08-11-25 - *FULL SHOW* CO Budget; Bourbon Bummer; AI Rock Star Hoax; DC Juvie Crime

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Congrats to the Broncos on a good first preseason game.
Jared Stidham probably had a better game than bo Nicks did.
But everything is fine. Slow start and good defense and
eventually the offense got going and a lot to build
on there. I don't think I have more to say
about that right now. Obviously we got our own plenty
of Broncos experts sports people in the afternoons and evenings

(00:21):
to talk to you through that. But it was fun
to see. So there's obviously a lot of news going on.
You just heard Colorado's morning news took a fair bit
of coverage and I may come back to it in
a minute, but of President Trump announcing this morning that
he's going to put the police in the District of
Columbia under federal control, and I've got some stuff to

(00:44):
tell you about that in a bit. There was a
particular data point regarding crime in Washington, DC that really
struck me, and you'll have to wait a bit for
me to tell you what that is, but I will
tell you that I moved to the suburbs just outside
of Washington, d C.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
For the second half half of high school.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
So in the nineteen eighties, I guess I'm dating myself
a little bit here, But in any case, since then,
I have known Washington, d C. And in particular Southeast Washington,
d C. Which is a little better than it used
to be, But I have long known that to be
just an incredibly crime ridden, dangerous place, and I've always

(01:23):
thought it was a little bit shocking that our nation's
capital would be. It's always among the top let's say
three crime rates in America, murder rates and so on.
Really bad has been since the eighties, since I was there,
and I'm sure since before that, since before I got there.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
And Trump is.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Sick of it, and he's looking to do something about it,
and I wish him lots of luck. DC deserves better
than what they've got going on right now. And I'll
tell you more about some of that crime stuff in
a bit. Something I learned that really kind of blew
me away. So let's move away from the news for
a second and let me just mention something that I

(02:04):
talked about briefly on Friday, and that is that on Saturday,
my older kid moved away. My older kid guy, I
helped him pack up the car. He was able to
get enough stuff in the car that we didn't have
to rent even a small U haul, just a bunch
of stuff in a car. And he's moving along with

(02:25):
a close friend of his. They are moving to Washington
State where my kid is going to enroll in a
junior college, and so is the other kid, and they're
going to study very different things. And I'll just tell you,
since we're friends, I'll kind of tell you what's going
on in case you're wondering, well, ross, why a junior college.
My older kid had some significant struggles in high school,

(02:47):
not with intelligence related stuff, but with well, i'll just
say with other things that made high school a challenge
for him. And through much of high school he did
not get very good grades. And I think in order
to be able to get into a good college, a

(03:08):
fairly good college, he needs to show something because there's
just not enough there in the high school record to
cause a college to understand and want to let him
in basically. And so he's going to go to a
junior college for a while study some things, and then
his goal is to apply to a four year college
in Canada. That's actually his goal, a four year college

(03:31):
in Canada and to study forestry and conservation and stuff
like that. And you know, my kid had a challenging childhood,
and there were some times during that childhood where I
wasn't optimistic that my kid had a good or even
long future ahead of him. And now I'm just so

(03:52):
proud and grateful that my kid is, you know, like,
you know, today, you're going to be driving the rest
of the world, probably either get there today or get
there tomorrow early, driving to Washington State, Gonna find an
apartment to rent with this other kid already signed up
for classes at the junior college, and gonna be getting

(04:13):
on with an adult life or adult ish the beginning
of an adult life, at least the college part of life.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
And it's an odd.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Thing because this kid has for a while now enjoyed
taking some road trips, few day road trips.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
My kid just loves the forest.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
And I think it's because when when he was young,
we lived near Netherland and the Boulder County foothills and
we had some acreage bordering National Forest and it was
a very idyllic life for a kid, you know, growing
up spending your time just running around outside in the trees,
climbing rocks, all this stuff. And so I think that's

(04:56):
what makes my kid happy is being in and around
forest and beautiful places.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
And my kid, does you know.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
My kid likes Colorado but has had enough now and
wants to be somewhere physically beautiful, and I mentioned on Friday,
wants to actually be.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Somewhere kind of cool and rainy.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Thus my kid actually moving to the Seattle area for
the weather, among other things, which is really odd. But
my kid has enjoyed taking road trips, either by himself
or with a friend, and will go away for three
days or four days or eight days and often sleep

(05:36):
in his car and then just enjoy nature and then
come home. And what's weird is it kind of feels
like the kid is just taking.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Another road trip. He's done road trips to that.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Part of the country before, to Idaho, for example, but
this time he's not coming home.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
And it's really odd. It's not bad, it's odd.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
I have felt a little bit, i don't know, wistful,
but not sad, not sad at all over the weekend.
I would say, Kristen, my lovely bride, has felt a
little bit more sad than she expected to, and moments
of almost being a little teary, like you know our

(06:23):
baby are first born has flown the coop, and again,
for me, this is wonderful news because I didn't know
if this kid was ever going to be able to
fly the coop. So I'm just overjoyed. Really, I mean,
I'll miss having him around. My older kid is a
very interesting kid, interested in so many different things, and

(06:46):
creative and smart and reads books and has deep conversations,
and yes, has turned into a bit of a liberal,
a bit of a you know, a person who I
don't necessarily agree with on a lot of things, but
that happened when you're that age. But this kid is
always so thoughtful and likes to have a conversation, and

(07:07):
I'm gonna miss that. My other kid, by the way,
the younger kid's not like that. The younger kid isn't
interested in very many things, and I don't know if
it's too late to change that. So we're halfway to
being an empty nester. I guess in a year or
so we probably will be empty nesters, because my younger
kid is a senior in high school starting in a

(07:28):
few days and probably will not take a gap year,
it's not certain, but probably wants to just apply to
college and go and we're going to be an empty
nester in a year. So we've taken the first baby
step here, ah, and it's quite a thing. It's quite
a thing to have that first day where your kid
has left home and you realize that for the first

(07:51):
time ever, they're not coming back, and you have to
be happy about it, and I am. It doesn't mean
there's no little bit of like I said, wistfulness, and
my wife even more like sadness, But that was much
in our minds over this weekend, that our first kid
has left home and isn't coming back. Please send me

(08:12):
any thoughts, anything you would like to share at all.
At five six six nine zero, we'll be right back
on Kawa. Christin and I did a bunch of sort
of gardening and landscaping stuff at the at the new house,
and that's going to be really, really beautiful when it's done.
So I'm excited. Let me see if we can take
just a couple minutes here of President Trump as he

(08:34):
appears to be wrapping up a rather long news conference.
This thing's probably been the better part of an hour
talking about putting the Washington, d C. Police under federal control.
Let's have a listen see what he has to say.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
So, just to conclude, Washington, d C. Should be one
of the safest, plan is, most beautiful places anywhere in
the world. It was years ago. We had one problem
that was a pretty big problem. The radical left got
out of control and they started trying to rip down statues.

(09:12):
And I said, let's go pass the law real fast.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
We're going to do it real fast.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
But we were blocked by the Democrats who do not
want safety.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Nobody gets it.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
I don't get it.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
They don't get it because they can't get votes. I
don't know how they can win an election with this,
but they don't want safety. And I found an old statue,
very old, early nineteen hundreds that said, of you so
much as touch or even think about destroying a statue
or a monument in Washington, DC, you go to jail

(09:45):
for ten years with no probation, no anything.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
No.

Speaker 4 (09:47):
There was slightly different than we have today today.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
We have cashlest bail.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Hey, you get jailed ten years, no curtailed sentence ten years.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
All right, let's move on from him.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
But the big point here, I'll give you the headline
from Politico. Trump places DC police under federal control and
deploys the National Guard. President Trump said, uh, let's see
just skipping ahead here, an escalation of federal power in
his campaign to tighten control over the nation's deep blue
capital city. I don't like that wording from Politico. This
is not about Trump trying to tighten his control over DC.

(10:20):
This is about Trump recognizing properly that d C, as
the nation's capital, should not be a place when where
you're if you're going out at night, going to a
restaurant or going to a bar, you're taking your life
in your hands by going out in an unsafe city.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Is not escape from New York, Right, It's not.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
It's not. It's not Johannesburg's and and Trump is talking
about how if you look at the actual data, I
picked Johannesburg because it's a very dangerous city. Uh. Trump's
talking about how you look at the actual data. The
crime rate, the murder rate in DC is higher, as
he was talking about, higher than Bogatah, Columbia, place you
probably don't think of as the most safe, higher in
the Mexico city, places you think of as having crime problems. Now,

(11:01):
it is true that certain crimes in Washington have declined
quite a bit over the past thirty years or so,
but there is still an immense amount of violent crime,
an immense amount of carjacking, murder, all kinds of stuff.
And the bottom line, as I said, I lived near
DC decades ago, and back at the time, there was

(11:23):
a dude who was mayor named Marion Barry, and Marion
Barry got arrested and convicted for crack and then he
was out of office. And then he came back and
ran again as a convicted crack addict, and he won.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
So this just goes to show you, you know, what.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
DC has long been about. Yeah, exactly, He's got his
little like his little crim brew let torch to heat
up the crack pipe, right, and he won. Look, cities
do this all the time. Look at the guy who's
probably going to become mayor of New York City. He's
a communist, anti semi and and oh this is a
propos of nothing, I guess. But I saw a news

(12:03):
story this morning about how how much money has been
donated to this guy, the New York guy, from employees
of Google and Facebook and a couple others as well.
These you know, like these young tech bros who want
reduced rent or whatever donating money to this commie anti Semite.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
It's absolutely unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Let me do one minute on a story that is
it's a little nerdy bothers me and I want to
mention it briefly. So the most valuable tech company in
the world now, I think, is in Nvidia, and pretty crazy.
They used to be sort of known as a company
that makes graphics processors. You'd buy a graphics card and
you'd put it in your computer so you could play

(12:46):
games a little better. But people figured out that you
could use these GPUs graphics processing units and a similar
type of topology technology about chip design. You could use
those better than the more famous at the time CPUs
by Intel and AMD and so on. AMD is also
in the graphics processing business. You could use those AI

(13:10):
for AI and Nvidia kind of retooled and refocused and
has turned into the biggest AI technology company in the world.
A few days ago I heard that it reached four
trillion dollars in market value, the first company ever to
do that. Now, they do produce a lot of chips
that you would not want your enemies to have, and
there are certain chips that the government said you can't

(13:31):
sell to China. The Trump administration has come back and saying,
all right, some of those the less powerful ones, we
will let you sell to China. But there was an
announcement over the weekend that the government is going to
take a fifteen percent fee, a fifteen percent tax, whatever
you want to call it, on the chips that in
Vidia and AMD sell to Chinese customers, as Axios puts it,

(13:54):
as a condition of granting them export licenses. And I
want to say, I hate this, I absolutely hate it.
Either you can sell the stuff to China or you can't.
But it is not the government's job to be in
the protection business. This is not like the mafia going
to the laundromat owner and saying, gosh, it's a dangerous
neighborhood around here. Be such a shame as something happened

(14:15):
in your life's nice laundromat. You know, as long as
you've got an envelope cash for us every Tuesday morning,
we'll make sure nobody comes and burns down your laundromat.
And of course they'd be the ones to burn down
the laundromat in I do not want the federal government
working this way. I don't want them taking fees from
companies as a condition of being able to do business.

(14:36):
I don't want them to be taking golden shares in
US steel in order to allow it to deal to
go down. I know people toss around the word fascism
a lot, and they use it in ways that are
really inappropriate. But the economic definition of fascism is running
what appears to be a free market economy, but running
it for the benefit of the government. And that's what

(14:57):
this is, and I hate it. I am very very
pleased to welcome back to the studio. Joining me in
studio a very very sharply dressed Jeff Bridges, State Senator,
chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, knows more than most
people about the state budget, and we're going to talk
a lot about this special session because there's going to

(15:20):
have to be a hole filled in there between some
combination of spending cuts and new revenue and so on.
Jeff is also a candidate for Colorado State Treasurer.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Thanks for coming back in.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Good to see You did not need to put on
sport code for me, but I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
It is radio, but still, you know you're dressed for
the job.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
You want right there one of mine dressed for all right.
I think you have the job. You are I do
have the job. That's true, that's true.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
All right, So let's talk about this special session. Before
we get into the nitty gritty, please define the problem
that needs to be solved.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
Sure, so, HR one, the big beautiful bill reduced what's
known as federal tax income, so it is a line
on your tax returns. Reduced it significantly, and the state
of Colorado uses that line to determine our own tax rate.
So we apply our flat rate against FTI. Because the
federal government changed their tax code, federal taxable income has

(16:16):
gone down, and so we lose one point.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Two billion dollars as a consequence.

Speaker 5 (16:22):
In Colorado, we just sort of adopt all of the
tax cuts and all of the new loopholes that the
federal government creates sort of automatically. We're one of only
four states that does that, and so that reduction hits
us directly.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
That is just math.

Speaker 5 (16:38):
That is that is what has caused this one point
two billion dollars shortfall.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Okay, and the cause is within that are not the
most important thing. But let's just lay out a couple
some of the big things contributing to a decline in
revenue for Colorado will be no tax on tips, no
tax on overtime, and then a couple of provisions for
business that you were mentioning to me just before we
went on the air. Can you elaborate on those?

Speaker 5 (17:02):
Yeah, you know, the non partisan Legislative Council staff did
an analysis of who benefits more from these changes in
the federal tax code, and this was mirrored in the
analysis by OspB, which is sort of the governor's version
of that, and it shows that of that one point
two billion dollars that Colorado was losing, about seven hundred

(17:25):
and fifty million of that is to corporations exclusively, that
is not to individuals, that is to escorps are included
in that.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Through what mechanism? How are they benefiting? What's the change
in the tax code that's benefiting the businesses.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
So there's a couple of different.

Speaker 5 (17:44):
Different changes that were made made specifically that apply to
businesses as opposed to individuals. Things like being able to
write off your research and development costs, So big tax
credit there for research and development costs. There's a big
tax credit, a big change in how quickly people can
write off depreciation. Not people, companies can write off depreciation,

(18:07):
and so that hits us really hard early on. So
we were talking off air a bit about how in
future years the hit is not quite as great, and
that is because there is some makeup for that depreciation
loss this year in future years. The other big reason
that we're seeing such a huge hit this year, the
one point two billion dollar number is opposed to next year,
where the reduction specifically attributable to the big beautiful Bill

(18:31):
HR one is about seven hundred and fifty million, is
because they changed their tax code retroactively, so it is
all of two thousand and five and six. So we
take all of that two thousand and five and half
of that two thousand and six hit in this fiscal
year in our budget.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
I can go into why that is.

Speaker 5 (18:49):
Essentially we're taking a year and a half worth of
cuts at the federal level, applying that to Colorado state
tax code, and taking that hit all in one year.
So eighteen months of cuts felt in just one year.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Okay, and a little more, a little more math.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
So this number is out there, numbers similar to what
you've been saying, one point two to one point two
one point one to one point two billion dollars in
revenue reduction.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
But the hole that you guys need to fill in.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
The legislature at the special session that's going to start
in ten days or something is more like seven hundred
and fifty million. So there's what a few hundred million
of budget surplus coming from somewhere? Else? Where's that?

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Where's that first three hundred million coming from?

Speaker 5 (19:28):
Great question, and this is one I think your listeners
in particular will care about. It is a reduction in
revenue coming into the state. A reduction in revenue means
that we drop below the taber cap. So about two
hundred and fifty million dollars that one point two billion
we will be air quotes paid for by the removal
of that taber refund. Table refunds are gone. We were

(19:50):
going to have about two hundred and fifty million in
table refunds. No more, we aren't bringing in the revenue.
We are below the tabercap now, and so that is
two hundred and fifty million. There's another portion of that
that is attributable to reduction that we will see not
in the general fund but in the state education funds.
So that's dollars that we bring in that are attributable

(20:11):
just to education.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
That's a longer term problem.

Speaker 5 (20:13):
That fund itself has some solvency challenges in future years.
We don't have to see that hit or address that
hit immediately right.

Speaker 1 (20:20):
Now or talking with State Senator Jeff Bridges, chairman of
the Joint Budget Committee, candidate.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
For Colorado State Treasurer as well.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
So anyone who's still listening right now is a huge,
huge nerd. We just lost like half a huge I'm
really sorry about that now.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
So you've got to fill you plural.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
The legislature have to figure out how to deal with
something like three quarters of a billion dollars in this
fiscal year, give or take right, And I guess there's
three ways you can do that. Take money out of
a rainy day fund, cut spending, raise new revenue through
fees or taxes, not necessarily a new tax, but maybe

(20:58):
adjusting or removing deductions, whatever changes to the code. So
it sounds like, just based on what I'm reading, there's
probably going to be a little bit of all of those.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, I think a third to third a third is
roughly the plan.

Speaker 5 (21:10):
So I think it's irresponsible to not spend some of
our reserves right now. There is likely to be some
kind of a recession in future years very soon here,
just given what we're seeing with the economy nationally, so
it would be irresponsible to spend all of this out
of our reserves. We need those if there is going
to be a recession, but there may not be it
major out that there's not, so I think it would

(21:31):
be also irresponsible.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Not to take some out of those reserves.

Speaker 5 (21:34):
So about a third will be taken from the reserves,
a third will be just straight cuts to the budget
that we have we already cut one point two billion
out of and then a third will be closing some
tax loopholes on those corporations that have benefited from the
change at the federal level. So they're seeing billions in savings,
we're going to say, well, how about two hundred and

(21:54):
fifty million, three hundred million of that comes back here
into the state.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
So thing will kind of represent a very different a
big difference.

Speaker 6 (22:03):
In philosophy between between me and you, and I realized
it's a fairly big number that you probably need to
cut somewhere between four and five percent of the state
general fund spending, which is a lot.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
And you know, listeners might think, oh, I could cut
four percent or five percent, but it's not the same
when you're running a government or a big company that
has contracts in place and people relying on stuff. It's doable,
but it's much harder. And it wouldn't even be that easy,
as easy as you think to cut five percent out
of your household budget all at once. But in any case,
in any case, if I were in charge, I wouldn't

(22:36):
take anything out of the rainy day fund and I
wouldn't raise any new revenue. Our government, our government, our
state government has grown so fast, so is so expensive,
has so many more employees, It has exploded way past
inflation and population, and one hundred percent of this should
be coming from spending cuts.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
Your turn. Thanks for the setup. Here's the thing. If
you want to cut, you know, have been suggested suggested
by folks. You want to cut five percent across the board. Great,
that means fewer kids will be going to kindergarten. That
means cuts to pre k, that means cuts two corrections,
that's prisons.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
So you need to figure.

Speaker 5 (23:18):
Out which five percent of folks you're going to let.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Out of jail.

Speaker 5 (23:21):
I know, my colleague, Senator Gonzalez has a plan for that.
I don't think that's a plan that shared by the
folks who suggested the five percent across the board cut.
You know, there's not we talked about this last time
I was on here. There's not like an entertainment budget
in the state government budget.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Right.

Speaker 5 (23:37):
You can't just skip the Dave Matthews concert and all
of a sudden, you know, you have all the money
you need. Any cut that we make is going to
mean people that are no longer in nursing homes. There
are real consequences to anything that we cut at this
point in the budget, especially after a year where you
just cut one point two billion dollars to get to balance.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
Okay, so this is actually it's serious and it's a
using at the same time. So whatever we get to
the possibility of budget cuts, people who don't want to
cut the budgets say things like we're gonna hurt the children,
We're gonna hurt puppies, we're gonna hurt veterans, we're gonna
let murderers out on the street and they're gonna come
rape you and your family.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
And I did not say that, and we're gonna and.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
We're gonna cut, We're gonna cut education, and we'll cut
all this stuff. And I just, dude, I just don't
think people are buying that. There's that government can't cut
without hurting people. Our government is too big, it does
too much. It gives away too much money to too
many people. And you know what, if fewer kids go
to pre k, then fewer kids go to pre k. Right,

(24:39):
there's And again I do realize that five percent or
four and a half percent all at once is hard.
And you might even get me to say, all right,
let's do one and a half percent out of the
rainy day fund. But I think it's nuts to be
raising taxes. We are feed to death.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
In this state.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
We have a nominally low income tax rate, but if
you add in our fees, even without higher education, we
are just feed to death.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's enough already. Two things on that.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
First, if you can show me the five percent of cuts,
I will take a look. Every time I've heard someone
on the other side say just cut five percent, it
has never come with a plan. They've never shown me
what five percent they're going to cut. So if you
want to have a conversation about those cuts. Tell me
what it is you're going to cut. I had a
conversation about this with Barb Kirkmeyer on Fox thirty one
the other day. She said, well, how about that bridge

(25:27):
for starters? We never funded the bridge. The bridge. The
bridge is not something that you can cut. You know,
the governor's going to chain himself to himself to stop
himself from building this. Right, So tell me what it
is that you're actually going to cut. I just haven't
heard that, well, Ken, I would love to have that
conversation question though. Can't they tell me, like the department heads, Like,
could you go to each department head and say, show

(25:49):
us what we need to find. Pick a number three
percent and we'll take the rest out of the rainy
day fund two and a half percent. Show us let's
say I gave you an order you must cut two
and a half percent. Come back to us and tell
us what you can do that does the least what
you might call harm to Colorado.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
I mean, is it really that difficult.

Speaker 5 (26:09):
We did this exercise this last year on the budget committee. Right,
we had to cut one point two billion effectively. Right,
it's a decrease in the increase, but we effectively had
to cut one point two billion of services to the
people of Colorado, and we succeeded in doing that while
preserving funding for K twelve, for public safety, for public lands.
And it was there were not broad agreement on the

(26:31):
Budget Committee about what else to cut. And to be
totally fair to I think the challenge that we have here,
there was bipartisan agreement not to cut a lot of
the things that were proposed to cut, whether that is
services in Medicaid, the provider rate, for example, we increased
by less than inflation.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
We did increase by one point six percent.

Speaker 5 (26:52):
That was driven in large part by the Republican members
of the Budget Committee. So if there are cuts to
be made, I welcome the conversation. These are hard and
painful cuts. If there were easy things to cut, we
would have already done it this last year.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
I hope you realize that most normal people have no
sympathy for a reduction in the rate of growth totally.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
It's not a cut.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
It's just we wanted to We wanted to go out
for lobster, and we're going to go out for steak instead,
and now we're supposed to feel sorry that it's a
bad I'm president of bad Analogy Clubs for a reason.

Speaker 5 (27:26):
Well, let's let's use this analogy, okay, right, I wish
that we could just switch from lobster to shrimp or
chicken or rice and beans. I wish we could do that.
That's not the budget that we have at the state level.
And I welcome a conversation with real proposals about what
the other side of jest we're going to cut, because
even with just cutting one third, because of this one
point two billion dollar loss, we are going to see

(27:48):
the it's going to hurt, You're going to see people
that are going to have a real impact on this.
So and we'll get that plan from the governor at
some point in the next few weeks. But here's the
other thing, right, So, if you think about your household budget,
you invest in, you spend your money on let's say,
school supplies, on gasoline, on your healthcare premiums, right on

(28:13):
paying for healthcare. Well, roughly what the state is expending
money on. A third of our budget is K twelve.
A third of our budget is medicaid, and we're building
roads and bridges now what we know year to year,
and this is where the other piece that we have
to cut comes in the tabor cuts that happen on
an annual basis that Republicans have said it's because you
spend too much. Well, it's essentially that we get to

(28:35):
increase every year a paycheck.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Goes up by inflation.

Speaker 5 (28:38):
But we know the costs for things like K twelve education,
like healthcare, like.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Roads and bridges, goes up faster.

Speaker 5 (28:46):
So if your paycheck just went up by inflation every year, effectively,
you would not be able to buy as much gasoline,
you wouldn't be able to afford as many school supplies.
You would have to find some cheaper plan on your
health premiums in order to afford it. That's what we're
doing every year, and we're doing that responsibly. We are
reducing what we invest in healthcare, reducing what we invest

(29:08):
in in transportation. We cut a bunch of multimodal projects,
which is mass transit and like bike paths. This last
year good, and we're going to be continuing to make
those cuts every year. But that's not There is some
implication that we are overspending and that's why we have
to cut.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
That's not the case.

Speaker 5 (29:24):
We have to cut because our paycheck, the state's paycheck
doesn't go up as fast as the cost of what
it is that we buy.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
This may be a thing that is sort of a
reflection of overall characteristics in my audience, But I have
a whole bunch of folks asking how much do we
spend on benefits of one type or another for illegal aliens,
including salute or whatever that thing is called us like
medicaid for illegals?

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Is there money there?

Speaker 5 (29:54):
About thirty six million dollars right there that doesn't close
a one point two billion dollar holect the coverall Coloradin's
program initial estimates were cost about six million this last year.
It's about thirty six million. That being said, it's thirty
six million for kids. This is not adults. This is
for you know, you're zero to eighteen year olds. For

(30:16):
you break your leg, you get to go to the
hospital and you get care.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
These are challenging situations because you know, on the one hand,
having that probably attracts illegal aliens here to get the
free healthcare. On the other hand, if you don't have that,
they're going to go to the emergency room anyway, and
their legs is gonna get fixed anyway, and then it's
probably gonna cost taxpayers more so, it's all a very
difficult thing.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
Okay, you brought this up, I am. Let's let's go there.
Because if you look at HR one, the big beautiful bill,
I think it is the single largest increase to private
healthcare premiums in the history of our nation.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
And here's why.

Speaker 5 (30:52):
The way that they are cutting Medicare coverage is not
by reducing eligibility. They are increasing the hurdles. You have
to file twice a year, you have to prove that
you're working. And the Congressional Budget Office has said, the
reason that this reduces costs on Medicaid at the national
level is not because there are people who don't qualify
who are getting care. It is because there are people

(31:15):
who qualify who just aren't filling out the paperwork. So
these are people that the country has said should qualify
for Medicaid, but will not get it because the paperwork
is too hard, which is its own crazy insanity of
like why does the federal government have all these paperwork kerdles? Anyway,
and that's across the board, but anyway, it is. It
is an increase in paperwork. So people aren't going to

(31:36):
be on Medicaid. They're still going to get care because
when they break their leg, they're going to go to
the hospital. A hospital can't turn them away and shouldn't
turn them away, is going to fix that leg, and
then you know how, they're going.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
To pay for it, raising the costs on everybody else
in our health insurance premium will go up.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
Exactly true, they are reduced.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
The way they've reduced spending on Medicaid is going to
directly impact people that have insurance.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
I agree with you, and actually I wish and I
think you and I might have talked about this privately
on the phone. I think that the way the BBB
is reducing the roles of Medicaid is kind of dishonest.
I would like to see them just come out and
say we're just changing the qualifications, right, instead of one
hundred and thirty eight percent of the poverty rate, you
can only be one hundred and fifteen percent of the
poverty rate, or just some direct thing like that. But

(32:20):
Jeff is right, most people who lose Medicaid coverage under
the Big Beautiful Bill are actually people who are eligible
and just won't be able to spend the time or
figure out how to file paperwork twice a year. All right,
we've only had about a couple minutes left, and I
feel like we've dealt a lot in theory, which is
kind of my fault.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
But give me, give me a quick sense as you're.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Going through this whatever, what do you anticipate will be
the parts of the state budget that actually do get
cut when you guys do the special session in a
couple of weeks.

Speaker 5 (32:53):
I think you're gonna see some cuts to medicaid. It's
a third of the state budget. I don't know how
you cut without some cuts to medical We did increase
overall spending on medicaid this last year. It actually became
the largest single part of our budget, even larger than
K twelve. K twelve had been the largest part. So
you'll see some cuts in Medicaid. I don't think you

(33:13):
can handle this without that. You'll see cuts in human
services things like you know, we already cut a million
dollars in what we are able to provide to food
pantries and food banks.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
That may go down as well.

Speaker 5 (33:27):
I mean it's going to be services that frankly are
for the least among us.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Are you going to try to avoid cuts to K
through twelve? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
And well do you think there will be any impact
on Higher ED.

Speaker 5 (33:41):
There is a requirement that the governor have conversations with
the governing boards before and he cuts the Higher ED
are made. I'd also say that it's difficult at this
point in the year for Higher ED to absorb those costs.
They sort of have the rest of their academic year planned.
That is a difficult place to cut. We did increase
funding by six dollars for Higher ED last year. What

(34:03):
we may do instead, what the governor may do instead
is to say, hey, heads up, we're cutting you by
a certain amount next year, so build that in starting.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Now, okay, and then what about transportation, roads, bridges, stuff
like that.

Speaker 5 (34:16):
I don't think you'll see a huge hit to transportation
in this upcoming budget. Again, the main change that we
made to transportation last year was we shifted out some
of our obligations one more year, just to spread that
out over more years. And then we also cut, as
I said, some of those bike paths and pedestrian bridges
and things.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
That brings a smile to my face.

Speaker 5 (34:36):
Jeff Bridges, State Senator Rural Colorado is very mad. Every
time I go talk to a rural county commissioner bike paths.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
The multimodal stuff we cut hit them hardest.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Jeff Bridges, state Senator, chairman of the Joint Budget Committee,
candidate for Colorado State Treasurer as well. That website for
the Treasurer's race is Bridges for Colorado dot com.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
That's Bridges fl or Colorado.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Dot com if you want to learn more about Jeff
in that campaign. Thanks for coming in, Thanks for dressing
up for us. Appreciate it. Always great talking talking to
you too. We'll be right back on KOA. I am
reading all your listener texts about the interview. I just
had the conversation I just had with State Senator Jeff Bridges,
who is also a candidate for Colorado State Treasurer. And yes,

(35:26):
he did say that somewhere around a third of the
state budgets general fund now goes to Medicaid. A few
people texted in saying something like did he really say that?
Is it a third? And yes? And another listener said
a third of the state budget. I'm curious what this
number was prior to the Obamacare expansion. Matt sent that

(35:47):
text in and I don't know the number, but for
sure the Obamacare Medicaid expansion was an enormous thing that
is putting incredible pressure on state budgets right now. And
I'm not going to nerd out on this on this
too much. I'll just give you one sense of how
this happened. Remember that Barack Obama and people like him
don't want there to be private health insurance. They only

(36:09):
want government health insurance. So they do everything they can
to push people onto government healthcare. So what they did
at the time was they expanded eligibility for Medicaid. And
this is the keynail, And they told the states that
if you expand Medicaid under these provisions, the federal government
will cover ninety percent of the costs. Right for every

(36:31):
dollar you put up, we'll put up nine dollars. And
of course that incentivizes all these states to go essentially
steal our children's futures by adding nine dollars to the
national debt or nine hundred or nine thousand, or nine
million or nine billion, depending on how many people are
signed up. And so they're stealing our children's futures in

(36:52):
order to do two things to buy the votes of
people who they're putting on the quote unquote free healthcare
and also to chase their ideological goal of ending private
health insurance and getting everybody on government health insurance.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
So we will see.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
I think Jeff was accurate and I think you know,
being being honest when he said he expects that the
special session will aim to fill this roughly seven hundred
and fifty million dollar hole, roughly a third a third
a third between taking some money out of the state's
rainy day funds, between cutting some spending and then raising

(37:34):
tax revenue. They're not going to come and raise the
income tax rate. What they're going to do is go
cut deductions for various companies, right, insurance companies have a
particular kind of exclusion they can use, and various other
kinds of business taxes. Mostly they're going to look for
ways to remove business tax deductions and effectively raise taxes

(37:56):
on business that way, so we'll see. I I find
it very unfortunate that they're going to be doing any
more revenue raising. They take enough money. Government in this
state takes enough money. I agree with Jeff that cutting
a significant number is not going to be easy, But
just because it's not easy doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
And that's what that's what they should do.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
That's what they should do. So what else do I
want to do here? Okay, I'm going to spend a
couple of minutes on this. I'm going to thinking about
this story for a week or more about a week.
And I am often frustrated with governments. I'm really really
angry at government. First of all, I don't think being

(38:40):
angry is a good use of my time or yours.
It weighs on you. It makes life less enjoyable to
be angry. And also, and I've said this for many
years on the radio, usually about hypocrisy, but it applies
in other ways when you're thinking about when you're thinking
about government, and the concept is this, if you getting

(39:01):
mad at a politician for doing some particular kind of
bad behavior. And again I usually it's usually in the
context of saying one thing and doing another. But getting
mad at a politician for that is like getting mad
at a puppy for peeing on your rug.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
It is just what they do.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
And I realize that there are a lot of people
who go into politics with the best of intentions.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
I also think there are a lot of people who don't.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Go into politics with the best of intentions. I think
there are a lot of people who go into politics
on the left and the right, although more from the left,
with this idea that they are smarter than you are
and they should be put in a position to order
your life because you are not smart enough to make
good choices for yourselves. And you get some of that
from the religious right, but mostly you get it from

(39:48):
the left.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
And I just don't like any of that. I think
we're adults.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Let us make our own decisions. Let us, you know,
live or die, thrive or not based on our own decisions.
But I so those people who go into government with
that mindset, like I want to change how people live
because I know better, I have no use for them.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
I do think there are.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Plenty of people who go into government, both on the left,
not the far left, but the center left and the
center right, who do have good intentions and they think
government could be better. Right, and there could be disagreements
about how big should government be and how much should
it do or how little should it do, But I
think a lot of people go into government thinking government

(40:32):
could be better, it could be more efficient, it could
it could help people more, or if you're more conservative
or libertarian, you can say it could get out of
the way, and I want to go help do that.
So you get all this stuff. But every once in
a while, then what happens is people get captured by
government and they get in there and they realize that
what they used to think was a bug, now they

(40:53):
think it's a feature. And I talk from time to time.
This is more in the context of people on the
world welfare system, but a similar mindset applies to people
who think about, for example, the welfare system and it's
supposed to be it's supposed to be a safety net
to catch you when you're falling, and instead they turn

(41:13):
it into a comfortable hammock that they want everybody lying around,
and even some Republicans will drift in that direction of
being afraid to cut government programs. Anyway, this is not
actually the thing I want to talk about. It's just
sort of context for for how I rarely get angry
at politicians or bureaucrats. Usually I just give a little

(41:35):
frustrated and like, eh, that's what they do. But there's
a story that bothers the bid Jesus out of me.
So the federal government, the Trump administration has moved to
ban transgender members of the military. So there's there's two
separate aspects of this in my mind that related, but
they're different. One is ban future PEP future folks from

(42:01):
joining the military. The other is what about people who
are in there now? And then in the subset of
people who are in there now, and by the way,
it's estimated to be less than a quarter of a
percent of the military, a few thousand people. Of the
people who are in there now who are transgender, some
number of them have been in for let's say fifteen

(42:22):
years or more. The Trump administration wants to kick all
these people out, no matter how many times they've been deployed,
no matter how honorably they've served, no matter that the
fact that their transgender situation doesn't seem to have any
impact on their job performance or on anybody else's job performance.
And frankly, I think that if you've got somebody who's

(42:42):
a patriot who wants to serve the country, and especially
someone who has demonstrated for ten or fifteen or eighteen
years that they can and do serve the country, I
think kicking them out is not just stupid but evil.
And here's the very specific story I want to mention
to you bunch of these folks. So they've been told

(43:03):
you can either quit voluntarily, in which case you get
a little bit of benefit, or you or will just
fire you when you'll get even less.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
But in either case you're not gonna.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Get what you thought you were gonna get when you
joined and decided to stay for a career your host,
no matter what. But you can do it voluntarily in
which case you'll be a little less hosed, or involuntarily,
in which case you'll be a little more hosed. So
a bunch of people who've been in for fifteen now
I'm talking, and when I say a bunch, I mean
I'm talking like fifteen people, not tons. They put in

(43:33):
for early retirement, which can be granted and sometimes is
for medical reasons and other things. Where people who have served,
you know, fifteen years, eighteen years, getting pretty close to retirement.
If there's a special circumstance that's causing them to get
out of the military, the military can grant them full
retirement benefits with some level of pension, health care benefits

(43:54):
and so on. And these people, these transgender folks who
are who want to keep serving our country, they put
in for early retirement, and it was granted, and then
some bureaucrat Assistant Secretary of the Air Force I think
in this case, rescinded all the approvals and is now

(44:19):
saying I am disapproving all of these requests, and anybody
at least with between fifteen and eighteen years of service
will not get early retirement and will essentially be fired
and will have either little or no benefits at all
after fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years of service to the United

(44:40):
States military. And again, I just want to say, regardless
of what you think of transgender people, regardless of any
of that, this is stupid and evil, and I'm really
angry about it. These people have committed their lives, they've
served honorably, they've been deployed. There's no reason to think
they're a distraction or a harm to military readiness or

(45:02):
unit cohesion or anything like that. They are patriots serving
their country. And some evil people who apparently think that
those folks very existence violates their religious views, wants to
not just harm the country, but harm them personally.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
And it's sickening.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
You're not okay with kids in cherry Crete getting free
lunch funded by my taxpayer dollars, but you are okay
with people transitioning and receiving hormone therapy while in the
military being funded by tax dollars. I don't know where
I ever mentioned even having an opinion on that particular
care being paid for by tax dollars. So I don't

(45:40):
think you should assume such a thing. I think there's
a much bigger question to be had, and it's not
a conversation I'm going to get in to today as
to whether you or somebody else thinks that that is
legitimate healthcare.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
I know a lot of people don't.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
I know a lot of people think that the whole
transgender thing is a lifestyle choice rather than a medical
slash psychological thing, And I think that's what makes it
a difficult conversation. I would say, for somebody who believes
that any of that kind of stuff is legitimate medical care,
then to the extended members of the military get their

(46:19):
healthcare paid for by tax dollars, then that should be two.
And if it is determined that that is somehow not
legitimate care, then not And then you also have to
decide at some point. I mean, we're talking about some
members of the military who like I said, have multiple deployments,
multiple combat zones, all kinds of stuff. Do you want

(46:40):
to lose them? You know, is your commitment to not
having that kind of healthcare funded with tax dollars? Is
your commitment against that kind of healthcare enough that you're
willing to say, yes, I'm willing to lose. However, many
members of the military who have demonstrated themselves to be

(47:02):
patriotic volunteers wanting to serve our country, and you're very
welcome to make that calculation. It's not a ridiculous calculation
to make, right, It's not an unreasonable question. But I
do think it is unreasonable for you to assume that
I that somehow I said, yeah, we should definitely fund
transition and hormone therapy out of taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
There's one other.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Thing I'd mentioned, actually, and this is a little bit
more nuanced, but the free school lunch thing versus the
military health thing. Once federal ones not those are, that
also makes them a little bit different. But in any case,
it's a big picture conversation. I just I just continue
to believe that that kicking people out of the military

(47:47):
who have been serving honorably and well and not disrupting
anything through their existence as a transgender member of the military.
Kicking someone like that out just because some Christian conserve
like Pete Hegseth doesn't like trans people is evil and stupid,
and in particular, approving them for early retirement when they

(48:10):
have fifteen, sixteen seventeen years of service, approving them and
then having.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Somebody else come back and say, oh, sorry, it changed
our mind.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
We're just going to fire you, and you're not going
to get any of the benefits that you have spent
fifteen sixteen seventeen years accruing working in the United States military.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
That's particularly evil.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
So there you go. There's that.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
So I wanted to mention a thing.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
So President Trump earlier today did a long press conference
and there was over an hour talking about how he
is going to call out the National Guard and implement
federal control of the police force of Washington, d C.
And DC's got a very very serious problem with crime.
Even if crime is down, it's still way too much

(48:55):
and has been in Washington, d C. For a heck
of a long time. And of course, DC is one
of the most liberal voting places in America, votes something
like ninety one percent for Democrats, I think, or ninety three.
It's a number that's almost unimaginably high, even in a
place that's full of government workers. But the bottom line
is it's DC is full of two kinds of people,

(49:17):
government workers and people on welfare. That's basically who lives there, right,
And those are both people who vote for Democrats all
the time.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
And so that's what you got.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
And then you just keep all you know, you go
back to electing a convicted crackhead Mary and Barry to
come back as mayor, and you just keep electing people
like that, and you get what you got. So I
was reading a little bit and hearing a little bit
about crime in Washington, DC, and there was a thing
that really really struck me more than the crime level itself.

(49:48):
And I think it's a data point or two data
points that explain why the crime is so bad in Washington,
d C.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Check this out.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Last year twenty four fifty two percent of all arrests
for robberies fifty two percent or juveniles.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Check this one out, dragging you ready for this? So
far this year.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Sixty six zero percent of arrests for carjacking or juveniles
sixty percent so there's two, there's there's basically one thing
going on here. The system does not punish juveniles enough.
It does not charge them enough as adults, It does
not make them.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Pay for their crimes.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
And some of these folks who are in these crime units,
who are you know, they're trying to do They're trying
to do what they can. There's a new DC police
unit actually setting up something called the Juvenile Investigative Response Unit.
And what they are saying is we keep saying the
same seeing the same young hudlums over and over. They
commit the crime, they get arrested, there's no punishment, they

(50:56):
get let out, and they just do it again because.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
There is no punishment.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
In twenty twenty four, about two thousand juveniles arrested for
violent crimes in DC had prior arrest for violent crimes
in DC.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
This is the problem.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
You gonna point a finger at one thing. It's not
just generically DC. It's that DC is not punishing and
stopping crime by juveniles.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Dragon you actually you looked like you were gonna say something.
Were you gonna say something?

Speaker 1 (51:27):
No? Not here? No, not here? And now okay, so
just a couple of quick football things I wanted to
mention from preseason games yesterday, not the Broncos game that
was slow start, but otherwise good game for the Broncos.
Jarrett Stidham had an amazing game, better game than Boenicks had,
but kind of cool. Yesterday, there was a dude who

(51:48):
the kicker for the Jacksonville Jaguars, kicked a seventy yard
field goal. And it's preseason, so it doesn't count in
the NFL records, but if it had been regular season,
it would have broken the record by four yards, which
is really a lot when you think about these records,
because typically what's been happening in recent years is there'll
be a record and then somebody will break it by

(52:08):
a yard, right, maybe two, but usually it's usually one yard.
This would have broken justin Tucker's record by four yards
a seventy year seventy yard field goal. So that's pretty
pretty amazing, and I guess the coach there would be
happy to know he has that weapon.

Speaker 7 (52:24):
What I think was it three four years ago when
we still had McManus. He did a seventy something seventy
plus in practice, but there was no defensive line, right,
you know, trying to block it, right, and you will
see those you every once in a while.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
And I mean, kickers are getting so much better. I
mean it used to be like when you and I
were young, a fifty yard field goal was a big deal.

Speaker 7 (52:47):
The change in style in the way the kickings too,
because it used to be the kickers would be straight
on and then once they switched to the quote soccer
style of k from the side.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, every game changer there, Yeah, absolutely, And yeah, so
now you know a fifty even like you see a
fifty yard field goal now and basically he kind of
expect you expecting to make it, You expecting to make it.
It used to be that a fifty yard field goal
would be fifty to fifty part of fuel pard in
all the fifties. But now now it in order to

(53:17):
feel like it's a nail bier, is going to be
a sixty yard field goal, right, and now this dude
just kicked a seventy seventy yard field goal in an
actual game. Anyway, I wanted to throw that out there,
And the other thing I wanted to mention for NFL fans,
you Buffalo's fans. Shoud Or Sanders played quite a bit
for the Cleveland Browns yesterday. They have at least two

(53:38):
quarterbacks who are ahead of him on the depth chart.
Joe Flacco was the guy who seemed like he'd be
a starter for the Cleveland Browns. But I think he's
got some kind of injury. And who's the other dude,
Picket Maybe some kind of injury. So shoud Or Sanders
played quite a bit and I just kind of I
watched a little bit and I read some stuff about it.
But bottom line is, he played pretty well. And as

(53:58):
one sport reporter put it, he said, the sports reporter said,
shoot Or Sanders looked like he belonged there, and and
you know, maybe gave Kevin Stefanski, the coach out there,
you know, something to think about. Not not like okay,
we're gonna start Shootdoor Sanders on day one, but like, okay,

(54:19):
you got a guy who maybe will depending on other injuries,
but a guy who maybe you could work into a
game a little bit sooner than you thought you were.

Speaker 7 (54:30):
I'm not the logan the Dave logan's of the Benjamin
all Bright. Yeah, but that's kind of pumped the brakes.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
Just a little.

Speaker 7 (54:36):
Okay, Okay, he's playing against second and third string guys.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
True, so yeah, you can look great.

Speaker 7 (54:42):
Yeah against the second and third string guys.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Oh Nicks didn't, right, Oh Nicks didn't, Jared s didn't.
Stidham did. But it's true.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
I don't know, actually, I don't know whether they whoever.
I don't even remember who Cleveland was playing, but I
I don't know if Sanders got some time against their
first string like we did play the Broncos did play
our first string defense for some of the games, so
we don't know that it was only against second string.

(55:14):
But you know, just as a guy who likes to
root for the former cy U Buffalo and Coach Prime's son.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
You know, I hope he does well.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
He kind of. We don't have to go rehash that
whole thing, but the fact that the dude didn't get
drafted until was it the sixth round? You know, talk
about a psychological blow to a kid who probably thought
of himself as a guy who's poop didn't stink right,
and he like he was brought down, not just brought

(55:42):
down a peg, but brought down all the pegs. And
he showed himself pretty well yesterday. So I was happy
about that. Wanted to share that with you let's see,
I got a lot of stuff I want to talk about.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Oh, let's do this one.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
You might have seen bouncing around on the interwebs, on
social media and so on, this story about Paul McCartney
visiting a very frail and ailing Phil Collins in the
hospital and bringing guitar and playing Hey Jude for Phil Collins.

(56:19):
And there's pictures out there of McCartney playing guitar. McCartney's
sitting next to Phil Collins, Collins in a hospital bed
and McCartney is sort of resting his hand on Phil
collins arm as they talked.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
There's a couple other pictures of.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Some folks in the background in the room, in the
hospital room, listening as Paul McCartney plays guitar. There isn't
a video where you can hear him singing, but a
still picture of McCartney playing guitar and Phil Collins seeming
really like cheered up and happy, even clapping a bit,
and people in the background watching.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
And this thing made its way around the internet like wildfire.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
What an incredible story, Right, Phil Collins elderly at this point, sick,
been frail for a while.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
And none of this, none of this is true. None
of it's true.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
I mean, it's true that it's out there on the internet.
Everything I'm describing to you. You can find all of
these pictures on Facebook, on x formerly Twitter.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
It's everywhere.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
It's absolutely everywhere, and it's all AI. And isn't this
a remarkable thing. I got a lot more AI to
talk about. I don't know how much I'll get to today,
but I'm gonna come back to it over and over
over the course of the week.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
But this is all AI.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
And actually the simplest way, just generally, when you're looking
at an AI picture these days, because AI is getting
better and better and better, but when you're looking at
an AI picture these days, a lot of times you
can see parts of the picture that are kind of
interpolated and they look a little bit smooth instead of sharp.
And that's, you know, AI doing the best it can
to create a picture. And you can kind of tell

(57:56):
that in some of this. But here's the real key.
Did you read this already?

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Do you know what I'm gonna say? I know the story?

Speaker 1 (58:02):
But okay, so you see these pictures of Paul McCartney
playing guitar again right next to Phil Collins, and you know,
in front of Phil Collins, and McCartney's holding the guitar
the way I would hold a guitar, strumming the strumming
the strings with his right hand and making notes up
on the neck with his left hand. Wait a minute,
Wait a minute, Wait a minute. Because Paul McCartney plays

(58:25):
guitar left handed. Paul McCartney strums the string with his
left hands makes the note with his right hand, the
opposite of what I did in the very very short
period of time when I took guitar lessons as a kid.
And and so all of this stuff has has Paul
McCartney playing guitar the wrong way, and and yet still
probably a couple of million people have seen this already.

(58:46):
But the big picture is not so much about McCartney
and Phil Collins. It's that AI is getting to a
point where you really got to be able to notice
the difference. And it's not always going to be that
AI is going to make a mistake about putting the
guitar go in the wrong direction. After all, most people
play guitar right handed, and if McCartney had been most guitarists,

(59:07):
you wouldn't necessarily have known that error.

Speaker 7 (59:09):
He's channeling his inner Jimmy Hendrix. So he's taking his
left handed guitar, flipping it upside down, playing it right.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Very good, very good. So what I wanted to just
elaborate on about this story is what it means for trust.
I didn't trust in everything at some point, and that
point is probably today. Okay Ai is going to generate
a story that is interesting, maybe or maybe not important,

(59:38):
but interesting enough that it gets spread around the world
like wildfire and it's not true. And once that starts happening,
enough and again I think enough is some time around
now there is going to be a crisis of confidence

(59:58):
and a loss of trust. Rust that's going to make
the loss of trust that happened in media and scientists
and government during COVID seemed like nothing, because that the
loss of trust in you know, quote unquote trust the
science and in people like Anthony Fauci, and in certain

(01:00:19):
medical data, like for example, when in order to make
COVID seem worse than it was, or in order for
hospitals to make extra money, they would report death of
somebody who happened to have COVID as if it were
a death caused by COVID. You didn't even have people
who died in car accidents who had COVID, but they

(01:00:43):
were reported as COVID deaths because more money for the
hospitals that way, and more money for the people who
wanted to try to panic us into doing whatever they
wanted to tell us to do. And there's this massive
loss of trust and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
But even that, as big as it was, was fairly focused.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Right, It's fairly focused on doctor Fauci and people like
him on maybe the CDC people, you know, groups like that,
on whatever. But you can name the groups that you
lost the trend maybe media, maybe so called mainstream formerly
mainstream media. You can talk about all that, but you
can say, Okay, I lost trust in this group, that group,

(01:01:20):
in that group. But what about when AI can and
does not by itself, but because someone told it to
make up a story about absolutely anything. It could be
a story about a rock star. It could be a
story about business. It could be a story about a politician.

(01:01:41):
It could be it could be Donald Trump. And this
is actually my wife said this to me yesterday. Kristen said,
imagine AI with someone prompting it. Right, It doesn't do
this thing on its own with someone prompting it, creating
an incredibly good, deep fake video of President Trump announcing

(01:02:12):
some kind of nationwide lockdown due to the emergence of
a new pandemic, not necessarily a version of COVID, but
just a new pandemic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
There's so there's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
An infinite amount of video and audio of Donald Trump
out there for a system to train on. So I
think these days, and certainly within a year, because this
stuff is evolving so quickly, someone would be able to
make a video, not just audio of Donald Trump speaking.

(01:02:45):
You can put any words in his mouth you want,
and most people will believe it. And imagine what that
could cause. Imagine this thing making its way around social media,
and may maybe some credulous news outlet thinking it's real,

(01:03:06):
putting it on television, and then suddenly you've got I'm
not trying to be hyperbolic here, I think you'll all
realize how this is a thing that could really happen.
Suddenly you'll have hundreds of thousands or millions of people
rushing to their local supermarkets or Walmart or whatever and

(01:03:26):
buying everything they can't buying the toilet paper, buying, the
nonperishable food buying, and just causing a run on everything,
and at some point, and hopefully the point would be
pretty soon, but at some point the president of the
United States or his people would hear about this and
they'd come out and say, wait, that's a hoax. That's
a hoax. Don't do that, don't go hoarding things. But

(01:03:48):
how long do you need to have that out there
before at least some damage is done and back to
the trust thing beyond just hoarding and shortages and stuff
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
But how much do you need.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
How many times do you need to have something like that,
whether it's Trump, whether it's the president of another country,
whether it's some big time business leader. I know conservatives
don't like Bill Gates very much, but imagine a video
of Bill Gates saying, you know, something terrible is happening
in the world and we all need to act right away.

(01:04:26):
People are gonna lose trust in everything, and I think
that's gonna be very, very dangerous. I get Just to
be clear, I'm not arguing that everybody should be trusted.
There's lots of people out there who shouldn't be trusted.
I get all that, right, but this is gonna be

(01:04:49):
an absolute hell escape of fake news fake video, fake audio,
fake everything, fake stories. And that's before you even get
to the scams and the people trying to steal your
financial information. And I think, what's gonna have to happen.
And I don't know how this will happen, but it
will happen because it has to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
That Big tech is gonna have to come up with.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Systems that allow you to check whether this thing you're
hearing is real or not. And again I don't know
how they're gonna do it, but think, for example, when
you come to your financial or not even just financial,
all kinds of online logins, you have two factor authentication. Now,
somebody thought of that. Somebody thought of that, we're gonna
create a system where we're gonna email you a code

(01:05:43):
or text you a code, or you have an authenticator
app that generates a code or something where in order
to make sure it's really you, you're gonna have to
enter your username and password, but you're also gonna have
to enter this short duration code that comes to you
in a way that theoretically only you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Has access to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
But even then, one if someone's you know, holding a
gun to your head in your house and they email
you the code, you know they'll get around it, but
you get the idea, and they're gonna have to come
up with something. And I don't know what that's something is.
I have absolutely no idea what that thing is going
to be. But it's kind of the analog and analog

(01:06:26):
to to Stein's Law that I tell you about all
the time. Stein's Law named for Herb Stein, former chairman
of the Council of Economic Advisors, former economic advisor to
Richard Nixon, and maybe Gerald Ford. I forget and he said,
if something can't go on forever, it will stop. And
I know it sounds trite, but people in government never

(01:06:49):
think that way. For example, they forget that you can't
keep expanding government healthcare forever and think that you're not
going to run out of other people's money. It can't
go on forever, and therefore it will stop. The analog
that I'm thinking of here is if something must come
into existence, it will, and something must come into existence

(01:07:12):
when it comes to a way to trust more stuff online,
because without that ability to trust the entire online ecosystems,
social media companies, they're gonna lose everything. Who is gonna
keep Some people will just for sheer entertainment, and there

(01:07:32):
are stupid people out there who like to be fooled
or will believe anything. There are people who sort of
feed on that. But for most people, if you start
believing that a large minority or what about an outright
majority of information you're gonna come across on a particular

(01:07:52):
platform is false, you're not gonna go there anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
You're just not.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
And so these websites are going to have to come
up with ways to create trust because their businesses will
be over if they don't.

Speaker 7 (01:08:08):
Did you want to say something just this text that
I just came in that I read? Oh wow, imagine
if there's an image of Ross washing his legs and
eating bell peppers stuffed with blue cheese at a Neil
Young concert. The scary part is half this might happen
in a few weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
I don't have an answer yet dragon as to whether
I've got Neil Young tickets for you and me, I'm
still working on that. I will find out. I will
find out. As amusing as it would be to go
see a terrible singer like Neil Young, I would, I
would do it just for the amusement of it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
But I won't, but only if I can get tickets
for free.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
I will not pay to go to the tickets, not
way back on the lawnch Yeah, right, it needs to be.
The tickets need to be good enough, close enough to
the stage, not like Row five, but close enough to
the stage that there is a decent chance that I
will need a paramedic to treat the blood running out.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Of my ears right back on the lawn. Eh.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
It's not risky enough. We can hide, Yeah, we can hide.
We can hear other people talking. It's just it's not
risky enough. So all right, I'll tell you what. I
still have an immense amount of stuff that I need
to get through on today's show. Let me just tease
a little thing here that I'll tell you about when
we when we come back. The United States is apparently

(01:09:29):
aiming to auction off a yacht that originally cost three
hundred and twenty five million dollars and is said to
belong to a Russian you know, plutocrat, billionaire, kleptocrat, whatever
you want.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
To call these people.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
And the question is, if you could buy a three
hundred and twenty five million dollar yacht for ten or
fifteen million dollars, you know, would you do it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
And it's that I'm not, you know, really.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Asking you that question because it's not an issue that
you and I are going to have to deal with.
We don't have that kind of money lying around. But
what's so interesting about this story is a potential risk
if you are the buyer, that might make it so
that they might not even get a buyer at ten
million dollars for a three hundred and twenty five million

(01:10:25):
dollar yacht.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
And I'll tell you why right after this.

Speaker 7 (01:10:27):
I don't know if I can get the inflection right. Yeah,
I will try. Okay, where's my honey, how you doing girl?
Welcome back, Rocky Mountain Bronx Bill, Rocky Mountain Bronx Bill.
I don't think that was meant for us.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
No, no, I don't either, But it is fun from
time to time when we get texts like that that
are meant for other people. All Right, I want to
finish this story with you. So this is from the
Associated Press. The United States's offer is auctioning off the
three hundred and twenty five million dollars yacht Ammadea, its

(01:11:04):
first sale of US seized Russian luxury ship since the
start of Moscow's invasion. Of Ukraine. The auction, which closes
September tenth, comes as President Trump seeks to increase pressure
on Russian President Putin and the war. By the way,
at the moment, we think Trump and Putin may meet
at the on Friday in Alaska.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
So we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
There's some question, you know, will it happen or not,
Will Zelenski show up or not?

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
We'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
This is a three hundred and forty eight foot long
yacht Sees three years ago, currently docked in San Diego,
custom built by a German company called Lursen in twenty seventeen.
Designed by Francois Zaretti, as all the best yachts are apparently,
the yacht features an interior with extensive marble work, eight
state rooms, eight dragon, a beauty salon, a spa, a gym,

(01:11:52):
a helipad, a swimming pool, and an elevator. It accommodates
sixteen guests and thirty six crew members. But of course,
because of course you have to have the right student
teacher ratio, you need to have the at least two
crew members for every guest if you're gonna live on
a three hundred and something million dollar yacht, Determining the
real ownership of the yacht has been an issue of

(01:12:13):
contention because of an opaque trail of trusts and shell companies.
The yacht is registered in the Cayman Islands and is
owned by a company called Milamarn Investments, which is also
based in the Cayman Islands. The United States says that
it is owned by a guy named Suliman Karimov, an
economist and former Russian politician who was sanctioned by the
US in twenty eighteen for money laundering.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
They say he owns the yacht.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Meanwhile, a former chairman and CEO of the state controlled
Russian oil and gas company called Rosneft, a guy named
Edward Kudanatov, who has not been sanctioned, claims that he
owns the yacht, but prosecutors say that he doesn't really
own the yacht. It's just designed to hide the fact
that this other guy, Karimov really owns the yacht, and

(01:12:57):
litigation over who really owns it is on going now.
I asked you the question as we went into the break,
why might they not be able to sell this thing
even for a small fraction, now, a small fraction of
its value? The yacht has been virtually untouched since the
National Maritime Services took custody of it a few years ago.

(01:13:20):
To submit a sealed bit on it, you have to
put a ten million euro deposit down. That's the equivalent
of about eleven and a half million dollars just to
be considered. Now here's the reason that they might not
be able to sell this for even what you know,
people who are in that world would consider a small

(01:13:43):
amount of money, and that is it is unclear that
international law would recognize the sale. It is unclear under
international law that whoever buys it in this auction being
put on by the American government would be considered the
actual owner. And it's it could happen that somebody could

(01:14:11):
sail the ship into you know, somewhere some other country.
It's got their own laws, and the government there could
seize the ship and go to the you know, the
person who they say really owns it and say here
you can have it back, or if it's a corrupt government. Right,
if somebody was willing to pay three hundred million dollars

(01:14:32):
for this yacht, then if that person is still around
and still is very very very wealthy, that person is
probably willing to spend ten million dollars to get it
back or twenty million dollars to get it back, so
somebody could buy this from the US government, sail it
into Cairo, and the government there say, all.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Right, get off the boat, we don't recognize it as yours.
You're out, and then get I get in touch with.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
This Russian dude and say you can have your boat back,
but there's a twenty million dollars fee for cleaning the
boat before you take it back, and then you can
have it back.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
So that I think that's a reason.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Why they may have a very hard time selling the boat,
even for what seems like a.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Small amount of money. Small amount money. I want to
share another story with you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
This is not the most important story, but I absolutely
love it and I've got it up on the blog.
I actually had it on the blog on Friday too,
but I didn't get to it. With a tweet from
the Royal New Zealand Air Force RNZAF one of my
favorite acronyms in the world. I just assigned my name,
you know, Ross Kaminski, Colonel RNZAF, just because I wanted
to write RNZAF. The Royal New Zealand Air Force. What

(01:15:44):
an awesome name for an organization. So this story is
from CBS News. Three people needing medical care were evacuated
from an American research base in Antarctica. New Zealand's Air
Force says during a perilous rescue operation carry out in
freezing temperatures in twenty four hours of darkness, US officials

(01:16:05):
called me the mission nothing short of heroics. So one
person requiring urgent medical care and two others needing some
level of medical care were flown out of McMurdo's station
in a mission that took nearly twenty hours. The Royal
New Zealand Air Force said in a statement that was
last week that the US National Science Foundation, with which

(01:16:26):
operates the station, sent out to call for help because
there weren't enough medical resources at the base. Now they're
not saying what the issues are, what the health issues are,
but listen to this now, a crew on a Royal
New Zealand Air Force C one thirty j Hercules braved
the heartsh conditions and successfully carried out the midwinter medical evacuation. Again,

(01:16:48):
as I said, no information has been given about the
what the medical issues were.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Official set a US.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
Team at the base had to manually create a runway
and ensure the ice was groomed and suitable for landing
in Antarctica's perpetual winter darkness and sub zero temperatures that
you get at this time of the year. After a
detailed analysis of the weather and conditions of the airfield,
the air Force crew. The New Zealand Air Force crew

(01:17:15):
with a doctor on board, used night vision goggles to
carry out the mission. Once on the ice, they kept
the engines of the airplane running to keep them warm
for refueling, a process known as hot refueling, before the
aircraft took off with the three patients, and the aircraft
landed back in christ Church, New Zealand. According to the
Air Force air commodore Andy Scott said, the freezing cold,

(01:17:38):
unpredictable weather conditions and the difficulty of landing on ice
in total darkness make such flights one of the most
challenging for crews to perform. He said, and I'm quoting,
It's an extremely challenging environment to fly in on night
vision goggles due to the extreme weather conditions which are
highly changeable at this time of year and make accurate

(01:17:59):
four casting a challenge. McMurdo station, which is located about
twenty five miles from the world's southernmost active volcano, reported
temperatures of minus eleven degrees fahrenheit just before the mission.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
And what else?

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
The US Embassy in New Zealand said, landing a large
aircraft on ice in darkness using night vision takes precision
and extraordinary skill. We are deeply grateful for the cruise professionalism, courage,
and partnership. The mission was nothing short of heroic. They've
done this before. The New Zealand Air Force had to

(01:18:36):
do similar rescues in twenty twenty one and also last
year as well. But I just think that's such a
cool story. And imagine, seriously, imagine what a badass pilot
you have to be to land on ice while wearing
night vision goggles in minus eleven degrees in total darkness,

(01:19:00):
total darkness. What an incredible thing. Anyway, that's up on
the blog. If you want to go read a little more,
check out the tweet from the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
A lot of other stuff on the blog today, as
every day at.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Rosskiminsky dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
I spend an immense amount of time putting the blog together,
so I hope you'll do me the favor of checking
it out every morning. I also try to bring you
important and interesting news stories as well, so hopefully you'll
find it as a useful way to start your day.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Rosskiminsky dot com will be right back.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
I've had this story for a couple of days, and
I wanted to share it with you just because it's
funny how obsessed somebody is with kitchen appliances as size comparisons.

Speaker 7 (01:19:37):
Oh like, the old thing's bigger than the bread box,
bigger than bread box exactly, and everybody, everybody knows that one.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
And I like that one bigger than a bread box.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Although I wonder how many people these days have ever
even seen a bread box? You know what, does anybody
even know what a bread box is? But actually, I
mean bread box kind of an old thing, even when
you and I were kids, old even then. But check
this out out, Check this out. A climber sustained This
is from the Denver Post from about a week ago.
A climber sustained serious injuries last week after being struck

(01:20:09):
by a microwave sized rock on a fourteen or outside Alamosa.
The incident occurred on the morning of July twenty seventh. YadA, YadA, YadA.

Speaker 7 (01:20:18):
There's different sizes of microwaves though, because you have the
little tiny ones that you actually have to rotate the
little the little rotator thing that you turned the little
knob like TV Dill plus then you got the one
that you had, I think the drawer style one, and
those are pretty massive.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
Those are pretty massive.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
So in fact, I'm getting one of those drawer microwaves
for the new house Kristin. I don't like them, but
Kristen wanted one. I don't like them, but I'm not
in charge, so I'm getting one of those.

Speaker 7 (01:20:44):
So whoever, just just a big discrepancy of those so
microwave sized.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Yeah, I'm still lost. Yeah, I'm still lost too. Now.
Just Sam Tibatchnik, who is quite a good reporter. Actually,
I like his work for the Denver Post. He dragging.
He's giving us a little bit more clarification, just a
little bit though, and I just want to see if
it helps you kind of an envision what we're talking
about here. This rock kind of rolling down the mountain

(01:21:10):
on little Bear peek and hitting this hitting this climber
with this microwave sized rock. Here's what It says, a
boulder sized between you ready ready sized between a microwave
and a dishwasher tumble down the summit along with other
large rocks. The woman and her husband managed to duck

(01:21:30):
behind some cliff bands, but they watched another climber tumble
some thirty feet down the steep slope.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
The group called nine one one. The man was unconscious.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
So does that how much does that help you out?
The boulder is sized between a microwave and a dishwasher.

Speaker 7 (01:21:47):
I do enjoy the dishwasher size because I do feel
those are slight somewhat, yes, because yeah, you can have
the countertop microwave, you have the drawer microwave, you have
the above the above range microwave dishwashers.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
They only fluctuate by an inch or two. Yeah, with
and heights right, so I'm okay with dishwasher size foulder,
but between microwave size, which could be I don't know,
yay big yeah, and a fewer than half of us
can see this, but yeah, it's it's pretty small hm
and massive yeah right, Yeah, they're like that tiny little

(01:22:20):
microwave that doesn't have a digital thing, just the knob
that you spend to go one minute, two minute, three minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
That might be on the counter of a very small.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
Gas station that sells old burritos or something that you
can heat up in there, versus like like Dragon said,
the drawer microwave, the thirty inch wide drawer microwave that
my wife made me buy. So yeah, there's a big rain.
So I don't know. I don't know just how big
it was, but I do. I just did want to

(01:22:49):
give a shout out to Denver Post reporter Sam to Batchnik,
to his to his absolute commitment to the to the
use of kitchen appliances. Why not say as metaphors for
or not metaphors, but as I don't know what word
I'm looking for, but but as a way to convey
to us the size of a boulder that hit a

(01:23:09):
guy on a mountain. And I'm I'm every bit as
confused as you are Dragon as to you know just
how big that rock is, not knowing how big the
microwaven question is. But I'm fully on board with Sam's
commitment to using kitchen appliances in that way.

Speaker 7 (01:23:25):
And I love odd measurement sizes, so I'd be curious
is out there in the texting world five six six
nine zero. What odd standard measurement do you use? Do
you say, oh, it's heap cube it Yeah, it's rod size.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
Uh huh yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:23:41):
So is is there a strange measurement that you use
in your family?

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
You know? No, that's a chair size, basketball shoe size?
Yeah right, it's it's running shoe size. So is it
is it my wife's running shoe woman six and a half? Right?
Or is it Shaquille O'Neal right? Yeah right, I don't
know you need? Is there even a thing I don't
know here? It's five six six nine zero. That's a
that's a wacky question. What's your strangest unit of measure

(01:24:08):
that you actually use? That you actually use? You anything
you've ever actually said? Gush, that's thing. That thing's the
size of baseball hat? Baseball right? Dragon said that because
I'm wearing a baseball hat right now. Sill still, I'll
take it off.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
Uh anyway, there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
So yes, well done, Sam with that particular commitment. When
we come back, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's
a power outage. Ralph and black Forest says, hey, we
have a bread box. Uh huh uh ross if it
was dishwasher sized? Was it the size of Joy Behar's butt? Uh?

(01:24:45):
If it's between the size of a microwave and a dishwasher,
does that mean it's trash compactor size? Ross? Do you
guys video recorder live stream the show anywhere?

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
No, I wouldn't mind getting to that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
We need to get you know, management around here to
be willing to spend a little more money then they're
currently spending on putting in permanent cameras in the studio.

Speaker 2 (01:25:10):
As it stands.

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
Every once in a while we do our koa cast,
usually me and Mandy for some you know, election related
thing or something, and a Rod will come in and
set up his own cameras and we do a Facebook
live stream and stuff like that. We we would like
to be able to get to be able to I
don't think I would want to live stream the whole
show ever, but I do think I wouldn't mind live

(01:25:32):
streaming let's say, some part of each show or or
something something like that. I have to say that a
part of the reason that I like being on the
radio is that I'm not on camera all the time, right,
and you can pick your nose without fear exactly exactly
I get my elbow into my nose without fear. If

(01:25:52):
I could turn it that much and only dragon could
see me, and and there is there is something to
be said about being able to come into work not
really caring how I dress, not really caring much about
you know, appearance, your haircut. Sit down, here, do the job.
I could have the worst haircut in the world like
I do right now, and nobody cares. And I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
There's also something different about knowing you're on camera.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
It's a little bit hard to describe, but I find it.
It adds an extra level of something that, even if
it's subconscious, you feel like you're paying attention to and
maybe distracts you from your trying to thought.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
And since I'm already squirrel, what was I saying?

Speaker 7 (01:26:36):
Bigger than our dog is one of the measurements here,
A good one, the size of a muffler. Nice, I
use a banana. I use a banana for scale. So
if I'm trying to be funny and trying to figure
out how big something else is, this is a banana
for scale.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:26:56):
I like the classic Groucho Marx jokeme flies like an arrow,
fruit flies like a banana. That is a very very
deep joke. You need to think about that a lot.
The size of a school boss. Okay, uh, my dishwasher
is twenty six by twenty four and thirty five inches tall.
It sounds about right now. It's thirty five inches tall.

(01:27:17):
It sounds a little tall for a dishwae furlongs per fortnite?
All right, that's good potatoes or hippopotamums business.

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
A smoot is five to seven, which is a unit
of measure named after mister Smoot. Which smoot is That
is that like the Holly Smoot tariffs ross the hat
are their hail sized peas rather than get it and
rather than pea sized hail are their hal size. There's
a lot of good units here, a lot of good
units of measure. Aloha from Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
Well, aloha back at you. It's pretty early out there.

Speaker 7 (01:27:48):
I once described something as being the size of Nickelback's
fan base.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
So is that enormous or tiny? And it could be both?
Could be both.

Speaker 7 (01:27:58):
Yeah, it's like Schrodinger's cat here. Mean, there could be enormous,
but it could be that one guy.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
I mean, if you went to a Nickelback concert, probably
that would be enormous, But if you ask around here,
like the couple people you're listening to right now, probably
pretty small the Nickelback fan base. All right, that's really good.
That's really good.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
Okay, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a power outage.
So this is a fun story from the from Dailyboulder
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
And I don't know if that relates to Boulder.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
Colorado or somewhere else, but there's a town in British
Columbia called Ashcroft, small town I think, and a fire
broke out there and when the firefighters arrived, they found
that actually some local ranchers and some folks from the
hydroelectric power company up in that area are actually already

(01:28:58):
battling the flame, the flames for this fire, and.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
They ended up using This is kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
I don't think I've ever seen a statistic like this
related to putting out a fire before. But they said
roughly forty eight hundred gallons of water were used to
put the fire out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Dragon. Have you ever heard have you ever heard serious?

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
Now? Have you ever heard a question? Have you ever
heard a story about putting out a fire that referenced
with some specificity the number of gallons of water used
to put out the fire. Maybe no, no, no, I
don't think I have. I don't think I have this
when they say roughly forty eight hundred gallons of water

(01:29:36):
we used to put out the fire. But the question
for this fire is how did it happen? Right? A
lot of times a fire will be started by lightning,
or a fire will be started by a careless camper
or some other kind of human error. But in fact,
here's what appears to have happened. You ready, an osprey

(01:30:02):
to large, fairly large bird of prey, not large like
a golden eagle or something, but a bird of prey
that often hunts fish. Apparently caught a fish about one
in three quarter miles away and picked it up and
was just flying with it, and at some point decided

(01:30:24):
to drop the fish, and it dropped the fish, the
fish hit the power line. The impact of the fish
on the power line caused sparks, and I guess probably
the fish itself probably got a little bit crispy and
created some embers made of burning fish, and that stuff
dropped into dry brush, triggering the fire. So they say,

(01:30:45):
we do suspect by the size of the fish and
the heat of the day that probably caused.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
The rather tired bird to drop its catch.

Speaker 1 (01:30:51):
Another suspicion could be that it's tired of raw fish
and wanted to try.

Speaker 2 (01:30:55):
Some cooked fish.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
The bird responded didn't stick around, but appears to have
escaped unharmed.

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
It's a bird, it's a plane. It is a power
outage from a dropped fish. I kind of like that story,
especially since I think nobody nobody died.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
Are you going to say something else?

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
Dragon?

Speaker 7 (01:31:14):
You look quick? I was just reading over some of
the others. The measurements here. My dishwasher is six foot
and two hundred and fifteen pounds. Nice, no ties, no makeup,
no problem, It's the Dragon Redbeard Show.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
I would also add no pants.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
Yeah, anything else? Are we just going to sit here
with dead air and leave all the listeners waiting waiting
for what Dragon's going to say next? Would lose half
the listeners and management comes running in.

Speaker 7 (01:31:44):
The drawer microwave was expensive, Yes, random and random. My
drawer microwave was expensive and randomly heated items. I would
like to see you shoot at the trash can to
see how accurate dragons Play by play is I'm assuming
that's references to us.

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
No, but what does he want me to?

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
Oh, I see right? To do it on camera so
we can see if Dragon.

Speaker 7 (01:32:08):
Are you really gonna question Dave Logan's play by play
and watch the game when you can have? Would Dave
Logan's beautiful color commentary?

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
Should we get Dave Logan in to do play by
play on me? Shooting a crumpled up piece of paper
into the trash can immensely better than me doing mine,
for sure?

Speaker 2 (01:32:24):
Oh, man, next.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
Time we see him during the show, and he's not
around here all that often during my show.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
He comes in later in the day.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
But if it happens Dragon any day, if you see
Dave come in during my show, grab him and we'll
just bring him in and have him do the have
do the call.

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
He's the best.

Speaker 1 (01:32:42):
And of course, of course he's one of the only
people in the history of of sports to be drafted
into Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL. Dave
Winfield did it h those three, was drafted in those three.
He played baseball, Dave play foot So that guy can
call any sport. I mean, he'd probably be the best

(01:33:03):
at calling curling. If he wanted to right, So forty
eight hundred gallons is one hundred barrels standard oil well
truck size. See the stuff that our listeners know, Dragon,
Oh it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Oh I love that ross so much.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
To unpack from that last segment, I have a bread
box that I ordered from Amazon a year ago.

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
It's a double decker.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
Did you know Custom Kitchen used to have bread garages
built into their cabinetry. I use a dollar bill for measurement.
It's six inches. Lastly, I heard that wearing ball caps
a lot could cause you to lose your hair. Maybe
rethink that all right, So I don't normally wear baseball
caps a lot. I was wearing a baseball cap today
because I still have a.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
Very very bad haircut going on.

Speaker 1 (01:33:41):
Although it's starting to come in, it doesn't look as
bad as it did before. But from doing my awesome
hair restoration thing with advanced hair about ten days ago,
it's already looking great. Actually. But I'm just sort of
wearing the hat to go to and from the studio.

Speaker 2 (01:33:55):
Between the car and the studio. I probably don't need to.

Speaker 7 (01:33:58):
And I would counter your baseball cap theory with if
that were truly the case yeah, every Major League Baseball player.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
Would be bald, right, they're yeah, not right.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
Good point. All right, let's talk about something else. I
started the show with this. I want to come back
to it, and let's get a little personal here. I
have I have all this other stuff to do with
AI and economics and YadA, YadA, YadA, and I'll get
to that stuff tomorrow. Oh, I had a hawk drop
a brainless squirrel two feet in front of me.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
Nice.

Speaker 7 (01:34:28):
Maybe we should do turtle races on the radio and
film it. Yeah, okay, I actually did that downstairs.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Really when when we were one.

Speaker 7 (01:34:36):
Of the Broncos playoff Super Bowl runs. Yeah, we My
sister actually has two turtles and she brought those in
and we raced them to see if it was going
to be the Broncos of the Patriots, I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
And lobsters. We did a lobster race too.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
Where'd you get the lobsters?

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
And what did you do with them?

Speaker 7 (01:34:52):
From the fish place down the down down the way
they came in and brought in some lobsters. Oddly enough,
lobsters on land move backwards, they don't go forward. Some
of the things you learned were some of the things
some of the things you learn.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
For here's a listener text to the person who said
that my dishwasher is six feet two hundred and fifteen pounds.
Another listener who's making certain assumptions here says six feet
two fifteen that's a big lady. Yeah, don't make assumptions,
especially not in twenty twenty five. That won't go over
very well. All right, let's talk for a minute, please.

(01:35:31):
So during the eleven o'clock break, like forty five minutes ago,
I was texting with my older kid. My older kid
is about to drive from western Idaho into eastern Oregon

(01:35:51):
on the last or next to last leg of his
trip to the Seattle area, where he is going to
find an apartment rent with a friend of his who's
moving out there with him, find an apartment to rent,
start at junior college out there, take you know, take
classes for a year, and then probably just one year,

(01:36:12):
but we'll see, and then use that to apply to
a four year college, probably in Canada.

Speaker 2 (01:36:19):
But anyway, you don't need to know all that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
What you need to know is that a little before
ten am on Saturday morning, our first kid, our baby,
loaded up his car while it was loaded already got
in his car and left, and is you know, turning
into an adult. And the one kind of interesting thing

(01:36:42):
that I think is a bit different between what I
expect from my kid versus my college experience. So when
I was in college, my family lived just outside of Washington, DC,
and I was in college in New York City, and
it's not very far and maybe a four four hour drive,
I don't remember four hour drives something like that. Or

(01:37:02):
you take a bus, or or you go to Grand
Central Station and you take an Amtrak train just down
to d C.

Speaker 2 (01:37:08):
It's easy.

Speaker 1 (01:37:09):
And so when I was in college, every vacation, I
would come home to suburban Maryland, just outside of DC.
Every vacation I was home, I had a job. We
lived in a town called Bethesda, which used to be
a medium small town at the time. It's kind of
like a city now it's actually kind of kind of nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:37:29):
But anyway, I would come home. I had a job.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
I worked basically every vacation, and I was home right
with my parents, with my I'm the oldest, so my
siblings were there. And then at some point I call
her my older sister. She's younger than I am, but
the older of my two sisters went to college and
was away for a bit, but I was around a lot,

(01:37:55):
and I didn't have my own apartment or anything like that.
I lived in the dorms. But my kid now is
moving to another city that's much further away. You can't
just easily get on a train or drive a few
hours and be home, and is not going to be
living in a dorm. Is going to be renting a
little apartment with a friend. They're gonna be splitting the rent,

(01:38:19):
and then you know, may end up going to college
in Canada. And I just think it's going to be
really different. My kid is not going to be home
during college the way I was when I came home
during breaks during college. I was coming home. I still
had a bedroom, I still had my stuff. It was
still my house until I was done with college and

(01:38:41):
then moved out, and that was that could get free
meals and do your laundry, all that, all that, and
but with my kids, it's kind of like my kid
has moved on to that sort of more adult phase
of life at the beginning of college that I didn't
move to until the end of college.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
And it's it's an interesting thing. And I mentioned this.

Speaker 1 (01:39:04):
Earlier in the show, and I'll just say it again
for those who aren't listening before, and also in case Mandy.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Didn't hear before, because Mandy's with us.

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
Now that you know. So, my kid left like nine
forty am on Saturday, and you know, I was just
getting the car. We were big hugging and drive away
and waving and that's it. And that's it. It's not
like I'm never going to see him again. But it's
an odd feeling. And for me, I didn't feel very

(01:39:33):
much wistfulness, a little bit, no sadness. It was I'm
incredibly excited for my kid, and especially with some of
the struggles my kid has gone through that Mandy knows about.
I was never sure i'd get to this day. I
was never sure I would get to this day where
where this kid would be off in a way that

(01:39:54):
I thought he would be thriving and happy, and I
thought this might never happened.

Speaker 2 (01:40:01):
And now he's going.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
And so for me, there were there are, you know,
a couple of moments where I thought, gosh, this is weird.
He's not like coming back after this road trip. He's
not gonna be you know, back in his room, coming
down to have dinner with us and talk about life,
the universe and everything.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
He's just gone.

Speaker 1 (01:40:19):
And and Kristin, my wife, has been a little bit
sad over the past couple of days. I won't say
not mostly sad, but moments of sadness where she'd say, yeah,
I feel a little bit teary, like my baby's not
coming back. And it's an interesting thing.

Speaker 2 (01:40:36):
It's it's as Kristin also.

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
Said to me, she said, this feels big and and
it and it does feel big.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
Anybody want to, you know, say anything to me.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
About any of your own thoughts, your own experience, advice
and anything like that. Text me at five six six
nine zero. But Mandy, what do you what do you
think about any of that? You're a You're a few
years behind me, but not way behind me.

Speaker 4 (01:40:56):
Well a few years behind you and a few years.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
Ahead of and a few years ahead of me, right, because.

Speaker 8 (01:41:00):
We already did this with with one set of kids, right,
And I'd love to tell you, no, it's everything's the same.
It's not nothing will ever be the same again. But
that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:12):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:41:12):
The relationship that I have with my adult.

Speaker 8 (01:41:14):
Children now is completely different than the relationship I had
with my with them when they were children, and in
many ways it's.

Speaker 4 (01:41:23):
So much better.

Speaker 8 (01:41:24):
There's less stress, and we can have conversations about pretty much,
I mean anything, no holds barred, and I can talk
to them in a way that I'm not constantly trying
to manage kid feelings, you know what I mean. So, yeah,
it does change everything, and it's never going to be
the same. I mean, I don't want to pile on
with Kristen, but but it's not necessarily a bad thing overall.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:41:48):
It's first of all, I mean, you don't want your
kid at home forever. No one should want that, you know.
And good for them that they are going and doing
and pursuing the life that they want to have. And
so it's a mixed blessing. But yeah, it's never going
to be the same after this. It just isn't by design,
you know what I mean. By design?

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
Yeah, And for me, you know, you say it's a
mixed blessing, and I fully get it, and that means
there's some positive stuff and some negative stuff. Yeah, and
for me, the positives massively, almost infinitely outweigh the negative.
Like it'll okay, there'll be some times where I wish
the kid was around we could have a conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:42:28):
But that's why God created dip face time.

Speaker 1 (01:42:31):
Yes, right, And I'm just and you know, you know
some of our family story with all this, Mandy, just.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
The fact that this kid is like.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):
Going somewhere and doing something and being happy is such
an almost miraculous thing to me that I can't be
sad about it really at all.

Speaker 4 (01:42:49):
I don't think you should be sad.

Speaker 8 (01:42:51):
And I realize that some parents really suffer from the
empty nest thing, but for me, it's like I'm always
excited to see what they're going to do next, you
know what I mean. It's almost like like even with
my sixteen year old daughter, she does things now at
sixteen that I look at and I think, boy, that's
going to bite her in the butt when she's an adult.
But then then I also think, wow, that's going to

(01:43:13):
be a really impressive skill that she already has when
she's an adult.

Speaker 4 (01:43:17):
So I just, I don't know.

Speaker 8 (01:43:18):
I'm a very forward looking person anyway. I will tell
you this, Ross, it's hard when your kids come back
and all of a sudden they have all their own
opinions and I'm not saying that your kids don't already,
because I know your kids, but their opinions that are
now shaped by experiences that you had nothing to do with,
and that's a little disconcerting.

Speaker 4 (01:43:37):
I think I thought that that's disconcerting.

Speaker 1 (01:43:39):
My older kid is already very much in that direction,
so many opinions that I don't know where they came from,
and I actually don't agree with. But it's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
I'm just glad he's got them. Draggon, what are you
going to say.

Speaker 7 (01:43:51):
I've got two boys that have moved out already, and
I've actually really loved the fact that my parent hat
is off. I don't have to every time I see
them or talk to them about something. I don't have
to be. You know that that guiding light. I can
more or less move towards being their friend. Yep, And
that's that's that's a world still.

Speaker 4 (01:44:12):
A guiding light. You never get out of that role
completely as a parent.

Speaker 7 (01:44:15):
But I can lean more towards being friendly with them
and joking around with them and having a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:44:21):
Exactly right. I got a bunch of stuff today.

Speaker 8 (01:44:25):
Oh my gosh, I just unplugged my computer thing Okay,
The Rocky Mountain Voice has done a very interesting series
on oil and gas and Jared Poulis's ferocious attack on
one specific company. We're going to talk to the editor
of The Rocky Mountain Voice, Jen Schuman about that, and
theynre just kind of getting caught up a little bit,
you know what I mean, because I was off last week.
Blah blah blah. Tell you a little bit about that.

Speaker 4 (01:44:48):
So it's just gonna be one.

Speaker 1 (01:44:48):
Of those shows, all right, And just to brief update
for my listeners in a few seconds or less, how
are you How are you feeling?

Speaker 8 (01:44:55):
I am fantastic. I mean feel like I had surgery, yes,
but zero pain. All is well. The hardest thing I'm
gonna have to do is not do anything for the
next six to eight week, sixty seven weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:45:08):
Everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous show. Great to have
her back on the air after that, after that surgery,
there's really no such thing as truly minor surgery, and
surgery or it's not right.

Speaker 2 (01:45:18):
So it's great to have you back.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
Mandy.

Speaker 8 (01:45:20):
Thanks