The 6-6-6 Dating Rule

Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467. 5600 to hear how signature bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here, just with an eye towards the November elections, both midterms as well as statewide. Boy, the more you see from the left in terms of the candidates they have unearthed to run for critical offices, the more opportunity it provides for Republicans to hang on, perhaps in some cases in spite of themselves. But nonetheless, it is a binary choice. Some candidates. Fox News Channel interviewed Tom Tiffany, who's the sitting Republican congressman running for governor of Wisconsin. This is an important gubernatorial race opportunity to claw back in Wisconsin. And since Illinois chose not to have much of governor's race, maybe people pay a little bit more attention and get a little bit more engaged in that one. One of the candidates that is. reputedly viable is a legislator named Francesca Hong. And, I mean, it's a familiar profile, but that it's happening in Wisconsin. And, you know, it's hard to say because Wisconsin is a state that elects Ron Johnson and then turns around and elects Tony Evers or on the Senate side, you know, that leftist lesbian. Her name's not important. Francesca Hong, Fox News reporting, Tom Kiffon, Tom Tiffany responding. The Democratic Socialist wrote this in 2020. I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police. Hong expressed similar views just a year later, saying police exist to uphold white supremacy, defund, then abolish reform can't be an option. She meant it when she said not just defund police, but abolish police, but she's taken positions like she's defended grooming of children voting against a bill that. would have stopped grooming with children. This is the extreme of the extreme. There's another candidate in the field also that he offered to have free beer if there's the assassination of Donald Trump happens. It is truly in Wisconsin crazy versus common sense. That's going to be the choice the voters are going to have here in Wisconsin because there's a whole bunch of candidates on the Democrat side and they are all going in the same direction of socialism and crazy. All right.

Well, that's that party in general. And I know there's some concern that the black caucus may be diminishing, at least black leftist members of Congress. But the good news for the left is it may, as that declines, you may see a rise in the Islamist caucus. You've got the prospect of an Islamist nominee for U.S. Senate in Abdul El-Sayed.I.D., Michigan. to join Rashida Tlaib. But this is sort of next level. This congressional candidate in New Jersey, his name is Adam Hemaway. And he is a plastic surgeon who volunteered with an al-Qaeda-linked organization in Bosnia, who traveled with the blind sheik. who was convicted in World Trade Center bombing number one. This is really, I mean, tough to be surprised by what the left puts forward, but. Adam Hamaway, this post from a Jewish insider has the, I mean, it's not really a scoop, but it's sort of a scoop because this was reported decades ago. This guy's name was mentioned, but never in this context of a congressional candidate. Remarkable. His relationship with terrorist mastermind, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed a retiring Congress human in New Jersey in a Dem District. The relationship spanned a 1991 road trip the two took together to Detroit. He served as the Blind Sheeks translator for a press conference in which he denied any role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And... Hamway's testimony on his behalf at his 1995 trial where he was convicted of plotting and carrying out the terrorist attacks in New York City. But just a year before he was convicted and after he had denied any role in the World Trade Center bombing, but after it took place and he was the chief suspect. He took the witness stand to describe his travels with Rockman with another party entangled in terrorist conspiracies to Bosnia with a group subsequently shut down for providing logistical support to al-Qaeda. In a 1996 interview with the Newark Star Ledger, This candidate, Hamouye, described volunteering in Bosnia during the summer of 1994 with a Chicago-based nonprofit. Of course, it has to be Chicago-based. With a Chicago-based nonprofit called the Benevolence International Foundation. He said, I worked in Sarajevo for 10 days and then the rest in Zeneca, a large regional center in central Bosnia.

We went out to hospitals around the area and in the mountains to check what supplies they needed, and we tried to deliver them. Those were the cities where the Benevolence International Foundation maintained its offices, offices that were raided in 2002 as part of a joint effort with the U.S. to dismantle the group, which they had identified as a front for al-Qaeda. The 9-11 commission report would later identify the foundation's base in Sarajevo as part of the, quote, impressive array of offices that covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities. Terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden. Hamaway has been endorsed by, you will not be surprised to learn. Comrade Bernie, Ro Khanna, Brotherly loves Spice, Ilhan Omar, the front girl for the socialist spice band, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib. According to evidence that federal prosecutors proffered in court, the 2002 raids on the Bosnian offices recovered weapons. correspondence between the group's CEO and Bin Laden from the 80s and 90s, letters from other al-Qaeda leaders on battles and financial transactions, a photo of the CEO and bin Laden together, an org chart of al-Qaeda, a handwritten list of top donors to al-Qaeda, copies have never before seen documents concerning al-Qaeda's 1988 founding and its admissions policies and details regarding training camps. and al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan. But he was just a doctor checking on hospitals, making sure there were supplies. Right. Working for this organization. No idea what was going on behind the scenes. Sure.

A polysai professor and historian at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology recounts what we most many of us live through, which is the global mobilization of Muslims to aid Muslims in the Balkans during the Balkan wars. He offers a lot of them wanted to go and defend Muslims from non-Muslims persecuting them. You had these organizations like Benevolence, which this congressional candidate worked for, like the Third Rule Relief Agency, which were operating in this chaotic situation, and some of them were absolute fronts for radical Islamists, others were ordinary charities. But even in these ordinary charities, you could also have radicals or extremists infiltrating them. And as I mentioned, the Benevolence Foundation ultimately shut down. According to the testimony of FBI agent Robert Walker, Benevolence International, which originally the creation of a al-Qaeda financier, the group operated in tandem with al-Qaeda across multiple nations, providing it with logistical support. Just to close this out, he has referenced his time, the candidate now, in Bosnia, only glancingly on the campaign trail. He told a Turkish state TV interviewer, his work in the Balkans was not through the Army but another volunteer mission, but he didn't mention the Benevolence International Foundation by name for obvious reasons. Then he told the local New Jersey station I was in Bosnia early on in 95. which, if accurate, would mean he either spent more time in the country than he acknowledged in his interview in the Star Ledger back in 1996 or was there during a different period than he described in the newspaper. And this has been revisited in part because he has given prominence to his volunteer work in Gaza during Israel's war with Hamas, including... at the European Hospital in Khan Yunus. The IDF struck that hospital repeatedly in 2025 to take out an underground Hamas command center. It operated, it said, operated beneath the medical center. In multiple interviews, he has denied the existence of such a terrorist post under that hospital and insisted that the facility was, quote, a completely benign civilian hospital with no tunnels underneath it. Old habits die hard. The IDF, Israeli defense forces, contradicted his account with footage, you know, evidence of subterranean passages, including where it reportedly recovered the body of Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar. Hamas subsequently confirmed that killing. I mean, wow. That is a lot there. Boy, that's all over the course of three decades. That is a lot of interaction with terrorist organizations, Islamist terrorist organizations. And the leadership of said could be an interesting November election.

To say the least. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, The Answer. Hey, business owners, is your business and money in good hands? Does your bank invest in your success? Hi, Mike Gallagher here, letting you know that when you need a relationship bank, signature bank makes commercial banking personal. I love these guys. Not only do they have expansive industry experience, a strong financial track record, but they're also highly capitalized for strategic growth. That's so important. That's why signature bank is my bank. They know what it means to grow a business by designing solutions that are right for you and only. you. These are real people. They're ready to help. So reach out to my friends at Signature Bank. Make the call today. 773-467-5630. Or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. Bank. That's SignatureBank. Bank. Your business could be Signature Bank's next success story. Go online. SignatureBank. Bank. Equal Housing Lender, Signature Bank. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM560. The answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Prop here. Just a post script on the discussion of the neo-Marxist candidate offerings and some high-profile races. And these races are important, even if they're not where you live and vote, because the high-profile races, whether because they represent the key races in determining the balance of power, who controls the House, who controls the Senate. Governor's mansions, governors' races are always important. There's going to be a lot of spend devoted to these races. So they have a disproportionate impact on defining the party. You know, who are these people that present themselves as quote unquote Democrats? Who are these people that present themselves as Republicans? Remember how good the left did at characterizing. The Tea Party candidates of a bygone era because you had a couple of outliers who were poor candidates running for big offices. Senate in Missouri, Aiken, Senate in Delaware, the I Am Not a Witch chick. And those two high-profile races with the help of the D.C. Press Corps, but that's always built into the price, helped to marginalize otherwise talented. responsible candidates made their jobs more difficult. And maybe ended up, it's hard to measure, but maybe ended up influencing the outcomes in other races around the country to the benefit of said self-identified Democrats. So Graham Platner, James Talarico. whichever neo-Marxist, the Wisconsin neo-Marxist nominate to run against Tom Tiffany, this Islamist Al-Qaeda-linked candidate for Congress in New Jersey that we were just discussing, they matter. They matter beyond the boundaries of their district or their state. And so just on that score, let's update Graham Platner in Maine. Because the Purple Heart recipient that he criticized, ridiculed, saying he should have never made it out of Iraq, he's responded. This is almost like a little bit of a swift boat veterans for truth here. Teddy Daniels is his name. Peace in the Wall Street Journal. I'm the soldier Graham Platner mocked. He writes something that type. more telling, more descriptive about the dynamic than just this race, just Graham Platner. A Democratic men are having an identity crisis. Maine's Graham Platner, the party's presumptive nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine is a prime example. He presents himself as a savior for working class Americans while his background screams the opposite. And his offensive comments about fellow veterans, including me, speak poorly of his character. It's a tough pitch. This is my aside. It's a tough pitch for the left. You know, vote for the guy with the Nazi tattoo on his chest to stop the Nazi Republicans. Uh-huh. Yeah. Back to Daniels. The tough talking Marine veterans struts around in a car heart jacket and jeans, but recent reporting.

Relates that he comes from a prestigious family where he access to a lead private school education and a lifestyle of privilege. He also plays up his job as an oyster farmer, but his only client mentioned in his federal financial disclosure was the restaurant as mom owns. He's been caught disparaging the service of fellow veterans like Chris Kyle, American sniper, JD Vance. He also disparaged me while commenting on a viral video of a firefight in which I sustained numerous wounds from a Taliban ambush. I think I should have never escaped Iraq. I meant Afghanistan. That's what Graham Platner said, words to that effect. Back to Daniels, I received a purple heart for my injuries, but Plantner cheered for my death from behind the keyboard. Online Graham Platner, neither Kyle, JD Vance, nor Daniels grew up rich. He writes, I was the son of a brick mason father and a mother who worked at a textile mill. My father, who died of cancer several years ago, would have had a field day with Plantner. He was always talking about the spoiled rich kid politicians who came out to job sites to get votes and take pictures. Dad would comment on the work boots they wore, boots that never saw a day of work, and their car-hard jackets, which still had creases from being on the shelf at the tractor supply store. That's pretty good. Intrue. Flannel shirt and all, writes Daniels, Graham Platner is Tim Walz on stair rights, an entitled Brat who campaigns with socialist Bernie Sanders. A real man by the lights of the Democratic Party, he presents himself as relatable to working class Americans, but in reality, he's a typical elitist who believes blue-collar, hardworking salt-of-the-earth rural Americans are stupid and racist. I couldn't care less about comments he made about me, but they're a reflection of his character. I never thought I'd see a day when Democrats would even consider backing a candidate like this. I think a lot of people around the country, including some that may be left of center but not part of the neo-Marxist revolution, are saying that to themselves. I never thought I'd see a day when Democrats would even consider backing a candidate like this. I see some, I think some Texas Democrats are thinking the same, although their choice between James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett was not an enviable one, I concede. James Talarico in Texas is busily trying to walk back, you know, comments like this. What is a woman? KBJ might not know. James Talarico does not care. One of our neighbors with the uterus to be able to control their own body. Neighbors with a uterus. Huh. Yeah, he's the one that's been busily trying to popularize that. And he sat down with an interview, CBS News, to try to provide some context to all of the radical, identitarian statements he's made, frankly, the heretical statements he's made using the Bible to defend his identityarian politics that have been the subject of blistering ads right out of the gate. ever since Ken Paxton secured the nomination. For example,

Move over, Davy Jasmine Crockett. There's a new Texas Trailblazer in town. And his, it's their name, is James Talarico. The man who bragged, our office is the first in the history of Texas to add pronouns to our official business cards. I am running around like a crazy person today. Spreading his white skin wherever he goes. I am not. A perfect Christian. Prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me reckon with my own whiteness, my own masculinity, and it's a painful process. Bearing the cross of white skin and unambiguous masculinity. I was a big nerd in high school. I never played sports. I probably shouldn't out myself like this. Sex is a spectrum. And oftentimes it can be very ambiguous. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary. Straight from Revelations in... the woke James Bible. I want us all to be aware of that there are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six. And on the seventh day, he, it, they rested. But not James Talarico. He built an arc big enough for all creatures. To be able to write legislation that benefits not just the people, but also our animal friends. Just like the Supreme Court said, one cow, one vote. Now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption that's the right thing to do and the moral thing to do. The 11th Commandment, Thou shouts not smoke brisket. I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign. So step aside, Sam Houston, Talaico's bravery towers over Texas. He's fighting for all six genders and tens of thousands of species. I guess we just have a different... Moral yardstick. You know what insults Jesus? Binary white people who eat barbecue and remember the Alamo? There's only been one perfect Christian. And they certainly weren't a carnivorous Caucasian binary homo sapien, according to the woke gospel of James. They're going to call me a radical leftist, un-Texan, un-American. And bar none, the weirdest candidate for Senate that Lone Star State has ever seen. Yeah, trying to get that weirdness stink off of them. It's going to be difficult. A text from 201, Neighbors with a Uterus, wasn't that the name of your garage band. Yes, it was a culture club cover band. We used to kill with Karma Chameleon. The CBS interview, where he's trying to...

soften the edges of some of his weirdness. During debate over transgender issues, you said, God is non-binary. What did you mean by that? Well, you know, I think I was being intentionally provocative with that statement. But what it means is that God can't be defined by human categories. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians says that in Christ there is neither male nor female. I'm always going to stand up for Texans who are being picked on by the most powerful, most corrupt politicians in the country. And I'm going to continue doing that in this race and hopefully in the U.S. Senate. You call it intentionally provocative. Do you regret describing it that way or talking about God that way? There are some statements that I've made that I certainly regret. There are statements that I've made where I've missed the mark. I'll be the first to admit that. But Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringy comments to distract from his career of corruption. Your comments are cringy. Well, which ones? Which ones miss the mark? How do they miss the mark? You're being intentionally provocative? I don't think he's being intentionally provocative. If anything, I think he is a flim-flam man, you know, a leftist televangelist. But I don't, but I, you know, when you say cringy and miss the mark, I want, I want details and explanations. This is just his way to pivot away. You know, I'm going to, you know, sort of walk it back without saying I'm walking it back. I'm going to cast myself as standing for the marginalized without having to get into the substance of the matter and then pivot to try to make the race about Ken Paxton and his moral and ethical failings rather than my weirdness and radical, humanitarian ideology. So that's what's happening. There's a reason it's happening is because you can't, James Talarico can't sell in a general election what he's been selling to rise within the ranks of the neo-Marxists, which is my point. And now the party writ large has to deal with them if they're going to spend $50,000, $150 million to try to pick up that seat. High profile. Beto O'Rourke part ado, but even way weirder than Bobby O. And how did that work out for Texas? Texas, neo-Marxist, that is? Greg Rogers Park. Good morning, Dan. Dan, you know, here in Illinois, that kind of why you're Pete County, all our menager judges here in Cook County, maybe almost all of our alderman, our mayor, they're just like these people you've been discussing here this morning. And everything, too, it's here in the archdiocese is your problem. Many priests, I'm just like this guy running for Senate in Texas. So right here in our own backyard, unfortunately, we don't have the media enough people to run against them to contract it and pull it and show it out for what it's worth.

They're growing our economy. So we have options. We can do both. We can continue to fund the core services of government and return value to people's, to Florida families through the largest investment most people will make in their lifetime. Begin by exempting the first $250,000 of a homesteads value from taxation and requiring a schedule for full elimination. This is the save our homes proposal. So the first $250,000 of your homestead, of your home's value for homestead of properties is exempt from taxation. Give you a sense of that. I don't know what the number is in Illinois, but in Florida. Just that alone, and it escalates from there, just that alone eliminates property taxes for 60% of Florida homeowners. 60%, just there. Once you raise it to 500,000, which is where he wants to take it, that would eliminate property taxes for 92% of Florida homeowners. Eliminate. hit based on his projections and how probably and how florida does that property taxation as you heard him say there to santis i'd rather focus on folks who are new homeowners young people seniors on fixed incomes you know the middle income folks and so this will be really significant very significant so it that guy You know, the object of ridicule from the likes of triple threat, Lori Lightfoot and Jelly Belly through during COVID to present. Gavin Newsom as people flee those states like it's on fire. So who's delivering? For the 99% or certainly the 92% based on where Ron DeSantis wants to take this with all due speed. Meanwhile, you have the ponderous J.B. Pritzker posting on X. We have to decide if we want to be a country where working families can afford to buy homes or one where homeownership is out of reach for everyone. Right, because he's the champion. Why? Because he said he is. And what is he done? Well, property taxes in Illinois during his tenure have increased 33%. Average annual increase 4.1%. Another $11 billion in property taxes extracted from property owners in Illinois. So 11 billion more. Well, we had all the services we had, we have now back then. So where's the property tax relief? Well, you can get by on less since we've given more. No. That's not coming and you know it. Compare and contrast. Models of governance side by side. Look closely. Meanwhile, Cranes, the Anti-Business Chicago Business Journal.

as this piece of jellybelly. I mean, they're just, they're pathetic. J.B. Pritzker ran for office eight years ago saying you want to be the state's chief marketing officer. And it talks about leaning into economic development. Here's how it's going. Oh, we've got all these credit upgrades. Yeah, we're still having the lowest credit rating, bond rating in the country. He had to deal with a financial mess he inherited. Every governor has created a financial mess and left one in my lifetime. Nothing new. But he has struggled to change the underlying fundamentals of the economy. You don't, of the Illinois economy. You don't say. Despite all of his wonderful rent-seeking gambits, which Cranes endorses because they think rent-seeking is entrepreneurship. Public-private partnerships everywhere. That's what we need. Well, again, look at the approach in, say, the state of Florida under a two-term governor and look at the results and do the same in Illinois. Decide for yourselves. All we can do is present the evidence. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. Business owners, now is the time for your business to make the move to a locally owned business bank. Hi, Mike Gallagher here to let you know that you don't have to look far. Signature Bank was founded in Chicago with a simple mission to help companies like yours grow, succeed, and thrive. Their decisions are made locally by a terrific team that knows your name, cares about your business, and invests in your success. That's why Signature Bank is my bank. I'm a customer. As business owners, they knew that local family-owned businesses we're not getting the help they needed or deserved. So, I invite you to reach out to my friends at Signature Bank today. Write the number down. Remember this phone number. Signature Bank, 773-467-5630. And learn all about this great bank, 773-467-5630, or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. That's SignatureBank.com. Signature Bank makes commercial banking personal. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.

This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Because they got the beat. The campus beat. The campus beat. Yeah, the campus beat. Yeah, so colleges want the SAT back all of a sudden. I thought it was racist. Six years ago, the University of California led the movement to drop standardized tests as an admissions requirement in the name of, say with me, equity. Now more than 750 professors in STEM disciplines across the University of California system, university system. Now, say they need the test back. We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields. Wow. That is a real stunner. Huh.

The current admissions metric based primarily on GPA and essays can no longer reliably distinguish readiness for university level STEM majors in an era of severe grade inflation and AI-assisted application essays. Bring the SAT back. Yale's doing the same thing, I saw. We need some way to measure whether a student will be prepared for the challenges of this particular institution before we provide admission, regardless of their race. Wow. How about that? 312-642-2-5600 AlphaWealthgroup.com call and text line. Preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics. I mean, could anybody have predicted that if you don't care about aptitude, you just care about identity, that you're going to put people in a position of failure? Feel great about it. Yeah. I mean, Thomas Sol wrote a book about this practice when it was in its relative infancy, I don't know, 35 years ago. But yeah, pay attention to that. We're out there changing the world. We're empowering marginalized communities and so on and so forth. Fighting the patriarchy, combating white supremacy. And of course, this is not the worst of the problems created by this. Identitarian push for quote unquote equity, which again is an antonym of equality, not a synonym or a compliment. The Board of Regents scrapped the university's SAT-A-C-T requirement in 2020 because they discriminate against minorities. Would they like to offer a Mia Culpo while they're offering this SOS?

Gavin Newsom, oh yeah, he was governor at the time, called the SAT-A-C-T tests, called the impact of SAT-A-C-T test, that they exacerbate the inequities for underrepresented students, even though a faculty report found otherwise. The new faculty letter. For three consecutive years, 20 to 30% of UC Berkeley's first semester calculus students who participated in mathematical diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits. As the Wall Street Journal commented, drop standards and learning mastery declines. Imagine that. This is a stunner. And so much like the... untethered admissions, untethered to the decision making by those now offering these admissions or these calls for course correction. They have, you know, disassociate themselves from the decisions that they made that put them here where they're saying, we need to reverse course. And you can't let them do that. They have to be held up and pilloried.

Interesting a discussion, by the way, on the great inflation piece of this that they cite. Yeah, law professor Sarath Sanga did an interview with Jonathan Kaye over at Colette about great inflation. It was interesting something, interesting take he had. The obvious. negative impact of great inflation as you're not separating people who are doing A level work from people who are doing C level work. Not making distinctions between the quality of the product. Sort of like turning a blind eye to aptitude when it comes to admissions. But one of the consequences... of the choice that these elite, in scare quotes, universities made, and so many followed suit, of course, so if the elites are doing it, we have to keep up. But one of the consequences is a bit counterintuitive. The median mark at Yale is now an A. That's right. That's crazy. Well, define crazy. Unless they change things, A is the first letter. Right? True. Okay. So it's like, there's a downmarket analogy, but, you know, if you're going bowling and, you know, the median frame is a strike, like it's, that doesn't make sense unless you're an amazing bowler. What's going on is a question you can ask? is it's a very strong and sharp upward trajectory. This is what is meant by inflation. And really, more interesting than inflation is the compression, that there's more and more of the top grades being given. So that's one thing. That effectively means that the top, in this case, 50% or more, aren't differentiated. But you ask yourself, like, you know, is it possible to do better than an A as currently given in a freshman English seminar at Yale? Like, is there no higher achievement than that? I mean, of course there is, right? So the idea that it can't get any better is already. Okay, that's one thing. The other thing is comparability because there are some departments. And I know Yale's example well, but, you know, other schools that have these dynamics have a similar phenomenon whereby one department might award 50% of its students, or 50% of its grades would be in the A range. And then, you know, you walk across the street and that department is giving essentially 100%. There are some programs and departments that offer where every class is 100% A or A minus. But then you scratch your head and you're like, well, are they just getting better students or are they offering, are they using different standards? It's almost surely the latter that an A in one class does not mean to A and another. And yet the university is treating it as if it is because they're all getting reduced to 4.0 in the GPA scale and kind of mixed together. So somewhere in this, I think the only reasonable way to describe the current situation is just as incoherent. There is tremendous pressure to inflate. And by pressure to inflate, I mean faculty express pressure to give grades higher than what they think the students deserve.

And the result? There's pressure to do this. So from the faculties or instructional faculty, especially non-tenure faculty's point of view, they feel tremendous pressure to do that. Otherwise, they get bad evaluations. Their renewal might be in jeopardy. So I think that fact alone, I mean, separate from like are we actually evaluating our students in a coherent way, you know, that kind of pressure, which is real and profound. I think is enough to make us think, look at me, we should stop for a minute and try to design a system. Like, the current system is just not designed is the problem. The anxiety of a B plus, I wouldn't underestimate it. It is profound, right? Students are, excuse the French, working their asses off. to get to make sure that they get that A. And then having worked their ass off, like still are not able to distinguish themselves in any way. And so then they'll go, they'll search for other avenues of distinction, whether it's student clubs. So you're saying there's almost like more anxiety with great inflation than there would be. Absolutely. That's interesting. You know, so I just wrote an op-ed about this with an economist at Princeton, Owen Zadar. And we put it in the Princeton student newspaper for this very reason. The title of the op-ed was, Great inflation is making you miserable. What we're trying to do is not just for its own contrarian sake, but I think because it's true, invert the usual argument that, oh, we inflate grades in order to support students' mental health because they're too delicate to get a B or a B minus. I think that whole thing just inverts the reality of it. The runaway inflation creates increasing compression over time. And so over time, You know, you get a B plus in one of the core classes of your major. That might literally rule out grad school. You're saying people aren't stupid. They know what a B plus means in 2020. They know what it means. Yeah. The B plus is the new D because the media, as you're the jarring thing at the outset, the median grade at Yale is an A, the median. I mean, there's so many good points made in there, too. You know, an A in biochemistry is not the A is not the same thing as an A in some, you know, fluffy humanities course. No, clearly. But the whole thing is fraudulent, right? The professors, the faculty feel pressure to go along with the great inflation because of the expectations of the customers, the students, and because of this and particularly the competition. in these status schools. And so both sides are perpetuating this fraud. The problem is employers know it. And so, I mean, then you connect to stories like this one from a state-run media in Chicago, WBEZ. The job market is brutal. Here's how recent Chicago college grads are navigating it. And it's a...

It's three young people that are floundering as they look for jobs. One is Loyola. One is Northwestern. One is U of C. And it's not worth going through that. I would tell them to move to Tulsa or Birmingham, where the cost of living is low and opportunities abound. And they're trying to attract talent. But the question is, despite coming from a stat of school. Do you have the talent necessary? Because when I'm looking at hiring people in a business that is not subsidized by my business, which is not subsidized by the government, I'm looking at, you know, skill sets and qualities that are related to my bottom line. And that's where the rubber meets the road. So now I have to pay for the fraud that I help to pay for, by force, to prop up for these kids to go to these status schools. or state schools, which are, you know, engaged in the same practice, you know, to varying degrees. The median grade at Yale is an A. I mean, but and the great thing, as Professor Sanga points out, is, oh, we're doing this in the interest of equity. We're bringing people along. We're, we're catering to their, you know, their sensitivities. We don't want to break them as they're finding their way in this rough and tumble world. And you do just the opposite. They're not prepared for the coursework there. They're not prepared for the life afterwards. And they're, you know, riddled with anxiety over all of it. Chris and Carrie are on Chicago's morning answer. Hey, good morning, Dan. What great timing this segment is. We are experiencing this very thing right now. Our daughter just finished your junior year here in Carrie, and she took the SAT, and her math scores were unbelievably low on the SAT, but she's been getting, she's an A-plus student math along the whole way. So shame on us as parents. We had no idea. We just assumed that the grades at A-plus that she's doing well. She's up to par. So we actually are going to have to enroll her at MCC, even as a senior in high school, for like the basic math. To catch her up. It's almost like starting all over. Yeah. Yeah. It's like almost eighth grade level math that she's got to catch up on. It's shameful that. these teachers have been giving her a pass this entire time. If we had known, if grades reflected her true standing, we would have been getting her help the entire time. Intervene sooner. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. Yeah, well, at least you got it now and you're doing something about it. Thanks for the caucus. But that's the point. The whole system is a fraud. It really is. That's why the valedictorian of Barrington High School can only get a job as the mayor of Boston, even though she's got a Harvard degree after that. Where else is Michelle Wu going to work in this world? Unless she's very good with AI or something like that and maybe Silicon Valley would hire. Who would want to tolerate her?

So I say, there's a lot of things that you're measuring, particularly in the age of social media where we can look at your character development over time and your narcissism based on the things that you posted to provide your public facing, to form your public facing identity and see if the two match up, your public facing one and your actual one. All kinds of ways. I've been saying this for years. We've been talking about it. Wirepoint pulls all the data together. The schools, I'm not talking to, talk about high schools because the fraud doesn't start in college, obviously. It's just extended because of the fraud that's perpetrated at the K through 12 level. We've been talking about math and reading proficiency. She goes, well, you can't, you can't pay attention to those NAEP tests. They're racist. You know what we need to do, eliminate the tests. Yeah, okay. Well, you're going to find out one day, one way or the other, whether you want to or not, as unfortunately Chris and Kerry did. Great suburban schools, I'm willing to pay $25,000, $40,000 to spend per kid. I'm willing to have my home liquidated out from underneath me. For what? The status of going to New Trier? or Barrington, or Naperville North. And then you scratch below the surface, and what do you find? Bob in Buffalo Grove. Good morning, Dan. Thanks for taking my call. The STEM education is in. important to me because I've been involved in it for 35 years. In fact, tomorrow I'm going to be doing an event downtown. With regards to what took place about 50 years ago, my alma mater in the wanting DEI stuff and bringing in low-income students didn't take a close look at SAT scores and admitted these low-income students. only to find out after one semester they flunked out because they couldn't do the math. You're not, thanks for the call, but you're not doing anybody any favors. And particularly the people that you think you're doing a favor for by giving them a pass on the threshold that has to be met. You're hurting the people that you think you're helping, which is the story of sentimentality. Look at me uplifting a minority kid. So he gets to Berkeley and he has aptitude, and I'm not just saying that just minorities across the board. But this is the focus. This was the impetus for all this. So he gets to Berkeley and he can do middle school math and Berkeley has to do something with him, either bounce him. or try and get him up to speed. And it's better to try to get up to speed when he's a freshman at Berkeley, as opposed to if you had been getting them up to speed and doing whatever is necessary, including holding them back in the primary grades. I mean, what kind of sense does any of this make? It's obvious. We're all blinded, the left, blinded by their sentimentality, blinds others and cowers others.

You don't care the way I care. No, in fact, I do. You don't care. I'm on that kid's side. You're not. And this is why, you know, the tough talk from like our friend Heather McDonald's has been brilliant on this topic for so many years. It's tough to hear, but you have to hear it because it reflects the reality. And now the left is having to admit it. University of California University System, please bring back the SAT. That'd be like Anthony Fauci coming out today and saying, you know, all those mandates were really stupid. Anybody who has a white male, straight white male son or grandson has either discovered this or will discover it, that that straight white male is going to be the last admitted to... selective colleges, to selective graduate schools, to professional schools, and to law firms, government science positions, you name it. And students experience this daily. I was at an event last night, and a very left-wing mother had to admit that although her son... had very good MCAT scores. He was right in deciding that he would never be admitted to medical school, and so he went to Palantir instead. Now, that's hardly the end of the world, but nevertheless, we have lost potentially a groundbreaking medical scientist, and this is happening all over, and what's going on is the medical schools have had completely different tracks of admission. MCAT scores and... and grade point averages, MCATs are the medical college admissions tests. They're the standardized colorblind, neutral, objective tests of the types of skills that you need to succeed in medical school. They're the medical counterparts of the SATs. In many places, if the MCAT scores and grade point averages in college that would be automatically disqualifying, if presented by a white or Asian applicant to medical school, are an automatic admit if presented by a black or Hispanic student. So you've got almost non-overlapping bell curves of who's getting admitted to medical school. And so what happens is, and this is true for any institution that practices racial preferences. Yeah, and most of them still do. even though they've had to go subterranean in the era of Trump. For example, legalinsurrection.com reporting University of Illinois Medical School, University of Illinois College of Medicine, promoting a webpage that encourages professors to adopt equitable assessments and grading practices. Equitable assessments and grading practices emphasize the process of learning versus performance outcomes and the attainment of grades.

So, yeah, so we're elevating people who are not going to be able to do the work, not on the level that's expected, not at a level of expertise that is connoted by the credential of a status school. And then we're driving people out of the pressure who could do the work because we're making decisions based on race and feelings rather than on competency and aptitude. And I know we've been beating this drum. Well, I've been beating this drum ever since I've been on the air or before then, less, more quietly, I guess. But now that we're getting admissions from the other side, let's run with it. Kind of important, particularly when you start getting into who's performing the surgeries, who's writing the prescriptions, who's diagnosing the illnesses. Who's teaching your high school kids math? This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM 560. The answer. Time now for another reason why. Dan Proff is single.

Yeah, gather around. The Slate's installment, I was just surprised yesterday of a rule that women use that I was unaware of when it comes to dating. Ironically entitled, in a sense, the 666 rule, have people heard about this? This came up post-golf yesterday. Hmm. And so I had to do some researching, which I don't really like to do. I like these segments, as you know, if you've listened to them, I like to just complain. But I did a little researching. So I found this story that's not that old, just a couple years old, women are using the 666 dating rule to find the perfect man, but it is hurting their, is it hurting their chance at love? The 666 rule, as it's told. means you have you're six feet tall, you have six pack abs, and you make over six figures. Is that even enough now? 312, 642, 5600, AlphaWealthgroup.com, call in and text line. Is that a real thing? Or is that just one of these sort of, you know, internet invented things that's, it gets bandied about, but nobody really uses. in practice. Because even in this story, the 6-6 rule, again, six feet tall, have six-pack abs, make over six figures. I mean, I don't exactly, six-pack abs, that would be a stretch. Working on it, though, with Pilates, but also that I, if that was the way that somebody was analyzing, I mean, like if that is something that is ubiquitous in the mind of the distaff side, then that's another reason why Dan Proff is single. But I don't want to. project that on to women if that's not really a thing. I think it ends up sort of being a thing and it just, they just combined it. You want a guy that's tall or taller on the tallest side, I guess, above median height, in decent shape, makes good money, has a job. I mean, I guess maybe this is sort of a handle that just speaks to reasonable expectations. I try to be considerate of the female perspective here because I'm magnanimous that way. But even in this story, talking about this 666 rule, a survey from a dating app, Fertini, geez, who comes up with this stuff, found 80% of women are open to lowering their standards in order to meet a mate. Perfect, because that's where I'm at, at the lowered standard level. So maybe this is just, you know, a... idyllic box checking, but it doesn't really represent. There's other contextual factors contributing assets that could move those numbers around a little bit, see if it works out. Especially because, well, we do, we should get an opinion of a dating expert. And how do you know a person's a dating expert? They present themselves as one. Dating expert, Amber Saletti.

Till the New York Post, I've met tons of singles through my dating events, both men and women who have crazy expectations for their partner. And I feel sad for a lot of them who are clearly feeling lonely and are going to remain single forever. Don't feel sad for me, Amber Soletti, dating expert. Instead of having standards, high standards, what she recommends is having deal breakers. But they should be focused on deeper topics like political views or views on children and raising children. Yeah, I mean, I actually agree with that. I guess I'm a dating expert now, too. 312-4-2-5600 alphawealthgroup.com call in and text line. You've got to compromise on some of your criteria, some of your idyllic criteria, according to that, according to the obvious, basically. Tom and Oswego, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Yeah, I think more women should be looking for a 540 and close to six. and that that's over five feet, about a 40-inch waist, and close to six figures, sometimes under, sometimes over. I think that's about the ideal guy. That has a little bit of expectation inflation. The median is you're, well, yeah, you're lowering the median. It's sort of like an A at Yale. Uh, uh, to, to, to, two, text, eight, one, five. Six, six, six, six rule, men can have the three S's sex, samage, and solitude. Uh-huh. Yeah. I, I wouldn't lead with that. 815, but, you know, well, I was going to say I'm not a dating expert, but apparently, I'm at least as good as Amber Saletti, who is a noted. dating expert because she noted it. And also, too, the whole, you know, we talk about this a lot because men with money. This story from a Yahoo Lifestyle, I read it so you don't have to. This is on the flip side, though. He's dating a millionaire businesswoman but says the experience is not what people think. She still expects me to pay for dinner and dates. I mean. Hmm. He earns six figures, so he has one six. But he's a dating woman owns a construction business and brings in more than 500,000 Canadian dollars a year. Canadian dollars. What's that? No, it's about 360 grand a year. Okay, but you're making six. I mean, it's not that. The disparity is not that great. But anyway, he said, I'm dating a woman out of my league. It sounds amazing until you actually live it. I honestly don't make much, and 100K is middle class now. Well, that's why I was thinking, too, the 666 may be a little antiquated. My sense from what I see out in the professional milieu is that the number's a lot higher than that. But anyway, I digress.

He said his girlfriend's lifestyle, the construction firm owner, reflects her much higher income. Frequent discussions on, fancy dinners, luxury shopping trips, multiple vacations, and so on and so forth. She always wants to go to expensive ass dates. Maybe it's the way you talk. She'll casually drop that she wants to go to expensive steakhouses every weekend. I'm going broke, try to take her on 24, on dates 2470. The other hand, am I going to meet a girl this rich ever again? I'm torn. What do you say to Torn in Canada? He's got to pay up front for the cash out if he marries her, but is there really going to be a cash out? And then you have to worry about the old saw that if you marry for money, you earn every penny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Okay, I can't read that. Several women who said they out-earned their husbands and boyfriends shared stories about paying for vacations, expensive, dinners, luxury experiences. I think the only thing I would say about that is you can't live off. I can't never imagine, I don't care about somebody else's money, but you can't live off somebody else's. If you're a dude, you can't live off somebody else's money. You got to do something. Even if she's whatever, she's in a more lucrative position or she's a successful tech entrepreneur, whatever she is, construction firm owner. But you can't live off her money. You have to go do something. You can't just hang around the house playing video games. Tom and Rolling Meadows. Yes. I'm calling about that 666 rule. Yeah. That's not how the way I heard it. It was. Six feet tall, six figure income, and six the swinging. Yeah. Thank you, Tom. And I'm not going to ask you if you meet all those criteria. Thanks for the call, Tom. I did hear that version as well. I'm giving you the PG version, as was reported in the post back in the day. But 666, yeah, I have heard that version too.

But, you know, it's not the size of the boat. It's the motion of the ocean. I don't know if I really want to get into that conversation. Bonnie and Displanes. Hello. So if a fixed rule, only 80% of women are willing to lower the standards, that means I really don't have that rule. It is ridiculous. Yes. So you think that 666 rule, regardless of the 1-6 being in question, you think that is not something that women walk around thinking. Yeah. That's too shot. No. Okay. That's ridiculous. All right. All right. Well, that's encouraging, especially for Tom and Oswego, who's got the 640, sometimes 6, sometimes 5 rule. It is rather. Dickensian that 666, which, you know, connotes something else. Tom in Blue Island. Relationship expert, Tom and Blue Island. Oh, okay. Very, very good. Expert at ruin relationships. I've had a couple of girlfriends, and one of them ended up being my ex-wife. Where else I can describe is when it comes to finances, what's her, what's yours is hers and what's yours is ours. So it did. And one of these girls was an assistant district attorney at Cook County, and she was actually wonderful. Yeah, well, they don't make real money. I know, Dan, but my point is the ex-wife wasn't, she was in school at the time, and she was a pharmacist, she was studying to be a pharmacist. But the bigger point is, if you're in a relationship with someone that isn't willing to share everything, and that includes money, it's a dead deal. I mean, I remember when I was still in a Ruffer's Union and we wouldn't be working in the winter, And my ex-wife would actually have to fork out a couple of dollars in cash to pay for a pizza. I swear, Dan, the pizza wasn't even worth eating. You would have thought she gave you a kidney. Unbelievable. Yeah, I hear you. Thanks for a call, Tom. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, yeah, I hear you. Dave and St. John. Hey, Dan, how's going this morning? Good. All right, so about 40 years ago when my wife and I were dating, she had a 10-point requirement list that was given to her by her aunt. Oh, boy. Fortunately, I met all of them except for one. And the one I didn't meet was that I was not financially secure. Really? But, yes. However, I mean, I had to borrow money from her when we went on dates, but it still all worked out because we've been married for, you know, 36 years. So. There you go. Your, uh, your winning personality, your charm and Savois fare won or over. Money didn't matter.

Yeah, it might have been part of it. Some of the things on the list, though, were, you know, you had to be a church-going Christian, you know, be saved, things like that, you know, the important things in life. It would have been interesting to ask her, her aunt. So, like, let's say I make, if I make 500 grand, do I still have to go to church? You know, one of those. Like, is it a bit of a sliding scale? If I'm really good at one, can I be less, you know, is there some give on the others? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that would be interesting. Although I will say her aunt did say that the one I did not meet was the lowest requirement on the list. There you go. All right, very good. Well, there you go. And I've never made, and I've never made six figures. So. And you've got a happy life and 40 years of marriage under your belt. So there you go. And three God-loving children. So absolutely. Thanks, Dan. Very good. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. Maybe he made up for it in other categories of the 6.6. Kathleen Donahue is tired of cooking. Like many people raising kids with a spouse, she'd face the same question every night. What's for dinner? The Seattle mom, oh, they're in Seattle. Oh, they're in Seattle. Oh, boy. The Seattle mom of two, who recently finished her first novel, eventually realized she no longer wanted to be responsible for the What's for Dinner question. She hadn't planned to be the primary cook in her marriage telling Yahoo, quote, I was a women's studies major in college, unquote. Oh, God. But her husband worked outside the house for 13 hours a day while she worked for home, so dinner mainly defaulted to her. So she threw herself into it for a while until they got what is known as a food divorce. I love the handles they come up with to, you know, pathologize these events, disagreements within a marriage, you know, changes in arrangement. She stopped cooking during the week. I broke up with cooking. Instead of making dishes from scratch, she relies on Trader Joe's frozen meals and assembles simple dinners for her family. It's okay for me to just open the fridge at 5 o'clock. I'll find something my kids will eat. It can be a grilled cheese and that's okay. She still cooks occasionally, but it's on her own terms. She's a woman studies major. On weekends, her family hosts a casual Sunday supper inviting other families over for low-stressed dinners where they can serve themselves like pasta or a baked potato bar. And it's working, I guess. Her family has found more joy, more time together outside the kitchen. And if that requires just throwing a heated up cassidia in front of them to generate that joy and more family time, then okay. Somehow dinner not being about food is what my family at this season of our life really needs. All as well, that ends well. However you do it. But the whole sort of intellectualizing this, in a way only a women's studies major would do food divorce.

Nicholas in Chicago. Hey, Dan, I just wanted to tell you listeners that I was there, I was married to a rich woman, and I got to tell you, I would never, ever do it again. Why? You were her servant? Why? What happened? Yeah, yeah, basically, well, I use another word, but I wouldn't say service. Yeah, it's just, you know, I mean, honestly, you know, they feel like they can talk to you any way they want. Yeah, I don't need anything from you. I have my own money. Exactly. It's not like I, you know, I mean, she helped me out a couple times, but it's not like I ever took advantage or, you know, wanted, you know, asked her for stuff that I didn't need, you know what I mean? But, you know, I mean, she clearly made more money than I did. I work two full-time jobs, you know, I'm a nurse and I have another job. So, I mean, you know, you're not rich in those careers, you know what I'm saying? But, uh... I ended up getting divorced and marrying my niece's nanny from Columbia. And let me tell you, never been happier in my life. Very good. All right. Another all's well that ends well story. Thanks, Nicholas. Dan Prop, Chicago's Morning Answer. It's like a hot, steaming cup of information. To start your day, it's Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, The Answer. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Profft here. So we went from threats of finishing the job and even blowing up on Oman. at President Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday to an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait yesterday, Trey Yanks reporting Fox News. A significant development overnight after Iran launched drones toward a commercial vessel. attempting to pass through the strait of Hormuz. A U.S. official tells Fox News that four one-way attack drones posed a threat and were shot down. Then a strike was also conducted against a control station near the city of Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone. In response, the Iranians launched a drone and missile attack against Kuwait, targeting a U.S. base there, according to Iran's IRGC. Now, the Kuwaitis confirmed an attack on their territory that did trigger sirens. The exchange of fire comes amid efforts. to reach a deal between the United States and Iran. Uh-huh. And then a few hours later, you have this reported possible memorandum of understanding that we're waiting to see what Trump does with it. 60-day ceasefire agreement. Unrestricted straight of Hormuz shipping. No tolls.

Iran removes the mines and the straight within 30 days, assuming they know where they all are, which is one of the questions that we had we've had for a while. And do we know where they all are? Are we just going to trust them? And if we know where they all are, how are we doing in removing them? Because I thought that was part of the operation that was ongoing as well. Questions bound. uh that's number three number four u.s naval blockade lifted with conditions and number five iran pledges no nuclear weapons well and of course there'll be a lot of details to that including arrangements for obtaining the enriched uranium that's a framework um there The president may be feeling more pressure on particularly getting the straight open, though, even though he's, of course, projecting that he is not concerned about the midterms and not concerned about these pedestrian economic matters because oil prices will. drop significantly as soon as this matter is properly concluded. And the important point, not just for the short term, but for the long term, is that this matter is properly concluded. But some oil CEOs are expressing some real concern about circulation of crude in the global market. For example, Mike Worth, the CEO of Chevron, warned oil prices are likely to rise over the next two months. As already near record low, crude inventories continued to decline, he said at a conference, quote, the buffers and the shock absorbers are steadily being drawn down and the ability for the market to absorb this imbalance is drastically diminished today versus where we started. Over the next few weeks, we're likely to see those pressures flow through more directly to physical prices, and there's more upwards pressure that I would expect as we get into June and certainly into July. So supplies down, demand up means price a spike is essentially the translation. Another oil execs said it will take at least four months to get back to 80% of pre-conflict flows, and full flows will not return before the first or even second quarter of 2027. And Exxon, Senior VP, Neil Chapman, took it one step further, saying, commercial inventories of crude oil of liquids, thick patrol, think... Commercial inventories of crude oil, of liquids, think petroleum, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, they've all run down. And running down those inventories has mitigated or offset supplemented by the release of strategic petroleum reserves, which most of the Western countries have done. All that has mitigated the impact, you can model this. We modeled it. I think a lot of people in the industry have modeled it.

We are approaching unheard of inventory levels. I mean really, really low levels. You can debate whether that's going to hit these really low levels in two weeks or three weeks. Once you get to that point, then you'll see price shoot up. A model would say dated Brent will shoot up. Once you get that, once you get to that really low inventory level, up to $160 or $150 or $160 a barrel, dated Brent. The models would tell you that. And then what happens is when the price gets to a certain level, demand destruction brings it back into balance. Prices go so high, it becomes unaffordable. And that's what happens. And so we're at that level now. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, that has to be factored into the calculus, but there are a lot of variables. And I don't know if that is motivating some sort of established framework that buys more time, but gets the straight open right now as they work out those other details. I don't know why this is the only way to get the straight open based on many of the military experts we've talked to. If we wanted to open it, we could. But President Trump seems particularly resistant to using force to do so. For more on all this, we're pleased to be joined by retired Brigadier General John Teichert, foreign affairs and military strategy expert who served as commander of Joint Base Andrews and Edwards Air Force Base, senior U.S. defense official to Iraq, and Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs. General Tyker, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Dan, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. So the framework, this potential MOU that the president may or may not sign on to, what's your assessment of that framework? Dan, I'm an eternal optimist, but I'm skeptical, but I do know the president has to be weighing two primary factors here. Number one, Iran is notorious. for acting and negotiating in bad faith. In fact, we're seven weeks into a two-week ceasefire. And the only precondition to the ceasefire from seven weeks ago was that they would open the straight of Hermuz, no strings attached, and we never saw that come to fruition. So number one, the president has to understand that Iran is not a trusted actor. Number two. People talk about how the devil is in the details, but I say purgatory is in the phasing. And where we went massively wrong with the Obama deal is that Iran got the benefits of the deal before they had to demonstrate the commitment to the deal and hold up their end of the bargain. And we have to structure any deal that may come to fruition in a way where Iran demonstrates commitment. before they get any benefits to the deal. And I really hope the president is wisely considering those two primary factors before he puts his signature to paper. Yeah, I mean, I would think, I mean, this is sort of the implication is that the specific performance will be with the Iranians first, that the straight is opened and there are no tolls and there's no piracy. And so let's see that. And then we talk about enrich uranium and the nuclear program and the rest of it.

I think that's right. And I do get added concern with just the activity that you described from the Iranians this week with respect to drones, mine laying, missiles, and emplacing of those missiles. And I think that's Iran testing how eager we are to make a deal. And I think we are falling over ourselves indicating that we want to make a deal without returning to military activity. And that puts them in a stronger position. Yeah, I'm a little perplexed. I mean, I understand the concern about putting our military men and women in harm's way, and that's something that should never be taken lightly, and I'm sure is not being taken likely by this president. But it just seems to me that there's a reason we have the military, and this is one of them to affect our national security interests. And is it certainly worth considering that the best, fastest way to address the straight issue is for us to get in there and address it ourselves? Dan, I think that's reasonable. And I also think that we left something on the table during the first six weeks of the war. And that is that we gave them a sanctuary and didn't strike the targets that were most important to the regime. On day one of Air War College, we are always taught that the way you use air power strikes is to hit at the heart of what matters most. to a regime. And while we struck a lot of operational and tactical targets, we didn't hit at those things that actually underlie or underpin the strength of the regime. And I think in addition to active kinetic activity that would forcibly open the straight, that we should start striking at those type of targets. The moment we see in the in game of this negotiation, Iran negotiate or act in bad faith yet again. I mean, do we have any sense of where we are? I mean, I haven't heard from Admiral Cooper on this recently. Where we are with respect to the mines in the straight, you know, one of the contingencies there in the MOU is to remove the mines from the straight. But I thought that was underway. We were going to get some help from the UK, one of their mine sweepers. And, you know, this was a laborious process. It's, it's a lot easier said than done. I understand that, you know, conceptually. But is there any, I haven't seen any assessment of how we are with respect to that issue and how long it would take for us, again, to do it ourselves or in, in conjunction with our allies. We have capabilities as do our allies, but the moment that Project Freedom stopped, that two-day adventure that seemed to demonstrate some level of hope, and then we stopped abruptly, the moment that ended is the moment that we stopped actively trying to use our assets to demine the straight. So we're basically at a standstill from where we were.

from the beginning of this conflict. And those mines are still there. And while we do have assets, it's a very laborious process to demine a waterway. And I think that we have been cooling our heels since we stopped Project Freedom. And it would take some time to get restarted and then to clear those mines. I mean, do you have any sort of particular intuition about why you think the president is so? seemingly averse to kinetic action, as the phrase is used. I mean, there's a lot of supposition maybe to deferential to, or maybe two is a value judgment, but deferential to Gulf State allies wants to keep the coalition together, that this is the path of least resistance. And for the short term, we've given up the idea of regime decapitation. It's just hard to reconcile the approach that's being taken and the time period over which it's being taken, particularly when you start to hear pronouncements like you've heard from the oil companies that I mentioned. So I think there are two factors that weigh into the president's mind. Number one, he is concerned that Iran will increase strikes on golf partners, especially their energy infrastructure. But I want to remind your listeners that 80 to 90 percent of Iran strikes on the golf partners have already been on civilian infrastructure. So I actually think that's already played out. We've mitigated it appropriately. Number two. I think the president has in his mind, how can he most quickly decrease energy prices? But the problem is, this has now been dragging on far longer than anyone expected. And if we would have taken the stronger kinetic activity up front, there would have been a shorter-term higher spike in prices, but it would have been done with once we finish the job. And I believe the president needs to finish the job. Yeah, it's interesting. This from a guy, a fund manager, but who's got colleagues in the space, in the energy space, he posted on X, according to my colleagues, recent meetings in Dubai, UAE, for example, is building out is crude pipelines and will be able to completely avoid the straight in 24 months for oil experts. Remember, nobody building the off-ramps has an incentive to advertise this, so the public narrative understates the real magnitude and timeline. So for the U.S., the details of any current deal...

matter less than people think. The U.S. doesn't need all of its ask granted in this deal. It just needs a deal that one reopens the straight and two buys time because you have the Gulf Coast states that are building capacity now that the straight card has been played by the Iranians to build the logistics and capacity to avoid the straight altogether so that this is a card that is no longer in the Iranians deck within the course of the next. year to two years. Maybe that's something too that is under consideration such that we need to make a show of force here. But if we get the straight reopen and we buy time, then the Iranian regime in the medium term, if not the short term, is going to collapse anyway because it is alienated as Gulf State allies. They're looking for other routes that don't involve the Iranians. They're going to have to look at the Iranian oil clients are going to have to look for. other suppliers because of the industrial base destruction that's occurred and the the the disalignment of gulf other gulf coast a gulf state actors and so so again it goes back to we just get the straight open and we buy time and we don't have to take the risk of military action in terms of casualties. We don't have to indulge the expense and the use of our weapons caches. And we let this play out over the next year or two with the Gulf states essentially taking the lead on it. Dan, I'm okay with some of that elongated timeline, but two factors have to be considered here. Number one, will Iran actually open up the straight, no strings attached? I'm skeptical, and I hope that in phase one of this agreement, we see that happen, but I doubt that it actually will play out the way we hope. And then number two, none of that factors in what Iran could do in the next two years with its nuclear program. And I think that we decimated it back in June in Operation Midnight Hammer of last year. But I think two years is a long time to give them a sanctuary to reestablish that nuclear program. If we could genie blink two years from now and have that added capacity via pipelines away from the straight. and we found a way to destroy their nuclear program, that would be great. But it's contingent on Iran opening the straight now to get there and us doing something about their nuclear program. He has retired Brigadier General John Tyker, foreign affairs, a military strategy expert who served as commander of Joint Base Andrews and Edwards Air Force Base, also as a senior U.S. defense official in Iraq and Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs. General Tyker, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it.

Dan, thanks for having me. And General Tyker joins us on the Alpha Wealth Group.com, Anseline. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's Morning Answer. On AM 560, The Answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Propped here. Do elements of so-called conservative socialism exist in the Trump administration? Or are there illustrations, examples of this seemingly oxymoronic statement? Well, I think they are. I think there are. You know, I mean, it's, is it conservatism? I mean, if you are engaged in socialist policy. I don't know how you can label it's conservatism. I mean, it's, but the point is to say self-identified conservatives acting the way that redistributionist Central Planners act. And I think there's a good case to make, and it really prompts the larger discussion that I keep pushing, which is when will conservatives, particularly in this populist America first era. reckon with questions, fundamental questions like, is this thing that the government does something that it should do at all? What should the government be in the business of doing and what should it not? And for the things that are determined to be something the government shouldn't be doing, don't cut them by 10%. Don't phase them out over five years. Eliminate them wholesale. It's something that conservatives have often talked about doing and rarely done. Now, the flip side of it is to say in some instances like longtime bugaboos, certain federal agencies like Department of Education that have been talked about by conservatives. in terms of elimination for many moons, through many presidential elections, which are the eight cabinet level agencies you'll eliminate, Department of Energy, Department of Education, always on the list, Department of Commerce. But ironically, Trump has probably done more to diminish the Department of Education, reduce its size and scope, drop ship those resources to the state where they're better deployed if they're going to exist at all than previous presidents who were more closely aligned with sort of paleo-con conservatism like a Ronald Reagan. So it's an interesting topic of discussion, which is why we wanted to have it with Robert Bork Jr., who wrote a new book about it. The New Paradox, Antitrust and the Threat of Conservative Socialism is the book. Robert Bork Jr. is the president of the Antitrust Education Project. Robert Bork, Jr., thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.

Glad to be here. It's always nice talking to you. Great to have you again. And so, you know, it's one of the things your father pointed out, and you've pointed out before, including in recent interviews, that, you know, socialism doesn't come in the West in the form of a revolution. It comes slowly over time. It creeps, right? And in such a way as you see it rear its ugly head in regulatory. mainly regulatory or tax policies, tax and regulatory policies that are redistributionist in nature that have the government directing private enterprise. And there are instances where this has been the case in the Trump years, aren't there? Oh, my gosh, yes. You know, I never would have expected it, or maybe that's maybe that's my mistake. But, you know, you've seen since. even from the first term of the Trump presidency, moves, particularly in antitrust, that look like what Lena Kahn and the Biden antitrust enforcers were doing to restrain business and, I think, kneecap capitalism. But now they're doing things which. They're taking it to the next level. I mean, my goodness, we have this administration owns a chunk of Intel. Yeah. This administration owns a chunk of invidia. It owns, has a piece of a couple of rare earth companies. It steers investment. It directs industrial policy. It manipulates competition. It rewards its allies. It punishes disfavored firms. I mean, and just most recently, it didn't happen, but it came pretty close. They were going to get a 90% stake in Spirit airline. That was their idea of bailing out Spirit. And thank goodness, the people who held the debt of Spirit said, no, I think we'll just sell the airplanes, you know. We'll just, and we didn't need, I think, government airline, which all that stuff creates. new sort of like moral hazards. Like, okay, so if we own an airline, does that mean that they don't get the same regulatory scrutiny that a regular airline, privately held airline does? Because we own them and we're the government. So anyway, that's, I could go on. Yeah, but yeah, let me, let me jump in here and play devil's advocate. Well, well, well, Robert, um, The $10 billion stake in Intel, if the government sold today, would be worth $40 billion or thereabouts. So it's a great ROI. Trump's a great businessman. What's the problem? The problem is that the private sector is better at deciding, you know, the private companies are better at deciding for themselves what they ought to be spending the investors' money in. They don't find themselves in this sort of moral morass.

of, well, when the phone rings and it's somebody from the government, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to do what they tell us to do? And I would argue that to a certain extent, You know, when the government owns a big piece of something like that, it's going to make decisions based on what the government thinks is the right direction for a particular company. And we all know that the government is never wrong about making decisions about things. So. Well, yeah. I mean, to me, it's right. Even if, even if you could make the case, you know, Trump is a better CEO than Intel CEO. Even say, yeah, so he'll do a better job of directing the company's development or influencing it. It'll be a positive influence. I don't care. That's not the point. The point is that government is a fearful servant and a dangerous master. And then some can. And some conservatives have lost that perspective because they like the president. you know, of the last, well, you know, intermittently two terms. And so, but I mean, but you, you set those precedents and then somebody comes out, somebody else comes right behind them that you don't care for as much and does things like, well, like Zohran Mamdani is doing in New York City where he comes up with some scheme that sounds wonderful and is really designed to seize private property and use it for his own purposes. So that, that's the problem with, with these sorts of policies. and making exceptions for people you like without recognizing you're opening the door for people you don't. Exactly. And, you know, we the taxpayers are sitting here and it has an effect on us. When markets become politicized, consumers pay for it. You know, regulatory complexity raises compliance costs. Industrial policy distorts investment, politically driven antitrust enforcement, which I spend most of my time thinking about, creates uncertainty. Capital becomes less efficient and innovation slows. You know, it's not, this is not. This is not just funny money that we can just spend and invest and hope that and believe that everything is going to be okay. Right. And, you know, it's it's complicated because, you know, the same week or at the same time like this week, Trump and Lee Zeldin discussed, you know, $2 billion worth of deregulation they did, environmental regulations on refrigerators and.

and air conditioners and so forth that are from the Biden administration that they're rolling back to allow that those companies that make those products to to be more efficient and more competitive and more successful ultimately. So, you know, it's it's uneven. You see, right, at least with Trump, it's uneven. You see. deregulation on a number of fronts that that that is but you just can't seem to get we can't seem to resist the temptation to say okay we're going to undo these regulations which are bad and they're particularly bad because they were the last guys but the stuff I want to do in in service of my political and economic interests that are similar in approach are okay because they're mine Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, when I talk about conservative socialism, that's really what I'm trying to point out. And, you know, conservatives have been for free markets. and for free trade, you know, and for capitalism, whereas the alternative we're talking about now is conservatives getting more into the progressive Democrat space and for them to be working. really adopting many of the same policies. You know, when Trump's antitrust people came in, they didn't reverse the Biden policy. They just said, that's good. We'll leave it the way it is. And they also brought, they continued his stupid antitrust cases that were wrongheaded and which they were losing. They just, they continue to. Anyway, I'm sorry. No, is it your view that there should be an antitrust division in the Department of Justice? Should there even be one? Should there be antitrust prosecutions? Absolutely. You know, I'm all, I'm against. bringing cases, you know, because something is big and successful. Right. I'm all for it if there's economic evidence, which the Biden administration just ignored economics for four years. And this administration is ignoring it somewhat too. But yes, you know, if there's price fixing going on, you know, jump all over them. If there's market manipulation going on, jump all over. If there's restraint of trade going on, jump all over it. But don't.

sort of gerrymander new markets so that you can say, aha, this company has, you know, 100% is a monopoly because it has 100% of this market that we made up. Just like in, you know, in political redistricting, the government goes around inventing markets so they can say, yes, Apple makes performance smart. phones there is no such market they made up that market so that they could sue apple you know well so then are there would there be um exceptions to the philosophy uh when it comes to government spend say that have national security implications talking about uh things like um rare earths for microchips and those sorts of things where America needs to be less reliant on its known enemies like the Chinese Communist Party. Is your question, should we be paying more attention and spending money on rare earths or what? I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Should we should we make an industrial policy exception when it comes to providing special treatment to chip makers or other associated industries that were too reliant that where we, our opinion, the view is we're too reliant on our enemies. Right. Yeah. So quantum. computing or, you know, other things should the government then, is that a exception to your opposition to industrial policy generally? We've always had policies that encourage. you know, new developments like AI. Right now, you know, the president is all over AI. And whatever concerns people have about it, I think, are being ignored. The data centers are, you know, are being ignored. So my concern is that the government basically, because if it's... size and power just pushes all dissent out of the way and, you know, begins to take over that industry. And I think we really need to find private sector answers because it'll work better in the long run. You know, the government can... try to cajole and issue grants or whatever, whatever the thing is. It can be involved in trying to make, you know, the regulatory burden less. But again, in specific cases, what you don't want to do is have the government...

the government running the big data companies or the chip companies. So, I mean, just another test case, just to see where the lines are in your view, TikTok and SkyDance. What was your view on the way the Trump administration handled that? Well, it was pretty obvious that the president wanted to protect TikTok because he felt it was instrumental in his getting reelected. And that may be true. But Congress passed the law saying, we've got to divest, you know, they've got to divest, you know, their American. subsidiary, their American operations, and by a certain date, and the president just ignored it. I don't think that's right. I don't know enough about the real threat of TikTok, but I assume it's real. I think the president should have done something, should have followed the law. In a way, it's sort of, I don't want to, maybe this is going too far, but, you know, the way he handled that looks an awful lot like the way he's handling Iran right now. You know, he doesn't want to go too far. He wants to protect his competitor a little bit because he's afraid of what would happen if he doesn't, politically speaking. So that may be a bridge too far, but it just has that flavor about it, that there's some places he won't go, even if he's legally bound to do so. Robert Pork Jr. is the president of the Antitrust Education Project. His new book, The New Paradox, Antitrust and the Threat of Conservative Socialism. Robert Pork Jr., thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Always enjoy talking to you. Thank you. Thank you, and he joined us on the AlphaWealthgroup.com, Anseline. This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's Morning Answer. An AM 560, The Answer. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. So the San Diego Mosque shooting that we talked about earlier in the week. And quickly dissipated into the ether. Gosh, when did it turn? I suppose it turned after we got the manifesto of the two shooters and realized that their motivations, these two teenagers, the motivations to go shoot up that mosque.

were not because they were from the ranks of Maga, but because they were Jew obsessed insult psychopaths. And that was confirmed by what they wrote. You know, everything was, it's the Jews again and again and again. And they even talked about promoting the assassination of Trump and JD Vance for that matter. The problem with the reporting on these incidents is they're politicized. And so you get stilted information and thus not much understanding of the difficult questions that have to be asked in the wake of these horrific events and how we should think about. discussing them and even from a media perspective covering them. And that is in part the topic of a piece that my friend Michael Golden recently wrote over at his substack. That was picked up, I think, by Real Clear Politics.com as well. Michael Golden is the author of Unlock Congress and he writes the golden mean column on his substack. His piece, neuter the shooters, what the media can do to save lives. Why we're relying on the media to save lives. That seems to me a dicey proposition. Michael Golden, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Good and talked to you. It's been a while, by the. It has. It has. So, I mean, look, one of the thrusts of the argument that you make, I agree with, and I do my best to practice it. on this show and have for years because of the research and part of which you cited. But that is when you say neuter the shooters, you're really talking about not naming these individuals who commit these horrific acts. And there's a reason for that. Explain. Yeah, you know, and I referenced in the piece, and thanks for having me on. This issue drives me nuts, not just obviously the first thing is to save lives and have these horrendous things. But honestly, just from a lack of logic, just sheer common sense logic to give these guys the infamy that they crave, these people that are doing these shootings. They're either going to a station and dropping something off before they go and do it or they're leaving a manifesto. They're leaving all the breadcrumbs so that they can be elevated. They're so miserable. You know, they can blame the Jews. They can claim a political party, whatever. They're so miserable in their lives. They're ill. They're ill people who are dying for notoriety and to matter. Narcissism and beyond. And as soon as, you know, Tom Tees lost his son, Alex, in the movie theater shooting in Colorado and Aurora. In fact, I used to call you The Dark Night for reasons we might get into. But that was a movie playing. So I sometimes think of you when I watch the movie The Dark Night. Well, thank you very much. I thank you, I think. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not. No, no, you like it. It's a compliment. It's a compliment in its own fashion. For sure.

Tom's son protected his girlfriend in that theater, and he got killed. And then Tom's watching all these, this coverage about the shooter who killed his son, and nothing about his heroic son. He saved her girlfriend and probably others in the theater. And he started something called no notoriety. It's got a whole protocol and everything, but it's about minimizing harm. And just... Not, you know, not elevating these people and their moronic ideas. I will tell you, Dan, before we get too far, I would take it a step further. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say this. If I was running a media entity or could get them all in the room, the executive producers and come to the agreement about how to handle this, I would agree on an absolutely insulting, belittling statement where you just fill in his, you don't even use his name to say, we're sorry to report. been in Aurora, Colorado, another ill, lonely, pathetic person who should have been in a psychiatric ward has killed people. We're not going to name him. None of us are because he doesn't, he's not worth it. Let me repeat. He's ill and a loser. Like one sentence that everybody knows they're going to get if they go do this. They're not even here their name. Their name's not even going to get mentioned. And speak to, because as I said, you referenced it, you know, criminologists have looked at this in terms of the psychology. You talked about they seek notoriety. They feel like their existence isn't recognized, and this is the way they make a mark. I know as evil as that is. But that's part of the psychology that has been revealed in some research that's been done by criminologists. Yeah, and it's obviously some of it's qualitative because there's only so many mass murderers, but you can still analyze the data. Their name's a Langford and Mathis, and they did this study in 2017. The upshot was, quote, don't name them, don't show them, but report everything else, a pragmatic proposal for denying mass killers the attention they seek and deterring future offenders. And they went. True it all. I mean, even if you did a Google search of vast murders, you will see almost every one of them. The activities beforehand are pounding on some sheets sometimes. How many people were killed? How many do I have to do to get the record? How did they get their attention on this media entity, that media entity? It's not like this circuitous line. It's a straight line that runs to be stillers. They have failed and are dying to get attention. And the media, especially the large media organizations that give the cues to all the billions of people that go on social media, they newsweek had these guys' names, the day of in a headline. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, well, of course. You know, it's repeated every 15 minutes on the hour on all the cable news channels, too. But, and I remember, and I reference this often when we are compelled to talk about these mass killing events, that.

When the Chicago Tribune used to be a newspaper, they would not publish the names of people who committed suicide because there was research that suggests that it creates copycats. Now, it's not the same sort of crime, obviously, but the problem is that people feel lonely, they feel isolated, and they think that they're only out is to take their own lives. And then they see somebody do that, and there's an outpouring of sadness and attention. And so it can instigate. copycats for people that are, you know, teetering on the margins. And so they didn't do it. And so it's sort of the same idea here that you don't want to glorify something that you don't want to see repeated. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. And by the way, they're not saying don't put the guy's name up if it's a suspect where he's at large and still can be dangerous. And it's an investigation and people, you need the community to help in most at large investigations. But it's a great point you bring up. This is not. really that complicated. That's why it bothers me. It's so obvious. It's just that it's packed journalism. And I used to be a part of it. I wrote in the article. I used to be, I still get, my stomach still gets sick when I see television news segments about murders where a station will banner it exclusive. I used to do that. They're basically saying we need eyeballs and advertising some money. So we're going to tell you that this tragic story, we're the only one who has it. It's just, So it's not like these guys can't get in a room, the powerful people at less than 10 major media entities, and then it's likely others would follow. Now, you still have, you know, deep investigators or people with 24 hours and nothing to do, go on and figure it out and splash it somewhere on Twitter or X or whatever the fuck. Whatever the hell. You wouldn't have. You minimize it. Yes, right, exactly. And it's astonishing to me that they won't get in a room. And as I wrote in the piece, if you're big media, you're getting criticized every day, which they are, this is a free one. This is a pat on the back by society. You finally decided to do something. And it's not really going to affect your bottom line. You get to all of them in a room to say, yeah, this is the least decent thing we can do. Well, the other important part of what you said, too, referencing the research is, you know, Don't report the names, but report everything else. The reporting everything else is part of it, too, which is an ongoing failure. So they report the thing they shouldn't report, and they don't report some of the things that they should report for political reasons. And that becomes a problem, too, because if you're trying to delve deeper into this, because these are all multivariate equations, if you're trying to delve deeper into this, then you have to understand, you know, how is this person radicalized? How did they go from the kid I knew when he was an adolescent to...

this monster who committed these horrific acts so maybe there's some things that can be gleaned that are useful for other people if they see their son or daughter going down a similar path and there can be interventions and so you need to present the body of the other information for for the public good frankly For sure. And actually, the third point in Tom Thieves in his organization's no notoriety protocol is one sentence that says, report the facts surrounding the mindset, demographic, and motivational profile without adding complementary color to the individual or their actors and downplay the individual's name and like this must be alleged to stay on as at large. Not complicated. Not complicated. Michael Golden. Are you an Arizona resident now? I mean, not to disclose a location. I am. I am. Very good. There's golf, this golf course is waiting for you. Another Chicago. Another Chicago or Illinois expat, you know? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I'm in for, I'm in for two days. Actually, it's 60 degrees and nice today here. I in Chicago for just a few days. But. This is like as good as you're going to get on May 28. It's a nice place to visit, I like to say. Michael Golden, author of Unlock Congress, he writes at the Golden Mean column on Substack, his piece, Neuter the Shooters, what the media can do to save lives. Mike, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Great to catch up, my friend. Thanks for inviting me, you and Quinn. Talk soon, and you joined us on theoffwealthgroup.com answerline. This is Chicago's morning answer. Your show keeps me alive during the week. There's nobody I'd rather listen to between 5 and 9 in the morning than you guys. On AM 560, the answer. Open mic!

Call it now. Open mic Friday. Yes, that time of the week, open mic Friday, where we take your calls. 312-642-2-5600. AlphaWealthgroup.com, Antoineline. 312-6-4-2-5600. Take your calls with comments, compliments, concerns, criticisms, general crack pottery. We'll take it all. And there are a few matters I still need to get to, including this. The administration needs some help, so. Trump supporters please opine. The musical lineup for the America 250 birthday celebration wasn't particularly impressive to start and it is getting less impressive with each passing day as these artists drop out. The original featured performers that were advertised. Martina McBride, Young MC, Bust a Move, C&C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, Millie Vanilly, The Commodores, Morris Day and the Time, Florida, and Brett Michaels. I don't know if that presents enough of a representation of... musical artistry that spans the generations. But the additional problem with the lineup is that it's, as I said, being paired. Young MC out. Millie Vanilli out. The Commodore's out. Morris Day and the Time is out now. Martina McBride also out. So now you're down to like Vanilla Ice Flooride at Brett Michaels and C&C Music Factory. This is, you know, this is celebration. That begins in earnest next week. I mean, next month I should, well, yeah, next month and runs through, of course, the 4th of July. So they need help. Artists that President Trump should reach out to, maybe personally. to join in the celebration. And Martina McBride wrote this long post on social media where she talked about she initially agreed to do this because she thought it was going to be nonpartisan and representative of the greatness of each of our 50 states and so on and so forth. And she found out or came to understand that that's not the case. And this is why she was backing out. I mean, it all sounds weird. It sounds she didn't make any specific allegations, just a general. One, you know, it sounds like maybe she just succumb to political pressure from her fans or artist friends or whatever it was. So there's always going to be that component of it. I haven't heard or seen anything where it's particularly partisan. It's Trump is the president. There's nothing the left can do about that. It's a celebration of the country and our 250 year existence. And so it should be. a unifying event and not political. And we're going to need some help, I think, in putting together, do we need to call Perry Farrell or somebody? 312-642-5600 AlphaWealthgroup.com call in line. Just wanted to put that out there.

I'll text 247 already. Leonard Skinner, Alman Brothers, Ted Nugent. Ted Nugent would be kind of fun. I mean, I do want some of the non-usual suspects, too, you know, not Lee Greenwood. And maybe some upcoming artists. Maybe you get a kiffness in there. Although that may be seen as a little political. Or five times August. No, but I mean, I have artists I'd love to see. I don't know if they perform. But, yeah, you want, you know, some whose perhaps heyday was behind them. Well, like all of the artists I just mentioned that have been invited. But some current, different musical genres. You want to be fun, entertaining for the assembled and those watching on television. Glenn in Orlando, you're not Chicago's morning. Good morning, Dan. So on the Mayor Johnson tour to Rome, he had 46 people in its entourage, including the president of Loyola, while Marco Rubio, when he went to Rome, had six people in his entourage. Interesting, huh? Yeah, thanks for the call, Glenn. And this was BLM Brandon's review of his time with the pontiff. This is where the pen met the pulpit a coming together. I believe that the Pope was blessed by our presence today. Our clergy actually led a prayer and prayed with His Holiness with the Pope. And I don't know how many people get an opportunity to actually pray for him, but at the end of the day, he is still a man. Yeah. At the end of the day, he's still a man. And the whole, like, the Pope was blessed to be, it was blessed to be in our presence. I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's like, the Post was literally blessed in our presence because we had clergy that prayed with him. But it, I think, could also fairly be interpreted. as he was just what he said. He was blessed to be in our presence. We really made his day. Branch and Johnson. In terms of the entourage, yeah, it's quite the lineup. I saw some of this. Melissa Conyers Irvin, the city treasurer of Chicago is able to make it. That's important. Stacey Davis Bill Gates, CTO president. An alder human Jason Irvin. Youssef Jackson, the newly minted president of the Rainbow Push. Reverend Tanya Lozano, she's a communist as well, many communists here. Another Alder human, Julia Ramirez was there. Mark Reed, President Loyola, as was mentioned. Alderman Lamont Robinson. Carmen Rossi, CEO of a hospitality company. I mean, of a restaurant group, right? Antonio Romanoucci, who's an attorney. Phil Stefani. I mean, Phil, did you really want to go with that contingent? Couldn't you schedule a time on your own? You probably could have. Jason Lee, senior advisor to the mayor.

Uh-huh. Quite the august group, you know, a lot of functionaries, political hacks. So I think I saw Guy Chipperoni was there. Yeah, or as part of the contingent. Yeah, Guy Chipperoni, political hack. Yeah. It really, just skimming through the list, it just reads like, um, The city on the decline. I mean, that's the kind of list I would think would be there when I see the city of Chicago when I look at what's happening. It's the city of decline. And when it comes to the quality of the quote unquote city elders, political, religious, corporate, otherwise. Yeah. Pretty unimpressive, generally speaking. A lot of suggestions for bands. Slayer. Yeah, that may be a little too hardcore for the 250. I did see Slayer at the PRX Civic Center. I think I've told that story before. So I won't bore you with it again. Yoko Ono. Yeah. Let's see. Let's see. All right. We'll keep going.

George in Burbank. Yeah, hi, Dan. I just wanted to say I'm sick and tired of hearing every usecaster or weather person saying it's beautiful outside and sunny when it's 86 degrees and they're sitting there in their air-conditional office and you're outside and you've got bugs. And whenever I'm driving, I'm always going towards the sun. I'd rather have it cloudy and give me like 50 degrees. Sit outside, smoke a cigar. No bugs. Keep your beverage a little colder. And, you know, you know, let them, let them, let them, let them, if it's so beautiful outside, go put your, your, your news desk in the middle of the park lot and let's see how beautiful it is out there. All right. Cheryl Scott, you've been noticed. All right. Thanks, George. Complaining about the coverage of the weather. All right. To, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, he's got some band suggestions. Hi, yes. I'd like to suggest Earthwind and Fire in Chicago. Thanks for the call, Adam. Yeah, both good suggestions. Love Earthwind and Fire. Almost, you know, I mean, I'm surprised actually the village people aren't on the list.

And so we could do, see Trump do his little dance. Maybe that would be perceived as too political, too, too partisan. I don't, but whatever. Whatever he does is going to be perceived just political and partisan. So just get good acts and make an entertaining show and, you know, ignore the the nattering nabobs of negatism. Uh, uh, Berlin in Michigan. Okay, Dan, I want to talk to you about slogans that wins elections now. For the last past eight years, I've been ranked. At the height of Woke, Lori Lightfoot said, I'm black, a woman, I'm gay. She won. I called in and told you that when Brandon Johnson, when I heard him say, I will invest in people, and he kept saying it, kept saying it, and he won. I don't know if you heard James Talarico of his name is his speech the other day. But he said, those who come to serve, that stuck with me. Those who come to serve and then he wrapped up in a nice bowl, the left's wish list. from health care to yada, yada, yada, yada, all of it. And he ended his speech with, I will serve you. Now, I don't know if Texans are as stupid as people from Illinois, New York, and California. But I predict. this race will be close. I'm not going to say he's going to win, but this race will be close, and I don't believe it will be decided that day. So we're going to see who the makers are, who the hard workers are, and who the takers are, and who the takers are, and if it's more takers than hard workers and makers. Thanks for the call, Verlant. Yeah, well, I mean, with the people of Texas, obviously, have made very different decisions up and down the... political power structure there than the people of Illinois, so that should give you some indication. Yeah, I mean, it's, look, as I said the other day, I mean, Ken Paxton is a very flawed candidate, both with, because I don't think he's particularly dynamic and because of his ethical and moral lapses. But I think probably when it comes down to it, and this is why they're. getting out of the gate fast to brand James Talarico as the mindless neo-Marxist weirdo that he is, his, you know, choir boy image and invocation of scripture, notwithstanding. There was a good to actually riff on this, too, about... you know, the infirmities with respect to Ken Paxton's candidacy. Jason Howerton on X. Since I'm going to be hearing this for the next six months as a Texas voter, let me answer the question. You would vote for an adulter over James Talarico? That's not very Christian.

Here's the truth. I would rather vote for almost anyone else who is going to at least advocate for conservative policies over a liberal, over a literal heretic who wears my faith like a skin suit, advocates for policies that harm children, endorses immorality, and generally harm society. Ken Paxton has personal baggage. I don't deny that, but James Talarico is plenty too, and he openly mocks God's law and treats Jesus as a political mascot, all while pushing a far... a radical far-left agenda that would be a disaster for my state. You see, I'm an adult. I don't expect those who are seeking political office to be memorial superiors or even trustworthy. They are tools to be used to do the least amount of damage via policy. I wish more pastors and men who live, God, the lives were running. I really do. But the options we get are what they are. It's about policy, not personality. Right. I mean, this is essentially... In many ways, Trump redux in so many ways. And all of this, you know, how can you call yourself a Christian? We're voting for flawed men and women. Now, there are layers of the flaws. Some are disqualifying. Some are not. And the context matters because it's a binary choice. And we're adults and we have to make difficult binary choices. That's what life is about. Tradeoffs. So that was a good riff. Eduardo in Tampa Bay. Yeah, good morning, Dan. I would definitely support a Maduro-type operation as far as Mr. Rao Castro, because I believe they have the USS Nimitz nearby. So I definitely would support it. Trump is in office right now. It's time to get rid of the Cuban communist regime. All right. Thanks for the call, Eduardo. George and Lamont. But I don't know if you need me for the internet. George. No, no. Yes, yes. Are you calling me back? Are you calling me back or you could call the other guy back? George Lamont. I'm calling the other guy back. Good, good. All right, that's right. I had a question you earlier, I think it was earlier this week. You were talking to McCarthy about the slush fund, you know, the DOJ slush fund. And he made the comment that, well, it's hard to, you know, say with this administration is doing, you know, quote, the same thing. And he didn't have any examples of that. And I know, you know, in general, like they always do, they say, oh, well, he's doing, you know, political prosecutions or whatever. specifically with regard to the J6 and the over prosecution of many, many J6 people. What is, what was McCarthy's analogy that is, you know, that he claimed is currently being done by the, by the administration? Um, uh, I'm blanking. Yeah, the, that, that was done under Biden. Is that we're talking about? Well, the J6 was done under Biden, yes. And he's saying, I thought, well, we're doing this. Or not we, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I mean, I mean, the, the slush fund for another, what he analogized, the Biden administration did that he's saying Trump is doing with the anti-weaponization fund, right?

Yes, I thought he was saying, I thought what he, maybe I misunderstood him. I thought he was saying that we shouldn't, you know, it's hard to say to complain about, you know, over prosecution by the DOJ when Trump is doing the same thing with his DOJ. That's what I thought he was saying. Oh, oh, oh, not the fun, not the fun. Yes. And so he's talking about things like opening up a criminal investigation into E.G. and Carol, he's talking about, I, I, I, I, I, he's talking about. I would probably, you know, I think he's talking about the James Comey prosecution, particularly the 8647. I mean, that's what he's talking about, using the DOJ to go after his political opponents. That's what he's referencing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, it just seems not quite analogous to over-prosecution of the J-6 people, right? I mean, and I'm not saying some people for J-6 should have been prosecuted, but it seems to me pretty clear that there was a political over-prosecution of those. And I thought he was drawing the comparison to that. And it seems a little different when you're just picking on like a James Comey, but whatever. I, thanks for the culture. I completely agree. I completely agree, both in terms of the substance, in certain cases, not all thousand prosecutions, but generally speaking, I completely agree. And it's different when it's the director of the FBI, for example, because you are bringing the weight of federal law enforcement and the federal government, the power of the federal government against ordinary citizen. And James Comey is not an ordinary citizen, not somebody in that role. former DOJ prosecutor, FBI director. And it has to do, 8647 doesn't, but the other matter of his perjury charges has to do with his professional conduct. That is not the same thing. I agree. By the way, on the anti-weppization fund, since I brought it up, but George didn't. Sparkle Beach Ken meets Patrick Bateman, the governor of California. What a flim flammer. He offered this. One thing that I think we're going to try to do with your support is tax 100%. Anyone from California that receives any of those funds, we want to tax 100%. of those proceeds. And that's an action the state of California can take. It's an action we look forward to taking. I mean, so wildly I got institutional, but I know that he's indifferent to that. It's just populist pablum. Scott Bessent was asked about that in his term to serve as Karoline Leavitt yesterday. And this is how that went. Anti-weaponization fund, your response to the governor's call from him. There's no cure for stupid. Yeah, there really isn't any immediate cure for stupid. Maybe one of the pharma companies will come up with a magic pill. Nick on the northwest side. Hey, Nick. Nick? Nick? Nick?

Okay. How about the other Nick and Kenosha? Yeah, Nick and Kenosha. I got you, Nick. Oh, okay. I was like, wait, was it me? No, I was supposed to tell you that you should have Sean on for the last hour of your show. Sean who? He always asked for another hour. Sean Thompson. Oh, gosh. Yeah, that's never going to happen. But I appreciate that. He rigs. He ribs you all the time. You can to defend yourself at least. Yeah. I don't know what it is, but I can suffer the slings and arrows of Sean from Mountwood Park. Thanks for the calling. I created him a whole cloth, for goodness sake. I don't need to spend more time with him than, you know, is absolutely necessary, particularly on the air. But we have fun. The cigar night thing was fun, as always. So we appreciate people coming up. And I know. Sean is not man enough to call in and demand more time. So he uses flunkies to call in and waste our time during my open mic Friday. I'm just kidding. Roger Southside, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Roger? Do we have phone line problems? What's going on here? Jerry in Milwaukee, you're on Chicago's morning answer. Yeah, good morning, Dan. I just... I wanted to congratulate you on the quality and the caliber of your guests. And General Tiger was a great example today. But I just wonder, do you get these guests through personal relationships, or do you just do a lot of research and ferret them out that way? Well, thanks for the call, Jerry. I mean, so if you want sort of behind the scenes, how the sausage is made, I mean, some of it's personal or become personal relationships over time, but our producer Quinn books all the guests, and I sometimes have suggestions, and he otherwise uses his best judgment. But, you know, over time, if you've done this as long as we have here, you build up stables of guests in, you know, sort of different areas of policy or cultural expertise. You know, you're always looking to add to the field of people from which you can, from whom you can draw. And you add when you see somebody comes out with an interesting article or a book or runs for office, you know, something like that. So, yeah, that's how we do it. And we try to get an interesting cross section of guests each morning. I think we do a pretty good job as good as anybody else out there. I'll say that. Let's try Nick again. Nick, Northwest Side, the other Nick. Yeah. Can you hear me now? Yeah, go ahead. Great, great thing. Yeah, I love to start my day with you and with your show. I was saying that some time ago, Trump ordered Benjamin Netanyahu. to withdraw his planes to not make an attack when one missile hit, I believe, was an Israel swimmer. And it's a serious problem where Trump seems to call the shots too much on his own. You know, I think that's where there's no king's stuff comes from me. You know, I sort of see that from that. He's got to rely a little bit on someone who is diplomatic, such as Marco Rubio.

You've got to rely on someone who has a military background and knows how to get things done, such as Pete Hegseth, and maybe one other or two others of a similar mind frame, you know, balance it out. Because that told the Iranian people who run the government there now, which are no good, that they can rely on Trump to be indecisive to back off like a lot of Western societies are. And that's the one problem while we're having a stalemeter. This is going to drag on for months and months the way it's going. So that's my opinion. Trump, please get some as best as you can get outside people, their opinions. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thanks for the call, Nick. I mean, I'm sure he's taking input from his inner circle of advisors, including. at the cabinet level, including from the Joint Chief of Staff and the Joint, the CENCOM commander, Brad Cooper, and others in the military that he trusts, I'm sure he is. And then, you know, and then in terms of the conversations and the collaborations between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu here as it pertains to Iran in the larger Middle East, I mean, they've got a relationship. And, you know, so they're going to talk to, I mean, you're going to have heads of state. talk directly and that's okay so i mean i don't think it's so much that he's going it alone and he's his own he's he's singularly his own counsel um i think that you know there are there are legitimate questions to ask about the thinking behind the decisions he's making, but I don't think he's going it alone. I mean, in fact, one of the things you could argue, as we've sort of plumbed the depths of this week, is whether he's being too deferential to the Gulf states. Rick and Carol Stream. Hey, Dan, there's a yard sale in West Chicago this weekend. It's for a Love You More Animal Shelter. So all the proceeds will go to help out the puppies. Okay, where's the yard sale? In West Chicago, on Wilson, just south of Roosevelt, Papa Joliet. Okay. All right. To help the puppies. Thanks for the call, Rick. It sounds like Spencer Pratt's campaign platform. He was on with... Fox and Friends and had this to say. He's doing GOTV right now. Don't forget that primary is Tuesday. And recent polling, I know we're focused on Pratt and Karen Bass Bass, but polling has this like basically all, some polling, not all, but some polling has this, all three candidates that Nithya Raman within the Marjorva as well. So. Yeah, if you're an L.A. resident or want to go out and be one for a day based on their own, their election laws, here's his push. Sorry, can I just get that second part of the question? Yeah, I plan on.

I have a feeling God wants me just to win with 51% on June 2nd and it's over. I believe it's a low turnout election. And that's why, again, I'm on this beautiful couch to remind everybody to get your ballots in today. Don't wait until June 2nd because we will definitely win if everyone who's as angry as me in Los Angeles just goes and votes. And they don't just share things on social media or tell their... friend, they're angry, they physically go vote. And they don't have to wait until June 2nd. A lot of people are concerned about elections and you've got to vote in person. No, you vote today. You put it in the mailbox. You drop it in the ballot box. We win with the most votes. And a lot of people again in California are concerned about, oh, election fraud. We can always outvote cheating, period. And we can do that. literally in the next five days with just moms alone and animal lovers because I'm also going to stop the abuse of these dogs on the streets and these alleged no-kill shelters. Yeah, he's big on that, moms and the animal lovers. And he's documented the abuse of animals in these homeless encampments and so on and so forth. It's pretty serious about that. And just to piggyback on that GOT effort. He also offered this message to undecided. All right, Spencer. So what is your message to people who are still undecided? Undecided. Well, they obviously don't live in Los Angeles City. So if they're undecided, they must be in a different country. Because if you live in LA City, you know I'm going to look around candidate. And if you're looking around and you're still undecided, I'm concerned for your health. You need to go get your brain checked and get a doctor's appointment. Or maybe you enjoy stepping in human poop or the smell of fentanyl smoke at the park. I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of these people she's going to offer treatment for her. She's going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentany or supermen. I mean, I could go on. So I don't think there's very many undecided voters. I think that's why on June 2nd, I will become the mayor with 51% of the vote. So just make sure the only thing you're probably undecided about is if you put your ballot in the mail today or you vote in person. And I would say for that. Vote today. Do not get in your head about, oh, I have to vote in person. It's more secure. That's nonsense. Get your ballot in the mail, whether it's at the post office or in a ballot box, just vote today. All right. I like the look around candidate. Look around and is what I'm telling you true. Is that your... Is that what's your, is that how you're living? Is that what you're seeing? Are these the things you're concerned about? And I think that's really been his sort of unvarnished description of what is true is what fueled his campaign compounded with and advanced by, you know, the creative ads and the outside help with AI and so forth. I got to get this in because this is, this is a classic.

And it's a favorite topic, probably right below attacks on Cubs fans. I mean rhetorical attacks, like Lee Elyas rant. Well, this rant against cyclists is to cyclists what Lee Elyle's rant about Cubs fans was, and both are spot on. I cannot stand these bicycleists. When I'm doing 30 and a 50, because I'm stuck behind eight grown men dressed like fucking radioactive highlighters, I start to develop opinions. Why the fuck are you guys riding three deep down the road? Like, there's no, they're not handing out gold medals at the end of this. cul-de-sac, Kyle, and why the f*** you wear the spandex with all the sponsor names? Like, nobody's looking at you and saying, oh, this 43-year-old might be the future of athletics. Nobody looks like they're having fun. Nobody is smiling. They look like they're transporting organs that have to be to the hospital in six minutes or less. Meanwhile, traffic is backed up. Three-fourths. Zip codes because Chad and his tour to midlife crisis thinks the road belongs to him and Team Spandex Thunder. And then when you go to pass them, they throw their hands up like you're the fucking villain. Like you just violated the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, you just spend $10,000 to be the world's most expensive inconvenience. And why do these guys travel in packs? One bicyclist, sure, I can handle that. But eight of them? That's a tactical formation. That's a infantry unit. And they roll up on you sounding like a flock of asthmatic geese. I mean, that is, that's an all-time classic right there. Instant classic. Uh, Bill and Waukegan. Oh, boy. Hey, Dan. Hey, Dan. Thanks for taking my call. It's, uh, it's great to be back on, uh, on U.S. soil. Um, I just wanted to comment. I called you from Spain on the, uh, Camino del Norte. And I just got to tell you if anybody's ever, if anybody's ever interested in doing something that is just majestically beautiful because you walk along the ocean and you get to the cathedral to Santiago, uh, to. touch and view the St. James' holiness that's there, I tell you, it's well worth it, Dan. I suggest if before you get, you know, before you blow out your back playing golf or something like that, you go out there and you try it and just enjoy the camaraderie of people you don't even know from different countries and everything else like that. I tell you, it's the best thing I've ever done. And I just wanted to say that. I'm, you know, I try to listen to every time I was walking. And I tell you, it was the best part of the day. So thanks again, even internationally, for putting me on and for taking care of everything. You guys, you and your crew are amazing. And thanks again. I just want to let you know that it was a great time. Thanks. I appreciate you, Bill. Thanks so much. And now that you're back, you know, you got a bit of a voter fraud problem in Waukegan.

It reared its ugly head when you were gone. Make sure people aren't voting for their dead mothers up there if you would. I appreciate that. Okay. All right, Dan. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. See you. Dawn, Naperville. Good morning, Jan. How are you this morning? Good. So you had spoken about Eric Church a few weeks ago in his commitment speech, which was fantastic. But I wanted to let you know and your listeners know that some years ago he had a song called The Outsiders. And I think it was U.S. 99 that had him on. And he did a parody song about North Siders and South Siders. And it was really good. I mean, we're going back here to what, like 2005, 2006. I don't remember the specific, you know, words of the song. But if anybody has a copy of that anywhere, it is really good. And, you know, nobody can make fun of a Cub fans better than Mike North. Yes, well, that's, yes, very good. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll have Mike North on. On your show, Dan. Get the, we'll get the lyrics to the air. Get the lyrics to the air church song and have Mike North on to sing them. How about that? Thanks for the call, Don. I have to dig that up. PM, quickly PM. 560s man in Europe. I am reparting breaking news from Vatican City covering what was perhaps the most consequential political and diplomatic summit this century. I am one of 45 dignitaries spelled D-I-D accompanying Mayor Brandon and his Johnson as America's most devout. God-fearing and deeply hairstyled mayor visits the Holy Seeing the Pope's most profound prayers, namely those designed to farce Chicago Bears to keep playing at soldiers. However, according to my sources in the Curia, America's very first Pope in 2000 years has thus far been unwilling to meet the prayer request of Chicago's mayor most known for his humility because... All right, Piyama. I told you to be quick. I mean, I appreciate the on-the-ground reporting, but we got to get to Chuck and Delavan to close it out. Hey, big day on Sunday. Downtown Sharon, Wisconsin, 8 a.m. There's a big car show by Pat's Bruin' Q, and then there's going to be a band at a band show at 4 o'clock, and there'll be plenty of dancing. Great, Chuck. Thank you. Have a great weekend. Appreciate it. Have a great weekend. Everybody else as well. Hear about the big stories of the day. Then talk about them right here on Chicago's Morning Answer. On AM 560, The Answer. Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467-500 to hear how Signature Bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.