The Mark Arum Show 08-03-26 HR 1

Welcome, friends. Hope you had a fan-tabulous weekend. We have a fan-tabulous show playing for you today. Headlined with Deborah coming off the top rope as her professional wrestling move. PGA Tour Championship tickets. Wow, that's huge. Yeah, right. Can we not give them away and I get to go? Forget to give a pair of them. Yeah. Forget I mentioned it, folks. Delete that off the podcast, Viddy. No, we're going to give those away in the 11 o'clock. Our fantastic prize pack there, PGA Tour Championship at East Lake. In just a couple of minutes, we're going to go up to the nation's capital. Maybe Todd Blanche's confirmation is back on to head up the DOJ. We'll go in depth on that. Hallelujah. Eric Erickson is back from vacation. I missed the jolly fella. He's going to join us live at 1035 talking all things, politics. The Georgia races. What's going on? with Max Miller and his father-in-law, Bernie Moreno. I mean, that's a crazy story we'll discuss. I should mention it's back to school. I think, Debra, you said 20 districts going back to school today. 20 districts, yeah. 20 districts going back to school. I used what I use AI for. I created, I don't know if you saw the show picture. Yeah, I did. A little funny back-to-school picture of me, you and Vinnie Drip. So we're going to go in depth on that, including the high costs. I'm looking at Judd. who's, I think kid starts middle school this year. Is that right, Judd? Your bro is... Big step, buddy. Big step, yeah. I don't have to tell you, Judd, but it's more expensive to send the kids back to school this year than it has been in past years. I'll talk to your wife. Oh, yeah. No, she definitely knows. We both, though, yeah. But we'll go in depth on that. It's a stunning amount how much it costs parents to send one kid back to school this year. It's a number bigger than I thought. I want to start, though. I had a really... amazing experience in downtown Atlanta yesterday. And since I've moved from the west side, yeah, I lived on the west side off a Howl Mill for a long time and I was younger and I was outdoing things. And I'd go to downtown all the time. Hawks games, concerts, whatever. But now I'm, you know, I'm over in Decatur, Tucker Carlson area. And it takes something pretty big to get me to downtown. Like, I didn't even go downtown for the World Cup festivities, the food. I know. I was like, crowds and traffic and where do I park? Where are you going to park? That's my thing. Where are you going to park? So Maya is a big Harry Potter fan. Like obsessed. Every time TNT does a marathon and I come downstairs, it's on. She's watching it. And I have never seen any Harry Potter movie from start to finish. I've seen clips of just about everyone. I generally know the storyline of what's going on with the Harry Potter situation. But she got us tickets. I don't know if I bought him or not for the first Harry Potter movie, the Sorcer Stone, I think it's called, at Cosm. in downtown Atlanta right next to State Farm Arena. And when I mentioned it the other day,

Deborah and Vinnie, you were stoked for me. You were like... We got the media alert about that last year, and we were able to go check. Well, I went to go check it out. Anytime they say come check out something like this, I'll go and see it. And I thought it was pretty cool for what they were going to do with it. Have you been to Cosm yet, Vin? I have not been to Cosm, no. But you guys were both excited. So I was like, oh, all right, this is cool. And it was cool to me is that I've never seen the movie. So I had that to look forward to as well. For those that don't know, Cosm is kind of like a mini sphere. You've all heard of the sphere in Vegas. And they showed... the first Harry Potter movie at this. And the tickets were not cheap. It was more than you'd spend for a normal movie. But the experience was, holy smokes. It was awesome. So we have the, I can't even discuss. Yeah. It was impressive. The seats were comfortable. They had a specific Harry Potter menu. And there's waitresses, the servers that will bring you food and drinks, et cetera. I had a phenomenal time. But I am looking forward to, so just like any other movie, they had like previews. And it was like a promo video of Cosm and what they're doing here. And Judd, the sporting events, I don't know how they do it, but it's literally like you are courtside or you are on the 50 yard line or you're on the soccer pitch. I was like, This is where I'm going to watch sports now. I had a buddy to go to that for the World Cup and said it was amazing. I mean, I just saw the promo. Yeah. I saw a documentary how they film it. It's really cool. Yes. It's really cool how they have them set up. I got so geeked out. And there's real, I'm not going to lie to you. There's not much it'll get me to go to downtown. But this new, it's part of Centennial Yards, which is this new complex. And I've heard of it, but I'd never been down there. It's the former Gulch. I'm very impressed what they did. Because to get down there, and I didn't want to deal with parking, so we took Uber, which is probably price here, then it should. I think next time we'll drive to the station here and then take Uber from here. Or just take Marta from here. So I didn't have to worry about parking. I don't know where you'd park there, but there's a big deck. But you had to go down. Judd, you remember going to the when the Hawks were on WSB and we would do the pre and post game show? You go down to the bowels below. Like that's how you drive into the parking garage for Centennial Yards. And there was an Irish bar there. A chops lobster bar is coming soon. But. Like, there's something now that excites me. What would get me to downtown? The Knicks coming in to play the Hawks. All right, I'd go downtown for that. You two in concert maybe would get... I am on board. And it's Cosm, COSM. COSM, yeah. I'm not getting paid by them. They have no idea I'm talking about them. But it was, I enjoyed Harry Potter, but I'm really looking forward to the sporting event. I think they're going to do a bunch of NFL games from what I remember, especially the ones that are international. Like, not everybody can fly to Ireland or Germany for those games. And I think they're going to try to have them all available at Cosms. And there's maybe like four across the country. And I think the pricing is kind of like at a concert.

Like the better seats are going to cost more money. And so, like, we had great seats. We were on the third row. And it was, I told, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the movie, too. I've got a hot take on Harry Potter, by the way. I don't know if it's a hot take or not, but as a newbie to Harry Potter, I'm going to tell you it. But I said to Maya, I was like, What else is coming here? So she pulled up. There was an NFL game. I don't know if it's preseason or regular season. I think they're going to do a bunch, but they do have the like the ones that are for the international ones. There were tickets like as low as $11 for the. And it was, I mean, and also. fully air conditioning like it was chilly in there like it's it gets you out of the heat and full bar it looked like and i i don't know i was i was like this is something that i would come back to downtown for which i think downtown needs right when i when i was 25 they didn't need i was coming downtown like vini's vinny doesn't need a huge reason to go downtown but as we get older and we move further away from the city i need i need a re i think this is the reason And I'm cautiously optimistic that even though we're kind of dealing with the World Cup hangover right now, like it's such a letdown of the World Cup stuff. I'm down. I loved it. I really enjoyed the experience. And they did a lot of the World Cup matches. Like if you couldn't get tickets and you didn't want to go to Fan Fest, you could watch it there. Not watching that. Because again, I just saw the promo video for the sporting events. It was like they showed one of the Knicks games in the promo. I was like, why didn't I watch the Knicks games here? I'll send you the documentary on how they do the camera. It's really interesting because I saw that before I knew the Cosm was coming here. I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. But then I saw like how it was going to be put together. Yeah, it's really neat. I'm glad you answered that question. I'm like, do they have special cameras at the sporting events? Because they put you like in the net. I've. It was awesome. My only regret is we'd eaten a big breakfast before we went to Harry Potter. So they had like a Harry Potter fixed menu with a butter beer and a shepherd's pie. And I, you know how I love a shepherd's pie. We wound up getting some like fruffy popcorn, like fancy magical popcorn. Oh, sure. It was fine. But yeah, I'm down. I'm very excited about it. All right, here's my Harry Potter hot take. We're going to get to the big stuff in just a second. So I'd never seen a full Harry Potter movie. And the three main little kid characters for, and this isn't a spoiler. If you haven't seen it, you're with me. You said Sorcerer Stone? Yeah, the first one. Yeah. So there's Harry, there's Hermione, and then there's the red-headed kid. Ronald. Ronald Weasley. Yeah. So I knew a lot about Harry and Hermione, but the red-headed kid, Ron Weasley, he's, at least in his first movie, he is a better child actor than the other two. Like, he's a legit good actor.

And the Dowager was in there, the Dowager Countess. And I enjoyed the movie because I'd never seen the movie. I enjoyed the experience, but I'm really looking forward to seeing sporting events at, am I pronouncing her right, Cosm? Cosm, yeah. And that makes me excited for the future of downtown Atlanta. Because for the last three decades, after the Olympics, like, what are we going to do in downtown? That's 10 yards is very impressive. Very impressive. All right, enough about that. Let's go to the nation's capital. Elena Trin from CNN on the Todd Blanche is the confirmation back on. Todd Blanche wrote a letter saying that the Trump anti-weaponization fund, the $1.6 billion fund, is officially off the table? Elena, is this letter enough to get Todd Blanche confirmed to the position? Well, looks like it's enough for Senator John Cornyn, who had released a statement, Sarah, last night as well, saying that he had reached a deal with the acting attorney general Todd Blanche to put this in writing. And that really is the big news. I'd remind you that we'd previously heard from Todd Blanche and others at the Justice Department that this $1.8 billion weaponization fund, a fund, of course, that would have paid people who claimed that they were victims of a weaponized justice department. That includes people from the January 6th. capital attack back in 2021. Todd Blanche had said previously in the Justice Department that this was dead. And the Justice Department had told courts, essentially, that this fund was abandoned. I'd remind you that came after we saw major backlash, not only from Democrats, but many Republicans who believed that that fund should not move forward. However, the issue here was that the White House and the Trump administration had previously refused to put that commitment in writing. That is really what we saw Senator John Quill. and Senator John Thom Tillis say was necessary for them to go forward and back Todd Blanche's nomination to become formally the Attorney General. So it seems that John Cornyn is on board. We have not yet heard from Thom Tillis, someone who said that this was a major issue for him. We also have not yet heard from the president responding to this. But I want to get into a little bit of what we heard from Todd Blanche specifically. He came out yesterday. He issued a post saying that he has been meeting with senators having conversations with them. And then he issued. this document showing that they have formally rescinded that weaponization fund. He says, or at least in this document, it says that it had been rescinded with no force of or effect. But I'd remind you that we heard from the president over the weekend, something that kind of through a wrench and a lot of the messaging around this to try and push Todd Blanche's nomination forward. The president had been threatening to revive this very controversial $1.8 billion fund if Todd Blanche was not confirmed. And he repeated those threats just yesterday when he was traveling back in the evening on Air Force One. Listen to what he told reporters. We have a man named Dr. Todd Blanche. He's outstanding in every way most of you know who he is. You're not going to find a better person. And everybody, and it's because I backed one his opponent and his opponent won in a landslide. This is the only reason it's happening. A lot of people like it. If they don't approve Todd, I put it back on the table. A lot of people like it. A lot of big supporters of Trump like it.

So I think a lot of things to break down from those comments there. One is that clearly the president still believes in this fund. He believes that there were people who deserve this type of money, even those who were participating in the Capitol attack on January 6th. He also seemed to argue that this was really just an issue that Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, both who sit on the Judiciary Committee, which is going to be meeting tomorrow to determine the path forward for Todd Blanche's nomination. He believed that they are the only people really get. getting in the way of this and against that fund. But that's not true. I'd remind you that even if Todd Blanche's nomination gets through the Judiciary Committee, the Senate still needs to vote on this. And there have been many senators who share John Cornyn and Thom Tillis's concerns. And I think the question, again, is going to be, is this enough for them as well? We have to see, you know, the Senate is expected to go on recess at the end of this week for five weeks. We know that Senate Republican leaders really want to get this nomination for Todd Blanche through and confirmed before they do so. quick timeline, but this could be enough to make it happen. We have to see the reaction from other congressional Republicans today. Lena, Trane, at the White House this morning. I do have a lot of questions. I'm going to ask Eric Erickson about this. That letter that Todd Blanche said that kills the anti-weaponization fund, is that legally binding? Does that matter? Can it be revisited? And the political implications, obviously President Trump said over the weekend, he still wants that fund to go. And the fact that they are... putting forward this letter, is that hesitation that, because on Friday, President Trump said, well, you know, I'm going to pull the nomination, and I'll just do it when John Cornyn and the other guy are gone, and we'll confirm them after, after the election. Are they concerned that maybe the Senate might not still be in Republican hands? I don't know the answer to that, but that's why we have Eric Erickson on with us live. 925 on the Mark Aaron Show.

Happy 65th birthday Lee Rocker bassist for the stray cats. I thought they would have been bigger than they eventually turned out to be the stray cats. They kind of burst on the scene. They never really went away. It's just they've always been this kind of side. genre. Yeah. And if you're not into it, it's just kind of there. Remember that swing movement? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Brian Setzer came back with that. I dig them. Welcome back to the Mark Aram show. Me and the rest of Braves country are going to be biting our nails today is the Major League Baseball trade deadline. I want to talk about that, not in respect to the Braves, but it's kind of amazing. Imagine if our profession, Deborah, that we could get traded. Like once a year there's a big open window. Yeah. Just openly move to another radio station. Yeah, like, I want to talk about the later show. Just imagine, like, whatever your job is right now is you're driving to work. Like, imagine you going to work and make, oh, you've been traded to the Jenkins Corporation. Yeah, another plumbing company. Yeah, exactly. So I do want to talk about that. I feel bad. I was not aware of the state of emergency up in McAisville, Georgia, just north of Blue Ridge. What is going on in McAisville? Yeah, I saw this on Sunday. They had some sudden flooding on Saturday. Saturday with the storms that came through so much that they had to declare a state of emergency because basically the whole city lost power that were washed out roads. It affected the police department, the post office, a lot of the actual city planning buildings there. There's sink holes in the area and so much that they don't really have enough water. So they're telling people either have to boil your water, buy water. There's not enough water pressure for the whole city to use. And they're still in cleanup mode there. So I'm sure I've driven through McKaysville. Fanon County. Yeah. But is it like a gully? Like how was it just localized flooding? Like why did McKay'sville get hit? I mean, we had storms come through. You might have to ask Chrissy about that. I'm not exactly sure. But yeah, they got hit really hard. It's south of my favorite town in Georgia. Ducktown. I just love that name. It's between Ducktown and Blue Ridge. But thoughts and prayers for the folks in McAesville. I don't know. Yeah, well, you know what? I'll track Christina Edwards down during the break and see if she can explain why that there is a state of emergency. Massive flooding in McAisville. Hope everyone there is okay. All right, Judd, he's biting his nails because his kids go into middle school and the brave trade deadline. He's going to pull it together. and give you your newscast come up in three minutes. When we come back, we'll continue our back to school coverage. How much more parents are spending this year than in years past? The average cost to send one kid back to school. Think about what that number might be, and I'll tell you next on the Mark Aram Show. I don't get you into Back to School mood, 937 on the Mark Aram Show. This is Collective Soul. I hit the post. Ed Rowland.

Singer guitars turns 63. Rock stars are getting old as we all are. Welcome back to the Mark Aram show coming up in one hour. Eric Erickson is going to join us live talking all things politics. Very happy to have the jolly fella back from vacation and joining us live. And then in two hours, Debra, you've got an amazing prize pack. Actually, we have two prize packs to give away today. We do. But the amazing one that you're talking about is round one of the PGA Tour Championship. We'll have that. And then if you love dancing, you've got tickets to see Derek Huff, who's a professional dancer. Oh, I've heard that name. Dancing with the Stars. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So that's coming up two prize packs to give away on the Mark Am show. As Judd mentioned, Gleefully, and I'm right there with him. The Dow is crushing it. Bella. Mark is just open eight minutes ago. Dow's already up 640 points. And oil, Deborah, I can't figure it out. It's down 6.3% back under $80 a barrel. So you give you the OPEC story? Yeah, the OPEC is, but. Anyway, great economic news thus far to start off the trading day. All right, let's continue our back to school coverage. Joining us from ABC News, it's Emily Guskin. Emily, 20 school districts, I believe, in North Georgia heading back to school today. And a surprise to zero parents listening, very expensive to send the kitties back to school. How expensive are we talking about? Yeah, we went into the national poll, random sample of parents, and asked them, are prices that they see for back-to-school shopping normally more or less or about the same as previous years? And 68%. Prices for things were more expensive. And we also found that parents on average expect to spend nearly $900 per kid this year on items to go back to school. $900 per child to get them back to school. What is that number generally? Do we know what it was last year or the year before? So this is the first year I've done this poll, so I don't have a direct comparison. Hopefully check in with me again next year and we will have comparative data. But the biggest category, we asked about different categories, which I thought was. was a good way to see what people were sending more money on. And the number one category, surprising to me, was not clothing and shoes, but was items for after-school activities, including sports. And that was almost $330, it was almost $340 per kid. It was $337 for kid, including $350 among elementary and high school students. And that's a lot of money to send on after-school activity items, not even paying the fees to participate in sports or to... to attend an after-school music class. Yeah, so I was about to ask that $300 plus for after-school programs, I'm thinking musical instruments or baseball bats or whatever the student is involved in. Right, right, right. Some of us were lucky. I had my grandpa's violin to play when I was in school, so I decided to keep that up, and I was not very skilled at sports, so that saved my parents a lot of money. And then the second category is clothing and shoes at $275. We saw some interesting demographic breaks on that number. Not surprisingly, parents of high school students are spending more on clothing and shoes for their kids than middle and elementary school students.

But we also saw demographic breaks, racial and ethnic demographic breaks there. Black parents spend more on clothing and shoes per kid than white parents, Hispanic parents, or Asian parents. Interesting, because I was about to ask you, you know, is there a difference in grade level? Like, do parents spend less for a kindergartner than they would for a senior in high school? So we didn't break it down by exact grade level. We looked elementary, middle, and high school separately. And clothing and shoes for high school students was on average 332. $2, middle school students, 290, and elementary school students, 218. So there is a difference there. But there weren't differences in other categories based on the school they attend, like school supplies themselves. It was really similar across elementary, middle, and high school. But we see a big difference in technology, including tablets, laptops, and calculators, way higher among high school students, and then middle school students with the final elementary school students at about $66. One thing that my parents didn't have to worry about was buying me any of those fancy electronics, a tablet or a laptop back when I was in school. Just my trendy calculator that I still use every day to do this work. Exactly. Emily Guskin from ABC News joining us on the Mark Am show. You know, just trying to be a penny pincher here. You know, the biggest expenditures, as you mentioned, clothing and stuff for after school programs. I would imagine, you know, hey, let's, instead of buying new clothes, let's hit the thrift store. and have fun finding some back-to-school clothes or let's get some second-hand sports equipment or musical instruments for you. Yeah, I don't have actual data on that, but from anecdotal data, kids are really into thrifting these days, and it's cool, and they look cool. I don't think I had the fashion sense to carry that off when I was in high school, but it's very cool that kids are doing that these days. And there are a lot of opportunities to save money. There's, of course, back-to-school sales. You guys in Georgia really beat the rest of the country and going back to school early. My cousin's a teacher in Georgia, and I'm always shocked when she's back in school, so much earlier than us up north. But there are tax-free holidays on a lot of states and sales for people to buy stuff. But it's still really expensive, and parents are really expecting to spend a lot. Yeah, $900 per student. Great insight on that first-ever GMA Ipsos poll. Emily, thanks so much for your time. Have a great day. Thanks for having me. 9-Hundo for the average student, the biggest expenditures there, clothing and after-school projects, which I think you can cut costs on. I didn't care about... Well, I still don't care about my wardrobe. But I would think, like, elementary school kids, like kindergartners, first grade, second grade, there's no like, oh, I want cool clothes, right? Yeah, I feel like in elementary school, you just wear what your parents put you in. But when you get to junior high, that's when it matters. When you get the peer pressure. So for parents listening, if you have a kid in elementary school. Go to a thrift school. Make it a fun excursion. Hand me down. This is what I had. Yeah, same. Absolutely. But that would be cool. Like go to one of those big Goodwell centers. Yeah, St. Vincent DePaul. Like make it a fun little thing for your, I mean, at middle school and high school, you probably can't do that. But high school kids might enjoy thrifting. I don't know. But buy a used musical instrument for your kid. Buy used sporting equipment for your kids. There's a way to do that.

to cut costs there. This makes me sad because I know it's a very, so I think the Cab County is one of the schools that's back today. And which means for the kids going back to school, this might be the first time since school let out that they are getting regular breakfasts and lunch now, which is sad. Right. You know, this breakfast served in schools wasn't a thing when I was a kid, but now it's legitimate, especially for the low-income children. They might have gone all summer without regular breakfast, but they're coming back to school. And now they're getting fed. We do have a bill that might restrict the free and low-cost meal situation in the state. So this was part of the one big, beautiful bill act. Part of that meant cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, which means less families qualify, which means the less families that qualify. Those schools are not going to receive aid to feed the children that would fall into those categories that normally would get free or reduced meals. And if they don't have the money to pay for them, that means they're still not getting something at school. Like, you still have to pay for those meals. And they know they're regularly there. But if they were getting them for free or cheaper, it was a lot easier. A lot of that's been changed just with the new, the laws in place because of that bill. So they're saying about 1.2 million students were eligible and that's going to drop this year. All right. See, that, that hurts me because I didn't leave the house hungry for school. Probably. zero times when I was a kid. Maybe in high school and that was by choice. Or yeah, you sleep in late or something. But, you know, God bless my dad. He would get up at the crack of dawn and he was, my mom would sleep in, which is her right. But he would make my brother and I have breakfast. Me and my brother, my brother and me. He would make both of us breakfast. And he's usually just toast and cheese. Like he put two pieces of wheat toast and two slices of American cheese. And I had breakfast. I didn't go to school hungry once. I never had to worry about that. So when I see kids that are... food insecure and having to go all summer without getting regular breakfast. We should take care of them. Obviously, if your parents can afford it, but a lot of parents can't afford it. And more so now than in years past. So we should do something about the food insecurity for the kids in school. All right, one more back to school. This surprised me, but in thinking about it, it makes sense. AIs everywhere. Maya uses chat GPT a lot. Like she's like, yeah, I asked chat and chat told me this. Like, especially with Walter our new dog. Okay. She's like, I asked chat about this, this and this. And chat told me like that it's her buddy. Chat is Maya's buddy.

AI and parenting. Are parents using AI to help them parent to their children? Well, some people are using new platforms on AI. Like they're called Ozzy and Cozy. And what they do is kind of help schedules. Like we talked about kids having after school programs. And, you know, if you have more than one kid and they have different programs and different parts, who's take? Are they carpooling? Maybe sometimes you get with neighbors or you do parent circles. And so they're using it for that. But. Open AI CEO Sam Altman. He's like, hey, you know, it would be really good. You could try using AI to type in all the information about your kids. Yeah. I know, right, including their schedules. And it could create a podcast for you and give you information for you to have a conversation with your child. That's a bit too far. That's too far. But I do like the scheduling aspect of it. Yeah, that makes sense. That's like having a personal assistant. Right. Like especially if you have like three or more kids and they've got all these functions. Yeah. My brother had six kids and they were all in after school sports. I think that's a good. idea. That's a good use of AI. If you've got multiple kids and you're juggling multiple activities and pick up times and drop off times and yeah, all right, I could see AI being used in parenting. When we come back, AI used a new AI use that I'm sure many girls I dated back in the day, which was available to them.

I ain't seen nothing except on that landmine in Viacom back in 72. It was rough. You were in Nung? So were we. Where? I was in Sang Bang, Ganga. I was all over that place, basically. A lot of places. The legendary Eddie Murphy in Trading Places. That was directed by John Landis, who turned 76 years old today. Trading Places, Blues Brothers, Animal House, American. What a... phenomenal directing career that John Lannis. He's 76. Eddie Murphy credits John Lannis for a lot of his movie success, by the way. That's such one of the best movies of all time. So good. All right. Welcome back to the Marco Rubio.m. Show. Continue our AI and back to school coverage real quick. We're talking about viable uses for AI. I just use it to make funny pictures and cartoons. Actually, there's two up on my Instagram story right now. I had AI make a fake oil painting of Maya. Yesterday. That was beautiful. And I did A used to AIA to make a cartoon, a back-to-school cartoon of me, you and Vinny today, both of those in my Instagram story at Mark ARA. But it sounds like AI now being used by the generation, the younger generations to end relationships, Deborah. Yeah. So Gen Z and the alphas, that would be like teenagers now are to alpha. So they're using AI a lot to write. breakup texts. They say they just can't find the right words. So they ask AI, what's a good way to do it really without having to hurt somebody's feeling too much? Or maybe if they do want to hurt somebody's feelings, AI can come make it a little bit better. Sometimes AI can even deliver that to somebody. I don't know how that works. But 57 people said they trust AI more than they trust people when asking about matters of the heart. I remember reflecting back all the times that girls in my dating history came to their senses and broke up with me. Rightly so. I was in the wrong everything. Did you get the little note that's all pulled up like a football? No, they all did it in face face to face. That's better. Well, yeah, but no. I would rather have been. Just a random text? There were no texts, you know, no cell phones or anything back then. Yeah, no, I never got broken up with a note. It was always face-to-face, which is not, yeah, I know you're supposed to say, hey, you've been dating along. Once you date this amount of time, you got to do it face-to-face. I didn't like the face-to-face thing. Give me the notes, send me the text. Would you rather get broken up via face-to-face, Vin, or via a text message? I really can't decide, man. I'll probably take the text. Yeah, 100%. I don't want that face-to-face emotional. I don't want them to see my face. Yeah, my face. Yeah, because I'm going to be hurt. Now, a lot of times, I wanted them to break up with me. And face-to-face was fine. Why didn't you just break up with them? Because I'm a chicken. I'm an absolute chicken. Yeah, I didn't want to hurt anyone. That's why you would turn to AI. Yes, exactly right. All right. Oh, voting age of 16. Now, what is this? Like some congressmen trying to change the voting age to 16? Well, this is specifically in Ohio. And they're basically saying a lot of young people have come forward and say, hey, you know, we have opinions. We have voices. We should count too. And although they're also saying that socialism is the way to go. I don't know if they've studied enough about the differences of socialism and, you know. Now, there's a viable argument for 16-year-olds and all kids to be able to vote.

But six, that number 16 specifically. And the argument, and I'm not placing this argument, but just telling you what the argument is. Like you're 16, you get your driver's license, you can drive on the roads, you got to pay taxes, you got to pay insurance. You get, you are a viable active member of society. You can work at a job. You pay your FICA taxes. You pay your, so like at 16, you, a lot of 16s aren't, but at 16, you can become, you're part of society. I was a viable functioning adult at 16. I had a car, paid insurance, got a job. That's taxation without representation. Right? You're 16. You're paying taxes, but you can't vote who represent you. I understand that argument. My counter argument is, shut up. Looking back, now, when I was 18, registered vote, loved it, blah, blah, blah. I shouldn't have voted until I was in my mid-20s. Yeah. So my whole thing is like, okay, you know what? Maybe we should all take a civics test. Yes. And see if we're eligible. You know how we have to do that for? Like you take tests. Absolutely. So like let these kids take a civics test to understand. You need a constitutional amendment for that. But if they pass, but yes. Let them vote. Yeah. So I understand the argument. At 16, you're, you're part of society. You're being taxed without representation. I get that argument. But also, no. No. I shouldn't have been voting when I was 18. I was an idiot. I didn't leave that idiot phase till probably my mid-20s. So I get the argument. I just brush it aside. Sabrina's got your news weather and traffic. When we come back, we got a new head of the DNI. We're going to go live to News Nation for the latest on that next on the Mark Abrams show.