09-30-25 - *FULL SHOW* KT McFarland; Israel-Gaza Deal; Gov't Shutdown; EA Sports

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pat Wadd's last day.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Actually he's doing his last newscast right now, and he
said he would stick around and stay at work late
to have a conversation with me just after nine thirty.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
So we're going to do that because.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
He is just a fascinating guy and what a remarkable
career and I'm going to miss him. And then at
ten thirty, another person you might have heard of, Katie McFarland,
is going to join the show. So before we jump
into all that, I have no that's who are you
doing like Sarah McLaughlin or Katie Lang?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Could be any Okay, So I have a.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Question for you, which producer Shannon, you need to get
your introductory audio drop there ready because I've got a
question that I want to ask you specifically.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
So producer Shannon.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Does very many of what are called remote So that's
when anybody in our iHeart family could be a KAA
person could be KA. How could be will he be?
It could be KBCO, could be any you know when
they're broadcasting from somewhere else. Shannon is running that also
see you Buffalo's stuff. He's running thew So my question
for you is yesterday, as you were doing the show

(01:08):
from many mile high just before the Broncos game.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
How close were you to being struck by lightning?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
As far as you could tell, there was a one
second count between the flash and the sound. Yeah, and
I'm trying to remember what is that per second? How
many should be?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
About a mile?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
About a mile? Yeah, it was pretty intense. And a
Rod told me that you guys like call that show
about fifteen minutes early and sent it back to the
studio to cover the show so you could get out
of the way of the lightning and we're done, and
we're done. So did you then how hard was it
raining at that time? At that point, I've certainly done

(01:43):
remotes and worse. It wasn't too bad. It wasn't too bad.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
It was coming down.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
So were you having them to be out there in
the open packing up electronic gear in the rain in
an electrical storm? That's me, producer Wow, Producer Shannon Okay.
A ton of stuff to do on today's show, and
this is going to be one of those ones where
I'm not going to get through everything that I wanted

(02:08):
to talk about, So I'll just do stuff in no
particular order and we'll get to whatever we get to.
I actually want to talk about something that is not
on my list of things to talk about today, because
I just did it this morning and I wasn't thinking
about it for the show, but just since we're friends,
I want to share it with you. So I've told
you that my older kid has moved to Seattle and

(02:30):
has taken classes there in I guess you would call
it a community college, even though the word community.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Isn't in the name of the college.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
I'm not going to tell you the name of the college,
but in anyway, so my kid has taken classes there.
My kid is taking a couple of math classes in
English class and a science class nothing at all to
do with world events, politics, even history, nothing like that,
and in one of the classes, but my kid won't
tell me which because my kid knows what I might

(03:02):
go do in one of the classes. And this is
the very very very beginning of the school year, right
classes started, actually.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Classes started last thirst.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
No, you know what, I think yesterday might have been
the first day of classes and whatever. Either yesterday was
the first day or just one of the first days.
And my kid already has a teacher who is telling
the class that Israel is committing genocide. This has nothing

(03:37):
whatsoever to do with any class that my kid is taking.
My kid shouldn't be exposed to this. My kid wears
a Star of David can be identified as Jewish. And apparently,
you know the other kids in the class, And remember
we're talking about a community college, a junior college, like
many of these kids will be minority kid or not

(04:01):
from highly educated backgrounds to begin with. And also many
of them probably unfortunately come from a household where anti
Semitism may already be a thing, because unfortunately, that's become
a thing in much of the African American community, much
to my dismay and somewhat to my surprise, given how
much Jews did for African Americans in the civil rights

(04:23):
movement in the nineteen fifties and sixties and seventies. So
now the teacher's propagandizing, and these kids in the class
are nodding along and saying things like, yeah, that's right.
So this morning I sent what one might call a
strongly worded letter to the top people that I could

(04:43):
find in that college system in Seattle, saying basically two things. Obviously,
starting with the teacher is doing this, and it is
inappropriate then I said, where's the star of David? And
if my kid gets hurt by some other kid in

(05:04):
the class because of that teacher's propagandizing, you're going to
have a big problem on your hands.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
And then I said, do you.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Not understand the threat to higher education institutions right now?
The valid threat from the Trump administration Department of Education
against universities that are engaging, actively engaging in anti Semitism
or tolerating it.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
And I said, if this.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Happens again, I will be in touch with the Department
of Education. I have plenty of friends in Congress and
elsewhere in DC. I did not send this from my
work email, and not even from my regular email. I
sent it from an email that I almost never use
that does not have my name associated with it. And
I said, I expect you to send a letter to

(05:58):
your entire work force saying that this has to stop.
And if it keeps going, then I will take my
next steps. But my friends, this is what is still
happening in higher education and perhaps K through twelve as
well throughout the country, and we have to put a
stop to it. Yesterday, President Trump met with Prime Minister

(06:23):
vib Net and Yahoo of Israel, and I want to
spend just a few minutes on this and we'll probably
talk about it a little bit more with Katie McFarland
coming up in an hour and a quarter just after
ten thirty, and they put out a twenty one point
I believe it is twenty years, maybe it's twenty point proposal,
and much later in the show. I'm going to go

(06:43):
through some of the details of the proposal, but it's
a comprehensive thing that lays out a peace plan, and
I'm not going to get too much into the details
with you right now. The bottom line is, right now,
it's a peace plan that everybody has said they will
go along with it, except for Hamas, which has not
responded yet. And there's one little provision in the peace

(07:06):
plan that I think puts more pressure on Hamas than
anything we've seen before, because what I've said so far
is I don't see what's in it.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
For Hamas to go along with this.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
When you're talking about people, especially the fighters in the
street who don't mind if they die, and the guys
living their cushy lives and Cutter don't mind telling the
people who are fighting in the street to in Gaza.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, go ahead and die for us. Right. So, I'm
not sure what's in it.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
For Hamas to give up the hostages, but I'll tell
you about this one particular provision, and it says that
if Hamas doesn't go along, the rest of the peace
plan will nevertheless be put into effect in the parts
of the Gaza strip that are controlled by Israel rather
than by Hamas. Now, if this ends up with soldiers

(07:57):
from Arab countries, from Arabia, from UAE, from Cutter, from
wherever else being stationed within Gaza to maintain the peace
and to do others to kind of run the territory
as a temporary government, then in order for Hamas to

(08:18):
reassert itself and to try to take control again if
they wanted to, they would have to shoot at Muslim
Arab soldiers, which I think is it's not outside of
what Hamas is probably willing to do, but it's certainly
outside of what the people of Gaza are willing to
have Hamas do. Now, the people of Gaza don't have

(08:40):
the guns, but still I think this puts Hamas in
a very very difficult situation. So I thought I would
share that with you, and we will see how it
all plays out. We hope to have an answer from
Hamas sometime soon. The other thing that I think would
help would be if the leaders of Cutter told the
people in Hamas who are living in Cutter, if you

(09:02):
don't agree to this, we're going to deport you, and
maybe we won't deport you to a place you actually
want to be deported, like we won't deport you to Turkey,
We'll deport you to Uganda like what Trump is doing
with American illegal aliens, right, or will deport you to Gaza.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
That could be interesting.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Now I mentioned that if this thing plays out as.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
The peace plan is written, there is a chance you.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Would see Muslim Arab countries placing soldiers in Gaza. That
would include Saudi Arabia. And I actually have multiple stories
that I want to share with you today about Saudi Arabia.
I'm not gonna do them all at once, I'll just
sort of spread them out during the show.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
But here's one I want to share with you.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
I think Electronic Arts is the biggest computer gaming company,
video gaming company. They make Madden, they make the Sims,
they make a bunch of things. The Electronic Arts is
publicly traded, but it is going to be taken private
by an investor group that includes the Sovereign Wealth Fund

(10:14):
of Saudi Arabia, which already has like a ten percent share,
but I think they're going to own more. And let's see,
let me see what the stock price did Electronic Arts stock.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
So the symbol is what is the symbol?

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Er?

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Is it ERTs?

Speaker 2 (10:34):
I don't remember anyway, all right, So the stock is
trading two hundred dollars a share. Before this announcement, it
was trading about one hundred and seventy dollars a share,
and the deal is going to be two hundred and
ten dollars a share for cash money, and it's going
to be a fifty five billion dollar deal, which far

(10:55):
exceeds the previous record for taking a company private, which
was a thirty two billion dollar deal to take Texas
Utility TXU private back in two thousand and seven. Now
that was a long time ago, when if you adjust
for inflation, it's probably kind of sort of close, but still.
The Saudi Investment Fund, which goes by PIF, is a

(11:18):
big player now in this They've actually been doing a
lot in video gaming and online gaming already and in
other stuff as well, but electronic arts going private in
the biggest private taking private deal of all time, at
least if you don't adjust for inflation. Other investors will
include silver Lake Partners and another firm run by Jared Kushner, Donald.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Trump's son in law.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Will be right back on KOWA with a fantastic conversation
with the retiring in one way but not retiring another way,
Pet Woodard. Pat Woodard is retiring after some number of
months or years at KOWA.

Speaker 5 (11:57):
I've been here for sixteen years off, but I've been
doing this, whether it's radio, TV or print for fifty
two years.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Let me just say, I want most of this segment
to be you. But let me just say, and I've
mentioned this a time or five times on the air,
I've never I've never met a news guy who had
just so close to the same sense as I have
at what the important stories are and right. So I'll
come in prepared to talk about stuff, and then you

(12:28):
do your newscast between Colorado's Morning News and my show,
and you can only do a very small number of
topics and a short newscast, and often you have two
or three things that you've decided we're important that are
the same, that are things that I was going to
talk about. And maybe it's because you and I kind
of come.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
From the world of finance. It in a bit.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
I don't know that i'd say we're kindred spirits necessary,
but I think we're we have kindred minds. Yeah, in
a lot of way, We're interested in the same sort
of things. I find a story and I go, oh,
oh wow, I want to know more about that, And
a lot of times it just happens to be something
of the lines with something you want to talk about.
So that's kind of interesting, kind of scary.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Maybe yeah, maybe.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
So I'm going to go in no particular order here,
but you said you've been doing this for fifty two years.
Did how did you get into journalism and what was
the first thing you did?

Speaker 5 (13:17):
Well, I didn't really get into journalism as much as
I got into radio. Okay, when I was in high school.
When I was a senior in high school, I wanted
to be a photographer. I wanted to be a nature
photographer Ansel Adams, you know, that's kind of what I
wanted to be.

Speaker 4 (13:32):
And I had.

Speaker 5 (13:34):
A I think it was a student teacher in one
of my speech classes who approached me and said, you know,
I know you're interested in photography, but she said, I
think you ought to consider doing something in communications as particular,
in particular broadcasting, radio, television, whatever. And so I started
thinking about it and I thought, well, you know, I
do kind of like that. And right out of high school,

(13:56):
I didn't go to college. Out of high school, I
went to a trade school, broadcasting trade school.

Speaker 4 (14:01):
We've all seen those, Hey, you come down and you.

Speaker 5 (14:04):
Know, And I went to one in Minneapolis, and I
was there for about nine or ten months. Got a
job right out of there, and Hastings, Nebraska was my
first job. And it was one of those funny little
places where you've got the tower right on site, you know,
and the buildings about the size of this studio, and
it's old and right and back of it as a cornfield,

(14:26):
you know, and it was so typical. But I was
only there for about two months, and I think I
quit right before they were going to fire me. Didn't
really like what I was doing there. But that was
my first news job as well, and that involved, you know,
you had to at the time go down to the
cop shop and to the county commission meetings and all
of that kind of stuff that I'm not sure people
even do anymore. But after I did that, I went

(14:49):
back home and got a job at another small radio
station where I could be a DJ, you know, and
play the rock music at night. And it was one
of those stations where it was it was block format,
where in the morning you'd have polka time, you know,
for the year. This was in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and
so there were a lot of German dairy farmers there

(15:09):
out there milking the cows in the morning, so he'd
play the polka music for them in the morning, and
then you'd have time to trade and you had all
these different shows on and at eight o'clock at night
is when it was finally safe to play rock and
roll music apparently wow for three hours until sign off.
So that was my job, but I had other duties
to do your or no, no, I was I was

(15:31):
nineteen yeah, okay, so I was nineteen years old. But
I had a friend who had gotten a job at
Coil Radio in Omaha, which was a you know, compared
to Detroit Lakes, that's that's a major city, that's a
pretty big market. And I found out through him that
they had an all night news anchor opening come in

(15:52):
at midnight and do the news every hour until six am.
And so that is what I loved about that job
is that I could there, I only had one newscast
to do an hour, and I could work on writing.
That is where I would sit there with all my
wire copy and say, well, I really don't want to
read this because it's awful, and I would work on

(16:13):
rewriting it in a fashion that I thought was more
entertaining and more listenable. And so it was a great
training ground to basically learn how to write for broadcast
and for the people who were listening and didn't want
to hear just the wire copy that was coming down.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
We tend to forget this in the age that we
live in now, But there wasn't always the internet.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
And so you're talking now about the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 4 (16:37):
Yeah, this would have been nineteen seventy four.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, so you were talking about wire copy. I want
you to get real granular with me here. How did
you get news that you then decided what you wanted
to talk about or rewrite or any of that, Like literally,
what form? What?

Speaker 1 (16:53):
How did you get that lose.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
Well, there was a teletype machine.

Speaker 5 (16:56):
There was a machine in there that was tied to
the United Presental or the Associated Press, and stories would
come over the wire machine and you would do the
rip and read, And that's where that term comes from.
You would rip it off the machine, take it in
and read it, or in my case, I'd sit down
and rewrite it. That is where all of the national

(17:17):
news came from. Now, we did have enough of the
news staff there, even though it was a top forty
pop music station, where we had people going out and
getting news as well for local news content, and so
we had that material as well. Working overnight. I didn't
do that because nobody's going out covering news. You know.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Thanks in the morning. Yeah yeah. Folks.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
By the way, if you've got if you've got a
question for Pat Woodard text us at five six six
nine zero. I don't promise to ask every question, but
I will try to ask good questions. And this is
pats last day, and actually he'd be gone already, except
he agreed to stick around and hang out with me.

Speaker 5 (17:55):
I still got a couple of housekeeping things to do
as well for iHeartMedia, for the HR people.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
Before I can leave.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Tell us a little about covering live aid.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
Oh that was so cool.

Speaker 5 (18:06):
I was working, you know, after I'd been in the
business for a little while. I was still fairly young
when I got hired at CBS News in New York.
I was twenty seven years old, and I'm going into
the newsroom and I'm working shoulders to shoulder with names
like Richard C. Hottlett and Douglas Edwards and all the
Murrow boys who had covered.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
World War Two. They were still there.

Speaker 5 (18:28):
But what had happened was the Democratic Convention in nineteen
eighty four was in San Francisco, and that is where
I had worked right before going to New York. And
I knew that we were going to send somebody to
cover the convention, and I thought, since I was from
San Francisco, I was the natural choice. Turns out we

(18:48):
had another guy on from San Francisco and they picked him,
so I was pretty frosted. I really really was looking
forward to going to San Francisco. I had never covered
a political convention before, and I got a lot of
friends san Francisco I wanted to hang out with. Sure
didn't get it, So a few months later we find
out that there's going to be this big concert in
London and a joint concert concurrent concert in Philadelphia.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
Live aid.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
It was called to help address the famine in Ethiopia
and turned out to be a pretty big deal, and
I put in for it and I got picked for
it this time, so I got to spend five days
in London, go to Wembley Stadium and sit there and
listen to all of the all of the rock stars
at the time, and be there for the legendary performance

(19:34):
from Queen, Queen.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
And Freddie Mercury.

Speaker 5 (19:36):
I mean, when you see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, it's
pretty darn close to what it was like. And I
remember at the time feeling, you know, when Queen got
on the stage. And keep in mind, at this time,
Queen was really several years off of their fame. You know,
they were not really that hot a group at the time,

(19:57):
but they were well known, and I don't think anybody
expected what they got because it was just it was electrifying,
heart stopping, almost wow.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
I can't believe you were there. That's incredible. Did you
to interview any of the rock.

Speaker 5 (20:09):
Star In fact, most of the interviews we did were
just with concert goers with people who were excited to
be there and all that kind of stuff, but we
didn't do any of the celebrity interviews.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Wow, it's still an amazing story, Shannon, You got something
to play for me? All right? A little weird al
I lost on Jeopardy. Pat is the only person I
know who's ever been smart enough to get on Jeopardy.
And we've talked about that on and off quite a

(20:40):
bit over the years. But I don't know how many
people listening right now know about your experience with that,
So just talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 5 (20:48):
The genesis of that goes back to when I was
working at Channel seven here in town, and at the time,
Channel seven is where Jeopardy aired, and they were having
a contestant search that came to Denver and I was
assigned or I assigned myself, I don't remember what it
was to go cover it.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
For part of the story.

Speaker 5 (21:07):
I took the test along with this hotel ballroom filled
with other people, and I found out later that I
scored higher than anybody else in the room on the test.
And I can't remember fifty questions something along those lines.
But I couldn't be on the show because I worked
for a station that aired Jeopardy. Not only couldn't I

(21:28):
be on the show, then I was barred from being
on the show for a minimum of three years after
I left the radio that television station. Wow, So I
kind of put that in the back of my mind
and kind of forgot about it.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
And then at one point they.

Speaker 5 (21:42):
Started the Internet got bigger, and they started doing contestant
searches online and after the time had expired, and actually
Jeopardy then had moved over I think to Channel thirty
one where it airs now, so I was in the
clear as far as eligible to be on the show.
So I did a couple of tests online which were short.

(22:06):
I think there were fifteen questions and they were all
multiple choice or you didn't have to type anything in.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
But they were timed. But they never told you how
you did.

Speaker 5 (22:15):
They just said, Okay, you'll either get picked or you won't,
but feel free to do another one next time if
you don't get picked before then. So I think the
next year or whatever it was, they had another test.
This time I did hear back from them, and they
said we are going to be doing auditions in Denver,

(22:36):
And it was at someplace on the sixteenth Street mall.
I can't remember. It was a hotel, ballroomer or something
along those lines. So I had to go in there
and there was They had sessions both in the morning
and the afternoon, so they had hundreds of people who
wanted to do this. So I went in and first
they gave you a fifty question test again.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Then they had you do a mock show.

Speaker 5 (23:01):
Where they had a set that was up there and
they had one of their producers who was acting the
part of Alex t Rebec and you had to go
up and they gave you the little the little buzzer
thing and threw you a few questions and then and
then they did the big thing. I think that counts
a lot is they do the interview that Alex and
now Ken Jennings does after the first break with the condestans,

(23:23):
Hey where are you from? Tell us about Hey, you
you went camping once? Tell me about that. You know
some really mundane stuff that you've got to talk about,
and they want to see it. And the course of
videotaping at all, they want to see how you are
on video and whether you can carry on a conversation,
whether you freeze up, that sort of thing, and they
still don't tell you anything about it after that.

Speaker 4 (23:46):
And it was some weeks, maybe a month.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
After that, that I got a call from the show
saying we'd like you to be on the show.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
So that was how that started. I flew out there.

Speaker 5 (23:56):
Actually they had to postpone it once because Alex was
having knee surgery and so they had to reschedule it
for another time.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
So I went out there. You pay your own way.

Speaker 5 (24:05):
By the way, they don't pay you to go out
there unless you're in the Tournament of Champions or something
like that, and that all goes back to the old
Paola days. They don't want any whiff of impropriety that
they've paid people to come out there and be on
the show. So I went out there and they had
they taped five shows a day, and so I sat

(24:27):
in the audience for four shows that they taped before me,
and then they finally said you're up for the next show.
And it was great. It was a great experience. I
played well, but I didn't win. The guy that I
that I was up against, who was the champion, was
like a three or four time champion and was really smart, obviously,

(24:49):
but he also was very good with the buzzer, and
that was I think my downfall is that I just
couldn't get in And I think, I know I've told
you this before. You can't buzz in until a certain time,
and if you try to buzz in early, you get
locked out for a fraction of a second, and that
basically means you're not going to get a chance to

(25:09):
answer that question.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
So what you try to do.

Speaker 5 (25:12):
There's a bank of lights on either side of the
screen that you don't see of the board, that you
don't see on the TV screen. You only see that
in person, and those lights will come on when it's
safe to buzz in. And the other indication that it's
safe to buzz in is that the host, whether it's
Ken Jennings or Alex Trebek, has to finish giving the clue,

(25:35):
and so you've got to kind of watch his lips
and see where it's going to go and try to
time it to where you can ring in.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
So we're talking with Pat Ward, who's retiring today after
sixteen years on and off at KAWA and many more years.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
I'm doing other things.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
A couple of quick listener texts, Thank you, Pat, We'll
miss hearing you. Good luck celebrating Pat today, sending so
many things for years and year years of incredible news reporting,
enjoying today's segments so much, and wondering what advice Pat
would give for those of us who are still trying
to discover our life's passion because he seems so passionate

(26:13):
about what he does.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
I'd love to hear his thoughts.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
Yeah, I wish I knew the best answer to that.

Speaker 5 (26:18):
When I first told some of my family and friends
that I was retired, I got a message back from
my cousin who I grew up with lived two houses
down from us, and he said, I still remember in
high school, you knew exactly what you were going to
do for a career, and you did it.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
And I wish I knew the answer to that.

Speaker 5 (26:40):
I got some good advice, as I mentioned, from a
student teacher, but it was something that I apparently had
a facility for and realized that I did at a
pretty early age, and I could pursue it.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
So how you find your passion, I don't know, But once.

Speaker 5 (26:55):
You do, you stick to it and it's not work,
it's fun.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
All right.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I've got two questions, and you can answer either one
or both. Thinking about interviews you've done in the past,
what comes to mind as a time where you finished
an interview with someone and then thought to yourself, Gosh,
I should have asked him or her this question, or
and you could answer both if you want, Gosh, I

(27:20):
should not have asked him or her that question.

Speaker 5 (27:25):
For the first part where I wish I'd have asked
them something that I didn't. That comes from the interview
that I liked the most because it was one that
I'd never expected I would ever get. I was working
at Como TV in Seattle. This would have been about
nineteen eighty eight, and they had sent me down to
do live shots at Boeing Field, which is one of

(27:47):
the major airports in Seattle. There was a seven forty
seven that was going to do in around the world
flight to set some sort of a record.

Speaker 4 (27:54):
I can't remember exactly what it was.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
I'm down there doing live shots and the planes behind
me and I who might do my thing? And then
I happened to look over and I see on the
curb this guy's standing there all by himself, And the
more I look at him, I know who that is.
But and then I realized it's Neil Armstrong, the first
man on the moon, and he's standing there all by himself,

(28:18):
and I've got a photographer here with a camera. I've
got to go talk to him, even though I know
Neil Armstrong is famously a media shy, not someone who
willingly gave interviews to the media. So I've got to
figure out what am I going to do to get
in his good graces to get an interview with him,

(28:39):
knowing that it's going to be probably an interview that
lasts maybe a minute and a half.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
You know, it's just it just wasn't at you.

Speaker 5 (28:46):
There was nothing set up with the press office or
anything like that. He's just So I approached him and
almost as with the camera with the cameraman, and well
he was standing there watching us, so he knew who
I was and what we were doing.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
So I approached him.

Speaker 5 (29:01):
And what I did is I said, listen, I would
love to talk to you.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
I said, what are you doing here?

Speaker 5 (29:05):
He said, well, I just love to fly, and I'm
going to be on this flight, this round the world flight.
And I said, well, can I talk to you about that?
And I said, I promise I'm not going to ask
you stupid questions like, gee, what was it like to
go to the moon, And almost before he said yes,
I was putting the microphone on him, so he was
almost a fade a complaint. And I did ask him

(29:28):
what he was doing there and why do you like
to fly so much? And I did kind of pull
off a little bit of a white lie by saying,
you know, geez, all the things you've done and you
still want to be on a flight like that, you know,
compare this to what it's like going on on something
you did in the past, like going to the moon.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
And I framed it that way and he was fine.

Speaker 5 (29:51):
He was fine with it, but I wish I'd have
had more time, really, not just to ask him one
specific question, but to talk to him more, because.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
We just had a very limited amount of time.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
What an amazing story. We've got about a minute left.
What are you doing next?

Speaker 4 (30:07):
Well?

Speaker 5 (30:07):
I have been approached to do a podcast. I mean,
everybody's got a podcast. I think my pets are getting
podcasts too, But I've been approached to do one that
I'll probably if all works out between now and when
we're going to start doing it. Looks like we may
start recording in a matter of a couple of weeks,
and it's not something that I'm going to do full time.

(30:29):
It's something that is just going to come up there.
There's five or six episodes that I'll do and then
we'll probably take a break and see if there's another
season after that.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Do you have any hobby or hobbies that you're looking
forward to spending more time on in retirement.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
Well, I have a couple.

Speaker 5 (30:45):
I still love photography and I love would you say,
she said, fixing the lawnmowers.

Speaker 4 (30:51):
First of all, I went out to moment the other
day in the battery.

Speaker 5 (30:54):
Was dead, so I got to get that done. Yeah,
I still love photography. I hike a lot in the
Colorado high Country and I use that as an opportunity
for photography, which is hard to take a bad picture
in the Colorado Mountains. So I do love that. I
used to love fly fishing a lot. I've kind of
gotten away from that. I wouldn't mind picking up that again.

(31:16):
And I hope to do something that is close to
what I've been doing here in terms of writing and communicating,
and I kind of.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Mentioned that with the podcast.

Speaker 5 (31:25):
But those are the hobbies that I think I'd like
to do we like to travel too, so we'll do
some more of that.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
So at my house, my wife gets the last word.
So why don't we do that here too? Jump on in, Anna,
So what are you most or least looking forward to
in having a retired husband? And we just got about
thirty seconds, so it was your best shot.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
I can get close to the microphone.

Speaker 6 (31:47):
I can't tell you that.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
It sounds like fun, all right.

Speaker 5 (31:55):
I think she posted something this morning online and she
found it. I have a couple of old kind of
vintage forties and fifties microphones at the house.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
And she put them on the put them on the
table and put my computer up and put the headphones
around him and she posted that pass finally hanging them up,
you know. And then she said, uh, best wishers to
him and good luck to me, and I wrote back,
you'll need it.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
That's right, you will. That sounds about right.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Pat.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
It's been a pleasure and an honor to work with you.
You're just an incredible newsman. Thanks and uh and and
we're gonna miss you.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
I'm going to miss you.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
I'm going to miss everyone here and I'm going to
miss you. But I get to listen to you every
day on the radio.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
I hope you do about or have a wonderful retirement.
I'm sure I'll see you around town.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
All right, we'll take a quick break. We'll be right
back on KOA. Did you drink a lot?

Speaker 4 (32:45):
I know, I know?

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Did you drink a lot?

Speaker 4 (32:47):
I did?

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (32:48):
Once you know what you're looking for, yeah, and you
just you can't unsee it. It's like the arrow in
the FedEx logo. You can't unsee it once you know
it's there. What were you looking for? Ross, Kaminsky and
Chuck on the sidelines for yesterday's game Ballpark?

Speaker 2 (33:04):
How many times did you see one or the other
of us?

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Almost two dozen?

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Wow? Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Wow? So how drunk were you at the end of
the night.

Speaker 7 (33:14):
I actually stopped looking for you guys around the third.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Quarter because your bladder was too full. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (33:20):
I didn't get drunk because I'm not the big drinker guy.
But I did have thirty two ounces of orange soda
and my orange cat.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah was that Fanta? What kind of orange was fanta? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Okay, did you drink thirty two ounces of orange soda?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Wow? Is it diet or not?

Speaker 4 (33:38):
No?

Speaker 1 (33:39):
That's some drinks.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
That's some full strength mainline high sugar stop.

Speaker 7 (33:43):
Late at night.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
I had to pee twice. That's awesome, all right. Thanks
to everybody who played along with the drinking game. Got
some good pictures of Yeah, you sent me a picture
or two of me on the sidelines from my television
from my television. Yeah, yeah, a few people did that.
That was pretty cool. It was really fun to be there,
especially in a game like that where you know you win.

(34:06):
And it actually it started off a little challenging in
the sense that Cincinnati drove down on their first drive.
They got a field goal, not a touchdown, but still
they moved the ball right and then they didn't do anything.
They didn't score again actually for the rest.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Of the game.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
And if I one of the things that happens when
you're working the sideline microphone as you're wearing headphones and
you can hear the KAWA broadcast, and if I understood
Rick and Dave Wright, I think they said that on offense,
I don't think the Bengals crossed the fifty yard line
for the entire second half. I believe that to be accurate.

(34:40):
And what else.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
JK.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Dobbins was the first Broncos one hundred yard rusher in
three years, thirty seven games. So that was that was
pretty good. What else was there? There were a couple
other statistics they mentioned, Oh, in Latin in the previous
week's game, what was at the Chargers the Chargers, the
Chargers had twenty nine and the Broncos had nine first
downs last night That Broncos had twenty nine first downs

(35:06):
and the other team had nine first downs, So that
was cool.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
And then the other.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Data point that wasn't really specific to the Broncos, but
that I heard Dave and Rick mentioned. They talked about
it as a good trivia question. The dude who was
the referee for the game last night, and I'm blanking
on his name.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
I'm sorry, I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
His name, but they said he is the only person
ever to both play in a Super Bowl and officiate
a Super Bowl as an NFL as an NFL referee,
And I'm blanking on his name, but it's a pretty
good trivia question. He played for the Tennessee Titans in

(35:45):
the Super Bowl.

Speaker 7 (35:46):
And one stat that nobody's going to mention outside of me, Yeah,
the Broncos are undefeated when Ross's at the game.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
MH I texted that into Ryan Edwards and the crew
who was sitting here after the game. But I don't
think they said it on the air. I said the
Broncos are two and oh when Ross is working.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
The sideline microphone, are you gonna travel?

Speaker 3 (36:05):
You know?

Speaker 1 (36:06):
No, Gosh, i'd be a hard one.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Can you imagine they probably need my help against the Eagles. Eagles,
there's much stronger team in the Bengals probably don't need
you in London, even though I think you were trying to.
I was trying, but I got too much. I got
too much going on. And actually it ends up that
that day I'm going to be traveling with my younger
kid to go to fly out of town to look

(36:29):
at some colleges, So it works out.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
I would really have loved to go to the London game, but.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
I will make a serious effort the next time the
Broncos play in London because or overseas, because typically these
days there's four or five overseas games every year, and
I would.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Absolutely love to go to one.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Whether I'm working it on the sideline or just being
there as a spectator or anything at all. It's just
a it's a wonderful thing. I want to take just
maybe one minute here. We heard in our newscast there
about Pete Hagsath giving a speech today to basically all
the flag officers or most of the flag officers in

(37:09):
the military, meaning generals and admirals, and then also the
most senior enlisted people. And much of what he was
talking about was regaining the warrior spirit and getting DEI
out of the military and wokeness out of the military
and all this stuff and making the military what Hegseth
thinks that it should be, which is about the mission,
as you hear from time to time, killing people and

(37:31):
breaking things.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
And here's a.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Little bit of what Hegseth had to say.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
This is I'm going to see if I can get
this working. Let's see.

Speaker 8 (37:38):
I mean today, at my direction, each service will ensure
that every requirement for every combat MOS, for every designated
combat arms position returns to the highest male standard. Only
this is not about preventing women from serving. We very
much value the impact of female troops. Are female officers

(38:00):
and NCOs are the absolute best.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
In the world.

Speaker 8 (38:06):
But when it comes to any job that requires physical
power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be
high and gender neutral.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
If women can make it excellent. If not, it is
what it is.

Speaker 8 (38:20):
If that means no women qualify for some combat.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Jobs, so be it.

Speaker 8 (38:25):
That is not the intent, but it could be the result,
so be it. It will also men that we mean
that weak men won't qualify because we're not playing games today.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
So I like that, I like that, I think, I
think everything that I've heard that, heg Seth said at
this meeting today where he convened the the leaders of
the UST military, I'm on board with. He also said,
by the way, no fat generals, no fat admirals. He

(38:56):
wants he wants everybody at every level the military, no
matter how senior, to have to pass the physical standards
test twice a year, regardless of how senior you are,
and if not, get out. And he also said, look,
if any of this, if this doesn't suit the way
you think about the military, if you think we should be,

(39:19):
you know, hiring more people of particular skin colors, just
so that the percentage of the military with particular skin
colors matches the percentage of the American population with particular
skin colors, he said, We're not doing that. We're here
on a mission, and you know, other people can go
do that stuff and if you don't like it, you
should resign. And you know what, I agree with him.
So he was saying, like, somebody is doing something about something.

Speaker 7 (39:43):
On your feet, on your feet about the song is
drowning Pool. The song is called Soldiers. The band is
what drowning pool?

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Of course it is right, and and the song is
soldiers Soldiers.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Okay, now I understand there's a connect. Yeah, no, I
got it. I got it. You don't need I mean,
I get them.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
I might have been born at night, but not last night.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Okay, But what we really.

Speaker 7 (40:03):
Want to know on the text line is that is
sixty three eligible?

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Oh my gosh, was that fun?

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Every was that guy's name, Pal Pelschewski. Every time this
guy was the like left left tackle maybe would report
as eligible?

Speaker 1 (40:22):
The crowd went crazy last night. And and it was
a thing.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Even in the broadcast, Rick and Dave, we're talking about it.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Susie was talking about, like what's going on?

Speaker 7 (40:29):
Evens Redbeard watching the game was like, is somebody gonna
date him?

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Apparently the apparently the referee was asking why does everybody
cheer every time I announced number sixty three has reported
as eligible? It turned into this running joke inside the stadium,
and everybody eventually was in on it. But I don't
know if if anybody actually knew why. And it was

(40:55):
but it was really fun. It was it was. It
was a fun night last night. I mean there for
a win and just a Monday night under the lights,
a big win, a needed win.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
It was. It was a it was a really fun thing.
It really was.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Let me do a quick local politics story. So I
get a little bit frustrated when people who should know
the rules don't know the rules and don't do them right.
It's not this is not that big a deal. It's
not an end of the world kind of story. But
it's just okay. So you you're well aware that Rose
Puglyci resigned from the state House. She was the Republican

(41:33):
leader in the Colorado State House of Representatives, and between
how sort of verbally abused she was at the end
of the special session, and then I think kind of
the the straw that broke the camel's back, I think
was the murder of Charlie Kirk, because Rose is a
prominent Republican in the state of Colorado, and she's a
single mom, and I think between feeling like she's just

(41:57):
constantly getting abused by the Democrats, and also so much
in the minority that it's hard to feel like you're really.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Getting much done.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
And then adding this sense that she's taking the kind
of personal risk where in the world we live in
right now, she might be risking leaving her children without
a parent. She decided, I'm not going to do this anymore,
so she's leaving. Okay, So the Vacancy Committee picked Ava Flanell,

(42:26):
who I've had on the show I think one time.
She's a firearm store owner and a very big Second
Amendment person.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
They picked her for the vacancy Committee.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
By the way, I note that Rocky Mountain gun owners
picked the other guy, but Able Flanell got it. And
you know, RMGO is good on some things, but generally,
if they're endorsing a candidate, I'll go with the other
one in a Republican primary. In any case, Flanell was
given the nod by the vacancy Committee. But it turns

(42:56):
out that the vacancy Committee didn't follow the rules, and
in particular, the members of the committee have to get
ten days notice ahead of their you know, getting together
in order to name somebody and they didn't get ten
days notice.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
They did it sooner than that.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
They're also supposed to live stream it, which they didn't,
and some Republicans are making some excuses. You know, well,
we did it this way and we think it's fine.
But the Secretary of State's office that oversees elections in
the state of Colorado said, you did not do this right.
Go back and do it again. And so Ava Flanel

(43:36):
and whoever was the dude that she beat narrowly the
first time around, are going to have to go back
and do it out again. I mean, you would think
that the vote will be the same the second time
as the first time, and she'll get it again this time.
But it is a little bit frustrating that Republicans who
supported the bill that put in these new requirements because

(43:58):
there's so many vacancy, any appointments to the Republicans working
with Democrats putting these new requirements in yet and that
yet Republicans didn't follow the rules. It's a little frustrating,
but hopefully it'll end up with the same result when
we come back. The one and only Katie McFarland joins
the show. I'm so pleased to welcome back to Kowa,
my friend Katie McFarland, who may be the most requested

(44:23):
guests on the show when and when we go some
weeks or heaven forbid a few months without kat boy,
do I hear it? And Katie has generously made herself
available us today even though she's traveling and she's on
a different time zone from her usual time zone and
giving a talk somewhere and all, and so, as always,
thanks for thanks for making time for us.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
Appreciate it so much.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Well, it's a pleasure.

Speaker 9 (44:48):
Thank you so much for having me on your very
thoughtful and insightful show.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
One quick question for you before we get to the
Israel Gaza thing. And if you don't have an opinion
or haven't really watched the New Is that much this
morning and don't really have anything to say, that's fine.
But I was wondering if you had any thoughts on
what Pete Hegseth said to the military this morning. I
know you're more foreign policy than military, but there's an
overlap there and I just wondered if you had a thought.

Speaker 9 (45:14):
Yeah, I mean, I work forever at the Pentagon, so
I know the sort of mentality of the military, and
he says, look, we're running We're the Department of War.
We're not the Department of Peace or DEI or even Defense.
We're the Department of War. At our jobs, we're going
to defend them. We're going to have the military equipment
and strategy to defend the country, to kill bad guys,

(45:35):
to fight the enemies. And what he didn't say was
and thereby with that capability, what we do is deter war.
But that is the Trump doctrine. I think the president
sounded like the President's remarks fell a little flat, and
I think in part it is because all those generals
were assembled there not knowing what they were assembled for.
It had been rumored in the media and other places

(45:57):
that Pete Hegseth wants to cut about twenty percent of
the flag officer rank, that we've become too top heavy
in the military. And so I'm sure that none of
them were in a laughing mood. They were all wondering
if the ax was about to fall on them. So
I think it was a really important thing to do.
And I think that what happens now is, you know,
the administration has been in long enough to sort of

(46:19):
reevaluate the military strategy the foreign policy strategy, and now
they're implementing both of those, and those are the guys
who are there in the room who are going to
be implementing them.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
That's I'm with you on all that.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
And just in terms of quality of presentation, I will
say that Pete Hegseth was was was very good and
probably better than I expected. And President Trump like it
was a little rambling and sort of off topic and
probably a little worse, a little worse than I expected,
but whatever, that's not important. The main thing is what

(46:50):
Hegseth said and what he's trying to get the military
back on mission, which.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
I thought was great.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
So it actually worked out very well having you we
we originally going to have you yes yesterday. We got
you today instead, and I think it actually works out
better because now we've had some hours to try to
digest a little bit of this Israel Gaza peace Plan,
which I actually think it's kind of a remarkable document.
And I've been a little skeptical of wit Cough a

(47:17):
little bit. Jared Kushner has done some good things already
with the Abraham Accords. I don't know that this is
going to work, but it seems to me like hard
to do a lot better as a proposal, But you're
the experts to tell me what you think.

Speaker 9 (47:33):
This is earth shatteringly brilliant. And it's not just the
proposal that they put in front of Hamas in the
air world yesterday, it's the steps leading to it. Let
me go back to eight ten, twenty forty years ago.
The thought was always that if you were going to
have Middle East peace in large, yourit large, it would
start with figuring out the Palestinian problem. It would start

(47:57):
with a peace between Israel and the Palacetenians. And it
never worked because that was never going to the Palestinians,
whether they were Yaser Arafat in the PLO forty years
ago or Hamas today in the same areas, they don't
want peace, They want the obliteration of Israel. So since
the half of you know, you don't get peace without

(48:17):
both parties, and since the Palestinian part of the peace
process was never going to be to give up its weapons,
never going to be to give up its pace, even
when you asked their airfat was offered in the Clinton
administration just unbelievable goodness of a deal and something that
it could live with and could have thrived with it
wouldn't take it so fast forward to where we are today.

(48:40):
And I think President Trump understood that the road to
piece does not run through it does not run through
the Palestinian territories, it doesn't run through Gasa. It runs
to a lot of other capitals, and then eventually it
gets there. So the first term, as she pointed out
with I'm Jure Kushner in the abraham A chorus, that
was that was an and an opportunity for the United

(49:02):
States to support the younger.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Generation the Middle East.

Speaker 9 (49:07):
When we came into office in the beginning of the
Trump term, Saudi Arabia, the golf Arabs were all in
the middle of a generational shift of power.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
The old guys were up. You know, we're too old.

Speaker 9 (49:17):
The young guys were coming in but very inexperienced. And
so which side does the United States back? Jared Kushner
wanted to back the younger guys who were.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
In their thirties.

Speaker 9 (49:27):
He said, well, they may be young, but they're the
same age as their majority of their very big baby
boom population. And he said that that those leaders have
been educated in the West, they were comfortable in open societies,
they were comfortable with women's rice, they were comfortable with
a diversified economy, and they knew they had to diversify
their economy because of Trump's energy policies, because of fracking,

(49:51):
because of oil and natural gas. The United States now
has that we could always we could dominate the price
of oil and natural gas. It would never be i
again because of simple supply and demand. We had so
much more supply than anybody had ever thought the United
States was capable of.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
So the golf Arab countries, the.

Speaker 9 (50:10):
UAE, the Saudis, others, they said, Okay, we know we
need a diversified economy. How do we do that. We
need investment. How do we get investment. Nobody's going to
invest in a war torn part of the world. We
need peace, We need peace with Israel. That was the
genesis of the golf Arabs, who had opposed peace with
Israel for fifty years. That was the genesis of them

(50:32):
swinging over to peace with Israel. And it's been very
effective that travel between the two areas, there's trade.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Everybody's benefited.

Speaker 9 (50:43):
Israel's benefited, the Saudis, even though they're not signatories to
the abraham A Cords.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
They were the prime movers in the abraham Acorus.

Speaker 9 (50:50):
But all of those countries have enjoyed just a boom,
an economic boom as well as an investment boom, and
more open societies, much closer relations to the United States.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
So that was part one of the big Chess move.

Speaker 9 (51:03):
Then part two of the Chess move comes in Trump's
second term, which is Israel obliterating Hamas's adversary. I mean
it's proxies, so Hezbelah Hamas, the houties, the missile defense
shield that was sent Syria. Israel took all of those out.
And then when October seventh happened, Israel concluded, I think

(51:24):
that there was no piece to be had ever with Hamas.
And so then they've then pursued this very different approach.
So it was to take Iran, which remember the golf
Arabs are no longer Israel's enemies, but Iran still is.
Then what does Iran have money because of oil and
it has proxies. Israel takes out the proxies so they're
not threatening Israel or the world anymore. And then the

(51:47):
United States under Trump two point zero puts sanctions back
on Iran, isolates Iran make sure the price of oil
is low. Iran's getting no income to pay for anything,
much less it'sies, and then the United States that takes
out Iran's nuclear program, So then you have an emasculated Iran,
no money, no friends, no allies, no nothing. So then

(52:11):
we're on to sort of what's the next step of
all of this, well, to finally get Hamas to come
to the table. Wise, Hamas always resisted coming to the table.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
They never had to.

Speaker 9 (52:21):
They've always had monetary support, whether it's come from the
Golf Arabs forty years ago or from Iran five years ago.
But now Hamas is alone, isolated, no money, no nothing.
And Katar, which was really the one country where the
Hamas could could hide out in safety under the auspices

(52:44):
of maybe having negotiations, even even Qatar changed his mind.
And so when President Trump two days ago announced this
new peace plan, the important part wasn't the specifics of it.
It was that all the Arabs in doorst it, Egypt
endorsed it, Katar endorsed it, the Saudis endorsed it, Turkey

(53:06):
and everybody in the region and endorsed it. So now
it leads Hamas with no friends no supporters and no
way out, and the terms of the agreement are immediacy's fire,
hostages come home. The next part of it is that
Hamaas lays down its arms, an interim government is formed,
probably under an international interim government, maybe under the leadership

(53:31):
of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Israel withdraw us
from the Gaza. The government, the new government or governing
body of Gaza will be this international maybe Tony Blair
had of it, but it'll include countries from the region,
and it'll include technocrats, the guys are going to keep
the water on, the guys who are going to rebuild

(53:53):
the roads. With the idea that then Hamas is gone,
Hamas is there's no military for home, there's no aid
for Thmas, there's no weapons for Hamas. Hamas is dead,
and then the Palestinian people have an opportunity to rebuild.
Not paid for by the United States, not paid for
by Israel, not with American occupation, not with Israeli occupation,

(54:16):
but paid for and run by the countries in the
Middle East, all the countries who have most recently signed
up to be members of the abraham A Corus.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
I mean it's just everything is now in place.

Speaker 9 (54:29):
And if you'll see that amazing thing that President Trump
had happened yesterday now, two days ago, when bib Dantya,
who came to the to the US and went to
the White House.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
What was the first thing he did.

Speaker 9 (54:40):
He made a phone call to the to the head
of the a mirror of Katar, and he said, I'm
sorry that we had that is action that we bomb
to kill the Hamas leaders in your country.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
We'll never do that again.

Speaker 9 (54:53):
So all of a sudden, Katar, the last hold out
of supporting Hamas, is now neutralized.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
So Hamas in the next three.

Speaker 9 (55:00):
Days, has the decision do they want to go along
with this new piece plan, and if they don't, all
these countries, the United States, any Arab countries have more
or less signed on to Okay, yes, you will go
finish the job, kill off all of Hamas's remaining.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
We're talking with Katie McFarland, former Deputy National Security Advisor
in Donald Trump's first administration and a foreign policy hand
for many many years and one of my very favorite
guests on these topics. So a couple things I'll add
to that. So I think I hope that if Hamas

(55:35):
says no, that the fact that the Arab countries have
agreed to all this the way.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
This is structured.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
If Hamas says no, it'll be obvious to absolutely everybody
that Hamas and not Israel, is the obstruction to peace,
and therefore it could continue. It could allow the continuation
of something like the Abraham Accords, which you know, if
Donald Trump's first turned had been a year longer, I
think there's a decent chance that Saudi Arabia would have

(56:05):
been signed. Right, So if if Hamas says no, maybe
they start pursuing that on the side while doing whatever
they're going to do. To Hamas, do you want to
say anything about that? And then I got another question. Yeah,
but but.

Speaker 9 (56:19):
Hamas, I mean, with what where's Amasa's money right now?

Speaker 3 (56:22):
It's not coming from the UN.

Speaker 9 (56:24):
You know, Hamas was stealing the humanitarian supplies the UN
was bringing in. They were stealing what it was like
ninety seven percent were captured by armed guards and disappeared.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
They never got to the Palestinian people. So that stride up.

Speaker 9 (56:39):
It's now being distributed directly to the Palestinian people. That
aid is going directly to the Palestinian people. Not through Hamas.
The Hamas's bank rollers always follow the money ross. It's
you know, war is expensive, so where's where is their
big donor their most recent big donor. Well that's Iran,
and Iran is broke, doesn't have any money or anywhere

(57:01):
with all to pay for anything for Hamas, It's big protector.
Hamas's protector is cut and cutter in Doha, and they've
now flip sides. So I don't I mean, if if
Hamas is going to cause trouble, it's going to cause
trouble with whatever they've got left right right right exactly.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
And they might they might, they might want to just
fight to the bitter end. The street fighters who want
to be martyrs and hate everything and everybody. They're kind
of nihilists in there in their own way. But what
I what I kind of wanted to ask you to
respond to more was not so much whether Hamas will
say yes or no, but what you think the prospects
are for continuing the Abraham Accords and stuff like that

(57:39):
to build a much broader piece in the Middle East.

Speaker 9 (57:43):
I think it's the future is golden if Hamas Hamas.
Remember Hamas is not the Palestinian Simas is this caggle
of you know, vampires on the top of the Palestinian people.
If Amas is gone, then the Arab countries together they're nice.
Not once they're all together work together in this multi
Arab force to rebuild Gaza, rebuild probably the Palace down

(58:08):
the West Bank, to govern it together. And so they're
already working together with Israel in a defacto way, and
so de Jui I would think the next step is
that they do come together and at the Abraham Accords.
Just ads, you know, another five or ten countries in
the next couple of months. Now, remember when before October seventh,

(58:29):
there was a trinering event before October seventh, and that
was when Brett bear Fox News sat down with the
Crown Prince to Saudi Arabia, the guy really runs things,
Mohammed and Selman, and he said, you're negotiating with Israel
to join the Abraham Accords. How's that going? And the
Crown Prince said, oh, I think we're quite close. I
think we're within a couple of weeks. And then the

(58:50):
next night Brett Baer sat down with Bnte, who said,
what do you think you're the other side of this equation,
and he said, oh, we're very close, you know, we're
almost ready to sign. And then sure enough around to
sabotage that, Iran unleashed Hamas and that's when the massacres
came on October seventh.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Why did Hamas do that? Why did Iran do it?

Speaker 9 (59:11):
They wanted to scupper and sabotage any idea that the
Saudis could join the Abraham Accords. Now with Hamas a
sidelined now and potentially obliterated, there's nothing standing in the
way of all of these countries signing the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
All right, we got got about four minutes left. One
quick question. Have you ever met MBS?

Speaker 9 (59:33):
I met him briefly in the first Trump term, Yes,
and he I realized, you know, he came into the
White House. They didn't meet in you know, bells and whistles.
They were really kind of just quietly negotiating and talking
to Jared Kushner and President Trump, you know, long flowing robes.
I've also met him at the Council on Foreign Relations.

(59:54):
He's young, he exudes an enormous amount of self confidence.
He's a very tall guy, I mean physically large range guy,
and so you look at him and you don't think, oh,
this guy's in his thirties. He just in some ways
really exues the confidence of someone who knows what he
wants to do, and it may be tough to do it,
but he seems quite committed to bringing his people into

(01:00:17):
a very different age. And then when you look at
what he's done Ross, I mean, what is he emphasized.
He's not emphasized, Well, we're going to like pompa oil
and make money, so we want to be the high
tech center of the Middle East.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Yeah. In fact, the Saudi.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Sovereign Wealth Fund, along with a few other partners including
Jared Pusher Kushner's firm, just announced yesterday that they're buying
Electronic Arts, this massive video gaming company for fifty five
billion dollars, the biggest ever in unadjusted dollars, the biggest
ever taking a company a publicly traded company private. And

(01:00:50):
the Saudis are involved in golf.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
They set up this alternative to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
To the PGA there, and they're taking a big role
in Ultimate Fighting with Dina White. I mean, they're doing
all of this like cultural and sports and entertainment stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
It's fascinating, all right, so I got about two minutes left.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
The Russia Ukraine war has not been much in American
news in recent weeks. There have been some very large
Russian attacks on Ukraine, including in Kiev a couple of
nights ago. President Trump expresses ongoing frustration, but hasn't been
doing very much about it, although in some of his language,
he's been giving Europeans not just permission but encouragement to

(01:01:31):
help Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
And even this is the thing I want to ask.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
You about, changed his language a couple of days ago,
where he started talking about Ukraine potentially recapturing territory, where
all the previous conversation has been let's end the war,
like where the lines are right now? And I noticed
that because you know, I noticed things like that, because
I study this stuff almost not almost as much as you,
but more than the average bear. What do you make

(01:01:56):
of that situation?

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
I think Trump is scrambling Putin's brain.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Right.

Speaker 9 (01:02:02):
So, Putin has gotten used to hearing Trump saying I
want peace, come to the negotiating table, we'll find a
way forward.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
And he's tried everything.

Speaker 9 (01:02:10):
He's given Putin, every off ramp, every opportunity, and Putin's
rebuffed it. And every single time, and Put's in fact
grown closer to the Chinese.

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
So what's Trump trying to do now?

Speaker 9 (01:02:19):
I think he's trying to scramble Putin's brain saying, Okay, look,
you don't want to do it with us in this
way where we can have a good ongoing relationship and
you gust Russian relationship after the Ukraine War. You want
to do this, Okay, then we're going to help Ukraine,
We're going to give well, we're going to help NATO,
we are going to sell. Remember, but the big difference
here is said Trump's not paying for this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
You know, the Guide administration was writing a check.

Speaker 9 (01:02:42):
Of one hundred and one hundred billion, one hundred and
thirty billion dollars. We were giving Ukraine all these weapons
and aid with no accountability. But President Trump has said, Okay,
we'll give you that stuff, but we're selling it to you.
We're providing it, but we're selling it. Europe you buy it, NATO,
you buy it, do whatever you want with it. But
when President Trump has said that, basically you're saying Ukraine,

(01:03:05):
the Ukraine War, Russia, do you want to join with
us in some.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Kind of a deal.

Speaker 9 (01:03:09):
If not, I'm going to continue to sell me in
a no skin off my back, I'm going to.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Continue to sell weapons to NATO.

Speaker 9 (01:03:16):
NATO's going to continue to supply Ukraine, and then you're
going to fight forever, and you Russia are going to
eventually feel somewhere real pinch.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Yeah, I've got a few seconds left, just trying. I
think you know, I took a class in college from
the big new Brazinski. I know you did, and maybe
not my favorite national security advisor, but just have a
chance to take a class from a national security advisor
is pretty interesting, right, And so my thinking on this,
and I want you to just tell me quickly whether
you think I'm kind of close or way off base

(01:03:45):
or whatever. Is that this rhetoric from Zelenski and Trump
about Ukraine not just playing for a tie, but playing
to win and taking territory back, I think is certainly
escalatory language, and I think it's necessarily so. And a
lot of people are always, you know, afraid of escalatory language.

(01:04:06):
I don't think there's a choice right now. So I'm
gonna let you sum up here and we'll we'll we'll
end on your final thoughts on this.

Speaker 9 (01:04:14):
You said it, you know it hasn't worked to give
it me off ramps, so so Trump's giving escalatory language,
and now Putin's got to be thinking this one through.
Oh I thought I had Donald Trump in my corner.
Maybe I don't. Maybe I've got to rethink this. So
it doesn't work. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work,
but at least it's trying something different because the all
thing was not working.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
So I think you're right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Couldn't agree more.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
KT McFarland one of our very very favorite guests and
incredible expert on foreign policies.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
She's traveling now, going to give a talk tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
I'm very grateful for you making time for us from
a from a hotel room. I know you don't have
to do that, and you're much in demand, so thanks
so much for doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
It's a pleasure. Thank you, Ross. Keep up the good work,
all right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Good to see you, KT, and go Navy Army. We'll
tuck you next time. We'll take a quick break. Be
right back on KOA. I said to you yesterday that
if I were to bet whether there would or wouldn't
be a government shutdown, because there hasn't been one in
a while. These guys usually come to some last minute agreement.
I said, I would bet that there will be a shutdown.

(01:05:15):
I wouldn't bet my life savings on it, right, I'm
not even sure I bet lunch on it, but I
bet a.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Dollar right that there will be life savings. No, I
would not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Bet your life savings either. I would bet about a dollar.
So are your life savings more than a dollar? Well,
I work in radio, so it's so around a dollar. Yeah, right,
all right. I still think there will be a shutdown
for a variety of reasons that I might or might
not have time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
To get to today.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
We will have a special guest on the show tomorrow.
And it's a little bit aggressive of me to book
a guest on the show tomorrow talking about a shutdown,
because that meant that I was high, that I was
confident enough that there will be a shutdown that I
booked a guest to talk about it. So we'll see
how it goes. But as I was coming to work

(01:06:02):
this morning, I heard some audio on Colorado's Morning News
from Gina and Marty's interview of Congresswoman Britney Petterson. She
represents Colorado's seventh congressional district, which is Jefferson County and
some other stuff, and she was talking about President Trump,
and she was talking about Republicans, and her comments really

(01:06:26):
kind of struck me, and I wanted to share them
with you again and talk about them with you a
little bit. So here and I may just sort of
jump in and interject, but this is Congresswoman Britney Peterson
from earlier this morning on Koway.

Speaker 10 (01:06:42):
We're dealing with a toddler in the White House, and
unfortunately it is going to come with a lot of
pain for the American people and our inability to come
together in a bipartisan way to move forward to address
the healthcare prices created by the Republicans.

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
Okay, so I just played that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
That's that's the whole clip that I'm going to share
with you, and I want to respond to that. So,
first of all, no matter what you think of President Trump,
and I know that it's it's a favorite Democratic talking
point when they're done calling him a fascist, to to
call him a toddler or something like that. And yes,
Trump has his juvenile moments, but what what exactly is

(01:07:25):
the purpose, the functional purpose that could lead to a
political win for Democrats to call Donald Trump a toddler.
Right again, I don't care whether you like him or don't.
That's that's not the point is this is a serious
game they're playing, and and I know we probably shouldn't
think of it as a game. These are people who

(01:07:46):
are impacting how we live our lives every day. But still,
this this is a serious thing. And she's gonna come
out calling him a toddler and somehow suggesting that the
fact that we may well have a government shutdown, whatever
that means, is because of Donald Trump's personal personality, foibles

(01:08:08):
or something.

Speaker 10 (01:08:09):
I just we're dealing with a toddler in the White House,
and unfortunately it is going to come with a lot
of pain for the American people and our inability to
come together in a bipartisan way to move forward to
address the healthcare crisis created by the Republicans.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
No, just know to all of that, right, Trump's personality
doesn't have anything to do with this, and there's no
healthcare crisis caused by the Republicans.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
Okay, So I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Gonna ask you to do something, and I ask you
this from time to time. I woke up at four
o'clock this morning, even though I went to bed late
last night after working the sideline microphones on the Broncos game.
I woke up at four am and was thinking about
all this, and I wrote a piece that's posted on
my substack. If you go to Rosskominsky dot substack dot com,
you can read the note and the title of the note.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Well, I'm not looking at it, but the title of
the note.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Is something like, Republicans stick to your fiscal guns. And
here's my take. I'm just gonna ramble here for two minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
For years and years on the radio and in writing,
when I used to do more political writing than I
do now, I would rail against so called bipartisanship in
Congress because bipartisanship in Congress for so many years only

(01:09:34):
and always meant one thing, and that was Conservatives moving
to a more liberal position, to go along, to get
along and getting nothing for it, and bipartisan bill for
so many years. And by the way, there was nobody
who did this more and better, or I should say

(01:09:54):
worse than John McCain always. Oh, he's the Maverick, He's
the ma Republicans. I'm sorry the media, the Democrats in
the media, that's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
I'm sorry for the redundancy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Loved the maverick John McCain because it meant he was
going along with Democrats and he got nothing for us.
Just one of the reasons I didn't vote for him
for a president when he ran.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
There were other.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Reasons, but anyway, So you have some bipartisan bill that's
you know, two hundred and fourteen Democrats and nine Republicans
in the House, and we call that bipartisan. Right, every Democrat,

(01:10:39):
a small number of spineless Republicans in favor, and then
all the other Republicans against them, we call it bipartisan.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
And I'm freaking sick of it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
I am sick of conservatives who are supposed to stand
for limited government and liberty and low taxes and whatever,
going along to get along and just moving left and
giving Democrats stuff. Because what they're giving the Democrats is
spending my children's future standard of living. There has never

(01:11:11):
been a better time in at least for a generation,
and we really didn't have government shutdowns before that. In
the age of government shutdowns, there has never been a
politically better time or a morally ethically in a policy
sense better time for Republicans to tell Democrats to go

(01:11:35):
pound sand then right now and let the Democrats try
to prove to the American people that somehow Donald Trump
is causing the shutdown. The American people are not gonna
buy it. The American people will know that Democrats in

(01:11:56):
the Senate, because they can't stop it in the House,
Democrats in the city are passed the House this particular bill,
Democrats in the Senate will say no, and they're gonna
go demand stuff like way more like another trillion dollars
for healthcare, spend spending for lower middle class people, not
poorer people, but lower middle class people, and then and

(01:12:18):
then poorer people as well. They want to keep these
enhanced subsidies that showed up during COVID and Republicans are
saying no, let's just go back to the subsidies that
the original Obamacare bill had, and you know, taxpayers will
be still paying eighty to ninety percent of the healthcare
health insurance premiums for these people. The Republicans are the ones,
Oh and one other thing, you know what, I got,

(01:12:39):
I got more to say. I'm gonna take a quick
break and I'm gonna come back and keep going with
this one quick thing before I continue on with my
rant about a government shut down, which I expect to
happen tonight. I don't think they're going to reach an agreement,
but we'll see. From time to time. I have Kathleen
Chandler on the show. She is with the Independence Institute.
Think Freedom dot org is the website, and she runs

(01:13:00):
the Citizen Involvement Project, and they have a class coming
up this Thursday, the Citizen's Guide to Civic Involvement. And
Kathleen give me less than a minute on what people
need to know, how to sign up and all that.

Speaker 11 (01:13:15):
Well, sure, thank you so much. I wasn't quite sure
how you would swerve from the national end of the local,
but here you go. It's all about the local engagement.
And so if you are tired of just sitting around
and complaining, I'm offering a class that will help you
figure out how to actually engage in your local government
without being elected. So oftentimes we think we need to

(01:13:37):
be elected, but you don't. There's so many boards and
commissions that are actually appointed. So this coming Thursday, which
we October second, I'm having a class at six point
thirty to eight o'clock via zoom, so it's available to
all four corners. Of Colorado, where you can learn all
the ins and outs about how to get into your

(01:13:58):
local government without being elected. Why it's important to get
on the library board, Why it's important to be on
the Citizen Budget Advisory Commission. Why it's important for you
to know who your county commissioners are so that you
can start affecting your local government. Because, as we know,
whatever happens at the local level actually dictates much quicker
what's going to happen to your life than the national

(01:14:19):
although the national obviously is extremely important.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
Folks, if you've been interested, yeah, if you've been interested
in getting involved in local government making your community better.
Maybe you don't want to run for office, there are
lots of opportunities out there that you probably never heard of,
and Kathleen's class is a great way to learn how
to get involved. So if you go to thinkfreedom dot
org and you just go to where it says join

(01:14:43):
us near the top.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
Actually it'll I may be on the front page as well.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
But if you go to join us, you'll see Citizen
Involvement Project. You can register for the class that's online
this Thursday, six thirty to eight pm. And whether or
not you ever intend to run for anything. This is
a great way to get involved in your community.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Thank you as always, Kathleen, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
Your bet.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
All right, So let me get back to the national
stuff now.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
So my argument right now, and I haven't always said this, right,
there have been times where I have said, look, these guys,
guys in gals in Congress need to come up with
some kind of compromise to get a deal done.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
This is not one of those times.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
And this may be surprising some folks who've been listening to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
Me for some amount of time. Right now, I think
as a matter.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Of politics and principle, Republicans should not give Democrats anything.
And remember the recent years, the Obama years, the Biden
years as well, when Democrats were in charge, they did
not involve Republicans and discussions of anything. They said, we won,
elections have consequences, Suck it, and that is exactly what

(01:15:52):
Republicans should say to Democrats.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Here's another thing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
There was a recent Gallup poll and I mean very recent,
like last several days, I believe, and they asked people,
do you believe that politicians should compromise to get things
done or to should stick to their principles even if
it means fewer things get done. And what was very interesting,
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but
it's up on my substack. If you go to Roskaminsky

(01:16:16):
dot substack dot com and read today's note, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Please do subscribe. It's free.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
And I put a lot of thought into those posts, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
I really think you'll enjoy.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
But I'm going to I'll give you approximate numbers among
Democrats over fifty percent fifty three maybe said politicians should compromise,
and something like eighteen percent said politicians should stick to
their principles even if it means stuff doesn't get done. Now,
the hardcore base of the Democratic Party does not feel

(01:16:46):
that way. That poll is not representative of the base
of the party, that is, the part of the party
that the party is really.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Responsive to now.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
But in any case, the over overall Democrats want to compromise,
but Republicans on the same question, should you compromise and
get more done, don't compromise and get less done? That
was evenly split at thirty eight percent each. Okay, and
the hardcore base there also does not want.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
To compromise with Democrats. And I am not a Republican.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
I am not maga, I am not part of their
base in any way, but I'm with them on this.
I do not want a compromise with Democrats because what
Democrats want right now is just much much more spending.
They want to add spending the healthcare, They want to
add spending to everything. It's what they always want. They
want to add spending. They want to take more of

(01:17:44):
your money now and more of my children's money later.
And it is time for it to stop. And President Trump,
as far as I can tell, I can't think of
one decent reason in terms of policy or politics for
him to tell Democrats anything other than go pound sand

(01:18:05):
and we are going to bury you politically with the shutdown,
to the extent that American people even care about it
at all, and I don't know if they do, but
we are going to hang this around your neck Democrats.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
Last quick thing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
One other reason that I think Democrats will not give
in at first, and we will not have a deal
tonight if I were betting, is because and I mentioned
this yesterday, the Democratic base is furious with Chuck Schumer
for going along with the Trump budget plan in order
to keep the government open about six months ago. They
do not want that again. And Chuck Schumer may be

(01:18:40):
facing a primary challenge for Senate from AOC, and if
he were to just go along to get along now
and do something that pisss off the base of the
Democratic Party in his state, he could lose a primary
challenge to AOC by thirty points.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
Even if he doesn't, I bet he loses is one
by ten or fifteen. In any case, Chuck Schumer doesn't
want to take that risk. And that's the reason I
suspect we'll have a shutdown starting at midnight tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
It's easy top.

Speaker 7 (01:19:09):
Oh wow, hell raiser the beer drinkers, Yeah, hell raisers.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
Okay, you know how I feel about zz top. Although
I should have recognized that as a distinctive sound.

Speaker 7 (01:19:21):
They're just you said, at least a half point.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
I know, they're just not very good. What are you
gonna do? All right? I got a wacky story for you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
What. I heard some TV guy talking about this yesterday.
I was wondering what it was about, and I went
and did a little little research on my own. So here,
here are the United States of America, in about half
of American states, and there's no federal law on it,
it is illegal for a person to marry a first cousin,

(01:19:53):
and part of the reason for that is it is
thought to increase the risk of genetic illnesses because there
are quite a few genetically based illnesses that come from
recessive genes. And what a recessive gene means is if
you get you've got genes going pairs in your bodies, right,

(01:20:17):
so you get one one half of your genes from
your mom and one half of your genes from your dad.
And I'm not talking about the genes like the Sydney sweeneyad.
So okay, this g e n E S. So a
dominant gene means that if you get a gene with
this particular trait from either parent, then whatever that thing

(01:20:39):
is will be expressed in your body. If you have
a recessive gene, it means if you get that gene
from one parent but not the other one, it will
not be expressed in your body. And there are quite
a few bad diseases that are that are transmitted through

(01:21:01):
recessive genes. So you will only have the disease if
both of your parents carry the gene, and if you
come from a population where that gene exists in some
at least moderate percentage of the population. Then if you
have people who are at least modestly closely related to

(01:21:25):
each other, like first cousins, you increase the chances that
both people will be carrying that gene because it's in
that family's gene pool already, And therefore you increase the
chance of somebody, you know, getting some kind of disease.
I think sickle cell might be one of them, and
there are plenty of others, and so you tend to

(01:21:48):
have a higher chance of certain kinds of often very
bad diseases. If you marry a cousin. Were you gonna
say something dragon.

Speaker 7 (01:21:58):
Oh, I was just gonna give a good ali you
to your dominant and recessive gens. Yeah about you know,
think think of eye color, Yeah, blue and brown eyes,
where blue eyes is a recessive, brown is dominant. So
I have blue eyes. The x missus Redbeard had brown eyes.
Our kids have brown eyes because blue eyes is recessive.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Yes, But if you're if your ex missus Redbeard who
you had kids with, Yes, and let's just go with
your thing about blue being recessive and brown being dominant.
Although there is a thing called incomplete dominance. But your
wife could have had a blue eye geen and a
brown eye gen and then had brown eyes, and she
could have passed along the blue eye gen that could

(01:22:41):
have matched up with a blue eye gen from you,
and your kids could have had blue eyes even if
the wife had brown eyes.

Speaker 7 (01:22:48):
The grandkids, Yeah, blue eyes. Wow, there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:22:53):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:22:53):
Right, So that's that's very interesting. Okay, So that's a
that's a reason that you don't want to marry a
first cousin. Now, I also write and I'm just I'm
just gonna stipulate this. This might just be my own
kind of Western cultural bias or something, but I personally

(01:23:17):
find the idea of marrying a first cousin a little
bit creepy, right, right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
I I don't want to.

Speaker 4 (01:23:24):
I do.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
And there's probably.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
You know, a step cousin, separate, separate from the disease,
step cousin, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
Separate from the disease thing.

Speaker 5 (01:23:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
There's just something about it that's just too close to
the whole. Like you know, in in Alabama, if a
man and woman get divorced, are they still.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
Brother and sister? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:23:49):
So I don't want to. I just find the whole
thing kind of creepy. Now here's here's where I'm here's was.

Speaker 5 (01:23:56):
That a that?

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
Just to try it again? That's better?

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
So so silly, all right. So in Britain they have
fully nationalized health insurance and healthcare and it's called the
National Health Service NHS, and god willing, the United States
will never have anything like it. The NHS put out

(01:24:26):
a paper or not not a paper, but they put
up an article a week ago.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
And I actually have this linked.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
On my blog if you go to Rosskominsky dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
I got a ton of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
On my blog today, a lot of stuff I didn't
even get to during the show. And I hope, just
generally speaking, that you will go to Rosskominsky dot com
and read that morning's blogcast every day that I have
a show, because I.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Do think you will.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
Actually find it a really useful repository of news and
informative stuff and entertaining videos and so on that won't
take too much of your time, and you will I
think you will find yourself kind of harder and maybe
entertained as well if you read my blog. Buket video
is pretty good at Rosskimminsky dot com, which one. The
bucket video. The bucket video. Yeah, the bucket video there

(01:25:08):
is pretty good. I actually found that one myself. Usually
Dragon sends me the funny videos, but I found that. Yeah,
it's definitely your style. I found that one. So uh. Anyway,
So this article that I'm mentioning to you that's up
on my blog right now. The reason I mentioned this
to you is it's actually been taken down off of
the NHS's website. And here's what the article says, should

(01:25:30):
the UK government ban first cousin marriage?

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
And there's a little bit of history here.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
UK laws allowing first cousin marriage date back to the
reign of Henry the Eighth in the sixteenth century, having
broken with Rome in order to marry Anne Bullyin. Remember,
Henry was wanting to have a son to be the heir,
and he kept having wives who either had daughters or
no kids at all, and they ended up waking up
dead one day right with missing missing parts of their

(01:25:58):
body like usually was above their which is not really
a good thing. So Henry passed a law back then
that let him marry Anne Boleyn's cousin. Actually, four years
after Anne Bolin was executed.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
What else.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
The Marriage Act of nineteen forty nine, this is in England,
states that prohibited degrees of relationship and marriage include marriage
to a sibling, parent, grandparent, child, or grandchild. First cousin
marriage is not included, and the UK government states that
it has no current plans to change the law. Now

(01:26:37):
that all is fine as historical analysis and so on.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Where this article and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
Then they talk about the genomics stuff that I was
talking about, right, so the potential risk from certain diseases.
So then they go on to talk about, well, as
Mary and cousins really the reason that the rate of
these diseases goes up, and they're hemming and hauling about that,

(01:27:04):
and they're saying, well, maybe if there's some degree of
cousin marriage and a community, and then what will really
happen is you get quite a few people doing that
in a particular subpopulation, and then you end up having
this kind of very shallow gene pool and you end
up with these diseases. And they're sort of making responses
for that. Now Here is where the British article attracted

(01:27:26):
a lot of attention, negative attention from conservatives in England
and even got to the point where some dude on
Fox News. I think it was Will Kine was talking
about it yesterday, and I'm going to share this with
you and again, this article has now been taken down,
but I've got it for you. Research into first cousin
marriage describes various potential benefits, including stronger extended family support

(01:27:49):
systems and economic advantages. Resources, property, and inheritance can be
consolidated rather than diluted across households. In addition, though first
cousin marriage is linked to an additional an increased likelihood
of a child having a genetic condition or congenital anomaly,
there are many other factors that also increase this chance,

(01:28:11):
such as parental age, smoking, alcohol use, and assisted reproductive technologies,
none of which are banned in the US. So whoever
wrote this is saying that since smoking or drinking or
you know, IVF or being a very old parent could
increase the chance of your child having a genetic condition

(01:28:35):
or congenital anomaly, and since those aren't banned, the implication
is therefore they.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Shouldn't ban marrying your cousin.

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
As a matter of pure logic, It doesn't follow at all. Now,
I'm not saying you have to ban marrying a first cousin, right,
you might not think it's creepy. And what I've also
told you is it's banned in about half of the
states in a maya, it's permitted in most of the rest.
And it's in this sort of in between state that
I didn't bother to go research very much in just

(01:29:07):
maybe four states. So it's banned in just slightly more
states than it's outright permitted in in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
So it's a close call here.

Speaker 2 (01:29:17):
But the fact that they wrote this thing saying, you know,
here are the potential benefits of marrying a first cousin
part of the reason that this blew up in England,
and the reason that if you go to the link
now at the NHS's website where this page was, if
you go to that link, the page has been taken down,

(01:29:39):
and again I have it if you want to go
read it. I have the current link where you can
see has been taken down, and I have another link
where you can actually read the original piece.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
Now here's the thing. Here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
A big percentage of the cousin marrying going on in
the United Kingdom is going in a very specific population,
the Pakistani population or British Pakistani population, or whatever you
want to call it. And I want to be very
careful how I talk about this. So the Pakistani population

(01:30:18):
in certain cities in England, Ratherham in particular, but there
were a couple others. Were the places where you had
these grooming gangs sexually assaulting and raping repeatedly young girls
twelve years old, thirteen years old, fourteen years old. And

(01:30:40):
this was done over and over and over by Pakistani's
or Brits of Pakistani descent living in Pakistani neighborhoods in England.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
And you know, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
Sorry if there are sensitive people out there who don't
like hearing this, or who think I'm you know, exacerbate
what happened, or elaborating a little more than is actually
there to try to pin this on sub subpopulation. I'm
telling you what the actual news is. You can go
research all of this yourself. What I'm telling you is fact,
not opinion. And it is also fact and not opinion

(01:31:17):
that politicians and law enforcement in these places where you
had these disgusting grooming gangs years and years of sexually
abusing young girls and maybe young boys, that the politicians
and the cops didn't do anything because they were afraid
of being called racist. Are you kidding? Wish I were?

(01:31:43):
They let dozens or hundreds of early teen or even
preteen girls get raped by these men for years because
they were afraid of being called racist. And I've said
quite a few times on this show. I realized this
is a very edgy topic. But I've said quite a

(01:32:06):
few times on the show, and this is a very
good example of why that I would much rather have
America's immigration problem than Europe's immigration problem. And I think
that what you've got among a lot of conservatives in
England now is they all know, the whole country knows

(01:32:27):
now what an incredible moral failing it was, among every
other kind of failure, but an incredible moral failing failing
by that country to not protect those girls because they
were afraid of being called racist. If they said, you know,
we're not We're not trying.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
To put any spin or anything.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
It's just a fact that this is being done by
this particular population, the Pakistani population in England.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
And now you've.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
Got this report coming out in the UK saying well,
here are some good reasons that you marry your cousin
or that it's okay to marry your cousin, where you
would think that they wouldn't be saying something like that,
but for their ongoing version of culturally suicidal wokeness where

(01:33:17):
they don't want to be called racist or Islamophobic or
something by coming out and saying, you know what, it's
a bad idea to marry your cousin, and it's turned
into a big thing in England. I don't know if
anything will come of it. It could just be a
tempest in a teapot.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
I don't know, but I thought I would share that
with you. One other quick thing I want to share
with you before I bring Mandy in. I mentioned this
probably two months ago now, that my wife and I
stopped on us at a Starbucks on the south side
of Arapaho Road right near Potomac kind of out sort
of by Douve Valley Don't going towards Parker, and that
it was the worst customer service my wife ever had

(01:33:55):
at a Starbucks. She went in, she was first in
the line, but they just ignored her for probably eight
or ten minutes while they took care of cars in
the drive through line. And then she wanted to order
this particular pastry that was in the thing, and the
guy said, no, we're not I'm not going to sell
that to you because we're reserving that for people in
the drive through line. And then the next person in
the drive through line ordered it after she wanted it,

(01:34:17):
and they gave it to the person in the drive
through line, and then the same thing happened too, and
she actually the same thing happened to person before her,
who stormed out, and then my wife stormed out. And
the reason I share that with you is that Starbucks,
and this is from the Denver Post, has closed at
least eleven locations in Metro Denver and Fort Collins, and

(01:34:38):
one of them is that location.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
And so golf plap.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
For the idiot management at that Starbucks who somehow engendered
the worst customer service my wife has ever seen. You
got what you so richly deserved. Hi, Mandy, good fun
working with your your better half last night.

Speaker 6 (01:34:59):
I know he loves that so much.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
Yeah, he loves it so so much.

Speaker 6 (01:35:04):
I mean it's like one of his favorite things. I mean,
I'm his favorite thing. Yeah, but then second favorite, well,
third favorite cute, Okay, other than the kids, it's his
whatever number that is.

Speaker 2 (01:35:14):
Yeah, favorite thing mine to work those games mine too,
And it's always great to work with with him.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):
He's so enthusiastic.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
It's it's like he turns into a you know, a
sixteen year old so excited about something.

Speaker 6 (01:35:24):
Actually, yeah, yeah, I mean that's how he is. He's
a big guy, but he's got a softer Can we
talk about the cousin thing for a second. Who doesn't
have a hot first cousin that they're now looking like, hmm,
like you don't have any hot first cousins. I have
hot first cousins, do you?

Speaker 5 (01:35:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:35:40):
Twins?

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
Twins? Twins? Yeah, I'm not going there.

Speaker 4 (01:35:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:35:45):
I mean they're both insane, so I would never actually
marry them. But you know, if it's okay, I just
you know, it's thinking about it. Just open it things up, Okay.
Is it just my cultural bias that thinks it's creepy?
Maybe there's nothing gross? Is it weird or is it
actually weird and gross?

Speaker 4 (01:35:59):
We've all the Have you seen the oh?

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
Gosh?

Speaker 2 (01:36:03):
What is it?

Speaker 6 (01:36:03):
What is the name of the documentary called The Wild?

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
The Wild?

Speaker 9 (01:36:06):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:36:08):
What is the name of the family the Wild something
of West Virginia?

Speaker 9 (01:36:12):
What the heck.

Speaker 2 (01:36:13):
I don't know the name, but.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
I see it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):
Clicks and they're so that's serious going on over that.

Speaker 6 (01:36:22):
It's like sisters and brothers having babies. I just I
mean the whole plenty of fish in the sea, Like
get out of the pond, you know what.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
I'm saying, Like, just go big, go big, all right,
we haven't done this in a while, you ready? Sure,
young woman yawn so hard she breaks her own neck.
Earth's magnetic field makes a creepy sound when it flips.
Competitive Staring Championship ends in tie after both finalists fail
to fall. No, after both finalists fall asleep, Pastor asks

(01:36:53):
parishioner to give up his land because because God commands it.

Speaker 6 (01:36:58):
Number four seems perfectly reasonable.

Speaker 4 (01:37:02):
Number three?

Speaker 3 (01:37:04):
What was number two?

Speaker 2 (01:37:05):
Number two is Earth's magnetic field makes a creepy sound
when it flips.

Speaker 6 (01:37:09):
I'm gonna say number three is the staring contest ends
in a tie. I can't believe that both of them
would fall asleep with their eyes open and there it
would be a tie.

Speaker 2 (01:37:18):
But you believe that a young woman could yawn so
hard that she broke her own neck.

Speaker 6 (01:37:21):
Mean, I've yo heard that. I thought I broke my
own jaw, Why not your neck? I mean, I'm just
saying dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:37:27):
If Mandy has it right today, what does she win
her own dueling? Banjo? I was gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
I was gonna say, a pastry at the Starbucks that's
closed if they'll give you one, all right, the actual
fake headline, I'm afraid to say, Mandy is competitive staring
championship ends in tie after both finalists falls, right?

Speaker 6 (01:37:46):
Can we talk about the Sunday night football game that
ended in a tie? Has there ever been anything more
unsatisfying than that?

Speaker 2 (01:37:52):
Well, but as a score of Gami, which is pretty awesome,
it kind of makes it worth it.

Speaker 6 (01:37:56):
Made it so bad. The game itself was freaking fantastic
stick to watch, and then you get to the end,
it's like, oh, we've soccered.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
Football now, yeah, so you can't. You haven't.

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
You have not soccered a game that ends up with
eighty total points scores and with the with the tie
on the l t and they have a team get
the tie on the last play of the game with
a Brandon McMahons sick to make it a tie.

Speaker 6 (01:38:21):
Sucks And I hate that. I think that's awful and
I'm trying to be judging about the NFL. That is awful.
I'm not with you on that game and made it
so unsatisfying.

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
Oh my gosh, I am so not with you on that.
What do you have coming up?

Speaker 4 (01:38:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:38:34):
No, I got Barb Kirkmeyer coming up. So we going
to talk about the competency bill that she and many
other Republicans voted for. We're gonna get a little background
on that. We have to talk about the government showdown.
But I'm totally with you on this ross like, don't capitulate.

Speaker 4 (01:38:46):
Let him shut it down.

Speaker 6 (01:38:48):
And I'll be taking phone calls from everyone who called
Thomas Massey mean names when he said that this is
exactly what was going to happen when the last er passed.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
I'm just saying, everybody, stick around for Mandy's fabulous show.

Speaker 1 (01:38:59):
I'll talk to you tomorrow.