This holiday season reached for the one butter that never disappoints Kerry Gold. made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy, and perfect for baking. whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerry Gold's high butterfat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture. Holiday treats will taste extraordinary. From the Mighty 990 Broadcast Center, you're waking up in Starnes Country with Todd Starnes.
All right.
Well, good morning, everybody. It is Monday, and it is bitterly cold outside. And, you know, if you can, just stay home today. I'm going to give you, I'll give you a doctor's note. You can stay home, just pull up the covers and wait until it warms up, which Laura Huckabee says it's going to do later on this week, which is great news for the Mid-South.
Hope you guys are doing well. Wow, can we just talk about what an insane weekend we just had here in here in the world? What a crazy thing, and a lot of bad things happening. Of course, we understand early the weekend kicked off with two of our soldiers being killed by Muslims in Syria. Then we have the Muslim terrorist attack in Australia.
And the story out of at Brown University. Just keeps getting weirder and weirder. And one of the stories, and we'll do a deeper dive on this on the national show. One of the interesting stories here is that the Providence, Rhode Island government, the leadership team, the mayor, the police chief, the president of the college, it's a diversity hire's best dream. These folks are like the poster children of what happens when you elect or you appoint DEI hires to keep you safe and to run your government.
And I say that because the mayor ran on an LGBT platform. The police chief is a migrant from Colombia. And the president of Brown is actually known internationally for writing an actual paper on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They don't have a clue, not a clue. They put a guy, they took a guy into custody, detained him, turned out, leaked his name.
Name. It's just terrible. And the FBI is involved. And it's a great big mess because it turns out that's not the guy. And early on, the eyewitnesses had all said a guy barged into the room, screamed something, and then opened fire.
And this particular classroom, the professor happened to be an expert in Jewish and in Jewish finances. And that's what she was known for. But there's another component of this story which is getting very peculiar. And the College Republicans of America now reporting late last night that one of the victims happened to be the vice president of the Brown University Republican Club there, and that she was reportedly targeted by the gunmen. And if this is true, and this is coming from the organization itself, if this is true, then we are looking at Charlie Kirk 2.0 now.
And that is a very dangerous thing. And what concerns me is Uh seemingly the lack of concern coming out of Brown, by the way, the young woman, Ella Cook, from Birmingham, Alabama, And from all indications, just a wonderful, sweet, precious person. Two people killed, by the way. Many others, we believe up to nine may have been injured in the attack, many of those critically.
So, anyway, we know nothing. There is some sort of a killer on the loose, a predator. We don't know if they're hunting Jews, are they hunting Christians, or maybe they're hunting both? We just don't know right now.
So, anyway, we'll be following that story all day here on the Mighty 990. Another big story we're following is the race to be the next mayor. Of Shelby County. It's really going to get interesting. This week, Marie Fagan's holding a big event, and that should make it officially official.
And she's already done the paperwork.
So I believe now there are at least seven Democrats, seven Democrats that are running to be the next mayor of Shelby County. And a lot of folks are thinking that Marie Fagans may be the one. Could she possibly be the upset pick here? And it would be look, I think she did a pretty darn good job of running the school system in the brief time that she was allowed to do that.
So the question is, do we give her a shot at running the the county? Is Marie Fagins the best person for the job?
Well, no, I don't know. No, I know she's a Democrat. I'm just saying those are the only people running.
So you don't have any other choices.
Sorry, folks. I wish I could tell you there were other people running in the race, but right now it's all Democrats that are running. And I will say this about the Democrats in Shelby County right now. They are focused, laser-focused on the midterms and getting out the vote and recruiting candidates. And they are being very, very effective at that.
And I would encourage the other parties here in Shelby County, if they want to win, they need to get moving, as they say.
So we'll keep an eye on that. But Marie Fagans is expected to make a lot of news this week. And a lot of people, I will just say this. When you talk about the big mo, which is momentum, she certainly has it. And you can tell that whenever somebody posts something about Marie Fagans, lots of people are getting on board and they're pretty excited about it.
Our telephone number, by the way, 901-260-5926. That's 901-260-5926. I just want to bring this story to your attention. The Daily Memphian, they've actually done a pretty good job of covering the situation over at Liberty Park, which is pretty much the same situation over at what used to be Union Row, which is the case across much of downtown. There are supposed to be giant, huge, massive, multi-billion dollar developments, but instead we just have grassy, ugly fields overrun by weeds.
If you've been down to the AutoZone ballpark, you see it every single day. And so now apparently, they've got a new development that's coming in, allegedly, across from the ballpark in near FedEx Forum. But The situation over at Liberty Park. This is a debacle. And I only bring this up.
Because the city keeps complaining about not having enough money. And people like Yolanda Cooper Sutton are out there accosting our firefighters, men and women who are putting their lives on the line. She's accusing them of basically being greedy.
Well, I want to throw that right back at the city council this morning. Because these people are slap crazy nuts. The city so far, according to the Daily Miffian, they have squandered $13.7 million of your tax money over the past five years to bring a hotel. to bring apartments and an entertainment venue To Liberty Park. That's supposed to be part of this huge development at the old fairgrounds, right?
It hasn't happened. They have, it's empty. If you've been over there, there's nothing there. Nothing at all.
So, anyway, the city is paying a consulting firm. Are you ready for this? $70,000 a month to manage a project. What are they managing? They're managing a field of weeds.
Oh, not only that, we got to pay their travel expenses. And I can tell you this. They're not p they're not staying down at the Motel Six. Not these folks. They're living high on the farm.
So, the firm has received over $2 million over the past five years to manage the project, even though the project hasn't gotten off the ground. An additional $11.5 billion in your tax money has gone to preparing the development site, which by the way, It's supposed to be a private development site. This is nuts.
So the city is in hot water now because they're not getting enough money out of the. out of the tourism development zone. That's a big problem. As a matter of fact, the city actually convinced the state to create this special tax district called the Liberty Park Tourism Development Zone, and it issued bonds. on the notion that the event center, which is the sports and entertainment complex, and a new private development would generate sales tax growth, And so far it hasn't done it.
It just hasn't it hasn't worked. The mayor went to the state. This was not Paul Young. This is Jim Strickland. And said, sports tourism is real.
That it's economic development, that it's investment, and they're going to get their money back. Three years, ladies and gentlemen, three years, and there's still not enough money. Not enough of that tax growth to pay the event center's bonds.
So the taxpayers are stuck footing the bill. The gross incompetence. And it could be a combo platter. You could have corruption and crime, but I'm willing to just step out here and suggest. that this is just gross incompetence.
When you look at how this city has squandered your money, and this is the reason why the police officers and the police department don't have the resources they need. This is why the fire department can't get the raises they were promised they were guaranteed. It's because of this kind of foolishness. 901-260-5926, our telephone number.
Well, let's go to the phones. Corinth, Mississippi. Vertina is on the line. What's on your mind this morning, Vertina? Mr.
Todd, let me tell you something. I infiltrated this hate group about her, right? They they got a concerted effort. And then what are we gonna do? And what if it, how's she gonna be mayor?
And she's doing, ain't that a conflict dimensions? And this, that, and the other. And how's she gonna be both of them at the same time? The same way y'all sitting up there giving them contracts to your folks and then giving kickbacks at the same time and didn't make them fulfill them. That's how.
She never said she was trying to be both. They're trying to kick up some nonsense. At the end of the day, whether she's mayor or not, they're still going to have to open them books. They're still going to have to accept accountability is our vocabulary word for the day, school board folks. Accountability.
I know you can't spell it because if 75 or whatever the percentage is of the children can't read, then 100% of y'all and Houston ain't got a problem, Memphis does. Yeah, I'll be And there ain't no hiding place down there, and there ain't one up there neither. Y'all gonna get some accountability. That is your side word for this week's school board, folks, and sick offense and cronies. And my Judge Joe Brown voice, you know what she did, and it is what it is.
That one was more qualified. I don't care about a residency. If somebody got to come from out of town to fix something and y'all sitting there your whole lives, and you don't see nothing wrong with it, we see way more wrong with it than you do. And we ain't having no tunnel visioning. The tunnel been going on up fast airport, fretted and went on yarn, and you're going to go somewhere and get some accountability for what y'all done done.
Bertina, let me say something. I like you. I agree with everything you just said. And again, the school board better be put on notice because if she becomes the county mayor, you better believe she's loaded for bear. And we're going to find out where all that money went and what all that money was spent on.
And, Bertina, here's my take on it: we're making an investment. Taxpayers, we're making an investment in that school district. And if over 70% of the children can't read, then we're not getting a return on that investment, are we? 100% of any citizen in the city of Memphis, when it was released that 70% of them children can't read, 100% of the people of the city of Memphis and Shelby County, whose money goes to their school board, still said, Hey, I need my sick days or something, amount of mutiny, and run up in their school board and acted like it was January the 6th to physically remove from office any representative of the people who's taking our money for their salary.
So they can go down to the casino and down to Jamaica and over here to the hair salon and wherever else they go good timing and remove their selves from office physically.
Now, if you think it can't be done, we detected some mouthpieces down here in Oak Hong County. It took us five business days to clear the building and the janitor was quaking in his care that we were gonna get him out the building. You can't get all these folks out of the building. And Backwood Hill, Billyville, got it done in less than a week, and we got a whole new school board. We ain't hurting down here in the holla, but we're gonna holler and we're gonna cry loud and spare not and we ain't gonna tolerate none of this.
And I'm from Memphis, Tennessee, and I left there because I got sick of looking at it. Vertina, we got to take a break, Virginia, and you're fired up. I like you. Give us a holler back. We're going to be covering the race.
And yeah, I think there are a lot of people that feel exactly like you do. They're just sick and tired of the politics as usual. And it's nice to have somebody come in and say, you know what? I believe I can change things. I believe I can make things better, and I'm going to give it a shot.
That's what I call courage, and we need more of that here in Memphis, Tennessee, among our politicians. All right, we got to take a break. 901-260-5926. Call in, just like Vertina did from Corinth, Mississippi. What if everything you thought you knew about online exploitation was only the surface?
The shocking docuseries, Sexploited, rips the veil off the digital darkness, destroying lives. You'll be stunned by what's uncovered in these real stories. Watch the trailers if you dare. Once you see it, you'll understand why silence is no longer an option. Visit SalemNow.com and watch Sexploited in America and visit sexploitedfilm.com.
Mm-hmm. All right, it is nineteen pardon me, nineteen degrees right now at the Memphis Zoo. Even the little penguins are shivering this morning. By the way, speaking of the Memphis Zoo, congratulations. They are number five on USA Today's 10 Best Reader's Choice Awards for best holiday lights.
We call those Christmas lights here in the Mid-South. The rankings announced at the PNC Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo, they topped the list. In twenty twenty five, the Memphis Zoo debuted a new Christmas lice exhibit for with the first Lantern Festival presented by Truist.
So that was a lot of fun.
So well done. And if you haven't been over there, you got to go check it out. They say it's sort of a cool Light experience. featuring more than sixty larger than life illuminated fixtures, transforming the zoo into a dazzling wonderland of color and light.
So there you go. Congratulations to the good folks over at the Memphis Zoo. All right, our telephone number this morning, if you want to weigh in on Marie Fagan's or the Memphis City Council squandering even more of our money at this debacle over at what's supposed to be Liberty Park. And now it's just an empty field, and we're paying $70,000 a month for a consulting firm to, I don't know, are they even mowing the grass out there? Do we know exactly what these guys are doing with all the cash?
901-260-5926. Our number, that's 901-260-5926. Let's check in with Parker Bay standing by with your sports update. Wow! I'm Parker May, and this is your KWM Sports Update presented by Ortho One Sports Medicine and Dr.
DeLabach. In the NFL, the Chiefs are officially eliminated from playoff contention as Patrick Mahomes tears his ACL in a loss to the Chargers. The Bills win a key divisional game overcoming a 17-point deficit to beat the Patriots and the Seahawks. Take down the Colts with six field goals from Jason Myers to win 18-16. In college football, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza takes home the Heisman Trophy.
Mendoza is the first ever winner from Indiana and led the Hoosiers to an undefeated regular season with 39 total touchdowns. In basketball, the Memphis Tigers took another tough loss on Saturday, falling at Louisville 73-99. The Tigers will be back in action Wednesday night as number 15, Vanderbilt, comes to town. The Grizzlies fell to the Utah Jazz at home on Friday in the return of John Morant.
However, the Grizzlies have good news as they are expected to get Brandon Clark back from injury this week. I'm Parker May on the Moddy 990 K-Wham. And it is now 26 minutes past the hour coming up. Our good friend Vicki Gandy from GoTeamGandy.com. Every Monday, Vicki drops by.
Always a lot of fun chatting with Vicki. What a place of audio here. This is from Congressman Chip Roy. And there's been a lot of conversation really around the nation about the rise of Islam. And we've reached a point now where if you express any concerns about a religion that wants to blow you up, that somehow makes you xenophobic or Islamophobic.
And so what's happening is people are being silent, and they would rather be blown up than actually address a major issue with the Islamists that are really inundating America and taking over the country. Here's Congressman Chip Roy out of Texas. In Texas, we've got to double down, if there is no Texas, the country completely falls apart. And you said it, and people need to know it. The Muslim Brotherhood in London and in Paris, they recognize that Dallas in particular, Texas, is the epicenter of what they're trying to do for the Islamification of not just Texas, not just America, but the Western Hemisphere.
They're planting the seeds here, and we've got to rip those seeds up and get them out of Texas. Yeah, we're going to have the, we will have Chip Roy on our national show coming up at 11 o'clock here on here on the Mighty 990.
So again, this is a big issue, and we're going to have to have some very, very difficult conversations and important conversations. The fact of the matter is, Islam is not compatible with Western civilization. Never was, never will be. And if you want to see what America is going to look like in a few years, just take a long, hard look at what's happening overseas in Europe, where for the first time in, I don't know, however many years they've been doing their Christmas celebrations, they've actually canceled their big outdoor Christmas celebrations around the Eiffel Tower over fears that the terrorist might blow people up simply because they're celebrating the birth of Christ. And that's what people are dealing with right now across Western Europe.
especially in the UK, where people are not even allowed to talk about Jesus in the public square lest they offend the Islamist, and then they get thrown in jail. It's the most unbelievable thing. It is a story that is underreported. But pay attention because it's going to happen here if we're not careful. All right, got to take a quick break here: 901-260-5926.
Coming up, Vicky Gandy, go teamgandy.com. Stick around, we'll be right back. Exploitation has killed more children on American soil than ISIS ever did. While we think our sons and daughters are safe from sexual predators and exploitation, they're being victimized right in our homes, in front of our own eyes, through their phones and computers. And until you watch this docuseries, Sexploited in America, the enemy will remain strategic, methodical, invisible.
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That's SalemNow.com. Or visit Sexploited Film.com. WWW Sexploited Film.com. All right, wait a second. How did it get colder?
It's sixteen degrees now. Gizaloo. Got the frost of the pork butt this morning. Hello, everybody. Welcome back.
To Stearns Country Broadcasting here, the principal Teoda Memphis studio. Great to have you with us today. Our telephone number, 901-260-5926. That's 901-260-5926. Always a pleasure.
Every Monday, our good friend Vicki Gandy drops by. Go TeamCanti.com is the website. That's GoTeamCanti.com. And her cell number, if you want to give Vicki a call, she actually provides her cell number. Am I allowed to give this out for Vicki?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I didn't want to, you know, screw up. Mr. President, do you mind if I give your partial cell number? I've actually, hold on.
Wow. I actually. I was texting somebody. Who I know very well. I go to church with a Margot, and I was texting the wrong Margot.
I was texting President Trump's executive assistant. Oh, golly. And she got a good laugh out of it, but I was just like somewhat horrified. Vicki Gandy hanging out with Vicki. How are you?
I'm well. They're hanging in there freezing, but other than that, I'm wonderful. Let me give out your cell phone number now that I've got permission. 901-412-2691. That's 901-412-2691.
Don't call her now. She's in the middle of a conversation. But man, it is so cold. It is. It is so cold.
And it's funny. In fact, I told you I pulled out my mama's fur coat today, which is heavy, but it is needed. You know, one of the big challenges, I love Christmas in the Mid-South because there's literally always something to do. I'm on a book deadline, so it's insane. I can't do anything right now.
But there are like 800 events I was supposed to have gone to yesterday. Same here. We were laughing because it's, you know, we don't do anything for several weeks. And then it's like, there's five parties tonight. And concerts, and you want to do that.
And our friends are calling, can y'all do this and that? And I'm like, no, we just can't. Like you said, everything yesterday, there was like five things going on yesterday that I couldn't get to all of them. Let's talk home inspections. This is important because normally, a lot of people think, oh, you just look around the house and it looks great, great.
We're good to go. But that's not what home inspections are all about. No, and that's one of the things, it is one of the most opportune times. And I tell people when you buy a house, you get to negotiate the first time around on the price when you're buying it. Then when it's home inspection time, you go through and check everything.
And then you may have another chance to negotiate again because you find these things that need to be taken care of. And one thing about it is that people don't understand what home inspectors are. And they're licensed professionals. who do a visual evaluation of any property in the structure, the systems, the roof, foundation, electrical, plumbing, HVAC. to identify potential issues.
And they provide a report, but then what you need to do and what I do is I will bring in specialists. Let's say the HVAC's not working. He can't tell you what's wrong with it necessarily, he sees a problem. Or she, and then you bring in your specialist, and then they can get it down to nitty-gritty and figure out exactly: like, oh, your HVAC's rusted, and you know, you got to whatever, do what needs to be done. But one thing I do want to specify, that they don't test.
Home inspectors do not test for things like mold, certain kind of specialized equipment or hidden components, things that people have in their house that he may not be aware of necessarily. Um because it's like And pools, unless they're licensed to do pools, most home inspectors don't because there's just so much they can see and do. And you cannot be an expert on everything.
So you don't want cousin Eddie to come and do your home inspection, right? You want a professional to do that. You want that so they recognize things and they can look at structure and they'll tell you, you know, you know that I would bring in someone, a structural engineer, perhaps, a foundation expert, because, you know, there's all kinds of things like that. And it is money you spend, but it's also money you're going to get back in either, you know, closing costs or something like that if there is something wrong. You don't want to do it and then buy the house and then find out afterwards why you're not, you know, you can't get it fixed anymore.
It's not covered. Linda Robertson and Dean Franklin say hello, Vicki. They're watching on our Facebook live streams. Oh, cool. Hey, guys.
Love Linda. She's my girlfriend. And love Dean. Dean's going after it with his little podcast. I think he's doing a great job.
So let's talk about the importance. And that's the big thing is that should people People actually get a home inspection if you're about to buy a house?
Well, when I walk my clients through everything, I'll just say, you know, first thing is the home inspection, and then I would like. For you to have on this house certain things. I have a list of things that I encourage clients to do. Number one thing is sewer inspection, sewer line. That's $7,000, $8,000, $10,000 right there in your front yard if the tree roots have gone in.
And the home inspector can't necessarily tell. You have a guy that runs a camera through there. And, you know, there's just so many things. I check, you know, on my list, I'll say, you need to check that. You need to check your chimney.
Chimneys are a huge deal. I just closed a house, $12,000 worth of damage on the chimney. Wow. And the home inspector looked at it and said, I can't tell. You can't climb up there and see.
They had blocked it off the opening of it and had not opened it in 23 years. We didn't know what was living in there. It was pretty creepy. Any stories about people maybe that didn't have a home inspection when they should have? Yes, um, there was no that now, um, I was not aware this was not my client, but this is a friend and the They even the realtor said, you know, there's something with your front porch.
And they're like, oh, it's no problem.
Well, it was separating. The huge all the steps were separating, and then they realized that they had structural damage and they had a house shifting, and it was tens of thousands of dollars. And that's just one story. Sewer line I've had done, I've had drains that backed up that they didn't test. I mean, there's so much that I've heard of.
I'm. One of the reasons I know as much as I do is because it's happened to me. I have just I've been reading a lot of horror stories, even here in the Mid-South, even with like new construction, where things, you know, homes are just not being built like they used to be built. And there are a lot of problems.
Well, there are. And there was one subdivision. I won't name names, but I had a client that had bought it without me. She went over and bought it from the listing agent. It was of New Build, and they were building her house.
And luckily, because she was a friend, I just started investigating and I found out that there were five houses that were sinking that were less than a year old. What? five in this area. Cracked foundations. A reason I found out at my pool, my pool inspector lived across the street.
He said, Please tell me you don't have someone who's bought here because I'm watching this area. They had a creek running through it and they just built on it. And everybody did. Wow. So it's something.
And I, you know, if anybody wants to call in and ask us questions about home inspections, anytime we're on, you know, I can answer as much as I can.
Now, as I said, I'm not the expert, but I have one. I have an expert for most everything. And that's the whole point of it is to get to that specific person that can help you.
So you would need, like, so if you have a pool, you would need a pool inspector. Exactly. Your home inspector would not necessarily be able to do like sewer lines and things like that. No, no, sewer lines, anything like that. Foundation, they can see the cracks, but they don't know how deep they go.
They can't do all that. They have to have someone. You want a structural engineer, perhaps, a foundation. I brought in, like this one house had a crack in the brick on the front. You could see it.
And the homeowners had filled it in.
Well, you can't tell. Is that brick separated?
So we did bring. In a structural engineer, and they did say it was safe. It needed to be these things needed to be done, but it wasn't something that they're going to have to rebuild the house.
So it's good because you don't want to be stuck with a clunker, right? I mean, if you decide to buy a house and you don't do all this, what happens?
Well, the brick will fall off the house possibly. You're stuck with the bills. Absolutely. And then you can't sell it because you know you have to disclose. What you know, you have to disclose to the next buyer.
Wow. This is crazy stuff. It is. And I know people listening and they're thinking, holy cow, they're just adding up the money here. But just think about this.
The money that you're saving down the road from having to do this, you know, and again, if you've got major, major issues with a home, you know, that's going to set you back a penny.
Well, you're in an inspection period, so you can always walk away. But secondly, that's what you negotiate. You say, hey, okay, Mr. Seller, can you help me pay for this or pay my closing costs? And I'll take care of it.
That's what we did. We ended up, they gave them, paid all their closing costs and gave them some money. And what you can do is you can hold a check. When you're buying a house, you can have the attorney hold the check and make it out to the contractor. And that way, money cannot exchange hands legally between buyer and seller, but you can do it that way.
And then when they close, the attorney holds the check. And then once the job is done and inspected, he issues the funds to them.
So you're protected, and you've also got a warranty because this person's working for you instead of the seller. I prefer my clients to do that themselves because that way they can come back on it. The seller disappears. And their person, Joe Smoe, you never hear from again. Amazing.
Vicki Gandhi joining us every Monday, go teamgandy.com. That's goteamgandy.com. You can call her 901-412-2691. That's 901-412-2691. Is this a busy time of year for the real estate industry?
It can be. It can be because people come during their breaks. And that's one of the things that I love about working with Cry Like, you know, we're always going and learning and training. And people come in town right now. I've sold, I've had December be some.
Of the biggest months of my career because people are, they've got those two weeks, and they may be having to move in January or February.
So, they're coming in. And it's so bright.
Now, the weather is a problem if it snows. I've had to show houses in three feet of snow. It's not fun. Let's not do that anytime. All right.
Vicki Gandy, everybody. If you have questions, go teamgandy.com. What are they going to find? They go to your website, Vicki. What are they going to find?
Well, it's got an area where you can reach out to me. Of course, you can say, you know, contact me. Please do if you have questions and anything that you're concerned about that you don't understand, just zap me an email. It'll come right to me. And there's other things, all the houses that are listed that we have and everything else about Cry Like, there's a lot about me.
I've got testimonials that I've been doing this now for 19 years.
So I've been working with a lot of different clients, every kind of situation. Not every kind, but most every kind I've experienced one way or another. Got any favorite Christmas traditions, the Gandhi family here in the mid-south?
Well, the Gandhi family is growing quite a lot. My five sons, all, you know, I've got wives and Girlfriends and children and grandchildren and all that. But one thing we do on Christmas Eve is my sweet Morgan, one of my son's wives, she comes over with all the things and we decorate cookies. We bake Cookies and then we decorate them, and we have icing up to our elbows, and everyone gets to do them. And we end up with about 50 cookies.
It's a lot of fun. Oh, wow. And those cookies are great. I'm just going to go on the record and say they've got to be great. All right.
Well, Vicki, great seeing you as always. Thank you. And we'll see you back here next week. All right.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
Okay. Thank you so much. Vicki Gandy, everybody. Go teamgandy.com. Got to take a quick break.
Let's check in with Commander Chuck standing by with a look at your traffic. What if everything you thought you knew about online exploitation was only the surface? The shocking docuseries, Sexploited, rips the veil off the digital darkness, destroying lives. You'll be stunned by what's uncovered in these real stories. Watch the trailers, if you dare.
Once you see it, you'll understand why silence is no longer an option. Visit SatelNow.com and watch Sexploited in America and visit sexploitedfilm.com. Uh All right, sunny skies out there. 16 degrees at Arlington High School this morning, still bitterly cold. It is going to warm up.
As a matter of fact, Jim Miller with your top of the hour local news headlines. And Laura Huckabee will have your complete weather forecast coming up. By the way, I want to give a shout out to our friends in Olive Branch. There are some big doings coming on down there, going on down there. The Olive Branch Light Show, which is underway now through January the 1st.
It is the Mid South's most immersive light show and Christmas festival. I don't know what that means, immersive, but it's a lot of fun. The light garden in Olive Branch City Park, they have more than a half million, yeah, a half million LED lights, 345 light displays and decorations, which is pretty remarkable. And they even have something called LED mini golf and large Lego displays. And if you've got a kid, well, you're going to get a free photo with Santa.
So, if you'd like tickets or information, go to lightgarden.online. That's lightgarden.online, and you'll be able to see all the information there. It looks. It looks pretty spectacular when you see all those lights. Very impressive.
All right.
901-260-5926. Our telephone number. That's 901-260-5926. So, Senator Marshall Blackburn joining us in studio on Friday. Here's a little bit of that conversation.
Very busy, very busy day on Capitol Hill. And we're going to talk about some of that legislation in just a minute. I want to talk, though, about something that happened in Nashville earlier today, TPUSA making a very important announcement. And you were a part of this huge press conference that they had in the state capitol today. We were indeed.
And Today, the state has allowed the starting of Club America chapters, which TPUSA does in high schools. And every single high school And college in this state will be able to have a TPUSA or a Club America chapter. And I was so pleased to join Turning Points team and Riley Gaines and make that announcement. You know, it's interesting. Even here in the Memphis area, there's a group at Collierville High School.
They couldn't get permission for their clubs.
So they're actually meeting at a little restaurant. They open the restaurant at 6:30 in the morning, and they'll have 60 or 70 kids come out early on a Thursday morning.
So this kind of program will actually help sort of make it easier for these clubs to exist. That's exactly right. You know, some of the schools say, well, it's political.
Well, learning about your founding documents, your Constitution, your founding fathers, your first principles, it's not political. This is called our nation's history. We're the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We are the beacon for freedom. And it is going to be the next generation to carry that through.
As Ronald Reagan said, we are. not we don't pass freedom on in the bloodstream. Every single generation has to fight for it, has to protect it, and then it's their responsibility to pass it on. That is what Turning Point USA is doing. That is what Club America Is working to do in removing these obstacles so that kids can have these classes and these clubs and participate in robust, respectful, bipartisan debate.
You know, I know you're running for governor and crime has been a huge issue. Yes. You led the charge to bring the National Guard to Memphis, and that has been a huge success. We're now hearing very similar stories about violence in Nashville. I know Congressman Ogles was very upset over this Somali migrant who killed a woman allegedly there in Nashville.
The judges had been letting this guy out on a number of other charges, dozens of crimes. And I think people here across the state of Tennessee and really across America, they're done with this. They are just done with this lawlessness out there. Oh, you're so right. People are saying we want safe communities.
We want our kids to be safe. And they want to know exactly what's going to be done to fight crime. And the Way Memphis and the mayor and the police chief have worked with the 20 federal agencies, the guard, the highway patrol, the TBI. It is a model, and indeed the administration and President Trump have made a long-term commitment to Memphis because of that. It's shocking.
People are literally driving 55 miles an hour on I-240, which has been unheard of.
So I think people are very grateful that you can go from point A to point B and not get run over and not get carjacked. Yeah.
Well, we hear about it every day, and the crime rate in Memphis is down a little over 50 percent. Wow, just it's it's remarkable. Yeah.
And it really is becoming, and I know that you would hoped it would become a blueprint for the rest of the nation, and it really is. It is indeed. Memphis is going to be the model for how you make a community safe. And you look at the work that we started in mid-September and the fact that we are now down over 50% in crime. Everything is down.
Aggravated assault, carjackings, murder, child sexual assault. All of this is down in drug trafficking. Dan, the fact that they're closing in on 4,000 arrests. 4,000. And our U.
S. Attorney, Mike Dunovant, is actually getting these cases assigned. We have surged ICE and DHS and JAG attorneys into the Memphis area to work with the U. S. Attorney Tyrese Miller.
Who is the U.S. Marshal in the area is doing exemplary work and working with the other U.S. Marshals from around the country? Talking a lot about mood and vibe, and it seems as though, especially with what happened yesterday in Indiana, I think the president's really aggravated by that some Republicans just aren't getting on board the agenda. What do we need to do as a Republican Party to make sure that we deliver big wins in the midterms?
What we need to do is support President Trump and his agenda. That's what the American people voted for. They want to see prices come down, and indeed they are. I was in part of the state last night, and $2.37 a gallon for gas. That's an improvement.
They want the price of groceries to come down. They want life to be more affordable. And so delivering on that, making certain communities are safe, making health care available and affordable is a big one. How is that going? All right.
And that was just a bit of our conversation with Senator Marcia Blackburn from Friday's show. You can listen to the entire conversation by downloading my podcast. You can do that at ToddSterns.com. By the way, I want to give you an update here. The Memphis Safe Task Force releasing numbers over the weekend.
So far, they have arrested more than 4,000 people as of Friday, 4,000 people, including 15 people wanted for homicides, more than 400 drug offenses, 72 sex crimes. 320 gun crimes. Almost 400 gang members off the streets and in jail, and 123 missing children. Returned to their families. What a great job the task force is doing.
Folks, we will see you here at 11 o'clock right here on the mighty night. Get out there. Have a great day, everybody. Stay warm. This holiday season reached for the one butter that never disappoints.
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