FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Football Friday with Paul FInebaum - Hurricane Recovery - Mobile Mornings - Friday 10-04-24
It's time for football Friday with Paul Finebaum, presented by Bryant Bank. Your hometown bank with big bank benefits, located in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Now, here's Dan Brennan and Dalton R. Wig. I'll ask you this question. Dalton, does football actually exist without Paul Finebaum? I'm going to say it does, but it's not nearly as fun. Paul Finebaum, who was exchanging gifts with his callers on the air again that have wished him death. I guess you're doing okay, huh, Paul? Yeah, listen, I hate to correct everybody at the beginning, but it's not exactly true. This caller, Jim, I'm touched on Luca, did not wish me death. He just said, "I want you to have a hard guy." That's all? And then slowly recover, I guess. Yeah, well, now, again, I think this was progress. It's about three years ago, he said, "I hope he gets stage four cancer." Even though heart disease is in my family, I have worked hard to overcome it. Even with the hardback, I still think I can take his call. It's quite a perilous job. Football is so passionate about football. You sit in the crosshairs every Monday through Friday. Good to know the country is coming together. Yeah, it is. And you know, I'm not joking here. Everyone has a reason they love the Paul Fine Mom Show, or I guess some hate the Paul Fine Mom Show. A lot of our folks love the callers in the back and forth. A lot of folks like me love the interviews with the coaches and players you have. But when you have a week like this after the devastation of Hurricane Helene last week and so much of your listening audience was in the path of that storm or currently trying to help folks in that storm, it's always a reminder when an event like that happens and the Paul Fine Mom community kind of rallies, it's something really great to see, Paul. Yeah, and listen, everybody listening knows about dealing with hurricanes. I'm dealt with it from a distance, but this one really gets close, not very far from our studios and so many people are affected by it. And it's unlike the storms that are bit to dull where you see it and you know exactly what happened. We're still finding out, but I appreciate you saying that and that is the thing I do love about college football though, it makes us forget almost everything if possible and that's really been the double screen of this week with the tragedy on one hand and then the ecstasy of what happened Saturday night in Tuscaloosa. Yeah, what a game, Paul. I don't even know, you know, I'm a Georgia fan and so I look at it through one lens. I talked to an Alabama fan the other night on the phone who he seemed to be as upset with the game as I was like, Georgia played like garbage, he was like, no, I think Alabama. So it's funny, it was an amazing game, but there's a lot of different opinions on it. Yeah, I was a little surprised by especially old, old line Alabama fans who could only find the fault. I don't look at it that way. I'm going to speak Wednesday on our show with Kayla and the board, he didn't look too upset. I mean, we live in a resultant oriented world, and no matter how you get to a certain point, and I do think the good news for Alabama is that they're playing Vanderbilt this weekend and it's a good team to recover from and play your sea game, it's still probably win. Yeah, I saw a lot of problems. I saw all the faults you could possibly see on the Georgia side and I'm probably distorted in that way. But you know what else Dan, like watching Alabama play in that first half, I was reminded they really hadn't played, you know, any one of significance. I mean, they've played some names this year, but it's almost like they held a lot of that stuff back knowing that Georgia was right around the corner. Well, Georgia, they had no clue in the first half how to stop Alabama. It was an amazing performance for one half at the very least, Paul. Yeah, and the board told me that it was really, I thought Alabama just came in like jacked up and he said it was just simply a matter of execution. They were hitting everything and I think there's a level of, they literally ran out of tricks. Everything they did was right and at some point it catches up to you and the funniest thing you bore said was that he said, I felt like after the Ryan Williams touchdown, it clearly left too much time on the clock. Yeah, they almost did. Yeah, but he said something interesting too and I had not thought about it because I mean when, you know, when Georgia scored that touchdown on the play before and then it went for two and didn't get it. It changed the game because they got in it, I believe it was going to be a three point game. Yep. Well, Alabama couldn't play for a field goal, Georgia maybe would have been in pre-ven instead they missed it. Alabama had to, you know, took a different approach and so, to any way, I mean, you can go back into any game and find a thousand different things, but to me, the fact that Kid Rock made it to the game made the 5-2 career. He's the SEC's Taylor Swift. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't decide who was worse kid Rocker John Daly. I talk with Paul Feynbaum for football Fridays presented by Brian Bank and the other side of the state Auburn. They were all geared up to get their first big SEC win of the year and against Oklahoma. Nonetheless, I think 21 10 lead they had. They had it. Pain Thorms taking care of the ball and then all hell breaks loose Paul and Oklahoma storms back and wins the game. Yeah. That's right. I want to congratulate Auburn for, you know, really putting up a good effort. I was down there the other day and it was a sunny day, but it felt like storm clouds are moving in. A few free says absolutely blown this quarterback situation and, you know, now admitting what he didn't admit in the summer that he made a colossal mistake really doesn't solve the problem. What he's trying to do is, well, they got a big commitment this week, somebody switched over from Notre Dame like that matter. I can't really matter, by the way, and, and now it's going to be a spin game. And it really depends on the, on the, on what happens in some of these other, they just have nothing to let me not going to win this weekend. They're not going to be Alabama, so you start doing the math and who can they be? And if they have a, what would look like a disaster season, a few free will likely survive, but he'll survive about a wounded as a coach can be. You know, it's on college game day this week, they, they, they go to a coach on the field ahead of their game. They're just strolling along hours before the game and they decided to have a conversation with Lane Kiffin. And so Kentucky of course is playing Ole Miss was at 11 o'clock kick. I think it was an early game and Paul, he's strolling along in Oxford along and like he doesn't have a care in the world. He just seems so confident and, and, and, and, and like I say, like he didn't have a big game coming up that in two hours. I just thought it was, it was poetic justice. Kentucky went in there and beat him and I, I, you know, I don't necessarily root against Lane Kiffin, but I was like good for Kentucky. Yeah. No, listen, he was, he was sitting there walking around the field going after I went to this game. I don't, I don't have to go after Paul, find a ball on Twitter and you know, man, he did that whole thing about what am I good at? What's he good at? I mean, I mean, I, I mean, that, that was, that was a devastating loss because, you know, they still have Georgia, some of the other major games as everybody knows and, and that, that loss will hurt you badly because Kentucky is not going to end up in a league team and they've lived off of that Georgia loss. But so what ultimately that game really exposed Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin and, you know, they play at South Carolina Saturday and the really dangerous game for them because, you know, they lost their Kentucky and South Carolina beat Kentucky by three touchdowns. Yeah. If you want to do the, the crazy math and what happened before you, your team played this game. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if the heat gets turned up on Kiffin. We're always talking about what job he'll move up to next, but will Ole Miss be tired of this after some time having such high expectations and then seeing the team fall apart when least expected? Yeah. Let's see what happens the rest of the year. Yeah. I mean, he's still, still in a good spot there, but, hey, listen to you, a lot of people in Florida want him and I said, if you wish to go, it might be tough for them to hire him because he would be playing in the CFP. Well, he may not be hard anymore. It might not. As far as the games we have come up this season, you referenced it earlier, but Auburn, off of that terrible loss, their first road game here, they're playing Georgia and Georgia coming off that late failed comeback attempt. Does Georgia just roll here, Paul? You would think so. I mean, this would be a big game for Georgia to get back on track and to really let it rip. I don't give Auburn any chance in this game. I think the number's 23, I think it's going to be a route. The only question is at some point Kirby Smart goes, you know, what's the point? Yeah, we have bigger fish surprise this season. Also that you've mentioned that Auburn did get at least good recruiting news this week, flipping that quarterback Deuce from Notre Dame. I mean, it's not a story that's going to be like immediate impact, obviously. He's a player who's still in high school, but at least a program looking for some good news. They got some. Yeah, and you expect stuff like that, it's amazing what money will do and right now in Auburn, I think that they're pretty desperate to get a quarterback. I have no idea whether this guy is the right one or not. We all know how difficult it is to, I mean, Alabama's got a roster full of guys who were ranked higher from this guy and they haven't played a game yet. So I mean, these are just things that you don't know about, but I think ultimately, depending on how this season goes, the question is of what he frees gets in a recruiting in the recruiting situation, how many players does he hold on to number one? And there's one guy on this team that everybody will be coming out that rather not identify them with them with like I'm interfering, but you guys know who he is. Yes. Have an idea. Also, the Tennessee balls had a buy week last week, so a little time off, but this looks like it could be a trap game for them, Paul Arkansas in Fayetteville at night. I know the hogs will be ready for that one. I think it is a dangerous game. Tennessee has not shown any signs of stopping this year, but this is literally maybe the last stand for Sam Pippa. Probably, I mean, you don't have to stretch to make the case that they could be undefeated right now. They blew the Oklahoma State game. That was an overtime that had every chance to beat A&M. And this win might say this job, and a loss here, that means three losses, and it looks like time is going to start running out on him. You know, Paul, part of our job is news as well as sports. And right now, Maduro in Venezuela, the guy that stole the election, is forcing his country to celebrate Christmas in October. And that's a little bit to me. That's like, boy, that's strange. And then I saw that University of Central Florida is favored going to Gainesville, Florida to play something. That's our own. That's the SEC's Christmas in October. Florida is an underdog at home against UCF. Shouldn't you fire your coaches over that back alone? I mean, before the game. Yeah. And this is a UCF team that got waylaid by Dion Sanders last week. True. By no means, well, for you to tell my friends, you know, a great team, but that is really amazing. And I think about the coaching longevity, it may be your loses this game. He might not get out off the field before they get him. The big slip. Yeah. That's something I never thought I'd see Florida a dog to a group of five team in Gainesville. Unreal. It's absolutely unbelievable. In the game, you'll be at Missouri at Texas A&M, A&M with the one loss. Missouri has had some tight ones, but they're undefeated. If A&M wants to work their way back into the college football playoff, I imagine this is a big, big game. Yeah. Yeah. Believe it or not, this is the only ranked versus ranked game in the entire country. And I'm usually not one that says that, but when you're covering a game, you try to make it sound interesting to the audience. Our interest is now so peaked. Yeah. Listen, I got more stats if you want to. Well, I think Mike Elko, it was probably a tall ask to have him come in week one and be ready firing on all cylinders, but now that we're four or five weeks in, I think A&M could be pretty formidable. Yeah. Everybody like what they're doing. I mean, they're already to the backup quarterback, but the kind of way it was heard that they're calling card is defense. And I think this game's really about Missouri. I just don't really believe in this program. Everybody's tried to make them out to be something sensational, but they just don't look that good. And I think ultimately we are going to find out, I'm leading, I think I missed my pick every week, wherever we've been, so I'll probably miss it again by going with the whole team A&M. Yeah. But I see that. And when you say everyone's trying to make Missouri out to be something big, I think you meant coach drink himself. Yeah. I mean, he's exactly. I mean, this guy is a four man lane kid. He is. There's a lot of similarities there. He's not funny. He really is not that glib and please don't hold me on this because I have to see this guy someday and I'm going to have to act like I like him. Paul, we appreciate your time. We took a lot of it this morning, but every week when we have this conversation, it means a lot to us and our listening audience. So thank you so much for coming on again for football Fridays. A pleasure, guys. Have a great weekend. Paul Finebaum, Football Fridays brought to you by Brian Bank, by the way, and Paul brings it, man. He does. For our audience, he doesn't hold back. No, he doesn't. And you could catch him every weekday afternoon, two to six right here on FM Talk 10065, Football Fridays with Paul Finebaum presented by Brian Bank, more of our show, Mobile Mornings after the break. Happy weekend. Weather's kind of gloomy this morning, but I don't let it the whole weekend through. Sunday, it looks really nice. It's 827 with Dan Adalton on FM Talk 10065, going to keep talking about Helene, and what appears to be a satisfactory federal response. Federal response to this. Yeah, now the governor from North Carolina didn't come out and say anything bad. He actually mentioned about FEMA being there, and I think that was just kind of like the -- he knows that the federal catching and a bunch of grief, and instead of just looking out for his own people, he tried to make sure -- he was playing nice with the Democratic administration. But that's -- you know, Georgia, I'll bet you that square miles, no state was affected like the state of Georgia, because it went right on through there, and my guess is that Georgia may be 200, 300 miles up and down from top to bottom, something like that, I would guess. Yeah. I mean, from Valdosta at the very bottom of the state. To the mountains up in Clayton. All the way up. That's a long way. Quite the path. Yeah, while North Carolina had the most loss of life, it may be most devastation as far as, yeah, like you said, Georgia from top to bottom. And so they're only administering to certain counties. And I think Brian Kemp saying, "You guys aren't paying attention here, our whole state was affected by that storm." Yeah, here's Kemp. He's talking with Channel 12 News WRDW, which I guess is in Georgia. Probably. When the first emergency declarations came down, there was only 11 counties in that. A lot of people were outraged, including me, because there was such devastation in, you know, up to 90 counties. So we call the White House, we spoke to the president's chief of staff, the FEMA administrator, and said, "Look, you're sending the signal that you're not paying attention to some of these rural communities." Yeah, so Kemp's upset. We've talked quite a bit this week about the actions of private citizens, taking their helicopters in, using drones to drop off medical supplies and baby formula, stuff like that. You know, the former NASCAR driver, Greg Biffle, has been one of these. He has a small helicopter that he flies around, and it's perfect for something like this. He said, "Unlike some of these bigger choppers, he's able to get into some pretty tight spots." He even rescued, I think, a group of people who were able to catch his attention using a mirror or a son-out reflector, but he's also been dropping off goods. And then you have the drones, which people have been using, like I said, to drop off insulin and other medical necessities, and Pete Buttigieg in the Department of Transportation yesterday ordered the drone operators to stand out, so they're interfering with FEMA operations. It's the feds have gotten in there, and only to restrict. Exactly. Okay. Okay. 830, FM talk 106-5, more talk about this on the way. Good morning from Dan and Dalton, FM talk 106-5, over the mornings at 834. A minute by minute, you know, time goes on, now it's been a week. I don't know that there's a lot of good news to report out of, in particular, so it's North Carolina and the hurricane, which also devastated many areas of the state of Georgia as well, including up in the mountains. They dealt with the same thing that Asheville is dealing with, basically, but that's not all. I mean, from when Helene hit the Florida coast through Tallahassee, through all of Georgia, but that sort of damage that was done in Tallahassee continued to happen over and over again in all these towns in South Georgia, mid-Georgia, North Georgia. And I don't know that Brian Kemp says he doesn't feel like he's getting the aid they need at all. Think about this. If this thing came through Alabama, say, for instance, came up Mobile Bank, well, we'd be feeling the effects of this for counties and counties, unlimited counties, really, Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, all the way up, right? And FEMA's looking at, like, 11 counties in the state of Georgia when there's 80 counties, I believe, in the state. And Kemp's saying most of them have got some sort of effects from that storm. Yeah, it's just, you know, pretty much every government entity now is so rife with, you know, complacency or a lack of caring or like what we saw at the Secret Service, just a total inability to get a job done, whether it's because of leadership or planning or just a mix of everything. So we've had so many big storms like this and so many that have gone into Houston or Louisiana. We see the Cajun Navy set out and they're immediately there on the scene making rescues right after and they went up to these places hit by Helene and did the same. But citizens, just like you could say, for America for centuries, getting out there and getting it done on their own seems to be much more efficient than having any kind of government bureaucracy involved. Now, National Guard, North Carolina National Guard has been making rescues left and right. We've sent other state national guards over that way to give assistance. Heck, some are even saying that because the Santas in a separate story, Florida Governor on the Santas threatened to have the Florida guard work at the ports during the strike that that was part of what led to them coming to an agreement yesterday. But from everything I've read, Biden's involvement, FEMA's involvement has just not been helping save lives or helping to make these folks more comfortable who are in terrible situations in the up there in the mountains. Almost the opposite. It's been the opposite. The FEMA came in and you've got a quote here on the way about the guy talking about the hotels. Now, I think they still are allowing and I'm not 100% sure on this. It's so tough to find straight news, right? Yeah. That's the problem. Wall Street Journal, New York Times doesn't have anything on the storm on their front page right now at all. That's crazy. It's pretty crazy. But I think they're allowing private helicopters to continue to go in. But the drones that I mentioned, Buttigieg, shut down the use of drones to deliver supplies to people. And these drones were doing a lot of good work. Yeah, they were. And then you had Biden when he flew in yesterday, I guess, or the day prior, they put, because he's the president, a total no-fly zone for about a 30-mile segment right there over the mountains of North Carolina. I don't think that makes any sense because my understanding was he went to Raleigh. Yeah. I'm not sure. He's been to several places. Georgia. Raleigh, yeah. I think Raleigh, North Carolina, which that might be the capital, but he wasn't in Asheville, right? No. It doesn't seem that he was in Asheville. No. And it's probably dangerous getting in and out of there right now. Yeah. And here's where my York has set a lot of people up. And I don't even think that he knew that's what he was doing at the time, Dalton. This was like a press gaggle and he's about to get on a plane or something like that is going on. And he just talks about the federal response to Helene and where the government is with funding. We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season. People are like, "Wait a minute. We're expecting another hurricane." So without saying another hurricane is imminent, he kind of said that. And he followed it up with, "Guess what? We don't have any money for it." Yeah. Well, this was supposed to be one of the most active hurricane seasons. So why we do not have any money for that except for the fact that $640.9 million this year in FEMA administered funds went to the migrant crisis. Yeah. Well, how did the migrant crisis happen, my orchids? How did that happen? Were they dropped out of a plane from outer space? Self-inflicted. And then, yeah, one and a half billion since 2022, he said $640 million this year. And then they don't have enough money to take care of their own people in these storm ravage places. It's disgraceful. And the fact that that story is not on the New York Times front page or the Wall Street Journal's front page is also disgrace- They've moved on. They're talking about January 6th again, right? This lady has removed on. Check this out. This is from North Carolina, a resident there. We haven't seen FEMA. We haven't seen Red Cross. We haven't seen Harvests with hands. We've seen no agencies come through here. Yeah. And there's this dude, and I'm not sure if he's in North Carolina or Florida, didn't even get his name, but he saw somebody taking one of his kayaks. I thought he was being robbed and he asked the guy, you know, what are you doing? And this other guy was going out to save people using his kayak. Listen to this. I yelled at him and he said, "Sorry, man. People are drowning." So I grabbed my kayak and my life jacket and followed him. Some people were in their attics and we could see their fingers sticking out through the attic vents and they were screaming. So we started going around rescuing people. How terrifying is that? Their fingers sticking out of their attic vents. They can't get out and they just took these kayaks and were trying to save as many people as they could. It's amazing the damage in Florida, too. Not even at the point where we're hit land, but along the way, scraping against a Gulf coast of Florida, the Clearwater Tampa area and everything, there was, I think John Daly lost his house entirely and he lives in Clearwater. Wow. And there's a Facebook, you end up friends with people on Facebook that you maybe don't really know that well, but this person that I have on my Facebook lives or lived on Treasure Island there in Florida. Which was, you know, one of the spots that got hit hardest. Remember that video of all these boats washed up all these yards on the causeway, and she was sharing footage from her home and her neighborhood on Facebook and her home just completely destroyed. I mean, it's still standing, but it is not livable. And there's a lot of houses there that aren't livable. The most damage that storm has done since Katrina. Yeah. Who's this one? The Congressman from Florida, we've heard a lot from him, especially since the Butler PA assassination attempt on Trump, by the way, Trump heading back to Butler tomorrow. We'll talk about that some, but he says, because of the landslides in North Carolina, they're going to be finding bodies for weeks and months that had been taken under during some of these landslides. Another guy that I was telling you about yesterday, Tim Kennedy, I've been following his career for some time. He's a white in the UFC, but he's a green beret. I think he was a sniper, just all around bad ass, really. And he has this group called Save Our Allies. And if I remember correctly, maybe they put this group together previous to, but they kind of made their name during the Afghanistan withdrawal where, you know, it was just wheels up and the Taliban took over. And we left a bunch of our Taliban, not Taliban. Our Afghan allies, they're translators, people who helped fight the war against terror. And he took this group, he and these other veterans and current military members. And they went in on their own. They chartered flights on their own and they went to save the families and Americans that were left behind, going out to save our allies is back out at work in North Carolina, trying to help people out. And he spoke on this program. I'm not sure what program he was talking to early yesterday morning, but he was talking about the FEMA, just kind of being in the way. Here's Tim Kennedy talking about their rescue operations. They're present. They're in the way. They are directly interrupting our ability to conduct missions and operations. And I'm not going to disparage anybody because we are trying to work within partner relationships, both government and non-government entities within state and federal and county. You know, I went to put a couple of people into a hotel last night and they have a security guard at the hotel. We're so sorry, the entire hotel has been booked for federal employees. And it's like, no, I have people that would just pull it out of a mountain that are living out in the hills and there's not a place for me to put them because we have federal employees that are staying in the hotel. I slept in this white car last night. I smell like foot and death right now. As does every single person on our team, not seeing one of us slept, we got done maybe at three o'clock the moment the sun was up and we could fly helicopters again. We were back in the air and we have not stopped. And I was like, on the fence about trying to get on this program or not, I want people to understand how incredible this organization is, save our allies and all the work that all of these volunteers are doing, but people, this is biblical level devastation. This is apocalyptic, the things that we see out there. That's pretty damning there, pretty descriptive of what he's seeing out there. He's trying to hold his tongue because he knows he's got to work with him. So he's not trying to just go all off on him because he, as frustrated as he is, Dalton, he's like, "Well, we got to work with these people regardless." It's like when everything's over with, he may write a book about what a disaster this was. And how about his description? We haven't really heard enough of that. Him describing how apocalyptic the whole biblical situation seems to be, yeah, that it's that bad. And then the response on a disaster described in that way has been so, the nicest thing I can say is substandard, late, substandard. You can feel it. What do you think? On the text line, if you think that I'm just to run my mouth here, not having all the facts, I'm just going on what I'm seeing reports, what people are saying, not just government officials. It's like that lady for just a resident of rural North Carolina. We don't see anybody anywhere. I haven't seen FEMA. I haven't seen Red Cross. We have some texts in here. This textor Kenny says, "With all the money that we send overseas to fight wars, how would we have any money left to go towards natural disaster situations?" This textor here, Hurricane Helene, amazing citizen response, lackluster government response is the first thing the government wants to, all the government wants to do is shut down the citizen response. In any disaster like this, it's hard to tell exactly what's happening on the ground, but I've seen people saying that FEMA was keeping people from gathering their belongings in homes that they were trying to get their stuff back out and that they were even taking supplies or rationing supplies, which I guess is their job. Unless you're on the ground there, we know of a couple of people who have been up there and have been trying to help out. We're going to try to get them on the air here once things calm down. Hopefully as we go into next week, but it's just been, we've had this, we've been trying to talk about it all week and I know some people are probably sick of it, but this is a massive story. Even though the death total right now is at 200, that number is going to keep climbing. You have a ton of people whose lives have been affected by this. How's this going to affect the election? Are these people going to be able to turn around and vote? We have some battleground states in Georgia and I know the Democrats are looking at North Carolina like something they could pick up there, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as well. In some other news, how's this Trump-Butler rally going to go tomorrow? That is crazy, he's showing, I guess, a combination of bad judgment and courage. Yeah, he has Navy SEALs telling him it's bad judgment that are in Congress, but it's not just going to be Trump out there. Elon Musk is planning to attend the rally in Butler tomorrow. He said I will be there to support. The Trump shared the photo of himself raising a fist in the air. I guess he shared that on Twitter yesterday saying I'm coming back to Butler and then Elon says he's going to be there as well. Of course, Elon Musk has since endorsed Trump and Elon has been assisting with the response in North Carolina delivering Starlink internet satellites and then waving the price. That's essential. Someone said he has done more broadband expansion, more with this satellite internet than the federal government has in years. He's been able to do it in weeks, just getting these out there to the hills of North Carolina and Georgia so that people have some way to contact others, and then waving the price so that they're not paying for it. And then, oh yeah, by the way, sent up the SpaceX to rescue the astronauts who were stranded there because of the Boeing plane, but you read so much about Elon Musk and pretty much everything is negative as far as the mainstream media coverage. Well, but it is quite refreshing. This team of Elon, RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, and all, I think Elon has voted Democrat in the past. So you have these, and of course, Kennedy, the name Democrat, and Tulsi Gabbard of course was high ranking, she was a Senator Democrat presidential candidate. Yeah, it was a good point and she sat on some big committees when she was a Democrat in Washington, DC, all three of them putting their weight full-throated, really, behind Donald Trump. Yeah, and meanwhile, you have Liz Cheney campaigning with Kamala Harris, it is a strange, strange election season. Yeah, a strange world, isn't it? And Dick Cheney on board with Kamala, yeah, and the Democrats are all for it. They love it. Didn't see this 20 years ago. There's a lot of stuff we didn't see 20 years ago that's crept up onto the radar screen. But Dan Adalton, FM Talk 106.5, it is 850. On Mobile Morning's text calls, feel free, 2513430106. Morning from Dan Adalton, FM Talk 106.5, Friday. Yeah, with the Dan Adalton College Football Show, that's on tonight, beginning at 8 o'clock. And you can just come so much smarter about college football just listening to the podcast. I'm going to drop that here in just a few minutes or so. Yeah, you'll be able to pick it up. Let's do it here after nine o'clock and just for the music alone in our show, we're listening to you. That song already. It is the best song on the radio. Jeff Porsche is coming up next and he has quite the lineup of guests who have Todd Stacey on in our number one, Senator Tommy Tuberville in our number two, that'll be right after 10 30. And then state Senator Chris Elliott after 11 30, Freedom Fest down at the Wharf this weekend would love to know if you're headed out to have a good time there. They're going to have a bunch of veterans groups that believe collectible gun show Saturday and Sunday. And they're going to have music all weekend long. So that'll be interesting. I think they're in year three or four of Freedom Fest down there. Yeah. It started doing COVID. Yeah. Tony Ken and I get people out. Is that because they canceled shrimp fest or something like that? That was the summer of twenty one. And Ken and said, well, if we're not doing shrimp fest, we're going to come up with something else. So he put together Freedom Fest 20 or 21 20, maybe COVID was 20. It was one of those years. 20. Great one. 20. And so there was it was late that summer into the fall of the first summer of COVID. Yeah. But it's kept growing. There was a meeting this week in Montgomery about the Bayway Bridge River Bridge project. And it's getting interesting here because I thought if there was one thing that everyone was in agreement on, as far as this project goes, it was the capping of the tolls. It was supposed to be $5.50 if you didn't have an algo pass $2.50 each trip if you do have an algo pass and then a monthly, if you wanted to pay for a monthly pass, it'd be $40. Well, Brendan Kirby with Foxton, and we'll dig into this further next week. But he spoke with state Senator Greg Albritton. And it's starting to sound like they may be wavering on the cap of the tolls. Yeah. The Alabama Department of Transportation reiterated its commitment to capping tolls at $2.50. But state Senator Albritton told Foxton news that may not be possible. Quote, I'm confident that we're going to be taking this slow and meticulously to make sure that we know what we're getting into. I'm not confident that any figure that's been stated or given will hold. Now, Albritton's part of the Alabama toll road bridge and tunnel authority. This week, they passed a number of resolutions meant to move the project forward in a statement. Al got indicated it hadn't waivered on its commitment to limiting the tolls to $2.50 per trip. They also stated it remains committed to construction beginning sometime next year. But Fair Hope City Councilman Jack Burrell, who is the chairman of the Eastern Shore Metropolitan Planning Organization, said the previous proposal reflected the highest possible cost. He's confident that it is feasible at lower toll rates. And if revenue did fall below expectations, said there are ways to address that without raising rates, such as extending the payment schedule over a longer period of time. So you've had the cost of the bridge itself skyrocket. Every few months, it seems like it goes up a little bit more. But I haven't heard until this last week or so almost like they're saying, you know what? We might have to make a change to the tolls. Now, Al Dott, Burrell, they're saying they won't be raising the tolls. But once they start discussing that, it has me kind of wondering if there may be a change of foot. And if you had a figure, it's not something that they really would want to tell us about list. They absolutely had to. Yeah. Once they actually start building the bridge, they might break that news out. So the Algopast costs $40 a month. I believe that's the plan. And if you pay that $40 a month, it's $2.50 every time we cross? No, I think it'd be unlikely to cross it. Okay. Yeah. I got it.