by Peter Boyles | May 21, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
I’d like to begin this award-winning column with this great quote, “Tell me about the rabbits, George.” Remember Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men? Just before Lennie gets it right through the horns. Get a mirror. Aren’t you starting to look a lot like Lennie?
Now back in 2005, now Senator John Hickenlooper (by the way isn’t it interesting how he turns around to the Front Range and says, “I was never here,” and vanishes now that he’s a Senator?), remember Johnny was going to end homelessness within 10 years. I can’t do math and I can’t do marriage but it seems to me Hickenlooper should have ended it in 2015.
Now maybe you would think this is crazy but what do you think would happen if a bunch of DU researchers treated a bunch of people experiencing homelessness like they were white mice in some sort of a maze in a sociology lab at the University of Denver? You would think, hey, that’s inhumane, possibly racist, where’s the social justice in that? Believe it, this is not Enter the Dragon.
Dr. Daniel Brisson and part of the Denver Basic Income Project want to start giving crackheads, street alcoholics, and the mentally ill, and, depending on who you are, up to $1,000 month. Or if the mouse can find the cheese $40 a day. Or one group gets $1,000. Another will get a lump sum of $6,500, and then $500 a month for the following 11 months. This is some kind of super stupid.
Years and years ago when I first gained my sobriety we were doing a radio show in downtown Denver. I was working at Brand X and came across a guy who had actually worked in the radio business and was a good DJ, but the disease of alcoholism had taken him to the skids. I took two $20s out of my wallet and was handing it to him when a big hand grabbed my wrist, and I heard, “What are you trying to do, kill him?” and that’s how I met the legendary Bob Coté. Coté explained the man would go outside and either overdose on drugs because of that amount of money, drink himself into a blackout, or simply get robbed.
Do these fools have any idea what they’re doing? Coté called it killing them with kindness. He also said they are committing suicide on the installment plan. Now Regis University will host a safe camping site. One of the more brilliant sociologists, Diana DeGette, wants to buy a hotel for two million dollars for the homeless, the Travel Lodge on East 38th Avenue. It will cost $7.8 million overall and the City is hopeful that DeGette’s request comes through.
Another advocate, of course, is outgoing Mayor Michael Hancock. He’s also supportive of another shelter project at 1603 S. Acoma Street, and between he and DeGette they’re going to offer a safety net for those who need to sleep in a safe place. Are you kidding me? All of that money, any money given them, will be money used to get high.
Number two, l read about what happened in Philadelphia, when they tried to give people houses to live in. First, everyone stole the microwave ovens, then the copper out of the walls and then stole the toilets and bathtubs. Mark Donovan is the founder of the Denver Basic Income Project. He’s proclaimed this giveaway is the first study of its kind in the United States researching the effects of giving cash directly to people experiencing homelessness. Mark, my boy, I can save you a lot of money, probably a couple hundred lives, if you and those brilliant researchers from DU just walk away.
P.S. Michael Hancock supports the project. Tell me about the rabbits.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Apr 23, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
Suddenly out of the clear blue of the western sky the COVID-19 pandemic has ended. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. By now, the entire world knows that by a flip of the Imperial wrist, Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game is coming to Coors Field, a proclamation by our esteemed Emperor Jarius the First.
As you now know, social distancing has vanished, bars and restaurants will be open until closing time. There will be no social distancing at a sold-out game because the Emperor has proclaimed it.
There will be no concerns, no state of emergency. Nothing for you to fear. The COVID virus, my friends, is gone.
Now while all of this is being said, it was a laugh out loud funny moment when, the next day, the sub headline in the Drudge Report was “Colorado Next COVID hotspot.” Don’t worry about it. The 2021 All-Star Game is moving from Atlanta to Denver, Colorado.
Joe Biden spoke to ESPN and it’s almost impossible to count the lies that the President proclaimed about what he dubbed “Jim Eagle.” And watching all of this take place, I was totally stunned. There’s been a lot of comparison and analysis by smarter people than me about fact-checking Joe Biden’s claims about Colorado’s election law. I cite the Daily Signal. The Daily Signal has pointed out six claims including registration, on absentee ballots, my personal favorite, the crime to provide water, ending early voting, stopping drop boxes, Jim Crow, and voter ID.
As many of you know anybody who walks up to the will call box to the All-Star Game is going to have to do what? Show ID. When you go to cash a check you have to show ID. When you go to buy a firearm, you have to show an ID and take a background check. When you buy alcohol you have to show ID.
There is no consistency. Major League Baseball had no problem but now I’m asking what will happen when your Colorado Rockies go down and play the Atlanta Braves, a racist city. What’s the difference? What about your Denver Broncos when they play their Atlanta Falcons? Isn’t that state still racist? So it’s ok, but just not for the Major League All-Star game. Note to self, how easily Jared Polis pulled this string and apparently they totally negated Mayor Hancock whose city Denver allegedly is. Hancock doesn’t even show up in any of this for three days. Polis the Emperor takes the box. I believe this is part of the setup as Jared Polis makes his move toward the Presidency.
One of the things the woke media has not yet figured out is Denver’s baseball diamond is named after Joe Coors. You remember him in Ronald Reagan’s kitchen cabinet. He bankrolled Barry Goldwater, bankrolled the Mountain States Legal Foundation, and broke a union strike. How dare they come to that field and play?
So I’ve got some proposals. First let’s rename it Dominion Field. That will satisfy all the woke people. It will be interesting to see who gets to carry the game and how nobody in the Front Range media will touch these things.
I leave you with a quote I came across that cracked me up. When Major League baseball player John Kruk was asked in a conversation in a bar… “So you’re a professional athlete?” Kruk responded, “No, I’m a baseball player.”
Take me out to the ballgame.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Mar 19, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Trump’s State of the Union address.
In previous award-winning columns, I’ve written about the profile of the kind of person who really understands what I do for a living and what other people try to do. “It” being what I call a radio guy.
Rush Limbaugh passed away. In the non-radio world that seems to be now dominated by “talk show hosts” it was akin to the death of Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, George Washington, and Babe Ruth.
Limbaugh was lionized, put on the shields of fellow warriors and carried through the streets of Rome. You saw it, I saw it, we all heard it. The truth always throws a curve ball and it deals from the bottom of the deck.
Rush Limbaugh was born in a small town in Missouri. His father was a banker and WWII fighter pilot. His grandfather was U.S. Ambassador to India, and his uncle was a federal judge. Limbaugh was a failure. When he was eight-years-old his father and mother bought a system so that he could be up in his room playing records and they could be downstairs listening on what was called a transistor radio. I think the record player needle, like a junkie shooting heroin, went right in the boy’s arm. His father, as an investor, owned part of a radio station in the town. Limbaugh got his first gig.
Now there are earmarks on how a radio guy operates in life. Let me list them for you. Number one, Rush Limbaugh used three different names on the air: Jeff Christie, Rusty Sharp and, of course, Rush Limbaugh. And in true DJ fashion, number two, Rush was married four times.
He went to rehab, another earmark to present someone as a radio guy, and most insiders believe that those drugs caused his hearing loss. As someone in recovery myself, it’s highly probable. He was fired seven times. A longtime friend of mine, Cliff Powers, worked with Limbaugh in Pittsburgh, when he used the air name of Jeff Christie, and told the stories of Limbaugh being blown out in Pittsburgh, not once wrestling fans, but twice.
He had less than a year of college, another benchmark since now this business is dominated by people who address each other as “Doctor.” And what I always thought was the whammo show-stopper, was for all the money, and what’s behind the curtain, when he finally settles in Sacramento, he replaces Morton Downey Junior.
His brother made most of his business deals. He used callers as records like good disc jockeys do. He did parody tunes as most great DJs. He did voices on air and was, in fact, what used to be dubbed a shock jock. He was brilliant, apparently very shy, and a lot of people around him never could explain whether a lot of what he did was an act or whether he truly believed it. I think its probably somewhere in the middle.
He got it! He understood it. He was a radio guy. He wasn’t leading Christianity although at the end of his life he became religious. I think he definitely loved the country. He loved the legacy. Yet with all the foibles, and all the problems, and all the good that he did, he changed what we do for a living, he changed the AM radio band and made us all better.
His voice will be missed, there is no replacement. Rest in peace, the best radio guy I ever heard, Rush Limbaugh.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Feb 19, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
As, by now, we all know, there were plenty of QAnon supporters amid the chaos at the Capitol in January. You could see many banners with the Q rabbit denoting the QAnon slogan “Follow the white rabbit.” There seems to me to be two forces in our country today, both sides are defended by elected officials and both claim the other one doesn’t exist. If you recall, Joe Biden told us that Antifa is a philosophy not an organization. And although many Republican elected officials adhere to the Q they say it doesn’t exist as well.
Karl Marx always talked about a specter haunting Europe, and I think these two specters are haunting America, and the American political scene. We can all agree that Antifa fashions themselves as a modern Bolshevik party. However, what is QAnon?
QAnon is jumbled theories that say Donald Trump is waging a secret war against the elite, Satan worshipping pedophiles in government and the media. They suffered a huge disappointment when Dr. Jill’s husband was sworn in and commandos did not come down on hot ropes and arrest all the offenders. By the way, I’m really drawn into the Jewish laser beam that started forest fires.
To explain QAnon, I myself am an alcoholic and a drug addict. The organization of Alcoholics Anonymous has a rule. We only use our first names. So that’s where the Anon comes from. According to my reading and listening, Q is a high ranking person inside the government, a source who apparently from time to time actually talks to Alex Jones and other selected elite. But beginning in October 2017, Q put out a series of posts on a message board known as 4chan. He signed off as Q and claimed to have a level of U.S. security approval known as the Q Clearance. These messages became known as Q drops or, if you’re following along at home, breadcrumbs, often written in a very cryptic language with pledges, pro Trump themes, slogans and riddles. True believers, and I’ve spoken to them, contend that deliberate misinformation is sewn into Q’s message so the conspiracy theory is impossible to disprove.
Brilliant historians have dubbed stuff like this parallel histories. Almost any event today or through history, if it’s important enough, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the writing of the Torah, to who shot Kennedy, a parallel set of tracks runs next to mainstream history. True believers are a frightening bunch. Like those of you who still believe Donald Trump had the election stolen from him.
If opinion polls are correct there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who believe in some of the bizarre theories offered by QAnon. People’s careers have been trashed, jobs have been lost. In fact, the Q people have survived with many predictions not coming true. Like almost all of them.
In a post Donald Trump world, Q believes Donald Trump is a savior who will stay in power and wage war against the cabal of satanic pedophiles. And for Q believers who saw President Biden get sworn in instead of Donald Trump it was a reality check. But it doesn’t seem to matter. In fact, the QAnon community has survived.
As crazy as Q is, was, and always will be, they are far less dangerous than Antifa. Militias are being formed in this country, battle lines are being drawn and who controls the streets has been an age old question dating back to the French Revolution. QAnon has survived after Donald Trump. Antifa and Black Lives Matter claim Joe Biden owes them for the win.
Remember this, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a picture of herself holding a gun alongside images of Democrats like AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. That’s kind of Q-ee, isn’t it?
See you next month.
— Peter Boyles
by Peter Boyles | Jan 22, 2021 | Blasting with Boyles
People believe the three easiest things in the world to do are grow a garden, tend bar and do a radio show. From experience at least two of them are very difficult. I never tried to grow a garden.
As a country we have come through one of the most amazing three month long periods in my lifetime as a radio talk show host, disc jockey/traffic reporter, major TV star.
Our business, the one I love so much, talk radio is about to go through the same thing that happened to Top 40 Radio in the late 1950s during what was dubbed “The Scandals.” It focused on payola, also known as pay-to-play. My mentors in this business were all what we now know as “radio guys.” They made their bones as young, almost teenagers playing top 40 radio, reading the news, doing all nights, working Christmas mornings and being in love with the business.
Talk radio’s advent begins principally with the king of talk, Rush Limbaugh. What always made Rush so incredibly successful is he is a radio guy. He jocked on the air as a guy named Jeff Christie. And notice, if you would, in all these threatened and moving along lawsuits and damage that’s being done Limbaugh’s name never comes up. He knows the line. Rush Limbaugh, with my great respect, is a radio guy.
Now we begin an era of oh, you used to be…. And now you can be a talk show host. Most of these on-airs have alternative ways to make money, alternative careers and income streams. My income comes from doing radio. When we went through the payola scandals in the ’50s lives were ruined, careers were wrecked. We’re heading into it again.
The Democrats will now control the House, the Senate, the Executive Branch. There will be a new Department of Justice and the evil empire, the Federal Communications Commission.
These people have been gunning for talk radio since Limbaugh dismantled the Clinton Administration, parody music, being syndicated clearly planted the ball in deep center field with a home run for radio.
That’s about to come to an end. We have been through this before and tragically we will go through it again. And it literally breaks my heart on this end of my illustrious career. Old five-and-dimers like me always knew the line and now I hear across the country the clarion call — bring it, as though they want to be sued. I’ve been sued three times including one time where I was told when it came back to Jefferson County and the Ramsey story, to pack a bag. All of you who have never been through it across the country, who smile and say bring it, get ready because they are going to do it. Fox News is running backwards, Newsmax is running backwards. People are shutting people off of the air now. The mask has been pulled off Sydney Powell, Lin Wood and America’s Mayor Rudy.
We’ll be damaged by this. There are already many Democrats in Congress who want more control over what we do. The First Amendment and the Second Amendment are in play. To paraphrase what Lenin once said, they will sell us the rope and hang us with it. Well, a lot of talk radio sold a lot of rope. We have been through Father Coughlin. We’ve been through Alan Freed. We’ve been through Alan Berg and now we sit here.
I don’t pretend to know the future but I sure as hell can read the past. I would never silence anybody’s voice but unless you’re a total stooge, the First Amendment has its limits. You can’t pull people into the public spotlight and then tell lies about them and then destroy their companies and force them into hiding. You can’t use the public airwaves to do those things without consequences. This is a statement of my fear of what’s going to happen to a business that’s been so wonderful to me. And to my family and to so many other people, a bunch of rookies are going to wreck it. There was a Cromwellian cry in Parliament and the voice s said, “In the name of God, just go.”
P.S. I hope I’m 100% wrong about everything I wrote in this column today. Thanks for reading.
— Peter Boyles
