10-09-25 - *FULL SHOW* Israel-Hamas peace?; Costly "free" lunch; Five for Fighting

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm standing up right now. And part of the reason
that I'm standing up right now is so I Uh.
I woke up around four something this morning, and I
decided I wanted to exercise, and we have a little
gym in our building here, a radio station building. So
I drove to work and I worked out, and then
it was right at the beginning of Colorado's morning news.

(00:23):
So I came up, like right around five o'clock to
say hi to Gina and Keenan. I don't think Keenan
was in this in the studio yet or he had
stepped out, and uh, and I noticed that Gina was
standing up, and I'm not usually in here, you know,
before seven o'clock. And Gina said that she often does
the first half of the show standing and I thought,

(00:44):
that's a that's a fine. And I do some of
my show standing, but it's not usually more than, you know,
a couple of segments or half an hour. But but
Gina does half of her show standing up, so I
may I may try to stand a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
I do think that's that's a good idea. When I
was a.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Trader in the options ex on the options exchange in Chicago,
you know, when it was really slow, you could sit
down on the step in the trading pit, but most
of the time you're standing. So I you know, I
spent most of my professional life actually standing before coming
into radio, So I think that's I think that's pretty good.
We have an immense amount of stuff to do on
the show today. I did mention in our crossover there

(01:24):
with with Gina and Keenan that we're going to talk
about I've got Kelly Cawfield from the Common sensensitot on
and we're going to talk about their recent report entitled
Colorado's free school lunch program is getting more expensive. And
then at the end of the show, I'm very excited
for this eleven thirty three. You've you know him by

(01:45):
his stage name, his rock and roll name, which is
Five for Fighting.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hey, Rod, you know the band Five for Fighting. Have
you heard of him? Rings a Bell? Yes, rings the bell,
Rings a bell? All right.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
His real name is John Andres, and he's been on
with me once or twice before, but he's going.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
To join again.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
And he's been an absolutely steadfast champion of Israel. And
he lives in California, you know, near the movie stars
and such.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
And has been just such a source.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Of moral clarity calling out these Hollywood people for their
terrible position on the Israel Gaza thing. So let's talk
about the Israel Gaza thing, and we're going to talk
about it a few times over the course of the show,
because this is enormous, enormous news. So first, just a

(02:37):
very basic kind of headline would be, Israel and Hamas
agree to the first phase of implementing a peace plan.
And the first phase involves a vote by the Israeli Parliament,
which may have happened in the last hour, I'm not
sure it's today.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
At some point.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Sometime soon the Israeli Parliament, the Knessa it's called, they
will vote on it.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
At that point, again, this is how it's laid out.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
At that point, Israeli military forces will withdraw somewhat within Gaza.
They will still have control of something like fifty three
percent of Gaza, but they will back up somewhat from
where they are, and then Hamas is supposed to release

(03:28):
all the hostages, which is thought to be twenty living
in twenty eight deceased, and they are supposed to release
those hostages within seventy two hours.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
That's my understanding.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
So the reporting on just when that will happen has
been changing a little bit. First I heard Sunday, I
heard a person or two mentioned Saturday, and then President
Trump said Monday.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
So I don't know, but that's the idea.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Hamas has said that they are not sure they know
where all of the deceased are, that some of them
were buried, and that they might not be able to
find them and retrieve the bodies within seventy two hours.
I don't think that itself will be a huge problem

(04:23):
as long as it does seem that Hamas really is
trying to find the bodies so that the families in
Israel can get their loved ones back for a proper burial.
So then what then? What part of this is very interesting.
There are a couple things that are very important to

(04:44):
understand and where there's still may be some negotiating to
be done, and nobody who is not in the room
really knows what the status of the negotiations are. One
of the short term things as who is Israel going
to release from prison? So there are two hundred and

(05:06):
something Palestinian terrorists and murderers in.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Israeli prisons with life sentences.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
There's I think maybe a couple thousand Palestinians and Israeli
prisons for other sentences, not life sentences, and it seems
that Israel is going to release most of the people
who are in there for life sentences. And let me
just say, I hope that Israel does everything they can

(05:35):
to make sure that they can track these people who
murdered Israelis and take care of them later on, and
especially especially those who murdered more than one person or
were involved in more than one terrorist attack.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Those people need to be that, you know, kind of
at the top of the list.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Now, where this part gets interesting is there are a
few people who are such heinous terrorists and leaders of
terrorism and responsible for many terrorist attacks who are in
Israeli prisons right now, who Israel is very very much
going to resist releasing, and I think Israel will not

(06:14):
release them. I won't bother you with the names right now,
but that part will be interesting. And then the next
thing that'll be interesting after this first phase is done
is the negotiation about the status of Hamasa's weapons right
Israel and the civilized world, and probably a lot of
people in Gaza want Hamas disarmed. Truly disarmed. Hamas, of course,

(06:41):
will not want to disarm in case they have some
dream of coming back to power someday, or even fighting
some other Palestinian group that might be running Gaza to
try to take it over, even if they're not fighting
Israel at that time. But Israel is going to want
them disarmed of their rifles and pistols and hand grenades,
and then at the next level up their ability to

(07:03):
make rockets and their ability to launch rockets, and we'll see.
Because Hamas used language like freezing weapons, and I don't
think they mean putting them in a freezer, but I
think what they meant was Hamas is going to probably
try to find a way to say, well, we'll put
all our weapons in storage, and then you could have
you know, some Turkish soldiers guard the storage, but we're
not going to give them to you. That's probably going

(07:25):
to be the next argument. But I will say it
was it was very smart to go ahead and just
agree on a first phase if that was doable, and
it looks like it has been, we'll see. You know,
nothing's done until it's done in the Middle East. But
it was smart of them not to say, all right,
we have to agree to everything before we can do anything.

(07:45):
They didn't do that, and I think that was really
good and President Trump deserves.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
An immense amount of credit for this, as.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
To Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, all of them, the
whole team. And also I mean, maybe we'll learn really
what's going on. Clearly Turkey and Cutter have been either
offered something or threatened by the United States in order
to get them to put pressure on Hamas. Because at
the end of the day, pressure from those countries and

(08:12):
some other Muslim Arab countries, but especially from Turkey and Cutter,
which have been the main supporters of Hamas other than Iran,
which is basically out.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Of the game right now.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Without that pressure, I don't think nothing else was different,
and there's no reason.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
To think Hamas would have gone along.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
So whatever it was that Trump said to Cutter in
Turkey that got Cutter in Turkey to lean on Hamas,
I think that's what moved the needle. Ross As a
listener text Ty ross As a never Trumper, I congratulate
the President for getting this done, and I said, yeah,
you got to be honest regard you know, this is
part of the problem. With what's going on in our
politics right now is there are so many people on

(08:52):
the you know, kind of far left and the very
maga right who are unable to either praise Trump if
he does something right or criticize Trump if he does
something wrong. And that's just bad for the country. All right,
I'm gonna move on to some other things. So this
is I mentioned to you and I will mention more

(09:16):
that one of the ballot measures in Denver, and I
think it's Referendum three ten if I remember right, is
going to be whether to repeal Denver's ban on flavored
tobacco products, so flavored tobacco and vape liquids and stuff
like that. And this is something that passed what a

(09:38):
year ago, I guess not that long ago, and now
there's a move to repeal it. Part of the argument
there is that Denver is not an island, so if
people want to get this flavored stuff, they'll just go
to Adams County or Rapo County or Broomfield or where
Jeff or jeffco or wherever they're going to go that's

(10:00):
that's nearby, or they'll order it online and they're going
to get what they want to get as far as
the flavor tobacco anyway. And so some people argue that
all this really does is deprive Denver of sales tax revenue.
And by the way, Denver desperately needs sales tax revenue.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Right, we are aware that Mayor.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Johnston is having to lay off lots and lots of
people in order to try to save two hundred or
two hundred and fifty million dollars, which is coming from
primarily from a short fall of sales tax revenue. So
the reason I wanted to mention this story to you
is that there had been quite a bit more money

(10:43):
put into the side to repeal the flavored tobacco band.
But now Michael Bloomberg, a guy who somehow doesn't recognize
places where he's not welcome.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Well, I guess there are.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
People always willing to take a check from a billionaire.
But this guy just seems like he can't stop interfering
in Colorado politics.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
He spent an immense amount of money.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Trying to restrict our Second Amendment rights, and he's had
some success doing that. He has now donated a million
and a half dollars a million and a half dollars
to save the ban on flavored tobacco. So there had been,
as I said, there had been.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
A group. Well, there is a group.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Called Citizen Power with an exclamation point, citizen power.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
And those guys.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
That group, and I don't you know, it's a bunch
of different people, including stores that want to be able
to sell this stuff. They had raised something like a
little under half a million dollars, and the folks who
wanted to keep it on the ballot had raised last
time I checked, a little bit less than that, not
massively less, but modestly less. And actually, and if you

(12:01):
go back several months, the repeal the Band people had
raised a lot more, and then it started catching up
a little bit. Anyway, now Michael Bloomberg has donated a
million and a half dollars, where the folks who want
to repeal the band have raised a quarter that much.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
So suddenly suddenly.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
The keep the ban side has has a lot more money.
I don't vote in Denver, I don't live in Denver.
I don't go too crazy with my commentary and recommendations
and so on about ballot measures unless I ballot measures,
especially that I don't get to vote on unless I

(12:44):
have a very strong opinion or at least I tell
you how strong my opinion is. I have a moderate
opinion that I would overturn the ban.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Here's what I would do, though. I would overturn the ban.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
So that these flavored tobaccos and flavored vape stuff is
legal in Denver.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Denver needs the money.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
But but I would get as as aggressive as I
possibly could on enforcing and panalizing against those who are
selling that stuff to kids. That's where the issue is, right,
that's the primary issue, And that's what people always say

(13:28):
when they say we want to ban it. They say,
the bubblegum flavored stuff, in the blueberry flavored stuff, and
the watermelon stuff is designed to hook kids.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
And it might well be.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
It might well be, but that doesn't mean adults can't
enjoy it. And by the way, that doesn't mean that
an adult who's trying to quit smoking cigarettes could maybe
take up flavored vaping, which would be not, you know,
not the most awesome thing for your health, but way
better than smoking. And maybe they like that flavor, let
them have it. And as I said, it's not an island.
They're gonna get it somewhere. So I would overturn I

(14:01):
would overturn the band, but I would do it in
concert with being as aggressive as I could in enforcing
no selling to kids. We'll be right back with Kelly
Kawfield from the Common Sense Institute about how free school
lunches are getting much more expensive. Thursday is my favorite
day of the week, so I'm very happy to be
here with you, and I'm very happy to be joined

(14:23):
by my friend Kelly Kawfield, who is executive director of
the Common Sense Institute, where I am proudly the Mike
Loprino Free Enterprise Fellow this year, and we're going to
talk about free school lunches, and just before we get
into the nitty gritty of it, I just want to
remind folks, as I mentioned probably a few times a

(14:44):
year on the show, one of the great acronyms of
all time is tan staffle t a n staa fl
tan staffle, and that came from Milton Friedman, and it
stands for there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's actually a well known acronym.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Among econ nerds, and I am one, which is why
I'm the Mike Laprino Free Market Fellow, Because they would
only have an econ nerd in that position at Common
Sense Institute.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
The thing is.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
The definition of free matters a lot, and I'm being
serious now, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
When many things that appear.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
To be quote unquote free, we need to really remind
ourselves frequently, and I would like to remind the people
who are who are taking advantage of the thing that
free really just means paid for by somebody else.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
It doesn't mean actually free.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
And that's the context in which Kelly joins me to
talk about the Common Sense Institute's new research report, Colorado's
free school lunch program is getting more expensive.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
All right, Hi, Kelly, sorry for the long introduction, Barnet,
thanks for having me, very glad to have you.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
So, it seems like when voters passed this thing to
begin with, the free school lunch is for middle class
and rich kids because lower income kids already got free
school lunch, that they misunderestimated how many people would want
the free lunch, if I can use my favorite George W.
Bushism there. So, now that they've misunderestimated, tell us a

(16:22):
little bit about how much they misunderestimated and what they're
trying to do about it. Sure.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Now, this is a measure that has been around since
twenty two I mean that's when voters first considered the
Health Females Program Proposition FF. And even back then, Common
Sense Institute's economists projected that this program would grow, and
we warned that if costs were not carefully managed, that

(16:50):
revenues would very likely fall short of the projections. And
that is exactly what has happened. We get estimated that
back in twenty twenty four that the ballot measure and
really its first year I think a full implementation, that
it was going to run a deficit. The measure had

(17:10):
raised about one hundred million dollars in revenue, but it
needed more than that.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
So we had projected close.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
To a sixty million dollar deficit, and it came in
just short of that, a fifty six million dollar deficit.
So while the policy may help certain families, the fiscal
analysis of the measure really I think makes me scratch
my head a little bit, because the underlying.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Costs of the program have not.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Been identified or well managed, and instead the state legislature
has sent this measure back to Colorado voters to just
increase taxes instead of addressing the underlying costs that are
driving the program expenses up.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
And I will note to listeners that the primary way
this plan was funded is that the is that taxpayers
who had the misfortune to earn over three hundred thousand
dollars a year had their ability to deduct things you
might deduct massively limited and capped. And will get to

(18:16):
what they're trying to do now because they think apparently
they think they haven't soaked to the rich enough. And
I just again just really want you to keep in mind,
you know, the people who support this thing.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
And by the way, you.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Know, Common Sense Institute is nonpartisan, and Kelly is not
here saying vote for or against this thing, but I
can right I'm not speaking for Common Sense Institute. I'm
speaking for Ross Kaminski as the radio host. Okay, so
I'll tell you what I mean. You know what I think.
Kelly is not recommending a vote one way or the other,
but I will I will note that they tried to

(18:52):
do this to let.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Me the point I want to reemphasize. I'll get back
to Kelly.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Lower income kids already got free lunch, free Briadakfast two
and the people who are selling you this thing. Conveniently
forget to mention that. They just call it healthy school
Meals for all, But really what this is is pre
school lunch for middle class and upper middle class and
rich kids. And that's part of what galls me so much,
is they're going to tax the Jesus out of people

(19:19):
that Democrats think are rich in order to give their
own kids quote unquote free lunch. All right, I'll get
off the soapbox. So why don't you keep going with
the CSI analysis, Kelly?

Speaker 3 (19:31):
In our most recent analysis, we're trying to educate Colorado.
So what are these two measures?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
I think a lot of people are not.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Focused yet on that ballot, but the election's coming up.
So what is proposition LLL and MM? They both relate
to this healthy Meals program. So proposition l L this
is allowing the state to hold on two dollars so
that they can continue to pay for this program and
not have taxpayer dollars refunded.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
L passes.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Taxpayers will not be refunded twelve million dollars in fiscally
year twenty six, and instead the state will use that
to continue to fund this program.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
But that's not all.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
There's also this other Proposition MM, which raises taxes on
those making more than three hundred thousand, is ross just indicated.
So once again it is it's allowing the state to
hold on to your refund and it would lead to
an additional tax hike. For Colorados who earn over three
hundred thousand, they would incur tax increases. We're estimating about

(20:36):
three hundred and seventy for single filers and about five
hundred and sixty for joint filers, So it's not nothing,
and I hope that's something that voters will will consider.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Right, And if MM passes, basically, if you aren't over
three hundred thousand dollars a year, your ability to deduct
many things from your state income tax will be almost eliminated.
I think there'll be like you can deduct one thousand
dollars if you're filing singly and two thousand if you're
filing jointly, or some small number like that. Right, But
it's essentially what they're doing is funding it by eliminating

(21:08):
tax deductions for people earning over three hundred thousand dollars. Yere,
you made a really interesting point at the beginning of this, Kelly, and.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Even I didn't think.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
About it, probably as much as I normally would have
or should have, and that is that I really haven't
heard any conversation about the cost of the program. And
obviously there's more demand than they put in their model,
just in terms of a number of people who want

(21:39):
the free lunch. But is it also possible that the
way they are providing, or what they are providing, or
something beyond just the number of meals is more expensive
than it needs to be.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
That's right. The underlying program has a lot of additional
expenses outside of the free meal, so it provides technical
assistance grants. It's trying to have the schools buy more
Colorado locals, so there's these buy local food grants. It
also increased wages for food workers, so those expenses were

(22:17):
not technically necessary for sustaining the Healthy Meals program, but
it drives the cost up, and legislators failed to address
any of the underlying cost drivers in the program and
instead are just asking taxpayers for more money.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Well, yeah, I mean, I wonder which of those things
that you mentioned, or potentially other things that you didn't mention,
And I don't mean I know what they are, I just.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Mean things I haven't thought about and things you didn't mention.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
I mean, I wonder if there are ways to save
money in this. I mean, I don't know if your
analysis has really gone into that so much as just
talking about here's what the numbers are, and they haven't
looked at big picture.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
You know, even the chief economists of the Legislative Council
for the legislature he warned the same thing, the budgetary
issues that we are seeing for the Healthy Meals program
that come on the expenditure side. So the legislature has
had these conversations and failed to take action, deciding that
a ballot measure was the easiest way to keep a

(23:23):
financially unsustainable program moving forward by asking for more revenue
and not addressing underlying cost.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Wow, all right, Uh, do you want to add anything else?
I think we I think we got the highlights there
of the report. And by the way, if you're just
joining this, Kelly Cawfield from Common Sense Institute, we're talking
about CSI's new report, Colorado's free school lunch program is
getting more expensive. I should have mentioned the website. Easiest
link to get there is CSI coo dot org. Like

(23:55):
Common Sense Institute, Colorado CSIICO dot org and you can
see this and lots of other great work on things
from economics, to crime, to health to this thing that
we're talking about. Anyway, I'll give you the last nineteen
seconds for your final thoughts on LLL and MM, and
then we'll probably have you back or another Common Sense

(24:16):
Institute person if you want, when the ballots are out,
and we're sort of in the heart of the election,
but ballots are coming out soon, which is why we're
doing this now.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Bottom line is, if voters approve these ballot measures and
the state does not take steps to better manage these
underlying program cost I think we'll just be back here
ross health. These school meals for all could continue to
run deficits in the future, and that would require transfers
from the general fund and potentially more tax hikes in
the future.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
You know, I actually I have one other question for you,
and I don't know and you can just tell me
you don't have the answer to this or haven't thought
about it yet. Is there a sense of what will
happen to this program if ll and MM fail.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
If LLL and M sail interesting, you know, then I
think they would be forced to address some of the
underlying costs and potentially sir fewer students.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, I mean, at some point I had heard and
this is just rumblings. And it's hard to tell from
politicians whether whether they're sort of telling what they really
think will happen, or whether they're trying to scare people
into voting for a tax increase in this particular situation.
But they were talking about, you know, like, well we'll
only we'll only provide free lunches for half the year
or for something like that. Because I don't think the

(25:41):
way the law stands right now, I don't think they
could just without passing another law. They couldn't just go
back and say, all right, well we're gonna have to
charge charge for lunch for you know, families that make
over X, which which will be their instinct. But I
do I do wonder about that. Anyway, anyway, we'll have
we'll have time to figure it out. Kelly Caawfield is

(26:03):
executive director of the Common Sense Institute c s I
c O dot org. And this particular report, Colorado's free
school lunch program is getting more expensive. Thank you, Kelly.
Always good to see you. All right, Well, very good.
So the ballots. You know, people ask me all the
time for uh, you know, am I doing a voter guide?

(26:23):
I I don't know this year. I don't know that
I'm gonna have time to do a voter guide this year.
I am just so swamped with stuff. I'm I'm I'm
next week, I'm traveled. I'll be off the air next week.
But you got some great, great folks in for me.
They might have been better than me, but I'm got
I'm traveling with my younger kid to go look at
some colleges, and so, uh you know, I think I

(26:46):
think ballots are coming out? Are ballots coming out tomorrow?
I don't remember. Anyway, Look, we're gonna be voting on
all this stuff, but I just I'm so busy. I
just don't think I'm gonna have time to put together
my my voter guide this year. I will aggressively recommend
no votes on LL and MM. I was against the

(27:08):
whole thing to begin with. Free school lunches for rich
kids was a stupid idea to begin with.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
It was the height of leftist folly.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
It is just a perfect example of Colorado turning into
East California, and I'm sick of it. And I want
to just I want to just tear all that stuff down.
I really do, I really do so well. So again,
I don't think I'm going to end up doing a
voter guide this year. I'm sorry about that for people
who who look for it, and I will encourage you

(27:41):
to do your own homework on local candidates and school
board candidates. We actually talked about this a little bit
earlier in the week, regarding candidates for city council and
places like that. Go look at who's endorsing them. That's
probably your easiest way. I used the words you aistic
a lot. That's probably the easiest shortcut for you to

(28:04):
figure out whether it's a candidate you support if you're
a because remember these municipal elections, generally your candidates are
not identified by party, and a lot of folks, you know,
if you're a Republican, you will buy default vote for
the Republican. I'm not saying you will never vote for
someone who isn't, but it's a shortcut.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
It's a way for you to think, all right, I'm.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Probably on board with this person if I'm a Republican
and he or she is a Republican.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Could be wrong, but it's a good.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Clue when you've got these municipal elections where they're not identified.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
That way, a good way to try to figure out
if someone is if a candidate is someone you might support,
is to go see who's endorsing them.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
And let's say you're a conservative Republican and everybody who's
endorsing John Smith is a liberal Democrat, and you probably
don't want to vote for him, And of course the
other way if you're a liberal Democrat and everybody voting
for Jane Joe is a conservative republic and then you
probably don't want her. And then what I would say
for school board for school board elections is go look

(29:08):
to see whether the teachers' unions are endorsing any particular candidate. Now,
of course, my recommendation, and you're free to ignore it,
of course, but this is just my own personal bias.
My recommendation is that if somebody is endorsed by a
teachers' union, you should make very very sure not to
vote for that person because they are almost certainly against

(29:30):
school choice. And this is going to sound a little
bit harsh, but they probably care more. How do I
want to put this, the quality of education of your children,
and perhaps even the safety of your children at schools
will not be their top priority if they are endorsed
by the teachers' unions. I know that sounds harsh, but

(29:51):
that is really how I think about the teachers' unions.
I think I think the teachers' unions are the most
evil organizations in America that are still legal.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
How about that?

Speaker 1 (30:06):
All right, let me do something completely different. This is
kind of a fun story. You know, we're in the
Nobel Prize season. We talked with Paul Beale a couple
of days ago about the Nobel Prize for Physics, and
we got the Nobel Prize for medicine. And actually, and
I'll talk about this later in the show, but we
got the Nobel Prize for literature. Actually, let me give
you the name. Let me give you the name this
is and I'll probably pronounce it wrong, but a Hungarian

(30:29):
writer named Laslow Krasna Krasna Horkai just won the Nobel
Prize for Literature. Actually, this is kind of interesting. Let
me tell you this, and then I'll continue with the
other Nobel story either now or in a little bit.
So this guy just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Many people consider him. According to this is AFP, which

(30:51):
is a French news agency, many people consider him Hungary's
most important living author. He's seventy one years old and
they describe as a great epic writer in the Central
European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernard and
is characterized by absurdism and grotesque excess. Now, this is
an interesting part. He's spoken in the past, and I'll

(31:14):
try again. Krasna Horkai has spoken in interviews about learning
as a child about his father's secret Jewish past. In
nineteen thirty one, his grandfather changed the family name from
Korin Krin to Kresna Horki, which is the name of
a castle on formerly Hungarian land, and this author, in

(31:38):
an interview with a Greek magazine back in twenty eighteen,
said my father had Jewish roots, but he only told
us this secret when I was about eleven. Before that,
I had no idea. In the socialist era, it was
forbidden to mention it.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Well, I am half Jewish, but.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
If things carry on in Hungary as they seem likely
to do, I'll soon be entirely Jewish. Now that's a
really interesting line, and I don't know what it means,
because I can think of two different things that it
might mean.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
So one, it might mean.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
That the level of anti Semitism around him rises so
much and he feels such a need to push back
on it.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
That he will.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Function as if he is a Jew, standing up for Jews,
standing up against the hatred of anti Semitism and all
that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Right as I'll.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Repeat his sentence, I'm half Jewish, but if things carry
on and hungry, as they seem likely to do, I'll
soon be entirely Jewish.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
So again, that could be about him.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Then deciding to aggressively present himself as Jewish and stand
up against you know, the neo Nazism and the bigotry
and the anti Semitism and stuff like that going on
in his nation of Hungary.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
The other thing that he could mean.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Is that, if you recall your history of the Third Reich,
if you had even like what a sixteenth or something
of your genealogy was Jewish, like you had one.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Jewish great grandparent, then I'm.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Not sure that that was the generation they looked at,
but you get the concept. The Nazis would say you
were Jewish and they would put you on the train
and send you to the camp and burn you and
incinerate you. And so that could be the other thing
that he means is if he's half Jewish and the
real haters take control to them, he'll just be Jewish.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
So I don't know what it means. I do think
it's a very interesting line.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
But in any case, congratulations to Laslow Kresna Horki for
winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
And I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
This other Nobel Prize story I have for you is
really kind of fun, and I'm gonna share it with
you right after this going on for a while this morning,
but I didn't notice it until now, and I have
on one of the TV screens here in the studio.
I've got our news partners at katiev R, Fox thirty
one and Chyron at the bottom of the screen, massive

(34:14):
fire at shopping center. And then I'm like, okay, which
shopping center is that? And then it says evacuations lifted
in Netland. So I used to live there, right, I
used to live just slightly out of town, but my
mailing address said Nedland, And there's only one shopping center
in Netland.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
It's a and it's.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Really two fairly big buildings. And I don't know if
you've been up there, but it's the shopping center.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Right near the Merry Go Round.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
It's called the Carousel of Happiness, which is just an
incredible thing that with all these gorgeous hand carved animals,
carved by one dude.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Just an incredible thing.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
So I'm just checking this out right now, and I'm
looking at the various news broadcasts, and so I don't
know if you've been up there, and if you have
an what I'm about to say probably won't mean anything
to you, but stick with me just for a second,
and in case you have been up there.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
So this is as I'm as.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
I'm trying to piece this together, just looking at looking
at pictures, still pictures on the news. Okay, So if
you were if you were driving in front of the
shopping center on the Peak to Peak Highway and the
carousel is right up next to the road, and you

(35:28):
were to look into the shopping center, all the way
across the parking lot facing the road is the B
and F Supermarket and there's I think maybe one or
two other businesses I think on the well, whatever the
right side as you're looking at it that in the

(35:49):
still picture, I'm looking at that building looks like it's okay.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
The supermarket itself.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
But if you're at again, you're on the road and
you're looking at the carousel, the building that would then
be to the right that runs perpendicular to the road,
this thing looks like it may be completely destroyed. Oh
my gosh. So there's at least one brewery in there.

(36:19):
There's a pizza restaurant there, and I haven't been there
a while, so it's possible some of these things aren't
there anymore. But there's a pizza restaurant that I've been
too many times. There's a yoga studio that my wife
has been too many times.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
There's a laundromat.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
The police station has used to be in that building,
maybe it still is. There's something called the Little Bear
like outdoor Ecology center something like that, but you know,
a place where kids would meet there and then go
do outdoor camps. And on the backside there's restaurants. And
I mean it's a big building. I don't know how long,

(36:55):
you'd say that is probably one hundred yards long something
like that, And it looks in this picture like it
might be just it looks like it might be destroyed.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Oh my gosh, oh that's terrible.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
According to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, the fire broke
out just after three am.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
All right, well, I guess I'm going to stop because.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
I realized it's a small town and you probably don't
know it, and I used to live there, so it
means more to me than it does to you.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Maybe. But yeah, wow, that's just terrible. Okay, lighten it
up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Back to the Nobel Prize story that I had started
and then I distracted myself. Squirrel, this is from the
Associated Press. Your phone rings, and it's a number from Sweden.
Do you answer a Nobel Prize winner didn't? And there
are some really kind of funny stories in here about
Nobel Prize winners in the United States in particular, who

(37:56):
don't get the call or don't answer the phone, because
remember they they tend to call like in the morning
the airtime, which will be you know, one am, two am,
three am hour time. And you know, if if you
don't sleep with your phone or whatever, you don't hear
the phone, or.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
You just like, oh, girsh I'm sleeping. I'm ignoring that,
and then you miss it.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
And it is actually kind of remarkable how many how
many times you hear the story of a Nobel Prize
winner who is told that he or she has won
the Nobel Prize and doesn't believe it, like, well, what note, stop, you.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Know, stop pulling my leg. When Associated Press photographer.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Lindy Wasson knocked on the door of Mary bronkows Seattle
home around four am local time.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
On Monday, it was the scientist's dog who woke up first.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Zelda's barking, roused, roused Doctor Bronkow's husband, and the AP
photographer said, I don't think he really knew what I
was there. And I said, you know, sir, I think
your wife just won the Nobel Prize. And then she
took pictures of the husband waking up the wife and

(39:09):
telling her that she was among three winners of the
twenty twenty five Nobel Prize in medicine. Her first reaction was,
don't be ridiculous, but in fact it was true.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
The following day.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
A couple of AP reporters went to Santa Barbara, California
to find physicist John Martinez, who Paul Beale, who was
on with US a couple of days ago talking about this.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Beale knows this.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Guy, John Martinez before the sun rose his I love
this part. His wife, Jean answered the door and told
them to come back later.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Martinez needed his sleep. Quote.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
For many years, we'd stay up the night of the
Physics Award, the night the Physics Award was announced, she
told the photographers. At some point we just decided that's nuts.
We'll figure it out if it's happening, but let's just
get our sleep. She added, laughing. I was trying to
think how I can introduce this, Like, do you think
you should plan a trip to Swedeen?

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
She finally woke her husband up just before six am
local time, telling him only that the AP wanted an interview.
He said, I kind of knew the Nobel Prize announcement
was this week, so I kind of put two and
two together. I opened my computer and looked under the
Nobel Prize and I saw my picture along with the
other two guys.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
So I was kind of in shock. I love these stories.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
They're like the smartest people in the world and yet
still kind of normal people. Right, here's one more everyone
but Fred Ramsdell seemed to know that he had just
won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. He was away on
a backpacking trip on Monday, driving through Yellowstone with his
wife and two dogs, and he kept his cell phone
in airplane mode, as he often does on family trips,
as they drove through a small town. Later, his wife

(40:45):
started screaming. His notifications flooded her phone. She told him
he'd just won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Along with
that gal who had just mentioned and one other they
shared the prize. I said, no, I didn't, Ramsdell told
the AP in an interview the next day from his car,
and she said, yes, you did. I have two hundred
text messages saying you won the Nobel Prize. Later on Monday,

(41:08):
he drove to a hotel in Montana to connect to
Wi Fi and call friends and colleagues. He did not
speak to the Nobel Committee to get their congratulations until midnight.
The Nobel Committee calls winner shortly before the formal announcement
is made. Some ignore the Swedish number, like Brunkow, who
assumed the pre dawn call was spam when his phone

(41:31):
rang Wednesday. Chemistry winner, Susumu Kinagawa, was skeptical. He said
he answered quote rather bluntly, thinking it must be yet
another of those telemarketing calls. I'm getting a lot recently.
The Nobel announcement continue with the Literature Prize Thursday, which
I talked about earlier. Will that winner pick up his phone?

(41:52):
I love that story. We'll be right back on KOA. Oh,
don't forget this hour's chance to win a thousand bucks
and our keyword for cash is coming up in the
next several minutes thanks to Mercedes of Littleton. That's Mercedesoflittleton
dot com. I just finished reading Jackcarr's new novel. It's
called Cry Havoc, and it's freaking amazing. It might be

(42:13):
his best book. It might be his best thriller novel.
And even though it's not actually directly in the Terminalist series,
for those of you who are fans of Jackcarr's books,
the main character in the Terminalist is.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Is James Reese.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Cry Havoc is a story about James Reese's dad, Tom
Reese in the Vietnam War.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
It is an amazing.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Book, and literally a minute ago, during that break, I
just confirmed Jackcarr to be on the show at ten
thirty three tomorrow here on KOA. So I'm very excited
about that. Still have so much to you know, I
need to just spend a couple of minutes here because
I want to.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Talk about this every hour.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
We think that we are on a path to Hamas
releasing the remaining hostages.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
We think there's twenty living and twenty eight dead.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
They say they're not sure they know where all the
bodies are, but they're gonna try. Israel is going to vote,
or maybe already has voted at some point today. Their knnested,
Their parliament is going to vote to approve a ceasefire,
and Israel will pull back modestly within Gaza. They're not
leaving Gaza, but they'll go from controlling ninety percent of

(43:33):
Gaza to controlling fifty three percent of Gaza. And then
within a few days, I think seventy two hours, Hamas
is supposed to release all the hostages. So there's a
lot to think about here. And first I want to
say that President Trump deserves to deserves a praise, I suppose,

(43:58):
and deserves a bit of a victory lap after the
hostages are out. And this is a thing that I've
been thinking about. I don't want to be overly pessimistic,
but remember, when you're talking about the Middle East, the
most optimistic you should ever be is cautiously pessimistic. Cautiously

(44:19):
pessimistic is the most optimistic optimistic you should ever be.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
In the Middle East.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
It's it's a place full of well, frankly terrible people.
And I don't mean Israel, but all these surrounding countries.
And I don't mean everybody in every country is a
bad person, but I mean there are lots of bad
people in each.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Of those countries. And there are people who.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Who want war and want death, and and want to
kill every Jew, and want to kill every American. And
it's a real you know, we know we were attacked
on nine to eleven from people who came from there.
It's not xenophobia. It's just that's the hot met of terrorists.

(45:01):
It's just reality. So we need to be a little
bit careful because I wish I said this a couple
of days ago, I said that however optimistic I might
be about this actually.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Coming to fruition.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
I wish that President Trump would tone down his own
public optimism a little bit because it's way better to
underpromise and overdeliver than the other way around.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Now, that is not Trump's style.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Trump is always about promising everything upfront, and actually I
have to give him credit for delivering on a lot
of it. And President Trump actually has done more, not
just in this term, but in his first term as well,
doing everything he can to live up to campaign promises.
And I appreciate that about him, right, you know, I

(45:55):
don't have to explain things about it.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
I like things about him. I don't like that's the
thing I bowed him.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
I like he does tend to try to honor his
campaign promises. Now, also, if you watch the videos coming
out of Israel, you will see lots of people hugging
with tears of joy and celebration that the hostages are
coming home.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
And what I would say to you is this, it does.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Seem more likely than not right now, that the hostages
are coming home, more likely than not.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
But you've got to remember who the enemy is here.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Hamas is one of the most implacable evil enemies that
there has ever been.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
In the modern world.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
They are in quantity much smaller than the Nazis, they
are in quality, and it's a difficult thing to say,
probably worse than the Nazis in the sense.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
That they not only do they want to.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Kill everybody who the Nazis wanted to kill, but they
also don't mind if their own people die for their
own propaganda victories. So they get a little cherry on
top of that poop Sunday. And my point is that
if Hamas thought that they could get away with raising

(47:16):
the hopes of Israelis and other civilized people everywhere and
then dashing them by saying, ah, we didn't mean it,
We're not releasing the hostages, they would do it in
a heartbeat if they thought they could. So at this
point we just have to hope that they don't think
they can. Jojo, you know the musician who goes by

(47:37):
the stage name five for Fighting, So his real name
is John Andresik. And have you ever you've done lots
of music radio, did you ever interview him, talk to him,
go to a show, anything?

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (47:53):
You do?

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Played them? Yeah? Okay?

Speaker 1 (47:58):
Jojo, who many you know, has done approximately everything in radio. Anyway,
John Andre six is going to be on the show
with me in an hour. He's been an incredible champion
of Israel and I've been very proud of him for
calling out the lunatics in Hollywood who he lives around,
who have been very wrong on Israel for a while now.

(48:18):
So that'll be coming up in an hour. I want
to do something completely different. I've seen a bunch of
stories lately about tipping, and I haven't talked about aim much.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
On the show, even though it is really.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
A topic that interests me and I'm always really actually
quite interested in how people shop and how people spend
money and kind of the psychology of it, the culture
of it.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
And I saw a story yesterday.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Or the day before about how it seems like maybe
on average, young people are tipping less at bars, although
it's mostly younger people who go to bars, but the
tips are coming down.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
And actually, let me ask you a question.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Let me ask you if you remember this the same
way that I remember this. When I used to go
to when I was younger, the tip would normally be
a dollar per drink. Now again, at that time, a
beer might have been three bucks, four bucks, five bucks,
a cocktail might have been six So a dollar a

(49:17):
drink was already on average probably something like twenty percent. Now,
I so that's my first question for you, and I
want you to text me at five six six nine
zero and tell me when when you were in your
going to a bar or going to a nightclub years,
how much did you tip on drinks?

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Tell me that five six six nine zero and tell me.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
What years we're talking about, right, because it could it
could be one person why was going to bars in seventies?
Another person nineties, and another person last week. You know,
I really haven't gone to bars much since I got married,
and that was over twenty years ago.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
I don't mean I've.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Never been to a bar. I'll go to a bar
with a friend and it's but I don't go. I
don't go a lot. So anyway, so there was that
and bartenders. The bartenders are saying that they expect in
this art in that previous article, that they expect twenty
percent tips, and I'm i gotta say, I'm I'm not
really down with that, especially if you're gonna serve me

(50:14):
like a ten dollars beer that just came out of
the out of the tap and you know, I know
cost the bar fifty cents and you're selling it to
me for ten dollars.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
You know what, I'm probably gonna tip a dollar on that,
but not too. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
It's just how you didn't do very much work. I
don't know that's anyway. Text me at five six six
nine zero and tell me.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Now.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Here's the piece at the New York Post, average consumer
spends one hundred and fifty dollars per week on per week.
That can't be right. That's impossible. There's no way that
number is right per week on unnecessary tips and unnecessary
as in quotes.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
This can't be right.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Two thirds of an American sixty five percent, are experiencing
tipping fatigue, now, I believe that up from sixty percent
last year and fifty three percent the year before, according
to an annual study done by this tech company that
serves about ten thousand restaurants with whatever their technology is. Yeah, okay,
the headline is wrong. The headline is wrong. The article

(51:21):
has it right. Over the last year, people have paid
around one hundred and fifty dollars in tips on average
that they didn't feel were necessary.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Okay, that's a yearly number. That makes a lot more sense.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I gotta maybe try to get in touch with the
with the right I can't believe this has been up
here for twenty four hours or so. I can't believe
they didn't fix the headline. One hundred and fifty dollars
a week in tips. Where are you eating? Actually, it
reminds me of a story for you later in the
show about the most expensive hamburger in the world.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
But anyway, the concept.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Of guilt tipping also goes for situations where the service
was not up to par. According to this survey, four
percent have tipped even when they got poor service and
customer expectations fell short. Consumers have said they added tips
when they felt bad for the worker. That was fifty
two percent, or they wanted to avoid looking cheap forty

(52:13):
five percent.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
When being asked to tip on a digital payment.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Screen with suggested gratuity amounts, two thirds feel pressure to
give the tip, even or especially rather.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
With the employee in front of them.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
People are still tipping at places without full service too,
like coffee shops, food trucks.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Even fast food restaurants.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
No, no, look, I don't know. I used to get
kind of sucked into the guilt tipping thing, not for
very long. But here here's how I think this played out.
You can tell me, you tell me anything, you want
at five six six nine zero. However you want to
react to this topic, and I'll share. I'll share some.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Of the good texts on the air, five sixty six
nine zero.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Here's how I think this played out for me anyway,
and I think I'm not alone.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
I try to.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Avoid I tried to avoid assuming that I represent lots
of people, but I do think I represent lots of
people in this case, and that is COVID hit. Restaurants
were only open for takeout, and a lot of people
felt bad for the people who worked at restaurants because
you don't have people dining in who are paying tips,

(53:25):
and most people don't tip, didn't tip at that time
on takeout, and so we got into this habit of
tipping on takeout, and I was I was there for it, right,
I'm I'm here for it.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
I tipped on takeout during COVID.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
Because I don't want these people themselves to starve or
not be able to pay their rent or whatever and
their business model. But got completely upended. But then it
came back to normal. And then at that point, so
what happened with the tipping on takeout is a lot
of times you would and with these new devices that
restaurants were using to check people out, Like you have
this iPad looking thing, and they put in it, even

(54:04):
for people who are doing takeout, a screen where it
would show you these options, you know, fifteen percent, twenty percent,
twenty five percent, no tip, custom tip. And you're standing
there in front of the person who works at the
restaurant and they've seen your face and they know your
name because you've they've seen a credit card, and you're thinking, gosh,

(54:24):
am I gonna look cheap? Or do I just really
want to tip this person just because you know?

Speaker 2 (54:28):
But at some.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Point the restaurants are full again, pretty full, and takeout
is like, why am I tipping?

Speaker 2 (54:38):
What am I tipping for? On takeout?

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Am I tipping for the person in the back who
put it in the styrofoam? And we can't use styrofoam anymore?
But whatever you're putting it in, is that what I'm
tipping for? Isn't that like kind of in the price
of the food? I mean, how much more does that
little container cost another eleven cents? And maybe you get
this whole takeout meal from the Chinese restaurant, the same

(55:05):
takeout meal you had before when you didn't tip. But
just stick with me for a second. Like the total
cost of all the packaging that all your food is
in for takeout, the total cost of it is probably
a dollar. And you got sixty dollars of food at
the Chinese restaurant. Are you supposed to tip twenty percent
fifteen percent? Not nine dollars for no, I'm done with it.

(55:30):
And here's the thing. Originally, when we're just coming out
of all that, and then the and then the worker
is standing right in front of you, and you don't
want to look cheap.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
To him or her, so.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
You tip something. You know, you would tip five bucks
when you would normally tip nothing. And you know, here's
where I am. Here's where I am sorry. I need
the five bucks. It's takeout. You didn't do any work
for me. I need the five bucks. I'm not tipping,
and I don't feel guilty about it. Here's the other
thing that started.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
To really annoy me.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
And I bet you've seen this, so you know I
described to you. This is the screen and it could
be on an iPad or a smaller thing that they
come that has a little swipey thing in it and
they walk around and bring it to your table and
you swipe it and they show you the screen and
you put in a tip amount. But it got to
a point where some restaurants showed you these tip choice
amounts in terms of percentages, and it got to at

(56:23):
least some restaurants where the lowest amount they would show
you is twenty percent, And like, you know, do you
want to tip twenty, twenty five or thirty percent?

Speaker 2 (56:31):
In my answer to that is no, just no. Did
I want to tip anything? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Maybe I wanted to tip something, but sometimes you're showing
me twenty percent as a minimum, and now it feels
like a little bit like extortion, And now I think
I'm not gonna tip anything. So here's my next direct
question for you. How has your approach to tipping changed

(56:59):
in the past year? How is your approach to tipping
changed in the past year. I want you to text
me at five six, six nine zero and tell me.
And I think I think I have a lot of
listener texts here already.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Oh my gosh, yeah I do. I do. Uh, let's
go through.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Let's go through some of these because I promised you
i'd reais to read the good ones.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Wait, this says Ross, It's National moldy Cheese Day.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Is that true? Oh my gosh, it is true. National
moldy Cheese Day. No, thank you, International Beer and Pizza Day.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
That sounds much better.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
And then one that I don't understand at all, National
Pro Life Cupcake Day. Okay, I understand National Pro Life Day,
and I understand National Cupcake Day. I don't entirely understand
National Pro life Cupcake Day.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
All right.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Anyway, back to back to the text line, I want
to share something. This is how I feel about. If
you're going to take the time to tip me and
tip me, oh my gosh, yeah, you should do that.
If you're gonna take the time to text me, then
I should, you know, do you the courtesy of sharing
at least the good texts online?

Speaker 2 (58:10):
All right?

Speaker 3 (58:11):
Ross?

Speaker 1 (58:11):
In the eighties, six budweisers would be a two dollars tip,
maybe two and a half or three, but usually two
for six beers.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
I was going to the bars in the seventies, I
tipped a couple of bucks per night, not per drink.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
I still tip one dollar per drink in twenty twenty five.
That's where I am. And maybe it's because I'm old,
but that's where I am. I I tip a dollar
a drink. Still, here's another listener. I still give a
dollar a drink from twenty twelve to present. I only
tip more if the bartender gives me a free drink
and then I tipped them the amount that that drink
would have cost me. Okay, so let me just jump

(58:46):
in on this one for a second. As a guy
who used to own a bar. All right, I used
to own a I wasn't the only owner, but I
was one of the biggest owners of this bar nightclub
in Chicago. Think about what that text means to me
as the bar owner. Are you kidding? What could be
worse for the bar owner than the bar tender giving

(59:10):
somebody a free drink knowing knowing, Because what this person
just said is pretty common. The bartender gives a free
drink knowing that they're gonna get a big tip, and
a tip maybe as much as the price of the drink.
You know what I call that. I call it theft.
That's my alcohol. I paid for that alcohol. I paid

(59:30):
for that bottle of vodka. I own the bar.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
It's not the.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Bartenders to give away, and it's not for you to
give a big tip to the bartender so that you
can avoid paying me for the vodka that I bought
for you. Oh my gosh, I hate that. I hate
that so much. I don't mean I'm mad at the listener.
I just this happened. I'm sure this happened all the time.
We would actually when I owned a bar.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
When I owned a.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Bar, we would actually hire sometimes off duty police officers
to come in and pretend to be customers and guys
who really and gals who really knew what to look for,
because you would not believe, or maybe you would believe
the incredible ways that bartenders figured.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Out to cheat the bar owners.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
And some of the stuff was so sophisticated, so clever,
and I actually don't remember them, but I actually remember thinking, Wow,
that's genius, What a genius way to cheat me. That
was really brilliant. Some of them are less brilliant, but
you still might.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Not think of them. Let's say somebody comes in.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
And let's say drinks are five dollars, okay, And somebody
comes and orders five drinks. You know, he's there with
some buddies, orders five drinks, and everybody knows the drinks
are five dollars. The bartender rings up four drinks, but charges.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
For five drinks. So the bartender rings up four drinks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
The person knows that it's twenty five dollars for the
drinks plus whatever they're tipping, but forget about the tip
for a second, just keep that aside.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
The person pays five dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
The bartender puts the twenty dollars in the register for
the four drinks they rang up and puts the five
dollars in the pocket as if it was a tip,
but it's really theft.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
We tip our bartender thirty percent. It helps our lose
track of how many drinks we've had nice ross two
thousand and two to two thousand and seven. I was
in the Navy station near Seattle, and we would tip
a dollar every other drink, and we were definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Not buying the five dollar mixed drinks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
So what this person is saying, you know, buying much
cheaper that drinks than that and tipping a dollar every
other drink.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
So fifty cents a drink. But remember, if.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
You're buying three dollars drinks, you know, then that's still
US sixteen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Percent tip or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
This is very interesting, actually, very very interesting. What A
very very large percentage of people who responded to this
are saying they did a dollar a drink and still
do a dollar a drink.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Now, I have to.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Say I feel a little bit bad for bartenders on this.
If drinks have gone from four dollars to eight dollars
and you're still getting a one dollar tip, then your
tip has gone from twenty five percent to twelve and
a half percent, But you still have to pay rent,
and you still have to buy your own food, and
the cost of everything has gone up, and it feels
a little bit like being me. What do I mean
by being me? I mean my income hasn't gone up

(01:02:33):
in quite a few years, as even though cost of
living has gone up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
I'm not asking you feel sorry for me. I'm just
saying I know how that feels to have.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Income not increase along with cost of living, and I
do feel little bit bad for bartenders about that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
How is the bartender serving beer different from a weight person.
They pick up your plate and carry it to your table,
They don't cook it. That's fair, And that kind of
falls in a little bit to what I was to
what I was just saying. But at some point I
just yeah, I don't know. It's a totally fair question.

(01:03:13):
It's a total and maybe the answer is just a
psychological answer and not really a legitimate defense. But maybe
it's that I and others have thought about waiters and
waitresses being dependent on tips more and haven't thought about
bartenders in that way more. But that's probably not fair
to the bartenders. It's probably not fair. The other thing

(01:03:36):
that I would note is like food prices have gone
up so much, and if you have a burger that's
gone from nine dollars to fifteen dollars, somehow that and
you're tipping on that, Okay, it's it's an enormous amount,
and somehow it feels different when it's in a drink,

(01:03:57):
and now you've got a beer that's gone three six dollars.
In fact, it's quite possible that the beer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
I'm just rambling now. I'm gonna shut up.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Everybody's got their own opinion on this, and I do
want to know your opinion. I think I'm rambling enough, though,
I just want to say, and I'll come back and
perhaps read some more of your texts a little bit later.
But what I want to say is there was a
short period of time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Where I tipped even though I didn't want to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Because I felt guilty or because I felt like, oh,
that person's gonna think I'm cheap. And all I did
was come in and take it, you know, get a
piece of carrot cake to go to give.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
It to my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
And yeah, somebody, the carrot cake is already sliced. Somebody
took a slice of carrot cake and put it in
a piece of styrophoam. The carrot cake, by the way,
is already eight dollars for the slice.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
I just.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
I'm not tipping on that anymore. I'm just not tipping
on that anymore. And then you confine that with as
a listener just pointed out good timing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
As a listener just pointed out in text.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
In a lot of places, the minimum wage for tipped
workers has massively increased, Denver in particular, some other places
as well. These folks are making seventeen eighteen, getting close
to twenty dollars an hour now, so they're not living
off of tips the way they used to. Because the
city council, more or less, and it's not only in Denver,

(01:05:32):
almost eliminated the gap between a tipped worker's wage and
somebody else. So all right, that's probably more than enough
on tips, but I do appreciate I got probably close
to Actually, I have more than one hundred texts already
on this more than one hundred, So thank you very
much for that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
I appreciate. I always enjoy these.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Interactions as part of what makes being a local talk
show host so much fun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
All Right, I'll tell you what I want to do
when we come back. Do you know what Lauren Bobert.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Is using as the hook in her new reelection campaign
fundraising commercial to get people.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
To donate money? Oh my gosh, I'll tell you about
it right after this.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
So I mentioned to you before we heard intrepid Chad
Bauer in the news that I would tell you how
Lauren what messaging Lauren Bobert is using as she begins
her reelection campaign right October of twenty twenty five, beginning
her reelection campaign for the election of November twenty twenty six.

(01:06:39):
Am I the only one who feels like gosh, I
wish politics would take a break anyway? Anyway, Let's see
who has this story. Media eight has this story. Representative
Lauren Bobert put out a fundraising email for her reelection
campaign this week, asking are aliens real?

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
This is what she is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
This is what she's putting in her fundraising email right now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Bobert, who was once one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Of the House GOP's most attention grabbing and controversial members,
has consistently tackled the issue of UFOs in recent months,
including asking during a congressional hearing about the possibility of
underwater alien bases. During a House Oversight Committee hearing last November,
Bobert asked the witnesses, there are rumors that have come

(01:07:27):
up to the hill of a secretive project within the
Department of Defense involving the manipulation of human genetics with
what is described as non human genetic material, potentially for
the enhancement of human capabilities hybrids.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Are any of you familiar with that? Yes? Or no?

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
All of the experts answered no. She then followed up
with this question, and so are there any accounts of UAP,
which is the new term for what we used to
call UFOs emerging from or submerging into our water, which
could indicate a base or prey beneath the ocean's surface.
That was her next question. Now here is here's her

(01:08:07):
email blast that she sent out to folks. Quote, for decades,
our government has shrouded the truth about UFOs in a
veil of secrecy. Strange crafts have been spotted soaring through
our skies, defying the laws of physics, and yet the
bureaucrats in Washington act like we're too naive to handle

(01:08:27):
the facts. They tell us we're crazy, like we can't
see these things flying through the air with our own eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
I say enough is enough.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
The American people aren't children to be spoon fed half
truth or dismissed with vague excuses. We deserve to know
what's really going on up there. And then the email
blast added a link to donate, and then another that
asked our aliens real and they talk to it now.
I want to be very clear about this, katiev R.

(01:08:57):
Fox thirty one talked to a DEMI I'm acrat political
analyst on this and I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
You know, look, it's a Democrat.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Democrats hate Lauren Bobert, so you're gonna get what you're
gonna get. So I just want to make sure before
I read the quote from the political analyst, to make
very sure you understand this person's a Democrat and this
person Andy boy N Boi A n said, this is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Almost a cry for help in politics, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
So I'm not really sure why this would go out
to conservatives in her district. And she may raise a
few thousand dollars, but she's also going to get a
lot of really weird looks. I don't know, I don't know.
You know, she's a fourth congressional district, lots of different
sorts of folks, lots of rural folks, lots of who
knows what people believe these days. I mean, you've got
Tucker Carlson, who, by the way, I think is one

(01:09:43):
of the worst humans on Earth, but he spent a
lot of time in the past year or so talking
about UFOs now called UAPs, which does kind of make
you think that this is a thing that's on the
minds of people a lot. There have been congressional hearings
about it. So let me throw a question out of you.
Let me throw a question out at you. From zero
to one hundred, with the number representing a percent. From

(01:10:06):
zero to one hundred, what is your percentage confidence that
non human intelligent life has visited Earth during your lifetime?
From zero percent to one hundred percent? What do you

(01:10:26):
think the chances are that intelligent non human life has
visited Earth during your lifetime. I'm not asking have you
seen a UFO. I mean, you can tell me if
you think you have, but that's not my question. Do
you think intelligent alien life has visited Earth in your life?
Zero percent chance, one hundred percent chance, some number in between,

(01:10:47):
which I think will be most people. But anyway, text
me at five sixty six nine zero and let me know.
By the way, I will also note that Lauren Bolbert's
campaign told our news partners at KATVR Fox thirty one
that this digital it's you know, online fundraising thing that
it's quote performing extremely well.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
So there you go. All right, another story for you.
I really like.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Online gambling sites that are not for sports but are
for things going on in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
And I actually don't bet on them. Okay, I haven't.
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
I don't gamble on them, but I love them as
a resource and as a thing to look at. And
the biggest one now is a thing called poly market
pol y market all one word poly market. And I
just saw this story h yesterday and wanted to share
it with you. It's kind of a remarkable thing from Bloomberg.

(01:11:48):
The founder of Polymarket is the youngest self made billionaire.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
His name is Shane Coplan cop L A N. And
I'm quoting from Bloomberg. And this is all all, by
the way, all this stuff when you hear me talk
about articles and guests and so on, it's all up
on the blog at Roskiminsky dot com. You should definitely
go check it out there. Shane Coplan started exploring economist
Robin Hanson's ideas on prediction markets after becoming fed up
with cryptogrifts, and he began building Polymarket from his bathroom.

(01:12:19):
Polymarket allows users to bet on real world outcomes, and
the company has had a tumultuous history, including being forced
to ban US users and having its founder's apartment rated
by FBI agents.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
So this is, you know, the government much too aggressive
against this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
The government was until Trumpet took the wrong position on
this for many many years.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
There is no reason there should ever have been a
problem with this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
But now the Intercontinental Exchange Incorporated, and that group actually
owns the New York Stock Exchange. They are investing up
to two billion dollars in Polymarket for about twenty five
percent of the company that would value Let's see is
that right, Let's see pre money eight billion dollar pre

(01:13:08):
money evaluation, making Copland the youngest self made billionaire tracked
by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, just amazing. A couple of
years after dropping out of NYU with dreams of making
it big in crypto, mister Copland was so broke that
he took an inventory of the Lower East Side apartments
so that he could start.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Selling his belongings to make rent.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
And then, as you heard already, he started to think
about this stuff about prediction markets.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
And let me just give you a sense.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
I'm not, by the way, I'm not encouraging you to
go participate in this market. I'm not encouraging you to
go gamble. I'm not encouraging you anything. I just think
these are very interesting as prediction markets because and this
isn't perfectly true, but on average, you would expect somebody's
prediction to more faithfully represent what that per person actually

(01:14:00):
believes if they have to put money on it. Okay,
and I'm not saying it necessarily makes it more accurate,
but you would think in the aggregate if people, for example,
if a polster calls somebody and Republicans have made a
sport about lying to pollsters. You can get these fairly
large error bars around poll results because people.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
Are intentionally lying. But if a polster called and said, you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Know, you can participate, but you have to pay me,
the person is probably more likely to tell the truth
about what they actually think. And so I do think
these are just very interesting and they include things right
like who's gonna win the mirrors the mayor's election in
New York.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
There's sports too. Which team is gonna be the World
Series championship?

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
A champion?

Speaker 4 (01:14:51):
Right now?

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Dodgers are thirty three percent, Blue Jays are twenty three percent,
Brewers or fifteen percent?

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
And so on? Will Congress pass a funding.

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
Bill by October for fifteenth that's fifteen percent? Well, they
passed one by October thirty first, that's sixty eight percent.
Who will be the next French Prime Minister? When will
the TikTok deal happen? How about this one? This one
is gone already because it happened because the question was about.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
A few days ago.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
But when Taylor Swift was on the Tonight Show on
October sixth, there was a question about what she would
say while she was on the show. I love this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:15:30):
I think it's a fascinating insight.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
And I will say also, Polymarket did have the most
accurate predictions about the twenty twenty four presidential election. So
this guy has created an amazing website and he deserves
the success.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
We'll be right back. There is an.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Apparent agreement on the first phase of what I won't
quite call a peace deal, because there is no real
peace to be had with Hamas, but a cessation of
hostilities for now, and in theory, what will happen is
Israel will pull back to within Gaza such that they
control fifty three percent of Gaza, and then within a

(01:16:05):
few within seventy two hours, Hamas will release all the
living and dead hostages, although they're saying they might not
know where all the bodies are and it might take
some time for some of the dead ones.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
We'll see Israel at some point fairly soon thereafter is.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Going to release a lot of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails,
including quite a few who are in for life sentences
for murder and terrorism related offenses. And it's really too
bad that those people are going to get out, but
Israel values life a lot more than the Palestinians do.

(01:16:40):
And that's just the way it's been for a long time.
And I won't go through all that again. President Trump
may go to Israel to be there for some kind
of document signing or whatever it might be. They're talking
about him potentially going on Sunday and maybe just be
there for you know, some single digit number of hours

(01:17:04):
perhaps and then heading back home. We'll see how all
that goes. There are a few people who are in
prison in Israel and who are serving multiple life sentences
for terrorism activities, for planning terrorist attacks in which lots

(01:17:27):
of Israelis, dozens of Israelis were killed, and most of
this goes back to the Second Hintovada. This is these
are not people who are in jail because of the
October seventh attacks. There are a few of those two
but according to the Times of Israel, reports have indicated
that two hundred and fifty senior terrorist convicts are among

(01:17:47):
the prisoners Israel will release.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Now, there are a few people here who are just
so terrible that Israel is going to negotiate very hard
to not let them out.

Speaker 2 (01:18:02):
Even among some.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
Of these people who are just you know, have committed
murder that they're going to let out. There are some
who are just a whole other level. And there have
been conflicting reports. And I'm not going to bother you
with the names, but there have been conflicting reports about
who's going to be let out and who's not. So
there's that, all right. Everybody knows Bob Ross. You know,

(01:18:26):
Bob Ross passed away. Gosh, I don't remember what year,
long time ago. Now did you know, by the way,
did you know that Bob Ross was a drill sergeant,
I think army drill sergeant. And he's just this soft
spoken guy with the huge hair on, you know, painting
on PBS and you know, happy little trees and happy
little clouds and have he says there's no mistakes and

(01:18:47):
happy accidents and just he painted so fast and you
and you look at his technique with these huge brushstrokes,
and you're like, how can that be good?

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
And then you look at the painting when it's done, like, wow,
that's amazing. That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
So the reason I mentioned this to you is if
you like Bob Ross and you got a little money
to spend. The Associated Press is reporting that thirty paintings
by the bushy haired, soft spoken Bob Ross will soon
be up for auction.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
And part of the reason they're doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Is because of the government funding cuts for PBS, which
then or for corporation from public broadcasting, and that loss
of funds flows through as a loss of funds, so
hard to talk about a loss of something is flowing through.
But you get my idea to PBSTV and to NPR

(01:19:40):
radio stations and such, and you know what, NPR stations
in a place like Denver, Places like Denver are gonna
be just fine, right, The rich liberals in this town
will just write bigger checks and they'll they'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
But there are other rural places, small towns where NPR
might be the only.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
Radio station around, or maybe one of two something like that,
public radio stations, and so they want to look for
ways to help these help these groups raise some money.
So Bonhams in Los Angeles is gonna auction three paintings
on November eleventh, and then they're gonna be There's gonna
be other options auctions in London, New York, Boston, online

(01:20:21):
auctions as well. And actually I take it back regarding
I take it back regarding radio, this is not for
NPR radio. It's only for PBS television, Okay, so let
me just make that clear. So all profits are pledged
to television stations that use content from a particular distributor
called American Public Television, and this is to help those

(01:20:45):
stations pay the license fees that they need to pay
in order to get shows like The Best of Joy
of Painting, which is based on Bob Ross's show, or
Julia Child's French Chef Classics, or This Old House.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
And that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:59):
Anyway, you're wondering, the same auction house sold two early
nineteen nineties mountain and lake scenes from Bob Ross in
August for one hundred and fifteen I'm rounding, okay, one
hundred and fifteen thousand, ninety six thousand. So they're gonna
auction off total of thirty other paintings and a bunch
of different places. Like I said, they're hoping to raise

(01:21:19):
between eight hundred and fifty thousand and one point four
million dollars. So if you want to buy a Bob Ross,
you know, get out your checkbook. Looks like you can
have one probably in the well, who knows, I mean
if they're if they're expecting only what eight hundred and
fifty thousand to one point four million, you could probably

(01:21:39):
get one of these things for less than fifty thousand bucks.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
Who wouldn't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
We'll be right back with the fantastic John Andresik.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
You might know him from his stage name five for.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Fighting, Five for Fighting, and John's a big La Kings fan,
so I just had to remind him what happened at
the opening game of the season when our Avalanche CRUs
his crushed his Kings. But he was at the game,
so he didn't need a reminder. Hi, John, thanks for
being here.

Speaker 4 (01:22:05):
Why thank you? Ross, I have to remind you it
is game one. It's a long season.

Speaker 5 (01:22:09):
But boy, if you're the Car's of the world and
stay healthy, you guys will have a nice season.

Speaker 4 (01:22:15):
So we'll see what happens.

Speaker 5 (01:22:17):
We certainly take a beating that night, but in congrats
to your Broncos pulling off one of the biggest upsets
in fourth quarter history.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
That was an incredible thing.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
All right, So my listeners know, because I mentioned this
from time to time even when you're not on with me,
that you've been an incredible source of moral clarity and
just a pillar of strength supporting Israel.

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
And you're not Jewish, and you're I mean, you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
Don't live in Hollywood, but you're out there in California
kind of around a lot of those people where a
lot of that moral clarity has been missing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
So the first thing I just wanted to say is
thank you for that. Again. I've said it to you before,
but I want to say it again, Well, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:23:03):
I appreciate that. I wish I was not an anomaly.
I wish I was the norm.

Speaker 5 (01:23:08):
But it seems that Hollywood and many folks have lost
their minds since October seventh, twenty twenty three. But hopefully
we're going to have some very good news in the
next few days with the hostages.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Yeah, and particularly good timing to have you on today.
You wrote a piece for Fox News entitled Hollywood joins
History's shameful betrayals by blacklisting Jewish artists, and you did
a rather long Twitter video talking about some of this
and name checking Mark Ruffalo in the Twitter video and

(01:23:41):
some other people in this article.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
So I want to know two things from you. So first,
what are you saying here?

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
And second, why are you expending the energy and the
political capital and whatever to say it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Why is it important to you to say what you
are saying.

Speaker 5 (01:24:02):
Well, I think really we are in the fight for civilization.
And I don't say that kind of flippantly. If you
see what's happening in Europe. Obviously, what's happened since October seventh,
the moral collapse of so many institutions, the UN, Amnesty International,
certainly our college campus is run amuck with Marxism, anti Semitism,

(01:24:26):
the media who became very quickly kind of hamas propagandist,
and frankly members of Congress, Rashida talib So the world
who again basically our partners in terris propaganda. I think
that really is the fight for the soul of the world,
And for me, it's just a simple thing to say

(01:24:48):
these things. The fact that I'm the anomaly in the arts,
I think is represents a historic shame of an industry
that likes to pride itself on being humanitarian, being progres
as being the voice of good versus versus evil. And
we've certainly seen the silence in the arts since October
seventh has been devastating. The article that you mentioned, there

(01:25:11):
was a letter signed by four thousand Hollywood actors basically
blacklisting Jews, saying.

Speaker 4 (01:25:17):
If you're Israeli, we're not going to hire you, We're
not going to work with you.

Speaker 5 (01:25:21):
And in this day and age, in twenty twenty five,
if you look back in nineteen thirty eight, that's how
the kind of Holocaust happened, the blacklisting of Jews, the
demonization of Jews. And we're really seeing it in all
aspects of the culture, but particularly the arts, including ross
many Jewish artists, which just blows your mind.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
Why do you think that is not the Jewish part?

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
But why do you think that particular mindset is so
prevalent in Hollywood.

Speaker 4 (01:25:47):
I think there's a lot of reasons.

Speaker 5 (01:25:48):
Certainly the woke, the kind of the woke mind virus
has affected many of these folks. They kind of look
at anybody as the oppressor. That is successful, but a
lot of it is pure cowardice, pure cowardice. Like the
folks every artist that kind of of of of stature
performed at the concert for New York after nine to eleven,

(01:26:09):
condemning Osama bin Lauden. Those have not been indoctrinated by TikTok.
They're my age. There are age they know better, and
their silence is participating in this betrayal of humanity. So
it's cowardice, it's it's indoctrination, it's fashion. But at the
end of the day, whether they're useful idiots or not,

(01:26:31):
they their actions are basically the same as the kind
of pro Hamas propagandists because they're empowering the genocide narrative,
which is a complete lie. They're palace, They're they're perpetuating
the free Palestine debacle, which you know, you want to
free Palestine, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:26:51):
Okay, free the gossins from the yoke of Hamas.

Speaker 5 (01:26:55):
So I think a lot of it is all these things,
and when the media gets behind it as well, it's
really hard to come back. But I do think the
tide is turning. I think President Trump has been an
incredible leader. Nobody thought we could get the hostages out, so,
you know, Mike Waltz has come into the UN to
clean up that cesspool. Marco Rubio has been a hero,

(01:27:18):
historic hero, kind of leading this fight for sanity. So
with all the insanity in Hollywood, thank goodness, we at
least have great leadership in our nation.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
We're talking with John Andresik, you may know him as
five for fighting a couple sort of personal questions here.
You have clearly thought about this a lot, and from
time to time when I hear some of these, you know,
Hollywood dimwits who you are criticizing everywhere, not just in
this article. When I hear them talk about these things,

(01:27:47):
it's clearly that they really don't know what they're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
And I'm wondering, have you, like, since you were.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
A little kid, or when did you get interested in
current events and foreign affairs and politics? When when did
this become a passion of yours?

Speaker 5 (01:28:05):
You know, I've never been one that likes to stand
on a soapbox and like, you know, spout my views,
you know, like Hollywood does.

Speaker 4 (01:28:11):
I think, you know, I think we all find those
books annoying.

Speaker 5 (01:28:14):
At the same time, music has always had a role
in talking about the world we live in, and for me,
the honor of my career has been performing and touring
and going around the world supporting our troops. I have
a great love and appreciation for the gift of freedom,
for our democracy, for America, and who.

Speaker 4 (01:28:33):
Is the spine of that? In the heart of that,
it's our troops. So for me, it's really been about
our troops.

Speaker 5 (01:28:38):
But then in the last few years, seeing the you know,
the abandonment of our allies in Afghanistan, seeing Putin trying
to reconstitute the Soviet Union in Ukraine, and of course
the aftermath of October seventh. You know, these are big
issues and they're all connected. And to me, they're all
moral issues. It's not about religion, it's not about race.

(01:29:00):
So to me, they're easy things to say. The Taliban
is bad, Putin is bad, Hamas is bad. To me,
they shouldn't be controversial, but unfortunately, in this crazy, woke,
tribal world we.

Speaker 4 (01:29:11):
Live in, it is.

Speaker 5 (01:29:12):
So for me, I'm just one guy singing songs, speaking
you know, my piece, and isn't that what America is about?

Speaker 4 (01:29:19):
And I would engage many of.

Speaker 5 (01:29:21):
My fellow musical artists, Hollywood artists, to have these conversations.
But again, I think the perfect example is here, we
are finally having a ceasefire, and for two years we've
been hearing from these artists demanding a ceasefire. We need
a ceasefire, and where are they now? They seem to
have no interest in a ceasefire. They're basically disappointed for

(01:29:43):
some reason. So I think it just goes to show
you the kind of insanity in Doctor Nation and really
what it is as a cult, and we have to
stand up to that because it's not going away.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
Yeah, and I think part of the reason that they're
silent now is that they're very troubled by the idea
that they might have to give Donald Trump credit for
something good. I think that's I think that's a lot
of it. But you didn't really answer my question, which
a more personal question, right, like did you think this way?
Did you feel this way? Did you have this kind
of moral core when you were twenty five?

Speaker 5 (01:30:18):
Well, look, you know, we have a family business, so
I understand the real world manufacturing and make it apparel.
But I was a Reagan guy, you know, I loved Reagan.
I loved him, you know, standing up to the Soviet Union.
So I've never been like a hardcore conservative. I've kind
of been like socially liberal, kind of fiscally conservative, you know,
kind of understanding the real world. So I've never been

(01:30:40):
someone who kind of has been into activism.

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):
It just so happens.

Speaker 5 (01:30:45):
I think the fact that nobody's saying anything made me
feel somebody's got to say something in the arts.

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
So I didn't come to this like.

Speaker 5 (01:30:53):
With any kind of joy. I still don't take any
joy in it, but I do feel it needs to
be said. And the beautiful thing about you and having
songs that people know, like Superman one hundred years, you
can give voice to the voiceless, whether.

Speaker 4 (01:31:05):
It's our Afghan veterans, the Jewish community, Ukrainian.

Speaker 5 (01:31:10):
So I think that's with my platform, it allows me
to to speak in a way that others cannot.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
I'm so with you on the Reagan thing. You're I
think you're nine months older than I am. And so
my my first vote for president was Reagan in his
re election. And and you know, and I mentioned not
that long ago on the show, I asked, I asked
listeners and myself this hypothetical question, as you, has there

(01:31:36):
ever been a vote for president that you're that you
remain proud of? And and I'm I remain proud of
that vote, and not very many others, but I do
remain proud of that vote. Tell me tell me a
little bit about the song that we bumped in with.
I think it's called Tuesday. Tell me a little bit
about that song.

Speaker 5 (01:31:55):
Yeah, I was actually surprised, you you know, usually it's
one of two songs I'm bout from music. But Tuesday
was a song I wrote about my experience playing the
concert for New York at nine to eleven, and nine
to eleven occurred on a Tuesday, And the song that
I wrote almost twenty years ago was a plea to
not forget the lessons of nine to eleven. And I

(01:32:16):
wish I had not been quite as prophetic, as we
were about to elect a mayor of New York City
where the atrocities of nine to eleven occurred, who wants
to globalize the indefada.

Speaker 4 (01:32:28):
So again, I think we certainly, in my mind, have
forgotten many of the lessons of nine to eleven.

Speaker 5 (01:32:34):
On the other hand, I think our leadership now understands that.
And I was also very proud of my vote for Reagan.
He's kind of always been my ideological hero. He sat
behind me at a hockey game once, and so I
get I think we can take that his kind of
values and willingness to show strength against evil actors, which

(01:32:58):
I think for and Trump bombing Iran change the whole narrative,
change the whole dynamic.

Speaker 4 (01:33:04):
And I think without that, we probably don't have this
hostage deal right now. But they're not home yet.

Speaker 5 (01:33:09):
Yeah, So again I'm kind of keeping myself on an
even keel, so let's see where it plays out. But
certainly I'm very grateful to this administration and what they're
doing for Israel and America.

Speaker 1 (01:33:21):
We're talking with John Andresick. You know, I'm as five
for fighting.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
I told I told my listeners earlier in the show,
John that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
At at your most, not you in general, at a
person's most optimistic about whatever is going to happen in
the Middle East, the proper approach would be what I
would call to be cautiously pessimistic. Right, that's as optimistic
as you should ever get in the Middle East. Like,
and I'm like, I want to be incredibly happy, but

(01:33:50):
I want to just pull back on the reins a
little bit andtill actually see the hostages out.

Speaker 5 (01:33:57):
I'm with you one hundred percent, let's just get there
to get to that moment. I talked to Adeed ol
alono El's mother every couple of days and many of
the hostage families. So again, Humas is evil, they do
evil things. Certainly, backing out of a deal like this
would not surprise me. On the other hand, the dynamics change.

(01:34:17):
You have all the Middle Eastern countries pushing them, and
I do think, I do think there is reason to
be hopeful, but I'm with you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:26):
Until I see it, I don't believe it.

Speaker 5 (01:34:28):
And even you know, even if we do get the
hostages out, that is just the first step in this
generational battle that we're fighting against kind of this Islamic radicalism.

Speaker 4 (01:34:37):
Europe is still being taken over by this ideology.

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
I just did a.

Speaker 5 (01:34:43):
Podcast with Canada. They also Canada, believe it or not,
becoming an anti Semitic accessful in Toronto.

Speaker 4 (01:34:49):
So we have a lot of work to do.

Speaker 5 (01:34:50):
But let's just pray through the weekend that Monday Tuesday
the hostages are home, and then we could celebrate that
and take it from there.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
All right, Last thing for you, when's the last time
you played music in Israel? And what do you think
it will be like for you when you next go
back to play music in Israel when the war is over.

Speaker 5 (01:35:15):
I was there actually a year and a half ago.
I was asked to go and ended up playing hostage.
Square played Superman in my song Okay turned out. It
was the night I ran bombed Israel for the first time,
so I spent the night in a safe room and
got a sense of what it's like to be there.
And as you know, ross I had done a new
version of Superman for the hostages for Alono Well, who's
a piano player, and our dream was to go to

(01:35:37):
the hostage square piano called the Yellow Piano, which is
a loan piano, and play Superman with a loon sitting
next to me.

Speaker 4 (01:35:45):
So that is our dream.

Speaker 5 (01:35:47):
I do believe that will happen, and hopefully that'll be
sooner than later when I go back to Israel and
have that incredible experience with not just alone, but all
the hostage families including and we have to recognize so
many of the hostage families where other loved one did
not come home, so we need to recognize them as well.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
In this time, John Andersick, you know him as five
for fighting. We're going to turn him into a huge
Colorado Avalanche fan by the time we're done. Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
That is so cool that Ronald Reagan's set behind you
at a hockey game. I can't believe that. John. Thank
you so much, not just for your time but for
your unflagging.

Speaker 1 (01:36:23):
Moral clarity and courage and showing the way in a
neighborhood full of people that need to be shown the way.

Speaker 5 (01:36:33):
Well, Ross, thank you. You fight the good fight every day.
This is a team effort, all of us, all your listeners.
And I'm just glad that you know now that Ronald
Reagan was a Kings fan.

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
Oh that hurts.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
Thanks John, talk to you soon, see you, Bud. All right,
all right, that's John Andersick. Five for fighting. Hi, Mandy
and easy are I hope that never stops. I love
the Kenichi Waha.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Are just practicing for one I return to Japan. I'll
be able to return that. Yeah, it's definitely on my return.
Just not in summer. Not in summer, Nope.

Speaker 6 (01:37:06):
I will go in the fall because I can only
imagine what those Japanese maples look like when they are
all ablaze with their leaves changing. Because the forest cover
in Japan is just stunning, stunning. It's a beautiful country.
So yeah, not in the summer when it's the worst
thing I've ever weatherwise experience, right, right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:27):
You know what, we haven't done this for a while,
and I got two fake ones. I gotta figure out
which one I'm going to use? In which one I'm not? Okay,
here we go, ready, Yes, Captain, Crunch and wine is
the latest food craze On TikTok. Someone donated items to
a thrift shop that might date to medieval times. Alabama

(01:37:48):
Sheriff's ice Halloween display is causing a commotion. The world's
most expensive burger is only available by invitation.

Speaker 6 (01:38:01):
I feel like I want it to be the person
donating something medieval to a thrift store is real, but
I think it's fake based on I don't think like
the burger invitation thing. Yeah, because rich people can be
parted with their money as long as they feel like
it's exclusive, right, Like you can tell.

Speaker 2 (01:38:17):
People, well we could, I mean perhaps we may. We
don't know if we're going to be there.

Speaker 6 (01:38:23):
Perhaps we will invite you to send twenty five thousand
dollars on a burger. I'm gonna say the thrift store fine,
even though I want it to be true.

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
Okay, and I will let you know the burger is
not twenty five th eleven thousand.

Speaker 2 (01:38:34):
The burger is real. A bargain, hey, Ron, what does
Mandy get if she has it? Right today? One baby
bite of that burger. Do I have to pay cash
or check? You have to pay an arm in half
a leg to get invited first?

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Yeah, the actual fake headline is Captain Crunching Wine is
the latest food Crazon TikTok.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
They are fake. Glad that that's fake, But it's.

Speaker 6 (01:39:00):
Too dumb to not be considered. And when as soon
as you say on TikTok, it's plausible?

Speaker 1 (01:39:06):
Uh? The acidor outpa Asa d o r a upa
restaurant in Spain, serves the world's most expensive and exclusive burger.
It's eleven thousand dollars. It can only be experienced by
those invited by the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
You are welcome to.

Speaker 1 (01:39:25):
Nominate yourself for an invitation, but they don't guarantee they'll
give you one, and they don't explain how they choose
boys invited.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
But so perfect and it's so perfect, isn't it? Oh God?

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
And they don't disclose what's in the burger, right, so
you have you have no idea what it's going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
The previous most expensive burger was only six thousand dollars.

Speaker 6 (01:39:46):
This so has an emperor has no clothes feel to it?

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
Right now?

Speaker 4 (01:39:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
Really like the AMX black card. Yeah, I got a
friend who has one. Okay, but we okay, So.

Speaker 6 (01:39:57):
My brother I think at one point had one, or yeah,
I think do you have one? And I was like,
isn't it like twelve grand a year or some crazy
amount like that?

Speaker 2 (01:40:05):
And I said, well, what do you.

Speaker 6 (01:40:06):
Get because I have an American Express specifically for airport lounges,
and I'll pay a pretty penny for that American Express
card so I can get access to all their airport
lounges because they're flat out the best. Yeah, I mean,
just straight across the board.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
That's the value for me. But I was like, well,
what's the value that you're getting for this black card?

Speaker 4 (01:40:23):
What?

Speaker 6 (01:40:24):
And no one can give me a valid reason other
than nobody else can really get it, Like, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
It's just it's so genius. Why can't I give up
with a grift like that? Why My rifts are all
for poor people? And I feel bad about it. If
I was grifting rich people, it would be fine.

Speaker 6 (01:40:47):
Speaking of grift, I've got Brian Blaze from the Paragon
Institute on We're going to talk about the fact that the.

Speaker 2 (01:40:52):
Current healthcare crisis put it cone.

Speaker 6 (01:40:56):
Senator John Hickenlooper, which I started laughing, but whenever, we'll
get into that later.

Speaker 2 (01:41:01):
Paragon has been talking about this.

Speaker 6 (01:41:02):
You probably if you'd had a show in two thousand
and eight, you would have been talking about the fact
that there was literally nothing in this bill to lower healthcare,
cause and everything to get more people on the dole.

Speaker 2 (01:41:11):
And that's what this is about.

Speaker 6 (01:41:13):
So the whole shutdown is about keeping people on the
government doal So I got Brian Blaze about that. We've
got Mike O'Donnell, my favorite statistics nerd, coming on to
talk about crime stats. Colorado is still moving in the
wrong direction, even as the rest of the nation is
moving in the right direction. It's a freaking disaster. But
what an opportunity for Republican candidates, just saying.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
If we could get a few good ones that would
help everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous show. Have a
great rest of your Thursday, which remains my favorite day
of the week.

Speaker 2 (01:41:42):
I'll talk to you tomorrow.