You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KF I am a six forty bill handle here. December two, last month. Boy, this year has zipped by. We always say that, don't we. Oh my god, it's going so quickly. I can't believe where this year is gone. And there's an entire theory about that. Because when you were a kid, you know, remember when we left, you had three months off vacation.
It seemed forever.
Now three months goes by in a blink, because it's a percentage of how long you've lived.
I think it is where three.
Months, you know, just is done, and it's what percentage of your life is a year?
Now?
Okay, let's oh, here's what I want to talk about. This was big news.
And Neil yesterday texted me seconds after I found out because I get alerts and you get alerts, and that is Joe Biden hunt pardon his son Hunter?
And was I surprised?
Yeah, because I actually believed Joe Biden when he said, under no circumstances will I pardon Hunter? Absolutely not. I mean he said it over and over again. Nope, not going to do it.
Just is not going to happen. Of course he did it.
Now and there's a question I have, and I'm going to ask this of Wayne coming up at eight thirty, do they have a case? Because Wayne understands this issue more than most. I mean, he happens to have been in the justice system, the criminal justice system of the Department of Justice for twenty eight years, and boy does he know his stuff. So what Joe Biden does is
issue a full and unconditional pardon for Hunter. And the reason is that there was this legal cloud that has hungover Hunter for several years, and that in fact, the attack, the criminal attack, the judicial attack.
On Hunter, was politically motivated.
And here is where comparison is made with Hunter and President to be.
Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has always argued that his the attack on him has been politically motivated, that was it.
He's done nothing wrong.
The people in that overran the capital did nothing wrong, and he's gonna probably pardon the vast majority of them, as a matter of fact, certainly in a pardon the vast majority of them. Here is the problem is that if you want to give credibility, I can see where Donald Trump argues that he was attacked politically, and I think the severity of what Donald Trump did versus the severity of what Hunter.
Biden did are night and day. But the argument that Trump was attacked politically holds water.
The argument that Hunter was attacked politically, it was Biden's Department of Justice did this, his own Department of Justice that politically went after Hunter. I mean, really, now, why did they go after a Hunter? Well, I'm going to tell you what I feel about it is that President Biden, like most other presidents, there was a firewall between the presidency and the Department of Justice. There doesn't have to be, but that is simply procedure, and it's the way it's
been for years and years. You stay out of it. The president does not tell the Department of Justice what to do in criminal cases. That's going to change completely come January twentieth and under that a special prosecutor was named because of the issue alone, the political issue as a matter of fact, under Merit gar Garland, and the entire argument that let's not make it political. A special prosecutor independent goes after Hunter Biden to prove the case.
That is a huge difference, and so Biden saying this was a political attack.
Of course, there were political attacks on Hunter.
It was a huge political attack, but that was by the Republicans and it didn't have anything to do with a department going after Hunter Biden for crimes. He pled guilty. He pled guilty to tax evasion. He didn't pay one point four million dollars that he owed on taxes that he spent on cocaine and hookers and strippers, and I mean he has had riproaring good time or bad time. And then he was absolutely guilty of a gun infraction. He bought a gun and he put on the forum,
I do not use drugs. I am not a drug user, and he clearly was. He admitted he was, and so they nabbed him on that. Now, how big a deal is that, Well, he had that gun for eleven days and it was never used in any crime at all, was never used for anything. And so the argument is he wouldn't have been tagged anyway with that, and the
tax situation was pretty serious. But again here is the argument between the two, and that is that what Hunter Biden did, had he not been Joe Biden's son, he would not have been charged and it would be let go because people in the same position as he is guilty of the same crimes. Pleading guilty under the same circumstances would not be charged. Didn't matter because Dad went ahead and pardoned him unconditionally. This is why I'm going
to ask Wayne this at eight thirty. Usually as do they have a case, and Wayne goes through the cases. But today I want to spend a segment talking about the legality here. Is any of this true? That Hunter Biden, but for being the President's son, would never be in the same position. And the President said in a lengthy statement the reason he's part of his son. I wish he had just said because he's my son. You know, that's the way it goes, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger pardoned
or commuted. That sends of Fabio Nunez, who was the head of the Assembly, who was Speaker of the Assembly of California, and he was now outright and he said, hey, I did it for a friend. It's that simple, you know. Okay, how do you argue with that? And I wish that Biden had said, hey, he's my son. I have the power to piden him, to pardon him. I don't want him to go to jail. And that's what I can do.
You know, I would do the same for you if you or my son, but you're not. You know, it's real simple.
You know, if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather, but she's not.
It's that simple. Does that analogy work, by the way, I think it does.
Well. You got to say balls, buddy, I did.
I did balls to the wall.
So anyway this ends up with complete hypocrisy. I can see him doing it. I would probably do the same thing for my kid, except just be honest about it, say hey, too bad, it's my kid and he has balls.
I would do the same for my daughter who doesn't.
There is a guy by the name of John Collins, Black, very interesting guy, and he early on got involved in bitcoin when it was pennies, and obviously he's got a ton of money, and he's been a lifelong fantasy guy, games, dungeons and dragons, all of that since childhood. And so by twenty fifteen is a musician, successful entrepreneur, successful, looking for a.
Change of pace.
And he said, I want to do a project and I want to connect with my younger imagination. I want to go back to when I was basically a kid. So he was motive motivated by a treasure hunt launched in twenty twenty by Forest fen and Forest Finn published all the clues of this treasure hunt, and obviously they were obscure enough where it took some real real doing.
By the way, I don't know if that was found. Do we know if that was found?
The story doesn't say if the original single chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains. Multiple groups of people went across the country trying to figure this out. In the Rocky Mountains it was I guess it was found and someone picked up a million dollars. Well what this guy does, Collins Black says, Okay, first of all, I want a bunch of chests, so he five is what he produced, and that's to give in different parts of the country, and people know which part of the country a chest is in.
And what he.
Did is he produced there's measure inside and it is a book, very clever. And what he does it's even to entertain people who aren't looking for the treasure. It's supposedly that good.
I haven't read enough about it.
But and this is the CNN story, The Treasure Box, the five boxes containing sixty five rare items weird it's not just money, gold and precious metals, and just what he thought were kinds of treasures that people would go for, and what are they. It's really interesting as to what he has decided. First of all, it's a custom design puzzle box, and I'm looking at it, and there are instructions for unlocking.
The box itself.
And each chapter of the book contains clues leading to one of the five chests, and he says, anyone can find the treasure. All the clues you need are in the book. And to make sure there were no leaks, he worked with very few strategists and editors to avoid any leaks. He wouldn't tell his wife where the treasures were. He said, I couldn't consult with other people because I didn't want them to have the burden of knowing.
And so there was no clear blueprint for doing this.
So he experimented through trial and error, and he was programming the difficulty of the clues. It's almost like the New York Times crossword puzzle section, where on Monday.
It's fairly easy, and then it gets more and more.
Difficult, and by Sunday, very few people can figure out the entire puzzle.
By the way.
Just an aside. Bill Clinton huge puzzle fan. He does crossword puzzles like crazy. John Stewart another one who is absolutely nuts about crossword puzzles.
But back to this story.
And there's treasure inside this book has already created this huge buzz, thousands of participants gathering on discussion channels to share their their theories. Some are convinced they've pinpointed the states where their treasure is located. Uh and he said, there's no dangerous underwater explanation, there's no climbing, there's no entering private property, and anyone of average health can travel to the sites.
No digging.
He said, I want the treasure to hunt to be demanding, and I do hope and think it may take a little while, but I don't want this to take forever. And if they are not found for several years, he will then release additional clues or.
Maybe even a sequel to his book. Ah ha, there's as madness to his method.
To his madness, oress to his method, well said, thank you. There's a sapphire and diamond brooch earned by that was worn by Jackie Kennedy during her time in.
The White House.
What he did Colins Black has meticulously curated the treasures to create a wide range of interests. So what Colins Black did is attend a bunch of auctions until he created this one of a kind collections. And he financed those pieces because they weren't cheap with money he made from bitcoin.
So what does he have in there?
Rare Pokemon cards, a ship wrecked bounty, sports memorabilia, gold precious metals, items owned or made by Pablo Picasso, George Washington, items owned by George Washington, Amelia Earhart, and a bunch of money, gold coins, etc. And the only item on his wish lists that he couldn't get, as he describes it, was one of Albert Einstein's pipes, which he lost in a bidding war. Other than that, he got everything he wanted. And I am so impressed with his thinking because the
combined prize value is more than two million dollars. Now is he going to publish more than two million books? Look at the publicity.
That he is getting. For example, there was an entire segment on this show.
That's not to say zillions of people listening to this show, but certainly you've got well, you used to have over a million listening to the show, and then it went down to several hundred thousand, and then it went down to about seventy thousand. So for all four of you that are still listening to this show, the book is called There's Treasure Inside, and you too can go for two million dollar. Well actually it's over five items, so no one's going to get all five. It's if you
break it down, it's half a million dollars. That's kind of fun, isn't it.
The treasure hunt.
I would do that if I had the money. Yeah, my wife would not be happy about it.
But that's true.
That's what I think money is for, to do interesting things.
That's why he.
Did this, because he's made enough money and he goes, now, I want to do something interesting.
We're not talking about playing golf or lolling at the beach.
He's going back to the time that he was a kid and was really into these puzzle games. Good for him, Good for him. Now a little bit of history that I want to share with you, and that is toys, toy giving and what do you do for Christmas for your kids or Hanukkah? And if you look at the toys and there were it toys, coveted toys that when they become it's real problem for the toy industry because all of these toy retailers.
Order months and months in advance, and what do you I was going to hit or not.
So today they're sparkly, they're squeezable, they're electronic. But if you go back, let's start with the nineteen fifties, the hula hoop and the kushball. Now I never had a cushball, but I've had everything else. The hula hoop, you know, it's been around forever. And Whammo Fun Company, I mean just completely crazy company. It came out with it out of plastic, and all of a sudden they were selling
millions of them. Everybody had win in the country. In nineteen fifty two, mister potato Head came out and I followed a year later by missus potato Head.
And I remember having one of these, and it.
Turned out they were Originally you actually used a potato and you would put the nose in the ears.
And plug them in.
And then they went to plastic, and then they become no fun at all because potatoes are much more fun. You know, different shapes and you can pretend you've got an elephant, man and potato depending on the size of the head, et cetera. Lincoln logs and matchbox cars came out in the fifties.
Play dough came out.
In the fifties. Who didn't have play dough if you were a kid in the fifties. Here's a little sidebar story. Plato was invented in nineteen thirties as a wallpaper cleaner until someone discovered oh.
Boy, playto.
And then in nineteen fifty nine there was a teenage fashion model doll called Barbie, which may very well be considered the icon certainly the iconic doll, and maybe the iconic toy of the time. Also in the nineteen fifties or this nineteen sixties. Now, remember the easy bake oven. The easy bake oven was a toy oven that you could actually bake little cakes, I mean for real, and the heat was provided by a light bulb, a light bulb, and you could actually bake something with it. Today you
can't do that because you don't have incandescent lights. All you have is led lights. And if you try to bake a little bit, a little tiny cake in an easy bake oven today, you're baking for eight months and it still hasn't finished cooking.
Remember etch a sketch and the light bright etch a sketch? I remember it.
That was almost impossible to do an etch of sketch with any round roundness to it. You could do straight lines with an etch of sketch.
Yeah, you can't do circles.
It's people actually could Well, you could do something that might resemble one.
Yeah, it's still kind of.
But yeah, if you don't know what etcha sketch is, look it up, you know, go ahead.
And google it.
And Hot Wheel debuted nineteen sixty eight. I didn't know that long ago. I was not a Hot Wheels guy because I'm not a car guy. But these little realistic built to scale and it started with Camaros and Munstangs and firebirds, and then they came out with everything. Nineteen seventy seven Pong. Remember Pong, one of the earliest electronic games. When you look at it and you go, really, this was the start of video games. Atari went big in
nineteen seventy seven. That was the first home gaming console. It cost about two hundred dollars then, which is about one thousand dollars in today's currency. So someone some kid getting an atari, some parent or uncle or grandparent spend a thousand bucks on it.
The equivalent there was the nerf ball. I remember those shrinky, shrinking dinks.
I'm not even go into that, because I will I misconstrued that one hundred percent shrinking dinks. I thought it had to do with weather when it's cold, and I'm just not interested in explaining that. I do remember the pet rock, Now, that was marketing genius. Somebody came up with taking a box and putting straw in it and putting in a rock, and then instructions on how to feed your rock, and how to take care of your rock, and how to be emotionally connected to your rock.
And it sold in the millions.
I think it was an advertising guy that came up with that, if I'm not mistaken. Speak and Spell that was Texas Instruments, and it was one of the first predictive coding speech synthesizer. And the language was with this talky robotic twist because early days voice were very robotic. Today, of course, man, I got I'm getting these scam calls that look that sounds so good that you know you answer, I don't understand you know somebody who pitched something I
don't understand. Oh you don't understand, well, let me explain it again. This is a this is an algorithm that's doing that.
So I answered space spam calls. Hopefully I can talk to someone.
So Star Wars action figures that was the earliest, earliest. This is George, George Lucas and his genius. Not only a brilliant, brilliant filmmaker. By the way, he would take a year to write his movies, a year to write those Star Wars movies, and then he would direct them. And then he discovered early took a wild guess before the movie was released. He cut deals for action figures and tie ins before anyone else did that, and the Star Wars action figures after the nineteen seventy seven release
of the original Star Wars went completely crazy. The Rubik's Cube came out nineteen eighty and it was a Hungarian architecture professor who invented in nineteen seventy four. Then, for you little girls or you little boys who think they're little girls, my little pony pound puppies care bears. Remember the craziness with Cabbage Patch kids where mothers would get into fist fights over cabbage patch kids and.
They were going for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Chia pets were great where you could actually grow animal figurines. My favorite was a bald figuring that you planted these little seeds and then you had this hair of grass. I was big on thatchia yep. I remember that commercial the Tamago cheese. The Tamaguccies Beanie Babies was another one of those where for some reason, limited edition beanie babies
went for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. An artificial market was created Ferbies, which created an entire group of mentally ill people who think they are ferbies, dressed like ferbies and their world is furbies.
I want you to go to for those of you that do.
That and you're looking for a job, go into the job interview dressed as a Ferbie and see how well that works out for you. And people spend thousands of dollars on these costumes. I mean, and there's a whole cause, there's a whole cosplay thing, Pokemon trading cards, PlayStation two, Xbox three sixty of course, the Razor scooter. I had one of those.
Juju pets. I think it is that a panda. I don't know. I remember brats, those little dolls that talk back to.
You, And didn't you call that your daughters?
I pretty well do. And so some of these toys are just great fun. And these are the classics, and some of them are still around. I think easy bake ovens are kind of finished. Maybe they have a quartz filament that the kids put their hands in and get their degree burns when they're cooking.
I don't know.
All right, So there's a story now, because well it's the holiday season and gifts are to be made and shoppers are to be shopping, and more shoppers than ever are on track to use the buy now, pay later plans. You know, isn't that the same as a credit card payment where you pay it later. Well, there's a little bit of difference, and more people are doing that because inflation has hit.
It's not there anymore.
But there's already record high prices and record high credit card debt because much like credit card debt, if you put off or you buy products with plastic or on a layaway plan.
You're not paying for it right now. You pay for it later.
And here is the rub And here is why the critics are saying this is a bad idea, because one, you're putting it on your credit card, you know, buy now, pay later plans. Well, they mean that you don't have the money. Now, if you have the money, you'd go
in and buy the product. Or what's happening is if you have the money, you stretch it out and buy more products, you put them on credit cards, and you get hit both late payments if your credit card is maxed out, huge interest on your credit card, and you get all these late payments and penalties on the layaway plane itself from the retailer. And I'm thinking, this isn't a whole lot different than straight out credit card debt, except they say it's no interest, okay, until.
You miss payments, and then it starts to add up.
And to qualify, you don't need credit, you just qualify and it's soft credit. You've already have a credit card, and they don't care. They're not going to say you've maxed out. They just don't care. And so it's easier to do this now layaway plans. I remember as a kid, this was before the advent of the ubiquity of credit cards. Where everybody uses credit cards. I use credit cards, but I pay mine off at the end of the month for two reasons. One is I don't spend that much
on credit cards. I live under my means. And two, I make a good enough living that I'm able to pay them off. But a lot of it has to do with living within your means, which I have basically my entire adult life.
And so it used to be the Layoway plans. You would go to a store and.
You'd pick out an item, and you would put a given amount of money down, real cash, not borrowed money, and six months later, when you've made six payments over this thing and that was the.
Cost, you take it home. It was a true Layoway plan.
You paid for it with real cash. The retailer got the money up front for six months or eight months or three months, and then you got the product. Well, today it's you get the product now, and you pay for it over spell of months and you use your credit card usually and you are at risk. Hey, you're at risk anyway. You know, the bottom line is just be responsible and what you buy.
And I know it's hard not to.
I know when you have kids, g Dad, I'd really like this, and I didn't have that problem as a kid. I would get you know, was Honica time ago. G Dad, here's a list of what I'd like, and I'd get a stick. Here, go play with this. It's a branch. So of course I went the other way. And when my kids were little, I got them way too much.
And now no, no, not a chance.
What I say now is, hey, remember when I got you fourteen, when you were fourteen years old, that was your Hanukkah present for the next fifteen years. Much easier. So I don't use this. And I'm going to suggest that you'd be really careful about these, because not only are you going to be in debt to the retailer, to the people that sold it to you, but also if you use a credit card, it's going to be a double hit.
And it's happening.
More and more and more. The firm Adobe Analytics Well regarded forecasts that from the period November one to December thirty one, eighteen and a half billion dollars worth of goods will be people will use the pay now, buy now, pay later program.
You just got to be really really careful.
But then you have to be really really careful anyway KFI.
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