Latest / The Mark Belling Podcast / Mark Belling Podcast #164: What a contrast: Tom Tiffany's extraordinary response to his plane landing in a lake, and AOC and Mamdani laughing it up as 9/11 survivors' names are read. And, a remarkable case from Kenosha County where a Judge rejects a plea bargain that would've allowed a PTA embezzler to skate.

Transcript

Mark Belling Podcast #164: What a contrast: Tom Tiffany's extraordinary response to his plane landing in a lake, and AOC and Mamdani laughing it up as 9/11 survivors' names are read. And, a remarkable case from Kenosha County where a Judge rejects a plea bargain that would've allowed a PTA embezzler to skate. · The Mark Belling Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by Uline. For quality
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: shipping and industrial supplies, Uline has everything in stock. Visit Uline.com.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Doesn't it seem like the whole world is photoshopped? Everybody
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: is posing. People are presenting an image of themselves. But
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: is it real? I mean, we can start with the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: photoshopping of people's photos in which they make themselves look
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: not only more attractive, sometimes completely different from what they
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: actually look like. And then there's the image posing. How
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: many people who post on social media, especially Facebook or
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Instagram or even TikTok, are they posting anything that's really them? Influencers.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: The funny thing about influencers is we're supposed to pay
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: attention to them, but everything they're doing seems fake. It's
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: all contrived. It's all aimed at getting attention. We're in
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the political season. The candidates all hire advertising agencies to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: put out there an image of them. But what's actually
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: behind that image? What's the real person? There were two
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: events over the weekend that I thought were very revealing.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Because it allowed the reality to sneak in. We saw,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I think, an actual glimpse of who the people really are.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: The first is the near-death experience of Republican Governor candidate
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Tom Tiffany. Passenger in a plane, plane, not a jet,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: piloted by a 73-year-old man, They crash into Lake Wausau,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: crash into the water in the dark on Saturday night.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: How he handled that during and then after, I think,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: gives us real insight into the guy. And then a
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: couple of, one day earlier, the 9-11 memorial in New York,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: where they went through the reading of the survivors' names.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Took a long time because, excuse me, I said survivors.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: The victims' names. A lot of names to go through.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Probably was rather boring for the people who were sitting
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: there listening. But you show respect. And then in this image.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: that's gone viral, at least in the conservative world. The
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: media really doesn't want you to see it. Of AOC
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: popping up and greeting Mamdani. And while the names are
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: being respectfully read and everyone is silent, there the two
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: of them are yucking it up. Two images. And I
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: think They both gave us some pretty good insight into
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the actual human beings there. More on that in a moment.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Uline moves fast so your business doesn't miss a beat.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: From shipping and industrial supplies to office furniture, Uline offers
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a wide range of products that are in stock and
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: ready to ship the same day if you order by
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: 6 p.m. Even the big stuff. Uline's expert customer service
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: team is available 24-7 to answer your questions, help you
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: quickly and easily place an order, or assist with any
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: other business needs, visit Uline.com. The Tom Tiffany story. He
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: was apparently on lacrosse Saturday night, and he had a
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: private pilot who was flying him back to Wausau. The pilot,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: very experienced. He's actually the chairman of the Langley County
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Republican Party, 73 years old. They're flying back. And it
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: was either dark or getting dark. The plane evidently lost power.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And they ended up having to make a water landing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I honestly don't know how common that is. I don't
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: think it can be very common. It wasn't a seaplane.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: It was just a regular plane. And they probably, I'm
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: guessing the pilot figured that the water is safer than
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: without power trying to land, say, in a farm field. Anyway,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: They had to make a water landing. The last water
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: landing I can think of is the miracle on the Hudson.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Neither of these guys are spring chickens. Tom's in his mid-60s.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: The pilot is in his early 70s. They land. I
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: can't even imagine what that jolt is. By the way,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I should stress here, because I think a couple of
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: people got this story wrong. This is a plane. It
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: wasn't a jet. It's a regular little, I think a
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: little four-seater plane. I don't know if that makes the
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: landing more cushioned or less, but they hit the water.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: You're hitting the water in a plane. You got to
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: get out. And they're in the middle of this lake. Now,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: before I go any farther, everybody always wonders how they'd
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: handle things. I mean, all I know about how it
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: was a miracle on the Hudson is what, Happened in
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: the Clint Eastwood movie. Clint Eastwood did the movie Sully.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: And you see the passengers all kind of quietly bending
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: over and getting in the position and praying. And the
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: flight attendants giving them instructions, repeating it over and over.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And nobody's screaming. I have to think it's just the opposite.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I have to think it's absolute total chaos that nobody
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: has any kind of control. Nobody is showing cool. People
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: are doing all the right. Anyway, I don't know. If
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I'm in that situation, do I brace and get in
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the exact right position? And then when we land, do
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: I immediately gather myself and have the guts to get
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: out of the plane? If there's a life jacket in
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: the plane, and my guess is a plane wouldn't have
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: a life jacket, would there be the presence of mind
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: to get a hold of it? If not, you're in
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: the water. So here these two guys are in the water.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: They were in the deeper part of the lake. Let
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: me Added interjection here. A reporter for JS Online in Gannett,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: her name is Hope Carnop, posted in a social media
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: post on X shortly after this that they landed in
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: only 30 feet of water. And she put in the
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: word only. Quite a few people jumped on this, including me,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: in a post on X. What do you mean only?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: 30 feet was apparently the deepest part of the lake.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: And that apparently in her mind is an only. I'm
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: not sure why it's relevant what the depth of the
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: lake even is. And comparing it again to a very
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: different story, the miracle in the Hudson when Sully landed
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: that U.S. Airways plane in the Hudson River, I don't
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: actually think I ever heard anybody report what the depth
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: of the river was. In fact, I looked it up
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: in the context of this story because as many times
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: as I've been past the Hudson River, I don't know
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: how deep it is. So she put in the depth,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: and then she put in the word only. Again, I
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: don't know what only is supposed to mean there or
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: what the point was of saying it or what the
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: point even was of the depth, but everybody, it seems,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: read it as sort of minimizing, well, it wasn't a
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: very deep lake. I don't know. If I'm landing in
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: a plane, it seems to me the 30 feet may
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: as well be 30 miles because if I start going under,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how much farther I have to go down,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: but She put that in there. She later explained that
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: she was trying to explain that this actually made it
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: more dangerous because the lake was rather shallow. I don't know.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe it was a typical biased cheap shot by a reporter,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: or maybe it was something that she posted rather carelessly
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: on social media, which certainly can happen. Anyway. They swim
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: over towards shallow water. I don't know how long it
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: was to the shore, but it was far enough away
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: that they didn't think they could get to the shore.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: So they swam to shallow water and then tried to
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: stay afloat. Obviously, there are images of this. And the
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: first responders, some people knew that this plane went down.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: And a rescue began. And they were rescued by airplane.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: So they stayed in the water, stayed afloat in the
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: shallow part of the water until they could be rescued.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Tiffany was taken to a hospital. His only apparent injury
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: was when they landed in the water, his head cracked
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: into the dash on the plane. My guess is that
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: he's sitting next to the pilot, if it's a four-seater,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: and he hit whatever you want to call it, the
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: dash or the cushioning or whatever it is that's in
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: front of him, and he hit himself right above the eye.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: So you can see these stitches, and they're right above
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: the eye. A little bit lower, he's probably blinded, at
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: least in that eye. And he has to pop out
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: of there and meet the media the next day. and
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: other than those stitches he looked absolutely fine he was
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: able to describe what happened as he's describing it he
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: choked up a bit as he considered how close he
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: was to dying, and the pilot apparently is a friend
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: of his. He was proud of how his friend, the pilot,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: handled the situation, proud of how the two of them
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: handled it, and he said clearly, not scripted, clearly from
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: the heart, that he thinks God was looking out for him.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Some people may poo-poo that. They may argue, well, if
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: God was looking out for you, why did he crash
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: you in the lake at the first? I don't know.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: but it was an honest, genuine human response. Furthermore, you
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: talk about being tested under pressure. I look around me
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: and I see so many people, I guess most of them,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: but not necessarily all young. They can't handle anything. You'll
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: see these videos on YouTube of people, they can't handle
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: being pulled over for drunk driving. They can't handle anything
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: at all. They fall apart at the slightest little thing. Now, obviously,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: we're not expecting people like that to run for governor,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: although now that I think of it, one of them
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: almost did become the Democratic candidate for governor. It certainly
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: helped Tiffany, I think, that he's from up north. Up
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: north is nothing but ponds and lakes and swimming holes.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: He's probably really experienced in the water. I would have drowned.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I'm a terrible swimmer. Plus, I don't know how shallow
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: the water was that he got to, but that couldn't
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: have been a lot of fun. It certainly had to
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: be physically demanding, not to mention the exhilaration and adrenaline
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: running through your bodies when all of this is going on.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: And then he doesn't get much time to kind of
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: gather himself back together. He's got to show up and
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: he's got to talk to the media and kind of
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: give them assurance, you know, I'm okay, and describe what happened.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I thought it was a real human being's response to
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: a real, actual, almost fatal experience that he was involved
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: in and how his actions were a huge part of
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: him not dying. I don't know that Tiffany was heroic.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know that the pilot was heroic. I kind
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: of think that he is. There's going to be an
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: investigation into what caused this, but it sounded like the
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: plane lost power as opposed to the pilot missing a
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: runway or something like that. What a harrowing experience. You know,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: I've done more than one segment on the number of
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: people in business or politicians or sports figures that just
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: constantly are making these small jumps in planes. I often
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: think NASCAR drivers. In the last several years, it seems
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: as though more of them have been killed in their
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: own private jets, bopping from one place to another than
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: on the track. Well, in terms of an elected official
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: like a governor, usually the governor goes anywhere he's in
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a jet. But Tiffany's running for governor. and he's bopping
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: around all over the place, and he's bopping around to
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of places that don't have runways long enough
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: for jets. He's going from one airfield to another airfield,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: then it's somewhere close to where it is that he's going.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: They're in these things all the time, and in this instance,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: there's not even any staff with him, so he must
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: have been going home for the weekend or something like
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: that because it was just the pilot and him that
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: was in the plane. All these little flights and all
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: of these little tiny little planes... There's a risk associated
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: with it, and there Tiffany experienced it. I don't think
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: most people in Wisconsin, other than those up north, know
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: much about who Tiffany is. He's got name recognition because
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: he's been a congressman. And before that, he was in
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: the legislature. And he's had ads on TV for months.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So you get some sense of the guy, but unless
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: you're from northern Wisconsin and you see him all the
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: time because he was your congressman and so on, I
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: don't know that he's known as well. I thought we
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: got a real glimpse of the real guy here. Now,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: let me go to the Mamdani AOC moment at 9-11.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: And by the way, there are people defending them. Mamdani
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: has said AOC had just gotten there and all he
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: did was greet her. I don't know if that's true,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: and I don't know how long the exchange went on,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: but I'll grant you that when people post videos of this,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: there's never any context. Was it edited so we saw
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: the only three seconds in which the two of them
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: had smiles on their faces? I don't know. But it
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: sure seems to me that if you're going to go
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: to an event like this, politician, dignitary, or otherwise... You
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: understand how you're supposed to behave. When they're reading those names,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: and I don't care how long it takes, you stand
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: there with respect. You don't chit-chat with the person sitting
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: next to you. And you sure as hell don't start
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: yucking it up like the two of them were doing.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Also understand that you have two of the least patriotic
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: figures in American life. Mamdani himself, who was asked repeatedly
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: by people not to show up because of his pro-Palestinian,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: anti-Israel statements. Instead, he shows up because he says he
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: wants to pay tribute to what happened in 9-11, such
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: a significant thing in the city of New York, etc., etc., etc.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: But I think, just as in the case of Tiffany,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: what we saw here in this reaction was real life
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: showing up. Now, let's imagine AOC walks up to him
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: and starts to greet him like the dingbat that she is.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And I could certainly see AOC, oh, 9-11, I was
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: just a cocktail. How old was she then? What is
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: she now? 35, 36? What do you think, AOC?
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: 36.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: All right, she was 11. Imagine the little girl. Imagine
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: how stupid of a little girl she was. She's not
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: very bright now. And I could just see her walking
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: up to Mom Donnie, smiling like this, not giving a crap. Okay, fine,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: she does that. A lot of goofs that I know
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: in my life are going to walk up to me
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: and start doing something inappropriate. Bamdani doesn't have the sense,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: first of all, he doesn't have the sense to know
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: that somebody's probably recording every moment of his life that
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: he's in public. Or, was his instinctive response, oh my God,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: this is going on forever, here's AOC, I'm going to
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: say hi to her. It was an utter lack of respect.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: And the thing again is, you know doggone well that
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: that lack of respect is real. That's where both of
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: them come from. Mamdani was at the 9-11 thing because
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: he felt like he had to be there. But I
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: don't think it's any big thing. He pals around with
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: people like Hasan Piker who say that the United States
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: is a terrible country and ought to be destroyed. His
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: entire life has been spent In the radical Muslim world, AOC,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: she's nothing but an America basher. And both of them
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: trivialize stuff like this. These are people who worship a
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: woman's decision to decide she's a man or vice versa.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: But honoring people who were slaughtered by Muslim terrorists, that
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: doesn't trip their trigger. And again, I think in that
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: brief moment, The real AOC and the real Mamdani appeared
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: in the same way that I think. We got an
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: image of the real Tom Tiffany. After that, I guess
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: I don't want to call it a crash because it
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: was a landing, but it was not landing where you
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: were supposed to land. It's hard to say if you
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: call that a crash. Like if you landed in the
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: field because you ran out of power. and then bounced around,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: is that a crash or not? Do you know you
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: could land a plane like that on water and that
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: it wouldn't immediately go down? It must be you have
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to land exactly correct and not come down nose first
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: and so on. The thing is, with regard to you know,
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: airline pilots, they are trained on that because in the instructions,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: nobody ever pays any attention to what are the things
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: that they say is in the unlikely event of a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: water landing. And ever since, you know, the Sully thing happened,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I laugh when they say the unlikely. Well, it is
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: unlikely as far as I know, it's only happened once.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: And what are you supposed to do? Grab the cushion
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: from underneath your seat or anything? I just, yeah, I
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: just can't imagine that that actually comes up. But then
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: when I know in the Clint Eastwood movie, they were
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: all grabbing it. Clint Eastwood believes in realism, so that
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: was probably pretty close to the way that it was. Anyway,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: you have to hit exactly right because any kind of
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: thrust with the nose first, the gravity is going to
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: force you down rather than what's ever in the plan.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: to be flotation. But for a small plane, it doesn't
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: have all of that equipment or anything. And I don't know,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: does the seat underneath get Tiffany's seat? Is that a
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: flotation device on a small plane? There's somebody out there
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: in the pilot world that probably knows the answer to that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: But I just can't even imagine that that can be
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: an easy thing to do. I mean, I'm not at
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: all afraid to fly. And I've done a lot more
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: flying on jets than I have on small planes. But
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: I can relate to this story. I mean, back at
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: the company I worked for before I came to, well,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: I was going to say before I came to iArt,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: which was the successor to SFX, which was the successor
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: to Hearst. We might have had another, we might have
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: had another owner in there somewhere that I don't remember.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: But the company that I worked for prior to that,
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: where I worked for four different radio stations in four cities,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Before I got here, the company is named Midwest Family Broadcasting.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: The chairman and CEO, the largest shareholder of the company,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: he was a pilot. He was, at the time I
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: was working for the company, he's up there in years.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know if Bill was in his 70s, but
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: he was certainly late 60s, maybe early 70s. And when
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: there were company meetings, like if the general managers of
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: the company, there are stations all over the Midwest. or
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: the news directors or the program directors, the various, they
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: were going to get them all together in a certain place.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: He'd like fly several of them so that everybody didn't
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: have to make these four and 500 mile drives. And
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I've been, I was on a few of his flights
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: when it was just a small plane and he's in
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: there and he's not working off of any instruments. He's
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: finding the airstrip via visually. Yeah. Don't have a Jeep.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Bill's no spring chicken here. And there wasn't like there
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: was any co-pilot sitting there. So you do kind of
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: think about that. Just imagine, okay, I'm a passenger on
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: a small plane here, and I'm the only guy in there.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: The pilot said, I've lost power. And now it's nighttime.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: It's nowhere safe to land. I'm going to land in
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the water. I mean, I'm just assuming I'm dead. We
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: mentioned the 9-11 story. Something happened that might have been overlooked.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: It got some degree of coverage. President Trump declassified the
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Bush-era 9-11 documents, including the intelligence that President Bush, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: for that matter, Clinton, had received about al-Qaeda prior to 9-11.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And as has been speculated upon for some time, we
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: now know from the documents that there were repeated warnings,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: that al-Qaeda was planning an attack, and there was a
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: good chance that the attack was going to be via airplanes.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: There's a lot written about this. I'm going to quote
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: from a report that appeared on politico.com. This story actually
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: dates back a few years, but it gives you some
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: sense of the larger picture of the documents that were
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: released over the weekend. An exclusive look at how the
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Bush administration ignored this warning from the CIA months before 9-11,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: along with others that were far more detailed than previously revealed.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Bin Laden determined to strike the United States. The CIA's
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: famous presidential daily brief presented to George W. Bush on
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: August 6, 2001, that's just about a month before the attack,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: has always been exhibit A in the case that his
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: administration shrugged off warnings of an al-Qaeda attack. But months earlier,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: urgently began to warn the White House that an attack
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: was coming. The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: and Black, intelligence officials, pitched a plan in the spring
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: of 2001 called the Blue Sky Paper to Bush and
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: his new national security team. It called for a covert
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: CIA and military campaign to end the al-Qaeda threat, getting
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: bridge with Uzbekistan. And the word back, says Tenet, was,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: we're not quite ready to consider this. We don't want
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: to start the clock ticking. At the end of July,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: 10 of his deputies gathered in the director's conference room
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: at CIA headquarters. We were just thinking about all of
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: this and trying to figure out how this attack might occur,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: he recalls. And I'll never forget this until the day
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: I die. Rich Blea looked at everybody and said, they're
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: coming here. And the silence that followed was deafening. You
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: could feel the oxygen come out of the room. They're
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: coming here. Tenet vividly recalls the White House meeting with
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Condoleezza Rice and her team. George W. Bush was on
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: a trip to Boston. Rich Bleas started saying, There will
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: be significant terror attacks against the United States in the
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: may be multiple. Al-Qaeda intention is the destruction of the
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: United States, Condi said. What do you think we need
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: to do? Black responded by slamming his fist on the
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: table and saying, We need to get at a wartime
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: footing now. Sean Davis on X. George W. Bush was
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: personally warned in May of 2001 via a top-secret memorandum
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: marked for the president only that Osama bin Laden was
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: planning spectacular attacks against the U.S. using hijacked aircraft. The
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: May 22, 2001 memoir, this is one of those declassified
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: by Trump over the weekend, prepared exclusively for President George W.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Bush was entitled, captured terrorist details hostage plot, and notes
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: that planning is underway for three separate operations. Now, obviously,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: it's very easy to second-guess these warnings that were presented
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: to George W. Bush in 2001, just as it's easy
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: to second-guess decisions, for example, made by the Packers after
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: they didn't work out in yesterday's games. One of the
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: things that a president has to consider is there are
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: consequences to doing something in the same way that there
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: could be consequences to not doing something. And secondly, it
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: wasn't like warnings about Al Qaeda were new. Al Qaeda
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: tried to blow up the World Trade Center a decade
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: earlier when they got into the elevator. So there were
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: always these concerns. My guess, however, is, and there's pretty
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: good information to back this up, one of the things
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: that made Bush reluctant to act on this was he
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: had this overall grand plan, this is before 9-11, it
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: was before the second war with Iraq, of trying to
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: bring peace to the Middle East and pushing this whole
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: concept of democracy and freedom and igniting a war against
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Al-Qaeda would have likely pitted him against much of the
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: rest of the Middle East. We have always had a problem,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: and I just mentioned this last week in the United States,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: of doing something about something before it's too late. People
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: never take anything seriously. The data center thing might be
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the opposite, where we might be overreacting to something before
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: it comes forward. But generally speaking, We tend not to
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: respond to a threat because we don't think that it's
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: real or that isn't going to happen or there's just
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: always something else that can be done. I bring this
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: up in the context of Trump's war with Iran. The
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: war with Iran did not have, I think, a good option.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: The option that Trump has taken clearly has had downsides.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I think that there may have been an impression on
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: the part of Trump that he was going to be
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: able to get Iran to surrender. after giving them massive damage.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: If so, that was a miscalculation. The best we were
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: going to be able to do is what we've done,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: which is wipe out their military and cripple their government
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: and wreck their economy. But getting them to surrender, that
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: appears to be something that they're just incapable of doing.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: So now we're in this situation that some say might
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: be approaching a quagmire, clearly has driven up the price
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: of oil, etc. But, Had Trump not responded, here we'd
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: be sitting here. Let's fast forward and say November of
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: this year. Iran fires a nuclear weapon at Israel. And
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: we all be going back doing the same thing that
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: we're doing with this 9-11 stuff. We knew the warning.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: We knew the warning. We knew they were getting close.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: We knew they were getting close. We knew they were
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: getting close. Trump said he'd never let Iran have a
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapon. I think you have to err on the
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: side of preventing something terrible like this. And I suspect
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: that if Trump, whether Bush, W. Bush had acted against
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Al Qaeda prior to 9-11, there would have been a
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: lot of people who would have dismissed it. They're going
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: to hijack a bunch of American airplanes and fly them
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: into the buildings. People would have thought it was so
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: far-fetched that they would have attacked him. for hitting defenseless civilians,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: al-Qaeda is not a military organization, all of that. You can't, however,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: be paralyzed by the fear of the consequences of what's
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: going to happen. Next story, somewhat related. We have this
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: separate problem in the Middle East with another group of
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: radical Muslims, the Houthis. The Houthis are now messing with
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are asking President Trump for assistance
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: in hitting the Houthis. Apparently, the Saudis have been overstating
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: how much of a military presence they had in neighboring
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: nations like Yemen. Apparently, it's been a lot less because
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: the Houthis have moved forward without much resistance. Well, we
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: do know who has the power to inflict some pretty
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: good damage on the Houthis and stop this advance. It's
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: probably the United States. So Saudi Arabia's asking us. And
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Trump's telling them, no. I think Trump is correct here.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Helping the Saudis attack the Houthis is nothing more than
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: an escalation of this thing that we're in in the
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Middle East. The next thing you know, we'll have seven
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: wars going on over there. Secondly, the Saudis. How much
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: help have the Saudis given us in the current war
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: with Iran? Nothing. I think the Saudis were happy to
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: see us, and I think that quietly they were happy
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: to see Israel go after Iran because nobody in the
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Middle East likes Iran, but the Saudis did not cooperate
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: with us in attacking Iran. They've also refused to provide
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: any assistance in moving forward with the Abraham Accords in
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: trying to get nations in the Middle East to recognize Israel.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: So suddenly now the Saudis need some help from us.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I think in terms of public policy and foreign policy,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: we don't need to be involved in the actions against
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: the Houthis, which again primarily are affecting countries other than
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: us like the Saudis. But secondly, If Saudi Arabia wants
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: some help from us, it needed to provide help to
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: us before. It's my same general attitude about Canada. Canada
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: has looked upon the United States as nothing more than
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: a lifeline for 150 years. And I just, I struggle
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: to think of the last time Canada's done a damn
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: thing for us. Jason's pretty smart. When's the last time
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Canada did anything for us? Can you think of one?
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, all they've ever done is screw with us
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: on trade. It's damn near impossible for an American to
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: get a work visa and hang around in Canada for
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: a lengthy period of time. Canadians get to hang around
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: here for six months and freeload off the United States
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: without a job. Try doing that in Canada. You're bringing
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: in a cheap shot by bringing Canada into this whole
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: thing with Saudi Arabia. Well, it probably was a cheap shot,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: but I wanted to do it. Now this story. There's
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: this guy, there's certain like pollsters and pundits that the
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: media loves. It's got to just be with all that
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: elbow rubbing that goes on in D.C. If I was
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: based in D.C., would I do this elbow rubbing? There's
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: just no way. I hate that stuff. I don't do
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: that elbow rubbing even in Milwaukee. I worked in Madison
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: for three years. There was a lot of that elbow
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: rubbing and Madison was always liberal. It was just never
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: as insidiously liberal as it is now. You know, and
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: there'd be, you know, the Capitol and all this stuff.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: There'd be the same crowd. They'd hang around. There was
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: this inn, this hotel right on the square. It was
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: kind of fading out by then, but they'd all go there,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: and then they started moving to a couple of... The
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: inn on the square or something. They all go down
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: there after the legislators. Oh, my God. Did I not
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: want to do that? Oh, you would not have wanted
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: to hobnob? No! No! But... The media and the people
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: in government, I worked in Springfield for five years. There
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: was a lot of that, and part of my job
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: was to work at the Capitol, but I just was
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: working too many hours. I didn't have any time for hobnobbing.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: I had to get up too early. I don't think
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: I would have been one of the hobnob types, but
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: these people who hobnob, this is their life. This is
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: how Washington gets a swamp. It's how Madison gets a swamp.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Media people are all buddies with one another, and they
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: have their sources in government that are buddies with one another. Well,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: some of this Charlie Cook, he does something called the
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Cook Political Report. And what he does, it's kind of
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: a pretty important resource because what he does is he
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: tracks the political scene in every congressional district in America.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: He tracks the political scene in every state. So he's
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: got like the go-to analysis of what's the latest in
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: The Senate race in, you know, Georgia. What's the latest
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: in the governor's race in Florida? Or they redo the
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: congressional districts in Florida. I don't know the numbers, but
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: who's got the edge in Florida district number 22? Cook's
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: on top of all of this. He's got a staff.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: That's what they do. So he doesn't so much survey
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: what's going on, say, in a presidential election or a
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: national scene, but he tries to stay on top of
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: every one of the districts in the United States. And
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: he just put out on Friday his latest forecast of
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: what's going on in the House of Representatives. And it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: really hard, obviously, because a number of states have redrawn
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: their districts, some to favor the Democrats, some to favor
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: the Republicans. And we all know what the national backdrop is.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Trump's unpopular. The party in control of the White House
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: usually sustains losses in the off-year elections. But the counter
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: to that is you also have the Democrats embracing radical socialism,
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: which might screw up their attempts to take advantage of this.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: So what Cook has done is he's classified every U.S.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: House district in America. And it's based on his current
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: intelligence and what little polling is available. And he's categorized them.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: There's six, there's seven categories. Solid Democrat. That would be,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: as an example, that would be Gwen Boer's district, which
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: is central Milwaukee County. Solid Democrat. Likely Democrat. Lean Democrat. Then,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: solid Republican. Likely Republican. Lean Republican. And the seventh category
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: is toss-up. So what he does is he goes through,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: he constantly updates this and comes up with his list
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: of which category they all fall in. Solid Democrat, 185.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Likely Democrat, 12. Lean Democrat, 9. That's 206. Then solid Republican, 180.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: If you're looking for an example of, say, a solid Republican,
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: that would be Scott Fitzgerald's district as an example. Solid Republican, 180.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Likely Republican, 21. Lean Republican, 7. That total is 208.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: And then toss up, 21. So the 435 seats in
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: the House... Cook has the Republicans either solidly, likely, or
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: leaning in 208, and the Democrats solidly, likely, or leaning
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: in 206, and 21, which is pretty high, so close
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: he can't put it even in a lean in either category.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: The only district that we have in Wisconsin that is
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: believed to be in this toss-up state is the district
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: in western Wisconsin, Derek Van Orden, the Republican. It's the
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: closest thing we have to a swing district in the state.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: He's hung on for a couple of elections in a row.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: But the last, you know, two years ago was a
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: big Republican year with Trump winning the presidency and so on.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: If this is a big Democratic year, could Van Orden
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: lose his seat? His Democratic opponent, the Democrats are doing
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: something that, again, rarely works. They're running the same candidate
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: against Van Hollen that they ran two years ago, Rebecca Cooke.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: And she just got revealed as somebody who was on
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the payroll of Soros. She's trying to portray herself as
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: a middle-class working woman. Van Orden's people are trying their
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: best to portray her as a radical. In any event,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: the point and the takeaway on this is, It's not
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: a foregone conclusion the Republicans are going to lose the House.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: I think many people have felt it's a foregone conclusion
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: because their margin as it is is so narrow. And
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: if there's just the assumption that even a slight down
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Republican year, with Trump's unpopularity as bad as it is
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: right now, just a slight Democrat year tips the House over.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: But Cook's numbers right now, he's essentially dead even. 208
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: to 206 in terms of the races that he can
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: make any kind of a call on at all. And
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: 21 dead even. You're listening to the Mark Belling Podcast.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: This is the Mark Belling Podcast. I want to real
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: quickly give you a PS to the point I was
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: making about That's Charlie Cook and his estimate of what's
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: going on in the congressional races. Cook is, his reputation
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: is that his numbers skew Democrat. Two years ago, his
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: assessment of which way the House was going to go,
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: he had the Democrats taking the House. And as you'll recall,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: they didn't. So when he's been off, he tends to,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: probably because he gives too much weight to polling, and
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: polling traditionally underpolls Republicans. If anything, his analysis has been
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: too positive for the Democrats, so having this thing as
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: a dead heat from a guy who has an historic
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Democratic bias, rather noteworthy. Let's move forward. I... I can't...
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying this has never happened. I'm just saying
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I can't think of a case... And again, when I
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: say I can't think of a case, I mean just that,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: I can't think of a case. I can't think of
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: a case in a prominent criminal case in which the
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: media and the public has gone after a juror. I
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: just can't. In some cases, jurors go public after a
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: verdict is announced. You always see the judge give the instruction.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: It's up to a juror. After the case is decided,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: you can't talk to anybody during the case, but after
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: a case is either decided or the trial is over,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: in this case a mistrial hung jury, the jury can
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: talk to the media and use their names, or they
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: can stay silent. It's up to you. I can't think
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: of a case in which the media has ever identified
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: anyone who didn't publicly say, I want to come forward.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: In this case, they're not only publicly identifying the one holdout,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: the holdout who refused to acquit Lindsey Clancy. They're telling
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: us everything about him. NBC 10 in Boston. Quote. The
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial has had a
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: history of domestic violence allegations. NBC 10 Boston investigators have
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: learned through court documents and interviews with family members. So
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: they obviously know his identity and they're asking family members
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: and they say, oh, he's got a history of domestic
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: violence allegations. Allegations. Apparently that means he's never been arrested
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: or charged with it because if he was, they would
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: have said that. I can't. Do you think he's the
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: only guy in the history of juries that's ever had
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: a history, for that matter, of anything? I've never heard
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: of it. They've been targeting this guy. Now, it came
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: out a few days ago that the juror is African-American.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: It's been kind of hilarious watching a lot of these
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: pundits responding to this because there was just an assumption
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: in their minds that he was white. Why would they
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: have assumed that? Gayle King on CBS, who I admit
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: isn't too bright. Has anybody ever figured out what her
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: relationship with Oprah is? Do you know... I mean, you see,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: I don't have any idea of Oprah and her person.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: I can't figure out the Stedman Graham thing. Well, I
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: guess I can't. I do have a theory that he's
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: like her version of the walker, you know, like they're
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: gay guys that walk around with rich women and all.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that still exists. It was a
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: big thing back in the 60s and the 70s when
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: these rich women, their husbands are workaholics and might have girlfriends.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: They need like guys to take them to the opera,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: take them to lunch and all of that stuff and Like, anyway.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Gayle King, CBI, Gayle is African-American, and she's interviewing someone
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: and pointing out, well, the juror's African-American, the whole old juror.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: And she said, well, that puts a new light on things.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: First of all, this is how liberals think. Well, they think,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: first of all, they think, no, it's impossible that there
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: could be anyone so stupid as to want to convict her.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: And then, well, if it's somebody that stupid, it's got
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: to be some stupid white male. Turns out it's a
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: black guy. And a guy who was willing to withstand
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: three days of pressure from his fellow jurors to cave,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: and he wouldn't do it. This is not an exaggeration
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: to say that it's very possible somebody could do something
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: bad to him. which is why we've never done this before.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Imagine it were the reverse. Imagine you had, I'll go
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: to Milwaukee, the Jeffrey Dahmer case. He didn't plead insanity
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: directly because you have a different kind of law in Wisconsin,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: but there was an attempt to claim that he wasn't responsible,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: even though the evidence is overwhelming that he actually physically
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: did it. He didn't deny actually killing the guys and
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: all of that stuff. Imagine one juror voted, it ended
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: up a hung jury, and the media went and reported
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: who the guy stood up for Garmer was. And somebody
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: went out and tried to get him. Or Jesse Anderson,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: before Jason's time, guy who killed his wife out at Northridge,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: and then lied and said he was attacked by a
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: bunch of African-American young males. lied about killing his wife
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: and then racialized it besides by saying the hackers were
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: a bunch of black guys. He was convicted. Imagine that
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: he wasn't convicted, that there's a holdout, that somebody decided
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: to say, no, no, no, I don't think Jaxie Anderson
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: did it, had a hung jury, and the media named
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: that guy. It's just something that's never been done. So
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: why are we breaking precedent here? They can't stand that
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: this guy voted to convict her. I always talk about
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: what the new causes of the left are. And people
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: never want to believe them. And I'll admit prior to
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: this trial, I would not have believed this, that we
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: were quite at this point yet. But it's clear that
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: we are. The new cause of the American left is
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: they think that women should be able to kill their children.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: They've moved past abortion. They now think that it's just
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: so difficult to be a mother that you should be
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: allowed to murder your kids. I don't know what the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: time limit is. If one of the kids was 14,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: would it have been the same? I honestly don't know.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: But clearly, under six qualifies. There's another case that's being
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: discussed right now, a woman who's done the same thing,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: and they're rallying to her defense. I remember many, many
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: years ago when I said after the gay movement, the
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: next thing is going to be trans. Which at the time,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Almost no one supported. The idea, if you would have
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: just mentioned 15 years ago that the left in this
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: country would be fighting for guys to be able to
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: play in women's sports just by claiming that they're guys.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: They don't even need to have an operation or anything.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: They just wander around and say that I'm a chick.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: You would have thought that that was ridiculous. Well, there
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: we are. I've said for some time, I think that
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: one of the next frontiers for the left is to
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: normalize adults who want to have sex with children. That
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: one has not developed as much as I thought that
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: it would, but it's still out there. You'll see once
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: again with regard to women, when a woman turns out
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: to be the molester or abuser of a kid, they
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: end up doing very little time, usually like three, four
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: years maybe. Male abusers of females, of girls, tend to
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: get more time. So that was moving a bit in
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: that direction, but this is clearly now a thing. Where
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: people on the left, and for that matter, a lot
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: of women think that women should have the prerogative to
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: kill their children. If this is proving anything to me,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: it's that maternal instinct doesn't exist. There is not an
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: instinctive maternal behavior in human beings. I just don't think
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: that there is. There is a learned moral responsibility. But
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: it's not something innate. If it was innate, it wouldn't
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: be so easy for some of these women to shrug
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: it all off. Next story. This is a very interesting story,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: and I want to credit as my news source for
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: this the Kenosha County Eye. It's Kevin Mathewson's news source
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: in Kenosha County. I'm not saying nobody else has reported this.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't see it anywhere other than his site. This
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: case is very interesting. So now that I've told you
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: it's very interesting, I'll pay attention to it. It has
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: to do... There's just certain kinds of cases that I
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: found interesting over the years. I find embezzlement cases interesting.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: For those of you who haven't heard me talk about
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: it in the past, I won't bore those of you
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: who have, but the whole spiel. But the short version is,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: I think embezzlement is way more common than people think.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I think when somebody steals from a business, steals from...
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: a charity, steals from a nonprofit, steals from a condo association,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: whatever it is, it's rarely reported because the organization involved
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to look bad by letting everybody know that
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: we're so slipshod that we were ripped off. Secondly, I
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: think in most cases when they catch it, they give
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: the individual a chance to pay the money back and say,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: we won't contact the police. Just give us the money
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: back and we won't tell anybody. So I think the
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: third thing is I just think a lot of it
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: is never caught. When somebody embezzles who is caught, it's
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: almost always because they were doing it for some time
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: and they went too far. When you see these cases
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: being reported of embezzlement, it's almost never caught. Well, we
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: caught this person, but this is the only time they
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: did it. It was never that. It's always, well, multiple instances,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: meaning they didn't catch it until after it was done
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: a zillion times. The overwhelmingly common response to embezzlement, even
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: when it goes to the authorities, is to put the
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: person on probation and make one of the terms of
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: probation a pay restitution. And I've just mocked this over
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: the years. What's the incentive not to embezzle if the
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: worst that can happen to you is you have to
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: give the money back? Meaning you are where you started.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: It's a no-lose situation. If you don't get caught, you
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: get the money. If you do get caught, you just
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: have to give it back, but they don't do anything
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: to you. But the court system and judges and prosecutors,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: they tend to look at embezzlers, well, they don't have
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: a long criminal record. Now, Again, my experience, which is
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: vast and long, and the older I get, extremely streetwise,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: is you're either an embezzler or you're not. And if
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: you are an embezzler, you're going to do it your
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: entire life. It's in their makeup. They can't help themselves.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: It's like these guys that are addicted to child porn.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: When they let them out of jail, they can tell them,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: you can't have access to computers, you can't have this,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: you can't have that. They're always running around thinking of
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: a way to beat the system. They can't fight it off. Well,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: the case comes from Pleasant Prairie. Pleasant Prairie is a
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: very large community in terms of area, west of the
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: city of Kenosha. A lot of the developed property along
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: Interstate 94 is actually Pleasant Prairie. Some of it is Kenosha.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: The Kenosha city boundaries go way, way out. But a
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: big chunk of that is Pleasant Prairie. So this case
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: is Pleasant Prairie, which is in Kenosha County. There's a
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: woman who was the president of her PTO at Prairie
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: Lane Elementary School. Do you think Prairie Lane Elementary School
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: is on Prairie Lane? That's actually one that could be 50-50.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, what else would Prairie Lane be other than
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: the road that the school would be on? It's not
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: the name of a lake or anything. Prairie Lane Elementary School.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Her name is Jan Hermann. She was arrested and criminally
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: charged in connection with stealing the funds that are in
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: the PTO. Now, PTOs and PTAs are the same. Why
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: did they ever switch from? When I was a kid,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: they were always PTAs or homeschool associations. When did PTO,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: why did PTO have to, PTA is association, PTO is organization.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Why would you switch from association, even by the standards
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: of people who feel the constant need to change? Isn't
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: an association and an organization the same thing? PTO. Well,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: they have a PTO. She was charged with six felonies,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: including theft at a business setting. The dollar amount was
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: over $ 10, 000. Now, before we go any farther, I need
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: an indoctrination from busybody parents as to why PTAs and
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: PTOs need so much money. Now, I know that they
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: do things like they sponsor field trips and they raise
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: money for band uniforms and all that stuff. But when
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: you consider how much money we pay in school taxes,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: it boggles my mind that you have to raise money beside.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: And secondly, 10 grand. That's really not the total budget then.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: That's just what she stole. Apparently it's more than that
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: because the criminal charges stole it more than $ 10, 000. Over
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: $ 10, 000 puts it in a different degree of criminal offense
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: and felony. The details of the story reported meticulously in
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: the Kenosha County Eye describe the lengthy period of time
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: over which Herman had been stealing the money. Let me
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: quote from the story. It deals with some of the
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: things that happened in court. Herman had been confronted about
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: the spending long before police became involved. According to the
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: criminal complaint, the former PTO president, Melissa Conkle, and again,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: I stress, she's not anything wrong. She was just the
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: president before Herman. The former PTO president first confronted Herman
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: in December of 2024. Herman allegedly blamed the transactions on
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: her having the PTO card linked to Apple Pay. If
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: you've ever been, you're a parent, if you've ever been
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: involved in any of these associations or anything, like charitable
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: groups where you're the treasurer or anything, yeah, you haven't
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: had to do that yet. Isn't it a red flag
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: that you have that link to Apple Pay? It would
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: seem to me that a checking account with a debit
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: card is all you need. And I don't know that
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: you need a debit card. Well, I guess you do
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: in this day and age. You're buying certain supplies and
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: all of this. The thing with Apple Pay is the
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: only person that can access your Apple account is you.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: Whereas if it's a checking account, you may have the
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: information available to all the members of the board. I
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: don't know. of having the PTO card linked to Apple Pay,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: she promised to stop and repay the money. But unauthorized
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: purchases continued. So they caught her. Now, I'm thinking the
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: average person who's like, you know, got a hand caught
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: in the cookie jar, in this case, stealing from the PTO,
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: they caught her. She'd be so terrified. How can you
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: risk continuing to do it because she knows they're on
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: to her, but she continued anyway? The explanations that she offered, well,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: I got it mixed up because it's tied to my apple,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: but it was ridiculous, said Herman had plenty of opportunities
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: to make things right before law enforcement became involved. So
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: after she was caught, she not only didn't pay back,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: she kept stealing. She described the repeated conduct as demonstrating
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: an enormous level of deceit and characterized it as showing
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: sheer arrogance and entitlement. Continuing on the backstory. Melissa Conkle,
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: the former Prairie Lane PTO president, addressed, this is in court,
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: addressed Meyer on behalf of the PTO and the broader
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: school community. Conkle said the harm went far beyond missing
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: money because the funds were raised by families and community
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: members for classrooms, field trips, assemblies, school events, and playground equipment.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: Conkle told the court, this is again the former PTO,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: she's the whistleblower, that much of the missing money had
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: been earmarked for a badly needed playground renovation. She also discussed,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: this is.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: First of all, anybody who embezzles has no shame. It's
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: just by definition. It's part and parcel of this. So
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: when you see some of the money that they embezzle,
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: it's not surprising that you just can't imagine that someone
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: would do it because you're dealing with somebody who's doing
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: it has no shame. She discussed the fundraiser intended to
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: benefit a Prairie Lane family whose son was battling Hodgkin's lymphoma,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: saying proceeds collected for the family were never turned over.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Hodgkin's lymphoma, that's serious. They had a fundraiser for this kid.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: She kept the money! So the prosecutor, and I've generally
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: been a supporter of the Kenosha County DA Solis. I
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: certainly can't be here. The prosecutor and the defense attorney
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: cut a deal, a plea bargain, that called for Herman
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: to receive no jail time. The plea agreement called for restitution,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: community service, and a term of probation. I'll quote from
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: the Kenosha County Eye story. Under the agreement reached by Curta,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: that's the assistant district attorney in the case, Vincent Curta,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: and Herman's defense attorney, The parties jointly recommended six months
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: in jail on each count consecutive, but both stayed. Now, again,
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: what does stayed mean? Stayed means you don't serve it.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: With Herman instead placed on two years probation. That's the prosecutor.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: Said that getting the stolen money back for the PTO
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: was the state's utmost concern. And prosecutors used the reduction
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: from felonies to misdemeanors to incentivize Herman to pay restitution
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: before sentencing. So the plea bargain dropped the felonies, reduced
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: them all to misdemeanors, and said only probation and him
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: saying the prosecutor, Curta, the wussy prosecutor that Solis needs
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: to can, Curta. I don't know if it's still bad,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: but the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office is one of
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: the most preposterous in the history of prosecution offices in
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: the state of Wisconsin. Not everybody in these offices is terrible. Remember,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: this is the prosecutorial agency that tried to turn a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: case of self-defense during the Kenosha riots into triple murder.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: With an assistant district attorney, who up at first of
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: all pointed a gun at the jury during the trial,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: and secondly made up facts that weren't true and presented them.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: You remember him, Binger, Binger the Bozo? It's the same office.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: Now there's a new district attorney there, and I don't
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: know if this guy's a holdover, and I've heard him.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: But he said that the top priority was to get
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: reimbursement for the PTO. Why is that the top priority?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: There's no incentive to not stealing if all you have
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: to do is give the money back. The only deterrence
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: for people like this, and I see her here. She
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: otherwise doesn't seem to have a criminal record. She kind
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: of looks like you would expect. Somewhat attractive blonde. You know,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: she's a mom. You can just say that there's a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: sense of entitlement. She probably spends beyond her means because
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: she wants to have a lot of crap, but also
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: the way these people justified, oh, I work so hard,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I do this, that, and the other thing. So the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: next thing you know, they justify it into stealing money
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: that was made for a kid that's got Hodgkin's lymphoma,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: taking their fundraising money. So they cut a deal on
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: a plea bargain where she skates and that reducing it
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: down to misdemeanors is not a requirement before sentencing, but
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: hoping that that will incentivize her to pay the whole
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: thing back before they sentence. Now, again, I've criticized these
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: deals in the past, but this is especially bad because
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: the dollar amount is big. This isn't $ 950. I didn't
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: see a full accounting of the total amount, but it's
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: over $ 10, 000. It's systematic. It was over a long period
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: of time, and it continued after she was caught by
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: the former president. In other words, it's as bad as
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: it can get. But there's more to the story. This
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: doesn't happen much. It happens, but not much. I've criticized
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: judges for many years, many counties, for when there's a
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: plea bargain for accepting the terms. They never have to.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: When a judge accepts the plea bargain, they always tell
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: the defendant, you know, I don't have to accept this.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: And if there's a sentencing recommendation, you know, I don't
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: have to go by it. They always say that, but
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: the defendant always bites on it because they know damn
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: well the judge is going to ratify it. There are
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: some judges in courts in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties who
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: I think have never overturned a plea bargain or have
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: never rejected a sentencing recommendation. And when they do it,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: they go softer. In this case, the judge, and it's
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: so important to know the names of judges. Because some
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: communities have bad judges, some have good judges, and some
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: have some in between. And Kenosha County is clearly an
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: example of that. This judge is named Jody Meyer. She
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: rejected the sentencing recommendation, criticized the prosecutor for reducing the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: felonies to misdemeanors. By reducing the felonies to misdemeanors, it
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: means that the maximum term is a year in jail.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: When they're felonies, she could sentence her to multiple years,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: and it's prison. So what the judge did was sentence
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Jan Herman to nine months in the county jail on
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: each of the three misdemeanors that she was guilty to,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: but then the judge made them consecutives. So because they're misdemeanors,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: it can't be prison. But she makes a cumulative, so
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: it's 27 months that she's got to sit her ass
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: in the county jail in Kenosha County. So this isn't
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: a slight rejection of the plea deal. It's a huge rejection.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: The original deal was six months, stayed. She went 27 months, imposed.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: I talk a lot about judicial roulette. A lot of
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: what happens to you in court in a criminal case
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: depends on the judge that you're in front of. In
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: this case, the embezzler was lucky with regard to the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: lame-ass prosecutor that Solis put in charge of the case.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Shame on him. Resign. Go become a defense attorney. You're
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: suited for it. But then she struck out when the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: case landed in front of a judge who realized how
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: horrible this crime was. Now, we're lenient on just about everything.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: And I admit that the use of a weapon in
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: the commission of a crime certainly is a reason for enhancement.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: But some kid goes into a gas station, puts a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: gun in the clerk's face. That's terrible. And clears out
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: $ 287 to take something or something or another. We consider
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: that armed robbery, and it's terrible because there is a
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: gun involved. It can traumatize the person that's behind there.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: But having the access to the money in this account
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: and going through the effort of putting it into an
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: Apple Pay and then swiping it repeatedly over and over again,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: that was her gun. She didn't have to hold the
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: gun to anybody. She was fortunate enough that she had
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: sole access. My next point on this. I've been lecturing
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: on this forever and ever and ever. Every nonprofit, every charity,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: every church, whatever it is, that allows one person to
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: be able to access the funds and authorize spending on
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: his or her own almost deserves to be stolen from.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: You can have fraud with, it used to be check signing,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: but now it would just be any authorization, be it
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: through a debit card or whatever. requires two people to
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: sign off. Now, the two people could be in cahoots.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: There's no doubt about that. If you have, say, a
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: soccer club and the president has to approve every dispersant
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: from the treasurer, vice versa, the president and treasurer could
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: both be in on it and swipe the money. It's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: not a guarantee, but it makes it a lot harder.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: So this PTO, and again, most people who serve on boards,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: in my experience, are lazy slugs. And about 10 to 15%
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: of them work their butts off. It can be any
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: board that you want to think of, a charity, a
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: soccer club, band, parents, anything. Most of the people show
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: up and josh around at the meeting and do everything
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: they can to avoid actual work. And 10 to 15%
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: do all the work. And the ones that do the
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: embezzling are usually the 10 to 15% that do all
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: the work. In their case, because they're in it to steal. So,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: you know, you're on the board. You don't want to
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: have to review every expenditure. Oh, she bought money for this. Plus,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: the other thing is, they're always the nicest person in
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: the group. Three times in my employment history, never here
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: unless I've forgotten something or was not aware of it.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: I worked for companies in which somebody stole money. It
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: was never here at iHeart. In all three instances... what
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: was in the previous company they'd worked for, but it
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: was three different cities, three different radio stations. We had
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: three different, in three different radio stations, there were three
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: employees caught embezzling. And in all three cases, they were
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: the nicest person who worked for the company. But of course,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: that's what you would expect. Everybody would be suspicious of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: the dink. Like, we had Paul here. They went, you know,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: nobody would trust him with any of them. I would
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: have said it about Jason, but I don't know him
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: well enough yet to make any fun of him on it. Well,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: you can think a bit, well, actually, I was going
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: to say, think of the people in the building here.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: What are we down to, four? Yeah, that's the other thing.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: What money would you steal? I mean, I noticed that
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: my office door was open when I walked in this morning.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: I don't lock it anymore because there's nothing in there.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: But it was open, so I don't know who went
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: in there over the weekend, but There's nothing in there.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't have a TV. I used to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: have a TV so people could like go and watch
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: a sporting game or something. I don't have a TV
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: in there anymore. But I mean, I didn't notice that
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: anything was stolen. But what is there to steal? My
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: printer's already gone because it's busted. I mean, between the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: stuff that's busted and there's nothing in there. I mean.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: So anyway, specific credit to the judge in Kenosha County,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Jody Meyer, for rejecting the plea bargain and sending this
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: shameless woman, Jan Herman, to the Kenosha County jail for
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: 27 months. I want to share this. This falls into
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: the category of old farts complaining about kids. Segments I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: may have done myself in the past. This topic first
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: came up, and we did several different podcasts on it
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: a few months ago. It was when Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: launched off and attacked the millennials and Gen Zs that
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: are whining that they don't have it as good as
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: their parents are. and they don't have any money, and
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: they have this affordability crisis when he sees them in
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: Starbucks every day. And there was a huge backlash to
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: him on that from the young people saying that he
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: was unrealistic and unreasonable. I have a listener who sent me,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: it's an actual letter, which tells me that the person
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: is old. And by her statement, she's at least somewhat old.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: She gives me some background here. I won't be real
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: specific so as to not interfere, but she said, I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: was the grandmother who hand wrote you a note when
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: my grandson's car was taken in total in front of
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: Marquette High School while practicing lacrosse. She then says a
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: few other things about what's going on with him and
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: so on. But I want to move forward to the
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: better part of the story. I hear from talk show
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: hosts that the reason the younger generation of people are
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: socialists is because when they graduate from college, they cannot
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: live the way their parents are living. Hello. Do they
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: know how their parents lived when they first got out
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: of college and got married? Speaking for myself, we could
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: hardly afford food. I think that if this generation would
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: give up their $ 55 a week at Starbucks, money for
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: Grubhub and DoorDash, they could save money for a house
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: down payment. Make your own coffee and cook for yourself.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: I walked by, again, this is just, I hear this,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: the following sentence from two groups of people, old people
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: and drunks. I walked by the South Shore Beer Garden
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: this morning. Beer is $ 11. No wonder they can't save.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: Go to the parks and bring your own allowance. Bring
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: your allowable refreshments. Well, the price of beer is high
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: just about everywhere. It's high at the ballpark. It was
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: higher than hell at Summerfest. I'm assuming it was high
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: at State Fair. There's a lot of reasons why it's
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: high in these places. And one of them is they're
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: trying to avoid people getting bombed out of their mind.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: by making the price for getting completely blasted somewhat prohibitive.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: But her other point that she raises, it's been brought
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: up in the past, but I want to talk about
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: it for a moment. I was once in that age group.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: I have a hard time, and I got a decent
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: amount of money. I have a hard time, and I've
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: said this in the past, I have a hard time
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: buying coffee at a Starbucks or one of their competitors.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: The only time I will do it, only, is, say,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: at the airport, and I've got layovers, but even the
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: morning flight at the airport, I'll drink the coffee before
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: I go home. Now, if I fly Delta, I'm a
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: member of the club, and they have the free coffee
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: in there, but on any other airline, there's going to
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: be nothing that's free. I never do it. I have
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: enough money, and also, I'm blown away at how much
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: some of these cappuccinos and mochas cost. And then, why
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: do you have to door dash every night? When you
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: door dash, you're paying a restaurant's prices for the food
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: plus whatever the upcharge is for the delivery. Single or not,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: when did it become unheard of to make your own food? Again,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: I think back to when I was working and when
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: I was young. When I had a girlfriend, I would
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: go to dinner. When I didn't have a girlfriend, I
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: ate at home. That was the way it worked. And
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: that eating at home was on the cheap, sometimes pathetically
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: on the cheap. Make a giant frying pan or skillet
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: full of hamburger helper and then milk that sucker for
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: two or three days. I mean, it was stuff like that.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: I couldn't afford anything else. Now, I wasn't making a
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: lot of money back in those days. I wasn't making
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of money until I started making a lot
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: of money. There wasn't much of a transition. That's the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: way it kind of worked when I hit it big
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: in talk radio. Nonetheless, when I hear about these affordability
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: concerns and this embrace of socialism, it's coming from a
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: generation that largely seems to me to be insanely frivolous
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: with their spending. I have another theory on this. For
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: a number of people who are up there in years,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: like me and the letter writer, who see this, credit
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: cards were around when I was young, but they just weren't,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: first of all, it wasn't automatic that you can get,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: I honestly don't even remember when I got my first one,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: but I know I didn't have one in college. I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: probably did get one shortly after because they've been around
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: forever and ever and ever, but They weren't as universally accepted.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: They weren't as ubiquitous. It's just easier to go in
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: and buy $ 16 worth of crap at Starbucks by putting
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: a card and touching it on the little thing where
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: it says tap than it is to pull out your
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: wallet and pull out a 20 in cash and let
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: them keep most of the change. So when I hear
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: about student loan debt and credit card debt, and I
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: can't afford this and I can't afford that and I
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: can't afford the other thing, I don't think, let me
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: go back and say one other thing on this. The
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: thing that I started thinking about this issue first, maybe
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: 40 years ago, and 40 years ago, cigarettes were, they
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: were nothing like they are now, but they were expensive
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: 40 years ago. I could not believe that heavy smokers
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: were spending the money they were spending on cigarettes. But
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: I'll go back to when, say they were $ 5 a pack,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: which was a long time ago. Well, not long, long,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: long ago, $ 5 a pack. And somebody who has a
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: pack a day, and I knew people pack a day,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: it's $ 35 a week. It's like $ 1, 800 a year, and
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at this guy, he's making like $ 25, 000, and
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: he's spending like 8% of his income pre-tax on cigarettes. Okay,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: I get it. They were addicted to the nicotine. How
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: can you be addicted to DoorDash? How can you be
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: addicted to Starbucks? Okay, you're addicted to the caffeine. I'm
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: addicted to caffeine. How do you become addicted to the mocha,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: all that junk that's on there and all of that?
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: I pick on Starbucks because that's the one that people use.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: But you can say that with regard to almost anything else.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: that seems to be frivolous spending. Now, this does come
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: across as being old farts and OU kids. But the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: reason that I think that it's valid is the OU
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: kids are using poverty and unaffordability as their excuse for
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: the embrace of socialism. I do acknowledge affordability is a
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: real problem. But one of the solutions to it It's
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: to not spend money on stuff you don't need to
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: spend on that is so transitory and fleeting. How long
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: do you enjoy the Starbucks mocha? Six minutes? How long
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: do average people take to down those things? Five, six minutes?
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: Five to ten. At $ 14 a pop, that's $ 14 for
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: five minutes of enjoyment. Trust me, yeah. I'll spend money
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: on a really expensive steak and I'll do all of
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: that stuff and kind of in the social setting, but
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not out here whining and crying and claiming that
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: I got to turn down to be a maternity, go
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: to turn to Marxism because I can't afford anything. Somebody
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: was complaining to me recently, you know, you're turning off
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: young listeners with your rant and raving about, I actually don't,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know about the Gen Z's. I do know
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: about the millennials. As somebody who turned a, talking about
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: the millennials into a cottage industry, we actually, Long before
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: I had a podcast, I took all the segments I
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: did on millennials and turned it into a podcast and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: posted it. That was probably 10 years ago. The one
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: thing about the millennials, as goofy as they were, they
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: were very self-referential and open to criticism. And many of
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: them made fun of their own generation and actually liked
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: to talk about themselves. Millennials were never offended by any
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: of this. The Gen Zs may be a little bit different.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: They may be more hypersensitive to the whole thing, especially
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: the Marxist version of them. But, I mean, when they
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: say we can't afford to do what our parents are doing,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: what they're saying is you can't afford to do what
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: your parents are doing now. And again, when I was
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: a kid, I remember the horror stories from my grandfather,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: and I didn't believe that any of them... They mostly
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: had to do with how far they had to walk
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: to school. The reason I know that that's crap is
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: I know exactly how big the town is that he
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: grew up in. It was the same city that I
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: grew up in, and they had the same school set.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: He was walking the same distance that I was walking.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: And then they'll get into the stuff about the house.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: you know we had a if the oil the oil
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: man didn't show up there was no heat in the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: house well that was probably all correct and they sat
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: around and they looked at the radio when they were
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: listening to the radio the radio would be odd and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: they'd sit there and they'd stare at the radio it
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: struck me as a really goofy thing to look at
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: the actual radio And all those stories that you gave,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: you kids have it so easy. Every generation probably has
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: said this, and this generation will say the same thing,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: when AI is creating all of the entertainment for the
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: kids in the future. But one of the things that
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: I think would have been hard to predict is how
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: an entire industry of fast food and the other type
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: entertainment has been able to sustain itself by charging extremely
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: high prices and targeting the segment of the market that
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: is on the lower end. I mean, I would think
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: of the overall universe of people who go to McDonald's,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: I'd lump in all of them. It's probably more of
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: a middle to lower middle class clientele than a lot
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: of rich people. And Well, I'm shocked as everybody else
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: is at what McDonald's now costs in comparison to, it
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like the dollar menu was that long ago.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: When you see the amount of money that people are
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: spending on things that, they're just a luxury. You know,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: sitting for 40 minutes in the drive-thru at the restaurant
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: to buy, I know not the mocha, just the regular coffee.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: I just can't fathom it. You don't have a coffee
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: maker at home? I don't use a coffee. I got
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: the K-cup thing. Okay, that's more expensive than the regular coffee.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: It's still, what do the K-cups cost? How about a
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: buck a pod? Do you use those things? You don't
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: drink coffee. Radio is really changing. I know, but it
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: used to be you were required to, when I got
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: into radio, you're required to do three things. You were
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: required to smoke, drink, and drink coffee. Well, I drank
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: and I drank coffee. They're all smoky, but that's how
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: they all got those deep voices. It's also why they
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: all died when they were 56 years old. All right,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: they're like a buck. What does Dunkin' Donuts, what does
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: a 16-ounce coffee at Dunkin' Donuts cost? Four or five bucks. Okay,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: that's five times more than just having your own little
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: mug and making it. I just do not understand. When
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: I say I don't understand it, I just don't understand it.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: And I was sort of, I hate lines. I couldn't
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: imagine sitting in the drive-thru that way. You're sitting there,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: and they're all sitting, or they're making that, they're getting
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: those terrible, like, egg McMuffin or the sausage, just deep-fried glop.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: This ends the grandpa segment of the Mark Belling podcast.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: This is the Mark Belling podcast. Sorry, this is a
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: great question. A great question is one in which the
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: answer is really debatable. I'm not asking the question because
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: I expect anybody to answer, but I do want you
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: all to think about it. Because it's one of these
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: things where I think each option would get some degree
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: of responses. Who will win more games? The Brewers in
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: the postseason, the Badgers in the regular season, or the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: Packers in the regular season? That is not an easy question.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, for the Brewers to win, let's just say seven.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: For the Brewers to win seven, they'd have to win,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: presuming that they do get a bye and avoid the
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: wildcard series, it would mean they'd win two series. The
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: first series is best of five, and the next series
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: is best of seven. Now, if they get into the wildcard,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: that's best of three. But if they won seven games
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: and they have a bye, that means they're going to
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: the World Series. So that's a high number. So you
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: would say, well, it won't be the Brewers. The Badgers
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: have one win so far. They weren't dominant against an
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: inferior team. Beat them pretty decisively, but it wasn't like
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: 90-3 or anything like that. And then you have the Packers.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Can the Packers win seven games? Now, I'm the guy
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: that rips on everybody who overreacts after week one. Week
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: one in the National Football League is the most It's
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: not the most inexplicable week. The last week of the
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: season when so many teams have clinched and people are
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: playing subs, that's inexplicable. Those results never mean anything. But
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: week one is a close second. I mean, when you
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: get to say week 11, you're going to look back
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: at week one and fully half the results will seem
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: insane and out of character with the rest of the season.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: And everybody does overreact to week one. So I'm going
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: to try not to do that. But there are certain
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: things that in terms of the Packers are undeniable. And
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: the biggest one to me, I mean, everybody's doing this
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: stuff about questioning the coach and his decisions. One of
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: the problems I have with fans is because they don't
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: know anything about how these games are played. They never
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: criticize individual performance by units, much less individual players. The
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: only thing that they can understand is decision. Should you
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: go for a field goal? Should you go for it
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: on fourth down? I mean, everybody can understand that. So
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: I think that they give overreaction to the decisions that
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: coaches make and so on. Matt LaFleur is getting a
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: lot of grief for taking the points off the board.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: would have put them up by eight. They had made
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: a field goal. They ended up getting a penalty, so
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: they went for a fourth of one, and they didn't
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: get it. And they didn't get into the end zone
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: after that, and they came away with nothing. The same
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: fans are the ones that have ripped LeFleur over the
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: years for being so conservative and always being cautious down
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: the stretch and never stepping on the pedal and going
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: for the jugular. In this case, I just wonder if
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: he was listening to the fans too much and made
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: a decision that I think was really stupid. I have
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: a hard time ever taking points off the board. The
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: only time I would do it is if you're really
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: close to the goal line anyway, but even if they
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: had picked it up, they're still in the 20. It's
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: still probably 50-50 at best that you're going to get
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: into the end zone. By going up eight, it would
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: have required them, while it's a one-score game, they would
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: have had a score twice. They would have had a score,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: a touchdown, and a two-point conversion instead. The Vikings got
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: the lead and the Vikings' defense then changed. They blitzed
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: on every play and the Packers couldn't block them. To me,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: the bigger concern for the Packers beyond just how the
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: game melted down is Green Bay's offensive line appears to
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: me to be absolutely terrible. It was terrible the entire game.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: The Vikings were blitzing on almost every play. I look
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: at the Packers right now and I think that you
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: have a team that's truly outstanding at almost every position
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: on the field, except running back where they're bad, an
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: offensive line in which it's a disaster. I don't see
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: how they go anywhere with this offensive line. They have
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: only one guy who's ever started more than a handful
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: of games at his position in his career with the Packers.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: That's the right tackle who used to be Zach. I
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: love that. The only guy who's been here for a
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: while changes his name so nobody knows who he is. Zach,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: whatever his hyphenated last name is, he's been the right
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: tackle forever. They couldn't block anybody, so the Vikings kept blitzing.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: And worse, the two running backs that we have now,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know how long Jacobs is going to be out,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: they can't pass block. I saw Chris Brooks, he was
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: just run over by one of the pass rushers. Now,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: the positive news is the receivers, I thought, looked spectacular.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: I thought the best news of the weekend was they
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: gave Tucker Kraft an extension. And the reason I thought
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: that was big news is that means they're convinced medically
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: his ACL is healed. They would not have given them
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: that extension unless they were convinced that he's back to 100%
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: from the ACL. And out there on the field, he
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: sure looked like it. Golden has made a major step up.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: They couldn't guard him. The passing game appears to be outstanding.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: The downside is Jordan Love had extra time to throw
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: almost never. And when the Packers were behind and the
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: defense knew the Packers had to throw, and they're just
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: blitzing six or seven guys in every play, the Packers
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: couldn't You had guys who couldn't block their own man,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: much less pick up and provide assistance to the additional
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: two pass rushers that were coming through. I don't know.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: It's the same problem I have with the Badgers and
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: watching their game. I think the offensive line at Wisconsin
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: is not very good. If you don't have a good
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: offensive line, you don't have a good football team. And worse,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: you're going to have injuries. I actually felt that when
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: the Packers were down by the three scores at the
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: end of the game and they were trying to drive
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: for what would have been a meaningless score, Jordan Love
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: should not have been in the game. I was fearful
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: that he was going to be injured. They were blitzing
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: him then on every play. That's not the fault of
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: the coach. That's the fault of the general manager who's
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: let this team go into the season with evidently no
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: offensive line.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: At all.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: The Brewers have essentially clinched the National League Central Division.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: I believe the magic number is two. They're in a
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: weird situation, though, in which this series this week, I
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: think the Brewers fans need to cheer for the Cubs.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: Since winning the Central Division is pretty much cinched, what
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: they have to focus on now is getting a bye.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: The top two, there's three divisions, the top two division
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: winners in terms of record get a bye and get
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: to skip that series. Not only is the bye a
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: chance to rest, Which is just. critical for the Brewers
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: because their pitching staff, I think, is just dead tired
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: and shot, and having a week off would be an asset.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: It's also one less chance to lose. And the team
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: that right now of the division leaders is in third
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: is Atlanta. And the Brewers, I think, are five up
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: at Atlanta. The Cubs play Atlanta. And I think that
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: the Cubs, you know, managing to make up 10 games
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: of the Brewers in 13 days is a lot less
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: likely than Atlanta making up only five games in 13 days.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: So I'm in the rare circumstance of liking to see
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: the Cubs win. The one flip side of that is
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: it's still plausible that the Cubs could fall out of
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: the wildcard altogether. Jason's a Cub fan in there. Yeah,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: you Cub fans started to worry about that or not. Yeah,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: Arizona and San Diego play each other and they're not
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: that good and all of that. So I'll reserve any
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: further comments on the Badger game. But anyway, that's it
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: for today's podcast. Talk to you soon.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: Production and engineering by Jason Gotch. The Mark Belling Podcast
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: is presented by Uline. For quality shipping and industrial supplies,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: Uline has everything in stock. Visit Uline.com. Listen to all
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: of Mark's podcasts, always available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.