Shownotes
We're hitting a big milestone—our 100th episode! So we’ve got a lot to celebrate and reflect on, especially the importance of keeping common sense conversations alive. And for a bit of fun, we talk about how some fiction writers seemed to have predicted future events.
We kick things off by talking about why it's crucial to take a clear stand on global conflicts—Russia's in the spotlight this time. Then, we turn to a hot topic closer to home: the tragic shooting of a pregnant woman by a police officer after a shoplifting incident at Kroger. We hash out whether the shooting was justified and what it means for society at large.
We also tackle the polarization of politics and how extreme views are pushing people away from their original affiliations. And don't miss our chat on freedom of speech, with a look at controversial figures like Donald Trump and Alex Jones getting their social media accounts back.
Common Sense Takeaways
The importance of taking a definitive position in international conflicts, particularly referencing the tension with Russia and potential military action against Moscow.
The consequences of shoplifting and the importance of following police orders. The hosts deliberate on the societal issues that could lead to such incidents and the role of the law in curbing them.
The increasing polarization in political views, noting how extreme shifts within political parties can drive individuals away from their original affiliations.
There is criticism of media sensationalism and the spreading of misinformation, citing past incidents like the Connecticut preschool shooting conspiracy and the "Pizzagate" scandal.
The taxation of tips and pricing policies. The hosts share their perspectives on how financial incentives and ethical considerations intersect in these areas.
The reactivation of social media accounts for controversial figures such as Donald Trump and Alex Jones is a point of debate, emphasizing the tension between free speech and responsible content moderation.
Geopolitical issues, particularly focusing on the conflicts in Ukraine, the involvement of global powers like Russia and China, and the media’s role in covering these events.
Common Sense Moments
00:00 Podcasting is not easy, find niche.
07:12 Bill Maher acknowledging shift in Democratic party.
13:02 Encouraged critical thinking through debate and dialogue.
18:10 Curious about how others predicted Titanic sinking.
23:42 US sending assets into ocean, sea, Ukraine, Russia.
26:20 Media protects Harris, quest for presidential power.
34:01 Gaslighting and aggression in Israel-Hamas negotiation.
39:45 Reflect on choices and consequences in hindsight.
44:11 Defiant action leads to debate on police power.
48:05 Police encounter flash mob, stop pregnant suspect.
55:21 Barry Farber's philosophy on illegal aggression.
58:39 Terrifying experience in basement with limited lighting.
01:02:56 Supply chain disrupted, surplus parts
Stephen Palmer is the Managing Partner for the law firm, Palmer Legal Defense. He has specialized almost exclusively in criminal defense for over 26 years. Steve is also a partner in Criminal Defense Consultants, a firm focused wholly on helping criminal defense attorneys design winning strategies for their clients.
Norm Murdock is an automobile racing driver and owner of a high-performance and restoration car parts company. He earned undergraduate degrees in literature and journalism and graduated with a Juris Doctor from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1985. He worked in the IT industry for two years before launching a career in government relations in Columbus, Ohio. Norm has assisted clients in the Transportation, Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure sectors.
Brett Johnson is an award-winning podcast consultant and small business owner for nearly 10 years, leaving a long career in radio. He is passionate about helping small businesses tell their story through podcasts, and he believes podcasting is a great opportunity for different voices to speak and be heard.
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
info@commonsenseohioshow.com
Copyright 2024 Common Sense Ohio
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Transcripts
Alright. It is time for that weekly dose of Common Sense, and we're gonna bring it to you from commonsenseohioshow.com. All of us back at the table, August 16, 2024. I think it's been, what, 3 or 4 weeks since we've all sat or maybe not. Maybe 2.
Brett Johnson [:Well, it's probably been that long. Bet it
Norm Murdock [:may be. Maybe.
Steve Palmer [:It's been it's been a minute, but we're all back. Norm, Murdoch, Brett Johnson, Steve Palmer, yours truly here, bringing you Common Sense Ohio, week in and week out, or at least we try to. I think very few weeks. We just did what episode, Brent?
Brett Johnson [:Today is 100.
Steve Palmer [:100 episodes of comments.
Brett Johnson [:Now, this may not be a lot. A listener's gonna go 100. Big deal.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It doesn't sound like a lot to the listeners.
Brett Johnson [:But it is.
Steve Palmer [:Try to do that.
Brett Johnson [:Try to do a 100 things every week. I should say one thing every week for a 100 times. Yeah. A 100 weeks. That's basically what we've done.
Steve Palmer [:That's what we've done.
Brett Johnson [:Very hard to do in this world. Well No matter what you're trying to do.
Steve Palmer [:Particularly, look, anybody who's tried a podcast, anybody who is because look, and we've had plenty of them down here that have come down and wanted to do their own podcast. It is not as easy as people think. And what I always tell people is, look, find a niche that you can that that content comes easy, because it's not easy. Norm, I know what you go through every week to come up with new stories and stuff that we can talk about, and it's not easy to do. So, you know, hats off to us. And if if you folks are happy with what we've done, go to commonsenseioshow.com. Send us a note. You wanna be a sponsor? You wanna help us out? Think we have some other sponsorship or maybe, some Patreon type stuff coming.
Steve Palmer [:But, you know, we do come at this every week, and it's not easy. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of effort, and we wanna keep doing it.
Brett Johnson [:And as you said, some mornings, you just don't feel like doing it.
Steve Palmer [:Sometimes you just don't feel like because
Brett Johnson [:the week's been just a bear, and you don't wanna do it.
Norm Murdock [:Isn't it interesting too that common sense has become a niche?
Steve Palmer [:No. Well, isn't it right?
Brett Johnson [:You keep hearing
Norm Murdock [:it more and more, don't you? So if you if you go to, like, our Facebook page, you'll see other organizations being suggested. And there's Common Sense Minnesota, Common Sense New York, Common Sense it's it's like
Steve Palmer [:It's become it's it's catchy?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's like other people in other places have discovered maybe that there's a general lack of common sense.
Steve Palmer [:Oh, it's sort of like fish. They don't realize they're swimming in water. Yeah. Like, when we just lived with common sense for so long that when they took it away, it was like, wait a minute. What's happening?
Norm Murdock [:It's a rare thing.
Steve Palmer [:I can't breathe anymore because the water's gone, and I don't know what to do. So we've created Common Sense Ohio show.com. Yeah. So at any rate, we appreciate your listenership. We appreciate you following us on Facebook and social media, and we would most appreciate it if you would just go like and share. Tell your neighbor about the comment. Guess what? It's catchy. It's catchy.
Norm Murdock [:It is.
Steve Palmer [:If you start making sense, other people wanna make sense. And if other people wanna make sense, then maybe some other other people would wanna make sense. And, pretty soon, we can have our water back.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. And, if nothing else, we've talked about this too. Hopefully, the listeners have learned. Maybe, I'm learning as we go along with this as well too. It's just to sit and listen. Shut up and listen. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Listen to the other point of view. Take it in. You can disagree, but walk away from that that that conversation, friends.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Just do. It isn't worth it.
Steve Palmer [:It is. I I've seen some, you know look on on TikTok or on the YouTube. I don't have TikTok, so I but on YouTube or Facebook, I think they're probably shared across those platforms. But you see these people, somebody getting interviewed, and they're like, I I saw one particularly where it was a woman and she was there at a Trump rally and the guy was like, you want me to introduce you to some of these people just to see if you can maybe find some common ground? She's like, no. No. Well, why I mean, no. I already know those people. Well, what do you know? Well, they're all racist.
Steve Palmer [:Or they're all this or they're all that. You know, it's just it's like lunacy. Right. Lunacy.
Norm Murdock [:And if you go 1 millimeter below the surface and say, well, tell me why you think they're racist. She has absolutely
Steve Palmer [:because they voted for Trump.
Norm Murdock [:She has no
Brett Johnson [:That is the answer.
Steve Palmer [:No because they voted for Trump.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. They can't they can't give you an answer. Yeah. Just like And we see that yesterday, just because I'm not gonna platform people that it's okay to platform people that challenge us and give us reasons why they disagree. That stays up on our on our Facebook page. But when somebody just says, you're a bunch of effing right wing wing nuts
Brett Johnson [:Nut bangs or something.
Norm Murdock [:And that's all they have to say. And then
Steve Palmer [:you It shuts the conversation down.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Well, then and then you email back. Well, what substantively do you disagree with? They will not engage in that conversation.
Steve Palmer [:Of course not. Yeah. Because look, it it if you and this is the problem. I've I've talked about this before. When you subscribe to a certain ideology, it just basically is a set of principles that that's it for you. And you never really have to think about them. You just that's what I believe because that's part of my, like Yeah. I'm this, so I believe in all these things even if somebody proves any one of these things may not make sense or may not be right.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I believe in all these things. And I think any extreme, you're gonna run into that.
Norm Murdock [:It's not up for discussion.
Steve Palmer [:Not up for discussion.
Norm Murdock [:And and that's where I think, to Brett's point, so I grew up in a I grew up in a fabulously thoroughly political family. My father was an office holder his entire career. So the old, you know, the old saying, you you don't discuss politics at the dinner table. Well, that's all the hell we talked about.
Steve Palmer [:You don't not discuss politics at the dinner.
Norm Murdock [:Right. And so we, a family of 8, we learned to tolerate each other. Right? And and there was a diversity of opinions. We didn't all believe the same things dad did. And, you left as friends. Yeah. You know, if not family, at least friends.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I mean, it it just is, things have just become so polarized that it it I don't see a middle ground. It's, like, it's hard to even see that there could be a middle ground. I mean, I just Yeah. It's, it's difficult. But that's the purpose of what we're trying to do here. So That's that's why we're called right wing nuts. I don't consider myself a right wing nut.
Steve Palmer [:I might be a nut. Me neither. Don't call me no.
Norm Murdock [:No. When when it when it all moves so far left and and you have people like in the Democratic Party, you have people like Joe Manchin, who's a pretty normal person. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Right. We might disagree on some economic policy, but that'd be it.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And they find themselves adrift or, you know, another one was, Joe Lieberman. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Lieberman. Yeah. Vicki Haley.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right? Recently. Ronald Reagan was a Democrat, you know. And then they just went too far to the left. And he and and you turn around and go, well, where did the party go? Yeah. You know, Tulsi Gabbard. You know, the the, the the
Steve Palmer [:What did I say did I say did I mean Tulsi Gabbard when I said Nicki?
Norm Murdock [:Oh, is that human?
Steve Palmer [:Yes. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. Tulsa's a great Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My bad.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes sometimes you stay the same. Right? You're just like a normal American
Steve Palmer [:Bill Maher is is now he's like he's starting to wake up to this, you know, and he he would say, look. I'm a democrat. I'm a lifelong democrat. My party moved, not I. Yeah. And, he's calling some of this stuff out where finally finally he's admitting things like, well, look, all these Trump voters, it's not because they're crazy. It's because they don't like things like men competing against their daughters in high school sports. Right.
Steve Palmer [:And you, my party, have subscribed to this, and you're not letting go.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Joe Joe Rogan's another
Steve Palmer [:Rogan.
Norm Murdock [:Comp commentator that's that's definitely
Steve Palmer [:Well and then to Changed. Into the news, you've got, what's his name? Tesla.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, Elon Musk.
Steve Palmer [:Elon Musk just recently.
Norm Murdock [:He backed Biden in the last election. In 2020, he was a Biden donor.
Steve Palmer [:And he was a he was a an Obama guy. I mean and now he's like, this is the most dangerous thing I've ever seen. He goes, I haven't moved. All of you people have moved. Yeah. I'm just still calling the shots and common sense that I see. You know?
Norm Murdock [:And Yeah. You're literally shutting down speech, and you're telling me, the owner of x, that somehow I'm a danger to free speech because I yeah. I'm gonna let anybody on the platform say whatever they want. Right? And then anybody who wants to oppose what they say can they can say whatever. Right.
Steve Palmer [:They can say whatever they want. Right.
Norm Murdock [:So it's a conversation or just a shouting match, but it's it's free speech, you know. And so he reactivated Trump's account.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Interviewed him for 2 hours? Was it like a 2 and a half hour interview early on Monday or Tuesday whenever that was his
Norm Murdock [:Even reactivated Alex Jones' account. And Alex Jones was legally proven
Steve Palmer [:to have persona non grata, man. He was Right.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:I still like Alex.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. He's he's broke. I mean, you know, he's he's totally $1,500,000,000 judgment on him.
Steve Palmer [:Such nonsense. And you know what else is in what's interesting about Alex Jones is that every now and like, not even every now and then, a lot of the stuff he says has been born out and has been proven true.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. But he just goes a little too far. He goes too far. Right. And he
Steve Palmer [:just goes a little too far. Right.
Brett Johnson [:Which is which is typical of the prognosticators because they have to break through the noise.
Norm Murdock [:Well, it's
Steve Palmer [:like a in National Enquire.
Brett Johnson [:Oh, yeah. They
Norm Murdock [:have to break through and There's
Steve Palmer [:a little bit of truth at the bottom.
Norm Murdock [:Here, and then I gotta go over
Brett Johnson [:here so people will hear me
Norm Murdock [:and bring it back in.
Brett Johnson [:Well, then, you
Norm Murdock [:know, the the and the and and it burned him. But the thing about the, you know, the the the killings in that Connecticut preschool.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. That that was all fake and, you know, it's like that that kind of sensationalism got him in trouble. And he didn't need to go there either. I don't understand. I mean or maybe at the time he did. Maybe he didn't have such a big platform. I I don't know. I
Norm Murdock [:don't know. But well and then the, pedophile pizza shop in New York City, like, he accused these guys that own this little Italian pizza shop that, I don't know, some of the DNC people would go get their pizza there. And so he came up with this idea that what they were really doing was setting them up with children.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Right. It's just like why go there? Why do it?
Norm Murdock [:What what what
Brett Johnson [:where are the dots, Stephen? Connect us.
Steve Palmer [:But then he had some other stuff that that, you know, he was dead on about.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But Right. But it gets no attention because it he goes too far. Yeah. Yep.
Norm Murdock [:So His big claim to fame where he was correct about a lot of things was the, that that, David Koresh, group in Waco. That's how Alex really got his bones. He did documentaries because he's from Texas and he went out there. And of course, the, you know, the FBI bulldozed all the evidence away. Yeah. Right? And so it was a natural conspiracy theory situation to come up with, well, what are they hiding? Why would they bulldoze a site where no forensics can be done to find out was that CS gas out of that tank really CS gas or was it fuel? What was really going on? Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:Right. And why was the FBI so
Norm Murdock [:Alex was he was on top of some pretty good stories there for a while. Just a little bit
Steve Palmer [:out of control.
Norm Murdock [:And he went he went wild.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, speaking of well, and that I I I guess one more point about what we're doing here with the celebrating 100 is that we are trying not to go too far. And if we do go too far, I would presume that either one of YouTube will whack me back Yeah. Or maybe one of our commentators will whack us back.
Brett Johnson [:If we pull back on each on each other, And
Norm Murdock [:we and we do on this show
Brett Johnson [:If we get emotionally charged.
Steve Palmer [:Sure. It's easy to do.
Brett Johnson [:It is easy to do.
Norm Murdock [:And we do and we do correct. Yeah. You know, like sometimes we don't like being corrected but we do admit our mistakes. Yeah. I try to. Put them on the show.
Steve Palmer [:I try to. And and look, I I I always make an effort, I think, sometimes to your chagrin, Norm, to take the other side of the argument just to see where it rides us. Yeah. Because that is where you find the truth.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It is, good to be a devil's advocate.
Steve Palmer [:You know,
Norm Murdock [:just Because you you then you're forced to flesh out. You know? What's the rule? What are
Steve Palmer [:the exceptions? How does it fit in with common sense?
Norm Murdock [:And why do you think this? So I'm gonna challenge you and that helps you actually, the Socratic method.
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:That helps you explain your position is when otherwise, we're just nodding dogs. Oh, I agree with you, Norm. Well, that's not interesting.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. I did a, we're going way far field here, but what the heck? I I did a, a pre law program at Oxford, I think, in my between my junior and senior year of college. Wow. So I went over to Oxford, England and spent, like, 4 or 5 weeks in a summer program pre law, you know. And I got some course credit for it, and they had this wonderful British professor. They brought in guest speakers, but the main guy was this, you know, this British professor who came in, and he sort of monitored what we would call here a seminar. You know, open discussion about, I think, some pretty controversial legal topics, sort of social legal topics, anything like medical ethics or even race, whatever it would be. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, he would he he sort of took us all on this ride where we would debate each other and argue each other and go through. And at the very last luncheon that he took us up to his house, served us biscuit and tea and whatever and, you know, in his in his British way, which I won't even try to replicate. He goes, you know, I've tried to get you all to think. I've tried to get you all to at least consider everybody's position in what you Americans would call the Socratic method. And if you go to law school, you'll learn all about it. And, he goes, I wanted to teach you something that it's almost impossible. Some of you think that you could be consistent about everything, but it's almost impossible. And the only way to flush all that out is to have discourse, to have a dialogue, and to really push the bounds.
Steve Palmer [:So don't feel bad if you feel like you were impeached or whatever word he used Yeah. In in one topic or another because that was the point of it. And, you know, it really was to create critical thinking. I think academics has completely abandoned that at this point.
Norm Murdock [:Totally.
Steve Palmer [:There is no more critical thought. If you come up with a contrary view, you're just like the Trump lady or the lady who hates the Trumpers. You're a racist and I don't like these people. You're deplorable.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, shame on society for that and shame on the academic institutions for that.
Norm Murdock [:Well, that girl in Cincinnati, the the UC college student that we talked about on the show Yep. Who tried to write a paper about the biological assignment of people that are transitioning.
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:And the college professor she had would not let her use the word biological. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:It's just supposed to be your assertion of gender, and you don't say this person is biologically male or biologically female. You have to say that they identify, you know, if you wanna talk about that that there might be a difference of opinion.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:It's well, you can discuss the difference being what they I what they the identification is, but you can't reduce the Well the discussion to biological You
Steve Palmer [:You can't use a term that they deemed to be in politically incorrect, which is really French for saying, we don't we're just gonna tamp out that viewpoint altogether and not let anybody even indulge it.
Brett Johnson [:You can't even know they will lose the argument. They can't win
Norm Murdock [:the argument.
Brett Johnson [:That they allow it to be in there. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Or they're afraid they're gonna lose the argument. They're afraid of the argument. So sort of like your what you said with the listeners. Like, hey, look. Where am I wrong? Right. Where am I wrong? Where am I And I'm cool with this. I'm cool being wrong. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And,
Norm Murdock [:But don't just yell a name at me. Right?
Steve Palmer [:You write what
Norm Murdock [:you mean? Because I'm I'm gonna delete it. I'm I'm gonna delete it. If if you just say if if you just say
Steve Palmer [:I I don't think you should. You're a
Norm Murdock [:show of 3 gigantic assholes. I'm just gonna delete that unless you 2
Steve Palmer [:say I've already read those. Yeah. I think it's awesome if
Norm Murdock [:you Well
Brett Johnson [:and and I followed I've
Norm Murdock [:I didn't follow him. I clicked through to kinda
Brett Johnson [:go, who is this dude? And it's like, he's getting slammed he's getting shut down on on Facebook as well because he's
Norm Murdock [:where's my where's my he's a troll. So what dude. So what I'm saying is is write a whole paragraph of why we're asshole. Right. Don't just blurt out that.
Steve Palmer [:Would require critical thinking.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly right.
Steve Palmer [:Organized thought. Yeah. And Yeah. Actually putting pen to paper Exactly. And making sense.
Norm Murdock [:Yes. Right. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And if you can't do that But
Brett Johnson [:if you can, do it.
Steve Palmer [:Do it. Right.
Norm Murdock [:We can't do it. Seriously. Yes.
Steve Palmer [:Make an argument.
Norm Murdock [:But that
Brett Johnson [:it's not a challenge. It's just go ahead and do it.
Norm Murdock [:And that won't and that won't get deleted. I mean, even if I disagree with the the ten reasons why you think we're assholes, I won't I won't delete that. Right. But if you just want a name call Right. You're you're gone. Right. I I'm not doing I don't do it to other people. I'm not gonna do it.
Norm Murdock [:You're not gonna do it to me. That's as simple as that.
Steve Palmer [:Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of Alex Jones and Prophecies. See that transition right there? 1925, there was a book written called The Great Pacific War. So this is my World War 2 fact. Okay. It was written by a guy, a British guy named Hector Bywater.
Brett Johnson [:When was it written?
Norm Murdock [:In when? When?
Steve Palmer [:I think it was in 1925. Holy hell. Basically, what he did is he predicted the entire Pacific campaign. It was this fictional story. He was a historian. It was this fictional story of how Japan was gonna, mount a surprise attack on the US and then start, working its way through the Pacific and take him in with an aggressive war. And it almost it it damn near was dead on accurate. Wow.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. But he died on this day in 1940 in 1940.
Norm Murdock [:So he got to see
Steve Palmer [:He got to see it happen. Well no. He didn't. No. 1940.
Norm Murdock [:Yes. But but Japan 41. But Japan had started hostilities with China in the twenties.
Steve Palmer [:I guess you're right. So but that probably in the twenties, he wrote the book in 25. So maybe that was part of why he he did that. He but he saw history coming. And, That's amazing. That there's, that was the best factoid of the day I could come up with Yeah. With respect to,
Brett Johnson [:Can you imagine some you're a sci fi writer or, you know, that kind of writing it. Yeah. What you put down on paper comes true? Wouldn't that freak you out on a night on 1984?
Steve Palmer [:So many guys have done this, though, and you wonder how they do. You wonder how they do it. And, you know, there was another one written. I've never read the book, but there was I think somebody wrote a book about a, a great, ocean liner that sank and, you know, I think it was even called Titanic or something like that. Wow. And that was years before the Titanic hit the iceberg. Yeah. It's almost eerily the same.
Norm Murdock [:Well, science fiction is particularly interesting. Like Jules Verne, you know, about what was it? 20,000 leagues under the sea and then, you know, going to the moon. We've seen these things happen. And they were fantastic visions that we're like, oh come on, we're not gonna get to the moon. What are you talking about?
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. You know. Or even the pieces of what they extrapolate from Star Trek. You know, the the flip thing that they have is like, well, that was Yeah. Now, whether the flip phone saw that going that's a cool design or
Norm Murdock [:one of
Steve Palmer [:the Yeah. No. Why is imitate or vice versa? Right?
Brett Johnson [:It still was implanted in us. Okay. Oh my gosh. You know, lots of things came from
Norm Murdock [:And all the AI that that was featured in is Star Trek.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:You know that. You know, computer.
Steve Palmer [:What is this?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Well, doc doc
Brett Johnson [:Now we don't need 2,001 Space Odyssey though. We're how he's in
Steve Palmer [:and just
Brett Johnson [:But, you know takes over everything. We don't need that
Steve Palmer [:crap. Voice will put you to sleep.
Norm Murdock [:The bones doing that body scan thing? Yeah. We're doing we're doing that.
Brett Johnson [:We're doing that. Yeah. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:You know? Yeah. Oh, you have an aneurysm.
Steve Palmer [:The tricorder?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. The date and the tricorder thing. Yeah. And all that. Right?
Brett Johnson [:And I think if there was if I remember correctly, I may be dreaming this up. I thought there was an episode about they kinda discussed our what we do with cancer now. You know, all that stuff and they were they were kind of saying, yeah.
Norm Murdock [:That was a bad time. Interesting.
Brett Johnson [:That, you know, we do we did all that to our bodies to kill cancer.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. You
Brett Johnson [:know, sort of thing.
Norm Murdock [:They would do the time travel thing like they went back to Chicago during Al Capone.
Steve Palmer [:Al Capone timing.
Norm Murdock [:It was pretty cool show, man.
Brett Johnson [:It was it was really. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Norm Murdock [:And and Shatner's still on the air. He's got some kind of new program on Fox now about aliens
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:On Fox Nation.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. He's a piece of work.
Norm Murdock [:He's a piece of work.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:He's a big horse race, horse race.
Steve Palmer [:And he took recently took a trip to space. He says one of the most fulfilling things he's ever done. Oh, wow. And did he take Elon Musk's trip to space?
Norm Murdock [:Or the other guys, the the Amazon. Amazon guys. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:One of them. He went up to speed.
Norm Murdock [:I forgot that.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So, anyway, we have said nothing about nothing. So we are in the throes of the most bizarre electoral cycle, I think, that we will ever see. It's the least in our lifetimes. I mean, I I this
Brett Johnson [:is the Before before the change a month ago.
Steve Palmer [:I know. This is the greatest thing. Speaking of prophecies, we all predicted that Yeah. That it would not be Biden and it is not. It'll be Harris. And I think it was Tulsa. He averages that. Well, look.
Steve Palmer [:If Trump's the candidate, Harris will be president. I think she made some prediction like that way back.
Norm Murdock [:And and she still might be president.
Steve Palmer [:And she still I think she will be. I I I I think Harris is getting elected.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, like, she might be president even if she doesn't
Steve Palmer [:Oh, you're saying you're saying, like, here
Norm Murdock [:in the I'm not sure Biden has got another 6 months.
Steve Palmer [:Well, it's so fundamentally inconsistent to say that he's with it. He's on it. He's got, all the faculties necessary to do this job when the world is basically crumbling around us, on the brink of world war literally. And, he's on the beach sleeping last week. Yeah. And, you know, he's not he's not fit to run, but he can still handle that stuff. So look, I mean, at least be intellectually honest about this. Tell us one way or another.
Norm Murdock [:Well, let let's dive into that a little bit. So one of the big big things that's going on right now in the world, of course, is the Ukraine Russia war. And Lloyd Austin has sent over numerous, nuclear tipped assets, aircraft carriers, submarines. All this stuff is moving in and around the Black Sea.
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:Right? And it and it's new. And it's and it's it's it's under the aegis of, of of Hamas and Hezbollah attacking Israel and the, Ukraine Russia war, which are the even though they're not in the same theater, they're adjacent. They're adjacent theaters. They're they're you could see a situation where those two conflicts somehow get spun into a world war. You know, where where where we're just generally, fighting a two front war.
Brett Johnson [:And that's Germany and Japan, I think it can happen pretty much any way you want. That's right.
Norm Murdock [:Yep. I mean, and and and seriously. And that Yeah. And that's, of course, not even counting in the possibility of a third front between Taiwan and Mainland China. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Right. Taiwan and Mainland China. Well, it's only a third front if we get involved. I mean, that'll last about 10 seconds otherwise. Yeah. But, and then you've got Iran. I mean, there this this world is on the brink.
Norm Murdock [:It's teetering. So my point being about Lloyd Austin sending those assets is people have our press is letting us down. But thoughtful people are asking, did Biden order those assets? Or did the sect def basically, is he acting on his own? Because Biden shots. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Who's calling shots? Is calling who is normally, when you send those kinds of assets, which are strategic, they're not just local, you know, responses. It's those are strategic assets that you would use to fight a a fellow world power like China or Russia. Yep.
Norm Murdock [:And we're sending those kinds of assets into a very narrow area of ocean and sea. And you gotta be thinking, why isn't Biden talking to the American people or Kamala talking to the American people about the administration amping up, in these hot spots? And and and you've got Ukraine has now come to control by through this incursion invasion of Russia. Ukraine now controls 400 square miles in the Kursk Oblast, which is a state, they call it an Oblast, in Russia. So Russia is in Ukraine, and as of a couple weeks ago, Ukraine is now in Russia. And we're sending we are scheduled, the United States to send f fifteens now to Israel. And f fifteens or f sixteens, from the Netherlands are already in Zelensky's hands in the Ukraine. So you're you're you're seeing in both cases, US assets being sent either by us or by our, you know, deputizing the Netherlands, you know, to do it, into both of these war zones. And furthermore, Zelensky wants authority from the US and has been given it to use US war materiel inside Russia.
Norm Murdock [:And and and it came out
Steve Palmer [:last Aggressively, not defensively.
Norm Murdock [:Aggressively. And it came out last week at a press conference at the defense department where the spokesperson would not rule out that those assets could be used on a on a on a strike on Moscow. On Moscow.
Steve Palmer [:So This is this is like
Norm Murdock [:Like like you say, no. We do not authorize. Tinderbox.
Steve Palmer [:We are living in a Tinderbox right now.
Norm Murdock [:We're talking about the capital
Steve Palmer [:of Russia. Somebody flicking the lighter, you know.
Norm Murdock [:And our defense department won't say, no. We don't authorize our support.
Steve Palmer [:Strikes are awesome. What you you you slipped in there you slipped in there. I think the most significant nah. That's not that's not the right way to put it. One of the one of the biggest problems of our day, and that is shame on the media. Because I'm not seeing this on the news. Yeah. No.
Steve Palmer [:You know, and and where is
Norm Murdock [:Granted, I don't watch a lot of news. I don't
Steve Palmer [:either. I don't watch a lot of mainstream legacy media. I try
Brett Johnson [:to try to zoning on what's gonna feed me, not not my point of view, but just give me the facts, dude.
Steve Palmer [:It's a lie.
Brett Johnson [:It is. It is. Right. You know?
Steve Palmer [:But, you know, this should be all over.
Norm Murdock [:Oh my god.
Steve Palmer [:This should be all over. Oh my god. But it's not because they want the power. The like, I you know, the you you everybody's heard that I don't know if everybody has, but, you know, the media sort of become praetorian guard for the Democratic party in a lot of ways. And they're I think they're protecting Harris, and they want her to be president. So this isn't coming up. And, you know, if there's a presidential candidate or the president or the vice president or anybody that's involved in this, whether it's Trump, whether it's Vance, whether it's Harris, whether it's Biden, I think these are not only fair questions. These are almost mandatory questions.
Steve Palmer [:Mandatory. What is your plan here? Right. Are we is the US is sending this stuff over? We've got China doing this. We've got Iran doing this. We've got Ukraine doing this and Putin doing this. Right. And what is your plan? What's going on in the world? You know, there was a time not that long ago in our distant memory, like, 5, 6 years ago maybe, where it's there would be a press conference where this would be discussed. You know, the US sent this blah blah blah blah blah over.
Steve Palmer [:You know, it's like this isn't but it's not discussed. And why not?
Norm Murdock [:And why not?
Steve Palmer [:You would have to ask why not. So To protect the damn election.
Norm Murdock [:That's that's the only thing I can see. So after 9:11, you guys will recall that the then in vogue doctrine of the United States was, if you help people who are attacking us, it is as if you you are the co conspirator. So if you're if you're harboring Al Qaeda, right Yep. In Pakistan, we don't need your permission to go in and kill Osama Bin Laden because you're
Steve Palmer [:Those are our enemies and you're helping them.
Norm Murdock [:And and you're helping them. Right. So it's the Bush doctrine and we adhere to that and Obama kept that in place because he would he did go into Pakistan. He didn't ask permission. We sent SEAL Team 6 in. They killed people inside Pakistan Yeah. Without us notifying them or getting their permission slip. Right.
Norm Murdock [:You know? So here we so you just think about this. Al Qaeda hit the Pentagon with an airplane. Right? And then Bush's response is to the world, if you help them, we're going to like, you're you're we're free to attack you. So Putin, he takes incoming rounds manufactured in the United States, let's say in Moscow, in his capital Mhmm. Just like our capital was attacked. And he may look at us and say, well, you you are aiding and abetting, you know
Steve Palmer [:This is an aggressive war. This is not just defending your borders now. They're attacking Moscow.
Norm Murdock [:I could see this guy pushing buttons.
Steve Palmer [:And that's irrespective of whether we think that Ukraine has the right to do that or doesn't have
Norm Murdock [:the right to do. Matter.
Steve Palmer [:But are we helping? Are we are we an ally? Are we help? Like, what's happened here?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. We're we're widening widening this war.
Steve Palmer [:And and most important, what's the plan?
Brett Johnson [:What is the plan? Well, yeah. Why is why I'm missing steps here. Why is Ukraine in Russia? Right.
Norm Murdock [:Well, you
Brett Johnson [:know, in regards to that I'm sure. Is that is that the old
Norm Murdock [:Taste of their own medicine.
Brett Johnson [:Is that what it
Norm Murdock [:or was that I think it gives them the core. It gives them Right. Right. Yeah. It's gonna give I didn't realize we're going in.
Brett Johnson [:That war was going in that direction. I thought, well, protect protect protect. Get out of our land.
Steve Palmer [:I I said is when you have weak reigns. No. I'm I'm with you. Right. So it's he's not just protecting his borders now. He's attacking. Yes. And and, look, like I said, he may have some justification for the look.
Steve Palmer [:It's their justification, not ours.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Right. Right.
Steve Palmer [:And if they do that, they do that. But it's like we have kept our we have kept loose reins. You know, Biden has done nothing to right her on any of this.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, you could also ask, well, what's his responsibility to right her? Because we're the freaking United States of America. We we we
Brett Johnson [:can we can call a meeting amongst powers, and it happens.
Steve Palmer [:We're a superpower. We're the we're the Versus absolutely. Greatest superpower that's ever landed on earth.
Norm Murdock [:We're And we're supplying billions and billions and billions to Zelensky every year, you know. I mean, another tranche just this past month. I think it was, you know, 2 or $3,000,000,000 in additional money. And I don't know what we're up to in Ukraine, but Avance thinks it might be as much as 50,000,000,000 at this point. And it's because it's just gonna keep And
Steve Palmer [:there's no end. Right?
Norm Murdock [:There's no end.
Steve Palmer [:Because it's not even we are not treating we're not doing anything to treat this, to end it definitively.
Norm Murdock [:That's right.
Steve Palmer [:You know, it's just it's just keep
Norm Murdock [:it going. Keep it going. I think Zelensky thinks if he takes Russian territory, then at the negotiating table, if they do a ceasefire, then he can swap that territory and get back Crimea. I think that's his k. Well, that's his thought. That might
Steve Palmer [:be a legitimate strategy from their perspective.
Norm Murdock [:From their perspective.
Steve Palmer [:But from the world perspective, we're, like, we're on day I mean, we're in dangerous ground here, man. This is a tinderbox.
Norm Murdock [:And Kursk. I'll I'll I'll do your World War 2 link up here. Kursk is famously within the Soviet Russian psyche. You say something like Stalingrad or Kursk or Leningrad. You talk about these set piece battles against the Nazis, and it brings out all that national pride, all that love of mother Russia. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:They're in Kursk where Hitler, right, did his last big, you know, battle to try to defeat Stalin. And now Zelensky, who they accuse even though he's Jewish, they accuse him of being pro nazis
Steve Palmer [:right now. Right? Right.
Norm Murdock [:Right. Now he's back in back in their mindset. Oh, they're back in Kursk, you know, the Nazis. Right? It this is not good stuff. This is this is If
Steve Palmer [:you if you wanna create a catalyst for to escalate, that's it.
Norm Murdock [:Right. It would be Just hearing what you said there. It would be like if the Ku Klux Klan went and had some kind of big shootout with the FBI at Gettysburg. Right?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:We're this is like a holy ground to the Russians, and and Zelensky is in there. 400 square miles.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And they've they have, I guess, a 180,000 refugees in the Kursk area have evacuated. And I can I can almost see Putin doing a tactical nuke? If he thinks basically everybody in that 400 square miles is just Ukrainian soldiers
Steve Palmer [:Right. Well, look.
Norm Murdock [:I could see him
Steve Palmer [:doing it. And and you can see how he can justify it. Maybe even in look. Not there's 2 means of justification, justify to the people and everybody else Right. To his own people. But justify it, like, legitimately in his head.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. This
Steve Palmer [:is rationalizing. This is our sacred ground. Exactly. So if there's ever a time that this is necessary, it is now. Exactly. Our very existence is a threat. Yeah. Right.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And I'm at risk.
Norm Murdock [:I'm I'm I'm and and, you know, he he's running out of troops. I mean, just like Ukraine is. There there's a young man shortage for both of for both sides. Tens of thousands of people.
Steve Palmer [:Look, it's crazy. And look, I I don't is Trump the the hero that's gonna come end it? I who knows? Is, but it's certainly somebody has to have a plan and somebody has to have a thought. And most important, the the we're back to where we're going here is that why isn't the media asking for this? And why are they protecting the Biden Harris administration? And you you know darn well they wouldn't be protecting the Trump administration if it were reversed.
Norm Murdock [:No.
Steve Palmer [:And I and I mean protecting because look. Asking questions and exposing this stuff or a lack of a plan is how you get to a plan. Like, if Right. You know, if there's no other motivation and you're the executive branch of government and the and the media is saying, what are you doing? Yeah. Then you gotta have an answer.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. And and, you know
Steve Palmer [:The media is great for our country when it when it operates independently.
Norm Murdock [:And this this gaslighting on the negotiation table between Israel and Hamas where we are brokering it. Right? So right now, there are quote peace talks. Amidst this Israeli bombing that took place that the house bomb where they they killed, you know, the head of Hamas in Tehran. Right? And, and then they killed, just this past week, the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon. So Israel is being very aggressive. Yeah. Right? And we're being gaslit right now. The the US State Department is telling us, well, we're in negotiations.
Norm Murdock [:We are brokering peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas. Except that if you read past the first paragraph in the New York Times, down in the lower part of the article, it says, but Hamas is not attending the peace conference. So the very people that the peace conference is supposed to be
Steve Palmer [:It's all it's all nice.
Norm Murdock [:They're not even there.
Steve Palmer [:They're not doing anything.
Norm Murdock [:They have refused to participate. So you got Netanyahu negotiating with the US and we are representing the the position of Hamas.
Steve Palmer [:Hamas is negotiating nothing. And why would they? Because they feel like they've got America bent over the barrel. Exactly. They've got the Biden administration bent over the barrel, and they've had their support.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. It's like
Steve Palmer [:I you know, I I I I wherever you this is insanity.
Norm Murdock [:It's insanity.
Steve Palmer [:It's insanity.
Norm Murdock [:The only people that really matter in that negotiation would be like Iran. Because they're funding all this.
Steve Palmer [:Yes. And and we're and
Norm Murdock [:we're And we're funding the other stuff.
Steve Palmer [:Funding. Yeah. It's like it's so
Brett Johnson [:The wrong people are the right at the table apparently. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Exactly. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Well, you don't have the right should
Brett Johnson [:be as an Iran. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. It's like trying to negotiate the end of the Korean War and you're not gonna involve and we didn't. South Korea was not at the table. We went negotiated directly with North Korea. Right? To to quote end the Korean conflict even though there was no peace treaty. And we did that and we did it in Vietnam too. We we we bypass the South Vietnamese government, and Henry Kissinger went directly with Leigh Dock To of North Vietnam. And they won the they won the Nobel Peace Prize together.
Norm Murdock [:But South Vietnam was not at the table. Yeah. I mean, it's we've done this. America's done this.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Somewhere along the way time. Somewhere along the way, it became okay to not to really fight wars, but just to participate and and have this political agenda behind whatever we're doing. You know, it's like, we're not really gonna fight or we're not really, you know, nobody really
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And I I don't know where that is. You know, I don't know where that is.
Brett Johnson [:It looks like the line is you can have everybody everything but our people. Yeah. But our but our armed forces.
Norm Murdock [:Well, we got because we're gonna give
Brett Johnson [:you money. We're gonna give you arms.
Norm Murdock [:But we got 60,000 names on that Vietnam wall.
Steve Palmer [:Well, that's right.
Brett Johnson [:Well, I mean, I I guess I'm going back to the, Ukraine, Russia.
Steve Palmer [:Ukraine thing.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. It's the same thing. So it's it's the same. Look, it's not the same thing because we didn't lose men there, but it's we're we're supporting without supporting and we're sort
Brett Johnson [:of doing everything. That's the line. You don't cross us. Don't
Steve Palmer [:don't send them in the back. Imaginary line.
Norm Murdock [:So That's a proxy war.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Take a take a stand. Yay or nay. Yeah. Right? This wishy washy nonsense is creating conflict.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. So you can control it versus someone else starting at first. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Russia retaliating going, okay. You're all in, but your people, we're gonna play all in.
Norm Murdock [:The number 2 nuclear power in the world. Right? And we and we won't say to Ukraine and we won't say to Russia, no. We do not sanction in any way, shape, or form any military action against the city of Moscow, your capital city. Yeah. How could we not say that?
Brett Johnson [:Right. Right. Well.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, it's unbelievable.
Brett Johnson [:And, and, the answer may lie in your answer. Maybe we want it. Maybe we want it. It's on somebody else does it. Yeah. I don't know if this is on your list, Norman. I did. I wanted to get,
Norm Murdock [:yeah. Go.
Brett Johnson [:It did to get Steve's insight on you know it's now made national news that you know the Westerville officer who fatally shot that pregnant 20 year old 21 year old.
Steve Palmer [:Oh yeah. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:That he's on charge that that the cop is now on what 4 different charges
Norm Murdock [:London town
Brett Johnson [:Blunden Town. Blunden Town. Yeah. The thing. In Westerville. Yeah. He's on 4 charges? Up on 4 different charges? I mean Yeah. I guess I I saw that and I see the video of that car pretty much running him over.
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. It's kinda hard to again, I don't necessarily agree that he shot and killed her. I maybe it was extreme.
Steve Palmer [:Mhmm.
Brett Johnson [:But she was gonna run him over.
Steve Palmer [:This this is one of these horrible scenarios that happens when you have weak rains on the on society. And I'm I'm trying to let me try that may not be the right analogy. I'm trying to use it to link it up to what we just talked about. But we have created a society that at the particularly at that time, where you didn't have to follow police orders and you didn't you didn't have to abide by the law. And I don't I don't I don't know all the facts to know if this woman was actually stealing from Kroger, but I think that she was.
Brett Johnson [:The the video video I saw, she was putting at least the cameras had her putting bottles of liquor in her bag. Yeah. Now, again, I didn't see She's shoplifting.
Norm Murdock [:She's shoplifting. Well, let's put
Steve Palmer [:it to the the salient way to describe this or the important way to describe this is there was reason to believe that she was shoplifting, which means that the police can investigate.
Brett Johnson [:Right. And I didn't
Norm Murdock [:She was part of a flash mob Yeah. That that that
Brett Johnson [:I didn't see any video of her walking out with it, but you saw her
Norm Murdock [:putting in a bag. So when when we
Steve Palmer [:start turning back the clock on causes, you know, at some point, I always I always do this. When you look in the mirror, you're always thinking, alright, something bad just happened. I I can almost always turn back the clock to a point in time, a decision I made, something I did that I can say, alright. That's sort of on me. It's like, yeah, that person did that to me, but before that, I did this, or I didn't do this, or I made a decision to blow this off, and then I didn't do this. You know, it's like there's always a ripple effect. And taking the turning back the clock here, it's like we created a system or society where it was cool to go steal from grocery stores.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And and look at San Francisco, and it's happening here too. A buddy of mine was at the Kroger down here right around the corner from us. And, he comes out and a police officer, special duty hired off duty police officer in full uniform, not only checked his receipt like they do at Walmart or Sam's Club, like, a quick little highlight, went through each item on the receipt. Wow. And my buddy's an attorney's like, what's going on? He goes, look. They're losing a 1,000 a day. Wow. A 1,000 a day Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Amazing. In shoplifting. So they've hired us, and this is the they're not allowed to do anything. So they've hired us to start cracking down on this. And, you know, so once you have that, now what like, what do you do? It gets out of control. Right. And then crap like this happens. Couple that with this notion that, you need to defund the police, and the
Norm Murdock [:police
Steve Palmer [:are all horrible. And and granted, some police officers are bad. Some are good. Some are in the middle. You know, not everybody's perfect. We're all human and imperfect. But, like, couple those two things together. So now you've got a police officer at Kroger saying, hey.
Steve Palmer [:Stop. This woman is not stopping. Not only that, she's she's driving her car at him, and he's saying, stop or I'll shoot. Stop or I'll shoot. And, you know, it's like it's it's created this. So you can't just judge this, I don't think. Now legally, it might be different, but it's societally. We can't just judge this by the moment where he pulls the trigger and blame that on racism or something.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:There is a lot more going on here. There's a lot more in this milkshake. Yeah. We need to we need to figure out what those ingredients are, turn back the clock, and get to the root cause of this, which is far more complicated. But, you know, to the to the question at hand, which is why is he charged with 4 counts of murder? There's different ways to be charged with murder. You can be charged with murder, aggravated murder, manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, or voluntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, reckless homicide. And a lot of times what prosecutors will do, they'll just pick the array of them. And then if a jury doesn't agree with the most serious, maybe they'll agree with the next serious, or next serious, next serious.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, some of that is a strategic, maneuver just to get their conviction. I know the lawyer on that case, Mark Collins, a great lawyer, a friend of mine, and a very well respected attorney. He does a lot of these kind of cases. And I'm gonna try to have a conversation with him at the table here at some point here in the near future. But That'd be great. You know, generally speaking, this is a another example of what happens when we lose the reigns of an organized society.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Like, I don't care what color you are. You can't steal. Yeah.
Brett Johnson [:Yes. And you can't not follow orders going to stop, get out of the car. Over 3 or 4 bottles of liquor. Right.
Norm Murdock [:And her thinking that she
Steve Palmer [:doesn't need to stop. Now the justification is gonna be we're so afraid of police that we don't wanna stop. And if that's if you legitimate believe that, we'll turn back the clock into a point where what causes that belief Yeah. And is it accurate? Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:And then
Steve Palmer [:turn back the clock even more until you get to that.
Norm Murdock [:I think this is the anniversary week, for example, of the Ferguson event Mhmm. Where, Michael Brown, right, was reaching into the police cabin where the officer was to get his gun. Yeah. And they're wrestling over his gun. And
Steve Palmer [:there was no stop. Don't do it. No. There was none of that. Don't shoot. Don't shoot. But, you know
Norm Murdock [:And that was a shoplifting. That that's what triggered that. And and look With shoplifting.
Steve Palmer [:There there's a Marxist notion that property rights there's no individual property rights. Right? There's so everything is owned by the collective, and the government has to sort of dole it out and before you get to the pure utopian nonsense that they think ever will come. Exactly. And so but property is personal property. It's real property. It's like, this is somebody else's property. And if you wonder why your grocery bill is high, this is part of it. Mhmm.
Steve Palmer [:Because if the grocery stores are losing a 1,000 a day in shoplifting, guess what? They're gonna make that up somewhere, and it's gonna come out of your pocket because you pay for your groceries and you pay for your groceries and hopefully, you guys pay for your groceries. I pay for mine, and I buy less now because I can't afford it. But, you know, the the point is is that there's so much going on here. That's right. And this at at the end, when this officer made a decision to pull the trigger, I I don't know how it you know, I wasn't there. I don't know. I know what the argument's gonna be is that he was acting in self defense. It was a lawful police order.
Steve Palmer [:She She not only was not obeying the order, she was aggressively not obeying the order and putting this guy's life in danger. Yeah. And, you know, that's gonna be Mark's argument in the case. It's in you know, there was a time and place where maybe it was too far the other way, where police could get away with rubber hoses and phone books and beating up suspects, and there was no safeguards on that. And then back in the sixties, we had cases like Miranda and Terry versus Ohio Yeah. And some other sort of watershed moments in our criminal procedure where we decided we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna put in place some constitutional protections, to protect us from overreaching police. Well, that it's like the pendulum always swings, and it always swings too far in the other direction.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And now it's gone all the way back. You know, it's like
Norm Murdock [:way back.
Steve Palmer [:Now these people think they can do everything and they don't have to obey a lawful order, please. I was taught at the dinner table. I was taught by high school teachers. I was taught by peer pressure, by everybody who knew anything about common sense. That when a cop says stop, damn it, you stop. And if you don't stop and you run, it's because you're doing something wrong and you don't wanna get caught. And, you know, it's not that people told me to run, but I understood that implicitly. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And now people think they can just run away. Yeah. And there's no consequence.
Norm Murdock [:So there's there's this this will sound like, I'm some kind of, immediate, you know, trying to politicize this. But there are 2 salient facts involved in the election that that are they're absolutely part of this equation. And one was, the former attorney general of California supported that change where if the total amount being stolen is under was it $900 or whatever it was. It was under a1000. Yeah. That we're not pursuing those cases. We're not Which
Steve Palmer [:is which is insanity.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So Kamala Harris but that that that's her this is her idea.
Steve Palmer [:And look
Norm Murdock [:And then the other thing was, she created a bail fund for BLM violent protesters.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. In Minnesota, ironically.
Norm Murdock [:Ironic you know. Hey. Come on, man. Yeah. I mean, this factors into the thought process of young people of any color
Steve Palmer [:Of course.
Norm Murdock [:That the police are the bad guys, and you run from them.
Steve Palmer [:And you see it. Look on YouTube. You see these young girls, suburban girls, city girls. It doesn't make any difference. It doesn't make any difference. And I say girls because it's almost always like, you see these YouTube videos where this girl's like, I don't she's wasted, and I don't have to get out of the car.
Norm Murdock [:And I
Steve Palmer [:don't it's like Right. Yes. You do. You absolutely do.
Norm Murdock [:You sorted out
Steve Palmer [:later in court. I am no apologist for the police.
Norm Murdock [:I know you're not.
Steve Palmer [:I am not. Exactly. And I have cross examined them. I have exposed their lies, their corruption, their covers up their cover ups. Right. In many, many cases, I've caught them with their proverbial pants down
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Many times. Yeah. And I love doing it because I think it sanitizes our constitutional rights or or at least, it it it But you're
Norm Murdock [:doing that in court. That's where it belongs.
Steve Palmer [:I can help you in a courtroom. I can't help you on the side of the road No. If you're running down a police officer because you think you're righteously don't have to obey.
Norm Murdock [:And then you get shot and you're dead.
Steve Palmer [:And you get shot and you're dead, and it's the most tragic thing that can happen. That's somebody's daughter, that's somebody's mother, that's that that somebody who doesn't get to live anymore.
Norm Murdock [:An unborn baby. Yeah. Unborn baby.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, this is awful at every level. And and and the people you're talking about are responsible for it by spinning this nonsense message Right. That that it's okay to steal and we're not gonna prosecute, that it's okay to violate the law and it's okay to run from the police and disobey orders. It's not. It's not. It's not. And it's not okay for police to falsely arrest people, to target people of a certain race or color Right. Or to to engage in any sort of corruption.
Norm Murdock [:And we'll sue them if if they do violate.
Steve Palmer [:Those things are true at this exact same time. Exactly. But in the main, police are not all bad. No. You know, this guy just wanted to stop somebody who was stealing.
Norm Murdock [:So the whole reason that we we talked it's been a long time, but when we had the FOP, guy in here, Brian Steele of, the the Central Ohio Lodge, We talked a little bit about this case. The 2 Blendon Township policemen involved were in that Kroger lot responding to a lockout or a dead battery or something. They were assisting a shopper and they happen to be in the parking lot. This Kroger employee runs out in the parking lot and says, it's them, them, and them. They just stole a bunch of stuff. And it was this flash mob of several people. They all got in separate cars and they're all taking off. And the one car that they could stop was this young lady who was pregnant.
Norm Murdock [:She was the maybe the slowest one to the car or the The nearest to them. Nearest to them and they were able
Brett Johnson [:Just bad luck on her part that she was in the wrong place wrong time kind of thing. Yeah. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:So, I mean, the police were actually there trying to do good things.
Steve Palmer [:And and representing a this is like the hallmark of criminal defense and go back to Clarence Darrow wrote a book, I think, called For the Defense. And I you know, Clarence Darrow is sort of like a hero. Now he was I I don't think I would have agreed with him anything politically. But any anyway but, you know, you know, he was a master in the courtroom, and he took on causes that were unpopular either way, you know.
Norm Murdock [:The Scopes monkey trial.
Steve Palmer [:Scopes monkey trial, Leopold and Loeb. He even he sort of cut his teeth, in the Chicago, labor disputes and some other stuff. I mean, really taking on all causes. The most, I guess, the most on downtrodden of people. Right? And so as a as a criminal defense lawyer, whether it's unpopular or not, you know, somebody's gonna pick up the torch and defend this police officer even in the face of a political nonsense that plea all cops are bad. So, you know, Mark's got his hands full. I I think, you know, he's gotta overcome Mark Collins is a lawyer. He's gotta overcome some of that implicit bias
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And and find a way to, get a fair trial for his client. And hopefully, his client whatever the just result is, hopefully, it it it is reached. Yeah. I have my personal thoughts on it. But, you know, tragic tragic as it may be, I think at the end of the day, the guy is probably gonna be vindicated. I I don't know for sure. But
Brett Johnson [:I don't know why that video hit me the way it did in the other video, a few years ago, you know, the, the young lady that you guys broke down.
Steve Palmer [:Oh, the knife fight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Brett Johnson [:It's just that I you look at the the police officer and if that car had hit him differently, he had been caught under that car.
Norm Murdock [:Mhmm.
Brett Johnson [:And he'd been out of commission. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:It was a deadly weapon that was being used again.
Brett Johnson [:£2,000 of deadly If
Steve Palmer [:a police officer were driving his car at a suspect Right. It would be a deadly weapon.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:If the suspect is driving the car to a police officer, it would be a deadly weapon. I've defended many a case Yeah. Where the angry boyfriend or girlfriend is trying to run down the other with a car. And it's a it's it's it's flown in.
Brett Johnson [:And I and I feel bad that the family has lost her. I really, really do.
Steve Palmer [:This is the tragedy of the highest order.
Brett Johnson [:But it's just she made some really bad choices.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, we all feel bad that
Steve Palmer [:George Floyd not deserve to die.
Norm Murdock [:George No. I feel bad that George Floyd died. Right?
Brett Johnson [:Yeah. Exactly.
Norm Murdock [:You know, but but there is, like, evidence there's evidence that they trained Chauvin to do what he did. Yeah. I mean Look,
Steve Palmer [:I I think
Brett Johnson [:And that needs to be reformed, then then we do.
Steve Palmer [:I mean Change the training. Change the training. Look. Could Chauvin make all the right decisions that they're clearly not.
Norm Murdock [:Clearly not.
Steve Palmer [:Clearly not. Clearly not. Right. He he blew it in a lot of ways. Exactly. But, you know, these these tragedies are gonna continue to happen if we are teaching our society that you don't have to respect authority.
Norm Murdock [:And and in the in the George Floyd case, they never proved any kind of hate or animus because because there were diverse police involved in that apprehension of George Floyd. There were Asian Americans. There were women. There were other kinds. It wasn't just white cops, black suspect. It it and and there was no evidence that Chauvin did this because, you know, George Floyd was black. And yet it turned into it's another one of these racial
Steve Palmer [:Well, they made it racial and it didn't have to be. I didn't hear one shred of look, I I've said this sort of maybe even famously now because I've said it on so many podcasts. Like, I called up my colleague or my colleague call me texted me at night when that was going on, like, 6, 7 at night when all the footage was coming out the 1st night. He said, did you see this? And I said, yeah. Looks bad.
Norm Murdock [:Looks bad.
Steve Palmer [:And I said, I wonder if it's race related. Right. And he goes, well, I don't need to know that. He goes, I obvious. I said, well, not so sure. Jeez, man. Like, I'm not so sure. Exactly.
Steve Palmer [:I said, it might be. It might be. It might be.
Norm Murdock [:It might not be.
Steve Palmer [:I never saw the evidence of it. Now the now the other side is gonna say, well, it's just systemically, part of the system where this only happens, because the guy's black. So you don't even know it's race related because it's so you're swimming in the water of race Right. Of racism. And I, you know And
Norm Murdock [:you know,
Brett Johnson [:but in that, you know, you say that, and it can go reverse too. So is it systemic that young black women are gonna go out and it's in their DNA that couldn't go out and steal liquor?
Steve Palmer [:Of course not. Right.
Norm Murdock [:It goes both ways.
Steve Palmer [:Somebody was taught to do that in some way, shape, or form. Right? So it's like look.
Brett Johnson [:You know, again, she's not at fault, but fault not not faultless, I should say. But, yeah, it's not
Norm Murdock [:Floyd. It doesn't doesn't fly.
Steve Palmer [:Floyd was high and he was OD ing and he was having his own medical issues and he was committing crimes. Right. Awful. No reason for him to die that day. Right. But it's still true.
Norm Murdock [:And I feel bad that he died. I feel bad that Michael Brown died in
Steve Palmer [:the furnace. It was it's awful. It's awful. Right. And but I think we have to we have to find the cause, not just the blame. Yeah. You know, we have to get to the cause. Like, what is it? Like like you said, Brett, I I I I think it's extremely racist for anybody suggest that only young black women would go and be thieves.
Steve Palmer [:There's plenty of white thieves. I know them. I represent them all the time. Sure. And there's the, you know, but
Norm Murdock [:Well, I think we could stipulate there are more white thieves than there are black thieves in America.
Steve Palmer [:That's probably true. It's probably true. It's probably true. Yeah. And and there are plenty of white folks who get injured by by cops, and there's plenty of black folks who get injured by cops. And there are plenty of cops that are bad, but most of them are pretty good. At least they try to do the right thing. We have protections in place, people.
Steve Palmer [:We have protections in place. If this arrest is invalid, if this arrest is unconstitutional, if this cop were doing something that he shouldn't have been doing Right. Then come to me Yeah. Or somebody like me Sorted. Tomorrow. Right. I can help you tomorrow. I can't help you there, and now you're dead, and it's awful.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Yeah. Right? It's awful. I pray for it. I mean, I I mean, literally, it's awful. Yep. So look. We're probably unpopular for even having this conversation, but at least a common sense conversation.
Brett Johnson [:Well, and I bring up just because, you know, a local local action may nag it is national news.
Steve Palmer [:Yep.
Brett Johnson [:I mean, it's being covered by
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Yep. Good or
Brett Johnson [:bad it is. You bet. And it's just another We're gonna
Steve Palmer [:break it down. When this case goes to trial, we're gonna break it all
Brett Johnson [:by because I think it's worthwhile. It gives just how it got there and that sort of thing too. Yeah. I agree.
Norm Murdock [:There was, I don't think he's on the air anymore, but there was a, you know, one of those, commentators had a show, Barry Farber. He was on, WTVN, for for many years. Barry Farber. And he he had this great philosophy, and I I Steve has said in the past that this that this philosophy is in fact part of the defense. You know, what the the defense says when a homeowner or a policeman is defending themselves and perhaps even goes a little further, like, doesn't meet it's not the exact amount of force to counteract the force that's being put on them, but the person went a little further. And this the philosophy was illegal aggression, right, invites overreaction. Because in the in the heat of the moment, right, somebody you catch a burglar in your house, in your daughter's bedroom. Right? And you don't wait to see if the guy's armed.
Norm Murdock [:You just start shooting. Right? Yeah. He's done a crime by breaking and entering. Mhmm. And Barry Farber saying that that aggression invites overreaction.
Steve Palmer [:Well, it does. Right? So so we we I started to say this earlier, and we got sidetracked on something. I forget what I think some I think one of you guys said she didn't deserve to die and you're absolutely categorically right. She did not deserve to die, but it can also be true that he acted in self defense. So this is where, you know, this is a struggle we have in front of juries. Like Yeah. It's not that this person should die. No.
Steve Palmer [:It is it whether this guy who's accused acted in self defense within the confines of the law. And the concept that you're talking about gets sort of processed through the legal system and comes back as a jury instruction that goes something like this. The law does not measure nicely the degree of force necessary to repel the attack.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Right? Because we are human. We're human. You have to put yourselves in the defendant's shoes. Yeah. You have to think about the things that he was thinking about, consider the things that he was considering, looking at the things that he was looking at. Self defense cases is the only opportunity where I get to say, ladies and gentlemen, put yourselves in the shoes of the accused. Think what he was thinking. See what he was seeing.
Steve Palmer [:Hear what he was hearing. Know what he knew about this.
Norm Murdock [:What were his available options to immobilize that car? He he he didn't have a button to push Right. To turn the engine off and stop the car.
Steve Palmer [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:He's got a gun on him.
Steve Palmer [:And it's not What else is he supposed to use? It he's not a robot. He's not a hero. This isn't TV.
Norm Murdock [:This isn't AI.
Steve Palmer [:So I try to get jurors in this in this mood where, like, you know, I I tell this story in front of juries sometimes where there was a time, like, once or twice. One time, I had to go had to, quote, sweep my house. I thought I had heard a noise that under there was no reasonable explanation I could come up with. None. Yeah. Not one. And it was dark. I used to have a house where there was a basement entrance from the outside or at least through a garage into the outside.
Steve Palmer [:And I heard a noise in that area, and I thought there is no reasonable explanation for this whatsoever. You know, I just moved in, so there's boxes all over my basement. It was a remodeled house, and the basement hadn't been done yet. So there were very few like, the kinda hanging lights with the strings.
Norm Murdock [:Mhmm. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, I couldn't turn all the lights on, in other words, when I went down. I only got the the one bulb at the bottom of the stairs. And here I am in my pajamas and no shirt and a firearm sweeping my basement around, like, boxes and stuff in a fairly new house and or freshly we moved into remodeled house. And I was just I have never been more terrified in my life. Never. Yeah. And it dawned on me afterwards, like, any action I made in that as I was going through that experience, there's no way it would have been perfect. Not even close to I mean, it would have been Right.
Steve Palmer [:And so all and the police are trained and they're professionals, and they're supposed to be able to deal with it, and they get better at it. But, you know, we've talked about our guys here at the table or our cops at the table about this. It's, like, it is hard to do. Yeah. This guy, like you said, Brett, there's a car coming in. What's he to do? What is he perceiving?
Brett Johnson [:Self preservation. What is he feeling?
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Think about his heart rate at that particular time. Absolutely. Think about what he's thinking about. Yeah. About his like and and look, this doesn't mean that she deserved to die. She didn't and she shouldn't have.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right.
Steve Palmer [:But both things can be true here.
Norm Murdock [:Over a bag of liquor.
Steve Palmer [:He can act in self defense Jesus. And she doesn't deserve to die. Yeah. This is one of those tragedies that the system cannot fix in at at a trial.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. There's no perfect outcome here.
Steve Palmer [:This has to be prevented in the future. And I would suggest I would suggest that we can still hold police accountable and instruct people to obey them.
Norm Murdock [:How to how to interact.
Steve Palmer [:Right. We can do both. We can do both. We can do both. Right. And we're creating a fertile crescent for this kind of crap to happen.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. We sure are.
Steve Palmer [:With bad policy.
Brett Johnson [:But sadly, in that court case though, if it let's say things need to be refined. It's all gonna be shining on how cops are trained.
Steve Palmer [:Yes.
Brett Johnson [:It doesn't take care of the other end of it. Why did this young lady die yeah how can we change that why that trial
Steve Palmer [:she did it
Brett Johnson [:she did it
Steve Palmer [:doesn't asking why she did what she did is not the same as saying she deserve to die for doing
Norm Murdock [:it right
Steve Palmer [:right you
Norm Murdock [:know nothing that may change
Steve Palmer [:the opposite
Brett Johnson [:nothing changes on that side of it.
Steve Palmer [:Like, what in her belief structure and how is her belief structure created? Like, her belief system, informed.
Norm Murdock [:And we'll never have a perfect answer to that question because she's gone. Right. That's a better
Steve Palmer [:at least we're asking questions that might prevent this from happening again.
Brett Johnson [:Right. Because
Norm Murdock [:we don't want it to happen again.
Steve Palmer [:On both
Brett Johnson [:sides. Right. His training
Steve Palmer [:and and
Brett Johnson [:her situation walking in. Right. Yeah. This is horrible for all. Well, look, guys. We're
Steve Palmer [:we're we're into it. I happy in 1 100th episode. Woo hoo. Yeah.
Norm Murdock [:I think I think food food for thought because I know that all of us here love economics and, think we know something about it. We know a little bit about it. And I just wanna put out there that, in in in my estimation, the proposals from Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris to freeze prices Oh my gosh. This is what
Steve Palmer [:we could talk for 2 hours on
Norm Murdock [:this nonsense. And and and also shrinkflation at
Steve Palmer [:the so you see government's gonna set the price of groceries.
Norm Murdock [:And also gonna do some kind of big warnings on a tube of Colgate or Crest that, hey, people. You know, P&G or Palmolive is lying to you. This tube of toothpaste in a big box is actually only 4.3 ounces. Well, yeah, I can read that without a warning label.
Steve Palmer [:I don't need government to
Norm Murdock [:look. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
Steve Palmer [:This is lunacy. It's lunacy. The last time price fixing worked was never. Never. Right? The last time communism and socialism worked was never.
Norm Murdock [:Or even us, president Ford, had whip inflation now. Everybody wore these little buttons. And he and Nixon that before him tried to freeze prices
Steve Palmer [:Didn't work.
Norm Murdock [:And what you get is a shortage because a hog farmer who is being told by his Kroger buyer, listen. I can't pay you more for pork than this amount. And he says, well, then I'm just gonna slaughter my my And I'm
Steve Palmer [:not gonna do it. I'm just my livestock.
Norm Murdock [:And then you have a shortage of bacon. Right. That's that's the outcome.
Steve Palmer [:Or when they like, think of this as my 4 corners of woodworking analogy. So you're gonna tinker with the price in this corner, and you're trying to build a perfect square picture frame.
Brett Johnson [:Right.
Norm Murdock [:So he's gonna shave a little bit
Steve Palmer [:off there, but that throws off the other corner. And the other corner is like the supply line Yeah. Or what it takes to build that product. So now I got since I can't sell the product for the price I needed, I've got a stockpile of parts that I needed to make that product that I can't sell. Yeah. So then what? Yeah. Or because there's a shortage, this guy over here, well, he's happens to be flushed with cash right now because of some other tinkering. So he's gonna go buy all of those parts because he's he knows in the future he's gonna need them.
Steve Palmer [:Now you don't get them. Yeah. So it just distorts the entire market. Thomas Sowell does a great breakdown of this.
Norm Murdock [:And then the other basic economics. The other economic story, guys, that that, you know, I know Trump did this as a throwaway campaign gimmick. But this idea that we're not gonna tax tips and I would just say, okay. If you're looking for people that we all sympathize with or people we love like waiters, you know. Right? So we're not gonna tax our tips. Okay. So let's not have an income tax on teachers or military or first responders.
Steve Palmer [:I'd prefer not to pay tax.
Norm Murdock [:For lawyers.
Steve Palmer [:I prefer not to pay tax on cash fees.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Well, in fact
Steve Palmer [:I I prefer that.
Norm Murdock [:In fact, the Heritage or or one of the
Steve Palmer [:things that Somebody thinks I make enough money without knowing how much I make.
Norm Murdock [:What what what they said, well, accountants and lawyers, what they're gonna do in response to this would be, like, okay, I'm gonna charge you $15 an hour, but I really want you to pay the other 85 to get to a $100 an hour. We'll call that a
Steve Palmer [:tip. Mhmm.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, we're just we're just gonna couch it Right. As a tip.
Steve Palmer [:Well, that's because they're no. It's because they're human. Right?
Norm Murdock [:Well, that's
Steve Palmer [:also human. And it also demonstrates something that's that's very significant in a capitalistic society. Greed and you're in people's quest for, a profit sort of guide them in a very moral way at times. Right? So I'm not saying that's the only thing out there. But it's like, look, people are gonna people are gonna act in their financial best interest.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:They are. Yeah. And if if you're ripping people off, then you're gonna be exposed, and you're not gonna be able to rip people off anymore.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. When I get your
Steve Palmer [:I'm gonna go buy from you instead of you.
Norm Murdock [:I get your in invoice from Palmer Defense, and you go suggested tip, Norm. It's a $150 per hour. I'm only gonna charge you really 25, but I expect you if we're gonna continue in this relationship.
Steve Palmer [:If you want this deal, I'm gonna give you a discount, but we gotta call half of it a tip.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right. I mean, you know that's gonna happen. It's coming.
Steve Palmer [:It's coming. Yeah. It's coming. Alright. Common Sense Ohio. You can check us out commonsenseohioshow.com. If you wanna be a supporter, you can be. All you have to do is go to commonsenseohioshow.com.
Steve Palmer [:Send us a message that says, hey, look, guys. I love what you're doing. I'd love to give you $5 a month, or I'd love to I'd love to sponsor your World War 2 fact of the day, or I'd love to sponsor, Norm's nuggets at the end even though we sort of don't call them that anymore. I would love to sponsor
Brett Johnson [:a day where Brett just doesn't say anything.
Steve Palmer [:Or maybe sponsor Brett's silence. Yeah. Right.
Norm Murdock [:I I will say Norm
Steve Palmer [:pay us enough money, we'll shut Norm up. No.
Norm Murdock [:Norm is super defensive about his nuggets. I just I just wanna say I Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:He got the last 2 in today.
Norm Murdock [:I protect my nuggets. Right.
Steve Palmer [:So Yeah. If you want to, if you wanna be a sponsor, go to commonsenseioshow.com. Otherwise, tune in each week in and out, in and out of each week. Whatever I'm trying to say, you get it. But here we are, August 16, 2024, coming at you right from the middle, commonsenseohioshow.com.
