Cocktail Lounge w/ Aggie & Brad: Hoist the Barrel Colours!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:30):
The following program contains course language and adult themes.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Listener discretion is advised and welcome to another episode of

(01:06):
The Cocktail Lounge. I am your hostess, Aggie, and with me,
as always is the ever suave Alfa blown pop up
a co host, Grad Slager. How are you doing tonight, Brad?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
How is everything going in Texas tonight?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I guess it's going okay.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
You say, with no conviction whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
It's going great. Okay, well happy.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
I just expected a little bit more of, you know,
your usual abulience, but we'll deal this work.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, okay, I'm I am. I'm good. It has been fine.
It cooled off a little bit today, so that was
kind of nice. We were overcast all day because it
was rain right north of us, but it never actually
got here, which kind of forced me to water all
my plants before. My mom sensed that they were dry,
and she would call me from ten hours away to

(02:08):
tell me go water the lawn. So I kind of
beat her to that. Otherwise, you know, it's been it's
been a pretty normal day.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
What the hell does she have a trail camera over
your garden or something?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I don't know, she just has this. It's not a
sixth sense. It's like a super sense, like like it's
eleven eleven senses up. I don't know, she's got many senses,
but this is this is like really fine tunes she
can tell. She can tell.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Wow, I see, well, no, wonder your tense. You you
almost sound like a Cracker Barrel marketing executive tonight.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
I I see where you're with that.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
With that, I mean, it's amazing how much has played
out just since our last show.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
It's incredible. Yeah, yeah, I didn't expect this, And thank
you Jeff for the hat tip to let us know
about that before the show. But yeah, it has a
lot of stuff has been developing. And it was and
it's funny because a young woman who used to write
for the Wall Street Journal had an entire thread on it.

(03:24):
But then she also expanded all of the receipts over
in her sub stack and I was actually reading and this,
I guess, this deterioration of the Cracker Barrel brand has
been ongoing since for at least twenty years, but it
was very slow and it was very methodical. And but

(03:46):
these past couple of years, you know, they last eighteen
months or so. It really just accelerated, and it was
it was quite interesting to see how how they were
so eager to destroy a very established brand.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, it's been amazing perplexing to watch this play out
because it's it's almost as if this company was being
managed by a group of people that never went to
the restaurant.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
I you know, I I was having that vibe as well,
because I mean a lot of people don't may not remember,
but Cracker Barrel has had its share of bad miss
steps and controversy. Specifically, I want to say early nineties,

(04:43):
they really really stepped in it by saying that they
were going to fire their gay employees because they wanted
to concentrate on it. They felt that the homosexuality was
the sin and they wanted to get to the American
values of heterosexuality and all that stuff. And so that

(05:04):
didn't last very long. I mean, I think it was
like six weeks before they retracted that, but it wasn't
for a few years after that. A lot of few
years after that that they did not include, you know,
the non discriminatory, non discriminatory section as to their hiring practices.

(05:25):
So when it came to sexual orientation, so it took
them a while to get there, but they were not
being you know, they weren't discriminating best on your sexual orientation.
They just hadn't written it. They did not put it
down in black and white. And it wasn't until two
thousand and five or so that they got somebody who

(05:49):
was actually a gay band to work on their marketing.
And that was one of the things that he was
very leary off, the fact that this company did not
have written down that they could not discriminate best on
sexual orientation, and so he set out to make the

(06:09):
brand MOREGA friendly. At the time, they had a I
guess ESG score of zero, and it was his personal
challenge to bring that up to at least eighty. So
you can imagine everything that he did to the brand
to make it acceptable with the ESD score of eighty.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah. I approached it like I'm not anti gay over
anything of the sort, but at the same time, I
don't see a need to cow to this group. At
the same time, and for whatever reason that they've gotten
away with, there's this attitude that if you don't genuine

(06:58):
flect in a very robust fashion to the gay crowd,
you're somehow anti gay.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
That was that was what he felt needed to be done.
You did need to reflect in order to bring inclusivity
into the Crackled Barrel brand. The thing is it didn't
need it. Crackle Barrel was just a restaurant, a bunch
of junk and food.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
You're not being exclusive, like it's not like gapers and
walks in there like, oh no, excuse me, you are
not welcome here. But for whatever reason, this group needs
to have outward displays of acceptance. And that's the part
I never really grasped about.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
No, they actually again, because you're.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Not excluding anybody, because that's against that's ante ethical to
business practice. True.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
And it started in Nashville. I think that's their biggest one,
and it is just it's spread from there. I remember
we were talking about the whole the rocking chairs outside.
I remember in twenty eighteen or so, they had the
Pride chairs, and I knew people used them to, you know,

(08:13):
they would sit in them and rock, but nobody was
buying those chairs. And there was some Pride stuff that
was included inside in their stores. And I don't know
how well it was moving because at the end of
the month, you know, I was all unclearance and it
was a very large area, and so it's it's just

(08:36):
that I don't think that it's not that people didn't like,
you know, the Pride stuff. I don't think it's that
they don't The people that eat there don't like gay people.
That's not it. I think it's just to them, it's
a disconnect. It shouldn't even be there. That shouldn't be
there at all. In fact, I don't think that story.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
I see this frequent, like at my local grocer on
Pride Month, because they'll come out with you know, like
rainbow frosted flakes or some nonsense like that in a
host of other brands. I know Oreos does it and such.
Then come July, I guess what's in the discount shelves,
all of these products that didn't get bought out by

(09:21):
the Pride people that demanded this corporate genuine flecting what
is even going on here? Not being rewarded for it,
but you're being criticized if you don't play along with
the group that doesn't endorse your product.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
No, it got so bad that they removed Phil Robertson's
stuff from Duck Dynasty from their shelves because he said
something about something that they felt was homophobic, and so
they removed all their stuff from all of the Dynasty

(10:00):
stuff from the shelves because of what he said. And
I'm like, okay, here's the thing. All of the stuff
that was on the shelf had nothing to do with
sexual orientation. You walk into that store, you don't expect
to see an adult toy store. Why are they even
thinking that everything has to be you know, rainbow. It

(10:24):
doesn't make any sense. The entire store is not heterosexual either.
It's just a store where you buy the best candy
you grew up with and every single soda pop known
in the South, and you know, just crap. Basically, there
was a time and I'd loved it because I used

(10:44):
to go to Cracker Barrel back in the nineties just
for this express purpose. They used to carry Fenton glass,
and I would go in there and I would see
all these beautiful vases and little trinket boxes and this
and that. I would always marvel how pretty it was
and everything. And of course Benton Uh. I think they

(11:07):
closed down early two thousands or something like that, so
you know, that went away, but it was it was
one of one of the things I looked forward to
going there for just to see that little section because
it was so pretty and Fenton was Americana, and that
was the whole purpose of that entire part of the restaurant.

(11:29):
All of that stuff in the in the in the
little old country store was Americana, all of it. So
when they started, you know, started the whole uh D
E D I and the pushing of the you know
for the ESG score, the pushing of the the lgbtq

(11:51):
PI agenda as you call it, that I think started,
it started hurting the brand. Well, apparently it wasn't enough
because they needed to like completely rebarrand everything, and it
didn't matter that people were telling them, yeah, no, don't
do it's best specifically shareholders and stockholders were saying, don't

(12:14):
do this. Don't do this. You don't damage it any
more than it already has been damaged. You need to
get back to the And the one thing that people
were missing about the whole rebranding of Cracker Barrel is
that Cracker Barrel started out being old in the first place.
It harkened back to like the twenties and thirties.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well, this is what I was gonna mention is that
they had this need, this desire. We need to modernize
them and contemporize cracker barrel really because currently the setting
is nineteen fifties and before, which has always been the case.
That's what people go there for is the comfort of it.
And now they're completely homogenizing the logo and they're also

(12:58):
doing it on the interior design. They're brightening the walls
and getting rid of like sixty percent of the kitchen
that was hung up in pictures and now they just
have these individual segments where it's got cutting boards here
and rolling pins and geometric pattern and it is. It
goes from being home style, which you're expecting for the food,

(13:20):
and now looking like a factory restaurant and getting assembly
line food.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
And this is one of the things that really pisses
me off about the modernist culture. You're actually taking away
beauty and replacing it with sterility conformity. A great example

(13:49):
of this is how in the seventies we moved into
having concrete buildings. Like the concrete was outside. It was
not painted, it was just and concrete. You know, when
I went to Paris, we flew into Paris and we
landed in Charles da Gaull airport, orly being the bigger one,

(14:11):
but it's outside of the city, and this one actually
flew into the city. So we went to we ended
up landing in Charles Stagall and it was you could
see it was crumbling. All of that cement that was
so glorious back in the seventies was just like a monstrosity.
And you know, I started thinking back all of the

(14:34):
cement buildings that I saw in Puerto Rico. You know,
I see some around here too. You know, East Texas
was a booming oil area, so the architecture here in
East Texas is absolutely stunning. I mean, you go from
Art Deco into Neuveau into you know, it just and

(14:56):
it just flows and then boom there you are nineteen
seventies and you're likeugh, somebody needs to buy that building
and just raise it, you know, because it's so ugly.
But it's you know, it's a block. It's just chunky,
and it's just and that's what modernism feels like. It's
like they're taking away everything that makes it individualistic for everybody.

(15:19):
You walked in there and you saw all of this kitch,
and it would instantly something would spark a memory and
it wasn't the same memory that you And if you
and I were to go in there, your memory would
be sparked by something that I have no idea where
that thing is, but my memory would be inspired by
something that you're not familiar with. I mean, it was
That's how it worked. That's it did that. It was

(15:39):
supposed to bring those memories forward from growing up, from
you know, everything that you experienced growing up, and now
they're taking that away and you're putting these weird things
all the walls with rolling pins and you know, and

(15:59):
I was just guessing with you how it worked for
I hop, but it doesn't work here, and I hop.
You have these framed prints, and the prints are stuff
that you find in a kitchen, like mixing bowls and
whisks and also the rolling pins and all that, but
they're in a setting that familiarizes you with your own setting.

(16:20):
That's something that you would find in your home. You
walk into the new cracker barrel and you see eighteen
pins in a geographic and a geometric format and you're like, yeah,
that's why. Why is that? There's just so clunky?

Speaker 3 (16:37):
And then you know, these are marketing people that graduated
from Ivy League schools or something, and they had you know,
you need to contemporize, really, you need to make modern
the old fashioned restaurant dumb asses. And it's you're actually
seeing this take place across the fast food industry too,

(16:59):
because you're seeing McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, even Pizza Hut
that are getting these modern square box configurations that look
identical outside of some of the brand color. And it
makes no sense why you're trying to blend in with

(17:20):
everybody else when your entire purpose is to draw attention
and make yourself distinguishable to people that are on the road.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
It's again, it's like they're they're taking beauty away. What
I mean by beauty is the original concept step would
bring that particular brand out and make it stand out
and make it unique and original, make it nice and
pretty for the eye. Take what happened and take McDonald's

(17:49):
their playgrounds. I remember when my little brother is seventeen
years younger than I am, so I would take them
to Donald's periodically, and I remember one of his friends
had a birthday party at McDonald's and that playground was
all about those slides and those horribly diseased ball pits

(18:12):
and this and that, and the kids were having a
ball and it was very tactile. You were climbing things,
you were sliding in things, you were pushing people into
the pit. You know, it was active. I went to
one where it was this little square room with two
screens and two little chairs. That was the playroom. There

(18:35):
was no ballpit, there was no slide, nothing, just two
screens and the kid sits there and he pushes things
like he would on an iPad. That was it. That's
their playground. Now they've taken that joyous activity where kids
would just be rambunctious and just overflow with it with

(18:59):
energy and exhaust themselves, and now they just put them
in a chair and make them zombies.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
That makes no sense why they saw a need to
make this change because people were going to cracker Barrel
intently for what it was. And it's not as if
you could say, well, there's this tremendous drop off because
people don't want old fashioned food anymore. Never happened. So
this is all just change for the sake of change.

(19:29):
So they tipped the logo, made it modern, made it
uniform instead of its curious shape. In the background, they
remove the guy. They removed the barrel. So both the
cracker and the barrel are now gone. And you turn
the interior. I put the link in the chat the interior.

(19:52):
You know, it could be any restaurant. Now when you
take a shot of Cracker Barrel now before changeover, you
know where you're at.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh, and you know one thing that I liked about
Cracker Barrel. There were no booths. There were all tables,
all chairs, there were no boots. I don't mind a booth,
but there was something about those old chairs. I'm comfortable
as hell, and yet they felt right. And you had

(20:24):
your you had the fireplace, which, by the way, they
took away the real wood, and I'm really I'm still
salty about that. But at least the fireplace was there,
and there were two tables with checkers and anybody could
play at any time. You didn't even have to order food.
You just went over there and you played.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
But we're seeing this take place across a lot of companies.
The other day, somebody put up a post where was
I don't know, eight or ten different companies that had
changed their logo over the last few years, and they're
all moving to static typeface. Some of them are removing
logo and iconography. Any distinctive characterization around letters was gone,

(21:05):
and it really just looks like you scrolled through the
font list at MS word. Oh, I'll go with this one,
I'll go with that one. And it's I'm really trying
to figure out what is driving this. I mean, outside
of the one thing I might say, as far as
the cracker barrel logo goes, might be wanting to modernize

(21:28):
it for the sake of cell phone apps so that
your logo is still distinguishable on that small field. But
you don't have to rebrand the entire company. You can
just come up with an alternative for that purpose in
that medium. As far as redesigning the restaurants, redesigning the

(21:49):
entire look of your branding, that's where it made no
damn sense. And these other companies are doing the same thing.
I mean, it was weird to see it side by side.
There was Google, there was Burberry, there was this, and
it was like slight variations.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Jackuar did it. I remember Jaguar had a beautiful script
and now it's like Ariel that's it, Like this is
the weirdest thing. But yes, a lot of them have
gone away from that, and you know, I jokingly said,
maybe that's because nobody reads cursive anymore. And then I
started thinking, does anybody younger than my brother, like younger

(22:30):
than forty, did they know what I hop stands for?
Or KFC for that matter.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
I don't think so, you know, and at least KFC
does it right, because I saw, you know, I did
kind of I went down a logo rabbit hole the
other night because I kind of into marketing, and you know,
Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC. They've done a lot of brand
logo changes over the decades, but they always retain Colonel
Sanders in some capacity.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yes, unfortunately there I don't know if you're aware, but
some of the descendants from Colonel Sanders have actually been
very salty about the use of the personage and making
it more sexualized, and so there's there's a contentious fight
going on. Not yes, they have actually sexualized Colonel Sanders.

(23:22):
They made him more muscular without his shirt, you know,
that kind of thing, and a lot of the family
members have objected to it. One in particular is the
I want to say, is the grandson, great grandson or
something like that, And he's been very vocal about that.
But you know, KOFC got rid of him completely, so

(23:46):
he's no longer associated with KOFC, but he's still fighting
the fight because it's it's a matter of pride. This
is Colonel Sanders also is a brand, and it's a
brand that means a lot. But they have changed it
over the years. They have actually made it to where

(24:06):
it's almost a caricature now, and so that was his point.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
I mean they've given it, you know, a little bit
more of a cartoonish logo look or such, but it's
still pretty identifiable. I mean, you know it's him when
you see it, so that at least makes sense. I
like Burger King because they actually reverted they've had for
quite some time now, this contemporary version of BK where

(24:34):
it's like, you know, the logo Hamburger, but it's kind
of in a slash and inside of a circle. They've
decided to go backwards with an older logo and they
actually have an alternative. Jeff's got it up on the
Lounge website right now. It's and this might be for
cell phone apps and such, but it's just either the
letter B if you look at it with beije in

(24:57):
red and beije or it's the letter K for K
inside of two buns.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
It's it's beautiful use of negative space to bring out
two letters in one. It's gorgeous.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, I mean, this is this right here is inspired.
This is actually what iconography and logo design is supposed
to do. Is gets you, you know, you interpret it,
but you also are being injected into the brand this way,
and it makes perfect sense. The homogenization of things. Just
I can't factor it. I don't know what they're trying
to do. And again, it's across the industries.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
It's yes, it's everybody, and it's a move by this
whole You know, we need to refreshen a brand. Some
brands don't need to be refreshed. Cracker Barrel is quite
possibly the quintessential brand when it comes to not needing
a refresh because it's supposed to represent old. It's supposed

(25:55):
to be that way. I remember, I think we were
TGI Fridays. Is that the one that we were discussing?

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Uh? Possibly we did a few. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Well, I remember when Benegan's decided to refresh their their
brand and everything, because y'all remember you walked into Benegans
there's a tuba hanging over here, there's a violin over there,
there's some kind of Celtic thing over there, there's a rowboat.
Somebody has a pair of oars over there. I mean,
you walked in. There was just a bunch of stuff.
I had a friend.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
That they had Irish football, They had curling mallets.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Sports memorabilia and all that stuff, and so.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
It was Irish tinged m And had a.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Friend that was a manager. Uh. And then he became
a district manager. And I asked him, It's like, where
do y'all get this stuff? And he says, we produce it.
We have somebody make it. It's not you know, it's
not original stuff. And uh and I was like, okay,
you know, no problem. And I used to love going
to Benegans. I thought it was fine, it was great,

(27:00):
right blah blah blah blah. The nighties called and time
moved on.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
But the same thing. They had a factory that produced
all that kitch.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, but they decided to do a rebrand. It didn't work,
and so they had to you know, it just people
were like, yeah, this is not what I came to
displace for, you know, And so they just stopped going
to Benet. I think there's like I was telling you,
there's one Benegan still and I think it's out in
West Texas somewhere. And you know, that's not the only

(27:36):
restaurant changed that happened to TGI Fridays as well has
went through that same thing. And and it's because those
you can you can't modernize things. I hop is a
good example of a modernization that worked. It used to
be you would walk in and the pictures on the

(27:56):
walls were all about I hop. It just said the brand,
the name, it was the store on a picture of
the store, you know, all of this stuff. When they
went to rebrand, they decided to change that format and
actually bring the kitchen outside. So you had the mixing bowls,
you had the whisks, you had, but you had them

(28:17):
in a setting. The photographs were in the setting of
the kitchen, so you could identify that with your own home.
And that rebrand worked. But this where you take where
you're saying, oh, no, we need to bring it into
the twenty first century when it's supposed to be just
after the nineteenth century that this thing takes place at No,

(28:40):
it's not.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Going to work well. The good news is the people
have spoken, and I think Wall Street has as well,
because after they made this announcement, I mean, the reaction
to it was instantaneous and it was amazing to watch,
and we saw social media blow up and I even

(29:01):
had to laugh. Over the weekend it was on MSNBC.
They actually started bitching and moaning about the reaction to this.
And there's Jonathan k part what's wrong with these snowflakes
that are so bothered by a breed brand logo and
they've got nothing else in their live Who these people
are with their emptiness And it's like, dude, shut up.

(29:22):
Three weeks ago your network lost its mind over Sydney
Swingey and a pair of jeets. I still have the headlines.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
There's a rebrand that is working, that's actually working.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
This is how stupid they are. It is like the
Mega people and they're dude, you were losing it. And
you know how bad that whole reaction was. Where the
now and the narrative is well, just people in the
writer maker note up. Nobody important ever talked about this,
and they're just losing your mind over no reason. No
nobody called her a Nazi. It's like, are you.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Kidding me, my goodness, that they lost their minds.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Do not light a cigarette because you're going to blow
up from your gas lighting, your dumbass. But it's you know,
this has been going on to an extent that their stock,
I mean plummeted within days. I think they lost like
one hundred million dollars or so in market cap in
twenty four hours, and just this afternoon. Now they have

(30:24):
made the announcement they're reverting to the old logo, and
now we wait to see if the redesign of the
interior of the restaurants will continue or not.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
I'm waiting to hear because it's one thing to keep
the old logo and change everything inside, and another thing
to change the logo back to the original intent and
just and keep the inside. Okay, if you want to
get rid of the tables and put boots in, fine,
I will give you that. I will give you the boots.

(31:00):
For God's say. Keep the kitch. That was the whole
point of going there. You wanted that kitch because it
was a it was basically a time machine that.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Took to see if they were going to get rid
of the rocking chairs out in front too.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, you know, that's one of the things that kind
of makes it iconic. You have all of those rocking
chairs outside and they are for sale, by the way,
and if the line is too long, you go outside
and your rock And sometimes they will have checkers out
there for people that are waiting in line to get
in to eat what used to be really good food

(31:37):
and now it's kind of mediocre. I hate to say it,
but they changed the menu and they remove some cool stuff.
And but I digress. In any case, yes, they they
should at least keep they you know, you're right. I
don't even know if they keep in the chairs.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Do they even still have the it was the cinnamon
roll pancake.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yes, okay, at least they did at the location I
was at.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
I haven't been in like probably a few years. We
will sometimes stop in if we're doing like a travel
or something like that. But uh, yeah, that's a that's
a pretty the order correctly, that's a monstrous meal right there.
That's a oh yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
I'm pretty sure I saw it, and I was there
about two and a half weeks ago, and I'm pretty
sure I saw it, and I was tempted, but I
was like, I can't I can't do that, not with moms.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
On top of that, Yeah, these are large pancakes that
have cinnamon and the sweet cream frosting. Basically Sinnabon pancakes.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yes, a Cinnabon pancake. That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
So and then you know, I of course have to
get it with the side of bacon, eggs, toast and
all of that. And then they brought this to the table.
The first time I ordered it, everybody is like, holy crap,
what did you do? You made a mistake.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
No I didn't, No, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
They were done in getting there to go boxes and
stuff and I'm still working. I'm was like, well, we're
gonna be her while guys, I don't know what you're
talking about. That tends to be me.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, it's I do agree that they need to before
they rebrand anything, and they need to work on the
food because it used to be several staples were taken
off of the menu and people did complain about that.
Several of the staples that were kept on the menu
were tweaked that were changed. So it used to be

(33:39):
if you bought the fried chicken I think it was,
it was half a chicken that you got, so there
was enough there for you to eat and then take
home and eat two more meals at least for me anyway,
And then you had your choice of two sides and
they did away.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Oh wait, wait, you're saying half the chicken makes a
couple of meals for you.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, I'm not you, Brad.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
Yeah, you guys.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Are going to come visit me and my grocery list
is going to be huge.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
I mean, I'll get a roaster and you know, oh wait,
you guys want something to what are you talking about?
It's like this is mine, you know what? And that
thing's down to the skeleton when I'm.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Well it, like I said, it used to be that
it was like easily half a chicken. Now it's just
either leg and thigh or you know, uh, breast and
wang or whatever. So that they've cut that down. They
several items that used to be there faithfully day in
and day out. They actually put on just one once
a week now. So there have been some changes that

(34:51):
a lot of people are not very happy with because
you know, it was Greckel barrel was where you stopped
when you we're traveling, and in the South, when you're
traveling you want to eat really hearty food. I've traveled
in the Northeast and honestly, I eat and I don't

(35:15):
eat that much compared to you. And I was still
wanting it was like portions of just I just I
don't understand, you know. And actually I went to I
was in DC and I was at what's his name?
The It was a burger joined by the redhead chef,

(35:41):
Bobby Flay, Bobby Flays Burger, and you know, I ordered
a burger and as plain as possible because they put
halapeno and everything. It just seemed like good to me
because they really believe in spice. But I had to
tell him the one without hall ofpen no Hall of
Pennis whatsoever. So it's basically the plane burger. And I

(36:06):
get it and I'm like, I didn't order the children's
Oh no, that's the regular burger. And I'm like, this
is a full size burger and she said yes. I
was like, oh, well, okay, it is what I ordered. Then,
thank you, you know, and I proceeded to eat it

(36:27):
and everything, but I was kind of stunned. I mean,
this was DC. You get a lot of people from
all walks of life coming to we see you. It's
a burger joint, you expect it to be big.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
But I would have been offended myself, Like I had
them speaking a Burger King. They just got one that's uh,
what is it to be the King Bacon? I forget
what the hell they even call this thing. And I'm
trying to get the grand kid beefed up for football.
So it's like, dude, you know, go to Ononderes get
a bacon etor you go to Burger King. You gotta

(36:59):
get this. He's like, I can, and they're mocking me
because I'm eating the thing and they're looking at me
AGAs and they're like, there's no way. And they looked
it up online. Just thing weigh a pound and a half,
basically like a whopper with a fist of bacon and
cheese on it. And they were like, oh, no, you're
gonna die. Stop it. And I'm looking, this ain't gonna

(37:20):
last until the next road stops. So I don't know
what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Shit, you're gonna die.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
They said, yeah, because you know my order is gonna
seize up. My heart would stop that kind of nonsense.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Did I did I ever tell you about our town
drunk back home in Puerto Rico. His name was Wilcredo.
That man, I kid, y'all, I'm not even kidding you.
I could you not. That man would eat a pack
of bacon. In the morning, he would fry it all up,
that's all he would eat with his whiskey. For noon,

(37:57):
he was drinking rum and by evening he was drinking picitoro.
You know what killed.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Him, a bullet, no clothes.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Somebody you know, was taking a curve too fast and
see him. And he was eighty two at the time.
So I'm just saying I think bacon actually extended his life.
All that bacon was lining his stomach while he was drinking.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, I don't think I'll be going to Bobby.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
I was not impressed. I was not impressed. And I
had you know, a lot of people recommended it because
it was Bobby Flay and they just they just felt, hey,
you got to have that experience. Yeah. I had the experience.
It wasn't that great. I was not impressed, and they
were like, well, didn't you have this that or the
other thing. I was like, y'all, I cannot eat hoolapenos.

(38:50):
Everything in that restaurant had jalapenos somewhere, or cayenne pepper
one of the two, or serranos it had. It had
a hot some kind of hot pepper was attached to
every single dish. So I so I was limited in
what I could order. And but you know, I was
with was with my husband and he ordered the one

(39:14):
of the regular ones and he was like, yeah, then
not great. And of course, you know, we just ever
went back. This is a waste of money. Three figures
for hamburgers.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
We just had it a few days ago here where
they came home. You know, I was working and had lunch.
Found Motor City Pizza. You can get it's Detroit style,
you know, the thick stuff all right, gotta get gotta
do that with the three meat special and all that.
They come in and they're like, who was over here?
Is what are you talking about? Because they're looking at

(39:55):
the empty box and that empty trailer, like did you
have company? I was like, I've been working. What do
you do?

Speaker 2 (40:00):
What?

Speaker 3 (40:01):
They were like a gas that I had this it's
a pizza. What's the big damn deal? And me look
at it says six servings. I should have got to
I don't know what you want to.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Uh yeah, the whole servings thing. I don't trust it anymore.
I don't.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
I think that's all sort of cut down on the
calorie count too, because.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Well, I mean, you're a gigantic person. What are you like,
m eight feet tall or something.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Listen to you.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
It just seems like to be.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
It's only because you're a hobbit.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
No, I am not a hobbit. I'm an elf. There's
a difference.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Okay, Well still.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah I am. I know, I'm not a hobbit. I
am tidy though I put five to two so I
used one five for three and then I got.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
Old anyway, But yeah, this whole you know, now we're
we're all waiting to see what cracker Barrel is going
to do about the inside now that they were keeping
the log.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
The very fact that they made the announcement has helped
him out and crack me up too, because Donald Trump
had to come out of course, I know, I'm weigh
in on this, and then that set off people on
the level like you's got more important things to do.
And can I interject something real quick? They posted it
on X when they haven't posted anything in over six years.

(41:38):
That's called desperation.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
I think what was the last thing before that that
they posted about? Do you recall it?

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Jeff, No, But I can pull it up here real.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Quick because six years ago is twenty eighteen, right, nineteen nineteen.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yeah, I just love it when people are losing their
mind about Trump putting out truth social truths and stuff like,
how does he have time for this? Do you know
how long it takes to send out It's like even
lengthy ones ninety seconds maybe yea, and rooms are he's
more important than to do it this He's on an airplane.

(42:20):
The hell you want him to do?

Speaker 2 (42:22):
I don't know. And it's the same people that are
not criticizing Gavin news and for completely copying Trump.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
So oh, those assholes. So they pulled down the tweet
from twenty nineteen. It's no longer there.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Oh okay. Interesting?

Speaker 3 (42:45):
What would they Why would they be avoiding social media?
I'm wondering.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Like I said, they have had a really tough time
adopting the ESD scoring and and doing everything in their
power to bend the need to the LGBTQ crowd. And
I'm not saying that they're mending the need to the
gay crowd. There's a difference. They really went all in

(43:14):
for LGBTQ everything else, and it had affected them.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
The lgb crowd is on social media.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yes, but I think this is one of the reasons
they stopped tweeting, was that some of the stuff that
they were tweeting was very pro that and it detracted from.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Their brand they welled, I believe, so.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
I remember, I know, I know they got trolled really
hard in twenty eighteen with the Pride rocking chairs. I mean,
they got a lot of heat on almost every single
social media platform. I remember X they got ratio to oblivion.
I remember seeing screenshots from FB where there were a

(44:01):
lot of people commenting, and even though they had a
lot of likes and thumbs up and whatever, the comments
themselves were very negative towards that, and most of them
were like, I don't care about the gay agenda. I
don't I have gay friends, my sister is gay, blah

(44:22):
blah blah whatever. I just don't want to see it
at a restaurant. There's no need for that. And I
think that kind of made them go kind of dark
because I didn't I don't see them saying much on
on FB either, so.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Who knows. Anyway, Well, we probably have a good lesson
as to why you shouldn't do that kind of thing anyway.
Mm hmm, let's take a listen here. No, that was

(45:08):
the abbreviated version. There's a very long this nonsense. I
don't understand, well, I do to a degree. When you're
sixty five and grew up in the sixties and activism
was all the rage, and we're going to fight the man,
to fight the power, and now Donald Trump arrives, that
just has to reinvigorate all your old I don't know, motivations,

(45:35):
whatever spurned you to have some kind of purpose in life.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
What I don't understand is that when I was growing up,
and you know, the hippies were still fighting the man,
and you saw that on every TV show or whatever.
It didn't matter who the man was. The man was government,
it didn't have a party affiliation. That were fighting government
at every turn for every reason, no matter who was
the president, no matter who controlled the Congress, no matter what.

(46:04):
They were fighting the man. Now, no, no, they only
fight one man. They leave the other one alone. The
other one is fine, but they fight one guy.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Now they're fighting good taste. And this was a group
of elderly activists, protesters who I don't even know where
you would start. You've all seen you know, road crews working,
you know, cleaning the side of the road or doing

(46:34):
you know, road repairs or anything of the sort. And
they got these bright yellow reflective vests they wear on
their backs for safety purposes. This is about two dozen
codgers wearing bright pink road vests, collection together on stairs

(46:55):
with a podium, singing and trying to clap in unison
and feeling significantly in doing so because this is their protest.
They have a protest song, not quite at a level
of blowing in the wind. Yes, we don't want him

(47:17):
to go. We don't want him to go to Well
Salvador and then to go to the jail because we
want a brego to stay here and not to go
or whatever. They they're protesting to keep a known criminal,

(47:40):
illegal alien in the country. Yeah, And I just love
when they do this, because I just I like to
look at their faces where they have this odd mixture
in their expression of being unsure of what they're doing,
but at the same time deeply confident that they're making

(48:02):
a difference. So they're trying to remember the words and
clapping unison. But we're gonna save him, and we're going
to do it, to do it, to do it, and
we're going and then you just know they went home
and wrote like a three paragraph post on facial Facebook,
you know, and we really made a difference today, and

(48:26):
this is going to send a message and that monster
in the White House is going to change his mind
and he's going to make him remain in this country
where he rightfully belongs because we.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Were It is so annoying, Grandma.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
Go do a sou douco or something.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
It's just they're not doing anything. This is all the
weakest type of virtual virtual thinks.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
What cracks me up is there are they're just oh
my god, we are going to make a difference. We've
got matching vests here, Tiffany, you put one onto ethel
I got one your size, it'll fit, trust me. No,
it's felgro Go ahead, we're gonna do it. Get together.
Who's got the camera? Are we filming this? We're filming this, yes,
filming this? Okay, we're filming this.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Well those people okay, fine, they couldn't even carry a tune.
They think they're gonna carry any sway with anybody that
sees this. No, they're not gonna do that. And the
thing is, like I said, it was the weakest of
all virtues signaling why because it doesn't do anything. No
one's paid attention, everybody's making fun of it. The administration

(49:41):
doesn't care that they're out there singing. It's not gonna
change anybody's mind. All they're doing is getting their fifteen minutes,
which by the way, is like sixteen minutes too many
in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Well, I mean, the thing is, they're not even getting
their message out. They're getting No.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
They're not, and they're just it's just it's incredible. They
have the opportunity, if they really need what they say,
they have the opportunity to help those they feel need
the help. But they don't want to put in the effort,
They don't want to put in the money for it,
and they certainly don't want to don't want to actually

(50:20):
even be near these people to help.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Here's the thing pipe down, and by all means, please
stop singing and do something like invite them into your home,
open your front door, show them to the guest room,
give them a pillow, tell them what time they're eating,
and then go get hooked on phonics to learn their
language so that you could tell them what's on the
menu the next day. And if you don't do that,

(50:45):
shut the hell up and get off the steps of
the courthouse. Would you.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
I have two words for you. Martha's Vineyard.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
I was just about to go there because they have signs.
To this day, crack up at that whole thing when
Ron just Sanding is like, here you go, they have
signs posted all over it. Let me just say that
we're a sanctuary city and we welcome with open arms
anybody from any establishment where they need to go. So

(51:13):
here you go, Here you go. And the first thing
they did was, oh, they can't stay here, And you know,
they had them gather together at a gymnasium or something,
and the people were showing up with like six month
old expired generic cereal and stuff like that. Do we
just want to help because we just want them to

(51:33):
have a good nourishing meal before they leave. And I
don't think they were on the island twenty four hours
before they kicked them out somewhere in New York. Oh no, yeah,
it was.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
It was real quick, right.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
They were trying to virtue signal about that. So, oh, no,
we care deeply, and look at us. We're bringing blankets
here because well, our maid moved away and she's not
using him anymore, so they can have those. And well, uh,
did you make sandwiches? I didn't make the sandwiches, but
there was a lot in the vending machine over in
the libraries. We got those over here. So here you go,

(52:10):
and could you do the like barest minimum and then
elevate yourself to the highest level as you do it
while you're kicking out the immigrants that you were begging for.
That's why I love these people. It's like their entire
life is nimby not in my backyard. I mean I

(52:31):
care deeply if they're in your yard.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah, And then they patted themselves on the back as
they were taken out for everything that they did to
make them comfortable while they waited to be escorted out
by the National Guard. I was so appalled. I cannot
even tell you.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
They were literally showing up with like generic corn flakes
and stuff like that. You know, living in a million
and a half dollar mansion and you can't even get
name brand cereal for the folk. Did you bring milk?
By the way, I mean, that's that's a little curiosity too.
But this is what I love. I mean, these are

(53:12):
the people that love the lecture. What have you done
because we helped? Okay, I'm sure their lives are deeply impacted.
Did you see that video too? Where was this? I
forget where? But there was a there was a road
stop and about three or four men were inside. Turned

(53:34):
out to be illegals. There's ice that got them up,
you know, sitting on the guardrail talking to them going
through the process. A lawyer comes ambling up on the cops.
Excuse me, one side please, one side, excuse me. I'm
their lawyer. One side please. Cops are looking at him
like the hell are you what are you talking about?

(53:54):
I'm their lawyer. No you're not. We just pulled him
over thirty seconds ago. And then the whole time on video.
You guys want a lawyer. You guys want a lawyer.
You want a lawyer. I'm there, I'm their lawyer. It's like, dude,
you're not their lawyer. And the tops got his hand
up in front of his camera. The guy's filming himself
the lawyers. He's like, who wants a lawyer? And you

(54:14):
look at the immigrants and they're sitting here staring at him, like.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Who is this guy.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
He's trying to make himself the hero. I'm gonna come
up and fight Ice, and Ice is like, sir, go
get back in your car. Nobody needs you here. But
I'm their lawyer. He's like, if you're an immigration lawyer,
pretty good idea would be to learn Spanish. And the
guy had nothing to say at that point.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
He's like, so basically this was an ambulance chaser, but no, no, no,
an Ice chaser.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
Yes, so like I guess he saw the vehicle, he
pulled over and comes across the streams like scrib me,
I've arrived. I'm here now, And he's filming himself doing this,
looking like a complete ass the whole time, and he
posts a video as if he were like the central
character of this hero tale. Watch me as I come
up and challenge Ice, and they all looked at him like, yeah, thanks, by.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Well it's I you know, I know that Ice is
getting a lot of heat. A lot of people are
actually getting in their face and trying to disrupt things.
And there was this one guy who's being prosecuted for
actually outing out where Ice is and the addresses of
ice agents and all that stuff and everything. But seeing

(55:39):
how our administration has been pushing back against illegal immigrants
and legal immigration as a whole, has i think incentivized
other countries to do it as well. And you're starting
to see the lion is starting to wake up. Over
in the United Kingdom. You're starting to see the waves

(56:01):
of people starting to go against the state. And it
has been it has been kind of freaky to see
because we have seen the UK slide so far down
into true chaos, and you've seen the government of that

(56:28):
once great country actually not work for their own constituency
but rather protect a foreign horde of immigrants that has
taken over because of their open border policy. And now
you're seeing the British, the Scottish, some of the Irish

(56:51):
actually starting to push back. And there's a movement called
Raise the Colors that is going on where they are
starting to act show pride in the Union Jack and
Saint George's Cross and the Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
No.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
The government is freaking out saying this is a sign
of white nationalism, and I'm like, you're British, of course
it's white nationalism. I'm like, what, But you're making it
out to be a bad thing over there. You make
it it. You're trying to equate it with Nazism, and
that's not what this is.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
This is s This is actually a European thing because
it's not taking place here, thank god. And the fact
that I mean they've surrendered. There's really no other way
to put it, because they're to the point now where
those immigrants that are arriving have more rights than the citizens.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yeah, and right now Germany is having a crisis. You know,
you're not worth discussing that. But over in Great Britain,
the crisis is so bad. It's not just an ex
ganomic crisis. This is a crisis of culture and a
crisis of their national identity. It's that bad, you have.
There's a girl now that was just arrested because she

(58:10):
brandished an axe and a knife to defend her twelve
years old Yeah, she was defending her twelve year old
sister from migrants that were, you know, stalking them, and
she's the one that gets arrested. The whole rather great
culture thing has has never been fully exposed. Well there's

(58:33):
now study has been before talking about the the gangs
and the pediphely that have been going on. They've identified
eighty five gangs in Great Britain, and Elon Musk is
to be credited with a lot of it because he

(58:55):
actually helped to uncover all of these things. So I
got to give Hemp props for that. But you know,
when you have somebody put up a Union jack and
here comes the cops selling them, you got to take
that down because it obstructs the view of vehicles. But
you can leave the Ukrainian flag that's right next to

(59:16):
it on the next pole because that's not obstructing the
view what they could protect. They will protect the Ukrainian
flag and the Palestinian flag before they protect their own flag.
That is bad. And this is what I mean when
I say the state is against the nation. The nation
is the culture the people that you know are proud

(59:39):
of what they are being Britons. The state is the government,
and the government is fighting their own people on this.
It should not take a lot of logic. The state
should be protecting its own they have.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
I'm trying to figure out where their fears coming from,
you know, like, are they just that married to political
correctness that you're not allowed to say anything critical? I mean,
this is the country after all, that incarcerated a woman
for over two and a half years because of a tweet,

(01:00:18):
and meanwhile, a guy convicted for actual rape only got
a year.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
For Fox's sake. This is the same country whose own citizen,
Simon Mushti, had to go into hiding for decades because
he had a fatwa against him.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Yeah, this is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
The same country they had to protect one of its
own from the Muslims that were trying to kill him.
And you're telling me and now, oh no, the thought
was just you know, that was just a joke. No,
it's not a joke. And this is when I tell people,
it's like a good Muslim is to be avoided at
all costs, and you need to get rid of them,
you need to get them out. And they're like, what,

(01:00:57):
but a good Muslim is a good person. No, good
Muslim is not a good person. A bad Muslim is
a good person, but a good Muslim is not. And
those are the ones that you have to watch out for.
I live in fear because my brother's best friend was
Muslim is Muslim. Prior to him getting married, he was

(01:01:19):
sent to Pakistan to Uamadrasa. He came back two years
later completely changed, and my brother's like, it's kind of weird.
I mean, I still like hanging out with him and
everything and his wife, but I used to see his
wife all the time. Now I just see her eyes
and I'm like, you know, I can't teach it to you.

(01:01:41):
You're going to have to figure it out on your own.
But he worries because some of the things that his
friend says are worrisome. Even though my brother is very liberal,
it still bothers him that his friend says these things,
you know. And you know, he one of the things
that his friend who was talking about was the epic

(01:02:02):
the East Plano Islamic Center that is now under investigation
by the state of Texas. And he was extoning how
he was going to live there and how wonderful it is,
and that they needed to actually congregate and it should
be all Muslim and all that stuff. And you know,
I asked, I asked my brother. I was like, you know,

(01:02:22):
next time you talk to him, ask him why the
mosque is right next to the police department instead of
being in the center of this community the way most
mosques usually are. And my brother didn't even know about that.
I pulled it up and I said, look, and because

(01:02:44):
he is liberal, I always have to pull up CNN
or MSNBC. MSNBC is what they watch. I'm pretty sure
that they're freaking out over the logo thing, but whatever,
and that's another logo that's really bad. But you know,
I I pulled it up and I said, it's right here,
look at it. And he was like, wow, why did

(01:03:04):
they put the why did they put it there. It's like,
come on, I can only take you to the water.
You got to drink it on your own. He's like, yeah, okay,
I'll think about it, you know, but at least he
was willing to think, you know, and put two and
two together. But you know, it's just this is because

(01:03:26):
and you're right, it's all because of PC nes political
correctness has led it Britain down this slippery slope.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
Well we saw a little bit of this take place
after nine to eleven in New York where the area
around the Twin Towers, you know, when they were going
to renovate it, there were plans to put a mosque.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Don't get me started.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
I hundreds of yards from the impact zone, and the
city was like, well, you know, we're going to go
ahead and do it, and people were clamoring like hell no. Meanwhile,
there was a church from the eighteen hundreds that got
to st and they would not grant it the opportunity
to rebuild.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
That's right, and they fought that. They fought that, and
they thought that listen, I am still salty over Cordeba, okay.
And that happened hundreds of years ago where the Muslims
came in and destroyed that cathedral and built their own
fucking mosque on top of it. And this is what
they do. They will build their mosques over cathedrals because

(01:04:26):
that is a That's how they conquer, that's what they
So when they were doing that at nine to eleven,
I was like, absolutely not. That has to be stopped.
And people were like, how could you be so islamophobic?
And I'm like, I'm not afraid of them, I'm pissed
off at them. There's a difference. I am not afraid
of them, I'm pissed off. And I had to explain

(01:04:48):
this to a lot of people why that was unacceptable
on any level. And it didn't matter that these people
were not involved with bringing down the towers. I didn't
care about that. It was the fact that they wanted
to put it there because that was a symbol of conquest.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
But I just uh don't understand, you know, they get
they can come up with that argument. When was the
last time you heard anybody say that you're Catholic phobic
or devout phobic. That's somehow not a thing. But if
you criticize or at least battle back against incursion of
Islam and any kind of Muslim community, you just say, no,

(01:05:30):
that's not normal, that's not right. What are you was Lamophobic?

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
No, I'm not, again, not a fair.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
From a sense in decency of what I'm in favor
for here. Yet you're allowed to dump on Christians and
Catholics that that's acceptable for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
No, I'm I hit somebody back with, so you're republic
phobec Oh what I'm what? Republic phobic? You don't like?
You know, that's what. If you're gonna call me islamophobic,
then I'm going to call you that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
But see, this is what you know. We've talked about
the shift in the national culture here since last summer,
and that's going on still too, with all these people
bitching about troops in DC and such, and people are
on the writers saying, yeah, well, you can go ahead
and bitch your moment, We're still going to come in
and fix it. And they have. They've gone thirteen days

(01:06:19):
without a murder in d C in the middle of summer.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Yeah, that's prime. Prime.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Do not have an idea if that has ever occurred before.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
I know that there was a time when when there
was it was very low as well. This isn't the
first time that it has happened, but it was so
long ago that people cannot think. They don't remember exactly
when it was.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Well, I mean it may have happened like in winter
when it was below zero for a string of days
and that sort of thing, but in the middle of summer,
oh hell, no, places like war zone normally. And I
had to love this. I had Lawrence the other day
came out and proved that there was no need for this,

(01:07:06):
no need for a military presence in DC. And he's
so insufferable to listen to, with his pedantic and very
slow method of talking, describing things, very taciturn cadence, the
kind of which makes you want to sit back and

(01:07:29):
punch your television directly where his face would be on screen.
He's doing this. I think it was on Thursday or Friday.
Came up with proof there's no need for troops in
DC based on the movie Mister Smith Goes to Washington.

(01:07:51):
There's Jimmy Stewart and Union Station staring out the glass
doors at the Capitol, Roton and a resplendent in the
background in the distance where you did not see any
soldiers around Union Station. Larry. That was nineteen thirty nine. Yeah,

(01:08:20):
that was also a movie. Ergo fiction.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Well, no, if okay, let's walk down this road, shall we?
If he wants to compare it to mister Smith goes
to Washington. Back then, the Federal District was still under
purview of Congress. It was not allowed to have its
own mayor, it didn't have its own council, and didn't
have any of those little perks. So if he wants

(01:08:48):
to go down that road, I'll go with him.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Well, the funny thing is that he's also trying to say,
you said, I've been in that station, I've walked through.
I've never seen crime in there, Larry. There was a
murder in April right there. Okay, half of the shops
and the Blazer closed because of crime.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
I mean did he say when he went notice?

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
He didn't, right, Probably not since nineteen thirty nine. But
Scott Jennings even said, He's like, I don't know what
these people are talking about. I watched a man get
murdered with a knife in un station. I mean, it's
just the panhandling, the drug use, everything was like so prevalent.

(01:09:31):
Now they got soldiers there, and people are offended by
the soldiers. They weren't offended by the criminal behavior. How
do you make sense of that? These these are journalists, right,
I can't believe I'm walking around. I got to see
a guy for chigs. Did you prefer the body on

(01:09:52):
the ground with a bloodstains surrounding it? Was that better?
I'm gonna take this. I'm sorry. The wolf Blitzer the
other day put up a picture right outside the Capitol.
Look at this. It wasn't even a hum V. It
was a larger vehicle with four soldiers positioned around it. So, yeah,

(01:10:12):
I've been posting videos and stuff of this repeatedly.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
You're familiar with smartcon Ish, right his show.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
Oh yeah, he's actually kind of sane for CNN.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Maybe just a little bit. But one of the things
that I stick around for is the cartoons. I want
to see what cartoons he is showing during his show
on Saturday mornings and stuff like that, because he does
put a lot of political cartoons in. One of them
that he had was a political cartoon that showed a

(01:10:48):
World War Two vet that said, you know, I, you know,
gave my life for this country. And then the next
one was a Vietnam vet or you know I, you know,
I did this for my country as well. And then
the third panel was the the the troops in DC,

(01:11:11):
I took selfies for my country. And I was like,
are we going to skip over for Oh? It was
World War Two and Korea. So they skipped over Vietnam,
they skipped over Desert Storm, they skipped over the twenty
years of the Global War on Terror to get to
this guy saying I took selfies for my country. And

(01:11:33):
I was I was pissed because, as you know, I'm
a military wife, and that is offensive to a lot
of the military, regardless of where their you know, political
affiliations lie. That's very offensive to a lot of them.
And he thought that it was a great cartoon, and

(01:11:54):
I'm like, no, you're comparing You're comparing apples to nutballs,
nuts and bolts. You're not even comparing fruit.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
And Well, the thing that people seem to miss here
is they're like, I can't believe they're dispatching troops on
American soil instead of overseas. And it's like, don't we
prefer this, you know, like I thought we were against,
you know, going out and imposing our will and violence
on others. See, when I see a soldier police presons

(01:12:25):
on the street, I feel kind of good about it.
I don't understand the people that see them in uniform
and oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
No, the laugh thinks that this is the siege. That's
what they think, and they want this to be the siege.
They really want to see you know, what's his name?
Bruce Willis out there in a tank and they want
to see, you know, Denzel over here, and they want
to see was it Denzel? I want to say, what's Denzel?
And they want to see Annette Benning and they want

(01:12:54):
to see you know, Tony Shaloup. That's what they want.
They want the encampments, They want all of that to
play out so that they can say, see, I told
you so. They don't want d C to be nice
and orderly. That goes against what their narrative requires, which
is complete chaos, so that they keep selling we can

(01:13:15):
save you to everybody else. Now people are starting to
figure out, hey, all this time they've been telling us that,
you know that they will help us, and they never did.
Here comes Trump, he cleans this place up in less
than four days, and oh my god, I can I
can walk the streets now.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Yeah. And they were denying there was a problem. Now
they're denying that they fixed anything. M And they're in
favor of lawlessness.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Yeah, and it's because of who's the law exactly. And
this is what Britain is now headed to. You're having
the Britains themselves actually taking to the streets and they're
using the UK's allowances for protesting against the state. They've

(01:14:05):
taken to the streets with those flags and the bobbies
have tried to hold them back and said, no, no,
we have all the paperwork. Lord knows the UK thrives
on paperwork. But not only do they have the paperwork,
they also throw it back in their face. Just yesterday
you allowed the Palestinians to go through the town and

(01:14:25):
we are less in number than the Palestinians, so why
can't we And they have no answer, they really don't.
And so now they're taking to the streets. And as
they take to the streets, people look and people are like,
if they can do that, so can I. And now
there's a run on the Saint George's Cross. There's a

(01:14:46):
run on the Union Jack, which the Union flag or whatever,
but we call it the Union Jack. And now you're
seeing echoes all over the EU. You're seeing Poland for
the first time, poland And actually acknowledged Jesus Christ. That's
their king. The country acknowledged this. And y'all have no

(01:15:06):
idea how big this is. Okay, they acknowledge that. That
isn't writing that is that isn't their their laws. Okay,
they closed their borders, they got rid of the bad
illegal immigrants, they incentivized the ones that were actually good,
and everything to go through the process hungary. Same thing.

(01:15:29):
They closed their borders. They kicked every single bad person out,
or at least that's as many as they could. And
now they're trying to, you know, make sure that their
identity is protected. Poland is doing the same thing, and
the EU is all calling them islamophobic. And they're saying,

(01:15:50):
we don't give a shit. Now you have Germany in
real trouble because their pm PM Merits actually came out
in the Reichstock and actually said that the welfare state
is about to crumble. They can no longer sustain their
welfare state. Why. Well, i'll tell you why. It's not
just the fact that they give free, free health care

(01:16:13):
to everybody, regardless of whether they can tax you or not.
The immigrants get free health care too. It's not that
you know that they have an open border of immigrants.
It's that their pensions are so extravagant. No matter what
your job, your pension is you know, set for life,

(01:16:34):
and you can you can. You don't have to work
until you're sixty seven or seventy. You can retire far
earlier and take your pension. But the biggest surprise that
a lot of people don't know about is that Germany
was actually paying their immigrants not to work. And in

(01:16:56):
the beginning when they started this, this was in two
thousand three, two thousand and four around there that they
started doing this, especially with the Russian emigrants, and that's
when the emigration from Turkey began. And then after Turkey,
was Algeria, and after Algeria it was you know, the
entirety of the Middle East. They just kept coming. They

(01:17:19):
were paying the immigrants not to work so that they
would not take the jobs away from the Germans. Okay,
because the Germans were the tax paying base, they could
not tax the immigrants because the immigrants were not German citizens.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
And so when word gets out that you could go
to Germany and get paid to not work, what's going
to take place?

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
Oh and I'm not saying that they were paying you
five hundred dollars a month, No, no, no, no. The
extravagant payouts were huge. At the beginning, it was twenty
five thousand euro per person in the family, So you
came in with your family of six, that was one
hundred and fifty thousand euro a year for you not

(01:18:07):
to work. You were making more money than most Germans
who were working. So of course you didn't have to work.
It wasn't a permanent gig, but it gave you enough
time for you to try and process enough paperwork that
you could legally work in that area, and then you
can take a job even though you were not German,

(01:18:28):
because then you would be paying taxes. I mean, this
is the country where you know, first degree murder is
less than ten years, but tax evation is a solid
twenty five. So they take their taxation seriously. And this
is a problem that Germany is now having to face now.
I don't know if the tariffs had anything to do

(01:18:50):
with it, or if the fact that the US is
now telling the European Union that they have to pay
for their own medicine, because before it was we were
picking up the tap for R and D, we were
picking up the tap for a lot. That's why you
could get medicine real cheap over in the In the
European Union, they don't have that fallback anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
So this kind of thing happened in the United States,
but on a macro level, micro level in Denver because
they were just you know, when Trump got into office,
were just actually before that. It was when Biden was
just flood gating at the southern border. Their their mayor

(01:19:34):
came out and just you know, I we're sanctuary city.
We'll take them on. We can. We are sanctuary city.
So Abbott started shipping people into Denver. Here you go.
You want them so bad, We're overloaded, they're bankrupt in
the city. The immigrants are to the extent that they're
shutting down government services. They're furloughing government workers because they

(01:19:59):
can't pay them. They're actually cutting police and fire service
because they're so tied up money wise catering to the
immigrants and putting them up in housing and clothing and
feeding them there, and nobody in the front office of

(01:20:19):
the city can I don't know, fall back on some
common sense like wait, is we're spending all this money
on people that aren't citizens, and we're screwing the citizens.
It's just where the Democrats just feel like they need
to go anymore. And this is the kind of thing
that's leading to the entire party collapsing before our eyes

(01:20:39):
right now. This isn't me being hyperbolic. This isn't mean
looking at data. This came out in Politico, I think
it was this week. The Democrat Party has barely raised
any money so far this year. After six months, they've
only taken in like fifteen million dollars in political donations.
Act Blue, that fund raising scam of theirs. Act Blue

(01:21:04):
is in the process of shuddering. It's had like I
think half a dozen or so executives all fleeing that entity.
This is how bad it is for them as a party.
They've taken in about fifteen million. They've spent twenty million
paying off Kamala Harris's election bills. So right now they're

(01:21:31):
trying to get donations and people are like, wait, I'm
trying to donate to a candidate and you're using it
to payoff her debt. Screw you. And so they are
like getting hammered with the lack of money coming in,
and it's all because and their hatred. Their visceral opposition

(01:21:53):
to Donald Trump is so hilarious. I mean, look at
what they've had to oppose this year alone. They're against
cutting government waste, they're against law enforcement, they're against deporting illegals,
they're in support of criminals remaining in this country. They
are opposed to tax cuts, and in just the last

(01:22:15):
couple of weeks it was they don't want to fight
crime in DC and they were against Donald Trump getting
a peace accord with Russia and Ukraine. It's like, it's
to to point out the flag burning issue that's coming
up now that Trump is trying to push. I'm really

(01:22:35):
not in favor of this at all. It's just I mean,
I'm not in favor of flag burning by any stretch,
but punishing people forward it seems like a First Amendment issue.
That's where I fall on it. But I'm really thinking
this is him once again forcing the Democrats into an
eighty twenty position where they're gonna go out there now
and so screw him, We're gonna go burn the flag. Yeah,

(01:22:56):
and then the rest of the country is gonna be like,
the hell's wrong with you people? We're burning the American flag.
By the way, donate to us.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
Yeah. I so disjoined it, and they're really, really, really
really into that twenty.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
Well, this is how bad it was. The Sunday Show
John Carl on ABC was discussing the I think it
was the DC crime issue and was acknowledging the fact
that Democrats were coming out against crime, but he was
blaming it on Donald Trump. Well, you know, because just

(01:23:37):
because Trump comes out and says he's gonna fight crime
now when he's making the Democrats oppose that. No, John,
you dumbass. He basically said, this is all Donald Trump.
He's the one that set this trap. Okay, John, I'm
going to walk you through this now or it'll help.

(01:23:58):
I'll type it out and crayon. The Democrats don't have
to go into the trap and eat the bait. You see.
That's the issue here, That's what's happening. Yeah, it's how
dare he do something good and make us oppose him?
That monster fighting crime? Where does he get off then authoritarian?

(01:24:21):
This is just how out of balance they are, completely
between the Democrats and the media. I don't know who's
worse right now, because either side is doing it to
themselves and it just cracks me up, no end. Kamala
Harris is coming out with a book about the election.

(01:24:43):
It's called one hundred and seven Days.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
Who wrote it?

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
I am not unburdened by what I've read. I think
it's going to be a subtitle. She's she got shit
hammered Neil election and she's going to write a how
to book on elections. I read, Yeah, what are you doing?
This is all and it's already being recognized as kind

(01:25:12):
of like a money laundering scheme. She's going also on
a book tour, not like show up at Barnes and
Noble and get a free copy. She's going to be
like a stadium tour. You have to buy tickets for
So let me get this straight. The woman that nobody
wanted it's going to go on tour.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
Now, I just can't. I mean I I I'm sure
she has a really good ghostwriter. She has to have
a really good ghostwriter, because I don't see her finishing
a sentence.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
I just wondered if this tour is going to be
sponsored by a salad shooter.

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
Black box y.

Speaker 3 (01:26:11):
There you go. Yeah, that's the thing is, I might
want to stick around for like the last ten to
fifteen minutes of the show when she gets into that
slurring thing.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Speaking of the show, I've just said, guess what time
it is?

Speaker 3 (01:26:29):
I know, I know, I can see there. Just FYI,
there is no show following us tonight. Is that you
need to go over? You can? Okay, except I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
You can't. But that's you know, you can still Like
if you had another story, well I know you had
your remis out today, I'll.

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):
I'll finish with this one dateline Great Britain. Speaking of
that whole figure out why the BBC felt this was
a necessary story to cover, and yet they did, thankfully.
There's a husband and wife that are I guess you
could say they're coming to contrattempts. They're having a little
bit of a debate, a squabble, if you will. Because

(01:27:16):
the husband, as you know many people do, he's got
a hobby. He has a collection, and it's kind of
weighing down on the wife. She's like, you know, you
have to. I think it's time to get rid of
He doesn't want to. His collection is he collects buses.
And I don't mean the matchboxes buses. I don't mean

(01:27:38):
models you know that you can build and put on
a shelf. Actual commuter buses is his collection. He's got
two dozen of these things.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
Wow, I mean like actual like buses. Like a big client.

Speaker 3 (01:28:01):
Purchase the commercial commuter vehicles and refurbish them. Because his
father used to be a bus driver, and when he
grew up, he reminisced about those fun times where he
would ride along with his father, to the extent he
actually tracked down the very bus his father worked down,
got it, refurbished it, and then just kept going go

(01:28:23):
to junk yards and stuff looking for old model buses
that were in need of restoration and then restored them.
And he drives these around and him and his buddies
go out and party in London and do all kinds
of other things with him. Yeah, And his quote was
something like, when you own a bus, you're always an
interesting person. Okay, sure, let's go with that. When you

(01:28:52):
own twenty three buses, though, might be a bit of
an issue. Might be something else going on besides interesting
that I would describe. But yeah, So the wife is
kind of like, I think you need to tone it
down a little. She actually goes with him on these tours.
She dresses up like a meter maiden. She has the

(01:29:15):
neck tech ticket machine around her and she issues boarding
passes to people. I mean, I guess these are healthy people, sure,
but I'm just trying to think what would compel you
to go to the extent that I own twenty three buses? Okay,

(01:29:39):
got it?

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
You know people in their hobbies.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
Oh you're right, Well you want a bus that's so interesting? No, No,
I own twenty three of them. M got it. I'm
gonna go over there now. So that was That was
one of the breaking news items from the BBC this week.
I included that in my remies.

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
Very cool.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
All right, well, I gotta do the vacating of the
office here, so.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
All right, well, Tank a deep breathon tell us what
we can find here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:16):
I am available on a daily basis at town hall
dot com. I've got a media column there called Rift
from the Headlines. I'm also on the front page of
Red State, where ag you just mentioned. I had my
latest entry for the Remy Awards. I do media nominations
on the regular for my year end awards, like classic

(01:30:36):
crap stuff that goes on all the time in the press,
And come December early January, we'll be awarding a ton
of trophies to our media. Jaz, those things are going
to be stacking up. I'm going to need my own
bus to load them all on. I also got a
twice weekly podcast there. It's called Liable Sources, and you

(01:30:57):
can hear more of me right here at k LR.
On Thursday night, I'm gonna be here with Paul Yawn
from Screen Rant. He and I all go through bad
movies and have fun at their expense. On Gerard Butler month,
we got a gym from Jerry on Thursday night. Alternate Thursdays,
it's me and Orty Packard as we go through entertainment

(01:31:17):
news on the Culture Shift, and of course every Tuesday
here with the ever, effvest and Aggie Reecan on the
cocktail Lounge. If you need more of me than that
less space that you do, go to Jitter Martini. Shark
is my handle. And what about you, Aggie? Where can
people find more of your magnificence?

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
You can find me at Aggieveecon and at Aggie the
barkeep does a rover on X. You can find me
a thirty pm Eastern Tuesday nights doing the cockday lound
with you a thirty pm Eastern Friday night's doing, he said,
She said, with the awesome rowdy Rick. The second Wednesday
of every month, the guys got together for Toxic Masculinity

(01:31:58):
at eight pm East, where I bring the drink of
the evening. And now Jeff and I on the first
of every month at a thirty pm Eastern host Spirited Books,
where we read some books and match a libation to
what tome we are reading and reviewing, So stay tuned

(01:32:19):
for that. We had a makeup show this yeh Saturday,
not the stats Saturday, I think it was. It wasn't
the stats Saturday.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
What you did a book about makeup? Huh you did
a book about makeup? No?

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
No, no, no, we made up one.

Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
Of our kidding, I'm kidding whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
No, it was a Friday, you're right, it was a
Saturday before that because Front Porch Francis was off. And
of course next week right because on the first we
have our show, so look for that. Thanks for joining us, everyone,
and we hope you have a lovely evening.

Speaker 3 (01:32:56):
Now go raise a glassland look at the ceiling.

Speaker 2 (01:33:22):
Every day I get cue. I've been to get on
the bus. It takes me to you. I've been up.

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
I'm so ner aside.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
Just sit and smile. I've been back.

Speaker 3 (01:33:37):
The house is only another mile I get by.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):
Thank you donabor getting me here.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
I didn'