03-17-25 FULL SHOW - Happy St. Patrick's Day, Erebody!

Anthony Rodriguez. You can call him a rod You'll.

event that was for a professional team. I don't care if it's spring training, I don't care, Okay, And I'd like channeled in my inner Jenny Kavnar and I just I had the best time. It was so awesome, and Jack Corgan was just so kind and generous and with his time, it was just so great. I was so excited. The game itself did not go the way I wanted it to go. But if you've never been to spring training, if you're a baseball fan, first of all, the stadium,

Holy macaroni. That stadium is super nice. The broadcast booth is probably twice as big as the broadcast booth at Coors Field. It is massive, and it's just a beautiful, delightful stadium to sit and watch baseball in. And I was super impressed. And it's my first time ever really in Arizona. I was trying to think about this. Chuck and I were flying in and normally, you know, I went a lot of places for small amounts of time when I was a flight attendant back in the nineties.

But I was like, I don't think I've ever been to Phoenix. I don't remember anything about Phoenix. I don't remember being in Phoenix. I don't Usually I can remember walking through the airport because that's how my brain works. I can remember what it looked like at the time, walking through the airport and leaving the airport, no matter where we are. But I have never been to Phoenix before. And I was selling a rod off the air Everything hears the same color. It's like, how many degrees of

beige can we have in one city? And I'm just wondering, how do people give directions to their house here? It's like, Okay, go past four beige houses, and then at the ninth beige house with the beige trim, go ahead and turn right. That's gonna be your ninth beige house. And the landscape, don't get me wrong, there's a certain kind of beauty in a desert landscape with all the cactuses or cacti. We went hiking the other day and it's so different than the hiking we do in Colorado. And I'm just

gonna be Frank. I could never live here. I could never live here. The weather is absolutely gorgeous right now, things are blooming. I mean it's you know, but you built a city in the middle of the desert. What are you thinking? At least with Colorado. You get to Colorado, you get to Denver, and you look at the wall of the rocky mountains in front of you and you can immediately understand. Like the first guy in the wagon train was like, you know what, I see those mountains.

We're just gonna stop here right now. Yeah, let's just stop here for a minute. My friend Greg said about Phoenix because I was talking to him. I was like, I've you ever been here? He said yeah. I thought about the leader of the caravan of settlers who said when they got here, this is it, this is the place. And how others must have said that there's no water and nothing will grow. But the leader said shut up an unpack. And that's Phoenix. And we have family out here.

And I always ask people. I asked my brother this about Las Vegas too, And I know, Arod, you love Las Vegas because you love the glitz and the light and all that stuff, and it's super cool and it's a great place to visit. But outside the city center, have you ever like driven around?

hundred miles huge. It's massive. It just goes on forever and ever and ever and ever. It's just it's it's huge. And so it's just sprawling city here in Phoenix, but it's it's I not my cup of tea. Man, I just I need things to be a different color. And you know, a Rod, we Joe, you and I about Colorado? Colorful? Colorado is not the most colorful place.

Saint Patrick's day, I am wearing my green shirt. Hey Rod, please regale the audience with what you are wearing today. Green wardrobe.

Tom or Lake's scare off BUCkies. Nuclear is green energy in Colorado?

Because now apparently aluminum foil is bad for you.

doesn't deduct heat. Well, it's the cook where you buy when you're young and you're broke and you don't have any money, and so you buy the cheapest cookwhere you can find at the Dollar General and then it turns out to be aluminum and it's horrible to cook on and everything sticks to it. So not a fan, Not

a fan at all. Anyway, obviously, we have a lot of stuff on the blog today, and I've got Sherry Pie from Complete Colorado coming on at one o'clock to talk about one story that I found very very interesting, not surprising, but interesting, and I'd like to know a little bit more behind this, and it has to do

with see you hiring people in newly created roles. In the last two years, CU has created new positions that have conveniently been filled my Democrat loyalists who have been instrumental in government up to this point until they were given to big fat jobs at CU. The two positions amount for more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in salary and benefits. Cherry's going to join me at one to talk about the latest one. She

wrote about it at Complete Colorado dot com. Oopscotch hiccups to you guys. Okay, that's fine. We also have let's just talk about March madness for a second, a rod because this is a time in America where you know, we're a country that prides ourselves on our productivity, right, American workers are highly reductive. We're always looking for ways to increase productivity. But this is the one, Well, there's two times of year when nobody expects anybody to get

anything done right. The first is around the holiday season, and we're talking about from Christmas straight through New Year's Like, if you need anything between December twenty third and January first, good luck, because a vast majority of people there are still people out there working. Obviously, people in retail, obviously, people in you know they're doing online retail. They're working there. Took uses off making sure the rest of us get

what we need. But in the normal outside shopping world, everybody's kind of mentally checked out. The other time of the year when we have an acceptable slowdown of productivity is when the March Madness basketball brackets come out. It is estimated listen to this that over the next couple of weeks we will lose about thirteen point one billion dollars worth of work because of March Madness basketball brackets. And the interesting thing and I grabbed a story from

Fox News. Although I read like four or five different stories about this, the Fox Business story that I read I thought was kind of interesting because they didn't just talk about lost productivity. They also talked about how it is sometimes counterintuitive to try and crack down on bracketology in the office because it increases camaraderie in the office. It gives people a chance to sort of talk about

something that isn't work related. And even people who don't watch basketball still somehow get cajoled into filling out a bracket. And then there are those people who fill out like twenty brackets. I used to work with a guy who filled out twenty different at least twenty, maybe even more, twenty different brackets every year, and to my knowledge, never

won any of them. And I don't even know how you do that, right, I don't even know how you can be that bad at picking a bracket that you never even won any of if you did twenty, Now, a Ron, how many brackets are you going to fill out this year for March Madness?

there who are gonna tell me I'm wrong. I'm gonna so the D two people that I know generally shift their allegiance to a larger D one school at some point because nobody shows D two school sports, you know, nobody shows So if you enjoy college sports, and I love college basketball because I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, where college basketball is king, there's no second, there's I mean, it is college basketball, and then way down you have

college football and that's where it goes in Kentucky. And it was such a great environment. It was like you go to a Cardinals game in Louisville and it's twenty two thousand screaming Louisville fans the entire time, and I imagine this year has been amazing because after a few years in the doghouse, their new coach has them really really competitive now, So it's fun to watch again. But I like watching college sports because I know the name

and likeness stuff is changing all that. But it used to be that they were in it for the love of the game and a college education, and so it had a certain purity to it that the NFL doesn't have, simply because we're told over and over and over again it's a business, just like the NBA. It's a business, right, so decisions are made on business. I'm going to go to that team because business wise, it makes more sense.

In college you to be there was a little more purity to the entire thing, I thought, and I still remain a college basketball fan. I watched maybe four games this entire season, but I will watch a ton of games during the tournament.

as hell most of the time. Like if I if I'm getting wound up in any college football, it's usually in preparation for you know, for the NFL Draft, for the guys I'm looking in terms of prospects for the Broncos, especially when they were in the market for a quarterback for oh I don't know a decade.

went to Duke. When I was in college, I was at Florida State and we went up to watch Florida State basketball play Duke in Duke, right, So we drove up, and I thought, if I had seen this school before I went to Florida State, I probably would have gone to Duke instead, assuming I could have gotten in and paid for it, which those two things, you know, being what they are, it probably worked out that I just went to Florida State. But it's a beautiful school, and

it was such a traditionally great program. Why wouldn't you pick that if you're just going to pick one team.

at like this whole North Carolina thing. North Carolina gets in and they get in on history and name recognition. Let's be real, okay, let's be honest about why North Carolina is in this tournament right now.

elevated it to this status. It's almost like the super Bowl of college sports in a way, you know, which is funny because it's basketball. But the playoff system is still pretty unwieldy in the sense that fans have not quite gotten that in terms of turning out for these games and stuff like that. So this is well attended no matter who's playing because the way they've set it up, so you have different regions, right, and the regions are always regions that love basketball. So the games sell out,

they're exciting, they're fun. I mean, there's just a lot going on, and I'm curious. I want to know for my listeners, and you can text us on the Common Spirit Health text line at five six six nine zero. I want to know from you crazy bracket masters how many brackets you are going to fill out this year? And if you're one of those people that's over ten, do you win? Do you win with your ten brackets?

That's what I want to know. Do you win? Because like I said, I knew a guy every year he filled out like twenty and he wasn't an idiot by the way, he wasn't a sports dummy. He was pretty smart sports guy in the sense of, you know, had a feeling for what was going on. And I don't know if you ever, ever ever are going to get past that. And this year we've got CSU coming off a big mountain, west Wind, really really fun to have the RAMS in there, and it's just going to be

a fun tournament. So yeah, I'm gonna fill out a bracket, but I'm wondering why you guys. Oh this texter just said, OMG, I know KAOI is the bus station. But if you not noticed that CSU has been one of the most talked about teams to go to the NCAA. They have a player who is literally the only player mentioned by name during the bracket announcements, Nick Clifford, who is expected

to go in the first round to the pros. And this is guys, I just want to point out this show is not a sports radio show, so to say that I have paid attention to the CSU rams before the Mountain West tournament would be a lie.

here's what we're gonna do. We'll do this a little bit later in the show because we've got plenty of time today. We got a full show, which I'm super excited about. Let's do that. Like in the last, like two thirty segment, you can pull up chat GBT on your computer there that you can run through the board and we can just ask chat GPT about well, upload the bracket. You know how to do that, right, Just cut and paste, upload the bracket, fill it out for us and see what chat GPT does and then see

how it does. We'll do that in the two thirty segment. I think that's a great idea. Is that cheating? I mean, I don't think so, because there's a lot of times. Here's the thing. If that's cheating, the knee flipping a coin is cheating because I'm getting outside help and there are often games where I'm always looking for the Cinderella upset. You know, there's always that one fourteen or fifteen seed that beats a one or two, not always a one, but a two or maybe even a three against the thirteen.

You gotta find that. You gotta figure out what which one of those teams is gonna win if you want to win the whole bracket, and you gotta just roll the dice and say, okay, I think that's gonna be an upset. Just fun, just fun, basketball ball rings, says this dexter. You spelled soccer wrong, sir or madam. Yeah. Golfer Rory McElroy has won three PGA events on Saint Patrick's Day. The luck of the Irish maybe now this

texter holy cow. Isn't it funny how everyone can be Irish on Saint Patrick's Day, but we can't all be black in February? Fair point, when we get back, let's talk a little bit about Saint Patrick's Day where it came from. I got some good history stuff. I find this fascinating, and I checked in with my favorite irishmen to find out what the differences are between here and Ireland.

We'll have that for you right after this. You know, growing up a Catholic, which in my small hometown made us super weird because we were surrounded by Southern Baptists, But we had Irish Catholic nuns, and they taught us how to do the Irish jig. They were so strict, they were so scary. They were not as scary as the American nuns that they replace them with. But these nuns, Sister Anne, our principal, she looked severe and I'm just gonna say, if you understand when someone says, well, they

have a severe look about them. She looked like she could shoot lasers out of her eyes and kill you. She never did, to my knowledge, she never actually killed someone with lasers out of our ice, but it could have happened. But there was one time of year when she let her softer side out. She would come out

after lunch. We would all be out on the playground and we would be playing and doing things, and she would go to the basketball court and invite everybody to come over and learn how to do the Irish jig. So then we created a little troop of Irish dancers and I got to Irish perform Irish dance at different places. I mean, it was it was not nearly as sort of majestic as these real Irish dancers that you see now that are leaping into the air like maniacs and

moving their feet so quickly. It's just it makes my ankles hurt. I'm not gonna lie, but it was kind of an interesting view into Ireland. And I remember asking her, even as a small child, I said, do you guys celebrate Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland? And she said, we do, but it's a day of feasting, it's a religious holiday. Now, this was back in the nineteen seventies, right, so fast forward to today, we all know that Saint Patrick's Day for some reason. It's the same reason that we have

adopted Cinco de Mayo. Right, Cinco de Mayo isn't even like a really important Mexican holiday, and yet Americans are all like, hey, yeah, Cinco de Mayo, We're gonna go out, We're gonna have It's just because we've made it a drinking holiday. That's part of it. I truly believe this. But the second part of this is is that we've had enough waves of migration to the United States of America from Ireland that about nine point five percent of our population has some sort of Irish ancestry. That's a

pretty big number. I mean, you're talking about almost thirty three million peace people, right, So we actually have more people of Irish descent than Ireland has citizens. They got like I think it's like six million, roughly citizens in Ireland right now. And so we have more people of Irish descent in the United States. And just like everything we do in the United States, we take something and we make it big. We make it huge, because that's

what we do. You give us something, you give us the coassault, We're gonna make the Chris sandwich, right, I mean, we're just gonna make it better. It's what we do over here in America. And today the river is green in Chicago. I'm still not quite sure how that happens. And there are parties and festivities and parades and everything else. And there was parade here over the weekend in Denver, And I mean, we've just leaned in on this cultural moment. And the reason I put it like that is because

something that's really significant about Saint Patrick's Day. And I read several articles about Saint Patrick's Day and how it became such a huge thing in the United States, and there's a couple different reasons.

the Roman Empire. He was kidnapped and taken to France where he was made a slave for six years, and then he was freed somehow where details are a little sketchy, but he went back to Ireland and they were the ones who captured him and sold him into slavery. But he was like, you know what, I love you anyway, Ireland. As a matter of fact, I'm going to come back to Ireland and I'm going to convert all of these people into Catholics because they were Pagans at the time,

because they were part of the Roman Empire. So he is the one that proselytized, evangelized and turned Ireland into the staunch Irish nation that it is. Well, it remains an Irish nation, but I wouldn't say staunch Irish nation, but it's an Irish Catholic nation for the most part. And he is also credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland, because they don't have snakes in Ireland. But

the reality is that was probably just a metaphor. That metaphor he was running around in the sixth century, so in the five hundreds around there somewhere, and by the way, oh I'm sorry, fifth century, fifth century is when he was around, and there was some question about whether or not we're talking about actual snakes or if that was just a metaphor for paganism, because he was so successful in driving paganism out of Ireland, and they then refer

to paganism as the snakes. So Saint Patrick's starting in about the twelfth century, was credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland, but that might have just been a metaphor for paganism. So we're not quite sure. By the way, all of this stuff we think we know super dodgy, we really don't know. It's not even clear that he was actually a Catholic bishop. He claimed to be a Catholic bishop, but the well, he might not have been.

But nonetheless, to your point, a Rod Boston, when a lot of Irish immigrants showed up in Boston, they were not necessarily treated very well. They were treated quite poorly. No one wanted to hire the Irish. The Irish were coming over and taking everybody's jobs. And that's why so many irishmen became cops because they could get hired by the police department at a time when it was very

difficult to get hired as an Irish immigrant. And Boston had the first Saint Patrick's Day celebration as a way to instill and share their pride with their country, of their former country, with other Americans. And here's the kicker, this is where it gets really good. They invited everyone to celebrate with them, and they invited everyone to participate.

They invited everyone to embrace their stuff. That's why when you see some guy it's clearly Hispanic in origin wearing a kiss me on the Irish shirt today, no one in Ireland gets mad. They just want to share the celebration with us. We are going to take a quick time out, be right back right after this. Mandy from Ralph he said, Pagans are snakes. Lol, Hits, I'm not a pagan. I'm becoming more Catholic each day. So and somebody pointed out yellow dye in the Chicago River to

make it green. They live close to the Irish Heritage Center in Chicago. Always went there often. Girlfriend was one hundred percent Irish Coronell, Colonel in the Army, redhead with blue eyes, gorgeous. We did drink a lot. You know, there are certain stereotypes that are accurate, and Irish drinkers is one of those things that is that is accurate. It is definitely accurate. I have a question about something for this short segment that I want to throw out

there because there was a very interesting article today. I grabbed it on MSN dot com, but it was originally from the Washington Post. Are parties dead now? Arod? I'm gonna ask you to hold your fire because I know you and your wife love to entertain So you are currently on the outlier side of this conversation. Yes, the headline party city is closing and champagne sales are down. Are parties dying too? So listen to this. This is

the second paragraph. But the vibes are off. People say, ever since the pandemic, parties are not what they used to be instead of flitting from table to table, because some guests cower with their phones in the corners. If they show up at all, people seem more excited to stay home than go out. A viral TikTok memes celebrates the relief and delight of plans getting canceled at the

last minute. In nightlife hotspots like New York and London, clubs are shutting down, Champagne sales are tanking, according to CNN, and those threatened to two hundred percent tariffs probably won't make things better. In a rather on the nose development, party City, once the go to sprite for party paraphernalia like theme hats, paper napkins, goodie bag stuffers, and shimmery banners, is going out of business and they're asking the question

is the party dead or is it just hibernating? And I find this very interesting because I used to love to throw a party. My mom was an excellent entertainer in my childhood and as she said, back when she was young and have young kids, and my dad was a young lawyer. The wives in that group, they competed by birthday parties, but it wasn't the extravagant things that

we see now. As a matter of fact, I sent myself a story on Friday I forgot to put on the blog today about now parents are putting out a tip jar at children's birthday parties, asking or on the invitation, they send thing like, oh, if your child's going to eat or play in the bounce house, we're gonna need you to bring a little extra cash. And I'm thinking to myself, this is not what parties are about. If you can't afford that stuff on your own, don't do it.

You can have a kid's birthday party without a bounce house. I know it's crazy, I know, but what we've done is create the perception that you have to have this over the top thing, when in reality, a great party can be a pot luck where you're asking people to bring over. Hey, bring over a side dish. We've got the main course. You bring over a side dish, you bring a dessert, you bring this a gathering of people,

a barbecue, whatever. But nobody's even doing that anymore, or I'm just not getting invited.

cars are everywhere. More on that now. But I want to bring my friend and crack reporter from Complete Colorado dot Com Sherrypife on the show today about her story that I just realized I did not put the link on. When I will fix that momentarily about some really interesting, well let's just say, placements at CEU that have to do with washed up politicos. Sherry, Welcome to the show. How you doing.

universities do, especially CEU. But what Connor I was when the most recent vice chancellor was hired, and he was a former sustainability officer in multiple different positions under the Joe Biden administration, and then the timing of his job at CU, which he was hired to do sustainability stuff as well. The timing of his job at CU started

almost immediately following the ending of the Biden administration. Pub but there was you know the good yeah, right exactly, And it was a position that was created, So it was a newly created position that started immediately after his position ended under the Biden administration, of which he also worked for Obama and Clinton as well. But not only that was there was some there was some reports when

he was initially hired. There was some reports in some other newspapers about some of the CU regents being extremely frustrated because he was the only applicant that they brought forward. So when they brought forward here's who we're going to choose from, he was the only one brought forward. So you add to okay, there was a newly adopted position

or a newly created position. The guy came from an administration that just ended and he's making over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, I think is what is in the story. It was that was surprising in and of itself. But then the thing you know about Complete Colorado is where owned by the Independence Institute and people there have been there for a very long time,

so there's a lot of institutional knowledge going on. And somebody at I was like, you know, I think this is what happened when Ed Pearl Mutters stepped down.

long it's been. The pro Mutter has been out where CU has created positions four people who are losing their job in the in DC. And these are healthy positions. I mean, the two jobs together are over seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.

hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year. Well, I know, from having considered being going into positions with US congressional folks, when I've looked at and talked to people about starting salaries, guaranteed she was not making three hundred and twenty five thousand.

add it all up, that's what it looks like. And then at the end of the day, when I'm calling people that I know that are close to this situation, going what is going on, I learned that they have created another position that they have just opened up for yet another guy who worked under Michael Bennett before he went and worked under Michael Hancock, and now he's going

to be at VSU. Don't are at to you or excuse me, I don't know what his salary and stuff was, because that position is so new that when I called to you, even the folks in the communications department had not heard his name. Oh my god, guarantee he's been hired. I guarantee he's been hired. Here is due to start I think sometime middle of March, and I'm waiting to find out because there's also a position in the media in the communications department that is yet to be filled.

I'll be curious to see who fails that one, because it's so clear that that.

we have to choose from. So you're telling me that only one person to me, if you're going to only take one application to the Board of Trustees or to excuse me, to the CU regents, if you're only going to take one application to the CU regents and say this is what we have, you're telling me you only have one application, because I would hope that you would have more than one person for the regents to choose from.

Not see you, but when I asked a specific question about a certain job that had been filled by someone that I thought was ill suited for the role, and they told me that they coded the job posting incorrectly, So say it was a job posting in accounting, right, so instead of posting in an accounting they posted in engineering, so no accountants would look for it in the engineering section. But guess you did their preferred candidate. So that's how

they got around it. They quote posted it, but they posted it in the wrong place where no one looking in that place would apply.

that nobody else would look for it. So at the end of the day there was only two applicants and one applicant, Ian Silveri's price came in way below the other applicant, so that of course we're going to hire him. Yeah, this is the motives apparandi of the Democrats. This is how they do things. They post positions in places they're not supposed to be posted. They can say they were posted. And then there's a phone call made to somebody that said, hey, you know, I don't wanted to check out this job.

that future CORPRA requests go to this particular position. And then when I then inquired about the newly created position with the Denver Metro Regional officer, I sent it directly to where she had told me, and I'm sorry I cannot remember her name, but I sent it to where she had told me to send these previous requests. Immediately responded back and said, I don't know who this person is. I've never heard of them.

the question, can you tell me how much? So they responded to that one, you know, after literally over a week, and then told me to go here next time. So I go where they told me to go the next time, and I get a response back that says, you're gonna have to file a CORA request or it's not a quorra.

believe that that's even possible on these campuses. And this is the kind of stuff that makes me crazy, because there seems to be some kind of straight line between democratic politics and CU Boulder, and I just want to know where who started the straight line on the other.

just coincidences. No, they didn't hire just Democrats supporters. They didn't hire just liberals. They literally hired people who had just left their job as a Democrat strategist for an elected official in Washington, d C. Even this guy that, this Nigel, that has been hired for this other job worked for Michael Bennett. Then he went and worked for Michael Hancock. They are purposely hiring democratic strategists for these physicians.

I appreciate the time today and the work on this story. And again it's like, you know, I just had this conversation with my son who was kind of pushing back on the notion that universities have become echo chambers to a certain extent. And he said, you know, I was a libertarian at my school. I'm like, libertarian is much

different than conservative. And the reality is is that conservative students are being cowed into silence, and for that matter, centrist students, students who are just moderate, who just want to go and get an education, they're being cowed into silence. They're not allowed to express their opinions or their teachers going to dock them a grade point. And frankly, these kids are like not worth it. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut, which creates an even more a

larger echo chamber when there's no pushback. I got an email from someone whose kid is in a Jefferson County high school and they said, in art class last week, a teacher used the whiteboard. In art, teacher use the whiteboard to write down all the bad things that Donald Trump had done. And I'm thinking to myself in art class, we have to fix that. First of all, kids are not getting a good education right now, especially in K

through twelve. Look at the test results. But secondarily, we're basically telling kids they have to believe this one way or they're going to be penalized for it. That's not freedom, that's not inspiring vigorous debate. That's extorting students to say what you want them to say in order to get a grade that they need to move forward. And it's just it's kind of stop. We've ruined our university system. Socrates is rolling over in his grave right now, rolling

over in his grave. I tell you, Okay, when we get back, I want to do this story. I've got a couple stories of like things to watch out for, but one of these stories from I think CBS did this story. It is about loans that are being offered online. And if you are someone who's a little tight on money and maybe you don't have great credit, maybe you'll be tempted to look at some of these online lenders.

Holy cow, don't do anything until you hear this next story talk about taking advantage of people with bad credit. We'll do that right after this. Keep it on. KOA. So I saw this story today and I'm a little bit horrified by this. And let me just say this. I've been the person with bad credit who needed a loan,

who got absolutely crushed by interest rates. Like I've had that experience, and it seems patently unfair when you're the person news broke, that you should have to pay higher interest rates because you're broke, right, it seems counter into it, But the reality is is that people who are broke are more likely to default on a loan. It's just the way it works out. But there should be limits right about how much you can sort of snooker poor

people for who need money. And this story is a whopper and it's brought something to my attention I had no idea about. So this is from our friends at CBS four. A woman needed a couple of thousand dollars to help buy a car. In February, she went online and stumbled on a loan and went ahead and signed up for it. His daughters or She signed up for a two thousand dollars loan with an online lender called

with You Loans WithU Loans. The payment schedule called for her to pay more than eight hundred bucks per month for nine months. That meant she was paying six thousand, three hundred and seventy dollars and nineteen cents in interest for her two thousand dollars loan. Now, if you can't do the math, really quickly, as I can't do the math really quickly. That is a five hundred and eighty one percent interest rate for her two thousand dollars loan.

And you know, honestly, people who live in poverty are generally not good with financial things, right. They never really understood compound interests. They've never really had this stuff explained to them because most of the time they're coming from poverty being taught by poor people how to manage money. That's not very much there, right, So there's a whole,

whole like lack of stuff. Now what surprises me is that the guy that called CBS four is her dad, and her dad has been a mortgage broker for thirty years. And I will say this, and I've said it before in the air, I love my parents. I absolutely love both of them. But one area where they failed me spectacularly was anything related to money management. So maybe this is a similar situation. But even I would not have signed up for a loan like this. Now, how can

they do this? Because Colorado has a law that CAP's interest rates at less than forty percent, okay, so anything above that is considered usually, which is charging some of an exorbitant amount of interest like the mob does, right, I mean, you borrow one hundred bucks from the mob, you're paying back a thousand kind of thing. I'm assuming I've never actually borrowed money from the mob. I thought about it, but I don't know any mobsters, so I

decided not to the with you loan. The online lender is operated by the Otteau Missouria tribe, and as an Indian tribe, they are generally exempt from state laws that prohibit exorbitant interest rates. What they're doing is perfectly legal, So as long as you're acting as a tribal entity, you're not subject to regulations of the state. I guess this is just one way for the Indians to get back to the white man. I don't know. I mean,

I'm not saying it's a bad way. But the reason I'm doing this story is like, you probably need to spread the word. We all know, we should know at this stage in the game that things like payday loans, you cash advanced loans, they are predatory. They're considered predatory loans because the interest rates are so high. Now I already mentioned I understand why you have high interest rates on people that have bad credit scores, because they are far more likely to default on those loans. I don't

know how much more likely, but it's significant enough. But I do think that there's a point when to charge more than that is just wildly on ethic. And this is one of those things. I genuinely put this in the same category as the scammers who spend their entire days and nights from some little dark room in Nigeria trying to part Americans from their money and ripping off old people. This is kind of the same thing. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. I don't even understand how you sleep

at night, and I'm sure that they have. They have couched themselves in the position of we are helping people who could not get alone otherwise, which is a valid a valid business plan. But charging forty percent interest annually, not five hundred and eighty one percent interest annually, and just some big native dude come over and beat you up if you don't pay it back. No, they just further wreck your credit.

I could never work for a company that was blatantly ripping people off like this, and blatantly because they can. And that's the kicker, right, I mean, they're only doing

it because they can. If they were under the laws of Colorado, then they would be subject to a forty percent cap now, Doctor Catherine spilled, I don't know if that's how you say it, a California based professor who specializes in American economic development, said tribal loans provide geographic isolated tribal nations with revenue needed for housing, education, healthcare, and law enforcement. She said, I do think it's a win win, especially when you think that the tribe what

the tribes are using it for. Based on that logic, then anyone should be able to open, you know, an online you know loan operation and charge whatever interest they want to charge, as long as they do it for something that someone else deems valuable. So if I want to create this this online loan situation and I want to charge one thousand percent interest, but then I make donations to the right charities, it still doesn't make it right,

regardless of what you're doing. By the way, the online review platform trust Pilot said seventy one percent of with You Loans reviewers gave the service a five star review. Eighteen percent gave it one star. One reviewer wrote, the interest is so evil. You're flat out robbing people who need help. You should be absolutely ashamed of your greed. The Better Business Bureau in Oklahoma City has given with You loans in F grade. The BBB has received three

hundred and forty three complaints against the lender. In Colorado, when resident filed complaint with a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about an unnamed tribal lender, he said he took out a tribal loan that carried a four hundred and forty seven percent interest rate.

you'd be very proud of me. I am also exclusively using my digital wallet when I travel now, like I don't even carry anything else. I've got my credit cards loaded in there by being by a boom. Here's my phone, let me pay. And now I even get like a little bit salty when someone says, oh, we don't have tap to pay, I'm like, what me too? What are we even doing here?

Just one in ten purchases are made with cash and card is the most common form of payment, followed by Swedish mobile payment systems Swish, launched by six banks in twenty twelve and now ubiquitous. Other mobile phone payment services are also growing quickly. In fact, according to the Central Bank's Animal Payments Report published this month, Sweden and Norway have the lowest amount of cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP in the world. So not only are

people not using cash, they don't even have cash. So I guess they don't have the big bin of quarters like I do. How much do you think you have in your change jar right now? A rod? And you better tell me you have a change jar.

attacks almost a part of daily life in Sweden. Life without cash is not proving the utopia that perhaps it was once promised to be, and then it goes on. The Central Bank said, look, measures need to be taken to strengthen preparedness and reduce exclusion so that everyone can pay even in the event of crisis or war. For years, it says, efficiency has been the priority for payments, but

now safety and accessibility are at least as important. In December, the government published the findings of an inquiry that proposed that some public and private agents should be required to accept cash, a recommendation that the Central Bank says the authorities should implement. So here's what they're worried about. They're worried about something happening, a cyber attack that takes down their system and all of a sudden, no one can

buy anything because no one has cash. This is one of those things, like a rod you don't ever carry cash. You we've talked about this before. You carry like fifty bucks.

us with cash. So I kind of have that mentality. But I think younger generations they don't think about this stuff at all, and I think that is a very big problem. And this is what I'd recommend for young people. And even if you're broke, right, you're super broke. Every week, take five dollars, take ten dollars. You put it in an envelope, You hide it under your mattress or wherever your super secret hiding place is, and every week you add to it and add to it and add to it.

If you can't go out and afford to pull out a few hundred bucks, you know, then do this a little bit out of time. Now you've done two things. You're making sure you have cash, but you're also saving money, so there's a win win there. So Norway's former Justice and Emergencies ministers put it in clear terms. If no one pays with cash and no one accepts cash, cash will no longer be a real emergency situation once the crisis is upon us. Take it to heart from the

folks in Sweden. Get yourself some cash and call it a day. We'll be right back to talk about two things. Mahmud Khalil and him being kicked out of the country and others being kicked out as well. And oat milk it's not healthy. We'll do all that next. Keep it on KOA.

Right it's all of these federal judges that Democrats have been listed to try and stop the Trump administration from doing what the Trump administration is doing. They are going to eventually have to be settled because I don't think a circuit court judge has more power than the president of the United States.

out at some point. I do not think that a circuit court judge should have the right to stop the duly elected president of the United States from executing his or her vision. So, I mean, I'm not sure. The other thing is, can we just talk about California awarding a fifty million dollars verdict because a guy got hot coffee spilled in his crotch? Now, don't get me wrong, that sounds horrible, Like I can't think of something worse right now, other than, you know, noted forms of medieval

torture than having hot coffees building your lap. So there's a we're staying at a resort in Scottsdale. I'm broadcasting from Arizona right now, out here for some spring training and looking having a lovely time. There's a Starbucks in the lobby of the place where we're staying, and they gave me coffee the other day that had just been rude, And I still don't have a skin on the roof of my mouth because I took a sip and it

was it was, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't want the boiling oil temperature, right, I just wanted normal coffee temperature. But even then, I'm thinking to myself, fifty million dollars. Fifty million dollars, that to me feels like a punitive dig at Starbucks, and Starbucks somehow has fallen out of favor. Starbucks used to be the lefties favorite. It started in Seattle, it has gone all over the country, but now the lefties have turned against it. And I'm not sure what

happened there. What did I miss you guys? What did I miss in the news? What did Starbucks do to make all the lefties mad? I know a young left leaner who is very upset. The Starbucks just fired a thousand people out of the I don't even know how many tens of thousands they employ. And their decision was, well, I'm not gonna shop there anymore. I'm not going to Starbucks anymore. Okay, great, then more people are gonna get fired. The logic sometimes the lack of logic is confusing to me.

But this just feels like these people did not like Starbucks and they were gonna let it be known that they did not like Starbucks. That's just ridiculous. And of course Starbucks is going to you know, appeal, and of course it's gonna get reduced. Mandy. This dude had third degree burns on his junk. I know, I know, But fifty million dollars. No, no, no, no, that's just crazy. This is why we have limits on pain and suffering in Colorado. This is why this kind of stupid, idiotic,

you know, verdict is just it. It's excessive to the point of ridiculousness. And I gotta tell you, if I'm this dude, I whin right, I whind But if Starbucks comes back and goes, look, dude, we're gonna give you ten million, take it walk away. We're gonna call it today or otherwise, we're gonna have it knocked down quite a bit. I don't know if you guys followed the lawsuit between Mark Stein, who I absolutely love. I love

Mark Stein. Hang on, I'm pulling this up so I can get the real, the real details for you, because it's so fascinating. So Mark Stein is a talk show host, he's a former Canadian, and he said some things about me not be climatologist Michael Mann, and Michael Mann the climatologist was hey, going, I gotta get to a better version of the story that it's not not here. Hang on one second, I've got only the Washington Post has it amazing only the Washington Post. Oh, here we go.

I found it in reason. So mark Stein and another blogger said a few things about mark about Michael Mann, the guy who created the hockey stick graft, which by the way, has been proven to be spectacularly wrong. And mark Stein said that michael Mann is the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, only instead of molesting boys, he molested the climate evidence, tortured it, and manipulated the data. Well, Michael Man sued, and first he sued National Review and

everybody else, Competitive Enterprise Institute suit everybody. The judge threw most of them out and allowed the case against mister Stein to continue. And through the process of this lawsuit, mister Stein lost the trial and was ordered to pay michael Mann one hundred or excuse me, a million dollars. Only the problem is is that he appealed, as one does. And now the verdict has come down, and the verdict

came down in mark Stein's favor. Now they still found him to have said mean things about michael Mann, but they dropped the damage's amount to five thousand dollars, and they ordered michael Mann to pay attorney's fees in some of the other lawsuits to the tune of over half a million. Dollars. So talk about a twist of fate. I mean, if I'm Mark Stein, I go to the bank and I get five thousand dollars worth of pennies and I put them in his many boxes, you know,

those flat rate boxes from the post office. I feel, all all of those flat rate boxes with pennies, I'd take as many as it would be worth to pay the fourteen fifteen bucks to ship them wherever they needed to go, and I would say, Okay, when you get this last box, consider it settled. Here's your five grand which I think is fantastic. I mean, that's just funny.

Keep it up. Oh, by the way, the judge reduced the fee because he said that the fees the judgment was so excessive and so ridiculous because Michael Man lied during the trial about losing certain grants and the value of those grants, and the award was based on the amount of grants that he was supposed to get that he said he didn't get, but he inflated their value by like ten times. And the judge was like, sorry, pal, sorry, pal, you lied in court. We're gonna knock this down. And

they did. M hm ha huh, We'll be right back. But on KOA, I wanted to find this text message from a little bit earlier, and I don't know what inspired this text message, but I do want to respond to it because I think it's an interesting question. Do you know why China doesn't worry about climate change? Asked this texter. There is, and just go down this rabbit hole with me. I only have a couple minutes here, so you're only gonna have to do the rabbit hole

for just a moment. There is a pretty good line of connection between China funding environmental organizations in the United States. Why would they do that because they want to cripple the American economy by having us move off oil and gas and coal, because they are building coal fired power plants natural gas fired power plants as fast as they

possibly can. And yet they are connected to and funding green organizations in the United States who are urging them to do things like bandfracking and essentially end inexpensive energy. So China can continue to rise and the United States will eventually stumble because, as we're seeing in Colorado, green

energy costs more. It just does. Green energy is more expensive because you not only have to have the green energy you have to have a way to back it up, right, So they're just sitting back and watching us destroy our energy economy, and we're just stupidly going along with it like kind of idiots. Hey, Mandy, I'm a maleman in the small town of Olga Lala Old. I always say this wrong?

I did not talk about this story last week because when the story broke about a man who is here as a permanent resident with a green card being arrested and being deported. He's going to be deported. I genuinely didn't know what the best answer about that would be. So I spent several days reading both sides of the issue. Because people are duking this out online. Mostly Democrats are staunchly in the corner of this guy. Mostly people on the right are saying, kick his you know what out.

I'll tell you which side I have landed on when we get back after the news trafficking weather, keep it on, Kowa and I got a couple of stories I want to knock out. First of all, I have a request for the oat milk story. Y'all. Oat milk is not good for you. If you're lactose intolerant and it's your only option, you can't take anything else but just flip around the curtain of oat milk. He has no nutritional value. It's loaded with sugar. It's not healthy. Not everything that's

not milk is healthy. I just wanna share this with you. Let's see here. Oh, come on. I love it when I've read an article like fifty times and then it's like, hey, you've got to give us this article. You've gotta share this, give us your email address to get it. But ultimately I don't even need to read the article because I know that what I'm saying is accurate.

Lactose intolerance aside, the rest of it is just it's basically a highly processed food. So if you think oat milk, if you can open it on my computer on your computer, that'd be great. It's on the blog. If not, sorry about that. But if you're drinking oat milk to be quote healthy, you are on the wrong track. Now I want to talk about the story of Mahmud Khalil. It's been such a hot topic. The subject is this. Mahmud Khalil is a thirty year old who was born in

Syria to Palestinian parents. He arrived in the United States on a student visa. He immediately I mean, based on the timeline, he must have immediately gotten married and applied for a spouse's visa to get his permanent resident card, because that process takes a really long time. And now he's got a pregnant wife here. But he also has

permanent status. He has a green card, which has created a lot of interesting conversations on the Internet about whether or not the US can do what the US says they are going to do, and that is detain him by federal immigration authorities, pull his permanent status and green card and deport him. Now, why are they doing this? They're doing it because Mahmud Khalil has served as a negotiator on behalf of students during Columbia University's twenty twenty

four pro Hamas and camp protests. He also has worked with charitable organizations that seem to support support a link to terrorism, but at a bare minimum that stuff aside at a bare minimum. This guy comes to the United States and starts leading protests, running down the United States and demanding that hamas be our new best instead of Israel.

And Marco Rubio was on the Sunday shows defending this. Now, if you look at the internet, you see a very clear schism between Democrats on the left protecting Mahmoud Khalil and saying this is the end of free speech and what are we doing? And this is such a nightmare.

And it just goes to prove that they've never actually gone through the immigration process themselves or have known anyone who has gone through the immigration process, Because if you do anything until you become a citizen, you can be deported straight up. And Marco Rubio made the point really well the other day, and I don't have that audio now I show of grad it, but I forgot until now.

He made the point the other day that when you come to the United States on any kind of visa, you are in the United States with the permission of the United States government. You don't have the same rights as a citizen at that point, and if you do something, if you commit a crime, you can have your status revoked until you become a citizen. He is not a citizen,

he is prior to that act of becoming a citizen. Now, if people have immigrated here in the past and they have become citizens, then the entire issue becomes kind of moot, because now you're a citizen, and you do have those protections to say whatever vile thing you want to say about the federal government or anything. You can do whatever you want, right, But he's not a citizen. He just has permanent status. And now they're pulling his green card

and they're going to deport him. And though I feel terrible for his wife and baby who is on the way, but I just want to point this out. Dude's been in the country for two years. From what I can say, he comes in the country, gets married, and immediately knocks up his wife. If that doesn't sound like a calculated series of events, I don't know what is. The Secretary of State, by the way, is explained the thought process,

which he called very simple. When someone enters the United States with a visa, either as a tourist or a student, they do so as a guest. Rubio said on face the Nation, if you tell us when you apply for a visa, I'm coming to the US to participate in pro Hamas events. That runs counter to the foreign policy interests of the United States of America. If you told us you were going to do that, we would have never given you the visa. So you know they have

the right. They absolutely have the right to kick this guy out. And for people on the left, I'd love to know what would have to happen. What would this guy have to do before they would say, yeah, he doesn't deserve to be here anymore. What would he have to say? Because I don't think that you have the right, as a citizen of another country to come to the United States of America and use that as a platform to attack the country. I just don't. I don't think

you have the right to do it. Try and do it in other countries and see how well that works out.

fine with that. We don't need to import any more agitators. We've got people on the left paying them to go agitate all over the place at Tesla dealerships. We don't need to import them. But the notion that somehow someone should have the right or the ability to come here and agitate, and what if he ginned up? What if he and this is a hypothetical, what if he got those students so angry that they started to riot and

someone got hurt based on his commentation? Is that enough to have him kicked out of the country for those on the left, For me, one hundred percent. But I just don't think you have the right to come here and run us down. If you have a problem with the country, go back to your own country. I'm sure it's a paradise, absolutely a paradise. And of course I'm being sarcastic because well, he's from Syria, born to Palestinian parents. I don't understand. You guys have a story today about

Democratic polling. Right now, the Democratic Party is polling at the lowest levels of popularity they've had, I think ever in the modern era. And the sad part is they're polling that low with Democrats. Now, of course Democrats like them better than Republicans and independence, but the Democrats are so unhappy with the leadership of the party and their perception that the party is in utter and complete disarray,

and it is. It's absolutely a mess. I don't recall in my life any political party being as much of a mess other than the Colorado Republican Party as right now the National Democratic Party brand is absolute disaster. But that being said, they've now put themselves in a position to argue that a young pro hamas Man is somehow they're guiding light when it comes to free speech. They keep adopting these policies that I think most Americans are

going to find really distasteful. And it's all because whatever their policy is, it's like, oh, Trump wants this guy deported, Well, we're going to fight for him. Misstay forget the fact that he's you know, has ties or at least sympathy for a terrorist organization and he's here on a visa. I mean, is that a winning position for the Democratic Party?

Who are they winning with that? That's the question that I have, Like, what part of your contingency other than the we hate Trump contingency, which is really strong in the Democratic Party. I get it, it's a big voting block.

I understand that. But shouldn't you be more thoughtful about what hill you choose to die on when it comes to this stuff, because right now there doesn't seem to be any thought other than, oh, Trump wants to do this, we're gonna we're gonna advocate for the opposite because the last I saw, Trump's numbers are on the rise. And if you just watch, if you look at the Drudge Report, I don't know who owns Drudge now, but it is

just it. I wouldn't be surprised if the DNC wasn't actually funding of the Drudge Report, which seems to be an important page for people to go look at. And now it's just blatantly anti Trump propaganda that isn't even always accurate. It's like an arm of MSNBC. It's just truly sad. So if you just go there, you think, oh my god, everyone in the country hates what Trump is doing, But then you look at other polling that says no Americans are like, this is what we hired

him to do. We hired him to create border security. We hired him to do something about illegal immigration, and unfortunately, nice people are gonna get caught up in that. It's just the reality. It's a terrible reality. But here we are, and now we have a position where someone sued to stop the deportation of a bunch of then is Whelan gang members. Now, don't get me wrong. Procedurally, they may

have a point. They may have a point that Donald Trump used an old law from eighteen hundred that requires a declaration of war in order to use it to deport people. But they're on the side of then is Whelan gang members. Now, let me think about this. At what point does somebody in the Democratic parties say, hey, guys, let's just not respond until we can figure out if we're responding as the good guys or if we're just responding because we don't want to be seen to be

like Trump. I mean, it's it's kind of crazy some of the stuff that they're coming out in support of. It's really really very strange, Mandy. The Democratic Party's problem is they no longer stand for anything. They're just against Trump. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. That's not a way to be because apparently in twenty twenty four. Trump is a fascist dictator, hitler, boot liquor, putin lover wasn't enough to win that election, was it? And yet there's

still still using the same playbook. So wondering, I'm guessing because nobody has taken me out on the text line just yet at five sixty six nine. Oh, I mean, doesn't it seem logical then that if you come to the as a guest and then you you espouse viewpoints in support of an organization that the US has declared a terrorist organization, that perhaps you should be escorted out.

I mean, to me, that doesn't seem crazy at all, and I do not think it is the same as a citizen having their right to support a moss abridged, because I will fight for that right. I will fight for these idiots on campus to walk around with their masks on because they're not brave enough to actually show their faces and hold their signs, as long as they don't impede other students from going to class create illegal encampments.

I support your right to protest as long as you don't disrupt and get in the way of other people who've paid for that educational opportunity. To go experience what they have paid for. I'll support your right. I'll think you're a complete idiot for doing it, but I'll support your right.

what Trump is obsessed with. I did not. I don't watch sixty minutes anymore. Occasionally I'll watch one of the stories after the fact, but I pretty much stopped watching sixty minutes with any regularity when Dan Rather fabricated his little story against George W. Bush. So it's been a while. It's been a while. The Democratic Party's problem is they no longer stand for anything. They're just against Trump. Yes, uh, hey Mandy, I support free speech too, but the mask

wearing is such a tell. If you're wearing a mask, you're a coward or an fd eye agent, and that that is just sad, I mean really sad. Hey, Ryan Edwards, I have a question for you, all right, have you ever gotten to do color commentary for a major League baseball game?

was like, oh my god. I mean I put on my Jenny Kavnar hat and I was like ready to go. I was like, yeah, power, because you just die those opportunities.

else I get really into. I have college basketball on the background, I'm watching it.

Holy cow, exactly exactly. There's always a scandal.