Tom Bradley Talks Halloween, Missed Guests, and a Big Announcement with Ellis Benus

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. Well, you’re not going to be able to shut me the hell up today because I’m pretty sure I’m working on like two and a half pots of coffee. I think that’s approximately what we’re at right now, is two and a half pots of coffee. You had a monster drink? Maybe. But only one? Just one. I can only ever do one a day. Well, let me explain this if I can. You said quickly, I need to talk about this quickly. We had a guest scheduled for this morning, and the guest hasn’t made it. They could come walking in any moment. I don’t think that’s going to happen, and I’m not going to jeopardize anything in the future or make it personal about that. I’m not throwing anybody under the bus right now. I wish you could have been here. God, the discussion we were going to have was going to be- I was really excited. Unbelievable. We would have all learned a lot. I’m not even going to tell you who it was, what their place in life is, and why we were all going to learn so much, but just trust me, and we’re going to work on bringing the person on the show at some time in the future. Absolutely. We’ll do the best we can. We’re going to do this real short and deal today between you and I. Sounds great. In a moment, I’ll explain to you why we had to go ahead and do it after all, the podcast, even though it’s not our normal podcast. Let me move into a couple of things. First, we are live from Truman’s Bar and Grill, and Truman’s is actually have a party coming up. It is two weeks from tomorrow, because Halloween lands on a Friday this year, and they’re going to have a Halloween party at Truman’s. Fun. Check that out, and tell you that now. You’ve got more time to get ready and figure out what you’re going to be. We had stuff come up on our memories page or feed or whatever yesterday that showed Halloween costumes we were wearing three years ago. We went to a Halloween event at the zoo in St. Louis. Oh, cool. I didn’t know they had one there. That’s cool. A Halloween event or a zoo? The Halloween event at the zoo. I didn’t know they did that. That’s real cool. The zoo in St. Louis is world renowned, so I figured you must have known that. That I did, yes. All right. I went as, this might not be safe to do this at most zoos, I went as the Big Bad Wolf. Now, there are some animals that might freak out, and Dev was Little Red Riding Hood. Oh, that’s cool. And grandson of Little Man Bradley was Harry Potter, and so it was a lot of fun. That didn’t fit with the theme there. Wolf, Little Red, and Harry Potter. Hey, dude. First of all, he’s my grandson, so don’t be giving him crap. And I’m the Big Bad Wolf. I can do anything I want to. I can do whatever I want. That’s a long time. Anyway, so that’s coming up, and be sure to check that out. It is Ellis Benus that you’re catching over here to my left, and floatingaxe.com is his company. He does a hell of a job. Thank you. And any tidbits for everybody, digital, media, right now? Oh, my gosh. There’s so much stuff going on with AI and everything. Just set up a meeting. Let’s talk. I’m doing a counseling for somebody else to set up a podcast, because they’re asking, hey, do you know anything about podcasting? It’s like a tiny bit. I’ve been bugging Tom about it for a long time. I talked to a great friend, Chris Conrad, yesterday that was talking about how important podcasts are. And she goes, well, what am I saying? Look at you. You have one. And I go, Chris, the only reason I have a podcast is because about eight months ago, you said, let’s go have coffee. We sat down. And she goes, you, if you’re leaving radio, you have to start a podcast. Yeah. She goes, oh, that’s right. It was me. I go, yeah. It was you. Coming up at the end of the show, and ours is a shortened show today, keep your eye on the crap brought to you by Family Focus Eye Care. By the way, keeping your eye on the crap, last week, I think it was, we talked about the Vision Zero program. Let me explain this to you guys who don’t understand marketing. Vision Zero is the name of a national program to try and eliminate pedestrian fatalities on our roadways. So they call it Vision Zero. Now, that’s a stupid idea. And somehow they ran with it, and it’s across the nation. And locally, not only did we embrace that, but in Columbia, they came up with their own new name for our program called Como to Zero. So the population? Como to Zero. Como to Zero. I see how the Como and Zero sort of rhyme, but you guys, it sounds stupid as shit that you’re saying Como to Zero. It sounds like we’re headed for a place where most people would not want to go. So you’ve heard of like zero to 60. That’s a cool thing. How fast your car? Well, zero to 60, 4.2. That’s good. Como to Zero, bad idea. So we’re going to move past that. Big announcement this morning. I want to get into that. But I do want to tell you, keeping your eye on the crap coming up, I think you’re going to appreciate it. And I want to tell you, for those people that really, really love and support the mayor of Columbia, you need to hear this. And for the people that really, really don’t like and wish to support the mayor of Columbia, you’re going to enjoy hearing this. So those are the two different kinds of people out there. And I’m going to tell you right now that all of you need to catch this, and I think you’re going to really, really enjoy it. Let’s release the hounds with Creekside Pet Center, which, by the way, the entire Brummet gang was out at the event that we had this past weekend in Columbia at Lakeside Ashland with Creekside Pet Center. And with Second Chance. It’s about helping the pups and kittens and everybody that’s less fortunate and giving them a second chance. And it was a great event. Great, wonderful. We had a great, great time. Thank you to Creekside Pet Center and to Dirty Harry’s in Boonville, as well as Creekside’s Bed and Biscuit and the wonderful job that they do. The big announcement this morning is letting you know that next week on TTBS, the podcast, we will have the CPD police chief, Jill Schlute, back on the show. That’s awesome. Do you remember when she was on the show? We’ve only been in existence, what, six months or whatever? Something like that. When she was on the show the first time, she shared the mic with somebody else. And it was fine. Yeah. But it didn’t really give us the one-on-one that we need to have with someone as important as the chief of police. And that’s going to happen one week from today. And that podcast is going to be delayed by one hour. So we’ll start at nine. Nine. All right. Today is central time. Today’s podcast was delayed by damn near two and a half hours. Because we were waiting. Better late than never. We’re still waiting. If I seem to be dragging this out, it might be because I’m hoping that we can- Have our guests show up simultaneously. Just. Suddenly they’ll walk in. We almost had a random person just jump on the show, right? Like a DoorDash driver or something like that. She goes, is this a podcast? Is this a podcast? Yeah. What are you guys doing? And we’re like, it’s a guest list podcast right now. Would you like to come over? And she’s like, hell yes. I think she would have been funny. I think so. If she didn’t have food to deliver, I think she would have been a good guest. So the big announcement then is that, and by the way, I will be not able to be here on time next week. It’s on me because I’ll be at the Columbia Board of Realtors, one of their annual breakfasts that they have. And I’ll be there with my good friends over at Columbia Pool and Spa. So that’s next week. And we’ll be doing that. Also, I want to send out a thank you to Mike Murphy from comobuzz.com. As Mike is the consummate professional, he’ll be back with us on the podcast very soon. He has been very flexible because of things going on with our scheduling. And Mike is just a good guy. And I appreciate that. So thank you all the way through. I’m going to move past that, move past, do you have something you’d like to add before we go to keeping your eye on the crap? No, let’s look at the crap. Let’s go. You said you want to talk about, was it parenting? Oh, I was saying we could do a whole podcast just about parenting. Like good grief. Go to you. Why? Well, okay. So I learned, do you want me to talk about the thing that I just learned about last week? The ridiculousness on the app that it’s okay. So this is unnerving. But if you have kids and you think they’re doing a great job because they’re opening the Bible app, like the YouVersion Bible app. Sorry, they’re opening the what? The YouVersion Bible app. What does the you mean? YouVersion is just the YouVersion. No not youth, YouVersion. That’s the name of it. I don’t know. YouVersion Bible app. That’s just what it’s called. And it’s an application for your phone to check out the Bible. That’s right. So you can read the Bible. You can do reading plans. It’s in printed form. It is. Yeah. I don’t want to have my phone with me everywhere and the Bible in the bathroom is, I don’t want to do that. So on the phone is okay. So I can read the scriptures in there. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second. Are you saying that it’s not proper to take a Bible into a restroom? Well, I don’t want to take mine in there. I can clean my phone a lot easier than those tiny little leafly pages. Okay. I know. Look, look, I just want to understand. Yeah. A lot of times when we’re talking about these things, I just, you know, so much more than I do. So I just want to understand. That’s my morning routine. I walk in, I take care of the things that need to be taken care of. Sometimes they take a few minutes. I’m sitting. So I read my Bible time. We call it your morning constitution. That is exactly right. And so you’re reading your Bible on the Bible app on the Bible app. Yeah. Application on your phone. So it’s an app. Okay. So your kids, do they have the Bible app also? My kids don’t have their own devices at all. So we, we keep that very restricted. We want to make sure that we protect them. Okay. So, so, so what’s going on with this parenting thing? The thing that blew my mind was I just found out last week, we have tracking apps on the computers that they use. They’re all in public spaces. We have tracking apps on the tablets and you would think like, Oh, I see somebody utilizing the Bible app. This didn’t happen in my household, but it was brought up to our attention that somebody was like, Oh, they were really happy. They saw their kid using the Bible app for hours a day. And they’re like, Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah. No. What come to find out? I didn’t even know this existed, but there is a chat metric that you can use. Like there’s conversations you can have inside the Bible app and people were sending inappropriate photos back and forth to each other inside the Bible app. So it’s like, Oh my gosh. You mean like pictures of Adam and Eve before the fig leaves? Yeah. Before the fig leaves. Yeah. Maybe just zoomed in on the fig leaf covered areas, et cetera. And I was just blown away. I mean, we always try to stay a step ahead technologically to protect our kids, but man, I was not ready for that. So, so I’m, I’m not going to sit here and say like, Oh, that’s what you get for having your kids read the Bible. Exactly. Right. Okay. Oh man. That’s horrible. This is why our kids don’t have devices. We keep an eye on everything. Take it from the big bad wolf. The wolf is always at the door. It is. I mean, and they’re always out there and they’re trying to do bad things on a Bible app. Yeah. Never would have seen that coming. I also don’t know why the Bible app has text messaging or conversations in it. Let’s just shut that off and not deal with it. Like just read the Bible. Do you see how much safer it would be for everyone if you go into the bathroom and take your physical printed Bible with you and then everything would be fine. It is time for us to, uh, as in this, keep our eye on the crap. 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. You better believe it. I am going to share with you a statement made by the mayor of Columbia this week. Thank you channel eight for catching it. We had a reporter out at an event this week and I want you to understand something. I think Barbara Buffalo, the mayor of Columbia is, is a good person and there’s no need for me to, um, to question where her heart is or to question if she’s intelligent. There’s a, there’s a lot there that I’m going to go ahead and tell you. I’m pretty sure she’s a good person and I’m fairly sure she’s intelligent. I think if we were to sit down and do like an IQ test, she’d probably kick my ass. Okay. I’m smart enough to know how stupid I am and that’s a burden I have to bear throughout my life. No, no, no. But this is, I want to, I want to make sure I, I say that upfront because the ripping I’m about to do is going to feel painful, especially if you’re a big time supporter or a personal friend of Barbara Buffalo’s. These are real people that decide that they want to be a part of a committee or a task force or actually run for a city office and, and then they win and they get elected. Maybe they’re the mayor and then maybe they serve three years and they seek reelection and they get reelected and they’re now in their second term. And that would describe where we are with her. They’re real people to live down the street from you. She, she could be bicycling down the road right here right now. I don’t know. She could be watching or listening to this podcast. I looked out the window like she might be there. She gestured, so I just had to look out the window. And by the way, if she is, I don’t think you’re going to hear, I’m not saying that I’m, but I am saying that she’s a real person and she’s right here living amongst us. So as I, as I share this with you, but I believe that mayor Buffalo is in over her head. She’s only the mayor, by the way, there’s only so much that a person in that position can do. And when we talk about problems in Columbia, and maybe it’s about safety, it’s violent crime. It’s what’s going on downtown. Somebody getting shot. It’s Moon Choi, the president chancellor of Mizzou coming out and saying, we need to do more. It’s Jim Yankee and other coalitions that are now forming downtown or the district and their own CID stepping up in downtown Columbia saying, we’re going to do more. We’re going to be putting money out there toward trying to help ensure safety for the citizens who are downtown. All these things going on. It’s what the chief of police who will be with us a week from today. It’s what she’s going to be talking about. And I believe that mayor Buffalo, if she is speaking on the subject matter is in over her head. She does, though, have the greatest platform from which to speak when it comes to the city of Columbia. She’s going to be quoted more often, more likely than the chief of police, definitely than a city council person, more than the city manager or the assistant city manager, this second assistant manager, the deputy to the second assistant manager, or the lowly but still lofty quad assistant city manager. Oh, my goodness. That’s right. We got four. We’re a town of 130,000 people. How does that make sense? And Tony, former deputy or assistant city manager, I think has moved back into Columbia. So Tony, I think I’ve seen you at the gym. And you’re looking good, dude. I’m not gonna say buff, but you know, you’re looking good. Keep it up. I’ll tell you that. And I’m sorry, when you were here, I think we only had half or less of the number of city managers that we now have. And it’s not fair that you were expected to do that. Mayor Buffalo, from knee-jerk reactions, I’m calling that, that have followed in some of the shootings that we’ve had, to turning her back on CPD officers after they’re forced to get physical with violent citizens, to using pet and practiced talking points when you’re asking her a real question, to shaping any conversation away from what we are perceiving as some of the actual truth going on, to so often promoting her own agenda. I think mostly she’s in over her head right now. I agree. And that would include the wonderful gem that I came across this morning. Dude, I was in my office and I’m working on some of the notes for today for the podcast we were supposed to be having that we’re not having. And I hear this thing come out of the television above me from Channel 8 with their morning news. And they start news at like 2.30 in the morning or some crap. And this thing comes out. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? And I’m so glad of the technology today. Pause. Back up. Did the mayor of Columbia just say, what did she say and what were you guys talking about? Back up further. Let me get this again. I have what she said, and I’m going to play it to give you a little context. She was being interviewed by one reporter at an event. It was called a let’s talk local. Same city that brought us Como to zero. So that’s a little bit of a callback myself. It’s called let’s talk local. All right. And they have this out with the public and a reporter from Channel 8 is interviewing the mayor and she’s speaking, I guess off the top of her head. But this may be the I’m going to I’m going to play it for you. They’re talking about safety. They’re talking about violent crime. They’re talking about what we should be doing. Let’s hear. Now, this is being set up by an anchor who was live this morning on Channel 8. And then they go to the recorded piece from the mayor who is responding back to a reporter. Let’s see what we get here. Buffalo says the city is doing more proactive work in the downtown area. We’ve upped how many people we have downtown, both Petroian and our weekends and especially game days. But also we’re doing more proactive policing. So our police are out during the day working with community members about making sure that they’re following the laws and if not gently guiding them into where they need to be focusing their efforts. I want you to understand how far away we are from the reality. The need that we have of a person in her position, understanding police work. That’s the problem. It’s not that she doesn’t like police officers. It’s that she doesn’t understand what the job requires. And so proactive policing, which we talked about on this show with the sheriff of Boone County. What is it? Two months ago? Yeah. Two months ago. We talked about proactive policing and what it entails and what it really means. And this is the mayor of Columbia trying to explain proactive policing. So now that you know how disgusted I am with her response, I want you to listen again and try to understand why I am so disappointed with the way that she describes this. Buffalo says the city is doing more proactive work in the downtown area. We’ve upped how many people we have downtown, both Petroian and our weekends and especially game days. But also we’re doing more proactive policing. So our police are out during the day working with community members about making sure that they’re following the laws and if not, gently guiding them into where they need to be focusing their efforts. I got to pause it right there. They’re not following the laws, which means they are what? Lawbreakers? Criminals? I mean. Yeah. Yeah. They’re breaking the law. Gently guiding them. We need to gently guide them. As she goes to deliver this to us, now I want you to listen to that pause. We’re doing more proactive policing. So our police are out during the day working with community members about making sure that they’re following the laws and if not, gently guiding them into where they need to be focusing their efforts. Wow. And then the word gently. Mm hmm. What is it? Buff, I don’t, I don’t know what’s going on and why you’re so concerned about saying they’re going to be arrested for breaking the law. What? What? What? Yeah. Are you worried that you’re going to have to say? Why is that a bad thing? How can you look down on like, okay, you’re breaking the law, you’re going to be arrested because you broke the law, like consequence from your own actions, but somehow that’s a bad thing. I’m really confused by that mentality. You’ve got to tell us gently. Why in the world would you have used the word gently? Gently. Do you? Are they worried about like police brutality or something? I mean. Did you ever see that stupid ass movie, uh, Judge, what was the Sylvester Stallone movie? It’s in the future. Judge Dredd? Yeah. Judge Dredd. Who’s the, uh, who’s the, uh, the, a young actor that works alongside the woman, um, do you, do you know what I’m talking about? In Judge Dredd? Judge Dredd. Yeah. In the, in the old one? The Sylvester Stallone one? The original. Yeah. The original. There’s a woman that works with him? How are you so fast on your phone? Because this is all I do all day long. Diane Lane. Is that who you’re thinking of? She wasn’t in that. Yeah. In the original Judge Dredd, she was. She was? Mm-hmm. She’s hot. I can either confirm or deny. How was, is that, maybe I’m thinking of a different, maybe I’m thinking of a different movie. Well, Sylvester Stallone was also in the movie with Wesley Snipes and that was Sandra Bullock that was in with him. That’s what I’m talking about. Okay. Is that, is that Judge Dredd also? No, no, no. That’s when they were frozen. Uh, the name of that movie was Demolition Man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With Sandra Bullock. Yeah. So go back to that one. All right. Sandra Bullock. Forget all the other crap. All right. This is all I’m good for is movie stuff. Wait a second. Except don’t forget Diane Lane. We’re just going to, we’re going to pause on Diane Lane for a minute. She’s a wonderful actor. So, so Sandra Bullock. Yeah. All right. And she’s like, I’m sorry, but we need to go ahead and ask you to stop doing that. So Sandra Bullock is the police officer for a new force we’re going to have in Columbia. And the chief of police for that force will be Barbara Buffalo. By the way, it’s also important. I was going to mention this in the, um, special announcement or the important announcement of the week. I am rescinding my offer to have the mayor on this podcast because it’s been like three weeks and she never responded back to me. So I’m just going to have to rescind that. I don’t think she wants to come on and talk on the show. No, it seems like not. She did one time, but the disconnect that we have behind the scenes, it’s important for you guys to understand. Do I believe anything illegal is going on? You’re damn right. I believe it’s illegal because we have collusion that’s taking place. Any level of conspiracy, you don’t like that. How about conversations that should not be taking place between certain officials with the city unless it’s being done in front of the citizens of the city, uh, except for very specific and determined and we being notified circumstances. So otherwise it’s a sunshine law violation. And I think it’s taking place and there was a disconnect and there was a disassociation between people in positions of power like the chancellor at the university and people in positions of power like the city council and city mayor in Columbia. And I don’t know why this is taking place. We now have three council members who have, they’ve explained why they’re not teaming up with Moon Choi on what’s going on. It’s really dude, it’s, it’s very, very weird. And when you have the mayor of Columbia, first of all, denying what crime we’ve had over the last several years to the point that now she goes, no, we understand, but we’ve actually, we’ve seen crime going down. She had the audacity to talk about the reduction in crime and what she and the city have done while someone was fighting for their life merely hours after the last shooting, the big shooting we had in downtown Columbia, that person no longer exists in this world. And mayor Buffalo was trying to promote what she has been involved with to the point that now she talks about proactive policing being more proactive policing. So our police are out during the day working with community members about making sure that they’re following the laws and if not gently guiding them into where they need to be focusing their efforts, need to be focusing their efforts. Dude, if you want to go talk to kindergartners, there are probably some great teaching positions that you could either assist in or maybe go to the college of education over at Mizzou and get certified, become a teacher and go talk to kindergartners because we’re adults out here and I need to speak from the heart and the mind and your soul, what you know to be true and speak coherently to us now. And in fact, you can’t do that. So I’m very, very disappointed in that. And don’t, don’t gently guide criminals, arrest them, and then let the courts figure that step out. I just, I’m so, I still can’t wrap my head around how do we wind up in a place where criminals have what seemed like more rights than the citizens when somebody is actively breaking the law and instead of saying, okay, they’re breaking law, they need to face the consequences of that. We think, oh no, we need to understand where they’re coming from. We need to understand the environment. No, no, we’re breaking the law right to jail. I’m going to tell you something. I’m not going to tell you who told me this, but it happened a couple of weeks ago and it’s, it’s someone that we’ve talked about. It’s someone that has been in the news. It’s someone in a leadership position. I’ll just leave it at that. All right. And they said to me off the record, Tom, my job is not to figure out what happened to this person when they were three years old. That’s right. And they went a step further. My job is not to go make sure three year olds today are being raised properly. My job is to take care of the problem at hand in front of us right here. That’s a really, really hard thing for some people to be able to accept. And especially if they’re in that position. But if you’re in that position, you have to unfortunately accept it, understand it, and then move forward. And so I’ve told this, I don’t know if I’ve said it on the, on the show, but it’s like when a firefighter shows up and the building is burning. If somebody wants to talk about what amount of sulfur is being used on the match heads in today’s match factories, you can talk about that. But the firefighters like right now, I need you to get the hell out of my way because I got a hose. We’re going to power this thing up and I’ve got a fire to put out and I’ve got lives to save on that. No, we’re going to go ahead and call it and roll on out of here today. And I’m sorry beyond belief that we did not get to have the guest on that we were going to. Hopefully we can. I hope someday we can. At that point, I’m going to go, see, see, it was going to be really good. It’s worth it. So we got to get out of here. So my friends, please live this day as if it were your last. I say to you, okay. Take care. Bye.