12-16-25 - *FULL SHOW* More Bondi Thoughts; Crazy Obamacare Costs; Trump v Reiner

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm ross. There's Gina a nice sweater like that sweater, Gina,
thanks very good. Another thrifted one in the men's section.
What what I could tell that was maybe a men's sweater.
Isn't it small for a man? Though? Like learning in it?
I mean the sleeves are three times the width of
your arms, so I wouldn't And yeah, much, No, it's

(00:20):
not small. Okay, it's not small. You know. It's funny.
So my wife tried to give me a sweater for
Hanik yesterday. It looked a little bit like that, but
a little more Christmasy or something. And you know, it's
still in the plastic things ll bean sweater or something
and I and I looked at it through the plastic
wrap and I said, I will never wear that. Go

(00:42):
return it, Go return it. And she knew that was
She knew that was coming. What So you're you're open
about your gifts. If you hate them, you will tell her.
Oh yeah, we've reached out.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
You're not.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
You're not married long enough to quite be there yet,
but you'll get there soon enough. What about you, producer Dragon,
you ever tell your spouse or does your spouse ever
tell you? Like, Hey, just go return that.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
I don't want it, not to throw Kristin under the
bus here, but I think my wife knows me to know,
because you just even stated that Kristin knew going in
that this might not work. Yeah, I don't think missus
Redbeard goes in going this might not work.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, christ that this might not work at all. Yeah,
Kristen's willing to take that chance, especially if it's something
she thinks she would like to see me wear. I
think she buys you fun clothes, right, yeah, with the
shirts and stuff or now, speaking of shirts, Dragon, have
I seen that one before?

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Probably? I haven't gotten new clothes, and I don't know
how long.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean, I'm so unused. That shirt has a collar,
doesn't it?

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Why do people get weirded out when I wear a
shirt with a collar.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
It's unusual. And I both think I've only ever seen
you in one other collared shirt here at work, and
I don't think it was that one. I think it's
a like a Robin's egg blue. Yeah, all right, but
still shorts with it, of course? Love it. Yeah, Okay,
got a ton to do today. We're going to sort
of alternate between you know, very serious stuff and less

(02:06):
serious stuff, and I want to do a very serious
thing right now. Yeah, and first let me just make
a personal note. Yesterday was a difficult show for me,
and it was it was made much better by having
Gena and Dragon here for a variety of reasons, after
that massacre and bond I and then you know, as

(02:27):
somebody listening to the radio, you might not think of this,
but just to give you a little kind of look
into my brain and maybe this will make sense. It's
not an easy thing to come in here and have
to talk for a living when you've got stories like
the Bondai massacre and the Rob Reiner murderer even before
Trump said what he said, and the Brown University shooting,

(02:51):
and the same day need to come in and talk
about the fantastic Broncos win over the Packers, which was
a fantastic Broncos win in a big thing for Denver.
It's not an easy thing, just kind of psychological. I'm
not asking you to feel bad for me. I'm just
telling you, like, this is what I all of us,
not just me, trying to balance yesterday. And it's a challenge.

(03:13):
It's I mean, how often is there some big positive
local story along with one of the worst non local stories.
Let's say that you can imagine. So anyway, first, you know,
thanks to all the listeners who sent in such kind words,
and also just to repeat, you know, I'm very grateful
to Gina and Dragon for having just been such a

(03:34):
great part of making yesterday's show something that I could,
something that I could get through. Frankly, so I didn't
spend as much time yesterday as I would have liked
to talking about some of my thoughts coming out of
the Australia massacre at Bondi Beach, and I just want
to take a couple of minutes on that because so

(03:57):
many things went wrong there and there are so many
conversations that could come out of that if we're willing
to have them, and let me just start with a couple.
First of all, I think it was a huge failure
both of the organization that organized this huge event celebrating

(04:18):
Hanek on the beach, but even more so of the
government and the police in Sydney in that area by
Bondai to not have armed security there from the beginning.
How could you in this day and age, with the
Australian government having been warned by MOSAD for the last
few months of serious risks of attacks on Jews, how

(04:44):
could you not have armed security there? Now? I do
not know if in Australia it's even possible to have
armed private security. It might not be. I don't know.
It might be that the only way to have armed
security is to have the police there. But why were
they're not police there? It took police five minutes to
get there. Apparently five minutes is an eternity when you've

(05:07):
got two guys with hunting rifles shooting into a big crowd,
almost impossible to miss. Why was there not armed security?
And then when the police got there? And again, we're
gonna learn a lot more about this, so I don't
want to go too far down this road of you know,
casting aspersions, but there certainly are reports and what appeared

(05:30):
to be some pictures of some police hiding. And again
I realized the bad guys had long guns. I get it,
I get it, and being a cop on you know,
there's a line there between, you know, the kind of
bravery you're supposed to show being in that job and
just an outright suicide mission. I get it. But it

(05:52):
seemed like the shooting kept going for some minutes, not
seconds after the police arrived. We will find out more
we need to know about that. The son is a
father and son. The father was an immigrant, the son
was born in Australia. The son was investigated for ties
to an ISIS cell. Why was the father then allowed

(06:22):
still allowed to own all these guns that he owned
legally in a country that is famous, by the way,
for having a quote unquote gun ban. But if you
look at the actual data the number of guns in Australia, yes,
it did go down noticeably after the gunman came into
place thirty years ago or whenever that was after the
massacre in Tasmania, but it's been steadily going up since then.

(06:42):
And let me just say, I'm not talking here about
you know what you or I think gun policy should be.
Do keep in mind that Australia does not have a
Second Amendment, all right, and I'm not here to debate
with you whether they should. They don't, so they put
in this gun ban, but then they've been sort of

(07:03):
not in fortant like they've been allowing people to acquire guns. Again,
Please don't take this as an anti gun commentary. I'm
just saying, if that's gonna be your law. The people
aren't gonna have guns, then make it, then have it
be your law. He had six okay, he had six
and he was an immigrant whose son was investigated for ties.

(07:25):
To isis why was he allowed to have six guns?
Why why was he even still in the country. And
so this is the other point that I made, and
I hope that you will do me the favor in
the honor of going to my substack at Rosskominski dot
substack dot com. Today's note actually is about what President

(07:47):
Trump said about the death of Rob Ryan, or yesterday's
note was a lot of thoughts about what happened in Australia.
And if you go to Rosskiminsky dot substack dot com,
I try to write a couple of times a week
and it's free and I think the writing is pretty good,
and I hope you will do that and subscribe doesn't
cost you anything. And so I got a few other

(08:10):
quick points here. One the Labor Party government of Australia,
which is kind of like the Democratic Party here, a
little bit more left than that, but not crazy socialists left.
Mostly they have some crazy socialists kind of like the
Democrats do here. They have been consistently supporting the Palestinians

(08:30):
and opposing Israel in Israel's war of self defense against
the Gaza terrorists, as as much of Western Europe equivocated
about this, and Gina mentioned in her newscast yesterday that
the Israeli President Prime Minister Benjamin net Nyahu had criticized

(08:51):
the Australian Prime Minister, saying, you are encouraging anti Semitism
by all of your ridiculous and wrong statement about what's
going on in that war. And that's saying the Palestinians
should have their own country and all this stuff. And
it's true, all of these liberals or whatever you want
to call them, are encouraging anti Semitism with their lies about,

(09:16):
you know, saying Israel's doing this or that, or committing genocide,
all of this nonsense. What did you think is going
to happen in a country like Australia with eight times
as many Muslims as Jews. Eight times as many Jews
are something like half a percent of the population in Australia.
By the way, Jews are like two tenths of one

(09:38):
percent of the world's population, and yet so many people
feel like they have to spend all their time hating
me for being Jewish. It's really weird. It's really weird.
But Australia and Europe they need to figure out their
immigration situation in a hurry. I've said for years I

(10:02):
would much rather have America's immigration problem than Europe's or Australia's,
because well, right now our immigration, our border's pretty under control.
But previously the people who were flooding in at least
were mostly people with some kind of commonality of values
coming out of a Judeo Christian culture. That is not

(10:22):
what's going on in Europe and Australia, and it is
a huge, huge problem. Before a whole bunch of things
happen that have dominated the news for the last few days,
and I don't need to remind you what they are.
One of the very big things that was in the
news and will certainly be again because it's going on.
Congress is dealing with it right now. This week is

(10:43):
the upcoming expiration of additional temporary Obamacare subsidies that were
in one of the COVID era bills written by Democrats.
They put these subsidies in is temporary. Now they're expiring,
and some folks want them extend, and it's become a
pretty big political issue. Joining us talk about the ins

(11:04):
and outs of this and her position on the issue
is Katie Berg, Senior director of Federal Affairs at Blood
Cancer United, which is part of the Keep Americans Covered coalition. So, Katie,
welcome to Kowa. Thanks for being here, ross pleasure to
be issue. Okay, we got about five minutes here, so
briefly describe what the issue is like. Add a little

(11:28):
detail to what I just said. What's expiring? Why does
it matter? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (11:33):
So, around two hundred thousand people in the state of
Colorado currently receive these tax credits, these enhanced tax credits,
and what they do is on a monthly basis, they
help lower the monthly premium payment to make quality, comprehensive
coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces more affordable. Many
of the people who are on these exchange plans are

(11:56):
small business owners, entrepreneurs, early retirees, student amongst millions of
other people across the country, some of whom have serious
and chronic illnesses.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
So, as an organization like Blood.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
Cancer United weighs the differences between the expiry and the
continuation of these tax credits. We know that for patients
and for people, they're critically important.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
So I have some serious concerns about this. And I'm
going to sort of overgeneralize here, but wouldn't it be
nice if everybody could get everything for free?

Speaker 5 (12:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (12:28):
This is other people's money that we spend with these
tax with these subsidies, and they were designed to be
temporary to begin with. And I believe, but you tell
me if I'm wrong that they're primarily aimed at what
you might call the upper income section of people who
are eligible for subsidies, which doesn't mean upper income Americans,

(12:50):
but just not the poorest Americans. And I have a
lot of concerns along the lines of maybe it was
Ronald Reagan who said there's nothing more permanent than a
temporary government program. That's a good point, Ross.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
I mean, I'll say here that it is not something
that is a handout. Right, These are hand ups for
millions of Americans. And on top of that, while some
people pay very little for these plans, there are many
more who are set to see their premiums double or
even triple. So for example, you know, we have an
advocate with living with MS whose family has also been

(13:28):
impacted by blood cancer. In main, she is right above
the Medicaid threshold, which is, you know, a very low
amount of annual income close to forty thousand dollars for
a family of four. Both of her children are also
in college and they are supporting them. And on top
of that, she has a very high cost chronic condition.

(13:49):
If the tax credits were going to go away, even
for people who are very low income like her family,
she had to leave her job because her disease had
progressed to a point where she could no longer sustain
her her.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Work.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
Her premium what increase from around forty dollars a month
to one hundred and sixty dollars a month, and that's
not something that she can afford. And so she's already
thinking about what scans can she miss? Can she cut
her pills in half? Is she okay with going blind
for a while? What can she afford in terms of
her disease progression to make sure that she's not financially

(14:23):
ruining her family? And she already has a big pile
of medical debt. So when we talk about like using
other people's money, everybody contributes, right, It's an insurance insurance
means that everybody puts their money in and you spread
risk across the risk pool. I think when we think
about people's health, this really isn't a giveaway. It's ensuring

(14:44):
that people can stay in their jobs. It's ensuring that
people can stay with their families. It's more loved hours
with loved ones, and so thinking about the temporariness of
this is yes, they were designed to be temporary, but
we are now on.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
The precipice of coverage.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
Losses in the millions of people across the country.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
That means more medical debt.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
Fewer people who are securely housed, people who get their
credit run before they apply for a job, but means
they're less likely to be employable in the future. So
we think about the knock gone effects here. This is
really serious business.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, we've got about one minute left. Let me run
one other thing by you. And this is not exactly
what we're talking about, but very closely related. My understanding
is that when it comes to these massive increases in
health insurance premiums, and this would be within the exchanges
and not there are a lot of drivers out there
that are pushing up health insurance premiums and maybe some

(15:42):
real structural issues that Congress should deal with. I don't
think they will very soon, but who knows. And I
thought that at least in some cases, that even if
these tax subsidies were extended, a lot of these folks
would still see big increases in their premiums because the
subject the expiration is only part of it. Is that right?

Speaker 4 (16:06):
Yeah, Affordability continues to be an issue across not only
the economy, but especially in healthcare. There are significant drivers
of cost across the healthcare spectrum. The tax credits are
not the driver of the cost. They are a way
to blunt the trauma from the cost on American families.
That said, Congress does have an opportunity to address these
cost drivers, and there are several good things on the table,

(16:29):
like addressing PBM reforms. Site neutral in Medicare is also
one that can help lower the cost for everybody. There
are options on the table, and yet we do not
see Congress pursuing them in a serious way.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, I agree, and I will note there was a
little jargon in there for folks with PBMs and strike
neutral and all that. But those are real issues that
maybe we'll get to talk about another day. Katie Berg
is senior director of Federal Affairs at Blood Cancer United,
which is part of the Keep Americans Covered coalition. I
can't say you've convinced me, but you're a very good
spokesperson for years side of the argument, and you've certainly

(17:06):
giving me something to think about. Thanks so much for
being here. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
We just want people to stay healthy, be healthy, lived
through their cancer diagnosis.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Thanks ros all right, all right, me too, Me too.
All right, that was a very interesting conversation. I will
say I still think I still think it's a handout.
We have a ton of stuff still to do on
today's show. One of the things I like to talk
about when we come back. There are a lot of
people who get really, really mad when you learn how
much money CEOs of big corporations are making, and I'm

(17:36):
going to offer at least a partial defense of very
high ceo salaries. Just as Gina was mentioning that we're
waiting for the jobs report, we got the jobs report,
and the USA added sixty four thousand jobs in November.
Even though that's actually kind of a low number historically,
it's a little bit better than what the market had

(17:58):
been expecting, which was somewhere and the depending on who
you were asking, forty five thousand to fifty thousand jobs range.
One very interesting data point here actually is the unemployment
rate ticked up from four point four percent, which was
reported for September. I think we're never going to get

(18:19):
October because of the government shutdown. It doesn't matter all
that much, but four point four percent in September. Economists
had estimated it uptick to four point five percent, but
instead it came in four point six percent. Now we
don't have the next decimal point, so we don't know
about the rounding. Right, it could have been four point
five six percent, and they rounded up to four point six,

(18:43):
where if it had come in at four point five
four percent, it would have been rounded down to four
point five. But still it's an interesting number. And I
think what you will hear, because these things always become political,
is that Trump won't President Trump and his advisors they
won't so much talk about sixty four thousand jobs because

(19:03):
that's not a very good number, but they will talk
about how the job's number was better than economists estimated.
And on the other side, the Democrats are going to
talk about how we are seeing an increase in unemployment.
So one other just small thing, and I have not
looked into the data, so I'm not saying I know

(19:24):
this is what is going on here. But you can
get what appears to be an increase in unemployment when
people who were and I'm going to be very precise
about this, okay, people who were not only not working
but not looking for jobs. If you are not working
and not looking for a job, even if you're old

(19:44):
enough to be in the workforce, you don't count as unemployed.
You only count as unemployed if you're looking for a job.
So if people are feeling a little bit or more
than a little bit of financial pressure and they have been,
maybe let's say they were retired a little early. You know,
they're sixty three years old, retired a little bit early,
thought they were fine, now feel not so fine, or

(20:08):
any other reason that they weren't in the workforce for
a while. It doesn't have to be someone of that age.
Could be you know, a thirty something year old who
just decides they want to take some months and not
even look for a job, and then they decide to
look for a job again. You can see the unemployment
number go up in theory. I'm not saying I know
this happened here, but you can see the unemployment number
go up even if there aren't people losing jobs, just

(20:32):
by increasing the number of people who are looking for jobs.
Another couple of economic numbers just came out. As long
as we're nerding out on all this stuff together, October
retail sales came in a little stronger than expected, which
is interesting, up four tenths of a percent versus expectation
of two tenths of a percent without autos. They usually

(20:54):
leave autos out of that because the auto number can
be very, very volatile. So that number look kind of strong,
and the consumer has been strong. On the other hand,
average hourly wages from the previous month to the most
recently reported month was up less than expected, up only

(21:15):
one tenth of a percent versus three tenths of a
percent being expected. So on the surface there it looks
like we have a continuation of a trend that I
don't know how long it can go on for people
of people's spending increasing faster than their incomes, and I

(21:38):
don't know how long that can last. So there's that,
there's that October retail sales when you include autos, was
actually a little bit weak. It was unchanged with estimated
being up one tenth of a percent. So I guess
what that's showing there is car sales were a little

(22:00):
other retail sales were relatively strong. All right, I had
promised you this topic, and now I only have ninety
seconds for it, but I'm going to talk about it anyway.
There's an interesting piece over at the Washington Post by
a conservative writer. They actually have a couple named Dominic Peno,
who's quite a smart guy, headline Starbucks ceo deserves his

(22:20):
big pit paycheck. Now he has to deliver. And they're
talking about a new CEO named not that new, actually
relatively new, but not brand new, named Brian Nickel. And
I see col and he made over ninety five million
dollars last week. And you've got a bunch of Starbucks
workers who are upset about it, and they're talking about
going on strike, and they think he makes too much
money and they don't make enough money, and they want

(22:42):
him to take a pay cut and the rest of
them to get a raise. And I get all that,
and as Dominic notes, this guy used to work for
Taco Bell and then he worked for Chipotle, I mean
in senior management, and both times he led successful turnaround efforts,
and Starbucks definitely needs one. Now, just keep in mind
this gets to the question of are these guys worth
the money? Guys and gals, are they worth the money?

(23:05):
This guy became CEO of Chipotle in twenty eighteen. By
the time he left Chipotle to go to Starbucks last year,
Chipotle's revenue had doubled and its stock had gone up
by eight times eight times. He earned somewhere between thirty
and forty million dollars a year while he was at Chipotle,

(23:30):
and in total, he made one hundred and sixty seven
million dollars a year, not a year. Over the time
he was at Chipotle, he made one hundred and sixty
seven million dollars. But during that time when he got
one hundred and sixty seven million dollars, the value of
Chipotle as a company, as measured by the stock price,
increased by are you ready now sixty eight billion dollars.

(23:55):
So this CEO got paid zero point two percent of
the wealth he helped create. And I think it's an
excellent point. And I am not saying that every very
very highly paid ceo is overpaid. My message is simply
that not every very highly paid CEO must be overpaid

(24:21):
when you think about the size of these companies and
the fact that if these guys can move the stock
up by a nickel a share, they've probably paid for themselves.
I have a questions for both of you and for listeners,
and it relates a little bit to this story that
Gina covered earlier about the very stupid arrest in Commerce City.

(24:43):
I don't mean arresting the guy was stupid. I mean that,
like our news partners at KATVR called it truly well
actually the cops called it a truly bizarre arrest. And
the video is up on my blog at Rosskominsky dot
com of a guy who snuck into a police station's
parking lot and stole a cop car and drove it
around naked and then was arrested, and they've got video

(25:03):
of him like wearing a flag around him self or
something like that. So here's my question for each of
you and for listeners at five six six nine zero,
what's the dumbest thing you've ever done? Whoever wants to
go first, whoever's got an answer first, what's the dumbest
thing you've ever done.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
I saw this in your show sheet and I'm trying
to think of something. But I don't think I've ever
been that dumb. I mean, it sounds bad if and
when I say it, yeah, but having kids at sixteen,
that sounds but I love don't get me wrong, I
love my kids. Yeah, So I can't say that that's

(25:43):
the dumbest thing I've ever done, but it's.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Something that I did.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Mm hmm Okay, I mean it was difficult times for me,
so it could be. Does that qualify? It qualifies, But
it's only moderately dumb. Okay, what about you, Gena.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
You don't seem like a person who's made a ton
of bad decisions in your life.

Speaker 6 (26:03):
No, I mean, I that's tough because I was gonna say.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Maybe the dumbest thing I ever did was in college.

Speaker 7 (26:12):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (26:13):
I was talking with a guy in my class.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
We were big on music festivals.

Speaker 6 (26:17):
I really wanted to go to a music festival that
he was talking about, and.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Spur of the moment, I said, you know, I'll go
with you.

Speaker 6 (26:24):
Lied to my parents about who I was going with,
knew nobody that he was going with, drove across the
country to go to said music festival. How old were you, Uh,
I'm a freshman in college, Okay, so it's still on
the cusp of like, your parents want to know what
you're what you're doing my tender sophomore in college.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
And that was probably a dumb thing to do.

Speaker 6 (26:45):
But that man is not my husband, so I think
it worked out in the end.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
That worked out pretty well.

Speaker 6 (26:51):
Could have been a killer, so, I mean, it was
definitely one of those situations where I told my parents,
you know, I'm really good friends with all these people.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
We're all going to this festival. We're going to from
you know.

Speaker 6 (27:01):
Michigan to Delaware, and it's gonna be fine. And I
know everybody I knew nobody except him somewhat. Yeah, And
at the time, we weren't even like dating or anything.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
It was literally just I wanted to go to this
fistal you said, he you know, he could have been
a killer. Yeah, right, So I mean I'm just curious, like,
how confident are you and him now like that he's not.

Speaker 6 (27:23):
I mean, is there some stat that that's most likely
the person?

Speaker 1 (27:27):
So I'm pretty sure I've met him a couple of times,
I think, right, and he seems all right. Yeah, but
they always do. I mean they always, they always do.
I'll tell you what I owe you, the story of
the dumbest thing I've ever done. I'm gonna ponder that.
I think I know what it is, and i'll tell
you about it right after we have some news weather

(27:48):
and traffic. Man in Australia, Ahmed al Ahmed, who I
presume is Muslim, a fruit shop or fruit stand owner
near Bondi Beach, who saw these shooters and jumped in
and and disarmed one of them. He himself got shot.
I think he'll be finding shot in the arm, in
the hand. But what a hero. And I want you

(28:09):
to know that we are right here doing a hero's
thank you. We've done this for some years in a row.
Now at KOA where you can thank a veteran or
an active duty member of the military or a first
responder with twenty five hundred bucks and you don't have
to write the check yourself. Okay, through February first, just
coming up sooner than you think, submit your nominee's name

(28:30):
and their reason that they deserve twenty five hundred bucks.
You do that at Koacolorado dot com slash contests. You
got me Koacolorado dot com slash contests and again your
nominee's name the reason they deserve twenty five hundred bucks.
It's a Heroes thank you presented by Common Spirit Health
and fix It twenty four to seven. All right, I

(28:52):
need to get serious again for a minute, and I'm
just going to try to keep my keep my temper
in check a little bit here. Oh wait, I owe
you the story. I owe you the story. Yes you do.
I owe you the story. And I'm gonna come back
to that. Okay. I asked you. Oh and I got
some interesting listener texts too. I asked you, what's the
dumbest thing you've ever done? And I asked you to
text us at five six six nine zero. And Gina

(29:13):
said she took a road trip across the country with
a killer No what what? Something like that? Something like that. Yeah.
And Dragon said he stole some babies from somebody when
he was a teenager. That's pretty accurate. This is something, right,
I'm not gonna lie. A texter did have a similar

(29:34):
story to me. Okay, go ahead, and then go ahead,
oh man, let me find it. Yeah, because the.

Speaker 6 (29:39):
Text screen moves from Thompson ninety six. I traveled to
Ontario from Colorado. I think I was about twenty is,
spending the week with a person I met online. I
never traveled by plane alone, and I never left the
country before. I did not tell my parents. To this day,
they still don't know.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Oops. My college roommate drove me to the airport. I
could have been murdered and no one would have even
known where to look. Wow, Okay, what I want to
know from this person is are you male or female?
I can't tell from that text, right, can you tell
from that text whether a person's male or female. I'm

(30:15):
guessing this might be a female in the sense that
I don't know that a male would be worried about
getting murdered on a trip like that as much as
a woman might. But I could be. Yeah, you know,
projecting from Gina having taken a road trip with a killer.
So also a lot of streakers, A lot of streakers,

(30:37):
That's what I was gonna say. There's like four people
who said they were streaking. Here's one the dumbest thing
I've done. Hare Now, now the screen moved on me
streaking in my dorm at college and running smack into
the future Miss Colorado. Her look and chuckle were classic.
That's awesome. That is awesome. I wonder if she sort
of looked down and then chuckled in Yeah, a whole

(31:00):
bunch of people who were streaking, all right. My dumbest thing,
I got a couple. But my dumbest one was also college.
I was, I think a freshman, and I was not
one of these kids who like stole alcohol from their
parents' liquor cabinet or let me just back up a second,
from the time I was not really young, but maybe

(31:23):
fourteen or something. My dad always liked having a glass
of wine with dinner, and sometimes I would ask him
can I taste it? And he'd almost always say yes,
and I have a very small sip, and then he
would tell me what it was. This is a Bordeaux,
or this is a Burgundy, or this is something. And
I got kind of interested in wine that way, and
I was for a long time a little bit less now,

(31:46):
But for me, I think that was part of the
thing where alcohol was never a taboo, so I never
felt like I had to go chase it to be
rebellious like I think a lot of kids did in
high school. So I did not drink like I'd probably
been drunk a few three times in my life or
something like that. But the dumbest thing I've ever done
done is one of those stories. One of the three times. Yeah, okay,

(32:09):
freshman year in college, a friend of mine, and this
friend of mine is like three hundred pounds. He can
drink a lot more than I can. In college, I
was probably one fifty five. I had fifteen shots of
tequila with chasing it in between drinks with gin and

(32:29):
tonic oh, in about an hour and a half. Oh.
And the next thing I remember was like a day
and a half later, I'm on my bed in my
dorm room, just sort of like flopped out, face down,
face turned, not face down, but I'm down and my
face turned sideways, just feeling unbelievably miserable. I don't remember anything.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
And then.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
I get up and I look down at the rub
and there's a spot where clearly I had thrown up.
But what was visible there on the rug wasn't what
I threw up. It was a burned rug. Like the
acid in my stomach from that got so intense that
it burned the rug. And uh, and I will tell

(33:17):
you it took me. It took me every bit of
fifteen years. I'm not exaggerating to be able to smell tequila.
I guess that was gonna be my question without kind
of sick.

Speaker 6 (33:31):
Also, are you still friends with this quote unquote friend
from college?

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, although we don't see each other very often. He
lives in Chicago and he's married with kids and whatever.
But yeah, help you. Yeah, you know what's funny. He's
a doctor. Oh wow, now not then, but yeah, he's
did he help me?

Speaker 5 (33:46):
Ah?

Speaker 1 (33:46):
I guess they probably put me in bed. Oh that's
about it. But you're thinking about it like I probably
could have died. Yeah, that's a lot. Uh huh. Fifteen
shots of tequila for a like skinny, little eighteen year
old or whatever I was as a freshman in college.

Speaker 6 (34:02):
You're also lucky that when you were somehow letting it out,
you were doing it on the rug and not falling.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Back asleep, because that happened a lot too. Oh man, Yeah,
that's pretty dumb. That's a good one, really dumb. Yeah,
all right, I didn't get to talk about that other thing,
but I will get to what I promise. One of
the things I want to do or Gena actually mentioned
can you just sort of preview this? Did you say

(34:30):
it's Rob Dawson Peace. Oh. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (34:33):
So we have a Fox thirty one pinpoint whether alerte
tomorrow mainly due to the wind gusts on top of
this un.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Seasonably warm temperature.

Speaker 6 (34:41):
We tied the record for our temperature yesterday at sixty
eight degrees for a high. So with that combined with
the high winds, Xcel Energy is gearing up.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
For possible power shutoffs.

Speaker 6 (34:52):
So we'll have a little bit more information about what
that could look like come tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
That's next time.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Kowa.

Speaker 6 (34:57):
Good Tuesday morning, Gina Gondek, Ross Kominski, And we've been
telling you about this in the newscast and preparing you
for what will be taking place tomorrow morning with the
unseasonably warm temperatures and the wind.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
That we can expect.

Speaker 6 (35:10):
And we did have a text or say, well, Xcel
Energy does this very often now to make sure we
don't have a repeat of the Marshall fire, which is
completely correct.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Xcel Energy is.

Speaker 6 (35:18):
Warning that it could be shutting off power to thousands
of customers up and down the Front Range due to
the conditions that we could see tomorrow. That could be
susceptible of wildfires kways. Rob Dawson had an opportunity to
speak with Xcel Energies Andrew Holder to talk a little
bit about their decision making process when it comes to
turning off the power.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
We were alerted of an extreme weather event that was
contemplated here for Wednesdays starting at noon here December seventeenth,
and this is all along the Front Range to help
mitigate some of our wildfire concerns. Considering that this is
this weather forecast is projecting high winds sixty seventy plus
mile an hour, and you can you compile that with
also dry conditions along the Front Range and relatively low humidity,

(36:02):
you create an extreme wildfire a risk environment. So Excel
Energy is monitoring this situation and we are potentially likely
to use a tool of last resort something we do
not take lightly, which is a power shut off. This
is where we systematically de energize some of our overhead
facilities in these areas that meet the criteria for a

(36:25):
public safety power shut off to ensure that we stop
the glow of electricity to keep our community safe and
reliable here through these extreme weather.

Speaker 8 (36:35):
Events, schools, hospitals, could they have their power turned off
or will they have to go to generation and power
on their own.

Speaker 5 (36:43):
So we're partnering with our offices of emergency management. This
is something we've been working on very extensively over the
last year to just really identify where these are in
each one of our communities. We're working with our emergency
managers to see how we can potentially mitigate any concerns
in the community for de energizing some of these critical
customers in our communities. But it is our anticipation that

(37:04):
you know, this weather event's going to come in on Wednesday,
and that we are going to potentially be using a
PSPs event that will impact our community members inside those
in those regions.

Speaker 8 (37:14):
Between now and Wednesday. Are you guys in overdrive going
out to brush, going out to trees. I know you
have a large area, you probably do this already, but
are you double checking hotspot or potential problem areas?

Speaker 5 (37:30):
Yeah? Absolutely, So that's part of our consideration as we're
going through this. We want to make sure that we're
looking at how our communities are in relations to the
weather forecast. Additionally, we're looking at how we can stage
crews and you know, deep up our assets to ensure
that they're ready and willing and able to withstand some
of these larger wind events that we're going to see
here on Wednesday. So and we're going to strategically locate

(37:53):
our crews and you know, stock up on material so
that if we do see damages here from the wind event,
that we're ready to get them dispatched now so that
they can efficiently and safely repair it and restore power
as quickly as possible.

Speaker 6 (38:05):
That's Excel Energies Andrew Holder with koa's Rob Dawson. So again,
these areas where Xcel could be shutting off power tomorrow,
they're already posted on the Xcel Energy Outage Map. You'll
see a little bit of like a dotted line that
like paths out the area of potential power shut off watches,
and then you'll notice that it has a little bit
of some carve outs where those sensitive infrastructure areas are.

(38:28):
So just be prepared for that tomorrow as we'll see
the high winds ramp up around noon. It is a
Fox thirty one pinpoint whether alert day tomorrow because they're
going to be monitoring the high wind gusts. Unseasonably warm,
still very very nice, but just be prepared for any
potential power shutoffs will continue following the latest year on KOA.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, I'll just add I don't envy the power company
in this situation. Glad you glad I started just before
you hit the button. Dragon. I don't envy the power
company because, on the one hand, people will be very
unhappy when their power shut off, and on the other hand,
especially in the aftermath of the Marshall fire, they can't
be in the position of leaving the power on during

(39:07):
these high winds. So here on KOA, we're gonna keep
the updated on all of that, as Gina and Rob
Dawson just did. When we come back. I do need
to tell you some more of my thoughts about what
Donald Trump said about the death of Rob Reiner yesterday.
This is the thing for those who are kind of
new to the show. Not only is producer Dragging in

(39:28):
charge of the bumper music, but he's kind of a
dictator about it. And sometimes when I try to play
my own bumper music, like I can bring up YouTube
or something on my computer here in the studio. If
he doesn't like it, he'll just turn it down in
the control room.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
And there's nothing I can do about it. I have
control over everything you do on the air.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Everything, yeah, absolutely everything. And this is why it's really
only Ross Kaminski on the news with Gina Gondek kind
of in name only, and both of us we know
who we work for. Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
And for that one guy I do have, the cat
came back later.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Later, the guy behind the guy behind the guy Dragon Redbeard.
You don't mess with the Viking. All right, let me
do this. I just I need to get this off
my chest a little bit. Yesterday during the show, toward
the end of the show, Gina walked in the studio
and handed me a piece of paper that was a
news report about President Trump's post on his social media platform,

(40:30):
which is called truth Social. But everybody picks him up
and reposts him everywhere else, so you know, I usually
get him on Twitter. I don't normally go to truth Social,
although I did yesterday and I'll talk about that in
a minute. And basically what Trump said was Rob Reiner
is dead because he had TDS. I'm summarizing. It was

(40:51):
kind of worse than that, and it was a long
rambling incoherent malignant, malignant narcissism on display by the president
of the United States, and I was very heartened to see.
And I did this intentionally. I went over to the
True Social website. Right. So, True Social is owned by

(41:14):
mostly by Trump and his friends, and it's a social
media platform that is mostly populated with strong Trump supporters.
With MAGA, there are very few. And it's not only
that there are very few Democrats on True Social, there
are very few moderates on True Social. It's kind of

(41:36):
like a big Trump fan club. And yet, and yet,
when I went over there, I saw that almost all
of the comments were critical of Trump. Here's one from
a lady named Carol with an E on the end,
Sir mister President, I love you, I support you one

(41:58):
hundred percent. I do not see support. This post highly
inappropriate and it puts us in their box, tacky and tasteless.
Another one from a female, another female, terrible response to
this tragedy, unbecoming of the office of the president. I
voted for you three times, but this is beyond the pale.

(42:21):
They go on like that, They go on like that.
Here's one more, another female. A man and his wife
are dead. It was a horrific act of violence. I
appreciated his work and not his politics. To align their
deaths with teds only in sights. Please show some humility,
say you are sorry for your thoughtless words that undoubtedly

(42:44):
hurt his fans and loved ones. I know you're doing
a great job, and I'm guessing you didn't actually write
the post. He did write it, and then he was
asked about it, and I think Gina mentioned this in
a newscast earlier. It came up when a reporter asked
him about it, and he basically doubled down, not quite
as aggressively, but he still made it about Rob Reiner

(43:06):
and what Rob Reiner thought about Trump. And Trump used
the word Trump. He talks about himself in the third
person like a malignant narcissist might from time to time.
And I wrote a piece for my sub stack, and
I got to tell you as extremely angry when I
wrote this, and I still am. I actually don't get
very angry with Trump. I disagree with Trump from time

(43:27):
to time, and I agree with Trump from time to time.
I try to be very honest in my assessment of
the man and his policies, well especially his policies, because
more often than not, I try to not care very
much about the man, and I try to not care
very much about I'm not saying not at all, but
not very much about the quality of politicians as human beings,

(43:48):
because mostly you will be disappointed, and Trump is much
lower than most. Trump is a bad person, and we've
known this for a long time. And don't bother debating me.
Debating me, I don't care if you disagree with me.
I don't care to hear it because you're wrong. Trump
is a bad person. It doesn't mean he's not nice

(44:09):
to his kids or nice to a puppy. But back
in that first presidential campaign, when he was bragging to
Billy Bush on that bus about how if you're rich
you can grab women by the private parts, do you
really need to know anything else about the quality of
his character. I don't think you do. So we've all

(44:32):
known that he's a bad person for a long time,
and many people are willing to overlook it, and to
a certain degree, I've been willing to overlook it. I
didn't overlook it, you know enough to I voted for him,
just so we know, if you're new to the show.
I voted for him once in twenty twenty, and that
was because Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris, and I thought,
and I said on the air, that means that Biden

(44:52):
administration will be further left and more incompetent than anybody thinks.
And so I'm going to hold my nose and vote
for Trump. And that's what I did. And he didn't
win that time. The other two times that he did win,
I didn't vote for him. So maybe there's a message
there about who I vote for. But anyway, he's bad dude.
And he attributed Rob Reiner's death to Rob Reiner not

(45:15):
liking Trump. It's nuts. I wrote on Twitter yesterday that
was arguably the single worst, most narcissistic, disgusting, unforgivable thing
Trump has ever posted on social media. He should be
ashamed of himself, but he's incapable of feeling that emotion.
This is the stuff I wrote yesterday. The other thing
I didn't think of, and I may I don't want

(45:36):
to make too much of this, but I'll just mention
it in passing. Trump said all this just in the
aftermath of what happened at Bondai Beach, where fifteen Jews
were killed by raging anti Semites. Now anti Semitism had
nothing to do with Rob Reiner's death. But Rob Reiner

(45:57):
is Jewish, and so then again you have Trump coming
out indirectly. Again, I don't want to say I don't
think Trump is an anti Semite, but just not. He
just wasn't using his brain indirectly celebrating the death of
a Jew. I didn't like that very much either. And
then the other thing that I think again, I'm going

(46:20):
to move away from my criticism of Trump now for
a moment, because I think that's all pretty obvious. And
I'm so happy to see that an enormous percentage of
Trump's supporters on social media were critical of his statement.
The only ones who weren't are people who now you
know they are bad people too, although you probably knew
it already. But I I'm very heartened by that and

(46:46):
by people saying, you know what, yeah, mister Trump, I
love you, but you can't. You can't do that. And
I do think that gives hope because at some point,
and I don't know what the point is, and I
know this may feel a little bit old fashioned or
a little bit you attach your own adjective to think
that the quality of politicians as human beings matters a little,

(47:10):
a little. I don't want to expect my politicians to
be saints or even to be better than average people,
but can you be close to average? Please?

Speaker 7 (47:20):
Like?

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Wouldn't that be better for all of us if you
were at least close to average? Last thing, I think
that part of what happened with Donald Trump's statement is
that as he is a malignant narcissist, he cannot handle
it when somebody else is getting more attention than he is.
And so even in death Rob Reiner's death, Trump had

(47:44):
to make himself the story. He cannot help it. It
is part of his psychological damage. And the reason I
mentioned this is not just to be backward looking at that,
but because I think that what we're going to see
is Trump starting to lose influence among Republicans. I think
it's already started. I think he can already feel it.

(48:06):
I think it was shown in what happened in the
Indiana Senate vote about redistricting that state, where they voted
against what he wanted. And I think we are going
to see him get more and more angry and panicky
and lashing out more at anyone and everyone who he
feels to be not sufficiently loyal, and this is not

(48:28):
going to be a pretty thing to see. All right,
Yesterday I was out somewhere. I forget I took off
my jacket, left in the car, like sixty eight degrees
or whatever it was. Are you kidding? It's December in Denver, Gina.
Great music. Sorry, he doesn't appreciate it. I do appreciate it.
It's just sort of part of a running gag that

(48:50):
Dragon and I have, and I almost I appreciate everything
except Neil Young, and you know, actually I have to say,
and even when he does kneel Young, I do feel
not as bad about it as I used to because
I know Dragon hates it too, So yeah, he's punishing me,

(49:11):
but he's punishing himself as well. Geena, if there were
bumper music, by which I mean specifically a band or
a singer that you would never ever want to hear
because you hate it so much, do tell do tell.

Speaker 6 (49:24):
Ooh, I remember a long, long, long, long time ago
you asked, what's the one artist that you generally changed
the channel for? Yeah, yeah, Katy Perry. It's just kind
of an earworm. I'm I'm not actually.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
I've actually seen Katy Perry in concert. She's actually pretty fun.

Speaker 6 (49:40):
Yeah, but it's just an earworm that I'm like, Eh,
don't want.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
To listen to it. Do you think she's annoying Justin
Trudeau right now now that they're dating? What a wild
that was a relationship? I never saw comment? Is she Canadian?

Speaker 2 (49:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
I don't think so. I don't know. A listener text rotten,
that's us rot n. By the way, if you knew
the show Ross on the News with Gina and you
could just write rotten rot and we will we will
notice that if you text us at five six six
nine zero rotten, it's thirty seven degrees here in Mississippi.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Wow, I think the weather got confused. We can get
together and swap at the nearest BUCkies. Nice. All right,
what have you found?

Speaker 6 (50:23):
Katy Perry's from California, Okay, which we should have known
because she has Californian Girls as her song.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
She does, yeah, California Girls. So I don't really know
our music except roar is that her rore is Katy Perry.
And you know firework? Yeah, and I know fireworks. I
actually kind of like fireworks.

Speaker 6 (50:40):
So what I'm saying she has a lot of earworm
songs and a ton of radio play, and I think
that's why I'm like, all right, that's.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Not all right. Can you look up what ear Firework
came out? Because my recollection is that Firework was a
song that my kids really liked when they were young,
and if it would come on the radio, they'd sing
it to the radio. Do you have a guess? My
guess is My guess is ten or twelve years ago,
twenty ten? Okay, a little more than that, Yeah, okay, yeah,

(51:09):
and that makes sense right because my kids would have
been but it's still getting airplay.

Speaker 6 (51:14):
Yeah, it's probably just been around for that long.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
All right, listener text, I'm not sure if this is
for Dragon or does he appreciate boy bands? Not me, Dragon?
You no no Backstreet Boys, no Boys to Men, no
Neil Young, no Gina boy bands. I was a huge.

Speaker 6 (51:38):
Jonahs Brothers fan growing up, so I guess.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yes, all right, but no Oasis, They're not exactly a
boy band kindness order New Kids on the Block, New
Kids on the Block.

Speaker 6 (51:50):
Yeah, I was thinking in sync, new Kids on the Block,
Backstreet Boys, that kind.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Of range, but not my vibe. Not my favorite. Always
been a classic rock kind of guy. Even when I
was young, I liked the classic rock, you know, Like
the first music I started listening to was Pink Floyd
and Rush and the Doors and Fleetwood Mac and Foreigner.
That was like my first music. Gina, when you got

(52:15):
your when you got music on vinyl albums and cassettes? Wow,
do you own any vinyl albums? Yeah? I think you're
told that before. You have a record player? Huh? And
did you ever own cassettes or you too young for that? Yes?
I owned cassette, but I owned.

Speaker 6 (52:30):
Like children's songs in a little red plastic key cossette
player that I remember going to my mom and crying
anytime it ate.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
It to take the pencil or the pen and yeah,
oh those are the good old days. Those those really
are the good old days. Oh my gosh. All right,
So yeah, it's it's nice to just shoot the breeze
for a while. I hope, I hope you all are
enjoying hanging out with us a little bit. Some days.
You know, you get these very very serious shows mixed

(53:00):
in with other stuff, and sometimes just for our own
mental health and hopefully for years, we take a little
a little pause and talk about dumb things like like
boy bands. Listener texts, No boy bands, even if it's
set to Deadpool. What does that mean? I mean, I
know what Deadpool is. Do you understand the text dead
Wolverine movie.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
Yes, they did a whole dance number in the beginning
of the movie.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Ah boy band. I can't remember exactly, but yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
It was in sync or something that Deadpool was dancing
to during one of the fight scenes.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
One more listener text. Apparently the back We'll have to
verify this. Apparently the Backstreet Boys are playing at the
Sphere in Las Vegas and tickets are thirteen hundred dollars.
They are, so that's the real thing. Send it.

Speaker 6 (53:43):
Yeah, so they've already played at the Sphere and then
they extended their tour and I don't know about the price,
but I have a feeling it's that much.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (53:52):
One of our sales staff members went to it. She
loved it, really, But I don't think that would be
my go to you, you know, I.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Think if you grew up with I mean, it's a
weird thing to say, but those early boy bands are
sort of classic music now, especially if you're younger than
I am. Like, if your Gina's age or forty even
right then. That's kind of like, that's the music of
your youth, the way some of this other stuff I
just described might be the music.

Speaker 6 (54:18):
Of my youth, you know, just all in love with
these boy bands like I was with the Jonas Brothers.
Every time I see them. I'm not gonna lie. They're
not that great anymore. But it is a great throwback nostalgic,
just like, oh yeah, this is fun.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
I remember that. Were they that great before or did
you just think so because they were cute or something exactly?
They probably weren't that great before either. There you go,
there's the answer. We'll be right back on KOA starting
right now. Dragon's gonna edit it to the podcast. People
are hearing this, Gina. You are well aware that copyrighting

(54:51):
music can't end up in the podcast because of lawyers.
M So listeners have no idea. What was just playing?
M h and that was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Did you
do you know why that's playing? I think you see
it on the text line. Do you want to explain
why producer Dragon just played Bohemian Rhapsody?

Speaker 6 (55:10):
So we were talking about some of the songs that
we just hate Neil Young and Katy Perry and whatever.
But one of the texters said Bohemian Rhapsody should never
hit the air again, and because I know Dragon will
play it now, I'm turning the radio offl lol.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
And the Dragon you responded to that.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
I did have to write back and say, am I
really that predictable? And they wrote back again saying lol, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
And I will bet I would bet a lot of
money that the dude didn't change the station, and I
bet you made him here Bohemian Rhapsody just then, I
really hope, so for which I congratulate you absolutely. That's
that's really good work. I would like to just take
a few minutes and go through several news stories with
you for a few minutes, kind of short versions of

(56:00):
covering a few different things. So first, yesterday, President Trump
signed an executive order that designated illicit fentanyl, which is
to say, fentanyl that is coming into the United States
through essentially drug dealers, but not fentanyl that is used
in the medical system as a weapon of mass destruction.

(56:23):
And I think that this is really it's a legal
issue as well as a political thing, right, It's it's
political in the sense that it's a signal to the people,
I recognize this problem. I'm trying to fix this problem,
and we're making these moves, and that's good. Fentanyl is
an enormous destructive problem. It's also I assume that it

(56:45):
has legal implications, and I don't know whether the legal
implications will be upheld in court. But when you say
that something is effectively a chemical weapon is basically what
they're saying, then that may allow law enforcement authorities the
ability to do things that they might not otherwise be
able to do, to try to interdict this and you know,

(57:06):
whatever punishments they might impose on people who are bringing
this fentanyl into the country. And let me just say,
I do put fentanyl, this fentanyl in this supply chain,
not fentanyl as it's used for anesthesia in a hospital.
I do put it in a different category from other drugs,
even other bad drugs like heroin, right because most people

(57:32):
who take fentanyl when don't know they're taking fentanyl. It's
an adulterant, it's a poison. If a drug dealer is
selling someone heroin, the person who's buying the heroin knows
they're buying heroin, and That's one conversation to have, and
I'm not going to have it right now, but that's
one conversation when you are buying something and you are

(57:53):
getting what you're buying. The thing with the fentanyl is
they're mixing it in with someone's whatever. It might be heroin,
not so much cocaine actually, but some other drugs, and
people are dying from it in very large numbers. And
so to me it really is like, it's not like

(58:14):
these people are dealing drugs. To me, what they are
doing is distributing poison to unknowing victims. And so I
have a lot of sympathy for this. I don't know,
you know, as a matter of law, you really going
to be able to count it as a weapon of
mass destruction since it's a weapon of mass destruction is
generally something that is supposed to all at once hurt

(58:38):
or kill lots of different people by blowing up or
spreading out a poison or radiation or whatever it might be.
I don't know whether they will get away with that,
but I do think the message is right. I do
think the message is right. What else yesterday we didn't
get to this. These would normally have been big stories,
but we had very big things to talk about yesterday.

(59:00):
Things to talk about yesterday. But there were one in Germany,
one in the United States, arrests of people who were
planning to kill others. I'll start with the overseas. One
five people Islamists, three from Morocco, one from Syria, one
from Egypt were arrested in Germany. They were planning to

(59:25):
do something that we have seen several times in Europe,
in both Germany and France, and I don't recall if
there are other places, but for sure we've seen it
of basically driving a truck into a Christmas market full
of people and looking to run a bunch of people over.
And yeah, so those five, those five people were arrested

(59:46):
again Islamists. So there's that. And then in southern California
yesterday there was a group that called themselves the Turtle
Island Liberation Front, and they an Instagram page which has
nine hundred and thirty nine followers, and their Instagram page

(01:00:06):
has pictures that have sayings or phrases or whatever in
these pictures with things like peaceful protest, will never be enough,
and death to America. She says. Turtle Island one of
these people is the Turtle Island is the decolonized name
of the Americas. So these are radical leftists who hate America.

(01:00:32):
Also are highly motivated by hatred of Israel and Jews
and supporting the Palestinians, and are terrorists. And so these
guys and gals or men and women wanted to set
off bombs all around southern California and Los Angeles in

(01:00:53):
a coordinated kind of way, setting off multiple bombs in
multiple places at the same time. I don't have the
new story in front of me, but I think they
were talking about maybe New Year's Eve attacks. And these
people also, fortunately through good police work, were arrested and stopped,
and that's very good news. And so I just want

(01:01:15):
you to be you know, I want to be thankful
to the police in Germany here in the US who
stopped these things. One other thing that I didn't mention yesterday,
and it would have been worth mentioning, but again couldn't
fit everything in was the Brown University shooting, which I
really didn't even talk about. But the Brown University shooting
and the arrest they call it, you know, he was

(01:01:39):
detained but of a guy who they called a person
of interest and here's my problem. My problem is somebody
put his name out in the news and then he
was released, which means he probably didn't do it. I'm
not saying it's impossible for someone to fool the cups
for a while and get released when he acts actually

(01:02:00):
did it, but he probably didn't do it. And meanwhile,
this guy's name and picture and information about him he
was actually in the military and is actually going to
go to Brown and continue his education and all this stuff.
His life, you'd have to think is for a while ruined.
Now again, I am not saying that the police should
not have detained him. It's a huge investigation and they

(01:02:21):
could have had good reason to think this guy is
a suspect. That's fine, you're allowed to get something wrong.
Where I'm really upset is with whoever put this guy's
name out to the public. And so now when he's
going to go get to try to get a job,
and people are going to, you know, look him up online,

(01:02:41):
because that's what you do when someone is applying with
you for a job, they're going to see he was
a suspect in a mass murder. That is wildly, wildly unfair,
and I think we will never find out who released
his name to the public, to the media, And I
think even if we did, that person probably wouldn't be punished.
But I think that's a shame. You're a nicer person

(01:03:01):
than I am, just generally speaking. Yeah, I think Dragon
is probably a nicer person than I am too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
It's close. Yeah, it's six seven. But I played the
Bohemian Rhapsodies just to hurt that guy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
I am.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
I really a nice guy. So I didn't say you
were a nice guy, he said.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
I said, maybe nicer than I am. But that's a
low bar. But you would have played Bohemian Raps. Of
course I would have got it was daring you to
play it. He knew you would play it. It wasn't even
like as soon as he.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Texted that in you and I both knew, and he knew.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
I didn't even read the full sentence. Shouldn't be on
the air, and I know I'm playing it exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
I didn't do. Just a couple more minutes on this
Rob Reiner thing. First regarding one's going to be about
Trump's response to it, but the other is going to
be really about Rob Reiner. I've said enough about what
Trump said. I just wanted to share with you a
quote from Republican Senator John Kerry from Louisiana. Who is
the guy the most quotable person in Congress, right is

(01:04:05):
John Kennedy. He is hilarious. Here's what he said. A
wise man sometimes says nothing because he's a wise man.
I think the President should have said nothing. I think
when he makes comments like that, it distracts from his
policy achievements and his agenda and just speaking personally. In America,
you can say what you want, but just speaking personally,

(01:04:26):
when another human being is murdered or as was the
case with Charlie Kirk assassinated, I think all of us
should show them, regardless of their political beliefs and their
families respect. And I couldn't agree more. And I'm not
going to add to that now. Over at the Free Press,
there's a very nice note by a guy named Hadlee Freeman.

(01:04:51):
And who is Hadley Freeman. I don't know who she is.
I don't know exactly, but clearly she knew she knew
Rob Ryan. Okay, and she writes for the Sunday Times
in England. I know that. And she's got a piece
at the Free Press VFP dot com entitled Rob Reiner
deserved a Happily ever After, and the subtitle on this article.

(01:05:17):
He wasn't supposed to be this talented, and he wasn't
supposed to be this nice, but he was. And it's
a long note, and I'm just gonna skip through it
a little bit because we just have a few minutes here,
she says. The first time I met Rob Reiner, back
in the summer of twenty eighteen, in a restaurant near
his home in Brentwood, I mock reprimanded him for setting

(01:05:37):
the bar too high for us, the kids who grew
up with his movies. If the first comedy you watch
is this is Spinal Tap, you are doomed ever after
to disappointment. It's true, so great awe. But it really
was all Chris and Michael and Harry, he insisted, referring
to Christopher Guest and Michael McKean and Harry Shearer of
the film's leads. When I asked how he made arguably

(01:05:57):
the only truly feminist romantic comedy when Harry met Sally,
in which the male and female characters are treated equally,
he protested again, but that was all Nora, as in E. F.
Run the film screen screenwriter. In order for it to
be funny, it had to be honest on both sides.
And Nora taught me how she saw men skipping ahead

(01:06:18):
a little bit right, because it's a long piece. How
were we to know that we weren't just watching a
coming of age movie, right, and a satire and a
team comedy and a rom com and a courtroom drama,
but the gold standard of all time for each of
those genres. How could we have guessed that the scenes
from those films inego Montoya gripping his sword. That's the

(01:06:39):
Princess Bride, which by the way, has one of the
great lines of all time that I absolutely love. I
do not believe that word means what you believe it means.
Oh my god, what a great line. And we skipping
ahead again. She talks a bunch about his business and
his work as an actor and a writer and so on,
But I just want to get for a moment to
the personal stuff. Because the President of the United stas

(01:07:00):
States attacked Rob Reiner personally, claiming that he was a
tortured and struggling but once very talented movie director in
comedy star. And I'll just say Rob Reiner had more
creative talent in his little finger than Donald Trump had
in his whole body. Although Donald Trump did does have

(01:07:22):
some creativity, Rob Reiner is a different level. And let
me just share this with you again from Hadley Freeman.
All the tributes to him meaning to Reiner will say
how nice he was and how it's easy, no sorry,

(01:07:42):
and it's easy to tune out that repeated cliche. But
let me tell you this now. Rob was the nicest
every time I met him. My initial throat clogging awe
dissipated when faced with his cuddly, bear like sweetness. A
few months ago, I emailed him to say I was
working on a book about a end of his and
I'd love to talk to him for it. No questions,

(01:08:03):
no hesitations. He set up the JOm the zoom call
and chatted with me for more than an hour. When
I had some follow up afterward, I emailed questions to him,
and he replied within minutes. Do I really need to
say that? This is not how major movie directors are
supposed to behave surrounded as they generally are, by secretaries
who never return messages and have email addresses like assistant

(01:08:24):
thirty three at Hollywood dot Com. Reiner's email address, by contrast,
has dad in the handle, a reference to how much
he loved being a dad, and he so loved being
a husband. His first marriage to Penny Marshall ended in divorce,
and the real reason he pitched when Harry met Sally
tofron was because he felt in such despair about his
dating life. I just couldn't figure out how people get together,

(01:08:48):
he said when we spoke a few months ago. He
was so confused by that. Initially, Harry and Sally didn't
get together at the end of the movie, but midway
through the shoot, Reiner's friend Barry Sonenfeld set him up
with the photographer Michelle Singer quote, and then I understood
how people get together, said Reiner. Every conversation I ever
had with him was peppered with references to Michelle, his wife,

(01:09:12):
the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, to whom he was
married for more than thirty five years. He wasn't supposed
to be this talented and wasn't supposed to be this nice.
And there is more, but I'm gonna leave it there.
I think in the aftermath of his terrible murder, Rob

(01:09:32):
Reiner deserves that bit of respect. All Right, I'm in
a good mood and I'm not gonna let you ruin
it with a terrible excuse for a musician. So this
is kind of a fun thing. I saw a Denver
Post article about a guy named Andrew Young who started
a Broncos fan club called the Bronco Gang. He grew

(01:09:56):
up a Denver Broncos fan, even though he's not from Colorado.
It is a very interesting story. Anyway, This guy came
to Denver for the Packers game on Sunday and I
got in contact with him and he told me, oh, yeah,
I'm going to be in Denver, and I said, all right,
I'd like to have a conversation with you because it

(01:10:17):
seems like you are an interesting guy with an interesting story.
He goes by the name the Mad Fanatic, and he
is a musician and a rapper who does music about
football and about the Broncos. And I caught up with
him in the parking lot at Mile High on Sunday

(01:10:39):
and actually interviewed the dude while standing in the parking lot,
which is not a thing I do a lot of.
It's more of a thing that Gina does, but I
actually did this and here is that conversation standing in
the parking lot here at in Powerfield at mile High
with Andrew Young the mad fanatic and dude, I just
saw it remarkable article about you in the Denver Post

(01:11:02):
and first welcome back to Denver.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
And why are you such a mad fanatic about the
Broncos Man?

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
I just love this team.

Speaker 7 (01:11:10):
It started with just the color being orange, my favorite
color being orange, like in a jersey. But then once
I started watching, I fell in love. I started watching
in that season when La got his first championship against
the Packers went I went to high school, actually middle school,
wearing the Terrell Davis jersey.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
My friend was a chief fan.

Speaker 7 (01:11:26):
He started heckling me. I didn't know anything about the
jersey or the team yet. So I went back and
started watching the games. And you remember that team that
were a maze and then.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
They went on and won.

Speaker 7 (01:11:35):
The team I won the super Bowl, And when they
won I was so invested by that point, I'm like
crying with them, like man, that way finally did it,
even though I didn't watch none of.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
The other ones.

Speaker 7 (01:11:43):
So you start off your fandom like that winning the
super Bowl, then turn around winning another one, you can
deal with the seventeen year drought.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
And then I got to go to Super Bowl fifty.
So all right, I got a quick story for you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
So back when all this was going on with the
Broncos that you're talking about, I didn't live in Denver.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
I've been here about twenty years.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Fine, okay, I've only seen Elway play in person two times,
and they were both Super Bowls and he lost them both.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Wow, that was a little run.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
And now I come here and I met Elway and like, man,
I wish i'd seen him win one. So are you
you live in Connecticut?

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Are you from there?

Speaker 7 (01:12:18):
I live in connecticutm from connetic Connecticut originally.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
So you not a Patriots fan or a New York fan.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
I live in Connecticut. You're kind of you pick what
you want.

Speaker 7 (01:12:26):
Some people pick the Giants, some people picked the Jets,
some people picked the New England Patriots. But back when
I was a fan, yeah, Patriots weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Really like on the radar. Nobody cared about the Patriots
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
So I don't want to dwell on negative much. And
when I've turned this positive. But in that article about you,
you talked to quite a bit about how it's almost
like getting involved with the Broncos and the fan club
that you created kind of saved your life. Can you
talk about that a little.

Speaker 7 (01:12:52):
Yeah, Well, making the songs in general kind of brought
me back to life because I used to be wildly
addicted to we and and it just wasn't good for
me after a certain point. I smoked like every day
for years and years and years, but at a certain
point they diagnosed me with like cannabis use disorder, and
first they thought I was bipolar. So I went to
the psych ward because I just completely.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Lost such with a reality.

Speaker 7 (01:13:13):
But I was under the impression that my creativity came
from smoking weed, Like I thought that's where I got
all my inspiration, like a lot of artists thing. And
when they told me I can't smoke anymore, I try
to make music and I couldn't. So then they also
give me this medicine and anti psychotic and I just
became super depressed, like everything was blave. But when I
started watching football, I felt like me again. But I
tried to write a song and I couldn't, and I

(01:13:33):
was like, I guess I'm done making music, which is
what I wanted to do. My whole life, since I
was as young as I can remember, I was singing
and rapping. So when I heard Lil Wayne make a
song about football, green and Yellow, the remix ironically against
the Packers, for his Packers Super Bowl against the Steelers,
I was like.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
You can make music about football. It's like, let me
try this.

Speaker 7 (01:13:52):
So I remixed the song he remixed, which was black
and yellow Maide called blue and Orange, and I thought,
like a few, maybe thirty people on the Bronco Country
message boards listen, and I just wanted them to be
more positive because they were so negative. We were coming
off of our worst year ever, getting ready to pick
Von Miller number two. Overall, everybody was so pessimistic, and
I was like, man, I want to encourage them, just
these thirty people.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
But when I.

Speaker 7 (01:14:13):
Posted it on Twitter, I added a couple of players,
thinking it's a long shot, but they ended up reposting it.
Brian Dawkins, Julius Thomas, you know, Eric Decker, and all
of a sudden, players started listening to the music, and
then the next thing I know, it's got a couple
hundred thousand views, And then people wanted me to make
more songs and then I started doing songs with CBS
and he just kind of took off your music.

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
Was it intro to Thursday Night Football? Yeah? Like thirty
seven times thirty?

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
So all right, this is have personal half business question.
Now are you making a living doing this?

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
I do it full time? Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
Yeah, so I'm a business guy. So do you make
a living? Is it like followers on social media? Or
do you get paid directly for the music or how
does that?

Speaker 7 (01:14:55):
There's multiple streams of income as an artist in today's
day and a's and you make you know music, you
put it out on these streaming platforms and they pay
you fractions of a penny for every time somebody listens
to your music, right, and if you make niche music,
like you have a niche audience, you're not going to
get a lot of money from streaming. I probably got
like twenty thousand total from streaming people listening to my music.

(01:15:17):
But I design my own clothes for Bronco fans that
love my music that's not changing on their trademarks and
stuff like that Brocco Gang clothing that only people that
are in this fan.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Club can buy.

Speaker 7 (01:15:29):
So you know, I make some profits off of that.
And then Also, I make a lot of money from
licensing music. So, like I said, I made those songs
for Thursday Night football. You know, they pay you a
big upfront fee and then you get royalties. I did
an uber each campaign. You know they're giving you twenty
five thousand and fifty thousand dollars checks.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
So wow.

Speaker 7 (01:15:47):
You know, there's a lot of different ways to make
money making music, But for me, it's about building the
community and kind of creating a lane for people that
love music and love sports. I want to be like
a pioneer for making sports music its own thing. Like
you know what, every team needs some mad fanatic. You know,
why can't I beat a blueprint for that? So I'm
in some talks with you know, scaling this thing and

(01:16:08):
trying to find the other people to do it in
other markets. But the hard thing is finding people that
are both good at music really love the team, like
even through the ups and downs, because you will have them,
like wrapping through a nine year draw of not making
the playoffs.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Most people aren't gonna do that.

Speaker 7 (01:16:21):
But also people that love people, because that's what this
is really about. It's about connecting people with each other,
connecting with them, being there for each other, you know,
like like you read about the article, these are real
relationships and friendships, like.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
We're family, so many of us.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Like there's a guy here today. He flew out from.

Speaker 7 (01:16:38):
Germany, right, and he's like, I haven't seen you in
a while since you came.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
To Germany and did that watch party for the German
Roccal Gang members out there. We have over one hundred
members in Germany. I'm like that.

Speaker 7 (01:16:46):
So we connect each other with each other, But you
have to have somebody that really cares about the people,
because you're gonna have years like where you're not making
no money doing this, You're.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Doing it purely for the love.

Speaker 7 (01:16:56):
And I'm caddying on the golf course, you know what
I mean to get by Sometimes I're doing well, just
a little easy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
We're talking with Andrew Young, the Mad Fanatic. Last thing
for people who don't know about the Gang, don't know
where to find you? Where do I go online to
find your music, your fan club and your awesome clothes?

Speaker 7 (01:17:13):
Broncogang dot com for the gang for the fan club
for the music or anything related to me social media,
WIE and stuff like that. Just type the Mad Fanatic
one word, just like a sounds THG M A D
F A N A C.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
I see the mad fanatic, then you'll.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
Find great to meet you in person. Meet you, Welcome
back to Denver, congratulations and all your success. Enjoyed a game.

Speaker 5 (01:17:31):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
I was really impressed with that guy. I had no
idea what to expect. Very very interesting, well spoken, business savvy.
The fact that he was willing to open up like
that and discuss about revenue streams and how he makes
a living, that was really cool. What'd you think, Gina,
because you do a lot more of that kind of
interviewing than than I and I do. Job.

Speaker 6 (01:17:52):
First off, he was he was very well spoken, and
I think we need to join the broncogang dot com.
It's a twenty dollars initiation fee to join his fansky
In all, honestly, I don't think I'm a long time
long enough fan because it literally says the history of like,
let us know how long you've been a fan, and
I've go while I moved here three years ago. He'd
be like, out, we got bigger fans.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Well, I know the boss now, so I can put
in a word for you good broncogang dot com if
you want to check out his stuff. I hope you
enjoyed that conversation. We'll be right back on KOA. If
you're listening on the podcast, you won't know that Bohemian
Rhapsody just played again. It is very rare for producer
Dragon to play the same bumper music twice in a show,
but there was a reason, a good reason. Dragon totally
worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
A texter texted in and suggested, Hey, just in case
that guy actually did turn the radio off, you better.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
Play it again. Yeah, okay, so I did. All right.
I would like to end today's show with a delicious
topic suggested by Gina with a J and Fox thirty one.
Our news partners have this KDVR dot com. The headline
butter dipped ice cream cones the next big food trend.
Do tell so you said delicious, that's your words, not mine.

Speaker 6 (01:19:03):
So obviously, like, do you think you think of soft
served ice cream? You dip it in chocolate. They sometimes
do that red hard shell or whatever. Well, apparently there's
a French bakery shop in New York City that started
this butter dipped ice cream, and now social media users
are getting on board. You pretty much just take a
soft served ice cream on a cone melted butter, and

(01:19:24):
it can create like a hard frozen shell.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
And yeah, butter solidifies when it gets cold, A little
sprinkle salt on top, and butter dipped ice cream. So
what's wrong with that? I don't know. I'm not gonna lie.
It's probably great. It's probably great looking at it, though
kind of I don't have I seen a picture of it.
Is there a picture of it?

Speaker 6 (01:19:48):
It's like a it's a yellow it's exactly. It's a
butter looking ice cream cone. But to me, I'm not
a cute like I love butter, but I'm not sure
if I want to be adding it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
To my So it looks a little bit like some
and blew their nose on an ice cream cone. Is
that what you're saying? Yeah, that's that's pretty much. It
good one. Everyone wants to run out and try one. Now,
I would try that in a heartbeat. I might make
that at home. I'll try it. But you gotta use
good butter. You got these really good like fabulous French butter,

(01:20:17):
Irish butter, something like that. Here's I think the hard question.
Now it's it's maybe half answered already because you said
at least some they'll sprinkle salt on it. But do
you use salted butter or unsalted butter? And maybe that
depends on the ice cream flavor. I think, ooh, are
you adding different ice cream?

Speaker 6 (01:20:32):
Free?

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
I was just thinking vanilla ice cream. I didn't even
think other vanilla ice cream. What else? Are you dipping
chocolate ice cream with chocolate ice cream with salted or
caramel dulce de leche ice cream with salted butter? That
could be delicious? I mean, isn't isn't caramel basically butter anyway?
Or cream? Yeah? Yeah, I forget. I don't know. I

(01:20:56):
don't know, and I'm not gonna ask Michael Brown because
he won't answer. Butter DipEd ice cream, dipped ice cream?
He said no, he said no.

Speaker 5 (01:21:05):
Maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'm used to it,
all right. Another fabulous three hours of radio magic. Thank
you again, Producer Dragon, Thank you again, Gina in the
big Sweater. We'll see both of you tomorrow. Michael Brown
up next.