07-03-25 - *FULL SHOW* Independence with Tom Krannawitter; Jed Babbin; Sports Sanity

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yesterday, I sort of mentioned in passing, was like I
had asked I had asked you what do you most
look forward to in the summer, and I had mentioned
I like barbecuing. And then somebody, maybe it was Dragon,
asked me what's your favorite barbecue place? And then I
mentioned a place called Jabbo's Jabo Apostrophe s Shannon, have
you ever been there? So it's it's just south of

(00:22):
Arapa Hole on Dayton, so just a little bit east
of I twenty five, south side of a Rapa Hole,
and it's been there for twenty one years.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
And Jabbo is the dude who runs it. Anyway, so
I was.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I was kind of inspired by just having thought of
that answer when people asked, like, what's your favorite barbecue joint?
And so I took my kid to lunch there yesterday
and we had a fabulous lunch.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
And then.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
I happened to be wearing a Koa shirt yesterday, which
is probably a thing I do once a month. It's
not a very common thing. But I happened to be
wearing a Koa shirt and then and then they said
to me that the people running in the restaurant said, oh,
a bunch of people came in and said they heard
about Like these people who were just sitting at the
tables next.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
To you said they heard about us on the radio.
I thought, oh, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
So if you did go to Jabbos yesterday because you
heard me talk about it, I hope you had a
really good lunch. That's the main point I wanted to make.
So what did I do later in the day. We're
all friends here, you know, we're talking about what we
did during the day yesterday. So yesterday evening I went
to get acupuncture. Now I've had it before, but it's
been a while and I've got just some health things

(01:35):
going on that I don't think are very serious, but
I just don't know what to deal you know, how
to deal with them exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I won't bore you with the details.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
But it's not like I'm going to die tomorrow unless
I get hit by a bus, but from this stuff,
I'm not And I don't think acupuncture can cure tomorrow's
being struck by a bus anyway. So but it's a
very acupuncture is a very interesting thing.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
And I was I was talking.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
With the guy who he was recommended to me by
someone else who gets accupuncture.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I went to this guy.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
He's actually South Korean, not Chinese.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
South Korean guy, pretty young.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
He looks to me like he's in his early thirties,
and it was interesting how he was talking to me
about like I should take fewer medicines if I can
change my diet, you know, fewer spicy things, which is
hard for me because I love spicy things, but very
very diet the whole. If you've never if you've never
experienced Eastern medicine, the difference between Eastern medicine and Western

(02:32):
medicine is it's as big as you could possibly imagine.
There's almost nothing about it that's the same, and it's
it's interesting. So I lay there and I don't. I don't, really,
I don't. I don't mind acupuncture and the needles don't hurt,
but I don't necessarily love to see my body looking
like a pincushion or a porcupine or something. So typically

(02:52):
I close my eyes when he's putting the needles in.
And so first I'm lying on my back, just wearing underwear,
nothing else, lying on my back, and he's probably puts
twenty something needles from my feet all the way up
to like one almost right between my eyes, and I
keep my eyes closed. I want to see it, although
it also would be a little bit like that dude

(03:12):
in hell Raiser. You remember the movie hell Raiser and
the guy who's got all the needles.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
And the things, and that's kind.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Of a badass look. I sort of like that look.
I'm not sure I want to go out in public
that way anyway. So he puts all these needles in it,
turns off the light, and I lie there for twenty minutes,
and then he comes back in.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Pulls all the needles out.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
I turn over and he does another twenty needles in
my back, and then I lie there for another twenty
minutes and then I go So I look, I can't
say I felt a difference after one treatment, but I
don't think you're really supposed to, you know, suddenly feel
some magical thing after one treatment.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
And I'm gonna I'm gonna try again.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
You know. It's a couple a couple of times a
week for a little while, and then.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
It's less frequent than that, and we'll see.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
But certainly an interesting thing to acupuncture is a really
interesting thing, and if if you never tried it, it's
almost worth doing just to try it. I mean, when
you actually have something going on. So that was my
day yesterday. What else did I want to mention? Oh,
I'm not the biggest baseball fan, but I do need
to give a massive congratulations to Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers pitcher.

(04:15):
He yesterday became the twentieth pitcher in Major League Baseball
history to record three thousand strikeouts. Quite an incredible thing.
So he's the twentieth pitcher ever to do it, he's
only the fourth left handed pitcher ever to do it,
and he's only the third pitcher ever to do it

(04:37):
all with one team. So that's a pretty fabulous thing.
So congratulations to Clayton Kershaw. So let me do another
thing that doesn't have anything to do with politics, and
I promise I'll get to the big beautiful bill in
a minute.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
I do have stuff to say about it.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
I posted this actually I think the video is up
on my blog from yesterday rather than my blog from today.
But I'm gonna share the story with you today and again.
If you want to see any of these stories, you
just go to my blog at Rosscominsky dot com and
look at the blog cast for that day and generally
almost everything you will hear me talk about on a

(05:15):
show is in there. And actually usually there'll be five
or ten or fifteen other things that I don't get
to in the show that are in the blog that
you might find interesting. This story is pretty fascinating. A
surgeon named Kenneth leaw Lao at Baylor Saint Luke's Medical
Center in Houston successfully perform This is a few days ago,

(05:39):
the first at least first in the United States that
we know of, fully robotic heart transplant on an adult patient.
And what's remarkable about this process. You know, for heart transplants,
normally what they do is they cut open the chest,
they break the breastbone, make room in there to reach
in and pull out the either dead or dying heart

(06:05):
and put the new heart in and sew it up
and all that. But with this procedure, because you don't
need to fit a hand in right, a robot is
doing everything. They actually use fairly small incisions and insert
the heart through whatever opening they're working with there and
do not need to crack the breastbone, and it makes

(06:28):
the surgery much easier, it makes recovery much easier. You
get a small scar everything about It is just so
much better and this is an absolute medical miracle and
I wanted to share that with you. And again, I
think I've got the video for this on yesterday's blog
if you go to Rosscommisky dot com and click on
the Wednesday blodcast. Everything else from today is in the

(06:50):
Thursday blogcast. One other quick thing I want you to
know this summer, My Show and KOA have teamed up
with Flatirnspire to heat up your summer. All month, we
are going to be entering listeners to win this gorgeous
outdoor fire pit. It's a little bit more than a
yard square and it's beautiful. It's made of hand finished

(07:14):
fiber reinforced concrete.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
It has an electronic ignition.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Retail value is around forty five hundred dollars and we're
gonna do only three entries a week, one on the air,
two on social media for four weeks. So when we
get to the final drawing, there's only twelve people in it,
so if you get in it, you have a decent
chance to win. I'm gonna be doing my on air
giveaway of the entry today and then for the next

(07:39):
three weeks we'll be doing it on Fridays. You can
learn more about the social media parts if you go
to x dot com slash koa Colorado and Instagram dot
com slash koa Colorado. Those will be the other ways
to enter. Let me just take a few minutes here
talking about what's going on with this so called big,
beautiful bill that is definitely big. It is not beautiful now,

(08:02):
it's not all ugly. Let me make this very clear.
It's like you've got the Democrats saying, literally saying this
bill is going to cause people to die. Of course,
they said the same thing about about Bill Clinton's welfare reform.
You remember that Bill Clinton was pushed by Newt Gingrich
to do welfare reform, and essentially it was basically it
was work requirements.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
And what the Democrats.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Said is we will literally have people dying in the
streets because of this.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
And you know what happened.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
The people who got work requirements and couldn't just get
other people's money and sit around and do whatever they
were doing. You know what they did instead of dying
in the streets, they got jobs. And the employment rate
among that community that had previously been on that kind
of welfare, the employment rate skyrocketed so they're they're trotting
this out again.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
But of course Clinton.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Was a long time ago, so a lot of people
will believe this nonsense again, but I don't. And so
there's a lot of good stuff in this bill, but
there's also some truly fundamental flaws that would make it
very difficult for me to support this bill. And rather
than looking at criticisms of the bill coming from Democrats,

(09:16):
almost all of which will be mendacious, I'm looking at
criticisms of the bill coming from conservative Republicans in the
House of Representatives. And let me just share kind of
the summary with you. So and let me just explain
the politics for a second. The House did a bill,
they sent it to the Senate. The Senate modified the bill.

(09:39):
The initial amendments that it looked like the Senate were
going to do were very good and made the bill better.
And I said, with those amendments, I'd probably vote for
the bill. But actually the Senate ended up doing a
bunch of other things that made the bill worse, not better.
So here's what conservatives in the House of Representatives say
the Senate bill.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
As compared to the House bill.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Number one increases deficits Number two waters down the already
only partial repeal of the Green News scam, leaving at
best fifty percent intact. Number three fails to ensure illegals
are fully removed from Medicaid roles. Number four eliminates the
prohibition on Medicaid and chip funding for transgender surgeries. Number

(10:23):
five only limits planned parenthood funding for one year, not ten.
Number six contains excessive pork for Alaska and Hawaii, and
number seven includes more expensive salt provisions for just five
years to reduce the quote unquote cost as a gimmick
to bail out blue states and high tax jurisdictions electing

(10:44):
socialists to run their cities. And then they go through
details of each of those bullet points. And I'm not
going to go through them. But the bill, which looked
like the Senate was going to make it better, ended
up being made worse by the Senate. And I think
it is a political sin for Republicans to pass anything
that increases debt and deficit. Republicans really have no use, well,

(11:10):
they have some use in not being Democrats, but as
far as what Republicans are for, if they aren't actually
for and implementing less government spending right lower eliminating the
deficit and lowering the debt. If they're not actually trying
to do that stuff, then there's really very little purpose

(11:31):
to even having a Republican party. It's not that they're worthless,
because that's not fair to worthless things, right, It's much
worse than worthless because they give cover to the Democrats
and to the big spending Republicans who don't even pretend
to care, and the Conservatives who go along with it,
you know, give them a win.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Now, let me say another thing.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
The political imperatives here are really significant. If Republicans don't
pass this, it is going to do major damage.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Not just to Trump.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
It would be harmful to Trump, but it would be
harmful to every congressional Republican and every Senator up for
election in twenty twenty eight, I'm sorry, in twenty twenty six,
maybe twenty twenty eight also, actually, and that's part of
the reason there's so much pressure right now on these
Conservatives who know that this bill is a poop sandwich

(12:29):
and are going to vote for it anyway. Even Thomas
Massey is going to vote for this thing, and he
knows better than anybody how bad it is. And I'm
just I'm so very disappointed. Even though, look, I understand
that Donald Trump is not a conservative. I understand that
he's a populist who will pander to whoever he needs
to pander. So he'll be conservative on abortion even though

(12:51):
he's not actually anti abortion, and.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
He'll be conservative on some other thing.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
But to me, the biggest threat to our country is
the national debt.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
And Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Has never been a physical conservative and he isn't now.
And Republicans are supporting a bill that is much worse
than it should be. And if we had a better government,
they would send this thing back with some changes to
make it better. But we don't have a better government,
and so we're pretty host I want to just mention

(13:23):
one other thing quickly. I mentioned it half an hour ago,
but I want to mention it again now because I
should have been talking about it.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Earlier in the week and I didn't.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
So I and Kawa have partnered with Flatirons Fire to
do a giveaway at the end of the month for
a spectacular square outdoor fire.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Pit with electronic ignition.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
It's a very high end brand at retails for forty
five hundred bucks and once a week normally on Fridays,
but this week there's no show on Friday, so I'll
do it today. Later in the show, we're going to
give away an entry into the drawing. I'm going to
do one on the show, and we're going to do
two each week, one online, one on our expage X
dot com slash koa Colorado, one on our Instagram page

(14:06):
Instagram dot com slash koa Colorado. So that's a total
of three entries per week, two on social, one right
here on the show. We're going to do it for
four weeks, so there will be only twelve actual entries
into the contest, so that people who are in it
actually have a chance to win. And then one name, number,
whatever however it's going to work, will be drawn randomly
and will win.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
One person will win this incredible thing.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
So go to x dot com slash koa Colorado, Instagram
dot com slash koi Colorado. You'll see the posts there
that tell you how to enter to try to be
the winner of the entry into the big drawing. And
I will do another one of those a little bit
later in the show. And now time for something completely different.

(14:49):
I am so pleased to welcome back to the show
a gentleman who is not only a good friend, but
one of the few people I really consider a mentor
and a tea sure, and a guy who has really
influenced my life. And that's doctor Tom Cranewitter, who is,
among other things, senior lecturer at the Leadership Program of
the Rockies for over twenty years now. And gosh, I

(15:12):
went through LPR twenty or twenty one years ago, and
nobody better to talk to as we head into the
July fourth Independence Day weekend.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
So Hi, Tom, welcome back. It's good to have you.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Hey, thanks a lot. Ross.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah, you know, we should make a little plug here
for the Leadership Program of the Rockies because one of
the key themes are the timeless principles of liberty and
human flourishing. And so we launch day one, the very
first class begins with a deep dive that I lead
into the Declaration of Independence and some of those key

(15:46):
ideas and you know, terms enshrined in that famous document.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
I would note, actually, as long as we're doing a
free plug for LPR, normally the deadline to apply is August,
I think Leadership Program dot org and go take a look.
And if you want to apply, I suggest you do.
It's been the most important thing I've done since I
moved to Colorado, other than becoming a parent. It's changed
my life, all right. So one quick thing before we

(16:11):
talk about July fourth, because I was just looking at
your recent video and Tom has a great substack T
Crana Witner T k r A N n aw I
T T e Ert dot substack dot com, and I
was greatly heartened to hear what you said about Juneteenth,

(16:32):
which was just a couple of weeks ago. And I
don't know that you and I have talked about Juneteenth.
And I do know that a lot of folks who
listen to my show, conservative Republicans had sort of a
gut negative reaction when that holiday was created. And I said,
on the one hand, I do understand the argument that
there are too many federal holidays and we get all
these government workers who get taxpayer money to not work.

(16:54):
But I said, this is a holiday really worth celebrating it.
And I spent some time talking about it, and I said,
I'm down with this holiday.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
I fully agree.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
Look, it's one of the great moments, not only in
American history, in the history of human liberty. I mean, right,
it's this astounding thing when the Union Army shows up
and finds hundreds of thousands of slaves in South Texas
who don't know that they had been freed by Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, and General Granger announces that they're free. And

(17:28):
that's why this became this event worth celebrating each year,
and so in and of itself, it's worth celebrating. It's
a story of human freedom, it's the story of liberty.
And then what really boggles my mind is that Republicans
in particular tend to be the ones who mock it
and dismiss it when this was a Republican triumph. This

(17:52):
was a Republican event that never would have happened if
Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President of the United States,
hadn't been elected. So here's the Republican Party. It's part
of the bigger story of the Republican Party bringing an
end to legalized chattel slavery, and their main opponent were

(18:14):
the Democrats. They were the ones willing to fight a nasty,
horrific war to preserve the Southern way of life which
revolved around legalized slavery, and the Republican Party brought that
to an end, and Juneteenth is a big important milestone
in that story of victory.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
So let's tie that in now to going into in
Penns Day weekend and again in your video and in
you know many or most or close to all of
your talks, you do talk about fundamental American principles. This
is what LPR is all about, but maybe more importantly
for today, it's what Tom Cranewitter is all about. What
do you want us thinking about on this July fourth weekend?

Speaker 3 (18:57):
That the United States is unique in this way.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
It is the first nation, the first sovereign political regime
that was founded upon a rational, universal, moral political principle
of justice, a self evident moral truth.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
To borrow some language from the.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Declaration itself, there had been no other regime like that
in thousands of years of human history.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
No group of people stood up.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
And said, look, we are declaring ourselves, you know, a
sovereign nation here, a sovereign body based on these principles
that apply to the rest of the human family, that
apply to every human being, and they're accessible to everyone else,
Like we Americans have no special knowledge about these, or
we have no special access to these it's not like

(19:54):
it's prohibited that other people can't understand these ideas.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
We thought about these, and we're going to to act
upon them. We're going to create.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
A self governing regime, a self governing republic, the purpose
of which is going to be very narrow based on
the ideas of the declaration.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
The regime.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
The goal of the regime is to protect the rights
of the citizens of the regime, to protect them in
their individual liberty, in their private property. And we encourage
people around the world to do the same. I was
just rereading there's this wonderful letter that Jefferson writes to
a guy named Roger Weightman. This is in eighteen twenty six,

(20:37):
so it's fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, Right,
seventeen seventy six to eighteen twenty six.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
I think I'm doing that math right.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
And they were going to have a big celebration in Washington,
DC to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration, and
they invited Jefferson.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
He was still alive. Jefferson was an old man then.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
He really couldn't travel well, so he didn't, but he
wrote this letter that he asked he wanted the letter
to be read and among the things he says, Look,
the Declaration was not simply for Americans. It was meant
to be a signal, a resounding signal to all of
mankind all over to the world to open their eyes

(21:20):
and become aware of their own individual natural rights and
start demanding that their own governments protect their rights. And
if they're not protecting their rights, then then lead an
effort to reform your government, or replace your government, or
you know, revolutionize and rebel against your government. Do whatever's

(21:40):
necessary so that various regimes around the world protect those
individual natural rights that are described in the Declaration of Independence. Now,
when you step back and look at that, you think,
good grief. This is a radical worldwide at least potentially,
it has the potential to be a world wide universal

(22:02):
revolution for liberty. I always love to contrast that with
something like a Marxist revolution, which by definition cannot be universal.
It cannot apply to the whole human family, the whole
human population, because some big number of human beings, the capitalists,
the people who own the means of production, we got

(22:23):
to kill them in a real Marxist revolution, because we're
that's how we're going to take the means of production
from them.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
So even though many people think, well.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
Real revolutionaries are you know, they're Marxist revolutionary or they're
Communist revolution Oh, the most radical revolution in the modern era,
by modern I mean in the past five hundred years,
was the American Revolution because in principle, all human beings
could stand up and demand that no one violate their

(22:52):
own individual rights, and they could respect the individual rights
of others. I mean, no one has to violate the
rights of someone else. That means, in principle, the American
Revolution could be a universal, worldwide, global human revolution for liberty.
That's ultimately what Independence Day is all about is celebration

(23:15):
of those principles.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
I'm going to ask and answer one question, and the
I'm going to ask you a follow up question. So
you argue that our founding principles are universal, and I
can imagine you get a question then in a sense
sounds deep, but it's actually a boring question. Well, how
can it be universal if they're not applied everywhere?

Speaker 4 (23:39):
Yeah, Well, any principle of justice is not universally obeyed.
It doesn't mean that it doesn't mean the principle is
wrong or incorrect. In fact, with our principles. They're universal,
which is what allows us to identify injustices as injustices
when there's a government tyrannizing over its own population, we say,

(23:59):
that's well, why is it wrong? Because those people have
the same universal, equal, individual natural rights that all other
human beings have, which which is why it's wrong for
their government to be tyrannizing over them.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Okay, so you then started to go into the next
question I want to ask you, which I think is
more interesting and more philosophical. And you started down this
road already. This is not a question of people believe
it or don't, but as a philosophical epistemological question, how
do you know that our principles are universal? There may
be somebody or a lot of people who have a

(24:35):
very different viewpoint about the proper way to govern a
society that is antithetical to the things you and I believe,
and they think theirs is universal. And by the way,
they don't think that the fact that you have to
kill some people to get it done means it's not universal.
Right right?

Speaker 4 (24:52):
Well, there are also some people who deny gravity and
and things like this, and yet gravity exists. There are
certain laws of nature or that apply whether someone believes
them or not, whether someone agrees with them or not.
But this is a universal moral political principle. And so
as long as we find beans that have two components.

(25:15):
They have a body which is the source of all
kinds of appetites and desires, and and a rational, freethinking
mind that can govern that body, that can make moral
choices about what the body does.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Right, we're the only ones. Lots of animals have appetites.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
They get hungry and they want to eat, and they
get tired, and they want to sleep, and they want
to procreate during certain seasons, but only the human animal
can choose whether or not to indulge those appetites. The
rattlesnake simply strikes at the bunny rabbit out of instinct,
and it doesn't have any choice about whether to do

(25:51):
that or not. The rattlesnake cannot choose to behave like
the bunny rabbit. But we get to choose how we're
going to behave and what appetites and desires we're going
to indulge.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
That's a form of self government.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
It means within every human being, no matter what they
look like, no matter tall, short, skinny, fat, black, white, green, yellow, blue, red,
doesn't matter as long as it is a human body
that houses a freethinking, rational mind, that is a self

(26:26):
governing being. That's the very kernel, that's the very source
of what it means to govern ourselves. And when I
come along and say, Ross, my mind is going to
choose what your body does, and I hold up a
whipper chain, right, I threaten you with violence. Your body
is going to do what my mind wants your body

(26:48):
to do, the slavery, and we rightly denounce that as
a gross injustice, because it turns out your body has
a free mind. It's the home to a free mind.
Your free mind, your mind should make choices and govern
your body, and my mind should make choices for my body.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
So I still okay, I'm still trying to get to
a deeply philosophical point. I mean, I think I'm like
channeling Plato or Descartes or something like, how do we
know that? How do we know that all men are
created equal?

Speaker 4 (27:20):
It begins by understanding what a man is, what a
human being is. Right, when the Founder said all men,
they of course.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
They meant all human beings.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
They meant all males and females of the species Homo sapiens,
all human beings.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
What is it that makes a human human?

Speaker 4 (27:38):
And now there's two thousand, more than two thousand years
a philosophic investigation over this question.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
What really it's nothing physical? Lots of other animals.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
Have hair and skin and eyes, and right all the
physical features that we have, bones and blood and internal organs.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
What makes a human human? What is distinctly human?

Speaker 4 (27:58):
And it turns out it's freethinking mind with the capacity
for reason to judge, to choose, that capacity to choose.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Only human beings have that. I know I have that
because I experience it.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
I make choices, and you do too, And every one
of your listeners makes choices about mundane, boring things like
what to have for lunch and things like that, but
also great, big important things like where to go to
college and who to marry, and.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
And how about this?

Speaker 4 (28:29):
What kind of person am I going to be? I
get to make that choice. What is the right or
the best way of life for me? Is it the
life of a thief or a gangster? Or is it
the life of a philosopher, or is the life of
a productive business person?

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Or what is the right way of life for me.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
I get to make that choice, and every human being
gets to make that choice. That's how we know that
we have the capacity to govern ourselves, because we experience
the fact that we are self governing creatures.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
We're talking with doctor Tom Kranell, senior lecturer at the
Leadership Program of the Rockies and a great substeck at
Tcranewitter dot com. If you forget any of that, it's
up on my blog at Rosskiminsky dot com.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
I've got just a minute left here.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Tom, Let's move away from the philosophical for a minute,
and I just want you to wrap up for about
a minute with anything you want to say, like real world,
not philosophical about Independence Day.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
Look, there's a growing number of Americans who are openly
embarrassed by their country. And I'll be the first submit
the United States has done some things that are embarrassing
and not great, but in its founding, in the ideas
of its founding, those ideas are perfect, They're beautiful. The
moments that are the most embarrassing in our history is

(29:42):
when we have fallen short.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Of those ideas.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
So the way to make America good and morally decent
and worth being proud of is to make sure that
we live up to those ideas.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Don't be smirched those ideas.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Don't denounce them, don't ignore them, don't run away from them,
embrace them. And if there are parts of whether it's
our government, our culture, our individual behavior, that are falling
short of those ideas respecting the equal individual rights of
all fellow citizens, let's change. Let's change the laws, let's
change the government, let's change our behavior. But the ideas

(30:19):
cannot be improved.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
They're perfect.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
And in the end, that's what Independence Day is all about.
These beautiful, perfect moral political principles of.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Action that we should act upon, and we have acted upon.
And it's a wonderful thing, folks.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
If you would love to be more inspired, learn more
from doctor Tom Cranawitter. You might try applying to the
leadership program of the Rockies Leadership Program dot or you
can email me to learn more because I've been through
the program, of course, and I'm a huge supporter, And
you can find the links to all the Tom's stuff
at my blog today. Tom, have a wonderful Independence Day weekend.

(30:58):
Thanks for your time. You're always in inspirational. It's great
to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
You too, Ross thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
All right, I love talking to Tom. And you know,
I got about two minutes here. Let me just do
two quick things. So one listener says. One listener says,
I believe Juneteenth is definitely worthy of a national holiday
because it's actually a second Independence day for America, which
is the best reason to have a holiday. And he

(31:26):
asked me if I agree, and I said yes. Another listener,
and this is just directly responsive to the conversation we
just had with Tom, and I think it's really interesting.
I enjoy philosophy. I enjoy thinking about principles, especially you know,
as we head into July fourth. I think that pondering
the nature of a republic, or at least what it's

(31:49):
supposed to be and hopefully what it can be, I
think is really important. And I don't think that citizens
of any other country think about their country in the
way we think of ours. I don't mean they don't
love their country, surely they do. But there isn't another
country that is founded based on a group of principles

(32:11):
the way ours is.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
It's unique. And so going back to.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Going back to this Juneteenth thing quickly, one listener says,
I think the turnoff for Juneteenth as a federal holiday
is that it's effectively a race based holiday. Many are
just sick of race based anything from government. They want
colorblind from government. So I absolutely agree with the second
half of that. Many people are sick of race based

(32:40):
anything from government. They want colorblind government. Absolutely right. I'm
sick of it too. The error in that text is
that Juneteenth is not a race based holiday. Yes, it's
true that the enslaved people were black, but that's not
really what you Juneteenth is about. Juneteenth is about ending

(33:04):
slavery in the United States, ending slavery as an evil,
immoral institution, regardless of the color of the people who
were its victims. And that's why I and Tom support
Juneteenth as a holiday. I realized as a couple weeks
ago and we're on to July fourth now. But I

(33:24):
do think it's important when you think about what America is,
what America should be, what America can be, even though
it doesn't feel like it right now, and that is
a country that values rights for everybody. And again I'm
not claiming, and Tom wasn't claiming, that this country has
behaved perfectly and done everything right. What Tom claims and

(33:47):
what I agree with is that the principles enshrined in
the Declaration of Independence are as close to perfect as
you can imagine in a political document, and we should
all aspire to them. This week's on air Entry and
a Rod will be doing the two social media entries
to win a forty five hundred dollars gorgeous outdoor fire
pit from Flatirons Fire. So you're gonna win an entry,

(34:11):
and then when we do the final drawing, there will
only be twelve people in the final drawing, so that'll
be coming up during the show. Dragon, I don't know
if you were paying close attention. I saw you were.
You were busy with stuff there a little bit, But
did you happen to hear what Chad was just talking
about as far as music.

Speaker 5 (34:29):
Oh, it's the auzzy thing is Yeah, final, I'm gonna
finally give it up after the third time I've told
you I was finally.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Going to give it up, right right, But I actually
saw this story over to BBC webs BBC website yesterday
and not being sarcastic here, this sounds like the ultimate
Dragon Redbeard concert that you must go to. Yeah, a
bunch of metal heads I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Check this out.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
The seventy six year old Ozzy will reunite with his
original Black Sabbath Bind to headline an all day stadium
show featuring groups they have influenced over the years, including Metallica, Slayer,
Guns n' Roses, Rage Against the Machine. It has been

(35:16):
not unjustly described as the greatest heavy metal lineup of
all time. And yet Dragon, you sound unenthusiastic. I was
thinking we would do a GoFundMe to raise money to
send Dragon Redbeard to this concert, and you sound a
bit blase, a bit nonplussed about the whole thing.

Speaker 5 (35:35):
I mean not to sound old, but I just saw Metallica. Yeah,
you've seen Auzsie before, and you have you've seen Ozzie before,
and then Ozzie's great, Yeah, but at seventy million years
old that he is, with all the drugs that he's
ever taken.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
He just stands there gussy.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (35:56):
Oh, and then you throw in Rage Against Machine in
there too.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
You don't care that much, you know, all right? So
that that brings me to a question then that I
want to ask listeners, what's the most boring rock concert
you've ever seen? Five six, six, nine, zero, what's the
most boring rock concert you've ever seen? Because Dragon, when
I think about a musician standing up there and basically

(36:21):
just standing right, barely moving and barely even maybe talking
to the crowd during the banks, good, yeah, yeah, that's
that doesn't mean it's exciting though, right, because because it
can sound good listening.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
To it on your stereo.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
True, And and so you know, to me, the worst
concerts are the ones where I feel like I could
have had that experience just putting in on my stereo.
I don't mean a concert where maybe something bad happened
to you, although you could add that could be a
bad concert experience. But what did you think was the
most boring rock concert you've ever you've ever been to?

(36:54):
And before you answered, Dragon, let me just share one
more paragraph with you from the BBC. In the BBC piece, swigging,
snorting and shagging his way around the globe in a
semi conscious days in the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties,
he ensured his place in the rock and roll Hall

(37:14):
of Infamy by biting the heads off some poor unsuspecting.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Creatures along the way.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Then in the two thousands, he and his family were
catapulted to a new form of.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Fame when they unwittingly pioneered.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Reality TV as cameras captured the foul mouthed but affectionate dysfunctions.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Of their home life.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
The Prince of Darkness has threatened to retire before, but
with health problems taking an increasing toll, Saturday's farewell gig
really does look like it's his swan song. I love
that line, swigging, snorting and shagging his way around the
globe in a semi conscious days.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
That's pretty good. That's true, all true.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
For those of you who don't know what shagging means,
it's a British expression that means that having a good time.
M hm.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
So, Dragon, do.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
You have an answer as to the most boring concert
you've ever been to?

Speaker 5 (38:06):
I wish I could, but during my promotional years here
at the radio station, I did three to four concerts
a week for almost a year straight, So I don't
know if I could point out one more memorable than the.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Other that was just absolutely terrible.

Speaker 5 (38:21):
I mean, I did a lot of shows that I
didn't care about, but that doesn't mean it's a horrible show.
So I don't know if I can I'm gonna cop
out and be like, I don't know if I can
answer that question.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
All right, let me just state the question again with precision.
What is the rock concert that you've been to that
you most felt was boring. I'm not asking to say
it was terrible for this or that reason, but just
like boring, Why am I wasting my time?

Speaker 5 (38:49):
Come on, even for those ones I got paid to
be I would really be borrowing.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
All right? See, I can't, I just can't.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
All right, I'll give you, I'll give you my I have.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
I have two that are contenders and for the exact
same reason, but I think I will pick.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
The cars and I and I love that band.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
I only saw him once. It was a small, mid
size venue called Alpine Valley in uh southern Wisconsin, near Chicago.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
And the problem with it was that they just stood there.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
They didn't move, they didn't dance around, they didn't they
barely said anything to the audience. It was almost like
you had gone to a music studio and watched them
record a studio album, and and I was I was
very very annoyed.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
I was very annoyed.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
I do have a bunch of listener answers to this
and I'll tell you what I'm gonna I'm gonna scroll
through them a little bit and share some answers with
you on the other side of this break.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
We also obviously have.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
A lot more to talk about on the show as
we head into an Independence Day weekend. Also coming up
in the next several minutes is this hour's chance to
win a thousand bucks in our keyword for cash thanks
to Colorado Joint replacement, which is Colorado Joint dot org.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
But that's a terrible song.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
And I and I I mean you, like, I thought
you'd be playing songs to kind of prove a point
that a lot of people thought the concerts were boring
that really were probably very good, and instead you play
a boring song just to prove the listener that they
had a boring of course it is, of course it
is not every.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Zzy Top is this song is what was bad.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Legs yuh huh, Okay, Yeah, there's a couple others. I'm
not a big Zzy Top fan, but that that song
in particular, I really don't like. Uh. Now, we did
get gosh a lot of answers to the question of
most boring concert And I'll just go through a few
and if you want to play other ones, are You
are You?

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Cue?

Speaker 1 (40:52):
And that opera, I'll sprinkle and sprinkle in from time
to time throughout the show, all right, Paul Simon, I
just saw Paul Simon.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I don't think it's.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Right to call Paul Simon boring in the sense that
you know what he is. He's gonna sit there and
he's gonna serenade you. And if you didn't want that,
then you probably shouldn't have gone to that concert. Neil Diamond,
that's interesting. I would have thought that would have been
pretty good.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
What else?

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Moody Blues looked like they didn't even want to be there.
The Eagles farewell tour a couple of years back. I saw,
I saw that tour. I thought that was I thought
it was good. But I think you're right that they
could have been a little more, a little more active,
a little more still each other. Is that after what's
his face's death? It was two years ago, okay, so
what I don't know. Steely Dan Chicago sticks with Rio

(41:40):
Stix was awesome. Ario just stood there. Hank Junior in
the early nineties, drunk as a skunk. Yeah. Another vote
for Zeezy Tops Sound Garden, what else? Ross, It's good
you're annoyed about the cars concert. The world needs morenoints. No,
all right, Tony Bennett again, Tony, but you know what

(42:00):
you're gonna get with Tony with Tony Bennett. Uh, all right,
So there's the list. Van Halen at Fiddler's Green. All right,
let me address this one. Van Halen at Fiddler's Green.
Now this is nineteen ninety five, so I don't know
about that. But a few years ago I actually got
in a little bit of trouble. I won't go into
too much detail there, but from time to time I

(42:24):
can get free concert tickets once in a while because
of where I work.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Not all the time, but once in a while.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Actually we give away concert tickets to listeners way more
often than I can get them for free. But in
any case, I had this probably five or six years ago.
I asked for some tickets to see Van Halen with
David Lee Roth back singing.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
And then I mentioned it to some people who are really.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Into music and has saw them recently and all this stuff, and.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
They said, dude, don't waste your time.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
David Lee Roth can barely sing and he stands there
he can bear carry a tune anymore. And if you
are a van Halen fan, if you are a van
Halen fan, and I would call myself a moderate van
Halen fan, then you definitely don't want to go to
the show because it'll give you a kind of a
bad feeling about the band. And so then I went

(43:18):
back and said, no, you know what, you can give
the tickets to somebody else. And the person who was
giving me the tickets got kind.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Of mad at me anyway. Anyway, so there's that.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Gosh, someone says, seriously, Ross, does that mean seriously you
agree with me? Or seriously you don't agree with oh?
Ross legs over Lagrange? What are you an infant?

Speaker 6 (43:39):
See?

Speaker 2 (43:39):
I think Dragon shares that shares that with you.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
I just I don't think one song is even better
than the other. But I can't say that Lagrange is bad.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Okay, I'm not gonna say that Lagrange is bad. Lagrange
is not a bad song.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
It's just a song that when it comes on the radio,
I change the station, all right, Tell.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Them what you asked me?

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Did I play the wrong song there?

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Ross Kaminski, Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Well, I was just a very boring concert. What can
I what can I tell you in a little bit
by the way, I'm gonna be giving away today's entry
into the into the drawing that we're gonna do at
the end of the month for this forty five dollars
gorgeous outdoor fire pit.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
And you can go to x.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Dot com slash koa Colorado and Instagram dot com slash
koa Colorado and you that we're gonna give away uh
and one entry a week on each one of those,
and one entry a week on the air, and then
at the end of the month there will be twelve
total people entered, only only twelve, and then we'll do

(44:43):
a random drawing to give away this incredible outdoor fire pit.
So that'll be.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Coming up sometime soon er the show.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
I want to just if I might take a moment
with you as we sit here heading into Independence Day weekend,
and just talk from the heart for a minute about
this holiday. And I want to ask you, I want
to ask you to text me at five six six
nine zero what this holiday means to you. And I'm
actually kind of looking for a philosophical answer, not so

(45:12):
much you know, barbecues and blowing stuff up, which are
both great I've always been a fan of barbecues and
blowing stuff up. When I was a kid, I made
my own explosives. Oh here's here's a fun little story
dragging a little tangent for you.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
So if you're a super nerd you want.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
To go look something up, you can look up a
chemical called nitrogen try iodide. Nitrogen try iodide, and it's
very it's quite easy to make. It's quite easy to
make if you've got iodine and nitrogen. Try iodide is
an exceptionally unstable compound when it's dry, but it's very

(45:53):
stable when it's wet.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
So as a kid I got some iodine somewhere I
don't remember. Think I had my dad's old chemistry set,
like from the nineteen fifties, and it had some iodine
crystals in it. And I made some of this stuff,
and I remember I put a little bit of it
on the ground just outside the garage. It was wet,

(46:16):
but it dried out, as things do when you leave
them outside, and a fly landed on it and it exploded.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
That's how unstable it is.

Speaker 6 (46:26):
And that was it.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
The gatefe It was great.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
And there was another time where I left a little
bit out and my and my younger brother stepped on it.
Thank god he was wearing shoes and he never told
my parents. But that exploded too. It was very, very
small amount. I didn't put a hole in his shoe
or anything. It was it really really like you're talking
about like just an eyedropper or something.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, not even not even just anyway.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
So the reason I tell the story, well, there's no
real reason, but it is that at some point, so
so I had a reputation as a science nerd and
playing with chemicals and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Uh, at some point somebody broke into.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
My high school chemistry lab and stole a big bottle
of iodine iodon crystals, not iodine liquid like you'd get
to put on cuts or something, iodine crystals. And I
was the first person they questioned, did you steal the iodine?
And I didn't. I'm not that I'm not that kind

(47:32):
of person. I don't go around stealing things. But I
was the very first person they questioned, and in a
sense it was it was a compliment and an insult
at the same time.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Could you blame them, right, couldn't really blame them?

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Kind of cool that I had a reputation is somebody
that nerdy that I would want iodine to make explosives,
but also a bit of an insult that they would
have thought I'd be a guy who you know, breaks
into a chemistry lab and steal stuff so that that's
my nitrogen tri iodide. So how do I even get
onto that? We're talking about barbecues and blowing stuff up?

(48:06):
So I want to ask you what does Independence Day
mean to you? And again I don't want it. I
don't want your answer to be about activities that you're
going to do that day.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
I want to know what the holiday means.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
And I would just like to take a minute or
a couple of minutes and just kind of talk from
the heart a little bit. And I haven't thought about
this all that much in advance of today's shows and
kind of making it up as I go along here,
which was intentional. So if you were listening to the
conversation with doctor Tom Cranawitter earlier, and if not, I
encourage you to go to Rosskiminsky dot com and have

(48:37):
a listen. But we talked about fundamental American principles, and
we talked about July fourth is not actually the day
where the Declaration Declaration of Independence was voted on.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
By the Continental Congress.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
That was actually July second, but it was signed on
July fourth, and I adopted on July fourth, even though
the vote wasn't that day, So that's why it's July fourth.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
And I said this earlier in the show.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
The United States is the only nation that is founded
based on these principles that all men are created equal.
And I don't need to read the rest to you.
Well I didn't read that, but yeah, I don't need
to share you know it. And whatever the United States is,

(49:31):
or perhaps more properly, whatever the United States should be,
come out of that document. Tom Krana would have called
it perfect. I'll call it near perfect, just because there's
probably something wrong with any document, but certainly the best,
certainly the best, the most important political document in the

(49:53):
history of humanity. Our Declaration of Independence Magna Carta is
probably somewhere close, and then Constitution.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
I also said this earlier.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I think many Americans, and hopefully most Americans, love their country,
not just out of sense of blind patriotism that you
can get in any other country as well. Right, Russians
love their country. And I'm sure, Cameroonians love their country,
and the Chinese love their country more than most actually
with China, but it's not for what I will call

(50:30):
the right reasons. I don't know if that's a fair
way to put it, but it's certainly not for the
same reasons that we in America do or should love
our country. Those those other countries, those people love their
country because it's a giant club that they're part of
and they want to be proud of it. And maybe

(50:51):
they think, and maybe they're right in some circumstances, that
their country has something to offer as good in some way,
as big, as powerful, or as beautiful or as whatever
whatever it is. But we love our country because of ideas,
and it's a whole different thing, and it's a much
more beautiful thing, as Krano Witter would put it. It's

(51:14):
a much more beautiful thing, and it's a much deeper thing,
isn't it. And I look around our country and I
see lots of imperfections, and I see one government after
another that I don't like. I see one presidential administration
after another that I don't like, and some of them
I don't like anything about them, and some of them

(51:35):
I like some things about them, but lots of things
I don't. You know, Trump administration, there's actually a lot
to like and a lot not to like the Biden administration.
For me, I know you may have a different view.
For me, the Biden administration has nothing that I can
think of to like. You know, first Trump administration a
little different from the second one.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
But again some stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
To like, some stuff not too Obama pretty much nothing
to like. And it's not because I'm a partisan, just
because those Democrats have a very different view of well frankly,
they don't respect the American Constitution or the Declaration of
Independence that we're celebrating this weekend. For me, I love

(52:15):
this country not so much because of what it is.
I do.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
I do at least like it because of because of.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
What it is, but I do think we could do
a lot better. And again, you think about the last
you think about the Biden administration and all of their
insanity with the various giveaways and the DEI, and then
you think about the Trump administration, and again there's a

(52:46):
lot of good there, but there's a lot of other
stuff that is just it's unconstitutional and it's wrong, and
it's bad, and it's whatever.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
And it reminds me of.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
A poll that got made a lot of news somewhat
recently that was done by Gallup.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
And when was this? When was this released? When was
this released?

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Three days ago? Something like that, three or four days ago.
And here's the headline from Gallup, American pride slips to
new low. Now, in a way, this is like the
guy whose head is in the oven and his feet
are in the freezer, and on average he's fine. But
they asked the question here, Here is the exact question,

(53:34):
how proud are you to be an American? Extremely proud,
very proud, moderately proud, only a little proud, or not
proud at all. So when you add up the total
of people who said extremely proud and very proud the
top two back in two thousand and one, that was

(53:55):
eighty seven percent. For most of the time time from
let's call it two thousand and five to.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Two thousand and sixteen, it.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Hung around in the low eighties, eighty one to eighty three,
and it's been it's been going steadily downwards since then.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
There's I think there was sort of one.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
It really plummeted from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty and
bounced up a little again in twenty twenty one, but
basically it's been on a steady down trend since since
twenty seven, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. But if you look
at it from the perspective of Republican, independent, and Democrat,

(54:41):
you see a very interesting story. In two thousand and one,
ninety percent of Republicans who were asked this question said
they were proud of their country. Ninety percent. In two
thousand and nine, it was ninety two percent. In two
thousand and sixteen, it was eighty nine percent. In in eighteen,
it was ninety three percent. Even in twenty twenty one,

(55:08):
twenty two to twenty three, it was in the mid
eighties most of the time when Joe Biden was president,
And this is asking Republicans, and now it's back up
to ninety two percent, which is basically the Republican average
for the last quarter century. So overall, Republicans have not
changed in any important way on the question of how

(55:31):
proud are you to be American? With Democrats and independence,
it's been very very different.

Speaker 6 (55:38):
Now.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Obviously, it's not a surprise that.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
There's been a massive plunge among Democrats in the last
year since Donald Trump, you know, since we went from
the Biden administration to the Trump administration. And among Democrats
they went from sixty two percent to thirty six percent
in one year. But the Democrats have been on a
pretty consistent down trend since around that twenty fourteen twenty

(56:05):
fifteen timeframe. They've gone from the eighties and they were
hanging around more like in the fifties, and they're just
not proud anymore. And with Independence, it's similar, it's a
smoother curve. In twenty thirteen, eighty percent of Independence said
they were proud to be an American or proud of
their country.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Now it's fifty three percent.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
So what's happened is you've got Democrats and Independence just
absolutely falling off a cliff in terms of pride in
their country, and Republicans.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Staying pretty steady the whole time. Why is that.

Speaker 6 (56:35):
So?

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Basically, there are two possible reasons. Very broadly speaking, there
are two possible reasons that this large group of people
could be less proud of their country. One is the
country has actually done things to make them less proud,
and the other is something.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
Else is going on to make them less proud.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
And again you know, with Democrats, a lot of the
falloff happens during the two Trump administrations.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
With Independence, it's.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
A steady curve downward that continued to some degree even
during the Biden administration. What is going on? And I
think there are two things going on. One, I think
in the past ten years or so, we have seen
outside of Fox News, which is the primary media outlet

(57:31):
for Republicans and conservatives. Outside of Fox News, I think
we've seen consistent bashing of this country, not just when
Trump was in office, but certainly aggressively while Trump was
in office, and telling people that the country has gone
from being good or great to being terrible, and that

(57:52):
Trump is, you know, Orange man bad, is a representative
of everything and the avatar for a country in decline.
And I think they believe it because they keep hearing
it on CNN and MSNBC and ABC and NBC and
CBS and New York Times, in Washington Post and Denver
Post and everywhere else. So I think they're being talked
into it. The other thing that I think is going

(58:14):
on is that I think we have had a generation
at least of college graduates having been brainwashed by anti capitalist,
anti semitic anti Western, anti American, anti everything good college
professors into believing that America is inherently flawed. I do

(58:40):
think there's a turn in that now, thanks very much
to the Trump administration, and I hope so, because it's
important for Americans to love this country, not out of
blind patriotism. I don't belie even blind anything, but out

(59:04):
of an understanding of this what this country stands for
and our founding principles. And what I suggest you do
or what you have your you know, your child do,
whether it's a high school age, college age, young adult,
go read the Declaration of Independence. Give a copy of

(59:27):
the Declaration of Independence to whoever we're talking about here.
They are actually organizations that will send you pocket constitutions
that also include the Declaration of Independence.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
For free or very little money.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
Go do that.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
And over this holiday weekend.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
While we're having fun barbecuing stuff, having a beer and
blowing things up, which is awesome, let's remember what this
country is actually about. And it is about timeless principles,
and it is about a country that most of the
time does the best it can to embody those timeless principles.

(01:00:09):
And we certainly have our failings, and it is not
just Donald Trump, and it is not just Joe Biden.
There have been problems for quite a while, and there
actually been, you know, many failings.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Going back much further.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
You know, FDR, for example, abandoned the Constitution at every opportunity.
But if you don't have a goal, if you don't
have that guiding life, if you don't have that north star,
you're never going to get anywhere. And that's why most
other countries are frankly never going to get anywhere, at

(01:00:45):
least if the destination is something that has to do
with increasing human liberty and human flourishing. And tell other
countries start thinking the way our founders thought, and only
a few of them do, they're not going to get anywhere.
And until we do a little better getting back to that,
we're not going to get where we should get either.

(01:01:07):
So I do love my country, but only a little
bit for what it is and more for what it means.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
All right, let's do something else. I have been.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Promising you that we were going to do the entry
for this week's on air entry for the incredible fire
pit that Flatirons Fire is going to give away. The
giveaway is going to be at the end of the month,
so each week normally on Fridays, but there's no show tomorrow,
so we're doing it on Thursday this week. Each week
we're giving away three entries into the final drawing, which

(01:01:41):
will only have twelve people in it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
So if you win an entry, you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Get a real chance to win this forty five hundred
dollars spectacular outdoor fire pit. Now, two of the entries
are going to be by social media. Go to x
dot com slash koa Colorado or Instagram dot com slash
koa Colorado. Go to both and read the instructions and
try to win that way.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
I will do one over the air.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
By the way, no one person or no one family
can have more than one entry in the final drawing,
So we're gonna do this next one by text. I
also want to remind you of the rules whenever you
do a text to win thing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Here with me and Dragon Dragon, what's the rule.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
I'm going to remind them of one text per entry, right,
one text per person. If you text in three or
four times, qualify disqualified, none of your text will count.
It's not just the later ones won't count. None of
them won't count. Only text in once. So The winner
of this week's on air entry will be Texter number

(01:02:42):
what three Text number three at five six six nine
zero at what time? Dragon? Uh, ten fifty seven eighteen.
That's not prime. That's not even to tell you that
you at least have to pick an odd number that
I might have to check. Nope, ten fifty seven eighteen
finds well, you don't argue with the boss. Texture number
three at five six six nine zero at ten fifty

(01:03:05):
seven and eighteen seconds by our clock, not yours with
the answer to the correct answer to this question what
does Ross think is the most boring rock concert He's
ever been to?

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Also includes your name and email address.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Please name email address and answer to that question, what
is the most boring rock concert Ross has ever been to?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Did I miss anything?

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
That sounds about right? It sounds about right, all right.
I wish y' all luck. I wish I could play.
I can't I can't play. iHeart Employees can't be part
of this, But this is your opportunity to get one
of only twelve entries to then win a forty five
hundred dollars beautiful hand finished fire pit that we'll be
giving away through random drawing at the end of the month,

(01:03:54):
all right, we still have a ton of stuff to do. Actually,
in the next segment of the show, speaking of you know, America,
American exceptionalism, we have a guest on who I haven't
had for a while, and his name is Jed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Babin, and I just love the guy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
He's a former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense. He was my
first editor when I started getting paid to write. And
we are going to talk about a piece he wrote
recently for The Washington Times is entitled to Win We
need to believe in American Exceptionalism Again. It's afternoon, where
my next guest is. We just spent a bunch of
time talking about Independence Day and fundamental American principles and

(01:04:30):
so on, and we're gonna have a little twist on
that right now, still kind of in the context of
the fourth of July and what America means, what America
should stand for, and joining us.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Talk about it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
A good friend of mine who I haven't had on
the show in way too long. Jed Babin is former
Deputy Undersecretary of Defense. He writes about national security and
foreign affairs for The Washington Times, and he is a
contributing editor at the American Spectator and is my first editor,
the first person ever ever to be my editor when

(01:05:09):
he was the first ever to pay me to write stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
So I'll be forever grateful for that.

Speaker 6 (01:05:14):
Hi, Jed, Hey, I guess I got a lot to
atone for.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Indeed, the title of Jed's piece for The Washington Times
to win we need to believe in American exceptionalism again,
and is a foreign policy piece.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
So why don't you just open it up kind.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Of with the high level macro thing you are describing
and then we'll get into details.

Speaker 6 (01:05:36):
Well, really, what I'm talking about here is an element
of really kind of an attitude that has been missing
from American foreign policy and American foreign statements for I
don't know since Reagan left the presidency. You know, he
used to have the right idea. You know, when someone
asked him that, well, what was your attitude or what's
your strategy for winning the Cold War? He just said, Hey,

(01:05:57):
we win, they lose. It's very simple in his mind,
a very simple issue coming down from a very complicated circumstance,
and we need to return to that attitude. It's kind
of like what America stood for in my father's day
and My father was not a typical kid from the Bronx.
He was a Marine Corps officer in World War Two.

(01:06:20):
He led his men into three of the worst battles
of that war, Guild Canal, Tarawa, iwo Jima, and he
came out with the attitude saying, you know, we are America.
We don't start wars. We don't start fights, we finish them.
And that's really kind of the attitude we need. That's
the kind of thing that we have lacked again since

(01:06:40):
Reagan left office. And I think we do well to
think about American exceptionalism, to think about why we are
what we are, and how good the America really is
towards the rest of the world. If we don't do that,
if we don't have that attitude towards ourselves as much
as towards the rest of the world, I think we
lose something, and we've lost something very important in our

(01:07:03):
foreign policy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
So first, let me just say utterly remarkable for somebody
to survive even one of those battles, but all three Guadalcanal, Taroa,
and Ewojima.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Wow, that's really something.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
The other thing that I want to say, what I
think in the last twenty years or so. The thing
that has galled me the most and reminded me the
most of this problem that you are describing was I
guess it was Barack Obama and the so called leading
from behind. And when I heard that leading from behind,

(01:07:42):
I just thought, well, he is intentionally weakening the country.
And neither you nor I as somebody who wants America
to be the world's.

Speaker 6 (01:07:50):
Policeman, well absolutely right. I mean, we don't want to
be a world's policeman. We shouldn't be, we can't be.
But the fact of the matter is we have to
protect our vital national security interests, our allies, our treaties.
You know, those are the things that we stand up for,
we have to fight for, quite frankly, and Barack Obama
was not willing to do any of that. He was

(01:08:12):
just simply out there to cozy up to the rest
of the world and say, oh, yeah, we're here where
we walk all over us. But that's not why we
are America. We are America because we are better than
the rest of the world. We are America because we
have more freedom. Our people enjoy more freedoms than anybody
else in the world, and we have the right to

(01:08:34):
brag about it. As a matter of fact, I think
we have the duty to brag about it, and that's
why I wrote the piece.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
So much of your piece revolves specifically around what Trump
just did getting attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Do you want
to just talk a little bit about those specifics?

Speaker 6 (01:08:53):
Well, yeah, I mean, really, what we're talking about here
is the strike that went in seven. The two bombers
took fourteen mops massive ordinance penetrators into Iran, came back
out without them, and did an enormous amount of damage.
We don't really know how much. I mean, President Trump

(01:09:14):
said we obliterated the Iranian nuquit program. Well, he's pron
new exaggeration. The Iranians said, oh, well, we didn't have
any damage at all, and of course you can't believe
any of that. So the answer is somewhere in between.
We have now more reports coming out saying we've set
them back for years, and that's a good thing. But
the real issue is not over again. It comes back

(01:09:34):
to the attitude we are in America. We win, they lose,
and the fact is the Iranians have not lost yet.
As far as you know, I'm not a neocon. God knows,
and you can testify to that. Ros. But you know,
we have to topple the Iranian regime. As long as
that regime exists, it will be a negative force in

(01:09:57):
the world, a tremendous force for instability, and quite frankly,
it's nuclear ambitions cannot be accepted any respect.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
The way I've thought about that, And tell me if
you think I'm wrong is I think it would be
a mistake and at least currently illegal under executive order,
for US to assassinate kume Ani. But I think we
should do everything we can to weaken the regime so
that the Iranian people can have another revolution or and

(01:10:27):
this doesn't bother me at all, because they're not operating
under our executive orders. Wouldn't trouble me, particularly if Israel
killed Kamani.

Speaker 6 (01:10:38):
Wouldn't trouble me either, You're right, I mean an executive order,
I forget which number is ten three thirty three or
something like that, which goes back to Reagan says we
don't do assassinations. However, I have advocated several times in
my columns that the president's sign was called a presidential directive,
a top secret document which would direct the CIA to

(01:10:59):
topple the IPOL regime, and that would be something I
think they can. I don't think the CIA is that
good quite frankly, and that's not.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
A small country, and the and the IRGC is very
bigue and powerful, correct.

Speaker 6 (01:11:14):
And I think also that you know, the Iranians, I
don't think they have a group that we could latch
onto to frankly, topple that regime. I don't think they're
that organized. I don't think they're that well well developed
in their opposition. So it may not be possible, but
I think we have to get the shot at least.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Last quick question for you, I got just under a
minute here. How do you think your concept of re
establishing American exceptionalism in the way of foreign policy applies
to what our policy should be with Ukraine.

Speaker 6 (01:11:48):
I think our policy from that standpoint, our policy should
be that, you know, Putin is the enemy. He is
not someone we're going to ever be friends with, So
we ought to help Ukraine, and I think from Trump
is making a very big mistake in cutting off the
arm shipments to them.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Right now, Yeah, I agree with you, and folks, just
so we're clear, right, Jed is a conservative Republican who
was Deputy Undersecretary of Defense and deep thinker, has been
a deep thinker for many years on these issues. And
he does have to live down the fact that he
was the first person ever to pay me to write
an article. And here we are Jed Babins piece for

(01:12:28):
the Washington Times is to win, we need to believe
in American exceptionalism.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
You can read Jed's writing there weekly tipically, is it
once a week, twice a week?

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
What are you doing at the Times.

Speaker 6 (01:12:39):
It's once a week now and it said varies from
day to day.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
And then also, folks, if you go to Spectator out
of orig and see Jed's writing there as well. Thank you,
my friend, thanks for your time. Have a wonderful fourth
of July.

Speaker 6 (01:12:51):
Thank you, same to you, Ross. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
Let me just read this from a listener named herb Ross.
Independence Day has very special meaning for my family. My
sixth great my six times so great great great great
great grandparents came to America from Germany in seventeen twenty three,

(01:13:17):
and my ancestors blood is directly tied to the fourth
of July, as four of my five times great grandparents
grandpas served.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
In the Continental Army.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
In fact, two of them were camped with General Washington
at Valley Forge.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
That's pretty remarkable.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
How about that for a wonderful American immigrant story. Gosh,
I love that one. All right, I'm gonna do something
completely different.

Speaker 6 (01:13:44):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
We're gonna go to one of my very very favorite
news sources. It's called The Babylon B and I do
use the word news advisedly there. The Babylon B, for
those of you who don't know, is a satire site
that has a bit of a conservative and Christian angle
to it. So let me just share this story with you.

(01:14:05):
I thought this was absolutely fabulous. The headline Dragon, are
you listening? The headline is Jesus delights crowd by miraculously
turning oatmeal raisin cookies into chocolate chip.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
That is beautiful and that beautiful so dateline.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
Bethseda, which I guess is somewhere in the Holy Land.
The amazing reputation built by a Galilean carpenter turned traveling
rabbi grew even more impressive this week as Jesus of
Nazareth miraculously turned a plate of disgusting oatmeal raisin cookies
into chocolate chip The multitude of men, women and children

(01:14:42):
had reportedly grown faint in the heat of the day
and were asking for some type of sweet treat.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Though a small boy.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Volunteered his snack bag, the crowd was thrown into despair
when it was discovered that he only had oatmeal raisin cookies.
Jesus then reportedly saved the day by turning them into
something more edible. Quote it was an act of God,
said Judah, a man from Capernaum who witnessed the event. Quote.
We were all starving, but this dumb kid had only

(01:15:13):
oatmeal raisin cookies. Nobody was going to touch those things.
But then Jesus quieted the crowd, raised his hands up
toward Heaven, uttered a prayer, and they were turned into.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
Chocolate chip cookies.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
It was the most joyous experience of my life, even
better than when He healed my crippled leg last week.
The boy was amazed at what the Lord had done
with his humble offering.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (01:15:39):
I didn't think God could use my cookies, he said later.
I wondered if the oatmeal raisin would make me an
outcast for the rest of my life. But Jesus turned
my lowly oatmeal raisin cookies into something delicious.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Truly, this must be the sun of the most High.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
At publishing times, Jesus' disciples were rejoicing as they picked
up twelve baskets of leftover chocolate.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
Chip cookies to take with them on their road.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
Love.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
It isn't that fabulous.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Oatmeal raisin cookies? Or why I have trust issues? Couldn't
agree with you more.

Speaker 5 (01:16:17):
Across the room and you're like, oh, those are chocolate chip.
You come over there, you don't even look, you just
take a bite immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Well, all right, so I can I tell you something.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
So Kristin was over at I think it was King Soupers,
and you know at King Soupers, and I'm a safe.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Way it's probably the same.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
They have a bakery section where they have kind of
their own branded stuff, right, so it's not Oreo and
it's not Nabisco and it's not Keybler.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
It's kind of stuff with their own brands.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
And they have oftentimes these sort of clear plastic clamshell
things that they'll have donuts in, or cookies in, r
brownies or whatever. And Kristin bought one recently that was
an assortment of cookies, and the problem was the assortment
had oatmeal raisin on one side and chocolate chip on

(01:17:05):
the other.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
But you can't really tell very easily.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
By looking, because actually what's interesting is I liked oatmeal
for breakfast, not in cookies.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
I like raisins, not in cookies.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
But the dastardly thing about raisins is they can look
like chocolate chips. And I reached it and grabbed what
I thought was a chocolate chip cookie, and I took
a bite into my horror.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
To my horror, Jesus hadn't fixed mine, and so.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
I worst day ever right there. I mean, you and
I dragon and I both just we just don't understand
chocolate chip.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Oatmeal raisin cookies.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Is it just maybe maybe there was just like too
much oatmeal, and people could buy oatmeal real cheap, and
there was a surplus of raisins, and like, do.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
You want this junk? Maybe you could like make some
way with it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
And then some accidentally fell into what otherwise is going
to be a delicious cookie, and someone accidentally made oatmeal
rais and cookies, and then they thought it was a thing.
I don't know where two rights do make a wrong.
I've got a few more stories to do with you today,
and of course, well I shouldn't say of course, since
it's Thursday before a Friday where we're not working, it's

(01:18:24):
Thursday that feels like Friday, which means that we do
name that tune on Thursday this week. And Dragon and
I each have a song this weekend. We'll do it
in a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
One of the things that Dragon and I do sometimes
is eat things on the air. Now, Dragon and I
understand that it's boring enough to watch people eat on television, right,
listening to people eat on radio is far below even

(01:18:54):
semi professional radio, so much worse and is near it's
near the peak of our skill set that we are
constantly working to enhance anyway, but it is near the
peak of our skill set when it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Comes to wasting your time.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Now, there is a specific thing Dragon and I are
going to eat today, And Dragon, I would like you
to tell the origin story of this thing we're about
to eat.

Speaker 5 (01:19:19):
Mandy and I recently did the Mandy Connell trip to
Korea and Japan, and when I first left, you said, hey,
you need to get some Korean black pork ramen, I believe,
So I was like, okay, I'll try and track that down.
So on Jju Island, they are known for their black pork.
So I found a shop in one of the little

(01:19:40):
shopping centers and there was a Korean woman that pointed
out and said, this is black pork ramen. And luckily enough,
I flipped it over on the back. And because we
also like doing spicy stuff, right right, so I flip
it over in the back and I see a number
scale from one to eight. Yeah, and this one had
us I head a seven, So it's like, I'm getting
it for us, right. You can imagine like a meter

(01:20:01):
that's moving up and down on a stereo or on
some other thing that can move left to right, and
imagine one that went to eight and this one was
at seven.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
So Dragon bought this.

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
And just to be it's actually, I'm really glad you
got this one because I had mentioned a different kind
of pork, not this black pork.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
But this smells delicious.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
But what I did figure out Dragon by using the
Google Translate thing, you cheated. I cheated that well, you
could actually see it. There was an indication even without
that that meter is not a measure of spiciness.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
It's a measure of the amount of sodium it's.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
In there mg or something that milligrams of cant says, yeah, right,
so this is so you bought this in Korea, not Japan?

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
Correct, Okay, so this is this is this is.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Ramen from Korea. I cooked it at home this morning.
Cooked I boiled some water and dumped in the powdered
mix and then dumped in the noodles and dragon and
I are going to try it now, and I suspect
it's going to be delicious, but not very spicy. Yeah,
it doesn't smell very so let's but let's give it.
Let's give it a try. That's really good. It is

(01:21:11):
at It's not like just a little yeah, enough to
be enough to be delicious, not enough to hurt you yearning,
but really good. Mm hmmm mm hmm. Gotta slurp them
all right, that is good. I'm gonna eat the rest
in a little bit. So let me just catch you
up on a couple of things going on here. I

(01:21:31):
think Hakim Jeffries has uh maybe just finished, yes, just finished.
So you heard about four or five minutes ago. Now,
Intrepid Chad Bauer saying that Hakim Jeffries, who is the
House Minority Leader Democrat from New York, just did the
longest ever speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
I don't know just how long it was. It is the.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
Sort of the House of Representatives equivalent of a Phillips,
but they don't really have that. So what they have
is they call it a magic minute. So there are
some prerogatives given to top leadership in the House of Representatives,
and one of those prerogatives is they can stand up
and speak for as long as they want to, and
you can't stop them the way you can in the

(01:22:16):
Senate with a vote of cloture, like if somebody's filibustering
and you want to you get sixty votes, you can
make them stop and move on to the next thing.
Actually in the House you can't, So all he was
really doing here was delaying and talking anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
So there's going to be a vote now.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
Basically they're going to vote on this so called big
beautiful bill, and then they'll pass it because they have to,
not because it's good, but as a as a political imperative.
Republicans have to pass this thing. As I said, earlier
in the show, when the Senate first got it and
I read the Senate.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Amendments on it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
They were really good, and I said, if these amendments
are the amendments, then I would vote for this bill.
Looking at what the Senate has done to it now,
I think this is a very hard vote, and I
think most members of the House Freedom Caucus, all else
being equal, if they were just voting on whether they
support the bill, they would vote no the bill, as

(01:23:14):
Republican bills go. Look, there's a lot of good stuff
in it. Okay, there's the work requirements for medicator, good
funding for the border is good. But there's a lot
of bad stuff in it too. And it raises the deficit,
not as much as the Democrats say, but it's still
kind of a political sin that Republicans would do anything
to raise the deficit and increase the national debt. But

(01:23:36):
of course you have to understand that Trump really doesn't
care about that. He's never cared about that. He is
not a fiscal conservative. He will play one from time
to time if he thinks there's a political advantage for
him in it. So I think that before there's a vote,
I think the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson is
probably gonna stand up and say a few things in

(01:23:57):
response to whatever Jeffries said over his eight hours or
however long he spoke, and then the bill will pass
and Trump will celebrate, and he will send out some
social media posts about how this is the greatest bill
of all time and and it's gonna, you know, I
add rocket fuel to the economy and all whatever. But
I just want you to understand, Republicans, out of political necessity,

(01:24:20):
have to pass it because if they don't, anyone who
was involved in not passing it is afraid that Trump
will support a primary challenge to them. And these people
when it comes to crossing Trump, they are very, very afraid,
and frankly, I don't blame them at least. If your
goal is to get re elected rather than to do
the right thing, then you will feel absolutely pressured to

(01:24:43):
vote for this thing, and they do, and they do.
I think what I want folks to understand about this
bill is there are lots There's a lot of good things,
and there are a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
Of bad things.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
The things that the Democrats say are the bad are
not the bad things. The things that the Democrats are
complaining about are fine things, and I support those things,
but the Senate amendments are just I mean, let me
just tell you how cowardly they were on just one
little thing. Actually, my favorite part of this bill was

(01:25:18):
going to be that it was going to remove from
coverage by the National Firearms Act suppressors and so called
short barreled rifles, and.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
They would just be things.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
You could buy short barreled rifles as a form of gun.
You would have to go through all the same processes
and background checks to buy any other gun, which is
all it should be.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
And suppressors you should be able to just.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
Buy it Walmart, right, you should be able to buy them,
like in Germany you can buy a suppressor at a
hardware store. They're all they really are is hearing protection devices.
They don't turn you into a silent assassin and still
hear your firearm. It just won't damage your hearing so
much or the hearing of other people around you. It's
just a courtesy to use a suppressor. And under the

(01:26:02):
NFA you have to pay a two hundred dollars tax,
and you have to pay a two hundred dollars tax
and wait a long time to get this special approval,
and that was all gonna do. That stuff was going
to go away for suppressors and so called short barrel rifles.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
And instead what the Senate.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
Did was, you still have to do all the paperwork,
you still have to register with the government. You just
don't have to pay the two hundred dollars tax. It's
just this spineless, weasily half measure, which is what the
Senate Democrats did to so much of this stuff, including
with the removing the subsidies for the Green New Deal nonsense.
They said, well if you if you're under construction within

(01:26:43):
a year, you can still get it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Absolutely spineless.

Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
Let's hear what the speaker of the House of Representatives
is saying.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
So that's a lot of applause. Let's see if he
talks again.

Speaker 7 (01:27:04):
My friends and colleagues on both sides of the isle,
we've waited long enough. Some of us have literally been
up for days now. But this day, this day is
a hugely important one in the history of our nation.
We have a big job to finish, and that's why
we're here on the week of July fourth, just days before,
just a day before now America's birthday. It was on

(01:27:26):
that faithful day as a Democrat leader acknowledged that our
founders pledge their lives and their sacred honor to this
grand experiment in self governance that we are now here
to steward. It's an experiment that falls to us to
guard and to protect it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
We take that very seriously.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
On this side of the aisle.

Speaker 7 (01:27:46):
In just a few moments, we will remind the world
why the American experiment still endures today and why its
best days are still ahead of us. Let'ster speaker, with

(01:28:10):
one big, beautiful bill. We are going to make this
country stronger, safer, and more prosperous than ever before, and
every American is going to benefit from that. Today we

(01:28:33):
are laying a key cornerstone of America's new Golden Age.
Now listen, we have a few words of gratitude. First,
Scripture has been cited a lot this morning, I think,
mostly out of context. But what I will say, what
I will say. One thing that we know about Scripture
is that we're supposed to give honor where honor is due,

(01:28:54):
and that's what we do on this side of the aisle.
I want to thank every single member of the House
Republican their for their time and their heart and their.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
EXPERI so I get it they have to say all
this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
And again, there's a.

Speaker 1 (01:29:08):
Lot of stuff in this so called big beautiful bill
that is good. But the one thing that really troubles
me when he says we're going to make America more
prosperous than ever before, is you simply cannot do that
by adding more to the national debt. And they are.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
And I think that's a shame.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
I also think it's it's almost laugh out loud funny
to hear Democrats complain about that as if they care.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
At all about the deficit and the national debt. They
never have, they never will.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
But I you know, to me, Republicans are the one
the ones who every day claim to care, and they're
still passing this thing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
As I said before.

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
Almost everything the Democrats hate about the bill is stuff
I support.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
This stuff that I don't support is well.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
I said it enough already, all right, let me do
something else quickly, and then we're gonna get to name
that tune in a bit here. A listener who wrote
a book actually about parades sent me a note with
a short article that he wrote about parades, and I
just think this is kind of fun. Going into Independence
Day weekend, so let me just share this with you.
This is from Ed Tomlinson, and again he's got a

(01:30:25):
book about putting on a good parade. What is a parade?
Some say it's a lineup of fire trucks, high school bands,
and people tossing candy. Others might describe it as organized
chaos with floats, flags and folding chairs. But if you've
ever been behind the scenes or on the sidewalk with
your grandchild, you know it's something much deeper. Here's the
best definition I've ever heard. Putting together a parade is

(01:30:49):
like making a movie. What you have is a bunch
of short clips. The goal is to take the child
sitting on that curb to a different world every fifteen seconds.
Once you've done this, the adults will follow simply by
looking at the faces of the children. And that quote
comes from somebody named Cody McNutt, the former summer event

(01:31:11):
coordinator at the Arvada Harvest Festival Parade. I think that's great.
That is it. That is the heartbeat of the whole thing.
A good parade is not about length, it's not about
a budget.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
It's about moments.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
It's about the wide eyes of a child, the gasp
of surprise, the contagious laughter that spreads down a sidewalk.
Every fifteen seconds is a chance to spark wonder. It's
about creating that moment when a child turns to a
parent and says, can we be in it next year?
That's when you know you've done it right. It's more
than marching. Think about your favorite parade memory. It probably

(01:31:51):
didn't involve a sponsor banner. It was a float that
made you stop and smile, a dance group that caught
your attention, a school band that plays their hearts out.

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
That's the formula.

Speaker 1 (01:32:02):
Fifteen second stories strung together, live and in motion. Each
entry is a tiny world of its own. Cowboys, pirates, dancing,
senior citizens, little kids in oversized costumes. Adults enjoy it,
of course, but adults also watch the children. We watch
their eyes light up. We remember our own childhood parades.
That's how magic passes from generation to generation, not through instruction,

(01:32:25):
but through emotion. Parades don't just entertain us, they reconnect
us to each other. As we plan this year's parade,
our mission is clear. Make it unforgettable, not by making
it bigger or louder, but by making it more meaningful.
We want someone to smile for the first time that week.
We want grandparents to tear up watching their grandkids march.

(01:32:46):
We want kids to believe for one day that the
world really is full of fun and possibilities. So, if
you're thinking about entering this year's parade, whether you're a business,
a civic group, a school, or just a creative neighbor
with a great idea, remember what a parade really is.
That is from listener ed Tomlinson, who actually wrote a
little book about parades and I just dig it. Hey, folks,

(01:33:09):
if you're listening on the podcast right now, that's the
end of today's show.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
Don't forget you can catch us every day on the
podcast as you are right now, on your smart speaker,
on your iHeartRadio app, even on the computer at Koa, Colorado,
and the good old fashioned way on your radio. Thanks
so much for listening to the show.