Rich responds to selected questions and comments from his nearly four million viewers, listeners and readers of The Common Bridge. Topics range included censorship, Big Tech, First and Second Amendments, and more.
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
Rich responds to selected questions and comments from his nearly four million viewers, listeners and readers of The Common Bridge. Topics range included censorship, Big Tech, First and Second Amendments, and more.
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
Welcome to this episode of season 4 of the Common Bridge, where policy and current events are discussed in a fiercely nonpartisan manner. The host, richard Helpe, is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and political analyst who has reached over three and a half million listeners, viewers and readers around the world. The Common Bridge is available on the Substack website and the Substack app. Just search for the Common Bridge. You can find the program on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The Common Bridge draws guests and audiences from across the political spectrum and we invite you to become a free or paid subscriber on your favorite medium.
Speaker 2:And welcome to the Common Bridge, richard. It's great to have you back. It's the dead of summer around here, which is really cool, and we get to do the thing that you and I do online here a couple times a year, where we go into the viewer mail and listener and reader mail and people give us pretty cool comments. Sometimes they're a little rash, sometimes they're not, but we've put together a bunch of these, probably a dozen or so more email messages and questions for you. Are you up for it today?
Speaker 3:Always Brian. Actually, these episodes are fun because there's literally no preparation, although I will say that I've read some great books lately, in particular Steve Drummond's book about President Truman Watchdog. They revisit Keith Closbitt, gerald Posner, listening to the deep research by Lee R Sapir and, of course, gunfight, which I think is a terrific book that I hope everybody takes.
Speaker 2:the time to read. You know that is fantastic, richard. We're going to update our website. If you go to thecommonbridgecom, probably next week we'll have it, but I think we're going to put in a library because over the past four years we've had so many good authors and I think we're going to make a library page that's our very own, a little link to Amazon or something you can buy the books, but we've had way too many good authors not to have that, so our customers and our readers and our viewers and our listeners can take a look at it. But anyway, are you ready to take the first swipe at the mailbag today?
Speaker 3:Yep For a way.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. All right, this is from George Trescott Trescott, yeah, wow, he uses his whole name. We got a couple of users' whole name, all right. Anyway, I said Michigan Law that passed the House would make it a crime to misgender someone. That's $10,000 fine and I think the possible jail term can be up to five years. I'm not sure if you've heard this. I think you have. I thought you and I were texting about this. Tell the audience a little bit what it really is and answer George's question what do you think about it?
Speaker 3:Well, it's passed the Michigan House and it still has to get passed the Michigan Senate, state Senate, which is also a Democrat majority, and then it would go to the governor's desk. Now the governor hasn't said whether she's going to sign it or not, but all indications are that she would pretty much need to or find some flimsy reason for not signing the bill into law, and so it adds a bunch of things that are kind of trying to define. You know, I guess we can't make people feel uncomfortable anymore, and I have to tell you that I found it amusing, because here in Michigan, if we say you guys, we could be referring to a group of women. That's just how we talk.
Speaker 2:So my backyard and say it about dogs. Hey you guys, come on in.
Speaker 3:I mean, we exactly agree, and I think that when Ohio State comes into Ann Arbor to play football, they're going to have to arrest a hundred thousand people because of the epitaphs that are hurled there. So I think with this one we just wait and see, see if it becomes law. It's more speech codification and you couple this with the censoring and you have to wonder where it all leads. So George Orwell and Rich Helpe and others, tai, ep and others, so let's just wait and see what happens. But in this particular state, good luck enforcing that.
Speaker 2:So you think this is just being positioned to help our governor run more on a national level, because this is compelled speech? I mean, there's really nothing quite like this, where you have to say something and if you don't say it the way it's written into law, you go in jail. That's crazy.
Speaker 3:Our governor is really a tragic tale, frankly. She started off kind of picking up where Rick Snyder left off with I don't care who gets the credit, we're going to all work together. We're Michiganders, we know how to do that. And then she got in a little fight with Trump and every cable network wanted to hear a little sound bite. She started thinking that was her job and then she got carried away with executive orders during COVID. I mean, they were insane when you look at them. She kept saying she was going to follow the science and then never told us what the science was.
Speaker 3:And then, of course, the nadir of poor leadership tells 9 million Michiganders to stay home, not visit their elderly relatives. While she travels to go see her elderly relative, she's being packaged for a national run and she could be running on effective governing, and yet just what I've reiterated. And then in the lightly televised debates she scoffed and said well, what kids were out of school three months? Anybody watching. That did a double take. But anyway, she has been positioned and if this is the best that her party has to offer, well, I hoped that the other party or a third party or a fourth party comes up with something better. But yeah, we don't really feel like she's doing much here but posturing and like.
Speaker 2:I remember talking to you years ago, though, and out of the gate you must be disappointed, because out of the gate you had some, some hope for her.
Speaker 3:Oh, her first state of the state address was outstanding, right tone, right messaging. She has party loyalties, don't they all? But it was really the right tone and this is again my view. She took a pivot when every cable group was calling her up and she was making a soundbite, because if you made a soundbite that was anti-president Trump, you could get on network. So she got stars in her eyes is what you said. She got stars in her eyes is what I see and then forgot what her job is and still seems to forgotten what her job is.
Speaker 3:But you know, look, we're Michiganians, we'll get through this. There, effectively, is no Republican party in Michigan anymore. In fact, today, in the latest bout of crazy, they endorsed Donald Trump for president, this being the 12th of July, it's a morally and politically incomprehensible act. Trump's not electable in a general election period and nobody wants this show back again. And if you look at the polls, that nobody wants to see Joe Biden in the Oval Office after his term and nobody wants to see Donald Trump back. Yet the Republican committee in Michigan makes the endorsement today.
Speaker 2:It's suicidal, but, like you said and your guests, a couple of weeks ago Brian Callie said the Republican Party is dead in Michigan, and that's steeped in irony because, as we know, the Republican Party was founded in Jackson, michigan.
Speaker 3:The Republican Party in recent years won landslides, made terrific progress across all fronts economic, education, getting the city of Detroit turned around by bipartisan, working with Governor Snyder and Mayor Duggan to get the bankruptcy through. And of course I'm a bit of a homer, I admit, but I will tell you anybody that's looking for a city on the upswing young people come to Detroit, chicago, san Francisco, la, those things. They're on their downhill slide and Detroit's on the ascendancy. So many good things happening here. Come take a look.
Speaker 2:I totally, totally agree. Let's move on to the next one. We ran your Fourth of July message again because it continues to grow an audience. Do you want to just sort of encapsulate what that was and talk about the positive remarks? Get a wide, wide range of positive remarks again. That's why we run it. Don Baker wanted to congratulate you. He wrote in and said thanks for running that again. He'd listened to it three times. What do you have to say about that and the popularity of that particular message?
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, don Baker. First of all, it was something I came up with when we had a guest had to get rescheduled and I thought about two things with that, like with birthdays, we don't go to celebrate someone's birthday and say, hey, we've got a list of all the things you've ever done wrong in your life. Here's all the times you didn't live up to your aspirations and your own ideals. And we are now going to beat you over the head with that. Ps. Happy birthday. We hope this is your last one.
Speaker 3:That's not what we do, but people want to do that with the country, and we've not been a perfect country. But the challenge is, if you were going to structure a country today from a clean sheet of paper, what would you do? And that, to me, is the challenge. And nobody's been able to come up with anything better. And one of the management constructs in management consulting is always it's structure, processes and people. And our structure is actually really, really good. Nobody's come up with anything better.
Speaker 3:Processes pretty good. The balance of powers three co-equal branches Obviously works in that ebbs and flows, the way a bill becomes law and the like. Processes are pretty good. Our problem today is people. When you have a government that tries to control what they think the truth is, control the press, suppress the rights that are in the constitution and the bill of rights, then you're in trouble. But the whole system breaks down if there are not people that are actually trying to morally and even-handedly uphold the constitution. I probably need to write another one of these that says all right, we've got the right structure, processes are working and we need better people in government and we need better people in the media.
Speaker 2:I don't know how you get there, but you're totally right, with colleges, though, shutting down their J schools, so journalism, almost as a degree, doesn't exist anymore, and you just wonder what the heck.
Speaker 3:And the journalists were supposed to be the watchdogs on the government, not the people that picked up the party line and propagated it. They freely admitted that they were dropping that objectivity. They didn't see that as their role anymore. They see themselves as businesses that need readers' clicks and eyeballs to sell advertising and they'll prostitute themselves in any way they need to to get that. And you see that through all the punditry the paid pundits that are on the major cable networks prostituting themselves with more outlandish claims and things that are objectively untrue, but they're doing it for a paycheck.
Speaker 2:Let's move on to the next. And well, this one's from T-Rex.
Speaker 3:This is a roundabout right, okay, you got any happy questions.
Speaker 2:Well, this one's a little more fun. It's funny because who it's from? It's from somebody called T-Rex, and all they wanted to know is what's with all the cocaine in the White House.
Speaker 3:Okay, All the cocaine in the White House, there's more. Well, look, when this story broke, first of all that the Secret Service said they found it on a sweep and like, okay, that's interesting. And immediately upon announcing that they had located this substance, they said well, we're probably never going to know who did it. I'm thinking well, that's given up pretty easily, quickly too. First of all, it was reported it was in the library. Nope, it was in a heavily trafficked area. And then, no, oh no, no, it's in a less trafficked area where the vice president's vehicle is parked and near the situation room. And nobody knows how it got there, because of course you know there's no cameras there and big, facetious, of course, and no visitors logs, no cameras. But we have no idea who did it.
Speaker 3:I find the situation painfully funny because it reflects poorly on the Biden White House. Before it's not a story, and I don't care about Hunter Biden, the man's obviously had a lot of issues. Somebody that has access to the situation room. You want them blowing a line inside the situation room? Yeah, I mean that wouldn't be a situation, but I don't think that's the intent of the situation room.
Speaker 2:All right, this is from Bob Giles. I said Trump's been indicted in Florida for documents. Now he wants a delay. You know what do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Look if history is any guide and I'm like, I'm a pattern recognizer, right, I was a computer programmer it's all about patterns of brand companies. It's about what are the patterns. As an investor, you know what are the patterns here, and it's the same story. Big headlines, big scandal. Okay, we've got him now.
Speaker 3:Donald Trump's the worst person on the planet. He doesn't help himself, by the way, with his behavior, because he actually helps make a case for that I'm talking about, you know, back to the P tapes and the Russian investigation, and there was a line between the Trump Tower and the Russians, and on and on and on, and it's all the same thing. Basically, get the basic cited leak information and, as it dies out, the batons handed to the next one of those things. So, as the New York case dies, it's rightful death. Then we have the situation in Florida. Now I said from the onset of the Trump presidency that if the Democrats kept acting like this when he does something, nobody's going to believe it. So now they're saying that he didn't turn documents back. Okay, he should have given the things back. Lots of knowledgeable people said give the darn things back. But they're trying to try him on the Espionage Act and that's a far reach. So my sense is this is that Trump's going to get convicted on one of the obstruction charges. There's three obstruction charges. Obstruction's a pretty low bar and almost anything can be obstruction that a reasonable person would say yeah, I might have done that too. Oh, I didn't realize that was obstructed. So I think he's going to get convicted of something and then we're going to have a real dilemma, because you've got people that want to see Trump incarcerated, bankrupted, et cetera, not because he took documents, but because of all these other things that it's already been proven he didn't do.
Speaker 3:Go back, remember the New York Times and I read every word of it. Oh, he was actually handed more money by his father and basically it's insane and anybody that understands accounting understands what a bad story that is. But his CFO went to jail over the way that they entered some of their expenses, which is ridiculous. And now you know this current case in New York where they took one act, repeated it 37 times. And is there any surprise that Donald Trump maybe paid off a porn star? It doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 3:But what makes it a felony is it's only if it's linked to a felony. Well, what's the felony? Alan Bragg, not going to tell you PS, I'm going away until the first of the year, oh good, right in time for the primaries. So it's clearly political acts that are going on and anybody that wants to try to make a case this is sober minded. Even handed justice is completely insane. It's indefensible and I invite anybody to come on my show that can make that case. Indeed, I've invited them. They won't come because they know they can't defend the things that they're saying in the left wing media. And whether Trump is convicted on this particular item or not, it is politically motivated. Make no mistake about that. I don't want to see the guy anywhere near the Oval Office, but it would have been so much easier. The Democrats just would have behaved like adults and let people see how unqualified Donald Trump was, and he'd have been out.
Speaker 2:Say don't you think that this just empowers them, because they've been so bad at getting him?
Speaker 3:Exactly. They're going to do it same script and now they're leaking things about this case. And if you were really going to go to trial and take somebody down, you're not telling the press. You're going to go in and nail the guy and it's all it is. It's conviction by media and there's a whole industry that does it and, by the way, there's an audience. Again they're debating whether they want him just broke or incarcerated or both, but most of them they remind me about Linus in the field waiting for the great pumpkin.
Speaker 2:Just I guess. So Mary Banks wants to know if you think that Chris Christie and everybody else getting into the race on the Republican side is going to make a debate stage. If it happened, divide all those votes up and Trump can still get that nomination with 25% to 30% of the support.
Speaker 3:Oh, good try, Brian. I can see that our reader, our listener, our viewer tried to get us to make a quip about the space on the debate stage of Chris Christie. And there's the race. Okay, good try, but I'm not going there. Look, good news, bad news is that, other than Trump, the Republicans actually have some serious candidates that would make good presidents, and Chris Christie is making his case. He ran a very difficult state in New Jersey. People can make their own decisions whether he ran it well or not, but it is a state that has heavily unionized, very strong Democratic Party there, and Chris Christie was there. I don't think anybody could say he's not qualified for the job.
Speaker 3:Now, whether it's your favorite candidate or not is another matter, but I can't wait till DeSantis actually starts getting some national coverage, because there's just widespread bashing of him at every turn and it's like, oh, I've seen this before. Everything he says is going to get twisted and it's going to run out of gas. And when he finally gets out there, people are going oh, he's not so bad. Oh, and what else about Ron DeSantis? He just won an election in Florida. That required a lot of Democratic voters and he won by a very wide margin. So Floridian seemed to be pretty happy with what he's doing. Yet the punditry that never gets out of that New York Washington corridor they're poo-pooing him. Oh, he's not charismatic. Okay, I'm okay with that, because the guy we got now is charismatic. I mean he's entertaining but not intense.
Speaker 2:All right, we're moving on. Dylan Burgess wants you to answer the question who burns more books, the Republicans or the Democrats?
Speaker 3:Well, look, always ask the second question, which is First of all, is a book indeed banned? If it is restricted based on age appropriate, then that's not a ban. That is being an adult around kids.
Speaker 2:Right, 50 Shades of Grey shouldn't be in an elementary school library. Yes indeed.
Speaker 3:I mean there were great works that were opposed from the left, like To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a very thoughtful, iconic American book that exposed a blatant racism in the South. I think that should be must reading or go sit on Broadway. But the Republicans have said there's books that don't belong there and I ask okay, what's the real thing? Are they quote banning books, burning books, or are they saying this is an age inappropriate book? And I've seen more than one video where a parent steps to the microphone and starts reading out of a book that's available to middle schoolers and is cut off by the school board because it's pornographic. You can't read it in public. Oh, you can't read it in public, but my 13 year old can have access to it. I think it's much to do about nothing and it's one more scare tactic. And again, if we had better people in government, better people in media, they wouldn't resort to threats. They would try to inform people.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're going to move on. Lloyd Davis. Yeah, lloyd Davis says the Supreme Court just overturned affirmative action. Don't you think that colleges will find other ways to make sure they tip the scales?
Speaker 3:My own personal view is that for black Americans, and black Americans exclusively, that we needed EEO and we need affirmative action, because EEO wasn't doing it, so we needed to make it someone's job to go find black Americans, young men and young women, to give them these kinds of opportunities. And they may not test as well and they may not have all the extracurriculars, but if they have the IQ and the ability to succeed at that next level of education or professional training, I think we need to make that affirmative. But I would draw the line right there in that, again, black Americans are the only group where it was legal to own them, where we had to fight a civil war over it, where we had to pass the Civil Rights Act during my lifetime and we need to recognize that and maybe, to a degree, women who also did not have full citizenship status and stop Every other group that came here came here on their own volition and weren't dragged here because other tribes captured them and sent them off in slave ships, and 100% of them came here and were subject to ridicule and faced difficulties in assimilating. Indeed, I just read a letter from a great aunt of mine where my great grandfather, when he arrived in this country, only wanted to stay in his little town because they made fun of him for his accent and his attempt at English. And that was the life of immigrants. And while he had skills as a pharmacist in the homeland, in Finland, he couldn't practice that trade, but he knew how to make shoes, so that's what they did. That's the story of immigration.
Speaker 3:And the other dilemma is that this notion of everybody that's got a different pigment in their skin is the same is, I think, revealed as false. And when you look at Asians, that Asians are outperforming the mean generally in terms of college admission standards, and a lot of the admissions rules are to try to not let there be too many Asians, which is discrimination of the worst kind. And then, along that same line, where somehow they've lumped together Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. And again, if you look at the history and I've said this often there's no love lost amongst those groups, and so some white person someplace is saying, oh, they're all kind of the same tone, so we're going to put them in a box over here. And it's insane. People need to get off this. What was the question?
Speaker 2:Let's just keep moving. Masha Mainers said her last sentence in dumping the Democratic Party was I will never apologize for being a black woman with a mind of my own. Do you want to reflect on that?
Speaker 3:This is the woman in Georgia, if I'm not mistaken, represents an area in Atlanta, in the Georgia State House, and the hill that she said she would die on is going to be over school choice and she's not going to give in to the political pressures if kids aren't getting an education. And again, I think it speaks to politics that this is a black woman who makes no bones about the difficulties she's had as a black woman in this society. It's not what you're going to educate the kids versus. Give in to what she perceives as school boards and teachers unions that are unresponsive. Again, one of the issues that we have to deal with is that you don't hear names like Winsome Sears or Misha Maynor in the general dialogue, because as soon as they step out of that compelled speech they're kicked to the curb. And yet they are black women who've done a lot and they never race and gender that they would be. Their resumes are things to envy.
Speaker 2:You recently had Ryan Busey on the show. Do you want to talk a little bit about gun control? I know we've just covered it so you don't have to go into huge depth, but anything you want to say about that?
Speaker 3:Well, I think those two episodes cover it pretty well that we are making incremental change, which is good. We're not doing enough. We need to get to graduated licensing, like we've got with everything else. It's just all the political posturing. I think it's crazy that we have this so-called constitutional carry, no limitations. Anybody can stick a gun in their pocket. Nuts, people open carry. There's something wrong with you. Feel the need. You've got to carry around a semi-automatic rifle with 30 rounds in it. I mean it's impractical. And equally, on the other side of the political front had California Governor Gavin Newsom saying let's have a 28th Amendment, it's never going to happen. He knows it's never going to happen. I mean, the Equal Rights Amendment has been proposed for 100 years, first time in 1923. He's not getting a constitutional amendment and he knows it. But he's trying to posture in a run for presidency that will have nothing to do with the devastation in his own state and the exit of population. But that's politics today.
Speaker 2:I'm sure Lewis Cooper writes that he was happy that student debt was canceled. Wanted to know what your thoughts were on the student debt cancellation overturning.
Speaker 3:So this was only a down payment like $10,000. It was not constitutional, and this is, yet again, something right in front of us. The solution is real simple. Who got the money? Were colleges, universities, trade schools and the financial institutions through which these loans passed period. They defrauded vulnerable consumers that were told you need to get this degree in order to have a good life, knowing full well they were saddling the person with debt that couldn't be overcome, and never mind all the people that took out the loans and never went to school or didn't finish school.
Speaker 3:Anyway, the solution is real simple Tax the colleges and universities, get their endowments, use that money to pay off the student debt and also refund anybody that's graduated in a relevant period the last 10 years that managed to do it on their own or pay off their loans. Refund them. Basically, it puts everything back where it was and we move forward. And when we move forward, we use student debt just like any other consumer debt. Do you have the assets, do you have the income, the ability to pay? And what will happen if you do that is that the college, universities, trade schools will need to figure out a way to be efficient enough to deliver their product, ie, an education, at a price point that their consumers, that's the students, can afford.
Speaker 2:Seems simple to me.
Speaker 3:It is. And here's the sad part. It's a lot easier for the in this case the Democratic Party to say we need to throw out the entire Supreme Court and get rid of that branch of government. That's just insane. And again I come back to the structure question. The right's done it too right, no mistake, when it's been a liberal court, the right was screaming about legislating from the bench.
Speaker 2:We're getting down to the end here. Got something from Keith Burgess and Keith wanted to talk about Twitter and if you think that what Elon's done with Twitter has been okay, and now that it has an upstart on the other side, another monopoly, and this time it's threads and it looks like Zuckerberg wants to do this, I don't know to try to say it's going to be kinder out there. I don't know how he pulls that off, but anyway, keith Burgess wants to know if you're going to be on both. He knows you're on Twitter. What do you think about the differences and do you think that Elon Musk is doing it the right way?
Speaker 3:Is Elon Musk doing it the right way? Well, I don't know. I think there's a great opportunity and I think he's made a lot of positive changes. And we need a public square All right, we need a town square.
Speaker 3:But the notion that these mega platforms can be influenced by our government about what the truth is is patently insane. It's the end of freedom, it is the end of democracy, and I've seen editorials written trying to justify the outright censorship. And this is right after we lived through COVID, where the censorship was shutting down factual stories by highly qualified people because they didn't like the conclusions they were reaching. Mark Zuckerberg says he's going to have what he calls a sane alternative that will have consumers now going to be under the watchful eye of the meta sensors. And Zuckerberg the same guy that allowed the current administration to censor what they were doing that shut down the factual New York Post stories leading up to the election, where post-election people said, had that been a story, it would have changed how they voted.
Speaker 3:What I think I see happening, and I don't like it, is I see splits.
Speaker 3:We have Twitter, which is more open. I know that my feed is more broad and not so left-wing weighted when you have threads which I've never been on, but they're basically promising hey, we'll give you the censoring that you used to get on Twitter, come to us and we'll give you that censoring. And then we have the truth social, which I've never been on the Trump product, and so it's kind of like cable news. Right, we're going to have this group of people censored here, this group of people censored here, and another group censored over there, and people are going to have to pick which censor they want. And fact checking that also got politicized Again. I would encourage people that do actual research, that actually have original data, to make sure that their search engine optimization lets people get to their works, and if it doesn't, they need to be raising holy hell at Google and other search engine companies to make sure that their works are getting presented in total. I mean, the information's out there. It takes a lot of work to get to it.
Speaker 2:Down to the very last letter in our mailbag and it's from Bill Fisher and he said a long time ago I used to hear it's the economy, stupid. What about the economy today?
Speaker 3:Well, the economy today is actually in pretty good shape. At the consumer level, the big questions are going to be this earnings season. Are people going to be accustomed to a higher multiple and buy more equities and fuel the Stock market again, or are they going to pull back and pick up? So, you know, four and a half to five and a half percent they can get clipping coupons. But in the meantime, you know, people have used up their COVID money and they're going back to work and at the same time, you had people that couldn't spend their money because stores were closed and Entertainment was closed and you couldn't travel. So they had the money in their pocket. Now they're gonna go spend it.
Speaker 3:It's a lot like at the end of World War two consumers with money in their pocket and unable to buy goods and services because of, in that case, rationing, in this case, societal lockdowns. So guess what the economy boons afterwards. Add to that we flooded the market with so much money. While it's caused inflation, which won't go away, it's also means people are feeling flush and maybe they better buy now because the prices are going to be higher In the future, which is why I have to admit that and I don't like to be as harsh on the president, but he needs better advisors, because him saying, oh, look at all the jobs I've added, it'd be like me bragging that I beat Jim Thorpe in a foot race, right, jim Thorpe has been dead for a long time, all right. So if you take an economy that was killed and then you let it revive, yeah, you better be able to do better.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of victory elapsed, being taken.
Speaker 3:You'll be hearing, is it? Hey, inflation's moderating, yeah, inflation's moderating, but we still have high prices and it's the law of big numbers. What? Something costs ten dollars and you get a ten percent inflation. That's a dollar. It's down to five percent. Well, not five percent on that 11. It's a bigger number. It's the law of big numbers. So we have persistently high prices now. Having said that, I like what the feds doing making the cost of money. I think we need to have interest rates that have some meaning for the value of that Dollar and the value that lending. We need to be able to reward savers, which we haven't quite gotten to yet, but it's coming, and I think that's a Ultimately going to be a stronger economy. But this notion that Biden's pulled off an economic miracle is yeah, I just be Jim Thorpe in a foot race.
Speaker 2:So All right, any, any final thoughts for the viewers and the readers and the listeners. And, first of all, thank you guys for sending in stuff. It's great, a lot of it we couldn't actually read on the air and thanks for that too. It's free society. But any, any final thought for your audience and and coming up with a few episodes that are coming up, Just, I'm very grateful for the following.
Speaker 3:I'm very grateful for the communication as a humbling job. I'm doing my best to Be fresh and not give something that's you can hear all over the place. I'm grateful for the guests that have come on and that have been candid and that share their Experiences and their research and their points of view, and I invite people to come on, particularly if you Disagree with me, particularly if you disagree with some of our guests. We'd love to hear from you, because free speech is not violence. Right, it's not. Oh, you're gonna make me uncomfortable or they make the other guests uncomfortable. It's okay, let's have the talk, let's see if we can find the solution. That's not that hard to do if you know people aren't reacting to triggering words and like and exaggerating. You know violence is violent. I like the quote. I don't know who said it. Was anybody that says speech as violence has never been punched in the nose.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a difference spoken like a guy who grew up in southeastern Michigan in the 60s and 70s right there. Well, thanks for this rich. It was great. Let's do it again sometime. All right, Brian Sounds good, so long.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the Common Bridge. Subscribe to the common bridge on substackcom or use their substack app, where you can find more interviews, columns, videos and Nonpartisan discussions of the day. Just search for the common bridge. You can also find the common bridge on mission control radio on your Radio Garden app. You.