10-21-25 - *FULL SHOW* NO on LL and MM; Doomberg; Boo at the Zoo; TABOR Court Win

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's it's good to be back.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I have to say I didn't talk too much about
my week off yesterday. I didn't talk too much about it. It
was it was not much of a week off. It
wasn't it wasn't what I hoped it was gonna be.
Because our little English bulldog hurt her legs, so we
didn't go away.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
But it's it's all right, it's all right, it's fine.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
And for some reason, for some and here's another thing,
last night, I couldn't sleep. I woke up at around
one forty something, tossed and turned until about two o'clock
trying to get back to sleep. That failed, so I
got up. I went downstairs and I sat on the
couch and I'm reading a book.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Actually, I'm going to tell you about the book in
a second, because it's so good, and I'm going to
get the author on at some point. I don't haven't
scheduled yet. But so I read the book for a
while and then.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I just decided to lay down on the couch and
I picked Agnes up. And she can't jump up on
the couch because of the injury to her leg, so
I just picked her up. I put her on the couch,
and then I lay down on the couch and I
fell asleep with her like down at my feet. And
at some point in the middle of that, I'm a
side sleeper. Okay, I don't think you needed to know
that about me, but now you do. So I tend
to sleep on my side. Usually my knees bent a

(01:09):
little bit, and so Agnes sort of came up to
behind my legs and lay down in the kind of
the bend of my knees. And I slept for a
few more hours that way, and so I didn't have
the best night's sleep. And despite all that, and despite
it being a Tuesday, I'm in a really good mood today.
And I have no idea why, but I'm going to
go with it because it's not my usual Tuesday thing
to be in a good mood. But here we are,

(01:29):
and I am. So let me just tell you, very
very briefly about this book. It's called The Persian, Persia
and the Persian by a guy named David McCloskey, who's
a former CIA guy. And I asked some of my friends.
You know who my friends are. I asked some of
my friends about McCloskey. As far as CIA, and they said, yeah,
that dude is a real deal as far as what

(01:52):
he did at CIA. And I got to tell you,
this book, The.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Persian is one of the best spy novels I've read
in years and years and years.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Like I think I told you. I had Jack Carr
on the other day for his new book called Cry Havoc,
which I thought was maybe Jack Carr's best book, and
I think The Persian is about as good.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
It's a different kind of story. It's a different kind
of story. It's a sort of.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Middle Eastern based spy story. It's just incredible. If you
want to read a really wonderful spy novel, go get
The Persian. I almost never mentioned books that i'm reading
before I have the author on, but I think this
one's so good that I thought I would mention it
to you.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
All right, So what else?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I get emails from listeners quite frequently, well emails, and
just when people see me in public or some event,
I get a lot of thank yous from listeners for
my voter guides, and I want to just let you
know I'm not doing a voter guide this year.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
They're not that much.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Any things that I would write about this year a
lot of local stuff that for your own local elections
you should do your own homework. And it's very, very
difficult for me to have the time to go research.
You know, who's running for school board and you know
in Littleton, I know we've got some potentially important school
board races in Douglas County. I'll probably let Mandy handle

(03:22):
that a little more than I do, but I'll probably
touch on it.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
But Mandy lives in Douglas County and she tends to
follow that stuff more than I do.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
The Denver school board race is very important, and with
all that stuff, there's a lot of municipal elections in
off years. So I want to just repeat something that
I said that I've said for for a long time,
and that is that in municipal elections where the candidates
are not identified by party, which is a good shortcut.

(03:51):
It's not always perfect, but normally, if you lean Republican,
you'll be more in line with the Republican candidate than
the Democratic candidate more often than not.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Right, So it's a shortcut.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
And if you don't have time to do your homework,
even if you don't consider yourself a hard core Republican,
or a hard core Democrat. Still, if you're a Republican,
you'll vote for the Republican candidate. These municipal elections, they
tend not to be identified by party, and so it's
harder to know. If you don't know, it's harder to
find out. And so what I encourage.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
You to do, and this actually came up as a
topic with a guest a few weeks back, what I
encourage you to do is.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Go to the websites of these candidates and look at
You can look at their policies, but they might lie
at least a little bit or exaggerate. So look at
who's endorsing them.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
That's the key.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Usually candidates for lower offices will try to get you know,
state House members, state senators, members of Congress, activists in
the community to endorse them. So then look at who's
endorsing them and make your decision that way. So, if
you are let's say you're let's say you're moderate liberal,
say I don't want to assume all my I don't

(04:58):
assume that all my listeners are conservative. Let's say you're
a moderate liberal and you're looking at, you know, candidate
for some municipal thing.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
I don't care what it is.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
And they're endorsed by a bunch of hardcore conservatives, and
they're endorsed by Lauren Bobert, Well, that would probably be
a clue for you to not vote for that person,
And of course the the other way if you are
of a different political leaning.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
So there's that.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
The one thing that I really really want to emphasize
though going into this election is please vote no early
and often, because I used to live in Chicago, vote
early and often. Vote no on propositions LLL and MM.
These are basically coming after coming to fleece tax payers

(05:46):
more in order to pay for the already ridiculous program
to provide free school lunches for middle.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Class kids and rich kids.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Remember that that lower income kids already got free lunch,
often free breakfast. This thing that was so dumb that
even Governor Polus wouldn't sign it. So the Dems and
the legislature sent it to the voters, and.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Colorado, now being arguably.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
To the left of California, passed it by a wide margin.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
It wasn't close.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
They passed it by something like fourteen points. But unsurprisingly,
when you offer people free food, a bunch of them
come for it, and so it's running out of money.
And so what they're coming back now is to raise
taxes even more, not on everybody, on certain people, on
people they don't like, which is to say, people who
make three hundred thousand dollars a year or more. So
they're taxing people who make three hundred thousand dollars a

(06:39):
year or more to give free lunch to those people's
own kids. The whole thing is so stupid, and it's
so inefficient, and it's so typically progressive. And the other
thing that this says is if they if they take
more money in taxes then they end up needing, then
they can dump the access into food stamps rather than
giving it back through tabor.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
This whole thing is terrible.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
We need to undo the original thing that was free
school lunch for middle class and rich kids, rather than
letting them fleece taxpayers more. Please vote know early and
often on propositions LLL and MM. And that is the
primary thing you're gonna get from me as my verbal
voter guide this year.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Producer Shandon, who knows what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Let's ease drop a little bit into Vice President jd
Vance's comments that he's giving right now in Israel Nation Center,
which we.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Are announcing the opening of. You have Israeli's and Americans
working hand in hand to try to begin the plan
to rebuild Gaza, to implement a long term piece and
actually ensure that you have security forces on the ground
in Gaza not composed of Americans who can keep the
peace over the long term. So we've got a lot
of work left to do. This is going to take

(07:54):
a very very long time. But I think see what Coff,
Jared Kushner and Ad Cooper behind me have done an
incredible job.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
I want to say just a couple of.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Quick things, and I want to turn it over to
see what called Number one, the Israeli government has been
remarkably helpfulness. I want to thank them, think our Israeli
partners and.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
All the folks particularly who are.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Working hand in hand with their American friends here at
the CMCC. And number two, I want to.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Say that there is this weird.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Attitude I've since in the American media, in the Western media,
where there's almost this desire to root for failure, that
every time something bad happens, that every time that there's
an act of violence, there's this inclination to say, oh,
this is the end of the ceasefire, this is the
end of the peace plan. It's not the end. It
is in fact, exactly how this is going to have
to happen when you have people who hate each other,

(08:39):
who have been fighting against each other for a very
long time. We are doing very well. We are in
a very good place. We're going to have to keep
working on it. But I think we have the team
to do exactly that. So with all thanks to our
partners both.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
All right, let's leave it there, all right. I want
to follow up on that for a second. That was
very interesting. Actually, I'm going to take the first thing
and the last thing he's talking about.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
In Israeli American partnership.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
We really don't know what American involvement will look like
in maintaining the ceasefire. We do believe there will be
quite a lot of American advising going on, not that
Israel really needs American advice on how to prosecute a
war against Hamas, but to the extent that there will
be a bigger ceasefire, to the extent that maybe, and

(09:24):
this is not certain, right, some countries will will send
some of their soldiers right, Saudi, the Katari's Turkey, somebody,
you know, sending peacekeeping forces into Gaza, because I don't
think America is going to I don't think there would be.
First of all, I don't think Trump has any interest
in that at all. I think Trump's base would blow
a gasket. And I actually think that most of the

(09:46):
American public would blow a gasket if we put American
troops into Gaza.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
I wouldn't support that. I wouldn't support that.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
So in any case, it'll be interesting to see just
what the American role is, perhaps coordinating with these other
not just with Israel.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
So there's that.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
The other thing that jd Vance said that was very interesting,
and I think he's right.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
I think in the mainstream.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Media, which is to say, in much of the political left,
you know, they were calling all the ceasefire now, ceasefire now,
And now suddenly there is a sea spence. Not suddenly,
but there is a ceasefire. But they don't seem happy
about it. They barely seem to want to talk about it.
Why because it's Donald Trump's accomplishment and they can't handle

(10:29):
saying that Donald Trump got something done, something that I
personally thought, okay, here's my thinking going into the whole
ceasefire thing.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Here's my thinking.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Donald Trump is a better chance of getting it done
than anybody else does. But still the chances are low
because it's just so freaking difficult with this situation.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
And he got it done.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
And so now the left, which includes so many people
in media, I think jd Vancey is right. They're not
saying it out loud, but you can you can hear
it anytime there's a thing.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Like the the I mentioned yesterday on the show.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
These Hamas people or some splinter group off of Hamas,
we're not exactly short, popped out of a tunnel in
southern Gaza a couple of days ago and fired an
anti tank rocket at an Israeli vehicle and killed a couple
Israeli soldiers. And then Israel launched something like a hundred
strikes against Hamas and whatever other terrorist targets. And what
I said on the air yesterday, I didn't say, like

(11:28):
you're getting what jd vance is referring to is not
what I not the kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
I said, but what so many other people said.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
I said, Look, Israel did what they needed to do,
and now they've said they're honoring the ceasefire again and
they want to keep going with the ceasefire, and it
probably will, and this kind of thing is going to
happen because there are people within Hamas who want to
break the ceasefire and want the war to continue because
that's all they know. But Israel doesn't want the war
to continue, not only because they don't.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Want it they're tired of war, but also because they
know Donald Trump doesn't want it. So I do think
I did see a bunch of news stories where after
that thing happened to lettin so called mainstream. They're not
mainstream anymore. There used to be mainstream, now they're not.
Now they're well out of it.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
But they were talking about as if it's the end
of the ceasefire, and I never thought it was. And
jd Vance, I thought made an interesting point there. I
will also say it's interesting that jd Vance is in
Israel right, because when you think about how this has
played out so far, you don't really think of jd
Vance as having had an important part. The key players

(12:32):
have clearly been Donald Trump, Steve Whitcoff, who I also
have to give an immense amount of credit to because
he had no experience in this kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
He was very very smart to bring Jared.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Kushner in, who has an immense amount of spirit experience
negotiating in the Middle East and was the lead on
the Abraham Accords that got done during President Trump's first term.
So Steve Whitcoff, who was really running lead, but he
kind of made Jared Kushner co CEO of this effort.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
It was very smart management on Witcoft's part.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
And then Rubio was around, as you would expect because
he's Secretary of State, but you didn't see Jade Vance
around it very much. And it's interesting that Jadevance is
in Israel right now. I think he probably said I
want to be there. I want to be part of this,
partly because it's historic, and partly because he wants to
run for president and he wants to have a fingerprint
or two on it.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
And I'm not criticizing him for that.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
I think it's a very smart political move for him
to be there in front of a camera in Israel.
I think it's a very smart thing. So anyway, that
was our easdrop for this morning. Coming up in the
next few minutes, is this hour's chance to win a
thousand bucks and our keyword for cash thanks to Mercedes
of Littleton. The website, unsurprisingly is Mercedesoflittleton dot com. I

(13:45):
am so pleased to welcome back to the show a
guest who is not only my favorite chicken, but my
favorite foul of any sort at least to have on
the show. Doomberg is the Green Chicken. Mberg is actually
a group of folks, but I usually talk with one
particular member of that flock, and Doomberg has the most

(14:09):
successful and I think one of the absolutely most interesting
sub stacks in the finance category.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
And it's typically.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
About energy and resources and international competitiveness and stuff like that.
And Loomberg has been warning us the larger US for
some time regarding the dynamics of the trade relationship and

(14:36):
other sorts of relationships between the US and China, and
we talked about it last time Doomberg was on the show.
But in a recent piece just from a few days
ago called Gloves Off, the subtitle was why the events
of last week changed everything, I thought it would be
really important to get the Chicken back on the show.
So do me thanks for making time for us. I

(14:56):
know you're a very busy Chicken, and I appreciate your time.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
Ross.

Speaker 5 (15:00):
Always great to talk with the best in the business.
Looking forward to talking about China today.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Okay, so last time you were on, you gave us
the concept of escalation dominance. So the first thing I
want to do for people who missed that is just
very briefly define escalation dominance in the context that we're
talking about now.

Speaker 5 (15:19):
You bet, in any war or any competitive negotiation, it's
paramount to identify who has ultimate escalation dominance, who could
take it all the way, who can suffer more? Who
is willing you know, what are you willing to do?

Speaker 6 (15:35):
So?

Speaker 5 (15:36):
For example, in the war in Ukraine, the US does
not have escalation dominance against Russia unless the US is
willing to use nuclear weapons. And in the trade war
with China, China has escalation dominance because of its monopoly
positions and certain critical raw materials, which I'm sure we'll
talk about next, But that's the main core concept. Who
can go all the way and who can't? And if

(15:57):
you can't, then you have to behave differently and negoti
Then if you're the one with escalation dominance.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
All right, just one quick aside and I realize you're
a very smart chicken, but not a psychic.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Nevertheless, I will ask you, do you.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Think Putin has escalation dominance because there is a credible
and I'm emphasizing the word credible concern that he may
use a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 5 (16:25):
No, I mean in conventional sense, the US can't outproduce
weapons at the pace that Russia is producing today. So
take nuclear off the board. Russia still has not gone
to full war with Ukraine. They characterize this as a
special military operation. They could do conscription, they could do
a call up. They're producing six seven hundred of these
attack drones every day. They have advanced missile technologies that

(16:49):
they could use that are not nuclear, including the Euroginic.
And so when we say Russia has escalation dominance, it
can just outproduce an outcompete NATO because it's right there
on its border and they're such a large military industrial complex.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Okay, and I don't know that I've read much from
you on this, and again a little off topic, but
the last thing on this, what did you make of
President Trump's decision after a lot of chatter, not to
give tomahawks to Ukraine, And how does that play into
the escalation dominance conversation in that conflict.

Speaker 5 (17:20):
Yeah, I think that was always a bit of theater
designed to buy Trump more time. Trump's under pressure, of
course from the Forever War Party in DC to escalate.
The tomahawks would not have changed the war, but it
would have destroyed the relationship between Russia in the US,
primarily because tomahawks can't be fired into Russia without US
soldiers actually doing it, and everybody knows that, and so

(17:43):
it would be tantamount to the US launching long range
missiles into Russia, militarily effectively joining the war as a
direct combatant. And I don't think Trump was willing to
do that.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Folks, we're talking to Dooomberg. You can go to Doomberg
dot com d O O M B E RG dot
com and if you go right now, you're going to
see the two most recent articles are what we're going
to talk about next. They are very much related to
each other.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
One is called gloves Off and one is called ninety
percent of the Loss.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
So do me.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Let me go to the subtitle of gloves Off, which
you posted about five days ago. Why the events of
last week changed everything? So what happened last week? And
what did it change.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
So what happened last week was exactly what you and
I were talking about in my last appearance and that
we were warning about, which is, China weaponized its monopoly
control over rare earth metals and the critically important magnets
that are derived from them, and effectively, China, because of
certain back and forth between the US and China, essentially

(18:46):
claimed that any company that re exports rare earths, even
trace amounts that originated in China, need China's permission to
do so, and that has vast consequences across the entire
developed world. There is no country, very few companies who
aren't in one way or another, involved in this dragnet,
and that was chant amount to an economic nuclear weapon.

(19:10):
China made a major threat to use it, and it
is stating that it will forbid the US military, for example,
from getting its rare earths. And there's an enormous amount
of rare earths in advanced weaponry, but rare earths are everywhere.
If trying to, like for example, of China, just stopped
exporting all rare earths, every automotive assembly line in the

(19:30):
Western world would be shut down in a matter of weeks.
This is what we call escalation dominance, and we predicted
immediately upon seeing the news that the US would have
to be to retreat. And the point of Gloves Off
is to go into great detail as to why that is.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Well, okay, so how do you think?

Speaker 2 (19:51):
And you've talked about this a lot in the past,
more than in this particular piece, which is about what's
going on now, But how did we get into a
p position where not just the US, but almost the
entire world outside of China hardly produces anything at least,
as you know, a percentage of the global demand of

(20:13):
these absolutely critical materials.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
How did that happen?

Speaker 5 (20:18):
China was willing to pollute on a scale that the
Western world would find intolerable. We described this almost three
years ago now in a piece called geopolitical warfare, which
I know we've talked about last time as well. And
so now what we're seeing is g China has ninety
plus percent control over these very difficult to purify metals,
and the rest of the world is caught with its

(20:38):
pants down. And so we just had the Prime Minister
of Australia in the White House. I leave yesterday, and
there's going to be tens of billions of dollars spent
to close this gaping vulnerability. But everyone saw it, Everyone
could see it coming. China, you know, ruins its own
environment to get knobly control over stuff everyone else needs.
And they didn't do that without the tend to someday

(21:01):
use the card if they needed to, and they felt
like they needed to. Now, last thing I'll say is
all sort of just create glots and we close gloves
off by saying in five years is going to be
a glot of rare earth metals as the world over
invests to compensate with what China has done. So this
leverage that China has, this escalation escalation dominance that China
has now is temporary. The US will get it back together,

(21:24):
the West will get it back together. There'll be enormous
investments poured into this sector. We're seeing rare earth stocks skyrocket.
I'd be very wary of that rally because glots eventually come.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, you know, it's funny, just tangentially. I was talking
with a friend of mine about SMR stocks small modular
nuclear reactor and what I asked what.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
I asked my friend because you know, doing me, you know, my.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Background is finance, right, So what I asked him was,
if I bought every you know, and let's say equal
dollar amount of every single currently publicly traded SMR stock,
and maybe if I could get my hands on the
private ones too, with their current valuations, will I be
up or down money in twenty years if.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I bought them at their current prices? Do you have
a I don't know if you even think that's an
interesting question.

Speaker 5 (22:13):
Though, sure, I mean I think you have to wonder
if you'll be abnominally or in real terms. Yeah, the
only real question you might quote make money but lose
spending power. We don't tend to buy power producers or
energy producers or the commodities themselves, just because the long
term real price of all commodities is lower, and electricity
as a commodity, and so we would hesitate to buy

(22:36):
the SMR companies. Any company that is leveraged to volume
of energy produced, like midstreamers or critical parts suppliers or
royalty companies, we find more interesting in the sector. But
we're not long any of these stocks. We don't like
to be long stuff that we write about. Their schools
of thought. Of course, you know our school of thought is,
we don't have a conflict of interest, and so the

(22:56):
reader knows they're getting our authentic views right.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
And that's been your position for as long as I've
been reading your work, which is right around when youre,
right around when you started.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
That's always been your position.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
We're talking with Doomberg Doomberg dot com. Back to the
China rare Earth thing. How much of China's effort, successful
effort to dominate the rare earth space do you think
was done with a specific intent of garnering leverage or

(23:28):
escalation dominance versus just this is.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
A useful economic thing and we want to make a
bunch of it.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
No, it's just one hundred percent the former. It's not
the most profitable business, especially when you invest too much
in it like they have done. They have too much capacity.
They do this all the time. So look at the
solar industry, way too much capacity, nobody's making money. Look
at the electric electronic vehicle, you know, the EV industry
in China, way too much capacity. I write that where
China can make fifty million cars a year and they

(23:55):
only make thirty, that means they have a lot of
room to take GM and Ford and Chrysler's business, but
it also means nobody in that sector is making any money.
They do this specifically for national security. And by the
way of one of the big failures of Wall Street
is its inability to properly priced national security risk. It's

(24:17):
just not something that stockholders care about. And so you
get this hollowing out of US manufacturing, regardless of the
consequences to the Pentagon. And now we're seeing that the
Pentagon has to go back in and dump a bunch
of money and become shareholders and all these stocks, which
I think is the right way to go. Give Trump
full credit for recognizing the problem and trying to do
something about it. But we have a sequencing issue ross

(24:38):
We have to we have to build our own supply
chains back up before we can enter into a trade
war or a hot war with China.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Right and during and in that interim period, which as
you said before, you're estimating at five years, but the
error bars around that are probably pretty wide. But during
that during that time period, they've got us by the
short ones. They've got escalation dominance the whole time.

Speaker 5 (25:01):
You're correct, and it's not just in rare earths. I mean,
this is something we've been flagging again since the beginning
of Doomberg. God have it. Look, we've interacted with the
Chinese end of China many times. I used to do
business in China. This is all very clear to people
from industry how they go about doing this. And you
just assume that there's somewhere, you know, behind enough closed door,
somebody has a plan for all of this. But then

(25:22):
you realize that they don't. And as you say, knowing that,
then I think we have to have a better approach
to China. I think you know this whole other piece
we wrote about ninety percent of the law, which shows
just how little forethought has gone into what's actually going
on here.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Right, Okay, So good timing on that, because I just
opened that tab right as you were saying it. So,
what what is Netspiria if I'm even pronouncing it correctly?

Speaker 1 (25:46):
And why should Americans care?

Speaker 5 (25:49):
Next? Speria is one of the more important companies you've
never heard of in the semiconductor world. There's the high end,
you know, Nvidia AI super chips, but then the base
of the pramid is this vast array of relatively simple,
discrete semiconductive devices that are in everything they're in your fridge,
they're all over your car. And during COVID we had

(26:12):
a shortage of those, and you may remember you'd see
F one fifties stuffed in parking lots because the cars
were assembled, but they were just missing some important chips,
like for the steering wheel or whatever. Nexsperia is a
market leader in those chips. It's based in the Netherlands,
is owned by a Chinese company got caught up in this,
you know, the US trade war with China, and the

(26:34):
Dutch seized control of it from the Chinese owners. There's
only one problem with this ross the main factories in China,
and so the Chinese simply said, you can't export these chips.
Then and now we're seeing a scramble similar to what
happened in COVID, and the automakers are setting up war
rooms and panic teams as we call them, because there's

(26:55):
only a couple of weeks supply of these critical chips. Next.
Spiia has something like forty percent share in some of
the important chips that automakers rely on. Of course, the
Chinese makers won't have any issue because the plants in
their country, and so, you know, to seize a company
without even playing one dimensional chess very well, like they'll

(27:17):
they just put export controls on the chips, and now
the world is in panic again.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
There's an amazing quote in your in your piece, ninety
percent of the law and this is a quote from
the South China Morning Post. Nexspiia China, the local unit
of the Dutch chip maker, has told its employees to
follow orders from local management and ignore.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Instructions from the Dutch head office. And in other words,
you're gonna do what Jijin Ping says, not what your
company says, because that's.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
Where the factor is. That's why you know, possession being
ninety percent of the laws is the tunnel. And so again,
in sector after sector, true Western indifference. Let's say, let's
be nice. China has accumulated geopolitical power bod design on purpose,
and so when Trump launched the tariff war, China was
ready with its own set of bullets. And you know,

(28:06):
sometimes people punch back and it hurts.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Okay, last thing for you, do me, what is your
expectation for the US China relationship in.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
This specific area.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I'm not talking about you know, invading Taiwan and stuff,
but in this specific area.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Over the next six months.

Speaker 5 (28:24):
A deal will be cut and then the US is
going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars papering over
the mistakes of yesteryear.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Do you think private industry will be spending that or
do you think this is going to have to be
government spending because private industry will think it's too risky
or not enough the ROI or whatever.

Speaker 5 (28:46):
Great question. So you know, Trump's spent touring the world
and people have been pledging all this money to invent
in order to circumvent the tariff threats. Katar, you know,
the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, pick your favorite. That's where
the money is going to come to do this. So,
you know, we joke internally, remember when Trump came down
the escalator and he famously said, I'm going to build
a wall in Mexico's going to pay for it. Trump

(29:08):
is now going to say, I'm building a rarerists factory
and the Saudi's are going to pay for it, and
that's what's coming.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Wow. Yeah, that's a good line.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
But by the way, I talk about those numbers, as
I talked about I think I sent you actually an
email and a message about this book. Apple in China,
And I had the author on the show yesterday and
what I said to him because he was talking about
Apple pledging to spend five hundred billion dollars and he
actually thinks a lot of that is stock buybacks and
dividends and nonsense that you wouldn't really think of in

(29:38):
the in the context in which it's being used. But
but the the idea, my idea is these guys just
open up chat GPT and tell it, give me a
random number between one hundred billion and a trillion, and
that's what we'll tell Trump.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
And then Trump buys it, and.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
He tells the world, look, they're going to do three
hundred and fifty billion dollars. And then all these execs
are sitting around in the conference room with little shot
glasses a bourbon, toasting each other and laughing saying he
bought it again.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Am I too cynical?

Speaker 5 (30:08):
Perhaps? With the US based executives. Great interview, by the way,
but the people who depend on US military for their
defense will be more than willing to pay a little
homage to the US and probably get an investment return
and part of it. So if the US Navy is
parked outside of your oil field. You might want to,

(30:29):
you know, pay for a little protection of a protection
racket service, and that's one way to model what Trump
is doing.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Doomberg has the best most successful sub stack in the
finance category. It's mostly about energy and resources and global competitiveness,
and it's an incredible read and well worth your subscription.
I am a paying subscriber Doomberg dot com, do O,
m B E RG dot com.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
All right, get back to pecking around.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
I hope you find some good bits of corn in
wherever you're eating today.

Speaker 5 (31:04):
Always a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Rosstuck you so okay, thank you? All right, that's Doomberg. Gosh.
I love those guys.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
I love that newsletter and if I'm sure you know
why if you read it too, So all right, a
couple other things I wanted to do, Actually, you know
what I want to do. Just one quick story here.
I had this for a while and I didn't get
around to it, and it's a huge change of pace
from what we were just talking about. But this is
a story I like because it represents, I think a
little bit of creativity from a place I don't normally
expect too.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Much creativity, and that is from education.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Establishments which are fundamentally part of government, and I don't
expect too much creativity there, but we've got some. And
this is from our news partners at KDVR Fox thirty
one KDVR dot com, and the story is from a
couple of weeks ago, but it's still a good story.
For many high school students, the stress of getting accepted
into an institution of higher education can be daunting or

(31:56):
even impossible. But Aurora Public Schools is aiming at try
Bryan and sure students have a higher education option after graduating,
and is doing so through a partnership with the University
of Colorado Denver. The partnership, they said, was to be
made official a couple days later, but that would have
been a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
And Aurora Public School Superintendent Michael.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Giles or Giles Gils, sorry, mister Giles or Giles, not
sure to pronounce your last name, He says, our new
partnership with c U Denver is a game changer for
our students, opening doors to more college and career opportunities
as an integral part of our work to become the
destination district.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
With CEU Denver's.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Emphasis on creating an exceptional learning environment with a diverse
student population. We know this will be a great fit
the agreement. Now, the agreement will guarantee that Aurora Public
Schools high school students in their junior year who have
a weighted GPA of three point zero or higher will

(32:59):
be admitted to See You Denver. And for seniors it
could be a weighted or unweighted GPA of three point
zero will also get you into SEU Denver. Also, Aurora
Public school students will have their application fees waived and
get more than have an inside track, let's say, to

(33:20):
financial aid from CU Denver. And See You Denver made
some comments about it as well, and I'm not gonna
mention those quote those comments, but I really like this.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
I think it's a win win.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
It's a win for Aurora students who might have a
hard time getting into college. It's a win for CU Denver,
which maybe wants to get some more students into that
particular part.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Of the CU system. And it's a win for Aurora overall.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
By making their high school more appealing. Right, especially for
what I guess I would call it, you know, sort
of middle class families where you're expecting your kids gonna
go there and you know, maybe work hard and get
just a you know, a B or a little better
than a bee, but really wants to go to college.
And now you know you can get in if you
can achieve that in Aurora High schools. I think this

(34:08):
is a win win. I think it's very creative and
I want to congratulate Aurora Public Schools and see you
Denver for this deal.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Better late than never.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Files, because I should have talked to you about this,
and I should have had Jake on a few weeks ago,
but he was busy, then I was on vacation. And
so here we are to talk about Boo at the Zoo,
one of the year's great events.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
But we're here to.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Talk about Boo at the Zoo with the understanding that
this coming weekend is the last weekend.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Of Boo at the Zoo. So for those of you
who don't know what it is, Jake Kubier.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Who is director of Communications for the Denver Zoo and
Conservation Alliance, is going to tell us right now, and then,
thanks to Jake's generosity, at some point, maybe real soon
or maybe later in today's show, I'm gonna have some
tickets to give away like whole family packs of tickets
so you can take you all your kids.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
That kind of thing. So Jake, welcome back, have talk
to you in a while. It's good to have you,
good to be with you.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Ross always nice to talk to you.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
So for those who don't know what's Boo at the Zoo.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
Yeah, Booth the Zoo. This has been a tradition here
at the Zoo for many years. This is our big
Halloween festival event. During the daytime, we have Wildfall, which
is included in your general ad mission, and it's just
the whole campus is decorated for fall, and we've got
roaming characters and everything that The Boot the Zoo is
a special ticketed event separate from the daytime, and this

(35:28):
is kind of Halloween themed event. We have trigger treating again,
costume characters, animal maassadors, and of course everybody's encouraged to
dress up and preview those Halloween costumes.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yeah I was.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
I've only been two or three times to Boo with
the Zoo, but that's two or three times more than
I've done other things. And it really is fun. It's
not too creepy. It's more like just a real happy Halloween.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
Super family friendly. Yeah, this is this is for Yeah,
definitely kid kid centric, nothing too scary, little little spooky,
but but it's it's a very very kid friendly event.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
I see on the website.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
And by the way, folks, if you if you go
Denver Zoo and just and then boo at the zoo,
if you type that into the Google machine or whatever,
you'll find it very easily. But I see it says
enjoy mysterious cryptid creatures ce rypt I D What does
that mean?

Speaker 4 (36:22):
Yeah, so cryptid creatures are kind of those mythical creatures.
So it's bigfoot, mermaids, fairies, unicorns, topicabra. So we're kind
of playing off of the the you know, our real
animals and kind of getting into the world of mythical
creatures too. So you'll see like a bigfoot roaming around
and interacting with guests, and people can get their photos

(36:44):
taken with a mermaid and a fairy in a witch.
So it's it's just kind of a fun play on
us being a wildlife and conservation organization.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
How does the mermaid do when she goes swimming in
the polar bear enclosure?

Speaker 1 (37:00):
You'd have to ask her.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
Well, luckily we don't have polar bears anymore.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, I know, I missed them.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
I missed them so we could switch it to penguins,
which probably the biggest risk is a little.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Penguin poop on her.

Speaker 4 (37:11):
Yeah, yeah, a little.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
I just want to correct you on one thing, because
you're talking about mythical creatures, and I have since the
time that my kids were very, very young. I told them,
with no uncertainty in my voice at all when I
say it, that unicorns do live in the wild, but
they're only in New Jersey and that's why my kids
will never see one, because I'm never taking them to.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
New Jersey Fair. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Right, So is that on the sign, like on the
unicorn exhibit sign at the zoo only? Yeah, they're only
in the wild in New Jersey.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Yes, yes, yes, all right.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
How's Boo with the Zoo been so far this year?
How's attendance been?

Speaker 4 (37:49):
It's been great, and you know, I mean we've definitely
been held by beautiful weather.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
Yeah, it's been really mild, and I think this upcoming
weekend is going to be really nice too. I think
a highest seventy one or seventy two on Saturday, and
then of course we have our our lion cubs, which
are just a huge hit right now. So those are
those may or may not be out in the evening.
Those are definitely Our cubs are definitely out in the mornings,

(38:15):
so we really encourage people to to come see them
as well.

Speaker 6 (38:18):
Uh, my producer Dragon has a question for you. Remember
recently that you guys were planning on moving the hippos.
Is the is he still There's she's still there for now?

Speaker 4 (38:28):
Yes, he's he will be moving soon though I don't
have an exact date, but yeah, I would if you
want to come see Mahali our hippo and come say goodbye,
I would. I would suggest people do that sooner than later.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, we do. We know where where he's going.

Speaker 4 (38:41):
He's going to a wildlife preserve in Texas.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
And is that Why is that? I guess it's better
for him. But what it's just because he's getting so
big or it's.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
A few reasons. No, he's he's been fully grown, he's
lived his life here. A lot of it is just
the state of his current habitat. He doesn't meet our
standards or industry standards anymore. Yeah, and it's a big
sustainability issue too, that his habitat alone because it's it's
an old facility and we have to pump and dump
the water every day. His habitat uses about twenty five

(39:13):
percent of our total water use, so it's just not
really good for the future.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Okay, So if he's moving to Texas, but he's in
Colorado right now, and this Sunday the Broncos are playing
the Cowboys, who do you think he'll be rooting for?

Speaker 4 (39:30):
Man I that's a great I think he's always a
Broncos fan.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
I think so too. Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
All right, So last quick thing, when is Boo at
the zoo now for the last few days so I'll
be able to give some tickets away to listeners thanks
to you. When are the days and times that listeners
will still be able to go this year?

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yep?

Speaker 4 (39:48):
This Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings twenty four, twenty fifth,
twenty sixth, and then we also have on on Halloween
night itself, we have an event we're really proud of
called Sensory Friendly Night. So this is great for families
who have kids with sensory processing disorders who might get
a little overwhelmed by the lights and noise and crowds
with other events or even just trigger treating, so that

(40:09):
that's also an option as well.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Okay, so I can include that in what we offer
listeners from you.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yep, absolutely, all right, that's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Jake Kubier is director of Communications for the Denver Zoo
and Conservation Alliance, and a little bit later in today's show,
thanks to Jake's generosity, I'll be giving away a few
family packs of tickets. As Jake just described, thanks for
your time, Thanks for your generosity to our KOA listeners.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Jake, we'll talk again soon.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
Yeah down' good Rossope, so soon, Okay, you.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Got it, all right, We're gonna take a quick break.
During this break. Is this hour's chance to win a
thousand bucks coming up in the next four or five
minutes or so, maybe sooner thanks to Mercedes of Little
Tin Mercedes of Little Tin dot com.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Oh all right, yeah, so there you go. Thanks correlation.
Yeah yeah, I mean, I guess what fraction of a
point would I get for that?

Speaker 6 (40:57):
I think a rod would give you. I think you
get half a point. Okay, because you knew the band.
I knew the band just from what the guitar sounded like.
So that right at half point if you if you
just heard it before, Rod's rules are quarter of a point,
so you know the band, So that's your half a point.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Okay, all right, I would like to give away some
tickets to Boo at the Zoo oo. So now you
said ooh, you should say boo Boo boo. So here
and again, thanks so much to to Jake and his
generosity from Denver Zoo, because we've got a good number
of tickets to give away.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
So here's here's what you need to know.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
So this is the last coming weekend for the real
Boo at the Zoo thing. So it's Friday, Saturday or
Sunday four thirty to nine pm.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Don't worry to do this by text, but don't text
in yet because I'll tell you I got some rules here.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Okay, but it's this Friday, Saturday or Sunday four thirty
to nine pm. Or as Jake mentioned at the end
of that last conversation, if you or or maybe your
child has some sensory issues where you can get or
your child can get or your grandchild can get a
little bit overwhelmed, let's say, by a lot going on

(42:04):
all around all at once and you would love to
be able to go to the zoo or take this
young person to the zoo in an evening that they
call sensory friendly, just calmer, quieter, easier for people who
have these particular kinds of issues. That's actually Halloween night
on the thirty first. So here's what we're going to do.

(42:24):
We're gonna I'm gonna have actually, I'm gonna give away
three sets of tickets. Okay, three, so we will have
three winners. And don't text in yet. Just listen carefully.
We're gonna have three winners. We will, and for each
person when you text in, and don't do it yet.
When you text in, I need to know how many

(42:47):
tickets you want. And you can have as many tickets
as you need for the parents and all the kids,
but don't start adding grandparents and other people and all this.
But if you've got you know, if you've got four,
four kids, you can ask for six tickets, all right,
and none asking for like sixteen or eighteen. No, no, no,
right now, we're not gonna We're not gonna go crazy

(43:07):
like that. And and these, by the way, these are
expensive tickets, right, I think adults. Adults are normally like
twenty eight dollars and kids are twenty one dollars.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
So this is like, this is some serious value.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Okay, So you can ask for as many tickets as
you as you need for the parents and the kids.
And then what I need in your text is which
which day you want to go? This Friday, Saturday or
Sunday or Halloween for the sensory night.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
So which day? How many tickets? And your name.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
And email address? Okay, which day? How many tickets? Your
name and your email address? Right now it's ten twenty
two and change. Why don't we say ten twenty seven,
ten twenty seven? Textures number three four and with that
and there's no trivia question, just Texter's number three four
and five with that.

Speaker 6 (44:05):
Information bonus points for your favorite animal. Ooh, okay, not required,
not required. Yeah, all of the only things that were
required were the day you want to go, the number
of tickets, your name, and your email Texter's number.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Three four and five at ten twenty seven on our clock,
not yours. One of my favorite animal, by the way,
is probably an echidna. I really really love echidnas. Go
look them up if you don't know what they are.
All right, this is another sort of intense story. So
I've often said I would much rather have America's immigration

(44:41):
problems than Europe's immigration problems. And part of Europe's immigration conundrum,
let's say, is that they have a massive number of
Muslim immigrants into all different parts of Europe who have
not particularly assimilated into the culture wherever they are into Germany,
into France, into England. England has had an immense problem

(45:05):
with many of their Muslim immigrants, including of Pakistani descent.
And look, I'm not trying to you know, bash people
in some xenophobic way.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
I'm just telling you the actual news.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
There have been real problems with for example, these these
Pakistani grooming gangs sexually abusing children for many, many years,
and politicians and police departments not doing anything about it
because they.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Were afraid of being called racist.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
It was really one of the biggest scandals in you know,
modern English history. But the the police and the politicians
there are afraid of their Muslims. Rather than telling them,
you know, if you do something wrong, we're going to
punish you, they are afraid of them.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
So Birmingham in.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Northern England, it's actually the second biggest city in England
after London, they're going to be hosting unless it gets changed.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
They're going to be host sting a.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Soccer game between Aston Villa, which is the soccer team
in Birmingham, and Macabe Tel Aviv, a fairly big, you know,
to the extent that Israel can have anything big. It's
a small country Israeli soccer team. And Birmingham now is
banning fans of the Israeli soccer team from going to

(46:22):
the game because local Muslims are making noise that they're
going to you know, hurt or whatever anybody they see
who's there, you know, wearing an Israeli flag or the
Israeli team shirt or whatever. And Birmingham is saying, you
know what, rather than you know, protect these people, rather

(46:43):
than slap down the people who would hurt our guests,
our tourists in these towns, we're.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Just gonna ban the Israeli fans. Not unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
A group in England called it a high risk event,
and the West Midlands Police said the decision is based
on current intelligence and previous incidents, but they don't say
what intelligence, and of course previous incidents are Muslims running
crazy in these towns, and there was a whole thing
actually in Amsterdam where Muslim taxi drivers started chasing down

(47:13):
fans of an Israeli soccer team that were there in Amsterdam.
It's just a few months ago now, I will say though,
the Prime Minister of the UK, Kure Stormer, has said
that Birmingham's ban is the wrong decision. But unless Birmingham
changes it based on what the Prime Minister says, and
so far it doesn't seem like they're going to. Maybe
they will, but so far it just seems like England

(47:36):
and perhaps much of the rest of Europe is more
afraid of their Muslim population than they are interested in
preventing them from committing crimes. Do you have first names?
First names for the winners? I'm working on working on it. Okay,
all right, I'll tell you Jake's email in a little
bit and then you can so if.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
You are a winner.

Speaker 6 (47:58):
Okay, Oh yeah, I can do do this live on
the other well, let's do that.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
It's semi professional, okay. So here I've got an email from.

Speaker 6 (48:05):
Talking through that I can say that what we got
asta Asta and elephants, you know, you guys one Taylor
and Holly. What was the first first name Asta A
s t A. Wow, that's a good name. And elephants.
Elephants are the best, really better than he kidnased. But
my personal is is polar bears.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Oh but missus Redbird loves the elephants, so of course
I love the elephant. Okay.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Well, and you're a Viking, so you're you know your
way up north in your in your soul.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
You live very very far north.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
And I'm not surprised you like polar bears, although that's
probably more of an Eskimo thing than a Viking thing.
And I am I Are you even allowed to say
eskimo anymore?

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Or is that considered inappropriate these days? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Okay, I probably say if anybody, if anybody took offense
at the word es como, I no, I don't so
dragon you No, wasn't you a listener? A listener sent
a question that I kind of liked and I thought
you might like. And this is a listener.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Who goes by the name of Zip, who sent me
an email.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
And here's the question this and this kind of a
spinoff from a little stuff we were doing yesterday when
we were wasting people's time. What's you ready dragon. I
know you're working, but that's not important.

Speaker 6 (49:19):
That's fine. I won't contact the winners. Winters, well, they
just heard their name. Their name, So if you haven't
texted you back, and your name is Astau, who the
Taylor or Holly?

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Give me give me a second. How many tickets did
they ask for?

Speaker 6 (49:31):
Uh Asta needed for h Taylor needed four, and Holly
needed for Okay, great, great, no problem, okay, real quick,
since we're still wasting time.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Yeah, yeah, I have to say, mary Ellen, mary Ellen.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
You you could have won if if you would have
obeyed the Kevin rule. Oh mary Ellen spammed us? Yes,
only twice.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Wow, But I wonder if mary Ellen even knew the
Kevin rule, which we don't repeat every time because true,
you know, and we get new listeners, people move to Colorado,
or people find the show. The Kevin rule is that
if we do a giveaway like we just did, you're
only allowed to text in once to try to win
the thing. You can't keep pinging us trying to be
text number four or whatever. And if you do, all

(50:21):
of your efforts to win the thing are disqualified. And
it doesn't mean we can't be friends. It just means
you can't win. That feels really bad. Yeah, I do,
especially with a name like Mary Ellen. Seems like probably
a nice person of course, right.

Speaker 6 (50:36):
But they were texted within like three seconds of each other.
So yeah, I saw its green. It's right there, back
almost back to back. Yeah. A for effort, but f
for breaking the rules. And you know, all right, okay,
So here's Zip's question.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, what's a song that makes you think of a
movie or TV show? But the song cannot have been
written for the movie or TV show like Gilligan's Island
theme doesn't count.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Obviously.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
This came up yesterday with danger Zone from Top Gun.
So what is something that makes you? What's a song
that makes you think of a movie or TV show?
And I'm going to open that up to listeners as
as well.

Speaker 6 (51:18):
I got one right away, you do, okay? What back
to the Future? I can't drive fifty five? Oh, that's good.
The Power of Love? Yeah that went in there too.
That's good. It is back to the Future day. By
the way, if you ever looked at the National Day
stuff that I give you, it's October twenty first, twenty fifteen,
twenty five.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
What is that?

Speaker 6 (51:35):
That's when Marty goes to the future in twenty fifteen,
which only ten years in the past for us huh
at the time.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
All right, I'll tell you what I want to do
something here because I was thinking of so.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
First of all, for listeners, please text in at five
six six nine zero and tell me and Dragon a
song that makes you think of a movie or a
TV show. But the song cannot have been written for
that movie or TV show. And so for I think
that would even just as an example, disqualify the music
for Star Wars, which his name was it John Burn?

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Was it Williamstun Williams okay, and he wrote that for
Star Wars, so that wouldn't count. Now let me just
play it. Can you put my audio up?

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Dragon, I'm wanna play a little something here, and and
I want everybody to yell at me as soon as
you know what this is and what movie it's from. Okay,
I want you to or you can text at me
as soon as you.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Know what movie this is from. Here we go.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I don't think you can have a copyright on music
that's from the eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 6 (52:35):
Ooh right, I don't you know what the boss is
gonna say? He's went in doubt take it out.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
No, really, we should ask about that. Hey, boss, if
you're listening right now, Dave, if you're listening right now,
do we need to take out music that is from
the eighteen hundreds. I don't think it's somebody owns it. No,
well no, I don't think so nobody owns it. No,
I think copyrights expire it.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
At some point we were to make a multi billion
dollar movie, you know, the Avengers or the next Star Wars,
we'd be able to put that in and not pay
a soul for it.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
I think, I mean, maybe.

Speaker 6 (53:16):
Maybe in every movie studio use one hundred year old
music if it's free.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
So I think I think the question maybe then if
it came from Okay, so here's what it might be.
Here's what it might be.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Uh huh. I think there might be an issue with
a specific recording of it.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Okay, so probably because the lawyers, you should probably take
it out here. But for sure, what you could do
if you were making your own movie with that music.
And by the way, that is called also sprach Zarathustra,
thus spaked Zarathustra.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
It's a tone poem, is what it's called. By Ricard Strauss.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
And it's from the eighteen nineties, and that's the opening scene.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
From two thousand and one in Space Odyssey. You could
get a bunch of musicians together and record that and
use that in your movie without having to pay anybody
for the music. Okay, that probably sounds much more.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
But you know, if somebody else recorded it now, then
they might have a claim on the particular recording, even
though the music itself isn't copyrighted anymore. So that's that's
probably right. That sounds about right anyway, Dragon got it
real fast? Did other people text in? Oh yeah, whole
bunch of people.

Speaker 6 (54:30):
Did my text screen still pause because I'm still trying
to text back Asta, Taylor and Hally, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
I'm trying to work here. Okay, you go do that. Exs,
you go do that. Okay, And I'm just gonna answer
a couple other listener and listen to responses to the
question of what's a song.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
That reminds you of a movie or TV show? The
Entertainer by Scott Joplin reminds me of the movie to
sting me too. I used to play that on the piano.
I used to play piano, not well, but I used
to enjoy playing that song.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
For sure, that's a good one.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
The entire pulp fiction soundtrack Son of a Preacher Man,
Missy Lou, the Serf Song by Statler Brothers, and so on. Ross,
isn't the performance of the old music? What's copyrighted?

Speaker 1 (55:14):
Yeah? I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Comfortably numb during the sex scene in The Departed, I
don't think I saw that movie, but okay, Atlantis reminds
me of Goodfellas. Smugglers Blues by Glenn Fry reminds me
of Miami Vice. Lunatic Fringe reminds me of a great
great movie, Vision Quest. Have you seen Vision Quest?

Speaker 1 (55:38):
Dragon? I don't think doesn't ring a bell. I don't
think I've seen it.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
And rc In Loveland, who describes himself as a former
high school wrestler, says that Vision Quest is a great,
great movie. I wonder if his describing himself in that
same message as a former high school wrestler implies that
the movie has something to do with wrestling.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Ross, Unchanged Melody, the movie Ghost Phil Collins. Something in
the Air Tonight reminds me of risky business. Anton who
loves stereo the way I do, although he has much
bigger subwifers than I do.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Anton. Wait, what did Anton say? I lost it? Simple minds,
don't you?

Speaker 2 (56:17):
From the Breakfast Club, Ross Space Odyssey. I got it immediately, Ross,
I was typing before it started.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Yeah, dragging back to the future.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
The dates were October twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five and
November fifth, nineteen fifty five.

Speaker 6 (56:32):
But he went to the future October twenty first, twenty fifteen.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
He did, yes, which was.

Speaker 6 (56:37):
Now currently our past, but it was the future when
the movie came out.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Got It, Got It, Got It, Got It all right.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
One more in the City by Joe Walsh for the
movie Warriors. Just good old boys, Dukes of Hazzard, hmmm, Mandy,
Guardians of the Galaxy too, guys. A lot of great answers,
and I will say an immense number of people got
the you know, the one, the one I played. That
was the very first thing that occurred to me. All right,
let me keep going. I did not talk about this

(57:05):
the other day. This is a thing that happened when
I was well. I didn't talk about it yesterday. It's
a thing that happened when I was on vacation, and
I want to just spend a minute on it, or
two minutes, and that is the indictment of.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
John Bolton, right, the indictment of John Bolton.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
So John Bolton former National Security advisor for a little
while at least in the first Trump administration, And to
put it very gently, Trump and John Bolton are not
fans of each other these days. Bolton has been very
publicly critical of Donald Trump for quite some time, and
Donald Trump has returned the favor by doing such things

(57:42):
as recently calling Bolton a bad guy and saying he
thought Bolton had brain damage and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
So the FBI raided John Bolton's house.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
I guess this is probably two weeks ago now or
something like that. It was all over the news. I
think we talked about it briefly on this show. They
raided his house. They took out a bunch of stuff.
And of course we know what's going on here. We
know that the Department of the Trump Department of Justice
is going after Trump's political opponents, and it's law fair. Now,

(58:16):
I'm not done, so don't start yelling at me on
the text line yet, because I'm not done with what
I'm gonna say, all right, so they're doing this with
Letitia James, who deserves what's coming her way, which is
not to say I like it, but she deserves it.
James Comy same thing, not saying I like it, he
does deserve it. So there is no doubt in my

(58:38):
mind that if anybody else were president of the United States,
John Bolton would not have had his house raided and
would not have been indicted.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
But or I should say, and, and.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
This indictment is really different from the indictments of Lacisia
James over barely specified mortgage fraud, and James Comy, where
the indictment doesn't even say what.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Crime he actually committed.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
As part of the reason, I have a feeling that
James Comy's indictment might get thrown out by a judge
before it even goes to trial, because it's so transparently
political with no apparent real evidence. In fact, as I mentioned,
the US attorney who got the indictment, he got an

(59:31):
indictment on two counts, tried to get an indictment on three,
and didn't get an indictment on one, which is already
pretty rare. And of course remember that the US attorney
who brought the indictment is a person with no experience
in criminal law, no experience in any relevant kind of law.
She's a real estate attorney who Trump knows from Florida,

(59:54):
who he put in that position in order to go
after his political opponents. That's not even my main point.
My main point is while all of these people are
being targeted because Trump doesn't like them, John Bolton's case
is a very different one because this didn't come out

(01:00:15):
of that Eastern District of Virginia with the unqualified US attorney.
This came out of Maryland, with the US attorney there,
the lead prosecutor being a career prosecutor, well respected, and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
The indictment is very detailed.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
The opposite of Jim Comey's indictment, where there's almost no detail.

Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
This indictment of Bolton is very detailed. And I've got
to say, I think Bolton's in trouble. I think Bolton
is in much more trouble than James Comy or Letitia James, because.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
For this particular office, not Eastern District of Virginia, but
for this particular Maryland US Attorney's office to put out
an eighteen count indictment with lots of detail. These are
for crimes that have pretty significant potential penalties involved, much

(01:01:23):
more than the potential penalties for Comy or for Letitia James.
In my opinion, I could be wrong, But in my opinion,
the other thing that's interesting about this is that, so
what we're talking about here, let me let me just
give you a sense what we're talking about. This is
what's alleged. Okay, I'm not saying what's proven. I'm not
saying what we know. I'm saying, here's this is the story.

(01:01:47):
John Bolton knew he was going to write a book.
He took copious notes after coming out of the situation
room after all these meetings and such. He took copious
notes that included classified information. And again just re emphasize
the caveat. I'm telling you what the allegation is. So
I'm not gonna every step of the way when I
tell you the story say he is alleged to have

(01:02:08):
done this. The whole thing now that I'm going to
say is what he is alleged to have done. He
is alleged to have taken lots of notes that included
secret and top secret information that he learned in various meetings,
compiled them in a diary, which in itself is not necessarily.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
A huge problem, but then.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Transmitted diary pages by AOL and maybe Gmail, but insecure
platforms where you are not allowed to put classified information.
He transmitted diary pages by those platforms to.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
His wife and daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Now they don't say wife and daughter in the indictment,
but it's pretty clear that's who they're talking about. And
at some point one of them, I think it was
the daughter, even said something like, are you sure we should?
You know, why are we doing this? Are we supposed
to get this stuff? And he said, you know, this
is for later.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Then he used those diary pages that he had sent
to his wife and daughter, and he had them read
and maybe help him addit and stuff like that. But
he used that as the basis of a book. Now,
the book itself had to have a whole bunch of
stuff apparently redacted. And then even when it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Was published, a federal judge said, boy, this is you know,
this isn't good. He said to Bolton, like, you're really
putting yourself at risk. But I can't do anything about
it because a few hundred thousand copies of the book
are out already. I've been sent have been sent out already,
and so I can't borrow you from publishing it at
this point. But if it had been earlier, I probably
would have because this has stuff in it that probably

(01:03:53):
shouldn't be there. Now, this was investigated already or looked
at already, including during the Biden administration, and they did
bring charges that said, of course, the Biden administration wouldn't
bring charges against somebody who was a constant critic of
Trump because there's politics there too. Now Bolton is saying

(01:04:14):
classified stuff was already taken out of my book, so
you can't get me for my book. But as Andy
McCarthy writes, and this is up on my blog at
Rosskaminski dot com, as Andy McCarthy writes, the point of
these charges.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Is not the book.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
The point of these charges and there's one other thing
I need to get to, but the first point of
these charges is taking notes of classified material, secret and
top secret and transmitting it by unsecure platform to people
who don't have security clearances. That was before the writing
of the book. So it doesn't matter what's in the book.

(01:04:50):
So don't let the book, you know, distract you from
what's really going on here. And then the other thing
that's important to note is apparently Iran hacked John bol
aol email and got some of these diary pages that
included classified information and then tried to extort Bolton and say,
you know, you know, we're we're gonna put this out

(01:05:11):
to the world and you're gonna be really embarrassed. Now
he took he took that to the FBI, and he
didn't give in to any of that stuff. He went
when he was kind of threatened like that, he went
to the FBI. But the that doesn't matter that much
because he put classified stuff on an insecure platform that
was hacked, successfully.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Hacked by an enemy government.

Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
So I gotta say, I gotta say John Bolton is
in trouble, I think, and it is. It is important.
And here's here's Andy McCarthy's headline from National Review. Law
fair and real misconduct are not mutually exclusive, and that
sounds about right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
I think John Bolton's in trouble.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
And the other last thing I'll mention on this is
there are many, many, many cases of John Bolton going
on television in the aftermath of Donald Trump being charged
with unlawful retention of classified documents. There are lots of
examples of Bolton going out in public and saying, everybody
in government knows that you cannot treat classified material that way.

(01:06:11):
He knew that you can't treat classified material that way,
and he is nevertheless accused of doing just that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
We're gonna do something completely different.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
I am very pleased to be joined on the show
by Tyler Martinez. And when I heard Tyler's name, it
rang a bell with me because I remembered an attorney
named Tyler Martinez who had graduated from the leadership program
of the Rockies a few years back at Colorado. Dude,
and it is indeed the same Tyler Martinez. There's probably
more than one Tyler Martinez in the world, but this

(01:06:42):
is that very one. And Tyler is now a senior
attorney at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation Taxpayer Defense Center.
And Tyler is from Colorado and he went to see
law school. And anyway, he and his group just won
a wonderful little lawsuit, well maybe not that little for the.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
People who are involved defending Tabor, and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
I thought it would be fun to have them here, just,
you know, tell us a happy story. About a win
for the good guys for one. So Tyler, welcome to Kowa.

Speaker 7 (01:07:18):
Well, thank you for having me. It's always nice to
have a win.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Indeed, it is tell us about the lawsuit.

Speaker 7 (01:07:25):
Sure so, this lawsuit asks a simple question, which is
does Tabor mean what it says. Tabor says that before
a government can raise the tax rate, you need to
have a vote of the people. Simple thing. It's the
simplest thing. I think Taber's praises all over the country
and other states saying this is how you can fix
your your government. This is a great idea. Let's do this. Well,

(01:07:49):
a little water conservancy district in northeastern Colorado raised its
rate without a vote of the people, and it seems
like a pretty straightforward idea to us. That means what
it says, and finally the courts agreed with us.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
So just give us a little bit of detail on
exactly what governmental entity we're talking about here and exactly
what they did.

Speaker 7 (01:08:13):
Sure so, a water conservancy district is important to farmers
and ranchers, especially out in the plains where it's really dry.
They take care of theoretically building dams or wells or
irrigation ditches. Those sort of things that you need to
keep table alive, keep alf alpha growing, keep corn growing,
all that good stuff. This water district, though, isn't voted

(01:08:35):
on by the people. It's appointed by a local judge
and there's no vote to the people on who's on
this board or not. And theoretically they shouldn't be doing much,
but they do have the power to have property taxes.
And for years and years and years, the Lower South
Platte Water Conservancy District had a water had a rate

(01:08:58):
for the property tax of a mill, and then they
decided one day to just double it, just raise it
up to one full mill, which is a lot of
money in the aggregate. That doubled their their budget overnight.
And they didn't have a vote of the people on
this at all. When some citizens stood up and said, hey,
wait a second, tabor, we have we have tabor, we

(01:09:20):
have the right to vote on this. Tell us what
are you going to use the money for? What do
you want to what project do you want to do?
That sort of thing, they said, no, we don't have to.
Our budget just requires more money now, and they were
they were just ignored, and eventually they had to try
and find legal representation. The problem is that this mill

(01:09:41):
every doubling. It's it's a small water district. It's not
the big line item on your property taxes. It's not
like the it's not like the schools or the fire
district or the police.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
Right. And we're not talking about we're not talking about
Denver or a Rapahole County right.

Speaker 7 (01:09:56):
Right, We're talking about Washington County. We're talking about literally
your almost you're right driving up by seventy six and
you're almost in Nebraska, right, Okay, so you're talking at
the very corner of the state. And in fact, it's
even harder to see the mountains from there. It's the
tiny farming community, you know, it's brush, it's it's those
Cardiff communities, Fort Morgan a little bit. And so the

(01:10:18):
problem is it's it's a doubled rate. But you can't
get a private attorney to to just like take on
that case because there's not enough money there to fight
for five years. This case ended up taking five years
of fighting. And that's what we do at the Taxpayer
Defense Centers. We protect taxpayers especially where it's important and
the issue is and the legal and the constitutional principles

(01:10:39):
are important, but it's there's not enough money there for
the you know, the big like law firms in Denver
to take it on because there's it wouldn't make economic
sense to do.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
So, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
So I see in the news story that this was
at the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Is that right? That's right? And so I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Not expert on Colorado's stuff, but there's at least one
and maybe two levels of state court below that, right.

Speaker 7 (01:11:07):
So this started out in district court in Logan County
District Court. It's the same place if somebody got a
felony or a ui, same sort of judge, but they
also hear civil cases. And it started out there and
the judge said, well, I don't know, it seems like
it's a ministerial sort of well, their budget, you know, raised,
and so they have to just raise the tax rate.

(01:11:27):
And the law before Tabor, the law before Taber allowed
up to one mill levee one mill for the for
the property tax in this district. That law was written
in like the nineteen sixties. So he said, well, it
seems like it's okay, and we said no, no, no,
Tabor means what it says, and we took it to
the court of Appeals. We took it to the Court
of Appeals and we got a unanimous decision from the

(01:11:49):
Court of Appeals. All three judges agreed with us, saying
that Tabor means what it says. You can't raise the
property tax rate, especially doubling it, but you can't raise
it with out telling people why and let people vote
on it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
So I'm just about I'm just about out of time here, Tyler.
But I don't understand what would have caused the water
district to think they had any chance of winning this
case when it got to a real court.

Speaker 7 (01:12:18):
It surprised us too, And so yeah, once it got
to the real court, the judges all knocked it down.
They tried to get the Colorado Supreme Court involved in it,
and Colorado Supreme Court is no friend of Tabor. But
even the colorad Spreme Court didn't want to take the case.
They're like, you know, they don't give their reasons why
they didn't take the case. Yeah, but I think it's
pretty obvious. And so it was. It was a big deal.

(01:12:39):
It's a big win. But now this water district has
to find a way to pay back in principle one
point six million dollars, but you add an interest on that. Yeah,
and it's going to be like a three million dollar problem.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Wow, I'll have to say for a small district that
they're going to have to pay out over time. By
the way, I know you at National Taxpayers Union, you're
you're a nonprofit and you did this pro bono. But
I'm wondering, as part of the settlement, will they will
the losers have to pay INTU or intuf any attorneys fees.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Yes, they will.

Speaker 7 (01:13:12):
Taper provides that the lawn Taper says, Hey, if the
taxpayers win, they get attorney's fees or they can at
least ask for them. And we got it, and we
got our fees, and so they're gonna also have to
pay for our time. And that helped us with the
next fight, and there will always be the next fight, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Tyler Martinez, a senior attorney at the National Taxpayer Union
Foundation's Taxpayer Defense Center. They just won an important case
for vindicating the rights of taxpayers and vindicating taber here in.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
The state of Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Not surprising that a graduate of the leadership program of
the Rockies would get that done. Thank you so much
for your time, Tyler and more importantly, thank you for winning.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
That case, thank you for having me, glad to do it.
All right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be
right back on. Kawa crumples it up. He doesn't even
check the win this book. Oh there he goes he was.
I thought he was overly confident.

Speaker 6 (01:14:01):
Finally does check the wind from wet east to west
as he is pointing because I'm in a difference, sudeo,
so I can't really tell and right off the backboard
into the trash can go.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
I'm doing this as long as I can tell you.
What's his headphones on? Aw? That hurt? That was really good.
Hey you, I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
That was an amazing blend, by the way of going
from the subtle, understated golf announcer kind of thing to
the over the top Mexican soccer announcer tried, really really
well done, really well done.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
By the way.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
The reason that Dragon played that song Don't You or
Don't You Forget About Me? From Simple Minds is we
were talking a little bit earlier in the show based
on a question from a.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Listener named Zip.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Zip asked, what's the song that reminds you of a movie?
Or show, but the song in order for you know
the rules of this particular question where you can't win anything,
by the way, so I don't even know why you're bothering,
but it is that the song cannot have been written
for the movie or the show. So no Brady Bunch
theme song, no Gillian's Island theme song, no Star Wars
theme music, because all of those were written for the movie,

(01:15:16):
for the show Adam's Family.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
And Anton Goo I mentioned really loves loud music and
huge subwoofers, texted in to say that he really likes
the song don't You, and it's don't You and then
parentheses Forget about Me by Simple Minds, which was in
the movie The Breakfast Club from Oh My Gosh forty
years ago. And I had to text Anton and I

(01:15:42):
didn't know this. Another listener texted, and this is how
smart our listeners are. Another listener texted in saying, actually,
that song was written for.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
The movie and so it doesn't count and it's true.
I looked it up. I looked it up.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Don't You Forget About Me as a song by the
Scottish rock band Simple Minds, released as a single in
nineteen eighty five, written and composed by the record producer
Keith Force and guitarist Steve Schiff for the film The
Breakfast Club. Okay, there you go. And then it became
like an enormous hit for them. That's that'd be another
interesting question, Like songs for movies that became enormous, enormous hits.

Speaker 6 (01:16:19):
Yeah, songs for movies that are bigger than the movie. Yeah,
you know what I'm saying. Breakfast Club wasn't a big movie.
I'm just saying that, you know, there are there are
probably songs that are bigger than the movie they were in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Can I tell you something. I've never seen The Breakfast Club. Hey,
have you seen it?

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
Yes? Yeah, I mean, just.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Like from the previews, well they called them trailers these days.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
When you and I were kids, they called them previews,
previews of coming a track. I was never interested in it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
It just didn't look like a movie that would hold
my attention very much.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
I don't know, brat Pack, Oh yeah, And I never
cared about any of that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
I was too nerdy to care about any of that.
I was like at the time that movie.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Came out, right, I guess I would have been in
college and I was slightly older than the demographic. Yeah,
but also just such a nerd, you know, thinking about numbers, numbers,
and that numbers prime.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
Well, I love my vinyl albums, but yes, I don't know,
just nerdy stuff. Okay, let's do a couple other things. Gosh,
this show is going so fast today. So Japan has
a new prime minister, and I don't spend too much
time talking about stuff like this, but I want to
mention her briefly. Her name, and I'm probably gonna pronounce
this wrong, sun A Sa Nae. Her last name is Takaichi.

(01:17:38):
And I mentioned this to you for a couple of reasons.
First of all, some places call her a hardline conservative
or far right conservative. I very much doubt she is
far right by at least what Americans would call, although
she certainly is conservative by Japanese standards. But even there,

(01:17:59):
it's hard to know as an American exactly what that means,
in the sense that, just as one example, she supports
a high level of government spending, which is not normally
a thing you think of from a so called conservative
in any case, So it's clearly a turn to the
right for Japan, which probably means a little bit of

(01:18:19):
an increase in Japan's focus on their own military, and
it's already not a bad military, but I would say
even more and preparing to offer some kind of maybe
a little bit more regional defense against Chinese ambitions.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
We will see how that plays out. She is also.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
The first ever female prime Minister of Japan, which is,
you know, always been in an old boys club. She
promised that she would have a whole bunch of female
government ministers, kind of like our cabinet, not exactly the same,
but kind of like our cabinet, but in fact she
didn't have a whole bunch of She only has two,

(01:18:59):
and so she's not really.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Doing what she said there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
The other thing that I wanted to mention about the
new Prime Minister of Japan, though against Sanae Takaichi, is
that she loves cars and heavy metal music, and she's
a drummer like Rick Lewis.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
They're both drummers.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
I texted Rick Lewis to say, here's what you have
in common with the new Prime Minister of Japan.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
So all right, I'm gonna hit a break here in
a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
We're gonna come back for our last twenty minutes or
show together. Today, I do want to ask you to consider.
I've got a space left for several more couples on
our trip next April to Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and one
or two other small cities. It's going to be an
incredible trip. Now, this trip is gonna be on land.
It's not river cruise. Now. I do like river cruises

(01:19:46):
a lot, but I've done two or three river cruise
trips in a row with listeners, and I'm really looking
forward to doing a trip on land where we're going
to stay in each of these cities for two or
three nights in a hotel so you can really get
out and get to know the city better and wander
around and find cool restaurants and all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
And we are gonna have an amazing time together. And
we're gonna hang out. Promise, I'm gonna hang out with you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
We'll get a beer, we'll do whatever, We'll have dinner together,
what you know, breakfast together in the hotels. And this
trip offers incredible value. You will not believe how inexpensive
it is for what it includes. So I hope you'll
check it out. The trip is next April. You can
learn more at rosstrip dot com, r O S S
t R I P dot com. All right, you're you're

(01:20:30):
gonna have to tell me. I'm just gonna take the
the end of Blair Pie.

Speaker 4 (01:20:35):
You go.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
What's that called? Juve the Belts?

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, good good, good poll
there Dragon appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (01:20:48):
I gotta think the text line for that one. Yeah,
And any chance I get to play it because I
know it really creeps out Rick Lewis, Oh really yeah,
it's because of the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
I mean, he's sure paranormal stuff. It's just creepy. So
any chance I get to play it, I'm gonna play it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
I've got a ton of stuff I want to do
still on today's show, and I'll do whatever I can,
and then whatever I don't get done, well we'll do tomorrow.
So just lots of different stuff. So I'm just gonna
jump in. This is from the Colorado Sun from yesterday.
Pushback by counties on solar projects is challenging climate goals.

(01:21:25):
Colorado officials say, now I love this headline, by which
I mean I don't love this headline because of the
concept of climate goals, the idea that a state in
a nation that already is incredibly efficient.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
In terms of.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
I don't even like the term greenhouse gases, but just
stick with me, like greenhouse gas or pollution output per
output level of GDP, the US is extremely efficient, right
for any how you want to measure, let's say, manufacturing output,
the United States generates less greenhouse gas or pollution or

(01:22:09):
whatever per measure of output than pretty much anywhere else.
And it is kind of a weird thing, actually, how
the American left has for many years tried to do
things that would shut down manufacturing in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
Of course President Trump is not having any.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Of that, but they would try to shut down manufacturing
because they would say, well, this process or that process
creates a lot of pollution, it creates greenhouse gases on
all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
And of course what they forget is that just.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
Because you stop making something doesn't mean that people who
want it don't want to buy it anymore. And as
long as there are people who do want to buy it,
then somebody else will make it. And so if you
move that production from the United States to China, right
or India or.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Southeast Asia, or even Mexico or even Europe, all of
those places will create more pollution or greenhouse gases. Well,
it's possible that some bits.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Of Germany might not where they are using a lot
of wind and solar, but you can't actually afford to
make it there because electricity is so freaking expensive there.
But anyway, so you know, they talk about these climate
goals as if one state in the United States of America,
even if we're the biggest state, even if we're California,
could actually make a difference when it comes to climate.

(01:23:28):
Colorado cannot do anything when it comes to climate, right.
I don't have the statistic in front of me, but
I think, oh is it. I think China has added
more coal processing, you know, coal fired power plants in
the past year than have been added in the United
States in the past twenty years or fifty years or

(01:23:49):
or something. We are just a spec on the butt
of an elephant when it comes to you know, the
emission emissions, and we can't do anything about it. And
so what we're doing here in Colorado under the leadership
and I put that very loosely, like in air quotes
of Governor Poulos, who has this weird almost religious viewpoint

(01:24:11):
that we need to get to, you know, carbon neutral
in the state of Colorado, which is a really really
boneheaded idea. And then he's got Will Tour, who I
like Will He's wrong about a lot in terms of
you know, focus, but he's been on the show, and
I like him. Will Tour runs the Colorado Energy Office.
And these guys have what they call what they call

(01:24:34):
climate goals. And again my big picture here is a
state should not have climate goals. A state can reasonably
have pollution goals, right, we shouldn't. We should do what
we can to minimize let's say, particulates and acid rain
and brown clouds of smog. Although much of Colorado's problem

(01:24:55):
is actually air blowing to us from California. In fact,
that part of the reason we have such big ozone
problems and are unable to fix them is so much
of our ozone is not produced here. It's produced in
California and blows over this way. In any case, here's
again from the Colorado Sun. Colorado must triple its wind
generation and quintuple its solar capacity to meet twenty forty

(01:25:18):
clean energy targets, and that will call for a lot
of land land that developers say is hard to come by.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
In some counties. Counties make the land use rules, and in.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
Some quote procedural hurdles, community opposition, land use concerns, and
regulatory gaps can impact projects and quote according to a
survey done by the Colorado Energy Office, and those local
land use decisions can be at odds with the state's
clean energy goals, according to the report. Now, the aforementioned
will Tour said, and I quote again, there are places

(01:25:51):
where there are local policies that stall or prevent clean
energy projects, which we think hurts economic development and ratepayers
as well well as have an impact on overall state
energy planning goals. And I just want to say three cheerers,
fully three, not just two, to all those counties who
are trying to stop this nonsense, right, all of this

(01:26:15):
freaking solar and wind boondoggle stuff. Look, if a private
landowner wants to have a wind turbine, and I've got
friends who are farmers in eastern Colorado who find that
the return for them is quite good. You allow such
and such a company to put up a wind turbine

(01:26:35):
or solar panels, and then they pay you a lease
or pay you a share of the electricity revenue or
whatever the model. The business model might be, and some
of those farmers really dig it. And you know what,
if it's all voluntary, and if it's all without any
government subsidies, and if it's all without the government condemning
land and essentially stealing property, then I'm okay with it

(01:26:56):
if it's a free market thing. But a lot of
this isn't and a lot of this what you've got
instead is excel And we've talked about this many times
in the past. Remember that the business model for a
regulated utility monopoly. Their business model is very simple. Spend
as much money as the government will let them spend.
And Dragon's laughing and it seems funny because it's ridiculous,

(01:27:19):
but it really is the case. Right, whatever the government
allows them to spend, they are guaranteed some percentage return on.
So if the government will let them spend two billion dollars,
they'll spend it. And if they can talk to government
in letting them spend four billion instead, they'll spend it
because they're guaranteed whatever the percentage return is. Let's say

(01:27:41):
it's an eight percent return. I don't know the number,
but let's say it's an eight percent return, and you
spend two billion dollars. They're guaranteed one hundred and sixty
million dollars, you know, every year, every and if they can,
if they can spend four billion instead, then they're guaranteed
three hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
And twenty million dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
And so these entergy companies, they know that this near
religious fanaticism from Jared Polus and from Will Tour and
from others to you know, theoretically get all of the
state's energy from quote unquote renewables. They know, the power

(01:28:18):
companies know it's ridiculous. The power companies know that that
religious vision by those guys is a massive, massive tax
on rate payers and is going to cause our electricity
prices to go up much more than they've already gone up,
which is already a lot. It's already a lot. You know,
What we need is very simple. What we need is

(01:28:39):
nuclear power. It's all we need. Okay, it's all again.
If you want to put some of this other stuff
in other places, and it's purely voluntary in the economics,
work just as a voluntary transaction with no subsidies.

Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
Cool, go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
But this idea of climate goals is a real problem.
Climate goal It's not just that we're not going to
meet climate goals. It's that we shouldn't have any all Right,
I'm gonna move on to another topic. I thought this
was a really interesting case, although I also thought that
the I also thought that the answer was pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
But I thought this was an interesting case. This is
from the Denver gaz At.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
So last week, the Colorado Court of Appeals, the second
highest court in this.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
State, ruled on a case out of Denver where.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
A defendant was convicted of a felony for possessing more
than four grams of an illegal substance. In this case,
it was fentanyl. And let me just tell you how
what the facts were the case, and then we'll get
to how the court ruled. I actually think, as I said,
that the court's ruling was obviously correct. So this guy,

(01:29:57):
last name is Garcia, was convicted of felony possession of
fentanyl and he got two years in prison for the
fentinyl offense.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Now, he was arrested with eighty nine pills.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
And I don't know if the pills were just supposed
to be fentinyl or supposed to be something else, and
it was adulterated with fentanyl, but it's not really the
point for this issue.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
The expert who examined the pills. The scientist said that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Each pill contained no more than two milligrams of fentanyl. Okay,
two milligrams of fentanyl. So the total weight of the
fentanyl within the pills was and I'm gonna use round
numbers here, point one eight grams, okay, zero point one

(01:30:59):
point eight. Now, the pills themselves were much bigger than that.
And I don't know what the rest of the pill
was made out of, right, I don't know if it
was chalk, I don't know if it was supposed to be,
you know, OxyContin or what.

Speaker 1 (01:31:11):
I don't know. The total weight of the pills, the
whole pill, of all of them, was.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
Nine and a half grams, okay, So nine and a
half grams for the pills, zero point one to eight
grams for the fentinyl in the pills. Now, in order
to be convicted of a felony in this case, you
need to be convicted of having more than four grams

(01:31:42):
under Colorado law, more than four grams.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
So the prosecutor in the case asked the expert if.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
The total weight was nine point four to seven grams
quote of fentanyl, and then the analyst said that sounds correct. Now,
I'm quoting from the Denver Gazette. A juror submitted a
question seeking to clarify how much fentanyl was in the pills,
and the analyst responded that fentanyl quote makes up very

(01:32:12):
little of the volume and mass of the tablet's masses.
Essentially the same thing as weight and weight is what
the charge would be based on.

Speaker 1 (01:32:22):
So he was convicted. This guy was convicted of.

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):
A felony because the prosecutor asked the expert if the
total weight was nine point four to seven grams of fentanyl,
and the analyst said that sounds correct, but it wasn't correct.

Speaker 1 (01:32:38):
That was the total weight of the pills, not the
weight of the fentanyl.

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
Now, Garcia appealed the felony conviction, and he said, you
can't convict me of a felony. It requires four grams
of the illegal substance, not four grams or more of
the total weight of the stuff that happens to include
some of the illegal substance in it. And a three

(01:33:07):
judge panel of the Court of Appeals ruled in favor
of Garcia. Now, the Colorado Attorney General's office actually took
the wrong side on this. They took the state's side
on this, but to me, the state is obviously wrong.
To me, this isn't close. And as the Gazette puts it,

(01:33:27):
because the analyst's testimony was unclear on the math.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
The Colorado Attorney General's office argued, it's for.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
The jury to resolve any potential inconsistencies, and based on
this record, a reasonable jury could find the defendant possessed
more than their requisite four grams of fentanyl. And the
three judge court panel of the Court of Appeals said no,
a jury could not have found that. Judge Craig Welling,
who wrote the opinion which just came out last week,

(01:33:54):
he said, this isn't a case where two different witnesses
offered conflicting testimony that the jew already had to sort out. Instead,
this is a circumstance where a single witness's later testimony
that the pills contained at most zero point one seven
eight grams of fentanyl clarified his earlier testimony that the
pill's total weight was attributable to fentanyl.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
And then because the law.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
Now this isn't a quote from the ruling, but just
in the article, the law doesn't render someone guilty of
this particular felony if the total weight that involves the
substance but other things as well, exceeds four grams, it's
only about the total weight of the particular substance at issue,
And so the proper ruling was to re sentence mister

(01:34:40):
Garcia for a misdemeanor rather than a felony. And I
got to say, look, obviously, you know, people dealing fentanyl
on the streets, I hope they get hit by a bus.
But when when they're in the court of law, the
law has to behave like the law. Right Again, I'm
not sympathetic to this guy at all. Like I said,

(01:35:00):
I hope he gets hit by a bus. Anybody out
there selling pills that has fentanyl, I hope something very
very bad happens to them. But we are a nation
and hopefully a city and a state where the rule
of law holds.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
And I actually thought it was rather shameful for.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):
The Colorado Attorney General's office to argue that, well, a
jury could do what they did on the basis of
misleading testimony. It's just a question of math. And the
Colorado Attorney General's Office said, well, now we'll let the
jury sort it out, and if they're misled by wrong
testimony from an expert and then do something that the
law doesn't allow, we should just let them do it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
No, we shouldn't. No, we shouldn't. And so they got
that right, and I just thought I would share that
with you. Hi, Mandy, can it do you are?

Speaker 7 (01:35:49):
Hello? Roth?

Speaker 4 (01:35:50):
Hi?

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
I heard a little bit of your conversation with Doug
Johnson yesterday.

Speaker 8 (01:35:54):
Yes, I am super excited about our trip and this
is going to be so much fun. I'm trying to
figure out a way that I can slide into Switzerland
a couple days early. But Q's going with us. It's
her last one and she has school. I would have
gotten away with it if it wasn't for that meddling kid.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
Dang it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
What about what about if you go to Switzerland early,
just you and Chuck? Wait? Can Q get to school
without you?

Speaker 4 (01:36:20):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
Yeah, by that time she will be able to Yeah.
What if just you and Chuck go to Switzerland early
and have Q travel with listeners?

Speaker 8 (01:36:27):
Well, my mom is also coming, so but but you
know what, the Q and her grandmother are a bit
like Lucy and Ethel, So I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
Sure that that would be you know, that would be hilarious.
You have no idea those two. I mean I know
that Q is funny. I don't know your mom.

Speaker 6 (01:36:43):
Oh.

Speaker 8 (01:36:44):
I got my sense of humor from my mom. Okay,
I mean I feel like I can absolutely say that
I have my mom's sense of humor one hundred percent
and I find her wildly entertainmed.

Speaker 1 (01:36:54):
Do you like traveling with your mom? I love traveling
with my mom. Does Chuck like traveling with your mom?
Chuck Adoor is my mom?

Speaker 8 (01:37:00):
I mean, you, guys, everybody, as soon as we moved out,
I think I appreciate that you just compared my husband
to your dog.

Speaker 5 (01:37:10):
But whatever, we're moving on.

Speaker 8 (01:37:12):
As soon as we moved out here, my Mom's like, yeah,
I'm gonna come live with you in our house, and
Chuck was like, bring it on, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
Chuck is very much like a big, lovable bulldog, isn't he.
We're like a He's more like a lovable polar bear.
I mean he's grumpy in the morning, you know, and
he likes to swim.

Speaker 4 (01:37:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:37:31):
I'm just saying, all right, what are you coming up?

Speaker 8 (01:37:34):
I have a former police chief, Paul Payson from the
Common Sense Institute, you know Ross. They did this study
at Common Sense where they studied recidivism rates and crime
reform and violent crime rates. And you won't believe what
they found.

Speaker 4 (01:37:49):
Ross.

Speaker 8 (01:37:50):
They found out that if you let criminals go, violent
crime rises.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
No way, it's true.

Speaker 7 (01:37:56):
I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:37:58):
This is my shock face. Yeah, you should see Mandy shocks.
Stick around and you'll see it again. Everyone, keep it
here on k o A