07-15-25 - *FULL SHOW* Andrea Gibson, RIP; Dismantling Dept of Ed; Snake stink - The Ross Kaminsky Show

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want to start by talking to you for a
second and I'm I'm actually glad you're here today, which
is not something you hear me say, Hey, Rod No,
because I want to know how the Superman movie was,
do you?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Well you know what, hey, Ema, you put those headphones
on and then hopefully you'll hear him. All right, Yeah,
I do want to know how the Superman movie was.
It was good, not great. Interesting it was it was
it was good.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Not great.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
The bar was very high. You know, I'm a giant nerd,
especially when it comes to superhero movie.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
I wasn't blown away as much as I thought I
would be. The bar was, I think properly placed, and
I usually like to go in with a low bar
because then I like for it to exceed the bar
that I set low. And I had heard ninety percent
positive reviews from those that I follow critically and the
fans that get to see it early ninety percent have
been in favor of it.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm more in that it was okay.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
The more I thought about it, the more I think
it was more nostal tied to seeing a really good
Superman movie again, less the actual product that I witnessed.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay, and I think I think part of the goal
of the director was almost like the sense of nostalgia
kind of taking it. And I haven't seen it. I
just know from what I've read, like even the even
the coloration of the movie, right, was supposed to be
a little more old school, right?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Was it? It was?

Speaker 3 (01:22):
And it's the best Superman movie I've seen. And that's
all of them, of all of them, really, and that's
saying something because a lot of them haven't been great.
I love Henry cavill, I love Mannis Deo. I thought
it was really good. This one's better than that.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Doesn't mean that those were great, and doesn't mean this
one was great. It had a lot of moving parts.
I really love James Gunn For those that don't know,
he did a lot, obviously with Guardians to the Galaxy
and a lot of different stuff with Marvel, really phenomenal stuff.
Most of what he did Marvel is better than this,
and people think that this is his best products and
it's not. I will say a lot of potential. For example,

(01:56):
David corn Sweat the New Superman actor by far the
best actor I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
He's really good. He fits the role he is there,
there's other pieces that are there.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
It's just it's a bunch of pieces on the board
that aren't placed properly.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
So was it not a consistent thread going through?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Like?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Was it disjointed? Was it boring? And then the other thing,
did did.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
You feel like there was any subtle or not so
subtle political preaching at you or is that just Fox
News ranting?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I it is Fox News ranting number one, I personally
believe obviously dating back all the way in the comics,
a whole issue with like, for example, Dean Kane, who
Man he has interviewed back at the RNZ former Superman actor,
hated that they are pushing that he's an immigrant. Go
back and read the comments. Dan Kane, former actor Superman
is an immigrant. That's the big thing. That's that's what

(02:51):
he is, right. I didn't feel that in the movie.
I didn't feel preachiness. The issues were. It was a
lot of disjointedness. That pacing is my number one attribute
in superhero movies in general, movies in general. The pacing
just didn't feel necessarily right. It was kind of ups
and downs. The action sequences were fantastic with James Gunn
is known for really really strong components. None of it

(03:14):
all came together. The plot was really kind of messy,
but like I said, it was the way I described it. Also,
it was very safe and really fun action. It had
a good lot of heart. His dog, which I tell
you now is a mirror image of our dogs.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
I'm pretty sure James Gunn.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Had to see a picture of our dog because it
looked exactly like our dog. Which is awesome, Crypto the
Superman's dog. The pieces are there, the future is bright.
This is the start of the DCU. It's the next
ten to fifteen twenty years maybe of movies there branched
from this.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
There's potential there. The bar was a bit too high.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
I think it's really good, worth seeing, worth paying for,
fun to watch, but it wasn't everything I wanted.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
So quick answer on this one out of five stars?
How many? Well, I usually do mine. Out of ten,
I gave it six and a half. So you do
the math.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Okay, that would be three and a coo not great,
And just to make your life easier, I'll sit.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Down, thank you, all right, you're welcome.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
All right, So there's a Rod's review of the Superman movie.
I haven't seen a Superman movie in a long long time.
I don't think I've seen a Superman movie in twenty years,
but I might see this one when it comes on
comes on streaming.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
All right, we're gonna do some other stuff. Now.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
There was a we talked a little bit during yesterday's
show when President Trump was meeting at the White House
with NATO Secretary General Mark.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Ruta r Utte, and.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Trump said that he is gonna sell weapons to NATO.
The US is not going to subsidize them. NATO will
pay full price for them, and then NATO will deliver
those weapons to Ukraine. And it's essentially a way for
Trump to allow the US armaments industry, which is the
best in the world, to help support Ukraine, but without
any addition cost to the American taxpayer.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
If there were a.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Small additional cost to the American taxpayer, that wouldn't bother me,
because I think it's very much in our interest to
see Russia not win. But it's even better if we
can get it done without any costs to the American taxpayer.
So that's a good thing. He also threatened. Trump also
threatened to impose sanctions not just on Russia, but on

(05:24):
any country that buys Russian energy. Now, that is going
to be a very very difficult thing to do because
the two biggest purchasers of Russian energy are China and India,
and Trump does not want trade relations with those two
enormous countries to be even worse than they already are.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
So we will see how that plays out.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
But in the meantime, Trump said, I'm gonna give them
fifty days. Now, I don't think the fifty days applies
to the weapons sales, but I do think it applies
to the sanctions.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
He said, I'm gonna give them fifty days to.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Sort it out. So we'll see how that plays out.
In a couple of days. Thursday, I hope to have
Doomberg on the show. You've probably heard Doomberg on my
show several times in the past. Doomberg and these are
some very smart people, are very much of the opinion
that not only do sanctions not work, but they often backfire.

(06:19):
So we'll see. The other thing that came out yesterday
about this that I thought was really fascinating, The Financial Times,
which is England's version of the Wall Street Journal, reported
part of the conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenski

(06:43):
from July fourth included and I quote here, Volodimir, can
you hit Moscow?

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Can you hit Saint Petersburg?

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Two?

Speaker 1 (06:54):
And Zelensky apparently replied, absolutely, we can if you give
us the weapons. Right, So this is sounding like President
Trump is considering giving Ukraine weapons and permission to use them.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
That would be very different from what Joe Biden did, Right.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Joe Biden basically gave Ukraine weapons that Ukraine either could
not out of limitations on the technology or could not
out of restrictions placed on it by the United States
used to strike deep within Russia. Maybe could strike within
fifty miles of the border, one hundred miles of the border,
stuff that is directly threatening Ukraine, but not Moscow, not

(07:35):
Saint Petersburg, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Now, Ukraine has done some.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Stuff to some small strikes around Moscow, but that's using
their own drones that they've invented, not American weaponry. So
what I suspect here is that this story.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Was leaked intentionally.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
I suspect this was leaked intentionally by some very senior
person with the President's permission, telling the Financial Times. Hey,
this happened in the conversation in order to put additional
pressure on Vladimir Putin to say, hey, you better come
to the negotiating table or Trump is going to unleash
weapons and permission to use them that can strike deep

(08:18):
inside Russia.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
I would like to take a moment just to do
a very random thing.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
A listener asked me yesterday, Ross, if there is a
rock band that you like but you really don't like
their politics, doesn't mean you won't go see them. And
my answer to that is no, it doesn't mean I
won't go see them.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
With only one exception.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
The one exception is Roger Waters, former frontman of Pink Floyd.
I will never see him, even though I love his music.
Will I own his albums too, his solo albums, and
I won't play them. And it's because he is a
raid anti Semite, one of the one of the worst,
most prominent anti Semites.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
In the world. So he is the only one.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
There's lots of other bands and actors too where I
disagree with their politics, but that's not really That's not
why I'm I'm not watching an actor because of or
despite his or her politics.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
You know, you know, do a good job.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Some Sometimes when Let's say an actor gets really political
and is out there on TV a lot, like Roberts
and Niro, it makes it a little bit more difficult
for me to watch them. And it's not because I'm
trying to punish them or punish myself or whatever for
that person's politics, but it's because at some point, when

(09:44):
I see them on TV just talking so much, usually
left wing politics, it becomes a little hard for me
to separate it. And then when I see that person
on a screen, even when they're playing a character in
a movie, it just becomes a little bit more difficult
for me to separate that, and it makes it.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Less enjoyable for me. But really, really, Roger Waters is.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
The only actor, musician, and entertainer who I would absolutely
refuse to see because of politics.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
That's the only one.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
So I saw a headline a couple of days ago,
and before I tell you the headline, I'll just tell
you a little bit of the story and then I'll
tell you why the headline grabbed me. So I actually
saw this over on iHeart Is where I saw the
news story. A woman lost her arm in a lion
attack at darling Down's Zoo in Queensland, Australia last Sunday

(10:40):
or a week ago Sunday. The victim, identified as a
sister of the zoo's owner, was observing keepers in the
carnivore precinct when the incident occurred. Despite being well versed
in safety protocols, a lioness inexplicably grabbed her arm, causing
severe injuries. Urgency services arrived promptly and paramedics airlifted her

(11:03):
to a hospital in Brisbane, where she underwent surgery. She
is recovering well, but has unfortunately lost her arm. The
zoo confirmed that the lioness involved in the attack will
not be euthanized or punished, as it remained in its
enclosure and posed no threat to the public or staff.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
So here's the headline that really got me and has
me sharing this story with you.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Woman loses arm after unprovoked lion attack at the zoo.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Wait.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Unprovoked? Aren't lions? Isn't their middle name provoked? Like any
wild animal?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Really? Do you need to provoke them? Isn't a lion
born provoked?

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Isn't provoking what they do for a living or being
provoked what they.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
Do for a living? I just I don't get it.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Like somehow we're supposed to think it was the lion's
fault for doing what. It's like when I say, sometimes,
you know, I talk about how there's no point. Now
this is me as president of the Bad Analogy Club.
I talk about how there's no point in being upset
with politicians for being hypocritical, because it's just it's not

(12:18):
just what they do, it's who they are, almost without exception.
And my take on that has always been, if you
can't tolerate a politician being hypocritical, then don't pay attention
to politics, because the analogy is it's like being upset
with a puppy for peeing on your rug.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's just what they do.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
And if you don't want a puppy to pee on
your rug, don't get a puppy. And if you don't
want a politician to be hypocritical, then don't pay attention
to politics. And if you don't want a lion to
attack you so that you lose your arm, then maybe
don't go in the pen with the lion, and then
have somebody else claimed that the lion attack was unprovoked.

(13:03):
Of course, it doesn't matter if it's provoked. It's a
freaking lion seems pretty simple, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Hey, I want you.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
To know that KOA listener, Lauren Ennis, just one one
thousand bucks in our keyword for cash, and you've got
your chance to enter our keyword for cash in the
next several minutes thanks to Colorado Joint Replacement.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
That's Coloradojoint dot org.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
That was cool that somebody won one thousand bucks on
our own keyword for cash right here. I have so
many stories I still need. I'm already way behind in
things I want to get to. You know, let me
do this local thing. I think I might have heard
this on our KOA news yesterday, but I just wanted
to make sure to get to it. And that is
Highway one nineteen under construction. Highway one nineteen is a

(13:48):
big highway goes a lot of places up there in Boulder,
but the section between Boulder and Longmont and the Diagonal
Highway and all that, they're doing a bunch of construction
up there over the course of multiple years.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
And I wanted to let you know, if you live up.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
There or drive that road or whatever, there are six
new speed cameras that are in place, and as I
understand this, it's six speed cameras within just a one
mile stretch of Highway one nineteen where they're doing the work.
And what's different about these speed cameras. It's not a
camera that is taking a picture of you and measuring

(14:26):
your speed at that very moment, like the regular kind
of speed cameras that you might be used to, or
like a cop.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
With a radar gun or a laser gun. It's not
like that.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
What they're going to do is they're going to take
a picture of your vehicle, identify your vehicle by license plate,
and then as you proceed up the road, they will
take another picture of you, identify your car by license plate.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Again.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
They know the distance between the cameras, and so they
they will use the precise time between the two pictures
and divided by the distance and determine whether you were
speeding over that section. Now, there's going to be warnings

(15:17):
for a while, a thirty day warning. This is from
our news partners at KDVR Fox thirty one. A thirty
day warning period for drivers will start on July twenty first,
and then in the fall seventy five dollars penalties. As
with most camera enforcement, there are no points on your license.
They just want the money now, they say, and it

(15:39):
might be true in this case where it's in.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
A work zone.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
They really want people to slow down in the work
zone because workers get hurt or killed when people are
speeding in construction zones. And I get that, I absolutely
get that, and I have no problem with some additional
enforcement in these work zones where you've got people who

(16:04):
shouldn't need to be risking their lives to work there
on the road. All right, So, Colorado State Patrol a
captain named Shane Scovell said, our data shows that more
than sixty percent of drivers are speeding through work zones,
and eleven percent of those are going over ten miles
an hour over that speed limit. Actually, to me, that

(16:25):
sounds like a rather small number, smaller than I would
have thought. If sixty percent of drivers are speeding through
the work zones, but speeding means going three miles an
hour over the speed limit, going one mile hour over
the speed limit counts as speeding, right, So of those
sixty percent, eleven percent are going ten miles an hour

(16:46):
over the speed limit. That means only about six and
a half percent of drivers are going ten miles an
hour over that speed limit. And again I am not
down with speeding through work zones while there are workers.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's a different thing.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
I would say, go on a little fast in a
work zone when there are no workers.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
But you know, I'm how I am about these things.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
What I don't know, and I have a question into
set right now, and I do not have an answer
for you, is whether these speed cameras are going to
stay in place after the construction is done. That's what
I would like to know. Are there going to be
permanent speed cameras there? Because I have a lot of

(17:27):
trouble with that, and I'm not going to get into
the whole big thing about it today. I just remain
of the view that much or most of traffic enforcement
is about revenue generation and not about safety. Again, I
am fully on board with enforcement in construction zones when
they are workers there, because I.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Really do believe that is about safety.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
I don't think that's about revenue generation for much of
the rest. That's a conversation we've already had. But I
wanted you to know if you drive Highway one night
team between Boulder and Longmont, there are speed cameras in
place already and there will be more. But I don't
know if they're going to stay after the construction is done,
So I just wanted you to know about that. Marty

(18:13):
and Gina talked about this briefly. I'm gonna just elaborate
a little bit more. Headline from NBC News here, Supreme
Court allows Trump administration to implement widespread Education Department layoffs.
So President Trump tasked his Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon,
with basically dismantling the Education Department. And let me just say,

(18:35):
for the record, hallelujah, all right, sort of, I'll give
it two cheers rather than three. I would give it
three cheers if it were an Act of Congress eliminating
the Education Department. And the Education Department is a department
that should not exist. There is no legitimate federal constitutional
authority for federal involvement in education, and there is no

(18:58):
evidence that the existence of a federal education department has
helped students achieve better success in their educations. And there's
plenty of evidence the other way. So I am fully
against the existence of the Education Department. So why do
I give it two cheers instead of three?

Speaker 2 (19:15):
The reason I give it.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Two cheers instead of three is the way this is
being done is by executive order and by executive action
by the Secretary of Education, essentially laying off most of
the departments so it can't do most of what it does,
and many of the things that it's supposed to do, I'm.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Sure will be allocated elsewhere, for.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Example, management of college education loans, management of student loans.
I don't know where it'll go. It'll probably go to Treasury,
but it'll go somewhere. And then the left is also
a little bit upset because the Department of Education will
address claims of civil rights violations within the educational establishment

(20:00):
that to go to the Justice Department, right, So we'll see,
so the major functions will go other places. There are
also things that the Education Department does that just are
not proper functions of the federal government at all, and
hopefully that stuff will just stop. Now Here's why it's
two chiers instead of three, because it's being done the

(20:20):
way it's being done, rather than through an Act of Congress.
The next Democratic president that gets elected can and almost
certainly will, just build it all.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Back up again. Right, It's it's like okay again.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
As president of the Bad Analogy Club, imagine you're diagnosed
with cancer. That might be a little harsh to analogize
the Education Department with cancer.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
But that's okay.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
It's something that shouldn't exist in the government, so kind
of like cancer shouldn't exist in your body. Now, imagine
that what you do is you do chemo or or
whatever the treatment is, or maybe a surgical treatment, and
you cut out almost all the cancer, but not all

(21:10):
you leave a little bit. Well, what's going to happen
at some point when you stop doing whatever needs to
be done to keep that contained in that very small piece,
is it's just going to.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Start growing again.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
And that's what's going to happen the next time we
have a democratic president, which might be four years from now,
and almost certainly would be eight years from now. If
it's not four years from now. The American public doesn't
tend in recent history to give the presidency to the
same party for a real for many many, for many
terms in a row again in recent history. So in

(21:44):
any case, yesterday the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration
to go ahead with mass layoffs I forget the number
thirteen hundred people or something like that at the Department
of Education, and to essentially dismantle it. But again, as
I said, the next Democrat president can just rebuild it

(22:04):
unless Congress codifies with the federal what Trump is doing now,
and I don't think they will. I also think as
a matter of law, this is an interesting question. The
three liberal justices unsurprisingly objected, with Justice Sonya Sotoma Mayor
writing I think it was a nineteen page dissent that
was very angry. The majority that allows the Trump administration

(22:29):
to go ahead did not write any.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Kind of significant opinion.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
They just put out a thing saying the ruling of
the lower court that blocks the federal government from going
ahead with the layoffs, that ruling is stayed, and therefore
the federal government can continue on.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
They didn't not write a long opinion.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Sodomaior wrote, when the executive publicly announces its intent to
break the law and then executes on that promise, it's
the judiciary's duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.
And then she said that the majority, the Supreme Court
majority that is allowing Trump to go ahead with it
is quote either willfully blind to the implications of its
ruling or naive, but either way, the threat to our

(23:12):
Constitution's separation.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Of powers is grave.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
I'm not a Sonya Sodama or fan, but I think
she is almost onto something here, and that is it's
clear that when Congress creates a function of government, only
Congress can eliminate it, and the job of the president

(23:36):
is to faithfully execute the laws. And I think that
the people who are against what Trump is doing here
have a legitimate argument actually that he is doing something
that is darn close close to identical to actually eliminating

(24:00):
the department without getting the required congressional approval.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
And I think that's a valid argument.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Now that that argument lost, and so all Sonya so
domiarc can do is yell from the rooftops.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
And Trump is going to.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Do what he's going to do when the Supreme Court
has said, you can go ahead and do it. But again,
that takes me back to the point that since there
isn't congressional authorization to do it, I expect that what
he's doing now will be significantly undone in future years,
not because it will need to be undone. Actually, it's
quite possible that the Trump administration will functionally dismantle the

(24:41):
Department of Education but reassign its key tasks as we
discussed moments ago to other agencies, other departments that do
it well, and it might be that the Department.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Of Education, or that the.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
That the fununctions of government that the Department of Education
takes on. Now that the legit functions may end up
actually being done better by other departments, and the non
legitimate functions don't end up being done at all, and
that would be great, that would be great, but we'll see.
And again that's why it's two cheers rather than three.

(25:23):
A quick note on today's inflation report came in a
little hotter than expected at two point seven percent. I
think they were expecting two point five percent. It's the
highest measurement on inflation since February. But as always with
these things, you really have to pay attention to the details.

(25:44):
So let me just take a minute and a half and
go through some of the details with you. So things
that were up food, let's see, energy, including electricity and
especially natural gas.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
What else come on?

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Excluding food and energy were up a little bit, and
let's see and shelter, so housing, transportation, and medical care
were up significantly. All of that stuff services basically services
excluding energy, but shelter, transportation, medical care, what was down.

(26:22):
So what was down last month were new cars and
used cars. That's the main thing that was down. Energy
was pretty flat. In any case, there's gonna be a
lot of the reason I mentioned this to you, there's
gonna be a lot of spin around it for political
purposes based on whether or not there is evidence in

(26:43):
this report that tariffs are causing inflation.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
And I will say it's hard to tell. It's hard
to tell. Right.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Almost everything was up at least a little bit, except
for new and used cars. And you would expect tariffs
to increase prices a little bit, but it can be
offset based on how much the exporting countries reduce their
prices to absorb a little bit of it, and how
much the companies here in the United States that sell

(27:13):
the stuff are willing to cut into their own profit
margins to absorb some of it in order to maintain
market share. But the other thing that's important to keep
in mind is that this data only includes a little
bit of the beginning of Trump's trade wars, and a
lot of that stuff has been put on hold anyway,
so it's really still kind of unclear what the impact

(27:36):
of tariffs is.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
And since it's unclear. What you can.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Expect is that Republicans will say, see, look, tariffs don't
do anything, and.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
You will hear.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Democrats say, look, the inflation number was higher than we
were told that it was going to be because of tariffs.
And really none of them, one of them really know
what the answer is.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
So we'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
I'm trying to decide if I want to do this
thing right here, wait a moment on this, Let's do
this now, I guess. A couple of years ago, I
had on the show. I had on the show Andrea Gibson,

(28:28):
who at the time.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Had just been.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Named the new Poet Laureate of the State of Colorado.
And I thought Andrea Gibson was a rather interesting person,
and I thought the poetry was powerful. Now I will
note Andrea Gibson is LGBT. Activists used the plural pronoun

(28:54):
they them there, which is a challenge for me as
an old person. I've find it very very difficult to
refer to an individual by they them, even when I'm
trying to be respectful. Andrea Gibson did use they them pronouns,
and I really enjoyed having Andrea on the show, and

(29:17):
I told Andrea, and I meant sincerely that I fully
intended to go to a poetry reading and hear Andrea's
poetry read live by Andrea.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
And I didn't, and now I never will, because she
passed away.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
From cancer that was diagnosed actually a little bit before,
but I didn't know about it. But it was diagnosed
a little before, a couple of years before Andrea was
on the show with me.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Andrea Gibson risked in peace.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
For the many listeners who have texted me about the
Andrea Gibson poem, you can go to my blog at
Rosskiminski dot com, and I put all this Andrea Gibson
stuff right at the very time of today's blog. Note
if you go to the Tuesday blog cast, and I've
got another poem there from her as well that I'm
going to share later in the show, and you can

(30:10):
just look up Andrea Gibson and you can learn more.
I think she's got a website Andrea Gibson dot com.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
And I you know, I know.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
There are folks out there who won't care too much
to listen to a poet who was, you know, LGBT
activist or whatever, but I think that's not the right
way to think about it.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
I think her.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
I mean, from the first time I heard Andrea Gibson
and I had her on the show a little less
than two years ago, I just thought her writing was
incredibly powerful and I really really loved it.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
And I feel terrible.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
That I did not go see Andrea Gibson in person
for a poetry reading or something like that. It's not old,
way younger than me didn't think she was going to die.
And here we are, let me share something with you.
I'm going to switch gears here for a few minutes.
And this is from The Spectator and written by a

(31:10):
guy named David Seifer Junior. And I have not spent
much time talking about the whole Joe Biden auto pen thing,
and I don't think anything's really gonna come of all
this as far as changing anything, but I do think
it's very interesting and I just want to share this
piece with you because I think it kind of gets

(31:33):
to the point that this guy is kind of where
I am on this.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
So let me share with you again. This is from
the Spectator.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Let's not pretend this is normal Joe Biden. President Biden
has admitted that he didn't personally approve the full list
of individuals he pardoned on his final.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Day in office.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Instead, he delegated the task to his staff and gave
them permission to use an auto pen, a mechanical device
that stands signature, to push through thousands of clemency grants
in bulk. To be clear, actually an autopen does not
stamp a signature. It kind of holds a pen and
writes the signature anyway. Legally this is allowed. Morally, it's disgraceful.

(32:18):
Presidential clemency is one of the few powers in the
Constitution left entirely to the judgment of one person.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
It's meant to be exercised with.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Moral clarity, human reflection, and a sense of final responsibility.
What Biden did was effectively outsourced that sacred duty to
nameless staffers armed with email chains and eligibility quote unquote criteria.
Then he signed the whole thing, or rather a machine
did with a click. This wasn't the slow, painful weighing
of guilt and redemption. This was a bureaucratic sweep, and

(32:49):
the left wants you to believe this is compassion. The
New York Times, not exactly a Trump newsletter, acknowledged that
Biden quote did not review the full list of individuals quote,
and that his aids quote made the final determinations. Chief
of Staff Jeff Zeinz reportedly approved the use of the
autopen by email, and Biden affixed his rubber stamped name

(33:12):
to more than two thousand clemency documents without ever seeing.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Many of them.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
We are told to take comfort in the fact that
Biden quote set the standards end quote, that he trusted
his team, that this is.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
How modern governance works.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
That's precisely the problem, because if pardons are no longer
moral decisions made by the president but bureaucratic acts made
by AIDS, if they are treated as policy outputs rather
than moral judgments, then we've hollowed out one of the
last truly human functions of the presidency. We've automated mercy,

(33:46):
delegated conscience, mechanized forgiveness, and we're supposed to applaud this
as efficiency. It's worth noting that Biden's defenders have rushed
to say this isn't unprecedented, as they point out have
been used before. President Obama used them for legislation. Trump
even used one himself. And yes, the Supreme Court has

(34:07):
upheld their legal validity. Fine, but legality is not the
same thing as principal. A signature can be valid and
still lack meaning. No conservative should confuse what the law
allows with what honor demands. Imagine if Donald Trump had
done the exact same thing in his final days, pardoning
thousands of people with a machine, admitting he didn't review

(34:30):
the names and insisting I made every one of those
decisions while clearly having delegated the entire process, it would
have been just as wrong. The press would have rightly erupted.
But the real issue isn't whether it's Trump or Biden.
It's that any president, regardless of party, who treats clemency
like a bureaucratic formality instead of a moral responsibility is

(34:51):
abusing the spirit of the Constitution. The power to pardon
is deeply personal. When either party turns it into an
automated pol tool, it ceases to be an act of
conscience and becomes an active cowardice. But when Biden does it, it's
treated like a quirky detail in a transition story.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
There's a deeper rot here.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
The autopen controversy isn't about a machine, It's about a mindset.
The modern presidency has become so insulated by staff, consultants,
and institutional cowardice that even acts of mercy are reduced
to technical exercises. The White House isn't a place of
leadership anymore. It's a production line of talking points and
plausible deniability.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Clemency used to be.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
A moment of moral courage the president, the president staring
down a name, a file, a life, and deciding if
redemption is deserved.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Now it's a checkbox.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Even worse, the sheer volume of these pardons and their
rushed execution on Biden's last day in office, raises serious
questions about motive. Was this an act of mercy or
a cleanup operation. Among those shielded by Biden's clemency were
prominent Democrats, military officials, and public health bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci,
all of whom could face legal scrutiny under a second

(36:08):
Trump administration. Mass pardons as preemptive political protection. That's not compassion,
that's corruption in plain sight. In the end, this isn't
just about Biden's age or judgment, though those are fair questions.
It's about the progressive detachment from responsibility, the belief that
intentions matter more than execution. That the system is too big,

(36:30):
the problems too complex, and the best a president can
do is hand over the steering wheel and hope the
bureaucracy drives straight. But that's not leadership, that's management. And
we didn't elect a manager. If the presidency means anything,
it must mean moral accountability, especially when life, liberty, and
justice are at stake. Clemency isn't supposed to be convenient,

(36:53):
it's supposed to be weighty.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
That's the point.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Joe Biden didn't violate the law with his auto spree.
He violated something deeper, the principle that judgment requires presence,
not just power. And when the White House can stamp
away guilt without ever looking someone in the eye, we're
not just losing a tradition, we're losing the soul of
the office itself. That is a piece in the Spectator

(37:17):
written by David Seipher Junior. I will take just a
few seconds to offer one other comment, and that is
part of the problem. And this goes both directions between
Biden and Trump, Biden first and then Trump. But it's
difficult for conservatives to criticize Biden. Vary ag Well, it's
not that difficult, but it's made let's say it's made

(37:38):
slightly more difficult by the fact of Trump's also ridiculous
abuse of the pardon power, pardoning people obviously because they're
his friends and political supporters, and not because they deserve
any clemency of any kind. So now we have two
presidents in a row abusing the pardon power. And you

(38:00):
know what when one side does it potentially using as
an excuse, well, the other guy did it first.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
That's a very bad path for the United States.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Listener question, who comes up with the criteria for pardoning
or clemency the president does. There's a pardon office. I
don't know if there still is under Trump. There's a
pardon office that's supposed to review this stuff.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
And make recommendations.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
But the bottom line is a president can pardon somebody
of a federal crime, not a state or local crime.
Can pardon somebody or commute a sentence of anybody in
federal prison or federal or even if they're not in
prison for any reason at all. Well, what about Trump
in the January sixth pardons, and those were bad. He

(38:45):
shouldn't have done it. That's all there is to it.
I'm not saying there was no political motivation behind how
aggressive the federal government was and going after some of
those people, but clearly a lot of those people broke
the law and deserved their punishment, and Trump part them
is bad. And someone said, oh, well, what Trump did

(39:05):
is worse. I don't know what's worse. It's not worse.
What I'm saying is and I think what the point
of that article is. We've got presidents who multiple now
like you know, this one and the last one, who
at least on some levels on some things, are really
just failing, and they're both using the pardon power inappropriately.

(39:25):
And I don't really care which one is, you know,
quote unquote worse.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
It's that we're we have presidents who are just aren't
doing the right thing right.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Joe Biden did the wrong thing really a lot on
a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Trump does the right thing sometimes, the wrong thing sometimes.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
But they all should be called out for it.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
And you know, anybody who anybody who says that Trump
was right to do a blanket pardon of everybody involved
with January sixth, it's just, you know, you need rethink
that because that's not right. Let me mention something interesting
thing that was in this so called big beautiful bill
that's starting to get a fair bit of attention now.

(40:11):
And what you need to keep in mind is when
Congress is looking at some of these very large tax
bills spending bills, the Congressional Budget Office attaches something to
it called a score, and a score means what it's
kind of the equivalent of what we call in Colorado
a fiscal note.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
And what the score means is how much do we.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Expect these new provisions of law will increase or decrease
revenue and expense to the federal government and therefore increase
or decrease the federal deficit and debt.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
That's the score. Now.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
A lot of times, whether based on rules for reconciliation
bills or other things, a lot of times what will
happen is that people who are putting together these bills
where there are provisions that are very expensive from the
perspective of the federal government.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
They're very expensive, at least from the perspective of the taxpayer.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
It's the opposite of expensive. You get to keep more
of your own money.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Right.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
But let's say there's a tax cut, and so that
means it's less revenue to the federal government. Now, of
course that's a good thing, because our government should have
less money. But that's separate from the question of now
we have a massive, massive deficit in debt, and.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
We don't want that in any case.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
In any case, so they want to pass this bill,
but they need too, the score to come in under
some number, like under a trillion dollars over ten years.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
In terms of net cost. I'm just making up a number.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
So what they'll do is they'll throw stuff into the bill,
just wacky stuff that doesn't even seem relevant, but stuff
that they can claim and it might be true, would
bring some revenue into the federal government and therefore lowers
the cost of the whole bill. The most famous example
of this probably is in Obama when Obama put into

(42:02):
the Obamacare bill the nationalization of the student loan industry
and then claimed that future profits from the student loans
and by the way, it's not profitable, it's been lost generating,
i believe, but claimed some fairly large number of profits
for the federal government off of.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
That and used that to offset the.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Fact that Obamacare itself actually cost more than they were claiming,
and that's how they went and passed the bill.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
So that's how that game is played.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
So there is a thing in the big beautiful bill
like this, and it's actually kind of small, right, And
this this thing I'll tell you about is only estimated
to generate one point one billion.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Over eight years. It's very very little. But here's what
it is.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
It is a change in the tax code that says,
if you have gambling winnings and gambling losses, you can
only claim ninety percent of your gambling losses against your
gambling winnings starting in twenty twenty six. So let's say

(43:10):
you won a thousand and lost nine hundred. I'm sorry,
Let's say you win a thousand and lose a thousand.
You can only deduct nine hundred of the thousand that
you lost, so you will have to pay tax on
one hundred dollars in winnings. So maybe you pay thirty
dollars in tax. Right, So now you only ended up
winning seventy dollars. Now you end up actually losing thirty

(43:33):
dollars when just in terms of the gambling, you broke even.
And when you get to some high stakes gambling, some
big money gambling.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
This thing just really explodes.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Now there is going to be a move in Congress,
led not surprisingly by a member of Congress from Nevada,
to undo this. This was the thing that somehow got
snuck in there. I don't think anybody really knows how.
Somebody knows how it got in there, but.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Members of Congress don't.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
And this would be if it stays in quite a
bad thing for Vegas, a bad thing for some people
who do sports betting online and so on. I just
wanted you to be aware of it, because even though
it seems like a small provision in this big, beautiful bill,
it could have some pretty big effects from.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
People who are real gamblers.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
And I, by the way, I think it sucks, and
I think it's I think.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
It's terrible policy, and I hope it goes away.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Just briefly, on tariffs, I don't want to talk about
him too much because who knows where they're actually gonna
end up. But were you aware that the United States
and Mexico have an agreement about tomatoes and the United
States the Trump administration just pulled out of that agreement
about tomatoes and they're imposing US seventeen percent tariff on
Mexican tomatoes. The other thing I would note is that, gosh,

(44:51):
this was a few days ago now, President Trump announced
fifty percent tariffs on Brazil. And when it comes to
things we eat, there are a couple of major things
where Brazil is a big supplier to the United States
breakfast things. Actually, well not only breakfast coffee and orange juice.

(45:17):
We also import some beef from Brazil, and then some
smaller airlines bring in some of the Brazilian regional jets.
But in any case, President Trump is at least threatening
fifty percent tariffs coffee, orange juice, seventeen percent on tomatoes.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
And I just want to reiterate.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
I know I sound a little bit like a broken record,
perhaps that it's exceedingly stupid for a president who campaigned,
among other things, on reducing our cost of living. I mean,
this is what everybody cares about right now. You heard
the head of the Colorado Democratic Party, it's Shad mariebin

(45:55):
studio with me a week or so ago, and what
he was talking about is how he's gonna try to
get the Democratic Party to focus on.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Cost of living.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Now, I know, it's kind of laughable because they spend
all their time making things more expensive.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
But that's not my point.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
My point is everybody's focused on cost of living, and
Trump campaigned on getting the price of food down and
talked about the price of eggs coming down, even though
it really isn't down very much, and to the extent
that is down, he had nothing to do with it.
But in any case, it does seem it does seem
pretty dumb to impose tariffs on food. So we'll see

(46:30):
how it all plays out. But I just wanted to
share that with you. Let me see if I can
get this thing going here.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
All right, I'm gonna share this little bit of audio
with you.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
And this is a member of the House of Representatives
speaking on the floor of the House yesterday afternoon. Have
a listen and maybe see if you can guess who
it is, perhaps based on what they're saying.

Speaker 4 (47:04):
Mister Speaker, I introduce today an amendment demanding the full
release of the Epstein files. The Speaker's Rules Committee should
demand a vote tomorrow of every.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Member of Congress.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
Yes we should release it, or no, we should not.
This is a question of whose side are you on.
Are you on the side of protecting the rich and
the powerful? Who've put their thumb on the scales of
government to suck out millions of dollars while working class
to Americans suffer or argue on the side of the people.

(47:40):
The Attorney General said on her desk was the Epstein file.
And now she's saying no, no, no, nothing to see,
don't release it.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
This is a question of trust. We need to.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Release the Epstein files so we can restore government of
the people, by the people, and for the people. And
every member of Congress tomorrow should be forced to vote
on this amendment.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Mistress, So who do you think that is?

Speaker 1 (48:06):
What conservative Republican maga kind of person who's very concerned
about the Epstein thing. Which Republican member of Congress do
you think that is, because obviously it is the Republicans
jumping up and down.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
About releasing the Epstein files, right, And the answer is.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
It's Rocanna, Democrat from Silicon Valley, California. Rocana and a
couple other Democrats have been involved in the past day
or two in putting together a proposed amendment, which, by
the way, failed in committee. One Republican voted in favor
of the amendment, so it failed by one vote. If
one more Republican had voted for it would have passed.

(48:48):
And it's an amendment that is aimed at forcing the
Trump administration to release the so called Epstein files. And
I just wanted to share it with you because it
gives you an insight into how stupid politics are, really,
really stupid. Democrats don't care about the Epstein files. Democrats

(49:09):
don't care what's in any of that. They know that
Trump isn't going to be implicated having anything to do
with underage girls or anything like that. They know, they
absolutely know, and they probably know that to the extent
that there's any implication in anyone And we don't even
really know if these so called files exist, just to
be clear, all right, but there's every bit as much

(49:30):
of a chance that it would, you know, if this
kind of thing did exist, it would catch prominent Democrats
at least as much as Republicans.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
And they don't care about any of it.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
But what they do care about, and why I think
this move is so clever, is that they just put
Republicans on the relevant committee, on the Rules Committee, I
guess it was. They just put Republicans in the position
of having to vote no on an amendment to release

(49:58):
the Epstein files. After all of these people have been
jumping up and down for a few years.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
You gotta release it. You got to release it.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
It's protecting democrats, it's protecting elite pedophiles, it's protecting whatever.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
You gotta release it. And now.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
And now you've got Trump's own dj NFBI saying there's
nothing there. You got MAGA people upset about it. Now
you've got Trump calling Charlie Kirkin saying please stop talking
about that, and then Charlie Kirk saying, all right, I'll
stop talking about it.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Because that's what Charlie Kirk does.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
You will do anything to stay on Trump's good side
because that's where his bread is buttered. And so you
get these There's a very clever and cynical move by
Republican by Democrats, by Democrats to put forward an amendment
calling on the administration to release the Epstein files, because
it put Republicans in the position of having to vote no.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
And that was that was pretty smart.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
That was pretty like I said, it failed in committee,
almost passed. They got one Republican to vote for it.
They needed two, but they only got one. Speaking of Epstein,
and this is a really bad segue. But speaking of
dying in prison, there's a guy whose name I won't use,
who committed some very very gruesome crime. He killed and

(51:20):
dismembered his wife and her parents. And this guy is
the son of some Hollywood big shot. He's got some
fancy name with the Roman numeral four at the end
of it. And he was arrested charged with murderer and
long story short, and I'm quoting from let's see who

(51:41):
has this story, The Independent. He was discovered Saturday morning
dead in his jail cell, having died in an apparent suicide.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
And you just got a wonder.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Like these people who call, especially these people who come
from fancy backgrounds. I don't mean necessarily they grew up
rich or anything like that, but at least they were
used to a certain style of life, maybe rich, maybe famous,
maybe being invited to all the right parties, maybe whatever
it was. Epstein is like that, right. He didn't grow

(52:17):
up rich, but he got him. He made himself rich.
And you're putting these people in a holding cell in
advance of a trial where they will probably lose their
liberty for many years or maybe forever. And that would
be a situation where you know, somebody would consider suicide

(52:41):
if you had lived what you thought was a really fun, exciting, rich,
whatever life, and now you're gonna go away for ten
years or twenty years or forever.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, you might think about ending it.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
How especially gosh, especially in the world where everybody's talking
about Epstein and you know, killing himself.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
How do these these people.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
In whatever jail he was in Los Angeles County jail,
how do they leave a guy like that alone and
with whatever tools, whether it's shoelaces, blank, you know, sheets,
whatever it might be. How do they leave a guy
like that alone in a situation where he might have
the ability to kill himself? And I just I just

(53:27):
don't get it. It really is, It really is kind
of nuts.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
All Right.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
A couple other stories I got for you. I'm just
doing a lot of random stuff today. I'm in a
very random mood. Some stuff's political, some stuff's not.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Some stuff's about bad judgment.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Let's do another bad judgment story, which is kind of
what that last one was. So retired Army officer named
David Slater, sixty four years old, left the Army and
then went to work as a civilian for the Air
Force and he had a top secret clearance at.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
US Stratcom Strategic Command. That's an off.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
It's Air Force Base Ffutt in Nebraska. This dude again
retired army officer with a top secret clearance, now as
a civilian. He retired from the Army several years ago
as a lieutenant colonel. Whatever he was involved with at

(54:31):
OFF it was had to do with understanding the Russia
Ukraine War, and he got briefings that were often classified,
sometimes classified.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
All the way up to top secret.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
And I guess, as I'm trying to read between the
lines on this story, he somehow got long distance, emotionally
slash romantically involved with someone on a foreign dating site, which,
by the way, you know you're talking to some like
imagine you think you're talking to some super hot Ukrainian

(55:08):
woman on a dating site.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
You have no idea.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
That's probably some fifty three year old, overweight chain smoke
in Russian dude catfishing you.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Most likely.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
In any case, it seems like what this guy did
was he started.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Passing along classified.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Information through the messaging part of this dating platform to
somebody who.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Was claiming to be a woman living in Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
The AP says the information classified a secret pertained to
military targets and Russian military capabilities, according to the Plea agreement.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
In this plea agreement, he acknowledged that he.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Conspired to transmit classified information that he learned from those
briefings via that messaging platform that I already described to you.
The agreement says, and I quote defendant knew and had
reason to believe that such information could be used to
the injury of the United States or the advantage of
a foreign nation. According to the original indictment, the co conspirator.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Again he thought it was a Ukrainian woman.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
But I bet you it wasn't asked regularly asked Slater
for classified information. She called him my secret informant love
in one message. She closed another message by saying you
are my secret agent with love. In another, she wrote, Dave,
I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very pleasant surprise
for Putin.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Will you tell me? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Court documents don't identify the recipient of the information. Don't
say whether it's actually a woman.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Don't say and I don't know if they know.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Don't say whether the person was working for Ukraine, which
is possible by the way, or working for Russia more likely,
but working for Ukraine as possible. They also don't identify
the dating platform, but in any case, talk about that
for like somebody who really should know better. I will

(57:09):
note again from the Associated Press he remains free pending
his sentencing scheduled for October.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Prosecutors and his.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Lawyers agreed that he should serve somewhere between five years
and ten months and seven years and three months in prison,
and the government will recommend a term at the low
end of that range. The charge carries a maximum of
ten years, and the district judge hearing the case will
decide whether to accept the plea. So the guy will

(57:40):
probably end up some in prison for six years or
something like that. I guess that sounds about right. I
don't know how much information he sent. I don't know
how harmful the information was. You know, if it was
stuff that actually got people killed, then probably six years
isn't enough. Or if they caught him before he really

(58:01):
sent anything important, then six years probably Okay.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
My point on this kind of thing is not just about.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
The punishment for the person who did it, but the
deterrent effect for people who might be thinking about doing
something like that in the future.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
All right, what else, Uh, let's move, Let's move to
New York. Let's move to New York.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Andrew Cuomo has announced that he is going to run
for mayor as an independent. Now, I will say, in
current polling, the communist anti semi zoron Mom Donnie is
in the lead, and I forget the number, thirty something percent.
Cuomo is in second in twenty mid twenties, so more

(58:46):
than ten points behind Mom Donni, Mom Donnie.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
And then the current mayor, Eric Adams.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Who's also running as an independent because you can have
an unlimited number of independents, is actually in third, somewhere
in the mid teens, I believe. Now, it makes this
an interesting conversation because you know, my first thought was,
and still kind of is, what.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
A remarkable ego Andrew Cuomo has.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
This is a guy who is very difficult to like,
who is famous for killing senior citizens in New York
State by forcing nursing homes and retirement homes to take
in people with active COVID. And he's also famous for

(59:41):
having to resign the governorship after multiple credible accusations of
sexual harassment. Although in the age of Trump, I don't
know that people care about that much anymore. The bar
has been so lowered by our current president. I don't
know if people anybody would hold that against Colon anymore.
But he's impossible to like. There's nothing good about him.

(01:00:02):
The only thing good about him, I guess is that
he's not Mom Donnie. But that's not normally enough to
win an election.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
It was just barely enough for.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump in twenty twenty. Just
barely not being Trump was enough. But even that was hard.
And it's just like, what an incredible ego.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Now here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Let's just move that aside a minute for you know,
Cuomo is running because he feels like it's he's God's
gift to politics, and he feels like maybe he's the
second coming of his dad and he's not, and he
feels like, gosh, here, Cuomo needs to be in office.
I know I'm just saying this stuff. I don't know
the guy, but that's sure how it feels, and sure
how it feels. But the actual goal here for anybody

(01:00:48):
who cares about New York City or anybody who cares
about the United States of America, frankly, would be to
defeat Mom Donnie, Mom Donnie is. It's actually not fair
to say he's everything that's wrong with the Democratic Party,
because much of the Democratic Party is not as wrong
as he is. But the Democratic Party, in its effort

(01:01:09):
to be a big tent, has made the tent so
big that they are allowing communist anti Semites to become
people of prominence. By the way, this guy grew up
fairly wealthy. He's never really worked, he's never had a
real job. He's a grifter.

Speaker 5 (01:01:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Yeah, he was born in Africa, but he moved to
the US when he's seven years old, grew up pretty
rich in the suburbs.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
And now he goes out for these for these photo ops.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Where he orders some you know, dish of rice and
whatever Middle Eastern dish or African dish, eats it with
his hands because.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
He's trying to show.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And we learned, of course that in his college application,
not only did he check his ethnicity as Asian, but
he also checked black or African American is not true.
And he's terrible. I don't I don't just mean he's
a little bit bad. I don't mean, you know, he's
he's worse than I'm gonna say it. He's worse than

(01:02:13):
Joe Biden, and he's much worse than Barack Obama. Imagine
that he's a commie, anti semi New Yorkers need to
beat him. And I'm spending time talking about it because
Coloraden's need to care because if if that guy wins,

(01:02:36):
like you think, AOC is bad and has star power
like mom, Donnie is the male version of her, but
maybe further left, if you can imagine such a thing.
They're both young, descended from immigrants or immigrants themselves. Mandanni
himself is actually an immigrant, AOC isn't. They both grew
up fairly privileged, but like to act as if they didn't, right,

(01:02:58):
AOC actually grew.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Up in a fairly well off suburb.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
I mean she was born in the Bronx or something,
but moved up to the richer suburbs when she.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Was quite young.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
And as these people start taking over the Democratic Party,
you're going to see the Democratic Party move to them
because they're.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Going to feel like maybe they need to in order
to succeed.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
And then you're going to have a party that really
does want the destruction of almost everything that America stands for.
And almost everything that has made America a successful place.
And it is absolutely true that people get the government
they deserve, and sometimes they need to get it good

(01:03:37):
and hard. Tariffs on bell peppers, That's a very good question.
So I just went literally fifteen seconds ago, I typed
this into the Google machine.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Where are most bell peppers grown? And here's what I've got.

Speaker 1 (01:03:50):
The largest producer of bell peppers globally is China. Maybe
not a big surprise. They seem to produce a lot
of things. A significant producer and major exporter to the
US is Mexico. And then we do grow some in
the US as well, from California, Florida, and Georgia. All right, Now,
as a matter of principle, I am against all tariffs

(01:04:11):
on everything all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
As a matter of practicality, if there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Were, if there were enormous tariffs on bell pepper, so
that bell pepper got very expensive in the United States
of America, so that restaurants and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Companies that make let's.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Say, frozen meals where they load them up with bell pepper, like,
they couldn't afford to do that anymore, So they'd have
to put something else in that would be great. So
as a matter of principle, No to high tariffs on
bell Pepper as a matter of what's actually good for
the world, Very high TIFFs. And Bell Pepper is so bad.

(01:04:53):
Bell pepper is so bad that even replacing it with
Celery would make something better. That's how bad it is.
I told you a story a while back, and I
want to give you a little update on it about
a liar, grifter, criminal, scumbag dude named Jared Leonard.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
And Jared Leonard.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
Had some significant connections in the restaurant business and some
significant partners and had his own restaurant group. Actually that
included a place called AJ's Pitt Barbecue that did not
have a Michelin Star, but it was on a Michelin
recommended list.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
And what this guy did was he.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
Not only did he steal money from his partners, but
he also took more than a million dollars in COVID
relief funds under false pretenses and then used it to buy.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
For example, a house for cash and I don't know
what else.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Last time I shared the story with you was not.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Very optimistic that this guy was going to face a
justice because he went to Mexico. He went to Mexico
and going to Mexico. Mexico does extradite to the United States,
but I didn't know that they would get involved. So
the reason I'm giving you this update right now is

(01:06:23):
that apparently he was arrested in Mexico brought back to Colorado.
According to the Denver Post, he made his initial appearance
in the US District Court of Colorado in Denver last week,
and then yesterday, I guess a magistrate judge ordered him
to be transferred to the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago,

(01:06:44):
where he previously lived and where charges were initially filed
last month. He remains in federal custody right now, according
to court documents. According to federal charges filed in Illinois
last month, he applied for more than one point six
million dollars in loans in the COVID Coronavirus Aid Relief
and Economic Security Act. And I think I told you

(01:07:07):
enough about all that stuff. But he bought a one
point two million dollar house and did other stuff. So
he was charged with seven counts, including bank fraud, wire fraud,
things like that. If he's convicted, he could be forced
to pay the federal government back one point nine million
dollars and forfeit the property he acquired.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
The Colorado Department of Revenue seized that restaurant, AJ's Pitt Barbecue,
and they auctioned it off. And now the restaurant is
open with new ownership, of course, and a new name.
It's called Riot Barbecue. And I haven't been there yet,
but actually I would like to try it. This is
what the Denver Post says. Patrick Klaber, the pitmaster who
helped win AJ's Pitt Barbecue a bib Gormond classification in

(01:07:51):
the state's original Michelin Guide in twenty twenty three, is
behind the new venture, alongside a chef named Many Burrella.
So claybur said, I'm fine, I'm happy at finally all
caught up with him. Other entities and other entities of
Leonards implicated in the criminal case are Hamburger Stan in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
And it's enough, all.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Right, But anyway, he's back, he's back in the US,
and hopefully he's going to get what's coming to him.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
Let me share a little story with you about a
stinky butt, but not human.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Not human.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
This is the New York Times kind of cool story. Actually,
if you're a science nerd, a lot of our.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Science nerd or around around here happens in the world
of physics.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
But this is in the world of biology, and I
just thought it was.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
Kind of fun, so I'm gonna share it with you,
because you know, a little bit of grossness can be fun.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Sometimes a writhing ball of.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Slimed up, musky smelling snake might be just the level
of grossness needed to repel the attacks of voracious fire ants.
New research published this spring and The Science of Nature
revealed that the scent glands near the back end of
serpents can release an enough nasty chemicals to kill ants
on touch. They quote a guy named Robert Vandermere, a

(01:09:05):
research chemist with the US Department of Agriculture. He says,
it's a remarkable event. Previous research had shown that Texas
blind snakes, a largely underground species, might repel ants using
secretions they produce from glands near their cloaca, which is
the snake equivalent of a butt. Many snakes will secrete

(01:09:26):
this musk from these glands located on their undersides near
their tails, rubbing their whole bodies in it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Doctor Vandermure imagine doing this research for a living.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
By the way, doctor Vandermere and his colleague Paul Weldon,
who was with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute before he
passed away, wanted to test these observations in a lab.
So and again, just think about this being your job.
This is nuts, I mean in a good way kind of.
Doctor Weldon acquired scent, gland secretion samples from several species,

(01:09:59):
the Middle American burrowing python, Boa constrictor, ball python, king cobra,
timber rattlesnake, and a snake I never heard of before
called the unicolor crebo cribo.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Maybe it's crybo.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
First they sprayed musk taken from the Middle American burrowing
python on ant species, but it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Didn't seem to have much effect. Then they took secretions
from the other snakes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
And placed the substances in water offered to captive red
imported fire ants and carpenter ants. Most ants avoided the
secretion laden liquid altogether, but carpenter ants seemed a little
more resistant to the chemicals.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
See you got to understand this difference here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
But some less prudent fire ants that touched the liquid
containing snake butt stank often that's the New York Times wording,
not mine. Snake butt stank often died. They would curl
up into a comatose state and never recover. They quote
a biologist at Penn State who says, having spent week

(01:11:00):
surrounded by gland secretions, that doesn't surprise me. She lamented
about horrible lunch breaks in her own work, which is
involved eating sandwiches after handling schueezy garter snakes. That's her word,
s hw e e z y after handling squeezy garter snakes.
The recent studies observation that snake musk repels ants quote

(01:11:22):
makes a lot of sense, she said.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Anyway, there, there's actually a lot more to that article.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
But I'm gonna stop there because you know, you only
need a certain amount of snake but stink in any
given day.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
All right. One one other thing. I just did a
food story. I'll do another. Another restaurant story here for
a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
This is an interesting one, and I have to say
it's not surprising, but I think it's really interesting. There's
a restaurant in Dubai called Woo Hoo Woo h Oo
all in capital. It's actually it's actually not open yet.
They're putting it all together and it's going to open
in a couple of months and in central Dubai near

(01:12:03):
the Burj Khalifa, which is tallest building in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
And here's the story. Here's what you need to know.
This is from Reuters.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Food at Woohoo is going to be assembled by humans
at least for now. But everything else, from what's on
the menu, to determining what the ambiance in the restaurant
should be, to determining how the service should be done,
all of.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
That is going to be done by AI.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
And it is by being done by one of these
large language models like Rock and Chat, GBT and Claude
and all these things. But it's a culinary large language
model called aman aim An.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Which is just putting together AI and man.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
But it is a large language model that is trained
on food, trained on decades of research into foods and
into the molecular composition of food, and over a thousand
recipes from cooking traditions around the world. I'm actually surprised
it's not more like ten thousand, but maybe it will be.

(01:13:12):
And while of course the AI chef can't taste or
smell or interact with the additions the way a chef
regularly would. The model works by breaking cuisine down to
its component parts like texture, acidity, and a characteristic called umami,
and reassembling them into unusual flavor and ingredient combinations.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
These prototypes are then refined by.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Human cooks who taste the combinations and provide direction. And
this is an effort that is led by an actual,
well known chef based in Dubai named Reith Aufman. Anyway,
I think that's kind of cool. I think it's inevitable,
but I think it's really cool. I had a story
yesterday that I didn't get to and in a way,
I'm glad I didn't get to it because there's a

(01:13:55):
new thing about the story.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
That I just learned last night.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
So I'm going to share this with you now. And
we've spent some time and you've heard our KWA news
team talking about the various wildfires around Colorado Eastern Utah
as well. And by the way, in the blog today,
I have this crazy picture of something they call a
fire NATO imagine like a tornado, but it's full of
smoke and flames from that fire in eastern Utah. And
I think there was actually a small one of those

(01:14:20):
in the fire that was south of Chatfield Reservoir down
by Louvier's a couple of days ago. But anyway, the
fire I want to mention to you that I didn't
get to the other day was at the Grand Canyon.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
And so the.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Story that I had but didn't get to was from
Politico and the first paragraph. A fast moving wildfire destroyed
a historic lodge and dozens of other structures on the
Grand Canyon's North Rim, forcing officials to close access to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
That area for this season.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
The Grand Canyon Lodge, the only lodging inside the park
at the North rim, was consumed by the flames. Superintendent
of the park said, the visitor center, gas station, wastewater
treatment plant, and administrative building in some employee housing. We're
among the fifty to eighty structures lost. Also, numerous historic

(01:15:08):
cabins in the area destroyed by the fire.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Now, if you've ever.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
Been to the Grand Canyon, probably aware that the South
Rim is much more popular in terms of number of
people who show up there then the North Rim, and
the South Room is basically open all the time. The
North Room is not open all the time. But in
any case, you know, you get this gorgeous lodge there
and it's gone. Now I've only been to the Grand

(01:15:35):
Canyon one time. I think that was quite a thing.
That was quite a thing. Went.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
I went with a friend of mine. His name's Ben.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
He was a trader little older than I am, a
trader on the options exchange with May back in the day.

Speaker 2 (01:15:48):
And we started on the south.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
Rim, hiked down, hiked across, and hiked.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Up all on the same day.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
A lot of people do that and they stay at
what's it called, is it Rattlesnake? Maybe the ranch down
at the bottom anyway, and a lot of people stay
down there, but we didn't, and that was quite a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Hiking up the side of the Grand Canyon.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Is psychologically brutal because it's these switchbacks. You go left,
you go right, you go left, you go right, and
you keep having this feeling like you must be near
the top, but you're actually not, and there's just another
fifty switchbacks. It's just it's amazing. Anyway, back to the
fire story. Back to the fire story. So now I

(01:16:33):
get this next bit, and I'm gonna have to switch
over to my laptop here because I'm not logged in
on this thing. This is why we call it a
semi professional radio show rather than an actual professional radio show.
But you know, let me get this going. This story
really miss is something and I all right. This is

(01:16:54):
from the Associated Press. A wildfire that tore through a
historic Grand Canyon line and raged out of control Monday.
Now listen to this part had been allowed to burn
for days before erupting over the weekend, raising scrutiny over
the National Park Services decision not to aggressively attack the
fire right away. The wildfire, along the canyons more isolated

(01:17:17):
north Rim where most visitors don't venture, was burning quickly
with no containment, no injuries, more than seventy structures lost.
At first, the fire did not raise alarms after igniting
from a lightning strike on July fourth, four days later,
the Park Service said the fire was being allowed to

(01:17:37):
burn to benefit the land and fire crews were keeping
close watch. The park said on Facebook at the time,
there are no threats to infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Or public safety at this time.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Then three days later, on Friday, fire officials in the
Park Service and warnings to evacuate immediately as the fire
grew by nearly eight times in size within one day,
to more than one point four square miles. The governor
of Arizona has called for a federal investigation into the
park services handling of the fire. So let me just say,

(01:18:13):
I'm not a fireman, and I don't play one on
a radio, and I have no idea whether what they
were doing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
Was sensible or not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
I do think it's an absolutely legitimate question.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Of course. I am not going to say I know
that they screwed up.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
I do not know that they screwed up, but I
do know that that raises a pretty serious question that
they were letting this burn not that far from all
this stuff. Obviously it exploded in size. But yeah, I
don't know. But that was a new part of the
story for me, that the fire had been there for days,
and it wasn't just that the park service that would

(01:18:52):
be handling that stuff. It wasn't just that they failed
to put it out. It was that they didn't try
to put it out until it was a huge fire
because they thought they were doing something good. Again, it
could be they did everything right and it was just
bad luck.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
I hope we'll find out all kinds of different stories.
Really let me do oh hey, let me ask a
Rod this question. And you might have you might have
seen the headline already, and so you might just know
the answer. Who is, as of just recently the highest
grossing lead actor of all time? Ooh, Scarjoe. Indeed, did

(01:19:29):
you see the story or you just have? I have
heard that because of her.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
History. But yeah, Jurassic Park, all the Marvel movies, yeah, right, and.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
Jurassic Park, I guess is something she had wanted to
get into it for a really long time and they
just got her into.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
The recent Jurassic Park move. Scarlett Johansson.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
By the way, he used the A Rod used the
lingo Scarjo Scarlett Johansson, and she's number one. And I
actually there's a guy who wrote this piece for Variety
magazine Scarlett Johanson becomes highest grossing box office star. And
then there's the top twenty list and the reporter his
name is Andrew McGowan, and actually emailed him.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
To ask him a couple questions. I asked him, does.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
It include any estimate and I don't even know how
you would estimate of any kind of online streaming revenue?
And he said, no, it's it's box office sales only.
I asked, is the number ever indexed for inflation?

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
And the answer is no.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
Right, So you could have somebody who sells a million
tickets at a dollar a ticket back in the day,
and someone else who sells one hundred thousand tickets at
twelve dollars a ticket, and that latter person, even though
he or she only sold a tenth as many tickets,
would be ahead in the list of dollars because it's

(01:20:51):
not adjusted for inflation. So that seems a little bit unfair,
just on an ongoing basis, assuming inflation is a positive
number almost all the time, it will just slowly, steadily,
surely push all the older actors who probably sold more tickets,
with some of whom sold more tickets off of the list.

Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
What are you gonna say, we had the list in
front of you, I do. Can I guess two that
I think are also in the top ten?

Speaker 2 (01:21:16):
Yeah? Yeah, you can. You can do that, And let
me owe one other thing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:20):
The list does not include that the actor didn't necessarily
have to be the star, but it couldn't have been
like a very small cameo or tiny bit part, right,
So you'd have to have a real role in the
movie or be the lead in the movie in order
for the in order for the revenue for that movie

(01:21:41):
to be counted toward your list.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
But like if Scarlett.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
Johansson did something as a teenager where she was in
the movie for two minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
That wouldn't count.

Speaker 1 (01:21:51):
Also, that probably wouldn't be a movie that had lots
of dollars attached to it, but that wouldn't count. All right,
So I'm gonna give you four. I think you're in
the top ten, all right, all right, So before you
do that, let me just mention this. So Scarlett Johansson
number one now at fourteen point eight billion dollars, and

(01:22:12):
what pushed her into number one was the few hundred
million dollars in worldwide ticket sales from the new Jurassic
Park movie.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
All right, go ahead, Tom Cruise. Is he in the
top ten? Let me see? Has to be? Yeah, And
do you want me to tell you number? Okay? Number six?
Number six? Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Samuel L. Jackson number two? Oh yeah, I thought he'd
be number two. Tom Hanks ooh, twelve, twelve twelve.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
I can't remember my fourth? Okay, all right, that's fine.
And I would note also that there are. They're not
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Oh, Leo, Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh well, let's let's see.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
And if not him, Jack Nicholson, Caprio, DiCaprio not in it,
there's no there's no way Nicholson is in it. No
Smolio because he's too old. Right, so the chicken sales
would have been would have been too small. Now, I
did see somewhere, and I can't. I don't have it
in front of me here.

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):
Samuel L. Jackson get paid by the F word.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
I think, I think, I think there's only one or
two other women like in the in the top, in
the top twenty.

Speaker 3 (01:23:26):
Ooh oh, that's really tough. All right here, let me go,
let me, let's do this a little bit. So number
three would not be a surprise to you. Robert Downey
Junior was gonna guess, okay, number four?

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
All right? So number four is a woman. Galcado.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
No, she hasn't been in nearly enough movies. Sandra Bullock,
No is okay. And here's another thing to keep in mind.
Almost all of these top people are in the superhero movies.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
Because they make so many of them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
And these people are in movie after movie after movie
that's so enormous numbers of tickets?

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Is this one? And I have to see?

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
Uh yeah kinda And I was actually surprised this is
a woman. I was actually surprised that she's as high
on the list.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
As she is.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
Margot Robbie, Oh no, that's not a superhero. No, think
Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh oh god, zoways sell Donya.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
And and Avatar of course, which is her biggestar. That
was her biggest movie in terms of But so she's
number four. Number five sticking with is not a woman
sticking with Guardians of the Galaxy.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
Chris Pratt. There's Pratt.

Speaker 1 (01:24:33):
Number seven's in there. Number six was Tom Cruise. You
did that already. Number seven is a number another Chris.

Speaker 2 (01:24:39):
Think of a young Chris.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Superheroes, not that superheroes, Giant Viking Hammer, Chris Hemsworth. Number eight, Okay,
this one. He was in Avengers Infinity War, was Guardians
of the Galaxy. See, but is most famous for an
entirely different series of movies.

Speaker 3 (01:25:05):
He was in Infinity War. Yeah, and in Guardians, known
for a different string of movies.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
It's not Oh god, I'm gonna hate myself. He's bald.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
He's bald, Oh godhead, come on, no, no.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
I'm embarrassing myself. Go ahead, Vin.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Diesel, Oh yeah, with all the Fast and the Furious,
All the Fast and number nine this is actually one
you probably would guess, another bald, black dude other than
whose people think might run for office someday. Come on,
actually was Yeah, actor was in at least two Fast

(01:25:49):
and Fury of the movies, The rock yep uh. Number
ten another younger Chris from Avengers movies.

Speaker 2 (01:25:57):
And yeah, he's number ten.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
I'll just tell you. Number eleven is Bradley Bradley Cooper.
Really you did number twelve already.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
Tom Hanks. Number thirteen.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
This is a guy who has not been around much lately,
but his movies were so huge when he did them.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):
Areg oh yeah, Jack Sparrow, Yeah yeah, mister, Oh my god,
just lost his name?

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
How can I forget Johnny Depp? Thank you? Okay? Number
fourteen Spider Man.

Speaker 3 (01:26:28):
Which one you tell me? Toby McGuire, No, no, it's
gonna be Tom.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
Holland Alreadlands already because he was in Avengers Endgame. He'll
be seen Infinity War, he'll be top five. Yeah, so
well he's number fourteen. Now Mark Raffalo, Ruffalo, Ruffalo, whatever
the health dude, Emma Watson.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
Okay, so that was from Harry Potter. Stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Mostly Will Smith is still in the list. Okay, how
about this. You'll never guess this, but I'm gonna ask
you anyway, what is the top grossing movie that Will
Smith was in? And and just to give a clue
that it'll make it too easy. It can include voiceover,

(01:27:11):
so it can include like cartoons where somebody does a
voice and some of those other people we did done
that kind of thing. So Will Smith? What is Will
Smith's top grossing movie?

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
Is it Tough? There's a tough one animated?

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
Yeah, and a long time ago, and it's still the
top grossing movie for him. I don't know if they
count like DVD sales, which aren't even a thing anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:27:39):
When this came out, no embarrassing myself, Aladdin Smith, Yeah,
that's what it says. He played the Genie. No, he
played it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
I was like, wait, this was a this I think
was a remake, a remake in twenty nineteen. That's where
he played. I was thinking and made a version. But
it's way before. And that's who does the Genie. Robin Williams, right, yea,
Robin Williams. Okay, it's the new it's the newer Aladdin
where he played the genie which I didn't see.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
Number eighteen following is grossing movie. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Number eighteen another black dude following on Will Smith, who
was in.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
Avengers Endgame, was in Iron Man Movies.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
The I'd say, a really great more artsy movie Hotel Rwanda.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
For this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
Oh oh god, his name, his face, come on, man,
embarrassing distinctive.

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
Yeah, you're kind of embarrassing yourself today.

Speaker 1 (01:28:46):
He was also in all three Oceans, you know, oceans,
all of them, and he actually won an Oscar for
Hotel Rowandan.

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
Fantastic actor. Yeah, of which name don ah gosh, don cheatle.
Number nineteen. This actually surprised me a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
Okay, Guardians and some Avengers stuff, but not necessarily someone
you immediately think of as uh as a big star,
except that he is a big.

Speaker 3 (01:29:20):
Oh yeahtar he played He played the collector in Guardians.
Hispanic name, yeah, Hispanic name, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
In in MCU, he plays drag to the Destroyer. Oh oh,
different guy, then different guy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
Then okay, really he's number what he's number nineteen, Dan Bautista,
famer Dave Bautista, and then number twenty. Another guy who's
top grossing film as Avengers Endgame and who was in
you know, uh, Captain America movies. He's also in at
least one Mission Impossible movie, uh, in the Hurt Blocker.

Speaker 3 (01:29:55):
Yes, that's why is it that I think of the
name earlier in the list? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
I remember this guy's name.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
Actually, he also was in didn't he do the King
of the Netflix series King of Something Town?

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
Who he's Hawkeye? What the hell is his name?

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
My god, King of king Kingstown, Mayor of Kingstown and
he plays the mayor of Kingstown.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Almost died recently.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
Yes, yeah, that's the guy almost died recently when like
a truck with a plowblade or something ran over him.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
What's his first name? Starts with a JA, give me
the first name. Jeremy, Jeremy Renner, Jeremy Renner. All right,
there you go. That's the top twenty. I was doing
so well.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Yeah, and then there's a lot a lot of pressure
when you're put on the air like that. All right,
let me do something completely different and in a little
bit serious now.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
Uh So, there are.

Speaker 1 (01:30:50):
Multiple legitimate functions of government when it comes to law enforcement,
for example, arresting, charging, and him prisoning someone if convicted
of a crime, and for example deporting somebody who was
here illegally who.

Speaker 2 (01:31:08):
Is convicted of a crime.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
Sometimes these things can interfere with each other in ways
that make for challenging and legitimate questions.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
Let me share this with you from the Denver Post.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
When a Venezuelan immigrant was arrested last year in charge
with sexually assaulting a fourteen year old girl in Jefferson County,
the teen's mother hoped for justice. Je who was being
identified by her initials to protect her daughter's identity, wanted
the suspect to be convicted and locked away. She wanted
to know he couldn't hurt anyone else, at least for
a while. But that's not what happened. Jesus Alberto Pereira Castillo,

(01:31:46):
twenty one years old, posted a five thousand dollars bail
bond and was released from Jefferson County jail on November
twenty seventh, twenty twenty four. He was subsequently arrested by
federal immigration authorities and deported from the United States. By
May of this year, the clerk notified via email that

(01:32:10):
the defendant had been removed from the country. The chief
judge over in Jefferson County wrote in an order in
May the deportation effectively ended the state's criminal case against Castillo.
The prosecution cannot continue without his presence in court, though
he remains wanted on a warrant and could be prosecuted
if he were to return to Colorado. There was no conviction,

(01:32:33):
no sentence, no jail time, just a deportation. The mom
says it's been pretty hard on me and my daughter.
She doesn't feel like she's getting the justice she deserves.
It just has been so easy for immigrants to come
into the country after they are deported. So the fear
is that he might relocate somewhere else in the US

(01:32:54):
and do this to someone else. Them deporting him ruined
justice for my dear. Just a little bit more here
from the Denver Post. At least two dozen defendants and
one witness in criminal cases in Metro Denver have been
taken into custody by ice and deported in the middle
of ongoing state prosecutions since last September. The Denver Post

(01:33:15):
found district attorneys across the region started to notice more
defendants disappearing into ice custody this spring, as President Trump
ramped up deportations nationwide.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
Some district attorneys who spoke.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
With the Post, including seventeenth Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason, said,
if I can't hold someone accountable because the defendant.

Speaker 2 (01:33:35):
Is deported before we've reached.

Speaker 1 (01:33:37):
A just outcome in the case, and the defendant finds
their way back here and commits another crime, that doesn't
make the community safer anyway, you get the idea. I
wanted to share this with you not because I'm pointing
fingers at one side or the other doing something wrong,
but because these are both legitimate functions of government right
wanting to prosecute the criminal and throw them in jail,

(01:33:57):
both for retribution and to prevent that person from committing
another crime against somebody else, and also the federal government's
legitimate desire to deport illegal alien criminals. Now sticking specifically
with conceptually, I would much prefer that the person not

(01:34:18):
be deported until after serving a prison sentence if convicted
of a crime. And you know what, if the person
is in an illegal alien, potentially even if they're acquitted
of the crime, you could still deport them, Although that
raises some moral questions.

Speaker 2 (01:34:32):
What if I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
Looking for an upside it is that deporting the person
without putting them in prison save tax payers a bunch
of money. But still I think on sort of that
moral ethical issue, I would rather have that person be
charged with the crime and serve the time. Part of
the problem is in and around Denver, you just never
really know what's gonna happen. You never really know what

(01:34:55):
the prosecutors are going to do. They have been kind
of soft on crime. It's a very ch lenging situation.
But I wanted to share it with you without saying
there's an easy answer, because there isn't. I'm going to
apologize upfront for ending today's show on a sort of
heavy note more than sort of. Earlier in the show,

(01:35:18):
I shared with you a poem from Andrea Gibson, the
recently named poet Laureate of the State of Colorado. And
I intended after having Andrea on the show two years ago,
I intended to go hear Andrea read Andrea's own poetry.
And I never did it, and now I won't be
able to because she's dead.

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
She died cancer.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
I guess she was diagnosed before she was on the
show with me, but I don't think I knew that.
And I am going to share with you now to
end the show. And again I realized this is heavy,
but I just really really enjoyed her work.

Speaker 2 (01:35:55):
This is Andrea Gibson.

Speaker 1 (01:35:58):
Reading poetry about two two years ago, and this is
called every time I ever said I want to die.

Speaker 5 (01:36:07):
Every time I ever said I want to die, I
meant I am willing to do anything to live, even
leave this world forever, even build a new home atop
a nebula, stick a straw into a buried lake on Mars,
get tipsy on anti gravity, and invent new constellations, walking
lines between undiscovered stars. When God pulls me over and asks,

(01:36:31):
can you touch your nose? I could say, what knows?
I'd be bodyless, a shadow in reverse, a patch of
light made by the darkness. I escaped the psychology. Man,
you will say, no one really wants to die. They
want relief. They believe they will never find it in
this world. That belief could be right or wrong. One

(01:36:54):
would have to stay to find out. Friend, if you stay,
at least we will be to get there. And I
have an extra straw.

Speaker 2 (01:37:02):
I could show you where the.

Speaker 5 (01:37:04):
Lakes on this planet are buried. How you do not
need light years to reach them. The dark years work too,
sometimes better. Sometimes grief is the fastest route to truth.
In addition to the straw, I also have a slingshot.
The fires rock bottoms directly at the Sun until change
spills from its golden pockets. That's how I got my

(01:37:26):
hands on the summer afternoon. We can do anything with it, sunbathe,
or scream, or forgive ourselves everything, most especially the thread
we could not convince to close our wounds. If your
wounds are still open, trust they are doors to an
answer and walk through. What if we don't have to

(01:37:47):
be healed to be whole? There are holes in every
inch of the fabric that makes me who I am.
But pull the string on my back and I'll say
I love you and mean it. Whenever you want, come
my home with your eyes. I read that people scream
when they are in pain because screaming actually lessens the pain.

(01:38:08):
Anyone who asks you to hold your tongue is asking
you to hold the heaviest thing in the galaxy. Forget
them and remember you can tell me anything about how
hard it is to stop flirting with your expiration day.
I understand being woved by the finished line of sadness.

(01:38:28):
Infinity still sends me nudes every day. I won't deny.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
She looks amazing.

Speaker 5 (01:38:35):
But I'm taking my hand now, promised to writing every
page of my story except for its end.

Speaker 2 (01:38:42):
Friend.

Speaker 5 (01:38:43):
You are who taught me that a difficult life is
not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is
just easier to carry than sorrow. And you could lift
a city from how long you've spent holding what's been
nearly impossible to hold this world. Those who know how
to do that, those who can find a tunnel with

(01:39:04):
no light at the end of it and hold it
up that a telescope to show that the darkness contains
many truths that could bring the light to its knees.
Grief astronomer, adjust the lens, look close, tell us what
you see.

Speaker 2 (01:39:24):
That's Andrea Gibson. She passed away yesterday.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
I truly regret that I never went to see Andrea
reading Andrea's own poetry. Andrea Gibson, rest in peace.

Speaker 2 (01:39:36):
I'm gonna leave it here. Mandy's up next.

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