05-27-25 - *FULL SHOW* State Sen Jeff Bridges; Right To Try

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I love four day work weeks.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Every time there is one I mentioned that I love it,
I still am inclined to believe, even though ongoing events
conspire to prove me wrong with every passing year, that
we will be moving inexorably toward four day work weeks.
I continue to believe it, and yet it continues to
not happen, which either means the whole world is wrong
or I'm wrong. I'm not sure which one of those

(00:23):
is more likely. I do think that even if we
do get to four day work weeks, like four ten
hour days instead of five eight hour days or something,
I think that will not apply to me, unfortunately, because
I do love them. So anyway, I hope you had
a wonderful and also meaningful and thoughtful Memorial Day weekend.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's a holiday that we.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Tend to think of as you know, go to the neighborhood,
swimming pool opens, you know, you have the barbecue all
this web. The weather didn't really cooperate with us very
well this Memorial Day weekend.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
But as we talked about a bit last week.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
And we'll actually talk about a bit more later in
the show, it's a holiday with some real meaning and
I hope you at least got to think about that
a little bit. There were a couple things that have
happened since Friday that I wanted to mention to you,
and one is you may recall when a guy named

(01:20):
what's his name, Jared Polis, was on the show recently
and I asked him about House Bill twelve ninety one,
which is a bill that would have regulated, or dare
I say, overregulated ride share companies like Uber and Lyft,
and I don't know if there are others, but those
are the well known ones. And Uber had aggressively threatened

(01:42):
to leave the state if this past, and Lift was
making similar noises.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
They hadn't been.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Quite as definitive about it, but they said they would
certainly have to consider leaving the state if it passed.
And when Governor Polis was sitting in this chair that
I'm pointing right now, but you probably can't see me
pointing at it because of the fog this morning, I
asked him about it, and I asked him if he

(02:09):
was likely to veto it, and he said something along
the lines of, well, my administration did testify against the
bill when it was going through committee, and so there
might be some message there. But you know, I'm not
going to give you any kind of scoop here.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
That's what he said.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
I'm not going to give you any kind of like
scoop as to what I'm doing or not doing on
the bill. And then I said on the air and
that this is close to an exact quote. Even though
I'm quoting myself, it doesn't mean I remember it right.
I said, well, I think you're a little better than
fifty to fifty, actually a lot better than fifty to fifty.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
To veto the bill.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
And on Friday he did veto the bill, and it
was interesting. He put out a veto statement. He always
does this, he puts out a statement with every veto.
He said, well, I appreciate the sponsor intent to ensure
the safety of riders and drivers. The bill would impose
on workable regulations on transportation network companies most of us

(03:09):
call them ride share companies TNCs, and potentially jeopardize their
continued operation in Colorado. I want to make sure Uberlyft
and others will be able to continue to operate, but
are far more accountable for the safety of riders and drivers.
The services go beyond convenience by providing essential means.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Of travel, and he goes on.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
So you may recall that this bill came up because
there was a female member of the state legislature who
was sexually assaulted within view of her house, actually by
a guy who was driving her in an uber or
lyft I don't remember which one it was, but who
wasn't the actual registered uber or lyft driver. He I

(03:52):
guess borrowed the car from a friend of his who
was the registered driver.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Now that's clearly a problem.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
The person who loaned the car to somebody else obviously
should never be allowed to drive for uber and lyft again.
And I don't know if there is any violation of
criminal law there probably not, but it would be worth
looking at.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
But it is.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Somewhat interesting that this massive buill to massively regulate these
things and all kinds of stuff about requirements for recording
audio and video in a car, what if you don't
want to be recorded in a car, By the way,
rules that don't apply to taxis, even though we don't
have as many taxis as we used to.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
But all this stuff came.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
About to regulate the drive share companies, the ride share companies,
because the person who committed a criminal act was borrowing
somebody's car but actually wasn't a ride share driver. There
seemed to be less aggressive ways perhaps to deal with
this problem, if you believe it's a problem. Paula said,

(04:57):
the language prohibiting arbitration clauses and rider trements is likely
preempted by federal law. And then he says, it's a
long note. I'm not sharing all of it with you,
But he says, even though I'm vetoing the legislation, I'm
directing my administration to take active steps to enhance ride
share safety.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
I think I'll stop there. There is a lot more.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
You can read more on the blog at Rosskominsky dot
com if you would like.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
To, I will do a little follow up here.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Pat Woodard mentioned that the stock market is up today.
The Dow was down somewhere around one thousand points last
week if I remember correctly, at least the last few
days of last week, after President Trump announced significant tariffs
on the EU and also on Apple, although he later
clarified he meant basically any smartphone manufacturers. Over the weekend,

(05:47):
and by the way, the Dow was up about one
point two percent, almost five hundred points right now. The
other major indices are actually up more than that on
a percentage basis. And over the weekend, President Trump announced
that he had been contacted by the head of the
EU or Savander Lyon, and they had a conversation and

(06:08):
Trump agreed to postpone the tariffs until July. They were
going to go into effect. I think it was next week.
So on the one hand, it sure didn't seem to
take very much to get Trump to offer that. On
the other hand, you know, at this point, with some
of this trade stuff, it is starting to feel a
little bit more like Trump doing the Trumpy style of negotiation,

(06:32):
even though he's leaving that ten percent on everything in
and we'll talk about that some other time.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
But so it's at some point also, I would.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Say that participants in the stock market are going to
have to decide, like, do I want to just go
sell stuff every time Trump opens his mouth on tariffs
or is he likely to back off just a few
days later, Because this has happened a couple times in
a row now that he has said something and then
backed off.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Just a few days later.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
At this point, the market has recovered about half.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Of what it lost in the last few days. Of
last week.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Also, I do think some of the reason the stock
market went down last week was because the Republican budget
that is being kind of forced on Republican members of
the House by the Trump administration is really bad and
it just explodes the dead and deficit in ways that
Republicans should.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Never ever do.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
I think that was part of the reason the market
went down as well. I wouldn't attribute at all to
trade stuff. In any case. The market remains quite volatile
and people are reacting to overreacting, I think, to everything,
and we will see how it plays out. All right,
I still have I mean, this is gonna be one
of those shows where I'm gonna have, you know, thirty
topics and I'm gonna get to half of them and

(07:44):
I'll do more over the course of the week. We're
gonna quit at a quick break right now, keep it here.
You're listening to Ross on Kiowa. Appreciate your company, and
I hope you had an excellent and at least somewhat
thoughtful Memorial Day weekend. Let's talk about fat people and
diabetics for a minute. GLP ones seem to a certain

(08:05):
degree to be a game changing drug. Now there are
certainly pros and cons of these drugs. The pros obviously,
they do seem to help a lot. They help people
lose weight. They seem to have some other benefits they
you know, I don't think this is proven yet, but
there does seem to be some good data showing that
the GLP one drugs like ozembic and Manjaro and some

(08:28):
of these other things help people who struggle with alcohol
to crave it less, maybe some other kinds of cravings
like that, you know. We go v is another big
one of these drugs, and they cause people to just
basically not feel particularly hungry, so you don't eat so
much and so you lose a lot of weight. And
these are also treatments for diabetes. This is how they

(08:50):
were originally designed until people figured out that they have
these other effects.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
And one of the things.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
I am finding, so, okay, those are the pros, right,
It has a lot of these pros. There are some
reported side effects, and I don't know if they're overstated
or not. But you know, people losing so much weight
that their skin starts to droop and they you know,
o zembic face and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
So I don't know how much of that is true.
You hear it a little here and there. I don't know.
I don't know how many people it applies to.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
It's probably happened to time or two, but I don't
know that it's a very significant thing for me. The
downside and the upside, of course, is convenience. If you
don't want to do any work, you don't want to
do any exercise, you just want to, you know, take
a shot, then it helps. So what's the downside. Well,
the downside is since a lot of people will do
this and maybe not exercise, they're not actually benefiting their

(09:44):
their cardiovascular.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
System as much as they might.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yes, it is certainly a benefit to your heart to
not carry as much weight around, but it would also
be good if you lost weight by running or exercising
or doing some other stuff that actually got your heart
rate up and boost your metabolism and boost to your
capacity for exercise and all that. That's better for you
than just losing weight on its own, although losing weight
on its own is not bad.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
And then the other thing is when.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
You're on these shots, as we understand so far, you
got to be on them forever or you gain the
weight back. So that's annoying and expensive, Whereas.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
If you do a more normal kind of.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Process, you know, you like the Sota weight loss thing
that I did, right, So there's no drugs and there's
no shots. You sort of modify your lifestyle a little bit,
eat a little better, exercise a little more, and then
you're not spending money and taking shots for the rest
of your life, which is part of the reason I'm
really glad I did the soda thing rather than the shots.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
But I saw this story at Axios and this is
pretty interesting. So about four percent of Americans right now, think.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
About what an enormous number.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
This is about four percent of Americans, according to this study,
are taking these drugs right now. About half ish, as
I'm understanding the data, are taking it because they're diabetic,
which is the original use of these drugs, or maybe
a little less than half actually are taking it for

(11:15):
that purpose, and a little more than half are taking
it to treat being overweight or being obese. And people
who are taking it for that that's up six hundred
percent in the amount of use over the past six years. Now,
don't let six hundred percent really jump out at you.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
At an enormous number.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
The reason it's up six hundred percent is that these
drugs were new six years ago, so you really got
to be careful with the baseline rate. To me, what's
more interesting is the idea that four percent of a
country are to all taking one category of drug. There
can't be any other category of drug like that that
four percent of the country is on. I'm not talking

(11:55):
about taking thailan on when you have a headache, okay,
I'm talking about you're on a medication, getting a regular
dose of a medication. I should do a little more
research on this, but the idea that somehow four percent
of this country and rising, right, I mean I would
expect it to be five percent or six percent or
more at the end of this year, is really really something. Now,

(12:19):
just a quick follow up on something else. We talked
about this on the show, and I had a guest
on the show, my friend Greg, who is kind of
on the edges of this industry, and we were talking
about the compounders. Compounders are private pharmacies that can make
their own medications, and it can be for off label use,
of course, so right, the on label use for these

(12:40):
drugs is diabetes. Off label use for most of them,
at least is for weight loss. Compounders can make their
own now. For a while, there was a shortage of
the critical ingredients in these drugs that cause the FDA
to give the compounders permission to go make them because
the big manufacturers couldn't keep up. And a few months ago,

(13:02):
a couple months ago, the FDA said, or I think
it was the FDA said, all right, there isn't a
shortage anymore, and the compounders have to stop making this stuff. Now,
these big companies they used to charge ony twelve hundred,
fourteen hundred dollars a month, they have been cutting price
on this stuff. So I think it's some I haven't
researched that I'm not taking them, but I think it's

(13:24):
somewhere around half of that right now, typically five hundred,
six hundred and seven hundred dollars a month. I think
someone can tell me if I'm wrong. Now compounders can
make and sell this stuff profitably for a fraction of
that couple hundred bucks a month, let's say. And the
compounders now are saying, after the FDA said you can't
make this stuff anymore, they're saying, come and try to

(13:46):
stop us. And what they're going to try to do
is they're going to make some compound that includes the
GLP one drug, and then they're going to add something
else to it and call it a custom drug, like
they'll add some vitamin to it, for example, and they
will call it personalized.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
They will call it tailored to you.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
And of course the big drug drug companies that make
the GLP ones and they want their money. And I
don't blame them for wanting their money. They spent money
to invent this stuff. They're saying that's not cool. In
any case, I do think it's going to be a
really interesting fight because this is such big business for
both sides that neither one is going.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
To want to back down.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
We'll be right back with state Senator and candidate for
state Treasurer Jeff Bridges. If you've got a question about
what happened in the last state legislative session and you
want to ask a Democrat, because mostly we've had Republicans
other than the governor.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Here's your chance.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I'm pleased to have with me in studio, my friend
Jeff Bridges, not that Jeff Bridges Shin and the other one,
the other one, but that's okay. I'm sure you get
that joke eighteen times every single day. And Jeff is
in a Democratic Party leadership, state Senate chairman, chairman right
of the Joint Budget Committee, and Canada for state treasurer

(15:06):
if I if I remember correctly?

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Right? Is that all correct? That's correct? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:11):
And I love that I have my own walk on
music for this show. Every time I come on, We've
got uh just dropped in to see what condition my
condition was?

Speaker 1 (15:18):
It M see what I'm doing today.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Shannon's a huge fan, so I can't wait for you
to have your star on the Hollywood Walker Fame.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
I think my name is already there exactly right.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, I should note, by the way, for folks who
don't know Jeff, it is very interesting dude, and you
have a Masters in divinity.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
I do, yeah, from Harvard yep. And we won't talk
about Harvard right now, but thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Let's just give it, give me a moment just so, folks,
because I don't want to get We're gonna get very political,
and I know stuff will get you know, I got
a lot of folks who don't love everything Democrats did
this year, so I think it would be good to
turn you into a human being first before we turn
you into a politician.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
So tell me this is a secret. All politicians are
actually people. I know we don't seem like at a time,
but we're actually all just human beings doing our best.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Don't you think at some points? All right, as long
as you're gonna drag me into this, sure, this is
a serious question now, And don't you think at some
points there are some politicians who become so highly motivated
by their own personal interests, their own desire for the
next election, their own fealty to some constituency.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
And this is on either side.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
I'm not pointing in Democrats that they actually kind of
lose what you might have thought, or you might think,
since you know them personally, that they lose their principles
or lose even their humanity, even temporarily.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
So I think there's a difference between being pulled away
from your principles and trying to do what's politically expedient
for the next election, whatever that is. And I think
there's a lot of examples of that in today on
both sides of the aisle, and losing your humanity right,
and and this goes back to the question you were
going to ask about divinity school, like recognizing that spark
of the divine that exists in all of us. And

(17:12):
what I found it was it was amazing.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
You know.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
We moved into the Landmark and there was a guy
there that I had talked to a number of times
and and was friendly, and then out of nowhere I
got it. I found out that he's hosting an event
for my opponent, and and he had never talked to
me about it, and he had never said anything, and
there's just sort of this like, oh, I guess he

(17:35):
doesn't have to treat me like a person, right, I guess.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
But he knew you were running course and was he
supporting as Aim in a primary or a Republican in
a general.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Who was a Democratic primary?

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Okay, but there was there were so many moments for
him to say, hey, you know, I think are great.
You know, I'm supporting your opponent. Yeah, I'm having an event,
and and I sort of get this notice that the
community in the Landmark is going over to this event
for my opponent, and I'm like, what is what's happening here?

Speaker 1 (17:59):
And it's just it.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
It showed me that too many people don't think about
us as human beings, right, And they think that the
general rules of polite society, where you know you're a
person and I treat you with respect and dignity, just
don't apply the folks who are in politics.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
I actually that's part of what's broken in our political
system today.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
And I do think I do think that my wording
of this as losing your humanity was intentionally a little
bit too far. But there is something that gets lost,
and you can see it. For example, I'll pick on
Republicans for a minute. In Congress right now, probably the
vast majority of Republicans know that this budget is terrible,

(18:38):
although probably for all the different.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Reasons than why you think it's a bad.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Budget, like probably pretty bad budget for probably probably really
irresponsible spending going on in Washington.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Oh good.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
We're usually obligated in Colorado to pass a balance budget.
So I have been on the budget committee three years
and every year have passed a balance budget.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Is usually required to. But it's still a great talking point.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
I think that, especially for a state like ours, that's
the right way to go. And whatever you think about
ongoing debt at a federal level, there is a certain
amount that is healthy. The amount we have, we are
almost at a point where we will be borrowing money,
more money to pay interest on our debt than we're
actually spending.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, that way, And yet if you were in Congress,
especially if you are relatively young member of Congress trying
to make your way up, you would vote for every
single spending increase, probably that leadership wanted you to, just
as Republicans right now are going along with this budget
that blows up the deficit and debt, even though they.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
All campaigned against it.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
So it's not exactly losing your humanity, but it's losing something.
And I think that happens maybe a little bit less
at the state legislature than in Congress, but it still happens.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
So what I was running for office the first time,
I had a great conversation with Casey Becker, who ended
up being the Speaker of the House here in Colorado
a few years later, and she said, when you're thinking
about a vote, there the sort of three things to
think about, and in this order are your conscience, your constituents,
and your caucus. And if your conscience calls you to
vote a particular way, you got to follow that. If

(20:08):
your constituents have a particularly very strong opinion about a bill,
you got to go that way. And then sort of
third and finally is caucus. And I would actually expand
that to sort of a broader view, the broader political perspective. Right,
there are bills that pass unanimously in the Senate. They're
on the consent calendar, and every now and then you
get a few members of both both parties going up

(20:30):
and saying, I'd like to be marked to no on
this bill. But generally these are bills that no one's
really opposed to. I think on the whole, some of
them on the consent calendar make a huge difference for
the people of Colorado. Many of them are really playing
around the edges. They're not the kinds of bills that
you would talk about on this show. But sometimes they're
just good government fixes and sometimes they're just lame. And

(20:50):
it's like, am I really going to go up there
and vote no on a colleague's bill just because they
think it's.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Like not great? Yeah, it doesn't do any harm, right,
it doesn't be that much either.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
But I think, Okay, so Becker said conscience something in caucus.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Caucus, and I see that on somebody. I get that,
but but it's wrong. More.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
The reason that it's wrong is that there should be
another C word that comes first to care for us,
I know, before all of those others. Constitution. If it's
not constitutional, it doesn't matter if your caucus wants it,
it doesn't matter if your conscience wants it. And you know, Democrats,

(21:38):
let me let me finish my sense. So Democrats don't
even usually don't even pretend to care about that, So
at least you're not hypocrites. Republicans pretend to care about
it and then just go ahead with any unconstitutional stuff
they want or Donald Trump wants, so they're hypocrites. But
I think the Constitution has to come first, and and
nobody pays enough attention.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
To it completely. A great institution has to come first.
We are advised by the folks who draft the bills
in the legislature, so we don't actually we sort of
come up with the ideas, and we can come up
in cases with language for our bills. But there's a
whole team of lawyers who don't practice law outside the building.
Their entire job is drafting laws, drafting bills in the legislature,

(22:22):
and they have very strong opinions about what is constitutional
and what is not constitutional, And if we're looking at
a bill that they think even approaches that line, they
will let us know, and they will let generally they
will let other people know as well. So it's sort
of like constitutionality is assumed. And I think we can
have a nice discussion about some of the gun bills
this year and whether or not you and your listeners

(22:44):
believe that they align the US Constitution.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
In fact, I get too, but let's get listener text
on that already. But still give me twenty nine seconds,
because I like prime numbers on why you got a
divinity to a divinity degree from Harvard and how you
think it changed you as a person or or as
a politician.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
If I can do a little more than twenty nine seconds, Okay.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
So I grew up agnostic, sort of just not sure
about what was true what wasn't.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
I saw a lot of.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
People really into this Christianity thing. I had some friends
in high school who took me to the you know,
their Sunday school sort of thing on Wednesdays. I asked
questions that frankly, Sunday school people are not equipped to answer.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
So I sort of.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
I had this journey of questioning for many, many years,
and one year I found myself in the National Cathedral
in Washington, d C. Which is beautiful, one of the
most beautiful places in the world. There was a woman
presiding at the service. It was an even song service,
so it was a choral service. It was sung, it
was a social justice message. It was one of the

(23:51):
most beautiful moments of my life. And to me, it
felt like, Oh, there's something here that really resonates with
what I've heard of this Jesus guy my whole life,
which really did not resonate with a lot of the
conservative Christians that I had heard from, you know, recognizing
the humanity in each other, love your neighbor, you know,
regardless of their state of sin. And and there was

(24:13):
something that drew me in and I'm like, what is this.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
It's an Episcopal church. I didn't know if you knew this.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
The cathedral is a yeah, I used to live right,
that's great. It's just gorgeous. They have a moon rock
and a window there. It's very cool. So they so
I looked into it more and I joined the Episcopal Church,
went through catechumen it which is like training when you
become an episcopalian later in life. In the first class
that we had was what is sin? I was like, oh,
here we go, here's where I leave. Yeah, And the

(24:41):
answers we came to was anything that gets in the
way of the relationships that God wants you to have
with yourself, with other people, with creation, and with God.
And I thought that's fantastic, right, that is so contextual.
It is it's not this like lists of like, you know,
do this, this, this, this and this. It really recognizes
that the world is messy and doing the right thing

(25:02):
at times takes discernment. It takes a real ability to
figure out all the different things that are going on
and play into that.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
And I actually think going to Divinity.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
School and spending three years asking questions about justice and
right and wrong was the perfect background for going into
the legislature.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
That's what we do, right.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
The lawyers sort of take the laws we pass and
it's like math with words. What are the facts of
the case, what's the law, what's the outcome? Right in
the legislature we say, what's the world we want to have?
What do we think the right role of government is?
What do we think the society around us should be
and how do we get there? And I think that
is a question of justice, and so my divinity background

(25:42):
I think works perfectly with the work that I've been doing.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
I wanted to ask Jeff that question because I don't
think most listeners think of politicians generally having that kind
of conversation, and maybe in particular, again I'm not trying
to be sarcastic, probably don't think of Democrats as having
that kind of converse station.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
So there are two members of the legislature with the
masters that divinity degree. We're both Democrats. Who's the other one,
Basinecker in the House.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
And if you're just joining, we're talking with State Senator
Jeff Bridges.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
What's your district number? I should know because I'm in it.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Twenty six. It's okay, no one knows. No one knows
the district number. If you even know who you're a
state representative senator is you're a very unique human being.
I know the district number. Yeah, I don't even know
the numbers of my colleagues.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
All right, you're right.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
So Jeff is in leadership and the Democratic Party in
the State Senate's chairman of the Joint Budget Committee.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Are you chairman next year?

Speaker 3 (26:32):
No, we flipped, So the number the House and Senate
goes back and forth.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Oka Joint House and Senate Committee.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
And Jeff is also a candidate for State Treasurer. And
hopefully we'll get to that in a bit, but for
the moment, I want to kind of keep House Network
and Treasurer stuff separately. So let's talk about a couple
of bills and a couple of constitutional things. Let's talk
about Senate Bill three, which is the obvious infringement on
the Second Amendment that you guys passed and poll As signed,

(26:59):
even though I told him in a private conversation, don't
sign this nonsense.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Why why do you think it's constitutional.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
So, if you look at the history of rights in
this country, just because you have a right to something
doesn't mean that as an unfettered right, and especially if
exercising that right leads to violence, there is a constitutionally
allowed limit on that so speech. For instance, I quote
this and the trolls online lose their minds. But Oliver

(27:32):
Wendel Holmes said that you essentially can't shout fire in
a crowded theater, right because that leads to panic, people
rush the doors, they get trampled.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
If it's not true.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
You can't say that in that context if it leads
to that panic. Right, So there's a case where there
is an immediate negative consequence for exercising that right, and
that is constitutionally an accepted limit on that right.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
You can't incite to violence, right, you can't. You can't
fire in the crowded theater.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
Thing is very misunderstood, and we talked about it last week,
I know, and anyway, keep.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Going, we can.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
But the principle though, and the reality is that anything
that incites violence is an accepted limit on free speech
in this country. So you know, you look at free
exercise of religion, there's there's all sorts of constitutional history
on where are the lines on these? The default is, yes,
you can do this, But then you have to look

(28:28):
around and say, well, what's the impact of this?

Speaker 1 (28:30):
And for Senate Bill three where it ended up.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
And I think the piece that you dislike the most,
and that that I hear from folks that they dislike
the most, is not necessarily the training. It's the check
by the sheriff. And what I hear every time there
is a mass shooting, every time. What I hear from
Republicans is this is a behavioral health issue. It's not guns,
it's behavioral health. Well, what we've done in this bill

(28:53):
is put that behavioral health check in right, it's the
same check that we have currently for concealed carry, and
it is now the check that we will have for
But it does it doesn't do anything determined by r
Do you really think it's going to catch I mean,
most of these people who do this stuff appear normal
when they're buying a gun. I think there are some

(29:14):
folks that have not appeared normal. I think the Aurora
Theater shooter there was some real red flags there.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Well fun intended.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah, that probably would have kept him from gaining access
to the weapons.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
But how does this change that right? I mean maybe
red flag could change that or something, but.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
I don't see. I think this is.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
I understand that Jared thinks that the training piece is
really important and you should have to get training, and
by the way, I think you should get training.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
But there's a big.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Difference between you should do something and the government is
going to force you to do something and otherwise you
won't be able to exercise a constitutional right.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
I think the best argument from your side is we're not.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Really blocking the constitutional right because you could just go
buy a different gun rather than the gun in this category.
I think that's your strongest argument, and don't think it's
a great one.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
I actually think.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
That for the vast majority of gun owners, this bill
will not change their ability to access the weapons that
they would like to purchase. The bill is introduced would
have eliminated wholesale any sort of semi automatic weapon that
had a detachable magazine.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
So that was that.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Is a very much different bill from where we ended up,
which is if you want that semi automatic rifle, and
I think it can be interpreted to include a certain
class of handguns as well. To listen to your conversation
with Paul Undine, I do think there is a class
of handguns that fall into this. But if you want
that semi automatic that you go get the okay from

(30:41):
the sheriff, the same okay that you get when you
want to conceal carry permit, and then you take a class,
you still have access to those and unless there's really
something going on.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Well I could be wrong about this, but it doesn't
really functionally change the ability.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
I don't think my sheriff can deny me a concealed
carry permit unless I've been charged or convicted of some thing,
or unless maybe there's a red flag violation. Under this thing,
a sheriff doesn't really have to have. There doesn't have
to be a conviction, as I read the law, The
sheriff can just say I think his past behavior makes
him a little.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Too risky and I'm not going to let him get it.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
That bothers me. All right, let's keep going. You know,
we have so much to so much to do.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
I wonder if you.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Could maybe back, well, mate, could you stick through a
break and do one more segment? We still have a
few minutes in this one. So one of the things
that really got my listeners very upset was House Bill
thirteen twelve, And this originally would have had, for example,
is so if you have a child who's born female
and wants to.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Identify as male.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
The original version that bill would have said that, let's
say there were parents who were getting divorced and there
was a custody fight. If there were a parent who
insisted on referring to the child by in this case,
her biological gender, that would be held against the parents.
In custody hearings, So that's been taken out. My question
for you is, why does any politician think that's okay

(32:01):
to put in And is there some point at which
you think your own Democratic colleagues are nuts? Because I
don't think you're crazy. I think you're relatively moderate as
today's Democrats go. But you got to be pretty nuts
to put that in there. How does that even get
in a bill that could pass?

Speaker 3 (32:22):
You know, it's important to know on this particular bill,
those particular provisions were opposed and removed from the bill
in large part due to requests from the LGBTQ plus
community here in the state. So One Colorado represents that
community largely at the Capitol, and they had serious concerns

(32:43):
with this bill as introduced. They didn't outright opposed, but
they were in an amend position. So there's sort of
different positions you can take on a bill. Amend is
essentially we don't like the bill as it is, and
we don't support it as it is, and we need changes.
And so you know, the leading LGBTQ plus group in
the state, this bill is not acceptable as is. So

(33:06):
I think that's important context here. Right, it may be introduced.
There may be members of the legislature that support it
in that way, but even one Colorado I get I
get that, So okay, go ahead, just about a minute here.
There's a lot of people that introduced a lot of
bills in the state. There was one two years ago
that was you have to pay a fee and register
all of your pets fifteen bucks for a goldfish.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Some things like that.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
So just because bills are introduced doesn't mean that they
have support from the majority of legislators or even the
majority of Democrats. And I think this bill is a
great example of something that was introduced in the Cadillac
version for the sponsor and amended down to something more
like a Chevy. I think it gets the job done
the way it is, but it does not have the
sort of same form in a lot of the same

(33:48):
regulations is in.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Okay, I think that's a good place to leave it.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
And then we'll come back to it in the next
break in the next segment, because you said it gets.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
The job done.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
So my question for you at the top of the
next segment and will be what is the job that
it is trying to get done? And then we're going
to talk a little bit about I want to do
two more things with you. In the next segment, which
will be shorter than this one, was taking a look
at next year's budget and running for treasurer Okay State
Senator Jeff Bridges in studio with me keep it here

(34:18):
on KOWA. I am joined in studio by State Senator
Jeff Bridges, who is also a candidate for state treasurer.
We got about seventy eight minutes, so let's blast through
a couple of things. You said that House Bill thirteen
twelve A lot of my listeners really don't like, and
in particular, the thing they don't like is is.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Adding is adding.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
To State Code preferred name, chosen name as a protected characteristic.
People see that as an infringement on the First Amendment.
You can comment on that if you.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Would like to. Also, you said that the bill does
the job. What is the job it is supposed to
be doing.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
So we're talking about a community that is attacked on
a fairly regular basis in pretty dramatic and terrible ways.
And I know that you, as a good libertarian, have
the sense that people should be able to live however
they want.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Absolutely, you know, Senator Paul Lundeen.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Had this discussion with him as well, and I think
when he was on your show, he said, Kelly Loving
was a hero stepping in the line of fire the
way that she did. In What we have is a
bill that was generated by that community, that came out
of the pain that they experience on a daily basis. Really,
and Brianna Setone, who is a friend of mine and

(35:37):
the first trans elected official in the state.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
She's in the state House.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
You know, there are members of the Republican party in
the House who refuse to call her Madam Chair when
she's sharing second reading in the House.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
And so these are just the sort of.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
The experiences that these folks have on a daily basis,
and in the bill, essentially, if you boil it down,
it's stopping terrible.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
Let people live their lives if there is something that
is going on in your home, right that I think
that the laws we have right now about abuse and
verbal abuse cover a lot of what it is that
this bill intended to cover. As introduced, if you have
a family life, that is horrific. And this is a

(36:23):
small minority of folks, right, but if you have a
family life at home that's horrific. There should be protections
for the kid, and there are protections for the kid.
What we have in the bill is it passed, is
protections at school if a teacher is being terrible. And
so this is really not at work right or right,
and it's just essentially, don't be terrible.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
But I just want to be quickly because we do
have to get to some other things.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
But at some.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Point, did you wonder, as you're look, I agree with you.
A lot of people are terrible, right, and I fully
agre I don't have any problem with trans people live
the life that you find fulfilling and meaningful. And and
I've got no caveats. Okay, Uh, my caveat is for

(37:07):
the legislation, so I'll say, but yeah, uh, did it
occur to you that this might be a violation of
people's First Amendment rights?

Speaker 1 (37:13):
And sometimes they have a right to be terrible.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
You may have right to be terrible, but you have
a right to be terrible to employees at work. You
have a right to be terrible to coworkers. Or is
this the same sort of kind of verbal abuse that
we see with sexism, with racism that we want to
draw a line and say this is not acceptable in
a workplace, and I think it is.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
I think this is just just be nice.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Just reckon, treat other people with respect.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
You respect them, they'll respect you.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
And essentially, it's it's a it's a it's a protected form.
It's protected at work in the same way that racist
and sexist languages.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
And again I'm I'm a non religious libertarian, So you know,
calling Brianna to tone chi or Madame chair, no skin
off my back.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
I don't care.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
But some of my listeners think that it's a violation
of their religious beliefs to be forced to address someone
by a gender that, let this say, a hypothetical listener
thinks is not the actual gender, and therefore they think
it's unconstitutional. So you don't agree, all right, let's move on,
just in the interest of time. So we heard a

(38:20):
lot about the budgetary issues and the kind of cuts
you had to make based on the revenue you thought
you were going to be able to spend in the
past year. I don't want to spend a lot of
time on that. Right now, what I want to ask
you about and then we can transition this easily, if
you will pardon the use of the word transition in
this conversation into the Treasurer's race. There is a fair

(38:40):
bit of conversation that went along the lines of if
you thought it was tough this year, wait till next year.
Now do you think that is true? Do you think
next year will be more difficult, and if so, what
do you think will happen? And do you think that
the Joint Budget Committee will be forced to look at
things like Medicaid cuts that they've been trying to avoid.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
So what we have in the state is what's called
the structure deficit.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
The tabor rationing cap is inflation plus population. And the
challenge we have is the costs for the things that
the state invests in go up at a much faster
rate than inflation. So medical costs Medicaid is a third
of our budget. Medical costs go up way faster than inflation.
Wage growth ninety percent of K twelve spending is teacher salary.
Wage growth goes up much faster than inflation. That's another

(39:22):
third of our budget K twelve. The cost of concrete steel,
the construction materials for roads and bridges, goes up faster
than inflation. So essentially, year over year you have this
gap between what it would cost to keep up just
to keep doing the things that we normally do every
year as a state.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
We have to cut those year over years.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
So the total dollar amount looks like it goes up,
but what we can functionally accomplish with those dollars goes
down because inflation just simply doesn't go up as fast
as our costs. So that structural deficit means year over
year we're going to just have to keep cutting. The
services that we're able to provide will continue to decrease,
the roads will get worse, and yes, certainly we're going
to have to look at it weighs to to cut Medicaid.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
So at some point.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Many Blue states took the advantage of Obamacare's kind of
tempting offer to go expand Medicaid, and we did as well.
Most states in America have way too many people on Medicaid.
And then I'm just gonna make an editorial statement, Now
we should be cutting Medicaid, and we should be cutting
some percentage of people who are on Medicaid out of it, especially.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Young, able bodied.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
People who can work, and especially among those the ones
who don't have who don't have kids. I would also
add you say that the stuff goes.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Up faster than inflation, and.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Certainly some of it does, because inflation is sort of
an average of things, and concrete might be on the
higher end of the average, and televisions might be on
the bringing the average down.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
But one thing is for sure, the things that tend.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
To go up fastest in price are the things where
the public is insulated from feeling the cost. So you
give them government health insurance right, or or make it
too easy to get a college loan.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
Those are actually the two areas college.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Tuition and healthcare that have consistently gone up faster than inflation,
and that's because government insulates people from feeling the cost.
So what do you think about something that increases co
I realized Medicaid is for low income people. But you've
got to do something about Medicaid or it's gonna shred
everything else.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
So first of all, we did reinstitute a copay requirement
for certain Medicaid coverages last year spill we passed on
the JBC. Second, most people on Medicaid are working, with
the exception potentially of some of those folks who are
spending full time caring for kids. If there was a
work requirement, that was passed federally as it's currently structured,
that wouldn't have a major impact on Colorado's costs to
cover and Medicaid because again, most of those people are working.

(41:37):
I would say, if people are working and they're on Medicaid,
that's a subsidy to their employer.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
That is not a subsidy. That is a legit argument.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
But I did see Governor Poulis was talking about maybe
calling a special session if the federal government did something
on Medicaid. But much of what they're talking about on
Medicaid is work requirements. So if we are already have
people working, then why would we call a special session
if it wouldn't really be a thing for us.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
We probably wouldn't if that were the only change. If
they cut eight hundred billion dollars from Medicaid, we would
feel that in the state we'd have to make some cuts.
The expansion that we did here in the state is
paid for entirely by what's called the HAS fee or
the hospital provider fee. This is, frankly some like some
budget voodoo that somehow the federal government says is legal.

(42:22):
Where we tax hospitals, the federal government matches it and
then we give the money back to hospitals. Yeah, so
the Medicaid expansion population isn't actually costing Colorado taxpayers to cover.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Okay, last thing, and we're about out of time, but
I want to give you a minute here.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
You're you're running for state treasurer. Thanks for a minute.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Well yeah, well why you and why should people even
care about what the state treasurer does?

Speaker 3 (42:43):
So Colorado dollars should go towards helping Colorado's and the
state Treasurer has access to a lot of funds sort
of in between when taxes are collected and when they
are spent by the legislature, and in that time in between,
what you see in various different funds is investments in
Wall Street securities, whether that's Caterpillar or Chevron or something

(43:03):
of the like, or treasury bonds from the federal government,
or it's mortgage backed securities from Freddie Mack and Fannie May.
And instead of investing in Wall Street companies, and instead
of investing in housing across the US, we can take
those Colorado dollars. We can put them to work right
here in Colorado. We can build homes that are affordable
for middle income people. We can help cities and counties

(43:26):
with the infrastructure that we need to attract and keep
good paying jobs here in this state. We can use
Colorado resources to reinvest in the state of Colorado, but.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Don't things have to get a return.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
So, because we're in a tabor refund situation, every single
dollar we get in returns goes right out the door
as table refunds. So there's actually no incentive from a
government standpoint to get those returns. And so if we
can ensure that we don't lose money, and if we
have some small interest amount on this that we get
to make sure that we cover any losses that occur,

(43:59):
we can in the State of Colorado in a way
that has no impact on the budget. No, it doesn't
decrease our ability to fund the programs we care about it.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Anyway, it sounds like your answer would change if you
felt somewhat certain that we wouldn't be in a table
refund situation.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
We eliminate the tabercap, it looks a little different, but again,
there are different pots of money.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
I don't mean eliminate the taborcap, dude, I just mean
like maybe the revenue will come.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
In a little lower and there won't be money to give.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
Back if we have a major reception that looks very different.
This is true, and I think that's part of why
you've seen the current treasurer with a much more conservative
investment profile. But as we look forward, if we expect
that we are going to stay in this table refund situation,
and even if we don't, Colorado dollars should be helping
Colorado's whether it's housing, whether that's starting and building a company,
whether it's infrastructure to ensure that folks have what they need. Like,

(44:47):
there is some really interesting work we can do in
the Treasure's office that directly affects the people of Colorado.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
We'll get you back to talk about that more.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
Look for State Senator Jeff Bridges joins me in studio.
He's very interesting, dude. I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
Thanks for being here, Thanks for joining me here, Thanks
for having me. We'll be right back on KOA. I
do want to have him back on to talk about
that idea of investing in Colorado rather than in stocks
or treasury bonds or whatever, because I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
I you know, as I said to him, it's like,
don't you need.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
A return on these things, and I will tell you,
I will tell you that he's just leaving that so
it'll be an interesting rate. You know, here's the thing.
Here's the thing. In Colorado, it's exceedingly unlikely than in
Colorado right now, any Republican is going to win any
statewide race. Republicans can win races in districts that are

(45:43):
Republican leaning or maybe even very slightly Democratic leaning, if
it's a very good candidate, a very good Republican candidate,
and if it's a good Republican year, and if the
Democratic candidate isn't very good, right.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Like sometimes some Donald Trump won district that have Democratic.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Register and there are members of Congress who represent districts
that have more Democrats and Republicans, so that can happen.
But statewide in Colorado, we're not going to elect a
Republican senator, We're not going to elect a Republican governor.
We're probably not going to elect a statewide see you regent,
and we're probably not going to elect a Republican secretary

(46:21):
of state, treasurer or attorney general.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
We're a blue state now. I'm just you know, trying
to live with it.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
And you know, these these various steps of anger and
acceptance and all this stuff. I don't know what state
I'm in, but I'm in one of those right now.
And so at some point, when we get to looking
at these races, I'm going to end up in my
own mind. I don't know if it's going to be
that is, you know that I'll talk about it other
than radio a lot, but in my own mind, at
some point I'm going to have to.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Say, like, you should vote for this.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Democrat because the Republican won't win at least in the
Democratic primary. I don't mean in the general election, okay,
but in it'll how do I want to put this.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
In Colorado? Right now?

Speaker 2 (47:06):
In statewide races, the Democratic primary is the election that matters.
And so when we get to that, I will probably
focus on that stuff.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
On that stuff a little bit. Let me do one quick.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Story on just an insane thing that we heard about
a few days ago. I think the story may be
broke on on Saturday, A really really nutty story. Have
you heard this thing about this cryptocurrency related kidnapping in
New York?

Speaker 1 (47:38):
This is absolutely nuts.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
So there's a dude who's described as a cryptocurrency investor,
and I guess this guy has some money because because
I think he's got it, like a helicopter and a
private jet or a share of a private jet or something.
His name is John. I think it's pronounced Welt's woe Ltz.
Maybe it's pronounced walt I don't know how he pronounces.

(48:00):
At thirty seven years old, and apparently this dude kidnapped
some other guy who maybe is European and has some cryptocurrency.
And I guess this guy Waltz Waltz Welts I don't know,
extorted some money from this other dude, claiming if you're saying,

(48:21):
if you don't give me some cryptocurrency, I'm gonna kill
your family. And I guess, I guess he gave him some.
And then somehow this criminal lured him to New York
on some promise to give him back some money or
a threat or something.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Anyway, he kidnapped.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
The guy and kept him locked up for weeks in
an apartment where he was basically tortured. According from the
ap they drugged him, they used electric wires to shock him,
They hit him in the head with a gun. At
one point, they carried him to the top of a
flight of stairs where they dangled him over a ledge
and threatened to kill him if he didn't the password

(49:01):
needed to get to his bitcoin, So, believing that he
was about to be shot, the victim said, all right,
I'll give you my password. It's on my laptop, which
is in this other room. The guy went to get
the laptop, and the victim, who I guess wasn't sufficiently
restrained sufficiently from the perspective of the criminal.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Escaped, waved down a cop.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
And now they've arrested the guy and he is charged
with all kinds of stuff and he may actually it
is possible he may end up with life in prison
for this. But what an insane story. Kidnapping and torturing
a guy for weeks to get.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
A bitcoin password.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
This story, I have to say, could have turned out
so much worse.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
I'm glad it didn't.

Speaker 4 (49:53):
Hen but he had said something about when Bridges was
in studio. He didn't understand it, so it all stands
sounded like voodoo to him.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
So okay, the song, okay, very good, and I will
note that God smack you. You will note if you
go to Colorado Voice Clinic and see doctor David Opperman
for any of your voice issues. When you come in,
there's a god smack thing, and it's because the lead
singer is a patient of doctor Opperman's and he's helped
take care of that guy's voice, which shows you how good,

(50:22):
how good doctor Opperman is. All right, speaking of doctors,
that's a week. That's a week segue, But we're going
to give it a try, as not just as a libertarian,
but just as somebody who wants people to be able
to live longer and live better. I've always been in
favor of right to try legislation. In fact, as a libertarian,
I've always found it more than a little bit annoying

(50:45):
that people have to ask permission to take medications.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
And there is a federal right to try law that.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
President Trump trumpetent if you will pardon the punt, during
his first term. States also have a particular right to
try law, and Colorado recently expanded its own right to
try law. And before getting any further into that discussion,
I want to bring my guest on to the show.
Elijah Stacey wrote a remarkable opinion piece for Fox News

(51:16):
a couple months back, and there's also a YouTube video
that he did that you can find on my blog
right now at Rosskominsky dot com. And the title of
the Fox News op ed is I'm dying of a
fatal disease. Bureaucrats shouldn't decide how doctors can try.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
To save me.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Now, I mean, I'll say hallelujah to that, but my
opinion doesn't matter that much because I'm not struggling with this.
Elijah Stacey is Elijah, Welcome to KOA.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

Speaker 5 (51:48):
Thank you so much for having me. And I got
to say your seconing was great, so well done with that.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
All right, thank you just set this up for us
in terms of your own personal situation, and then why
right to try is such an important thing for you?

Speaker 5 (52:04):
Yeah, So I'm bored with the fatal muscle weays disease
called the shin muscle medistrophy, and give you a quick
rennant of that. Basically, what happens is patns start to
lose muscle as time goes on because to lack a
protein that adds structural support two muscle fibers called distripine.
And so what that looks like if you have children
walking on their toes falling frequently and then eventually going

(52:25):
into the wheelchair. I went into a wheelchair by age eleven,
which is common. They'll lose upper limb functions, so that
being to raise their arms, I'll be able to feed themselves,
stretch their head, things like that. And the worst part
is that the diseases fatal with an average lifespan of
twenty five. Because the diaphragm and intercostal muscles are responsible

(52:46):
for breathing, they weaken as well as the heart being
a muscle itself. So the reason that's is so important
is because when you have a fatal disease and you
don't have a lot of options, and there's so much
variability with decisions based on the unique commutation and things
like that, you know you want to you want the
building to try, especially in the land of the free right.

(53:07):
I mean, like you kind of said, it's kind of
crazy that we we have to even ask to take
a drug that you know, our position would be signed
off on, right and so we shouldn't really need the
government to to approve that if you know, the people
closest to us, our doctors are there.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
So I hope you don't mind my asking so you
said you went into a wheelchair at age eleven, You're
you're twenty three right now?

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Is that right? Twenty three, twenty four somewhere in there.

Speaker 5 (53:34):
Yep, No, that's correct, twenty three and yep that's true.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
And so right now do you have use of your arms?

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Not?

Speaker 5 (53:42):
Really? Not really?

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (53:45):
So again, sorry for these personal questions.

Speaker 5 (53:50):
Open books, I mean book, ask me, go for it.
How do you.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
How how do you process knowing the path that you're
on is essentially certain unless you get some kind of
miracle cure that we don't know of to exist right now?

Speaker 1 (54:11):
How do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Or do you spend all your time focusing on maybe
we'll find something?

Speaker 1 (54:17):
How do you get through each day?

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (54:20):
No, that's an excellent question. Mean, you know, everybody really
has a duty and if you will, mind just more defined.
That's how I looked at it. But you know, I
work in the BIOPXT build, so I'm constantly involved with
research and the latest agnanched things, and there's so many
great things coming down the pipeline that I have a
lot of confidence in U. You know, I also believe

(54:40):
in God, so I believe, you know, my time when
my time's up here, I'll be with God. So that's
very comforting to know. And I believe it's God's plan
for me to have this disease and a committed me
to have it to do something about it. So you know,
that's that's why I'm on the phone with you today.
Right to have it came again. I can use my
disease to help people with their disease or whatever they're
going through and try and help to overcome their suffering.

(55:03):
So you know, I don't think about it much. I
honestly have full confidence that we're going to get in
thesise and patients are not going to die for me anything.
We're really close to that.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
I don't know how much you have paid attention to
what's going on.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
To the new Colorado law, do you.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
I don't even want to take your time with it
if you haven't studied it at all.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
So you do you know about it? Or should I
just skip that part?

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (55:31):
No, No, I actually testified and both this and thisbly
for it.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
So okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
So in the context of the fact that people already
understood there to be right to Try legislation, what does
the new Right to Try legislation here in Colorado, and
I will note to listeners that this is bipartisan legislation.
I see Republicans and Democrats on the bill. So what
does this bill do going beyond what was already there?

Speaker 5 (56:00):
Yeah, so this this goes one step further, gives you
even more medical freedom to patients with a terminal illness.
So this is Recordrive for individualized treatments. And so what
this does is you don't need safety data, right, and
if you know how drug development works, safety data can
take time to develop, and patients that are dying don't

(56:22):
have time, and so you know, you could be short
of just one month with you know, with current legislation,
but with Recordrive individualized treatments that you know that could
spare you that one month and then you save your life.
And I think that you know, the technology is there,
the science is there, and everybody agrees you shouldn't be
stomped because of legislation. And so this goes one step

(56:46):
further and allows patients to try.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
So as I and as I read the summary of
the bill, at least what it says is that an
an eligible patient and that's that's defined as have a
life threatening or severely debilitating illness and not having other
treatments available and having a recommendation for a doctor. I'll
stop there, But there's more to it. An eligible patient

(57:12):
can request from a pharmaceutical company to be provided with
an investigational drug or biologic or device that and this
is what you were talking about with personalized. So again
again according to bill summary, unique and provided exclusively for
use by an individual patient. Can you just elaborate for

(57:35):
us a little bit what personalized really means here for
somebody in this situation.

Speaker 5 (57:44):
Sure, I mean you might look at Dishne would be
a great example of this. For example, with Deshan, Right,
there's seventy nine different excells. These are the coding reasons
that make up the dishest engine, and that's the gene
that's mutated. And so if you do like a gene edit,
for example, you're going to have to edit their mutation
differently for each person. So that would be unique development

(58:08):
that's totally needed in a disease like to shin, because
it is unique for every person. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Absolutely? It does for those just joining.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
We're talking with Elijah Stacy, he's twenty three years old.
He wrote a piece for Fox News entitled I'm dying
of a fatal disease. Bureaucrats shouldn't decide how doctors can
try to save me. He also did a really wonderful
and powerful YouTube video that I've posted on my blog
to make it easy for you to find if you
go to if you go to Rosskominski dot com. So

(58:41):
does this stuff apply to you right now?

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Elijah? Are there are there.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Investigational drugs or biologics that you are trying right now? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (58:57):
I mean I would definitely want me I much bring
anything right now, but I definitely would want to have
this in place. You know, I am getting older in
terms of the average lifespan with the shin, so you
know how new things come up. Definitely, you know this
will be an avenue that I would probably likely to
pursue that could theoretically save my life. So you this

(59:19):
certainly applies to me, and I mean my youer brother
he also has the shin as well, so I he's
seventeen years old, so you know this is definitely very
personal to me.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Oh my gosh, is is he in a wheelchair now
as well?

Speaker 5 (59:32):
That's correct?

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Yep, I can't believe it, how do your parents.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Deal with this?

Speaker 2 (59:38):
I mean, you sound like a very upbeat guy, and
it sounds you made clear that part of what makes
this relatively easier. I'm not gonna say that it's easy,
because it's obviously not, but relatively easier for you that
it might be for some others. Is your is your
strong faith? Do your parents share that? Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:00:01):
Absolutely, they have a very strong faith. I mean, get
the ass of the story to give.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
You more color.

Speaker 5 (01:00:06):
My younger brother, Max, he was severely disabled from a
film heart surgery when he was four months old, and
he actually passed away when he was fourteen years old.
And he also had to sham as well, So you
know they've already suffered a loss as a child. So
you know, my parents are very very strong people, been
married for thirty plus years. They share the same faith

(01:00:28):
that I have, and you know, we just keep going
forward and using our using our suffering for something greater
and living a life full of purpose and meaning.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Are you what's the normal day for you? Are you
in college? Did you go to college? Are you doing
grad school? Are you spending all your time as an activist?

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Now? What's a day for Elijah these days?

Speaker 5 (01:00:52):
Yeah? So I do many different things. First of all,
when I was fifteen years old, I found a nonprofit
called Destroyed the Shin. I do a lot of work there.
You know, we get people grants to help them with
wheelchairs or accessible cars or whatever. We also helped some
research and we're trying to destroy desend right. I'm also

(01:01:12):
a patient advocate or consulting for five biotech companies, so
that's what I do mainly for work. I'm also an
investor who I absolutely love it and will I have
to invest in biotech companies use for knowledge there. I'm
also a public speaker. I do that professionally. And I'm
also an author on my book A Small Lip, which

(01:01:34):
is a memoir about my whole wife and all things
that we're discussing here, and that's not being turned into
a movie, so I'm also working as a producer on
that as well. So a lot of different things. I
try to be busy, and I honestly love working.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Fabulous a remarkable story. You're a very resilient dude, and
I hope that somebody somewhere find something that you can try.
Uh even separate from a question of law, you and
I agree that you shouldn't need the law to allow
you to try something. But this is where we are,
at least in Colorado, you have that law now, and

(01:02:11):
there is some of it nationwide. But I'm tremendously admiring
of your of your attitude, and of everything you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
You're You're a.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Remarkable guy, and and I'm honored to get to talk
to you.

Speaker 5 (01:02:25):
No, thank you so much. I appreciate the kind of
words and giving me the time to talk about this
an unfortunate manner.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Thanks so much, Elijah. Hopefully we'll keep in touch. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Awesome, Thank you, Thank you. Elijah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Stacy's op ed at foxnews dot com and this is
actually posted about three months ago.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
I'm dying of a fatal disease.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Bureaucrats shouldn't decide how doctors can try to save me.
Let me just interject for a second. I mean, think
about that that young man, call him young, I mean
not a kid.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
He's a young man, and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Like he's probably somewhat certain at the age of twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Let's put it this way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
The average lifespan of someone with the disease he has
is twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
And he's twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
And he's in a wheelchair and it's a progressive disease
and he can barely use his arms now he said,
hardly use his arms. So I'm sure other people are
feeding him and doing other things that you would need
to use your arms for. I mean, imagine, you know
it must have to help him go to the restroom,
put on his clothes, all these things. And he's a
young man. He wasn't in an accident. It's just it's tragic.

(01:03:37):
And yet you didn't get any sense of self pity
from that guy at all. And you heard all the
stuff that he said. He's doing this remarkable, what just
what an impressive What an impressive guy?

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Seriously.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Wow, all right, let me let me switch gears for
for a.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Few minutes here. So, oh, I want to tell you
the story.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
This is a really quick story, but I think I
had mentioned maybe a year now. It's probably less than
a year ago that Twitter was still called Twitter at
the time, so it must have been more than a
year ago.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Was in a fight with a landlord in Boulder.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Because Twitter stopped paying their rent and they said, well,
we're not paying our rent because the landlord didn't do something.
And the landlord says, no, you owe us the rent
and Twitter said, well, you owe us some money, and anyway,
it all went to court and just a couple of
days ago I think it was maybe Friday, Thursday or Friday, Yeah,
it was Friday. A judge ruled against Twitter now called

(01:04:40):
X but that they owe the landlord. And again this
is in Boulder, which part of the reason I'm mentioning
this to you. They owe the landlord eight point two
million dollars for past do rent expenses and a small
amount of money for repairs based on damage that Twitter
caused when they when they moved out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
It's actually sort of.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
In interesting story because there was a bunch of stuff
that was done to the building to really personalize it
to Twitter, like stuff embedded in the floor with the
Twitter logo and so on, that the owners are saying
is making it very hard for them to lease it
to somebody else people want to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Move into their own and they even did.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Some wacky Twitter stuff, like some kind of I think it's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Like a four story maybe spiral.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Staircase or something, or staircase in the in the middle
connecting all the floors straight up in this kind of
open thing with a staircase that is also making it
very hard to lease in any case. In any case,
Twitter lost that and I wanted to I wanted to
share that with you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
All right. So now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Donald Trump versus Russia and Ukraine, it's very interesting ongoing story.
So last week President Trump had a two hour phone
call with Vladimir Putin, and coming out of it, everybody
who understand Dan's you know, right from wrong and what's

(01:06:02):
going on, was really pretty concerned because coming out of it,
Donald Trump remained pretty positive about.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Putin and is still blaming Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Just as much as Russia for the war, and this
sort of ongoing Trump insanity. And there was a headline
at Axios and again this is from last week. Trump's
deference to Putin stunned European leaders on call, right, because
there were five other European leaders who were who talked

(01:06:30):
with President Trump after Trump talked with Putin, and they
were really surprised and disappointed at just how positive Trump
had continued to be about Putin. And Trump has this
long running, weird fealty to strong men and dictators and
loves to tell us how well he gets along.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
With them, as if that's an important thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
And then something changed and now something has changed in
the past. Right a month ago, to Trump said he
thought that Putin was quote tapping him along, when really,
as Andy McCarthy put it, Trump has been tapping the
American people along. And I've never heard that phrase before that.
But right, remember, going into the camp throughout the campaign,
Trump said all in this war in twenty four hours.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
I don't know if anybody was dumb enough to believe that.
I surely didn't. That we have very very little leverage
over Vladimir Putin. And when you have a guy who
talks as nicely about Putin as Trump does, it's hard
to see why Putin would feel.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Any pressure at all.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
And then Trump becomes president and puts way more pressure
on Ukraine than on Russia. It's all pretty nuts. But
in any case, over the weekend, Russia launched a huge attack,
I guess it was on Saturday, one of the biggest
attacks since the beginning of the war, with rockets and
drones against a lot of different places in Ukraine, including

(01:07:53):
against the capitol of Kiev.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
A bunch of kids were killed.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
A very expensive us AT missile launcher was destroyed in
this as well. And then suddenly Donald Trump changed his mind,
or at least appeared to. And he said that something
has happened. He said, something has happened to Trump. I'm
sorry to Putin.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
Isn't that a weird way to put it?

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
He said, and I quote, I don't know what's wrong
with him?

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
What the hell happened to him?

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
But nobody with half a brain who's been paying even
just a tiny bit attention of attention to what's been
going on in the world, not just for the last
weeks or last couple of years, but last twenty years.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
Has thought that Vladimir Putin has changed at all. He
hasn't changed at all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
He's always been a murderous, thuggish tyrant who hates the
United States of America and is a committed enemy of
the United States of America. Suddenly Donald Trump is waking
up to it. And so of course it's kind of
damning of Trump that he claims to think that Putin
has changed when we we all know that Putin hasn't changed.

(01:09:02):
But there's some it's also maybe a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Of light at the end of the tunnel.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
I don't know what the light is, though, And we
need to be careful about this because now Trump is
talking about sanctions on Russia, and I don't know that
sanctions on Russia are going to be effective. What exactly
are they gonna do? What can we pressure Russia with
that they will care about?

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
But just the fact that Trump seems to be waking
up is a good sign. You have a story. First
of all, do we know who this song is? Going?

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Out?

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
To?

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
It?

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
From a text message of a DJ dragon, I have
a long distance dedication to a guy named Mike in
New Mexico Black Magic Woman by Santana, So sure enough,
there you go. I can only guess he's referring to
Michael Brown, whom had stated to me as I was
working on that show that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
This is his favorite song.

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
So of course, since it is his favorite song, I
vouch never play it ever again.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
So somebody requesting over it here is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
So does does Brown have music that you know of
that he hates?

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
That he really hates that? He hasn't stated to me
that I can recall.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
So I need to find out what that is so
that you can torture him constantly the way that you
play Neil Young for me, even if that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:21):
Has to he does, he doesn't make it obvious that
he doesn't like said song that's played where you that
you take your headphones off, throw them, yeah, set them
on fire?

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
Right, Yeah, absolutely right, Okay, let me do a couple
of minutes. I realized it seems like our president is
in the news, in the center of the news all
the time, and he is, and I try not to
do too much of that, but.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Some stuff's worth talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
I spent some of the last segment talking about how
President Trump appear to have a realization about Vladimir Putin
over the weekend. It's a very overdue one, it's a
welcome one. I'm very skeptical that the US is going
to be able to do anything to really impact that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
War other than send more weapons.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
I do not think there are sanctions we can impose
on Russia that will change Russia's behavior. And I do
think there are sanctions we could try to impose on
countries that are doing business with Russia that might end
up hurting US more than it hurts Russia.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
For example, are we really.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Going to sanction India, which is a major buyer of
Russian oil? If so, how's that going to work out?
We need India, right, and they need us, but we
need them for sure. So there's that I want to
talk about another thing, just just for a couple of minutes.
And it's funny with Trump, there's rarely a middle ground,
like usually from my perspective, right, everybody's got their own

(01:11:37):
perspective on stuff. But from my perspective, you sometimes see
Trumpet is best, and you sometimes see Trumpet is worst,
and you don't very often see him in the middle. Right,
he is really like, very chaotic, And again, everybody's got
a different view. And sometimes something I think that's him
and his best, other people will think is bad.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
And sometimes stuff that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
I think is him and his worst, other people will
think is good or neutral even.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
But we all have our own opinions.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
So I wanted to just take a minute and talk
to you about where I saw Trump at his best
a few days ago, and I actually just heard it.
I wasn't able, I wasn't looking at a screen, but
I was listening to the coverage and to the press conference.
And this was toward the end of last week. I
think it was on Friday. President Trump signed multiple executive

(01:12:25):
orders and this was in a big public thing where
he was talking with people in front of the news
cameras about multiple executive orders about boosting nuclear power in
the United States of America. And this is just absolutely fabulous.
We need so so much more of this. And he's
restructuring the Nuclear Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has really been

(01:12:50):
an impediment to the growth of nuclear power for quite
some time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
And it's not supposed to be that, so he.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
And here this is from one of the executive order.
The NRC has failed to license new reactors, even as
technological advances promised to make nuclear power safer, cheaper, more adaptable,
and more abundant than ever. This failure stems from a
fundamental error. Instead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy,
the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the

(01:13:20):
most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic
and geopolitical costs of such risk. Aversion this is absolutely
right and extremely important for our country. A little bit
more here, the NRC utilizes safety models. This is very important.
Now listen carefully. And this was in a Dumberg piece

(01:13:41):
last week as part of the reason you should subscribe
to Doomberg. The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there
is no safe threshold of radiation exposure, and that harm
is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. These models
lack sound scientific basis and produce IRAQ national results, such

(01:14:01):
as requiring that nuclear plants protect against radiation levels below
levels that occur in nature.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
Wow, I mean that we know that's true. We know
that's true, but.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Just to hear him say it, to have this in writing.
So one of the things that he is going to
require the NRC to do, and again quoting from the
from the executive order, adopt science based radiation limits. In particular,
the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no threshold

(01:14:38):
model for radiation exposure and the quote as low as
reasonably achievable standard end quote, which is predicated on l NT.
These models are flawed, as discussed above. In reconsidering the limits,
the NRC shall specifically consider adopting determinative radiation limits. All Right,
I'm gonna stop there in the interest of time. There
are a bunch of things in these executs orders that

(01:15:00):
are designed to spur growth of the nuclear power industry
in America.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
To add lots and lots of.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Nuclear power electricity generation in America over a fair fairly
short period of time. I'm skeptical that they'll be able
to do it over a fairly short period of time,
but if they can speed it up, that would be great.
Then we just have to hope that the next president
isn't a Democrat who undoes all this, although even now
on the left, nuclear power is becoming more popular. So

(01:15:30):
this is this is Trump at is best, taking great
advice from smart people like Secretary of Energy Chris Wright,
who is from right here in Colorado, and this is
the stuff he was elected to do, and I wanted
to give him some credit for it. We'll be right back.

Speaker 4 (01:15:45):
Another request, not leaving their names so I don't know
who this is for. Just say, hey, yes, some Asia
folks do us a favor.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
If you're sending producer Dragon and really these are going
to him, not me. If you're sending music requests, please
include your.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Your first name.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
You don't have, you don't have to, but it's nice,
it's nice for us. And then we can, you know,
dedicate this to you, or you can dedicate it to
somebody else and we can mention their name and your
name or something like that. As long as we're turning
kaway into a nineteen sixties style rock and roll station.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
And why not. We're one hundred years old.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
We can do anything we want from the past hundred
years of radio and what to do, right, nobody's gonna
tell us what to do.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
So just a couple quick.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Stories that I wanted to share with you in this segment.
First of all, congratulations to USA Hockey, right, congratulations, So
it's not the Olympic team, it's a different thing, USA Hockey.
From CBS Sports. USA Hockey wins gold at World Championship
for first time since nineteen thirty three, beating Switzerland one

(01:16:47):
zero in overtime.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
How about that?

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
The last time the US this is this is how
long it's been dragon?

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Are you ready?

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
The last time USA hockey he won a World Championship?
Koa was only eight years old? How about that?

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Right? Just a little baby station. Isn't that unbelievable? So
congra very much. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
I did post a video on my blog where you
can see the winning goal.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
The US had not even appeared in the World Championship's
final since nineteen thirty four. They won four bronze medals.
This is again from CBS Sports they won four bronze
medals in the past twelve years, which shows you know
that they were.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Picking up steam a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
But they hadn't been in the final game for eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Years and then they won it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
The other thing that I wanted to mention, if you
follow hockey at all, you may recall that I think
it was a little bit less than a year ago
an NHL player named Johnny godro Gau dr Eau.

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
And his brother Matthew you were.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
Taking a bike ride and they were both killed by
a drunk driver. And when USA Hockey won this over
the weekend, they accepted in his name while holding up
one of his jerseys. They accepted the trophy while holding

(01:18:24):
up one of his jerseys. And in the pictures, you know,
a team will sit on the ice and some of
them will stand and whatever and holding up Johnny godreau jersey.
And I thought that was a lovely moment, and I
thought I would share that with you. So congratulations, very
very much to USA Hockey. Another thing I wanted to mention,
I guess this is my third Trump story of the day,

(01:18:45):
but this is gonna be a short one. So you know,
Trump and Harvard are really battling it out, or the
Trump administration in Harvard are really battling it out. A
lot of anti semitic stuff has been going on on these,
especially the quote unquote best college campuses, for quite some time,
and the administration is absolutely right to call it out
and absolutely right to try to make them change their behavior.

(01:19:09):
And we can talk maybe at some other point about
whether you like this or that tactic, but they are
certainly addressing a real problem. Columbia is sort of kind of,
sort of playing nice, and they seem to want to
go along to some degree with the administration, at least
enough to get him to back off of some of.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
The worst threats. But not Harvard.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
Harvard has been pushing back hard, and Harvard is suing,
and Harvard this and Harvard that, and Trump ain't playing.
And so here's a headline from today from National Review.
Trump administration to terminate Harvard's final one hundred million dollars
in contracts, severing last remaining ties.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
WOW.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
The US General Services Agency will send a letter to
federal agencies today direct seeing the determination of Harvard's remaining
one hundred million.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
Dollars in federal contracts. First reported by the New York Times.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Draft letter directs agencies to respond by June sixth with
a list of contract cancelations and to find alternative vendors
for future services.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Now, one hundred million dollars sounds like a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
It is a lot in the world of this stuff.
It's only it's a moderate amount. I'm sure for smaller universities.
It sounds like an insanely large amount. For Harvard, they had,
you know, over three billion dollars, maybe closer to four billion.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Dollars of stuff. And this is the last one hundred million.

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):
We will see if Harvard caves in, or maybe they
will decide. We're gonna just keep fighting back and hope
that in a court of law we can force them
to reinstate the money. But I will say I continue
to believe that the Trump administration has more authority in
this area and some other areas like immigration, than their

(01:20:58):
political and legal opponents hope they have.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Is that dedicated to Mandy?

Speaker 4 (01:21:02):
I don't know. I'm curious. I need to know when
she comes in. We got to ask why did you
dedicate that to Mandy?

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
Whoever you are, Text us at five sixty six nine
zero and let us know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
Dragging the answer to your or the answer to your.

Speaker 2 (01:21:16):
Implied question before Yeah, or at least information to inform
appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:22):
There are four.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Rockies games between this moment and the end of this month.

Speaker 4 (01:21:27):
Now, this happened off air, so I was just curious
as to if the Rockies were going to be able
to make it to double digit wins by the end
of the month.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
Yeah, what's the what's the Rockies record reign? Now? Nine
and what nine and forty Yeah, nine and forty five.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
So that means they've won one out of every six
games they've played so far. They're in They're due, They're
at their due, They're They're winning percentage is point one
six seven.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
Now check this out.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Check this out, Dragon, Their winning percentage is point one
sixty seven. What do you think the winning percentage is
for the second worst team in the National League?

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
And I'll tell you it's Pittsburgh. It's Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
What do you think the winning percentage is for the
second worst team.

Speaker 6 (01:22:18):
In the National sins issuing a second software we call
it a month after a second crash, The company says.
On May the eighth, the slow moving unoccupied at Zukes
taxi was breaking as it approached an interception when it
was struck by an e scooter. The problem is the
Zookes vehicle kept moving through the intersection.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
The worst team there is the Chicago White Sox and actually,
intrepid Chad Bauer just went to a White Sox game
in Chicago.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
And saw the White Sox win a game. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
But so the worst team in the American League is
the White Sox and they're at point three to one five.
So anyway, the Rockies have four chances before the end
of the month to get to double digit wins. My
question for you, dear listener, is will they or will
will they or will they not have double digit wins
by the.

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
End of the month.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
Dragon wants to know Text us at five, six, six,
nine zero and just say yes or no. The question
is will the Rockies have ten or more wins by
the end.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
Of the month. They have nine right now.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
And four games to play, so just yes or no?
Will the Rockies have double digit wins by the end
of the month. Now I'm gonna ask another question, but
I need to word this in a way where you
don't answer yes or no, because I really need to
know the answer to this one. Like your answer. Let
me just make something clear. Your answer as to whether

(01:23:43):
the Rockies will or won't have double digit wins. I
don't care. It really makes no difference to me at all.
I don't even care if the Rockies end up with
double digit wins. I only ask that because my boss
on the other side of the glass seem to care
about the question, and I wanted to pretend to care
about what the boss says so that he doesn't fire me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:01):
But here's something I do care about. Would you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
I'm just I'm not asking you for a commitment. I'm
just asking for a digital version of a show of hands.
How many of you would potentially be interested in getting
some pizza for lunch with me tomorrow in the Denver

(01:24:26):
Tech Center a little bit after the show, like twelve
fifteen or twelve thirty kind of time frame, right, And
I don't know if it's gonna be zero people or catch.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
There's no catch. There's no catch.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
I was just thinking it'd be fun, and it's not
too far from here and a lot of people work,
and maybe listening around.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
DTC Green would I'm not buying? Oh okay, all right,
that sounds much more like the Ros Kminsky. I know. Oh,
come on, am I supposed to buy? Is that just
Ross Kominski? If you wait a minute, if you if you.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
If you invited listeners to I didn't say I was buying,
I said, would you want to meet me somewhere?

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
That's all about the invitation, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
So if you were inviting people to meet listeners to
meet you for lunch, would you volunteer to pay for everybody? No?
And would you think that they would assume that you
would be paying for everybody?

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
If I am the one giving out the invite then yet?

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
Okay, So let's make this darn clear. And it's not
because I'm Ross. I'm not buying. I'm just saying you
want to come hang out. And the reason I'm asking
this in particular is I was talking with a friend
of mine a few weeks ago who said, Oh, I
just came from this new pizza place and it's really
really good. And so I went and I thought it
was great, and so I've been there I think three

(01:25:41):
times now in just a few weeks because it's so good.
And anyway, I'm thinking of going there tomorrow and if
anybody wants to meet up, we could, like order a
few large pizzas maybe, and then just all share them
and all pitch in towards the bill or something like that.
So if you just let me know, I want to
get a sense of it's zero people or three people

(01:26:01):
or twenty people. I have no idea what it would be,
and I'm intentionally doing this on short notice, But would
you have interest in meeting me for some pizza. I'm
not buying meeting me for some pizza tomorrow near I'll
tell you it's near I twenty five and Bellevue somewhere

(01:26:22):
a little bit afternoon.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
Just text me, and then if.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):
It be text pizza, yeah, text pizza there you go,
Text pizza to five six six nine zero, And you
know what, if like more than one person or two
says yeah, then then we'll do it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
I don't need a ton of people. I don't care.
It'd be fun just hanging out with a few people.
But if it's zero, then.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
I probably won't go, and then I'll just realize I'm
a loser who has no friends.

Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
What else, Dragon, you looked like you were looking at something.

Speaker 4 (01:26:49):
There seems to be a whole bunch of yeses for
the Rockies, but the whole bunch of no's as well,
So one win out of four doesn't seem incredibly impossible,
but it is the Rocky.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Well, it's funny, and you put it that way, you
would say winning one.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
Game out of four seems like something most baseball teams
should be.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
Able to do.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
But the Rockies are not even close to winning one
game out of four this season. And I what's see,
it's Cubs today. I think it's Cubs today. And then
I think the next games are against the Mets, and
the Mets are pretty goods. The Mets are one of
the better teams, and they're playing in New York.

Speaker 1 (01:27:30):
I think. I don't think these are home games. I
think they're in New York.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
So it's not gonna be not gonna be easy to
beat the Mets at Mets Stadium, whatever the at Shay Stadium,
if they still call it that, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
I have no idea. I look at that. You do
have two pizzas.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
I have two pizzas so far, and half maybe a
third maybe it's okay, all right, all right, let me
share this with you.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
So you may recall, well, I'm sure you do.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
Recall I have Admiral James Tritis on the show fairly often,
and he right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
It's a lot of books and a couple of his novels.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
One of them is really really great called twenty thirty four,
and I highly recommend it, and it's very timely right
now again twenty thirty four, a novel of the next
World War. The next novel is called twenty fifty four.
I didn't like that one as much. There is co
written with a gentleman named Elliot Ackerman, who has been

(01:28:23):
on the show and served in the military.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
And is going to be on the show again.

Speaker 2 (01:28:28):
Because Elliott writes stuff even separate from working with Admirals Tavritas.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
They've got another.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):
Novel that's actually finished and is going to come out
next year called twenty eighty four. But in any case,
definitely go by and read twenty thirty four. So Elliot
wrote a piece for the Three Press and it was
published a couple of days ago, heading into a Memorial Day,
and I wanted to share this with you. It's a

(01:28:55):
column that is an ongoing series at the Free Press,
which is the FI dot com. It's an ongoing series
called Things worth Remembering, and different writers contribute to it
and again. This one is by Elliott's Ackerman, and let
me just this is.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
It's actually a.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
Little bit long, but I'm gonna I probably share the
whole thing with you. We'll see if I decide to
skip ahead a little bit. But it's up on the blog.
If you want to read it again or share it
with others, It's up on the blog at Rosskominsky dot com.
Of all American holidays, Memorial Day is beset by the
most contradictions. Officially, it's a somber holiday, one where we

(01:29:35):
honor our country's war dead, but it's also the holiday
that marks the unofficial beginning of summer. Over this long weekend,
many of us will pull out our barbecues, travel to
our local beach, check out the latest blockbuster. I grew
up in a religious household, and for me, a Memorial
Day weekend meant it was the one Sunday I didn't
have to go to church. The D five hundred was
on and I was allowed to watch the race with

(01:29:57):
my dad and no Elliot Ackerman, even though that's a
rather Jewish sounding name, Eliot Ackerman is not Jewish.

Speaker 1 (01:30:03):
Then he says, I.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
Joined the Marines and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. After that,
Memorial Day took on a different, more specific meaning.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
For me.

Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
In the early years, I'd spend the day visiting the
graves of friends buried at Arlington. Many Americans don't have
any personal ties to our war dead, so the remembrance
part of Memorial Day is for them an abstraction. The
first ever Memorial Day was anything but abstract. It was
celebrated in eighteen sixty eight, three years after the Civil War,
a national blood letting that killed one out of every

(01:30:34):
fifty Americans. Back then, everyone knew someone lost in the war.
The original idea was simple. The day would be used
to decorate the graves of the fallen. It was proposed
by John Logan, a retired Union officer who understood how
important it was to the dead that they not be forgotten.
The truth is, anyone who has fought in a war
and had the good fortune to survive understands this because.

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):
All of us have imagined our own deaths.

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
Like countless others before me, I knew that in the
event I was killed, I wanted to have one last
word with the people I loved, So I wrote a
few letters, hid them and told my best friend from
high school where they were in case anything happened. Fortunately
they were never opened. Today they sit in a drawer
with some mementos from the war. My father, who one

(01:31:23):
of the letters was addressed to, has since passed away.
My children, who were then unborn, have no letters addressed
to them. The letters are from a different time, as
if written by a different person. I doubt I'll ever
open them. The practice of writing a death letter is
as old as war itself. In the summer of eighteen
sixty one, Sullivan Ballou b Alou, a thirty two year

(01:31:46):
old Union major in the second Rhode Island Infantry Division,
I'm sorry, Regiment not Division, wrote one such letter to
his wife on July fourteenth, one week before the first
Battle of bull Run, wondering how to remember the dead
this Memorial Day, I recommend you spend a moment with
this letter. It begins, my very dear Sarah. The indications

(01:32:10):
are very strong that we shall move in a few days,
perhaps tomorrow, lest I should not be able to write again.
I feel impelled to write a few lines that may
fall under your eye when I shall be no more.
Now moving out of the quote from the letter and
back to Elliott, military life is filled with movement.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
You're never in.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
One place long, and the days before a battle are
often frenetic, as pieces are put in place for one
great effort against the enemy. If you love a soldier,
part of waiting for them is living with uncertainty. You
never know exactly where they are or what they're doing.
When I read the opening of this letter, I imagine how
much Sullivan and Sarah's life had changed in the prior

(01:32:50):
six months before the war. Ballou was an attorney, losing
his father at an early age. He had attended Brown
University for two years before establishing himself as a lawyer.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
He had married Sarah Hart Shumway six.

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
Years before, on October fifteenth, eighteen fifty five, and they
had started a family.

Speaker 1 (01:33:08):
When war came.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
She was in her mid twenties and they shared two sons,
Edgar and William. Then, in eighteen sixty one, after the
bombing of Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for volunteers.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
Balou answered that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
Call, left his family and took up life as a
soldier with the second Rhode Island Infantry. Listening to his
stridency in the next paragraph of the letter, I can
almost imagine their conversations as he made his decision to join.
Quoting now from Balu's letter, if it's necessary that I
should fall on the battlefield for any country, I am ready.

(01:33:44):
I have no misgivings about or lack of confidence in
the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage
does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American
civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government, and
how debt we owe to those who went before us
through the blood and suffering of the revolution. And I

(01:34:06):
am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys
in this life to help maintain this government and to
pay that debt.

Speaker 1 (01:34:17):
Keep in mind here that.

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
The oldest people alive at the time that he wrote
that letter.

Speaker 1 (01:34:25):
Because life expectancy was a lot lower.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
But the oldest people who were alive at the time
he wrote that letter were alive during the American Revolution.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Keep that in mind. Right back to Elliott's commentary.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
In Iraq and Afghanistan, our cause was rarely so clearly articulated.
It was the same for the American wars that preceded
mine in Vietnam and Korea. To hear a voice from
the past speak with such clarity about his cause gives
us a view into a very different America. In my wars,
we fought for myriad reasons, for each other we were professionals,

(01:35:01):
or because we loved soldiering and couldn't imagine or didn't
want a life outside the military. I can't remember ever
hearing someone say the reason they were willing to lay
down their life was for any government, whether it be Iraqi,
afghan or even American country. Yes, each other, yes, but
not the government. Willingness to make such a sacrifice is

(01:35:22):
never simple. I deployed five times to Iraq in Afghanistan.
My last nights in the US before leaving were some
of the longest of my life, and they never got easier.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
I both did and didn't want to go.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
That tension between obligations at home and a desire to
go is as old as war. Balloon must have felt
that acutely when he left home and began his long
march south. In his letter, he writes to Sarah of
his ambivalence as well as its sources, as well as
its source his love of her, and quoting from the letter, now, Sarah,
my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind

(01:35:55):
me to you with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence
could break. And yet my life of country comes over
me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on
with all these chains to the battlefield, well back to Elliott,
my final deployment. By my final deployment, I'd become a father.

(01:36:15):
The firebase where I stayed was pretty comfortable. I had
Internet in my room. Many nights I would skype with
my infant daughter. Often I would listen to her laugh
and try to get her to say Daddy, while my helmet,
body armor and assault rifle sat in the corner, just
out of the videos frame, ready for later that night,
when I would go on a raid with the Afghan
Special Operations Unit, I advised as I log off Skype,

(01:36:36):
I couldn't help but wonder if that call would be
the last time I spoke to her. In Valou's letter,
he's clearly wrestling with similar emotions. What will Sarah's life
be like without him? What will be left for her
and the children to hold on to? Now back to
the letter, forgive my many faults and the many pains.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
I've caused you.

Speaker 2 (01:36:54):
How thoughtless and how foolish I have oftentimes been. But
oh Sarah, if the dead can come back to this
earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall
always be near you in the gladdest days and in
the darkest nights, always always, And if there be a
soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath,
or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall

(01:37:16):
be my spirit passing by. Sarah, Do not mourn me dead,
think I am gone, and wait for thee for we
shall meet again. Sullivan Beleu was killed a week later
at the First Battle of Bull Run. Sarah Ballou never remarried.
She lived another fifty five years after her husband's death.
She died in nineteen seventeen and is buried next to him.

(01:37:41):
There's more to this, but you can go read it
at my blog. Just in the interest of time, I'm
gonna pause it. I'm gonna pause. I'll just read you
the last, very short paragraph. So please, this Memorial Day,
go to the beach, walk to the Blockbuster, have that barbecue,
Remember the dead, and then live for them. That is
what they fought for, and that is most of a

(01:38:03):
note called things worth remembering. Do not Mourn Me Dead
by Elliott Ackerman, published in The Free Press over the weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
VFP dot com. Hi Mandy, Hello.

Speaker 2 (01:38:18):
Were you married to Chuck when he was deployed?

Speaker 7 (01:38:22):
No, I met him after the military broke him into
tiny pieces and put him back together badly again. Yeah,
all right, so I got the I missed the cool part.
I just got the broken dude. Yeah, that's okay. I'll
take him.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
I'll take him too.

Speaker 7 (01:38:34):
I don't know if I said I would be I
would have been a great military wife. I'm not sure
I would have been a good military wife.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
That's kind of what I was wondering. I bet you would.
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:38:44):
I think I probably would have gotten in trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
How so.

Speaker 7 (01:38:47):
I you know, I don't like people bossing me and stuff,
and there's a certain amount of even as a military spouse,
you you kind of have to put up with a
certain amount of that. And the best military wife that
I know are the ones that don't take crap from
anyone but understand how the game is played.

Speaker 2 (01:39:06):
Yeah, well, even at at your current age, which I
was going to call your advanced age, but you're not
that advanced. Is I have heard come out of your
mouth the phrase you're not the boss of me?

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):
Correct?

Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
Okay, we dragon and I had a questions, two questions.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
First thing, okay eight days, eight days.

Speaker 4 (01:39:25):
The second thing, somebody requested bumper music for do it
like they do on the Discovery channel.

Speaker 1 (01:39:32):
So what is your dedicated? Dedicated it to you? Dedicated
to you?

Speaker 4 (01:39:36):
It was a Bloodhound dang song bad touch. So I
don't know. I don't this song with the lyrics.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Do it like they do on the Discovery end of
the song? No, do you have it? I don't know.
Then you won't be able to Yeah, you have to
cut it out of the pod. So it's a fairly
well known song. But you know I'm talking about listening
to it. Somebody's there was my song?

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
Well, they dedicated to you, and we're trying to figure
out why.

Speaker 7 (01:39:56):
I have no idea your gun do it like you know?

Speaker 1 (01:40:00):
I have no idea.

Speaker 7 (01:40:00):
Now have to go read the lyrics and try and
figure it out, ferret it out as it were.

Speaker 2 (01:40:05):
Folks, whoever whoever texted in that and and and dedicated
it to Mandy, could you please text in.

Speaker 1 (01:40:12):
And explain explain why? Explain why?

Speaker 5 (01:40:15):
Over here?

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
All right, folks, I probably will. I'll give you more
information tomorrow. I probably will do the pizza thing. Anybody
who wants to meet me for pizza after the show tomorrow,
just a short term thing, just to you know, a
short interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
Mandy can't make it friend. Yeah, it's not my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
So we'll probably meet up for pizza tomorrow after the show.
I'll give you the details then, Mandy, what you got
coming up?

Speaker 7 (01:40:35):
We are going to talk about Matt Walsh, who I
normally love, but boy, you waded into it this weekend
with his thoughts on marriage and within making more than
their spouses.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
And uh, we've got that.

Speaker 7 (01:40:46):
We've also got my friend Derek Wilburn from the Springs.
He's actually suing a left wing Waco activist for slander
and uh yeah, and then we.

Speaker 1 (01:40:56):
Got John Calderre to talk ring choice voting.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
I would be so happy if my wife made more
than I did, and especially if I was making an
okay living right, you know, I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:41:06):
Want to be for your marriage.

Speaker 2 (01:41:09):
He's wrong. Well, I'm sure you'll tell us how wrong
he is. Everybody stick around for Mandy