Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty. You are listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1: Here's Wayne Resnick, kamv Iames is forty man Cono. You
Speaker 1: kill it with the bumps. It's a Bill Handle show.
Speaker 1: He's back after the new year. Wayne Resume here until
Speaker 1: nine o'clock. And speaking of California, Governor Newsom, when he
Speaker 1: took office five and a half six years ago, whenever
Speaker 1: it was, he said he would be California's healthcare governor.
Speaker 1: And he has made a lot of stuff happen. And
Speaker 1: some of those things he made happen may have to
Speaker 1: go away because we have a new federal administration that
Speaker 1: is not going to be very friendly toward some of
Speaker 1: the things that Governor Newsom has made happen. I think
Speaker 1: I just I want to focus on two big ones.
Speaker 1: One of them very quickly, because abortion. Enough with talking
Speaker 1: about abortion, but just to point out that under Governor Newsom,
Speaker 1: California gave the right to an abortion put into the
Speaker 1: state constitution and passed a law that allows out of
Speaker 1: state doctors to perform abortions in California, and we built
Speaker 1: a big stockpile of the abortion medicines because remember they
Speaker 1: were trying to ban overturn the FDA approval of mifapristone. Also,
Speaker 1: he created this twenty million dollar fund to help Californians
Speaker 1: who can't afford an abortion get an abortion. So he
Speaker 1: did all those things, and I think that we know
Speaker 1: the incoming federal administration is not down with any of that.
Speaker 1: So that is something he's going to have to fight
Speaker 1: about come January twenty. And then the other thing I
Speaker 1: want to bring up, and this is this. These are
Speaker 1: two of certainly a dozen or more things that he's done.
Speaker 1: He made an Office of Healthcare Affordability. Laws have been
Speaker 1: passed about generic drugs and general If you remember where
Speaker 1: he said the state is going to get into the
Speaker 1: business of manufacturing insulin. That's proved harder to spin up
Speaker 1: than maybe he thought it that it would be. But
Speaker 1: here's the one thing, because on the one hand, it
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, but then I will reveal something that if
Speaker 1: it's crazy, then everybody's crazy. There's a program called medicaid.
Speaker 1: It is healthcare for poor people, and in California it's
Speaker 1: administered under medical but you get for about half of
Speaker 1: the money spent through medical on healthcare comes from the
Speaker 1: federal government. It's Medicaid money, and it's supposed to go
Speaker 1: for things like doctors in medicine and emergency room visits.
Speaker 1: But California, under a friendly administration, has been able to
Speaker 1: get waivers that allow California to spend Medicaid money on,
Speaker 1: for example, housing, because there is a trend of thought
Speaker 1: that says housing is healthcare, that for vulnerable populations, that
Speaker 1: having stable housing is vitally important to them even being
Speaker 1: able to pursue, you know, getting their medical needs taken
Speaker 1: care of. So the idea of housing as healthcare and
Speaker 1: waivers from the federal government allowed Medicaid money to be
Speaker 1: spent on homeless housing. Well, that's only because you had
Speaker 1: an administration that was friendly to the idea and granted
Speaker 1: those waivers. And I don't think there's a chance in
Speaker 1: hades that the incoming administration is going to continue allowing
Speaker 1: that use of Medicaid money. In fact, not only might
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom have to fight to be allowed to do that,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have to fight not to have Medicaid money
Speaker 1: cut drastically. So he's got a huge battle on his hands.
Speaker 1: And it does maybe sound crazy that housing is healthcare,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna use Medicaid money for housing. And I
Speaker 1: just want to point out, because sometimes California gets pointed
Speaker 1: at as the birthplace of crazy ideas, there's nineteen stakes
Speaker 1: that have been doing the same thing. Sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: just us, and as soon it might not be any
Speaker 1: of these states being allowed to do it. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about gift giving, and let's talk about gift returning, because
Speaker 1: a lot of gifts are given at this time of year,
Speaker 1: and ooh, a lot of gifts are returned. The National
Speaker 1: Retail Federation estimates about a trillion dollars worth of merchandise
Speaker 1: was sold over the holiday period and that about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion of it returned. You've got a
Speaker 1: consumer research firm called Civic Science, and so this is
Speaker 1: a survey they did, and twenty eight percent of respond
Speaker 1: and said they had returned or exchanged a gift last year.
Speaker 1: Because this was taken before this holiday season, and according
Speaker 1: to Statista, I'm not as big a freak as I've
Speaker 1: been made out to be. I have been criticized roundly
Speaker 1: and incessantly by several people in my life because I
Speaker 1: happen to think I happened to think that cash or
Speaker 1: a gift card, the more generic the better, Like a
Speaker 1: Visa gift card is better than a Starbucks gift card,
Speaker 1: but a Starbucks gift card is still pretty good. I
Speaker 1: think those are good gifts. And people tell me I
Speaker 1: have no imagination and I'm thoughtless and bah bah bah
Speaker 1: bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah. And yet,
Speaker 1: according to Statista, the most desired Christmas gift in the
Speaker 1: US is cash, and the second most popular gift from
Speaker 1: the recipient's gift cards. So excuse me, I'm not a freak,
Speaker 1: I'm a basic be So in any event, I bet
Speaker 1: right now, if you think about your home, there's probably
Speaker 1: something in there that somebody gave you as a gift
Speaker 1: that you don't really use, maybe hadn't thought about till
Speaker 1: I just prompted you to. But you haven't gotten rid
Speaker 1: of it either, because man, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: etiquette around what do you do when somebody gave you
Speaker 1: a gift and you don't want it and you're not
Speaker 1: sure how to handle it. And I'm not here to
Speaker 1: tell you how to handle it, because I do not
Speaker 1: work for Emily Post. But why why do you get
Speaker 1: gifts from people that are not really in your mind
Speaker 1: good gifts, believe it or not. There has been significant
Speaker 1: deep research into this question and the lead person in
Speaker 1: that area in that field is Deborah Cone from the
Speaker 1: New York Institute of Technology, who published this exhaustive paper
Speaker 1: in a journal called and there is a journal called
Speaker 1: the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction and Complaining Behavior. Every
Speaker 1: issue has a centerfold of Bill Handle in it. And
Speaker 1: she looked at how this happens, what is the psychology
Speaker 1: behind the gift giving that doesn't work out, and has
Speaker 1: identified specific reasons that people sometimes when they give gifts,
Speaker 1: they're not being nice at all. The least benign, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: the least malicious. The most benign is when simply you
Speaker 1: don't know enough about the person and all you really
Speaker 1: remember is they said something once about the Miami Dolphins,
Speaker 1: so you thought it would be cool to get them
Speaker 1: Miami Dolphins jersey. But it turns out they don't really
Speaker 1: love the Miami Dolphins at all. It's just a thing
Speaker 1: they said once. Now that's not the selfish kind of
Speaker 1: gift giving. That's the trying to personalize a gift and
Speaker 1: not really realizing that you don't know as much about
Speaker 1: the person as you should. Now we get into the
Speaker 1: bad stuff, the dark stuff. Here are some reasons that
Speaker 1: people will give you a crappy gift. One of them
Speaker 1: is they want bragging rights. They're not really giving the
Speaker 1: gift for you. They're giving the gift for the other
Speaker 1: people who see you open the gift, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: something very expensive or very elaborate, and that everybody else
Speaker 1: will go, WHOA, what a great gift, and they get
Speaker 1: all the kudos. Even though it might be expensive or elaborate,
Speaker 1: it's not something that you're interested in having. And a
Speaker 1: related concept is the gift I give to you for me.
Speaker 1: This usually happens in marriages or partnerships, where for example,
Speaker 1: I really like a pair of headphones, So what I
Speaker 1: do is I give you the gift of those headphones,
Speaker 1: because hey, we live together, you're my wife. I know
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be using those headphones. It really wasn't for you,
Speaker 1: it was for me. There's also the I know better
Speaker 1: than anyone else thing. You might have a gift registry,
Speaker 1: and there's a kind of person who will look at
Speaker 1: what's on your gift registry and deem them all to
Speaker 1: be blame or boring and instead get you something else,
Speaker 1: not because they really think you'll like it better, but
Speaker 1: because they're rejecting what you want for a gift and
Speaker 1: they're gonna show you. It's kind of a control thing.
Speaker 1: And then you also have the downright aggressive gift. They're
Speaker 1: mad at you, and even though they don't realize that
Speaker 1: it's affecting their choice of gift, it is, and subconsciously,
Speaker 1: because they're so mad at you, they give you something crappy.
Speaker 1: So the next time, the next time you get a
Speaker 1: crappy gift from someone, I guess you have to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: are they self absorbed, ignorant or mean? Imagine hearing two
Speaker 1: people argue a couple because somebody left a wet towel
Speaker 1: on a bathroom floor, and the other person hates that
Speaker 1: a wet towe was left on the bathroom floor, and
Speaker 1: they are going at it with this argument. Now imagine
Speaker 1: one person who's part of this argument that you're hearing
Speaker 1: is hundreds of miles away from you because the other
Speaker 1: person is having the argument on their phone on speaker phone.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, there is an epidemic in the United
Speaker 1: States of America anyway, where people have forgotten mass amnesia,
Speaker 1: as if some kind of radiation came down from space,
Speaker 1: targeting our brains and erasing the little part of the
Speaker 1: brain that holds the memory of earbuds that earbuds exist,
Speaker 1: because for some reason, you all stopped using earbuds, and
Speaker 1: you're walking around, standing around holding your phone not up
Speaker 1: to your head, holding your phone about a foot in
Speaker 1: front of your face, talking at it, and someone else
Speaker 1: is talking out of it at you, and I'm hearing
Speaker 1: it now. I want to tell a little story because
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know that I was witnessing
Speaker 1: the birth of a problem at the time, but I
Speaker 1: think now that I was. There is a coffee shop
Speaker 1: in Larchmont called Go Get Them Tiger. I'm not endorsing them.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not not endorsing them. They're good, but
Speaker 1: that's not why I'm bringing up. I'm bringing them up
Speaker 1: because they are the place that on Thanksgiving they have
Speaker 1: a tradition that on Thanksgiving Day they make a special
Speaker 1: menu of special coffee drinks that usually they are elevated
Speaker 1: versions of certain coffee drinks that other huge coffee chain
Speaker 1: sell and it's a big deal. The place is packed
Speaker 1: all day and I went one Thanksgiving. I went over
Speaker 1: there and the place is packed, and I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: my order, and there's this kid and he is watching
Speaker 1: something on a phone on speed like with the speaker on,
Speaker 1: and it's loud, and I don't like it. And I
Speaker 1: looked at it. And here's the thing. At the time,
Speaker 1: I was on the phone with a friend, appropriately on
Speaker 1: earbuds and speaking very softly. So I look at this
Speaker 1: kid and I just go, you got any earbuds? And
Speaker 1: it turns out he did, and he got them out
Speaker 1: of his pocket and he used them because hopefully I
Speaker 1: shamed him for listening to his phone audio without earbuds
Speaker 1: in a public place. Now, I didn't know at the
Speaker 1: time that one day everybody would be doing the same
Speaker 1: thing and I would have to have the travel skills
Speaker 1: of a Santa Claus to go all around the country
Speaker 1: and confront everybody who in any moment is yacking or
Speaker 1: watching a movie or a TikTok on their phone on
Speaker 1: the speaker. If you've flown anytime in the last year,
Speaker 1: you've heard it or you've done it. I don't know
Speaker 1: which one you want. Airplane terminals are one of the
Speaker 1: worst places for this. I think part of it is
Speaker 1: you're not allowed, you know, to be on the phone
Speaker 1: on the flight, so everybody's got to get their stuff
Speaker 1: in before they board. But also where are your earbuds?
Speaker 1: And maybe in an airplane terminal. The thinking is, I'll
Speaker 1: when I get on the plane, i won't be on
Speaker 1: the phone, I'll watch my tiktoks and I'll put in
Speaker 1: my earbuds. But I don't want to run the battery down,
Speaker 1: So in the terminal while we're all waiting to board,
Speaker 1: I'll blast my TikTok to the world. Do you know
Speaker 1: if you fly American Airlines or you fly Alaska Airlines,
Speaker 1: they make an announcement about, hey, you need to wear
Speaker 1: headphones or earbuds if you're going to listen to content
Speaker 1: on this flight. And if you go to Delta's website,
Speaker 1: they have a section about their in flight entertainment and
Speaker 1: they've got a thing on that website now that says
Speaker 1: plays if you're gonna watch anything on a flight, use headphones.
Speaker 1: Flight attendants say every single flight there's at least one
Speaker 1: person doing this. Also, the people who do it are
Speaker 1: getting more and more virulent because it used to be,
Speaker 1: let's say two years ago, when this was going on,
Speaker 1: if somebody was doing it and you just kind of
Speaker 1: gave them a look, they would cut it out and
Speaker 1: they would either mute the device or they'd put in earbudgs.
Speaker 1: Now people are talking back. Somebody's on a plane, they're
Speaker 1: watching a movie on their iPad with the with the
Speaker 1: you know, the speakers, and you say, hey, would you
Speaker 1: mind using headphones? A lot of times they'll ignore you
Speaker 1: or even say you are being rude. Man. It used
Speaker 1: to be. Remember remember when everybody had earbuds. Remember when
Speaker 1: if you bought an iPhone, you got earbuds with the phone.
Speaker 1: And they stopped doing that. Uh in I think it
Speaker 1: was twenty twenty that they stopped including a pair of
Speaker 1: wired earbuds with an iPhone, and maybe that was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the end. Part of the problem too, is
Speaker 1: you might not be on it when people are not
Speaker 1: on a call. It used to be when you had
Speaker 1: a phone, a cell phone, and you weren't on a call.
Speaker 1: If you were using it, it was something quiet. Maybe
Speaker 1: you were texting or checking email. That's about it. Now
Speaker 1: you're either on a phone call, yacking, or you're watching videos.
Speaker 1: Everybody's watching videos if they're not talking to somebody, because
Speaker 1: nobody knows how to be alone with themselves anymore. I
Speaker 1: still do not understand why, though people have no compunction
Speaker 1: about doing it with the speakers on. And this happens
Speaker 1: everyone where I go supermarket. Yes, ah, they have Texas peats,
Speaker 1: and they have Tabasco and they have Tabasco green, and
Speaker 1: oh they have Tabasco scorpion pepper. That sounds good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and take a scorpion pepper. Will try and see. It's
Speaker 1: too hot for us in the gym. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: be working your body in a gym, not watching tiktoks.
Speaker 1: For the entire cardio machine section to hear, we need
Speaker 1: lass man. I know I'm not a big government guy.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. Okay, it's not that we have
Speaker 1: big government and it's bad, or we don't have enough
Speaker 1: government and it's bad. It's that we have this bizarrely
Speaker 1: shaped government where parts of it are too big and
Speaker 1: controlling and other parts of it need to step it up.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the death penalty for having a speakerphone
Speaker 1: call in public. I'm not saying death penalty that would
Speaker 1: almost certainly be unconstitutional. Twenty years sounds good to me.
Speaker 1: Are they great or do they suck? He knows? But
Speaker 1: first animals in the news, but never upsetting. This is
Speaker 1: heavy petting. All right, Let's start with this year's American
Speaker 1: Humane Hero Dog Award winner. It is Bo, Bo, the
Speaker 1: blood hound from North Carolina who works with the Gastonia
Speaker 1: Police Department. Bo is a youngin at the tender age
Speaker 1: of just eighteen months, but he has already made a
Speaker 1: big difference in the lives of a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And I'm about to tell you how. When he was
Speaker 1: just eight weeks old, Bo began training to be a bloodhound, which,
Speaker 1: as you know, is a dog that you say, here,
Speaker 1: here's a smell, Go find that smell out in the world.
Speaker 1: Apparently he took to it pretty rapidly, because he has
Speaker 1: already found a missing eleven year old, a seven year
Speaker 1: old who had been Uh, this part's not that fun,
Speaker 1: but it turns out fine. A seven year old had
Speaker 1: been kidnapped, and they gave Bo a little piece of
Speaker 1: that boy's clothing, and Bo found that kid seven miles away,
Speaker 1: and the child was unharmed and returned to the delighted parents.
Speaker 1: He also has found a whole bunch of I don't
Speaker 1: even have the number, a whole bunch of seniors with dementia.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes seniors with dementia, they end up getting
Speaker 1: lost and he finds them. And even when and I
Speaker 1: am not trying to slight the other bloodhounds, but apparently
Speaker 1: sometimes other bloodhounds can't find them, BO can find them.
Speaker 1: So kudos to you and your sniffer, good boy. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of heroes, there's this eight year old kid, his
Speaker 1: name is Zay and Barry, and one day who's out
Speaker 1: with his skateboard and he sees another group of kids
Speaker 1: and they they are teasing a little feral kitten and
Speaker 1: he's like, that's bogus. But there's multiple of them and
Speaker 1: only one of me. I doubt they're gonna listen to
Speaker 1: my pleas for humanity, and there's no way I can
Speaker 1: take them all. So you know what he did. He said, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you leave this kitten alone, I will give you
Speaker 1: my skateboard. And they went for it must have been
Speaker 1: a pretty good skateboard, and he gave up his skateboard,
Speaker 1: oh to save this kitten. And then what happened. The
Speaker 1: kitten fell madly in love with Zay and Barry and
Speaker 1: is now the family pet at the Barry house. And
Speaker 1: you may say, ah, but he he gave up his skateboard. Oh,
Speaker 1: no worries here, because guess what happened. They took the
Speaker 1: cat to the Humane Society be checked out, and everybody
Speaker 1: was so like, oh, this kid and he gave up
Speaker 1: his skateboard. So here's what happened. A manager at the
Speaker 1: Humane Society got in touch with with Zuomies, which you
Speaker 1: see in a lot of malls that sells, amongst other things,
Speaker 1: skateboard stuff. And they got together and they gave him
Speaker 1: a big fat gift card which allowed him to go
Speaker 1: into the local Zuomies not only get a new skateboard,
Speaker 1: he was able to custom design to his specific specifications
Speaker 1: his dream skateboard. So he ended up with a better
Speaker 1: skateboard and a best friend. And that is cool. That's
Speaker 1: such a precious story. What a great kid, What a
Speaker 1: good kid. And then finally say happy birthday to Henry.
Speaker 1: Henry is a crocodile and he lives at a conservation
Speaker 1: center on a private piece of land in South Africa.
Speaker 1: And guess who he lives with, Come and knock on
Speaker 1: a door. It's Henry and six lady crocodiles. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he has lived a long time. He's huge, by the way,
Speaker 1: you want how big he is. He weighs over fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. He is over sixteen feet long. He is
Speaker 1: still growing because crocodiles are one of the animals that
Speaker 1: keep growing their whole life. You know, we grow until
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen sixteen depends and then we're done. You're not
Speaker 1: growing anymore. I mean maybe maybe, uh with wise, that's
Speaker 1: on you and me, but height wise, you're not growing anymore.
Speaker 1: Their whole life. He grows, and he is one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty four years old. He's in perfect health. Getting
Speaker 1: older is not slowing him down, they claim. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is true. Okay, maybe this number got
Speaker 1: a exaggerated, but they claim that he has fathered over
Speaker 1: ten thousand little crocodiles. That's a busy boy. Of course,
Speaker 1: he's surrounded. I mean he's surrounded by women for exactly
Speaker 1: that reason, so they can keep, you know, pumping out crocodiles.
Speaker 1: So happy birthday to Henry the old big randy crocodile.
Speaker 1: And that is heavy petting for you. Almost certainly we'll
Speaker 1: do this again next week. This is KFI AM six
Speaker 1: forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
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