Shownotes
Steve Palmer and Norm Murdock jump into the whirlwind of national and local events shaping our world and our state. From the chaos swirling around Washington, D.C. and Trump’s bold “DC takeover”—is it legal, political theater, or both?—to a nostalgic look at how pop culture icons like Fast Times at Ridgemont High helped define a decade, they leave no stone unturned.
They break down the historical roots of D.C.’s unique status, why the Constitution gave Congress special powers over the district, and how shifts in federal control could change America’s balance of power. Steve and Norm also tackle the rise in big government: how did we transform from “the arsenal of democracy” to the land of red tape and administrative bloat, and what does that mean for our rights today?
Back in Ohio, Norm and Steve discuss the challenges facing our cities—from rising crime in Cincinnati to safety and police shortages in Columbus—and why these trends matter for everyone living in the Buckeye State. On the lighter side, Steve celebrates college football traditions with a preview of the much-anticipated Ohio State vs. Texas showdown, and shares some fatherly pride as his son embarks on basic training.
All this plus late-night TV woes, new global tensions with China, and how American exceptionalism still resonates through history.
Moments
00:00 80s Party Culture & Consequences
06:06 Global Power for Peace
08:00 D.C. Home Rule and Federal Control
11:29 FDR vs. Supreme Court Power Struggle
15:10 Incremental Loss of Rights
18:31 Kristi Noem's Dog Incident
21:20 "Democrats' Stance on Crime in DC"
23:46 Congress' Decline: Blurred Powers
27:39 Cincinnati's Potential Urban "Donut Hole"
32:28 Security Costs and Business Disruption
33:38 Central City Exodus: Safety Concerns
37:06 Rent Control Subleasing Loophole
42:28 "Friday Night Lights: True Story"
45:56 Protests Over Bullying Incident
49:07 U.S. Sells Chips to China
52:45 Tariffs Boost Stock Market Gains
56:29 Abbey Gate Attack: Afghanistan Tragic Loss
57:10 "Discussing Scandals and Open Debates"
Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.
info@commonsenseohioshow.com
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
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, My Podcast Guy®, 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.
Transcripts
All right, common sense Ohio. August 13, 2025. Texas is coming to Ohio. Putin is coming to the United States, and D.C. is in the comics. The world is on its ear. We're going to explain it all. That and much, much more.
Steve Palmer [:Common sense ohio show.com. check us out. It's a, it's a neat little website. You can send us a question, you can send us a topic. Norm will cover it. Or if you just want to take on Norman and debate, I dare you. Online or elsewhere, he'll. He's happy to oblige.
Steve Palmer [:Trust me. I know. Personal Brett, not here today, but the show must go on. Fact of the day. So I. Those who know I do a this day in history and I'm gonna. I picked two things today. One, because it's sort of my.
Steve Palmer [:My youth, my comeuppance. Fast Times at Ridgemont High debuted today in 1982. August 13, 1982. Fast time, Ridgemont High. Cameron Crowe film, I guess wrote it and created it. I, you know, it's funny, I, I thought about this. There's so much cultural stuff that came from this movie.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But then I went back and watched it. At one point, when I thought my kids were old enough to watch it, I realized that they weren't. I mean, if you see what's in that movie.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:It is insanity.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, everything from abortion to.
Norm Murdock [:It's nuts.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, it is. To drug use.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Skipping school. I mean, it is. But done sort of tastefully, I guess. Is it in a weird way, it's like. But you have teen sex with like an older guy. I mean, how do I say that's done? Taste. I don't know. But I got to thinking about this a little bit and how that has informed our.
Steve Palmer [:You know, that was back in the 80s, so we were coming off the 70s. I didn't. I was a young man in the 70s or a young boy in the 70s, but that is in the 80s. And that sort of really informed the culture going forward.
Norm Murdock [:You know, it did. Madonna was just getting going and.
Steve Palmer [:Or the excess of the 80s.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. I mean, it was kind of turbulent at that point in time. I don't think the boom economy had quite taken hold yet.
Steve Palmer [:Not quite. But it was coming.
Norm Murdock [:It was coming.
Steve Palmer [:And it was just sort of this free and loose, enjoy party style of the 80s that then was dashed by AIDS and some other stuff that sort of happened. So it was like all this teen sex was going on and craziness going on and all this, you know, I don't know if it's good or bad. And I'm sure somebody smarter than I some has sort of tried to connect the dots here about where were we then and where are we now and how do we, how did all this happen? You know it, because it really was a, it sort of mainstreamed all these things.
Norm Murdock [:No Internet yet really, you know, and, and the personal computer wasn't really, you know, hadn't taken the world by storm.
Steve Palmer [:You probably had your Apple II.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:At the most maybe your TRS 80.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:So the other thing that happened I think more significant and I believe last week, August 6th was the, the anniversary of the bomb. But today the Manhattan in 1942 today the government started the Manhattan Project to create the bomb that three years later, I think what they did in three years, three years later they, they were able to drop two different types of bombs. And so, you know, here we are.
Norm Murdock [:The same general that was put in charge of the Manhattan Project also built the entire Pentagon in like six months. I mean think of that.
Steve Palmer [:Isn't it crazy how if you think about that, we went from Nothing in the 30s to a completely fully operational Death Star. And I think that's what a lot of people, we used to talk about World War II a lot here. But a lot of people don't understand or didn't maybe at the time didn't understand the force of nature. They awakened with the United States, like with our manufacturing capacity, just the human capacity, like our human resources.
Norm Murdock [:We were called the arsenal of democracy, the United States. And part of this can do spirit that Americans really embraced, that really took us up through the space program and put men on the moon was this idea that America, if it put its mind to it, could do anything and could do it. Exceptional is the word and could do it fast.
Steve Palmer [:Exceptional is the word. And for those of you who don't think so, go study the history, see what we did. Because it's not like we conquered the world in World War II. It's like we did not conquer the world in World War II. And we could have. Yeah, maybe the Soviets would have something to say about that at the time, but I think we could have.
Norm Murdock [:I mean there were people alive, right? This is the thing that blows me away. There were people alive. When Neil Armstrong stepped out on the moon that had been born before there were cars, okay? Before there were cars, much less airplanes. And then in 1969, think of it. You're a hundred year old guy, you're born in 1869, right? Think of, think of that.
Steve Palmer [:Think about that. Like, what's your grandmother? My grandmother was born in 04, 1904, I think. And, you know, the transition that she saw in her lifetime was nothing short of incredible. And I don't think it's the same now. You can maybe say the same. We were just talking about fast times, Ridgemont High. There was no computers. There was no never.
Steve Palmer [:But we still had little handheld games, and we still had, you know, we had stuff you could plug in and stuff you could use. And life had become sort of simplified by appliances and washing machine, everything else.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:But like, these people live through a complete transformation, complete of the world that, you know, culminates in people walking on the moon.
Norm Murdock [:Really.
Steve Palmer [:Nothing short of incredible. And because of United States, American exceptionalism.
Norm Murdock [:So that Manhattan Project that you're talking about that they started, you know, today. That in 1942, so up in Chicago, like underneath, I think it was a basketball court or something, they took the first steps of splitting atoms, like underneath a university basketball court.
Steve Palmer [:Isn't it incredible? I mean, it's just wild and just. So those who know others were trying to do this. We got word that the Germans were on this. We got word that the Japanese were on this. So it's like if we didn't do it, somebody was going to do it for sure. And. And we wielded this power in a way that did not. That was not designed to conquer the world, but to end the conflict that we didn't start, by the way.
Norm Murdock [:No, right.
Steve Palmer [:That we didn't kill the millions of people that the Germans killed, that the Japanese killed. And obviously later that the.
Norm Murdock [:Or during all that, they industrialized death camps. I mean, they were factories of death.
Steve Palmer [:Right. So, look, I mean, somebody had to do something about it, so why not us? All right, well, look, lots going on. Norm, you want to talk about the DC takeover, and I'm not talking about the DC comics here, but there is some interesting. You know, I actually had to go back and brush up on this, but go ahead.
Norm Murdock [:Well, wasn't Superman a DC character?
Steve Palmer [:I think Superman.
Norm Murdock [:I think he was.
Steve Palmer [:I don't know who all the DC character was, but just put Trump on that face now.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So he's.
Steve Palmer [:Imagine Trump wearing the. Was Batman DC or was he?
Norm Murdock [:I'm not sure, but like. Like Jim Croce said, you know, you don't put on Superman's cape. So I guess Trump is trying to do that and probably successful.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Here we go. We got Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern. Hold on. There's Even more. These are the ones I know.
Norm Murdock [:Superman was invented in Cleveland, by the way. Those, the guys who came up with.
Steve Palmer [:Superman were Ohioans, the Flash, Aquaman. Then they got a bunch of people they added to it later.
Norm Murdock [:But so, I mean, you know, I gu. The latest Clark Kent is Donald Trump.
Steve Palmer [:I don't know who Wonder Woman is. But anyway, the DC takeover. So there's some interesting history here. You want to kick it off?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So back in 1973, probably as a reaction to the Vietnam protests that pretty much swarmed over D.C. took over the Mall, that Congress decided to give D.C. some home rule, ability to control its own government, but still have some strings to bring it back under federal control if necessary, if civic order was lost, that somehow there would be a mechanism for the president and the federal government to grab back control. So Donald Trump as president today, these days, a few days ago, implemented that. And what he gets is 48 hours of control over the police, direct control as the president over the local PD for 48 hours. And then after 48 hours, he gets to extend that on his own initiative for a total of 30 days. And then the law calls for Congress, so his power runs out after a month, 30 days.
Norm Murdock [:And then if it goes beyond that, Congress has to sanction it.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And the reason Congress has the control here is because if you dial back the clock to that pesky document that those who want to get things done because they think they can, it always gets in the way. The United states Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, basically laid the foundation for the creation of a district that would house the federal government. And it granted, I think it was like 10 miles square separate from any existing state. And the idea here was that we didn't want the federal government to sit under the jurisdiction of a state. And for all sorts of reasons. Right. The federal government had to be independent of a state.
Steve Palmer [:And you didn't want to have Virginia or Maryland or one of these other states ostensibly having more power than the other states, because then the people would have gotten their panties and a bunch about that.
Norm Murdock [:And back then, Steve, as we know from our history, federalism and what all that philosophy entails, the states were really way more powerful than the federal government. All the rights and powers were reserved to the states other than the few things that were in the Constitution. And now it's flipped. Now the federal government has all. They've really opened up what the Supremacy Clause means. And federal government is way more powerful now than it was at that time.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. So 1790, we created D.C. and just to give you, I guess we can put a little color to that history. For the longest time, I mean, there was even in the time, maybe your grandfather's life norm, going to a different state meant something.
Norm Murdock [:Oh yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Going to a different state was, I don't want to say it's like going to a different country. It wasn't quite that. But you go to a different state and it wasn't so homogenized where the highway system didn't exist. You're going on different roads, you're on different names for. I mean, it was just a little bit different. And if you turn back the clock even further, you have. FDR gets sort of, he goes through the Depression and he creates what he calls the New Deal. And basically the New Deal was fascism.
Steve Palmer [:He wanted to take over the means of the economic production and sort of top down control over the economy. And the US Supreme Court for the longest time says, no, you can't do that. The federal government doesn't have power to do it. You can try all you want to regulate Jim Bob on the farm and tell him what he can grow and what he can't grow, but sorry, fdr, you don't have authority to do it. Yeah, then so he sells ourselves. I don't like you. I don't like you justices of the U.S. supreme Court.
Norm Murdock [:So I'm gonna add more.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. And guess what? The ones I'm gonna add are new Dealers who are gonna vote my way. And then also all of a sudden we have this concept or this slogan that's emerged a stitch in time, save nine. And what that means is the Supreme Court miraculously does an about face, says, oh, we were wrong. We were wrong. It turns out under the commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, the New Deal or the President can. Or Congress can pass laws under the New Deal that are now miraculously constitutional.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And what that was is so the commerce clause basically was this limitless bucket of power for Congress to regulate the states. And careful what you wish for, because now we've created. That's what basically fueled what we now see as this modern megalith of the federal government.
Norm Murdock [:The swamp.
Steve Palmer [:The swamp, right. I mean, and then if you couple that with the administrative state of government that came along with the New Deal that was actually started by. Was it Woody Wilson? But anyway, now we have this sort of leviathan to quote Hobbes, of a government that you can't get rid of.
Norm Murdock [:What they say is like, you accidentally probably break a couple laws every day and you have no idea.
Steve Palmer [:You don't even know it.
Norm Murdock [:Right. Because there's all these regulations and things. I mean, just starting your car and commuting to work, you've probably broken a law or two. And you have no idea that you did, like, you refilled your lawnmower gas can the wrong way or bought the wrong light bulbs.
Steve Palmer [:Can we just talk about gas cans for a second? Because those damn safety ones, you can't dump the. Anyway.
Norm Murdock [:Insane.
Steve Palmer [:But this has parallels to what's going on today, because now we have back when Biden was running and right before or in Trump's last presidency, he started hearing rumblings about packing the court again.
Norm Murdock [:Again.
Steve Palmer [:And ironically, somehow magically waving your wand over D.C. and making it a state. Because then you'd get two more senators and you'd get a couple probably representatives. And then doing the same thing with Puerto Rico.
Norm Murdock [:And away you go.
Steve Palmer [:Away you go. Whoever does that, if they're. And it would be the Dems here, because they would presume that D.C. would vote Democratic.
Norm Murdock [:Sure.
Steve Palmer [:And they would presume that if they're the ones packing the court, then the judges are game over. It's game over. It's a fait accompli.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And look, if you believe in everything that that side is doing, you're probably saying, hooray, except guess what? It always comes back to bite you in the ass. We have checks and balances on power for a reason. The federal government was intended to be inefficient for a reason. It was not supposed to be able to get everything done that everybody wanted. It was supposed to be quite the opposite.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And when we're talking about budgets these days, we're talking about government spending these days, we're talking about all this stuff. But when in our lifetimes, when the government worked, the federal government worked the best. It was when Slick Willie was president and he didn't have Congress and he had to negotiate and get. We balanced the budget.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:Because they couldn't spend all. They couldn't do whatever they wanted.
Norm Murdock [:And the way this happens is the way we lose our rights, if you will, because that's really what we're talking about. The way we lose our rights is we give up a little. We give up our rights in exchange for what we perceive as security. So a little at a time, it happens incrementally, like boiling a frog. And this, you know, like somebody sees what they perceive as an injustice, I don't know, in Arkansas or Montana or someplace. And then they go, well, well, why is that law so backwards? Like maybe it allows corporal punishment in public schools or something. So somebody in Pennsylvania or New York or Connecticut looks at what Montana does and goes, oh, that's horrible. That's wrong.
Norm Murdock [:We disagree with that. So we need to pass national legislation to prevent that and make all 50 states comply with one, you know, philosophy or one view of how things should be. And then issue by issue by issue, whether it's car bumper height, whether it's discipline in a school, whether it's building a pond on your land, whatever it is, we start homogenizing, as Steve mentioned, where every state has to be the same. And then before you know it, the whole argument for separate statehoods almost evaporates.
Steve Palmer [:Well, we should talk about the argument for separate statehoods because it's not just that. That's, I guess, that sort of demands us to. Or you're asking the next question, which is why do we care?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And I think that's an important question. Yeah, we care because we are different. So we talk about the American melting pot. We talk about the American. We're based on diversity. And I'm using these terms in the truest sense. In the truest sense, that means that your American brother that lives in Massachusetts is going to be different than your American brother that lives in Texas. And.
Steve Palmer [:And not just different, but like a different lived experience. You know, Texas isn't going to have the same winters as Massachusetts. The weather is different. Our country is huge, and the people have different interests. And the freedom is the very freedom we're fighting to protect this, quote, democracy everybody's worried about is the freedom to do what you want to do.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. Right.
Steve Palmer [:And live the experience that you want to live within a certain framework. And if you try to make the people in Texas live like the people in Massachusetts, it's not fair to either. No, it's just not.
Norm Murdock [:No.
Steve Palmer [:And so right now, everybody talks about the coastals and the coastal elites, and that's what they're doing.
Norm Murdock [:Oh, yeah.
Steve Palmer [:They have decided that they know best and they're going to cram all this down. And the people have basically, I think, at this point, stood up on their hind legs and said, enough's enough. And I think now we have Trump, and that's what they got for that. They got their worst enemy. It's sort of like in. What's another movie reference, Ghostbusters. Conjure up your word, your biggest fear, and it was the stay.
Norm Murdock [:Puff.
Steve Palmer [:Marshmallow. Marshmallow. So they got Trump. People conjured up the biggest fear of the other side. And it was this stay puft marshmallow man. It's Trump. And he's basically saying, no, you can't do it. And we're trying to dismantle.
Steve Palmer [:And he's dismantling this, or he's at least trying.
Norm Murdock [:That is a great scene. They're telling Rick Moranis, no, don't think of it. Don't think of that thing. And then he thinks of it. It's just. It's beautiful.
Steve Palmer [:Well, yeah, it was Dan Aykroyd.
Norm Murdock [:It was Aykroyd. Yeah, don't think of it, man. I think, like, culturally, a good example of this, like this is a micro example. It's almost not important. But, you know, like when Kristi Noem was getting approved as Secretary of Homeland Security, it came out that she had shot a dog right on her ranch, you know, had, had, had put down a dog with a rifle or something because a dog would not behave and it would not. It would. It was untrainable. Well, that's how they do things out there, right? Like, that's not.
Norm Murdock [:But people in maybe say, I don't.
Steve Palmer [:Know, New Jersey or they have no concept of that.
Norm Murdock [:They have no. They flipped out over that. And it's like, you just don't live that life. You don't. Or with our Sarah Palin up in Alaska, nobody understood her life. Well, you're not in Alaska. You don't know what's going on up there.
Steve Palmer [:Just like Sarah, leave it alone. Or Kristi Nome is not going to go to Jersey and understand how those people drive.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:I'm just kidding. But look, there's a. If you go to New York and you go to Jersey and you go to some of these coastal cities like in the Midwest, they use a different language, they talk a different way. They're far more aggressively confrontational than we are here. And that's okay. You get to be that way. But imagine if we started passing laws trying to prevent that.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:The beauty of the federalist system is that it allows both to exist in harmony at the same time. It's not. They're different.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:That's the beauty of it. And we come together for certain values that we think are important, and that is our freedom to. To be different. And these people wanna make it all the same.
Norm Murdock [:And it's expressed in the Constitution with things like common defense. Okay. That's where the Constitution's trying to describe what the state should have in common. And it's pretty limited. I mean, the original plan. Right. And we've lost the plot now. And so this particular administration is trying to claw back.
Norm Murdock [:I mean, it's kind of funny because they accuse him of being Hitler and a power concentrat and he's actually disgorging power. Like if you get rid of the Department of Education, what does that mean? That means you're giving the power to oversee education policy back to the states and the local school systems. If you eliminate the top down force from D.C. you're giving up power. And yet people accuse him of being an amalgamator of power. And I think this administration is being totally misrepresented in the legacy media. I mean, they don't want to talk about the truth. They want to just.
Norm Murdock [:They hate him so much that, like in this DC takeover thing, oddly enough, and maybe not even by design, Trump has forced the Democrats to become pro crime. So what they're doing, what they're doing is saying there's not really a crime problem in D.C. so I'm watching CNN last night and they have an ABC anchor, a female, who said she was sexually assaulted by a guy who was let out five times by the D.C. you know, the lower court, you know, criminal court system in D.C. let this guy out five times. Recidivist, sexual assaulter. And he assaulted her. And she's saying she doesn't feel safe on the subway system, at the park and rides on the bike trails.
Norm Murdock [:None of this stuff feels safe to her after being assaulted. Right. And she is saying there is a crime problem and yet the Democrats are trying, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, hey, Trump should not be doing this because we don't really have a crime problem. I mean, so basically they're saying we're pro criminal in effect. Well, how can you be anti. How can you not say it exposes.
Steve Palmer [:What they really are? Right. It's really just no matter what Trump says, they're opposed to it.
Norm Murdock [:They're opposed to it. Knee jerk reaction.
Steve Palmer [:It puts them into. There's an old logical fallacy called. I think it's reductio ad absurdity reduced to absurdity.
Norm Murdock [:Yes.
Steve Palmer [:And the idea is you take the other side's argument and you reduce it to its absurd nature. And Trump is sort of doing that. Right. Like he's calling there. How can you possibly feel that there's not a crime problem? Or are you just opposing me because it's me.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And now look, I at the same time will say, I will watch carefully to see if Trump exceeds the federal authority or the executive authority here.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely. Of the act, Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:At the same time, I appreciate what Trump's trying to do. I also am very cautious and critical of power grabs by the executive branch, particularly because we don't have a king. We have an executive branch. And really, it was almost intended by design to be the weakest of the three branches.
Norm Murdock [:Exactly. It used to be. Yes, it was.
Steve Palmer [:It was too weak when it first started or when we first created. But so we've got to be very mindful of that. And here's the problem that we've run into, and it's all. And we can move on, but because of what we're talking about, because of this administrative swamp that we've created, Congress doesn't do its damn job anymore. And Congress's job was to pass laws and do things, and instead it delegates everything to these administrative agencies, which, guess what, sit under the hat of the executive branch of government. So we don't. We've got. We've blurred the lines of the balance of powers, and this is what we get.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And, you know, if somebody could wave their magic wand and get rid of. And Trump tried, I don't think he's going to be successful. But if you could wave your wand and get rid of these executives or these huge, meaningless executive swamp agencies, I think everything. There'd be a learning curve and there would be a little bit of a hurdle to get over, but it'd be smooth sailing after that.
Norm Murdock [:Well, like, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting is all rolled up now. Right. They got defunded, so they don't have federal money to dole out to.
Steve Palmer [:Guess what?
Norm Murdock [:Create a great.
Steve Palmer [:That people like and go sell advertising.
Norm Murdock [:That's what Brett said on our show last week is like, you know, one door shuts, another door opens. So now go out and be, you know, go out and sell advertising. You know, people are still gonna want to watch Sesame street for their little kids.
Steve Palmer [:That's right.
Norm Murdock [:Or this old house or whatever the program is. So just go get.
Steve Palmer [:Go get your sponsors and do it. Look, life sucks, man. All of a sudden, it's hard for you now you have to do what everybody else does. Sorry.
Norm Murdock [:This show is not subsidized by the government. Why should that show be? I mean, that's. This is part of.
Steve Palmer [:That's such a good point.
Norm Murdock [:We could talk about intel or we could talk about, you know, Solyndra. We could talk about a lot of different industries and the idea that the federal government picks winners and losers or jobs. Ohio, here in Ohio decides to fund intel or Anderol or Some meat processing company is ridiculous. You know why they're picking one and not the other?
Steve Palmer [:When the government puts its thumb on the scale, it throws everything out of whack.
Norm Murdock [:It throws everything out of whack.
Steve Palmer [:And I can imagine what those supporters of NPR and its content would say if the government were giving this show money.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And I wouldn't fault you because the government should not be sponsoring this is political content. This would be, to me, it's akin to content based regulation. When you're giving one content money and not giving everybody else money, then you're basically regulating the others by supporting one. And the only solution to that is do none. Because you can't give everybody money.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:The only solution is do none.
Norm Murdock [:Look how the elite universities have freaked out over Trump, you know, pulling back on these grants to places like Yale and Harvard and Princeton. They are now settling all of these issues about antisemitism and things like that because of the strings. The federal government has these strings into these universities. And of course, it was always a one way thing. Everybody was happy to just throw money at him. And then when he threatens to withdraw the money, it kind of shows how you can change their behavior because they're addicted to that federal funding.
Steve Palmer [:That's right. And look, if it were necessary, if it were needed, then the market will provide it. Yeah, it just does. It's not easy and it's not hard. It's a harder road for sure than having something given to you.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:But when's the last time you got something for free that was actually that great?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Right. I mean, really no such thing as a free lunch. Really.
Steve Palmer [:All right, what's going on in Ohio?
Norm Murdock [:Well, yeah, so in Ohio, what all I'm dubbing this the Cincinnati Six. So they, you know, I think in order to calm down the city, because that city is on a bubble, that city could go one of two ways. And the local FOP and some of the people down there that are involved in law enforcement have said this city is teetering. It could go full donut hole like Columbus is sort of undergoing, where people are emptying out the city center. You know, like we're trying to in Columbus, for example, have the short north where people invest millions of dollars into condos and bringing back these old mansions and homes. And if that doesn't work, okay, we'll hollow out the downtown like Cleveland has done. And then people go to the suburbs and you create this donut hole. Well, that's going on in Cincinnati downtown.
Norm Murdock [:They don't have the shopping they don't have the nightlife like they used to have, say, 30, 40 years ago, in spite of things like the over the Rhine, having the casino and, you know, some of the microbrews and stuff. When people are getting beat up and assaulted in the over the Rhine in a festival.
Steve Palmer [:I mean, it was a public. I mean, it wasn't like you vent. They didn't venture into some dangerous place. I mean, this was a public place.
Norm Murdock [:And what has come out is that at 2 or 3 in the morning, when all that went down, there were only two Cincinnati police officers on duty downtown. Two. Two guys. You gotta be kidding me. In a major US City. That's. So if we here in Columbus that were 4, 500 police officers down when we've had guests on the show, like, it's very. In Cincinnati is said to be 3 or 400 down, according to.
Steve Palmer [:And it makes a difference.
Norm Murdock [:It makes a difference.
Steve Palmer [:I've had just. Look, I'm gonna. I hate anecdotal evidence, but I love it.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:So let's talk some anecdotal evidence.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:My son was in a crash. Nobody was hurt. It was a fender bender in a parking lot type of thing. And I wasn't there. And, you know, he called me and said, dad, what do I do? I said, well, you call the police. Well, I did. And they just said, they're not coming. And I get it.
Steve Palmer [:It's not an injury accident. But it never used to be that way.
Norm Murdock [:No.
Steve Palmer [:Like, a patrolman would be there to take a report, and that helps somebody like a teenager deal with a problem where there's an adult on the other side saying, no, no, no, you're a teen driver. It's your fault. And maybe, you know, I'm not taking sides here, but it's like just something as simple as that.
Norm Murdock [:Absolutely.
Steve Palmer [:I've never. I don't ever remember having to deal with that.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Now, except for, like, you would hear that on the news sometimes during snow emergencies reports only don't call the police. They're busy doing other things. Unless it's an injury.
Norm Murdock [:But.
Steve Palmer [:But now that's the policy.
Norm Murdock [:It's a policy across the board, and you can get rolled very easily. There's a lot of people that they say, exchange information. Well, when it's just voluntary. And some guy says, okay, my name is Joe Smith.
Steve Palmer [:F you. Bye. Bye.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, I'm Joe Smith. I live at 123 USA Street, Columbus, Ohio. And then they say, bye, kid.
Steve Palmer [:Okay.
Norm Murdock [:And that's it. No ticket, no report.
Steve Palmer [:So we end up in this weird. Here's. But this pushes us into places we don't like. This pushes into bad places. People are getting dash cams. People are like, this promotes road rage and vigilantism.
Norm Murdock [:It kind of does.
Steve Palmer [:So if somebody, you know, if somebody hits your car and they say it was your fault, I say, no, it was my fault or your fault, My fault, your fault, my fault. Your fault, my fault. So somebody's chasing somebody down, saying, look, you're supposed to give me a screw you. I'm not doing it. Think where this goes. And look, you just heard me rail against government intervention and things. But this is what the government's supposed to do, right?
Norm Murdock [:This is like, the basic function is, you know, retail safety, where the rubber.
Steve Palmer [:Meets the road, basic infrastructure, common safety. And I noticed it around Columbus in the street. Like, what's happening in Cincy is happening in Columbus.
Norm Murdock [:It is. It's a wild west.
Steve Palmer [:There are. We had somebody walk into the building, wander around and take what they wanted during business hours. It's like that never happened before. Not in this city. No, not in this city.
Norm Murdock [:And the employees at stores now get in trouble if they try to intervene, like, they're the bad guys. So somebody goes up to a shoplifter and says, hey, I gotta call my manager. You stay right here.
Steve Palmer [:So what's the cost? Right? You know, what's the cost? Here's the cost. I called out the security company, and it's costing me thousands of dollars more to install additional security that regulates access to the building. And there's an additional cost to that. So now if somebody wants to come see somebody in my building on the second floor, it's a headache. You can't just come in and go up and knock on their door and say, I'm here to do commerce with you. Instead, it's like you feel like you're buzzing into a jail. And that's not fair to those trying to do business in a city. It's just not fair.
Steve Palmer [:And if I tried to call the police on that situation, they didn't come. They won't come. Yeah, you. Sorry. You know, whatever. We're not gonna take a report.
Norm Murdock [:It makes things very harsh. Last night, for example, I'm out in Mount Vernon. I'm out in the boonies visiting a friend. And, hey, they leave their car. I mean, they leave their car keys in the ignition. There's people who park in their driveway out in farm country, and their doors are unlocked at night. The dogs come in and out at all hours. The keys are in the cars.
Norm Murdock [:And it's a completely different way. You're not living your life paranoid. And that's part of why people are emptying out of the central cities is because they're not allowed to assert their rights as homeowners, as property owners, as renters. They're, they're being victimized. And basically, you know, the, the local infrastructure is piled up against them and is more interested in preserving the rights of the perpetrators. And or at least that's the way it feels. And so people are like, well, gosh, if I can't defend my, if I as a homeowner or as a renter, if I can't stand my ground or if I can't, you know, oh, if I have to worry constantly about my wife when she parks outside of my home, walking to the front door, you know, and that 20 foot walk becomes an exposure that's unacceptable. People are going to move.
Steve Palmer [:They're going to move, right? So look, we are, and this is relevant, I want to cover one more branch of this little topic and then we'll move on. But this is relevant to what's going on in New York City. So New York City's about to elect, in the bastion of capitalism and free trade and free markets, a communist.
Norm Murdock [:The largest city in America.
Steve Palmer [:I'm not adding, this is not my label. He is a communist. He is a stated communist, straight up. He is advocating for the government takeover of all commerce and business and property. I mean, this is communism. So what's gonna happen in New York City? It's already happened, but now it's just, now it's gonna be like the final cut. Everybody's gonna leave. And you know, I don't know what's gonna, you know, I don't know where this goes.
Steve Palmer [:Is the heart of commerce for the world gonna move to Florida? It might, it might, it might. Or at least it'll be all remote.
Norm Murdock [:Or even out of America to Geneva. I mean, I don't know.
Steve Palmer [:I guess you're right. One door closed, another open. Somebody's gonna see opportunity here because you can't just tell people you now owe 85% of your income to the government. People are gonna leave. They're gonna leave. You can't just tell people. You can't. We're gonna take over the housing.
Steve Palmer [:Well, guess what? The last time the government controlled like high rise buildings and did all the maintenance and control of that, it went to. They can't do it. They don't know how to do it.
Norm Murdock [:Have you heard of Cabrini Green? In Chicago. Right. Which is now like an empty field. That was the government's idea of public housing.
Steve Palmer [:It never worked.
Norm Murdock [:And it just became. It became like a center of murder. Like, people are getting killed every day at Cabrini Green. They finally had to just destroy.
Steve Palmer [:Even here, even in Columbus, this has happened. So when the government employs things like rent control, you're telling private property owners that they can't charge the rent that they need. And what you're really saying is, we don't care what your expenses are, Mr. Private Property Owner, to maintain this property. We don't care what your expenses are to provide a habitable dwelling. We're just going to tell you that rent is X. I don't care.
Norm Murdock [:Right.
Steve Palmer [:And the reason the government doesn't care is because it doesn't even know. It has no concept of what it takes to maintain something because they've got an endless bucket of money in their own property, so they just do whatever they want. But on the private side, what happens? A, it either goes to crapola or B, they stop renting to people and they just sit.
Norm Murdock [:Or C, there's a black market and people buy and say they start subleasing. You know, like a guy gets a rent control price, and every time a new renter moves in, there's an incremental increase that they're allowed to do under the law. So what they do in order to dodge that, let's say I graduate from, you know, some university in New York City, so I'm gonna leave. What I do is I advertise my rent control apartment as available on the student bulletin board, and then under my name, a new person just moves in. Right. And so the rent never goes up. Like, you know, the same person is ostensibly still renting it after 20 years, but they moved out 16 years ago, but their name is still on the contract. And every subsequent renter moves in under that name.
Norm Murdock [:So people start playing these kind of games, and the landlord never gets to increase their rent.
Steve Palmer [:And so what do they do? They sell. And what. Who are they selling to? The outside investors just going to come in and they don't care because they got enough money, they don't need to rent it. They're going to sit on it or they'll think, all right, well, look, the property values are so low here, I'm going to go buy that apartment in New York City.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:And I'll just use it as my little vacation. In fact, why don't I buy two? I'll buy one for my buddy Norm, and that Way we have a place to stay when we go visit New York City. And what does that do? So that decreases the supply of rentable habitation, and then that screws up the rent market even more because there's fewer apartments to rent or fewer houses to rent. And that increases the price, except the prices are frozen. So it's just like this is my woodworker analogy. Anybody who's done. You've heard me say this. Anybody who's tried to build a picture frame with perfect 45s and it's a little bit off, so you think, I'm just going to shave this one a little bit.
Steve Palmer [:Well, then when you get to the third one or the second one, that's off. Certainly by the time you get to the end, it's totally off. It's off by a quarter inch.
Norm Murdock [:Then the picture won't fit in the.
Steve Palmer [:Frame and you have to shrink it and say, I'll just make it a little bit smaller. Then pretty soon you don't have a mat. And then pretty soon you don't have anything. You can't do it. It's an endless problem.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, and we saw this during the illegals being put up in the hotels in New York City. All of a sudden, conventions that had booked blocks of rooms for huge money making conventions for New York City. Right. You're gonna have, I don't know, you're gonna have all these shriners come to New York City and they're gonna rent 2,000 rooms. Well, they call to the hotel to make reservations and they go, oh, those blocks have now been taken by the city council. Illegals are living in these.
Steve Palmer [:So think what that does then. So then the hotels that don't have that, the prices skyrocket, Skyrocket.
Norm Murdock [:So people don't go and they cancel.
Steve Palmer [:Conventions and then they don't spend money. They don't have conventions. Like, you can't just do this, folks. It doesn't work.
Norm Murdock [:It doesn't work.
Steve Palmer [:All right, so more Ohio on the sports side, Norm.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:Arch Manning is coming to the Horseshoe at noon, which sort of pissed everybody off here. High noon, man at high noon in the shoe. Texas, Ohio State, week one. Which, look, I'm a football fan. I played football. I love it. Yeah. And I love this for the community.
Norm Murdock [:It's a great sport.
Steve Palmer [:And you know, Ohio State's done some of the stuff they're trying to do I think is sort of foolish, but they're giving away towels now or like they're trying to create their own version of the terrible towel they're trying to. I don't know what they're trying to do here, but I don't think it's going to work. I will voice my criticism and then my support. My criticism is. One of the things about Ohio State football is this. And you could. Everybody says it, but we mean it. Darn it.
Steve Palmer [:Tradition, you know, we. Ohio State's a very. One of the original schools. It's huge. It has a tradition about it. You still see the old geezers in their tailgates coming up and. Yeah. And I say geezer in a very.
Steve Palmer [:My dad used to use that in a.
Norm Murdock [:Dressed up as molecules or whatever. They look crazy.
Steve Palmer [:They use that in a very affectionate way. The old fashioned folks who have been. Who went to school there. It's like the tradition of Ohio State football. It hasn't really changed. We didn't do all the crazy stuff. Now look, Ohio State fans have their problems, we have our sores. They get out of control sometimes and they burn dumpsters, but hopefully that's not.
Steve Palmer [:But anyway, I think what Ohio State's doing is artificially trying to create something different and it doesn't work that way. So don't try. It's not going to work. But it doesn't mean we're not going to beat Texas. Arch Manning coming in. Julian Saan, I think is announced as a quarterback. We'll see for Ohio State. But a huge game.
Steve Palmer [:I love this. I love seeing.
Norm Murdock [:I hear that Brian Day is still doing his little head fake.
Steve Palmer [:Brian Day, you can't say it. Don't screw it up. But not on our show.
Norm Murdock [:Ryan Day still doing his little head fake and is talking about this Lincoln kid as possibly going to be the starter, but we know he's not. But I think he's trying to get Texas to get prepared for two different styles of quarterbacks to, you know, throw in a little bit of confusion at them. But I don't, I don't think it's working.
Steve Palmer [:It looks like Ohio State's favored at least marginally. But we'll see. I guess we'll see. Texas finds itself a 2.5 underdog. And this is the other thing, the bet, like with this ubiquitous sports betting now, it's like it changes every day, but.
Norm Murdock [:And the nil thing, they got to get that under control.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. Who's bought the best team? I don't know. We'll find out, I guess on August 3rd when that game goes down here in the Horseshoe.
Norm Murdock [:So we have all seen, you know, Friday Night Lights. That's a Great movie. You know, I'm not talking about the TV series, but the original one with Billy Bob Thornton as a coach. That's a. Like, that's based on a true story that's real, you know, like that all happened, you know, roughly. The plot is pretty accurate down there in oil country where you look out, like, if you've been to that part of Texas and you look to your left and your right going down Highway 10, it's flat. There isn't much out there. And you see Derek after Derek after Derek.
Norm Murdock [:And this is, you know, like, the kids basically know that before they slip into adulthood, this is their one shot to become local heroes, if not break out.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah, well, it's a culture and it's everything.
Norm Murdock [:Everything to them.
Steve Palmer [:I used to say, and ignorantly I would add that Ohio State or Ohio was the best football state, you know, because I played. Why? Because I was an Ohio football kid in the. In rural Ohio.
Norm Murdock [:And it's kind of true. We are a big football team.
Steve Palmer [:But Texas.
Norm Murdock [:But Texas.
Steve Palmer [:Texas is a whole different universe.
Norm Murdock [:It's a different deal.
Steve Palmer [:It is a different deal. I've talked to people from down there, and it's a different, different universe down there. And what's. So we'll see. I mean, I'm optim. I am cautiously optimistic, but Arch Manning, he's got a little bit more experience because he played against us last year in a playoff game. We got our boy Jillian sand or maybe Keen Holtz coming in sort of rough and fresh. Yeah, untested maybe is the right word, but we still got a lot of.
Norm Murdock [:This is a rebuilding year for the Buckeyes. There's no question about it.
Steve Palmer [:It's not without tools. I mean, we've got a of lot. So anyway, we'll let the sports guys comment on that. One more sports thing in Ohio. I was a lie, I admit. And the jury's still out. I was a little skeptical of the Shador Sanders draft by Cleveland last year. Oh, Deion's kid.
Steve Palmer [:He's lighting it up in preseason, though, so he's so far so good with Sanders. We'll watch it. I'm still a Browns fan, even though they never win. But anyway.
Norm Murdock [:Well, that the quarterback. I don't even want to use his name, but I mean, he was a disaster. That was a terrible pick. You know, in my opinion, they should have kept old what's his face that went down south and he ended up having a couple of really great seasons and they should not have gotten rid of him. And that was a Mistake.
Steve Palmer [:Cleveland makes perennial mistakes. Perennial it seems. But anyway, we'll watch Cleveland. I'm optimistic for the Browns. I am certainly hopeful and optimistic for the Buckeyes. And that's Ohio sport, which is great. So Ohio makes it big again.
Norm Murdock [:I'm gonna talk a little financial thing here. There's a lot of news out of China right now. I mean, they have this. I can't pronounce the word, but so I'll just call it the Chicky virus. They've got some kind of crazy virus that's the next big Covid thing or whatever you want to call it. And, and it's supposed to be very lethal and all that stuff. So they've gone full fascist, just like they did during COVID where they were welding people into their apartments, welding metal doors shut so that nobody could leave their apartment and therefore in their mind not spread the virus. They're demanding everybody in China get blood tested.
Norm Murdock [:They're just doing all this crazy stuff. And, and now they're having protests over some video of a 14 year old girl getting bullied. And there's open protests and they're shutting down. Social media film of the police doing their heavy handed reaction to these parents that are coming out and saying the government's not doing enough to restrain bullying by kids in schools. And this girl who I think her parents are deaf and she's poor, there's video of her being kicked and beaten and pummeled and the school system and the police didn't want to do anything about it. They're like, well, we don't really care about girls or we don't really care about this kind of violence. If you're not violent against the government, basically we don't care what you do. You're just people and it doesn't matter.
Norm Murdock [:Well, these people took to the streets and the police have been knocking heads and all of that. Now, unlike in America, where we still have some freedom of speech, they don't have any.
Steve Palmer [:Well, this is the. Careful what you're trying to do here. You want to create. We did this during COVID Yeah, exactly. And fortunately we woke up and pumped the brakes a little bit.
Norm Murdock [:After two years.
Steve Palmer [:After two years. And I was railing against this and not to brag, but it's like I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of us railing against us being shouted down and saying, you're whatever. All the peer pressure to go protect the world.
Norm Murdock [:Well, when they're deplatforming people, certain doctors like Dr. Bhattacharya who's now head of the CDC and a lot of these doctors, Scott, gosh, what was his name? A lot of these doctors that were trying to advise Trump against some of these policies and then Biden just went full bore. They were deplatformed. They were not even allowed to express their medical professional opinions. Yeah, it just is, it was crazy.
Steve Palmer [:It is lunacy, Lunacy medical, Lunacy medical.
Norm Murdock [:Scott Power, that was his name. So at any rate, the other big story out of China that I think is, well, it's actually out of the US but how we're handling. So we all know of situations where China has either done aggressive pricing or even has done loss leader pricing in order to destroy an American industry and more or less take it over. And they've done that for example in the tool business. So if you buy a Mac or snap on tool these days, odds are, or even like a great, it used to be a great brand like Crescent wrenches. If you buy that at Ace Hardware, look at the package. And most of these tools now even by high end American tool sellers, those tools are being made in China by and large and they have just taken over, you know, like Craftsman and all these brands are now Chinese. So at any rate, well, Trump has kind of flipped the script.
Norm Murdock [:So China's military, which obviously is an adversary, they need these chips, they need these computer chips, right? So instead of letting them, instead of denying them any chips, what the Trump administration has decided to do is go ahead and sell the Chinese military chips in order to not force them to start their own domestic production or of chips. So what's happening is they've approved like Nvidia and amd, they're allowed to sell to the Chinese, the chicom government, which is going to give these chips right to their tanks and airplanes and their boats and whatever they're going to use these chips in. We know that. And people were like, well why would you sell chips that are going to go to the. Well, because we don't want them to develop a domestic chip production industry. And what Trump has told Nvidia and AMD, they have to give 15% of the sales money to the federal, to the US government if you will. It's like a reverse tariff in a way, or you could say it's a pre sale tariff. So we will be getting money into the U.S.
Norm Murdock [:treasury. We will also be selling them just enough chips and not the most latest and most sophisticated chips by the way, but like mainstream chips that will, then they won't have a need to produce on their Own. So in a way, we are keeping our edge, or at least the strategy is to keep America in front on the chip making business, which is pretty sophisticated, pretty smart. We are doing now to the Chinese what they used to do to us. I think it's brilliant.
Steve Palmer [:Well, with that, I think we've covered what we can cover.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah.
Steve Palmer [:What's good and bad in your life, Norm?
Norm Murdock [:I just. Yeah. And at the end, I want to promote a show, Steve. So, like, when we do this, maybe we can promote one of our future shows. The losers to me of the week are the people, you know, the. The. In a way, it's a funny story, but I'm glad it's happening. So we have this thing now that's going on where these comics at, late night comics who haven't been funny in like 10 years, like, it's just been.
Norm Murdock [:They've alienated half the country. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, they have just, like. It's just anti mainstream humor, like every night, like, making fun of people that don't want their kids to use, you know, common bathrooms with adult men and things like, you know, and girls having to have boys on their team. Like, they're. They make fun of the mainstream culture. And, you know, obviously Trump also. And so the rest of us are just not watching them. And they're losing their jobs now.
Norm Murdock [:And Jimmy Kimmel says he got Italian citizenship. He's so afraid that Trump is gonna put him in prison. This is the kind of, you know, such nonsense. Yeah. This is the kind of crack.
Steve Palmer [:When's the last time that happened?
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, right. This is the kind of crack eye he's on that. He. He's.
Steve Palmer [:It's theater.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, it's theater. So I just. I love, I love the fact that finally Paramount is looking at the sheer numbers. Why are we paying Steve Colbert 40 million a year?
Steve Palmer [:Well, look, they can if they want.
Norm Murdock [:But he's not funny. But he's not making funny and he has no audience.
Steve Palmer [:He's lost 10 million a year. For how long? I don't know. Whatever it is.
Norm Murdock [:So then my winners, once again, and I hate to say, like Steve said, he told you so about COVID I'm gonna say I told you so about the tariffs. So, okay, we've got tariffs, but they weren't tariffs just designed to bring in money. They were tariffs, as I said back when they were implemented in February of this year, they were mainly designed to put us on an equal footing in terms of competition. And in spite of that, the winners, the last couple months have Been investors. I mean, check out your 401ks people. I'm sorry if you sold your stocks because you missed out on a huge boom. And you know, yeah, there'll be a correction at some point, but like the stock market's been at all time highs under. Under all of this concern and worry about how the tariffs were going to crash the economy.
Norm Murdock [:It hasn't happened. And in fact, investors are making a fortune right now.
Steve Palmer [:Well, for another day, we'll give another side of that coin. I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but there's a little bit of a pushback.
Norm Murdock [:I know.
Steve Palmer [:Anyway, my good and bad. I've covered some of this before and I love to do this. I love when the same topic provides both good, both good and both bad.
Norm Murdock [:Yes.
Steve Palmer [:So here's the bad. My son, as I am a proud father, has signed up and he is now in basic training for the army. And prior to that, he graduated from, I'm going to call it out, Upper Arlington High School. And at the graduation, there was not a peep about the military. The kids who were joining the military. There's all sorts of fanfare about those going to college. There's a fanfare about this and that.
Norm Murdock [:And the other captain of the football team, you know, like all that.
Steve Palmer [:Yeah. But there was like a little. And even the symbol next to the name was. I can't. It was sort of a little bit degrading. I mean, it just is. It is. So anyway, we got the yearbook.
Steve Palmer [:So my wife bought the yearbook for the kid. And not a mention in a yearbook about anybody. Now there's a club for everything in the Upper Arlington yearbook. Apparently you can just create a club. So there's clubs for. I mean, there's 50 clubs and they're all referenced in the yearbook. And there's like five kids in each club. And it's absurd.
Steve Palmer [:It's totally absurd. And you can imagine what the clubs are. I'm not even going to go through the names. You can imagine what they are, but not a peep about them. That's the bad. Here's the good.
Norm Murdock [:He's at not a peep about serving your country. That's what Steve's saying. You got to be kidding me.
Steve Palmer [:Now, the good is that military enlistment is up significantly. Yes, it is. That my son is doing well with his others in boot camp and having a great experience. I'm watching in this short amount of time in the little communication I have with him, him turn into a responsible young man. He's a great Hats off to the US Military and hats off to those who volunteered. Hats off who are serving now. I never did and I am very thankful that you did and you are. So that's my good.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah, great kid.
Steve Palmer [:All right. We got a show coming up I think everybody will be interested in.
Norm Murdock [:Yeah. So on October or, excuse me, on August this month on the 26th, we're having a military historian, local guy who is a legend with the US Marine Corps and also with the Columbus Police Department. So he retired with great honors from both. He was a sergeant in both. Not an officer, but a sergeant. So he's a regular middle class, blue collar guy named Stephen Walter. And he wants to come in. He's done a really deep dive into our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the violence surrounding that.
Norm Murdock [:In particular the Abbey Gate attack, which killed over 200 people. And I think 13, I'm pretty sure of the number 13American service people, men and women. And I believe one was from Ohio, a young lady I think was one of the service members who was killed that was from Ohio. But at any rate, he wants to go through the details of that. And as you know, that is all wrapped up into that abandonment of Bagram Air Force Base over there in Afghanistan where we turned over billions of materiel weaponry.
Steve Palmer [:We have lived in our time through some of the greatest scandals I think that history will recognize. But that's looking forward. It's going to be a great show, great guest show, common senseohio show.com. if you got a comment, you got a question, you got a topic you want us to cover, you can give it to us there. You can leave us a comment in the media, like I've always said, you want to debate Norm, then have at it. Shoot us a question. And if you got the chops, maybe we'll get you right here at the table. Fortunately, we are brought here week in and week out by Harper Plus Accounting.
Steve Palmer [:My accountant could be yours signing off right from the middle. Until next time.
