November 12, 2025 • 27 mins
Join Jim and Greg for the Wednesday 3 Martini Lunch as they weigh in on EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin blasting Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for their incompetence concerning the California wildfires, housing officials repeating the mistakes that led to the 2008 financial crisis, and Michigan’s “Mamdani” trying to erase his radical record.
First, they applaud Zeldin for imploring Newsom and Bass to get to work to help people rebuild after the wildfires. Jim notes that less than one percent of those who lost homes or businesses have received permits to rebuild, even after nearly a year. They also consider how this glaring failure could hurt Newsom’s presidential ambitions.
Next, they facepalm as Fannie Mae removes a minimum credit score needed to be approved for housing loans. Yes, buying a home is really tough for a lot of people right now, but Jim and Greg recall how giving mortgages to people who clearly could not afford them led to economic disaster just 17 years ago.
Finally, they highlight Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abu El-Sayed deleting past anti-police and anti-border agent posts in an attempt to hide his radical views. El-Sayed once called police “standing armies we deploy against our own people” and smeared border agents as “white supremacists.” El-Sayed is very competitive in a three-candidate race for the party's nomination.
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First, they applaud Zeldin for imploring Newsom and Bass to get to work to help people rebuild after the wildfires. Jim notes that less than one percent of those who lost homes or businesses have received permits to rebuild, even after nearly a year. They also consider how this glaring failure could hurt Newsom’s presidential ambitions.
Next, they facepalm as Fannie Mae removes a minimum credit score needed to be approved for housing loans. Yes, buying a home is really tough for a lot of people right now, but Jim and Greg recall how giving mortgages to people who clearly could not afford them led to economic disaster just 17 years ago.
Finally, they highlight Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abu El-Sayed deleting past anti-police and anti-border agent posts in an attempt to hide his radical views. El-Sayed once called police “standing armies we deploy against our own people” and smeared border agents as “white supremacists.” El-Sayed is very competitive in a three-candidate race for the party's nomination.
Please visit our great sponsors:
Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp by visiting https://BetterHelp.com/3ML today!
OneSkin uses the patented OS-01 Peptide™ designed to keep skin healthier, stronger, and more resilient over time. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code 3ML at https://www.OneSkin.co/3ML
Try the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for free with zero commitment by visiting https://Oracle.com/Martini today!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garretty of National Review.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hey, so glad you're with us for the Wednesday edition
of The Three Martini Lunch. And check out who's here.
It's Jim Garrity. He's back from vacation. He also had
a couple of work related events in there. But Jim,
thanks as always to Andy McCarthy and Rob Long for
filling in. But great to have you back.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It is good to be back. And yes, listeners, I'm
so exhausted for my trips. The only way I can
relax is to take another trip. Jasha, I was in Asheville,
North Carolina. Listeners probably remember that part of the country
was hit by Hurricane Helen and just absolutely devastated. Very
poleased to report that's made quite a strong comeback. Not
everything's back to one hundred percent, but you know, downtown Ashville,
(00:52):
the River Arts District, all that stuff thriving once again,
lots of shoppers, lots of people dining, and the missus
and I did our part for the local economy. I'll
love say that much, including the micro breweries.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Excellent, excellent. Well glad you had a good time away,
and you know, a couple of things happened while you
were gone, you know, end of a shutdown and a
few other things. But a lot to talk about today.
We're going to get into the Michigan Mamdanie. We've talked
about him before, but abou l Sayed one of the
Democratic Senate candidates, and he's been very busy deleting old
tweets as he's trying to win a state wide race.
(01:25):
Now we're also going to be taking a look at
people in the housing industry, slow learners, not really learning
the lessons from a couple decades ago. And Lee's elden
oozing competence once again while talking about people who lack
it very much when it comes to competence, specifically Karen
Bass and Kevin Newsom.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
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Speaker 3 (01:45):
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good martini here. And it's a good response to a
(02:56):
really bad situation. I don't know if you're keeping track
at home, but it's been more than ten months now
since the massive wildfires that devastated parts of Los Angeles County,
Pacific Palisades, of course, Malibu, many different areas, Tens of
thousands of people displaced, and in ten and a half months,
the number of permits paltry. There's talk of Gavin Newsom
(03:21):
trying to get low income housing in there and whether
people getting able to keep their land or not. But nonetheless,
not much has been done when it comes to getting
people back into their homes. But EPA administrator Lee Zelden
does not find this acceptable, and he was at a
Bright Part event yesterday and lit into both Governor Gavin
Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom need to get off of
their and allow all of the people in Los Angeles
to rebuild their freaking homes and their businesses. Okay, you
have people who are suffering extreme amount of frustration, anger
and pain because of whatever type of bureaucratic red tape,
delays and incompetency is resulting in the local and state
(04:06):
leadership preventing people from building what is theirs. They lost everything,
They lost their homes, they lost their businesses, and now
they just sit there and wait and they don't even
know when it's going to end.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It is in competency.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And for these people who live there who lost everything,
the most important thing that you can give them is
to instantly allow them to rebuild their lives.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well Jim, you got it, gaving you some a little slack.
He's very busy trolling President Trump, who he will not
ever be running against on x He's busy playing resistance
hero when it comes to Ice. But no, seriously, his
job is to get these people hoole again, and this
could not be going slower or make his competence look worse.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
First of all, Greg, I really wish Lee Zelden could
speak for the administration on all issues. He is always
on top of the facts, He is always specific, He
is always clear as demonstrating that clip. He can show anger,
but he doesn't come across as a guy who's rabble rousing.
He just it comes north across as like just righteous
(05:07):
indignation that people are not doing their jobs and explaining
how and why they're not doing their jobs. I am
looking at the twenty Los Angeles County Permitting Progress dashboard.
This is as of this morning, November twelve. Right there
are seven four hundred and seventeen destroyed or damaged units.
Right there are seven one hundred and sixty two building
(05:28):
permits issued right now. The last of the fires went
out at the end of January, somewhere over before them,
but like, let's assume that like February was the start
where you get started with this, no Nomember, right, So
we're now pretty much a good year into this, and
they are just barely above ten percent. Have they issued
permits for never mind rebuilding. Now, as I just mentioned,
(05:48):
I was just in Asheville, North Carolina, which had been
you know, River Arts District got you know, the flood
waters look like you know, from one of the marks
on one of the buildings, not quite as tall as
may I'm six two, but like let's say, you know,
five between five and six feet first floor of every
building destroyed. This is the River Arts District. A ton
of galleries there, and they just talked about the sheer
number of works of art that were destroyed, like so
(06:10):
just the artistic lass. But I think about the economic
loss for every artist, every gallery owner, everybody who's got
jobs in that entire region. And there are cafes and
there are restaurants and other stuff along that line. Now
I'm here a year ago, a little bit more, actually,
probably a little less than a year, and it's back,
probably not one hundred percent, but it is significantly back.
You know, Los Angeles, if we walk around the palisades
(06:33):
in a you know, at the end of January, what
are we going to see? My guess is we're going
to see a whole bunch of empty lots. We're going
to see a whole bunch of ubble. We're going to
see a whole bunch of places where the reconstruction has
not even yet begun. When you're at ten percent of
the permits that you need nearly a year later, absolutely abysmal.
I understand why Rick Caruso, who ran against Karen Bess
(06:54):
in the last mayoral election, he argued against a recall
election for Karen Bess. It shows a little bit. I
thought Karen Bass had failed her city as spectacularly as
just about any but any mayor has ever failed their city,
being on the other side of the world and not
coming back as soon as it was clear the city
was experiencing an unprecedented disaster. And he said, look, if
we do this, it gives her an excuse. She will
(07:16):
say this is a distraction. This is going to focus
our energy and time on fighting over whether the mayor
should stay in office. And I suppose I can see
that logic, But the problem is you've got Karen Bess
in place there, and you've got Gavin Newsom in place there,
and all the leadership that was in place before and
during the crisis is still in place after the crisis,
(07:37):
and we are less than shocked at the extraordinarily slow
pace of rebuilding out in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Blame probably belongs in both directions. A lot of those
permitting processes are local things, and so that's on Karen Bass.
But Gavin Newsom, you know, with the thick especially environmental
regulations that exist in California getting to the point where
you can actually rebuild, and environmental studies and all this nonsense,
you know, his government is certainly not doing anything to
(08:03):
expedite this process as well. And there should be a
massive indictment against him as he prepares a presidential campaign,
and just an indictment against blue state policies. If this
was happening in a red state and all these people
were still displaced, I think we'd be hearing a lot more.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
About it, you know, Greg. First of all, remember we
can go back, we can find the quotes Karen Bass
and Gavin Newsom pledge there was going to be rapid
rebuilding that they were they said they were taken away
all the permitting, you know, red tape and dureaucracy and
all that stuff, and this would be the fastest rebuilding
and we have you know, obviously we're seeing a very
slow incremental pace. You know what. I'm just really you know,
could like I could conceivably see happening. This is just predicted.
(08:38):
This just popped in my head as we're discussing this.
If you're JB. Pritzker and you've got a billion dollars,
imagine him going in and financing the reconstruction of a
whole bunch of stuff in Los Angeles and saying something like,
I'm here because your governor isn't Now. JB. Pritsker wants
to be President of the United States, wants to be
the Democratic Army in twenty twenty eight. Gavin Newsom wants
(08:59):
to be the No. Eight Like he could do that.
And if even if you're not, let's say you're any
one of these other Democrats who allegedly wants to run
for president. Kirsten Gillibrand apparently is still interested. And you know, gosh,
that poor woman in Iowa never got her ranch. But nonetheless,
like you could do something like this is an easy
target on Gavin Newsom, and you can say, if you
want to see what Gavin Newsom can do for America,
(09:21):
just take a look at what he has done for
Los Angeles County after these wildfires. My guess is that'll
be a very effective line of attack because it's basically
saying he's all talk, he's all smiles, he's all Gordon
Gecko hair is not about results, and that is, you know,
what should matter as a Democratic nominee in the next president.
That's entirely true.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
He had this quote, I think it was the last week,
maybe a week before, where he's like, not only have
we fulfilled every promise, We've done it ahead of schedule.
And I'm like, are you not paying attention to this?
Forget high speed rail, which is another just massive boondoggle,
but so many other things that are over budget, not
done well, or not happening at all. Just a terrible
track record all the way around. And it's the people
who are suffering. We'll talk about Gavin Newsom's political fortunes,
(10:00):
but these people have been homeless for months on end,
and it's not going to be changed anytime soon, unfortunately.
All right, not to the bad Martini now and Jim,
you and I are what certainly my children would consider
old at this point. But sometimes with that age comes
memory of things that happened that you probably want to
(10:23):
keep in mind when people suggest terrible ideas like this.
It was just a couple decades ago that we were
talking about subprime mortgages and it's the bubble gonna pop.
Well it did pop big time. Fall of two thousand
and eight. We saw major financial firms collapsing. We had
the stock market basically plummeting. We had to have the
Toxic Asset Relief Program or TARPS right in the middle
(10:46):
of the Obama McCain election, a total mess. And now
because of the fact that home prices have risen so
much at interest rates are higher than they were, it's
hard for people to buy homes right now. That is
a very legitimate concern. But there are right ways and
wrong ways to deal with this, and this is the
wrong way. I would suggest. This is from Payments Journal
(11:06):
dot com, but a lot of folks are reporting on this.
Fanny May is lowering its minimum six hundred and twenty
middle credit score requirement for purchases and refinance loans, a
move that could broad an access to home ownership for
borrowers with thinner credit files or lower scores. Following Freddiemac's lead,
fani May is removing the threshold from its Desktop Underwriter
(11:26):
eligibility determination system. How bureaucratic does that sound? But while
Desktop Underwriter may no longer require a credit score, it
will continue to evaluate loans using a comprehensive set of
credit risk criteria to determine whether they qualify for sale.
To Fani May, well, that's delightfully vague, Jim. But since
how we got into the problem that led to the
(11:47):
housing crash almost twenty years ago now is because well,
we need to get more people into homes. So you
know what, let's not worry about their credit rating or
their ability to pay these monthly mortgage payments. That bill
will come do, and it's going to come very painfully
if the last round is any indication.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You know, Greg, As you were reading through that, I
was reminded of a quote from former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank. No,
I will not attempt to do an impression because someone
will accused it of being hateful, discriminatory, homophobic, et cetera.
But way back in two thousand and three, he said, quote,
I want to roll the dice a little bit more
in this situation towards subsidized housing. Unquote. Well, when you
(12:27):
roll the dice, there is always the chance you're going
to end up with snake eyes, and that is effectively
what happened. That is a major factor in what's set
off the Great Recession starting in late two thousand and eight,
continuing into two thousand and nine, and some would argue
continued well through the first term of Obama. Look, we
would all like to see everybody have an easier time
of buying their first house, right. The problem is a
(12:49):
whole bunch of people don't have assets, don't have an
income level, have not been able to put together a
nest egg or savings, and they have a situation where
they also don't have anything to put you know, put
up for collateral. They don't have They just they just
don't have much. The idea of saying, well, they don't
have much, but we'll give them loans anyway, well, then
you're taking a very big risk there, because, yeah, some
people are going to be very diligent. They're gonna pay
(13:10):
their mortgage every month. Some people are not right. I
also understand apparently. Great. Other great news is kind of related.
Did you know that adjustable rate mortgages are back? Oh? Great? Great? Yeah,
there are some people. There are some people who are
like probably our younger listeners, you know, all the younger
listeners we have, they're probably arms or just what are they? Okay?
Adjustable rate mortgages were this thing where you had a
very nice low rate for your mortgage, like the first
(13:32):
two years, three years, usually some short period like that,
and then after that it suddenly jumped up and all
of a sudden your mortgage papents became a lot more expensive.
So the idea was this is very popular in the
era of home flipping. There you can make an argument.
I wouldn't say completely that HGTV caused a great recession,
but listeners with memories will say, back in the Bush era,
this was a hot thing of like, you know you're
(13:53):
gonna you're going to flip a house. You buy one
that's gonna run down, fix it up, make it look
very nice, and then you sell it at a higher price.
You make pocket, you pay for all the repairs you made,
you pocket some money, you buy another house. And this
is how some people are making money there's that couple
on HGTV that this was what the whole show was about,
and look, if you can do it, great, But a
lot of them were buying them with adjustable rate mortgages
(14:14):
because they did not intend to own the house for
very long. The problem is when you can't sell the
house when you want to, and you reach the point where,
almos sudden, that mortgage payment that have been very small
suddenly gets a whole lot larger, and all of a sudden,
you're buying a house. And if you happen to be
signed to trying to sell a house at the wrong time,
all of a sudden, you can lose your shirt. And
that is what happened for a whole bunch of folks
(14:34):
during all that. So here's the thing. High credit standards,
as much as they're a pain, as much as they
involve saying no to people who are decent but who
otherwise don't have the financial resources, they are necessity because
otherwise the banks make a whole bunch of loans. These
people stop paying back the loans, and as they say,
if you owe the bank a million dollars, you really
(14:55):
have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion, dollars.
Then the bank has a problem, right, and that's what
happened with all this stuff. So we've seen all this before.
It is in living memory. It's like half a generation
if that. And yet here we are and they're going
forward again, and I just I am. It's extraordinarily frustrated.
And the really frustrating thing is that we can say
this is a very bad idea, We can warn people,
(15:17):
we can point to the specific quotes, we can point
to this. Did no one see the big short? They
made movies about this, right, this is not an obscure
thing that happened. And yet we're all kind of stuck,
you know, going along for the ride because we cannot
opt out of the economic consequences of government decisions like this.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
And it's utterly ridiculous. Like you said, we've lived this nightmare,
and it wasn't that long ago. It's you know, if
you're a young adult, it's hard to remember, perhaps because
it was twenty eight seventeen years ago, I guess, but
you know, lessons should be learned from that. There are
certain reasons these criteria are in place. The ability to
pay back is the key to getting the loan in
(15:54):
the first place or having someone who can co sign
or having.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Collateral or whatever that is.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And so yeah, gim it reminds me of I think
I saw this on social media somewhere, but I don't
know who to give credit the typical HGTV House Hunter's episode.
As you know, she has a small etsy shot, he
raises salamanders. Their budget is two million dollars.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yes, it's who are these people? You know? Oh? And
their you know and their their parents are senior executives
at JP Morgan or something final.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
They'd have to pay Yeah wow, So please reconsider this.
This is a really really bad idea. So anyway, they
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(18:11):
course last week. Yeah, last week. That's how fast time goes.
But he's not even in office yet, and we've already
got Mam Donnie clones popping up all over the place.
And the fact that he won and won fairly comfortably
means they're going to be running the mom Donnie playbook.
One that we've talked about before certainly is Abu al Ayed.
He ran for governor and lost in the Democratic primary
(18:33):
in twenty eighteen to Gretchen Whitmer. He's now in a
pretty competitive Senate primary on the Democratic side. Polling is
scant on this There was one back in May that
showed El Sayed just two points behind Congressman Haley Stevens
and State Senator Mallory McMorrow at eleven percent, but now
it's even tighter. Steven's at twenty six, McMorrow at twenty five.
(18:55):
El sayet at twenty So he's in third, but he's
certainly not out of the running yet. And hats off
to the Free Beacon for this story. Basically, before he
launched the Senate campaign, l Sied did what Mamdanie didn't,
and that's delete his entire x feed because he knew
that some of the things he said are going to
pop up, And well, the Internet lives forever, doctor l saied.
(19:15):
So let's go through a couple of these sakes here.
According to the Free Beacon article, the Senate candidate had
anti ice statements related to the whipping of the Haitians.
Remember that whole hoax from twenty twenty one. Listen to
this Jim. He says, blaming horses for the dudes riding
them to whip Haitian refugees is like blaming Haiti for
(19:37):
the fact they're coming. Well, yeah, you should blame Haiti
for the fact that they're coming. But how about asking
how our policies decimate Caribbean and Central American countries and
why we allow white supremacists to police our border. So
not a radical there at all. He also, of course,
had anti police posts. One in June twenty twenty said
police have become standing armies we deploy against our our
(20:00):
own people, and that US cities quote spend way too
much on police departments to police poverty, and that fixing
that is what the defund movement is all about. He
also sent out a fundraising email in October marking the
second anniversary of the October seventh terrorist attacks in Israel,
but not mentioning the attacks, only saying two years ago
(20:20):
this month net in Yahoo's military launched a ground invasion
of Gaza, and therefore you should donate to him. I
guess there's other candidates and other states. Graham Platner certainly
one of them. You've got the insane lieutenant governor in
Minnesota who's expected to be competitive for the seat being
given up by Tina Smith. But here in Michigan, you know,
it really seems like the Mamdani playbook is being followed
(20:43):
step by step.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
First of all, Greg, we need to work on for
future episodes of this podcast. Every time we mentioned the
name Graham Plattner, I want the Nazi Flourish from Edward
John Williams soundtrack to Indiana Joe as the last for
saying bum but but I want that music to play
every time we say gret Later, Oh, I'm sorry he
(21:04):
didn't know it was an SS tattoo. Who could figure out?
You know, there are schools on our caps. Anyway, So
regarding the Michigan mom, dammy, I fully await like within
a month or two he's going to be saying, oh, no,
it was an autocorrect typo. I meant to write befriend
the police, not defund them, befriend the ice. That's not
you know. Now here's the thing. If you are running
(21:27):
for office and you genuinely have had a change, like
changing your mind is not actually a crime in politics,
believe it or not, it is okay to say, you know,
I've looked at this issue some more, I've studied this issue.
The policy that I supported in the past I've concluded
just won't work the way I wanted to, and thus
I'm going in a different direction. He could say, I've
talked to people who are victims of crime, and I
(21:47):
no longer think we should defund the police. He could say,
I have, you know, talked to people who have been
victims of you know, gang members, and or I've seen
the plight of human trafficking, or I've seen all kinds
the consequences of ill immigration, and I no longer believe
we should defund immigration and customs enforcement. Like you could
do that. It will probably cost them some votes, but
he could, you know, like, that's that's the intellectually honest
(22:11):
and legitimate way to say I don't have the opinion
now that I did back then. All throughout the presidential campaign,
we kept seeing Kamala Harris and people would say, oh,
in her Campo presidential campaign of twenty nineteen, because she
never really made it to twenty twenty. You know that
she had supported, you know, transgender surgeries for prisoners in
federal prisons, and we would just get this statement issued
(22:33):
through a spokesman that she no longer has that opinion,
and somehow became unfair to attribute those positions to her.
She never elaborated on when she changed her mind, why
she changed her mind, what she was thinking then, what
she was thinking now, Like you could do that, but
if you want people to believe that you generally have
changed your mind, it's good to explain people. Why walk
people through your thinking. We're not getting any of this
(22:55):
from this guy, and if he does, it'd be great,
but I don't think it's gonna be thest And I
think there's just idea of life vaguely nineteen eighty fourish
or well, we've always been at war with East Asia.
You know, I have always supported law enforcement in Ice,
and you can't prove it because I deleted my tweets,
except you know, very rarely are your tweets actually completely gone,
and people pay attention to these sorts of things, and
(23:16):
people like the Washington Free Beacon look at that and say,
wait a minute, you had all these tweets. And if
you want to say I was young and foolish, then
two years ago, what I you know, as Braham Plattner
said when he was getting his you know, when he
said all those radical things on Reddit, it was three
years ago, man, You know, it was like how he's
grown as a person so much in that in the
(23:37):
intervening three years. You can do it. But worth noting
that Kirsten Cinema and Arizona started out as a hard left,
you know, activist and then became a you know, fairly
hard left democratic member of got elected state wide in Arizona.
And I don't even know, I don't know which we'd
argue she became centrist, but she held the wine on
the filibuster and a couple of other issues and kind
(23:59):
of became a whole servant has developed a real soft
spot for her because she was willing to take those
very unpopular, very brave stances. Remember the lefty lunatic protesters
who were chasing her into the bathroom. You know, like
you know, you can say, you know what, I know
more about the issue now, and I actually don't think
that a policy proposal will work anymore. And I think
people respect that. But we don't see that from this guy.
(24:20):
It's like it has disappeared. It's gone. You're never gonna
see my old positions again, except they still exist, and
nobody's gonna forget that. Get Oh, no, I'm a sensible
centrist moderate Now. That doesn't work that way unless you
walk people through your thinking, you have a convincing explanation
of why you felt one way and then you felt
the other. I don't think we're gonna get that from
this guy, Greg.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
No, not not in the slightest. And the difference you
see between al Saied and Kirsten Cinema is is it
politically convenient or politically inconvenient for you to take this position.
Kirsten Cinema's political career essentially blew up as a result
of her changing her position on these things. That's how
you tell it's a genuinely held belief. There's no political
benefit for you in there. Now you've got else. I
(25:00):
d you know, he's not running for Rashida to Leeb's
congressional seat, where these positions will probably play pretty well.
You're running statewide in a pretty purplish state, and so
you got to not look insane, and those statements certainly
don't help.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, by the way, some people you can all candidate
could say, you know, I still in my heart believe
this is right, but I also know that the people
of this state do not agree with that position, and
so if elected as your senator, I would not push
for policies in that direction. People may or may not
choose to believe you. They senators serve for six years.
As we all like to joke, a whole bunch of
Democratic senators are very hard left for the first four
(25:33):
or five years, and then like a year before election day,
all of a sudden they start deviating from their party
and say, ah, ah, I'm an independent, I'm a maverick.
I don't always vote the way my party wants me to.
And we're like, what did you know? Did we just
neuralizer EF forre Bet and Black the last five years?
And unfortunately, in ultimately too many cases it works. But
like this guy could say, you know what, Michigan doesn't
support that policy, so I'm not going to stand by
(25:54):
it anymore. But I notice he's not saying that either.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you see this in the
in the shutdown votes too. Tim Kain just got reelected,
he can vote to reopen the government. Mark Warner's up
in twenty twenty six. I don't know, you can't face
the wrath of the base, so he still has to
vote no. And then in this situation, looking at some
of the head to head polling, and obviously we're still
very early. Else I ed is the best opponent for
(26:18):
Mike Rogers. He leads him by six. The others are tighter.
But as we talked about with Graham Platner, don't want
to run that risk, especially in a year that could
potentially trend against Republicans if it's anything like what we
just went through in Virginia and New.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Jersey and so forth.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So best to get him out of the way politically
as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, I don't like this, losing by winning, or you know,
let's have the opposition nominate Genghis Khan because we have
a really good chance. But the problem is if you
lose you know, and you never know when your candidate's
gonna get caught with a young hussy or god knows
what else right before election day, and then you end
up losing to Genghis Khan and then you've got Mongolian
warriors ravaging the landslide. We're having a little bit of
(26:57):
the country side. And who do you have to blame
for that? You can only blame yourself. So root against
a bad candidates, period.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Jim, Jim, it's pronounced jingis.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
That's right, that's right. Cut off here is cut off here.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
The haughty John Kerry anyway, Jim, Well, let's hope that
he doesn't get past the nominating process again, just like
happened to him eight years ago. But we will find
out anyway. Great to have you back. We'll do it
again tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
See then, see you tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Greg Jim Garretty, National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America.
Thanks so much for being with us today. Please be
sure to subscribe to the podcast if you don't already,
and have your friends do so, as welpo'd love to
have them listening. Thanks for your five star ratings and
your kind reviews. Please keep those coming. Also get us
on your home devices. All you have to say is
play Three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us both on X
(27:47):
He's at Jim Garretty, I'm at Greg Corumbus and coming
soon Facebook and Instagram. Have a great Wednesday. Join us
again Thursday for the next Three Martini Lunch
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garretty of National Review.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hey, so glad you're with us for the Wednesday edition
of The Three Martini Lunch. And check out who's here.
It's Jim Garrity. He's back from vacation. He also had
a couple of work related events in there. But Jim,
thanks as always to Andy McCarthy and Rob Long for
filling in. But great to have you back.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It is good to be back. And yes, listeners, I'm
so exhausted for my trips. The only way I can
relax is to take another trip. Jasha, I was in Asheville,
North Carolina. Listeners probably remember that part of the country
was hit by Hurricane Helen and just absolutely devastated. Very
poleased to report that's made quite a strong comeback. Not
everything's back to one hundred percent, but you know, downtown Ashville,
(00:52):
the River Arts District, all that stuff thriving once again,
lots of shoppers, lots of people dining, and the missus
and I did our part for the local economy. I'll
love say that much, including the micro breweries.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Excellent, excellent. Well glad you had a good time away,
and you know, a couple of things happened while you
were gone, you know, end of a shutdown and a
few other things. But a lot to talk about today.
We're going to get into the Michigan Mamdanie. We've talked
about him before, but abou l Sayed one of the
Democratic Senate candidates, and he's been very busy deleting old
tweets as he's trying to win a state wide race.
(01:25):
Now we're also going to be taking a look at
people in the housing industry, slow learners, not really learning
the lessons from a couple decades ago. And Lee's elden
oozing competence once again while talking about people who lack
it very much when it comes to competence, specifically Karen
Bass and Kevin Newsom.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
But in the.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Meantime, let's talk about competence when it comes to computing.
Because in business they say you can have better, cheaper,
or faster, but you only get to pick two. But
what if you could have all three at the same time. Well,
that's exactly what business is like. Cohere Thomson Reuters and
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Speaker 1 (02:07):
OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database,
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it faster? Well, OCI's block storage gives you more operations
per second cheaper. OCI costs up to fifty percent less
(02:30):
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Speaker 3 (02:35):
And right now, with zero commitment, try OCI for free.
Head to Oracle dot com slash martini. That's Oracle dot
com slash martini. To try OCI for free Oracle dot
com slash martini. All right, Jen, let's get to our
good martini here. And it's a good response to a
(02:56):
really bad situation. I don't know if you're keeping track
at home, but it's been more than ten months now
since the massive wildfires that devastated parts of Los Angeles County,
Pacific Palisades, of course, Malibu, many different areas, Tens of
thousands of people displaced, and in ten and a half months,
the number of permits paltry. There's talk of Gavin Newsom
(03:21):
trying to get low income housing in there and whether
people getting able to keep their land or not. But nonetheless,
not much has been done when it comes to getting
people back into their homes. But EPA administrator Lee Zelden
does not find this acceptable, and he was at a
Bright Part event yesterday and lit into both Governor Gavin
Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom need to get off of
their and allow all of the people in Los Angeles
to rebuild their freaking homes and their businesses. Okay, you
have people who are suffering extreme amount of frustration, anger
and pain because of whatever type of bureaucratic red tape,
delays and incompetency is resulting in the local and state
(04:06):
leadership preventing people from building what is theirs. They lost everything,
They lost their homes, they lost their businesses, and now
they just sit there and wait and they don't even
know when it's going to end.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It is in competency.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And for these people who live there who lost everything,
the most important thing that you can give them is
to instantly allow them to rebuild their lives.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well Jim, you got it, gaving you some a little slack.
He's very busy trolling President Trump, who he will not
ever be running against on x He's busy playing resistance
hero when it comes to Ice. But no, seriously, his
job is to get these people hoole again, and this
could not be going slower or make his competence look worse.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
First of all, Greg, I really wish Lee Zelden could
speak for the administration on all issues. He is always
on top of the facts, He is always specific, He
is always clear as demonstrating that clip. He can show anger,
but he doesn't come across as a guy who's rabble rousing.
He just it comes north across as like just righteous
(05:07):
indignation that people are not doing their jobs and explaining
how and why they're not doing their jobs. I am
looking at the twenty Los Angeles County Permitting Progress dashboard.
This is as of this morning, November twelve. Right there
are seven four hundred and seventeen destroyed or damaged units.
Right there are seven one hundred and sixty two building
(05:28):
permits issued right now. The last of the fires went
out at the end of January, somewhere over before them,
but like, let's assume that like February was the start
where you get started with this, no Nomember, right, So
we're now pretty much a good year into this, and
they are just barely above ten percent. Have they issued
permits for never mind rebuilding. Now, as I just mentioned,
(05:48):
I was just in Asheville, North Carolina, which had been
you know, River Arts District got you know, the flood
waters look like you know, from one of the marks
on one of the buildings, not quite as tall as
may I'm six two, but like let's say, you know,
five between five and six feet first floor of every
building destroyed. This is the River Arts District. A ton
of galleries there, and they just talked about the sheer
number of works of art that were destroyed, like so
(06:10):
just the artistic lass. But I think about the economic
loss for every artist, every gallery owner, everybody who's got
jobs in that entire region. And there are cafes and
there are restaurants and other stuff along that line. Now
I'm here a year ago, a little bit more, actually,
probably a little less than a year, and it's back,
probably not one hundred percent, but it is significantly back.
You know, Los Angeles, if we walk around the palisades
(06:33):
in a you know, at the end of January, what
are we going to see? My guess is we're going
to see a whole bunch of empty lots. We're going
to see a whole bunch of ubble. We're going to
see a whole bunch of places where the reconstruction has
not even yet begun. When you're at ten percent of
the permits that you need nearly a year later, absolutely abysmal.
I understand why Rick Caruso, who ran against Karen Bess
(06:54):
in the last mayoral election, he argued against a recall
election for Karen Bess. It shows a little bit. I
thought Karen Bass had failed her city as spectacularly as
just about any but any mayor has ever failed their city,
being on the other side of the world and not
coming back as soon as it was clear the city
was experiencing an unprecedented disaster. And he said, look, if
we do this, it gives her an excuse. She will
(07:16):
say this is a distraction. This is going to focus
our energy and time on fighting over whether the mayor
should stay in office. And I suppose I can see
that logic, But the problem is you've got Karen Bess
in place there, and you've got Gavin Newsom in place there,
and all the leadership that was in place before and
during the crisis is still in place after the crisis,
(07:37):
and we are less than shocked at the extraordinarily slow
pace of rebuilding out in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Blame probably belongs in both directions. A lot of those
permitting processes are local things, and so that's on Karen Bass.
But Gavin Newsom, you know, with the thick especially environmental
regulations that exist in California getting to the point where
you can actually rebuild, and environmental studies and all this nonsense,
you know, his government is certainly not doing anything to
(08:03):
expedite this process as well. And there should be a
massive indictment against him as he prepares a presidential campaign,
and just an indictment against blue state policies. If this
was happening in a red state and all these people
were still displaced, I think we'd be hearing a lot more.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
About it, you know, Greg. First of all, remember we
can go back, we can find the quotes Karen Bass
and Gavin Newsom pledge there was going to be rapid
rebuilding that they were they said they were taken away
all the permitting, you know, red tape and dureaucracy and
all that stuff, and this would be the fastest rebuilding
and we have you know, obviously we're seeing a very
slow incremental pace. You know what. I'm just really you know,
could like I could conceivably see happening. This is just predicted.
(08:38):
This just popped in my head as we're discussing this.
If you're JB. Pritzker and you've got a billion dollars,
imagine him going in and financing the reconstruction of a
whole bunch of stuff in Los Angeles and saying something like,
I'm here because your governor isn't Now. JB. Pritsker wants
to be President of the United States, wants to be
the Democratic Army in twenty twenty eight. Gavin Newsom wants
(08:59):
to be the No. Eight Like he could do that.
And if even if you're not, let's say you're any
one of these other Democrats who allegedly wants to run
for president. Kirsten Gillibrand apparently is still interested. And you know, gosh,
that poor woman in Iowa never got her ranch. But nonetheless,
like you could do something like this is an easy
target on Gavin Newsom, and you can say, if you
want to see what Gavin Newsom can do for America,
(09:21):
just take a look at what he has done for
Los Angeles County after these wildfires. My guess is that'll
be a very effective line of attack because it's basically
saying he's all talk, he's all smiles, he's all Gordon
Gecko hair is not about results, and that is, you know,
what should matter as a Democratic nominee in the next president.
That's entirely true.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
He had this quote, I think it was the last week,
maybe a week before, where he's like, not only have
we fulfilled every promise, We've done it ahead of schedule.
And I'm like, are you not paying attention to this?
Forget high speed rail, which is another just massive boondoggle,
but so many other things that are over budget, not
done well, or not happening at all. Just a terrible
track record all the way around. And it's the people
who are suffering. We'll talk about Gavin Newsom's political fortunes,
(10:00):
but these people have been homeless for months on end,
and it's not going to be changed anytime soon, unfortunately.
All right, not to the bad Martini now and Jim,
you and I are what certainly my children would consider
old at this point. But sometimes with that age comes
memory of things that happened that you probably want to
(10:23):
keep in mind when people suggest terrible ideas like this.
It was just a couple decades ago that we were
talking about subprime mortgages and it's the bubble gonna pop.
Well it did pop big time. Fall of two thousand
and eight. We saw major financial firms collapsing. We had
the stock market basically plummeting. We had to have the
Toxic Asset Relief Program or TARPS right in the middle
(10:46):
of the Obama McCain election, a total mess. And now
because of the fact that home prices have risen so
much at interest rates are higher than they were, it's
hard for people to buy homes right now. That is
a very legitimate concern. But there are right ways and
wrong ways to deal with this, and this is the
wrong way. I would suggest. This is from Payments Journal
(11:06):
dot com, but a lot of folks are reporting on this.
Fanny May is lowering its minimum six hundred and twenty
middle credit score requirement for purchases and refinance loans, a
move that could broad an access to home ownership for
borrowers with thinner credit files or lower scores. Following Freddiemac's lead,
fani May is removing the threshold from its Desktop Underwriter
(11:26):
eligibility determination system. How bureaucratic does that sound? But while
Desktop Underwriter may no longer require a credit score, it
will continue to evaluate loans using a comprehensive set of
credit risk criteria to determine whether they qualify for sale.
To Fani May, well, that's delightfully vague, Jim. But since
how we got into the problem that led to the
(11:47):
housing crash almost twenty years ago now is because well,
we need to get more people into homes. So you
know what, let's not worry about their credit rating or
their ability to pay these monthly mortgage payments. That bill
will come do, and it's going to come very painfully
if the last round is any indication.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
You know, Greg, As you were reading through that, I
was reminded of a quote from former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank. No,
I will not attempt to do an impression because someone
will accused it of being hateful, discriminatory, homophobic, et cetera.
But way back in two thousand and three, he said, quote,
I want to roll the dice a little bit more
in this situation towards subsidized housing. Unquote. Well, when you
(12:27):
roll the dice, there is always the chance you're going
to end up with snake eyes, and that is effectively
what happened. That is a major factor in what's set
off the Great Recession starting in late two thousand and eight,
continuing into two thousand and nine, and some would argue
continued well through the first term of Obama. Look, we
would all like to see everybody have an easier time
of buying their first house, right. The problem is a
(12:49):
whole bunch of people don't have assets, don't have an
income level, have not been able to put together a
nest egg or savings, and they have a situation where
they also don't have anything to put you know, put
up for collateral. They don't have They just they just
don't have much. The idea of saying, well, they don't
have much, but we'll give them loans anyway, well, then
you're taking a very big risk there, because, yeah, some
people are going to be very diligent. They're gonna pay
(13:10):
their mortgage every month. Some people are not right. I
also understand apparently. Great. Other great news is kind of related.
Did you know that adjustable rate mortgages are back? Oh? Great? Great? Yeah,
there are some people. There are some people who are
like probably our younger listeners, you know, all the younger
listeners we have, they're probably arms or just what are they? Okay?
Adjustable rate mortgages were this thing where you had a
very nice low rate for your mortgage, like the first
(13:32):
two years, three years, usually some short period like that,
and then after that it suddenly jumped up and all
of a sudden your mortgage papents became a lot more expensive.
So the idea was this is very popular in the
era of home flipping. There you can make an argument.
I wouldn't say completely that HGTV caused a great recession,
but listeners with memories will say, back in the Bush era,
this was a hot thing of like, you know you're
(13:53):
gonna you're going to flip a house. You buy one
that's gonna run down, fix it up, make it look
very nice, and then you sell it at a higher price.
You make pocket, you pay for all the repairs you made,
you pocket some money, you buy another house. And this
is how some people are making money there's that couple
on HGTV that this was what the whole show was about,
and look, if you can do it, great, But a
lot of them were buying them with adjustable rate mortgages
(14:14):
because they did not intend to own the house for
very long. The problem is when you can't sell the
house when you want to, and you reach the point where,
almos sudden, that mortgage payment that have been very small
suddenly gets a whole lot larger, and all of a sudden,
you're buying a house. And if you happen to be
signed to trying to sell a house at the wrong time,
all of a sudden, you can lose your shirt. And
that is what happened for a whole bunch of folks
(14:34):
during all that. So here's the thing. High credit standards,
as much as they're a pain, as much as they
involve saying no to people who are decent but who
otherwise don't have the financial resources, they are necessity because
otherwise the banks make a whole bunch of loans. These
people stop paying back the loans, and as they say,
if you owe the bank a million dollars, you really
(14:55):
have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion, dollars.
Then the bank has a problem, right, and that's what
happened with all this stuff. So we've seen all this before.
It is in living memory. It's like half a generation
if that. And yet here we are and they're going
forward again, and I just I am. It's extraordinarily frustrated.
And the really frustrating thing is that we can say
this is a very bad idea, We can warn people,
(15:17):
we can point to the specific quotes, we can point
to this. Did no one see the big short? They
made movies about this, right, this is not an obscure
thing that happened. And yet we're all kind of stuck,
you know, going along for the ride because we cannot
opt out of the economic consequences of government decisions like this.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
And it's utterly ridiculous. Like you said, we've lived this nightmare,
and it wasn't that long ago. It's you know, if
you're a young adult, it's hard to remember, perhaps because
it was twenty eight seventeen years ago, I guess, but
you know, lessons should be learned from that. There are
certain reasons these criteria are in place. The ability to
pay back is the key to getting the loan in
(15:54):
the first place or having someone who can co sign
or having.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Collateral or whatever that is.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And so yeah, gim it reminds me of I think
I saw this on social media somewhere, but I don't
know who to give credit the typical HGTV House Hunter's episode.
As you know, she has a small etsy shot, he
raises salamanders. Their budget is two million dollars.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yes, it's who are these people? You know? Oh? And
their you know and their their parents are senior executives
at JP Morgan or something final.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
They'd have to pay Yeah wow, So please reconsider this.
This is a really really bad idea. So anyway, they
probably won't. All right, let's talk about One Skin Love.
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one skin all right, Jim mom Donnie was elected, of
(18:11):
course last week. Yeah, last week. That's how fast time goes.
But he's not even in office yet, and we've already
got Mam Donnie clones popping up all over the place.
And the fact that he won and won fairly comfortably
means they're going to be running the mom Donnie playbook.
One that we've talked about before certainly is Abu al Ayed.
He ran for governor and lost in the Democratic primary
(18:33):
in twenty eighteen to Gretchen Whitmer. He's now in a
pretty competitive Senate primary on the Democratic side. Polling is
scant on this There was one back in May that
showed El Sayed just two points behind Congressman Haley Stevens
and State Senator Mallory McMorrow at eleven percent, but now
it's even tighter. Steven's at twenty six, McMorrow at twenty five.
(18:55):
El sayet at twenty So he's in third, but he's
certainly not out of the running yet. And hats off
to the Free Beacon for this story. Basically, before he
launched the Senate campaign, l Sied did what Mamdanie didn't,
and that's delete his entire x feed because he knew
that some of the things he said are going to
pop up, And well, the Internet lives forever, doctor l saied.
(19:15):
So let's go through a couple of these sakes here.
According to the Free Beacon article, the Senate candidate had
anti ice statements related to the whipping of the Haitians.
Remember that whole hoax from twenty twenty one. Listen to
this Jim. He says, blaming horses for the dudes riding
them to whip Haitian refugees is like blaming Haiti for
(19:37):
the fact they're coming. Well, yeah, you should blame Haiti
for the fact that they're coming. But how about asking
how our policies decimate Caribbean and Central American countries and
why we allow white supremacists to police our border. So
not a radical there at all. He also, of course,
had anti police posts. One in June twenty twenty said
police have become standing armies we deploy against our our
(20:00):
own people, and that US cities quote spend way too
much on police departments to police poverty, and that fixing
that is what the defund movement is all about. He
also sent out a fundraising email in October marking the
second anniversary of the October seventh terrorist attacks in Israel,
but not mentioning the attacks, only saying two years ago
(20:20):
this month net in Yahoo's military launched a ground invasion
of Gaza, and therefore you should donate to him. I
guess there's other candidates and other states. Graham Platner certainly
one of them. You've got the insane lieutenant governor in
Minnesota who's expected to be competitive for the seat being
given up by Tina Smith. But here in Michigan, you know,
it really seems like the Mamdani playbook is being followed
(20:43):
step by step.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
First of all, Greg, we need to work on for
future episodes of this podcast. Every time we mentioned the
name Graham Plattner, I want the Nazi Flourish from Edward
John Williams soundtrack to Indiana Joe as the last for
saying bum but but I want that music to play
every time we say gret Later, Oh, I'm sorry he
(21:04):
didn't know it was an SS tattoo. Who could figure out?
You know, there are schools on our caps. Anyway, So
regarding the Michigan mom, dammy, I fully await like within
a month or two he's going to be saying, oh, no,
it was an autocorrect typo. I meant to write befriend
the police, not defund them, befriend the ice. That's not
you know. Now here's the thing. If you are running
(21:27):
for office and you genuinely have had a change, like
changing your mind is not actually a crime in politics,
believe it or not, it is okay to say, you know,
I've looked at this issue some more, I've studied this issue.
The policy that I supported in the past I've concluded
just won't work the way I wanted to, and thus
I'm going in a different direction. He could say, I've
talked to people who are victims of crime, and I
(21:47):
no longer think we should defund the police. He could say,
I have, you know, talked to people who have been
victims of you know, gang members, and or I've seen
the plight of human trafficking, or I've seen all kinds
the consequences of ill immigration, and I no longer believe
we should defund immigration and customs enforcement. Like you could
do that. It will probably cost them some votes, but
he could, you know, like, that's that's the intellectually honest
(22:11):
and legitimate way to say I don't have the opinion
now that I did back then. All throughout the presidential campaign,
we kept seeing Kamala Harris and people would say, oh,
in her Campo presidential campaign of twenty nineteen, because she
never really made it to twenty twenty. You know that
she had supported, you know, transgender surgeries for prisoners in
federal prisons, and we would just get this statement issued
(22:33):
through a spokesman that she no longer has that opinion,
and somehow became unfair to attribute those positions to her.
She never elaborated on when she changed her mind, why
she changed her mind, what she was thinking then, what
she was thinking now, Like you could do that, but
if you want people to believe that you generally have
changed your mind, it's good to explain people. Why walk
people through your thinking. We're not getting any of this
(22:55):
from this guy, and if he does, it'd be great,
but I don't think it's gonna be thest And I
think there's just idea of life vaguely nineteen eighty fourish
or well, we've always been at war with East Asia.
You know, I have always supported law enforcement in Ice,
and you can't prove it because I deleted my tweets,
except you know, very rarely are your tweets actually completely gone,
and people pay attention to these sorts of things, and
(23:16):
people like the Washington Free Beacon look at that and say,
wait a minute, you had all these tweets. And if
you want to say I was young and foolish, then
two years ago, what I you know, as Braham Plattner
said when he was getting his you know, when he
said all those radical things on Reddit, it was three
years ago, man, You know, it was like how he's
grown as a person so much in that in the
(23:37):
intervening three years. You can do it. But worth noting
that Kirsten Cinema and Arizona started out as a hard left,
you know, activist and then became a you know, fairly
hard left democratic member of got elected state wide in Arizona.
And I don't even know, I don't know which we'd
argue she became centrist, but she held the wine on
the filibuster and a couple of other issues and kind
(23:59):
of became a whole servant has developed a real soft
spot for her because she was willing to take those
very unpopular, very brave stances. Remember the lefty lunatic protesters
who were chasing her into the bathroom. You know, like
you know, you can say, you know what, I know
more about the issue now, and I actually don't think
that a policy proposal will work anymore. And I think
people respect that. But we don't see that from this guy.
(24:20):
It's like it has disappeared. It's gone. You're never gonna
see my old positions again, except they still exist, and
nobody's gonna forget that. Get Oh, no, I'm a sensible
centrist moderate Now. That doesn't work that way unless you
walk people through your thinking, you have a convincing explanation
of why you felt one way and then you felt
the other. I don't think we're gonna get that from
this guy, Greg.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
No, not not in the slightest. And the difference you
see between al Saied and Kirsten Cinema is is it
politically convenient or politically inconvenient for you to take this position.
Kirsten Cinema's political career essentially blew up as a result
of her changing her position on these things. That's how
you tell it's a genuinely held belief. There's no political
benefit for you in there. Now you've got else. I
(25:00):
d you know, he's not running for Rashida to Leeb's
congressional seat, where these positions will probably play pretty well.
You're running statewide in a pretty purplish state, and so
you got to not look insane, and those statements certainly
don't help.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, by the way, some people you can all candidate
could say, you know, I still in my heart believe
this is right, but I also know that the people
of this state do not agree with that position, and
so if elected as your senator, I would not push
for policies in that direction. People may or may not
choose to believe you. They senators serve for six years.
As we all like to joke, a whole bunch of
Democratic senators are very hard left for the first four
(25:33):
or five years, and then like a year before election day,
all of a sudden they start deviating from their party
and say, ah, ah, I'm an independent, I'm a maverick.
I don't always vote the way my party wants me to.
And we're like, what did you know? Did we just
neuralizer EF forre Bet and Black the last five years?
And unfortunately, in ultimately too many cases it works. But
like this guy could say, you know what, Michigan doesn't
support that policy, so I'm not going to stand by
(25:54):
it anymore. But I notice he's not saying that either.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you see this in the
in the shutdown votes too. Tim Kain just got reelected,
he can vote to reopen the government. Mark Warner's up
in twenty twenty six. I don't know, you can't face
the wrath of the base, so he still has to
vote no. And then in this situation, looking at some
of the head to head polling, and obviously we're still
very early. Else I ed is the best opponent for
(26:18):
Mike Rogers. He leads him by six. The others are tighter.
But as we talked about with Graham Platner, don't want
to run that risk, especially in a year that could
potentially trend against Republicans if it's anything like what we
just went through in Virginia and New.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Jersey and so forth.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So best to get him out of the way politically
as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, I don't like this, losing by winning, or you know,
let's have the opposition nominate Genghis Khan because we have
a really good chance. But the problem is if you
lose you know, and you never know when your candidate's
gonna get caught with a young hussy or god knows
what else right before election day, and then you end
up losing to Genghis Khan and then you've got Mongolian
warriors ravaging the landslide. We're having a little bit of
(26:57):
the country side. And who do you have to blame
for that? You can only blame yourself. So root against
a bad candidates, period.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Jim, Jim, it's pronounced jingis.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
That's right, that's right. Cut off here is cut off here.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
The haughty John Kerry anyway, Jim, Well, let's hope that
he doesn't get past the nominating process again, just like
happened to him eight years ago. But we will find
out anyway. Great to have you back. We'll do it
again tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
See then, see you tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Greg Jim Garretty, National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America.
Thanks so much for being with us today. Please be
sure to subscribe to the podcast if you don't already,
and have your friends do so, as welpo'd love to
have them listening. Thanks for your five star ratings and
your kind reviews. Please keep those coming. Also get us
on your home devices. All you have to say is
play Three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us both on X
(27:47):
He's at Jim Garretty, I'm at Greg Corumbus and coming
soon Facebook and Instagram. Have a great Wednesday. Join us
again Thursday for the next Three Martini Lunch
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