John Rush is joined by Will Hild, Executive Director of Consumers’ Research, for an explosive segment on Microsoft’s decision to outsource Pentagon-related coding to engineers in communist China. What could go wrong?!? They dissect the implications for national security, the failures of DEI-driven decision-making, and how corporate wokeism is often a smokescreen for incompetence. They also talk strategy—what consumers can do to fight back, how to use your voice and your wallet, and what happens when tax credits for EVs and solar run out. Later, John discusses new battery technology, safety issues with lithium-ion batteries, and a listener brings
SPEAKER 09 :
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It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush, presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we’re back. Hour number two, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Will Held joining us now. Will, welcome. How are you today? Doing great. Great to be with you. Executive Director of Consumers Research. Talk to us about Microsoft and the fact that there’s been some digging, and I guess they’ve got some engineers in communist China that actually work for the Pentagon’s computer system.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, it’s frankly one of the most insane stories you could possibly imagine. Microsoft won a contract to help maintain the Department of Defense’s computer systems. And instead of hiring U.S.-based coders here who they could vet properly and trust, they hired a team in China and then just simply assigned them sort of chaperones here in the United States to watch over them as they work. The problem is, of course, that, you know, that allows them all kinds of access to our defense systems. And if you… In order to keep someone from doing something bad, you’d have to be at least as good as they are at coding. Well, if they’re at least as good as the Chinese coders, just have them use the coding.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thank you, Will. I mean, yeah, I’m sharp enough on the technical aspect of things to know how some of these things work, fortunately. And the other thing I know, Will, is unless… those quote unquote chaperones are literally watching every single piece of code in line that they are inputting. And to your point, if they’re doing that, why not do it yourself? Because if you’re not doing that, you’re not watching over them.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly, exactly. And so this is a company that we’ve been calling out over the last few months for doubling down on wokeism, for doubling down on DEI. They’ve been one of the companies that has pushed back the hardest against the Trump administration’s initiative to get rid of DEI in higher ed and in corporate America. And so it’s very telling that this is the company that was offshoring coding of our defense systems to our probably biggest geopolitical enemy in the world. No, it is the biggest.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think you’re very spot on, Will, when you say that. It is, in my opinion, they are, you know, there’s some other bad actors out there for sure, but they’re public enemy number one because they have the ability, as you know, to take that information, and in my opinion, I don’t think I’m wrong here, Will, they’ve got the ability to turn that into other things that can be used against us far better than probably any other country on planet Earth can.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s exactly right. And while we may have issues with countries like Iran or Russia, China has much, much broader ambitions for the world than either of those two countries. And so it is an insane breach of just basic common sense that they would allow. And frankly, it’s borderline treasonous.
SPEAKER 03 :
I agree with you on that. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 07 :
But imagine what happens if we get into a kinetic conflict over the defense of Taiwan and And our defense systems fail in that moment because they have allowed Chinese coders to be involved. And this is something I want to draw a distinction here because one of the reasons we go after woke companies is because it’s inherently bad to discriminate based on race and sex. But the other reason that wokeism is so bad is because without fail, whenever we see a company going woke, really, really going woke, they are always failing at their core mission. It’s a distraction from the fact that they have forgotten about their consumers, or in this case, forgotten about our national security, right? And so that’s why whenever you see a company going woke, what you should think is, what are they hiding? What are they messing up? And I think this is a perfect example of that with Microsoft.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know what? I think you’re 100% correct on all of that. And, again, my fear in this, and I’m sure you guys’ fear is the same, is the back doors also that can be put in doing these things, meaning, to your point a moment ago, we have some sort of major conflict. Something comes up, and then all of a sudden we’re wondering why things aren’t working quite right. We saw Alaska Airlines have to shut down yesterday for X amount of time for a cybersecurity situation. Will, what’s to say that – That couldn’t happen to our defense mechanisms. And by the way, any type of a scenario you could throw out there, who’s to say that couldn’t happen to us?
SPEAKER 07 :
Nothing at all. And Microsoft certainly can’t guarantee it at this point. I would hope that… Really quick, Will.
SPEAKER 03 :
Microsoft can’t put out a new iOS, put out a new OS without a gazillion bugs in it. So I have no confidence in that side of it at all.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s exactly right, and I think this speaks to even a broader trend. As you know, the quality of Microsoft products is on the decline as they have outsourced more and more to foreign coders who they use to undercut wages of American-trained coders here in the United States. And it just speaks to a lack of concern for their product life, for their consumers, and they just use this gloss of DEI that they’re hiring non-whites. OK, in order to do it as if that’s a virtue, as if discriminating against people based on their race or sex is a good thing. They brag about it in order to undercut wages. So it’s a double damage to to to to consumers into the American country.
SPEAKER 03 :
So I always ask this question because I like solutions. How do we fix this?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I think one of the biggest things we do is consumers start treating DEI and wokeism as the mark of poor quality and bad management that it is. For a number of years, companies would brag about it. They need to go from not just bragging, they need to be running from it. And so that’s one of the reasons we have a weekly woke alert system that we put out. You can visit the consumer’s research to sign up for that. But we always make sure to provide contact information. It’s not just about getting people riled up and making them feel like doomsday is around the corner. It’s about activating us as consumers to push back. And I think everyone would agree, we’re seeing a lot less of this nonsense than we saw maybe four or five years ago. That’s because consumers have pushed back against Target. Budweiser, and a host of other companies. And the more we do that, the more they will understand they’re not going to get away with this DEI wokeism scam.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, as you know, Will, it’s the power of the purse that really does affect some of these individuals. And I had read I was not able to verify this, so please nobody go out and hold me to this or repeat this because I wasn’t able to verify this. But rumor has it, Will, that Budweiser, you mentioned them, that in that year that we had all of the issues with Mulvaney and all of that, that they actually disposed of more Bud Light than they actually sold.
SPEAKER 07 :
I had not heard that, but I wouldn’t be surprised about that because I think what happened there is a huge reservoir of frustration with corporate America was unleashed by that insane campaign. And so I would only amend what you’re saying. The power of the purse is very important, but never forget the power of your voice as well. Make sure that when you’re switching your purchasing decisions from one product or the other, you let that company know why. Because that filters up to the executives, and that’s what will make them… And part of what made the Budweiser campaign so effective was the social media, the jokes, the posts, the attacks. It devastated their brand. consumers should never feel anything but empowered because they really are the ones in charge.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, if there’s anything social media has done positively, there’s a lot of negatives that come out of it, Will, as we know, but if there’s any positives that have come out of it, and for those of you listening, trust me, it does work. There are teams. of individuals out there from all of these big companies, even some small companies that are literally watching for posts. A company like Microsoft, Will, will have pre-programmed bots, if you will, that are out there looking for negative or positive feedback on any of their products. So believe me, when you post on either Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or X Twitter, however you want to say it, at the end of the day, Will, those companies know that because they are purposely looking for that.
SPEAKER 07 :
That is exactly right. That is exactly right. And that taken with the decline in sales is the nuke that destroys the business. When they see that message of this is why we’re not buying your product anymore and the sales start to drop, that’s when those executives start polishing up their resumes because they realize it’s only a matter of time until they’re out the door.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s exactly right. So, no, you are right. It is the power of the purse. It’s the power of social media. In some cases, direct phone calls, direct emails, direct letters, even snail mail, believe it or not, folks. That still works today, Will. Those things make it to the executives’ offices as well. And to your point, it may not have much of an effect early on because most of them will say, well, we’ll just kind of ride this out and see how it goes. But if they start seeing a dramatic drop in sales, oh, believe me, they pay attention.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s exactly right. And they are terrified. These woke companies are terrified of more and more Americans basically making this a routine habit to push back on this. And that’s really why we created this woke alert system, which you can sign up for on our website at consumersresearch.org, so that we can, for the consumers that are just sick and tired of this, we can give them a way to activate week after week after week. We’re not going to bombard you, but it gives you something to feel like you’re pushing back because this is how we went.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. Honestly, Will, again, thank you. Perfect segment. I’ve enjoyed this. It goes right along with some of the things I was talking about in the last hour. And again, give the website one more time where folks can find you and keep up on all the things you guys are working on.
SPEAKER 07 :
Absolutely. They can sign up for our woke alerts at consumersresearch.org, and they can follow me on X at Will Hill. That’s W-I-L-L-H-I-L-D. Come along with us. We’re building together an army, and we’re going to end this woke stuff.
SPEAKER 03 :
Will, thank you. I appreciate you, sir. You’re welcome anytime. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. You bet. Have a great night. Now, real quick, this is one of my weekend sponsors, but I’m going to throw this out there because there’s some of you listening where you’re thinking, well, yeah, but I have to have Microsoft to do X, Y, Z. Well, do you? Do you? In some cases, no, you don’t. And I will tell you that in my situation, I have not been a regular Microsoft user now since about… I got to go back and think here. It’s been well over a decade plus… that I’ve actually used anything Microsoft-related outside of some of their office products and so on, which, by the way, I use minimally because there’s workarounds for that as well. So I will tell you that I’ve got a great friend of mine. He actually is one of my sponsors for the weekend programming, Ease My Pain. i.t services so it’s easemypain.biz so some of you that are in the business world not not individually uh brian doesn’t do anything on an individual basis this is all you know business to business stuff so some of you that have businesses where you’re thinking man i like that segment i’d like to participate i don’t want to be buying any more microsoft product than i need to I want to send a message loud and clear on all of this. I have somebody, Brian, at Ease My Pain that will help you with that and making some decisions as to do you really need to have all these Microsoft products or are there workarounds in other areas where you wouldn’t need that? If you want to reach out to him, you can actually text me directly and I can give you his number or go to easemypain.biz. It’s easemypain.biz and he’ll help you figure out a way around some of what we were just talking about. Veteran Windows and Doors is up next. And at Dave’s, at Veteran Windows, I should say, Dave Bancroft will inform you of there is an Energy Star potential change coming in January that you need to know about because it could affect how windows and doors work for us at our elevation. And the proposed changes are not going to be good for Colorado. So find out from Dave today what you need to do. You can do that by going to klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 03 :
All right, we are back, and I’ve got it in my notes. I might as well talk about it now because I was going to cover this anyways. I did a little bit of this in the last hour talking about solar and EVs, and given that we’re going to talk to Richard here momentarily on the car end of things, do a car review as well, I thought, why not? This is a great place to slide this in. So I talked a little bit towards the end of the last hour about EVs and some of the experts that are out there, supposed experts that are out there when it comes to cars and EVs and so on. Now, keep in mind, every expert has – their own lens that they’re looking at things through, whether they’re on the far right, far left, in the middle, and I fully understand that. And nothing wrong with that. I fully get that, you know, folks will look at things through their own lens. I have my own lenses that I look through. Now, I try to be as open-minded as I possibly can, especially on the automotive sides of things because, as I’ve said many times on Drive Radio, I’m more of a car advocate than anything else, meaning that, you know, a car is a car is a car. And, you know, EVs especially, just because they’re getting some sort of a bump from government doesn’t mean they’re a bad car. Jennifer, let me go ahead and talk to you before I do anything else. Go ahead, Jennifer.
SPEAKER 08 :
A couple things really quick. I have heard that if you charge your lithium-ion batteries in your EV at a faster rate, The batteries do not last as long. Have you heard this?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that is not true. Let me just say this, Jennifer. There’s a lot, I think, of misinformation out there along the lines of not only EVs but just regular batteries, your phone, your car chargers, all that kind of stuff. and the reality is what you just said is no now where evs can struggle and this is true with a lot of devices when you charge or overcharge so a lot of evs they want you the manufacturer even wants you instead of running that at a full 100 charge they want you to run at 85 to 90 charge leaving some headroom in there and there’s a couple of reasons why they want you to do that One, it does help the battery life last longer by not going to the full charge. The other thing that it does is because a lot of EVs have regenerative braking, meaning you can drive them with one pedal, and instead of actually using the brakes, the electric motors will generate power that then feed back into the battery, and that will actually slow you down. And frankly, if you’ve ever driven an EV with one pedal driving, it’s one of the slickest things out there because you rarely step on the brake pedal. If you do it just right, you can come up to a stop. Works very well. The problem, Jennifer, is if you charge to 100%, regenerative braking will not work when you’re starting out because there’s nothing to send that power back to. In other words, the battery is fully charged. Regenerative braking is basically disabled at that point because there’s no place to basically send that power. So in turn, it doesn’t work. So what they want you to do is charge 85% to 90% so that as you use regenerative braking, it’s always there no matter when you’re driving it.
SPEAKER 08 :
I think the term we’ve always used is they want a little headroom.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. That’s right. Exactly.
SPEAKER 08 :
Now, here’s another one for you. Have you ever heard of the nothing cell phone?
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I have not. The nothing cell phone.
SPEAKER 08 :
I think they’re called nothing.tech is their website. They’ve just come out with their third version of the nothing phone.
SPEAKER 03 :
I see it now. Yeah, I’m looking at it as we speak. I’ve never heard of it.
SPEAKER 08 :
They don’t use a lithium-ion battery. They use something called a silicon carbon battery, which apparently has higher energy density, and it charges faster than lithium-ion.
SPEAKER 03 :
Interesting. Very cool.
SPEAKER 08 :
It’s the first place I’ve heard of it. There was a discussion about the difficulty of making a certain battery, and I think they were talking about this one, It requires an extremely thin ceramic film to be used inside the battery. And it’s very difficult to make that at this point in time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Meaning there’s still advancement that can be made across battery life period, whether that be for our handheld devices, whether it be for backup power, whether it be for, uh, cars even. So to your point, Jennifer, and I, but thank you, I’m going to look into this phone cause I had not heard of that, but just shows you that there’s still a long way to go on the battery technology end of things.
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely. And, um, You know, I’ve always been wary and respectful of the lithium-ion battery because you always hear the stories about things that were mistreated.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 08 :
And they blew up on you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 08 :
Or like that, what was it, a forklift at a large food warehouse about three, four years ago that caught on fire and they couldn’t put it out and there went the huge warehouse with all the food.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, they are something to be… I mean, Jennifer, it’s funny you say that because it’s a lot like… Anything else, I mean, in my world where I’ve always been around the automotive end of things and all the way back to when I was a kid and you respected gasoline, open gasoline containers, anything, I mean, all of those things, you were taught at a very early age, these are things you have a healthy respect for. This is no different. You were talking about the exact same thing. The problem is because we don’t look at it the same way we do gasoline that’s very volatile, we should because there’s really not a lot of difference at times.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, every year there is approximately 12 or 13 people who die in New York City because they had their EV scooter worked on and they are either using the wrong charger or the person who repaired it didn’t do right. And they bring it into the house and it’s by the front door and it bursts into flames and they die.
SPEAKER 03 :
Which is no different than them dragging a can of gas in the front door.
SPEAKER 08 :
Or filling your gas tank while smoking a cigarette.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, having an open flame or a spark or anything along those lines. Absolutely. And I think, you know, we get so – I mean, the same thing. I see people at gas stations, Jennifer, all the time where they get so complacent even filling up their regular car where they’re not really even half paying attention to what’s – And I’m thinking, man alive, it’s no wonder we don’t have more accidents on a daily basis. And some of what you’re talking about, whether it be, you know, batteries exploding on airplanes or you’re talking about electric bikes in the front of people’s houses and so on, the reality is all of these things we have to be very respectful of.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. And if you have a cell phone or anything else that uses lithium ion batteries and you see that it’s kind of changed shape because it’s smelling a little.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
Stop it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 08 :
Pull that, get rid of it.
SPEAKER 03 :
I had a listener on Saturday that called in. They had a little jump box that was doing that. It had been in the car, got overheated probably at one point. It had bulged out the side, and he could just tell the battery was bad, and that’s a great example of what you’re talking about, Jennifer.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. Well, thanks, John.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, Jennifer, thank you. Great, great, great points. And I appreciate that kind of a carryover from, you know, drive radio, but applies to everybody that’s listening. And my point with this particular conversation was it’ll be very interesting. And I had a conversation with a good friend of mine. We were going back and forth via email this morning. And it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens with EV and solar once these tax credits are gone. or diminished greatly. States may still do a few things here or there, depending upon the state and so on. So you might get some tax advantages on certain vehicles, certain states and so on, or even solar and all of that. What it’s going to do across the board, solar and EV, is I don’t think either one are going to die, by the way. But you’re going to see a reckoning of those companies. And what I mean by that is the ones that are really sharp, that have got a really fantastic product, that can stand on that product and the product alone and sell on the basis of that product, the features and benefits and so on, those will make it. Those will last. They’ll market, they’ll figure out a way around these things, and they will still be okay at the end of the day. The ones that have been kind of riding along the coattails of tax credits, or they did it because they felt like they had to, and by the way, this is solar companies to EVs, because some jumped into it because they knew there were buyers out there that would do it. There were these tax credits ready to go. Let’s jump in. We’ll take advantage of this stuff, because in some cases, there was even tax credits on the manufacturing side as well. So we’ll jump on board. We’re all in, and off we go. Well, when that ends… it’s going to separate, quote-unquote, the wheat from the chaff. And my prediction is you’re going to see the really good companies rise to the top. They’ll still be successful. They’ll make it. They’ll market correctly, and they’ll be fine. The ones that were not doing it correctly and were in it for the wrong reasons, you’re not going to see them make it. You’ll see a consolidation of sorts, and what we see today in both ends of that will be greatly diminished in the not-too-distant future because those products that they have just – They just flat out won’t be selling. That’s my prediction. We’ll see how things go here in the near future because the EV credits run out here at the end of September. And I haven’t checked on solar. I don’t know exactly when those end, but I think it’s this year is going to be the last year for those getting any kind of credit on your taxes as well. Golden Eagle Financial. Now, speaking of taxes and all of that and planning for the future, financially speaking, Al Smith would love to help you with your financial future, the planning of… All you need to do is call him today. Just go to klzradio.com and look for Al there.
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SPEAKER 06 :
Putting reason into your afternoon drive. This is John Rush.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. My son Richard should be joining us here momentarily. And if not, we will roll right along just like we always do. And, again, for those of you that these are questions I get all the time when it comes to, you know, what’s going to happen with certain industry. I had this question that came up this morning. It was in my inbox. What’s going to happen to the, you know, solar industry? What’s going to happen to the EV industry? And that’s where my comments a moment ago came. came into play was I thought, well, you know what? This is a good time to talk about it because it’ll be really interesting to see what these industries do. And again, for those of you that potentially have investments or things along those lines, this is where you really need to be double checking to see where is my money. And that goes back to the whole Al at Golden Eagle Financial. Be looking at some of those things because again, some of these companies are going to do very well and some of them won’t do so well. Richard, what’s going on?
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, not too much, Dad. It’s the heat of summer right now, isn’t it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Very hot. It doesn’t look like it outside. If you look outside, it would look like it would be very, very cool, but it’s 92 as we speak. Now, one place where it was also hot was out on the golf course with all the players this last weekend, and old Sheffer, man, he can knock it out of the park.
SPEAKER 09 :
Sheffler can. Not hot in old St. Andrews there in England or whatever it is, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
What a tough course, by the way.
SPEAKER 09 :
Gloomy. Well, it’s funny because it’s a link style golf, right? So it doesn’t feel like it should be as tough, but it is, right? Because it’s that thick rough, right? You get into the tall grass and the weeds. We’ve got a few of those around here because it’s kind of plains golf.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, right, right. Good point.
SPEAKER 09 :
You know, it’s right on the sea out there. It’s just definitely a different little, you know, situation. But, yeah, old Scotty, he is doing everything in his power to, I don’t know, he’s doing everything in his power to compete for old Tiger, I will say. And, you know, can Tiger and Isaiah, I saw their stat, and basically he’s almost the same as Tiger in, for the first four years or whatever it is, or by the time he won his fourth major, like essentially in between his first and his fourth major was like the exact same wins, exact same whatever. Actually, Scottie was better in a few different categories. But, I mean, even for you, Dad, it’s impressive to get you talking about it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and again, I just happen to be watching a little bit of it here and there. Don’t watch a lot of TV, but I got a few updates, and I was watching some different things. We were out to dinner one night, and, you know, because of the time difference, some of that stuff plays at different times than it normally would because of the big time difference. And, of course, they record some of that stuff as well. But just watching him play, and the one thing about him that I think is different about him versus even other golfers is he just plays golf. You and I were talking about this today. There’s just not a lot of flair there.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, he’s a very no-nonsense kind of player, right, Dad? He is the type of player that he’s going to go out, he’s going to make quick work of it, he’s not going to do a whole lot of frills and get with the fans, where Tiger would do that a little bit, right? He would sort of play to the fans in a lot of cases, and he would kind of be the showman of sorts, if you know what we’re talking about. And Scottie’s, I don’t want to say he’s the opposite of that dad, but, you know, even some of his comments this past week, he sort of talked about, like, he almost plays both because he’s good at it. And I’m not to say, like, you know, we’re kind of talking about, it’s like, you know, Joker for basketball with the Nuggets, right? Like, do I think that Nikola Jokic likes basketball? Yeah, you don’t play professionally if you don’t like it. But do I think that he lives and breathes it? No, I don’t think so. And I think that that’s how Scottie is. Sheffler kind of is. I don’t think he lives and breathes golf. I think he enjoys it when he plays. I think he’s really good at it, and that’s partially why he plays. But ultimately, I think that he’s – and maybe that’s the right perspective. I actually think he’s got a – I think he’s a Christian, or at least from what I can tell, and he has his priorities in order. He talks about spending time with his kids and wanting to do that, and I think there can be something said for that, right? The guy who sort of puts his family first and isn’t really so consumed with – just winning at all costs. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and I think, you know, you and I were talking today, I think that he, maybe I’m wrong in this and maybe I’m, my memory is, you know, failing me, but I look at him and I did watch golf younger because my dad watched a lot of golf. So we were kind of forced to watch it. Cause back then you didn’t have much choice. If dad was watching something, there wasn’t too many other places to, you know, we didn’t have 15 TVs in the house. Like a lot of families do today. We had one. And if there’s something on and you weren’t able to watch what you wanted, just tough noogies, you had to suck it up and keep watching whatever was on TV. And a lot of that for me was golf because of my dad. And I can remember watching, you know, Jack Nicklaus play back in the day. And, you know, Jack was a lot like Scotty. There just wasn’t a lot of I mean, he was always a nice guy, always appreciated the fans. No problems along those lines, but not a lot of razzle dazzle, I guess I could say, Richard.
SPEAKER 09 :
Nope, I would totally agree with you. And again, I wasn’t obviously as much into Jack and Arnie and those guys. I obviously grew up watching Tiger. But there’s a certain sense of, like you say, kind of no-nonsense about him. And Scotty, he’s kind of a throwback type of player in that sense. And honestly, I think it makes him endearing to a lot of people. It’s frustrating to some people, to me, because… I want a good rivalry. I want a good villain. And Scotty’s like the anti-villain, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and to your point, in a lot of sports, and golf is right now currently, and I could be wrong, and somebody I’m sure will correct me if I’m in because I don’t watch a ton of golf on the weekends, but just what I see even in the news and so on, Richard, it’s become more where they’re all friendly with one another. That’s good, by the way. I’m not saying that’s bad, but there doesn’t seem to be that inner rivalry that there once was.
SPEAKER 09 :
No, and in sports in general, right? Like NBA, NFL, right? I don’t think John Elway and Dan Murray, maybe they were. I don’t know. You watched more of them. Were they close friends?
SPEAKER 03 :
No. In fact, there was a lot more rivalry, I think, even back then inside of sports. Now, I think once everything was all said and done, those guys became pretty good friends, and off the field was way different. But, man, on the field, no. I mean, they used to talk trash and all sorts of stuff, and that’s what made it fun. And I think it still does at times.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and that’s what I was just going to say, Dad, is I do feel like that there’s a certain level that that has gone missing, right? The idea that you can not like each other on the court, right? You know, Michael Jordan and Isaiah Thomas and Larry Bird and Magic, and while they were good friends, when it came to on the court, on the course, on the field, they didn’t really like each other. They wanted to rip the other guy’s you know, hard out, right? He wanted to beat the other guys. And I just feel like sometimes there’s a little bit too much friendliness going on. And like you say, it’s not to say that you want to beat someone up or anything like that. You’re not even trying to teach my boys that because, you know, they get frustrated and, you know, mad when something else goes on. But I also think that there’s a healthy sense of, you know, harnessing, you know, anger or not resentment, but, you know, just kind of harnessing that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Just the rivalry. Nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and I guess to your point, though, maybe Scottie’s proving us wrong because that guy is just playing some of the best golf of anyone ever at this point in time. And it is just insane what he’s doing. And, again, I know a lot of your listeners may not tune in, although I will say this, Dad. I know it’s because of the time difference. It is nice. You know, you turned on the open if you’re watching, like you’re kind of watching a little bit of Sunday morning. But it’s over by noon our time, you know, whatever, 11 o’clock noon.
SPEAKER 03 :
If you’re watching later in the day, it’s a replay.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, but then you have the rest of the day to do whatever you want to do. Right. It’s kind of nice for that time zone, which, by the way, real quick, and you weren’t even going to talk about this. I would make an argument that the mountain time zone is the best time zone to watch sports in.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hmm.
SPEAKER 09 :
Now, we get messed up at times because they will do old – for example, the Nuggets may start at like 8.30 because I think sometimes TV execs think that we as the Mountain Time Zone Denver, we’re like the West Coast. And it’s like, no, we’re not. So you start that game at 8.30. It’s not 7.30, right? It is 7.30. 8.30 and it’s late. You’ve got to stay up until almost 11 o’clock.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think to your point, what they tend to forget is East Coast, those guys, everything they do is late. They eat late. They do everything late. It’s just their schedule and what they do. West Coast tends to be a little bit earlier. Well, we tend to be a little bit more West Coast-ish along those lines. Most people around here will eat dinner between 5 and 6. Not too many people eating out. I mean, you go to most restaurants and by 7, 7.30, things are already starting to wind down, even on a weekend, Richard, a Occasionally, you’ll go someplace that’ll be still wound up at 8 o’clock at night, but not very often around here.
SPEAKER 09 :
No, no, no. That high time is between 5 and 7, basically, right? That’s right. You get your reservation, and then it starts to wind down. But I would say, kind of back to what I was saying, I would argue that we are the perfect time zone for sports in general because… Like you say, you can go to dinner at a reasonable hour, 5, 6 o’clock. Most of our games, even if they’re home games, they start about 6.45 or maybe 7 o’clock. Even Monday night football for us starts at 6.30 or even Sunday night football starts about 6. So it’s over by 9.30. You’re on the East Coast. Some of those games. Midnight. Yeah, exactly. 11 o’clock midnight. And it’s like, man, I’m already in bed by that point in time.
SPEAKER 03 :
Everything they do is late. Well, Charlie and I always say really quick, just talking about the Mountain Time Zone. We always say it’s a forgotten time zone. I can’t tell you how many times I tell a guest, you know, Mountain Time, Mountain Time, Mountain Time. And they call an hour early or an hour late because nobody knows that there’s a Mountain Time Zone.
SPEAKER 09 :
Nope, they don’t, and for those of you that are familiar, Joe in New York, and I know that John up in Cheyenne with his Giants and stuff, it’s different, right? Like you say, they run differently on the East Coast, and you go back there, everything does start later, but yeah, most people don’t remember the Mountain Time Zone. It’s kind of forgotten, although I kind of like it, because we are kind of forgotten, but we also kind of end… And, like, right, you know, you can also be finishing up a call, you know, here at 4 o’clock, and if the guest is in California or somewhere like that, you can, it’s still 3 o’clock for them, right? So you can still get an answer. And so, yeah, again, folks, and sometimes, you know, I don’t plan these things, but I just think the Mountain Time Zone is a fun time to watch sports, in my opinion, because it sort of lets you get your sports watching in.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Even if you go to a game, and then you’re still able to be home by 10 o’clock, in bed by 10, 15, and you’re ready to go. But, no, like you said, that kind of backs what you’re saying. Scottie, he is on a heater. If he keeps it up, he will go down as one of the greats. And, honestly, that golf has been looking for the next great one since Tiger. They tried to make it Rory. Yeah, he had a good year this last year at the Masters. He’s just so inconsistent. But you get a really consistent golfer like Scottie Scheffler who, and if he does it the right way, which I think he is, golf may really benefit from that type of a player.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. That time of the week where we do car reviews. Richard, what have you driven lately?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, Dad, so drove a really fun car, a fun sedan. It is an EV. It is the Hyundai IONIQ 6. This was the limited version, which has the long range and the all-wheel drive with 20-inch wheels. Price, as it was tested, Dad, with no brakes, no EV credits, which we’ll talk about actually after this review a little bit, about $56,000. Range on this vehicle, because that’s something that you talk about a lot when we talk about the EVs, and the range on this was just over 300 miles, which is really good, Dad, for a car of this size, and it was really efficient. And some of you are going to say, well, of course, Richard, it’s an EV, an electric vehicle. Of course it’s efficient. Well, Dad, some of the other cars in this segment are, Maybe they might have a similar size battery, but they’re just not as efficient. So they can maybe only go 270 miles or so on a full charge. This vehicle that fully charged can get you over 300 miles, which really is great, especially if you’re able to charge this vehicle with an upgraded charger at your disposal. One nice feature, Dad, and we’ll kind of get into the apportionments as far as that goes, is on this vehicle, if you wanted to and you met all of the right conditions, you can go from about 10% to 80% in 18 minutes. And so some of the things that we talk about as far as range anxiety and some of that, you can sort of, well, not completely remove, but really minimize some of those concerns depending on where you’re driving this vehicle at, kind of the area with which you’re in. This was first introduced out in 2023. Minor revisions kind of to this year. If you’re over six foot tall, the headroom’s a little bit, um funky especially in the rear seat even the the front row right we had walt in it he’s about six foot four he had to kind of lean that seat way back but myself about five ten not any issues dad getting in and out of the car responsiveness was fantastic for those that haven’t driven the evs dad you know they don’t this one wasn’t even i guess i would even call it a performance ev and you’re right around there about four to five seconds from zero to sixty Really a fun car to drive. All the nice apportionments on the interior. The infotainment system that Hyundai’s done works really, really well. Operates fantastically. You’ve got different drive modes, and you can feel the difference. It had an eco mode, a comfort mode, and then it had a sport mode, Dad, where you did feel the difference, and you could actually see the differences in terms of your range go down. If you put a little bit more
SPEAKER 03 :
oomph to the to the electric motors within that and so overall really impressed in that i kind of told you i was driving this car you looked you were kind of impressed with the looks it’s a really good look yeah no it’s not and i’ve driven one before they work very well like you say and you see these driving around uh town i mean again you start noticing different vehicles and especially if you’re looking at certain vehicles and we know we’re driving a vehicle i tend to pay more attention during it’s funny when you’re looking for something you see more of them than when you’re not looking for them so yeah these are around you can see them And, again, I’ve driven them, and they, to your point, they work very, very well. Now, I want to add this in really quick, too, before – because folks are thinking about doing some things. We’ve talked about this in the program. I’ve already done this today when it comes to some of the different credits and things that are out there. There’s also right now, currently – Zero 48-month financing on that particular unit. So that might be something else to think about if you’re looking to do an upgrade on a new car. And we talked about this a little bit last week, Richard, too, comparing this without any credit. So after the September 30th deadline, this compared to other sedans, it frankly is right in the ballpark. If you look at how another sedan like this would be equipped on the gas engine counterpart, there’s not a lot of price difference. It’s about $5,000 is all.
SPEAKER 09 :
You are correct, Dad. And when you get the value that it brings and all of the apportionments, and we don’t want to sit here and bore everyone with everything that it can give you, but you’ve got a heated steering wheel, for example. You’ve got dual auto temperature control, rain-sensing wipers. I think this one also had some heated and ventilated seats. And so you get a lot of creature comforts on this vehicle, Dad, a lot of storage, which is nice. The back end, again, it is a sedan, but I felt like it had ample storage. in the trunk space of this car, which was fantastic. But I would encourage folks that if you are in the market for that sedan, and I would consider it more on the luxurious side of things. I would, absolutely. Especially with the looks of it, and I’ve actually got a neighbor that drives one of this, and he loves it, and it’s a fantastic car for him. like you said that we can’t speak to every circumstance situation and people may be listening to this review later on but we will always encourage people get out test drive these vehicles if you can whether it’s this model year again 2025 hyundai ionic 6 or a different model year they haven’t made a ton of changes since 2023 encourage you to get out test drive this vehicle let them when you do that let them know that john and richard rush from drive radio and rush for reason sent you
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, and with everything, Richard, you just said a moment ago, I think it’s also worth noting, and this will be where I talked about this earlier as to how do EVs, how will they stand up over the test of time? Will they make it? Will some make it? Will some not? And I do believe that there’s going to be some manufacturers that embrace it that I think do very well. And by the way, I think this happens to be Hyundai, happens to be one of those that I think will do very well because they’ve actually embraced the EV thing and have done some things technologically speaking that – I think others have even borrowed from or copied, if you would. So I think they’re going to be fine. I think they’ll market well. They’ve got them priced well. I think they’ll be fine. I do think there’s some other manufacturers out there that will struggle. There’s some that have kind of, quote, unquote, dabbled. And I don’t want to name names, but maybe at some point you and I can get into that and rattle off some of the different names that are out there that, in my opinion, haven’t gone full bore. Or maybe they think they have, but they definitely haven’t marketed them full bore. It’ll be interesting to see how that works, because I feel, Richard, some of them aren’t going to make it. Some of these EVs that are being made by some manufacturers, they’ll just go away.
SPEAKER 09 :
They will, and like you said, I think that the competition will prove that, and you’re starting to see some of that with some of the credits going. Like you said, the credits are going to be going away, so these companies will figure out really quick, and they already know that, right? They already have the internal sales data, and they know which of their vehicles are selling well, and the vehicle we just mentioned, and like you said, Hyundai in particular, I’ll just say that vehicle competes with the Tesla Model 3, right? We see a bunch of them running around all the time. One thing that that vehicle has, I’ll say it, I think it looks better than a Model 3. And I think that some of these manufacturers can take advantage of that because you can do more. And maybe we talk about this a little bit greater in detail at some other point, Dan. You can do more with electric cars, right, because you do save space. You can do some different things with the body lines. You can do different things with more space, right? You can kind of configure the car a little bit differently than maybe an internal combustion counterpart. And I think some companies… Is that in other companies maybe played a little bit too safe, if that’s a fair way of putting it?
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I think that’s right, and it’s funny. If you go even do some searching on top EV companies, of course, BYD, which we don’t talk about much here in America, which is a Chinese company, they have set the world on fire when it comes to EVs, and our tax credits and things that are happening here will have no effect upon them whatsoever. As you start rolling through, for example, I’ll throw one out there that these guys aren’t going to make it with EVs. I just don’t think they will. Stellantis, which, of course, is Peugeot, Fiat, Jeep, Ram, they have dabbled in that market, have never been very strong in the market. If they survive that, Richard, I will be shocked.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and like you said, they may survive that in certain senses, or they may do some collaborations, but I think they’re going to have to change their thought process. I think you hit the nail on the head, which is standalone, a lot of these companies may not stand on some of their standalone vehicles. Well, and I’ll even say this, Dad, there are some standalone EV-only companies out there that may not make it themselves either. Lucid being one of them. Yep. Well, and I’ll say it too, Rivian. I know a lot of people love their Rivians, but some of these companies have yet to make a profit.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 09 :
I’ll be curious what happens now that some of these credits are going away.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. I’ll let you go with that, Richard. Thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day. Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning coming up next. It is still hot out there. Your AC unit is working overtime this time of the year. Any problems at all, give Hunter from Cub Creek a call. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 06 :
Now back to Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, that’s it for Hour 2. Hour 3, Dr. John Brady is going to be joining us. We’re going to talk about Epstein and just the psychological sides of that, not the whole opening the files and all of that, but him psychologically speaking. We’ll be back and do that in a moment. This is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m a rich guy.
