Mark Belling Podcast #78: Bill Gates breaks from the left on climate change; is this the crack that will end the movement? Mark analyzes why other tech leaders will likely join Gates. Also, Fiserv stock crashes, and can the Trump Administration help Milwaukee kill its money losing streetcar boondoggle?

The AI-driven need for more power crashes into the long term climate change narrative, Sean Duffy's son-in-law says he's running for Duffy's old congressional seat and Giannis roars during Bucks game that "This Is My City!"

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by you Line for
quality shipping and industrial supplies. You Line has everything in stock.
Visit you line dot com. The Mark Belling Podcast is
a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I want to start with something that I say all
the time because we have an example of it. One
of the things that I say all the time because
true and it's important that people learn this is that
lefties are always proven wrong, but they never I mean,
in the history of Leftiism, they've never admitted they were wrong.
What happens is they just gradually kind of you go

(00:43):
into a period of a thaw where they stop saying
the thing, and then they move on to something else,
but never admitted that they were wrong. The problem for
them is they never learn from this. And I stress
all the time they need to say I told you so,
so that it at least those of us whose minds
are open.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Are aware of it.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
One of the examples of they just move on as
the whole. Since it's starting now in about a week
and I actually first stuff starts this weekend, the I
ninety four widening project in Central Milwaukee County, which is
going to be hellish. And then when it's done, everything
will be better. Unfortunately, it's not going to be done.
I wrote this in my I kind of put the

(01:28):
wrong word to the wrong place in my newspaper col
last week, but this is what I meant to say.
It'll be done about the time that President Marco Ruby
our President JD. Vance will be starting their second term.
I wrote the column ending their term. But it's not
quite that bad anyway. It's it's years. But the point
that I am making here is that for decades leftists

(01:48):
have opposed the widening of I ninety four from three
to four lades who greenlighted this Tony Evers. Because now
they the eve, they have realized that it needs to
be done, and I think even they have realized that
it's not good for the city of Milwaukee, that it
isn't done. But they never I haven't heard a single
one of them say we were wrong about opposing this

(02:10):
for thirty years, and you know, and the fact that
it was Evers that signed it, that means they were
perfectly fine with it. There's no great I mean, it's
going to be a miserable brother, the construction is going on.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
The point that I make is they've never once.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
You know, there became a period in which they simply
stopped opposing the widening, and that was this period of silence,
the thought that I mentioned, and then it starts to hit.
They just move out of the next thing. So they
want to now tear down seven ninety four, learning nothing
from the other thing. But they've moved on and that
becomes their thing. I have a story here that we're

(02:47):
going to get to in just a short moment that
might be the early stages of this. This is not
an issue that they've moved on yet. I'm merely picking
up on something that indicates maybe we're in the beginning
stages of this kind of dropping one of their causes
and moving on. As Paul claims he knows what it is, well,

(03:09):
it doesn't matter if you know what it is or not,
because A I'm not going to tell the audience if
you know what it is, and b B you're not
the host of the program. Why what do you think
it is? He knows what it is? Well, I mean,
if you know what it is, everybody knows what it is.
I don't have to do the segment it. We'll just
have a shorter podcast today. Is that what you're.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Saying you're brighter. No, you're not. Are you?

Speaker 2 (03:31):
You think you're brighter than most listeners? You're above average? Well,
I mean we have dumb listeners. You're true. There's some
that are dumb, there's some that are really smart. We
have a broad cross section of them. See you make
a mistake here and shooting your arrogant mouth off like this.
I'm not going to challenge you on a couple of
things and you're just going to come across as a
total dud. Let me share some information with you. Have

(03:52):
you ever been offered an add on option for premium
or white glove service? U Line provides only one type
of service, the best from knowledgeable customer service available twenty
four to seven three sixty five. Be keeping every product
in stock ready to ship the same day. When your
business needs quality shipping supplies, reliable warehouse equipment or office
furniture fast, contact you Line and get the best service

(04:17):
because you Line believes service is essential.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Not an option.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Bill Gates, the Microsoft co founder who wasn't an idiot.
Steve Balmer, he was an idiot, and now Sachi Nodela,
who runs a company he's a genius too. Like Gates
was Bill Gates, of course, after leaving Microsoft and holding
onto the stock, has become a giant lefty. Probably always

(04:47):
was a giant lefty, but that's what he's doing. He
gives money away, and he's in charge of lefty causes,
and he holds lefty symposiums, and he's become like the
senior statement of the uber rich elitist left.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
That's what he is.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
He's got a website in which he opines on things,
and yesterday he'll pined on something that's raising.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
A lot of eyebrows Bill Gates.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
And I'll give you the cliff notes here, because the
thing goes on and on. Bill Gates is now saying,
we really don't have anything to worry about with climate change.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Oh now, he is the first of this first person
I've seen to say this, that's part of this whole
group of people that's been telling us that this is
going to be the end of the world and so on.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
But when Bill Gates says something, that's an indication to
me that many others in this establishment are pondering.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
And I have a theory as.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
To why he's saying it, aside from the fact that
he's right. But it never was the threat that they
said that it was. I have a theory as to
why he's an his piece, he brings up all of
these things in which he said, there's simply no reason
to think that climate change is going to threaten human
existence or anything like that. He's not denying the climate

(06:10):
change is occurring, and he says that there is still
a gradual warming in global temperatures, and he's using three
degrees centigrade by the end of this century, in other words,
the next seventy six years. But in his piece he said,
we can live and coexist with that. Some may not
be good, but it doesn't threaten human existence or any

(06:31):
of those things that alarmists, including him, have been saying.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Forever and ever and ever. This is the first break
I've seen by somebody who's right there in the middle
of it and has influence.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Now, I have a theory, as you could say, well,
part of it is they've been saying this for twenty
five years and none of the things that they've predicted
so far. In fact, we should mention that Melissa, the
biggest hurricane of this season and really the only big
hurricane of this season, hit Jamaica yesterday. Fortunately, degraded a bit.

(07:08):
When it got landfall, it was a Category four. You know,
Jamaica being Jamaica. There haven't been a lot of images
or pictures back yet, but it apparently is not the crushing,
horrid devastation that.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Hit some of the other islands.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
But the point of bringing this up is one of
the theses of the whole climate change narrative is the
ocean waters are warming and that's creating more turbulent weather weather,
and there's going to be a incredible increase in the
number of hurricanes. This year has been one of the
quietest ever. We're close to the end. You can still
get them in November. December first is the end of

(07:42):
the hurricane season, but the guts of it is late
August to about right now, so I mean, there still
could be one or two more in November. It's happened,
but so far this has been an extremely quiet season.
And if you just take a look at hurricane activity
in the Aganic over the last fifty years, what happens

(08:04):
one year seems to have nothing to do with the
following year.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
It's all over the map. There are some years in
which there's just.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
A lot of them, and then there's a year like
this year in which almost zip meaning I don't think.
I don't think that the hurricane activity has anything to
do with climate. I think that there are other forces
that dictated. Paul wonders where al Gore is these days? Now, see,
I think al Gore he'll never he's he is still alive,

(08:33):
which is kind of amazing. You don't hear, you don't
hear anything about him. He'll never break because that would
be like his entire thing that he's known for in life.
But Bill Gates has different motivations here, and I want
to come to where I think this is coming from. Gates,
of course, remains a major holder of Microsoft stock. Microsoft

(08:58):
is semi partner. They have a relationship partner is not
the right word, but a relationship with open AI, which
is a separate company and Microsoft and all of them
are kind of in the cutting edge of this whole
data center thing. The data centers and AI and all

(09:20):
of the other advances in computing and technology are going
to require massive amounts of new electricity generation well if
well fossil fil eVision power and all of the This
is what's creating climate change. That's with the narrative now,
if we don't drastically increase the generation of power, this

(09:45):
new technological revolution can occur. So we need to divorce
the two things from one another. And here comes Gates. Well,
it's nothing really to worry about, that's my guess. And
the motivation, there's always a motivation. The motivation is never
the truth, but there's that motivation on that issue of power.

(10:08):
I want to read an interesting post on X. You
know a lot of people use handles. I use my
actual name. I think is Mark Belling show this is
rain Maker nineteen seventy three. I don't know that is,
but a very interesting post with regard to uranium. As
you know, I have argued that the only real solution

(10:29):
to this issue of needing massive amounts of new power
generation is nuclear, solar and wind. You could make the
whole planet solar panels and wind farms and you would
not come up with enough electricity to power the AI
technology revolution of the future. Cole has all the issues

(10:51):
that we know that it has. Natural gas is a
very good option, but people object to wit. It is
a minuscule carbon footprint. The big problem with it is
the pipelines. Nuclear has no environmental footprint.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
At all.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
It's the closest thing you can find to something that's
carbon neutral. There's no emissions from a nuclear plant. The
only thing that happens is that the water next to
the plant is a little bit warmer than the water downstreak.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
We moved away from nuclear in the seventies and the
eighties when the lefties decided that this was an environmental
concern because the core of the reactor could melt down.
But now that we're faced with the need for massive
amounts of new electricity and the need to find something
that is totally carbon neutral and can produce massive amounts

(11:47):
at the same time, nuclear is the only option. Natural
gas can produce lots, coal can produce a pheromount. Nuclear
can produce huge but unlike the coal plants, nothing's being
belched out, and unlike the natural gas, you don't need
to have any pipelines. Nuclear power is generated when specific

(12:15):
minerals have their atom split. Uranium and plutonium are two
of the biggies. This is rain Maker nineteen seventy three's post.
An egg sized chunk of uranium delivers as much electricity
as eighty eight tons of coal. The true marble, though

(12:36):
lies not only in its output, but in the density
of that power. At the heart of each uranium atom
sits a colossal reserve of energy. When a uranium two
thirty five nucleus splits in fission, it unleashes heat and neutrons.

(12:57):
Those neutrons collide with neighboring atoms, triggering more splits in
a runaway chain reaction atom for atom. The cascade liberates
millions of times more energy than combusting coal or oil.
He's kind of saying it's a snowball effect. You bust
one of these atoms, all of the atoms adjacent they

(13:19):
start to bust, and you're just cranking out all of
this energy and you only need a little bit of
ur uranium to be able to do it. The lefties
have sort of been silent of late on nuclear. I
suspect the fact that almost everybody in tech is a Lefty,

(13:42):
and everyone knows that in order to move to this
next great waves of technology with AI and everything else,
you're going to need way more electricity that at some
point the left is going to rediscover nuclear for what
it is, the ultimate clean energy source. All Right, I've

(14:03):
got another story for you, picked out of the Bowels
of the News. This is something that's I keep expecting
any any day now, a breakthrough in this government shutdown.
The Democrat position is not sustainable, and the Democrats have
more to lose, and the people that they claim to

(14:24):
be their constituents have more to lose. This week, the
largest federal workers union called on the Democrats to pass
the GOP bill and end the shutdown. The Federal Employees
Union is about as democratic an interest group as you
can find. We certainly know in the last election that

(14:45):
there's this demographic shift that's now on steroids going on,
and a lot of private sector labor unions their members
are becoming Republican, but the government unions that's still one
of the backbones of the left. Federal workers, the ones
that are furloughed, aren't being paid right now, and as
we all know, it's kind of a wink wink, nod nod. Generally,

(15:08):
when the shutdown ends, they get all their back pay
and they just ended up getting a vacation. But now
you're at the point in which not getting a paycheck
is creating something of a hardship, and the Federal Workers
Union is telling the Democrats to pack the bill and
from the Republicans' perspective, they have what's called a clean bill.
It's simply the same continuing resolution that was passed last time,

(15:28):
no policy changes in it at all. The Democrats want
to come up with this huge chunk of money, health
care for illegals, bailout Obamacare, and so on. The Democrats
have tried to blame the Republicans for the shutdown, but
the Republicans keep passing this bill that would refund the

(15:50):
government and not change anything. The problem for the Democrats
is is that their base is demanding to stand up
to Trump, stand up to Trump's, stand up to Trump,
but they haven't figured out what they're is game is.
My belief is that the Republicans will provide some assistance

(16:12):
for Obamacare, and they probably should. It is not the
fault of any Republican in this country that Obamacare was
a financial fraud and when the subsidies ended, premiums would
explode by three hundred percent, which is what we're staring at.
The Democrats wrote the bill, and the Democrats wrote the
bill as to when the Obamacare credits expire. It's passed

(16:34):
with zero Republican votes. But the reality is, and this
is a reality. It's pretty good data on this. More
Trump voters are on Obamacare than Democrat voters. Remember who
it is that's on Obamacare. Obamacare is not.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Medicaid.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Medicaid is healthcare for really poor people. Obamacare generally serve herbs,
the lower middle class to a portion of the middle class.
They're the people that are eligible for the Obamacare at
its subsidies. That again, the realignment of American politics. That

(17:16):
chunk of the American voter base, the kind of blue collar,
non college kind of middle class to lower middle class
to maybe including some that are slightly above middle class.
Thet's took up a core base of the Republican party.
And again it's not their fault that we created Obamacare

(17:38):
with a non sustainable financial model. The one thing that
Republicans have to insist upon is if they do do this,
they have to get credit. It was the Democrats that
shut down the government and the Republicans that are bailing
out the Democratic mess of Obamacare, something that financially never

(18:00):
added up. I have another story for you. This is
an interesting political story.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
All right.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Many of you know that Tom Tiffany's running for governor.
You know that, don't you you know that Tom Tiffany's
current job is he's the congressman from north in Wisconsin.
For those of you who listen to my podcast and
you're not from Wisconsin, you should see Tiffany's district. I mean,
it's just I live in Gwen Moore's district. You almost
can ride a bike from one end to it. I

(18:30):
can't ride a bike from one end to it to another,
but a lot of people actually could if you try
to take a jet air plane to get across Tiffany's
test even take his district's huge. It's basically all the
parts of Wisconsin that don't have a lot of people.
It's up north pretty much.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Think of.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Everything up north, with the exception of a corner of
northwestern Wisconsin. That's Tiffany's district. With Tiffany running for governor,
he can't run for Congress at the same time, so
he's giving that seat up. He could change his mind
and drop out of the race for governor, but presuming
he doesn't, his seat is open. It is the most
Republican congressional district in the state of Wisconsin. Trump had

(19:15):
a greater percentage of the vote in that district than
in any other district in Wisconsin. So it's if not
a i'd say it's a safe Republican seat. The Democrats
have delusions of grandeur that they could flip the seat,
but it's unlikely. Well with Tiffany leaving. Here's the thing
about seats in Congress. First of all, members of Congress
almost never lose reelection. It's a great gig. The only

(19:38):
downside to it is, unlike the Senate, you have to
run every two years. You're constantly running, but get a
chance to go into the Congress, and as we know,
there are people that are there for years and years
and years and years and years. Remember the House of Representatives.
So this is a very attractive seat for pretty much
every Republican who lives in this vast expanse of area.

(20:00):
A couple of candidates have declared so far, but there's
a very interesting development today. Michael Alfonso is running.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Who's he? Do you know who he is?

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Well, he's his story. You could not find a more
interesting story. First of all, he's twenty five. That's the
bare minimum you have to be. Twenty five is the
minimum to be elected to the House. He's twenty five,
He's from northern Wisconsin, went to UW Madison, got a

(20:37):
good life story, did construction jobs to pay his way
through college, and so on. Now he's twenty five and
he wants to run for Congress, but he doesn't hold
any political office. You might be wondering, well, how can
just this guy with no real background decide that he's
going to be in the Congress.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
His wife.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Has two very well known parents. His wife's name is
a Vita. There was a time in which A Vita
was like one of the great bride. I actually saw
a Vita when it came out, and it had a
tremendous impact that a lot of baby boomers end some
generation exers when it came out, and all of a sudden,

(21:19):
that name that nobody ever heard of was popping up
all over the place.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
I don't think anybody's name of their kids a Vita anymore.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
But this young woman is twenty five years old, so
it was back of the air at twenty five.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Vita.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Her maiden name is Duffy. She's Sean Duffy's daughter. Sean
Duffy represented that district in Congress prior to Tiffany. Sean
is now the Secretary of Transportation in the Trump administration.
Shawn's wife and Avita's mother, is a prominent host who's

(21:56):
all over Fox News Channel. She's one of the I
think Saturday Morning Fox and Friends, and she's been on
a lot of the other programs over there as well.
The Duffies are political royalty in the American conservative movement.
President Trump is very close to Sean Duffy, his Transportation secretary.

(22:19):
I think there is a very good chance that Trump
may endorse I think Michael Alfonso jumping into this race
he may have. I'm sure he's discussed this with his
father and mother in law, and they've obviously given their blessing,
which may mean that there will be support from Trump
as well. In his declaration, he calls himself a pro

(22:41):
Trump conservative. But any Republican running for anything in the
United States is throwing Trump's name into their thing, including
even Bill Berrien was doing a guy who couldn't stand Trump.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
They're all throwing the Trump Trump Trump thing in there.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
In this case, Michael Lfonso has family connections. Now I've
never heard him talk. He's going to have to put
himself out there, I guess is he's an extremely well
spoken young man. But I don't know that, but he
instantly by joining the race makes himself the most probably

(23:11):
interesting of the candidates running so far.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
And now this with.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Democrats, everything is about the narrative, the narrative, the narrative,
the narrative, the narrative. They all need to have like
a backstory. The Kamala Harris is constantly changing backstory. She's
claimed to be every possible ethnicity that there was. An
example of the Kamala narrative was the phony I worked

(23:36):
at McDonald's story. It's still to be one of the
strangest political lies I've ever heard. I don't I think
she's the first person ever to lie about working at McDonald's.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
I mean, it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
First of all, it doesn't really create anything positive or negative.
Let's start with this, what percentage of Americans that worked
at McDonald's.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
It's huge.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Secondly, it's not like terribly demanding physical labor. But it's
also not a cake job. It's a job that billions
of people have. It's neither a positive nor negative. It's
just a regular thing. Why would you make that up? Now?
The reason that she made it up is that she
was This was the more time in which she was

(24:22):
trying to pass herself up. First of all, she passed
herself up as growing a poor which that turned out
not to be true because we found out that she
was growing up in an affluent suburb of Montreal. So
then she comes up with this I worked at McDonald's
thing to make herself seem like a normal girl as
opposed to this arrogant elitist lefty that we all know
that she is, except there's no evidence that it's true.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Trump called her out.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Of the reason that Trump went and when he did
his work to shift at McDonald's and so on, was
the draw attention to the fact that Kamala was lying
about the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
It was the reason that the lie was told is
they were. This is one of the narratives she was
trying to create.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
The narrative.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
This brings to zoraon Mandani. Mamdani likely to become the
next mayor of New York next week. He's obviously anti Israel.
He told this story last week about how so many

(25:20):
Muslims in America suffered after nine to eleven. And he
told this story about how he had an ant who
was terrified of getting in a cab or getting on
a bus or doing anything after nine to eleven for
fear that New Yorkers would attack her because she's Muslim.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
First of all, let's just start with.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
The tone deafness of in a city where thousands of
people were killed on nine to eleven to worry about
the impact on people who weren't killed. Nonetheless, it creates
this narrative, and he said, this is one of the
defining things for him, the bigotry that is directed against
Muslim Americans, and by imp occasion, you know, somehow this
is all Israel's fault and it's all Jewish people's fault.

(26:04):
That's the wink wink, nod nod that's in nobody creates
this narrative that he had this ant and so on.
Where am I going with this? This is the thing
with these lefties and telling these stories. The story is
evidently untrue, and it didn't take long for some sluice

(26:27):
on the Internet to disprove the story. This is one
poster run X the aunt Zora Mandami Zoron Mamdani shed
faked tears over claiming she stopped riding the subway after
nine to eleven because she didn't feel safe wearing her
sh Bob Hijab.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Never wore a hi jab, nor.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Lived in New York City at the time post nine
to eleven. She lived in Tanzania.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
So now Donnie's press people have been challenged on this.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
We found this woman, she wasn't even living in New
York at the time, and she was also not someone
She was not one of the Muslim women who wore that.
So now Mam Nannie is changing the story. He's now
saying it was actually his father's cousin, a woman named
Zarah Fouhi, and she apparently died a number of years ago.

(27:28):
First of all, I don't even know what your father's
cousin is. What is your father's cousin? Could you figure
out what that relationship is? Is that your second cousin
or is that your cousin once removed? Is I don't
even know. I know that I had a zillion of them.
Neither of my parents had siblings, but on my father's
side there were just he had zillions and zillions of

(27:51):
cousins because his father and his mother both came from
in other words, my grandparents, or my father said, they
both came from massive, huge, you know, families. So I
had all of these people, and I kind of thought
of them as cousins, but they weren't cousins. They were
something else. And I forever, I mean, I heard second

(28:11):
cousin and I heard first cousin. Once removed that I
never knew which one of the two it was. But
this is your cousin's your father's cousins. So whatever that is,
I do know this, though it's not your aunt. Secondly,
the person he now says that it is conveniently died
several years ago, so we have no way of knowing
whether or not she was actually afraid to ride the subway?

Speaker 3 (28:33):
What was she wearing? A shop?

Speaker 2 (28:34):
But was any of that crew? Well five plusin why
do you like? Because their whole thing is to create
the narrative. His narrative is is that Muslims are impressed,
are oppressed in New York, They're oppressed in America.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
It's one of the things that makes his appeal to
this huge base of.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Leftists that are now pro Muslim and Muslim sympathizers and
Muslim supporters and so on. He's got to be able
to tell that story. First of all, Minai is a
very rich guy. His family is incredibly wealthy, but he's
got to get every Democrat has.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
To claim at some point in their life they were
all pressed.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
They're the victim of bigotry, and they were held down
family as much as billionaires as what they are.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
You say, why did he lie? First of all, he
never figured anybody would actually look into this.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
But secondly, you've got to be able to create this narrative,
and none of them can have. None of them actually
have a reality that is convenient for the narratives that
they want to share. I have a story to tell,
and we'll tell that story when we come back in

(29:40):
very brief moment here. This is the Mark Belling podcast.
This is the Mark Belling Podcast. As I said, I
have a story to tell. I'm telling the story as
a way of getting into the next actual segment that
I'm going to do. Here's why I didn't lead the

(30:00):
program with it, but at leading the second segment of
the program. For those of you who listened to my
old radio show which lasted forever, I had a certain
style of doing the program, and.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
I tended to like to move into the.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Program slowly, in other words, kind of back in and
be conversational and yap about a bunch of inane things
and so on.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
And kind of ease the audience in.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
It was a style that I had, and I just
felt it was a entertaining and be a less threatening
way to begin the program than by coming in and
ranting and raving from the very very.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
First part of the program.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
But thirdly, since my show was on for so long
and the audience was so huge, it wasn't like the audience.
Clearly the audience wasn't tuning out. I had the most
listened to radio program on the state of Wisconsin. They
were used to it because they knew, Okay, he's going
to be getting to a point here more and these
little nuggets that he throws it in between are probably
going to be humorous. During the time that I filled

(31:10):
in for Rush Limbaugh and I think there's no way.
There is a way, but I don't know what it is.
I think I was his longest running substitute. I didn't
say did more substitute shows. Longest running Walter Williams was
right along the same time frame.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
As I was.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
I did it for about twenty years, few programs here
and there. When I going to do the Rush program,
I essentially worked with one of two producers. One of
them Kit Carson, native of Whitefish Bay, passed away a
number of years ago, and the other the guy that
he calls that he called at the time, both Nerdly

(31:54):
who's gone on to become a podcast thread a host himself,
and in doing the program, when we would do a
show prep, both of them, especially Kick Carson, would just
stress to me get them in the first fifteen seconds.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
You got to hit hard.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
You've got to come out of this exploding. And I
came to understand that people turn on the program expecting
to hear rush. Okay, here's a guest host. It's a
guest host. You better grab them right away before they
pushed the button and say they didn't want to listen
to a guest host that they'd never heard of, and
so on. You've got to grab them. As opposed to
in the regular radio show I was doing in Milwaukee,

(32:34):
hardly anybody was stumbling onto my show. They were mostly
people who were conditioned to listen to it. And I
approached it a different way. What is the point of
this story, Well, part of the point of the story
is I couldn't lead with this segment at the beginning
of today's podcast, because my podcast is a hybrid of
the two. We have numerous people who are finding me
in podcast fell who were not radio listeners. You can

(32:57):
listen to this podcast anywhere on planet Earth, and there
are all sorts of people who just were not listeners
to AM radio or not living in southeastern Wisconsin, or
even when our show went online.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
It wasn't distributed.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I mean it was we recreated it as a podcast,
but it wasn't really a podcast, if you know what
I mean. So there are all sorts of Our guess
is is about fifty to fifty of people who live
in Wisconsin and outside of Wisconsin. And this is based
on the research at the end of the podcast listeners,
and it's pretty fair to say that a huge portion,
not maybe not quite half, are people that were not

(33:33):
radio listeners to the program. So I'm not yet ready
to just back into each podcast. I kind of try
to grab you from the beginning, and the podcasts are shorter,
so why waste all of that time? Even though this
portion here is a sort of waste of time, but
it's for the purposes of doing a point. So I
couldn't lead the show with it, but I could lead
the second segment with it, And why am I even
bringing up the old Rush Limbaugh thing?

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Because of this? You could never do what I do.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
You could never think through all of this to get
me to where I am now.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
You could not you admit that. What did you claim?
Oh you knew the Bill Gates story. That was all
right anyway.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
The last time Fi Serve stock was as low as
it is today, I was still doing the Rush program.
That means not only was Rush still alive, but I
was still doing it. I stopped doing it prior to
Rush passing away in the end of his show and
so on. The last time I filled in for Rush

(34:31):
was in twenty eighteen. I basically did it between nineteen
ninety eight and twenty eighteen. Fi Serve stock has not
been as low as it is today since then. That
was the point of telling this story. You may be
wondering what's going on with Fi Serf stock. Fi Serf
stock crashed today, and the term crash is about little term,

(34:53):
but I think it's accurate in this case. The stock
went down forty percent in a half hour. It opened
forty percent lower, and it's you know, when the thanks volatile,
it's trading like crazy. It's bouncing around a bit since
then that decline. You'll see this often with a stock
where it starts to drift lower and drift lower for

(35:14):
an extended period of time. And the reason is drifting
lower is there are ominous things that are going on
that some people have picked up on, but most have not.
And then when the news is out about the ominous thing,
everybody sells and gets out so that they can save
their butt before it crashes even lower. That appears to
be what's happened here. The news that triggered this was

(35:35):
The term is called guidance. Publicly traded companies offer guidance
to the Wall Street analysts as to what they're the
outlook for the company is going to be, and what's
going to be in our next quarterly earning statement. You
can't be misleading in this Suareholder lawsuits come out if
you give bad guidance. If you create, say a rosier scenario,

(35:59):
then is reality. And five serv gave guidance that the
next quarterly earnings would be far short of the analyst consensus.
These analysts make an estimate of what your earnings will be.
They were estimating two dollars and sixty cents per share
for the coming quarter, and apparently five Serve is lowering
the guidance to two o five and the third quarter
earnings are now coming out. In other words, it's a

(36:22):
big earnings miss. It's a year over year decline, and
it's way lower than the analysts were expecting. And when
something like that happens, often a stock will crater, and
the stock crater. This was I don't even know the
culmination because I don't know what the next six months
are going to do it. Could it be higher or lore,

(36:42):
I don't know, but it's the culmination of something that's
been going on for a couple of years. First of all,
if you bought five Serve stock when the company was
formed in its first five years, your one thousand I
think if the stock is up about twenty six thousand percent,
what's initial original funding? It was almost a penny Scott.
It was a microcapstock that got involved in the financial

(37:04):
services industry and it exploded to become a huge and
enormous company. So what's the cause of the problem here.
Several years ago, Fiserv merged with a larger financial services
company called First Data. First Data was a larger company,
but Fiserv was portrayed as the acquirer in that Fiserv

(37:27):
would be the corporate name now of the newly merged companies.
It was also stated that the corporate headquarters of Fiserv
would remain here in the Milwaukee area. They have offices
in Brookfield in Milwaukee. For the first year or so,
Jeff Yabuki, who was the chairman and CEO of Fiserv,
kept the job with the newly merged companies. But then,

(37:49):
and I'm guessing that this was arranged a couple of
years later, Yabuki left the company and the first data
guy took over as chairman and CEO. His name is
Frank Visignano. He quit in December to go to work
in the Trump administration. He's now the head of the
Social Security Administration. I don't know if he got out

(38:09):
because he saw what was coming.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Just don't know.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
There's a guy named Lyons who was brought in in
May to be the new CEO of the company, succeeding
Frank Visgnago. Over the past several days, there's been head
rolling all across fire Servant, which a lot of top
officials of the company have been fired again, clearly problems
are out here. My guess is, and it's a guess

(38:37):
that this merger simply didn't work. Often when one company
buys another, you're always looking for the term they always
use as a synergy.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
Well, we do this thing and they do a related thing.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
So now we've got this larger company that does these
two things that it blends into what another and.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Often that works.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Feiserv was primarily in financial services, banking transactions, stuff like that.
This is all the kind of stuff that goes on
with regard to any kind of transmission of data financial
and so one that we don't see that's a fight
Serve was and first at it was a broader company
that was in broader areas. And my guess is that

(39:17):
the merger is simply.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Didn't work.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Now I'm not familiar enough with the company to know
if the FI Serve operating unit is the one that's
not growing as fast, or if it's the fast data
first data part, or if the two parts didn't come
together or not at all. But the financials now are declining,
and the declining in a period in which the overall
stock market for several years and especially this year, has
been going up on steroids. It's not rare when the

(39:45):
market is down forty percent in a year to see
individual stocks that crater forty percent a year. When you
see a stock crater at a year in which just
about everything else is up, that's concerning. Here are some
of the numbers down. And again these numbers are for
those of you listen to the podcast. We're recording this
early in the afternoon on Wednesday, so if you're listening
five days later, these numbers could be completely different. Stock

(40:07):
down forty percent as of when I checked when I
started the podcast just today alone, down sixty percent this year,
and the last year in which it was as low
as it is today was twenty seventeen. So the stock
has hit an eight year low. And during that eight

(40:29):
years we've had a massive, obviously bull market in the market.
So five serves that they dumped the CFO a couple
of other people. The CEO is new, and who knows
what the long term solution of the problem is that
I don't know what the problem is. One thing to
bring up here over the years I've heard from five

(40:49):
Serve millionaires.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
The predecessor of these year in.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Southeastern Wisconsin was the ge Millionaires did a couple of
segments on this back in the nineties. The people who
worked for GE was then called GE Medical, which is
based in Waka Shop. GE Medical was a huge division
of General Electric at least since broke up the companies
and so on. But the stock of General Electric in
the seventies, eighties and nineties was one of the great

(41:13):
success stories in American corporate history. That's when Jack Welch
was the CEO, et cetera. And there are people who
you know, when you're in a company, one of the
options in your four oh one K is often to
buy the company stock. And there are people who work
for GE who put their entire four oh one K
into the company stock and regular working class people forty
fifty sixty thousand dollars a year, and they became multimillionaires

(41:36):
because the stock exploded, exploded, exploded, exploded, exploded, and they
called them GE millionaires. Unfortunately, after Jack Welch left the company,
they named an utter incompetent. In fact, he was the
head of GE Medical to succeed him, and General Electric
declined ninety percent in value. And a lot of these
GE millionaires, you know, they've worked for these companies and

(41:57):
the company. Rarely does a company tell it, well, our company.
Sometimes really does a company kill employees. Everything's going to hell,
it's all we got this. And again, some people just
it's always risky to put too much of your investment
money in one sock. Now, if you're twenty five years
old and you're just starting, that's different. But if you're

(42:18):
somebody that is you've now built up quite a nest egg,
you never want to no matter what, that company is
just the highest market. Look at tick in Video right now,
which has done nothing. You cannot say that in Vidia
ten to fifteen years from now will not be substantially
lower because many of these stocks that just seemed like
they would grow forever stop growing. GM four at IBM.

(42:42):
They were once the biggest companies in America. So hopefully
there aren't too many people that who work for Pfiser
who just had way too much of their money tied
up in the Feiser, because if they did, that's that's
just a huge hit to find out forty percent of
your net worth just eviscerated within five minutes. Weirdly, we

(43:09):
have another story that deals with Sean Duffy, a double
Duffy day. I hinted at the story here. A few
days ago on the program, I mentioned that one of
the arguments being made by Milwaukee officials who are opposed
to abandoning the terribly failed trolley the street car that

(43:31):
they call the hop it was another one of those
examples of me doing and I told you so, in
which I said that this thing was going to be
a disaster. It was never going to grow, There never
be any ridership, there was never a long term funding
thing for it. Nobody was ever going to pay to
ride the thing, so it's had to have been free,
and even as free, it's hardly ever ridden. Well, you
now have a number of city officials that are fed

(43:53):
up with the city subsidizing this because you've got all
the women who represent the entire city and this thing
runs only in a small section east of downtown Milwaukee,
and then's a little bit west over to where the
post office and bus station is.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
Well.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Several all the have been led by Scott Spiker from
the South Side, are saying that the city should just
abandon it, that it is ridiculous with all the city's
needs that you are putting in money, city property tax money,
city dollars to fund this thing that's in only one
segment of the community, and as Spiker points out, it's
used by two people, the affluent and the homeless. Affluent

(44:28):
high end downtown condo owners who work on high rise
downtown office buildings and street people who just sit in
and ride it.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
All day because it's free. Those are the two. What's
the point of everybody else in.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
The city, what, you know, the people who live in
the central city, the people in the Latino south side,
the far South cyberspikers. What's in it for them to
subsidize this thing that doesn't serve anybody other than this
tiny select.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Group of people.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
And the city's retort has always been, we have to
pay back the entire federal grant if we shut it down.
This is all background now, and indeed there is federal
law that if you get federal funding for a project,
you have to continue that project unless the.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
New use for the money is for the same purpose.
In this case, transit.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
The Milwaukee had a transit garage on the site where
the Coteur was built, and they got a grant to
build it in order to clear the land for the
courteur and run the street car over to the COTUUR.
They had a carry down the transit garage that was

(45:38):
built with federal funds, so they had to justify using
the federal funds on something else that was transit, i e.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
The trolley.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
This is how Tom Barrett got funding to do his
stupid street car, is that he basically transferred the money
that was originally intended for the parking garage and so
on and use that as a way of getting a
new federal grant.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
So the argument being made today.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
By city officials is they now if they get rid
of the street car, finally have to pay all that
money back because the money is not still being used
for the initial stated purpose transit. Now, here's what I
said on the podcast a few days ago. Who's the
president right now? You better not get this wrong. After
bragging about your climate change thing, Trump Trump, you really

(46:29):
think that Donald Trump isn't going to give them the
ok to stop a street car that not one person
who voted for Donald Trump supports. The following letter has
been sent to Trump's Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy. It was
written by Van Wangard, state senator who represents southern Milwaukee

(46:49):
County portion of Racine County, portion of Kenosha County, and
Bob Donovan, who represents good chunk of southwestern Milwaukee County,
including a portion of the city. They jointly send the
following Who Shaan Duffy, Secretary of Transportation. Dear Secretary Duffy,
as state legislator is representing the City of Milwaukee. We
write today in support of the letter from Milwaukee Alderman
Scott Spiker urging the US Department of Transportation to release

(47:12):
the City of Milwaukee from its grant obligation for the
development of the Milwaukee street Car. If this is granted,
the City of Milwaukee could once and for all end
this public works boondoggle that has plagued the city's finances
for years. This proposal reflects there is growing support among
local leaders who address the fiscal issues facing the City
of Milwaukee not through tax increases, but rather by eliminating

(47:36):
wasteful spending. So here are these two Republicans are asking
Republican Secretary of Transportation do this thing so Milwaukee and
stop can stop wasting this idiotic buddy. I think Duffy's
going to be receptive to this. Milwaukee's taxpayers have contributed
tens of millions of dollars of their own money to
this project that continues to be an annual Draine who

(47:58):
told you it a so old you'll be a terrible
Draain who told you befess I did?

Speaker 3 (48:02):
I did? I? Did I hit it?

Speaker 2 (48:04):
When you say I told you so, it's critical to
say I told you so. I was explained earlier on
the podcast. You have finally learned why it's important to
say I told you so correct continue the letter. Operationally,
the street car has never broken even and he's incurred
an additional burden to maintain it. In twenty twenty six,
the street car is projected to face a four point
two million dollar deficit. This deficit has increased since the

(48:28):
inception of the project and shows no sign of stopping.
By the way, if you watch the news coverage all
the way through this, you would never do it.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Oh the hop it's so pop It's soap popua, nobody
rites it.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Summerfest goes on, some people will jump on it to
get close to the north edge of the grounds.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
You got.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
There's there's quite a few like nursing homes and senior
care centers on Prospect. Some people will riot it and
get off where a dead ends at the corner of
Ogden in Prospect, and then walk the other three blocks.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
Other than those two or.

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Three things are when something specific is going, it's never written.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
It just it's never written because it serves no purpose and.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
It doesn't go anywhere, and it can only go where
the stupid tracks are as I told you was going
to happen. Thank god, I've spent so many years saying
but first of all, I have a successful in stopping
this for like twenty years. Then when I finally Barrett
finally got it through because he got that Frederal money.
I said all of this, and I said all of this,
and I said all of this the only way there

(49:26):
was only one way, well, two ways, I guess there
were only two ways in which I wasn't going to
in the end be able to come back and say
I told you so you know what those two would be.
I would be fired or I would die. As long
as I didn't get fired or I didn't die, I
it was such a cinch that this was going to
be a fiasco that I'd be able to come back.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
So what does this mean?

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Watchino, watch Meino, keel over and die? I have no
more meaning in life, no purpose in living. I was
the trolley was a bust, as I said it all
right again. They're trying to convince Sean Duffy to free
them the requirement under grant that since the Feds gave
them this money to be used for something for transportation,
they have to keep running the street car forever and
ever and ever. Releasing the City of Milwaukee from these

(50:10):
grant obligations would request would represent an extraordinary step by
the federal government, and we recognize the gravity of this request. However,
we believe the decades of sunk costs and the annual
hemorrhaging of taxpayer resources will only continue if the federal
government does not take direct action. Granting this relief would
not only eliminate wasteful spending, but allow for these funds

(50:33):
to be redirected to core services. I would point out
their excuse for not hiring more cops and firefighters.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Et cetera goes away.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
We appreciate your thoughtful consideration of this proposal to release
the City of Milwaukee from their federal obligation for the
streetcar and order to discontinue operations. Thank you for your
attention to this matter. Yeah, you get the ending of that,
don't you?

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Who else? And who else? Who's the other person?

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Who? In everything? Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Trump Trump puts that at the end of every one
of his posts. So that's why they conclude. The signing
signed by Bob Donovan and Bangwangard, who members of the
state legislature who represent parts of their district include portions
of the city of Milwaukee. The districts go on to

(51:21):
others other segments as well. Wisconsin Institute of Law and
Liberty sent a letter to the United States Department of Justice,
again trying to draw attention to the fact the Wisconsin
Election Commission has still not fully purged names on the
voter roles that appear not to be legitimate anymore. And

(51:42):
in some cases, people move, some cases, people die, et cetera.
But the people there's forty one thousand people on the
voter roll in which there is no evidence that they
reside at the place that they are they because they've moved,
they've died, et cetera. So they're asking the Department of
Justice to do this. I think it is a good request. However,

(52:02):
as I insist on continuing to point out there are
some people that are focused on election integrity in Wisconsin
who obsess over this matter of the voter rolls. My
response to that is the voter roles is not unimportant. However,
it is a tiny portion of the problem. It's not

(52:25):
the major problem. If someone's name is on a voter
role but nobody votes in that name, it's kind of
a no harm, no foul. What you have to do
is prove that some of these forty one thousand people
actually have voted, when in fact they don't exist. That's
a sign of fraud. The bigger problem is I keep

(52:46):
pointing out, and unfortunately there's some people in the right
that I just think they don't fully understand this because
they've listened to a handful of people that are Charlatan's
and one of the people that they listen to is
a convicted con man who's going on about the.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
Voter roles thing.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
And again, I'm not saying the voter roles in an issue.
The real problem is same day voter registration. You're concerned
about a name that's been on the rolls for three years.
My concern is somebody's name gets on the roll one
minute before you give them a ballot. That's where the
fraud occurs. People showing up with some bogus identification and
they get the ballot and it's in there. Yes, that

(53:21):
name that is on the voter rolls after the fact,
but the damage has been done, and often those fake
votes are cast only the one time by people who
same day register. Same day registration is the core a
vote fraud in Wisconsin. Photo ID has helped, but as
anybody who's ever seen I don't go to them many

(53:41):
bars anymore. But this is a big problem in fluid,
as anybody who's ever seen an eighteen year old at
a bar will attest, I swear there are more fake
IDs than there are actual ideas. They've gotten very good
at making those things. There are certain things that you
look now that they have the real idea on the
driver's license, but a lot of them they don't give
you a driver's life since they just give you an
ID card because those are easier to uh, you know

(54:04):
about all of that stuff, don't you?

Speaker 3 (54:08):
You had one?

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Because when you're fifteen, see see Paul's a little bit
younger than me, well a decade younger than me. I
never needed a fake ID.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Paul, I don't think I've ever been carded in my life.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
First of all, I was the drinking age was eighteen
when I was a kid, But there were fifteens and
six fifteen and sixteen year olds of drink and I
just can't. I'm not saying it never happened. I can't
recall anybody ever telling you you couldn't. Just a totally
different era. What I have needed that for? You know,

(54:45):
Plus I'm in Kakana. If I go to like I
should name some of the bars that are see that's
the problem with bar names. They all sound stupid. But yeah,
Harry's tapping, in fact, that was the bar I went
to an Oshkash. Harry's taping was on the there's this
street in Oshkosh. She was intersect called the four corners
you know where that was there were three hot young
bars on each corner. And Harry's was for old farts

(55:07):
for some on the softball team that are stationed at
a softball team and you know, the losing team supposed
to buy drinks after the game. But we're a radio station.
We can't bring up more with this. You kind of
have to adopt a bar if your sponsored resident. Harry's
was our bars, so we would go over there and
then go across the street and try to use our
softball uniforms to try to woo attractive young women, which,

(55:28):
by the way, that that was just a fool proof.
There were guys I knew who would wear their softball
uniform when they weren't even playing, just to go into
bars and hit on women.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
Does that still go on?

Speaker 2 (55:40):
People even play softball anymore? I think the bulls that
it would work against you more. I mean the young
people still play softball. I mean there's still the fields
out there. I just don't think it's as big as
it once was. Softball is a great game. I mean
faster at softballs is a fantastic game with just really
really hard the ball. Because pictures are so good. Slow

(56:01):
pitch softball, I mean, anybody could play that. I mean, yeah,
they're playing pickleball well, but that's why young.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
People shouldn't play pick a ball.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
Pickleball should be left to older people because that's all
they can play. And young people should be playing softball
in tennis because they're still healthy enough to run. You know, tennis,
you have to run from side to side and do
all that pickleball, you only have to take three steps.
So that's why old people should play pickleball and young
people should do so. Instead, you've got young people that
have to come in and steal away pickleball just because
they want something that's easy. It's like people who play

(56:31):
disc golf rather than golf. You know, disc golf is
as so far as I can tell, disc golf is
like playing frizzy playing golf, only you use it a frisbee.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Isn't that kind of what? Isn't that kind of what
it is? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:44):
I just put well play golf, for crying out loud.
It is kind of Golf is expensive. You know what
the most expensive I you know what the most expensive
thing for me and golf was. Remember I was terrible
the number of balls I lost the course I played,
and I was in high school. I mean it was
called Oakwood Hills, long since gone. It was hills, and

(57:05):
there was cricks and it was brush and I mean,
first of all, I'm broke. I would spend twenty five
minutes looking for my ball, play on through, play on,
I'm not giving up on this thing. There's like a
frog that has swallowed my golf ball and there were
snakes and all of the stuff that we're down in there,
and well, oh that's what I would mostly do, and

(57:28):
you play other people's walls. But that means the ball
you're playing is a water log ball, which isn't gonna
go very far. But a sliced up water log ball
is still a free ball as opposed to Even then,
the titleist was like, that was the ball that like
a guy like me could never have. The only time
I would play a titleist is if I found somebody
else's lost ball that.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Was stuck in there. It's still kind of the go
to ball, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Yeah, but I see the The only reason I know
that really is when you watch golf on TV, they
often do a close up of the ball in the
green and oil Boy, it seems like almost all of
them are titleists said, yeah, some are in Ikea, which
is sponsorship of it, But I think most of the pros.
Wouldn't you see more than half of the balls you
see would be titleists when you watch the pro golf.

(58:13):
Nothing more clearly to say in any of that. This
is the Mark Belling podcast. This is the Mark Belling podcast.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
All right.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Now here's one of the things that in the future
all sorts of people are going to claim that they
did but will not have done it. The ultimate example
of this, and we've discussed this over the years, is
this is an old person's reference, but some of you
will get it. People who claim that they were at
the ice Bowl. Right. We have the example we always

(58:45):
cite is one of the people that ran the company
that ran my cruise Forever, Peggy Crawl. Her father, no,
she she actually was at the Ice Bowl. And my
rule of thumb, as somebody who was a kid and
grew up in the Fox Valley at the time, is
that anybody who claims that they were at the ice
Bowl is lying, and you're going to be right ninety.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Five percent of the time. At the time lambeau.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Field held about fifty thousand people, and I swear about
one million people have claimed that they were at the
ice Bowl. So that means that the overwhelming majority could
not have been there. So my default position is you're lying,
but we don't pay you. Is very honest, is a
very honest person, and there was a significant amount of proof.
And see that's the thing, if you actually were there,

(59:25):
you would hate the people who lie about it more
than anybody, right, yeah, I mean you were there, all right. Well,
this is one of those things. I watched all of
Game three of the World Series, the eighteen inning game.
I know most people were not, and I can tell
you the time that it ended our time, because I
looked at my phone to see the time and then

(59:48):
went to bed. Fortunately, the game was I do my
podcast Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. This was Monday night, so
I didn't have a podcast on Tuesday, so there's no
real reason to have to go to bed other than
I wanted to get a lot of things done on
I was going to get up early on Tuesday, one
fifty one of the morning. So I watched all eighteen
innings of that game. And I know most people did not.

(01:00:09):
It's going to go down and years to come as
one of the greatest games ever played and all of
that stuff. So I actually did stay up and watch
the whole dog one thing this World Series. Right now,
it's two to two as of the time we're doing
this podcast, and it is impossible to predict. Both teams
are flawed, both teams have great strengths. The weaknesses of

(01:00:30):
the pitching staff showed up as showed up in times
for both of those teams. But then you had the
eighteen inning game, which was just so bizarre, in which
the best pitchers were guys that are on the back
ends of both teams bullpens. Former brewer Eric Lower pitched
four or five shutoutings for Toronto. The Dodgers' last four
innings were pitched by a guy who spent most of

(01:00:50):
the season in Triple A and was terrible in Triple A.
His World Series outing was the longest outing of his
major league career, but he was the last guy in
the bullpit anyway. I actually, I know you didn't stay
up and to see the say you did.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
I did.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
And it was one of those deals in which once
you got to the tenth or eleventh inning, it's not
like when it's the tenth inning, you know it's gonna
go eighteen. Now I should point on for people who
don't follow baseball real closely.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
They have a new rule in baseball started.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
A few years ago that in extra innings, each team
starts with a man on second base. It's to prevent this.
But that rule does not go into effect in the postseason,
so you don't have that. So the potential for a
game to go on as long as this one does exist,
but usually they don't. So it's like the tenth inning. Okay,
well I'm gone this. I turn it off, and it's
the eleventh. Now it's the thirteenth.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
That's the fifteenth.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
What I'm gonna give up after fifteen because you know,
dog gone well that the moment you give up, they
were gonna somebody's gonna score like fifteen seconds after you
turn the TV. I was at the Bucks game last night,
which would be Tuesday night. Something happened at that game
that has made'll lose. Yeah, And I was at think,

(01:02:02):
first of all, I'm at the game. My seats are
pretty good. I'm like twelve ros behind the Bucks bench.
Unless nobody's talking, you don't hear anything on the court,
but he's yelling at screaming.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
The only time you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Hear something on the court is if there's somebody shooting
a free throw and somebody yells something UF. It's in
a quiet moment, et cetera. So I didn't hear this,
but the reporter for the Athletic, which is owned by
New York Times did, and he's done a story and
this thing has just gone fire.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
Well anyway, if you hit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
The Bucks have only played four games so far this
season the three on one, but Yannis has been phenomenal.
First of all, he's a phenomenal player, but secondly, he's
one of these guys that only has one gear, so
he's gonna start the season as if it's Game seven
of the NBA Finals. So he's playing really, really hard,
and he's been off to and off the charts start.

(01:02:48):
The Bucks have looked very good, and a theory that
I've held that they're going to be better.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
Without Damian Lillard seems to work.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Lillard was a very good scorer, but he's slowed down
the team, and the Bucks are playing at a much
greater pace and Yannis's game is one of pace rather
than hanging.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
Around, and it aids the team.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Anyway, Yannis made one of those spectacular only Yannis type
plays in which guy's going in for a layup and
he makes this freakish, freakish incredible block and then saves
the ball and fires the ball to Miles Turner who
goes off.

Speaker 3 (01:03:20):
And scores it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
It was just it's one of those just highlight moments
that Yannis seems to do to a game, but it's
really strong one. What I did not know until I
read this this morning is Yannis then screamed at the
you know they want a player makes a great play,
players a scream, the other team calls a timeout, and
you'll do it. But I didn't know what he's screaming.
Yannas screamed at the top of his lungs, this is
my city now. The reason this is relevant is there

(01:03:44):
been rumors everywhere in the media that Yannis will be
traded in the middle of the season, that if the
Bucks are not a contender for a championship, the time
to move on from Yannis will be here. And I mean, obviously,
if the Bucks traded Yiannis in the middle of He's
got two years left in his contract. If they traded
him in the middle of the season, the hall would
be astronomical. The problem with trading him to a contender, though,

(01:04:08):
is contenders draft choices are useless. You trade Giannis, you
want to get like nineteen first round draft choices and
all of that stuff. But if you trade him to
a team that has a good record, that first round
draft pick is at the end of the draft. That's
what makes it problematic. You often end up therefore trading
for say the five or six best young players that
that team has. You try to do a three wing

(01:04:28):
get another team. Anyway, there have been these rumors and
rumors and rumors and rumors, and Giannis has said that
I want to be in Milwaukee as long as we're contender,
and he keeps saying that, but what if you're not
a contender, So this proclamation, this is my city. Yeah,
And then when the heat went on to say, I
can't say it even though every other bring in. We
should bring in Meghan Kelly to outsourced my swearing to

(01:04:51):
Megan Kelly since she swears all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
I swear.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
She loves to say the I think she gets off
saving the F bob. Don't you just think that that's
our excitement in life? Yeah, so when we need to
say the F bomb, we should bring in Meg and
Kelly to read the life. I actually think I could
get her to do that once. She's such a self promoter, Rigie, Meg,
and I need somebody to say the F bomb. You

(01:05:16):
record this. If I could get that to the right person,
she would actually anyway, she said. And then Yana said,
and I ain't f and leaving. Well, it was a
state of the It was a statement in the passion
of the moment. But the reality is is that the
guy is in what is this is he eleventh year,
twelfth year in Milwaukee. He hasn't left in a sport

(01:05:37):
in which there's a couple of guys. Steph Curry never
let has never left Golden State, Kobe never left the Lakers.
But the overwhelming majority of players are Kevin Durantz who
are on six, seven, eight nine different teams, and Yannis
has been here a long time. At some point he's
probably going to leave. And you know, it may be
this year, or it maybe in three years, or it
may be when a Michael Jordan thing he retires and

(01:06:00):
comes back at the age of thirty seven years old.
But it was a powerful statement, and the story's become
a big, big deal. And I'm just guessing that he's
energized by how well and it's so early, four games,
so well the team is played in the fact that
he's adored by Bucks fans and he's one of these
you know, some athletes in a city are hermits and

(01:06:23):
you never see him anywhere, And then there are others
in which they're just spotted all the time. And Giannis
is one of those people that just spotted all the
time everywhere in well yeah, well yeah, and that I
mean he's got he's on the way to having fifty
five kids apparently. I mean MARIAHS. Crankin went out at
the rate of about one per year, et cetera. But

(01:06:45):
he's also a funny guy. But he just he's a
Milwaukee guy and he likes it. He already likes doing
these things, and he likes to be seen. And Milwaukee
is a community. And when I say Milwaukee, I mean
Wisconsin in terms of sports fans. When they sense that
a player is happy to be here, there's an embracing
of him. And after Aaron Rodgers' career is over, that

(01:07:05):
will happen with him. And the same way that after
Brett Favre's career was over, that he played a couple
of years elsewhere, that will be over as well, because
you had even in the case of Rogers, he was
a guy that showed up at nineteen thousand things and
he was around all over the place.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
And so on.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Yeah, and then there are other athletes that just you know,
they're concerned about their privacy and their safety and their security,
and you never see him anywhere. But Yiannis is just
one of those guys you see all the time to
the point that, oh, there's Yannis. You know, if you're
from out of town, maybe you'd be shocked to see him.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
But there's some people.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
It's like a once every few weeks thing, and quickly
on the Packers. There's another story that I found on
that same website, The Athletic Today. The NFL trading deadline
is it's now imminent. The one clear need the Packers
have now. Teams don't make a lot of trades in
the NFL in midseason. In baseball and basketball, zillions of them,

(01:08:03):
but there is I think only one.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
There's knee.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
Every team has multiple needs, but only one glaring need.
The Packers have and it's the position that I worried
about at the beginning of the year. They have a
glaring need at cornerback. They benched Nate Hobbs during the
game against Pittsburgh this past Sunday. Nate Hobbs signed a
huge contract, four years, forty eight million. That's not all guaranteed.
He came from the Raiders. The problem is he played

(01:08:29):
the slot or Nickel. People use different terms, and he's
being asked to play the pure corner position and he's
not adapted to it, so they back and forth. They
use him in Carrington Valentine and neither are are that good.
On the other corner side, Keyshawn Nixon was very good
most of this season, but at a terrible game against
the Steelers, especially in the first half. Committed two penalties

(01:08:52):
on third downs and was having difficulty. I think the
Packers just look so strong everywhere to address and in football,
you know the problem with addressing a need is you
could trade for somebody and he gets hurt the next
week and you have it. You just get injured so
often in football. But to take this position of weakness

(01:09:15):
and shore it up by going.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
And trading.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
Now, the Packers' trade capital is limited because they gave
up so much for Micah Parsons. You'd probably have to
trade another player, find a position at which you may
have an excess to get a corner. And anyway, the
story in the Athletic goes on a tremendous length about
this and the deficiencies the Packers have had at the
one corner and so on. I'm not going to suggest

(01:09:41):
who it is that they should trade in order to
do it. But if they can address this, you hate
to do another draft choice. But I think you could
get a good corner for a two or three second
or third round pick. And I mean the Packers are
in a situation in which it's so early in the
season to say this, but they're one of six or

(01:10:02):
seven or eight teams that I think you could say
are a Super Bowl contender right well, and if they're not,
it's going to be because either either key injuries or
they're going to get burned a corner. Right There's also
a lot of people who think they made a terrible
mistake cutting Hamersack the kicker.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
Are you one of them?

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
You don't know well the people I know, But he's
he can, he can. Eventually he's going to be released
and put on the injured list and not the injured
list the what do they call that the practice squad,
because you can't tie up two kickers on your squad
and so on. McManus missed a couple of fields. On
the other hand, he was coming back from an injury

(01:10:44):
and McManus's long term track record is way way way better.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
And.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
No, he can't. But there's a reason why McManus has
been in the league forever, and that this guy was.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
This guy was on the.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Scrap heap when the Packers signed him weeks ago. Enough
of our sports content. Do want to remind you that
in the final segment on.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
The Thursday podcast, that's when we do our football agree.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Paul wants to for if any season, I mean, I
had a we had the same pick last week I had.
Just there's I can't do worse than I did last
week because every football pick that I had in my
whole weekend I was rolling on. Mike pointed out to
me that all but two games in the NFL were
decided by more than ten points. First time had it
ever happened? Okay, talk to later.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
The Mark Belling Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts,
production and engineering by Paul Crownforest. The Mark Belling Podcast
is presented by you Line for quality shipping and industrial supplies.
You Line has everything in stock. Visit you line dot com.
Listen to all of Mark's podcasts, always available on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

(01:11:57):
favorite podcasts.