09-30-25 FULL SHOW - Barb Kirkmeyer Stops By, And We've Lost Our Collective Minds

Senator Barb Kirkmeyer stops by to discuss the competency bill, two more horrible mass shootings this week, and why aren't GOP states in a panic over spending? 

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:04):
No, it's Mandy Connell and.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
On Kam sat Way to study the nice through three.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
By Connell Keith real sadding welcome, Welcome, QA Tuesday edition
feels like well Monday for me, because yesterday the show
got eaten by me Broncos coverage and Anthony.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
But that's okay.

Speaker 5 (00:36):
At least you were representing the team this team as
you represented the team the Denver Broncos.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great game last night. That is Anthony Rodriguez.

Speaker 5 (00:47):
I am Mandy Connell, and today we will take you
straight through up until three o'clock when the afternoon guys
will take over and talk about that game in great depth.
I thought it was a solid, solid game by the Bronx.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Solid. Oh, I'd go further than solid.

Speaker 6 (01:03):
They wipe the floor with a team that they should
have wiped the floor with great teams.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Do that.

Speaker 5 (01:07):
Yep, solid solid performance and I was very happy about that. Now,
I don't know if you just heard the conversation that
I was happening about Sunday night football.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
So and what's funny is I don't even remember who
was in.

Speaker 5 (01:18):
The games Cowboys, Packers and Cowboys. So this game on
Sunday night was so freaking good. Okay, it was an
awesome football game. Back and forths and back and forths
and back and forth, and then it's tied at the end,
and then they go to overtime and nobody and it ended.

Speaker 6 (01:33):
In a tie, what with our very own Brandon McManus
kicking the field goal to tie.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I hate the tie. It rarely happens, and it doesn't
happen in the playoffs. They keep it going.

Speaker 6 (01:44):
But maybe this will start some legislation to not even
have ties, I mean the regular season, because a great
game like that to then, so you understand, the equivalent
of a tie in the NFL is basically like the
game not happening exactly when you have a tie at
the end of your record, the game essentially did not
take place. So it really takes away and I mean
every interview I listened to, every player, every coach, even

(02:07):
people in the media. It's hard to make something of
that because like, are we happy?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Are we sad?

Speaker 5 (02:13):
Are we just pointed to go into whether or not
you you know, how does that go in your in
your division standings?

Speaker 6 (02:22):
Like I said, at the end of your record, so
they are either like one two and one or two
one in one. It doesn't factor in in a win percentage.
It doesn't factor in the game. Did not happen, is
how ties are the NFL. The game stupid did not
take place because if let's say years back when the
games were early sixteen games, if you were eight and
eight yea and a team was eight seven and one,

(02:42):
they have a better record than you because win percentage
they have less eight year fifty yes, fifty eight seven
and one is a better winning win percentage. So it
just the game didn't happen. The game did not take place.
It was free fund entertainment, no impact on the standings whatsoever.

Speaker 5 (02:58):
I cannot stand end, absolutely cannot stand the tie. I
just felt like, like I want to use a really
crude analogy to how that feels.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, it's like football was football because you can have
ties in soccer. Yeah, and that's what I said.

Speaker 5 (03:14):
I'm like football now we have now we've soccered the uh,
the game of football, which is very disappointing.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
It shouldn't happen, and it doesn't. In the playoffs they
keep on rolling.

Speaker 5 (03:25):
But you know, the argument and they understand that it sucks, right,
and they can't do that in the playoffs, but they're
still gonna do it in the regular season even though
it sucks.

Speaker 6 (03:33):
But the argument to be made is in the NFL,
the longer the game, the longer it goes. If there's
no end, then we could be talking about like injuries,
and then you don't want to go down that rabbit hole.
But like college, yeah, you make it harder and harder
and harder to not get a winner, like you have
to go for two and you have to do this.
There's ways to make it happen, and maybe in the
future it will because yeah, ties are stupid.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Mandy question.

Speaker 5 (03:56):
I'm in Arizona and tried to stream the game on
the iHeart app and it was not available because, as
it said, it was out of network.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Why is that?

Speaker 5 (04:02):
Yeah, wherever you are listening to the iHeartRadio app, we
know where you are.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's not creepy at all, but we know where you are.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
And our contract with the with the NFL allows us
to stream the Broncos games within our metro area, within
what's our our defined media market area, and it will
not let us stream it outside that market, which I
don't understand, truthfully, like, I'm kind of confused about that.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
I don't know why it is that way. I'm not sure.
I'm not up to speed on that contract. So I
don't know a.

Speaker 5 (04:38):
Person standing outside what we call the geo fence. Yes,
the geo fence. We've geo fenced you all in with
an imaginary fence.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
You can't see, but we can see it. Yeah, we
can see where all of you are. We know, I
know it's creepy. We've got the wall. It's a geophanx wall.
You basically, if you had said the wall, you don't
get tradition, and we built this wall because it's necessary.
It's necessary to keep the wall out there.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
Thank you to all of you who are letting me
know that. The movie I was trying to think of
was The Wild White Family of West Virginia. Rus and
I were talking about in breeding.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, I think, no, they're the whites. Are the whites?
I think there's a white family.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
This is a documentary and it is about the real
life family of West Virginia. There the modern inbred. They're
led by Jessco White. He's the head of the Wild
and Wonderful Whites. Of West Virginia. This movie came out
in two thousand and nine, and if you watch it,

(05:39):
you sort of forget that it's a documentary and you
start thinking to yourself, this is really mean to portray
people in this in this fashion, and then you realize
this is just the people and it's not like a
movie portrayal. It's the actual people and they're they're not right,
you guys, they're not right.

Speaker 6 (05:56):
Well, now, the family everyone follows the one I'm familiar
with on social media, people post videos of them all
the time. The Whitaker family, very similar story, also in
West Virginia, and they barely communicate.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
They like bark and it's weird.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
Well, the the White family doesn't bark necessarily.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
But uh, they're not normal and they're not normal at all.
Are the Whites at least nice, because the wider seem
at least nice. Yeah, yeah, no, No, they're not.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
They're they're very insular and they're not really interested in strangers,
and they're very odd. They live kind of like on
the side of the mountain in Appalachia.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
And so the Hills Deliverance, very deliverance. Have you ever
seen the movie Deliverance?

Speaker 5 (06:42):
I don't know, but it's hills. Trust me, you'd remember
if you'd seen the movie Deliverance. Deliverance is one of
those movies that leaves an impression. It's it's a phenomenal movie,
but you will not forget that you have seen the
movie Deliverance, kind of like when you see it really
really scary movie that scares the bajeebers out of you.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
You remember. That's why I referenced the hills have eyes,
because that's what it sounds like. And that scared the
crap out of me. Yeah. No, well you know I
didn't watch that nor.

Speaker 5 (07:11):
No, because it came out after the last scary movie
that I watched.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
There are the cannibals and Deliverance.

Speaker 5 (07:18):
No, then there are sexual predators in Deliverance. Oh yeah,
let's just put it that way. Good and that Yeah, yeah,
you'd remember if you'd seen the movie Deliverance. And and
I bet uh that the audience will text here in
a moment on the Common Spirit Health text line at
five six six nine, oh and say you'd remember it
if you'd seen it. Hi, Mandie, I live in Colorado

(07:41):
Springs and still can't catch a game on iHeart. I
think they need to expand your their fence. You in
Colorado Springs are actually in a different media market. And
I know that seems dumb because you're right down the road,
But you have your own media market in Colorado Springs.
We have our own media market in Denver. We have
another media market in the Fort Collins area, So we
have multiple media markets down the front range. I believe

(08:03):
Preblo has its own media market as well, don't I?

Speaker 2 (08:05):
I think so?

Speaker 5 (08:06):
Are they part of Colorado Springs? And TV is slightly
different than radio sometimes, so I can't tell you with certainty,
but the Colorado, Colorado Springs, you have your own media market.
Mandy says, Ralph, I can spoof iHeart with a VPN,
no problem, Ralph.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
I can't give out that kind of information.

Speaker 5 (08:30):
Hey, Mandy, after deliverance, you can never look at ned
Baty the same way. Exactly exactly, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, anyway, Mandy,
how can a rod call a two and two team
a great team?

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Do you know what's interesting?

Speaker 5 (08:46):
Last or during the game. So Troy Aikman is doing
color for the game on TV. Troy Aikman broke down
bo Nix's performances in all of the first three games,
and Troy Aikman said, Bonix is playing like an MVP.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
I don't know why they're one and two. He said
that last night.

Speaker 6 (09:10):
They did not trail in the fourth quarter. And I
know those two games. Yep, did they choke it up
at the end? Of course they both they did. Okay,
I understand that. But I call them a great team
because they played like a great team yesterday and they
do what great teams do, which is destroy not good teams.

Speaker 5 (09:24):
Yeah, this texter said, I get the game on. iHeart
in the springs. Okay, never mind lots of you texting
in squeal like a pig, which is a reference to well,
trust me, after you see Deliverance, you'll never hear that
line the same way Anthony never Never I took a
date to see Deliverance, says this texter.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Last date. Have you ever made a strategic error and
gone to see the wrong movie on a first date?

Speaker 1 (09:50):
I have.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
I went to see a movie and I don't remember
what movie it was. Maybe it was.

Speaker 5 (10:00):
It had Uma Thurman in it, and she was playing
like a lesbian an a Eastman or something.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
And I'm on this first date and there's so many
sex scenes on this.

Speaker 5 (10:09):
First in this movie that that me and my date
were both so visibly uncomfortable. We were just like, it
was just so awkward because we didn't know each other
that well. It was one of those things where I
just met him and he's like, hey, let's.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Go get coffee or movie ors and we went to
this movie and it was just like and at the
end of the movie, he went, I am so sorry.
Could you just drive to another theater?

Speaker 5 (10:30):
I mean not where we were now there wasn't a
drive in haha. And that's been making a lot of
old jokes and I can't even argue at all. iHeart
settings changed to Denver zip code.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
There you go.

Speaker 5 (10:47):
We got lots of people with the work around on
getting the Broncos games. Let's do the blog. Shall we
know that we squandered a good bit of time and
I apologize for that, just getting back in the saddle
after yesterday's free day for me and yes, I took
the whole day and did nothing because there was Usually
when we have a baseball preemption, there is a chance
that at any minute a baseball game is going to
get rained out right, so I have to be ready.

(11:09):
I have to do show prep. I have to be
ready to jump in at any minute if you know something.
But with this yesterday, I was like, I'm not even
freeing the game.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
I represented well. I hope some of our listeners hung
around and chilled out with me and Ben.

Speaker 5 (11:22):
Yes, I hope, so, I hope, So, Mandy, I saw
deliverance just before I went on a week long canoe
trip on the Buffalo River in northern Arkansas. Kept looking
over my shoulder up those limestone bluffs all week.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
That's the states I never make. Normally, nothing really freaks
me out.

Speaker 6 (11:40):
But if it's like, oh, here's a movie about a
plane crash before you're going on a plane, here's a
movie about you know, terrible things they go in the
woods before you go camping, those those mistakes I don't make. Yeah, No,
then you get in your own head and yeah, there's
a fifty percent chance that the things that you see
or hear are coming from your own head. Yeah, you
don't want to do it to yourself. Don't do that
to yourself.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
No, let's find the blog.

Speaker 5 (12:00):
So now we go to mandy'sblog dot com, look at
the latest post section. Then look for the headline that
says nine thirty twenty five blog Barb Kirkmeyer stops by
and we've lost our collective minds. Click on that and
here are the headlines you will find within.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
As in Office, half of American larships and clipments as
to pass.

Speaker 5 (12:17):
Play Today on the blog, Barb Kirkmeyer joins to talk
the competency bill. No, the Colorado GOP did not vote
to end primaries. What the heck is going on in
our country? Some cu fans show their ugly side. Why
aren't Red States facing a budget crisis? Like we are
a column about hope for a better US. These attempted

(12:38):
robberies were probably figments of someone's imagination.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Cherry Creek Park is closed at night.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
Now Denver Public Schools is losing kids again. Hey, look,
the federal government may shut down again. RTD wants to
throw good money after bad. Heg Seth brings back the
warrior ethos. Why is everything so intentional these days that
underflip on work? And why it matters? The NFL announces
the halftime show. The QAnon Shaman is back in the news.

(13:07):
Colorado needs Trump to back Taiwan. Beware a new romance scam.
I flat out love jk Rowling, Well, the Rocky season
wasn't the worst in history, ay Rod Love Nightmare on
Strip Street, Drumstick football is something Amazon will pay big.
Decenttal claims they were the Hotel California. Free speech is

(13:28):
important On Late Night Am I right? Trump says TikTok
will be all American. Nuking the moon seems like a
bad idea, and I love Shelby Harris. Those are Oh wait,
do you really want to know what others think as
bribing for best friendships?

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Justin Adam bust a crime normalize being obsessed with your spouse.

Speaker 5 (13:46):
The Live Nation CEO proves why people hate CEOs. Those
are the headlines on the blog atmandysblog dot com Tech two.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
I know, Nancy, I know, I get it.

Speaker 5 (14:01):
Mandy, is it Bark or barb Kara or brab Kirkmeyer
this week? I mistakenly put Bark on a prior blog
post and this texture.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Is never going to let me forget it.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Never.

Speaker 5 (14:15):
Mandy went to the wrong movies twice, Soldier Blue about
the Sand Creek massacre and rode to Perdition with Tom Hanks. Hey, Mandy, Hey,
Rodd and Ben did a great job there. You go
a little at a boy at a boy, Mandy, I'm
curious your thoughts about Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl.
The MAGA crowd seems to be upset, he's anti Ice,
and none of his songs are in English. Okay, So

(14:37):
here are my feelings on this.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
So, first of all, they announced that he was the
uh and I had no idea who it was, had
no clue who it was.

Speaker 5 (14:46):
No, no, no, wait, wait wait when they showed did
you see Oh you weren't watching that. You weren't watching
the TV version, were you?

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Okay?

Speaker 5 (14:53):
So they showed an image, just an image with no
like of him. No it was I don't even know
what they image was, but I was like, I have
no idea what that is. And then they came back
to one of I think the sideline reporter and she's like,
there it is Bad Bunny and I was like, oh, okay,
I've heard of him. Didn't he use to date Kylie
Jenner or something? I think so not Kylie one of

(15:16):
the Jenner's kindall or something like that. But he is
a massive star, like a massive, massive worldwide, one of
the best selling artists in the world.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
But I do think the NFL was just like, who can.

Speaker 5 (15:32):
We get the sales a bunch of records that's gonna
appeal to the Latin community as we try to build
our base in Central and South America. And guess what
it was, Bad Money. Everything the NFL does, one hundred
percent of every choice the NFL makes, is coldly calculated
to try and grow the fan appeal and the fan
base of their product. Now, the fact that Bad Money

(15:53):
skipped the mainland United States of America on his latest
tour because he was afraid that ICE agents would target
his fans, and he's been very disparaging of ICE agents. Uh, Frankly,
I don't care because I'm not the demo. The NFL
is not catering to my tastes. I generally speaking as

(16:14):
a fifty six year old woman, don't matter to them
in the grand scheme of things. Now, I could not
tell do we have any bad Bunny music in the
in the look and see if they might have it
on party for our hit station, because I mean, he's
got some hits.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Is this so called party or is it called hits?
What is it called now? What is it called hits?
Hits on Hits ninety seven point three whatever.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
I obviously don't spend a lot of time listening to
pop music. Now that my daughter has her account, she's
basically DJ Quickspin whenever we're in the car.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
So, do we have any Bad Buddy? Is it any
in the system?

Speaker 5 (16:54):
Anything's let's just give a quick review of mister Bunny
and the work that he does.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Let's go ahead and hit that.

Speaker 5 (17:01):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Oh, hang on, we're getting it. We're getting I gotta
find a good one. Hang on, how do you know
if there is a good one. I know that Bad
Buddy's songs. I got a fairre it with what it. Okay,
I'm glad somebody does that, somebody's heard of this guy.

Speaker 5 (17:12):
I just I you, guys, my my limit for being
upset about things has been reached. Okay, I don't have
the time, energy and bandwidth to be upset about a
guy that they hired, which to me clearly shows they
are trying to build the fan base in Latin countries.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
We'll come back with that on the other side.

Speaker 5 (17:31):
Okay, that works for me, That absolutely works for me. Now,
coming up at one o'clock today, we've got Barb Kirkmeyer
coming on. There's been a lot of talk, including on
this program, about the disastrous competency bill that was passed
in twenty twenty four, and it was passed in a
bipartisan fashion. We're gonna find out why they didn't see

(17:52):
the problems that we're having now coming, because I think
somebody should have, and what they're gonna do to fix it,
because right now, because of that bill, we have a
situation where we have people that have demonstrated themselves to
be violent and they are getting out after they're arrested.

(18:14):
It's sometimes charged with attempted murder or worse, and they're
getting back out because they've been deemed unable to participate
in their own defense, unable to stand trial. So she's
going to join us at one to talk about this.
Mandy from the text line, who didn't date a Jenner girl?
I mean, you know, I Aron, have you ever dated

(18:37):
a Jenner rock Kardashi, there's one right there, one strapping
young fellow right there that has never dated to Jenner.
Mandy bad Bunny wants us to turn a blind eye
to gate crashers at the border. How does he feel
about gate crashers at his concerts?

Speaker 2 (18:51):
That is a fine question. A couple of things. I
just want to reiterate number one.

Speaker 5 (18:56):
There are people on the internet Matt about this, and
what's interesting is they're not mad because everything is in Spanish,
although I'm sure there's some that are mad because it's
everything's in Spanish. They're mad because he's anti Ice, because
Bad Bunny assumes that all of his audience is illegal immigrants,
So that is why they're mad.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
And honestly, I don't have the energy for it.

Speaker 5 (19:20):
I'm tired about being mad at everything, stupid stuff that
doesn't matter. If you don't want to watch Bad Bunny
at the Super Time Super Bowl halftime show, set your clock,
you know, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and go
find something to do.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
I just can't be mad about it anymore. I don't care.
I really don't. And if that makes me a bad
talk show host, like I'm not a here jeming up,
you know, anger, I just we have so many other things.

Speaker 5 (19:43):
That are so much more important to be mad about.
It's just it's not even funny either way. We have
some really, really really great videos on the blog today,
including one of Shelby Harris at a school principal.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Harris is what we have to call him from now on.

Speaker 6 (20:00):
Well, Harris, that man continues to prove on the daily
why he's one of my favorite either current or former apptees.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
He's just a super super nice guy.

Speaker 6 (20:10):
He's right up there for me with the Steve Atwaters
of the world, the rod Smiths of the world, current Broncos,
Marvin Mims.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
I mean, he's Shelby's awesome. Shelby has a lightness about him,
Bronco's Country loves Me.

Speaker 5 (20:23):
Shelby has this kind of like his joy of life
kind of shines through. And that's one of the things
that you when you have an opportunity to neet Shelby
and talk to him on any level. He's just he
brings that joy to the table and you feel it.

Speaker 6 (20:37):
He's just one of those people if your bad day
continues after a good old Shelby Harris off the air
belly laugh and something's wrong with you exactly. I love
just chatting with him, just just besing and having a
good time when he's in here with us. So as
good as we all want him to continue to do
with the Cleveland Browns and in the NFL, we also
can't wait for him to potentially be able to join

(20:57):
us more on air and his post career because he's
awesome anyway, I hope so too.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
He's also still really good at football people. Yes, he
is a monster on the d line.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
He is.

Speaker 6 (21:08):
He's got some of the best hands for a defender
in the NFL. He's still really damn good.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
And he's just a super super nice guy. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (21:16):
I just genuinely like Shelby. So the video is really
really funny. Okay, let's talk for a minute. This is
a little inside baseball with the Colorado Republican Party. So Saturday,
mine of my own bees Wax. I'm getting a bunch
of stuff done around the house, like a lot of
little stuff that needed to get done.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
I'm just I'm cranking. I'm just getting things done.

Speaker 5 (21:33):
And all of a sudden, my phone starts to blow
up from people texting me who were at the state
committee meeting for the Republican Party on Saturday. This meeting
was supposed to allow the membership to vote on whether
or not to opt out of the primaries. Now, I

(21:55):
want to clarify something about that vote very quickly. If
the Republican already votes to opt out of the primaries,
it doesn't mean that the Republicans will have their own primary.
It means that a vast majority of the roughly nine
hundred and forty thousand or so Republicans that are in
the state of Colorado will have to accept candidates that

(22:17):
are chosen by the state convention.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Now, how do you get to go to the state convention.

Speaker 5 (22:21):
You show up at the caucases first, and then you're
selected to go to the state convention, and then you
have to go through a different process to get to
the state convention. So not every Republican has the opportunity
to go to the state convention, even if they show
up at the.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
At the caucases.

Speaker 5 (22:38):
Now, I think it would be a whole lot of
fun if nine hundred and forty thousand Republicans showed up
at the caucuses.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
I think that'd be a blast.

Speaker 5 (22:46):
It would demonstrate once and for all that the caucus
system is hopelessly outdated. It is a relic when people
were far more engaged at the community level, and it
needs to go right now. It serves no purpose other
than making sure that party insiders who have nothing better
to do but Republican politics get to have their day
in the sun. Now, I just want to point out

(23:09):
that the Assembly has put forth candidates that didn't even
make it through the primary. They didn't even get enough
votes in the primary to make it through the primary,
and yet we're expected to believe that those people would
make it through a general election. Now, let me explain
to you what happened on Saturday and what didn't happen
on Saturday, because even people who were at the meeting

(23:31):
on Saturday are unclear about what happened on Saturday. At
the meeting, there is a group of rabble rousers, the
Rhino Watch morons. And I shouldn't normally call the morons,
but I'm gonna call the morons because I have now
begun questioning their intelligence. I've long been questioning their motives.
Everything this group does should be considered a campaign contribution

(23:52):
to the Democratic Party. Like I think we should call
the Federal Elections Commission and say we need them reported
as a campaign contribution to the Democratic Party. But you've
got this this little brain trust over at Rhino Watch,
who really honestly believes if we just ran trumpier candidates
in a state that Trump lost by double digits, then

(24:13):
Republicans are going to take over. They have absolutely no
data to back that up.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Nothing.

Speaker 5 (24:19):
There's not one bit of polling, not one bit of information,
no hard data at all to back up this position.
But that's where they are. That's where they are. And
in the meantime they call actual Republicans who are concerned
about what's that word, what's that winning? They run around
and call them rhinos, But they can't define what a

(24:39):
good Republican is, and the rhino definition it shifts to
sweep anybody that they don't like on that day into
their rhino category. They're just a group of bitter idiots
who are so determined to inflict their vision on the
entire Republican Party that not only they demand on Saturday

(25:01):
that this.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Group of Republicans vote to a firm a.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
Vote that took place in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
We're in twenty twenty four. Let me okay, this is
going to take a minute. Just bear with me.

Speaker 5 (25:16):
According to state law, in order to opt out of
the primaries, seventy five percent of the state Central Committee
has to vote to leave the primary. That did not
happen in twenty twenty four. It did not happen in
this meeting on Saturday. Neither of those that statutory requirement
was never met ever, and yet this group of morons,

(25:41):
I'm trying so hard to get them to put me
on the Rhino Hall of Fame so I can make
t shirts and sell them and donate them to Republican candidates.
So please the morons in the Rhino Watch.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Group of people.

Speaker 5 (25:54):
They not only demanded a vote on this, and they're saying, oh,
the Republicans opted out, they're now suing d a Horn
to force her to abide by a vote that did
not meet the state's statutory requirements to opt out of
the primary.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
That's how dumb they are.

Speaker 5 (26:15):
So now, instead of spending money on candidates, getting people elected,
maybe trying to bring some semblance of balance back to
Colorado before we run the entire state into the ground,
we're going to be spending that money on lawsuits because
that's what the morons want. The morons are mad, by
the way, because they're out of power. That's why they're mad.
They're out of power, and so they bring up these

(26:37):
ideas with absolutely no backing. Whatso, there's not a single
bit of polling data that says Colorado wants somebody more trumpy,
Not a single bit. We've talked about this. I mean
at nauseum. If they would listen to the show, maybe
they'd learn something. Just maybe I don't know, maybe they're
not capable of learning something. Mandy, what is Trumpier or

(26:59):
maga people? I think you mean the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Oh no, no, no, no.

Speaker 5 (27:03):
Here's the thing about the Colorado Republican Party. There's a
lot of what I'm going to call normal Republicans who
don't abide by this. We'll explain on the other side
of this break. Saturday, there was the State Assembly for
the Colorado Republican Party. It dissolved into chaos when the
Rhino Watch Group decided they were going to try and
force this state Assembly to honor a vote that they

(27:26):
took in the last state Assembly in twenty twenty four,
which did not meet the statutory standards to opt out
of a primary.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
So here's the deal.

Speaker 5 (27:37):
If they opt out of a primary, it means that
only the party insiders who go to the State Assembly
will be able to choose the Republican candidates. Now, currently,
with the primary system, you have the state Assembly and
they nominate candidates to the ballot, and people can also
petition onto the ballot as well. And then everybody goes

(27:58):
into the primary and we the voters chuse the actual
candidate for the general election. The candidates that have come
out of the Assembly process, for the most part, have
failed to make it out of the primary. Not because
they were shut down by all of these secret Democrats
who came into the Republican primary to create havoc, but

(28:20):
because they were lousy candidates that didn't even get enough
Republicans to vote for them. Because the people that go
to the state Assembly are far more invested in Republican
politics than your average Republican.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
They're the diehards.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
And I'm not mad at diehard people who are participating
in the party system at all. The party can't function
without those diehards. But what happens is they get siloed
into their little lanes and they get surrounded by people
who keep telling them that their way is the only way,
and their way is the right way, and their way
sucks in Colorado. And here's why this text on the

(28:56):
Common Spirit health text line. As an independent voter, I'm
not anti Republican, but I am anti Trump. And I
know it's only one vote, but every time Colorado puts
an election with stolen super Trump or candidate on the ballot,
I cringe and vote independent, or worse, I vote Democrat.
Is it possible to be a balanced Republican anymore?

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Or is it?

Speaker 5 (29:17):
If you're not with Trump, you're against Trump. Right now,
I'm going to direct your attention to Jeff crank Wait,
Jeff heard, Jeff heard in the third Congressional District. He
is catching all manner of crap for not voting for
the censure of ilhan Omar. Now, I think the central
process is important, I think it has value, and I

(29:39):
think ilhan Omar is gross. That being said, he is
in a district that used to be fairly Republican, but
we saw Lauren Bobert leave the third Congressional District because she.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Was probably going to lose.

Speaker 5 (29:53):
You have well funded Democratic candidates in that district, some
of who may not have embroider the crackback on one
miss ilhan Omar. So he made a decision that could
be based in his conscious but also every decision made
by a politician takes into account how that's going to
affect their reelection. So now the Maga Republicans the Rhino

(30:19):
Watch Republicans, and there are two different kinds of Republicans there.
I don't want to make sure. I want to make
sure that you don't under that you don't think those
are the same because they're not Rhino Watch maybe maga,
but there are also maga Republicans who just really like
Donald Trump, who are not idiots. So Maga Republicans are like, dude,
why did you do that? You have to look at
how to win erase you guys. You have to look

(30:40):
at the grand scheme of things that vote to not
send her ilan Omar means nothing to you and me.
It doesn't affect our lives one way or the other. Right,
I don't care. I still think she's gross. I think
she's an awful person, I really do. But I don't
care if she's centered or not in the grand scheme
of things. But what I do care about is keeping
the or a congressional district with an R behind the.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Name, and is that the one that Ron Hanks ran for?

Speaker 5 (31:08):
The looking backwards Republicans that are embraced by Rhino Watches heroes,
they want everybody who it was looking firmly in the
rear view mirror while ignoring everything ahead of them. So
if they opt out of the primary. By the way,
probably I would say roughly nine hundred and forty thousand

(31:29):
Republicans will be disenfranchised and have no say in who
appears on the general election ballot.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Is that what you want? Because I got a lot
of messages with people say no, we need to opt out.

Speaker 5 (31:38):
I'm like, but you know, you don't get to vote
in the primary then, right, unless you have time to
go to the caucus and you get chosen to go
to the state Assembly and you go to the State
Assembly for the whole day. Is that what you do?

Speaker 2 (31:48):
You have time for that?

Speaker 7 (31:50):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (31:50):
No, you have a job and kids and a family
and a business to write. Yeah, okay, I don't either.
But that's what people think they want because they don't know.
They really don't. Mandy the Independent Texter is lying. They
always vote Democrat.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
You know what.

Speaker 5 (32:07):
I generally think that when people hit the text line,
for the most part, they're telling the truth. There's there's
literally no reason for them to lie here. I mean, granted,
when people send rude things, well nevermind, I won't mention
that we're going to take a quick time out. Speaking
of elections that can be won, could Barb Kirkmeyer be
the next governor.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
We're going to have Ron to talk about.

Speaker 5 (32:27):
The competency bill that has created havoc in law enforcement,
why it passed, and what they can do to fix it.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Right after this.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Bell and Pollock
accident and injury lawyers.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
No, it's Mandy Connell and.

Speaker 8 (32:50):
Got the nicey three Many Connell, Keith.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
The Risk Well Local.

Speaker 5 (33:02):
Welcome to the second hour of the show, and I
am pleased as punch to check in with state Senator
and goubernatorial candidate Barb Kirkmeyer. We are going to talk
about something that has turned into a huge problem, and Barb,
first of all, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 9 (33:19):
Well, thank you, it's great to be back on and
thanks for having me.

Speaker 5 (33:22):
So let's talk about HB twenty four Dash ten thirty four.
This was a bill that it from the outside looking in,
and you can tell me where I've got it right,
where I've got it wrong. It looks like another well
intentioned piece of legislation that has accidentally created a huge
negative consequence. And that negative consequence for my listeners who
don't know their bill numbers right off the top of

(33:43):
the head is that we've now seen multiple cases of
people that have demonstrated a propensity to be violent being
arrested and then being released because they are found unable
to stand trial because of a competency issue. And this
is now a huge problem. So, Barb, let's start at
the beginning. Where did this bill come from? And were

(34:04):
these problems ever discussed?

Speaker 10 (34:09):
Let's do start there. But first of all, let me
just say this. I did vote for that bill, and
I'm going to say why, but it is obvious you're
right that it's got it needs to be fixed. There's
it did create a huge problem. We thought we were
solving another issue that had to do with the deal
with the constitution, But in this case, we need to
fix this bill. And I very frankly believe that the

(34:32):
governor should call for a special session, that we should
fix it sooner rather than later.

Speaker 9 (34:38):
And I'm concerned that he won't want to do that.

Speaker 10 (34:40):
I know the remembers folks that had asked to have
this get fixed in the special session we had in August. Yeah,
obviously it did not get on the call, but we
need to get it fixed sooner rather than later, because
you're right, what happened was the bill and We talked
about this in our caucus as well. But this bill
started actually with Attack as Force, who was putting together

(35:02):
recommendations for what's called an introim committee, so a committee
that meets when we're not in session and they go
through and have more time to really go in depth
and look at bills and see what's made it there.
And so it came out of that introm committee, and
it was especially built as a necessary fix for a
constitutional deficiency in other words, way back like I think

(35:22):
it was nineteen seventy two, but back in the nineteen seventies,
the Supreme Court had made it very clear that individuals
that are deemed incompetent simply cannot just be left in jail.
It violates the Constitution. Do process in the Constitution, and
that's been out there for a while.

Speaker 7 (35:40):
So we.

Speaker 10 (35:42):
We passed this bill thinking that we were addressing the
constitutional concerns looking at the length of time, the reasonable
amount of time that an individual could be staying in there.
And quite honestly, when we talked about this billing and
in our Republican caucus, and when I mean we all
voted for.

Speaker 9 (35:57):
It on the floor in the Senate reading, we talked
about that.

Speaker 10 (36:02):
It was really they're either going to be in a
correctional facility or they're going to be in a mental
institute institution, right, So it wasn't like they should be
letting go or not, you know, getting back out on
the streets. So that's where we've got a problem. I've
talked with, you know, a few district attorneys. I've talked
with obviously the sheriff of my sheriff of Well County
who rightly so is you know, ringing the alarm bell

(36:25):
and thank you for doing that, and so, you know,
we think we can come up with a fix. I've
spoken with one of the prime sponsors and she's been
working with the District Attorneys Association, the disability groups, victims groups,
and others as well, and we've pledged to kind of
try and come together to see if we can come
up with a fix.

Speaker 9 (36:45):
But in the meantime, we really just need to have
the governor call special session and then let's get the
bill fixed. But that won't solve all the issue is
part of the other problem.

Speaker 10 (36:55):
And I've talked about this in a couple of different places,
but you know, it's one thing to try to adress
to the constitutional concerns.

Speaker 9 (37:01):
Now, we need to fix this hole. It's in this bill.

Speaker 10 (37:04):
Fix this flawed law that's letting people go. But the
other problem is the next phase of this. And as
I was talking to like, for example, some of the
district's attorneys, I like, is the institutions that we have
in the state. We have about five hundred beds in
the state. Four hundred of them are for those that
are criminally justice involved. The others are for civil of

(37:24):
people who are involved in civil cases, and it's for
people who are either mentally ill or developmentally disabled. And
so what has been going on in the courts is
instead of the defense having the burden to say that
they are not restorable, in other words, they're incompetent, it's

(37:44):
been put on the prosecution to have to prove that
they are not competent.

Speaker 9 (37:49):
So again, I think there's a fixer that we can
come up with. But where do we put them. These
beds are full. We've got anywhere from three hundred and
sixty plus bed weight list.

Speaker 10 (38:00):
To get into these institutions, it's very expensive, and you know,
in our budget situation, I know last year in the budget,
the Joint Budget committee.

Speaker 9 (38:10):
We added additional dollars to this area. Quite frankly, not enough.

Speaker 5 (38:14):
Not enough.

Speaker 9 (38:15):
We're going to have to prioritize this area, you know.

Speaker 10 (38:17):
And so I tell folks, you know, when you want
to keep voting against the budget, you're also voting against
things like this about you know, increasing bedspace.

Speaker 9 (38:25):
You're voting against.

Speaker 10 (38:26):
Department of Corrections, You're voting against judicial getting funding. It's like,
we have to fund these things and we're going to
have to find the money for it. And it's it'll
be tough. I mean, from my perspective, it's a must have.
It's not a pet project of any kind. This is
a must have that we have to do. But we
got to fix the first problem first, and that's fixing

(38:47):
the flaw in the in the bill, in the law,
and the governor needs to call special session.

Speaker 5 (38:51):
Okay, let's talk about the second part of this, because
the first part seems like a no brainer, right that
I don't understand. I think so anyone could have any
issue was saying we need to make sure that the
dangerous people are not getting released back onto the streets.
It does seem to me that there's something wrong, and
you sort of referenced it. There's something wrong with the
way people are declared unable to stand trial or or

(39:14):
not competent to stand trial. There seems to be something
there that mechanism, because once someone is determined to be
unable to stand trial because of competency, it seems like it's.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Far too hard to get them to a point.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
And I'm going to use the example of Ephraim Oh, gosh,
what's his last name, I can't remember his last name,
the guy who was just Collins. It's from something, even
from something, from whatever it is, but just getting that guy,
because that guy went on TV with CBS four and
is like, I'm not even getting a chance to plead
my case. And Sheriff Steve Reem said on my show

(39:49):
that from his interactions, this guy does not meet the
classic standard that most people would think of as someone
like And I'm going to use Robert Deer, the guy
who's been accused of shooting up the planned paratid in
Colorado Springs. He's been incarcerated since twenty sixteen, because he
is completely detached from reality, right, like I think most

(40:09):
people think when you hear not competent to stand trial,
you're thinking someone with serious mental illness instead of they
just don't seem to understand that they're now in the
judicial system, which the second case feels that way.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 9 (40:24):
Yes, it does.

Speaker 10 (40:25):
So there's a difference between being you know, a mental
illness and being able to be treatable.

Speaker 9 (40:30):
And then there's also the developmentally disabled.

Speaker 10 (40:32):
So someone with like a very low IQ, right, Like
you know, I don't know what this individual in Wild
County with our IQ is, but when I talked to
the sheriff, it sounds like he's got a very low
IQ and they're developmentally.

Speaker 9 (40:43):
Disabled, right, And so that's that's the difference.

Speaker 10 (40:47):
But like I said, when I was talking with different
district attorneys, their comment was, look, we need to kind
of flip the burden here and have its where the
presumption needs to be reversed that defendants should have to
demonstrate competency or the defense should have to demonstrate compency
rather than forcing prosecutors to prove incompetence. And that's causing

(41:10):
an issue and I think that's where we can fix
the law. But the next question is then where do
they go?

Speaker 7 (41:17):
Right?

Speaker 9 (41:18):
You know, certainly if they're having a.

Speaker 10 (41:20):
Lesser crime, like if it was you know, shoplifting or
a non violent but not just some left or lesser
crime that's more of a misdemeanor type thing. You know,
there are probably other suitable places for them to go
to get resources and services, especially if it's mental illness.
But if it is developmentally disabled and they just aren't

(41:41):
capable of understanding, we're going to need to find a
location for them. But we can't just be letting them
out on the streets, especially if they are violent, you know,
and have a very low IQ kind of thing. And
that's what's going on here. So we're going to have
to figure out how to increase the number of beds
and that we have in these institutions, and probably the

(42:03):
ones either in Fort Logan or Pueblo. I mean, that's
where we have our two institutions in the state of Colorado.

Speaker 9 (42:08):
And it's very expensive.

Speaker 10 (42:09):
And I will tell you right now, we're under a
consent to cree because of that waiting list we already have,
so we're already paying out money to essentially stay out
of compliance, which I don't like. And we've been trying
to figure this out at the Joint Budget Committee. But
at the same time, we don't have the we haven't
been well find the funding.

Speaker 9 (42:28):
We have a workforce shortage.

Speaker 10 (42:29):
I mean, we don't have people who want to work
there and I wouldn't either, quite frankly.

Speaker 9 (42:34):
But so that's part of the other issue is trying
to figure out especially after COVID.

Speaker 10 (42:38):
I mean, our issue got exasperated with COVID because of
you know, people being furloughed and being left not at
the state, not being furloughed at the state. But like
you know, these types of medical and behavior health providers.
You know, things just got moved around and got switched around,
and now things have gotten a lot more expensive. It's
more expensive to hire people contract out with these beds,

(43:01):
you know, to get the right workforce there. But it
is extremely difficult to do that. And that's the next step.
And by no means trying to make any kind of excuse.
We have got to fix this. We cannot let, you know,
violent criminals just because they're developmentally disabled out on the streets.

Speaker 9 (43:19):
We've got to figure out where they go. And we
also have to follow our constitution.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Amen to that.

Speaker 5 (43:24):
Now, let me ask this question to the point that
Colorado and it's not just Colorado. Okay, we know back
in the you know, fifties, sixties, and seventies, of the
nineteen hundreds. Back in the nineteen hundreds, as the kids
today say, we had a big emptying out of mental
institutions of all kinds, state, federal, everybody kind of said, Oh,
we've got all these new medications, and we're going to

(43:46):
just give people medications and they're going to be okay
in the community. The reality is is that we have
underinvested for decades, right, we have underinvested, and now we've
got this situation, which is criminal situations, but we also
have on the streets of our cities here in Colorado
evidence of a significant population of people with severe mental illness.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
They are self medicated with drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 5 (44:12):
So we need to be having a conversation not just
about the criminal element, but we need to be having
a conversation about what are we going to do in
a meaningful way to help people who are stuck in
the throes of addiction have an opportunity to come out
of that addiction and get help for that mental illness
while also being protected in an environment that protects themselves

(44:35):
and the general public.

Speaker 10 (44:39):
You're exactly right, and part of the issue is and
I've been having this struggle with this as well, is
we created a behavior Health Administration, and this is where
we were supposed to be combining things from all these
departments and creating this new administration that was going to
figure out this system of care and how do we
get behavioral health services to folks. I quick, frankly, don't

(44:59):
really know what our return on investment has been for
the over billion of dollars that we have put into
this administration, into this department, and I think there needs
to be some discussions there about where are we really
putting the funds and how do we fix how do
we fix this issue? I mean, maybe we need to
be pulling some of those funds over to assist with
the issue with the beds that we have in our
institutions where we have a lack of beds, I mean,

(45:21):
because we do not we do not want to get
into the situation that we were in with our juvenile
detention facilities and beds where we literally had a cap
on the number of beds that we could have, and
just this year we finally were able to get that
cap increase because what was happening is we were to
put someone into that situation into that bed we were

(45:43):
letting someone else go, and we do not want to
be in that situation either. So we are literally, quite
literally going to have to sit down and get this
figured out. Like I said, the easiest part, and I'm
not gonna say it's really easy, but the easiest part
of this is fixing the law. The most difficult, difficult
part is I don't even think it's finding the funding.

(46:03):
I think it's finding the workforce to increase the number
of beds that we have in our institutions so that
we can get.

Speaker 9 (46:10):
That wait list down.

Speaker 10 (46:12):
I know the woman who runs this office, she has
worked for district attorneys.

Speaker 9 (46:17):
She understands what the situation is.

Speaker 10 (46:20):
And if we don't get it down, you know, quite frankly,
we just get posed with another lawsuit, which doesn't do
any good. We know what the problem is, we're trying
to fix it. Another lawsuit just doesn't happen. But you know,
sometimes you just can't get those acl you guys to
stuff with the loss.

Speaker 9 (46:34):
But you know, we've got to. We've just got to
get under control, and we've got to.

Speaker 7 (46:39):
We will.

Speaker 9 (46:40):
We can find the funding.

Speaker 10 (46:41):
I know, we will go and work to find the funding,
because this is a must have, a must fund. It's
that workforce shortage is what is scaring me, and I
don't know where we find that well.

Speaker 5 (46:51):
I mean, this is when when I had then candidate
Mayor Mike Johnson now Mayor Mike Johnston on the show
and he was talking about creating all these micro communities and.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Hotels and all of this stuff for homeless people.

Speaker 5 (47:03):
My number one question for him was who is going
to work there? Where are you going to find the staff?
Where are you going to find the trained staff? This
is not exactly you can't just PLoP a new high
school graduate into this position. These are people that have
to be highly trained. They have to understand how to
deal with mentally ill people that could be violent.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
I mean, I'm with you on this.

Speaker 5 (47:24):
I think that this is a huge, huge issue and
one that I fear, and I'm going to be honest,
I fear that nothing significant is going to happen until
someone's family member gets murdered or someone gets, you know,
attacked on the streets by someone who should not have
been out. We've already seen some high profile cases of this,

(47:46):
but maybe the wrong people are being attacked. Maybe, you know,
I don't wish that on anyone, to be clear, but
I really worry that we're going to let this go
and let this go and let this go, and someone's
going to die because of it.

Speaker 9 (47:58):
Well, and I hope and pray that does not happen.
And I know you don't want it to happen either,
and I don't think anyone does. And you're right.

Speaker 10 (48:05):
I think one of the other things, though, maybe one
of the fixes that we can do in the law
is when this was determined back again, I think I
know it was back in the seventies that you can't
just leave people sit in jail. There has to be
a reasonable standard, a reasonable amount of time, So you
can't just leave them there in a correctional facility, either
in a county jail or in a state correctional facility indefinitely.

Speaker 9 (48:27):
But again, I think if one, if we go back
and look at what the.

Speaker 10 (48:33):
District attorneys are saying, where we you know, put the
burden onto the defense that we presume people are restorable
until the defense says no, this individual is not. That
would help. If we've tried some other things with you know,
ensuring that we can get legal guardians appointed, but we
also started another program. It's called the Bridges Program, and

(48:54):
I don't know how successful it is.

Speaker 9 (48:56):
We started in the last couple of years as.

Speaker 10 (48:58):
Well, but it's like a court of point it individual
that would be on every case like this to ensure
that these individuals are one getting the services that they
need and getting place and that we find placements for it.
But I think the other part of the law that
maybe we need to look at and probably.

Speaker 9 (49:15):
Change is the amount of days.

Speaker 10 (49:17):
You know, the Supreme Court didn't say in their rulings
back in the seventies that it had to be sixty
days or ninety days or one hundred and you know,
twenty days or anything of that nature. They just said
it needs to be a reasonable time frame, and maybe
we need to redefine what reasonable time frame is as well.

Speaker 9 (49:33):
I don't know. I am not an attorney.

Speaker 10 (49:35):
That's why I talked to the district attorneys a lot,
and would talk to my county attorney a lot all
the time.

Speaker 9 (49:42):
But I think maybe that's.

Speaker 10 (49:43):
Another area where we can help fix this law and
maybe start at least giving us a little bit more
time to figure out how we find the funding and
then where do we get the workforce from I mean,
that's part. It's going to increase the funding. And you know,
again I'm not trying to shrink my responsibility here. We're
going to have to go find it just all there
is to it.

Speaker 5 (50:00):
Well, I'm speaking with Senator Barb kirk State Senator Barb
Kirkmeyer and gubernatorial candidate. A lot of people on the
tech signe are saying, how did you guys not see
this problem coming? How when you passed the bill, did
nobody go, hey, we could let some dangerous people out
of jailed. Was that never a consideration?

Speaker 10 (50:18):
I'm telling you in all the conversations I had Now,
I was not in the interim committee. I didn't you know,
I didn't see all of the task force recommendations.

Speaker 9 (50:27):
I'm not on the Judiciary committee that I think this is.
That's the committee that it went through. On the Senate side,
I do know we had.

Speaker 10 (50:33):
Conversations about this in our Republican caucus, and that's that
was not the discussion.

Speaker 9 (50:37):
It was like, we need to find what a reasonable
timeframe is.

Speaker 10 (50:40):
We need to ensure that we are adhering to the Constitution,
because again, if we're leaving these individuals, whether it's mental
illness or developmentally disabled folks in our correctional facilities.

Speaker 9 (50:51):
It just keeps setting us up for more lawsuits, and
that's not solving the problem either.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
So no, we did not.

Speaker 9 (50:58):
I mean, at no point did I here anybody have
that kind of discussion. Doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Speaker 10 (51:03):
It just means I'm telling you I was not a
part of that conversation. And maybe it happened in committee.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 9 (51:10):
I just know on the Senate floor it passed unanimously.

Speaker 10 (51:13):
So I'm thinking, you know, we're all thinking the same
thing that we are putting in what we believe to
be a necessary fixed for constitutional deficiency. But clearly the
application of this law has clearly exasperated Colorado's public safety
issues that we have.

Speaker 9 (51:30):
And you know, I'm just going to sit again. The
governor needs to call a special session. This is not
one of those.

Speaker 10 (51:36):
Things that can wait until January or February for us
to go in and get in session and fix the law.
I mean, my gosh, we are not back in session
till the middle of January. It takes at least three
days and then another few days to get things signed.
I mean, at a minimum, we're talking February first, if
you ask me, and I think that's way too long
to wait. I know people don't like to have special sessions,

(51:58):
but I think.

Speaker 9 (51:59):
Too darn bad.

Speaker 10 (51:59):
Let's all get back to work and let's fix this
flaw on the bill and at least fix the first
step and then let the JBC, along with whoever else
wants to, let's go look at let's find that funding,
and let's see what we can do.

Speaker 9 (52:12):
With regard to the bed issue.

Speaker 5 (52:13):
All right, Senator Barb Kirkmeyer, appreciate the time today and
your willingness to just come on and say, look, you know,
we've solved one problem while creating another one, which is
kind of exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
The worst problem.

Speaker 9 (52:24):
Yeah, it is exactly what happened.

Speaker 7 (52:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:27):
Well, I mean my friend Laura Carno, who has a
book called government Ruins Everything. I'm just saying, in this case,
maybe it is it. Barbar I appreciate your time today.
We'll see again soon.

Speaker 9 (52:36):
Thank you so much. Thanks for letting me on.

Speaker 5 (52:37):
All right, that is, Barb Kirkmeyer. A lot of you
are being super critical, like Ray Charles could have seen
this problem coming, and I get it, I really get it.
But I think that hindsight is always twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
And when you believe, as.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
Barb just said, that you are trying to solve a problem,
sometimes you look only at the solution and you do
not look at the unintended consequences, which is clearly what
happened here.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
I mean clearly.

Speaker 5 (53:02):
So anyway, it was a bipartisan mistake, and hopefully a
bipartisan group of people can fix it. We'll be right back, Okay, guys,
I have to talk about a really serious subject. I'm
not even being sarcastic. Over the weekend we had two
more horrific attacks. We have one in North Carolina where
a man we know to have been an Iraq veteran

(53:23):
used his boat to cruise past a dockside restaurant and
bar and just open fire and murdered a bunch of
people and hurt a bunch more. And then we have
another Iraq veteran in Michigan who decided for some reason
that he was going to run his giant pickup truck

(53:44):
with its American flags flying into a Mormon church and
murder people there and set the church on fire and
flat out burn it down. Now, the first guy or
the guy who struck at the Mormon church. A pair
according to a guy who was canvassing in the guy's neighborhood,

(54:05):
meaning he was going door to door running for office,
and he said he had a conversation with a guy
and out of nowhere they were like, yeah, those Mormons suck.
And apparently this guy had a long standing beef with Mormons.
And I will tell you this, this is just an
anecdotal piece of evidence. You can do with what you want,
But in my lifetime I have had the great pleasure

(54:25):
and sometimes aggravation of meeting people from a wide variety
of faiths.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
I grew up in the Bible Belt.

Speaker 5 (54:32):
I was Catholic in a town that was fully Southern Baptist,
with a few Presbyterians and a couple Methodists sprinkled in
for good measure, but the Southern Baptist owned my town.
And when I was about ten years old, and I
think I've told this story on the air before, when
I was about ten years old, I went to church
with my friend because I had stayed the night at
her house and we.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Went to the church. We did not go to her
normal church, her normal.

Speaker 5 (54:55):
Southern Baptist church, where fun fact, I actually sang in
the choir when I got old, because I stated at
her house so much that I just would go to
her church all the time. And I sang in the
choir at this Baptist church. So I have no beef
with the Baptist Church overall. But when I was about
ten years old, we went to a different Baptist church
for some reason, and I don't remember the reason at
something important, but we were in Bible school in this room,

(55:16):
you know, like all the kids are in the Bible
school room or we're doing Bible school, which we didn't
do at the Catholic church.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
So it was kind of cool. I was like, Oh,
let's learn about the Bible. This will be fun.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
And this man appears in costume in the window of
the door as the Devil, okay, and he's there to
scare the kids. And that man later told me when
he found out it was Catholic, that I was going
to hell because I worshiped idols, because I did the

(55:45):
Hail Mary.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Now you can.

Speaker 5 (55:47):
Imagine, at the age of ten, I found this extremely distressing,
and I went home and I talked to my mom,
who at the time I did not know that my
mom was not like a you know, true believer. My
mom has been agnostic for most of her life for
a lot of reasons, none of which are we're gonna
go into here. But I went on and I told

(56:08):
my mom what happened is she was just like, what
is going on with these people? And got super mad
and she said, well, you're not going back to that
church anymore. If they're going to go back to that church,
then I'll come pick you over the morning. It's fine,
but it gave me a bad taste in my mouth
about that church. But certainly not all Southern Baptists. But
apparently this guy had a long standing beef with the
Mormon people. And I'm just gonna say this. The Mormon

(56:31):
people that I have had in my life friends, you know,
throughout you know, growing up in high school and college,
even now, the Mormon people that I know are some
of the genuinely nicest people you will ever meet in
your entire life. They put their family first. They want
to make sure that their kids grow up to be good,

(56:51):
solid citizens. Do I think some of their beliefs are crazy?

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yes, I do.

Speaker 5 (56:55):
I do, But I subscribe to a faith where someone
rose from the dead so who am I to judge
someone else's crazy bit of business, right, I'm just gonna
be honest, Like I don't believe other things that other
religions believe. I mean some of them, I'm like, eh no,
But but the Mormon people that I have known are

(57:16):
are lovely, and it would seem that the Mormon people
would fit nicely in the conservative movement, don't you think.
I mean a group of people that focus on being
good at citizens, on making sure that their kids are good,
people that focus on the family, focus on their faith.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
I mean, what, these are things in my mind to
be admired. This guy did not think.

Speaker 5 (57:38):
So we still don't have any real like what set
him off today or yesterday?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
I mean what created that? I don't know. The other guy.

Speaker 5 (57:48):
Seems to be clearly suffering from post traumatic stress and
maybe a little touch of insanity, as he's been involved
in multiple lawsuits that have been dismissed with prejudice, meaning
they cannot be brought again.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Were so, he alleges that there is.

Speaker 5 (58:01):
An LGBTQ white supremacy, a group of people that are
trying to kill him. Yeah, that seems safe. I mean,
this guy seems super stable. But I say both of
those things. I'm not going to excuse anyone who perpetrates
violence and perpetrates evil, and I believe that both of

(58:24):
these acts are evil. Just because they're on my team
does not mean I'm going to make some kind of excuses.
And I realize that for people, I'm trying to think
of the nicest way to say this. A lot of
people will reflexively say, look, this man was suffering with
post traumatic stress. But do you have any idea how

(58:46):
many people walk among us every single day fighting their
inner battles, struggling with their own post traumatic stress, and
they don't go out and murder people. I don't think
that's a valid excuse. I really don't. I think it's
a terrible, terrible thing that's happened. But what the country
is out of control? Is this just where we are now,

(59:06):
is like, Oh, our team's gonna kill some people. Then
their team's gonna kill some people, and you just hope you're.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Not in the middle of it.

Speaker 5 (59:13):
I'm genuinely baffled on why this all feels like it's
coming to a head right now.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
And it's not guns. It's not guns, guys.

Speaker 5 (59:24):
We've had guns circulating in society for centuries now, and
we haven't had these kind of issues.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Now.

Speaker 5 (59:33):
I did see something super interesting, and that was political
violence in the nineteen seventies was really out of control.
And I was a little kid, right, so I didn't
pay attention, so I didn't know. But I don't know
if either of these fall under the political violence category
unless this man who believed that he was being targeted

(59:55):
by white supremacist LGBTQP think about think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
For just a second.

Speaker 5 (01:00:02):
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure that there
could be lesbians, gays, transgien I'm sure there are people
that could be in that category and also be a
white supremacist. But it seems that if you're in a
group who has been excluded because of your sexuality, it
seems unlikely that you would jump on the bandwagon of

(01:00:23):
another group that was exclusionary and negative over some other
immutable characteristic, right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
I mean, it just doesn't doesn't make sense.

Speaker 5 (01:00:32):
But if this guy had started to believe in these
conspiracy theories in this these nonsensical stories about the pedophile
rings that are operating out of you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
Know, Pizza Joyce, I don't know what else he could
have believed. Who knows, But what is the end of this?

Speaker 5 (01:00:54):
And I have a bigger question to ask because I
thought about this the other day, like, is this it's
going to change your behavior? Are you not going to
go to a dockside restaurant because someone crazy, evil may
shoot you? I mean, is this what we're headed for?
What's fascinating to me is talking to my nephew in Israel.

(01:01:15):
He's been living in a war zone almost continuously the
whole time he's been there. He's been there, I don't know,
twenty something years. He's now raising three little children in
a war They walk to school every day, walks his
kids to school every day.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
He's wearing his glock.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
He's scanning the horizon at every moment and lives with
such a high level of situational awareness because his life
and the life of his kids depends on it. Now
he's also highly trained, and if someone was going to
go down, I'd want him at my side. But does
this mean that we as Americans, we've all we're all

(01:01:52):
going to see each other.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
It's a range.

Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
We're all going to see each other, practicing, arming up,
finding out how to defend our families in public, because
I don't think that this is what we in the
United States of America want, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
How to fix it. When we get back. Let's talk
a little bit about bad behavior at CU.

Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
Football games, because in all honesty, college students, you're gonna
have to do better than this. At the end of
the game, CU students chose to express themselves in a
way that was less than kind, less than gentlemanly or
gentle lady. It was ugly. It was very, very ugly.

(01:02:35):
They were chanting FBYU. They were chanting nasty things about Mormons,
and in light of what happened this weekend, they look
even worse, right, I mean honestly, like ugh. They have
now been fined fifty thousand dollars by the Big Twelve.
This after to see U's credit, they immediately came out

(01:02:57):
and said, holy col that is not acceptable, that is
not okay. We apologize. They basically were like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
We're so sorry. The Big Twelve was like, sorry, that's
not enough.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
Their message from the commissioner said, hateful and discriminatory language
has no home in the Big Twelve conference. While we
appreciate Colorado apologizing for the chance that occurred in the
stands during Saturday's game. The Big Twelve maintains zero tolerance
for such behavior. Colorado will receive a fifty thousand dollars
fine in accordance with our conference policies. And all of

(01:03:31):
these college students should be ashamed of themselves, except I
used to be a college student, So they won't be right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
They won't.

Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
They'll talk about how funny it was and how honestly like.
There's no way for the university to find out which
students were actively involved.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
There just isn't. But the reason that I'm.

Speaker 5 (01:03:51):
Bringing this up is, wouldn't it be nice if the
students told other students that this kind of behavior is
gross and disgusting and makes them work terrible. Wouldn't it
be nice if the students were the one to push
back in a social manner and say, this is not okay,
this is not who our this is not what our
campus is all about. The problem with this kind of

(01:04:13):
stuff at a football game is that a little bit
of the mob mentality.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Kind of starts to to show up.

Speaker 5 (01:04:21):
Where whereas you would have people that normally would not
in any way, shape or form engage in such conduct,
but they're surrounded by people chanting if b yu only
the real word, and they just what they start because
it's fun. Now, I am a big believer in booing.
I think that we should bring back booing just generally.

(01:04:43):
You know, like someone in front of you at at
you know, at a at a fast food restaurant, waits
in a long line and that gets to the menu
and it's like the first time they've ever seen the menu,
even though they've been in line for ten minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
I think we should be able to go boo.

Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
Boo, Like the next time I hit the wrong button
and cause a rode a bunch of work, he should
be able to just go boo boo. Booing is perfectly
fine as an expression of frustration when your team loses.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
I'm perfectly fine with that. But what went on was
just tacky.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Y'all.

Speaker 5 (01:05:25):
See being from the South, when I casually say that
was just tacky, if you too were from the South,
you would understand that is like the deepest form of
insult that you can lodge against another person or entity.
You could be a lot of things in the South,
but you don't want to be tacky.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
And taki is not just about how you look what
you're wearing, how you're here.

Speaker 5 (01:05:49):
No, Taki is a vibe, Taky is a personality, and
what they did at CU was taki.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
And I don't know how to fix this.

Speaker 5 (01:06:02):
But college students, you guys are jerks, rude, nasty, But
luckily we're elevating the dialogue in this country.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:06:13):
Let me play a little snippet for you. Randy Winegarden,
teacher's union president who kept the schools closed so kids
lost a full couple of years of learning.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
This is what she had to say.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
There is a reason why in Norway, when the Nazis
took over Norway.

Speaker 9 (01:06:30):
That's why I'm wearing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
This paper clip. I wear two things now, the American.

Speaker 10 (01:06:33):
Flag, nobody can take patriotism away from me, and a
paper clip.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
What did the teachers in Norway do when there was
when there was a Nazi occupation? They started wearing paper clips.
There is a week.

Speaker 5 (01:06:46):
Just to be clear, Randy Winegarden, in the spirit of
taking the rhetoric down a notch once again, compared to
Trump administration to a Nazi occupation. Thankfully we're all on
the same page with his taking the rhetoric down a notch.
I mean really are really yeah, yeah, thankfully.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Bell and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
No, it's Mandy Connell, Andy Condall.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
FM, got.

Speaker 8 (01:07:27):
The nicey pray and connal keeping your really sad thing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the third hour of the show.
I'm Mandy Connell.

Speaker 5 (01:07:39):
That guy's Anthony Rodriguez and together, thank you. We're going
to take you right up until the top of the hour. Okay,
I'm going to talk about something that I already know
is going to create a kerfuffle on the Common Spirit
Health text line at five sixty six nine. Oh, because
it is an extremely controversial topic depending on where you
live in the Denver metro area. I know that when

(01:08:05):
fast Tracks was sold to Colorado, that it was sold
as this magical thing, all of these light rail train lights.
They were going to be full to the gills with
people who gave up their cars in order to get
to work. Right, we were going to take all of
these cars off the road.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
We can't wait.

Speaker 5 (01:08:25):
Once we get this light rail up and running, it's
going to be a mazing Except it hasn't been. If
you follow Randall O'Toole at Complete Colorado dot com. He
writes for the Independence Institute. Randall knows more about actual
mass transit usage than any other human being I've ever
met in my life. And in his most recent story

(01:08:46):
he printed out or pointed out that the exact same
percentage of commuters use light rail as they did before
light rail meaning public transportation.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Light rail has been an appslo loop boomdoggle.

Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
It will never meet its passenger expectations ever, because we're
moving away from a time when you're trying to get
people out of their cars, because what's gonna happen next is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Self driving cars.

Speaker 5 (01:09:13):
A Rod sent me the coolest video, and you know
we didn't talk about it when it was on the
blog before.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
I might have to go back and find it.

Speaker 5 (01:09:19):
The one that the Japanese video about what happens when
someone taps their brakes in.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
That you remember what I'm talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:09:26):
So A Rod sends this video to me, and it
is a group of cars going around in a circle,
like a standard circle, just going around. And then they
showed what happened when one person taps their brakes, and
it's a cascade effect that screws up traffic in ways
we can't even imagine.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
It's just nuts. It's nuts.

Speaker 5 (01:09:45):
But self driving cars will fix all of that. Self
driving cars will take care of all of those issues.
Now we're forty years away from everybody being in some
kind of self driving car except for you, you know,
you olds who want to stick with Like, there's no
chance that my husband is going to be in a
self driving car. He likes to have control of his vehicle. Me,

(01:10:07):
on the other hand, I'm like, if I could get
a way mo, if it was if it was feasible
for me to only use Waimo to get from home
to work, I would do it every day because that's
like forty minutes that I can have doing something productive.
You know, I can actually get stuff done. I would
not be wasting time driving my car in traffic getting here.

(01:10:29):
So I'm ready for self driving car. But let me
get to the controversial part of this. RTD on Monday
released a draft of it's comprehensive twenty twenty five Finishing
Fast Tracks Report. In the draft, transportation officials estimated RTD
needs one point six billion dollars in capital and operating

(01:10:53):
costs to complete the fast Tracks program across four unfinished
and unfunded mansion projects by twenty thirty four. So one
point six billion dollars we're looking at throwing one point
six billion dollars good money down the drain after bad money. Now,

(01:11:18):
I'm sure you all are familiar with the sunk cost fallacy, right.
The sunk cost fallacy is say you have a business.
Say your business sells widgets. I don't know what a
widget is, but we all use it when we're talking
about a product that we don't want to specifically name.
So your business sells widgets and you've been selling the
same widget and it's not going well, it's really not.
People are not buying your widgets, they are not supporting

(01:11:41):
your company, or company is starting to go under, and
you start say, you know, we'll put a little more
money and we'll put a little more money in. We've
already spent all this money over here, so we should
continue putting.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
Money into it.

Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
That is the sunk cost fallacy, and it has destroyed
more than one business before. Now we're not talking about
a business, we're talking about a governmental age. And see RTD,
the Regional Training Regional Transportation District. And they want to
spend more money on more trains that no one's going
to ride. Is this really how we want to spend

(01:12:15):
one point six billion dollars? And here's where it gets controversial.
All of you people up north who don't have a
train that you're not riding. You've paid into this, and
I understand that. I get it one hundred percent. I
absolutely understand why you want your train. You have paid
a lot of tax money into this system and you
want what was promised to you. I totally get that.

(01:12:37):
I understand that feeling. I understand that emotion. But I'm
asking you to put your logical hat on right now,
because we already know how this goes, we already have
the results. We're not speculating that if we make these
lines up north that all of a sudden, Fast Tracks

(01:13:00):
is not only going to pay.

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
Their own way.

Speaker 5 (01:13:02):
Heck, they're even going to be profitable. Nobody's saying that,
by the way. I'm just saying that's how they sell
this stuff. And their projections are never accurate, never never accurate.
They're always under They're always over how many people are
going to ride, and under how much it's going to
cost the taxpayers to subsidize this operation, which is significant.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Now, let's go back in time.

Speaker 5 (01:13:26):
Since voters approved fast tracks in twenty oh four, RTD
has already completed seventy five percent of its project. Originally,
the entire project one hundred percent was to cost four
point seven billion, which to date has ballooned to five
point five billion. For the first seventy five percent, that

(01:13:46):
seems like a pretty big miss to me. We're not
talking about the change you find in the couch cushions here, people.
We're talking about billions of dollars. We have twenty five
miles of new light rail track that no one's writing,
fifty three miles of commuter bus rapid transit implementation, the
flat Iron flyer, and the new Union Station train platforms

(01:14:06):
with an underground bus concourse, and no one's using it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
I saw again, I just saw the other day.

Speaker 5 (01:14:15):
Now we're in the Tech Center, so we have the
train that goes all the way down to the RidgeGate station,
which is the final station.

Speaker 8 (01:14:23):
Y'all.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
They're only running one car, just one car on.

Speaker 5 (01:14:28):
That line, just one, and it's empty, and it looks
like you're getting on the car to go to the
Land of Make Believe on mister Rogers neighborhood. Just one
little train car just one. You know what, we could
replace that very expensive train car with buses. Yeah, we
could absolutely do that. But if you guys up north

(01:14:50):
are longing for your opportunity to ride light rail with
someone smoking meth in the same car, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
I totally get it.

Speaker 7 (01:14:59):
One.

Speaker 5 (01:15:00):
I understand you, I feel you, I get it. Yeah,
but this is what they want, one point six billion
dollars for something that we already know has never met
expectations in terms of ridership. Ever, and in order to
keep the lightrail going, they have shifted money away from

(01:15:22):
buses that people actually use, canceled routes, stop some bus
stops all together, in order to shore up lightrail that
no one is using. This texter said, took lightrail downtown
the other night, and I actually liked it. But we
only go to downtown a couple of times a year.
I think our state is too spread out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Yep. Correct. Most people that take lightrail from.

Speaker 5 (01:15:45):
The suburbs, they take it when they go to a
Rockies game, or they take it when they go to
a Broncos game, or they take it when they go
to a concert.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
That's pretty much it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:54):
That's not enough to sustain mass transit, and since COVID,
mass transit anywhere has not recovered at all. And there's
no reason to think that adding more lines that nobody
will use is going to be any different. But yet
here we are, Mandy, Umm, so you're just suggesting we
get rid of light rail. I've been using it since

(01:16:16):
it started and love it, especially in bad weather. In
all my years, only had delays four or five times.
I love the train to Dia. My experience is trains
have a lot of passengers. Not fair to say no
one is using it. It's Americans who refuse to not
drive their precious cars, not RTD's fault.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
We need it. Well, where's RTD located again? Wait?

Speaker 5 (01:16:41):
Is it located in America with Americans that like to
drive their cars. I'm just throwing that out there, Mandy.
The legislature mandated RTD to do this. The district I
live in was not promised anything in fast tracks except
additional bus service. We pay more in taxas than the
northern communities and have lost bus service.

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
And this is my point.

Speaker 5 (01:17:04):
I sent a text back by the way to the
person who said they use it every day. I said, great,
if we paved over the tracks and made it a
bus line so we could easily and quickly add buses
to lines that we're going to be really busy, and
we could be responsive to what people actually need.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Would you would that affect you? Would it change? Mandy?

Speaker 5 (01:17:24):
If we're gonna waste money on trains, why not start
running zeppelins up to Boulder.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
I like it. I like it a lot. Bless you, Anthony.

Speaker 5 (01:17:33):
I live very close to a light rail station, says
this textra. I used to work right next to a
station on the same line. What a hoot it was
to take that ride. The company moved to a place
nowhere near light rail. They're not going to relocate the
light rail. I'm not kidding, Mandy. Did you hear about
the Waimo taxi that tried to dodge a dui checkpoint
in California?

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:17:53):
The wrinkles still need to be ironed out when it
comes to self driving cars.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
That's why I don't have one yet. You know I'm ready,
but they are not. Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:18:07):
Try having a conversation with the folks that are pushing this.
It's like talking to a monkey. Clueless, Mandy. I prefer
trains to buses, but I do take buses. Also, I
just wish more people would use RTD. As you say, though,
would RTD truly add more buses? It's a quandrum. Well
I think you met conumdrum. But here's the thing, you guys.

(01:18:30):
If I were running RTD, and I'm not, my first
thing would be like, okay, what is the most cost
efficient way to move people.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
From point A to point B?

Speaker 5 (01:18:40):
And can we use the most cost efficient way to
move people from point A to point B in a
more efficient fashion that is responsive to the needs of
our audience. Yes, we're going to run these buses all
day long so people will commute like this, texture can
go ahead and continue to get to work, to and
from work with no problem. But then we're also going
to do things like look at the schedule. Is something

(01:19:02):
happening at Mile High Stadium? Is something happening at Ballerina?
Is something happening at Coors Field? How can we be
responsive so when people come out of those events, they
know they're going to be able to get home with us.
You know that's I realize it's a mass transit system
and there's a lot of moving parts, and.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
There's you know, schedules that would have to be filled.
But good grief, people, Good grief.

Speaker 5 (01:19:27):
Mandy, user of the light rail that says they absolutely
love it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
Fantastic for them.

Speaker 5 (01:19:32):
They love it so much, why don't they pay the
full fee or charge of what it costs for them
to actually ride it instead of getting taxpayer subsidized travel.
I never take the bus or light rail, and yet
I have to pay for it, as well as most
everybody in the metro area. They're hypocrites if they're not
willing to put the full price utilizing that service. Now,
I'm not going to call them hypocrites. I'm just gonna

(01:19:53):
say it's probably not as good a value proposition when
you make them do that, right, It's not at all,
not at all, Mandy. RTD had their chance to build
a useful, safe, and reliable transportation system and failed.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
I'm going to be in RTD's defense.

Speaker 5 (01:20:10):
I'm going to say this, No mass transit system in
the country pays for itself, none of them, not even
in New York when everybody rides the subway. They all
have to be subsidized by taxpayers. And part of the
reason that I think taxpayers voted for fast tracks was
they really believed that other people were going to get

(01:20:34):
off the roads and use the light rail other people,
not them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
They had no intention of getting off the roads and
using the light rail. They wanted other people, so.

Speaker 5 (01:20:43):
They were actually voting to subsidize those people's travel, so
they weren't on the roads with them. But the problem
is that hasn't happened at all. So you know, we'll
see what happens. What one point six billion?

Speaker 2 (01:20:59):
Good luck getting that? Good luck RTD, Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:21:05):
Whenever I ride the light rail, I get checked for
my ticket, but the.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
Homeless drug addicts do not.

Speaker 5 (01:21:11):
Perhaps you should get online rail disguised as a homeless
drug addict.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):
There's an idea for you when we get back.

Speaker 5 (01:21:20):
Secretary of War Pete Eggseth gave a message to the troops,
or at least the leadership today, and I gotta tell
you I liked it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
We'll be right back from Axios.

Speaker 5 (01:21:31):
That came out August thirteenth of twenty twenty five, so
a couple of months ago, not even and RTD's ridership
decline deepens. They have never recovered from the pandemic fully.
Back in twenty nineteen, they had a writership. Does not

(01:21:51):
give me that actual number the numbers from January to
May in RTD are down thirty nine percent below pre
pandemic levels in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
That's a huge number. Huge. And this this quote from
this article, it made me I just kind of loled,
like in the studio.

Speaker 5 (01:22:18):
It says what they're saying, writership is just one metric
used to assess the agency's performance.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
What what other?

Speaker 5 (01:22:30):
What other metrics matter other than if people are using
your product? I'm being genuine here. Aberman wanted to continue
the agency has focused on maintaining assets, hiring and retraining
a qualified workforce, and enhancing the customer experience, the customer

(01:22:52):
experience which is declining. Okay, let's talk about the meeting
that took place today. And I got a message last
week when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said, look, I'm
bringing all the leadership and they're coming to Quantico and
we're having a meeting. And I told the texter, who
was like, do you really support this expending of this
much money in a tight budget situation? And I said,

(01:23:15):
I don't know what he's going to say, so I
can't pass judgment on it because I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
What he's going to say. Today we found out what
he is going to say.

Speaker 5 (01:23:27):
He is taking the military back to the military that
used to win wars.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
And what do I mean here?

Speaker 5 (01:23:35):
Since the Obama administration when they started gearing up, they
have used the Secretary or excuse me, the Defense Department
as some kind of social experiment. Now, to be clear,
you guys, I am not opposed at all to having
a diverse workforce. If that diverse workforce is the best

(01:23:58):
people you can find for whatever where it is, whether
it's the military or whether it's an accounting firm, I
don't care if you have a code of many colors
in your workforce, if they're the best at what they do.
But we've gotten so far away from recognizing that the
job of the military is to break things and kill.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
People, full stop. That's their job.

Speaker 5 (01:24:22):
And if we're going to have an entire Defense Department
or now war department that is designed to break things
and kill people, then I want the people who are
going to be best at breaking things and killing people.
It's really that simple. Here's a couple of things that
Pete Haggs has said to the leadership of the military.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
He is bringing back what he calls the warrior ethos.

Speaker 5 (01:24:49):
He is doing away with dei culture and woke values,
which would elevate people based on something other than their excellence.

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
There's no room for this. There's no room for any
of this in the military.

Speaker 5 (01:25:04):
One of the things I loved that he said, he said,
no more fat leadership, no more fat soldiers. My husband
and I hope he doesn't mind. I'm about to tell
this story because I'm gona tell it anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
He was overweight when he went.

Speaker 5 (01:25:20):
Into the military, and he will tell you basic training
for him no fun at all because they were gonna
take that weight off of them. And they did, They
absolutely did. But I mean, I feel the same way
about fat soldiers as I feel about fat flight attendants.

(01:25:40):
When I was a flight attendant back in the nineties,
you had to be weighed in like when you were
in flight attendant training. We were in flight attendant training
for six weeks. Once a week we had to be
weighed in. If you weighed in one pound over your maximum,
they sent you home. You didn't get a chance to
make it up the next week. We started calling flight
attendant training anorexia and bolimia camp.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
But there was a reason for it. When you are
a flight attendant.

Speaker 5 (01:26:05):
Your main job is to help people in an emergency situation.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
That is why you're hired for the job. And Guys,
I am.

Speaker 5 (01:26:13):
Seeing flight attendants right now that I'm not sure they
could get out of a window exit, let alone possess
the strength to open the window exit, deploy the slides,
and actually get out there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
There are some planes.

Speaker 5 (01:26:26):
There's the L ten eleven, which they're not flying that
much anymore, but the L ten eleven has a galley downstairs,
and the only way to get out of the galley
if you have a loss of power and you've crashed
the plane and you're in the galley is to come
up through a floor panel in the floor. And when
I was a flight attendant, we actually had to climb
through that floor panel. That floor panel is about eighteen

(01:26:47):
inches square. And I'm looking at some of these plans
and I'm like, they there's no way they could get.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Through that hole.

Speaker 5 (01:26:55):
Fat soldiers, do you really want Do you really want
to send someone into combat who is in such poor
physical condition that if they have what they have to
road march twenty miles to get where they're going, are
they gonna have anything left in the tank when they
get done. I just think, if you're gonna have that
kind of job where your physical being is critical to

(01:27:22):
how you do your job, then yeah, it's it's time
to stop with a fat positivity. And I have nothing
against fat people at all.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
I truly don't.

Speaker 5 (01:27:32):
People have to walk their own journey in their health,
their physicality, the way they look.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
I mean, that is on them. That is that is
your responsibility.

Speaker 5 (01:27:40):
I have nothing but love for you as you fight
the same battles that I've been fighting my entire life.
I really do have a lot of compassion there, and
it's compassion born of a similar journey. But at the
same time, I'm not so bold as to think I
should run join the military.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:27:57):
The other thing that he said that I really, really
really liked was that the different standards for physical fitness
and physical accomplishment in combat arms would be dropped because
right now women do not have to qualify at the
same physical level as men, and I have a real
problem with that because they're going.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
To be doing the same job as men.

Speaker 5 (01:28:19):
They're gonna be expected to be able to save their
compatriots should they get wounded, and there's no gonna be Oh,
I can't pick them up the ways more than I'm
required to pick up. Now, if women can pass the
physical standards to be in the combat arms area, I
salute them.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
I will stand and salute them.

Speaker 5 (01:28:39):
All day long, and I will wish them well and
I will pray for their safety as they serve in
that position. But if you can't meet the physical requirements,
you don't deserve the job, because the job is all
about how you use your body.

Speaker 3 (01:28:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
I know this, I now because of my husband, know
a whole bunch of.

Speaker 5 (01:28:54):
Veterans who have destroyed their bodies for the military. And
the notion that somehow women should not have to meet
those standards has always been deeply offensive to me. And
that's a fairly recent development. So that's out the window.
So I gotta tell you, man, if bringing everybody to Quantico.

(01:29:18):
Oh by the way, here's the best part. Leadership has
to now take PT tests as well.

Speaker 2 (01:29:23):
Physical you have to.

Speaker 5 (01:29:25):
Take your path take and pass. And I don't know
if they're the same standards. I have no idea what
the standards are for PT tests. Imagining as you get older,
they probably go down a little bit. But now all
these these generals, these admirals, they're going to have to
pass the physical fitness test. And I think that is
fantastic because the entire tone of the military starts at

(01:29:50):
the top and if you want to have the leanest,
meanest fighting force that you can have, and frankly, I
want the leanest, meanest fighting force that we can have.
I don't want someone who joined the military because they're
hoping to take advantage of the gibill and they're just
going to coast and remain a private for however many
years that they've signed up to do.

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):
I don't want that. I don't want that person at all.

Speaker 5 (01:30:13):
One of the things I've always admired about my husband
is when people would come to him with you know,
high school kids or whatever, and they'd say, you know,
my son's thinking about, you know, joining the army. What
would the army do for my son? And my husband
always responds, what would your son do to the army?
That question is just as important. So I'm perfectly fine

(01:30:36):
with what Pete Hegsex said. Now already people on the
left are getting the vapors because he said, look, we
are not going to be a military of endless investigations
from nameless accusings of people accusing people of doing bad things.
If people have a problem, if something has been done
incorrectly or wrong, you're going to have redress. But it's

(01:30:56):
going to be on the record. No more anonymous reporting,
and we're going to take care of it. Well, We're
not going to have these endless investigations from the same
handful of people. And I'm guessing, and I'm just guessing here,
and maybe some of you military folks that listen can
weigh in via the Common Spirit Health text line at
five sixty six. And I know what I'm guessing is
is that you may have a group of people throughout

(01:31:18):
the military that spend most of their time complaining about
other people in the military.

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
Now, if somebody's doing something wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:31:26):
I certainly hope that there is a strong reporting process, investigator,
investigatory process, and a consequences process if someone is found
to have violated the rules.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
I hope that all of that exists.

Speaker 5 (01:31:39):
But anonymous accusations, we don't allow that. I don't get
to go to the police and make an accusation against
someone and have them filed charges and then I get
to remain. And that's not how this works, and it
shouldn't in the military. Now I realized because I've talked
to women in the military, some women that have been
victimized in the military, along with men who have been

(01:32:02):
legitimately victimized by someone senior to them in the military.
We have to make those people, we have to make
sure that they can file those complaints and make sure
that there is true accountability. So there's a couple things
that have to happen here.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
He especially is unhappy with bearded, long haired troops, and
all of that will go away. So we'll see.

Speaker 5 (01:32:30):
We'll see what happens here, Mandy, sounds like the basic
training in nineteen eighty one. My drill sergeant asked me
if I was born with a coat hanger in my
head because I was a walking abortion.

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:32:40):
By the way, he said, drill sergeants will be unleashed
once again. And this is something that I truly do
not understand why anyone would have an issue with it.
And here's why we're not training people to go and
work retail. We're not training people to go and work
at a fast food restaurant where they're going to be

(01:33:01):
dealing with the public. In the military, we're training people
so we can send them into life threatening situations where
people will be shooting at them. And if they can't
handle a drill sergeant in their face asking them or
telling them that they're a walking abortion, how are they
going to manage when someone is shooting at them. Unfortunately,

(01:33:26):
a military requires somebody tough. And notice I haven't said
a single word about race, or gender or any of
that stuff. Any of that stuff. I mean, I just
want the best of the best. And here's the thing.
I think that recruiting will actually go up when we
say in the military you will be judged on merit,

(01:33:49):
You will be judged on how you perform, and if
you perform at a high level, you will be promoted accordingly.
I think that attracts really good people to the military.
I think a lot of kids have looked at the
military and said, I don't want to go to a
military where I'm going to be reporting to a dude
wearing a dress like it or not. So I don't know,

(01:34:13):
I have no problem with this, I really don't. I'd
love to know what my military people in the audience think. Specifically,
if you would just tell me what branch you were
in I'd appreciate it, Mandy. I'm retired Army. I destroyed
my body for the Army and would do it all again.
When it comes to the enlisted and officer's physical fitness,

(01:34:35):
officers were able to promote without a passing PT test.
I believe that that has stopped as of today.

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:34:43):
Listen, ten percent of military personnel see direct combat. What
percentage of that have needed to single handedly carry someone
off the battlefield. Once again, you're using a less than
one percent situation to determine broad standing policy. Every single
person in the military should be prepared to go into combat.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
That is their job. That is what you're signing up for.

Speaker 5 (01:35:04):
If you're signing up for the military just to get
a desk job, sign up somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
Now. Don't get me wrong.

Speaker 5 (01:35:10):
Support services are incredibly important in the military, and I'm
not in any way, shape or form downgrading or degrading
what they provide. But if you get called and you
are in a support service situation and the military comes
to you and says, guess what you're going to combat?
I want to make sure you're ready, and being fat
and out of shape and not in good physical condition,

(01:35:32):
says you are not.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
So there you go. Mandy loved it so much, says
this texture. Mandy.

Speaker 5 (01:35:41):
Why is it okay to hold people accountable for their
performance in the NFL something that fundamentally doesn't actually matter,
but not in the military, correct, Mandy. Did you know
the drill surgeon from Full Metal Jacket was a real
drill surgeon in the military. It was hired for the
role because he was that perfect for the role. We
all know that guy, Guy scary as hell scary in

(01:36:03):
boot camp, says this texter. I was convinced my name
was g D. Lazy Bastard. Go Navy beat Army. Oh no,
go Army beat Navy.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
Stop it.

Speaker 5 (01:36:13):
I already have my tickets to the Army Air Force game.
By the way, could I be going down there? Ryan Edwards,
you a little tailgating?

Speaker 2 (01:36:20):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:36:20):
Ryan?

Speaker 5 (01:36:21):
Before we I'm gonna stop what I'm talking about because
I want to talk about what's really important, and that
is we cannot have any more ties in the NFL.
Sunday Nights game was the most unsatisfying game I have
ever watched because it was so good until the end.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
It was good until the end.

Speaker 7 (01:36:40):
I thought it was interesting because they I mean they
almost ran out the clock, which is hilarious. But you know,
in path we've seen coaches even with one second left,
we're going for the win.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
We're not going for a tie.

Speaker 7 (01:36:51):
Yep. So I thought that was kind of an interesting
moment there for the Packers. They had one second left
on the clock. They could have drawn a play, we
could have run a play and gone for the win.
But accepting the tie there, I think sat weird with
a lot of people. It's one thing if it if
at least you tie, like hey, we both kick a
field goal, then there's somebody you're driving late and it
just doesn't happen, and then hey, but they intentionally went

(01:37:13):
for the top, and I think that that's sad, a
little weird.

Speaker 1 (01:37:16):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
It was so at the end of the game.

Speaker 5 (01:37:21):
I was like, what what what? What it's like when
you watch a good movie and then the ending is
so bad that you're like, what what just happened?

Speaker 2 (01:37:29):
They know country for old men. Me on this game,
I thought, I was just like I just can't it
was so horrible. And then I was like, oh my gosh,
we've sockered the NFL. We've soccered it.

Speaker 7 (01:37:39):
Yeah, and they always do it in terms of like
health and safety, because we say, well, why aren't you
go to college rules where there's definitely going to be
an outcome, and people say, well, you know, then there's
more plays and there's more hitting, and I don't know,
how about.

Speaker 2 (01:37:54):
Win the game in regular regular time? Ryan, how about that?
We'll say it. That would be good too.

Speaker 7 (01:38:01):
I listened. Good for Dallas to hang in there. I
think most people expected Green Beta.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
Yeah, I was surprised, Like Dallas looked like they knew
what they were doing. That's right, they really did. And
I was like, who is this Dallas game? Very entertaining game?

Speaker 5 (01:38:13):
Their offense was was quite quite good in that situation.
But yeah, that was so frustrating.

Speaker 2 (01:38:18):
Last night's game. Not frustrating at all, not at all.

Speaker 7 (01:38:21):
No, it was very nice winning on twenty eight to three.
And I personally, as somebody was gonna be on till
midnight talking about the game, enjoyed the lack of stress
in the fourth quarter. Sometimes I am like so wound
up and upset, and then I got to go on
the air for three and just hold it all together.

(01:38:41):
So that was very nice last night going on the
air and being like, you know, I'm cool this. Yeah, great,
a cruise to a win and I'll take those. You know,
people were talking on on Twitter like, oh, this is
a boring game.

Speaker 2 (01:38:51):
I'm right, the boring game.

Speaker 5 (01:38:53):
If it's like that, if we're if we're the upside,
I'm perfectly fine with the boring game.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
Like, yeah, Joe Block, Troy Aigan take it out.

Speaker 5 (01:39:00):
Did you hear Troy Aikman talking about BONIXO and said
very complimentary things and said, this guy is playing like
an m v P and they're one and two.

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
So he was like, I don't understand that.

Speaker 5 (01:39:09):
I don't know if he's m v P, but he
was very complimentary to Bonix and I was like, oh,
that's nice. Toy thinks because he knows things and people.
And now it's time for the most exciting segment.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
All the radio of his guy in the world.

Speaker 7 (01:39:26):
Love that day.

Speaker 5 (01:39:28):
This texter is worried about you. Did Ryan sleep at
KOA last night? He just got off the air a
few hours ago. Yeah, you're sleeping over there on that little.

Speaker 2 (01:39:36):
Sofa, a lot of caffeine. Not comfortable be up here.
Yeah today, but you're doing a great job. What is
our dad job? Please?

Speaker 6 (01:39:42):
Anthony my geography teacher asked if I could name a
country with no R in it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
I said, no way, It's our word of the day. Please.
It is an adjective, okay. Impetuous?

Speaker 5 (01:40:00):
Oh means you have you do something spur of the
moment without any thought.

Speaker 2 (01:40:04):
Yes, a synonymous synonymousnomen of impulsive phenomena. Yep, phenomena. Okay,
what is our word of the day? Oh, we just
did that. Told me a question today. What's the softest
mineral found on Earth?

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):
I mean gold.

Speaker 5 (01:40:25):
Phosphorus is soft till Oh wow, did not see this
coming because honestly did not know it was a mineral
talc in powdered form. Talc is normally used in cosmetics,
from eyeshadow to blush form.

Speaker 2 (01:40:41):
I literally did not know that that was a mineral.

Speaker 5 (01:40:44):
Dumb should have paid attention to Earth science anyway. What
is our jeopardy category?

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
Canine conversations? Okay, good luck?

Speaker 6 (01:40:55):
A fear situation in which survival belongs to those with
the toughest and thickest skin.

Speaker 2 (01:41:01):
Is this kind of work? Many? What does a dog eat?
Dog world? Not doggy dog dog eat?

Speaker 6 (01:41:08):
Just to be clear, to placate someone in a minor
way by giving them something.

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
Many pat on the head, No, dang it, back to
zero again. Canine conversation to play kate someone in a
minor way by giving them something. Two different answers accepted
here too. Yeah, I mean I have a second guest.
But what is to give a dog a bone? Or
throw them a bone?

Speaker 5 (01:41:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
Yeah, that's good. A long rambling tale that is amusing
because of its absurd What is a shaggy dog story?
That is correct?

Speaker 7 (01:41:39):
You heard of that?

Speaker 2 (01:41:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:41:40):
A fabric pattern has a distinctive textile pattern characterized by
a broken check design with jagged edges.

Speaker 2 (01:41:48):
Oh, Ryan, what is dog's tooth?

Speaker 7 (01:41:52):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:41:54):
Correct? You were so close that it would be too
to minus. Finally, you have no stake in a conflict
or issue? What is no dog in the fight? That
is correct? All right? Was right there? It's like it's
not dog suits.

Speaker 5 (01:42:09):
But guy, I'm glad because I had no idea, so
you gave me the answer. Anyway, what is coming up
on KA sports? Obviously a big eater? Respective look back
on last night? Oh, come on, that was sad. I
didn't I didn't make it tight enough. I didn't the
ball up paper. It was an aero dynamically challenged obviously.

Speaker 7 (01:42:27):
Yeah, because we're gonna have a lot of fun, obviously
reacting to the wave of garat bowls right off the
top of the show, which is going to be a
lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:42:32):
Shelby Harris with the Browns is going to join us
at four thirty. We call him Principal Harris. I'm gonna
call him that to day. Yes, he's so funny.

Speaker 7 (01:42:41):
See, they're dynamically not challenged, I make I'm going to
intro him as Principal Harris today, which I'm very excited about.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
And then we had Rod Smith's study of five, so
that'll be a lot of fun.

Speaker 5 (01:42:49):
Excellente. That's all coming up next. We'll be back tomorrow.
Keep it right here on KOA.