02-19-25 FULL SHOW - Weather Wednesday, Plus Johnston Gaslights Restaurant Owners

another guest right before the show. Did you send him a zoom link?

superstrike is over. Want to feel better? Turn off your internet on your phone? How about an offline evening? Why some people remember their dreams? You can beat bad jeans with good choices. Southwest cuts corporate jobs. Trump blames Ukraine for Russia's invasion, but he got the receipts right. Fish coming to fulsome field gen Z doesn't care about the climate much. I laughed hard at this one. Shared The Broncos trade for Deebo Samuel is a gender bending mohammed. Next,

an asteroid may hit the US. In twenty thirty two, Todd Helton goes to spring training, now an elk eating a carrot. This seems mean don't be afraid to fly. Those are the headlines. Yeah, there's a lot of them on the blog batmandysblog dot com. Check it out for yourself. Whoo jeez, Louise a ride, I see yet another edition of a to z? How many times? How often is this thing coming out?

most of the time. But there is so much stuff happening with such speed right now that I am mentally exhausted from it, and I'm working really hard to try and pick and choose, you know, kind of kind of do my best to focus on what I think is going to be the biggest issue or the biggest deal. But I feel like stuff is There's no way I can get everything on the blog today is long and

it has a ton of stuff on it. But just for our own sanity, and I mean ours listeners, yours line, all of us together as part of the Mandy Connell family, I've got to lean into some stuff that isn't political right now. But if you ever think that there is something that one hundred percent I need to be talking about, please email me. Mandy Connell that I heart media because I have never in all of my I've been doing this job. I had my own show for twenty years now.

In April, it will be twenty years since two thousand and five. I got my first show in I think August of two thousand and five. Yeah, maybe ish, I don't. I wish. This is how good I am At anniversaries. I get my own talk show and I don't even make a note of the date. I don't know in any case, in my twenty years of doing this job, consuming news and content and politics and everything else, at this level, I have never seen things happening, and not

just in the United States, all over the world. President Donald Trump's second term is already historically disruptive. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Okay, I am all in favor of disruption at this moment in time, because what we're doing previously clearly is not solving the problem clearly. So I'm all for, you know, doing some of the different agree with everything that President Trump has done. I don't understand why he is going after trans adults.

It is one thing, in my mind to say we should protect children from permanent physical harm, but it's quite another to say to an adult, you can't have plastic surgery. That's essentially what you're saying. You can't take these hormones, even though millions of people take hormones basically off label just to feel better every day. I don't understand that It's one of the things that I just I have

nothing for. I don't get it. But some of the other stuff that he's doing, sending jd Vance to a Munich conference to basically yell at Europe for turning their back on free speech, what what I mean, we just don't do that, and then to watch Europe get the vapors over that speech has just been really illuminating. Get me wrong, I've often known that politicians in Europe have no spine whatsoever. For the most part, you're talking about a spineless, gutless group of people. That is my view

of politicians in Europe. That being said, I love Europe, the people of Europe love Europe. And right now what's happening over there, especially in Germany with the AfD Party. By the way, AfD stands for Alternative for Germany. Yes, alternative, Alternative for deutsch Land. Alternative for Germany is what the party stands for. And if you watch the news, you would think that they were a party of people walking

around goosestepping and begging to bring back the swastika. But the reality is, do you know what the AfD party stands for. It stands for resecuring their borders, it's ending mass migration of middle aged Muslim men, one of whom, the day before JD Vance gave that speech, ran and

murdered a bunch of people. I mean, you guys, it's like, but the most stunning thing of all out of all of this, To get back to my original train of thought, which I already left at the station, watching the news media do what they've done over the past few weeks now, it's one thing to be caught flat footed by the speed with which things are happening, and I understand that that's basically what I'm saying here. So much going on

it's almost becoming impossible to take it all in. But watching the media do the things that they've been doing in trying to portray and paint all of these things that are happening right now as instantaneously the worst thing

ever because they're happening under Donald Trump. They're putting themselves in this very strange situation where they're saying on their networks, donald Trump is firing all of these people willy nilly, when in reality most of us are like, wait a minute, we spent how much money to where to do what? As Doge continues, to do its work and publicize the outrageous ways our tax dollars are being spent and the news media and I have this Margaret Brandon cut from

this weekend with Secretary of State Mark Rubio Man. He's turning out already to be an amazing secretary of State, just really really good. I want to play wait, wait, hang on, I got a little spot run. I want to play this for you because it's it's a it's a really telling exchange from their longer interview, and it has to do with free speech.

and monitoring by German intelligence because of extremism. What did all of this accomplish other than irritating our allies.

thought it was actually a pretty historic speech. Whether you agree with him or not, I think the valid points he's making to Europe is we are concerned that the true values that we share, the values that bind us together with Europe, are things like free speech and democracy and our shared history in winning two World Wars and

defeating Soviet communism and the like. These are the values that we shared in common, and in that call what we fought against, things like censorship and oppression and so forth. And when you see backsliding and you raise that, that's a very valid concern. We can't tell him how to run their countries. He's simply expressed in a speech his view of it, which a lot of people frankly share. And I thought he said a lot of things in that speech that needed to be said, and honestly, I

don't know why anybody would be upset about it. People are all you know, you don't have to agree on someone's speech. I happen to agree with a lot of what he said, But you don't have to agree with someone's speech to at least appreciate the fact they have a right to say it, and then you should listen

to it and see whether those criticisms are valid. I assure you the United States has come under withering criticism on many occasions from many leaders in Europe, and we don't go around throwing temper tantrums about it.

the Nazis free speech being the problem? John Kerry saying, complaining about the First Amendment making it too difficult to get things done, that pesky free speech, the Democrats are exactly the same in many situations as the Europeans who are putting people in jail for reposting a Facebook meme that upsets someone. I'm gonna let Marco Rubio answer her accusation about weaponization of free speech to create genocide.

concern because that is eroding. It's not an erosion of your military capabilities, that's not an erosion of your economic standing. That's an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transit line union that.

They threw the playbook out the window, and it's watching everybody react and trying to figure out how to respond. Right now, all we have is lawfare. All it is is will sue, will sue, will sue, and then they've got they're trying to figure out a strategy. At the same time. It's just been a lot and I don't

think it's going to slow down anytime soon. So back to my earlier question, if there is something you feel like I'm missing, First off, I hope you understand, but second off, send me an email Mandy Connell at iHeartMedia dot com. When we get back. It is time for whether Wednesday we'll find out from Fox News meteorologist Dave Fraser when we will be out to the grips of this Miderdal code. We'll do that next Dave Fraser, Fox thirty one's chief not cheap meteorologists. We clarify that some

time ago, Dave. You can turn the heat up anytime, buddy.

What has to happen for us to have multiple days of those kind of gray and gloomy skies.

had that. So you're just kind of being like neutral mode, if you will. And with the cold temperatures that we were dealing with. You get that low cloud deck that's tough to a road in there. You can get the fog, the mists, the ry mice, which you know gets on the trees and is pretty look at, but you just don't have a component to mix the atmosphere to kind of get the you know, get it to turn over to maybe an accumulating snow rather than just the misty stuff.

You just kind of you're kind of flat. You're just kind of hanging and waiting. And that transition is the next storm coming in.

You guys give out any advice for people if they want to get a weather station because they're very affordable now, you know, and my husband loves his like he loves his. So is there any advice about where to put something like a thermometer or weather station where you're you know, around your house. Is there like a standard kind of advice you give.

home use anywhere in your yard is fine. I actually have on my deck, I have one of those automated stations. It's a little sensor stick that is actually I've screwed it to one of the posts on the deck where you can't see it. It's not exposed directly into the sunlight. And then my gauge is right next to my kitchen saying, so I can see the temperature, what the morning row was,

what the high was. And I do actually have an official rain gage that is also out the backside, so I can keep tract the brain and figure out if we've had enough over the storm to maybe turn the sprinklers off and save myself a couple of bucks. But anything you find online these days on Amazon or Googling,

you're right, they're more reasonably priced. They're pretty cool gadgets, and I just love having one at all, so I wouldn't courage anybody just get one and don't be terribly concerned about whether or not you should put it in place aob.

going to use it. So I'm trying to come up with a better list of stuff for Father's Day because this is truly the perfect opportunity, you know, to the dude holiday. And I think weather Station is a great dad gift.

sensor for temperature. One of the things we tell people is sometimes when we're forecasting, we want to remind people that those sensors are generally about five feet off the ground, and your densest coldest air can below that. So sometimes on night when we're talking about there being a frost or you know, your temperatures could get below freezing, the official temperature may not go that low, but that difference in five feet means the coldest air is sinking to

the ground. So there are a lot of stipulations. And listen, I've said it time and time again, the way we collect data is not a perfect world, right. I mean, it's going to change from one neighbor to the next. When we get snow reports from people who volunteer to you know, send in their reports. You can get snow reports from people living in the same community who might literally be a mile apart, and they're going to be different. Well, so yeah, you've step to deal with that variation.

weather app. That's right, it's the one I use every single day. All right, my friend, I'll talk to you next week after we out of the deep freeze.

is good and you're perfect team that. We'll get into that in a little bit, but I want to take just a second to mention an update on a story that we talked about as it's been going on, and it has to do with Colorado Democratic Democratic State Senator now former Colorado Democratic State Senator Sonya Jacques Lewis. She quit on Tuesday morning. Now, if you're thinking to yourself,

will good. She quit because she was accused of doing these awful things by aides who felt compelled that they had to take these pide gigs of mowing lawns and bartending if they wanted to continue to work in her office. And she sounds really awful. So yeah, she should have quit. Well, she should have quit because of that, but she didn't. That's not why she quit. She quit because in her response to the Ethics Committee, she included a letter which purported to be from a former aid in her defense.

The problem of this is that the former aid never wrote.

I've worked in one small business before where I watched it happen in real time, and I was just a kid. I was a teenager, so there was nothing I could do about it. But you meet someone immediately and you're like, oh, this is not a good person. And within like three months, this manager had literally run the business into the ground. So now this LGBTQ plus organization has hired a woman who's been accused of being a horrible boss, who then,

in an ethics investigation, provided a fake letter. You guys, what is it with Colorado left wing women? We've got Robin Decida, the wackadoodle broad who not only falsely accused Aurora City Councilman Daniel Drinsky of horrible sexual abuse accusations against her child, then when she got caught, to get out of it, she used a Google image to send to the judge saying that she had brain cancer and could not stand trial. And now this woman, in an

ethics investigation provides a fake letter. Did she not think anyone is going to talk those people? I mean, you have to wonder in that situation, is she stupid or does she just assume the rest of us are that stupid? Either way, not flattering. Well, the people of Logmont, Lafayette and Eerie. You guys dodged a bullet, absolutely dodged a bullet. Now, of course, a Democratic vacancy committee. And I'm not picking on the Democrats for this. She is a Democrat. The

Democrats will choose he replacement. I am, however, picking on the entire replacement committee process. It is a joke. How many people in are elected and I'm putting elected in air quotes. How many people that are supposed to be elected, we're just appointed by these vacancy committees. On both sides, it's terrible system. It's awful. There's got to be a better way to do this. It allows more people to participate if they want to, not that I think people would.

By the way, I have no faith in the voters to show up in a you know, special election of any kind, and I just don't even if they get mailed the ballots. I have no faith. But at least the option exists. Right now, we can't participate, you know whatever, Republicans or Independence, they're locked out of this process. I wonder what that district is majority wise when it comes to independence. I'd be curious about that because they have

no representation whatsoever in the vacancy process none. And when we get to be a majority independent state, we're very close, very close. I would think that some of these issues have to be addressed. I would think this one needs to be addressed now. But good luck to whatever LGBTQ plus nonprofit just hired this winner, because not only does she sound like a horrible boss, she lied about it after she got caught, and that's just that's just not cool,

not cool at all. When we get back, I want to share part of I wish I've been looking for the actual letter I haven't been able to find the whole thing. I'm sure it's on the internet somewhere. I just haven't had the time this morning to do a deeper dive and find it. But a bunch of restaurant owners in downtown Denver wrote a letter to Mayor Mike Johnston about the situation downtown. These are restaurants that are

hanging on by thread. Their margins are so low, and basically it was a cry for help, and the tone deaf response from the Mayor's office is just typical of what passes for communication in that office. We'll do that next.

It actually came out for on Friday, Valentine's Day, and I'm going to share just some of the Denver Gazette story on it with you. Several Denver restaurants said they're at a boiling point with the state of downtown. In a letter to Mayor Mike Johnston and city leaders sent last week, Dave Query, owner of Jack Spish House and Oyster Bar, expressed frustrations with the mayor, noting he had

promised on the campaign trail to turn downtown around. Several other major restaurant tours in downtown Denver on Query's letter, including owners from Illegal Piece, Cholin Restaurant Concepts, and Union Station's restaurant operators. You ran your entire campaign platform on restoring our downtown Denver business districts, Query said in his letter, it has gotten worse since you took the position of mayor, even though you received five hundred and fifty million towards

stewarding it in a different direction. The Boulder based chef behind BRF restaurant groups said downtown's traffic plan and new bike paths implemented in the last two years have taken up parking spaces and made it more difficult for customers to come to their businesses. In addition, food trucks are taking parking spots and bringing in more competition. Oh you know what, I just found the letter. It's right next to the story I'm reading. Told you there's a lot

going on right now. Let me skip over to the letter. Here he from the paragraph. What it says, even though you have received five hundred and fifty million towards stewarding it in a different direction, who are the streets? Who are the streets for in our town? Who's in charge

of keeping them safe? We've spent our careers building our restaurant businesses collectively for almost three hundred years, this group on this email, employing tens of thousands of Denver residents, including our treasured Latino community, between all of our restaurants, putting our entire lives into this effort, all the while contributing tens of millions of dollars in sales and property taxes over the last twenty thirty forty years. And we

are now watching the tenth District completely fall apart. The entire downtown traffic plan and bike path cluster implemented over the last two years is a catastrophic disaster. Your police officers are frustrated with the legislative changes prohibiting them from arresting anyone but the very most extreme and dangerous roaming

our streets. But the other ninety nine percent of the fentanel zombies who are also extremely dangerous, are allowed to get court summons which they throw in the officer's faces. Many times was Elijah Caudill arrested before he stabbed four people, killing two? How many times should it take to put a mentally ill, homeless, drug addicted danger to the community, as was the case with mister Caudill in jail before

something like this happens. This is the current vibe and energy on our downtown streets and our longtime lo Doo and Larimer guests are now driving to Cherry Creek and Northfield and Golden for dinner and entertainment places where it's safe, where they can finde parking, and where the very clear and present dangers of Lodo and Larimer and cap Hill don't exist. How far will you let this go? How many more restaurants and small businesses need to close before

your quota alarm is triggered. Our downtown Denver businesses deserve more and so much better than this. This is now our third letter about this situation we find ourselves in as the first two went unrequited. Between the out of control minimum wage increases, over the top, property tax high and the complete loss and seeming care for our valuable and unique business districts, we are struggling for our lives

to keep those local restaurants alive. The same people who support community nonprofits like none other, show up when there are fires, floods, and disasters and fed hundreds of thousands of first responder meals during the two year chaos of COVID. We did your local restaurant community. That's what we do. We would like some response and a conversation to understand how this changes and how we can participate and help

in the effort to get back to center. And it's signed by a bunch of heavy hitters, including Troy Guard right at the top. Man. They kind of buried the lead on this, The Denver Gazette did very much. So that's a scorching letter our restaurants that are essentially saying you know, I'm begging. I'm begging. Now it goes further. The Boulder chef Query said to the Denver Gazette on Friday he was pushed to write to officials after going through his restaurant shift notes, a diary of the restaurant's

daily events. He read his employee's notes of seeing people who are homeless locking themselves in the bathroom, a man with a machete hacking at a tree outside and taking off his pants in public, and someone smoking fentanel in the trash enclosure. This was all within three days. He said. It's not a homeless problem, it's an addiction problem. Gosh, that sounds super familiar, Like I know I have heard that somewhere Cow. Now it goes on to talk about

the investments. But listen to the response from the Mayor's office on this. I want to make sure I get it just right. Let's see here moving, We're going up, We're moving here. Let's see here it goes the mayor says this. This is from Jordan Fuja, the spokesperson for the mayor's office. She said, that's why Mayor Johnston has helped remove large tent encampments increase police patrols and is bringing in more than five hundred million dollars in transformative investments.

There's more work to do, and Mayor Johnston will continue to partner with local businesses, restaurants, and residents to ensure Downtown is a safe and thriving part of our community.

She added that the city has been investing in increasing the presence of both police and community safety officers, focusing on high priority areas such as Loto, Larimer Square, Upper Downtown, and Capitol Hill, as well as working with partners to reduce shoplifting and theft, and increasing mental health responses for

individuals in crisis. Why did they have to write three emails to get a response, Well, I'll tell you why, because the Mayor's office sucks at communication, absolutely sucks at it, absolutely sucks at it. Instead of saying what I would have done if I were the Mayor's office, First of all, I would have immediately written back and said, Okay, let's have a summit. Let's get as many of these guys. Here's where we can do it. Here's a place, here's a time. Can you guys do it at this place

in time? What works for you? Here's a couple different options.

That's the thing number one I would have done, and then I would have sent out a press statement that says, the Mayor's office is distressed to hear of the ongoing struggles that the restaurant community is facing, and we are actively going to work with them to seek solutions to bring relief where we can, to assist our downtown businesses in getting back to normal as we invest more taxpayer dollars into reviving downtown, because I mean, we just have to.

There's too much infrastructure there to let it go. We can't let it just spiral into becoming Detroit, you know, in the nineteen nineties. We can't do that. But man, I'm going to read this text because I was about to say this exact same thing, but I'm gonna let a texture say it for a change. Mandy. I appreciate the letter from the restaurant tourist, but I wonder how many of them voted for Johnston. He was the lying liar who lies, who learned from Polus how to be

the lying liar who lies. So why do they think anything would change? And they probably also voted for Polus. I believe the exact same thing to be true. And this is a whole group of people who are reliably Democrats, who probably did fundraisers and you know, donated food and maybe even donated some money to different campaigns, and now when the inevitable result of voting for Democrats falls directly on their heads, they realize it sucks.

you're going. They're just not a great way to make a living. All that being said, there's a lot of people like me who said this is a really bad idea. A lot of people have been saying for a long time. This isn't a housing issue, it's an addiction issue. So a lot of the things that people have been sitting here in Okay, it's me. I've been saying it. A lot of things I've been saying for years have now completely come home to roost. More bike lanes downtown and

we said, well, what about the parking? What is this going to do to businesses? Guess what catastrophe is the word that's used in this letter. By the way, does anybody actually ride their bicycle in downtown? And if so, have you noticed an uptick in fellow bicycle riders since all these bike lanes went in. You know, before they do anything to build out a road, or ride in a road or put in a traffic circle, traffic light,

they have to do a traffic study. Do we ever do traffic studies on mike lanes to find out if anyone is actually using them? Yeah, Mandy, Just to let you know, my girlfriend and I went to the Brian Reagan concert on February first at the Paramount. Normally we would have spent several hundred dollars between dinner, parking, shopping before and after the show, but I didn't feel safe

going downtown without my concealed carry weapon. In particular, I couldn't put my girlfriend at risk without having sufficient means to protect her against the chaos that's going on down there. So instead we ate in the suburbs. We had drinks in the suburbs before and after, and we took lyft into and out of downtown. We seriously limited the amount of time we spent downtown to just seeing the show,

arriving thirty minutes before and leaving immediately after. I suspect they lost out on about three hundred dollars worth of our additional expenditures that night. And that's because Denver is a crap hole. Now here's the thing. The mayor's office is asking for even more money to increase the vibrancy downtown.

But all I see in all of that, And by the way, I really believe I want downtown Denver to succeed, even though I hardly ever go there, because a vibrant urban core is a major part of a vibrant city. And if we have a bunch of empty buildings, we have a bunch of empty storefronts, we have a bunch of empty nonsense. How long before it all starts to

fall into disrepair? I will never forget. So I became a flight attendant in nineteen ninety one, and one of my first layovers of any length maybe like sixteen or eighteen hours, because most layovers are like twelve, thirteen whatever, and you don't get to spend a lot of time

wherever you are. One of my first longer layovers was in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and all I knew about Allentown was the Billy Joel song about the mills closing, you know what I mean, And it's just it's a great song, but that's all I knew about Allentown, and it's kind of a depressing song. So I'm excited because I have a long layover and oh, we're going to lay on in downtown Allentown. Great, fantastic, let's do it. We get

to quote downtown Allentown. It's like three city blocks maybe, and there's a Sheraton Hotel right in the middle of it, and that's where we were staying. And there was a drug store kind of near the hotel. There was not a single store front in the rest of their downtown area. All of it was empty. There was not a single other business. It was the most depressing thing I had ever seen in my life. And I thought to myself, Wow,

how do you get here? Well, now, I feel like, well, you want to know how to get here, You make doing business impossibly expensive. You then add in a huge layer of regulations. Then you do in the real kicker here, the real kick and the teeth over all this stuff moving from Denver to Colorado for just a second. Right now, in the legislature, they are trying to do even more damage by making it easier for people to unionize and take away money by force from people who don't want

to be in the union. They're continuing to add on more regulations to make it even harder to have a business, and they have no sense of kind of what they have wrought, and they don't seem to care. I mean, my gosh, talk about maybe giving you some relief to this minimum wage situation. All of the people who probably voted for the higher minimum wage because they thought they were going to be making more money, who then lost their job because people are shutting down and moving out

of downtown Denver. You know, my longtime client, Regen Revolution is a perfect example. For twenty seven years, they were in downtown Denver twenty seven years, and they were Downtown's healthcare. But it got so bad they couldnot ensure the safety of their employees or their patients. Everything around them shut down. There were no restaurants to go to lunch too. There was nothing around them anymore. Their building became a ghost town,

which made it feel even more unsafe. So they completely relocated to Oravada Or They have a much better business client client. They don't have to worry about people being accosted walking into their building. It's just a much better quality of life. That's how you end up with a downtown that's completely empty.

We are going to put a full throated effort into getting enough police officers to not only meet our minimum authors standard, but we are going to hire one hundred more officers than that, and then we are going to flood the streets of Denver with police, and we are going to arrest people for petty crimes, those quality of life crimes, because those quality of life crimes are creating the feeling that downtown is not a safe place to be. That's thing number one mayor comes out and says that.

And then the mayor comes out and says secondarily, and by the way, we are no longer going to be allowing people to wallow in their addiction. Open drug use will no longer be tolerated, and we will send people to drug court where they can choose treatment or jail. And we can do that as many times as we need to get them to a position where they're ready to accept treatment. We can do it over and over and over again, and until he says that, what else

are we going to spend money on? What else matters more than those two things? Having enough police on the streets enforcing crime das that will prosecute those crimes instead of just creating that revolving door of people getting in and out. People that will actually go to jail for stuff that they've done over and over and over and over again. And then all of a sudden, the perception of downtown changes and what the Mayor's office sent back was, Hey,

who you gonna believe us? Are your own lion eyes?

Instead of him saying, here's what's going to happen, why wouldn't he go to them and say, what would you like to say happen? Well, I got to tell you they pretty much laid it out very clearly in that letter. So, Mandy, if they're expecting uber and lyft to get people in and out of downtown Denver, the average trip around downtown Denver pays five to six dollars per trip. A driver would be lucky to get four rides an hour if they hung around downtown. The net pay is about seventy

percent of that after fuel and expenses. You know, if there's conventions in town, there are people in downtown. It's just not remotely what it used to be when I first moved here, when it actually felt vibrant and it felt you know, fun, and there were things to go do and see and businesses open and you know, stores

to look at. Hi, Mandy, I'm a state employee. Compliments of Governor pe Cowing, oh Governor peek cow its comes what compliments of Governor Pollis oh co wins comes is as an optional joining union now that their foot's in the door and switch with this new proposed legislation. Of course, of course, Mandy, you've talked about Dayton, Ohio. Downtown dateon Ohio. The last time I was there last summer felt better than downtown Denver. It's a nice town. It's like a

small city, but it's Milwaukee like in size. But Dayton is actually a nice town, really nice little city. Hello. My sister and dad and I were in Los Angeles last year when minimum wage went up to twenty five dollars for fast food workers. For three combo meals, the price was forty eight dollars on average, I mean, what do you expect people to do? Are the airlines still having their cruise of boid downtown? I'm sure American Airlines is there's with the flight attendant that that you know

was murdered. Allentown is a great place for skydiving. No, I preferred to be inside the plane, thank you, Mandy. Multiple lanes and bus lanes, but don't care, don't dare drive your vehicle downtown. Democrat policies are killing Denver.

right problems. You've got to go right at crime, you've got to go right at safety. You've got to put a cop everywhere until the perception matches the reality and the reality is better. And then you got to you gotta recognize we have we have a massive drug addiction problem in downtown Denver. It's not a people. The people that are homeless down there are homeless because they're drug addicts, not because they don't have a home. Because they're drug addicts.

That's why they're homeless. They've got the cart before the horse, and it's never gonna work. Okay, when we get back, I got a lot of good comments on this, Mandy. You should see if Hancock will come back on and talk to you about this. Where is Mayor Mike Hancock? Where ay Rod? Do you still have his number? Did you ever have his number? I might see if we I mean I might have his number. I don't know, Limba.

I'd love to talk to mayor former Mayor Hancock, not not so he could dunk on Mayor Mike Johnson.

I'm not doing it. A lot of people sent text messages on the Common Spirit Health text line earlier in the show, which you can always do at five six to six, and I know asking me what I think about Trump's comments about Ukraine, and I said at the beginning of the show, watching everything that the Trump administration is doing, so much of it, I love. I mean, there's no other way to put it. It's not even

like like I love it. And for people concerned that it's going too fast or the speed is too much, or or you guys, I fully believe at this moment. And I would have never said this before the election, because what's happening right now is so inconceivable to me that things are happening this fast. But I truly am

starting to believe it now. One of the things that Trump one point oh learned that Trump two point oh is now, you know, sort of using, is that government moves very very very slowly when it comes to doing anything to rein itself in and in order to affect real change. And I've said before, not all the stuff he's doing now is going to end up being found. Okay, he's going to lose some court cases. It's going to happen. But that being said, I think he learned trying to

do it the old fashioned way, slow methodical. It doesn't work. You give DC a chance to get entrenched against something and it will never change. And when you're talking about cutting spending, the way that the government is going after spending right now. And I have a video on the blog today of Donald Trump standing and giving a list of the most absurd things that American taxpayers are paying

for around the world. We wouldn't have that right now if it weren't for the speed with which he's doing things. But that being said, there's a few things I don't like. And yesterday he blamed Ukraine for the war with Russia, arguing that President Zelenski should have never started it. He said, that's the quote, should have never started it. Now, the President did make some points. He said when he heard that the Ukrainians were mad they weren't in the peace

talks that he said this, Oh, well we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have to been demolished, and not one dome would have to be knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way. Now, of course,

it sounds like he is already seating well Crimea. I mean Crimea was seated by Obama years ago, not directly Obama, but you know what I mean, we didn't do anything when Russia took Crimea. But where will the new borders be? Will they just revert back to the old borders. But Russia gets to keep Crimea. Maybe, But to say that

Ukraine started it. The only thing I can imagine that the President was thinking in this situation is that he's trying to get a deal done, and as he does, he blows smoke up the skirt of whoever he's negotiating with, and in this case is Vladimir Putin. Now I'm guessing he assumes that Zolensky is just going to take whatever deal they come up with. But Zolensky and the Ukrainians

have to be brought into the conversation. I personally think that any more negotiations without Ukraine would be a waste of time and ridiculous. It's like, it's like the situation in Israel. We've got Cutter and Saudi Arabia and another and Israel, but Hamas doesn't have a presence in the negotiations. I'm like, wait a minute, what are we even doing here? I don't understand that. But to say that Ukraine started

this war is just ridiculous. Now, you could argue that by trying to become a member of NATO, they provoked a response from Russia, but that doesn't mean that they wanted to be evaded when they were looking for protection from exactly this kind of Russian aggression. That's a huge stretch, and I think this is ridiculous. That being said, are you ready to end this war? Because I am the only reason we're still fighting is because we're paying for it.

I mean, that's the reality. Europe isn't paying for it, Europe isn't doing anything. We're ostensibly taking the war to Russia so it won't be taken to other NATO allies. It sounds great, but ultimately, how's that going. By the way, the other thing Pete Hegseth, the new Secretary of Defense, also went to Europe and put them on notice that they are on the hook for their own defense. They don't spend at high enough levels. They need to get

their space. He's said five percent of GDP. We currently spend three point five percent of our GDP on defense, but that's only because our GDP is so big. I think we spend plenty on defense. It's just our GDP as much larger, almost nothing. Germany, which has gone all in on this green energy idiocy that is going to bankrupt their country, they're also not paying for their defense at all. So on the one hand, I think it's stupid to blame Ukraine for the war in Russia. That's

like blaming Israel for what Hamas did. I feel the exact same way, incredibly stupid. So but at the same time, if we're the only reason they're still fighting, that we deserve to be in the middle of the negotiations, and if Europe is upset about that, well then why didn't they do anything in the last three years? Where have they been Where have the high level talks been happening in Europe. I'm one of those people. I am sick to death at being the world's policeman. I'll tell you, guys, man,

the invasion of Iraq broke me of that. We were sold to a bill of goods about Iraq that were absolutely not accurate. They weren't totally wrong, I should say that differently. They weren't totally wrong, but they definitely were totally right. And that action, you know, on top of the other failed military interventions that we've dabbled in since World War Two. I don't want to do that anymore. Let other people sort that out, figure it out. I

don't care. Reinforce our borders, reinforce our military, put everybody else on notice that if they mess with us. You know what is the old saying, You mess with the bull, you get the horns. Best offense is a good defense, all that stuff. That's what I want to do. But I'm tired of sending our money to fix problems in Ukraine. No offense to Ukraine. I've got nothing against Ukrainians, nothing

at all. But I'm just very, very tired and the notion that somehow engaging in conversations and negotiations is bad. How else are we supposed to end a war and it's just grinding on you guys. Nobody's making any real progress, nobody's making any big moves. It's just this stalemate line that barely moves back and forth as more people continue to die. It just it makes absolutely no sense. I know that we're always going to have war because there are always going to be people who seek to use

violence to get control and maintain control. That's just human nature, and it's one of the most basic forms of human nature. So we're never going to eradicate that. But my goodness, at what point can you not look at the situation

and say, what are you even doing here? You know, I employ certain tools when I get in my own head too much and I start overthinking something, and sometimes when I find myself I'm starting to go down like a catastrophizing path where I'm you know, taking myself like, oh this is horrible, this is gonna even and you start to do that cycle. Sometimes I'll stop and I'll say out loud, what are you even talking about? Woman to myself, And that's honestly, it's like, what are you

even doing? What are you doing Russia? What are you doing in Ukraine? What are you doing right now? Ukraine is saying we want pre twenty fourteen borders. Well, you should have defended harder in twenty fourteen. Sorry about your luck. Same to the Palestinians and the Arabs who want pre nineteen sixty seven borders for Israel shouldn't have attacked, then should you? Sorry about your luck? But second up, Buttercup, this is what we've got and this is what's happening.

Damn right. Zelensky started the war. Putin said no NATO bordering his country. That was the deal, and Zelensky thumbed his nose at Putin, except Zolensky tried to get into NATO because of the threat of Russian aggression. That is a chicken and egg situation. And I'm not sure that anyone clearly knows exactly how much chicken and exactly how much egg came first. I've read as much as I can.

And for people who don't understand why Ukraine being in NATO would be a agressive, imagine if Mexico sign a defense and trade deal with Russia and China. Is that a game changer for US? I bet it is. That's kind of how it is for Russia. Not in any way excusing an invasion. I just think that was Putin's ego. They said, does the Ukraine policy apply to Israel? How much have we paid for Israel since nineteen forty eight?

So I looked it up and so far one moment. Please, I need to get back to that draft folder, which is where I put this so I could see it very quickly. Bear with me, since since let's just go here we go. Since nineteen forty eight, we've provided Israel one hundred and fifty eight billion dollars in military eight since nineteen forty eight, how much have we supplied Ukraine?

Shouldn't we now aid in their defense? Pootin wouldn't have invaded had they been armed, right, I actually agree with this. I know that sounds crazy because I'm sitting here saying, you know, I don't want to do this anymore, but I think that ship has sailed in the sense that we can't go back, and it can't go back and change it, and there's nothing happening in terms of ending this war until Donald Trump got into office. I mean, did you guys, did we miss the news about the

high level talks in the last three years? That to me seems like a big red flag that no one is even talking about ending the war. So yeah, I think we need to help them by figuring out a way to stop getting their people sent it, you know, to the front lines to be in a meat grinder. I don't know if we can get them back to the twenty fourteen borders where Russia's Crimea and everything else

is as it was before. I think that's the best possible outcome and then if I'm Ukraine, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna figure out how to have my own nuclear weapons. I'm gonna make sure I can protect myself. I don't eat NATO, I don't need anybody else, and then we can deal with that when you know, when the time comes, Mandy, the three Baltic states were part of the USSR border. Russia, I have large Russia minorities and are in NATO. Are they trying to start a war with Putin?

the government for reparations? Okay, I understand why you might feel that way, but you have to also understand that ultimately, we the people have the right to vote, and we have systematically voted in these clowns over and over and over again from both parties, and never held them accountable for spending out of control. I mean, at some point, do you think, at some point we probably should have said, you know what, if you guys can't get the budget

under control, we're going to fire all of you. But that's not how it works. We have representative government, and unfortun we've allowed our representatives to get us into this situation. So you could say that the American people have been complicit in our demise. We every single dumbass thing that we are spending money on, we elected the people that continue to allow that happening. Not anymore, not anymore, So you do sound crazy, Mandy. Also, Ukrainian aid supplements our

defense industry as well. Who's bombs and bullets and tanks do you think they're buying? I didn't say that, I'd never said that wasn't true. But why are we just are we just are we just sending people to be killed? So our defense industry has a good bottom line. That's disgusting. I mean, it's altogether possible, but it's disgusting. And that,

my friends, is what we're doing with DOGE. That's why people elected Donald Trump and it's kind of complical that the Democrats really don't understand that at all and are taking the position that somehow they're protect democracy when really they're just protecting the bureaucracy.

of depression, of people feeling disconnected from other people. And I am becoming more and more convinced that our smartphones are a net negative or mental health Now they're in net positive. If you want to do your banking while you're standing and waiting for a bus, or you want to watch pornography at any moment in time, or you want to find out who that actress who was in that movie with that guy was great? But are they

good for us? Overall? We already know that teens who are the first generation to be ones to grow up fully digital with a smartphone are the most miserable generation of teens we've ever had, so listen to this study. New research reveals a surprisingly simple way to improve mental

health and focus turn off your phone's Internet. A month long study found that blocking mobile internet access for just two weeks led to measurable improvements in well being, mental health, and attention comparable to the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy

and reductions in age related cognitive decline. Research from multiple universities across the US and Canada worked with four hundred and sixty seven iPhone users, average age thirty two to test how removing constant internet access would affect their daily lives. Instead of asking people to give up their phones completely, the study took a more practical approach. Participants installed an app that blocked mobile Internet while still allowing calls and texts.

This way, phones remained useful for basic communication, but lost their ability to provide endless scrolling social media and constant online access. So they took a smartphone and they turned it into a flip phone. The average smartphone user now spends nearly five hours each day on their device. More than half of Americans say they use them too much. So how did this turn out? After two weeks without

mobile internet, participants showed clear improvements in multiple areas. They reported feeling happier and more satisfied with their lives, and their mental health improved, an effect size that was greater than what is typically seen with antidepressant medications in clinical trials. They also performed better on attention tests, showing improvements comparable to reversing ten years of age related cognitive to decline.

And then they go on to talk about how they tested participants to find out about their retention, their attention spans and other things. And they found out that taking away mobile internet access actually increased our retention spans. I mean, this is pretty amazing because this is just two weeks without having internet access on your phone. Now, I found another story that I think goes hand in hand with

this one. In London. There are young people and I mean you know, twenties thirties that area, who were paying twelve bucks to go hang out at an event that promises a two hour digital detox night. More than one hundred and fifty young adults age mostly between twenty and thirty five met at this event. They dropped their mobile phone into a deposit box, and then they went for a two hour night where they did things like playboard games.

You know what I hate more than phone usage, and they kind of go hand in hand. I hate the fact that everybody wears earphones or earbuds all the time now all the time, so like it used to be when you were riding a subway or you're riding a bus in a different city I'm not talking about here. You know, you may strike up a conversation with someone on the train and that could actually turn into a friendship or at least an interesting conversation where you meet

someone you didn't know before. And I think it's part of the reason that our society has gotten so incivil because we don't have those sort of regular, random, you know, communications that happen when you're filling up gas and you mentioned the person filling up gas on the other side of the pump, like dang, these prices are high, and they're like dang, they are high. And then you have that little just a minute, you know, just a little exchange,

that that little human connection. You're not going to be best friends, but you've had a human experience and we're not having those as much. So the word of a question, is this something that you would sign up for? I'm just curious? Uh oh. I used my smartphone to listen to Mandy Cardill iHeart they always free app. That's a great use, But couldn't you just turn it off for a couple of hours. What I'd love to see I would love to see a high school. Maybe I'll talk

to my daughter's high school about this. I'd love to see if we could just do an experiment with kids with teenagers where say, look, for two weeks, we're just gonna put this app on your phone that prevents you from getting your internet access and see what happens. Because this generation, this group of young people, they're miserable, they're unhappy, they're lonely. They all feel like they don't have any friends, and they have this perception that everybody else has all

of these friends and it's making them miserable. But because everybody else is doing the exact same thing, it's really hard to turn it off. It's really hard to say, yeah, I'm not going to do this, especially when you feel like that's all you have going for you. I've been trying to get my daughter to do more of like the inviting and the you know, like planning, because somebody in the group has be the planner, right, somebody has to be the one to call and say, who wants

to go see this movie? Is that U a rod? We call you the cruise director of the group. Everybody, every group needs a cruise director.

finding old old friends that I'd lost touch with. And I'm gonna be perfectly honest. And I don't know if you guys do this too, does anybody else do this? I look at people on Facebook all the time, not because I want to reconnect with them, but I just want to see how they turned out. I don't even send a friend request. Oh look they seem to be doing well. Oh look he lost his hair, Oh look she has eight kids. I just want to see how you turned out. I don't want to have an actual

relationship with you. Ew Mandy, we spent two weeks on horseback and camping in the Wyoming back country no cell service. Talk about wait a minute, oh that just that updated no cell service and it's great. Oh only a few people, Mandy, can you find an address without your cell phone. Uh, Nope, I could if I had a map. Now, remember, back at olden times, children, we had to go to a place on the Internet called map Quest, and you would put in the address where you were.

just stopped her social Security checks? How could Elon Musk do this? Obviously being sarcastic, but focusing in on a story that was publicized by DOGE about all these people that are ancient that are still on the Social Security roles now come to find out there's actually a programming

reason for this and they're not actually getting checks. But these kind of stories coming out of DOJ are catching fire because people recognize that our money has been squandered and wasted and we're just sick of it, absolutely sick of it. And if you're ready for all of this to be over, there's a three point one percent chance that an asteroid will hit the Earth in twenty thirty two.

So if you are ready to just be like, you know what, this thing this earth is not working out, good news, you're gonna be able to just you know, last I heard it is like one point something, So it's going on three point one percent chance. This is the highest chance, by the way finest christ.

cruise that we just went on. There were so many groups of obviously single, middle aged women that had gone on this cruise on Valentine's Day, and every single one of those groups stunk like Patulie so bad it was

like a walking stereotype. It was all I kept waiting was for them to pull a cat out of her bag, and then I would have been like, of course, of course when we get back, the Trump administration is rolling back something when it comes to plavor tobacco that the Biden administration did that I always thought was super patronizing.

We're going to talk to an expert about what that is and what I mean after this, I'm actually talking about an AI representation of Jerry Garcia at the Sphere, not just dead in company right, like I get it, But I'm talking about like they did with you too. You too wasn't there, but yet they were there. The Sphere is a magical place. So I sit corrected, ladies and germs. But as I also mentioned in the last segment, I am no longer a jam band fan at this

point in my life. How was I going to know that? I'm not going to pay attention to that.

writer and a Young Voices contributor. He just wrote an op ed about this decision. And Brian, first of all, welcome to the show. And second of all, you're actually arguing that this is a victory for harm reduction by not banning menthol cigarettes. Explain that to me.

my world, there was some truth to that. And when I found out Biden was just going to ban menthol cigarettes, I thought, how patronizing to black people to essentially say, you're making this bad choice, we don't like it, so we're going to take away what you do like and hope that you stop. Wasn't that wasn't that kind of the end game that they were going for.

and I do agree there. You know, I explored from a kind of pragmatic lens and the piece, but I mentioned that at the end, I mean from a liberty nanny state perspective, these bands are pretty offensive and to particularly target black people, I agree, it's very patronizing.

makes you look old, it ages your skin. And yet even though we've raised taxes to where cigarettes last time I looked, we're like nine to fifty in Colorado, we still have a percentage of the population that is still smoking. So what in the world are you going to do that is going to make that population stop. They're either going to get sick or they're going to get broke, right, and that's why they're going to stop smoking. Tho are

the only two reasons. So to as if somehow more government intervention is going to get those hardcore I call them lifers right, their lifers, they're lifetime smokers. It's not going to work. It has to come from within them, and they're going to work around the government. I do want to talk to you about how these menthal bands could potentially create a black market. Tell me about that.

that people like, impicit markets emerged and use. Actually, ironically, in Massachusetts, the stated intention, like you mentioned earlier, was to prevent black people from smoking mental slightly very slightly less than one percent and overall or use of unfollows. But among black women and kick there there's like a forty percent increase and they're still trying to figure that one out.

becomes contraband, right, So now you've made it cool. You've made it like rebellious to have a pack of Newports, which is so ridiculous. But I always think of Eric Garner, and I don't know if you remember Eric Garner in New York City, but Eric Garner was selling, as they call him in New York loosies because cigarette taxes in New York are so oppressive. I think cigarettes there are like twelve to fifty a pack. So it created this black market where people would stand and sell loose cigarettes.

And it ended up with him being taken to the ground and by police and a choke cold in him dyeing and so that's the kind of unintended consequences that you're talking about. And I think that anytime you tell grown ass adults who should be able to make their own choices, that we're not going to let you have something, it just makes it more popular than it did before.

Florida Institute of Law many years ago, it was the three strikes you're outlaw, and when you got caught with a gun and you were committing a crime with a gun three times, you went to prison for life. I mean you, that's three strikes and you're out. It was pretty effective at the time. I need to look up and see what's happened there with that law. But this bill, and it is a bipartisan gun bill, not to be confused with the other trash bill that the Senate just

passed out. The legislature is looking to make it a felony, excuse me, no, a class six felony to steal a gun. Right now, the penalty for gun theft is based on the value of the guns stolen, which is stupid, really stupid. But here's the bit that I want to share with you. Republican Representative Ryan Armagost said, guns when they're stolen are not used for putting food on the table. They're used in violent crime. They're used typically by people that can't

buy a firearm legally. And the vast majority of crimes committed in Colorado in the ninety percent of those gun crimes, those guns used are acquired illegally. And I want you to think about that stat for a second. Ninety percent of the crimes committed with a gun are committed with

a gun acquired illegally. What if, just what if hear me out, What if the Colorado legislature actually decided to pass more laws targeting the people who are stealing the guns and committing ninety percent of the gun crimes with the guns instead of Now this new this bill that just came out of the Senate is so bad. Now we're going to create a gun registry, and if this legislature deems you of the right sort of category, you're going to be allowed to buy one of these weapons.

But otherwise, no, So you better hope you check the right boxes. I mean, you better hope you're not Jewish. Now, I'm just kidding. That was a throwback to the Holocaust, But hey, that's how it all started, right, disarm the people we don't like, disarm the people that we don't agree with. That'll do it. My conversation about the crackdown on free speech by the left right now in this country. Earlier in the show. You can always listen to the podcast. It'll be up right after the show on the free

iHeartMedia platform. By the way, with the new iHeart Media app, you can actually make my show a preset at the top of your app. And that way, you just open up the app and you hit me. I mean, no, actually hit me. I mean you could try to hit me, but I catlike reflexes. You just hit a button and then boom, there comes the show. You don't even It's

like idiot proof. So idiot proof. But at the beginning of the show, I talked about the attack on free speech, the attack on free speech the attack on gun rights. Gun rights and free speech fall into the same category in that they give power to the week. Free speech laws don't protect the people in charge. They're already in charge. They already have the power. Free speech allows the week to protect themselves verbally. The second allows the week to

protect themselves physically. Is it really not that hard to understand and both of those things are now under attack from the left. What is happening to the Democratic Party? What are they doing? What is the end game there? You know, on the one side, you have dogs. You have the Republican Party that are trying to make everything incredibly transparent. I mean they're putting everything online. What Dog is finding, you can find it on their Twitter feed,

you can do it all. You can just see exactly what they're doing. And on the other side, we have people who are arguing that we shouldn't be looking at how our money is being spent, We shouldn't be investigating how the tax dollars should just being burned alive in Washington, DC. I don't That's not a position i'd want to be in, and I don't understand why that seems to be the position that they're pursuing. Who's playing of the Day with me today?

not like right to work. And tomorrow we're going to talk to Mark Mix with the National Right to Work Committee, Rand Paul has filed a bill that would make a National Right to Work Act. It would simply say unions can't take your money if you don't want them to, and you have a right to work, and you don't have to be a member of any association in order to do so. I mean, as they say, I don't want to be a member of any association that would

have me. Ryan Edwards right, red words words. That is how it looks when you email you red words.