You're listen Saints KFI AM six forty the bill Handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio fea Fine AM six forty handle on a Thursday, October ninth. And the big story is peace has broken out in the Mid East, and we all know what's happening. I mean, you look at the news and there it is. We know that Hamas has agreed to the peace plan. Most of that twenty point peace plan, the big parts of it. Hamas As is releasing Sunday or Monday all of the hostages.
They figure twenty are still alive. Is what the Israelis think. Twenty eight are dead. And so we're talking about actually Hamas releasing the bodies.
How sick is this?
They hold on to bodies for negotiations and hostages. So that's phase one, all right, So Israel ceasefire happens, Israel goes still, stays in Gaza, goes back to a predetermined area, doesn't It just pulls back a bit and the hall of hostages are released and then the rest of it is up for negotiation. So I want to dive into a little bit is why are the hostages being released?
Why is Hamas saying yes to it.
Now, the hostages were all the ammunition that Hamas had, So all they had were the hostages. Why would they cut loose with the hostages without the rest of the deal being put on paper but being signed. In other words, the demilitarization of Haramas, the dismantling of Hamas, that's still up there. Why would Hamas do that? Well, when this war started, Hamas is under no illusion that it was never it was ever going to win or even fight a standard.
Military battle against Israel.
I mean, that's basically a World Series baseball team to a high school team, not even so what they thought was and they guessed wrong on this one. The more that Palestinians were killed, the more infrastructure, the more destruction the Israel wrought on housing and hospitals and schools and sewage systems and electrical systems and water plants, wiping out everything, the more Israel would be under pressure to sign this deal, right, to leave Hamas alone. There'll be some kind of negotiation.
And they guessed wrong because Natainnehu said, I don't care Hamas was right. There was tremendous world pressure. I mean, Israel is on its way, maybe already be a pariah state in doing what it did to sixty seven thousand Palestinians. About a third of them are militants, so that doesn't count, but the rest, for the most part, innocent, innocent civilians. And so we're going to show Israel because the worldwide pressure is going to stop them doing for what they're doing.
Nettie says, you're crazy. We're not stopping.
We will wipe out Gaza. And now what does Hamas do? Yeah, boy, what a choice. Hamas made good, good choice to do that attack on October seventh.
Yeah, they did it right.
And the other thing I want to point out as to what happened, by the way, the Israeli Cabinet is meeting right now to sign off on this because they have to under Israeli law. And the first that well, all the hostages will be released over a Sunday Monday, and Israel's releasing about fifteen hundred prisoners that some.
Of them have life sentences.
That's because that's normally what happens whenever you have an exchange like this. One of the things that I pointed out this morning, and I had said this, and I was wrong by the way I had said when this is over, and there of course they'll be a negotiated peace.
It's impossible not to have that happen at some point.
What you'll see in Israel is celebrations that the hostages are coming home. What you'll see in Gaza is the celebrations that Hamas has won the war, because that's what happened every single time, every incursion into Lebanon, the Israel wipes out entire military structures and their entire military force, and Israel stops, We've won the war, We've gotten rid of the oppressor, and they sing and they dance. The only singing and dancing that's going on is that the
war is over. I have not yet seen a statement from Hamas saying we've won. We got rid of those Israeli bastards. This is a success, we are victorious. Have not heard that yet, and I don't know if they're going to because you know, where do they do that in front of a hospital that doesn't exist anymore?
Or is that where they have the press conference? So is Israel still a pariah state?
I think Israel has a horrible reputation now, I mean it is not very well respected. But I'll tell you where it is respected Is by Donald Trump, and without Donald Trump, Israel would never been able to pull this off. He is being credited for putting this together, and I think rightly, so he's taking a lot of credit. And then the issue becomes when this is all said and done, and it will end. There will be a full negotiated piece. You'll see what happens. What happens to Camas, we don't know,
but there'll be all kinds of safeguards. You will see humanitarian aid. Right now, there are hundreds of trucks lined up on the Egyptian side of the border ready to go in with humanitarian aid. There's enough to keep everybody going for three months, I mean today going into Gaza and then the humanitarian aid and the restructuring is, the reconstruction is going to start and it's going to change
everything that Gaza will come back. Now will they be able to rebuild as generations before it comes back to where it was before October seventh? So good news and Hamas, good call, guys, good call. You talked to sixty seven thousand people because you sure show those Israelis, didn't you. Okay, let's move on and talk about what's happening here. The Trump administration continues the immigration crackdown. And see what happened in Chicago yesterday if you're looking at the video, my God.
The deck, the demonstrations.
So as the immigration crackdown is happening in southern California, it was one of the places that the Trumpet administration is focusing on. The La County Board of Supervisor Supervisors is considering issuing a state of emergency to provide itself with more power to assist people affected by these detainments and deportations. Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, who wrote this proposal, says, this escalation about raids puts thousands of our neighbors in
extreme perils. So I believe we need to act now, and this declaration is necessary to give us every available tool to fight back. So the state of emergency, this declaration of the state of emergency is a legal concept, and it's a precursor to enacting an eviction moratorium for households that have lost income doing due to the rates. You can prove a loved one who paid rent, a head of household who paid rent, we have been affected. Therefore, we shouldn't be able to be forced to pay rent.
And that's the moratorium, which I'm assuming he's going to kick in for sure. Now that's county, that's not going to be the city. And the declaration allows expedited hiring for rules and assist tenants.
Four to one vote.
Now, the board chair, Catherine Barger, came up with something rather interesting and I think legitimate.
She voted no.
She was the only no vote, and said, first of all, you know, we're going to be challenged legally. Every moratorium we've ever put in. We went to the courts and it went crazy. But look at what's happening here. The landlords are going to be held financially responsible for the unpaid rent. They still have to pay the mortgages, they still have to maintain the property. Now the moratorium means that the rent doesn't have to be paid, but it
is still due. So you have a family, and I'm going to go forward doing this, and Neil, I'm sure you're.
Going to say, I don't handle You're either being eracist or whatever.
But I am going to make an assumption that families that have illegal aliens within them, that are breadwinners do not make a lot of money. My guess is there are very few high end cardiovascular surgeons who are illegal or who are married to people who are illegal, and the breadwinner is someone who is not undocumented. Okay, moratorium. They have a tough time making rent anyways, moratorium. It's now an eight month oratorium, a nine month oratorium.
During COVID it was what a year? Two years?
And okay, now you owe thirty thousand dollars in rent? Now you owe fifty thousand dollars in rent in back rent? Really you think you're going to get that? In reality, the landlords are going to be nailed now.
Big corporate rations can take it.
But the majority of the rental units in southern California are owned by people, they're not owned by huge corporations, and so it's.
It's going to be another fight now. Is there any way to be fair about it?
Yeah? The state pays for it all. The state pays the rent. If someone falls under this moratorium as a result of being unemployed or affected financially because of a raid or a deportation, do you tag.
It onto the landlord? Well that's not fair. Do you say, but you owe.
The nine months or a year and a half rent? Yeah, but you know there's no money there. Let's get practical for a moment. So what do you do? Do you subsidize the rent? Well, that costs us money the taxpayer. This is not fun stuff. This really isn't And frankly, for me, it boils down to these deportations are worse.
They do more harm to us.
Our economy, our country than they help. I don't know if anybody who's lost a job because an illegal alien has taken their job, I don't I don't know how many people pick strawberries and said, oh, that undocumented person, I would be picking those strawberries if the farmer had not hired that person. I don't know how often does that happen? Now?
I think it's probably the construction industry and things like that.
But they're still huge. But there aren't enough people in the construction industry. That's the problem right now. Anybody in the construction industry has a job for the most part, And you're right, the construction industry is hit, but most people, I gotta tell you, it's harder and harder to hire undocumented, very very tough.
The problem is, I believe that this.
Whole issue of immigration deportation is more optical than it is realistic. I also think that people who are deported, family members who are deported or held in detention are not being able to pay the rent.
That's real.
Non payment of rent is real because you can't afford to pay it. Non payment of rent is real when the landlord and you own the property and can't make the mortgage payment. Those are all very real. The immigration, I don't know how much money is being spent for that.
It just drives me nuts. You know that by now? Okay, now, there is a story came out at USA today in which the columnists wanted to move on an airplane sitting on an airplane empty seats up there, and said, you know, I'd like to move up there, and they said no, no. The not only just one stewardess, but the steward die said no, two of them.
So you know what is that about? They're empty seats.
Here was a post at United Flight to our mission trip to Honduras, some Houston, three hour duration, most of the plane empty. The attendant told is they won't let anyone change seats for less than the eighty six dollars each charge, even though the plane is nearly empty and there's a picture of the empty airplane. Okay, that's pretty obnoxious. They just don't let you do it. Now, there's some good reasons for it. It's not just a question if
you pay more money. There's a safety component big time.
And even the safety issues extended seat assignments. Why well, there's something called weight and balance and airplanes when before they take off, it is very specific as to how much weight they're carrying at you want to get the plane as balanced as as possible, which means one side of the airplane should not be full of passengers on the other side should I remember once going on a plane and we were passing Mount the Rushmore and the pilot said, as we were flying on the left side
of the plane, we're going to be passing Mount Rushmore and it's a great view. And everybody moved over there and the plane damn near went over on its side and you could actually feel the plane go over, you know, swing to the left, and so that is important stuff. So the argument is that you know, we've got a weight and balance issue, and we have to know how
many people are sitting in what seats. Now, if a few people move, did that make any difference now, not really on big planes, but if a lot of people move, yeah, that's important. It's also important to know where people are sitting because they have a manifest and they know what seat people are in other than Southwest, although that's changed
and that makes sense. The other thing is if they're charging a premium for a seat that someone is paid for, but let's say the next seat next, the seat next to what is empty, and all of a sudden someone jumps in from the back of the plane and goes and sits in that seat.
Hey, what are you doing. I paid for this, you got it for free. So there's a whole philosophy there.
And by the way, it can get really bad. I went to school in Canada for a period of time, about a year and a half. I don't remember one day of it because I was stoned every single day that I was in Canada. I was on some kind of drug. But I needed knee surgery I had. It was a mess. I was in a cast and I had to get on an airplane from Vancouver to la I was fully extended in the cast. So I'm sitting in coach and I and there was seats opening business class and I asked the stewardess, Hey, can I sit
up there? This is incredible, it's such pain. I can't move. She said, no, you can't do it. So there I am sitting with my feet sticking out in the aisle and the steward says, you got to put your feet back, and I'm it's it was insane And they wouldn't do it. Why because people paid a fee, an additional fee, a lot of money to sit up in business and we weren't.
Going to let you do it. So can you change seats? Although today, when's the last.
Time you've been on an airplane that there were a lot of empty seats, Neil, have you been on They're no empty seats on airplanes anymore.
No, they've all been pretty packed. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
You know, when I fly overseas, I always well, I tend to want to usually fly business class because I use my credit card, which I get miles and I run my business through it. So everything is paid through the credit card, so I get some miles and so I fly. I get to fly up front because of the miles. There is an a seat that's not occupied. I have not seen one seat in business it's not occupied. You want to know why, because everybody else has miles too, bastards.
I thought it was only for me, and there are fewer airplanes and there are more people flying. COVID did that, and then the airlines realize, Wow, you want to know something. If we cut down on the number of flights, which means we don't have to pay pilots, we don't have to use fuel, we don't have to do maintenance as much, and we have as many people flying or more. Guess what we're gonna have. We're gonna have full airplanes, a lot of them. So the concept of an empty flight
today is pretty rare. You know, air bust, the big three eighty, you know that huge double stacker that's out of production, making it anymore because it just didn't make sense, too big, too expensive to run. The seven forty seven is out of production. It's now these regional jets, small jets,
or with the big ones. Of course you can still do wide body jets, but their two engine jets and jet these planes have just gotten smaller, more people crammed into them, fewer of them, and this is why the airlines are making so much damn money.
Oh, let's not forget what they charged for check bags. Right.
The last bastion was Southwest Airlines, the last ones. And here they were swirling, swirling, keeping their head just above water, and then down the drain they went. So now every single airline charges for baggage. It's just it's horrible flying. You know, flying at one time actually used to be fun. There was leg room. People used to dress up that were a tie and coat because that was considered really neat. Yeah, cattle cars, all right, we're done with that.
Now.
Halloween is coming up, and chocolate candies are a big deal. Except chocolate candies are not a big deal. Chocolate is expensive as hell. Droughts in chocolate land where they grow it, the cost is exploded.
And what are the manufacturers doing.
Are they just lying to us and calling this brown stuff chocolate and it really isn't.
Neil chocolate ish. Yes, okay, So this is what's going on.
The vast majority of the world chocolate comes from West Africa, and you can have as little as three weeks of problematic weather that would throw everything into a tailspin.
And that's what we've been dealing with.
In addition to droughts or problematic harvests and they had a very small harvest. These things are making chocolate just sore. The cost of chocolate is nuts right now like three times normally what it is.
So it's at a.
Record high right now, which is twelve thousand dollars a ton. Recent history, prices were below four thousand dollars a ton, so you can see that that's choked up.
So how do you make chocolate candies when you can't afford to make chocolate candy?
Well, this is what's interesting. And I mentioned this gosh maybe last week or something like that, that butterfinger is one of my favorites, and I know Amy King has talked about it being one of hers as well. People love butterfingers right well, they came out with a new flavor. It's covered in a marshmallow coating. Now, we love all kinds of different flavors, and there is a lot of novelty items that come out around the holidays or just
to stir up interest again in candy. However, there is a pattern right now that we're seeing that is not about novelty or changing things up. It seems to be across the board they're finding different ways to use less chocolate or to not use it at all. There is a cinnamon toast crunch version of the classic kisses, you know, the little chocolate kisses.
It lodged.
Last year or something like that, and it had no chocolate in it.
A chocolate kiss that had no chocolate in Yeah.
I mean, you think there's things that are just chocolate and they're spinning away and doing everything other than chocolate, like butterfingers without the chocolate on it.
But they're also changing the ounces of it. You're too, you know, your regular package of two standard Reese's peanut butter cups is about one point five ounces.
But the peanut butter pumpkins that.
They that are out right now for Halloween are you know, they lock launched them back in July and they're sold individually wrapped at about one point two ounces.
So they're finding ways.
Kit Kat has a bunch of different flavors that don't have chocolate.
In them right now.
They have the cookie crunch and all of that stuff, but they have like different coatings on the outside, or are using flavored white chocolate which is not chocolate.
Is it affecting sales of candy where people are simply just not buying. If you can't get chocolate, we're just not going to buy the candy.
Now they're finding consistency still that that there are folks that are you know, the main groups that are buying candy, gen Z, Millennials, that type of thing.
They're still buying.
They happen to be a group of people though that like to experiment and taste different flavors and textures together.
But you know the rest of us. I like chocolate.
I mean for Halloween, I make sure we have chocolate, and you know you can get those bundles of the mix of the fun size or whatever. Well now they're putting together these fun these mix of candies, but they're like starbursts and things like that that don't have any chocolate in them to begin with. So it's something we're going to see probably quite a bit, or you're going to be spending more money on it. And when it comes to candy and things, we kind of let ourselves spend.
Yeah, that makes sense. Amy is our butterfingers your favorite candy.
Bar pretty much because I was deprived of them when I was a child. Yeah, I love butterfingers.
Here's a little factoid did you know that butterfingers were Jeffdahmer's favorite to candy.
Also, I did not boy. Thank you very much.
Okay, k IF I am six point forty. As 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