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Why C.S. Lewis Still Matters When We Talk About Laws and Leaders · Common Sense Ohio

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All right. Anyway, so it is Common Sense Ohio brought to you by Harper Plus
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Accounting. I've been spending a lot of time talking to Mr. Harper these days. Why?
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Because we're halfway through the year. And what do I do halfway through the year?
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I start planning for the year end. And why do I start planning for the
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year end? Because I don't want to get that call,
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that bill, that notice, that kick in the
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groin area that I owe a chunk of money and I haven't put it
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back because I haven't done what I'm supposed to do with the government. Or better
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yet, I would much rather get the call that, hey, look, you're even steven. See
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how I did with even steven? So you're even, you don't owe any money
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and you're not getting any money back, which means I've hit the perfect balance.
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Well, it's inevitable. If you live long
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enough and if you're in business, at some point you're going to get,
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you know, either a full audit or you're going to get looked at or something
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questioned. It's just inevitable. So you want the best advice you can
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afford. Yeah. And, um, certainly Mr. Harper
0:58
fits that bill. So, um, you know, even
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if you're, you know, super organized and on time and all
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that, uh, eventually, you know, your, your
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home office or some kind of deduction or something
1:13
structured in your tax return will get questioned. It's almost
1:16
inevitable. Right. So you want to be prepared.
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HarperPlus Accounting, my accountant, our accountant, could be your accountant. So it is July
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29th in history. On July 29th,
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J.R.R. Tolkien released The Fellowship of the Ring,
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uh, I think the first of his trilogy. Uh, I read
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some, I didn't read all these. I'm, I'm like, people look at me like, oh,
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you're crazy. Come on. They're like 5 inches thick. They're, they're slugs. Now, I, I
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did read some other huge books back in that era, like The Stand, and I've
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read, um, Reading, we didn't have
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TV like we have it now, so I would dig into these deep books. My
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dad always had a big thick book, and sometimes I would grab them and read
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them. Yeah. But I didn't get through those. I did get through, and the reason
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I'm bringing this up is I did get through C.S. Lewis's
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The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that trilogy. Yeah. Well, that's
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digestible. Tolkien's like Silmarillion,
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where he explains the universe that he created,
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I mean, it's like reading an encyclopedia. So he goes through every
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creature, every village, everything that he
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ever created, and basically defines what it is. And that's the
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book. And it's like 5 inches thick. It would be like Lucas
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in Star Wars, if in a book, like, you know how he created every single
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world, every character, and then he wrote about it. Right. Yeah. So anyway, I'm bringing
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this up because One of my favorite
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thinkers of all time is a guy named C.S. Lewis. He used to hang— we
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talked about him, but he used to hang around Tolkien back at Oxford. C.S. Lewis
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was an atheist, famously, and I think
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Lewis and Tolkien had a lot in common. They fought in World
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War I, they were both writers and scholars, and they started this club
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in Oxford, I think the Inklings Club. There was another person involved. Anyway,
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one famous night over the course of several years anyway, one famous
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night, Lewis was converted to Christianity
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because of his relationship with Tolkien. And another guy, I can't remember his name, I
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should probably look it up anyway. But it had to do with this idea of
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myth. What finally got him is this idea of mythology and storytelling. These
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guys were authors, they were storytellers. And they started talking about
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this, metaphorically speaking, all myths and all stories have certain
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common themes that appeal to us in our hearts.
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Mm-hmm. Good versus evil, Yep.
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A power struggle. Yep. The little guy overcoming an
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insurmountable obstacle. Yep. Think from
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modern all the way back to the Bible, right? I would agree. But think like
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Rocky. Yeah. Or any story, or Star Wars
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is a great one. Yeah. And so that finally
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pushed C.S. Lewis over the edge and he ends up writing a book called Mere
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Christianity and some other things. Now, I guess, I didn't realize this, but I
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did some reading, they fell out a little bit later in life.
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Tolkien being a Catholic like you,
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Lewis sort of ascribing to the Anglican model.
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Tolkien criticized a little bit, I think, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as
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being too obvious of a Christian backdrop,
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while Tolkien would bury his themes sort of in the story.
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But either way, if you got anything,
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even if you don't, and there's a reason why this is relevant, because this is
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going to take me to Lewis. Yeah. Who talks
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about this later on. He gives these series of
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talks during World War II. He did fireside chats on
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the BBC talking about the good and the evil, like
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everything. And they're phenomenal. Go listen to 'em. They're really
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sort of interesting talks. But
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Lewis had a lot to say about power
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and struggle and and authoritarianism,
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communism, and all these things that our boy Mondani is now pushing
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in New York and people seem to be falling for yet again.
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And how power is corrupting in and of itself
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because we are all fallen to begin with. And you think that
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your leaders are going to be less apt to be corrupt than
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the leaders that preceded them. Yeah. Everybody thinks
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that all the way through history and it's never been true. Yeah.
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In literature, the famous saying, and I'm sure
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Tolkien and Lewis would agree, that
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there are no new stories, that there's just new
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ways of telling the stories using different characters in
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different places. But essentially all the plots
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that the human mind can invent have
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been told in, you know, whether it's Beowulf, Or whether
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it's the latest take on Homer
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with Chris Nolan's movie, The Odyssey, the
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stories have been told and then repackaged. And it's kind of
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like sitcoms on TV.
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It's the same situational
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tensions in literature as in
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politics with communism and and marketplace and,
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uh, you know, the, the, the
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open economy versus, uh, socialism,
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capitalism versus socialism, that
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is— that's been playing out now for literally
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hundreds of years. Mhm. There have been communes
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basically ever since there were human communities. That
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model's been tried, you know, in time immemorial, and
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And, you know, to, to try it again in New York City, um,
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obviously it's going to fail because it always has failed.
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Yep. Why? Because certain people
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aspire to do better than the average.
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They just, they just want to maybe
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continue to hunt and get that extra antelope to put
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away for the meat for the over the winter. Because they can.
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Because they can. And because— and maybe because They
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just have more energy, or they're more fit,
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or they're better at thinking through the
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possibilities of problems like an extended blizzard, or
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whatever it is. There have always been people that want to do
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better, um, not necessarily to put anybody else
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down, but they just want to take care. They want to be
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self-reliant. Because that leads to personal
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growth and satisfaction and ultimately contentment. I'm not going to
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say happiness, but at least it gives you some contentment in life. Here's what Lewis
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said on Marxism. Proletariatism in its various forms, ranging from strict
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Marxism to vague democracy, is
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self-satisfied to a degree perhaps beyond the self-satisfaction
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of any recorded aristocracy. They are convinced that whatever may be wrong
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with the world, it cannot be themselves. Someone else must be to
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blame for every evil. Does that sound familiar? Sure. It's the
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politics of envy. Yeah. The politics of— Pride. You know,
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of complaint. You know, the politics of,
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you know, grievances. And that's what Mondame
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is playing at in New York City. He's got air— he's
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got the classic— I feel like it's the 1930s. He's got
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the classic anti-Jewish pogrom
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playing out in New York City today, almost 100
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years after Hitler did that. And, you know, and before
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that, uh, the, the Russian czars did that. And, you know,
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and before that, even Christians did that. Uh, you know,
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it is, it's just playing out again in, in this,
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this doxxing of millionaires. You know, you've got little old ladies that are
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84 years old. Their husbands bought, you know, a
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home or a condo or something in New York City. Now it's worth
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a million bucks. and he wants to extract whatever,
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$56,000, $60,000, they got to write that
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check like in the next 4 months or
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the city is going to put a lien
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on their property and eventually take it. And take it, right? So—
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I mean, what's that about? If you— this is the classic, and Thomas Sowell's
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talked about this too. This is the classic problem.
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freeze rent. And at the same
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time, the cost of maintenance continues to increase. Sure. So if
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you freeze rent, the landlords, the owners of the property, can't do the
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repairs necessary. So then the property falls
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into disrepair and then they blame the evil landlord for not fixing the property.
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But the landlord's saying, well, look, if I'm gonna have all this risk, if I'm
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gonna own this property, I need to make some money so I can actually
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maintain it. So not only make money, but actually just enough to maintain it would
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be nice, thank you. Uh, they don't. So the property falls into repair
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and then the government says, all right, now you're going to get fined and you're
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going to get this and you're going to get that. Not only that, we're going
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to tax you because of the value of this property. So what happens? People leave.
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And, and— Well, now, Steve, that's playing out in, uh, in
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the, the situation with groceries in New York City. Same thing.
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He's coming out with this program and it's collectivist in, in
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nature where, um, uh, groc— he's going to have certain
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grocery stores that are compelled, and
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I assume subsidized somehow, because otherwise they're going to fail.
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They did this in Kansas City and it failed, where the groceries
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are, certain items that are gonna be considered by the city
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to be essentials will be 40% below
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the average retail price of all the other grocery
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stores in New York City. So what's that going to do? I mean, just play
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this out, people. It sounds like, woo, I'm gonna get a bargain. I can get
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my toilet paper for— for, you know,
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40% less than what I'm paying now. But what is going
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to happen is the bodegas and the small grocery stores
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and maybe even some big chains will say, you know what, I can't make
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money. I can't make money, so I'm closing. But even worse,
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then there's fewer choices. These, as Lewis would call
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them, moral busybodies, which— and, you know, I listened
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to some other commentators on this and Lewis would call them
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moral busybodies because they think they know better and they're not corrupt and blah, blah,
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blah, blah, blah. Now others are saying this is just pure evil and they know
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what they're doing. They're trying to take down the country, which may be true because
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this is taking out some of the stilts that hold up our country.
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But even on their face, they purport, whether
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genuinely or not, to protect the little guy. Right. To protect the mom and
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pop. And there's always been this, going back to these myths and stories,
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there's always been this the big company taking over the little mom-and-pop
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corner store. This is how it happens, guys. This is what
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happens. So we create an entity that subsidizes groceries,
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um, and they're going to sell it cheaper than mom-and-pop can get and sell the
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products on the corner store. So what's going to happen now? They're out of work.
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Now they need to go to the same grocery store to get their food that
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they didn't— weren't struggling to purchase in the first place. Now they are. So it
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just— and it— there's no bottom to it. Because this
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creates— all you have to do is just go study it. Well, it'll create shortages.
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Shortages, hoarding, lines. Lines. And
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I have about 4 or 5 stories here of actions that
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various governments, whether it's federal down to local,
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are doing things that the private sector would be
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prosecuted for doing. So what Mamdani is
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doing with this grocery thing is price fixing. Yeah, this is great. I mean,
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you know, if— so I sell auto parts, uh, over the internet.
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So if I got together with, um, I don't know, Rock
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Auto and AutoZone and Advance Auto,
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and we were all to get in the room and say, you know what, oil
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filters should just be, you know, $100 each.
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This is bullcrap that they're $6. They should all— and
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if we all agree they're $100 each, right? Right. all going to make a ton
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of money, right? Because there won't be any choice whether
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it's me or AutoZone or whoever. It's actually worse than that, Norm, because here's what's
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going on. You're going to agree to lower the price beyond your cost,
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so you're operating at a loss. You can't run a business
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that way unless you do what Mondame does or is doing. He is taking
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the money from your pockets to cover the loss. He is stating
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on its face, yes, we're going to operate at a loss,
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but But don't worry, the collective, the warmth of the collective soul is
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going to make it up. And at the same time, we're going to put everybody
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else out of business. I mean, this is devious stuff. Right. Well,
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I'm going to one-up you a little bit. So Steve
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brings in one of the classics of literature
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yesterday. Okay. I can't make it happen on the 29th, but
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on the 28th of 1978,
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July 28th, Animal House debuted. Awesome.
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So, awesome. So 48 years ago, Animal House came
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out. And, uh, and, and, and touching again back on
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1776, so on July 4th, the
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Continental Congress, you know, adopted the Declaration of
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Independence. The formal signing is coming up in 4
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days on August 2nd,
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1776, is when the The
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56 signatories decided to
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formally write their names and,
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you know, write down for historical
14:51
purposes that they voted in favor of adopting
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the Declaration. So that's kind of neat. Passed it on July
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4th, but formally signed it August 2nd. So that's
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coming up. Well, And I would
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encourage— we should probably talk about 9/11. And we were, by the way, we were
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losing the war at the time. So they were going to hang together. Yeah,
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they were going to hang together. I would encourage everybody to go read that document.
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A couple of years ago, I think it was,
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I don't remember, it was an online class. What's the school up in Michigan?
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You mean the university? Yeah. No, no, there's a conservative school up there anyway.
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I can't think of— I've drawn a blank. You guys will remind me in the
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comments. But they— there was a lecture
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series on the Declaration of Independence and
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they broke it down. Yeah. And I happened to listen to that on the 4th
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of July. Yeah. Because I was working on my house and it was during COVID
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and I thought, I'm just going to listen to this. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. Like
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every— like they broke down every sort of phrase and
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what they— where they were coming from. They were grabbing what ideology and what
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where in history they were grabbed. Really incred— it is a remarkable
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document, and I would encourage the Mondanis of the world to go read the damn
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thing. That's right. And appreciate where it's coming from. But he won't because it's all
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BS. Well, there's a
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lot of stuff going on. Um, one of, um,
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one of the things that was said to be just a completely
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made-up MAGA myth is this
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thing about, um, stolen elections and
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people registered to vote who are
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noncitizens and people who voted
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multiple times. And it was all said to be baloney and crap.
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And you had the mainstream media and, you know, the
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mainstream networks all say
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that this is just an insignificant problem
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and maybe, you know, 10 or 12 people nationally
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engage in fraud and that it's such a small
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problem that other than some township trustee race
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somewhere that's decided by 1 or 2 votes, it doesn't
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affect anything. And then the Democratic governor
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of New Jersey came out last week, this—
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I don't know what kind of woman has a first name of Mikey, but
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she's some sort of veteran of the Air
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Force, I think. And Anyway, her— Mikey Sherrill is her name,
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and she's one of these people who got elected under false pretenses, but
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we don't need to go there. She claimed that she was middle of the road,
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but she's pretty radical. She came out, her administration
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was— it had been discovered that over
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6,000 non-citizens were registered to
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vote in New Jersey in the 2024 election.
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That's the one, obviously, you know, that just,
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just, we just went through. And
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of those 6,000, something close
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to 500 of them actually cast ballots. And they're
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saying it was just a software glitch.
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And the software company is saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's not a software
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glitch. So they're saying in New Jersey, it was just an
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error. And I don't know how they can say that because they won't
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investigate it any deeper. Who says that these
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6,000 people registered erroneously as
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opposed to being a part
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of a plan
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to sign them up? Right. We don't know the facts because
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she yesterday announced that
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she will not cooperate with the U.S. Department of
18:43
Justice who wants the voter
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rolls from New Jersey. Many of the other states have, have provided
18:50
that, but New Jersey is saying they will not provide the
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voter rolls for the DOJ to look into what may
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be fraud or maybe a mistake. And why wouldn't
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we want to know that? So if we could— if you and I could write
19:04
a recipe for things that create conspiracy
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theories, yeah, This is it. Sure. A controversial
19:12
topic. Right. An outcome that people don't like on— or some— a lot
19:16
of people don't like. Right. And a complete not only lack
19:19
of investigation, but an utter government
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shutdown of any question about an investigation. Exactly. Which just
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kind of leads us to another story like Fauci. Like, oh,
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I mean, it's, it's spot on. It's the same thing. You, you have people
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hiding the facts in real time
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because the American people can't handle it. Oh, right. Look,
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so he, he knows. So Steve, so this diary, right?
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Oh my God, that they're going to question him about today unless he pleads the
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Fifth and, and says, I'm going to clam up despite the pardon.
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But in this diary, Fauci admits it's
19:57
not a wet market origination, it— that it probably
20:01
came from the lab, which is what you and I would
20:05
be taken off the air for saying back in the old
20:08
Twitter days, back in the old Biden, you
20:12
know, Google, Meta, uh, you know, all,
20:16
all when the FBI went out to Silicon Valley and said you can't
20:20
let these people put the conspiracy theories out there about
20:23
COVID Turns out we were right. It turns out we were
20:27
right. Look, not to bring up C.S. Lewis again, but to bring up C.S.
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Lewis again, he called pride the great sin, the ultimate
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essential vice. In his book, Mere Christianity, there's an entire chapter
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dedicated to it, to pride. And I read that, I was on a plane when
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I read it for the first time, and it was really difficult to read because
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we all suffer from it, some of us more than others. But one of the
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things that we are tasked, I believe, by God to overcome is our pride. And
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once you overcome pride— Excessive pride. Excessive pride. I mean, I'm not talking about being
20:56
proud of your son because he did well. I mean, you and I get up
20:58
in the morning— I'm talking about preening around like you're the guy, like you know
21:02
better. We put on nice clothes, we shave, we bathe.
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Not what he's talking about. Yeah, I mean, but that's 'cause you take pride in
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your presenting. That's self-worth. That's right. Pride is, look
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at me, look at me, I know everything. The classic
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narcissism. Yeah. like
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a giant-sized portrait of himself in his house. Yes. Who
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does that? Right. So I would say, this is like my— when I took on
21:28
a condo complex, and if you guys are listening, you probably aren't, but if you
21:32
guys are listening, but anyway, I got in an argument with one of them one
21:35
time and it dawned on me, and I'm sure I didn't— I'm not the
21:39
originalist of this quote, but it dawned on me that anybody who wants to be
21:42
in charge of this nonsense, anybody who wants to be president of a condo complex,
21:45
anybody who wants to be on the board of a condo complex, an HOA is
21:49
the exact person that you don't want on the board of a condo complex, right,
21:52
or an HOA. And that was Fauci. Fauci, in his— he's
21:56
just preening around in his diary talking about how these,
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these celebrities are idolizing him. Sure. And how Man of the
22:04
Year, blah blah. And he's, he's a power broker. He's going to
22:08
help Kamala beat Trump. And all this is behind the scenes.
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All— and then he, then he's concealing at the same time all this nonsense that
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he's involved in. Well, you know, like,
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and this is not insignificant. So, you know, I think Trump's got a
22:23
big ego too, but that— but we're talking about
22:28
evil here. We're talking about guys that lie. And this— and
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Fauci flat out lied. He said, I was not
22:35
in any way involved in school shutdowns. In his diary,
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he admits he was the architect of it. Yeah, he was secretly
22:42
pushing that out, that we've got to save the children by
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keeping, keeping them at home where they could just be
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online. Well, we know what kids do when they're online. They're
22:53
not learning, they're gaming. But, you know, you, you brought up a good point.
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Trump's got huge pride and ego as well. Sure. And back to Lewis, it's how
23:01
you channel it. And this is how Lewis would— this is, this is what's so
23:04
insightful about what he saw. Those people in charge
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don't have any more ability to check their power, and perhaps less,
23:12
because who would want that job? Less. That is
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why we created the structure that we created. That is why we
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created this balance of powers. That's why we made it so difficult for the executive
23:23
to get anything done, so difficult for one branch of government to control.
23:27
And now, I don't know if you're getting to this later or in the show,
23:30
maybe it's a good segue. There are people, the Democratic
23:33
Socialists of America, are now championing to do just that. Yeah.
23:37
To, to, uh, yeah, get rid— to pack the Supreme Court and get
23:41
rid of the Senate so they can have more power and they can go
23:45
solve all your problems for you. Because guess what? You're not smart enough to do
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it on your own. Yeah. Uh, you know, some of, some of the things this
23:52
guy did that he admits in his diary— now,
23:56
he, he is the— he was the top federal
23:59
salary receiver in the entire government.
24:03
Fauci's salary was higher than the president of the United States
24:08
when he was head of the CDC. So
24:12
of the, you know, of the,
24:16
of that part of the CDC that, that does communicable
24:19
diseases. He was also invested
24:24
in some of the vax companies. And then he rolls out
24:28
and compels the vax You will lose your
24:31
job as a federal employee. You'll lose your job if you're in the Army,
24:35
Navy, Marines, Air Force. You'll, you'll,
24:38
you'll be a scourge online. People will— and
24:42
they did, they doxxed people that did not get
24:45
vaccinated. If they knew that you weren't vaxxed, it
24:49
was said in order to protect other people that they
24:53
would let everybody know who was not vaxxed. Right? You
24:57
couldn't go to a wedding reception. You couldn't visit your
25:00
grandma who's dying in the hospital unless you were in a
25:03
spacesuit. All of this ridiculous stuff
25:07
was, was Fauci, and millions of people's lives
25:11
were affected. Well, I think children who— now, in
25:15
Ohio, we didn't do this too long, but in many states, kids were
25:19
out of school for well over a year. And Steve, They
25:23
probably will never catch up in certain cases. In certain situations, they
25:26
will not. And look, it goes deeper than this, and this
25:30
hasn't come out yet, but it will. He was doing things like
25:34
suppressing the therapeutics
25:38
hydroxychloroquine. He was suppressing ivermectin as a use as a
25:41
therapeutic. And he was pushing his own drug,
25:44
remdesivir, which killed people left and right.
25:48
It was so— I'm not going to drop names here, but I know a story
25:52
of a friend whose son got sick and called
25:56
another friend who worked at a hospital as a nurse. And that nurse said,
26:00
bring him here, bring him to the ER, and make sure you call me
26:04
and text me when he's here. I'm going to get him. I'm going to make
26:06
sure he gets the right therapy. Because the protocol was different
26:10
than what Fauci was— Yeah. The one that worked, the one that they all knew
26:13
worked, they were ignoring because They wanted to use this other
26:17
approach. And I have not done my— our X-Checker has done a
26:20
deep dive into this, but it has to do with Fauci at
26:24
the end of it and being part of this other drug. These people are evil
26:28
bastards. Yeah. And I'd say it to his face if he were right here. And
26:32
some things that people don't consider, like, oh, that's not that big of a
26:35
deal looking back on it. But masking, he knew
26:39
masking did nothing. Did nothing. He knew it. Yet he
26:42
promoted masking because he thought it would— his theory was,
26:46
well, it's a calming thing. It's— it'll make people who feel
26:50
helpless feel like they're doing something. But
26:54
yet rebreathing your own germs turns
26:58
out to be something that makes you sicker. Like,
27:02
like, there is something to fresh air, people, you know? Like,
27:06
fresh air— Stuff that has been working for
27:09
thousands of years. I mean, you know, right? Your brother's a doc. I
27:13
mean, look, we've talked about this stuff. It's not even—
27:17
whenever you run into something that we all know to be true,
27:21
I'm trying to think of an example. Like, look, I know that it's light
27:24
outside and people try to tell you it's not and you're looking
27:28
around. But when you get to these moral busybodies,
27:32
again, to quote Lewis, will get you to a point, Norm, where They
27:35
will try to convince you that they are so smart, that this is
27:39
so complicated, and they understand it so much better than you, that you
27:43
just have to trust them. It's not what it so obviously is. It is
27:46
something else, and we know better, and you have to do it our
27:50
way. Because look, Norm, it's not like fresh air's gonna help you. Trust us. Right.
27:53
This is like something we've never ever seen. You have to be masked up 10
27:57
times over, even though yesterday we told you you didn't.
28:01
It is so outrageous. And I, I, you can tell I'm, well, animated about this.
28:05
I'm pretty amped up, you know. So, uh, the, uh, one
28:09
of these Centers for Journalism, uh, Integrity,
28:13
uh, checked out in advance of Fauci testifying today,
28:17
they checked out what did the mainstream media publish
28:21
yesterday, meaning Tuesday, yesterday, today's Wednesday.
28:26
What did the mainstream media say regarding Fauci's
28:29
appearance before Congress? yesterday. ABC
28:33
News didn't use the, the word, the
28:36
name Fauci all day yesterday. Zero
28:40
coverage. Isn't that incredible? CNN used his name twice.
28:44
How's that not news? I mean, even if he's on your side, how's that not
28:47
news? It's so— the guy, darling of COVID is on the witness stand, and he
28:51
admits in his diary he engaged in head games with the
28:55
American people. So 350 million
28:58
of us, right? He couldn't tell us what masks
29:02
really did. He couldn't tell us about, you know, the— not
29:06
the— that there was no necessity for wholesale
29:10
restrictions on children because they weren't really
29:13
susceptible in large part to COVID-19.
29:17
So all of this deception and head games against
29:21
the American people. And And the media, because, because they
29:25
carried this story for 3 years, they were his
29:29
cheerleaders and his promoters. And they told, they
29:33
told you, the American public, that Steve and I and other
29:36
doubters, people who wanted more information, we were the
29:40
dummies. And Fauci was the guy that you had. He said
29:44
quite blatantly, I am the science. Right. Well, it
29:47
turns out He was a bullshitter. And yet that's not a
29:51
story to the mainstream media. But if Trump— Hold on, Norm.
29:55
Yeah, go ahead.
30:01
That's old Judge Dredd. Judge Dredd, right. I am the law. Right.
30:05
Okay. Because Fauci was saying, those who are criticizing me are
30:08
criticizing the science. I am the science. I am the science.
30:12
Think of the pride and ego and arrogance and narcissism just
30:16
baked into that cake. A psychologist, the news should have had a
30:20
heyday with that. Exactly. And we were down here— And should be now. And it
30:23
should be now. And we were down here howling at the damn moon about it,
30:25
saying, right, this is lunacy. You know what I call these? And you and I
30:28
talk all the time, and I, I call these, well, I just want to know
30:32
questions. I, I would just like to know, you know, what exactly makes this a
30:35
little bit different? Why exactly do we have masks now? When you say, I would
30:38
just like to know. We are the people that are fact-based, Steve. We want
30:42
facts. And however the facts fall, I will
30:45
accept that. But I want a thorough— just like the New Jersey
30:49
voting scandal. That's right. I'd like to know more. I just want to know the
30:53
facts. And whether or not it pleases me is
30:57
beside the point. I want to know the facts. And this
31:00
guy stood in the breach and would not let us get drill
31:04
down to why is the U.S. partly funding a
31:08
Wuhan lab with the Communist Chinese on a
31:11
gain-of-function virus. And what I mean, that's outrageous.
31:15
I mean, think of it. The Communist Chinese are trying to,
31:19
trying to crash our country and we're in the business of
31:23
developing a military-grade virus with them. With
31:26
them. And think about it like, all right, so we've got these facts that we
31:30
all sort of came out in the beginning. All right. There's a Chinese lab. They're
31:33
studying these particular viruses. Right. They're trying to figure out
31:37
gain-of-functioning. Yeah. And they are creating
31:41
deadly warfare-type viruses. Right. But
31:45
that's not where it came from. No, no, that's not— it came
31:48
from a market in the same city. You xenophobic,
31:52
rotten racist SOB. Yeah. For thinking otherwise.
31:56
That's what the news was saying. That's right. Jake Tapper, all of these
31:59
people. Damn you guys. You know, Brian Williams, all of these
32:03
people that just turned out to be you know,
32:07
carrying his water because they wanted to be
32:10
anti-Trump. Let's face it, it was political in nature. Yep.
32:14
That's what the whole thing was. And I was pissed at Trump during this time
32:17
too. I was pissed at Trump too. For following this jackass. Well, and he, he
32:20
ended up himself complimenting
32:24
Fauci. He was deceived by his advisors
32:28
because, well, I think Trump is kind of a
32:31
germaphobe. He's afraid of disease. He's afraid of
32:35
addiction. He's afraid of alcohol. He's afraid of
32:38
drugs. And some of that is good, I think,
32:42
but a little bit too much so. See, I think— I
32:46
don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But I also think there's another
32:49
component, if not a different reason,
32:54
and that is Trump has this tendency, in the first term particularly, to
32:57
surround himself with people that he just perceived as experts. That's correct. And I
33:01
think that's how he ran his companies. That's just right. That's what you do when
33:05
you run a business. He kept James Comey at the FBI. He kept
33:08
Fauci. I think he underestimated the forces that had been put to
33:12
bear against him. And here's a guy that campaigned against the swamp. And
33:16
after his first term, he was taken down by the swamp. They took
33:20
him down. They took him down. So it really informed his second term.
33:23
You've said in previous shows, Steven, you're so right, about this,
33:28
that it's actually good that Trump lost, uh, the election for the
33:32
second term because I think he learned a lot. He
33:35
signed 20— excuse me, 200 executive
33:39
orders on his first day in the second term.
33:43
He and his staff knew what they needed to do. Yeah. To, to
33:47
try to turn the country around in the second term,
33:50
that after he lost for 4 years, And Biden, you
33:54
know, couldn't run and Kamala ran.
33:59
It actually has turned out better for the country. Where did you go wrong?
34:02
You had 4 years to reflect on it. That's right. And where did I go
34:05
wrong? Right. What did I do? You know, it's like every other—
34:09
every rematch is like this. Right. You know, you don't always win the
34:13
rematch. No. But like— He had to close that because
34:16
frankly, the American people weren't going to take the cuts. Yeah.
34:19
We're somewhat socialized. You know, we
34:23
already have a socialist democratic
34:27
republic in a way. Yeah. Nobody's willing to take the big cut. We're not willing
34:31
to take the big cut. We're not willing to tell people on Social
34:35
Security, look, if you have some means in order to
34:38
preserve this program for people who are more needy than you,
34:43
you know, if you have $1 million or $2 million
34:47
in your net worth, Maybe instead of getting your full check, you get
34:50
75% of it in order to save the program
34:54
for everybody else. But at the same time, you need to dig out the
34:57
fraudsters. You need to dig out people that are getting Social
35:01
Security that are noncitizens and things like that. Like
35:04
it's low-hanging fruit to start with. And it looks mean to the
35:08
suburban moms, you know, just like the ICE thing.
35:12
You know, how can you tear this father away from his children?
35:16
Well, lady, he's a rapist and a murderer, and he's a gangbanger,
35:20
and he's been in the country for 5 years committing crimes. So yeah,
35:24
just like Steve's clients who get torn away from their families
35:28
when they're American citizens and get thrown in the hoosegow, we're going
35:32
to throw this guy in the hoosegow and deport him. I mean, you do that
35:36
to American citizens, and I don't see people marching around
35:39
complaining about Steve's clients that I don't know, rob a bank or
35:43
something and they go to prison. Why is it different if it's an illegal
35:47
alien? But we were not willing to take the Doge cuts.
35:50
Yep. And, and so, you know, Trump in a way kind of
35:54
lost that battle. Uh, and, and that's why Elon quit.
35:58
Elon quit. And, you know, but you know what, he, he tried.
36:03
And they made some progress. They made some pro— they, they turned the light bulb
36:07
on, on a lot of stuff. They did. They tried. So look, maybe
36:11
I, I like to say you can't measure success unless you have failure, because then
36:14
you're not measuring success against anything, right? You can't measure success against itself.
36:18
Yeah. Or as you know, running a business, it's always easy to run a business
36:21
when you're making money. And Steve, you and I have said many times here
36:25
that getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse
36:29
should be a nonpartisan exercise. I would think, right? So if I'm a
36:33
Democrat and let's say I want to preserve Say mass
36:37
transit funding for COTA or the
36:41
Western Reserve Regional Transit Authority up in Cleveland.
36:45
So I believe, let's say maybe Norm would disagree, but
36:48
let's suppose I'm a Democrat who says, I think we should
36:52
subsidize and have buses running around for
36:56
people that can't afford cars or don't want to pollute or
36:59
whatever the issue is that makes them want to ride a bus. Well,
37:03
if I'm in favor of mass transit, wouldn't I
37:07
logically want to get rid of all the waste, fraud, and abuse in those
37:11
programs so that the regional transit authority
37:14
could provide more service with the savings? Mm-hmm.
37:18
I mean, I don't understand preserving waste, fraud, and abuse
37:22
because you're afraid the program's gonna get canceled, because
37:26
that's what's gonna happen unless you get rid of the
37:30
waste. Yeah, there's this— I think there's this fear that if you start chipping away
37:33
at any of it, you're going to lose all of it. And it's the opposite
37:36
that's true. And I think it's probably the opposite that's true. Or, or maybe it's
37:39
not. Maybe it is true, which would lead— would have,
37:43
looking backwards, rationally led to the conclusion that we didn't need it.
37:47
Yeah, right. So perhaps that's it. Well, there's a, there's a thing in the
37:50
military that when you are swarmed
37:54
and you're swamped with the enemy, you call an artillery
37:57
strike on your own LZ, you know, your own landing
38:01
zone. You, even though you know you're going to get some
38:04
shrapnel in you and you're hunkered down in your trench,
38:09
you call in an artillery strike to clean out the enemy
38:13
from the very base camp that you're located in.
38:16
And that's happened many times in American military history.
38:21
And if I ran, say, a transit authority, and I knew I, I, I
38:25
was infiltrated with crooked people that are self-dealing,
38:29
or they're using the buses for non-public purposes,
38:33
like, you know, going on a fishing trip or something, I
38:36
would bring in the police. I would bring in the auditors
38:40
in order to save that government program. So then it, it,
38:45
it demands the next question: why wouldn't you do that? And
38:49
there again, that's the water that makes the conspiracies grow, because it then it
38:52
looks like you're part of it. You're part of it, right? Out of fear. Yeah.
38:57
Um, I, I love this story. Um,
39:01
so OpenAI, which is one of these huge
39:04
entities, and it was supposed to be open source, and
39:08
Musk obviously pulled out because it turns out OpenAI,
39:12
you know, uh, is, is, is going to try to be
39:16
privately held and, uh, a competitor with other
39:20
AI companies. They announced last week that their
39:24
own system, their own AI system— this is right out of the
39:27
Terminator movie— that it went rogue and it
39:31
hacked a competitor's AI program.
39:35
Like, the software just— I don't know if it became
39:38
self-aware, you know, Hmm. like they said in the
39:41
Terminator, but the software without
39:45
human action telling it to go hack
39:49
another company. The OpenAI software
39:53
just did it. And it tells me— This is
39:57
The Matrix, man. Dude, we are not in— we're not in control anymore.
40:01
I mean, like, if you've got OpenAI out there
40:04
that is teaching itself every day, every
40:08
nanosecond, teaching itself how to crack
40:12
somebody's security measures at a
40:15
competing company, well, that tells you, I mean, China's doing
40:19
it, we're doing it to ourselves. And eventually
40:23
these AI systems may start
40:27
themselves bonding together, forming an enterprise
40:32
of intelligence where they decide,
40:35
we're just going to do this. This is a bad dystopian. This is bad
40:39
stuff, man. I don't want to hear it. And if you remember in The
40:42
Terminator, the reason Sarah Connor was in trouble
40:47
with, with the government, because she was
40:50
going around and blowing up data centers. Yeah. Because
40:54
Skynet, right? Her fear was Skynet was going to
40:57
become self-aware and start launching these
41:01
military robots against human beings.
41:05
So, I mean, Listen,
41:08
I have more to say about data centers. I'm not against data centers in
41:12
theory, but it's interesting
41:16
that, you know, what was that, James Cameron did that movie? It's
41:19
interesting that all those years ago, somebody writing
41:23
that fiction was looking forward to AI and
41:27
data centers and, um, the insurgency of
41:31
humans against Machines. And it's, it's coming true.
41:34
And it's— yeah, I mean, we just had OpenAI
41:38
go rogue, so without human control.
41:43
Uh, so yeah, data centers here in
41:46
Ohio. Candidate for governor Amy Acton
41:50
came out with— and, and this has— excuse me, ladies,
41:54
if you're a conservative lady, you, you know, you, you agree with me.
41:58
But a lot of the housewives, the
42:02
housewives who consume The View,
42:05
consume a lot of fearmongering sources
42:09
of news, have it in their heads that somehow
42:13
data centers are a bigger
42:16
environmental threat somehow than
42:20
steel smelting plants or car factories.
42:24
or coal mines, or lots of other things, right, that they
42:28
never protested against, right? So in Toledo, you've got a
42:31
Jeep plant that coexists right in the middle of neighborhoods
42:35
with homes. You've got— in
42:38
Columbus, we had Buckeye Steel Castings that was
42:42
just south of German Village, right there downtown,
42:46
putting out pollution. And I didn't hear anybody out in
42:50
Gahanna or Pataskala or Johnstown bitching and
42:53
moaning about how they were concerned about inner-city
42:57
urban people getting, uh, polluted
43:01
by factories in their neighborhoods. But all of a sudden it's a big
43:05
deal. And I just would say, with Amy Acton, who
43:09
came out and she has stated that she has a
43:12
conditional moratorium on data centers—
43:16
ladies, this is to get your votes. Because if you read the
43:20
details of her moratorium, it's business as usual.
43:24
She's doing nothing. All she did in her
43:27
moratorium is say, well,
43:31
I'm gonna put a moratorium on data centers if they don't comply with
43:35
Ohio environmental laws. Well, I got news for you.
43:39
All the 200 data centers that are in Ohio right now
43:42
are complying with some sort of Ohio EPA
43:46
order. And And they're complying with all of that that
43:50
has been required of them. And in many cases, the rules were
43:54
bent. But under Amy's thing, she's saying if they do what the
43:58
Ohio EPA tells them, well, they're doing that now. She also
44:01
says that all data centers should be built with union labor.
44:07
Well, so, I mean, whose business? Why is it her
44:11
business? I'll tell you why. Because she wants union votes. I
44:15
mean, it's just a sop. I mean, it's so— It's so patently
44:18
obvious. Yeah, it's such a— And then she says things like,
44:22
there's a moratorium on any data center that won't do the following:
44:27
support local communities,
44:31
operate with full transparency, create jobs.
44:36
All of those things are happening now. It's nothing
44:40
new. It just sounds like a
44:43
moratorium, like a Kathy Hochul in New York moratorium,
44:47
but it's not that. And do you know why? Because Amy
44:51
Acton wants the same
44:55
money that's going to Vivek Ramaswamy. She
44:58
wants that Silicon Valley money and she's getting it.
45:02
She— this is just a game. She's playing on the
45:06
hysteria. out there in around these data
45:09
centers. And what has Norm said about data centers on this show? They
45:13
shouldn't be near homes, okay, because of the noise, the light
45:17
pollution, the, the road destruction and all
45:21
of that, okay? They shouldn't be near homes. There are plenty
45:24
of isolated places or brownfield sites where these could go.
45:29
Other than that, I, I'm not convinced that data centers
45:33
ought to be banned. Steve, if it's
45:37
how we're going to power innovation that
45:41
benefits all of us, it just needs to be done the right way. Well, this
45:45
is my question for you. So look, as a
45:48
Star Wars geek fan, only Sith deal in
45:52
absolutes, right? So you can't say all data centers are bad and we have to
45:55
ban them all because you just can't do it. It's not real.
45:59
'Cause you know who's gonna have them if we don't? Exactly. China. Exactly. So do
46:03
we want China controlling the data centers? Exactly. Or would we rather do it here?
46:07
So then the question is, how do we do it here in a way that
46:09
makes some sense? That's right. And because we are Siths dealing
46:13
in absolutes, we aren't talking about how to do it the right way.
46:16
That's right. That's what we should be talking about. And that's what we should be
46:19
talking about. That's right. Because I, look, I'm a realist. We're
46:22
not getting rid of data centers. No. And somebody's gonna have 'em. That's right. We're
46:26
not getting rid of gasoline. Somebody's going to produce it. That's right. We're not getting
46:29
rid of the world that you think we live in is bad, and we're not
46:33
going to have the one you think we should be— we should have. That's right.
46:36
We have to deal with the one that we have. That's right. And, or, or
46:39
you decline. Or— right. And, and what did Germany find out?
46:43
Germany reopened their coal mines. They reopened their coal mines
46:47
after announcing a ban on coal. And why did they
46:51
do that? It's because of the Ukraine war. They're not buying
46:55
natural gas from Russia. Right. And, and, and
46:59
they can't make enough with nuclear power. France isn't
47:03
sending over electricity from their nukes. And
47:07
so, yeah, you've got to face reality. And you've
47:10
got countries like England— as Trump's correct about
47:14
this— England is surrounded by a whole
47:18
sea of oil. You know, the North Sea oil
47:22
platforms are now being tapped into by China, Russia,
47:26
I mean, other countries. So, so what is England doing? They're
47:30
buying their oil from other countries who
47:34
are extracting it from the North Sea where British
47:37
Petroleum used to extract it. Hmm. So,
47:41
so they're paying more for their oil and it's coming from the same
47:44
place. Their ban on offshore
47:48
drilling is doing nothing for the British
47:51
people. It's doing nothing. It's absurd what they're doing. And it's like when
47:55
Biden says, we're going to get ahead of the environment because we're not going to
47:59
produce oil, we're going to— he curtails everything, shuts down the pipeline, does all this.
48:02
We didn't use any less oil. We just paid more for the oil because now
48:04
we had to get it from somewhere else. Exactly right. And then he pressures politically
48:08
somebody else to give it to us cheaper. It's such nonsense. And the
48:11
clothing we wear, the medicines we take, all
48:15
of it is petroleum. Yes. Look, like it or not, this is the world we
48:19
live in. It's a world we live in. And it, you know, it is natural,
48:23
you know. So just like a green bean or a stalk of
48:27
corn grows naturally, oil is made naturally.
48:31
I mean, I don't know, you know, it's like uranium is natural.
48:35
And for us not as human beings to harness that energy
48:39
in an intelligent way, in a non— as much as
48:42
we can, a non-polluting way. Of course. Well, that makes sense.
48:46
And who would not be in favor of that? But like you say,
48:50
Steve, in a world of absolutes, you know, like
48:53
any child that's caught doing something, some kind of
48:57
politically incorrect thing at school, they're absolutely
49:00
suspended from school. They're absolutely kicked out.
49:04
Those are crazy punishments, and we are punishing
49:08
ourselves economically with these
49:11
absurd decisions. Only to wave a virtue
49:15
moralistic flag, because that's all that is. I can put a
49:19
decal on my car. The same people who are railing
49:22
against data centers are Googling stuff every single day.
49:27
The same people who are railing against oil and gas are
49:30
driving around, even if it's an electric car, it's all made from petroleum
49:34
products. That's right. They're all doing it. It just is to wave or feel like
49:38
you've got some virtue that is all nonsense. I think a
49:41
study, in fact, on the Prius, and it was an
49:45
even-handed study, somebody like Motor Trend, somebody who doesn't have,
49:49
you know, a bias pro or con EVs but just likes
49:53
cars, they did some kind of economic impact study
49:57
of the production And the eventual
50:01
scrapping out of a Prius. And it turns
50:05
out it consumes way more energy, way more oil,
50:09
way more, you know, rubber because the vehicle weighs more.
50:13
So the tires get ground up quicker. And, and, you know,
50:17
that goes all over the roads. And, and the, the
50:21
environmental impact and the economic impact of something
50:24
like an EV or even a hybrid like a Prius is, is
50:28
much more costly than just a straight-up small, efficient
50:32
gasoline car. Yeah. And, and, but people don't want to hear that. And it
50:36
makes— they don't want to hear it. Perfect sense. It makes total sense. It makes
50:39
perfect sense. Uh, State Fair opens today, Steve. All right.
50:43
And a little bit of happy news, the Ohio State Fair. Who's performing this year?
50:46
Anything? Well, a guy named Nelly. I don't know much, but, uh, a rhythm and
50:50
blues kind of, uh, you know, or soul, uh, artist.
50:54
And then a whole slew of country western artists
50:57
are lined up. Back in the day,
51:02
I saw Bob Hope there in person, Patti LaBelle,
51:06
Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings.
51:10
So— All right, well, look, here's some interesting stuff there. Yeah, go ahead. It might
51:14
even interest me. Go, man. Styx with Don Felder. There we go. Be
51:17
Like Blippi. I don't know who that is. If I don't know it, I'm not
51:21
talking about it. Alison Krauss and Union Station. Okay, good stuff.
51:25
Sammy Kershaw for King Plus Country, Nelly, Weird Al
51:28
Yankovic. No way. Coming to town on August 5th
51:32
at 7 PM. Uh, Bailey Zimmerman, the
51:36
Gin Blossoms, and Blues Traveler heading back to the '90s, my era. Uh,
51:40
so lots of great stuff. I heard 2 new buildings have been built out
51:44
there. Oh, is that right? And 4 of the existing buildings have been totally
51:48
remodeled. So it's, it's going to be a more upscale
51:53
state fair. They still have the butter cow. Do they have outdoor
51:57
air conditioning? Because it's always— my only memory of the state fair
52:00
as a kid is just walking up in this sweltering hot heat and humidity
52:04
looking for, you know, some shelter from that. I think this
52:08
week is maybe that now that it opens today,
52:12
it's not— it's very seasonal. Yeah. No, this is like a
52:16
little hint of fall, right? Yeah. So, you know, please go.
52:21
Steve, a little crime story here
52:25
that I'm fascinated how you— I
52:29
don't— so, you know, I stayed at a Holiday Inn
52:33
and I can use my law degree there, but I can't really use it. Steve's
52:36
the real lawyer here, as our listeners know.
52:40
So this Bryan, I think it's pronounced Kohberger or something.
52:44
Oh, Kohberger. Yeah. Thank you. The guy in Idaho that killed the 3
52:48
coeds. Yeah. So he has been sentenced.
52:52
He pled guilty. There was a plea deal. He
52:56
actually had to tell the judge in order for the judge to accept
53:00
the plea deal. The judge queried him and said, are you doing this
53:04
of your own free will? Of course. And, and all the other questions. And one
53:07
of the questions was, did you commit these murders? And he
53:11
said yes. Okay. He's now saying
53:15
that he had poor representation, that he was misled by his
53:19
attorneys, and they kept him alive. And this is—
53:23
Idaho has the death penalty. Yeah, so this happens a lot. So tell me
53:26
what you think here. He wants to withdraw his plea. Withdraw his plea.
53:30
All right, so look, first of all, those who say
53:34
that you would never plead guilty to something you didn't do have never been put
53:37
in a spot where you are faced with
53:41
impossible choices. And I'm not saying lots of people plead guilty to
53:45
something they didn't do, but lots of people plead guilty to some
53:49
version that they don't agree with of something they may have done. In other words,
53:53
there's plea bargains all the time. Yeah. And then lots of people, look, in
53:57
child sex cases, I have had people literally plead guilty
54:01
to something they didn't do, like a misdemeanor assault case when
54:05
they're facing life in prison for an allegation that they raped their stepdaughter.
54:09
Okay. And, you know, you would— you, because of the reduction, you know,
54:13
the, the— you'll take the— you'll take the deal. And then you can
54:16
also bake into that equation, uh, you can sort of reverse engineer
54:20
why the prosecutor might have offered such a reduction, is because there's a huge question
54:24
about the case. Okay. All right. Now, and it's going to be a
54:28
lot— consume a lot of, of resources, maybe, that maybe
54:32
a, a smaller county Yeah, but almost always that doesn't—
54:35
anymore that doesn't move the needle. Okay. Anymore, the resources to
54:39
prosecute somebody, sometimes prosecutors will use that
54:43
for a deal to avoid the death penalty. But I think a lot of
54:46
times it's more along the lines that maybe they
54:50
can't get the death penalty. Okay. Or it's just not worth the squeeze.
54:54
Okay. Because there's some weird winds about
54:58
the death penalty these days. Yeah, right. And you just don't know. But anyway, so
55:02
in the death penalty cases, a lot of times People cut deals for life in
55:05
prison in exchange for the prosecutor taking death off the table. Okay.
55:09
Happens all the time. And that's, that's pretty much what happened. That's what happened here.
55:12
Now the issue is, is he guilty? So the judge had what's called a, quote,
55:16
meaningful dialogue to make sure that Kohberger understood
55:20
what his rights were, understood what the possible punishment is,
55:23
and understood that he was giving up all of these things and he was proceeding
55:27
knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. And part of that was, and a lot of judges,
55:31
I didn't watch that plea, some judges will actually put guys under oath and say,
55:34
are you guilty? Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty of the
55:37
crime? Yes, I am. I have had clients
55:40
say yes to that and they hesitate because they don't, you know, it's
55:44
a plea bargain. It just is one of those things. Yeah. There's another mechanism
55:48
called an Alford plea where guys will actually plead guilty, but at the same time
55:51
say, I'm not guilty. Okay. But I'm avoiding the risk of trial. Didn't happen here,
55:54
but it, Just setting the stage. So Kohberger pleads guilty, he goes
55:58
into his plea colloquy, admits that he committed the murders, and now he's
56:02
changing his mind. He's pissing backwards. Yeah. The law
56:06
hates this. The law hates this, which is to say the law
56:10
loves finality. The law loves when things are done because then we don't have
56:14
to monkey with it anymore. We can get on to the next thing. Yeah. Now,
56:18
is it true that his lawyers were bad? Is it true that he got bad
56:22
advice? Is it true that he made a— I don't know. I don't know that
56:25
at all. He's claiming that's true. So here's what would happen in Ohio. I don't
56:29
know Idaho law. Sure. In Ohio, if I were representing a guy like Kohberger to
56:32
try to withdraw that plea, I would start with an investigation. I would start by
56:36
interviewing Kohberger. All right, what did you talk to your lawyers about? Why did
56:40
you actually enter the plea? When you said, I did it, what were you really
56:43
thinking and what contributed to that line of thinking?
56:47
And was it false? I would go to the lawyers. I would look at the—
56:50
I would ask them if they would answer questions of me with my client's
56:53
permission, waiving the privilege, about the conversations and the
56:57
dialogue he had with his lawyers. I would look at the discovery or the
57:01
evidence to see the ultimate question. I actually should put this
57:05
cart way before the horse, which is, all right, Kohberger, if you are
57:08
successful withdrawing your plea, you don't win. You go back to the
57:12
beginning. Yeah, yeah. And guess what? The second time around, there ain't no deals.
57:16
No, they can put death penalty right back on the table. And they will. And
57:19
I doubt that they would ever offer him another bargain after that because they're like,
57:23
we tried once. dude. Yeah. So there you start with that and
57:27
then sort of unwrap the rest of it and see, do you have any basis
57:30
to do it? Now, a couple things. It could very well be that Kohberger
57:34
just went to prison, he's thinking, well, this really sucks, I'd rather be dead.
57:37
Yeah. Um, I'd rather just risk it all and, and get killed if that's what
57:41
has to happen. Yeah. So he just changed his mind. It could be that,
57:45
you know, on some level he's not guilty and, uh, he pled guilty
57:48
just because the evidence was so overwhelming he didn't want to risk going to trial,
57:52
blah, you know, whatever it would be. Could be any of those things. My prediction,
57:55
the judge is not going to let him withdraw the plea unless there's something painfully
58:00
sticking out like a sore thumb, okay, that was wrong with the plea bargain.
58:03
Okay, like maybe one of his attorneys said, well,
58:07
I did tell him that maybe he could get out early. Yeah. And it
58:11
turns out no, got bad advice. Yeah, or something. This
58:14
happens, say, if you're If you're not a US citizen, you plead guilty to something
58:18
and your lawyer said you won't get deported and there's a record of that, but
58:22
it's obvious that the law is that you would get deported, you might get a
58:25
little play withdrawing your plea then. Oh, wow. I would also say this,
58:30
your odds of success trying to withdraw a plea of
58:33
guilty are far better before you're
58:37
sentenced because the law also hates people just changing their
58:40
mind because something bad happened at sentencing. So, okay, you know, you can't get— you
58:44
can't wait to see what's behind door number 2. So the odds are really stacked
58:47
against him succeeding here. Yeah, I don't think he's gonna get it. Okay. Yeah.
58:51
Yeah. Um, want to do some winners and losers? Do some
58:55
winners and losers. Yeah. Um, so
59:00
my winners, um, I think I mentioned earlier the, the new
59:04
Chris Nolan, uh, version of The Odyssey.
59:08
So as you know, you know that the first 2 great
59:11
books, or they were songs orally
59:15
passed down originally, later transcribed into
59:19
writing. But the first 2 great works of
59:24
fiction in Western civilization,
59:28
most scholars would say, are the Iliad and the Odyssey by
59:32
Homer. It turns out That,
59:36
uh, what was his name, Hans Schliemann, the German
59:39
archaeologist, actually found the historical Troy. There really
59:43
was a Troy. And for a long time, people thought Homer just made that up.
59:46
Mm-hmm. So now they're wondering, well, could there be an Atlantis? But that's a
59:50
sidebar. Um, so I saw the movie. I think
59:54
it's terrific. Um, yes, it's not 100%
59:58
faithful, but Steve said something early in the show
1:00:01
about constant, if you will, human
1:00:05
values or human aspirations
1:00:09
that regardless of the religion, almost any
1:00:13
religion has some kind of code
1:00:17
of behavior, some
1:00:18
sort of
1:00:21
expectation of how you interact with other human
1:00:25
beings in a way that is decent.
1:00:29
Mm-hmm. And so in the movie, The Odyssey, I'm not
1:00:32
sure Homer actually hammered this, but Nolan certainly does.
1:00:36
There's something called the Code of Zeus. And what that means is
1:00:40
you never know if a person you're dealing
1:00:44
with isn't a god who has taken human
1:00:48
form to kind of screw around with your life.
1:00:52
And so throughout the movie, for example,
1:00:55
Ulysses is dealing with
1:00:58
Athena, and
1:01:02
she appears when he's destitute. And of course, she's
1:01:06
beautiful and she's in robes and all that kind of stuff. So you know
1:01:10
that she's an apparition, but she has taken human form.
1:01:13
So the Code of Zeus says, even if it's a beggar, or
1:01:17
even if it's your enemy and you're going to kill him or you're going
1:01:21
to maybe drop some money in the basket of a beggar,
1:01:25
that you don't know if that what you
1:01:29
think is a human might be a god, and you'll really piss off
1:01:32
the god if you mistreat that human being. In other words, do
1:01:36
unto others as you would have them do unto you. Yes. So even if you're
1:01:39
about to strike that person down, say in combat, you do it
1:01:43
with a certain amount of honor. Like, you wouldn't
1:01:47
necessarily, uh, go up to somebody who's disarmed and chop
1:01:51
their head off. You would, uh, you know, here's a sword, we're going to
1:01:54
do combat. And, uh, so at any rate,
1:01:58
that's throughout the movie. I enjoyed that aspect of it because
1:02:02
it's pre-Christianity, right? And it shows that,
1:02:06
um, that there is— it's like Arab hospitality. It's
1:02:10
like Marcus Luttrell when he rolled down that mountain into that
1:02:13
Afghani town and he went to some
1:02:17
random house, the father of that household said, well, here's a
1:02:21
stranger at my door. And yes, the Taliban is looking
1:02:25
for him, right? They killed all his other members of that
1:02:29
squad, the SEAL team. But here's a guy at my door
1:02:33
and my code of ethics demands that I extend
1:02:36
hospitality to him. Mm-hmm. from his enemies, right?
1:02:41
And there's something of that in that movie, and it makes that movie special to
1:02:45
me. So I thought Nolan did a good job. My other winner would be
1:02:50
President Trump's eulogy yesterday at Lindsey
1:02:53
Graham's funeral. So there's— Steve, you probably remember this,
1:02:57
and so does the audience. When they were campaigning
1:03:01
against each other back in 2016 for the
1:03:04
presidency, Trump's first term, term. You might remember in one of the
1:03:08
debates, Trump got so aggravated with Lindsey Graham when they were
1:03:12
enemies before they became friends that he gave out
1:03:16
his cell phone number. Do you remember that? And it was
1:03:19
too— I can give it out now because Trump just gave it out again
1:03:23
at the funeral. He said, I did something I
1:03:26
shouldn't have done. I was so mad at Lindsey. And he's
1:03:30
speaking, this is a eulogy, and he says, I gave out his cell phone
1:03:34
number, and for those of you here that want to give it a shot,
1:03:37
it's 202. And then he ran around, and I just thought,
1:03:41
you know what, classic Trump is funny. I mean,
1:03:45
he couldn't come back. Yeah, I mean, it was— he was almost stand-up funny. So
1:03:49
yeah, I mean, he said he did a bad thing, and— And then he did
1:03:52
it again. Then he did it again right there at the funeral. So you could
1:03:56
just imagine Lindsey in that casket He had to be laughing his ass off.
1:04:00
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I've not seen The Odyssey yet, but
1:04:04
I did have a chance to talk to somebody I will call an expert that
1:04:07
I encountered in my professional life, and somebody who had read The
1:04:11
Odyssey in its Greek several times and all the different translations,
1:04:15
a classicist. And I talked to him about this very thing
1:04:18
because while I haven't seen the movie, I'd heard other people saying
1:04:22
basically Nolan injected into the Odyssey
1:04:26
this notion that Odysseus felt guilty about the Trojan horse and it wasn't
1:04:30
quite honorable and that sort of motivated him, whatever. And his
1:04:33
reaction was a lot like yours. He goes, look, you can't just go tell a
1:04:36
story. You have to tell a story. And it's okay to take some
1:04:39
artistic license and put that into the story, because not only did it make it
1:04:43
interesting, it added a dimension. And whether it's true or not,
1:04:47
whether that was part of it or not, who knows? Right. And I think he
1:04:50
even said, wasn't that far from what Homer was trying to do, at least in
1:04:53
his estimation. So at least it was a
1:04:57
reasonable insertion
1:05:01
given the history. So anyway, for whatever that's
1:05:05
worth. My good is Rubio. Did you listen to his speech on
1:05:09
communism? Heard about it. Did not listen to it. I'll
1:05:13
make a point of listening. I can maybe play some. Let's see where I am
1:05:15
queued up. A man who happened to also be a
1:05:19
husband and the father of 2 young children, shot and
1:05:22
killed. I don't have it, but I thought I had it queued up. I don't.
1:05:26
I was trying to do it while I was here. But anyway, he basically takes
1:05:30
this idea that everybody says communism
1:05:34
is great in theory, but horrible in implementation.
1:05:39
And what he says— It just hasn't been tried correctly. What he says is, that
1:05:42
is nonsense. That is nonsense. Communism is
1:05:46
horrible in theory. It cleanses
1:05:49
us of any individual uniqueness. It's
1:05:53
boring. It discourages greatness. It discourages the things you were talking about.
1:05:57
Sure. Like our, I'm gonna go get 2 elk today and I'm gonna put one
1:06:01
back. Why? Because it's hard and because I can and because that'll help me
1:06:04
tomorrow. Right. It squelches all the life out of
1:06:08
us. All the initiative. And all the initiative out of us. And it makes everybody
1:06:11
the same. And I said earlier that you can't measure success without
1:06:15
failure. You can't measure anything good
1:06:18
without bad. Yeah. You can't do it. And if you're— this is my
1:06:22
argument often in favor
1:06:24
of free will and Christianity.
1:06:27
It's like, look, why is there evil in the world? Because we wouldn't know what
1:06:30
good was without it. Yeah. You know, it is as simple as that, I think,
1:06:33
at times. And communism would strip us of all that. Yeah.
1:06:37
Would you ever have a Thomas Edison or a Henry Ford
1:06:41
or an Andrew Carnegie outside of the capitalist
1:06:45
system? Yep. In other words, if when you're on a collective
1:06:48
farm and you're going to get paid the same
1:06:51
amount of gruel or
1:06:55
clothing or however you're being compensated is exactly the
1:06:59
same as the guy who just slouched during the
1:07:03
day, he only picked maybe 2 baskets
1:07:07
of the produce and you picked 20. Yep. You're both going
1:07:10
to get paid the same. It's like, so extra work and effort is not
1:07:14
rewarded. Remember the movie 1984 back in the '80s? Sure.
1:07:18
Yeah. The cinematic color,
1:07:22
it was turned down a little bit. Everything just looked gray. That's right. The
1:07:26
one with William Hurt in it. Yes. Yeah, yeah.
1:07:29
Everything just looked gray. Yeah. Not William Hurt. Not William Hurt. It was, uh,
1:07:34
Richard Burton was in it, uh, but the guy playing Winston was
1:07:38
the guy in, um, he was the guy in those,
1:07:42
um, gosh, the Sigourney Weaver movies, the, the
1:07:46
where the alien was on board the spaceship. What is his name? Oh,
1:07:49
now we got— but at any rate, yes, during the '80s there was that, and
1:07:53
it was Very, very, yeah,
1:07:57
drab. Yeah. And that's what, I think that's what his,
1:08:01
John Hurt is who you're looking for. Yeah. And
1:08:04
that's what Rubio was saying. He's like, you're creating this
1:08:08
miserably boring world and offering it as utopia. So
1:08:12
forget for a second that it's never worked. Forget for a second that it's killed
1:08:14
hundreds of millions of people. Forget for a second that you are not going to
1:08:18
be able to usher it in. Sure. You're creating, even in its best,
1:08:22
a boring, miserable, nonsensical world that is
1:08:26
no fun to live in. And it was— I, I was, you know, I, I
1:08:29
listen to these political speeches all the time. Rubio's coming out now like, he's my
1:08:32
man. Well, and you know what's interesting? We were just talking about Lindsey
1:08:36
Graham. They were both sons
1:08:40
of bartenders. Isn't that interesting? They both came from pretty
1:08:45
Bad poverty situations. Rubio's father was a
1:08:48
bartender. Lindsey Graham's father and mother died early.
1:08:53
And I think at— when he was
1:08:56
basically like 17 years old, uh,
1:09:00
when he got into college, he offered to his sister to drop
1:09:04
out, and he formally adopted her, um, to
1:09:08
be her guardian. And now she has replaced him.
1:09:12
succeeded him in the Senate, uh, at least
1:09:15
until the next election. So, you know, if you look at
1:09:19
Trump's, you know, the,
1:09:23
the, the, the people around him, there's this
1:09:26
accusation that he's surrounded by millionaires and billionaires.
1:09:30
But if you look at like Katherine Levitt, his press secretary,
1:09:34
or you look at J.D. Vance, or you look at Rubio. You look at
1:09:38
a lot of these people and they did not come from money in any
1:09:42
way, shape, or form. They came from Appalachia. Uh, that—
1:09:46
probably goofing her name up, but Miss Levitt worked at
1:09:49
an ice cream store and her next job was press secretary.
1:09:54
It's, uh, pretty remarkable because, because they've been there,
1:09:57
they've done that, they've got experience behind them, and they didn't just get plucked out.
1:10:01
So anyway, with all its evils, we'll start— well, and where we started— You wouldn't
1:10:04
do that in a communist country. No, you would not. Stalin was a bank
1:10:08
robber. And again, you would say, look, communist— like the Carnegies, these people you're
1:10:12
talking to, they have these huge egos, they were narcissists, they were greedy, they were
1:10:16
all these human flaws. Yet the system that we created
1:10:20
lets us bring out hope— not always, hopefully bring
1:10:23
out the best of those flaws while keeping them in check at the same time,
1:10:26
because there's other people doing the same thing. That's the beauty of competition. Well, the
1:10:29
commies in the Senate, you know, like Elizabeth Warren and
1:10:33
Bernie and people like that are worth tens. Oh
1:10:37
yeah. And in some cases hundreds. Apocrypha. A million. Lindsey Graham
1:10:41
died with— his estate is valued at $1.6
1:10:44
million. I know guys,
1:10:48
I know guys driving trucks whose estates are bigger than that.
1:10:52
That tells me Lindsey Graham did not profit from insider
1:10:56
knowledge. He didn't do that. Maybe he could have, but he chose not to.
1:11:00
And he lived a very modest lifestyle. So, um,
1:11:03
you know, I didn't agree. I really didn't agree with him on his immigration
1:11:07
policies. But, um, there's no question that he
1:11:11
was a true and faithful American. And we can
1:11:15
disagree with people like that, or John Fetterman. Uh,
1:11:19
we can disagree with honest people who love their country on the other side.
1:11:23
Yep, indeed. All right. Well, with that, we're gonna wrap it up. commonsenseohioshow.com
1:11:27
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