Speaker 1: You're listening to k I Am six forty the bill
Speaker 1: Handle show on demand on the iheartradiop.
Speaker 2: I Am six forty bill Handle.
Speaker 1: Here it is a taco Tuesday, June seventeenth. Pretty special
Speaker 1: guest this morning a friend of Amy's, Colonel Nick Hayes,
Speaker 1: NASA astronaut, who is on a four month tour, a
Speaker 1: PR tour around the country because that's what they do.
Speaker 1: And he brought his fourteen year old son with him, Asher,
Speaker 1: And I asked, Asher, are you bored silly coming to
Speaker 1: these things? He said absolutely so, Colonel Haig, how can
Speaker 1: you do that to your kid?
Speaker 3: I know it's cruel and unusual punishment, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, fourteen year olds? Look what you did.
Speaker 4: Hey, congratulations, you're starting your summer vacation and you get
Speaker 4: to follow me around for a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also asked him, so do you stay in the
Speaker 1: same hotel room as your dad?
Speaker 2: He goes absolutely. I go do they give you an
Speaker 2: nice hotel room?
Speaker 1: Goes no, no, no, no, this is the gard special
Speaker 1: treatment nothing, you know, this small hotel room and yeah,
Speaker 1: none of that. Although you have the Dodger game today,
Speaker 1: it's a Colonel Haig, do you mind if we get
Speaker 1: inform informal, can I just call you colonel Haig? You
Speaker 1: could just call me Nick and that'd be great. Oh
Speaker 1: that's even better. Well you can call me your excellent
Speaker 1: See that works out.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Oh do I have questions? Now?
Speaker 1: I know you've gotten every question in the world. Inevitably
Speaker 1: the bathroom question everybody asked you.
Speaker 3: Is that where you're starting?
Speaker 1: No, God, now I will finish up there. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't care less. Uh. And the food, there's so
Speaker 1: much tang you can drink, of course, you know the
Speaker 1: food that Yeah, okay, fine, we've done that. But life
Speaker 1: on the space station. Uh, that one gets kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: First of all, what's the difference between, for example, being
Speaker 1: weightless and going in a really fast elevator?
Speaker 2: So is it just a question of time?
Speaker 4: So weightless, it's it's the we're up there in orbit
Speaker 4: because we're all falling toward the center of the Earth.
Speaker 4: We just happen to be going fast enough forward that
Speaker 4: as we fall the trajectory, the curvature of our trajectory
Speaker 4: matches the curvature of the Earth. And so if you
Speaker 4: could throw a baseball five miles a second, then it
Speaker 4: would go into orbit, but you can't throw it that fast.
Speaker 4: But that's what we do with the space station. So
Speaker 4: there's this thing up there that's the size of a
Speaker 4: football field that we assembled over the course of a
Speaker 4: decade and over one hundred spacewalks put this laboratory together,
Speaker 4: and it allows us to float or free fall NonStop
Speaker 4: as long as we want to.
Speaker 2: So, uh, do you get used to it? I mean,
Speaker 2: does that become do wayless?
Speaker 1: This just becomes sort of a normal thing like gravity
Speaker 1: is here.
Speaker 4: We don't pay attention to Your body adapts, your mind adapts,
Speaker 4: and so first your your body figures out, hey, everything's
Speaker 4: floating inside me, and it starts to adapt how it
Speaker 4: processes those inputs, and so it stops listening to your
Speaker 4: inner ear and it just uses your eyes for visual
Speaker 4: cues on how you navigate around. You start predicting subconsciously
Speaker 4: how things are going to behave based on floating versus
Speaker 4: being in gravity. So if go back to a ball analogy,
Speaker 4: if I was going to throw a ball when I'm
Speaker 4: up there, if I threw it to you, I'd invariably
Speaker 4: hit the ceiling when I first got there, because I'm
Speaker 4: trying to compensate for gravity. When I get back down
Speaker 4: to Earth, the exact same happens. So you know, you
Speaker 4: throw it short because you're not planning on gravity. I've
Speaker 4: been back three months, so I've got high hopes that
Speaker 4: I'm actually going to get the first pitch across the
Speaker 4: plate tonight.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, you are. Show Hey, Otani's going to
Speaker 1: be putting the ball in orbit. I understand he'll do
Speaker 1: that five miles a second. Now I know that, and
Speaker 1: everybody sees that in the videos. Is the exercise two
Speaker 1: and a half hours you have to do and that
Speaker 1: treadmill where you're strapped, you have that tether down there
Speaker 1: two and a half hours of They get at least
Speaker 1: give you a little screen in front so you can
Speaker 1: watch Netflix or something.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's because the wall is like two feet away.
Speaker 4: It get pretty monotonous. So we do have iPads up there,
Speaker 4: get apps we can download. We've got great connectivity up there,
Speaker 4: so I can download shows and binge watch seasons of things.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of there's a lot of podcasts.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of things that you can listen to
Speaker 4: two and a half hours a day every day.
Speaker 2: You we get bored.
Speaker 1: I mean just you know, you're doing this basically this
Speaker 1: sort of the same thing, or is it so different,
Speaker 1: different experiments, different things that you do that it's just
Speaker 1: all fascinating.
Speaker 4: It's like waking up at Christmas. You don't know what's
Speaker 4: going to be inside some of these boxes. Some of
Speaker 4: the stuff we don't actually see until I open it up.
Speaker 4: And so there's a team on the ground, hundreds of people.
Speaker 4: They plan every five minute segment of the day, and
Speaker 4: from seven thirty in the morning till seven thirty at night,
Speaker 4: they're telling us, hey, this is what you need to do,
Speaker 4: and so we do experiment after maintenance after experience. Keep
Speaker 4: busy and it's different every day, and so we're busy,
Speaker 4: the time flies, and then if you're ever bored, then
Speaker 4: all you need to do is just.
Speaker 3: Float over to the window.
Speaker 1: How much free time do you get a day? If any?
Speaker 1: Free time is how you define it. You know, during
Speaker 1: the work day, there's not really much free time. Before
Speaker 1: we start the work day, You've got about an hour
Speaker 1: and a half after you wake up, but you got
Speaker 1: to eat and you got to get ready for the
Speaker 1: day and check your email and check in with the
Speaker 1: family at home. And then you've got about an hour
Speaker 1: two hours before you go to bed after the end
Speaker 1: of the workday, and so there's time to steal away
Speaker 1: moments and enjoy living in space.
Speaker 2: Say you're up for how long?
Speaker 3: Six months? This time?
Speaker 1: Around six months? Yeah, and you're there. Obviously, do they
Speaker 1: pay you overtime over forty hours?
Speaker 3: I would think no salary employee, no overtime.
Speaker 2: Wow, it turns out you don't even make minimum wage.
Speaker 3: Does it not if you add up all the hours? Yeah,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Colonel haigu is here. Colonel Nick Haig is with us.
Speaker 1: Say an astronaut, am still working as an astronaut. We
Speaker 1: were just talking Nick, You've been kind enough to let
Speaker 1: me call you Nick. That we were going through the
Speaker 1: process of how you get selected as an astronaut. And
Speaker 1: I'm a space buff and you go look back to
Speaker 1: the original seven astronauts and what they had to go through.
Speaker 1: I mean the testing, I mean, for it's just insane.
Speaker 1: They got prodded and poked and I mean there were
Speaker 1: more things going to their bodies simultaneously.
Speaker 2: That's just part of it.
Speaker 1: Are they still that insane or has it become reality now?
Speaker 4: They are still that thorough yes, you know, medical getting
Speaker 4: over the medical bar is one of those high things.
Speaker 4: So you know, if you want to become an astronaut,
Speaker 4: you got to take care of yourself, you know, just
Speaker 4: in general it's a good thing to take care of
Speaker 4: your body and take care of yourself and stay in shape.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's an in depth, thorough screening process. But
Speaker 4: it all starts with an application. And to apply to
Speaker 4: be an astronaut, you just have to be a you know,
Speaker 4: a US citizen and have a master's degree in a
Speaker 4: STEM field and submit your application online when they send
Speaker 4: out a call for a selection, and they do that
Speaker 4: based on demand, and on average it's been about once
Speaker 4: every four or five years there'll be a job listing
Speaker 4: on USA Jobs.
Speaker 1: Now, it used to be we go back to the
Speaker 1: original Yeah, right there. You look at indeed, the original
Speaker 1: astronauts and in the second class, and Neil Armstrong was
Speaker 1: in the second class astronauts, interestingly enough, and he had
Speaker 1: applied and you know, the first time.
Speaker 2: Out didn't make it. They were all test pilots.
Speaker 1: That was Eisenhower who decided that test pilots were going
Speaker 1: to be it. Anybody who I'm assuming is either the
Speaker 1: commander or actually flies, you know, pilots they aircraft and
Speaker 1: during the Shuttle days had to be a pilot of
Speaker 1: some kind.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, the Space Shuttle was a different vehicle. The
Speaker 4: capsules we fly now have a different, different interface, if
Speaker 4: you will. We still, as an astronaut Corps value the
Speaker 4: skill set of the test pilot, but we also bring
Speaker 4: in a pretty you know, disparate experience base when we
Speaker 4: bring in a class, and so we don't want everybody
Speaker 4: to be a test pilot. We want to have those different.
Speaker 2: I would think.
Speaker 1: So now I'm assuming the psychological testing has to be insane,
Speaker 1: that you have to get along with people. Have you
Speaker 1: ever flown with anybody that just everybody hated? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just I hate that person and you're there for six months.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, fortunately we don't end up on the
Speaker 4: International Space Station like that. There's you know, we we
Speaker 4: select people coming in, and you're right, there is a
Speaker 4: pretty steep or pretty thorough selection process where we'll bring
Speaker 4: people in and you know, put them in this in
Speaker 4: this situation, put a number on them, have a whole
Speaker 4: group of people surrounding them taking notes, and then give
Speaker 4: them something to solve that's impossible to solve and then
Speaker 4: see how the stress of the situation plays out and
Speaker 4: understand their inner skills, because fundamentally, you want to be
Speaker 4: on a space mission in that confined space with people
Speaker 4: that are good people to work with, and so we
Speaker 4: really want to know do you have those soft skills
Speaker 4: you Are you a good teammate? Do you take care
Speaker 4: of yourself? Do you look to take care of the
Speaker 4: people that you're with? And are you kind?
Speaker 2: Do they put groups together? I mean, did you meet.
Speaker 1: Let's say this is the crew that's going to go up,
Speaker 1: and y'all sit around and do a cocktail party the
Speaker 1: night before, so you get to know each other.
Speaker 2: Or field trips in Disneyland or whatever.
Speaker 3: We do our version of that.
Speaker 4: So once I got assigned to Crew nine mission, we
Speaker 4: took our crew and we went to Wyoming and through
Speaker 4: an outfit there, the National Outdoor Leadership School, we did
Speaker 4: a six day camping trip up into the mountains in
Speaker 4: waist deep snow and built igloes and suffered in the
Speaker 4: cold and got to know each other in that stressful environment.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we spend time intentionally getting to know each
Speaker 4: other and understand, you know, what's everybody everybody's got pet peeves.
Speaker 4: Everybody got things that kind of you know, we'll set
Speaker 4: them on edge a little bit and you understand what
Speaker 4: those are and then you figure out how you're going
Speaker 4: to be successful together.
Speaker 2: A lot of big glob building, I'm assuming on the
Speaker 2: space station.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's similar.
Speaker 5: Do you, for one, colonel, have no idea what it's
Speaker 5: like to be locked in a small space with someone
Speaker 5: you hate, working day in and day out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how you do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel by the tone in your voice you
Speaker 4: like me to close the door here.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I've got two other questions. I'm hoping we can do
Speaker 1: this for hours. That and that is do you work
Speaker 1: in different shifts where there really is no time and
Speaker 1: people are sleeping at different times, eating at different times.
Speaker 3: We try to synchronize to a day.
Speaker 4: The circadian rhythm and a person is really important, and
Speaker 4: so the whole crew will synchronize to Greenwich meantime. Wake
Speaker 4: up at six am, go to bed at nine thirty
Speaker 4: at night. And that's also important to synchronize because we've
Speaker 4: got it's not just the seven people on the space station,
Speaker 4: it's the hundreds of people in Mission Control Center and
Speaker 4: So you've got a mission control center in Houston, in Japan,
Speaker 4: in Germany and Russia, and so they all have to
Speaker 4: be synchronized.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming one person stays awake just as a
Speaker 1: guard in case anybody breaks in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you always got a guard against the aliens out there.
Speaker 4: I know where you're going with this. We all sleep
Speaker 4: together and fortunately the ground is there twenty four to seven,
Speaker 4: so we really rely on the ground support.
Speaker 3: It's a gigantic team that makes it work well.
Speaker 1: Apolo was what four hundred thousand people that put the
Speaker 1: three men on the moon. What was the first meal
Speaker 1: you ate when you got off the space station?
Speaker 4: I had a Deli sandwich If that sounds strange, not
Speaker 4: at all. Fresh bread is something that you don't get
Speaker 4: up there because it's not shelf stable for long enough.
Speaker 4: And so a nice loaf of bread making a good
Speaker 4: sandwich is nice.
Speaker 1: What's the best thing that they serve you up there
Speaker 1: food wise? And what's something that everybody hates and will
Speaker 1: not eat?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: Well, everybody's got their own personal preferences. I I typically
Speaker 4: wouldn't touch the crawfish attufe uh uh, because you get
Speaker 4: sick and throwing up there. Is not easy taste changes
Speaker 4: up there. So for whatever reason for me, that is
Speaker 4: a really bland dish, and so to make it spicy,
Speaker 4: I end up having to add so much hot sauce
Speaker 4: that it leads to indigestion. So it's just better not
Speaker 4: to not to not to eat it. But you know,
Speaker 4: best foods up there. I got a sweet tooth, So
Speaker 4: I work out two and a half hours a day
Speaker 4: up there every day, which affords me the ability to
Speaker 4: enjoy some dessert.
Speaker 2: No corn nuts, because everybody hates those.
Speaker 4: And you know they're they're hard, and so you don't
Speaker 4: want to fracture a tooth up there. Oh yeah, because
Speaker 4: because then the dentist, which we don't have a dentist
Speaker 4: up there. So I've had training so that I can
Speaker 4: try to temporarily fill a cavity or pull a tooth.
Speaker 4: Oh really, And you don't want me doing that, do you?
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool?
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, I'm assuming you're you're you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't have doctors up there, and I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody's gotten seriously sick where they had to send someone down,
Speaker 1: have they.
Speaker 4: So we've we've had conditions, but we are always have
Speaker 4: been able to manage those conditions. Space is really hard
Speaker 4: on the body. Thankfully, there's a team of doctors on
Speaker 4: the ground and every so often we have an astronaut
Speaker 4: that is a doctor that's on board, so we leverage
Speaker 4: that expertise when we can. But we've got flight surgeons
Speaker 4: on the ground that are in constant contact, so if
Speaker 4: we have an emergency, we bring them in on the
Speaker 4: radio and they can talk through and we do a
Speaker 4: lot of training.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and constant training. When you're down here. As soon
Speaker 1: as this tour thing is over, are you back to Yeah.
Speaker 1: It never gets old. You're always training, you're always learning
Speaker 1: something new. It's it's like, you know, it's like going
Speaker 1: to college your whole life.
Speaker 2: How often can you actually fly.
Speaker 1: Or let me put it this way, the time the
Speaker 1: timeline between you coming down and then everybody wants to
Speaker 1: go back up on assuming as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: What's usually that timeline?
Speaker 3: Yeah, on every.
Speaker 4: It's probably it's hard to say three, four or five years.
Speaker 4: When you think of the demand, there's a two year
Speaker 4: usually a two year lead up to your launch, so
Speaker 4: you're assigned two years of training. You launch, there's another
Speaker 4: six months on board the station. And then there's a
Speaker 4: six month postflight to rehabilitate, to reconnect with the family
Speaker 4: and rest up and be ready to go again. So
Speaker 4: that's three years minimum, but it's it's a little bit
Speaker 4: more than that. You know, there's four dozen of us
Speaker 4: down at Houston active astronauts on the US side, and
Speaker 4: so we cycle through a flight assignments.
Speaker 1: One last question, because we're out of time. When your
Speaker 1: kid goes to school and they you know, they bring
Speaker 1: in what your dad do day does when he says
Speaker 1: my dad's an astronaut, do all the kids think he's
Speaker 1: just a liar?
Speaker 4: No, because we live in a town where the mayor
Speaker 4: is a former astronaut and there's a dozen astronauts.
Speaker 3: Deal, it's no big deal. I tell you.
Speaker 4: What is a big deal is my dad he's a plumber.
Speaker 4: My dad's my dad's in the space for that. That is
Speaker 4: a little bit different because it hasn't existed very long,
Speaker 4: and so I think that that's a that's a you know,
Speaker 4: something that he is still educating his his classmates about,
Speaker 4: you know, like what is a guardian?
Speaker 3: What does the Space Force do?
Speaker 2: That's cool, that's cool, colonel, Thank you? What a what
Speaker 2: a trip?
Speaker 1: This is I wish we had another hour and a
Speaker 1: half on this at least, But onwards and upwards. I
Speaker 1: know you're going in to the Dodger game tonight, and
Speaker 1: I know anything over ten bucks you cannot accept.
Speaker 2: You have to buy your own Dodger dogs.
Speaker 4: We're gonna, we're gonna, We're gonna enjoy our evening and
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna.
Speaker 3: Look at the pocketbook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, guys, we're done. Time for Tech Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Mike Dubuski, ABC News Technology reporter Mike is always thanks
Speaker 1: for hanging out. Quick question, well I even actually not
Speaker 1: even quick. The Trump family phone plan. So let me
Speaker 1: ask you. I don't know if you bought a one
Speaker 1: of the Trump ties bibles. The stakes were very strong,
Speaker 1: and now we've got the phone plan, tell us about it.
Speaker 1: Why would other than for political reasons, why would I
Speaker 1: buy a phone plan?
Speaker 5: That's a great question, and I will try to measure
Speaker 5: up to the astronaut here.
Speaker 3: I know it's a tough act to.
Speaker 5: Follow, but yes, on Monday here in New York City,
Speaker 5: the Trump Organization, which is not run by President Donald
Speaker 5: Trump but rather run by his sons Eric and Don Junior,
Speaker 5: announced that they're getting into the telecom space with Trump Mobile.
Speaker 5: This is what's known as an MVNO or a virtual
Speaker 5: mobile excuse me, a virtual mobile network operator, which kind
Speaker 5: of piggybacks off the larger service providers in the United
Speaker 5: States AT and T, Verizon T Mobile, so it should
Speaker 5: offer the same coverage as those types of service providers.
Speaker 5: It is forty seven forty five a month, which are
Speaker 5: significant numbers for the Trump family given that that is
Speaker 5: sort of his place in the presidential line. But that
Speaker 5: is a little bit more expensive than what we would
Speaker 5: expect from some of the competitors in this smaller network space,
Speaker 5: things like Mint Mobile or things like Cricket Wireless. This
Speaker 5: is a little bit pricier than that. But the Trump
Speaker 5: family is saying that they're offering some bonuses, things like
Speaker 5: roadside assistance and telehealth services. We don't know really how
Speaker 5: that's going to work in practice, but that is what
Speaker 5: they are saying. Justifies that additional cost. And in addition,
Speaker 5: despite the fact that they say that this will work
Speaker 5: with pretty much any modern smartphone, they're also offering their
Speaker 5: own smartphone. But this thing also raises a little bit
Speaker 5: more questions than it.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe at.
Speaker 5: First blush answers. It is called the T one. Its
Speaker 5: full name is actually T one Phone eight thousand and
Speaker 5: two gold version. It is gold. It has a big
Speaker 5: T on the back and an American flag. They say
Speaker 5: it has a six point eight inch screen with a
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty hertz refresh rate, of fifty megapixel
Speaker 5: camera and a five thousand million hour long life battery.
Speaker 5: So it is a pretty standard mid range Android device,
Speaker 5: but there are some question marks on the website if
Speaker 5: you dive a little deeper into the specs. For example,
Speaker 5: the processor and RAM section claims that the storage of
Speaker 5: this phone is twelve gigabytes of RAM. Ram and storage
Speaker 5: are two different things, so we don't really know what
Speaker 5: the storage is here. We also don't know what the
Speaker 5: processor is up until this morning when they change it.
Speaker 5: They also claim to have a five thousand million amp
Speaker 5: hour camera of million empowers are used to describe battery size,
Speaker 5: so that is also a sort of question mark there.
Speaker 5: The photo they have appears to be a computer rendering.
Speaker 5: It looks sort of iPhone esque, but there's no flash
Speaker 5: next to the camera array, so that's a question mark
Speaker 5: as well. These are all things that maybe should give
Speaker 5: people pause before they put down the one hundred dollars deposit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, one dollars deposit.
Speaker 3: Towards how much five hundred dollars is.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, but obviously not the gold phone.
Speaker 5: Well, so it's interesting, right they call it the gold version,
Speaker 5: implying a non gold version of standard version, but that
Speaker 5: there's no real v of that on the website at
Speaker 5: this point. And in addition to that, that five hundred
Speaker 5: dollars should also give us a little pause as well,
Speaker 5: because the Trump family claims that they're going to build
Speaker 5: this phone here, yes, at some point.
Speaker 1: That is the question I asked, How does someone build
Speaker 1: a phone? Considering the intricacies and the manufacturing, etc.
Speaker 2: In the United States, how do you physically do that?
Speaker 5: It's really difficult. In short, for one, all the reasons
Speaker 5: that you laid out right, there's no real infrastructure to
Speaker 5: do this. The Trump family would need to spin up
Speaker 5: a factory to do this and agree with suppliers to
Speaker 5: build the materials needed for this phone in the United
Speaker 5: States as well. And in addition to that, there are
Speaker 5: no major smartphone manufacturers building phones in the US, so
Speaker 5: there's no real knowledge base to hire people to do
Speaker 5: this at least here in the US either. So it's
Speaker 5: going to be a big task if that is exactly
Speaker 5: what they're trying to do. Now, we've seen similar phones
Speaker 5: like this crop up aimed at like one specific side
Speaker 5: of the political isle, on both sides of the isle,
Speaker 5: where essentially they've bought cheap phones from China and then
Speaker 5: imported them into the United States with different branding on them.
Speaker 5: There's a phone called the Freedom Phone a few years
Speaker 5: ago that basically did that. But again, a major point
Speaker 5: of the Trump administration, which again is separate from the
Speaker 5: Trump organization, so they say, you know, is aimed at
Speaker 5: bringing manufacturing back to the United States. So that's what
Speaker 5: they say they're going to do. But even still, for
Speaker 5: all the reasons that we've outlined, there's some reason to
Speaker 5: be skeptical of that.
Speaker 1: All right, I wish we had more time. I know,
Speaker 1: we have to be a lot of here. You got
Speaker 1: a lot more reported into. Thank you. We'll talk again
Speaker 1: because there's a ton of questions I have about that
Speaker 1: and the madest the meta story.
Speaker 2: Take care, Mike, Thank you much.
Speaker 3: Take care.
Speaker 2: All right. I want to tell you.
Speaker 1: A little bit about what happens happened to the Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency under President Trump. And one of the things,
Speaker 1: as you probably know, that the cuts that have come
Speaker 1: from this administration across social programs have been extraordinary, as
Speaker 1: well as scientific programs. And you know about the schools
Speaker 1: were federal funding. Federal grants have been cut like crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the other ones that I want to spend
Speaker 1: a few minutes on talking about the EPA, and the
Speaker 1: agency has told the staff this is official and this
Speaker 1: is the EPA oversees the country industrialized sort of Midwest.
Speaker 1: This is the section that where this letter came in,
Speaker 1: and this is the place that is just played with pollution,
Speaker 1: the legacy of pollution. The agency has told the staff
Speaker 1: stop enforcing violation against fossil fuel companies, those protections that
Speaker 1: we had against fossil fuel companies. Now, I will tell
Speaker 1: you here's my bias. I want to start right now.
Speaker 1: Is I happen to be someone that number one believes
Speaker 1: in climate change and has for a very long time
Speaker 1: believes in global warming. Actually, and I am, at least
Speaker 1: in this way an environmentalists, and not for the political purposes,
Speaker 1: not the kumbaya, you know, getting married in front of
Speaker 1: a bush and everybody holding hands and singing kind of environmentalists,
Speaker 1: but the kind of environmentalists that recognizes, at least I do,
Speaker 1: that we are going to be in trouble. The world
Speaker 1: is truly going to be in trouble, to the point
Speaker 1: where I believe that critical mass is already here. We
Speaker 1: heard signed to say, you know, we still have a month,
Speaker 1: we still have a year, we still have five years.
Speaker 1: I don't think we do. I think we have now
Speaker 1: just tipped over and it's going to get worse. And
Speaker 1: this is why I tell my kids, for the first
Speaker 1: time in my life, I'm happy that I'm at the
Speaker 1: back end, as opposed to, Oh my god, I wish
Speaker 1: I would be born. I wish I were a kid
Speaker 1: right now because of the technology that's coming, flying cars,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Absolutely not and so ambitious. Deregulation has come
Speaker 1: down and the EPA administrator Lee Zelden at the behest
Speaker 1: of President Trump and Trump entered the office promising to
Speaker 1: slash burden some oil and gas industry regulations and increased production.
Speaker 1: As you know, one of the statements the President Trump
Speaker 1: made as part of his campaign was a drill, baby, drill, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna drill, baby drill. That means you have
Speaker 1: to eliminate a whole lot of the protections, or if
Speaker 1: you don't view them as protections, you view them as
Speaker 1: policy that just gets in the way, regulations that gets
Speaker 1: in the way, and that is exactly what the administration
Speaker 1: is looking at. So you have and we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before. There has never been a I don't think
Speaker 1: so since the Civil War maybe where such polarization occurred
Speaker 1: between parties and between philosophies, and here in this country.
Speaker 1: So as far as the Trump administration is concerned, EPA protections,
Speaker 1: if you will, are just burden, some wasteful and they
Speaker 1: get in the way of what United States does and
Speaker 1: does really well, and that's produced energy, albeit fossil fuel energy.
Speaker 1: Because I don't even know if Trump remember when he
Speaker 1: said that climate change was a hoax.
Speaker 2: It was part of that crowd who said that. I
Speaker 2: don't know if he's ever changed his mind.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's ever admitted and I may be
Speaker 1: wrong on this, that climate change is number one real
Speaker 1: that I think he probably has or it is.
Speaker 2: A real problem and it is not easy.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're so these are executive orders Biden puts
Speaker 1: in more protections for the EPA than had ever been
Speaker 1: done before, more restrictions on power plants, VPA having more
Speaker 1: and more power, and throwing in regulation after regulation, of
Speaker 1: which Trump is removing virtually all of them. And this
Speaker 1: is all executive order stuff, which means executive direction, which
Speaker 1: means directive, which means that the next president, and assuming
Speaker 1: it is going to be a Democrat, is going to
Speaker 1: unravel that.
Speaker 2: So nothing gets.
Speaker 1: Easy, Absolutely nothing, All right, kf I am six point forty.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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