08-12-25 FULL SHOW - The Other Side Of The Post "Expose" On Do Better Denver

Episode Transcript

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:11):
KOA ninety one at them.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Stay the nice through Free, Andy Connald, Keith Sad bab Welcome, Welcome,
Welcome to a Tuesday edition of the show.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm your host for the next three hours, Mandy Connell.
And because Anthony Rodriguez is back at training camp, bringing
all things Broncos to our social media channels. You can
find those at KOA, Colorado, mostly Instagram and Twitter. I
know he's got some stuff on Facebook, but if you
follow us on X, I should say Twitter dot com
no longer works. Grant Smith, who's sitting in for Anthony Rodriguez.

Speaker 5 (00:52):
When did that finally happen?

Speaker 6 (00:54):
Well?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I have these bookmarks save that are my show sites
that I have opened during the show, and one of
the is Twitter, and so I saved Twitter dot com.
I don't even know how long ago as the bookmark,
and I clicked on it the other day. First time
it was like, sorry, this page doesn't exist. Well, I
was like, that's coortant.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
Question is does Randy Cromwell dot com still work?

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Randy Cromwell dot com does still work. And if you're
the person who bought Randy Cromwell dot com, send me
an email. I just want to be able to thank
you because that gives me a great deal of delight,
just makes me laugh. So anyway, we've got a lot
of stuff on our plate. I just added a twelve
thirty guest I'll tell you about. But let's do the

(01:35):
blog while we're talking about it. Randy Cromwell dot com
or mandy'sblog dot com. Look for the headline that says
eight twelve twenty five blog the other side of the
post expose on do Better Denver. Click on that and
here are the headlines you will find within.

Speaker 7 (01:52):
I think it's office half of American all with ships
and cuipments of sass plat.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Today on the blog what did the post yvorter leave
out of her winey expose? The trades are having a moment.
Senator Adam Schiff is a total scumbag. RTD finds out
more cops equals less crime, limits on what food welfare
can buy or fair Representative Weinberg is in more trouble.
Want to know more about the book bands and marketing

(02:20):
your business online? The perfect explanation for why the left
supports Hamas Fort Collins is getting a black eyed pey
Ken wash parkst a planned road diet. No Epstein ran
jury files for you. One of the motorcycle deaths was
a road rage incident to sell out at core Field.
I wonder how many more restaurants this will kill. In Denver,

(02:41):
KFC is bringing back potato DGEs. Please pray this judge
makes the right decision. DA studies small modular reactors, or
do they? The American diet is way too much ultra
processed food. More on a likely socialist new mayor in
New York, The real cause of dementia and Alzheimer's Instagram
meets reality news important to my daughter, Colorado DEM's make

(03:03):
a show trip to an ice facility, and yes DC
has broken and needs shock therapy. Those are the considerable
headlines on the blog today, and because I now have
a third guest to add to the mixt we will
not get to most of those. So please take the
time to go and read the blog because I worked
really hard on it. You know, that's the thing you
guys don't appreciate. That's what you don't understand about me.

(03:28):
Is that I worked really hard on stuff. Anyway, Oh
JEZU just turned my microphone up. Were my headphone's up
way too high? Still fighting that tonight is that I'm
trying not to get any worse than I already have.
So here's the deal, you guys. President Trump yesterday, right
when I started the show, he started a press conference,
and I went back and listened to it this morning,

(03:51):
because the reaction in part of the left media, and
I say part of and i'll explain not in just
a moment, part of the reaction has been completely out
of control and over the top in such a way

(04:12):
that it's almost comical. Because you guys, here's the thing.
When I see one more person on X or whatever
talking about how you know this is authoritarianism at its heart.
Trump is federalizing the police force in DC. He's taking
over this city. It's just the first step. It's anthoritarian

(04:34):
rule in the other guides days everywhere. But I would
urge you to just go watch the press conference that
the President gave yesterday. It's an hour and twenty minutes long.
I mean, you gotta commit. Okay, it's not one of
those that you can just bounce, but the reality is this,
and this is something I very much agree with. Washington,

(04:57):
d C. Should be the crown own jewel of the country,
the city itself. It should be our crowning glory. All
of our history is noted and stored. Much of it
is stored in Washington, d C. And we have these
absolutely incredible museums that are owned by the American taxpayer.

(05:20):
And you can go to DC and you can walk
through history and you can learn about so much stuff
all in one space. And yet the last time I
was in DC with students, I've been there since with
my family, but the last time I went on a
school trip with students, we had a naked, homeless guy
bathing himself in the fountain right by our hotel. We

(05:41):
were not allowed to leave the hotel after like eight
o'clock at night. Now, this was years ago, but still
it's not that much better now. And one of the
really I mean interesting, fascinating, however you want to look
at it, whatever your perspective is, is the way that
the media keeps telling us that Washington, DC's crime rate

(06:02):
is the lowest it's been in thirty years. Wow, that
sounds amazing. How much above the national average is that
crime rate? Do you think how far above I'm going
to let GROC do the work for me, because well, no,
I actually have this in a thing I can read

(06:22):
right here because I looked it up earlier. I asked
GROC to compare DC to other cities per capita, and
this is what GROC had to say. Washington, DC's violent
crime rate in twenty twenty four, this is last year,
was approximately four hundred and ninety four per hundred thousand,
that is, per hundred thousand people. And that is a

(06:45):
thirty five percent decrease from twenty twenty three and marks
the lowest level in over thirty years. So that sounds great. Now,
what is the national average violent crime rate for twenty
twenty four? You just heard me say, DC is four
hundred and ninety four incidents per hundred thousand people. Do
you know what the national average is? The national average

(07:08):
is three hundred and seventy four per one hundred thousand,
and that's with a four point five percent decrease. I mean,
you guys, that's nothing to write home about. That's not okay.
It is not okay that they have more than two
carjackings a day in Washington DC more than two still

(07:29):
now with their new lower crime rates, you know, and
the way that that is being presented as kind of
the end of the argument is fascinating. So in order
to get a little more information about that, in about
fifteen minutes, I am going to be talking to a
dude whose name is I want to make sure I

(07:50):
get this right. His name is National Guard Colonel Josh McConkey,
and he's been in the DC area for a very
long time. He's been an emergency management or officer for
the National Capital Region, liaison officer for Defense Board of
Civil Authorities. He is going to come on and give
some clarity as to what's actually happening, because I just

(08:12):
find it fascinating. By the way, the President of the
United States does have the right to federalize the law
enforcement of Washington, d C. For thirty days in the
case of an emergency. So this is not a matter
of does he have the right to do it? He absolutely,
one hundred percent does. So we'll talk to is it

(08:36):
Lieutenant colonel, Oh, Colonel Josh McConkie at twelve thirty about that. Now,
we also have other guests coming up. We're gonna probably
hopefully put a pin in the great at Do Better
Denver flap of twenty twenty five. Today, when I have
one of the women who was outed by the Denver Post,
they accused her of being the person behind Do Better Denver,

(08:57):
she is not. And Jill Osa is going to joined
me on the show to just talk about her experience
in this process and the things that she said in
the conversation with the reporter that somehow did not make
it into the story. So this is a story that

(09:18):
I personally have in my life. I mentioned it yesterday
at some point on the show. It's like whenever I've
done an interview, the reporter has come in to interview me.
And it started in Denver. First of all, I could
tell you about the ones in Louisville, Kentucky. They were insane.
They were absolutely insane. And I should have known when
we went to do the photo shoot. I'm standing there,

(09:41):
I'm like, hey, you know, I'm smiling whatever like you
do in a photo shoot, and the reporter says, do
one where you look like you're really mad. And if
I was smarter like I am now, I would have said, no,
thank you, because that's the way you're going to portray
me in your story. And that's why you're asking me
to do this. It's never a and hey, it would
be funny or cute if you did this. No, it

(10:03):
is an agenda. And this has been my experience over
and over and over again. Perfect example, when I came
to Denver. This is one of my favorite stories of
all time. By the time Joanne Ostrow, long time kind
of social lifestyle reporter for the Denver Post. She asked
to interview me when I come to do the job

(10:23):
at KHAL and I told my then boss, Greg Foster,
I didn't want to do it. I was like, I
never get treated fairly by these reporters, and I don't
want to do it. And he said, you kind of
have to because it's Joanne. Yeah, it's a post. Whatever. Okay,
So I do it, and I do this interview. And
in the interview, she asked me what books I was reading. Okay,

(10:49):
now my daughter's four at this time, you know, And
I said, well, I don't read a lot of fiction,
you know, because I because I don't have time, and
I and I what I read. I read political books
for work, but mostly I'm just reading, you know, green
Eggs and ham right now or something along those lines.
You know what she wrote in the story, Condle says

(11:10):
she doesn't read.

Speaker 8 (11:11):
Like what what?

Speaker 2 (11:15):
What are you talking about? It was I swear to god,
you guys. I was just like, oh my god, it
was so so funny. It wasn't funny at the time.
I was lit. I was lit when I saw that.
But that's exactly what they do. They know what they're
gonna say about you before you have the first conversation.

(11:36):
And that's what happened to Jill. So we're going to
talk to her about her experience. She's coming up at
two thirty this afternoon to talk about that. And then
at one o'clock we got a really interesting interview with
a guy named kirk Offfel. He is coming on to
talk about trade school. And now gen Z is looking
at their older brothers and sisters with a gazillion dollars

(11:58):
in college debt and saying, yeah, I don't want to
do that, and so they're going to trade school. And
he's coming on. We're going to talk about why blue
collar is the new white collar. And you know, there's
there are trades that are not going to be replaced
by AI and and that is going to be you know,
what's I don't want to say funny, because I don't
think it's funny when people find out that something they've

(12:21):
trained for for a very long time is not going
to work out the way that they want it to
work out. But it's ironic that for years now people
on the left have been telling people who work in
coal mines or things like that, when they're put out
of business by regulation, they're learned to code. Learn to code,
grant go, learn to code. You got to learn to code.

(12:42):
That's what everybody's doing now, they're learning to code. You know,
the first group that's going to be put out of
business by AI people who write code. I And that's
going to be the great irony. It's kind of like
when I when I went to a restaurant one time
and they had the new pay at the table thing
where you, oh, you could order appetizers, you can order
your in the little computer, and the server is showing

(13:03):
me how to do this, and I just looked at
her and said, how does it feel to be training
your replacement? What I was like, I mean, why are
you here after you teach me how to do this?
What is our relationship? Going to be I'm doing everything myself.

Speaker 5 (13:22):
Bartenders everywhere, you won't even need anyone.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
I don't like the robot bartenders because I like thinking
I can shout my way into a little heavier poor,
you know what I mean. And it's not that I drink.
I mean I drink so infrequently now I'm basically a
vacation and celebratory drink person. That's it, you know, And
I'm fine with it. But I do like thinking, oh,
you know what, I can get that bartender to chuckle.
I can give them a little heavier poor on the

(13:45):
next one. It's just part of the fun of sitting
at a bar and talking to a bartender. Which, by
the way, Grant, I need your opinion on this because
you're a millennial. Gen Z is just figuring out that
they have no social skills whatsoever, none, none at all.
They can't have a conversation. I think that we need
to bring back like taking people to bars with a

(14:07):
great bartender and teaching them just how to chat with
a stranger, because I know that some of the best
conversations I ever had were with bartenders at random bars
all over the world.

Speaker 5 (14:16):
Yeah yeah, or random people at the airport when you're
waiting to fight and you get a drink beforehand. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Okay, where are you going, where are you coming from?
Where do you do?

Speaker 9 (14:25):
What do you do?

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Yeah, you do.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
It's just they don't have those opportunities. They they live
in this digital world that doesn't require or demand any
of that stuff. Okay, let me not get off track,
because I got so much stuff on the blog today
that I want to talk about. Now. I'm going to
start talking about this right now. I got about five
minutes and I don't know if I'm gonna finish it.
But you all need to go read the Just Were

(14:47):
from the uh the just the News article on the
fact that Senator Adam Schiff when he was Representative Adam Schiff,
you remember when he was all over the news saying, oh,
we've got us no gun on Donald Trump when it
comes to Russian collusion. We got a smoking gad. We're
gonna get him. Okay. You know why Adam Schiff said that,

(15:10):
because he is the guy that authorized the leak of
classified intelligence to the news media with the express purpose
of being able to use it to indict Donald Trump.
I don't know where you are, but that certainly seems
pretty significant, I mean really significant. And the worst part

(15:33):
is there was a whistleblower who was in the room
when all of this happened, eventually lost his job because
he would not leak intelligence to the news media. He
is not only talked to the Department of Justice, he
talked to the Department of Justice during the first Trump
administration about it, and no one did anything this story.

(15:56):
You know, if you think Watergate was a big deal,
then you have to believe that this is an even
bigger deal. And what's interesting is in this story the
staffers who went along with it, and there were a
significant number of staffers who just went along with this.
They went along with it because they had convinced themselves
that democracy was at stake, because that's what they were

(16:20):
being told by people like then Representative Adam Schiff. Listen
to this. A career intelligence officer who worked for Democrats
on the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade
repeatedly warned the FBI beginning in twenty seventeen that then
Representative Adam Schiff had a proved leaking classified information to
smear then President Donald Trump over the now debunked Russia

(16:43):
Gates scandal. This is according to documents to cash Bettel
has turned over to Congress the FBI. Three h two
interview reports obtained just by Just the News state the
intelligence staffer, a Democrat by party affiliation, who described him
as both a friend to both Schiff, now a California Senator,

(17:04):
and former Republican House Intelligence Chairman Devin Newness. He considered
the classified leaking to be unethical, illegal, and treasonous, but
was told not to worry about it because Schiff believed
he would be spared prosecution under the Constitution's Speech and
Debate clause. Wow, if only if only Richard Nixon had

(17:27):
thought about using that as cover. Now, we all know
who was in charge of the FBI at the time,
so it's not surprising at all. But this is a massive,
massive scandal now, whether or not the news media pays
attention to it or they want to stand around shrieking
about authoritarianism and DC I don't know, but if what

(17:47):
Richard Nixon did with Watergate was worthy of him being
impeached and stepping down, surely Representative now Senator Adam Schiff
should face some kind of consequences for leaking classified information
to the media to destroy a political opponent. This isn't

(18:08):
in the case of Edward Snowden, who was leaking classified
information about the NSA spying on the American people and
lying about it. This is using your power and position
to leak information to hurt a political opponent. And here's
the kicker, you guys. They still lost. And if you

(18:29):
have any wonder about what the motivation for Adam Schiff was,
he was told that when Hillary won, he was going
to be the director of the CIA. Can you even
imagine this guy in charge of the CIA? Holy cow.
When we get back, we're going to talk about that
DC situation. We've got a guy who's intimately involved in

(18:51):
aware and he's going to bring us up to speed.
Coming up next, keep it on KOA federalize the police
force in Washington, d C. In an effort to bring
crime and nonsense under control in the capital city. And
joining me now, he is a National Guard colonel. He's
been Emergency Management Officer for the National Capital Region, now
Liaison officer for Defense Support of Civil Authorities. He's in

(19:15):
the DC parking lot right now. He is Colonel Josh McConkey.
First of all, welcome to the show.

Speaker 10 (19:22):
Thank you, very much appreciate you having me on IM
me at the headquarters at Tindel Air Force Base. It's
actually in Florida, not physically in DC.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
My apologies. Thanks for clarifying that. Let's talk about what
actually happened yesterday and what that means in practice. What
did you hear yesterday?

Speaker 10 (19:37):
So just addressing some of the crime issues. Having been
in Washington, d C. For three years myself as a commander,
I've had several colleagues attacked. I had one of my
colleagues had their son who worked at the White House
was assaulted last year, was beat very severely, had some
perminent vision damage in some things.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
So you know, crime is a very real deal there
in Washington, d C.

Speaker 10 (19:59):
And this is just simply getting things under control to
have a safe nation capital.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
And you know, I love Washington, DC, and I always
tell people, I think every American, wherever you are in
the country, you should plan and take a vacation and
go to Washington, DC and see all the monuments and
go to the museums and do all the history. But
make sure you're back at your hotel by eight because
it's not safe to be outside after that. That's the
reality and it's not okay. And one of the things

(20:27):
that I heard I listened to press conference this morning,
this president wants our capital to be a shining, beautiful
model city for the rest of the country. I really
think that's his intention. But what does that mean in practice?
What happens from this point forward?

Speaker 10 (20:44):
So really, what you're going to see is you're just
going to see men and women from their own community.
That's why a lot of people join the National Guard
is to serve your community. So they're going to be
called in and they won't be doing police activities per se,
because there's a posse commatatis that prevents that if you're
on federal orders. But they're going to be able to
fulfill a lot of the roles that the Washington d

(21:07):
C Police and firefighters and social workers. They're going to
be able to do some of their jobs that then
freeze them up to address these issues in Washington, d C.
These are your friends and neighbors out in your community.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
But what does this mean in terms of when people
say this is the first step to authoritarian rule, what
is the actual authority of the president here?

Speaker 10 (21:27):
So the authority it was well established, It was a
congressional law passed in nineteen seventy three, so the.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
D C Home Act. Washington d C. Is not a state.

Speaker 10 (21:38):
It has always been a federal district of Columbia, and
in nineteen seventy three they gave Washington d C. The
ability to do some very limited self rule. But Congress
has always retained that authority. Nothing has changed. They've had
this authority since it was since it was Washington d C.
And then even since nineteen seventy three they've they've kept

(21:59):
that authority over them.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
So how long does that authority last permanently? Is there
a span of time? I was under the impression I
don't know where I got thirty days? But how long
does that last?

Speaker 10 (22:11):
Yeah, so the administration is announced thirty days. I think
that's a very reasonable window of time to evaluate how
things are progressing, and they'll reevaluate it after that thirty
days and see what else needs to be done or
if the mission is complete.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
So what is this going to look like for your
normal citizens who should be worried here?

Speaker 3 (22:30):
I don't think anyone needs to be worried.

Speaker 10 (22:32):
They need to be celebrating that the crime issues are
being addressed. I know if I saw the things happening
in my community where I live in North Carolina, I
would very much want there to be some intervention and
if you had that resource. Yeah, I have three children.
I want a safe environment for my family. This isn't
a political issue. This is about safety in our nation's capital.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Is there any concern that by bringing in FEDS you
are are either undermining local authority in a way that
is not helpful on the long term or is there
a hope that and this is what I'm hoping is
that it works. And when it works, other large Democrat
mayors will go, Wow, that actually worked and maybe try
to replicate some of the same stuff. Do you think

(23:18):
that there's any possibility or if there is a possibility,
what would success look like in your world? You know,
is it for me? Is the crime rate below the
national average? That would be a stunning success.

Speaker 10 (23:30):
So you know, for me, just having crime lowered, especially
the violent crimes, the muggings, the carjackings, the assaults. You know,
that's what I've seen just personally with some colleagues that
had been injured over the past year. So you know
that can't happen in our nation's capital. That's the face
of the country. That's where people, foreign dignitaries, people from

(23:51):
all over the world go to visit, and needs to
be a safe environment. So that's not really a political issue.
Success there is just a safe community for you and
your family. And these DC Guard members they're already there,
they live there, this is their home.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
So these are just your friends and neighbors.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
So how long did he say how long they were
going to be deployed? How long is this deployment? What
does that look like?

Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's planned right now at thirty days?

Speaker 2 (24:16):
That's right now.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
You're going to reevaluate after that.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Okay, that's where the thirty days came from. I was like, Mandy,
how do you have thirty days in your head? Colonel
Josh McConkie. I hope you're right. I mean, I hope
that it goes as planned. What I find really really
interesting is that once again President Trump has essentially forced
Democrats into a position where they seem to be on
the side of criminals. And I'm I'm you know what,

(24:39):
it's kind of interesting to watch that happen. I appreciate
your time today very much, sir.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yes, ma'am, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
All right, that is Colonel Josh McConkey, and yeah, again,
like I have to give Trump the win. Let's talk
about the political aspect of this right now in DC,
because I was having conversation with a friend of mine.
She's a very she's a liberal, she's not a progressive,
she's not a wacko, and she said, it seems like

(25:07):
this is just a flex on a democratic city. And
I mean it. I absolutely mean this. And I know
that sometimes people will hear things and they go, oh,
she's just being Pollyanna. I believe that if this were
a Republican in charge of Washington, d C. In its
current condition, Donald Trump would already have done more. I

(25:28):
just think that when you and if you did not
watch the press conference city gave yesterday. First of all,
it's an hour and twenty minutes long. I listened to
it this morning. He yeah, he took some shots at Democrats.
He took some shots at some other Democrat run cities.
But the problem is there are no Republican run cities, right,
They're just they don't exist. So even if he wanted to,

(25:48):
he couldn't name check them. And my friend said, well,
I just feel like this is a flex on democratic cities.
If you watch the press conference, the President stays on
message over and over and over again, talking about wanting Washington.

Speaker 9 (26:02):
D c.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
To not just be the capital, but to be one
of the most beautiful cities in the world, and to
have it be this shining, beautiful representation of the United
States of America. And he means that. He didn't just
talk about crime. He was like the broken marble tiles,
We're fixing all of that. We're bringing it to its

(26:25):
glory again. And when you listen to him talk about
how important it is for the American people to go
and feel safe and be able to go and visit
all of this stuff and be able to leave their
hotel at eight pm and not worry about getting shot.
He also listed multiple people who work at the capitol
who had been either murdered or had been badly beaten

(26:45):
over the past year. And when you know people who
are being victimized, I think it changes your viewpoint on
a lot of stuff. Now, what's been fascinating is watching
people essentially hold up the well. Crime is that the
lowest it's been thirty years. You guys, their crime violent
crime numbers per capita are still way way above the

(27:09):
national average. Like way, way way, there are over two
carjackings per day in Washington, d C. People get murdered
on a regular basis being carjacked in Washington, d C.
That's what happened to one of the staffers he mentioned.
So when you start to see it, you live it,
you're in it. And Donald Trump has zero blanks to

(27:30):
give in this In this term, the man does not
care what you think. He is going to make Washington,
d C. A beautiful city comparable to the other beautiful
capitals around the world. And let me tell you, I've
had the great privilege to see a lot of beautiful
capitals around the world, and he's not wrong. I think Washington,

(27:54):
d C. Should be the most beautiful city in the
entire country. And it already has all the bones in place.
So there's no reason why he can't make that happen.

Speaker 11 (28:02):
Now.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
The other flex here that I want to throw right
before I go to break here is that if they
throw a bunch of you know, people and resources and
everything into Washington, d C. And they sort of bring
it to heal a little bit, then Donald Trump has
yet another way to say the Democrats said it couldn't
be done, But we just did it, didn't We just

(28:26):
like he's doing on the border. How many times you
know Biden said it couldn't be done, but here you know,
six months since it's done. He's not wrong. And that
is why the Democrats, I think, are freaking out again.
We're going to take a quick time out, be right back.
Keep it on KOA. A lot of people on the
text line on the Common Spirithealth text line today unhappy

(28:47):
about about that. Let me see here. I'm gonna go
down here and find this, Mandy. Why didn't say that
there were two carjackings a day in DC? Instead he
used the same rhetoric he used to describe Aurora as
a warzone. Hyperbole is the refuge of those who have

(29:09):
no other way to support their position. It's also the
refuge of politics. My friends, come on, I think it's
stupid too. I agree with you, but I think it's
stupid when everybody does it. It was Democrat Ram Emmanuel
who said it best never let a crisis go to waste.
And you can't let it go to waste if you

(29:30):
can't create the crisis. People are motivated by fear. People
are motivated by their emotions. If they weren't. The Democrats
would never win another race because there's stuff makes no
sense when you dig down just saying it's all emotional. So, uh, Mandy,
Who's going to be the next All the President's Men reporter?

(29:50):
On this shift scandal? That from Jake There is the
article that I link to today at just the News
is very long. I mean, it's very long, and it
covers a lot of stuff. And Matt Tybee, who writes
over at Racket News, has been on this for a
while and he really did a deep dive into this,

(30:11):
and he reminded me of a few things that I
had forgotten about, and one of them is is that
there was a you may have remembered. And what I'm
talking about is the fact that we now know Representative
Adam Schiff oversaw the leaking of classified documents with the
intent of using them to impeach Donald Trump when he
was in the House of Representatives. It's very well documented.

(30:34):
There's a whistleblower who came forward during the first Trump
administration and also and nothing was done, So this thing
is huge. You may remember the Horowitz Report. The Horowitz
Report was sort of commissioned by government to make sure
that Donald Trump did not abuse the Department of Justice,

(30:58):
and the information is in that report, but it was
very very vague. The FBI Director's office just discovered interviews
that made this all very very clear. The existence of
a shift staffer who talked to federal investigators was referenced
in the Justice Department Inspector General report released nine months

(31:19):
ago in December of twenty twenty four. That was another
investigation by Barack Obama appointing Michael Horowitz into possible abuses
by the Justice Department in Trump's first term in searching
for the origin of classified leaks to the Washington Post, CNN,
and the New York Times in the spring and summer
of twenty seventeen. The subject of those media reports Russiagate,

(31:41):
and now we know who leaked them in the first place,
and so did the Department of Justice. Back then somebody
on the text line and I think it's already fallen
off the thing, so I can't find it right now.
But it said something of why is the president doing
this now? Like why didn't he do this in Washington,

(32:02):
DC in the first term? You guys, he learned And
when I said, he has zero blanks to give in
this term. I am not kidding. He is not gonna
be slowed down by these people. He is gonna blow
everything up rhetorically, not literally. And he's doing this in
DC right now because he can. And any politician who

(32:26):
says they don't do stuff because they can is lying
one hundred percent. Okay, let's take a quick time out
when we get back, shifting gears entirely, give you plenty
of time and go read that whole article. We're gonna
talk to a guy who says, look, AI is gonna
kill a lot of jobs, but you know where, they're
not gonna kill him in the trades. We're gonna do
that right after this. Keep it on KOA.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and Injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
No, it's Mandy Connell.

Speaker 12 (32:55):
And nine.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Got the Nicety three and Toronto keeping sad bab.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the second hour of the show Man.
That first hour went fast, and the second hour will too,
because we're talking about one of my favorite things to
talk about, and that is not college. Okay, Now, Kirk
Awfel is my guest coming up in kirk just a
little bit about me before we get to you. I
am a college dropout, so all of the debt, none

(33:36):
of the degree. And to say that I am a
fan of alternatives to that potential path is an understatement.
And that is what you're very invested in. Tell me
a little bit about Overwatch Mission critical. We'll start there,
and then we'll talk about why the trades are kind
of the new hot almost blue collar.

Speaker 13 (33:54):
Yeah, you got it. I'd love to talk about it.

Speaker 7 (33:56):
Let me first say that you don't own the market
on being the college shop out, so my right. So,
as I said, I wrestled at the University of the
Colorado for all three semesters before I enlisted in the military.
So I'll doptail my background in maybe a little bit
and not tell us a little bit about Overwatch. So
my background is I'm former military, came from the submarine community,
but every man in my lineage is military, so I

(34:16):
was literally born and raised on military basis until the
end of the Cold War. I wrestled in college for
a little bit and then found myself into the US military,
where I was enlisted and I got sent to some
training schools, some tech schools, and when I came out
of the military. In two thousand, I sat front row
in Silicon Valley at this new emerging industry called the Internet.

Speaker 13 (34:37):
Right, so a lot of people.

Speaker 7 (34:38):
Think Amazon dot Com going live in nineteen ninety four
is really the birth of the Internet, but we were
iterating upon that already.

Speaker 13 (34:46):
So when I got out in two.

Speaker 7 (34:47):
Thousand, I sat in Silicon Valley in a front row
seat of watching web t dot O get rolled out,
and then we created this thing called the Internet of Things,
which allowed us to build e commerce platforms and businesses online.
That led to cloud and then today I'm sitting front
row watching the birth of AI, and I'm watching the
demand it has on labor, and I'm looking at the
opportunities that the demand of industry has that allow us

(35:11):
for the first time to truly build back the middle
class with a lot of really high pain, high quality
careers that don't require a college degree, because in most cases,
technology iterates and evolve so quickly that the things that
we'd be teaching them on their freshman year, they would
already be obsolete by the time they graduated their.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Senior A lot of and I will call it intelligence
work where people are sitting in a computer using their brain.
They're doing things, data analysts, things of that nature. Those
are going to be the jobs that are going to
be the easiest for AI to replace. And I said
it earlier in the show, Kirk, and you can agree
or disagree. It would be incredibly ironic if we've been

(35:50):
telling all of these coal miners and people that we've
been putting out of work to go learn to code,
only to find out that AI has put the coders
out of business pretty quickly. I mean, I am I
wrong in thinking that those kind of intellectual jobs are
going to be the first to go.

Speaker 7 (36:05):
White collar jobs are definitely gonna be the first ones
that AI will blow out. What AI will do is
create a massive demand for blue collar type jobs, jobs
like former military like me, transitioning.

Speaker 13 (36:15):
Out of college dropouts like us.

Speaker 7 (36:17):
I should say, but I work for a company called
Overwatch Mission Critical, and all we do is provide We're
a technology incubator for labor. So there is no think
of the automobile industry of nineteen twenty five. Just keep
in mind, we were building model ts until nineteen twenty seven.
We are in twenty twenty five, the same state that
the automobile industry was in in nineteen twenty five. I mean,

(36:38):
we were putting cars on the road, but we did
have mechanics. We didn't have schools to teach people the
trades to figure out how to repair and maintain these vehicles.

Speaker 13 (36:47):
There wasn't even until Henry Ford, who we think created
a car.

Speaker 7 (36:50):
He created a forty hour work week in an entire
sub economy. That lent itself to the ability for companies
to just build empires around tires or brake pads or
spark plugs, and the manufacturing and the labor that goes
into that created a ton of really amazing jobs. We
outsourced some of those component levels, but fortunately for you
and I America. Let's say in the world, there's eight

(37:10):
thousand data centers in the world, more than fifty four
hundred of them here in the United States, which puts us.

Speaker 8 (37:16):
In the lead.

Speaker 7 (37:16):
You could add every data center outside of the United
States up together, and it's still not as many as
we have here. So we may be outsourcing manufacturing components
to other countries, but the manufacturing of the most prevalent
and the most in demand technology in the world will
always come back here to the United States. And we
just we don't have enough labor to build these data

(37:37):
centers fast enough because there's no training platforms. You cannot
go to college today to learn about data centers, right,
very educational institutions that will teach you about it.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Well, wait, let me let me stop you there, because
I'm interested in that the whole concept of talking about
teaching about a data center. So I know absolutely nothing
about a data center. I mean, zero and zip. What
would you need employees? What do they do? What kind
of jobs are we talking about specifically for data centers?
Because I think you're absolutely right. It's why I bought
stock in a small nuclear modular reactor company today because

(38:09):
I know that data and AI and all this stuff.

Speaker 6 (38:12):
What do you do?

Speaker 2 (38:12):
What kind of jobs are there that are not being
filled yet?

Speaker 7 (38:15):
Yeah, let me start with the broadstroke, Okay, So every
vertical of industry is that moves into the mainstream like
ours is. Right now, there's nine different job domains that
represent two hundred and eighty five different jobs, and some
of them are very homogenous, like HR and payroll and
marketing and finance. But the jobs that we're talking about
are the ones that are in the field that use

(38:35):
your hands. If you have a professional skill set, much
like a tradesman or a craftsman, or you have the
ability to reinvent yourself. You're going to have a job,
a lifelong job on data centers. I'll tell you why
we build data centers at gigawatt magnitudes. Now, just to
put into perspective, we're building data centers behind like off
the grid and island mode.

Speaker 13 (38:56):
We're calling it behind the meter power. So we don't
have enough.

Speaker 7 (39:00):
People with their hands to manage the logistics. Well, it
starts at the supply chain. Supply chain is an extostential
threat to this industry. We don't have enough people that
could go into factories and manufacture the components and the
widgets that we used to build this infrastructure. Then we
don't have enough people that could truck it there. Then
we don't have enough people to get off the trucks
and land it at a piece where it needs to be.
Then we don't have the tradesmen that come in. We

(39:20):
don't have enough of them. This industry is three point
two million people. Since the birth of this industry, we
are five hundred thousand people short. And this industry has
more than fifty percent of our industry has been in
this industry for more than twenty years, meaning we're facing
what's called the silver tsunami.

Speaker 13 (39:35):
There's a ton of people that can.

Speaker 7 (39:36):
Retire any time, and there's a lot of us that
are necessary to still continue to build this because the
adoption rate of emerging technology, specifically driven because the demand
of AI has made it to where we can't build
data centers fast enough. We are building more data centers
right now than we did in the last ten years,
and to ninety five percent of all the production environments
that we're building today that haven't even made it online,

(39:58):
they're already pre sold. We're selling components all the way
into twenty twenty seven. So the only thing stopping us
is labored to build the components, labored to build the
construction means and methods in the field, labored to operate
the data centers.

Speaker 13 (40:12):
And labor to maintain those data centers.

Speaker 7 (40:14):
And there's hundreds of thousands of career fields that have
really high paying jobs that don't require In three years
from now, a college degree is going to be the
equivalent sy of a as a taxi medallion.

Speaker 13 (40:25):
That's how woh.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Wow, that's a cold, cold thing, right there, and taxi
medallions used to be incredibly, incredibly valuable and they were
very very very very expensive, and Uber and Lyft have
made a taxi medallion pretty much worthless. So let me
ask the question, where, if anywhere, do these schools exist?
Where can people get the training that you're talking about?

Speaker 13 (40:47):
Yeah, you asked what was overwatched? Overwatch is the technology
incubator for labor.

Speaker 7 (40:51):
As I said, and break it down, there's five phases
of a data center life cycle.

Speaker 13 (40:54):
One you have to develop it. Someone has to come
out and say I need that piece of land.

Speaker 7 (40:58):
I'll make a business case to justify buying it, and
my basis of design for what I need looks like this.
And once you're done with that phase and you give
it to a design engineering team architects engineers, Okay, when
they're done designing what the basis of design was, then
they have to give it to a team to deliver it.
Once that team builds it, then they hand the keys
over to a commissioning agent, which is the fourth phase,
and they commission it to make sure it's design right
and built right. When you're done, you hand the keys

(41:20):
over to the operator and they roll in tenants. There
are no schools. There are accrediting global accreditation firms that
will give you certifications into this industry, but there aren't
really anything establish yet. Like I said, this is twenty
twenty five for AI is nineteen twenty five the auto industry,
which means we are building it as we go. And
there hasn't been the data center career field boom, and

(41:44):
it's called the data center gold rush. It'll have a
greater impact on the workforce than in humanity since powered flight.
There's so many opportunities that there are jobs that your
kids may have in two years from now that haven't
even been invented yet. That's why when you ask me
what the jobs they have, I tell you they're smart
hand jobs, jobs that require you to use your hands,

(42:05):
and their jobs that pay you.

Speaker 13 (42:07):
If you have that skill set.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
So if someone is because to me what I'm hearing,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm hearing
someone who maybe has an electrical background, or maybe has
a mechanical background, somebody who knows how to do those
things with their hands. How do you get into this field? Then,
if you have all this need and you have all
this opportunity, how can someone make that career shift for

(42:28):
maybe something they're doing now that they don't love or
they don't feel like they have a good career path on.
How do people even begin to tap into this?

Speaker 13 (42:35):
Yeah, great question, and that's the magic question. There's two
parts to it.

Speaker 7 (42:38):
First is you need the emotional range to be able
to work in what's called the mission critical industry, our
industry that's emerging right now. We refer to it as
data centers, but it's it's like saying I'm in the
airplane industry. Well, you're in the automotive or the airplane industry,
but you're not just working on one platform or one airplane.
And for us in data centers, we're in a vertical
of industry called mission critical. Mission critical means if for

(43:00):
every one second of downtime of your it, you could
quantify that loss in either death or the loss of
a million dollars per second in revenue from ecommerce. So
you need to have an emotional range to come into
this industry, which means you're doing something that's never been
done before, which it's not normal. A lot of people
want to go work in a homogeneous construct environment where

(43:20):
it's laid out in a linear trend on how to
learn certain things, and that's important. There are very few
companies like Overwatch Mission Critical that have a technology incubator
for labor with a university that sends people to it
to learn how to lead. So we bought a company
called the Talent Word Group. We teach people how to
lead themselves, then how to lead others, and once we're
done building stronger leaders, then we build subject matter experts.

(43:41):
So we've partnered with a company called EPI. They're the
largest and most global accredited firm for data centers in
the world. They're the only one that Amazon uses, the
only one that Microsoft uses. There's a lot of people
that use this group to get certified in data centers.
We offer that in our schoolhouse. So when we hire
fifteen people a month right now, they all come in.
They get immersed in leadership training, they get immersed into

(44:04):
subject matter expertise, information and data center so they know
the language and the lexicon, and then they get introduced
to a program. It's no different than what we did
in the military. I enlisted in the military, I went
to a bunch of tech schools. Then they put me
right on a submarine and I was in the fleet
and most of everything I was learning was on the
job training through immersion. And that's what we really want,
is people that want to go reinvent themselves and like

(44:25):
learning in immersion brings.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Somebody on our text line said, Mandy, what about older
people they want to change careers?

Speaker 9 (44:35):
We got it.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
One who's fifty two, one who's fifty one? They want
to change careers? Is this is this something they could look.

Speaker 13 (44:40):
Into fifty year olds or spring chickens today.

Speaker 6 (44:45):
We need.

Speaker 13 (44:46):
What they offer is that emotional range.

Speaker 7 (44:48):
They may not have the subject matter expertise, but what
they have is the ability to work in an environment
of conflict.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
And the number one thing that dressed your your high
stress is what I'm hearing.

Speaker 7 (44:57):
That's well, yeah, I mean we're spending millions of dollars
a day, like we're on Stargate as an example, and
there's other programs like Stargate that are equally of magnitude
of size that we haven't talked about yet, and those
programs are massive. We're talking about the Manhattan Project of
the Fifth Industrial Revolution and programs that are similar to that.
So you need people that want to reinvent themselves. It
doesn't matter if you're thirty one, it doesn't matter if

(45:20):
you're fifty one. Infact, there's a big advantage between hiring
gen xers over some advantages of hiring millennials and some
advantages of hiring gen.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Z because they're not soft.

Speaker 13 (45:31):
Well, that's right.

Speaker 7 (45:32):
They have the stars, they have the calluses. Those older
people that have worked in corporate environments. They have a
homogeneous conditioning of education that they can introduce to younger
workforce that is probably more at depth to pick up
the subject matter expertise.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
This is fascinating. I mean, this is really really interesting.
I've got a lot of people coming in and asking questions.
Somebody just made this point though, Mandy. Just in case
you didn't know, Microsoft is building a two million square
two two million square foot data in Wyoming, in Cheyenne,
which is just up the road from us here in Denver,
So obviously there's going to be need mary perspective.

Speaker 7 (46:07):
Oh, go ahead, Microsoft can pick their teeth with that
data center. That's how many data centers they have, and
they have way more data centers than that.

Speaker 13 (46:14):
They're way bigger.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Okay, this one says, so what specific steps does a
twenty five year old man need to jump on this.

Speaker 7 (46:21):
Go to www dot wereoverwatch dot com and submit an application.
We started our company by hiring transitioning veterans first because
they came from a skilled trade. If they weren't a
tradesman like an electrician or a plumber, if you joined
the military, there's a good chance you were exposed to
HVAC or maintenance operations or other forms of technology where

(46:43):
it's it's not the only thing that we get is
people that have the ability to learn at an insane
learning curve. So if you're a young twenty five year
old and you don't want to go to college, take
a number. Neither did I, Right, I enlisted and used
my hands, and with that, with the ability to immerse
myself in the environment that allowed me to use and
learn through my hands, I was able to go build
a career. And you just some people don't know where

(47:04):
to begin. I say, think of it as a game
of baseball. Maybe even belong in the outfield, maybe you
belong in the infield. All I'm telling you is just
get in the game and then figure out over the
course of time where you belong on that field. You
can be a first baseman. You can be behind the plate,
but you won't know until you start playing. So if
you don't know where to.

Speaker 13 (47:21):
Begin, I can tell you this.

Speaker 7 (47:22):
You could go to we are overwatch dot com and
submit an application because we have over one hundred open
job rerecksit anytime because the pent up demand for this
industry is talent, and talent comes from those twenty five.

Speaker 13 (47:34):
To fifty one year olds that want to reinvent themselves.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
This industry it does not lack genius or intelligence, that
lacks leadership, encourage and people that want to reinvent themselves.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
So what are we looking at salary wise? And I
realize it's arranged depending on what you're doing, but what
kind of salaries do you look like? Give me some
ballpark numbers.

Speaker 7 (47:51):
Entry level jobs are around fifty five sixty five K,
no problem, no college degree required, and within a few
years it's not hard to be making one hundred and
twenty one hundred and forty K. Heck, there are plenty
of people that we pay a quarter million dollars a
year too. They never want step foot on accomplish campus.
So it really comes down to those people that want
to go out and go get certified in data centers
and they want to roll up their sleeves.

Speaker 13 (48:11):
They have to look at a data center career like
you would any other tradesman.

Speaker 7 (48:15):
Like a plumber or an electrician that has to go
through an apprenticeship before they become a journeyman, before they
become a master.

Speaker 13 (48:22):
But you're going to see that there's more.

Speaker 7 (48:24):
The fastest path becoming a millionaire today is not going
to college.

Speaker 13 (48:28):
It's going through the trades.

Speaker 7 (48:29):
And with the data center industry, our industry is growing
faster than every other industry because of the growth of
every other industry's adoption of technology.

Speaker 13 (48:37):
So we are the fastest growing industry.

Speaker 7 (48:40):
In the world, and we have more pent up demand
than we have talent and access to talent today, so
we try to recruit from the military.

Speaker 13 (48:47):
First responders.

Speaker 7 (48:48):
Twenty five year olds are great because they have if
they haven't figured out what they want to do, they've
definitely figured out some of the things they don't want to.

Speaker 13 (48:54):
Do right and that helps them get more focused.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
So I'm on it. By the way, I put a
link already on the block to the website, so you
just go there and you can click on the career button.
Somebody said, do you offer college internships. I don't even
know what that would look like.

Speaker 13 (49:06):
Tons of them. We love those.

Speaker 7 (49:08):
We offer every summer we load our benches with as
many college interns as you can. We also have a
DoD Skill Bridge program that allows us take military active
duty military and for the last six months of their
ACTI duty career, they could come work for us and
we don't have to pay them, but we immerse them
on construction programs or data center projects so they could be.

Speaker 13 (49:28):
Introduced to the industry as a whole.

Speaker 7 (49:30):
So when they do transition out the military and they
go out and they try to look for a job,
we could help place them and show them that they
have exposure and some somewhats of education. Again, this is
no different than how they teach us in the military.
We go to school for a little bit and then
we hit the fleet and you learn everything in the fleet,
learn on the.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Job, fascinating stuff. Kirk of Affel is my guest with
Mission Overwatch, and you can find a link on the
blog to all of this. Got a lot of questions.
We're going to rip through a couple right here. We
got four minutes left the Yeah, this one said, I
have forty two years in the concrete industry, commercial, residential, industrial,
civil and managing people that need to learn that trade.

(50:08):
So I don't know if he's asking for a job
or someone else.

Speaker 13 (50:11):
Mandy, I asked a demand for that skill set.

Speaker 7 (50:13):
Yeah, he just has to figure out do I want
to travel or where do I want to live? Right,
because we're building data centers first and NFL cities and
now the bespoke secondary and third tier market. So if
you're working in a lifestyle state or a lifestyle city,
you have to be willing to travel with that skill set.
But there's a lot of demand for that skill set.
That's a couple hundred thousand dollars job.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
We areoverwatched. Dot com is the website somebody else just
asked me this, Mandy. This guy must have watched me
play baseball. I was out of position my entire career.
That from Andy, this is what I have to put
up with. On the text line, I'm trying to go
through these very quickly to find the most useful one. Fine, now,

(50:52):
I think that's it. I think the rest have dropped off.
A lot of people are saying, you know, rural jobs
are important and we have a lot of rural kids
that are growing up. When do data centers come to
rural areas, if at all, although I would say Cheyenne,
Wyoming getting two is kind of a big deal.

Speaker 7 (51:09):
The large magnet, So we build in all the NFL
cities because the hub and spoke backbone of the fiber
bone of the Internet of the United States is long
the railway system.

Speaker 13 (51:17):
But we build certain.

Speaker 7 (51:19):
Magnitude and volume of size of data centers in different markets.
What I was saying is, we don't build one hundred
megalot data centers anymore. We build one, two, three, five
gigawat campuses that take five to seven years.

Speaker 13 (51:29):
So these construction programs, they are.

Speaker 7 (51:32):
There for a very long time, and we're going to
go build them in areas where it won't the optics
won't be bad for the communities that they support. So
you don't want a data center in a market that
someone says, hey, you're stealing our water, you're stealing our energy,
and there's not enough jobs to right. But there are
areas in the United States so we could go build

(51:53):
these large language model AI data centers and we could
connect them back through the edge to the NFL city,
so there's.

Speaker 13 (51:59):
No latency issue.

Speaker 7 (52:00):
So these data centers are going to be built, I
mean Abilene, Amarillo, Orsla. Not just Northern Virginia, not just
the NFL cities. They're going to be built. The sky
for the cloud of the world is Northern Virginia. The
home for AI will most definitely be West Texas. So
there's so much building opportunity right now that everybody that

(52:20):
wants to be a builder in some capacity, the sky's
unlimited for them for the next three years.

Speaker 13 (52:25):
It's the data center.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Gold Group Kirkoffle with Overwatch Mission Overwatch, and you can
find them at we areoverwatch dot com. I really appreciate
your time to be fascinating subject. I mean, it really
really is. I had no idea. I didn't even know
this was a thing. I didn't even know data centers
were going to be. I mean, I do know that
AI hoovers up a tremendous amount of energy, So that's

(52:45):
what I do know, And it sounds like this is
another thing that I need to be paying attention to.
I really appreciate your time today.

Speaker 13 (52:52):
I appreciate it's an emerging industry. Try to think of
this as it's still very punk rock. It's still new.
When the automobile industry came out, it wasn't met.

Speaker 7 (53:00):
Now look at it that this industry will be have
a greater impact on humanity than the automobile.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
All right, Kirk Goffel, I appreciate your time.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
Man.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Thank you guys if you have because I got it now.
I have like fifteen questions that just popped up. Send
them an email. They have a contact button right there
on the website. We are overwatched dot com. Fascinating, just
really fascinating, and you think about it. One thing he
said that I feel very very strongly about and in
a way that I did not feel this way when

(53:30):
I was a kid at all. Right, So this is
the benefit of being gen X and being straddling the
personal computer revolution, because when you grew up in an
analog world, everybody was pretty sure they were going to
do the jobs that somebody they already knew. Did you
know you're going to be an insurance agent, You're gonna
work in the tire store, you were going to farm

(53:51):
whatever it was. Now technology is moving with such speed
that there are jobs being invented on a daily basis
that simply did not exist five or ten or even
two years ago. It's fascinating, absolutely fascinating. A lot of
you were sending text messages like this one. Mandy, my
oldest son is a master automotive technician, as younger brother

(54:14):
is an aerospace engineer with a master's degree. Guess who
makes more money the grease monkey. I'm telling you, guys,
I'm just not handy. Grant Are you handy? Grant In
I'm not handy at all?

Speaker 9 (54:28):
What is it?

Speaker 5 (54:29):
Olivia is super handy?

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Now you married handy, right?

Speaker 6 (54:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (54:32):
I did too, But that doesn't help me if I
have to change careers. I'm just saying, let's take a
quick time out. We'll be right back. Keep it on KWA.
A video from Twitter yesterday and it's by It's part
of an interview with a woman named Melanie Phillips. Melanie
Phillips is a long time journalist in the UK. She
started out on the left and has evolved over to

(54:53):
the right over time. But this is a discussion about
why people on the left are blaming Israel and still
aligning themselves with Hamas even after the atrocities of October seventh.
But the bigger thing in this it's five minutes long,
and I really want you guys to hear the whole thing.
But the bigger thing here is that this same logic

(55:16):
can be applied to so many people's politics, and not
just on the left. When people see themselves through the
lens of the things that they believe in politically, and
they've decided that they are a good person because of
the things that they believe in politically, when you find
out one of those things is bad, you can't say

(55:38):
it's bad. But I'll let her explain because she does
a much better job.

Speaker 8 (55:42):
The western liberal mind conceives of itself as being good
because it's liberal. The western liberal tells him or herself,
I'm a good person because I'm liberal. I'm liberal because
I'm a good person, which means that I believe in
things like the brotherhood of man, conscience and compassion, looking

(56:03):
after the wretched of the world, the poor, the brechet
of the world, standing up against abuses of power. These
are all good things, and that's why I'm a liberal.
And I'm a liberal because of all these good things.
So one of the expressions of my goodness and my
liberalism is that I support the Palestinian Arabs, who I

(56:23):
think are an oppressed people, and they are oppressed by
the Israelis who have taken their land away from them,
and they are oppressing them. Now, every part of that,
in my view, is a lie. But put that to
one side. This is what the liberal progressive thinks, and
the liberal progressive thinks that supporting the Palaestinians is therefore

(56:44):
something that makes the liberal progressive of good person. October
seven happened, and suddenly you have a situation in which
the people that the liberal progressive has supported as being
oppressed and everything they do is a legitimate defense or
resistance against oppression. Suddenly we can see that those people

(57:08):
have turned into the most bloodthirsty savages that could ever
be imagined, in which the people that they have supported
as being oppressed to good people because they're victims. Are
these savages and the people they have represented as oppressors
are the victims. They can't have that because if they
have that, if they admit that that is the case,

(57:31):
then their entire worldview is shattered because the people, you know,
the cause they have supported as representing goodness is shown
to be evil.

Speaker 13 (57:42):
And what does that make them?

Speaker 8 (57:44):
It makes them evil?

Speaker 2 (57:46):
So they can't have it, So what do they do.

Speaker 8 (57:49):
They go to extraordinary lengths to pretend that black is white,
that justice is in justice, that oppression is resistance, and
vice versa. So they have to represent the Israelis as
being at fault. The Israelis are to blame for what's happened,
So there is no better way of blaming people than

(58:11):
accusing them of the very thing. They are the victim
of projection. Projection, so you accuse them of genocide. We
hear it also regularly. The Israelis are accused of being Nazis.
It's the same thing. It's not simply an offensive thing.
It's a very deliberate thing, because if the Israelis are Nazis, then.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
We are free.

Speaker 8 (58:31):
We the liberal West, are free of any kind of
guilt or any kind of association with bad things because
they are to blame. They are the people who are bad,
and so we are free to continue with our fantasies
of us being good people. And I think that's also
what lay behind these amazing scenes that we saw on

(58:53):
social media of people with their hands tearing down posters
of the hostel. Now you have to ask yourself what's
going through the mind of someone like that. These weren't
posters advertising Israel, they weren't advertising the Israeli defense forces.
They were pictures of babies, of children, of women who

(59:14):
had been kidnapped by bloodthirsty monsters, by savage, depraved savages,
and were being almost certainly subjected to untold horrors. And
yet they were torn down, and the faces of the
people tearing them down were contorted very often with rage
and hate, and you have to ask yourself, what's going

(59:36):
on in the mind of that person. And it seemed
to me that they were that they were. They had
to literally with their fingernails tear it out of sight.
It was something that could not be tolerated to be
in existence at all, the very concept of the Israeli
babies and children as victims of the people they had

(59:58):
been supporting, because it come addicted the narrative on which
they had hung their own moral worth.

Speaker 13 (01:00:04):
And it seemed to me also they were.

Speaker 14 (01:00:06):
Tearing the Jews out, trying to tear the Jewish people
completely out of their world, out of their sight, out
of their world, out of their.

Speaker 8 (01:00:16):
Minds, out of their thoughts, and out of their consciences.
That's to me what it represented. And this whole inversion
of genocide thing is part of that. It is not
just disgusting, it is not just ridiculous. It's evil, and
I think it is a symptom of the evil paths

(01:00:39):
into which the West has fallen through its embrace of
a whole range of ideologies, a whole range of thinking,
which I think has come to define what we call
the liberal progressive West.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
That is a woman named Melanie Phillips, and I have
that on my blog today, And when I saw that
a couple of days ago, it struck me because that
is what I have been trying to articulate. But I
didn't do it nearly as elegantly as she just did.
Unless you think that this is only something that happens

(01:01:15):
to liberals, trust me, it happens on the other side
as well. You know the people that are so hardcore
Donald Trump fanatics that nothing that man does could ever
be wrong. I mean, you know them. I try to
be really fair, like I'm looking at things. I'm looking
at what's happening at Trump in DC, and if he
was doing stuff against the law, like if he just

(01:01:37):
took over and he didn't have any right to do that,
I gotta tell you guys, I think I would stand
up and say, yeah, no, we can't do that. I
don't think that it is as strong foremost on the right,
but boy laid out like that, it certainly does help
you understand why there are so many people who are
who are now supporting a murderous square group of people

(01:02:01):
who as of what last week they released a video
of one of their hostages digging his own grave. In
what world would that ever be acceptable unless you were
invested in making sure that your own self worth, in
your own self image was so intertwined with the oppressor

(01:02:22):
oppressed victim narrative that you have been believing for so long.
I mean, it's just it's crazy, but I thought that
was super interesting. The whole thing is on the blog today.
You can find it at mandy'sblog dot com. Mandy's support
for Palestine is to distract from the colonial powers England
and Turkey possession of I don't think so. I don't

(01:02:44):
think anybody cares. Honestly, especially outside the countries that were
part of the empires. I don't think anyone cares. I mean,
we can talk about except for people on the left.
You just like to talk about colonialism no one cares,
really everybody, honestly, I mean, don't you think this when
you look at what an absolute mess Africa is and

(01:03:07):
Africa I'm sure there are some lovely, fantastic, well run
cities and countries in Africa, we just don't hear about
them that often. Those are all former colonial powers. How
have they not taken what the British Empire had done, roadways,
things of that nature and maintained them. They didn't even

(01:03:29):
have to build them, but they didn't even do that.
It's amazing. I mean, it really truly is. It's not
about colonialism. It's just I really believe that it does
have more to do with the people that are saying
things than it does Hamas or even the Palestinian people.
It has to do with how they want to view themselves.

(01:03:50):
And that's what she just clearly delineated. We'll be right back.
So when I saw this story today, I was like, oh,
good news from RTD. The headline says complaints via RTD
appsees drop. Here's what passengers are noting, noticing, noting, noticing,
sorry about that. From the story, Reports of crime and

(01:04:12):
drug use on Regional Transportation District public buses trains and
its stations have been trending downward since the beginning of
twenty twenty four, though actual citations increase this year. According
to police data reviewed by the Denver Hazette, the increase
in citations resulted from a surge in enforcement activities, the

(01:04:33):
data showed, and at least once this year, illegal drug
use wasn't the top complaint among writers of Metro Denver's
transit system, a drop that authorities attributed to more police
visibility and an increase in writership. Now, let me translate
for those in the back. Increased police equals lower crime.

(01:05:02):
Better enforcement of the rules equals more citations, which equals
what is an equal It equals less crime. It's amazing
what happens when you actually put police officers on mass transit. Amazing,

(01:05:22):
no crazy, And then when people get on a train
and there's no one smoking meth, they're like, you know what,
Maybe I'll do this again soon. Maybe, but I'm never
gonna stop harassing RTD. As a matter of fact, I'm
gonna get Kathleen Chandler on the show because she's on
RTD board. Now, RTD has got to fix the problem

(01:05:43):
when they don't pay attention to what's happening at the
Pepsi Center or the ball Arena or whatever it's called,
and schedule more trains. That is a huge problem, huge problem.
They should have every train available in the history of
trains on game days. You know, they should be able
to move Broncos fans downtown. Anybody go into a hockey

(01:06:04):
game should be able to go downtown and get on
a train to go home in a reasonable amount of time.
They've got to fix this, I mean, they've got to
fix this anyway. Mandy, you are indeed queen of the
snappy comment. Thank you, Bill, Appreciate you, Appreciate you. There's

(01:06:26):
a really good column by Aery Armstrong in a Complete
Colorado Today. It might have been from earlier this week. No,
it's today, and it's about the kerfuffle over restrictions to
soda purchases on the Snap food assistance program. It's been

(01:06:47):
kind of interesting to watch people talk about how if
you don't want poor people to buy sugar water, that
is going to give them obesity and diabetes eventually at
a higher rate. By the way, poor people only have
a higher BMI worst health outcomes because they have obesity,
they have high blood pressure, they have type two diabetes
because they're eating sugar, water and crap like that, and

(01:07:09):
they'll go, oh, you want poor people to suffer. No,
I don't want poor people to suffer. I pretty much
don't drink soda anymore. And you know what, I'm not suffering.
I drink well. I know this is going to blow
your mind, you guys. You know what I drink. Great,
You're not even ready for this. I drink water out
of the tap.

Speaker 9 (01:07:28):
Me too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
I know these days I can feel the suffering. Suffer, suffer, suffer.
The reality is this when it comes to things like
food benefits. By the way, I don't want anybody to starve.
I don't want any child to go hungry in this country. Ever.
It would be the greatest shame on our nation's history
if a child went hungry in this country. Honestly I

(01:07:52):
feel that way. But as I like to say, when
I get my daughter tickets to a concert or something,
and we're sitting up in the nosebleeds close to God
because I got them free from the radio station, and
my daughter's like, man, we're sitting way up here, and
I look at her, and I say, the free tickets
come like this. The free food comes like this. That's

(01:08:12):
what it looks like.

Speaker 6 (01:08:13):
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
If it was up to me, I would do food boxes.
I would literally give people actual food in boxes from
like a you know, farm collective, whatever, can goods, frozen
good I'd put them all in a box and go,
here's your box for the week. I mean, I would
love to do that. But yeah, the free stuff comes

(01:08:34):
like this. If you don't like the free stuff coming
like that, then figure out a way to buy yourself
your stuff with your own money. Just saying healthy old
food costs a lot more than processed foods, that is
a lie. Because I can go right now to the
grocery store and buy a bunch of frozen vegetables which
are very very healthy and frozen things like that you
don't have to eat organic. You buy a bag of beans,

(01:08:57):
a pack of sausage, and some rice. That's like four
meals for a family. There's ways to eat on the
cheap that are not garbage. Most people don't take the
time to figure it out. Okay, when we get back,
I have one of the women who was outed by
the Denver Post article on do Better Denver, and I'm
gonna let you hear from Jill Osa after this, her

(01:09:18):
side of the interview process and what more importantly, didn't
make it into the story that the Denver Post eventually printed.
She's coming up next. We'll be right back on KOA.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Well, no, it's Mandy Connell.

Speaker 12 (01:09:38):
And Tonam god Way, Guy Cantyre, Bendy Connell, Keith sad
bab Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the third hour of the show.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Koh And you know, if you've listened to the show
this week and before I went out for my little
adventure and surgery, you heard me talking about a ridiculous
and I mean ridiculous kerfuffle that was created by the
Denver Post. The Denver Post, for reasons which no one
is actually clear about, decided that they were going to

(01:10:20):
get to the bottom of a social media account called
at Do Better Denver. And what they do is they
post videos of the reality of Denver, and obviously that
has made them very unpopular to the politicians running around
city hall screaming everything is awesome. So the Denver Posts
set about finding out who was behind at do Better Denver,

(01:10:40):
and through a core request about core request, settled on
three people as being the masterminds behind this social media account.
The problem is they are not the masterminds. They were
merely contributors who either sent video or did a cor
request and then forwarded that on to the mastermind behind

(01:11:01):
that Do Better Denver, who still shall remain nameless because
the Denver Post was unable to figure out who it was,
which I think is hilarious. By the way, nothing says
crack investigative skills more than that. But that's neither here
nor there. Joining me today is one of the women
that was outed in this article as being behind or
a contributor to at Do Better Denver. Jill Osa, Welcome

(01:11:24):
to the show, amany.

Speaker 6 (01:11:27):
Thanks so much for having me on today.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
So you and I have spoken pretty extensively about this,
and as a non media person, what happened to you
had to feel very shocking, but as a media person,
I was surprised by none of it. So I want
to kind of start at the beginning and let's go
to the reasons behind your participation in any way, shape

(01:11:49):
or form with that Do Better Denver. How did that
all transpire? How did that come about.

Speaker 11 (01:11:55):
Yeah, thanks so much for letting me get my story
out there and my why behind it. In August of
twenty twenty three, I received a text message from my
tenant at the time letting me know that Mike Johnston,
who I didn't even know who that was at that point,
didn't know that he was the mayor of Denver, was
starting a new initiative called the House one thousand Initiative
and his goal was to help house one thousand people

(01:12:19):
who were experiencing homelessness by the end of twenty twenty three.
And the message went on to say, one of those
sites where they are going to be housed would be
the property that shared a single that shared a fence
line with my single family rental home in Denver.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
And you can.

Speaker 11 (01:12:36):
Imagine how shocked I was to find this out. So
I started digging doing a little research.

Speaker 6 (01:12:44):
Is this legal? What is zoning entail for this? And
it was still unclear to me.

Speaker 11 (01:12:50):
So my husband and I and our kids flew to
Denver and we were there for a number of weeks,
going to the town halls about the micro communities and
the shelters and trying to meet with Mary Johnston and
his administration, but we were met with gaslighting and deceit
and we were not getting the answers that we were getting,

(01:13:10):
And so I turned to Colora Colorado Open Records at
Requests to try to understand how these sites were chosen,
why the ones that went out ended up being the
final list, and just the zoning details behind it.

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
And through that I believe.

Speaker 11 (01:13:31):
Over the last two years, I've submitted about fifty core
requests in total, and twelve of those requests I forwarded
on to do Better Denver and other news outlets because
they contained information that I.

Speaker 6 (01:13:44):
Thought was important and that the community deserve to know about.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
So let me ask you one question, because you've got
a rental property in Denver, but everybody's like, you don't
even live here, why do you care? But you were,
actually you that house used to be your house, right,
I mean that you lived in correct?

Speaker 6 (01:14:00):
I was.

Speaker 11 (01:14:00):
My husband and I were both born and raised in
Colorado in the suburbs, and after college purchased a home
in Denver.

Speaker 6 (01:14:08):
Lived there until I married my husband, at which point
we moved away.

Speaker 11 (01:14:12):
But Colorado is still home to me. If you ask
me where home is, that's my answer. And we hope
to get back there someday, and so it was. It's
been heartbreaking to see what has happened to Denver and
to the place that we do call home.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
So what happened to the information that you forded? You
forded it to Do Better Denver and you forwarded to
other news outlets. What happened?

Speaker 11 (01:14:35):
Some of those requests were posted on to Better Denver's
Instagram page and possibly her Twitter page.

Speaker 6 (01:14:41):
Quite honestly, I don't do Twitter.

Speaker 11 (01:14:42):
I only logged into my Twitter to post my public statement,
but other than that, Twitter's not my thing.

Speaker 6 (01:14:49):
And to my knowledge, many of the premise reports, which
are nine to one to one.

Speaker 11 (01:14:54):
Call logs that I pulled of the very shelters and
permanent supportive housing loc in micro communities in Denver were
shared pretty publicly, which I can't claim full credit for this,
but Brian Moss actually ended up doing a story on
the call logus to the shelters and the micro communities, and.

Speaker 6 (01:15:16):
So yeah, they were posted on Do Better Denver. It's
unclear if.

Speaker 11 (01:15:23):
They one hundred percent contributed to news stories or if
they pulled their own premise reports to have more to
date information. This story was about a month and a
half after I pulled all the premise reports and they
went out to a bunch of people.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
It's it's hard. It's hard to deny the impact that
Do Better Denver has had. I mean, I know I
have shared stories that I saw there first. So I
do think it is within the possibility of reason that
you're doing that and it being published on Do Better Denver.
And I actually shared some of those calloagus on my
blog at one point. I do think that that kind

(01:15:59):
of stuff does end inspire investigative journalism by some of
the better journalists in the area. So that's why I
think Do Better Denver is important. So you got caught
up in this and you are, you know, minding your
own beeswax, and all of a sudden you get a
phone call. Tell me about that phone call with a
reporter from the Denver Post.

Speaker 6 (01:16:20):
Yeah, so last.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Can you hold Jill? I got to take a break.
I just realized what time it is that we're in
the third hour, So hold on, Can you hold on
through a break for me? Okay, hang on, We'll be
right back with Jill Osa for the other side of
the Denver Post expose story. We're doing that next. Jill
Osa one of the women that was quote outed by
the Denver Post in They're incredibly whitey but They're a

(01:16:44):
journalist article about the origins of a social media account
called at do Better Denver. Jill, I want to know
what that conversation went like when the reporter calls you
and says, hey, we know it's you or whatever. How
did that all pan out?

Speaker 11 (01:17:00):
Yeah, So about two weeks ago, Shelly Bradbury called me
on my cell phone and once she called, the doorbell
actually rang and I had a contractor showing up at
my house, and so I said, can I call you back?

Speaker 6 (01:17:12):
And she said, I'm.

Speaker 11 (01:17:15):
This is in reference to do Better Denver in the account,
and just so you know, I'm running this story regardless.
And I said, okay, I'll call you back because I
wanted to know why I'm not do Better Denver and
didn't know why my name would be associated with her
story about do Better Denver.

Speaker 6 (01:17:31):
And so fast forward an hour.

Speaker 11 (01:17:33):
I call her back and asked her what her article
was about. She said, I'm writing about who do Better
Denver is? And I started questioning, what do you mean
You're writing.

Speaker 6 (01:17:45):
About who do Better Denver is? Like, I'm not do
Better Denver.

Speaker 11 (01:17:48):
So I don't really understand what you're going to be writing.
So what is your piece about? And she said, I
told you it's about who do Better Denver is?

Speaker 6 (01:17:57):
Did you so tell you?

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Like you were in a circular converse, like you kept saying,
I'm not do Better Denver And she's like, I'm writing
about who do Vetter Denver is and you're in the article.
I mean, did it just stop stop making sense right away?

Speaker 6 (01:18:10):
Yeah, it didn't make sense from the get go.

Speaker 11 (01:18:12):
I think when she called me, there was a narrative
that she wanted to have in her piece and write about,
and it didn't really matter what I said to try
and tell her otherwise. So she began asking me questions
about the core requests that I conducted and why in
the do Better Denver posts it said we or we

(01:18:34):
obtained core request records, and I said, because do Better
Denver always talks in a collective weed because the account
is crowdsourced information.

Speaker 6 (01:18:46):
And so I said, there's one administrator. I don't know
who she is. I couldn't pick her out of a lineup.
She's never given me her name, and I'm thankful for that.

Speaker 11 (01:18:55):
Because of situations like that and if that person chooses.

Speaker 6 (01:18:59):
To remain anonymous, that is their right. Yeah, And so
she just kept coming back to well, why does it
say we, why does it say administrators?

Speaker 11 (01:19:10):
And I said, you're going to have to ask the
actual person that those are questions I can't answer for
you because I don't write any of the content. I'm
merely forwarded on some core requests that I thought were interesting.

Speaker 6 (01:19:20):
And she chose to publish them.

Speaker 11 (01:19:23):
I never thought I would hide behind a corre request.
I never thought my name was secret. They're open records,
and so you know, with that comes my name being
potentially public from it. But I never ever worried about
that because I'm not the account holder and I don't
write the content for the account, and I have never

(01:19:43):
had any privileges on the account.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
You you have some core requests in an ex post
that I shared on my blog today. Why did you
feel it was important to share the stuff that you
shared on that post?

Speaker 6 (01:19:57):
Was that the one relating to Denver and your yes?

Speaker 11 (01:20:01):
Okay, So that was actually the first poor request that
I shared with do better Denver. I did that on
my own because my community was fighting against the YO
micro community, and so when the Yale micro community was
taken off the table, and even before it was taken
off the table, I felt that it was important to

(01:20:24):
work with the other individuals across the city who were
faced with the vac same thing that I was, and
share the information that I had, and also helped them
fight against what was happening in their neighborhood. And so
one particular neighborhood, it was the Birch neighborhood, which is
in Virginia Village, they were also set to have a
micro community in their neighborhood backing up to single family homes,

(01:20:49):
which I felt was.

Speaker 6 (01:20:50):
Entirely inappropriate because essentially, we're moving.

Speaker 11 (01:20:54):
The problems that we see in encampments into these tiny
home communities or into shelters.

Speaker 6 (01:21:02):
And I absolutely believe that something needed to be done
in Denver.

Speaker 11 (01:21:05):
I just didn't think that this was the appropriate answer
to that, right And I don't know that I have
the answer, but I just knew that this.

Speaker 6 (01:21:12):
Wasn't what I thought was appropriate.

Speaker 11 (01:21:15):
And so the core requests that you shared and saw Mandy,
and which had also been shared by Do Better Denver,
was about an initiative that the Mayor's office decided to
call Denver in your dining room. And that was a
group of people, many of what you didn't live near
each of the sites, that they were going to bring

(01:21:36):
together in somebody's dining room.

Speaker 6 (01:21:38):
And I don't know if their objective was to try
to convince.

Speaker 11 (01:21:41):
The people near the site that it was a good
idea or what their plan was there, but they tried
to frame it in a way of, oh, you get
a meet with other people in the mayor's office in
this exclusive event, right, And to me, that's not appropriate.
If you're a mayre of transparency and honesty, all these
conversations should be out in the open. They shouldn't be

(01:22:02):
happening in somebody's dining room with people who don't live
that close to the site, with people like the director
of Saint Francis being invited and a professor from CU
Boulder who doesn't even live in Dinver.

Speaker 6 (01:22:15):
It just wasn't appropriate, And so I shared it and
they didn't be c see the invite list. The mayor's
office didn't. That's fair game to in most people's email.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
So joll let me let me cause we're almost out
of time. I want to ask you two questions. The
first is how much of your conversation with Shelley Bradbury
was actually accurately represented in that news story.

Speaker 6 (01:22:41):
Great question.

Speaker 11 (01:22:42):
I would say the majority of the conversation was not
represented in that news story.

Speaker 6 (01:22:47):
I gave her my why, which was related to the
micro community site by our rental house. She did not
share a single word of that in there.

Speaker 11 (01:22:56):
I also asked Shelley not to share our is this
information which she made very clear to me, and the
phone call that she knew how much we bought our
house score and all those details that she did in
her article. She misconstrued my words and said I do
research and made it sound like I do research for
the count Really, I said, I do.

Speaker 6 (01:23:15):
I do research because I like doing research. It's fun.
It's really important that we learn this stuff ourselves and
not just rely on what we hear in the media,
And so she made it sound like I'm the researcher for.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
I'm not shocked by any of this, Jill, I, I
you know, I do think that the Mayor's office has
its fingerprints all over this story, and I hope that
us continuing to talk about it and have these conversations
makes them more reluctant to try and do it again,
because it's just becoming really patently obvious that do better
Denvers over the target and doing a great job in

(01:23:53):
really exposing the things that the Mayor's office would rather
us not know about and not talk about and not see.
So Hi, for one, I have your back, Jill. I
have do Better Denvers back. We are all do better Denver,
and I hope that the website can or I hope
this social media account continues to do exactly what it's
doing because we cannot fix what we do not name,

(01:24:15):
and that's all we're doing here. Jill, I appreciate your
time today.

Speaker 6 (01:24:18):
Thanks so much. Mandy.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
All right, that is Jill OsO. She one of the
people outed by the Denver Post. We'll be right back
after this. Tomorrow. Someone in my household is having a birthday.
Someone's going to be seven in dog years, which for
a Saint Bernard is fifty six in human years. Fun fact,

(01:24:39):
big dog's age faster, So for the first time and
only time, my dog and I will be the same
age human years. I don't know how old I am
in dog years. I feel like I've stacked up some
dog years over the years, you know what I mean.
I'm just saying, just throwing that out there. Hey, did
everybody here there were two sellouts this Las weekend of

(01:25:00):
course Field. Did you hear this, Grant?

Speaker 9 (01:25:03):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
And unfortunately it was the Savannah Bananas. And you know what,
God love them. You know what the Savannah Bananas are, Grant?
Do you know what they are? They are the Harlem
Globetrotters for a new generation. When I was a kid,
when the Harlem Globetrotters came, they didn't come to my
town because it was too small. You had to drive
ninety minutes to go to the big town.

Speaker 5 (01:25:24):
Hey, they came to Athens.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
Shut up, Well, you guys had a college. That's why
at the Yeah, we didn't have that. And everybody would
go because you knew that Curly was gonna throw a
bag of glitter onto somebody from a bucket, and you
knew it was gonna happen, and you wanted to be there.
And that's what the Savannah Bananas had become. And they
just had to I believe the first two cellouts of there,

(01:25:48):
of course Field, when baseball was being played. I think, so,
you know what, Grant, maybe we're missing something. Maybe we
just need to put the right keys in banana.

Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
Costumes that should be their alternate jersey for the rest
of the year.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
Teach him how to do some dances, little shuffles, little boogie.

Speaker 5 (01:26:08):
Down, bring out Peyton Manning and some Rockies legends.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
There you go, There you go? Was Peyton Manning there?
Apparently shut up? Dang, I missed it. I thought that
was kind of funny though. They sold out both games.

Speaker 5 (01:26:21):
Yeah, and it looked like a great time from the
videos I saw. I saw the video. So the guy
that runs it and owns it, he goes by Yellow
Tech Tucks Jesse on Instagram because he's always in the
Yellow Tucks for the banana Yep.

Speaker 9 (01:26:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:26:34):
He adopted a daughter with his wife like five years ago,
and she was nonverbal when they got her, and she
just had a lot of issues from how she was
raised before they got her. Brought her onto the field
beforehand and let her lead the thing where everything she does,
the crowd has to do, and all fifty thousand people
were participated. I almost Oh, it was beautiful moment.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
That is fantastic. Where was that? That was a horse field?

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
Where was that?

Speaker 5 (01:27:01):
Oh that was a course field?

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
Oh no way?

Speaker 5 (01:27:03):
Yeah, Oh you got it. I'll talk Jesse on Instagram,
you can see it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
I am.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
I'm gonna go find that because I want to see that.
That is the most what a lovely, lovely experience? See
that is the that's the power of a communal experience
like that, because if it had just been like four people,
you know, responding to the little girls, still would have
been super cool. But fifty thousand people, you've now created

(01:27:29):
this incredible moment that for the rest of everybody's lives.
They're going to be like, oh my god, do you
remember when you got all those people at Coursefield to
do those things? And when she's older, she's like, I
should at them and give me fifty bucks. Why didn't
I do that?

Speaker 5 (01:27:44):
I think they're gonna be a okay with the way
bananas have grown in popularity.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
Like crazy, they have come out. I think I saw
my first Savannah in Banana's video maybe four years ago.
I feel like it was during COVID that I started
seeing the Savannah Banana video. And boy, they have just
rocketed to fame. And you know why, They're just all
about having fun.

Speaker 5 (01:28:06):
They won't raise their ticket prices even though they know
they could charge more. They're like forty fifty or sixty dollars,
depending on where you sit.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
I think it's so smart, I I you know, and
it's just what it is is it's kind, it's wonderful.
It's just recognizing that you have a good thing and
instead of being a hog about it and getting slaughtered,
being a pig and being get a little fat, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:28:29):
And when they bring the kid out of the stands
every game, no matter where they are across the country,
and all the players are acting like they're trying to
tag them out like it's just me beautiful, it really is.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
It's like the most perfect Americana ever. And doesn't it
show what a thirst we have in our culture right
now for that kind of unbridled joy and just fun
and no agenda and no you know, bilking, no seventy
five dollars jerseys for a player you're gonna trade next year.

(01:29:01):
Not bitter at all. And there are one hundred and
twenty five dollars. I should have checked myself, they're one
hundred and twenty five dollars. Now, it's just we're all
craving that, and yet we still find ourselves just getting
sucked in to all the negativity that exists online and
doom scrolling videos instead of going out and just being
kind to each other. It's just I don't know anyway, Mandy,
welcome back. Can you please put it on the blog tomorrow?

(01:29:22):
I will, I absolutely will. Uh Happy birthday, Jinks? What
should I get Jinks for her birthday? But I just
found a recipe for a dog cake. I have to
figure that out because she can't have. I think they're
all like made out of chicken, though she can't eat chicken.
She's got a finicky stomach, this dog of mine. Anyway,

(01:29:45):
five six six nine, Now go ahead and do that,
all right? We have so much more stuff and a
couple of these stories that are further down in the blog.
I'm just gonna say it, today's blog is amazing. And
I don't normally just shamelessly pimp the blog at two
forty in the afternoon, but today's blog like it. If
there was a blog award, I would submit this for
a blog award. I might not win it, but I'd

(01:30:05):
feel proud enough of it to submit it. So on
the blog today, you're going to see Denver's minimum wage
is going up again January first, and I gotta tell you.
I think that we are going to see a decent
sized wave of locally owned restaurants going under because they

(01:30:27):
don't have the economies of scale that chain restaurants have.
And I think, especially in Denver, you're going to see
a cratered like locally owned joint kind of economy. And
who wants to go to a big city that just
has Oh look there's a I can't even think of
a chain restaurant because I eat it so few of

(01:30:47):
them at this point in my life. Oh look, there's
a chain restaurant on that corner, in that corner, in
that corner, in that corner. I mean, when I travel,
I want those mom and pop experiences. I want to
feel like I'm giving my money to, you know, a
shot to a family that lives in the community kind
of thing. And I worry this is this is gonna
be really, really tough. And if you don't travel very often,

(01:31:14):
you may not even realize that Denver restaurant prices are insane.
They're really really crazy already, and now we're gonna raise
them minimum wage again. I just don't it's by the way,
it's gonna go up about forty eight cents, which doesn't
sound like a lot until you start adding those numbers up.

(01:31:36):
And No to the person who said Jinks needs a playmate,
no she doesn't. After Jinks goes boom, I'm gonna be
Doglass for a while. I'm just saying, Jinks, give fifty
pounds of unflavored snow cone ice. Oh my god, I
love that. That's a great idea. Tumerican apple sauce. Dog treats. Mandy,

(01:31:57):
my Irish wolfhound, loves them.

Speaker 5 (01:31:59):
She might like that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
She's kind of an adventure some eater. She eats a
lot of vegetables with me, but boy, broccoli does things
to her belly.

Speaker 9 (01:32:08):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
Wow. Anyway, the dogcake people you had on the show
a while ago. Wait a minute, do we have dogcake people?
I don't remember dogcake people. I mean, I'm not saying
it didn't, can't it didn't happen. I'm just saying I
don't remember it. But a lot that happens on the
show I don't remember. So anyway, i'd love to you.
We're going to try and get Sonya Riggs from the
Colorado Restaurant Association on the show to talk about what

(01:32:32):
she's hearing, because you know, restaurant owners don't want to
come out and talk about it because it makes it
look like their restaurant is struggling. And then once word
gets out your restaurants struggling, then people stop coming because
they assume there's something wrong with the food or the
service instead of the massive overhead costs that it just
takes to run a restaurant in Denver. It's just kind

(01:32:55):
of sad. So we'll see if we can get on
the show. I have a story about Denver International Airport.
I had this the other day yesterday as a matter
of fact, and they were going to study the potential.
They did a request for proposal for people to come
in and do a study on the feasibility of small
modular reactors. And small modular reactors are nuclear reactors that

(01:33:18):
are small. Just like they say, they don't work in
the traditional like you know, we need the big pool
of water situation. Some of them are salt cooled in it.
Some of the stuff is just like the coolest stuff ever.
But when you have the power needs that they have
at Denver International Airport, having their own source of power,
which is what a small modular reactor would do, I

(01:33:39):
mean that would be tremendous and that is truly the
greenest form of energy, right, so this should be a
win win win all the way around. I think the
concerns about things like theft or damage or something like
that to the actual reactors can be mitigated with the
right layers of security, physical security, technological security, you know,

(01:34:04):
monitoring twenty four hours a day, that kind of stuff.
It's gonna have to happen. But if you heard the
conversation earlier with Kirk Offel about jobs that you know
are just becoming jobs that don't even exist yet, then
you have an opportunity to say, look, we're going to
provide security for your small modular reactor, and here's what
we're doing in the terms of physical fencing structure, here's

(01:34:26):
what we're doing in the terms of monitoring. I mean,
that's a business, you guys, And I don't even know
what I'm talking about most of the time. No, I'm
just kidding. I know a little bit. But now it
seems that Denver has rescinded the request per proposal, and
this is the part that has me super concerned. Allow
den the opportunity to provide an overview of the proposal

(01:34:49):
to the community in District eleven and beyond. Our goal
is to present this idea to the community, listen to
their feedback, and understand what they would like to see
included the feasibility study. So the community, which is generally
made up of people who are uh, underinformed, I think

(01:35:11):
that's the best way to say it, underinformed. That that
would be the thing anyway. Oh, Mandy goes shopping at
Three Dogs Bakery. Food truck owner can't afford to hire employees. Oh,
I'm so sorry about that, Mandy. Up here, Noco, We're
mighty excited to see the chain black Eyed PA and
Fort Collins. Except black Eyed PA is locally owned and operated.

(01:35:34):
I'm just saying, all of the Black Eyed peas under
the Black Eyed Pa Colorado dot Com umbrella owned by
a very nice family, very nice family. All right, So
the noise you're hearing chuck, Wow, Wow, that was loud.
That's chuck. Because I'm broadcasting from home right now, so
I have to, uh, I have to get you under control.

Speaker 9 (01:35:56):
Ang one twenty years you haven't been able to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:59):
Good luck, good luck with that. So check, do you
want to tell your big news from the past few
days about your big victory.

Speaker 9 (01:36:08):
Oh my, my, twenty years I've been playing scrabble with
this woman, with other people.

Speaker 15 (01:36:14):
I always get my butt kicked. So she's going to
blame it on the rain. But twice I actually beat
her and right in a row, actually.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
Be right in a row. Maybe it's antesthesia brain, but
I just.

Speaker 9 (01:36:29):
Wanted you to have you.

Speaker 15 (01:36:30):
I just want to make it clear if if you
didn't have this anesthesia brain excuse, you would never have
mentioned it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:36):
No, let me give you the victory, because I don't
think there's going to be a whole lot more so,
I just want.

Speaker 9 (01:36:41):
To give you.

Speaker 2 (01:36:42):
I want you to revel in it. I want you
to see what he is.

Speaker 9 (01:36:44):
You want to play a game when you get off
the air the excitement upstairs.

Speaker 2 (01:36:48):
Okay, let's do it. We have a really awesome scrabble set.

Speaker 6 (01:36:51):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
It's on a lazy Susan. So the board turns. Man,
it's fancy. I mean, it's very fancy. No, we'll go.
We'll go again, and if you win again today I
will not share that with Nan tomorrow. Okay, I gave
you your glory right there. Absolutely, Mandy, you need to
have Jake Fogelman from the Independence Institute on to talk
about nuclear energy. It is responsible for getting nuclear energy

(01:37:13):
reclassified as clean energy. He would be a great interview.
I got to tell you, I'm one of the fools
that actually watches Power Gab with he and Amy Oliver Cook,
who I've known for a long time. They do an
amazing job. You can find that at the Independence Institute's
YouTube channel IV and just go to YouTube and put
in IV and just watch power Gab. That's how I

(01:37:37):
actually know what I do know about nuclear energy and
why I'm so keen on it. So that is definitely
Mandy do better Denver whoops, hang on, do better Denver
should find out if solar panels are wait, solar panels
are connected out at DII. I have heard they've not
do better Denvers not an an investigative body, They're just,

(01:37:58):
you know, think of them as a bulletin board, a
giant bulletin board of people making bad choices. Now, before
we do of the day with Chuck, did you see
that headline right there on the blog KFC is bringing
back potato wedges.

Speaker 9 (01:38:14):
That is awesome.

Speaker 15 (01:38:15):
I quit going when they got rid of them, you know,
I mean, just what's the point of course They also
got rid of the KFC around us.

Speaker 2 (01:38:21):
Yeah, but I don't. I'm not a potato wedge person,
but I know that they're very popular.

Speaker 9 (01:38:26):
Going down the road. You need some you know, fast
energy pulling the potato wedges, rock and.

Speaker 2 (01:38:30):
Roll, salty smushy, No, no, no, salty and smushy. This
texter said, did you have general anesthesia or propofol? I
had propofol, but I thought that was general anesthesia. Yeah,
I was out for the great, great, great nap that
only propofole.

Speaker 9 (01:38:51):
Come. Think they could have done a local No, no.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
No, thank you. I will pass anyway. Chuck is here.
I'm just killing time for like thirty more seconds.

Speaker 9 (01:39:01):
Grant.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
Somebody asked somebody else.

Speaker 9 (01:39:05):
At us.

Speaker 2 (01:39:06):
Somebody asked earlier if they keep updating the taking it
for granted app and there's no new content.

Speaker 5 (01:39:12):
That's because there is not any new content.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Okay, are you done?

Speaker 5 (01:39:16):
No, I'll bring it back eventually. It's just been a
crazy couple of months with travel and buying a house and.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
Yeah, not buying a house business. Now you're responsible and
you got to do all that adulting.

Speaker 9 (01:39:26):
Buying a housewaet, I thought you were like twelve.

Speaker 3 (01:39:29):
I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:39:31):
Ye bought us a house. And by the way, pro
tip for your potato wedges at KFC, get an extra
side of gravy and dip them out.

Speaker 2 (01:39:38):
Oh, he's not a gravy gather all right, nope. And
now it's time for the most exciting segment all the radio.

Speaker 6 (01:39:49):
It's Game.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
Who of the Day? All right, we gotta work that
out a little further away there, Yeah, anyway, ready for you?
What is our word of the day? Plea, excuse me
our dad joke of the day, please?

Speaker 10 (01:40:04):
Dad.

Speaker 5 (01:40:05):
Joke of the day. My wife hated my impulse purchase
of a revolving chair, but then she sat on it.
Eventually she came round.

Speaker 2 (01:40:16):
I like that one a lot. Okay, what is our
word of the day, please grant.

Speaker 5 (01:40:20):
Word of the day is an adjective ramshackle.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
Oh means kind of falling down, falling apart, looks ramshackle shack.

Speaker 5 (01:40:28):
Yeah, yeah, something in very bad condition.

Speaker 8 (01:40:31):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
Today's trivia question what animated TV show features a trio
of superhero girls named Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercull.

Speaker 7 (01:40:41):
What was that?

Speaker 5 (01:40:43):
Puff Girls?

Speaker 13 (01:40:44):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:40:44):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:40:44):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
The Power buff Girls?

Speaker 9 (01:40:46):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:40:46):
No, yes, I didn't know that. Good job grant, good job.

Speaker 9 (01:40:50):
I remember watching that with a que.

Speaker 2 (01:40:51):
The show originally aired on Cartoon Network from nineteen ninety
eight to two thousand and five, and in my childhood
in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 9 (01:40:59):
Ye you're a powderpuff girl crep.

Speaker 5 (01:41:01):
Yeah, I was a bubbles.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
What is our Jeopardy category for today?

Speaker 5 (01:41:08):
Jeopardy category for today? The old line state, So each
answer will have line in it? Okay, first one. This
the time by which something must be finished or submitted.

Speaker 2 (01:41:21):
Mandy. What's the deadline correct?

Speaker 5 (01:41:25):
Style of armchair where you'll find someone watching a sports game?
Do you guys want another hint?

Speaker 6 (01:41:33):
Wait?

Speaker 1 (01:41:35):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:41:36):
Yes, lazy?

Speaker 2 (01:41:38):
What is recliner correct? Recliner?

Speaker 9 (01:41:43):
I got you now?

Speaker 5 (01:41:44):
So every answer has line in it?

Speaker 9 (01:41:46):
Yeah, okay?

Speaker 5 (01:41:49):
Advertising catchphrase for a movie or a play, Mandy. What's
the tagline correct? This is not going like your scrabble game. No,
it's not that I can one word clue pedigree Mandy?
What is bloodline correct?

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
Poor?

Speaker 9 (01:42:06):
Zero?

Speaker 5 (01:42:07):
Going for the clean sweep? Your nose?

Speaker 9 (01:42:10):
Nose?

Speaker 5 (01:42:10):
It means shape like an eagle's beak.

Speaker 2 (01:42:13):
Mandy, what's aqualine?

Speaker 6 (01:42:14):
Correct?

Speaker 5 (01:42:15):
For the clean sweep?

Speaker 9 (01:42:16):
I got my butt.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
Stone to play.

Speaker 9 (01:42:20):
He just wants me to come down here so I
can get my butt kicked.

Speaker 2 (01:42:23):
It's you know, I got to clear up that anesthesia brain.
That's what it's all helping.

Speaker 9 (01:42:26):
Gone, as you just noticed, the antesia brain's gone.

Speaker 2 (01:42:29):
No, not quite, because I struggled with recliner, reclineer. I
should have gotten that right away, but I thought of recliner,
and then I thought, well, that's not right because I
forgot what the category was. Like an idiot. Anyway, why
don't we just turn the station over?

Speaker 9 (01:42:44):
Can I say, welcome to my world.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
It's I'm telling you, it's the anesthesia brain. All right,
we'll be back to Actually, we will not be back tomorrow.
I believe baseball eats the entire show game starts at noon,
so we will be back on Thursday, where we already
have a really big show planned for you. Then, in
the meantime, though, I'm gonna let you hang out with
the guys from KOA Sports. We will check in with
you later. Keep it here on KOA