We open with reflections on D-Day, the hidden costs of war, and how history is portrayed on screen, before connecting those lessons to today’s cultural and political divides.

The conversation winds through America’s founding ideals, examining patriotism’s place in our divided culture, and why the principles of the Declaration of Independence still matter. We tackle hot-button topics, including the role of government in housing and business, rising frustration with policy interventions, and the push for election integrity in Ohio. The show spotlights local and national politics, California’s shifting landscape, controversial legislation, and the ongoing effects of major social movements.

We also explore the intersection of faith, morality, and public life, tying it back to the founding of the country and the ongoing challenges of leadership, forgiveness, and redemption in politics—all while sharing some pop culture recommendations and real-world stories. It’s a thought-provoking episode packed with history, sharp opinions, and a dose of common sense you won’t want to miss.

Recorded at the 511 Studios, in the Brewery District in downtown Columbus, OH.

[email protected]

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.

Copyright 2026 Common Sense Ohio

All right, here we are. It is common sense. Ohio, flying blind.

No video today. It's all right. It's okay, man. It's all

right. So it is June 3rd.

You know, there's a. There's a movie out I haven't. My sons want to go

see it. It's about the weatherman on D Day, which is right around the corner.

Oh, yeah, I want to see that. Yeah, that looks like a pretty good movie.

I think I'll grab my father, who is still with us on

the planet, and take him to that movie. Yeah,

the guy who played Tarzan, Brandon, that actor, they

say does a great job as Eisenhower. Oh, I bet. Yeah. I mean, it's getting

great reviews. Yeah. And so I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Anyway, that is not this day in history, as it turns out, but other things

happened this day in history. Well, d day

was June 6th, so. Right around the corner. Yeah. I mean, it's

kind of pertinent. I don't want to jump the gun. No. But D Day, you

know, we go, he makes that decision, probably June 5th. Yeah.

And look, for those who don't know, there was a famous. I say this even

in my own life. Sometimes somebody's like, what are we doing? I say we go.

Yeah, that was Eisenhower saying, we're going, we're going tomorrow. I don't. Damn the weather.

There's a little bit of a clearing. We're going to go. So anyway, Steve,

let me recommend. So you know the actor Pierce

Brosnan, former Remington Steele and then James

Bond. Yes. There is a great D Day movie

that he stars in. It's called the Last Rifleman

and it's a true story. It's about this

British, a veteran who's like

90 years old and he's in an

old folks home and the 70th anniversary of

D Day's coming up and he

snuck out and all of Britain, like

all the police, I mean, they contact the French police,

everybody's looking for him. Right. And they found

him. And he was able to sort of.

He was able to sort of weasel his way into

attending the services before they

formally arrested him. But it is very touching and

it's a true story and it's another D Day

movie that I don't want to ruin the

plot, but what happens to his unit when they do the flashback scenes

is just profound. Yeah, there's so much. There's so

many stories surrounding D Day, you know, yes. And I've

read some of them, not all of them, and

it literally chokes me up every time. Like, you dig into that and if you

let yourself go there, what these guys did and how

little our current society regards

or considers what they did. Yeah. Is gross.

One of the things that happens in the movie, and this won't ruin anything,

but he. I don't know, his bicycle or whatever he was

borrowing didn't work, or he needed a ride. And a bus

full of German veterans from D Day who came in

for the ceremony gave him a ride,

and he could not resolve his feelings with him.

They wanted to befriend him. And he was just like, you

shot too many of my friends. Like, and it's,

you know, and who are we to judge that? Well, and instead of making it

a sweet little Hollywood thing where everybody, like, you

know, forgives and forgets, it reminds you

that, you know, this was hugely traumatic for these young men.

And, you know, you talk to veterans of

the Japanese battle. The Japanese side of it was even. It's even worse, I think.

Yeah, that was vicious. There's people from Pearl harbor that just could not meet with

those pilots. When they would come in, you know, they were like, you

know, I'm sorry, we can't be friends. I'm sorry. Just

can't do it. I mean, that's the human side of life, right? Yeah.

Like you said, Hollywood tends to sort of button those things up in a nice,

tidy bow. And everybody's warm and fuzzy and everybody gets along and they have,

you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's. Yeah,

it's. You know, what happened to those people

was. You know, I'm reading this book right

now called Guts and Glory, and it's about Hollywood

and the Pentagon and

portrayal of war movies. And.

Yeah, there's this tendency to want to make

without glorifying war.

Just the fact that you show heroics

happen in movies kind of makes

it easier to convince people to go to war,

to the public, to support war. And it's an ugly

thing. There is just nothing. There's nothing

glorious about it. It's when everything else

fails that we have war. Yeah, but

Hollywood's always done that, though. I suppose. It's always done, like, always glorified

war, probably more so than it does now. What really changed was, like, in the

mid-60s when they started, you know, when the Vietnam went sour

and you had, on the one hand, John Wayne making the Green

Berets. Right. Which showed the positive. But

then you had, you know, Coming home and, you know,

the Jane Fonda with her husband, you know,

falling apart and, you know, the other

side. Yeah. And then in the 80s, you have all the. There's some of those.

Vietnam, born on the 4th of July, 4th of July. And what was the other

one? And that's a true story. And it's pretty ugly.

Yeah, it's ugly stuff. So anyway, this

week, a little bit, if I can do the Revolutionary War, I

had something for that, too. Go ahead. Before we get to there, I wanted to

at least point out that Grover Cleveland became the first sitting president

to marry in the White House on June 2, 1886,

which was yesterday. Wow. It was an interesting trivia. And I did this

because he's from Ohio. Yeah. His new wife, a young woman

27 years his junior named Frances Folsom, she

was the daughter of a former law partner of Cleveland's

in Cleveland's legal ward. So Cleveland was taking care of her. So his law partner

dies. Everybody sort of expected Cleveland might hook

up with his law partner's widow. But no, no, no, no, no, no. He gets

close to the young daughter and marries her as

soon as she turned 21 years old. So I never knew that story. Yeah, I'm

sure there's some controversy there. That is. Wow. That is swimming around

in the background. But anyway, growing. Robbed the cradle, didn't he? Maybe a little too

much. I think she was pretty young when he died.

When she was 11, her father died and Cleveland became her legal guardian,

remaining close friends with her mother. His pet name for Francis

was Frank. I mean, look, the whole thing just gets really weird. Yeah. But

anyway, you had something on the Revolutionary War, but I

think the Coercive Acts, or Parliament

completed the Coercive Acts with the Quartering act on this day

in history or Yesterday in history, 1774.

So whatever that. Wow. Okay. Well, on this

day or this week in 1776, so

250 years ago,

the ancestor of Robert E. Lee, the

guy who became superintendent of West Point

and then, of course, famously commanded the Confederacy,

the Confederate army, in the Civil War, his

ancestor Richard Lee was president

of the Continental Congress. And he moved

today for a

Declaration of Independence to be drafted.

And they appointed a committee this week, 250

years ago, of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin,

John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert

Livingston, those five people, to write

and draft the Declaration of Independence. And

I think most people say Thomas Jefferson did most of it

by candlelight late at night and pored

over it. But at any rate, gosh,

a declaration was passed and signed Only a month

later. So we are in that one month zone.

The final 30 days of

America being under,

like being consenting to be under British rule.

There's only 30 more days before they declare independence.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're coming up to it. Yeah.

Well, speaking of which, this, which brings us to the next thing. Like there's all

these celebrations are supposed to happen. Yes. 50 years

in. Yes. And it is, of course, and I hate

Trump. It's all turned into I hate Trump because nobody will

perform. I mean, listen, people. Yeah, it's the country. Steve,

do you remember the bicentennial? You were a young man, six years old. I

remember. Okay. Do you. Now, Gerald Ford, who was

president then, was not super popular. Like inflation

was crazy. It got worse under Carter, his successor,

but he had pardoned Richard Nixon and he was not.

And of course he was on the, the committee that

investigated jfk. So there were a lot of negatives about

Gerald Ford and he had been. There were assassination

attempts on his life too. So,

I mean, I remember pretty well. So I was a senior in high school.

I graduated 50 years ago from high school and

I remember the bicentennial pretty well. And people are,

you know, people have kind of forgotten. You know, we came off the Vietnam War

like society. We were not super pro. This is

before Reagan. And we were not like super patriotic at that

time at all. No, it was. Recruitment was down for

the army post Vietnam. Like it was an ugly time. It

was very similar time. Maybe it's on the backlash of what we're going through. It

was like the backlash of what. The functional equivalent of what we're going through now.

These people hated the country. They were. That's right. You know, there was all the

young kids who said, that's right, kids. I mean, you know, the college, college age

kids protesting everything. Yeah. And you know, a lot of

socialism and communism and all that stuff, the rise of cocaine and disco.

Like, it was kind of like, it was a weird time. People

were focusing like on

sensuality. It was kind of like the decline of the Roman

Empire or something. You felt like society was cratering.

But you know what, though? I don't know what a

six year old would experience or will experience in a

month. Yes, good question. But the entire year

I have these. Do I remember vividly? I don't. But I've

gone back and seen this day and whatever. And I

remember patriotism, even the

commercials on tv. People still love

the country on some level. And now it seems worse.

People won't even celebrate the country You've got like the Hasan

pikers out there saying, I feel not patriotic to any, to anything at all, let

alone this country. It's like, you know what? F you guys get out, leave.

Right? Leave. What are you going to do? Like, where is it going to be

better and what are you going to do? Like, I could see, look, we want

to tweak it here, we want to tweak it there, or we need to get

back to the fundamentals of our Declaration and really, really dig in.

But short of that, leave. Yeah, yeah, leave.

Guess what? Like the utopian world that you think exists, go find it.

You know, when slavery in this country was

at its apogee, at its highest

point, Frederick Douglass, who

was famously right, an escapee of slavery,

and later on, befriended Abraham Lincoln

before the Emancipation Proclamation. He said

everything that Antifa and Black Lives

Matter are saying today, he said all that stuff.

And then one of his advisors

said, you know, Frederick, you ought to sit down and study the

Declaration of Independence. You ought to read the words

and actually digest it rather than just

focusing on the contradictions and the

flaws. Look at the founding

documents and, and see in them what we can use

to leverage that to free

Americans, to free the rest of the Americans out of

slavery and out of poverty. And he did that. And it was

profoundly. It changed him forever. He did do that.

And he. Thereafter, in all of his

speeches and with Abraham Lincoln, when he would meet him at the White House,

you know, guess who's coming to dinner? The first black guest that would

sit down with the President for dinner at the White House was

Frederick Douglass. And

he used the Declaration of Independence to

point out to America that there was this inherent contradiction

and that certainly the Founding Fathers were aware of it

and laid the groundwork for the change that they

wanted to happen. Yeah. And Douglas was upset.

You know, even

the critics now would say Lincoln was a racist. And

even though he, like, they were getting it. Right, Right, right. But think what was

hanging on the balance there? I mean, it wasn't just

like, it was the country. And Lincoln said, all right, we

gotta. We're. Lincoln found a way to navigate through both. And it

started with, we're just not going to add any new slave states. And then

once he got into it and the war was on, he's like, all right, so

we'll just issue this Emancipation Proclamation. And that was somewhat

of a strategic move to try to show.

To cause an insurgency. To cause an insurgency down south. Right.

But it was also high minded. It was high minded. He believed it. But

he was this careful dance because he's losing support up north for the war because

everybody's getting killed. Right. I mean, it's like there were draft riots in New York

City. Yeah. It just is. Like, people don't quite understand what

those guys went through to abolish slavery and what they went through

initially to found the country despite slavery, not based

on slavery, but despite it knowing that the problem was coming.

It was just around the corner at some point, and somehow

it ended up in Lincoln's lap. And he was the guy at the time, and

imperfect as he was an incredible leader who got that

done. And he was meeting with Frederick Douglass, and Douglass eventually sort of came around

and said, ah, I see what you're doing here. Yeah. And it.

Really neat history and people whitewashed. You know what it is? Nobody learns it anymore.

Nobody reads it like you're saying, douglas, go read the damn Declaration of

Independence and see what it says. Read the Constitution and see what

it says. Before you say, Mr. Obama, we're gonna fundamentally change our

country. Read the founding documents to see that. You don't need to change it.

Right. In fact, the more you change it, the further away from the beginning it

gets. Right? Right. Or from the intent it gets.

And what a lot of people do,

like this piker guy is, okay, let's

a millionaire, by the way. Right? Yeah. I mean, if you did columns

like you would. Let's suppose you were comparing

corporations and doing a due diligence on should

I buy IBM or should I buy Wang Computers or

Nvidia, whatever. If you. If you were looking

at pros and cons, if you did that with America versus

any other country, we are the best country.

There's just no question about it. What we've done for

humanity in terms of saving lives

and medical advancements and

just our contributions to the United nations and

to charities. It's anecdotal, but you never

hear. Every now and then you hear people threatening to leave, but they rarely do.

And it's almost the opposite. Everybody wants to come here. Exactly. You

know. Right. And when they leave, they want to come back. Like Rosie o'.

Donnell. Yeah, that's right. You know, because, look, I'm not saying it sucks

everywhere else, but they don't know what they're. They don't know what they don't have.

Right. They don't understand what they don't have. And Americans don't know the water we're

swimming in. Yeah. Like, we've done a dive into this. And some of these sort

of. Even the Pseudo, like the Scandinavian pseudo socialist countries. Yeah. Like, you have

your life laid out for you in advance there. You know, your careers aren't just

what you want to do. Yeah. The top Brit entertainers, like, their

taxes are like 90% income tax.

And other than Elton John, almost all the

Brits, you know, all the U2 guys and all these guys,

they all become, you know,

expats of Great Britain because, you know, in

spite of their, you know, anti American sentiment,

they know that they. That's unsustainable for them.

So they all bail in spite of like, oh,

this is the best system over here. That's right. And this is probably.

I was going to make it my bad of the week or whatever, but. Yeah.

Bernie Sanders, did you hear his speech out there? Unbelievable. Talking about

a government takeover of AI. Yeah. He's just

not going to be a tax, though. We're just going to take their stock, we're

going to take their stuff. We're going to take the company that you found,

Norm. Right. Bernie says I can run it better.

I'll nationalize it. I'll nationalize it. Yeah, just take it. The

people. Yeah, just take like Maduro did with oil companies in

Venezuela. Well, how did that turn out? I haven't heard Rogan talking about we should

just have the government take over oil company. Yeah. Just look at, like, what could

go wrong? Yeah. What's up? The government, like, when's the last time the government ran

an AI company? The government came and run the damn Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Right.

Efficiently. I mean, look at Italy. They took over Fiat and

ran that into the ground and Fiat

is bankrupt and has to be bailed out. And

isn't that, I mean, look, isn't that.

Now I'm really curious what your thoughts are on this, because everybody thinks

that fascism is this far right movement. Yeah,

it's not. It's usually not. That's for sure. I

guess it's all about definitions, but historically, it's a

form of communism that just nationalizes private industry

and keeps the private oligarchs in charge. So what is Bernie's

plan? This sounds a lot like fascism to me. The government to take

half the stock shares and what are they going to say, you guys run it?

Which is really just to say we're a fascist government. Or am I missing

something? And Bernie and Mom Dahme are on the same

page when it comes to New York City apartment

properties. Mamdani said to landlords, hey,

if we think you're not running your apartment buildings right, we'll Just take it.

We're taking them even worse, though, and we're going to give them, like, to, you

know, nonprofits, or we're going to run them ourselves. But we're going to take

your property. But they're not just going to take it. They're going to make it

so you can't run it. And so here's what's going on. They put

rent controls in, so the government says you can only charge so much for rent.

Right. And look, you run a business, so you defer maintenance

because you don't have enough. You can't fix it. You can't make money and fix

the building. So I have a building here, I rent it out, and I have

to do one of two things. When I have a big improvement that has to

be made. Not, not improves, not even the right word. I would call it a

repair. Yeah. Got to do the parking lot this year, guys. Put a new roof.

Got to do the roof. Yeah. These are $50,000 proposition. Sure. Exactly. You know,

if you scale this up to 50 million, it's the same math. Yeah. And if

the government says I'm not allowed to raise the rent of my tenants, one

of two things is going to happen, right? I'm just, you know, I'm either going

to spend my own money and not get it back, or maybe I don't

have the money and I can't fix it because if I'm not allowed to raise

the rents to recoup some of that cost, if not all that cost, then the

things doesn't get fixed. And then the tenants say, well, look, my space is

wet. This is unhabitable. I'm calling city hall. I'm calling city hall because

Dami said, if you don't fix my place, then you have

to. So then the government says you have to fix it. And I'm saying, I

don't make money. Well, that's okay. We're going to take it. In other words, the

government is creating a scenario that sets it up

so they can and will take over this property.

This playbook is as old as Marx himself, right? And

then they criticize capitalism and they say, well, look, it doesn't

work. Private property ownership doesn't work. These are

slumlords. You're the ones that are causing it not to work. That's right. It's

lunacy. It's lunacy. Utter lunacy. And you know, and

here's the other part of this that nobody will ever get their head around. If

somebody came to me in my building and this has happened over the years. Look,

having some Covid years for sure. Having some tough times,

can I skip a month or can I do? And I say sure, yeah, right,

sure. I'm totally cool with that. Yeah. Now I'm not saying because we're all hurting,

but because I understand that this is a good tenant

who has otherwise paid the rent. Right. For five years. Right.

And the problem, the issue

of me saying no, you have to do it, blah, blah, blah, and I don't

collect anything and then I have to start over and get a different tenant and

that becomes. That's baked into my equation already. I don't need the

government to tell me how to do this. And because of that, and if

the government comes in and says, look, you just can't ever raise rents,

I don't have the margin. When somebody says they need help.

Steve, if I recall right, during COVID didn't they also,

I think the Biden administration, Housing and Urban Development,

they forbid evictions, didn't they? You couldn't evict. You

couldn't have these guys like, it's like now business wise, you probably could have but

a personal, like family evict. You

couldn't evict people. No. Even I think businesses. I don't think I was allowed, I

think the eviction actions and then maybe not in Ohio, but in lots of big,

in the, in the blue states for sure. Eviction actions, even businesses were state.

Wow. I couldn't have evicted people not paying my rent. Wow. And

that's incredible. I would have to go to the bank and say, look guys, I

need a reprieve on my mortgage because they won't let me evict these people who

aren't paying their rent. I mean, it was a disaster. Yeah, things roll downhill

then. It's like I said, anybody who's ever tried to build a perfect

picture frame in 45 degrees, if you start shaving off one to

fix the other, it just, it ends up a disaster. As soon as the government

puts its thumb on that scale, tries to fix a for

an ill fitting 45 degree angle, then everything

else gets thrown out of whack and it all blows up. Yeah, yeah,

we're seeing this happen. Like the returns were coming

in last night for the primaries out in

California. And we're seeing this very debate you're talking

about between private ownership and

what is the role of government when it comes to maintaining the

basic services. And you're seeing that whole debate with this mayor

oil race Los Angeles.

And so I'm very heartened. With

57% of the votes counted so far,

believe it or not, Spencer Pratt looks like he's

gonna make the runoffs and he'll face Karen Bass.

Cause right now, he's in second place. How much of

that is counted? 57%. Okay, so I'm seeing one that

says. With roughly 63% of the vote. So the little moreness now. Bass

led the field with 35ish percent. He's at 34.8.

Okay. And Pratt was running second at 30.4,

which is just awesome for a guy. He's not even really a Republican, I

guess, but he's got. He can't run as a Republican, so he's running

as an independent for a guy with his ideas. Yeah, but he's great. But

he's clearly, you know, hey, let's. The government

has a role. It's essential services.

Streets, homelessness, fire, you know,

police do the big basic things

that we all expect of government. But free

needle programs and it's lunacy. What are you doing?

Bill Maher interviewed Spencer Pratt, and Bill Maher's got his

moments of realizing that the truth. But

sometimes he's still on cloud nine. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, he was interviewing Pratt,

and he was asking Pratt about climate control or some.

Some environmental stuff or. What was he saying? Something about the environment.

And I wish I could remember what it was, but I can't. And Pratt's like,

I don't know anything about that. Yeah. And Mars like, well, you're going to be

garbage. And, you know, or you're going to be a mayor. Pratt just looks at

me, goes, look, we can't even do the basics right. We

have. I can't walk out without getting stabbed with a needle. My house is

burned down, and I can't rebuild it. Like, he just says, look, I

always say, this is my saying, like, Germany first. We're gonna take care of these

problems first. Yeah. And then maybe on my second term, I'll deal with that stuff.

But for now, let's get the trains running at least close to on time.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and Maher just sat there and was like, all right,

good point. You know, it's like, of course, because these people are worrying about, like,

global warming while the houses are burning down.

It's so Cincinnati. A good

example. This one always blows me away. And, of course, countries are doing

this to our own Navy. But Cincinnati, Ohio, the city

council, when it got, you know, dominated by

crazy lefties, passed this ordinance. I mean,

so the city's falling apart. Downtown Cincinnati is not a place where

you want to go and casually walk around at night because

you're going to get assaulted. It's become really bad.

And, you know, so people after a Reds game, for example, would

collect on Fountain Square, you know, celebrate, eat a hot

dog, watch fireworks, you know, kind of hang out. There's usually some outdoor entertainment going

on. Yeah, outdoor. And you just can't do that anymore.

And so. But. But city council had the time to pass an

ordinance that said no defense

ordinance of a nuclear nature can pass

through the city of Cincinnati on our highways. And you're like, well,

not only does that violate all kinds of interstate commerce, but.

But how do you have time to address the

nuclear arsenal of the United States of America?

Defense Department. When you're running the city of Cincinnati,

you're not even taking care of the basics. Yeah, they're addressing the laws. This is

what Spencer Pratt is talking about. Yeah. He's like, listen, guys, let's do the main

thing. We don't have water. Yes. Right. We don't have water to fight fires. And

you want me to worry about some existential threat that might. It's like, listen, let's

do the easy stuff. We got people defecating all over the streets, and

kids can't play in the municipal playgrounds in LA.

MacArthur park is trashed. You can't walk around

or throw Frisbee. You're gonna step on needles and die

of fentanyl poisoning. And then I see these people interviewed, and they're gonna vote for

Karen Bass. Why? Because she's black. And look, I could care less what

color her skin color. I don't care about her melatonin one way or another. Because

there's plenty of white folks who screw up just

as bad as her and black folks who do better than anybody else.

It doesn't make any difference to me. No, it just. Who is gonna fix the

problems? Actually, you don't have to fix the problems. Just stop trying to

manipulate the rest of the crap that you're manipulating. And these problems

tend to iron themselves out on their own. Right now,

there's a Democrat mayor of San Francisco, and he has

really started to turn that city around. And. And it's

because, you know, the previous mayor was

a nut. And just whether it's a Democrat

or Republican, if you get somebody in office

that wants to take care of the basic responsibilities

of running that city, they can do a pretty good job

if they focus on that. And so here you've

got a Democrat mayor in San Francisco doing a halfway

decent job, and that's fine with me. It

doesn't have to be a Republican. No, it doesn't. Look, Trump

is a perfect example. I mean, he was a Democrat, basically.

He didn't ride this crazy bus these people are going off on. Yeah.

Ed Koch, who was Democrat mayor in New York City, did a pretty good

job. Did a decent job. Right. I mean, anyway.

But the other big story in California on these returns is, is

Steve Hilton is number one in the governor

returns. Now, it's only 28%, but the

second place guy, this Xavier Becerra, has

25%. Tom Steyer, the multi billionaire

that spent like 200 million on this primary so far of his own

money, only has. He's in third at 20%, which

means he will not be a finalist if he stays third.

So it'll come down to Hilton and Becerra if these returns

stay at the same percentages that they are now, which is.

You got Steve Hilton, a Republican. Like, it's been.

Who was it? Pete? I'm trying to think of Pete Wilson, I think

was the last Republican, or no, Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he

was a rhino. Backlash coming. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it

has to. This can't last. No, Anybody who opens their eyes and looks down, they

see the mess. Yeah. So anyway. Well, anyway,

it heartens me. California could be a paradise

again. It could be what the Beach Boys always sang about.

It could be instead of a net

population loss, which has

happened for the first time in California history under Gavin Newsom,

where more people. I mean, you couldn't get a rental

truck in California because they had all left, you know,

so it would be nice to see it revert back.

But so much industry has left California now. I

don't think it'll ever quite be the same, but they can fix that

state. But now is the

time is nigh to do it because I think any more

slippage and it might really just turn into,

well, New Jersey or something, you know, where,

by the way, the ICE protests in New Jersey

are just out of control. Yeah. Where did this come from? I mean, you've got

this governor, this Mikey Sherrill, who's

supposedly, you know, a veteran. Like, she ought

to know better. And she's running New Jersey

now for six months she's been in office and she's saying all these

contradictory things that, well, ICE is the Gestapo and they're

Nazis and everywhere ICE goes, there's violence, and it's violence

because of ice. And ICE is just like. No,

actually, come in. Look at this facility. Delaney

hall in New Jersey. Yeah, they denied all this. We're feeding them

three squares. You can come spend the night, we'll put you up, you know,

like we have nothing to hide. And like you're creating

this fiction, like, where's all this? And these people

are mainly from out of New Jersey that have been bussed and flown

in. And clearly they are

professional communist agitators. That's what's going

on. That's what's going on. And people are

increasingly aware of this and they're starting to call

it out and people are just, they're sick of this.

What happened in Minnesota, what happened in la,

the same contingent of people causing these problems,

Soros backed. You know,

basically, it's just chaos. It's like they want to tear down our

society, they want to ruin the country. And it's been going on now for years.

Yeah, we're finally sort of seeing it. I think you

always say you're on the brink of this huge. Something's got to give.

Something's got to give. We are on the brink of like it's either going to

tip over the edge and we just go full on socialist, communist

or there's a fight back. I mean, and part of that is,

Steve, part of that is also

we have to secure honest

voting. And in Ohio, you may have heard of this,

because nationally the Save America

act seems to be stuck. And it's been passed three times by the

House and three times the Senate has not moved the ball.

And all it is is basically a requirement for voter ID

and proof of citizenship. Those two things. Anything

by any other name with any other president at any other time would be taken

as a matter of course. Yeah, so what's happened in Ohio is Matt

Huffman, speaker of the House, is

drafting a constitutional amendment

which will emanate from the House to be voted on by the public

on, on the ballot in November to

emplace in the Ohio Constitution voter ID

and proof of citizenship. So, okay,

if we're not gonna do this nationally, you know, even

better. I mean, I'm totally in favor of this. I'd love all 50 states

to do this at the state level, because then it would.

Rather than just the Save America act can really only

do this for 50. Federal election. In theory, it's only federal elections.

And if you do it at the state level, well, man, now that's,

it's locked in. And anybody who disagrees with this, I've not heard a

rational argument against this. I've not. Yeah, but I mean,

if we're Going to turn the country around.

Let's do it. Honestly. Let's have only American

citizens voting for these candidates.

We can. You know, Mamdani, people say, well, how do you get

elected? New York City permits non US

citizens to vote in local elections. So you have,

I don't know, roughly. I think they're saying roughly

15% of New York City's population are

non Americans. They get to vote on who the mayor

is instead of just American citizens.

New York law allows non citizens to vote in

local elections. That's outrageous.

It makes zero sense. You can't go on vacation

in France and vote in their election. It's just giving away. But

French people can come here and vote. You're giving the keys of the kingdom away?

Just giving it away. I think we

should talk about this. This is right up your alley, Steve. And

you're so busy practicing law. I don't know if you've heard about this

House Bill 667, right. This is in the state of Ohio.

They're talking about watering

down. Actually, it's a reversal of something they call tcap,

which I'm sure you could just lecture us

here for hours about this. But that's called Targeted Community

Alternatives to Prison, where fourth and fifth

nonviolent felony violators. You

know, things like defrauding the government

on an application, say for

edchoice. Like you get online and

pretend that you're your relative

and really you're the mother of somebody who's trying to get an

ED Choice benefit for a school district.

So you fake that you get busted, okay, that's a

felony. But what they've done

is in this bill, if it

passes, it would say that if you have

two priors or if you

have a felony during the pendency of a trial,

a second felony. So if you have two fourth or fifth

degree felonies that you have to go to state prison, and

instead of going to a municipal county or a workhouse

facility, a local, less expensive, less

onerous, perhaps kind of incarceration

or some other kind of program. So I'm

not sure why they're doing this, but it's like they're harshing on

people in this TCAP program that I'm sure many of your clients

have been able to go to, that instead of the big house,

has worked successfully for like the last 10 years since they brought

it in. Yeah, I mean, and it seems stupid to me that if they would

pass this. I think. Here's

my take on this. Anything that

typically what happens is the general Assembly Gets involved,

meaning the legislative branch. And they get involved because

they don't like the sentences that trial courts are

dishing out. Yeah. And at times that has been because the sentences

are too harsh. At times it's because they have not been harsh enough. It just

depends on which way the tide is flowing. Yeah. And I

have sort of found that the more the General assembly tries to tweak that

and reign in judges, we being lawyers.

Human lawyers. Judges. Human judges.

We immediately find the workarounds. Yeah. We start doing other things. So, for

instance, and even prosecutors. Prosecutors will do this. Right.

Because you and I have a case. You're a prosecutor, I'm a defense lawyer. We

have a case and say we'll take it out of TCAP for a second. We'll

make it like a sex abuse case. Okay. But it's a case where maybe a

17 year old had sex with a six something. Yeah.

Not a case where you would think that person should be on the sexual predator

list. Okay. And I know there's people out there thinking, well, they all should

be, but I'm telling you, they all not. The predator list is a special

list that was designed for special people, meaning not so special people. Yeah.

And a lot of times the dragnet catches people just because the General

assembly says everybody convicted of these crimes has to be on a sex offender registry.

And they make it less and less discretionary and more and more mandatory

for judges. But you and I know this as prosecutors and we know that what's

really going on. Or maybe there's a proof problem. Maybe you have an issue proving

your case. And I come to you and I say, look, Norm,

I'm going to trial and you're going to have to put your victim on the

witness stand. We're going to have this brutal drag out fight and you could lose

because my client doesn't want to eat. A sex offense

that is non expungeable can never be off his record and

he's going to be on a sex offender registry for say, 25 years. Yeah.

And maybe his girlfriend won't testify. The minor girl. So you

say, well, look, all right, we'll make it a misdemeanor or we'll make it a

non sex offense felony, whatever. So you can avoid the registry, clean up your guy's

record later. But it's also a case that but for that registry, my guy

might have pled to a sex offense that wouldn't be expungeable. Yeah. In

other words, you're losing more than you're gaining with a Lot of these things. Yeah.

And these are like the real life things that we horse trade

in the trenches. Yeah. And a lot of cases go to trial. They

probably wouldn't have to because of things like this. I'm not saying TCAP is like

that. Yeah. But generally speaking, if a trial judge wants

to impose some sort of community or local sanction, let them.

Yeah, let them. Yeah. Don't think that, you know,

up on Capitol Square, what it's going to be like in Jackson County, Ohio. The

individual facts really matter. Right. Because you're dealing with

human beings and, you know, we're not all the same.

And somebody's background, they may have some merit,

where a little mercy is perhaps entitled to

this person. Or it's a good idea. And it's not always,

as I always say, and you said it earlier, our system isn't

perfect. It's only the best. Yeah, right, right, right,

right. That's my motto on this stuff. It's not gonna be perfect.

It's never gonna be perfect. Tweak it here and that. You're never gonna make it

perfect. And that's how I look at our candidates, too. Like, okay,

Spencer Pratt, Steve Hilton, Donald Trump. None of these

guys are perfect. But the

alternative is what? Kamala Harris, Hillary Kelp. That's right.

So you hear these guys? You hear these? I'll call them the Nouveau.

Right. The Tuckers, the Candace Owens. Yeah. They want perfection.

And even Megyn Kelly. What do they want? Would they go back

and vote for Kamala Harris? Are you kidding me? Right? Where would we be

in the world? Exactly. It might have been unrecoverable.

Yeah. So, I mean, I put up with, you know, I

mean, gosh, it would be an

imperfect description of me to call myself a Trump supporter.

I'm a supporter of most of his policies, but, yeah,

of course I hold my nose when he insults people at

a personal level. I find that distasteful. Or

he makes fun of somebody and I cringe. But

again, if Hillary or Kamala were

in office, or Joe Biden, God forbid. It's like

I'm reading the Old Testament right now, this Bible in a Year podcast with Father

Mike Schmitz. Okay, cool. I never really have. When I was a

kid, maybe in college, I took Old Testament, but not like I'm studying it now.

That's very cool. I hear he's great. I have.

Not really good you've done any of his podcasts. But I've heard it.

It's really good. I mean, look, it's good and bad it's good in the sense

that you can get bite sized chunks of complicated

reading done and I do it on the way into work every day.

And that's good. It's bad in that I like

to dig deeper and deeper and deeper. And Sometimes in the 20 minute

segment we have, he doesn't do that. Not that he can't do it, but that's

a different. Well. And you know, the Catholic philosophy about the

Bible is that it's allegorical, it's illustrative.

So I'm Catholic. The Catholics, for example, don't get all

bollocks up that like

in the four Gospels, we don't look for the

contradictions and then get. We're like,

okay, yeah, it's not a perfect rendition. And this

book is different than that book in certain details.

So Father Mike might be skimming over some of those things

and it may intrigue you to try to be because you're

very fact based and you might want

further explanation and he's probably not going to. I like the more

metaphorical. I like to really dive in to see how it fits. See

how it fits in today's world. How does that inform how I live my life?

That's more the Catholic attitude. And I was a

Presbyterian. It's like I always look into that. But anyway. Whereas the

Baptists are very literal. Very literal. And you can't always be literal. And the Bible's

at times literal. The Bible at times is not on the third day and then.

And I'm not making fun of particularly when you get to like these, you know,

all the Old Testament covenant stuff. All the rules and all the stuff.

Yeah. Shellfish and can't eat. How big the temple is going to

be, how big the ark, like all that stuff. But what's interesting to me is

we're going as he goes through the kings. Okay. I mean even

going way back, like David did phenomenal stuff.

Screwed up his personal life in certain ways. I mean, you talk about a

trump, right? Yeah. I mean an egotistical Solomon,

multiple cheating on wisest man ever. But like

these flaws, it's like you can be good and bad and everybody

is right. We're all human. Nobody's perfect. Right. And so. But

you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. And

that's what people are doing. They were great kings. Yeah. But

flawed people. They were flawed. Yep. And didn't

always follow what God told him to do and was punished greatly for it in

certain things. That's exactly right. And those lessons I've Never really

pondered and how relevant that is today with what

we're witnessing. And it makes me wonder, you know, the

modern abandonment of any religion, Christianity or

whatever, people can

judge without any context based on what?

Whatever they want, whatever their compass is pointing them at that day. They can judge

without any context, and it gives them this

sort of redemption without all the hard stuff

of living within the bumpers.

And I think that's where we are. People say, well, Trump said this. Like

you're just saying, you hold your nose. They're not willing to do that. Trump said

this. So I hate him for everything else he does. But really what they're doing

is they're pushing their own agenda, whether they know it or not, and they're just

saying, I hate Trump. It's sort of fascinating to me.

Isn't the best part of Christianity, Steve? I mean, the best

part. So as a sinner, I say this. The best part

about Christianity is the redemptive quality

of the religion, that you're not permanently

damned. If you still have some life left in your

breast, you can ask for forgiveness.

Maybe even beyond. We don't know. We don't know. But isn't

it great to know that

at any time, up until possibly

death, and like you say, maybe beyond, but at any time,

you can say to God, please forgive

me. What's going on? Helping. Yeah, I'm out of control.

I'm sorry for hurting these people or those people,

you know, please forgive me. I want to change. And yes, you're going to

fall down again and again, even after that. But you know what? That does. I

mean, I didn't mean to, but that's the best part of Christianity,

Christianity rally. But

it in almost. Well, that's the basis of our country. That's right.

It imperceptibly, yes, motivates me

to abandon the things. It doesn't happen overnight,

but this slow path towards not where we start, but where we

end. So if I find myself going down rabbit

holes on the Internet that aren't good, a light bulb will come on and say,

what am I doing? And is this something that Christ would approve of? Or is

this something that. And that doesn't mean I always stop, but it means I start

thinking about it. If you start thinking about it, then all of a sudden the

algorithms change because you're not looking at the same stuff on the Internet because you're

trying to be conscious of not to. And then all of a sudden you're not

fed the same crap. It's really remarkable how just that

belief can steer your life in a positive direction.

Not straight line, but in sort of this positive direction, hopefully

towards what God would want. Yeah.

And I love talking about the founding of the country

and the Declaration of Independence, mentioning God and

the Creator, you know, several times in the

document. And then you look at things like, as our

society has evolved, you look at things like the parole system.

And it is about redemption, it is about forgiveness. In a

way. There is Christianity, the

ethics, the mores of

Christianity are imbued in how our

country and how our government was set up and

continues to evolve. And when you lose

the religious foundations in our society,

then you kind of lose the rationale for why we have

parole. And you start rolling out

mandatory sentences like,

oh, if this person commits that crime, we cut their hand off

or we tie their tubes so they can't have

any babies anymore. Or we do something that's almost

like irreversible. But

that's when we lose ourselves as a people. We lose our

humanity. Yeah. Become unmoored from any moral

foundation. Any moral foundation. And that is the problem.

That is the problem. And really

laws, at the end of the day, when you say, well, what

is the philosophy behind a law? Like

we have laws against, you know, you can't

slaughter other people, you can't kill other people.

Well, unless you have a Ten Commandments or unless you

have some kind of moral code that says you can't kill people, why

would you have a law that says you can't kill people? That's right. And this

is like anytime you, I mean, where do people think that came from?

It came from morality. Anytime you debate with people on this, they always,

they always get tongue tied because there is like, where are the laws coming from?

Where is it? Yes. And we had this discussion, I think last week,

we had somebody who was the congressman

arguing, making fun of somebody who said our

constitutional rights came from God. Yeah. Right. If they

don't. Yeah. It was Mike Johnson giving a speech. Yeah. If

they don't come from God, then we can take them away. Way

exactly right. The purpose of our founding was to say these come

from God, don't touch it. We hold these truths to be self evident. Yes.

Don't touch it. It's beyond our human control. And the only thing we're

doing here with this document is protecting those things that otherwise come from God. Yeah.

And if we somehow

conflate those two things into one, that we create the rights

because we are moral do gooders that know better,

then I get to decide on an ad hoc, on a Case by case basis,

when somebody doesn't get those right. Look, Norm, the environment's too important, so

you have to go to jail or this is too much. I think that this

is the bigger. Bernie Sanders thinks that AI is not

good. So guess what? We're just going to take your property, even though you have

an inalienable right to property. So it's like, where is that?

How do they address that? Yeah, it's always another

existential threat or inequality or

some other huge undefinable problem that they throw in front of you that would

justify them taking rights away. You know the most

exciting thing. Jump off my soapbox. No, no, but no. I love

this thread. The most exciting thing to me about studying

the founding of the country is Thomas Jefferson

and these other writers,

they were coming off the movement in Europe called the

Enlightenment. And that's where the

fusion of science with Christianity,

where it came together. And rather

than it being like a Martin Luther rejection

of the old time religion, the Enlightenment,

people like Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon,

John Locke, the people in Europe that

were really the founders of the Enlightenment movement,

and people like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin that were

fusing the idea of the people

having these rights bestowed by God, but yet

having a rational system where we wouldn't tell you what kind

of religion you had to have.

That's where it came together and that's where all of these contradictions

about slavery were built into the Declaration.

And they weren't saying no religion.

Absolutely. They were just saying, we're not going to dictate to you. Yes. And

we're not going to adopt a religion as a national

matter like England had done. And we're not going to give

the quote, call it Catholic, whatever

religion the government adopts, Calvinism, whatever you want to talk about, whatever

the government adopts, we're not going to give them like, like it was in medieval

times, like carte blanc over libraries and books. And whether you could

go, if you're Copernicus and whether you could study the heavens or

Galileo, Galileo,

we're not going to do that. But we're going to grab from that all

the ideals that it has. That's right. And we're going to

bake that into our cake. Really genius, you know, and

you take somebody like Sir Isaac Newton. So

here's the guy that gave us the basic laws of physics.

Right. And nothing could be more rational, nothing could be

more scientifically based. But what a lot of people don't know about Sir

Isaac Newton is the other side

of his great Intellect was devoted to dissecting the

Bible and looking for patterns, scientific patterns even

for, for the Bible. Like he was

trying to do AI on the Bible before there was

AI and looking for

what kind of patterns do we see in

Christianity that I can then apply

scientifically to the rest of reality.

And yeah, okay, he didn't

come up with those kinds of, if you will, formulas

for the Bible, but he looked for them. And this is a rational

person like Thomas Jefferson who, you know, sent

Lewis and Clark out west because he wanted to know every critter,

every plant, every Indian tribe where all the

rivers flowed. He was interested in reality

and he was interested in data. He wanted information

for those who have rejected that. Who rejected what you're

calling that fusion of Christianity and science and learning and everything else. Yeah, that's where

it's at, man. Even Einstein famously said that was his

greatest regret. It's like he tweaked his formula because he didn't want it to lead

to some creation moment. I don't know. You signed. I'm not looking at the.

You scientists out there will know this better than I. But he regretted that he

tweaked his formula and he changed things because he didn't want the conclusion that maybe

there's God and it. I'm not saying there, I'm

not, I'm not saying he believed, I'm not saying he didn't believe. But the

idea is this open minded exploration and those who would reject

God automatically come with a closed mind. I would much rather have them

say I don't know. Oh yeah, agnosticism is at least

an honest. Because that is norm what led me to Christ.

Yeah, because I didn't know. I didn't know. And at the end of the day,

there's a leap of faith at the end either way. And I didn't know for

sure until I got to the end, but if you block it out

the entire time, you'll never get there.

Switching topics. Yep, this is a good time. Last

week I was talking about that I thought

Vivek Ramaswamys running for governor of Ohio needed

to come up with a data center

position that would resolve this anger. And

in red hot, red maga country, the

rural part of Ohio where, let's face

it, that's where they're putting these 225 and

growing number of data centers. And

just this week Governor DeWine, whom I've had a

lot of disagreements with, of all people, may be

pulling the coals out of the fire

for Vivek. So what he has done. DeWine, just this

past week, after the first meeting of the Data

Center Task Force committee

investigating that, there came testimony that

Ohio's sales tax exemption for

data centers, meaning all the steel roofing,

air conditioning, piping, excavating,

all of the stuff and the labor that they're

buying to build these data centers, they got sales tax

exemptions for that, haven't paid a penny in

sales tax for all this stuff to build these data

centers. And Ohio has missed out. The

Department of Tax reported to this committee that that

sales tax exemption, instead of

being $160 million, if you will,

assistance to data center industry, it's cost

$1.5 billion

worth of losses to the state of Ohio.

So by a factor of what would that be? 10.

They are off so far in their estimate.

And so Governor DeWine has suspended any future

sales tax exemptions for data centers.

For new program for new data centers being

built right now, they will not get a sales tax

exemption. And it's the first time

I've seen Ohio's command

structure, meaning the governor or the legislature

put any kind of brakes on just this runaway

train. And I'm heartened by that. And what it does

for Vivek Ramaswamy. Is he. It's

not now. Well, he can say, well, we're

doing something. And DeWine kind of gave him a gift there

in a way. Yeah. I mean, he could say, well, we're doing

something. Whereas before it's like, yeah, we're getting

sold out by the rhinos running the state of Ohio.

The data center, it's such a. Don't you feel.

I feel like there's more to it that we don't know for

sure. Like what is moving the needle on this stuff, like, what's really going on.

So, Steve, this is what retail

citizens like me, I'm just a regular Hammond Egger,

really am. I'm just a regular person. Right. I may have gone to

college, so maybe I seem smarter, but I'm really not. I'm just a

regular person looking at this data center thing

and I keep hearing from everybody like Vivek Ramaswamy

that we must win the AI war. We can't let China

win that. And I'll be honest, I don't understand it. I really

don't. I don't know what the war is all about. I don't

know why China can't maximize their use of

AI and we do the same. And I don't understand

why data centers, maybe strategically they need

to be spread out. Maybe they can't be co located all in one

concentrated area because, you know, you fire a weapon at, you

know, like if, if they're all in the middle of Nevada somewhere.

Well, yeah, you could take out our entire computing

capability by shooting, you know, at one target. So maybe

there's some sense in spreading it around. But I don't understand

why AI is that urgent, number one. And I don't understand

why data centers can't be put in areas where there

isn't a lot of people. Why is it, for

example, next immediately adjacent

to the house of some friends of mine

that I care about? And I really, you know, I

feel passionately that their quality of life will never be

the same because they have this gigantic data

center that is right next to their house. And,

and so all the zoning and everything was

perverted in order to install this

factory, this data factory right next to somebody's

house. And that's just, to me, it's out of order. People in Upper

Arlington or people in the nice

community in Cleveland or Cincinnati, they wouldn't want a

data center in the middle of Indian Hill

or someplace in Cleveland.

So why in the country is it okay to put a data center next to

somebody's house if you wouldn't do that in a

municipality?

This whole thing, it could cost Ramaswamy the

election. And this is why I say I think DeWine

has possibly

started the ball roll. A little bit of pushback, you know, on,

on the giveaway. And when you think about so people, you know,

numbers sound insane. So $1.5 billion,

what does that really mean? The capital budget for the state

of Ohio for the two years. It's a two year budget.

The capital budget, which means highways, buildings, airports,

harbors. Everything that the state of Ohio would build for

bricks and mortar is $3.7 billion

over two years. We gave away 1.5 billion,

almost half of what the state would have

spent to build stuff for two years. It's not

an insignificant number. I mean, it's a complete blunder. The whole thing,

it's mind boggling. Yeah. All right. You wanna do some good? Yeah, man. Yeah.

So

winners for me are California voters. We've already

explained why. We have gone into pretty good

depth. If that holds the largest city

in the state of California and the state itself, there's hope that

it'll get turned around losers. These

protesters for me in New Jersey are just,

I mean, there's just no excuse

ever for violence

against somebody who's non violent. And

you've got the law enforcement all they want to do

is arrest people that have broken the law

and put them through the justice system where they will get

a trial or they will get through the

immigration court system or processed in some way

under the laws that have been passed by Congress. And,

you know, if you attack an ICE officer and

they shoot tear gas back at you,

to me, that's not violence by ice. You're doing something.

You're the predicate for the violence that then happens to you.

Yeah, there's an escalation. Yeah. All right. So my good and bad is both

good and bad. I watched this series called you'd

Friends and Neighbors. It's on Apple tv. It stars Jon

Hamm from. Oh, he's great. From Mad Men days. He's

got. It's sort of a similar character, actually. But this has got me

really thinking, this series, and I've tried to sort it all out. I'm gonna sort

it out in real time. So the good about it is it's sort of. It's

these wealthy people who have these insane lives.

Probably, like a lot of stuff Hollywood does. I mean, it's just like a

carrot, like an overblown caricature of these. Of these wealthy lives.

Like, people with a lot of money and how they live and

they have stuff that's. Ridiculous amounts of stuff. Ridiculous that's.

Of money. They're screwing each other's wives. I mean, all that stuff is going on.

And Jon Hamm has gone through a divorce because his wife was

screwing his best friend. But they've all sort of remained in the

same community. And he's sort of sorting it out as a man figuring it out.

And one of the. He loses his job and, like, this parade of horribles is

bestowed upon him. So he starts going into houses and ripping off stuff. So, like,

he goes into your house and he'll steal. Like, not even for the money as

much as just, like, you can just tell he's lost, okay? And so he'll

go in and steal your watch. And he's got this really expensive watch, maybe worth,

say, a million dollars or $500,000. And the point is, like,

these people don't even know they're missing it. It's just. They have. It's just.

And it got me thinking. As you know, we just talked about it. I'm reading

the Old Testament, and in Ecclesiastes, there's this

saying, all vanity is vanity. Like, everything is vanity in, you know,

life. So the. The saying, I think, is vanity of vanity, says the preacher.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Ecclesiastes chapter

one or one, Chapter two. But it sort of means that

everything we do is fleeting until you put God into it and gives us

a direction to do the things we're doing. So it's not. I don't think it's

against God to have money, even though Christ would say it makes it harder. I

don't think having money is not itself bad, but it can draw you away from

it. So you have to have some mooring of. What did he say about the

rich man and the elephant going to. Going through the needle of an eye? Yeah,

it was some parody or something. It's harder for him to get into heaven, but

he can do it than an elephant to go through the eye of a needle.

Still doable, but you gotta be careful is what he's saying. He's gotta say be

careful. But what I like about this show is that

it makes this point. These people's lives are ridiculously

absurd and it leads him to do this

ridiculous stuff. What I don't like about it is at the end of the season,

I'm giving it away. So spoiler alert. At the end of the season, everything sort

of works out for him. Him. I'll just say it that way. Okay. And he's

got his family back, or at least he could. He's got his job back, or

at least he could. But he doesn't choose it. He goes right back

to the same stuff. So it's like it makes the point but then

keeps it going like there's no lesson to be learned. At the end of it,

it just. We're just going to keep going with this insanity. And he's saying

he's making this choice to keep going with the insanity because he didn't

want to relive all the same as go back to what he had. Instead, he

could have said, I'm going to go back to what I had and not eff

it up this time. So anyway, that's the bad. So that's my take on it.

You heard it here first hot take. And then I know there's Reddit

people who are going to disagree with me, but that's what's good and bad

about that. Also, if you haven't seen Top

Gun Maverick. Oh, I've seen it, yeah. Yeah. Jon Hamm, like, he plays

the heavy. He plays the guy that's going to basically take away

Tom Cruise's career, you know, as a

fighter pilot. And it's. He does a great job. He's a great

actor. Yeah, he does a great job, his face. He does a good job. Yeah.

Good stuff, Steve. All right, common sense Ohio, June 3, wrapping it

up. We are coming at you right from the middle each and every week, typically

on video, but this day only audio, at least until

next week. All right. Well, hopefully we'll

figure that out. Came a little more.

Well, the big themes are interesting to me and

I think a lot of pe. I think it resonates with a lot of people.