Jimmy is a Suburban Dweller

Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:

• The City vs. the Burbs
• The Biden and Trump debate

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Well, what we need is morecommon sense, common the youth, common
breaking down the world's nonsense about howAmerican common sense. We'll see us through
with the common sense of Houston.I'm just pro common sense for Houston.
From Houston Way dot com. Thisis the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to

(00:27):
you by viewind dot com. Nowhere's Jimmy Barrett. Okay, welcome.
It is a Thursday here on AMnine to fifty kPr. See Jimmy Barrett
Show. I don't normally talk aboutthe city of Houston, not because I
don't care about the city of Houston. I clearly do. After all,
I do live in Harris Cutty.I don't live in the city. I've
never been with one exception, I'venever really lived in the city. For

(00:51):
a very very brief time between marriagenumber one and marriage number two, when
I was in Michigan, I didlive downtown Detroit in an apartment on the
Detroit River, and but that waslike for about maybe six months, and
that's about it. Because I didn'tstay I didn't stay single before long.
Evidently I'm a catch. I don'tknow about that, but but it didn't

(01:19):
take didn't take long to find Elizabethand you know, to move on to
the next step. And then wewent out and we bought a house in
the suburbs. So I've a prettynever pretty much never been I grew up
the suburbs. I guess that's thecity is not my area of comfort.
I don't like tons of noise,I don't like I certainly don't like crime.
You know, when I was havingkids, I certainly didn't want to

(01:41):
send my kids to the public schoolsystem in the city. So you get
the idea. I mean, there'sa lot of reasons why. You know,
I was a suburban dweller, andI guess that's what I got used
to and I still enter this day. Not that there aren't some great places
to live in the City of Houston, but the property taxes are so high
and then and the home value seeunlike unlike a place like Detroit, the
home prices are higher in many casesin the city than they are in the

(02:05):
suburbs. At least that that's theway it was when when we first moved
here in twenty seventeen. You couldget more house in the suburbs than you
could get in the city, whichis the reverse of some places like as
I said, Detroit, where youknow all the all the good deals are
in the city because well, becausepeople don't want to live there. But
here, you know, the cityis so big and we have so many

(02:27):
commuters that a lot of people chooseto live in the city because they don't
want to have to spend forty fiveminutes driving back and forth to work every
day. And I get all that. I still am more comfortable in the
suburbs, but I still care aboutthe city and the things I care about
the city I care about. Icare about going to Minim Park for Astros
games. I care about restaurants,I care about. Those are the main

(02:49):
things I care about. I don'tcare about going to the Houston Public Library.
The Houston Zoo is a nice placeto go, I haven't I don't
have kids. I haven't been tothe Houston Zoo, to be quite honest.
It looks nice from everything I've seen, But when you get right down
to it, you know, there'sa reason why cities are in the shape

(03:12):
that they are in financially speaking,it's because they waste money on the wrong
kinds of things, and I thinkHouston is a primary example of that.
Now, during the Sevester Turner years. We wasted a lot of money on
social programs. We wasted money buyingart. We wasted money, you know,

(03:35):
supporting artful causes. Now, artis wonderful, but art is something
that should be paid for by patrons, right should be paid for by patrons,
by people who who are, youknow, patrons of the arts,
not by the taxpayers. And ofcourse, the primary example right now that
we have going on in Harris Countyis for the whole county, is Lena

(03:57):
Hildago and Rodney Ellis and their desireto give people five hundred dollars a month
just because because it'll make their lifebetter somehow. If we give them five
hundred dollars a month. Now,they're using federal money for it. They
they aren't using local money. Butyou know as well as I do,
that if they can make a casefor this program to continue, that they

(04:19):
will eventually have to replace the federalmoney with local money. And they and
that they're more than willing to dothings like that. Here's the thing that
I think all of us, orat least most of us, would be
more happy about as far as anybig city going forward, because the mayor
Whitmyer came out with his budget.The budget is over six point something billion

(04:45):
dollars. It's a one year budgetfor the City of Houston. Over half
of that money is tied up inpolice and fire. You know, you
got new contracts there. You've gotpolice officers and firefighters who retire and they
get benefits, and very good benefits, by the way, not that they
shouldn't, but you've got over halfof your budget tied up with police and

(05:06):
fire, and that's I guess that'sfine from the standpoint of that is the
number one thing that I think weall expect right as a city service.
We we have crime, We needprotection, and that's what police and fires
for. If your house is burning, you want to be able to call
nine one one and know that aHouston fire department is going to show up

(05:28):
and put out the fire. Ifyou call nine one one because you're a
victim of a crime, you wantto know the Houston Police Department's going to
show up and investigate the crime.Well, as it turns out they weren't
investigating all the crimes because of insufficientmanpower. Well what happens if you have
insufficient funding, then the insufficient manpowerproblem never goes away. I don't know

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if we can fix that problem,but that's number one and that Mayor whit
Myers made it clear that that ishis number one priority and that's good.
Number two on the list, Iwould say would be infrastruture roads. That
is something the City of Houston doesnot spend much money on. I mean
they spend money, but they don'tspend enough money to keep up with the

(06:09):
roads. We all drive on theroads. We all need the roads to
get around. The roads need tobe in decent shape. We do not
live in a harsh while we livein a harsh weather climate. From the
standpoint, it gets really hot inthe summertime and that can sometimes cause problems.
But we don't have to put salton the roads. We don't have
freeze thaw conditions that really make roadsof mess in northern cities. We don't

(06:31):
have to deal with that here.We need to devote money to making sure
that our roads and that's not theonly part of the infrastructure that needs to
be taken care of. There arepipes under the ground in the City of
Houston that are hundreds of years oldthat need to be replaced and have never
been replaced. The electrical grid needsto be sufficient to do supply power for

(06:51):
everybody and to deliver it accurately independently. That's where that's the public schools.
We have an obligation to educate ourchildren. Please fire infrastructure, public schools.
And if you have any money leftover after that, then you can
talk about doing something you know inthe social realm and see if you can

(07:15):
come up with some sort of consensusof all that money should be used.
But when you have a city whereall those things are underperforming, or are
underfunded, or or they don't havethe manpower, you've got nothing until you
fix those problems first. So canwe fix those problems and worry about the
other stuff later? All right,quick little break back with more in a
moment, Jimmy Parrot show. Herea name in nine fifty KPRC. All

(07:56):
right, there's going to be adebates, presidential debates. I don't know
why I'm soundly excited about that.I think we all know how this is
going to go. Right. Twodebates evidently have been agreed upon if they
actually happen. I'm part of thecamp that says maybe one of those debates
will happen, But I don't thinkthat maybe they can get Joe Biden juiced

(08:16):
up enough that he could do adecent job in one debate. Maybe they
can screw around with the rules enoughso that they can make Trump look as
bad as they can. But ifit turns out that, you know,
Trump does a great job in thedebate and Biden does it, then I
would not expect to see a seconddebate. Then they'll come up with some
other reason why they can't or AndI'm also surprised they're doing it in June.

(08:37):
And then I thought about it alittle bit. Maybe the reason why
they're doing the first debate in Juneis because they h's summer vacation season.
The conventions haven't happened yet. Let'sjust, you know, let's see how
he does. And if he reallydoes bad, then that's our reason to

(08:58):
pull the plug on this guy.He will figure out how to get rid
of them, you know, intime for the convention. I'm convinced that's
why they didn't want to do onein Gym. But here is Biden,
and other than the fact that it'sreally edited, he looks fairly strong in
this little promo you did here.Here he is the little snippet of him
answering the debate challenge from Donald Trump, with some reaction from former Georgia Representative

(09:22):
Doug Collins. Here we go,Donald chuklass two debates to me. In
twenty twenty, the Saint said hehadn't shown up for debates. Now he's
acting like he wants to debate meagain. What makes my day? Pal.
I think it's good news if weactually get to have it. I'm
still not convinced it's going to happen, okay, because if you look at
the details that see and Andrew justsent out and some others just sent out
about this, they're actually sort ofplaying it like a presidential debate, saying

(09:43):
if you get fifteen percent of thepolls, which could mean RFK could show
up at this thing, and theBiden people won't let that happen. All
And so again, there's a lotof stuff going on out there. I've
been reading some stuff. I knowyou all folks have as well. So
look, I think there'sill be plentyof outs in six weeks for Joe to
not get into this because frankly,I don't think he wants this debate.
He had to say something. We'llsee how it actually goes. But if

(10:05):
it does happen, we'll see.Yeah. I'm sticking with my theory here
though that well, you know,they had to answer the challenge. You
can't duck it, and this isan opportunity for them to see what they
can physically get him to do versuswhat he can't do, and if he
really bombs in June, then theyhave time to figure out how they're going

(10:26):
to get rid of him. I'mconvinced that that's what's going on with this
thing. I do like Greg Guttfeldand his panels take on of it,
though I found it even funnier.Here's Gutfeld talking about the possibility of debate
and reaction from his panel today.Joe Biden said he will debate Donald Trump
twice and he promises to be alivefor at least one of them, so,

(10:46):
assuming he continues to cheat death,there will be one debate in June,
which would be the earliest head tohead debate ever, and again in
September before early voting starts. ThatOld Joe made the announcement on X Trump
lost two debates to me in twentytwenty. Sin Sandy hadn't shown up for
debate. Now he's acting like hewants to debate me again. Will make

(11:07):
my day, Pal, I'll evendo it twice. So let's pick the
dace. Donald, I hear you'refree on Wednesday's five cuts. Just chickt
at thirteen second video. I guessI had added out all the times he
sharded, lost consciousness and flatline.Meanwhile, Trump already agreed to the debates,
telling Fox Digital quote, I'm readyto go. The dates that they

(11:28):
proposed are fine. Anywhere, anytime, any place. I will provide my
own transportation. I'll drive it back. Donald, What a guy providing his
own transportation. That's smart. Youdon't want to rely on Democrats to get
you there. You'll end up ina lake. You know what I think
is brilliant is the fact that Biden'slike, oh, let's go, man,
We're going to go into these twodebates. Two debates. Yeah,

(11:50):
they're being held by CNN and ABC. Are you freaking kidding me? ABC?
Who just had Robert de Niro onthere slamming Trump. They are going
to be respond for delivering the votersa proper bipartisan questionnaire to this, to
these two candidates and get fair questionsout there. I mean, uh,
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, they'relike really objective when it comes to yeah

(12:13):
they are holy crap. Yeah,well holy crap indeed, But that's what
it is, ABC and CNN,and you know how that's going to go.
And and one of the advantages forTeam Biden is if they do what
they did in the twenty sixteen electionand they get tipped off ahead of time

(12:33):
to what the questions are, right, so you can rehearse what the answers
are going to be. Another reasonprobably why they wanted held there. Oh
there were There was a list ofdemands that came along with all this from
the Biden camp. Number one,he doesn't want an audience. Now,
why wouldn't you want an audience,Well, witnesses. There'll be plenty of

(12:56):
those watching. I assume some peoplewill watch it even in June. So
I don't think it's about witnesses.I think they're concerned about the reaction,
right, the reaction that Trump gets. I mean, because Trump, unlike
Biden, Trump knows how to worka crowd. Trump knows how to get
audience reaction. Trump can be funnyand you know he's not afraid, he's

(13:20):
not afraid to do the putdowns,So I can I guess from that aspect,
I can see maybe why, youknow, why the Biden crowd does
not want there to be an audience. Another demand was a mute button.
A mute button for Trump. Iassume that both candidates would have one.
Well I shouldn't assume that, shouldI what if they just did a mute

(13:43):
button for Trump and they didn't doa mute button for Biden. And the
reason why they wanted the mute buttonis because Trump has the tendency to take
things over and you know, havea stream of consciousness going on as the
other person is answering a question,he'll just chirp right in, but he
can't if they turn his microphone off. I think they did that last time,
didn't I think so? I thinkthey did that last time. The

(14:07):
other demand, evidently is that theyneither one of them, from what I
hear, doesn't want RFK Junior there. They don't they want to don't want
to debate Kennedy. So I thinkboth of them are concerned about losing votes
to Kennedy. Perhaps Biden even moreconcerned about it, though, than Trump.
You know, those are a coupleof the demands that they've that they've

(14:28):
made for this thing, or atleast, you know, for the most
part, the Biden camp has,and you know, they'll one or two
things will happen. Either they willmeet those demands and the debate will happen,
or they won't, and then he'sgot an excuse not to debate.
That's a no. That's probably ano lose proposition, right. I think
that's pretty much a no lose propositionfor Biden. If you get if you

(14:50):
get to set the rules, andif your demands aren't meant you can just
go ahead and decide you're not goingto do it, then you're ahead on
the whole deal. All Right's geta couple more opinions here on the whole
debate thing. Here's Joe Kancia in, Mark Simone Marx Simone is a New
York City radio host knows Trump prettywell, and Joe Concio, of course

(15:11):
from Fox. Here they are talkingabout the debates in twenty sixteen. CNN
has the first debate in June.On two occasions, they shared questions with
the Clinton campaign in advance. Dowe remember that who's to say this won't
happen again, because we still don'tquite know how that happened. Right.
Secondly, this is the same networkthat ousted its president last year. It's

(15:33):
network president Chris Lick because lickt gaveTrump a town hall on the network,
and everybody on that network, ledby Jake Tapper, revolted against the president
and he got kicked out. Sonow we're supposed to believe that we're going
to get a fair, objective,moderating debate from CNN given their history in
this department, Because now we're goingto get Larry a heavy dose of January

(15:56):
sixth, We're going to get theTrump trials, We're going to get a
lot to focus on abortion. Youlook at gallup the five most important topics
and issues in terms of voters andwhat is most important to them The economy
and inflation number one, a legalimmigration, two, government and poor leadership
number three. We have foreign policyat number four and number five is poverty

(16:17):
and homeless. Where was the trials? Where were the trials? Where the
trials? Fifteen eighteen? Oh money? Probably simon you think CNN's a liberal
network. Really they have to scrambleaway from the left just to get to
liberal. They're so far to theleft. But what does this all mean.
Whenever somebody suddenly demands debates, itmeans they're way behind. That's the

(16:37):
only time he got a good point. So he's behind in the rigged public
polls. He must really be behindin the private polls. I think Saturday
is what made this happen. Ithink that paniced them. That Trump got
one hundred thousand people. We've neverseen one hundred thousand. I think that
really scared them. Now why soearly? Why June? We've never had
a debate before the convention. Ithink the Biden people know he could be

(17:02):
a disaster and they'll need time tofix it. If he is, Yeah,
well fix it by fixing it isit's to get rid of him.
That's how you fix that problem.But I think they're both dead on right,
dead on right about what is likelyto happen, and on the issue
thing, I think it's could beclear to it. There will not be
very many questions about the economy,and Trump will have to figure out ways

(17:23):
to work the economy in Trump knowswhat the issues are. He knows what
the biggest issues are. He'll figureout a way to work those in,
and he'll have to. They'll haveto, and they'll try to keep him
away from those topics as much asthey can. All Right, We're to
take quick old break. We're backwith Born a moment. It's the Jimmy
Bart Show here on AM nine fiftyKPRC. All right, we are back,

(18:03):
getting ready to wrap it up fora Thursday. But before we do,
we got a couple other things totalk about. Here. See if
I can remember what it was.Oh, Sharon, I did this this
morning, and I was I wasa little bit of shock over this.
I guess in fairness, if I'mgoing to talk about this, I should
probably let you know what my religiousbackground is. I do not currently attend

(18:27):
any particular church. I for Christmas, for example, we went to a
Lutheran church because we we happened toknow the you know, the organist there,
who's who's a relative of my wife. I was born and raised a
Methodist at the United Methodist Church.I from what I hear, I probably

(18:49):
would not recognize the Methodist religion anymore. It is become very liberal. A
lot of religion have I think that, In fact, I think that most
other than perhaps the Southern Baptists.Many of the religions have become more liberal

(19:10):
than I am, and I don'treally feel comfortable in church the way I
used to. I say all thisto say, you know, the fact
that I don't go to church,or rarely go to church, or have
a particular endorsed religious preference at thispoint has nothing to do with my belief

(19:33):
in God, or in Jesus Christ, or my belief in many in morality,
in spiritual issues. I still considermyself to be a spiritual person.
I still consider myself at least tryingon a constant basis to morally do the
right thing. I like all ofus, I don't always achieve that.

(19:55):
Sometimes I fail, sometimes I failmiserably. But the fact is I try
very hard, you know, tolead an upstanding life. I mean,
I believe in the tank commandments,especially the thou shalt not kill part.
That's really important. But we don'thave a lot of that going on in
our lives anymore. And that concernsme because I think as a country we've

(20:19):
kind of lost our way as aresult of that. Now, I say
all that about myself because I didn'twant to didn't want to think that I'm
preaching. I'm not trying to preachhere, But I do find it very
interesting. I saw this headline andit really got my attention. The headline
is atheists take up more than halfthe population in these fifteen states. Atheist.

(20:45):
Now, I think they might havegotten confused when they did the story
a little bit. It may takea little revisiting, because I think when
they when they brought up the termatheists, they didn't really mean, you
know, people who just don't believein God, you know, they they
I don't know if they included theThey probably included the agnostic crowd, and

(21:07):
they probably also include people who don'tgo to church ever go to church.
Now, if you title, ifyou if you total all those people up,
then then maybe I can see wherethey came up with these figures.
But I found it shocking and andkind of interesting at the same time that
the top states that made this atheistlist were all in New England. Vermont

(21:33):
was number one. Like over fiftysix percent of the state population doesn't go
to church, or doesn't believe inGod, or maybe believes in the Higher
power but they're not quite sure whatthe higher power is. But they're they're
they're not, they don't have atraditional religious value fifty six percent, that's
the majority. Also, the otherNew England states the same situation, very

(21:59):
similar, very simi. Massachusetts wason the list, Maine was on the
list, as they said, Vermontawas on the list, Connecticut was on
the list. I mean, allthese New England states made that list,
and I thought, well, well, that's interesting. What is it about
New England that would lead people tobe less religious? That kind of confused

(22:21):
me a little bit. I wasn'tquite sure what was going on with that,
and I don't know really the answerto that. There's a lot of
states at California and New York earlierin the top twenty five, maybe even
my home state of Michigan I thinkwas number twenty five on that list.
What also was interesting, of course, is that there were no Southern states
that were on that list. Infact, I think if you were probably

(22:41):
to run an opposite list of stateswhere you're going to find the most religious
people, the people who go tochurch most often, the people who have
a strong belief in God, you'reprobably going to find all the Southern states
on that list, including I'm guessingaxis, so we really happy. We

(23:02):
talk about North South Dubai on theshow all the time. It even it
even gets down to religion and morality, there is a there's just a different
set of life rules that work herefor people who live in the North versus
people who live in the South.That's why so God him in the South.
I feel so much more comfortable herethan than I ever felt up north.

(23:26):
It's just they have different priorities,and they they're religious in their own
way. That's the other disturbing partof it. They worship other things,
Mother Earth, government, a wholevariety of things that I don't worship,
and I'm guessing you don't worship becauseyou're listening to the show, so you
don't worship those things either. Youknow. One last thing for you here,

(23:48):
because I find this interesting as well, that denial. Denial is a
powerful thing, and denial seems tobe working really hard right now in the
Biden administration. Denial over the poles. They are just having themselves a fit
over the poles that are out rightnow, especially when it comes from an
organization like the New York Times.The New York Times their poll, would

(24:12):
you know how slandered. Their polesare going to be Their poll shows that
Biden is behind in five out ofsix battleground states, and they're having a
hard time figuring this one out andreconciling it, garing Jean Pierre that the
White House spokesperson got asked this aboutPeter Doocey asked the question about it.

(24:32):
Here's how that went. I know, you don't like to talk about poles
like the five loom States swing statesthat he is losing right now to somebody
who is a criminal defendant. Butmore broadly, it doesn't seem like anything
you guys are doing is making himmore popular. Why do you think that
is? We understand we are sensitiveenough and open minded enough to understand that

(24:56):
this is that not just this country, but globally, people have had to
deal with a pandemic and coming outof that pandemic. We understand that even
you know, you think about gasprices and because of Putin's war, what
that has occurred that led to gasprices increasing and the President had a lot

(25:18):
to deal with when he walked in. Yeah, that wasn't great. Not
surprised. Look, Biden's not believingthe polls. He complained to a CNN
anchor, how many people are youguys pulling? Well, I just checked
they pulled over oney two hundred peopleto be statistically relevant. So maybe he
should take a quantitative methods class tounderstand how polling works. But then he
went on to say, well,the press doesn't write about it. The

(25:38):
momentum is clearly in our favor.Why would the press write that you have
momentum when in the New York Timespulled Trump speeding you in five out of
six states, when in the bloomberbpoll he's beating you in six out of
seven states. Why would they writethat you have clear momentum. That would
be lying. But he can continueto not believe the polls, and he
pushes, oh, well I'm winningamong likely voters. That is true and

(26:00):
polls. But even in the swingstate pole in the New York Times,
he Trump is winning five of sixstates. So get better polls, you'll
get better headlines. Yeah, Idon't the answer the Poork Cringejean Pierre,
I shouldn't say poor. I don'tfeel sorry for I mean, she's so
so unqualified to do the job thatshe does. But you're still gonna Trump
out Putin's war for high gas prices. You can still gonna try blaming Putin

(26:25):
for that, just like you tryto blame blame Trump for inflation. Nobody's
buying it. Nobody is buying it. I'm sorry. Better think of something
else, like, I don't know, solving some of these problems and taking
back some of your crazy ideas.All right, Gotta leave it at that
for now. You all have agreat day. Thank you for listening.
Sure to appreciate it. See youtomorrow morning, bright nearly for a Friday

(26:48):
edition of Houston's Morning News starting atfive AM with Sera over a news radio
seven forty KTRH. We're back hereat four on AM nine fifty KPRC joined
the band and the band