08-03-26 FULL SHOW - Benjamin Allbright Fills In

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mandy Connall Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, it's Mandy Connell Mann.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
On ninem stay study the nice through.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Many Connell keeping is sad thing.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to a Mandy Connall Show. They've been all right
filling in for Mandy Connell today. Mandy is on vacation.
Good for her.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
It's taken to Alaskan cruise. That is one of the
fifty states that I've never been to. I've been to
all forty eight contiguous states, but I've never been to
Hawaii or Alaska. I was talking to her about that,
and uh, that's that's one of those things. Been all
into six continents, have never been to Antarctica, never been
to Alaska or Hawaii, and Hawaii think I guess it

(00:57):
is surprising to people. Look iverybody's been Towaii. It seems
like it's just one of those things I've just never been.
I've got to check those two items off off my
bucket list at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Appreciate you guys being along for the Ryans. A hot
one out there today.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Heat advisory has been issued for Denver, and the city
has opened some cooling centers out there Under these extremely
hot conditions, National Weather Service and Boulders said expect to
hive one hundred degrees out of DIA.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
If the mercury does hit triple digits.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
It would tie the all time high for August third,
which was set one hundred and forty eight years ago
back in eighteen seventy eight. Heat advisories issued until six
pm today for Denver and its western suburbs, for Collins, Boulder, Castle,
Rockies Degreely due to temperatures ranging from ninety five to
one hundred and two degrees. It has been absurdly hot.

(01:48):
I don't remember it ever being this hot. I grew
up down south. I grew up, you know, all over
in the South and especially at Arkansas, and you know
it was it was hot and humid. Spent multiple trips
to Iraq where it was obscenely hot, and I just
don't remember it ever being this hot.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Here.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
Even my dog is like who normally wants to be
outside all the time. It's like using a paw and
a bang on the glass, like, bro let me in.
It's hot out here. She's doing like the head droop
with the tongue all the way hanging out.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
I went to the Rockies game yesterday. Yeah, and it
was it was tough to sit through it.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
Yeah, one hundred and four degrees I think, oh yeah,
you like ninety nine at first pitch brutal?

Speaker 6 (02:33):
Were you?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Were you at least in the shade.

Speaker 5 (02:36):
Luckily luckily in the shade, but barely a row and
the whole right side of the stadium everyone had moved
up to, like almost to the concourse to get out
of the sun because it was just it was too
hot to sit in. But three wins in a row
for the Rockies, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:52):
There's at least there's least that. Of course, we had
a trade today. The Rockies traded Brenton Doyle to the
White Sox and got a couple of couple.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Of prospects back. We'll see how that goes.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
Rocky's been obviously more competitive this year, still bringing up
the rear.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
In the division, but at least they've been more competitive
this year. Broncos had padded practice today. News out of that.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Luke Wattenberg went down with an injury in one on ones.
We don't have an update on that yet, but he
did not return to practice. He's the starting center for
the Denver Broncos. And that would represent a big injury
right off the bat there on the offensive line.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
So we'll keep you up to date on that.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
As far as the heat goes, Weather Service set expect
patchy smoke after three pm from mayby bring wildfires, twenty
percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after three pm, and
a cold front will bring isolated thunderstorms late the day,
much cooler temperatures for tonight and tomorrow, which will be
a welcome respite for everybody suffering from the heat out there.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
It's like it's made me.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I don't know to say it's maybe apathetic, because that's
not the right war, but I like, I like to
get out and do stuff, and I have just been
uninterested in getting out and doing things, going hiking, getting
out and doing stuff.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
I'm like, oh my god, it's so hot out here.
I just it's it's not enjoyable.

Speaker 4 (04:13):
It's miserable to hit the outdoors in Colorado is such
such an outdoor state five six six nine zerold text line.
I guess I'm want to get involved the conversation that
both my guests canceled today, So we're gonna be, uh,
we're gonna be pretty wide open the three h sevens
are here.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Twenty twelve was hotter this year. Well, I moved here.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
I moved here to Colorado in September of twenty twelve,
So I missed that, So I I if that was,
If that's true, and I have no reason to doubt you,
I missed all that. I moved here in September of
twenty twelve, and I remember, and I came out here
from from Tampa. I remember when I moved out here,

(04:51):
like the first weekend I was here, it was super windy,
like like absurdly windy. And I guess that was right
when it was changing. I don't remember the exact eight
off the top. Might have to go back and look,
but I just like, oh, my goodness, did I move
out to like the windyest state on Earth? Because you know,
I just came from Tampa and a week it wins,
you know what it is, hurricanes or tropical storms, that
kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
But it was not nearly as windy as it was
that one weekend.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
And it seems like it's been windy here at night
lately as well. I don't know if that's the heat,
you know, kicking up the winds. I'm sure somebody with
a meteorological background can can weigh in on that.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
I don't know. At least we don't have it as
bad as Cuba's got it going right now.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Though Cuba's energy grid collapsed late yesterday, the state owned
electrical utility got on social media and announced it in
the country is and yet another nationwide blackout. It's the
first of August that they've had and comes after the
the island had ten million people suffering free blackouts in July.

(05:52):
As the United States continues imposing an oil blockade that's
testing Cuba's aging energy infrastructure. Cuba has struggled to import
fuel since the United States capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas
Maduro back in January, as Venezuela was basically Havana's closest
ally certainly in the region. Mexico has also halted exports

(06:16):
in response to US pressure. Rolling blackouts this summer approved
increasingly difficult for many of the Cuban locals, forced to
wake up in the middle of the night and cook
wash ues the internet cool off during these hot summer months,
on sure of how many hours of electricity they're even
going to get in a day. The US pressure is
pushing a Vada into making some economic reforms. Prime Minister

(06:40):
Manuel Mareo Cruzden in July announced that the government had
approved the first foreign investment venture to import and sell fuel.
Reuters reported on that and added that nearly two hundred
businesses on the island had been given permission to engage
in wholesale fuel distribution, and the lawmakers there had approved
some measures authorizing private investment to the tour of industry,

(07:01):
which has been basically devastated by the departure of hotel
giants in response to US sanctions and flight cancelations due
to fuel shortages.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
We'll keep an eye on that, but that's you know,
that's yet another thing that's out there.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
As Cuba continues to struggle and their energy grid collapsed.
Energy here, costs of have certainly gone up. They were
talking the other day when I was on on a
regular show on Rouckess Country at night, we had Steve
Attwater in and Dick Ferguson and we were talking about
the cost of energy. And you know, I don't know,

(07:37):
I don't know how you guys are, but normally, like
I don't run the air conditioning, I'm a I'm a
thermostat hawk. I don't run the air conditioner. AC in
my house stands for adjust the climate.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Now, it's been too hot over the last couple of
weeks to do that, and I've I've honestly had to
run the air conditioning.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
But listening to.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Steve and Nick, who.

Speaker 4 (08:02):
Are both married men with families, and how their families
will come in when they're not around and try to
snake the thermostat turn, crank it all the way down
into the sixties or whatever. And I got my energy
bill from having run the air condition I still was
pretty conservative with it. I mean I had I said
that at seventy four I think, which was cold. Was

(08:25):
a little cold for me. I don't know what you
guys keep the house at, but that was a little
cool for me. And the energy bill, I was like,
oh my goodness, people pay this on a regular basis.
I'm I'm used to a twenty five dollars energy bill,
so that was certainly that was certainly something five.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Six six nine zero. I definitely want to hear from
you guys and what you guys want to talk about.
You know.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
One of the things that I do want to get
into is what issues are weighing most heavily on you
guys and gals in the coming elections.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
I was reading over.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
An internal report and one of the political parties they'd
done and how they missed the market some things the
last elections. They said flat out didn't listen to voters.
They tried to dictate to voters what the issues were
rather than listening to the voters and addressing those concerns.
And part of the reason they had some some pretty
tough losses in the last election cycle. And I kind
of sort of agreed with that, because it doesn't feel

(09:21):
like a lot of times when you hear politicians and
campaign things, it feels like the generic problem. You know,
I'm against crime, Well, everybody's against crime, you know those
kind of videos.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
But I don't see people speaking to specific issues.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
And you know, the.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Hyperinflation, rising cost of goods and services and groceries, the
way that cost is outpacing wage gains right now, and
you just don't hear people talking about that.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Are there other things that are on your mind?

Speaker 4 (09:51):
I saw somebody post, I don't know if it's yesterday
or today, about the wolf reintroduction and how a single
wolf can cause to rancher up to you know, one
hundred and sixty two million dollars, which you know, on
the surface sounds ridiculous, but then you start reading this,
you know, like the downtrace effects from you know, animals
that they kill can be a problem. What issues are

(10:16):
affecting Colorado voters? Rising cost of energy as we try
to try to cool our homes.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (10:25):
Three L seven smokey is all get out up in
Cheyenne right now. It was a little it was a
little smoky here earlier.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
It's not as bad as it was.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
It was smoky when I when I got up this
morning and took the dog for a walk at nine am,
it was it was a little weird.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
This guy was red.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
It was a little smoky here. But it's it's cleared
out a little bit here. I imagine that's gone north
to Cheyenne.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Seven to two Old power has been out of my
house a few times.

Speaker 4 (10:53):
Already this year. Not sure the causes. I'm not gonna
repeat what you called excel there, but I'm with you. Yeah,
you know, that's one of those things, like you don't
you know, we take for granted the fact that our
energy grid is more or less reliable, and we've had
lackouts here. It's it's been it's been fascinating to step

(11:14):
back and and see that normally, you know, here in
the United States, that's that's not a concern to people.
We just we just take it for granted and rely
on our energy infrastructure. And there have been places around
the country and even here where that's that's not been
the case. Uh seven two Oh do you believe the
Save Act specifically requiring ID to vote is a poll tax?

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yes, Now it's a de facto a poll tax.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
I have issue like, I'm not a poll I mean,
we already show ID to vote, like you already have
to you already have to prove who you are or
to get registered to vote.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
I think that this is is a bit redundant.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
But there are some things that I would do, and
there are compromises I think that we could make if you,
if you really wanted to enact this, where you you know,
you bring up the ID and all that.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
What I don't want.

Speaker 4 (12:01):
The libertarian to me does not want a federal database.
I don't like the government being able to track things
like that. For me personally, I'm a you know, it
bothers me, but I do believe that there are things
we could do. I mean, our elections are already pretty secure,
and I would tell people a lot of the hysteria
that I see out there. The first thing I ask is,
have you ever worked an election? Have you ever worked

(12:24):
as a ballot counter or at a at an election center,
because I think most of the people that I talk
to that have done that understand exactly how secure they are.
I think people that haven't done that just don't wrap
their head around how secure we really are at that.
Now are the things we can do better? Absolutely, And

(12:44):
I'm here for that discussion. If we're going to if
we're going to have IDs, those IDs have to be
provided for free, though, because otherwise it becomes a de
facto a pulltax, and I am against that. I personally
would love to see a compromise here where we do
a free ID for everybody and have that and then
we declare that day a federal holiday so that everybody

(13:09):
is off work already and able to go do that.
It doesn't have to work around it. If you're upset
with mail in voting, which is again it's also secure,
and I don't want to get into the you know,
the receiding process on all that. But it is if
you're upset with that, okay, But we need to provide
an avenue to ensure maximum participation in our elections, and

(13:33):
I feel like having Election Day be a federal holiday
is a path to that.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
I feel like that's a compromise. Honestly.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
There's some things to take out of the Save Act
that I don't like, and I don't want to get
too deep in the minutia on that at the moment,
but I think that if you want to do that,
if we want to do hey, provide a photo ID. Okay,
I'm listening to you. But there are some things we
have to do with that. You can't just arbitrarily say, okay,
well now you've got to go spend thirty bucks to
go do this. You can't you know, charge people to

(14:01):
do that. And so that's where I come down on that.
I think there if we want to do these kinds
of things, if we collectively agree and vote that we
need to do these kinds of things, Okay, I'm listening
to you. However, there need to be a few caveats
to this in order to make those types of things work,
and I am absolutely one hundred percent for Election Day

(14:22):
being a federal holiday where people have off work and
are able to able to go vote and make that
process more accessible. And really that's that's my thing. At
the end of the day. Are we trying to make
it easier or more difficult to vote? Because if the
answer is make it more difficult, that's the wrong answer.
We need to make it easier to vote while still

(14:43):
maintaining that level of security and making sure that there
is no fraud. Although that's the other part of the
sort of hysteria on this is the fraud at scale
does not exist. There are people that try to fraudulently
vote in things, and we've seen I think there's what
is it over the last ten years, two hundred and
fifteen total care or whatever. But that's that's such a
minuscule number relatively, and so I think I think for me,

(15:14):
I hear your concern about the security of it, but
I want to make sure that in doing so, we
aren't making it more difficult, we aren't finding ways that
create hurdles to the voting process. And if we could
do that, then then I'm all for it. Five six

(15:35):
six nine zero. I want to take you guys's questions.
I'll answer you know, give you my perspective on things.
For those of you that don't know me, obviously, I
host Broncos Country and I do a lot of sports here,
but I've been on I filled in for Mandy before
I worked. I worked two different presidential campaigns, one for
generals the Clark uh and one for my cuckaby in

(15:57):
data and analytics i worked. I've been involved in the
political process at various levels and ways.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
I'm former military. It was fifteen years in the United
States Army.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
I did multiple combat tours, and so to give you
a little background on that, I tend to come to
things with a bit more of a libertarian perspective. I'm
a bit fiscally conservative and a bit socially permissive, and
so that should help you hopefully understand in my responses
and framing my responses how they go.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
The seven too. Oh let's see here.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
I'm very curious we're all the tariff money and supposed
investments from foreign countries went. I feel like our economy
sucks well, we spend all this money fighting Iran. I'm
one of many paid off in the tech sector. I
voted for Trump all three times this second term. I
am significantly less than impressed.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
I would say that that sentiment feels.

Speaker 4 (16:55):
There are some people that are still very very Protrump,
but there's I think the ship has gone off for
a lot of people that did vote that direction, people
I talk to anyway. It doesn't mean all of them
are that way, but there are people that are definitely disappointed.
I think one of the biggest or most odd disparities
is this whole taking a market share, you know, government
taking a market share in companies. And it's interesting to

(17:17):
see people that say that they hate communism basically applauding
a precursor to communism. It's going to be interesting to
see how future administrations divest the United States of those
market shares of companies that we are while we're picking
winners and looters, which I'm against.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
I'm not a free market absolutist, but pretty close.

Speaker 4 (17:39):
Because if you once you offload those shares, that's going
to hit the market, flow the market, and tank the
shares of those companies.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
So it's going to be interesting to see how we
untangle that.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
Later on, to answer your your question about the TERRIFORLEYT
terrimony is going back to the businesses. The tariffs were
basically illegal. The statutes under which they tried to collect
them were completely wrong. Tariffs are an archaic policy. I've
talked about these before why tariffs are inherently terrible. They're
inefficient too, Like you don't get a one to one

(18:09):
collection like that. It costs money to collect tariffs, and
so it's it's an inefficient taxation that ultimately gets passed
on to us consumers. The money is going to go
back to the businesses. The consumers got stuck with higher prices.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
And you're gonna have to deal with that.

Speaker 4 (18:26):
And these investments from foreign countries, That's something I've warned
about when these these you know, air quote deals got announced.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
These countries can say anything.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
Yeah, we're we're eyeballing, we're going to encourage investment, those
kinds of things. Look for the weasel wording in those
announcements because most of this stuff either as already invested
or it's just something that they say they're going to
do and there's no legal mechanism to hold anyone responsible
for it. So it sounds good in you know, in theory,

(18:54):
but in reality, you know, a lot of these numbers
that get tossed around are funny money.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
It's kind of like, you know, for the sport. To people,
it's kind of like an NFL contract, right.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
You see something a quarterback gets signed for five years,
one hundred and fifty million, and then you find out
only you know, one hundred of that's guaranteed money and
the rest of that's you know, money that could be earned.
It's it's sort of funny money, and it it evaporates.
I got a lot of stuff coming in here, a
lot of questions.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
I like.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
I want to hear you guys, even if you disagree.
I love I love disagreement. One of the things I
is if you disagree with it, I love hearing it.
It gives me a chance to check my own self.
It gives me a chance to or or either figure
out that my argument is correct or a chance to,
you know, change my argument. So, if you're listening to
this and you disagree with me, I'd love to hear
from you. I got a lot of stuff here for you, guys, to.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
For me to get to on this. I want to
hear from you guys. I want to hear what's what's
on your mind today?

Speaker 4 (19:49):
Let's talk about what's on your mind instead of having
somebody dictate to you with the topic of the day,
is you dictate to me?

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Five six six nine zeros text line I got to
hit a break, Mandy Kittle show, Benjamin all Right filling in.
I'll be back after this. The latest on the war
in Iran.

Speaker 4 (20:04):
President Trump is now saying that Iran's leadership is duplicitous
for appearing to back away from intentions to talk today.
Trump wrote on truth Social it iron It begged for
a meeting with the United States this weekend, leading to
a pause in strikes, only to walk back on Monday, saying, quote,
Irani leadership is unbelievably duplicitous. They ask for a meeting,

(20:26):
some would say, beg talks begin with more scheduled than
the immediate future. And they say openly and proudly they're
not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about,
and they're only dealing with Oman. That's what Trump wrote
on his truth Social He confirmed that talks were taking place.
The Iran's foreign ministry said that they were not, and

(20:49):
we'll continue to see if that works. As the United
States has paused strikes again, most people I talked to
here locally on the street, all that kind of stuff
seem like they're kind of against this idea that we're
even in a conflict with hereon what does that have
to do with anything here? And we keep spending absurd
amounts of money over there while not spending any on

(21:12):
our our spending less, I should say, on our allies
in the Ukraine that are in an altercation with Russia.
You know, while Ukraine has quite a bit of resources
that we here in the United States use five six
six nine zero the text line a lot of stuff

(21:32):
to get to here that you guys, guys put it.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
In three h three.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
I agree with federal holiday for voting, but as a
night shift nurse, daytime sleeper, there are shift workers who
will push.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Back on a holiday that's from Mountain Grema. That's fair.
I hadn't thought of that, Honestly, I don't know what
the solution is for that.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
I just I like, you know, I just inherently like
the idea of a federal holiday for it, and anything
that we can do to make it easier and more convenient.
And I think the compromise here because the original conversation
was about to save act. I think the compromise here
on federal id for voting is exactly that, a federal
holiday making it easier and more accessible for shift workers

(22:14):
and low income people, as long as the ideas are free.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Again, that's one of those things. There are several other
things in here with this one was interesting to me.
The nine of it.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Oh, I disagree voting should take effort. It weeds out
the casual voters that haven't done research. Founders discussed this,
and I agree that uneducated votes dilute the voters that.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Did their homework as an intellectual exercise. I do tend
to agree with you. However, who am I to judge
who is a low information voter? You know? Who is
the judge on that? Who is the arbiter of that?

Speaker 4 (22:49):
Because at the end of the day, just because you
could disagree with me, I can't call you a low
info voter just because you disagree with me, which I
certainly have seen I think we've all seen. If you've
ever been on social media, the first thing you do
is somebody disagrees with all. They're an idiot, you know,
and so like, who's the arbiter of that? We have
we can disagree on things and both be highly informed.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
That is, you know, those are not mutually exclusive positions.

Speaker 4 (23:14):
And so I think as an intellectual exercise, I sort
of agree with you, Like, yeah, the idea of low
info voters voting on mass and creating a mob rule
and passing laws or passing things because their low info
voters is scares me in a sense. But at the
same time, who is the arbiter of that? I know
enough to know that I shouldn't be, So I leave

(23:35):
you know, I leave that question back to you as
far as antellectual exercise.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Seb. One nine says Mandy's Siddon. My name is Ben h.

Speaker 4 (23:44):
Calling an ID to vote a poll tax is moronic. Well,
if you have to, if you are having to directly
spend money because of a government policy in an effort
to vote, then it becomes a de facto poll tax.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
And I'm sure you can read up on Jim crow
Era how.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
People were attempting to weed out the African American vote
by doing things like that. I'm not saying that there's
not a compromise here, but it's not moronic to call
it a poll tax. You're literally requiring a forty dollars
charge or whatever the idea would cost at this point.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
To do that. If you provide the ID for free,
then that defeats my argument.

Speaker 4 (24:22):
But at this point, if you are charging people who
a lot of whom you're weeding out people on a
fixed income to do that, not everybody has to throw
away forty dollars. I mean, I'm fortunate enough in my
life that you know that I'm fine, that you know
that money's not going to affect me. But there are
people that are that live paycheck to paycheck. Some of
them are listening to the show right now, and so
the idea that we're going to create barriers to them

(24:45):
being able to participate in the democratic process, I'm against that.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
I'm sorry, and I I don't find that to be moronic.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
Three or thirty tariffs or a joke, especially since the
national debt is now forty trillion dollars, Well, those are
to me, that's two separate statements. I mean, the national
debt being where it is is absurd, and the fact
that we've added something like twenty five percent of that
over the last twelve years is ludicrous. Tariffs are an

(25:17):
archaic process, They're inherently inflationary.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
They drive up cost it the register.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
They're inefficient in terms of return because you're not gonna
get a dollar for dollar return on it. If you
wanted to create a dollar for a dollar return, you
could cause businesses to invent a volt tax or something
like that. But the collection process for the tariffs costs
you money, cost us money, right, so in order to
collect those tariffs, it costs us money.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
So we don't get a one to run return. It's
almost I think.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
It's a ninety one cents on the dollar for tariff return,
So we lose nine percent of what we.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Collect just in the collections process.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
So you know, even if even if they were even
if they worked on the front end as a source
of revenue, would be an inherently inefficient way to get revenue.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
And then I don't find them to be that anyway.

Speaker 4 (26:06):
If you're going to if you're going to try to
tax consumers that way the value tax, there would be
a national sales tax or something where you at least
get more out of it. In the end, they are
just a tax on American consumers foreign the foreign countries
don't pay them. I don't know, like all this stuff
in the beginning that was out there like you pay them.
You're paying them, so you know, if you support them,

(26:28):
that's you. But tariffs have been wildly inefficient. The last
time that tariffs were a decent source of income for
this country and were valuable, I think in the process
is you've got to go all the way back to
the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds when we were
a different type of economy. There were some targeted tariffs

(26:52):
in the Regged administration that worked specifically on electronics as.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
They came from Japan.

Speaker 4 (26:57):
If you got to go back and read up on that,
there were some limited time frame targeted tariffs, and Reagan
was hesitant to even put those in.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
He abhorred tariffs.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
You know, tariffs have really been mostly a disaster policy,
dating back to before Smooth Holly, which is probably the
biggest tariff legislation that most people know, but even before that,
they really were largely a disaster policy. Anything that increases
prices at the register is something you want to avoid.
Anything that drives cost up at the register is something

(27:29):
you want to avoid, because that's what inflation is, right.
It raises the cost of goods, raises the cost of services,
tightens the belts on American consumers, and that's not what
we want to do. We want to create an efficient
economy that keeps people putting money into it, spending, buying things, consuming,
because that's what type of economy we are. And I
know there's an attempt to move toward manufacturing that we're

(27:52):
never going to be a manufacturing nation again.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
I mean, we're just not.

Speaker 4 (27:55):
We can't beat China on cost of labor. The Chinese
I've already got a leg up on us on the
dual currency system that the offshore and the onshore one
which they can manipulate the.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Value of.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
And so without getting too deep into currency manipulation right now,
which because I've got to hit a break here in
a minute, we're not going to be able to compete
with that. So you've got to find ways to Okay,
if we can't compete with that, then what is our
what is our How do we preserve our place in
the in the world economy? We are the reserve currency
for now, although there's been an erosion of trust in that,

(28:29):
and we're going to have to figure out ways to
continue to keep costs down at the register here in
an effort to stay prominent in the world economy, and
I get that that's very generic right now, but I
got to hit a break and we can get more
into that. We come back on the Manicotte Show. Most
people are pretty engaged in the conversation so far. Some

(28:51):
guy named Will is making stuff up, but that's what
people do.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Let's see here.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
Thomas Jefferson said that we the government should by the interested,
don't make it easy for the lazy to vote. That's
from the ninth set. Again, as a matter of intellectual exercise,
I sort of agree. I just like, who's the arbiter
of who's interested? Some people can be interested and not
have all the information, don't have the time to do that.
And so while I am one hundred percent with you

(29:20):
on making sure that elections are secure, who's the barrier
for who gets to vote? I mean, we literally created
this country on the precept that everybody has the right
to vote. Now, the elites of their day and that
includes Thomas Jefferson was like, yeah, we don't want mob
rule from uninformed people that don't know what they're talking about.

(29:42):
And is it a little electual exercise. Yeah, you know,
I tend to agree, But as a matter of practicality.
Who am I to tell someone they can't vote because
they don't have enough information? And who am I to
be the arbiter of that. So I'm with you on
the thought. The reality is implementing that is sickly unconstitutional.
And so that's where I I draw the line for me,

(30:05):
you know, I want a government that's just small enough
to fit inside that constitution.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
I want a government that's I mean, the.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Founders laid out a brilliant framework here. We've amended it
a few times over the years as we found reason
to do so. But our source document's pretty clear on
that the reason that we, you know, created this country,
it's pretty clear on that what percentage of sales tax
is eating up for collection less than tariffs with with

(30:33):
sales tax, it's collected at the point of sale. Uh,
and then that's reported on from the business. So that's
you know, that's it's much less, it's much more efficient
as far as that goes. God, there's so much here.
As here's one from the three oh three. Then I've
worked as an election judge in Broomfield for the last
five years. The entire process has a single point of

(30:54):
failure in that signature verification. See, this is how I
can tell you did work this, because like there are
things I look for when people have these arguments with me,
And this is what i'm because I have done that before.
Sage of verification one's compromised will perpetually allow invalid signature
to pass. As far as I can tell, we've seen
a number of cases with heir invalid signature made it
through the process.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
I don't believe it's secure.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
You're right, and I can absolutely tell you telling the
truth because this is one of the comments that I'm
looking for when people talk about this. However, if I
would put back onto your lab, that does not happen
at scale.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
It does happen. It does happen in individual cases.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
And we've had, as I was saying earlier, we've had
something like somewhere between two hundred and five hundred.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Total cases over the last twenty years.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
But that's not scale. That's such an that doesn't affect
the outcome. And that's not to say that we can't
be better. I'm all for being better. But the hysteria
over this stuff, the hysteria that we have over several
different topics, I think in our political discourse, these days
that affects minuscule amounts of people.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Is certainly an interesting phenomenon. Back in the.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
Back in the late nineties, there were the anya the
National doubt for the arts was something that Republicans used
to hit Democrats over the head with all the time
because of and then they would the would talk about
the obscenity some of the art coming out of there was,
you know whatever, I don't know, we get too deep
in the weeds on that, but they got to hit
the Democrats over and the reality is it made up a.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Miniscoogle amount of the budget.

Speaker 4 (32:25):
It didn't affect hardly anybody, but it was it was
a loser topic because it was something you got to
go to as far as that goes. Now we've got
topics like that today. Election security is something that we
need to be cognizant of. But the reality is the
number of cases don't don't affect anything at scale. It's
the same thing with UH and and I'm sure everybody's
gonna hate me for saying this, but it's the same thing.

(32:45):
When we talk about this transathlete debate. You're you're you're
talking about a dozen people over the over the course
of the country. And yet it's a forefront topic, and
I'm not smart enough to sit there and know what
the what the the barrier should be. I'm definitely not
the guy who should be making that decision. So that's
not what I'm getting into. But these are topics that

(33:06):
affect a minuscule amount of people and yet seem to
be on the forefront of.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
The discussion. Point seven to two. Oh, let's see here,
half bright.

Speaker 4 (33:19):
If you can't afford forty dollars or a nominal fee
for an ID, maybe you shouldn't be voting.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
You demonstrate poor judgment.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
This is literally antithetical to the Constitution. We literally separated
from Britain because we wanted to make sure that there
was no taxation without representation. And now you're telling me
that you want to tax those people and not give
them representation.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
I don't understand that. I just don't understand that.

Speaker 4 (33:48):
I'm with you on the security portion of it, but
not everybody can afford forty dollars. Some people are out
there trying to eat ramen and you know, and stuff
to survive. I'm fortunate enough that I'm not one of
those people, but there are people out there like that,
and so that's why we have that. We would I
would encourage you, whether or not you'll believe that applies here,

(34:09):
to go back and read up on how during Jim
Crow people used to do this kind of stuff to
keep people from being able to vote.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Five six six nine zero. I'll love to get into
some of this other stuff with you. Got to hit
another break, We'll be back.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
No, it's Mandy Connell, Mandy ton on KA ninety one FM,
s got way.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Can then nicey us through.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
Three many Connell keeping sad thing, holding back to you
an hour two Matdy Connall show up and been all
bright pillain in today five six six nine zero.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
The text line.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Of you pointing out about the fees on firearms, and
I'm with you on that one government should be should
not be charging fees various different fees and embtting to facto.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Taxes on your your right to bare arms. I'm with
you on that.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
We like it's not a gotcha moment. I'm I'm there,
I'm a firearm owner. I'm one hundred percent with you
on that. Five six six nine zero text line the
Night seven Oho makes a point here. It says, with
regard to Thomas Jefferson's comment on interest, if you show

(35:33):
up to a poll, then you're interested, no wanting any
other tests, and so should be free to vote.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
And it absolutely should be free to vote. That's the thing.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
You guys telling me that forty dollars a four to
like all that stuff is just wrong. Go back to
the Constitution here making false arguments like, for instance, and
I appreciate your text in three or three, but I'm
gonna I'm gonna use you an example here, says Benjamin
the forty dollars supposition as a canard as the IDs
will cost nothing to the applicant, Well, if they don't
cost anything to the applicant, then they're not forty dollars.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
They're free, which I wouldn't have a problem.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
With because I have to say, by the way, how
many citizens living paycheck to paycheck walk around with eleven
hundred dollars iPhones in their hands. Well, you know that's
not relevant. Like at the end of the day, the
Constitution says we can't charge. That's that what they're driving
to the poll in what they're walking around with their
hand in and how they acquired that is not my business.

(36:21):
And to wit, most people that walk around with expensive
cell phones are doing so with the cost of the
cell phone embedded into their cell phone bill or leasing
the phone.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
But it's it's not that that part isn't my business.

Speaker 4 (36:36):
What's my business is is this government providing a barrier
that is illegal, uh in your your quest to vote.
For the rest of that, I mean what I'm what
I'm walking around or driving to the polling station. In
what you're walking around, what they are none of anybody's business. Somebody, uh,
somebody's just texted me saying, want anything from culvers.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
I'm hungry. Yes, I could use something for culvers. I
don't know if this was for me, but I'm so
starving right now I could absolutely absolutely use something for culver.
So if you're serious, I will uh, I will send
you my order. You know. There's there's a lot of
a lot of text in here about on property taxes,

(37:20):
gun taxes, things like that, and I'm with you guys
on that.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
I think that we need we have to fund government
because we have to fund essential services. But then what
we need to do is define essential services and then
what we need to do is find the best way
to fund those essential services. And I think that that's
a multi pronged conversation that most people are only willing
to have on their terms.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
At certain points in the conversation.

Speaker 4 (37:44):
Government is a necessary evil, right at least that's the
way I approach it.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
We need it, we have to have it.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
We can't just run around lawlessly because at scale, unfortunately
things don't.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
We don't work as a society.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
So we need and a set of ethics, sort of
code that we call the law, and operate within that
framework that most of us sort of agree with that framework,
and and go for there. We need public utility, we
need streets, we need roads, we need emergency services, and
privatizing all that stuff at scale is not feasible. And

(38:18):
I keep saying at scale, like, you can do that
in small doses. You could privatize a neighborhood fire department
or police department. You could as a neighborhood, you could
work together to create your own roads. But once you
start getting out into scale, into city wide.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
And hire environments, it becomes impossible to do that on
a private level. And so at the end of the day,
we've got to find ways to do that, ways to
fund that. I'm with you on the property tax, and
I'm with you on the fees charged on gun owners.

Speaker 4 (38:59):
I'm with you. I agree with you on most of
these texts that you said that you know that those
are the things that should be considered the facto impediments
to that as well.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
I'm with you.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
In fact, if I were you, what I would get
together with is get together with lawyer and you know,
bring a case because I think you have a case.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
And go from there.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
I think a lot of us just kind of look
at these kinds of things that we grouse about it,
and then we just move on instead of trying to
affect that kind of change. Five six six nine zero.
Somebody said, my understanding of cost of business is lacking.
Every time someone has to record and move money, it
has an associated cost.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Right.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
What I'm trying, What I was trying to do this
is trusting. What I was trying to do was compare
the idea of a sales tax versus a tariff, and
that a sales tax is more efficient than a tariff
because it costs less.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
I'm not saying there's no cost. I'm just saying it
costs less.

Speaker 4 (39:53):
To collect, right because when with tariffs you have to
send a collector down to the port and you know,
and collect it.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
To hire someone to do that, they have to, you know,
they have to go through that.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Process with a business and creating a sales tax, the
the impetus is on the business for collecting it at
a point of sale and then reporting it up and
so there's there's a smaller cost associated with that. It's
not nil, it's just negligible that yes, it does add
up over time, but the percentages are different. Like I said,
with a with a tariff, I believe I have to

(40:25):
go back and look at it. At the efficiency rating
on that, I think it's ninety one percent. I'd have
to go back and look with a sales tax, it's
closer to ninety nine percent. And so the velocity of
money and then the value of what you're getting right
there out of collecting that is wildly different. You're just
you're hemorrhaging money in the tariff process, whereas with a
sales tax you're still losing a little bit, but it's

(40:48):
not the same amount. And go from there and hopefully
you guys understand that if you want me to get
more into it. I can, but hopefully you understand what
I'm saying when I'm when I'm doing that. The eight
oh a, Benjamin, I'm enjoying your guest appearance on Mandy's
show today. I enjoy your show in the afternoons. I
was in the military for twenty three years, said, you
got out. It for fifteen years in the army. I'm

(41:10):
curious why you didn't stay in for twenty and retire.
That's a good question.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
I got out because I was tired of deploying.

Speaker 4 (41:15):
I'd done multiple combat rotations at that point, and I
don't need the money for retirement.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
I'd rather that go to people that need it, So
that that's the reason I got out. I was I
was kind of tired of it.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
I was ready to get back into the civilian world,
and and I you know, I didn't need the money,
so you know, it's just not there was no point
in me staying in another five years because it wasn't
you know, necessary.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
To my my sort of retirement plan. The three h three.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
Then, I think if you take more from the government
than you pay in, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
I get where you're coming from.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
On that, but again, we literally fought a revolutionary war
against that ideology. The idea that everyone should be represented
doesn't change. And I get where you're coming from on that.
I just I disagree on a fundamental level because that is.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Who that is.

Speaker 4 (42:14):
And so we can go back and look at the
reasons that we attempted to secede and did successfully from
Britain and why this country was founded the way that
it was.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
I do believe that there are other ways to you know,
we don't want people to be a negative and there
are other ways to incentivize that, but I don't think
voting is the way to do that. Seven to zero
on your ID argument.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
The problem you have is that everyone has ID for
other uses and the idea is not only utilized voting.
That would be like me I having to buy a
stamp or pay for fuel to get the ballot box
or election center. It's to minimus sort of because it's
not required. Fuel is not require fired for you to vote.
You can mail your ballot in it costs you nothing,
or walk it's that costs you nothing. If you are

(43:07):
required to have a document by the federal government, that's
you know, that's different. Now if they would allow you
to use current photo ID for that and not have
to have a special you know, a special thing again
here for it, or if you make it free. You know,
there's a way to air quotes, make it free, you know,
and that's by wrapping that into your taxes on the

(43:30):
back end. There are certainly ways to solve this problem.
But I'm just I am not for having someone having
to pay on the front end to be able to vote.
That that's a scary precedent that we eliminated back during
the Jim Crow stuff and I'm just adamantly against that. Now,
if you want to get creative and solve this, like
I said, on the back end, like we'll you know,

(43:51):
we'll charge everybody forty dollars for this process, provide free IDs,
and then you know, if you don't need it, rebate
it back on the taxes. Okay, But as long as
people don't have to come out of pocket on the
front end, if they have to come out of park
on the front end, I'm against it.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
And go from there. So there's that the three h three.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
I was never in the military because they would not
accept me during the non war. I guess that makes
me a worthless loser to you? No, not Why would
that make you a worthless's?

Speaker 3 (44:19):
No?

Speaker 4 (44:20):
And then if you got that from what I said,
I don't really know what to say. I just you know,
people who didn't serve in the military are not lesser.
It's just part of my background. I don't I really
don't know where that came from. So, uh three, my
fifty year old daughter has a job and has to

(44:40):
pay taxes. She made a point of she shouldn't pay
taxes as she can't vote. No taxation without representation your thoughts.
I actually brought this up back when I was in
high school. I completely agree with your daughter and I
you know, we have an age restriction to vote.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
I don't necessarily want to change that, but one of.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
The two has to give. One of those two has
to give. You can't sit there and say no taxation
without representation and then turn around and have a segment
of the population that is disenfranchised by that. I'm one hundred.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Percent with that. I agree.

Speaker 4 (45:22):
I agree with your daughter, and I think that people
under the voting age of sixteen should if they're getting paycheck,
should not be taxed on that not be taxed on
their productivity. I'm obviously gonna get pushed back against that
by the government because they want to collect the money.
But you know, and because FIKA is a funnel up,
you know, you're so security as a funnel up, they

(45:43):
need that money. But I'm with you on that fundamentally.
I think that that is correct from your daughter, and
good on her to recognize that.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Let's see here, what else have we got?

Speaker 4 (45:58):
Everybody gets an idea at twenty one, so they can
not everybody does? Not everyone does?

Speaker 3 (46:03):
And are those are those forms of ID okay? To
be able to vote with?

Speaker 4 (46:08):
Like Colorado, as one of the other texts pointed out,
has several programs to provide free id's okay?

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Are those identifications able to be used to vote? If
they are cool, then we're good. Then we don't. We
don't even have a debate here.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
But based on some of the verbiage I saw, and
with some of these proposals, some of them aren't good enough.
They have to be certain types of ID, and well, okay,
if you're going to do that, but again, provide them
for free five six six nine. Here, Oh, I appreciate
the a couple of competents. I appreciate that I'm going

(46:42):
to read the I'm not going to read that, but
I appreciate them. Someone asked who I am, Well, my
name is Benjamin Olbright. I host Broncos Country Tonight on
this station. A little bit later, I filled in for
Mandy a few times. I've worked in two different presidential
campaigns and data and analytics. I've got a fifteen year
background in the United States Military. I deployed multiple times.

(47:08):
I don't really know what else to go for from there.
If you have other questions, I can certainly, I can
certainly go from there. Nine oh four are The only
people allowed to vote around the founding of the country
were property owners, which would obviously only be white males
because they were property owners exclusively. Well, the reason the
voting was restricted to property owners exclusively was to ensure

(47:30):
that the majority of those who did not have property
do not abuse the interest of those who did.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
To a degree.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Yes, and again, going from what we were to what
we are, I mean, people, there are plenty of people
that rent an apartment now and don't own property. Should
you know, we can't barrier the democratic process that way.

(47:58):
I get where you're coming from, and I get what
you're trying to say, but we can't burier that process,
and I don't.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
To me, this seems easy.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
You have to have ID for almost anything, So have
the state or federal government, whichever ID you have to
have to vote in this proposal, Well, provide it for free.
You can work that backwards through all kinds of things
in state sales taxes, millages. There are other ways for
the government to get the funding to be able to
provide the program. They already Colorado State already provides certain

(48:29):
ideas for free or have programs to allow people to
do that. So this shouldn't be And the false premise
in this debate against me here is that if you
don't have an ID, you shouldn't be voting. Well, no,
we should just get everybody to have an ID, and
we can we can provide pathways to do that. That's

(48:51):
the solution. There shouldn't be a pushback on this. We
all agree with you know that, we love American we
love the Constitution, We want to do the right thing.
There shouldn't be pushback on this, you know, just because
I don't want to disenfranchise anybody.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Five six six nine zero said one on Mandy.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
No tax till fifteen, so they get to know and
feel the taxation when they go vote. I'll never I'll
tell you what, I will never forget getting my first
paycheck and look at it, that thing, and look at
all the taxes that came out of that. Gosh, what
was I fourteen fifteen? I think it was fourteen fifteen anyway,

(49:36):
and looking at all the taxes and everything that was
withdrawn from that, and just like the first paycheck you
get as a kid, looking at the taxes that come
out of it, and it wakes you up. It's it's uh,
it is a you know what I want? I want
like a reaction video. You got all the kids out
there on TikTok these days doing this. What I need

(49:58):
is somebody that goes around a videos people's reactions to
opening up their first paycheck and realizing that the half.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Of it is gone right off the top.

Speaker 4 (50:12):
And them struggling to figure out, you know, sort of why,
because it makes converts out of us. All we talk
about taxes and everything should be free and all that
kind of stuff until you see what gets taken.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Out and then you're like, well, wait a minute, that's
not actually free. I'm paying for it. I would love that.
I could. I could spend hours on a TikTok account
that sat there.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Showing people's reactions to their first paycheck and how much
in taxes was taken out. If somebody's got if that,
if that exists already, somebody tell me appoint me to that,
because I'm so so here to see that.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
If I went three A. I'm listening to Ohio.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
I used to listen to Mandy when she was on
Whas and Louisville, Kentucky when I live there. I've always
wondered what gets people into government to be an unelected
bureaucrat just to make their fellow man's lives harder.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
Yeah, that's one of those things. It's interesting to me.
You know, you look at the attraction to government work.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
There are patriots that are in government, did you just
you know, love their country and they want to get
involved in the process. There are people that want to
affect change that get into government because they feel that
the process or they've seen the process as flawed they
want to remedy them. And then you know, there's that
sort of third category, which it feels like we're overrun

(51:38):
with today, which is accommodation of people looking for a
little bit of power or looking to get in on
the grift right, looking to make money off of government.
And unfortunately, it feels like we are overrun with a
lot of those types today. They're really is sad government
at work is no longer as attractive as it used

(51:59):
to be. Running for is that it doesn't bring out
the best of us. Honestly, the best of us avoid
that because they don't with a scrutiny that comes with
a campaign with running like everybody's got skeletons in their closet.
Everybody's got skeletons in their closet, and so nobody wants
their whole family and their whole lives upended subjected to
the public scrutiny of going through a campaign for presidency,

(52:20):
and that eliminates a lot of the great minds out there.
There are several people, several quotes over the years from
billion people saying, you know, the best people for president
don't want anything to do with the job for obvious reasons.
The salary is terrible and unless you're going to be
out there, you know, finding ways to grift off of things,

(52:46):
you know, it's a money loser for you. It's a
thankless job. Half the country's going to hate you, maybe more.
You subject your family and yourself to an immense amount
of public ridicule and going through the campaign process to
dig up every little thing you've ever done. It's, you know,

(53:11):
it's it's one of those things that like the best
and the brightest among us aren't often involved in this
process because we've made the process so horrible and hateful.
Three oh three my neighbors retired Navy. As far as
he's concerned, if you never served, you got no business living.
I don't know if that's typical of career military or not.

(53:33):
I know, I mean, everybody in the military is different.
Like it's it's I don't like to I don't like
to ever speak, you know, as a veteran, because I
don't speak for other veterans.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
I speak for myself.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
What I will say is there is sort of a
thought process that having been involved in the process, having
having sweat and blood equity in this country does give
you a different perspective on it. I will say that,
But I don't devalue anyone else's opinion because they didn't
serve and I did. I'm willing to come at a
conversation with the ssumption of good faith, and I would
hope that people engage me the same way. Three or

(54:06):
three Ben, there's pretty funny video of young African American
man who gets his first check as a couple of
inquiries and laughs as the kid says, where's all my money?

Speaker 3 (54:18):
Yeah? Like I said, if there's a TikTok account of that,
I'm so so here for that.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
Three h three Ben, first paycheck, whiskey tango, fox trot
his fica. Yeah, the first time, my first check. That
was exactly basically exactly what happened.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
I'm looking at this, I'm like, where did all the
I thought I was gonna make this amount of money,
which they made him a wage at the time I
think was like four fifteen an hour or whatever, and
I was like, I thought I was making X amount
of dollars and I got much less. And who the
hell is fika?

Speaker 4 (54:51):
Oh the uh seven to a shout? I had to
show an ID in order to buy a firearm? Should
be charged for the background check? I mean constitutionally, No,
as a matter of practice mentality, I think we do
that just because of.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
You know, the way things are now. But I as
a as a matter of legality. No, I don't think
that you should. I'm with you on that.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
I think that we've we've placed cumbersome restrictions on firearms
because we've we've been unable to solve the problems that
have stemmed from people who have mental health issues using them,
and so instead of addressing the mental health issues, we
create de facto taxes on the front end and barriers
and impediments to purchasing firearms.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
I'm with you on that, And I say that as
someone who is a gun owner. I mean I I
am three h three AI will run for president before
we know it. Oh god, I hope not. How bad
some of these are.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
If you're like, use chatcht GPT and figure out how
many wrong answers it gives you. So these ais are
laughably terrible. Get it at some of that A minute,
Patty Cattle show bench. All I fielling in and I'll
be back.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Find six six nine zeros text line, maybe Collins show bench.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
But all my filling in today. Appreciate all the conversation.
And like I said, I'm cool with people disagree with me.
I love to find different perspectives and see how my
own stacks up and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
So don't be you know, if you disagree with me,
I'm fine. I don't know that.

Speaker 4 (56:19):
I'm not mad at you on the text line, unless
you're being insulting, in which case, but I love to
have differing perspectives, challenge my beliefs, make me either dig
in and realize I'm right or make me change my opinion.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
I love that stuff, So I appreciate all the engagement
that's on there right now. I haven't gotten to all
of it, but.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
Seven to old dying to hear what Trump has to
say about Victor Marx could go either way, but I'd
love to see the reaction of his supporters if Trump
calls him a whack job.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
I look, I did enough commenting on the not the
best and the brightest of us running for office in
the last thing. Yeah, I'm fair enough. Yeah, there's enough
about that guy without me having a pile on.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
I don't get that. Honestly. The candidates for governor that
are running, I just roll my eyes at this point.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
Through their colorad license to out, Oh great, our mail
in ballot system is. I will admit I like the
convenience of it. Same time, I know it's flawed. I
have a friend whose kids have been out of the
house for over twelve years that are registered to vote
in other states. If they still get Colorado mail in
ballots sent to my friend's house, they're addressed in Colorado.
He's ethical just throws them away, but to test the
integrity of the system, he's not notifying the states, waiting

(57:31):
to see how long it'll go on my confidence in
the Colorado mail ballot system. When it comes to fraud,
you would think there would be some state to state
coordination to look for duplicates.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
That's an interesting premise, Yeah, I think.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
I mean, obviously, purging the voter rules more periodically I
think would probably be better. You know, as far as
that goes, If I'm not mistaken, I believe it is
on the voter though to notify that you've moved not
one hundred percent on that, but I believe it is.
So that's the reason they keep sending them out, because they,

(58:02):
you know, obviously haven't been notified. So I would suggest
to you to just tell your friend to notify and
you can move on from there. Previously, before we hit
the break, somebody had texted in saying AI is gonna
run for presidents soon, which you know, I chuck a
little bit because sy I here in the States is
I mean, it's kind of falling behind. You've got some

(58:23):
of America's biggest technology companies pushing Washington to make uh,
you know, AI a national priority because China is leading
in the space and continues to build.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
A lead.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
Uh, there's there's there's a gap in US policy on AI.
America is a chip strategy for AI. We've we've seen
that rolled out, but we need an open model strategy
and we don't have one. You know, Open models lower cost,
keep sensitive data inside of companies own system, prevent businesses
from becoming dependent on just a handful of a I providers.
Models give researchers and security teams the ability to uh

(58:58):
sort of inspect powerful models to find we this is
you know, unlike chatcheptior Claude, which customers access through services
that are controlled by the company's open AI and anthropic
open weight models are something that could be downloaded, customized,
run on a company's on computers. It'll make them cheaper.

(59:19):
It gives users more control of their data and technology.
Last week, a coalition that was led by Nvidia published
an open letter arguing that America's AI leadership will depend
on building a strong open ecosystem, and there were other
companies that signed onto that from Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Open

(59:43):
Ai and Google added their support later as well. And
there was a striking cybersecurity incident days earlier that showed
why the issue matters. During an internal test, open AI
models found a way out of a restricted environment and
compromised systems on the AI platform hug which I'm sure
you guys read about this. When hugging Face tried to
investigate safety controls on closed commercial models blocked them from

(01:00:07):
analyzing the attack. Then the company instead used an open
Chinese model that it could to run its own infrastructure,
And therein lies the problem. As you're already seeing, a
closed American model caused the incident, a Chinese open model
helped investigate it. And this episode complements the argument that
closed aye is always safer. In the US, We've restricted

(01:00:30):
China's access to advanced chips. We've spent billions in you know,
onshore semiconductor of manufacturing. We've encouraged a massive build out
of data centers and power. But on the flip side,
of that. Meanwhile, you've got Chinese labs like Zeepou, Moonshot Ai.
They released capable open models and a fraction of the

(01:00:50):
cost of leading American systems. So now you got the
Trump administration reportedly considering restrictions on Chinese models. But a
ban is not going to stop these models from spreading
around the world. It just leaves American developers on the sidelines.
So China has a pretty clear incentive to push open

(01:01:10):
weight AI. Every improvement makes powerful models cheaper. We can
see advantage of American companies that charge a premium et cetera.
Open AI and Anthropic have the opposite incentive. Their businesses
depend on keeping their models proprietary. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi
has warned that models anyone can download are harder to

(01:01:31):
moditor and could be modified by bad actors, and those
security concerns are obviously real, but so is the risk
of allowing China to become the foundation on which the
rest of the world builds. And the way to win
an open source race is by outbuilding, not with a ban.
The US could support the way support open either the

(01:01:54):
way it support chips by giving universities and startups access
to computing power, could award government contracts to American open
model developers fund the security tools needed to run those
models safely. Companies are already asking for alternatives, and open
models can lower cost and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Let business keep sensitive data inside their own systems. If
you look at.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
The CEO of AI Platform Together Ai, that practice said
the other day quote the data that comes from these
companies have is really their strategic asset. By sending it
to the maker of a powerful closed model, a company
risks giving away its businesses recipe and He's right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Adoption is moving quickly. During the last week of June.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
Chinese models accounted for forty eight percent of traffic traffed
that was tracked by open Router.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
That's up from twenty percent a year earlier.

Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
Conversely, US models fell to thirty two percent when they
were up at seventy four percent a year earlier. So
the future a of AI might not be decided by
and who builds the smartest single model. It might be
decided by who builds the models that everybody else has
to run on, And right now that is increasingly China.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
We got a break Manny Cotta show back after this.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
The thing that's going on in Spain, he had like thousands,
tens of thousands of migrants from Morocco swam into the
Spanish enclave of Quite on Thursday, most of which have
returned to Morocco now escorted by escorted the board by
Spanish soldiers and police.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Seventy two people died in the events of shaken Europe politically.

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
Once again exposing divisions over the pretty sensitive issue of migration.
Had left lingering question about what sparked these sudden influx,
whether it was social media posts promising an easy path
to Europe that went viral or something more deliberate or organized.

(01:04:00):
Spain's Prime minister, who's the socialist, is pretty angry with
the response. Peterer Sanchez hit out at some of the
EU for attacking Spain in the crisis, and he was
really sort of pointedly referring to Italy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Fertility.

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
The Italia, which is like the very right wing party
of Prime Minister George Maloney in Italy, had been pretty
quick to post images of these.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Migrants racing through the streets of Tuerda and.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Captioned it this is the Sanchez model the Italian left
wing likes so much so try to politicize the event,
Meloney annow she was suspending Italy's Shandean agreement was Spain
that allows for free movement between the countries, citing a
security threat, and you know, Spain obviously was fuming because
of that. The way Spain sees it, the crisis was

(01:04:54):
contained is not even in the Shengin Shingan zone. Sorry,
and some Morocan migrants were never going to head for
mainland Europe unchecked anyway, And Maloney knew that, but was
using it for a political moment because she faces elections
next year and her coalitions losing ground, so there's a

(01:05:16):
chance to sound tough and clawback votes. Al He's not
the only country to see Spain as soft on migration, though.
Two dozen EU heads a state call for the elimination
of policies that could be pull factors into Europe, and

(01:05:40):
Spain's controversial move to allow hundreds of thousands of undocumented
migrants apply for residents and work permits and regularize their
status is a byproduct of Spain's pragmatic approach to what
it needs. Spain is aging and they need workers. That
was the impetus behind them doing that in the first place.

(01:06:01):
But those who flocked to the beaches this week were
not heading to sign up for a campaign that's already closed.
And Sass himself points out to a recent ruling by
spain Supreme Court and it said that those who enter
by sea cannot be pushed back immediately. Prime Minister argued
that that was misrepresented by smugglers to promise an easy
path to Europe.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
The message spread online. Migrants have shown social media posts
to reporters with people shouting that Spain is open and
jumping into the sea.

Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
Obviously, those accounts and their promises turned out to be false,
and the crowds who made it to kiss the Show
or aguetdo with joy were met with nothing, no food,
no shelter, no way onto the continental of Europe. Most
of them just turned back. President Trump called it a
catastrophe and invasion. Russia has been gloating on social media

(01:06:59):
loves the Chao Austin division in Europe, anything to weaken
Ukrainian allies and Morocco blaming criminal organizations. But surely its
own border guards must have seen the crowds building. Last
time something similar happens, albeit smaller. Spain and Morocco or

(01:07:21):
at longer heads over Western Sahara, which is a former colony.
For their part, Sanchez emphatically not blaming Morocco for what happened,
calling Robot a good ally, but his critics say that's
appeasement and that he should be showing teeth. It's just

(01:07:45):
fascinating to see the images in the video pouring in
of tens of thousands of people. And now you've got
a random document check in place in Italy for any
traveler from Spain. We know what you guys thought about
that one. I've got some small stuff till we come back.
Mandy Condall Show. You're on KOA.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
The Mandy Connall Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and Injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
No, it's Mandy connellyn on KOAM ninety ONEm.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
Got way.

Speaker 6 (01:08:22):
Can the icy three many Connelle sad thing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Welcome back to it our free Mandy Condall Show.

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):
Albright filling in today. Several people have asked for I'm
in all week? No, just today, I'm not sure who's
in the rest of the week. Ought to try to
figure that out for you. Five six six n Y.
The text line a lot of discussion about voter I
D one of the more recent texts that came in
said when discussing voter ID, you should make it clear
of the ID requirement they're trying to pass.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
This proof of citizenship means.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
If you're a woman that was married three times, you
have to a notre copy of your three marriage license,
no rise copies of all your forces.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
And there's Yeah, there's a lot of minutia.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
That's That's what I said with the same act, like
I can get behind the premise, but there's a lot
of minutia in there that that needs to be stripped
out or figured out.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
That's just ridiculous, and that that's one of them.

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):
Other news companies have started to receive their tariff rebates
and while absolutely nobody has gotten their promise to two
thousand dollars tariff check, Apple has received two point two
billion dollars as a tariff refund check, Walmart got ten billion,
Target got two, Costco got two, Nike got a billion,

(01:09:45):
Home Depot two billion, Amazon six hundred million. Those started
going out yesterday. Then what a nightmare that was implementing
them illegally, having a unwind them create one hundred million
dollars of profit for American corporations selling foreign products at

(01:10:05):
the expense of American consumers. Always love that, and I
don't understand the obsession with them. Like I said before,
it's it's inefficient to collect. You don't get one hundred
percent of the value back. It's just just an odd
thing to be obsessed with. But I don't know the

(01:10:29):
other part of that. The administration, this administration and then
the owning shares of certain companies.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
I hate that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:36):
I hate the fact that our government right now is
picking winners and losers in the market and the unwined
to that is going to wind up being disastrous. The
tru administration is interpreted that the laws is allowing the
government to become a shareholder in companies.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
I don't believe that to be legal. It's being battled
in court right now.

Speaker 4 (01:10:55):
The disturbing The other disturbing part of me is that
has offered few many details on how these deals are structured.
Congress has granted equity authority to a handful of agencies,
namely the International Development Finance Corporation, the Small Business Association.

(01:11:15):
It has supported the establishment of in q Tel. You
remember that it's venture firm started by the CIA that
invests in early stage technology companies that are directly applicable
to intelligence and national security operations. But the administration justifies
its equity deals using the Defense Production Act and the

(01:11:35):
Chips Act and then other supply chain resilience laws to
allow the Commerce, Energy, and Defense Departments to pursue equity stakes.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
That has changed for grants.

Speaker 4 (01:11:49):
These laws were intended to save companies producing materials or
goods necessary for for national defense, ideally to incentivize investment
in critical technogies and boost production strategic sectors. Previous governments
have used these laws to offer private companies incentives that
do not dilute equity, such as subsidies, grants, and loans,

(01:12:10):
but the Trump administration has interpreted this as allowing the
government to become a shareholder in companies. I personally believe
this to be an illegal shift, and it's going through
the courts now and we'll see how that ultimately works out.
That's one of those This is one of those things
that for me, it's interesting because I think it's a
huge deal, and for whatever reason, this is not something

(01:12:38):
that's readily discussed. It's not something that captures the outrage
on Twitter. It's not something that hits the virality. Owning
a stake in this is not made anything appreciably better.

(01:12:58):
Tariffs have not made anything better. It's been eight years
since Trump plays tariffs on aluminum imports. Production is not increased,
prices have increased. How much longer do we have to
wait to declare this policy of failure?

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
I just I just don't understand this.

Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
And the the problem is that businesses are always scrambling
to adjust here, and this tariff policy really crushed a
lot of small business because they're trying to make decisions
based on policies that are delineated and then they would
be the tariffs would be one day, they're fifty percent,
then they are fifteen percent, and they're eighty percent, then
whatever they change daily based on the you know, the
leveraging here.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
And so these businesses that are trying to make decisions
in an effort to.

Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
Make sure that their products can be manufactured played a
guessing game on a lot of this stuff and trying
to figure out how they're going to meet the margins
to make sure that they can get their products out equitably.
I just, for the life of me, I don't understand

(01:14:13):
who talked them into this. I don't understand who thought
it was a good idea. I don't understand. Like, after implementation,
you saw how horrifically bad it was.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
Just silly.

Speaker 4 (01:14:29):
Five six six nine zero the text line you were
talking about IDs. One of the other things that I
got a good laugh about.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
This past week.

Speaker 4 (01:14:37):
Turns out they're going to impose an ID card system,
a library card esque system for government grocery stores in
New York. And there are several people who lived in
Venezuela and lived through a similar system that had been
pretty critical of this.

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
Daniel di Martino.

Speaker 4 (01:15:04):
Just like when I had to use to my national
ID to buy food in Venezuela, they told me how
much I could buy, what I could buy, how much
I could buy of it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
It controls what you can buy, where you can live,
what you can learn. Yeah, I don't understand the ID
to buy a grocery thing either, Absolutely ridiculous. Five six
sixty nine zero is the text line.

Speaker 4 (01:15:38):
Somebody asked how I could possibly say that Culver's offer
was directed to their own Everybody, we get texts for
wrong stuff on the text line all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
We just don't read them.

Speaker 4 (01:15:46):
We get some pretty weird texts every now and again
from people that you know have texted KOA the five
six six nine zero and then they accidentally clicked back
on that thread to send their reply to something.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
So we get fragments of conversations sometimes, especially at night,
where you're like what in the world? Those are always fun.

Speaker 4 (01:16:11):
Yeah, I just assumed that somebody was like texting their
significant other for a Culver's order.

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):
Not me.

Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
But although now after I leave here, that's probably what
I'm gonna go do. I've been off the diet for
about two weeks and can actually have you know, real
food again from the three or three Barb Kirkmeyer was
a well qualified candidate. Don't know what happened there, Yeah,
I don't either. That was one of those things like
if the at the Republican Party in Colorado was serious,

(01:16:39):
that would have they would have just united behind that
and that would have been a thing. And I don't
know that she would beat Wiser, but she would at
least be I think within the margin. My good buddy
Rosskovinski and I we both have an open ended bet
that Marx is going to lose by twenty points or more.

Speaker 3 (01:17:01):
In the general Here we'll see as of right now,
looks like we're on the right track on that mean,
I'll continue to be mean.

Speaker 4 (01:17:13):
We gotta break Mandy Connell show back after this, so
ad alty text come into one big group and they
separated by phone numbers. Do you recognize phone from frequent texters?
They're they're separated by phone number. When you guys come,
when you guys text, it's uh, it's got an IV
number for the individual text it's got it's got your
actual text, and it's got a little thing out to

(01:17:33):
the left of it that shows what number it came
from and who the service provider is. And so Yes,
to answer your question, I do recognize some frequent texters
on the night show. There's one of our guys named Brian.
I recognize his number when it comes through. There are
guys Bruce texted you know earlier. I recognized his number.

(01:17:53):
There are people in here that I reckon. There are
some numbers in here that I recognize. So yes, while
of of doing it, you can sort of recognize, not
always that you can recognize some of the numbers.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
The three H three.

Speaker 4 (01:18:09):
I'll trust Trump's business acuity over anyone else, including you.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Uh, that's your prerogative.

Speaker 4 (01:18:16):
I don't know that I'm sitting out here clamoring for
a guy that bankrupted casinos. But more power to you.
And I don't think you know my business acuity, but
you know, okay, you are certainly welcome to do that.
I'm not going to sit here and try to convince
you you're your own person. So that I came across,
I got a few minutes to discuss here that I
thought was hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
There was a survey out there of what women single
women look for.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
As the bare minimum when looking for a partner. And
according to a survey of women twenty five to thirty five,
their three things that they look for are a man
being six foot or above, earns one hundred thousand dollars
a year or more, and are not considered obese. Right now,

(01:19:04):
people put in thing They always say things like sense
of humor and all this, but this is what they
put down on this survey, right.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
Those three things as a bare minimum.

Speaker 4 (01:19:15):
Those three things account for point oh three percent, not
three percent, point oh three percent of unmarried men aged
twenty five to thirty five. That is literally forty nine,
four hundred and ninety three of the one hundred and
sixty four million nine hundred seventy seven thousand, three hundred
and forty one American men as the bare minimum.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
Standard like that that is delusional at best. It's fascinating.
This this entire, this entire dating pool they consider the
bare minimum standard is like non existent. There's like a
thousand of these men per state.

Speaker 4 (01:19:56):
If you average it out, and I imagine they're concentrated
in different different areas. It's just, uh, you know, looking
at this stuff, and there's there's a couple of different
things in here. There's one the one that I've talked
about this one before that really jumped out of me.

Speaker 3 (01:20:09):
Of uh, men.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
Aged twenty eight or younger, something like sixty five percent
have never asked a woman out in person. And I
get it with the advent of you know, the apps
and all that kind of stuff, you know that it
sort of makes it easier on some things, But to
have never asked a woman out in person is mind
blowing to me. Maybe I'm showing my age a little bit.

Speaker 5 (01:20:31):
But wouldn't you think, like at least even in school,
like when you're in a middle school or high school,
you would ask someone out in person. There's or kids
just do it all online now even though you see
each other in person.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
Is there an app for like inviting someone to the
Sadie Hawkins Dance now like yeah, or like hey you
are having lunch together?

Speaker 4 (01:20:52):
That through a text check yes or no on your
app for will you be my Valentine?

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
I don't know. I I think that was. And looking
at some of these things that people have, it's just
absolutely ridiculous. I don't know. Five six, six, nine zero,
the seven to two I aps love this siety.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
Benjamin best wishes Brandon frequent Texter, appreciate you on the
flip side of that from the seven too. Oh, you
offer no proof, blanket statements withou anything but your opinion,
not insults, criticism, opposition.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
You have no tolerance. Sorry, you come across the radio
as a narcissist. Take it as it is. Well, I mean,
I think that would be the opposite of what I've
said this entire show. No tolerance. I said, I love
people that disagree. I I don't know if I'm u
if I come across as the radio narcissist, I guess
I do.

Speaker 4 (01:21:44):
The US military is asking troops for creative and unconventional
ideas to punish Iran.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Across from a senior officer came in an email. We
need I ideas.

Speaker 4 (01:22:00):
We are looking for new, creative and unconventional ways to
pressure and punish in Iran. That's an officer from the
US sent Comms Intelligence brandch wrote a message sent last
Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts crowdsourcing style query,
in which military officials said was unusual over emails one

(01:22:20):
of the limited options available to Trump to.

Speaker 3 (01:22:24):
Force Iran into a deal on his terms. That's just
an interesting thing to me because it's when I was
in They certainly don't crowdsource these kinds of ideas to
the troops, and I wonder if anything comes of it.

Speaker 4 (01:22:37):
I wonder if any ideas come from that, because I mean,
it's sort of being ridiculed. But at the same time,
I'm like, you know, if you get a good idea,
then I understand the ridicule from the sense that you
should have already had a plan when you started this.
But on the flip side of that, if you get
a good idea, who's to say we had a final break?

(01:23:01):
Any Carle show back up for this. So I have
two boys in high school. They say asking girls out
has gotten tricky. Because there's no casual dating anymore, at
least among their set. You asked her to the dance
you are now boyfriend and girlfriend. Yikes, I mean it was,
but it was kind of that way back in the day,
right you ask the girl like the homecoming of dance.
You were pretty much you know, boyfriend and girlfriend are

(01:23:25):
gonna be unless you were like going as friends or whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:23:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
My recollection on that was it was kind of the
same way I could be wrong. Three or seven, my
niece who's fifteen, broke up with her first boyfriend via text.

Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
It was weird to my forty six year old self. Well,
I'm forty five. I'll be forty sixteen December. Yeah, text breakup.

Speaker 3 (01:23:46):
That is weird.

Speaker 4 (01:23:47):
I've had that happen to me. I have had that
happen to me. I've never broken up with anybody via
text or impersonally. But it is weird how much of
what we do now filtered through the lens of technology.
It's my good friend, Grant Smith would say, or did

(01:24:08):
say actually on his Taking It for Granted podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:24:10):
You can find the archives on the iHeartRadio app. He
had a guest on there who pointed out that.

Speaker 4 (01:24:17):
You know, you put something out on social media and
it only gets like twenty or thirty likes, and you're like, well,
that underperformed. But if you were walking down the street
in the real world and twenty or thirty people came
up to you and said, man, you look great today,
you would be overwhelmed. That's one of those things that

(01:24:40):
social media sort of warps into Stort's reality. Technology warps
into Stort's reality. I thought that was a fascinating point.
Aren't you so glad you grew up in the area
you did?

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
Yeah, I tried to explain that to.

Speaker 4 (01:24:57):
I was talking to somebody the other day and trying
to explain that to them. They're thirty one years old,
and so like trying to explain sort of the difference
in growing up in an era where, I mean, Google
didn't exist.

Speaker 3 (01:25:12):
When I was in high school. We had asked Jeeves, Yeah,
we're right, remember that was still around. But like it was,
it was so different because you had if you wanted
information on stuff like Wikipedia didn't really exist, you had
to go to you had to go get the encyclopedia
out to go look things up. And now you've got chat, GPT,

(01:25:33):
write and whole book reports for people.

Speaker 5 (01:25:37):
Mandy had this great bit on her blog on Friday.
It was some comedian and then the bit was explaining
libraries to gen z ers, and it was like, if
you go to go to the library, you get this
little code with the numbers on it, and you look
up that book and hopefully it has the information in
it you wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:25:54):
If not, you've just got to learn a bunch of
other stuff and then try again. You're explained the doing
decimal system. Oh I love it. I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:26:04):
Yeah, five six six nine zero in a whole bunch
of people saying I don't think you're a narcissist. You're
brother fresh Air Ben, You're not sounding like a Narcissist's
always entertaining. Many people hear what they want to hear,
not what's said. Solid Hustle Today enjoyed the show. Here's
a good one, said one I been normally. I don't
care if you use a sports guy, but I think
you're the best guest host on the Mandy Connell Show
I've ever heard. Well, that'll get you read on the here.

(01:26:30):
Some of these other people didn't like my quip about Trump.
I guess let's say three to a billionaire like Trump,
a bankruptc here too is a small crack on the
highway he cruises over.

Speaker 3 (01:26:38):
He's not a quitter. Ratio out his wins and losses
and compare.

Speaker 4 (01:26:40):
Actually, you probably don't want to do that because that's
a losing argument for you on the wins and losses.

Speaker 3 (01:26:45):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:26:46):
I think that Donald Trump is a brilliant businessman in
the sense that he sells his brand, like his name
as a brand, and gets people to buy it. But
I think as far as his actual business or economic acumen,
I find it lacking. Anyone who would try to bring
terriffs back has a fundamental misunderstanding of of modern macroeconomics.

(01:27:08):
And there are other aspects that I that are bizarre
and costing us all money. Right now, I don't have
enough time to get into the rest of that on
this show, And maybe next time I fill in, I'll
come in with all that we can debate that. And
I'm not saying that Trump, you know, whatever, whatever you
think of him, he's excellent at generating pr for Trump

(01:27:29):
and he's excellent at selling his own brand.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
Those are things that he's he's very good at. I
I just find his.

Speaker 4 (01:27:37):
His discourses on economics to be what's the best word
to use here, at best naive and in reality sort
of weird. There's there's absolutely no reason we should be
trotting tariffs back out there. There are much easier, much
better and much more efficient.

Speaker 3 (01:27:53):
Ways to uh to do things with regard to that.
As far as the.

Speaker 4 (01:28:00):
The technology thing goes, Yeah, it's it's fascinating. The modern
dating world is fascinating. I you know, I'm somebody who's
previously married and if you've you've been out in the
in the dating world after that. Now it's it's it
is sort of interesting how technology has taken over and
the hoops you have to jump through.

Speaker 3 (01:28:20):
It's so impersonal, like it's just like trying to trying
to describe yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
For a.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
Profile and try to capture the nuances of yourself, and
then you go out, you know, for the first time,
and you hit that same basic benchmark of questions that
everybody has, tell me about yourself, what's your you know,
we do you know?

Speaker 3 (01:28:46):
Those kinds of things? I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:28:48):
I'd say it's tough because if you don't make the
right impression on the profile portion of it, do you
even get to that.

Speaker 3 (01:28:54):
It's like a job interview in a lot of ways. Right,
You try to get.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
Your resume past the AI film they see and get
in the room and close on the job, and it's
it could be difficult to do. And then you know,
if you do that, you got to meet the person.
You got to even hope that there's a compatibility there.
I've been outed some hilariously bad dates over the last
fifteen years. It was the one, uh was when I

(01:29:21):
was here. I think it was like twenty twenty fourteen.
I think it was twenty fifteen, maybe twenty fourteen, I
don't know, twenty fourteen. And we sat down, We're having dinner.
It was going fairly well. I mean, it wasn't you know,
would I don't say that there are sparks flying or
anything like that, but.

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):
It was it was going okay, and she she says, yeah,
you know this this might work. This could work.

Speaker 4 (01:29:43):
We could uh this was the date was in February.
For context, see this is my work. This this could
this could work. I could see this, we could we
could date until April. And I'm like, well, that is
a very specific timeframe. Are you are you moving at
that point? I mean are you are you military? You
get get deployed or something. She said, no, no, no,
that's what that's why my boyfriend gets out of prison.

(01:30:04):
And I could not get that check fast enough. I
was just so, you got to be kidding me, you know.
It's it's it's just it's it's wild out there. If
you guys have some dating horror stories before we get
out of here, I'd certainly love to hear it. Oh,
let's see what we got here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
Three zho three.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
Growing up here in the five zero, and it's there
was a law that required employer's time off to vote
in person.

Speaker 3 (01:30:33):
No holiday needed. We enjoyed voting in person and knowing
results that night. Yeah, and that goes back to.

Speaker 4 (01:30:40):
What we were talking about earlier, Like I, I, you know,
I suggested the holiday, but if employers could get you know,
if you got a two hour pass to go vote
or something, something that's not going to count against you,
you know, making money, just whatever whatever that may be.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
And so that that's that's the thing. I just don't
want impediments to voting. I want to make it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:00):
I want to make the democratic process easier for people
to get invested in.

Speaker 3 (01:31:03):
I want people to make it more informed choices.

Speaker 4 (01:31:05):
I want people to be able to participate in that
process and have and feel like they are a part
of that process. And I feel like a lot of
us feel jaded and put off by the process.

Speaker 3 (01:31:16):
There's so many grifters out there on both.

Speaker 4 (01:31:18):
Sides of the aisle that at this point we just
give up and let it happen, right, I mean we
see it every day. We're just like, oh, well, you know,
that's a price it that shouldn't be the standard. The
standards should be get these guys to bleep out of there.
And I just it's so frustrating these days. And that's

(01:31:38):
I think what institutions of power like political parties count
on that it's so frustrating for the average citizen who
just wants to make things a little bit better for everybody,
even though we may disagree on what makes things better
or how to make it better, but it's so frustrating
to get involved in that process that we leave it
up to them.

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
And that's you know.

Speaker 4 (01:32:02):
I've always had sort of a problem with political parties
in general because I think that their main goal is
acquisition of power.

Speaker 3 (01:32:07):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:32:08):
The goal of a political party is to be the
party in power not necessarily the better mid of the
constituents to be voting for it, And so at the
end of the day, I sort of struggle with that.

Speaker 3 (01:32:24):
It goes back to the conversation we were having about
the people that are running for these offices aren't the
best in the brightest because who wants to expose themselves
to that? Who's to put themselves to that machine?

Speaker 4 (01:32:37):
You know. I'll make jokes about being glad that there
were no cell phone cameras back when I was in
college and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:32:46):
Because you know, I was out there being an idiot.

Speaker 4 (01:32:49):
But I'm sure there are enough eyewitnesses that if I
ran for a public office, people coming forward out of
the Worlwick, Oh you want to hear something.

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
Dumb about this guy. I just it's just frustrating because
there's a there's a growing ground swell, and we can
see it through these populist movements, both on the left
and the right.

Speaker 4 (01:33:15):
And I'm not a populist right because populism doesn't really
have any adherent set of rules. It's just sort of
a feeling by a group, you know, and and they
go with whatever the charismatic leader at the time does.
So I'm not a populist, but I will say there
is a ground swell of populism. There really has been
since the John McCain Obama election. Right, we saw it

(01:33:36):
because the pushback from the McCain nomination on the on
the Huckaby side of things, there was a swell of
sort of populism and the you know, at the time,
it was the Tea Party movement. And so we see
a ground swell of Americans that want to get involved
in the process, that want to be more involved in
the process, they want to feel more empowered in the process,

(01:33:57):
and instead we get these these parties that are a
barrier to that because they just want to stay in power.

Speaker 3 (01:34:02):
They want to get power and stay in power.

Speaker 4 (01:34:05):
And so one of the things when I'm debating people
on political issues, one of the things that I kind
of eyeball is is that person willing to be critical
of the party or movement or ideology that they assign
themselves to, right, the one they tend to agree with.

Speaker 3 (01:34:19):
Are they willing to be critical? What's the biggest negative
about that?

Speaker 4 (01:34:21):
And that's one of the things I'll ask, what's the
biggest Let's say you're a say you're a Democrat or
a Republican and you want to debate me on an
issue and we're talking about things, I'm like, what's the
biggest problem with the Democratic Party or biggest problem with
the Republican Party, whichever one they identify with, And if
they're unable to give a real answer to that, I
know right away that you know this isn't somebody that's
doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:38):
They're just an acquisition of power person.

Speaker 4 (01:34:42):
If you find yourself unable to find something wrong or
criticize the person in power that you wanted to win,
I would suggest that you might be exhibiting as some
culty behavior. I always just tell people, try to find

(01:35:02):
two or three things that you you know you know
you don't like about that, and work and work from there.
Five six six nine zero is the text line seven too,
Oh love you as a sports analyst. Love you is
this debater? Types never knew you could do this, to
be honest, love the show. Well, I appreciate it, thank you,

(01:35:24):
said when I asked what I would use this leverage
instead of tear If there are all kinds of different
things that you can do for that, and I don't
have enough time left in this show. But I promise
you if you bring that up the next time I'm
filling in, and I fill in you know, at least
once a quarter.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
If you bring that up.

Speaker 4 (01:35:36):
Next time, I will be more than happy to build
a segment around that and and talk to you about that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:42):
Seven to two.

Speaker 4 (01:35:43):
Other's an app advertised on KOA that will create a
breakup song for you to send to the unlucky person.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
Are we really advertising that?

Speaker 5 (01:35:51):
I don't think it's about a breakup. It's about avoiding
a breakup. But yes, it does a jingle thing, really
like an AI jingle or something?

Speaker 3 (01:35:59):
Or is this real? People? I do not know the
answer to that. Well, what good are you? Gret You're
supposed to know these kinds of things. Oh, I didn't know.
We were like, I listen, Uh good lord. We have
enough commercials on the station. I listened to some of them.
I have not heard that commercial, so I can tell you. Uh,
let's see here.

Speaker 4 (01:36:16):
I went on a date with someone that claims she
went to the same high school at the same time
I did. Never seen her before, and I'm a social butterfly.
She had bad teeth and sounded like Selma from The Simpsons.
She said she thought there was something there I couldn't
get out fast enough. Yeah, there's I mean, there's been
some bad dates as far as that goes. Now with

(01:36:37):
the bad teeth thing, I gotta ask like, cause did
you Obviously you didn't ask her out in person or
you would have seen that. So I'm guessing you it
was a dating profile and she just didn't smile and
you didn't see the teeth ahead of time, or maybe
she just had old photos up.

Speaker 3 (01:36:49):
I need more on this one. That's from the seven
one nine. Let's see I said too.

Speaker 4 (01:36:54):
I recently retired as an airline pilot, often gone on
multiple day trips, So how would I be able to
vote on only election day? You know what, that's a
good point. Just like the nurse earlier was talking about
night shift voters. There are plenty of things to get
down in the weeds on that kind of thing, and
just having the idea of having an election day holiday
is a great thought from my end, but it does

(01:37:16):
not cover everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:37:17):
So you're right, there has to be some sort of
mail and exception for things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:37:20):
I'm one hundred percent here obviously, you know, you know
deployed soldiers, as I used to be one. There has
there have to be some carved out exceptions in there somewhere.

Speaker 3 (01:37:32):
Nights somebod.

Speaker 4 (01:37:32):
I had a date once where she set her goal
was to get pregnant by a tall cowboy. I too,
couldn't get the check fast enough. I'm assuming you are
a tall cowboy there, nine seven zero. That's a that's
an interesting goal. And she said that on the first
date she started to getting pregnated by a tall cowboy,

(01:37:54):
said when I Colorado requires businesses to give employees two
hours of paid time off to vote.

Speaker 3 (01:38:00):
I didn't know that. Did you know that? Grant Smith?

Speaker 4 (01:38:06):
I did not, Yeah, knowing us at the battle seven
one night. I went to look that up to verify.
But if you're right, and there's several people that sort
of texted, uh something similarly in we got a couple
from the three oh three one from the.

Speaker 3 (01:38:17):
Seveone nine seven two zero, I did not know that.
I legitimately did not know that.

Speaker 4 (01:38:23):
So if that that uh, if that is correct, if
that is the law, and I'm assuming it is, because
several of you said that we're doing a really bad
job of advertising that in this state, I would guess
intentionally what business owner has incentive to like let his
employees know that that two hours off the vote.

Speaker 3 (01:38:43):
By the way, I found that commercial that textor was
referencing what is it? Is it a break up? Like
fifteen seconds you want to hear it? Yeah, fired up
real quick.

Speaker 7 (01:38:51):
I'm not great with words after a fight, and I'm
sorry I wasn't cutting at this time, So I used
smile tunes to write a soulful ballad about how she's
always right. By the second court, the silent treatment was
officially over. Is it smile tunes dot com and get
out of the doghouse today.

Speaker 4 (01:39:06):
Okay, so it's a makeup thing, not a breakup thing, correct,
But still it sounds like it's like an AI like
create me a song sort of thing.

Speaker 5 (01:39:13):
Right, here's what I did wrong. Here's why She's always right?
Make me generate me as generate me a generic song
smile tunes.

Speaker 3 (01:39:21):
Yeah, hit the hit the chorus of forty five seconds
forget we need to under two it. Yeah, songwriting one
of one.

Speaker 4 (01:39:29):
Oh five six six nine zero is the text line.
And I'm appreciating you guys jumping in here. Back to
the bad teeth. She didn't show her teeth on her
profile picks because she was a smoker.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
Okay, all right. I was curious how you went into
that without knowing.

Speaker 4 (01:39:44):
That's one of those things I will say, there are
there's an actual believe it or not, there's an actual
person out there that is a consultant for dating profiles,
like the hitch for dating profiles.

Speaker 3 (01:39:55):
You guys remember the Will Smith movie.

Speaker 4 (01:39:58):
And that's one of those things. Like I I I
was gonna do this interview with her, and I sort
of like talked to her about it. I ended up
not ended up doing the thing, but I talked to
her and asked her some questions, like preterview questions.

Speaker 3 (01:40:08):
That was one of the things. She was like trying
to wrap my head around the fact that this was
a job.

Speaker 4 (01:40:13):
And I guess she's like, yeah, you got to have
if you're a man you want to be make sure
you're smiling and showing teeth in your first pick, so
she knows you don't, you know, have like like horrible
teeth and all.

Speaker 3 (01:40:21):
This kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:40:23):
Don't put your best pictures your first picture, d it
is your second picture. So when she starts looking, she
doesn't get progressibly disappointed as it goes like this whole
rules thing for these dating profiles. So that's that's phenomenal.
Three L three says the voting rules and the employee handbook?
And how many of you have read the employee handbook?

Speaker 3 (01:40:44):
Come on? Do we even have an employee handbook here?

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):
We do?

Speaker 3 (01:40:48):
Do? I didn't know it existed, and I've certainly never
read it me either.

Speaker 4 (01:40:51):
Okay, all right, last time I read an employee handbook
I think was the Army.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
I'm just saying like, it's I you do anybody read
the employee book? Does anybody read that? I don't know?
Three or three? Great? Hearing you is a fill in
for Mandy Ben. I appreciate it. Seven to a lethargic
is a good word for hot temperature activity.

Speaker 4 (01:41:15):
This textas old now. I meant to reply right after
the show started today. I'm sorry. Yeah, we were talking
about that. We were talking about how hot it is
that my my lethargy just sort of kicked in.

Speaker 6 (01:41:24):
It was.

Speaker 4 (01:41:27):
It was hot and sweaty. It was so hot, like
it's yesterday. I was gonna go to the pool and
they're just gonna walk up and go to the go
to the pool out there, and I was like, it's
too hot to go to the pool. That's when you
know it's like and then you couple that with like
the air quality, you know, with like the smoke and
everything else. You're saying, I don't, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:41:48):
I'm not doing. It's kind of into my jogging though.

Speaker 4 (01:41:51):
I like to get out there and jog every other
day and get a couple of miles in. And I'm
just with the air quality the way it is, it's
just tough to.

Speaker 3 (01:42:00):
Tough to breathe.

Speaker 4 (01:42:05):
To. I was saying, there's a breakup commercial also, so
I guess there's a makeup so I guess what was
the name of that products? A smile too, smile tunes? Okay,
I guess they make makeup and breakup songs. I'm actually
gonna look into this later just to see what what
services they offer, what it costs. I'm my curiosity is
peaked now. So do voting runs seven eight to seven

(01:42:27):
p If your job has you worked that entire span,
then they have to let you take two hours and
go vote. But if you work eight to four, you
don't get a break because you've got five hours outside
the work to vote on your own time. Okay, so
we're getting clarification on this this voting loss stuff seven

(01:42:47):
nine points to my employee handbook back when I was
serving as the UCMJ. Yeah, that was the joke. I
figured that anybody who served would get that joke. The
three H three, Yes, the HR manager who has to
write it, talking about who reads the employee handbook?

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
God, I feel sorry for that. I could never work
in HR. I could.

Speaker 4 (01:43:06):
I could just never work in HR. I would be
so bad at that. Of all the things that I
could be decent at, that is not one of them.
I would be horrible working at hrce to I prefer
to fill my ballot at home, drop it off the
day of Yeah, it's kind of me too.

Speaker 3 (01:43:25):
I'm the same way.

Speaker 4 (01:43:27):
I appreciate you guys. Uh, let me jump in with you,
mix it up, guys, ain't gals. Uh mixed up with
it and talk about stuff today. I always enjoy getting
different perspectives. I like being able to give my perspective.
Some of you guys maybe think some of you gals
may maybe think about, you know, my perspective on things.
I appreciate that. I appreciate the conversation, and I'll talk
to you all again soon.

Speaker 3 (01:43:47):
Appreciate you guys beat along for the Mandy Connle Show
on Benjamin all Bright. Fill it in. K wait Sports
come up next.