You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty k I AM six forty Bill Handle.
Here. It is a Monday morning, November eighteenth. Next week being Thanksgiving, which is always great, fun, fun holiday, eat myself silly and then get sick.
I eat so much.
And we're going to be covering the of course, the Trump picks and what's going on, because that's I love that stuff. It's so much in my wheelhouse that will be happening over the next few days, few weeks.
Now.
You probably have heard and I have heard and talked about this for years and years, and that is recognizing the fact that California really is two states.
We have different states.
Obviously in the United States, you have the South being very different than what California is being very different, what the seaboard states are about. We're almost different countries, but we are separate states because we are the United States of America.
I don't know how united we are, but we certainly are a fifty state union.
And there was talk and has been for decades saying, let's recognize the fact that we in southern California are very different than northern California.
That's red we're blue.
There is a breakup movement that actually is growing across states, Illinois, California, other states, and I'm going to talk about Illinois. This is out of the Wall Street Journal that looked at this where you have these large swaths of red rural counties dominated by just a few blue cities, and residents in those red parts of the state are trying to split it apart.
There's a group called New Illinois State.
New Illinois State declared itself independent from Illinois last weekend and passed the first draft of a new constitution and the introduction of the constitution as it was introduced, it was called leave Illinois without moving. That was the marketing message. Seventy three of voters in predominantly rural Iroquois County on election date back the idea of forming a new state with every Illinois county except Cook County, which is forty
percent of the entire population of the state. But Cook County is blue and the rest of the state is not. And that's where Chicago is now. This resolution, of course, is non binding. It takes a lot more than just have a certain number of voter say yeah, let's have a different state. But this non binding resolution actually passed in six counties, bringing the total to thirty three of the one hundred and two Illinois counties. A third of the counties want out. That's a lot of people that
want out, and this urban rural divide. And one of the things that Donald Trump brilliantly did play this up on the campaign trail, running against the large Democratic run metropolists and making big electoral games. And later on I'm going to talk about Generation Z what happened and how so many zeers voted for Trump. Interesting Paul Preston, the
founder of the new California State. He says, I'm so flipping excited because he wants all the counties outside of LA outside of the Bay Area, outside of Sacramento independent new state, which, of course naming him as governor. Go figure now attempts to redraw the map of US. Has happened a whole lot before. And then the issue of Puerto Rico in the District of Columbia. Some people seeking to become the fifty first date some states floating in
the idea of becoming independent countries. Now, how does that work? Well, first of all, new states, you can actually form new states. I don't think you can form new countries, but a state can form a group people. Can't actually form a new state. It's happened before. It requires the consent of the existing legislators and not very likely, certainly not in most blue states because they're blue, and you need the existing legislature. You need the okay of Congress. And that's
according to the US Constitution. Now, it has happened before. Kentucky became a state onto itself, and that was the founding of Maine, by the way, was once part of Massachusetts. You know that Maine was once part of Massachusetts. I didn't,
and it split off and became Maine. West Virginia wanted statehood during the Civil War, and Congress said, okay, West Virginia, you can have your own state without even Virginia's legislature because West Virginia or Virginia had voted to secede or that part of.
Virginia said fine, you can be West Virginia.
So preston this guy who is trying to split across split up California and become the new governor of Northern California, said he plans to petition Congress for statehood based on the argument and now we go into crazy making.
Now I love this.
While there's probably a legitimate argument for saying we are separate states completely, and we are even sort of de facto separate countries. I mean, you go to southern California, you go to northern California.
Man, you think you're on another planet.
His argument, this is Preston, is to petition Congress for statehood based on the argument that California's government now is a one party communist state.
Okay, whoa, Oh, we've now gone into crazy land. And technically.
Northern California has already seceded from the Union.
No, it hasn't. It hasn't at all.
So you know, while there's some reason for you to say what you do, it's not gonna happen. But at least there's an argument. You've now gone off into crazy land.
Thank you. Okay, you're helping them.
You are helping the movement a lot, aren't you. Now looking back on the.
Election and thinking, okay, what happened.
As I've said earlier, that the pundits really missed it, and that as crazy as Trump seemed to be with his insanity, he read it perfectly, even against his very advisors. And this is a story out of the Atlantic about gen Z gen Z, woke snowflakes, slacktivism, climate warriors, gun control activists, right, all the negative stuff for or positive stuff, depending which side of the political spectrum you ran.
So here's what happened last week.
How is it the gen Z Many members of the gen Z generation moved over to Trump And these are voters eighteen to twenty seven. Exit polls and analysis county by county show that young voters have shifted right since twenty twenty and that was sort of missed. Well, certainly we knew about young men, young white men who came, not came, not only came out in favor of Donald Trump,
but were his army. Basically, among evangelists, this was the army of God, and among whites, white men, this is the man who is going to change America for the better, much more so than a presidential run. I mean, this is on a level above this almost deification.
So Democrats lost ground with young women.
And you would think that young women, especially based on reproductive rights. That's why hair supporters were cautiously optimistic. Nope, I mean there were plenty. I mean there are plenty of people obviously who are in favor of reproductive rights, I being one of them, where it's a very big deal for me. You know what, some gen Zers have just moved away from that.
Now.
Gen Zers do care about the environment, firearm safety, diversity, inclusivity.
If you look at a twenty twenty three pole.
Compared with baby boomers and exers, gen z is more concerned about criminal.
Justice reform, racial equity.
Gen Zers are likely to say the government should do more to solve problems rather than leaving things to business and individuals, which is basically what gen zer is are about.
But there's a portion that.
Have moved away from that, and they're frightened and what the world's going to be like and prices are out or we're out of control and the economy and immigration and are looking at it.
What Donald Trump did.
Is paint the world as a very destructive, frightening place, and it was blot That message was bought. I don't know how many people have actually lost their jobs to illegal immigration, to illegal migrants. Most jobs that migrants do take are not taken by white people. You just won't even if you're unemployed, are you going to go out and pick strawberries.
Probably not.
And so this fear inflation out of control, it's not. Inflation is under control. But it doesn't matter because what is the message. The message is it has become out of control, which it did, and prices did explode during the Biden years, and so that extra polace. You know what it's gonna be very interesting is President elect Trump's view and his move to raise the tariffs, and he's gonna get whatever he wants. I'll tell you right now, this president is going to basically get what he wants.
Tariffs are going to go sky high, and that may kick in inflation. We don't know yet, but most economists say that we'll start jacking up prices like crazy.
And if it does, what happens, well, I'll tell you.
Because of those who believe Donald Trump to such an extent. He will tell you that the price of a toy, which used to be five ninety nine, which is now eight ninety nine, is still five ninety nine, even though you're paying eight ninety nine. I believe that's absolutely true. I do because he said, you don't have a job. The migrants have taken your job, and you have thousands of people roaring yes they have, and of course then
they go to work on Monday morning. I've never seen anything like it, and I can see it just works.
He is a populist.
He was able to plug into this fear we have and crime, for example, it's out of control. It's actually down nationally in Los Angeles, it is down across the country. It is down if you look at it statistically, and how else are you going to look at it? If you look at Sandy Hook, their crime is one hundred percent and half the school of those poor kids were killed, their crime is one hundred percent. If you look at
crime across the country, it is down. Yet when told crime is up, crime is up, and a lot of people bought into that. I have no problem or not.
I don't have an issue in terms of understanding.
How a lot of people believe that because the world it can be and is a frightening place.
Now, the issue is what are we going to do about it? And one of the.
Things that I think is a legitimate is and I heard this over the weekend, and that is I look at these crazy picks, for example, that President elect Trump has made. You know, between Pete Hegseth and you've got Robert Kennedy Junior.
I mean, just insanity.
I heard one of the senators who basically said, whatever Trump, whoever Trump wants, we're going to go for it. We don't care who he nominates. Our job is to put that person in the cabinet position. But what he did say was kind of interesting, which actually resonated we have.
To shake things.
We have to go in and look at government with a fresh approach. Fdr did it and he's considered a total hero. Ronald Reagan did it, and now we're gonna look at Donald Trump. Is he gonna shake things up? Absolutely? Does it need shaken up?
Yeah? Yeah, I think it does. Now Is it gonna be shaken up in the right way?
I don't think so. I think Matt Gates as Secretary of or the Attorney General, I think is a little tough. As he has said, basically his first job is to root out the enemies of America read Donald Trump. Does the Attorney General's office need shaking up? Maybe to that extent, I don't think so. Okay, nuclear power, the nukes, Now, if you look at nuclear power historically, they actually the scientists were actually able to crack the atom in the nineteen thirties, and it was not thought of as a
weapon in those days. It was going to be used for peaceful purposes. And then up and running comes World War Two. Einstein writes a letter to FDR saying that this technology can be used to create a weapon of just incredible magnitude. And so the Manhattan Project starts. And by the way, the Manhattan Project was not to bomb
Japan at all. It was to stop the Nazis because the fear was that the Nazis and the German scientists were on their way, by the way, they were going balls to the wall to also develop a nuclear weapon. They knew what a nuclear weapon could do. And so that was why the Manhattan Project was.
Put into place. Just a little bit of handle history.
So now in the fifties, now comes the peaceful use of the atom, the splitting of the atom, and I'm talking power plants. And in the fifties, boy, this was going to be the future of the world. And when you think of a nuclear power plant, a single nuclear power plant can power hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of homes.
I mean, this is insanity.
When you look at a footprint of a nuclear plant and what it can do in terms of its power. So this was the future, and then one that ended up happening. Well, you had a couple of instances like Three Mile Island, which killed all the advances in nuclear energy or at least power plant design and construction.
Chernobyl, which of course was the worst.
Nuclear accident in the history of the world, and still within I don't know, hundreds of miles around the Chernobyl power plant and it's still a dead zone. No one can live there. You can go visit, but for a very limited.
Amount of time.
Did you know that they are tourists there. You can take tours into Chernobyl, into that area. They're not particularly legal, but there are tour guides. They go through the fence and you walk around. Everybody has a Geiger counter and you can only stay half an hour, an hour whatever, depending on how close you are to the power plant. And that was I mean, that shut down a lot of interest in power plants. And then Fukushima, which was amongst the most modern safe nuclear reactors in the world.
They weren't quite accepting they expecting the tsunami that went up to ninety feet with those waves and overran everything, and Fukushima blew up and they have the same dead zone area up there too. So, man, we were on our way, by the way, prior to those those massive meltdowns and explosions, we were on our way to creating
more and more nuclear power plants. We still have I think about sixteen percent of the energy of the United States, if memory serves that's correct, still is derived from nuclear energy. Here's a fun fact. Do you know that in France seventy five percent of their energy is derived from nuclear power. France uses nuclear power more than any other country in the world. That's why their baguettes glow green in the dark. You can always find baguettes in France even when the bakeries are closed.
You got that green neon.
Look, today's support for nuclear powers is the highest and it's been in a decade for.
One very simple reason.
Two, we need energy, more of it because for example, AI.
It needs massive amounts of energy.
And you have various nuclear power plants that are ending their lifespan. So a couple of groups that are really pro nuke, and it's really interesting. Young people have become pro nuclear energy because they didn't live through Chernobyl and three Mile Island. I mean, if you look at the dates of Chernobyl and three Mile Island, I mean we're going back to what nineteen seventy six or nineteen eighty six was Chernobyl, Three Mile Island was nineteen seventy nine.
Who the hell remembers that?
Well, older people remember that, So older folks are are still scared.
Younger people don't care.
Man, we're way past that or not we they you are way past that. So the nuclear industry is going up. They're great paying jobs. The technology is exciting as hell. It's actually much safer. For example, one of the things the designs of new nuclear plants.
Instead of pressurized water to cool.
The to cool down the or to make the steam, they're using molten sand.
I don't know how that works, but it's far, far safer.
And the other group of people that have become pro nuke, and this one is interesting, are a good portion of the environmentalists. Environmentalists used to be one hundred percent against nuclear power.
Why well, because how danger dangerous it is.
I mean, you have a meltdown and you've got some big problems.
Three Mile Island, you.
Have an explosion. Man, do you have problems Chernobyl. But this is a Chernobyl was old style nuclear energy devised, built and engineered by the Russians. If you look at Chernobyl, there is no containment building at Chernobyl. The old Russian nuke plants do not have containment buildings. If you look at a US or a French nuclear reactor, it's containment buildings.
For example, Diablou down on the coast, it.
Looks like two giant breasts that or a pair of breasts along the coast. Those structures are I don't know, yards thick of concrete.
That's what you're looking at a containment building.
And so what you have is here the technology not only is it safer with its containment buildings, but the new technology is infinitely safer, and.
So whire environmentalists sorry about that.
Why are a good portion of environmentalists because nuclear power? Nuclear power plants don't emit. There's no fossil fuels, there's no carbon dioxide, there's no methane.
It's about the leanest kind of power.
Now, granted you've got spent nuclear fuel, what the hell do you do with that?
That lasts forever?
So what they do is put them in these barrels or in case them in concrete and put them deep underground or at the bottom of the ocean where they're leaking. And all the fish now have four eyes and fifteen tails.
But that's besides the point.
And the thinking is that technology will be there one hundred two hundred years from now that we'll deal with and you can get rid of the spent fuel.
Nuclear fission instead of nuclear fusion.
And I'm not going to explain what the difference is because I don't understand it, but it's the technology that is going to be able to be used to make these nuclear reactors completely safe. So you've got a generation now that is excited about nuclear your energy. You've got much safer nuclear power plants, and you've got different ways, for example, small nuclear power plants that can power a neighborhood.
Even there's technology out there or on the books a nuclear a tiny little nuclear power plant that can power your home. Little tiny guys. Those are on the books, so you're going to see and I'm a big fan of nuclear power, always have been small footprint, huge amounts of energy. Technology will be there in the future, and I believe in the technology, scientific technology, technology that is going to make them smaller, safer, and.
I'm just I am just a huge fan. Are we going to go there? Yeah? Probably because the fear of.
The emissions, fossil fuel emissions is real, climate change is real. We know where that comes from and the amount of power that's needed to the point where, for example, Microsoft that's just cut a deal with three Mile Island to revamp its existing shut down tower or one of the plants. Those are usually several buildings that are power plants. Well, the one that did not melt down was shut down and they're going to bring it back up to speed.
No one would have thought that was even possible. Amazon is cutting deals.
Microsoft, You've got major maje and AI sucks.
Up power like no one can believe.
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