08-04-25 - *FULL SHOW* Trump Fires Statistician; New Thriller Author; Racist WNBA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning and happy Monday.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm Ross and Gina said, I'm on the Governor's Instagram page,
so I'm trying to find that right now and see
if I'm actually there. We had our big Koa one
hundredth anniversary birthday party on Thursday and it was a
lot of fun. Governor Polus showed up, a lot of
people showed up. Oh yeah, and there there it is.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
There's me.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
You don't know it's me.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You don't know it's me, but there's Governor Polus with
two thumbs up in the picture.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I'm on the right, so his left.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I'm facing away and all you see is one hundred
in hair on the back of my head with the
rest of that part of my head kind of shaved,
and the one hundred is there in hare and then
two Broncos cheerleaders on either side of us. And it
is a rather ridiculous looking picture. But that's kind of cool.

(00:53):
What you know, what I think is what is especially
cool is nobody knows that's me unless you are there,
or unless Gina just said.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And Jared didn't even put it in. Jared didn't even
put it in the in the description who that was?
He Yeah, anyway, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
The other thing that I did before we jump into
the heavy stuff is I wanted to, you know, from
time to time, since we're all friends here and we
like to talk about what we watch on TV.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I just got finished, kind of binge watching an Amazon
Prime murder mystery series called troup O t r o Ppo.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
And if you've ever.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Been to Australia or known an Australian a lot of times,
you know, they have these these words and they shorten everything,
like if you want to have a cup of coffee
or a cup of tea or whatever, it's a cup
of cuppa. So they have words for our conversation is convo.
So Troupo is apparently when you go a little crazy

(01:49):
when you're in the tropical heat and humidity and bugs
and stuff for too long.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
And so this is.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
A murder mystery series said in Northern Queensland. Lots of
crocodiles and castaway and stuff like that. And it was
pretty good and I binge watched it just two eight
episode seasons, and I watched it over the last couple
of weeks or so, and I just actually watched the
last episode of the second season, which is oh there
is so far and I just finished it twenty minutes ago.

(02:16):
I decided to watch it while I was having breakfast
this morning because I was done getting ready for the show,
or at least I think I was done getting ready
for the show. So if the show is really bad today,
that's because I was busy binge watching that little that
Trumpo thing. So anyway, if you like kind of gritty
murder mysteries, Trompo on Amazon Prime is pretty good. And no,
I you know, Amazon to Prime didn't pay me to

(02:37):
say that. I'm just sharing with you, all right, a
couple stories. I want to start with. This thing happened
last week, but I didn't get to it because I
was out on Friday, and I just want to share
it with you because I think it's kind of nuts.
And you know how I you know, with President Trump,
sometimes I think he does great stuff. Sometimes I think

(02:58):
he does meaningless stuff. Sometimes I think he does dumb stuff.
And this one definitely falls into the latter category. And
I'm not going to say it's the most important decision
he's ever made, but I actually do think it's one
of the dumbest, even though it's not nearly the most important,
and that is that after the Bureau of Labor Statistics

(03:19):
put out the latest jobs report only came in quite
a bit weaker than have been expected, but more importantly,
massively revised downward the previous couple of months of estimates
that that was really where the huge change was. So

(03:41):
only seventy three thousand jobs reported created in July. The
economists were expecting one hundred and twenty five thousand or
some number like that.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
I don't remember the estimate, but it was a lot higher.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
And then more importantly, though, is the revisions to May
and June dropped to those numbers massively. So May was
initially reported as one hundred and thirty nine thousand and
was slashed to nineteen thousand, so one hundred and twenty

(04:13):
thousand less, and June was actually reduced by even more
than that, so something on the order of two hundred
and fifty eight thousand fewer jobs reported for May and June,
which eliminates about seven eighths about eighty eight percent of
the previously reported new.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Jobs during those couple of months.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
And Donald Trump's reaction to that was to fire the
head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Her name is
Erica Macintarfer. And I don't know her. I never heard
of her. She was put in that job, that particular
job by Joe Biden, but she had served as in
high levels in this kind of work in the federal
government for twenty something years, including through the prior administration.

(05:01):
And I think what's frustrating about this is Trump is
implying by doing this that somehow this lady manipulated the data,
which is essentially impossible.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
It is true.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
So let's just go through this for a second, because
I want folks to understand it. There are two different
surveys done. One is of businesses, one of us is
of households. They're kind of put together to give this
employment report. And because they try to get the employment
report for any given month out at least the first estimate,

(05:35):
they try to get it out as early as possible
in the beginning of the next month, right, so the
July employment report, the first estimate will come out very
early in August, and it did.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
But here's the thing. There are two more estimates.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
There's a second revision and what they call final third revision.
Because a lot of the surveys and the work that
they need to do, don't come in till late.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Businesses.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
There's not a law that says they have to report
by a certain time and so on.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
So they get the information.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
They make their best guesses at extrapolation from the information that.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
They have, and usually, by the way, usually.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
They have a lot more than half the data. It's
not like they're extrapolating based on a third of the data.
Usually it's more like two thirds of the data or
three quarters of the data. But for whatever reason, and
probably the methodology can and should be improved. I'm sure
there's a lot to say there. But for whatever reason,
the later data for May and June was much worse

(06:37):
than the early data, and they revised the numbers down
a lot. And Trump is claiming implying that it was
political manipulation by a Biden appointee, which, as I said,
is essentially impossible. These people who work in these places
are not It's not like, for example, the former intelligence
officials saying, oh, the Hunter Biden laptop is maybe Russian missing.

(07:00):
It's not like Anthony Fauci like these are people with
spreadsheets and methodologies.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
They're just numbers nerds who are doing.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
The best jobs they can and sometimes coming in late,
the numbers change right. Sometimes you might have a football
game that you know is twenty one to nothing going
in the fourth quarter, and then the losing team gets
hot and wins twenty four to twenty one.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
These things can happen.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
And the problem with firing this lady is it's Donald
Trump saying that the American people shouldn't trust our economic data,
and that's a really, really bad move. One other thing
I'll say, I was pretty shocked when the job numbers
were as strong as they were the first time around,
because it's not It's simply not possible that Donald Trump's

(07:46):
trade policy and tariffs and all that is not negatively
impacting the economy. I'm not saying it's driving us into recession, okay,
I'm just saying some of these earlier data points have
made it look like there was little or no impact,
and that was and is impossible. So I think these
numbers are much more likely to be true than the
original numbers. Last thing I want to say on this

(08:07):
The market got crushed on Friday after this employment news,
but now people are thinking, well, if the economy is
really that week, it means the FED is much more
likely to cut at their next meeting, which is the
middle of next month. And now the market at so
far today is up quite a bit based on the

(08:28):
thinking that the FED is going to get back to
cutting rates. In any case, I'm not surprised the jobs
numbers were worse. It was a very bad move by
President Trump to fire this lady. Not his most important move,
but not something he should have done. When we come back,
we're actually gonna talk with a Rod from training camp.
We normally talk with him a little later in the day,
but we're gonna get a nine o'clock update from a

(08:49):
Rod coming up next here on KOA.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
There was ever a day when A Rod was gonna wear.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
His most reflective sunglasses at training camp, it would be today.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
A Rod joins us from training camp.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Thanks again to Chevron for supporting us through all the
training camp broadcasts.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Hi, Hey, Rod, what's up?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Hey, what's going on?

Speaker 4 (09:06):
I'm staring at myself and the reflection as the sunglasses
are sitting here on the table.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
I definitely did not forget them today.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
It is going to be probably what the hotest days
of training camp out here today, like early the nineties.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
For sure, it's gonna be toasty.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
You were telling me just before we went on the
air that you're expecting the players to practice in.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Shells today rather than full pads. So why does that
Why is that important?

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Correct?

Speaker 4 (09:29):
So Saturday they had the scrimmage in full pads, and
obviously with the day off yesterday, today and today, the
sorts of telling me they're going to be in shells,
And why that's important is because you've got the joint
practice coming up with the San Francisco forty nine ers
on Thursday. They travel on Wednesday to San fran And
typically a couple things. Number one obviously in terms of

(09:49):
just you want to make sure you schedule out your
pads days because you only get so many and you
can only do so many in a row. So maybe
pads tomorrow, but today. A couple of reasons is one
obviously is to continue the momentum of the offense a bit.
So typically in shells, it's gonna be more about mental reps.
The defenders obviously can't fully take to the ground at
full tackling. Sean Payn's even mentioned it's about timing technique,

(10:12):
and like I said, those mental reps, so kind of
keeping that momentum going for the offense. You probably had
the most balanced day on Saturday, bo Nix and especially
in the red zone. I looked a lot. Look probably
one of the better days they've had they've had. So
shells will kind of help that. And then you can
schedule out like I said, pads tomorrow maybe, and then
you have the day off Wednesday and getting ready to
go to San Franco joint practice.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
So we've been getting a lot of a lot of
contract news, right. We had we had Courtland Suttlent Sutton
with four years ninety two million dollars, we had me
with four years ninety two hundred dollars, and now and
now Zach Allen. Tell us what's up with Zach Allen's
contract and who you think might be next?

Speaker 4 (10:52):
Yeah, So Zach Allen is is is really kind of uh.
I mean, he's not really as much underrated anymore. I
think people understanding he's one of the better in areer
defensive lineman really across the entire NFL. He's he's extremely
solid and tackling and saxon pressures. He's he's up there
in terms of basically all the all the metrics that
there are, and it's really great to get him under

(11:13):
contract for what is, by the way, kind of and
people been kind of saying, you know, him and.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Courtland Sutton a little bit under market. I think Zach
Allen could have demanded a bit more. Uh, Courtland Sutton
definitely could have demanded a bit more.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
He's kind of in the in the in the twenties
in terms of wide receivers paid, kind of around the Pittman's.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Of the world. So what's really great Ross.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
Is it's it's kind of a testament to this to
this culture that they're developing here. Both Courtland and Zach
Allen have talked about just you know the fact that
the team has has been negotiated and in good faith
they've they've they've been out on the field. And that's
different from what we're seeing across the entire NFL too,
because it seems like every other big time negotiation is

(11:52):
contentious right now. Michael Parsons wants out in Dallas, Terry
McLaurin wants out in Washington, Trey Hendrickson, that's been probably
the nastiest one in Cincinnati that Nick Benito's watching.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
In terms of his contract.

Speaker 4 (12:02):
James Cook is the one holding that I think it
can think of in Buffalo, But then what's next Going
into this offseason, it was kind of the big four
Sutton Allen both done now, Nick Menito and JFM. JFM
maybe last could potentially be the last. The odd man
out here with all the money going out. Nick Menida
hopefully will be next, but it may not be for
a bit. The next one could be a while because

(12:23):
he's watching the Parsons and Hendrix Steels is to kind
of have them reset the market and get Benita more
upwards into the mid twenties and maybe closer to thirty.
I don't think you'll get over thirty. But also Ross
it could be noteworthy that maybe they wait if they
wanted to think about doing the franchise tag next year.
So it could be a bit, but maybe they get
Benito done. But I would say it's going to be

(12:45):
a bit a little bit longer.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Wow, well, okay, And I got to say there was
some there was some chatter about Micah Parsons maybe going
to the Raiders and for the just take the Broncos.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I hope he doesn't end up there.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Ben Ben was reporting that out here at camp over
the weekend, saying that honestly at the end of the day,
and Ben says this and everyone else is really saying it,
and Jerry basically say gonna he's not gonna deal with
Michael Parsons and Cowboys fans would go up in arms
and not be happy if they were to. But the
Raiders are a team that could potentially be in the
next four of that and I will put this to
bed right now. No chance at all the Broncos would

(13:18):
be in the mix for Michael Parsons.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
I personally don't believe that. I think the.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
People that no other talk about no ball that you
number one, You're gonna have to pay him, probably at
least upper thirties, maybe into the forty million per year.
The Broncos don't have it now, especially with the contracts
they're s shelling out, and then you're potentially giving up
multiple first round picks for multiple reasons.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
The Broncos would not be involved, but maybe a division arrival.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
There's a Rod reporting to us from koa training camp
which is powered by Chevron safely bringing reliable energy to
the front range. Thanks so much, as always, a Rod,
stay cool out.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
There if you can.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Sounds good. Thank you, all right?

Speaker 2 (13:55):
I tell you what we're gonna do, folks, something a
little different when we come back. One of the the
really fun parts of my job is talking to authors,
and I try to alternate more or less between thriller
writers because it's a genre I love, and then nonfiction
writers or sometimes other kinds of fiction. And I've got
a novel in my hands right now called Blood and Treasure,

(14:17):
and it's the first novel by a new writer named
Ryan Pote, whose own background is really interesting and is
the stuff that would be basis for some really good
writing this new book. And we're going to talk with
Ryan Pote next. His new book is something of a
combination of like a paramilitary thriller and Raiders of the
Lost Arc. It's a lot of fun. We'll do that

(14:38):
right after this. Keep it here on KOWA. I often
get books to read a little before they come out
to the public so that I have the opportunity to
have read it when I talk with the author on
or around publication day. And such is the case with
the book I'm holding in my.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Hand right now.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
It's called Blood and Treasure. It's a new thriller by
first time thriller author Ryan Pote, and it is a
really fun read that I describe as something like a
mix between a paramilitary special ops thriller and Raiders of
the Lost Arc. And it's it's really a lot of fun,

(15:16):
and it's it's quite different from you know, I read
a lot.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Of thrillers, and I have a lot of thriller authors.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
It's a really different kind of book and it's really
really fun.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
And Ryan Poe joins us to talk about it right now.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Welcome Ryan, good to talk to you for the first time,
and and and thank you for entertaining me.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
But really good to have you here.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
Oh Ross, it's great to be here. I'm super I
love talking about this book, so.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
I bet you do.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
I bet you so.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Before we get into the book, I read a little
about you, and you got.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
A very very fascinating background, which probably leads to your
being able to write a.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Book that's got so many different aspects to it. But
I mean, tell us a little about your background.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
I mean, just for example, on the wall behind you,
I see a pistol and I also see a knife
that looks like it's from the Middle East.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
So, you know, tell us a little about you.

Speaker 5 (16:11):
Sure you know, I I never wanted to be a writer.
I wasn't one of those people who grew up, you know,
thinking this was going to be in my path. I
never wrote creative fiction. I was I was doing what
I wanted to do. Like I I'd never been out
of New England. When I graduated high school, I had
this deep seated desire to go do something exciting.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
I packed my bags and moved to Hawaii.

Speaker 5 (16:33):
Became a Scooba instructor out there, and I was just
trying to I was just always looking for the next adventure.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
I joined the Navy, became a helicopter pilot.

Speaker 5 (16:41):
I did count a narcotics mission with a joint interagency
task Force for about twelve years. Search and rescue pilot
in there as well, and I had a lot of
jobs in between those two stories. Men did a lot
of different things. But I was always, you know, just doing.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
What I was doing.

Speaker 5 (16:58):
And then when I got injured and flying was taken
away from me, I couldn't fly anymore at all. That
was my career. That's what I poured my life into.
Uh I kind of was lost and I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
What to do.

Speaker 5 (17:08):
I was dealing with PTSD and I started I started
writing as a as a therapy exercise, and that turned
into uh, discovering that I had a knack for and
a passion for writing fiction. And that just started this
journey of writing five books before I got published. And
and yeah, now now we all get to read Blood

(17:29):
and Treasure.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
I absolutely loved writing this book. I loved the character.
I love the series. It's it's so it.

Speaker 5 (17:36):
I love what you said that it's different, that it's unique,
because that's what that's what I was going for. And
you know, this book was rejected over four hundred times
before you know, It's it's it's They didn't they don't
really know still where to place it on the shelves.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
And I kind of like that. You know, it's not
good for sales, I think, but.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
I like that it's uh, it's got its own little
niche carved out, so.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
I like it too.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
And and I you know, I was looking at some
of the blur in the press materials, and you've got
you've got Brad Taylor, and you've got Taylor Moore, and
you've got Andrews and Wilson, and.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
You've got others too.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
But those are just ones who have been on my show,
who have been you know who are you got? You
got some really big names there, and I guess it
was a little bit incorrect when I called you a
first time author. It's a first time published author. It's
not your not your first book. But just again, one more,
just two, two more things. You did some science, ye
kind of stuff in addition to the military stuff, and

(18:30):
I'm a science nerd, so tell me a little about that.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Sure. So I got injured scuba diving.

Speaker 5 (18:37):
Actually, I you know, not to like self grandize whatever,
but it was, uh, I had to rescue one of
my clients at at one hundred feet and I ended
up getting a mediast olemphysema and some bear traumas in
my ear and you know, you know, decompression chamber and
all that stuff, and so I couldn't dive for like
you can't dive after you decompressed for like six months.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
So I had to do something else.

Speaker 5 (19:02):
And that was like my that was my full time
job at the time, so I was you know, I
was bartending as well, but I needed something else, so I, uh,
I found this lab on base. I had taken a
couple of micro bioclasses and had the skills to do it,
and they were looking for another tech and so I
came on board as a full time employee for them.

(19:23):
And it turns out it was it was a lab
run by Shell Oil. It was a company called Salana,
and they were in the early stages of researching algal biofuels,
so basically taking the oil from algae. Uh and you know,
refining that process to be able to make it a
viable business option to get you know, the equivalent of

(19:45):
ethanol out of or or diesel fuel out of algae.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Wow. And they weren't the only company.

Speaker 5 (19:51):
They weren't the only couple company doing Chevron was doing
it all everyone Everyone's actually working on those and that
was gosh. That was at this It was well over
fifteen years ago, so it's probably way more advanced now.
But I did that for about a year and a
half every day and I learned a lot. It was
super super cool to be a part of that job.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
I have to just tell you, I have to tell
you one maybe the dumbest thing I've ever done, but
you'll appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
So we all got those stories.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Solomon Islands scuba diving with two women who are both
master divers, and you are probably aware as a guy
who's done a lot of scuba, how good women are
with air when they're diving compared to us. Right, So, anyway,
we went down trying to remember the exact number. I

(20:44):
took a picture of my dive computer. It was something
just over two hundred feet. And we took out our
knives and started banging on our tanks behind us with
our knives, and we got these two like eleven or
twelve foot hammerhead sharks that came to check out a
little over two hundred feet with no special equipment, no nothing.
We couldn't stay there for very long. Of course, we

(21:08):
had to come up very slowly. But yeah, I thought
you'd appreciate that story.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, we've all done dumb dive things.
You want you want a dumb dive story of mine?

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, yeah, give me one. Okay.

Speaker 5 (21:20):
So we used to take our boats out to this
wreck called the Sea Tiger, which is in one hundred
and twenty feet of water off the coast of a Wahoo.
And you know, we dove that wreck so many times,
gone in and out and through it, and we used
to just you know, we were young, dumb kids, and we
would get we would be out, you know, partying all night.
So we'd show up in the morning, like, you know,

(21:41):
kind of under the weather. So we'd we'd breathe some
medical oxygen first to kind of get ourselves going, and
then we would take our gear, our dive gear, and
we'd weigh it down and just turn it on and
toss it over and just let it sink tow one
hundred and twenty feet and then we would just grab
the rope to tie the boat off, and a heavy
lead weight belt in our mask, and we would just

(22:02):
jump off and and just sink down to one hundred
twenty feet, tie the boat up, and then you got
to make it to your gear. Basically, it was we
used to call it supermanning to the bottom, but man,
it was stupid. In retrospect, it was dumb, but while
we were doing it, it was a heck a lot
of fun.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
That is that's even dumber than mine. That is a
fabulous story. All Right, we're talking with Ryan Pote, that's Pote,
by the way, about his new novel, Blood and Treasure.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
So let's get to the novel.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Now.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
It's kind of interesting, you know, we're talking about we're
talking about scuba, but right at the beginning first parts
of your book. You got people deep or sort of deep,
not that deep underwater, and you got people to mile
up in space, right, you got everything, You got everything
going here, and it starts off with some action in
the in the space station International Space Station. I'm gonna
be a little careful not to spoil stuff, but give

(22:54):
us an overview of the plot. And I'd like to
ask authors to do it so I don't say something
you don't want me to say.

Speaker 5 (23:02):
Oh no, that's okay. Yeah, this one's tough to do
that with. And you know because I and I made
it that way.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
But uh yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:10):
So you you start right off in the prologue, you
are the reader is attached to a character in NASA
Johnson Space Center Mission Control. They you are right in
the middle of a problem that nobody understands and neither
the use. You're figuring it out along with them, and
they've lost all connection to the station.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
They've lost control of the station. They don't have audio video.
They're trying to restore that video feed. When when you
start the book, they.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
Get glimpses of that video feed that cuts back in
just in just in time for them to see one
astronaut on board motion as a hottie, and she has
killed everybody on board, and then she blows up the station.
They lose connection and that's pretty much where they're at
with it. Then we're cut and nobody understands why. And
then we're cut to the coast and Mozambique, where you're

(23:57):
introduced to the protagonist, Ethan Kane, and he's he's been
on when you when you join him, he's been on
the hunt for some kind of relic that he's been
paid to recover and from from the ocean, and but
you're at the tail end of it with him, so
you don't go.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
He's pretty much already found it.

Speaker 5 (24:13):
And as he's as he's hauling this thing out of
the water, there are some bad people who are after him,
and something from the sky, a fiery mass, almost takes
out their boats and crashed into the ocean and it sinks,
and when he goes to investigate, it's the Soyu space capsule.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
From the International Space Station.

Speaker 5 (24:30):
It's filling with water and inside there's a loan astronaut
and she's trapped and he has to save her before
she drowns, and you, as the reader, know that that
astronaut is the woman from the prologue who killed everybody
in the space station.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
But he doesn't know who that. He doesn't know who
that is.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
And and then it turns out the people that are
after him for what he's recovering are also after her.
And so it begins this interconnected web to figure out
how the events in the space station are connected to
this relic he's pulled out of the ocean and who
is this astronaut from space?

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (25:03):
And that's that kicks off the adventure that spans part
of the globe.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
It really is a remarkable story.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Like I said, I described it earlier as a something
between a paramilitary kind of thriller and and Raiders of
the Lost Dark. And there there are aspects of this
that are are distinctly I don't know if you'd call
them spiritual religious something. And is that is that a

(25:29):
reflection of you or is that just a is that
just a plot device or what is that?

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Well?

Speaker 5 (25:35):
You know, it's it's funny, Uh, it's kind of bolth
like I actually had my own kind of spiritual journey
and to faith through writing this book. Actually ironically, because
that's actually a theme in the book, uh, because when
I was writing so so you'll you'll learn within the
first five chapters of the book, so I'm not going
to spoil this, that he's searching for the Ark of

(25:56):
the Covenant, and you know, fans of like Raiders of
the Lost Arc and something like that.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
You know, I found a story.

Speaker 5 (26:03):
That really resonated with with doing an Arc of the
Covenant story, and I knew it was going to be
full of all these tropes from the past, and you know,
there's so many copycats, and I really didn't want that.
I wanted to create something that was unique and fresh
and different. So I thought of different ways that I
could do that to break away from, you know, the
old and do something new. And one way that I

(26:25):
devised to do that was to imbue the novel with
the essence, the words, the flavor, the history, the feeling
of the Old Testament, where the Arc of the Covenant
is from. And if I could do that, I wouldn't
have to bore you with all of its history. The
feeling of it would just be in the very words
you were reading. And in doing that, it kind of

(26:45):
brought it. It made it feel fresh, and while I
was writing it and it just kind of brought the
whole vibe to life of this this arc of the Covenant,
you know, Chase. And so I intentionally did that and
leaned into it and and just kind of wove it
more into the fabric of the story. So, yeah, it's
got lots of deep themes that cover that.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, I will say, folks, again, like I read a
lot of thrillers, and there it's been a while since
I've read one that has so many threads interweaving in
such interesting ways with you know, the arc of the Covenant,
the the murderous female astronaut in the space station, other

(27:26):
stuff that I'm not going to tell you about because you.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Have to just go read the book.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
I'll ask you one more question about a little phrase
that comes up repeatedly throughout the book, Memento Mauri.

Speaker 5 (27:36):
Tell us a little about memento Maury. Sure, it's it's
a Latin phrase. It means remember that we must die.
It's kind of, you know, going back to the old stoics.
You know a lot of people read Marcusralias meditations things
like that.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
People were very people back.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
Then, were very focused on the the brief mist that
is life, and that the you know, the true way
to to find happiness in life is to just move
on from the past, look forward and know that you're
not going to be bringing a U haul with you
into the next life, and that all your regrets and

(28:13):
things they are lessons of the past and you can
only go forward and in bringing your regrets for it.
You know, there's a There's a whole lot uh that's
packaged into to what momento Morey became in the in
the ancient kind of mottos. I wove it into the
story because I thought that I was dealing with a

(28:33):
lot of regret in the story and having characters deal
with regret and regret in different ways.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Almost every character has a little.

Speaker 5 (28:43):
Relationship dynamic that deals with regret in their own way,
and and I think a lot of people reading it
might kind of attach to a different characters dynamic because
of their own circumstances. And I just made I made
it kind of a model throughout to kind of have
a motto for the series, if you will, and also

(29:04):
for the character. I thought it fit Ethan Kaine's whole
story and kind of his arc, and I like to
do what I was trying to do with This book
was set a trajectory for the series because it is
a series and there's there's more books to come in
this one, and I wanted to kind of set a
trajectory for fans to kind of know if you read
it and you like it, you can kind of parse
out and figure out where this is going, where the

(29:25):
character's going, and the kind of flavor that you're going
to get from these books.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Ryan Poet's first published novel out now called Blood and Treasure.
It is really a lot of fun and you will
want to read the rest of the series. I know
I already want to read the rest of the series,
and I think my listeners know. I'm very picky when
it comes to thrillers because there's a there are a
lot of thriller writers out there, and not all of

(29:51):
them are a good use of my time or yours.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
This book sure is Blood and Treasure. It is so
much fun.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Congratulations on persevering through you know, a few books now
getting published and then working so hard to get this
one published.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
It definitely deserved to be published, and I wish you.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Lots of success, and we'll talk with you for the
next book and maybe even get you out for an
event at some point.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Absolutely, and thank you for saying all that about the book.
It truly like to be cliche one hundred percent. I
poured a lot of my own blood and Treasure into
the book. So to hear people you know, really resonating
with it means the world to me.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
So thanks you for having me on. I'm glad to
come back anytime. Glad to do it, Ryan, And thank
you for your service to our country. Thank you Ross.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
All right, all right, so yeah, everybody go read Blood
and Treasure.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
A lot of fun just came out.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
I think I forget publication day, but it's right around now.
It was like a week and a half ago, just
published a week and.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
A half ago. Really fun book. All right, let's do
a couple other things.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
So this story, you know, some folks on the right
and Colorado are paying very close attention to it, and
I do think we should keep an eye on it.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
But my motto here is going to be.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
When I want to share this story with you, I'm
gonna say, let's give her a chance, because people do change,
but we got to watch her carefully, and I'll give
you the story in a second. But I'm just giving
you the framework here. You know, more often than not,
people get wiser when they get older, right, except maybe
in politics. It doesn't seem to happen too much in politics,
Like surely Joe Biden didn't get wiser as he got older.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
But anyway, the story.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
In the Colorado Sun is about a lady named Nicole
Ross Marino who is the new director of the Colorado
State Land Board. All right, Colorado State Land Board. And
when she was much younger, she was a true radical

(31:44):
environmentalist associated with a group called the Earth Liberation Front
and she supported things here let me share this with
you from Colorado Sun. And this came out less than
a week ago. And so some people are upset that
she got this job as a kind of conservation job
because of her history. And again I fully understand it.

(32:04):
I fully fully understand, and I might not have offered
the job just because of her history. But in any case,
so she used to also be involved with Wild Earth Guardians,
another really radical environmental group. That is, it's one of
these kinds of groups that I often say it's not
so much that they love the planet, is that they

(32:25):
hate humans. But in any case, I'm going to quote
from the Colorado sun. The nails that should have sealed
the coffin of her appointment, according to people including Lori Diversi,
who serves on the Eagle County Republican Party Executive Committee,
were statements in action she made after the Earth Liberation
Front's twelve million dollar arson and comments she's made about

(32:48):
cattle since then.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
The arson, and I'm not sure exactly what the arson.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Was was about, but in any case, the arson was
one of the most beautiful acts of economic sabotage ever
in this state. Russ Marino told Mother Jones magazine in
nineteen ninety nine. She said she was jumping up and
down with delight. But again sticking with the Colorado's son,
Ross Marino has some thoughts about things she said and

(33:13):
did when she was a twenty nine year old doctoral
candidate at CU. She claims that she she calls claims
that she's opposed to agriculture a complete mischaracterization, and she basically,
I'm gonna summarize. She goes on to say that she's
grown up quite a bit and that she's learned a lot,
and that she understands the value of agriculture for example,

(33:36):
and you know the cowboy life and ranching and all
this stuff. And she also understands what an enormous percentage
of revenue for the board that she's running now comes
from oil and gas leases, and you only get the
money when the lease actually goes into production. So she
says she's learned a lot. She says, she's not the
same person that she was back then.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
So I would.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Say, not that we have a choice because she got
the job. I would say, let's give her a chance
and we'll see if she's wiser. You know, you got
to watch her very carefully when somebody does something like that.
But I just wanted to, you know, share that story
with you. Let me do just one minute on this
one other story. Delta Airlines made an announcement not that
long ago that it was going to try to increase

(34:21):
the percentage of its air fares that would be determined
by AI from something like three percent to something like
twenty percent across at least with it domestic US.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Flights by the end of this year.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
They're doing this in partnership with a company called Fetcher
f E T C H E er R, and they
are described as an AI pricing company.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
And you know, I think AI pricing.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Is absolutely inevitable, and you would do it if you
had a company to try to maximize your revenue. And
by the way AI pricing, everybody's thinking about it in
terms of it, they're just going to raise prices wherever
they can, but there will be times where the AI
is going to say, you want to maximize revenue, you
need to lower the price here.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
But here's where it's become a little bit controversial.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Some people have been wondering is in this case Delta Airlines,
are they going to try to use information that their
AI scrapes from your computer or your phone to try
to set a ticket price.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
And one example being given is.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
What if they find out that you need to fly
back to your original hometown or wherever for a funeral,
and they know you have to go on short notice
on a particular day and you've got no flexibility, would
they use that to set a much higher price for you? Now,

(35:47):
Delta says they never have, never will never thinking about
using personalized personal data to set prices.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
But it wouldn't surprise me to see.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
A bill come before Congress saying that they can't.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
It's going to be an interesting area.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
It's probably, I believe Delta actually that they were not
looking to scrape your computer for personal data to set
ticket prices, because they and their lawyers would already know
how bad that would be for them. But in any case,
I just wanted you to be aware of this controversy
that's bubbling up. We had a lot more stuff to
do on the show. Keep it right here on Kowa.

(36:28):
I didn't really have to lay in the bed very much.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
I did for those wondering what Dragon's talking about.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
I did a hair restoration I guess you'd call it
a touch up with advanced hair restoration on Friday, and
that's why I was out on Friday.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
No, I didn't really need to lay in bed much.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
I mean, yeah, I got home probably three pm on Friday,
and I kind of took it easy for Friday.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
But I was pretty busy on Saturday.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Christin and I were driving around, you know, looking for
a car actually, and yeah, so no, it didn't didn't
really keep me down for long.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
I look a little funny though.

Speaker 6 (37:03):
So no joker face reveal as in the original Batman
movie where he takes all the bandages off from around
the whole head.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
And show my gosh.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
None of that.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
No that would be pretty good.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
But no, but no, I.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Didn't see you at I don't think I saw you
at the koa hundredth birthday party.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
That were you there?

Speaker 3 (37:24):
It was Mama Redbeard's birthday party that night.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Oh yeah, you told me, you told me? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
How was How was that? It was fantastic, had a
great time. Awesome, awesome. All right, let's do some other stuff, people,
we got a lot to do today. I want to
actually just follow up for a second on something Chad
Bauer was talking about in the news.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
I don't I don't talk a lot.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
About politics and other states, but the stuff going on
in Texas is pretty interesting. So most of what you're
going to hear in the news be sort of from
the left wing perspective about how Republicans are looking to redistrict,
in other words, redraw their state congressional map in a
way that would give the House potentially five additional seats

(38:08):
in the House of Representatives after the twenty twenty six elections.
So going into the twenty twenty seven Congress, and you'll
hear a lot about how they're doing that in order
to for purely partisan reasons, to increase the number of Republicans,
and there is absolutely that's mostly.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
What's going on. But the other thing to keep in
mind is this.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
You know, we used to get these lawsuits from democratic
administrations or Democratic administrations supporting lawsuits brought by others, typically
in Republican states, where the maps were drawn in a
way that people claimed benefited Republicans, but not at the
expense of not the expense so much of Democrats, but

(38:50):
at the expense of African American and minority voters. So
their argument was that in order to in order to
build up more Republican seats, they would draw the lines
in a way that would break up black communities. Because
African Americans tend to vote Democrat, they would draw the
lines in a way that would tend to break up

(39:12):
those communities. I don't mean physically, but I mean where
you draw the voting lines. So, for example, let's say
you might have forty percent of a current district that
is made of African American residents, and you redraw the
lines in a way that splits them. That puts now
twenty percent in a district that is otherwise very conservative

(39:33):
and maybe mostly white, and then the other twenty percent
in another district. Like that, and those districts end up
voting Republicans still, even though by a smaller margin, they
still end up voting Republican. And people on the left
or you know, you've got to keep those communities of
color together, And what the Supreme Court has basically said

(39:53):
is that you have to keep them together in some circumstances.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
But it can't be like that.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
You draw some crazy hundreds and hundreds of miles squiggly
lined through a state just to try to capture as
many black people as possible. Right, So anyway, that's what
you would use to get from the left, and I
mean you still do, but now you've got the Trump
administration in office.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
And there's some question from the Trump administration as.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
To whether some states may have drawn lines that were
constitutionally infirm in the other direction, drawing districts designed to
put lots of minority people together in districts that otherwise
wouldn't make sense and are not really geographically contiguous in
any way that makes sense, and.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Might themselves be illegal.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
So Texas is also using that as a little bit
of an excuse to redraw. Of course it is mostly
for partisan advantage, but I just wanted you to understand
that context. So the other thing that's going on now,
and this happened several years ago on a different issue,
But what's happened is that you need a quorum. You
need one hundred members of the state House of Representatives

(41:07):
to be able to vote, because you need a two
thirds quorum, and there's one hundred and fifty members in
the House, so there are sixty two Democrats, and that
means if fifty one of them or more leave and
don't show up, there won't be a quorum and they
can't vote.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
So that's what's happening right now.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Many of the Democrats fled the state.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
They didn't just not show up to work.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
They went to New York, they went to Illinois, they
went to some other places because if they were in
the state, the governor of the state could actually order
law enforcement to.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Go get them and bring them back to their jobs.
So they fled the state.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Now, this happened again several years ago regarding a different issue,
and the Democrats eventually came back and the Democrats eventually lost.
It had to do with certain changes to voting rules.
The rules have been changed since then. Five hundred dollars
per day fine on the lawmakers who have gone from
the state.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
There's some question now about Democrats who have been.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Raising money elsewhere in order to pay these fines.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Unclear whether that's legal or not. And now the.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Governor of Texas is saying that he may actually look
for a way to remove Democrats who don't do their job,
to remove them from office. I have no idea whether
he has a legal leg to stand on there.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
I'm not saying he doesn't. I'm saying I.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Truly don't know. But it's a mess. It's going to
stay a mess for a while. But at the end
of the day, the Republicans in Texas are very very
likely to get done whatever it is they want to
get done. They are the majority by a long way
in that state. But until then, grab the popcorn. We'll
be right back on KOA. Here's a story that doesn't

(42:50):
break my heart and I'll just share with you. This
is from a website called radioworld dot com and the
headline and this came out last Friday, I think it was.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has announced that they will
close their operations September thirtieth of this year, so less

(43:12):
than two months from now. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
is essentially the organization that takes in government money and
then distributes it out to NPR and PBS. So I
want to make something really really clear. CPB closing its

(43:33):
doors does not mean that NPR is shutting down. It
does not mean that PBS is shutting down. And let
me just say, you know, I used to listen to
NPR quite a bit more than I do now.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I think they took a pretty bad turn in recent years.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
They used to have a lot of wonderful, kind of unbiased, fun,
nonpartisan content, and they drifted into this world where even
if you thought you were listening to something that was
supposed to be like everybody, once in a while you
would just get this kind of unexpected ied of some
leftist outburst, and I just couldn't listen anymore, you know.
And I've got friends, not good friends, and not a

(44:11):
lot of friends, but I know some people over at
NPR here or Colorado Public Radio, let's say, and I
like them, and they're good people, and they're good radio people,
and I wish them lots of success, I really do.
And PBS as well, saying you know, I think PBS
has a lot of wonderful content, and I just don't
think there should be any government funded media in America.

(44:32):
It's basically what it comes down to. So I wish
them a lot of success. And I also note I
didn't get to these stories, like I had a bunch
of these stories last week, but there are a lot
of stories out there.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Here's the headline from the New York Times.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Donations to NPR and PBS stations surge after funding cuts,
And I think there's an important lesson here.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
There's a concept in political economy, kind of the intersection
of government and economics called squeezing out. And what that
means is when government does something, it squeezes individuals or
organizations out from doing those things.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
And it does it in two different ways.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
One, when government goes to do lots of things, then
it has to take a bunch of your money in
terms of taxes in order to do these things, so
you have less money to do the things yourself. And
the other that I think is actually more important is
when the government tells the world, hey, we're going to
do this thing, then nonprofits feel like we don't need

(45:38):
to do it because government is there to do it.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
And there are so many things where you used.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
To have private sector actors helping, you know, you know,
food shortages, housing issues, where where the government is coming
in and say we're going to take care of this,
and so charities that used to do go do something else,
and you sort of, over a period of time, you forget,

(46:07):
and in a way, I think the people who love
big government want you to forget that a lot of
these things actually can be handled by individuals, by foundations,
by charities, by you know, whatever the organization is, or
just buy.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Individuals, and you forget that.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
And I think some people came to think that, you know, NPR, PBS,
these kinds of things could only exist with government money.
And Democrats like it because Democrats understand that when you
have an organization that is even a little bit dependent
on government money, those organizations will tend to support bigger government.

(46:50):
Even separate from the question of pro Democrat.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Bias, but those things go.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Hand in hand, right, because typically Democrats talk about supporting
bigger government, Republicans talk about opposing bigger government. Most of
the time, it's just talk, although under Trump recently they've
been better and cutting back on some you know, ridiculous
excesses of government. But I just you know, when you
see these headlines that Corporation for Public Broadcasting is going away,

(47:19):
you've got to remember that there are all these other
headlines about how so many people are donating more money.
So let the people donate more money, Let foundations donate
more money.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
The government is going to spend a little.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
More to try to protect rural stations where they might
not have the donor base, might not be able to
make so much money on telethons or even advertising, and
the federal government is going to try to do something there.
We can have a conversation about that another day, but
I wanted you to be aware that.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
This is such good news.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
This is a thing that Republicans have been talking about
for so so many years, and properly so, getting rid
of federal funding of media. And again it does the
primary point is not really the bias. The bias attracted
the attention, but the primary point is that there never

(48:12):
should be government funded media in a free country. So
it is good news that CPB is closing its doors,
and it does not mean that NPR and PBS are
going away.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 6 (48:26):
Well, Andrew had texted in and said Ross Creed, Dragon Nickelback. Next,
Andrew I was like, well, I played Creed because there
was a text message that came in earlier that said
my own Prison is a pretty good song.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Now.

Speaker 6 (48:39):
I don't know if that was intended for us or
our sister station that occasionally uses this text line, but
I figured, what the heck somebody texted in a song,
I'll play it, Andrew, you texted in Nickelback, I'll play it.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
And we haven't done this in a while, folks, But
I just want to remind you that producer Dragon is
in charge of essentially everything and obviously in charge of
what music plays. I mean, the dude could turn me
off if he wanted to, and I couldn't do anything
about it.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
So we know who the boss is.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
If you would like to request particular bumper music, feel free,
And of course Dragon gets to decide. I don't get
to decide, you know, Bob Pittman, the CEO of iHeart,
doesn't get to decide. Only Dragon gets to decide what
music gets played. But you are welcome to text in
at five six six nine zero and request particular bumper music.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
It is.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
It is preferred if you have this degree of creativity,
it is it is preferred that you request something that
has some kind of interesting tie in to a topic
in the show. And of course you might not know
what the next topic in the show will be, and
Dragon doesn't know either, even though I haven't written it
down for obvious reasons that we talked about. But you

(49:53):
are welcome to text five six six nine zero and
ask Dragon to play whatever. Listener follow up on the
the last story, the listener says, ross which Colorado public
media is going away? TV or radio? And my answer is,
probably nothing is going away. I just want to again,
I want to re emphasize the fact that this sort

(50:13):
of national parent umbrella thing, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
the fact that they are shutting down does not mean
that any particular local so called public radio or TV
is going away. All it means is that the organization
that had the one purpose of taking government money and

(50:36):
then federal government running and then redistributing it out to
these various stations, that's going away because at least for now,
while Trump is in office, there is no more federal
government money for NPRPBS and so on, and that says
it should be.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
But it doesn't mean the stations are going away.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
They're raising more money in donations and the vast majority
of them will find a way to stay around. And
I want it that way, Okay, I want it that way.
I am absolutely sincere when I say I wish success
to my friends and colleagues and people I don't know
who work at NPR and PBS. I want a very

(51:18):
broad and vibrant media landscape. I would not want, you know,
just KOA to be the only talk station or something
like that. I love the competition, I love the diversity
of kinds of programming and alternative viewpoints and all that.
I just didn't want the government funding. So let me
that was the point I wanted to make there. So

(51:38):
I and as I mentioned before, in that big beautiful bill,
because there were actually a few Republicans who said they
might not go along with it because of the risk
to rural stations, because there are some places where NPR
is or the local public radio station is the primary
radio station source of information. The bill included something like

(52:01):
fifty billion with a B dollars for rural public stations
to keep them from going out of business. So We'll
see how that all plays out over time. But I
would not expect any public radio or TV to go
out of business right away, and the ones that have
risk would be the smaller rural ones, and folks will

(52:22):
try to find a way to keep those okay, all right.
So on Thursday, was it Thursday? I don't know, on Someday, Yeah,
it was Thursday. I had teased that I was going
to talk about this initial public offering of a software
company called Figma, and then Dragon reminded me, Hey, Ross,
are you sure you're going to talk about that, because

(52:43):
you've got the governor booked on your show in the
next segment, And we ended up talking with the governor
about the state budget and so on, and I probably
will come back to the state budget conversation in a
while as well. But I wanted to talk about this
just because it's so interesting, and you know, I'm a
finance guy, or maybe if you don't know, if you're
relatively new to me and to my show. My professional

(53:06):
background is that I was an options trader in Chicago
for many, many years.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I started trading right out of.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
College in nineteen eighty seven. Believe it or not, I
had been trading for about four months before the big
stock market crash, and most of my professional life has
been involved in financial markets. I was options actually as
a customer even when I was a college student, and
I did options at Options Trading as my job until

(53:37):
I started full time at iHeart. And my first full
time job at iHeart was the morning drive on our
sister station, KHOW, which is the show that Michael Brown
has now and most of you probably listen to that
show as well. And so I'm a financial markets guy,
and I really do enjoy talking about this stuff, and

(53:58):
I think I have some inside that a lot of
folks maybe don't have, So I want to talk a
little bit. This is more of an investor thing than
a trader thing about initial public offerings and this fascinating
story that took place on Thursday than Friday than some
more going on today.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
So here's here's how this works.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Generally, you start a company, and usually you start it
with some of your own money, and you maybe borrow
money or raise money by selling private shares to often
actually it's friends and family, right, And you want to
go raise ten thousand dollars or one hundred thousand or
a million or two, you know, and it depends how

(54:39):
much money of your own you have, and it depends
how much you know, how rich your friends and family are. Friend,
I'm not being sarcastic. It really does like you got
to go find the money where you can. And if
you're fortunate enough to have rich friends, then good for you.
And if not, you do the best you can to
raise the money and get going and all this. So

(55:00):
the other thing that can happen in the early stages,
so you raise that money. The other thing that can
happen is maybe you want to get some employees, and
you don't have a ton of money available to pay
the employees, but you've got potential employees, for example, a

(55:22):
good computer programmer. Maybe you have a good computer programmer
who had a pretty good job before, you know, maybe
worked at some famous company. I won't even use a
hypothetical name because it doesn't matter. Just pick some company
and made a good salary and saved some money up.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
It's got some money in the bank.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
And doesn't need a big salary right now, and believes
in the vision of your company, okay, and so they
might be willing to come on in return for stock.
Now maybe when you're starting this thing, you value the
stock at a dollar a share. It really doesn't matter

(56:01):
what value you put on it, right, but let's just
call it a dollar a share. And let's say you
authorize five million shares and you go sell, you know,
half a million shares at a dollar a share, so
you're selling ten percent of the company. There's five million
shares authorized, but you're only selling half a million. You're

(56:21):
selling ten percent of the company for half a million dollars.
It puts the value on the company in those early
days at five million dollars. And let's say you take
another half a million shares and you give them as
a form of pay instead of cash to your employees.
Now there's a million shares out there, and now the

(56:43):
company is growing and your company actually becomes successful, and
now public investors like mutual funds and hedge funds and
other people want to buy into your company, so you
go public. Going public means that you now you offer
the shares to trade on the stock exchange, so anybody

(57:05):
can buy them now. Usually this happens in a thing
called an initial public offering, and that name makes sense, right.
It's initial because it's the first time you go to
the public markets. If you were to go to the
public markets later to raise more money, that's called a
secondary offering, but we're not going to deal with that today.
The initial public offering, normally you work with an investment banker,

(57:30):
and it could be Goldman Sachs, it could be Morgan
Stanley for smaller companies, it could be smaller banks that
you maybe haven't heard of that are investment banks that
run the deal. Now, one of the things that oh, hey, dragon,
do not pay attention to that listener text that last one.
You must not pay attention to that, to that listener.

Speaker 6 (57:50):
So you just brought my music the text line you
want me to Oh no, I do not, you know
I had.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
I wasn't even looking at the text line I was.
You ignore that one since you brought that up. No,
don't even think about it. It could very well happen. This
is your own fault, you know. Oh my god, I
wasn't even paying attention to the text line.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
Uh huh uh huh.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
So the bankers need to decide what price to price
your shares at, and a lot of times what will
happen in the initial public offering is there will be
two different sellers of stock, and the buyers will be
mutual funds and individual investors and whoever wants to buy
into the company. The sellers are usually two groups. One

(58:35):
the company selling selling shares in order to raise money
for growth so they can hire more people, you know,
rent bigger office space, whatever it might be. Yeah, Dragon,
there's a good one. There's a good one. Check that
listener text with the number ending with zero four. I
like that one better, Okay, and then the.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
Others know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
The other potential group is your employees or other people
who bought shares or were granted shares early on because
they want to cash out. So imagine a situation where
you took stock at a dollar a share instead of
getting a paycheck, and.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Now the IPO is going to happen.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
And now here we're going to talk about a company
called Figma. Figma that went public on Thursday at a
price of thirty three dollars a share. Okay, that's pretty massive,
thirty three dollars a share. And you can imagine that
if you're somebody who back in the day took stock
at a dollar a share and now and now you

(59:43):
can cash out at thirty three dollars a share. You're like,
oh my god, I'm a million I'm a multi millionaire, right,
And seriously, imagine you took one hundred thousand shares at
a dollar a share as you're equivalent, you know, salary
for a year. You took it cheap. You could work
for more than one hundred thousand dollars a year, but

(01:00:05):
you decided to do it to betle the company, and
that one hundred thousand shares is worth three point three
million dollars at thirty three dollars a share, and you
feel great, absolutely great, and the bank helps you price it.
And the bank is trying to determine, you know, what's
the market going to say your company is worth.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
And so they priced it at thirty three dollars a share.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
What I want to tell you is that when the
stock opened for trading on Thursday, on Thursday, the first trade,
and this is based on as far as what I
can tell looking at the charts. Remember, they priced it
not at thirty three and they sold thirty Let me

(01:00:50):
see how many shares thirty seven thirty seven million shares
at thirty three in the IPO. Remember, okay, I got
to just make sure I get this right, just to understand.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
The IPO.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Is priced, and everybody who participated in the IPO gets
whatever that price is. And a lot of people try
to be on the IPOs and these hot.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Stocks because they think the stock is going to go up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Right, The IPO price is not the first price that
the stock trades at on the day of the IPO.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
The IPO price is set by the bank.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
The number of shares being sold initially is set by
the bank.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
It was thirty seven million.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
I'm rounding thirty seven million shares at thirty three dollars
a share, and most of it, two thirds of it, okay,
was existing stockholders who were cashing out in the way
I just described. One third of it was stock being
sold by the company thirty three dollars a share. As
far as I can tell, the first trade when it

(01:01:52):
opened for trading was ninety three dollars and fifty cents
a share, and it traded up from there. Closed the
day somewhere around one hundred and twenty dollars a share.
In the after market hours, traded over one hundred and
forty eight dollars a share traded throughout almost all of

(01:02:12):
Friday at about one hundred and twenty dollars a share,
and it is getting crushed today but back but when
I say crushed, it's still over ninety three. And what's interesting, Oh,
that's a funny text. Is that a real company or
just a pigma of your imagination.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Figma is the company name, This ticker symbol is fig
And what what I wanted to explain is just how
interesting this is that the banks and these guys had
the biggest, smartest banks. They had Goldman, and they had
Morgan Stanley, they had JP Morgan, they have.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
All the big guys.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
They priced the IPO with thirty three and it comes
out of the gate essentially at.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
One hundred more or less at one hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Now, you always price IPOs cheaper than you think the
stock will trade, because you want to make sure you
the IPO was fully subscribed and that some people still
want the stock. But they could literally have doubled the
price of the IPO. And so all these people who
got you know, one hundred thousand, could have gotten two
hundred thousand. And the company, you know, instead of getting

(01:03:18):
three hundred and sixty million, could have gotten seven hundred
and twenty million, and and it's just stunning the.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Amount of money that was left on the table.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
I have rarely seen what appears to be an error
this big pricing stock at thirty three that right out
of the gate is basically trading one hundred within a
couple hours is trading close to one hundred and fifty,
and even now with people taking.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Profits, is still ninety three.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
And it is a remarkable story that you you rarely
rarely see what I'm going to call an error that big.
I know I've spent a long time on this, but
just imagine if you were the guy who took one
hundred thousand shares of stock at a dollar a share
and the bank price, and you want to get out
of at least some on the IPO.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Right at thirty three dollars a share.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
You get out at thirty three dollars a share three
point three million dollars, and then you realize that if
you had if you hadn't sold it, then you probably
could have gotten ten million instead of three point three million,
Or if the banks had just priced it better, like
at sixty six instead of thirty three, you could have

(01:04:33):
gotten six point six million instead of three point three million,
and the stock still would have gone up fifty percent
from there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Anyway, it was fascinating and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
It's going to be interesting to keep an eye on
other IPOs that may come out this year. Klorina might
come out, Discord might come out, Stripe might come out.
There's some other ones as well, but that I think
is one of the biggest mistakes I've seen in a
long long time. I wanted to say a quick rest

(01:05:02):
in peace to Lonnie Anderson. Lonnie Anderson famous, you know,
smart and sexy character in WKRP in Cincinnati, which is
sort of an iconic, an iconic television sitcom aired from
nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighty two, and the concept

(01:05:24):
was an Ohio radio station, obviously Cincinnati radio station that
wasn't doing very well and was trying to kind of
get going again with rock music. And Howard Hessman probably
one of their more famous characters. But Lonnie Anderson just
a very key part of that show. She passed away yesterday,

(01:05:45):
just a few days before her eightieth birthday, and I
just wanted to say rest in peace to Lonnie Anderson.
And yeah, I'm not really a celebrity. News you know,
gossip kind of person. She was married to Burt Reynolds
for a while. That must have been an interesting and
interesting man. Didn't last all that long, but there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
There's that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
So rest in peace, Lonnie Anderson. One other very quick
story I want to share with you, a political story.
So you've heard me talk from time to time about
how I thought. Oh, the company name that I was
just talking about is Figma. Figma. It's some kind of
business software. That's probably why I really don't know much
about him. But and the ticker symbol is fig if
you want to go look at it. Ross, who do

(01:06:25):
you believe? What do you believe was the fundamental information
gap that the market knew that the banker price the
IPO didn't. It's hard to say about fundamentals and an IPO, right,
the company hasn't been reporting information for all that long,
hard to say, you know, I think they just really
really gauged the market wrong. Anyway, So let me just
very quickly on this thing. So I've talked for some

(01:06:48):
time about how Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top advisors,
a guy I really don't like, had had publicly said
that he had had ordered and I don't know how
he has the authority to order it, but that he
had ordered a minimum of three thousand ICE arrests, right
illegal alien arrests for deportations every.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Day, and that caused ICE.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
To start moving to do all kinds of workplace raids
and arresting gardeners and you know, people working at places
that are preparing your food and all, and hotels and
all this stuff, rather than focusing all their resources on
the you know, million or two million or however many
people there are who are illegal aliens in this country
with criminal convictions.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
And also I think it's a close I think it's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
A million and a half million and three quarters illegal
aliens who already have criminal convictions or already have orders
of removal removal lodged against them. And I thought that
this three thousand arrests per day thing was a really
bad idea. Now Politico says DJ is walking back the
White House's goal to arrest three thousand immigrants per day.

(01:07:57):
The subhead says, it's another discription and see between what
White House advisors say and the administration's legal posture. So
the DOJ is saying there is no such thing as
a three thousand person per day quota, but Stephen Miller,
Trump's Deputy chief of Staff and Homeland Security advisor, publicly

(01:08:18):
said when he was on Fox that there is a
three thousand.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Daily arrest goal. So we'll see.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
What I'll say is I hope they back away from
the three thousand a day thing, because we need to
be deporting based on quality, and I mean bad quality,
and not on quantity.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
We'll be right back keep it here on KOA.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
It's a simple folks. You asked for it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
You know we've all heard about bad bosses, right, we
all know we've all heard about.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Why are you so cranky? Why are you doing this
to me today?

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
You asked it.

Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
You said, hey, dragon, look at the top text right now.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
No, I make sure not to look at it, I said,
I said, make sure to ignore that one.

Speaker 6 (01:08:59):
I wasn't even looking looking at the text line at
all at that time.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
And then live.

Speaker 6 (01:09:04):
On the air you say, hey dragon, check out the
text line.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
So look at all the I mean, even Maler, as
one person said, Gustav Mahler would have been a better choice.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Can you play some Maller for us?

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Maybe?

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Do you have any do you even know who that is?
Maybe Oh my gosh freaking Neil Young. Oh all right,
I gotta I gotta move along or my head's gonna explode.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
Okay, let's do a little let's do uh.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
One immigration thing kind of following up on a story
I did at the end of the last segment and
then an econ thing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
Just a little bit of nerdiness here.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
So a dude named Harry Enton, who was a numbers
nerd on CNN, was talking on TV within the past
few days that net migration to the United States may
may be negative for the first time in at least
fifty years.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Okay, so what does what does net migration mean?

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
It means if you add the number of people who
immigrate or immigrate no immigrate to the United States, immigrate
into the United States, and subtract the number of people
who emigrate out of the United States. So if more
people leave, the number is negative. And Harry Enton is
saying we might be in a negative net migration to

(01:10:31):
the United States situation this year, and I just want
to talk about that for a moment.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
It's a double edged sword, right, I realize, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
A lot of people will cheer, and especially and I
will cheer to in a way got to be careful.
But in a way, if the vast majority of the
out migration is illegal immigrants who don't want to live
with the stress of possibly being arrested and deported and
all that, and maybe some folks taking advantage of the

(01:11:00):
offer from the federal government to use the same app
actually that the Biden administration was using to encourage illegals
to come to the US, the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
Trump administration is using it to.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Tell people that use this app self deport and we'll
give you one thousand dollars, And so a lot of
people are doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
I am against illegal immigration. It doesn't mean I hate
illegal immigrants, not by a long shot. And in fact,
I think that it is economically harmful to try to
remove an immense number of non criminal illegal immigrants in
a very short time. And I know there's people out
like there who I'd like to nitpick and say, well,

(01:11:43):
they're illegal immigrants, they're criminals.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
That's not what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
I'm talking about people who committed real crimes while in
the US.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
They need to go.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
They need well, they need to be imprisoned, and then
they need to go. I'm not arguing for any of
that at all. But there are industries, as you well know,
that are heavily dependent, whether we like it or not,
on illegal immigrant labor. I would like to see those
industries become dependent on legal labor, whether it's immigrant or not.

(01:12:16):
That needs to be done with some kind of transition process.
And when it's not, it is going to hurt the
economy and it is going to raise the prices of
things like food houses, restaurant meals, hotel stays, and things
like that. So I just want to be careful because

(01:12:38):
so few people talk about this stuff with no subtlety
at all, and they talk about it as if, well,
if we have negative migration in where and an immense
number of illegal aliens are just leaving, then that's awesome
and has no downside. There is some downside, And there

(01:12:58):
are people on the other side talk about it as
if every illegal alien who's here already, or at least
if they haven't committed a crime.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
Should be able to stay.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
But I don't agree with that either, because if you
just say anybody can stay as long as you didn't
commit a crime, then you create a massive incentive for
people to try to sneak across the border. Figuring that
they're going to get that sort of treatment themselves. So
we do need to deport people, including unfortunately, but we

(01:13:28):
do need to deport some people who haven't committed a crime. Personally,
I would deport everybody who's committed a crime, of course,
and then I would prioritize the rest based on how
long they've been here, and the people who flooded in
during the Biden administration, those would be the first ones
I would send out after dealing with the ones who

(01:13:49):
already committed a crime.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
All right, So there's that. The other thing I wanted
to mention.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
I may have to do a little of this now
and a little of this in the next segment, but
just as an econ NERD, I wanted to mention something
to you. Last week, there was a report about the
second quarter GDP, second quarter gross domestic product. It came
out on Wednesday, and I think I mentioned this briefly
in passing last week, but I do want to mention

(01:14:13):
it one more time. And the headline number was three
percent growth in GDP. But it's a really weird report
and the reason that I wanted to share this with
you is that GDP was up three percent on the
headline number. But you need to understand that because the

(01:14:34):
way the math works around the calculation of GDP, you
have to understand the D part stands for domestic. So
when they are looking for where things are produced imports,
imports count as negative. Exports count as positive even though
we are not using them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
So what happens is, hold on, let me make sure
I've got that right. Imports right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
Yes, So so what happened in that second quarter is
there was a massive.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Drop in imports.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
There was a massive drop in imports because of the
tariffs and because of confusion over what tariffs would look
like going forward. So remember I told you that the
headline number was three percent GDP growth, but.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
The decline in the decline in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Let me make sure I've got this right, imports right.
I got to make sure I get this right. In
any case, I added five percent to GDP, added five
percent to GDP, and I got to make sure I'm
getting the import export number part right because I think
I'm sort of confusing myself. But the main point that's

(01:15:58):
important to make here is that when you look at
the stuff that you would normally think about regarding economic growth,
it was.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Really really weak. All right, it was really weak.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
Yes, imports fell thirty percent and that added five percent
to GDP. But really, when you think about it, what
does it mean. It means that American people and American
businesses are not buying the things they want to buy.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
It's a negative for this country.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Actually, imports are a thing we should actually treasure. Imports
mean we are getting the things we want at the
price we want. And when imports collapse, it means that
individuals and businesses alike are either not getting what we
want or getting it somewhere else at a higher price.
But in this kind of report it shows up as

(01:16:52):
a positive number.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
Don't let it fool you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
It was actually a bad GDP report, and it is
another reason that I think the stock market is up today,
believe it or not.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Thinking that now the Fed is going to cut rates,
we'll be right back.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
Ross doesn't know what hip is because he clearly is not.
So there's what is hip?

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
Well, yeah, that's I never claimed to be hip, did I? Dragon?

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
I think you never claimed to be hip?

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
No, No, I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
There there are a lot of a lot of good choices.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
I'm still laughing at banter about Neil Young between you
and your boss. Yeah, yeah, me too. I'm laughing so hard.
I'm laughing so hard right now, let me do a
little sports thing. It's a little outside of what I
normally talk about, but I think it's it's an interesting piece,
and I'm gonna stay up front. I don't really think
this is gonna go anywhere, but I do wonder about

(01:17:44):
it a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
This is a piece in the Wall.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Street Journal written by a guy named Sean McClain mc
l e a N.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
And he I don't know much about him.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
He's some kind of lobbyist, but he he's served in
the Trump White House in some capacity, and he worked
for Senator Ted Cruz and at the time Representative Marsha Blackburn.
So's some kind of you know, Republican maybe conservative activist.
So I don't know much more about him, but I
just wanted to share this with you a little bit
because I think it's it's interesting. And the headline is

(01:18:17):
the w n b A and Caitlin Clark's civil rights.
And what this guy is getting at is that Caitlyn Clark,
who has done unbelievable things for the w n b
A and made it much more interesting to fans, made

(01:18:38):
it much more valuable. And just as I was looking
for some of the statistics in this in this piece somewhere,
when I when I find him, when I find when
I find him in the article, I share someone with you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
But she has just done. Here we go.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Since she joined the league last year, merchandise sales for
the league, not just her team. Merchandise sales for the
league have jumped six hundred and one percent. Viewership for
her team, the Indiana Fever, jumped one hundred and seventy percent,
The value of the team tripled, League pass subscriptions climbed
three hundred and sixty six percent, app engagement is up

(01:19:16):
six hundred and thirteen percent. In her own endorsements topped
eleven million dollars. She is, as this writer puts it,
the economic engine driving the league forward. And what this
guy goes on to talk about, I'll just share this sentence.
It kind of describes it summarizes it. Yet she routinely
faces intentional hits, excessive fouling, and uncalled abuse while referees

(01:19:40):
look away. One teammate says, the star player in the
league is not being protected, and Caitlin Clark herself, says,
everybody is physical with me. They get away with things
others don't. Three injuries of sidelineder for ten games in
the All Star Game was played with out her, and

(01:20:01):
the ratings dropped fifty five percent without her. I guess
ratings from I don't know ratings from what, because I
think that would have been her first All Star Game.
But what she wonders about is whether it's because, I mean,
he says it outright.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
Is it because Miss Clark is white?

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
A person named aj or a apostrophe ja, I don't
know how you pronounce it, agia.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):
Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, a three time league MVP, thinks.
So she says that race is a huge thing, and
then it boils my blood when people say it's not
about race, because it is systemic. Missed calls include viral
replays of Miss Clark being found multiple times in a
single possession.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Every one of them is a foul.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Analyst Rebecca Lobo said Miss Clark absorbed seventeen percent of
flagrant fouls last season, and I think that means they're
afraid what viewers believe or what experts believe. Was a
flagrant fowl, but that don't get called seventeen percent, double
the rate of other players in the league. And this

(01:21:05):
guy says, this is not just bad officiating, it's dangerous,
it's unequal.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
And this guy, essentially.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
I'm just gonna move ahead in the interest of time,
is arguing that this is arguably a race based violation
of her civil rights being done by the entire league
and the entire and the officiating crew of the league,
essentially allowing the star white girl to be fouled and

(01:21:34):
harmed repeatedly when they wouldn't allow the non white girls
to be treated that way.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
The writer says Ms. Clark's targeting may.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
Reflect a culture of disparate treatment, and the evidence provides
reasonable cause for a federal probe into potential civil rights violations,
and then he goes on to talk about, you know,
Columbia just spending two hundred and twenty one million dollars. Anyway,
I don't have much more to add to this. I
just wanted to share it with you. I don't know
that this will go anywhere, but given who's in charge

(01:22:03):
right now in Washington, DC, if I were the WNBA,
I would take this very seriously and if I were
there officials, I would start refereeing the games in a
way that protects everyone equally. We'll be right back, Dragon,
That's much better than the Drek you played before.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
Andy wants to remind us.

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):
That it's National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, and so let's
ask listeners a dumb question that I think we have
asked before, but I am going to ask again because
it's National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. I'm sure we've asked
it before, but just for fun, especially since it's a Monday,
I'm gonna ask it again on a scale of on

(01:22:42):
a scale of zero to ten in terms of how
much you cook the cookie dough, with zero being raw
cookie dough, and I think Dragon is somewhere around the
zero area what he liked, and ten being essentially burned
right like, as cook what does it can possibly be
where you could say somebody could still eat it? How

(01:23:06):
cooked do you like your chocolate chip cookies?

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Zero?

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Tech text us at five, six, six, nine, zero and
tell us from zero to ten, zero being raw dough,
ten being the most cooked thing that a person could
still potentially eat in cookie form. What how do you
like yours? And I will say as I say from
time to time there are no wrong answers. There are
right answers, but there's no wrong answers. Dragon, As I recall,

(01:23:34):
you are somewhere around to zero exactly it zero zero, okay,
And if someone gave you a four, you're still gonna eat.

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
It, right, Oh, totally. It's a chocolate your cookie.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
So here's the question, though, if someone gave you a nine,
would you eat it?

Speaker 3 (01:23:50):
Ooh?

Speaker 6 (01:23:51):
You know, is that that would seem imply to me
that it would turn to dust as soon as you
bit into it, and that just.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
So yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):
All right, So I'm gonna I'm gonna just put a
pause on this topic until we get some listener texts
coming in at five six six nine zero, and I'm going.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
To do a couple of other a couple of other
things until then.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
Uh So, I have mentioned this guy one or two
times in the past, and I just want to mention
this again.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
I gotta be a little bit careful.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
So I'm talking about a guy named Joe Oltman olt
M A N N. And the reason I need to
be a little careful is the only time I've ever
talked to him was a private lunch with me him
and a mutual friend of ours who isn't so much
a friend of Oltman's anymore, but a mutual friend asked

(01:24:42):
if I would get together with mister Oltman, and part
of it was a political conversation, and part of it
was that Oltman wanted me to perhaps endorse one or
more of his businesses on my rate D show, and
I declined to do so. And again, I gotta be

(01:25:05):
very careful because it was a private lunch, so I'm
really not going to say much about just what came up,
but will I will say that my takeaway was that
I have rarely in my life met a person who
seemed more full of himself and spent more time over

(01:25:26):
the course of a lunch telling me how smart he is,
how right he is, and how rich he is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
This guy became well known.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
Sort of well known by being probably the first person
to bring up this crazy conspiracy theory about dominion voting
machines rigging the twenty twenty election and giving the victory
to Joe Biden. There has never been any evidence of that.

(01:26:00):
This guy claimed that somehow he got into a call
held by what he called Antifa organizers, and he did
not say even when a court asked him how he
got into this call. And he made a claim back
after that that a guy named Eric from Dominion said

(01:26:24):
that he would make sure that Trump wouldn't win the election.
And Oltman went on to determine that someone whose first
name he caught and he never saw, okay, he only
caught the first name, decided that it was this guy,
Eric Komer, who worked at Dominion, and then he did
this huge public thing accusing Coomer and Dominion of stealing

(01:26:50):
the election. And again he didn't even know that if
the person was Eric Komer, and he told it over
and over. He went on all kinds of radio shows.
I would not let him on my radio show to
say this stuff because I knew it was absolute nonsense
and this so you know, he kept getting shot down.

(01:27:12):
The recent news, though, is that he was ordered to
go sit for a deposition and he ran out in
the middle of the deposition. He fled the courthouse without
telling anybody, without telling the judge.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
He fled the courthouse. He got fined a bunch of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
Money, and then Coomer asked the court to order Altman
to pay for Coomer's attorney's fees. That he was going
to have to spend to deal with this whole deposition,
and a court ruled in favor of Coomer and has
ordered Oltman to pay over ninety thousand dollars for refusing

(01:27:48):
to do what the court ordered him to do to
cooperate in this lawsuit about his bogus claims of election fraud.
And now apparently humor is claiming that here I'm quoting
now from CPR dot org. Shortly after the Oltman was

(01:28:09):
ordered to pay a daily fine of one thousand dollars
until he complied with court orders, he began crowdfunding to
pay the fine. According to nine News, he said he
would go broke due to the fine and the fact
that three of his businesses severed ties with him. So
quite a thing for me to watch this, having sat

(01:28:30):
down for lunch with him and having him tell me
how he had absolute proof of everything that he had claimed,
and how he was smarter than everybody who was discounting
what he said, and how he was so rich. I
should just go look at how expensive his Porsche was

(01:28:51):
that was there and.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
Now this, and I guess that's all. I guess. If
I want.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
To slightly pat myself on the back, just a little,
not enough to hurt my shoulder, right, It is knowing
that I needed to stay away from him and not
endorse any of his businesses on my radio show, even
though one of them was a kind of business I
won't get into it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
One of them was a kind of business that I would.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Be perfectly willing to endorse on my radio show in
terms of the industry it's in. It's a good fit
for me, but since he was associated with it, I
said no. And I tell you, just as a little
aside here frequently that I'm very, very picky about who
I will work with and take on as my morning
show partners, and I say no, so does Mandy, by

(01:29:41):
the way, to lots of people who ask for me
to endorse them. I will only endorse businesses where I
believe that the businesses will take good care of my
listeners and where I believe the people who own and
run the business are good people. And if I don't
believe that, I'm not going to sell myself.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
You know, for whatever. So I turned him down.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
The other thing that I wanted to mention, though, is
part of this story, and this part probably bothers me more.

Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
There's a guy I've known.

Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
As I like to say from time to time, a
guy I've known a little bit for a long time.
And his name is Randy Corporn. And Randy Corprin has
been on conservative radio a lot in Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:30:22):
You may have heard him in one place or another.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
He is an attorney who does a fair bit of
political stuff. He was, I don't know if he still is,
a Republican National Committee man. So that's a very very
high ranking, high power job within the Republican Party. And basically,
when Donald Trump came around, Randy, who I always thought
of as well to my right but as a principled conservative,

(01:30:49):
when I thought a little bit off the deep end
with just trying too hard to appeal very specifically to
Donald Trump and secondarily to hardcore Donald Trump supporters, and
he did it in a way where I thought he was.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
Abandoning his principles. He might not have thought that.

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
I have no idea whether Randy was sort of chasing
clicks and fame and power or whether he honestly believed
all these things he was saying. I just don't know.
But as part of this stuff going on with Oltman Randy,
Randy was actually Oltman's lawyer and.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeal.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
So we're talking about, you know, a very high level
federal court.

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:31:32):
The next thing above this court is the Supreme Court. Right,
So it's a very high court. They found that Randy
committed misconduct during the appeal process by making baseless arguments
that Randy had to know were baseless. And I find
that very disappointing. And I hope that Randy. I don't

(01:31:55):
know that I would call Randy a friend, but we
have been friendly and sort of been in similar circles
even though we don't socialize, we've been in similar circles,
similar friend groups for a while. And I wonder how
he feels about all this, and I wonder if he
has any regrets, and I wonder if he feels like
he did anything wrong. And I hope that he does

(01:32:17):
think that, and I hope that he comes around and
you know, if he's on the radio again.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
Or whatever, I hope he apologizes.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
I hope he apologizes to to everybody who he directly
or indirectly, you get.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
I'm not going to say anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
I'm not going to say anymore, but I just I
wanted to share that story with you. So I want
to just come back briefly to the story I started
the show with, because it's not President Trump's most important action,
but I think it's one of his dumbest actions, and
that is when he announced that the head of the

(01:32:55):
Bureau of Labor Statistics, her name is Erica Macintarfer, was
to be fired because Trump didn't like the jobs report
that came out last week, and he didn't like that
the job's number was low.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
And he didn't like that the previous two.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
Months jobs numbers were massively revised lower, so there were now,
according to official federal statistics, there were far fewer jobs,
like over a quarter million fewer jobs created in May
and June combined than had previously been reported.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
And Donald Trump fired this lady.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
And let me just say, this lady was given this
particular job by Joe Biden, but she had been in
high ranking similar jobs in the federal government for something
like twenty years through Democratic and Republican administrations. I would
also note that Trump is talking about this as phony
job numbers. There is no reason to believe that. Okay, now,

(01:33:55):
it's one thing to say a number can be wrong,
and of course it's very, very it's not just possible,
it's certain that they should be looking for ways to
improve the methodology. And this has been a conversation within
the Bureau of Labor Statistics for at least twenty years,
maybe more, maybe thirty years.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
These are not easy things to do to.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Figure out how to gather statistics in a way where
you can put out some report kind of quickly because
you want to get data out there when you can.

Speaker 1 (01:34:25):
But you know that the early data isn't going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
Complete, and so then you're going to put out a
second revision and then a third final revision, and you
do the best you can to try to make your
best guesses based on the early information as to what
it's going to be. But sometimes the later information is
so different from the early information that the revisions end
up being huge. And that's what happened here. But it

(01:34:51):
doesn't mean the numbers are phony. It doesn't mean anybody
did anything intentionally wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
In fact, it would not be possible for.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
The person in that job, the person who just got fired,
It would not be possible for that person to manipulate
the data. And here's another thing to keep in mind.
A lot of people work on this data. So if
somewhere along the way, someone along the way changed the
data or change the methodology, there would have been a whistleblower.

(01:35:21):
And there's just you can't You couldn't keep a secret
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:26):
So there's two things wrong with this.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
One is Trump is firing a person who didn't do
anything wrong as far as I can tell.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
And second, and this.

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Is more important, Trump is attacking the credibility of this
kind of government data. And I say this kind intentionally
because I am surely not here to say that I
trust all government data.

Speaker 1 (01:35:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:35:54):
For example, so much information we were giving during COVID
was not just wrong, but they knew it was wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
They were lying to us.

Speaker 2 (01:36:03):
And those were people with hardcore political motivations.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
And also it was a small it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
Was a little bit of data, a few data series
going through one filter, like Anthony Fauci, right, or just
a couple people.

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):
This isn't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:18):
This is thousands of surveys of businesses and households that
get collected by a bunch of green eyes shade wearing
numbers spreadsheet running technocrat nerds. My kind of people, I mean, right,
these are my kind of people. They love numbers, and yes,
they do have to do their best guesses based on

(01:36:38):
how this has all worked in the past. But nobody's
manipulating numbers based on politics. So when Trump criticizes the
numbers as phony with this kind of data, what he's
doing is he's reducing the United States credibility globally with investors,
with everybody, Like if the president is saying they were

(01:37:00):
economic statistics. This is not the same as COVID numbers.
It's not the same as you know, retired intelligence community
officials and Hunter Biden's laptop. It's not like that. This
is data based stuff that you can quibble about the methodology,
But challenging the United States' own credibility is a very

(01:37:23):
dangerous thing, and it's a very dumb thing, and he
shouldn't have done it. All right, let me lighten it
up for a bit for the last few minutes together, Listener.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
Says, why do these numbers always get revised down?

Speaker 2 (01:37:35):
They don't, but when they get revised down and Trump
is president that he complains about it. Although I will
note that in the past couple of years there have
been more downward revisions than upward revisions. Before that, it
was more even and I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (01:37:50):
All right, So.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
Last week we talked briefly about a story that's gotten
way too much national attention about a super hot girl
named Sidney Sweeney, who who who has the left going
crazy because she did some ads for American Eagle, gens
saying Sidney Sweeney has good genes and it's a it's
a hominem pun g E n ees versus j E

(01:38:12):
A n s. And you get all the liberals talking
about it being some kind of Nazi propaganda for blonde,
blue eyed people. By the way, Sidney Sweeney is naturally
a brunette. She colors her hair blonde. But anyway, so
a lot of people on the left complaining about it,
calling it neo Nazi dog whistles and stuff, and they're
making fools of themselves and and uh and and American

(01:38:33):
Eagle is is laughing all the way to the bank.
But let me share with you a quick story from
the Babylon be my favorite quote unquote news source. Social
justice warriors scored another victory today as retail chain American
Eagle issued a public apology and replaced Sidney Sweeney. And
it's a Sidney Sweeney in its ad campaign with a fat, transgender,

(01:38:53):
double amputee of color.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
The new campaign featuring Sweeney.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
Had caused controversy after American Eagle was accused of choosing
an attractive, young Caucasian woman to sell their clothing, which
is a well known Nazi dog whistle. The company aimed
to quickly rectify this by replacing Sweeney with the most
intersectionally diverse fashion model of all time. American Eagle spokesperson
said quote, We're really sorry for giving people someone pleasant

(01:39:19):
to look at. We mistakenly believed that featuring a beautiful
woman wearing our jeans would make people want to see
our commercials and buy our products, but instead we unintentionally
outed ourselves as horribly racist Nazis. We deeply apologize to
anyone who was offended by someone visually appealing, and we
have officially changed course today by replacing miss Sweeney with

(01:39:42):
Sean Trees Underwood, a body positive, disabled man who identifies
as a woman.

Speaker 1 (01:39:48):
We trust that this correction will put us back in
everyone's good graces. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
The brand's new face was thrilled to get the call. Quote,
I'm grateful for the opportunity, Underwood said, as a f
that transgender double amputee of color. I haven't seen much
representation in fashion ads, so it's nice.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
To be a part of changing that.

Speaker 2 (01:40:09):
I look forward to rolling my chair down the runway
and showing the world just how fat and transgender I
can be. At publishing time, American Eagle had also issued
a formal apology for its prominent depictions of the American
flag eagles and that the word.

Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
American is in its name.

Speaker 2 (01:40:28):
There you go, that's from the Babylon b that's entitled
American Eagle apologizes. Oh my gosh, boy, that show went
fast today. Thank you so much as always Producer Dragon,
except for the Neil Young Jimmy Seckenberger in

Speaker 1 (01:40:41):
For Mandy Connell next to talk with you tomorrow