07 14 26 *FULL SHOW* I thought Trump was joking; SC gov picks Graham's sister; Rep Jeff Crank; Trump's bad court day; AI recycling; Toll this

This episode sponsored by Minky Couture. Fair warning, bring a Minky Couture blanket home, and it may instantly become the most wanted seat in the house. That's the magic of Minky Couture. Minky Cotor created the original soft Minky Blanketuit, trusted for premium quality and custom styles. One Touch, and movie nights, naps, and cold mornings, suddenly revolve around who got to it first. Shop now at MinkyCatour.com. That's Minky, M-N-K-Y-K-T-U-R-E.com. Go to minky couture.com and get your minky couture blanket now before everyone in your house claims it is theirs. All right, I might as well just start with this. Boy, did I get that wrong. I thought, okay, this came up at the very end of our show yesterday, and Gina was actually reading the social media feeds as this was going along. And there were two things that happened very near the end of the show yesterday. One was President Trump talking about imposing a toll on the Strait of Hormuz. We'll get to that later. And then the other one was President Trump suggesting Lindsey Graham's sister to replace Lindsey Graham just for the rest of... his current term, which goes through January, but functionally goes through December because they go on their Christmas, New Year's break, and by the time that's all done, usually they're basically done in December. So we're talking about maybe five months or so. August's, yeah. So I thought Trump was joking. And I said that yesterday. And boy, was I wrong. And the governor of South Carolina, his name is Henry McMaster. I got in touch with Ms. Graham. She got a married name now that I don't have in front of me. But in any case, and she accepted, and she said, you heard Gina play the audio clip, that she. that Lindsay was always there for her, and now she's going to be there for him to help finish whatever important work remains in this term. And I think the thing that I didn't know that probably would have been a useful thing for me to know when I was saying that I thought Trump was kidding, is that it turns out that Senator Lindsey Graham and his sister talked about politics a lot. And she is probably very well informed as to the issues and his views on the issues that she will intend to honor for the next several months while serving in the U.S. Senate. She's going to be sworn in today, apparently. So the seat will only have been vacant for a few days and not for any votes. So that's an interesting thing. But boy, did I get that wrong. And so I just wanted to let you know. You know, I admit it when I get something wrong.

doing there was just saying something to kind of get some of these other people off of his back who are who keep badgering him for endorsements for the primary election and those people are going to keep badgering him for endorsements for the primary election but it does sort of you know, get them off his back for a little while. And I'm not going to go through all the nuts and bolts there of the South Carolina politics. But I do think understanding now that Lindsey Graham talked with his sister a lot about politics and policy, you know, I think she's as good a choice as anyone, right? I think that she probably, at least when it comes to the issues that Lindsey Graham cared the most about. She's probably as well informed as at least some other members of the Senate, and she will go in there and honor his wishes. Let me mention one other thing, actually. This is more of a philosophical point. And this came up on Twitter yesterday, just as I was interacting with some folks. A person said that one of the reasons that he wants Lindsey Graham's sister to do that is that... She will vote the way he would have voted. She will honor his wishes and continue whatever that vote would have been as as it should be. And that as it should be part, I thought was kind of interesting. And this is really far more of a philosophical point than a political point. It's not. I don't object to somebody going in and saying, you know, I'm in here earlier and I should have been. And it should still be this other guy or gal. But for whatever reason, that person isn't here. We know what the reason is in this case. And I am going to do my best to the extent that I know how that person would have voted. I'm going to do my best to vote that way to honor him. and to maintain that continuity as he would have had he been here. But I don't actually think it's morally or ethically necessary to play it that way. When the senator or a house member in a different situation is gone, then he or she is gone. And then another person is the senator. And yeah, I get that in this case, Lindsey Graham would have been the senator voting the way he votes for the next several months. I understand the feel good. aspect of it. But you know what, if the governor had appointed somebody else who maybe would have voted a little differently from Lindsey Graham, I would have been just fine with that as well. So I just kind of wanted to make that as more of a philosophical point. And then on a practical political point, And we talked about this a little bit yesterday with Jim Banks, Senator from Indiana who joined us. There is a newish version of the Russia sanctions bill. And President Trump for a long time had not wanted a Russia sanctions bill because, as Senator Banks told us, the president thought it would kind of tie his hands in negotiations with Vladimir Putin. But now that President Trump has figured out.

even though it took him far too long, that Vladimir Putin can't be trusted. And also, it appears that the Senate has gone through and modified the sanctions bill a little bit, changing some of the things that the president and his team most didn't like. It does appear that this is fairly likely to pass. Axios posted a note saying Senate looks to honor Graham with Russia sanctions. So we will see that. That's a thing that could actually come up for a vote this week. You would expect that it would happen after. Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene Graham Nordone, that's her last name, N-O-R-D-O-N-E, is sworn in, which will be a little bit after noon hour time today. I would expect a Russia sanctions thing to potentially happen even this week, which would be very, very interesting. All right, we still have a ton of stuff to do, including Congressman Jeff Crank, joining us in a little over 20 minutes. Keep it right here for Ross on the News with Gina. Wanted to say rest in peace to Sam Neal, a brilliant actor who passed away at the age of 78. He was in Sydney, Australia, and we think his family hasn't said exactly, but he probably passed away from a kind of cancer that he was diagnosed with about four years. Well, I don't know. I shouldn't say that because he was diagnosed with cancer. Then he said that he was cancer-free. And his family actually said he was cancer-free when he passed away. So we just, we don't know. Let me share with you from the New York Times. Sam Neal, the ruggedly handsome and remarkably versatile screen actor from New Zealand. He was actually born in Northern Ireland, but he raised in New Zealand. Spent a lot of time in Australia as well. But he appeared in more than 150 films and TV shows over a five-decade career, perhaps best known for his star turn as the dashing paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant in the Blockbuster Jurassic Park series. So as I mentioned, he passed away at the age of... of 78, a little more from the New York Times. Two roles in films released in the same year in 1993, give a sense of his range. For the director Steven Spielberg, he played the wonderstruck Dr. Grant in the first Jurassic Park movie in 1993 filled with... crowd-pleasing computer-generated effects. And at the same time, same year, he portrayed the forlorn, cook-holded husband and Jane Campion's severe and mysterious drama, The Piano. I won't go through naming lots of other movies he's been in. But for those of you who ever saw kind of older British television, he played a spy called Riley. The show was called Riley Ace of Spies.

set about a hundred years ago and that was that was part of the reason that some people thought he might actually be in the running to play james bond although he he never did play james bond but anyway sam neal i i always enjoyed watching his watching his movies and And we, I mean we, I mean fans, yeah, all right, but his family and friends are gonna, gonna miss him a lot. One other, one other quick things, kind of interesting. Mr. Neal faced obstacles as a child that included a stutter. And what he perceived to be an embarrassingly grand British accent and the name Nigel to land in a pretty rough playground in a New Zealand primary school with a plum in the voice. And Nigel for a name was asking for trouble. So I lived in Australia for a while. And his whole name, Nigel John Dermott Neal, any ILL. And in Australia, Nigel is kind of a name you don't really want. Like, it's sort of a name that's thought of as sort of a loser kind of name. And so I imagine that that followed him to New Zealand, even though it's probably not that in Britain. It is that in Australia. So he had overcome a lot of stuff. And boy, did he ever. So Sam Neal, rest in peace. A truly, truly great actor. And one of those guys who. You know, one of those actors is like, okay, if he's in it, I'll watch it. I don't really need to know anything else. And everybody's got actors like that. In fact, what do you tell me at 5669-0? Tell me an actor who, you know, male or female, that if that person is in a movie, you're going to see it. You don't even need to know anything else. You're just going to see it because you like them so much. Right? For me, probably Clint Eastwood is near the top of that list. So let me know, 56690. Oh, one other quick thing I want to mention. And then we're going to have Congressman Jeff crank in the next segment. So producer Dragon is having surgery today. So what I would like you to do is text us right now at 56690 with any message you want to give Producer Dragon as he heads into surgery. And I will ask him to log in from home and look at the text line so he can see your messages. All right. Text 56690 with anything you want to tell Producer Dragon as he heads off to be under the knife today. Jeff Crank. Congressman from Colorado Springs joins us after some news, weather and traffic. All right, good morning. It's Tuesday. I'm Ross, long-sleep Gina in studio. Producer Shannon behind the glass this week. A producer Dragon is getting surgery today. If you want to send him a note, just text him anything at 56690 and he'll log in and check your messages before he heads into surgery. 56690. So.

Very pleased to welcome back to the show, my friend Jeff Crank, who is Republican Congressman representing the 5th Congressional District here in Colorado, Colorado Springs, and other areas as well. Plenty of stuff to talk about today. And Jeff, obviously, you're in the House, not the Senate, and you're in Colorado, not South Carolina, but I did want to get your take on the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. Yeah, Ross, great to be with you. Thank you. You know, very sad, very shocking. I actually was here at my apartment in Washington, D.C. when it happened, and Senator Graham literally lived two blocks from me. So my understanding is that's where it happened. So I was very close to where it happened. It just really sad. Anytime we lose anybody, it doesn't matter whether Democrat or Republican. It's a sad thing. And he's had a great impact. You know, he had that. I actually worked here in the House of Representatives when he was a member of the House Armed Services Committee. And I knew him back then. He was played more of a role of a moderate, I think, back then. He morphed a little bit more into a conservative over time in his career. But, you know, he had that very shining moment, of course, during the confirmation hearings where he just very forcefully pushed back on this Democrat narrative that was trying to destroy a man. for their own political gain. And that was, I think, his finest political moment. And his stock really grew after that. I agree with you. Actually, I didn't play that audio yesterday. I might get to it today. Let's just continue in a somewhat Lindsey Graham direction, but on a policy basis. I saw a piece at Axios. Here's the headline. Senate looks to honor Graham with Russia sanctions. Now, I presume that this either will go through the house as some new version or has gone through the house. What's going on with this? And by the way, yesterday we had on the show our mutual friend Jim Banks. And he said he did think that partly just because this is the way it was going, but also partly to honor Lindsey Graham, he thought that a Russia sanctions bill was more likely to pass than it ever had been. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I think this probably does give it a little more impetus. Of course, Senator Graham just came back from visiting Ukraine, just I think the day before he passed away. So I do think it gives a little more impetus to a Russian sanctions bill. And I do think that it would pass both the House and the Senate. And it sounds like, of course, the administration is on board as well. So I do think that we'll probably see that in the next couple of weeks. Looking at some local bills or at least some things that could really impact us locally here in Colorado. We've been talking about the wildfires over and over again. There's a bill, if I'm reading this correctly, it has passed the House on its way to the Senate, HR 471. It's Fix our Forest Acts. Can you explain if this was in place right now what it could possibly mean for Colorado's firefighting efforts at a time where we're just seeing so many burning across our state?

Yeah, the Fixar Forest Acts, which I supported, it came through my committee and I voted for it in committee and then the House floor and we passed it out of the House, sent it over to the Senate where all things seem to go to die in the United States Senate. And so it's been very frustrating that they haven't been able to act on this. It's a great bill. It basically creates kind of high priority fireshed management area. So it actually for the first time, if you can believe it. looks at our forests and it kind of identifies forests that interface, particularly with urban areas and those that have kind of a significant wildfire threat to nearby communities. And then it directs agencies to prioritize fuel reduction in those areas, which just makes sense. But we haven't been doing that. I mean, I looked up a statistic. The other day, Gina, you can see this. In Pike National Forest, which comes down to Colorado Springs and interfaces even with parts of Denver, the Denver metro area, in 1860, in the 1860s, there was an average of 39 trees, ponderosa pines in the sort of lower montane area, the area of lower elevation, 39 trees per acre in 1860. Today, the average is 177 trees per acre, four and a half times the amount of fuel sitting in our national forest. And so we've done a terrible job. We've argued that. Somehow, this is preserving our heritage. It's not our heritage. Our heritage was thinner for us, right? And so we've just done a terrible job. One of the other things this bill would do if it passed is it would just speed up forest management projects. Right now, they're being tied up through the NEPA process, the National Environmental Policy Act process that does reviews. This would allow those to be sped up. And then it just reduces delays from lawsuits to get in there and thin out our forests. And then there's other things that helps with wildlife and wildfire intelligence for But trying to predict where wildfires might start, using some technology to try and detect wildfires so that we can get to them faster. This is a bill we've got to get through. And, you know, Western states particularly have a terrible problem this year. And we can fix it by passing a bill like this. Do you have an indication, Jeff, as to how this will fare in the Senate? Well, I mean, we passed this over a year ago. I mean, it's been probably 15 months ago. We passed the Fixar Forest Act in the House and have sent it over there. And it's just sat and languished. And they just don't seem to make it a priority. You know, the Senate, obviously, they've got a lot of HR stuff to do, approving nominees and things like that. So they got a lot of work to do there that the House doesn't have to do. But they need to get on it. And I would encourage our...

our citizens in Colorado to call our two U.S. senators. And by the way, this bill is a bipartisan bill. We had a lot of Democrats and Republicans support the bill. The main sponsors were Republicans, but the administration would sign this bill if we can get it through the U.S. Senate. We're talking with Jeff Crank, Congressman from Colorado's 5th Congressional District. Jeff, I have literally one minute left. I'm going to ask you a question. So President Trump announced that he's going to give a speech on... Thursday night. If you were in charge, if you were President Trump's speech writer or at least speech topic chooser, what would you be encouraging President Trump to speak about on Thursday night? I think two things. One, what is the strategy in Iran? How do we deal with it? Sell the nation on why we're there and what the mission is, number one. And number two, the efforts that we are doing and this administration is doing to make life affordable. We had 9% inflation under the Biden administration. That is coming down. We're working to get it down. What is this administration continuing to do to solve those issues for the American people and the housing issue? Those are the three things I think I'd talk to talk about. I couldn't agree with you more. I think those are the most important things for voters and for politics, although rumors are he's going to spend a bunch of time talking about election integrity, but we'll see. You never know with President Trump. But I would second your motion for the things he should talk about. Jeff Crank represents Colorado's fifth congressional district. Thanks so much for your time, as always, Jeff. Ross, Gina, thank you much. All right. The forest thing sounds interesting. These things are very technical. I don't know if you ever tried to read one of these bills. They're almost, they're so dense that are very hard to read. But you can imagine, Gina, how frustrating it must be for these guys who are passing things that they don't think are highly partisan and highly political and, right, the forestry stuff. And yet, like you said, it goes to the Senate to die. It's just, all right. There's a lot of other stuff going on. Ice can't seem to get out of its own way. I had mentioned yesterday about shooting in Texas. Now there's another one, not in Texas. Gina's got an update. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, but I feel pretty bad for Karen. All of the Karen's. I have a friend named Karen. Super nice lady teaches music, taught music to one of my kids. Couldn't be nicer. And somehow we've gotten to a place in the United States of America where when you hear the name Karen. somehow subconsciously, like the first thing that I think that comes into many people's minds is some kind of negative thought for no obvious reason at all. And Gina found a story from a research firm entitled Survey Names Karen as Most Judged Name Ever. What's going on here? You know, as soon as you started talking about that, I was trying to look into like, where does it stem from?

Just Google AI says that it might come from comedian Dane Cook back in 2005, where he had a concept of the most annoying, universally disliked friend name Karen. So he might have started it. That long ago? I know, because that's what I was thinking. I was like, I thought it was maybe all the viral moments and maybe it actually comes from one single Karen who blew up at a restaurant. Was that annoying lady in Central Park in New York? Was her name Karen? I don't think it was. But like that. Yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah, something like that. So, of course, they do research on it. And I'm sorry to all the Karens, especially like the nice ones like you mentioned. This is from a research company, Talker Research. They surveyed 2,000 Americans, not a ton of people. But it says one in five say they judge others by their first name alone. So then they topped the list was the name. Karen. They had them rank all of the names. Okay, well, what are the names that you would judge the most? What carries the most negative connotation to it? Karen was number one on the list. Chad? A distant second. I get that one. Which we love K-O-A's Chad Bauer. He is not a Chad by any means. Nowhere near a Chad. No. But that one makes sense too. Parents is the, you know, older lady that blows up at the restaurant worker and then records it on her video. I want to talk to your manager. Yeah, Chad is what, the beefy airhead hunk. Bitcoin. I don't know. Like, you know, it's just a Chad. Yeah, it's just a Chad. He's the one that never puts, never puts his weights back on the rack at the gym. You know, it's a Chad. The other on the list, well, Donald, which might make sense. John, I don't understand why John's on there. And Damien. Which Damien is a character in Mean Girls, which was the only thing that I could think of was Damien, but I have no idea where John came from. Well, you're too young to understand what many people think of Damien, the name Damien, and I'll tell you in a second, but the, when this study that you found shows that the people who are. most judgy about names are Gen Z, right? So it's the youngest people who are most judgmental just based on the superficial kind of meaningless, meaningless thing. And then as you get older people are less judging on names. But have you heard of the movie series, The Omen, old school, old school horror movie?

So you've heard of like Jason or whatever, these bad guys. And so Damien was like that. Oh. Damien was like a demon, devil, bad guy in an old school horror movie. So if you're my age, the name Damien kind of had that kind of connotation. But people your age, I have no idea what they would object to in the name. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny to see like Gen Z is the most judgmental or the younger generations are more judgmental about names. But it also shows that the younger Americans tend to be stronger or have like a stronger connection to their name is another thing that they said in this study. Uh-huh. So 42% of those surveyed say they actually don't feel like they embody the spirit is what it said. Emboddy the spirit of their first name. Uh-huh. And younger Americans say, no, I like my first name. So. I like my first name, but I don't dwell on it. Maybe it's the fact that the poor boomers are named Karen. And they're like, well, you ended up killing my first name. So I don't like it anymore. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, my friend Bill's wife is Karen. He just texted me. He said, I have a friend named Karen, too. And she couldn't be nicer. Yeah. Every, I mean, I don't know a lot of Karen's, but every one of them couldn't be nicer. Yep. It just seems so. And yet, and yet, unless it's a Karen, I already know, when I hear so-and-so is Karen. I have to like make an effort to put out of my head the image of I want to speak to the manager. Absolutely. It's everywhere. I can't help it. How did that happen? And I'm actually surprised not on this list is Kyle. Because my husband's a Kyle. Yeah. And Kyle became a big monster drinking punch holes through drywall, like rage kind of man. Like that's what people like to joke about. Really? It was like they chugged energy drinks and then decided to like punch a hole in the wall. It's different from Chad? Different than Chad's. Yeah. Chad's like a waspy entitled Jim Rat. Yes. Yes. Huh. I didn't know that was a Kyle thing. Kyle hates his name Kyle. Really? Yeah. He doesn't like it? Yeah. I don't think it's a bad name. Want to hear something funnier? Sure. My dad doesn't like it either. He said there needs to be a constant somewhere in there. It's literally just Kyle. You never close your mouth, Kyle. He said, that's not a name. It's just a sound. Does your husband, don't tell me the name, but does he have a middle name that he likes that he could go by? Could he go by if he wanted to? You know, when we moved to Denver, he thought about it. Really? Because he was like, this would be my chance. Yeah, I could reintroduce myself. Yeah, he didn't do. Witness protection. Yep. But he didn't do it. No. No.

That's funny. Kyle's not a name. It's just a sound. Oh, love it. This episode, sponsored by Minky Couture. Fair warning, bring a Minky Couture blanket home and it may instantly become the most wanted seat in the house. That's the magic of Minky Couture. Minky Cotor created the original soft Minky Blanketuit, trusted for premium quality and custom styles. One Touch and movie nights, naps, and cold mornings suddenly revolve around who got to it first. Shop now at MinkyCatour.com. That's Minky M-N-K-Y-K-T-U-R-E.com. Go to minky couture.com and get your minky couture blanket now before everyone in your house claims it is theirs. All right, a few listener texts, Sheena. There is a crypto token called Gigacad. Chad does not return his cart to the cart corral. I think that's more Cairns than Chad. That could be. That could be. And one more. I don't care for that reference. Thank you. Sincerely, Chad. Oh, sorry, Chad. That's what I said. That's what I said, too. Sorry, sorry, Chad. Appreciate that. For those who want to wish Dragon, good luck or anything else as he heads into surgery today. Just text 56690 with your thought for Dragon, and he'll check those out and he'll go read him himself and he can see your notes. So that's pretty good. I had asked earlier. Who you would go see an actor or actress. These days I think you're supposed to use actor for male and female. I kind of like the word actress. Anyway, who is an actor or actress who if that person is in a movie, you'll go see the movie no matter what just because you like seeing that actor or actor so much. It came up for me in the context of the passing of Sam Neal. Epic Gina, is there an actor slash actress who you love that much? If so-and-so was in a movie, I'm going to see it. I don't need to know anything else. Maybe Ryan Gosling. Okay. Is that because he's really good or is it because he's cute? Both. All right. He was really good in the Project Hail Mary. Did I tell you we saw that? I think, yeah. Did you like it? Loved it. See, I think it became Ryan Gosling most recently because of seeing back to back, not back to back, but pretty close, Barbie and Project Hail Mary. And I enjoyed just the difference in range that he can do with both. And he's. Not bad to look at. Maybe Paul Rudd, too. I really like Paul Rudd. Another handsome man. This listener says, Tom Cruise, Dwayne Johnson, and Jason Statham. I really like Jason Statham very, very much. Although he's starting to get to the point like Liam Neeson, where he's the exact same guy in every movie.

Having a back and forth with Brett Kavanaugh and then also addressing some of his comments like you heard right there to Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. And I have to say this, if you think back to these sort of terrible days of Me Too where people of a certain political persuasion were saying that. Any claim by any woman against any man must automatically be believed and that the man should be assumed to be guilty and punished as much as possible based on one claim from one woman, right? And let me just be clear. Like sometimes guys do bad things that they should be punished for. All right? That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about this was one claim from a woman who said some stuff that she said he did to her in high school, in high school. And, you know, this came up in another context recently, and I don't even remember what the context was. Oh, it was about Graham Platner. And, and... The context there was you never get caught your very first time, right? If somebody's rapy, they're rapy pretty often. They mistreat women pretty often, even if it's less than rape, they mistreat women often. And Graham Platner clearly did. A point that Lindsey Graham actually made when talking to and about Brett Kavanaugh was the idea that somehow he was this horrible abuser of women while in high school for a year, you know, at the end of high school. And then suddenly was a perfect Boy Scout and never did anything wrong again and has all these women staffers around him when he was a federal judge before being a Supreme Court judge. And everybody only had glowing things to say about him sure does make it seem unlikely that he actually did. anything wrong to that woman. I'm not saying it's impossible, but they tried to destroy him. And I will say, since it was that time of Me Too, you had a lot of Republicans who were very afraid. Republicans are afraid a lot. of a lot of things. And at that time, that's what they were afraid of. And there seemed like there was a very good chance of Republicans caving in on Brett Kavanaugh and going along with this character assassination. And it was that speech by Lindsey Graham that put the spine back in the Republicans and got Brett Kavanaugh through. And it doesn't matter particularly whether you love or don't love Brett Kavanaugh, but that was a shining moment for Lindsey Graham.

All right, there's always someone who wants to take something a little out of context. Let me just respond briefly to this listener. A listener says, as a survival of serial assault when I was in high school, I'm offended by Ross's comments this morning that only one woman accusing a man of sexual assault isn't enough to believe it happened. So I was obviously, clearly, talking about a guy in his 50s being accused by some woman of something that she said that happened 30 or 35 years earlier and which had not been... supported in any way by any evidence about that guy's character since. So this listener says, actually this is kind of, it's kind of heavy, and I'm not even going to share it on the air. But the listener then ends the text by saying, shame on you to me. I don't accept that. And, you know, I'm not saying, I thought it was pretty clear that. It absolutely does happen that men do bad things to women and they deserve the harshest possible punishments, right? I'm not defending any of that. What I'm talking about is character assassination and based on one accusation, 30, 35 years. after the fact with or non-fact with no corroboration. And just also to this person who's texted me, I would also like to say that I think I was the first radio host, certainly the first in the Denver area, to say that I believe, look, I'm not a court of law. So I don't have to say alleged and I don't have to say presumed innocent. I don't have to do any of that. I'm just giving you my opinion. I think I was the first radio host in Colorado to say that I thought Bill Cosby was a serial rapist who deserved to be in prison. When many of my listeners at that time, especially conservative white people who liked the message that Bill Cosby was spreading at the time back in the day, Right? Before all this was known, but the message from the Cosby Show and all that, which is pretty positive message. But I had lots and lots of actually conservative white people and especially conservative white women really mad at me. for saying that I believed, and obviously it needs to go to trial before you put someone in prison, I don't have the power to put anyone in prison, and I'm entitled to my opinion, right? And that I believe that Bill Cosby was a serial rapist who deserved to be in prison. So I'm not a person who is like going around excusing this stuff. So I, you know, when you say, you know, shame on you to me, I don't accept that at all. And I think that the example that you

you gave in your text is not relevant. And perhaps you should listen more closely to what I'm saying rather than fly off the handle and decide to text shame on you to me. If I thought I had really said something wrong, I promise you I would admit it. In fact, I started the show today by admitting something that I got wrong. But that wasn't the thing we just talked about with Justice Brett Kavanaugh was not one of them. All right, let's lighten it up a little bit. Two quick things I want to do here. First, I had this story to talk about, and then I just saw it on TV here on our news partners at KDVR, Fox 31. I don't think this is exactly genus thing, but Olive Garden is bringing back the never-ending pasta pass. How are you about Olive Garden? Soup, salad, and breadsticks, if they still do that, be unlimited. Yes, hands down. I haven't been to an Olive Garden in a really, really long time. I haven't either, but check this out. Producer Shannon, this could be a thing for you, too, if you could get one. So this is from Axios.com. Olive Garden is bringing back its popular, never-ending pasta pass for the first time since 2019. Let me just skip ahead a little bit. The promotion debuted in 20, Shannon's leaving to go get one. The promotion debuted in 2014 with just a thousand passes and quickly developed a cult following with passes routinely selling out almost instantly. The company said fans never stopped asking for the pasta pass to return. Let me skip ahead here. Olive Garden will sell 10,000. It's not really that many. Never ending pasta passes for $100 each plus tax beginning this Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern, so noon hour time. Oh, Shannon's got his cash out ready to go. I don't think you can use cash. You got to go to pasta pass.com. Why do you so much more? Yeah, he's got to like this, like he's going to Vegas ready to lay down thousands of dollars on the blackjack table in cash. What in the world? Yeah, that was quite the water. That was old school right there. So, Shannon, you paying attention? PastaPass.com Thursday at noon hour time. Okay? That's where you can sign up and try to get. So each pass, you ready for this, Gina? Each pass includes 13 weeks. of never-ending pasta bowl meals featuring unlimited pasta, homemade sauces, and protein toppings, plus never-ending soup or salad and breadsticks. Diners can choose from 120 possible combinations of pasta sauces and toppings, two new additions this year, spicy Alfredo sauce and crispy shrimp. Frita, F-R-I-T-A, whatever that is. So there you go. 10,000 never-ending pasta pass is going for sale, 100 bucks. I'm kind of sort of tempted. The thing is, I don't think my wife would go with me. So I'd have this thing and then I'd have to go by myself.

And I don't know. Shannon doesn't mind that. Shannon loves, Shannon goes to Golden Corral by himself once a week, every week for the past 20 years or more. And so it's fine for Shannon. Are you thinking about it, Gina? No. There's no way I would go to Olive Garden enough to even break even with a hundred bucks. How many times do you have to go with what food caught? You're right. Four times. Four times. Well, yeah, don't you think? You go for sure six times. In 13 weeks, once every other week. And you've definitely covered your cost. There's no way. Unless you're only having breadsticks and salad and boring stuff like that. Every other week? The thing is you don't eat any, you don't eat meat. So the protein is the expensive part of these meals, right? So, but still. Still, it's tempting. Did you hear that Americans were all suggesting Olive Garden as like the authentic Italian cuisine to World Cup travelers? No. They were telling everyone if you're looking for authentic Italians. Oh my gosh. Olive Garden. Oh, that's hilarious. That's like Taco Bell as authentic Mexican food. Which I did see photos of people eating Taco Bell and were just mind blown by how good it was. It is really good. You know, so at some point, there was a point at which I decided I cared a little bit about the quality of the food that I ate. And I was, and I would cut back on burgers a little bit. I still love burgers, but I cut back on them a little bit. and was eating more Taco Bell and then I actually started doing some research. And it turns out Taco Bell is every bit as unhealthy or more unhealthy than most other fast food places, which really bums me out. And as a result of which I am eating Taco Bell every bit as much as I used to. You thought it was healthier? I thought it was so. I don't know why I thought that. I'm not saying I thought it was healthy. A little lettuce. A little lettuce, a little tomato, little sour cream, right? And everything is cured. No? No. Definitely not. Okay. I should have asked you. All right, let's do something really silly. Gina, why don't you tell us about this funny story from Rolling Stone? Pit bull, Mr. Worldwide. Born and raised Miami, or Miami's very own pit bull. Setting the Guinness. For people who don't know who he is. Mr. Worldwide. I don't know all this to explain them. Okay. That's it. All right. Keep going. If you don't know who Pitbull is. I know, I know. Pitbull is a bald rapper. That's all you need to know for this. He's got his own station on satellite radio and he's freaking enormous. Yeah, yeah, bald. That's all you need to know. Setting the Guinness World record for the most bald caps at a London festival. 22,141 people all showed up to the British summertime festival in Hyde Park, London on Friday. all wearing bald caps to support bald pit bull. And, yeah, he got the Guinness World Record title. And he, uh,

Took the recognition by opening it by saying, we did it, baldies. That's your dumbest story for today. Wait, it's so dumb that I'm not done with it. Okay. Can we do another minute? Sure. Can we do another minute? I don't know what else there is to say. From the Rolling Stone piece that Gina found, Rollingstone.com. While Pitbull is bald, he donned the bald cap himself. As Will Munford, an official adjudicator for Guinness World Records, said, pit bull. Quote, had to wear a bald cap to be in the record number as the record was not for the largest gathering of bald people, but the largest number of bald caps. So Pitbull, even though he was bald, he put on a bald cap. So is there also a Guinness World record for the largest gathering of bald people? There must be. There's a Guinness World record for absolutely everything under the sun. I did see an Instagram reel of a bald guy attending this bald gathering. And everybody was just shocked that he was bald not wearing. a bald cap like everybody else. He probably felt so included. There was actually some interesting thing in here, if I can find it, or you can find it, about... how they know how many people there were wearing bald caps. Like how did, how did they count and verify all that? I thought that was, I thought that was pretty cool. Did you, did you see that? You want me to find it? No. Here, let's see it. Volunteers numbered to 400 to individually check people when they entered, but there was also drone footage with 42 people backstage counting the bald caps. from the drone footage. So drones are for absolutely everything these days, right? You can you can blow up a Russian refinery with one and you can count a pit bull bald cap with one. There's nothing that you can't do with a drone. That was probably challenging too because this festival had like. Almost 70,000 people at it. Wait, wait, there were 70,000 people and only 20 something thousand. What's up with those other sticks in the mud? Why didn't they? That's not right. So it says that $65,000, I'm sorry, 65,000 people capacity was what this festival had. Now, I don't know if there was like multiple stages where people at other artists. Is it just pit bull playing? I don't know. But you're right. When you say it that way, you should have way more than you should have way more. You would have worn one if you were there, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, and Kyle, who doesn't like his name, would have worn one. Everybody should have worn one. Everybody should have. Wow. I mean, in this one, I'm looking. In this photo, you can call out. There's two girls in baseball caps right there. Call them out. Oh, come on. Get with the spirit of the thing, will you? All right, Epic, a listener texted in saying there is no record for bald people in one spot. So I went to chat GPT and I asked and chat GPT confirms what the listener said. Like I assume there's a.

Guinness World Record for everything. But Chet GPT says there is, there does not appear to be an official record for the largest gathering of naturally bald people in one location, although I assume could shave your head too. But then the, the AI says this. One practical challenge is verification. Guinness would need objective criteria for what counts as bald, like completely bald, right? Complete hair loss, shaved scalp. Or what about? male pattern baldness and also how do you know you'll have to know that someone isn't wearing a bald cap or or something like that so they say Guinness could potentially consider it as a new proposed world record, but they would have to define measurable rules and approve the category before an official attempt. Just fully bald. Fully bald. Fully bald. Yeah. But it could be any way. It could be mostly natural or it could be like producer dragon to shave your head. Which would probably be most of them actually. Right. Right. You know, because most guys who are kind of bald are not. Fully bald. So what about a guy who's like vast majority bald but got like a little ring or hair like around the side and back? No. No. Doesn't count. Fully bald. Yep. Yeah. So you can take one for the team and shave off that bit of hair you got left. Sure. And then it'll grow back. Yeah. Perfect. And then it'll grow back. Yep. All right. So are you, are you encouraging this? Is this something you would like to? Let's do it. I mean, clearly we just need more than one and we got the record. So let's do it. All right. I saw as long as we're sticking with kind of dumb stories, let me give you another one. So I saw a piece at KDVR.com, our news partners at Fox 31, about a week ago. And the headline is this. Vale police seek suspect after $1,200 bottle of tequila stolen. Now, here's a little more. Police are searching for a suspect accused of stealing around $6,700 of cash and a $1,200 bottle of tequila from a restaurant in West Vale, according to a press release from the town of Vale on Tuesday. They say the burglary occurred around 4.41 a.m. Last Monday, I guess it was, at the Del Toro restaurant on North Frontage Road in Vale. And they actually have security footage of a guy. And so anyway, so $1,200 bottle of tequila. That was the part that piqued my interest. So I actually got in touch with Vale law enforcement and asked them.

Hey, can you tell me what kind of tequila that was? Now, I am not much of a tequila guy. I will just say, and I'll put this into gentlest possible terms. I had a very bad experience with tequila in college, and it took many years before I could even smell tequila again without feeling physically ill. I will not elaborate. It was just, it was a very, very bad night. And I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I'm in retrospect, I'm kind of surprised. I didn't die. That's how bad it was. So in any case, so I'm not really a tequila guy, but I emailed the, the, I emailed Vail and they said that it was Don Julio Royale, which means royal. Extra Anyahu tequila. And I went and looked it up. And sure enough, even in stores, it's between 800 and 1100 in a restaurant. It definitely would be at least $1,200 a bottle. So there you go. It really was a $1,200 bottle of tequila. It comes in a beautiful decanter, by the way. Here, let me read this to you. Just free advertising for these guys, even though I don't like tequila. Because I just like the wording, how you market the stuff. Don Julio Real Extra Ania. Yeho tequila is an exceptionally rare and luxurious tequila crafted from 100% blue Weber agave, whatever that is, and aged for extended periods in American oak barrels as one of the most prestigious expressions. That's a nice word too. From the legendary Don Julio distillery in Halisco, Mexico, Don Julio Real represents the pinnacle of refinement, depth, and craftsmanship. Well, I hope it does. I hope it does for $1,200 a bottle, again, in a very beautiful glass crystal decanter as well. So there you go. And I was very pleased that the veil law enforcement folks got back to me and actually answered my question about what kind of tequila it was. So thank you very much for doing that. We have plenty of other stuff to talk about. I do need to say again, And I'll tell you the details if you missed it an hour and 50 minutes ago that I was just shockingly wrong yesterday about a particular thing. And it only took me a few hours to be completely utterly proven wrong. And if you missed it, I'll tell you about it right after we do some news weather and traffic here. This episode sponsored by Minky Couture. Fair warning, bring a Minky Couture blanket home and it may instantly become the most wanted seat in the house. That's the magic of Minky Couture. Minky Cotor created the original soft Minky Blanketuit, trusted for premium quality and custom styles. One Touch and movie nights, naps, and cold mornings suddenly revolve around who got to it first. Shop now at MinkyCatour.com. That's Minky M-N-K-Y-K-T-U-R-E.com. Go to minky couture.com and get your minky couture blanket now, before everyone in your house claims it is theirs.

Quick thing on markets here, watching the stock market and other markets this morning. Kind of interesting to see that near the market opened, the Dow was down and the NASDAQ was up. And in the last half an hour or so, now everything's up, but not by a lot. But the Dow has been drifting up and the NASDAQ has been drifting down. One quick thing I want to mention, the Dow... is an unusual index is because it's not capitalization weighted and i'm not going to get into all the details of this but basically every stock that's in the dow for a a one dollar move in that stock whether it's a thirty dollar stock or a three hundred dollar stock a one dollar move in the stock moved the Dow by the same amount. So it's a very odd kind of index, and it's a very famous index. And people talk about the Dow when it's been around for a hundred and something years. But it's a weird index, and it's not actually highly representative of the market overall, of the economy overall. After all, keep in mind, it's called the Dow Jay Jones Industrial Average. So in any case, what I wanted to mention is, Since there's only 30 stocks in the Dow, if any one of them has kind of a big day, it can really, really move the Dow a lot and cause the Dow to be even less representative than it normally is. And today that stock is IBM. IBM announced weaker than expected earnings, and the stock is down pretty massively for a stock of that size. IBM is down about $70 a share. I don't have the quote in front of me, but from roughly 290 to 220. So it's a massive percentage down almost 25% today. And that would mean that IBM has lost something close to $50 billion or a little more in market value in one day. And the last thing I'll say on that. These things, I think, I used to be a professional trader. And a lot of folks, a lot of thought around markets revolves around so-called efficient market theory. And I don't think anybody takes it 100% seriously. But a lot of theory does, and theories about economics involve people being rational, people having good information. And this kind of thing with IBM. shows actually how bad the information flow can be. To be that wrong about a company that big, to have a company as famous with as many analysts following it as follow IBM, there must be 100 analysts following IBM or more. And for the overall assessment to have been wrong by an amount that causes the stock to drop by 24% over $50 billion in one day is a really fascinating thing. And it does show you that even the biggest experts can be really wrong, even about something that they spend all day, every day researching and thinking. And in a sense, it's part of what makes markets fascinating.

That money and market commentary brought to you by Blue Heron Capital. Now, speaking of the analysts getting something wrong, I need to do a major Mia Culpa for something I got wrong about 24 hours ago. And it was very near the end of yesterday's show. And Gina said, hey, Donald Trump just recommended, President Trump just recommended that Lindsey Graham's sister fill the rest of this term, which will go to December or thereabouts. I mean, technically until January, but usually they leave in December. Gina said, well, Trump is recommending that Lindsey Graham's sister get this. And I said, I think he's joking. It turns out he wasn't. And just some hours later, he proved me completely wrong by the governor of the governor of South Carolina, naming Lindsey Graham's sister to fill out the rest of his term. She is a, she's retired. She's 65 years old or thereabouts. And, you know, she's a mom. She's a grandma. And what I didn't know. when I said, I assumed he was joking, and what I have since learned is that Lindsey Graham actually spent a lot of time talking with his sister about policy and politics. So at least when it comes to the issues that Lindsey Graham cares about a lot, I assume, based on this reporting, there's not a ton of this reporting, but based on the reporting I've seen, I assume that his sister. is not just there to vote, you know, how she thinks maybe he might have voted on a thing, but rather that she actually probably understands pretty well. some of these issues, how he thinks about Ukraine, the Russia sanctions bill, his support for Israel. He was very much a foreign policy-oriented guy. It wasn't only foreign policy, but that was a big part of his thing. He's also chairman of the Budget Committee, even though he said he wasn't very good with numbers. But he was really thought of as primarily a foreign policy guy. So I didn't know that he confided in his sister that much and that he spoke with her that much, which makes the choice of her more sensible. But in any case, I sure. got that spectacularly wrong in a very short period of time. So I just wanted to, I wanted to, you know, admit when I get something wrong, I definitely like to admit it. There is a listener text here that I wanted to share with Gina. And it says, Rotten, I was worried that with Dragon's absence, there would not be enough wasted time during this show. But Gina has stepped right up to fill the need. And I replied, I said, look.

Gina is a professional, and she will learn whatever needs to be learned to do the very best show. So I just wanted to give you credit where it's... I really think I'm proud of that. I don't know if I want that time of long. But talking about the Guinness World Record for the most ball of caps at a pit bull concert. Yeah, that's fair. That's probably. No, and when dragons out, it's very good of you to step in and kind of fill that void and help me waste some time. Sure. Even though it makes you, I can tell just by the look on your face, you're a little uncomfortable with even being recognized for that as a professional would be. Sure. Sure. All right. No, we did have a text yesterday that said, are we missing all of, do we feel more comfortable at the fact that Dragon's not here because there are no sound buttons being created. And yes, I will say that there are probably been a lot of comments that I've made that would have been added to the sound bar that Dragon has. I responded to that one as well. And I said, I do think that on the one hand, Gina and I don't have to worry about. Producer Shannon doing extra work and, and, you know, grabbing some sound bite that we make and putting it on the soundbar. Shannon is not that guy to go the extra mile. Right, Shannon? That's fair, isn't it? Yeah, he just nodded. He did set an alarm for the pasta pass. Of course he did. Of course he did. If you know anything about Shannon's dining habits, I knew when I brought that story that he would set an alarm for that pasta pass. So, yes, Gina and I don't have to worry about what we say ending up as a sound clip, but I kind of miss it. And I kind of like the suspense of wondering. Whether something that comes out of my mouth or Jean is more likely Gina is because she is an absolute gold mine of sound bites is going to end up on that button bar to be to be played later. So we do look forward, at least I look forward to getting back to that. I don't know. Do you? Sure. Sure. I'm trying to see if I can actually find it. I wonder if I could find it. Wait, what are you looking for? The button bar. Oh, so I had found it at some point, but I have never found the ability to actually play it from our computers. Janet, do you know, do you know if we can play those, you think we can, if we can open the button bar here, you can play it? Say again. I'm saying that I know. You're saying that you know. Okay. But you're not saying whether we can or can't. Correct. If I asked you whether we can or can't, would you answer the question or not? Yeah. Do you, if Gina were able to get the button bar up on her computer and if her computer audio were potted up on the board by you, would she be able to play a sound of herself saying, I'm epic or whatever else she found? No.

Why is that? The next gen is not routed through the audio board. Okay. That's why in the, all right, so you heard the answer. I can't even find it anyways. It's a whole different computer that has the audio in it. Got it. So there you go. There's a little inside baseball. You learn something from producer Shannon right there. All righty, good morning. Happy Tuesday. Dragon is going to get surgery at some point today. If you want to send him well wishes, text them to 56690. And I think he's checking the text line just to see if he's, you know, what you're sending him. Hey, Ross, if Mia Coppa were an Italian restaurant, you would have a lifetime all you can eat pass. Oh my gosh, that's not very nice. At least, hey, at least I admit when I get something wrong. I do think I deserve a little credit for that. Donald Trump had a challenging day in a couple of federal courts yesterday in some cases that I wanted to mention to you. Not so much because they're about Donald Trump, but because I think they are interesting cases. So one of the things that's been going on within the Trump administration is a... I don't know if obsession is too harsh a word, but there's certainly a focus on election integrity and voter fraud. And actually, so let me back this out a second. I saw a really interesting conversation yesterday on Leland Vittert's show on News Nation. And he has Bill O'Reilly on the show somewhat frequently. And... O'Reilly talked about a phone call that he was on with Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump. And I don't know if it was only the three of them. O'Reilly didn't exactly say it was only the three of them. He kind of implied that it was, but I don't know for sure. And... And so O'Reilly clearly knows Trump very well. He talks to them, talks to him with some frequency. And one of the things that O'Reilly said about Trump is that Trump actually deeply believes that he lost because of fraud. And that it is not that all this stuff about the Save America Act and the other, you know, when Trump talks about stolen election and all that, according to O'Reilly, Trump really believes it. Now, I'm not going to get into a whole thing about whether Trump should believe it or not. I just found it very interesting to hear from someone who really knows Trump pretty well and has known him for decades that Trump really does believe it and that it's not just a political talking point. Again, I'm not looking to debate what Trump should or shouldn't believe. So given that the President of the United States believes this stuff, and given that he is the head of the executive branch and can task them with pursuing things that he thinks are important, the Justice Department in particular, has been asking many states to give them for the states to give the federal government their voter rolls.

And the voter rolls would include a bunch of things. Now, this is mostly being done by Pam Bondi before she got fired. But the voter rolls would include not just your name and whether you're registered to vote, but other information about you. And many states... have been pushing back on on this and not just not just blue states for example west virginia said no we don't want to do this we don't want to give you our information And we don't believe that you have a legal basis to get it. So a U.S. district judge named Thomas Mike Johnston, who was appointed by George W. Bush, yesterday was just the latest federal judge to tell the federal government that they are not entitled to get a state's unredacted voter rolls. This is something like the 12th. Maybe. But this judge concluded that their request failed to satisfy requirements of the Civil Rights Act. I'll quote a little bit from this news article. Let me just bear it. This is from Newsweek. The central question, the judge wrote, was whether the attorney general's written demand contained a statement of the basis and purpose for requesting the records as required by federal law. And the judge found that it did not. writing that the plaintiff's demand fails to include a factual basis as required by Title III. And it gets a little nerdy from there, so I'll just stop. But the bottom line is, this is the latest in a string of federal rulings against the federal government, federal judge rulings against the federal government when it comes to. their wanting state voter roles. Part of the reason that this is interesting is we expect that at least some of what Donald Trump will talk about in his Thursday night speech that was announced yesterday, the speech Thursday night at 7 p.m. all our time, we do think that at least some of that will be about election integrity and this sort of thing. And Trump is trying to get the federal government much more involved than they are probably legally allowed to. The other thing that happened in court. yesterday, a federal judge in Florida issued a really scathing ruling against President Trump and his lawyers for this so-called settlement between Trump and the IRS. And what the judge said was, basically, you're not allowed to make a settlement here. There wasn't even a real case. So first of all, Trump, now the judge didn't say this part. I'm going to say this part. Or at least the judge mentioned it but said it wasn't what? She was ruling on. Trump actually brought the case against the IRS for that contractor disclosing some of his tax information.

After the statute of limitations had lapsed. So Trump had a 0% chance of winning any case if it had gone to law because it was already time barred. So instead, he had his current personal lawyers negotiating with his former personal lawyers in government to give him or his friends a whole bunch of money. For his friends, it was this fund that now is not going to go through. But this isn't being talked about enough. There was a whole other thing that was. done, where the Justice Department is part of this completely corrupt so-called settlement, ordered the IRS to stop auditing Donald Trump's taxes and his business is taxes and taxes of some other things that he's associated with and basically said, even if he owes money, even if you were to find a $100 million error, which the New York Times says they think there is. Well, not exactly an error, just a wrongly claimed deduction. Even if you were to find that he owes $100 million, you have to stop the audit and you can't charge him that money. And it is unclear now with this judge's ruling whether that whole thing is completely out the window because the judge just basically said that Trump and his family. can't call it a settlement. So I don't really know what it means. The other thing that's interesting on this is that this judge has referred to state bar associations, the various Trump attorneys who brought this case against the government because she says that those lawyers knew or should have known that this was essentially a fraudulent case that they were bringing. Very, very interesting. Happy Tuesday, I'm Ross. Let's see, responding to some listener texts. This one explains that I'm a moron without saying that. This person is not trying to call me a moron. I'm just taking it as I'm a moron. The World Cup semis are at 1 p.m., our time, so that they are on in primetime in Europe. Duh, why didn't I think that? Because I'm a moron sometimes. I'm not going to bring you any audio of this right now, but it's quite an interesting day going on right now on Capitol Hill. There is one house hearing where you have Supreme Court justices testifying. And Amy Coney Barrett right now is testifying about threats to the safety of Supreme Court justices. I think she has been swatted a time or two, which is where somebody calls the cops and says there's a, you know, a hostage situation or some really bad thing going on at somebody's house so that the cops show up, not just show up, but show up armed and aggressive and ready to go. And the SWAT team shows up. That's why it's... swatted, and it's extremely dangerous because, you know, when you, when you show up thinking it's a hostage situation, you can imagine the adrenaline levels and all that. So Amy Coney Barrett is also talking about how she's been given a bulletproof vest. They're also talking about the budget requests for the Supreme Court. But you almost never hear Supreme Court justices testifying at Congress. I can't.

I can't tell you the last time I've seen this. So that's pretty interesting. And then in another hearing room right now, also on the house side, Kevin Warsh, who is the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. is testifying about inflation and such things. And, you know, if he says anything, you know, wacky, you may see a move in the market. But this guy seems much, much more guarded than Jerome Powell did. He seems much more careful in his words. I mean, these guys are all fairly careful. But. Kevin Warsh has actually been talking about changing Fed policy to not give guidance as to what the Fed may do in the future. And, you know, so he's very cagey. He's been there before. He's very experienced. highly qualified guy, right? Of all the people that Trump was considering for this job, I think he was the best choice. He is not like the Todd Blanche or the Pete Hegseth of the Fed. He's worked there for a long time. He wasn't there most recently, but he has been there. He's a true expert. He's the real deal. And so I'm very glad he has the job. I do think having him there brings a little bit of stability to markets, because I do think that despite the fact that he was appointed by Donald Trump, I think folks think that he will be quite independent. And I think he's trying to show that early on. Let me switch gears to something completely different, not political, and kind of interesting. I saw this over at the Colorado Sun, so Colorado Sun.com. I'm fascinated by the ways that AI is going to change the world. And it's going to change the world in lots of different ways. And some will be great and some will be not so great. And even I guess the not so great ones may be kind of interesting. And we talk about them, whatever that is. But here's the headline from the Colorado Sun. AI robot arm aims to pluck more recycling out of Denver metro area. They talk about a company called Republic Services that does a lot of recycling about 500 tons a day. Well, you can decide if that's a lot, about 10,000 a month. And... If you recycle stuff in the Denver metro area, I'm sure you know that we have what is called single stream recycling. Back in the day, if you were doing some recycling, you might have one bin for metal and another bin for glass and another bin for cardboard and paper, right? These days, it all goes into one thing, single stream. And then...

The recycling companies have to separate the stuff. And, you know, it's basically been a human job. But what this article is talking about is that Republic and I'm sure plenty of other companies are going to start using AI. robots and or they've actually started a couple of months ago. The AI assisted arms installed in May in North Denver are plucking valuable stray pieces of cardboard off the conveyor lines at 60 to 70 hits a minute. There are many things the robot don't. It doesn't do better than humans, but at this, the robots have been an instant success. A human worker on the same line is plucking 40 to 50 cardboard scraps a minute with far more mistakes. Again, quoting from Colorado sun.com, every six by 12 inch cardboard flap plucked by the robot adds up because cardboard is one of the most valuable commodities coming at a recycling center because it can be bailed, so like tied up. in bundles and shipped in bulk and remade into equally valuable new containers, all with rising demand from retailers like Amazon, right? So I think this is a very interesting idea. And when you're dealing with tons and tons of stuff, then when you start adjusting your percentages by even small amounts, it can make a real difference. The Plant manager for Republic Services, Denver, says that they have a 25% what they call residue percentage. And let me just quote this with you, because this is actually a little bit staggering. Over of the 10,000 tons of single stream recycling Republic brings into the facility every month, 2,500 tons, so a quarter of it, is either non-recyclable or has no effective commodity market so it goes to a landfill. And this guy at Republic says we have, so that means we have a 25% residue percentage. We would like it to be in the mid to upper teens. So some part of fixing that is doing a better job, just picking the stuff out and making sure that you're really getting the valuable stuff out and making sure when there's stuff that can't be recycled at all, like let's say iron isn't supposed to go through this, that you get that out as well. Check this out. This is fun. Glass is valuable as there are local manufacturers in Colorado who take it and make it into new containers. Clear glass is best as it can be made into any. new color. Colored glass can only be remade into brown glass. Let's see. The most valuable thing is aluminum cans because there's a solid commodity price for it and it's easily recycled while saving a lot of energy versus making a new can. Cardboard is really good too. We talked about that already. Glass is pretty good. Plastics are all over the place.

Thick gallon milk jugs or Tide style laundry detergent bottles have relatively high commodity value once sorted and bailed because they can be chipped, whatever that means, and reused in non-food containers. Plastic containers with higher recycling numbers or flimsy produce bags currently have no market and serve only to gum up the intricate sorting machinery and mess up the warehouse. Anyway, you can read more. It's a very interesting piece. It's on the blog at rosskomminsky.com. All right, for the listener who asked, why is Dragon getting surgery? He hurt his leg. Apparently, it was contagious, but Gina did the smudging, the sage ceremony here in studio with some Palosanto wood as well, and she wafted it around my leg. So we think we think we're good now, but unfortunately, Dragon caught whatever this thing is that causes people to hurt their legs. before Gina performed her, her mysterious. Wu-woo ceremony. So Dragon is having surgery today to repair a knee. We have been, don't text in right now, but just for those who are unaware, we have been taking your entries at 56690 with your fabulous made-up stories as to how he hurt his leg, because I have not disclosed how he hurt his leg. And so some of you have sent in really, really fabulous stories, including one that I think I neglected to read. on the air about dragon. kicking a wolf out of his backyard in order to save Boots the Cat. And that was a really fabulous one. Anyway, Dragon goes under the knife at some point today, and he'll probably be back at work next week. All right, we've got about 90 seconds here. And Gina, I want to make sure we get to this today because we didn't get to it yesterday. And am I allowed to say that this video is awesome since the old guys is basically fine? Since he's fine. He himself is joking about it, sure. Okay. Yep.

Just an unbelievable video out of Yellowstone. Do tell, Gina. You've probably seen it because it's all over the place. A massive bison tosses Yellowstone Taurus into the air like a ragdoll. And shocking attack is what the article says. We now know that the victim is a 65-year-old grandfather. His name is Carl Issa McDaniel. He's from Washington. He suffered serious injuries, survived, but suffered a lot of injuries because a bison, which was nearby. charged and rammed him, sending him about eight feet flying into the air like a cartoon character, which you see in said video. Why does everybody know what it means to be flung like a rag doll, even though almost nobody listening has ever had or seen a rag doll? Good point. I don't know. So you said to me yesterday that somebody told you a thing about the bison's tail. Yes. And then I went and looked it up and did you see I sent you this thing? Yeah. Could just talk about that for a second and then we'll give this over to Michael Brown. So if this happened, because this guy was pretty far away. And first off, I did know the thumb technique of like to know if you're safe distance from a bison. Yeah. You stick your thumb out. Put your arm out. Stick your thumb out. And if your thumb fully covers the bison, you're safe. If you could see it a little. bit from your thumb. Like, I'm too close to you. If you charged and rammed at me, I would be out of luck. So you can do that. But then I learned about the tail, which is the fact that usually their tails are down. If it starts to kind of flicker back and forth, like a wagging of a dog's tail, it's usually excited. The vison's like, hey, get out of my way. I'm warning you. This is your first chance, you know? And then when it goes straight up in the air, you're kind of out of look. Like the bison is really angry at this point. You better get out of his way. And I never knew that. And you could see it in the video before it charges and rams this poor grandfather that it starts to wag a little bit. It's lying down in the ground. And then it gets up, wags, and then goes straight up and goes right at him. Which, I mean, stay away because this all happened, you know, Yellowstone mating season for the bison. Apparently it was agitating some teens earlier in the day and things like that. Crazy. Like you said, usually these stories are stupid tourists getting too close. But I don't think these people work what you would normally call too close. Right. And he was, yeah, he was very far away from the bison. And the bison was just hanging out at the time. And a photographer who caught all this on video did check on Carl to make sure he was okay. He said he had a lot of pain in his leg. Otherwise, he was conscious the whole time in good spirits and joking about it. Unbelievable. All right, the video's up at rosskimoski.com. I'm trying to remember if I, yeah, I did. I put it in today's blog and yesterday's. So rosskiminski.com, you can go check that out. And since the old fella is alive and. okay and joking about it we can post that and it really is it's it's some it's it's both frightening and funny at the same time all right have a wonderful rest of your tuesday michael brown up next