You're listenings can't fly AM six forty the bill handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio. F Oh, I'm gonna ask Amy's not in her chair. I want to know how the Dow is doing this morning. I'm looking at CNN. I think it's up one hundred and twenty two points something like that. So I'm particularly watching the market these days as everyone is find out what's going on with our economy, and the Dow is, you know, symbolic to
some extent of what's happening out there. Now I'm going to move over to the medical side of news and what's going on in California. As we all know, our medical system in this country is broken. No one's arguing that even those that hate the concept of national health or socialized medicine or single payer, which is the same thing, can't argue with the fact we have.
A broken system.
And so with that, there are groups of people towns who are trying to get primary care physicians in their neighborhoods and cities, especially in rural areas and for example, the Central Valley up in central California. There are towns and there are no doctors, and they have to drive quite a ways away, especially for primary care physicians, or maybe an er twenty miles away or fifteen miles away, and that's where they get primary care.
And that is horrible. It's a horrible use of resources.
So these are general practitioners that are desperately needed, and you know, people are just spinning. There is the town of Salinas, for example, primarily a Latino city in central California, and Susan Sumanaretti is a primary care physician and she runs this Acacia Family Medical Group and just tries to get doctors and can't get them. She can't match the salaries offered by the larger health system, can't get the
environment which doctors want to live. So they're trying everything they can, and one of them is cutting deals with insurance groups, saying we'll pay more salary, will make it more beneficial for doctors, will have them come over. Anything we can do, and we want to get paid by you guys insurance companies, because someone have to pay for them, and the long run, it makes sense, but you have to play the long game, and we don't play the
long game in this country. Medical insurance companies do not play the long game.
At all. Case in point bariatric surgery.
It took forever for HMOs to jump on, even knowing that if someone is one hundred pounds overweight, it is far easier, cheaper even in the medium term, much less the long term to perform bariatric surgery because people did are one hundred pounds overweight have more heart attacks, they have diabetes, they have strokes, they're not as healthy, they're in the hospital, they have all kinds of joint injuries, and it is expensive to deal with all that and
you can't You can at least, if not eliminate, but certainly curtail those medical issues by taking one hundred pounds off someone. And what's the easiest way of doing it. It used to be bariatric surgery. Now you have the wonder drugs, but they're still not as effective as bariatric surgery. Bariatric surgery is twenty five thousand dollars. What does a stroke cost for an insurance company? What does diabetes cost to treat for an insurance company?
For an insured.
Fifteen million Californias live in areas without enough primary care providers. It is it's a shanda. You know, our medical care is it's horrible. I mean wor short of doctors, nurse practitioners, physicians, assistants.
And particularly in rural areas.
As I said, some of us face month long waits for appointments or have to travel long distance or go to an emergency room. As a matter of fact, there's a whole new cottage industry where mortuaries are set up right next to ers in California, so they don't have to transport the bodies while they're dying in the waiting room and they can just deal with it. By the way,
that's absolutely not true, but it makes my point. Granted that's not the greatest analogy, I understand that, but still, and the problem is why aren't doctors willing to become primary care physicians? Well a couple of reasons. First of all, because it doesn't make as much money. And primary care physicians where they used to sit down with a patient and spend twenty minutes, half an hour or whatever talking to a patient, what's going on, Let's talk about your symptoms,
let's talk about your lifestyle. Now it's five minutes in and out, as there isn't nearly as much satisfaction. And of course the paperwork for insurance.
Forms that have to be filled out.
It's not fun. So if you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it for the money. You might as well be a specialist. And there's a stat here that I was just reading and this actually makes a lot of sense, and you go, Okay, if I'm going to be a doctor, this is the way I'm going to go.
What is the medical a.
Primary care physician makes? Well, actually not bad. One hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars a year. I mean that's after of course college, med school residency. So you're in debt or the doctor is in debt hundreds of thousands of dollars. But then if you go into a subspecialty or specialty and maybe a fellowship. Now, if you're a neurosurgeon, the average in come is eight hundred thousand dollars a year, and you have a chance to
talk to your patient. Now they're not answering very often because there they are on the table completely unconscious. Okay, that one didn't work either, did it?
Bottom line? Thank you? And Amy's looking at me.
This is why I get paid the big bucks, Amy, because I make these connections I'm the one that explains this to you. But the debt these doctors walk into are completely crazy.
So it's a broken system. It just doesn't work.
Case in point, I was over in Italy, as you know, I got married over there, and we ended up going on vacation afterwards to Palermo, the capital of Sicily, and Lindsay got very sick and we went to the local emergency room because that was the only pap.
You could go.
Doctor Sawer immediately went and saw e and t immediately.
There was zero weight and there was no place to pay. This is Sicily.
I don't know if you've ever been to Sicily, but another name for Sicily and Italian is toilet.
It is not a good place to go.
But the medical care, granted, there are more potholes than I've ever seen in a major town in my life. But at the same time, yeah, I could do story after story after story on our broken medical care, and I will, and I will over the course of the next insert name or insert timeline here. All right, coming up the Alta Dina, the Eton and the Palisades fire. We talked about the inequities, how one is being treated better than the.
Other, Okay, I've got a story there too.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
The Alta Dina the Eton fire in the Palisades fire, and there's some differences. Both places were burnt down to a crisp As you know, We've talked about this just a whole bunch of times, and there's a lot.
Of disparity between the two.
To one was a very wealthy area, the Pacific Palisades area, multimillion dollar homes. The other one they eat and fire in Altadena. The neighborhoods were nowhere near.
In the same price range. The homes were much older.
It was a historically black community, so there were a lot of black residents. And in this day and age, I mean, how does anybody in a medium or lower socioeconomic scale buy a home?
I mean you can't.
So how did these black families who are in that lower statistically lower economic level, how do they buy a house? Well, their parents, their grandparents bought these houses. This neighborhood has been around for a very long time. It has a heritage to it, It has a background. There is a culture that didn't exist, or it didn't exist. The silly doesn't exist in the Palisades.
So here's what's going on.
You have the fires, they're done, and now we're finding out that there's a lot of burglary going on, a lot of looting, if you will, going on where people. You got these cockroaches, these gangs, these individuals coming in at night and going through these empty homes, the ones that were burnt completely, even those are being robbed as these burglars, these thieves are combing through the debris the homes that survived. You know, keep in mind, people in
many cases aren't even allowed in. I don't think are there any neighborhoods where people are still not being allowed in? And I don't know the answer to that, But up to this point, there were plenty of burglaries. As a matter of fact, if we look at this story in the La Times, burglaries are up four hundred and fifty percent in the Altadena area compared with last year. And still burglaries away up in Palisades, but not even close. Homes that survived actually come with a curse now too.
They are prime targets for these opportunistic thieves who prowl the neighborhood at night, so thieves have.
Broken into windows.
These are homes that survived, rated garages, ransacked the home. I mean just going through with a fine tooth comb because there's no one there. There are no neighbors to call the police. The police aren't driving up and down these empty streets. They have plenty of other places to go. In Pacific Palisades, year over year, burglary rates are about the same four hundred and fifty increase in Altadena Palisades about the same. What's going on? Do we not care
about the African American community that lived in Altadena. Well, it gets a little more complicated than that, because at first glance, yeah, you're a bunch of racists. But you know, let me give you a practical, just a practical approach to this.
How many ways you.
Think you can get into Aldadena? How many streets come into Altadena? How many streets go into Pacific Palisades, One basically Sunset and the rest are these little offshoot streets that you have to go through the entire neighborhood. It is damn hard. It is much easier to patrol Pacific Palisades. Also, there is no more money because there are neighborhoods, you can afford private guards to drive up and down the streets. It is easier to protect this wealthy area than it is Altadena.
But still the question remains, what is going on?
Why isn't there much more of an effort, And does it boil down to people that have more money do a better job of protecting themselves?
Yeah?
Yeah, I mean I live in a gated community, right, so with now, I used to the Persian Palace live in a gated community.
We had a guard twenty four to seven.
And if I can remember, there were exactly two times in the twenty five years that we lived there that the houses were broken into. Once there was a neighbor down the street and the other time it was ours. Let me tell you how pleasant that was. But that's twice in twenty five years. Now, how often can.
You say that?
There's only twice in twenty five years in insert neighbor of an entire neighborhood here, Pacific Palace aides has more money, and it is unfair and we have to look at it. I mean, is there a reason, I mean, is there any kind of a racial reason for this? And at this point of course, you're seeing a lot of investigation, and the accusations are made immediately, and we, I mean, we tend to do that, don't We accuse people and accuse institutional racism. I don't know if I necessarily buy it.
I don't.
I mean, just on the physical aspect of just there's a lot. And then you have the issue of if you have a poorer neighborhood, do you have statistically I'm talking now, not in terms of specifics, but do you have more people in poorer areas who commit more crime simply because it's a poorer neighborhood as a given you, notwithstanding any racial makeup, just in general. Yeah, I think
the answer is yes. So you put all of those factors together, and you've got, as always, poor people getting screwed of the system, as always, poor minority people getting screwed for whatever reason, and life just isn't fair. On the other hand, you can move to Yemen, where life is very fair, where everybody gets killed and everybody eats sand for breakfast. I think we'll stop at that point, Okay, And coming up, Oh, here's one Israel's experimentation with AI.
All right, no surprise, you know, it's a technologically advanced country. But Israel's experimentation in the Gaza war and all kinds.
Of ethical questions are being raised here.
And I'll throw a couple of stats at you and you go, you know, these people are nuts.
And I'll talk about that coming up.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KF I am six forty.
Let's see how a market is doing. I can't see it's way. Oh, it's up a little bit in amy.
Not too bad doing okay, all right, So we'll see what happens over the next little WHI I'm going to talk a little bit about the what what we're guessing is going to happen, and what we're looking at the economy. And I'll be doing that. Matter of fact, I'll do that at seven fifty. And has to do with the first one hundred days of the Trump administration.
Uh. Let's move on to AI. AI has all kinds of.
Issues involved with it. Of course, its ability to dive into our lives AI in terms of facial recognition and privacy issues. There is an issue of AI that we're not involved with and israel Is, and that's with the Hamas Israeli war. Going back to twenty twenty three. Israel was trying to assassinate this Ibracam Biati top Hamas.
Commander couldn't find him. He was in the tunnel somewhere.
So what the Israelis did is they turned to a new military technology that's just infused with AI and it was developed about a decade earlier but hadn't been used in battle. And so with this they were listening, found able to listen to his calls, didn't know where he was, and tested this AI tool. This audio tool gave him an approximate location where he was making a calls, not specifically but approximately, but enough to know where he was.
And boom, there came the airstrike and one hundred and twenty five.
Civilians died in that attack, but so did he, And then you have the whole ethical issue of the one hundred and twenty five civilians, how many men, how many innocent men and women and children were killed, And that is really at the heart of can we use should we use AI?
Now?
Israel is looking at this war and Hamas is an exit existential threat to its survival. October seventh and the kibbutz at the border were wiped out twelve hundred and fifty individuals were killed. Were massacred, men, women and children, I mean innocent people, just massacred, and Hamas figured, okay, well that's will show you.
You know, I didn't.
One of the things I don't understand is the Kamas leadership and this attack on Israel. What did they think was going to happen. Let's forget about all the ethics.
Involved here for a moment. Let's just talk practically.
You attack Israel like this, what do you think is going to happen? Gaza has disappeared as a nation, as an entity. It is now a mound of rubble from top to bottom, where ninety percent of the people have been displaced. All the infrastructure has been wiped out. Boy, we showed them, didn't we. Here is the issue not only the Israeli.
Ability to wage war, but.
Its ability to find out where you are and find out how to wage war. And we're not talking about military might. We're talking about it's an intelligence ability. How we can go after infrastructure in people that otherwise we couldn't. And it's using AI more so than any place else in the world because it's a baptism of fire. I mean practically speaking, I mean, do you really want to go after Ai? I mean after Israel, especially if you're
an Arabic country out of the Middle East. If you look at it, that part of the world, out of the Muslim world, Muslim world entirely. You know, one point eight billion or two billion people there have been in that part of the world, Muslim and Israel. Twenty two Nobel prizes over half have been Israel. One one point eight billion Muslims, nine million Jews in Israel over half of the Nobel prizes, all of them in science. Now, I don't know how many programs you use.
Do you use ways.
That's Israeli? Do you use modern technology system? Good chance, that's Israeli. Are they smarter than everybody else? No, it's cultural. People are people.
It's not a question of smarts.
I don't think anybody from one part of the world is smarter than the other part of the world. But I do believe there is a culture. I do believe there is a cultural difference. Israel has nine million people in it right now, three hundred and seventy million Arabs surrounding it. Who is going to go to war with Israel? Hamas tried it and look what's happening there. Not so good for Hamas. Lebanon was stupid enough to come into the battle on the side of Hamas solidarity, and that's
in quotes. Well, Lebanon was decimated almost immediately, and all of a sudden they pull back and go, you know what, maybe not, maybe this isn't such a good idea.
And I don't know at what point.
The Palestinians are going to figure out, you know what, maybe we shouldn't go to war because there isn't much ethical constraint in Israel with privacy, certainly not using AI to find out where the bad guys are and to track him down. All of the Kamas leadership, they are living in tunnels. They can't rear their head up above ground without having a good possibility of then getting those heads blown off.
Yeah. Yah, Sinlar, the head.
Of the military arm of Hamas, probably the most wanted man in palis side in Gaza, he was killed. They tracked him down and they have to be running scared. And AI is now a big, big part of it.
Now.
A lot of people dying, yeah, a lot of innocence. They're dying across the board, and there's some real ethical concerns there. At what point does Israel mandate of peace. It's gotten to the point now where Hamas wouldn't talk, and now they've actually in this courting. I think the bbc NC last week Hamas offered a return of all the hostages for a five year moratorium, a five year truce, and Israel saying not a chance, and why is that?
And what five why five years? Well does that give.
Hamas it's ability to reconstruct its military abilities? You think? Keep in mind Gaza in the last ten years spend all of its money on building those tunnels, and those tunnels are only about attacking Israel. That's all those are about is to remain hidden from Israeli forces. And they just don't do such a good job because Israel is well, they're just better and smarter at it. Are they smarter than No?
I don't think so.
I don't think Israeli's per chance are smarter than Are Jews smarter than non Jews?
No? Are they more neurotic than non Jews? Hell?
Yes, more guilt absolutely, Mortsuda's.
Yes up against the wall.
Yeah, it's one of those things where Israel only has to lose once the Arab countries.
Can lose over and over and over again.
Israel has one shot, so the use of AI and somehow the ethical concerns I don't get. All right, so much for that first one hundred days, we're on top of it right now.
What's happening.
Well, we start with the approval rating of our president not so hot right now, and we'll be back and do that, and then oh, we's got.
Plenty more to do the entire show, so don't go away.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
As we continue on a Monday morning, and usually nothing ever happens on the weekend except boy, those days are gone. And I've said this many many times before. There used to be something called a news cycle where something would happen and it would disappear after news cycle, in other words, it sort of had legs for a bit, and Saturday and Sunday it would disappear. And if there was a major story and you were part of it and didn't want it to go out, you'd release the press conference
or the press release whatever on a Friday night. Because it disappears over the weekend. Those days are gone. It's news twenty four to seven, to say the least. Okay, here's one I want to share with you, and that is, as you know, polls are constantly being taken, especially in the well, especially in the world of the world, but in the rule a world of the president, polls are always being taken.
As to the approval level of the president.
Well, I don't think anybody's surprised at President Trump's approval rating has dropped precipitously over the last week, and it's it's going south pretty quickly, and there's some reasons for it. First of all, we start with no president in modern times has moved quicker than Donald Trump to remake so many parts of the government, to literally change the government around and change the world economy around, which is part of what he believes he has the authority as president
to do. And unfortunately, the maga Republicans out there believe he has the authority to wake up and do whatever the hell he wants. Be a terrorist, be a treatise, it doesn't matter at all. Well, I think he has fumbled, and I'm not alone, particularly with.
His tariff business.
Now he is touting huge successes in the world of immigration and the border. You know, what I mean going to argue that I'll give that to him now. I don't know how important that is for you, but I'm willing to guess your job is more important than the illegal migrant being kept being picked up down to the local home depot certainly is to me or my four to oh one K plan being worth fifteen to twenty percent less than it was a couple of months ago.
I mean, the fact that they've arrested.
An illegal limit okay or DEI program at work, and you're so offended by that, Okay?
Now, is that as important as your business going under? I don't know.
I mean, I'm looking at a business that I'm involved with with everything has stopped completely. We import from China. Cookwears we're stopped cold. Do I really care if a DEI program is in place or not? Do I care if there's a gay issue. Do I care about the rights of trans people? When I'm looking at I've got twenty employees and we don't know when do I fire them all?
I don't know what's more important. And I think people are waking up.
And starting to realize we've got some issues going on here and this war against China with the tariffs.
Let me tell you. We're hearing from the administration.
Well, it's going to be tough on China and China it's unsustainable. No, no, unsustainable is here. China plays the long game. She is an autocrat. He has complete total power in that country. There are some guard rails here, there are no guardrails there.
And I'll tell you something else.
The Chinese people are used to being upended completely and having their world turned around.
We're not.
We get tired of things, sometimes quicker than in other times. Afghanistan we're done, Vietnam, we're done. I don't think there's been a China We're done story anytime recently. And the Chinese people have a history of sort of tightening their belts and sucking it up.
We're not that way.
And so to think that g is going to cave before China, well before the United States will, I don't know. I've got some doubts. And certainly the market has turned around and said, okay, we're not happy with what's going on. The world is not happy. The IMF International International Monetary Fund has said that world global economic growth is going to slow down and dramatically because of this tariff wor that's going on, and the President keeps on changing his mind every day.
It's something new.
We're gonna have teriffs, We're not gonna have tariffs. We're going to exempt certain industries from tariffs. Okay, we're not going to charge China one d and forty five percent tariffs.
We're going to reduce that.
It will it won't be zero, but it'll be something. And now we're back up to one hundred and forty five percent. We're holding firm.
I tell you where do we go? And this is just a start.
If this thing holds, if this tarifor continues, not only are being hundreds of thousands of businesses. Small business is gone wiped out, but you're also gonna see when you go to Walmart empty shelves, You're gonna go to Loew's or at home depot empty shelves.
It's not going to be fun.
And unfortunately, this is a president that doesn't give up. He's gonna double down. He's gonna quadruple down and say it's a win and argue that it is a win no matter what. Day one, remember the day one promises, but you said day one, I really and I'm not kidding. I wasn't serious when I said day one. I was jesting when I said day one.
All right, all right, enough of me.
With my Trump situation going on, seems like every day I do it Trump and you.
Know, okay, now we're gonna have fun.
Dead popes and just what happens with I love the secrecy and the just just the way things are done in the Catholic Church going back hundreds of years. How do you go from A to B A being a no longer alive pope to be a new pope and everything in between. Oh, the rules are spectacular. There's so much fun and some myths that I want to share with you. That's all coming up. KF I am six point forty.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app