Live July 24

Whether we like it or not, he's the self-proclaimed governor of mid-Missouri, and he's the host of TTBS, the podcast. Since we can't shut him the hell up, here's Tom Bradley. Thank you, Nikki. And we're a little late this morning, and I love pulling back the curtain on what it is that we do for a living over here. Hey, I'm in charge of the video, right? For some reason, I was making myself feel like that you were. I was starting with an overhead shot of us right now. We're live from Truman's Bar and Grill, but if you're listening to this as recorded, then I guess it's not live for you. But it's funny because this morning on my way in, I was listening to Howard Stern. I finally have it on my SiriusXM, and do you have SiriusXM? I do not. For some reason, I figured you did not. I'm cheap. That's why. No, no. No, it's because you're raising a whole herd of children. You've got to do what you've got to do. I don't even pay for Pandora. I just ignore the ads, you know? I don't pay for Pandora. I've never paid for Pandora in my life. I did for a brief time. There was this one Ford commercial that drove me absolutely insane. There was a Ford commercial. It was so repetitive, and it was just so annoying that I was like, you know what, I'll give them five bucks to shut these guys up, so I did that for a little while. One of the things I think that happens is when you've got commercials. People say they don't like advertisements and commercials. They're full of crap. What they don't like are bull crap. They really want to be told something. What are you drinking this morning? Iced tea? Just iced tea, yeah. There's a new iced tea that comes with a little bit of protein. You're like, wait a second. No, there's not. I just made that up. But if there was, and you were on a kick where you're really trying to get in your protein and take care of it, you'd be like, what's the name of that iced tea? Where do I get it? I want to check it out. Does it taste weird? All of a sudden, an advertisement that's speaking to you. The Ford commercial, not putting down Ford, but my guess is it was probably speaking at you. Well, and it was the main thing was it was so repetitive. It was like the only ad. Say that again five times. Exactly. I was like, come on, man. Just mix it up. You have an unlimited number of advertisers. I've never owned a Ford in my life. Give me anything else. I completely understand. So the deal with listening to Stern all the way in this morning, and I don't know why I didn't have it for so long, but Deb took care of it, so I have it now, is that a couple of the cohorts on the show were explaining people that were stealing his bits years ago and using them in other markets. That happened all the time. I probably stole some from Howard when he was in New York long before. Not like an audio clip. You mean just like he'd have a catchphrase or something like that that people would take and then just reuse that? No, no, no. I would steal a bit from him. Oh, so the one that was being stolen was a thing called Weather by God or God's Weather or something. I never heard that, but I did. I had a buddy who lived in New York and he would record an hour or 90 minutes, I guess, 45 minutes each side of a cassette tape and mail it off to me. This is the old days, people. You've got to hear this guy, Howard Stern. I remember in D.C., he was on D.C. 101, I don't remember what he was on in New York. Howard is only a few years older than me, but he had made it to this massive jump into big markets by being outrageously himself. I always appreciated that. Of course, I stole a few ideas from him or whatever, but they had people that were doing God's Weather in other markets and he'd find out about it. They felt like it was okay. They were like, yeah, but you had that up there and we're all family because we're all radio. I was like, no, we're not family. You're not my family, bitch, and you're not paying me any money. So they were pulling… At least change the name. Right. Come up with something else. They were pulling the curtain back behind what goes on and we're going to do a little bit of that this morning. This is an open mic morning is what I came up with earlier this week in talking about it. You're not invited to come up here and take a mic, so please understand. It's open mic for you and I. Both of us. I don't get a chance anymore to sit there and just spew my crap for hours every single morning on a radio show. And I think it's starting to show up when I'm talking to people. I'm going through a drive-thru and they're like, that'll be $4.95 for one small coffee. And I go, yeah, time was when we had inflation like that. It was 1975. I'll never forget. And they're like, sir, please pull forward. So now I go over to like parking space pickup number two and I just sit there and talk to myself. I talk too much, but it's open mic morning and it means we're going to be able to catch up on a lot of stuff and we're probably not going to be here for a full 50 or 55 minutes. I don't know. Be that as it may, we will share some things going on behind the scenes, including what's coming up over the next several weeks. I think I gave you two of the next guests that we have here. And I'll hold off on mentioning who they are until we get to releasing the hounds with Creekside Pet Center. And we'll go into that. But you're looking at the email. Did I give you two? Is that right? There wasn't one we were just talking about. Oh, here we go. Yes. Oh, yeah. But we have a third. Yeah. And we have two more guests beyond that that are still sort of in the wings. And so we'll mention those coming up. And I'm very, very excited about it. And so we'll get into it and chat about that. The last several weeks, we've had some guests on here that have been, for me, captivating. I don't give a damn if you agree with me or not. I'm not trying to sell it to you that that's what it is. But for me, it's been captivating to have individuals talk about their stories. And in some cases, it might be a short story that's the last couple of years. And in other cases, it's a life story. And we have more like that that will be coming up. And I'll just give you some insight into what they involve. One is a young man, still a young man, who a couple of years ago was shot. And the bullet is still lodged in his spine. And he is in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And he was on the radio show. But I ran into somebody this week, and they said, this deal you're doing with this podcast is so much different, because you're able to zoom in and really focus in on one subject matter. And sometimes that's one guest for an entire 45, 50, almost 55 minutes. No commercial breaks. Yeah. Zoom in. Occasional sponsorships. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bill, we've got to pay the light bill. Yeah, yeah. When we say pay the light bill, here's what I really mean. Pay the light bill for the light on our pool and the heater that's running. Because we are truly the ugly Americans. What's the temperature been this week? Oh, my God. 102 is what it was yesterday when I was driving down the road. You know, two days ago, 36 hours ago, I was in the pool. I got in the pool. Deb was in there. I got home from a business meeting, and I got into the pool, and I go, do you have the heater? And she looked at me, and she goes, it just needed a tinge. It's 102 outside. Oh, man. I'm just simply saying. That's great. So, yes. So, occasionally, we've got to have a sponsorship. See, and already, we're able to talk a little bit this morning, longer than we can on a regular basis, which makes me wonder, do we need to have an open mic episode on a regular basis? Hey, I'm all for it. It's getting us to shut up is the hard part. So, usually, an hour flies by in two seconds, it feels like. A couple of things. Did I mention last week that Frank said, we do a good job, although occasionally, you might see my throat. Like, the camera may be focused on my throat, or it may be blurry or something like that. That was very funny. She is a long, long time listener and supporter of what we do. You don't want to see your Tom's apple? Well, it was just, we started off one of our podcasts, and the video was absolutely focused on my throat. It was zoomed in that much. Yeah, yeah. That's great. And so, we do mess up a little bit. We may have already messed up today. I want to go to our wide shot right now. You were laughing about this shot earlier. You're looking at it right now. Yeah, it looks like a security camera. It looks like you just tapped into Truman's security cameras, and that's what we're using for the overhead. Maybe we should. Maybe we should. A bunch of angles. I actually want to get a wide angle on this thing. I want to explain to you, as we pull the curtain back a little bit this morning, about some of the crap that we go through. I cannot for the life of me remember if it was Big Gender or the Sexy Bass Player that said, your time is off between your audio and your video, and I go, what are you talking about? People, when we went to HDMI cameras and to the switcher you now see, if you watch our video feed, which we're live on YouTube and Facebook right now with those, if you watch closely, it was off. I had no idea. The HDMI slowed down the video presentation, so the audio was coming out like, I was guesstimating a quarter of a second early, and then, are you the one who told me, or did someone else? No, it was me. So it was one of those two said, actually, you can slow down the audio through your OBS software, and I go, really? So I worked on it this week. Now our video and our audio should be synced up in the presentation to you, and so that everyone who's keeping score at home can understand, we had to slow down our audio 200 milliseconds to make it match. That is some finite math. And I said to you, I said, I have never, ever known or paid attention to the length of a millisecond. Yeah. And I said, this is my first question I asked when you walked in, I said, is a millisecond one one thousandth of a second? And you said, I guess so. And I said, so it's 200 thousandths of a second or two tenths, which means it's about a quarter of a second, which is what I first estimated. You're good. Go with grandpa's estimation. Speaking of grandpa, this is something, as I was peeing right before the show, that I decided I wanted to bring up. And that's of being of an older age now. I do not wake up lots of times during the night to have to pee. I'm not even certain that I got up last night to pee, typically probably once a night. I want to tell you at this weird age of where I am right now, and if the kids are listening and you don't want to hear us talk about, let me make this more specific. If my grandchildren are listening and you don't want to hear, you don't want my grandchildren to hear grandpa talking about what he and grandma did last night, you turn it off now. Let me explain. I'm not sure if I want to hear this. I'm going to explain my age to you very, this is so, boom, it just came to me just now. And so if the camera's on me right now, I'm going to go back to you as I explain this. Here is my age right now. I'm still young enough to want to brag about the fact that I had sex last night. I'm still young if I want to brag. I am old enough. I have to brag. You've got your own both sides of it. Am I right? Am I right? Did you clear this with Deb before you give okay? I guarantee you she's okay with it. She was last night. Are you channeling your Stern? Is that what's happening this morning? Did you just channel your Howard Stern? No, no, but it is, it is, first you need to understand, I have a great appreciation for what he has done in his career and a much greater appreciation for what he is as an interviewer. He's really, really tremendous at it. The rest of his show is not me, and it's not even my listening enjoyment, so when he starts going into other stuff, typically I'm drawn away from that and I wind up, I'll start listening to some of my Yacht Rock radio or something else that I love on there. I do want to get into some serious subject matter that we have in Columbia, and that's going to mean, it's not going to be an announcement, but I do want to unveil a couple of things, so let's now, brought to you by Mid-Mow Dog Boarding, Mid-Mow Dog Boarding is what you're going to start really recognizing and knowing when I bring up Creekside Pet Center, Bed and Biscuit, and Dirty Harry's in Boonville, in that it really is an amazing family of people that love your pet almost as much as you do. And I just can't thank them enough, and Jacob Brummett, you know they've got a menagerie at their house, and they've got this little hobby farm of animals, and it includes equine. I was going to say horses, but there are ponies and there are colts, and it's a lot of stuff. Go to the category instead of the specifics, I like it. And so, apparently, some of them, I don't know if they chewed their way through an electric fence, or if they broke it down, you know, like they backed up to it and used their hind legs. I don't know what they did, but they broke out. Horses will break out, and horse-like creatures. So they had to wrangle them up. At some point, Judge, who was the pony that was in our radio studio on the second floor of the Bank of Missouri building in the Buttonwood Business Center, Judge was out, they got a halter on him, listen to me acting like I know what I'm talking about, and they had him trot home. They didn't ride Judge the pony, they trotted him home. Did they run alongside? No. Jacob drove a vehicle alongside, and Judge just trotted alongside the mile and a half on the way home, or whatever the hell it was. So that was cool. That was cool. Creekside Pet Center, Bed and Biscuit, and Dirty Harry's, mid-mode dog boarding, they love your pets almost as much as you do, and if you ask your pets sometimes more. So I'm just saying. I've said, if I've got this Christianity thing wrong, I hope the reincarnation thing is right, and I just want to come back as an American pet, because is there anybody that has a greater life than an American pet? I mean, come on. Well the other night, Daisy Jane was swimming in a heated swimming pool. Your dog has its own heated swimming pool. So I'm fairly certain that you are correct. Okay, I sent you an email this week, but I want to share, as we get into talk about this, and so it's not going to be an announcement, but I want to, if you listened to the Tom Bradley Show radio version for a long time, for the last year or so, you heard me say several times, I'm not going to get off this topic. I'm on it, and I'm not moving from this point as we go forward. And here's my, here's the topic, and here's my belief. We need to outlaw panhandling in the streets of Columbia. For some reason, there are some people out there that believe that you have some sort of a God-given right or a constitutional right, a freedom of speech, to be soliciting anywhere at any given time. Bitch, don't work like that. And I am quoting one of our founding fathers. That's in his lesser known letters, right? I am fairly certain it was Ben Franklin. Yeah, he said that. You can see him with those little, yeah, and he's plying a kite. And somebody said, yeah, and somebody said, hey Ben, you're going to get struck by a light. Bitch, it don't work like that. So here's the thing. You don't get, freedom of speech doesn't mean you get to say anything, pontificate, solicit, ask for handouts anywhere, and the Constitution protects you to do that. It doesn't work that way. And what the homeless and the addicted are doing in our marketplace right now, in our town, in our community, in our township, in Columbia, Missouri, USA, is endangering all of us. And it's not right. Tom, you just don't like to see people out there that are less fortunate than you. Dude, I don't know what rock you woke up under. People that are less fortunate than me don't make me feel better about myself, I'll tell you that. Maybe there is something inherently human in which we look at people that are begging for money and it just makes us feel icky. Maybe that's true. But let me explain this to you. That median on that major thoroughfare was not put there for people to solicit for donations. It wasn't put there, and you're a minister. It wasn't put there to minister Christ to all the followers or non-followers out there. That's not what it's there for. It's dangerous. You've got cars driving by. I mean, you've got 4,000 pound weapons. It's too close. There is nothing in the Constitution that would prohibit us as a community from outlawing panhandling on the medians. There may be a restriction that makes sense also on the corners and the roadways of the thoroughfares. You know, after all, cars are supposed to be driving on the road, but not on the shoulder, correct? Oh, can we have panhandling then on the shoulder? Right there along Providence going through town? On Stadium? On the exit ramps where they've been forever? Coming off of Interstate 70? Will they go to Constitution? No, they don't. It needs to be. And I said, I'm not going to get away from this thing. Now, what's going on with the leaders in Columbia? I don't know. You figure it out. Because if I start trying to explain it to you, you're going to think I have some other agenda. Oh, Tom, you lean in this direction. Guys, unless it's been a rough night with Deb, I generally don't, you know what I'm saying. Do you hear what I'm saying over here? That I don't lean. You don't lean. That's not what it's about. We have major, major problems going on with the homeless. So I sent you an email, and I had reached out to someone who I've known for a long time. Wendy is a real estate agent in Columbia now. I know that we have a lot of real estate agents. I don't know if that's why. But I know, and I have friends that are real estate agents of a countless proportion. I can't even tell you how many people are friends of mine that are real estate agents. And this is weird. I think it's personal. I really do. Because if you know me, there's a chance that someday you may become a real estate agent. You lead people towards some proclivity, huh? I would love to find out why that keeps happening. I don't know how many friends I have that are real estate agents. I know a lot of real estate agents out there. Wendy I knew when she was tending bar. That's how we first met. And she was one of those like professional bartenders. She was wearing like the tuxedo shirt, bow tie. And like, sir, can I get you such and such? That's high level bartending. Right. Yeah. Right. And so she's always been a big, big part of town. She posted earlier this week on social media that some of the properties there in the middle of selling, she will go to check on them to drop off something to take some pictures, whatever. And she goes to go through the front door and there is a camper inside there. I'm talking about a squatter living inside the now empty home that is for sale. And she's like, what the hell are we doing here? And she doesn't feel like she's getting any help out there. Is there a homeless problem in Columbia? It's getting worse and worse and worse. How bad is it getting? Let me let me tell you something. We have so many people coming into Columbia that it's become they're exacerbating it. But it's it's it's a it's a it's a time continuum. I'll bet you Einstein could put it in a formula for us. The more that happens, the more that happens. This is a reality. Right. And unfortunately, if you have a homeless person that shows up in a small town, I don't know that that means a second one will show up. But if you have 200 show up in a small town, you might easily wind up with another 50. And that's happened. And our police chief talked about the guy that walked up to one of the people from City Hall that they were in Colorado. Right. So I can't wait to get to Columbia. And I still want to know why. Like, first off, they obviously have some kind of a cell phone. Right. It wasn't nobody mailed this guy a letter to let him know to come out here. Well, they all have cell phones. But I'm really curious. Like, what are they saying? Are they saying, hey, you're allowed to panhandle on every corner? Are they saying, hey, they're building some huge great place? Are they saying, yes, that, hey, guess what, even if you get arrested, you'll be out the next day. Like, I'm really curious what they're telling people. It's all those things. And it's also bad, bad, bad, bad things. We know that drug trafficking and money laundering and human trafficking and… I see posts every week of people finding just needles. I mean, needles everywhere. It's really, people, it's really, really bad. We're getting worse and worse and worse. And it's this buildup that's going on. And guess what? I don't even think we're halfway complete in building the opportunity campus on the business loop. You know, the business loop posted earlier this week, and some other people did, I think, that a federal grant has been rescinded. Now, I don't understand that, but apparently there was money that Columbia or the loop was expecting from the federal level that's not going to be coming in here now. There's $2 million or something like that. I think so. Let me explain something to everyone who gives a damn about the business loop. That is the least of your concerns. You know what your concern is? Is the opportunity campus for homeless individuals on the business loop. That's a bigger, bigger concern. That's a much bigger concern for you. Everything that's happening right now, you can go ahead and double and triple. The leaders in Columbia have no idea how to take care of this. None. They've got nothing. They don't have any set of balls, I'll tell you that. None of them. And I don't know what it is. What's your problem? They're on the street corners, shooting themselves up, prostituting themselves out, begging for money, sleeping it off. I saw a picture in front of QT with a guy laying on concrete in the middle of an afternoon in July in the middle of Missouri. He's laying down. And somebody goes, hey man, they're by the grace of God, you know, and maybe you don't understand what he's going through. It's like, do you not, he didn't find a place to curl up to take a nap because he doesn't have a home. You're insane. He's got brick on one side of him and a parking lot on the other and he's on concrete in front of QT. Guys, he didn't even go find a shady piece of grass on land that he doesn't belong occupying. He's sitting there on, guys, he's whacked out on drugs. He has fried his brain. He's going to fry his skin if he's on concrete in July. He's like, that's not the hot dogs cooking, I think it's the homeless guy to the side. You can smell this guy? Well, I was just thinking the skin baking on 150 degree concrete. It's horrible, you guys. So Wendy has this problem going on with her properties that she's in the middle of trying to sell. These are beautiful homes. Yeah. And sometimes the homeowner has moved into an assisted living facility. Sometimes the homeowner has left and moved to Florida to some big old condo and they got a billion dollars down there and they're like, hey man, sell this house. Or maybe they moved into another house because the child needed to be closer to a pediatric center somewhere. That home is being sold and people find it that are homeless and they go in there and they start occupying it. That was an amazing thing. Wendy's going to be on the show this day, this time next week. Good. Now she posted this publicly, right? Yeah. So I was just interested. She mentioned that she has had them arrested. So she actually said she had them arrested. Well, I thought that was interesting because Wendy is not the homeowner, she's the real estate agent. Right. So I wonder then after what we were told a couple weeks ago now about the idea of, oh, you can absolutely have them arrested, but the property owner. So it's like, okay, if your real estate agent calls the cops, will they arrest them? Or are they going to contact the property owner and make them do it? Well, that's an interesting thing because if I'm renting an apartment, I don't have, we don't have to have the owner of the apartment complex contact the police department. That's what I was confused about. No. Yeah. Never. Never and never and never. Now, I don't know if Chief Schlute, who I thought did a really, really open, great job on this show. I don't know if she was mistaken, if she was confused, if she was trying to cloudy things up for you and me and everybody else, or if we misunderstood, but let me explain this in no uncertain terms. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I don't have to be a renter. I can stop by your house and I can be hanging out and you can say, I'm going to the lake for two days. You stay here and relax. You got the cable. Everything's fine. Great. Somebody breaks in that house. Oh, no, no, no. I have permission to be there. I'm not on a lease. Right. I'm not the property owner. Yeah. Find me on the recorder of deeds over here. Somebody broke in. I need the cops here. Get them out of here. I have permission to be here. We need to contact the property owner. No, you don't. Get this person out of my life and out of this building now. Right. And that's it. It's confusing because it's like if anybody is seen breaking the law, like you don't need to talk to the property owner, like that person is breaking the law. Like, like all you need to know is the person that's on that property does not belong to that property. They need to be removed. That doesn't seem like it should be. I recognize the fact that, you know, if you have, let's say, QT and they've got homeless people that are coming and hanging out in front, if they call the police and they say, this is trespassing because they're loitering here and they're not our customers. This is something else. We want them taken away. And you go, OK, if that's your policy, like that is moving forward. And then the police are going to know that that's happening. And when we have these establishments, you're going to have to have somebody go, we want this done from now on. The cops have so much crap to take care of. And what are we talking? What do we say from Chief Schulte? 20 to 30 percent of their calls every single day are dealing with homeless. And the leaders in Columbia are paying no attention. City manager DeCarlin Seawood needs to be fired. I don't know what it is, man. I guess after a while we just get used to not being in charge because that's the way you grew up. Your parents were in charge. The teacher was in charge. The principal, the administrator at the school, superintendent of the school system. You can't make any changes. Bullshit. You can change everything. Don't ever sit here and think that something can't be done. The mayor of Columbia has a different agenda. What is that agenda with homeless? I don't know. But it doesn't, it does not include, it does not include slowing down the influx going on. No. That sounds like they want to ratchet it up, ramp it up, speed it up. I don't know what the hell your deal is. Let me explain this to you. Ours is not the ship to invite all the rats to. I don't, and you're talking about human beings. You're damn right I am. Prostitutes, drug sellers, illicit drug users, leaving dirty needles at Stevens Park. Meth at Flat Branch Park. Human excrement everywhere. We had a guy. No, these are rats. You got, these are rats. They are rats. Did you happen to see the, anything about their murderer in Idaho that killed the four college students? He was, no, he was sentenced this week and he had the families of those who were slain get a chance to speak. It wasn't the minor, right? Because I saw a thing about a minor that they tried him as an adult. That's not what you're talking about, right? No, no, no. This is an adult. I'm talking about the adult that murdered these college students in their sleep. These families came in and addressed him and I don't know what I would have done. I'm certainly not happy that they were in this position and I've never been in that position so I don't know what I would have done. And you're upset if I called him some rat bastard? Well then I guess be upset. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't have any, I told Deb yesterday after I watched this, I said, you know, because the judge took the death penalty off the table and accepted the plea agreement for four life sentences. I'm like, what, what just happened here? And then the judge tries to admonish him at the end of this whole thing and I'm like, I don't need to hear from you. If you, if you're the one who signed off on this and accepted the plea agreement that we removed the death penalty, I don't want to hear from you. What's the point of four life sentences also? That doesn't make any sense. He's not going to live four times. It doesn't make any sense. It's just like a check mark on a piece of paper. But if you're concerned about, well, he's human. Don't call him a rat bastard. I'm, I don't, I don't, he's a rat bastard. These people that are doing this in our town that we care about, I have cared about this thing and watched people spend their lives working on giving their family a home, working on cleaning up the town, caring about and donating their money, their time, their resources, their energy to programs like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, the Food Bank of Columbia, Boy Scouts. I don't care. You name it. I've seen them out here. People that go out on a hot July afternoon on a beautification spot where they're taking care of flowers to make things pretty. Why? So, so a drunk bastard, rat bastard can go over and fall down, pass out and sleep on the daisies today? What are you, what are you talking about? No. Rat bastard, get out. Again, I don't, you're not, you are not my responsibility. You're not the community's responsibility to take care of. Now, that's where I am. And if you want to say it is our responsibility, okay, all right. You and I disagree and I will listen to you, but I will tell you this, at no point does our responsibility include surrendering our medians to allow them to do all of their illegal crap, including crap. Literally. No, that's, that meeting is not there for that at all. I see from the Real Columbia, Missouri Facebook page, we got pictures of a new tent camp that popped up and because I see, there's only one Cici's Pizza in Columbia, right? I believe it to be then on the Connelly Road area. And they're right over here on the grassy, grassy knoll between the parking lot and the roadway. They're not even trying to hide. Cici's is right there with their tents set up. Like, what are we, what are we doing? Now, if anybody says the police can't take them away until they get a call from the property owner that says we want them removed. Okay, can you move that for a second out of the, will you talk about witnessing visually the problems we have? It's going to get at least twice as bad as it is right now when the moment that opportunity campus opens up. All right. That's what's going to happen, you guys. All right. So, Wendy's going to be on next week. Tom, that's probably the most you're going to talk about, homeless, this morning. No, it's not. We're going to get to that. I want to talk about some of the other guests we have coming up. And I want to lead into this with a comment, a question that was raised with a bunch of guys that I get together with. We get together every other Wednesday evening at Burr Oak Brewing Company. And we're all business owners. And we've spent a lifetime working hard. We have families. We have children. Some of us have grandchildren. And we get together and we talk. And Burr Oak's a great place to do that. How great of a place? Burr Oak was so wonderful last week that I took one of my clients and we had a team building meeting at Burr Oak Brewing in the middle of the day on Friday. It was awesome. It was, and you know, they're available for any of that stuff you want to do there. And I said, I don't care if you want to have, what do you call them, preacher sessions? What is it that you and your wife do when you get together and you're like, come on now. Testify. Jesus. Come on. They have food there, right? Is it like a full, is it a full restaurant too? At Burr Oak Brewing? No, no, no. In fact, we had lunch brought in from Como Smoke and Fire. And we fed the brewers at Burr Oak Brewery as well. We are all personal prohibitionists. So none of us drink. So that wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense for us. Nobody was drinking that day. Really? No, no, no, no, no. Do they make a good Arnold Palmer? Um, well, I've never ordered one from them. I don't have any idea. But I know they've had weddings there. Oh, that's cool. It is a beautiful, beautiful location. They've probably had memorial services there. For all I know, they've had baptismals there. Well, there was one day I fell into a vat of beer. Fell or jumped into? It was a little of both. Anyway, they're great. They're great people at Burr Oak. And thank you, Burr Oak, for being who you are. That's a member of our community. And I'll tell you something. It's a member of our community. While they're outside city limits, yeah, I'm pretty sure they are. While they're outside city limits, it doesn't mean they can't still have homeless problems. And I don't want homeless rat bastards camping out and crapping on their front door, on their side door, on the side of the building, their back garage door, which we open up on nice days and pull the picnic tables out and play games of bags or cornhole. By the way, I don't like the idea of being invited out back with guys to play cornhole. Context matters. Yeah. Yes, it does. So me and my guys, and they're not my guys, I was invited there about a year ago to join them with them. And one of the guys brought up, we have a problem. Why don't we have any investigative reporting anymore? That's a great question. And I said, well, you know, it depends what you want answered on that. Do you want the business answer? Or do you want… I'm not making a point. I was trying to clear my throat just a second. There we go. Do you want the business answer? Because I know how to run a media business, a media company, and why it's not there anymore. Or do you want to understand what's going on with the level of appreciation of what is journalism? What is a journalist? And what is one of the best journalism schools in the country? The J School here at the University of Missouri. What is it that they're doing when they're turning out these new professionals? And because there's a lot of answers there, we can go in a lot of different directions. The business model says we can't afford this anymore. But it's not only that. We have reporters who call themselves journalists, that when they are given a statement from someone, they run the statement like it's a fact. Like it's factual. I'm going to put you on the spot right now. What shape is the earth? Round. Mostly round. You passed. I would accept either answer. I would accept either answer. It's round. The earth is round. That's just as easy as that. If someone puts out a statement about the earth and it conflicts with that and you run it as fact, you don't need to argue it like a reporter has done in front of the president so many times in the last 10 years. You don't argue with the president. You ask the president a question. And if it's outlandish and you're pretty sure they are wrong, you can ask for clarification. You don't argue. That's not what you do. If you're doing a long-form interview and you know that they're going to answer a certain way and you want to bring something to the table and say, well, here's what they said and we have that on video. Are you arguing with the video? Again, it's clarification. Don't argue with this person you're talking to. That's not the thing to do. So you don't have to argue with the statement when it comes in. All you have to do is ask questions. Do the research. And show that this appears to be incorrect, outlandish, unsupported, whatever, whatever. We don't have journalists that are doing that anymore. So when a politician like they would have anything at all to say, they don't have an agenda. They don't have any lie. They never lie. A politician sends you a statement and you run that as fact, what the hell are you doing? You're not asking any questions anymore. So it's on both ends of the coin. The reason we don't have investigative reporting is because we don't have an investigative sense with journalists anymore. So all you've got to do is find somebody that has spent time when we could afford investigative journalism and now they're no longer working for companies like the Columbia Daily Tribune. Which shut down everything locally, right? The printing is gone now. The layout design has been gone. Reporting has been done from other markets. That's where they sit and they do the reporting. Printing is now shipped out of here. Guys, it's all gone. And it's happened everywhere. I had a chance to run some radio stations years ago in Columbia. And for the news outlet that we had, because we had a news talk station, we had three full-time news people and three or four part-time news people. One of our full-timers spent the greatest amount of their time in investigative journalism. We were uncovering stories at that little shack on Old 63. That's the point of what journalism is supposed to be. This was supposed to be the balance out to our government. They were supposed to be the watchdogs. That's why we have the freedom of the press. They were supposed to dig in, find the stuff, and then tell it to the American people. That was their responsibility. Now they're owned by free media companies that own most of everything. It's absolutely amazing. Just amazing how it's got to that. And you're like, well, see, it's capitalism that caused this. Yes and no. Yeah, capitalism builds and it destroys. I know that it does. I'm a capitalist. I'm not blind to it. One of the reasons it was brought up that day, because we have people that have different mindsets at that gathering of these friends of mine, and we like the challenge to bring it up. What about an aggregate where we bring together people's desires and their dollars to support investigative journalism? And I was like, you know, I'd be up for listening to that. Maybe would you spend the money on something like that? And I said, well, yeah. How much? $8.99 a month? $4.99 a month? Maybe. Maybe. What would I get for that? What would I know? And would it just be to support it? I mean, for $4.99, there are some things I'd like investigated right now. So if for every single month I got another story that's not being investigated right now, investigated, and we got to learn some shit going on behind the scenes, for $4.99, you better believe it. I would pay that. Here's the card. Run it every single month. Hell, what am I spending right now a month to get my roll card cleaned? What am I? What is that? Should it be $13 a month or $18 a month? $13 if you find the doormail flyer. I'll look for that. Is that depending on where I got it or the size of my can? No, we will clean no matter what size your cans are. So it's pretty much the same price. If you have multiples, then it costs a little more. I have mercy on the soul that has more than one can. You have a single can. I'm a single can man. I'm a single can man. What I am. So, you know, this is where we are in investigative journalism, and it was an interesting question. With that being said, there are at least two people that have started their own effort in Columbia working on this. One is Michael Martin, and it's ColumbiaHeartbeat.com, if I have that correct. And when I was filling in on a radio station about 25 years ago on a regular basis, Michael would sometimes come in and be the guest, if I remember that correctly. I don't know how long he's been doing this, been trying to give us some level of a reasonable reporting on something that maybe isn't being covered properly in our marketplace. The other is Mike Murphy. And Mike Murphy has ComoBuzz.com. That's one Z for y'all keeping track at home, ComoBuzz.com. And Mike Murphy also has a show with Al Germon, who Al Germon is a longtime friend and a longtime co-conspirator of radio of mine. And I appreciate all moments I've ever spent with Al Germon. And the two of them are doing a radio show together on the Eagle 93.9 on Sunday mornings, I believe starting at 8 o'clock. And I believe it's a two-hour show. And they're cracking through stuff other people aren't talking about. That's one of the reasons they have that, and hats off to Zimmer Radio for giving them that slot. And screw Cumulus for screwing Al out of his slot some time back. So believe me, if the Zimmers let him go, I'll be saying screw Zimmer. I'm fair like that. So they've got that show going on. And I listened to a little bit this last week, and I was like, you know, after what these guys had talked about the Wednesday before in asking why don't we have investigative journalism and listening to Mike Murphy talk about several different things, and I know that he's going deep on this, and having one other factor, someone came up to me last week and said, you know what, you need to do a show on. And I said, what? And they said, we need to know what the hell happened to the superintendent of Columbia Public Schools. And I was like, huh. You know, I'm not a journalist, which means I'm even more so not an investigative journalist, but I do like to investigate. I've started reaching into that a little bit. And I may be uncovering that to some degree, and maybe sometime in the next week to couple months we will go deep on that subject matter, because I also am not satisfied, and I think we need to learn. And I look at the clock right now, and I realize we are going to eat up as much time. And people go, Tom, you couldn't talk for an hour. Gee. Yeah, you're right. I can't stop at an hour. I can't just talk an hour. We're talking two, three, four hours. Maybe. Maybe true. I'm going to try and wrap things up in the next five to six minutes. I'll see if I can make that happen. You know who else does that, by the way? Preachers. I'm closing. I'm closing. I swear I'm closing. I always thought, you know, growing up Catholic, a Catholic Mass, they've got to get that thing in under an hour. That includes if you've got the full choir that particular session, or what the hell was going on. If it's a wedding, or if it's a funeral, that thing can go over an hour. Easy. But a Mass should be in under an hour. And you're going to see your biggest contributors to the kitty. You know what I'm talking about. They're going to be in the front pew going… That's why they sit in the front pew so they can tap their watch. So they can tap their watch. Hey, over here, man. Over here, priestly one. Okay, so I've reached out. So I was talking about the superintendent, and we're going to try to go deep on that. With that all happening at the same time, I decided to reach out to Mike Murphy and go, hey man, would you be up for coming on the podcast? And I don't know if being on a radio show precludes you from that thing, or if you can. And I said, I'm happy to talk up what you're doing there, and other places too. You've asked me if we'd promote help. We've promoted you. Yeah. Floatingaxe.com. Yep. Which, it's a lot more than just a company that builds a website. You are a contributor of knowledge and an advisor to people in what they're doing and how they're doing it, to market themselves on the web in every fashion. I try really hard, yeah. You also can advise people on raising kids, because you're working on that too. I don't think I'd give good advice, but you know, I can tell them the gaps I've made. Your oldest is how old today? 14. Oh. Driving instruction is coming very soon. Actually, my 8-year-old was driving very well last night down at Bramble Road. I don't want to hear it. I'm just kidding, officers. That was a total joke. Was it a private piece of property? There's the gravel roads. No, no, no. Gravel does not make it … Oh, yeah. It was only on the private property. Absolutely. That's what I thought. Yeah. That's what I thought you meant to say. That's what I thought you meant to say. An important one. And you left two drivers. So, I know I'm derailing everything over here on purpose, but I reached out to Mike Murphy and I said, hey, man. And he said, yes, okay. So he's going to be on here two weeks from today. Awesome. So we've got Wendy next week and then Mike in two weeks. But then I reached out to somebody else because of some things I saw and a letter that was written and sent off to the city manager's office. Managers, that's a plural possessive because we have, what do we have, five city managers now? Is that right? Well, we have the manager. We have the city manager and then that person has three or four assistant managers. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Because where there's one, why not two or more? Bureaucracy is good at one thing, getting bigger. What was it that was said in the Bible, where two or more are gathered in my name, there was love and the Lord will be also. When two or more are gathered in the city's name, there, my friends, we have politics. So they sent off a letter and it was from Como Renewal Project, which is its own entity, but you'll find them on Facebook and probably other social media under that heading, Como Renewal Project. And a person involved and responsible with a number of acts that they're going through and taking care of and duties would be Bonnie Steinmetz. And I reached out to Bonnie because of the letter she sent the city of Columbia concerning homeless individuals in our area. And I told you, I'll bring homelessness back up. And I reached out to Bonnie and I said, Bonnie, would you be up for coming on the show? I've never had her on because she started back when we had the radio show and they've been working on a lot of projects behind the scenes. And I said, would you be up for coming on the show? And she said, yes. Which damn means I am three for three. I'm batting a thousand this week on the people. You should go buy a lottery ticket. Who else? If you're batting that great, man. Who else should I invite on the show then? Because and they'd be a fool to turn me down because I'd be like, are you kidding me? Bonnie, Mike, Wendy, they've all said yes. So who should I invite? Some politicians would be pretty nice. I'd love to get some real answers to why are we doing this? Do you want somebody from the city council in here? We've had the mayor on a couple of months ago and that was a she speaks like a politician. I'm hearing the same thing from everybody. They're all saying it's not necessarily word salads, but it's not defining like this is why we're putting up with this. Right. One of the biggest questions that I get asked, even there was a couple of people that were a little hard on me. They're like, I feel like you should have pushed harder when you were talking to the chief of police. I was like, I get that. But we also don't want to piss them off so much. They'll never talk to us again because that doesn't establish anything either. So I just, I think everybody is asking the same question and nobody has gotten an answer of why, why is this a desirable? Why do we want hundreds of homeless in our town? And I'd love to hear, I mean, leave us a comment, right? Tell us if you're one of the people that is like, listen, I really want all of these homeless in our town. I imagine part of that is they have big hearts. They like, they want to try to take care of people, but it's like, okay, but what happens when the services are completely overrun? What happens when we can't handle them? What happens when they're breaking in, shooting up and dying in the streets? That's not loving. So why do you want that? You know, and I appreciate the way that you said that. The reality is we don't have to say what happens if and when this thing happens. People listen. Let me explain this to you right now. What's already been happening for several years here is both illegal and other parts of it need to be illegal in the city of Columbia with a new ordinance that's in place. Can you believe there's not one member of the Columbia City Council that is out talking like we are right now? Not one of them, none of them are stepping out and saying this is not about inclusion with the other members of the city. This is not about cohesion. We don't need solidarity. I'm going to explain this to you and explain to you one time. We need to eliminate some of the problems going on with homeless individuals moving to Columbia and taking over our streets. Not one of them is saying that. Your city manager isn't saying it, which means they're happy about it? The city manager? Do they go speak at these damn conferences? Because they all go to conferences. They all go to these conferences like, yes, I'm such and such, I'm going to sit up on the panel. Do they go up there and go, and by the way, we have continued to increase our homeless population. Oh, that's amazing. Is that what they do? Is that a brag? That's what I'm saying. That seems like a knock. You would think that would be a knock against your political ability if you're just increasing, increasing, increasing the number of homeless people. Right. Right. So they keep on going down the street. We have more poop in the streets than anybody. All right. So, which in talking about that, I'm just going to go ahead and use that because I know we're running out of time and we need to make that step. When you say we have, what did you say? What exactly did you say about poop? We have more poop in the streets than anybody. Ah, more poop. Which means you need to? Are you ready? You got to keep your eyes on the crap. You can't handle the crap. Looky here. There's a big difference between shit and Shinola. As my great-grandfather always said, Matumba, keep your eye on the crap. Matumba. Matumba. Matumba is actually an African name and I appreciate Matumba joining us at that juncture. Keep your eye on the crap brought to you by Family Focus Eye Care and Dr. Rich and his incredible team over there. And I believe it's time for my next eye exam and I don't know what it is about people that get scared of going to doctors like a dentist or an eye doctor. You know what the biggest factor was of people going to an eye, why they didn't want to go? Do you have any idea? No, no, no. Ellis Bennis. No. The puff of air. Oh, yeah. Which they've mostly eliminated, right? They've completely eliminated the puff of air. Family Focus doesn't use that at all, do they? No. And it's like the puff of air, they were trying to check for glaucoma. Yeah. They had a whole Friends episode about that where they like, she couldn't handle that puff of air. They're like, you're young, you probably don't have glaucoma, let's move on. Because of that. Because of the puff of air, yeah. Amazing. No, it's what they do now, Dr. Rich will tell you, before I ask you to name off the letters on whatever line up here, they pretty much know what your vision is already. It's like a camera, right? They look into your eye, and by looking into everything they see at Family Focus Eye Care, they look in your eye, and they're like, yeah, we're going to see how honest you are now. Read the third line, and you start trying, and you're like, my eyes are a little weird right now. I was like, no. No, they're not weird. We knew you couldn't read that. Read the fourth line. Yep, I knew you could read that one. Family Focus Eye Care, FamFocus, I've got their website right in front of me, FamFocusEye.com, and so you can reach out to them. Keep your eye on the crap, people. It's out there right now. I certainly appreciate saying, what are we going to do when somebody falls off a median and gets hit by a car? I recognize you saying that. I'm not trying to say that you're wrong for saying it. But the other side of the argument, if you were a 12, 13, 14-year-old, it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. With all these people here, it hasn't happened yet. This is how a 14-year-old says, why do I have to be out at 10 o'clock? Because bad things happen at 10, 15. I didn't see anything bad happening out there. The other day, when I was out late, and I stayed out until 10, 30, nothing bad happened. Nothing bad happened. So obviously, I could stay out until 10, 30. This is what a teenager… You're preparing me. This is what I have to look forward to. That's what you're telling me. That's what I have to tell you right now. And you were probably a good kid. I was. Yeah. Me, I was number five out of eight kids. By the time I came around, the old man was like, look, if you make it home before sunrise… If you make it home alive, we're fine. We're fine. Honey, how's Tom? Is he in bed? Yeah. 6.35 a.m. The sun's up. He's in bed. He looks like everything's fine. Is he okay? I saw his toe twitch. There was some breathing. I believe there was breathing. There was some breathing. Empty whiskey bottle on the bedroom floor. No, no, no, no, no. This is just the reality. So I want you to know you've got to keep an eye on everything that's going on out there. And we are already past the point of saying, what if something bad happens? Bad stuff is happening all the time. Do you know this summer, like last month, has now marked two years since I was at Stevens Lake Park and my grandkids had to pee outside, both of them, boy and girl. At that time, we had three. Now we have four. But two of them were with me. Both of them had to pee outside near some bushes near the lake in the middle of day because I had homeless people showering in the sink in the men's room at the park. That was 1230. There must have been 30 kids playing on the playground right there at that bathroom. Don't tell me what happens when this thing happens. People, bad things, lawbreaking, disgusting things, drug use, needles, drug sales, the crime that follows it around. We had to pressure wash poop off of the front doorstep of our church. Our church is on 7th Street. We are really close to downtown and we are just off the business loop. Before Sunday morning, we had to hook up the hose so we could wash human excrement off of our sidewalk that morning before Sunday morning service started. I mean, it's just wherever. Jesus washed the feet of his apostles. He did not wipe their butts. Did you ever think you'd be a poop washer? Yeah, well, I mean, I knew I'd have kids, so I knew that wasn't my future, but at least I made the people whose butts I'm cleaning, you know? I don't want random people. You made the people whose butts you're cleaning. My 12-year-old daughter. I think your wonderful wife said that at one time. You made them, too. Yeah, you made them, too. You go clean that thing up over there. I think on the poop washing, I think we're going to go ahead and say it. That's where you want to end it? Keep your eye on the crap washing. I think that's a real good point. That's a good place to stop. We are so close to an hour with nary a break in that thing. Do you think we could sit with two hours of this sometime? Us talking? I think we could go all day. Nobody would watch, but we could definitely talk all day. We got to get out of here. My friends, next week, Wendy, we'll talk with her about the homes and the homeless and everything else going on. Please live this day as if it were your last. I save you. Hookah hay.