09-10-25 - *FULL SHOW* Drones in Poland; Al Pitrelli-Trans-Siberian; Leland Vittert

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got some very interesting guests, including Leland Viddert from

(00:03):
News Nation, who will be on with us in half
an hour. An hour after that, at about ten forty,
we are going to have state Senator and now Republican
candidate for Governor Barb Kirkmeyer, and so we'll talk about
her campaign. And then toward the end of the show
at eleven thirty three ish, we are going to have

(00:23):
Al Petrelli, the musical director of Trans Siberian Orchestra. This
guy's played with Mega Death and played with Alice Cooper
and just an incredibly incredible musician, really interesting guy. Talk
a little about music, talk a little about Trans Siberian Orchestra,
which is coming back to Colorado. Actually tickets go on
sale tomorrow for like the pre sale and then the

(00:45):
next to day for the big sale. And they're doing
two shows in Denver in November, November fifteenth, and then
two shows in Colorado Springs the next day.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So anyway, we'll talk with Al Patrelli. We we got
an immense amount of stuff to do, So.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Just before we went on the here like literally twenty
seconds before I hit the button to turn the microphone
on or something like that, producer A Rod who I'm
working with today, said are you ready for World War three?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Here it comes?

Speaker 1 (01:11):
And so you heard you heard Pat Woodard talk about
it in the news, And basically what happened yesterday is
a bunch of Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace, and
Poland and a couple other countries scrambled jets.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
A few of the drones got shot down.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Donald Tusk, who is the president the Prime Minister of Poland,
tweeted a bunch of things, one of them being my
thanks and congratulations to the Polish Operational Command in our
NATO pilots for shooting down Russian drones over Poland. Actions
speak louder than words. And I got to Ben Albright
is also, I mean, Ben was in the military, is

(01:52):
very on top of all this kind of news. He
texted me yesterday as this stuff was breaking, saying, Ross,
You're gonna be very busy tomorrow look at all this
stuff that's going going on. And I guess at the moment,
it seems like things have kind of calmed down.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
They shot them down. Russia hasn't said anymore.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Poland, you know they're gonna have a meeting with the
NATO countries and so on. But it seems like it
has moved pretty quickly from shooting things to talking about
a meeting.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
The meeting will not include Russia.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Nevertheless, the fact that and this is not the first
time that a Russian drone has crossed into Polish air space,
but I think it's the first time there have been
this many.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
And it's likely that it was intentional.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Belarus, which is a Russian puppet state, and where the
drones entered Poland was near the intersection of Poland, Russia
and Belarus. So Belarus said, well, there were like there
were jamming mechanisms aimed at these drones, and it jammed
their systems, and that's what caused them to go into Poland.

(02:52):
I sort of doubt that, but I don't know. I
don't know if we'll ever find out, But in any case,
the tensions are certainly ratcheting up over there. And that said,
as I checked on this last night, and I have
not checked again this morning, I guess I I guess
I could real quick here, let me do this, let
me do this real quick. But as I was checking

(03:14):
last night looking at international stock markets, the European markets
generally were were up. So let me just take a
quick look here. Let's see world indicase, let me just
check this website I like, I like to look at.
Let's go to Europe if if I can here, we'll
see if this works. Let's see down a little, down

(03:36):
a little maybe yesterday. I mean, but the initial the
initial reaction was actually up of France is up a
little bit, Germany's down a little.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Bit anyway, and it would kind of a yawn.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
So we better hope there's not world War three because
that would be bad, and because Vladimir Putin might actually
be crazy enough to use a nuclear weapon if he
feels caught in cornered. Of course he wants us to
think that as well. It's in his it's in his
just for us to think that. But anyway, it seemed
like it could be very very messy. As it is,

(04:06):
it seems like things have calmed.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Down, which reminds me.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Also.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
The other military story we had yesterday, of course, was
the Israel strike on Hamas targets in Doha.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
In Kutter, and I got just a couple things to say.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
About that as we were talking about this yesterday morning,
because the news broke up during Colorado Morning News and.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Then we talked about it on my show.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Was a morning story yesterday, it was being reported that
the Trump administration knew about the attack. But when I
got home in the afternoon started reading a little more news,
the headlines were more along the lines of the White
House was frustrated and surprised, and infuriated was another one

(04:48):
infuriated by the attack. And ABC has a headline that
I think, when you put all this together, seems like
it might be the most plausible headline. And that is,
and I'm quoting for MAYBC News, Israel told US military
of plan to strike Hamas, but didn't say where. So

(05:10):
that probably explains that bit of confusion with somebody saying
the United States was aware of the attack, but then
the Trump administration saying we're a little annoyed about it.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Now.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Trump didn't go, you know, both barrels crazy against Israel.
Trump said that he didn't think this necessarily furthered Israel's
interest or America's interests. But then Trump also said, and
I'm paraphrasing now, that these people are legitimate targets based
on what they've done.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
The other thing I would note about.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
This, the very very I have only heard one report,
and I don't know how credible it is that mentioned
the death of a Katari civilian and they said they
think maybe one Katari civilian died. Right, if five or ten,
or fifty or one hundred had died would be a
very different story. But the fact that it seems to

(06:03):
be zero or one is part of the reason. And
then you add this Russia thing and other stuff going
on in the world. This has kind of moved off
the front pages pretty quickly, which is a rather interesting thing. Right,
you have this incredibly Oh the other thing I wanted
to mention at this point, it seems and this news
could change, right, this could definitely change. I don't think

(06:25):
we have the final information, but it seems that Israel
did not take out their primary targets. They hit the
building they wanted to hit. It wasn't that the rockets
hit the wrong target. It's that the people they wanted
to kill weren't Either they weren't in the building or
they weren't close enough to the explosion to be killed.

(06:45):
So Israel took out some Hamas members and they were
probably fairly senior if they were there in Cutter but
not really the ones they wanted to take out. In
any case, the story is already mostly off the front pages.
I thought the interesting part, in particular was what Trump
knew and when Trump knew it. We still have a
ton of stuff to do on today's show, keep it

(07:07):
right here on KOA. Tomorrow, Ben Albright is going to
be in for me, and as you may recall from
last time, Ben likes to analogize my show to a
kind of vehicle, to a vehicle, and then he endeavors
not to crash the vehicle, whatever the vehicle may be.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
So the first time he filled in.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
For me, he said, I'm you know, I hope I
didn't wreck the Ferrari And I said right, I said,
it's more like a you go or something like that.
So what I would like you to do as a
personal favor to me tomorrow is, at any point during
the show nine to noon when Ben is in, just
text in five six six nine zero. Just text it

(07:46):
and say Ben, please don't wreck the and then put
in any kind of vehicle you want. It could be
a luxury vehicle, it could be an old beater, it
could be an Edsel, it could be rusted out. Nineteen
ninety seven Saturn, anything at all, but just text into
Ben Albright at five six six nine zero tomorrow and
say Ben, don't wreck thee and then just.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Put in any vehicle you want.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, coming up in about fifteen minutes, we're gonna have
Leland Vidord on the show he hosts on Balance on NewsNation,
which is my favorite show on cable news seven PM
on News Nation here in the Mountain time zone. And
one of the interviews he did yesterday was with doctor
Marty McCarey, who has been a guest on this show,
but not since he became head of the FDA. I

(08:29):
haven't had him on since he got that job, and
it was a fascinating interview. And one of the things
that Marty McCarey said is that they the FDA are
getting much more aggressive now on pharmaceutical advertising, which is
not a big surprise given who is HHS secretary right

(08:50):
with RFK Junior, and a lot of folks to RFK
in the MAHA movement and actually many just regular people
as well certainly understand that or or feel as if
we are constantly being bombarded by drug ads. And I'll
tell you what, I watch a lot of cable news,

(09:12):
and as cable news goes, I am very much on
the young side of their average audience. Right the average
cable news viewer for Fox or CNN or MSNBC, all
of them, I was like early seventies, believe it or not,
is the average age. So I'm very very young for
their audience. And I don't need all these drugs. I
don't think about all these but like when I have

(09:33):
the news on, especially on a weekend morning, which is
probably even more likely to have older people watching than
younger people watching, probably every other ad is a drug ad,
and I'm just I'm.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Sick of them now.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
I do think pharmaceutical companies have free speech rights, And
where this is.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Going to become interesting is.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Where do the free speech rights end and prevention of
misleading or fraudulent ads begin. And what Martin mcarey said
was so the FDA can send seasoned assist letters, essentially
telling pharmaceutical companies you can't keep running that ad because
that ad is misleading or doesn't otherwise.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Comply with the rules.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
And what doctor McCarey said was two years ago, the
FDA only sent out one such letter all year, and
last year they sent none, and Marty said that he
just yesterday, if I understood him, had sent out one
hundred and eight letters to pharmaceutical companies saying you can't
run that ad anymore. And it basically their argument is

(10:36):
that the ad is deceptive, although it's a little bit
broader than that, because within the rules governing pharmaceutical advertising,
you're supposed to give and this is a key thing,
you're supposed to give the side effects.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
And I don't know the exact.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Wording, but you're supposed to give essentially all the potential,
all the somewhat likely significant side effects. And their argument
is that these companies are doing a couple things.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
They're either not naming enough.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Side effects or and I think this one is even
more often, they are putting the side effects in the
commercial in a way where music plays over it a
little bit, or where the visuals on the screen are
so distracting that it's that you would expect a viewer

(11:28):
to hardly be able to pay attention to what they're
hearing because their eyes are taking up their their brain activity.
And so they're gonna start cracking down on this and
it's gonna be very interesting. McCarry said that drug companies
spend up to twenty five percent of their budgets on advertising.
I don't know if that's true, but if it is,

(11:48):
that's an enormous number when you think about how big
their budgets are. McCarry said, those billions of dollars would
be better spent on lowering drug prices for everyday Americans.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
If companies are.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Spending that much on adverts, that goes to tell you
how profitable those particular drugs are. You might even say
they're overpriced, although that's a little bit more of a
judgment call than how profitable they are. Nevertheless, the other
thing to keep in mind on this is the fact
that I'm seeing so many ads, and I'm annoyed by
seeing so many ads, But the fact that I'm seeing
so many ads means that these media companies that are

(12:20):
running the ads are getting an incredible amount of revenue
from the drug companies, so they might want to protect
that revenue too. The whole thing's going to be very interesting,
but I think in general, I think the American public
is going to be very sympathetic to the government in this.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
To Marty McCarey, two r FK.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
With the idea that there is too much pharmaceutical advertising
and that the ads do not comply with the regulations
regarding making sure people understand the risks and the side effects.
So we'll keep an eye on all that. When we
come back. Leland Vitter joins the show. I mentioned this
every time because I never fail to read Leland's war

(13:01):
Notes that come out in the afternoon, which I like
because I get bombarded with stuff in the morning, so
I like getting the afternoon email. If you go to
war notes dot com, you can sign up for Leland's
daily email, which is basically his show prep, and you'll
kind of see what's in his brain. And then the
other thing I'll mention before we own before yeah, before
we start a conversation. The other thing I'll mention is
his book Born Lucky, a remarkable book that we'll talk

(13:24):
about a little this time and then more next time
I have him on the show.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
But you can get started with with the pre order at.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Born luckybook dot com. All right, Leland, it's been a
busy week. It's good to have you back. Thanks for
making time for us.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Always good to be with you. Ross And you were
looking because my video disappeared for a minute. Ross always
makes you connect with a video link, and he got
very nervous because I was my video disappeared. But I
am here.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
For you, all right, very good and nice flag on
the wall behind you wherever you are. Before before we
jump into the heavy stuff, you went to your sister
in law's wedding that brought you to Colorado. How was Colorado?

Speaker 4 (14:10):
Colorado is always where my heart will be. I spent
three years here and it was the best three years
of my life there in Colorado, and was up in
Aspen for my sister in law's wedding and was reminded
how the mountains are renewing to us and how they
bring you back to what matters, which was one of

(14:35):
the just wonderful moments of the summer, was to be
there with them.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, I share that you and I have both lived
in Chicago and either in or near DC, and I'm
very happy living here and hopefully one day you'll be
able to move back here when you're profession or whatever.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
You know.

Speaker 4 (14:52):
When I got my job, I was an angry at
KATIEVR for three years and when I got a job
to move overseas with Fox News, the person who I
worked for said, congratulations on your new job. You are
now cursed because you are going to spend the rest
of your life trying to figure out how to get
back to Colorado.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
And he was right, very good.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
All right, So I talk to you about every two
weeks on the show, and just in the way the
world works, and especially the rapid news cycle and so on,
it's pretty rare that, other than war, the same thing
is really the central topic of conversation. You know, two
weeks later, we're just constantly moving on. But last time

(15:33):
I talked to you, the primary topic of our conversation
was crime, and now it clearly still is. And this
horrific killing of this innocent young girl, young lady, whatever
you want to call her in Charlotte Arena.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
I saw some stuff.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
On your show last night that I wrote about this morning,
and you read all that. But you've been talking a
lot about I'm in the Macro, and I'd like you
to just talk for a minute about how you think
this particular terrible murder maybe or may already be an

(16:14):
important thing in the national conversation, maybe even a thing
that changes elections, as you were talking about with Mark
Helper and yesterday.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
On the show.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
There are inflection moments in our life that we look
back on and say, that was a moment the conversation changed.
And lately it's been because of an image, right it was.
Rodney King was an example, the march on the Selma
Bridge as an example. George Floyd was an example because
you couldn't unsee what was happening, and it required a

(16:48):
conversation about something that existed for a long time, and
then all of a sudden, that image is something that
people realized was capturing this much larger issue that had
been festering and building. And the image of Marina Jeruska

(17:09):
having her throat slashed and then sitting there and grabbing
her throat as no one on the train did anything,
and realizing she was dying, and this man walking out
saying I got the white girl. You see that image,
and it is the personification of a fear of a

(17:29):
huge number of Americans, a huge number of American women
who feel as though they are a waiting to be
victims and b have been bullied into silence about who
is committing the vast, vast majority of violent crimes in America.

(17:53):
And if we want to have honest conversations about how
to solve problems. We have to have honest conversations about
what the problem is and who is who is perpetrating
the crimes. After nine to eleven, the threat was from
Islamic terrorism. There were not a lot of grandmothers hijacking plants.
The statistic I have seen is that fifty percent, a

(18:14):
little bit more than fifty percent of the murders in
America and the vast majority of non relationship murders in
America meaning unknown killer to the victim, are committed by
young blackmales, which to the time the victims are other
young blacks. And if we are going in the vast

(18:34):
majority of these people have already had run ins with
the law. Lots of them have multiple felony arrests but
have been let out because of cashlest bail policies. There
is no other way to get a handle on violent
crime in America than reversing the policies that have allowed
these people to be on the streets as they did

(18:56):
with the case in Charlotte. This is somebody who, by
any objective measure, but for all of the changes after
George Floyd, should have been in jail.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
So prior to watching your show last night, I had
only seen video and still photos up until the moment
just before Irena got stabbed. Right like the last still
and the last piece of.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Video was a.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Terrifying image of the killer with his hand up in
the air about to stab her, like you might see
in a slasher movie.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
And that's horrific enough.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
I hadn't seen anything after that until I saw your
show last night. And on your show last night, I
saw a couple of still pictures from after. I had
imagined her sort of immediately dead, which already would be
bad enough, but she wasn't immediately dead. She was sitting there,
as you said, with with her hand on her throat.
And you know, listen, you can't see Leland, but as

(20:01):
he was talking about it, he put his hand on
his throat.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
I don't know, Leland, I don't even know if you
noticed that you did that.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
And and and she's there with this look of astonishment
and bewilderment, and what the bleep just happened? As she's
slowly dying, and the people around her, not all many
of the people around her get up and walk by
her to get her without offering any help.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
And this whole. Dude.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
I had to turn away from the screen as I
was watching your show just from this still picture because
of that mock me crushed and.

Speaker 4 (20:35):
That And that is the issue, right, is that we
want to turn away. And I hate doing media commentary,
but we all know that if it had been a
black woman and a white assailant, that video would be
playing on repeat on every single network morning show and
every single social media channel, and we would be having

(20:57):
national conversations on and on and on and on and on.
But because the race is reversed, we are not. And
it is so easy to look away. It is so
easy not to think that that could be my wife,
your wife, your daughter, your your friend, any of us.
And people wonder why Donald Trump is getting traction when

(21:23):
he talks about crime. It's because of the fear of
that happening. And you know, for so much of liberal America,
they pretended that this didn't exist. It's not only looking away,
but it's denying the reality for of the fear of
so many Americans.

Speaker 5 (21:43):
And you know.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
Everything in America has come down to politics. It's what
I do. You want to know why people respond to
Donald Trump, It's because he has said you're okay, It's
okay for you to be afraid. Yeah, it's not racist
for you to be afraid. Most people who are good,
decent Americans are not racist. They're just realistic. And the

(22:08):
statistics speak for themselves.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
And just to be clear, when I said I felt
like I had to turn away, it wasn't to try
to get away from the reality of it. I already
understood the reality of it. It was that. And maybe
it's because my kids are only a little bit younger
than Arena. It was because I just didn't want to
burst out in tears. I mean, I'm almost I'm almost
in tears just thinking about it right now, and I'm

(22:31):
not even looking at the picture.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
And she came to America to escape war and lead
a better life and dies on the streets of America
at the hands of a monster who had committed multiple
other violent felonies.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I hate to say this, ross, but all these
people who are crying about Ukraine right now, and that's
a different conversation, but everybody saying we have to save
the Ukrainians, we have to save the Ukrainians, when are
they saving her now that you she's in America.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
And you know, I'm you. I'm sure no, or at
least know a little bit.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Mary Catherine Ham, she was on another network yesterday and
she had a wonderful line that, you know, really.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Kind of stuck with me. She said. I She said, I.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Think it's outrageous how there are so many people who
are who are more upset that people are noticing the
murder than they are upset that there was the murder.
And and I think that's I think that's on target.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
Yeah, And that's that is why I predict that this
will force a real conversation about this issue. And it
needs to. It just it's that simple.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
It's at the risk of making it political when it
really is about that girl's life. This is a This
is a terrible issue for Democrats, and as with most
issues for Democrats that aren't good for them lately, they
find themselves unable to get on the right side of
the issue because the first instinct is to take the
other side of Donald Trump, even when he's on the

(24:03):
right side of the issue, which you talk about a lot.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
Right, Yeah, Donald Trump's political genius is getting his political
opponents to reflexively take the opposite side. And for the
past few weeks, Democrats have been telling us that crime
is not a problem. American cities are safe. Crime in
DC is down. You can walk the streets of Chicago unmolested.
And it's just not true. And we all know it's

(24:27):
not true. And the one surefire way to get on
the wrong side of the American people is to deny
how they feel.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Right.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
It was when Joe Biden told us the economy was great,
people felt it wasn't. When people told us that you
needed to have boys in girls sports, people felt like
that was wrong. It's not how you as a politician.
You cannot capture support by denying how people feel. And

(25:01):
I think that is, by the way, in the flip
side is when you capture how people do feel, there's
something there. Barack Obama was great at it. He realized
in two thousand and eight that America needed optimism and
they needed hope, and they needed the promise of change.
And that's what he delivered Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety two,
same thing. He needed somebody who felt their pain. And

(25:24):
Democrats right now don't seem to be able to do
that because the identity politics part of this and being
social I would call it illiberal, but for them, being
progressive is more important than anything else.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
All right, let me do a couple other topics quickly
with you. Yesterday. I think I might have cheered out
loud when watching your show when you were talking with
that guest who is a former State Department guy, blanking
on his name, Jil Ruin. Yeah, And I really liked
that guy, by the way. He's an excellent guest and

(26:01):
he's very interesting. I really really like him. At one
point in the conversation, he said something like, well, there
needs to be a negotiated solution to the Israel Gaza thing,
and you said, and I could tell that you said
this without thinking, And I don't mean that in a
negative way. You said it without thinking because it's already

(26:21):
so clear in your mind that it's the right answer.
When he said there needs to be a negotiated solution,
you said, no, there doesn't. And I was just cheering
for you, like to have the balls to say that,
because you're right, and I've never heard anybody else on
television say it.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Can you just elaborate briefly on.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
That the concept seems to be that Israel must accept
a suicidal terrorist state swarm to their destruction. On their border.
There is no other country in the world that ever

(27:00):
accept that over the course of history. I mean, that
would be like saying to the United States, hey, we
have to allow imperial Japan to control all of Canada
and post World War two. You can't do that. The

(27:22):
Hamas has sworn declaration is the destruction of the state
of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state with
Jerusalem is their capital. Okay, So asking Israel to accept
that on their border is asking them to simply wait
to be attacked again. That doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
You can't do that.

Speaker 4 (27:45):
And the idea that you can make peace with terrorists
is laughable. It's why, by the way, Israel has made
peace with Egypt and with Jordan, and with the United
Arab Emirates and the other countries of the Abraham Accords,
because those are countries that recognize Israel's right to exist
and have become supportive of it, and Israel's become supportive

(28:06):
of them. It's fairly simple. So I think it is absurd.
And all you have to do ross is take the
next sentence right after you say a negotiated settlement, Well,
who do you have a negotiated settlement with terrorists who
want to kill you.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
That doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (28:22):
It was like us trying to have a negotiated settlement
with Issama bin Lad after nine to eleven. It's preposterous
on its face, but as you point out, nobody will
say it because the Palestinians have been very good at
convincing all of us that Israel is the problem, when
in fact it's them.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
We're talking with Leland Vindert.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
He hosts on Balance on News Nation seven pm with
replay at ten pm Mountain Time Warnoes dot com as
well to get Leland's daily email or at least each
day that he has a show, and you get Leland's
show prep in there, so you kind of understand what's
in his brain.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
All right, I just want to do two minutes with.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
You on one more thing and then we'll talk about
this more the next time I have you.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
On the show.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
But I read your book and it's not published yet,
but I got an advanced version from you. I read
the book. I think the official release is toward the
end of this month.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Is that right.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
September thirtieth, the book comes out Born luckybook dot com
and it is the story of what happened when I
was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism,
and my father decided he would tell no one and
rather than adapting the world to me, as is so

(29:43):
much in vogue right now when everyone has a diagnosis,
he said, I am going to work to adapt Lucky,
which was my nickname.

Speaker 6 (29:51):
To the world.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
And I think most importantly, he realized that being uncomfortable,
that facing adversity as the kid was a good thing.
And I think so many parents now and rightfully so,
because they love their children, but also because this is
very in vogue, don't want their kids to face adversity.
They want things to be as easy as possible for

(30:14):
their kids. And he was right when he forced me
to face adversity head on. Tell the story in the
book of how my IQ tests showed that in some
cases I was mentally retarded. In other cases a genius
would have had huge special considerations for having learning disabilities.
And he said no, he said no accommodations whatsoever. So

(30:37):
that it is the story of him, And obviously you've
gotten a chance to read.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
It's it's a remarkable story.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
I've got so many things I want to ask you
that we'll talk about next time, because next time will
be right, let's see, right before the book publishes, I guess,
so we'll talk about it more next time. But I
just want one quick question. I have a little less
than a minute. You share a lot of stuff about
yourself in there that it is pretty remarkable that somebody

(31:05):
would open that up to the millions of people who
would read the book, and the pain you went through
as a kid, and the struggles you went through as
a kid, and it was you know, as your friend.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
It was hard for.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Me to read some of that, like I can't believe
my friend went through this as a kid.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Why why did you do that?

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (31:22):
Like there was the story of the teacher who inverted
an entire eighth grade class said that if his dog
was as ugly as me, he would shave his dog's
rear end didn't say rear end and make it walk backwards.
And then my dad made me go to school the
next day. It was a little bit like going to therapy,
which I never did as a kid. My dad. I
never had a therapist or anything like that. But now

(31:42):
I'm going to therapy on national television and radio ROSS.
So we'll see how it works out.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
We'll see how it works out.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
The idea is to give parents and kids hope, and
if it does that, then reliving this was worth it.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
It's born luckybook dot com. Go pre order the book
right now, seriously, right now. Go to born luckybook dot
com pre order it. You'll get it just at or
just after the end of this month, and you won't
be able to put it down. It's kind of a
life changing read, I have to say. Leland Verdert's show
is on Balance on News Nation seven pm and ten

(32:16):
pm Mountain time here weekdays.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
It's great to talk to you. Thanks for making.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Time as always, Leland, and thanks for the best show
on cable news.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
All the best, Ross. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll be right
back on k away.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Oh, let me mention this as long as we're talking
stadium and I have some other interesting history for you
in a bit. But if you want to catch Sunday's
Broncos game with my buddy Benjamin Albright, who will actually
be filling in for me tomorrow and with Nick Ferguson,
that'll be at burn Down, Denver off Broadway from two

(32:51):
pm to four pm. All right, So Sunday, two pm
to four pm, burn Down Denver and you can enter
there to win a to the Broncos Raiders game in
Las Vegas. And that is all presented by Arta Tequila,
the official tequila of the Denver Broncos.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
So there's that.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Also want to let you know that at some point
today we're going to be doing the final giveaway and
this is not something you directly participate in, but you'll
hear the announcement on the air of the final giveaway
from Flatirons Fire of this twenty six hundred dollars Napoleon
Gas barbecue grill. And we're gonna do that a little
bit later in the show. We've got twelve entries. One

(33:32):
of those twelve folks will win. You don't have to
be you don't have to be listening to win. You're right,
your entry is there and we got you. But if
you are an entrant, you may hear your name on
the radio. So a couple other stories I want to
do with you right now. So Larry Ellison is the
founder and chairman of Oracle, which is a giant business

(33:55):
software company, database software company and so on. Larry Ellison,
now just do a little math in your head, right,
I tell you know, I didn't promise there would be
no math. So Larry Ellison owns about accord according to Axios,
about one point one six billion with b hares of Oracle.

(34:19):
All right, I'd like to own a thousand shares of Oracle, Okay,
but I don't. Larry Ellison owns one point one six
billion haarires of Oracle.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Oracle announced earnings yesterday.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
And including included in the earnings, they had an enormous
earnings report, and it's basically caused the investment community to
reevaluate Oracle and how much extra profit Oracle might make
as businesses start a bigger transition to AI. So keep

(34:58):
in mind now, and this is very math, because I'm
going to use round numbers to make it easy for
you and for me. Larry Ellison owns one point one
six billion shares of stock. The stock is up, are
you ready now? One hundred dollars a share just under now,

(35:19):
but let's call it one hundred dollars a share. So
Larry Ellison's net worth is up somewhere around one hundred
and fifteen billion dollars today. That's not his total net worth,
that's just the increase today, and with that increase, today,

(35:40):
Larry Ellison has passed Elon.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Musk as the world's richest man. Wow.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Pretty impressive. I don't have more to say about it,
just thought i'd share that with you. That's enough, right,
all right, here's a cool, very nerdy story.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
And this story actually came out a few months ago,
but I missed it.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
And if you're a history nerd at all, or just
generally a nerd, I think you'll find this interesting. So
here is a press release from Harvard. British researchers have
discovered that a quote unquote copy of Magna Carta.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
And by the way, if you really.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Know what you're talking about, when it comes to that
particular document, you don't put the.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Word the in front of it.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Like you would say I looked at the United States Constitution.
You wouldn't do that with Magna Carta. You would just
say I looked at Magna Carta. You don't put THEE
in front of it. A copy of Magna Carta owned
by Harvard Law is in fact an extra extraordinarily rare
original from thirteen hundred, so not a copy. The discovery

(36:46):
by leading Magna Carta experts from King's College, London and
the University of East Anglia. Means that the document which
Harvard Law School acquired in the nineteen forties is just
one of seven from King Edward were the first's thirteen
hundred issue of Magna Carta that still survive.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Considered a key.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Step in the evolution of human rights against oppressive rulers,
Magna Carta has formed the basis of constitutions around the world.
It was influential in the founding of the United States,
from the Declaration of Independence to the framing of the
US Constitution and the subsequent adoption of the Bill of Rights.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
The Harvard Law School bought the.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Document, which has been known as HLS for Harvard Law
School M five one seventy two. And I won't repeat
all that again, but that's just sort of the catalog number.
They bought it in nineteen forty six four Are you
ready now? Twenty seven dollars and fifty cents. Twenty seven
dollars and fifty cents. It had been purchased a month

(37:47):
or so earlier by a bookstore in London, who bought
it from Sotheby's, where it was sold by a Royal
Air Force War hero for a mere forty two. So
clearly the Air Force guy didn't know it was original,
the bookstore didn't know it was original, Harvard didn't know

(38:07):
it was original. And yet it is an original Magna Carta.
I have no idea what such a thing would be worth,
but many, many, many millions of dollars. And really this
isn't even about the about the value. It's also been
revealed that the guy who sold it, who was a

(38:28):
who was Air Vice Marshall Forster, Sammy Maynard, inherited archives
from some folks from the seventeen eighties who were abolitionists,
who were big campaigners against the slave trade. And the
story goes on from there. You can read it on
my blog if you want to go read more. And

(38:48):
then this next bit is just as badass as a
response can get at this level of academia. This is
from Oriel College at Oxford.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
I congratulate. This is from the head of that college.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
I congratulate Harvard Law School Professor David Carpenter and Professor
Nicholas Vincent on the remarkable discovery of the seventh surviving
thirteen hundred engrossment of the Magna Carta. Oriole College's own
thirteen hundred engrossment and the accompanying Forrest charter are two
of the most treasured items in our archive. The charters

(39:23):
are in excellent condition, including their original seals. And then
there's a bunch of other stuff that I'll skip in
the interest of time. And then the head of this
college at Oxford, upon the discovery of Harvard, realizing that
theirs was original, they say this, and this is just
like a really funny kind of Mike drop SmackDown between colleges.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
While Harvard Law School.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Paid twenty seven dollars and fifty cents for their Magna carta,
Oriel College's charter was delivered free to our founder, Adam
de Brome. In other words, Harvard, you think you're cool,
and you think you're old. We at Oxford, our college
is so old that we got the original from the

(40:10):
founder of the college in thirteen hundred, when Magna Carta
was first written.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
How about that for a mic drop moment.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
I want to bring you a little information about an
event coming up in.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
A week and a half that looked pretty interesting.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
So it's called Protect our Children Day of Defense. It's
being put on by the Colorado Faith Alliance and joining
us to give us quickly some information about the event.
What people need to know is Abby Corrigan. Abby is
CEO of Colorado Faith Alliance And usually, you know.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
I got lots of people asking me, Hey, can I
come on the show and tell about my event?

Speaker 1 (40:48):
And usually I say no because I'd have too many
But this looks interesting enough.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
So Abby, what do we need to know?

Speaker 7 (40:55):
Good morning, Ross, thank you so much for having me on.
You need to know that our children are at risk
and we are an anti trafficking child protection nonprofit. So
we are bringing together a group my sister from Florida
who's been doing anti trafficking for twelve years. She was
Advocate of the Year by State Attorney General Ashley Moody.

(41:17):
She's going to teach online safety. This is for parents, grandparents, educators, children.
We can have children six through college. She is able
to speak to a very large audience to teach them.
We're going to teach you how to decrypt your kids' texas.
What are secret rooms in gaming and what are the

(41:38):
local arrests going on? What's going on in our community.
That will be by Commander Amanda Weiss, who works with
Sheriff weekly in District twenty three. Then we're going to
have a really fun demo of self defense. World Champion
Tyler Weaver Senior will be teaching us what if somebody
grabs us, how do we get out of that grass?
What if somebody tries to pull us in a Now

(42:00):
we're going to do this. It's going to be really fun.
But we're going to learn self defense. And then Special
Prosecutor Abby Haggerty prosecutes this in the state of Colorado,
and she's going to teach us what's going on, what
do we do if we think we see something, who
do we report this to? And what are the signs
of trafficking? How do we know if our children are

(42:22):
getting caught in this web on the net. That's what's
going on is online our children are being exploited, and
we want to stop this in the state of Colorado.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
So part of the reason I thought this event was
so interesting is that it includes in one event how
to protect your kids against online threats and then also
a little bit of you know, kind of basic martial
arts self defense, all in one of one events. So
it's really a kind of broad overview of here are
ways to protect yourself in a lot of different ways.

(42:56):
So folks, you can go to Coloradofaithalliance dot org to
learn more Coloradofaithalliance dot org. But the event is Saturday
the twentieth, and not this coming Saturday, but the following
nine am to noon at the RidgeGate Conference Center in
Loan Tree, and it's up on my blog, or as

(43:16):
I said, you can go to Coloradofaithalliance dot org. It
seems like a really cool and useful and worthwhile event.
So Abby Corrigan is CEO of Colorado Faith Alliance. Thanks
for giving us the info and have fun next Saturday.

Speaker 7 (43:32):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
All right, glad to do it. So let me do
one other story, just very very quickly here, less than
one minute. But it's I think, kind of a big story.
In Seattle police just arrested a thirteen year old who
had posted stuff on social media that looked like he
intended to be a school shooter. And he had twenty

(43:56):
three firearms, including a bunch of ak's and ars, well
I don't know about aks, ars for sure, pistols twenty
three of them, and he's thirteen years old and a
bunch of ambo and he had been posting stuff online
that was really pretty scary, and one post said when
I turned twenty one, I'm going to kill people, and

(44:17):
another said it's over.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
My time is almost here.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
And he also had social media posts where he was
showing guns and when he was dressed the same kind
of way that prior school shooters have been dressed. And meanwhile,
this guy's mom has been saying like he's a good boy,
he wouldn't hurt anybody, he was just trying to look
cool among his friends at school.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Are you kidding me? At some point? And I don't
know what the point is.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
And I know some of my you know, most hardcore
pro Second Amendment friends may may get mad at me.
But when you've got a thirteen year old stockpiling ar
fifth teams, pistols and Ammo while posting online things that
seem to be looking up to school shooters, admiring school shooters,

(45:11):
at some point the parent is the criminal.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Something has to be done.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Want you to know, coming up in a few minutes,
we're gonna have Barb Kirkmeyer on the show. She just
She is a Colorado State senator, former World County commissioner,
and now a Republican candidate for governor. There are a
bunch of Republicans already in the race. So far, I
think that Barb is the most credible candidate, but we'll see.
I haven't absolutely made up my mind yet. We'll talk

(45:40):
to her in a little bit. In about an hour,
we're going to talk with Al Petrelli from Trans Siberian Orchestra,
who are coming back to Colorado. And I'm gonna have
some tickets to give away to see tso, so that's
gonna be a pretty cool thing. I got a few
minutes before before Barb shows up, so I wanted to
just talk about a thing here, one or two things

(46:00):
we'll see when Barbed. When Barb arrives, I saw this
piece at the Colorado Sun, and let me share this
with you. Teachers, farmers and advocates urge Colorado voters to
approve new funding for school meals and food stamps. So
we've talked about this a little bit already, but I
just want to elaborate and we'll get to it even
more when we get closer to the election. But there

(46:20):
are these ballot initiatives LLL and MM, and what they
are about is pilfering more money from people who happen
to be successful in the state of Colorado in order
to be able to fund what I call free school
lunch and free breakfast too.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
I think for middle class and rich kids.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Remember that under Colorado law, and in fact, I think
in every single state, people who are families that are
below some income level already qualify for their kids to
get free food at school. So the Democrats in the
state legislature wanted to pass free school lunch for everybody,

(47:09):
regardless of income, and Governor Polis, who is a big
spending liberal, said geez, this thing is so nuts and
so expensive that even I can't support it, and so
they sent it to the voters, and voters in Colorado,
being East California, now passed this thing.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Now, originally this thing was.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Supposed to to and let me go to the Colorado
Sun the original let me back up. Since then, the
cost of the program has exceeded projected tax revenue with
a high demand for the meals. Oh big surprise, right,
You offer people a quote unquote free lunch, and you're
surprised when more people wanted.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
The initial program was supposed.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
To raise more than one hundred million dollars annually, but
the first year of the program, funding fell short by
fifty six million dollars, and the second year now which
is projected to have a shortfall too, so we're we
just had the first year. During the first year of
the program, the Department of Education saw a thirty seven
percent increase in breakfast participation, a thirty percent increase in

(48:11):
lunch participation, and then last year another five percent in breakfast,
another three percent in lunch. And since this thing was
originally passed as a ballot measure, it had a limit
in it as to how much tax money could be

(48:33):
kept to fund this thing, But now they need more.
So what they're going to do under this thing is
they're going to say if you make over three hundred
thousand dollars a year.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Under the first measure, they.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Had already limited the maximum amount of tax deductions you
could get on your state income taxes to I think
the number was twelve thousand dollars twelve or sixteen, and
it was a slight difference between filing singly and singly
and filing jointly. But they massively reduced the total amount

(49:05):
of tax deductions you could get if you make over
three hundred thousand dollars a year. Under this thing, they
want to cut it to almost nothing, just one or
two thousand dollars. So if you have the misfortune to
go from making two hundred and ninety nine thousand dollars
to making three hundred thousand dollars, your tax bill suddenly
goes up massively. Right, Punish the successful people, Punish the

(49:26):
so called rich. I mean, and look, three hundred thousand
dollars is definitely making a very good living.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
But Colorado is a very expensive.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
State, and I don't think three hundred thousand dollars makes
you rich in this state.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, you're you're doing fine. I'm not saying you're poor.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
I'm not feeling bad for anybody who makes three hundred
thousand dollars. I'd like to make three hundred thousand dollars
and you know, even a million in this state. Yeah,
that's great. But rich, Eh, anyway, we're gonna penalize you.
We don't like you. We want to take your money
and we're gonna give it to you know, free school,
free quote unquote free three school lunches for your kids

(50:02):
and for middle class people's kids.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
But anyway, the other thing that they want to do.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Is they they want to say that well, we're going
to raise these taxes, and then what if somehow we
end up with more money than we need for the program, Well,
then we're going to take that money and put it
into food stamps. So, according to Colorado Sun, people who
earn three hundred thousand dollars or more will pay an
extra four hundred and eighty six dollars in taxes on average,

(50:28):
the bills authors estimated.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
But I don't trust their estimates. I don't trust their estimates.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
The initiatives are expected to raise an additional ninety five
million dollars a year for the state, according to fiscal analysts.
And what I just want to say again, since since
the headline on this thing is teachers, farmers and advocates
urge Colorado voters to approve new voting for new funding,
I'm sorry, new funding for.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
School meals and food stamps. Right, I'm going to do
the opposite.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
I'm going to advocate that Colorado voters vote no on
these things. Please don't let them steal any more money
from people who work hard for their money in order
to fund their nonsense big government free this and free
that project. As as Milton Friedman taught us, one of
my favorite act acronyms tan staffle t A n STAA

(51:25):
f L Yes, tan staffle and it stands for there
ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Democrats want
you to think there is, And unfortunately Colorado voters went
along with it the first time. So when this thing
comes up the next time, LL and MM, please vote no.
Stop the insanity. Now, somebody else who hopes to stop

(51:48):
the insanity in this state is State Senator Barb Kirkmeyer, who,
before being in the state Senate was also for many
years a Weld County commissioner. And as of yesterday, bar
is the newest Republican there are a few in already,
but the newest Republican to join in the race to
be the next governor of Colorado. And I have not

(52:12):
made up my mind yet on this, and I may
not end up endorsing anybody, but I will say at
this early date, to me, Barb seems like the most
credible Republican candidate of the candidates who are in at
this point, and I don't know if anybody else will
get in, so I'm not endorsing yet, but I do
think Barb is a very.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Credible candidate, and I liked.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
So, first of all, Barb, welcome, welcome back to the show.
It's good to have you. Let me start with this.
I'm on your website at Kirkmeyer Forclorado dot com and
I see your tagline better days ahead or better days
ahead for Colorado.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
I want you to get specific with me, though, better
days ahead in what ways?

Speaker 2 (52:59):
If Barb meer where to be governor?

Speaker 8 (53:03):
Sure, and thank you again for having me on the show.

Speaker 9 (53:05):
I appreciate it. But my takeline is, actually it's time.
It is time that we do get better days ahead.
It's time that we have a governor who knows how
to govern that will lead us to better days ahead.

Speaker 8 (53:16):
I truly believe that they're there.

Speaker 9 (53:18):
So I'm running for governor because Colorado needs responsible leadership
that delivers real results. Families are struggling under the weight
of rising costs, unsafe communities, crumbling roads, and underperforming schools,
not because decline is inevitable, but because of poor decision making.

Speaker 8 (53:35):
So we need a vision, and.

Speaker 9 (53:36):
I believe I will provide one of leadership. And it's time,
you know, to cut costs. It's time, particularly to cut
costs with our insurance costs. We need to get our
healthcare system back into shape. I mean, gosh, it is
just in crisis mode at this point, and we need
to ensure that families are not accessively taxed and overburdened.
And I just went through a special session and I'm

(53:58):
telling you, we sit here and increase taxes, not we
They set there and increased taxes on small businesses. Trying
to figure out how to balance the budget on the
backs of small businesses just not the thing to be doing.
So it's time to finally fix the darn roads, make
our community safe, strengthen our schools, and build a Colorado
where families can strive. For the last seven years, we

(54:20):
have just had bad decision making by Colorado and lawmakers
and it's gotten us into this mess. The flip side
is good decision making can turn things around. As a
lifelong Colorado and a mom, a grandmother, a dairy farmer,
small businesswoman, and a proven conservative leader, I'll put my
experience and my determination to work every day to make

(54:40):
sure that Colorado's best days are truly still ahead of us.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
All Right, lots of things to ask you about.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Let me start with the politics of this.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
I had David Flaherty from Magellan Strategies On yesterday, you
might have seen their recent voter survey, which was very,
very interesting. This date still seems to be roughly D
plus eleven or something like that. And we definitely know
from recent experience that a lot of voters in Colorado
dislike Donald Trump so much that once they see an

(55:12):
R next to somebody's name, they refuse to consider that person,
even if that person is a good candidate. Now, that
might be improving a little bit right now, because the
other thing that his poll showed is that although the
Republican Party and Democratic Party both are viewed significantly unfavorably
in Colorado, Democrats are actually quite a bit worse than

(55:34):
Republicans on that measure for the.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
First time in a long time.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
So that is a long way of me getting around
to ask you, asking you what makes you think you
can win in a state this blue.

Speaker 9 (55:47):
So again, I did see that poll, and I've been
seeing other polls for the last few months that have
showed and demonstrated that whether you're unaffiliated, Republican or Democrat,
almost everyone is saying that we are headed in the
wrong direction. But certainly unaffiliated voters, which make up about
fifty percent of our voters in this state are saying
things are just off course. We're going down the wrong way,

(56:09):
you know, going down the wrong path, and going the
wrong way on that path for quite frankly, so, I
just believe, you know what, we need a governor that
will speak to Colorado's needs and interests.

Speaker 8 (56:21):
And I just talked about those a little bit.

Speaker 9 (56:23):
But it's about affordability, lower insurance costs, safer communities.

Speaker 8 (56:27):
All of that.

Speaker 9 (56:28):
Colorada Republicans, you know, we need to provide meaningful vision
and I believe that I will that will resonate with
Colorado voters. That's my objective. Some folks in my party
are content with just making a point.

Speaker 8 (56:41):
I am not. Voters see right through that stuff.

Speaker 9 (56:44):
We need to commit to making a difference for colorado
one's and I'm telling you that, as you're governor of
the state of Colorado, I am running to be the governor,
not of a party, but running to be the governor
for all of the people of Colorado. My job with
governor will be to look out for the people of Colorado,
to represent the state's best interest in dealing with the
federal government and with other states and I believe voters

(57:07):
will expect me to act with integrity and a strong
sense of public obligation. That's what I did as a
Well County commissioner, That's what I've been doing as a
state senator.

Speaker 8 (57:16):
I'm not going to change anything there. I'm going to
go be that same kind of governor.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
And in the interest of time, give me some slightly
shorter answers to the next orlt Okay, right, yeah, do
you do you think or how do you think that
you specifically and Republican candidates generally, especially high quality Republican candidates,
and I do think you are one of those can

(57:42):
overcome the previous few years of shenanigans and trouble, let's say,
I'm putting it very gently within the Republican Party and
sort of some damage to the brand of the Colorado
Republican Party.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
How do you overcome that? How do you change that?

Speaker 8 (58:03):
Again?

Speaker 9 (58:03):
I think it's through good, solid leadership, and I think
when people understand what my accomplishments are and what accomplishments
are and my experiences, that that will help.

Speaker 8 (58:13):
But you're exactly right.

Speaker 9 (58:15):
Our party was completely divided in twenty twenty three, twenty
twenty four for instance, and our candidates were outspent. I
don't know that we necessarily had the best candidates.

Speaker 8 (58:25):
I mean, we were trying.

Speaker 9 (58:27):
But I think the big difference though now is is
that for the last seven years, what Colorado voters have
been seeing is this unbridled far left lallmaking and what
they're doing, and the folks in the state just don't
like it.

Speaker 8 (58:40):
I mean, everything's up.

Speaker 9 (58:41):
We're the second most dangerous state in the nation, you know,
all like I said, all consts are up, and you know,
we're over regulating, and we're going after small businesses and
increasing taxes. And I think folks are saying, look, we've
had enough of that. And so I think from our side,
our party has worked pretty diligently. I was safe from
my self specifically, I ran for state Senate again, run

(59:04):
for election for state Senate in twenty twenty four. But
I went out in my community in Weald County, in
the Larimer County area and out into the eastern plains.
We went out and we recruited good candidates, candidates that
are part of the fabric of their community to begin with,
and then have a good sense of conservative values. And
then we all went out and worked together. We didn't
work against each other. We worked together, and we were

(59:26):
able to flip five seats in Weld County, flipped them
from Democrat to Republican back to Republican because people saw
the message we were delivering and saying, yeah, that's what
we want in the Republican Party, that's who we're going
to vote for.

Speaker 8 (59:40):
So I think we just need to do the same
thing statewide.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Okay, So I think the Democrats are a little bit
afraid of you already. And again I'm not saying you're
you're a favorite or anything. Right, It's a democratic state,
and I think you can win. But I think I
think just generic, even a good Republican would be an
underdog in this state. But I don't think it's an

(01:00:05):
impossible situation.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Now I've seen.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
I saw a statement from Phil Wiser, and I just
want to ask you to address a couple of things,
and again, do this quickly. You just have a few minutes.
Okay Wiser's statement. I actually emailed him directly about it
and kind of criticized him for a statement. But the
first thing he says is, well, we don't need someone
who's a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
I don't even know what that means when you're.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Talking about a governor, But do you want to respond
to that at all?

Speaker 8 (01:00:30):
Sure, and I appreciate that well.

Speaker 9 (01:00:32):
As I said before my job, I'm running to be governor,
not to be governor of a party.

Speaker 8 (01:00:36):
I'm also not running to be a governor for any president.

Speaker 9 (01:00:39):
You know, I support Donald Trump, and as governor, you know,
we have to work with the federal government and we
need to find a way for that. So I don't
think I've ever been, in any portion of my career
or anything that I've ever done, been a rubber stamp
for anybody. I have fought for everything that I've done,
and I've won those fights, and they've been for the
people of the state of Colorado.

Speaker 8 (01:00:58):
They've been in the best interest of my constituent.

Speaker 9 (01:01:00):
So, Robert Stamp, I mean this from the guy who
thinks it's a good idea to turn around and sue
the federal government every.

Speaker 8 (01:01:06):
Opportunity to get I don't think that's productive.

Speaker 9 (01:01:09):
I think it's a waste of time, it's a waste
of money, and I certainly don't think it's working in
the best interest of the people of the state of Colorado.
What I think is he's just trying to further his
political career.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Three or four years ago, shortly after the Supreme Court
overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion was an enormous issue in voting,
and I suspect that you narrowly lost the race for
the eighth congressional district a few years back on that issue.
And I see that the Colorado Democratic Party has already

(01:01:41):
put out a bunch of stuff about you, negative stuff
about you. Like I said, I think they're a little
bit afraid of you already, but quite a bit of
it is about abortion and you being pro life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
And I'm wondering at.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
First, do you think abortion is going to be an
important piece in this election or do you think that
moment has passed? And to the extent that this is
mostly a pro choice state and you are not, how
are you going to address what you know they are
going to make an issue?

Speaker 8 (01:02:13):
Sure, and I agree with you.

Speaker 9 (01:02:15):
I think they probably will try to make that an issue,
but that is a settled question in this state, and
I think that has passed regardless if you know my
position on it, and yes I am pro life. But
here's the difference of what between twenty twenty two, and
what will be twenty twenty six is that has been
emboldened into the constitution.

Speaker 8 (01:02:34):
So I am an an elected official.

Speaker 9 (01:02:37):
As a state senator, I take an oath of office to
uphold the constitution of this state and the United States.

Speaker 8 (01:02:43):
I will be doing the same as governor and our constitution.
The voters have spoken.

Speaker 9 (01:02:48):
So if you want to make anybody any side, any
point on this, if you want to make any changes
to the constitution, you will need to take it back
to the voters.

Speaker 8 (01:02:56):
The voters have spoken. You know, I follow the constitute.
That's my job, and you.

Speaker 9 (01:03:02):
Know what, you want to make any changes, you got
to take it back to the voters.

Speaker 8 (01:03:05):
They'll have to make changes. If there's going to be
any changes, I will not be doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Okay, last thing for you, going back to what you
talked about early on as some of your primary goals
and motivations, how can a governor make any important changes
to the people's cost of living?

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
And I got about one minute.

Speaker 9 (01:03:29):
Well, quite frankly, it's looking at all of the regulations
that we have in this state that we've been putting
onto businesses that are increasing costs. You know, basically the
impact is it increases cost to the consumers. So first
thing when I'm in office, I'm going to charge all
my cabinet members, all my department heads to go back
and work with the industries, the small businesses that we
are regulating, and go back and see where those regulations

(01:03:50):
are and what we can do to.

Speaker 8 (01:03:51):
Cut through that red tape. Cut their cost will cut
consumer costs.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Barb Kirkmeyer, State Senator, former Weld County commissioner, the newest
Republican candidate for governor. As I've said, at the moment,
I think Barb is the most credible Republican candidate. I
haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, and
we will see who else gets in, But at the moment,
I'm thinking that Barb Kirkmeyer is the is the head
of the pack among Republicans. Her website is Kirkmeyer for Colorado.

(01:04:19):
That's k I R K M E Y E R
F O R Colorado dot com. Barb, thanks for being here.
I appreciate your time.

Speaker 8 (01:04:28):
Thank you, Ross and appreciate what you're doing for the
state of Colorado. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
All right, So there you go, all right, Barb. Look
I like Barb.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
She's well, to my right, Okay, she's an unapologetic conservative.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
I'm an unapologetic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Libertarian, is close enough, and so she's well, Tom, I
right on some things. But I'll tell you one of
the things I appreciate most about Barb Kirkmeyer is her
experience on the Joint Budget Committee. She would be a
governor who understands the state budget better than almost anybody,
So I think that's useful. I do see a couple

(01:05:05):
of folks asking, well, you know, is she for Trump
or another?

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
And this is someone else.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
When Trump calls a Republican governor and orders him to
do something, the governor is going to rubber stamp. It's
that simple. I don't care what she says about her integrity.
I don't know about that, and I look, I get it,
I get it, and I can see it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
It's not a crazy claim.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
But the other thing to keep in mind as we're
thinking about this, and if you're worried about rubber stamp
or whatever, remember keep in mind that the next governor
of Colorado will take office when there's only when there's
two years left essentially in the Trump presidency, and you
might see at that point that the president will have

(01:05:45):
a lot less leverage over other politicians than he has.
Now it's speculation on my part. I understand your concern,
but look, somebody who is afraid that a governor might
be a little bit too willing to agree with Trump
is probably someone who hates Trump enough that they're not
going to vote for a Republican any way. So in

(01:06:07):
that sense, I'm not that concerned about your concern, and
neither is she, because you're already not going to vote
for her.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
We'll be back.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
One of the most fun parts of my job is
when I get to give stuff away, and you know,
we'll give away concert tickets and give away Broncos tickets
and sometimes give away some more valuable stuff. And I
don't think I've ever had the opportunity to give away
stuff as cool as valuable as what Bob at Flat

(01:06:35):
Irons Fire. The whole team at Flatirons Fire has been
giving away to listeners. Last month we did this fantastic
travel barbecue, and this month we're.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Doing something else.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
And over the past four weeks we've collected a total
of twelve entries into the giveaway that we're going to
do right now, and Bob, who is founder and co
owner of Flat Irons Fire joins us by phone right
now and he's going to help us with the thing
he's giving away.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
So first of all, Bob, thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
And second, before we do the giveaway, can you please
just tell listeners what it is that you're giving away.

Speaker 6 (01:07:11):
Absolutely so, this is a Napoleon Prestige grill. It's the
Phantom version, which is super cool. It's really updated. It's
all black and a Matt Black, has infrared side burner,
infrared rotisserie burner, five hundred square inches of burning space
on the grill itself. And the nice thing with Napoleon,

(01:07:35):
you know, it's a twenty six hundred dollars grill, but
a lifetime warranty, so the year one through ten everything's
covered one hundred percent. Year eleven, lifetime is fifty percent.
And you don't even have to work through us. They
Napoleon had to contact them direct and they'll send you
any warranty parts or anything that you need. So it's
just an amazing grill. I had one for years and

(01:07:57):
my wife wouldn't let me get a new one until
that one broke and I have fun. They had to
give it away because it would never break. So anyway,
that's the grill. You'll absolutely love it, and I'm waiting
to whoever wins it. They may want propa ineternatural gas,
so we'll get you whichever one you need.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
And I'll note, before I met you, before I knew
about flat irons fire, I did my own research some
years ago on barbecue grills, looking for the best combination
of quality and value. So I wanted a great barbecue grill,
but I didn't want to spend nine thousand dollars and
I ended up picking Napoleon. So I have a Napoleon

(01:08:33):
grill and I love it. I absolutely love it. And
I'll also tell folks, this grill also has some cool
stuff like Wi Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, so you can
actually see on your smartphone how hot the grill is
and how much gas is left in the tank and
stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Is that right, Bob?

Speaker 6 (01:08:49):
That is correct?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Very cool, all right, So we're going to do the
giveaway now. So here's what we've done. We collected twelve entries.
I did four over the air, and producer A Rod
did eight over social media. And in order to make
this as random as possible, so that the entries aren't
simply in the order in which we got them. I
asked chat gpt to give me a randomized to give

(01:09:14):
me the numbers one through twelve in random order, and
then I assigned those to these entries in the order
that they came in, so that no entry is actually
the same number today as it were. Like the first
entry that we got is not number one today. I'm
not going to say what it is, but it's truly random.

(01:09:35):
And so now Bob is going to pick a random
number from one to twelve, and then I will look
up on the list and announce the name of the winner.
So go ahead, Bob, tell me a random number from one.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
To twelve and number eight. Number eight, All right, number eight.
The winner is Roger. And I probably won't.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Say the last name, but last initial L Roger L.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
There's a one Roger who was an entrant.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Roger, Congratulations, you win a twenty six hundred dollars Phantom
Prestige five hundred grill thanks to Flat Irons Fire where
Kristin and I are actually buying three fireplaces for all.
Your fireplace needs, your outdoor fire pit needs, your barbecue
grill needs, even indoor and outdoor Saunas outdoor Kitchens, the

(01:10:25):
whole team at flat irons Fire, which has the nicest
showroom gallery for fireplaces I've ever seen. They are here
for you flatirnsfire dot com to learn more. And Bob, seriously,
thank you so much for your generosity to our listener.
Is it just a remarkable that you're giving this stuff
away and we're all really grateful for it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
No, thank you, Ross, very very much, fantastic. All right,
we'll leave it there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
That's Bob the owner of Flat irons Fire, flat irons
fire dot com and Roger l. If you're listening, producer
A Rod will in touch with you. You got it right, hey, Rod,
Roger l is the is the winner, and very very cool.
All right, there's still a ton of stuff to do
on today's show. Let me mention one thing quickly, and

(01:11:11):
then when we come back, I do want to take
a few minutes more to talk about this just terrible
murder out of North Carolina, and I'll mention please go
to Rosskominsky dot substack dot com. I'll mention this again
in the next segment. Go to Rosskominsky dot substack dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Please.

Speaker 1 (01:11:27):
I wrote a thing this morning at about four point
thirty this morning about some additional thoughts about this terrible
event and at an angle that I don't think most
people have touched on, and I feel like it's one
of the more important things I've written. I hope you'll
go to Rosskiminsky dot substack dot com read it, subscribe

(01:11:47):
to my substack.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
It's absolutely free.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
I write once or twice a week, and I think
you'll find it worthwhile.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Rosskominsky dot substack dot com. All right, let me do
this one story very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Safeway has announced that they are closing ten stores in Colorado,
including a bunch of stores in the Denver metro area,
at least two stores that I have shopped at.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
So let me just go through some of these quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
I don't know that I'll give all the addresses, but
let's see two oh one East Jefferson in Englewood. So
that is in the heart of Englewood. Basically, it's on Hampden.
It's called Jefferson, but it's on Hampden in the heart
of in the heart of Englewood. You're probably aware of
that one. It's near Swedish Hospital. There's one on one
hundred and twentieth Avenue in North Glen, sixteen fifty three
South Colorado Boulevard in Denver. I have shopped at that

(01:12:30):
one as well. Twelve two hundred East Mississippi and Aurora.
That Safeway is going away, thirty six fifty seven South
College in Fort Collins, eight sixty Cleveland Avenue in Loveland,
and then as we move south, fifty sixty North Academy
Boulevard in the Springs, fourteen twenty five South Murray Boulevard
in the Springs, and then a Safeway in Lahunta, and

(01:12:51):
a Safeway in Lamar. Those stores are all going away,
as they, like King Soupers, try to get rid of
the stores that are simply not profitable enough or even
run at actual losses. Such is the nature of the
supermarket business, the business that some leftists, like the anti

(01:13:11):
Semitic Communists who may yet be the Mayor of New York,
think run at such high profit margins that government can
do better. Such nonsense. In any case, those safe Ways
are going away. We'll be right back, going back to
a subject I talked about earlier in the show and
in some depth with Leland Viddert from NewsNation a couple
hours ago. I would suggest that if you didn't hear

(01:13:34):
the conversation with Leland, it really is very very worth hearing.
It was a really excellent conversation. It's up on the
blog at Rosskominsky dot com. Almost every single guest we
have on the show ends up on the blog at
Rosskominsky dot com and also as a standalone within the
podcast feed. So if you subscribe to the Ross Kominski
Show podcast, that will allow you to listen to any

(01:13:58):
combination of an entire show and or the standalone interviews
of guests. So maybe you hear maybe you're listening while
you're driving to work or driving to lunch, and you
catch a few minutes of an interview and you'd like
to hear the whole thing. You can go to Rosscominsky
dot com and just listen to the interview without having
to listen to the whole show, or you can subscribe

(01:14:19):
to the podcast feed and do it that way. In
any case, I also want to ask you, as I
did just a couple of minutes ago, to please go
to Rosskominsky dot substack dot com. R O S s
KA M I N s k Y Rosscominsky dot substack
dot com and read my note today.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
It was for me.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
It was one of the most emotional things I've ever written,
and I entitled it, how Can You Not Cry?

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
And then the subtitle, well, I'm not looking at it
right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
But I think the subtitle is the second worst thing
about the killing of Arena, and Arena, of course being
the the young woman who was murdered in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And it's hard for me to talk about this. When

(01:15:10):
I was first talking about this case yesterday, i'd only
seen video and still pictures up to the moment before
Irena was stabbed. I hadn't seen any still pictures or
video afterwards.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
And I have seen that now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
I have not seen, and do not ever want to
see the part of the video that includes the actual stabbing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
I do not want to see it. I do not
need to see it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
There will be no value in my seeing it, and
I hope I never see it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
It's already enough.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
What struck me so much about the video and still
pictures that I hadn't seen until yesterday is that this
young woman didn't die right away. Was stabbed in the neck,
in the throat a few times, and then what you
see in the still pictures, and in the video after

(01:16:08):
is she's sitting there on her chair, her hat and
glasses have been knocked off, and she's holding her neck
and looking up with this look of absolute bewilderment and confusion.
And I don't even know if she knows she's dying.
She just knows that something terrible just happened to her.

(01:16:29):
I don't know that she knows she's dying, but she is,
this poor girl, this look on her face, it's one
of the saddest things I've ever seen. My children are
not much younger than Arena. One of my children now

(01:16:53):
lives in a dangerous city in Seattle, with so many
homeless people in that city because it's a city run
by Democrats. Sorry if that sounds too political, but that's
just the truth, a truth you're not supposed to say.
It's frightening as a parent, it's frightening as an American.

(01:17:16):
It's probably additionally frightening as a woman. I don't mean me,
but as a woman thinking about that, a woman who
might be thinking about this situation, because probably a woman
in that situation is a little more likely to be
the victim because they're smaller, and maybe the assailant has
a little less fear. I'm speculating. I could be wrong,
but that's not the main point I want to get to.

(01:17:36):
And I just want to do this quickly because we've
got a special guest in the next segment, and we're
going to lighten it up a lot in the next segment.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
The thing I noticed most is the.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Two or three people who are sitting behind Irena who
watched the attack and got up, and after the assailant left,
they got up and walked.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Around her and did not offer any help.

Speaker 1 (01:18:01):
Might Arena have lived if somebody had come over and
held their hand against her throat in a pride pressure
to the wounds until the EMTs got there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):
But no.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
I note also when I'm not allowed to notice this,
But I note also that she's white and all the
people who walked around her were black.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Is it possible.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
That somebody of her same race might have reacted differently?

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
I don't know. Are we allowed to ask that question?
I'm asking it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
The people who were in that video who did not help,
who got up and walked around her, I don't know
if they can be charged with crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
I feel like they should be.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
That might just be the heat of the moment in
my emotion. Maybe you don't charge someone with a crime
for not helping, although I do think that is a crime.
In some places they could have helped. I think they
didn't try. They just got up and walked away and
let her bleed to death.

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
I like to think that if I were in their.

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
Position, I would have immediately run to her aid, and frankly,
I think everybody listening to me right now would have
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
I think my listeners are good people.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
That is the second worst thing about the death of Arena,
the fact that multiple people simply walked by her and
let her die. AL Trans Siberian Orchestra they're going on
tour again and it sounds like it's going to be
a fabulous tour. I mean, it always is, but I
think especially good this year. And Al will tell us
about it in a minute. But Saturday, November fifteenth at

(01:19:39):
Paul Arena two thirty pm and seven thirty pm, and
then the next day, Sunday, November sixteenth, at Broadmoor World
Arena in Colorado Springs two thirty pm and seven thirty pm.
And if you go to TRANSI trans Dash Siberian dot
Com and go to the tour tab you can find
the links there. The pre sale goes starts tomorrow and

(01:20:01):
the bigger sales starts to the next to day, so
you can absolutely still get tickets. And with that, I'm
so happy to welcome back to the show. Al Petrelli,
who is the music director, the musical director of Trans
Siberian Orchestra and has just done, you know, so much
in rock and roll. We talked last time about his
time with Alice Cooper. He's done so many things. It's
really good to have you back. Al, thanks for being here, Bron.

Speaker 5 (01:20:25):
Thank you so much for having me again. And I
hope all is well at home and everybody's good by you.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
Absolutely, you know, I always like to talk to you
about some non music stuff when and then also about
the music stuff, and so I always want, I always
want to make sure to ask you about you have.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
You have five kids.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
I think two of them either are or were in
the military and Navy and Coast Guard maybe, and I
have a vague recollection that you told me last time
that maybe one of them isn't in anymore, but I
could be confusing things. So how are your kids and
how are your military kids?

Speaker 5 (01:21:01):
All they're fantastic. Thank you so much for saying that. Yeah,
my oldest son just made chief Warrant Officer, so he's
stationed in DC now, which is a lot closer than
when he was in San Diego.

Speaker 4 (01:21:11):
M H.

Speaker 5 (01:21:12):
And my youngest son, who was in the Navy, he
was an engineer on a nuclear sub out of Pearl Harbor,
ended up a couple of years ago being one of
two sailors that year who were accepted into the Space Force. Wow.
Now he's in the United States Space Force. So he's
a buzz light year dude. Wow, I need one more
thing to worry about in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Right, where is he stationed?

Speaker 5 (01:21:33):
Vandenburg in California? Kandurg Air Force Space All right.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
Yeah, I wonder if the since he's not in Colorado,
then all this stuff Trump is doing, probably moving Space
Command headquarters might not affect might not affect him.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
I don't know if he'll get moved to Alabama or not.
But wow, that's sure.

Speaker 4 (01:21:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:21:49):
But you know, I couldn't be prouder and terrified at
the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
So that's amazing. That's amazing. You should be and I'm
sure you are extremely proud. Tell me any I don't
want to spend all the time only talking about your
military kids. Tell me anything about any of your other kids.

Speaker 5 (01:22:05):
Well, my three older boys, the two on the outsides,
are in the military. And my middle son, Jamie is
an incredible musician, crushing it living in the city, producing
a lot of records and writing a lot of film
score TV commercials. You know, he just had that thing
where he was a great bass player as a kid
and then started a composition on piano and guitar and
I look at him and go, I wasn't that good

(01:22:26):
when I was your age, So wow, very pravicant as well.
And my two younger girls, Olibya's fourteen and Leyla just
turned nine, you know, so they're just hitting. You know,
Layla's hit. Excuse me, Lvy's a teenager now wanting to
go to every show that's at Madison Square Garden that
comes to town. So I'm going broke doing that. And
you know, Layla, she's nine years old. Man, Skittles and

(01:22:50):
rainbows everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
It's a great age, absolutely great age.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
And just for listeners who aren't up on the terminology,
since I'm from New York work originally, although I didn't
live there very long, and I went to college in
New York and saw a lot of concerts at Madison
Square Garden. When Al says my kid lives in the city,
that means that means he lives in Manhattan.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
So in case, in case he worried up on that, yeah,
I got to be clear.

Speaker 5 (01:23:17):
At some point I saw he lives in a city.
Now he lives in the city.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
The city, the city.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
All Right, one other non TSO question, and then we'll
get to and then we'll get to tso. Is it
is it true that you dropped out of the Berkeley
School of Music, which is one of the elite music
schools in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
Is that true?

Speaker 5 (01:23:36):
Yeah, yeah, the middle of the second semester.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
So my question for you is, can you please tell
me a little bit about making that decision.

Speaker 5 (01:23:49):
When I went there in the first semester, I was
It was just one of the most fantastic experiences ever,
because I was introduced to thousands of musicians from all
over the world, people that I never would have met.
Cultures I was not familiar with, people who were enjoying
different genres of music that I wouldn't gravitated towards you know,

(01:24:09):
and the first couple of people that I met who
became the best of friends that have remained the best
of friends over forty years later. One was a keyboard
player named Derek Sherinian who played with me with Alex
Cooper's band. I met him in college and then he
went on to join the band Dream Theater and just fantastic.
But he was from Santa Cruz, California. He might have

(01:24:31):
been from Mars considered. I grew up on Long Island,
get it, you know. And the other guy was a
drummer named Will Calhoun who went on to start the
band Living Color. So that was my first introduction of
my top tier, top shelf talent and we started a band,
and you know, Derek and I were like, you know what,
this place is great. But you know, he went to
LA and I went back to New York City. Was like,

(01:24:52):
I just want to go cut my teeth. Will ended
up staying on and graduating from Berkeley and doing really
well for himself. But just the curriculum I got board.
You know, I'm not a school person. You know, I
go into classes and I just wanted to play at
the guitar and I played with some great people, and
I got a really great education in that short period

(01:25:13):
of time, mostly from hanging out with incredible players. I
think with guitar players up there. I turned the corners,
like I gotta go practice, you know. I wasn't that
jammed up with American government in history or calculum. No, no, no, no,
no no.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:25:24):
I had a couple of friends of mine who was
starting to like make some noise to themselves, Paul O'Neil
in particular, you know, on the streets in New York City.
And I told my parents and much to the issue,
and I said, listen, I got a plan. You gotta
trust me on this one, you know. So I decided
to leave fantastic experience. I've got a bunch of my
students now who have just started going up to Berkeley
and experience and that in my listening and go It's

(01:25:46):
fantastic if you can make it through, wonderful if you
don't take what you want from there and apply it
later on. But I decided to hit the streets in
New York City in like late eighty four eighty five
and really wanted to make a go for an old
school style.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
So you were doing that well, Actually, while I was
in college in Manhattan, I feel like I wish I
wish I had known you then I could have gone
to senior play somewhere while I was in the city.

Speaker 5 (01:26:12):
Well, we probably eat the Grays, Papaya or you know,
some piece of.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
Place, right right, that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
We're talking with Al Pacerelli, who is the musical director
of Trans Siberian Orchestra. They are coming to Colorado in November.
Denver at Ball Arena on Saturday, November fifteenth, two thirty
pm and seven thirty pm, and then Sunday, November sixteenth,
the next day down in the Springs that brought more
World Arena at two thirty pm and seven thirty pm.
And a Rod found a really easy link TSO tickets

(01:26:43):
dot com. T SO tickets dot com and it just
redirects to the to the tour page at the Trans
Siberian Orchestra, but TSO tickets dot com. So every every
year is great. But I get the sense that you
think that this year is going to be a particularly
special tour. Can you tell me why?

Speaker 5 (01:27:05):
Well, every year we finished up okay. Last year we
finished up okay, got home, spent a couple weeks catching
my breath, had holidays with the family, and by the
second week of January. Historically we get together with our managers,
a couple of department heads and say, okay, great run
last year, fantastic, that's in the books. How do we

(01:27:28):
make next year better? And I think last time we talked,
I made the comparison of the super Bowl team. Whoever
wins the super Bowl, you got the ring, you got
the trophy, fantastic, congratulations, you killed yourself to get to
that point. You deserve it. Com no guarantee you're going
to win the super Bowl next year. So what do
they do? They get to all season, pre season, deconstruct
the whole thing and rebuild it, you know, take a

(01:27:50):
look at like little parts. You know, the devil's in
the details. What can we work on where you know,
what did we fall a little bit short on that
we could make better? How can we change a little
bit to confuse the opposing team next year? Not too
different than how we look at it here. We get
home in the middle of January, say okay, that one's
in the books. High five. Next, take the whole thing apart.
We have to make it better next year. We have

(01:28:10):
to make it different next year, yet keep it familiar
because folks in your community love their tradition, their holiday
tradition intact. So musically, my job is to think, Okay,
what songs haven't we done before? What songs have we
never played before? What songs haven't we done in ten
or fifteen years? What songs make sense to surround paul

(01:28:30):
O Neil's beautiful story The Ghost to Christmas Eve. So
not only that, but we have the best apartment heads
in the world who love this thing as much as
I do, who have been with us from the jump
as well, and they do the same thing by the
second week of January. How can we make the stage
look different, How can we make the pyro even crazier?
What can we do with the lasers? What can we
do with the moving Trust is what haven't we done before?

(01:28:52):
And that's what we do every year. So this year
we're going to perform The Ghost of Christmasy Alive, which
has become a lot of people's favorite those many stories.
We did the movie back in ninety eight, and it
was it just became one of those things like Chartie
Brown's Christmas were going thirty fourth Street goes to Christmas Eve,
and Rudolph right, you know, yeah, Wow, we're in good

(01:29:13):
company now, dude. So we're gonna bring it live. But
the folks and you and I talked about this to
come back year after year after year. I could call
them the repeat offenders, right, you know. The first thing
I wanted them to notice is that when the curtain
comes up, everything about the stage and the place where
it's completely different than years past, you know, So the
visual I want to put people back on their heels.

(01:29:34):
Then it's the opening of the show, something we haven't
done and maybe I don't know fourteen years, you know,
and a spin on that not the exact same way
we did it years ago. But I want to bring
these songs to life the second half of the show.
Of course, we're gonna play everybody's favorite songs, but this year,
in particular, we're celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary of Beethoven's

(01:29:56):
Last Night since it was released, So we wanted to
take our hats the great composer and Paul Neil those
beautiful arrangements of these compositions by doing a small mini
set from that record, which we've never done on a
Winter show ever. Well, and you know more Pyro, moral lasers,
more stuff. Man, Bigger is better, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
Yeah, I want to.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
I also want to let audio files know that Trans
Siberian Orchestra is actually putting out a special double album
of Beethoven's Last Night and it's going to come out
in two different additions, and.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
You know, you can go look that up.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
And if you love Vinyl the way I do, you
can go buy this brand new TSO album Trans Sibirian
Orchestra album.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
So it sounds like it's gonna be an amazing shore.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
You do you still have the violinist who I can't
take my eyes off of. Even though you're fine looking,
I can't stop looking at her.

Speaker 5 (01:30:48):
I should be Van have been with me for decades. Man,
she goes nowhere. What a beautiful human being with a
beautiful woman and what a talent.

Speaker 2 (01:30:54):
Yeah incredible man.

Speaker 5 (01:30:56):
I say, listen, I need you to do something for me,
and she's and I'll write something out real quick and
she'll look at it and she'll sight read it and
she'll nail it from the jump. That woman is spectacular
on and off the stage. So yeah, she'll be there, dude,
I got you.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
Did she have some fancy musical education or is she
kind of mostly self taught like you.

Speaker 5 (01:31:16):
I'm pretty sure she had formal education. I don't know where.
But you know, you're not that good of a reader
or well versed in the classics if you don't have
some sort of formal background. But I know that she's
constantly working, constantly playing, constantly exploring. One minute, she's listening
to I don't know a Moshaw can chat on. Next
time she's listening to Stephan Rappelli. You never know what

(01:31:37):
that girl, she's fantastic