Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-23-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Final Outdoor Report of 2025 with Greg Roberts, travel weather, wolf news and other stories. Former Sen. Baertschiger - what is up with the recall folks and situation in Jo County?

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurdrilling.com. Mr. Outdoors here. I love those J-I-M-G-L-E Bells. Well, Mr. Outdoors, will we be enjoying snow in the higher hills or none? What is the storm quotient looking like here in this holiday travel week, huh? What's up?

Well, without any question, we're going to. to be enjoying snow up in the higher hills, you know. Up until probably last, I would say, Thursday, we look like we may even have potential to be enjoying it here in the valleys. Well, as Mother Nature so often does, we went to kick that football and she pulled it away and we flew in the air and landed flat in our back just like Charlie Brown. But luckily, fortunately, we are getting snow now high up in the air. the mountains and especially at places where we need to have it like Mount Ashland, where it is snowing hard this morning. Unfortunately, really can't see what it's doing for accumulation,

but the view on the webcam at the lodge definitely reveals it is snowing up there, snowing at a good rate, and it's 27 degrees. There's happy news. So we're happy to see that. The first winter storm warning of the season is up in Northern California in Siscue County and Modok counties. In Siskue County, above 4,500 feet through 4 a.m. Friday morning, potential for up to 5 feet of snow. It gets higher as you go up in elevation above 4,500 feet. Okay, so up to 5 feet of snow over the next few days. And where is this again, Modok and Siskue? No, Siskue County.

Siskew County. Wow. Elevation is above 4,500 feet in Susquee County. Okay. So really what we're talking about here is the area around Mount Shasta, the Mount Shasta Ski Park, I believe the base elevation is 5,300 feet. They're definitely going to be getting snow. So we will see the beginning of the ski season here in the state of Jefferson, if you

will, either by Christmas Day or probably the day after. But Mount Chester Ski Park will definitely get enough natural snow. I don't think at this point they'd even need to fire up the snow guns, especially if they're getting five feet of snow. The five feet of snow, by the way, on the upper portions of the ski park, certainly far more likely. You're going to have winds 60 miles an hour. They could be higher, over-exposed higher terrain. you know, up here in Oregon, we have winter weather advisory. The winds won't be as high. The snow amounts won't be as high. But we still have the potential, especially places like Crater Lake, over a foot of snow through Friday morning, Diamond Lake, probably close to a foot through Friday morning. And of course, as I said, Mount Ashland, where it's already snowing hard, they're probably in that foot, maybe up to 18 inches range. Now, should they get that, and I'm talking the 18 inches, there is the potential they could open up the lower portion of the mountain, as we've discussed before.

Yeah, I was wondering what is the actual, I was wondering what the actual threshold is to actually be able to ski safely up on Ashland. So 18, you're kind of getting close. Is that what is 18 inches? Yeah, because they've done a lot of what in the ski industry is known as summer grooming. They get up there, they remove a lot of the obstacles, the brush, the logs, even right down to taking pieces of equipment known as rock hammers out, which are mounted on excavators or backhose, and literally hammering away at the rocks and reducing them, you know, both in height and in size. I spent a summer working at Mount Bachelor doing that. And, no, we didn't do the excavators and the backhows with the rock hammers. That would have taken too long.

We used primer cord. We blasted them. Oh, see, that's much more fun, I would think. Oh, yeah. Heck, yeah. It's a lot more fun. I mean, you get paid to set off explosions all day. What can be better than that?

That's even better than me putting firecrackers on the old Green Army men that we used to do as kids, you know? Yeah, well, the old Green Army. men, launching your astronauts into space on bottle rockets, you name it. I mean, when you're getting paid to blow things up all day, there's not much better than that. Oh, man. I mean, just about every guy listening. Just about every guy listening understands this, understands this. I think it is something within the genome of the American male.

I don't know if it's the testosterone, whatever it is. We like to blow things up, and it's just the way it is. Oh, yeah, the marshmallow run on the east side of the mountain. That was the target of all my explosive activity. And over the course of a summer, we literally removed everything down to where nothing was over six inches high in that run. Because the idea was at six inches, if you got 10 inches of heavy, wet, dense snow, you could run the groomers over it. And then you could open up the sunrise chair and at least have marshmallow. mellow open on a well-packed 10-inch heavy, wet, dense base.

May makes a lot of sense here, Mr. Outdoors. Now, what I'm kind of wondering, though, is are we going to have any travel issues wherever we're heading here over the next few days, I-5 and south and northbound and out to the coast? Probably no problems? I don't know. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because there are already travel issues going through the Cascades. And it is snowing now this morning up also on Highway 140, going over to Klamath at Lake of the Woods, Fish Lake area. Here's something funny. A wife, okay, there's a

follower. She is always on rogue weather. She started asking me questions Thursday, Friday. My husband and his buddy are going over to work in Klamath, and they think they want to go on Monday morning. Should they go on Sunday afternoon? And I said, without any question, go on Sunday afternoon, because Monday morning, even if there's no snow, that thing's going to be very icy. Well, sure enough, they delayed the travel. They went over yesterday. The end result, the buddy of the husband rolled his truck, told it. Luckily, he's okay.

Okay. The husband went off the road in his truck because of his buddy's wreck and banged up the side of his truck, and he's okay. 140 is actually worse when there's no snow coming down and it's icy because ODOT does not sand it. They don't. They don't. throw sand down on it until there's snow. Why? Is there a reason for that?

Is it the wind that they, is it, the reason for that is it, is it the wind or is it the lack of funding? I dare say, you know. There you go. It has everything to do with the money situation. Oh. You get east of Klamath Falls, and I don't know what makes the difference, but you get east to Klamath Falls, and you get to where Lakeview is responsible for maintaining 140,

they will sand it and sand it hard when it's an icy morning. And then the other thing Lakeview has is salt. And they are salting Highway 395 out of Lakeview as an experiment along with Susquee Summit to see how well salting is going to work. And I can't remember how many years we are into this. It's been a bit. But clearly salting, I've seen the effect firsthand. on I-5. It absolutely works. I am certain it's working on Highway 395, and of course, they salt everything now in the Portland and Salem areas with ice or any kind of snow.

You know, so I suspect it would probably won't be much longer before salt's going to be more universally used in Oregon, and especially in the Cascades. You know, that's really interesting because one of the things that I, and I know people will look at me like I'm weird, but I grew up in areas that had nothing but salt, and they just poured salt on everything. Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and they would plow in salt, and that's the way it was. And that's the way it is in a great portion of the country where snow is frequent, and you don't have volcanic cinders. The one advantage of volcanic cinders have, when the sun comes out and you've got those little volcanic cinders, they collect and trap and hold the heat from the sun, even if it's below 32 degrees, which does help with melt factor. But then again, as soon as the sun goes down and you drop temperatures down and those rocks lose that heat, it sets up more icing issues.

The other reason why Oregon didn't want to use salt, obviously everybody thinks corrosion, yeah, there's that too. But they were paranoid, especially the old days with the kind of road salt they used about attracting deer and elk to the road surfaces and causing collisions with vehicles. Now, what do they do with the salt that they're using right now? I mean, I was thinking about how it used to be the West Coast cars you could always count on them being in pretty good shape, even use cars, because of no salt, but I guess that's not the case. I didn't realize that they were experimenting with salting. I hadn't paid attention to that story. Yeah, and they have, you know, in a way it's kind of like retardant out for wildland

firefighting. Retardin now is definitely not the quote-unquote boreate that used to got, that was dropped from the inception of dropping, you know, that red stuff on fires back in the 40s all the way up through the 70s. They knew it was doing serious damage to the environment. And as the years have gone on, they've continued to perfect less impactful retardant to drop on wildfires. They did the exact same thing with road salt, and it is now commercially marketed as road salt, because sodium is still a component to it, thus salt. But it is definitely not the stuff they put down for decades, in the Great Lakes and places like that that caused corrosion because the other thing was

Oregon wouldn't use road salt because of the deer elk factor back east. Well, not so much elk, although there are getting to be more elk in spots back there. It was deer. And there were a lot of collisions between deer and vehicles, and people would complain about that. And the states basically said, well, it's either the collisions with the deer or it's collisions with vehicles. dying and we'll take the unfortunate deer hits over the other. And as time has gone on, lo and behold, science has created a quote unquote salt that achieves the same ends, but isn't nearly as attractive to deer and elk. So it's not as tasty. It's not as tasty then for the

deer and wildlife. That's it. Correct. Okay. Because I think most people know, especially if you're a hunter, you want to attract deer and elk, put out a salt, And every livestock owner, rancher down here and this end of the state will tell you the second you put salt blocks out for your cattle, you will definitely be drawn in any deer and elk in the vicinity to hit that salt block as well. I'm kind of curious, do salt blocks attack or attract wolves, do that? No. No.

But the things coming in for the salt blocks absolutely do. No. I imagine so. then the wolf, we're going to set up shop around this salt lake and just kind of watch it. Because essentially what you do when you do that. And it used to be, I mean, we certainly did it when we had cattle on summer range. You would put salt blocks out on your summer range, so your cattle on summer range, meaning in the National Forest BLM lands, could get to salt.

That's another one of those things that you learn being on the Jackson County Wolf Committee and ways to try and help attracting wolves to your animals, you don't put salt blocks out anymore except right where you can control it, basically, where you're living or with barns being there, because the wolves aren't dumb, and they see everything they want to eat congregating there, you're just begging for trouble. Oh, yeah, you're just making a buffet for them, I suppose. Now, you're going to be, there's going to be an early January meeting. you're going to be part of that, Ben, with the Jackson County

Wolf Committee? I don't know that it's early January. It's closer to the middle of the month, but yeah, I'm going to be part of that. We're going to talk about the unavoidable now about how every single known method of non-lethal

is not working in the Butte Falls area. In fact, next while we're off, I'm going to be going up there getting eyes on. I want to see exactly what's going on. I've had some reports of behavior from the wolves up there towards humans that, quite frankly, I want to see it with my own eyes because my eyes are different than a lot of other people's, and I've got a bit more

experience. I don't have the fear factor, but if what I was told was true, and I'm going to want to see it firsthand, we may have a much greater potential safety threat to humans than we've ever had to deal with down here before, but I want to be able to ascertain that for myself, watch them react to me, see how they're reacting, and then that's going to be part of the basis of what I'm going to tell Jackson County Wolf Committee. But the big thing I already know, we have to push to allow those landowners, ranchers up there at Butte Falls, to be able to shoot the wolves that are actively engaging on their livestock. Because, sadly, all of the non-lethal, every bit of it, right down to rubber bullets, is not working.

Yeah, it's sad, but you could see it was going to come to this, and we are not really doing much to, well, to control predation. We're really not doing that much, Arnegan is absolutely not doing a thing for it, and that's the other tough part of the situation here. On the other hand, allowing ranchers to shoot the wolves that are clearly a threat to their animals is also not going to empty the landscape of wolves. It just won't. Because, well, quite frankly, I have no doubt that what's going on up there right now is shoot, shovel, and shut up, known as the triple S. Oh, yeah. I was wondering. Even with that going on, we still have more wolves now than we've been able to document before here without any question. Even in other areas where ranchers are

allowed to engage and shoot wolves threatening their livestock, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, it definitely has not eliminated wolves from the landscape. So unfortunately, I'd hope this could be avoided because, you know, people know, I've said it before, I'll say it again, the wolves do have a right to exist, but so too do the ranchers, and when we've reached the point when all non-lethal will just will not be effective, and the wolves are becoming more bold and more brazen, allowing the ranchers to shoot the ones trying to kill their animals or having killed their animals will achieve two results. It will, of course, help the ranchers immediately, which will make them probably more tolerant over all of the situation,

but it will restore something we definitely need to restore. And that is a healthy fear of humans in our wolves locally, and they flat don't have that. Yeah, they don't care. They look at us. They look at humanity and pretty much laugh at this point. All right, Mr. Outdoors, I appreciate the take on it. And, hey, got a roll, but got a roll into a great Christmas holiday,

all the best to you at rogueweather.com, and I appreciate you coming on and giving these reports, and we'll pick it up again Friday, Friday, the 2nd. Friday, January 2nd, and Bill, obviously, very Merry Christmas to you, Linda, the boys, you know who I mean, and obviously every single one of our listeners. It is so much fun to engage with people at when I'm out in the bout in the stores and just about anywhere else and everybody coming up and going, I've been listening to you and Bill Meyer for years. You're absolutely my favorite part of the Bill Meyer show.

And people love listening to us doing what we're doing. And so, yeah, I'm very grateful for that. And I hope we keep this thing going for many more years to come. Very good. Greg Roberts atrogweather.com. Outdoor reports sponsored by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Medford. And we will pick this up on the second, the second of January. I can't believe we're already getting close to 2026.

Your generator works hardest when the weather turns rough, so protect it before the next story. Hi, I'm Matt from Dusty's Transmissions. I'm on 106.7 AMED. Former state senator Herman Berchiger, we always talk a little bit of politics in what's going on in the state of Oregon, California, Washington, but mostly Oregon. And maybe just to keep an eye on the bubble, the political bubble, however, the things back there. Herman, what's going on this morning, sir? Welcome. Well, a couple things. First of all, you know, you hear a lot about Josephine County, but it's still a great community. I mean, over the Christmas holidays here with the Christmas parade, the lighting of the Christmas tree, I mean, people are excited. Town is booming. People are moving. It's hustle and bustling getting ready for the holidays. So this commissioner mess, how did we get here? Well, it's pretty easy. I've told you for years now that Southern Oregon is targeted by the Democrats as a takeover. Kind of like they did, but they tried it in Deschutes County. They got Bend, and they have.

They have been. And down here in Southern California, Southern Oregon, they got Ashland. They're working on. Yeah, but they're looking to expand their footprint. And I understand that. I know that one of one of Stacey Abrams's lieutenants or, you know, associates, ends up moving to, you know, Josephine County. Why would that be, a person be moving from Georgia to Josephine County all of a sudden, you know, that kind of thing? I think that's part of the strategy.

And I think where people make a mistake here is, and by the way, you know, I am not, I don't do ringing endorsements of the people that are on the commissions or anything. This is not bad. Right. But the tumult, which is being brought here, I think, is division being fostered. I mean, you have, you know, you certainly have division within the Republican Party, but. The Democrats are very smart, in my opinion, of pouring gasoline on that fire, too, behind the scenes. So, you don't see, well, these people that are on this recall, they're not like hardcore Democrats or, you know, the Republicans, you know, that you hear that. I don't. I don't. I think there's, you know, a lot of people who have switched parties that aren't really part of that party, but they're able to foment dissension.

All of that. They're being energized. And I wouldn't surprise me if Kate Burrower. ground doesn't have her fingers meddling in this. But anyway, so what happened in 2024? Donald Trump got elected. Right. Okay. But what else happened in Josephine County? There was 11 seats between the county and the city, and they were all swept by Republicans, every single one. So between Donald Trump getting elected and the Democrats losing all 11 races down there, They absolutely lost their ever-loving mind. And the only way they can fight that back, they can't win in a real election. So you can win in a recall election to get people out because it's a very small turnout,

usually on a recall, isn't it? That's right. But what also happens is they've teamed up with some former employees that I believe from the county that I don't want to seek a little revenge. So they've teamed up with that. And you're exactly right. This whole thing was orchestrated. They said at day one, when these commissioners were elected, they said at day one, we're

going to wait six months and then recall you. They have to wait state six months because that's the law. So they did. They did exactly. And they choreographed it right in to the holiday season, low border turnout. Yep. But also, it was really interesting. They really thought this through.

They did a good job thinking this through. What they were planning on doing is recalling Andreas Fleck and Chris Barnett, and then there would not be a quorum in the commissioner's office, so it would automatically go to the department head, okay? And they feel they can control the department heads much more than control the commissioners. Now, Chris Barnett threw a monkey race in there. So then the battle came down to will Ron Smith provide quorum, right? Yeah, but see, they didn't anticipate Andreas resigning. So Andreas resigned, so now there is a quorum, and Ron Smith got caught in the middle of it. He's new into politics.

He can't take the heat. He cannot take the heat. He threw up his hand. And so now they're pushing. They're pushing. They're pushing. to extend this all the way to the recall. They're counting on Chris Barnett getting recalled,

so it goes back to the department heads again. Now, the one thing that I've always kind of scratched my head with is all these elected department heads, these other elected officials got to get elected too. Yeah. And votes have consequences. And so, you know, we still are two to one in Josephine. County. There's two conservative votes for every liberal vote, roughly speaking. And so these people

got to think about that. And then the next thing is our next election cycle next November, you don't think that the Republicans aren't going to get back in office again with a two to one and there's going to be so much going on with Donald Trump and everything. So it's this constant, constant battling. And that's why I say it's going to continue because there's all this outside influence from the liberals trying to take over in Oregon. It's stimulating the local liberals, and it's also given them some resources to work with. But, you know, it's hard to get over that two-to-one voting ratio. Ultimately. But the problem with this, though, is that there's no governing going on, really, in Josephine County with the county commission

because there's a lot of tippy-toeing, you know, kind of stuff going around, people trying to avoid getting recalled. Well, you know, with this, you know, you don't have to have a huge amount of people on a recall. It doesn't take much. All you have to do is just get the petition through, right? Doesn't take a lot. And you don't think the Republicans are going to, let's say that a liberal gets in office. You don't think the Republicans are going to recall, are going to recall people. So it's just, you know.

Well, my thing is, is that I'm just hoping that Josephine County voters don't take the bait, okay, on the recall situation. It's not about taking the bait. It's taking the time. I hope they don't. They won't take the time. It's a single, it's a ballot. There's only one thing on it. And a lot of, you know, a lot of people think, I'm not going to vote to recall anybody. And so they think throw it in the trash can is a no vote. But that's not the case. No, it's not. You have to take part in it, okay? That's absolutely right. So that's kind of the problems in Josephine County, and they're not going to be over anytime soon.

But others than that, the spirit of the people, you know, I've been out in the community quite a bit the last couple weeks. I'm just amazed at the commerce and how many people in the stores and cars on the street and people for the Christmas parade and the restaurants are full and stuff. There's a lot of good things going on in Josephine County, too, Bill. You know, something I was kind of wondering about when it came to the differences between Jackson and Josephine County. How do you think it was that Jackson County became just kind of like a chain restaurant mecca?

Not that there aren't independent restaurants, but Josephine County has an extremely vibrant local restaurant scene, which I really admire. I think they do a great job with the local restaurants. Was that something intentional or was it just because of the population draw? Because it's kind of like everybody gets excited in Jackson County. It's like, oh, here's another insert chain restaurant to it, though. We're so excited. I'm thinking, so what, you know, is where I tend to come down on those kind of things. You know, I don't know.

Maybe there's just not enough commerce for those big chains and so that they're not as interested. You know, you've got a lot more people in Jackson County that we got over here. three times overall, right? Yeah, and so I think it has to do with that. But I know they make such a big deal. To me, to me, it's kind of embarrassing when you see people, you get all excited about a chain. It's like yet another chain.

It's like I would be much more excited if there were more mom and pops opening up with something interesting and unique. It's the way I tend to look at it. Yeah, no kidding. But anyways, I just wanted to touch on, you know, that's what's happening in Josephine County. All right. And by the way, you have to take part in the recall because the Democrats are going to be very, very animated to want to create tumult.

I don't know if the Democrats really hate Chris Barrett ad. I don't know if it's necessarily that. Or just the fact that he's a Republican. I don't know if there's any other thing simple. I'm going to tell you there's a good percentage of the liberal community that do hate. It's hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. I mean, look what they've been doing with them. the Trump administration. You really want, you know, you really want everybody succeeding in government.

You know, you really want that happening. But this is the hate. I see on social media, I don't respond, but it is hate. It's absolute down bone-chilling hate some of the things these people are saying. And that's why I say that the existing people need to be kept on the commission. and like I said, this is no endorsement of Ron and or Commissioner Barnett. It's not about that. There needs to be some peace, and they need to be able to catch a breath and actually do some governing rather than working from a defensive political posture at all times, because this is just insane what's been going on in Josephine County.

Oh, but it's not just Josephine County. it's across this country. The reason it's more highlighted is because there's so many outside resources and excitement and stuff going on in Josephine County because the Democrats, I seen him do this in Bend, and so once they got Ben done,

now they switched over here, and they got so much money and everything. And, you know, I don't know what former Governor Brown, she was an activist her whole life before she got in the politics. I heard she's back. doing that a little bit behind the scene. So it wouldn't surprise me if she's not helping down here too. Yeah, it could be. But there are also the Republicans that I would dare say, you know,

in different times could have been called never Trumpers. There's a big part of that in the Republican party too. Isn't that part of the issues that we deal with? Well, you know, we've had a lot of people down here switch to Republican that weren't, especially over the Senate two race. They wanted, they didn't want Noah Robinson in, they wanted a moderate in. And I mean, look at the, you know, the courier, you say the courier isn't biased. Ask why did so many people on the courier change their party affiliation for that election? You know, come on. Yeah. Well, they were trying to do their own version of Operation Chaos, and that is continuing in Joe County. And there's, yeah, I think we, we figured for whatever reason, there was about

350 people changed their party affiliation during that election cycle. And so they say, and that's why the career say, oh, it's also Republicans are trying to recall. Are they really Republicans or are they just so they can use the Republican logo? Yeah, you know, I've noticed there's a bunch of Republicans that I'll see on social media in Southern Oregon. And they're the type of Republicans that are flying the rainbow flag and, you know, talking about this and, oh, it's like, really?

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm getting at. The Republican label is not particularly telling in Joe County right now for some. That's all. We'll just kind of leave it at that, okay?

Yep. And the other thing is that, can we be honest, that I think Democrats fight better than Republicans overall? Well, I don't know if they fight better, but they're louder. They are loud. Well, maybe louder is all that matters in today's social media world. You're louder. Oh, I'm telling you, some of the stuff I say on social media, I don't respond to it. I just, you know, I'm always surfing, looking, and stuff.

But, I mean, I can remember talking with President Courtney about the level of ang. I've mentioned it to you before. And it does. It keeps getting ratcheted up, and I don't know how far it can ratchet it up until it turns really bad. But some of the things people are saying, you know, they actually wish people would die or be killed and stuff like that. And that is not good. No, it is not. Before we take off, I didn't want to touch on something.

You and I have talked about fuel supplies here in Southern Oregon. There was a conversation about the Olympic pipeline. I guess they have it patched back together, you know, for the... Well, that's not the real problem. No. The Olympic pipeline, you know, the Olympic pipeline, there's one, two, three, four, there's five refineries up in Washington, and they're all on the Puget Sound for a reason because they can bring the supertankers in from the Pacific Ocean.

And so there's a pipeline that, really, extends from Blaine, Washington, which is right on the border of Canada, and it comes all the way down to Portland. It's called the Olympic pipeline. It's 400 and some miles in it. And then the gasoline ends up getting loaded onto trucks and brought to Southern Oregon, right? No. No. No. It's actually, it ends in Portland. It ends on the Willamette River, and there's a big fuel farm there. Now, we've had a lot of discussion when I was dissented over that fuel farm because, you know, you always worry about Cascadia, and that fuel farm is all built on fill right on the river. So in an earthquake, that would end up shaking around like jello, right?

It would be pretty bad. Yeah, exactly. So we're always worried about that. From there, there's another pipeline from Portland to just north of Eugene. And that is who, that is Kimberly. timber, anyways, timber Morgan pipeline. And so it terminates in Eugene, and that's where our trucks go in. So then it goes to, then it goes into gas trucks and then comes down to Grants Pass

Medford, Ashland. Got it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, okay. So that's not the problem. The problem is, in California and Washington, the legislature has made these laws where they are making these refineries mixed fuels. all kinds of things that fuel, stops in a whole bunch of money, and the refineries are

shutting down. Now, I think they're shutting down to exercise their muscle a little bit and bring these legislators to their needs. Because public opinion, when you're looking across the country and everybody else is paying $2 a gallon for gas. And you're paying $6 and seven. Right. Public opinion is going to change on those politicians. And so I think that's what's going on. They're just shutting them down. They're not tearing them down. They're shutting them down.

So I think there's a little bit of muscle flexing going on. But absolutely, look what these liberals have done. My gosh, they've turned our electrical grid into this green muck. And so now we're talking about, oh, we may have brownouts. now they've turned our petroleum industry, made things so expensive. I mean, I think public opinion is going to start shifting on these liberals. You could be right about that when it comes to the fuel. Look at even what they're doing in California at the end of the year.

You have to have a double-walled tank, even if it's not leaking, even if you have a single-wall tank that's perfectly fine, and it's not leaking if you run a gas station in California. Well, this is going to put hundreds, if not thousands, out of business down there because of the insane cost, $25,000 to $50,000 per tank, plus the double wall piping and all the rest of it. It's crazy. Oh, absolutely. But like I told you before, some of that is the industry. So you get the double wall tank people.

They lobby the legislature. They say, oh, this is going to be much better. We're not going to have all these terrible leagues. Oh, so we have that public-private partnership. Now, it's not technically a public-private partnership, but the private lobby, lobbying the public, and then they get their regulation changed, right? That kind of thing? Right.

And so they convince, so, you know, it meets a couple goals from the legislature because they're in California. They're very liberal. They're very green. So, hey, it's going to protect the environment. And, oh, less gas stations. That kind of plays into our playbook. You know, you've got to remember the 30,000 foot view. with some of these liberals is to get rid of petroleum, period.

Uh-huh. Even though there's really nothing to replace it, but we'll figure that out because science and human creativity will always save us, right, Herman? Well, look how ridiculous this is. I mean, you know, I was in the discussions right in the middle of it over natural gas. I mean, we've promoted natural gas to heat your house and do your cooking, do you. And the next thing, you know, the Democrats are saying no more natural gas. You cannot install natural gas in a new home.

Cannot do it. Everything has to be electric. At the same time, they're saying, oh, we're going to shut down our coal plant there in, up there out of Hermiston, and we're going to, you know, we're going to go to all green energy and everything. So they're putting more demand on the grid, but taking more supply. None of this makes sense. And now we're looking at Brownout. Yeah, we need a different class of elite here in the West Coast political enclaves.

I mean, seriously, it's just crazy. We know it used to be that your elites actually tried to make things work. Oregon's elites do not, Herman. They just don't. I don't think I even don't understand how to make it work, really. No, we did all this. You know, back in the 60s, do you remember when gas stations were giving you free glasses and free this and free that and come and get fuel.

Yeah, S&H green stamps for a fill-up, you know, that kind of thing. Sure, I remember it. Oh, yeah, all that kind of stuff. And it's just, but I think the inconvenience of less availability to energy is going to eventually change public opinion. And once that changes, things will change. And I, listen, people are not. going to go back to a horse and buggy and riding bicycle. They're not going to do it, Bill.

They're going to go nuts before that happened. From your lips, my friend, and may the nut, may the nut going come in 2026, because it's really needed. It needs to be a turnout. But that has been kind of, though, a Republican Party strategy is the thought that they would get things, that things would be bad enough that they would change and vote for Republican. I'm not necessarily convinced of that, though.

Are you? Not yet, but I think things are changing. You know, public opinion, this whole climate change and green, and I'm not saying we shouldn't do the right things for the environment, okay? But some of this stuff is absolutely, you know, off the charts. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and it all starts with that fallacy, that lie, really, which has been inculcated into a lot of youth. So on that note, Herman, Merry Christmas, and we'll talk to you after the first of the year.

I guess it'll be, what, the third, four, fifth, January 6th will be the next time we converse about things like this, okay? Oh, that's Election Day in Josephine County. Make sure you get your ballots in. Yeah, get them in and please vote. Now, I guess you want to vote no on this, right? That's the deal, right? Listen, I don't agree what everything commissioners do, but I don't see any great deficiency. of what these commissioners have done. Yeah. My main thing is to vote against team chaos, okay?

That's what it is. And, you know, it just keeps the, it keeps our citizens stirred up and everything at anger. The anger, I'm really getting worried about the anger. Because sooner or later, that's going to excel. And that's not what we need. We need things, you know, we need to be working towards a conference. common cold. Yeah. And also, you need to be able to get a little bit of stability, get some proper policies in there. Calm. Calm. Think calm. Think no more chaos for the time being,

okay? That's what we need. All right. Yep. Yep. You have a Merry Christmas and Merry Christmas to all of our listeners out there. And to all the good night. Thank you, Herman. Talk soon. See you later.