06-05-25 - *FULL SHOW* Boulder attack; Colorado energy; Ethical IVF

Please read and subscribe to my Substack. Here's today's note. I'd be grateful if you'd take a couple of minutes to consider it:

By me: Some thoughts on the Boulder jihadist attack

By someone else: I Saw My Friends Set on Fire in Boulder - by Ed Victor

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was thinking about actually doing my show from iHeart

(00:02):
Studios in Manhattan, which I did. Go visit, very nice,
very interesting space actually right in midtown, Shannon.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Have you been there? It was. It's right in.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Midtown fifty fifth Street near sixth Avenue, and it's very
interesting space. They have a bunch of floors and it's
kind of industrial unfinished ceilings so you can see all
the duck to work and it's pretty cool. And you know,
when I was there in the mid late afternoon, so
there's not there wasn't a lot of live local radio
going on at that time because they mostly have music

(00:32):
stations and a lot of music stations. You know, the
big shows, the live shows are the morning shows. So
I walked by the studio though where Charlemagne the God
You heard of him. He's like one of the biggest
DJs in like morning shows in America.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I saw his.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Studio and Elvis Durant another huge show, and it was
kind of it was kind of cool, and and I
went over to Fox News a couple of times. I
went to a taping of The Gutfeld Show, which was fun.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
And I uh, you know, said hi.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
To a bunch of different people at Fox for the
first time ever, actually, and only.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
For like fifteen seconds, I met Jesse Waters. I was
waiting for.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Somebody and he walked by in the hallway, hit his
makeup on, ready for the show, and I said, Hi,
I'm Ross from Koa and Denver, and he said, oh,
I know who you are, and and I oh, that's nice.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
And and anyway, it was.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
It was very interesting visiting Fox and seeing both. I
actually saw more of the radio side than of the
television side. I saw some of their beautiful radio studios
and all that stuff. It was a cool trip from
a professional perspective. Anyway, I'll tell you more about the
trip in a bit. I did mention just then with
Marty and Gina that New York was nicer and cleaner

(01:44):
and had fewer homeless people than I thought it would
in the neighborhoods that I was in, and as I
as I just mentioned, I talked to people who live
and work there and they said, yeah, if you had
been here just a couple of years ago, it was very,
very different. It was. It was the opposite of paradise is.
It was not quite escape from New York, but wherever

(02:05):
you looked, there was a homeless person, and there was trash,
and there was whatever. And I posted a little Twitter video,
yeah two days ago, of just me walking through Times Square.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
In the middle of the day and it was pretty busy.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
And if you were in Times Square at night, it
was freaking pact packed with tourists. And that whole I mean,
I'll tell you, no sign of a recession there. Every
restaurant's full, every show is full, all the blocks are
full of people walking around and shopping.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
No sign of a recession.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
And New York seems to be doing all right, although
the people I talked to who live there aren't very happy.
The tourist seem pretty happy.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
We'll come back to more of that over the course
of the show. One thing that did happen, of course,
while I was in New York was the attack in Boulder.
And I don't have that much to add to it,
what I you know, the news hasn't changed very much
in the past couple of days. I did write a
substack about it. I would consider, or in a personal favor,

(03:01):
if you would go to Rosskominski dot substack dot com
and read what I wrote today and subscribe to my
substack it's free, and it's probably worth a little bit
more than that, and I think I put some good
writings up there, So Rosskominski dot substack dot com. I
am going to have a guest from the organization that

(03:22):
puts on these little marches slash runs.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
It's called Run for Their Lives.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I'm gonna have a guest from Run for Their Lives
on the show tomorrow to remind you and me when
and where we can participate in this weekend's walk or
run or whatever it is in Bolder this Sunday.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
And I think I'm probably gonna go.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
And I don't know if I should say this on
the air, but I will say it on the air.
If I do go, I will be carrying period. Everybody
should be so. But that's not the primary reason I want.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I want to go.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
I'm not going because I think something bad is gonna
happen and I need to protect people. Going because I
want to show my support, and that's and that's it is.
Gutfeld actually a midget, not midget, but definitely short. He
would generally be the shortest male in the room, and
probably shorter than a fair number of the women in

(04:17):
the room, especially because at Fox. When you're walking around Fox,
they they mostly seem to hire fairly tall, rather attractive women,
and not just for on air positions, but just everywhere.
There's a lot of good looking people, a lot of
good looking guys at Fox too. Everybody's good looking at Fox.
So was New York City cleaner with less homeless than

(04:40):
downtown Denver? Yes, New York City, at least the neighborhoods
I was in was cleaner, less trash on the ground,
and fewer homeless than downtown Denver.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
How about that? All right?

Speaker 1 (04:54):
There were a bunch of Supreme Court decisions released this morning,
and I'm going to share a few of with you
over the course of the show. I'm going to share
one with you right now. There's a lady named Marlene M.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
A R. L E. A.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
N Ames Ames, and some years ago she did not
get a promotion, and then a little bit after that
she was demoted. And she argued that these negative job
occurrences happened to her because she is wait for it now, gay,

(05:34):
no straight, straight, And the person who got promoted to
manage her was a lesbian. And Ames claimed that after
she began reporting to a lesbian boss, her career basically stopped.
She was denied a promotion and then she was demoted,

(05:57):
and she claims that it was essentially sexual discrimination a
lower court, so she sued the Ohio Department of Youth.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Services, which is where she worked, worked for a government
and a lower court ruled.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
That, and it was the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled for the state agency,
saying that if you're a member of a majority group,
like you're straight, or you're white, then you cannot sue

(06:39):
for sexual discrimination or racial discrimination without proving some kind
of much higher bar. And I haven't read that lower
court case, and I haven't had time to read the
Supreme Court ruling today, but I.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Know what the ruling is. I'm going to tell you
that in a second.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
I'm just telling you I haven't had a time to
read the time to read through the.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Details of it.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
But essentially, the lower court said, if you're white and
you want to sue for racial discrimination, if you're straight,
you want to sue for sexual discrimination, you have a.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Much much higher bar to cross.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Than if you're black and want to sue, or if
you're gay and want to sue or whatever, and the
Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision written by Justice Katanji
Brown Jackson, who is either the first or second most
liberal member of the Court, with Sonya sotomayor. One of

(07:37):
those two I think is the most liberal, more than
Elena Kagan, who is also a liberal. But I think
one of these two is the most liberal. A unanimous
Supreme Court ruled that straight people who or white people
or what people in the majority do not have to

(07:58):
meet a higher bar in order to sue under these laws.
Katanji Brown Jackson wrote, we wrote, we conclude the Title seven,
that's the part of the Civil Rights Act that ms
Ames wanted to sue under. We conclude the Title seven
does not impose such a heightened standard unmajority group plaintiffs.

(08:18):
In other words, you know, the whole the so called
reverse discrimination thing that we hear so much about, and
that's definitely a real thing.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
But what we all need to understand and what.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
I think the Supreme Court implicitly makes clear here, and
I don't know if they use these words in the ruling,
and I will go look for it. Reverse discrimination is
just discrimination.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
It doesn't matter. It's not a different thing.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
If someone discriminates against me because I'm WHI or against
me because I'm straight, versus if someone discriminates against someone
else because they're black or someone else because they're gay,
it's still just discrimination. And so called reverse discrimination, which
is just discrimination against the majority group, is equally forbidden
by law.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
That is a great result from the Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
You may recall that both during the Obama administration and
during the Biden administration actually got more attention. During Obama,
there were moves by the government under these liberal administrations
to pressure banks not to offer banking services to businesses

(09:27):
that liberals did not favor, such as gambling businesses or
firearms related businesses, and a lot of banks went along
with it.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
And so I just saw this story.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
City Group said Tuesday, so two days ago, that it
was rolling this is from the New York Post, by
the way, that it was rolling back the twenty eighteen
policy that placed restrictions on providing banking services to retail
clients selling firearms, citing recent regulatory developments.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
So I'm not even going to add anymore in the
interested time.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I just thought I would share that with you and
we'll see if other banks do it, and maybe some
other banks already have, but that's a very good start.
Here's another story I just saw that was published yesterday,
also from the New York Post. Tesla is under pressure
from Michigan authorities after scores of unsold cyber trucks were

(10:22):
discovered parked at a shuttered shopping center in Farmington Hills,
prompting concerns about violations of local zoning regulations.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Over the past several weeks, local residents.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
And social media users have posted images and videos showing
rows of cyber trucks lined up at Hunters Square shopping center.
The site is adjacent to a Tesla service center, leading
to speculation that the facility is using a lot as
an overflow site to manage unsold inventory. Reports estimate that
more than one hundred vehicles have accumulated in the space.

(10:54):
Tesla employees say that the property is owned by the
same party that manages the nearby service center, and the
vehicles are scheduled for customer delivery, but the city basically
says they don't believe them. All right, there's enough of that.
This one is a rather interesting story.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm not a Catholic, but I understand a little bit
about it.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
I understand a little bit about for example, confession.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
I dated a Catholic girl for a while.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
She went to I mean, I didn't really participate, but
I went to a Catholic mass just to watch all
that was going on. And you know, I'll learn a
little bit and been around and I've studied different religions.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
What Shannon, what.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
So this is?

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So I understand confession to mean you you go over
to that box, the priest is in the box. You're
like outside the box talking through it to the priest,
and you tell the priest things that you think you'd
want to confess. Thus confession and there and again I'm
massively oversimplifying, and I'm not an expert, so I'm sure

(12:00):
I'm missing important stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
But you confess what you need to confess to the priest.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
The priest tells you what you need to do to repent,
how you can make up for it. Let's say, now
here's the key, though, here's the key. That stuff is
supposed to be every bit as secret between you and
the priest, as for example, a conversation that you might

(12:26):
have with your lawyer would be also secret and beyond
the reach of the law.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Let me share this with you from National Review.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Catholic bishops from the state of Washington have filed a
lawsuit challenging a law requiring Catholic priests to break the
confessional seal to report information about suspected child abuse or neglect.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson, a Democrat himself a Catholic, recently
signed legislation singling out Catholic clergy as quote supervisors who

(13:00):
cannot use legal privileges to defend themselves from its reporting
requirements for child abuse investigations. It grants protections to other professions,
including nurses and therapists, exempting them from having to report
such information.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
The law is set to go into effect in July.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
The bishops filed a lawsuit on last Thursday, arguing that
the new law violates First Amendment protections, the Fourteenth Amendment's
Equal Protection Clause.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
And the Washington State Constitution.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
The lawsuit says Washington and again meaning the state, not
the federal capital, is targeting the Roman Catholic Church in
a brazen act of religious discrimination without any basis in
law or fact. Washington now puts Roman Catholic priests in
an impossible position violate two thousand years of church teaching
and incur automatic excommunication. So if you violate the secrecy

(13:55):
the sanctity of confession apparently communication from the church, or
refuse to comply with Washington law and be subject to imprisonment,
fine and civil liability. The object of this law is clear,
says the lawsuit subject Roman Catholic clergy to dictate of
the state. So I will just give a couple seconds
of my thoughts on this. Again, I'm not Catholic, so

(14:18):
I don't want to opine on it too much. On
the one hand, I understand why a government would want
to get everybody they could who might have information about
child's abuse to have to report it to the government.
On the other hand, this is clearly obviously manifestly unconstitutional,
and I would be absolutely shocked if the Catholic bishops

(14:43):
do not win this lawsuit. In fact, I would be
shocked if it even goes to trial, because it is
such an obvious violation that the state of Washington would
be wasting way too much of taxpayer their taxpayer money
and time for either outside council or their own in
house lawyers trying to defend a law that they cannot

(15:04):
possibly defend.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
When we come back.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
What exactly is ethical IVF. I'll give you a hint.
It does actually relate to religion. But is it actually ethical?
I saw the term ethical IVF, and as I read
about ethical IVF, it's not at all clear to me
that what the supporters of it are proposing is actually ethical.

(15:32):
You know, for me, it seems like they're on a
somewhat different mission that might perhaps be summarized by a
headline over at Axios conservative support builds for IVF guard rails,
And I think that guardrails is another word that understates
what some of these people are trying to do. Joining

(15:53):
us to talk about this is Sean Tipton, who is
Chief Advocacy and Policy Officer for the American Society for
Reproductive Medicine that's as r M dot org.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Sean, thanks for joining us on KOWA.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Happy to be with you.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
So, uh, let's let's just define a term. What what
is ethical IVF? What does it mean in theory, and
then we'll start getting into the nuts and bolts of
it or and and actually hold on, let me interrupt
myself there not only what does it mean in theory,
but as far as the people who seem to think
it's a good idea. What is the the issue or

(16:37):
or quote unquote problem that they think they're trying to
solve with.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
This, Well, well, I think ethical IVF, as being seen
in the news lately, is in fact a term put
out by opponents of IVF, people who would argue that
IVF is an unethical medical technology. Now, I would argue
thatical IVS is what our members have been doing for
forty years, that is providing needed medical care in an

(17:07):
ethic in a context that takes into account ethics, because
we recognize that reproduction is a different kettle of fish
when it comes to medicine. It's not. You can't just
say it's between the patient and the physician, because obviously
the point is to produce another human being, and to
do that requires two people. So it's a different kettle
of fish. But I would I take issue with the

(17:30):
implication that somehow the medicine that our members have been
providing their patients for all this time is in any
way unethical.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
So, and just to be clear, I'm fully on your
side on this, but that makes for boring radio sometimes,
So I'm going to play Devil's advocate a little bit
as we go through here. Okay, sure, So my understanding
is that the folks who dislike at least some of
ivf is are are religious people who believe that the

(18:04):
process creates embryos that then end up some of them
end up being discarded or destroyed, and they view that
as as basically as murder. And so if I were
one of them, my question would be, well, why can't
you do IVF without having to do that?

Speaker 4 (18:26):
Well, I think it's important to understand that human beings
are really inefficient at reproduction. We're not very good at it.
I think it's because we're very complex organisms. You know,
you may remember from your high school biology class that
you know you got to take twenty three chromosomes from
the mother, twenty three from the father. They have to
line up just right to produce the forty six that

(18:49):
the healthy humans have, and that things can go around
in that process. So, you know, most fertilized eggs, whether
through natural conception or through medically assistanceception, do not become
born children if they just don't. And that's unfortunate, but
it's also nature.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
It's part of the reality.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
We're trying to improve on that our members are in
the business of helping people overcome their medical problems so
they have children. But yes, the reality is there are people,
as there are with almost any topic in this country,
who take different stands on it. We are perfectly fine.
If you have an ethical concern with IVF, then you
should not participate in it, and that's fine. We would
never want anybody to participate in IVF against their will.

(19:34):
But for a lot of people, that's the best and
maybe own shot they're going to have in order to
have the children that they so desperately want. And so
you do it, you oversee it, so it's done ethically.
But if you don't want to do it, if you
have concerns, then that's fine. Oftentimes people can those concerns
can be accommodated. So, for example, there are cultures. One

(19:54):
of the parts of IVF is you get a semen
sample and get the sperm out of it that is
collected via disturbation. Some cultures don't allow men to do that.
There are workarounds for that. If you don't want to
produce more than one embryo to use, that's fine. It
makes it less efficient, it makes it more expensive, but
that's something that physicians can work with patients to achieve

(20:15):
if that's what the patients want to do.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
All right, let's stick with that last bit for a moment.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
And again, I would like just for people who may
be hearing, they've heard a little about IVF, and mostly
they've heard Republicans, including President Trump, saying they support it.
But now there's this whole ethical IVF thing, which what
they're trying to do is to force the medical providers
to only make enough embryos that will actually be implanted,

(20:40):
and if they have more to then sort of give
them up for adoption or something.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Like that so that no embryos get destroyed.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
But I would like you just dumb it down for
us for a second, because I don't want to assume
that people know any particular thing. Why you were talking
about efficiency and costs, and I think those are the answers,
but I'd like you to elaborate, why does the ordinary
process of IVF produce more embryos than are likely to

(21:09):
be used?

Speaker 4 (21:11):
Yeah, so, so the goal of in vitrol fertilization is
to produce one healthy child, Right, we can all agree
on that. To do that, it takes more than one
egg and more than one sperm. You know, the the
average ejaculate from a man and an average number of
sperm and an ejaculate for men is you know, many,
many million women produce hundreds of thousands of eggs, one

(21:32):
every month in a natural cycle. In an IVF cycle,
something has not been working, so the woman is given
medication to allow the doctor to retrieve more than one egg. Usually,
you know you want to get five or six. You
take those, you mix them with the sperm. You see
which of the of those eggs are going to fertilize,
and if you're lucky, you know you'll get maybe three

(21:53):
or four that do fertilize and begin to develop. Well,
you only want to use one of those at a time,
because even having twins or triplets is much more risky
for the mother and the baby. And so what we
do is you take these three embryos, these frozen eggs
that are developing, You use one, you freeze the other ones,
and then you could go back later and use them

(22:14):
again if they want to have a sibling, if the
first pregnancy doesn't pan out and produce a child, whatever,
And you're halfway through the process at that point, so
it's a lot more efficient a lot less expensive. The
key to us is decisions about what to do with
those tissues belong in the hands of the patients after
consulting with their physician. So the women, the would be parents,

(22:39):
need to decide what they're going to do with these
embryos which have been created in their quest for a child.
That decision has got to stay with them. It cannot
be made by politicians or beer crats.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
So without getting into specific numbers about how much IVF costs,
because it's going to vary from patient to patient and
maybe even geographically, but tip typically and I haven't been
through all that, but my understanding is that there is
not necessarily a very high probability that any given implanted

(23:10):
embryo will take. So maybe you can tell me, like
a what a typical probability is. Again, I realize it
will depend on the health of the of the woman
and all this stuff, but what's an average probability that
an embryo will take.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
So so one of the ways to look at it
is per cycle or per attempt. So if you start
an IVF procedure and you have some embryos, the single
cycle success rates probably bordering on a for a healthy
relatively young woman. You know, we're talking thirty five to
forty percent, and then you can try it again and

(23:44):
it gets higher. So of patients who start an IVF procedure,
probably sixty to seventy percent and will have a child
by the end of three or four tribes.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Right, Okay, so that's the key.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
So now I want you to give me a cent
of and if you want, you could put a maybe
a national average if you want, of the cost on this.
What would how would the cost differ if three embryos
were created at once and then one was used, right,

(24:16):
and the first one didn't take and they had to
implant another versus if only one embryo.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Was richieved retrieved and it didn't take.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
And then they had to go get or make another
embryo and implant that doing the whole process the second time.
Give me a sense of the cost difference and other differences.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
It will it will be at least fifty percent less
because you have done two of the of the most
expensive parts of the procedure. That is the medication to
make the woman produce more eggs, the retrieval of those eggs,
and what's called the culturing. So the developing of those
embryos in a laboratory for a couple of days. That's

(24:58):
all done, right, and so if you need to go
back again, you don't have to go back and start
that from scratch. So it's gonna save you at least
more than a half the effort and probably more than
half the money.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Okay, So do you think that the folks who are
trying to push so so get ethical?

Speaker 2 (25:16):
IVF.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
What they mean by that seems to be either only
producing one embryo and then seeing if it takes and
then doing the whole thing again if it doesn't, or
producing more than one and then what if you have
embryos that you're not gonna use.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Well, I think that's a very key question, right they
they would want to, I'm not sure what they would
want to do. I think those kinds of pushes sort
of defy biological reality. And I'm of the view that
if you're gonna make policy, that policy has to start
with understanding what the real what's happening in the real world,

(25:54):
And if you want to pursue this policy, what what
would that probably look like? Because I think what you're
looking at there is forcing women to receive these embryos
and bring them to term, and I don't think. I
think when you put it that way, that's clearly not
practicing good medical ethics, right. Forcing women to carry a pregnancy,
to initiate a pregnancy if they don't want to, is

(26:17):
unbelievably coercive. It's a terrible thing to contemplate.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
So do you think this is getting any actual traction
or is it just some conservatives making noise and hoping
it gets traction. How much risk is there of legislation
passing somewhere. I doubt it would pass federally, but how
much risk is it of passing in Alabama or Oklahoma

(26:44):
like this?

Speaker 4 (26:45):
I think there's a fair amount of risk. And I think,
you know, it's really troublesome because the implication is that
IVF as it has been practiced since the nineteen seventies
and for more than two million children in the world,
somehow not being done ethically, and I think that's just
not the case. I think the term if clavif is

(27:06):
in fact an attempt to impose a particular generally religious
based and once you know some specific pieces of religious
that's not widespread belief that the fertilized egg has the
same moral and constitutional standing as a born baby. And
I don't think we want to. I don't think we

(27:28):
need to see that imposed on everybody.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
But do you think it might pass them? Is their
legislation anywhere right now that you're aware.

Speaker 4 (27:34):
Of, Well, you know, most of the states around the
country are going out of session, and so most of
it has slowed down, you know. I think one of
the things that has been happening is that since you know,
a year a little over a year ago, the Alabama
Supreme Court had a case that said fertilized, frozen and
ags were the same as children. That shut down IVF
in the state. For a while, there was this outpouring
of outrage. So one of the most conservative anti choice

(27:58):
legislators in this whole country pass the bill to protect
IVF access. I think that got if you are anti
choice and have put a whole lot of investment into
life begins at conception, then IVF poses a danger to
you because people start to understand that, in fact, the

(28:20):
ford less rosenada is very very different from a born person,
and you probably need to take that reality into account
when you're making policy. So I think they're worried about it,
and I think they're trying. But IVF is also really
really popular right at this point. So many people have
had IVF, have had family members who have had IVF,
have had friends who have gone through IVF, and they
love the children that have resulted. And so one thing

(28:43):
I can say for certainty about these kind of legislative
threats is we don't know what all the implications will be.
One's going to be fewer happy parents and happy grandparents
and whatever state and acts something like that that you
can count on.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Sean Tipton is Chief Advocacy and Policy Officer for the
American Society for Productive Medicine as r M dot org.
And I'll just tell listeners, you know, keep an eye
out for this thing they're calling ethical IVF or any
sort of similar term. This is really coming from people
who generally don't like IVF and are looking for nice

(29:19):
sounding ways to try to make it anywhere from difficult
to impossible to unaffordable. And I think there's nothing ethical
about it. Thank you so much for spending time with us, Sean.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (29:32):
I'm grateful for the opportunity to keep up the good work.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
All right.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Thank you Okay, yeah, definitely a misnomer ethical IVF. So
right now, by the way, President you know what, Shannon,
do you think you could grab any of this on
I see it on Fox right now.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
We'll we'll see if we can get any of it.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
But President Trump is meeting with the Chancellor of Germany
right now. I think his last name is merse Emi
are the recently elected guy.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
It was very interesting.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Actually this guy was elected in part because, or at
least going along with it, he was quite publicly positive
about Donald Trump, had a lot of nice things to
say about Trump. You got elected in Germany, and then
Trump kind of started this trade war with the EU

(30:21):
and and and it's been a little bit rocky since then.
But you know, as as foreign leaders go, I won't
say this guy is the Trumpiest, right You probably need
to look at orban or you know, people like that
from where's he from, Hungary? I think and and but
but this guy was never a big Trump critic. Let's

(30:44):
just drop in and have a listen to what they're
talking about right now.

Speaker 5 (30:46):
The chance of course, you have a little problem too
with some of the people that were allowed to as
your montry.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It shouldn't
have happened. I told her it shouldn't have happened. Talking
about illegal immigration, yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
You have your own difficulty with that, and we do,
and we're moving them out, and we're moving them.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Out very strongly. But it can't come fast enough. We
want to get them out. We want to get them
out now.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
We don't want to have other bad people coming into
our country.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
But using the word bad, I'm being nice. Okay.

Speaker 6 (31:17):
You put out on truth Social a post regarding your
conversation with President She. Can you talk about whether or
not you feel that trade talks trade relations are back
on track after appearing to be a little bit off
track last.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Week, a little bit off track.

Speaker 5 (31:32):
It was only the complexity is it's pretty complex stuff.
We had a very good conversation with President She a
little while ago, just before you're I don't know. In fact,
we just hung up and they said you're here.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I said, that's pretty good. Two great leaders of.

Speaker 5 (31:48):
The world in a very short period of time. We
had a very good talk and we've straightened out any complexity.
It's very complex stuff.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
And we all right, we can leave that there.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
I probably will get to some of the China US
trade issues. Just a little bit later in the show,
I will note part of what President Trump was talking about.
There is a follow on to sort of a follow on.
He's tying it together. Although I don't think it's a
great I don't think it's a great tie, but he's
he issued this travel ban from twelve countries and lesser

(32:24):
travel restrictions from seven other countries. You remember, in his
first term, he did this thing that a lot of
people called the Muslim ban, which was really a misnomer,
but he kind of marketed it badly himself. This time around,
most of these countries are actually not Muslim majority countries.
Some of them are, but I'm not going to give

(32:45):
you the list of countries. You can go look that up.
But essentially their countries that the administration says, we simply
cannot rely on their systems and their government to either
you know, vet bad people and you know not bad
people or potential terrorists travel. But even more, we can't
necessarily trust their passports to represent who the people really

(33:08):
are or that sort of thing there. It could like
close to failed states, and as a matter of national security,
we just can't take the risk of letting people in
from these countries because we don't trust their whole passport system,
their whole immigration you know, you know, immigration or immigration system.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
And he said.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Trump kind of tied it into what happened in Boulder,
and he gave a little, a short, a short statement.
He talked about, you know, the guy in Boulder came
from Egypt. He was in the country illegally, and just
so we're all clear, right, he he came legally but
then overstate his visa and was in the country illegally.
And that is somewhere maybe forty percent. It used to

(33:49):
be forty or even fifty percent of the illegals in
this country. Now, with the massive number of illegals who
came in illegally under Biden, the percentage who are here
where illegally by virtue of coming in legally and overstaying
the visa is lower than it used to be because
because the denominator is so much bigger. Anyway, Trump said, look,

(34:09):
we had this bad guy, did this bad thing, unvetted people.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
We don't want them, and so we're going to do
this thing.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
And people from these twelve countries can't come in, and
people from these other seven countries is going to have
to prove some things to be able to get in.
But what was interesting is that Egypt wasn't on the list.
And part of the reason I think Egypt is not
on the list is that Egypt is a strategically important country.
You know, they don't want to annoy Egypt while Israel

(34:36):
is going through what it's going through, and I think
that's part I think that's part of the reason. Also,
I don't think Israel, I'm sorry, I don't think Egypt
is anywhere close to the sort of failed state that
they are talking about with.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Some of these other places, right.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
It's like Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea and Turkmenistan and.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Places like that.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Anyways, it was an interesting thing for Trump to talk
about Egypt and tie that into this travel van and
then not have Egypt on the list.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
A lot of people noted that it wasn't just me. Anyway.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
We got a ton of stuff still to talk about
on the show. I'll tell you a little bit more
about my trip to New York, and we will talk
about what drug the FDA said they are going to
look at, even though all the data I've seen suggests
that it's safe. So I am back from New York City.
I went for my nieces bought Mitzvah and it was

(35:29):
great great. The service was at a really nice, quite
large and I assume fairly old synagogue on Park Avenue.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
And then the.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Party was actually in Queens because my sister found that
it was much much, much cheaper to basically rent a
ballroom at a place that just has a bunch of
ballrooms for rent in Astoria, Queens, and rent a couple
of large buses to take one hundred people over there.

(36:01):
Then it was much cheaper to do that than to
rent a space in Manhattan. So that's what we did
and a good time was had by all. Oh you know,
I've got a couple of different things I want to
talk about that in a.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Way tie into the guests.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
In the last segment, we were talking about IVF and
just in general sort of reproductive health kind of stuff.
I have a couple of stories I want to share
with you, one from the news and one from actually
attending the bot Mitzvah. So National Review has a story
the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration is promising
a full agency review of the safety of the chemical

(36:40):
abortion drug mif of pristone, after a new study raised
concern about its effect. So Josh Hawley, who's a senator
from Missouri, he's the worst Republican in the Senate by.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
A long long way.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
He's basically a hardcore social conservative who is pretty much
a liberal on other things.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
He wants more spending.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
He doesn't want to He's just bad, really, he's just bad.
And so he was pushing the FDA to re examine
whether MiFi pristone is safe, with a goal towards trying
to get the drug banned. And there was a there's
this conservative group called the Ethics and Public Policy Center
that is against abortion, against all this stuff, and they

(37:20):
put out this study claiming that almost eleven percent of
women experience experience a serious adverse effect within forty five
days following mifa pristone induced abortion, a figure twenty two
times higher than its current label indicates. Now, my problem
with this National Review piece is that they don't mention

(37:43):
that the study that Holly is pushing on the FDA
to re examine the drug is almost certainly nonsense.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
It's almost certainly nonsense.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
And I posted a link to a Washington Post story
where they go through. It's very hard to tell what
data these guys use. They don't really share their data set,
they don't really share what they looked at. It's rather opaque,
which is always a warning sign when there's a study
where they really don't show you what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
But in any case, it's likely that the study that.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Claims is, you know, eleven percent complications is wrong by
an order of magnitude, right, that the real number is
one percent or something like that, or less than one percent.
And I just want you to be aware of that
because a lot of the same people who are going
to be pushing for so called ethical IVF are also
going to be pushing this study, and this particular study

(38:37):
does seem to me to be nonsense, and I wanted
you to be aware of that. Now. I do trust
doctor Marty McCarey, who's running the FDA. They have another
guy who's running the vaccine program kind of under that
I don't trust him. But if McCarry is really on
top of it, then maybe there could be a good
outcome here. Right, there's no legitimate reason to go examine

(39:01):
this drug again, But if enough conservatives believe it because
they're fed some nonsense from National Review, which I normally like,
and other places that have an anti abortion including medication
abortion bias, and they're fed this nonsense.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Well, then maybe if they.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Go through with more studies and come back and say, no,
this stuff is really safe and that study was wrong,
then maybe some of those people will say, all right,
I guess I was wrong. Some of them won't though,
because they're not really interested in the truth. They're just
looking for any angle they can find to ban these
abortion drugs. So I just wanted to be aware of that.

(39:36):
Now here's the other story I wanted to share with you.
So when I was at the bat Mitzvah, I saw
a couple of girls there and somebody everybody knows everybody's
business there, So there were a couple of young girls there,
and I was told that those girls came from the

(39:58):
dad was a sperm dome, right, so an unknown male
who is only known by a number at the clinic.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Right. So there were these couple of girls there, and
then I.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Was talking with my sister, not the sister whose kid
was having the bought mitzvooh, but my other sister, and
my other sister pointed out another girl somewhere else on
the dance floor, looked maybe a year or two older
than most of the kids there. And my my sister
said to me, that girl has the same sperm donor

(40:32):
father as those two girls over there, different mom.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Well how do you know, I asked, And my.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Sister said that somebody created a web page based on
the sperm donor's number, you know, seven five, one three
seven or whatever his number is at the clinic, and
a bunch of people have signed up saying, oh, yeah,
that number is you know, either my father or my

(41:02):
kid's father, if it was an adult woman who signed
up and used a sperm donor to have a kid.
And I guess there's twenty or something, twenty five people
who are now connected through this website where all of
these children are half siblings. They all have this same father.

(41:23):
They don't know much about him. I think they know
a little bit about what he looks like and maybe
a little bit about what he does for a living
or something like that. They don't know a name, They
don't have highly identifiable information about him.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
But isn't that an interesting thing? In a way.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
It's good like they have all this family and they
can connect with each other in a way. It's also
kind of weird, isn't it. And I'm not judging it.
I just think it's super interesting, so I thought i'd
share it with you.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
I have just this is one of those days.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
I have so many stories to go through, and I
just I don't know that I'm going to get through
all of them, but I'm just going to try to
do a couple of them quickly.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Here.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
We'll just keep going and we'll get through what we can,
and whatever we don't get through, I'll get to tomorrow.
So one of the Supreme Court rulings that came out
today was about a lawsuit that the government of Mexico
had filed against American gun manufacturers, arguing that the gun
makers were responsible for gun violence in Mexico, and in particular,

(42:29):
gun violence that came from drug cartels that somehow get
their hands on American firearms. The case is called Smith
and Weston Brands Versus Estados Undos Mexicanos, so Smith and
Weston versus Mexico, and I'm quoting from CBS News here.
Mexico argued that gun manufacturers are knowingly aiding and abetting

(42:50):
the unlawful sale of their firearms to straw purchasers who
are trafficking them across the southern border to give to
drug cartels. Justices unanimously ruled that Mexico is not allowed
to bring this lawsuit. They didn't rule for or against
Mexico on the merits. They said Mexico is not allowed

(43:12):
to bring this lawsuit because there is an existing law,
because Congress is aware that people will try to go
after the gun industry because they hate guns, and they
will just try to sue the gun industry out of business,
even if there are not meritorious cases.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Just the cost of having.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
To defend themselves can put even fairly large companies out
of business.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
So there is a law called the PLCAA.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
It is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
And again quoting from CBS, the Justice is said that
because Mexico's complaint does not plausibly allege that the gun
makers aided an abedded dealer's unlawful sale of weapons to
Mexican traffickers, it was barred.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
By the law.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
And I note again there were a bunch of unanimous
opinions today and this is one. So this is another
one where you might have thought, oh, gosh, liberals probably
hate guns. They'd probably love to see the gun manufacturers
get sued and maybe get put out of business.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
This was another one of.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
These cases where the opinion was written by one of
the liberal justices. So I don't think I'm going to
add more to the story there. I just wanted to
share that with you. All right, Now, let's do a
little local story. This came up during COVID nationally and
here in Colorado, and I talked about it more as

(44:36):
a local thing.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
You may be aware.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
That during COVID, when people couldn't socialize, a lot of
people went out and got dogs, either from shelters or
from breeders or pet stores or whatever. And I remember
saying at the time that I sure hoped that people

(45:02):
would only go get dogs if they were confident that
they really wanted a dog and were not going to
just turn around and give the dog to a shelter
in a year or two or three when they got
tired of it and decided they didn't need the companionship anymore.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Whatever. So here's a headline from Westward Denver.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Dog owners are sending their pets to the pound in
record numbers. In the first one hundred and thirty eight
days of this year, six hundred and thirty four dogs
were taken to the Denver Animal Shelter by their owners
and left there. That is nearly five dogs surrendered just
to that one shelter every day this year, and the

(45:50):
situation is only getting worse. Dog surrenders at the City
of Denver shelter are up two hundred and thirty seven
percent compared to the same period in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
In other words, pre COVID.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
That year, there were five hundred and forty four surrenders
for the whole year, and twenty twenty five passed that
number weeks ago, like more than a month ago. Actually
just five years ago. Dog surrenders at the shelter were
on a steady decline, reducing annually from twenty eighteen to

(46:23):
twenty nineteen to twenty twenty. Then there was a spike
in twenty twenty one, and since then they jump by
between twenty six and forty two percent every year, and
they're on track to do that again this year. And
I just want to say, folks, if you adopted a
dog during COVID because you wanted a friend, do not.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Give that dog back to the shelter. Now, you made a.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Commitment to that little that little guy or that little girl.
You made a commitment there when you adopted that puppy
or maybe it wasn't a puppy. Live up to it.
Stand by your commitment. Honor that commitment. Love that little
doggie as much as he or she loves you, and
keep feeding him, and keep taking him for walks and

(47:11):
using him, but it could be her. And keep loving
that little puppy because that little puppy did what you wanted.
That little puppy, That little dog gave you the companionship
that you were missing during COVID that you felt.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
That you needed so badly that you decided to.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Go get a dog. Don't betray that dog. Now, how's
your relatively new vehicle treating you?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
With the driving youth to do? So? It's so good?
You know how great it is to not have.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
The car issue, headache or worry about the car constantly
in my mind?

Speaker 2 (47:42):
So nice?

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Did you ever hear from the person you sold your
other car too? Did they ever get back to you
and say, why'd you sell me this thing?

Speaker 7 (47:50):
Or no, no, what that means, which means all the
thousands and thousands of dollars I put into that thing.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah paid off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Literally, Now you've been you've been a little upset just
thinking about the story we did in the last segment
of people giving up their dogs to shelters.

Speaker 7 (48:04):
Yes, I have the amount of people, for various different
reasons that just rush to get a dog will continue
to contribute to my unsubstantiated number of eighty percent of
dog owners I believe are terrible.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Why that's a high number. Eighty percent? Why?

Speaker 1 (48:23):
What? No?

Speaker 2 (48:24):
The reason? Why?

Speaker 7 (48:25):
For the reasons of not caring for their dogs, for
the reasons of giving up their dogs, for the reason
not giving enough love to your dogs?

Speaker 1 (48:31):
But what? But doesn't come on eighty no way? I
bet you eighty percent are really good. I bet you
ninety percent are really good. You are more optimistic than
I I am. I guess, I guess. I hope you're
wrong on your show.

Speaker 7 (48:46):
I will officially declare a decrease to seventy percent.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Okay, that's the lowest I'll go. Wow, I gotta say.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
I got a bunch of listener texts, and everybody's really
pissed off at people who would just give up their
give up their dogs to the shelter, and one listener says, Ross,
there's no chance anyone in your audience would abandoned a pet.
I mean, there's probably not no chance, but I do
think my audience is probably made up of some pretty
good people. Oh let me, this is not even an

(49:15):
official thing. I'm not even supposed to talk about this yet,
but I will because I just thought of how you know,
all the good people who listen to this show.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
If you want to hang out with.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
A bunch of good people who listen to this show,
consider going on our listener trip next year, which we're
not really going to officially start selling, you know, but
it's available now if you go to rosstrip dot com,
r O S s t r ip dot com if
you want to travel with me and my wife and
some KOA listeners next April. I'm not even gonna bother

(49:46):
giving you more details right now because I don't want
to take the time with it. But just go to
rosstrip dot com and you can learn more and I
would love to travel with you. Let's go through a
bunch of different stories here. So, oh, how about this?
How about this? The Rockies just swept a series for

(50:07):
the first time in more than a year, more than
a year. Pretty fabulous though. I'm very glad they did it.
Let's see, and I'm gonna go to NBC News. This
was actually now, this was before they swept the series.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
This was the news story when.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
They won the when they won the second game of
a series. The wolful Colorado Rockies have ended their ignominious
record setting MLB streak of twenty two consecutive series losses,
which dated to last season. So that would mean in
any three game series they had lost at least two

(50:44):
of the three games in twenty two series in a
row until they took on the Marlins, and not only
did they end up winning the first two games, they
won the third game as well, and so it's their
first series sweep since.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah, at some point at some point last year. So
there you go.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Congratulations to the to the Rockies. It was funny about
four or five days before the end of May, producer
Dragon and I were talking on the show about whether
they would get to They had nine wins, and Dragon
and I were talking about whether they would get to
double digit wins before the end of May, which basically
every team always does every year, and they didn't. They

(51:30):
didn't get to double digit wins until the month of June,
but they did go on to win a series, so
that's pretty fantastic. Okay, the Boulder attack happened while I
was away. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time
talking about it today. I do request that you go
to Rosskominski dot substack dot com, okay, Or if you

(51:54):
go to my blog at Rosskominsky dot com and open
today's blogcast, the very first link is too my substack
where I write some thoughts about the Boulder thing, and
I would appreciate it if you would read that and
subscribe to my substack. It costs you absolutely nothing, and
it's probably worth even more than that. Ross Kaminsky dot

(52:14):
substack dot com. Go ahead and subscribe, and you can
read my occasional writings. I'm gonna try to write something
like every other day. So the other thing that happened
while I was away, the other big story that happened
while I was away, was this remarkable Ukrainian attack on
I think it was five, five or six Russian air bases,

(52:38):
and I still don't know that we have really all
the details, but what it sounds like is perhaps Ukraine smuggled,
and I could be wrong.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
On any of this, by the way, Okay, but.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
I'm sort of piecing it together, and I could be
wrong on any of this, that perhaps Ukraine smuggled parts
of drones into Russia rather than trying to load up
a big truck full of drones, multiple big trucks full
of drones and take them into Russia, because there's a
very good chance that truck would get caught at the border,

(53:13):
and not only would all the drones be taken, but
the driver would probably be imprisoned or executed. Right, So
it seems to me that probably what happened is the
Ukrainian smuggled drone parts, lots of little you know, just
cars going in and hiding little parts here and there,
and then bringing all these parts to a place and

(53:34):
assembling the drones, and then they put the drones in
these semi trucks. They hired Russian drivers to drive the
semi trucks from and didn't tell them what was in them,
to drive the semi trucks from one place to.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Near a.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Near a handful of Russian air bases, and then they
have these essentially autumn mated military drones that follow whatever
the software takes it tells him to do. They launch
and they target airplanes at the Russian military bases, and

(54:13):
they took out a bunch of very expensive airplanes, strategic bombers,
nuclear capable strategic bombers, all kinds of stuff. Now, I
don't think I shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Even put it away. I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
I'm sure that this attack on Russia did not change
the strategic balance in the war, right, they did not
eliminate Russia's capability of doing anything. But symbolically it was
a very big deal, including striking military bases that were

(54:47):
on the other side of Russia. I guess thousands of
miles at least many hundreds, No, it must be thousands
of miles away from Ukraine. Really an incredible thing, and
it showed real weakness.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Now, there was a lot.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
By Russia, and one wonders which part of Vladimir Putin's
intelligence staff, military intelligence staff, you know, is dead already
from having failed on that. And when it happened, of course,
I thought about what does it mean for the war

(55:23):
and what does it mean for President Trump's efforts to
try to end the war? And I thought two things
at the same time. One, it probably doesn't help in
the war sooner, although it might help eventually end the
war better.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
But one thing you know for sure.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Is that Donald Trump likes and appreciates strength. It's the
adjective that I think he finds to be the most
positive adjective in the world, strong and the most positive
adverb in the world strongly. This morning when he was talking,
he was taking questions from reporters while speaking with the

(56:04):
Chancellor of Germany, and he was talking about getting illegal
aliens out of the country, and he said.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
We're doing it strongly.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
And he says it all the time, and it really
sounds kind of moronic, but it's just how he is.
He's all about portraying strength. He wants everyone to think
of him as strong, and he admires strength, which is
part of the reason he admires Vladimir Putin, and he
admires dictators all around the world because he perceives them

(56:32):
as strong. And maybe some part of him would like
to have that level of authority.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
I don't know, but.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
In any case, it seemed to me that Donald Trump
would very much appreciate.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
What Ukraine did.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
And there was an interesting piece headline at Axios Trump
admired Ukraine's badass and that's in quotes badass attack, but
worries what's next?

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Now they quote someone who's.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Around Trump but not Trump, using the word badass.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
But I believe it.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
This person who's around Trump says that Trump thought the.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Attack was badass.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
I did too, Everyone did, probably even the Russians secretly did.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
They're not very happy about it, but they did.

Speaker 7 (57:22):
So.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Now what's interesting, OK, let me make a comparison.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Let me make a comparison. You may recall, sure you do,
recall when Iran.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Lobbed a whole bunch of rockets and missiles at Israel,
and I think only one or two people were killed,
and most of the rockets and missiles were either taken
out by Israel's defensive systems or landed harmlessly in open
space somewhere. You will also recall that Israel took quite

(57:56):
some time to retaliate.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
And when they did, they.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Destroyed most of Iran or at least a certain segment
of Iran's air defenses, and proved that they can get
into Iran. They took out a couple of military targets,
and they took out air defenses. They didn't attack nuclear
weapons facilities or energy facilities. I was kind of hoping
they would attack some energy facilities, but they didn't.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
In any case, my point is Israel waited a while.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
And I don't know whether they waited a while as
kind of a form of psychological warfare it's a psyop,
or whether they did it because they just had a
little more planning they wanted to do, they wanted to
narrow down their targets a little bit more, whatever it
might be. And you have to think that Russia, I mean,

(58:47):
Russia has already said and then Trump said that, Putin
said that Russia intends to react again very strongly. As
Trump put Itussia is going to hit back hard.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
But Russia hits hard all the time.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
They lob lots of missiles, lots of rockets all the time.
Some of them get through and people get killed, kids
get killed. Right at least Ukraine was only attacking military targets.
Russia always attacks civilian targets. So we're gonna have to
see what happens here, because I think, on the one hand,
that attack would raise Trump's level of respect for Ukraine.
You know how Trump always says Ukraine doesn't.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Have the cards.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Well, this attack showed that Ukraine had a you know,
a joker. Not that most people who play poker play
versions of the game that have jokers, but anyway, that
Ukraine had a joker or or had a hand had
cards that nobody imagined.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
That they had.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
So we'll see the other thing. And I this was
a story I read just briefly in passing this morning at.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
The Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
There's a story about how there are some particular parts
that Ukrainian military uses that are supplied the American military
for I think maybe it's missile defense systems, I think,
and the story suggested that the US is going to
supply fewer of them to Ukraine and send more of
them to American forces in various parts of the world. Now,

(01:00:14):
if it's true that American forces in various parts of
the world are short of these things, then yes, of
course we should prioritize making sure our troops have everything
they need to defend themselves in case something blows up
somewhere in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
That involves us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
But we should do everything we can as well, in
my opinion, to keep supplying Ukraine with this stuff. It
is very much in America's national interest. It remains very
much in America's national interest. I'm not gonna say it's
going to be easy to cause Putin to lose, but
perhaps for Putin to not win.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
All right, what else?

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Oh, here's an interesting story. I mentioned this is probably
two weeks ago now. At the city Council on an
eight to one I think it was eight to one vote,
voted to spend seventy million dollars to buy and improve

(01:01:13):
some land in Denver that would be a future home
of a stadium for a new professional women's soccer team.
The one no vote is a woman named Sarah Parody
Paara d Y, who is a socialist.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
And I don't mean that's me calling her names. I
mean she is a.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is proudly
herself a socialist. That is not an epithet I'm throwing
at her. I don't know why anyone would be a socialist.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Proudly, but she is. And she voted no. And she
was the only one who voted no.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
And I said on this show that it's probably the
first time I can think of that. I think I
would have voted the same she voted. Denver is cutting
its budget right now, and they say that this seventy
million dollars comes out of an entirely different pot of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Money and doesn't affect the budget.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
But still Denver has to put people on unpaid furloughs,
right you know, a day off here, a day off here,
and you don't and you don't get paid for it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
So that's not great. That's not the sign of financial strength.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Seventy million dollars to buy some land hoping that there
will be some long term financial gain.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Where you know that almost every single time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Some study is done about the economic benefit to a
location from putting in a new stadium, almost always those
benefits don't show up, and certainly not at the scale
that was promised. They're all lies all the time, or if,
if you don't want to be quite so pejorative is
calling them lies, you can say they're overly optimistic projections.

(01:02:55):
If I were Denver, I wouldn't be spending this money.
If there's a use for a professional soccer team here
and it's gonna do that, well, then maybe you work
out some kind of tax incentive. Maybe you work out
something that maybe cost.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
The city a little a little but leaves this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Up to the private owners of the team and all
this other stuff. I don't like the idea at all
because I don't have anything for or against women's soccer
professional women's soccer, right, I'm not really that interested. Although
I probably rather watch professional women's soccer than professional women's basketball.
I do like watching women's soccer in the Olympics. I've

(01:03:37):
liked watching that for a long time, so but I
have felt that it's a bad bet.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
I could be wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
I could be wrong, but I just don't like the
idea of Denver making that bet. Now I see this
news today, here's the headline from Axios Bronco's legend. Peyton
Manning joins Denver NWSL. That's the Professional Women's Soccer League
I'm talking about. Joins Denver NWSL's ownership team. Peyton Manning's

(01:04:07):
jumping aboard the ownership group for the city's new professional
women's soccer team. Manning, who led the Broncos to a
Super Bowl victory in twenty fifteen and now operates a
media business called Omaha Productions, is the latest high profile
co owner of the yet to be named club, which
announced his edition Tuesday. Mikhaela Schiffrin joined last month other

(01:04:30):
people in the ownership group Rob Cohen of I am
a financial and a separate venture led by a woman
named Melody with two l's Melody Hobson, who's part of
the Denver Broncos ownership team. And I will say that
if you're getting people like that involved in the ownership

(01:04:51):
of the team and therefore involved in the promotion of
the team, it might be a better bet for the
city than I was think. I still think i'd vote
against it. I think I'd still say these people are
all massively wealthy, let them spend the money rather than
the city spend the money. And of course the retort

(01:05:11):
to that will be, well, other cities will offer them
these things, and if Denver doesn't do it, somebody else well,
to which I would say.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Well, let them go somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Then I say that generally about these kinds of things
where you're going to get taxpayer subsidies for infrastructure that
eventually benefits at least millionaires, if not billionaires, why should
taxpayers potentially be on the hook for that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
I don't dig it. Still, I wonder if.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
The city council had any sense of Mikayla Schiffrin.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
I think she might have done it before the vote.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
I think she might have joined the ownership team before
the vote, but not Manning. And Manning's clearly the biggest
name in Colorado. And Manning is the biggest name in
sports in Colorado right now, even though he hasn't played
in a long time. He's everywhere, He's famous, Everybody loves him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
He's a he's an.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Unbelievable brand in his own right, probably bigger than even
John Elway at John Elway's branding peak.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
And that's saying something. So we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Maybe it's a better bet for the city than I thought.
And also it's probably a better bet for these people
to have the city take the upfront risk to buy
the land and to improve the land so that they
can build a stadium on it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
All Right, one other quick thing. I listened to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
A podcast and I'm not going to name the podcaster.
It's a female podcaster, but I'm not going to name her.
And it's a fairly popular podcast. I think it's in
the top hundred. And this woman is very maga and
very smart, very high IQ, very maga, and I hadn't

(01:06:58):
heard her podcast before, and I thought i'd give it
a try, so I put it on and she starts
talking about Jeffrey Epstein and about the fact that Dan Bongino,
who was a huge Maga hero, right and he is
now deputy director of the FBI. But Dan Bongino is
just in the you know, the the pantheon of people

(01:07:18):
who Maga folks trust and admire and adore. And Dan
Bongino has now seen everything that he can find and
some stuff that he that originally seemed to be hidden,
and he's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
Looked through it all, including all the video.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
That he could find of the prison and the area
and the area around the cell of Jeffrey Epstein, and
he came out. Bongino came out and said, everything I've
seen says he killed himself.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
We've got it's not he said. We have lots of video.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
It's not great video, but there is simply after such
and such time, there is no evidence of anybody going
to Epstein's cage, to Epstein's cell.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
I believe he killed himself.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
And this podcaster said, Oh, I'm so disappointed, and I'm
disappointed in Dan Bongino. Oh there's gotta be more here,
and I'm I'm sure he'll find it and then he'll
tell us the truth. And that just really bothered me,
you know, like, why are you in such a such
a hurry to try to violate outcomes?

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
Razor.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
It's always been most likely that he killed himself always,
And now the guy you've trusted, the guy you cheered
when Trump named him to this job, comes out and says,
I've seen even more information now and I'm really convinced
he killed himself. And now your answer is you're you're
disappointed because you wanted there to be some kind of conspiracy.
You wanted there to be some other thing. Whatever happened

(01:08:54):
to caring about the truth more than wanting some wacky
political talking point.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Hello, Rob, can you can you see me?

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Hi?

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Rob?

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Hi?

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Rob?

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Rob? Rob is the new big mcguilla of our KOA newsdesk.
It was it was announced by email to everybody in
the world that Rob.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
What's the title? Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
News director? Is that the correct title?

Speaker 8 (01:09:18):
News director for the Rocky Mountain Region and KOA.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
And KOA So all right, just stick with me here
for a second. Rob.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
First of all, congratulations. All right, Rob's gonna come in
for a second. Well, as Rob is walking in, let
me just read this listener text, Hi Ross, I enjoy
your show. I'm not sure why I'm texting. I just
heard the commercial for Koa's one hundredth anniversary. I'm proud
to say I started listening to KOA fifty years ago
after I got a Crystal radio kit for my birthday.
The Blowtorch was the only station I could pick up,

(01:09:46):
and I enjoyed listening to the likes of Alan Berg,
Ken Hamblin and many other hosts I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Here's to another one hundred years. Thank you, Rich. That
is a That is a great text.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
I doubt I will still be here one hundred years
from now. What it's surely my honor to be on
this historic station.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
Hi Rob, Hey Ross, how are you good?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Congratulations?

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
Thank you?

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
So tell me tell.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
The people who are listening what exactly your responsibilities are
as news director?

Speaker 8 (01:10:17):
What does that mean monitoring news content, especially in a
breaking news situation, but in general, for primarily Kawa and
for the entire Rocky Mount reason of iHeartMedia now, Kawa
is ninety percent of that work.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
We are the largest station in our region, but.

Speaker 8 (01:10:35):
We do assist other markets and times of breaking news.
Salt Lake City at times Las Vegas, Wichita, North Dakota.
We do some regular newscasts for North Dakota in the
mornings here.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
But it's a pretty cool job.

Speaker 8 (01:10:51):
And Kathy Walker, who is stepping away from full time duties,
who has been such a great mentor for you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Yes, for decades, Kathy has been has been helming the
Kaway news ship. And if you're listening, Kathy, thank you
for all your years of fabulous work.

Speaker 8 (01:11:10):
So she's still going to be here part time, yes, Yes,
And we really like that because she has historical perspective
on Colrado's stories that I'm developing. Yeah, but don't have
especially you know those people that maybe out of the
public line light for a decade, but then you know,
comfort but they die or maybe they do something cool
and I don't know who it is. I don't have perspective.
All right, She's great on those things, all right, So.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Let me switch gears completely.

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
So I was in New York, yes, and I was
over at Fox News actually, so the TV and radio
are on different floors. I was on the radio floor
and I was watching Jimmy Fayala, who's a very very
funny guy, do his radio show, and I was introduced
to the two guys who were producing the show. I'll
loosely call them producers. I don't know who was doing

(01:11:55):
what exactly. And I said, hey, I'm ross from Kay
and they said, oh, do you know Rob Dawson. And
I say, I said, you know, what's funny it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
Was it was before. It was before the announcement of
you getting the news director job.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
And I said to them, I said, to them, mon
Monday morning, you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
Were there Monday? Tuesday? Maybe yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
I was there. Yeah, No, I was there both Monday
and Tuesday.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
Yeah, but Mondays were users just visiting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
I was just visiting, Okay, But Monday I was.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
I met them and I said, Rob's going to be
our next news director.

Speaker 7 (01:12:34):
And then they came out and then and then I
did a selfie with it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
So what's yours?

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
What's your connection with with Fox News Radio?

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
So that that was the in between.

Speaker 8 (01:12:42):
I was here at KOA in twenty sixteen to eighteen.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):
As the overnight anchor.

Speaker 8 (01:12:46):
Okay, So then I left to go home and it
was just a personal growth thing.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:12:52):
You know, KOA has had not meant for a station
of one hundred years and news for how long fifty
sixty years new talk. I know we probably heard music
and symphonies like prior to nineteen sixty or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
But you know, but there's not a lot of turnover.
People get here.

Speaker 8 (01:13:08):
It's a destination, they say, and at the time there
just wasn't as many people moving. I said, you know what,
I want to go home. I want to work in
my hometown, New Jersey and New York, the New York
market and everything. I had an in with someone at Fox.
I worked there part time at first. I worked part
time at iHeartMedia New York at first, and then they

(01:13:30):
had this product for called Fox News Headlines twenty four
to seven on Sirius XMR. I love all news and
I love news talk too, but all news is where
I first started, and I was the overnight anchor eventually
as in a full time role on Serrius XM. Random
Facebook friends from usually the West because they were up
the East was asleep, you know, so I was I

(01:13:52):
was big and like rural Nevada or something else that
wasn't big anywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
But it was so much fun working there.

Speaker 8 (01:14:01):
But you know, overnights was tough, you know, uh physically
and uh and then there were stuff here at Koa
and Kathy walker A text hers like, hey, you know
what's going on over there?

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
You know April was leaving at the time.

Speaker 8 (01:14:15):
And she's like, hey, you know, Jerry Bell have two aunt.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
You know, do you wanna do you want to come back?

Speaker 8 (01:14:20):
You know, we're struggling a little bit and to find
someone or you know. I was like, wow, I know
it's still open. Is it daytime work?

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (01:14:29):
So Fox News Radio was the in between and and
I have a great time and so many friends still there.

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
So you got a listener text, We'll just share this
with you and then we'll we'll call it. Good congratulations
Rob from a fellow Jersey guy, Jack the blind guy
from Aurora, Okay, now living in Portugal. All the best
in good luck.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
So there right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Yeah, your first listener text as news director, Yeah, is
from Europe.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
But that oh yeah, because Friday night, Oh yeah, all.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
Right Friday, So Friday night, it's official. The announcement was
already so I'm just gonna call it. I'm gonna call it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
But there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Portugal, Portugal is rooting for you, Portugal rooting for Jersey.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
Congratulations Rob, Thank you appreciating it. We'll take a quick break,
we'll be right back on KA.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
The big news at the federal level in the past,
especially twenty four hours, but it's been simmering for several
days is Elon Musk's opposition to the so called Big
Beautiful Bill.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
And I played some audio for you the other day.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
I'm not going to play it for you again right now,
but it was Elon Musk saying to an interviewer who
asked about the Big Beautiful Bill.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
Elon Musk said, well, a bill.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
Can be big or it can be beautiful, but I
don't know that it can be both.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
And I agree with him, and I don't like this bill.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
And if I were in Congress, Look, this is a
very tricky thing, right. Politics is the art of the possible,
and it's easier to say I definitely wouldn't than it
is to actually get over there and do the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
But I like to think that I would vote against
this bill, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
At the very least, I would do absolutely everything I
can to not support a bill that is a Republican bill,
passed by a Republican Congress, signed by a Republican president, that,
even under its supporters rosiest assumptions, increases our debt and deficit.

(01:16:33):
And I want to be very clear about something I
don't accept, even though I understand the mechanics of it.
I don't accept the scoring that counts the maintenance of
current tax rates as a massive loss to government revenue
and therefore as increasing the deficit by just keeping the

(01:16:53):
current tax rates. I understand why the CBO has to
do it that way, but I don't like it. The
reason they have to do it that way is that
under current law, if nothing were to be done, the
individual income tax rates passed in twenty seventeen and the
first Trump administration will expire and revert to the prior rates,

(01:17:16):
and the vast majority of the country will get a
rate height By the way, the corporate income tax provisions
in that bill were permanent, they won't expire, but the
individual ones will expire, since under current law the rates
would go to whatever they would go to. It means
that a bill that extends the current rates is functionally

(01:17:38):
to the CBO like a new tax cut, and they
will score that as costing the government money.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
They never adequately account for.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
The dynamic effects of this, meaning how how much reduced
tax rates increase economic activity and at least pay back
some of the quote unquote cost of a tax cut.
I also would like to note that the best argument
for a tax cut is not economic efficiency. The best

(01:18:10):
argument for a tax cut is I earn the money,
keep your bleeping hands off of it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
That's the argument.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
The government does not have a first claim on your money,
and yet they steal it to do all these things
that are unconstitutional. Now we have a huge problem because
we can't just say, yeah, we're gonna cut taxes because
it's the right thing to do, when at the same
time we have far, far too much spending. And unfortunately
we have as Republican presidents go a guy who is

(01:18:40):
about as bad as you could imagine, because Donald Trump
campaigned against reforming entitlements, which is where the money is.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
All this other stuff, the doze stuff, as welcome as
it is, and.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
I welcome every dollar, every billion dollars saved by government.
It's small compared to Medicare and Social Security. Medicaid is
fairly big, but even that is small compared to Medicare
and Social Security. That's where we got to go, and
nobody's gonna go there now. Elon Musk has been saying
that Elon Musk has been tweeting Elon Musk called the

(01:19:18):
bill a disgusting abomination. He said in a post on X,
this massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a
disgusting abomination.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Shame on those who voted for it. You know you
did wrong, you know it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Then there was a piece that just came out this
morning from the Daily Signal, which is part of the
Heritage Foundation, when Trump was asked about Elon and he said,
Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know
if we will anymore. And then listen to this jab
at Elon Musk from the President. He knew everything about
it and had no problem, but then all of a

(01:19:54):
sudden he had a problem. And he only developed the
problem when he found out that we're gonna cut the
EV mandate, because that's billions and billions of dollars, and
it really is unfair.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
And what Trump means, it's unfair.

Speaker 1 (01:20:04):
That Musk is criticizing the bill because Trump claims that
Musk is just mad that Tesla won't get as much subsidy.
But I think that's nonsense, because it has been known
all along that they were going to do this to
the EV mandate. This is not a new piece of information,
and Musk is now urging members of Congress to kill
the bill.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
Those are his words, kill the bill, Kill the bill.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
So look, this is gonna be a very interesting thing
because Donald Trump is president.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
And has tremendous way, much.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
More than Elon Musk does over the Republican Party, much
much more. Normally, I would say that Elon Musk would
have an incredible amount of influence because of his.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
Money, but might not be that much for two reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
One, Elon Musk has already said he's not gonna spend
as much as he did last time. And two, Donald Trump,
even though he's not running for reelection, is sitting on
a massive, massive stockpile of campaign cash that he can
use for other candidates. So I really don't see much
of a way for Elon Musk to win.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
But he also doesn't need.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
To get very many Republicans to side with him in
order to force Republicans to change the bill and make
it better. And that's what I hope happens. Will Tour
and I run into each other, either you know, communications wise,
or not that often in person, I guess, But for
years and years and years now and Will is always
doing something around energy issues. And his current gig and

(01:21:37):
actually has had this gig for a while, is he
is the executive director of the Colorado Energy Office. And
my listeners know I am fascinated by energy issues.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
I think in the big.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Like, there's always some short term thing that comes up
that seems very important at the moment, but in the
big picture, other than perhaps the national debt, there's probably
nothing more more important than energy policy. And so I
like to pay close attention to this stuff. And most
people think about it at the federal level, but there's
an immense amount of stuff that happens at the.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
State level, and Will knows all about that. So, Hi Will,
thanks for being here.

Speaker 9 (01:22:15):
Hi Rosa, I'm happy to join.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Before we jump into issues, tell us a little bit
about the mandate and responsibilities of the Colorado Energy Office.

Speaker 9 (01:22:28):
Yeah, So, the Colorado Energy Office is a non regulatory
agency that is actually part of the Governor's office that
has the mission of advancing both affordable and clean energy
for the people of Colorado and advancing energy efficiency and

(01:22:49):
transportation electrification. So we helped develop policy. We're involved in
the various regulatory bodies like public Utilities Commission or the
State Air Commission, and then we run a bunch of programs,
largely programs that are focused on helping businesses and consumers

(01:23:12):
do things like energy improvements to their properties, or installing
electric vehicle charging, or helping low income residents and reduce
their energy bills.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
And you said a non regulatory agency.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
So does that mean you guys are not writing and
enforcing rules the way the Department of Revenue might or
something like that.

Speaker 9 (01:23:39):
That's right. So we do help to administer a number
of programs that have sort of regulatory elements, but where
the actual regulatory body would be something like the State
Air Quality Control Commission, we may be helping do administer
programs where we don't have direct regulatory authority.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Okay, so that's actually a great jumping off point for
the question I emailed you about the other day, and
you wrote me a very interesting and long answer, and
I'm not going to read any of it. We'll just
you you can tell my listeners about it. And I
saw a headline over at the Colorado Sun. It's written
by a reporter named Michael Booth, who I think has
a particular angle on energy issues.

Speaker 2 (01:24:20):
It's probably.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
I think his I think his approach to energy is
probably much like yours.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
It's probably a little different from mine.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
But the headline is Congress has likely killed Colorado's ev
mandate and clean energy programs.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
Environmental groups say, but.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
This is actually a secondary effect if it's true, and
we'll get to the is it true question of what
Congress did regarding California.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
So first, before.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
We get to Colorado, just the listeners understand the framework.
What did Congress do regarding California.

Speaker 9 (01:24:57):
Yeah, so this is in the context of car standards.
So under the Federal Clean Air Act, the Congress wanted
to make sure both said cars were getting cleaner over time,
but also that there weren't fifty different state standards that
auto manufacturers had to build their vehicles too. So when

(01:25:21):
the Cleaner Act was first passed, like back in the
nineteen seventies, at that time, California was a one state
that already had a clean air standards for vehicles. And
so the way that the legislation was written, the federal governments,
through the EPA and the Department of Transportation, sets both

(01:25:43):
fuel economy standards and clean air requirements for cars and trucks,
and then California was also allowed to set their own standards,
although they had to go through a waiver process with
the EPA to have those standards approved, and then states

(01:26:05):
would have their choice. They could either go with the
standards set by the federal government or they could go
with the standard set by California, but they couldn't set
their own standards, and so Colorado a number of years
ago adopted our own clean car standards that were based
upon the California standards, which are somewhat stricter. They lead

(01:26:29):
to lower pollution than the federal standards, and recently a
couple of years ago, California updated those standards. It's what's
called the Clean Advanced Clean Cars to standard that, among
other things, requires the a level of vehicles sold by

(01:26:52):
any given manufacturer in a state to that are electric
vehicles or other zeromission vehicles, has to dually increase over time,
and Colorado partially adopted that rule. We adopted it through
twenty thirty two. Congress recently used something known as a

(01:27:14):
Congressional Review Act to remove the waiver for the state
of California, which means they can't enforce those clean car
standards and other states wouldn't be able to either. It's
likely to go to litigation. There's arguments that it was

(01:27:35):
not a legal use of the Congressional Review Act, but
it's created a lot of uncertainty into whether California or
other states will can have their own clean car and
clean truck standards. It's interesting for the state of Colorado,
you know, we basically view those standards as a means
of assuring that manufacturers will bring all their vehicles to Colorado.

(01:28:00):
It has a relatively small state. In the past, we
often saw that new electric vehicles would go to the
coasts and the manufacturers wouldn't bring them here. We view
this really as helping to ensure consumer choice and make
sure they bring all those vehicles here. But in practice,
to date, what we've seen is that actual consumer demand

(01:28:22):
has been probably four times higher than those minimum regulatory standards.
So there's probably not a near term impact on the
Colorado market, but there may be over time.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
This is a thing that some people who are very
much against this were calling effectively a internal combustion engine ban.
Not immediately, but they were sort of describing it as
the way the rules would be implemented would force car
makers to massively reduce or eliminate other internal combustion engine
vehicles and just have electric Do you think that's is

(01:28:58):
that a goal of yours if you were in charge.

Speaker 9 (01:29:04):
So the way that so California's rule, Colorado did not
adopt all of California's rule. California's rule does require by
twenty thirty five, one hundred percent of the vehicles that
are sold in California have to be either electric vehicles,
plug in hybrid vehicles that have a gasoline engine but
also are are able to take electricity or hydrogen vehicles

(01:29:29):
for new vehicle sales. It doesn't stop, you know, used
vehicles from being sold. Colorado didn't go that direction. You know,
we adopted a rule that does require sales to grow substantially,
you know, eventually up to about eighty percent of vehicles,
but does not include any ban on gasoline only or

(01:29:50):
diesel only vehicles, because we wanted to make sure that
we're maintaining consumer choice here.

Speaker 1 (01:29:57):
So and again I realize you're you're not in legislature,
and you're not a and you're not a regulator, but
you are more involved in these issues than probably anybody
I know here in the States. So again, I'll ask
you whether you think eliminating or nearly eliminating internal combustion
engine vehicles as new car sales. Do you think it's

(01:30:20):
a reasonable goal.

Speaker 9 (01:30:25):
So, again, that's not the direction that we we thought
made sense for Colorado. We certainly, you know, I do
believe that over time evs will take over almost the
entire marketplace just because they're better. They're better vehicles, and
as the cost of batteries keeps coming down, they're going
to have so many advantages over gasoline vehicles. But from

(01:30:48):
a public policy perspective, you know, our goal has been to,
you know, make sure that in these early days of
the EV market, they're financially tracked a track to folks,
make sure that we have the electric vehicle charging infrastructure
so that people know that they can get wherever they
need to go with one, and and make sure the

(01:31:10):
manufacturers they're bringing their vehicles here. And I don't you know,
we you know, very consciously did not go in the
direction of a ban on gasoline vehicles. Do you think
that was good public policy for the state of Colorado?

Speaker 1 (01:31:26):
All right, fair enough, so let's actually let's tie this
in then to the other thing that I want to
talk to you about. So if if evs are going
to take over, and they and they will might. As
you said, it's not only that there will need to
be more infrastructure in terms of chargers in a lot
of different places, and they'll have to be fast chargers

(01:31:47):
because people are not going to want to spend twenty
minutes to get the range that they could get in
four minutes at the s LENE pump, right, So, but
that technology is developing, so they'll need to be fairly
fast chargers and and widely dispersed, easy to access. The
vehicles will need better range to people don't have the
range anxiety, and I do think all that's possible. To me,

(01:32:09):
the hardest part of this is the electricity generation and
the infrastructure to get the power from whatever is generating
the electricity, insufficient quantity to all these chargers and everything
else as we try to electrify everything, and I have
great concern that that cannot be done in a way

(01:32:31):
that doesn't double or triple or quadruple our electric bills.

Speaker 9 (01:32:38):
Yeah, so it's a great question, and this is an
issue where I actually think that the impact of EBS
is the opposite. If you're concerned there are other types
of electrification, and especially sort of the advent of large
data centers, where I think there are a lot of
questions about how to how to meet that load. But

(01:33:02):
the great thing about electric vehicles is that for the
vast majority of vehicles, people plug them in at night,
and the vast majority of charging is happening overnight when
there's lots of excess capacity on the grid. So you're
essentially taking a bunch of generating capacity and transmission lines

(01:33:22):
and distribution lines that we've already had to pay for
that right now, there's ten hours a day where there's
not much revenue coming in to pay for those, and
you're spreading those fixed costs over more kilo white hours.
And so all of the analysis that we've seen suggests

(01:33:45):
that especially for light duty electric vehicles for passenger cars,
the more of them we get on the road, they
actually helped to put downward pressure on electric rates and
slow down the increase in electric rates that we're seeing
happen across the country for a bunch of other reasons.
So one analysis from a couple of years ago found

(01:34:06):
that every EV we add to the road in Colorado
will reduce electricity costs to other customers over its lifetime
by about six hundred and fifty dollars. That said, I
think we can create an even better benefit by having

(01:34:26):
sort of rate structures and managed charging that really encourage
people to do the vast majority of that charging later
into the evening.

Speaker 3 (01:34:35):
And so there's a.

Speaker 9 (01:34:36):
Bunch of programs that are more in the pilot phase
right now, but that are focused on trying to get
folks to just program their vehicles so the charger comes
on at nine o'clock instead of at five pm when
they get home from work, and it's even bigger benefits.
So I do think that there are some challenges around

(01:34:58):
how are we going to manage the infrastructure we build
out on the electricity side, especially to make sure that
we can power data centers without driving up other people's
electric rates. But I don't think that's a problem for
e these.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
All right, that's a very interesting answer, insightful answer. I
like that when we first started talking, you mentioned that
one of the mandates of your of your office. And
by the way, folks, if you're just joining, we're talking
with Will Tour that's t oo R. And he is
the director of the Colorado Energy office. So you said
that part of your mandate is to make sure that

(01:35:37):
we have electricity that's both clean and efficient. Now, for
a lot of people, and I'm not pointing a finger
at you here will, but for a lot of people,
clean really only means quote unquote renewable solar.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
And wind and that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
And it seems to me again and that it's going
to be somewhere between difficult and impossible to get to
Jared Poulos's goals of having all renewable energy in the
state of Colorado and and not have our bills go up.
To me, this is a much more obvious problem than

(01:36:14):
than the ev one, which which you explained pretty well.
How how could we even theoretically get to what we're
calling all renewable energy at some point when you have
to have base load power anyway?

Speaker 2 (01:36:32):
How do how do you?

Speaker 1 (01:36:33):
And and the cost of all these projects wind and
solar just has exploded.

Speaker 2 (01:36:38):
Over the past few years. How should we think about that?

Speaker 9 (01:36:43):
Yeah, So it's a great question and a somewhat somewhat
nuanced answer. So the way that I would describe it
is if you if you look around the country, what
we have seen is that in essentially every state around
around the we have been seeing electricity cost increases over

(01:37:05):
the last decade. When you look at those costing creases
and you compare it to how much renewable electricity there
is on the grid and how is it growing in
those states, there's almost no relation. And in fact, Colorado,
which has had one of the highest rates of renewable growth,
has had among the lowest increase in electricity costs over

(01:37:30):
the last ten years. But when we look out into
the and really part of that is because we've had
some pretty expensive old coal plants that as those have
been retired, they've been replaced by lower cost wind and
solar and natural gas, and the effect has been to

(01:37:53):
both have a cleaner electricity mix and have much less
much less of an increase in electricity rates than we've
been seeing in other areas as we look out into
the future. The regulatory structure in Colorado does have clean
energy requirements for our electric utilities. They're required to reduce

(01:38:17):
their pollution eighty percent below a two thousand and five
baseline by twenty thirty, but it does not specify the
technologies that they need to use. So even though that
the state's been very supportive of renewable energy. Our rules
don't tell the utilities you must use wand or you

(01:38:38):
must use solar. They say, here's your target for reducing pollution,
and bring forward the mixture of resources that is going
to maintain reliability and that makes economic sense. And if
they're a municipal utility or a co op, they decide
on that mix. If they're a regulated utility, they bring

(01:39:01):
that proposal to the state Public Utilities Commission and naming
the ultimate decision on it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:09):
Let me just jump in for a second, because we
only have about ninety seconds left.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
So I saw, and I'm sure you saw.

Speaker 1 (01:39:16):
The head of Colorado Springs Utilities some months ago made
some comments along the lines of they cannot abide by
the statewide goal for eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gases
by twenty thirty without massively increasing cost to their right payers.

(01:39:39):
And even if they did that, it might still be impossible.
And given also how long it takes to build a
nuclear plant, and nuclear is the right answer, but it
takes forever to build one.

Speaker 2 (01:39:50):
Just give me one minute here.

Speaker 1 (01:39:52):
On what's going to happen where Governor Poulis's pipe dream
of eighty percent reduction.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
And Jared's my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:40:00):
He knows I say this stuff to Governor Poulus's pipe
dream of eighty percent reduction meets the reality of physics
and economics that that absolutely positively will not be achieved.

Speaker 2 (01:40:10):
Then what happens.

Speaker 9 (01:40:12):
Yeah, well, so that's not what's actually happening on the ground.
When we look across the state, there are utilities, all
taken together, are on track actually to exceed that eighty
percent goal, and we think that we'll average it across
all the utilities hit about eighty four percent. It's harder

(01:40:33):
for utility like Colorado's Springs that doesn't have the same
access to transmission as some of the bigger utilities who
are have an easier time accessing wind energy. That's a
nuance that is quite difference between the larger utilities like
Tri State and Excel than it is or color Springs.

(01:40:55):
So when we look at it across the entire state,
what we see is that we're well on track.

Speaker 2 (01:41:00):
To interest achieve. Okay, okay, last quick questions you need.

Speaker 9 (01:41:05):
I do agree with you that over the longer term,
we are going to need zero pollution sources of electricity
that are available twenty four to seven, and so you know,
there was legislation this year that made it clear that
nuclear is very much in the mix. You can be
considered in Colorado. Advanced geosermal. We think there's huge opportunity

(01:41:30):
in Colorado. Their tri state is already moving forward on
plans for a gas plant with carbon capture in northwest Colorado.
So there's a lot of technologies that I think can
come into play.

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
There, and I sure hope nuclear is AMN. So I
just literally have a couple seconds here. Will can a
utility in Colorado buy energy from another state where the
other where the producer in that other state says this
came from wind or solar, and then Colorado can count
that toward this goal or is it all? Is it

(01:42:07):
only based on energy produced in this state?

Speaker 9 (01:42:11):
So our our standards are based upon the electricity serving
retail sales, not whether it where it is produced. So
it's it's all the electricity that they're using, including electricity
imported from out of state.

Speaker 1 (01:42:26):
So they could if Texas is producing a lot of
wind power, and I don't know if we're connected to Texas,
but if we were connected to Texas and they produce
a lot of wind power, then theoretically we could buy
a bunch of electricity from them and claim more, meeting
our goal.

Speaker 9 (01:42:40):
If we had the transmission to deliver that. Will Tour
real It can't just be a paper transaction.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
But yeah, Will Tour, you really know your stuff. And
that was a great conversation. And I you know you
have me. You have me believing I have some things
at least a little bit wrong, and I appreciate that.
Will Tour is director of the Colorado Energy Office. Thanks
so much for your time. We'll definitely have you back.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
Thank you. Will.

Speaker 1 (01:43:06):
All right, that's it for me for today. I see
Jimmy Singenberger is here in for the traveling Mandy Connell
stick around for Jimmy, who may or may not have
a harmonica. I'll talk to you tomorrow.