HEIDI GANAHL HAS BEEN WORKING ON SCHOOL SAFETY FOR YEARS NOW And when you hear about how a group she was appointed to was summarily shut down for no reason, you'll be very, very mad. But she didn't stop there. Today we will talk about Moms Fight Back and the School Safety 360 Pilot she helped create. Read more about it here, she's on at 1. Find Heidi and support her campaign by clicking here.
MIKE ROSEN IS IN AT 2 For an hour of bad jokes and movie and entertainment talk. I'm covering the new Ricky Gervais special and I'm not sure what Mike and Dave have planned.
WE HAVE A CHANCE TO CHECK MONOPOLY ENERGY PROVIDERS! And the next time I see Jon Caldara from the Independence Institute I may kiss him square on the cheek for this ballot initiative. The initiative is simple. It requires monopoly energy providers to set aside 5% of their profits to pay for improvements to the system and energy increases. From CompleteColorado.com:
Currently, if Xcel made $100 million in profits last year, all $100 million goes to shareholders. If Xcel needed $20 million for increased expenses, the company goes to the PUC and asks for a rate increase to have customers cover the new expenses.
Under the new initiative at the 5 percent minimum, Xcel would have to take 5 percent (or whatever the PUC sets as the amount, but no less than 5 percent) out of its profits to help defray the cost to rate payers.
The PUC will decide after passage how much, in what manner and to whom the money would be paid.
The measure makes Xcel shareholders have a stake in the game, sponsors say.
Yes!! I can't wait to see the messaging Xcel comes up with on this one. Cooperative energy companies would not face this same standard, as they already have skin in the game.
ALL CASH OFFERS ARE ON THE RISE IN DENVER And this makes a tight real estate market even tougher for a buyer who needs a mortgage. To be clear, a large majority of buyers fall into that second category, but the number of closings with all cash buyers has risen significantly the last few years, from just 12% of the market in 2019 to a whopping 21% of the market in 2021. Why? I think people are moving in from places like California where they cashed out, and large real estate investment groups are snatching up properties as well. I'll have to get Mike from the Chad Madlom team on next week to discuss it.
HIGH RATES OF GUN OWNERSHIP DON'T CORRELATE TO HIGH MURDER RATES And hat's off to our friends at Fox 31 for even doing this story. They broke down rates of gun ownership and overlaid it onto rates of fun homicides and you need to click on this link to see the graph, it's pretty telling. Long story short, there is not a connection between the two, and it actually seems to be quite the opposite.
IT'S NATIONAL DONUT DAY And if you want a list of the best donuts in Denver, here is one for you. I disagree that Voodoo is the best, but I'm a donut purist who likes a simple glazed old fashioned better than anything else. Speaking of donuts, this is a story about the man who invented the donut. Not all heroes wear capes.
SHE DID THE MANITOU INCLINE HOW MANY TIMES??? Andrea Sansone of Golden has set an insane record for the most number of times to climb the Manitou Incline in 24 hours by a woman by climbing it 19 times!! I can't even imagine how tired she is. Good for her!
DEBBIE DOES DEUTERONOMY DURING A BAT MITZVAH Imagine being a couple who just wanted to watch a friend's bat mitzvah on Zoom, but then you feel frisky during the event? What do yo do? One couple forgot to turn off their camera before they engaged in some hanky panky for the whole temple to see. What do you do if you are them. I'm changing my name and moving to another state. For real. The real question I have is who gets frisky during a bat mitzvah???
DINING OUT? CHECK YOUR BILL FOR FUNKY ADD-ONS And I get it, restaurants are trying to figure out a way to deal with rising costs without raising prices. I really get it. But why not just tack on a "Inflation Fee" rather than dance around with something that sounds...stupid? Using euphemisms like “noncash adjustment,” “fuel surcharge,” or “kitchen appreciation” just seems dodgy. Some restaurants are being honest, adding a "temporary inflation fee" to their bills. Try not to get mad and recognize that perhaps when infation...if inflation ever gets under control perhaps these extra fees will disappear, whereas price hikes will not.
THE KIFFNESS SINGS AN ANCIENT HUSKY MELODY
A GREAT OVERVIEW OF HOW CHINA IS SABER RATTLING AT TAIWAN This is a very big deal and this is a great explainer about China gearing up to try to take Taiwan.
THIS SEEMS LIKE A FUN THREE DAYS AT THE BORDER Since it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that Biden Administration has let 1.3 million people into the country illegally, how about this Tweet from Border patrol about what they encountered in THREE DAYS. Tell me again how a wall wouldn't help at all please. I'm especially stoked to meet the ten sex offenders they caught. Oh, and that amount of fentanyl could kill 29 million people using the CDC number of 2 milligrams being a fatal dose to most people.
GOOD DEEDS CAN CURE BAD SEEDS According to this study anyway. They tried to find out if they could take someone who had undesirable personality traits and change them. And they showed that doing good things could do just that. What I found most interesting is this:
However, Hudson and other psychologists have previously shown that people who actively work to change their personality are largely successful. The study author has also created a list of challenges people can take on which change the “Big Five” personality traits – extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.
If you have parts of your personality you don't like, you're not stuck with them. We can change. Changes follow changes in behavior but you have to work on it.
I THINK JINX KNEW I HAD COVID Because she was SUPER clingy and whiny the entire time I was sick, and then we had a moment when I had started feeling better and she put her face in mine and smelled my breath and chilled out after that. It's not crazy, dogs who have been trained to alert when they detect covid are more accurate than the covid tests are! We don't deserve dogs.
OLD DUDE PUNCHES OTHER OLD DUDE And here is the story if you want to read about geriatric fisticuffs.
HOW DO YOU SPELL PERSISTANCE? A girl in her fourth National Spelling Bee finally brought home the prize! Harini Logan beat another veteran of the Bee to win in her last attempt. I love these stories but have a question for my Indian-American listeners. Why are there so many IA kids in the Spelling Bee? Is this a big deal in your neck of the woods? I'm not knocking it because it is a big honor, but Indian-American kids are so strongly and disproportionately represented in this field I'm curious.
MAYBE HE AND DR. JILL CAN OPEN A PRACTICE TOGETHER Dr. Ringo Starr will now be seeing patients. Oh wait, the former Beatles drummer just got an HONORARY doctorate from the Berklee Academy of Music in Boston. My bad.
BIDEN'S NEW SPOKESPERSON IS STRUGGLING And Peter Doocy is RELENTLESS in his questioning of her on gun control. She is stumbling badly.
DOWN WITH MUSIC AND GET OFF MY LAWN I realize as I type this that I am cementing my status as an "old person" by wholeheartedly agreeing with the sentiment about piped in music in restaurants and frankly everywhere. Enough is enough. I don't need to eat sushi to the pulsing sounds of techno, and if I have to raise my voice to be heard by my dining companion I'm never going back there. Just turn it off already. Leave it in the elevators where it belongs, where ironically, there is no music anymore. The grocery store is fine though, as they are now playing my favorite tunes, which further cements my old person status.
COLORADO CAN STAY ON DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME IF ONLY.... There are a lot of caveats in the new bill that would allow Colorado to stay on Daylight Saving time, and I think we are a long way away from this becoming reality, but it's a step in the right direction. I'll take it.
SLOTH HAND HOLDING IS THE BEST HAND HOLDING
THIS IS WHY I FEEL BAD EATING OCTOPUS NOW Because they are so, so smart.
SOMEONE BOUGHT JANET YELLEN A BOOK And she was caught reading Economics for Dummies by the Babylon Bee.