05-8-25 - *FULL SHOW* Trade Deal; You Want Factory Work; Real ID; Not That K-Car

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the
Prime Minister of the UK, Keir Starmer, have announced what
Trump is calling a major trade deal with the UK.
I have some thoughts about it, but first let's hear
some thoughts from the President of the United States.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's really good to have got this deal over the
line to both teams.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Tribute to our countries and tribute to your leadership.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Thank you well.

Speaker 4 (00:24):
It really is a great thing.

Speaker 5 (00:25):
And you go do your press conference and I'll see
you soon, maybe speak to you later, but thank you
very much.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
An incredible thing.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
I can't tell you that.

Speaker 5 (00:34):
For so many years, even as I said, everybody talked
and talked and talked about a deal with it just
seemed like a natural deal, but it was not done.
But now it was done with us. So I feel
very proud to have been a part of it. Care
thank you very much. I'm so we'll speak of very
good sell off back. Why don't I do this, Why

(01:03):
don't I have our Secretary of commerce. I would let
make give a little description of the day, quit and
then the good side, the very nice side, will be
speaking about it also. Maybe from seeing pretty well, I
think it's a very it's just been a deal that
was we thought very complicated, it became very simple. It's

(01:26):
opening up the country that we really didn't have the
kind of access to that I would have thought.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
I was surprised. All right, I'll tell you what. Let
me jump in here just in the interest of time.
So I have a few things. I have a few
things I want to say. First, I note that the
ten percent tariffs that President Trump is imposed on everything
will not.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Be lifted against the UK.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
And I've been saying throughout this entire process that I
think that no matter what deal any country does with
the United States, the President will not move those ten
percent tariffs away. And I can talk more about that later.
I think that's a little bit bad for the country.
You know, it is at tax on all Americans, but
at ten percent, it's you know, it's like I don't

(02:07):
feel that good today, But it's not like.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
I need to go to the hospital.

Speaker 6 (02:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
So it's bad, but it's not terrible, and we can
survive it, sure, And there are I will also note
there are plenty of industries out there where the profit
margins are so high that between the foreign manufacturer and
the domestic importer and seller, they will be able to
absorb some at least of the tariff amount, and many

(02:34):
of them will in order to just try to maintain
market share. Right now, if you're in an industry with
a three hundred percent profit margin, and it's not that
bad for you to go to a two hundred and
ninety percent profit margin and maintain your market share, right
So that will be some industries. But there are other

(02:55):
industries that run on very very narrow margins, and those
guys might try to absorb some of the tariff if
they can, but they're not going to be able to
absorb all of it, and prices will go up on
those things.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
So we'll see how all that plays out.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
But I want to just I want to take a
moment to talk about this deal for a second. So
the macro statement is to the extent that Donald Trump
uses this stuff as leverage to liberalize worldwide trade and
open other markets to American stuff.

Speaker 4 (03:31):
That's three cheers from me.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
And Trump is right when he identifies this problem that
lots of countries treat our stuff unfairly in an effort
to quote unquote protect their own markets, which is really
an enormous, an enormous penalty against the citizens of that
country that is putting tariffs on our stuff. They no

(03:56):
longer have an opportunity to buy our stuff at any
price they can afford, which often means our stuff just
doesn't go there at all. Right, Like, why would you
bother setting up a whole supply chain to sell something
into a country where you're going to have three customers
a year. So it almost works as a ban on
American stuff. And that's bad, but you got it. You

(04:16):
do have to remember that we always think of the
victims as being the American manufacturers, and they are victims,
but the bigger victims are the citizens in those countries.
And that's part of the reason that I don't like
America imposing tariffs, because we think about it as if
the primary victims are the foreign exporters. But I think
the primary victims are American consumers in any case, as

(04:38):
Trump uses this leverage to get deals done, even if
they're small, anything anything that makes trade freer and better,
And again just separate from Trump's baseline tariffs, I'm just
going to take that as a given for the moment.
I'm for it. I'm for it, so I want American

(04:59):
manufacturers to more stuff overseas. I've never said that doesn't matter.
I've just said it's not the only thing. Right, So
this is good and if he can do more of this,
it will be good. And maybe it won't be as
good as it might be without the ten percent tariffs,
but still good. Specifically with the UK thing, this is

(05:22):
a much bigger deal for the UK than it is
for the US for a very particular reason. So for
obviously the UK is much smaller than the US and
to be able to do a lot more trade with
US on a percentage basis is going to be better
for them.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
But that's not my main point.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
When when the British voted for Brexit, so getting out
of the European Union, setting up their own trade regime
and their own regimes for things like immigration law and
all kinds of stuff so they wouldn't be dominated by
these bureaucrats and Brussels. One of the very very top

(06:00):
things on the list of what they wanted to get
done was a free trade agreement with the United States,
and they've been working on it for a long time,
but the Biden administration had no interest. The Biden administration
had no interest in any of these issues. Really, they
didn't seem to care too much about China. They didn't
care about any of the stuff that Trump cares about.
And I guess I'm probably actually, I won't say i'm

(06:23):
in between them. I'm actually much closer to Trump in
terms of recognizing these problems and saying these are issues
and they need.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
To be dealt with.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm not with Trump on his proposed solutions for everything,
but you know, he's president and i'm not.

Speaker 4 (06:41):
And like so many things.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
The Biden administration either ignored a problem or made it worse.
But my particular point with this British trade deal is
that this has been worked on for a long time.
It was been active for a long time. You know,
maybe there was a little pause, but this thing was
basically sitting on the shelf, ready to go. And so
when Trump wants to get a deal done fast, because

(07:06):
for political reasons, he wants to say, look, this is
working and I'm making a deal and here's a good
deal with an important country and all that, he had
a bit of a head start on this one.

Speaker 4 (07:16):
And I'm not that's not a criticism.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
I'm just saying this was ready to go, and maybe
they did a little, a little bit of tweaking to
change a couple things in a way that Trump would
like it better, and was basically ready to go, and
so they did the deal. And my point is, I
think it will not be easy for the Trump administration
to do really significant comprehensive deals quickly with other countries.

(07:41):
They'll do them over time, but I suspect that for
a real significant deal, it's gonna it's gonna take a while.
This one was a much easier lift because it was
ready to go, and I'm grateful for it. Like I said,
I'm grateful for anything that makes trade freer. We'll be
right back. A ton of stuff to talk about today,

(08:04):
a lot of a lot of international stuff, but I
think I'll hold on on some of that for a bit.
We did take a little bit of Trump's press conference
announcing a trade deal with the UK. He's answering reporters
questions talking about this thing where he announced tariffs on movies,
tariffs on foreign movies. People aren't exactly sure what that

(08:25):
even means. Then the very next day his administration said, well,
we're not doing any of that right now, and we
got to look into what anyway that whole thing is
a little bit of a mess. But I got to
say Trump takes more questions than any president I've ever seen.
And even if I don't always like his answers, I
love his availability and and the fact that he will
sit there and answer reporters questions one after another. It's

(08:47):
it's it's how opposite from from the previous president who
was never available for anything because he was hiding and like, uh,
you know, having a couple of spoonful of spoonsful of
oatmeal before going to bed early. So anyway, let me
do another thing. Yesterday, just at the end of my show,

(09:08):
because it's always at that time, at noon hour time,
the Federal Reserve announced the results of their latest meeting
and they decided to leave interest rates unchanged. I'm not
going to spend a long time on this, right, it's
very it's very nerdy. But what Jerome Powell said, and
this ties into politics, right, So that's why I'm just

(09:29):
mentioning what Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Fed said,
and I'm is that there is increased uncertainty about the economy.
He did he did specifically in a press conference after
the official statement was released on paper or online or
whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
He did talk about the tariffs, and one of the things.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
That's interesting though, he said, look, we're holding our rate
steady because there's just so much uncertainty right now. And
again I think he is kind of sort of gently
pointing at the tariffs, pointing at Trump as the source
of the uncertainty.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
He didn't really say that.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
But what was interesting in the detail, Well, what are
they uncertain about? They're uncertain about there's a possibility that
unemployment might go up because of what's happening with this
trade policy. And if unemployment were to go up and
the economy were to slow down, then you would think
that in that case, the FED would respond by cutting rates.

(10:32):
And by the way, are they probably are too tight
right now? With inflation down in the twos and they've
got FED funds at four and a quarter to four
and a half, they probably should have cut already, right
And I know Trump wants them to. Trump wants them
to for different reasons, but I think they are a
little bit tight anyway.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
If if anything but he.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Is thinking about the trade policy causes unemployment to rise,
you would think the FED would cut. The other side, though,
is to pay. Ending on how the tariff policy the
trade stuff plays out, that could cause price increases, that
could cause inflation, and that would be a situation where
normally you would expect the FED to tighten, although to
be very clear, I do not think FED policy has

(11:14):
any real chance of offsetting inflation caused by tariffs. Right,
if you're tightening the money supply, if you're making money
more expensive, yeah, you could offset inflation that's being caused
by they're being too much money. But you can't really
offset inflation that's being caused by there being too small

(11:35):
a supply of goods into the United States, which might
or might not happen depending on how all of the
tariff policy plays out. All right, we have a ton,
as I said, a ton of stuff to do. I
have a question for you. We're going to stay with
a little bit of nerdy economics in the next segment.
Would you like to work in a factory? Would you

(11:56):
like your children to work in a factory? Some interesting
data on that. Right after this thought, I had a
guest here, but I got the time zone wrong, so
it's actually not right here. So I'm gonna have to
try to I'm gonna have to try to move move
a guest and we'll we'll deal with we'll deal with
all that and a in a bet, all right, all right,

(12:16):
still a ton of stuff I want to talk about today. Oh,
today is V Day, Victory in Europe Day. Uh, it's
it's a national holiday in the EU. And yeah, I'll
share with you from Wikipedia. It is the day celebrating
the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War Two
of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
So that's a pretty good thing.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Let's see. I'm I'm gonna try to do something while
I'm while I'm talking here and see if I can
see if I can text my my guest and see
if he can come on early the other the other guest.
This is just you know, this is this is how
it goes. This is how it goes. I think I
don't have his phone number though, so I'm gonna just
see if he can reschedule and just move things around.

(13:02):
Let's see, can just can you call in now? And
then I'll and then I'll put the number that I
won't say on the air, but we'll we'll see if
we'll see if he gets it, we'll see if he
calls it all right, So today is V Day, and
you know what, I'll tell you one one little thing.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
So I lived in Amsterdam for a while, and.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
It's a remarkable thing that I think Americans maybe don't
appreciate quite as much as we might what we did,
what we meant to those countries over there. And it's
not really I shouldn't say really, it's it's not an exaggeration.

(13:51):
It's not an exaggeration to think that the countries in
Europe that were being invaded, were it serious risk of
them all having to speak German a generation or two later,
German is not nearly as pretty a language as French

(14:13):
or Spanish. And I'm glad they're not all or English.
And I'm glad they're not all speaking German. And now Amsterdam,
if I remember correctly, I think the first Allied liberators
into Amsterdam, I think were Canadians.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Americans were right behind them.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
But when you get to V Day, living in Amsterdam
or I lived, there's still parades US Army World War
Two jeeps at the time I was there, Right, this
is a long time ago, now, right, this thirty years ago,
This thirty years ago, So you would have had World
War Two veterans who were certainly young enough to travel

(14:53):
and go in a parade and whatever.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
Right, if there were a World War two vet who.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Had been born in nineteen twenty five, let's say, right,
and was late teens in the war, right, then that
person would have been seventy years old when I was
living in Amsterdam. And it was something to see the
Dutch out on the streets waving American and Canadian flags.

(15:21):
It's a wonderful, wonderful thing, really fabulous. And there are
other places that are still like that. Parts of France
are still like that, especially up towards Normandy. You still
have towns where they have these parades and they do
all these It's great. And so I.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
Like to note V Day.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Even more than Victory over Japan, because you know, that's
a land war where the American soldiers were really on
I mean, we were on the ground in Ewo, Jima
and other places like that. I get it, But you
understand my point, enormous, massive land war in Europe and

(16:05):
talk about making the ultimate sacrifice. And I think that
I think that there is a generate the current generation
of young Ish Americans.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
And maybe not the young guest.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
I actually think there's enough pushback against wokeness going on
right now that actually maybe people under the age of
eighteen might be a little bit more sane, less woke
than people between the ages of say eighteen and thirty five.

(16:40):
But I think somewhere in that range. You see these people.
You see these kids at colleges right protesting Israel, protesting
everything that's good in the world, wearing the terrorist rags
on their heads. You saw the fire at the University
of University of Washington a couple of days ago, and
then you had a thing at Columbia University, my alma
mater yesterday where all these people wearing those terrorist rags

(17:03):
on their heads, you know, went into the library. A
bunch of them got arrested. And I don't know, by
the way, I don't know how many of them are students,
but you know, I doubt very many of those people
are over the age of thirty five or under the
age of eighteen. They're in that range. And I understand
always that in every generation, at least every generation in
modern times, In every generation in modern times, young people

(17:28):
are idealistic and often liberal.

Speaker 6 (17:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
There's a statement attributed to Winston Churchill. It's probably not true,
but I like it, Shannon. It seems like you know
what I'm gonna say, And that statement is if you're
not liberal when you're young, you're heartless, and if you're
not conservative when you're older, you're brainless. Right, And I

(17:52):
that sounds about right to me, although that would make
me heartless. I've never been liberal, even when I was
a kid, right conservative, and I'm still not conservative. Right,
I'm libertarian. I'm all about individual freedom. I've never been
I've never been a creature of the left, and I've
never been a creature of the right. I probably have.
I have more in common with the right than with

(18:16):
the left, except on social issues. But that's typical libertarian right.
On the right, conservatives more often than not, not always,
but want you to have a lot more freedom in
your business life, lower taxes, less regulation, all that kind
of thing, whereas the people on the left want to
burden your business life.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
And it's reversed on the social issues.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Right, the left wants you to have freedom to marry
who you want to marry, have an abortion, take drugs,
all this stuff. And you know it's funny. I hear
that coming out of my mouth, and I can hear people.
I can hear thoughts out there in the ether of
people saying having negative reactions to any of this stuff. Right, Oh,

(19:00):
I don't want them to marry just whoever they You know,
I don't want same sex marriage, or I don't want
people to take drugs, or I don't want abortion, right,
And I get that people have different views about this stuff,
but I actually don't.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
For me, it's all the same.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
For me.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
It's for me, it's all the same.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I want to be free in my business and I
want to be free in my personal life. And that's
why I've never been a creature of the left or
the right. And I have a feeling a fair number
of Americans are pretty close to me, especially in.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Their adult years.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
I do think lots and lots and lots of people
were more liberal when they were younger. And so getting
back to the v Day thing, I like. And this
isn't going to get any real attention in the United States,
but you know what might is the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the United States of America next year,
and anything that allows Americans to be reminded that we

(19:48):
are a fundamentally, good country is worth is worth doing,
It's worth doing, and so I just wanted to mention
that to you, all right, So again I had I
had teased that we were going to talk about working
in factories, but I had a brain cramp. I had
a guest in the for this segment who was in

(20:10):
the Eastern time zone, and I thought I thought they
set eleven, which would have been nine. I thought they
said eleven thirty, which would have been nine thirty here.
But actually I set eleven thirty my time, one thirty
there time.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
So that's so that guest is later and I will
come back to it.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Let's let's do a pope thing for a second, and
this is just a nerdy thing. So so far today
we've only gotten black smoke. That means that they had
a vote that did not result in the required two
thirds majority for somebody to be elected pope the last
time I checked the news, and I don't know if
there's been another one since I checked the news. Okay,

(20:51):
but the last time I had checked the news, we
had black smoke yesterday and then twice today. I don't
know if they've done another vote today. I haven't seen
that yet. They would have two more votes today, so
there have been three so far that have been inconclusive,
and I just I didn't get to this yesterday and
I wanted to, and so I just want to share

(21:14):
a little bit with you of the process of voting.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
And I'm going to just switch websites.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yesterday I had a the National Catholic Reporter website, I
think it was, but CNN has a pretty good explainer
of the voting process, and I just think it's interesting,
so I want to I want to share it with you.
Nine cardinals and there's one hundred and thirty three. By
the way, there's one hundred and thirty three cardinals who're
voting there from there from seventy different countries, and they
have to be under the age of eighty to be

(21:42):
allowed to vote. Nine cardinals are chosen at random to
perform specific roles in each session. And I assume a
session means at the beginning of the process for a
particular vote, all the way up to the result of
that vote, and then once you get the black smoke
and they do another vote later, I think that's the

(22:02):
next session. I think anyway, three of the cardinals are
called scrutineers. That would be a good band name, and
they oversee the voting three infer marii and you could
probably guess what that means, the word infirm three infer
mari They through a special process that I'll get into

(22:23):
again in a second, collect votes from cardinals who are
part of the voting process but who are too sick
to attend in person, and they're off in their room,
they can still vote, and then three revisers who verify

(22:44):
the results. So let me share a little more. Ballot
papers are handed to each cardinal, who in secret writes
his preferred candidate's name on the piece of paper. The
three scrutineers sit behind a table and right in front
of them they have a risk receptacle. And in this
in this elaboration of the story, the receptacle looks like

(23:06):
a wide bowl, like a like a Chinese walk, right,
a wide low thing like that, and then it has
a cover that goes on top of it, right, And
each cardinal walks up to that table where these scrutiniers are,

(23:26):
and they go up in order of seniority, and they're
holding their ballot up in the air the whole time.
So it can be seen the whole time. And then
the cardinal says, I call as my witness Christ, the
Lord will be my judge, that my vote is given

(23:47):
to the one who, before God I think.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
Should be elected.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I don't know if they do that in Latin or
if they do that in their own language that you
know they does. The American do it in English, and
the French cardinal do in French. I don't know. And
they drop it into this thing, and actually I think,
I think the thing it doesn't look like an open walk.
It looks like a walk with a cover on it.
And the cover has a hole in it, and then

(24:12):
you drop the ballot into that hole that's covering this
sort of low flat receptacle. So then the scrutineers review
and tally the ballots. I think this is fascinating, I
really do. No, I'm not Catholic. So the scrutineers add
up the votes, and the revisors after that checked the

(24:34):
results and if a candidate, as I said, if a
candidate gets two thirds of the total vote, he'll become
the next pope. So the first scrutineer shakes up this
container that has the ballots in it, so you know,
randomize them and then you know, let me get let
me get this right, and then they they count them.

(24:58):
By the way, let me just mention this third scrutineer
counts at the end of this process that will describe.
The third scrutineer counts the ballots, and if the number
of ballots doesn't match the number of people who vote
who are supposed to be voting, they burn all the
ballots and start that vote again. So anyway, the first
scrutineer unfolds each ballot, notes down the name, and passes

(25:22):
it to the next scrutiner. The next scrutineer notes down
the name as well and passes it to the third scrutineer.
So the first two guys are keeping the same list,
and they're going to make sure that the listener are
the same. The last scrutinier reads the name out loud
for all of the cardinals to hear, and records the vote.
And then after the name is read out loud, this

(25:43):
last scrutineer takes like a needle, a big needle that
has a chain or string going through it, and pierces
the ballot in a particular spot on the ballot where
it says the word elect Eligo, Eligo.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
They put it right through that word.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
And then leave it through so it's on the chain,
and they tie all the ballots together that way, and
then after all the names are read out and that
vote is counted, these ballots, which are now all tied together,
are placed in another container and burned. Fascinating, huh. There

(26:29):
can be as many as four votes a day, two
in the morning, two in the afternoon for the first
four days of the conclave. We're in the second day
right now. On the fifth day, voting is suspended to
allow time for prayer, quiet reflection, and informal discussion. Voting
resumes no more than a day later and continues for
another seven rounds before another break. If the stalemate continues,

(26:52):
cardinals can choose to vote between the two leading candidates
in the ballot immediately proceeding, and at that point only
only an absolute majority, not two thirds of the vote,
is needed to win. Last little tidbit here from CNN.
The longest People conclave on record stretched from November twelve,

(27:14):
sixty eight to September twelve seventy one, nearly three years.
That was due to political infighting among the cardinals. All right,
there's enough of that. So yesterday was the end, thank goodness,
of this year's legislative session here in Colorado. And we
have a legislature that I would call terrible, but that

(27:37):
would really not be fair to terrible legislators. And it's
not because all the people in it are bad. There's
a few good Democrats actually, and there's quite a lot
of good Republicans. And when I say good, I'm not
really making value judgments about them. I'm talking about their
policy preferences and what they think governments should be doing.

(27:57):
All right, most Democrats just on that level, you know,
I think most Democrats aren't very good. Although I think
I think some of them are well intended. I think
others are just kind of serving their masters in the
labor unions and their own power trips, and Republicans do
that too, not with labor unions but other groups. In
any case, it ended yesterday and at that point every year,

(28:19):
and this just tells you, This just tells you everything
you need to know about the legislature, or at least
how I feel about the legislature. As soon as the
session starts, I'm nervous and as soon as the session ends,
I breathe a sigh of relief. And because I say
it as a joke, but I don't know. I say
it in a way that sounds like a joke, but

(28:39):
it's not a joke. And that is when the legislature
is in session, I am not thinking about what our
state reps and senators are doing for us.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
I am thinking about what they are doing to us.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
And most of the time, not always, but most of
the time, the best we can hope for is that
they only hurt us a little bit, even though they're
going to try to hurt us a lot, especially financially
and in terms of freedom, except for abortion and drugs,
you can have those freedoms and gay marriage, and again

(29:22):
I'm for of those freedoms, but those are the only
freedoms you're allowed to have, and every once in a while,
separate from a freedom thing.

Speaker 4 (29:30):
Wait, let me just interject for a second.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
We are going to do some good recaps of the
legislative session in coming days, and I'm going to try
to have at least one Democrat and at least one
Republican on the show. We're going to start tomorrow with
Rose Puglici, who's the head of Republicans in the State
House of Representatives. I'm going to try to get I'm
going to try to get Paul Lundin on at some point,

(29:53):
who's the head of Republicans in the state Senate. I
might get a Democratic legislator on if they're willing to,
And I will get govern Jared Poulus on the show
to talk about it as well. So we're going to
do a recap with people who know a lot more
than I know. So sometimes the best thing that can
happen when you've got a legislature that is this bound

(30:13):
and determined to do things that steal your freedom or
increase your costs, sometimes the best thing that can happen
is they just they just run out of time to
pass a bill, or for some other reason, they just
don't get it where they want to get it. And
I just want to briefly share with you a bill
like this. This is a bill that actually Governor Polis wanted,

(30:33):
but it was.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
Defeated on a bipartisan basis.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I mean, it got some votes, but it got both
Democrats and Republicans against it, and the guy who's in
charge of regulating the insurance industry in Colorado was also
in favor of this thing. And I think it just
sounds like this crazy Rube Goldberg structure where it's just
too clever by half. So what they wanted to do

(30:59):
and this would have been and this was house built
thirteen oh two, and again it didn't pass, Okay, just
want to be clear, didn't pass. But this what this
did was assess a fee to homeowners as a percentage
of the cost of your homeowner's insurance. And they were

(31:20):
gonna start at one and a half percent, then they
lowered it to a half a percent. But whatever you
were gonna whatever you pay in your homeowner's insurance, you're
gonna have to pay the government another half a percent.
And they were gonna then redistribute that money to home
owners to get those homeowners to do things to make

(31:40):
their houses more resilient, whether it's against high wind or
hail or fire or whatever. And they would have used
this fee and I'm quoting here to defray the cost
of retrofitting their property to resist losses due to common
perils including windstorms, wildfire, and other extreme weather events. And
then their thought was that that would then cause insurance

(32:04):
companies to lower rates for everybody. So they were going
to take your money and then give it back to
you if you spent it in a way that they
wanted you to spend it, because they think that your
homeowner's insurance is too high, but that you're too stupid
to go do something about it yourself. Alternatively, what they

(32:27):
wanted to do was kind of socialize the risk. So
maybe you've got five houses that don't have any significant
risk of wildfire, and they've got good roofs already to
deal with hailstorms, right, and they're in some area in
the suburbs where there really aren't trees and wildfire is
not going to be a thing. So they want to
tax all those people and then redistribute the money, let's say,

(32:49):
from those five people to the one person over there
who has a bad roof, or the person over there
who lives near too many trees and you need to
cut down some trees.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
And it's just it's nuts.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
This is one of those a perfect example of an
idea that's so dumb that it could only have been
thought of by a smart person. So we've been talking
a little bit yesterday a little bit today about what's
going on at the Vatican as far as efforts to
choose a new pope. And I got a text from

(33:20):
a listener named Bill who said that his uncle was
pope for twenty minutes. And I thought that sounds like
a heck of a story. So Bill joins us for
a couple of minutes to tell us the story of
his uncle.

Speaker 7 (33:36):
Hi, Bill, Hey, Ross, how you doing today?

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Good? Good, Just to get you know, give us the lowdown.

Speaker 8 (33:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (33:42):
Actually it was my great.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Uncle, great uncle all right, great.

Speaker 7 (33:44):
Uncle Conclave of nineteen fifty eight, and you can find
us online. It's called the Siri thesis. But in fifty eight,
what happened during the conclave. Some white smoke went up
one of the days, and people rushed over to Signeter
Square and they thought, okay, there's a new pope. And
like a half hour later, some black smoke went up,

(34:05):
and so it was like, oh, we made a mistake
or something. Nobody said anything. Next day the pope is elected.
I think it was a cardinal ron colleague. He became
John twenty second. And what happened everything, of course, is
a secret in the contract. Nobod's supposed to say anything.
A couple of weeks later, supposedly in a newspaper, in

(34:25):
a French newspaper, they wrote, what happened, somebody was told
by the palace guards of what happened was that a
guy named Siri was actually elected, but he was so
anti communistic that he was threatened by the communists. His
family was, and so he said, okay, I'm not going
to be pope. And they said, well, we already sent
up white smoke, so we need to We need to
find somebody, and they elected my great uncle. His name

(34:48):
was Federico Tedescini, and he became pope for like twenty minutes.
But then they thought, you know, he's kind of sick.
He probably won't last, which was true. He died a
year later. So they decided to send up black smoke
and admit that they made a mistake. Next day, of course,
the white smoke comes out, and so all this was
kind of a conspiracy. In fact, there were some people

(35:09):
that heard about it and actually followed Siri for a
few years. There was a group of Catholics that followed
Siria as the duly elected pope. But in nineteen I
think it was two thousand and three, the book came
out by somebody who quoting the FBI that said exactly
what I just told you happened in that conclave of
nineteen fifty eight. So my great uncle was pope for
twenty minutes in nineteen fifty eight.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Love it. Fabulous story and way to tell it, very
briefly and succinctly. Bill, excellent, Well done, Thanks for texting in.
Thanks for coming on and sharing the story.

Speaker 4 (35:42):
I love it.

Speaker 8 (35:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (35:43):
As my son likes to say, infallibility runs in the family.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
That's funny.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
That's a good joke.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
All right, thank you, Bill.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
All right, that's pretty good. The pope, the pope is.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
In Catholic doctrine, the pope is infallible on matters of
the church, but not on every We've talked about that
a little bit in the past, right, So when you
know Pope Francis talks about climate change, that's not an
area where, even under Catholic doctrine, the Pope would be
thought to be infallible.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
It's not a matter of the church anyway.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
There you go. How about that great uncle pope for
twenty minutes. Let's do a couple other things. All right,
this story absolutely sucks, but I have to share it
with you a little or an update on a story
you already know about. That's just a really terrible story.
So you know what happened. You know what happened several
days ago when John Elway's friend and business partner fell

(36:42):
off the back of a golf cart that John Elway
was driving, hit his head on the ground and die
and oh there's white smoke. Wow, look at that white smoke.
They've got a new pope. Wow. I wonder when we'll

(37:03):
find out who it is. I wonder when we'll find
out who it is. That's a that's pretty quick. That's
pretty quick. The first full day the I think this
is the fourth vote, it's gonna be very I'm not.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
I'll come back to the ol Way thing in a second,
I promise. I just say one one sentence here. What
I think a lot of people are going to be
really interested in is not just who is he and
where's he from and all that, but but is the
new pope somebody who is going to be more on
the conservative side, like Benedict or John Paul a second,

(37:39):
especially benedict Or more on the liberal side, you know,
you know, anti he's sort of anti Trump and all
about climate change and all this other stuff that a
lot of people kind of wonder why is the pope
getting involved in that and who knows? Well, we'll we'll
find out. A very large number of the people who
got to vote on the next post are people who

(38:00):
were made cardinals by Pope Francis who just passed away,
And you might think that would make them kind of
of the liberal wing. But on the other hand, a
lot of them came from the southern hemisphere right South
America and Africa, and a lot of those places, especially Africa,
the tendency is toward more religious conservatism and religious orthodoxy.

(38:21):
So I think it would be a fool's errand to
try to predict whether the new pope will be a
relative conservative or a relative liberal. So as we get
more news, I'll let you know when we when we
find something.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
So there we go. I just want to finish up
on this l Way thing.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
So John Elway's friend and business partner, Jeff Spurbeck, obviously
the whole the whole nation heard this story, and nine
News actually did some. Mike Cliffs sports Guy did some
as much more investigative reporting as he could to try

(39:03):
to figure out what happened, and the Denver Gazette has this,
and I just wanted to share a little bit with
you because it's something I wanted to know and I
think it's something you will want to know. So John
Elway and his girlfriend and his son and his son's wife,

(39:24):
and Jeff Spurback and his wife and their friends, they
were at a private function at a place called the
Madison Club in La Quinta, which is a very very
upscale golf resort where people like Elway and like the
CEO of Apple and like people like that have property,
have homes. So they it was reported that they had

(39:49):
gone to an outdoor country music festival called Stagecoach, but
they didn't. They had gone there the night before, but
they didn't go this night. The weather was bad, and
so instead of going to do stuff in bad weather,
they loaded up some golf carts, three or four golf
carts with ten or fifteen people to go about a

(40:11):
quarter mile from wherever they were to Elway's house, and
always son and his son's group were in the cart
ahead of Lway. L Again, according to my Cliss, Elways
driving a single bench cart at the back and his
girlfriend was next to m with Jeff Spurback's wife on

(40:34):
the outside of the You know three people right, so
from left to right if you were looking forward, John Elway,
John always girlfriend and missus Spurback is named Corey, and
mister Spurback and another guy stood in the back of
the cart apparently, and they turned on some music and
they started the drive, and Spurback had told his wife, hey,

(40:59):
gho sit up front, He'd be more comfortable, and you know,
I'll just I'll go in the back. And Elway was
following the carts that were in front of him when
Spurbek fell fell off. And this is the part that
I really wanted to know. There was no swerving, no
horse play, no one was drunk. The cart didn't hit anything.
It was a smooth ride. We just don't know what happened.

(41:22):
Indications were that mister Spurbeck fell straight back, hit his
head immediately, had no other injuries, but it was clear
that it was immediately clear that he had a really
bad injury, and they called nine to one one and
paramedics showed up quickly. But it was it was clear
that as I understand this, like, he was basically gone,
at least as far as his brain and then his

(41:44):
body went after that. But I have to say it's
an incredibly horrendous story. But I'm glad to see reporting
that doesn't that says that there's no evidence that John
Elway did anything that caused the accident. Wasn't driving crazy,
wasn't drunk, wasn't anything, and it was just a.

Speaker 4 (42:02):
Terrible, terrible accident.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
If there can be any silver lining to this story,
and I don't know that there really can be, that
would be it. We'll be right back. Got the white smoke,
which means there is a new pope. We don't know
who it is yet, I do. I am looking at Polymarket,
which is a website where you can bet on these things,
and a gentleman named Pietro Perolin is by far the

(42:26):
leader in the betting odds trading somewhere around seventy percent.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
And I don't think.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
I'll spend a lot of time telling you about him
because it might it might not be him, but in
any case, he is. He is the most senior cardinal
or cardinal bishop who is less than eighty years old.
So that's, you know, potentially one one interesting tidbit. So

(42:55):
we're going to do our very best here on KWA
to bring it to you live. Whenever we get whatever
it is we get coming out of coming out of
the Vatican, let me just do something that said, kind
of story that bothers me that I wish somebody would
do something about it, and I get frustrated when the
person who can do something about it doesn't do something

(43:16):
about it. And this is just a news story I
never heard of before. A couple of days ago and
I was watching News Nation and right after Leland's show,
Ashley Banfield comes on, and her show is really she's
a lawyer, and her show is really, very very much
about legal cases. It's not a broad ranging news show

(43:39):
like Leland's show is, or you know most cable TV
shows that you're used to. It's really law oriented. And
she brought up this story that I hadn't heard of.
And so there was a guy. There's a guy named
Michael Edwards and in nineteen ninety four he sold like

(44:01):
a teaspoon or so maybe a tablespoon of cocaine worth
less than eight hundred and fifty dollars to an ex
girlfriend of his who happened to be a police informant.
He was arrested. He had two prior, minor nonviolent arrests

(44:25):
for drugs, and because they have a three strikes law
in Florida, where he is, he was sentenced to sixty
six zero years in prison for I mean, I could
say for selling a teaspoon of cocaine. You could say, well,

(44:49):
for having selling a teaspoon of cocaine and having two
previous violations. I get that, but sixty years and he's
been in prison for what He's served thirty one years
in prison, and the person who can do something about

(45:12):
it is Governor Ron de Santis of Florida, who so
far has said he's not interested. And I think that's
a shame in a way. As long as I'm watching
the pope and all this, I think it's a sin
to steal a third at least of somebody's life for

(45:33):
a nonviolent, voluntary transaction between two adults involving a small
amount of a prohibited substance. It's insane. And the sooner
we get past this war on drugs, the better. And
this refusal by Ron de Santis to say that's enough

(45:58):
already is a stain on his record. I wonder if
you agree with me. I would like to know your
thoughts at five six six nine zero. All right, here's
what we're gonna do. We're gonna I'm gonna hit a
break right now to try to make sure that when
we get an announcement for the from the Pope, if
that's coming soon, that we're able to bring it to you, uh,

(46:22):
that we're able to bring it to you live and
tell you who the next who the next Pope is,
Who the next guy in the Pope mobile is. We'll
do it right after this or whenever they show up
here on KAA, the new Pope is going to come
to the Vatican balcony, stand out there on the on
the balcony, and I assume, say a few I don't know,
Actually I don't know. Is he gonna talk, is he

(46:44):
just gonna wave? I don't see a microphone or anything.
I have no idea. But anyway, we'll.

Speaker 8 (46:48):
Seply are trusted to Rob Dawson says that they he
will come out and give a quick prayer and then
announce his name all that kind of stuff here hopefully
within the next ten minutes or so.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
That is the belief the buzz around here.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, and actually this is kind this part is kind
of interesting. Right. I mean, he's got to choose a name.
And we talked about this in the past, right. I
don't know if there's ever been a pope who actually
used his own name. I guess the very the person
who's considered to be the very first pope is that Paul.
Maybe I forget, one of one of Jesus' buddies is

(47:21):
the first pope and I think it well, or he's
considered that, and I'm guessing that was just his name
all along. But historically and for a long, long, long
long time, pope's chose a different name. According to the Internet,
Sat Peter, Peter first Peter twelve, right, and and so

(47:42):
I'm guessing, you know, because his name is Peter and
the stories about him and then still as pope. But
generally they pick a different name, and the name is
supposed to represent something, what you want to be, the
way you want to behave, who you honor. And Pope
Francis chose Francis, and he was the first Pope Francis
because of Saint Francis, as of Saint Francis of ASSISI
who had who lived a certain way, a philosophy of life,

(48:08):
an approach to things that this previous pope wanted to emulate,
so it will be really interesting to see and in
a sense, I think you because I mentioned earlier that I'll,
you know, even as a non Catholic, I'll be interested
to see whether the pope they pick ends up being
someone who is more on the conservative end or more

(48:29):
on the liberal And then you might might get a
clue about that based on the name he chooses, although
I have to say I don't know enough about Catholicism
and Catholic history to to where I will immediately be
able to put that together and say, oh, that's a
conservative name or that's a more liberal name. I have

(48:50):
no idea, and I don't know if anybody knows that
much that you could make that prediction with with high confidence.
So there's that. So as soon as the new pope
comes out, we're going to just jump to that live.
And in the meantime, I want to just work on
some other things. There's some local stories, some state stories,
some other stuff I want to do. We had a
lot of international and national today, but I want just

(49:12):
want a little bit of local stuff now. I think
our KOI news team covered this a couple of days
ago and I didn't get to it, but I just
want to mention it, and that is that in Denver,
the mayor is proposing pretty significant pay raises for members
of the mayor's cabinet. And I'm not going to go
through all of them, but these are just some of

(49:33):
the top ones in order of percentage increase in salary. Right,
So this is from most to least, but these are
still all big numbers. So the Director of Finance proposing
going from one hundred and eighty five thousand a year
to two sixty six. The director of that's forty four percent.

(49:56):
The Director of Human Services going from one seventy six
to two thirty two.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
That's a thirty two percent increase.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
The Director of City Services going from one seventy seven
to two to twenty one to twenty five percent increase,
the City Attorney going from two sixteen to two sixty
eight to twenty four percent increase, and it goes on
from there. I won't read anymore, but you get the idea.
These are these are pretty big increases, and the mayor
is saying that the salaries that Denver offers right now

(50:28):
are too low to attract the best possible talent and
there have been three years in a row now with
no raises for those twelve department heads. I guess he's
pushing for a raise for the heads of all twelve
of his departments, but there have been no raises for

(50:49):
any of them, uh for for the last three years.
And his goal is to be able to and this
is a quote from the city's deputy HR director, attract
and retain top talent.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
I'd say I get that, and I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
I have absolutely no idea what the fair market value
is in terms of annual salary for the person who
is director of I don't know. Pick a thing, parks
in recreation for a big city, I don't know. I
don't know the parks in recreation. By the way, one
hundred and seventy one thousand right now, proposing two hundred
and seven thousand for a twenty two percent increase, is

(51:26):
that the right number. I have no idea, and I'm
not going to sit here and criticize it saying I
know it's the wrong number. I know that it's easy
and common for people to object when government workers, especially
highly paid government workers, get raises. I get it, especially
when times feel a little tough especially when you feel

(51:47):
like government is wasting so much money on so many
other things as Denver is very very good at and
it doesn't it doesn't feel great when you think, oh,
I'm gonna have to get more in taxes in order
for these people to get a raised, or we'll have
fewer city services in order for these people to get
a raised. But it's not a crazy argument to say

(52:09):
you want people who are fairly talented at their jobs.
You might not need the world's best parks and rec manager, right,
but you probably want someone who's pretty good to be
managing that, or managing finance, or managing HR or managing
whatever else for the city of Denver if you want
to be a world class city, and it might actually
be that. At the salaries that we have, somebody could say,

(52:32):
you know what, I really like it here, but Omaha
offers thirty percent more and cost of living is twenty
percent lower, So I'm leaving. I'd rather live in Denver
than Omaha. But the math just doesn't work anymore. And
then you lose that person, you lose the talent, and
you lose the experience and all that. So the city council,

(52:53):
the city council is not necessarily on board with this.
Flora Alvadrez of the City Council said, the cleaning staff
is furloughed two days a week now, and when I
compare the need of that person to someone making over
two hundred thousand dollars, it hurts my heart.

Speaker 4 (53:13):
I'll come back to that in a second.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
The full City Council is going to hold a final
vote on this proposal June second, after members requested more
time to weigh the plan. You know, there's I thought
I saw in here, right, So the way Axios describes this,
some council members question both the equity and the option
and the optics of the plan. The optics I talked

(53:37):
about already. The equity is a weird thing, and I
guess that's what Flora Alvadrez is getting to, like, Well,
people who already make a lot of money shouldn't make
more when there are people who make very little money,
and we should give that money to them instead. But
that's not the real world, right, And that's not the
real world. That's the world of unicorns and big Rock
Candy Mountain that I talk about all the time. And

(53:58):
I understand, absolutely understand the point that Flora Alvadrez, who
I don't really agree with on much of anything, but
I understand the point that she's making.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
I'll say again, I'll quote her again.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
When I compare the need of that person, a person
who works on the cleaning staff and is now furloughed
two days a week, When I compare the need of
that person to someone making over two hundred thousand dollars,
it hurts my heart.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
But your heart's irrelevant.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
This is the problem with people of that particular political
persuasion is they make decisions based on their heart. But
the real world doesn't care how your heart is. The
bottom line is, if you need a really talented manager,
say a manager of finance, that's a big deal. Somebody
running the city and County of Denver's finances, that's a

(54:49):
big deal. You want a talented person, You want an
experienced person. That person has choices. That person can earn
what whatever the market will bear, and you need to
put together a whole package. And some of it could
be Yes, maybe they're willing to work for a little
bit less just because Denver is or it used to

(55:11):
be such a great place to live. On the other hand,
maybe they need more because Denver is now a very
expensive place to live. Meanwhile, the person who is on
the cleaning staff has a skill set. I'm not look,
I'm not insulting anybody, but the skill set of the

(55:32):
person on the cleaning staff is easier to replace than
the skill set of the person to run the finances
of Denver. There are more people with the skill set.
And also perhaps wherever the cleaning staff is cleaning, maybe
it doesn't need to be cleaned seven days a week,
or however many they were cleaning it, And maybe it's

(55:54):
just a fine thing anyway to furlough the cleaning staff
for two days a week, even if it hurts your heart.
So I again, I just wanted to bring that up
because it's it's very easy to as a gut reaction,
object to any government worker ever getting a raise. But

(56:16):
that might not be the right answer, and we need
to really be open minded about it, even in Denver.
Even in Denver, we're still waiting for the new Pope
to show up on the balcony. I'm keeping an eye
on what's going on on TV. You've got the Swiss
guards out there and there and their funky uniforms. Draggon
is having a you know, keeping his ear on what's

(56:36):
going on so we can bring it to you live. Uh.
The pageantry is interesting. The Swiss guards are I love
the Swiss guards and the way they dress and and house.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
I love, I love all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
I mean, I like, I like the changing of the
guard at Buckingham Palace. I like I like the I
like the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery.

Speaker 9 (56:58):
Even for a Jew like you, this is absolutely fascinating. Yeah, yeah,
it is. You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate this.
And and it was I forget the number, but Pope
two hundred and sixty. I mean, there have been popes
for for a long long time. I mean Catholicism is
only half as old as Judaism, or less than half,
but it's pretty old. Right of the of the Western

(57:19):
of the major Western religions.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
I guess Catholicism would be the oldest except for Judaism, right,
Hinduism is older, but that's over there. So, I mean,
there's a big deal. And there's so much tradition and
so much history, and I do dig it. You don't
have to be Catholic to dig it. So and again,
we're gonna try to, you know, assuming they cooperate with
the timing.

Speaker 4 (57:40):
You know, we're gonna we're gonna bring this to you live.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Let me, let me mention one other thing, and again
I'll interrupt myself where Dragon will interrupt me as soon
as it's the right time for it. But many of you,
especially if you've been following politics and political philosophy and
political debates for a long time, will be aware of
a guy named David Horowitz. I don't know how many
of an He kind of a neo con in the
truest sense, and I don't mean usually the term neocon

(58:05):
is used relative to foreign policy, but if you think
about what it means neo Khan, a new conservative, it
means somebody probably wasn't conservative before and became conservative. David
Horowitz was definitely that. And I don't know how many
of you know this, but some years ago, gosh, he's

(58:25):
probably more than ten years ago now, David Horowitz moved
to near Parker, Colorado, so he's been here, and he
passed away a little over a week ago at the
age of eighty six from cancer. I met him a
time or two. I had him on the show A

(58:46):
time or two. Very very very smart, intellectual guy, also
a very aggressive debater and writer, and very critical of
the things he was critical of and not shy about,
not shy about anything, not shy about anything.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
David's good friend.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Who also happens to be a good friend of mine,
is a guy named Steve Schuck a Chuck, and he's
a real estate developer in Colorado Springs. But he's also
a big time philanthropist and probably the single biggest supporter
and the single most important supporter of school choice in
the entire state of Colorado. So Steve said about David Horowitz,

(59:31):
David's courage, his love of country, his selfless personal sacrifices
in the face of unrelenting, vicious attacks and criticism bordering
on persecution, combined with his raw warrior defensive truth, have
inspired an army of us to carry on his battle
for freedom. And that's a great line and the reason

(59:53):
of the other thing that I wanted to mention, and
I described him as a neocon. He was born to
a couple of school teachers in Queens, New York who
were communists. And I don't mean, oh, I think they
were that far left that I'll call him a communist.
They called themselves communists, right, he was when Horowitz was

(01:00:14):
a little kid. He was marching like COMMI parades when
he was nine years old. And then later on in
life he actually edited a far left, borderline communist magazine
called Ramparts and a quote from the Colorado Springs Gazette.
As The Washington Post noted last week, the nineteen seventy

(01:00:36):
four murder of his friend Betty van Patter by the
Black Panthers shattered his illusions about leftist morality. The betrayal
propelled him toward a reckoning detailed in his nineteen ninety
six memoir Radical Son, a masterpiece that has readers feeling
the ache of a man who saw Utopia's mask slip

(01:00:58):
to reveal Tyranny's. So I think I'm not going to
share more of that with you right now, but I
just did want to say, David Horowitz rest in peace.
A very interesting guy for many years, a very important
guy in national political debates. And yeah, that's it. That's

(01:01:20):
what I want to say about that. All right, let
me lighten it up for a little bit. And again
we're waiting for the Pope. Dragon will tell us when
the new Pope is coming out and we'll work it out.
If we go to a break and there's gonna be
news or something, we'll try to we'll try to interrupt
whatever we have to interrupt to bring you to bring
you this.

Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
So, have you heard the K car? Not that K car?

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Now? Do you remember maybe it was seventies or eighties,
was it Chrysler, Maybe that made a very very ugly
and exceedingly ugly today and called the K car. That's
not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about
is something that is spelled K ei K e I
and a KI, so a K car, K vehicle. These

(01:02:06):
things come from Japan and they're very small vehicles that
can be in different forms. It could be a little sedan,
it could be a little truck, it could be a
lot of different things. And I'm gonna share with you
from House Bill twelve eighty one, which passed the state
legislature and will become law.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
It's a bipartisan bill.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
A K KI vehicle is the smallest road legal four
wheeled vehicle in Japan and is imported into the United
States as a used vehicle. And so this is kind
of a cool thing. I cannot tell you the last
time that I saw, and I'm sure these are out there,

(01:02:47):
and there's probably there's probably a bunch this year that
I just didn't see, all right, So I'm not saying
I see every bill and this never happens. I'm just
saying I haven't seen. I can't tell you how long
it's been since I've seen a bill that passed unanimously
in both chambers of the state legislature. Every Republican, every
Democrat in the Senate and the House voted for this thing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
So what is this about? Related to K cars?

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
So these are wacky little cars that some Americans like
to drive, some Americans like to collect, and some folks
in state government being you know, what bureaucrats are. And
it appears people in the Motor Vehicle Department, if I
understand the story correctly, were trying to use a backdoor

(01:03:36):
kind of way. It wasn't really law, but to reinterpret
a provision of law to ban these vehicles so that
you could not get a license plate for one if
you had one. And some people brought this to the
attention of some legislators, and they said, this isn't right,
this isn't right. By the way, you're not allowed to

(01:03:57):
drive these things faster than fifty five miles an hour
on a highway. Actually, no, I take that back. It's
not that you're not allowed to drive it faster than
fifty five. It's that you're not allowed to drive the
vehicle on a road that has a speed limit higher
than fifty five miles an hour. Also, the way these

(01:04:18):
things are, you have to do different emissions testing. You
don't use a dynamometer, but you use something else. In
any case, what this law does is very simple. This
law says that the DMV must register and allow these
particular emissions testing standards for these K vehicles so that

(01:04:40):
people who dig these wacky little Japanese vans and cars
and trucks can use them. Just a tiny little step
toward freedom, pushing back on these bureaucrats who look sometimes
I just default to attributing bad motives to them, and
I probably shouldn't. I'm guessing that the bureaucrats who wanted

(01:05:03):
to ban these things think that they're not safe enough.
But I just get so sick of the nanny state.
I just get so sick of people saying that's too dangerous,
you can't do it. You can't drive that car, you
can't do this, that or the other thing. You can't

(01:05:26):
choose a medicine that you want without having to get
a doctor's and all these things like I'm an adult,
Leave me alone.

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
And this is a great example.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
So the bureaucrats maybe thought, oh, these things aren't safe enough.
But you know what, as long as their breaks are fine,
and as long as it's not unsafe because I'm going
to cause an accident that's going to hurt somebody else.
If the risk I'm taking is that, you know, maybe
they're a little bit lighter and maybe there's a slightly
higher chance that I'll get hurt, I should have the

(01:05:57):
right to take that risk.

Speaker 4 (01:05:58):
And I wish that more often.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
The folks who are doing a regulation would try to
remind themselves what their actual purpose is. So there you go,
the first fully unanimous bill in the state legislature that
I've seen in a long time. We're gonna get a
break right here, because we expect at any moment the
new Pope is going to show up, and we'll bring
you that live here on Kiawa anxiously awaiting the new

(01:06:25):
Pope to show up on the balcony at the Vatican,
and we will bring that to you live when it happens.
We are keeping our eyes and ears on it for you,
and yeah, we'll bring it to you live. The betting
odds are on a gentleman named Pietro Perolyn, So we'll
see if it ends up being him. He's he's seventy
years old and he's been the Secretary of State of

(01:06:49):
the Vatican for about a dozen years. So that would
be an interesting choice in the sense that this is
a guy who understands international relations and diploma to see
extremely well. So anyway, I have no idea if it's
gonna be him. The betting odds think it's gonna be him,
but I don't know why that people who are betting
think what they think.

Speaker 4 (01:07:09):
All right, let's I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Just gonna go through a few little stories and when
when the new pope shows up, we'll we'll we'll go
to that and we'll learn the we'll learn.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
His papal name. Isn't this an interesting thing?

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
By the way, So the cardinals, the bishops and so on,
everybody below the pope, even in the highest the highest
levels of the Catholic Church below the pope, are not
considered infallible, right, I mean, they're smart and you know

(01:07:42):
know what they're talking about. But as soon as one
of them is picked and becomes pope, suddenly they become
infallible in matters of the church, only not about everything
under the sun. But I do find that an interesting thing,
and I have talked with a Catholic friend of mine
about it a little bit, and I understand the concept somewhat.
And each every religion has their own stuff that is,

(01:08:05):
you know, like, oh, how does that work? And for me,
this is one of them, Like how does a guy
go from being just a guide to being infallible an
hour later?

Speaker 4 (01:08:14):
I don't know, but that's okay. I don't I don't
have to know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
I don't. I don't have to get it. I just
think it's interesting. So we'll see when that comes through.
I wanted to share. We talked a couple of days
ago about the Department of Education. Actually, we had a
guest on the show talking about the Department of Education
beginning recommencing collections on student loans that are in default.
And I saw a piece on CNBC that was from

(01:08:41):
a day and a half ago, and it had a
couple of little things that I thought were worth mentioning
to you and really kind of struck me.

Speaker 8 (01:08:49):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
First of all, as we said on Monday, the Trump
administration began collection efforts on student loans that are in
default after about five years of the federal government not
doing that. The Education Department began this week alerting about
one hundred and ninety five thousand student loan borrowers who
are in default that their federal benefits will be subject

(01:09:13):
to garnishment in thirty days. So these people who have
outstanding loans, who haven't been paying on their loans, they
could see social Security.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
Retirement checks taken.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
And how about that? Right, This was the first thing
that jumped out at me. Normally, when I'm thinking of
who owes money on a student loan, I'm not thinking
about somebody who's collecting Social Security, right, I'm thinking of
a thirty five year old, But they can have Social
Security checks seized by the government. As soon as next month,
the Treasure Department is going to send notices to five

(01:09:46):
point three million defaulted borrowers about the collection activity of
their wages later this summer, The Education Department wrote, since
the pandemic began in March, of twenty twenty, collection activity
has been paused.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
I think this is just terrible. We talked about that already.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
The Trump administration's aggressive collection activity is a sharp turn
away from that strategy of like offering what I guess
the Biden people called relief, but I will just call
vote buying. And it's well past time that the federal
government got back to collecting from people the money that
they owe me. They owe me, those students, those students

(01:10:27):
with that loan, they owe me the money. And you
and your kids and everybody who pays taxes in the
United States and is on the hook for the national debt.
That's all of us, and they better pay. Secretary of
Educational Linda McMahon said borrowers should pay back the debts
they take on, and that is absolutely right. Now back

(01:10:51):
to the thing I mentioned a moment ago that really
kind of struck me. I didn't realize listen to this.
There are some two point nine million people age sixty
two and older who still have student loans outstanding. Wow,

(01:11:15):
how's that even possible? Unless you're unless you go to school,
That's what I was gonna say, Unless you're Rodney Dangerfield, right,
unless you're Rodney Dingerfield. How do you have student loan
dead at the age of sixty two? How is that possible?
I mean would like to.

Speaker 8 (01:11:32):
Think at that point in your life you're more well
off and you would be able to just go to
school on your own dime versus taking a loan out for.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Yeah, I mean you're at that point you're either a
deadbeat or you've had some kind of very difficult life
and you haven't been able to pay back. But they're
coming for you, all right, They're coming for you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:51):
By the way, this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
Two point nine million people age sixty two or older
with loans outstanding.

Speaker 4 (01:11:56):
This is as of a couple of months ago.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
That's a seven seventy one percent increase from just eight
years earlier when there were one point seven million people
sixty two or older that have student loans outstanding. So
that means because I don't think we had I don't
think we had lots of sixty year olds going to
college in that time. So what it means is lots
and lots of people who were in their fifties, late fifties.

Speaker 4 (01:12:22):
Or early sixties even.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Decided hey, I'm going to stop paying on my loans,
right and I'm not or are they just anyway, I'm
I find the whole thing so strange to me. It's
it's just incongruous, right to think, Wait, sixty six year
old with a student loan, what have you been doing?
What have you been doing? But I'm telling you, these

(01:12:46):
people are going to start losing their Social Security checks
and I'm not cheering for that, but I am cheering
for the American taxpayer to get repaid.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
I have so much more to do.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
We'll have to see what I can get to versus
the new Pope, who probably takes priority over me. So
we'll take a quick break, we'll come back, and whatever
happens next, well, we'll handle it all right. We're going
live right now. I think Dragon is a little bit
ahead of what I've got. We're going live right now
to what we think is going to be the new

(01:13:19):
Pope showing up on.

Speaker 7 (01:13:21):
The balcony.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Our baby stop.

Speaker 6 (01:13:33):
Man, I don't know my cardinals worm worma Robert.

Speaker 7 (01:13:51):
Son de.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
God, you know that my payball stunk.

Speaker 10 (01:14:00):
QUI se be no man named potuita Leon dechi mon coat.

Speaker 9 (01:14:14):
M hmm.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
So the new Pope is.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
On the balcony and he is heard.

Speaker 11 (01:14:29):
At Robert Francis Prevost of the United States born in Chicago,
an American pope named the next Pope. There you see
a picture of him on the left hand side of
your screen. There have been so much talk about whether
or not there was a slim possibility that there would
be an American pope, one from the United States.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Wow.

Speaker 11 (01:14:53):
He went to college at Villanova, studied mathematics. Italian media
has referred to him as the least American of the
Americans because of his quiet, humble way, fascinating get years
of missionary experience in Peru, strong connections in Latin America

(01:15:15):
and the bishops, and through the years he said very
little about the church's divisive subjects, same sex blessings, a
female ordination, helping him to maintain a broad appeal.

Speaker 4 (01:15:29):
Before we hear from him and the name he has
chosen is Leo the fourteenth, an American pope.

Speaker 11 (01:15:39):
Incredible again, Cardinal Robert Francis Cravost of the United States,
making history, the first pope ever chosen from the US,
and he will be called Pope Leo the fourteenth.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
Obviously, this is the first American pope ever. Among the
cardinals who could vote this time, there were ten Americans
among the one hundred and thirty three cardinals.

Speaker 4 (01:16:09):
We are expecting him to speak.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Remarkable. I'm stunned. I'm not Catholic, but I'm stunned. An
American pope just incredible. I suspect, and I'll stop talking
as soon as he starts talking. I suspect that part
of the reason that Pope Francis elevated this, this gentleman

(01:16:35):
Robert Francis Prevost is his name is because of all
the I'm guessing, but he did a lot of work
in South America. He was a missionary in Peru and
so on. For those who are, you know, think about
the different subdivisions of Catholicism waiting to hear when when
he was you know, when he was young, when he

(01:16:56):
first was coming up within within the religion, he was
with the Augustinians, right, unlike, for example, the Jesuits, who
paulpe Francis was.

Speaker 4 (01:17:08):
He was a Jesuit.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
So Prevost, at least at the beginning of his career,
was an Augustinian. I'm and I'm not expert on this stuff,
all right, I don't claim to be. He did, he
did become a priest in the seventies, joined the Order
of Saint Augustine, took his first vows in seventy eight

(01:17:31):
to the Order, and then what they call the solemn vows. Again,
I'm not expert on this stuff. In nineteen eighty one
he got a master's degree in divinity from Catholic Theological
Union in Chicago, and then yeah, I guess he so
he stayed with the Augustinians. In the nineties he was
elected what they call provincial of the Augustinian Province of Chicago,

(01:17:56):
and he had been overseas. He came back from Peru
to Chicago take that position. Anyway, Again, I'm not expert
on any of this. I just am amazed. I'm absolutely
amazed that there is an American pope. One of the
things that I wonder about, and I'm gonna word this

(01:18:19):
very carefully because I'm not looking to reign on anybody's
on anybody's parade. The American Catholic Church has had some
issues that I'm not gonna delve into more. You understand
what I'm talking about, and the new pope has in
the past been the subject of some questions or criticism

(01:18:41):
regarding how well some of those issues were handled under
his leadership. I'm just gonna put it gently like that,
and we'll see people who know more think more about
the Catholic Church will will go over all of this stuff.
But wow, an American pope for the first time, for

(01:19:02):
the first time ever on the betting odds were wrong, right,
I mean, this guy in the betting odds and here,
let me actually see if I can find a chart,
and I'm looking at polymarket dot com. Give me one
second here, So okay, gosh, this would be like betting
on the longest long shot, like in the in the

(01:19:24):
history of the Kentucky Derby or something. So he was
trading in terms of betting odds this morning. He was
trading at one percent or two percent. He was just
down the list of one of these people. Well, we'll
put his name there, you know, because I guess it's
theoretically possible. We'll put his name there and one or

(01:19:48):
two percent. So and now he's one hundred percent. The
other thing that I would like to look up if
you don't, if you don't mind bearing with me for
a moment.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
So his.

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
Name, his chosen name, is Pope Leo the fourteenth, the
last Pope Leo obviously, the thirteenth was a little over
one hundred years ago, and he was pope from eighteen
seventy eight for twenty five years until until nineteen oh three.

(01:20:27):
It was actually the fourth longest reign as pope of
any according to Wikipedia, any documented pope, and the third
longest reign that we know for sure for sure, because
we actually dragon and I were mentioning earlier with Saint

(01:20:47):
Peter as being kind of the first pope, but it's
not known for sure how long Peter, Peter the Apostle
was pope. So anyway, what else can I there's so
many lee you know, these guys, these guys pick pope
names based on behavior and philosophy that they want to emulate.

(01:21:09):
And I mentioned to you that it'll be interesting to
see whether they pick a pope who is more conservative
like Benedict was, or more liberal like Francis was. And
again it's a very relative term. And please bear with
me in the sense that I am I'm Jewish, I'm
not expert on this, Okay, I'm doing the best I can. Clearly,

(01:21:33):
Francis was a liberal, very liberal, and clearly Benedict is
very conservative. But again, as I said, it's relative in
the sense that even a liberal pope is against abortion,
even a liberal pope is against having a.

Speaker 4 (01:21:57):
Female pope, and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
So I thought it would be kind of interesting to
get a sense of what is this guy likely to
be like. So I'm looking right now at some information
about the last Pope Leo, and I just mentioned, you know,
a little over one hundred years ago, and check this
out this from Wikipedia. Pope Leo the thirteenth well known

(01:22:25):
for his intellectualism and his attempts to define the position
of the Catholic Church with regard to modern thinking. In
his famous eighteen ninety one encyclical Rerum Novartum, Pope Leo
outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe
working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming

(01:22:48):
the rights to property and free enterprise, opposing both socialism
and lesse fair capitalism. With that in cyclical, he became
popularly titled the Social Pope or the Pope of the Workers,
also having created the foundations for modern thinking in the

(01:23:10):
social doctrines of the Catholic Church. And again, a lot
of this is beyond me. It's not stuff that I've
thought about, but let's see what we can hear now
from the Vatican in therea is the new pope. You'll

(01:24:38):
hear from me mem in a moment, I trust, the
first American ever to become pope. Remarkable, really remarkable, standing
on the balcony wearing vestiments. I try to describe a
basically a white robe, purple, I don't know what you

(01:24:59):
call it, almost like a vest and then a gold
I mean, I don't know all the times a sparse.
He's flanked on either side by a couple of the
other cardinals. I believe he's standing on the balcony looking

(01:25:38):
rather serene, nodding his head just slightly, waving to the crowd.
And the crowd is, you know, wildly enthusiastic. And I
mean obviously almost everybody in that crowd will be will
be Catholic, but probably not everybody, even if you're not.
This is history. It's not just a new pope, it's

(01:25:59):
the first American pope. Who would have thunk it the
vetting odds didn't dunk it right, because at the betting
odds he was one hundred to one. He was one
hundred to one. Will never really know, And again I'll
shut up when he starts talking, won't won't never really
know how it happened, how it came to him.

Speaker 10 (01:26:21):
After La parcheesia pontu ti void tatellis questo, el primo
Saluto del Cristo Resorto, ivon pastorre la vita great jeddo

(01:26:46):
than kio boq questo saluto dipache and transcende loostro quore
raji les familiar a toteal a personaio greetingss.

Speaker 12 (01:27:03):
Is the first screening the Risen Christ. May the peace
be with you.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
M h.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
H first lapata. The christ Resorto.

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):
Is the piece of the Risen Christ is.

Speaker 10 (01:27:44):
Armando a percevante.

Speaker 12 (01:27:48):
A piece that deal that is humble and perseverant income
for all.

Speaker 10 (01:27:58):
And quorac on samostro requi puela masm precorajosa the Papa
Franchiseescova Roma.

Speaker 12 (01:28:12):
Of course, we preserve our prayers for Pope Francis, Papa Roma.

Speaker 10 (01:28:26):
Almundo and tero puela Mattina the Giorno the password he
passed away.

Speaker 3 (01:28:34):
Morning, Dio.

Speaker 10 (01:28:39):
Dio diamat.

Speaker 3 (01:28:45):
What's good for you?

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
He loves you.

Speaker 3 (01:28:50):
And we remain all in goda.

Speaker 10 (01:28:56):
Manoloo hand in hand with God and the amo Ati.

Speaker 12 (01:29:02):
We go forward shape with the Cristo. We are disciples
of Chris Christ. In Mongo, the la Christ goes before us.

Speaker 10 (01:29:13):
Mana nechA di nui coome in ponte p ra junta
the dios am.

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
A Yankee boy or do.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
You really help yourself through and help one another? Call
for building bridges. We then go for solo follow sempre.

Speaker 12 (01:29:39):
In pache for being a people always in peace. Thank
you to Pope Francis.

Speaker 10 (01:29:58):
Contral CARDINALI, Piano shinto ma es succes, Pietro Kaminari in
Siema boy comchiezoita cercando sempre la pace Laiusicia, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:30:15):
Want to thank.

Speaker 12 (01:30:18):
The fellow cardinals chose me to be the successor of
Peter in the United Churches.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
Monsieur, I just to work We're clear here, and I
was just verifying this with with dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:30:32):
The Italian that you're hearing is the American pope speaking
in the English that you're hearing is a translator, not.

Speaker 4 (01:30:40):
The American Pope. As best we can tell, in peace,
I was Ciriano.

Speaker 10 (01:30:48):
Cetto sono Cristian boy bascobo in questo senso po toti
kaminarians ceme versa quela patria.

Speaker 1 (01:31:06):
La dio preparato.

Speaker 12 (01:31:09):
We walk together, as Saint Augustine said OWDs Christ that
God God prepares a special greeting.

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
A missionaria.

Speaker 10 (01:31:34):
Kisa costriche ponti the algo sempre a perta riche from
a questa piazza perteti tout colocano bisogonia de lansa caritos presenza.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
In the alogo lamore, we have.

Speaker 13 (01:31:52):
To be a church that works together to bill bridges
and to keep our arms open like this very piazza,
welcoming as.

Speaker 10 (01:32:04):
Acos them of particular amiquerida dios is the chiclaio and peru.

Speaker 12 (01:32:15):
He says a special greeting to people per campiago.

Speaker 10 (01:32:22):
As all we spoke a toom partioso face theo tanto
tanto segi sieno iglesia piel de Cristo.

Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
Who have been so faithful.

Speaker 10 (01:32:38):
Church, the roe Christia di tute mondo bamo una quiesa.

Speaker 4 (01:32:46):
Sino others and sisters.

Speaker 6 (01:32:47):
Of the Camina.

Speaker 10 (01:32:50):
Sempre la parche.

Speaker 3 (01:32:53):
Form church. Church searches for a police.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
And to help those who are in need.

Speaker 12 (01:33:08):
Old Today, the day of the supplication of the Madonna
of Conte.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
Some to help us.

Speaker 3 (01:33:37):
Let us pray together.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
For the now mission like.

Speaker 3 (01:33:45):
The peace the Maria and the special grace of Mary.
So say better at the women pray for users now

(01:34:14):
and at the hour of our cash.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
You're listening to the first public words of the new Pope,
Leo the fourteenth. Hope Leo the fourteenth, whose name, before
becoming pope was Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago, part
of the Augustinian Order within Catholicism, and the first American

(01:34:52):
ever to be pope. The youngest of the ten cardinals
in the College of Cardinals who were allowed to vote
this time. He he's sixty nine years old. He'll be
seventy this year. He was the only one who is
not yet in his seventies. He is the first American Pope.
Let's keep listening, Reggia.

Speaker 10 (01:35:14):
Concerraguza de Conqueda into toil Mongo.

Speaker 9 (01:35:27):
For all those.

Speaker 12 (01:35:29):
Both here and listening throughout the world and receiving this
blessing from the Pope Leo the fourteenth.

Speaker 10 (01:35:42):
Let us hear Santia felipetruce Paulus the Quorum.

Speaker 3 (01:35:47):
Potestat a torita.

Speaker 10 (01:35:50):
Confimus gypsy interceeda from Noovi's the dominom amen frechie was that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
Fer virginis.

Speaker 3 (01:36:01):
Let them intercede on our behalf.

Speaker 7 (01:36:05):
You are.

Speaker 10 (01:36:07):
The sanctorum aposto la petrit Pauli at omnium sanctorum, mister
reatur vestry of nepotins, deus omnibus peccati in vestries perducat
was Jesus Christos at vitam eternam.

Speaker 3 (01:36:25):
For Saint Peters absolute.

Speaker 12 (01:36:31):
Mercy and all the other saints as well us penitents
and Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:36:40):
And that's the only peace.

Speaker 10 (01:36:42):
Gratiam a consolation, sancti spiritus a finale and perseverantiam in
bonis of veribus priba b o nipotence and misericors Dominus
at benedictio they omnipotent patris ed. Really, that's very polti supervo, said.

Speaker 12 (01:37:09):
Manik Shampe of the all powerful, blessed.

Speaker 4 (01:37:17):
You can be with you always, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
That was history, not just not just history because it's
new pope, but it's the first American pope ever. Shocking
a lot of people, certainly shocking people were who were
betting on this. I know a few people have texted
in saying, why would you bet on that? It seems
less miss anyway, you can bet on anything, and it's
very interesting. The first American pope. We just listened to

(01:37:56):
History Polymarket, a website where you can bet on lots
and lots of things, and one of the things you
could bet on was who's going to be the next Pope?
And there was a guy who was at seventy There
was a guy who was at seventy percent. And I said,
you know, I have no idea. I'm not going to
take more than fifteen seconds telling you about him, because

(01:38:16):
nobody really has any idea how this is going to
come out. And you know, I didn't say it at
the time, but in my mind, like why is he
seventy percent? Who who thinks they have that much certainty
about a process like this? And it ended up being
a guy who was trading one or two percent who
ended up being named pope. And more importantly than any

(01:38:36):
of the betting stuff, obviously more important is that the
new pope. His papal name is Leo the fourteenth and
his normal name is Robert Francis Prevost. He is from Chicago.
He's an Augustinian and he is the first American Pope.
Rob Dawstin from rkeay News Desk joins me in studio

(01:39:00):
with reactions from some other folks and well whatever else
you put together in the last few minutes. Yeah, So
here's what's going on.

Speaker 14 (01:39:06):
First of all, the Archdiocese of Denver a lot of
their main figures, and we think the archbishop too, is
Samuel Lacquela. They're actually in a retreat this week, so
some of the statements are a little bit slow to
come out from them at this time. But what we
do know from the archdiocese is the cathedral bells have
been ringing downtown, so if you've been downtown near there
on Callfax, you might have heard them in about twenty

(01:39:29):
five minutes or so. There's a special mass for the
new pope at twelve ten. I believe that Father sam
Moorehead is going to preside over that mass, and there
is goal bunting over the archdioces office to celebrate the
new pope. Also, Governor Poulos has congratulated the new pope.
They must have had this ready to go because he

(01:39:50):
was because he was just giving a news conference about
the end of the session, so you know, they're sending
out a statement while he's talking about something else. But
the governor congratulate the new pope. He says, this is
a joyous occasion for Catholics across the world, and it
congratulates the Catholic community on the historic selection of the
first American Pope, Cardinal Robert Francis. Pray those who will

(01:40:11):
lead the church as Pope Leo the fourteenth. He also says,
I look forward to continue to sharing collaboration between Colorado
and the Catholic Church on helping vulnerable people in times
of need, and Poulas says it is his hope that
the new Pope follows the path of the late Pope
Francis of loving kindness for all who walk the earth.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
That's who's spoken so far. Locally. I do think that
the choice of the name of Leo the fourteenth for
this pope, as I shared some stuff on the air
about Pope Leo the thirteenth, does suggest to me that
Jared Poulis, who by the way, is Jewish like I am,
but is going to get his wish right in that

(01:40:51):
this pope seems like a guy who is going to
continue to be I don't know, relatively liberal as popes go,
and interested in the day to day lives of normal people,
of downtrodden people. And I think there's a decent chance
he's going to be that sort.

Speaker 14 (01:41:11):
Of And I guess this is a signal of the
Church shifting in that direction, because if I was reading correctly,
Cardinal at the time, Cardinal Prevos in his role, he
was in charge of selecting bishops, right, it sounded like
towards in the last couple of years for bishop dominations,
and you know, if you're selecting bishops that I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
In the things that you believe in.

Speaker 14 (01:41:36):
It seemed like he was both the late Pope Francis
his right hand person towards the end a little bit that.

Speaker 4 (01:41:41):
Makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
And Francis named a lot of these folks, and as
I as I mentioned earlier, just based on his history,
it wouldn't surprise me if Pope Francis felt some appeal
from the now Pope Leo the fourteenth because before he
was Pope, Robert Francis Prevost did some missionary work and

(01:42:05):
other kinds of work in South America. He spent a
lot of time in Peru, like eight or ten years
in Peru, and so they I think they had that
in common. I'm guessing that I'm guessing that they would
speak Spanish together sometimes. Wouldn't surprise me a bit. And
how about how about this pope giving that long address
in Italian American pressure.

Speaker 14 (01:42:24):
Yeah, for sure, you know, And we were talking in
the newsroom that it almost seemed like a requirement was
you had to speak Italian. They got this probably to
get this position. By the way, we should point out
David Kale, who is kind of our our newsroom expert
when it comes to this. He's very tight with the
archbishop and with the church. He is going ahead to

(01:42:48):
Mass at some point. We are trying to get Father
sam Ware ahead after Mass with the rest of the media,
and David cal will be there.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
I note in Wikipedia that prevosts now now THEO the
fourteenth speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese and can
read Latin and German. Clearly, clearly a very educated God.

Speaker 14 (01:43:09):
Puts me in a shame because I I could speak
at first grade Spanish.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Yeah, I think you're I think you're not alone in that. Anyway,
It's gonna be, it's gonna be super interesting, and yeah, well,
what do you say an American pope and we're dragon
You're not You're not Catholic, correct, but still it's it's
it's interesting.

Speaker 8 (01:43:31):
Yeah, you have such a small percentage in the in
the cardinals. And then all of a sudden boom, there is.

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
Ross. This listener text, Ross, a pope who can connect
better with the American public because he speaks English fluently,
is going to be better than other popes who barely
spoke English. Well, yeah, for connecting with people who speak English,
he likely will be. Uh, let's let's bring Mandy in. Hi, Mandy. Hello.

Speaker 15 (01:44:01):
So I went to my new second best friend Groc
and asked, what's this guy about? And his resume is
incredibly impressive. He's actually a Peruvian citizen.

Speaker 1 (01:44:14):
Ross.

Speaker 15 (01:44:15):
He was in Peru for so long, first as a
missionary and then an archbishop that he actually obtained Peruvian citizenship.

Speaker 1 (01:44:22):
So he is truly a man of the world, as
they say, you.

Speaker 15 (01:44:26):
Know, I think that we can be proud, because I
am oddly proud that he's the first American born pope.
But I think he views himself to your point. He
speaks all these different languages as a man of no boundaries,
right of no borders, which for the church is good
because the faith is growing much faster in Central and

(01:44:47):
South America and Africa than it is in English speaking countries. So,
you know, he does have a little bit of scuttle
butt in his past when it comes to sexual abuse
cases that he was aware of. He allowed one priest
to remain after credible allegations of sexual abuse and didn't
warn anybody. And then there was a situation where three

(01:45:08):
women came forward. But his defenders say, look, he was
just following the rules of the church, you know what
I mean. I do love that explanation. That's one of
the reasons I left the Catholic Church was the handling
of all of that. Not necessarily that it happened, right,
I mean, stuff's gonna happen, but the handling of it
was something I kind of took personally.

Speaker 1 (01:45:28):
I don't blame you, I don't really, you know, I
don't have a lot to say about that as someone
who isn't Catholic, wasn't Catholic.

Speaker 4 (01:45:35):
I did think that that whole thing was a blight
on the church.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):
I don't think you have to be Catholic to say
that and I did see that in his history that
there's controversy around him.

Speaker 4 (01:45:49):
I wonder now that he's been named, will it be
a very.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
Different dynamic talking about that stuff than it might have
been if, for example, he had been thought of as
one of the very top contenders, which he wasn't. But
if he had been thought of that and people were
talking about this already, would they have you know, would
we have heard about it already? But now that he's pope,
you know, is NBC going to talk about it? Are
are Catholics gonna who's going to talk about it?

Speaker 3 (01:46:13):
Oh?

Speaker 15 (01:46:14):
I think, first of all, I'm the Cardinals, all new?

Speaker 1 (01:46:16):
Right? The Cardinals know everything.

Speaker 15 (01:46:17):
Sure, everything gets laid out in these in these conclaves,
so they they absolutely knew. But they've obviously decided that
those that situation had been addressed by him in some
way that we've not been privy to. I mean, I'm
assuming that they had to address it, and perhaps, you know,
his experience of letting down people and being a part

(01:46:39):
of covering things up, perhaps is pope he will take
that in a completely transparent direction and not allow those
kind of cover ups that the Church was not only ordering,
they were sanctioning to happen, right, so it could go
either way.

Speaker 1 (01:46:52):
Yeah, uh, well, we'll see. I'm just I don't I
don't know how much weight to put on that. And
I think about this whole thing, you know, having an
American pope and what else we need to know about
the guy, And you know, at what point in my mind,
if it were up to me or up to you,
would a particular action have been disqualifying? And maybe it

(01:47:17):
would have been. But now we's pope, and I don't
know how much to wait to put on that.

Speaker 15 (01:47:22):
I well, I don't think it matters now they're not
They're not gonna unseat him, right, right, that's not gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (01:47:27):
So it's fine.

Speaker 15 (01:47:29):
They've obviously decided it had been dressed enough, so we'll
see what happens here. But I don't see any significant
changes from the last pope, which may or may not
be a good thing. We'll just have to wait and see.

Speaker 1 (01:47:39):
Yeah, I agree, I think just based on based on
the name he chose, you would expect this pope to
be relatively liberal and more like Francis than like Benedict
or even John Paul.

Speaker 4 (01:47:52):
Well, we'll see, what do you have coming up.

Speaker 15 (01:47:54):
Oh, I've got a half hour, but I'm filling it wisely.
We've got Representative ty Winter on to talk about the
end of the legislator session, what's been inflicted on us.
But then at twelve thirty the show's over, so people
need to pay attention for the next let's see thirty
six minutes and there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:48:09):
That's what's coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:48:10):
All right, everybody stick around for the best half hour
in radio. That's a high bar right there. Let me
tell you. There you go.

Speaker 4 (01:48:18):
I'll talk with you tomorrow.