Mark Belling Podcast #93: The scandal in plain sight: Somalis in Minnesota steal $1 billion in taxpayer money in full view of the media and full knowledge of pathetic Gov. Tim Walz. Also: the gall of the Democrats hammering on the "affordability" crisis they created. And, Mark's take on the Lightning & Thunder movie Song Sung Blue: is it Oscar-worthy?

Minnesota's bozo Governor refused to stop the Somali aid scandal because the crooks were Somali.  Trump rightly outs Obamacare as a windfall for insurers that provides crappy coverage for the poor.  Mandela Barnes defies fellow Wisconsin Democrats and runs for Governor and a firsthand report from the red carpet (so to speak) for Song Sung Blue.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:35):
There's a scandal that's been going on in plain View,
and it's still going on in plain View, and I
think the fact that it's going on, it's rather obvious
that it's going on. It's going on for some time.
There's a fortune involved, and nobody does anything about it

(01:01):
that's more interesting and more important than the scandal itself.
We're going to dive into that story here in the
beginning of the program. It's the Somali scandal centered in Minnesota.
As I said, it's happening in Plainview. Zillions of Somali

(01:24):
refugees come to the United States. A huge number of
them settle in Minnesota, and I don't know what the
percentage is, but it's not tiny become scammers. Many of
them don't like America. Some of them have become just
out oute scammers. And we're now learning the details of

(01:45):
this scandal that's been going on in Minnesota. Apparently that
everybody in Minnesota knew about, in which they there were
groups that just stole a fortune in COVID and other
aid money and else the governor didn't do anything about.
Apparently the media knew about it, and it's still going on.
Now it's been revealed, it's outed, it's still going on.

(02:09):
It's a story worth diving into, and I'm going to
set it up before we roll into the program. With
zillion posts on social media that are coming out, a
lot of them from frustrated Minnesota residents who aren't part
of the radical cabal that runs the state. This summarizes
it as well as anybody. It's a post that I
found on x A group of Minnesota Somalis stealing tens

(02:33):
of millions of dollars from American taxpayers told Minnesota's Department
of Education to pay up for their fake charity or
they would call them racist in the media, and it worked.
Now I'm going to give you the details of the story,
but that's an extraordinarily good one sentence summary. We're gonna

(02:57):
call you racist if you try to cut off our funding.
So they didn't. The fact that it was Somalian Americans
that did it is why they were able to get
away with it. Have you ever been offered an add
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(03:43):
not an option. Now, as I say, this story is
now out there and everywhere, and the reason it's out
there and everywhere is the liberal media has now even
reported it. A couple of days ago, the New York Times,
the New York Bleeping Times ran a massive piece exposing

(04:09):
this scandal and pointing attention that to the fact that
it all happened under Tim Waltz, who appeared to empower
the scammers. So as they say, the story's out there
and now nobody's denying it, it's just a reality that
is there. And when the New York Times itself decides

(04:29):
that it's going to report on it, there's no longer
any deniability. You know, it's there, which requires us to
go back and look at how it happened. And then
in development this week that indicates it's still going on,
even as though even the New York Times admits it.
Let me read a few paragraphs on the New York
Times piece the fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering

(04:52):
in scale and brazenness. Now let me pause with just that.
Brazen What do you do something that you're not supposed
to do and you are brazen about it? In other words,
just doing in broad daylight, whateverybody knowing you're doing it.
Like just think of a you know, little kids stealing
from the cookie jar. Imagine little kids stealing from the

(05:14):
cookie jar when the mom is standing right next to
the cookie jar. You are brazen when you feel as
though nobody will do anything about it, even if they
find out about it, they won't do anything about it.
A lot of the shoplifting that goes on, or some
of the car thefts in Milwaukee just so obvious. They

(05:35):
braizen somebody driving a stolen car, and instead of trying
to be obscure about it, they'll drive one hundred and
twenty miles an hour so guarantee that the cops will
fight it no concern at all. That's brazen. That's what
this was, Braizen back to the New York Times piece,
and again, if we had an actual mainstream media that
reported on these things when they were happening, many of

(05:57):
these problems would go away. You do have extreme cover
here in being able to quote the New York Times piece,
because nobody on the left is going to claim now
that this is some sort of biased, right wing Fox
News hate mongering racist thing because their own mouth Peace
The New York Times is blowing the whistle at it
because it became so obvious. Why are they blowing the whistle.

(06:18):
I'll get into that in a moment. It's not quite
as interesting as the fact that the scandal went on
as long as it did and it was so obvious continuing,
federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them
of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government
program meant to kept children fed during the COVID nineteen pandemic. No,
let's pause on that. As I told you during COVID nineteen,

(06:40):
you know the old Rama manual line, never let a
good crisis go to waste. The Democrats needed COVID to
be this terrible thing in order to justify spending an
absolute fortune, and that spending an absolute fortune is when
all of these leftist groups licked their chops because they think,
I'm going to go get that fortune. We just used

(07:01):
COVID as an excuse for the money to exist in
the first place. We saw this all over the place
with COVID. I'm wondering what percentage of COVID money was
actually properly spent. According to what I swear, it's less
than fifty percent. In any event, fortune is being dumped
into this program in Minnesota, and it's aimed at you know,
we have a legitimate problem of hunger, people that are impoverished,

(07:24):
don't eat enough, don't eat good food, children, etc. So
we spend a fortune out of COVID. Okay, a lot
of people aren't going to be working. There's going to
be hunger in all of this. And this group of Somalians,
lots of them, just tapped into this and stole all
the money, with everyone in Minnesota apparently where they were
doing it. When they were doing it. At first, many

(07:45):
in the States saw the case as a one off
abuse during a health emergency, but as new schemes targeting
the state's generous safety net programs came to light, State
and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.
You just imagine this. Everybody involved here is liberal. The
scandal went on during the Biden era, and in Minnesota

(08:07):
the governor was Waltz. Okay, the Somalians are stealing all
the money. Instead of the reaction, let's stop. Oh my goodness,
but it's some allions. We can't do anything to them.
This is their jarring reality. Over the last five years,
law enforcement officials say fraud took root in pockets of

(08:30):
Minnesota's Somali diaspora, as scores of individuals made small fortunes
by setting up companies that build state agencies for millions
of dollars worth of social services that were never provided.
Let me interject one of the scams that we've seen
in Wisconsin in which several people have been charged these

(08:52):
setting up these home health care agencies or childcare agencies.
A woman says, Okay, I'm taking care of fourteen kids,
gets federal funds for all of that, not taking care
of anybody who's actually going to go into our house.
Into a headcount of whether or not any of these
kids are actually in there easy to scam, and there
are certain programs that are set up that just don't
have any safeguards whatsoever. Now in a tight knit ethnic

(09:16):
community like the Somali community, the word just got around
it's very easy to set up and scam this program.
And guess what, they won't do anything to us. We're
too damn powerful. Since so many of us moved to Minnesota,
were a massive power block in Minnesota. Nobody's going to
do anything to us. It was part of their calculation

(09:37):
that no one would do anything to them. Federal prosecutors
say that fifty nine people have been convicted in those
schemes so far, and that more than one billion dollars.
Think about that. This is just one billion billion. One
billion dollars in taxpayer's money has been stolen in three
plots they are investigating. That is more than Minnesota spends

(10:00):
annualated department to run its Department of Corrections. Minnesota's fraud
scandals stood out even in the context of rampant theft
during the pandemic, when Americans stole tens of billions of
dollars through unemployment benefits, business loans, and other forms of aid.
According to federal auditors. Outrageous swelled among Minnesotan's. Okay, some

(10:22):
of these people in Minnesota, and you know, there's just
numerous problems with Minnesota. Do you know any of the
problems that associate with Minnesota. It is really liberal. That's
one of the problems. What else. The governor's an idiot,
he's he's that almost goes to the liberal part. But

(10:44):
you know the Somalis that are there. Here's the other part.
The people in Minnesota that aren't like part of that
liberal idiocy. They're dumb. I mean that. Well, all these
Fargo movies and TV things, they must be real. So

(11:05):
now you have the Minnesotans that are honest, you know,
they got the whole Minnesota nice thing there. Now, after
years of this happening right into their noses, now that
everybody is acknowledging it happen, now they're mad and a
lot of them are very very mad at their idiot
and income poop governor, who almost became the vice president
of the United States sees people in Minnesota, well, gee,

(11:31):
this is worse than what anybody did in California or
New York or all of these other leftist states. Why
did it happen so badly here Continuing, Governor Tim Waltz
and fellow Democrats are being asked to explain how so
much money was stolen on their watch, providing Republicans who
hope to take back the governor's office in twenty twenty

(11:52):
six with a powerful light of attack. In recent days,
President Trump has weighed in calling Minnesota a hub of
fraudulent money laundering at and saying the Somali perpetrators should
be sent back to where they came from. Many Somali
Americans in Minnesota say the fraud has damaged the reputation
of their entire community, around eighty thousand people, at a

(12:13):
moment when the political and economic standing was on the rise.
What this reminds me of is how so many Italian
Americans back in the day objected to the bracedness of
the mafia, with most Italian Americans who were not criminals saying,
we're all being lumped in with this. People are going

(12:34):
to look upon our entire culture as being corrupt, Whereas
obviously the mafia was a small minority of Italian Americans.
So now you have other Somalis and I'll just describe
who they are. The ones that are hacked off about this.
They're the ones that weren't stealing any mighty didn't get anything. Now,
with the tables being turned in public attitudes toward immigration

(12:58):
and in particular resettlement refugees and so on, many Somalians
who didn't steal the money are fearful that this is
going to build the case against all of them, and
it probably rightly should. Back to the New York Times
and listen again. The fact that this is in the
New York Times is the substance of the story that

(13:18):
this is now being outed by the left itself. Debate
over the fraud has opened new riffs between the States
Somali community and other Minnesotans, and has left some Somali
Americans saying they are unfairly facing a new layer of
suspicion against all of them rather than the small group
accused of fraud. Critics of the Waltz administration say that

(13:38):
the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of
alienating the Somali community of Minnesota. See that's the story,
Waltz Democrat. The Somali community is packed into areas in
the Twin Cities. That's where the majority of them live
and have a power base in that area. Waltz being
Waltz terrified of getting on the wrong side of that

(14:03):
group of Democrat voters, and Waltz calculating this, if my
administration goes after and targets maybe the two to three
thousand Somalis that are involved in the corruption, all the
other Somalis will hate me. No way of knowing if
that's true. If a bunch of crooked Somalis were charged

(14:26):
and were stopped early on in this would all of
the non crooked Somalis have been furious. Again, there's no
way of knowing, but Waltz and the Democrats who did
this feared that. Now the New York Times story goes on.
The following is a post from a group of Minnesota
Department of Human Services employees. These are employees who work

(14:50):
within the agency who were unable to stop the fraud
from going on that they saw. They've posted on x
Tim Waltz is one hundred percent responsible for massive fraud
in Minnesota. We let Tim Waltz know. And again, these
are people who work within the DHS in the state
of Minnesota. We let Tim Waltz know of fraud early on,

(15:11):
hoping for a partnership and stopping fraud, but no, we
got the opposite response. Tim Waltz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers,
using monitoring threats, repression, and did his best to discredit
fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight

(15:34):
of retaliation by Tim Waltz. Certain DFL that's the Democrats
in Minnesota, Democratic Farmer Labor parties that they call themselves
DFL members, and indifferent mainstream media in different mainstream media
where was all the media. The media was the same
thing the media in Minnesota. They got newspapers and TV
and all this. They didn't want to expose corruption in
the Sombali community. If this was just a bunch of

(15:59):
companies up and off COVID money, they would not have
had that problem. It was the fact that they were
somebodies that stopped the media from wanting to look into it.
You see the same thing in any number of areas
in which the media is averting its eyes at all
of the violent crime being committed by trans individuals. They

(16:19):
just don't want to see that story because they think
focusing on crime criminary trans individuals lumps all trans individuals
in together and suggests that there's that means there's something
wrong with TRANSPI. Same thing as well, free reporting some
Mali criminals. That means that makes it look like all
some allions are criminals. Back to the statement from the
whistleblower employees. In addition to retaliating against whistleblowers, Tim Waltz

(16:44):
disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to
disregard their audit findings and guidance. Media and politicians supporting
Tim Walls of the DFL agenda attacked whistle blowers who
were trying to raise red flags and fraudulent activity. As staff,
we first hand witnessed and observed fraud happening, Yet we

(17:05):
were shut down, reassigned, and told to keep quiet. Sometimes
more fundamentally, Tim Waltz is dishonest, lacks ethics and integrity,
his poor leadership abilities, and has never taken any accountability
for his role in fraud. Instead, Tim Waltz deflects by
blaming national politics for his own failings and distracts the

(17:25):
public with inveterate lying thank you New York Times for
bringing the plight of Minnesota to the national state, and
again that's what it took. Unless the leftist media reports it,
it doesn't break through this wall of the half the
country that only hears from the leftist media. Jason Riley

(17:47):
excellent columnist Wall Street Journal. He's conservative. He writes on
this when the little Boy in Hans Christian Andersen's the
Emperor's New Clothes. By the way, I don't think I
had to read that when I was a kid. I've
heard references to it forever. I don't remember. Maybe they
did read it and it slipped it. But usually, like
like the Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, some of those,

(18:08):
they stick with you anyway. He cites this reference blurts
out that the emperor is naked. I mean, I've heard
the reference river. I just don't think maybe because it
was nakedness in it, they didn't have us read it.
But you know, he says what people already knew. He
says what his fellow townsfolk were thinking. But we're too

(18:30):
afraid to utter themselves. Sometimes it can be seen as
though we're all living in America's fairy tale, where too
few people are willing to state the obvious. Let me interject,
it's just like, you know, I live in down to Milwaukee.
Almost all the liberals know this rip it up in
the city streets is unbelievably stupid. And you know the
concrete sitting in the middle of the road and all

(18:51):
of us, they all know it's stupid. They will not
say so because that means that they have to disaffiliate
themselves in the liberals that did it. But they all
know what. They're all sitting there having to drive all
the way across the middle of the intersection and try
to turn right. I don't know this for a fact,
but I know some people drove right over at the
top of the concrete. When that snow came down. A

(19:13):
lot of the snow that was in downtown melted upon
contact because of where the temperature is. But you get
a couple of feet down there, you're not gonna see
all the concrete. That said that they're gonna drive right
up to the top of it. They have told you
get a snowplow driver having to confront with this. Like
g I said, the lefties all know that. It's just
like they all know now that the trolley's a fiasco.

(19:35):
They all know it, but they don't want to say
it's a fiasco, because that means they have to like,
oh my god, people like Belling said it was going
to be a fiasco. But they all know, but they
can't say it. There's zillions of things like this. Eventually,
what happens is somebody on the left says it. They
all that agree and move on, and it happens in
like two seconds, but never any kind of admission they

(19:55):
were wrong. So back to the piece here, Jasid Riley.
Parents of school aged children are expected to watch their
daughters play competitive sports with boys and not notice the
physical difference. Law abiding citizens are expected to believe the
police pose a greater threat to public safety than violent criminals.
We're told that asking someone to show identification before casting

(20:18):
a ballot is voter suppression. He's setting all these examples
of things that people on the left. They all know
that this is wrong, they just will not say so.
Last month, the Manhattan Institute's City Journal published an investigative
report by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Ruffaul about COVID related
welfare fraud in Minnesota, which happens to be centered in

(20:38):
the state Somali community. Federal prosecutors have charged dozens of
people with setting up fictitious nonprofits that build state agencies
for services that were never provided. More than one billion
dollars was stolen instead of being used to provide housing
or medicaid services. Quote, the money was being used to
fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles and by real estate

(21:00):
to the New York Times, and then they quote some
of the statements that I've read from the New York
Times to move forward. The massive fraud was an open secret.
Merrick Ireland, who served as US Attorney General under Joe Biden,
called it the largest pandemic relief hustle in the nation.
Democratic state officials also suspected wrongdoing, but didn't want to
upset an important voting block or be accused of racism.

(21:21):
A former state senator told Thorpe and Ruffaul, quote, the
media does not want to put a light on this,
and if you're a politician, it's a significant disadvantage for
you to alienate the Somali community. If you don't win
the Somali community, you can't win Minneapolis. And if you
don't win Minneapolis, you can't win the state. The story

(21:45):
goes on, of all the refugee resettlements we've done in
the United States. The Somali one may be the most disastrous.
The overwhelming majority of Somali's have become extreme leftists and
seemed to close an despise the United States. One of
the things that is sensible when you do a refugee
relocation is put all of the people in the same

(22:08):
general area, because then they can have support group and
someone rather than what Biden did with the illegal immigrants
crossing the border, in which we're just flying them all
over the country and dropping them everywhere, every here and there.
But it also means that they can become a significant
block the amount of crime and fraud that's occurred here,

(22:31):
as I say, is going on in broad daylight. For example,
it seems to be widely known that elan Omar married
her brother. It's been reported repeatedly, but it's never really pursued.
Hard to prove because tracking birth certificates and proving parentage
in Somalia very very difficult to do, and then you

(22:54):
got second generation when people came here and so on.
But it appeared to be a citizen It wasn't a
perversion thing so much as it apparently was a citizenship
to be able to make permanent the visa, on and
on and on those stories went. And now this after
all of this has been reported, we have a conviction

(23:17):
in Minnesota connected to these scams, one of the many
convictions that was just overturned by a Minnesota judge. I'm
going to quote the report from Fox News that Republican
State Center in Minnesota is calling one judge a true
extremist after she overturned a seven point two million dollar
taxpayer fraud conviction. They brought the svals to trial in Minnesota.

(23:40):
They were convicted, the jury convicted him, and after they
read the verdict, the judge threw the conviction out. That
almost never happens. I didn't say never. Usually, if a
judge is going to dismiss the case, they're going to
do it before the trial. You know. One of the
things after the a conviction lawyer will always make a

(24:00):
motion asking the judge to not accept the verdict, and
it's just routinely rejected. In this case, the judge accepted it.
Continue with the story. The defendants were charged in June
twenty twenty four. I'm accused of stealing seven point two
million dollars from the state's medicaid program while operating a
home home health care business. The Minnesota Attorney General's Office said.

(24:22):
The business lacked an official building and operated for years
out of a mailbox. The Attorney General's Office said, and
then us Off, one of the defendants, received medicaid money
by billing for services not provided and services that lacked
any documentation and overbuilt for services. Yusuf allegedly used the
money to fund a lavish lifestyle, including shopping sprees at

(24:45):
luxury stores such as coach Michael Correr's, Nike, Nordstrom, and more.
Usef directed over one million dollars from the business account
to his personal and also withdrew over three hundred and
eighty seven thousand dollar in cash. A jury convicted use
of of six counts of aiding and a betting theft
by swindling over thirty five thousand dollars in August. However,

(25:09):
that decision was thrown off by Judge Sarah West in
a mid November ruling. According to k hey Kai, in
a decision West wrowtet the prosecutors quote relied heavily on
circumstantial evidence. So what, By the way, juries don't have
much of a problem with circumstantial evidence. Some of the

(25:30):
cases that we've seen convictions of quite controversial. All of
the evidence has been circumstantial. I think circumstantial evidence is
often better than witness testimony because witnesses often get things wrong,
and witnesses can lie the whole big trial that's been

(25:51):
going on, trials that have been going on for better
than a decade now in Florida, entire family involved in
higher a hitman to kill the X of one of
the daughters. There's all circumstantial evidence in every one of
those cases. The jury comes in after like an hour
and a half of deliberation and finds guilty. So there's
very circumstanced So what the circumstantial seems every pretty strong.

(26:16):
They didn't provide any home health care, and they got
the money. Okay, I guess that's circumstantial. But how do
they get all this money? You know the old thing
about following the money. They followed the money and throw
it out, continuing adding that quote, this is the judge.
The state didn't rule out other potential reasonable inferences. Well,

(26:38):
of course they didn't rule out other inferences because they
were trying to convict them of this. Well, you didn't
go and check and see whether or not they won
the lottery. Well, I suppose not. Isn't it the job
of the defense to come up with the possible other
explanations for this? Anyway, So you've got convictions being overturned
in Minnesota now, even after everybody knows about this, somewhat

(27:04):
related this election in Nashville. It's in Tennessee. Part of
the district is Nashville for the US House. The Republican
won yesterday. The margin wasn't real close, but the district
is more Republican than the margin would indicate. The margin
was fifty three to forty five. It was getting a
lot of attention because the polling was closer. The lefty

(27:26):
running was Aten Ben. And what made the story fascinating
is Aten Ben isn't just a regular Democrat. She's a radical.
And she wasn't running in like New York or Minnesota
and Detroit with some of the She's running in Tennessee.
And while the city of Nashville's democratic, rural, Tennessee's overwhelmingly Republican,

(27:49):
and Ben had all sorts of dirt on her. She
had years of posting on social media. Among the Savans,
You've got a list here some of the things she
you know, she lives in Nashville, and she put her
she hates country music, she hates rural Tennessee, she hates this,
she hates that, all these things that you would think
would kind of disqualify her. Yet she was in the

(28:09):
game here and she was just doing the same thing
which is now the Democratic claim. She's running out affordability
every day. That's going to be the issue you're going
to hear all through twenty twenty six. The network is
going to run an affordability It's the same thing that
Mundanti ran on New York and for a number of voters.
So again, she didn't win in Tennessee, but the fact
that she got herself into the hunt in an overwhelmingly

(28:30):
Republican district is reason to pay attention here. This is
one of those issues in which it's easy to see
why Republicans are flat footed, because you would never envision
that this would be a winning issue for the Democrats.

(28:51):
The affordability problem was caused by the Democrats. This whole
thing developed during Biden. The explosion in inflation occurred during Biden,
and it was conscious. So now you have the Democrats
who gave us the inflation that created the affordability crisis.
Now running on the affordability crisis, you simply would not

(29:13):
have thought that this was something that they would want
to touch, because you would have presumed that everybody knew
that they were the ones that caused the problem. Going
back to my point though about the New York Times
reporting now on the scandal in Minnesota, there's a huge
segment of Americans who didn't know that the inflation was
going on because their media sources weren't telling them it

(29:33):
was going on. I remember the segment on The Morning
Joe right around the election in which this idiot Scarborough,
you know, he's worth a fortune, sits there Horses Show
with his wife. He expressed shock when he found out
how much a pound of butter cost. This is like

(29:54):
right when the peak of the Biden inflation in the
middle of twenty four. His wife Mika pointed out, she said, no,
you're lower, it's like eighth night nine. Do what dollars
it is whatever. He had no clue of it. He
probably had no clue that these prices were going up
because the lefty media wasn't hammering on the three and
a half years of inflation. The kit in right when

(30:15):
Biden started carpet bombing the country with all of this
COVID money and the Fed loosened even more. It was
a conscious thing. They wanted to create growth by pumping
money under the economy and creating all of these programs,
full well knowing it to be inflationary. So no, here
you have the affordability crisis that occurred as a result

(30:37):
of this. And who is it that's running to try
to deal with the affordability crisis The people who created
the problem. So I mean, I give the Republicans some
slack and being flat footed on this because they never
would have thought that the people who created the problem
could be the ones that could present themselves as the

(30:57):
ones who care about the problem that they created. Secondly,
you see that the affordability issue is resonating most in
the big cities. Not surprising. Here's something everybody knows. I mean,
there might be a couple of exceptions, but by and large,
living in a big city is more expensive than living
in a small town. Cost of living, cost of everything

(31:18):
is higher. Just going to Milwaukee, the gas pumps in
the city of Milwaukee usually have a much higher price
than they are out in the suburbs just a lot
of reasons. Is a higher cost for the business and
the gas station in the city to have to operate, taxes, shoplifting,
all the stuff that causes you know, stuff to cost more.
And you take some of the really big cities like
New York, the cost of living is insane. Democrats run

(31:44):
all these cities. The reason everything costs so much is
because of them. There's no inherent reason that the cost
of living should be that much higher in cities. In fact,
the economies of scales so many people living in a
small area to pay for the services that are out there,
you would think would create the opposite. But look, just
take a look, for example, the City of Milwaukee. All
this crap that we makee money on that doesn't do

(32:06):
any good for people. That all comes across in taxes,
fees and everything else. You know, put up a trolley
that loses a fortune, somebody's paying for that, and it's
largely people in Milwaukee. City of Milwaukee has to crack,
has its own sales tax, Milwaukee County has its own
sales tax over and above the state sales tax that's
in there. Well, that's a huge portion of the affordability

(32:27):
right there. All the other things that lefties do, the
drive up costs, the refusal that are crack down on crime, shoplifting,
and so on. So of course retailers have to charge
more and hire is So the point that I'm making
is the people in these big cities are now voting
for Democrats because of this affordability problem not occurring to them.
That the reason that there's an affordability problem is because

(32:47):
of the policies the very Democrats that are are running
on this issue. The Republicans are going to have to
figure out a response to this. But admittedly it's sort
of flowboxing, because you would think that most people would
know the reason the prices for so many things have

(33:09):
gone up is because the Democrats are the ones that
drove them up. It's kind of like stating the obvious.
The rate of inflation is crashed under Trump. People say, well,
Trump didn't lower all the prime Well, see, as I said,
when the inflation was going on, that's the problem. You
don't want to deflate, because deflate is when a depression occurs.

(33:33):
You can't do that. Once something has inflated, the damage
has been done. You can try to stop the inflation,
but in order for just take housing, for example, in
order to deflate you're telling Paul that he's supposed to
just accept that his house is going to go down
in value two hundred thousand dollars because we'd killed the
economy that badly. The only way to deflate something is
to make everybody so poor that nobody buys anything. We

(33:57):
don't want that you can. The only thing that you
can do is try to address the problem that's been
put in your hands. And what Trump has succeeded in
doing despite all this stuff. Oh, the tariffs are going
to be inflationary, is that the rate of inflation has
flowed so all of a sudden, the Democrats that created
an affordability crisis. You fight an area in which everything

(34:20):
is way way too expensive. I guarantee you it's lefties
running everything. Paul points out the price of gasoline has
consistently gone on gone down under Trump. All of that,
All of that is true. But as I say, who's
running on affordability? Lefties? And here's the most unelectable candidate possible,

(34:42):
somebody you know. They even called Afton ben a clone
of AOC. She got forty five percent of the vote
in Tennessee running on affordability, even though she's been seeing
her entire life how much she hates all the stuff
that you know Tennessee consists. It is like that. I'd
be like a candidate pre Mayer of running a Green

(35:03):
Bay saying he hits the packers within. Just say affordability, affordability, affordability,
the magic words, and it negates with a huge percentage
of the voters. The entire issue real quickly. On Obamacare,
Trump is trying to solve this problem. The problem with
Obamacare is that Obamacare provides crap insurance. When I say

(35:27):
crap insurance, most of it has very high deductibles and
co payments. For the people who have it, they're gratified
that they at least have insurance. Those kinds of policies,
very high deductibles and high co payments are massive money
makers for the companies that sell them, because they're only

(35:49):
having to kick in and pay when somebody passes over
their yearly deductible and the co payment. And Trump being
a great businessman and seeing through all of this is
we see these now. The problem with Obamacare is it
was massively subsidized so that we could make these prep
policies out there, and in the process, the insurance companies

(36:10):
have made a fortune. Here's the quote from Trump, Obamacare
was made to make the insurance companies rich. Their stocks
have gone up one thousand percent in a short period
of time because the money goes to the insurance companies.
I want the money to go to the people. Let
all the money go to the people, and let the
people go out and buy their own healthcare. In other words,
what he's suggesting is like a voucher for school choice.

(36:33):
Give them money for the insurance policy to the consumer,
and they can't use it just to put it in
their pocket. They have to use it for insurance and
let them go out and pick the policy that they want.
Insurance companies don't want that because they want to create
policies that cover everything under the sun. And remember, Obamacare
did not allow the flexible policies in which say a

(36:53):
single twenty five year old mail could get a spartan
policy that didn't cover pregnancy, which he wouldn't need in
a bunch of other things. Made all of that illegal
because the insurance companies wanted to sell Cadillac plans with
these huge subsidies that they had the common denominator in
all of this is that the left is now an
arm not of lower income people, but of the corporate

(37:15):
America that fleeces lower income people. What the left has
become is the entity that says it cares about poor people,
so it supports doing all sorts of things to the
people who make money off of poor people. Perfect example
is the COVID vaccine. We're gonna make everybody get the
COVID vaccine, and we're gonna buy all of them so

(37:35):
that the drug companies can make the fortunes off of
making the COVID vaccine. Next example of this, What of
the weaknesses that we on the right have is we're
terrible at remembering names of people on the left. The
left is brilliant at it. They'll come up with somebody
and just demonize the hell out of them. On the right,

(37:57):
Mark Kelly, I know that he's I look at Paul
and I just see a guy who had slips through.
He's the senator from Arizona, the leader of the Seditious six.
So he claims that he knows. Yeah, he claimed that
after I started to explain who he was. Yeah, it's
a ball. Is you know some interesting reporting now on

(38:21):
Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly ran this company called Worldview. It
was like this weird old balloon startup. As it turns out,
he got his financing from ten Cent, te Nce and
t not the rapper ten Who is that rapper's name?
Fifty cent? Yeah, not to be confused. That ten cents

(38:41):
a Chinese company and for a time it was a
big high flyer on the stock market. It's controlled by
the Chinese Communist Party, the government. That's where he got
all of his financing, and it was buried in his
financial disclosure statements. Is it fair to say that Mark
Kelly could be co opted by the Chinese Communist government?

(39:04):
It is fair to say that when it's the whole
concern that we had with TikTok. When the business is
Chinese and it's government controlled in China and you're getting
a ton of money from them, you're obviously beholden. Now
we don't know whether or not the company ten Cent

(39:27):
made the loan to Kelly because they're sizing him up
as a politician that's on the rise and they can
have their hooks inside the politician, or if they thought
it was a good investment. I'll quote the post ax
from amuse is the handle ten set of Chinese Communist

(39:47):
Party controlled company pumped money into Mark Kelly's stratospheric balloon
startup Worldview in twenty thirteen and sixteen. Kelly quietly moved
the Chinese investment into a secret of blind trust when
he ran for the United States Senate. See, that's one
of the things that candidates will do. They'll take their
financial holdings and they'll put it into a blind trust,
saying well, I don't control the trust. Well, somebody's controlling

(40:08):
a trust. Wink wink, nod. Not Now he's part of
the Seditious Six, telling US troops to ignore President Trump's
lawful orders and awarding that they could be prosecuted once
Democrats are back in control. Critics note the irony a
senator with a CCP linked funding undermining the chain of
command of the United States military. Again, this is a

(40:31):
Democrat beloved by the left. Many believe he's going to
run for president, which is why he's fomenting all of
this anti Trump attitude within the military, controlled apparently by
the Chinese Communists. And again, this story is again now
out there. It's in broad daylight. People dug into the
fighting in the financials of the companies that are inside

(40:53):
of his blind trust, and they realize that a huge
chunk of the funding came from Keen Sentich, a Chinese company.
Now people point out that lots of Chinese investors invest
said a lot of the United States companies. True, but
a disproportionate amount of the money of Kelly's company came
from this Chinese funding source. Kelly can explain it away
if somebody even forces him to explain it away. But

(41:14):
who's going to do that? And finally, this Megan Kelly
made a very good point that I'm gonna piggyback off of. It.
Was dealing with this latest anti Trump ruling from a
federal court. Three judge Federal Appeals Court disqualified Alina Haba
as the interim United States Attorney in New Jersey. Alida
Habba was Trump's personal lawyer. Trump named her the interim

(41:37):
United States Attorney in New Jersey. A three judge panel
that said that Trump doesn't have the authority to name
these interim US attorneys. There's challenges to these interim and
acting United States attorneys all over the place. No, eventually
this will have to get to the Supreme court. Prior
to this, to my knowledge, nobody's ever challenged the ability
of a president to name acting directors of agencies before

(41:59):
someone's confirmed. But the things have been blacked right and left.
And here's the point that making Killy mead. All the
news stories about this are pointing out that of the
three judges on the panel, to a Republican appointed she said, well, gee,
even Republican appointees are blocking Trump. There's a point within

(42:23):
this that requires a little bit of thinking and analytical thinking.
What does Republican appointed judge me see. I know you're
not gonna I know you're swimming, and you're swimming Trump,
I glad you took You're you're like the You're like
the fish of the water. And it's the most fake

(42:43):
looking piece of beef bait that you can imagine. I mean,
it's like one of those plastic worms. We're gonna run
and you're still dumb enough to grab it. No, it
does not. How long is Trump and the president five years?
He was president from seventeen January seventeen to January twenty one,
and now January of this year to here in December
of this year. Federal judges serve for life. None of

(43:04):
these judges were Trump appointed. Republican appointed means that many
some of them are Trump, many were W. Bush, some
who are still around her H. W. Bush, and some
of the older ones are Reagan. There is zero reason
to believe that a Bush appointed federal judge likes Trump
at all. None of the judges of the three judges here,

(43:26):
the two Republicans are both Bush appointees. Well, we know
that the Bushes can't stand Trump. So this is the
point that Megan Kelly made. One of the reasons that
Trump is doing so badly and a lot of these
cases in the federal court is many of the Republican
appointed judges loathe him just as much as the Democrats.
And she's making this point that it's clear, and she
was on with Mark Halprin. He said, it's just clear

(43:47):
the judiciary is now results oriented. They're not ruling on
the law, They're ruling on which side they want to
be right. We see that with regard to the Wisconsin
Supreme Court. So even the comfort zone that some have
of there being a lot of Republican judges on anther
of these courts are Republican appointed judges. The old establishment
of the Republican Party can't stand Trump. So the only

(44:10):
judges that he can rely upon it all, and that's
not a one hundred percent thing, are the ones that
he himself has appointed. I went to the Milwaukee showing
of Songs Sung Blue last night. This podcast is coming
out on Wednesday.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
No.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
First of all, you know, there's going to be stories
about this, right, It's almost impossible you could have an
event like this in Milwaukee and not like if you
knew somebody that went to this and they came back
and they didn't have a single story, you'd think that
they had to have been like a sleep or something. Right,
There's got to be stories. I will share some later
on in the podcast, including see we can't look to

(44:51):
ciscol and Ebert for reviews anymore. You know, why don't you?
They're dead. Yeah, there's actually weirdly hardly any newspapers every
viewers anymore. The Internet's a wash in reviewers. The problem
just is I was a fan of Cisco and Ebrid shows,
and I go way back to you know, when I
was in college. That's when they were writing for The
Tribute and the Sun Times, and I was a mass

(45:12):
communications major. We read all those papers, and they were superstars.
And I think the TV show started in the seventies
and it went through a bunch of iterations, but they
were actually probably the two best movie critics in America,
even aside from the fact that they got the greater
fame from doing the TV show. And I mean, you know,
this is back when you'd watch movies and movies are
worth going to and so on, and their recommendations. I mean,

(45:36):
I wouldn't stop, but if like they raved about something,
you consider going to that. So I didn't even know
who it is I'm supposed to follow anymore. Gino salomona
Fox six, who do you think introduced the movie last night?
Geno Salomon of Fox six was the guy that introduced
I mean, he's like the but he's the only entertainment
reporter in our media. So I talk a lot about

(45:56):
the lack of celebrities. In fact, I was going to
go into that a little bit later. Just say it.
I mean, for the longest time, the celebrity stratis fere
of Milwaukee. Number one was blow Bow Black, Number two
was me and there are but nine other people for
three And that isn't even me Elematy. It's infightment of
our lack of celebrities. She was always bigger than me.
Ever be a recognize her and they're go out and
out and out a butt her. Then I think clearly

(46:17):
I was the second most right, and then there were
like a zillion others belong that I don't count, like
sports figures or people like that. And it's not somebody
that left Milwaukee and somebody actually was here, So like
you know, somebody that grew up in Milwaukee and was elsewhere.
I didn't. I didn't count that. So yeah, so like, okay,
we need somebody involved in covering entertainment to introduce something.

(46:39):
I mean, after Gino Salamone, who is the number two,
that McGivern guy. You say yeah, but I mean Gino Salabone,
that would be like bow Black here and then there's
me and then there's then there's everybody else underneath that.
So anyway, that's still in front of us. This is
the Mark Belling podcast. This is the Mark Belling podcast.

(47:03):
This issue was cropping up all over the place. Ever
since the death of Charlie Kirk. Young people have been
trying to start turning point chapters. They called them Club America.
At schools all over the United States. Before Charlie died,
there were rezillions of these chapters as it was, but
the desire to start chapters even grew after his death.

(47:25):
But this is not a new thing. As I say,
before Charlie Kirk died, there were Turning Point chapters all over.
It's the reason he was such a threat to the
left is that this is the first time, really at
any level, conservatives were organizing at the grassroots level, and
they were organized at the grossroo's level among young people,
colleges and universities and so on. Well after Charlie died,

(47:47):
a number of places that didn't have a Turning Point
chapter tried to create one, and all of a sudden
there became opposition to it. The weird thing is it
was easier to get one of these things approved before
he was killed. That after I went through the debacle
at a local charter school called Lake Country Classical Academy,

(48:09):
in which the school administration just refused to do it
and ended up creating what they call the compromise. They
have a school run club that's not affiliated with Turning Point,
but it's like a Civics Cloud club or something or another,
and they just didn't want to do it. Well. This
issue has been now popping up all over the place.

(48:30):
There's been coverage on local television that just completely misses
the point. It's at Sussex Hamilt at High School. The
Hammelton School District covers Sussex and the area surrounding area.
It's in northern Waukashaw County. It's kind of like go

(48:51):
beyond Menominee Falls, but not quite get the arrowhead. That's
not exactly accurate, but it's close enough. It's a concer
conservative area. By voting patterns at Hamilton High School, in
order to get any kind of extracurricular club approved, you
go through the student council. They were like, apparently, okay,

(49:11):
let's show the students how to run government. That one
of the actual responsibilities they have the student government is
you have to approve the clubs. Prior to this, do
you know how many clubs have been turned down by
the student council that Hambledon High School? You mean, what
am I speaking too fast for you? Prior to this?
Take a guess as to how many clubs were turned

(49:32):
down by the student council that handled in high school. None.
Turning point Chapter is requested funded down by the student council. See,
you know what, this is lefty kids not wanting to
have this conservative club. There's a problem here. There is
a law that deals with not discriminating against clubs on

(49:54):
the basis of ideology. They can't legally do it. Hammeled
in high school administration knew. So this was a rare
case of the school administration trying to step in and
do what they legally had to do. So first of all,
they've changed the rules. It's no longer going through the
student council because they can't trust the student council not

(50:15):
to break the state and federal law. Secondly, this Channel
four has been all over this. The group, the kids
that are trying to start the club America Club, the
Training Point Club put up posters in the school. Some
of the lefty brats ripped down the posters. They got
a suspension from school. The parents run the Channel four.

(50:37):
How terrible it is the terror suspended for this. I
don't know if they should be suspended or not, but
for once, snotty people on the left got a little
bit of punishment. So I'm perfectly fine with, of course,
missing the entire story as the fact that you've got
bigoted kids that wouldn't allow this conservative student group to form.

(50:58):
Ham of the high school is now allowing the group
to come into place. There's another local high school called
Lake Country Lutheran. I have been told that they rejected
a turning point application. The school officials have refused to
answer my questions about it. Now, I don't know that
that means that it's true, and the administrators are too

(51:22):
cowardly and gutless to answer my questions. I'm nearly pointing
out that I've been told I can't prove it. I'm
not on the school, but I can tell you that
I've been very patient and asking the question repeatedly of
the consortium that runs those schools. It's the same consortium
involved with the Milwaukee Lutheran None I'm answering my questions.
They're just something again about and I think I know

(51:44):
what it is. There's something about this Charlie Kirk thing
that this is driving some of these people in school
officials or in the case of hammelting some of the kids.
Battie and I know what it is. Of all the
groups and clubs involving young people in the United States,
how many are conservative, Like what one out of every
eight teen trillion, there's this club, the trans club, the
chess club, there's legitimate clubs, there's whack every possible club.

(52:07):
All of a sudden, Charlie Kirk and hopefully his organization
can continue after his death, has gotten young people to
try to form their group, and the left can't staff.
There's only one. They can't stand it. The thing that
has struck me is often these turning point groups. They
call them Club America. They're proved in very lefty areas,

(52:29):
mostly because the lefty schools, they just to prove everything
that there is. Okay, you got to have this, you
three goofy conservatives, go have your thing. Often the backlashes
occurring in more conservative skills. So you've got like little
mommy running off the TV, you know, whining and complaining
that her kid got suspended for ripping a poster down
from the school. And like I say, maybe they should

(52:51):
have suspended it, Maybe they shouldn't have suspended I would
have suggested maybe require them to read the Constitution of
the United States and sit in a corner and do
it or something or another in But I mean, that's
the coverage of Channel four, rather than covering the actual thing,
the fact that these bigoted student council members wouldn't allow
the turning point thing to come in there, instead going

(53:12):
after the fact that the kids got into trouble for
doing something that's apparently in violation of the law. I've
got a very interesting story here, filled with interesting material today.
Have you noticed this? I think I'm gonna do the

(53:32):
story this way. I'm gonna share it with you, and
then I'm going to ask you to think along with
a question about it. Here's the background of the issue.
This is an issue that I have found has confused
people I've done my radio show started in nineteen eighty nine.
For those of you who did the podcast, there is
an issue here on Wisconsin that has confused people. I'm
just telling you forever there are people who never know

(53:56):
what we're talking about when we talk about emissions testing.
The reason is not every county in the state has
to have admissions testing. It has to do with years ago,
the federal government, using the Clean Air Act, designated certain
areas as non attainment regions and they were put under
restrictions with regard to air pollution. In Wisconsin, most of

(54:20):
them were the counties along Lake Michigan, which just proves
I think that these regulations were idiotic. Because of the
water content over the lake, pollutants in the air kind
of hang longer, and then there's the wind forces and
so on. In any event, the other thing is air

(54:42):
blows along with the prevailing winds and so on. But
several counties in southeastern Wisconsin, and it's changed over the years.
Some of them ran up the lake shore as well,
were non attainment areas, and one of the restrictions that
was put in place is emissions testing. If you live
in Milwaukee County as an example, And I don't know
what the current list of all the counties are, but

(55:03):
most are not under emissions testing. So when people will
talk about what you can your car pass the emissions
you had to go get the emission testing. You say,
we don't have emissions testing because they seem to think
that it's statewide. It's not. It only goes by certain counties,
including the populous ones in southeastern Wisconsin. The emissions testing
is depending on the vehicle, you have either no big

(55:25):
deal at all or a giant pain in the ass.
Wisconsin made a change and I think it happened during
Walker might have even been Doyle, in which you no
longer had to go to a state facility to get
emissions testing. When you had to go to a state facility,
the problem was the lines are ninety five miles long
because there were only a few of them. Now they're

(55:46):
all over the place. They're often usually they're usually private
car dealers, and so on and and I other than
I just know the rules. Don't go to the first
of the month, don't go to the last of the month.
Go somewhere during the month. And usually worst case scenario,
there's three cars in front of you, and it's really quick,
and since you're on a car dealer, it's comfortable, simple,
But I usually have a new car. Be quite humiliating

(56:09):
if you bought a brand new car and it failed emissions,
how'd you like to be some poor guy driving a
nineteen ninety two whatever? Those are the ones that fail.
Correcting the problem is often very expensive. Who drives a
nineteen ninety two old beater? Somebody doesn't have much money,

(56:31):
so the correcting it becomes an incredible hardship for a
number of people. So all sorts of scams there. There's
ways to get around this. See, you have no ability
to think like a scammer's you can't think of one
of the ways you would get around it. You would
have no idea. Here's one of the things you do.
People get the car registered in another county. Who do

(56:51):
you think checks on this? Nobody? How many people say,
why I have a place up north register the car
up north. All you have to do is put in
where you keep the car. There's nobody going to check
where you keep the car. You find somebody in Milwaukee
and his car is listed, is being registered in like
Dane County, Matt, I don't think that, man, I'm pretty
sure Madison's not any missions county. But who's checking it?

(57:15):
So there's scams to get around this. Just get to
get it registered in the county. That what, No, you
don't have to pass the test if it's another the
county because those counties don't have a missions testing Say,
you can't think like a scammer. You can't think like
a SCAMMERA I live in the city. I know about
all scams. You're in the suburbs. You know about kinky perversion,
and you know about the exotic drug use before me,

(57:37):
like you know what, all the suburbani kind of weird
old mixed up drugs are taken. I'm in the city.
They're just taking math, math and heroin and all of
that stuff. You got these things that like fifty two
year old suburban housewives are taking right before they wife
swap with their in their neighbors. And what's the thing
that you said they put in the front yard of
pineapple or something. See, there's no pineapple sitting in the city.

(57:57):
For one thing. You put a pineapple and somebody's fight
the city of Milwaukee. It's gonna be stolen in five seconds.
So now people don't know where they can go to,
like wife wife sal Anyway, it's a lot of background
explaining the emissions testing thing. So the point that I'm
making is if you have an old beader that can pass,
it's a real problem. The next big problem, Now you
might know a little about this. Aside from the fact

(58:20):
that it often can be expensive, what's the other big
problem if you have a car that fails emissions in
order to bring it into compliance, I think get through
a little bit what well, I mean, aside from the cost,
what's the other big problem. Suppose you have a nineteen
ninety two. I didn't even want to diet a car

(58:42):
nineteen thirty two. Four to anything and it fails. The
ambissions very hard to find parts. The problem is a
part needs to be replaced. That's usually that's why you
know that's the problem. Something's not. The parts can be
very expensive if you can locate them, so it's a
huge hardship on who basically lower income people, which brings

(59:04):
me to the following. The following letter has been sent
to the Wisconsin Congressional Delegation by a number of members
of the state legislature who represent southeastern Wisconsin. I'm going
to read it, Dear members of the Wisconson Congressional Delegation.
As members of the Wisconsin Legislature, we write to day
to urge our federal delegation to introduce and support legislation
repealing the Vehicle Inspection and Maintenance Program requirement under the

(59:25):
Clean Air Act. As stewards of this Earth, we recognize
the importance important duty to care for Wisconsin's natural beauty
and environment. However, the vehicle Inspection and Maintenance Program is
no longer useful to the economic is no longer I
didn't read that right. However, the vehicle Inspection and Maintenance
program is no longer useful due to the economic burdens

(59:46):
on citizens and technological advancements reducing the need for testing.
It goes on. One of the points they make is
almost every car passes, so you don't need to do this.
The ones that don't pass, however, are as I say
the old beat is it often lower income people have.
The letter is then signed by a number of members
of the state legislature. For let's said the Wisconsin I'm
gonna read them real quickly. State Representative Bob Donovan, State

(01:00:08):
Senator Van Wanguard, State Representative Scott Allen. He's Waukershaw State
Senator Julian Bradley. That's southwestern Wisconsin, kind of southern waukers
Shaw County. So on. State Representative Lindy Bill, State Representative
Barbara Dietrich, State Representative Cindy Duco. Those are a Western
Wakashaw County State Representative Rick Gunner Walkershaw Coni, State Senator
Rob Hutton. He overlaps in Milwaukee, Wakashall County State Senator

(01:00:30):
Chris Kappiga, Western Waukashaw Countie State Senator Dan Knoto, that's
Menomine Fallows, Germantown State Representative Dave Maxie, State on New Berland,
state Representative Paul Melitics, state Representative Amanda Nedweski, State Representative
Sylvia rts Valz, state Representative Jim p. O Warchik, state
Representative Chuck Wiggers, and state Representative Robert Wiggy. Now, wasn't
that real fast that I don't expect you to pick

(01:00:51):
up on anything unless you're like a political junkie who
knows who all of these people are. So I'm just
going to give away what the thing to listen to
listen for? What The only Democrat that signed this with
Sylvia Ortiz Valets. She's the other Democrats can't stand her.
She's a Milwaukee Democrat and she often switches party lines
to vote with the Republicans. She represents a lower income

(01:01:14):
Latino district on the south side of Milwaukee. In other words,
the people who are hurt the most by emissions testings
the ones who probably drive these meters. Here's my point
in bringing this up. The Democrats keep claiming they care
about the little guy, yet emissions testing disproportionately crushes the
little guy. Let's imagine for some reason my car field

(01:01:37):
emissions you have new cars is under warranty. It's gonna
be no skin off my back. And even if it
was a repair, I could afford it. Some poor person
who barely has anybody at all, and they're stuck with
a nine hundred and seventy five dollars This kills them again.
The Democrats orphan low income people for what for this

(01:01:58):
ridiculous ordinance in which the overwhelming majority of the states
don't have to comply, so only what The pollution that
comes out of a beater in Dane County doesn't screw
up the year as much as a beater in Milwaukee County.
When the lefties keep telling you that they're looking out
for the little guy, they are lying. They never do.

(01:02:21):
The closest you can get is that they look out
for people who make money off the little guy, providing
service to the little guy, and say that that's for
the little guy. But in fact their constituency is the
people that are getting the money off those services, which
brings me to Mandela Barnes. This is a fascinating story. Forever,

(01:02:43):
not forever, last ten years. The Democrats in Wisconsiner be
very good telling people who can run for what they
don't like divisive primaries. Devisive primaries hurt the candidate that
wins and split up the party. And the Republicans have
had these for statewide office for the last number of years,
and you see the result. I mean, there's people still

(01:03:03):
pissed off at each other over Clayfish versus Michael's And
there's a chance that the Republicans will have the same
problem with the twenty six governor's race. The Democrats just
avoid this. Whoever's leading in the pools, they tell everybody
else to drop out, and they handpick who it is
that they want to run. Mendela Barnes is as big
a prima donna as exists in Wisconsin politics. He's an

(01:03:27):
incredible First of all, Mendela is not even his first name.
Now I understand if I was an African American guy,
Mandela is my middle name. Of course, that's the name
that I'm gonna run under. What of course, it's a
great name. He's named after Nelson Mendela, so he's running
with that name. But he's a prima donna. He also
has more. He has baggage and baggage and baggage and baggage.

(01:03:48):
He ran a party in college. He came right out
and said of the poster, no ratchets allowed. He wasn't
paying his condo fees. He didn't have a driver's license
in Milwaukee. He was having state troopers. I have him
back and forth because he didn't have all of this crap. Well,
and he's kind of dumb. He ran against Ron Johnson
in a year in which the Democrats won everything, including

(01:04:10):
they won the governorship in Wisconsin, and Ron beat him.
The reason that he beat him is that for some
people in the middle, Mandela Barnes was a bridge too far. No,
he runs to run for governor. We have a thing
in Wisconsin where the governorship forever goes back and forth.
Evers is the governor for eight years, So therefore it
might swing to the Republicans. On the other hand, it

(01:04:30):
is likely to be a Democratic year based on the
signals that we're seeing out there, and the Democrats have
already gotten several high profile candidates in the race. David Crawley,
the Milwaukee County executive, who, like Barnes, is an African
American Milwaukee. He's running, and Sarah Rodriguez is the Lieutenant governor,
and he's being supported by much of the leftist establishment,
including the public employee unions. None of them want Barnes

(01:04:51):
to run. They don't want Barnes to run because they
fear he's the only one that could screw this up
and lose. But as I say, Mandela is a prima donna.
He wants to be a big shot. He wants to
be He didn't make the Senate, what's lest other than
send it to be a big shot at Wisconsin governor, right,
so he wants to be the governor. Phil I'm not
to run any second. I got great name recognition. My

(01:05:11):
first name's Mandela, not really, but I claim it is.
So I'm gonna I'll win because of that thing. And
it worked for him last time, and he thinks it's
gonna work for him again, and he's not listening to them.
It will be very interesting to see if this time
the Democrats take the gloves off and go out and
attack him and have an actual primary. You remember Michael's

(01:05:32):
versus Clayfish. They beat the crap out of one another.
The Democrats don't tend to do this. But if Sarah
Rodriguez gonna give up her chance to be governor just
because Mendela Barnes goes and elbows out of the way.
And with regard to the whole racial issue, David Crowley's
gonna say, I've been the Milwaukee County executive, why does this
guy who already lost it to come and knock me
out of the fray? So they may all fold and

(01:05:52):
let him win the nomination, or they may go out
and attack him. Now the safest way to attack him
is to pound the message he'll lose, he'll lose. He'll
lose because Democrats, I think most Democrat voters don't care
who their candidate is Pridal. They've voted. They were willing
to support Kamala Harrison, Joe Biden, any Nancapoop, but they

(01:06:13):
don't want to lose. So that would be the angle
you would run in a campaign. Mendela will lose, but
it doesn't seem to be enough to get them to
drop out of the race. And now finally, this this
is one that requires analytical thinking, which we've established the
earlier you were incapable of. You're not very minted. Now

(01:06:36):
here's the peg for the story. You probably know this.
The Wisconsin women's hockey team has been really good forever
that you know, they're always good, and they won the
national championship last year. Mark Johnson's the coach. It's a
spectacular program. They won the national championship last year and
most of the players in that team are back this year. Well,
they played a team that was obviously overmatched. I've never

(01:06:57):
heard of this school. It's called stone Hill. They played
them in one of these holiday tournaments over the weekend
and they beat them seventeen to two. My guess Wisconsin's
women have three goalies. My guess is they probably played
one of the backup goalies, which is why they gave
up a couple of goals. They won seventeen to two.
That's a school record for the most goals and obvious,
what are you going to do? And one of the

(01:07:19):
things that makes Wisconsin strong is they generally play with
four lives. That's a lot in hockey because they're so deep,
which means the starters, the Superstars, the All Americans. When
they're on the ice, they have fresh legs because they're
running four lines and the deep programs, so they're probably
playing the women on the final line more minutes than

(01:07:40):
they would normally play because it's an over massed opponent,
but they kept scoring. What is it? What can you
do about it? As I say, Wisconsin has this last
year they lost record forty and one I think thirty
nine and one or forty, won the national championship and
wanted in sudden death overtime after scoring the game time
goal with only a few seconds left in a penalty shot,

(01:08:01):
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There is a problem though,
that's going to face the Wisconsin team this year that
may cost them a number of their wins and the
ability to repeat. Let's see if you can figure out. Now,
this is one of those things. If we were doing
a live radio show, all the phone lights would light

(01:08:23):
up of the people who knew the answer and they
would tell you. But because we're doing a podcast, people
are going to call up and light up the phone lines,
like when Dan o'donald is on or something or another.
It's something you should be able through analytical thinking figure
out and you I'll see you see. The reason you
can't figure it out is you often will give up.
I talk about you know a lot of confidence, a

(01:08:45):
lot it's the same thing, but you still play golf
don't you when you know you're going to make a punt,
you're not. Maybe might, maybe you won't make it. But
when when you think, I know I'm going to miss it,
have you ever made one when you knew you were
going to miss it? No? Same thing with free throws.
As a kid, I was actually a very good free
throw shooter, and when I got in a role, it
just meant I'd make the next one because I knew
I was gonna make it. Well, what happens is you

(01:09:09):
miss something when negative thoughts interfere with your muscle memory.
When you when you have no thoughts, that's when you
do well. When you're on the autopilot and sword you
just assumed that you can't get it all right? You
want to hint? You know, yes, this is pretty simple.
Any big deals coming up in the world of sports
over the next number of months. What okay, now you're

(01:09:31):
getting somewhere. Yes, a number of the Badger players will
be on the American women. See you got that hint?
Help Paul. The Olympics are coming up in a couple
of months. And because Wisconsin's women's hockey team include there's
a professional women's hockey league now, so it isn't just
college players, but several of the Wisconsin women are among

(01:09:54):
the best players in the world. Layla Edwards, for example,
is right now the best female hockey player in America
and one of the best players altogether, and she's been
on the national team already along with a number of others.
Several of the Badger's superstars are going to be on
the Olympic team, which means they have to leave the
team in the middle of the season. With regard to

(01:10:17):
men's hockey, they keep changing it back and forth over
the years, and I actually don't even recall, but National
Hockey League team members would leave their team, but the
NHL would just stop their season during the Olympics and
the players would come right back to their teams after
the two to three weeks of the Olympics are over.
With regard though, to the women's hockey, they're going to
play together for several games. They have to play and

(01:10:38):
get to learn one another, so they could play exhibitions
in the United States for the weeks leading up to
the Olympics, and then they go off to the Is
it Milan, I think it's Milan. It is Milan, isn't
it I should know this twenty six Winter Olympics. Yeah, yeah,

(01:11:04):
that's the area. Yeah, that's the area. It's northern Italy.
It's the part of Italy that's close to the Alps
and so on. It. Yeah, it's all over that area.
Milan is the center where the ceremony will be and
it's the whole region of Northern Northern That's what the
winn Our Olympics are going to be. So the Wisconsin
women's hockey team is going to have to count on

(01:11:24):
some of these players that are kind of on the
second of the third lines. Wisconsin is a great defenseman too,
weird just think about her as her nickname has nothing
to do with her. With her name anyway, a number
of their great players will be gone. I think there's
some notion that they will be back in time for
the NCAA tournament and reintegrate them then. But it's an

(01:11:48):
incredibly strong program and Mark Johnson's the greatest coach the
history of the sport. No, of course that No, they're
all they're gonna go. I mean, and they've been on
national teams before and so on, But often the other
competition does not occur to during your regular collegiate season.
It's just a matter of the time frame is to
win the Olympics. Of course you're not gonna leave on
the Olympics end. The NBA has not had that problem

(01:12:10):
because it does not occur. The basketball is in the
summer Olympics, and you know, basketball is a winner sport,
but it's not played outdoors, so they put it naturally
in the Summer Olympics. Baseball has created this World Baseball Classic,
and they took baseball out of the Olympics so that
it didn't come in there. But hockey remains the one
sport where it's right in the middle of the season.

(01:12:32):
And I do think with regard to the NHL, there's
been discussion over this back and forth. Should the NHL
let its players go play on the Olympics and get hurt,
you know with international basketball competition. You know, Bucks fans
have been frustrated forever that Yannis keeps playing for grease,
fearing that he's going to hurt himself in these games
in which he's playing for nothing. Although Giannis might not

(01:12:53):
be playing for the Bucks by the middle of next
week anyway, what yeah, we're going to talk about that
in the context of my thoughts on Songsung Blue the
movie that it's incredibly Milwaukee without being Milwaukee at all.
It had premiere is the wrong word. They've been throwing

(01:13:14):
that around. But then I found out this has been
like six or seven different different premieres. Hollywood's very very
good at using hype words to It was an advance
showing and it was held in Milwaukee last night, and
I was fortunate enough to be there. And as I
said at the beginning of the program, the chances of
having a bit like this in Milwaukee without and there
not being stories, you'd have to be the most non

(01:13:36):
observant person in the world not to pick up on
a few things. Well, here you've got me. I'm like
a cop. I got the eyes in the back of
my head picking up on every goopball thing that they're
all right. This is the Mark Belling podcast. This is
the Mark Belling Podcast. We were talking earlier about celebrities
and generally I don't count athletes because in any city,

(01:13:59):
of course, an athlete, Yannis is a unique situation in
that he's not only an athlete, he's a Milwaukee personality.
That is kind of I say, anybody that doesn't have
a yanis sighting, doesn't spend much time in the city.
He's just one of these people that pops up everywhere,
and unlike a lot of people, he's the most recognizable

(01:14:19):
person probably in the state of Wisconsin. I mean, he's
a seven foot tall African American who just he stands
out for reasons that are obvious. And he's been with
the Bucks his entire career, which has been an unbelievably
long career because he came here at the age of
eighteen and has become a larger than life figure. Well,
this drama that's been going on with him, will he leave?

(01:14:41):
Does he want to be traded has been going on
now for several years. Who I resign with and not?
And it finally does look like the Yannis era in
Milwaukee is coming to an end. He's made it clear
that he'll stay in Milwaukee so long as the team
is competitive. Right now, the team is playing terribly. They
had one of the worst losses in recent memory on
Monday when they lost to a terrible team, the Wizards,

(01:15:05):
even with Giannis in the lineup. He sends on his
social media scrubbed all references to Milwaukee and the Bucks,
and it just says athlete and people are reading this
set and the other thing into it. Part of it
is is he just being a drama queen or is
a trade imminent? Now I'm doing this podcast at Wednesday,
a tip off will be the Wednesday night game. If
Jannis is close to being traded, the Bucks are not
going to put him in the lineup because the night

(01:15:27):
beare would be you're planning to trade a guy and
then he gets hurt and now you can't trade him.
So if he plays and he's in the lineup that
I wouldn't think anything is imminent, like within a few days.
The hard thing with trading Yannis is, aside from just
the fact that you're trading one of the best players
in the game to get a proper return for a superstar,

(01:15:47):
and the return would be enormous. I mean it'd be enormous.
The Bucks will get a ton back for him. But
when you trade someone like this, you're generally looking to
build for the future, and that means get a zillion
draft choices so that you can go into the draft
and get another potential Yanas and so on. But the
teams that have the good draft choices are the bad teams.

(01:16:10):
They have the draft lottery at the end of the season,
and the worst records have the best chances of getting
the first and second pick. But a team that's bad,
Jannis won't go to a bad team. The only team
you would trade him to is a team that's close
to winning a championship, so their draft choices aren't going
to be good, and if Yannis goes there they could
win the championship, they'd be last in the draft. So

(01:16:31):
the hard thing about trading a guy like him. You know, Dallas,
for example, traded Lukadancic last year, a trade that has
just been ripped. They traded him head on for Anthony Davis.
Just traded him for another superstar, and everybody thinks that
the Lakers got the better of that deal when they
got Donchik. So unless you did trade him for another superstar,

(01:16:51):
who you trade him for, that's the equal of Giannis.
Normally you would trade him and then you trade almost
everybody else got the team, get ninety million draft choices,
and then get your own team trap picks to be
low in the draft. If you're going to trade him,
you do it for the purposes of rebuilding. It usually
doesn't work, but sometimes it does, and almost every team
that gets great does it because they went to the bottom.

(01:17:13):
Detroit's an example of that. They're having a very good
season this year and so on. So I don't know
that he will be traded, but these are the most
ominous signs that I've seen so far. The team seems
to be going nowhere even with him, which would be
an incentive for him to possibly even also perhaps an
incentive for the Bucks. If they can't win with him,
why not just see what you can get for him
and try to start the whole thing over again. The

(01:17:35):
problem for the fans and everybody is that often means
a gap of sometimes years before you're competitive again. What
percentage of the audience, it's been so widely covered, knows
about song sung Blue eighty three, so it doesn't require
much explanation. Thunder and Lightning were just as talking to

(01:17:57):
hear about celebrities. They were like classic, what well it
is Lightning and Thunder, But not, as was explained in
the movie, not always. In fact, one of their friends
who was in the band you know is talking about
Thunder and Lightning. Lightning was the originator of the band.
That's Mike, and he created this persona of Thunder for

(01:18:21):
his the girlfriend that he met, Claire and Lightning and
Thunder was the name of them. But if you listen
to the people talk, they talk about Thunder and Lightning
all the time. And Mark Farrillo, who has played but
for Shririlla. Did you ever bump into him? He was
like always in the music scene. I would see him
around Shank Hall and all of that stuff down. Yeah,
you know, did you meet Mark Schilla? You did? He

(01:18:42):
passed away. In fact, one of the things about making
a movie about people that are long dead is all
of the other players in the movie are dead. Michael Imperioli,
who played in The Sopranos Christopher and the Sopranos, he's
in the movie and he played him. Their manager, Tom
Dematto was played by Jim Belushi, who somehow is less

(01:19:02):
fat than he was when he was younger. He usually
doesn't work. He's still fat, but he's not as fat
as he used to be. So anyway, they were kind
of like a Neil Diamond act. She sang some Patsy
Klein stuff, but most of the thing was a Neil
Diamond person interact, and just for kind of Milwaukee reasons,
they got big in Milwaukee and the region, but nowhere else,

(01:19:28):
which creates for an interesting movie, and then just unbelievable
tragedy in their life. So I mean, they did a
documentary on them that was done by again him Co's
about twelve or fourteen years ago, and it was really
good and it showed all the heartbreak and all the
awful things that happened to the both of them. I'm
in talking about this. There's not a spoiler alert here

(01:19:51):
because it's a true life story and everybody knows what's happened.
The movie is playing out and watching what occurs, but
I won't give away like the tails of the movie.
But you know, they got married and they got this
band in It just turned into a huge kind of
local thing. And I talked about Bull Black. It was
one of those deals that go back about twenty years.
For those of you who are around then. Everybody had

(01:20:13):
heard of them, including people that didn't see them. It
was just a uniquely Milwaukee thing. And a filmmaker decided
that he was going to take this documentary and use
it an inspiration to make a real life movie, and
he got two huge stars to play the lead roles.
Hugh Jackman is playing Lightning and Kate Hudson is just

(01:20:37):
incredible and now it isn't young anymore, she's playing Thunder.
So that's the setup for the movie. And one of
the things that the movie makers do is they try
to create all of this hype in advance of the movie.
So there's been like the world premiere was in London,
they were at a New York Film Festival or they
had everybody there for that. So of course one of
the places they're going to go is Milwaukee because these

(01:20:57):
people are from Milwaukee, and they had this thing a
cops yes and so on. But the actual showing in
the movie was at the Oriental, which is this old
style movie house just off of North Avenue in the
city of Milwaukee. And his movie theaters is pretty big,
but it's one of those places where you can't do
the traditional red carpet because the front door is like

(01:21:18):
three feet from the road. I mean, there's the sidewalk
and then and then there's the front door. It pulses
the letters that burned on it. I mean, it's just
it looks exactly like something you would expect to see
on the East side of Milwaukee. All right, So there
are people who got invitations that listen, it's all the
people who like knew them, and then other kind of
there are no big shots in Milwaukee. But if like

(01:21:40):
I'm a big shot, people like me, and then people
who would then in a lot of media, people who
would do what I'm doing talk about the movie. That's
who they invite to this. So I get an invitation.
I take a friend and a guy that I know.
He and I went to the thing, and he it's
this idiotic thing. He thinks we're gonna go door to door,
We're gonna be able to walk right in, that it's
gonna be the easiest. And I say, there's no way.
It's gonna be a line ninety seven miles long. So

(01:22:00):
we show up and there's a line ninety seven miles long.
We get into the line and we're like at North Avenue.
See it's like a block and a half down, And
I'm telling you, last night it was We're not going
to think of this as cold in two months, but
by the standards of early December, it was cold, and
the line sort of moves. It was thirty minutes to
get from the when I got there into the thing,

(01:22:21):
which wasn't terrible given how long the line looked, because
all they did was check your creditial and you get
a thing and you go into the place. But what
stunned me was the number of people who did not
have tickets who were standing. They had a second line.
It would normally be a rope line, but they just
used police horses. So they're standing on the edge of
the street and they're there just for the same reason.

(01:22:42):
All these people were going to cops to see. The
only real celebrity was Hugh Jackman. Kate Hudson was not
here for this showing. Hugh Jackman as the star and
the director was here. Plus Claire who is still alive.
Claire who was the wife who played Thunder the real
life Claire, she was still there. So they were just
there to cheer and do this. And it's you know,
Milwaukee gets its moment in the sun. So the huge

(01:23:02):
numbers and I was kind of expecting, but still for
people to stand around in the coal just to watch
a couple of people walk inside of a theater, that's
a pretty big thing. In addition to that, they had
a big party at the Landmark Lanes, which is this
half stupid half cool kind of Milwaukee bar. It's not
I mean, it can bowl there, but it's more of

(01:23:23):
a bar. And that's what the party was. And it's
like a door and a half down from the Landmarks.
All right, I'm going to tell you my thoughts of
the movie, but first there's got to be a couple
of stories. You know, I'm standing in the line, and
you know what people's reaction to me is. It's one
of three. Either they don't recognize me, and I got
a hoodie on and all this because it was cold,

(01:23:44):
so I pulled the hood over my head, and then
there's one third to hate me, and then one third
are going to like me. Fortunately, standing right behind me
as a woman who immediately demands that I get a
picture taken. They're a big fan, so that's at least
a good enough thing. We get up to the front
and as I say, the line is, it's a disorganized line,
but it's orderly but disorganized at the same time because

(01:24:06):
you just jammed onto the sidewalk. It's cold, people are
huddled together trying to get into the thing. And then
there's this second huge line of people that aren't trying
to get in because they don't have the tickets that
are standing off to the side of this, but you
know you're walking and walking, you get there for thirty minutes. Sorry.
Just as I'm about to get to the front door
and go in, what do you think happens? I can't

(01:24:32):
say I recognize this guy. If I did recognize him
when I out him or not, I don't know. I
honestly don't know. But I didn't recognize him, but he
was like you could just tell it was a well
off guy. I'll just go beyond that. By the way,
there were no tuxedos there, but some people were wearing
suits and ties like you would expect from a premiere.
But they said right on the thing, no dress code.
I'm just wearing a sweater and wearing a jacket with

(01:24:53):
a hood over the top of it. Just as I'm
about to walk in, here comes this guy with I
don't know if the outerage was more than his wife
or girlfriend or whatever it is, walks right to the
entrance and says VIP. I don't even know who the
first person was to start the objection, but I was

(01:25:15):
right at no Vip in fact, and his invitation probably
said VIP. All of us said Vip. He was the same.
He was the same kind of whatever high mucket he
muck that the rest of us was. So they said
him all the way back to the line. So there
was that. I don't know. I think I was the

(01:25:36):
first who object it, because he was you know, if
you're going to butt into a line, you may as
well do it right at the front. Why do it
in the middle. Right. He walked right to the front door,
like he owned the place and he was going to
walk past. And once I objected, of course, everybody else objected,
and then they explained, no, no, no, everybody's VIP. He
didn't fight it or anything. Maybe he just thought that

(01:25:58):
he had some special status. But I don't. I mean,
I don't. I mean when I say, we just showed
up at the wrong time. And you know, the doors
opened at five thirty, and we got there at five
thirty five. Probably the line started forming at four forty five.
There was no importance of getting in early because there
were I did not know this, There were assigned seeds. See,

(01:26:20):
I don't everybody knows you don't want to sit in
the front of a movie theater. I mean, you know that, right, Well,
I didn't want that, so, but I mean they were
I did not know by the way the seats were assigned.
When I initially got in there. We just plopped ourselves
down on two aisle seats, and then I noticed people
talking about assigned seats. So we sat over there. That's
the first thing. When I'm first of all sitting and
I bump into like a couple of people that, you know,

(01:26:41):
somebody who used to I don't know if I should
mentioned her.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
She?

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
Can you think of people that worked at the station
when you and I started, Who comes to mind? Not her? No,
there's only like one or two left female though you're right,
aunt Anne is no longer with us, so it can't
be her. That would have been terrible if you would

(01:27:04):
have guessed her. Julie remember her, See, I could say,
why not? She now works at Summerfestie Julie Dickleman. She
used to be Julie Stoleper. Oh, she overlapped with you,
so she was there. I talked to her, bump into
a couple of other people who recognize me, and so on,

(01:27:25):
and then this woman turns around and she keeps looking
at me. And I am used to this look in
which people think that they recognize me, and then they wonder,
and you just when you're somebody that's at like my
level of like medium level whatever. And now the other
thing people will do then is they'll go to their
phot and they'll like google up to get a picture
and look back to see if I'm So she's eyeballing me,

(01:27:46):
and she's like she's been talking the whole time too.
She's just not somebody that's observing any like be discreet
every ound, somebody that might be a big shot. And
she turns around to me and said, I know who
you are. I mean, I get this a lot by
the way. Most men do with the following. They'll say
their name and put out their hand to shake hands

(01:28:09):
if they recognize me. Women will do it completely different.
They'll either demand to know if I am who I
who they think I am, or say you probably don't
remember me. But he turns around with just incredible confidences,
I know who you are. Okay, here it comes. I'm trapped.
There's nowhere to go. You're Bob Berry. Well, first of all,

(01:28:36):
Bob Berry is I think seventeen years older than I am.
So the secondly he does, if you take a real
reach at it, he does look a little bit like me,
but I don't want to say he looks a lot
like me because he's way older. By Bob Berry was
the guy that introduced the Beatles. That was nineteen sixty four.
I was in probably the second grade or whatever it
was then, so and I said, no, I'm actually not.

(01:28:58):
He said no, I know that it's so now she's
convinced because I'm denying it, which is like a real
no win situation. I almost felt like going with it
and say, yeah, I am Bob Berry. Now these other
people that are overhearing this and listening, and I'm with
a guy and he said, no, he's not Bob Berry.
Well you're somebody. What's your name? Why, I say, Mark,

(01:29:20):
I don't see the whole thing. No, you're not, you're
Bob Berry. Well then eventually I came up and you know,
she's demanding, and I say what, I knew, you're that
trouble maker. And she's announcing this in the loudest voice
to everybody under the sun. That's when we realized that
there were assigned seats, that we were sitting in the
wrong seats, which turned out not to be the worst
thing in the world. And went over to our other thing.

(01:29:41):
All right, one quick thing. We can't on podcasts play
music unfortunately, so I can't play this. But after the
movie was over, they had the before and after party
was at the Landmark Lanes and Hugh jack when who
played the Neil Diamond impersonator, who's the one of the

(01:30:05):
two protagonists of the movie. That's Lightning Mike Sardina. He
and the actual thunder Clara Sardina. Mike passed away, which
is part of the movie. He died twenty years ago,
and that's kind of how the movie. The tragedies of
their life though, I mean, it's the whole thing was
like a vh You remember those old VH one documentaries

(01:30:25):
Behind the Music, I think it was called. They were
always the same thing and be about a band. They rise,
some obscurity, go up the ladder, superstarred and fame and fortune,
crash and tragedy usually drugs or something or another, and
then redemption that comeback and then it's the same. Well,
this is the actual story of their lives. So, I mean,

(01:30:49):
you knew that that's what the movie was gonna be.
And it's just kind of a made for Hollywood kind
of thing. Well. Anyway, Clara is still with us, and
I did not for it was cold. We were there.
I had massive detal work done yesterday and I had
taken i'll admit painkillers because I knew when they When
I showed up at the movie, the anesthesia was still on,

(01:31:10):
so I couldn't eat popcorn or anything, and so I
had a headache and it was cold. We went home.
I should have gone to the Landmark Lanes after party
because on the stage Hugh Jackman saying Sweet Caroline with thunder.
I can't play it on the air, but it is
linked up on my x account x formerly known as
Twitter under Mark Belling Show. There's a video of it.

(01:31:33):
There's a few others that are going on the internet
and their viral all over the place. But that was
had been a wonderful moment there. As for the movie itself,
there was. It's been reviewed by some of the reviewers
who get to see the movies before it's available to
the general public, and some of the reviewers have been
very positive. I thought it was very good. It's the

(01:31:56):
kind of movie that clearly it has the potential to
be off right. It is done. First of all, the
two actors are Paul and I were debating are they
superstars or not, but they are clearly phenomenal actors, Hugh
Jackman and Kate Hudson. And I've just Kate Hudson's been

(01:32:17):
one of my favorite actresses ever since the movie Almost Famous.
She always plays roles that are kind of a little
bit different kind of person, which allows I think actresses
and actors to play well. I mean, she played like
the groupie Penny Lane and Almost Famous. She was just unbelievably.
I don't remember the name of the movie that Larry
David did on one of his hiatuses from Curby Your Enthusiasm,

(01:32:39):
but he did a movie about a guy that was
living a Cape cod and she was the funniest scene
I've ever seen in a movie was in that movie.
So she's just always been good at roles and she
was just she played that role so well, and Jackman
played the role really well. And it just this story
of these two people who kind of and made it

(01:33:01):
to start them but at that unique level of their fame,
probably didn't even get to Madison, but just extremely well
known around here and it's got all the you know,
they take liberties with the truth which happens often and
in some kind it seemed to me. So I thought
that the movie was very very well done. It was
not cheap and small sy. I thought it was sincere

(01:33:22):
and real, rather positive. Maybe the documentary was much more.
All the warts and the problems were really peeled back.
That was smoothed out a little bit, but we saw
all of the problems, and there was an incredible tragedy
were very famous in their lives, in which she was
run over by a car in her own front yard
and lost a leg, and he battled health problems and

(01:33:43):
he had a history of alcoholism before the band. These
are things they're all known by anybody who knew the
story of the two of them, and it played out
in the movie. But I just thought it was extremely
well done for the type of story that when you
think of like doing it Hollywood. They could have complete
screwed it up. The two things that I thought stood
out the most were the performances of the main characters

(01:34:07):
were just outstanding. The other thing, and I would recommend
to Paul to see it for this reason. I thought,
you know, all the side musicians that were in their
band and the people that they knew in the knock
around circuit, like playing the like the you know, open
mic Knights, and seeing all the other characters and the
actors who played them. I thought it was a very
good look into the life of lifer musicians who were

(01:34:32):
just getting by, who never made it big, but were
making it well enough that they could keep doing it.
And there's a lot of that. And I butchered a
guy's name early, and I want to get it correct
here because I Mark Shilla. I mean, I didn't really
know him other than I saw him a lot because
he was always downtown and he was in all of
these bands. He passed away a handful of years ago.

(01:34:53):
But he's played by Michael Imperioli, and I mean, who
didn't really look like him. But I thought that the
way they worked them in, you know, and the manager
is driving the badger bus to take him from the gigs,
and he was one of those guys that drove the
bus for those casino junkets and all of that stuff.
It was a very well done component of the movie.

(01:35:14):
And those are the two things that I thought were
really good. If I knock it down for anything, it's this.
It didn't have a feel of authenticity about the background. Now,
maybe nobody else picks up on this, but they didn't
shoot a single scene in Milwaukee. It was all generic,
and it didn't even make it like you could have
done some things like just stock footage of the skyline

(01:35:36):
or something, or sent a crew into shoot a couple
of few outtakes and pretend that something's in something Milwaukee.
But it was not only generic, it looked like they
apparently shot it in location in New Jersey. It didn't
even look like it was shot on location in New Jersey.
They clearly didn't want to pay naming rights because they
took almost all the names of places out. For example,
the famous they played I mean, you know, Lightning and

(01:36:01):
Thunder is kind of was a smalllza act. And Pearl
Jam at the time was like considered the most authentic
rock band there was. Eddie Vedder was into stuff like this,
and you know, they would often cover smaltzy stuff, and
Eddie Vedder found out about it and invited them to
play at Summerfest when Pearl Jam performed, and they changed
that in the movie and instead they're at a theater

(01:36:22):
and they're not at Summerfest, and the name of the
theater is the Rich Theater, which there isn't even one.
So I think that that's just that they didn't want
to cut a deal with Summerfest. But I think shooting
the movie and even if you create a fake crowd,
but making it at Summerfest. They did use the State Fair.
That's a generic name. They probably didn't have to pay
naming rights for that. They got married at the State Fair,

(01:36:42):
so they include that. But otherwise they did. They showed that,
you know, an outshot of a custage stand that was
clearly supposed to look like Leons, but they didn't call
it Leons, And so I thought that it would benefit
from even if they didn't film scenes in Milwaukee to
make it seem Milwaukee. Having said that Milwaukee's drilled through it.

(01:37:02):
I mean, you watch the movie you'd set in Milwaukee,
it set in Milwaukee, set of Milwaukee. They say that
a mozillion times. But I you know, you might say
that somebody who's watching the movie in Houston, they won't
even know that it wouldn't be Milwaukee. Usually when you watch,
like a movie that's set in Chicago, they'll put like
Chicago's scenes and it gives you a feel of where
they are. And this kind of reminded me of how

(01:37:23):
you know, Happy Days was in Milwaukee, but there was
they never shot had any scenes of Milwaukee and Happy
Days and same thing. All in all, I would put
it together in I clearly would do the old Siskel
and Ebert thumbs up. I would recommend it. It's long.
Usually movies like this. The movies that are long are
usually like dramas or mob movies and so on. Now
ninety minutes is the norm, right most of it. This

(01:37:45):
is over two hours for a movie like this. That
kind of surprised me. It didn't brag, but of course,
you know, you're seeing all these things that you know about,
so of course I'm into it. And the crowd that
was there was a lot of people who knew them,
and then it was media types and there was no
way I was gonna bomb with that crowd. They were
cheering for everything and so on. Anyway, Hugh Jackman was

(01:38:07):
very gracious when he talked. The director and writer is
Craig Brewer. This has been his project. He bought the
rights to the documentary so he could base it off
the documentary, and this is his baby. He's worked on forever.
He was there, and several members of the family were there,
and Claire was there and so on. I just one
of the things I question is it opens Christmas Day.

(01:38:29):
That means it's you know, it's a big thing Christmas Day.
Movies that open the studios are making a big play
for them. I just it's not a kid's movie. I mean,
I know a lot of young people are into music
of the sixties and the seventies and like the Neil Diamond.
In fact, one of the things of the whole movie
is lightning. Mike hated playing Sweet Caroline. His whole point

(01:38:51):
was Neil Diamond and all of these other great songs,
and everybody just wants to hear Sweet Caroline, and they
play Sweet Caroline, See Caroline, And he had all of
these other Neil Diamond songs that he wanted to do it,
like they play Sweet Carolina baseball games and all kids
all know it. So will any of them go Because
the people who go to movies in the theater are
primarily young and people of our age really, I think

(01:39:12):
forty and over they watched the movie when it hits
Netflix or whatever the streaming service is, so it might
be a bigger movie when it hits the streaming service
as opposed to going in. I didn't mention the music itself.
The sound. Now, the Oriental has a great sound system,
which you wouldn't think but it does. The sound was
really good. They do their own singing, the music was.
It sounded as good as being at a Neil Diamond

(01:39:33):
concert and their own way of doing it. So the
sound is really good. Also, Neil Diamond had a very
mixed Neil Diamond did a lot of great songs and
he did some real dumpers too. They picked them right.
None of the bad songs like that song B from

(01:39:54):
Jonathan living Sego that's not in there, Like the really
bad ones aren't in there, but all the ones you
would want to hear are in there. So I would
give it a strong recommendation, especially if you knew those
people from back in the day. And well, it doesn't
have any Milwaukee exteriors to it, it feels Milwaukee because
I just think in most cities lightning and thunder would

(01:40:15):
not have become a thing, and it's the kind of
thing that just would work in Milwaukee. I know you
would like it because of the local musician thing and
all that and you probably bumped into the two of
them just from Yeah. They and like I say, before
they formed this act, they were kick around musicians, just
in the scene, doing any number of things, and they

(01:40:35):
never really made it beyond that. They just kind of
got to in the same way of one or two.
It's like one or two other like rock bands that
have last who's the one, who's the big one? The
name's escaping to me right now. A band that's been
around for like thirty years, kind of a party band,
not bad Boy. Later than that they were kind of
a cover band, not Cherry Pye. A little bit later

(01:40:57):
than that they're still around. Not Philla Cain. Yeah, there's
the Toys. That's what I was thinking of. There are
bands that like The Toys will be an example. They're
just really big around here, but it's only like reagionable
and that's the level the lightning and thunder got by,
so that becomes a story. And then they were larger

(01:41:17):
than life personalities and great actors played them. So there
was a lot of talk about them. And the reason
I'm sure that I got an invite to go there
is they were hoping to get fifteen minutes of flicity
about me talking about the talking about the thing. See,
so I'm a VIP, I got to go to this.
They didn't send the guy walks up in the front
of the door saying, I'm a VII. Feel with me.

(01:41:40):
Do you think he thought that there was like a
VIP list or do you think that he was just
trying to get into the front door he thought there
was a VII. See the problem with pulling that is
even if you were a VIP and get in everybody,
I mean imagine I had then Can you imagine if
I did that and that story would be all over

(01:42:01):
the city, It would have been all over social media.
So instead I'm the one that can't do that, and
I was the guy. The reason I objected is it
was right in front of me thirty minutes in there.
My nose is running because of the wind whipping around
in the cold, and this is where the vipce go in. Yeah,
it is after everybody that's in front of you gets

(01:42:21):
through the line. That's it for today's podcast. We're going
to have our football preview college football championship games, not
the playoffs, with the conference championship games or this weekend,
and we all know what's going on with the Packers.
They play the Bears, then they played Denver, and then
they play the Bears again. The entire season gonna be
rolled into the next few weeks. Talk to You Soon by.

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
The Mark Belling Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.
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You Line has everything and stuff. Visit you line dot com.
Listen to all of Mark's podcasts, always available on the
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(01:43:09):
favorite podcasts.