June 4, 2025 • 31 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have said for quite some time, and I believe
this to be true, that you don't follow the stock
market on a day to day basis. Now, financial advisors
will tell you you don't follow stock market day to
day because they don't want you pulling your money out.
And you could argue that they make money on the
big They get action off of the investment, so whether
(00:24):
it's up or down, they're still getting their percentage. Now,
it depends a lot on what kind of relationship you
have and what kind of financial structure you have established,
whether they are a fiduciary, as Ramone loves to say
about his guy or you know my guy who is.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
A fee based but anyway, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I mean, technically his is too, but he thinks the
word fiduciary is a big word and he doesn't know
what it means.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
But anyway, I'll leave that. I'll leave that there for
a second.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
You would think, I think Ramone thinks that his money
manager when he goes to the doctor and you put
in occupations as fiduciar. I think he believes that he
doesn't understand what the term actually means. But whatever, anyway,
I had long said, when you got to keep me
on track. That you don't watch the stock market up
(01:16):
and up, you know, on a given day, because too
many vagaries of news and happenings and rumors can affect
things negatively or positively.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
That is irrational.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Now, the stock market had seen a dip when President
Trump took over, when the tariff talk heated up bigly,
and I read a lot of things. I try to
consume opinion from across the spectrum, and most everybody who
(01:54):
was not you know, deeply in Trump's corner, was saying,
these tariffs are a bad idea. Look at the stock market.
Looking at the stock market is not a good way
to measure long term economic plans. In fact, it's a
terrible way when you understand that the stock market is
(02:15):
not repeat is not a rational, practical, sophisticated determinant of
whether current economic plans are going to yield prosperity. Generally,
(02:36):
the stock market can rise or fall dramatically on the
basis of a lie, on the basis of hype, on
the basis of fears never come true, all sorts of things.
It is a marketplace, and there is the idea that
(02:58):
with sufficient numbers you achieve there's even an economic theory
on this, but I don't want to get too far
into this. You can achieve a sense of efficiency. Well,
this is about as rational as the idea that the
housing market bust in two thousand and eight was based
(03:21):
on taking a bad loan. You got a guy that
makes fifty thousand dollars a year and he lives in Houston,
and he takes a loan on a house in Arizona
for four hundred thousand dollars and he airbnb is a house.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Or back then there was a different process.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But he gives it to somebody to rent, and he
makes the minimal payment and he's counting on in a
year selling it for five hundred and they're called liar loans.
He would go and take that and sign that he made,
you know, two million dollars a year.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And so he would.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
He would he would lie on his application, like like
Letitia James did in New York. But these were unverified loans,
which meant you tell them what they what you make
state because stated income. Uh, they would loan you money
based on what you told them you made. Well, you're
not going to leave this, but some people lied, who
(04:15):
would imagine and so they would have all these houses. Well,
why would you do this? Because the market was going
up and up and up. So you'd buy a house
for four hundred sell it in a year for five
hundred minus property taxes and transaction fees. You know it
was working because values are just going to go up, up, up,
until they didn't and when they started unwinding. What happened
(04:39):
was these lyyre loans were a big part of the
portfolio of outstanding loans. So what they did people recognized
there was risk. That's a really risky loan. That guy's
I'm able to pay it back. So what they did
is they bundled them up. Because the idea was if
you took one bad loan and added another bad loan
and another loan, if you put enough bad loans together
(05:02):
into a bundle, that made the bundle efficient. But that's
not true. It's quite the opposite. It had a multiplier
effect on the likelihood it would bring the whole thing down.
And I say, I'll have to say, this stock market
was up yesterday. I never comment on the stock market
(05:23):
on the day of because I like to have time.
In fact, I very rarely, if you notice comment on
day of news at all. Anyway, the stock market had
been down yesterday, it shot up because he pulled back
the terraces. All that by way of saying, every time
Trump says something and they panic, just understand, it's all
(05:45):
a negotiation. Be calm, we are the watchman. Okay, let's
let's let's be the same voices.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Out there, Michael Berry show. Graduation speeches are.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Always interesting, whether someone is trying to push their own agenda,
whether it's a pie in the sky optimism and why
not you got graduates.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Used the opportunity while speaking at West Point to set
a new direction in a new tone for the American Army.
Rush Limba always said the military's only job was to
kill people and break things. And that's very offensive to
the people who are not warriors, but it's exactly how
warriors feel. It might sound overly simplistic, but when it
(06:39):
comes time to kill people and break things, which is
when we most need our military, there are lots of
people that are let into the military for all the
wrong reasons, who are not prepared to kill people and
break things. When the folks on the other side are
prepared to kill people and break things. President Trump gave
the commencement address at West Point, and he laid out
(07:02):
the military's true purpose. And I'm going to tell you,
I'll guarantee you. I'll guarantee you. Those folks were proud
to be an American again, proud to go into our
United States Army, proud to lead our army as officers
were the graduates at West Point there.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
But under the Trump administration, those days are over. We're
getting rid of the distractions and we're focusing our military
on its core mission, crushing America's adversaries, killing America's enemies,
and defending our great American flag like it has never
been defended before. The job of the US Armed Forces
(07:50):
is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures,
or to spread democracy to everybody around the world at
the point of a gun. The military's job is to
dominate eddy foe and annihilate any threat to America anywhere, anytime,
in any place. A big part of that job is
(08:17):
to be respected again. And you are, as of right now,
respected more than any army anywhere in the world. And
that's happening, and I can tell you are respected like
nobody can believe.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Then we turn to sixty minutes Scott Pelly. Now Pelly
is one of the people who is upset because sixty
minutes are sorry. CBS is having to fork over a
massive amount of money for interfering in the twenty twenty
four election. The head of CBS stepped down, the head
of their news department step down, and Scott Pelly is embarrassed,
(08:55):
and he's angry. And so Scott Pelly was speaking at
wake Forest, and what you going to hear here is
Scott Pelly whining he's angry. And what he's angry about
is being a journalist, being a university professor, having degrees
(09:16):
from Harvard or Yale or one of these. Columbia was
supposed to make them better than you. But there's more
of you than there are of them. And they abused
their power, and they used money from you to then
turn against you and to support causes and candidates that
(09:38):
you don't support with your dollars. And now Trump came
in and said, hey, guys, I'll go in and shatter
this thing. You couldn't get a Bush family member to
do that, they were as tied into this. You couldn't
get a Romney to do that. You couldn't get Obama
to do that. They were all tied into the august
nature of Harvard University, and they all wanted their kids
(10:01):
to go there. They all want to be associated with it. Well,
Trump comes in and goes in and speaks at the
University of Alabama and says, this is the crimson that's
going to be leading the future. And Americans roared because
we're tired of the Ivy League getting all this money,
getting all this preference. And Scott Pelley is upset because
(10:23):
Donald Trump is bringing shame upon people who deserve it,
and that comes at his expense on multiple levels.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Listen to him.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
But in this moment, this moment, this morning, our sacred
rule of law is underattack. Journalism is under attack, universities
are under attack. Freedom of speech is underattack, and insidious fear.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Is reaching.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our
private thoughts, the fear to.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
Speak in America. Power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives.
They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals. Power can
change the definition of the words we use to describe reality.
(11:32):
Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned.
Inclusion is a dirty word.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yes, this is an old.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Playbook, my friends.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
There's nothing new in this. You know the beauty.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You really gotta admire what these people do. They make
what they do which is evil discrimination, they make it noble.
So then anyone who criticizes it is ignoble because what
they're doing is decent. This has been done by Marxist
throughout history.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, let's check in.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Since one of the subject of speeches, let's check in
on Jasmine Crockett giving the commencement address at Tugalou College.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Here's what she had to say for.
Speaker 6 (12:19):
Going to be people that tell you that you don't belong,
and I am here to tell you over and over
and over that you absolutely belong. There are people that
are going to tell you that there is not a
table in which there is a seat for you. But
I am here to remind you of Montgomery and those
folding chairs. Let me tell you, did we know how
(12:40):
to use a chair? Whether we pulling it up? Are
we doing something else with it?
Speaker 7 (12:46):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Now, hear let me heed. Somebody wait to.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Tell you that I know that y'all are ready to
put your boots on the ground again. Yes, that's your key,
I said, can carry out.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, I'm gonna dance, y'all. Don't judge me now because
I'm feeling it. They gonna tell you that you ain't
smart as they is. They gonna tell it to you.
But let me tell you.
Speaker 8 (13:20):
If they don't hire you, if they don't give you
their money, if they don't.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Do what you want them to do, you can either
sit in the chair or you can take the chair
to they head. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 8 (13:31):
And if we got to pull out a gun, we're
gonna be We're gonna get our boots out.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
We're gonna create the war.
Speaker 8 (13:36):
If we got to intimidate them vote into doing what
we want, then we gonna do it. What I'm saying,
what I'm here to tell you, Yeah, because now you
don't got a degree.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
From a historically black college and university. We don't want
no white people here though, because the inclusions.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Can say something nice, you can always say it on
the Michael Perrys.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Since we were talking about graduation speeches, it's that season, right,
Joe Biden told the audience at Morehouse, a historically black
college and university, that their country didn't love them, you know,
Thomas Soul has talked a lot about this. When you
(14:20):
tell young black people that this country doesn't love you, you
don't make them love this country back. You instill in
them resentment and bitterness. And young minds are easily formed,
and it's important to give them optimism rather than cynicism
(14:44):
and skepticism and victimhood, because it's very hard for people
once they're in that mindset.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I saw a video the other day. It was of
these kids.
Speaker 9 (14:55):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Series of posts about Japan and the people there, and
it was a group of school kids and they were
walking on the sidewalk and they were getting ready to
cross the street and a bus or a truck driver
pulls up and he stops and lets them all cross,
(15:19):
And after they crossed, they all stopped and waved and
thanked him. Then he moved on and they were smiling
and waving as they crossed, But at the end they all,
once they got safely across, stopped and waved and thanked him.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Very much.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
You can learn a lot about people by how they
act when they crossed the street in front of you,
and you were in a car and they've already parked
and they're going into the event. There are culturally different
ways people cross the street and their attitude about crossing
(15:55):
the street. If you hold the door for somebody as
they are entering a building and you're going in before them,
and you're far enough ahead that you could just let
it go and they won't be able to get it'll
close all the way, and you stand and hold the
door for them to go in. There are people who
will say, why, thank you, I appreciate that. And there
(16:17):
are people who pretend they don't notice that you did that.
And then there are people who you can tell are
making a statement by not acknowledging it. I'm not saying
anyone as any you've probably had this experience, and if
you haven't, maybe you haven't. But there are people for
(16:39):
whom everyone fits into one of those three categories.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Joe Biden told the audience at more House that their
country did not love them. This was the President of
the United States last year speaking at Morehouse College aid
historically black college and university.
Speaker 7 (16:56):
You missed your high school graduation. You start a calling
Just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a
reckoning on race, What is democracy if black matter? Man
killed on the street. What is democracy, betrayal of broken promises,
slowly black communities behind. What is democracy if you have
(17:20):
to be ten times better than anyone.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Else to get a fair shot.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
And most of all, what does it mean, as you've
heard before, to be a black man who loves his
country even if it doesn't love him back in equal measure?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
That is how you doom young people. I have frequently
said that much of the success I have enjoyed in
my life is because from the earliest ages my parents
and my teachers inspired me that I had great gifts
and that if I would put them to good.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Use, I could be somebody.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I don't think you should pat your kid on the
back for everything. I would have teachers who would say
to me, you made a ninety eight, but you should
have made a hundred. You made an a, but you
could have done better. You've got to push yourself harder,
because what does public school do. It compresses everybody in
the middle. It tries to get the kid at the
(18:25):
bottom up to the middle, and it has no space
for the kid at the top. Hey, you're not causing
any problems. Just keep doing what you're doing. So it
doesn't super serve the kid at the top.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
It's not built to It's built for the masses. This
was a mass education inculcation effort.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
We know that, right.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
A Pharmacy benefits manager or PBM is a third party
company that manages prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers, employers, unions,
and government program There are a lot of people involved
in the racket of healthcare today who hate their jobs,
(19:09):
who are listening right now and going, oh good, I'm
glad we're going.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
To expose this. Let me start that over.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
A Pharmacy benefits manager or PBM is a third party
company that manages prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers, employers, unions,
and government programs. PBMs play a key role in how
medications are accessed, priced, and reimbursed in the US healthcare system.
(19:44):
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, we like her signed House
Bill eleven fifty in ending the conflict of interest of
PBMs owning pharmacies. Now, what happened as a result, Well,
we'll get to that moment. All right, here's the bill
(20:05):
she has signed.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
For far too long, drug middlemen called PBMs have taken
advantage of customers and raised drug prices. Under my leadership,
Arkansas took action and imposed nearly one point five million
dollars in fines against law breaking PBMs last year. Now
we're going even further and banding PBM conflicts of interest Altogether.
(20:27):
This will prevent inflated drug prices, protect pharmaceutical access across
our state, and help our Kansons be healthier for less money.
Some of these big businesses are worried because Arkansas is
leading the way and they don't want other states to
follow our lead. But we're not afraid to be a
conservative leader for America, and I will never be afraid
(20:50):
to stand up for our seniors, our veterans, and everyone
else who relies on their local pharmacy to stay healthy.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Now, as a result, after House Built eleven fifty in
Arkansas was signed, Forest Park Pharmacy took to TikTok with
this bit of industry news.
Speaker 10 (21:17):
BBS is moving forward with closing all locations in Arkansas
after the state banned PBMs from owning pharmacies. They only
have twenty three locations there, but it proved where these
companies make their money. Before the bill even passed, they
were running ads telling everybody that if the state moved
forward with the legislation, they were going to close.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
All their stores.
Speaker 10 (21:40):
There was never even a whisper of them considering stopping
PBM operations. They threatened that people would lose access to
care if they couldn't own pharmacies and PBMs. But when
it came down to it, they chose to be a
middleman rather than a provider that speaks volumes. The middleman
has wrangled completely old people.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Because we'll play the rest of it in the next segment.
What we're experiencing here are the hidden costs and control
because he who has the gold makes the rules. That's
the golden rule. How many people can't get their medication.
How many doctors don't perform this or that procedure because
(22:23):
they can't get the insurance recovery, which means the insurance
companies are like the people during the Biden administration who
were loading that the teleprompter. They're actually in charge.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So let's recap for a moment.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Because my dad's eighty five, I'm fifty four, my wife's
fifty seven. You know, for many years we didn't have kids,
so we didn't really need health care, and we were
young and healthy, so we didn't need health care, neither
one of us as a major chronic condition, so we're lucky.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
But my dad does and has his entire life.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And then my mom passed, and between her and my dad,
one or the other of them was in the hospital
almost once a week for years. It was very traumatic
for me. I went to bed every night if I
wasn't driving to Beaumont to be there with him overnight,
and then rushing back in the morning. Beaumont's a a
little over an hour drive for me. There was a
(23:27):
lot of windshield time at the end or beginning of
a long day. And it's traumatic, right, it's debilitated, it's fatiguing. Well,
you really learn insights into things, and COVID brought that
to bear when you couldn't get ivermectin, when you couldn't
(23:48):
get hydroxychloroic, when when your doctor couldn't tell you to
use that because they were being pushed to write scripts.
When your doctor can't tell you how best he can
heal you, but instead for issues of money control, hospital
(24:09):
system control is forced into giving you advice that is
not the best guidance. That's a problem, that's a quality
of life drop right. So in a state of Arkansas,
they went after this, They went after these PBMs prescription
(24:32):
benefit managers, and as a result, CBS said, uh huh,
we're pulling out. And the theory goes CVS would rather
write off Arkansas not do business there. Then other states
see that CBS consented to this change in policy, because
(24:53):
then Texas and New York and California and Florida and
everywhere else would say, hey, in Texas, you're willing to
play that game. In Texas, you're willing to be fair.
So CBS said, we can't let that happen. So CBS
pulled out. That's the way big corporations think. So here
is Forest Park Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy presumably, and them
(25:16):
talking about the fact that CBS had twenty three pharmacies
in Arkansas and they pulled out.
Speaker 10 (25:22):
FBS is moving forward with closing all locations in Arkansas
after the state banned PBMs from owning pharmacies. They only
have twenty three locations there. But it proves where these
companies make their mind.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Right, let me stop you there.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Back before big pharma started buying large amounts of ad
time on every news program, organizations like CBS did real reporting.
This was our friend Cheryl Atkinson when she was at
CBS in two thousand and six, reporting that flu deaths
among the elderly climbed, didn't drop, climbed after getting the
flu shot.
Speaker 11 (25:56):
It stands to reason that flu deaths among the elderly
should have makeing a dramatic dip making an X graph
like this. Instead, flute deaths among the elderly continue to climb.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
WHOA, it was hot yesterday.
Speaker 11 (26:09):
Here's what scientists have found over twenty years. The percentage
of seniors getting flu shots increase sharply, from fifteen percent
to sixty five percent. It stands to reason that flu
deaths among the elderly should have taken a dramatic dip
making an X graph like this. Instead, flu deaths among
the elderly continue to climb. It was hard to believe,
(26:29):
so were searchers at the National Institutes of Health set
out to do a study adjusting for all kinds of
factors that could be masking the true benefits of the shots.
But no matter how they crunched the numbers, they got
the same disappointing result. Blue shots had not reduced deaths
among the elderly. It's not what health officials hope to find.
NIH wouldn't let us interview the study's lead author, so
(26:50):
we went to Boston and found the only co author
not employed by NIH, doctor Tom Reikert. We realized that
we had incendiary material. Doctor Reichert says they thought their
study would prove vaccinations. It helped. We were trying to
do something mainstream, that's for sure. Were you surprised astonished?
Did you check the data a couple of times to
(27:11):
make sure?
Speaker 7 (27:11):
Well?
Speaker 11 (27:12):
Even more than that, we've looked at other countries now
and the same is true. That study soon to be
published finds the same poor results in Australia, France, Canada
and the UK, and other new research stokes the idea
that decades of promoting flu shots and seniors and the
billion spent haven't had the desired result. The current head
(27:32):
of National Imanizations confirmed CDC is now looking at new strategies,
but stop short of calling the present policy a failure.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
There's an active dialogue into how we can do better
to prevent influenza and its complications in the elderly.
Speaker 11 (27:45):
So what's an older person to do? The CDC says
they should still get their flu shots, that it could
make flu less severe or prevent other problems not reflected
in the total numbers, but watch for CDC to likely
shift in the near future more toward protecting the elderly
in a roundabout way by vaccinating more children and others
around them who could give them the flu. Wrl Akison,
(28:06):
CBS News Washington.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Did you hear what the CDC just said. When we
give the flu they called a flu shot, because it's
not a vaccine, we give the flu vaccine. Let's call
it what they used to call it. They don't want
that because the vaccine prevents you forgetting something. Remember when
Joe Biden said that the COVID shot prevented you from
(28:30):
getting COVID. You can't get it, you can't spread it.
That was a complete lie. Of course, everything about it
Biden administration was. The CDC said, if giving the shot
to old people is killing more old people than it saves,
that would assume the shot even worked. But it's killing
(28:52):
more people than it saves, then you know what we'll do.
We'll start giving the shot to everyone around the old people. Well,
do you rouse it's going to kill some of those
people as well, do you know how many people died
from the COVID shot? Do you know how many people
die from the flu shot? They don't want you to
know this. A study coming out of I think it
(29:13):
was a University of Michigan said the flu shot had
a negative efficacy rate. More people die from getting the
shot than are saved by taking it. You know, we
had several years ago we had somebody that was I
think they'd been at the NIH, a National Institute of Help,
and they explained how the flu shot is put together.
(29:35):
Every year, there is a convention that's pulled together at
the end of February, and they have to decide, as
I understand it, by the end of February, on which
of three strains of the flu it could be this year.
They have to pick one so that on March first
they can begin production of the flu shot to have
(29:57):
it ready for the fall. So you've got a one
in three chance of even getting it right, but you
got one hundred percent chance of having been exposed to
a dangerous shot if you take it. Now, who on
earth would would make the decision for you to do
that unless you were making billions of dollars off selling
the flu shot. Well, CVS and Walgreen's told me to
(30:20):
come in.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
And take it.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Oh you mean they told you to come in the
door so they'd get paid to give you the shot.
And while you're there you might pick up some snacks
and cokes and all sorts of other stuff. Of course,
they told you to. That's what got you to go
into CVS and Walgreens so they can make more money.
Gas stations don't make their money off the gas. That's
to get you in the door and buy the rest
(30:41):
of the stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Good grief.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
The evil afoot in this country, The evil a foot
in this country, the things that are passing, the people
that are I'm doing the right thing. I'm taking care
of myself. Bless your heart. You tried to but evil
people lied to you. You did nothing wrong other than
being the naive neighbor. You should assume you can't trust
anything these people say.
I have said for quite some time, and I believe
this to be true, that you don't follow the stock
market on a day to day basis. Now, financial advisors
will tell you you don't follow stock market day to
day because they don't want you pulling your money out.
And you could argue that they make money on the
big They get action off of the investment, so whether
(00:24):
it's up or down, they're still getting their percentage. Now,
it depends a lot on what kind of relationship you
have and what kind of financial structure you have established,
whether they are a fiduciary, as Ramone loves to say
about his guy or you know my guy who is.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
A fee based but anyway, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I mean, technically his is too, but he thinks the
word fiduciary is a big word and he doesn't know
what it means.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
But anyway, I'll leave that. I'll leave that there for
a second.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
You would think, I think Ramone thinks that his money
manager when he goes to the doctor and you put
in occupations as fiduciar. I think he believes that he
doesn't understand what the term actually means. But whatever, anyway,
I had long said, when you got to keep me
on track. That you don't watch the stock market up
(01:16):
and up, you know, on a given day, because too
many vagaries of news and happenings and rumors can affect
things negatively or positively.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
That is irrational.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Now, the stock market had seen a dip when President
Trump took over, when the tariff talk heated up bigly,
and I read a lot of things. I try to
consume opinion from across the spectrum, and most everybody who
(01:54):
was not you know, deeply in Trump's corner, was saying,
these tariffs are a bad idea. Look at the stock market.
Looking at the stock market is not a good way
to measure long term economic plans. In fact, it's a
terrible way when you understand that the stock market is
(02:15):
not repeat is not a rational, practical, sophisticated determinant of
whether current economic plans are going to yield prosperity. Generally,
(02:36):
the stock market can rise or fall dramatically on the
basis of a lie, on the basis of hype, on
the basis of fears never come true, all sorts of things.
It is a marketplace, and there is the idea that
(02:58):
with sufficient numbers you achieve there's even an economic theory
on this, but I don't want to get too far
into this. You can achieve a sense of efficiency. Well,
this is about as rational as the idea that the
housing market bust in two thousand and eight was based
(03:21):
on taking a bad loan. You got a guy that
makes fifty thousand dollars a year and he lives in Houston,
and he takes a loan on a house in Arizona
for four hundred thousand dollars and he airbnb is a house.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Or back then there was a different process.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
But he gives it to somebody to rent, and he
makes the minimal payment and he's counting on in a
year selling it for five hundred and they're called liar loans.
He would go and take that and sign that he made,
you know, two million dollars a year.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And so he would.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
He would he would lie on his application, like like
Letitia James did in New York. But these were unverified loans,
which meant you tell them what they what you make
state because stated income. Uh, they would loan you money
based on what you told them you made. Well, you're
not going to leave this, but some people lied, who
(04:15):
would imagine and so they would have all these houses. Well,
why would you do this? Because the market was going
up and up and up. So you'd buy a house
for four hundred sell it in a year for five
hundred minus property taxes and transaction fees. You know it
was working because values are just going to go up, up, up,
until they didn't and when they started unwinding. What happened
(04:39):
was these lyyre loans were a big part of the
portfolio of outstanding loans. So what they did people recognized
there was risk. That's a really risky loan. That guy's
I'm able to pay it back. So what they did
is they bundled them up. Because the idea was if
you took one bad loan and added another bad loan
and another loan, if you put enough bad loans together
(05:02):
into a bundle, that made the bundle efficient. But that's
not true. It's quite the opposite. It had a multiplier
effect on the likelihood it would bring the whole thing down.
And I say, I'll have to say, this stock market
was up yesterday. I never comment on the stock market
(05:23):
on the day of because I like to have time.
In fact, I very rarely, if you notice comment on
day of news at all. Anyway, the stock market had
been down yesterday, it shot up because he pulled back
the terraces. All that by way of saying, every time
Trump says something and they panic, just understand, it's all
(05:45):
a negotiation. Be calm, we are the watchman. Okay, let's
let's let's be the same voices.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Out there, Michael Berry show. Graduation speeches are.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Always interesting, whether someone is trying to push their own agenda,
whether it's a pie in the sky optimism and why
not you got graduates.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
President Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Used the opportunity while speaking at West Point to set
a new direction in a new tone for the American Army.
Rush Limba always said the military's only job was to
kill people and break things. And that's very offensive to
the people who are not warriors, but it's exactly how
warriors feel. It might sound overly simplistic, but when it
(06:39):
comes time to kill people and break things, which is
when we most need our military, there are lots of
people that are let into the military for all the
wrong reasons, who are not prepared to kill people and
break things. When the folks on the other side are
prepared to kill people and break things. President Trump gave
the commencement address at West Point, and he laid out
(07:02):
the military's true purpose. And I'm going to tell you,
I'll guarantee you. I'll guarantee you. Those folks were proud
to be an American again, proud to go into our
United States Army, proud to lead our army as officers
were the graduates at West Point there.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
But under the Trump administration, those days are over. We're
getting rid of the distractions and we're focusing our military
on its core mission, crushing America's adversaries, killing America's enemies,
and defending our great American flag like it has never
been defended before. The job of the US Armed Forces
(07:50):
is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures,
or to spread democracy to everybody around the world at
the point of a gun. The military's job is to
dominate eddy foe and annihilate any threat to America anywhere, anytime,
in any place. A big part of that job is
(08:17):
to be respected again. And you are, as of right now,
respected more than any army anywhere in the world. And
that's happening, and I can tell you are respected like
nobody can believe.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Then we turn to sixty minutes Scott Pelly. Now Pelly
is one of the people who is upset because sixty
minutes are sorry. CBS is having to fork over a
massive amount of money for interfering in the twenty twenty
four election. The head of CBS stepped down, the head
of their news department step down, and Scott Pelly is embarrassed,
(08:55):
and he's angry. And so Scott Pelly was speaking at
wake Forest, and what you going to hear here is
Scott Pelly whining he's angry. And what he's angry about
is being a journalist, being a university professor, having degrees
(09:16):
from Harvard or Yale or one of these. Columbia was
supposed to make them better than you. But there's more
of you than there are of them. And they abused
their power, and they used money from you to then
turn against you and to support causes and candidates that
(09:38):
you don't support with your dollars. And now Trump came
in and said, hey, guys, I'll go in and shatter
this thing. You couldn't get a Bush family member to
do that, they were as tied into this. You couldn't
get a Romney to do that. You couldn't get Obama
to do that. They were all tied into the august
nature of Harvard University, and they all wanted their kids
(10:01):
to go there. They all want to be associated with it. Well,
Trump comes in and goes in and speaks at the
University of Alabama and says, this is the crimson that's
going to be leading the future. And Americans roared because
we're tired of the Ivy League getting all this money,
getting all this preference. And Scott Pelley is upset because
(10:23):
Donald Trump is bringing shame upon people who deserve it,
and that comes at his expense on multiple levels.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Listen to him.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
But in this moment, this moment, this morning, our sacred
rule of law is underattack. Journalism is under attack, universities
are under attack. Freedom of speech is underattack, and insidious fear.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Is reaching.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our
private thoughts, the fear to.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
Speak in America. Power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives.
They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals. Power can
change the definition of the words we use to describe reality.
(11:32):
Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned.
Inclusion is a dirty word.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yes, this is an old.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Playbook, my friends.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
There's nothing new in this. You know the beauty.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You really gotta admire what these people do. They make
what they do which is evil discrimination, they make it noble.
So then anyone who criticizes it is ignoble because what
they're doing is decent. This has been done by Marxist
throughout history.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, let's check in.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Since one of the subject of speeches, let's check in
on Jasmine Crockett giving the commencement address at Tugalou College.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Here's what she had to say for.
Speaker 6 (12:19):
Going to be people that tell you that you don't belong,
and I am here to tell you over and over
and over that you absolutely belong. There are people that
are going to tell you that there is not a
table in which there is a seat for you. But
I am here to remind you of Montgomery and those
folding chairs. Let me tell you, did we know how
(12:40):
to use a chair? Whether we pulling it up? Are
we doing something else with it?
Speaker 7 (12:46):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Now, hear let me heed. Somebody wait to.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
Tell you that I know that y'all are ready to
put your boots on the ground again. Yes, that's your key,
I said, can carry out.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, I'm gonna dance, y'all. Don't judge me now because
I'm feeling it. They gonna tell you that you ain't
smart as they is. They gonna tell it to you.
But let me tell you.
Speaker 8 (13:20):
If they don't hire you, if they don't give you
their money, if they don't.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Do what you want them to do, you can either
sit in the chair or you can take the chair
to they head. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 8 (13:31):
And if we got to pull out a gun, we're
gonna be We're gonna get our boots out.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
We're gonna create the war.
Speaker 8 (13:36):
If we got to intimidate them vote into doing what
we want, then we gonna do it. What I'm saying,
what I'm here to tell you, Yeah, because now you
don't got a degree.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
From a historically black college and university. We don't want
no white people here though, because the inclusions.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Can say something nice, you can always say it on
the Michael Perrys.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Since we were talking about graduation speeches, it's that season, right,
Joe Biden told the audience at Morehouse, a historically black
college and university, that their country didn't love them, you know,
Thomas Soul has talked a lot about this. When you
(14:20):
tell young black people that this country doesn't love you, you
don't make them love this country back. You instill in
them resentment and bitterness. And young minds are easily formed,
and it's important to give them optimism rather than cynicism
(14:44):
and skepticism and victimhood, because it's very hard for people
once they're in that mindset.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I saw a video the other day. It was of
these kids.
Speaker 9 (14:55):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Series of posts about Japan and the people there, and
it was a group of school kids and they were
walking on the sidewalk and they were getting ready to
cross the street and a bus or a truck driver
pulls up and he stops and lets them all cross,
(15:19):
And after they crossed, they all stopped and waved and
thanked him. Then he moved on and they were smiling
and waving as they crossed, But at the end they all,
once they got safely across, stopped and waved and thanked him.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Very much.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
You can learn a lot about people by how they
act when they crossed the street in front of you,
and you were in a car and they've already parked
and they're going into the event. There are culturally different
ways people cross the street and their attitude about crossing
(15:55):
the street. If you hold the door for somebody as
they are entering a building and you're going in before them,
and you're far enough ahead that you could just let
it go and they won't be able to get it'll
close all the way, and you stand and hold the
door for them to go in. There are people who
will say, why, thank you, I appreciate that. And there
(16:17):
are people who pretend they don't notice that you did that.
And then there are people who you can tell are
making a statement by not acknowledging it. I'm not saying
anyone as any you've probably had this experience, and if
you haven't, maybe you haven't. But there are people for
(16:39):
whom everyone fits into one of those three categories.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Joe Biden told the audience at more House that their
country did not love them. This was the President of
the United States last year speaking at Morehouse College aid
historically black college and university.
Speaker 7 (16:56):
You missed your high school graduation. You start a calling
Just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a
reckoning on race, What is democracy if black matter? Man
killed on the street. What is democracy, betrayal of broken promises,
slowly black communities behind. What is democracy if you have
(17:20):
to be ten times better than anyone.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Else to get a fair shot.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
And most of all, what does it mean, as you've
heard before, to be a black man who loves his
country even if it doesn't love him back in equal measure?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
That is how you doom young people. I have frequently
said that much of the success I have enjoyed in
my life is because from the earliest ages my parents
and my teachers inspired me that I had great gifts
and that if I would put them to good.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Use, I could be somebody.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I don't think you should pat your kid on the
back for everything. I would have teachers who would say
to me, you made a ninety eight, but you should
have made a hundred. You made an a, but you
could have done better. You've got to push yourself harder,
because what does public school do. It compresses everybody in
the middle. It tries to get the kid at the
(18:25):
bottom up to the middle, and it has no space
for the kid at the top. Hey, you're not causing
any problems. Just keep doing what you're doing. So it
doesn't super serve the kid at the top.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
It's not built to It's built for the masses. This
was a mass education inculcation effort.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
We know that, right.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
A Pharmacy benefits manager or PBM is a third party
company that manages prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers, employers, unions,
and government program There are a lot of people involved
in the racket of healthcare today who hate their jobs,
(19:09):
who are listening right now and going, oh good, I'm
glad we're going.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
To expose this. Let me start that over.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
A Pharmacy benefits manager or PBM is a third party
company that manages prescription drug benefits on behalf of health insurers, employers, unions,
and government programs. PBMs play a key role in how
medications are accessed, priced, and reimbursed in the US healthcare system.
(19:44):
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, we like her signed House
Bill eleven fifty in ending the conflict of interest of
PBMs owning pharmacies. Now, what happened as a result, Well,
we'll get to that moment. All right, here's the bill
(20:05):
she has signed.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
For far too long, drug middlemen called PBMs have taken
advantage of customers and raised drug prices. Under my leadership,
Arkansas took action and imposed nearly one point five million
dollars in fines against law breaking PBMs last year. Now
we're going even further and banding PBM conflicts of interest Altogether.
(20:27):
This will prevent inflated drug prices, protect pharmaceutical access across
our state, and help our Kansons be healthier for less money.
Some of these big businesses are worried because Arkansas is
leading the way and they don't want other states to
follow our lead. But we're not afraid to be a
conservative leader for America, and I will never be afraid
(20:50):
to stand up for our seniors, our veterans, and everyone
else who relies on their local pharmacy to stay healthy.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Now, as a result, after House Built eleven fifty in
Arkansas was signed, Forest Park Pharmacy took to TikTok with
this bit of industry news.
Speaker 10 (21:17):
BBS is moving forward with closing all locations in Arkansas
after the state banned PBMs from owning pharmacies. They only
have twenty three locations there, but it proved where these
companies make their money. Before the bill even passed, they
were running ads telling everybody that if the state moved
forward with the legislation, they were going to close.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
All their stores.
Speaker 10 (21:40):
There was never even a whisper of them considering stopping
PBM operations. They threatened that people would lose access to
care if they couldn't own pharmacies and PBMs. But when
it came down to it, they chose to be a
middleman rather than a provider that speaks volumes. The middleman
has wrangled completely old people.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Because we'll play the rest of it in the next segment.
What we're experiencing here are the hidden costs and control
because he who has the gold makes the rules. That's
the golden rule. How many people can't get their medication.
How many doctors don't perform this or that procedure because
(22:23):
they can't get the insurance recovery, which means the insurance
companies are like the people during the Biden administration who
were loading that the teleprompter. They're actually in charge.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So let's recap for a moment.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Because my dad's eighty five, I'm fifty four, my wife's
fifty seven. You know, for many years we didn't have kids,
so we didn't really need health care, and we were
young and healthy, so we didn't need health care, neither
one of us as a major chronic condition, so we're lucky.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
But my dad does and has his entire life.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
And then my mom passed, and between her and my dad,
one or the other of them was in the hospital
almost once a week for years. It was very traumatic
for me. I went to bed every night if I
wasn't driving to Beaumont to be there with him overnight,
and then rushing back in the morning. Beaumont's a a
little over an hour drive for me. There was a
(23:27):
lot of windshield time at the end or beginning of
a long day. And it's traumatic, right, it's debilitated, it's fatiguing. Well,
you really learn insights into things, and COVID brought that
to bear when you couldn't get ivermectin, when you couldn't
(23:48):
get hydroxychloroic, when when your doctor couldn't tell you to
use that because they were being pushed to write scripts.
When your doctor can't tell you how best he can
heal you, but instead for issues of money control, hospital
(24:09):
system control is forced into giving you advice that is
not the best guidance. That's a problem, that's a quality
of life drop right. So in a state of Arkansas,
they went after this, They went after these PBMs prescription
(24:32):
benefit managers, and as a result, CBS said, uh huh,
we're pulling out. And the theory goes CVS would rather
write off Arkansas not do business there. Then other states
see that CBS consented to this change in policy, because
(24:53):
then Texas and New York and California and Florida and
everywhere else would say, hey, in Texas, you're willing to
play that game. In Texas, you're willing to be fair.
So CBS said, we can't let that happen. So CBS
pulled out. That's the way big corporations think. So here
is Forest Park Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy presumably, and them
(25:16):
talking about the fact that CBS had twenty three pharmacies
in Arkansas and they pulled out.
Speaker 10 (25:22):
FBS is moving forward with closing all locations in Arkansas
after the state banned PBMs from owning pharmacies. They only
have twenty three locations there. But it proves where these
companies make their mind.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Right, let me stop you there.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Back before big pharma started buying large amounts of ad
time on every news program, organizations like CBS did real reporting.
This was our friend Cheryl Atkinson when she was at
CBS in two thousand and six, reporting that flu deaths
among the elderly climbed, didn't drop, climbed after getting the
flu shot.
Speaker 11 (25:56):
It stands to reason that flu deaths among the elderly
should have makeing a dramatic dip making an X graph
like this. Instead, flute deaths among the elderly continue to climb.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
WHOA, it was hot yesterday.
Speaker 11 (26:09):
Here's what scientists have found over twenty years. The percentage
of seniors getting flu shots increase sharply, from fifteen percent
to sixty five percent. It stands to reason that flu
deaths among the elderly should have taken a dramatic dip
making an X graph like this. Instead, flu deaths among
the elderly continue to climb. It was hard to believe,
(26:29):
so were searchers at the National Institutes of Health set
out to do a study adjusting for all kinds of
factors that could be masking the true benefits of the shots.
But no matter how they crunched the numbers, they got
the same disappointing result. Blue shots had not reduced deaths
among the elderly. It's not what health officials hope to find.
NIH wouldn't let us interview the study's lead author, so
(26:50):
we went to Boston and found the only co author
not employed by NIH, doctor Tom Reikert. We realized that
we had incendiary material. Doctor Reichert says they thought their
study would prove vaccinations. It helped. We were trying to
do something mainstream, that's for sure. Were you surprised astonished?
Did you check the data a couple of times to
(27:11):
make sure?
Speaker 7 (27:11):
Well?
Speaker 11 (27:12):
Even more than that, we've looked at other countries now
and the same is true. That study soon to be
published finds the same poor results in Australia, France, Canada
and the UK, and other new research stokes the idea
that decades of promoting flu shots and seniors and the
billion spent haven't had the desired result. The current head
(27:32):
of National Imanizations confirmed CDC is now looking at new strategies,
but stop short of calling the present policy a failure.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
There's an active dialogue into how we can do better
to prevent influenza and its complications in the elderly.
Speaker 11 (27:45):
So what's an older person to do? The CDC says
they should still get their flu shots, that it could
make flu less severe or prevent other problems not reflected
in the total numbers, but watch for CDC to likely
shift in the near future more toward protecting the elderly
in a roundabout way by vaccinating more children and others
around them who could give them the flu. Wrl Akison,
(28:06):
CBS News Washington.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Did you hear what the CDC just said. When we
give the flu they called a flu shot, because it's
not a vaccine, we give the flu vaccine. Let's call
it what they used to call it. They don't want
that because the vaccine prevents you forgetting something. Remember when
Joe Biden said that the COVID shot prevented you from
(28:30):
getting COVID. You can't get it, you can't spread it.
That was a complete lie. Of course, everything about it
Biden administration was. The CDC said, if giving the shot
to old people is killing more old people than it saves,
that would assume the shot even worked. But it's killing
(28:52):
more people than it saves, then you know what we'll do.
We'll start giving the shot to everyone around the old people. Well,
do you rouse it's going to kill some of those
people as well, do you know how many people died
from the COVID shot? Do you know how many people
die from the flu shot? They don't want you to
know this. A study coming out of I think it
(29:13):
was a University of Michigan said the flu shot had
a negative efficacy rate. More people die from getting the
shot than are saved by taking it. You know, we
had several years ago we had somebody that was I
think they'd been at the NIH, a National Institute of Help,
and they explained how the flu shot is put together.
(29:35):
Every year, there is a convention that's pulled together at
the end of February, and they have to decide, as
I understand it, by the end of February, on which
of three strains of the flu it could be this year.
They have to pick one so that on March first
they can begin production of the flu shot to have
(29:57):
it ready for the fall. So you've got a one
in three chance of even getting it right, but you
got one hundred percent chance of having been exposed to
a dangerous shot if you take it. Now, who on
earth would would make the decision for you to do
that unless you were making billions of dollars off selling
the flu shot. Well, CVS and Walgreen's told me to
(30:20):
come in.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
And take it.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Oh you mean they told you to come in the
door so they'd get paid to give you the shot.
And while you're there you might pick up some snacks
and cokes and all sorts of other stuff. Of course,
they told you to. That's what got you to go
into CVS and Walgreens so they can make more money.
Gas stations don't make their money off the gas. That's
to get you in the door and buy the rest
(30:41):
of the stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Good grief.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
The evil afoot in this country, The evil a foot
in this country, the things that are passing, the people
that are I'm doing the right thing. I'm taking care
of myself. Bless your heart. You tried to but evil
people lied to you. You did nothing wrong other than
being the naive neighbor. You should assume you can't trust
anything these people say.
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