THANKS TO KYLE CLARK FOR THE CLARIFICATION YESTERDAY I shared a video on the blog yesterday that purported to show a trucker who said he got shaken down by a Venezuelan gang for fifty bucks. Check out the blog posting I did yesterday on it:
NOW GANGS ARE SHAKING DOWN TRUCK DRIVERS IN AURORA? I have no idea if this is accurate but I sure as hell hope the Aurora PD is checking it out.
Turns out it was a parody video. Kyle Clark, ever helpful and apparently obsessively paying attention to what I do, took to X to out the video and take me to task for getting fooled. A simple email would have sufficed, but it gave Kyle a chance to sic his Twitter minions on me for the day, which he loves to do! So I'm sorry I shared a video yesterday that I clearly said I didn't know was accurate, something Kyle would have realized if he'd done one bit of digging, but that's how he Colorados! So consider me chastened, and Kyle, my email address is mandyconnell@iheartmedia if you catch anything else you think I got wrong. Just send your notes there next time. I hate getting stuff wrong and I always try to correct myself, as you guys know. Unlike certain members of the media *coughKylecough* who simple double down when they are wrong. I mentioned it on the air yesterday because I genuinely wanted to know if all your tires get flattened is that an insurance claim? I never did find out. Maybe Kyle can check on THAT for me.
NOT ALL MICRO COMMUNITIES ARE THE SAME Especially when it comes to crime. We have three microcommunities that have been housing formerly homeless people for more than a year. This report by the Denver Gazette pulled the records for emergency calls and found very different results for each of the three. If there are problems to be dealt with, it seems they are mostly around the community at Elati street. From the Denver Gazette:
Within 1,000 feet of the Elati site, 1,924 emergency 911 calls were made between Jan. 1 and Aug. 28, records from the city's Department of Public Safety showed. That is nearly three times more than the 38th Avenue "micro-community" in northeast Denver. That site saw 647 emergency 911 calls during the same period. The Wesley Avenue site, which is located in the Overland Park neighborhood, drew 121 calls since the beginning of the year, according to the data.
The good news is that at last the Wesley Avenue site seems to be somewhat stable, so we can concentrate our efforts where they are needed. Neighbors of and residents of the communities deserve to feel safe.
THE FED CUT RATES BY HALF A PERCENTAGE POINT Or 50 basis points, which is the same thing. This should juice the stagnant real estate market by quite a bit, as there are mortgage rates in the low 5s right now. I think this rate cut (the size of it anyway) shows the Fed is concerned about the slowing economy and are trying to juice it a bit. Right before an election, imagine that. I'm sure they aren't connected. Nope.
LEBANON IS ON EDGE And my first thought is good. Israel has been on edge since October 7th. This interview on CNN is interesting.
People are now asking what will explode next? People are asking if anything electronic could explode next. The Pentagon is worried that Israel is about to escalate the conflict that has been going on since October 7th, as Hezbollah has been firing rockets NON STOP into Israel since. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was quick to separate the US from this series of Israeli attacks. Watch this.
Blinken talks a lot about a cease fire, but he never talks about victory. He talks about the disruption in shipping the Houthis have created but he doesn't talk about stopping them. Telling. Israel obviously doesn't care about what the US thinks anymore and is going to act in its own self preservation. Hezbollah is promising "harsh revenge" which will be super tough with zero communications ability.
THE ARABS ARE MAKING FUN OF THIS TOO Across X there were reactions from Arabs in the Middle East that were really funny as Arabs who are not aligned with Iran had a lot of fun making fun of the fate of Hezbollah. Find the pick of the litter here.
FRONTIER FLIGHT ATTENDANTS VOTE TO STRIKE And maybe this is the reason why Frontier flight attendants seem so grumpy. The flight attendants are rightfully arguing that the airlines new policy of daily out and back trips is seriously eroding the pay of the flight attendants. Flight attendant pay is weird, and flight attendants only get paid from the time the plane pushes back to when it gets to the next jetway. Flight attendants with layovers get a per diem pay along with that flight pay, and Frontier's new scheduling takes that money away from them. Now the flight attendants have voted to strike if their demands aren't met and if you're planning on flying Frontier over the holidays you may want to pony up for another airline. Just saying.
NOW GRADES IN SCHOOL ARE RACIST And Sexist and Ableist and a bunch of other ists that are ridiculous. Read it here but your IQ will drop doing so. You've been warned.
WHAT REAL PROPERTY TAX REFORM WOULD LOOK LIKE And spoiler alert, what just passed the Legislature falls short. Joshua Sharf does a great job explaining how to check property taxes here.
KAMALABOT 2.0 WILL ONLY MEET WITH FRIENDLY PRESS And the New York Times sort of buries the lede here when talking about how inaccessible Vice President Harris has been to the media. You don't say. From the New York Times:
Even the press-averse Mr. Biden took more questions in the final two months of his campaign than Ms. Harris has in what is nearly the first two months of hers.
Her team says this is about to change, promising a series of appearances across an array of media venues, including local and national outlets, podcasts, radio stations and daytime talk shows.
In their own article they say candidates are increasingly avoiding outlets like the New York Times in favor of smaller, more local outlets where the reporters are frankly not used to having big interviews and are easier to manipulate. I can't wait to see Kyle Clark's interview with her. Heh.
THE TEAMSTERS WON'T ENDORSE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE And the polling done internally by the Teamsters clearly show the rank and file is going to vote for Trump. This is a huge blow to Democrats but good on Teamster President Sean O'Brien for listening to the men and women in his union. Watch this.
CNN'S NEW COMEDY SHOW FALLS IN ITS FACE By trying to make a joke about something while getting the underpinnings of the joke completely wrong. I bet Kyle Clark puts them on X for this. Christian Toto writes it up here. It must be exhausting just copying Fox News and still failing at it.
XCEL IS PASSING ON THE SAVINGS And as much grief as I give them I figured I'd share the good news that they are passing the savings on wholesale energy down to consumers so bills will be about 12%. That's the end of the good news, as Xcel is going to be looking for a permanent increase in February.
I WONDER IF THIS IS REAL I'm sure Kyle will fact check this but I'm gonna throw caution to the wind because I'm just positive the Babylon Bee is a real news source*.
*I know the Babylon Bee is satire, I'm just trying to bait Kyle into giving me more free publicity.
TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT CRIME GOING UP And ABC News/Democrat Spokesperson David Muir was wrong when he fact checked the President during the debate (imagine that) but the Washington Examiner has an editorial with receipts here. From that editorial:
For decades, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the National Crime Victimization Survey largely tracked each other. When crime went up in the FBI data, it also went up in the Department of Justice data. The percentage increases and decreases in crime, particularly for certain specific crimes, didn’t always match precisely, but the trends mostly coincided.
That stopped when President Joe Biden took office, and the FBI changed how local law enforcement agencies report crime to the bureau. The process was made more complicated and burdensome. As a result, the percentage of agencies submitting data to the FBI fell, with some of the largest and most troublesome cities failing to report at all. The cities included Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
The Department of Justice reports, which have always closely mirrored the FBI numbers until the Biden admin made these changes, tells a much different story:
According to the latest DOJ numbers, since Trump’s last year in office, total violent crime has risen 37%, assault has risen 33%, total property crime has risen 8%, and motor vehicle theft has risen 41%. No wonder 77% of voters, and even 58% of Democrats, believe crime is higher than it was, according to Gallup.
I'm sure ABC News will apologize any minute now. Any minute.
NO, BLACK BABIES DON'T DIE MORE WITH WHITE DOCTORS A racist study put out in 2020 has finally been debunked by a new Harvard study and this column asks why this took so long?
METALLICA IS COMING TO EMPOWER FIELD And this is one stadium show I might make an exception for because you know the pyro is going to be nuts. Read more here.
CITIZENS IN SOCIALIST UTOPIA REDUCED TO EATING SUGAR WATER Oh, Cuba, you are the gift that keeps disproving the model of socialism. Now Cubans, who live on an average of $42 a month, are finding the shelves at the subsidized food stores empty and many are going hungry. I feel terrible for these people, too bad they gave up their guns or they could fight for better government. Too bad.
THINGS NOT TO WASTE MONEY ON IN YOUR HOME And some of these surprised me. Read them all here.
GEN Z IS NOT READY FOR THE WORKPLACE And this makes me very, very sad for this generation. A new survey says that one in six businesses are reluctant to hire new college grads, with many admitting they had fired Gen Z in the last year because they were unprofessional and not ready for the workplace. I feel like there is an industry to be created here.
THIS VIDEO IS FROM A SATIRICAL ACCOUNT AND I KNOW IT'S NOT REAL, KYLE But it's funny as hell.
KAMALA SPEAKS And this is real, Kyle. No need to doctor this.
THE HEZBOLLAH MEMES WON'T QUIT And this one made me laugh very hard this morning.
ONE SHERIFF IS DONE PROTECTING YOUR KIDS If your kids are the ones calling in bomb threats and he's had enough. He released the photo and name of an 11 year old who was arrested for calling in a bomb threat. This is a scorcher.
THE COLORADO LEGEND OF THE TOMMYKNOCKERS This is super interesting. Watch below or click here.
HOW CHEESE IS MADE
BRITS DON'T RINSE THEIR DISHES? I had no clue this was a possibility but here we are.