Handel on the News

You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.

Casey Wasserman said, Los Angeles is defined by its resilience and determination. Actually it's more defined by the traffic, the lack of clean air, and the number of people who don't have green cards. That's really the definition of Los Angeles. Also, resilience is thrown in there.

We're going to certainly see and now handle on the news. Ladies and gentlemen. Here's Bill Handle. Good morning, everybody.

Bill Handle here and the morning crew, well, most of the morning crew. It's a Thursday morning, January sixteenth, or four days out until the inauguration of our new old president. And that's only happened I think once or twice in the history of this country. Where president finishes a term comes back the following term after.

The next term. Did that make any sense? Probably not? All right.

Neil is out today, is not feeling very very good. So it is today. There's no fill in for Neil. Usually we have it so amy, it's just you and me.

Okay, we'll do it just us.

And however, the other crew is here an always here. Yes, I am, and I don't even know how many times you have not been here you are?

Have you missed any days?

I've never called in Sika.

Yeah, I don't think you ever have I have. I have been late.

Twice since I started a KFI in nineteen eighty nine.

Wow, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, it's count on me. Yeah, no, I do.

I do. And Cono, well, con I was young and stupid, so he's always here.

I'm young. Yeah, it's not that's not okay.

I'm now going to give you some some creds here. Okay, young and stupid is a phrase as opposed to a description of what you are.

That makes sense, Yes, but we can change it. Yeah, when you're young, vibrant, smart, Yeah nice.

Yeah, yeah, let's not forget a huge direction because you're young and stupid.

That believe me. How old are you? I'm thirty six. It'll fall apart.

You're very very close, Amy, Yeah, good morning, Hi, how are you?

It's just fine? Al right? Oh do we have a lot going on today?

The big story, Well, Joe Biden last night with his farewell on a great speech, and the country is going to be destroyed with Donald Trump as president. So that's one thing we're going to talk about and The other thing is the Hamas is Ray cease fire is kicking in ostensibly on Sunday, and they finally come came to

Why are we in the middle of a press conference Because.

The winds are down, but there are still some red flag warnings and mountain areas and the fires are not under control. They're gaining control of them, but they're still there's still hot spots. They're still fighting them and people are not in their homes. Twelve thousand buildings, formes, businesses, they can't go back in.

Yet, that's fair. That's three minutes of a press conference.

Thank you. You just gave the press conference.

You got it.

I'm here to help and we're going to hear what usually it's half an hour?

Now?

Is that what we do? Or we bail out after half an hour.

We'll see what the critical information is and likely bail out when the politicians start talking.

Oh yeah, the Kumbai Ya, we love you. Let's all hold hands.

Oh chrisys mayor. Beth said anything of consequence?

Yet no, no, And Chris told me yesterday and he's going to bring in the information. When Bass was this was I don't know, six eight years ago. She said, if she is elected may she's been wanting to be mayor for a long time.

She would never leave the country. Isn't that interesting?

Now you give her a pass for going to the Olympics, Olympics and accepting the flag. I'll give her a pass on that one. And she said she would go to Washington and Sacramento. Okay, that's fair, But Ghana she's been to South Africa a bunch of times. She's been to Europe a bunch of times. Let me tell you, it's good to be a politician. When you're in a major city. You get a lot of junkets. And I don't think

All right, we got it. Ceasefire.

Finally, a year and a half, eighteen months, nineteen months after the attack on Israel by Hamas, twelve hundred people killed in Israel. Now, one of the facts, twelve hundred people seem to be not a whole lot when you think of the numbers relative to the number of Palestinians who have died over forty five thousand, which about a third are militant, so you don't count those. But thirty thousand were not militants, and it is men, women and

Twelve hundred.

That was the worst attack on Israel and more Jews died in one attack since the Holocaust.

That's why Israel got did what it did.

In addition to some other things coming up at seven o'clock, I'm going to start doing some history explaining why and what's going to happen and how does Biden get credit?

Yes? Does President Trump get credit? Yes? Does NATA Yahoo get credit?

No? All right, let's go ahead and move on. That's coming up at seven o'clock after the news.

Bye bye, bye, bye, bye bye bye. President Biden gave his farewell address to the nation last night from the Oval Office. Instead of an upbeat, happy message, it took a rather ominous dark turn as he delivered stark warnings about an oligarchy of the ultra wealthy taking root in the country and a tech industrial complex infringing on Americans' rights and the future of democracy. This will probably be his last opportunity to address the country before he leaves the White House on Monday.

Now it's pretty stark. Is it going to be as bad as he describes it?

Yeah?

I don't think so, Because Trump there's a lot of bomb bass in what Trump does. I mean a lot of bombas. We are not going to by Greenland. We are not going to have Canada as our fifty first state. We are not going to take over the Panama Canal. There will not be the tariffs that Trump is proclaiming. But is it going to change? You got the ultra wealthy, you bet they're going to do better. You bet they are businesses, you bet they're going to do better.

And it's just, you know, it's a different philosophy.

We elect Democrats who are super liberal, and now we elected a Republican who's not you know, welcome to America.

Now that was a legitimate election.

And now it's a different view of the United States.

That's what happens.

State Farms stay input for now.

So as you know, State Farm has been canceling or not renewing policies in California, and they had planned to drop policies in the Pacific Palisades area. But now say Or says that it will offer renewals to residential policy holders affected by the fires in Los Angeles County. The figures of who they're going to offer renewals to about eleven hundred of the sixteen hundred residential policies still in place in Pacific Palis Sades and thousand more in other

Yeah, you think that has anything to do with the governor saying you can't stop the policies, you must renew?

Think they Yeah?

I think by the way, I had State Farm insurance and it canceled. It's Persian Palace last November and no November before that year ago November, and they just canceled me. They dropped out, and I had to scramble to find new insurance. I was bere for two and a half weeks. Let me tell you what it's like waking up in the morning and knowing you have no home insurance. That was a pleasant two and a half weeks. And finally found a policy twice as much, one hundred percent increase.

News, not so fast in order prohibiting cleanup or removal of debris in the fire areas, including of course Specific Palisades and Altadena.

Pasadena can't do it.

You're cut off and not allowed to remove anything until a hazardous materials inspection has been completed. That's according to the Ella County Health Officer, doctor Moontoo Davis. He says fired debris and ash and dirt from the fires could have asbestos or heavy metals and other hazardous substances in it. They need to check those areas make sure they're safe before they let people start clearing the space.

Makes sense, and people desperately want to go back to the house see what they have, especially in areas where the house sort of survived. Was it, Amy, did you report this morning about how a house has survived just split right in half.

That was in Pacific Palisades. Yes, it survived the wildfire, but then there was a mud slide and it came down split the.

House in half. Perfect for a divorce that's already done.

The divorce.

No, the splitting of assets.

Yeah, half and half. You get half the house, I get half the house.

Works.

Getting money from go fund me, as several people have set up goal fundme accounts could affect what you get from FEMA. So over one hundred million dollars has been raised for California wildfire victims on go fund me. But victims have to be careful when using crowdsourcing to raise money because it could affect the money they get from FEMA. FEMA basically says, if you've already been paid for something, you can't get paid again.

Yeah. Two things wrong with go fund me. First of all, the scammers out there using GoFundMe like crazy. You got to be super careful. We've been hearing that a lot. Also, I love this story where, I mean, it's being reported by ABC.

Do you know where it did come from? Any idea amy the original story? I mean, it's a I do not know.

Okay, it's legitimate news source, but it's a new source that's telling us.

Here's how to screw FEMA.

Make sure your go fundme, Paige or were The GoFundMe is very vague, so FEMA can't nail you and say you got that money to replace this part of your house. This is I've never seen this before, coming from a new source.

It's great. So there's the rule.

If you get paid by any other source FEMA doesn't pay, you have to deduct what FEMA would normally give you.

The clock is ticking down on TikTok.

One hundred and seventy million people in the US have TikTok on their phones, but a federal ban on the social media platform, which of course is owned by a Chinese company, goes into effect Sunday unless there's a last minute reprieve. President elect Trump has been considering issuing an executive order that would suspend enforcement of the law for sixty to ninety days.

Which you can't do. By the way, he does not have the power. This is a law that was passed by Congress and signed by the president. You can't just as president arbitrarily say oh you know what, I don't like that law.

You can't.

Now, does he have the power not to enforce Yeah, he sort of does.

But even to.

His Republican allies in the Senate and the House this thing. Does he say, I don't care what you did, I don't care what you pass I'm going to decide what happens. I don't think that's going to go over very well. So this now is sitting with the Supreme Court, which I don't think has yet ruled whether or not the Court is going to say that that law is unconstitutional. It's First Amendment issue versus national security. And we'll see how far the Court goes on this one.

Well, the people on Wall Street must have heard something. They liked stocks surge yesterday. The Dow was up by about seven hundred points in early trading. I think it was up five or six hundred points by the end of the day. The consumer price index slowed for the first time in months, and there were some better than expected wholesale inflation numbers, and that that apparently did it. The Dow again up by almost seven hundred points in morning trading. The SMP was up by more than one

Yeah, it's good news.

Inflation is coming more and more in control, not yet at the two percent that the Fed wants, but pretty good stuff.

Newsom is following Trump's lead on this one. Lots of controversy. You know, the fly flags are flying half staff around the country because of former President Carter's passing.

There, they're going to fly that way for thirty days.

But the Trump team said, actually it was Mike Johnson said that we're going to raise the flags to full staff on Monday for inauguration Day and then bring them back down to half staff. And Democratic Governor Newsom says, Yep, we're going to do that in California too.

Yeah.

When's the last time Newsom was an ally of Mike Johnson and Donald Trump? But on this one he is joining the We're going to raise the flag on our inauguration day, which, by the way, I think is super appropriate to have the flag flown on inauguration Day. Here's the problem. The law says there's thirty days of morning when a president a next president dies, and the law says that a flag or the flag has to be flown at half staff.

So what Gavin Newsom.

And Mike Johnson are doing are saying, screw the law, We're not going to follow what US law is.

And who's going to come after in the Department of Justice.

A good point, Yes, Department Justice is going to by the way, bringing a flat Remember the cavalry when someone was holding the flag and they were marching down or they going down on horses.

That's exactly what's going to happen.

Yeah, do you think you think it's okay?

No, I have mixed feelings about that.

First of all, I think inauguration Day is a very important day in US and US history because how many inaugurations day?

Inaugurations? Do you have?

Forty seven or forty six so far?

Yes, thank you for that number. But do you follow the law? No, it's that simple. Here's what the law says. Do you say screw the law? Well, that's what Gavin Newsom is saying. This is exactly what Mike Johnson is saying. And you know, I have mixed feelings, but if i had to go one way or the other, I'm going to go for the law.

Okay.

Pam Bondi gets grilled on Capitol Hill. Pam Bondi is President elect Trump's choice to be the next Attorney general, and she was in the hot seat yesterday and Dick Durbin kept asking her whether Trump won the election or actually whether Biden won the election. And she wouldn't specifically say Biden won the election, but she says President Biden is the president of the United States.

He was duly sworn in. He is the president of the United States.

Yeah, Will, that's say the word elected, just statement of fact.

He is the president. Yes, that's a fact. He was sworn in.

That's a fact. He is in the White House. That's a fact. Was he elected. He's in the White House. That's a fact. That's just code for nope, he was never elected. That's what That was her position. She was part of his team that argue the election was fraudulent, and you know's she believes that. I mean, there are people to this day that say this whole thing was a fraud. I'm not talking about just people walking down the street. I'm talking about people, for example, like the

Well, there's a move to make smokes less potent. The Biden administration has put up a proposal to cut the level of nicotine in cigarettes. The proposal would require cigarette makers to significantly reduce levels of nicotine to try to

Yeah, that's not gonna happen, because you you have a new president who is a big fan of big business, and cigarettes are big business, and they donated to his campaign. I think they're already donating also to his inauguration. Did you know on inaugurations are not paid for it by the government, private donor private donors.

Oh that's right, because remember like Bezos and Zuckerberg, they've donated a million dollars, which is probably why they're going to be at the inauguration.

Yeah, inauguration simply is whoever I can think it can be any judge by the way, who swears in a president any judge? Remember when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in on Air Force one.

Not specifically, pardon, not specifically?

Okay, when Linden yeah, okay, nineteen sixty three. November twenty two, nineteen sixty three, Linden Johnson was sworn in as president while JFK's coffin was sitting in the back of the airplane, air Force one, and they're in this sweltering, sweltering cabin of Air Force one. It was a federal judge, Sarah Hughes, who swore in Lyndon Johnson.

It was not the Chief Justice.

Now do you find that weird that I actually know the name of the judge and I don't know what I had for breakfast?

Say I you this morning? No? Okay, yeah, yeah, and said we're used to it.

But anyway, that's it. According to law, it's just a swearing in. It's basically two people and you're done.

Protections for porn are before the Supreme Court.

The justices.

We're listening to arguments yesterday about the legality of a law in Texas that requires pornographic websites to verify the age of users. But The justices were also apparently concerned over the burdens imposed on adults to view constitutionally protected material. They seem to agree the states can try to keep the adult material from minors, but said the free speech implications could be kind.

Of to.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just you got a First Amendment versus the ability of people to view porn, and porn is perfectly legal to view, and the issue is keeping kids away from it.

But I think it was who said.

No.

I think it's the next story.

No.

One of the justices said, I think she has kids. I don't remember which justice had. You know, I personal experience. You know, I have kids, and no matter what you do, they're going to see porn.

Would that be Amy Cony Barrett, I think it would be younger kids.

Yeah, I think it would be her. Yeah.

Is part of a state for sale. A Republican senators says he wants to make Minnesota Iowa again and is introduced a bill that would allow Iowa to buy nine counties in Minnesota. Minnesota borders Iowa to the north, and Senator Mike boselat.

I think it's Bosslot.

Yeah, whatever wants to I don't know what it wants.

The state to enter into negotiations with its neighbor that would allow it to purchase nine southern Minnesota counties.

Now, who sells nine counties? Is the state? Is it the state that sells nine.

Counties or did the counties sell themselves?

I don't know.

And who buys nine counties? I guess the State of Iowa buys the counties.

And will there be a vote? I don't know.

This is some of the crazy stuff that it's going to be happening with this next administration. Can you imagine any administration that was coming in where a senator says, we want to buy some counties from that state over there, or Greenland or the Panama Canal or Canada. I mean, we're in for a ride. We really are in for ride. None of that is going to happen, of course, but still it's just great fun seeing what's attempting to happen.

Glenn's Gone supersonic Blue Origin officially.

Is kind of in the space race.

The New Glen, which is the company's first rocket that's powerful enough to launch satellites into space, launched this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The rocket was safely taken into orbit, but Blue Origin didn't get its next goal.

They wanted to do two things.

They wanted to get the rocket up into orbit, and then they also wanted to bring the rocket first stage booster back down to land on a platform, kind of like SpaceX does all the time.

That didn't work.

Yeah, so boy, they're jumping right in it.

SpaceX has been doing this basically by twenty fifteen, or started in twenty fifteen, and so Blue Origin is only ten years in behind SpaceX. If you go back in history in the space race with Russia and the United States, by the time John Glenn, who this rocket is named after, who was the first American to orbit the Earth, Russia had already orbited the Earth a dozen times, had sent I think at that point they sent a man rocket to Jupiter and back.

You know, they were pretty well advanced.

But now you have Blue Origin now competing with SpaceX that has the entire market. SpaceX now has eighty percent of the world market for rocket tree. You know, one thing about Elon Musk, You cannot argue that he is not a visionary crazy, but a visionary.

Going international to crack down on some deadly drugs. Two Chinese citizens are standing trial in New York. The trial actually started yesterday. It's tied to fentanyl and it's considered a landmark case because we haven't tried Chinese nationals before. These two were picked up in a sting operation in Fiji. They were kicked out of the South Pacific, and then

We're not talking the cartel doing this. These are companies, real companies in China, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing companies that ship this stuff out. Also, I have a question about how bright these guys are. They are arrested in Fiji, expelled from Fiji, and end up in the United States.

They're Chinese nationals.

Why in God's name would you come back to the United States for.

That first flight out? Hey, let's go to the US.

Yeah.

Usually you're expelled to your country of origin. So they can't be really bright.

Oh Canada.

Canada's outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says nothing is off the table when it comes to responding to proposed tariffs by President elect Trump. But he also said that not just one of the provinces should pay or should basically bear the brunt of the tariffs, and it needs to

Now.

This is Canada caving to Trump's request or demand more like it that the tariffs are going to be huge. And what Canada is saying, Okay, the tariffs are going to be huge. What we're going to do is spread them out. For example, tariffs on car parts, which and I don't know which province does most of the car the car parts. Let's say it's Ontario, and so it's going to be hit harder with tariffs than any other

It's caving because they're basically saying yeah, it's going to happen.

Yeah, yeah, or anticipation of it happening. As I said, what Trump is doing, there's a lot of bomb bass in what he says. But he's getting what he wants and then.

He goes back.

So you have the threat of twenty five percent tariffs, so you have the threat of forty percent tariffs.

Is he actually going to do that?

I don't think so, and most economists don't think so because one of the things that happens with tariffs, I mean.

It goes through the roof, Inflation goes crazy.

You know, you can't you know, you know why we don't buy electric cars here in the United States from China. You cannot buy an electric car from China. It's not because they're banned, it's because tariffs are one hundred percent for evs coming in from China. Well, so you buy Uh, my EV was made in Germany. Germany happens to be an ally and I have no idea what the tariff is.

All Right, we're done, KF. I am sixty you've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.

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