11-04-25 - *FULL SHOW* Dick Cheney RIP; Pardon Me; Elections Today; Robot Soldiers

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The big news of this morning is that Dick Cheney

(00:03):
has passed away. And I did hear some I heard
Michael Brown here on KAA talking about it, and I'll
probably bring you that audio just a little bit later
in the show, since you just heard it a few
minutes ago. But Michael Brown, of course, former Deputy Secretary
of Homeland Security and knew Dick Cheney, and it was

(00:24):
interesting to hear that story, and I'll share it with
you a little bit later. I'm just need to take
a moment here on Dick Cheney. I will say that
he is one of the most interesting and controversial and
consequential Vice presidents that we've had, maybe ever, certainly, far
more consequential than well jd Vance so far. I'm just

(00:49):
working backwards. I'm not picking on anybody so far. Dick
Cheney far more consequential, far more important in the job
than JD. Vance, Infinitely more important than Kamala Harris, who
might as well not have been there, absolutely pointless. Mike
Pence probably did a little more than Kamala Harris.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
But still not all that visible.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
And then you just sort of keep going back from there.
And Dick Cheney is the guy who in modern history,
and maybe the first time in American history turned the
vice presidency into a job where somebody's actually doing a
lot of work.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
And doing important things.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
The other thing, there are many things interesting about Dick Cheney, right,
I mean even little things like the fact that he
was the captain of the University of Wyoming football team.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Did you know that?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
And then he married a cheerleader from Lynn from the
University of Wyoming. But one of the interesting things about
Dick Cheney that you could always tell when he was
at least when he was Vice president, which is when
it matters most, is that he had no interest in
being president, which is very interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
You cannot say that about jd Vance, who clearly seems
to have interest. You cannot say that about Kamala Harris obviously,
you cannot say that about Mike Pence, who did run
for president.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
So when you have a VP who doesn't care about
running for president, that probably gives that person a lot
more room to do or say whatever he thinks needs
to be done or said, whether or not you agree
with it. And Dick Cheney ended up being one of
the most forceful supporters of American involvement in Iraq, which

(02:20):
is something that many people at the time and a
lot of people now say was an enormous mistake. He
was also a big supporter of so called enhancing interrogation
techniques that some people call torture.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
I won't go that far on.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Most of these On most of these things, sometimes if
you need to get some information from someone, you got
to play a little hardball.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
There is a line somewhere.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
I don't know exactly where it is, but Dick Cheney
was on the very aggressive side of that. He was
on the side of in general, he was on the
side of expanding executive power, the power of the president,
more than I prefer And yeah, I mean, look, the
other thing about Cheney that's important to keep in mind
is he was probably the last, really large as a

(03:05):
figure vestige of Reagan Republicanism, right, of that kind of
conservative peace through strength but not really isolationist, truly economic conservative,
unlike what we've got going on with many Republicans now.
He was one of the last vestiges of that Reagan

(03:26):
Republicanism and part of the problem I think for people
who love that Reagan republicanism, which includes me, right, Reagan
was my first vote for president in Reagan's second election.
That was my first vote ever for president, and a
lot of people hope that the Republican Party would get
back to that. But I think one of the problems

(03:47):
with Dick Cheney is he was so divisive and on
the screen he came across with a persona that caused
people to nickname him Darth Vader, even though in private,
people who knew him say that he had a good
sense of humor, that he was extremely loyal, that he
was really on top of details, and whether or not

(04:09):
you really got along with him, you didn't necessarily think
he was a bad person. But a lot of people
now think he was a bad person for a lot
of that war stuff on the left and then on
the right. Although Dick Cheney did support Donald Trump for
president in twenty sixteen, he didn't do so aggressively. He
did it because Trump was the Republican nominee and Cheney

(04:29):
was going to support the Republican nominee. But after Trump
lost the twenty twenty election but claimed he wanted and
then the January sixth stuff happened, Dick Cheney and his
daughter Liz, who was in Congress at the time, went
full throated anti Trump Liz Cheney. You know, I'm not
going to go through all the Liz Cheney stuff again.
You know what happened, and Dick Cheney ended up publicly

(04:51):
endorsing and then voting for Kamala Harris right in the
twenty twenty four election. So Dick Cheney, let me just
tell you one other story. I heard a guy tell
this story as Pete Williams. He used to be with NBC,
but before that worked in government, and he told a
really interesting story that I thought said a lot about
Dick Cheney. I'd never heard this story before. So a

(05:12):
couple of staffers at the Pentagon said something in a
briefing that annoyed the president at the time, George H. W. Bush,
And I guess what happened was they said something or
put out something in writing.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
I'm not sure which that.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Was something that the President himself had intended to announce.
So these guys got in ahead of the president. You
hear that term a lot from spokespeople. I'm not going
to get ahead of the president on this, right, And
they did, and the President got pretty mad. He called
Dick Cheney. Secretary of Defense called Dick Cheney and Dick

(05:50):
Cheney said, mister President, that was my idea, and Dick
Cheney took the blame for it, but it actually wasn't
Dick Cheney's idea.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
He didn't know about it until afterwards.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
And he took that heat just to take the heat
off of his underlings because he didn't think what his
underlings did was bad enough to, you know, get fired.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
He didn't want that to happen to them.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
He knew he wouldn't get fired because it wasn't that
big an infraction.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
And I think that says a lot about the guy.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Nevertheless, Dick Cheney is a very, very controversial guy, and
history will have a lot to say about him, plus
and minus. But in any case, I do thank him
for his many, many years of loyal service to the
country as the youngest ever chief of staff to a president,
as with ten years in Congress, as Secretary of Defense,

(06:37):
as Vice president of the United States.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
And you think about that.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
You know these days where a lot of political candidates
get elected because they have no experience, rather than despite
having no experience, because people are so fed up with
government and they want people not tainted by it. Dick Cheney,
in that sense, as well really seems like somebody from
a bygone era. I'll be here from six to nine

(07:03):
starting next Monday, and I sure hope you will join
me then for Ross Kaminski on the News with Gina Gondek,
and the show is going to be mostly like my
current show. It is not going to be mostly like
Colorado his Morning News. I am not going to become
a reporter and that sort of thing. I'm doing this show,

(07:26):
but we will have news four times an hour, and
Gina will participate in the show where it makes sense for.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Her to participate in the show.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
And it's just gonna be fun, and it's gonna be informative,
and it's gonna be entertaining and.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
If we if we do this right, it's also gonna
be kind.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Of unpredictable, but you know that's what That's what we're
gonna do from from six to nine, and then Michael
Brown will be in this time slot from nine am
to noon, and Colorado's.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Morning News will be five to six.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Gina will we'll be doing that show from five am
to six am, and then we'll move into Russkaminski on
the News with Ginigondek from six to nine. No change
after Michael Brown. So Mandy Show is the same, all
sports guys are the same, and all that stuff. So
that'll be starting next Monday. I slept in today. I
slept in because I can, because I'm on nine am

(08:21):
to noon right now. I slept in. I slept into
five until five point fifteen this morning.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Wow, I won't be able to do that in the future.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Actually, I probably could sleep until five point fifteen in
the future because I live pretty close to work, so
I could hop out of bed, grab a shower or
not and still get to work in time. So obviously,
we've got elections going on today all over the country,
lots of actually most states have some kind of elections today.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
You've got a lot of municipal stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Here in Colorado, you've got ballot measures, You've got a
few governor's races. We're going to talk about them on
the show. I did turn in my ballots this morning.
On my way to work. I saw an intro and
let me mention also real quickly, if you haven't voted yet,
please make sure you vote by seven pm tonight. Remember
here in Colorado, the ballot has to be received by

(09:14):
the deadline, which not postmarked by the deadline. You may
not bring you well, you may, but you shouldn't bring
your ballot to the post office today because it will
not count. You've got to drop it in a drop box,
preferably in your own county. By the way, there are
folks who live right near county lines. For example, a

(09:36):
rapa Hoe County at its west end borders Jefferson County.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
On its east end.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
If you live in a rapa Hoe County, try to
find a drop box in a rapa Hoe County.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Because the elections are different.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
It's not that your ballot won't be counted, but it
will have to be transported. If you dropped it off
in Jefferson County, it'll have to be transported to a
rapa Hoe County to be counted. And you might as
well just not put all those good folks to that
kind of extra work. I encourage you to vote no.
Vote no as often as you can. I say that

(10:09):
as someone who used to live in Chicago. Vote no
as often as you can on propositions LLL and MM.
This is further raising taxes in order to fund free
quote unquote free school lunch for middle class kids and
rich kids. Remember, lower income kids already got free school lunch,

(10:32):
and many of them already got free school breakfast. This
was just a This was such a massive leftist daydream
and so expensive that even Governor Polus would not support it,
which is why the program did not become a law
through the legislature passing it and the governor's signing it. Rather,

(10:54):
the legislature referred it to the voters, and the voters
of Colorado, since we are now.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
East California, passed it.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
But of course so many more people wanted the free
food than they modeled for That's how free food always works.
That now they need more money because they're running out
of money and they want to raise taxes again. Vote
no as often as you can, and in a more
serious sense, what I mean is try to get everybody
you know who hasn't voted yet in Colorado to cast

(11:22):
their ballast today and vote no on LL and MM
Proposition three ten.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
In Denver.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
You heard this mentioned, by the way, on Colorado's Morning News.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Michael Bloomberg has.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Donated another two and a quarter million dollars to the
to this referendum three to ten. Thing he wants Denver's
ban on flavored tobacco products which include vape fluid to
be upheld. I want it to be overturned. I don't vape.
I don't smoke. I never have. I've never tried any

(11:56):
of it. In fact, I don't know personally anyone who
smokes or vapes.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
If I do, I don't know that they do it right.
Put it that way.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
So none of this is about me saying, oh, I
want it legal in Denver because it'll help me or
my friends. No, I want it legal in Denver for
a couple of reasons. Lots and lots of people used
flavored products like the pouches or the vapes to quit smoking.
It's much much better for your health. I'm not saying
it's good for your health to vape, but it's much
better than smoking, Okay, much better that. Also, as a

(12:29):
matter of individual liberty, I believe that people, adults should
be allowed to put in their bodies what they want
to put in. People are arguing that kids are getting
this stuff. If kids are getting this stuff, then find
the people who are getting the stuff to the kids
and punish them aggressively. Aggressively, that needs to be done right. Also,

(12:50):
Denver is not an island. If people want to get
this stuff in Denver, they just drive into jeff Co.
Or Adams County or Broomfield or a Rapo County or
wherever and get this stuff. We're there'll order it online
from someplace that doesn't care about Denver's rules, So you're
really not gonna stop people from getting it. What you're
gonna do is have those Denver rights deposit their sales

(13:11):
tax revenue in all these other counties instead of in Denver,
which has a huge budget problem right now. So for
every reason I can think of, this band should be overturned,
and I encourage you to vote no on three ten. Okay,
three ten basically asked the question do you want to keep.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
The ban in place?

Speaker 1 (13:30):
So vote no on three ten. All right, we have
a lot more stuff to talk about regarding elections, but
before we get to that, we're going to have a
really interesting guest talking about something that as a guy
who used to run a business, I find a really
important topic, and that is micro management. I appreciate your
company as always. I think you know that in a

(13:51):
previous version of my life, I co found it. I
guess you would say, with a couple of partners of
Financial Markets trading company, and we had offices in different places,
and I ran the Chicago office, and we'd be involved
with hiring people and firing people and managing all the
stuff that's going on in the business. And I'll tell

(14:11):
you there is an immense amount that goes into being
a good manager.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
And I think I was a good manager, but I
don't think I was a great manager.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
And I also don't love management, which I think is
an important thing as well. I think that I think
that really great managers enjoy that part of the job,
and I didn't. I really just wanted to go trade
and just think about markets and not do all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
But no one else was going to do it, so
I did.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
And when it comes to all this, I think if
you're running a business, whether you love managing or you
just have to, you need to know how to do
some things right, and maybe even more importantly, you need
to know how to avoid some pitfalls. So joining us
to talk about one of them is Matt Matheson, who
is an entrepreneur and an investor and a co founder

(14:57):
of MBL Partners, and he had his companies and writes
about leadership and management. His new book is called Leadership
Orbit and the website is leadership orbit dot com. And
we're going to talk a little bit about micro management,
which is something I always tried to avoid. I don't
know if I did avoid it well enough. But you

(15:18):
might not think how how big a problem this can be,
but Matt thinks it's potentially an enormous problem.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
So Matt Mathison, welcome to Kowa.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Thanks for being here, and glad you're a Broncos fan
even though you're living in Texas.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Ross, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. Happy to
be here.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
And yes, Hugh, back to back weeks with the Broncos
beaten two Texas teams.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's been fun.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
I bet it reminds me when I when I first
moved to Chicago years and years ago, whatever year that
would have been, like nineteen eighty seven or something. I
went to a sports bar and I was a Redskins
fan because I was living in DC near DC at
the time. I went to a sports bar and watched
the Redskins Bears in a playoff game, and the Redskins

(16:05):
knocked the Bears out of the playoffs that year, and
I kind of had to slink out of there a
little bit just to not get beaten up, right, rooting
against the Bears in Chicago, So that might be how
you feel they are rooting against the Cowboys or the
Texans in Texas.

Speaker 4 (16:20):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, it's actually fun. I enjoy it a lot,
and like I said, it's been a great back to
back with you.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Right that micro management doesn't always look like failure. It
looks like high standards, like urgency and like precision. I
love that line, and I can easily imagine it now
that you mentioned that, before we jump into what it
looks like, just to make sure we're one thousand percent

(16:48):
on the same page, define micro management.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
I believe micromanagement really is a culmination of two things.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
It's overly.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
Distrusting your people right to actually follow through on your culture,
your mission, your you know what you're actually setting out
to do. So I believe micromanagement is a great distrust
and overly getting in the way of what makes us wonderful,
which is we are constantly moving and trying to advance

(17:24):
and progress.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
And that's what I believe micromanagement is.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
One of the things I can imagine and I don't
know if this is a distinction without a difference, you
can tell me.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
But on that thing about right.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Okay, I mistrust my employees and therefore I'm going to
look over their shoulders at everything they're doing. Is there
a difference that matters or is it a distinction without
a difference. If the mindset behind the micromanagement is my
people are actually good, it's just that I'm better and
they could benefit from me, is there anything there that

(18:00):
or is that irrelevant?

Speaker 4 (18:03):
No?

Speaker 3 (18:03):
It matters a lot. And here's why.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
If you're a solopreneur or you're not actually trying to
grow and scale, that logic both applies and makes a
lot of sense. You can be the king of all right,
and you can truly be better.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
But if you're a business.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
That wants to grow and scale and actually be valuable,
you have to do it beyond any individual, let alone yourself.
And so if you take that approach, even if it's
true for a season, you're actually thwarteing your ability to
move forward in advance.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Okay, So what is the impact on employees or teams
of employees if they're manager or managers micro manages them.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah, I mean I think that there's a couple of
things that I would highlight. One, it's a destroyer of momentum,
and momentum is a power. We want people to actually
gain this momentum feeling of taking action, making course corrections,
overcoming issues, getting sand out of the gear. We want

(19:12):
that momentum. When we're overly micro managing them, it's a
destroyer of momentum. People have to wait. People wait to
make a decision, They wait for you to step in
and fix their problem, They wait for your permission. That
momentum killer slows everything down. And I believe winning is

(19:33):
less about making the right decision. It's just it's more
about the speed to ultimately fixing what's broken, which is
a continual thing.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
So that's one thing. It's a destroyer of momentum.

Speaker 4 (19:45):
Second thing is if you don't have a culture where
people actually feel empowered to do. And again, lots of
every level of an organization different job functions, doing means
different things. But if they don't feel empowered to do
and make decisions, you create You actually create your worst nightmare.

(20:07):
You actually create people that are dependent on you or
something else to make a decision for him. As opposed
to creating a culture where there's an empowerment to make
things happen.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
We're talking with Matt Matheson. His new book is Leadership Orbit.
The website leadership orbit dot com if you want to
check out the book. So, I wonder if you might
share with us one or two stories from your own
time advising businesses where you have found a manager or

(20:40):
the management class in a particular business, maybe many of
them micromanaging their employees, the harm it was causing, and
how you got them to change, and how that worked out.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Can you have even just one story like that?

Speaker 4 (20:58):
Sure, I can give there's I have a lot of
examples of this, and again I think we oftentimes fall
into it. I'll give both a sports analogy and then
a very specific business analogy. In business, I have been
part of many organizations, both directly and indirectly, whether through
just passive investing or advising or playing some other role.
And in one company in particular, there was this culture

(21:23):
that no one could actually make a decision without getting
this one individual. He wasn't even the CEO, by the way,
but right he held all the cards, and no one
could do anything without this one person's like blessing, and
they would get bludgeoned if they did, and that literally
grinded a whole company to halt. It was it's a

(21:47):
technology company, and as you know, in technology, things move
very fast, and you actually had very capable and competent
and visionary people at the helm and they were literally
it was like you were walking into something where just
full paralysis. And it wasn't paralysis by analysis. It was
paralysis by micromanagement. And it was I mean you could

(22:11):
taste it, you could feel it. It was palpable. Removing
this individual was painful and messy, but as soon as
this person was removed, it was almost just like the lid,
you know, people just they could feel this empowerment kind
of seepin.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
That was a technology company.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
Actually, I talk about that particular company in my book.
It's actually a very large Chinese conglomerate company. Crazy story
of what actually happened, but there was a moment in
which this individual, not the CEO, not the actual operating head,
but the chairman of the company ultimately brought it to
its knees.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Fascinating story.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
In sports, I think we oftentimes think about and I
think the Denver Broncos may have their own kind of
version of this, and even though great season, good wins,
oftentimes you hear about a very athletic quarterback that's like, oh,
I want them to be a pocket passer, and it's
you can almost feel like the micro management in their

(23:10):
mind seep in where they can be they're less athletic
and they're reacting less and.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
There's just this season of like that.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
It's things just don't work that well when you kind
of take away someone's ability to just be an athlete,
make decisions go And so it's a it's a tough balance.
I like to say, micro manage the process, not the people.
You're going to micromanage anything. Micro manage the process. So
having a system, having a culture, having you know, standard

(23:41):
operating procedures, you can micromanage that because those are standards.
But don't let that seep into managing or micromanaging the people.
Let them work within that system and just be great
and fail and learn and get better. And I think
that's how things move forward.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Okay, last last question for you, and it's kind of
a big one. So what if there are people listening
to the show right now who are business owners and
business managers, what should they look for in themselves, or
I should say, and in their highest level of employees

(24:17):
right under them, those who are managing others to look
for signs that hey, we're drifting into micromanagement here.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
Yeah, how so this would be the reflection point when
something goes wrong, when someone does something wrong, what is
the knee jerk reaction for a leader, for the executive
team whatever. Do they drop in and fix it or
do they actually empower and enforce this culture of both accountability, Hey,

(24:51):
something went wrong, but like praise for how fast did
we figure it out? And how fast did you course
correct and what do you need to actually make a
better decision going forward. There is a difference between going
in and fixing versus empowering the people and creating this
culture where they're continually fixing and updating and improving.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
That distinction.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
Do I go in and just I'll screw it, it's
just easier for me to do it. Or do I
let them figure that out and do I praise them
for that? That's to me the reflection of am I
actually creeping into micro management phase?

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Or am I actually creating this culture of empowerment.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Matt Matheson's new book is Leadership Orbit you can go
to the website at leadership orbit dot com and I
think you'll learn a lot and hopefully help you run
your business, whether you own it, whether you management, manage it,
run it better and get the most out of your employees.
Matt Matheson, thanks for your time. Really interesting conversation.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Thanks, Ross, have a great day.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay you too, go Broncos. All right, all right, that
was good. That was very good. So yeah, as a
guy who ran a business, you know.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
I see all that. I see all that stuff. All right,
let me do something else. I'm want to sort of
go to this intersection of national politics but international as well.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
So what's up with this? The UK Telegraph website doesn't
like my browser. I'm gonna have to get another browser
going here. So the BBC.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
You living here in Denver or wherever else you live
in the United States, you might not interact with the
BBC very much. You might not go on their websites
very much. But I'm telling you, as a guy who
looks at BBC a lot, it's arguably the single worst

(26:43):
of what you might call mainstream media outlet in the world.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
It's in that category with the Washington Post in the
New York Times at PBS. And keep in mind now
BBC is fully government funded in Britain, so it's like PBS.
PBS all got all its money from the government. Now
at this point PBS gets little or nothing from the
government because if all this stuff Trump is done, which
is absolutely fine with me. But the BBC has this

(27:13):
worst possible combination of an incredible built in left wing
bias that makes the left wing bias you seem in
most American media actually seem small. And I know that's
hard to believe. I'm not being hyperbolic about it. You
read the BBC enough and you will say, Wow, the

(27:34):
New York Times seems moderate and honest in comparison, and
of course The New York Times is neither moderate nor honest, right,
And that's just how bad the BBC is also. And
this is just a little aside, and then I'm gonna
get to the main headline here is that the BBC

(27:56):
finds climate change to be the cause of every single
bad thing that happens in the world.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
And it really is amazing.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
And when you listen to BBC on the radio, and
I listen to it, sometimes whatever it is that's coming
along bad weather plane crash. I don't know, some hungry
people somewhere. It's always climate change and it is so annoying,
but they're kind of protected because they're a government agency.
They don't care, they don't really have important competition. They

(28:27):
just no interest in doing a better job until something
blows up. That's just so nuts that even the BBC
has to pay attention. And there was a story that
came out a couple of days ago about a BBC coverage,

(28:50):
the BBC coverage of.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
President Trump's speech.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Near the Capitol, not at the Capitol, but close to
the capital on January sixth, following which there was that
riot at the Capitol. Now I'm not looking to debate
what you think happened that day or whether it was
terrible or just kind of bad or not bad at all.
I'm not looking to I'm not talking about any of that.

(29:18):
Let me share this with you. This is from the
UK Telegraph. The BBC quote unquote doctored a Donald Trump's
speech by making him appear to encourage the Capital riot,
according to an internal BBC whistleblowing memo seen by the Telegraph.
A Panorama program, so Panorama is something like sixty minutes

(29:41):
for them.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
A Panorama program broadcast a week before the election misled viewers.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
So a week before the twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Four election misled viewers by showing Trump telling supporters he
was going to walk to the capital with them to
fight like hell.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
That's a quote, fight like hell. Now, let me be.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Clear, he did use the words fight like hell and
I'm gonna get to all this, but not then.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
In fact, at that time he said he would walk
with them quote to peacefully and patriotically make.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Your voices heard.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Now, this report is in a nineteen page dossier on
BBC bias, which was compiled by a recent member of
the Standards Committee of the BBC, and this dossier is
now going around the British government. The dossier said that
the program made the US president quote unquote say things

(30:41):
he never actually said by splicing together footage from the
start of the speech with something he said nearly an
hour later. Pretty nuts, huh, pretty nuts. So basically, what
Trump said at the early part of that speech was
He's gonna march with people to the capital to peacefully

(31:04):
and patriotically make your voices heard. But then later here,
hold on, let me expand this a little bit and
I'll just do this exact quote if I can get
this to work. It's not working anyway, So that's what
he said. He said, We're gonna walk to the capital,
I'll be with you, and then later on, talking about

(31:28):
something else, he said, we fight like hell, and if
you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a
country anymore. But he wasn't talking about fighting like hell
at the Capitol. But what the BBC did was they
splice those things together to make it sound like he said,
We're gonna walk to the Capitol and I'm gonna fight
with and I'll be with you and we fight.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
We fight like hell, and if you don't.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
Fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore.
But he didn't actually say that. They spliced it together
that way. Pretty remarkable. Donald Trump Junior, of course, has
seen this and he's upset about it, as I would be,
as I am as I am.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
The BBC is really really terrible, and.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
They're gonna have to do something about it. I don't
know what, but they are going to have to do
something about it. Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister of
the UK, said the BBC has doctored footage of Trump
to make it look as though he incited a.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Riot, when in fact he said no such thing.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
We have Britain's national broadcaster using a flagship program to
tell palpable untruths about British Britain's closest ally. Is anyone
at the BBC going to take responsibility and resign? We'll see,
I guess right, we'll see. The other thing is this
is part of a larger dossier about bias in the BBC,

(32:46):
and there's plenty more, all kinds of.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Bias in how.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
The BBC covered the war in Gaza right, very very
pro Palestinian, anti Israel.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
And there were also things.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Where you may recall this. President Trump said a thing
about Liz Cheney, and we talked about Liz Cheney a
little bit this morning with the news of the passing
of her father.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Dick Cheney, and.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Trump perceived Liz Cheney as somebody who likes going to war,
and he said, let's put her with a rifle standing
there with nine barrels shooting at her face and see
how she feels about it. And then he went on
to talk about politicians who are sitting in Washington in
a nice building, saying, oh, g let's send ten thousand
troops right into the mouth of the enemy. So his

(33:39):
point that he was making is it's easy for Liz
Cheney to say she supports going to and such a
war when she's not going to be the one having
guns pointed at her when these soldiers go into war.
It's a pretty straightforward thing to say. You can agree
with him or not, but it's a pretty straightforward thing
to say. So instead, the BBC edited it and also

(34:01):
claimed in their own news reporting that Donald Trump said
he wanted Liz Cheney to be shot in the face.
He didn't say anything like that. Again, I don't care
whether you like or hate Trump. I don't care whether
you like or hate Liz Cheney. It doesn't matter. I
am talking about the probably the premier news organization in

(34:23):
Europe repeatedly lying in ways that are aimed to hurt
one political party.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
One politician. They did a.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Similar thing with Kamala Trump. Kamala Trump with Kamala Harris.
They kept running these stories that played up Kamala Harris's
thing and blew up other kind of nonsense, like when
Trump said the thing about somebody eating pets, but they
misframed that as well, over and over and over, and
now to the point that you've got a British outlet,
a British newspaper writing a story about nine ways the

(34:54):
BBC misled viewers over Trump. And that's just the Trump part,
then the all the other stuff. I know most people
in America don't care about the BBC, but this is
worth keeping an eye on because it is one of
the large media outlets in the world and it's finally
getting called out for its failures.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
A last Tuesday from.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Nine to noon because starting next Monday, Dragon and I
will be six am to nine am, and if you
tune into KOWA at this time, you will be hearing
Michael Brown. So I'll be six am to nine am.
I'm so excited for the change a lot. And so
what's happening is five to six am will be Colorado's
Morning News essentially as it is now, with Gina Gondeck

(35:36):
doing news and all that for that hour, and then
we're gonna transition into my new show, which is Ross
Kaminski on the News with Gina Gondeck, and Gina will
be bringing news four times an hour and also participating
in the show in other ways, and it's gonna be
an evolution.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
We're gonna figure it out as we.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Go along, and the goal is going to be to
be informative and fun and a little bit unpredictable and
probably still wasting time.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Is that what you were going to ask about. I'm
a little worried.

Speaker 5 (36:00):
It's not going to take over my job at wasting
everybody's time?

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Is she? No?

Speaker 1 (36:04):
See, here's the thing, and this is why I think
it's going to be a pretty good fit. So Gina
is a professional, right, and she's a journalist and she's
a professional, and you and I are neither of those things.
And proudly so right, proudly so we very much. We
take great pride in I mean, I don't think much

(36:25):
about being a journalist or not being a journalist. I
do my own thing. I'm not being sarcastic there. I
do my show. I don't really think of myself as
a journalists. But I do take great pride in semi
professional radio, right, just like going to you know, the
double a baseball game, the minor league hockey game, you know,
can be so much fun and you get some of these,
you know, the pro game.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
It might end up being two to one.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
The semi pro game is going to be thirteen to eleven.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
That's so much more fun. So that's what we do, Gina.
Gina's going to be the adult in the room. Yes,
Gina's gonna be.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
So this is the question Dragon that I have gotten,
probably more than any other question on the listener text
line about this change that we're doing, and that is
is Gina gonna make the show a professional show? Or
are we gonna make her unprofessional? And it's probably a
little bit of both, right, It probably is going to

(37:21):
depend on the moment, but we.

Speaker 5 (37:22):
Definitely hope we can pull the unprofessionalism out of her. Yes,
she hopes to pull the professionalism out of us.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, but I think since Gena's probably not listening right now,
let's just say that I don't think.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I don't know what you think, Greg, I don't it's
two to one.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
We will not only is it two to one, but
you and I are both much older than she is,
and with the whole like old dog new tricks or
changing a leopard spots or whatever other metaphor you want
to use, the odds of Gina being able to make
you and me professional don't it's hardlima none, slim to none.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
So we'll see, we'll see how that plays out. Uh,
let's see. Let me do this thing real quick. Oh
she's here. If you you can, you're welcome to I
thought you'd be gone by now.

Speaker 6 (38:12):
I just hear the whispers just coming from the newsroom.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
You guys are talking about me behind me. They say that, yeah,
do you have I mean anything to say.

Speaker 6 (38:25):
To be determined, But I but I think, well, I
will stay on the semi professional side and you can
continue with the shenanigans that you.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
I just I hope you don't take offense at the
fact that Dragon and I called you a professional.

Speaker 7 (38:39):
Umm, no, I guess that's all right. Yeah, yeah, you
it's intimidating. But sure, you're very dedicated to standards of
journalism and you're gonna be doing a lot of You're
gonna be doing real.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
Journalism and then whatever other shenanigans you and I and
Dragon get involved with, so you're gonna be kind of
doing different things.

Speaker 5 (38:58):
Yes, out of the three of us, you're the professional
that we have. Out of the three of us, you're
you're the most professional here. Wow, it's not even a
close call, like why are you acting?

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Surprise?

Speaker 5 (39:09):
Then I was downstairs on the third floor for you know,
a decade and a half, so I'm as unprofessional as
we can get.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, And I was in an options trading pit, waving
my hands and yelling and where like.

Speaker 6 (39:21):
The nicest thing I'd be called is a hole? Like,
how about professionals in different realms? We all bring different experiences. No,
I don't want to be about No, all right, that's
your job. I'll can continue listening to the rumors you're
saying about me behind my back.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Very good, Very good. All right, So starting next Monday,
you're gonna have a lot more of that. Oh that's
I don't know, Dragon, that's pretty intimidating to have a
professional walk in on us in the middle of the show.
I wasn't she walked away now, but she's probably still.
Are we safe for now?

Speaker 2 (39:52):
For now? What did you say?

Speaker 1 (39:54):
We got about you know, thirty seconds or twenty nine
seconds here?

Speaker 2 (39:58):
What did you say?

Speaker 1 (39:59):
Was the listener text that you saw as soon as
you got here this morning?

Speaker 5 (40:02):
The first text that I pulled up when I came
over from the Michael Brown Show, which now, which next
week will be in this time slot. But I popped
it open and it says where to go? I lost
it now?

Speaker 1 (40:12):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (40:13):
It basically said, Ross, do we have you to thank
for the Broncos win? Were you listening to KOA on Sunday?

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (40:20):
So?

Speaker 2 (40:20):
And Dragon is aware of this because I kept him
up to date on Sunday. The first half of.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
The game, I was not listening to the KOWA broadcast,
and the second half of the game I was.

Speaker 5 (40:30):
I actually did Dragon, That's why the Broncos are a
second half team. Yeah, so, Roskin, I actually did what
you and I talked about with listeners.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
I went home, I paused the TV. I put on
the ko I put the KOA.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
On my iHeart app on my phone and put it
down in front of me on the table in front
of the TV. I played that, and then I adjusted
the TV with you know, fast forwarding or backing up
just as necessary to get it exactly to line up
with the with the broadcast. And so I listened to
the I turned down the volume on the TV and
I only listen to to Rick and Dave.

Speaker 5 (41:04):
Since you listen to the broadcast here on KOA, Rick
and Dave, how did the Broncos.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Do they won? Oh another fourth floor? What are they like?
Seven and oh?

Speaker 5 (41:15):
When Ross Kaminski is listening to the KOA broadcast, I
think there also I forget the number, but there's something
like four and oh or five and oh when when
beginning the fourth quarter behind in the score.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
It's pretty nuts.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
It's pretty nuts, actually, listener text, Ross, maybe you could
go for semi neutral topic selection. I hope Gina is
comfortable sharing her opinions on your show. That's a very
interesting and insightful text. And what I will say to
you is that I'm going to keep doing pretty much
what I do, and there are gonna be topics where
I'm not gonna drag Gina into it.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Right, there's just some things that are very polarizing and very.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Controversial and that kind of stuff, and I probably won't
drag Gina into a lot of a lot of that stuff.
But there's gonna be all kinds of other stuff that
I might not have talked about without.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
The inspiration of having Gina here.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
That might be more culture and life and music and
fun and all this stuff that we're gonna do because
Gina is here, and she'll be very involved in that stuff,
so we will see Ross. Will you be running the
parabolic microphone on Thursday night? If so, why not get
dragging to hold the other microphone. So now neither of
us are doing this this Thursday's game.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
I don't know who is.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
I'm not involved with all that. I just know the
games that that I'm doing. But I will probably do
what I said that I did with this game Dragon.
Do you think I should do just the second half
again since it worked this time?

Speaker 5 (42:46):
I think it's the Raiders, and it's a home game,
it's a Thursday game on a short week, and I
think you really should listen to the entire the entire
day game, just like Cowboys, where I just dominated the
entire time.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
All right, So that's that's necessity again, it's the Raiders.
There you go, all right, we'll take quick break. Will
be right back on KOA. Talk a little more about
elections in Colorado and around the country that are going
on today. Is there any polling data on ballot measures
L and MM not that I have. There may be
private polling on it, I haven't seen public polling on it.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Ross.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
I tried to pull up some voter guides. All I
could find were left leaning voter guides that you and
Mandy publish one. I did not publish one for this election.
There's not that many things that I really had a
lot to say about. And I figured, if I was
going to say vote no on ll and vote no
on MM, and vote no on three ten in Denver, right,
I didn't really need to go to a lot of

(43:40):
work of publishing a voting guide. Also, I've just been
so freaking busy with you know, kids, college stuff and
the dog getting hurt, and remodeling this house.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
And listening to the Broncos games and listening.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
To the Broncos games, and it was just I just
didn't have time to do a voter guide.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
I will do.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
I will do a voter guide next year when we're
getting to, you know, a bigger election. But I will
just request if you haven't voted yet, and you vote
in Colorado, please vote no on LLL and MM, and
if you vote in Denver, please vote no on Referendum
three ten. There's a bunch of there's a bunch of

(44:17):
other stuff, school board races. So Mandy actually puts some
stuff in her blog yesterday which I plagiarized and put
in my blog. Today, but I put a link to
I said it was from her, and I put a
link to it, so it's not really plagiarized if you
give credits, yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
I gave.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
I gave full credit and a link to Mandy's blog, okay,
And so that has suggestions for who to vote for
on a bunch of school board races. So you can
go to mandy'sblog dot com and find her blog from yesterday,
or you can go to Rosskominsky dot com and find
my current blog note from today where I've got that
information from Mandy for school board races. If you're in Aurora,

(44:53):
vote for Danielle Jorinsky if she's on your ballot. There
are other good candidates in Aurora. I have that linked
in my blog today as well. But if you go
to Danielle Jorinski's website, which hold.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
On, let me actually look that up so I can
tell you what it is. Sorry, Danielle Jurinski. So Danielle
for Aurora dot com.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
If you go to Danielle for Aurora dot com and
just scroll down a little bit, you'll see her recommendations,
which would be the same as my recommendations for Aurora.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
For city Council. So actually, Danielle is an at.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Large candidate, and that means anybody, everybody in Aurora will
see her name on the ballots. So vote for her,
and vote for I'msalukasal. I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing your
name wrong, sir, but vote for him as well. And
then the other ones Steven Elkins, Steve Sundberg, and Marcia Burzons.
Those are the candidates for Aurora who Danielle recommends, and

(45:49):
I'm gonna go with her recommendations. Anyway, there's lots of
stuff there. Let me just gosh, I'm running out of
time here.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Let me just set this up. I'm gonna start.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
I'm gonna start the conversation, and then we're going to
continue the conversation more in the next segment of the show.
There are a bunch of very interesting elections going on
in other places around the country, including governor of New Jersey,
Governor of Virginia, Attorney General of Virginia, Mayor of New
York City, and then this Proposition fifty in California, that

(46:18):
is California's answer to Texas's mid mid cycle like in
between censuses, redistricting, Texas was asked by Donald Trump to
redistrict now in order to pick up some congressional seats
for Republicans. And so Gavin Newsom is pushing this thing
in California to do the same thing there to offset

(46:43):
Texas's move towards more Republicans.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
So I want to talk about all of this stuff.
There's also a very interesting bunch of three elections going
on in Pennsylvania that I'll tell you about.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Keep it right here on KOA something that I wanted
to just share as well, because it's trouble me a bit.
Not the biggest thing in the world, but it does
trouble me a bit. And keep in mind as we
talk about this, that money is fungible, right. So let's
say you were, you know, you needed two hundred dollars
for something, and you're going to get one hundred dollars
from one person with no restrictions and one hundred dollars

(47:17):
from another person with some restrictions, like you can't spend
it on such and such a thing. Well, maybe you
were going to spend some of the money from the
first guy or from the second guy on that such
and such a thing. Now you're not allowed to. So
you'll just spend the money from the first guy on
that such and such a thing. You're still going to
spend money on it. You'll just honor that person since
you want the hundred dollars, You'll just spend that person's

(47:39):
donation on something else. You get, You get my point.
Money is fungible. It's just money in the bank, and
once it's in the bank, it's really all the same.
And you can just tell whoever that you're not using
their money, you're using other money. So that's why I
raise this issue. In Denver, You've got these ballot measures
two A through two E, and each of them is
a different section of the so called Vibrant Bond ballot

(48:03):
measure where the city of Denver, and this is being
very aggressively pushed by the mayor they want to.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Raise.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
I forget the number, but it's somewhere around a billion
dollars of new debt.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
To do all kinds of things. And I will just stipulate.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I'll just say I assume that most of the things
they want to do with the money are things that
need to be done, kind of rebuilding infrastructure in the city.
I'll just assume that. Okay, does that mean that we
need to do them. Now, does that mean that a
city that has a couple hundred million dollars budget shortfall
should be taking on a billion dollars in debt? Even
though the governor says, look, we're rolling off of other debts,

(48:42):
so we'll just use those cash flows to pay this
debt and there will not be any increase in taxes.
I still struggle with it a little bit. I don't
live or vote in Denver. I don't pay Denver's local taxes,
so I'm not going to take a very strong.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Opinion on this.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
I guess I'll say if I lived in Denver, i'd
vote no. I suspect this thing will pass. But the
thing that I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Mention is that.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Organizations, quasi governmental organizations in Denver have contributed fifty thousand
dollars each to the campaign to get these these ballot
measures passed. So, and I'm looking at nine News' website here,
the Museum of Nature and Science, the Zoo, the Center
for the Performing Arts, the Art Museum, the Botanic Gardens,

(49:32):
and nine News reached out to these organizations and asked
them about these fifty thousand dollars contributions. And now keep
in mind what I said before about money being fungible,
because this gets to the reason that I made that statement.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
And I'm quoting from nine news dot com here.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Spokespeople for all of those organizations stated that their contributions
came from earned revenue such as admissions fee in concessions,
and not tax dollars. So is that a difference that matters?
And by the way, I love all of these places.
I love the Nature and Science Museum, I love the Zoo,

(50:12):
I love the Center for the Performing Arts, I love
the Art Museum, I love the Botanic Gardens. I've been
to all of them more than once. Some of them
I go to quite frequently. I love all these places.
And I'm not looking to beat these places up. Okay,
I love them. They're great for Denver, They're great for
my family, probably great for your family. And if you
haven't been to all of them, you should try to

(50:33):
get to all of them. They are really really great.
But imagine, I'm just gonna I'm not even gonna name
one because I don't want to sound like I'm picking
on any one of them. Any of these places sells
tickets to get in, and then when you're in there
you could.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Buy a beverage or a snack or whatever you want
to buy. So they're selling these concessions as well.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
So they got admissions fees, they've got concessions, and they
also have money coming in from a government from from taxes,
right from the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District sales tax,
in particular the SCFD sales tax, which is a special
sales tax that applies in seven counties, you know, in

(51:14):
and around Denver. And this troubles me because I don't
know how one of these organizations can say, hey, yeah,
we donated money, but that money came from ticket sales
and sales of glasses of wine and snacks. How are

(51:36):
you gonna tell me that that fifty thousand dollars came
from that stuff and that it didn't come from tax revenue,
because it's it's all the same. I realized that on
an accounting basis, you could create just imagine this. You
could create an Excel spreadsheet and on one tabital show

(52:00):
here's how much we took in from sales tax revenue
from the special district, the SCFD, and then here's how
we spent all that money.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
And then you could line it up so that the
amount that came in from these taxes exactly matches.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
The amount that is spent on this, that and the
other project. So you can say this is what the
tax money went to. And then you could set up
another page, another tab in your same spreadsheet and see
how much have chive nerd I am that says, all right,
and here's how much we took in from selling food
and drink and whatever other concessions, you know, the souvenir
shop at wherever, and here's how we spent that. And

(52:41):
you could claim that, hey, this is how we're spending
the tax money, and this is how we're spending the
other money.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
But I don't buy it. I don't. And here's one
reason I don't buy it.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Let's say that, for one reason or another, the funding
from let's say concessions dropped a.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Little bit, and they still or in general.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
The spending levels, the revenue levels dropped a little bit,
and you need to fund something, and to cut some
things out, you gotta fund some other thing. There's no
reason at all that they couldn't take tax money and
spend it on this thing that they said or was
going to be funded by concessions.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
So I just with the fungibility of money.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
I really think that it's a tricky thing and frankly
a very very bad look and a mistake for these
organizations to have contributed fifty thousand dollars each to try
to pass some bonds. Look, I don't really think it's
going to hurt the organizations. And it's Denver, right, It's Denver.

(53:46):
It might as well be San Francisco. It's just such
a left wing place. I don't think most people will care,
but I do, and I thought I would. Thought I
would mention that to you, and thank you to the
listener who brought that up to me.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
So there's that. Let's talk about one other thing with Denver.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Actually, and I think Mandy mentioned this on her show yesterday,
but since I had the day off yesterday, I'm not
getting it till today. From the Denver Gazette, a key
metric for downtown Denver's recovery had its best month yet.
And what they're talking about is foot traffic in downtown Denver.
And I'm quoting from Denver Gazette dot com. The city's
urban core saw foot traffic in September at ninety three

(54:27):
percent of what visitor levels were in September of twenty nineteen,
and that's picked us as a time that's just before COVID, right,
so before the pandemic. September had seven point seven million
visits downtown in September of last year six point nine million,
September of this year, two months ago about seven point

(54:49):
two million.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
So it's the highest monthly rate of foot.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Traffic in Denver since the Downtown Denver Partnership started track
this after the pandemic. So I think that's great. I
want Denver to succeed, and I think this is this
is fantastic. So far, they say that downtown has had
about six two hundred more daily visits on average this

(55:16):
year than last year, and they say that it's both
tourists and residents coming, you know, coming back to Denver.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
So that's good. Now, the other side of this coin
is that the recovery and the.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Number of people working in offices in Downtown Denver remains
not only very slow, but one of the slowest in
the whole country for you know, major or nearly major cities.
The number of weekday employees was at sixty four percent
of the pre COVID level in September. Now, it's still

(55:53):
higher than the previous year, which was something like fifty
seven percent. So more workers are coming to downtown, and
I still continue to wonder what's the cart and what's
the horse, or if it's more of a virtuous cycle
kind of thing, like a chicken and egg kind of cycle,
where you have to.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Have a chicken and make an egg, and you have
to have an egg to make a chicken.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Regarding more people in office buildings in downtown Denver and
more successful businesses, whether along sixteenth Street, which we're not
supposed to call sixteenth Street mall anymore, or elsewhere in
that downtown area Lanhamer Square, any of that, because you
would think these things feed off each other. The more
people come to work downtown in the office buildings, the

(56:38):
more they will go out to lunch or stick around
after work and go to a bar or restaurant or
go bowling or whatever they're doing, and build up the
economy of downtown. Right, So, the more people in the
office buildings, the better for the businesses. And the other
way to look at it is the more thriving and
interesting businesses there are. And of course, with sixteenth Street

(56:59):
being so much cleaner now, more police presence, fewer bombs
and stuff like that. Then maybe having downtown being a
nicer place to be and shop and eat, that might
cause more employees to be willing to come back to work,
and more employers to be willing to tell their Denver employees, Hey,

(57:20):
it's time to come back to work. Now, we need
to get to the office. And now that downtown is
a lot nicer than it was a few years ago,
that might all play out pretty well. So well, we'll
see how it all goes, but I'm very glad that
the trend seems to be in the right direction. All right,
I promise you I would talk a little bit about
some of these elections.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Going on around the country.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
So I'm just gonna go through these kind of quickly
because I'm not the stuff I'm gonna mention right now
is not the Colorado stuff.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
So I'm gonna talk about some other things. We go
through it quickly.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Just you have an idea what to keep an eye
on tonight, and then we'll talk about these as well
as Colorado results tomorrow. I will note from the yes
Please files. Nancy Pelosi has said that after today's elections,
she will decide whether she's gonna run for reelection next year.

(58:12):
And normally, when somebody says I'm going to make a decision,
they've made it already. And normally, if a politician says
I'm going to make a decision about retirement, it means
they've already decided to retire. It's not one hundred percent,
but it's a very, very very high percentage. And so
I'm guessing that, you know, tonight tomorrow something Nancy Pelosi

(58:35):
will officially say she's not going to run for reelection. So,
and here's just another crazy thing to keep in mind.
As much as a wild eyed liberal as San Francisco
Nancy Pelosi is these days, she feels like the center
of the Democratic Party, which is really something, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Okay, Now, let's go through some of these races around
the country.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
In New Jersey, you've got the governor's race between Mikey Cheryl,
who what Mikey Cheryl was a military pilot I think
ichifu helicopters or something like that, against a guy named
Jack Chittarelli who ran previously and lost but came in
did better than people thought the last time. And also,

(59:18):
New Jersey is a state that moved toward Trump, and
I don't have the exact numbers in front of you,
but I know of all.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
The states, it was the second biggest.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Move toward Trump of all the states in the twenty
twenty four election as compared to the prior presidential election.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
So it's a state that is still blue, but less blue.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
I note that the betting odds have Mikey Cheryl the Democrat,
at about eighty four percent and Jack Chitarelli the Republican
at seventeen percent. Last night, it was a little bit
worse for the Republican. It was around fourteen percent, Now
around seventeen. I posted on Twitter last night, I really
think fourteen percent is too low. I do think that

(01:00:01):
the Republican there Chitdarelli, is the underdog, but I think
fourteen percent that they had last night in the betting
odds was too low. I think he's got a better
chance than that. So we'll see how it all plays out.
So that's one, okay, So new New Jersey governor. Now
in Virginia, you've got a governor's race, and I'm not
going to spend a lot of time on it because

(01:00:21):
this one is almost certain that the Democrat is going
to win.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Her name is Abigail Spanberger.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
She's a former CIA agent or officer or something, and
her resume on paper looks really good, but when you
look at how she actually behaves, how she served in Congress,
not nearly as moderate as she likes to pretend to be.
You know, I don't think she's going to be good
for the state, but on paper she's good enough. And

(01:00:49):
the Republican candidate, who I really really really want to like, right,
she's a black conservative woman, and I want to really
like her, but I just don't think she's been a
very strong candidate. And I think the Democrat is going
to win that race by a pretty wide margin. Like
if it was less than eight, I'd be pretty surprised,

(01:01:10):
and if it was more like ten, eleven, twelve, I
wouldn't be particularly surprised. Now, what is interesting in Virginia
is the attorney general's race. And now you heard about
this because it's all over the news that the incumbent
is a Republican Jason Miares, I believe is how you
pronounce his name, and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
The guy who's running against.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Him, the Democrat running against him, is a state legislator
named J Jones. Now, J Jones got famous in a
way he didn't want to get famous in the news.
A few weeks back when a former legislative colleague of
his gave to I think it was National Review that
broke this story some texts that J Jones had sent her.

(01:01:52):
And we think that maybe J Jones didn't mean to
send a text to her, but maybe to somebody else.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
But I think she's a Republican, he's a Democrat.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
He sent texts to her talking about a senior Republican
in the state legislature. And J Jones said, if I
had two bullets and I had I forget who, he said,
Hitler Stalin and this Republican, you know what would I
do with the two bullets? And he said he would
shoot the Republican in the head with both bullets. Right,

(01:02:22):
And so these text messages came out. And then then
if you could imagine it getting worse than that, it did,
it did. Then there were more text messages where he
said something like he was sort of fantasizing about this
Republican's children dying in their mother's arms. Now, this guy

(01:02:47):
shouldn't never be eligible for public office. Again, I don't
care what you think of the Republican. Nobody should cast
a vote for this guy, and yet a lot of
people will. And I will note that while I think
the Republican is going to win this race, two polls

(01:03:08):
in a row now by two different organizations have the
Democrat leading by two points in that race. That would
really be something. And I do think a big part
of this is how many people on the Democrat side
are going to come out and vote for Spanberger for governor,

(01:03:29):
and as long as they're there, they'll just keep voting
D all the way down the line and vote for
this guy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
J Jones.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Can you imagine not just a guy winning just some
elected office, but a guy winning the top law enforcement
office in that state, the attorney general, being a guy
who fantasized about killing someone and then about that person's
children dying. Absolutely incredible, So you got to keep an

(01:04:00):
eye on that one. California Proposition fifty. I talked about
this already. This is Gavin Newsom's effort to pass a
ballot measure to override the state constitution because the state
constitution was amended with much push from Arnold Schwarzenegger when

(01:04:20):
he was governor. This was really his thing to do
what we do here in Colorado. Now, California did it
first to have nonpartisan commissions drawing congressional district lines. Texas
went ahead and did some redistricting in.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
A way that is aimed to knock a few.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Democrats out of Congress and pick up a few Republican seats,
and Gavin Newsom wants to do the same in California,
but in the opposite direction and knock some Republicans out
by redrawing the lines so that you include more Democrats
in some of these swing districts.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
So it looks like this thing is going to pass.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
And what's quite interesting about it is essentially none of
this campaign, especially from the side that is in favor
of doing this, none of this campaign was about how
it helps California. The entire campaign was do this to
push back against Donald Trump, do this to fight against Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
And it's working. It's gonna work.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
It's California and Colorado is the same way, by the way,
which is probably why. In something that is very very
disappointing to me, Phil Wiser, who is a Democratic candidate
for governor and the state's attorney general, came out publicly
saying he thinks Colorado should do the same thing and
amend and pass the ballot measure to quote unquote temporarily.

(01:05:37):
Phil says just one time, as if it'll be just
one time to just one time redraw our congressional maps.
I was very, very disappointed in Phil about that. Another
big election going on as mayor in New York City
where it appears that New Yorkers are likely to elect
as mayor an anti semi communist, and neither of those

(01:06:02):
is hyperbole. He's clearly anti Semitic. Even go back and
look at some of the speeches that he gave when he,
you know, in college or just out of college talking
about all this. You know, he like he founded the
Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at his college, which
is very very anti Israel, pro hamas all this. This
is a dude who couldn't get himself to walk away

(01:06:24):
from the phrase globalize the Entifada, which just means kill
Jews whenever you can find him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
He is a communist.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
He calls himself a democratic socialist, but if you actually
look at his policies, he's a communist.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
And New York looks likely to elect this guy.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Now, it's not impossible that there could be kind of
sneaky vote that doesn't show up in polling, and a
lot of people at the last minute when they say.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Oh my gosh, do I really want to live with
this guy?

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
You know, even maybe some Republicans because Donald Trump and
kind of sort of endorsed Andrew Cuomo yesterday, It's not
impossible that somehow Andrew Cuomo could sneak up and take
a win. But in the polling he's so far behind.
He's more than ten points behind, with the Republican who
refused to drop out of the race getting probably twelve

(01:07:09):
to fifteen points.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
If Mom Donmi.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
If Mom Donnie wins and the Republican gets significantly more
votes than Cuomo lost by a lot of people are
going to look at that Republican and say, boy, you
should have gotten out. That said, Andrew Cuomo is a
terrible candidate. Republicans have always hated him, and deservedly so.
He seems like a bad dude. He killed lots of
people during COVID by forcing nursing homes to take COVID

(01:07:35):
patients into the nursing homes, and then he had to
resign because of various sexual indiscretions, sexual harassment, indiscretions.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
It's not like he's a good candidate.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
And so I'll just say, you know, New Yorkers deserve
whatever happens to them now. They absolutely deserve it. And
if Mom Donnie wins, here's what I can tell you.
Unless I absolutely have to because of something that involves
my family where.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
I must be involved, I'm not going to go to
New York.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
I'm not going to spend a dollar in New York
as long as Mom Donnie is in office. And I
hope many Americans follow me on that. But we'll see
what happens tonight. I got a listener text a moment
ago Ross. You say, we'll see very often, maybe mix
in a different cliche periodically.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
We'll see. You knew that was coming, right dragon.

Speaker 5 (01:08:26):
If you didn't see that coming from a mile away,
you must be new here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Let me come to a local story here, this story
that really troubles me as a Colorado as an American.
Here's the headline, Colorado snap recipients flood local food banks.
And this plays into the bigger national conversation about the
federal government shutdown and then this fight where the Trump
administration is arguing that they can't use contingency funds in

(01:08:55):
order to fund SNAP, and that they don't have very
much money there anyway, and federal judge saying, no, you
have to use it, and so it looks like the
money may start dribbling out towards the states.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Then there's a whole question of because.

Speaker 1 (01:09:08):
This is not being done in a normal way, how
will the states even process it? What will they have
to do with their own systems to get it all
to work out. It's all kind of a mess. But
listen to this, and this is from our news partners
at KDVR Fox thirty one. Kdvr dot com is their website.
People lined up at the Metro Caring Caring Metro Caring

(01:09:29):
anti hunger organization in Denver on Monday. People lined up
needing food assistance in Colorado. Now listen to this. This
is the part that troubles me. In Colorado, about six
hundred thousand people receive SNAP benefits. Six hundred thousand people,
and about half of those are children. Those dollars are

(01:09:50):
put onto debit cards for groceries on a certain day
each month, So people who usually get their benefits on
the first, second or third day of the month, they're
already feeling the loss. Penny Grant said didn't get her
Snap distribution on November first, and since then she has
taken the bus to four different food banks. Quote it's
a little scary. I'm like, WHOA, what's going on? Because

(01:10:11):
I've never had to do it, so now all of
a sudden, I have to do it to eat to survive,
she said. Metro Caring as a fresh foods market where
people can pick out the groceries they need and take
them home for free, but it does require an appointment
in staff says those booked up faster than ever on Monday.
Even without an appointment, people can get grab and go
items like sandwiches and water. One person who works there

(01:10:35):
says everybody is just scrambling peanut butter and jellies and
peanuts are not going to last. Oh actually no, she
doesn't work there. She is somebody else who's on Snap
benefits and his concern she says, like, well, and so
she's planning ahead with her neighbors. Talking with her neighbors,
here's a quote like, well, what do you have, Let's
start making meals together. Maybe dinner time so we can

(01:10:56):
know that at least we all got to eat at
least once today.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
So let's just talk about this for a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
And I want anything that you have to say about this,
any thought that comes into your head as I share
this story with you, just text me at five six
six nine zero.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
There are a lot of different angles.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Obviously, there's a very there's very much of sort of
a conservative and libertarian angle. Big picture thing that doesn't
doesn't help deal with the problem we're dealing with today.
But the big picture thing is why is the government
feeding people? Especially this many people?

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Right? What are there three? Three and a half million?
How many people are in Colorado?

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
Dragon here? Let's let's look this pretty close. Yeah, population,
Let's see. I thought it was like, uh no, it's jeez, three?

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
Is Denver five?

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
Yeah? So yeah, Colorado was was five not long ago.
It's it's six now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Anyway, okay, So let's that's actually, that's that makes it easy.
Six million people, six hundred thousand people on food stamps,
ten percent of the population. And actually we knew it
was ten percent because we talked about the last week.
Ten percent of the population on foodstamps, and half of
those are kids. How does this happen in America? How
does And let me also mention, most of these people

(01:12:10):
actually have jobs. They're not mostly people lying around on
a couch smoking pot and playing guitar and playing video games.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Right, most of these people are working.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
And I'm gonna say a thing here that's gonna sound
a little bit like a thing a liberal would.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Say, But I'm going to say this as the opposite
of that, as a.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
Free market guy. Why do we have a situation where
people have jobs where it doesn't allow them to earn
enough money to eat? Now, I am not going where
the left goes, which is to say, raise the minimum

(01:12:53):
wage and force businesses to pay more through using the
threat of government force essentially as the lever to get businesses.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
To pay more.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
And don't forget government is force, right, You always remember
that government is forced. There are lots of things that
people wouldn't do that government wants them to do or
tells them they have to do, that people wouldn't do
if government didn't have guns in jails. Government is force.
There are things that you do that you wouldn't do
that because government tells you to do, but you wouldn't

(01:13:23):
do it. If I told you to do it, you
might do it if DRAGON told you to do it,
but you wouldn't do it if I told you to
do it. You definitely do it when government tells you
to do it because you don't want to go to
jail because government is force.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
What if, and now this is really a thought experiment.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
I'm not saying this is something I would, you know,
propose today if I were in Congress, because there have
to be some kind of transition out of these crazy
quasi socialist systems.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
But what if the food stamp.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
Program or SNAP they call it, it didn't exist, or
at least only existed for the truly deeply impoverished, for
people who couldn't work, who couldn't help themselves, Then what
you would have is employers trying to get workers, and

(01:14:11):
workers saying I'm sorry, I can't work for that amount.
You're gonna have to pay me more because otherwise I
can't put food on my family.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
To use a George W.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Bush'sm I want workers to be able to feed themselves
and to be able to feed their families without all
of this nonsense government distortion. So instead what happens is
you and I as tax payers pay for these people's food.
They take my money and your money through tax redistribution

(01:14:43):
in order to buy food for themselves and their kids.
And let me be clear, I don't want them going hungry.
I don't want Americans starving, you know, I don't. I
do want people to recognize that they are taking other
people's money, right.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
I want them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
I want them to know that, And frankly I want
people to I feel, I don't know, shame is probably
a little bit too far, but to at least recognize,
and I've said this before, Hey, we're spending other people's
money on our food, and to want to not do
that anymore. But within the current system, I don't think

(01:15:17):
that's gonna happen if I were in charge.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
What would we do?

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
If I were in charge, we would, over a period
of time, not necessarily all in one day, massively cut
back on government funding of food and instead put it
on the private sector through voluntary transactions with workers to

(01:15:41):
hire workers at a wage that the workers need in
order to be able to feed themselves. And if not,
the workers will say no, I'm gonna go work somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
It'll pay me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
Enough, and it's gonna take some time to get there.
If we ever even try it, it'll take some time
to get there. If we did this overnight, I think
a lot of people would go hungry. That said, I
also think there's a transition and a time of transition
that is something like what we're seeing right now, although
hopefully less acute than this, where nonprofits and individuals charities

(01:16:13):
jump into that void and say, if government isn't feeding you,
we will private people, private donations, private the private sector
will through the goodness of the hearts of the American people,
and we do have the best hearts. I know that
sounds trumpy, in any case, that's what I would do.
And when I see this story that ten percent of
the population of the state of Colorado get food stamps,

(01:16:37):
get SNAP benefits, I have to say, it makes me sad.
And there's got to be a better way. Ten percent
of the state of Colorado on food stamps called SNAP
and I said, let's eliminate that, and then companies will
pay people enough that they can actually afford food without
having the food come out of the taxpayer instead of
out of the employer where it should be coming from.

(01:16:58):
One listener says, what's the incentive for private companies to
do this, and another listener says the minimum wage should
be above the poverty level period. So I think I
think to the first question, the incentive is very It's
a simple concept. When you're hiring someone, you're just buy what.
You're buying something.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
What are you buying. You're buying their time, You're buying
their labor.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
And just the same way that if you go to
a car dealership and you try to buy a car
for thirty thousand dollars that they happen to have offered
at forty thousand dollars, and they might say to you, well,
we could negotiate some but I'm not going to get
anywhere near your price.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
I'm definitely not selling it to you at thirty thousand dollars.

Speaker 7 (01:17:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
It's it's the same kind of thing. It's just it's
a voluntary transaction.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
And if a worker knows that they're not going to
get other people's money, my money for their food, then
they're going to have to get money for their food
from their from their job. And if they get money
from the job that if they go work someplace, that
employer is going to have to pay enough or they
won't get the workers and it'll sort itself out over time.

(01:18:09):
And I do realize that I'm arguing for a market
based increase in wages that definitely might cause a market
based increase in prices. Right If there are people working
at some businesses, at some business and they're getting I'm
just going to pick a number, nineteen dollars an hour,
and then they find that that's not enough to feed

(01:18:30):
their family, and so they have to take some of my.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Tax money through food stamps.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Right in the aggregate, maybe they're getting the equivalent of
twenty seven dollars an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
I'm just making up a number there, right, But.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
What if we said, no, you can't take other people's
money anymore, and now this employer is going to have
to pay twenty seven dollars an hour or something like
it in order to get that worker. The worker will say,
I don't have a way to feed my family if
I'm only working at nineteen dollars an hour, You're gonna
have to pay me more, and that employer is going
to lose employees until they raise the wage. It's up
to some level that the employee will actually work, and

(01:19:07):
so that's the incentive of the employer is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
You've got to have the workers.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
And as far as the listener who says the minimum
wage should be above the poverty level, my answer to
that is the minimum wage should not exist at all.
There is I don't believe there is a legitimate government
role in interfering involuntary contracts. So maybe there's somebody who
has a particular living situation and they're willing and able

(01:19:34):
to work for less than somebody else. Why should I
tell a business that they are not allowed to hire
somebody who is willing to work for some lower price.
And I realized this is intention. This is in a
kind of tension with the thing I just said before.
Maybe there are people who don't have kids, don't have families,

(01:19:56):
don't need as much income, can work for nineteen dollars
an hour, don't need twenty seven dollars an hour. We'll
keep working for nineteen dollars an hour, and then that
particular employer maybe won't have to go go have to
pay more. But in that case, at least the customers
of that business won't have to pay more either. But
in any case, what we're dealing with is just one

(01:20:17):
distortion after another. And I don't believe in trying to
solve one government caused distortion by imposing another government caused distortion.

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
What you end up with is like Obamacare, right, that
is what that is.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
That is a situation where government wrecked the health insurance
market so much that the public demanded rather than freedom
and consumer choice, which public doesn't really understand, they demanded
more government intervention, more rules, and more subsidies. And now
we have Obamacare, the Unaffordable Care Act. Remember even the
Washington Post called Barack Obama's claim, if you like your doctor,

(01:20:53):
you can keep your doctor. The Washington Post called that
the biggest lie of the year that year. And now
we're going to have these massive, massive spikes in some places,
at least for some people in Obamacare premiums. It's being
talked about by the politicians as if that's a result
of expiring Obamacare subsidies that were temporary subsidies.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
That's only a small part of it. Even if the subsidies.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
Get get extended, the premiums are still going to explode
because of the structure of the system. And you have
all of these systems now where you've got government pushing
a group Goldberg kind of fix to paper over a
problem they caused, rather than just undoing the things they

(01:21:40):
did that caused the problem to begin with.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
So I'm for freedom, I'm for less redistribution.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
I am for the private sector handling these problems, and
I deeply believe that in most cases, the private sector
will handle these problems in an Adam Smith kind of way,
not out of the generosity of any particular employer or business,
but out of their own self protection and self preservation.

(01:22:10):
But we're never even going to be able to try
until the government stops redistributing your money and mind. So
listeners may recall that, oh, two weeks ago, Ish I
had a guest on the show, author author Alex de Mill, who,
along with his famous father Nelson de Mill, they co

(01:22:31):
wrote a novel called The Ten Men. And you will recall,
if you heard that conversation, that Nelson passed away before
the book was finished, and I had Alex on the
show to talk about his dad and talk about the book.
And the subject of the book is the military using
humanoid essentially human looking robots as soldiers. And there's a
lot more to the story. That's just the very kind

(01:22:53):
of top line, and we're not to talk about the
book today. But that had me thinking about this and
I started doing a little bit of reading online about
robots as soldiers, about using robots in war and I
found a fascinating company online called Foundation Future Industries. And
Matt leblon Mike LeBlanc, who is I had Matt earlier

(01:23:14):
on the show, Mike LeBlanc who is co founder of
Foundation Future Industries and served in the US Marines and
is joining us talk about the future of robots in warfare.
So thanks so much for being here, Mike. I really
appreciate I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
Ross One one nerdy question because I'm I'm a nerd
and I assume you are too. Your company's name, Foundation
Future Industries.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
Is that a reference to Isaac Asimov?

Speaker 4 (01:23:49):
It is.

Speaker 8 (01:23:50):
Yeah, that's that's where we got the foundation and then
wanting to be like Tony Starks, what got us the industries?

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Awesome?

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
All right, So tell me a little bit, just at
the highest level, what your company does, and then we're
going to jump into some of the ins and outs
of the potential of robots in war.

Speaker 8 (01:24:08):
Yeah, so, you know, everybody's familiar with you know, open
AI chant GBT and what Generative AI has done. The
puzzle that really started to unlock was the idea of
embodied AI. And so all of a sudden, you've seen
tons of robotics companies come out over the past couple
of years that are putting that same AI into robots,

(01:24:28):
not just having them know things like Alexa, but also
being able to move through the world and intelligibly then.

Speaker 2 (01:24:35):
Actually move things around. And so we started last April.

Speaker 8 (01:24:39):
We already have a fully walking, fully functioning humanoid, so
in the shape of the human human. It's about the
same size as me. It's a one hundred and seventy
five pounds about six feet tall. And we have these
working twenty four hours in factories right now. And then
we also have some defense contracts with Army, Navy, and
Air Force with that we're using to test these for

(01:25:00):
deployments into combat and non combat rules.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
Okay, before we get to the combat, give us a
sense of the functions these robots are performing for companies
that are not in the defense space. Right now, it's
almost all auto manufacturing, and so you know, the first
you know, when you walk into I think of these plans,
they're filled with robots already. The robots are just not
in the shapes of humans, right, And so every time

(01:25:24):
I see a human, I ask the plant manager, why
is a human still doing this?

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
Why hadn't you automated it? You'd be surprised. They have
very good reasons for this.

Speaker 8 (01:25:31):
It's usually because they don't have high dexterity and locomotion
and so you know, it can plug right in and
pack parts, move clips around things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:40):
Okay, So one of the things I wonder about the
shape of the robots humanoid why is it an optimal
shape functionally? Is it something that is easier to integrate
into some kind of work environment because people who are

(01:26:01):
managing them can quote unquote relate to them better because
they look kind.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
Of like people I like.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
I wonder especially the first question, I really wonder, are
we an optimal shape for something?

Speaker 4 (01:26:14):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
I think that the real thing is to ask is
are we optimal beings? Right? Because the world as we
imagine it is perfect.

Speaker 8 (01:26:23):
You hear every software company come out and talk about
how you're going to open up your phone and it's
going to make you coffee and open your windows. That's
not how the world really works. The world works in workarounds.
You know, you can go to the fanciest restaurant on
the planet and if their table is wobbly, they're gonna
put a piece of cardboard under it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
It is just we are a world of workarounds.

Speaker 8 (01:26:44):
And because we are like that, having a human shaped
robot makes you able to fix any problem that you have.
So instead of trying to create the perfect optimal shape
for whatever that small task is, you can create this
one sque right, put all of your money into making
this is cheap and and fishing as possible, and you
will replace any human sized task, which is a ton

(01:27:04):
of tasks.

Speaker 2 (01:27:05):
So that's that's how we kind of landed on the
form factor.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Very clever, very very clever. I should mention well, I
mentioned that I mentioned that Mike served in the Marines,
And this is kind of funny based on a comment
I said to you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
Before we went on the air.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
But a listener wants to know if the humanoid robots
will eat crayons.

Speaker 8 (01:27:29):
You know, it is it's kind of funny you asked
that because I always think everybody's all afraid of AI.
AI really has taken over the spot of the midwit.
If you have like a one ten IQ one ten.
Your job is pretty much done for right now and
it is moving out to the edges. So they cannot
eat crans yet, they cannot win Nobel prizes yet.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
But AI works from the middle out. Uh huh that's
did you say mid wit? Yeah? Yeah, the midwits I had.

Speaker 8 (01:27:58):
I had an old professor that you used to always
refer to the midwits because you said midwits are the
most dangerous people on earth because most people can speak
and understand within about thirty IQ points of themselves. And
so that's why when you have really smart people that
run for office, they don't connect with anybody, or we
have really dumb people, but all of your politicians basically
fall into that category of midwits.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Wow. Wow, that is a fantastic and exceptionally elitist concept
that I fully approve of.

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):
I have a book on my bookshelf.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Well it's in a box right now because we're renting
a house and I didn't unpack everything. But I have
a book on my bookshelf that I've had for probably
thirty years, entitled in Defensive Elitism. And I'm not going
to get into all that right now, but boy, would
the concept of midwit.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
Fit in there perfectly.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
And actually there are actually enormous societal conversations to be
had about that, as you just.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
Did regarding who AI is going to replace.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
All right, so I probably need to have you back
to talk about that stuff, because that's that's fascinating. Okay,
let's talk about now, robots as warriors, robots as soldiers,
robots in defense. First of all, and this is something
you mentioned to me just in passing kind of before
we got onto the on the air. Your company, Foundation

(01:29:16):
Future Industries, is one of the few, one of the
maybe the only, that is looking to make robots to
be used as soldiers.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
Why.

Speaker 8 (01:29:30):
Yeah, well, you know, I mean there are a lot
of companies that are doing this in China and for China,
so you know, the the nuclear bomb has already been
created and it's already going to be used by potential adversaries.
But in the US are there are six humanoid companies
that have been valued at a billion dollars or more
or one of those six. Of those six, we're the

(01:29:51):
only ones that are working with the Department of War,
and most of those six have signed a non weaponization
pledge saying.

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):
That these robots will never be armed in an Wow.

Speaker 8 (01:30:01):
And you know, I think, I think this really comes
back to it's it's just different approaches to life, right.
There are there are other we'resau people who look at
the world as everyone is really nice and we need
to try to educate them to be even nicer. That's
where the world should be. And then there are the
Hobbes people that says the reason you lock the doors
at night is because you know that people are fundamentally
greedy and want to.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Take your stuff. Mm hmm. I think that we are.
You know, it's it's us and.

Speaker 8 (01:30:25):
Tesla are probably the only two that live in the
Hobbsy in reality, and Tesla has shown no interest yet
in the Department of war.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
Yeah, interesting, it's interesting. Hobbes analogy solitary, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutal in short.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
I mean, you're the philosophy major, so you tell me solitary, poor, nasty,
brutal in short.

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
I think, I think. Okay, here's what I think.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
I think within the United States, the truth is somewhat
closer to the idealistic version than the Hobbesian version. But
you must defend yourself against the Hobbesian version, even if
that's a very very small percentage of the population. And
then when you start talking about, you know, wars with
foreign powers, then it's all Hobbs all the time. I mean,

(01:31:17):
you think about Vladimir Putin and wherever you want to go.
Obviously you have to assume that if you're talking about war.
So tell us some of the capabilities of the of
the Phantom MK one.

Speaker 8 (01:31:32):
So right now we have the robot that has contracts
with the Army of the Navy and Air Force. As
I mentioned, those are doing things like maintenance of aircraft.
So we'll look at a C one thirty and we'll
do all the inspections to make sure the tires are
filled with air, make sure all of the rivets have
been up properly, things like that before they take off.
But we are beginning to move into things like mount

(01:31:52):
operations mount is military operations in urban terrain, so going
in clearing cities things like that. You know, we had
a we had a saying when I was in the
Marine Corps, never send a marine where you can send
a bullet. First, we now say, never send a marine
where you can send a robot first. The idea is
to have this robot enter the room and be the
bullet sponge instead of a nineteen year old American that has.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
To go into that space.

Speaker 8 (01:32:15):
We're also working with a lot of breaching capabilities, so
breaking into doors, breaking.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Into windows, shooting off locks, those types of things. So again,
take marines out of harm's way.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
Okay, couple follow ups on the first function. Let's say
aircraft maintenance. Does the robot see the rivet and know,
all right, there's a rivet. I need to inspect that.
I'm going to use whatever my hands can do or
whatever tools I put in my robot hands, and you know,

(01:32:46):
make sure that rivet is tight enough. And then see
here's the next rivet to the right. Now, I need
to do that one or is it somehow more of
a mental map? And so if you covered the robot's eyes,
that would still be able.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
To do that same function.

Speaker 8 (01:33:02):
So we're doing this all with AI and the perception
capabilities are amazing. So when the robot is reaching for something,
you can move whatever that piece is and it will follow.

Speaker 2 (01:33:12):
The part will pick it up from where it is.

Speaker 8 (01:33:14):
It knows how to maneuver its hands to be able
to pick it up things like rivets those you know,
that's really like a machine learning capability. So just the
same as they used to have people at Google that
would click on a bunch of pictures of cats to
teach the system what a count was, we have the same.

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
Thing through video data that shows it what a good
rivet looks like and what a bad rivet looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
Wow, So it really does see it, and it really
is responding to its environment more or less the same
way that a human with that task would.

Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
It's amazing.

Speaker 8 (01:33:45):
Once you actually start breaking down what a human being
does in any given situation, you realize so much of
it is just based on images to come in and
so having things like cameras and being able to just
make basic sense of what's in that picture. That's what
we're doing all the time in blue collar work, in defense,
in defense work, when we're driving cars.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
So that's exactly what the robots do.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:34:06):
We're talking with Mike LeBlanc. He's co founder of Foundation.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
Future Industry is the website Foundation dot bot like Robot
Foundation dot b o T and they are, as far
as we know, the only American company making robots designed
to go to war. So right now, what is the

(01:34:30):
capability of a robot And if it doesn't have the
capability right now, when will it to uh pick up
an M four or or sit in the back of
a pickup truck with a finger on a on a
you know, on a mounted fifty or three oh eight
and and and take out the enemy and and target

(01:34:52):
and not and not engage in friendly fire.

Speaker 5 (01:34:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
Well, and and that's that's kind of an important point,
you know, to this perception.

Speaker 8 (01:35:00):
I think that a lot of people picture a humanoid
on the battlefield and they picture Terminator, and they think
this robot's going to determine a good guy from a
bad guy, just like a good rivet from a bad ribbon.
You know, the fact of the matter is we have
tons of robots already on the battlefield. Drones are airborne robots,
and there is no drone in the military that is
making decisions about who and when to kill. There are

(01:35:23):
I used to be in air strikes, right one of
the many bureaucratic layers, but of all these people that
do intelligence work to make sure that we know when
we're going to drop a bomb humanoids. Every conversation that
we have is exactly the same. There would be many
approvals processes from the humans, so the human not just
in Lupo, human on.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
Top of every action of the robot. That's the basic idea.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
Yeah, but if you had a platoon size, much less
a battalion size group of these robots going out in
a land war in Europe or to defend Taiwan, how
do you manage a group of semi autonomous or potentially
fully autonomous things? How can you manage that and make

(01:36:06):
sure that you have the control that you think you
have and that you intend to have.

Speaker 8 (01:36:12):
So it'll be very similar to how we're doing it
in auto manufacturing, which is the robots know how to
do all their tactical measures, so they know when to
pick something up and if that thing move, they know
they know where to reach for it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
Yeah, but you have a fleet.

Speaker 8 (01:36:24):
Management system that says, here's the line you need to
be working on, here are the parts that you need
to be moving.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
The same would be true of a platoon.

Speaker 8 (01:36:31):
You'll be able to give it a mission, just like
you would give a opportunity for marines, and then they'll
be able to carry out the individual actions.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
So if there's a step over them.

Speaker 8 (01:36:39):
They're going to know to take a step up to
reach hire and things like that, but all the major
decisions will be made by a human.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
I'm still wondering, like, in the heat of the moment, like,
do you tell a robot that's going to take out
an HVT and a building in Fallujah? You tell them
like just just assume everyone you see is a bad guy,
or do you say, well, there might be women and
children there. I bet you could probably teach a robot
what a child looks like and don't shoot a child,

(01:37:06):
But that sounds to me like a very very difficult
thing to program.

Speaker 2 (01:37:12):
Yeah, so far they.

Speaker 8 (01:37:13):
Haven't had any conversations that wouldn't have a human actually
being there for a robot where to pull the trigger.
And really in this right in autom manufacturing makes no
sense to have one to one human to robot, but
in the military it absolutely does, as long as that
person is taken out of harm's way, just the same
as we have operators.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
Interesting, my colleague Mandy Connell just came in and I
told her she really needs to listen to some of this,
and Mandy has a has what's your question for Michael Blanc?

Speaker 9 (01:37:39):
I mean The biggest question that I have is how
are these unhackable? Because as many people say, hey, we've
got a great security system here, ultimately, when you are
remotely sending directions into your robot army, that is something
that can be exploited by the enemy. How do you
protect against that?

Speaker 8 (01:37:59):
Yeah, well, one of the biggest differences in our AI
approach is that we are trying to put all the
compute at the edge, which means instead of having all
of the decision making capabilities take place in the cloud
and then be deployed to a robot to take actions,
we're trying to put as much on the robot locally
as possible.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
So it would actually take breaking.

Speaker 8 (01:38:18):
Into one individual robot, you wouldn't be able to take
over the entire fleet. For example, if a robot we're
getting broken into hats that would take some kind of
physical response from a person and that would be an
easy thing to shut down the robot.

Speaker 9 (01:38:32):
So how do the robots work together as a team
if they are autonomous in that way?

Speaker 8 (01:38:38):
Yeah, Well, that's what we're really building toward, and we've
been working with a lot of companies in the defense
space for this because the idea of having all of
these coordinated, not only with humanoids humanoid, but humanoid.

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
To drone and other sensors.

Speaker 8 (01:38:52):
That's really the picture of the future of warfare is
to get all these actions together.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):
So that is not built out yet for any of ours.

Speaker 8 (01:38:58):
We've been focused very much on individual actions, improving exactly
what each robot can do. But that's what we're building toward,
is one single picture that they're all all operating off of.

Speaker 2 (01:39:09):
Wow. It just remarkable.

Speaker 1 (01:39:11):
So what would you say, how close do you think
you are to a robot really being able to perform
the kind of function we've just been talking about now,
like go out in combat while holding a rifle.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
Yeah, I think we're looking at one to three years. Wow,
that saints get there.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:39:27):
The one of the biggest misconceptions about what's going on
with embodied AI is that people think this is a
ten to fifteen year problem, And we've been around for
eighteen months. We already have a robot that is working
twenty four hours a day, five days a week on
a manufacturing floor. We did I just got the email
we got we did nineteen thousand parts and on one
line last month.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
I mean, this thing is this thing is in business.

Speaker 8 (01:39:51):
This thing is out there today commercially and these steps
in the military. It's it's not a far it's not
a far crowd amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:58):
Are are you allowed to answer the question of how
much it costs to buy one of these robots?

Speaker 7 (01:40:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:40:04):
Right now.

Speaker 8 (01:40:04):
Commercially for our first first five customers, it is one
hundred thousand per robot per year that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:10):
A year will go that's pretty much. Yeah, that's yeah,
that's interesting. It's sort of a subscription model, right, really.

Speaker 8 (01:40:20):
Completely, Yeah, and that includes all field services and maintenance everything.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
We've tried to make this really easy to buy.

Speaker 8 (01:40:26):
So instead of having to go get a big capital expense,
which people have to do and they typically buy a robot,
you can just remove your payroll. So if you have
a work style that is working twenty four hours a day,
you're probably paying those people each sixty grand, say one
hundred and eighty thousand a year. That is where we
come in have huge forty plus percent savings. And the
robot is plugged in today so it can work all

(01:40:48):
all those twenty four hours.

Speaker 2 (01:40:49):
And yeah, safety morning day one, absolutely incredible. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
I could talk to you for hours more, but we
got to go. I'll definitely get you back on the show.
Mike LeBlanc is co founder of Foundation Future Industries Foundation
dot Bot Uh the only American company, as far as
he knows, and as far as I know, and I
don't know anything, but as far as he knows, the
only American company making robots with the intention of being
used in war, which is inevitable by the way, and.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
These other American companies.

Speaker 1 (01:41:17):
That aren't doing it are just cutting themselves out of
a market that's really important.

Speaker 2 (01:41:21):
Mandy, did you want to add something real quick?

Speaker 9 (01:41:23):
I can hardly wait for war to be rock'm soccer robots.
I can't wait. Come on, it's gonna be amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
I can't wait for a robot that has a Marine
Corps insignia on it eating crayons. Ah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:39):
Yes, that that will be the best. Mike, thank you
so much. This was really fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:41:44):
We'll do it again, and congratulations on your success so far.

Speaker 2 (01:41:48):
And I wish you a lot more.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
And I'm very grateful that you guys are focused on
defending the country when so many other companies are refusing
to take part.

Speaker 2 (01:41:56):
I'm I'm proud of you for that, all right, Mandy.
Thank you so much. All right, good talking to you. Hi, Mandy, Hello,
can you.

Speaker 9 (01:42:04):
See you.

Speaker 2 (01:42:07):
Want to do?

Speaker 9 (01:42:07):
You have time to ruin the show today?

Speaker 5 (01:42:09):
My show?

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
I don't. Oh whatever, sorry.

Speaker 9 (01:42:12):
Because I have all the answers to your questions about
the welfare. I have been thinking about this problem, swear
to God, on a regular continuing basis for twenty years,
and I have suggestions that are real and genuine, thoughtful
policy positions that I've shared with so many flipping politicians
that can solve a huge portion of this issue. And

(01:42:32):
to your point about not wanting people to suffer in poverty,
I want them to be uncomfortable in poverty.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
I do too.

Speaker 9 (01:42:38):
That's the difference between suffering and uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
I want them to be uncomfortable when they are living
off of other people's.

Speaker 9 (01:42:44):
Correct I don't think that's unreasonable.

Speaker 1 (01:42:47):
Yeah, all right, everybody stick around for Mandy's fabulous show.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
I'll talk with you tomorrow.