You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Chris Merrill I AM six forty more stimulating talk and on demand anytime in the iHeartRadio app. We are pulling back. People are saying, no mold, forget about it. In fact, if you were like me and you grew up poored, you didn't have lucky charms. You had something that was the equivalent like fortune totems, or you didn't have cheerios. You would have oat circles, and you didn't have fruit loops. You'd have fruit rings something like that. Right, you didn't
have the actual stuff. We had knockoff cereals, and knockoff cereals were fine.
It was good. In fact, in some cases you got so you like them better.
I always hated the knockoff cheerios, but I thought that the knockoff wheaties were fine, Right, I mean, you just got so that you got used to it. There are other things that you can buy that are store bought, that are reasonable duplicates, and stores are getting better at this than they were when we were younger, which was so so many millennia ago. But Treehouse Foods is one of the country's largest manufacturers of private brands, they're the ones.
So if you see something that is the equate brand from Walmart that may have come from Treehouse Foods. If you see the Safeway brand that may have come from Treehouse Foods. If you see which is like or excuse me, you see like the Safeway Albertson's. If you see the Kroger brand from like Ralph's, may have come from Treehouse Foods.
They make a bunch of that stuff. However, we are seeing the whole.
Egg thing going on, with the price of eggs going up, which certainly is not in any way, shape or form a money grabbed by the egg manufacturers capitalizing on the spike and prices due to the bird flu. Coffee prices are going up, and of course we may start seeing more prices jumping because of the threats of terrace tariffs.
So here's what you're looking at. Prices on things like cookies, crackers, coffee, and other things are not only going up everywhere, but they are also going up for the store brought store bought brands, the store brand names, right, which we always think of as being generic. People have decided I'm gonna go and I don't know who does this I don't know who it is that is insane enough to do it, but some people say I will just go without coffee.
Friends.
We are in a bad spot. When inflation gets to the point where people are not having their morning drugs, that's gonna make things that work a whole lot more difficult. I don't know if you know any coffee drinkers. Maybe you're you are a coffee drinker, but if the point comes where you have to start rationing coffee, things are gonna get ugly fast. They say that people are stressed. Treehouse,
that's again they make the groceries. Their financial chief says, we don't have any strong indicators that consumers are going to be less stressed in the near term, and grocery retailers are relying on third parties like Treehouse to make their store brands.
Is from the Wall Street Journal.
Giants like Kroger Albertson's Costco boosting investments in their branded products. Private labels are growing faster than name brand goods heading into the pandemic, and then consumers stuck at home with money to spend, went back to the national brands and low cost brands. We've seen now a resurgence for a couple of reasons. Because you have higher grocery prices, Retailers
are expending their store brand offerings. Walmart is introducing a premium line of food called Better Goods along their Great Value brands. So you've got the Great Value and then you've got Better Goods, which is supposed.
To be the step up.
But now people are even saying we're just going to cut back on even the low cost stuff. To me, this is a bad omen. You've got consumer confidence. You may have see the report consumer confidence is down. With consumer confidence down, whether they have reason to or not. Maybe it's based on the news, maybe it's based on the worries over the tariffs. Maybe people have lost jobs. But at this point it doesn't look like we're in
a recession. The fear of recession is so great that people are beginning to behave as.
Though we are in a recession.
We're priming for it, we're getting ready, we're pregaming.
The next recession is what's happening, and so people.
Are cutting back on things, even the store brand products, but they're also cutting back on this from the Wall Street Journal, US convenience store sales falling over four percent by volume.
What are they cutting back on?
Derrito's When you stop in at the Circle K or the shell station, there's no there's no big bag of chips. If you've bought a bag of chips at the at the gas stations lately, have you seen the price on that, it's seven bucks. Seven bucks for a bag of potato chips is not even the family size bag. I know, I sound like a grumpy old man. I understand, but I'm gonna be grumpy. I don't like it. So people are cutting back and what they're buying. That includes Doritos,
that includes Twinkies. And I think we just saved Twinkies from the brink of extinction a decade ago. They were all ready to wrap up. But here's the really scary thing. While we have some people cutting back on things like coffee and other places, which is terrifying, sounds like some people are cutting back on cigarettes. Oh my, So now you've got people that are not gonna have their cigarettes
or their coffee in the morning. That is uh, it's gonna get ugly fast, friends, This is gonna be very apocalyptic in a hurry.
I don't have high hopes. So what can you.
Do Could you turn to one of those dollar stores? Nope, because have you been to a dollar store lately? Nothing costs a dollar anymore. And now Dollar General says they're not even making an money and they're shutting up shop.
Dollar General is closing nearly one hundred stores. The company says it plans to close ninety six locations by January of twenty twenty six.
That's not too many, though. I think Dollar General opens more than one hundred a day. I'm exaggerating, but not by much. This is from Whas by the way, I believe this is in Louisville.
Dollar General CEO says that the number of closings represents less than one percent of the company's overall store base. It also plans to close forty five of Dollar General's home to core stores popshelf.
I think the Dollar General had home to course stores.
Did you know then beds through a dollar.
All right? The decision was quick, Amy, you get credit on that one. That was very quick.
The decision came after a view of the store performance and conditions to determine which stores should be closed or maybe be rebranded. Now, as of now, it's not known which locations are set to close. There are more than thirty of those stores in the Louisville metrics.
All right, so again I told you that it was from Louisville. Did he just say rebranded? Don't know if they're going to close or rebrand. So you rebrand from a Dollar General to what a dollar Lieutenant? I don't understand what the rebrand would be. You go more high end Dollar General. There's no lower end Dollar I mean, Dollar General is what it is. It's just cheap, cheap. All the dollar stores just cheap. Tell you man, I would think Dollar General will do really well as people
are worried about inflation and recession. It has in the past. Walmart and Dollar General stores do well during recessions. They do, they do, and yet here they are saying they're going to close some shops. We'll find out how it plays out. Okay, If I Am six forty were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio.
App, IM six forty more stimulating talk, Chris Merrill.
Big questions are coming up about the people being deported, especially when we find out that we're trying to deport people who have legal status in the United States, including green cards or well respected positions within major universities. It kind of started with this Machmud Khalil, who was a guy protesting at Columbia. Many many schools were protesting during the demonstrations over the warre in Gozar, right. Most of
the protesters were pro Israeli protesters. And as we know, when it comes to protesting, you cannot be pro one side without being anti the other. That's how it works out. You can't say I love the Dodgers without people knowing that that means you hate the Yankees. Now, maybe you do hate the Yankees, But is it possible that you're
just rooting for your team. Possible, But when it comes to the world of politics, and especially when it comes to something so significant as war and war where religion is involved, you have to be my side or the other side.
You're either with me or you're against me.
So Khalil and Khalil was in large part part of the demonstrations at Columbia. We saw those at UCLA, you see Irvine, Berkeley, Stanford, Santa Cruz. There's been a number of California schools. Of course, we're taking part in these protests. Some of them did feel distinctly anti Semitic. That doesn't mean everybody there was, but it wasn't like they were stopping it from being anti semitic either, So we know
how this played up. However, as much as we despise that anti semitism is not illegal in the United States, you're allowed to be anti Semitic, you're allowed to be racist. You're not allowed to hire base on racism or anti semitism, but you are allowed to be an a hole in America. That hasn't changed in the last two hundred and fifty years. You can still be a total a hole in America.
The line is when you're being an a hole and it starts to threaten other people if there is demonstrable harm being done, although did this guy, Makmu Khalil, actually demonstrate any harm. He was a negotiator that was representing the student protesters at Columbia. He is a permanent US resident. He was arrested March ninth at his apartment by Customs enforcement by ICE. According the AP agent said they were executing a State Department order to revoke his student visa.
His lawyer says he didn't have a student visa. He's a Green card holder, He's a permanent legal US resident. They said, oh, we're taking that too.
What this is.
This is like when you were a kid and the bully came by and punched you and said give me your lunch money, and you said, I've got my lunch money, but please don't take my allowance.
I just got it.
And the bully goes, oh, can give me that allowance too.
That's basically what's going on.
So the State Department says, we want a student, we're taking away with the student visa. The lawyer says he didn't have he's a permanent US resident. Oh, we're taking that away too. And why is that? Because Trump has signed an order, signed an executive order to cancel and deport the students and all the student visas of any hamas sympathizers on college campuses.
That's a tough one.
And the reason it's tough is again, you're allowed to disagree.
Even if your disagreement makes you.
A total a hole in the eyes of the majority of people, you are still allowed to disagree.
In America.
You may remember after nine eleven there were a number of politicians who came out and they said.
Look, nine to eleven was have home.
It was a terrible chapter in American history and that said, you kind of understand why some people hate us, and they were lambassador. They were told, how dare you? You can't say such terrible things about America. Don't you know we're in a war against terrorism, and yet you're still allowed to say that. Even Congress persons were saying that they don't approve of nine to eleven, but they kind of understand why other countries, why other groups hate us.
Now dare you do that?
The real kicker on this case with the Khalil is that Marco Rubio, formerly known as Little Marco, did a press conference right after the arrest and he said, this is not about free speech. This is about people that don't have a right to be in the United States to begin with.
But it sounds like by all accounts he did.
He had a student visa, then he had a permanent green card, and now we're just claiming you don't have a right to be here because we're policing your eye ideas now.
But it's not just him.
There was also a doctor who was detained, now a highly regarded kidney doctor.
Just after six pm six from ABC seventh.
Saturday, planes carrying more than two hundred Venezuelan prisoners left the US after the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a law from the late seventeen hundreds that allows the government to deport non citizens without due process during wartime.
Are we at war with Venezuela? Anybody? Anybody? The answer is no.
Less than an hour later, a federal judge temporarily blocked the president from invoking the law and ordered the planes to turn around, saying any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. But the planes never turned around, and video shows the alleged gang
members being marched into prison in El Salvador yesterday. Critics argue the administration defied the judge's orders, but the White House argues the judge has no jurisdiction over the president's conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article two powers to remove foreign alien terrorist staff.
All right, So that is key. And I guess I thought there was more of this deported doctor. I want to talk about this deported doctor or the detained doctor. I'll do that here in a second. But also you just heard the report from ABC saying we didn't like what the judge had to say.
The administration just says, hey, wait, what jurisdiction do judges have? What can federal judges?
They don't really get to talk about us, and they have no jurisdiction over us. We're the White House for Pete's sake, which means that we no longer have checks and balances. We just have separate silos where judges issue rulings in vacuums that don't apply, and Congress writes laws that don't apply, and the White House executes laws.
That they don't even have.
Take a check on news KFI AM six forty Chris Merrill Live. We are in the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Could even my friends Chris Merrill KFI AM six forty on demand anytime the iHeart Radio App. And honored to be with you as always every Sunday, Sunday Sunday, my friends. See, I grew up in a rural area where I mean there was like one private school nearest. There was a Catholic school that was about twenty five miles away, but the public schools were fine ish. So there is a new trend that's happening. Parents are disillusioned with public school.
There's arguments over charter schools. Some states are trying to fight to be able to use tax dollars to send their kids to private religious schools. Then you've got the parents to say, we're gonna homeschool our kids because we don't want them to be in doctor NATed by all that edumacation. There's a new trend, and that is what if the kids teach themselves? My mind is blown. Of course, these children will know what algebra is and know that they need to know that.
It's called unschooling.
Molly Bond's a former grade school teacher for a decade now is a twenty four to seven educator for her nine and eleven year old boys. They're being unschooled at their Ann Arbor area home.
Homeschooling, you're educating your child at home. You're usually following a curriculum versus unschooling. You're actually following your child's desires, your child's interests.
Yeah, we should have done more of that in school because I was not interested in reading or writing or arithmetic.
I was interested in kickball.
Latin in elementary school, then dodgeball in junior high, and then screwing around in high school. Is there a class unscrewing around?
So you may grab a curriculum to help you with that, but overall, you're really presenting like a feast for your child. Think about like a Shmorgas board, a Thanksgiving feast, and your child is picking and choosing what's interesting to them.
Lynnett Heines, that's great for a well rounded education.
No.
Lynette Hines is on the other side of the state, near Grand Rapids.
This is out of the Detroit by the way, ABC News in Detroit.
But she's on the same page with her three kids.
Schools.
The structure of them is set up really well for certain students, certain learning styles and personalities, but there's a lot who don't really.
Fit the box.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Of school Michigan doesn't keep tags on how many kids are enrolled in any kind of homeschool program, and per the state Department of Education, there are no required tests for students to take. Giving grades and submitting them to the state are both voluntary.
Well, that seems like a really good idea. No, not a great idea. How do you end up with an under educated society. It's simple, you don't educate them.
Tada.
Well, you know, we were gonna educate our kids, but then we thought do the kids want to be educated? And then we said, kids, do you want to have to sit around and read books that you don't like all day about the things? And they were like no, and we were like, that sounds great to us. So we thought we would work on more of their education
at the playground. It is interesting to me that you have trends like this, which honestly it's a few crackpots doing this sort of thing because most homeschoolers are going to follow a curriculum, so you got a few crackpots. But the reason that it picks up any attention, and in this case, it was a story in USA Today this week that was like, unschooling is the new way, Like, no, it's not. And it's always somebody who's like, I just
want my kid. I mean, think of the weirdest hippie stereotype from the nineteen sixties that you can and then add a modern day twist to it, which usually involves more nose piercings. Those are the parents now that are like I'm vegan. Even my nose ring is vegan, and all of my I got. I got all these different like Japanese characters of tattoos on the inside of my armpit because I love that.
And my kids don't want to learn like from the man.
So we're not gonna We'll let my kids decide what they want. They're they're five now, and they want to be engineers, so we're gonna teach them to be engineers. The parents who are for these sorts of things are not the parents of the future CEOs of America.
Generally speaking. Now, you may have someone, as they use the story, who used.
To be a teacher, and that teacher, even though she says, well, you don't have a curriculum, that teacher has a general idea of what the kids need to learn.
The reason is that was her job. She went to school for that.
She actually has an education in child psychology. There's some child development in her educational background. She may not be a child psychologist, but she's had some courses on she understands the progress of the children. I'm far less concerned
with the former first grade teacher. This says, I'm gonna homeschool my kids and we're gonna kind of have a loosey goosey curriculum because I have more faith that the teacher with the experience is more likely to understand the kids have to understand, have to know the basics AB's and c's.
But a lot of these TikTokers.
That are making this sort of thing popular now they're influencers and we're gonna ride our bikes through every RV park in America and that's their education.
They're the most crackpot parents you could imagine.
They have not been wildly successful in life until they found TikTok and then the fact that they are eccentric makes them interesting, and that's why people watch. And then they do eccentric things, and then people watch them do eccentric things.
It's the same.
Reason we watch reality shows on Bravo. Nutty people doing nutty things.
That's it.
And so all of a sudden, the nutting people find other nutty people, and then the nutting people create communities, and then the nutty people catch the attention of mainstream and then we all say, look at this new trend. This person is totally normal and had their butt cheeks pierced together. Is now teaching their kids how to be well adjusted. Adun'ts they don't poop because their butt scheeks
are pierced together. It's called unpooping. That's not normal, it's not beneficial to society, it's not.
Good for the child.
And yet, because of the reach of social media and the entertainment aspect of everything in our lives now, it's become popular enough that we're giving it some sort of credence. So I guess what I'm saying is, please don't do
that to your kids. Please, Dear God, don't don't do that. Look, I don't like all the things my kids are doing, and honestly, I'm a little concerned that for one of my three adult children, there's a chance they would try this because they're the kind of person that would be like, I'm doing this un thing because it's not normal, and I'm gonna be different, just like everyone else that's different. We're totally different than everyone else, all of us that
are doing the same thing. We're different and the same, but different together as one. So I'm really hoping that she grows out of that before she starts procreating his fingers crossed.
It's being honest with you. Just hoping the great Doctor Wendy Walsh and Doctor Wendy after.
Dark will give us some insight into all things related to our relationships and uh maybe tell us bad parenting one on one, letting your kids watch porn and then blaming the porn.
That is next.
Chris Merril KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeart Radio App Live from the KMFI twenty four hour Newsroom.
Nothing wrong with that.
I mean maybe if you're bill handled betting your dates just a couple of weeks after you get married, then that's problematic.
But otherwise the wrong though it's called due diligence.
Chris Merril CAFI AM six forty on demand anytime the iHeart Radio App. Shout out to my friend Raoul. Love working with my friend every week. I look forward to that. Kayla, Hi Kayla, Tayla, Hi Kayla, Hi Kayla, Hi Kayla.
Hike.
She walked away as doctor Wendy.
I'm getting to you, and of course Brooker in the hiszel tonight and I love I love me some Heather Brooker too.
All right, Doctor Renney, you know I didn't know if you were there too.
I am knowing I'm always here. I appreciate you got your women with you.
Don't worry.
That's the important stuff, right, all right.
So doctor Weddy walls Doctor Wendy after dog starts at to seven o'clock. And as we know, I like to talk with doctor Wendy, and I like to pick her brain about things. I happen to see a story out of one of the states that I hold near and dear to my heart, the state of Kansas. I lived there for seven years and I loved every second of it. It's a beautiful place, and I know Kansas gets a bad rap, has been a fly over state.
It's a great place. Loved it.
But there's a woman in Kansas who is suing porn sites now after her fourteen year old used an old laptop to watch adult content. She says, one hundred and eighteen times, I think she's underestimating it. Claims that porn sites violated Kansas age verification laws.
So they're saying that the porn sites are the problem.
And they didn't do what they were supposed to do. And Kansas law says that any site or adult content represents a quarter of total content can be held liable if they don't take measures to ensure that miners can't access their sites. They say, however, that the law essentially lumps other sites like Twitter together with porn sites, even
if distributing porn is not their main mission. This has been my argument over the age verification stuff on some of these websites anyway, and other states continue to sign on, and I understand why they do. It's to limit the kids from accessing the pornography. But what's the point when you're only going to do it to the sites that have one third or one half or one quarter or pornography.
And then you've got X And I mean, for Pete's sake, as we know from this, more than a quarter of what you find on Twitter X is pornography, Snapchat all these other sites that are easily accessible.
And I just think we're blaming We're blaming.
Penthouse for the kids looking at it back in the old days, in the nineteen hundreds, remember those days, doctor Wendy.
Okay, Yeah, if I got a hold of my.
Dad's Playboy, it wasn't Hefner's fault. It wasn't the fault of the Zephyr station on the corner of Broadway in State which was the only place within walking distance.
So that that that sold smut from my house.
Oh wait wait, that's the difference, is that that your dad had to bring it into the house.
Now it's available in every child's phone.
It's well, well, who gave my kid the phone? I mean, ultimately, are your parents? Let me yes, I got three of them and I'm a terrible parent. Yeah, and you think you can control their use. Let me tell you the kids who came over to my in middle school who were not allowed to have phones. The first thing they do is pick up any device or walk to any computer and log onto all their accounts.
They all still have accounts.
It's worse for those parents because the parents didn't know that their kids had all these social media accounts.
All right, I get that it's tougher to police the kid's activities right than it ever has been before. But that doesn't mean that parents don't have any responsibility. It doesn't mean that the parents can be like, this is porn Hub's fault for my kid looking at So.
Let's talk about the kind of pornography. There's one thing, but if their dad had some Playboy Soft porn, cute little air brushed young women.
Right, you can't find that anymore.
No, Now we see violence, we see misogyny. Young boys are growing up to believe that this is love and this is sex. They assume that young girls want to be choked all because of the messages being sent by porn. This is very, very serious and it's also highly addictive.
I don't agree. I don't disagree with anything that you've just said.
I fully understand and I'm a big believer that it takes a village now, having been a single mom for twenty years, and I see how our culture loves to pathologize parenthood, like, oh, it must be the parents terrible to parents. We are in a village together, and there are many things that influence our children. Parents only have
so much influence. They yeah, they dropped the genetic bomb in the kid's head, but and they try to model being a good person, but they are It is so easy to undo good parenting through things like pal pressure and the internet.
In a heartbeat, again, I agree with what you're saying. My issue is that this kid found an old laptop and then access the pornography in his own home.
If it's a he accessed it, it's well it does.
Matter in the same way that I had to find it.
I had to find my dad's stuff under the bed, in the same way that this kid was able to find a laptop that his parents didn't didn't take care of it, but he.
Was able to access it because the porn side opened the door and let him in.
All right, if you are not adult enough to know how to set up restrictions on your own Internet, then you shouldn't be having kids.
Flat out, you're pathologizing parenthood.
I am a parent. I have to take accountability.
What I'm not doing is shirking that responsibility as a parent. I will tell you the flaws in my children are largely my fault.
Really, I do think that.
I think our culture at large also has a huge impact.
But I'm not going to blame other people for my forthcomings.
Hypothetical question.
In a few weeks, I'm having a UCLA's lead cannabis researcher on the show here, and he told me that up to two percent of Americans are addicted to THHC and cannabis and it is you know, we're talking about millions of people.
It is legal.
There are myths about it that cannabis for instance, isn't addictive, which is a myth. There are myths that because it's legal, it's safe. There are myths that it's not a gateway drug, it is, et cetera. We're going to talk to him about that. So if your kid became addicted to weed as a teenager, is that your fault?
I mean, I understand this legal.
It's available in every corner.
It is not legal for children. So neither is porn.
Neither are cigarettes. And yet somehow people get it right for the porn. But if I find, if I find my kid is smoking, I don't go sue Philip Morris. I correct that parentally, so you go. I don't say, my goodness, we're all victims here. I have problems with that. I mean, I'm not saying that the porn didn't do wrong.
They did. That's fine.
I think that we all need to take responsibility as a society and as a culture to make the world safer for minders.
Wholly agree.
But I don't think that starts with saying not my fault, somebody else's fault.
That's where that's where well.
I think there's a difference between saying not my fault and saying shared responsibility.
Let's work together to solve these problems.
We'll look at you finding some nice middle down here being the adult in the room.
I don't like it. I love talking to you, I really do. I love it.
This is why I listen to Doctor Wendy after dark and she starts here at seven o'clock.
Have a wonderful show. I hope I got you. Hope I got you. Warmed up a little bit.
I'm warmed up. Good, go fired up?
All right?
Love it all right.
We will talk to you next week as well. Chris Marril every Sunday, four o'clock right up until we hear from doctor Wendy. She is next. It's KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio
App kf I AM six forty on demand