Mark analyzes the H-1B visa debate and how it is dividing some on the right. It's another example of the failure by many to figure out Trump (he's a commonsense pragmatist, not an ideologue). A massive security breach results in a loaded gun magazine on a Frontier aircraft. And, we preview the state high school football semifinals along with outr weekly look at college and the NFL.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:23):
There's a big piece in the Wall Street Journal today
by see the psychiatrist or a psychologist, and he's writing
that Trump derangement syndrome is actually real, that there are
some people that are mentally affected by their reaction to Trump.
There are a couple of issues nationally that I want
(00:44):
to deal with, but I'm going to put them under
the umbrella of the way people react to President Trump.
I contend that he's misunderstood by almost everyone on the left,
both the moderate and the Marxists, and by a lot
of people on the right. I think that Trump is
(01:09):
not an ideologue. I think that he's a pragmatist who
happens they have brilliant negotiating skills because he is able
to figure out leverage with regard to one of the
issues that we have in front of us that we're
going to dive into in some depth here the question
(01:31):
now of not illegal immigration, but legal immigration, the H
one B visa question. There are a lot of people
in the magaqurotas that will Trump's against immigration is against immigration.
I don't think Trump's an ideologue on anything. I think
that he views issues from what do we need to
(01:52):
do now perspective, And I think that this is misunderstood
by the left and the right. So who understand it's you? Yes,
I understand what's going on. There's another big national issue
that's under this umbrella to and we're going to get
to that in just a moment here. When it comes
(02:13):
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(02:37):
used in their own business experience. The you Line difference
today visit you line dot com. The government shutdown is over.
The shorthand of this is that it is a total
victory for Trump and the Republicans. They didn't have to
capitulate on anything. The exact same terms maybe there's one
(03:03):
slight amendment. Otherwise, the exact same terms could have been
accepted by the Democrats seven weeks ago and we would
have had any of this. This raises a whole lot
of questions, like if they were going to cave, why
did they start this anyway, or did they actually think
(03:24):
Trump would buckle? And what made them think that Trump
would buckle again. One of the things that I put
on with Trump is the thing that makes it. One
of the things that makes him a great negotiator is
he is able to size up the other side's weaknesses.
And he looked here, and this was a situation in
which the Republicans reunited. You know, over there in the Senate,
(03:48):
you've got two or three moderate Republicans who often bowled
over to the other side, Collins, Murkowski, et cetera. They
were solid on board on this because what Trump was
proposing was simply an extension of current law, not changing anything.
So you didn't have any Republican breaking ranks here. And
Trump knew that over in the House, you didn't. You know,
(04:09):
there's the Freedom Caucus members and so on who sometimes
break away. They were all on board. So Trump realized
that this issue, given the fact that they weren't making
any significant changes one way or another. The Republicans were
totally united on So Trump, my side isn't going to buckle.
I'm not going to buckle. My side isn't going to buckle.
(04:30):
So why should I change anything? Which brings us to
the question of why did the Democrats do this? Why
did they make people go without pay for so long?
Why did they screw up the number of government services
that were obstructed? Why did they panic people over the
food stamps. The House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Sean
(04:51):
Hannity's show last night and he gave his answer, and
I think his analysis is exactly correct, which is why
we're going to play it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
This shutdown never was about health care. It wasn't about
Obamacare's subsidies. It wasn't about all the things they tried
to make it about, all the false narratives and talking points.
It was about one thing. Sean, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem
Jeffries are from New York. They needed to get political
cover because the Marxists are taking over the Democrat Party,
especially in their state, and they're worried about their next reelect.
(05:21):
That is one hundred percent what this was about from
the very beginning. We called it out in the beginning
and never changed. They were more afraid of political retribution
from the radicals that now run the Democrat Party than
they were afraid about taking the food out of the
mouths of Hungary families, truly, or about having fights canceled
around the country, or making the troops and their families
(05:42):
worry about where the next paycheck was going to come from.
It was a selfish political stunt. It yielded nothing but
paying for the American people. And I think the people
are it's going to be a long time before they
forget this.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I think he's exactly right. I think that that's what
this was all about. The radicals it is party who
are now Marxists terrify Schumer and also Jeffreys. You remember
Jeffreys represents a district in New York City. He has
to be fearful of a Marxist candidate challenging him from
the left in a primary. Schumer's terrified that AOC is
(06:15):
going to run against him. So you've got the leftist barking,
you fight Trump, fight Trump, fight Trump. So even though
strategically Schumer's not an idiot in terms of debating and negotiating.
He knew that he had no leffage, but he felt
he had to do this because they're terrified. This is
why I believe the mainstream Democratic Party is dead. And
(06:36):
I've been harguing this for several weeks because there's no pushback.
You can say that most Democratic voters are not Marxists,
but the Democratic elected officials who are not Marxists are
not doing anything to shove the radicals away. As for Schumer,
(06:58):
so what did he do? For weeks? He came to
these people and then a handful of Democratic moderates said,
screw it, we're getting nowhere. We're going to vote to
end the shutdown. And the left is blaming Schumer. Schumer
wasn't even one of the So what did Schumer get
out of this? They hated him before this. He did
what they wanted, and they still hate him. They hate
(07:20):
him because they don't believe he's a true believing Marxist.
He's just the guy that's caving into Marxist. I want
to move now to an issue that's royaling Republicans. This
is the issue not of illegal immigration, but legal immigration.
(07:46):
In particular people who come in either temporarily or permanently
on work visas, the H one B visas. Trump has
been talking to a lot of business leader who have
been begging him to soften his stance with regard to
the H one B visas, and Trump is acquiescing to them.
(08:11):
There are a number of people in the MAGA crowd,
and maybe even Vice President jd Vance who don't agree
with this, who think that the last thing that we
need to do is import a number of foreign workers
to compete for jobs in a softphening economy with American workers.
(08:31):
I've got a couple of quotes on this, and I
also have some thoughts here because I believe there are
a lot of issues that you hear me talk about
and say I really don't know, I really don't know.
This is not one of those I believe I do
on this issue. No, this is an exchange between Laura
Ingram and President Trump. Ingram had Trump on her show
(08:55):
a couple of days ago. Here's her question Ingram h Wa,
and she's clear not on board with trump. H one
B visa thing won't be a big priority for you.
If you want to raise wages for Americans. You can't
flood the country with thousands of foreign workers. Trump, you
have to bring in talent, Ingram, We have plenty of
(09:16):
talented people. Trump, No, you don't, Ingram, We don't have
talented people here. Trump, you don't have certain talents. People
have to learn. You can't take people off the unemployment
line and say go make missiles. Ingram, how do we
do it before? Trump? I'll give you an example. In Georgia,
(09:37):
we rated Hyundai for illegal immigrants. They had people from
South Korea, very dangerous job. They had five hundred to
six hundred people early stages to make batteries, to teach
people how to do it well. They wanted to kick
them out of the country. You need them. You can't
bring in ten billion dollars for a plant, take people
off the unemployment line and start making missiles. It won't
(10:00):
work that way. Here's some of the blowback he's getting.
I don't know who this is, but it's supposed to
run xt name with the handle sav says. Trump needs
to get out of his bubble and back on the
ground listening to the American people who elected him to
work for US. His H one B comment shows how
(10:21):
out of touch with the base. He has become another
commenter on ex Wall Street MAV. I really hope that
Stephen Miller or someone else can explain to President Trump
that is not what we voted for. This is a
path of giving away the midterms in twenty twenty six.
In other words, Trump getting blowback that the mega crowd
(10:44):
that the base does not want softness on any immigration.
Clearly Trump isn't buckling an illegal immigration. He's being attacked
viscerally from the left for throwing out of the country
people that are here illegue. But with regard to people
coming in legally through work visas, Trump seems to be
(11:07):
taking a different position. Here's my take on this, And
every now and then I'll preface my take by saying,
I'm right. You know, there's degrees with a certain you know,
for example, I started the season. We'll do a football
picks later out in the program. I start of the
(11:27):
season really really good. At six and two. I've lost
three games in a row, and I've found parts of
the NFL to be inexplicable. So I come right on,
I don't know, this is the opposite. I have a
strong viewpoint here as to what's going on I did
a segment on the podcast. It was either Wednesday or Mondays.
Paul won't remember because he's got an even worse memory
(11:49):
than me. Paul said, doesn't really matter. No, I guess
it doesn't. It was either wedns near Monday, in which
I talked about the incredible I think it was Wednesday's
podcast all these people that have college degrees but can
find proper jobs because the degrees are all in things
for which the jobs there's no demand. And I talked
(12:13):
about how you see in skilled, some skilled, in semi
skilled positions, constructions, many of the trades, repairing of equipments, etc.
The kinds of jobs that do not require college degrees.
Usually there is a vast shortage of workers because we've
got all these college graduates with degrees and women's studies
and all of this other crap for which there's no
(12:36):
need for the jobs. I believe that's what's driving the
H one B visa situation. Even though every young American
is fluent in how to use computers and tablets and
play games and all of this stuff, the fact of
(12:57):
the matter is that it's a fact we don't have
anywhere near enough Americans trained to work in technology. Many
of these jobs for which the H one bvss are
coming in are skilled positions in either tech or the
higher end of the trades. Trump talked about, you know,
(13:19):
building missiles, building batteries, high end batteries, and so on.
We have misdirected, and I went through this on Wednesday's program,
So many young people into the wrong careers. It isn't
just we don't have enough brick layers. It isn't just
that we don't have enough refrigeration techs and so on.
(13:42):
We don't have enough people who know how to do
things like build the infrastructure of tech, all these data
centers and so on. Clearly, most of the jobs are
the kinds of jobs that most people live in America
can handle. But a lot of the highly focus tech positions. No.
(14:07):
I think it's clear these comings. There is a shortage
of people who to do lots of these types of jobs,
and we have lots of Americans out here who don't
have the skills to do these positions. We are get
This isn't anybody's fault of the people in the workforce.
It's the fault of their parents, It's the fault of college,
of the colleges. It's the fault of the message from
(14:28):
society that we have been not directed. It's not been
exactly a secret where the trend is going in our world.
The one type of either blue collar or non type
college education job that's never going to go away because
of AI and so on is anything that requires hand
on fixing, building fixing, repairing, and so on. You know,
you got a refrigeration system to bust down. AI isn't
(14:50):
going to fix that. Somebody's got to come in there
and do it. So Trump sizes this up. Trumps he's
trying to get all these tech companies to build these
plants in the United States. He wants the data centers
to be in the United States. He wants us to
control our jobs at our destiny. So these companies are
(15:10):
doing it, and they say, oh my god, where are
we gonna find workers to do this? Then? And I'm
gonna add this part of it. In many of these
industries are the ones that's still drug test Let's face it,
there are some jobs that you can do when you're
a pothead. There are others that you can't. All these
(15:32):
types of jobs are that we've got so many people,
especially in the states where pot or legal, or they're
taking Delta nine or all of this other crap. You
simply can't have them building tech systems. They aren't going
to be any good at it. There's no way they're
gonna be able to focus and concentrate. So Trump, as
(15:54):
I say, he's a pregnant he's against immigration. No he's not.
He's against illegal immigration. But I thinks is open that
this is a need where we need to bring people
in legally through the front door. My own position, which
has been the same position for years now, I'm all
in favor of legal immigration, and I'm totally opposed to
illegal immigration. Legal immigration come into the front door is
(16:16):
what's built our country. Illegal immigration come in through the
back door, letting in people who aren't vetted at all,
people who don't have any job skills, coming in to
do a lot of things that in many cases are
bad for the nation bad. We need to go back
to what we get in the first place, which is
(16:38):
we have controlled and regulated immigration, not wholesale. And one
of the keys that we focus on is where do
we need people anyway. I think that there's this general
misunderstanding of Trump. I think he is at this position,
not because he's doctor near or tied into one particular
(17:00):
thought and immigration, but he sizes up the illegal immigration problem.
Ten to fifteen million people came in under Biden. There's
no way for us to pay this. It's driving up
healthcare costs because all of these people are getting treated
at hospitals and the going to the doctors. He's driving
up education costs, is driving up a crime problem, et cetera,
(17:20):
with many of them not bringing it a lot to
the table. But then he looks at the other thing.
Some of these higher end positions are going a wanting
where nobody's applying because nobody has the skill set, or
they're in many fields in which people simply don't want
to do it. I'm right about this, you know, I'm
(17:43):
right about this. Let's imagine, well, let's imagine that we'd
build you know, let's imagine all the data centers that
are being proposed here in Wisconsin, go through the one
southern Racine County, the Port Washington, the Beaver Dam. Do
you think that there are enough people who live around here? Now? Again,
a lot of the jobs do not require massive tech skills,
(18:04):
but the ones that really do do. We have enough
people that are there, and I realize some will come
from other states, which is the case when any new
industry comes in and develops and so on. Or do
you think there's gonna be a shortage of this because
they've got way too many people that are going to
college and majoring in stuff that doesn't translate to anything.
(18:25):
You major in romance literature, What can you do with it? Well,
you better be a good writer, or you better be
a teacher. What the hell else are you gonna do
with it? We've indulge people and given them massive student
loans to go out and get training for all sorts
of stuff that doesn't translate into a career or life.
In the meantime, there are still, even with AI and
all this stuff coming, zillions of positions out there that
(18:46):
need to be filled, and we have a mismatch of
the skills that people have and the people that are
out there. Let me turn my attention to a political story.
Usually this is the opposite, but right now the Democrats
(19:09):
in Wisconsin appear to be setting up for a free
for all for governor, while the Republican race seems to
be orderly. All of this can change. Dan biss js
Online is now reporting that there's another big name Wisconsin
Democrat thinking of entering the race. The reason they're all
thinking of entering the race is a they think it
(19:30):
might be a Democratic year next year. So you run,
and you win the nomination, you could be the governor.
B they all size up the Democrats that are running
and say, well, this I can beat this one. It's
like five lefties, some Madison running. Then you've got David Crowley,
the Milwaukee County executive running kind of a lightweight. If
Sarah Rodriguez, the Lieutenant governor, who's somewhere between lightweight and middleweight,
(19:56):
who's trying to convince the rest of the Democrats that
I'm a big Marxist left DC, you don't need these
Madison ones. But there isn't anybody who's past the Smeltist
to be in the governor. So you have Joel Brennan,
who worked in the Vers administration. He's now a big
behind the scenes power broker in Wisconsin. He's the president
(20:17):
of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, and he's got some Milwaukee
leftist business leaders behind him on this. He's kind of
what would be running as the mainstream somebody could actually
do the job. Type of governor. He hasn't entered the race,
but you're looking at the potential of seven eight nine
Democrats running, and usually they like to do is clear
(20:39):
the field so you don't have people taking pot shots
at one another. The Republican side, it's still it's Tiffany
and Josh Shulman and Schauman is trying to do things.
He's made a good election reform proposal. The problem, of course,
he is you got to get it to the legislature
and then you have to get it approved by the
state Supreme Court. Have leftists who won't to prove it.
(21:02):
But in the meantime, it just seems to me that
Tiffany is gradually developing a consensus around him. The Milwaukee
Police Union, which is very influential, just endorsed Tom Tiffany
for governor. Showman could find an opening. Somebody else could
still jump into the race, but right now it seems
to me that there's more order on the Republican side
(21:22):
and the very likely winner is going to be Tiffany,
whereas the Democrats of the party that seem to be
in terms of their running for governor rather chaotic. This
is the Mark Belling Podcast. This is the Mark Belling podcast.
(21:44):
There was a murder over the last couple of days
that is raising some questions. It's now one of these
street murders in the inner city of Milwaukee. Those are
often easy, albeit them tragic, easy to understand. This one
is being reported by a number of different news organizations,
and I just this is often the case. None of
(22:06):
them have put everything together, and I've been prying today
to put some details together, and I think I've been
able to do so. It has to do with the
murder and racine a couple of days ago of a
thirty seven year old woman. Her name is Joyce Bongo.
It was described by authorities as a domestic violent situation
in which the domestic violence got so out of hand
(22:28):
that the abuser actually killed her. Bongo has not been
named by most of the authorities yet, but she's been
identified in numerous news accounts. The man who's been arrested
as a resident of South Dakota. His name is Benjamin Chips.
He's fifty six, she's thirty seven. Now you may be
wondering why in the world would a guy from South
(22:49):
Dakota be beating the hell out of a thirty seven
year old woman from raciin I've been able to piece
together some details here. It appears to me that Bongo
is a long term resident of South Dakota. In fact,
I've seen no coverage of this. I found none of
this stuff. Is hard to think, Paul, have you picked
(23:10):
up in the fact that the media is not very
talented just basic research that I was able to do
so unfortunately, just tragedy. Enjoyce Bongo's life. There's an obituary
from July, late July of this year from South Dakota.
An infant child of her has passed away. It doesn't
give any details of how that is, but in the
death notice there's no father even listened so listed, So
(23:33):
apparently it was a situation in which she got pregnant
and the guy wasn't in the picture or whatever, and
the child died. So that was her in South Dakota
as recently as July. I don't know what brought her
to Raccene, if there are other family members here, but
in looking up the listing in the death notice for
the little baby that died, all the relatives as in
South Dakota. So she's a long term South Dakota resident
(23:54):
and came here and now this guy followed. They may
have had a longer term relationship than the story would
otherwise imply. The pictures that are in the media accounts
of the victim, she's very attractive woman, doesn't appear to
be somebody that had problems in her life. I found
(24:15):
a LinkedIn post for her in which she said she
worked in janitorial services cleaning, So didn't look they have
a high end job or anything like that. But it
appears to me that this was something. Ever, by the way,
both of these people involved in Native Americans Indigenous people.
They somebody that is from South Dakota. She moved to Racine.
The guy followed a hero a stormy relationship, beat the
(24:37):
hell out of her, rand he murdered her. He's facing
charges a first degree intentional homicide with a domestic violence
en hands her. The Waka Shaw School Board voted last
night to close two elementary schools. They've been debating this
for months. This issue is going to be confronted. Is
(25:02):
going to confront almost every school district in Wisconsin. There's
only a few that aren't seeing declining enrollment. There's a
number of factors coming together. First, the incredible decline in
the birth rate. It's possible that the gen zs will
turn it around. They can't if fewer babies in the
millennials who just went on strike against children. But the
(25:25):
school enrollments are way down from twenty years ago almost everywhere.
The only exceptions are communities that are seeing rapid residential growth,
new subdivisions coming in, Farmland is turning into subdivisions and
so on. But even they don't seem to be growing,
they're holding flat. But otherwise just about everybody's going down. Secondly,
there's an explosion in both charter and private schools really
(25:48):
all over the state. More and more parents have recognized
that most public schools aren't any good and they're looking
for alternatives. So public schools are facing this double whammy
of the decline in the birth rate and alternatives for
kids to be educated somewhere else. So the school systems
are overbuilt. And what happens there's something irrational among people
(26:09):
about the closing of a school. I think Wendy's just
announced that they're going to close two to three hundred
restaurants and so on, the lower performing places. Whoever gets
upset if a Wendy's closes, you go to another Wendy's,
or you just go to somewhere else. Well, school is different, Yeah,
school is different. Your kid goes to the school, and
so on. But boy, oh boy, I was in the
(26:32):
era in which there are building schools like crazy, because
I was in the baby boom you had the opposite.
Schools are packed to the rafters, parents are popping out, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
kids mending all over the place. Almost all those schools
are closed now. I think in the community that I
grew up in when I was a kid, there were
three Catholic schools, one Lutheran school, and let me count one, two,
(26:57):
five public elementary schools. Three of the public schools are
closed and two of the Catholic schools are closed, and
the Lutheran school is closed. Well, okay, people have a
been I went to that school, et cetera. The high
school that I went to, they turned it into a
middle school, and now they want to knock that down
(27:18):
and build a new middle school and so on. Okay,
you have memories of all of this, But so what
if you don't need the school, you should close the school,
sell the school and get it, get it under turn
it hopefully in a tax batucic property and stop running
(27:38):
a building that you don't need. Well, my kids go
there and all the other schools another mile. Oh shut up.
The other factor here, and I've been talking about this,
is we keep passing all these referendums at school districts,
kept putting up new schools. Don't you realize that all
the projections are on. The reason voters vote for this
(28:01):
is a they buy into some of this stuff. And
secondly there's the big con job from the construction firms,
the engineering firms, and the architectural firms who get paid
to build the schools. Buy me a school district in
Wisconsin that's not overbuilt. As I say, there are a
few that are in communities. Just off the top of
my head, the Sussex, the Hamilton School District, which is
(28:23):
Sussex and the region around there was an area where
just a lot of residential growth has gone on. I
don't know if the enrollment's gone up, but that's been
an area that's boomed. Another one may say the Slinger area.
I mean Slinger were just there and now Slinger and
Richfield are almost merging together. In WESTMND, there's just a
lot of development there. So there may be a few
cases where the enrollment is holding firm or even going
(28:47):
up a little bit, but almost all other cases it's
just the opposite. Wowatosa, which is the worst run school
district maybe on the planet. They passed that massive referendum.
I mean, They're enrollment is hemorrhy like. It's just falling
and falling and falling. And secondly, the educational quality in Wambatosa.
Wambatosa went from being one of the best school districts
(29:07):
in the state to one of the worst. Yet they
put up all of these building sense school you went to,
Is it still standing? What was it called the Random
Lake School? Random Lake High School? What about the grade schools?
Is it's still standing. It's connected of the high school.
(29:29):
That's probably why they haven't knocked it down, because they're
afraid that the high school would fall over if they
knocked it. So the thing of it is, if there's
only one school in a community, it's hard to close
that school, even if it's mostly empty. But maybe they're
not using some of the room, but you know, they'll
just fill the rooms, so they'll hire more administrators and
put them into there. And that's The other thing, you
go back to the era in which the school enrollments
(29:50):
are huge, the staffing was lower. I remember my grade school.
We had a principal. She was a nun. That was
the total admitis. There was the principle and there were teachers.
There was nobody else. They were like there was like
a music teacher, especially as a teacher, but there was
no one else in the administration. You know why everything's
(30:15):
top heavy, don't you? It's you? What if I what
did I just tell you on Wednesday? Follow the money.
If something's top heavy, it means there's a lot of
jobs that pay more. So all the teachers and everybody
wants to create these positions because it's more money for them.
(30:37):
If you were a worker in a field and you
want to have a lot of jobs that pay the same,
or would you like to have a lot of jobs
that are high and numerous management? It was like, you know,
you go to a factory that's unionized, everybody's in the
union wants to be the foreman. Why the foreman makes
more money? And then the foreman wants to you know,
private sector companies can't afford to have all this massive
(30:59):
layers of management and top heaviness and so on, and
the ones that do tend to be the ones that
get bloated and go under and so on. Now let
me move to this story. Wait, the travel over the weekend.
Here's a weird one. This happened at the Atlanta airport
on Saturday. The ones that didn't fly through Atlanta coming back.
(31:21):
I went through Atlanta going down there a Frontier Airlines.
I'm killing you know that Spirit is close to going under.
I just think all the problems are going to transfer
over to Frontier. Like the two discount airlines in America,
Size front are Spirit in Frontier, right, you know. And
we started our cruises on kind of they weren't like
(31:44):
what they are now. It was like halfway nice, wasn't it. Yeah,
it's just the clientele. I don't know. Anyway, this is
Frontier Now. I'm not lumping all the Frontier. I'm just
saying that there are a couple of airlines it seemed
they have way more troubles with their passengers than others.
And you could psychoanalyzer, socio analyzer, democrat would come up
(32:07):
with all the reasons you want. Anyway, this is Frontier.
Frontier plane a passenger on the plane found a loaded
gun magazine, not the gun, the magazine when you think
(32:27):
of a weapon, not a revolver, but like a pistol.
The magazine is the thing that holds the bullets. It's loaded.
So they went back to the gate. There was no incident,
but it begs the question how did it get on there?
And no one really knows because a passenger just founded
was it something that was stashed there by somebody who
(32:49):
was gonna get a gun on? But again, there wasn't
a gun found, just a magazine. So this doesn't make
any sense to me at all as to how this happened.
You can't carry them a magazine of bullets on any
more than a gun. Why would someone not carry the
(33:10):
gun but carry the magazine. Now, there are ways to
legally transport a gun by flying, but you have to
go through rigamarole and it's checked and this, that and
the other thing. You file a thing and someone, but
the magazine is the same thing. You're not supposed to
have bullets in the passenger section of a plane, but
they're found there and nobody's figured out exactly what it is.
But I do have a theory. It's how it got
(33:30):
through TSA. You have a theory, because I do. You
have no idea? Oh come on, yeah, well, how did
this happen? The key to the story is when did
it happen. It happened on Saturday. I'm just telling you,
as even if you weren't at any airports. The airports
(33:53):
have been overwhelmed with understaffing TSA air Traffic Control. The
lines at TSA were out the wazoo at many airports
and so on. I just suspect, you know, the TSA
people at whatever this gate, whatever gate this was at Atlanta,
that something got through that it didn't get seen as
they were skiing, you know, they look at the X
(34:14):
ray thing and got through, and they're ninety million people
in line. They're trying to be as efficient as positive.
I think somebody probably just missed it. That's my guess.
No acknowledge. My explanation makes a lot of sense to you,
doesn't it now? It does? Yes, But why would still
somebody had to have brought it on and it wasn't
in anybody's bag. A passenger just found it up in
(34:35):
the I think it was found in the It in
the overhead. It's in here somewhere. Oh, also there were
initials on the magazine. Now, sometimes these initials is it's
somebody sending a message that they're going to do it,
but they weren't done the bullet. It was on the magazine.
Was this like the owner putting his initials on there?
(34:55):
That seems like a dumb thing to do. But I
don't know, I mean, would you ever put your initial
was on a gun magazine? No? Now, a lot of
times you'll we don't know what they said. K It
was found during boarding, So the plane had not yet
left the ground. It was gonna go from Atlanta to Cincinnati.
(35:17):
But during boarding a passenger founded the story that I
have here from Fox News. It's unclear exactly where they
found it. Was it stuck in a seat? Was it
in the overhead? Did somebody leave it behind from the
earlier flight? And the notion that somebody's bringing the magazine
on and somebody later was going to use a gun, well,
why wouldn't the person just bring them both on because
(35:39):
he had doing it separate? Would require you to do
two separate things. None of it makes any sense. Or
here's another theory. Somebody by mistake brought it on. Was
supposed to be in their check bag, and they're afraid
of getting caught, so they just drop it over the
thing and it's found in the Who knows, Paul said,
federal marshall's a armed on planes. Yeah, so you think
(36:01):
this is one of theirs, and that guy's not gonna
come forward if you're the other guy that lost it,
I'm guessing they would know on that plane though, when
which if there was a federal march boy, I don't
think there's a lot of Marshalls in many of these
flights anymore, at least, I just I never see any Well,
I know that you're supposed to be undercover and all
(36:24):
of that, I never see anybody that ever looks like it.
I ended up plane and everybody looks like a shlup.
I mean I look like above the I look above
the level of most of the other people that are
getting on, and I'm just a shlump. Everybody's getting on
the plane looks like you or me or somebody like that. Well, yeah,
I mean there used to be, and I think I
think I dress properly to fly. I mean I'm not
(36:47):
wearing a suit or attire or anything, but like in
the summer. I'm not sitting there with short shorts, and yes, yeah,
it's showing you skin all over the place. And then
there's that whole debate or for people, there's just this
big thing because of all these videos on YouTube of
people being drunk at the airport. Why do they serve
alcohol at the airport? Why do this? I acknowledge, I'm
(37:08):
not sure why they do it or if they should
do it, But here's the reality. I think of the
last twenty flights I was on, I didn't notice a
particular person causing any incident instant instant incident because they
were drunk. And I can't think of the last time
that it was boarding a plane where somebody was being
on drunk. And I just think that when it happened,
there's billions of flights. When it happened, somebody gets the
(37:31):
YouTube video and slaps it up there. So I think
ninety nine percent of the people who have a drink
or two at the airport bar on the plane are
perfectly fine with it. So that isn't a reason to
stop it. But the ex are nerves. And I have
another theory though, and it's the one that you came
up with, like ten or fifteen years and this I
think most cases it's because they got something else in
(37:52):
their system and the alcohol is mixing badly with it.
I'm I mean, I occasionally have to take painkillers, and
I can tell you right now I do not just
drinking with those is not a good thing. It just enhances.
And then you add these people that are taking ninety
zillion anti anxiety meds and they're mixing this out of
the yeah, and all of that, because I just it
(38:15):
just seems in general the wrong way drivers. The drunks
are weirder than the drunks that I've been used to
my entire life. And I think it's because there's things
other than alcohol mixing in with the alcohol. Yeah, the
gummies in all of that. I mean, yeah, you're right
about You're right. You're right about that too. Right. There's
a big story on JS online today by Paul Smith,
(38:36):
the outdoor writer. The Wisconsin deer population is growing, and
the concern is this. I think I raised this like
five years ago. Every year the number of deer licenses
goes down, but just a little. But the trend, it's
like the baby decline. The long term trend is fewer
and fewer and fewer deer hunters, and the result is
(38:58):
that the deer herd is becoming now a according to
Smith's report, dangerously overpopulated. There's another part of the problem though.
Here in southeastern Wisconsin where we are, I see deer
all the time, and they're always in places where you
can't hunt. Like the deer rut's about to begin or
is beginning. It usually begins right around deer hunting Cason Room.
(39:20):
What's going on right now? Well, they start coming out
of the woods and wandering around and doing all of
this stuff. Well, I mean, you can't kill a deer
in our backyard at the radio station, but the zazillion
of them out here, So I think that's part of it. Secondly,
it's very hard in many instances to be able to
hunt on private land. Well, private land is still most
(39:43):
of the land in northern and central Wisconsin, and more
and more and more property owners are banning hunters from
going on there. So you end up with the deer
and all of these safe zones, and the hunters that
are hunting, they're all congregated into the areas where they're
allowed to hunt, and they all come back and complain.
I didn't see any deer. The overall deer numbers are
higher than ever. I mean, I'm guessing that one of
(40:05):
the solutions would be to just eliminate all bag limits
in certain areas that you can kill as many deer
as you want and expan the season or something or another.
But they're suggesting it's a significant problem that the primary
predator for deer is in fact man, and if man
doesn't kill enough deer, you can create a significant problem
with not only deer heard running a month, but deer's
(40:27):
starving right and left because there's not enough of a
food infrastructure to sustain all of them. Paul said he
saw a dead dear on the free well that's right
around now, in the well. But there's wooded areas near there.
They come out of that, And I mean part of
it is though, when they're in an urban or suburban area,
(40:49):
there's no predator, I mean, and the coyotes. People will
get rid of them that are out there. And coyotes
can take fawns. I think, I don't think they can
take a full size deer, do you They can? Wolvescan,
but there's no wolves here. The wolves are all up north,
all right. There's that and the semi finals in the
state high school football playoffs of this weekend. We're gonna
(41:11):
do our big football preview at a moment, but I'm
gonna do a short term high school football preview right now.
Paul knows all about Grafton. You're going to all there.
You used to look down your nose. You're a front runner.
You're like these people who go to Bucks games to
watch the app. They didn't couldn't care less about Oklahoma City,
but now that they're good, they'll follow them. Or they
(41:32):
became Warriors fans when uh Steph Curry and all of
those guys came in. So you live in Cedarburg, but
Grafton as a winning team, and suddenly you're going over there. Yeah,
after forever and after what ever, suggesting that Grafton is
the scum of the earth and Cedarbury is the If
I'm the Grafton people, I'm telling you to get out
of there. Oh, they love you now. They are not
(41:53):
aware of all the crafting all over them that you've
been doing on this program. Division one, by the way,
this weekend, they start playing neutral fields next weekend. The
games are in Madison at Camp Randle. Division one Wannakee.
They're in this every year. You know why they're in
it every year. It's a huge suburban area north of Madison.
(42:16):
Those are the kind of places that produce football players.
Wanache plays Arrowhead. Wanakee's twelve and Arrowhead's eleven and one. Arrowhead,
I know, is very good. I don't know an name
of Wuanakee other than they're in it every year. They
have to go to Madison. Moroyal very close to Wannakee
for that. Bayport plays Muskego. Do you know where Bayport is?
Bayport is the west suburbs of Green Bay, like Swamako
(42:40):
in that area if you go like west of the city,
like very rather high end houses and so on. And
it's one of those regional districts of several municipalities. It's
kind of like an Arrowhead kind of district. That's Division one.
Of the biggest school's Division two, Green Bay. Notre Dame.
That's a very big Catholic school. It's the only one
(43:03):
in Brown County. I don't think there's one in Door County.
The closest other Catholic school. I think there's one in
Manadawack and one in Appleton, So that's it draws from
a regional area there, Greenmay Notre Dame. They play river Falls. Weirdly,
river Falls is great in college football this year and
in high school football. I don't ever recall river Falls
being good in anything. They play in Schoolfield and then
(43:27):
the other Division two game, West of Pier plays Homestead.
A friend of mine has like a nephew or something
that's the star running back at Homestead, and he tells
me the kids phenomenal. All right. Now, West of Pier
is another fascinating story. What city do you think? West
de Pier is in to Peer but there's also de
Peer high school. This is the weirdest thing. There's a
(43:51):
West to Pier school district into Peer and a de
Peer school district into Peer. Unusual, I mean there's separate
school districts. West of Pier has its own high school district,
but it's in the city of the Pier. And then
there's the Peer. When I was a kid, I remember
my grandmother's grandmother always saying East to Pier. There is
(44:14):
no East to Pier. But she said that because you
had to differentiate it from West to Pier. So this
is west a Pier and another weird thing about this
to Pier often has a good high school team. So
that's Division two, Division three. Catholic Memorial of Waukeshaw, a
powerhouse a Division three is playing graft and Paul mentioned
they're twelve and zero and in the other one. This
(44:35):
is where the story gets interesting. Ridsburg at nine and
three plays Whitefish Bay six and six. Six and six.
That means they've won three games in the playoffs. So
they got in. I guess at three and six. What
did you say? Paul says, whoever wins that first game
will crush the other team. You may be right about that. Anyway,
(44:56):
they're saying Whitefish Bay is a Cinderella team. I need
explain something on this Whitefish Bay. The divisions are based
on your enrollment, but Whitefish Whitefish Bay is in a
conference of Division two and one schools. In other words,
they're any The reason they had a poor record is
they're playing larger schools, but now by enrollment they drop
into Division three. Same thing with Catholic Memorial. It's Division
(45:18):
three because of the size, but it plays schools of
Division one type size and you'll see often and that's
one of them. There's just too many divisions and you
end up often the Division two team is better than
the Division one. And so when I won't go into
the other levels, which I try to diminish all the
people that are involved in the others, but the high
school football semifinals and it should be pretty good football
(45:39):
weather this weekend and then they all play Thursday and
Friday of next week at Camp Brandon and Madison for
the finale. This is the Mark Belling Podcast. This is
the Mark Belling Podcast, and it's time for our weekly
football preview and some point spread picks. As we are
every week. I'm joined by Mike Murlett of Americans Sports
(46:00):
Analysts and Madison. Their website is ASA wins dot com.
We're going to get into football in just a moment here,
and I found the last several weeks of football, and
the NFL in particular, to be almost impossible to figure out.
We have, for example, a team like the Cincinnati Bengals,
(46:23):
which in the first few games had as bad an
offense as you can imagine, and now might have the
best offense in the National Football League. Part of it
is they got a quarterback, Joe Flacco, but that quarterback
spent the first portion of the season with Cleveland and
they couldn't move the ball at all. Then there are
other teams like the Green Bay Packers which seem schizoid.
(46:43):
You have the Dallas Cowboys that had an unstoppable offense
and now it doesn't appear to have much offense at all.
It is very hard to figure anything out. So we'll
pick Mike spray on some of those things. But before
we get into any of that, is there anything you'd
like to share about anything that ASA is going to
be doing this weekend?
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Mike, Yeah, after a couple not so good weekends heading
into last weekend, we had a good weekend last weekend
when both top games and won in college won the pros.
So back on track and we may have a bigger
type college game this weekend. We'll know more on Friday,
so you can check the website on Friday for that situation.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Okay, that's ASA wins dot Com. We're going to start
a discussion with college football, and rather than preview any
national games, I want to spend the time that we
have here talking about the situation with Wisconsin, which finally
got its win, its breakthrough win and probably the biggest
win of Luke Fickles's career. They beat a ranked opponent
for the first time in several years when they beat
(47:41):
Washington with another outstanding defensive performance. That game was played
under the backdrop of the athletic department at UW Madison
announcing that Fickle is going to be back for next season. Mike,
it struck me that I think Wisconsin has built one
of the best defenses in the country, and they have
(48:02):
some freshmen on defense that are close to among some
of the best defensive players in college football. Right now.
Two freshmen, in particular, Posa and Catillao are playing off
the charts. Catialano had nineteen tackles last week, and Mason
Posa appears as a freshman to be as good as TJ.
Watt and JJ Watt and some other legendary Wisconsin linebackers
(48:26):
were in the day that they were there. In the meantime, however,
the offense remains a train wreck. They only scored a
touchdown because Mason Posa forced to fumble on the five
yard line. They're down to I guess their fourth and
fifth string quarterbacks right now, maybe you count the third
of Simmons is still into the fray. So a big
(48:46):
question here of post Washington analyze, Wisconsin analyze the decision
to keep fickle and give me a take on where
the team is right now and what its future looks like.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
Well, you kind of hit it on the head. I
think defensively, they've got a strong base right now. They've
got a lot of their best defensive players are young
now in the defensive line. There hasn't been enough talk
about the defensive line. I mean, they stunk stopping the
run last year and they're one of the best rush
defenses in the country this year. They brought in a
bunch of transfers. They're going to have to do that
again this year. And if they do, and their defense
(49:21):
is going to be really good again next year. If
they keep everyone offensively, they got to figure it out.
It it's more than just a quarterback. But let's face it,
mark when you're when you're a new offensive coordinator for Wisconsin,
Grimes has had success in the past and everyone was fourth.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
He was did a great job at Baylor when that
program turned around. Baylor had a good defense. He got
there and gave them an offense. He did a very
very good job at Kansas. He's got a track record
pretty much everywhere, so I don't think people can argue
that Grimes is a bad offensive coordinator. However, the offense
at Wisconsin he's coordinated this year has been a tro.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
Well what are you going to do with it? I mean,
you're down to your fourth or fifth string quarterback, a
freshman last week, who they threw for a forty eight
yard last week, and half of them came from the punter.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
I mean, it's hilarious when a guy who wears number
ninety one is your leading pass already throws throws only
the one pass. I am of the opinion that Wisconsin
is making the right decision in not firing Fickle. I
believe that he is building one of the best defenses
in the country. Obviously, the offense is a problem. He
(50:34):
made a disastrous decision with his decision to go with
an air raid offense when he came into the program
and hired a terrible offensive coordinator in retrospect, and it
set the offense back obviously the entirety of the time
that he's been there. But I think, unless Fickle's crazy,
he has figured that part of it out, and now
you need to build enough talent to make the offense work.
(50:57):
Can they do that and can they have a better
offense by next year? Because I think if they do
and they avoid players transferring out on defense, I think
they have every reason to be a top thirty team
in the country next year. I always believe it's harder
to fix a defense than fix an offense. That you
(51:17):
can fix an offense through transfers and a couple of
talented receivers, decent offensive line, they're fixing a defense. I've
seen programs take years and years and years to do that.
So I think they're making the right decision. And I
think fans that are screaming fire Fickle simply are blinded
to the progress on defense, and also are blinded to
the fact that there are so many teams looking for
(51:39):
college football coaches. I have a hard time thinking Wisconsin's
going to find anything other than a downgrade to Fickle.
Your reaction to.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
All of them, Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I agree
at this point, it's best to keep them on board. Again,
you said he's got the defensive in the right direction.
That's one hundred percent right. Next year, they'll have to
bring in a probably a portal quarterback and let Smith
wait one more year unless he lights it up the
next few weeks, which I don't think is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
If you get a good court, nobody's gonna light it
up with that offensive line right now.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
No, but the offensive line's playing better so the fer games.
They had six six different combinations in the first six
games because of injury and such, and now the last.
This will be the third game where they've had the
same offensive line. They've got some young, young starters that
are playing better. I think they've got a good base there.
They just need a quarterback that's good that stays healthy.
Next year, their schedule is much weaker. I think they
(52:30):
have a chance to be five hundred or better next
year if they get a quarterback and stay healthy. I
think the offensive line is going to be much better,
and they've gut good, decent running backs and decent running
backs coming in. I think they'll be okay.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Having said all of that, this Saturday they have to
play Indiana. I don't see how this is anything other
than a whipeout. Indiana is incredible. They probably should have
lost last week. They didn't because a guy made maybe
the best catch of the year in college football. But
(53:02):
they're very very good on both sides of the ball.
So Wisconsin, which has its win, I just think has
to try to avoid getting killed on Saturday, because the
two games after that give them chances for a couple
of more wins to close out the season. Your thoughts
going into the game that I believe Indiana's favored with
twenty eight and a half or twenty nine points if
(53:22):
anything that strikes me as low. Indiana's offense is really
really good and their defense is really good, and you
don't need a great defense to stop Wisconsin's offense. Your
thoughts on Wisconsin going over to Indiana. It's just really hard,
but I guess this has happened now, it's been building
for four or five years. It's just really hard to
think of Indiana as just a football juggernaut. But they are.
Speaker 4 (53:46):
Yeah, they're top ten. You talk about their offenses top
their defense is top ten. I mean, they're really good
on both sides of the ball. And I agree with you.
I don't know how Wisconsin stays is you know, the
last couple of weeks they held Oregon down and kind
of some great weather last week they held Washington down.
Now they're going in. Indiana scored Since Signetti took over,
They've scored thirty points in seventeen of their twenty three games.
(54:09):
If they score thurs Gonson his theay close in this
game because Indiana's defense is really good. If they can,
if Indiana can key on the run mark if Wisconsin
can't pass, Indiana gives up eighty three yards per game
rushing their eighth in the country. Wisconsin's got to find
a way to pass. I just don't see how they
stay in this game. Indiana's won all their Big Ten
(54:30):
home games this year by at least twenty five points.
They've won two of them by fifty or more against
Michigan State, excuse me, against UCLA and Illinois. This is
probably going to be.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
A well I think the I am an opponent of
the twelve team playoff in part because I think it
waters down the conference championship games, and both Ohio State
and Indiana are going to be in the twelve team championship.
But I do presuming both say I'd beaten. I just
think that could be an incredible game the national the
(55:01):
Big Ten championship game between Ohio State and Indiana. But
off the top of my head, are they playing that game?
In Indianapolis again or is it elsewhere? Do you know
where the Big Ten Championship is?
Speaker 4 (55:12):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's in Indianapolis. And there's already
a pre line on that game of Ohio State minus
three and a half or four if it was played today.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, well, that's close to Indiana's campus. They split up
the tickets and all of that, but boy, that would
be the marquee game I think of any of the
conference championships. Let's sort of turn our attention over to
the NFL. My comment on the Packers is they've become
the Badgers. The Packers defense is outstanding, but they don't
seem to have an offense at all. I mean, when
(55:42):
you I watched the Badger Washington game on Saturday, then
I watched on Monday the Green Bay Philadelphia game. I
started was watching the same game. What's going on with
the Packers?
Speaker 4 (55:53):
Yeah, it's They're one of the hardest teams to figure
out in the NFL in my opinion. They've scored points
total at home in their last two games. Prior to that,
they were averaging thirty two points the game in their
previous four games. They're so up and down. Last week's game,
you watched it. I mean they tried to run the
ball on second long and they were you know, they
(56:14):
had thirty six pass attempts, but eighteen of them came
in the last nine minutes when they were down by
ten points. At that point, he decided to start throwing.
I don't know what to think of the Packers. The
Packer defense is really good. Here's the problem, mark that
I see. They run the ball the tenth their tenth
and run play percenters. So run the ball a lot,
(56:36):
which is fine, twenty third pass play per centers. The
problem is their offensive line isn't great pass blocking or
run blocking. In fact, Green Bay running backs are averaging
point eight four yards before contact. That's the third worst
in the NFL. So they're trying to run the ball.
They're not a great run blocking team. There are really
hard teams to project right now, and I think this
(56:56):
is a dangerous game against the Giants.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, let's talk about the Packers playing the Giants in
New York. Giants have just fired their coach, Brian Day
Ball and again and again and again. Both pro and
college teams that fire their coaches often come the following
week with a huge performance. I still haven't figured out
exactly why it is, but yeah, I mean either if
the Giants do come out with an improved performance post
(57:19):
at day ball only seven points, could they beat Green Bay?
Speaker 4 (57:24):
I think they could. Hey, you don't forget Jamis Winston's
starting a quarterback, so and I don't think that's a
great thing for green Bay. He's throwing for twenty five
thousand yards. The players love Jamis Winston. He rallies guys,
and in that first game with the coach gone and
him starting, I don't love this spot for green Bay.
They're favored by seven. Let's face it, the Giants have
(57:45):
been fairly competitive. They beat the Eagles at home. They
lost at Denver by one point. They blew a nineteen
point fourth quarter lead. They blew a ten point late
lead in Chicago. Giants could be four and six or
five and five right now. I think this is a
really dangerous game for green Bay.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
The other game that I want to talk about this
weekend in the NFL let's preview the Seahawks and the Rams.
The NFC West is very strong. These teams seem to
me to be identical. They're both seven and two, they're
both very good. The Rams are favored by three, and
I think that's largely a function of the game being
at Los Angele's. My guess is that if it was
(58:22):
in Seattle, that the Seahawks would be favored. Your thoughts
on the Rams.
Speaker 4 (58:25):
And the Seahawks, Yeah, we have these teams powerted dead even,
which is why you hit it right on the head.
Rams are favored by three at home. If it was slip,
Seahawks be faired by three. I mean, I think the
right now, these are the two best teams in the NFC.
I'm not an Eagle fan, don't. I don't think the
Eagles are as good as people think they are. Right now.
These two teams are both seven and two straight up,
(58:47):
seven and two against the spread. They've both won four
games in a row. They are the top two point
differentials in the NFC, the top two yards for play
differentials in the NFC. Seattle's led for sixty two percent
of their offensive snaps. That's number one. Rams are second
in that category. The one thing that's interesting in this game.
We're not going to use this game either way because
I think the line's dead on. People probably don't realize
(59:09):
Seattle's got a good home field advantage. But they've won
ten straight road games going back to last year, not
against the spread, just straight. They're ten and oh their
last ten road games. This is gonna be a fantastic game.
We're going to stay away from it. But I think
these two teams are really good right now. And for playoffs,
you know, one of these teams are going to win
the division probably and the other one's going to be
in the wildcard. Right now, RAMS would be in the
(59:31):
wildcard and seatle be the number two seed.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
This game, that's game there. It's so important because head, yeah,
you're the head to head is the first tiebreaker, and
this is obviously a head to have game. It really
moves the standings by two and a half games. It's
a huge game out there in the West. Time to
get some point spread picks. And I was the only
loser last week, but as Mike pointed out to be,
I have an excuse. I had played a big favorite
(59:56):
that actually lost outright, but it was such an anomaly
of a game. I took Oregon State over Sam Houston State.
Sam Houston got its first win. Oregon State outgained them
by three hundred and seventeen yards. And they had twenty
more first downs, and as you said, it's almost impossible
to win when you're out gained by that much. So
(01:00:18):
I don't know if I would have covered the whole
twenty and a half after that, but I think my
pick is not as stupid as it turns out to be.
There were just a lot of turnovers and weirdo things
that screwed up Oregon State in that game. Paul was
the beneficiary of a very good line. The line on
the Bears Giants game at the time that we did
our contest was three and a half. It went up
(01:00:39):
to four and a half, and I thought the Bears
would war. They won by four, So people who bet
on game day probably lost. But Paul got a win
on that pick, which he really needed. Mike, who started
really slowly here is knocking off winners right and left.
He was right. This is a game weight preview. Texas
Tech was favored by tanover unbeaten BYU, and they crushed him.
They beat them twenty nine to seven. If you were winners,
(01:01:02):
I was a loser omain in first place in this
but I've lost three picks in a row, and as
I say, football is borderline mystifying me. My favorite NFL
game was the Bears at the three and a half,
but then when it got to the four and a half,
not so much. So. I would have been right on
Friday on the time that I had that and almost
took that game that Paul took. All right, let's get
(01:01:24):
started on this weekend. We're gonna start with a pick
from Paul. Paul, you go first, the forty nine Ers
at the Cardinals. That's the other game in the NFC West.
I think NFC West NFC North might be the two strongest.
The West might be the strongest division of the in
football right now, wouldn't you say maybe the AFC West. Yeah,
(01:01:49):
forty nine Ers and Cardinals two teams that are also
I think pretty close. This game is in Arizona, but
the forty nine Ers on the road are favored by three.
The forty nine ers always seem to be banged up.
Arizona's banged up. I guess everybody's banged up in the NFL.
Forty nine ers on the road are favored by three.
You're gonna take the forty nine ers on the road,
(01:02:12):
paulis is the forty nine The Niners are kind of
a mess at the quarterback situation, they seem to be Yes,
forty nine ers are more of a complete team. He thinks, Well,
I mean, I think the Rams Seahawks game is as
Mike said, I think that point spread is exactly correct.
(01:02:32):
It's exactly yeah, it's a three. It's exactly correct. And
if you ask me how the game would turn out,
I would say the Rams are gonna win by three
by three. So you say you're taking another three point game.
It's the other game in the same division, Pulse is
the forty nine ers of the Cardinals. I have no
opinion in that game. Do you have an opinion, Mike.
Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
I'm the same. I can't get a good feel for
San Francisco, to be honest with you. They got so
many injuries, and some weeks they look good, in other
weeks they don't. They get crushed against La last week,
but they did beat Arizona at home earlier this year.
But as a one point as sixteen to fifteen, who's
the final score, Arizona looks better offensively, they're set a quarterback.
(01:03:09):
I think that's a really difficult game. I don't like
that game at all.
Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Okay, let's find out about a game that Mike does, like,
where are we going.
Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Let's look at college first year and I'll see what
you give me on the in the Big ten. I'm
going to go to Penn State at Michigan State game.
It's three forty seven eight.
Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Yeah, I thought a lot about that game. Penn State
on the road is favored by seven and a half points.
Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
I'm going to take Michigan State there.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I thought about
using that game myself. Michigan State's not very good, but
they seem to be getting a little better. But boy,
this has got to be a letdown for Penn State.
They almost beat Indiana and now they have to go
on their own to Michigan State. It strikes me that
they could be really really flat here. And yes, thing,
(01:04:00):
that's what your rationale is.
Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
Yeah, this is a play against Penn State, and I
like for the spot for Michigan State as well. I mean,
Michigan State, you got coming off of bye. Their last
game was at Minnesota. They lost that game. They switched
quarterbacks in that game. If you didn't pay attention, he
threw for well over three hundred guard. They had four
hundred and fifty yards against Minnesota, who's a really good
(01:04:24):
defense creamed Minnesota in the stats. That's the second most
yards this year on Minnesota besides Ohio State. So their
quarterback situations figured out. They're coming off of by Not
only did Penn State lose the way they lost last week,
if you watched the end of that game, how the
how Indiana scored right at the end of the game
with kind of a toe tap in the end zone
(01:04:45):
to tap.
Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
When he caught the ball with like one hand and
got the two feet down and fall.
Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
So they put everything into that game. They played Ohio
State the week before, so they're coming off Ohio State
in Indiana, the two top teams in the Big Ten.
Now going on the road. You got Penn State team
who was thinking about the playoffs. They don't care about
bulls at this point. This is a perfect leftdown spot.
I wouldn't be surprised if Michigan State wins this game
out right, So I'll take seven.
Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
And a half. Yeah, I feel like switching my pick
and taking that game is one that I agree with
Mike's pick on that. The only thing, and I say only,
I mean there's ninety factors. The only thing I just wonder.
Penn State was thought to be a really good team
this year and they just fell apart in the middle
of the season. They fired Franklin. Maybe they're getting it
back together, and maybe they keep the momentum that they
(01:05:31):
showed by almost winning last week. But that's a lot
of maybe's. But I think all the other situational factors,
including the quarterbacks switch at Michigan State, would point to them.
Now for a pick for me, there's a couple of
games that I sort of like, but the line is
not exactly right, and I'm just falling to one game
(01:05:52):
here that has I think college football the two best
quarterbacks that nobody's ever heard of. It's the game between
South Florida and Navy. This game is in the American Conference,
where you're talking about, conference is wide open. I think
there's five or six there's five or six teams that
are either five and one or four in one. Somebody's
(01:06:12):
gonna win that league. It's one of those conferences in
which half the teams are good and the other half
are terrible. And this is both both of these teams
have one loss in the conference. It's Navy at South Florida.
South Florida has a spectacular quarterback and he's got a
tremendous ratio and he's putting up a tremendous number of yards.
(01:06:33):
But the Navy quarterback who's primarily a runner, Horrorvath, he's outstanding. Also.
He can also throw the ball a little. He's banged
up and they list him as questionable, but I think
he's going to play. I'm going to lay the points
and lay the ten with South Florida, which I think
has one of the best offenses in America. Their coach,
Alex Golich, he's probably going to all these openings that
(01:06:57):
are out there this year. One of these schools with
an opening is going to hire and snap him up.
The two defenses, I think are about even. They're both
pretty good. The two offenses are very good, but I
think South Florida is borderline elite team. The couple of
losses that they've had this season were the in state
games where they lost to both of the in state schools.
(01:07:20):
I think I have that right. I think that they
lost to Miami and did they lose the They.
Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
Lost that Memphis. They lost that Memphis Memphis.
Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
That's what that's what it is. Memphis, which is in
their conference. Otherwise, I think they're a very very good team. Navy.
Here's a state a stat on Navy. Navy started the
season seven and zero. I think it's possible they're going
to go from winning seven in a row to losing
five in a row. Their first seven games, the competition
was terrible, and the last five games they have four
(01:07:48):
strong games and the end, of course, with a great
rivalry game with Army, which I think is a team
that's close to Navy and ability, I think Navy could
start with by winning their first seven and losing the
last five. It's a lot of points to lay. But
I'm really enamored with South Florida and especially their offense.
And as I say, it's just two really good quarterbacks,
(01:08:10):
very different styles. One as primarily pass it, the other runner.
But because they're kind of lower profile schools, you can
look at the stat Southwest quarterback and I think he
should be a Heisen contender. He won't be, but I
think that he ought to be. Any thoughts in that game.
I know I'm laying a lot of points here, but
I'm struggling. I'm struggling to find anything else to pick.
Speaker 4 (01:08:31):
I would agree. In that game, South Florida really should
only have one loss to Miami Florida. They went to
Memphis lost by three, but they led by fourteen in
the fourth quarter in that game, and they completely outplayed Memphis.
So who's a good team?
Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Navy?
Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
As you said, they played the the worst schedule in
FBS in the first seven games they were. Their schedule
was horrible, and now they've gotten smoke two games in
a row, their quarterbacks banged up. I don't disagree with you.
I think I think Navy was kind of a farce
at seven and zero, and I think they got problems
down the road here and South Florida is the much
better team.
Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Okay, Mike agrees with me on this, and I desperately
need to win. That line has bounced around all week.
First it was ten and a half, then it moved
to nine and a half, and I think that's because
people think the Navy quarterbacks going to play and it's landed.
We use scores in odds, which is one of the
many consensus services out there, and the number they popped
up with today is ten. Had it been ten and
(01:09:27):
a half, I would have had to find something else.
Ten and ahead. So many games land on ten. I
think that I'm either going to win or push the game. Okay,
recapping everybody's picks real quickly. Here, Paul takes the forty
nine Ers to beat the Cardinals by more than three.
I had both those games in that division. As I say,
they're both three points, and I think those lines are right.
(01:09:49):
What I would make the line too. I think the
forty nine Ers probably are three points better than the Cardinals,
Mike says. I like Mike's pick. He says Michigan State
a seven and a half point underdog over Penn State.
Michigan State can lose by seven or less at home
or win the game outright for Mike to win. And
I need South Florida to beat Navy by more than
the ten points. Again, if you want to find out
(01:10:10):
what's going on with as AASA wins dot com, lots
of information up there. They right picks on all the sports,
so forth and so on. And that's it for this
week's podcast. Back on Monday.
Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
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Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Of mess sss
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Speaker 2 (00:23):
There's a big piece in the Wall Street Journal today
by see the psychiatrist or a psychologist, and he's writing
that Trump derangement syndrome is actually real, that there are
some people that are mentally affected by their reaction to Trump.
There are a couple of issues nationally that I want
(00:44):
to deal with, but I'm going to put them under
the umbrella of the way people react to President Trump.
I contend that he's misunderstood by almost everyone on the left,
both the moderate and the Marxists, and by a lot
of people on the right. I think that Trump is
(01:09):
not an ideologue. I think that he's a pragmatist who
happens they have brilliant negotiating skills because he is able
to figure out leverage with regard to one of the
issues that we have in front of us that we're
going to dive into in some depth here the question
(01:31):
now of not illegal immigration, but legal immigration, the H
one B visa question. There are a lot of people
in the magaqurotas that will Trump's against immigration is against immigration.
I don't think Trump's an ideologue on anything. I think
that he views issues from what do we need to
(01:52):
do now perspective, And I think that this is misunderstood
by the left and the right. So who understand it's you? Yes,
I understand what's going on. There's another big national issue
that's under this umbrella to and we're going to get
to that in just a moment here. When it comes
(02:13):
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(02:37):
used in their own business experience. The you Line difference
today visit you line dot com. The government shutdown is over.
The shorthand of this is that it is a total
victory for Trump and the Republicans. They didn't have to
capitulate on anything. The exact same terms maybe there's one
(03:03):
slight amendment. Otherwise, the exact same terms could have been
accepted by the Democrats seven weeks ago and we would
have had any of this. This raises a whole lot
of questions, like if they were going to cave, why
did they start this anyway, or did they actually think
(03:24):
Trump would buckle? And what made them think that Trump
would buckle again. One of the things that I put
on with Trump is the thing that makes it. One
of the things that makes him a great negotiator is
he is able to size up the other side's weaknesses.
And he looked here, and this was a situation in
which the Republicans reunited. You know, over there in the Senate,
(03:48):
you've got two or three moderate Republicans who often bowled
over to the other side, Collins, Murkowski, et cetera. They
were solid on board on this because what Trump was
proposing was simply an extension of current law, not changing anything.
So you didn't have any Republican breaking ranks here. And
Trump knew that over in the House, you didn't. You know,
(04:09):
there's the Freedom Caucus members and so on who sometimes
break away. They were all on board. So Trump realized
that this issue, given the fact that they weren't making
any significant changes one way or another. The Republicans were
totally united on So Trump, my side isn't going to buckle.
I'm not going to buckle. My side isn't going to buckle.
(04:30):
So why should I change anything? Which brings us to
the question of why did the Democrats do this? Why
did they make people go without pay for so long?
Why did they screw up the number of government services
that were obstructed? Why did they panic people over the
food stamps. The House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Sean
(04:51):
Hannity's show last night and he gave his answer, and
I think his analysis is exactly correct, which is why
we're going to play it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
This shutdown never was about health care. It wasn't about
Obamacare's subsidies. It wasn't about all the things they tried
to make it about, all the false narratives and talking points.
It was about one thing. Sean, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem
Jeffries are from New York. They needed to get political
cover because the Marxists are taking over the Democrat Party,
especially in their state, and they're worried about their next reelect.
(05:21):
That is one hundred percent what this was about from
the very beginning. We called it out in the beginning
and never changed. They were more afraid of political retribution
from the radicals that now run the Democrat Party than
they were afraid about taking the food out of the
mouths of Hungary families, truly, or about having fights canceled
around the country, or making the troops and their families
(05:42):
worry about where the next paycheck was going to come from.
It was a selfish political stunt. It yielded nothing but
paying for the American people. And I think the people
are it's going to be a long time before they
forget this.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I think he's exactly right. I think that that's what
this was all about. The radicals it is party who
are now Marxists terrify Schumer and also Jeffreys. You remember
Jeffreys represents a district in New York City. He has
to be fearful of a Marxist candidate challenging him from
the left in a primary. Schumer's terrified that AOC is
(06:15):
going to run against him. So you've got the leftist barking,
you fight Trump, fight Trump, fight Trump. So even though
strategically Schumer's not an idiot in terms of debating and negotiating.
He knew that he had no leffage, but he felt
he had to do this because they're terrified. This is
why I believe the mainstream Democratic Party is dead. And
(06:36):
I've been harguing this for several weeks because there's no pushback.
You can say that most Democratic voters are not Marxists,
but the Democratic elected officials who are not Marxists are
not doing anything to shove the radicals away. As for Schumer,
(06:58):
so what did he do? For weeks? He came to
these people and then a handful of Democratic moderates said,
screw it, we're getting nowhere. We're going to vote to
end the shutdown. And the left is blaming Schumer. Schumer
wasn't even one of the So what did Schumer get
out of this? They hated him before this. He did
what they wanted, and they still hate him. They hate
(07:20):
him because they don't believe he's a true believing Marxist.
He's just the guy that's caving into Marxist. I want
to move now to an issue that's royaling Republicans. This
is the issue not of illegal immigration, but legal immigration.
(07:46):
In particular people who come in either temporarily or permanently
on work visas, the H one B visas. Trump has
been talking to a lot of business leader who have
been begging him to soften his stance with regard to
the H one B visas, and Trump is acquiescing to them.
(08:11):
There are a number of people in the MAGA crowd,
and maybe even Vice President jd Vance who don't agree
with this, who think that the last thing that we
need to do is import a number of foreign workers
to compete for jobs in a softphening economy with American workers.
(08:31):
I've got a couple of quotes on this, and I
also have some thoughts here because I believe there are
a lot of issues that you hear me talk about
and say I really don't know, I really don't know.
This is not one of those I believe I do
on this issue. No, this is an exchange between Laura
Ingram and President Trump. Ingram had Trump on her show
(08:55):
a couple of days ago. Here's her question Ingram h Wa,
and she's clear not on board with trump. H one
B visa thing won't be a big priority for you.
If you want to raise wages for Americans. You can't
flood the country with thousands of foreign workers. Trump, you
have to bring in talent, Ingram, We have plenty of
(09:16):
talented people. Trump, No, you don't, Ingram, We don't have
talented people here. Trump, you don't have certain talents. People
have to learn. You can't take people off the unemployment
line and say go make missiles. Ingram, how do we
do it before? Trump? I'll give you an example. In Georgia,
(09:37):
we rated Hyundai for illegal immigrants. They had people from
South Korea, very dangerous job. They had five hundred to
six hundred people early stages to make batteries, to teach
people how to do it well. They wanted to kick
them out of the country. You need them. You can't
bring in ten billion dollars for a plant, take people
off the unemployment line and start making missiles. It won't
(10:00):
work that way. Here's some of the blowback he's getting.
I don't know who this is, but it's supposed to
run xt name with the handle sav says. Trump needs
to get out of his bubble and back on the
ground listening to the American people who elected him to
work for US. His H one B comment shows how
(10:21):
out of touch with the base. He has become another
commenter on ex Wall Street MAV. I really hope that
Stephen Miller or someone else can explain to President Trump
that is not what we voted for. This is a
path of giving away the midterms in twenty twenty six.
In other words, Trump getting blowback that the mega crowd
(10:44):
that the base does not want softness on any immigration.
Clearly Trump isn't buckling an illegal immigration. He's being attacked
viscerally from the left for throwing out of the country
people that are here illegue. But with regard to people
coming in legally through work visas, Trump seems to be
(11:07):
taking a different position. Here's my take on this, And
every now and then I'll preface my take by saying,
I'm right. You know, there's degrees with a certain you know,
for example, I started the season. We'll do a football
picks later out in the program. I start of the
(11:27):
season really really good. At six and two. I've lost
three games in a row, and I've found parts of
the NFL to be inexplicable. So I come right on,
I don't know, this is the opposite. I have a
strong viewpoint here as to what's going on I did
a segment on the podcast. It was either Wednesday or Mondays.
Paul won't remember because he's got an even worse memory
(11:49):
than me. Paul said, doesn't really matter. No, I guess
it doesn't. It was either wedns near Monday, in which
I talked about the incredible I think it was Wednesday's
podcast all these people that have college degrees but can
find proper jobs because the degrees are all in things
for which the jobs there's no demand. And I talked
(12:13):
about how you see in skilled, some skilled, in semi
skilled positions, constructions, many of the trades, repairing of equipments, etc.
The kinds of jobs that do not require college degrees.
Usually there is a vast shortage of workers because we've
got all these college graduates with degrees and women's studies
and all of this other crap for which there's no
(12:36):
need for the jobs. I believe that's what's driving the
H one B visa situation. Even though every young American
is fluent in how to use computers and tablets and
play games and all of this stuff, the fact of
(12:57):
the matter is that it's a fact we don't have
anywhere near enough Americans trained to work in technology. Many
of these jobs for which the H one bvss are
coming in are skilled positions in either tech or the
higher end of the trades. Trump talked about, you know,
(13:19):
building missiles, building batteries, high end batteries, and so on.
We have misdirected, and I went through this on Wednesday's program,
So many young people into the wrong careers. It isn't
just we don't have enough brick layers. It isn't just
that we don't have enough refrigeration techs and so on.
(13:42):
We don't have enough people who know how to do
things like build the infrastructure of tech, all these data
centers and so on. Clearly, most of the jobs are
the kinds of jobs that most people live in America
can handle. But a lot of the highly focus tech positions. No.
(14:07):
I think it's clear these comings. There is a shortage
of people who to do lots of these types of jobs,
and we have lots of Americans out here who don't
have the skills to do these positions. We are get
This isn't anybody's fault of the people in the workforce.
It's the fault of their parents, It's the fault of college,
of the colleges. It's the fault of the message from
(14:28):
society that we have been not directed. It's not been
exactly a secret where the trend is going in our world.
The one type of either blue collar or non type
college education job that's never going to go away because
of AI and so on is anything that requires hand
on fixing, building fixing, repairing, and so on. You know,
you got a refrigeration system to bust down. AI isn't
(14:50):
going to fix that. Somebody's got to come in there
and do it. So Trump sizes this up. Trumps he's
trying to get all these tech companies to build these
plants in the United States. He wants the data centers
to be in the United States. He wants us to
control our jobs at our destiny. So these companies are
(15:10):
doing it, and they say, oh my god, where are
we gonna find workers to do this? Then? And I'm
gonna add this part of it. In many of these
industries are the ones that's still drug test Let's face it,
there are some jobs that you can do when you're
a pothead. There are others that you can't. All these
(15:32):
types of jobs are that we've got so many people,
especially in the states where pot or legal, or they're
taking Delta nine or all of this other crap. You
simply can't have them building tech systems. They aren't going
to be any good at it. There's no way they're
gonna be able to focus and concentrate. So Trump, as
(15:54):
I say, he's a pregnant he's against immigration. No he's not.
He's against illegal immigration. But I thinks is open that
this is a need where we need to bring people
in legally through the front door. My own position, which
has been the same position for years now, I'm all
in favor of legal immigration, and I'm totally opposed to
illegal immigration. Legal immigration come into the front door is
(16:16):
what's built our country. Illegal immigration come in through the
back door, letting in people who aren't vetted at all,
people who don't have any job skills, coming in to
do a lot of things that in many cases are
bad for the nation bad. We need to go back
to what we get in the first place, which is
(16:38):
we have controlled and regulated immigration, not wholesale. And one
of the keys that we focus on is where do
we need people anyway. I think that there's this general
misunderstanding of Trump. I think he is at this position,
not because he's doctor near or tied into one particular
(17:00):
thought and immigration, but he sizes up the illegal immigration problem.
Ten to fifteen million people came in under Biden. There's
no way for us to pay this. It's driving up
healthcare costs because all of these people are getting treated
at hospitals and the going to the doctors. He's driving
up education costs, is driving up a crime problem, et cetera,
(17:20):
with many of them not bringing it a lot to
the table. But then he looks at the other thing.
Some of these higher end positions are going a wanting
where nobody's applying because nobody has the skill set, or
they're in many fields in which people simply don't want
to do it. I'm right about this, you know, I'm
(17:43):
right about this. Let's imagine, well, let's imagine that we'd
build you know, let's imagine all the data centers that
are being proposed here in Wisconsin, go through the one
southern Racine County, the Port Washington, the Beaver Dam. Do
you think that there are enough people who live around here? Now? Again,
a lot of the jobs do not require massive tech skills,
(18:04):
but the ones that really do do. We have enough
people that are there, and I realize some will come
from other states, which is the case when any new
industry comes in and develops and so on. Or do
you think there's gonna be a shortage of this because
they've got way too many people that are going to
college and majoring in stuff that doesn't translate to anything.
(18:25):
You major in romance literature, What can you do with it? Well,
you better be a good writer, or you better be
a teacher. What the hell else are you gonna do
with it? We've indulge people and given them massive student
loans to go out and get training for all sorts
of stuff that doesn't translate into a career or life.
In the meantime, there are still, even with AI and
all this stuff coming, zillions of positions out there that
(18:46):
need to be filled, and we have a mismatch of
the skills that people have and the people that are
out there. Let me turn my attention to a political story.
Usually this is the opposite, but right now the Democrats
(19:09):
in Wisconsin appear to be setting up for a free
for all for governor, while the Republican race seems to
be orderly. All of this can change. Dan biss js
Online is now reporting that there's another big name Wisconsin
Democrat thinking of entering the race. The reason they're all
thinking of entering the race is a they think it
(19:30):
might be a Democratic year next year. So you run,
and you win the nomination, you could be the governor.
B they all size up the Democrats that are running
and say, well, this I can beat this one. It's
like five lefties, some Madison running. Then you've got David Crowley,
the Milwaukee County executive running kind of a lightweight. If
Sarah Rodriguez, the Lieutenant governor, who's somewhere between lightweight and middleweight,
(19:56):
who's trying to convince the rest of the Democrats that
I'm a big Marxist left DC, you don't need these
Madison ones. But there isn't anybody who's past the Smeltist
to be in the governor. So you have Joel Brennan,
who worked in the Vers administration. He's now a big
behind the scenes power broker in Wisconsin. He's the president
(20:17):
of the Greater Milwaukee Committee, and he's got some Milwaukee
leftist business leaders behind him on this. He's kind of
what would be running as the mainstream somebody could actually
do the job. Type of governor. He hasn't entered the race,
but you're looking at the potential of seven eight nine
Democrats running, and usually they like to do is clear
(20:39):
the field so you don't have people taking pot shots
at one another. The Republican side, it's still it's Tiffany
and Josh Shulman and Schauman is trying to do things.
He's made a good election reform proposal. The problem, of course,
he is you got to get it to the legislature
and then you have to get it approved by the
state Supreme Court. Have leftists who won't to prove it.
(21:02):
But in the meantime, it just seems to me that
Tiffany is gradually developing a consensus around him. The Milwaukee
Police Union, which is very influential, just endorsed Tom Tiffany
for governor. Showman could find an opening. Somebody else could
still jump into the race, but right now it seems
to me that there's more order on the Republican side
(21:22):
and the very likely winner is going to be Tiffany,
whereas the Democrats of the party that seem to be
in terms of their running for governor rather chaotic. This
is the Mark Belling Podcast. This is the Mark Belling podcast.
(21:44):
There was a murder over the last couple of days
that is raising some questions. It's now one of these
street murders in the inner city of Milwaukee. Those are
often easy, albeit them tragic, easy to understand. This one
is being reported by a number of different news organizations,
and I just this is often the case. None of
(22:06):
them have put everything together, and I've been prying today
to put some details together, and I think I've been
able to do so. It has to do with the
murder and racine a couple of days ago of a
thirty seven year old woman. Her name is Joyce Bongo.
It was described by authorities as a domestic violent situation
in which the domestic violence got so out of hand
(22:28):
that the abuser actually killed her. Bongo has not been
named by most of the authorities yet, but she's been
identified in numerous news accounts. The man who's been arrested
as a resident of South Dakota. His name is Benjamin Chips.
He's fifty six, she's thirty seven. Now you may be
wondering why in the world would a guy from South
(22:49):
Dakota be beating the hell out of a thirty seven
year old woman from raciin I've been able to piece
together some details here. It appears to me that Bongo
is a long term resident of South Dakota. In fact,
I've seen no coverage of this. I found none of
this stuff. Is hard to think, Paul, have you picked
(23:10):
up in the fact that the media is not very
talented just basic research that I was able to do
so unfortunately, just tragedy. Enjoyce Bongo's life. There's an obituary
from July, late July of this year from South Dakota.
An infant child of her has passed away. It doesn't
give any details of how that is, but in the
death notice there's no father even listened so listed, So
(23:33):
apparently it was a situation in which she got pregnant
and the guy wasn't in the picture or whatever, and
the child died. So that was her in South Dakota
as recently as July. I don't know what brought her
to Raccene, if there are other family members here, but
in looking up the listing in the death notice for
the little baby that died, all the relatives as in
South Dakota. So she's a long term South Dakota resident
(23:54):
and came here and now this guy followed. They may
have had a longer term relationship than the story would
otherwise imply. The pictures that are in the media accounts
of the victim, she's very attractive woman, doesn't appear to
be somebody that had problems in her life. I found
(24:15):
a LinkedIn post for her in which she said she
worked in janitorial services cleaning, So didn't look they have
a high end job or anything like that. But it
appears to me that this was something. Ever, by the way,
both of these people involved in Native Americans Indigenous people.
They somebody that is from South Dakota. She moved to Racine.
The guy followed a hero a stormy relationship, beat the
(24:37):
hell out of her, rand he murdered her. He's facing
charges a first degree intentional homicide with a domestic violence
en hands her. The Waka Shaw School Board voted last
night to close two elementary schools. They've been debating this
for months. This issue is going to be confronted. Is
(25:02):
going to confront almost every school district in Wisconsin. There's
only a few that aren't seeing declining enrollment. There's a
number of factors coming together. First, the incredible decline in
the birth rate. It's possible that the gen zs will
turn it around. They can't if fewer babies in the
millennials who just went on strike against children. But the
(25:25):
school enrollments are way down from twenty years ago almost everywhere.
The only exceptions are communities that are seeing rapid residential growth,
new subdivisions coming in, Farmland is turning into subdivisions and
so on. But even they don't seem to be growing,
they're holding flat. But otherwise just about everybody's going down. Secondly,
there's an explosion in both charter and private schools really
(25:48):
all over the state. More and more parents have recognized
that most public schools aren't any good and they're looking
for alternatives. So public schools are facing this double whammy
of the decline in the birth rate and alternatives for
kids to be educated somewhere else. So the school systems
are overbuilt. And what happens there's something irrational among people
(26:09):
about the closing of a school. I think Wendy's just
announced that they're going to close two to three hundred
restaurants and so on, the lower performing places. Whoever gets
upset if a Wendy's closes, you go to another Wendy's,
or you just go to somewhere else. Well, school is different, Yeah,
school is different. Your kid goes to the school, and
so on. But boy, oh boy, I was in the
(26:32):
era in which there are building schools like crazy, because
I was in the baby boom you had the opposite.
Schools are packed to the rafters, parents are popping out, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
kids mending all over the place. Almost all those schools
are closed now. I think in the community that I
grew up in when I was a kid, there were
three Catholic schools, one Lutheran school, and let me count one, two,
(26:57):
five public elementary schools. Three of the public schools are
closed and two of the Catholic schools are closed, and
the Lutheran school is closed. Well, okay, people have a
been I went to that school, et cetera. The high
school that I went to, they turned it into a
middle school, and now they want to knock that down
(27:18):
and build a new middle school and so on. Okay,
you have memories of all of this, But so what
if you don't need the school, you should close the school,
sell the school and get it, get it under turn
it hopefully in a tax batucic property and stop running
(27:38):
a building that you don't need. Well, my kids go
there and all the other schools another mile. Oh shut up.
The other factor here, and I've been talking about this,
is we keep passing all these referendums at school districts,
kept putting up new schools. Don't you realize that all
the projections are on. The reason voters vote for this
(28:01):
is a they buy into some of this stuff. And
secondly there's the big con job from the construction firms,
the engineering firms, and the architectural firms who get paid
to build the schools. Buy me a school district in
Wisconsin that's not overbuilt. As I say, there are a
few that are in communities. Just off the top of
my head, the Sussex, the Hamilton School District, which is
(28:23):
Sussex and the region around there was an area where
just a lot of residential growth has gone on. I
don't know if the enrollment's gone up, but that's been
an area that's boomed. Another one may say the Slinger area.
I mean Slinger were just there and now Slinger and
Richfield are almost merging together. In WESTMND, there's just a
lot of development there. So there may be a few
cases where the enrollment is holding firm or even going
(28:47):
up a little bit, but almost all other cases it's
just the opposite. Wowatosa, which is the worst run school
district maybe on the planet. They passed that massive referendum.
I mean, They're enrollment is hemorrhy like. It's just falling
and falling and falling. And secondly, the educational quality in Wambatosa.
Wambatosa went from being one of the best school districts
(29:07):
in the state to one of the worst. Yet they
put up all of these building sense school you went to,
Is it still standing? What was it called the Random
Lake School? Random Lake High School? What about the grade schools?
Is it's still standing. It's connected of the high school.
(29:29):
That's probably why they haven't knocked it down, because they're
afraid that the high school would fall over if they
knocked it. So the thing of it is, if there's
only one school in a community, it's hard to close
that school, even if it's mostly empty. But maybe they're
not using some of the room, but you know, they'll
just fill the rooms, so they'll hire more administrators and
put them into there. And that's The other thing, you
go back to the era in which the school enrollments
(29:50):
are huge, the staffing was lower. I remember my grade school.
We had a principal. She was a nun. That was
the total admitis. There was the principle and there were teachers.
There was nobody else. They were like there was like
a music teacher, especially as a teacher, but there was
no one else in the administration. You know why everything's
(30:15):
top heavy, don't you? It's you? What if I what
did I just tell you on Wednesday? Follow the money.
If something's top heavy, it means there's a lot of
jobs that pay more. So all the teachers and everybody
wants to create these positions because it's more money for them.
(30:37):
If you were a worker in a field and you
want to have a lot of jobs that pay the same,
or would you like to have a lot of jobs
that are high and numerous management? It was like, you know,
you go to a factory that's unionized, everybody's in the
union wants to be the foreman. Why the foreman makes
more money? And then the foreman wants to you know,
private sector companies can't afford to have all this massive
(30:59):
layers of management and top heaviness and so on, and
the ones that do tend to be the ones that
get bloated and go under and so on. Now let
me move to this story. Wait, the travel over the weekend.
Here's a weird one. This happened at the Atlanta airport
on Saturday. The ones that didn't fly through Atlanta coming back.
(31:21):
I went through Atlanta going down there a Frontier Airlines.
I'm killing you know that Spirit is close to going under.
I just think all the problems are going to transfer
over to Frontier. Like the two discount airlines in America,
Size front are Spirit in Frontier, right, you know. And
we started our cruises on kind of they weren't like
(31:44):
what they are now. It was like halfway nice, wasn't it. Yeah,
it's just the clientele. I don't know. Anyway, this is
Frontier Now. I'm not lumping all the Frontier. I'm just
saying that there are a couple of airlines it seemed
they have way more troubles with their passengers than others.
And you could psychoanalyzer, socio analyzer, democrat would come up
(32:07):
with all the reasons you want. Anyway, this is Frontier.
Frontier plane a passenger on the plane found a loaded
gun magazine, not the gun, the magazine when you think
(32:27):
of a weapon, not a revolver, but like a pistol.
The magazine is the thing that holds the bullets. It's loaded.
So they went back to the gate. There was no incident,
but it begs the question how did it get on there?
And no one really knows because a passenger just founded
was it something that was stashed there by somebody who
(32:49):
was gonna get a gun on? But again, there wasn't
a gun found, just a magazine. So this doesn't make
any sense to me at all as to how this happened.
You can't carry them a magazine of bullets on any
more than a gun. Why would someone not carry the
(33:10):
gun but carry the magazine. Now, there are ways to
legally transport a gun by flying, but you have to
go through rigamarole and it's checked and this, that and
the other thing. You file a thing and someone, but
the magazine is the same thing. You're not supposed to
have bullets in the passenger section of a plane, but
they're found there and nobody's figured out exactly what it is.
But I do have a theory. It's how it got
(33:30):
through TSA. You have a theory, because I do. You
have no idea? Oh come on, yeah, well, how did
this happen? The key to the story is when did
it happen. It happened on Saturday. I'm just telling you,
as even if you weren't at any airports. The airports
(33:53):
have been overwhelmed with understaffing TSA air Traffic Control. The
lines at TSA were out the wazoo at many airports
and so on. I just suspect, you know, the TSA
people at whatever this gate, whatever gate this was at Atlanta,
that something got through that it didn't get seen as
they were skiing, you know, they look at the X
(34:14):
ray thing and got through, and they're ninety million people
in line. They're trying to be as efficient as positive.
I think somebody probably just missed it. That's my guess.
No acknowledge. My explanation makes a lot of sense to you,
doesn't it now? It does? Yes, But why would still
somebody had to have brought it on and it wasn't
in anybody's bag. A passenger just found it up in
(34:35):
the I think it was found in the It in
the overhead. It's in here somewhere. Oh, also there were
initials on the magazine. Now, sometimes these initials is it's
somebody sending a message that they're going to do it,
but they weren't done the bullet. It was on the magazine.
Was this like the owner putting his initials on there?
(34:55):
That seems like a dumb thing to do. But I
don't know, I mean, would you ever put your initial
was on a gun magazine? No? Now, a lot of
times you'll we don't know what they said. K It
was found during boarding, So the plane had not yet
left the ground. It was gonna go from Atlanta to Cincinnati.
(35:17):
But during boarding a passenger founded the story that I
have here from Fox News. It's unclear exactly where they
found it. Was it stuck in a seat? Was it
in the overhead? Did somebody leave it behind from the
earlier flight? And the notion that somebody's bringing the magazine
on and somebody later was going to use a gun, well,
why wouldn't the person just bring them both on because
(35:39):
he had doing it separate? Would require you to do
two separate things. None of it makes any sense. Or
here's another theory. Somebody by mistake brought it on. Was
supposed to be in their check bag, and they're afraid
of getting caught, so they just drop it over the
thing and it's found in the Who knows, Paul said,
federal marshall's a armed on planes. Yeah, so you think
(36:01):
this is one of theirs, and that guy's not gonna
come forward if you're the other guy that lost it,
I'm guessing they would know on that plane though, when
which if there was a federal march boy, I don't
think there's a lot of Marshalls in many of these
flights anymore, at least, I just I never see any Well,
I know that you're supposed to be undercover and all
(36:24):
of that, I never see anybody that ever looks like it.
I ended up plane and everybody looks like a shlup.
I mean I look like above the I look above
the level of most of the other people that are
getting on, and I'm just a shlump. Everybody's getting on
the plane looks like you or me or somebody like that. Well, yeah,
I mean there used to be, and I think I
think I dress properly to fly. I mean I'm not
(36:47):
wearing a suit or attire or anything, but like in
the summer. I'm not sitting there with short shorts, and yes, yeah,
it's showing you skin all over the place. And then
there's that whole debate or for people, there's just this
big thing because of all these videos on YouTube of
people being drunk at the airport. Why do they serve
alcohol at the airport? Why do this? I acknowledge, I'm
(37:08):
not sure why they do it or if they should
do it, But here's the reality. I think of the
last twenty flights I was on, I didn't notice a
particular person causing any incident instant instant incident because they
were drunk. And I can't think of the last time
that it was boarding a plane where somebody was being
on drunk. And I just think that when it happened,
there's billions of flights. When it happened, somebody gets the
(37:31):
YouTube video and slaps it up there. So I think
ninety nine percent of the people who have a drink
or two at the airport bar on the plane are
perfectly fine with it. So that isn't a reason to
stop it. But the ex are nerves. And I have
another theory though, and it's the one that you came
up with, like ten or fifteen years and this I
think most cases it's because they got something else in
(37:52):
their system and the alcohol is mixing badly with it.
I'm I mean, I occasionally have to take painkillers, and
I can tell you right now I do not just
drinking with those is not a good thing. It just enhances.
And then you add these people that are taking ninety
zillion anti anxiety meds and they're mixing this out of
the yeah, and all of that, because I just it
(38:15):
just seems in general the wrong way drivers. The drunks
are weirder than the drunks that I've been used to
my entire life. And I think it's because there's things
other than alcohol mixing in with the alcohol. Yeah, the
gummies in all of that. I mean, yeah, you're right
about You're right. You're right about that too. Right. There's
a big story on JS online today by Paul Smith,
(38:36):
the outdoor writer. The Wisconsin deer population is growing, and
the concern is this. I think I raised this like
five years ago. Every year the number of deer licenses
goes down, but just a little. But the trend, it's
like the baby decline. The long term trend is fewer
and fewer and fewer deer hunters, and the result is
(38:58):
that the deer herd is becoming now a according to
Smith's report, dangerously overpopulated. There's another part of the problem though.
Here in southeastern Wisconsin where we are, I see deer
all the time, and they're always in places where you
can't hunt. Like the deer rut's about to begin or
is beginning. It usually begins right around deer hunting Cason Room.
(39:20):
What's going on right now? Well, they start coming out
of the woods and wandering around and doing all of
this stuff. Well, I mean, you can't kill a deer
in our backyard at the radio station, but the zazillion
of them out here, So I think that's part of it. Secondly,
it's very hard in many instances to be able to
hunt on private land. Well, private land is still most
(39:43):
of the land in northern and central Wisconsin, and more
and more and more property owners are banning hunters from
going on there. So you end up with the deer
and all of these safe zones, and the hunters that
are hunting, they're all congregated into the areas where they're
allowed to hunt, and they all come back and complain.
I didn't see any deer. The overall deer numbers are
higher than ever. I mean, I'm guessing that one of
(40:05):
the solutions would be to just eliminate all bag limits
in certain areas that you can kill as many deer
as you want and expan the season or something or another.
But they're suggesting it's a significant problem that the primary
predator for deer is in fact man, and if man
doesn't kill enough deer, you can create a significant problem
with not only deer heard running a month, but deer's
(40:27):
starving right and left because there's not enough of a
food infrastructure to sustain all of them. Paul said he
saw a dead dear on the free well that's right
around now, in the well. But there's wooded areas near there.
They come out of that, And I mean part of
it is though, when they're in an urban or suburban area,
(40:49):
there's no predator, I mean, and the coyotes. People will
get rid of them that are out there. And coyotes
can take fawns. I think, I don't think they can
take a full size deer, do you They can? Wolvescan,
but there's no wolves here. The wolves are all up north,
all right. There's that and the semi finals in the
state high school football playoffs of this weekend. We're gonna
(41:11):
do our big football preview at a moment, but I'm
gonna do a short term high school football preview right now.
Paul knows all about Grafton. You're going to all there.
You used to look down your nose. You're a front runner.
You're like these people who go to Bucks games to
watch the app. They didn't couldn't care less about Oklahoma City,
but now that they're good, they'll follow them. Or they
(41:32):
became Warriors fans when uh Steph Curry and all of
those guys came in. So you live in Cedarburg, but
Grafton as a winning team, and suddenly you're going over there. Yeah,
after forever and after what ever, suggesting that Grafton is
the scum of the earth and Cedarbury is the If
I'm the Grafton people, I'm telling you to get out
of there. Oh, they love you now. They are not
(41:53):
aware of all the crafting all over them that you've
been doing on this program. Division one, by the way,
this weekend, they start playing neutral fields next weekend. The
games are in Madison at Camp Randle. Division one Wannakee.
They're in this every year. You know why they're in
it every year. It's a huge suburban area north of Madison.
(42:16):
Those are the kind of places that produce football players.
Wanache plays Arrowhead. Wanakee's twelve and Arrowhead's eleven and one. Arrowhead,
I know, is very good. I don't know an name
of Wuanakee other than they're in it every year. They
have to go to Madison. Moroyal very close to Wannakee
for that. Bayport plays Muskego. Do you know where Bayport is?
Bayport is the west suburbs of Green Bay, like Swamako
(42:40):
in that area if you go like west of the city,
like very rather high end houses and so on. And
it's one of those regional districts of several municipalities. It's
kind of like an Arrowhead kind of district. That's Division one.
Of the biggest school's Division two, Green Bay. Notre Dame.
That's a very big Catholic school. It's the only one
(43:03):
in Brown County. I don't think there's one in Door County.
The closest other Catholic school. I think there's one in
Manadawack and one in Appleton, So that's it draws from
a regional area there, Greenmay Notre Dame. They play river Falls. Weirdly,
river Falls is great in college football this year and
in high school football. I don't ever recall river Falls
being good in anything. They play in Schoolfield and then
(43:27):
the other Division two game, West of Pier plays Homestead.
A friend of mine has like a nephew or something
that's the star running back at Homestead, and he tells
me the kids phenomenal. All right. Now, West of Pier
is another fascinating story. What city do you think? West
de Pier is in to Peer but there's also de
Peer high school. This is the weirdest thing. There's a
(43:51):
West to Pier school district into Peer and a de
Peer school district into Peer. Unusual, I mean there's separate
school districts. West of Pier has its own high school district,
but it's in the city of the Pier. And then
there's the Peer. When I was a kid, I remember
my grandmother's grandmother always saying East to Pier. There is
(44:14):
no East to Pier. But she said that because you
had to differentiate it from West to Pier. So this
is west a Pier and another weird thing about this
to Pier often has a good high school team. So
that's Division two, Division three. Catholic Memorial of Waukeshaw, a
powerhouse a Division three is playing graft and Paul mentioned
they're twelve and zero and in the other one. This
(44:35):
is where the story gets interesting. Ridsburg at nine and
three plays Whitefish Bay six and six. Six and six.
That means they've won three games in the playoffs. So
they got in. I guess at three and six. What
did you say? Paul says, whoever wins that first game
will crush the other team. You may be right about that. Anyway,
(44:56):
they're saying Whitefish Bay is a Cinderella team. I need
explain something on this Whitefish Bay. The divisions are based
on your enrollment, but Whitefish Whitefish Bay is in a
conference of Division two and one schools. In other words,
they're any The reason they had a poor record is
they're playing larger schools, but now by enrollment they drop
into Division three. Same thing with Catholic Memorial. It's Division
(45:18):
three because of the size, but it plays schools of
Division one type size and you'll see often and that's
one of them. There's just too many divisions and you
end up often the Division two team is better than
the Division one. And so when I won't go into
the other levels, which I try to diminish all the
people that are involved in the others, but the high
school football semifinals and it should be pretty good football
(45:39):
weather this weekend and then they all play Thursday and
Friday of next week at Camp Brandon and Madison for
the finale. This is the Mark Belling Podcast. This is
the Mark Belling Podcast, and it's time for our weekly
football preview and some point spread picks. As we are
every week. I'm joined by Mike Murlett of Americans Sports
(46:00):
Analysts and Madison. Their website is ASA wins dot com.
We're going to get into football in just a moment here,
and I found the last several weeks of football, and
the NFL in particular, to be almost impossible to figure out.
We have, for example, a team like the Cincinnati Bengals,
(46:23):
which in the first few games had as bad an
offense as you can imagine, and now might have the
best offense in the National Football League. Part of it
is they got a quarterback, Joe Flacco, but that quarterback
spent the first portion of the season with Cleveland and
they couldn't move the ball at all. Then there are
other teams like the Green Bay Packers which seem schizoid.
(46:43):
You have the Dallas Cowboys that had an unstoppable offense
and now it doesn't appear to have much offense at all.
It is very hard to figure anything out. So we'll
pick Mike spray on some of those things. But before
we get into any of that, is there anything you'd
like to share about anything that ASA is going to
be doing this weekend?
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Mike, Yeah, after a couple not so good weekends heading
into last weekend, we had a good weekend last weekend
when both top games and won in college won the pros.
So back on track and we may have a bigger
type college game this weekend. We'll know more on Friday,
so you can check the website on Friday for that situation.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Okay, that's ASA wins dot Com. We're going to start
a discussion with college football, and rather than preview any
national games, I want to spend the time that we
have here talking about the situation with Wisconsin, which finally
got its win, its breakthrough win and probably the biggest
win of Luke Fickles's career. They beat a ranked opponent
for the first time in several years when they beat
(47:41):
Washington with another outstanding defensive performance. That game was played
under the backdrop of the athletic department at UW Madison
announcing that Fickle is going to be back for next season. Mike,
it struck me that I think Wisconsin has built one
of the best defenses in the country, and they have
(48:02):
some freshmen on defense that are close to among some
of the best defensive players in college football. Right now.
Two freshmen, in particular, Posa and Catillao are playing off
the charts. Catialano had nineteen tackles last week, and Mason
Posa appears as a freshman to be as good as TJ.
Watt and JJ Watt and some other legendary Wisconsin linebackers
(48:26):
were in the day that they were there. In the meantime, however,
the offense remains a train wreck. They only scored a
touchdown because Mason Posa forced to fumble on the five
yard line. They're down to I guess their fourth and
fifth string quarterbacks right now, maybe you count the third
of Simmons is still into the fray. So a big
(48:46):
question here of post Washington analyze, Wisconsin analyze the decision
to keep fickle and give me a take on where
the team is right now and what its future looks like.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
Well, you kind of hit it on the head. I
think defensively, they've got a strong base right now. They've
got a lot of their best defensive players are young
now in the defensive line. There hasn't been enough talk
about the defensive line. I mean, they stunk stopping the
run last year and they're one of the best rush
defenses in the country this year. They brought in a
bunch of transfers. They're going to have to do that
again this year. And if they do, and their defense
(49:21):
is going to be really good again next year. If
they keep everyone offensively, they got to figure it out.
It it's more than just a quarterback. But let's face it,
mark when you're when you're a new offensive coordinator for Wisconsin,
Grimes has had success in the past and everyone was fourth.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
He was did a great job at Baylor when that
program turned around. Baylor had a good defense. He got
there and gave them an offense. He did a very
very good job at Kansas. He's got a track record
pretty much everywhere, so I don't think people can argue
that Grimes is a bad offensive coordinator. However, the offense
at Wisconsin he's coordinated this year has been a tro.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
Well what are you going to do with it? I mean,
you're down to your fourth or fifth string quarterback, a
freshman last week, who they threw for a forty eight
yard last week, and half of them came from the punter.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
I mean, it's hilarious when a guy who wears number
ninety one is your leading pass already throws throws only
the one pass. I am of the opinion that Wisconsin
is making the right decision in not firing Fickle. I
believe that he is building one of the best defenses
in the country. Obviously, the offense is a problem. He
(50:34):
made a disastrous decision with his decision to go with
an air raid offense when he came into the program
and hired a terrible offensive coordinator in retrospect, and it
set the offense back obviously the entirety of the time
that he's been there. But I think, unless Fickle's crazy,
he has figured that part of it out, and now
you need to build enough talent to make the offense work.
(50:57):
Can they do that and can they have a better
offense by next year? Because I think if they do
and they avoid players transferring out on defense, I think
they have every reason to be a top thirty team
in the country next year. I always believe it's harder
to fix a defense than fix an offense. That you
(51:17):
can fix an offense through transfers and a couple of
talented receivers, decent offensive line, they're fixing a defense. I've
seen programs take years and years and years to do that.
So I think they're making the right decision. And I
think fans that are screaming fire Fickle simply are blinded
to the progress on defense, and also are blinded to
the fact that there are so many teams looking for
(51:39):
college football coaches. I have a hard time thinking Wisconsin's
going to find anything other than a downgrade to Fickle.
Your reaction to.
Speaker 4 (51:45):
All of them, Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. I agree
at this point, it's best to keep them on board. Again,
you said he's got the defensive in the right direction.
That's one hundred percent right. Next year, they'll have to
bring in a probably a portal quarterback and let Smith
wait one more year unless he lights it up the
next few weeks, which I don't think is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
If you get a good court, nobody's gonna light it
up with that offensive line right now.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
No, but the offensive line's playing better so the fer games.
They had six six different combinations in the first six
games because of injury and such, and now the last.
This will be the third game where they've had the
same offensive line. They've got some young, young starters that
are playing better. I think they've got a good base there.
They just need a quarterback that's good that stays healthy.
Next year, their schedule is much weaker. I think they
(52:30):
have a chance to be five hundred or better next
year if they get a quarterback and stay healthy. I
think the offensive line is going to be much better,
and they've gut good, decent running backs and decent running
backs coming in. I think they'll be okay.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Having said all of that, this Saturday they have to
play Indiana. I don't see how this is anything other
than a whipeout. Indiana is incredible. They probably should have
lost last week. They didn't because a guy made maybe
the best catch of the year in college football. But
(53:02):
they're very very good on both sides of the ball.
So Wisconsin, which has its win, I just think has
to try to avoid getting killed on Saturday, because the
two games after that give them chances for a couple
of more wins to close out the season. Your thoughts
going into the game that I believe Indiana's favored with
twenty eight and a half or twenty nine points if
(53:22):
anything that strikes me as low. Indiana's offense is really
really good and their defense is really good, and you
don't need a great defense to stop Wisconsin's offense. Your
thoughts on Wisconsin going over to Indiana. It's just really hard,
but I guess this has happened now, it's been building
for four or five years. It's just really hard to
think of Indiana as just a football juggernaut. But they are.
Speaker 4 (53:46):
Yeah, they're top ten. You talk about their offenses top
their defense is top ten. I mean, they're really good
on both sides of the ball. And I agree with you.
I don't know how Wisconsin stays is you know, the
last couple of weeks they held Oregon down and kind
of some great weather last week they held Washington down.
Now they're going in. Indiana scored Since Signetti took over,
They've scored thirty points in seventeen of their twenty three games.
(54:09):
If they score thurs Gonson his theay close in this
game because Indiana's defense is really good. If they can,
if Indiana can key on the run mark if Wisconsin
can't pass, Indiana gives up eighty three yards per game
rushing their eighth in the country. Wisconsin's got to find
a way to pass. I just don't see how they
stay in this game. Indiana's won all their Big Ten
(54:30):
home games this year by at least twenty five points.
They've won two of them by fifty or more against
Michigan State, excuse me, against UCLA and Illinois. This is
probably going to be.
Speaker 2 (54:41):
A well I think the I am an opponent of
the twelve team playoff in part because I think it
waters down the conference championship games, and both Ohio State
and Indiana are going to be in the twelve team championship.
But I do presuming both say I'd beaten. I just
think that could be an incredible game the national the
(55:01):
Big Ten championship game between Ohio State and Indiana. But
off the top of my head, are they playing that game?
In Indianapolis again or is it elsewhere? Do you know
where the Big Ten Championship is?
Speaker 4 (55:12):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's in Indianapolis. And there's already
a pre line on that game of Ohio State minus
three and a half or four if it was played today.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, well, that's close to Indiana's campus. They split up
the tickets and all of that, but boy, that would
be the marquee game I think of any of the
conference championships. Let's sort of turn our attention over to
the NFL. My comment on the Packers is they've become
the Badgers. The Packers defense is outstanding, but they don't
seem to have an offense at all. I mean, when
(55:42):
you I watched the Badger Washington game on Saturday, then
I watched on Monday the Green Bay Philadelphia game. I
started was watching the same game. What's going on with
the Packers?
Speaker 4 (55:53):
Yeah, it's They're one of the hardest teams to figure
out in the NFL in my opinion. They've scored points
total at home in their last two games. Prior to that,
they were averaging thirty two points the game in their
previous four games. They're so up and down. Last week's game,
you watched it. I mean they tried to run the
ball on second long and they were you know, they
(56:14):
had thirty six pass attempts, but eighteen of them came
in the last nine minutes when they were down by
ten points. At that point, he decided to start throwing.
I don't know what to think of the Packers. The
Packer defense is really good. Here's the problem, mark that
I see. They run the ball the tenth their tenth
and run play percenters. So run the ball a lot,
(56:36):
which is fine, twenty third pass play per centers. The
problem is their offensive line isn't great pass blocking or
run blocking. In fact, Green Bay running backs are averaging
point eight four yards before contact. That's the third worst
in the NFL. So they're trying to run the ball.
They're not a great run blocking team. There are really
hard teams to project right now, and I think this
(56:56):
is a dangerous game against the Giants.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, let's talk about the Packers playing the Giants in
New York. Giants have just fired their coach, Brian Day
Ball and again and again and again. Both pro and
college teams that fire their coaches often come the following
week with a huge performance. I still haven't figured out
exactly why it is, but yeah, I mean either if
the Giants do come out with an improved performance post
(57:19):
at day ball only seven points, could they beat Green Bay?
Speaker 4 (57:24):
I think they could. Hey, you don't forget Jamis Winston's
starting a quarterback, so and I don't think that's a
great thing for green Bay. He's throwing for twenty five
thousand yards. The players love Jamis Winston. He rallies guys,
and in that first game with the coach gone and
him starting, I don't love this spot for green Bay.
They're favored by seven. Let's face it, the Giants have
(57:45):
been fairly competitive. They beat the Eagles at home. They
lost at Denver by one point. They blew a nineteen
point fourth quarter lead. They blew a ten point late
lead in Chicago. Giants could be four and six or
five and five right now. I think this is a
really dangerous game for green Bay.
Speaker 2 (58:00):
The other game that I want to talk about this
weekend in the NFL let's preview the Seahawks and the Rams.
The NFC West is very strong. These teams seem to
me to be identical. They're both seven and two, they're
both very good. The Rams are favored by three, and
I think that's largely a function of the game being
at Los Angele's. My guess is that if it was
(58:22):
in Seattle, that the Seahawks would be favored. Your thoughts
on the Rams.
Speaker 4 (58:25):
And the Seahawks, Yeah, we have these teams powerted dead even,
which is why you hit it right on the head.
Rams are favored by three at home. If it was slip,
Seahawks be faired by three. I mean, I think the
right now, these are the two best teams in the NFC.
I'm not an Eagle fan, don't. I don't think the
Eagles are as good as people think they are. Right now.
These two teams are both seven and two straight up,
(58:47):
seven and two against the spread. They've both won four
games in a row. They are the top two point
differentials in the NFC, the top two yards for play
differentials in the NFC. Seattle's led for sixty two percent
of their offensive snaps. That's number one. Rams are second
in that category. The one thing that's interesting in this game.
We're not going to use this game either way because
I think the line's dead on. People probably don't realize
(59:09):
Seattle's got a good home field advantage. But they've won
ten straight road games going back to last year, not
against the spread, just straight. They're ten and oh their
last ten road games. This is gonna be a fantastic game.
We're going to stay away from it. But I think
these two teams are really good right now. And for playoffs,
you know, one of these teams are going to win
the division probably and the other one's going to be
in the wildcard. Right now, RAMS would be in the
(59:31):
wildcard and seatle be the number two seed.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
This game, that's game there. It's so important because head, yeah,
you're the head to head is the first tiebreaker, and
this is obviously a head to have game. It really
moves the standings by two and a half games. It's
a huge game out there in the West. Time to
get some point spread picks. And I was the only
loser last week, but as Mike pointed out to be,
I have an excuse. I had played a big favorite
(59:56):
that actually lost outright, but it was such an anomaly
of a game. I took Oregon State over Sam Houston State.
Sam Houston got its first win. Oregon State outgained them
by three hundred and seventeen yards. And they had twenty
more first downs, and as you said, it's almost impossible
to win when you're out gained by that much. So
(01:00:18):
I don't know if I would have covered the whole
twenty and a half after that, but I think my
pick is not as stupid as it turns out to be.
There were just a lot of turnovers and weirdo things
that screwed up Oregon State in that game. Paul was
the beneficiary of a very good line. The line on
the Bears Giants game at the time that we did
our contest was three and a half. It went up
(01:00:39):
to four and a half, and I thought the Bears
would war. They won by four, So people who bet
on game day probably lost. But Paul got a win
on that pick, which he really needed. Mike, who started
really slowly here is knocking off winners right and left.
He was right. This is a game weight preview. Texas
Tech was favored by tanover unbeaten BYU, and they crushed him.
They beat them twenty nine to seven. If you were winners,
(01:01:02):
I was a loser omain in first place in this
but I've lost three picks in a row, and as
I say, football is borderline mystifying me. My favorite NFL
game was the Bears at the three and a half,
but then when it got to the four and a half,
not so much. So. I would have been right on
Friday on the time that I had that and almost
took that game that Paul took. All right, let's get
(01:01:24):
started on this weekend. We're gonna start with a pick
from Paul. Paul, you go first, the forty nine Ers
at the Cardinals. That's the other game in the NFC West.
I think NFC West NFC North might be the two strongest.
The West might be the strongest division of the in
football right now, wouldn't you say maybe the AFC West. Yeah,
(01:01:49):
forty nine Ers and Cardinals two teams that are also
I think pretty close. This game is in Arizona, but
the forty nine Ers on the road are favored by three.
The forty nine ers always seem to be banged up.
Arizona's banged up. I guess everybody's banged up in the NFL.
Forty nine ers on the road are favored by three.
You're gonna take the forty nine ers on the road,
(01:02:12):
paulis is the forty nine The Niners are kind of
a mess at the quarterback situation, they seem to be Yes,
forty nine ers are more of a complete team. He thinks, Well,
I mean, I think the Rams Seahawks game is as
Mike said, I think that point spread is exactly correct.
(01:02:32):
It's exactly yeah, it's a three. It's exactly correct. And
if you ask me how the game would turn out,
I would say the Rams are gonna win by three
by three. So you say you're taking another three point game.
It's the other game in the same division, Pulse is
the forty nine ers of the Cardinals. I have no
opinion in that game. Do you have an opinion, Mike.
Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
I'm the same. I can't get a good feel for
San Francisco, to be honest with you. They got so
many injuries, and some weeks they look good, in other
weeks they don't. They get crushed against La last week,
but they did beat Arizona at home earlier this year.
But as a one point as sixteen to fifteen, who's
the final score, Arizona looks better offensively, they're set a quarterback.
(01:03:09):
I think that's a really difficult game. I don't like
that game at all.
Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Okay, let's find out about a game that Mike does, like,
where are we going.
Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Let's look at college first year and I'll see what
you give me on the in the Big ten. I'm
going to go to Penn State at Michigan State game.
It's three forty seven eight.
Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Yeah, I thought a lot about that game. Penn State
on the road is favored by seven and a half points.
Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
I'm going to take Michigan State there.
Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I thought about
using that game myself. Michigan State's not very good, but
they seem to be getting a little better. But boy,
this has got to be a letdown for Penn State.
They almost beat Indiana and now they have to go
on their own to Michigan State. It strikes me that
they could be really really flat here. And yes, thing,
(01:04:00):
that's what your rationale is.
Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
Yeah, this is a play against Penn State, and I
like for the spot for Michigan State as well. I mean,
Michigan State, you got coming off of bye. Their last
game was at Minnesota. They lost that game. They switched
quarterbacks in that game. If you didn't pay attention, he
threw for well over three hundred guard. They had four
hundred and fifty yards against Minnesota, who's a really good
(01:04:24):
defense creamed Minnesota in the stats. That's the second most
yards this year on Minnesota besides Ohio State. So their
quarterback situations figured out. They're coming off of by Not
only did Penn State lose the way they lost last week,
if you watched the end of that game, how the
how Indiana scored right at the end of the game
with kind of a toe tap in the end zone
(01:04:45):
to tap.
Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
When he caught the ball with like one hand and
got the two feet down and fall.
Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
So they put everything into that game. They played Ohio
State the week before, so they're coming off Ohio State
in Indiana, the two top teams in the Big Ten.
Now going on the road. You got Penn State team
who was thinking about the playoffs. They don't care about
bulls at this point. This is a perfect leftdown spot.
I wouldn't be surprised if Michigan State wins this game
out right, So I'll take seven.
Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
And a half. Yeah, I feel like switching my pick
and taking that game is one that I agree with
Mike's pick on that. The only thing, and I say only,
I mean there's ninety factors. The only thing I just wonder.
Penn State was thought to be a really good team
this year and they just fell apart in the middle
of the season. They fired Franklin. Maybe they're getting it
back together, and maybe they keep the momentum that they
(01:05:31):
showed by almost winning last week. But that's a lot
of maybe's. But I think all the other situational factors,
including the quarterbacks switch at Michigan State, would point to them.
Now for a pick for me, there's a couple of
games that I sort of like, but the line is
not exactly right, and I'm just falling to one game
(01:05:52):
here that has I think college football the two best
quarterbacks that nobody's ever heard of. It's the game between
South Florida and Navy. This game is in the American Conference,
where you're talking about, conference is wide open. I think
there's five or six there's five or six teams that
are either five and one or four in one. Somebody's
(01:06:12):
gonna win that league. It's one of those conferences in
which half the teams are good and the other half
are terrible. And this is both both of these teams
have one loss in the conference. It's Navy at South Florida.
South Florida has a spectacular quarterback and he's got a
tremendous ratio and he's putting up a tremendous number of yards.
(01:06:33):
But the Navy quarterback who's primarily a runner, Horrorvath, he's outstanding. Also.
He can also throw the ball a little. He's banged
up and they list him as questionable, but I think
he's going to play. I'm going to lay the points
and lay the ten with South Florida, which I think
has one of the best offenses in America. Their coach,
Alex Golich, he's probably going to all these openings that
(01:06:57):
are out there this year. One of these schools with
an opening is going to hire and snap him up.
The two defenses, I think are about even. They're both
pretty good. The two offenses are very good, but I
think South Florida is borderline elite team. The couple of
losses that they've had this season were the in state
games where they lost to both of the in state schools.
(01:07:20):
I think I have that right. I think that they
lost to Miami and did they lose the They.
Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
Lost that Memphis. They lost that Memphis Memphis.
Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
That's what that's what it is. Memphis, which is in
their conference. Otherwise, I think they're a very very good team. Navy.
Here's a state a stat on Navy. Navy started the
season seven and zero. I think it's possible they're going
to go from winning seven in a row to losing
five in a row. Their first seven games, the competition
was terrible, and the last five games they have four
(01:07:48):
strong games and the end, of course, with a great
rivalry game with Army, which I think is a team
that's close to Navy and ability, I think Navy could
start with by winning their first seven and losing the
last five. It's a lot of points to lay. But
I'm really enamored with South Florida and especially their offense.
And as I say, it's just two really good quarterbacks,
(01:08:10):
very different styles. One as primarily pass it, the other runner.
But because they're kind of lower profile schools, you can
look at the stat Southwest quarterback and I think he
should be a Heisen contender. He won't be, but I
think that he ought to be. Any thoughts in that game.
I know I'm laying a lot of points here, but
I'm struggling. I'm struggling to find anything else to pick.
Speaker 4 (01:08:31):
I would agree. In that game, South Florida really should
only have one loss to Miami Florida. They went to
Memphis lost by three, but they led by fourteen in
the fourth quarter in that game, and they completely outplayed Memphis.
So who's a good team?
Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Navy?
Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
As you said, they played the the worst schedule in
FBS in the first seven games they were. Their schedule
was horrible, and now they've gotten smoke two games in
a row, their quarterbacks banged up. I don't disagree with you.
I think I think Navy was kind of a farce
at seven and zero, and I think they got problems
down the road here and South Florida is the much
better team.
Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Okay, Mike agrees with me on this, and I desperately
need to win. That line has bounced around all week.
First it was ten and a half, then it moved
to nine and a half, and I think that's because
people think the Navy quarterbacks going to play and it's landed.
We use scores in odds, which is one of the
many consensus services out there, and the number they popped
up with today is ten. Had it been ten and
(01:09:27):
a half, I would have had to find something else.
Ten and ahead. So many games land on ten. I
think that I'm either going to win or push the game. Okay,
recapping everybody's picks real quickly. Here, Paul takes the forty
nine Ers to beat the Cardinals by more than three.
I had both those games in that division. As I say,
they're both three points, and I think those lines are right.
(01:09:49):
What I would make the line too. I think the
forty nine Ers probably are three points better than the Cardinals,
Mike says. I like Mike's pick. He says Michigan State
a seven and a half point underdog over Penn State.
Michigan State can lose by seven or less at home
or win the game outright for Mike to win. And
I need South Florida to beat Navy by more than
the ten points. Again, if you want to find out
(01:10:10):
what's going on with as AASA wins dot com, lots
of information up there. They right picks on all the sports,
so forth and so on. And that's it for this
week's podcast. Back on Monday.
Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
The Markbelling Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts, production
and engineering by Paul Crownforest. The Markbelling Podcast is presented
by you Line for quality shifting 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
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