Dan McLaughlin on Biden Press Coverage, Election Security and Baseball
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Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. With me, Chuck Warren. Also in the studio today, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. Irrepressible indeed. Indeed. And coming up on the line, someone I know, Chuck, you and I are excited to talk to, Dan McLaughlin of the National Review. As a senior columnist with them, previously he's practiced law for 23 years, handling securities and class action defense.

and has previously written for Red State and has been blogging since 2000. All of that is fantastic.

But there's something more important. He is a giant baseball fan. Big baseball fan. We will touch upon that today. Even though we're not a sports radio talk show, we're going to talk about it because it's America's pastime. It is America's pastime. It is a passion for you and I. Well, you're a communist if you don't like baseball. Absolutely. And probably not smart. No, that's right. So we're excited to have him on with that today. I think that should be one of the questions on the employment agreement we do going forward, right?

ladies how do you feel about that well you know and it's an interesting thing and i want to ask dan this as we get them on too have you noticed most politicos are baseball nuts it's true and i've always felt it has to do with the pace of the game the numbers there's some strategy involved i think the strategic elements of it appeal to our minds fun it's fun so it looks like we have dan on the line i don't want to hold off too long uh

And folks out there, if you're not following him on Twitter, you absolutely should be at Baseball Crank.

And with that, welcome Dan McLaughlin. Glad to be here. Dan, thanks for having me. This is Chuck Warren. We want to start off with the two most important questions of this interview today. One, what teams do you foresee in this upcoming Major League Baseball season making the playoffs? And two, if you were commissioner for the day, what are the two rule changes you would make to enhance and improve the game of baseball? Good ones.

Oh, well, I mean, the playoffs, these days, you know, we'd need 15 minutes to list all the teams that are going to be in there, right? But, you know, I mean, as a Mets fan, I'm pretty upbeat and optimistic about where the Mets are. You know, I think they obviously they have to keep their pitching staff.

get to a point in the season when they've got the entire pitching rotation healthy at the same time, which is always a challenge. You know, and I mean, clearly the Dodgers are going to continue to be a force to be reckoned with. The really interesting thing to me is going to be watching the Astros because obviously they, you know, had some ups and downs last year. And,

and seeing where they end up turning out. So, I mean, in terms of rule changes, I mean, look, I'm very much a purist and a traditionalist, so I would be...

You know, I'm perfectly fine, for example, with, say, requiring relief pitchers to face three batters. I think that's actually a pro-traditionalist move. I'm not a fan of bringing the designated hitter into the National League, but...

Thank you. I don't like the seven-inning doubleheader thing, but at the same time, there's so few doubleheaders these days that it doesn't matter that much. But the one that really offended me is this whole phantom runner on second base and extra innings thing. That's just wrong. That's bizarre.

Well, it's bizarre. Against the very nature of baseball. Well, and the bigger bases. I heard that's one thing now. They think that's going to prevent injuries, making the bases bigger. But some of this stuff they're trying in the minor leagues is wacky. I mean, limiting the number of times you can try a pickoff to three, what happens after you've thrown two? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Well, and then, you know, then that's basically how are you going to hold a guy on at that point? Yeah, I think you're just handing him a stolen base.

Yeah, which is... I mean, I guess if the...

It is true that one of the problems that the game has right now, and this is kind of a bit of a metaphor for what the economy is these days, which is that the teams are acting in a completely rational way to pursue the best winning strategies, which is guys who take a ton of pitches, swing from the heels, strike out 200 times a year, and hit a lot of home runs and hit for low batting averages.

Yeah.

And that's a perfectly good way of building a winning team, but it's not as much fun to watch as guys putting the ball in play a lot. And, you know, and the chess game of guys stealing. I mean, base stealing is so low right now around the league. And strategy. Yeah, so a rule change that encourages more base stealing in and of itself is not a bad thing, but I think the limiting the pickoff throws is kind of, you know, at that point you're kind of cuffing the pitcher. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. Well, let's get back to more of the topics of the day. You know, there's a great line is a movie I'm sure you've seen Bull Durham when the manager throws all the bats in the shower and says, you know, baseball is a simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. I feel like this applies to reporters covering the Biden White House now.

they're not making a simple game anymore where the reporters and where they ask follow-up questions. It seems out here in middle America that this is purely a, you know, we're a cheerleading corps and we're going to do what we can to make you look good unless we're forced because there's

tens of thousands of migrants trying to cross the border and people are seeing it on pictures, then we need to bring this up to you. But everything else, we're going to try to cheerlead. Do you feel, do you get that sense? I know you're in those circles. What are your feelings about how the D.C. press corps is handling the Biden administration?

Oh, absolutely. But I mean, in contrast to discussing the baseball playoffs, our list of Biden press conferences that we can analyze is quite short. You know, we finally got the one. And it was very obvious that as he did during the campaign, that Biden was picking off a preselected list of reporters with prescreened questions. And struggling with that.

Yeah, he was still kind of horrified, I think, by some of the questions, though, because, I mean, if you looked at the way they were questioning about immigration and the filibuster and such, it was all almost all of the questions were basically saying to Biden, why aren't you moving further to the left faster?

Right. And even even Biden, I think, was kind of shocked by that question. He got this this one question from Yamiche Alcindor about, you know, well, well, aren't all of these people just coming to America because they've heard the word that Trump is gone and you're this great moral man who attracts. And even Biden, I think, recognized that that was a trap.

because the last thing he wants to be telling, you know, ordinary middle America voters is, hey, we've got all these people flooding to the porter's house because I'm the president. So I think even Biden realized that that's not a tactic. But it's sort of amazing that you've got reporters up there saying, well, why don't we, you know, why aren't we, why aren't we making it easier for people to come here illegally? You know, uh,

Dan, as someone who's worked border races and worked border towns for a long time here, I think one of the traps, I think it's a huge trap. And I think one of the things they don't realize, or maybe they do, and this is why it makes them nervous, is sooner or later there's going to be video of some of these migrants being horrifically abused and or killed by the cartels that they're paying to traffic them here. Because these are not coming on their own.

These are organized criminal operations to cross the border. You put your life at risk from those cartels if you try to cross the border without paying them off. So sooner or later, that video is going to happen because we know those things happen and videos are everywhere. That's a huge risk when you're talking about this sort of open borders policy. Yeah.

Yeah, and I mean, Biden, I mean, you know, another thing that I noticed yesterday, I mean, if you remember when Trump was talking during the campaign about the coyotes, right, the smugglers, and people were jumping up and down about how, like, racist it is for Trump to use that word Biden was using yesterday. I mean, it's just that's how they're known, you know, and the people who are in the business. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think sometimes...

uh... you know conservatives sometimes i think get to up in arms about well open borders means you're letting in like bad people which is certainly true because if you don't control the border you're gonna let uh... drug dealers and terrorists and various other types of people in but it's also a humanitarian problem when you have you know you have innocent people hard work and people trying to get into the country uh... and and they're getting a few

uh... and so it really it i mean it does go both ways there and uh... you know i look at it it's hard not to be sympathetic uh... absolutely people who want to come here i mean i think most of us probably are descended from people who work you know like poor working-class people who wanted to come to america for opportunity but the reality is you can't let in everybody and you have to have some kind of orderly process for how you do it uh... and i think that

you know it's it's one of those issues where i think they're actually is an awful lot of middle-of-the-road sentiment in the country and to kept democrats just keep running away from that in a way that that is is that you know that they're they're in this echo chamber people in the media and academia hollywood everything saying well why don't we just open the borders completely uh... and and i think they're uh... you know that their their court to real danger

You know, let's quickly transition here to you wrote a fantastic piece in the National Review on election reforms. You know, Sam and I, you know, being involved in elections, feel that, you know, there's things that happen, but not at the magnitude that some of our conservative friends really, truly believe in their heart happen. I had lunch with a

an acquaintance the other day and you know they thought I had gone just crazy not not believing that Dominion machines were rigged and I mean just I mean just looked at me like you know what is wrong with you are you on something basically it was their opinion Sam and I are the opinion that there's there's some reforms that need to happen um you know but the bigger problem is a um you know

The D.C. and New York media probably need to start filing FEC reports for the contributions they're making to Democrat campaigns. And we think ballot harvesting is a real big problem. And the Republicans either have to really stop that or they got to start doing ballot harvesting themselves. There's nothing stopping us from doing it. But that's what they do year round. Take your pick. We just have to play by the same rules the opposition has. But let's talk about your article. What are the three things that you and we'll –

Go for a bit here, then go over to the next segment on this as well. Let's start with number one. What is one thing if you were king for the day that you would immediately implement on election reform?

I would like to see, you know, I mean, one thing that actually I suggest at the end of my piece, which I think would be really helpful, is to have much harder deadlines against both state election officials, whether they be legislatures, whether they be state executive officials or federal courts.

uh... or certainly the justice department uh... having really anybody change the rules on election either you know within sixty days before election day or after the election yet right i mean you're going to have law suits after election saying well this law wasn't followed that law was involved but you should not be still fighting you know a week before the election or a month after the election about what the rules would have been and no

Dan, I got to say, I thought the Supreme Court refusing to certify the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania case, and we'll get to that when we come back, but refusing to certify and hear those Wisconsin and Pennsylvania cases, not on Dominion, but on the changes to the law, was a real travesty. And we'll talk about that more when we come back. Broken potholes. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Dan McLaughlin of the National Review. Please follow him on Twitter at Baseball Crank. Great Twitter name. When we went to break, we were talking about some of the elections changes that happened before this election. And I kind of made the point that

The laws in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were changed without the authority of their state legislatures, I think the outcry over issues around the Dominion machines, perceived issues around the Dominion machines and all the other potential election fraud things that Trump hammered on really obscured the fact that those were two very different things than those two cases, which should have been heard by the Supreme Court.

And I think it's critical that states take strong steps to reassert authority in elections.

Yeah, I agree with that completely. I think the court really missed an opportunity. And look, ordinarily the court, A, the court doesn't like to get involved in elections disputes, which I understand. They still feel kind of burned by all the controversy over Bush versus Gore. And B, they don't generally like to get involved in cases that are sort of academic, right, where their decision is not going to change the outcome. But

But this is a chance for them to kind of lay down the law in a way that is helpful. Well, what's happened by them doing that? They've done something conservatives should not want to have happen, is that being courts deciding who wins, right? So they should have done this before the election so the rules were clear because then you had conservatives on our side as you had Democrats on the side in the past saying,

Go and say, well, the court will go rule on this. Well, I don't want as a conservative judges ruling on elections. I think that's a horrible trend to start. But, you know, them not doing that obviously added confusion and fed the conspiracy minded folks on on the right.

It absolutely did. And then on top of that, I think you have a real issue here when you have in 2016 essentially two thirds of Democrats who think the election was stolen by Russia or whatever. In 2020, you have two thirds of Republicans who think it's stolen. Election integrity and transparency is really critical for the functioning of our country going forward, isn't it?

Yeah, it is very dangerous to have. And, you know, and it's always going to be that mistrust is going to be exploited inevitably by the worst people in the system. And, you know, it is it's just it's corrosive. And it is exactly the sort of thing that you have courts of law, among other things, to eliminate, you know, to be able to say, look, everybody got their day in court. And we you know, we ruled on what the rules are and one side, one fair and square.

Absolutely. Dan, let's talk about photo identification. So right now in various states, people who are getting the vaccine have to show picture ID to get the vaccine. We do everything in this world from a mortgage to opening a checking account to getting a car loan. You can't do this without a photo ID. What do you believe? And polling shows two thirds basically believe photo IDs required.

not only in person, but on absentee balloting. Right. My question is, what why do you think Democrats oppose the photo I.D. so much, even when Republicans say we'll just pay for it? They don't. We're not going to have anybody give money a pocket. The state will provide this for free. What do you feel their gripe is about it?

I mean, there's a combination of things. I mean, I think part of it is just that they feel they can make hay on being able to have something they can say about voter suppression, you know, that they feel. I mean, I think they do tap into kind of the historic fears of, you know, black voters in particular who have an ancestral memory in some cases that doesn't go back terribly far of real and genuine voter suppression.

And I think that they're just... They have this kind of knee-jerk thing that says, well, you shouldn't make voting harder without considering the idea that, look, any kind of rule, any rule at all, is going to impose some amount of burden on the voting process. But...

If the alternative is you have no rules, then you have no ability to secure the ballot whatsoever. And ultimately, you have no ability to protect the votes of people who do cast them from being swapped. Well, and when you combine that with automatic mail ballots, you're creating a hole in the system that can be very easily exploited and that I would not call voter fraud necessarily fraud.

But that I would definitely, you know, it's dirty. I mean, the way they collect and gather ballots and harvest ballots is not a clean process.

And I think that hurts the perception of our elections. Absolutely. Dan, what's been the feedback in your National Review article? For those of you who don't know, please look it up. It was a National Review two weeks ago. It's very thorough. It's very detailed. There are wonderful call-to-action items there that if you really are concerned about election integrity, these are good points to look at. What's the feedback been to your article since you posted it?

I mean, you know, I've gotten a fair amount of positive feedback. There are always going to be some critics of the article, most of whom did not read it, which is inevitably the way these things are. I mean...

You know, I think we just... My view is you just got to have... Many of these are just kind of common sense solutions. And I don't think that we ought to be... You know, we shouldn't put unreasonable burdens on people. For example, one of the suggestions that

that has been made is, well, you know, you should have to get like your signature on an absentee ballot notarized. Well, okay, I can see if you get it notarized, maybe there should be some, you know, that should immunize your signature from challenge. But, you know, we shouldn't be forcing people to go to a notary. That's a step way too far.

Yeah, so I can see that as an alternative to some other things. But, you know, that's an example of putting an unreasonable burden on them.

You know, I mean, I think the Democrats do have the one legitimate, really legitimate grievance that I think Democrats have and that Republicans ought to be doing more to alleviate is is the fact that, you know, in a lot of particularly in a lot of black neighborhoods around the country, there aren't enough polling places. There aren't enough voting machines at the polls.

polling places. And it seems to me that instead of extending like a month of early voting and doing all these things to water down and to like help people, bribe people who are standing online and stuff like that with, you know, food and water and free drinks. The simple solution is to try to reduce the lines. Yeah.

You know, Dan, we've talked about that before. You do that with more polling places, I mean, obviously, and you have to fund them and you have to staff them and you have to pay for that. But one thing I think that Chuck and I have talked about before is the destruction of all the civic institutions and the things that united us in this country, the fracturing of those institutions. And I got to tell you, I think going to the polls –

was one of those institutions that actually has hurt us not having, that mail-in balloting has taken away some of that civic unity. And we've talked about doing things like having a four-day in-person election where that Tuesday is a state holiday. And you make public transportation free. You really make it into a celebrated event. And early voting should be open until – if you're going to do early voting, keep it open until 8 or 9. Why are they shutting these things down at 5 and 6? People work. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I mean, look, I'm not a fan of early voting, but I have far less objection to early voting that is, you know, either like you said, a four-day week, you know, Saturday through Tuesday, or even a Wednesday through Tuesday if you want to make it a week.

But you really should not be stretching it, you know, two weeks, a month of early voting. Because first of all, even just in terms of securing the voter registration list. And it changes the timelines on candidates. Dan, I'm sorry to have to cut you off. We're going to break. Broken potholes. We'll be right back. It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. In the studio with me, my co-host, Chuck Warren. On the line, Dan McLaughlin of the National Review. You can follow him at Baseball Crank on Twitter. Be sure to check out his columns. One of the brightest people in news media today. And Chuck, when we went to break, you had a very good question. Yeah, Dan, what is... Tell us how a person who practiced securities law for 22 years...

became a columnist, a reporter. How'd you make that step? What got you to do it? Well, I guess like boiling a frog, it's something that happened a little bit slowly. I did an op-ed column in college, and I started doing originally baseball blogging on the side back in 2000.

And, you know, after I worked in the World Trade Center, so after, you know, terrorists blew up my office, I got bored back into political writing and blogging and joined a group blog, Red State, in 2004. I was there for 12 years, started doing, you know, National Review brought me over to do as a contributing columnist in 2016. So I'd been doing that.

You know, I'd been doing that for two decades by the time I finally got the opportunity to leave the law behind and come on board to NR full-time. Actually, you know, in March of 2020, so just when the whole world was moving to working from home involuntarily, I was taking a job that involved, you know, sitting at home and writing all day. Yeah.

Okay, so you're well-read. You're writing a lot. What are two issues you foresee that really concern you about America over the next two to four years, that things you feel like, look, we have got to focus on this like a laser, or we have to change the course we're going on, or we're just in real trouble? What are a couple of those things that come on top of your mind?

I mean, as much as I'm concerned about spending, and I think the government spending that we're seeing right now is orders of magnitude beyond anything we've seen in our lifetimes. But I would say the two biggest things that worry me right now, one are attacks on our system, and the other is our culture.

uh... so in terms of the system you know it's it's things across the board from attempts to change the election rules to uh... trying to break down the filibuster in the senate to you know trying to the senate with new states or practice pre-court all of these efforts you know coming from the democrats principally uh... to change the rules of the system in ways that you know kind of will be permanent and

You know, the culture is a broader concern, and I think it's not just a matter of, you know, left-wing culture war, although that's a big part of it. There is also what you're talking about, that decline in faith and trust in American institutions, decline in, you know, a sense of civic responsibility and understanding of, you know, what Ronald Reagan called an informed patriotism, an understanding of our history.

I feel like both sides are sort of talking our country into a banana republic status, which is really uncalled for. And that's something that concerns me quite a bit. I mean, you talk to people on either side. 2016, it was stolen. It was stolen for Trump. 2020, it was stolen for Biden, stolen for Biden. And, you know, you listen to them. And if you're just someone who's not paying much attention, which is 80 percent of the voters, you're going to think, oh, my gosh, we're Venezuela. Right.

Well, and I think politics are the religion now for big chunks of America. And when you frame political arguments on the basis of faith, you're essentially saying that the people who oppose you, it gives you ground to call them evil or to see them as evil and as other.

Yeah, I really think that – I mean, I think if you turn from the 1990s to the 2000s is where a lot of the hinge for this is. It did happen gradually, but it just seemed to me in going back to my youth in like the 80s and 90s that there was much less of –

a combination of two things, which is on the one hand, sort of conducting attacks, not just on the politicians you disagreed with, but the people who voted for them. And simultaneously, the rise in refusal to accept the legitimacy of election losses. Yeah, both sides have been guilty of that rather repeatedly. So, Dan, what is the next article you're working on? What is something we can be looking forward to?

Yeah, I mean, I'm always looking at, you know, the 2024 Republican field, which is, of course, deep and complicated and all that much depends on what Trump does. And taking a look at some of the election law changes that have been coming through in Georgia.

Fantastic. You know, I think what happened in Georgia is going to happen in a lot of other states in the red states. And then you're going to see kind of the opposite kickback from the blue states who will loosen election laws.

But we'll see. Yep. Dan, thank you. We're still learning all this fun radio stuff. Thank you for being on with our training wheels here. We really appreciate you. Great conversation today. Broken Potholes is coming back in just a minute with our sunshine moment. Thank you, Dan.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now. The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping.

It's time for the sunshine moment on Broken Potholes. Today's ray of sunshine comes courtesy of the great, the one and only, the Mackenzie Seberad.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I want to talk about weddings in the era of COVID. And this topic will become more relevant because this weekend we are celebrating a special couple. Yes, we are.

In the past year, the reality of COVID-19 has stepped in to influence weddings by postponing, modifying, and changing the way wedding celebrations take place. I think we've all witnessed that firsthand. Some examples, there's way more at-home weddings, maybe backyard, extremely small, intimate weddings, lots of tented affairs, and a huge rise of elopements.

But there is a positive to it, though. Couples are saying that they have a deeper appreciation of what is essential, especially with respect to how they celebrate with family and friends. And for many, a new and fearless spirit has energized them to break with wedding traditions and transform the way they want to marry.

And that's opposed to fairy tale or the celebrity weddings they see on TV or in magazines. So I think that's pretty special. I think that's beautiful, quite frankly. I mean, I think there are sort of two types of weddings. There's that sort of fraternity sorority party wedding.

or, you know, celebrity wedding. And then there's the family part. And that's the really important part. It's nice that people are focusing on that. It would be interesting to do a study of how many people you invited to the wedding that you're still talking to or know exactly what's going on in your life within five years or 10. You see that a lot. You see it a lot here in Arizona. And I always see these big crowds and lots of friends. I'm like, okay,

Okay, well, how many of you will talk to Barbara or Janet and so forth? It's a different time. So special person this weekend is my daughter getting married due to COVID. We've had two cancellations. So today will be three times the charm. But it's been interesting to watch my daughter as a person who believed in the fairytale wedding. Mm-hmm.

And it's, you know, we've had this gorgeous weather in Phoenix all week till yesterday and today. Today she's getting married, and then it hits back to 80 again tomorrow. And, you know, we were talking about it, and, you know, last night as we were doing wedding rehearsal walk, I asked her if she's doing okay. I'm quite grumpy about the weather. I think it's a load of crap. You know, it's not very good for tourism either. And I was asking her about it, and she says...

You know, I got my family. I'm getting married. I'm great. And I think that goes to what Mackenzie, I mean, she's absolutely giddy about it. The day is here. Those closest to her are here. And, you know, we talked about this before. There's there are look, you can never you can never the amounts of death and carnage from COVID have been horrible. Yeah.

But in regards to some things like this, it's caused people to take a step back and say what is really important today and long term. Yeah, absolutely. And I hope people, you know, people have short memories, but I hope they keep that in mind somehow. What do they do it through keeping journals or, you know? You know, I got to tell you, though, Chuck, as a Northeasterner, if I'm being forced to wear a suit.

I'm taking 65. Yes, yes, yes, yes. What is this 80? You really need me sweating that much? Well, as the ladies in the studio can tell based on my tan and your pale skin that, you know, one worships a son and one does not. So that's not the case, maybe. Sam, let's talk a little bit. I want to talk about the Biden press conference. But first, I want to talk about Mayor Gallego.

our chief fear monger in the state of Phoenix. I think her leadership through COVID, if anybody who's paid attention to it, probably two or three would just say, what a nightmare. No, it's beyond a nightmare. I mean, the press here and particularly the Arizona Republic, which then leads the tone or tenor for all the other local media, they're in love with her and they have been for years and they excuse every fault. But her leadership under COVID has been

beyond awful. I mean, she has been driving the fear mongering since day one, claiming that by middle of summer, we were going to have 800 plus people a day in Phoenix alone, not just the state dying. She has continued to push fear at every single turn. Phoenix has had the most draconian restrictions in all of Arizona. We kept kids off of outdoor soccer fields until last week.

And there was no reason for that. She made a push to close the hiking trails.

It's basically nil. I mean, that really is a joke when you see people, you know, walking by themselves in a park and they're wearing a mask. That's the result of the fear peddling and fear pushing that Mayor Gallego and to a lesser extent, Kyrsten Sinema and our local media have pushed. And it is she is psychologically damaged.

Thousands and thousands of people. It is inexcusable, and yet it's not merely excused. It's being cheer-led.

by our local newspaper. Well, the local newspaper has been in the bed for a long time, unfortunately. I remember when we were doing Responsible Budgets Initiative to fix Phoenix pension problem. Right. Right. There was nothing more to it. Fix Phoenix pension. There are no tax increases. You weren't robbing Peter to pay Paul. You say you have to be accurate with your numbers. This is what you do need to do to get this even. We weren't cutting anyone's budget. And remember, when we discussed that, my great logic was, well, the

This is something they'll support us on. It was crickets. I mean, all they were concerned about is Chuck Warren's funding this. And, you know, he's part time resident of Utah. Yeah. No, I mean, look, they took they took you, me and Tim Mooney. Now, two of us live here full time. You're here half the time. Absolutely. And the narrative was these are out of town people.

some sort of black, dark money, nefarious out-of-town consultants. You paid for it. Oh, exactly. I mean, that was ridiculous. Yeah, it's beyond ridiculous. And then...

With the council, how much did you have to put in to fund up, shore up pensions here two or three weeks ago at Phoenix? Oh, yeah. Now, I mean, at this point, right, Phoenix has about 10 percent of our budget that's getting eaten up by past due pension costs. That increases massively in the coming years. So we're going to get to the point in a couple of years where it's a quarter of our free cash flow to address this problem.

I mean, it is just unbelievable. And then the Republic will start writing an article about it saying this is a crisis. Why wasn't it taken care of? And they will what they will not do is blame what they desperately, clearly hope will be then Governor Kate Gallego, because she's clearly planning to run for governor. In fact, she's raising money right now that's going into her city fundraising account for mayor.

But we all know she's not running for reelection as mayor, that she's intending to run for governor. And this is essentially a scam that will allow her to take in max contributions now for a theoretical mayoral campaign. Those monies will get rolled over and those same donors will be allowed to max out to her again.

for her governor's run. So it's cheating the law. And this is a woman who spends all her time beating her chest over, you know, how ethical and all that she is. The truth is she has proven nothing of the sort. Well, you know, we talked about this before. I really do believe there needs to be a law that if you are a current governor,

elected official and you're deciding to run for another office, you need to resign your office. Yeah. I mean, let's not even have the tinge of that gray. Just say, look, I'm mayor. I'm running for governor. I'm going to resign so I can really do what I'm supposed to be doing, running full time, not being paid by the taxpayers. Well, and quite frankly, when you have an existing account for a lower level office, you know, fundraising account, those money should either have to be returned to the donors or

Or they should be donated to a nonprofit. And those nonprofits should be very limited into which ones you can give it to. You know, I mean, talk about like food banks and the Arizona Animal Welfare League. The people that we know aren't ballot harvesting with that money. That should be what gets happened to that money. And you should have to raise all your money fresh. This is really cheating the system. She can use her influence and her power to...

basically coerced donations twice. And to be fair, she's not the only elected official politician who does this. They all do this. But that doesn't make it not wrong. Right, right, right, right. And if you're out there campaigning on, you know, how clean you are and how you're the most ethical person and you care most and all this stuff that she tries to claim,

You ought to hold yourself to a higher standard, but we've seen they don't. I want to get back to finish up here on the Biden situation. But first, I want to ask the ladies here, you know, obviously the weddings on my mind today and the weather. How many friends have you had that have had to cancel or delay weddings during COVID? I've had at least four or five. Same for you, Kip? I'd say probably two or three. We have Jamie here. Jamie?

Nobody who's had to cancel, but I had one friend who had to seriously scale back her wedding pretty drastic. Where was she getting married at here? No, actually in Columbus, Ohio. Oh, Ohio. Yeah. I mean, I guess just saying Columbus, Ohio answers so many things to that question. So how did they handle it, ladies? Did they reschedule it? Has anybody called off a wedding now because of it?

Nobody's canceled for me, but I've had one go through with it who cut their wedding invitation list and oh gosh, probably only a third went. And then the rest all were rescheduled for this spring or summer. I think it's a little bit of a blessing in disguise because I do have one friend who they called off the whole thing completely. They ended up breaking up, but if they had gotten married...

They would have had to go through a divorce, but just because of the delay, they never ended up getting to the marriage. You know what would be interesting? 10, 20 years, one of you look it up one day and you're sitting with your kids in the backyard, Google, what's the divorce rate of people who got married during these COVID years? I bet you the divorce rate drops dramatically. Yes, although— I mean, look, you're really making a decision. I'm in this. I want to do this, right? Because if you're delaying it and can't— I think we have moved up the divorces of lots and lots of people this year.

Yes. But for those still getting married, it will be interesting to see the divorce rate 10, 20 years now. I bet it's quite low compared to averages. You know what I actually thought was really interesting? I saw in the newspaper the other day that everyone was kind of talking at the start of COVID that you would have a giant wave of COVID babies.

But it turns out to be just the opposite, that there are far fewer people who have gotten pregnant. It's the only prediction on COVID I had that did not come true. I was so wrong on that. I just thought there would be this baby boom, five new congressional seats. I mean, I just thought the population. Apparently, between the election and the laundry, there was too much to argue about. I will say, though, I got a quarantine puppy and that is the best birth control. He ate the couch and I was like, I can't afford it.

A child, let alone this puppy. Kylie, this is not about you. This is about your puppy. This is about love and weddings. And Kylie somehow throws in her puppy. So Kylie, tell us about your puppy. What is it? Oh, he's a labradoodle. And he's very bad. We're working on training right now. What does that mean you're working on training? You say no? Yes, we put him outside when he eats the couch. Well, you know...

I'd feel bad for you, but right now one of my cats is serving in the role of phantom pooper. Oh, my gosh. So I don't know. I can't feel too bad for that couch because it's been at least twice this week I've stepped in it walking out of bed. Well, besides this sunshine topic, let's go to my last item here. I am so depressed at the state of journalism.

It's it is so bad. And that press conference highlighted what an utter. Yeah, it is. I mean, that was embarrassing. There's nothing serious about it. There's no follow up questions. There wasn't there wasn't even anything on COVID except his statement. I mean, no one's going to follow up on it.

I mean, it's ridiculous. Well, and then they let him go on and on about the racist filibuster. Which he has used numerous times as a U.S. senator with Barack Obama, who both thought it was the best thing since sliced bread when they were in the Senate. Every Democrat in the Senate in 2020 voted for multiple filibusters, every single one of them. I mean, they filibustered Tim Scott's bill.

that was designed to make elections more accessible for African Americans. They have filibustered everything. So aren't they all right? I mean, by their own standard, aren't they all racist?

Well, obey that standard, but that's not how the press reports it now. So, you know, it's the worst double standard. Look, I do think I do think there I am not for eliminating the filibuster. I do think there are some things that need to change. I mean, I guess, you know, I grew up a myth. Mr. Smith goes to Washington with Jimmy Stewart. Right. I mean, right. I like the old days. You got to stand up. You got to keep talking. Right. And you can tag team if you want to. Yeah, I actually think a talking filibuster makes a great deal of sense. I do. I do.

I mean, you should be able to tag team. It should be one person. Say, look, we're filibustering, and they're just going to keep talking until they get what they want, right? If you haven't seen it, it's one of the great episodes of The West Wing when a senator is filibustering, and they find out it's about his grandkid and an issue, leukemia. Oh, we've got to look that up. And so, yeah, if you haven't, that's a great episode to watch. Kylie can do that while she's training her puppy to say no or not chew the couch. Good luck, Kylie. Good luck.

With that, Broken Potholes will be back next week. With Burgess Owens. Congressman Burgess Owens. With your host, Sam Stone, Chuck Warren, in the studio with us today, the lovely chorus of ladies. Have a good one.