Showdown
Showdown Episode 88 6-21-24
(gentle guitar music) Welcome to Showdown, I'm Mark Casein, and this is Friday, June 21st, and I have to say, I know this is a bizarre point of view, but it's certainly not my only point of view that's ever been bizarre. And this one is very simple. Any day that it's 100 degrees out or more, I consider to be a very excellent day. I just happen to like 100 degrees or higher. That's good weather. And I don't know if you've ever seen, and probably very few people on the planet anymore, even know what I'm talking about. I mean, certainly you probably heard of the Twilight Zone, but there is one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes where everybody is freaked out because the planet is on fire, and it's 100 degrees plus, it's 130, 140, it's beyond imagination how hot everything is. And throughout the program, they go through all the problems caused by this wildly overheated planet that has everybody absolutely burning up. And then at the end, the Twilight Zone kicker to all of this is, that actually everybody was just dreaming. The planet wasn't 140 degrees, actually. It was below zero, and everybody was so frigid that they were dreaming that they had all this heat and fire. And it was somehow overcoming their real conditions. Do you ever see that, Joe? - Yes. - Oh, okay, so Joe saw it. Yeah, so it's not impossible for anybody to have seen it, that's good. In any case, I love hot weather, and that's what we've got. Now, Granche, it's probably not good for the planet, and everything's burning down, and it's certainly a problem, and we need to figure out how to fix it. But part of what I've learned, and I am certainly no oceanographic expert. I'm not, in any sense. But I know this much, that once the heat gets to a certain point, which it has, the water, which actually makes up most of the planet by far, the water absorbs the sun, and it continually absorbs the sun, and because the heat is up so high, it keeps increasing the heat of the planet. And even if you get rid of all the carbon dioxide, you now have a problem with sort of runaway heat, and how are you gonna solve that problem? I don't know, far from now, I don't think anybody knows. Anyway, the one thing that's out here that maybe we could solve, but no one's really talking about it much, and I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again, won't hurt. It's not like we're gonna fix it. And that is the plastic issue. Because not only are our bodies filled with plastic, and when I say filled, the experts say that every inch of our body is loaded with plastic. It's not just a little plastic somewhere. We are consumed with plastic every inch. It's not good. Now, beyond that, we've got that gigantic bunch of plastic that's laying in the ocean somewhere around the Indian Ocean, I believe. But it's gigantic, in fact, it's so big that it's three times the size of the state of Texas. And this is a giant pile of plastic in the ocean. And you know it can't be good for anything. It absolutely kills ecosystems within the ocean, and it's just bad stuff. And it's there and it's growing. And I can tell you right now, I add to it every day, and probably everybody in the audience of any show, everyone's adding to it. Because you go to the grocery store, and you get some plastic bags, and you take them home, and you throw them in the trash, and they go straight to that big pile of plastic in the ocean, not good. We are piling it on by the minute. So we're doing quite a bit of damage, and you can get rid of some carbon dioxide, that isn't gonna stop it. And one or two of us, standing up for the principle of ending plastic, that won't do it. I mean, I could never use plastic again, and that thing in the middle of the ocean is gonna grow enormously. So the only way to stop it is for everybody to stop it. Let's get rid of the plastic bags. Just that alone would have an impact. Now, is there a way to actually remove that plastic from the ocean? I'm sure there is, but it may not be within our capability at the moment, but it's out there, and it needs to be removed. Now, why would I bring any of that up? Well, I'll tell you why, because we have another problem in this country, and we've known about it for a long time, and that is we have a lot of lead in our water. We still do. I mean, we've removed some of it by getting rid of pipes that have lead, but that's not everything. A lot of it is still sitting out here, and sadly, the largest number of these lead pipes that have not yet been removed are in black communities all over the country. Now, is this a special plot to kill black people? Only in a way, only in a way, because what essentially you've got here is something that you know is in communities where the people basically don't count, not in America, and since they don't count, we can just look the other way and say don't worry. And sadly enough, Hillary Clinton came out and said when she was Secretary of State or even before that, when she was just, you know, first lady. Gotta get rid of this. And then Barack Obama said, gotta get rid of it, gotta get these pipes out of here. Now, forget Donald, Donald didn't say anything 'cause what does he care about a bunch of black people with lead? No, he never said a word. But Joe Biden actually did say something, and then he went out and passed the law, or when I say passed the law, no, the president doesn't pass the law. He proposed it in the Congress passed it, and that is a significant accomplishment in the Biden administration. They passed that infrastructure bill and part of it was a huge amount of money assigned to the inner cities to pull out the pipes that have led and replace them with safe pipes. We still haven't done it, so let's not get hysterical. But at least we're on a path to it. But the sad part is that even after passing a law aimed at getting rid of these pipes, we're still trying to get rid of them. Does that have to do with the fact that this is all in black communities all over the country, primarily? Probably, yeah, I would say yes. You could say no, but that's where the pipes are. The pipes are in black communities all over the country, and we still haven't removed the lead. It's a bad thing, and it's certainly something that's within our capability that is to get rid of these pipes, we could do it. And not only could we do it when we've passed laws that say we're going to do it, and we still haven't done it. Over the years, I have brought people from all of these different kinds of communities all over the country, on the air, to tell about the lead pipes and their communities. These are all inner city black communities, and we talk about it, top people in our country talked about it. These are all Democrats who said we get rid of these pipes. Actually, in Michigan, a good chunk of these pipes were put there by Republicans who were then indicted, because they had negligently created the circumstances for putting those lead pipes in. I don't even remember what the final outcome was on those lawsuits against these government people. And the reason I don't remember is because, first of all, I don't think anybody went to jail. And secondly, because nobody's all that bent out of shape, this is all just black people. Who cares? This is the United States of America. What are we gonna worry about that for? Okay, so what are we gonna do? Climate change and ecological damage and all, we could be doing something about it. I assure you, if the impossibility occurred and Donald Trump became president, there wouldn't be one second spent on it. How do I know? Well, because we went through four years of that guy, and they didn't do a thing. Talked about infrastructure every time you turned around, he said, "Well, in two weeks!" Yeah, well, two weeks never came. It did come under Joe Biden. And presumably, they've allocated the money, so over time, you would hope that they do something to fix those pipes. Kids are being murdered today by those pipes. They're drinking water out of those pipes. One of the worst places in the country, Flint, Michigan. They have to do something. The government has to do something. No one else can do it. This is not like a private enterprise that's gonna come in and fix the pipes. It's gotta be the federal government. It was the state government to put the pipes there on the first place. So here we are, and those pipes have still not been fixed, nor have we dealt with the plastic out in the middle of the ocean, and hopefully we will, maybe. I don't know. We've passed laws, so we'll see. Now, let me mention that there is a movie. I know a lot about old films. I studied old films at UCLA, along with everything else that I did there. And I've taught old films at all levels, including at the university. And I just like it. It's a good thing to study. In fact, interestingly enough, if you know much about film noir in OIR, which in French is black and it means that it has a dark component to it. And these filmed wars are basically crime films from the 1940s and 1950s. And if you ever wanna see them, and if you don't know where to go, I'm gonna tell you. You go to TCM and you watch Eddie Mueller, and he's on every Saturday night and Sunday morning with an example of film noir. And everything imaginable is there. And Mueller, he's a genius. He knows everything about this. He's written books on it. He talks about it at the beginning. He talks about it at the end. Sometimes there's guests on who talk about it from the standpoint that they were involved in some way. And it's really interesting. And so you might be interested in that. But in addition, when it comes to film, I love the great films. And actually, we're in sort of a sad position today because after COVID, we have not been making films anymore like we did. I mean, we make films that sometimes are streamed, but as far as going to the movie theaters, the movie theaters are just way down on the number of people going and the number of films in the theaters. And I did see an animated film today. I can't even remember the name. Do you know what I'm talking about? Minions? Yeah, what is that? Oh, minions, okay, okay. So anyway, everybody apparently knows I knew nothing about it. And Will Ferrell and a bunch of really well-known comedians are behind this. And there's a new one, which is the fourth version of it that's coming out. And I think they said July 3rd. So, but again, I mean, these are kids films. Maybe grownups go to some of this business, I don't know. I've never been there and I don't really even know anything about it except for what I saw today on MSNBC. This is where I learn everything that's real anyway. Anyhow, the film situation today is a little rough, but historically we certainly had great films. And one of the great films, I mean, when you hear what this leads up to, you'll go, why are you doing this? Anyway, one of the great films, which actually there are two versions of it and both produced by Alfred Hitchcock, and it's the man who knew too much. Well, I think the better version of this for 2024 coming up in six days is the man who couldn't think straight. And trust me, we're not talking about Joe Biden. Yeah, Donald will be there. He says, I mean, he still says he will, that's in six days, so less than a week. And generally it's believed that he's going to show up and that certainly he's probably gonna yell and scream and act crazy. But my prediction six days in advance is that he's gonna walk out. I think he will. I don't see anything in it for him to stay through the whole debate. I understand he's got the last word, they flipped a coin, he has the last word. Okay, big deal. He's not gonna talk about anything anyway. All he's gonna do is call people names and act crazy. So what's in it for him? And my guess is what's in it for him is to walk out. So that's gonna be my prediction for the next six days that the man who couldn't think straight is going to stand up in the middle of this thing after sounding like a lunatic. And then he's gonna run out of there screaming. I could be wrong on this one. I won't be wrong on the election. I could be wrong on this one, but that's my prediction. Okay, you wanna throw up that little flyer or whatever it is, Joe? Let's put this one up here. Whatever that thing is for, there you go. So this was off the internet today. And there's no question, I still don't understand. Yes, there's no question about that. There's a lot these people don't understand. I still don't understand how a man who's never held public office until being elected president is blamed for all of America's problems. By the people that we've had in Congress since the 1970s. And then if you will vote to re-elect Trump, yeah, say absolutely. Okay, so I thought I'd throw something in there, but we can take that off now. Yeah, it's not in there to make anybody look good actually. It's completely the reverse. Believing, first of all, that anybody's blaming Donald Trump for all of America's problems is ridiculous. That's Donald Trump who's doing that and he's blaming everybody else 'cause that's all he ever does. He's a victim, his people are victims, everybody's a victim, America's no good, that's Trump. There's nobody out here blaming Donald Trump for all of America's ills. That's not it at all. That is not what anybody on the left is saying. The people on the left, first of all, are saying that we don't have the kind of problems that Trump and a lot of people are trying to promote. We just don't have them. We have a tiny little bit of inflation, tiny, a little more than the Fed wants, but 3%, 3 1/4%, let's be factual. So 3 1/4%, the Fed wants it at 2%, and for the last 10 years before inflation did come back, we had about 10 years where we couldn't even get it above 1% and believe me, the Fed was worried about that because they were worried that what was gonna happen is the things would turn south and that instead of having inflation, we would go into deflation and so the Fed kept pumping money into the system in order to stop deflation. So here we are, we've got a little bit of inflation that has arisen from, first of all, pumping money into the system, secondly COVID and third, some other exogenous events which, you know, from all over the world that have come in to affect the United States. Things that we couldn't control under any circumstances, but it affected us. A friend of mine was talking to me about inflation the other day and this is a Democrat, pretty much left of center kind of guy and he's in the business of chemicals and part of it is something to do with motor oil and he was talking about how some of those chemicals are way up in value in price and including motor oil and then I said to him, but the one thing about those chemicals and motor oil is that those prices go up and down. They are very cyclical and they can go way up and then they can go way down. Now, you know the things we buy at the grocery store, they're up, they're never going down. That doesn't happen. Grocery store prices don't fall. They go up, but oil does go up and down. In fact, and who would even know this, but they should and that is that back a few years ago after oil prices had gone way up and then they collapsed, they actually fell briefly from a hive about a hundred and a quarter per barrel of oil, they fell to minus 40, minus 40. So that doesn't mean it dropped 40. That means it went to minus 40. So if you went into the commodity market to buy a barrel of oil, well, you wouldn't pay anything. In fact, you would be paid $40 per barrel to take the oil and you may say, well, how would that work? Well, that's how our country works. That's how the world works. We have markets. And in this case, the price of oil dropped to minus 40 dollars a barrel. That's nothing that somebody like Donald Trump could jump up and down and say, look what I did. It is something that happened because commodity prices do that and you know that our gas prices go up and down. And I have to tell you, which I've told people this in the past and I've been right every time. And here we come again. The price of gasoline, not too distant future, I'll say within the next five years, but it might be a lot sooner, will drop to somewhere between a dollar and a dollar 50 per gallon of gas. And that doesn't have anything to do with either Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It doesn't matter who the president is. It could be one of those two. It could be Kamala Harris. It could be anybody. I promise you, if the price of gas drops to between a dollar, dollar 50, it will be because of the marketplace and that alone. So one of the things that you probably ought to do is learn about how markets work. I mean, I can't teach you that on showdown. You got to go and learn it. Go read about it. I mean, I learned about it when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. You can learn, go do it. And you'll know all about how these things work and you won't be surprised at any of it. You won't make up stories about inflation going up, you know, $11,000 over the last year to feed a family of four. You'll never say anything like that because nobody could trick you into it. Not even Stephen Moore, that quack economist that's over on Fox from time to time. So, you know, you couldn't be suckered into it because you would know what's going on. But trust me, gasoline can go up and down. Lumber can go up and down. So, you know, you could buy lumber at really high prices and build a house or at another era, you could buy that lumber very, very cheap and go and build the same house. And, you know, your costs are gonna be either up or down. Now, I'm not saying the price of houses are gonna go down. No, they keep going up too. But I will tell you, though, that oil and gasoline goes up and down, just does. It does go down. And these gas prices, we're looking at 350, some places 320, California, $5 a gallon, horrible, especially with all the distance you gotta drive and all the traffic. But I'm just telling you right now, all of those prices are going to come tumbling down between now and five years. And like I say, probably sooner. Now, before you get all excited and jump up and down and think you've got a deal, I assure you, you won't like it because it will be accompanied by a gigantic decline in all asset values around the country and everybody's gonna be screaming. Whoever's president at the time is going to take blame for this. There's no way around it. It's just the way we do things. It's unfortunate if we understood better, we'd be better, but we don't. And if you don't teach it in elementary school, if you don't teach it in high school and you teach it in college, but it's strictly elective. So very few people are gonna know about this and know how it works, just the way it is. I talk to audiences all the time about this. And I ask them, how do the prices of oil go up and down? And inevitably, they tell me that there's somebody out there that's ripping us off. That's what they believe. Well, that's not happening. No one rips us off. And I'm not saying you don't get ripped off for 10 cents a gallon here or there. That might happen. And especially when the prices are going sky high, you'll get a lot of people out here who will take advantage of that in order to kick in some extra profitability. That's true and the government has to watch for that. And we do. But what I'm talking about is the overall trend and I promise you, that's not determined by anybody. There's nobody out here that decides it, not even OPEC, which they often in Saudi Arabia and beyond, they'll get credit or they'll be a sign blame for one change in price or another. But they don't even do it. In fact, they struggle to control the prices themselves for their own benefit. Because a lot of times it goes the wrong way against them and the next thing they know, they've got a problem. So it's not like that. Gas prices, oil, it's all determined by the market. The market is affected by how much demand there is in the world for these products. And then there are also other cyclical factors from other markets that play a role. So if you know everything about all the markets, then you're in good shape. If you don't know anything about the market, you got a problem. And with that mind, it's really kind of interesting because we had James Ingram and Jacob Israel on here a couple of days ago and James just briefly mentioned, something I've mentioned before, which is that famous professor at Trump's University. That's the Wharton School of Finance where Donald went to school. And his professor has said repeatedly, you can find it on Google, trust me, it's there. He said Donald Trump was without a doubt the worst student that I ever had at Wharton, bar none. Donald Trump, so he knows nothing, absolutely nothing. That's why I say, the man who couldn't think straight and wait till you see him at this debate. I mean, the fact checkers are gonna be sitting there working their butts off, believe me, they'll be working after everybody walks out of that thing. In order to try to keep up with how many lies Donald Trump has spouted during that debate. Now, the one thing that you could consider is you might say, well, what is a lie? And it might be true that if you don't really know and you just say something that you think is true without the intention of misleading somebody, that might not be a lie. But we're not cutting any breaks for Donald. I mean, if he tells us something in there that's not true, we're gonna rightly call it a lie because he's one of the most prolific liars in the history of the United States. He is just one magnificent liar. You know how he always says, oh yeah, that telephone call in Georgia. It was so beautiful when he was begging for Raffensberger to change the votes so that he could win. Well, I'm gonna use his word. Donald's lies are so prolific that they are truly beautiful in terms of actual lying. He's just a great liar. Not that he gets away with it 'cause he doesn't get away with it. Everybody knows he's lying. I mean, they're people in the Republican party who know he's lying and go along with it. That's one group. Then after they say it over and over again, then there are people out here in our country who also believe it. That's very sad. That's why when I put up that thing on the screen and they talk about how Donald is, he's only been in office for such a short period of time. How can you blame him for everything? Well, don't worry. We're not. We're not blaming him for any of those things. Inflation's not his fault, the plastic in the ocean isn't his fault. I mean, really, almost nothing is his fault, except for the stupidity that came out of Washington, DC for four years. That was his fault. But the rest of it, nah, it was there before. And as far as blaming Democrats, that's ridiculous. They do everything they can to tell the story straight. They don't all understand economics so much either. So I wouldn't get hysterical about what they know or don't know 'cause they don't know a lot. And there are just a lot of problems in the world that always have to be fixed or addressed. But with Donald, it's a different story. And again, like I say, we'll see him in six days and just keep thinking of that famous 1950s version of the man who knew too much with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. And actually, in this case, when we see him in six days, it'll be the man who couldn't think straight. And it won't be Joe Biden. Okay. So now, let's get something neat. And I would strongly recommend with this 100 degree weather out there, which I love, but I strongly recommend that you go get yourself out of the heat, go get yourself some air conditioning, and enjoy the great food at WENTIES, which is at 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road in the Valley. And believe me, the food is, I don't wanna say beautiful because it sounds like I'm lying. The food is great. It really is. Excellent food. They've got wings. They've got the meat that is smoked meat. They've got hamburgers, cheeseburgers, patty melts. They've got pizza. Come on. You don't want some pizza? You go right down there this afternoon to WENTIES and sit down and eat pizza and whatever it is that you drink with pizza. I think people drink beer with pizza. Probably, Joe's probably over there laughing that I don't even know, but I think they do. What do I know? I don't drink, yeah, I drink coffee. Huh? - Beer and pizza. - Yeah, see, beer and pizza, yeah. I drink decaf coffee, but yeah, that's another story. Oh, okay, and I've got Ben on here and I got Lizzie on here as well. Lizzie, you don't have any disinformation to spread today. Anyway, I'll be watching over here just in case you got something new, like $11,000 to feed your kids. I'll tell you, I wouldn't even need $11,000 to feed my kids for the whole year. You're talking about an increase. Anyway, that's another story. But WENTIES is great food, great prices, I promise you, no one here is gonna argue about that with me. And in addition, don't forget my favorite, baby back ribs and the onion rings. And I had Ingram and Jacob Israel on the other day and they were quite concerned about me eating those onion rings and the baby back ribs. So I'm gonna suggest to Ben that whenever I come to eat at WENTIES, just find a rabbi to come up there and say a couple blessings over the food and then my friends won't be so bent out of shape. But anyway, don't worry, it's great food and you can get it at WENTIES, 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road, also in defiance. Great WENTIES food is now available in defiance. You see, it's a 29.99 South Highway 94, even I know where that is, although I can find anything if you give me GPS and that is in defiance, Missouri. Okay, that's WENTIES. Now, if you're looking for really excellent jewelry, I mean, fabulous jewelry, great designs, super prices, they'll buy and sell jewelry, they'll buy it from you, they'll sell it to you, okay? I'm telling you right now, all you gotta do is go to 4506 Hampton and Jules on Hampton and see Ben says here, thanks showdown with Marquesen. But let me say to you, Ben, thank you for finding me that rabbi to say a couple blessings over my food so that my friends don't freak out. It's okay, enough of that nonsense. But anyway, Jules on Hampton, great, great jewelry. I was just there the other day. I'm telling you, they got cases filled with it. They designed the jewelry very creatively. They'll do designs for you, you can do that. So that works, they'll fix your watch. And if you walk in there and you're not sure what you're doing when you walk out because your watch doesn't work, you look down and you can't, they'll fix your watch. Now they're really good, it's great jewelry, it's a great jewelry store. Al and AJ, father and son, and they run a great store. They do everything with Jules. They will buy and sell and get you the best prices. They're just nice people. You go in there, you're gonna enjoy being there. Jules on Hampton, 4506 Hampton, check them out. And then finally, here I am with my suit again. And today is yellow shirt day on the air. You know, I wanted to wear a red shirt. I was looking for my red shirt, I couldn't find it. I was gonna wear red and a tie that went with it, but I didn't do it. And in a minute, I'm gonna show you why, but let me say that, you know, suits, I got suits like you wouldn't believe, I mean, great suits. Some of them I haven't even worn in, so it's really crazy. I buy these suits and I don't even wear them because they're so nice, I don't wanna wreck them. I know, my wife thinks I'm nuts, but that's another story. Okay, so the story here is this. My red shirt would go with the suit even that I have on right now, and you could get it at the St. Louis Suit Company. See, they won't put that up there until I say their name. The St. Louis Suit Company, which is on the corner of Central and Forsyth in Clayton, and they have lots of great suits. You can see some of them on the screen right here. You go to my website, you'll see all kinds of information about the St. Louis Suit Company there as well. And they just have all the greatest suits. You wouldn't believe all the famous people that have bought suits at the St. Louis Suit Company in Clayton. They've been there for 29 years. They sell suits, they sell shoes, they sell shirts, but the ties are incredible. I wore my brand new Susan Coleman tie yesterday. Everybody loved it. I had another choice I could have worn that they offered me a tie with the American flag on it, and I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, "can't do that one." But the Susan Coleman tie, yeah, that was great. But there are all kinds of ties there, and they are $5 a piece of the ties. They are extraordinary. Silk ties, $5, beautiful designs on the ties. You can't go wrong at the St. Louis Suit Company, and let me remind you that while they don't sell chucks, they do sell really nice dress shoes, including dress shoes that are more like tennis shoes, but they're dress shoes. And then on top of that, if you're getting married or you're going to a wedding, you definitely wanna get yourself to the St. Louis Suit Company in Clayton, because they also take care of wedding attire. They're good. They're good, they're great, and they're in Clayton, the St. Louis Suit Company. Okay. So, you know, I've been on a kick lately where I've been talking about how Donald Trump is a useful idiot, which is the name that was given to people who take care of the Russians, who do the bidding of the Russians. And so, that makes Donald a useful idiot. Some people would call him a puppet, which I certainly have, and Vladimir Putin is the puppeteer, pulls the strings, and whatever anybody, whatever, anybody who Ben is looking for a rabbi for me. That's very nice of Ben. Anyway, they pull the strings, and they definitely get Donald to do whatever he's told. And I talked yesterday again about, which is one of my favorites, you know, the Trump administration throwing out all the American reporters and high-fiving in the Oval Office with the Russians, as they passed around the classified information for the Russians to read, and, you know, just go back and read the papers at that time, and countries all over the world were horrified because their classified documents were being read by the Russians in the Oval Office. Why? That's the question. Why? I mean, we know that in the Mueller report that they reported 140 illegal meetings between the Trump people and the Russians, we don't know any stories on what that's all about, and the reason we don't know the stories is because we haven't any trials. No one will bring a case having to do with that, because as we know, Bill Barr came out immediately on the publishing of that report, I guess it was in 2018, and Bill Barr said, number one, this report exonerated Donald Trump. When we know that inside the report, what it actually says is that they said they couldn't exonerate Donald Trump, but Bill Barr just changed the story and that's become the narrative in America, that it exonerated Trump. And then they say Russia or Russia, as if there's some kind of a hoax. And of course, there isn't, according to the Mueller report, but we'll never know, because nobody is gonna prosecute that. Now, moving forward a little bit, we are coming up to some really interesting decisions from the Supreme Court. One of them today, which sort of shocked people. And when I say shocked 'em, it shocked 'em because you would have never expected the six conservatives to take the position that they did. Now, one of them did not. So Clarence Thomas did not. But the other eight, including the three liberals, they all said, if you are a person who is abusing your family, your wife, if you've gotten caught and you've been somehow, they put out an order against you saying you can't go near them anymore because you're threatening to kill the people, the family, you can't have a gun. That was the law. You can't have a gun. If you have been put on notice, that you have to stay away because you're a family abuser, you beat your wife and so forth. So, shock of all time. Eight members of the Supreme Court agreed. They agreed that if you beat your wife, if you're a domestic abuser, then you should not be allowed to have a gun. Gee, that's nice of them. One of the things that was brought up today is obviously women got the vote in 1919. Think about it. 1919, and that's from 1889, so it's 130 years it took to let women vote in this country and it took a lot longer than that before black people could, but we're dialing that back right now through the assistance of the Supreme Court. But in any event, it's truly unbelievable. It was really a pleasant surprise that these people, including even Sam Alito, I mean, I haven't read the opinion, it just came out today. They said that domestic abusers should not be allowed to have a gun. Okay, so we're getting some progress here. That's good news. How about this one for you? I got a Supreme Court case for you. This one's called Angle versus Vitaly. And I'm not gonna sit up here and read Supreme Court cases, but I can tell you that Angle versus Vitaly in, I believe, 1961, this was a Madeleine Murray story, if you know who that is, if you don't go look it up, we only have 10 minutes left. But I will say that there were people back in the early 1960s who did stand up and brought cases to prevent using religion in school in a way that could be harmful for our kids, could be harmful. So these people filed lawsuits and these lawsuits came together into this case, Angle versus Vitaly, 1961, which very specifically identified this separation of church and state, which actually is not in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court said that it was implicit in the language of the Constitution. And therefore, for the last 60 some years, we have limited the amount of religion that is possible to bring into school situations or other public forms that are governmental. Obviously, we say God bless America in the House of Representatives and there are all kinds of things that we do generically, but we don't hammer kids with religion specifically a certain religion. We don't do it because we want these kids to be free to choose whatever it is that they and their families want. Well, here we go, the geniuses at the Supreme Court, they did accept the fact that if you're beating your wife, you shouldn't be allowed to have a gun. They accepted that one, but get ready for this one. We got to have in every single classroom in the state of Louisiana the Ten Commandments. Now, I didn't say that the Ten Commandments were a bad thing. I mean, the Ten Commandments are a good thing. Which Republicans passed the right to vote for women? Well, forget that one. There's no sense in, you know, this is Danielle. There's no sense in worrying about that because these were all, this is a different era. And long ago, 1919, women got the right to vote. Listen, this Supreme Court would take it away in a second and all the Trumpers would be out here clapping for it. They would accept it, they would accept it gladly. They'd say, yeah, take my right to vote away. What do I care? No, see, that's the problem. But in any event, what they're saying is, is that in the state of Louisiana, every single classroom has to have the Ten Commandments. And like I said, is there anything bad in the Ten Commandments? Of course not. That is ridiculous, no one's arguing that. What we're arguing is whether certain words that come out of specific religions can be used in a government facility which might influence people in a way that number one, their families might not want. Number two, even the kids might feel very uncomfortable over being pushed into this because everybody does not subscribe to the Ten Commandments. Including, for example, Ronald Reagan Jr. Ronald Reagan Jr is part of this group, you know, freedom from religion. And he's got an ad that he's been running on television for an awfully long time. And what he says is at the end of this very appropriate ad because it's all about not hammering people with religion. And he says, "I am Ronald Reagan not afraid to go to hell." So yeah, there are people like that and they have constitutional rights also. No one's saying that someone else's belief should be denigrated, but the point is to not put people into these positions of being coerced into believing anything. Even if it's implicit in implicitly being forced to believe something. So implicit coercion is bad. It's as bad as explicit. So we don't do that, at least since 1961, but Louisiana is pushing to see if the courts will allow this one. Because, and I shouldn't say they are, what's gonna happen and it's happening right now. The freedom from a religion group, the ACLU in Louisiana, all these different groups have already begun to file lawsuits against having the 10 commandments there. And like I said, nobody's against the 10 commandments. That's ridiculous. But, no one should be forced to read it and to believe that their school is supporting it. Either one. Now, are the 10 commandments a good thing? Of course they are. Yeah, it's not like I'm gonna sit up here and say, kick Moses in the butt. No, that's not what this is about. It's about not coercing people into believing anything that is not their way of thinking when it comes to religion. This country is not a theocracy. The president of the United States is not an ayatollah. That's not what we're doing here. What we're doing is setting it up in a fair way that protects everybody's position so that everybody can go to school and feel comfortable walking out on their way to their home. They can believe in the 10 commandments. They can pray when they leave school. I mean, they can do anything they want in these public school environments to themselves, but don't do it to other people. That's all. 1961 is the case. Engel versus Vitali, check it out and believe me. This is really sad because I can tell you right now, this group on the Supreme Court is aiming for cases like this even when Amy Coney Barrett said, we're not doing it. Hey, you want to throw up my little clip real quick? I think I've got time. Two minutes. So heading into the weekend here, here we go. (audience laughs) - Well, Willie, you've certainly tried as hard to make this panel fumble as you do when you get up to bed and that's 31st. - They're looking for me, you know that? - Well, I got a hunch that when they find out there's somebody from sports around here in the summertime, they go for that baseball and then they think, now, who's really up on those big headlines on the papers? And that's where you've been for so many days now. I'm afraid they're just next. They're going to go looking for you. - You bet. - You did a wonderful job though. And we offer our congratulations because you're on the All-Star team and going to Cleveland for the game, which is on Tuesday. - John. - We've read in the paper a lot about how Willie is always yelling, say, hey, I'd like to hear just how he says it. - And let the hat fly off the paper. - Do one for us. - When you wear one. - No, it's just a phrase that I used when I first came up, you know, it's something that-- - Don't you use it anymore? (both laugh) - No, because I know everyone's name. Now, the phrase I used was like, I didn't know a person's name, I would start the phrase I would say, hey, it's something like that, you know? Well, I know everybody's name now. - Now you say, say John or say John, say Hannah, you know? - No, we know, I know everybody's name now. - What do we do now? - Okay. - So there we go. - Seriously, if you're not getting, go back and watch me in. - A little bit of, certainly Willie Mays in the week that he died. And, you know, we all wanna honor him. And here we are with the St. Louis Cardinals, you know, so nicely last night they managed to hold on and win six to five and maintain themselves over 500, which is quite a miracle. In fact, I was surprised to find out that in the last month and a half, the St. Louis Cardinals have the best record in baseball. Hard to believe. Anyway, I'm gonna get out of here. This is Showdown, you have a great weekend. I'm Mark Casein.