August 13, 2026 • 26 mins
(August 13, 2026)
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to step down
LA county ADU construction hits record highas housing shortage persists
A fight over whose name the kids take was settled by a family Olympics
Europe has a new passport system
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listen.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Saints Can't Fly AM six forty The Bill handles show
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Some of the stories we're looking at. The President is
being sued by two US media groups over a new service,
True Social Service for early access to his posts. You
get him before anybody else. And all you have to
do is subscribe one hundred thousand dollars per month. And
keep in mind True Social is a private organization having
(00:30):
nothing to do with the government. It's owned by Trump,
his organization. And one thing I have to give the
president man, the ways he has figured out a way
to make money off his presidency is astounding. You got
to give him a lot of credit for that. Everywhere
from the Trump memorial cone coins, you know, not real money,
(00:50):
just his picture on coins.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
There's a few hundred million dollars. And let's remember.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Trump ties and Trump steaks, and then there was Trump sneakers,
and let's not forget Trump University. You sued for that
one and had to settle for twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I believe this is a good one.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
One hundred thousand dollars a month, so you get first
access to his truth Social posts.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
But wait, a minute.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
What if he is promoting something or saying this is
what the government is going to do relative to some
financial issue. You get to find out first, Hey, good
news there.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Now in the same orbit, White House Press Secretary Caroline
Levitt is leaving.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
She's stepping down.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
And this is not one of those issues where the
president is unhappy with someone and fire someone. This was
someone who is truly on his side, who he respected
and loved having close to him. And she is bailing
because she says, Number one, I have to spend more
time with my family. Number Two, I didn't take maternity
(02:00):
the first time out two years ago, and I took
some out here.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
And I just don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
And in listening to Fox and CNN, in MS NOW,
et cetera, virtually everybody says that she's not blowing smoke.
This is absolutely case. This job is impossible to do.
It's twenty four to seven, particularly when you're dealing with
this president. Because he turns on a dime. There'll be
(02:27):
a message at ten o'clock and then the message changes
at three o'clock, and she has to deal with it.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
And she has done.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
When I see her, she does a very good job
of expanding espousing Trump's policies, even when with a straight
face she looks at us and says, prices are down,
you're paying less than you did during the Biden years,
your healthcare is better now that Obamacare is gone for
(02:58):
many of you, straight face. And the other thing, and that,
by the way, earlier we talked about other press secretaries spinning,
which they do. There's no question, I just don't think
to this extent, that's my take on it.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Now, by the way, I'm not alone on this one.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
And so she's also taken to and was when asked
a tough, tough question about a president's actions or philosophy
or statement, she's very good at deflecting. Why are you
saying that? What's your motivation for asking that question? Are
you really trying to attack the president? Well, we just
(03:34):
want an answer. Why are you coming up with that question?
So she would quite often throw the question back. She's
very good at that. And even though I'm not a
big fan, as you know where I sit politically on this,
I think she did a great job in doing exactly
what the Trump administration and President Trump wanted her to do.
(03:56):
And she was also part of And this gets interesting
because this has never happened before. When you look at
the press dealing with the White House Press, the reporters
that were assigned the White House traditionally organized by the
White House Correspondence Association. Well, in twenty twenty five February,
(04:17):
the White House to control of all of that. First
of all, adding new media to the rotation. Read bloggers
who are let's say, very pro Trump, and all of
a sudden they've become journalists. And boy, that was up
in the air, and she said outright, the White House
Press team in this administration will determine who gets to
(04:38):
enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such
as Air Force one and the Oval Office. And heretofore
it was left to the press itself to determine who
the reporters the correspondents were going to be. And that
changed completely, which is simply taking what is tradition and
(04:59):
throwing it out the way. Now, does the White House
have the ability to do that? Yeah, I think so.
It hasn't because this tradition. For example, in the case
of the Department of Justice, does the White House have
the ability to remove all independence from the Department of
Justice or the FBI where there used to be a firewall.
(05:20):
There's nothing illegal about tearing down that firewall. The government
has the ability to do that and does so. And
it's just a different kind of presidency.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Now. The question is who is going to replace her?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Because she has been an adamant supporter of everything that
the president does, says, and is as any press secretary
has to be. That's that's the job, and it is
a tough one. It's a twenty four to seven job,
particularly in this presidency, and so she is out based
(05:54):
on she just wants to have a life, all right.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Coming up? What are we gonna do? Coming up? Let mean, okay,
let me see where we're gonna go.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Oh yeah, you know what, Let's do La County and
the ADU construction. I've got some pretty good news on
that one, and that's coming up after our break.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Some of the bigger stories we are looking at.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
More than five hundred people have lost their jobs in
the latest round of layoffs. Not very many, but it
just it's unemployment is increasing. The only thing that is
doing really well is the stock market and that is
a lot of that is AI driven, and profits from
corporations are doing absolutely phenomenal, and jobs not so much.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And of course inflation not so much. Inflation.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Actually numbers are pretty good relative to what they have been,
but it's still it still costs a lot of money
to go to.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
The grocery store, for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Now what's going on with southern California and housing, Boy,
have we been talking about that for a long time,
because we probably have the biggest shortage of housing in
southern California. For a whole bunch of reasons. People just
like to live in southern California. It's not that complicated.
Our weather is great. Look what's happening in the rest
(07:22):
of the country. The opportunities here are pretty damn good,
to say the least. And even with all the craziness
in California, there was a period for two seconds in
which the population of California was either flat or going
down a touch. It's increasing again. I mean, California is
just people like coming to Southern California. They love the smog,
(07:48):
which is coming back. They love the traffic which is
always here. The homeless are terrific out on bridges underneath
you know, near your house. But the reality is the
weather is good, the benefits are good because we're a
very liberal state. Okay, So with that housing shortage, like crazy,
housing is both there in enough of it, and to
(08:11):
what extent there is is just so expensive. It's very
difficult for people to survive. So one of the things
that the state did is change or force cities to
change their building codes. If you have a single family
home like I have had most of my life, you
(08:33):
certainly have been here in southern California, but I bought
early on. Guys, that's the only way you really can't
afford a good home anymore is you have to have
bought years and years ago and then just moved up
the ladder selling buying, selling buying, and just reaching to
the next level and stretching but getting there. Then what
happens is you almost can't. You can't afford a home.
(08:54):
It's very, very difficult. So what the state did is say, Okay,
we're going to make it easy for people who live
live in single family homes on single family lots, and
you can build an adu, which is a little you know,
you can build a guesthouse, guest room out there my
(09:16):
daughter who is moving to Scotland on Saturday. She lives
in a converted garage which became an ADU, which used
to be illegal. You couldn't do that, but hey, there
it was a little kitchenette, a bathroom, a little tiny
bedroom and it was all within I think two hundred
square feet or three hundred square feet. Small, but it
(09:37):
was in a place at a house where Heretofore it
was illegal. You couldn't do it. Now no one can
stop you from doing it. And let me tell you
how much fun that is when you're buying a piece
of property for the purpose of having a single house
on a piece of property and the guy next door
builds even worse than that. With the new laws coming in,
(09:58):
the guy next door builds four unit apartment building or
eight units on his property. Yeah, that gets to be fun.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
So what is Let me give you.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
A stat There was thirty seven percent of new housing.
Guess what that thirty seven percent was when the news
housing completed in La County last year. It was ADUs
accessory dwelling units. Over a third of all the housing
built were these ADUs. And a researcher saying, boy, this
(10:30):
is a boom more than a boom let. This is
a boom nowhere near close enough to close the housing gap.
It's just not the same. We need a whole lot more.
And this is one of those issues where you've got
to put this on.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
How do we deal with this?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
And we want to dealt with now, and the only
way it's going to be done is incrementally. Housing It's
going to be built incrementally is when we're going to
finally deal with it.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Will we ever have enough housing? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Decades from now maybe homelessness. Will we ever be able
to really put a dent in homelessness? Yeah, over the
next decades. And this is what we do. I mean,
there are certain things unless you are willing to, unless
we are willing to spend insane amounts of money immediately
to the detriment of all the other programs, put this
(11:25):
on the front burner. It's going to be incremental. It's
going to have to be bits by bits by bits.
And let me give you two examples. Catalytic converters. Remember
when they came into being because of smog and the
emissions that cars created. Wellbody, every car now has a
catalytic commercial converter that's sold in California. That's basically driven
(11:46):
in California. But it took a generation to get there.
It started, well, new cars, Well, that still means ninety
nine percent of cars on the road don't have them.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well they will.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And then the one since I was in the construction
business and I dealt with this a zillion years ago,
is California.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Made woodn't shake roofs illegal.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
You could not replace the roof with wood shakes, which
traditionally that's what southern California homes were about. Why because
wood shakes are made out of oh, I don't know, wood,
and what seems to do really well when there's a
fire going on. Wood does better than tile does certainly
(12:28):
better in terms of being ignited and going up in
flames than concrete.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
So here's what happened.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
It became illegal to replace roofs or build with new
housing with these shake roofs. How long did it take
thirty years? Why did it take that long? Well, because
it took thirty years to basically go through the cycle.
Roofs last thirty years, so it was every year it
(12:54):
was better and better and better, and that took a
full generation. I think the same thing is going to
happen here. Will we have housing?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Yeah, the population.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Doesn't increase dramatically, which it doesn't look like it's exploding
or anything. We're gonna be at about forty million people
give we take in California and we are really short
of housing. Will be Will we have enough housing?
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
How long you think it's gonna take? I'm saying a generation.
Same goes for the waymos oh. I saw my first
Weymo a couple of days ago. I had not seen waimo,
and I saw two of them when I was driving.
That was kind of neat with the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
No, they're not. I haven't seen him in my neighborhood.
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I saw him in West LA near the Petersonata Museum
when I went there a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, they buzz all over our neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Hunt. Yeah, I think though, Boy, those are neat, you know,
the little twirly things. They look like they have tops
all over them, and as they were spinning.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Around day and all night, up and down our street.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I think they're great. But anyway, are we going to
be there? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
At some point the road's gonna jammed with those. But
it's going to take time. Okay, coming up, this is
a fun one.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
A name.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
What do you name your kid when you get married?
What does your spouse name himself or herself? Who takes
the name? Do you do a hyphenated name?
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:20):
In my case, hyphenated names seem to work out, even
though I'm not a big fan. And then naming kids. Oh,
I love that story too. We'll be back with that.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Some of the stories we are looking at Nick Reiner,
the son of Rob Reiner and Michelle Reiner, when he
is accused of stabbing them to death. He has just
been charged again a superseding indictment of lying in weight
and then killing his parents. So are lying in weight
(14:56):
and committing a murder brings it to another level, that
is special circumstances, which makes him eligible if convicted, for
either life imprisonment without possibility parole, which is probably going
to happen, or the death penalty, even which unfortunately we
can't do anymore because it's just too damn expensive and
no one gets killed anyway, and it's just too long
(15:18):
a time and we have to pay for we the
taxpayers have to pay for all.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Of the appeals.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Okay, Now, it's a fun topic that I want to
share with you, and that is the fight over names.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
And it's the story in the Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Journal about this man where they had a wedding, he
and his wife, and what he did is say, we're
going to have a family Olympics, and we're going to
give one grand prize away at a child coming. The
winning family will determine the name of our future children.
(15:52):
The name of our future child children is going to
be given to someone who wins a lottery. Well, this
whole issue and that got me going on names and
what do you name your kid?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
What do you name? What do couples do? First?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Let's start with when you get married, usually to someone
of the opposite sex, what happens to the name? Well,
usually the wife takes her husband's name. Why is that?
That goes back to English common law actually, where by
law the wife had to take her husband's name because frankly,
she was property in terms of their relationship. And so
(16:33):
a wife assumed her husband's surname because their legal identity
was now subsumed by her husband.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
He was the Haunt show.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Now in the US, it's never been legally required, but
in a study done in twenty twenty three by Pew
Research shows that nearly eighty percent of women in opposite
sex marriages take on their spouse's last name when they
get married, and particularly with kids, if they have children.
Most kids are named after the father or use the
(17:05):
father's last name, and women who heretofore use their own name,
they want to share the name with their child last names,
and so they take on the name.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
So that part is pretty well done.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
My personal situation is I have a wife who has
a hyphenated name, and I said, don't do it. You
have your own name, you know, Lindsey. Nope, she wanted
a hyphenated name, and she does. She legally changed her name,
and I therefore had to change my name to build
no hyphen handle. That actually is my legal name. I
(17:42):
want to point that out. That's absolutely not true. But
it makes for a bad story in any case. That's
one issue. The other issue, which is allows a little
bit of history. Another issue, which is a lot more fun,
is what people name their kids.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
On a personal note to this station, Neil, you your
name and you are named.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
After Neil Armstrong, and buzz Edwin aldrin I was born
in July of sixty nine, so it was named after
the astronauts that landing on the moon.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
People name their kids after either themselves or family members
or historical historical issues, historical times. Happens all the time. Now, Oh,
I'm going to have fun with this. People's names, and
especially girls' names, particularly boys' names changed dramatically, and every
(18:45):
year outcomes a I don't know who does the survey,
but what are the most popular names that are that
come out? And for example, in July of nineteen sixty nine,
for the year nineteen sixty nine, Neil was a huge name.
John was a huge name after JFK was elected. One
(19:10):
of my favorite George Foreman, who named his five boys
George Foreman. All of them are George Foreman. And the
way you differentiate between all five, it's George Foreman Junior, one, two, three, four,
and five. Hey, how's that for a little bit of hubris.
(19:33):
Not only do I want my kid named after me
as a junior, but I want all of them named
after me.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Okay, not bad.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
My son is named after a murderous robot from the
movie Black Hole. Oh, Okay, his name is Maximilian.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah, no, no, let me ask you a question before
we take a break, because I want to keep on
going with this. What is Max's name based on?
Speaker 4 (19:58):
It? Is?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It is on a murderous robot.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
The movie was The black Hole, put out by Disney
some time after Star Wars when all the studios were
trying to replicate that. Not a great film, but the
robot always stood out to me. He happens to be
the protagonist or the antagonist rather and murderous. But I liked,
(20:22):
you know, get smart and Max will smart and all that.
But yeah, that's cool what he was named after.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Why didn't you name Max black Hole?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Because because he hadn't been to prison yet. Okay, that's
a rough name to go.
Speaker 6 (20:42):
Although his middle name was almost Danger because we thought
Max Danger was It's funny. But we honored Tracy's father
with his middle name, which is Oh.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
That's another thing I want to tell you about my kids.
I want to share with you a couple of names
and then some some personalities out there that you just
shake your head, You go, really, how do you do
that to a kid?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
We'll be back and we'll finish that up.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
You're listening to Bill Handle on Demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Finish the last segment of the show. And this is
kind of a fun one because we're talking about names.
First of all, last names, whether names should be or
are hyphenated, usually by the wife in a normal male
female spousal marriage, and very few husbands take on the wives' names,
(21:32):
although there are some I haven't heard this recently where
they both take on both names via al Gosse For example,
former mayor, he had two names. I think his name
was Valar and his wife's name was whatever the last
part of that is.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
And so he took on his wife's dad's name.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
That's what he did.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I think he did.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah name name, that's a night's name.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
He took on another man's name, is what he did.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Well, I don't know, Ragosa, I have no idea, and
I don't even know if those were the actual words
that he took on.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
The last name was.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
His name was Villar, his name was Valar, and her
name was not Vlar. But the point I'm making is
that's very unusual to combine last names, and in the
case of naming kids, that one is just terrific. So
For example, my daughters, we talked about Neil being named
after Neil Armstrong because he was born in July nineteen
(22:35):
sixty nine. My daughters were, well, my daughter's middle names
one Barbara, one Pamela. Barbara named after Marjorie's mom, Barbara,
and so that one's easy, and then Pamela. We were
trying to figure out a middle name, and it became Joel.
(22:57):
Now we're trying to figure out middle name for Barbara,
and we ended up naming her after my grandmother. Matter
of fact, it wasn't even my call. Marjorie suggested that,
and I said, why would we name her after my grandmother?
Her name was Leah, and Marjorie said, because that would
be an honorable thing to do. And I said, wait
(23:18):
a minute, we're naming her after my psycho bitch grandmother
who left my mother when she was eleven years old
and treated her like utter crap.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Actually she didn't leave her my mom.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Her father left my mom, but treated to the point where,
let me tell you how crazy my grand my grandmother was.
There was a maid that everybody had maids in Brazil
in those days, stole all of her jewelry and she
insisted that my mom didn't call the police and try
to have my mother arrested. This is her own daughter,
and we're naming my.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Daughter after her. Go figure that one out.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And so that's just an assault. I thought I would
share that. But names of that I love. Elon Musk
is really terrific. Kai is one of them. Saxon is
another name. X Ae dash Roman numeral twelve. That's fun.
Nevada that's another one.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
I like that. Nevada is a big name. Madison's a
big name.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Dakota remember that that name was around for a while,
either North or South. New Hampshire was a big name.
Baja for Baja California. That was a big name. You
just don't know that. And then you have names Lulu
if your kid's gonna be a stripper, Candy. Remember that
(24:44):
great iconic porn actor tool O'tool. That really wasn't his name,
that was his nickname. That's the other thing that people
don't do anymore is take on stage names. John Wayne
not his real name, Douglas, but Michael Marion h Kirk
Douglas whatever they hell, Abramowitz was his name. And so
(25:08):
today when you have people in the media, they usually
are real names, and so what is oh and the
other ones? Okay, so when Elon Musk, he's got like
a dozen kids. One of them is Strider. H Then
there's azure A, z u.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
R e x e x A. I mean those are
then there's some real fun ones.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Frank Zappa, remember Frank Zappa, the big rock and roll star.
One of his he has two kids. One is moon Unit,
that's his daughter. His son is Dweezle. Nice going through
life with that.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Names are great, and even Pamela and Barbara, my daughter's names,
very old school, very old school. I mean when the
last time you saw a kid named Barbara? I mean
they just people don't name their kids that anymore. What
kind of names are out there that are really popular
this year? Because it goes in cycles. Boys' names, Joseph, Jacob,
(26:14):
you know, those are the names.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
That are used a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Okay, we're done, guys, we are finished. Tomorrow morning all
over again. On a Friday, we have a fun Friday.
It's a foody Friday. And it'll be Amy and Will
even with his Costco shirt on probably, and that starts
at five am.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Neil, I come aboard at six.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show, Catch My
Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
You're listen.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Saints Can't Fly AM six forty The Bill handles show
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Some of the stories we're looking at. The President is
being sued by two US media groups over a new service,
True Social Service for early access to his posts. You
get him before anybody else. And all you have to
do is subscribe one hundred thousand dollars per month. And
keep in mind True Social is a private organization having
(00:30):
nothing to do with the government. It's owned by Trump,
his organization. And one thing I have to give the
president man, the ways he has figured out a way
to make money off his presidency is astounding. You got
to give him a lot of credit for that. Everywhere
from the Trump memorial cone coins, you know, not real money,
(00:50):
just his picture on coins.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
There's a few hundred million dollars. And let's remember.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Trump ties and Trump steaks, and then there was Trump sneakers,
and let's not forget Trump University. You sued for that
one and had to settle for twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I believe this is a good one.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
One hundred thousand dollars a month, so you get first
access to his truth Social posts.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
But wait, a minute.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
What if he is promoting something or saying this is
what the government is going to do relative to some
financial issue. You get to find out first, Hey, good
news there.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Now in the same orbit, White House Press Secretary Caroline
Levitt is leaving.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
She's stepping down.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
And this is not one of those issues where the
president is unhappy with someone and fire someone. This was
someone who is truly on his side, who he respected
and loved having close to him. And she is bailing
because she says, Number one, I have to spend more
time with my family. Number Two, I didn't take maternity
(02:00):
the first time out two years ago, and I took
some out here.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
And I just don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
And in listening to Fox and CNN, in MS NOW,
et cetera, virtually everybody says that she's not blowing smoke.
This is absolutely case. This job is impossible to do.
It's twenty four to seven, particularly when you're dealing with
this president. Because he turns on a dime. There'll be
(02:27):
a message at ten o'clock and then the message changes
at three o'clock, and she has to deal with it.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
And she has done.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
When I see her, she does a very good job
of expanding espousing Trump's policies, even when with a straight
face she looks at us and says, prices are down,
you're paying less than you did during the Biden years,
your healthcare is better now that Obamacare is gone for
(02:58):
many of you, straight face. And the other thing, and that,
by the way, earlier we talked about other press secretaries spinning,
which they do. There's no question, I just don't think
to this extent, that's my take on it.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Now, by the way, I'm not alone on this one.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
And so she's also taken to and was when asked
a tough, tough question about a president's actions or philosophy
or statement, she's very good at deflecting. Why are you
saying that? What's your motivation for asking that question? Are
you really trying to attack the president? Well, we just
(03:34):
want an answer. Why are you coming up with that question?
So she would quite often throw the question back. She's
very good at that. And even though I'm not a
big fan, as you know where I sit politically on this,
I think she did a great job in doing exactly
what the Trump administration and President Trump wanted her to do.
(03:56):
And she was also part of And this gets interesting
because this has never happened before. When you look at
the press dealing with the White House Press, the reporters
that were assigned the White House traditionally organized by the
White House Correspondence Association. Well, in twenty twenty five February,
(04:17):
the White House to control of all of that. First
of all, adding new media to the rotation. Read bloggers
who are let's say, very pro Trump, and all of
a sudden they've become journalists. And boy, that was up
in the air, and she said outright, the White House
Press team in this administration will determine who gets to
(04:38):
enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such
as Air Force one and the Oval Office. And heretofore
it was left to the press itself to determine who
the reporters the correspondents were going to be. And that
changed completely, which is simply taking what is tradition and
(04:59):
throwing it out the way. Now, does the White House
have the ability to do that? Yeah, I think so.
It hasn't because this tradition. For example, in the case
of the Department of Justice, does the White House have
the ability to remove all independence from the Department of
Justice or the FBI where there used to be a firewall.
(05:20):
There's nothing illegal about tearing down that firewall. The government
has the ability to do that and does so. And
it's just a different kind of presidency.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Now. The question is who is going to replace her?
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Because she has been an adamant supporter of everything that
the president does, says, and is as any press secretary
has to be. That's that's the job, and it is
a tough one. It's a twenty four to seven job,
particularly in this presidency, and so she is out based
(05:54):
on she just wants to have a life, all right.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Coming up? What are we gonna do? Coming up? Let mean, okay,
let me see where we're gonna go.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Oh yeah, you know what, Let's do La County and
the ADU construction. I've got some pretty good news on
that one, and that's coming up after our break.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Some of the bigger stories we are looking at.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
More than five hundred people have lost their jobs in
the latest round of layoffs. Not very many, but it
just it's unemployment is increasing. The only thing that is
doing really well is the stock market and that is
a lot of that is AI driven, and profits from
corporations are doing absolutely phenomenal, and jobs not so much.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And of course inflation not so much. Inflation.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Actually numbers are pretty good relative to what they have been,
but it's still it still costs a lot of money
to go to.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
The grocery store, for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Now what's going on with southern California and housing, Boy,
have we been talking about that for a long time,
because we probably have the biggest shortage of housing in
southern California. For a whole bunch of reasons. People just
like to live in southern California. It's not that complicated.
Our weather is great. Look what's happening in the rest
(07:22):
of the country. The opportunities here are pretty damn good,
to say the least. And even with all the craziness
in California, there was a period for two seconds in
which the population of California was either flat or going
down a touch. It's increasing again. I mean, California is
just people like coming to Southern California. They love the smog,
(07:48):
which is coming back. They love the traffic which is
always here. The homeless are terrific out on bridges underneath
you know, near your house. But the reality is the
weather is good, the benefits are good because we're a
very liberal state. Okay, So with that housing shortage, like crazy,
housing is both there in enough of it, and to
(08:11):
what extent there is is just so expensive. It's very
difficult for people to survive. So one of the things
that the state did is change or force cities to
change their building codes. If you have a single family
home like I have had most of my life, you
(08:33):
certainly have been here in southern California, but I bought
early on. Guys, that's the only way you really can't
afford a good home anymore is you have to have
bought years and years ago and then just moved up
the ladder selling buying, selling buying, and just reaching to
the next level and stretching but getting there. Then what
happens is you almost can't. You can't afford a home.
(08:54):
It's very, very difficult. So what the state did is say, Okay,
we're going to make it easy for people who live
live in single family homes on single family lots, and
you can build an adu, which is a little you know,
you can build a guesthouse, guest room out there my
(09:16):
daughter who is moving to Scotland on Saturday. She lives
in a converted garage which became an ADU, which used
to be illegal. You couldn't do that, but hey, there
it was a little kitchenette, a bathroom, a little tiny
bedroom and it was all within I think two hundred
square feet or three hundred square feet. Small, but it
(09:37):
was in a place at a house where Heretofore it
was illegal. You couldn't do it. Now no one can
stop you from doing it. And let me tell you
how much fun that is when you're buying a piece
of property for the purpose of having a single house
on a piece of property and the guy next door
builds even worse than that. With the new laws coming in,
(09:58):
the guy next door builds four unit apartment building or
eight units on his property. Yeah, that gets to be fun.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
So what is Let me give you.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
A stat There was thirty seven percent of new housing.
Guess what that thirty seven percent was when the news
housing completed in La County last year. It was ADUs
accessory dwelling units. Over a third of all the housing
built were these ADUs. And a researcher saying, boy, this
(10:30):
is a boom more than a boom let. This is
a boom nowhere near close enough to close the housing gap.
It's just not the same. We need a whole lot more.
And this is one of those issues where you've got
to put this on.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
How do we deal with this?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
And we want to dealt with now, and the only
way it's going to be done is incrementally. Housing It's
going to be built incrementally is when we're going to
finally deal with it.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Will we ever have enough housing? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Decades from now maybe homelessness. Will we ever be able
to really put a dent in homelessness? Yeah, over the
next decades. And this is what we do. I mean,
there are certain things unless you are willing to, unless
we are willing to spend insane amounts of money immediately
to the detriment of all the other programs, put this
(11:25):
on the front burner. It's going to be incremental. It's
going to have to be bits by bits by bits.
And let me give you two examples. Catalytic converters. Remember
when they came into being because of smog and the
emissions that cars created. Wellbody, every car now has a
catalytic commercial converter that's sold in California. That's basically driven
(11:46):
in California. But it took a generation to get there.
It started, well, new cars, Well, that still means ninety
nine percent of cars on the road don't have them.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well they will.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And then the one since I was in the construction
business and I dealt with this a zillion years ago,
is California.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Made woodn't shake roofs illegal.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
You could not replace the roof with wood shakes, which
traditionally that's what southern California homes were about. Why because
wood shakes are made out of oh, I don't know, wood,
and what seems to do really well when there's a
fire going on. Wood does better than tile does certainly
(12:28):
better in terms of being ignited and going up in
flames than concrete.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
So here's what happened.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
It became illegal to replace roofs or build with new
housing with these shake roofs. How long did it take
thirty years? Why did it take that long? Well, because
it took thirty years to basically go through the cycle.
Roofs last thirty years, so it was every year it
(12:54):
was better and better and better, and that took a
full generation. I think the same thing is going to
happen here. Will we have housing?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Yeah, the population.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Doesn't increase dramatically, which it doesn't look like it's exploding
or anything. We're gonna be at about forty million people
give we take in California and we are really short
of housing. Will be Will we have enough housing?
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
How long you think it's gonna take? I'm saying a generation.
Same goes for the waymos oh. I saw my first
Weymo a couple of days ago. I had not seen waimo,
and I saw two of them when I was driving.
That was kind of neat with the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
No, they're not. I haven't seen him in my neighborhood.
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
I saw him in West LA near the Petersonata Museum
when I went there a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, they buzz all over our neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Hunt. Yeah, I think though, Boy, those are neat, you know,
the little twirly things. They look like they have tops
all over them, and as they were spinning.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Around day and all night, up and down our street.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I think they're great. But anyway, are we going to
be there? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
At some point the road's gonna jammed with those. But
it's going to take time. Okay, coming up, this is
a fun one.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
A name.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
What do you name your kid when you get married?
What does your spouse name himself or herself? Who takes
the name? Do you do a hyphenated name?
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:20):
In my case, hyphenated names seem to work out, even
though I'm not a big fan. And then naming kids. Oh,
I love that story too. We'll be back with that.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Some of the stories we are looking at Nick Reiner,
the son of Rob Reiner and Michelle Reiner, when he
is accused of stabbing them to death. He has just
been charged again a superseding indictment of lying in weight
and then killing his parents. So are lying in weight
(14:56):
and committing a murder brings it to another level, that
is special circumstances, which makes him eligible if convicted, for
either life imprisonment without possibility parole, which is probably going
to happen, or the death penalty, even which unfortunately we
can't do anymore because it's just too damn expensive and
no one gets killed anyway, and it's just too long
(15:18):
a time and we have to pay for we the
taxpayers have to pay for all.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
Of the appeals.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Okay, Now, it's a fun topic that I want to
share with you, and that is the fight over names.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
And it's the story in the Wall Street.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Journal about this man where they had a wedding, he
and his wife, and what he did is say, we're
going to have a family Olympics, and we're going to
give one grand prize away at a child coming. The
winning family will determine the name of our future children.
(15:52):
The name of our future child children is going to
be given to someone who wins a lottery. Well, this
whole issue and that got me going on names and
what do you name your kid?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
What do you name? What do couples do? First?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Let's start with when you get married, usually to someone
of the opposite sex, what happens to the name? Well,
usually the wife takes her husband's name. Why is that?
That goes back to English common law actually, where by
law the wife had to take her husband's name because frankly,
she was property in terms of their relationship. And so
(16:33):
a wife assumed her husband's surname because their legal identity
was now subsumed by her husband.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
He was the Haunt show.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Now in the US, it's never been legally required, but
in a study done in twenty twenty three by Pew
Research shows that nearly eighty percent of women in opposite
sex marriages take on their spouse's last name when they
get married, and particularly with kids, if they have children.
Most kids are named after the father or use the
(17:05):
father's last name, and women who heretofore use their own name,
they want to share the name with their child last names,
and so they take on the name.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
So that part is pretty well done.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
My personal situation is I have a wife who has
a hyphenated name, and I said, don't do it. You
have your own name, you know, Lindsey. Nope, she wanted
a hyphenated name, and she does. She legally changed her name,
and I therefore had to change my name to build
no hyphen handle. That actually is my legal name. I
(17:42):
want to point that out. That's absolutely not true. But
it makes for a bad story in any case. That's
one issue. The other issue, which is allows a little
bit of history. Another issue, which is a lot more fun,
is what people name their kids.
Speaker 4 (18:01):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
On a personal note to this station, Neil, you your
name and you are named.
Speaker 6 (18:08):
After Neil Armstrong, and buzz Edwin aldrin I was born
in July of sixty nine, so it was named after
the astronauts that landing on the moon.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
People name their kids after either themselves or family members
or historical historical issues, historical times. Happens all the time. Now, Oh,
I'm going to have fun with this. People's names, and
especially girls' names, particularly boys' names changed dramatically, and every
(18:45):
year outcomes a I don't know who does the survey,
but what are the most popular names that are that
come out? And for example, in July of nineteen sixty nine,
for the year nineteen sixty nine, Neil was a huge name.
John was a huge name after JFK was elected. One
(19:10):
of my favorite George Foreman, who named his five boys
George Foreman. All of them are George Foreman. And the
way you differentiate between all five, it's George Foreman Junior, one, two, three, four,
and five. Hey, how's that for a little bit of hubris.
(19:33):
Not only do I want my kid named after me
as a junior, but I want all of them named
after me.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Okay, not bad.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
My son is named after a murderous robot from the
movie Black Hole. Oh, Okay, his name is Maximilian.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah, no, no, let me ask you a question before
we take a break, because I want to keep on
going with this. What is Max's name based on?
Speaker 4 (19:58):
It? Is?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It is on a murderous robot.
Speaker 6 (20:01):
The movie was The black Hole, put out by Disney
some time after Star Wars when all the studios were
trying to replicate that. Not a great film, but the
robot always stood out to me. He happens to be
the protagonist or the antagonist rather and murderous. But I liked,
(20:22):
you know, get smart and Max will smart and all that.
But yeah, that's cool what he was named after.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Why didn't you name Max black Hole?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Because because he hadn't been to prison yet. Okay, that's
a rough name to go.
Speaker 6 (20:42):
Although his middle name was almost Danger because we thought
Max Danger was It's funny. But we honored Tracy's father
with his middle name, which is Oh.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
That's another thing I want to tell you about my kids.
I want to share with you a couple of names
and then some some personalities out there that you just
shake your head, You go, really, how do you do
that to a kid?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
We'll be back and we'll finish that up.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
You're listening to Bill Handle on Demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Finish the last segment of the show. And this is
kind of a fun one because we're talking about names.
First of all, last names, whether names should be or
are hyphenated, usually by the wife in a normal male
female spousal marriage, and very few husbands take on the wives' names,
(21:32):
although there are some I haven't heard this recently where
they both take on both names via al Gosse For example,
former mayor, he had two names. I think his name
was Valar and his wife's name was whatever the last
part of that is.
Speaker 6 (21:50):
And so he took on his wife's dad's name.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
That's what he did.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I think he did.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah name name, that's a night's name.
Speaker 6 (22:02):
He took on another man's name, is what he did.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Well, I don't know, Ragosa, I have no idea, and
I don't even know if those were the actual words
that he took on.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
The last name was.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
His name was Villar, his name was Valar, and her
name was not Vlar. But the point I'm making is
that's very unusual to combine last names, and in the
case of naming kids, that one is just terrific. So
For example, my daughters, we talked about Neil being named
after Neil Armstrong because he was born in July nineteen
(22:35):
sixty nine. My daughters were, well, my daughter's middle names
one Barbara, one Pamela. Barbara named after Marjorie's mom, Barbara,
and so that one's easy, and then Pamela. We were
trying to figure out a middle name, and it became Joel.
(22:57):
Now we're trying to figure out middle name for Barbara,
and we ended up naming her after my grandmother. Matter
of fact, it wasn't even my call. Marjorie suggested that,
and I said, why would we name her after my grandmother?
Her name was Leah, and Marjorie said, because that would
be an honorable thing to do. And I said, wait
(23:18):
a minute, we're naming her after my psycho bitch grandmother
who left my mother when she was eleven years old
and treated her like utter crap.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Actually she didn't leave her my mom.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Her father left my mom, but treated to the point where,
let me tell you how crazy my grand my grandmother was.
There was a maid that everybody had maids in Brazil
in those days, stole all of her jewelry and she
insisted that my mom didn't call the police and try
to have my mother arrested. This is her own daughter,
and we're naming my.
Speaker 4 (23:56):
Daughter after her. Go figure that one out.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And so that's just an assault. I thought I would
share that. But names of that I love. Elon Musk
is really terrific. Kai is one of them. Saxon is
another name. X Ae dash Roman numeral twelve. That's fun.
Nevada that's another one.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
I like that. Nevada is a big name. Madison's a
big name.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Dakota remember that that name was around for a while,
either North or South. New Hampshire was a big name.
Baja for Baja California. That was a big name. You
just don't know that. And then you have names Lulu
if your kid's gonna be a stripper, Candy. Remember that
(24:44):
great iconic porn actor tool O'tool. That really wasn't his name,
that was his nickname. That's the other thing that people
don't do anymore is take on stage names. John Wayne
not his real name, Douglas, but Michael Marion h Kirk
Douglas whatever they hell, Abramowitz was his name. And so
(25:08):
today when you have people in the media, they usually
are real names, and so what is oh and the
other ones? Okay, so when Elon Musk, he's got like
a dozen kids. One of them is Strider. H Then
there's azure A, z u.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
R e x e x A. I mean those are
then there's some real fun ones.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Frank Zappa, remember Frank Zappa, the big rock and roll star.
One of his he has two kids. One is moon Unit,
that's his daughter. His son is Dweezle. Nice going through
life with that.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Names are great, and even Pamela and Barbara, my daughter's names,
very old school, very old school. I mean when the
last time you saw a kid named Barbara? I mean
they just people don't name their kids that anymore. What
kind of names are out there that are really popular
this year? Because it goes in cycles. Boys' names, Joseph, Jacob,
(26:14):
you know, those are the names.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
That are used a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Okay, we're done, guys, we are finished. Tomorrow morning all
over again. On a Friday, we have a fun Friday.
It's a foody Friday. And it'll be Amy and Will
even with his Costco shirt on probably, and that starts
at five am.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Neil, I come aboard at six.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show, Catch My
Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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