You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty KFI Handle Here.
Morning Crew on a Monday morning, October twenty eighth.
And oh, do we have a day to day?
Do we have a week this week to talk about what's happening? Because week from tomorrow is the election. And if we thought the twenty twenty election was scrambled and just a mess was made out of it in terms of who was elected and who was not, let me tell you what's going to happen next Tuesday. First of all, all the problems that we had within the election process are going to be multiplied, and I'm going to talk
more about that probably tomorrow. You know, there already been one hundred lawsuits already filed, have already been filed, a hundred of them by Republicans, and I'll talk more about that tomorrow. Also, what's really going up there is the hacking President former President Trump's phone was hacked. A false video is running around the internet showing ballots being burned in Pennsylvania.
National security officials.
Saying that US adversaries may incite violence protests after the election day. We're not talking about Republicans versus Democrats. We're not about pro Trump versus pro Harris. We're talking about foreigners. The Russians, particularly Chinese not so much, but really the
Russians are the bad guys here. And this shows how Russia, China, to a smaller extent, Iran big Time have increased the pace of their efforts to meddle in our politics, just the way intelligence officials have said, that's what's going to happen.
Well, at the same time, since we.
Know about it, you've got the officials, tech companies and researchers are already in a much more aggressive defensive mode, and they're exposing quickly these foreign election threats, highlighting what's learned in the last few elections, particularly the last one. Now officials say the US election is secure, so secure that no foreign nation could actually alter the results at a scale necessary to change the income.
It doesn't matter because you know the lawsuits, you know what's going to happen. But what you have is adversaries.
US advertaries have leveraged disinformation, cyber espionage to target target campaigns and voters. And I'm talking about both sides, not just Trump or Kamala Harris. Depending on the interests of a foreign country. It is both sides. Iran hates Trump and is doing everything you can and pushing into cyber attacks and disinformation and memes in favor of Harris because Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal does not like Iran. Harris is much more of a peacenick. And that's in quotes. Russia,
of course loves Trump. And why well, because Trump likes Putin.
It's that simple.
Trump genuinely feels that United States, the services, the intelligence services for example, and the deep State are far more dangerous to the US than is Putin and Russia.
So it goes both ways.
And so you see the Kremlins disinformation program, what are they? Immigration, crime, the economy, the disaster relief which the Trump folks are attacking like crazy. If you look at the anti Harris Biden Harris campaign and how they've handled this disaster relief, and you know that the administration has been attacked over over again. Money isn't flowing for disaster relief. The money has been taken and gone for illegal immigration. A lot of that is from Russia. A lot of that is
from Russia. So you have a situation, Well, let me give you an idea. Let me give you an example. A couple of examples. Russia staged a video and this is been confirmed by US intelligence officials that accuses Harris of paralyzing a woman in a car crash years ago. Another one is making allegations against Tim Walls. The FBI confirmed Russia created a third video that just came out
showing the destruction of male ballots in Pennsylvania. You see that with a guy tearing up Trump literally tearing up Trump votes, and local election officials debunked it as false, But it doesn't matter because people believe it, because how many people believe in what they see on the internet versus any news because news is false, news is fake, but Joe Rogan is true, and that's what we're getting.
Russia has also tried to pay American influencers. By the way, that is not just an allegation, because we know that two Russian state media employees funneled ten million dollars to an ascent to a Tennessee company to create pro Russian content.
That company then paid some right wing.
Influencers, and the influencers, when they were told, said they had no idea that their work was being supported by Russia, which I believe, because I believe Russia is that slimy and I'll take them at their word. Now, Iran is accused of, and it's true, hacking the Trump campaign, offering stolen communications to media organizations and Democrats. And there is a story out there that the Russians were sending emails dirt about about Trump, well dirt about yeah, about Trump,
to people associated with the Biden campaign. That was back then, and at this point they didn't accept it. We don't know if that's true, but I'm taking them at their word. So we're looking at not only an election where it's homemade memes and videos that purport to show crazy, crazy stuff on both sides of this, but you got Russia, Iran, China to a lesser extent, jumping into So our election is not just among candidates in the United States. It's
all about Russia and Iran specifically. And we'll talk more about this coming up, and then next few days a little bit about what's going on in the world today. The LA Teachers Union has weighed in. They voted last Wednesdays to support a congressional effort to block the sale of weaponry to Israel twenty billion dollars worth on the grounds that these arms were being used against civilians and they are now the issue is and it goes far
deeper than just you're using arms. Israel of course says, yes, civilians are dying. Yeah, we feel horrible about it. That's their position. But when Hamas invents itself in civilians, what do you expect us to do? So you have the United Teachers of LA voting to pledge their support, and this was calling for California centers Alex Padilla and Lafonza Butler to pledge their support for a government action called
a joint resolutions Resolutions of disapproval. Bernie Sanders is heading this one, and it's to halt the sale of some armaments Israel, and that's supposed to be taken up by the Senate after the election. And here is the reasoning behind it, and this is union materials prepared for the Board of Directors meeting in which they voted to support this measure coming up, and it says that taking the stand, the arms named in the resolution are.
Being used to indiscriminately.
Kill large number of civilians, many of them children, which again is absolutely true. As educators, we've watched for a year as Israel has decimated the education system for current and future Palestinians, destroying every university in Gaza. True, forcing kids to attend schools and refugee.
Camps or not at all.
That's also true, and the union says it's our duty of educators to speak up for the protection of education and all young people and their families, especially when it's our tax dollars fueling this discretion destruction and our government providing the arms.
You know what, I'm okay with this, you know there, I'm not.
Okay with the position, but I'm okay with a union resolving saying we're on one side or the other of this political issue. And also the union says it affects our members, many of them have loved ones who have lost their lives or livelihoods in Gaza due to this conflict.
Of course, Israel is blaming.
Hamas for all of the destruction, saying, hey, if you had an attacked us October seventh, and if you here's the other way. If Hamas decides tomorrow afternoon, okay, we recognize Israel and we guarantee there will be more, no more attacks that forces israel I believe to sit down and have some serious negotiations, but Comas won't do that. The destruction of Israel is still primary.
The issue of.
Hostages are still primary, and so that's the difference between the two parties.
This is why nothing is happening.
And as nothing is happening, Gaza is getting more and more destroyed by the day. Another attack just killed thirty three Palestinians in Gaza over the weekend, and a lot of those were kids, and it is horrific. Now, how far has the union gone? You're ready for this? There was a resolution that was introduced by and voted by a majority of UTLA members or the board criticizing the
Jewish state and not condemning the Kammas atrocities. They just wanted to come out and say, Israel is that fault here and they're killing people and not even mentioning October seventh.
Well, there's a member of the board who I'm assuming is.
Jewish and that is anti Semitic, and he says, if this motion passes, not only will we lose many Jewish and Israel supporting members, but the negative pr will that results will be tremendous.
And that's absolutely true.
In September twenty twenty one, the Teacher's Union shelled that resolution that would have condemned Israel and supported Palestinians, and of course not even mentioning October seventh. Well, a substitute motion was then put into play, saying that we'll leave it open. We have to have discussions about the union's position.
And by the way, that union isn't the UTLA is.
Not alone in promoting these resolutions and saying that Israel has to stop. The Association of Flight Attendants, the American Postal Workers Union, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, National Education Association, the Service Employees International Union, United Auto Workers, the United Electrical Workers. So the unions seem to be well, at least the ones I talked about, seems to be pretty much on the side of what's going on in
the Palestinian side. And it's not hard. And by the way, you know where I sit. I have friends in Israel. I've been to Israel half a dozen times. I had
family members that live in Israel. Of course, I am of the Hebrewic American persuasion, so there are a bunch of reasons that I am pro Israel, but at the same time, you know, in terms of humanitarian aid that Israel is not allowing to go into Gaza and claiming that they are allowing to go into Gaza, and as a matter of fact, claiming they are helping the humanitarian aid go into Gaza and being distributed. That kind of
hippocracy is stunning. That is horrific. And upon international pressure, I do believe the more humanitarian aid is coming into Gaza, they've opened up those passageways. But the attacks and guys that keep on going. And then we have Lebanon, that war is going, and then we have the attack on Iran, which I'm going to talk about later.
And is it going to be a three front war for Israel.
I don't think with the Iran, But frankly, I was kind of surprised that Lebanon unleashed all those A missiles just in solidarity with the Palestinians.
That's it, not.
Because Israel is attacking, not because Israel leaves Beirut alone. Israel is not interested in taking over that part of Lebanon.
But you've got Hezbollah and the.
Whole northern part of Israel has been evacuated because of what's going on.
So, I mean it is crazy, It really is.
You know, it's gotten to the point now where I think that those Arab countries have to be a little careful.
They have to take into consideration what Israel is prepared to do.
Gaza is gone, it's been decimated. It will take generations to bring Gaza back. Southern Lebanon, be Root included, is on its way to being decimated.
It's a tough way to go, all right. I want to do a story about housing.
I always jump into housing because it's just one of those things that I'm interested in. And this has to do with Airbnb and Verbo vrbo and facing backlash against cities that are passing new ordinances saying you know what.
You can't have, You can't use Airbnb. It's that simple.
Short term rentals are not going to be allowed. It has to be over thirty days, and very few people rent or go to airb or Verbo over thirty days. And this is a story in CNN about Irvine, which passed ordinances saying short term rentals off the table.
And they're not alone, by the way.
A lot of cities are doing that because the argument is the more of these that are around the less there is housing available for people.
Because it's real simple. Here's the equation.
You take housing, affordable housing, or any kind of rental housing off the market long term housing, what do you get?
You get short term housing, which gets in.
The way, and therefore it lends itself to the issue of just simple not only housing affordability, just the number of houses are available.
Well, it goes two ways. Number one. Irvine says, yeah, it works fine, no problem.
We've had an increase in housing rentals as we decreased and eliminated Airbnb for short term rentals, so that makes sense. On the other hand, it goes the other way too, tell you right, Colorado, for example, did the same thing, and they didn't get any more housing because people have places and they're not going to give them up for rental, long term rental, just simply because they bought places. Neil,
for example, has house up in the mountains somewhere. I don't know, you know, the mountains of Big Bear or the Rockies or the Appalachians.
I have no idea where it is.
But Neil, here's the question. If you couldn't rent it out for short term, which you do, would you rent it out at all for long term? Would you want to be a landlord with it?
Probably not. That's the whole point. That is what Airbnb is saying.
Because we're not allowing because Irvine doesn't allow us to now short term rent the property. That doesn't mean that the property is going to be available for long term rent. Because people bought second homes. They buy vacation homes, and that's what they're primarily about, as in Neil's case, and Neil is not alone.
Now let's go to tell your Ride Colorado.
All right, no more Airbnb, no more Verbo or any of those other platforms. Therefore, housing is now going to be more affordable, there'll be more.
Units out there.
Well, people bought their places as vacation homes.
And so they haven't gone on the market.
And I'll tell you what did happen with the Airbnb being tossed out. Tourism went down. It affected the tourism industry. And tell your Ride, which is their industry. So it goes both ways. This is pretty complicated stuff. I mean, it's easy for us to say, Okay, Airbnb is gone, no more short term rentals. Therefore it immediately equates to longer term rentals.
Not necessarily.
Michael Seller, a professional of finance and real estate, saying, you look at an area's economy in terms of whether you have short term rentals, you have to look at all the factors, the local housing market, the geographic location, the appeal to tourists.
And we're not doing that. And in some cities it's working.
In other cities it is not working, and so and we tend to look with a broad stroke. And sometimes city councils, and these city council are not the most sophisticated political organizations that exist, and there are too many people that are willing to look long term and look at the studies. Not in the city council, matter of fact, not even in the US Senate or the House. There are a lot of people that just react. Matter of fact. Long term planners, I think are in the minority. And
that's important stuff, all right, So much for that. I want to spend a minute talking about cyber attacks on US infrastructure and how worried we should be about it.
Well, you know what, let me ask you this.
Do you remember there was a storm that knocked out the largest gasoline pipeline in the country that was from Texas to New York and nearly seventeen thousand gas stations went dry.
There was another one that happened.
A couple of years ago, actually twenty twenty one, and it was the Colonial gas pipeline that went out.
Half of all the.
Fuel consumed on the East Coast was disrupted for four days. It couldn't get gas. It was your typical gas lines, etc. Do you remember how bad that big that story was. Amy covered it and we were talking a lot about it.
It was Russia that did it.
Russian hackers shut down a pipeline for four days that produced oil for half the oil on the.
Eastern seaboard, and Russia did it.
And the US cyber warriors that are working on our side, of course, say that's just a taste of things to come. Foreign governments, gangs working under the protection foreign governments read Russia, Iran, China are getting into our system and not so much shutting down our systems now.
Because they're not.
What they're doing is getting ready to shut down our systems. There are plenty of hacks and they have not transferred into shutting down entire sections of our US infrastructure. What they're doing is they're basically doing dry runs. Earlier this year, Chinese hackers breached Verizon AT and T other telecoms, not to shut them down, but understand how these companies cooperate
with authorities to track criminals, particularly the Chinese actors. Recent months, there has been an update, not only an update, but an uptick, but a steady drumbeat of these high profile cyber attacks, most minor distractions. Not much has happened except that we know now the cyber experts know that they are simply practicing These are all dry runs.
There is a guy who is an expert on this. His name is Clark. What's his first name?
I think Stephen Clark, and he is a professor and studies infrastructure at tennio's president of Security, Risk and April, and he goes hacking as old as the Internet itself. But the contest has evolved into a key front. It's just another theater of war. It's that simple air, land.
Sea, space.
Of course, we know space is going to be another point of warfare and cyber wars. And the cyber wars are actually the scariest because it's not just a front that we have to fight, it's our entire infrastructure system. Now can it all come down in a crash. Probably not, but a lot of it can. And are we doing enough?
No? But here is the good news. Okay, I'm going to now share with you.
Actually there's a silver lining here which I never share because I only give you the crap, and that is, as these foreign governments are hacking into our infrastructure, we're hacking into their infrastructure.
And it's back to the Cold War mutually.
Assured destruction mad when we had thirty thousand nuclear weapons. Russia had thirty thousand nuclear weapons, which you need about a dozen to wipe out the entire planet. And the bottom line was, Okay, you attack us, we're going to attack you, and there'll be nothing left of this planet. And the same sort of philosophy is going you take out our infrastructure, we're going to take out your infrastructure.
And since the entire world is based on the internet, other than you know in Yemen, South Sudan, where they eat sand for dinner and they don't have much going and their telephone lines are two cans with a string between them and there or smoke signals or whatever the hell they do. Short of that, it's mutually a shured destruction. Okay, we're not gonna blow it. We're not gonna blow each other up, but we're certainly not gonna be able to
call each other. There'll be no phones, there'll be no computers, there'll be nothing. Do we really want to be in a world like that? Uh? And the answer is probably not unless you get some crazy people in charge. And even the craziest at this point Kim Jong Lunn, for example, who's about as nuts as they come, except he is pretty smart. I mean he was able to take over North Korea at the age of twenty eight. You know he can't be that dumb. Even he won't go that far.
Will putin go that far? Well, actually he's gone further.
Is it going to happen? I don't think so. But we're back to those days. And I thought we thought those days.
Were over when the Cold War was done. It's just another Cold war. It doesn't stop.
Boy, are we doing well?
Right?
Society has done so well When I was a kid, that was gonna be peace.
There'll be food for everybody, There'll be cars flying around like the Jetsons were there by the way, everybody's gonna love one another. And then I stopped doing LSD and then I got a reality check. Okay kf I am six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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