We are now in the post-elections "blues" (or the "reds") depending on who and what you voted for in the mid-term elections.

What we cover...

Overview of the country's election results, especially on states under the microscope (Texas, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania).

Inflation? Cost of living increases? But in Central Ohio, all the school levies pass.

Divided federal government DOES work. Here's how.

Voter ID. None is needed in Michigan or North Carolina, for example. Why not?

Election interference from Russia and China. Proven.

No loitering or congregating near polling places. Voters, get over yourself if you don't know the rules, and quit hassling those that do.

Why aren't candidates answering questions posed to them for the League of Women Voters? And is it a missed opportunity to win a few votes?

Straight ticket voting pros (are there?) and cons (there are many). Exercise your right to vote. (Exercise: the act of putting into use, action, or practice the exercise of power)

Brett: You hear that? Big collective exhale?

Norm: Yeah.

Steve: Although, um, it was more of a red trickle. True, true. Uh, and still, uh, way up in here, we don't even know what kind of trickle it is. Might just be a trickling little stream that dives into the forest of hell. Or, uh, perhaps there'll be some light, uh, at the end of the tunnel. I mean, maybe at least, uh, speaking for the good of the world that we can at least split up the House in the Senate. That would be good, uh, no matter what party you're in, if you think that it's great when one party has total control, even if it's your own party. Well, the country seems to flourish the most when, uh, I can't get anything done because I can't spend your money on crap that you don't like, it's.

Brett: More fun to watch, too.

Steve: All right, so anyway, this is common sense Ohio. We are here providing common sense from Ohio and the election is a great springboard for Common Sense Ohio. What the heck is common sense, Ohio? Well, I mean, we look at stories like the election or other newsworthy events or sometimes not so newsworthy events like, uh, uh, well, whatever, you pick it. And, um, we use it as a platform to discuss the broader scope of the country because as Ohio goes, so does the country as the heart of the country goes. Or you know what I'm saying. So here we are right from the middle norm. Uh, you're not here. I don't know where you are, but you're not here at the roundtable.

Norm: I have been, uh, dispatched as a field agent for Common Sense Ohio down south. Uh, so I'm deep in the heart of Texas? Yeah.

Steve: Do they have common sense down there? I mean, spread the gospel, man. We're speaking the truth.

Norm: They threw Beto, uh, O'Rourke battle the fake Mexican who's really an Irishman, uh, pandering to Brown, uh, in the most racist way possible trying to present himself as some kind of diverse candidate, uh, as his skin color matters. The Texas voters wisely, like the voters in Florida saw, passed all this, um, ridiculous division politics of, uh, identity politics and politics about, uh, that there's some kind of big, massive, i, uh, don't know, fascist, uh, we got to protect democracy, whatever that means. I mean, I don't even know what the hell they're talking about. Somebody will have to tell me, uh, what Republican tenant, uh, or conservative tenant has ever proposed any kind of threat to democracy. But anyway, Texas voters saw through all that bull cake and reelected Governor Abbott to a third term. Governor Abbott, who, by the way, is, um, uh, impaired physically, uh, who has a disability. So all those ablest, uh, horrible Republicans who are ableist, uh, when they elected a fella in a wheelchair of a bitch, I guess they're not as, uh, horrible and judgmental as, uh, the news media would tell us that they are. That's? A report from Tech. And, uh, the whole, uh, uh, group of conservatives also won. The Attorney General, the lieutenant, Governor, they're all reelected. Texas is solid. Uh, uh, no change down here, I'll tell you that. Uh, uh, uh, it was a wave election in Florida. It was a wave election in Texas. Uh, JD. Vance won by seven points. Uh, even though the news media tried to make it sound like it was close all night, it was not close. He soundly defeated. Tim Ryan, who faked his way through the campaign as some kind of middle of the road Democrat, which he is not. And so, uh, even an elected Democrat in Hamilton County, Ohio, a former political foe of my own father, uh, a, uh, former DJ, introduced the Beatles at Crosley Field. A politician named Dusty Rhodes, emily county auditor who endorsed JD. Vance as a current Democrat office holder, called out Tim Ryan as a phony, a fake, and not, um, representing the true interests of the people of Ohio. Hey, man, from my perspective, there's a few oddities going on. Um, like federman. I can't imagine that they re elected young Frankenstein or not reelected, but they put a guy who is totally nonfunctional, uh, into office over Dr. Oz. Go figure. But, um, I'm pretty happy today, fellas, to be honest with you.

Brett: I can hear you. His voice.

Steve: Yeah, I can tell you. Here's a couple of comments about this. First of all, the identity, it's like you're right, the ablest and all this other nonsense here's what I found about the identity, political, uh, bent, is that if, uh, the person with whom they are trying to identify happens to agree with their ideology, whatever it is, then the identity matters. But as soon as they disagree, the identity doesn't matter. So, um, if you happen to have a vagina and you agree, then that's awesome. But if you have a vagina and you don't agree, well, that's not so awesome. And same with skin color and maybe disabilities, and maybe any other thing that might give you some reason to claim victimhood. But, um, I, uh, think that's been exposed. And I think you're right. As I watched this, uh, last night unfold good candidates, uh, on the Republican side, the good candidates won and the questionable ones didn't. Look, I think Herschel Walker is what he is down in Georgia. Um, but he wasn't a great candidate, and he had a lot of, uh, mud, uh, come at him there at the end. I think Warnock is a reprehensible candidate, but, uh, it would have taken good candidates to win this thing. And same with, um, dr. Oz. I don't know how that happens. There's going to be cries of election, uh, fraud or whatever. But, um, I think some of that might be explainable by the fact that they have such early voting uh, that some of, like that last debate of federal where he just appeared almost incomprehensible, uh, people had already cast their votes. And uh, once cast, you can't uncast, uh, the line was tangled too deeply and it couldn't be undone. Um, so look, I guess from my perspective, JD. Vance was a good candidate. Anyone? And uh, the real issue is will the Republicans take the House? And uh, it looks like that is still likely to happen. Um, but uh, the Senate is up in the air. I think there's like four seats up in the air and it's a pretty even split. And even Herschel Walker, I think, doesn't that end up in a runoff down there? That nobody gets 50%?

Norm: Yeah, it looks like neither Warnock, who's at like 49 something and uh, Herschel is at 48 something. It looks like neither one of them are going to get 50%, in which case there'll be a runoff. And uh, then the early voting won't count anymore. It'll be a fresh decision on uh, which gentleman, uh, which person is um, more uh, attractive to Georgia voters.

Brett: And you know, that opens the can of worms of voter fatigue. It's like, okay, so they have to go through this all again. Why don't they just stop the early stuff and do it? You know what, I agree.

Steve: Uh, and it's early voting.

Brett: So some people are just going to tap out going, I'm not doing this.

Brett: True. Yeah.

Norm: Go ahead.

Brett: Brett, do you thought yeah, I was.

Norm: Just going to also highlight uh, that uh, the fascist, uh, COVID dictators, uh, across the country, many of them, got reelected. And it's staggering to me, for example, that Gretchen Whitmer uh, was reelected, and Kathy Hoshchel, who was never elected, who was just the lieutenant governor, who, uh, assumed office after Cuomo resigned, that she got elected. And it just blows me away, because you would think these restauranteurs and the workers in small business and, you know, uh, gosh even people that wanted to go fishing or boating with their, uh, outboard engines up, uh, in michigan, the sportsmen of Michigan. You would think that these people would remember what happened during those two horrible years of COVID shutdowns where, you know, you could go to Walmart, order from Amazon, but basically they shut everything else down and people were thrown out of jobs if they didn't get the backs. They got tossed out of the military. And it's just like people forgot that Whitmer and Hoshell and these dictator governors, uh, did, uh, all this to them. It's like they forgot it. And I'm blown away that Whitmer got reelected. In particular up in Michigan. To me, I'm going to have to see the, uh, autopsy, uh, on that, uh, particular election to try to wrap my head around what is wrong with the Michigan electorate. Uh, I guess Ohio State fans would have a lot to say about that, but I'm not as biased, uh, with Ohio State ism. But it is kind of funny to me that all those people in Michigan bitched and bitched about Gretchen Whitmer, and, uh, yet when they had the chance to throw her ass out, they did not do it.

Brett: Oh, they didn't do it. I didn't hear a whole lot against what DeWine did at the very beginning either.

Steve: That was not talked about except from.

Norm: Republicans bitched about it.

Steve: The problem is that Dwine was a Republican. That was the problem. Given the, uh, alternatives, what do you do now? Everybody here knows what they should have done. And that's right. My name down.

Norm: That's right. Um, three of us voted for Steve Palmer.

Steve: Actually, I think I picked up a couple of others, too. My wife voted for me. And, um, maybe.

Brett: I was telling Steve I've never done a write in, and I'm doing a write in this time just to kind of experience that right in. So I'd love to see the final tally of all the ride ins. That would be great. Yeah, it's the guy you came in.

Steve: And I'm sure I'm not the only one with those ideas, but, uh, it's like Mayor, uh, Goldie Wilson and Back to the Future. It's like mayor, governor. I like that idea. I think, uh, maybe, uh, next time around, it'd be my turn. I'm going to go, although I go for governor. Norm, m. Why not? Shoot big? This would be mr. Palmer goes to Washington.

Brett: There you go. Exactly.

Steve: Jimmy Stewart. I'll take over.

Brett: I noticed and this is more of on a micro local level, but we hear all about inflation and the cost of living going up, but every school levy in Franklin county, central Ohio, passed every one of them. Everything you had money attached passed. So I'm not saying we're not feeling the pain. I don't mean that. But it's one of those so how much pain are we feeling that we're passing school lobbies? Or is it just that wave of its time? Schools look like crap. We got to do it. I don't know.

Steve: I think everyone think there is a disassociation. I think the school levies are really the suburban mothers that are voting for that stuff. And, um, I think there is a gross disassociation. Um, and maybe, uh, we can talk about why, but I think people disassociate what's going on with reality and why it's happening. And I mean, inflation, I mean, cost of living. I mean, I hear it all the time, all these price gougers, and I'm thinking, come on. Because five years ago, they weren't gouging prices. Three years ago, there wasn't price gouging going on. And now all of a sudden, you think they just come out of the woodwork and start raising prices for no reason. There are reasons. And, um, thomas Soul, or, um, um what's his name, norm, the god king of, um, uh, melton Freeman. Yeah. As they used to say, it's like inflation is made in one place. That's Washington, DC. You can't make it anywhere else. The only people responsible for inflation are politicians in DC. And that's because they print money and they give it away. And it's like anything if we all have money and everybody's got the same amount, and you keep making more, then it takes more, it has less value. It's very commonsensical here in common Sense, Ohio. Um, but I don't think people associate that. They're thinking, well, there's price gouging going on. And this is where I blame blame is not the right word. Attribute that maybe to the media, more so, uh, and the spin doctors on behalf of the party in charge, because they can stand up and say it's price gouging all they want, but it wasn't price gouging under the former regime. And there's a very obvious argument in response. And frankly, norm, I didn't hear it. I didn't really hear the republican side screaming about this as much as maybe I thought I would. It's like, wait a minute, there's one reason we have inflation. Because these jackasses printed money and gave it away. And, uh, uh, to me, it's so obvious, but nobody wanted to hear it. They're blaming the chicken farms, they're blaming the oil people, they're blaming everybody else except for their own stupid policies.

Brett: Well, and we're looking at ourselves. Inflation is across the world, though, too.

Steve: Everybody did the same thing. They gave money away, and it's pegged to the dollar.

Brett: Right? Exactly. So it's not just us, but the naval gazing. Uh, everybody's hit with inflation. Everybody's paying more for everything.

Brett: Right, exactly.

Norm: Yeah. Well, uh, you remember Elizabeth Warren blamed meat prices on pig farmers and, uh, cattle ranchers. Uh, they rolled out of bedstomp one day, and a guy in Colorado told his buddy in Kansas and said, hey, you know what? Let's just raise the price of a side of beach. Let's all conspire to do that. No, you dumbasses. What you did is you jacked up the cost of energy the day Biden took office. And now diesel cost more, feed cost more, fertilizer cost more. I, uh, heard Lawrence Kudlow, the, uh, economist, uh, talking about everything from eye glasses, uh, to, uh, MRI machines. All of it uses oilbased products in the construction or in the chemistry of producing those products. And people are like, Mystified, I just don't know how dumb the American people are if they can't understand that when you jack up energy and when you print money, those two big things, which Biden did his package last year, it added $5 trillion, 5 trillion to the US. Debt in spending. And then on top of that, he cancels the pipeline. He won't do any more federal leases. He, uh, is trying to restrict fracking and drilling. And yet John Federman in Pennsylvania, where they frack, where they drill, where they coal mine, where they get natural gas those idiot people in Pennsylvania elect John Federman. Don't they understand there's a direct link between their future jobs in Pennsylvania in the energy sector, and lowering inflation? If they get conservative candidates in there now, what's going to be interesting, guys, is what the stock market does with all this news today. Does the stock market say, we like divided government, in which case it will go up? Uh, or does the stock market go, oh, crap, we're in for more high energy, high sustained energy prices because Joe Biden didn't get slapped down as hard as we had hoped? Yeah.

Brett: Uh, historically, historically, stocks are going to go up. Uh, from what I've heard, they'll go down that third quarter prior to elections. We'll start to see it go up, I think just because the unknown is now known. But you're right. I'm a fear of that, too, Norm. But, uh, from what I'm seeing and hearing historically, we'll probably see it go up. No matter what. It'll get better.

Steve: I think it's hope. It's the uncertainty that I think drives that stock, uh, market fear.

Brett: Fear drives stock market.

Steve: And once you have some certainty, it will go up. It even happened after Biden got elected. There's a quick spike. Now, it quickly plummeted, sure. But, um, there was a brief spike. And Norm, I love it when there is divided government. Nothing can get done. I absolutely love it. Uh, you would say, why do I love it? It's because the government sucks at almost everything it tries to do. And maybe, uh, you and I disagree a little bit on this, but it's like I don't want the government trying to fix everything. In fact, I think all they're trying to do is fix the crap that they created. And when they can't do it, when they don't have power to do it, things, uh, tend to correct. I mean, it's like a ship in the current and it wants to go in a certain direction. But these lunatics try to tap it off into a different direction and then they have to try to fix it and all they do is keep adding more cuts to the angle and it gets worse and worse and worse and worse.

Norm: Well, I think amongst the three of us, I'm probably the most, uh, strict constitutionalist. I, uh, could be wrong, but dude, I am anything but a big government guy. The government can't do jack shit. Uh, like Ronald Reagan said, government is not the solution. Government is the problem. That's my view of government. I'm a Reagan conservative. Government is the problem. The government, meaning the federal government just to start with that needs to do as little as is described in the Constitution. Very strictly. Its powers are very, very limited. We need to go back to that. And that's part of what I tell my, uh, friends, people I love, everybody, but that's what I tell the people that are screaming and yelling and getting hysterical about the Dobbs decision. For example, the current Supreme Court took a step to restrain and limit the purview of federalism and render back to the states their power to pass legislation about whatever issue it is abortion or marriage or whatever it is, uh, that, you know, Clarence Thomas is saying. Basically, Dobbs is just a little preview of maybe what's to come and things like affirmative action, etc. I could not be more delighted with that. If Michigan like Michigan just did, if Michigan wants to be a death cult state where women are happily going to clinics they have scissors stabbed through the skull of a fetus. If that's what they think is a good time and they think that's moral, well, then good for Michigan. Their voters just went and did that. They enshrined row into Michigan law. Well, yeehaw for Michigan. But that's what the Dobbs decision did. I am a very, very limited federal, uh, government guy. Get them the hell out of our lives and our rights and let the states, uh, be those individual laboratories. And, uh, in Michigan also did another ridiculous thing, and God bless them if they want to do it. They struck down the election requirement for any kind of photo ID forever more and pass the constitutional amendment as long as it stands in Michigan, that you can merely sign an affidavit that says, oh, yes, I hereby sign an affidavit that I am Norm Murdoch or I'm Steve Palmer or Brett Johnson. I'm hereby, I'm signing an affidavit that I really am this person. And on that basis, they will accept you as a voter. Now, if they want to do that insanity in Michigan, God bless them, but I don't want that in Ohio. Man yeah.

Brett: Ah, I didn't realize North Carolina basically does the same thing, too. No photo ID, which is mind boggling. It's such a simple mindful. It's a simple lever to control fraud.

Steve: It's simple. Yeah, it seems so. Uh, like, even a close friend of mine said, this is very racist to require voter ID. It's very racist to suggest that somebody of a certain color is not able to go get a damn ID. And if you've got a real problem with it, then spend all these billions of dollars not on stupid government programs and issue everybody a freaking ID. All you got to do is go down and say, I want my voter ID. Here you go, it's free. Sign a document.

Norm: Franklin rose. It's free. In Ohio, you get a voter ID, it's free. It costs nothing. There is no penalty for poor people to get a voter ID. Yeah.

Steve: Uh, it's absurd. It is, it is a mechanism. And this is what I don't like. And somehow it works. It seems to like if you suggest voter ID to have a fair election, they say, you're racist. And I'm like, well, no, I'm not racist. I just think it makes sense to have everybody or give everybody an idea and make them identify themselves. I did it. Uh uh. I have plenty of minority friends. And if I went and asked them, hey, man, are you smart enough or rich enough to go get an idea? They would look at me like, what.

Brett: Are you talking about?

Steve: Gas? Gas. I've represented clients who are white and dirt poor. They have an identification. I've represented clients who are black and dirt poor and they have identification. The people that don't have IDs are the people, uh, who shouldn't. Right.

Brett: Well, they've avoided it for some reason. Exactly.

Steve: Right.

Norm: They just released a federal judge just ordered the release from prison. From jail. I say prison because to me, they're interchangeable. You lose your freedom. I don't know if it matters that it says jail or prison over your door. You can't go out of your cell, but the federal judge just let the two top officials and True the Vote, uh, Ashley and Phillips, they were just released from federal detention, US. Marshals, uh, because they would not give a trial the source for, uh, the inside information on Connect. Connect has been prosecuted by the Democrat La District Attorney, who called it the largest voter fraud release, uh, of data in US. History, where that company, which is headed by a guy who embezzled millions, uh, of dollars out of that company, that company sued the True the Vote people in federal court. They wouldn't disgorge their source of the inside information, the whistleblower at Connect and they were allowed now out of jail. And the reason is because La county and the federal government that is going after, uh, the Connection is the data breach in La with Connect and all this voter information and voter worker, poll worker information was all discouraged to the chaikoms. So there really is election interference. It was proven the True the Vote people who claimed Connect was run by the Communist Chinese Party. It's now been proven as a fact what they said is true. And so you want the federal judge was going to keep those people in prison. He pretty much the appeals circuit pretty much had, uh, to let him out of jail because it's contradictory to say, on one hand, you got to give us the source, but on the other hand, the La District Attorney and the federal government are going after these people. So I've been reading all morning about election deniers and The Guardian, even conservative outlets like The Guardian and, uh, National Review and all of these, uh, putative, even Fox News calls anybody who questions the integrity of our elections an election denier. Hey, I'm not an election denier, I'm an election skeptic. Let's use that word. I think there's a lot of questions to be answered. And this idea that the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated our election system has just now been proven by True the Vote.

Brett: Well, uh, just a couple of days ago, Russia's proposal admitted interfering with US. Elections. He came right out and said, I did it, we did it, and we're doing it, and we're doing it.

Steve: It's always like this, having done criminal defense work now for years, and more important, having been a parent, when you accuse somebody of something and you know you got them, the off used defense, uh, mechanism is come back over the top and act like, act horrified that you would even make such a ridiculous allegation. How dare you accuse me of, uh, such conduct. So if you follow your spouse to their paramour's house and they're cheating, and, uh, then they accuse you of following them instead of, uh, defending the fact that they're cheating, this is a very normal, yet illogical reaction. So to say, look, let's be pessimistic about the validity of some of these elections. And then they say, well, you're just an election denier. Well, what the hell does that mean? I'm not denying any election. That's why I know it's fair. If you're going to hide in the shadows of this thing, it's just going to fester. Uh, and then on the heels of the Russian hoax, after four, three and a half years or three years of this Russia hoax, uh, where they denied the election results and blamed Russian interference for trump's election, they turn around and have the gall to say, uh, anybody who possibly questions the election going the other way is a denier. And then I heard even biden, we have a voter integrity at stake at the ballot. Well, only if they lose. Because if they win, then there's nothing wrong with a vote.

Brett: Um, and that comment goes both ways, it seems. Of course, it's just like, you got to be kidding me. We're fighting the wrong enemy here in regards to, uh, not trusting ourselves. We need to look outside the country's borders at times and going, you know what? There's some interference outside. It may not be red or blue parties. It's outside interference. It's messing with us, too.

Steve: I would wonder why anybody in either party would ever just accept as a foregone conclusion, elections are never stolen. Who would accept that as a foregone conclusion? Because as soon as you accept that, you take your guard down and you get punched in the nose. Um, you have to be vigilant about this. So if one side I mean, to me this is open and obvious. If one side is claiming the other cheated, the resolution to that is open the books, do a complete and thorough investigation and let it go down. But if the side being accused instead says, no, you can't accuse me, you're just an election denier and you're threatening democracy by even questioning whether this election was valid, it just rings a defense mechanism and, uh, it causes the problem to fester. Now, if you put sunshine on it with an open and clean, uh, investigation and it comes back snake eyes that there was no problems, then at least shuts everybody up. It's like you prove everybody in the room that these lunatics are wrong and then you can move on. But if you refuse to even allow entrance to prove the election was valid, then all you're doing is validating the claims that it was invalid.

Brett: But we don't get a spotlight. We don't get a spotlight on when the truth is finally out there, though, that's the problem. We'll hear all day long media coverage of, uh, pointing fingers, pointing fingers, pointing fingers. And then when it's finally resolved that there was or wasn't anything wrong with that election cycle, uh, or dog catch or whatever, you never hear the results.

Steve: You never do.

Norm: Yeah, that's what, uh, Brett Kavanaugh basically said, or Clarence Thomas after basically their accusers, Anita Hill, or that Daffy lady from California that couldn't remember what. Party she was at, what year, whose house it was, or what the boys were involved. She just was pretty sure Brett Kavanaugh came in and wanted to do something at a party. Basically, nothing was proven. It was just casting aspersions on both men. Where do they go to get their reputation back? Where is the retraction of all of these, uh, of all of these claims? Where is the truth, as you said, Brett? When does that get published? Well tell you where. On page 31 of Section C of the New York Times at the bottom of the page, after, uh, two and a half years of blaring headlines that, uh, Trump is an agent for Putin, or whatever the current live story is, then the retraction oh, gosh, look, John Durham actually proved that, uh, Hillary was the person behind the fraud. Uh, Hillary was the one who got the dossier written up and financed it. And it was the FBI that had the secondary source on their payroll supplying the information. Uh, yeah. So we'll put that retraction on page 31 at the bottom of Section C. Right? Exactly.

Steve: You're wrong. You're 100% wrong. It's not going to appear anywhere. And it hasn't appeared anywhere in The New York Times. Um, maybe the digital version.

Brett: That's about it.

Norm: Exactly. Well, guys, as I've pointed out in previous shows and have given examples, speaking of the digital version, the archives, the Washington Post and The New York Times will go back to articles they've written 510 years ago and revised them as if the reporters had never said those things.

Steve: That's correct. That's been proven.

Steve: And worse yet, I think we talked about this. I don't know if we were on the air talking about this, but we did talk about it. Brett, you were saying now that they have voice recognition software that will actually duplicate people's voices and, um, cause them to say, like, people can fraudulently, uh, forge, uh, a voice, for lack of a better way to put it, and make it sound like somebody said something. So, I mean, what we're saying right here, you would like to think, is indelibly inked on the little graph that's printing as we're recording, but it's not. It can be modified, too.

Norm: We all saw the final installment of the star wars, uh, franchise where they had a dead Carrie Fisher speaking and acting in a movie. She had been dead for a year. The technology exists to have to simulate whoever you want to simulate, uh, speaking even, uh, not only voice, but they're, uh, in, um, animation, or whatever you would call it, uh, computer graphics. Yeah. CGI. Uh, one other thing that occurs to me now, this has been buried by the election, so pivoting just a little bit, but it has to do a little bit with the psychology of identity politics and how we're a lot more honest, the, uh, three of us, about our position, about our intellectual position. And it goes to show, I don't care if you're Swedish, Mexican, Ecuadorian, uh, or Polish. Uh, if you're an illegal immigrant, you shouldn't be here. Okay? And the most beautiful recent case is this attacker who did this horrible hammering on Paul Pelosi, okay? He's a Canadian. He's a white dude. He's been here 22 years. Okay? Overstate his visa. Right. In California now, city of San Francisco, as of a couple of days ago. The prosecutor there said, oh, no, we are not going to cooperate with Ice or the federal government and in any way participating in identifying him or transferring custody of this guy. When the trial, the Paul Pelosi, uh, assault trial, when that's over with, we're not going to give this guy to the federal government for him to be extradited back to Canada to be deported. We're not going to participate in that because we're a sanctuary, uh, city. Okay? Ah, really? You're a sanctuary? I thought that was just for brown people. You're a sanctuary city for white Canadian men. Interesting. So it just goes to show you, uh, we are consistent. I don't give a rat ass about your race, your gender, who you want to sleep with. None of that matters if you're illegal. Get the hell out.

Brett: Interesting. Wow. Yeah. I hadn't heard that. That's interesting.

Norm: Oh, yeah. He's an illegal immigrant. And this is where the tables are turned on the Pelosi family, because Nancy's been running around saying, uh, about, uh, isn't it wonderful that we're a sanctuary state, sanctuary city, sanctuary this, sanctuary that. And then her husband has a shit beat out of him by an illegal immigrant in his own house, in his underwear.

Brett: Which is an interesting it is amazing what comes back to bite in the ass. Yeah. Wow.

Norm: Yeah. Uh, right?

Steve: Yeah, she's sharp. I know her very well.

Brett: Yeah, she was a client of mine when I was selling radio. She is. That changed. A typical democratic voter. She usually does, but she but she, uh, doesn't go the whole blue, and, you know, everything's got to be d.

Steve: She's a good voter.

Brett: She reads. She reads, and we both take a look at it. Laura was the only one who was opposing her that wrote down answers, and she got a vote. She got a vote because of that. Take the damn time to fill out and answer those questions. It looks moronic when you don't.

Steve: Yeah, I agree, but I don't think that we have voters now, like your wife who pay attention to any of it.

Brett: It's possible. I don't know, though.

Steve: I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think people do. I think I think, uh, people go down the party lines and, you know, judges the judicial elections are a particular pet peeve of mine.

Brett: Yeah.

Steve: Just because you have an r next to your name or d next to your name, doesn't make you a qualified candidate to be a judge. And what we have is a bunch of people getting elected to the bench who don't know what they're doing or have very little experience, or maybe the person against whom they're running is far more qualified and would be a better judge, and it just gets rug swept. Nobody cares.

Brett: Would those races be better if we didn't have the rs and the DS for judges?

Steve: I think that judges should run independent. I really do. I've always thought that.

Brett: I don't understand that the supreme court is not an RNA d. Not the US.

Steve: Supreme court. Yeah, but not the US.

Brett: I guess I don't understand judges aligning.

Steve: With parties, and this year, other than money this year, there was a rule that it had to actually be designated. Usually it just doesn't show up, but now it's actually out there. You can go get the information, and you're, uh, running as an RRD. And I, uh, had Keith McGrath m in here on my other podcast lawyer, uh, talk last week, and he was an incumbent in the 10th district court of appeals. I've known Keith now for coming up against i, uh, forget who it was, but he lost. I, um, uh, had a minute talking about it. I've known Keith for 25 years, and I buttoned heads with him because he was a prosecutor. We've had big cases against each other. We had little cases against each other. We disagreed at times. We, um, maybe even had coarse, uh, words or harsh words at times. But he's always been professionally excellent at what he does. And, uh, he is an extremely well qualified court, uh, of appeals judge. And, uh, I'm not saying whoever was running against him isn't qualified. I just know Keith. And he didn't get a shake because he had right next to his name. It's like you run at them and that's it. Um, now, maybe the old way would have been we used to say back in the 90s, if you have the right name to get elected. So McGrath would have been a shoe in because it sounds sort of Irish.

Brett: It still plays that way. If you got the last name DeWine, all of a sudden you get the votes.

Steve: You get the votes. But McGrath and, um O'Donnell. Both lost.

Brett: Amazing. Yeah, that is me, because I got.

Steve: The wrong letter, right?

Norm: I can.

Brett: It's amazing. What? These people will just go off the deep end.

Norm: In fact, you could take a human being in with you to assist you.

Brett: Sure you can. Exactly. And I saw that happen too. My daughter and I get in. Uh, the Gladiator drive up to her, and I'm, uh, sure she was expecting me rolling down the window in a Jeep. Gladiator probably going to read her the right act too. And I said, did you have to put up with that crap all day? And she says, no, actually, people's been pretty nice today, and that kind of stuff. I've had a nice conversation with her. And she says, you know what, I really appreciate you stopping and talking to me. This made my day. Folks don't know the rules. Don't be an asshole. Walking up to these people that are where they need to be, can be, and are allowed to be. Come on.

Norm: Yeah, there was a poll worker. Uh, gosh, what state was it? I want to say Wisconsin. Maybe Michigan. I can't remember. It was story, I don't know, three, four days ago. Uh, where, uh, they allow early voting. And a person went in to vote and, um, they noted that the poll worker, uh, a particular poll worker, uh, was advising people how to vote, meaning who to vote for. And, um, it had taken an elderly person, uh, who asked basically about the mechanics of the machine punch card or was it electronic or how it worked, whatever it was. And a person in this poll worker had gone over and people overheard her, uh, uh, sort of trying to force this person. And I couldn't believe that there was this device or this capability in this state, whatever state it was. But it goes to your point, Brett, that, uh, people hand out information on how to vote a straight party ticket. But in this particular state, whether it was Michigan or Wisconsin, there is the option to make it convenient for straight party voting, where you can just punch one hole and every Democrat or every Republican, depending on which, uh punch, uh, you make or which click you click, it will then do the entire ballot voting for you on the basis of party affiliation, which I think is outrageous. That's outrageous.

Brett: Talk about dumbing down our society. Wow.

Norm: Right. So somebody can go in half tippled, uh, slammed down three or four bruskies and can go in there and go, I don't really give a crap. I'm just here to do whatever the union told me to do, or I'm just here to do whatever the Pac told me to do or whoever told him somebody at the nursing home. And they're in and out in 1 second because all they got to do is punch this hole at the top of the ballot. I'm voting for all Republicans, or I'm voting for all Democrats. That's crazy. That goes to Steve's point. And your point, Brett, that people need to use their minds, do a little research, uh, do some reading. They need to become familiar with this, uh, Judge Nezbit that you just mentioned, uh, or whoever it is. There needs to be a little bit of work. I mean, the electorate just can't be that lazy. And I can't believe that officials in a given state have made it that dumb, you know, have dumbed down the process to the point that somebody can vote a straight ticket with, uh, one stroke of a pen. That's crazy.

Steve: Yeah. This makes me think of a broader question. And if you go back to, um, sort of the social contract, even with Hobbs and Lock and some of these old philosophers about it what is the role of our citizenship in the government versus what is the role of the government to the citizens? We have this agreement where we have, uh, I guess voluntarily given up certain control of our freedom and given it to the government. There's a line there, I think, that is getting crossed. That is, our obligations as people having given this power to the government with our freedom. We have to exercise it wisely. And I think we're not. This is a description of what, uh, you guys are describing is a perfect example. It's like we are just doing what we're told to do. We're being lemmings. Ah, this is, uh, Hobbs to a T, right? We have to give control of our lives to the government to protect us and uh, keep us safe. And we have to trust that the government is going to do what's right for us and it has our best interest in mind. Uh, and it's all nonsense. Because as we all know, the government is made up of people just like us. And they're no better, no worse on any given day, I suppose. So some may be better, some may be worse. But it's certainly not all one way. And uh, when I see a guy or a gal, uh, who holds an office, my immediate reaction is anything but. This person knows a lot and they're awesome. And I'm just going to let them tell me what to do for the rest of my life. Because they've been elected magically. They have this vested authority. We got rid of kings and queens for this reason. Uh, there is no one person better than the other. And to say that we should just do what they're telling us to do is lunacy. And I saw it during COVID and it blew me away. It blew me away. I had very close friends down here on the microphone saying, well, I just trusted that the government's got my best interest in mind. Bullshit. Anything bud.

Norm: Wow.

Steve: Anything but wow.

Brett: The phrase exercise, you're right. Hit me when you said that. And I had I'm going to be doing this every episode, looking into definitions of words. But the meaning of exercise, the act of putting into use action or practice the exercise of power. That's the first definition of exercise. It's not just your right to do, you need to exercise that right.

Steve: Otherwise it goes away.

Brett: It goes away.

Steve: It's like your muscular system, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Brett: Right?

Steve: You don't use it, you lose it. And if you're a lemming for a straight ticket, punch one thing and go, here's what's funny.

Brett: You might as well proxy your vote then.

Steve: You might as well. And here's what I'll say at the same time. I don't mind that there's a rule or a policy or policy not period. I don't mind that that's permitted. I really don't. If somebody wants to come in and just do that, I don't have a problem with that because I don't want the government telling us we can't. But, uh, implicit in that is the obligation to be responsible and exercise your right, as you say. Because if you don't, somebody will do it for you. And it's not going to be somebody who, quote, has your best interest in mind because nobody has your best interest in mind. That's what family is for, right? Nobody elected has your best interest. I used to joke about it during the shutdowns norm. I would say, I would text this guy who say this to me all the time. I would say, uh, yeah, I got this appointment with the wine. It's coming up. Uh, I expect him any day now. And it'd be like, what for? So he can get to know me and know what my best interests are. Because so far I can tell, he has no idea who I am, what I need, and what my, uh, interests are. And, uh.

Norm: If I could just jump in just real quick and please hold your thought there, Steve. My problem with having a capability, having the facility to vote a straight party ticket is that that is not what an election is. An election is vote for individual candidates or for a ticket, uh, made up of either a president and a vice president, for example, or a governor and a lieutenant governor who run as a unit, as a team, and you vote for Mike Pence and Donald Trump, or you vote for, uh, Kamala and Joe. So you choose those two people as a ticket. I have no problem, obviously, when they're combined, uh, president, vice president, governor, lieutenant governor. My problem with a straight party ticket option on the ballot is that you're not voting for a candidate, you're voting for a party. And elections aren't about electing a party, they're about electing human beings. So if we provide a facility for you to just vote straight Tommy, straight Independent, straight Libertarian, straight Republican, straight Democrat, that's not what an election is. An election isn't the election of a party. It's the election of individual human beings to given named offices. And I'm sorry if you have to go through the rigmarole of, uh, five minutes worth of voting instead of 5 seconds worth of voting in order to.

Steve: Do that, but that's how I yeah, fair enough. But again, I think it's the obligation of the citizen to do otherwise. And you could say that if they don't have that checkbox, uh, option, then, uh, maybe fewer people would actually, uh, go vote the ticket. But I don't agree. I think what they'll do is the people who would take that option, they're going to go in with their literature and just do it anyway. I think the problem is deeper than that. I think the problem is one of how, uh, we the people look at the government and what the government's role is in our lives. And if we are lemmings to a party, uh, with all the warts of that party, or ignoring all the wards of that party, uh, all the time, that's a bigger problem. And I don't think it's one that the government can fix by changing the rules on not allowing a straight ticket voting like that. I think it's a deeper problem. I think, um, it's one that will have to be solved by hard knocks. Like every other problem, people are going to have to get stung. I don't ever look at the Republican Party and say, everybody that's ever been a Republican or currently is a Republican running is a good candidate. I think that's insanity. And, uh, anybody who does that in the Republican side is equally insane. And the same with the Dems. And I've told this story before where a close friend of mine once said, I'm only going to vote for Democrat judges because even if they're going to be terrible judges, because they might get an elected office later, and, uh, if, uh, a Republican is there, they're going to move up and be some policy against me. It was insane logic, and that's what we're reduced to. So I think norm look, I think what I'm saying is, I don't care if there's an option to do that. I care more about what is going on, what the trend is on people who would take that option, and I don't know how to fix that. I think getting rid of the option isn't going to solve the problem. The people who would exercise it will do it anyway in a different way. Um, and like I said, maybe it just has to play itself out and we have to fall on our faces. My kids didn't learn how to walk upstairs by me, uh, carrying them. They had to go up and fall down three stairs next time they got to four. And I'm not comparing voters to kids, but I think it might not be a bad analogy. I think it's a human issue the first time.

Norm: No, I think we have an increasingly infantile culture, frankly, we have a culture, uh, that now I saw it was 48% in favor, only 52%. Uh, this, uh, debt forgiveness thing in exit polling from the voters about how has Joe Biden done on student debt. And, uh, 48% of people in this country are for this debt forgiveness, which is nothing more than a gift, uh, to people who will be higher income earners, uh, at the expense of people who generally going to be lower income earners are subsidizing doctors and lawyers and economists and teachers and other people who will out earn them for the rest of their lives while they're plumbers and, uh, uh, bricklayers and roofers. I mean, it's just I mean, it boggles the mind. But the people want to be taken care of. They want to be babied. They don't want to be held to the terms of a loan agreement that they signed as an adult saying, I will pay back the government for this loan on these terms, which were all low interest loans anyway. But, uh, I think we have an infantile culture, and I think, uh, we are further and further slipping away from the idea that you raise yourself up by your own bootstraps. You show a man how to fish, and he could fish for a lifetime, as opposed to giving him a fish every day, and he just eats it. But he has no concept of how to take care of himself and how to be a man, how to be a woman, how to be an income earner. No, we're just going to give people stuff.

Brett: Um, yeah, I think the PPP loans for all the good and bad they did probably set a very bad precedent in regards to we never had to pay this back.

Norm: Right.

Brett: Again, there's pros and cons for everything that we do and have done, but it may or may not have helped us get through what we needed to do, but it set a precedent of, yeah, we'll give you the money. I mean, every loan that I took, I was totally expecting to have to pay that back. And that's why I signed on the dotted line, thinking, I will have to pay this back. I'm cool with that. When, uh, they wipe it away, it was kind of a weird moment.

Steve: It doesn't feel right.

Brett: It didn't feel right.

Steve: Here's the problem. And I'm going to lash out at Biden specifically on this because he made this speech a couple of days ago talking about how dare those people who took the covered money now complain about, um, forgiving debt and this and that, like you have no place because you took the money, as if to say you're being a ah hypocrite about it.

Brett: Everybody that signed that, they're signed that they would pay it back.

Steve: And beyond that, this is like this covered amnesty thing that's going on right now. We should give everybody a pass for all this stupid, awful, corrupt government policy that made people millionaires and people, uh, and decimated others, uh, because they were doing the best they could. But I tell you what, screw you. You weren't doing the best you could. You were doing what was in your financial best. And, uh, to the extent that that can be exposed, let's do it. Um, about this COVID. Uh, the distinction between what was going on with COVID is so obvious to me and so painfully obvious to me, that I can't believe that a guy like Biden would ever get up there and make this dumb analogy. Because the only reason anybody ever took a penny of government money as a loan for covered relief is because of the dumb government policy that stole their damn business. So it's not like I walked into my own crap pile and then put my hand out and said, help me. It is that. I was swimming along nicely with the current with a good business and five employees, and life was great. And, uh, all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out from me for no reason whatsoever. As it turns out, it did nothing. There was no benefit whatsoever to society. By shutting down my business, shutting down the bars, shutting down the restaurants, shutting down people's livelihood and taking everything they had built. Businesses that were family, businesses that were in, uh, operation for 100 years or 50 years are gone. People lost their lives not because of COVID but because of their devastated psychological health from losing their business. And I got to tell you, to say that those people are hypocrites because they don't want it to happen again is utter, complete horse shit. And I, uh, would say screw you, Mr. Biden. Screw you and everybody else who is in favor of nonsense. Screw you, too.

Norm: Right. I totally agree. And the General Accounting Office has further said that because it's so sloppy and, uh, the COVID TPP thing was so sloppy, the student debt forgiveness thing, uh, they were bragging. It takes less than five minutes to fill out the form online. They're bragging about how easy it is to get your money, uh, forgiven. My sons and I were discussing last night an engineer who now works for Duke Energy obviously not going to mention his name, but he's an electrical engineer, works for Duke Energy, makes 150 GS a year. Right. He's in his twenties. He paid off his federal student loan, 20 grand. Wrote the check, like, within the first year of him having this job. Has no kids, no wife. He's living a great life. Paid off his federal loan early. Just wrote a check. Guess what? Under student debt forgiveness, he is allowed to ask for, because he was a, uh, pell grant guy, uh, he's not limited by ten grand. He gets to get a refund from the government for having paid the 20. He's going to get that 20 back. He applied for it, and it's been approved. And he's waiting for his $20,000 check that he happily paid last year or the year before. Whenever he paid it. He's going to get a $20,000 check from the Uncle Sam for money he doesn't need?

Steve: Yeah. Uh, he's getting our money.

Norm: It's insane. He promised to pay it back. He did, in fact, keep his promise. He did pay it back. What if I got it.

Steve: Instead of a student loan forgiveness, I want to get, like, uh, 100,000 of my taxes back over the last, uh, 25 years. I'll take that.

Norm: Well, they're doing a little bit of that, uh, on employee taxes, where whatever the employer had paid his portion of Social Security or federal unemployment tax buddha or whatever there's. Now this program. You hear it on the radio all the time. There are these accountancy, um, firms and lawyer firm. Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. That is absolutely insane. I can't do it because I'm a sole proprietorship. I can't go and, uh, get my tax money back. But if I had paid myself as an employee, I could. That's crazy. It's morally wrong.

Brett: Yes. Hopefully your friend gets his 20 grand. And he uses it better than the government. Would you look at it that way? I guess, but it's still going.

Norm: Exactly.

Brett: It is. It's borrowing it from everybody else, but, you know, that's insane.

Steve: All right, well, with that, we got to wrap it up, guys. We are now in post election plus one, uh, here at Commonsense, Ohio, and we'll see if Ohio can, um, find some sense. And if not, they can always look here at Commonsense, Ohioshow.com. I think we have a website that is, uh, now up and at them. So, Commonsense, Ohio, show.com, uh, whenever you fear Lawyer Talk is still happening. I dropped an episode with Keith McGrath last week. More to come. Uh, the infamous rogue edition is on its way. I promise. I promise. Lots, uh, of Q and A's are still coming in, and I got, um, a couple of nice comments about common, uh, Sense Ohio, as well as the Lawyer Talk. Uh, once I dropped a new, uh, lawyer talk episode. So, uh, life is good now. We're going to run on two rivers here for a while. We're going to run parallel here at Lawyer Talk and Commonsenseohioshow.com. But common sense. Ohio has its own feed now. You'll be able to subscribe, you'll be able to, like, you'll be able to do whatever you want. And as the website grows, and, uh, as the social media presence grows, lots, uh, more to come. Videos, swag, uh, just great stuff, I promise. You'll get to finally see what Norm looks like, and, uh, you won't be disappointed. Silence. Except for normal devious chuckle in the background. All right, so, uh, this has been and Common Sense Ohio right from the middle, at least until now.