on KOA, our favorite meteorologist. He
is Fox thirty one's Dave Fraser. Dave, what are we
at a rainforest?

Speaker 4 (18:59):
All of a sudden? What is happening with all the
rain right now?

Speaker 5 (19:01):
But of course, as I am a Colorado resident, we
need the moisture.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
I have to add that last part. Yeah, we always
need the moisture.

Speaker 9 (19:10):
You know, I'm surprised I kept the favorite part because
the rain is welcomed, it is needed. I didn't like
the timing. I'm sure most people didn't. Made for a
soggy holiday weekend, but boy was it beneficial. May is
our wettest month on average a little over two inches.
We are now a little over three inches. We're not

(19:30):
on the top twenty wet maize. We would need another
three quarters of an inch. However, we have rain chances
just about every day through the end of the month,
so it's possible we could crack that top twenty for
wett It's made and we're ahead for the year now,
so we've made up for the shortfall that was March
in April.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
That's what I was going to ask you.

Speaker 5 (19:49):
We pay a lot of attention to snowpack at what
percentage of average? So this did kind of right the ship,
I guess on our water situation.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Is that what you just said?

Speaker 9 (20:00):
Yeah, I mean you know the problem is you know
they're statistics, right, so you can't hold it for when
we dry out again and sprinkle it around to even
it out. But statistically, right now we are ahead of
the game. May has been very beneficial to it. It's
interesting because you and I always talk about and I
pull up the long range outlooks for these conversations to

(20:20):
see what's what. At the beginning of the month. In
the middle of April, May was looking to be like
March and April were projected to be below normal and
above average for temperatures. Well, we're exactly where we should
be for temperatures. We've had a few days in the eighties,
we've had days in the sixties the last couple of days,
so it's averaged out, but for moisture were ahead. So

(20:43):
those long range outlooks, as I say, they can give
you a kind of an overview, but they generally don't
tell you anything about the day to day, and they
can bust. And in this case, March and April held
true to being dry and warmer than normal, but May
has been a bust on that long range outlook. And
they just updated the six to ten day outlook, So
think three more days beyond a normal seven day forecast,

(21:04):
and we're looking to be wet and a below average
for the next six to ten days. And there's a
pretty good chance for rain this afternoon Friday Saturday. The
rain drops off Sunday, the only dry day I have.
It's our warmest date about eighty six, and then we
are back to rain chances come Monday and Tuesday as
we transition into the start of June.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
So basically what.

Speaker 5 (21:22):
I just heard is Mandy, mow your lawn on Sunday?
Is what I just heard? Is that what you just said?

Speaker 9 (21:27):
Okay, just double checking, okil if you like me do it,
I'd like to do it in the morning before the
rain comes to me afternoon. So for me, my chort
list is Friday morning before I go to work, so
that it don't have to deal with it on the weekend.
But a lot of people don't have that morning time,
free time to do it. And so yeah, the best
day would be Sunday because of.

Speaker 5 (21:44):
The shade in my yard, it has to have a
good bit of time to dry out from the afternoon
storms the day before.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
Why are we in this weather pattern?

Speaker 5 (21:52):
Because this is not And of course my kids and
rand kids came this past weekend and I was like,
I honestly don't remember the last time we had this
many days of gray skies and overcast and rain.

Speaker 4 (22:05):
It's been a very long time.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
So where what is happening right now that's creating this
weather pattern?

Speaker 9 (22:11):
What just kind of stuck between two areas to the
west of us along the West coast. There's an area
of high pressure. It's dried there. Flow around that is
clockwise to the east of US near the Great Lakes,
there's an area of low pressure flow around that is added,
you know, anticlockwise. So the flow coming over Colorado is
in a northwesterly direction. And so we're getting storms that

(22:34):
are building over the mountains, which is typical, and they're
drifting out of Wyoming and they're coming down across the
Front Range and onto the eastern plains. With that pattern
in place, we have really good moisture. We haven't been
able to flush out the moisture. And so with the
moisture and plate every day, relatively good humidity levels, decent
due points. As we talk about the measurement of moisture

(22:56):
in the air, you know, the dew points have been
running in the forties and fifties. That's good number for
Denver every day with those passing showers, the thunderstorms have
boisture to work with and we're just squeezing it like
a sponge. That pattern is probably going to stick around
for several more days. As I said going in, it's funny.
Right before you guys you were talking about coming to
weather Wednesday, I was looking at long range models. We

(23:18):
have one of our computer models that we look at
for forecasting that has actually two of them are looking
like it. I'm going to keep an eye on it.
Still has snow at around ten thousand feet on June third,
and emulating snow, emulating snow of several inches, not just
the dusting. So that should tell you the wet pattern
that we look like we're going to keep around as

(23:38):
we're going to June.

Speaker 5 (23:39):
If somebody is a question sort of related to what
you were just talking about, and it is Mandy, please
ask Dave if the fog is more dense in the
spring or in the cold months. I think I know
the answer, but ask anyway, Thank you.

Speaker 9 (23:53):
You know it can be both. Really, I don't think
one season wins out over another. I think in the
this time of the year, you're dealing with more moisture
and it can be thick and grayer and dense. But
in the winter months sometimes you know, you can get
that fog because of a snow that melts into the
lower levels, and it can be thick as well. But
I think this time of year you're dealing with more

(24:15):
of a gray, thicker fog. But anytime you have fog,
if the air is calm, whether it's left over rain
or it's melted snow. In the lower levels, it can
be thick.

Speaker 5 (24:26):
So this texter just asked, where are the official rain
measurements taken?

Speaker 4 (24:31):
Is that at the weather station by the airport.

Speaker 9 (24:34):
It is okay, it is so there are many weather
gauges and volunteer gauges up and down the front range
that we can look at and pull data from our radar.
The radar that we use also has a product that
we call rain Vision. It can keep an estimation of rain.
It's good for showing where the path of storms were

(24:57):
and whether or not there was an inch or two inches,
get approximations of rain. But the official gauge is out
at the airport. And you mentioned a little bit ago
about record range. So on Sunday we did break the
record for a daily rainfall total when we hit one
point thirty nine inches. That substantial rain yees, Yeah, more
than an inch in a day. And that was the
official record at the airport. There were other places, plenty

(25:20):
of places, especially on the southern east side of the
Metro on Sunday that got two to three inches of rain.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
Another question for Dave.

Speaker 5 (25:28):
I'm looking for clear sky, still air for astronomy. This weekend,
and he says southern Colorado, Preblo, Trinidad. Is any of
that going to be Is it going to be good
star watching this weekend anywhere in Colorado?

Speaker 9 (25:41):
I would say potentially Saturday night. If the Chanceller storm,
the Chanceller storms on Saturday is very low, the sky
should clear here along the front range. If not, Sunday
should be pretty good Sunday night.

Speaker 5 (25:53):
Last question before I let Dave Fraser Fox thirty one go, Manny,
please ask Dave if the thunderbirds will be able to
fly tomorrow for graduation Deer Force Academy.

Speaker 9 (26:02):
Uh, that's a good question. We do have a chance.
Here's the setup for someone. Do you know what time
that is?

Speaker 10 (26:08):
Manny?

Speaker 4 (26:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 9 (26:11):
I don't know. I don't know if a rod can
look that up quickly. Here's the thing I'll tell you,
just quickly put tomorrow. If this helps your your listener,
the chance for thunderstorms is already moving in this evening. Okay,
the chances are going to linger overnight?

Speaker 6 (26:25):
Am is yeah?

Speaker 4 (26:27):
Nine am is the ceremony.

Speaker 9 (26:29):
There is a possibility there could still be some showers
around themorrow morning. That's what I was going to say.
We have one of these situations where you know, we
rarely get rain overnight, there's going to be some lingering
pockets of showers overnight. I don't know that the cloud
deck will be low enough to prevent them from flying,
but there could be some wet weather for graduation down
there to the south early in the morning, as we'll
have these kind of lingering morning showers before the sky

(26:51):
start to break and we get some clearing later in
the afternoon. So I can't speak to specifically the cloud
deck and what they're you know, what they're lowest is
for flying. I'll keep my fingers that it's good and
everybody can enjoy graduation.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
All right, that's a lot. That's a wrap there.

Speaker 5 (27:04):
Dave Fraser from Vox thirty one, you can always and
you know what ay Ride and I talked about right
before you came on the air, just like a little
free plug. We were talking about how we always use
the Pinpoint Weather app because it is the most accurate
weather app period for a local forecast. So if you
are looking for the local forecast, the Pinpoint Weather app
from Vox thirty one, and I have five weather apps

(27:25):
on my phone, although one of them is just an
obscene weather app where it gives you the forecast in
dirty language.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
I moved everyone off my homepage except for this one.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:35):
The only one on my homepage is the pinpoint weather app.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
So there you go.

Speaker 5 (27:39):
Dave Fraser a little free plug, because you guys do
a great job with that, all right, man, have a
great one, all right, that is Dave Frasier. I oh,
dang it. Oh, I guess I could get that down.
I have a couple of like patchy spots.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
In my yard. Gotta get a little grass seed down.
You know mine's working so good. Well, I just have
a couple areas anyway. Yeah, all right, you guys.

Speaker 5 (28:05):
We've got a lot of stuff on the blog today,
a whole bunch of stuff on the blog today. And
when we get back, I would have spend just a
minute on something that I mentioned yesterday in passing, and
that is we're gonna call it the slap scene around
the world, and it is Brigitte Macrol, the President of
France's wife smacked him in the face.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
And I'm not.

Speaker 5 (28:27):
Gonna talk about them necessarily, but I'm gonna use it
to have a bigger conversation about women who beat up men.
Something I mentioned yesterday and this was caught on film.
So the President of France lands in Air Force in
whatever they call his plane, I don't know, and they

(28:49):
swing the door open. The President of France, Macron, steps
into view and if from out of frame you see
two hands come up and kind of like push his
face away, not in a playful way at all. And
I mentioned this yesterday and I was like, you know,

(29:09):
people are talking about this on the internet and I'm
just but ultimately I started thinking about this last night
and I started thinking about a friend of mine from
a long time ago. I've since lost touch with him,
so I don't know how a story ends. But he
married a woman and then like ten years into their marriage,
so we were maybe in our early thirties. Through another friend,

(29:31):
I found out he was in the hospital and he
had had to get like sixty stitches.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Or something like that.

Speaker 5 (29:38):
And the friend that was sharing this with me said
something to the effect of I guess his wife finally
hurt him badly, and I was like, what are you
talking about. It turns out that among the guys in
that group, it was pretty well known that this guy's
wife was abusive to him seriously abusive to him. And again,
I've lost touch with that entire group of people, so
I don't know what happened.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
If he's still with her, I have no idea.

Speaker 5 (30:00):
But we talk a lot about men behaving badly, and
with Diddy being on trial and his ex Cassandra taking
the stand and talking about living with years of abuse,
I think this is a good opportunity to talk about
the fact that though it happens less frequently than it
does in the other direction, women can be just as
abusive as men. And what this woman did by by

(30:24):
putting her hands in her husband's face. Now he's on
the official plate, so it would stand to reason that
he was not doing something abusive to her that she
physically needed to stop.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
And in my in my thinking, if.

Speaker 5 (30:41):
Someone is physically doing something you, you always have.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
The right to fight back, right.

Speaker 5 (30:47):
You always should be able to protect yourself, and if
that means physically, then you should be able to protect
yourself physically, And I have no problem with that.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
But this did not appear to be that. And if
she's doing.

Speaker 5 (30:59):
This on a plane full of people, what is she
doing at home? That's that's the other thing about this, Like,
if this is okay in public?

Speaker 2 (31:07):
For her?

Speaker 4 (31:08):
What is okay in private? I don't know. It's just
a really really bad look.

Speaker 5 (31:13):
And and you know, now it's out there and now
they're running around.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
Oh it was a playful swat. It was not.

Speaker 5 (31:19):
You can watch it yourself on the on the video,
you can just watch it and decide. And and Matt
Crohn's face certainly doesn't look like, oh, that was so playful.
It looks shocked. I mean, he genuinely looks shocked. And
then he realizes the door is opening. Hey, how you doing, guys?
Oh great, everybody saw that. Fantastic, excellent, everybody saw one.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
But what just went on?

Speaker 5 (31:45):
And he's now coming out to say, no, we were
just kidding. I mean, it very much like an abused spouse.
But I'm just gonna say this, guys, if you're living
with someone who mentally or emotionally abuses you, you have
every right to leave. And I know you're saying, but Mandy,
we have kids. Your kids should not live with that example,

(32:08):
because whatever you allow, you're teaching them, it's okay for
somebody else to do to them.

Speaker 4 (32:14):
Right. This is one thing that I have.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
In my lifetime when my female friends and even a
couple of male friends have come to me to confide
in me about marital issues because they need someone to
talk to.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
I am always the person.

Speaker 5 (32:28):
That says, look, if you have kids, work so hard
to work it out, like, try everything in your power
to work it out, unless there is addiction, or abuse
or adultery. Right, those are the three a's that should
be deal breakers. And when you allow someone to treat
you that way, you are telling your children that is

(32:48):
that it's okay to be treated in this fashion. And
I want you to think about those kids in those terms.
Would you want someone to treat them like you're being treated?
And this goes for men or women. You have the
right to leave. You deserve better. You deserve so so
much better.

Speaker 4 (33:05):
Big time.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
All right, you guys, when we get back, I've got
a couple things. First of all, at two thirty, if
you heard the interview yesterday with my friend Derek Wilburn
about a woman that he is now suing for defamation
because she has been relentlessly attacking him both publicly and
on social media, calling him a child molester, calling him

(33:27):
a lot of different names. And I asked yesterday, hey,
can somebody help get this, get me this woman's information.
She reached out to me, So she is going to
be on the show at two thirty to find to
sort of get a better idea of what is happening
from her perspective. That's only fair. And then at one

(33:48):
o'clock coming up here in just a few minutes. We
were also talking about sixteenth Street and kind of making
fun of the fact that we spend one hundred thousand
dollars to drop maul from the name of sixteenth Street.
But I have news to report you guys. First of all,
in just a few minutes, we're going to talk with
Derek Derek Freedman. He owns two businesses on sixteenth Street,
so we're gonna check in with him. But I was

(34:09):
in downtown Denver last night. We took my daughter and
her friend to a show at Mission Ballroom, dropped him off.
Then we drove for a while and got some dinner,
and then we went and played pool. But we drove
around downtown Denver quite a bit, and I have to
tell you it looks really, really good. We'll get more

(34:29):
into that after this.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock,
Accident and injury lawyers.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
No, it's Mandy Connell and Dona on Kla.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Ninetem god say nice through three and Donald Keithing, you're
really sad, babe.

Speaker 4 (34:56):
Welcome local, Welcome to the second hour of the show.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
And I am pleased this punch to have in the
studio with me a business owner that we're going.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
To talk to in just a second.

Speaker 5 (35:04):
But I want to take just one moment and give
you guys an idea of what I saw last night
in downtown Denver. So my daughter wanted to go see
Alex Warren at Mission Ballroom, and I did not want
to go see Alex Warren in Mission Ballroom. So we
dropped her off at Mission Ballroom, Chuck and I did,
and then we drove to a restaurant not too far

(35:25):
but a good bit away, multiple blocks too far to
walk kind of thing. And then after that we drove
again to a different part of downtown Denver so we
could go to a pool hall and play some billiards
while my daughter was at this concert, and as we
were driving back to Mission Ballroom when the concert was over.
By the way, if you want to send your kids

(35:46):
to an early concert, send them to a concert of
a YouTuber because that thing got over at nine o'clock,
and yeah, it was fantastic, but nonetheless, and Chuck and
I were both struck by how clean Denver again, it
is remarkable. It felt like when I first came to
Denver many many years ago. I remember driving through downtown

(36:09):
and thinking about how beautiful it was, and how clean
it was, and how welcoming it felt, and how much
just it was just a lovely, lovely city. And that's
part of the reason that I've been so disappointed over
the last seven years to see what has become of
downtown Denver. And as much as I criticize Mayor Mike Johnston,
I feel like I should give him credit because when

(36:30):
he said on the news, if you think downtown is
still a hellhole, he didn't say this. I'm paraphrasing, it
is a hellhole.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
You need to come downtown, and he's right. Can I
say that.

Speaker 5 (36:40):
I know we did have a conversation when we did
park about whether or not our car would be safe there,
so that perception still exists. But we briefly dipped onto
part of the sixteenth Street mall and it looks absolutely
lovely and joining me now in the studio is a
business owner who owns two stores on the sixteenth Street.

(37:00):
I got to stop saying the who owns two stores
on sixteenth Street, because I mean, we've paid one hundred
k for the brand rebrand. I gotta get it right.
He owned sports Fit and Sockham Sock Emporium, and Derek
Friedman's joined me today to talk about it. Now, Derek,
you sent me a rather salty email and said, Manny,
it would help if snarky talk show hosts did not

(37:22):
talk about this in such a negative way. And I said,
come on and talk about what your experiences are. First
of all, pull that microphone right up to your face
until it's almost uncomfortably close.

Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah, but welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 (37:33):
Well, thank you very much. And first of all, that
text was actually directed at the audio that you had
immediately before that, which is a personality on news Ah gotcha.

Speaker 12 (37:47):
Oh yes, not necessarily you although you were repeating the lot.
Well it was funny. I mean it was kind of funny.
Let's talk about your experiences. How long have you owned
a business, these two shops on sixteenth Street.

Speaker 11 (37:59):
Yeah, so I bought sports Fan in twenty fourteen, So okay,
So it's just.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
A lot of ten years here.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
You have a good you have been for the whole arc, right, It's.

Speaker 11 (38:07):
Been a bit of a roller coaster, so ups and
downs all together. So yeah, seeing the entirety of it.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
So I'm guessing in twenty fourteen when you bought this
you bought a business that had positive cash flow and
was doing well, because very very rarely to someone buy
an unsuccessful business unless they plan on bringing it back
to glory. When did you start to notice problems of
any real significance. I'm not talking about little you know,
little ticky taggy sub. At what point did you go, hmmm,

(38:37):
we may have a situation here.

Speaker 11 (38:39):
Yeah, in twenty fourteen, when I bought the business, I
would say it was kind of normal in terms of
the level of choplifting, and I mean, it's just something
that you have in retail, right. So we've got four stores,
two of them on sixteenth Street, and it's just sports
fan and everything was was great and normal. Twenty nineteen,

(39:02):
probably about halfway through the year, is when I started
to see a turn and some change in the dynamics.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
Certainly on the heels of that.

Speaker 11 (39:12):
About nine months later we ran into COVID and then
George Floyd where things got really out of control, and
then you know, a couple of years into construction and
all those things.

Speaker 4 (39:25):
So it was really kind of the middle of twenty nineteen.
I think there were some decisions that were made.

Speaker 11 (39:31):
Politically about how they were going to enforce shoplifting. And
there's so few people who commit crime that if you're
not enforcing it, those people are just going to be
out there and they're going to do it again and
again again.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
So but that was the timing.

Speaker 5 (39:46):
So since twenty nineteen, what do you think, And of
course we're talking about a whole stew of things that
have gone wrong, increase shoplifting, no enforcement, which just encourages
more shoplifting. When did things really start to go Did
you ever get ap We're like, I'm not sure that
we're going to be able to continue.

Speaker 11 (40:03):
Yeah, I think it was probably on the on the
heels of George Floyd, And into twenty twenty one, we
had between our stores on sixteenth and our store right
next to the Broncos Stadium, we had eight break ins
looting from George Floyd and and and you know, we

(40:25):
lost six figures in terms of merchandise, and so.

Speaker 5 (40:30):
You know those were you insured, because that's the big
thing they got insurance.

Speaker 4 (40:34):
Was all that covered by insurance.

Speaker 11 (40:36):
So that is a typical refrain the first couple of times, yes,
after that, because they were right in sequence with each other,
just a week apart or so. The next incident, the
insurance agent said, you're free to to submit claims, but
I kind of drop get nervous about whether or not

(40:58):
you're going to have insurance when you need it. So yeah,
they're going to drop us potentially, And so after that
I stopped submitting them.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
How much did you come out of pocket for all this?

Speaker 9 (41:08):
Do you know?

Speaker 4 (41:09):
It was six figures? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (41:12):
What is it about those stores? What is it about
sixteenth Street that makes you want to stay there? Because
we've seen a pretty good exodus by other businesses who say, look,
it's just not sustainable, whether they're a large chain restaurant
or whether they're a small mom and pop.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
We've seen efforts by the.

Speaker 5 (41:27):
City to bring these pop ups in, only to find
out at the time they're like, we can't ensure the
safety of our employees, let alone our customers. So you've
seen these things come and go. What is it about
being on Sixteenth Street that you've committed to.

Speaker 11 (41:41):
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of what you
were talking about in terms of what you saw. It's
a beautiful area when it's not under construction. When there's
not yeah, George Floyd, you know, protests, and it's also
a place that draws a lot of tourists. And so
for our business on the Sox side, tourists are big,
and then sports.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
I mean, you've got four stadiums.

Speaker 11 (42:03):
That's very very rare for a big city to have
four stadiums that are all kind of walkable from each other, right,
And so you know, we get so much traffic from
tourists and convention goers and sports goers that it ends
up being super attractive for our particular business. And then
for restaurants and all those other businesses down there, they

(42:27):
enjoy the same.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
So last night one of the things I did notice,
because then once I started looking around, I was like, Okay,
let's do a little recon of what's downtown. I would
say probably well over fifty percent of the license tags
of cars on the road we're from out of state easily. Now,
that's not necessarily a bad thing because those many times
are tourist dollars and things of that nature. But what

(42:51):
do you think, as a person who lives in the
metro area, what do you think is going to be
the catalyst to bring people from Littleton and Parker and
oar Vada back to downtown Denver.

Speaker 11 (43:05):
I think you said it it's just experience it or
re experience it, because you know, perceptions reality. For all
those folks they went down there, they had a bad situation,
or I think more importantly, you know, where's the media
point in the camera, and they're certainly not pointing it

(43:27):
at normal behavior, right, people just coming in, buying something,
being happy and then leaving.

Speaker 4 (43:33):
It's the kind of stuff that we saw.

Speaker 11 (43:36):
In twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and so those images
last a long time with people's memories, and they need
to come back see it for themselves, and once they do,
I think it'll you know, completely refame for them what
the downtown experience is like.

Speaker 5 (43:52):
Have you felt an increase in police presence since the
mayor announced the public safety initiative about two months ago?

Speaker 4 (44:00):
Roughly?

Speaker 5 (44:01):
Have you noticed an increase in police officers and conversely,
have you noticed a decrease in a less desirable patron
on the sixteenth on the sixteenth Street.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
Yeah, so the answer to that is yes and no.

Speaker 11 (44:18):
So the yes is there are more police versus what
used to be in twenty twenty twenty twenty one on
the heels of defund right. So but it's not two
weeks ago, three weeks ago. It's actually going back a
little bit further than that. So that transformation began to happen.

(44:42):
And the reason why I say no is because it
looks like what it looked like in twenty fourteen, twenty.

Speaker 4 (44:49):
Fifteen, right, So it's back to normal almost.

Speaker 11 (44:51):
There's an announcement of hey, this is all new investment
and this is all you know, new officers and horses
and people on motorcycles. But that's what I had in
twenty fourteen, right parked outside of my store, and so
that's what I thought was normal and usual, and people
would just interact with the horses and it would be,
you know, a great experience. But you know, talking about

(45:13):
it as some kind of you know, major breakthrough and different.
It is different than twenty twenty twenty one, but not
different than where it's been historically.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
You can text us questions at five sixty six nine
oh on the Common Spirit health text line. I want
to read this text message, Mandy. I walked them all
daily on workdays. No, you walked sixteenth Street, sir or madam.
We paid one hundred thousand dollars. We're going to get
our money's worth out of that. Today I saw one
motorcycle cop coming out of a back alley and a
little later two cops on foot. It's so good to

(45:45):
see cops on the mall again, which leads me to
my second part of that question.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
Do you cause the last time I walked down.

Speaker 5 (45:54):
The Sixteenth Street mall, now great, it was under construction,
there's fences everywhere.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
It did not feel safe at all.

Speaker 5 (46:00):
The only other people that I saw there were homeless people,
one of whom appeared to be in the throes of
some kind of drug situation.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
I did not feel safe at.

Speaker 5 (46:11):
All, and I kind of mentally was like, well, that's
not going to happen again by myself, Like, I just
did not feel comfortable. What have you seen in terms
of the number of people that maybe are homeless or
maybe you know having a drug issue or addiction issue.
Are you seeing fewer of those people and more kind
of normies. What's the balance there now?

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Well, it's completely changed.

Speaker 11 (46:35):
I would say during construction, I didn't really see anybody.
You know, nobody likes to hang out near the noise
and bother of construction, homeless or not. But you know,
in the early twenty twenty twenty twenty one, that's where
I saw the most that you could possibly see. So

(46:57):
everything that you you know, is discuss about, you know,
what happens in big cities. I pretty much saw everything
except for except for a death. Well, and so you know,
I because I have three stores along that sixteenth Street,
I'm there almost every hour.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
I have been either in a day yea.

Speaker 11 (47:22):
And so if you're there any hour, you could probably
see anything.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
And so I did.

Speaker 11 (47:28):
But right now and over the course of and I
would go back to actually November of last year where
I really started to feel like, well this is this
is actually more like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. So it
was a Saturday night and I was making a delivery
to one of my stores, and they had just cleared

(47:50):
the construction right in front of there, and there were
three little kids and they had just bought a Broncos
football from my store, and they were just on sixteenth
Street throw and the three dads were there just chatting,
and I was like, yeah, this is pretty normal because
they were going to the game the next day. And

(48:12):
that's when I started to think, all right, it could.

Speaker 5 (48:15):
Maybe exhale just a little bit. Y what percentage? And
this is un just ballpark me. Here of the storefronts
are available right now, meaning they're empty.

Speaker 11 (48:26):
You know, the numbers that I've seen are I think
anywhere between twenty and thirty percent. It's going to vary
a little bit depending on where you are along sixteenth Street.
You know the blocks, one of the blocks that I'm on,
it's it's a good chunk are actually full. And oh

(48:46):
that's good for you. I mean, yes, it's great for me.
We have two stores in that particular block. It's Curtis
to Champa and along that you've got a bunch of
local folks as well.

Speaker 5 (48:59):
So that's the other question that I was going to
ask as a follow up question, because I remember the
first time we moved here in twenty thirteen, and my
first trip to the sixteenth Street made was in the
day and then like a week later back at night,
and there was a vibe both times, right sometimes you
end up with just bars and restaurants, or you don't,
you know, you just end up with shopping and the
stores close at seven. It had a great mix, and

(49:20):
it had a lot of local stuff in it. Are
we seeing those local stores? Are we going to end
up with a bunch of chains again? What's going to
happen there?

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (49:28):
So, you know, a lot of folks kind of went
out in as construction started to happen because if your
lease was up, that became an opportunity and not have
to live through all the construction.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
And it's harder as a small business to sort of
keep those costs under control when you can't defer it
over multiple properties like a chain can exactly.

Speaker 6 (49:49):
And so.

Speaker 11 (49:51):
I am expecting that there should be a good mix
coming back in. We will, undoubtedly we'll see big chains
come in. But I was at a meeting a few
weeks ago where the mayor was talking to business folks
from all around the Front Range and in the mountains
who were looking at Sixteenth Street, and you know, they

(50:14):
were a mix of food and retail and theater and
kind of really fun concepts and all local. And I
would expect that, you know, not all of them would join,
but a bunch of them will.

Speaker 5 (50:28):
I think that's nice that they're they're doing outreach specifically too.
And I was going to ask, are you part of
the downtown Development organization or what kind of what kind
of meetings do you guys have? Are they working with
the businesses that are already there, and do you have
a window into some of the things that the Downtown
Development Partnership is planning to actually bring people back to

(50:49):
Sixteenth Street are they Are they planning events?

Speaker 11 (50:51):
I have relationships with folks there. I'm not a member.
It's kind of expensive for small business.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
But.

Speaker 11 (51:00):
Might have great relationships. They have events actually coming this weekend.
There's a bunch of stuff as they formally kind of
grand reopened sixteenth Street, and then a bunch that are
coming along the entirety of the summer.

Speaker 5 (51:17):
And I don't know all the time, when is the
rest of the fencing going to be down, because there's
still there's still fencing up, there's still construction going on.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
What is the timeline for that?

Speaker 11 (51:25):
Do you know?

Speaker 4 (51:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (51:27):
I think you know by the end of summer everything
will be done, okay is my understanding. And you know
there's been delays, but Hopefully they'll be all done wrapped
up by the.

Speaker 4 (51:39):
End of summer.

Speaker 5 (51:39):
Somebody just asked, did they get rid of the urine
smell on Sixteenth Street as of last night? Now, granted
it has been raining a lot lately, but I did
not see or smell anything that was remotely New York
City subway like. It was actually rather pleasant and quite enjoyable,
So I'm excited about this. Somebody else is the light

(52:01):
reel still bringing in undesirable patrons? Wouldn't that be the
place to start with more police presence? And I'll answer
this one that is a separate police force. RTD has
its own police force, so now they coordinate with Denver
police and all of those things.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
But I'm just not sure. I know. I'm going to
ask you this question, and you can answer it if
you want to.

Speaker 5 (52:21):
Derek, this person said, regardless of downtown is better or not,
I can't bring myself to spend my money in a
city that strongly supports sanctuary policies and liberal spending.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
Do you want to respond to that. Yeah, I'd love
to respond to that.

Speaker 11 (52:35):
I would say there are likely points where I differ
significantly from the administration in terms of the policies that
I would choose. By the same token, there are a
lot of great things that you would miss, you know,
that have nothing to do with the policies. And there

(52:57):
are a lot of folks like my businesses and Trompo
Bakery and you know, Mod Market, Cossett Tequila's folks who
are all local, who really and frankly need you to
come down and re experience it and spend your money.
And you know, whether it goes to support that administration specifically,

(53:22):
that's a fraction, right, You're talking about sales tax. I'm
not talking about the lion's share of a restaurant, you know,
bill that you're paying, or the tips for the folks
who are there.

Speaker 4 (53:32):
So I mean, I get it.

Speaker 11 (53:34):
And so I've got stores in Park Meadows in Douglas
County as well. But you know, the downtown Denver area
is completely different. And and I would understand if people
choose not to, but would encourage them to at least.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
Give it a try.

Speaker 5 (53:48):
I agree with you on that second part last question,
and we're almost out of time, but I white asked this,
what kind of a difference did it make when they
finally took down the construction in terms of foot traffic,
what are you seeing?

Speaker 4 (53:59):
Yeahs right before that.

Speaker 11 (54:00):
Yeah, you know, once once the fences come down on
your block, then you know, traffic goes up thirty fifty
seventy percent just because people are realizing, oh, I'm not
going to be confronted by an inability to kind of
navigate that block.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
So really really simple.

Speaker 11 (54:20):
When it's wide open, people love to be there, and
it is clean and it is nice, and it's not
perfect because it's a big city and so you don't
search for perfection there, but you can search and find
really really great experiences restaurants, retail, theater, everything downtown.

Speaker 5 (54:37):
If you need anything sports memorabile, well i'd say sportswear,
meaning your teams, you should go see Derek Sportsman and
sock them sock and Porium because with nothing else you
at least know Derek is a listener of this show
as well. Derek, I so appreciate you coming down today.

Speaker 4 (54:53):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 11 (54:54):
Really, it was great to meet you and love interacting
with your listeners.

Speaker 5 (54:59):
All right, thanks y, we will be right back. I
saw this on Twitter the other day and I thought
it was kind of fun. So a person on Twitter
who goes by Sarah Lazarus. I have no idea what
Sarah's deal is, but.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
I saw this question.

Speaker 5 (55:12):
Did parents in the nineteen seventies really allow their kids
to roam freely?

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Or is that just a portrayal in teen movies?

Speaker 5 (55:19):
We're seen in movies, And I was like, okay, seventies
kids looks like this woman up And this is what
I had as my example. I said, we left home
at seven am on our bikes and had to be
home when the street lights came on. And in the
time between, we built a fort with stolen construction supplies
in the woods, rode our bikes to the c closest

(55:40):
convenience store four miles away, ate candy, poked a dead
animal with a stick, gotten four fights with our friends,
played at the playground at school, ran away from the
neighborhood bully, and made a ramp to jump over our
friends on our bikes, all in one day. And I thought,
I can't be the only person who have had these experiences.
And oh lo and behold, my Twitter feed is just

(56:02):
full of people.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Now when I look, and this isn't one of those
what's the matter with kids today?

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Things?

Speaker 4 (56:09):
Because I get it.

Speaker 5 (56:10):
Kids have the world in their hands right with the Internet,
and the Internet is built to be addictive.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
It's kind of funny to talk. And I don't mean funny, haha.

Speaker 5 (56:22):
I mean funny that we're spending a lot of time
that I think is long overdue talking about the things
in our food that make us eat more, things that
can make food a little more addictive, that things that
they add to food that can kick in those dopamine releases,
so you're gonna want to eat more of it. And

(56:42):
yet no one talks about the fact that the entire
Internet is geared towards dopamine releases. Whether you're playing a
stupid game on your phone, and I'm not judging you
because when I fly, I play stupid games on my phone.
I never play stupid games when I have Wi Fi
because I don't want to see all the ads and
crap that they make you see, because I'm not paying
for anything. So if you're on an airplane and you're

(57:05):
an airplane mode, you can play the game, and granted,
you may lose your lives, But then I have I
have like five different versions of Candy Crush downloaded on
my phone, and I go from one version of candy
crush to the next because on an airplane, that's the
only time I have to do, Like, I can just
sit and there's nothing else I could be doing.

Speaker 4 (57:25):
Do other people feel that way? Do other people have
trouble with downtime?

Speaker 6 (57:30):
A Rod?

Speaker 4 (57:30):
Do you have trouble with downtime?

Speaker 5 (57:31):
Because you are a super busy guy and we kind
of talk about this a little bit on the air.
But Arod not only does the show, he also handles
all of the social media accounts for Kowa. He also
has like two side businesses with his wife.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
You Guys, Go Go.

Speaker 5 (57:46):
He also is the track announcer It's Colorado Speedway. He
has all of these irons in the fire. Do you
have trouble just stopping.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
And just chilling? What was that word you said? Down downtime?
Downtime down high? Yeah, I never heard that time where
you don't have stuff to do. Wait, that's a thing, Yeah,
never heard of it.

Speaker 5 (58:07):
Well, this is what I always think of when somebody
I'm you might hear yourself in this next comment. And
if it sounds like I'm being judgy, I'm being jealous. Okay,
just remember that. But I have friends that are I'm like, hey,
what'd you do this weekend? Oh my god, We've just
been watched all of ted Lasso, the whole series, and
I'm like, how do you have that kind of time?

(58:31):
What are you not doing in your life? It allows
you to sit and watch an entire series over the weekend.
I'm jealous, fully, one hundred percent jealous. So I have
trouble kind of ratcheting back. But now all of those
stupid Internet games, and I've shown this to my daughter
from the time she was old enough to take my

(58:52):
candy crush and use all of my bonus stuff without asking.
I'm not bitter about that at all.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
But.

Speaker 5 (59:00):
I tell her, like, all the little celebrations all to
release dopamine in your brain, so you want to keep playing.
The way shopping apps are set up are all about
releasing dopamine, so you want to keep shopping, and no
one talks about that, Like we're completely manipulated by the Internet,
and no one says, hey, we should probably not do
that now. A couple of you have texted the Common

(59:23):
Spirit Health text line at five six six nine. Oh, Mandy,
you forgot to mention that the first few seconds of
hot as sun water from the hose we drank kind
of in the yard. You know, at our house, we
didn't even have a hose. Yeah, my mom wasn't big
on yard work, right, so we did not have a hose.
So we just stuck our faces under. You can't see

(59:46):
me right now, but I'm the microphone is like the faucet,
and I'm just sticking my face under the faucet. And
in case you were wondering, in Florida, the first I
don't know, minute and a half of water is so
hot in the summer. You know, one of the most
magical things I found when I moved out here. And
you guys are gonna laugh if you're from Colorado. When

(01:00:06):
you turn on the tap in Colorado in the middle
of summer, cold water comes out.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
Such a small thing. In the middle of summer in Florida,
you know what you're getting out of your tap. It's hot.

Speaker 5 (01:00:18):
It's like eighty five ninety degrees depending on how hot
it is outside. You don't get cold water in the
summer unless you ad ice. There's no cold water coming
out of your faucet. When I got out here, I was.

Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Like, this is kind of magical. Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
No kids equals all the downtime you want. I disagree, Mandy.

Speaker 11 (01:00:39):
I raw dog.

Speaker 4 (01:00:40):
Every flight, I just sit and stare.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
That's called thinking, sir or madam, and I try to
engage on that on a regular basis, not just while
I'm flying. It drives Chuck crazy when we're on a
long flight if he's sitting next to me, because like
you know, the screen in front of you. Now on
most planes they have a score in the headrest, but
in the seat in front of you. If we're on
a long flight, I put the map on. This shows

(01:01:05):
you where you're flying, and it shows you how much
time is left, and it shows you like where you
are because I want to if something interesting is beneath me,
I want to look out the window and see it.
I highly recommend if you're ever flying to Europe and
you're flying over Ireland, open up the window and look out.
It is a beautiful country from the sky. I'm assuming
it's also beautiful from the ground. I've not spent a

(01:01:26):
lot of time in Ireland, especially in the countryside.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
So yeah, it tries some crazy. There's a god. Then
it just makes it feel like it goes so slow.
I'm like why then I'm following along in real time.

Speaker 5 (01:01:38):
Mandy drends straight from the gutter while the gub up
the street was probably washing his car. There's nothing wrong
with dopamine. Texture to the text who said what's wrong
with dopamine? Nothing is wrong with dopamine. But we are
not designed as human beings to have a constant flow
of dopamine, because then our dopamine receptors get overwhelmed and

(01:01:58):
can no longer receive dopamine, and that means that you
can no longer feel the rush of dopamine. Too much
of anything is a bad thing, including dopamine, and ultimately
they're using our dopamine to manipulate us, right, Mandy, I agree.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
I don't do downtime.

Speaker 5 (01:02:16):
I have three jobs and at exercising two times a day,
sitting on a plane, I watch shows.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
I'm gonna try and read a couple books.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
I got enough time to read a couple books going
to Japan, so I'm hoping.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
To get in a couple books there. Hi, Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:02:30):
I remember one spring day we were playing out front
my older brother were kids, but my older brother drank
from hose and spider eggs came out of the holes
and into his mouth.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
Totally gross.

Speaker 5 (01:02:39):
Ah, he got well more than his annual average of
spiders in his mouth. Hey, hey, Rod, would it be
okay if I came to see at the racetrack? Can
people come visit you at the racetrack?

Speaker 4 (01:02:53):
Absolutely to make sure you say hello?

Speaker 6 (01:02:55):
How do they say hello? Well, they say hello, but
where do they do that? Well, usually you see me
running around like a crazy person. Like if it's a
three plus hour raindelay where I'm running through the crowd
throwing out T shirts and cool stuff and have a
mob following me, that's the time to say hello. But
normally I'm just walking around. If I'm not up in
the booth, I'm running around somewhere nice say hello, So.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Please do unless there's a rain delay, in which case
he'll just be bitter in the booth. Oh No, if
there's a rain delay, it's more off. More often you'll
see me running around. Oh there you go. I got
to entertain the people. Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:03:28):
I grew up in the sixties and seventies. It was
like the movie Stand by Me without the body. Well,
I would hope, so, Mandy, I'm sixty six. We had
fields around our neighborhood when I was a kid. We
climbed trees, slid down hills on cardboard boxes, played with
the sheep dogs, taking care of the sheep that grazed
the field.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
I just told my daughter about something fun we used
to do.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
We found an old mattress, just like somebody had thrown
it out on the side of the road in the country,
and so we tied it to.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
The back of a pickup truck.

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
And then the pickup truck went into a field and
started doing donuts, and we were hanging on to the
mattress trying not to get thrown off. The fact that
we are all walking and talking and have full use
of our limbs is something of a miracle. Don't try
that at home, kids. It was a dumb idea, then
it's a dumb idea now, Mandy. I live in Lafayette,
my son, daughter and grandson live in Eerie. We just

(01:04:18):
might visit the Colorado National Speedway into Konas on weekend,
and if we see.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
A rod, we'll all say Uncle Leo's style, Hey Rod, Hello, sick,
come on down every Saturday.

Speaker 5 (01:04:30):
Yep, yep, yep, yep. Last one about what we did
in the seventies. Mandy was born in nineteen eighty seven.
I think we were the last of the old guard
pop bottle rocket fights and Sandlott football and baseball games.
Had a cell phone, you could play snake in my
junior year of high school, Snake Boy.

Speaker 4 (01:04:47):
That was challenging, and we thought it was so cool.
Bottle rocket fight.

Speaker 5 (01:04:54):
You said rocket fights, but I immediately went back to
we used to have bottle rocket fights.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
What are bottle rockets fights? You ask again, kids, this
is a dumb idea. Don't do it.

Speaker 5 (01:05:02):
We're lucky no one died. You just light a bottle
rocket and point it at someone and let it shoot
at them. And we were completely unattended. No grown up
ever stepped in to say, probably don't want to do that. Nope,
there were no grownups on the scene. They were all
having cocktails somewhere, because that's what we did in the seventies.

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
Our parents had cocktails. We ran loose in the streets.
That's what we did.

Speaker 5 (01:05:27):
Anyway, I thought that was kind of funny when I
saw it. Now, I do want to mention one sportsy
thing for a moment to Marius Thomas is going to
be inducted into the Broncos Ring of Fame, and I
think that that is really cool, and it's really sad
that he's not going.

Speaker 4 (01:05:44):
To be here to see it. It's kind of a
bummer one, isn't it, You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (01:05:47):
Because he's he was not old when he passed away,
and he should still be a young, vibrant man. Or
I'd be an older man, but he still should be
a vibrant man. He of course, was found dead in
twenty twenty one. They attributed the cause of death to
seizures that he had had.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):
And tough thing. But he will at least his family
will get to see it.

Speaker 6 (01:06:12):
There is no, off the top of my head immediately,
there is no former Bronco that isn't already in the
Ring of Fame that would enjoy that more than DT
would have had he been here.

Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
Wholesome, super nice guy.

Speaker 6 (01:06:27):
I randomly just came across, actually a picture I was
looking through one of the videos I got for our
training camp coverage years ago, and just having him come
out and give me like the rock and roll say, well,
like staring right at the camera, like super fun bombing,
loved being a Bronco, loved playing football. Just would have
eaten that recognition up so much. I mean, he wanted

(01:06:47):
to be a Ring of Famer. He absolutely deserves it,
one of the best to put on the Orange Blue dudess.
Awesome Is he the first posthumous I believe so. Like
I'm thinking of yeah, I'm thinking about who.

Speaker 5 (01:07:01):
Else is in the ring, and I can't think of
anybody else that went in posthumously first ballot two. Yeah,
oh well, there's no doubt, no doubt. So when are
they When are they inducting him? What are they doing that?

Speaker 11 (01:07:14):
Do you know?

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
I just saw it hanging. I'm sure we're going to
have coverage of that.

Speaker 6 (01:07:20):
Do yourself a favor in honor of DT in this
recognition being announced. Go go check out that play once again,
the overtime winner. Just and listening to listen to Dave's call,
listen to the TV call. It's all it's all so good,
so cool, all right, pe Man, Yep, it'd be awesome
to honor him. Like you said, I wish he could

(01:07:41):
be here, like you would eat that up that entire week.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
I mean it, this is why.

Speaker 5 (01:07:47):
Believing that there's something beyond this for me. I think
DT is gonna know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
I just think he.

Speaker 5 (01:07:52):
I got to tell you, guys, you are cracking me up,
lighting me up on the text line for pointing out
that Roman candlefights were better, And I just want to
throw this out to you, Okay, Roman candles are far
less predictable in terms of which way those little pops
are going to go when they come out, So you
could be aiming a Roman candle at someone and that
thing could curve up and it lands in your lap.

Speaker 6 (01:08:14):
At will be inducted into the Ring of Fame week
seven and against the Giants October nineteenth.

Speaker 5 (01:08:19):
All right, that's gonna be a whole lot of fun,
and it's gonna be really nice. It's just a shame
that he will not be here to enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
It.

Speaker 6 (01:08:27):
Will be, by the way, part of the team's alumni
weekend where they will celebrate the tenth anniversary of Super
Bowl fifty.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
All right, ten years.

Speaker 5 (01:08:36):
Time for another one, just saying when we get back,
I got a couple of things I want to talk about.
I want to talk about the fact that NPR is
now suing to get my money and yours. And I'm
going to explain one time because the vote will happen
when I am in Korea and Japan, and I want

(01:08:56):
to be clear to Douglas County residents why I am
a no on this home rule initiative.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
Will get into that next.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Bill and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
No, it's Mandy Connell and Conall, m God.

Speaker 4 (01:09:21):
And the NY Three.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Andy Connell keeping no sad thing.

Speaker 4 (01:09:29):
Welcome, Uncle, Welcome to the third hour of the show.
This show is flying, and I want to.

Speaker 5 (01:09:37):
Talk about a couple of things that are important in
this segment. And if you are a member of Douglas County,
if you're a resident of Douglas County, you may know
that Douglas County is pursuing the possibility of becoming a
home rural county and there's a lot about being a
home rule county. I now have a much better understanding

(01:09:57):
about it, and I've I've been to several forums. I've
had the opportunity to ask questions, and I like the
concept of home rule, not because I think it will
get us out of the most onerous laws in Colorado.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
It will not, but it does give.

Speaker 5 (01:10:13):
The county some power to push back against certain things
in the state. So I'm not opposed to home rule,
but I am voting no on this home rule initiative
for the following reasons. Number one, this entire operation, the
entire process was put into motion by a meeting that

(01:10:38):
was announced twenty four hours in advance.

Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
During the meeting, the three county.

Speaker 5 (01:10:44):
Commissioners spent almost no time discussing the issue before voting
yes to move this whole process forward.

Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
So I'm already like, wait a minute. Other people were
not even involved.

Speaker 5 (01:10:56):
I've also spent a lot of time talking to people
who are active in the republic parties, some of whom
are very active in the Douglas County Republican Party, and
I've been told by multiple of them, some of whom
are supporting the home rule initiative, that the quote dream
team of participants was chosen by the County Commission before

(01:11:18):
they even voted to move to a home rule situation.
Why did they do that because they made the time
so short for people to sign up for the ballot
to maybe be on the charter commission. And when I
talk about home rule, you have to write a charter
for the county. It is basically the county's constitution. It's
the underlying document that lays out how governance works. In

(01:11:41):
Douglas County or whatever county that home rule is adopted.
It's a very important document, and a commission of people
who are elected by other people through the democratic process
is formed and those people decide what's in the charter.

Speaker 4 (01:11:57):
I don't even have a problem with that. What I
have a problem with is.

Speaker 5 (01:12:00):
That the county commissioners, according to people that I know
hand pit, people that they believe would support them in
whatever they're trying to do, and they had them ready
to go. They actually signed each other's petitions to get
on the ballot.

Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
I'm talking to people right now.

Speaker 5 (01:12:17):
In Douglas County that are just now finding out about this,
and they keep saying things like, well, I'd love to
be on a charter commission. Well, too late, you missed
the three week window that you had to get on
the ballot.

Speaker 4 (01:12:29):
Coming up in the.

Speaker 5 (01:12:29):
Middle of June, we're going to have a special election.
It's going to be five hundred thousand dollars. That's how
much does special election costs. Why couldn't we be having
these conversations and then have a special election next year
during a non off year election. Whenever a politician tries
to put something on an off year ballot, meaning not
a presidential election or a midterm election. They do that

(01:12:51):
because they know turnout's going to be much lower and
they have a better chance of activating enough voters on
their side to get it passed.

Speaker 4 (01:12:59):
So that is another thing that has my antenna up.

Speaker 5 (01:13:04):
Then there's the fact that after this election in June,
if the people in Douglas County vote to move forward
with the Charter Commission, the Charter Commission will be seated
and they then have about seventy three days to come
up with Douglas County's constitution. Now you got to think
this is a volunteer committee. How many times are they
going to meet, let's say once a week. That means

(01:13:28):
ten meetings, and they're gonna have to come up with
a charter. They're gonna have to decide what's in it.
And guys, this is the framework for all of the
governance of Douglas County. This is how the county is
going to be structured. And now we're gonna have ten
meetings with volunteers. So that makes me think that perhaps
perhaps somewhere, perhaps the county commissioners who sprang this forth

(01:13:53):
with very little notice, have already started to create a
charter outside of public view, and that makes me very,
very uncomfortable because if you truly had a charter commission
made up of volunteers from the community, then they would
need to know kind of the backstory on this stuff.
How are they supposed to learn everything they need to
know to know what needs to go into this charter?

(01:14:15):
And then, by the way, it has to be released
a couple months before the election in November so the
citizens of Douglas County can read it. That's where the
seventy three days came from.

Speaker 4 (01:14:25):
All of this is compressed.

Speaker 5 (01:14:26):
It's too fast, and I am a firm no on
this go round. But should they make it a more
thoughtful process. Should they allow more time for people to
jump into the fray to possibly be on the charter commission,
giving us more choices? I would totally support it. So
I am yes on the concept, know on the execution

(01:14:49):
as it is now. I don't think you can do
what needs to be done well unless there's already some
kind of charter framework out there that we don't know about.
And I don't trust this county commission enough to say, oh,
let's do it. So Douglas County I am a no
on the home rule proposition as it is now, but

(01:15:11):
I would love it if we could have a more
thoughtful discussion about this and come up with something going forward.
Now I find myself in a very weird position, and
that I agree with Representative Bob Marshall. Representative Bob Marshall
is a guy who, it's my understanding, used to be
a Republican. Now he's a Democrat. He has been a
rabble rouser for a long time. He's wasted a lot

(01:15:33):
of time and money in Douglas County filing lawsuits against
various Republican boards and commissions. But sometimes a blind squirrel
finds a nut, and Representative Bob Marshall said this. No
one heard of home rule until the commissioners placed it
on a ballot in a specialty meeting, specially called meeting
with only twenty four hours notice, where they spent less

(01:15:54):
than ninety seconds discussing and then voting on the most
important political decision County could ever make. They could have
placed a home rule on the ballot in a normal
election year in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty six
to ensure broad turnout and voter engagement, while also avoiding
having to spend five hundred thousand dollars on a special election.
But they did not, and my question is why not?

(01:16:20):
And I have not gotten an answer to that that
I am satisfied with. I am moderated a forum with
my friend Deborah Flora and Douglas County Citizenry and George
Teele made himself available at the event, and when asked
why they were doing it with such speed, the only
answer is we want to start being a home rule
county in January of next year. That's not a good

(01:16:41):
enough reason. And as I said, I have trust issues
with the current county commission. So again I am a
solid and strong no on this issue. By the way,
I have to answer this question on from the text line, Mandy,
You're gonna kill me, but can you please tell me

(01:17:02):
how to get to your blog again? I'm so sorry.
I will accept the public shaming I'm about to endure. Guys,
it's so easy. I don't know why this simpleton who
just texted me, and I'm kind of having fun because
I sent him back the link to the blog already
and I said, but I'm gonna get I'm gonna shame you.
You just go to mandy'sblog dot com. That's mandy'sblog dot com.

(01:17:25):
That takes you right to the Mandy con okayaway page
and then you could look for latest posts and in
the latest post section you.

Speaker 4 (01:17:32):
Will see a headline.

Speaker 5 (01:17:33):
The first numbers in the headline are today's date, and
then it says the word blog and you just click
on that and it's gonna open it right up.

Speaker 4 (01:17:42):
There you go, There you go. LOL.

Speaker 5 (01:17:46):
So you like home rule, but your butt hurt about
these guys is called politics. No, it's called shady politics.
And I had a boss once who I went in
to ask him a question and it was a timely question.
I need him to give me an answer right now.
He looked at me and said, if you need an
answer right now and you're rushing me to get there,
it's a no. And in this case, it's also a no.

(01:18:08):
To write the US Constitution. How many meetings did the
Founding Fathers have? I'm here for you, and I looked
it up. The Constitutional Convention started in May of seventeen
eighty seven and lasted one hundred days. They boarded up
the windows so the Founding Fathers could speak freely as they.

Speaker 4 (01:18:28):
Hammered out what would become the constitution.

Speaker 5 (01:18:32):
It took one hundred days to actually frame it, and
then only four days to actually write it after they
had worked out.

Speaker 4 (01:18:38):
What was going to be in it.

Speaker 5 (01:18:40):
And Douglas County wants to do this in ten meetings
of what four hours each? And that is why I'm
a no on this home rule proposition, but I'd be
absolutely open to having a longer conversation about it. Now
where I'm going to talk about this really quickly coming
up at two thirty. The woman who is accusing Derek
Wilburn we spoke to him yesterday of being a horrible person,

(01:19:05):
so much so that he issuing her for slander, is
joining me at two thirty with her side.

Speaker 4 (01:19:10):
Of the story.

Speaker 5 (01:19:11):
But first, can we talk about how National Public Radio
and three of its stations in Colorado have now sued
President Donald Trump, arguing that his executive order cutting funding
to the two hundred and forty six station network violates
their free speech and relies on an authority that he
does not have. Now, all I'm going to say about this,

(01:19:32):
and I've said it before, I will say it again,
there is zero reason to publicly subsidize a media form
when there are other media forms out there in so
many different ways.

Speaker 4 (01:19:46):
You know what's funny. No one ever complains about not
having a federally funded newspaper, do they not? One person
is like, why don't we have a newspaper?

Speaker 5 (01:19:57):
Why don't we Why don't Indeed we don't because when
countries have newspapers, they turn into Pravda, they turn into propaganda.
And when you have an organization that gets a big
old chunk of change from the government, do you really
think they're going to be the ones to criticize that government. No,
so they end up being propaganda. And though PBS and

(01:20:23):
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, nobody is curtailing their First
Amendment speech. No one is saying you can't say this.
What they're saying is we're not going to give you
taxpayer dollars to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:37):
And is one who has.

Speaker 5 (01:20:38):
Worked in corporate radio and in commercial media my entire career.
Do you know what iHeartMedia could do with a four
hundred and thirty five million dollar cash injection?

Speaker 4 (01:20:48):
Do you know what Odyssey could.

Speaker 5 (01:20:50):
Do one of our competitors with a four hundred and
thirty five million dollar cash injection.

Speaker 4 (01:20:54):
Every year.

Speaker 5 (01:20:56):
I mean, this is why the salaries at public radio,
in the big time public radio. I'm sure there are
small market public radio stations where people don't make a
lot of money, they are generally higher than in commercial
radio just across the board.

Speaker 4 (01:21:11):
So yeah, I'm a little bit salty about this because
the fact that my.

Speaker 5 (01:21:16):
Money taken out of my paycheck is being given to
my competition has really been an issue for me for
a very long time.

Speaker 4 (01:21:25):
And I actually think that NPR is going to lose.

Speaker 5 (01:21:29):
I think that a lot of these lawsuits that have
been filed against Donald Trump were lawsuits that have been
thrown together hastily. But I think the executive orders by
Trump have not been thrown together hastily. They've been thrown
together very very very carefully, really the opposite of throwing

(01:21:49):
them together, and they're being put together in such a
way to sort of negate these arguments before they even
get started. So NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
they're fighting one, you know, one argument, but the reality
is the argument itself is much much different than what
they're arguing.

Speaker 4 (01:22:10):
So we shall see. I hope they lose.

Speaker 5 (01:22:14):
NPR is already selling ads if you listen to NPR.

Speaker 4 (01:22:18):
You hear them.

Speaker 5 (01:22:19):
It used to be sponsored by the Brouckler family or whatever,
but now it's like sponsored by Region Revolution. If you
have knee paid, that's a freaking commercial as soon as
you say anything other than speaking of and their charter
says they can't do that. So yeah, I got a
lot of beef. And NBR can do whatever they want.
CPR can do whatever they want. There's a lot of

(01:22:42):
nice people that work at those stations.

Speaker 4 (01:22:44):
I know some of them. I have no ill will whatsoever,
but they can do it without my money or yours.
Seems simple enough.

Speaker 5 (01:22:53):
When we get back, the woman who's accused Derek Wilburn
of being a horrible person joins us with her side
of the story. Derek Wilburn on the show. He is
a member of the D twenty school board, but he
has been dealing with what he says is a high
level of harassment from a woman named Bernadette Guthrie, and
Bernadette Guthrie is joining me now to get her side
of the story out.

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
Bernadette, welcome to the show.

Speaker 7 (01:23:15):
Thanks for having me, Mandy. I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:23:17):
So I want to let you set the table on
this one, and then I will ask questions about the
things Derek said yesterday, and we can kind of let you,
from your perspective, explain what has happened in this ongoing
situation with Derek.

Speaker 7 (01:23:35):
Sure, and you might notice that I have someone with me.
So I also wanted to introduce Saffren Stevens. Saffren was
one of the student moderators from the event in which
all of this happened. So Saffron has a recent D
twenty graduate. She just graduated a couple of weeks ago.

(01:23:56):
She was nominated as one of these that's best and brightest,
so she's onto great things. But last year, last fall,
herself and a few other D twenty students put together
this student forum, and I'm going to just let her
sort of introduce what the event was, and then we

(01:24:18):
can kind of get into what has happened since then.

Speaker 4 (01:24:20):
All right, welcome Saffron.

Speaker 10 (01:24:23):
So what we wanted to do was, like, we know
that students can't vote, but I was in APGV the
year before, and I've always been pretty involved in the
school board, especially since I kind of more became aware
of like my civic duties kind of almost and so
me and a group of other students at my school.

(01:24:43):
We decided during school board election season, even though we
couldn't vote, we still wanted students to have a chance
to sort of hear what was being talked about and
have a chance to participate.

Speaker 7 (01:24:52):
So the whole reason that we started this was sort of.

Speaker 10 (01:24:54):
To be a four students by students event. So we
held it out of middle school so it would be
more easily accessible for students, and we opened it up
for questions from the audience so that the students could
actually ask questions. But yeah, so that's what it was like,
a student forum ran by students, left by students.

Speaker 4 (01:25:10):
Okay, so what went wrong? Bernadette?

Speaker 7 (01:25:16):
So I think, you know, to begin with setting the
stage of what the event was. I think it's just
really important because there has been an attempt to rewrite
history a little bit.

Speaker 8 (01:25:28):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:25:28):
So, I've heard that it was a school board meeting.
I've heard that it was just a political forum. It
was never marketed that way, advertised that way. In fact,
there are several emails that Saffron had from Derek's campaign
basically verifying that it was only a student event, that

(01:25:49):
only students were coming up with the questions, and that
would be moderating it before they would even commit to attend.
And so I wanted to make it very very clear
this was a student event. How did I'm school moderated
by kids? All the questions were submitted by kids. It
was heavily attended by children. So that was the you know,

(01:26:09):
the the event that we attended. My daughter was a
new sixth grader there. She was really excited to attend.
A couple of her friend's older siblings were part of
the moderation team, so, you know, I went brought her
there because it was a you know, it was a
student laed form, it was a it was marketed to kids.
We were there with a lot of other kids, and

(01:26:31):
so essentially what happened is I was sitting We were
actually sitting in the front row. I sent you a
photo of what the setup of the room looked like,
but it was sort of stadium style seating. We had
bars in front of us, so there was no way
to quickly exit anything like that, and so there was
a number of questions. Saffron and Piper, the other moderator,

(01:26:55):
read the rules of norms and decorum. They had said,
you know, there will be no profanity there, you know,
all of this stuff. So the candidates all agreed to
those things. And so a question came up about books,
and I think it was do you remember the exact question.

Speaker 10 (01:27:13):
It was something along the lines of like will you
it kind of onlines like will you ban books?

Speaker 7 (01:27:19):
What is your opinion on banning books? Tell you it's
how will you ensure like diverse literature is available to students?
Essentially something like that, And he was the last one
to answer. The other three candidates answered the question in
terms of their you know, viewpoints on you know, library
access and that sort of thing. And so when Derek

(01:27:41):
took the mic, he said, I don't curse, and I
apologize what I'm about to say. I haven't said these
words in years, and I mean I had no idea what,
you know, what was what was going to be said.
There was no warning of like these are not kid
appropriate excerpts anything like that. And so the first book

(01:28:06):
that he read from was Push by Sapphire, and he
read the most graphic passages out of that book about
rape and incests. He read all of the words. He
did not to be clear, there was nothing this.

Speaker 4 (01:28:23):
This book is.

Speaker 5 (01:28:25):
It's pretty savage. I mean, it is a lot of
really bad language. It is about child rape and incests,
and it is definitely there's a lot in this book.

Speaker 3 (01:28:35):
I I.

Speaker 4 (01:28:38):
Have seen the excerpts and they're pretty horrible.

Speaker 7 (01:28:41):
Yes, yeah, And it's all on video. I mean, to
this day, District twenty has the entire thing unedited on
the website, full captioning everything. Right, So D twenty you
google D twenty Student Forum, it's all there. I think
it's like forty three minutes in oh As I said,
I'm sitting there with my eleven year old and she

(01:29:05):
immediately I can just she grabs my arm and she
is like, what what is happening? It was so quick,
I mean there was I think the clip of this
particular you know, reading was forty seconds. Like there was
no way for me to remove her from from the room.
And so the moderators ended up like having to take

(01:29:26):
an unscheduled break because they were shaken up. They didn't
know what to do, you know, they like, there's it's
just a couple of sixteen year old kids that are
moderating it, and so they were shell shocked. Everyone was
in a state of shock, and so they quickly like
took a quick break. There were some words exchanged with

(01:29:46):
the other candidates on stage. A couple of kids actually
approached him after, like older not old older kids, but
like thirteen fourteen year old kids that went up to
him after the forum and us. You know that they
were very upset. I left with my daughter right after that,
and like, immediately we got in the car, she burst

(01:30:07):
into tears. She had no idea what any of that
stuff meant. And you know, it was a it was
a tough time for our family at that point. She
was very emotional. My husband was going through chemotherapy at
the time, he had cancer.

Speaker 5 (01:30:25):
Well, and I'm not trying to down your story. I
just want to make sure that we don't run out
of time.

Speaker 7 (01:30:29):
Yes, so she had a very she had a very
emotional reaction to what happened essentially, And so fast forward,
you know, a month later, he's elected to the school board.

Speaker 5 (01:30:42):
And did you ever reach out to him and say
this was inappropriate, this was wrong? Did you reach out
to him and have a conversation with him about it?

Speaker 7 (01:30:50):
I attempted to, and it was basically like we support
what we did, and there was no you know, like
no acknowledgment of any wrongdoing. After the forum, then when
he was elected, she saw him at another event at
the EAC, which is like our administration center, and she

(01:31:12):
immediately had to payic a secondy and my mom had
to come get her. It was all of the board
and the administration witnessed it. She had to be like
she had to go home. And so after that, I
had set up meetings with Detoy administration, the superintendent saying,
how can I make sure that he doesn't go to
her school? Essentially, like there's forty schools in the district,

(01:31:35):
I just need to make sure that he does not
go to her school. So I had a I had
a meeting with the superintendent and the and the administrative
staff the January, like it was January second, right after
he took office, and they told me that they could
not restrict his access to her school, that he was
an elected official, that if there was you know, the

(01:31:57):
only thing I could do is like you know, petitioned
for a recall to have him removed. And I just
wanted to get this one thing. Security was there, so
they said the director of security was directed to create
a safety plan for my child with the administrators at

(01:32:20):
her school. So along with District twenty security and the
principle at her school, they created a safety plan which
included if he went to her school, that they had
that they brought her to like a safe room and
would contact me right away to come get her. And
so from the beginning, I said, like all I needed
was him to acknowledge that what he did was wrong,

(01:32:41):
because seeing that harm done to a child and not
apologizing and not admitting that it was wrong, and then
also not committing to staying away from her.

Speaker 5 (01:32:55):
Yesterday yesterday on the show, that he just said, that's
perfectly fine.

Speaker 4 (01:32:59):
I will never go to her school. Has he gone
to her school?

Speaker 6 (01:33:02):
No?

Speaker 7 (01:33:04):
I I have never gotten a call.

Speaker 3 (01:33:06):
No.

Speaker 7 (01:33:06):
And I want to say, he hasn't really gotten to
any schools. Right, he had a health issue after after
being elected, and so he really has not even been
able to serve in his capacity. So I don't know
that he's done any school visits or very many.

Speaker 3 (01:33:23):
I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:33:23):
I've never gotten a call that that he's gone there.
But also you have to realize I only spoke about
this like he's like it's been two years, Like that's false.
This happened in January is when I started speaking out
about it, and then.

Speaker 4 (01:33:39):
By Devil's Advocate.

Speaker 5 (01:33:43):
Let me just play Devil's advocate a little bit, because
I can understand why this would be upsetting.

Speaker 4 (01:33:47):
I have a daughter. I get it, you want to
protect your child.

Speaker 5 (01:33:50):
But you've been very vocal saying that he is uh,
sexually assaulted your daughter.

Speaker 4 (01:33:56):
Is that accurate? Okay? Has have you said that.

Speaker 5 (01:33:59):
He is like a basically that he gets sexual gratification
in any way from doing this stuff in front of children?

Speaker 7 (01:34:06):
So he has referred to that book as pornography multiple times,
whether it be on you know, other podcasts, an article
he wrote for the Gazette before, he referred to this
book as pornography multiple times. And I have said the
definition of pornography is pornography is for arousal. Right, So

(01:34:28):
if you're saying in one breath that this book is
pornography and then you're reading it to children to make
a point concerns about that book in the library, there's
something wrong with that.

Speaker 4 (01:34:44):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (01:34:44):
But you're as signing a motive here, and this is
where it gets dodgy for me. You're a sign because
I've known Derek for years and I've known him to
be an upstanding, good person who really really cares about
his community and really really cares and wants to do good,
which is why in my and I'm not gonna I'm
not going to try and describe motives or make an
excuse for him.

Speaker 4 (01:35:03):
That's not my role here.

Speaker 5 (01:35:05):
But I can understand why someone is trying to make
a point that, you know, a book does not belong
in a library when you have specific questions about book
banning or things of that nature. I just had this
discussion with my sixteen year old daughter, like, let's talk
about what the words book banning mean. So I can understand,
and I think it was a bad choice by him.
I just want to say that if it's a kid's venue,

(01:35:25):
bad choice to read this you you should have shows
in different words whatever, I am with you that this
was an inappropriate venue. But that being said, if you're
trying to make the point that these books shouldn't be
in a school library, unfortunately, what we've seen in school
board meeting after school board meeting is that people just
gloss it over. It's not that big a deal. It's
you know, so to to infer that he read the

(01:35:49):
book because he enjoys. Reading those books to children is
a huge leap and one that I don't think is
necessarily fair.

Speaker 7 (01:35:58):
And that's you know that you're entitled the opinion. My
opinion is mine. I don't think that thing man to
look out into an audience of young children, like there
was some there was elementary kids there. And so how
do you prove a point that a book is so
this Like, don't get me wrong, this book is in
one high school. Okay, So this book is in one

(01:36:20):
high school. So you are trying to make a point
that it is so damaging for high school kids that
you're going to read it to elementary and middle school kids.
Like that doesn't that defies all logic.

Speaker 4 (01:36:28):
But you think he gets sexual gratification out of that.

Speaker 7 (01:36:31):
So and it's funny because there was a discussion on
like a Republican chat group where a former Senate candidate
Eli Bremer was talking about a situation at a local
city council meeting where there were some people that had
come to that meeting and had read excerpts out of

(01:36:53):
this book. So I had quoted, I had read Eli
Bremer's quote about he said something about like it's like,
you know, sexual deviant behavior for a grown man to
read this sort of thing in public. I never said
those things. I was reading quotes that like other people
had said about people that did that. So there's the

(01:37:15):
whole thing is just a bunch of hyperbole and him
misquoting me and sort of just you know, twisting words
to make it seem like I have somehow gone around
town and you know, defamed him in some way, shape
or form. I mean, he won the election after he

(01:37:37):
did it, so it's like, I don't know how one
equals the other. But at the semime, like I said, like,
there's delay, so I see your mouth.

Speaker 4 (01:37:47):
That's okay.

Speaker 5 (01:37:48):
I'm trying to get We're almost out of time, and
I want to get this one question. Do you think
he is that that people should be afraid of Derek Wilburn,
that he's going to sexually assault or otherwise do something
inappropriate to child.

Speaker 7 (01:38:02):
It is my opinion that his judgment around children is
extremely concerning. I believe that if you look out into
an audience of children and read pornography to them without
any I mean, he said on your show yesterday that

(01:38:22):
he knew he had the mic and there wasn't anything
they could do about it, and.

Speaker 10 (01:38:25):
It was and I mean, the only other people who
had a MIC was a sixteen year old and a
seventeen year old.

Speaker 4 (01:38:30):
And I don't know what he could us to do.

Speaker 5 (01:38:32):
I mean, I agree with you that that was an
inappropriate thing to do. But what I'm having a hard
time with is the is the sort of never ending
drumbeat of assault of accusing him of doing really horrible things.
Did he have a horrible moment of judgment. I agree
with you, that was bad judgment on his part. And
he said yesterday, if I had to do it again,

(01:38:53):
I would have done it a lot differently. He said
it on the show yesterday.

Speaker 7 (01:38:56):
Which that's the first time he has ever said anything
like that. He has never even remotely come close to
anything of an apology. He's never agreed to not go
to my child's school or else. The administration would have
not put a safety plan in place for her, so
this could have all been avoided if from the very
beginning he said that was a bad call. I'm sorry.

(01:39:18):
I would never do anything to harm a child, and
I would never go to her school. And I just
I said, from the very beginning, like I am going
to keep talking about this because your lack of accountability
shows me that you don't think it's wrong. And if
you don't think it's wrong, you shouldn't be around kids.
That is my opinion to this day. I don't waiver
from that at all. I don't think that it is

(01:39:40):
normal behavior to read graphic sexual content about rape and
incest to small children at a student event.

Speaker 4 (01:39:48):
So you are you are not?

Speaker 5 (01:39:50):
I just want to I have a lot of people
on the text line saying, so do you want the books.

Speaker 4 (01:39:53):
In the library or not? Can I actually step in
on this one? So no, I no offense that fround
them all out of time, and I just want to
get I'll.

Speaker 7 (01:40:02):
Answer that that was another thing that he, you know,
miss commit about advocated for these types of books in
middle school libraries ever.

Speaker 4 (01:40:12):
But it's this from a high school library.

Speaker 7 (01:40:15):
Yeah, and my my opinion, I would never fight for
this book to be in a high school library. Okay, ever,
and I never have so to pay me. I'm not
I'm not the left, I'm not a leftist, I'm not
any of these things. I'm not you know, a whacko
like you you know, you described me like I'm just
a mom and I'm and I'm not an activist either.

(01:40:35):
I'm a dedicated district volunteer. I serve on our district
accountability committee. I serve on both accountability committees for my
children's schools. Like that, that is who I am. My
kids are are high, achieving, high you know, great grades
they've I grew up in the school district. I've lived
here since I was in the fifth grade. Like I

(01:40:56):
have deep roots in this community. And to your point,
I had an amicable relationship with Derek. The last conversation
that I had with him was comparing notes. I sent
him a bunch of information because our spouses were going
through Chimo at the same time. That was the last
conversation I had with him before this. So to take
me as like some angry person that he won, it

(01:41:17):
couldn't be further from the truth.

Speaker 5 (01:41:18):
Well, Bernadad, I appreciate you coming on. I'm completely out
of time, so it will get it'll get sorted out.
I appreciate you making time for us today, and uh,
we'll just we'll let the courts decide.

Speaker 4 (01:41:28):
I appreciate you.

Speaker 7 (01:41:29):
Yep, we sure will.

Speaker 5 (01:41:30):
Thanks much for you, all right, And now I've got
Ben Albright and Ryan Edwards in the studio and now
it's time for the most exciting segment on the radio.

Speaker 4 (01:41:40):
Of its kind, not bad of the day. And what
is our dad joke of the day, please, Anthony, What
do you call a French guy being mauled by a lion?
French guy being mauled by a lion? Yes, hmmm, I
do not know. Claude, simple clean, not that I believe.

Speaker 5 (01:42:06):
Is that a President Macrone joke? Oh no, he was
being clawed by his wife.

Speaker 4 (01:42:10):
My bad. Anyway, moving on, what is our word of
the day.

Speaker 6 (01:42:13):
It is an adjective voluble, voluble correct, voluble.

Speaker 4 (01:42:19):
Having some volume like you can measure the volume.

Speaker 5 (01:42:22):
It's voluble, you would think. But no, okay, wrong, anyone, anyone, nothing.

Speaker 6 (01:42:28):
No one may be described as voluble if they are
talking a lot in a rapid energetic way.

Speaker 5 (01:42:34):
This is a voluble program here on, Probably it accused
to make voluble yourself. There, Ben Albright say, trivia question.
If you guys don't get this, I am going to
be so disappointed in both of you.

Speaker 4 (01:42:47):
I'm just letting you know.

Speaker 5 (01:42:49):
The Four Corners Monument is the only place in the
United States where four states meete.

Speaker 4 (01:42:55):
What are the four States, Colorado, domestic. Uh yeah those
four yes, those are correct? All right.

Speaker 5 (01:43:07):
A bronze disc embedded in granted marks the special spot. Okay,
Ben Albright and Ryan Edwards text line is telling Mandy
not to cheat. I look at my text line. It's
already closed. Okay, line is already closed. I don't need
to cheat.

Speaker 4 (01:43:27):
Category.

Speaker 6 (01:43:27):
I like this category also on the football team. Okay,
you'll catch on idiomatically. It follows at wits, Mandy.

Speaker 4 (01:43:36):
What is end? That is correct? Deodorant with an extreme
fresh version is yeah, Ben, We're not going to give
you as from this point forward.

Speaker 6 (01:43:49):
Another name for the economy section of the airplane that
is correct ran okay.

Speaker 4 (01:43:57):
The part of a.

Speaker 6 (01:43:57):
Stereo system that gets the electrical signals and converts them
so you can what's a receiver?

Speaker 2 (01:44:02):
Correct? Wow?

Speaker 4 (01:44:04):
Finally, British term for a gambler, Ben? What is a
punter head? Is correct?

Speaker 9 (01:44:10):
Nice?

Speaker 4 (01:44:10):
Nice, very nice? I did win, Ben, But a good
showing the first one. Yeah, even the first one we
will no longer get.

Speaker 5 (01:44:20):
But all right, points if he does not use it
in the form of a question. Just now the stickler
has come out anyway, rights, so did baby steps.

Speaker 4 (01:44:29):
I realized this this bend.

Speaker 5 (01:44:30):
We gotta, you know, bring him along slowly, don't want
to throw too much at him here, Sure, put me up.
What's coming up in UK Way Sports? What you guys
got supposed to?

Speaker 4 (01:44:38):
J Anderson? He's a bowler? I'm sorry what he's bowling?

Speaker 3 (01:44:46):
Like?

Speaker 10 (01:44:48):
Just like that?

Speaker 4 (01:44:49):
Like he makes bulls? I did not see that coming.
Like is he is he professional? Like really good?

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:44:58):
Does he have like a movie to after a strike?
You gotta ask you ask me the ex you know
that guy.

Speaker 4 (01:45:05):
Like Bill Murray and Kingpin. No, there's a there's a
real bowler.

Speaker 2 (01:45:08):
He does that.

Speaker 4 (01:45:09):
I can't remember. Was it p Webber? We might have been.
I know that's my bowling knowledge.

Speaker 2 (01:45:15):
That's my bowling.

Speaker 4 (01:45:16):
Knowledge right there. And one fell swoop. We'll be back tomorrow.
In the meantime, KA Sports coming up next