Mark Belling Podcast #82: Trump makes a compelling argument that tariffs (and the threat of them) are creating a safer and more peaceful world. Also: will the Supreme Court strip Trump of his tariff powers and our weekly football preview and point spread picks.

Under President Trump, trade and foreign policy are no longer separate issues.  Instead, trade is his most important foreign policy tool.   Also: is the stock market terribly overvalued?   A new stat on the age of first time home buyers explains a lot.  And Mark and Mike Merlet analyze this weekend's Packers-Eagles game.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by you Line for
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Visit you line dot com. The Markbelling Podcast is a
production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
We have a quote of the day on Today's podcast.
Every now and then we have a quote of the day.
We don't have one every day because I don't find
a good enough quote every day. Plus my own quotes.
The things that I just come out with could all
be quotes of the day. But I have a quote
of the day. The quote of the day, my definition
comes from somebody else, and we're going to actually lead

(00:40):
with it. I found this in one of the aggregator
services that I subscribe to to help me find material
for the program. It's from somebody named Charles Bukowski. By
the way, I would bet almost ever anything you don't
know who that is, I wouldn't. I'm glad I didn't
say a dollar about what if you actually shocked me
and came up with this. He was He was a

(01:04):
poet in the era in which some poets actually were
not hoody twitty but were, you know, halfway bums, an
old era when Alan Ginsburg and the Beat poets came
out Bukowski, he just looked like a slob and he
was like he was he was. He wore punchy, short
little things, and I just back when I was in college,

(01:25):
like people were into that stuff kind of. Bukowski was
not like one of these flowing you know. His stuff
would be like about whinos, and he was more of
a Muhammad Ali type poet, if you know what I mean,
except very punchy stuff. This is a line from Charles Bukowski.
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people

(01:48):
are full of doubts. Well the stupid one. Stupid ones
are full of confidence. Boy does that nail it. I
go back to COVID, in which I was simply rejecting
the official line that we were getting from the government,

(02:10):
from Fauci, the drug companies. But I didn't embrace the
line from all of the skeptics who said the vaccines
were terrible. That people said they there's some people said
COVID is gonna kill us all, and as they're saying
it's just a common cold, I said, I didn't know
that something like this is going to require an open
mind and evidence. There are a lot of things that

(02:34):
are like that the people who do the true damage
in our country are people who are convinced they're right
when they don't know what damn thing. The people who
usually turn out to be right are those who think
things through and are not biased in advanced in Advanced

(02:54):
by some conclusion that they want to hold. Great quote,
and I'm opening with it because it applies to the
first segment of today's program, which we're just gonna underline.
I think that what we're gonna get into here following

(03:14):
my sharing of information about our title sponsor you Line
is particularly important. It covers two or three issues, and
I'm just underlining and drawing my attention.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
So.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
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(04:14):
are a couple of issues that I think are tied together,
and I think almost nobody has picked up on this.
What I want to do is focus initially on one
of the issues is my way of getting into the other.

(04:36):
So that's a little bit of a setup. President Trump
did the interview on Sunday night. We talked about a
podcast earlier in the week with Nora O'Donnell on sixty Minutes,
and I thought that it was Trump at his best, because,
first of all, Nora o'donna wanted to carve him up
and interrupt him. But CBS is under new ownership and

(04:56):
she was under I think instructions to be a agressive
with Trump, but to let him get his answers in.
And Trump got his answers in anyway. One of the
areas that they discussed is I think an area in
which Trump has been shockingly successful. One of the things

(05:21):
that we just don't pay enough attention to our problems
that we avert. For example, you may hear the authorities
in a case, say we foiled a plot of somebody
who is going to blow up a school, you didn't
think anything about it, Well, imagine if they didn't. We

(05:44):
have the world a world right now that's on edge.
There's a lot of reasons for it. The radicalization of Islam,
factional dispear in many parts of the world, the fact

(06:04):
that the world is increasingly nuclear, the abrogation of American
power during Biden, a lot of factors. It is extraordinary
to me how much peace Trump is bringing to the

(06:28):
world now. The critics of Trump just want to say, well,
what about Russian Ukraine? And undeniably that war is still
going on, and in the response that Trump gives here,
it's going to be addressed. And it's the point that
Nora O'Donnell is raising. But we don't pay enough attention

(06:48):
to the fact that it was only a few months
ago that Indian and Pakistan were closed. This is one
of those issues that I talked earlier about Pukowski back
when we're in college, you know, and I don't know
about today. Nobody discusses ideas. When you're around other guys
in the front, we would discuss the issues. You know.
One of the things was debated is when World War

(07:10):
three breaks out. Whenever it is where will it be
or better put, what's the most dangerous part of the world.
A lot of people say the Middle East, but there
were many people this goes back decades that said Indian Pakistan.
They're both no clear and the level of hatred is

(07:35):
as great as Israel in the Arab nations, It's as
great as anything. It's religiously driven, it's border driven. There's
a time in which there was a separate country called
East Pakistan, since changed its name. India is predominantly hiddenu
and Pakistan is virtually entirely Muslim. You know. British colonialism

(08:01):
kept it all in order. But when they gained their independence.
It goes back to Gandhi, who is the great pacifist
at the time and probably averted in his era the
Great War between India and Pakistan. They were ready to
go to nuclear war. We managed to talk them off
the edge, as we've done again and again and again

(08:24):
under Trump. One of the things that simply can't be
processed by people who hate promp he's a warmonger in
the world. Trump is pacifist. Isn't the right term. Trump
believes in bringing peace to the world without American military intervention.

(08:46):
And yesterday's podcast, I talked briefly about the legacy of
Dick Cheney. He was an interventionist. Trump is not someone
who says, what doesn't involve us, to hell with it,
Let the world go to hell, let them figure it out.
We can't have that attitude. And I'm somebody that has
gone from being an interventionist, which I clearly was in

(09:08):
the Bush era. I considered myself a Neocon, but have
enough of an open mind to see it didn't work.
We're sticking our beaks into all sorts of things and
just getting our people killed, wasting a ton of money,
and nothing was ever gonna g anny better. And some
of the conservative movement had gone to being isolationist. I'm
not that either. We live on a planet that if
a nuclear war starts out, it doesn't really matter if

(09:30):
it starts in Norway or Kardosha. The radiation's gonna kill
us all, not to mention the fact that a decent
human being wants peace in the world. I think the
reason Trump has been so successful in so many of
these areas is he doesn't view the world the same

(09:53):
way the conventional leaders of both political parties do. There's
another part of this that I'm going to get to.
I said it was a two pronged discussion in a moment.
But here's the exchange with Norah O'Donnell, and I need
to set it up because she had rupted him a
couple of times. She's just jumping on. You know. Trump
said he was going to get the war between Ukraine

(10:15):
and Russia ended, and I thought he was going to
get it ended prior to this. It's the one nut
that he hasn't cracked. And it's I just think because
the leaders of the two nations want war, but look
at all the others that he stopped. So at any words,
that becomes her premise. And Trump has a retort. You know,
the term now is bring receipts. The term just came

(10:36):
out of nowhere three years ago. In other words, he
has the documentation to prove his point, and he's going
to go through I don't want to get the whole
thing away. He pulls out a piece of paper and
he talks about all of the wars that were on
the verge of starting or underway that he's ended. And
he's only but this is let's see ten months, not
quite ten. It would be ten months. Yeah, ten months
on November twentieth. So here's this exchange. But it'll with

(11:00):
this a little back and forth about Russian Ukraine and
why he hasn't solved this, and he goes into some
of the others, and I want you to listen to
this because a point that he makes at the end
is work is the subject that I'm linking to. So
this is again Trump from sixty minutes on Sunday.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
Nd Nora, that was Joe Biden's war, not.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
I need to Can you take it back to the beginning,
Paul or not? Yeah, take it back. I need to
set that up again. Her question that she's asking is
about Russia and Ukraine. So when he said, Joe, but Ace,
you know she's tried it, Why haven't read of the war?
Why haven't you had an end of the war? And
his the answer that he's giving here is starting with
this didn't start on me. I'm trying to clean up

(11:37):
a mess that somebody else let happen. Now, that's so
that's the context that we're the answer will start. Let's
play it.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
Again, Nora, that was Joe Biden's war, not my war.
I inherited that stupid war. That should not have been
a war that would have never happened if I were president,
and by the way, for four years it didn't happen.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
There was never even a doubt.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Then the election was rigged and stolen, and all of
a sudden, you see them forming up at the line.
And now I come back and I'm going to get
that one solved too. But I brought I mean, just
a little list of Look at this wars. How many
did I solve? Cambodia, this is Cambodia, Thailand, Costovo, Serbia, Congo,

(12:20):
the Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India. That was going
to be a beauty. They shot down seven planes. Israel
and Iran, you've heard about that one. Egypt and Ethiopia.
That's another beauty. Ethiopia built a big damn where there's
no water going to the Nile. Armenia and Azerbaijan. And
if you take a look Israel and Hamas, which is

(12:41):
a rough little situation, but it's going to be I.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Do want to talk about. I mean, you have branded
yourself the peace President.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Well, I think I did pretty good. I solved Those
are eight of the nine wars I solved. You know
how I solved them. I said, in many cases, in
sixty percent, I said, if you don't stop fighting, I'm
putting tarif from both of your countries and you're not
going to be able to do business.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Why isn't that working with Putin?

Speaker 4 (13:06):
It is working with Putin. I think I did different
with him because we don't do very much business with Russia.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
For one thing.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
You know, he's not like somebody that buys a lot
from US because of foolishness, and I think he'd like
to be. I think he wants to come in and
he wants to trade with US, and he wants to
make a lot of money for Russia. And I think
that's great.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
That's what we get it done in a couple of months.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
To you, I think we're going to get it done yet,
I think he really wants to do business with the US.
But it did work with India, and it did work
with Pakistan, and it did work with sixty percent of
those countries. I can tell you if it wasn't for
tariffs and trade, I wouldn't have been able to make
the deals. But I stopped. As an example, India does
a lot of business with US. They were going to work,

(13:46):
they were going to have a nuclear war with Pakistan.
The Prime Minister Pakistan stood up the other day and
he said, if Donald Trump didn't get involved, many millions
of people would be dead right now. That was a
bad war. He's ready to shut down aeroplanes all over
the place. That was going to be a bad war.
And I told both of them, I said, if you

(14:06):
guys don't work out a deal fast, you're not going
to do any business with the United States. And they
do a lot of business with the United States. And
they were both great leaders, and they worked out a
deal and they stopped the war that would have been
a bad war, would have been a nuclear war. No.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
One of the things that bad interviewers do is they
focus on the questions that they want to ask and
they don't listen. She kept prodding down, but what about this,
what about this? What about this? And I think that
she was missing where Trump was going with this answer,
which is really interesting. Prior to Trump, in prior to

(14:49):
Trump's first term, prior to a second term, people have
had positions on tariffs, and going back to that quote
from Pokowski, not enough people have doubts my position on tariffs,
as you know, has been mixed. I want to step
back for a moment and then get to where Trump

(15:11):
was going with this. One of my criticisms that you
heard me express. I used to be a free trader,
I would say during the years I did this program
in the nineties and the early Zeros, I was a
free trader. And then I said, I'm not an isolationist,
but I'm something other than a free trader. Fear trader
isn't really the right term either. I believe that free

(15:33):
trade versus protection is and free trade is better. But
the mistake that we have made in our foreign policy,
and this goes back decades of past presidents, is we
have treated foreign policy and trade policy as separate. One

(15:56):
of the reasons China has walked all over US ever
since events Nixon went to China in nineteen seventy two
three whatever it was fifty years ago and opened the
door to us having a relationship with China is we
have had certain desires for China to behave in certain

(16:19):
ways with regard to foreign policy, but we didn't use
our best lever, which is trade. China's economy has grown
largely because of the business it does with the United States.
We could have used that business and the threat to
do less of it as leverage to get China to

(16:39):
do what we wanted them to do in other areas.
But we've kept the two separate because, oh, don't mess
up trade. Don' messuprade. They're too many American companies that
better from trade. Trump Trump has said, screw that, I
got a tool here in any dealing that we have
in life. You use the leverage you have. Trade and

(17:02):
foreign policy under Trump have become connected. Without regard to
your view of trade and tariff. Oh, it's raising prices
for Americans. Well, whether it is or it isn't. First
of all, I think that the evidence is is that
it actually isn't, which is surprising. But maybe it is,

(17:23):
maybe it will. There are other components to this. Trump said,
when India and Pakistan, we're ready to go nukate one
another member. Both are nuclear. He said he's gonna slap
tariffs on the both of them. India felt as though
it was aggrieved and it was going to hit Pakistan.

(17:44):
Do you understand how important the United States is to
India's economy. It's right there with China. Trump said, I'm
gonna tariff you to death if you hit Pakistan, and
he told Pakistan the same thing that got them off

(18:05):
what could have been a terrible world war. No, why
is it working with Russia? Trump at an interesting point,
We actually don't trade much with Russia versus all. Russia
doesn't have many exports. They got vodka, and they've got energy. Well,

(18:27):
we have a lot of energy ourselves. We don't need
their energy. A lot of other nations do. And now
they figured out how to make vodka from damn near everything.
I swear when I find is there anything you can't
make vodka from? You basically let something rot and it
then turns into vogue. Anyway, we don't do a lot

(18:47):
of business with them, So therefore Trump has not had
the ability to tear a Russia to death because they
don't sell that much stuff to us. The point though,
that Trump was making in all of these high spots
that he's averted, he's used not terrafts but the threat
of tariffs to make a more peaceful world. Here's where

(19:11):
Trump's I love the term fresh eyes because it just
works when you see something you know. The cops use
it all the time. If two detectives are stimied in
a case, they'll move off to something else, So they're
bringing two others. Because you just look at it something
so long you miss the obvious. One of the things
that I do when I kill time on a plane
is I'll do a crosser puzzle stuff like that. When

(19:32):
I get stalled in an area, I moved to another
part of the puzzle. Come back ten minutes later to
the part that I was like, It's amazing how I
get the answer. It's amazing. Your mind gets cleared, and
you know the things that you were flummocks on fresh eyes.
Trump has had fresh eyes. If Trump's good at anything
in life, it's understanding what his strengths and weaknesses are.

(19:52):
It's how he's done all of these It's how he
built Atlantic City, It's how he built his casinos in
some of these bond deals in which frankly, he got
the better of a lot of these negotiations because he
figured out the strengths and weaknesses. He's very good at
understanding leverage and pressure. The United States is a massive
consumer nation, and it is also still a massive producer

(20:14):
of product, particularly technology. Lots of nations in the world
need our stuff and they need us to buy their stuff.
So he's put that on the table, and he's using it,

(20:34):
and I think so far to great success. You can't
look at trade in a vacuum. Are we getting screwed
by other countries? Are the tariff's going to raise prices
on us? And the other point the Trump makes look
at all the money we're making off the tariffs. That
is one component of it. But the other component of
it is we can use the threat of slapping you
with a terraf for not selling our stuff to you,
or blocking you from selling to what is selling to us,

(20:56):
et cetera, to achieve all sorts of other important goals
we have, including world peace. Unrelated to tariff. Trump mentioned
Israel and Iran. Well, we know he settled that. Trump
just sized this up. Iran's ason. The hole is we're

(21:17):
building nukes and we can threaten to nuke out Israel.
Trump knocked out at RAN's nukes, and now Iran is
probably going to spend all of its time going back
to square one and rebuilding its nukes. And so Iran,
we're not going to support Hamas anymore. We got bigger
problems here. Trump's solved two problems there. First of all,

(21:39):
he looked the other way as Israel bombed Iran and
took out Iran's defenses, so when we came in to bomb,
they couldn't shoot any of our bombers down because Israel
had pummeled all of their anti aircraft on the ground.
Let them do all of that. So we went in untouched,
dropped these bombs, wipe out the nuclear program. How can
anyone argue that hasn't made for him our peaceful world.

(22:01):
It may result in peace throughout the Middle East, which
brings you to myn X point. The Supreme Court is
hearing oral arguments this hazard or oral arguments this week
on whether or not Trump has the ability to unilaterally
imposed heroffs. Trump says it's the most important ruling the

(22:23):
Supreme Court will make one hundred years. I'd say at
least seventy five Brown versus Board of Education. Separate but
equal is unconstitutionally really important. It's huge. The fear is
the two moderates who lean conservative, the Chief Justice and

(22:47):
the law professor from Notre Dame. Are they going to
rule that Trump doesn't have this authority. I think it
is critical that the Court get this right. Trump is
using not tariffs alone, but the threat of tariffs. You

(23:10):
can't go to the Congress and pass a bill setting
a tariff if you're then going to take a change
it back. He wants to be able to threaten alter
moves so he can utilize this power to exercise American
foreign policy. The one thing the Constitution is clear on
is that foreign policy is the exclusive role of the
executive branch, not declaration of war but everything else. Marco

(23:34):
Rubio has made this point clear. The Supreme Court can't
tell Trump anything on foreign policy. The concert is clear
it is the domain of the executive. The question is
trade foreign policy. Constitution doesn't say it's a gray area.
I think it is critical that they get this right.

(23:54):
If you don't want us to use trade as a leverage,
you simply a fight not only the world to walk
all over us, but you limit our ability to do
good in the world. It used to be that the
do gooder is the ones who wanted to save the
whole world were the left, and it used to be
the people on the right. It didn't give a crap
if people were killing one another. And it's some two

(24:15):
remote parts of the world like Africa, that's all changed.
The left doesn't seem to care at all about awful
things going on in the world, because many of the
awful people doing awful things are on their side, the
Venezuelan dictators and drug lords, the Muslim terrorists, the people

(24:36):
practicing genocide in Central Africa. I don't think that the
United States needs to focus all that much on things
that aren't our vital interest. But if we can make
for a more peaceful world when that also benefits us,
of course we should do it. You have to use
what you have, and the United States not using trade.

(25:00):
It's kind of a bad reference to make because of
the awful loss of Tucker Craft, but it would have
been like if the Packers never threw the ball to
Tucker Craft once they realized he was one of the
great titans. You use what you have. Can I tell
a funny story about this? It's good, it's good. I
have this really powerful, high minded segment here, and I'm

(25:21):
just gonna take it straight into the gutter. But that's
kind of what I'm known for, isn't it. I just
it's just one of the you get every now and
then something happens. I mean, I forget everything, you forget
even more than me. I hope Paul lives next door
to me in the nursing home. Because A, it means
I've been a good one given the fact that he's
got somehow has managed to a mass, massive amounts of money,

(25:42):
we would have sitting there and you know, and you
start to lose it as people do you imagine the
two of us. We aren't gonna have one damn thing right.
We're both gonna know that we were sort of a
big deal in radio, but we'll have all the details wrong.
You're gonna somehow turn it into you were the host
of the show. And and I was like, anyway, this

(26:07):
is back when I was in Madison. I can at
least place this. I love being able to tell anything
that happened prior to Milwaukee is a good story to
tell because ain't nobody's gonna know who it is. And
b it means the story so long ago that you
can't hold it against me. Statue of the limitations is
read out there was all right, now understand that I'm

(26:27):
right in the age of being you know, frisky. I
was in Madison from eighty six to eighty nine. Madison
was stupid then, but it was not is like there
were tons of attractive women at that time in Madison.
I don't think that there are any now. For example,
there are also tons of heterosexual women in Madison at

(26:49):
the time. And remember also my generation, the baby boom,
you know, we were you know, it was in that era,
all right. I was, I was some friends and we
were in one of these But I just I have
not gone to a happy hour at a bar in decades,
but I did then, and it was one of those
places that I could even mention the name of it.

(27:11):
I might get this. I think it was the Bombay
Bicycle Club in Madison, but they had like a happy
hour on Fridays that the place was just mobbed, and
it was all people of my age, men and women,
and it was it was. It was like a hangout,
but not a late night hangout. It was an after
It was just what was what it was. I think
that was the name of the place. I might be wrong,
but I think that was it. And Okay, you're talking

(27:37):
to people that it's crowded in there and guys are
talking to women and so on. So I'm talking to
this woman and she's got big boobs. Well, we I
asked throughout. We went on a date not. Nothing happened
that night. But I then I said, well, you know,

(27:58):
you do the thing of that was in the days
which you actually had to get somebody's phone number. You
don't remember those days because you've never dated anybody like
your first girlfriend, I think was your wife?

Speaker 4 (28:07):
Was it it?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Oh, you have been around while, see you? Well, an
I never got married. But but you had to get
the phone number. There was no other way to no
other way to contact. There was no texting or any
of that stuff. So we went out. So I go
to pick her up. That's what we did at the time.
I don't even think that's what you did. The guy
would pick up the woman, right, and she's got this

(28:31):
low cut thing on. I remember, I said, she's got
so anyway, hours passed her in the date and I must.
I mean, it's hard not you know. It's like, first
of all, you're on a date with a woman and
she's got big moves and she's got a little cut
thing on. Well, it's just you know, if you look,
you're a latch. On the other hand, but she evidently

(28:52):
wants you to look, or the thing wouldn't be low cut, right,
I mean, And it's one thing you know, I try
to be polite when you're like and regularly, but it's
a date, so I'm thinking, there's nothing wrong with me
kind of looking because she said we're on a date.
So I well, I wasn't peeking. I was looking, and
I made a cod I just brought it up. And anyway,

(29:13):
this the whole point of this. It gets back to
this other subject she said. It just stuck with me.
She said, Mark, you use what you have.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
There.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
She's thinking, big boos, Why would I hate him? I'm
on the make, I'm a single woman. That's what she's thinking.
As I recall, she was above average attractive, but I
mean her general other thing was not equaled by the
great body that she had. Paul said, Sidney Sweeney said
the same thing this week, and we like her now

(29:47):
because she's Republican. So anyway, nothing ever came, and there's
nothing bad about the story or anything other than it's
one of the few times a woman really actually I've
ever heard end basically her joking around and I brought
it up actually came out. And it's the same thing.
If a woman's got great legs, she's gonna wear a
short skirt and so on. Use what you have. It
was just a common sense answer the chief. And this

(30:07):
is my point with regard to trade, you use what
you have. And the incredible success that Trump has had
in terms of international policies. People grumbling about this, that
or the other thing, but undeniably the world is a
safer and better place than it was when he came
in office nine months ago. And it's because he using
what he has. And that's this whole key on trade

(30:29):
and tariffs and the whole thing and being locked into
your well. Milton Friedman said this and this sad or
the other thing. We got to use that we have,
and in the case of these theraffs and Trump's being
able to use it to avoid war, we're using it
for good and not for bad. I do run the risk.

(30:51):
Nobody is gonna remember all of the high minded points
about how Trump has linked trade policy and war prevention
and foreign policy into the same thing, because but if
they remember the moral of the story about the woman
with the well, I don't remember her name. It's been decades.
I don't remember the line. I think we only went

(31:11):
on the one time. We didn't, you know, just it
was just the thing. But I remember that line it
was just just so act. You know, every now and
then you'll hear something in which it's just like words
of wisdom, and everybody should apply that to their own career.
You use what you have, not if it's not if
you've got it flawned and it's that's a similar thing.
But you know, in terms of the skills I have

(31:32):
as a talk show host, some things I'm good at.
Other things that I'm not good at. The decision that
you make about what field to go into when you're
a younger person, use what you have. You have musical ability,
I don't, so of course you got into a bad
I wish I had it. I don't. I've got all
sorts of analytical powers and I'm extremely intuitive. You use that,

(31:53):
You use what you have got. One other topic I
want to cover in this segment. The stock market has
gotten hinky this week. I made a comment on Monday's
podcast that I want to reaffirm here. I just and
I said it last week too. I just think the

(32:13):
market is frighteningly overvalued. The thing about anything I say
about the stock market is I always throw in going
back to that line from Charles Bukowski, filled with doubts
I might be wrong.

Speaker 4 (32:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Predicting the stock market's very, very hard, in part because
the market tends to do the opposite of what most
people think. And there's the reason for that is fairly obvious.
If everybody thinks it's going down, that means everybody has
already sold, Meaning there's nowhere else for it to go
but up, because if you've all sold everything you're gonna
have can't go donnity farther. People confuse the stock market

(32:47):
with the health of the economy. What the market tends
to do is overreact on the upside of the downside.
I remember one of I still think it's the first
time I ever actually kneeled a higher low in the
stock market. And I remember when it was. It was
we were on one of my cruises. It was early
in Obama, so it was the cruise of two thousand
and nine. I guess it would have been March depending

(33:09):
I don't remember where we were, but probably early on,
and the stock market had fallen apart at the end
of the bush here I remember the housing crisis and
so on, and there was a positive economic report in
which growth had reversed. We had negative growth, negative growth,
negative growth, and it's a very good report. And I

(33:32):
remember saying to the group, I think the stock market
just bottomed out. And it did. The market, as you know,
rallied extremely during Obama. A lot of it was simply
everything had over sold. The same I didn't say it
about housing, but the housing bottomed out as well, and
that's when the tremendous explosion in housing occurred. The same thing.
I wasn't smart enough to realize that it would apply

(33:53):
to housing and everything else, although I did believe that
housing was grotesquely undervalued. After the housing market. In other words,
what happened and is the market had gone housing, real
estate stocks, everything had gone down way more than it
needed to after the housing market collapsed. And I think
that what's happened with the dot com thing and so on,
not dot Com with AI is mirroring what happened with

(34:13):
dot Com in ninety eight, ninety nine and zero, in
which the stock market collapsed. They called it the dot
com bust. And people look back at that and they
learned the wrong message. It wasn't the dot com that
the Internet wasn't going to be a big thing. It's
that the wrong companies got overvalued. We just don't know
which companies are going to be the ones that become

(34:34):
the next in Nvidia and Microsoft and Alphabet in AI.
It might be the ones I just said, or it
might be others. But in the meantime, the anticipation that
this is going to be huge has just gotten a
lot of companies to be overvalued. I think it's dangerous
for Trump to crow about the stock mark, because I
think the stock market's going to turn down some indicators,

(34:55):
gold and bitcoin have really turned downward after roaring ahead
the last several weeks. I am not one who believes
that we're headed for a period of inflation. I think
that the greater threat is that of an economic slow down,
and I agree with Trump that the FED needs to ease.
I think that the inflation fears are almost non existent.
The tariffs haven't caused inflation. The cost of living increase

(35:17):
now for social securities two point eight percent, that's based
on the CPI. We've gotten that under control. I think
that there's going to be a downturn, however, in the
stock market. My caveat on that is, and I say
this all the time, I am not an expit of
the stock market I don't understand technicals and all of
that stuff, and I might be wrong. I've thought the
stock market's been overvalued for like eight months and it's

(35:37):
done nothing but go up. But I do think that
it's overvalued, and when it's overvalued, it tends to correct
very very badly. And history tells us that those then
are spectacular buying opportunities. But I just think there needs
to be a shakeout. I look at open AI, which
is on the cutting edge. I just wonder if fifteen
years from now there's going to be five ten companies

(36:00):
that are worth trillions of dollars because of AI. I
just don't know that we know which ones they are.
And you know, you look back at the dot com thing.
The big winners were Amazon, Microsoft because of the cloud, Facebook,
some of the others. But look at the companies that

(36:22):
were incredibly valuable that went to bust and went zero.
Sun Microsystems, Yahoo became a nothing, was just bought up.
Broadcast dot Com the company founded by Cuban. He sold
it to Yahoo, which then itself got sold. A lot
of the early on companies that you think are going
to be the future turnout to be zeros because technological

(36:42):
advances trump them and make them irrelevant. I think the
problem here is this, so much of the NASDAQ one
hundred and the S and P five hundred, the top
six or seven stocks in the S and P five hundred,
I think, make more than half the market cap of
the all other four hundred ninety three stocks combined. So

(37:05):
if some of those stocks that are high flying correct,
all of the market averages go down, even though many
other companies in the market may do just fine because
they didn't get to the point of being as overvalued
as they are. And again I might be wrong about this,
but the one thing I can tell you about stocks
based on living for a number of decades is stocks

(37:26):
go up, and they go down, and whenever people think
they can't go down, they're guaranteed to go down. The
one thing about this is I'm not the only guy
saying this. Zillions of people think the market's going to
turn down yet, so maybe it is still months away
and we're not at that point because so many people
seem to be expecting that that's what's going to occur.
You have no opinion of what's going to happen with

(37:47):
the stock market, do you don't you think it's overvalued. Well,
you say, I bet, I see. I mean, I just remember,
as younger, a pe of eighteen or nineteen was considered
fair valuation the eighties nineties one hundred, one hundred and ten.
Now in part these companies are growing at forty and
fifty and sixty percent as well, so it would I

(38:10):
just think there's a lot of overvaluation in there, and
I think that if there is a correction, it could
be pretty sharp. I also wonder if we're looking at
two to three to four years of just kind of
blog growth in the market, because see the stock market
looks ahead that all of this growth has occurred, and

(38:31):
it's going to take corporate earnings years to catch up
with where some of the valuations are my completely worthless thoughts.
And again, if you disagree with me, that's just fine.
I'm just telling you what I think here, and it's
based on not emotion but my objective view that some
of these companies I just think. I mean, I've held

(38:52):
in Vidia forever and ever and ever I've sold it
to I just it scares me, right, how I this is.
You don't want to see a stock go up forever
and ever and ever and then go down eighty percent
and you blow everything that you you had. And you know,
if it does keep going up, okay, you missed output.
And the other thing is a lot of this depends
on your view of this, your age, and what your
time spectrum is. If you're eighty years old, I would

(39:13):
not want to have ninety percent of my life savings
in tech stocks, because you need all that cash right now.
But if you're thirty five, what the hell do you care?
It's going to go up and down and over the
long hold, et cetera. This is the Mark Belling podcast.
This is the Mark Belling Podcast. I found an interesting

(39:34):
stat here. This is one of those things that I
think we probably sort of knew, but I've never saw
it actually put into a number. The median. What's median.
There's all these things, the media and the mode, the
average and so on. The median that's right in the middle.
The median age of first time home buyers in twenty
twenty five is age forty. It means there were as

(39:59):
many young than forty as there are over than forty.
But that's the median age for first time home buyers.
In nineteen eighty five, it was twenty nine. There's so
much in that number. The people who were twenty nine

(40:21):
and nineteen eighty five were baby boomers. Baby Boomers are
people who they had their lives on the accelerator pedal
all along. When they were in grade school, they wanted
to be in high school. When in high school, they
wanted to either be free or in college. When they
were in college, they wanted to be out of college,
and they wanted to be working. The Generation Z's, I think,
were closer to the Baby Boomers than they were to

(40:43):
the Millennials, the one after them. The Millennials became the
generation in which their lies are on the brake pedal.
They wanted to slow everything down. They didn't want independence,
they wanted to live with mom and dad. They've not
wanted to make commitments. And one of the things that
that's manifested itself in it was this delay in purchasing

(41:03):
a home. The other component of it is almost every
baby Boomer that I recall from the twenties, none of
us had anybody because we were starting to save it
and we weren't making enough then. Whereas you think of
the millennials when they were in their twenties, they were
all going on trips and posting on Facebook, and they're
at life experiences and all of this stuff that they

(41:23):
were doing now, so none of them have money for
a down payment. The price of housing has gone up
because we're in the middle of a housing boom, and
so on. But that number, I think explains a lot
of things. I do think it will go down. I
think that the Generation z's as a group seemed to
strike me as a group again, not individually, more of

(41:46):
them are interested in settling down and having houses and
so on, And that number will go down a bit
just because it's gotten so high. I mean, imagine not
the average person not having a home until they're owning
a house until each four. It seems to be an
extremely high number. I'll pull back some, but I don't
know that I'll ever go back to the days of
the twenty nine and so on with a simple expectation

(42:07):
with There's a lot of other things that have changed it.
In many cities, property taxation and so on have changed
the equation with regard to home ownership and so on.
But that number, you can go look at that number
and take it in any number of different Paul mentions
both of his daughter's own homes and they're in their twenties.
Now your family is in real estate. You understand the
value of it. So I'm just saying they've thought it

(42:29):
through and they understand the advantage of it, and they
also understand how you know you can pull this what
kind of as you did pull it off two or
three times. Buy a house, sell it for more, get
a better one, buy itself, sell it for more, and
it just it becomes that becomes your savings plan rather
than having to set money aside. I mean, the perfect
storm is when you buy a house, you have a

(42:50):
place to live in and it goes up in value,
so you're actually earning money by living somewhere, where as
opposed to rent, where you're paying money out and you
have no for whatsoever. I like I say, I just
think the Millennials were an anomaly generation in which their
priorities were different in it's almost entirely the result of
baby boomers overly protecting them and mothering them and creating

(43:14):
a generation. And I just think it was it's in
reaction to the way we baby boomers were. We all
wanted to get into the world. The older the baby
boomers were sent off to Vietnam. They had no choice
but to get into the world. The rest of us
just wanted our independence and rock and roll and sex
and love and all of that stuff. And perhaps we
looked upon our kids, and I didn't have kids, but
the baby was looked upon their kids. Is they wanted

(43:36):
them to be more dependent on mom and dad. End
it just became the opposite thing. Not exactly related, but
an interesting little anecdote here. Found this on one of
my news aggregated sites. It's from a post on the web. Well,
this whole discussion of the Snap Benefits food stamp program

(43:57):
being cut off or slowed down because the government shut down.
A woman from New Mexico admits to being on Snap
benefits for over thirty years. She says that delays our
quote detrimental to her life if she doesn't get them.
When I heard zero dollars, my chest went into my throat.
I have depended on those benefits since the nineteen nineties.

(44:17):
That's the problem. The welfare state went awry when we
made it long term sustainable. When we created all of
these programs, they were supposed to be lifelines for people
who had fallen on hard times. If somebody has been

(44:39):
on enough government assistance programs, food stamps, and all of
the others that are out there that that has been
their entire life. By definition, they're too high and we've
done them no favors. Now, obviously there are unique circumstances.
Some people have a physical disability, others have mental issues,
the drugs and so on. But if you're otherwise generally

(45:01):
able bodied and you spent your entire life on an
assistance program, we haven't done you any favors. By essentially
letting you waste your entire life, it never make an
effort to really improve what's going on with you. I'm
guessing that that number of people who've been on SNAP

(45:22):
or food stamps, whatever you want to call it, for
three decades is a larger number than many may be
aware of. And now this libs of TikTok is actually
a conservative site that posts on the internet. So woman
that does it, she's very very good, she knows an

(45:43):
entire staff. They have a huge following. They monetized it.
What they do is they run around and scour era
for examples of liberal idiocy, and they found this one.
There's a course being taught at the University of Maryland.
This is one of those deals that could I used
to do up and on the radio show and bring
something up, and then I'd ask, am I making this up?

(46:05):
Or is it true? And you could always There are
so many things that are crazy that you can all
now almost make anything up and people would think that
it is true. This one, however, is true. Here's the
title of the class at the University of Maryland, intro
to fat Studies, Fatness, Blackness and their Intersections. You don't

(46:30):
think that this was racist, that it's an actual teacher,
it's a lefty and the store and the course. It's
an actual academic course into I'll quote again, Fatness, Blackness
and their Intersections. Now it sounds as though this is
a course about why are black people fat? And that
seems to be what they're saying. Well, we have the

(46:52):
course description. The course description reads like a parody someone
would write to mock academia, except it's real and taxpayer
funded for liberation as a social justice movement. The teacher
of the course is Sidney Lewis, a self described LGBTQ

(47:13):
black liberation activist. For those of you who have any
doubt that a college education is inappropriate for any number
of people, and much, not all, of what is being
taught in college is a waste of money. That course
is an example. Now people on left keep saying, you
cherry picked this out and you find this example. Well,

(47:34):
of course for cherry picking out and finding that example,
But that example is there, and this is not some
excuse the University of Maryland. They're hiring some quack who's
going out and teaching crap like this, for passing it
off as education. Now in there somewhere, there's actually a
legitimate area of inquiry. The health problems that African Americans

(47:56):
have because of poor diet and so on. A lot
of the things that Kennedy Junior has been pushing with
the MAHA movement, that we're eating so much stuff that
ends up with us sick and have poor quality of
life and so on, they're legitimate areas of study that
are in there. But I'm sure that she's not looking
into any of those things whatsoever. I'm sure in the
end the conclusion of all of this is going to
have something to do with racism and the terribly unjust

(48:18):
society that we all live in. This is the Markdelling Podcast.
This is the Mark Belling Podcast and it's time for
the Mark Belling Weekly football preview and some point spread picks,
and as always, were joined by Mike Murlett off American
Sports Analysts and Madison ASA wins dot com. We're getting

(48:40):
into the important part of the college football season and
kind of the hard to figure out middle part of
the NFL season. Anything you'd like to share about what's
going on this weekend at ASA, Mike, and I'll remind
you that tough our podcast is airing on Thursday.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Yep, same as usual. Check our website ASA wins dot
com on Friday for anything we've got going on. Well,
if we have a top game in college we'll have
it up at that point and weekend stuff. And we're
coming off back to back bad weekends. I'll be honest.
We had a good season, going weeks have not been good. Yeah,
I mean I lost my tick on the air, and

(49:19):
it wouldn't have mattered what pick I took, all three
of them that I considered lost. So it was one
of those weekends. I think we'll bounce back and have
a good weekend this weekend.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
I had the same result with my own picks. I
could have gone through my top twenty seven picks, and
I think it would have been wrong out all of them. Anyway,
It's a very interesting weekend and both college and pro football,
and I want to preview three separate games in college football.
They're all interesting for different reasons. The first one, this
is a fascinating game to me. You have two teams here,

(49:48):
one is unbeaten and the other has only lost one game.
And I don't think anybody would have talked about them
as being national championship contenders or even playoff teams before
the beginning of the BYU is playing Texas Tech. The
games in the Big twelve. BYU is unbeaten, Texas Tech

(50:09):
has only one loss, and you have a curious situation here.
We're not early of the season. BYU's played eight games,
they're unbeaten, but they're a ten point underdog. And you
can't say, well, BYU's unbeaten because they've had a crappy schedule.
They beat Utah, and Utah is really good. They've played
some pretty good teams. Texas Tech, on the other hand,

(50:31):
is probably the most controversial team in college football. It's
a team that's just built on massive nil money and
it's worked interesting matchup and Texas Tech at home favored
by a lot. What do you think about that game?

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yeah, I mean there's a reason that Tech's favored. You
mentioned Utah BYU beat Utah at home by three. Got
all gained by you. Tech beat Utah by twenty five
points at Utah. I mean Tech would win the national championship.
Their one loss was at Arizona State by four. Tech
was missing their starting quarterback and Arizona State had to

(51:04):
score with thirty seconds left to win that game. You
saw what played out last week against Kansas HUT.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
I used my radio pick last week to go against
Texas Tech. They were a seven point favorite and his
terrible peck. Texas Tech destroyed a pretty good Kansas State team.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Yeah, and Kansas State was peaking. They're playing really well.
I agreed one hundred percent with your pick, and I
watched the game and there was no comparison between those
two teams you mentioned BYU is eight. No, they're coming
off a buye, which is a good situation.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
They have a great coach too.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
They do have a great coach, they really do, but
they haven't been great on the road. I mean to
beat Colorado by three, who's bad Colorado.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
By the way, the Sanders thing, the verdict is.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
It that it has failed.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
I mean, Dion Sanders did one thing at Colorado. He
brought his son and he brought Travis Hunter there. They're
both gone. Colorado's gone and Dion's going to be gone.
I don't even know what his buyout it is. It
has to be pretty big. But in Colorado, well, you know,
they were terrible before he got there. But boy, has
that just fallen apart. It's in a side but.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Anyway, yeah, no, I agree, it's falling apart fast after one,
one or two years. So but yeah, YU struggled down
the road this year. Again they beat Arizona and overtime,
but they had that they were down ten with like
four minutes to go in that game, so they've struggled
a little bit on the road. I think Text definitely
the better team and that's why that's why they're laying
ten in this game. I've had other people asking, how

(52:27):
can how can a top ten team that's undefeated beginning
ten points and you know, Text the better team here,
and that's why they're favored by ten.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Let's go to another very interesting game. It's another game
involving an unbeaten team. Texas A and M is playing Missouri.
Texas A and M largely because they made a great
hire with their head coach a few years ago. They're unbeaten.
Missouri is six and two, but a good six and two.
Their losses were against tough teams. They're both teams that

(52:57):
are playing in the SEC. It's hard to imagine in
the Texas A and M and Missouri are in the SEC,
but they're there. The game is at Missouri. Texas A
and M is favored by a touchdown, and I think
that that's largely because Missouri's quarterback is hurt and out
for the game. I sniff an upset here and I
think Missouri can win the game. But here again a

(53:19):
larger line than you think. Texas A and M on
the road is favored by seven points. What do you think, Mike?

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Yeah, the tough part to handicap in this game. You
talked about it. Missouri's quarterback is out, so and their
second string quarterbacks out, so they're not on a third
string quarterback.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
But he did play against Vanderbilt and didn't play bad.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
He didn't play bad, but he's a true freshman it's
his first start.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
I don't Texas A and M's head coach is a
defensive coordinator with a defensive background. I'm sure he relishes that.
But Missouri's at home, and Missouri's got a chance for
a big upset. And you know, Texas A and M's
got a target on their back now every week because
they're an unbeaten team, and everybody focuses on the unbeaten team.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Yeah, and Missouri is good. I mean they're good. I
just don't know how they're gonna play with this quarterback.
We'll see what happens, and might might be the best
team in the SEC right now. I mean everyone talks
about Georgia and Alabama and those type of teams that
you got to remember. A and M beat Notre Dame
on the road, good win. They beat LSU by twenty
four points on the road. And while LSU isn't great,

(54:21):
they're pretty darn good and they killed LSU. You talked
about Elko. Their coach came over from Duke. When he
took over at Duke the two previous years they were
five and eighteen, and he turned to around and head
back to back winning season sixteen and seven in two
years at Duke. He's really good. Missouri has much better number.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
It has the better.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Numbers in this game, but they played the much weaker schedule.
They're the only team in the SEC that's who strengths
the schedules outside the top twenty five. It'll be an
interesting game. With Missouri's freshman quarterback plays well, they can
definitely win that game.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Wisconsin comes off the by after finally playing a decent
enough game defensive, at least when they played very, very
tough against Oregon. The offense has been non existent all season.
They come home and again it Wisconsin just plays a
strong team every week they play Washington, and while Washington's
a strong team, they're actually not as good as the
last three teams Wisconsin has played. The line is not

(55:19):
calling for a blow out. I believe it's Washington by
about eleven or twelve points at Wisconsin. Wisconsin is off
to buy a chance to physically recover a little bit.
But you know the problem is Wisconsin just can't score.
What are your thoughts on Washington and Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
Yeah, first to quick you mentioned Washington's favored by eleven
eleven and a half in this game. Just a quick
note on that. So Wisconsin has now been a double
digit home underdog five times in the last sixteen home games,
so that dates back to the middle of the twenty
twenty three season. Prior to that, from nineteen ninety seven
to the middle of twenty twenty three, they were a

(55:56):
home dog of more than ten one time, and they've
been five times in the last sixteen home games. So
that's that shows how quickly they've fallen fallen off the
map unfortunately. But you mentioned Washington's a top twenty five team.
They're fringe. I don't think they're top twenty five team.
They're not great on the road. They're one in six
on the road in the Big Ten since joining last year.
Their one win was this year against Maryland by four,

(56:19):
and they were losing twenty to zero in that game.
The problem is, like you said, Wisconsin, in order to
score against Washington, you need to pass. They don't have
a good pass defense. Wisconsin hasn't passed for one hundred
yards in over a month. I mean, they they're going
to start O'Neal in this game. Sounds like and Smith,
their freshman's going to get some time too. They need

(56:41):
to put up some points. You can't rely on the
defense to hold teams to fourteen or lest have a
chance to win. Eventually, they're going to break. They need
to find a way to get some points, and I
don't know if they can do it.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah, Washington's had some of their games. They pounded Illinois
game that surprised me. They're good at all, by seventeen
point two to twenty five, but the week before they
put up only seven against Michigan. And as you're right,
they're a schizoig team in which they seem to play
better at home, I mean each week. And I was
certainly wrong last week when I two weeks ago when

(57:13):
I thought Oregon would kill Wisconsin each week. I look
at the Wisconsin spread and I expect them to be
more of an underdog than they are. And I thought
the same thing in looking at the line here. On
the other hand, Wisconsin's defense is just playing I think,
spectacularly well when you consider the pressure that is on
them and being on the field constantly because the offense

(57:34):
isn't moving the ball. And you know anything about football,
if you have a it's like hockey. If you have
a great goalie, you have a chance no matter how
bad the rest of the team is in football. If
your defense is outstanding, I guess you have a chance.
Let's turn our attention to the NFL and I only
want to discuss one game this week, and that's the
Packers and the Eagles, one of the marquee games of
the weekend. First, starting before we get to the game itself,

(57:57):
the Packers we talked about last week just being a
hard team to get a feel for because they've looked
both good and bad. I think the Tucker Craft injury
is devastating. I think he is the best tight end
in the NFL or was this year. Without him, the
passing game is I think going to suffer. I think

(58:18):
it's a massive loss for the team. In addition to that,
the Packers made no trades at the trading deadline this week.
They didn't address the cornerback problem, which has gotten even worse.
Nate Hobbs, who was having a terrible season, is now
out probably for most of the year. He has not
an ACL, it's the other one with the MCL he's
having surgery on that. The cornerback position's been bad. The

(58:42):
Packers made no moves whatsoever. Before we get to the game,
ILF MIC They're still in first place, but boy, they
don't look like a first place team to be. What
are your thoughts on Green Bay before we discuss how
they match up against Philadelphia there.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
As you said last week, they're kind of all over
the board. They're a hard team to handicap. They lose
to Cleveland, they lose to Caroline as almost a two
touchdown favorite. And you know, they beat Detroit early in
the season. They beat Washington, which we thought was a
really good win, but you know, it's not not great
this year. But they beat Pittsburgh on the road, which

(59:17):
is hard to do, and they handled them pretty. They're
they're all over the board. They're a hard team to handicap.
I think Craft is a huge loss as well. I
mean it's like losing that'd be like Kansas City losing
kelsere who you know, He's.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Like losing Kelsey and his prime.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Yeah, I mean, I think.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Kansas City could handle the loss of Kelsey now, but
imagine if they had lost them. If you just a
brilliant tight end, most tight ends, eh, doesn't make much
of a difference. A brilliant tight end changes an offense.
And the thing with Craft is he always got open,
and it always run for ten yards after each catch
and just extended things and it puts tremendous pressure on

(59:54):
the defense. Now it's going to be a test to
see whether or not Luke Uscape could a stay healthy
and be step up. He has played better, but now
he's in the featured role as the tight end. But
it's quite a lost. Paul mentions Fitzpatrick the other tight end,
But I mean, this is the drop off is enormous. Now,
let's get to the game between the Packers and the Eagles.
It's in green Bay, National Game at night. The whole thing.

(01:00:17):
The Eagles are another team a lot of teams like
this in the NFL this year. The Eagles are another
team that's really hard to get a redot. Green Bay
is actually favored in the game against Philadelphia, and I
think that's as much because people don't have a strong
feel for whether or not the Eagles are a Super
Bowl type team again or not. What are your thoughts

(01:00:39):
in the game.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
Yeah, First of all, if you look at these two teams,
they're the only two teams in the NFL that have
been favored in every game.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
Green Bay is the only team that's been favored in
every game. So let's quick look last week, you just
can't lose that game against Carolina. It's different if you
get out played at home, and you look at the
stats and Green Bay didn't punt, they scored thirteen points.
They outgain Carolina by one yard per play, which is
pretty dramatic, and you can't lose that game at home.

(01:01:08):
You have to find a way to win that game
at home in this situation. But the good thing for.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
The past one thing I will say, and I made
a comment last week we're discussing Carolina is always bad,
and I retract that Carolina's now won four or five games,
and they're better than I thought that they were. They're
just everything in the NFC South forever to me has
seemed terrible, And I guess I need to acknowledge that

(01:01:33):
Tampa Bay this year is very good, and Carolina is
pretty good. Atlanta, who I thought would be very good, stinks,
and New Orleans might be the worst team in the
nationally in the National Football League. So I've just misread
that division. So every now and then a loss will
come in and it turns out not to be as
terrible a loss as you think. But You're right, they

(01:01:54):
should have won the game, but probably in retrospect they
should not have been that large of a favorite because
Maryline has been playing very good football.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Yeah, the Carolina is decent, they have a winning record. Now,
they're not great, But the way Green Bay outplayed them
on the field as far as yards yards for play,
didn't punt, you just can't lose that. You gotta find
a way to miss the field goal to turnovers, you
can't lose that game. The one situationally, the Packers are
in a really good spot coming into this week. If
you NFL teams that are double digit favorites that lose

(01:02:25):
outright the following week, if they're back at home, they're
forty eight and thirty four against the spread. Now if
they lost at home as a double digit favorite and
then they're home again next week, now they're twenty six
and thirteen against the spread, And it makes sense, right,
a good team, big favorite loses embarrassing, they bounce back
and play well the next week, as I would expect great,

(01:02:46):
But in.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Those stats you don't contain did you lose your best
offensive player? And I you know, I actually wonder would
the loss of Jordan Love be greater than the loss
of Tucker of Tucker Craft. I just think that has
been such a difference maker. But maybe I'm overreacting to that,
But you're right, there's all those things in there that
screen bounce back in the meantime. Who knows what to

(01:03:09):
make of the Eagles. They could be one of those
teams that kind of kicks it into the second half
of the season, and they might be stronger. It's just
I think a really tough game to get a read on.
Speaking of games that have been tough to get a
read on, every pick we've been making on this program
for the last two weeks. We all got skunked two
weeks ago, and we all got skunk this past week.

(01:03:32):
Paul took the Lions to beat the Vikings by nine
or more, a terrible pick. I agreed with his pick,
but the way I was wrong about everything last week,
Minnesota won the game straight up still to me a
shocking result. Mike said that Dallas and Arizona would score
more than fifty four and a half points. But you
talk about confusing teams, what has happened to Dallas? I

(01:03:53):
mean the Dallas offense a few weeks ago looked unstoppable,
and they couldn't do a dog one thing against Arizona.
So Mike's pick, let's see, Yeah, you don't have an
Ellen there, but that's right. And I took Kansas State
a seven and a half point underdog against Texas Tech

(01:04:14):
and they got killed by twenty three points. So we're
all wrong and just put that in the all in
the rearview mirror. I got a dilemma this week. And
then there's actually six games that I like, but every
one of them has one problem. So I have to
go and grab one of those games despite the fact
that I've got a problem in each pick. They're all good,
except they both have one drawback on them. Anyway, Paul,

(01:04:36):
who's having an atrocious season, I was having a good
one in pill I drove right into a brick wall
two weeks ago and have not recovered from it. Paul
needs a win. Where are we going here? The Bear
Giants game? Now you have a interesting game there. The
Bears suddenly another team. The Bears started the season with

(01:04:57):
a pretty good defense and the offense was a working
fry Chris, the Bears defense is falling apart, and the
Bears offenses now they are what the Cowboys were a
few weeks ago. Three and a half. The game is
in Chicago. The Bears are favored by the infernal number
of three and a half. He's going to take the Bears,
even though he doesn't like the half. Now, tell us
why you're taking the Bears?

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Did I see the end of the Bears? E There's
so many things that I saw this week. I don't
remember it. Ag Oh that was the forty seven to
forty two game. Yeah, yes, I did little momentum after
the Caleb Williams touchdown last week when Paul made his pick,

(01:05:45):
I said I was going to pick that game too,
but I'm not going to because when we go together,
it's just doomed. That's one of the games that I
was considering. The only hang up I have I agree
with Paul entirely. The only hang up on that game
is I hate three and a half. I hate three
and a half. I hate three and a half. I
did take a three and a half game earlier this

(01:06:07):
year and it did win. But I think Paul's right.
I think the Bears are a now team and the
Giants surprising of the Giants defense is not very good.
What do you think about the game, Mike, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
The only thing I don't like about the Bears in
their record, I'll be honest with you. They're five and three,
but their last five wins, all their five wins, they're
plus fourteen in turnover margin in those games. Yeah, when
they had four wins in a row, they were creating
like four turnovers every game, and you win in the
NFL when you do that. The one time they didn't,

(01:06:40):
then they turn around and lose. And then last week
against the bad Cincinnati team, they were plus three and
turnovers again and barely won the game. So I don't
know what to make of Chicago. I don't like the Giants,
but I don't know what to make of Chicago, to
be honest with you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
And Cincinnati is just I mean, Flacco didn't do anything
for Cleveland's they did. Cincinnati had no offense at all.
Flackel goes over there and they put up a zillion points.
But the Bengals defense. Yeah, you just you wonder if
we're having a hard time right now. I'm just sizing
up a lot of things in the NFL, and it's
just hard to make heads or tails of them. Okay,

(01:07:13):
time to get a pick from Mike. Where are we going.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Let's look at first in Colin, you told me, all right,
the Texas Tech BYU game you said was ten.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
You said, I want to confirm that it's ten. That's
what I had in my notes.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
Texas Tech and you would number one sixty five, one
sixty six of.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
You said that, all right? Ten, Yes, Texas Tech at
home is favored by ten.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
Okay, let's look in NFL the Sunday night game, Pittsburgh Chargers.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Steelers and the Chargers. I believe that's three. Yes, the
Chargers at home are favored by three over Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Okay, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna take Texas Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
You're gonna take Texas Tech. You're gonna well, that's that's
an out there pick. You're gonna go and lay ten
points against the team that is unbeaten. Texas Tech does
look like a steamroller. I grant you that, and we
discussed several of the reasons for that, so I don't
think that we need to add anymore. It's time to
get a pick from me. And as I said, that,
just a problem with every I really really really wanted

(01:08:26):
to take Texas over Jacksonville, but c J. Stroud, the
Texans quarterback, as a concussion, he's in the protocol, probably
won't play. I still think they're gonna win, but they're
laying a point and a half, so I can't pull
the trigger on that. I mentioned the problem that I
have with the Beers pick of the three and a
half and some of the factors that Mike mentioned, and

(01:08:47):
I also kind of leaned to Philadelphia getting two and
a half against green Bay. But my prob but my
problem there is all the things that Mike mentioned. Green
Bay is a team that has gone back and forth,
and after a poor performance, they tend to step up.
So I have to reject all of those games. We

(01:09:07):
were talking about. One of the games of Missouri. I
like Missouri. I think they have a very very good
chance against Texas A and M all these teams from
Texas that aren't the University of Texas, but there's the
backup quarterback, so that that's not a perfect situation. I
see a game that's out there this weekend. Mike talks
a lot about trap games, and I've come to think

(01:09:29):
that years ago people did not give enough credence to
there's a letdown situation. Now. I think everybody says every
game is a trap game, and it's an overused thing.
But there's a trap game on the schedule this week.
That's the I think the biggest trap game that in
the history of college at least this year, in the
entire college football season. Which game do you think that is, Mike,

(01:09:51):
there's a game in which a team is just screaming
to let down. You'll get it. You get these always.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Uhh, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Yukon and Virginia. I mean Yukon is they're an independent team,
so no game is a conference game.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
And Yukon Duke you mean Ukon Duke.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
I'm sorry, I said Virginia Duke last week be Clemson
by one point in a thrilling just a thrilling game.
Now they play a non conference game and they have Virginia.
That's Virginia on my mind, Virginia, who's eight and one
next week, so they have to go play a non
conference game against Connecticut. Jim Mora Junior is the coach
of Connecticut, and he took just a terrible program there

(01:10:35):
and he's winning, getting ten points. My problem is Duke's
ten points better than Connecticut. So I can't make that pick,
so I've rejected all of these, and here's where I'm going.
There's a very weird team called Oregon State. They're in
a conference, but there's only two teams in the conference.

(01:10:55):
They were orphaned when the PAC twelve fell apart. So
the only other team in the PAC twelve, which is
now the PAC two, is Washington State. Washington State and
Oregon State are kind of looking for a conference to
attach themselves to. They's talk that they're going to end
up in the Mountain West and so on, so they're
really an independent, even though they're technically not listed as

(01:11:17):
it independent. They fired the coach earlier this season after
they started to seven, and they started to seven because
everybody's transferry out of the program because you know, they're
not at a conference, they're not in anything. They fired
the coach, but they're not. Coming off of two straight
wins and they beat They all have a rival in
Washington State, the other team in the Pack two. They
beat them last week, and I love this. They're one

(01:11:39):
and seven and the fans storm the field when they
got their second win. This week, they're laying twenty and
a half points at home. Two and seven. They're laying
twenty and a half and that's because they're playing Sam Houston,
who is a contender for the worst team in college football.
There's a real battle here. It's either Sam Houston or
Massachusetts in fact. But he's gonna believe me on this.

(01:12:01):
If the schedule had worked out, I was this week
going to take go against Massachusetts and our pick. They
played last night and they lost by thirty four points
to Accrid. Accord's not very good, but Massachusetts is atrocious,
So unfortunately I couldn't do that twenty and a half points.
Sam Houston is coached by Phil Longo, who destroyed the
Wisconsin offense during the couple of years he was the

(01:12:22):
offensive coordinator. Here, they're terrible this year. They haven't won
a game. They're losing but twenty five and thirty points
every week. The one downside for Oregon State is it
is a letdown after they beat Washington State and the
fans storm the field. But Oregon State's terrible. Their offense
isn't very good and their defense is atrocious. They haven't
played anybody and they're ower to seven. The only team
that they played is Texas, which has shown no offense

(01:12:43):
all you're in Texas put up fifty five on them.
I think Oregon State's program, the kids that are there,
you know, beaten down. There's all sorts of reasons to
be depressed. They're not at a conference, the coach got fired,
but they' feeling good about themselves. They won two games.
Now they're at home and they get to play a
team in which they destroy him. And I'm gonna lay
twenty and a half points and take Oregon State over

(01:13:03):
Sam Houston In. Phil Longo's another Phil Longo's another candidate
to be one and done and be fired at the
end of the year. I mean, he screwed up Wisconsin
and now he's screwed up Sam Houston In. Just an
overrated coach. What do you think about my pick, Mike.

Speaker 3 (01:13:17):
Yeah, I mean that's a game that's on my radar
this week as well. Wash It Oregon State and one
the one fear. I mean, you're you're laying twenty with
a team that averages nineteen points a game. So and
granted they're playing Sam Houston State as a horrible defense.
In fact, they give up I believe forty points per game.
I think they're last in the country in points allowed
and they get creamed every game long travel.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
I don't it's their second road game in a row
two for a team that's yeah, stinks and it is
probably they're overmatched and they've quit. Sam Houston last week
played Louisiana Tech. Louisiana Tech Okay, Louisiana Tech beat him
fifty five to fourteen, and that was Sam Houston's game
off the by the week before that, Sam Houston played UTEP,
team that I thought was going to be better this

(01:14:01):
year than they are. UTEP's offense is awful. They put
up thirty five points against them. I mean, you know,
as I mentioned, they lost fifty five to nothing to
Texas when they played there, and they're getting worse every week,
probably because they're an overmatch team and beaten down. In
the meantime, Oregon State's played some pretty good teams. They
played Oregon, they played Texas Tech, and they actually gave

(01:14:23):
Texas Tech. You know, they came within thirty against them,
which that's more than most people most teams are able
to do. I just think it's a chance for them
to put up forty nine points on a team that's
only going to score ten against them, and as I
say there's a problem with every one of the picks,
but that's where I go. So recapping everybody's picks. Let's see,
I don't have anything. Oh, Paul brought it in for me. No,

(01:14:46):
this is coming in right now. I'd see. Paul says,
take the Bears. I don't disagree with Paul. Take the
Bears to beat the Giants by four or more. Mike says,
Texas Tech will beat BYU my more than ten, and
I'm taking Oregon State to beat Sam Houston. Paul wrote
down twenty. I need a win, so I should go
with it's actually twenty and a half. Twenty and a half.
Watch them now be twenty and over Sam Houston. Anyway,

(01:15:09):
if you want to see more about what ASA has
to offer, asawins dot com is Mike's website. Check it
out over there and we'll be back in another podcast next week.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
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