7-13-26 Scott Sloan Show

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We'll be back with you on 700 W. Crazy Times and College. It's always crazy, but it's especially crazy now. He had Lindsey Graham passing away. He dies before Mitch McConnell, which no one's all coming. But nonetheless, it points out the absurdity of the average age of Congress now 65 years old. That's the average age. Retirement age is now average, only in the United States Congress. We have the Democratic Party that's being overhauled, overtaken by socialists. And the president, President Trump is losing blocks of voters, of key voters, including now working class voters, apparently according to polling, turning their back on President Trump. It is going to be a crazy, crazy summer. And then the midterms come up, of course. Is there any way out of this as Americans? Can we find a way out? Is there hope? Spike Cohen just happens to be making the rounds. He's back again on 700 W.W. former libertarian vice presidential candidate in a party that no one cares about. Spike, welcome back. How are you? I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me back on. Yeah, thanks for. Last time we spoke, you were the vice president. I don't know. That's not true at all. In 2020, you're the vice presidential nominee. We've talked since then. But you're out of the game. You're just. that's not what you're doing now right no i i started an organization called you were the power uh and we protect people against state and local government abuse uh and that can look like a lot of things it can look like eminent domain it can look like false charges it can look like uh having your children taken from you wrongfully all sorts of different stuff and uh and that's what we do now we've had we've been wildly successful we've processed over a thousand causes in the last three years we've lost once that's it yeah that's And that's as libertarian as he can get. It's like literally, so if you're like, only losing once is not libertarian. Well, I bring this up. And I'll get to this in just a second because I think that's perfect where I wanted to ask you. But, you know, if you're like, okay, I get Republicans, Democrats, what the hell's the libertarians? Like, are you a liberal? No, no, no, no. So what it is basically is just leave me the hell alone. Basically. Government can be a referee. I'm not saying, you know, anarchy would be. We don't have any. Okay, be a referee, be fair to both sides. Just play it down a minute. Put up some guardrails. Tell me what the rules are. Let's go. Don't favor one side or the other. And let me do my thing. And, you know, I'm free to do what I want to do as long as I don't harm someone else. That's it. It's as basic as it gets. We want government to treat us as individual human beings. It's sort of like the goal. Don't pick winners and losers. Yeah, don't pick winners and losers. Don't treat me like a political obstacle or a financing opportunity, a revenue opportunity. Don't treat my family like something that is either something you're trying to leverage or is in your way. Treat me the way that you want to be treated. And frankly, treat me the way you would if you weren't a politician. You wouldn't walk up to me and hold a gun to my head and tell me what to do or tell me to give you your money or anything like that. And there's a million examples you can use. I think like some of the most basic ones is like C. belt laws for example i never understood that and that's something i've never been identified oh wait a minute hold just a second i choose not to wear a seatbelt who am i harming well you're harming your family yeah i i screw my family over all the time

You're not getting in much bigger ways than that. Right, right, right, right. Ask Mike Brable, right. What are we doing here? But it's like a basic, and you got to have a marijuana schedule and we're talking about that finally. Like, it sounds like they're going to get this done. It would definitely be a move in the right direction, allowing it to at least be, I think, with Schedule 3. at least allowing it to be used for medicinal purposes, medical testing, and things like that. And the more that they do that, the more that it leads to people seeing the potential medicinal benefits of it. And I say this is someone who... I haven't, I've been sober for about 20 years now. And I know few people who I truly believe are actually moderately consuming it if they are. But I'll say this, we've seen with Prohibition and now with the war on drugs, it just makes it worse. The Howard's cartels, it does not lower the rates of abuse. It just, it destroys it is, it makes everything worse and doesn't actually address the problem. And here in Ohio, and I've been banging this drum for a while and I get a lot of side eye from conservative Republicans or. ones that just want to bury their head anyway. But on the inside, people are like, hey, good for you, man. It's about, I mean, we have a governor here that decided like, you know what, I never really liked gambling, gambling, you know, using phones and draft kings, whatever it is. And I think we ought to ban that. And he said, the worst thing ever did is now. And basically the legislature is now moving towards getting rid of gambling, gaming, by putting us so many restrictions in for. our partners and for those platforms, there's no way anyone would be allowed to. You just simply would. No more part of I bet. You can't bet on college sports. If you go to a casino spike, they propose that you're only allowed to gamble $100 per hand or per play up to eight times. So you're only, the government has said that the conservatives of Ohio, Spike are telling us you can't spend, you can't gamble more than $800 a day. What? The arbitrary nature of it, it's back to stay six feet away from people and, you know, no more than 25% capacity. And you'll say, well, where is this coming from? Well, we just, we think you should do that. It's all, it's a type of security theater. If you're only spending $100 and only eight bets a day or whatever, then you're safe. But if you did a ninth one, that's when your family's at risk. We got to allow you to have some fun. I mean, we're not Puritans. The Ohio Taliban is one who's in charge here. It really is. It's like, we're going to put a new, we're going to rename the state. We're going to put an N. And so it's no, Ohio. You're not allowed to do anything fun. We're not allowed to do anything. It's, I mean, if you, and I say this is someone that does this, if you're trading in the stock market, you're gambling. Like, I mean, there's so much of your, if you started, this is my, what, third small business that I've started, this one's a nonprofit, but it's a gamble. I mean, anytime you start something, it's a win. It's a gamble. It's a gamble. And I'm not even speaking to the merits of whether it's a good or bad thing to gamble. Again, I'm very low on the vice scale personally. But I'll just tell you, like, if when you get government involved in something, they create arbitrary barriers at best, and they create black markets at worse. It doesn't make things better. And how did we get to a point, too, where in the era of Trump, I think, especially?

you're not allowed to criticize the people you support. Like I've never, it really turned, right? It's like then you're somehow you're cast out. You're the Thompson's gazelle that's going to get eaten by the lion unless you stay with the pack. And there's something to be said about that. But we should be challenging the people we support. We should challenge the people, you know, we should fight against the people we think are stupid, certainly in whatever other side it is you look at. But especially for those people who are doing the bidding that we support it. More so than any other politician in our era, and possibly in American history, Donald Trump is an expert on creating, and people get upset when I say this, so hear me out. He has created a cult of personality. And I'll be clear what that means. It doesn't mean you're in a cult. What it means is that a cult of personality means he has almost total control of both his supporters and his greatest detractors. So he controls the conversation constantly. The longer that goes on, given a long enough timeline, what ends up happening similar to. other cults of personality is if you are on his side you can never critique him you can and this is true of any of these you can never critique we see these in churches we see this all the time you can ever critique them you can never create critique the system even if the system isn't isn't what originally was don't question the man behind the curtain and if you are against him, the same thing happens. You can't ever give him credit for anything he ever does because now you've betrayed the cause of resisting him. And so you create this binary of either, in this case, Donald Trump is the worst person ever, or Donald Trump is, I mean, we're increasingly see self-described Christians who are far quicker to defend Trump than they are to defend Jesus. Right. I mean, the whole meme that he put out was indefensible and yet people are like, well, oh, shucks, it's just. the war guy i mean you're taking on the pope that's not a good fight and if you can do that and get away with it then of course you know you gives you more license too well the grift right i mean the record law got to respect the grift man it's it's pretty epic line your pockets and everyone else around you with with money and what he's doing in dc now my buddy spike coens is doing he is mr libertarian party and uh yeah i kind of the beginning intimated we'd get there but the problem with the libertarians i always had as much as i love the philosophy behind it is finding someone that could be the standard bearer that you would take seriously because At last check, the standard bearer of this may possibly be afro-man. Now, I think Afro's funny. I think what he did in here was great. But now he's talking about making a presidential run as the libertarian party can. I'm like, I'm not quite sure we take him seriously. That's the problem. So the interesting thing, so Aframan's been around, at the very least, so we've had other celebrity in New York. Howard Stern was the gubernatorial candidate, which was a disaster for us because he's not remotely libertarian. He was just using our ballot access. You picked Kenny Kramer once. The actually original guy that Kramer was based on from Seinfeld was a candidate. Yeah, yeah. So at least in the case of Afro man, he's been with around us for a few years now. Yeah.

So he's like one of us, kind of. And so I would give him that at the very least. But I would say this. If you're going to run for the president of the United States of America, yes, you're running third party. Yes, you don't have an effective chance of winning. There's nothing legally stopping you, but you're probably not going to win. We never have. You have to have like. When I ran for vice president, I made sure I had at least a vague position on just about every single thing on earth, which doesn't sound like much until you realize there's a lot of things on earth. And when you're running at the top of the slot, they're going to ask you about all of it. And if he's got that answer, hey, he can run. They're over 35 American citizens. I love what he did. I love what he did. It's right down the road from here in Adams County. And I love it. It's just like... I think you need kind of like maybe Rand Paul or Thomas Massie, someone like that to jump over and then there'd be some... And why would they do that? I don't know, right? Why would you do that? That's the... See you're a liberal chairman, but you're realist. Like, every little bit of this is the year. We're going to do it. We're going to get... Like, you're not. No, there was an adult's, what was it? Robot chicken episode where they went through the years from like, and I think that was up to like 2012 or 2008. They're like, this is going to be our year. It's going to be our year. And it was not our year. And we get why, right? It's the way the system is. The electoral system is the way it is. The debate system is the way it is. It's not going to change. If they allowed us to have the same ballot access they did, the Republicans and Democrats, if they allowed us to have the same debate access they did. then it would be like other countries where, yeah, the main two parties win most of the time. But every once in a third party wins. That's why they don't allow that. And they haven't allowed that for quite some time. The Republican Party was a third party at one point. Once they got into office, post-Civil War, there was one thing that Republicans and Democrats agreed on. We're the only ones who should be able to participate in this in any meaningful way. And that's what it's looked like ever since. That's what the cabala. And right, it's, it's, it. Again, if we did this in our private lives, we'd probably be indicted by the SEC. It's a RICO, right? Exactly. And they do it. It's like insider training. Same thing. It is an election cartel. Yeah. It is a cartel. There's no doubt about it. Spike Cohen is here on 700, W. Talking about the libertarian effort here. I think locally we've got some libertarians that. locally seem to do pretty well, and it's more of a local kind of party at times. Yeah, there's a guy Mike Mainz. Yeah, I know Mike. Yeah, I think city council races. Yeah, so, I mean, we win locally. We win occasionally at the state legislative level, but we've never won a statewide race like governor or attorney general or something like that. We've never won a federal race, Congress, Senate, or president, vice president. So we've never won any of those. And I actually, what started me starting you with the power was realizing whatever I was going to do post 2020 campaign had to start at the local and state level. And so we started by like going after city councils that were using eminent domain to like, you know, shut down private businesses because they were, they wanted to run them out of town and put in their own business. Yeah, a huge case here back in the day in Norwood. Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of stuff. And we've now grown to the point. We've gotten legislation passed in multiple states. I just got back from Arkansas. We stopped the governor.

from destroying a small town in Franklin County with a prison project that would have required tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure instead of building it about an hour up the road for none of that. All sorts of incredible stuff we've been doing. That's good grassroots, you know, hands on. And you're just talking about that now, Spike-Co and made me think about the data center battle. We have that. It's everywhere. But here in Ohio, we are fifth in the country when it comes to data center. I'm not against data centers per se. And I want that. I would love to have them. But there's an environmental strain on there. There is the electricity crunch. We don't have our power grid as terrible as it is. That's going to add more of a strain. We have regulatory obstacles like, you know, adding nuclear and things like that. What's a libertarian angle on it? So I'll tell you my angle on this is that the biggest two issues are that, and one of them is an angle we're working on, is the government is using eminent domain to take land from people so that they can build data centers. If you're a part of a multi-trillion dollar industry, by the way, if you take out AI development, we've been in a recession for years. So it's... It's this big, growing, booming industry. It's a bubble. Okay, pay for the land then. Like, if your business model requires you to have someone steal land for you and buy it for pennies on the dollar, then I don't know, maybe your business model should change. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, and this is kind of the externality, is that it drives up energy costs because of how much energy it uses. The drum I've been banging for years is we were given the birthright of nuclear power. And because our parents and grandparents got scared of, you know, were made to lay under their desks in school and whatever. Nuclear anything just scares them, even though it's the safest form of energy production. And the confidences are using it for generations. It's not, and any country that denuclearizes, they get more dependent on the fossil fuels they're trying to get away from. And the cost of energy goes through the roof and becomes dependent on weather factors when you're using like solar and wind. There's no reason. And we'd have to start now to get it in a few years from now. But there's no reason that energy shouldn't be. extremely cheap, completely affordable, and much safer for that matter. Well, there's all the element. Now, this is the other side of this, though, too, Spike, as you talked about that, okay, it's created in the nuclear power plants, but then there's transmission, which means more eminent domain, right? I mean, if you, we need, we desperately need to add transmission lines. How do you do that without eminent domain? I think for the most part, you can upgrade the existing infrastructure. There's also, I mean, so eminent domain's in the Constitution. It's not to say they can't ever be used. Problem is it's not usually used for infrastructure. It's used for things like... Private business and things. They call it urban renewal or city beautification. And it's, well, we don't like these small businesses here. We want to attract bigger ones. And that'll raise more revenue. And after the kilo decision in 2005, that's considered a public use. Well, it's not. Stealing land from something. The perfect example of what we were talking about. If I look at your small business, not as you as an individual with a small business, but as a obstacle to me getting... more revenue and potentially funding to my campaign to bring in a much bigger business that can raise a bunch more money, then I'm not treating you the way that I should, and I'm misusing my power as a government official. And I think the other thing with nukes is, you know, I think in maybe our great grand kids or something, you'll go on Amazon and buy fuel for your furnace. It'll be a small nuclear reactor, right? That's what it'll be. The way that we're going, especially now with like... It'll be in a shoebox. Yeah, like with thorium reactors and things like that. Your car is going to get powered by.

Right. It's not. Or we'll go the fusion route and energy will be so cheap that you can just get charged, plug in anywhere for free. It'll be like water. Yeah, you'll be able to swapping a battery out every, you know, my, my dad bought this and now I got to buy a new 50 years later. The price will be somewhere between tap water and air. Exactly. It's going to be just so plentiful. It'll be all over the place. And you'll have it. You'll have stuff. But again, you can't do something because. a small percentage of it's going to go wrong. And now you're back into the trap between the two parties that want to ban things because it doesn't serve their own self-interest. Especially when there's fewer accidents and less deaths and less destruction than the existing ways that we currently get entered. Yeah, yeah. I was debating distracted driving the other day with a safety engineer going, it's fabricated. I mean, the results are getting... The object of driving is being distracted. You're looking for somebody holding their phone. I'm like, the whole thing is a distraction. Anyone who's ever driven a car with their kids in the back of it? Like it's distracted driving? What are we talking about? It's like I said that. If you want to go after something, this time you go after the family who just got. Parents and minivans. Just got ice cream. Yes. Clearly. That's the real. And that's a real election seller too. You want to get reelected. Go after the parents and minivans. He is Spike Cohen. Spike Popper. and he was a former vice presidential candidate libertarian party mr libertarian now he's in local activism here you are the powers name of his group and i'm sure you're going to be involved in the data center battle before too long so roll your sleeves up let's go we're definitely doing it we're doing anywhere anytime that the government is abusing people and making their lives harder we get involved we're a 50 state organization and we've had a nearly 100% success right well you shouldn't even leave the tri-state area then you have just a hang out right here because there's all sorts of Fix it. It needs to be done. We're doing an eminent domain case down in Kentucky. We've gotten them to halt something in a place called Frogtown. Okay. We're working on stuff in Indiana. We're helping to get a family and get their children back after they were wrongfully accused of abuse. Not currently anything in Ohio right now. Okay. Well, there's plenty here. Your listeners have stuff. Go to U.S.Power.net slash help and ask for our help. I'll open a spike-co and substation here for you. Yes. Yes. I appreciate it popping in, buddy. Absolutely. Thanks again. Scott Sloan Show. This is the home of the Red 700, WLW, Cincinnati.

All right, back to the grind, y'all. Back to the grind. Scott Sloan here, 700 WLW. Reds baseball, thank God. Thank God we got three days off. Thank God. You're having a worse day than maybe, I don't know, the front office, the Reds, the Nick Crawl. How about Carl McDaniel? Carl McDaniel is the guy. The grandfatherly guy with the long pointy beard. Looked like he was maybe the fourth member of ZZ Top. This was the guy that was gored and tossed by a bull bison Friday night at Yellowstone. You've seen the video presumably now. If you haven't, it is a much say because... The guy suffered multiple bulk and bones. He's conscious. He's joking. He's going to be okay. So that's the good news there. But here's this, you know, grandfather looking at a grandfatherly age, you know, you put on a few LBs. And you know that at that age and with that weight, you're not going to outrun a bison. You're just not going to do it. And I cannot wait to see the Bills. As a Bills fan, I can't wait to see the memes. But nonetheless, he's going to be okay. And initially when I saw this, as you did too go, okay, here's another clown that's getting way too close for comfort to a bison thinking this is a Disney movie. And I was shocked to learn, actually pleasantly surprised to learn that that wasn't the case, that everyone was standing pretty far back when this whole thing happened. because the male was in heat, he was riled up. You know, it's testosterone. And I don't have to tell you as a guy, you know, when you're at that age, you're testosterone. At least the bison wasn't drinking because that's the worst thing that humans do. And this will be men of the species. Is the testosterone and alcohol, it's a lethal combination. We do the dumbest things. when we're influenced by testosterone and alcohol. Really, if you're looking to ban stuff in the world to fix problems, that'd be one of them. Testosterone ban. So there was no provocation whatsoever on the part of Mr. McDaniel or anyone else. And the bull was riled up. It's mating season there, which just coincides with the height of tourism season. And they had already, I guess, causing another group of people to leave. You could see a picnic table there awaiting maybe yogi bear. But there was like a carton of eggs and a bunch of stuff people left behind because they took off because this male bison just said, hey, you know what? I'm going to hang right here. And he just kind of rested near that picnic table or leftovers from dinner. And then the witnesses said he got up kicking like a rodeo horse and clearly agitated. A truck drove by. He looked like he wanted to take off after a white pickup truck. And so Mr. McDaniel's grandson were there. And they looked like to be a safe distance away, I would say. The grandson escaped because he was a lot faster and smaller.

And as they say, hey, listen, you know, how do you, how do I avoid being gored by a bison? If there's a couple of, well, I only got to be faster than my grandfather. And he was, and he flipped him up in the air good, but God, it looked like 10, 15 feet at least. And that bison was not happy with things. And everyone said, well, we tried to the, that after it was gourd. We tried to make ourselves look bigger and scared. And events of that scared them up. I, you know, I know about bears. Bears, you make yourself look bigger. And if you turn and run, they're going to hunt you done and eat you. I'm not sure what the protocol is with, with bison. I never come across. Actually, we were in Utah a few years ago. And we're, I don't know, maybe 50 yards away. from live actual bison there was a fence there i don't know if that would have stopped them but they seemed like they were just chilling and they weren't agitated and riled up and of course it was in the winter too um i'm not sure what the protocol though is bison i got a thumb through that in your head going wait a okay bears make a bigger uh if i'm attacked by a shark i got to punch it in the nose um i think a camel attack i just i don't know if i try to run around behind it or something i'm not quite sure what the protocol is there though so if you're near i may have you decided maybe travel these areas maybe no okay well what do i do if an angry mal bison starts to attack me but uh that video will live on in infamy as a grandpa that got flipped upside down ass over tea kettle as they say beard at all upside down he's going to be fine he's going to be just fine but man Tell you what, that's something you wish you would happen to younger. First of all, you heal better, but the other thing is you've got a long, this guy doesn't have much life left for stories because he's only elderly oldies, he's grandpa for crying out loud. Good day, you know, the storytelling days, or you've got plenty of stories already. This is a pretty damn good story for him. All right, we have the passing of Lindsey Graham, and he's dead less than 48 hours, and I haven't even 24 hours, and the Internet's already got him poisoned by Iran. Iran did this. The Russians, Vladimir Putin got him. That's what this was. It could be the Illuminati. He knew something. I don't know. I'm surprised. Somebody hasn't, and probably has already thrown some Epstein stuff out there because, you know, never mind what the medical examiner literally told us hours after it happened. And that is probably why following news or stories today is just so damn exhausting. So Senator Lindsey Graham was 71. He died Saturday after a brief and sudden illness. So he was a brief and sudden illness. The cause of death, the medical examiner ruled it was an aortic dissection due to arterial sclerotic cardiovascular disease. Basically, you're eating too much of the stuff they told you not to eat. Hardening of the arteries, I believe is what they called it back in the day. And so they responded, ambulance, braided. He was pretty much dead at that point. And it's, you know, and we've seen this before. John Ritter comes to mind. The actor John Ritter died of the same thing, aortic dissection. And I guess a part of the, and artillery wall lifts up and the blood flow goes against it and causes basically a rupture essentially. I know I'm, I'll shave of Kermani on this on Thursday. We'll talk a little bit about this. But he was 71 and the condition is driven by age, long-term high blood pressure.

and the heart of the arries. And so it's not, it's not like some sort of exotic toxing he was hit with here. And he just got, if you think about it too, he's 71, he has these conditions. He just returned from a visit to the Ukraine where he met was Volodymyr Zelensky. And so he spent a lot of time traveling. And I get, you know, the geopolitics, geopolitics, rather, you know, they, they certainly. are the thing of film and movies where, you know, you travel somewhere and all of a sudden you pick something up and somebody's there to assassinate you, why they would get Lindsey Graham, I may be, you know, a big Trump supporter, I suppose, but, you know, it's not like you're going, and we know that Trump has had death threats against them, but every American president has had death threats against them from domestic and foreign body. So I don't know why that would be the case here, but nonetheless, so he goes, he travels. And the fact of the matter is, you know, here's a guy who goes and he flies and you're going to clot, as you know. DVT is an issue. That's where you're them wacky socks if you're traveling, if you're flying. So, you know, he'd been traveling for a long time. And they said, yeah, that's probably a pretty common thing, man of his age, with the conditions, the preexisting conditions he had, you fly, this is how it happens. So it's basically Occam's razor. You know, the single most common cause of sudden death. with a guy like Lindsey Graham with his lifestyle and stress load. I mean, a very stressful job. That's cardiovascular. It's not an assassination. And we reach for the extremes because, you know, that's kind of a boring way to go. We want it to be some sort of conspiracy theory. But can anything happen nowadays, it seems like, without some sort of conspiracy theory taking center stage? And we've come to a point now, I'll tell you on a second, is that no, the burden of proof is backwards. Nobody has to prove poisoning happen. They just got to say, well, see, it's curious, isn't? Oh, sure, that's what they're going to say. There's no way to defeat that argument. And the algorithms do the rest. But unfortunately, that's not how the truth works. That's how making something go viral works.

You know, you've got a medical examiner's office, D.C. Coroner's office. You've got a dispatch recording. You've got toxicology that's pending at this point. That's all publicly verifiable. Compare that to the trail of conspiracy theories. There's nothing there. And our default reaction right now, because we live in this void, is just that. You know, I don't lament it all that much, but you watch what's, well, like this past weekend, they just announced like Local 12, Channel 12. They completely blew up their weekend morning shows. A lot of good people lost their jobs. But they hate to see that. But newsrooms that used to have an individual that would contextualize these things and what that means. And now it's like that vacuum gets filled by. You know, the assassination memes going out there or the, you know, the thumbnails or the, you know, the reels, whatever it is, or somebody's a giant assassin with someone with a shocked face on it. Oh, I better click on that. And, you know, you get rewarded for that. That's how it works today. And the incentive structure rewards theory and not the correction because here's what the medical examiner said. That's not going to compete with the Iran-Russia headline. there's plausible deniability there too. So, you know, and the trust has been pre-eroded, and this is years of real institutional failure, that's for sure. It's not like journalism is, people are trying to get it right. They had an agenda a long time ago, for sure, a lot of news organizations did. And once we also, that coincided with the fact that journalism has become democratized, meaning that me and you are, well, okay, I guess I'm in the radar now, but you, for example, you have a camera, you're a journalist. But, you know, there's no standards, no ethical standards, anything like that. And many people would probably rightly so in a lot of cases, not always, but in a lot of cases say, well, those things eroded anyway because those news agencies have an agenda. And obviously speed beats accuracy. And that's true now in TV journalism. I mean, look what it is now. So we'll throw stuff out there. And we have no verification whatsoever. It's right or wrong. It doesn't matter because that's not what people want. And it's about clicks and views and all that stuff. So obviously you have Graham being a conservative in line very, very strongly with Trump. You're going to have a not just a dead senator, but you're going to have a conspiracy theory in the making. You know, the saddest part isn't that people believe crazy things. It's that we build a whole ecosystem where crazy and fast beats true and slow every single time. You know, Lindsey Graham didn't need a foreign service intelligence operator to take them out. It was, you know, cheeseburger stress and seven decades on earth. It's kind of boring, but that's what happened. Unsold proven otherwise, but you probably won't be proven. We've seen this before you know, the Charlie Kirk assassination. It was Israel. It was Mossad. It was, no, we got the guy who did it. There was no conspiracy there, just another nut. And, of course, you know, continues to persist is, you know, the voting machine fraud. And even smart people like Elon Musk promoted the conspiracy theories that have long since been debunked about voting machines. And, yeah, do we have some sort of manipulation in every election? Sure, it's human nature. It's small, but it's not enough necessarily to influence an entire election. Now, some people think that's the case.

But, you know, by and large, it's more likely that there's an operator at the, or there's an error at the accounting level in a sense that the people who tell folks voting give them bad information because they don't know better. That's usually what it is. It's an honest mistake as opposed to some sort of. You know, deep-seated, deep conspiracy. And now we've got, you know, I don't know, 150 million Chinese that are immigrating here to overthrow our elections and simply vote one way. That seems, that's just ridiculous on its face. But, you know, people believe what they want to believe. But, you know, you have an anonymous, low-credibility account that posts a scary, unfal, a undefensible claim. You can't argue with that kind of stuff. And we deserve that because that's what we want. We click on it and therefore it exists and that's where we are right now. So you can't have Lindsey Graham dying without some conspiracy. But I will say the actor from Jurassic Park just died and there are no conspiracy theories about him. It was a dinosaur. The bison attack is what it was. That's what it was. The bison attack. We got news on the way in minutes here on the big one 700 WLW. He is Kevin Burton, a political strategist. A new polling showing that Trump is losing working class orders. Is that a concern? Well, it's one of many concerns for Republicans heading into midterms, and specifically the president. I don't know how much he cares about any of this stuff. It doesn't seem like he does, or he just dismisses it. But you can see the tide starting to shift here. Now, the only question is, what do Democrats offer? Because we're in a two-party state. I all due respect to Spike Cohen, who was on at the top of last hour. But I look at it and go, all right, well, so all these people to vote for Trump are going to go vote for for Zohran Mamdani, a Zohran Mamdani look alike, like a Democratic socialist? It seems like a bridge too far for sure. So all the Kevin Warsh and problems the Republicans have, I look at the Democrats and go, well, okay, who's your standard bear? Who's your guy? Who's your girl? And they simply don't have one at this point. And what does this whole democratic socialism thing mean? Do the people who are now turning their back on Trump going, hey, you know, you're supposed to represent me, the working man, the working woman and make it better? It's not better. It's worse. Do they simply jump over and go, I'm going to try some socialism now, see how that works out. I don't know if I'm buying. But anyway, Kevin Burton will get us straight here after the top of the hour here on 700 WLW Scott Sloan show. I was kind of tongue-in-cheek about the Reds opening up, but I can't think of a... worst situation to be in right now. I mean, what, 8-4 the final yesterday? I don't think as I bring up the Reds. And like, how many people are listening or watching that game yesterday? Outside of Cubs fans? They had, what, 29,000 yesterday, GABP, beautiful day for baseball. Looks like the weather held out. But I saw a lot of, you know, on the highlights, I saw a lot of blue jerseys in the stands, not just on the field. So Cubs travel well, don't they? It's 8-4 they lost yesterday, by the way. That record now,

is 15 and a half games below first place. Games back, I'm sorry, games behind Milwaukee right now, first place in the central. Looking up at Pittsburgh, looking up the Cubs, looking up the Cardinals. I mean, it's just awful. No one would have, I don't think anyone would have foreseen just how bad this team was in season, especially after last year's playoff run. It is absolutely bonkers. And from what I've seen and heard, a lot of people, a lot of folks are blaming to some degree Terry Francona, which I don't see. You know, there may be issues there, but he's so far down the list. It's insane. Like he just doesn't get bad. 25 seasons he's managed. He is only, this is only the fourth time in 25 seasons where at the All-Star break. He has a losing record. I don't think this is that much on Terry Francona. We got other issues to solve before we get to the manager. So I'm on Team Terry for sure. Anyway, news update and more to follow here. Win, lose or lose, mainly. It's the home of the red 700 WLW Cincinnati.

So we jump in, or I guess back in this morning the big news in political circles. Of course, Lindsey Graham passing away unexpectedly and didn't see him going before Mitch McConnell at the rate Mitch McConnell was backsliding as well. I saw that the average age of Congress is now. The average age is 65. I think that is a massive, massive problem. Same time, we have President Trump losing probably his most important block, and that would be working class orders. He's now underwater. From polling a polling perspective on them. But then you have Democrats that have no identity whatsoever. And you wonder how much stock you can put into us. Are Americans, you think a lot of Americans are going to vote for something called Democratic Socialists? I don't think so. But the guy with perspective on all this, joining the show this morning is a political consultant from Crosstown Consulting in Northern Kentucky. Our buddy Kevin Burton. Kevin, welcome back. How are you? Scott, thanks for having me. Yeah, the Lindsey Graham news came out of nowhere, but, I mean, it makes sense considering he'd been traveling, you know, he's in his 70s, don't know what his cholesterol level or his arterial blockages, but you travel, you know, blood clots form and you die. And, you know, again, it's a sad thing for sure, 72. He still has many years ahead of him, but. Eventually, it was a blood clot. It was a say, aortic dissection that they talked about that got them. And now you start to look around. Okay, you got an incapacitated. Mitch McConnell, you have others who are, well, Mitch McConnell wasn't, but certainly Lindsey Graham was an ally of Trump. How does that change the calculus moving forward now? I mean, first of all, 71, 72 is not that old. No, not at all. And I mean, it's still South Carolina. So, I mean, Trump will still have an ally there. You know, they'll do a special election and all that. But it is one less House or one less Senate vote right now. And so now it makes everything more difficult to pass Trump's agenda before the midterm. So, you know, on that front, it's going to make it harder and harder. And the juxtosition of. You know, the Democrats now want to run younger, younger, younger, um, why, you know, the Republicans have, you know. Chuck Gassley, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump. So, you know, it's looking like they're trying to create a clear vision with this DSA movement of young, fresh, newer versus old and stale. Well, it is over for the baby movements. I mean, there's a demographic group, right? They're fading into the sunset here. The Republicans want to hold on to that. Democrats are at least trying to move younger, I guess. Again, it's an optical thing, right? It doesn't mean anything. Do younger people simply vote for people who look to be their age as opposed to old? Is this all going to be another, well, Democrats are really good, the classism thing? And that is saying, hey, young versus old. Is that essentially what they're setting this intellectual election up to be? It's going to be, hey, we've got a lot of millennials that are voting, the biggest new block out there, and vote for people that look like you, that are your age. It can represent you instead of the tired old Republicans. It's simply going to be an issue of ageism?

Well, I mean, to your point, the average age is 65. If you're a millennial like myself, you're almost 40 or 40 or that way. So, you know, and now you have Gen Z and Gen Alpha coming. You know, I think a lot of people, if you don't know how to reset your router, should we be trusting you to run the country? And I think that's going to be the message of that, hey, you guys got us into this mess. We need to try something new. And this is all leading from Andani in the DSA movement. Right. And so if you put it in that context, Kevin, with the Democratic Socialists, I can't imagine Middle America going, wow, that's what we need, Democratic socialism. At the same time, you look at Trump's waters now with working class voters. He's underwater with them, which is, you know, he needed them to win. And the disapproval rating among white working class voters is cratered from roughly a two-thirds support in 2024 to a disapproval in some polls in the 50s. Is that a temporary economic gripe? Or is there a real structural crack in that coalition? And what does that mean for Democratic Socialists? Well, I mean, for the Democratic Socialists, look at the primaries that's happened, even on the Republican side. Look at how many incumbents have locked, even on the Republican side. You know, conventional wisdom 15 years ago, after Mitt Romney left, it said the Republicans need to move to the left, need to get, you know, open a bigger tent and do this. But what really Trump has shown is if you have someone who can galvanize your base. At the end of the day, that's all you need. Yeah. And we've talked about for the last, ever since Obama left, what has been the Democrat identity? With the DSA, you know exactly where they stand. I'm not saying I approve it. I'm not saying that. But you know exactly where they stand. And for working class families that, you know, inflation has skyrocketed since 2020. The DSA doesn't look as bad as it did, you know, seven years ago, eight years ago. You know, people are struggling right now. Yeah. Well, you have the gap between the have and they have nots. And that has always been the appeal to socialism. You know, the more people you have and the have not category that are struggling to get by and say, hey, listen, you know, it's not like I'm getting a big raise here. Inflation's killing me. Gas prices. We're in this, I don't know what we're doing with Iran here, but it's making it worse and not better. You worry about things like health care, longevity. And so that becomes more appealing going, hey, listen, you know, if I can't make it and I hold a couple jobs. maybe socialism is the way to go. That's frightening. Well, I mean, what I would counter with that is from their messaging point is we have a trillionaire. Jeff Bezos bought, you know, the Washington Post, he was worth $16 billion. Now he's worth almost $250 billion. Has your net worth gone up $5X? You know, so those are the messages that they're going to use and that they're going to do. For Republicans,

It's how do you counter that? But when it's a change election, money goes out the window because people are feeling it every single day. So, you know, when Trump got elected, I think I said on Mike Allen show that he will lead to the next president will be the most progressive president since LBJ. You know, for what is the thing? For every force there is an equal or opposing force. Sure. And that's kind of what it is. You know, politics are about like styles. Like when you hear like with basketball teams, it's all about matchups. And frankly, Democrats have tried to do the middle of the road and they've got eviscerated or the Trump era. And, you know, if we're looking back historically 100 years ago, Herbert Hoover, you know, what do they do? They turn to FDR, the Democrats did. So it's going to be really interesting to see if this keeps up. But, I mean, Zohran Mamdani is the kingmaker in the Democratic Party right now. It's clear about that. Is this their Tea Party movement basically on the left? Yeah, yeah. And it's almost identical. You know, the Tea Party started in Texas, Kentucky. You know, it happened in 2012. It didn't really hit mainstream until, what, you would say, 2016, which the Tea Party kind of led to the Magid Movement. So the question is, for the Democrats, does this lead to 2028 or is going to be 2032? But this is their Tea Party movement. You know, with the Tea Party movement, people were tired of the status quo. They were tired of sending billions elsewhere. the Democratic Socialism movement is the same. They're tired of spending billions outside of the U.S., tired of, you know, the haves and the have-nots. So, yeah, this is exactly here. And, you know, in a lot of ways, how Ron Paul was the forefather, Bernie Sanders, is kind of that on the Democratic side. You know, it's very easy to say do X, Y, and Z. And, like, New York City, you can charge those extra taxes on second homes and things like that because, let's be real, they're not going to leave New York City. Right, right. Can you do that in Cincinnati, Ohio? No. You know, if you're in L.A. or New York, you have built-in advantages. Middle America, you don't. Yeah, Hamilton County, maybe, but elsewhere, it's not going to happen. Kevin Burton, a political consultant, he is the founder of Crosstown Consulting, Northern Kentucky, and talking about, well, the passing of Lindsey Graham, the average age of Congress is 65 years old, and now you have Democratic Socialists taking over the Democratic Party, and what that all means for elections coming up, not only midterms, but for the next presidential cycle.

thing is with Trump's disapproval rating and losing in a lot of key categories, right now, and you can see why. That doesn't translate people. I'm going, well, so what are they going to do? Go and vote for Zohran Mamdani or some sort of DSA surrogate? No, of course. I think they just, they're not going to flip Democrat. Are they just, they're going to stay home? How many of those voters can you convert to, you know, that may have supported Trump but go, hey, you know what, I'm going to try democratic socialism now. I don't see that happening very much. That's an ideological thing, isn't it? Yes and no. I mean, there's a lot of voters who, you know, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania who voted for Obama, voted for Trump, voted for Biden, voted for Trump. You know, it's all about the margins. If, you know, if you can get 50,000 people to switch. who voted for Trump to Zohran Mamdani, which he's getting about 10% of MAGA when they showed his polls, that 10% of the people voting were actually identified as MAGA. You extrapolate that, that can be enough to win an election. You know, Hillary Clinton famously lost the presidency by 60,000 votes. Is there 60,000 votes that a Democrat could get in, you know, the Russ belt? remains to be seen. Okay, so you as a consultant, what would you say? Okay, well, what, what points could the Democrats offer to lure someone who supported Trump in the past to jump to that side? I mean, what I would just point out is, you know, we have a trillionaire right now. Is your life better or worse than it was four years ago? Is it better or worse than eight years ago? You know, people are struggling, and you're seeing that people are tired of the status quo on both sides, but people don't feel that the government is doing enough or listening to them. You know, these have been changed elections, and it's really, I mean, people are feeling it. So, honestly, being a part of the status quo is not great right now on either side. And you can run to either the left or to the right of, whoever would whichever side of the aisle you're on because people are feeling it people are struggling with gas prices they're struggling with energy bills struggling you know with groceries um and it's really easy when you have a voting record to say hey you've done x y and z is this really America first and that's the one thing that the DSA is captured from Trump is this America first Yeah, it makes sense, Kevin Burton. So Trump is this transformative revolutionary figure. We're going to drain the swamp. We're going to throw these people in jail because we wanted a pound of flush. Retired of getting overlooked as working people in the Midwest, especially, we're often overlooked by the liberal elite class. Now, Obama had that same type of culture personality that Trump does. The problem with this is I don't see maybe, I don't know if Zohran Mamdani's a guy or not. I think it's never the first one. It's the one's after, right? Because there's just too much baggage with him. But do they have that revolutionary figure in their midst right now? For the life of me, I can't think of who that would be. Are you asking me today who I would think to be the 2028 nominee? Who's going to be the standard bear? Who's the face? So who's the Trump? Who's the Obama of this new Democratic Party? I'm going to say, and I'm not a betting person, but if you did odds and everything, I would say John Offs off.

because he's from a swing state. He's young. He has the look. If you were asking me today who I would place, you know, a Coca-Cola on, that's who I would bet. And most people don't know who that is, let alone what state he's from. But then again, there was this guy named Barack Hussein Obama. No one knows. All it took for him was to speak at the Democratic National Convention, like, who's this guy? And let's let's be honest. In 2013, 2014, if you said Donald Trump was going to be the frontrunner for Republicans, you would have laughed too. It's all about momentum. And it's all about how can you get your base. And, you know, if you're Jon Ossoff, you win in Georgia again. You can say I won in 22, 2022, 2028. um i'm young i have maybe i can bring north carolina and georgia in um you know in a lot of ways don't trump is kind of like step curry where he for some people he's ruined politics with the way he's done it but he's changed the game you know before donald trump you know we had a lot of tv type politicians where they didn't really say they're say their peace and, you know, they weren't authentic. And that's going to, and he's changed the way. So who from the Democratic side will someone want to grab a beer with? And me, that's always the number one issue when you're looking to vote and go back through the last 40 elections. Who would you rather have a beer with? nine out of ten times it's the person who wins the office. Interesting. Yeah, I think there's something to be said about that. I mean, Bush v. Gore came down to that. And, you know, he's also said thing. He's a, I think the youngest senior senator in the Senate, and he's like 39 years and not even 40 yet. Out of Georgia, Southern State, okay, that carries a little bit too. But I was just thumbing through his Insta right here, and he just had some really nice things to say about Lindsey Graham, the passing of Senator Graham as well. So that is something that... You'd never see Trump do. Would Trump say that about Nancy Pelosi or anyone? Of course not. And I think that also would endear him to people going, wow, we need a little, someone who's a little bit more genteel, I suppose. Someone who has a little bit of compassion and empathy that we've been missing for a while. I think there's an appeal for that, too. Yes, but at the end of the day, it's all going to come down to your pocketbook. You know, everything goes out the window. when you're struggling to afford rent and all this. I don't disagree with anything that you said. So Jon Ossoff would be the person from the Democratic side who I would look at. If James Talarico could somehow pull the upset of all upsets in Texas, he becomes an interesting person because he's young, you know.

I think it's going to be a young person and they're going to want to show a contrast to style. It's matchups to make elections. Yeah, I think that's, as you said, you know, it crystallized a form of this is going to be an ageism. race it's going to be old trump old by we're tired of the old old old we need somebody young in there with new ideas and in vibrancy all you have to do is show you know maybe a couple clips of trump falling asleep maybe joe byton stumbling uh probably not joe but you know what i'm saying is you picture yourself um and the shoes going hey we need we need to get the boomers out of here get a it'll be a youth revolution now be careful what you wish for because you might just get he's kevin burton political consultant crosstown consulting in northern kentucky kevin always appreciate the analysis thanks for come on brother appreciate it Thanks for having me. Yes, sir. Any time. We've got news update happening here in just seconds. There are a couple shootings locally gone. I think started, of course, is the passing of Lindsey Graham. We'll get you recapped on that what they think it is. And we're in return on the Scott Sloan Show on 700. W.O.W. Julie Hattershears here, it's mental health Monday. Are you ready for your ozepic divorce? You always want your spouse to lose some weight. But careful what you wish for, as I just said, you might just get it altogether. 700 WLD. Everyone needs help every now and then. And she's here to help us get our heads right. This is Mental Health Monday with mental health expert Julie Hattershire. All right, you can't swing a dead cat, a thin dead cat, but nonetheless, without seeing an ad or hearing an ad for GLP1 drugs, Ozempic, Wegovi, stuff like that. There's shrinking waistlines. We're watching our collective weight drop, which is a good thing. It is also great news if you're a divorce attorney. What? Apparently. Weight loss is quietly wrecking couples. She is licensed mental health therapist, Julie Hattershare from BConnected.Care, and it's a mental health money with Julie. Welcome. How are you? Hey, I'm great. How are you? I'm doing fine. So I guess fat is happy, is it not? Given what we're talking about, yeah. It's really interesting. Yeah, stay fat and happy. Stay fat and stay married. Get thin and who knows. Well, you better do it at the same time. Apparently that's a deal. I guess it's probably not a surprise. So you've been doing this job for a while now, Julie. How often is, and it's a new phenomenon, is it actually shown up in your practice? Yes, it is. As you know, I work mostly with couples and people on their relationships. And so I'm seeing, I'm seeing more and more of this showing up in the last couple of years. Obviously, we didn't see a lot of it before. Although, when people got bariatric surgery or went through other really significant weight loss treatments, they would often have at least one visit with a therapist or a psychologist to explain the life. style and relational challenges that would come along with that. But with these GLP-1 medications, we don't do such a thing, and yet we're seeing a lot of similar kinds of reactions. All right, but is the weight loss drug causing the divorce, or is this just exposing cracks already there?

Well, it's a little bit of both, to be honest with you. So I have a couple of people in my practice who are on GLP ones now, and one of them in particular talks about how he just doesn't enjoy much of anything anymore. He doesn't, he's kind of flat in a lot of areas. So he doesn't enjoy food very much. He doesn't enjoy alcohol really at all anymore. But he also doesn't enjoy sex as much as he used to. He doesn't enjoy golf, and he was an avid golfer. He still plays, but it doesn't give him the same hit of pleasure and fun and enjoyment. He doesn't enjoy spending time with his wife and his kids in the same way that he did. It's not completely gone, but it's definitely dulled down somewhat. And so that actually is an effect of the medication. And that's one of the reasons that they're finding that a lot of people not only are losing weight on this medication, but they're smoking less and they're drinking less. Well, that sounds like clinical depressionists, you know, depression disorder as opposed to the drug, but the drug actually causes that. Well, it, it. Part of what it does is it works on your pleasure receptors over food and other substances. And so they're finding that people who had problems with drinking, smoking, gambling are having fewer problems. Their problems are lessening with drinking, smoking, and gambling. Not all the time, but often when they take this medication. So if you think about compulsive overeating is very similar to compulsive. gambling is very similar to having that dopamine hit craving that that next hit of dopamine so there's a lot to this that we don't understand about how it works in the brain and there's still a lot we don't understand about how it works in the body so part of it actually is the medication but part of it also is The impact of body weight changes on one individual and the impact that has on the larger system, which is the couple or the family dynamics. So if you have someone who's very overweight and has been for quite some time and they start losing weight, they move through the world differently. People respond to them differently. Sometimes people are very supportive. Sometimes people can inadvertently or maybe even overtly sabotage that. because they want the person that they knew before, not the new person who's emerging. So it can be a combination of both. Okay. So, yeah, one person loses the weight. All of a sudden, you know, they're getting attention paid to them and like, oh, my guy, they look very good. And all of a sudden they start thinking, well, you know, I got, I'm hot now and I can get anybody I want. And why am I doing with this jump? Well, it could be that, yes, but also I'm finding there are people I've worked with who start getting more attention at work. Their opinions start getting taken more seriously. They start getting put forward for promotions or projects that they weren't before. They're taken more seriously and differently at work, so their career prospects can also change. And that can...

gives them a different level of self-confidence than they had before and perhaps a different level of financial dependence than they had before. And so changing that alone can change the power dynamic in a relationship. If I no longer depend on someone for my economic stability or if it looks like my career prospects are changing, the power dynamic in a relationship can shift as a result of that. So is that what the confidence spice looks like in a marriage when one partner changes the other doesn't? When one partner changes and the other doesn't or when one partner changes and the other isn't supportive of it and adapts to it. So, you know, maybe only one person needed to lose the weight. Maybe the other partner has always been active, always been interested in fitness. And the dynamic was partner B, always trying to convince partner A to get moving and get healthier. Now partner A is getting healthier and getting moving. Partner B now has to respond differently to that. They're no longer the ones cajoling and urging. They may be the one following along in the wake of. Or now they have someone who's going to work out with them and they thought they wanted that. But now that their partner is there, they're not loving it so much. So do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Like I think I want you with me. And now that you're with me, I'm not sure I'm enjoying this as much as much. Right, right, right. This road trip sounds like a great idea until the first exit. Until we're actually there. Yeah, it's a different story. Is jealousy over partner success and attention a bigger driver than people have met in us? Oh, yeah, it absolutely can be. And if you think about people who marry for, people marry and partner up and couple up for a whole lot of reasons. And sometimes we find people who think that this is the best person I'm going to be able to get. Like, this is where I am in my stage of life in terms of education, career, physical attractiveness, personality, whatever, and rightly or wrongly, they think this is probably the best I'm going to get. And then if one person starts to change, they realize, oh, boy, this is not the best I could possibly get. Or this person is now becoming, and I'm using air quotes here, out of my league. And I no longer have the confidence to feel like I belong with them. So it could be that the partner who's losing weight gets more attention from other people and realizes they may have romantic prospects they didn't know. about, but the partner who isn't losing the weight can also feel like, oh, they're now outclassing me. They're more physically attractive. They're more physically active than I am. They're getting career opportunities that they didn't have before. So now they're getting more notice or more money. And I'm now outclassed, and that can change the dynamic too.

I think also if you're in a relationship with someone there's, for a lot of couples, a food and eating together, there's a ritual, right? It's kind of like you're eating meals together, doing things. And now of a sudden one partner suddenly doesn't want that anymore, can't eat that anymore. That has got to be a threat to the relationship, too, I'd imagine. You have to figure out new things to do. So one of the things that people who are drug users or alcoholics have to do when they go into recovery is find new ways to spend their time because so much of the way they spent their time centered around their drug of choice or drinking. And so many of their friends and relationships and social activities centered around that. So the same is true here if one person in a relationship is no longer all that jazzed about going out for a really lovely expensive meal because they can eat about. half of it and it's not super pleasurable for them. And that's one of the ways the couple enjoyed time together or enjoyed time with their friends. They need to come up with other things to do together to spend time together. And if they aren't aware that they're going to have to do that or if they're not creative in how they come up with these other ways to spend time together, it can create increasing levels of distance and disconnection between the two. Julie Hattershier's here, Mental Health Monday on the Scott Sloan Show on 700 WLW. She's our licensed mental health therapist from here in Cincinnati and talking about something called Ozempic divorce, which in her practice and across the nation for that matter, you're seeing it. One person in the relationship loses a lot of weight using a GLP1 like Ozempic and it changes the relationship dynamic a lot. If one person is going to go on this, should there be a conversation? What should that include? And should physicians who put people on this B going, hey, just so you know, we're starting to see some psychological issues with us too. Yes, absolutely doctors who prescribe this should do that. The challenge with that is so many people now are getting it from online services where they never actually meet with a physician or never actually meet with a physician who knows them. They don't have to talk about their relationship situation as part of that process. So if I go to my doctor, my doctor knows me. He treats my husband. He actually treated my kids when they were here in town. So he knows my, he knows my system, my family system. But an online doctor doesn't necessarily know that. And so wouldn't know to say, hey, this might cause some challenges in your relationships with your family, with your friends, with your partner, with your children, with your coworkers. People may look at you and treat you differently and you may move through the world differently. And these are some things you need to be aware of. And part of the challenge is not being aware of that, people are caught by surprise. They're not prepared. They don't know what to make of it. They think that their dissatisfaction or the challenges or the friction in their relationship is about the relationship, which it might be, but it also might be about any change introduced into a system creates disturbance.

And if you recognize that, then it may be easier to weather that. So I do think doctors should tell patients about this. I also think it makes sense for a couple of the first signs of distress around this to see a therapist. It doesn't have to be for a very long time. But with just a few sessions, we can pretty easily help them figure out what's going on and how to make some changes and manage it differently and better. Okay. But if you're a couple, you're in crisis already over this, what's the first move? Yeah. go to a therapist. The first move is go to a therapist because it seems really complex and challenging and problematic for the couple. And we in my field can probably help you make sense of it fairly easily. And it might be that this is exposing cracks in your relationship that you didn't know we're there. For sure, COVID did that. COVID for sure exposed cracks in relationships that people didn't know we're there. And it might be that. But it also might be that this is just as a result of some of the things that we've already talked about and some other factors that we probably don't have time to get into today. And that we can help you, we therapists do types, can help you make sense of that and figure out what to do about it fairly quickly. You do sex therapy too. So how does GLP1, like, I don't know what that does to your libido or your body change. And that also affects Amerit too on the physical side. For whom? Absolutely. Absolutely it does. So both men and women, when they lose significant amounts of amounts of weight, experience changes in their hormonal balance because when we are very thin or when we are very heavy, our hormones are different than when we are sort of at our ideal weight, whatever that is for our age and body type. And so testosterone can go up or down as a result of weight fluctuations, and testosterone is the hormone primarily responsible for libido. So testosterone going up can increase libido, testosterone going down can decrease libido. People can feel both proud of and uncomfortable with their new bodies as they lose weight. If they're losing a lot of weight, they may have a lot of excess skin that they didn't have before, so things may feel looser. that they did. I think specifically an analogy here or a way to think about it is when women go through pregnancy and then regain their post-pregnant body, all of those physical changes are very destabilizing. They can be. And the same can be true for people losing weight. So one partner loses a lot of weight. They suddenly look better to their current partner who may have not been interested in sex before, but is now interested in sex. And maybe the partner who's lost the weight is and maybe they're not, but the sexual dynamics can definitely change. Physically, the testosterone differences can make libido different. And just dealing with a different body as the person in it or is the person having sex with it can also feel different. And it can be really great or it can be really problematic. It can feel like you're with a stranger. It can feel like you are a stranger because your body is responding in ways. that it hadn't before. And all of these things are also things that with good communication and some understanding can be worked through pretty easily. It sounds just a hell of a lot easier and cheaper just to stay fat. I mean. Oh, I rock the boat. That's a lot of easier. It's just easy. It's a lot more fun.

Is there a version of this? This is the horror story. Is there a version of this where the marriage actually improves? I mean, there's got to be the opposite, too, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There can be. And usually that is when both people have some idea of what to expect. And they have marriage going in. And so they've got good communication skills. They've weathered changes in their dynamic before. And they have a sense of how to do that. That can also be true when people didn't put a whole, if they happen to be people who didn't put a whole lot of their identity into what their body looks like. So rather than going from a fat person to a thin person, they're just a person who lost some weight. So it's not their identity. It's just a fact. in their lives and they put it in the appropriate perspective, there absolutely are cases where this can improve. And we don't hear about those because things go well and their life is good and they're happy and they're living their life the way they want to. The ones that come to my office and the ones that I wanted us to talk about are the ones for whom this really great thing creates a change in one person that has... a problematic negative or destabilizing impact on the couple or on the family system careful what you wish for you might just get it so yeah it's the unforeseen consequences of doing something very very positive very good and very healthy for you uh the ozimic divorce is a real thing so if you're getting on this you may want to talk to your partner first and then talk to someone like well julie hattershire she is our licensed mental health therapist on the show every monday morning mental health monday with sloony and uh you can get a hold of her at hey julie that's july hey julie at b connected dot care and clifton thanks again and we'll talk next week have a great one thank you too all the best got to get a news updated momentarily very latest from around the world a hot looking weather forecast but relatively dry i think anyway we'll recap that in just minutes here slooney 700 w l w cincinnati

Scott Full Show back on 700, WLW. A concert seat that doesn't exist. What? They're selling you a seat that doesn't exist. Who's doing that? Well, the man is that. We've got concert seats in Ohio priced like 750 bucks that don't exist. It is the latest of frontier wallets when it comes to out of control ticket fees and scams that could be fixed by this proposed new law. She is state representative Alan Russo, former minority leader. She's running a secretary of state now. Alison, welcome back to the show. How are you? Hi, Scott. Good to be with you this morning. This is outrageous. Now I'm getting sold stuff that doesn't exist. It's House Bill 563. You got it through the House unanimously, by the way. So this is Democrats, Republicans. The keeper is so you'd have to show the total price up front on concert tickets. You resellers have to disclose if they're not the official or the affiliated seller. There'd be a ban on selling tickets and seats that don't exist. And, of course, the Attorney General's office would have power to go after the bad actors here. Take me through the whole banning a ban on selling things that don't exist. It seems like it's illegal or ready to sell things that don't exist. Does it not? Well, it should be. I mean, listen, I think this is good common sense legislation, has broad bipartisan support. And really, this bill is about, you know, how do we establish those clear rules for transparency and accountability to protect? consumers because, you know, Ohioans, we love our concerts. We love our sporting events. This sector generates more than $3 billion in economic output for the state every year. But as we've seen this rise of these third-party resellers, you know, many people who have tried to go to these events, you encounter issues. Either you're sold something that doesn't exist. Or when you go to checkout, you know, the total price is not what you thought it was at the beginning. You don't really understand, you know, what the refund policies may or may not be or who you're actually buying this from. So, you know, the need has risen because this is a big industry. The case study here, the one that really, because you've got to have one story that just puts people over the edge going, this is insane, we've got to stop. This involves the Renaissance Theater in Mansfield. It was the opening of Guys and Dolls in August. I mean, we were talking about Mansfield and Guys and Dolls.

They lost $60,000 in 2025 to Scalpers at that small theater. Tell me that whole story. That and the tickets that don't exist element of this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, that's one specific story. But I think, you know, what we have seen all across the state is, you know, people are thinking that they are buying a legitimate ticket from one of these third-party resaleers. These third-party resaleers don't actually have the ticket. in hand, the consumer buys it, pays for it, arrives at the venue, and of course they find out, you know, it was either a duplicate ticket that has already been used, or it was a ticket that never existed. Now, of course, when somebody arrives, you know, whether it be at the community theater in Mansfield or it is at the Great American Ballpark for a Noah Khan concert. And, you know, the ticket doesn't exist. You know, who do you think they get angry at? It's usually at the venue or at the artist because it is not clear in the beginning who they were buying this ticket from. So not only is it a loss in revenue for the venue, a loss for the person who was trying to thought that they were buying a legitimate ticket. But, you know, now also people don't want to come back and visit the venue again. So, again, this bill is adding that transparency, that accountability. We can go after the bad actors now so that people have a better experience. This is a large source of economic revenue for our state. And, you know, I love to go to these events. Yeah, you like to go to these events. And we want people to have good experiences to continue to support this industry. Yeah, it's interesting. And what's driving this, Alison Russo, of course, is the fact that people like going to live music, live shows, despite the economy, despite inflation, will still carve money out to be able to enjoy that. And, of course, these vultures see an opportunity there. A group called, or a company called Tickets, Ticks for Cause. sold a seat in row X at this theater for $750. The only problem is the seating at the theater only goes to row you. So they sold tickets in a row that doesn't exist. Is that deliberate? Is that an algorithm? Is that them being just deliberately dishonest? Or what's the story behind that, you know? Well, again, specifically for this third-party reseller, you know, my guess is this is being deliberately dishonest to these buyers who were deceived. But, you know, I mean, you've been online probably trying to search for, you know, your favorite artist and concert venue, you know, trying to find a last minute ticket. And listen, we're all looking for deals because in this economy, any dollar that you can save is great. But, and no one's fault, you know, there are legitimate actors in this space, absolutely. And we want to keep this open for consumers. But there has to be some level of accountability and transparency because we want to get rid of the bad actors. Because overall, this increases cost for everyone at the end of the day. And, you know, that is really what this is about. It's about lowering the cost.

of operations of, you know, these resales, but also improving the experience. Well, if I tried to sell you the Roebling suspension bridge, Alison Rousseau, now you're in Columbus, so you do come down to Cincinnati. Obviously, go, oh, yeah, you own it? Yeah, sure, here you go. We have something already on the books called fraud. So based on the fraud statutes, under existing Ohio consumer law, does this already exist if you're selling seats that don't exist? And what would this law do to remedy that? Is this just another law on top of a law that's not being enforced? Yeah, well, it essentially strengthens, yes, you're correct. I mean, there are some aspects of this. Certainly they could go after under existing law. But what this does is it sets those standards at the outset. And it says that, you know, you have to, number one, disclose. what you are representing, whether you are a third-party resale or the official ticket seller to begin with. It also says you have to disclose up front in that all-end pricing. You have to disclose up front what are the refund policies so that consumers know what they're getting into in the beginning. So again, all of this is putting those guardrails in place at the beginning so that it helps eliminate, you know, what could turn into fraud. And yes, certainly there are laws about fraud, but this is about setting those standards in the beginning. Does this hinder the notion of supply and demand that, hey, you know what, if somebody is willing to pay $750 for a ticket, we should allow them to do so. Does that hinder that at all? Yeah, so this doesn't do anything or put any constraints around pricing. It just says that you have to disclose at the beginning what is the all in pricing. I mean, you and I probably have had the same experience. You know, you're looking at one of these third party resellers. You are like, oh, wow, this is a great deal for this ticket. I'm going to get this. You know, you're probably comparing across multiple sites. And then you go to checkout and suddenly you have a hundred extra dollars in fees at the end that makes your ticket more expensive. And you didn't know that until you go to put your credit card number in. So what this says is you have to disclose that at the beginning. Okay, yeah, it's kind of funny, the price transparency. Boy, if we only could have that in something like, I don't know, health care, that'd be great, wouldn't it? That's right. That's right. That's right. Listen, we've been working on that too in the Ohio General Assembly, you know, not surprisingly getting a lot of pushback from hospitals. Shocker, shocker. I know it's interesting in this, Alison Rousseau. By the way, she's a state rep, former minority leader in Columbus now running for Secretary of State, and she is one of the co-sponsors of. House Bill 563, it passed the house unanimously, so complete support on both sides. And it's going to help maybe stop some of these bad actors in the ticket resale market because he's, you know, selling $750 seats in a row that doesn't exist in a theater is problematic for most people, I would think. Now, Live Nation and Ticketmaster are supporting this publicly while...

groups like vivid seats and stub hub are saying wait on just a second hold on just a second it's too restrictive it could hurt legitimate sellers season ticket holders who may not have a particular seat assignment i don't know how that works not like an airplane um and now they went able to sell their product how do you push back on it Well, I think, I mean, again, this is about having transparency in the process. And, you know, part of what this bill does is it says that before you can list it on your site, you actually have to, the retailer has to have the ticket in hand, which again, that is just protection for the person who is trying to buy the ticket. I don't think that this diminishes their business. In fact, I think that this strengthens it because it gives people confidence in these third party retailers, makes them go back and buy from them again. You know, that's what I would say in the answer to that opposition. I think it makes my head swim when I hear that Live Nation and Ticketmaster, it's a subsidiary, Ticketmaster to Live Nation, they're found liable by a federal jury for operating an illegal monopoly just a couple months ago. So now they're going, yeah, we need more of this stuff. That's right. Well, listen, you know, we could have a whole separate conversation about, you know, some of these practices by these large ticket sellers and the frustrations that I know many Ohioans feel when dealing with this. You know, at the end of the day, again, Ohioans, we love our live events, whether it's a sporting event or a concert event. And, you know, we want more people to be able to experience this and to be able to afford it. And I think that this bill is a great step forward in adding some protections to that. Now, overall, I think, lowering the cost of these ticket prices. Relative to that, though, is there an appetite to go further than 563, Allison, like capping, resale markups, for example, and anything like that? Well, I think more to be seen on that. I mean, listen, this bill still has to get through our colleagues in the Senate side. You know, as you know, we're not in session right now. We'll not be back until after the election for late duck session. So we'll see, you know, how quickly this moves, if it moves and makes it across the finish line at the end of this General Assembly. And when we get to capping prices that may be a little bit of a bridge too far for some of our members. But, you know, I'd like to see this get across the finish line because I think this is common sense. These are really good protections. Yeah, I mean, if you can get that kind of money for, you should get the kind of money for it. But again, if the seat has to exist, you should have a physical ticket if you're trying to resell this thing relative to that.

If someone has already been caught up in this, what has the General Assembly or what has the Attorney General's Office, Allison, done relative to those people already got scammed buying a ticket that doesn't exist? Do they have any recourse? Well, I mean, certainly, yes, people do have recourse. They should reach out to, you know, their local prosecutor's office, reach out to the Attorney General's, the Consumer Protection Division, report this. But, you know, Scott, as I'm sure you can probably imagine, a lot of people when this happens, you know. They don't report it. So it's probably happening in much larger numbers than we even have a sense of because most people, you know, they move on and they say, well, you know, this was a bad experience. and never actually reported anything. I don't know. For $750 and generally, you're not going by yourself, I'd want to get the whip and stick out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, $750, you know, that's a pretty high tag and that's a fairly egregious pace. But, you know, when you're thinking about some of these smaller venues when you're paying. you know, $30, $50 the ticket and this happens. Those cases likely never get reported. Does this bill address bots in like the speculation market, the ticket futures market or just the pricing of disclosure piece? So this does not go that far yet. You know, I think we're still kind of getting our arms around that issue, which, by the way, is also an issue and is emerging as an issue even in some of our grocery stores, for example, and it's come up in that space and food pricing. But this bill does not go that far. It simply says at the outset, you know, you have to disclose all of those fees and that all-end pricing. Yeah. And we just continue to build more and more music venues. You know, we have Brady Center downtown. Now we've got a River Bend 2.0 that's going on because we want to enjoy outdoor concerts. Ovation across the river in Kentucky. You go up to Columbus. A lot of great venues up there. And we have a thirst for live performances, I think, because it's real. It's not AI. You got to enjoy it. You just listen to music and have a good time. with like-minded folk and we're willing to maybe forego some things in our private life budgets aside in order to enable that that we can go and have a damn good time maybe have a couple drinks let loose for a little bit sing along and for a couple hours you're a happy person your happy soul i hate to think that now um and we saw what happened with ticket master and live nation and now you've got operators out there that are selling invisible seats it's getting worse not better that's why do you think that ultimately this is going to this is going

to stop all that because we've had legislation before. It doesn't seem to work. Why would this one be the magic bullet? Yeah, well, listen, I never think that any piece of legislation is the magic bullet because if there is money to be made, you're going to find people who find ways to get around, you know, the guard rails and protections that exist. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to institute these protections as much as possible. And, you know, certainly, you know, the way that we do ticket sales has evolved over the last couple of decades. So we're always going to have to adjust for new technologies. But I think that this is a great step forward and includes some really important protections and transparency that, you know, many Ohioans are asking for in this space. She is a former minority leader in Columbus. That's a state rep Alison Rousseau out of Columbus. And she's running for Secretary of State. Good luck with the race. And if I don't talk to me now and then, we'll see how things turn out. All the best to you. Thank you, Scott. I was going to talk with you. Yes, ma'am. Thanks for catching up. Thanks for taking time out on your extremely busy campaigning and doing what it is as a lawmaker. But, hey, we've got some bipartisanship going on at the General Assembly. How about that? Yeah, the ticket pricing, man, it's just, I just bought some concert tickets, and it's crazy, stupid expensive now. you look at ticket going that's like a hundred you know back back rose like a hundred bucks over a hundred bucks all the fees and everything it's insane uh but that's where the money is because we're willing to forego their things in our life in order to go have that uh mental release for a couple hours to let our hair down have a good time we'll get a news update in unfortunately have bad news The red season is only half over. Reds are at the All-Star break, 15 and a half back. Worst job in America is being Jeff Carr from Locked on Reds. He'll talk about the first half and look ahead to the second half. What the hell happened with the Cubs when we continue here on 700 W.O. All right, let's get right down to it here. This is like taking your medicine. The Reds closed the first half with an 8-4 kick in the nads, losing the Cubbies, a losing record at the break. By the way, this is only fourth time. Terry Francona, Tito, has been a manager for 25 years. It's only fourth time that Terry Francona has had a losing record. Cincinnati now an epic 15 and a half back when they were hoping to. Make a long playoff run. What the hell happened? What's going to happen? This guy, by the way, does the only Daily Reds podcast. He has never wished before in his heart in his life to maybe do, I don't know, locked on the Kentucky barrels, locked on FC Cincinnati. Locked on anything except the Reds. It's like an anchor around his neck taking him down to the bottom of the Ohio River where he's sucking in water like Jack from the Titanic. Jeff, welcome. How are you?

Smolny looking forward to the old start break. Might read a book. Who knows? We'll see what happens. Not about baseball. It's not anything, anything else. It's just fugly down there. I mean, they lose the rubber match, 8-4 to the Cubs, didn't turn it on for a second. You have to sit there and watch this nonsense. 29,000 people showed up. I'm guessing there had to be like, take your shirt off day, or it was like a free hot dog, some sort of bobblehead, a trinket, a Chotchke, whatever have you. But... 29,000 show up. They lose a series once again. What happened yesterday? It was a considerably well-attended series with the Cubs. I mean, there were definitely a lot of Cubs fans there, but I would argue. 28,000 of them are Cubs fans, just so you know. Yeah. At least the two games that I went to, I'd still say it was 60, 40 Reds fans. But there was definitely a concern about a blue in the stands. But honestly, this series was, if you didn't watch anything of the Reds, which you just watched these three games, you saw everything that's wrong with them. Because in game one... everything worked everything looked great and they looked clearly better than the other team that they were playing and they won handily game two they lost because there were many missed opportunities with men on base for them and they were just unable to get that clutch hit and bring the run home when they needed to and they end up falling in that game and then game three they just got stopped and nothing worked and i mean for a minute there they they took a lead because gino hit a hit a solo home run and you know one nothing it never hold up one nothing it never hold up but but one run leads have been horrible for the pitching staff for most of the season and we we saw that again on sunday because later on in the ball game they just give up everything and their lineup just can't make that up Yeah, I pointed out in the open, Jeff, that a losing record at the break is very, very rare for a Terry Francona team, only four times in 25 seasons. Does that tell you more about the roster or more about circumstances or more about Tito? I'd say it's roster almost 85%. with those three excuses because I think that Terry Francona has definitely made some head scratching decisions but for the most part it's mostly because he's just trying to fit square pegs and around holes and all those all those square pegs are being hand to him from Nick Crawl. Like, I really feel like there's just too many guys that are out of position or out of, you know, out of their role that the Reds are trying to fit into these different positions. I mean, I don't know how anybody can look at this year and say it's anything but an abject failure.

I think if anyone wants to argue that Tito is the problem with that, I don't think I agree, but I also don't know that he's the solution either, which leads to a bigger disappointment because when he was hired, it felt like he would be that guy that could transcend what the Reds have been these last couple of years, and he just seems to be falling in line. Yeah, I think there's some validity there as well. Maybe it's just headscarves. I can't do anything with the players he gave me. And maybe some of the decisions are head scratching because he's desperate to, I don't know, try anything at this point, even if it is going against conventional wisdom and statistics and everything else. I've got to try something. That's probably what he's thinking. And another point to this series being the thing that you need to see if you didn't see anything else this year to know who the Reds are, Spencer Steer played center field two out of these three games. Like, we all know who Spencer Steer is. He's not a center field. You know, Pito can tell us he's a ball player as many times as he possibly can into a camera. That's cool. He's not a center field. And that's where he's had to play because they've had a couple of injuries there and ineffectiveness from T.J. Friedel for the season. And you're just trying to find anybody that you can put in the lineup who's not a black hole that you also put into center field. And not only that, it's guys coming here that did well. As we've seen this before, Suarez just hit his 200. That's too few and far between. Yeah, it kind of feels like small cookies at this point because the year has just been so bad for him. Like I knew he would be a low average guy, but he was supposed to bring power. And he hasn't brought that either. And when you look at him in the lineup, he's just been the guy that kind of stops every single rally that the Reds ever seem to put together. He's hit a couple of home runs here in the last week or so. But it's like you've got to really squint hard and find that small sample size to say, okay, I believe in what Gino's starting to put together here. I think of all the things Jeff Carr from Lockdown Reds that jump off the page to me and explaining this team is. You are six in 22 against teams in your own division. I mean, that is beyond brutal. It's almost like there's a talent gap here is what it is compared to other two. Just in your division alone. If you're six and 22 in division, you're going nowhere. You're going down fast. What the hell happened there? Did the other teams add and we didn't do anything or not do enough to keep up? Well, and the most frustrating part about that is I think I agree with you that most teams added when the Reds thought they were adding, but they did better at adding because the Pittsburgh Pirates are the perfect example. They were bottom three in most offensive categories last season. This year, they're top three, including batting average. Team batting average, there's nobody better than the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And they were able to add to their lineup where the Reds weren't able to. And then the Reds spent the majority of their money adding to their bullpen. And through injuries, which have definitely been a part of the story, but also plenty of ineffectiveness as well, the bullpen has been anything but good and anything but lifting the team up whenever other areas aren't working. So it's... It's really tough to say that the Reds had a good off season, whereas in February we were saying that the Reds had a good off season because they were plenty busy. It just seems as though they were running in place really, really hard. Jeff Carr from Lockdown Reds this morning on 700 WLW. It is over for the Reds first half at 15 and a half back. The All-Star Break is here. Lucy had another series, of course, of the Cubs. Reds 6 and 22 in the NL Central and 23 and 41 since late April. That collapse has been. What started that and why did it continue? There was some injuries in the pitching staff mainly in the bullpen that had already kind of been used a decent amount in April. that it just sort of all came to a head. I mean, Emilio Paghan got hurt, but then the thing, and probably the biggest injury of the year so far for me that the Reds about to deal with, is that Graham Ashcraft went down. Graham Ashcraft was their everything guy in the bullpen. If there was a tight game in the seventh inning, but you had a couple of guys in the scoring position, you bring Graham Ashcraft in and he would shut it down. And they just don't have that guy that has stepped up into that role with him out. But... On top of that, you compounded it by the fact that the rotation was already hurt with Hunter Green being on the IL because of bone spurs and his elbow and he wasn't even able to get going until July. And the guys that were filling in for him were just very, very ineffective. And we've seen very few starts this year, Sloney, where guys are going six plus innings. And that has absolutely taxed his bullpen to the point that I... kind of wonder how they recover from here, especially when you think that some of these guys should be moving in the trade deadline. No doubt about it. Where are we on Matt McLean now? Is that an experiment over? Should be. We know who he is. And I hate to say that because... Everyone knows what we saw in 2023 and everyone knows that this guy could easily be the leader of the team. But we are now very close to a thousand at-bats of data over the last couple of years. And he has been somewhere between 20 and 30% below week average. It's really unfortunate to say, but it just seems like there will be one game every two to two and a half weeks that he goes off and we see the guy that we saw in 2023. But for the most part, Matt McLean has been the consistent guy who just cannot get a hit. And the way this ball club is, you even look at, well, a rookie like Sal Stewart, who...

Came out of the blocks extremely hot. He's leveled off a little bit, but still doing well. And, you know, as a Reds fan, even start questioning, okay, well, what's his longevity here? Really like, Sal. I think that he is going through the ebbs and flows that a rookie season typically provides. And plus, I mean, like, people will start with batting average, but even league numbers when it comes to batting average are much closer to 240. So he's still hitting above. the league line there. It's just, it's a different ballgame the way things work right now. He's coming up with clutch hits more often than not, and he leads this team in RBI, and he leads to this team in home runs. I think that it's been a very good season from him, albeit some folks might look at that one number and say, I don't know, but you got to look at the rest. The whole picture is very nice for South Stewart. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned, we mentioned Matt McLean, of course, and Matt has said he's injured again. He's out. You've got a couple other key play. Don Myers hurt. And I guess that's why you're, that's where you're putting in center field or you're putting in center field. Are they going to address this before the deadline or just like, the season's lost. Forget it. I think this season is lost, to be honest with you. I would love to say that they can make a few trades and get better. But like at this point, making a few trades and getting better probably gets you back to 500. And the way that the National League is working, 500 is not going to be good enough to be a wild card team. Now, the Reds were in the American League. We'd be talking about a different thing here because the American League is pretty bad. But where the Reds are, how many teams they have to jump, they're definitely. out of it here. And I mean, one other point on Matt McLean, too. Like, they, they started working him out in the center field because I think he's lost second base. Like, I think Edward O'oyo has shown he deserves to play at that position for the rest of the year every single day. He's not hitting for power just yet, but he's got the average and he's got the glove for sure to be the team's everyday second base. What would a successful second half look like? What is the best you can expect? What would be like, okay, guess what? The first half was God awful, but you know what? We started turning the thing around. What are you looking for? I don't even know that I'm looking at wins and losses. I think I'm looking at a healthy hunter green. He doesn't have any more injuries the rest of the way. I'm looking for some good trades at the deadline to get you set for the next season. Whatever that might be, I know that we're talking about a lockout that might sap some or all of the next year. So you're probably looking at 2028 there, but definitely got to reposition yourself because right now it's a regroup and look to next year as much as we've heard that as Reds fans. We've definitely hit that point because I just don't see the talent on this team to make the kind of run that it needs to get back into the conversation for a playoff picture. And on top of that, I don't see.

a New York Mets team that's going to open the door for them to actually make it to the wild car because the Mets are even worse than the Reds this year. Yeah, yeah, but not by much now. The Reds may actually catch them in futility. I never would have said that three months ago, but, you know, here we are. Then only, I think, a half game away from their record. So, and, and, uh, easily closing in on the worst record in baseball at this point. I'll give you a silver lining though, Jeff Carrey. You want a silver lining? Let's do it. Here's a silver line. Let's say the Reds went on there on a tear. They're on a tear. Things are looking great. They go in the playoffs, maybe win the first round. And then the year after that, it's a World Series run because we got all the pieces. We're like one piece away. And then they have the lockout. And there's no season whatsoever. See, this way we're not setting ourselves up for that. It's futility. It's another blowup. It's another rebuild, another management. We don't have to put ourselves through that. So if we suck now, there's no expectation for next season. See, and that's where the silver lining has its true genius because Nick Crawls playing chess instead of chess. Correct. You people just don't know. He is Jeff Carr, locked on Reds, worst job in America. Jeff, thanks for jumping in. The only live daily Reds podcast. Now, seriously, man, I appreciate you jumping in, as always. Thanks again. Tony, thanks, man. Go, Reds. Go Reds. Going somewhere. I'm not quite sure. Going down. Willie is on the way in just a few minutes. And news, of course, passing on Lindsey Graham. He's going to get into that. I'm sure as well during the course of his show starting at 1206 today on the Home of Your Reds 700. WW Cincinnati.