Brewers Prospects and Ella Langley

The Mark Belling podcast is presented by Uline. For quality shipping and industrial supplies U, hasLIN everything in stock. Visit you line. com. The Mark Belling podcast is a production of IHAT radio podcasts . There are certain songs that when you hear them the first time they make an instant impact on you . That's not most songs. Most songs , you have to hear them two or three or four or five times before they start making a connection. When some especially back in the day when top forty radio went you always wanted new stuff. Nobody ever wanted to hear anything that was even a month old because there was all this great new stuff coming out but when the new song was played it usually went in one ear and out the other and it took a few times. Oh , I guess I like that . When I was a kid , there was a song. It was like an old people's song . I heard it for the first time on the radio , I think I was in my grandmother's house because I can't imagine anybody else that would have been listening to that radio station . noticed it right away because it was so haunting . I've mentioned this a couple of times over the years and every time I do , other people my age say the same thing that they were haunted by this song as well . It was a song by Peggy Lee, who was an interesting character in and of herself. She was like a torch singer in the forties and the fifties saying standards and so on . She wasn't really attractive, she wasn't ugly. She had an unusual she said something unusual about her appearance. She was blonde but probably not really blonde. Anyway , the song was called Is that all there is ? I mean, even as a kid, this was haunting . The message of the song essentially okay, this life you know this all there is ? It's one of the great existential questions . Is that all there is ? That song comes to mind when I see whatever this ceasefire end of the war agreement between the United States and Iran consists of is that all there is ? I want to analyze this deal. I want to analyze what's happened with the war and where we are . I think one of the reasons that you have seen almost no criticism and almost no praise of this is people are having a hard time figuring out what to make of it. You line moves f ast so your business doesn't miss a beat, from shipping and industrial supplies to office furniture. ULINE offers a wide range of products that are in stock and ready to ship the same day if you order by six PM, even the big stuff, ULINE's expert customer service team is available twenty four seven to answer your questions , help you quickly and easily place an order or assist with any other business needs . Visit U LIN . com . So there's going to be a signing ceremony at the end of the week on june day actually, june nineteenth in Switzerland . It's being described as a deal to end the conflict . But the deal is basically a framework for further negotiations Did we get enough Did we give up too much ? Did Trump settle too soon ? Now, one of the things that's made the political dynamic in this interesting is there have been three factions here . One , the people that are adamantly opposed to the fact that the war happened at all , that would be some on the right and a lot on the left , and everybody who hates Israel . Then there are others who supported the war but wanted the war to be one that actually would result in a victory . And a victory in a war means the other side surrendering and usually their government being toppled. Sometimes governments survive after surrendering, but usually not . And then the third side was the one that was in between . They trusted and supported what Trump was doing and were looking to devastate and cripple Iran for a long time to come , but had no interest whatsoever in a prolonged war or a ground war that would result in actual victory. So there's been three sides to this thing all along . And I don't know that any of the three can say right now that they're happy with this in part because I'll grant you it's vague . The strait of hormuz will be reopened . That means we end our blockade and Iran allows the free flow of oil through the strait . Well, that was going to be the term of any deal . The Strait of Hormuz gave both sides leverage. Iran could stop oil from going through, and the United States could stop Iran from sending any oil out . The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz raised global oil prices. It didn't affect the oil supply in the United States, but oil is globally priced. So the price went up . It really hurt Europe and the other parts of China and the other parts of the world that depend a lot more on oil that comes out of the Strait of Hormuz, but that clearly had to be ended and furthermore from the perspective of Iran, if the Strait of Hormuz, if our blockade doesn't end , their economy just cripples. So that part had to happen . So it was what both sides got on the other side of this. What Iran clearly gets is, we stop bombing them . I mean, our leverage is really simple to figure out. We're bombing the hell out of them . It wasn't like Iran was bombing us. All they were doing was throwing a few drones around Israel and the Gulf States and a couple of other places . We were sustaining no damage at all Some of our troops obviously were at risk and some tragically died, but in the context of a war, a relatively low number . Iran was on the losing side of the war continuing, but obviously Iran had some leverage. They can keep throwing the drones around . And while we in the United States don't need their oil , others do, and a restriction in the world's oil supply means an increase in the price of oil . I want to read some analyses of these from both sides . The first report comes from the Ham News Service in Israel, and I think that they have very good information here because it's addressing the fact that the Trump administration itself had three factions . There was the faction that I think within the administration didn't want this war at all . There was the fact wanted to deal with Iran once and for all . And then I mentioned that one in the middle that kind of trusts Trump and hopes to inflict great damage on Iran, and that's good enough. You know who that constituent? That's Trump. That was his position on this . I want to quote from the report from Hyam, the Israel news source. Trump's negotiating team, which was JD Vance, the vice president and his two envoys, Jared Kushner, his son of law, and Steve Witcoff . They have been advocating, according to this report for a deal . Now they would be on the side of those that are looking perhaps for an end to this . There are many who believe that JD Vance did not support this in the first place . Nonetheless, Trump put him on the negotiating team. He also has on the negotiating team Jared Kushner , who is very pro Israel and Steve Witcoff , Jewish, I believe , but also a very close confident and very close friend of President Trump and he's go to negoti ator. So according to this report, they have been advocating for a deal with Iran . I'll quote here, partly due to concerns that the regime will not collapse within a reasonable timeframe and partly due to pressure from Qat ar. Qatar is one of the Gulf states . They want this over with because they're tired of these drones being lobbed into their country by Iran . In addition to that , the JD Kushner , Wickwav Crowd said , It doesn't look like they're going to topple. Now let me interject with my opinion on this. I believe one of the hopes that we had is that this pound ing that Iran got would result in some in the government turning on others , that there'd be perhaps a military coup that the military would decide to oust and kill the religious leaders and put in place a total civilian government less radicalized that allowed Iran to re enter the civilized world that they get rid of all of this crap of bank rolling terrorist organizations in the Middle East . And they instead decide to sit back and relax and enjoy the fact that they're an oil rich nation and make a fortune kind of like Saudi Arabia and allow their country to have a higher standard of living, they'd still be an Islamic Republic , but wouldn't be as deranged. And I think that the goal was by bringing on this pressure and seeing the damage that Iran's hardened line has done to them. There they are with half the country blown up . But the reality is that didn't happen . Now I have some thoughts on whether or not that government will ever fall at the tail end of this discussion. Back to the peace . On the other side, remember, that was the first side, JD, Whitcoff and Krushner. On the other side , these are the more hardliners that wanted to have a more devastating blow to a rad. I think you can guess who those would be. Those of you, of course, from the Cabinet, Secretary of War Pete Haggs, Secretary of State Mark Rubio On the other side, Secretary of State Mark Rubi and Secretary of War Pete Hagsith recently presented an assessment that the Iranian regim e is dying due to economic pressure . And strengthening this pressure is the right way to achieve surrender or the overthrow of the regime. Let me interject . There have been reports from like the mayors of the big cities in Iran that the people are suffering badly , that insurrection is ready to begin . The people are going to return to the streets . Prices are out of control. There are shortages of goods , and the internal pressure from the population might be so much that the people return to the streets and this time the police forces in these individual cities will join with the protesters . So that was the stance of Rubio and Hags. We've got them unkilled. All we have to do is maybe starve them for two or three more weeks. And this powder keg's going to pop. So here's Trump in the middle . He's got JD Wickoff, and this is why I think that this report from Israel is very, very and again, this is not the Israeli government, it's a news agency in Israel. Very credible. It makes sense. So you've got on the one hand some of the more pragmatic members , JVU, I don't think wanted the war at all , and then Kushner and Wickloff , both pragmatic people, saying we don't think this government's going to fall, Mr. President . You know, there's people fighting within and we've knocked off a bunch of their leaders, but for everybody we killed, we get another lunatic in charge over there. There are some that are willing to negotiate and more moderate . But you've got these stone age people who want jihad . There's just a lot of them. And so far there doesn't appear to be enough of an uprising among the populace to get the kind of civil war necessary to finally get rid of these Cretans at all. We think we've done enough and there's not that much more to accomplish, but in the meantime , Rubio and Hagsa think Iran's in really rough shape right now . Why ease up? Even if we don't do much bombing, keep the blockade up and starve off that country . So here's Trump in the middle of that . And I've always felt that Trump's instincts are remarkably good. I don't know if Trump plays chess, but if he learned the game, I think he'd be unbelievably good at it. He's always able to see things well beyond what most people have. It's why he's solved so many problems that have existed in the world because he's looked at some of these things with fresh eyes . So those are the two sides. The back to the report . Last week, Trump decided to pursue go with the deal route. So in other words, Trump made the decision of this conflicting advice that he was going to get to side with Vance, Kushner , and Wickoff. The memorandum of understanding includes the suspension of all sanctions on Iran's oil sales, which could bring in eighty to one hundred twenty billion dollars a year. Tre Theasury Secrettary Scot Bassent reportedly pushed against lifting the sanctions. Now that's interesting . Bassent has been one of the stars of the administration . He's been way more mag a than you would think, but he's also a pragmatist . Apparently Bassett was saying, Don't lift the sanctions . Bassett, I think, was less concerned about the impact on the global oil market than the fact that these sanctions were in fact working . If you've got sanctions against Iran's oil, you've got sanctions against Iran . What else comes out of that God forsaken country ? A literal use of the term . Treasury Secretary Scott Passen reportedly pushed against lifting sanctions on Iran as returning to them would be problematic . Terms were changed so that sanctions would only occur at least in part after the Strait of Hormuz is fully operational . Now a report from Wyde . President Trump has demanded Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu halt fire in Lebanon and begin a withdrawal of IDF forces . But Netanyahu initially rejected both demands. So you got the parallel thing going on. You still have Israel going after Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran wants that connected . So Trump wants Netanyahu to call off the dogs, figure, my goodness gracious , you've really damaged them up there. How much do you need to do BB ? This report now from Prey Yingst . This is Sunday. Israel just struck Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. This follows Hezbollah fire into northern Israel overnight. The strikes today, this would have been yesterday, in Beirut are creating issues with finalizing a deal. A diplomat involved in the talks told Fox News. This is a clear attempt by Israel to sabotage the president's deal and drag the United States back into war. So some believe that Israel keeps firing out Hezbollah because they don't like this deal that we've made with Iran because they want the war to continue because Israel's goal, of course, is for Iran's government to be whipped . And Iranian military official said Israeli strikes in Beirut will not go unanswered after similar strikes last week, Iran launched thirty ballistic missiles at Israel . President Trump, this is Trump from yesterday afternoon . The Israeli attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a peace deal with Iran. This happened right before the peace deal was released. Trump said he asked Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu , what the bleep are you doing? Trump said, That's what he asked. And you know, damn well, that is what Trump asked him. I almost want to say the F word in here. I don't use it, but Trump said it to Netanyahu and the fact that he said it to Netanyahu, see this is where People have so underest imated Trump . He will stand up toe to toe with anybody on this planet . This isn't your Barack Obama bowing before everybody, and it certainly isn't Joe Biden's scene and bright yeapping about relationships that he had in the nineteen seventies . It was shortly after that conversation that the deal was struck . Is Israel in full agreement or not, or will Israel behave simply because it's in their interest to keep Trump on their side ? We'll still see . Now, my take on all of this , I think that the ceasefire ceasefire is not the right term. Deal to end the hostilities is a good thing . As I have been saying throughout my discussion of this , it cannot be the goal of the United States to overthrow the Iranian government . I've said this in the beginning. I've said if that government falls, it's a good thing . But we can't do it . I don't believe we can do it without a ground invasion. In other words, troops on the ground go all the way to Tehran . The Iranian army doesn't have much left, but they still have soldiers. They still have guns, and they still probably have some tanks. That would be a bloody conflict and who knows what the people on the streets of Iran, a very divided country would do . And in the end, it's not our responsibility. If Iran's going to have a bunch of lunatics fighting that country, it is our need to control them so that they can't damage our interests in the world . We can't change their government . The only people who change their government are the Iranian people . And the Iranian people are up against it because those who go on the street and try to challenge this government, they get killed . But in any revolution , there are going to be people who get killed until eventually the rebels, the populace, if they're if they represent the majority of opinion in the country , overwhelm and those that are doing the killing turn their guns around and start pointing them in the other direction. This is how popular revolts have go back to Cuba . It's El Castro and Batista came into power . Eventually the cops and the military stopped siding with the old government and they sided with the comes and the government fell the next thing you know,, Batista was the airlift himself out of on a helicopter . I get mixed up over what happened and what happened to the Godfather . I think the Godfather was pretty accurate, wasn't it? Was it New Year's Eve? it W reallyas New Year's E ve? I think it was just the godfather was the best telling of the Cuman Godfather Godfather too, obviously . Remember Michael was down there and the middle of all of this he,'s going to kill What's his name played by Lee Steinberg? Anyway, I clearly digress . But as I said, I do believe conditions exist that that government has to be shaky because it's already fragmented . I think the local government leaders are not on the same page as the religious mullahs and who knows where the military is Here is what could and perhaps should happen . The United States is not the only nation that wants that government to fall . I think everybody wants that government to fall with the poss ible exception of China and Russia. Possible . You know that the Gulf States want it to fall, they're scared to death of these monsters . You know, damn well, the Saudis want it to fall . Who has a lot of money? The Saudis have a lot of money. What do the people in Iran not have? They don't have money and they don't have guns . Well, if there's anybody good at covert operations beyond Israel, it's the Saudis . And if you want to start funding a resistance in there , let the damn Saudis do it . It doesn't need to be our responsibility. Our concern with Iran is A at bankrolls terror and B develops nuclear weapons that it can use against our allies and ultimately us and then transportable nuclear weapons that they can give to terrorists a so called nukana suitcase. That's our concern . And I think we have significantly weakened Iran. The people arguing, well, we lost the war. To me, that's ridiculous. What do we lose? What did we lose? We lost some loss of life among members of the military . But in terms of numbers, it wasn't extreme . What we have gained is undeniably Iran is the very fact that Iran has to kind of even if it's pretend suck up and sign this thing and say they aren't going to do this that or the other thing furthermore , we all know that they hardly have any aircraft left. The only attacks that they're doing are drones because they've got some of the drones hidden. They might have a little bit of nuclear dust laying around. Most of their top scientists are dead . Goals have been achieved. I want to go to the next partial portion of this . One of the criticisms of Trump is that he's taken his eye off the ball . You know, Iran said, I'm a president of peace. We can't have all these foreign entanglements. I'm going to solve our domestic problems. And there are people who have made the argument that Trump is ignoring our domestic issues because of this focus on Iran I just think that that statement is untrue . One has to argue about what our biggest domestic problems were . But Trump has solved the border problem . I think that was domestic problem number one . Secondly , and this is the issue that the news media has just been pretending not to see forever . The border problem was also the fetanyl problem . Almost no fentanyl is produced in the United States and certainly almost no fentanyl that's on the streets is produced in the United States . Fentanyl used for medical purposes and so on is not the fentanyl that's getting to the streets. This fentanyl isn't being stolen out of hospitals some, maybe, but the overwhelming majority of fentanyl is coming into the United States across the Mexican border. The reason that so many people were ODAN on fentanyl is fentanyl was cheaper than all of the other opioids, even though it was more powerful , because there was so damn much of it. Fentanyl is so strong, you need only a little bit for a monstrous impact. So it's so addict ive . The fentanyl was coming in across the Southern border . By closing the border, Trump has gone a long way toward improving the fentanyl problem . All the reports that I've seen indicate that the fentanyl overdoses are now somewhat down. There's still a massive amount of fentanyl that's already here. I mean, the drug dealer is stockpiled it like crazy when it came in. And there are other opioids that you can use and we still have meth and everybody and crack and everything else rolling around out there . But in the meantime, this story that has gotten I'm sorry, scant coverage . Nino Guerrero, you know he is, he's the head of TDA Trend Aragua We went and killed him This is exactly what Trump ran on. You know , a lot of politics is campaign, rhetoric and blust er . Some people on the left, every bit of Trump's bluster they took literally and some people on the right thing thought that this is all just blustered by Trump. Okay, he's not going to do any of these things that sound half crazy. The reality is that a good chunk of Trump was indeed blustering campaign rhetoric, but he was dead serious about some of it. He said, We are not going to let you get away with bringing these drugs into our country to kill our children because the border was closed. They started bringing this stuff up in the boats of the Caribbean , we bombed them . And now they located Nino Guerrero . The term they're using is I'm going to quote Trump here. At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Nina Guerrero, the infamous leader of Trend iuga, one of the most bloodthirsty terrorist organizations on planet Earth. Before I returned to office, Joe Biden opened our southern border to millions of illegal criminals and allowed this foreign army to rape, maim, and murder American citizens with total immunity . During my campaign, I pledged to expel these monsters from our country and bring justice to the families of those slaughtered, including the precious twelve year old Jocelyn Angari, twenty two year old Lake and Riley , and countless other beautiful souls. With this action, the United States military has brought retribution for them, their families, and their loved ones. Early in my administration, I delivered on my promise to designate Prenday Uragua as a foreign terrorist organization, deport thousands of evil criminals and wage war against the cartels who have long been waging war against our citizens , while weak leaders left America helpless and def enseless. During this entire time that the gangs were crossing the border , Joe Biden and Kamala Harris kept saying, We can't do anything about the border because you have to pass some bill. Remember that we can't pass this bill . We can't pass this bill. We can't pass this bill. No bill passed. Trump closed the border. And then well, the scurry come on. Well, we need to have a conversation about the scourge of illegal drugs and what's coming into the country. We need to have a conversation. Trump's said having a conversation. He's grabbed up as many as he can and has deported them despite the fact that leftists have tried to obstruct these deportations of criminals all along. And he's trying to target as many of the leaders of the drug gangs as possible . Now clearly, Trende Aragua makes a fortune . And if you know anything about street drug gangs , you kill somebody, somebody else gets in charge. We haven't eliminated Trende Aragua, but he sent a clear message to these leaders that if you're the leader of this organization, you've got a target on your back, you're going to be killed. I don't know that you can argue that this act was as significant as the war with Iran , but it certainly proves my point that Trump did not take his eye off of domestic priorities . And as I say, I just think his two big ones, they're a lot, but his two big ones . We're closing the border and doing what we can to stop the flow of these cheap, unbelievably potent narcotics into the country . People are going to debate his trade policy . Are the tariffs good or bad? Well, we do know this. The tariffs are bringing in a fortune . Have they resulted in a renaissance yet in Amer ican manufacturing ? Probably not. On the other hand, the American tech economy in particular is in the middle of massive transition. As you know, I believe that the software industry is going to collapse. The sem iconductor industry is in the still the early stages of becoming by far the most important industry in the world as semiconductors power AI and rockets and everything else . Anyway Let's turn our attention now to Wisconsin politics. You know who had a convention over the weekend? Jesus, you know who had a convention over the weekend, don't you? The Wisconsin Communist Party had a convention over the weekend. This is actually I love it when all bunches when I just love these kinds of things. The Democratic Party at their convention . As you probably know, the Democrats have an extremely contentious primary going on for governor right now . And Republicans have been enjoying this thing, almost eating popcorn with delight watching . What's going on Polling has been somewhat limited and you get the strong sense that the vast majority of Democrat voters haven't decided what they intend to do even though the election's only two months away . The ads are just now starting Who goes to the convention? Well, the activists go to the convention . There are about six hundred or so that showed up . And one of the things they did is they had a straw pool . Now, again, this isn't a straw pool of boaters. It's a straw poll though of the leaders of the party . And the results were quite interest ing. We have the sense based on a little bit of polling that's out there right now , that the two front runners in the overall race are the two that Republicans want to win because they seem to be the two most unelectable . Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor whose entire life is baggage , who's rather stupid and has already proven his inability to lose a statewide campaign in an otherwise huge Democrat year . And Francesca Hong, who, like Barnes is a deadbeat , and more so than Barnes, is an out and out Marxist. She describes herself as an anti capitalist. She said she dreams of living in a society in which there are no prisons . That's who the rank and file voters of the Democratic Party want because the rank and file voters of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin have become a bunch of comies. Evidently they wouldn't be backing these two l unatics . So what do the activists in the party say? Well, some of them are pragmatic people, as you know . And there's been a lot of hand wringing going on among Democrats, Democratic leaders because they both know that Barnes and Huang are terrible candidates in a general election. In the meantime, here's Tom Tiffany, whose campaign seems to be I'm not nuts . I'm from Northern Wisconsin I work on dams and I'm not nuts. Look at these crazies over there . So there's been some concern from Democrats that Tiffany is a very mainstream guy . And we're going from Tony Evers , an adult guy who hired a staff of leftists to run the administration for them, but didn't seem radical at all to either Mandela B arnes , the prospect of him being the governor of Wisconsin would frighten many people, and Francesca Hong, who would instantly be probably the most radical elected official in the United States of America . So they took the straw pool. Here it is . The leader was Sarah Rodriguez, the Lieutenant Governor, who early on in this, I think most people thought was going to win the nomination. Why? She's the Lieutenant ic governor . She's got some things going against her though. She isn't real bright . She's not the stupidest one in there, but she's not really, really politically savvy . She's also failed to rack up the support of many influential Democrats, and she also has the baggage of being despised by the entire Evers team. They can't stand her There must, I don't know what it was, but there was a huge rift that developed after she won the Democrat primary for Lieutenant Governor four years ago and had to become Tony Evers' running mate because Tony Evers gave her no responsibility whatsoever But they can stand her . And while Evers has clearly lost influence within the Democratic Party, some of those aids at the apparatus and all of that, they've done everything in their power to stop Sarah from getting the nomination. Nonetheless, she is the leader here and she's got the backing of public employees and she's got a backing of a lot of the kind of government long term government madison crowd. Second with one hundred thir andty eight is Francesca Hong . She's the most radical of the bunch and it's a radical party. So again, I'll recap your numbers. Sarah Rodriguez one hundred sixty four, Francesca Hong one hundred and thirty eight. Third, Kell De Roy's. Kilde Roy ce actually got the most support at the Democratic Convention eight years ago . She ran for governor eight years ago the time that the Evers well . She's also from Madison. She's a member of the state senate . The lefties love her. She's got the endorsement of the state teachers union , but her wide popular support is Zilch . She got killed by Evers in that Democratic Priory at eighteen. There's no reason to think that she's going to go anywhere right now, but again , the Madison , you know, the Madison Democratic crowd and so on, the rank of fellow Democrats, there are people in there that love her. Now, again, I've just gone through three names and you may have noticed that some names have not yet come up. Fourth , Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, seventy eight . That's a pretty weak showing . The problem that the Democrats have had, they're trying, of course, to stop Barnes and Hong from winning the nomination , but what they haven't yet done is figured out who we're supposed to rally around as the alternative . The way to stop Barnes and Hong is for all of the other Democrats to force everybody else out of the race, anoint one of those candidates , and then put the word out . This is the one we want, you know, and Democrats do what they're told . And Crowley has tried to position himself as I'm that alternative . African American from Milwaukee , seemingly not radically crazy . But among the ranking fellow the party, six hundred people only seventy eight picked him. There's still three names you haven't heard yet . Fifth, Joel Brennan fifty two . Joe Brennan, former official in the Evers Administration, longtime Milwaukee hangar on, Rand Discovery World did a bunch of other things. He's the candidate no Republican supports because Joel Brennan, if he's the Democratic candidate, I believe would probably win. Brennan puts out a pict ure of you know , I look at Brennan as Tom Barrett. And as much of a lightweight Tom Barrett is and I think Joe Brennan's a lightweight , he doesn't present crazy vibes. Tom Barrett presented kind of like do nothing kind of soft leftism and dumbbell ideas like the trolley, but he wasn't a Marxist or ready thing . The problem in the among the Democratic Party though is Joe Brennan's a white male . They don't like those types of people . So there he goes with only fifty two votes. He does has raised a fair amount of money and he's got ads on the air . I don't see how he gets anywhere, however, if he doesn't start attacking the others as being too radical for Wisconsin and Democrats have a very, very hard time calling out their own extremists. There's still two names you haven't heard yet . Sixth place forty one votes, Mandela Barnes . This is remarkable . Mandela in the polls that have been taken , Mandela Barnes is leading among the voters, but among the actual Democrat activists, he's six out of seven . So you have a tremendous divide between the people involved in leading the Democratic Party and the average Democrat voter. People involved in leading the party don't want Barnes at all. First of all, none of them like him . He's an eagle maniac, he's not that bright and as a candidate he's, got tons of baggage . Deadbeat is him, went a year without a driver's license , got into trouble with his homeowners association for a non payment of his dues, delinquent in his property taxes hosted a party in which he put out a poster that said no ratchets allowed . So the Democrats , they don't like him . B , they don't think that it's his time to run for this job. He had his chance. It was the candidacy for the Senate when he lost to Ron Johnson . So out of six hundred Democrats there, forty one of them said they wanted Mandela Barnes it dead last . Missy Hughes at ten . Now let's talk about Missy Hughes If you were to ask me who the strongest Democrat candidates in a general election, not like this to win the primary , but in a one on one race against Ton any T,iff who would be the strongest Democrat, I would rank them in this order . One Brennan , two Missy Hughes . Get to her in a moment . Three, Sarah Rodriguez , four David Crowley . Five Francesca Huang Six Mandela Barnes and seven Kelle Royce. I think Keller Royce would be the easiest to beat and Mandela the second easiest to beat. The two toughest to beat would be and And I think if they got the got the nomination, both of them could be Tiffany. I think it's likely to be a Democrat year not everybody agrees with me on that . And I think Brennan would be their strongest candidate at Missy Hughes the second strongest . Missy Hughes ran the state economic development agency in the Evers Administration. She's a lefty like everybody of that administration, but she's not a whacked out, weirded out lefty. She was the one Democrat that backed the deal , the Evers deal , to provide property tax relief in Wisconsin and increase spending on the schools. The rest of the Democrats all killed that deal. That was a deal that according to the polls, eighty percent of Wisconsin voters supported . Missy Hughes is backing in among some in the Madison LGBTQ plus community. She's backed by some people in the Evers Administration, but she has zero name recognition and her platform to run from former head of the economic development agency. It's not an elected position and in a party in which everybody is looking for somebody who's most strongly identifies with a particular group . She isn't the leftiest . She's not the most pragmatic . She's not African American. She doesn't have a name any kind of name recognition . If there is some sort of decision to anoint a candidate who is more mainstream , I think it's going to have to come from Missy Hughes, who has no chance, Crowley and Rodriguez, and two of them have to drop out of the race and endorse the one that gets it in exchange for some promise of future support for something else One national story . I'm not going to get into this in any great detail, but I have this fear that the next Trump administration official to leave as Kennedy . I think everyone that has left so far , in the case of Telsi Gabbert, she left for the obvious reason her husband has a very bad illness. She may not have been on the same page with Trump as some things, but I don't think that she was forced out like say Camp Pam Bondi or someone or Christie No . I think the loss of Kennedy would be significant. I'm just reading between the lines here . Trump knows he's got to focus on the inflation problem . Kennedy's desire to make the American food supply healthier is undeniably inflationary . One of the reasons food in America has been traditionally very cheap is because we're eating all this processed stuff that lasts forever . I haven' etaten a can of spam in fifty years, but I'm willing to bet that if you look at if you want if they make a candidate, the expiration date is going to be sometime in twenty thirty two. The reason this stuff's so bad for us is because it's loaded with preservatives that it lasts forever . My theory has always been. The reason it is screwing up our bodies is once it gets into our bodies it doesn't break down because it's made to last until twenty thirty two. And all of this other processed stuff , if Kennedy succeeds in forcing the food industry to get all of that stuff out and we have stuff that you know, you buy a can of beans and you got to use it within three weeks in the same way for fresh stuff because they're getting all the chemicals and all the other crap out of there . It's clearly very inflationary . And I think that Trump has not been all that willing to green light getting rid of all the dyes and preservatives and chemicals and all of this stuff that allows food to last longer . And he's not been on the same page as Kennedy. And I just suspect that there's some clashing that's going on. I think that this would be a mistake. First of all, I think that Kennedy is rightly focusing on the fact that public health policy in the United States has been hijacked by the drug companies who are not particularly interested in a healthier America. They are particularly interested in selling drugs to cure diseases once people get them. And he's gone after the food industry , which has made hundreds of billions of dollars putting crap into our bodies and discouraging people from eating fresher foods that may, of course , cost them more money. You're listening. Oh , back in the old radio days , one of the things that you were always taught to do and I have been in radio since I actually think I was there when Marcoti had been at the I've been in radio for a long time. You're always taught to do teases, teases, teases. Jason Still in radio. Do you do any teases ? You do a teases . See , in doing a podcast , I think a tease backfires. If I'm going to say something's coming up, why wouldn't you just skip ahead and list en to this thing that I said right now? Back when you were listening to live radio, the only way you can hear it is you'd have to stick around and wait for the guy to get around to either play the song or say the thing that you're talking about. I am only going to say I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I have something good for you . It's going to be something you have to do because it's something I can't do on the podcast. I can't explain it any better than that. I'm not going to tell you what it happens other than the podcast is more than half over right now, so you don't have it's gonna be somewhere in here . You're listening to the Mark Belling podcast. Charisma Customs and Delafield, their sponsor , they're also where I took my car. They do a lot of things to make your car look really good and stand up to all that we have to put up with on Wisconsin Roads. The package I took included ceramic coating which makes the vehicle look really good, paint protection for all of the chips and stuff that comes off of our roads, the wheel package and a tint job that adds to a little bit of privacy and security They handle all sorts of cars there from regular old family drivers to exotic spectacular cars . Anybody who wants to protect their car like I do or make it look really good like I do, check out Charisma Customs in Delafield. They're right off the freeway that's Charisma Customs in Delafield . This is the Mark Belling podcast. We're doing this podcast on Monday . I'm giving you the time reference here because I'm going to ask y'all what you think I did last n ight . First of all, it won't be interesting. I don't ever do anything interesting . I mean I do things that are interesting to me. I don't think I don't think I ever do anything . Th anyenbody else would be like, Oh my God, you know what Mark Belling did last? I can't imagine the last time I did that. Did something that which people like their jaw would drop that I did something . So you have to let I watched the U FC fight at the White House . I didn't watch all of 'em, but I watched a lot of it . I think I did something really stupid though . I didn't see Paramount plus on my like, you know, you have a sm art TV, you go on and all the things that are on there that you either already have or you have to subscribe to. And I didn't see Paramount plus. I thought I had every streaming service there is, which is why my bill is so rough. I know I have Hulu. I know I have Apple TV, I know I have Prime, I know I have Netflix , I know I have Peacock . But I actually can't remember ever having watched anything on Paramount Plus . Well, the UFC was on Paramount Plus. So I subscribed . I do have spectrum. I think Paramount Plus was included in Spectrum, but I think I subscribed for nothing. So I can cancel after a month, I guess. But I'm not sure about that. That's the other thing. All these things in which you get one and you get the other . How do you remember all of this? Well, anyway, it was on and it was the same coverage, the same guys that are always there. Rogan was there, et cetera. There are of course people on the left who say that this is demeaning to our country to have this at the White House . Is it demeaning to the country? We certainly haven't had sport ing events at the White House or even on the Capitol Mall or near the ellipse. It hasn't really been done, but we've had every other kind of thing imaginable . Secondly , it did look impressive. Of course it looked impressive. I mean the UFC thing first they always look the same anyway. It's in an arena. There's the, they don't call it the octagon. That's I think a proprietary name of somebody else. They what do they call it c? Aage in the UFC or whatever it is . Yeah, I mean, because the octagon is owned by whatever the rival of UFC is, the one that isn't very successful . I watched a bunch of these matches , they're pretty good and I don't I'm not going to say that this is a great thing . I will certainly say there's nothing wrong with it and I will add to at least we're doing something to create the notion of spectacle only three weeks before the nation's two hundred fiftieth birthday. And that's where I'm going with this. So far , this anniversary is half a dud in this country and that's because half this country doesn't want to celebrate it . The left doesn't want to celebrate it because they don't love America. Now maybe if they were still in the White House, they'd celebrate it a little bit more. But let's imagine Obama was the president of the two hundred and fifty birthday. He would have said we're celebrating there's nothing to celebrate. You know, we have to let's use this as an opportunity to keep apologizing to everybody else for being the worst nation in the history of the world. I'm going to tell you why leftis don't like America . They don't like America because they are unhappy people . There is no country you could put one of them in that they would not that they would they would like . If you put them all in Uruguay, they hate Uruguay because they're unhappy people . You always hear them threatening to go to France or threatening to go to Canada, hardly any of them do because they'd be just as miserable there . They're miserable and therefore they blame the country for the fact that they're miserable as if it's the country's fault rather than their own damn fault and the life decisions that they've made . Lefties are always angry and the vast majority of them back when the Democratic Party was actually a party that captured the middle class. You know, there were the happy warriors. That's what Humphrey was, all of that. They are sour pussies constantly whining about how miserable and awful everything is . Unbelievably depressed. And then they started dying their hair and tattooing up their bodies and doing everything they can to make themselves look as ugly as they possibly can because they're not happy One of the things that I generally don't do on this show because I don't like her column is Peggy Noonan . I have a friend who thinks that Peggy Noonan is the greatest columnist in the history of the world. I actually read what she actually wrote this is rare, a good one a few weeks ago and I quoted it on the program and I said, I'm pretty sure I'll never do this again. She had one over the weekend . I'm not going to read the whole thing here, but she hit a theme that is interesting. And it relates to the subject I discussed. I'm going to exerpt the column here and without telling you what it's about. I'm just going to dive into it. She writes, and for those of you who don't know Peggy N unan, she was she was Reagan's chief speech writer and wrote Reagan's most famous speeches. And it's a big deal. And she's been a columnist in the Wall Street Journal for, I would think, at least twenty years . She writes, We've recently been touching on the themes connected to personal biography and the observations of Russian diplomats. This week we go full hulk. In a piece about a little bit of hulkiness that fifty years ago America saw right through and embrace to its deepest heart. In other words, she's referring to the two hundredth anniversary of the United States, which was nineteen seventy six. You weren't even around for that, were you? Were you alive? You were too, Jason says. So you don't remember it . I mean, it was big I remembered . First of all , the fourth of July is my birthday. So of course I embrace the whole thing and even though that this was the kind this was the presidency of Gerald Ford and the economy was bad and all this stuff, there was overwhelming national pride over it. And why wouldn't there be ? She harkens back to that year and an event that happened that particular year . A prelude . We need more love in things. The two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a transcendent moment in the political history of man comes in a few weeks. Do we sense the mounting excitement? I do not . But we should all be gentle about it and treat it as something with meaning , and also maybe use it as a corrective for our kids and the young people in our lives. They haven't seen America publicly loved a lot the fat past few decades. I think the right approach to this moment is a little romantic realism, and we might jump started by watching a movie . So fifty years ago, America's Bicentennial was a giant and memorable event , the tall ships in New York . If you ask me what I most remember, that would be the memory that would stick most in my mind. They had this tall ship thing . It was I don't even know if they're going to do it again. Now that New York's run by a Marxist, maybe they aren't going to do anything. But the tall ships thing which they in're all in the New York Harbor that was quite the thing. There's still photos of it. The tapping of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the parades at fireworks . But what most captured the spirit of seventy six wasn't murals of revolutionary war marchers with drums and flags or the bicentennial minute on CBS TV. Every night CBS would run a one minute thing leading up to the bicentennial wasn't that . It was a movie . The biggest Hollywood grocer of the year . Everyone went. She's right about this. I haven't told you the movie yet. Everybody went . This is back in the days in which the only entertainment that there really was I didn't say going to a concert was watching TV at home or going to a movie . And in that era, sixties, seventies, and early eighties, that was the era of the great movie. Everybody went into this movie . The tagline in the original poster said it all his whole life was a million to one shot . Rocky was hokey , sentimental , dealt freely in stereotypes . But it summed up without even trying what a spectacular new thing in history America was , because the meaning of the movie was the American promise . Anyone can come from anywhere and become anything . The mook from the mean streets can become a champ . That's all. It's the oldest story in America . She then goes on and writes about Rocky Bill Boy, the character and then jumps forward. Here enters Apollo Creed , heavyweight champion of the world, a brilliant showman inspired by Muhammad Ali . The anniversary of seventeen seventy six is coming and Creed wants to put on an extravaganza , a bicentennial super battle, a title fight to make money. But nobody will fight him. So he comes up with an idea, a title boat in the city that started America, Philadelphia , and he'll give some local fighter a chance, some snow white underdog . This is the land of opportunity, right? They chose Rocky Bo elba, who calls himself the Italian stallion. Italians discovered America, right? Creed asks The people will love it. And so Rocky begins his famous punishing regimen, up at four, five raw eggs for breakfast, running through the streets and up and down the steps of the Grand Philadelphia Museum of Art, sparring with slabs of beef in a meat freezer. The night before the fight, he confesses to Adrian Yo, Adrian . Does that tell you Shire ? You say yes , do you know that or did you look it up? No, you're pretty sure. I must be right. Why would that come into my head if it wasn't Telia Scheyer ? I just remember Bert Young was like the sidekick manager and Burgess Meredith was the traitor. The side roles were as good as Rocky, of course as the Festeral S.om The night before the fight he confesses to where Adrian All I want to do is go the distance . If he's still standing at the end, even if Creed busted his head open , I'm gonna know for the first time in my life that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood. Column moves on and then ends. Final round, they're exhausted, bloody. The bell rings, Rocky's still standing, the judge calls, the judges call it a split decision . And here in the melee in the ring in his great moment, Rocky doesn't boast or dance , turns away from the mics, being thrust in his face. He just stops and bellows out the word that means most to him Adrian . She is at a mouse now Rocky, Rocky , and she fights to the crowd through the hulking mob to get to him . There are finer moments in American cinema, more brilliant , more profound , and poetic , but there is no greater moment in American cinema . And if you aren't moved by it, there is something wrong and you must investigate your soden heart . Anyone from anywhere can become anything Life is hope . And the most crazily hopeful of all lives are lived still here . Why do you think the immigrants come ? The old parchment proclaims we are all equal free and deserve a shot. That's the romance of this old place and must stay the realism . This coming big birthday, let's just remember and remind this story shall the good man teach his son. That's Peggy Nunan 's column was peered over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal . Again, I'm not a huge fan of Peggy Noonan, but the spirit that she writes in that column in which she uses Rocky coming out of the two hundredth anniversary of the country in the story of Rocky basically , in America there are no limitations , which is the exact opposite message of the Marxist that America's stacked deck that you have no chance. The reality is that most people don't make it . Most people are just regular people . Some are total failure, some end up in prison, some are miserably unhappy, some have a very, very cruel bow zell to them. But some people make it really big, and that's the whole point of it . Everybody can't make it big because everybody's big, then nobody's big . The point is that you might be one of them . There's going to be a lot of luck , but also there's going to be a lot of everything else . Next segment . If I was doing a radio show this would come after the break. I don't have enough breaks to do here, so I to' romll going right into it. Do you know what company is going into bankruptcy ? Sleep number I actually think way back when on the radio show I predicted this, but it was one of those predictions like if, you predict something and twenty five years later it comes true. You can't really claim it was right. I just felt that it was inevitable . It's one of those reorganization bankruptcies in which they're going to be inquired out of bankruptcy. I think the shareholders are going to lose everything . Sleep Number is one of these mattress companies. They invented this notion. They have they like the inflatable mattresses and you set it dial so you can set the firmness of the mattress and one of their great innovations is you could do a different setting on the other side of the bed. So if you sleep with somebody, you could have the mattress harder and the other one could have it softer. And that was their great innovation . And I have a sleep number mattress . And I like it. They're very good . And I do like the fact that you can set this out. I think almost every mattress is too soft for me. I want a firm one. Anyway , sleep number , I'm amazed they lasted as long as they did. You know why? Do you know what sleep number mattresses come with ? A lifetime guarantee . How do you continue a longstanding business if your product wears out, you have to give some body a new one for free . Now they can come up with the most gussied up new fan, keep improving, improving improving, but the guarantee only kicks in if the mattress is flawed . And the one that I have, I think it's at least fifteen years , maybe longer than that, it's still perfect . Their problem here is they can't have much repeat business. What happened was the business operated off of word of mouth. People got a sleep number mattress and tells I got a great sleep number mattress. The other thing that came in to kill them was the mattress in a box. I forget which company started that, but when they sold these started these mail order things in which the mattress just gets they roll the mattress up into this little circle and it gets delivered to you and this is what I have in Florida. It's one of those. It comes to this circle thing and you look at it and they think there's no way there could be an entire mine's a king in Florida. And it's just in this circle. There's just no way there's a king mattress in this end. You unquark the thing and lay it out and it just keeps on quirking and quirking and quirking and somehow it only takes like a few hour s to straighten itself out rather than well, that hurt him too . And those mattresses are really, really good . There's no point to that story . FISERVE has evidently fired their CEO , Mike Lyons . He was only on the job for thirteen months, he took over for Frank Biz ogna who went to the Trump administration to run the Social Security Administration. Some believe that the company started a decline under Bisnogno and Lyons, who was one of his right hand men, is taking the fall here. I certainly can't claim to be an expert on what happened here, but I will I will note this , when the first data people took over FISOV, the problem started . FISERVE MERGEED several years ago with First Data. They're both giants in the financial services industry. The merger was one in which First Data was sort of the acquirer because FISEVE had the better known brand name. They took the name FISERVE. So they merged the two companies. FISERVE OF course, of, has always been based in Brookfield, and first data was from they were all over the place, but from New York. The corporate headquarters is still supposedly in Milwaukee, but the big shots are based in New York . When you the original after the merger, chairman and CEO was Yabuki. Part of the deal was he would retire after a certain period of time. I don't know if it was a year or two since he's left, the problems at FIS have occurred. I don't know what all of those problems are. I don't know if they're one of the many companies that are threatened by AI . I just don't know. What I do know is that some of the numbers have been disappointing and they're going and they're going in another direction . All right, another story . There's been kind of I think I don't know if this is generational or not, but there's been a grad ual simmering revolt in America against tipping. Now, I know where part of it comes from. It's people asking for tips who have jobs in which we've never given tips before . Tips are generally provided to somebody who provides a service for you . So if you order something at the counter, why are you tipping? So that thing started showing up and then it got made worse by you don't get to fill out the tip of the thing and then skulk out of the place or just leave some cash on the thing. They bring these gadgets over there and you got to push the percentage and the lowest percentage is usually like fifteen We also live in a delivery society . Amazon, you don't have to tip them because see, I think Amazon thought this through . It would cost them all sorts of time. Amazon would not just leave the thing at the door. They would wait for somebody to show up because then you'd have to tip the Amazon driver because they just leave it there and take off, you don't tip them. But door dash drivers get tipped. Anybody else doing any kind of delivery is getting tipped? There's just a general revolt against this whole notion of tipping . I love tipping in general, but I do think it's being extended in areas that it shouldn't be extended to. I like the idea of if you get very good service compensating someone and if you don't get very good service, not stiffing them necessarily, but giving them less. It's one of the few things where we actually can pay for what you think actually happened . Anyway , as you know, I led a zillion cruises. I keep forgetting the number because we had the unusual situation of me not going on one of my cruises because I had a stroke five days before we would leave. And then we had the whole thing of one of them was delayed a year because of COVID . I think it was twenty seven , but it might be way a way different number. Anyway , one of the ways that the cruise when I started doing the cruises , what you would do at the end of a week of cruises was you would tip the prime people. You didn't tip everybody You would tip your waiter and this is back in the day in which most people were just staying there was just the one dining room. Most cruise ships now have ninety seven zero zero restaurants and you don't sit at the same table every night, but you would tip your waiter, your bus boy , and you would tip your cabin steward. The cabin steward was the person who came in twice a day and just made the cabin immaculate . If you wanted to, there are a couple of others you could tip , you could tip, I forget what they were. There were a couple that were optional. And then they gave you like the expected tip . But because you were tipping yourself and the tips were in cash, you could do more or less. I mean , there are famous stories that I could tell you from back in the day. There would be people who on the last night of the cruise didn't didn't go to the dining room for dinner . And I know why they didn't go to the dining room for dinner because they wanted to skip out and have it to tip the waiter because when the waiter and the waiter comes around last day and they're lingering they're waiting for you to give them the envelope and all that and the people that weren't there, I know why they weren't there. They were there because they wanted to stiff . But they eventually change that . And again, I can't speak to all, but most of the cruise lines change this where instead of having you actually tip the person , they instead put it right on your bill a certain percentage. Initially, you could then manually up or lower it . But rather than give them cash, it was just on the bill. And since almost everybody's paying their bill by credit card, it would just attach on to the bill. You could, however, manually up or lower it . It has since moved to be more of a standard, which leads to this story, which I found in Fox News . And by the way, when they had that what the thing was that they would put on the thing , I forget what the dollar amount was, but boy, it seems to me that when I was stopped cruis ing, it was twelve or fourteen or fifteen dollars a day and that would be divvied up among the various people that dealt with you . Holland America is raising the daily tipping charge to twenty dollars . And according to the story on Fox News, there's a revolt over that. Howland America in the food chain of cruise lines would be upper middle like Like Carnival is the mainstream cruise line . And from what I can see, Carnival's gone to hell . We went on Carnival the first ten years of my cruise . Carnival is now finally starting to address what's happened on the cruise and which it's just become there were always partnerships, but it's just been behavior that's out of control and it's gotten to the point that many people just will not travel in Carnival even for the price. Some blacks believe that these policies are directed at them, whether they are or they aren't. Carnivalists now is saying they're now going to enforce standards of behavior because they're fed up with the way that some people just decide to go on these cruise ships and make jackasses of them selves, completely ruining the cruise for every people who live in cabins next to them and so on. In any of it . Carnival would be like a mainstream, I won't say budget . It's not Spirit Airlines, but I think the behavior got some people to that point, but it would be a more mainstream cruise line. And then way, way, way at the top, there are cruise lines like Regency . Trying to think of couple of the others. Crystal kind of in between, I would say Holland America is right above the middle. So it would be a higher end cruise line but not, real higher end . It's more for older people. They're not selling like a raucous experience. You don't see people partying at two in the morning in carnival . It's more of an older destin ation driven thing, really good food, very high levels of service, beautiful ships, but more of a refined thing . And as I say, the clientele in Holland America is largely older people . The raising the tip charge to twenty dollars a day, and there's a revolt against this. Let me quote from the Fox News story. Daily gratuities, drink package service charges, especially dining fees and other automatic add ons have become a flash for trapvelointers to say cruise vacations are being advertised one way yet priced another. Let me add. It used to be everybody just ate in the main dining room and it was all part of the cruise. Well now they've added specialty restaurants like the Steakhouse and all of that stuff. Well, there's an upcharge for that . But you don't have to go to the steakhouse. If you still go to the regular dining room, that's still free. But a lot of these people are saying, okay, there's all these things that you have to pay for. That's true. The retort I would offer is if you don't want to pay for them, there's still all the other options of stuff that there isn't an upcharge for. Continuing, frustration is said to be mounting as several cruise lines have recently raised the gratuity or service charges in twenty twenty six. Holland America is the latest cruise line to change its gratuity structure. As of june first, guests on board Holland America ships will pay daily crew appreciation charges of eighteen dollars per day for non swite state rooms and twenty dollars per day for suites. Crew appreciation is a meaningful way for guests to recognize the exceptional service and hard work our crew provides every day. The company says the gratuity is automatically added to each guest on board aboard account. Guests who want to change the daily amount may adjust it at their discretion while on board the cruise line notes . I want to weigh in on this If you can't afford eighteen or twenty dollars a day for the people on the ship , don't go on the cruise, you cheap skate . Let me explain a few things about cruising. This does not include American only cruises, like one of them that operates in the Great Lakes . All of the other cruises, the ships are flagged, not in the United States, but in a foreign country. Since they operate in international destinations that are in international waters do not have to follow American wage and labor laws. The crews on cruise ships all work way over forty hours a week. There's no overtime. The captain and a few people like that might be salaried , but all of the other people have these work schedules. And the waiters you see in the morning are the ones you're gonna see at noon and the ones that you're gonna see at night and they work all seven days . The people that are cleaning your cabins, they start getting into the rooms and starting at six or seven o'clock in the morning and it takes them until noon to clear their entire area of cabins and then they come and do the night turn down service again and that's another three to four to five hours . These people work their asses off and invariably they are very friendly. The level of service I got on cruise lines dwarfs what you get walking into some joint here in the United States . The reason that cruising has been affordable is they don't pay these people much money . So they're dependent on these tips . And if you can't pay that tip because you're too cheap to phony up twenty dollars a day is one hundred and forty dollars a week. Don't go on the cruise. People say, well, the cruise line should pay that. Yeah, well then the price of the cruise is going to go up. Doing it via tipping allows the customer to have such some control and it does allow you to up or lower the amount. So the twenty dollars or the eighteen dollars for non sweet isn't mandatory. Some points some of this crabbing about certain things just strikes me as utter cheapskatism. Now, I'll tell you something else. And I haven't gone on a cruise since I stopped doing my last one, which is a few years ago, but a lot of people, in addition to that, now that those charges are standard, would give extra cash to the people that worked with them on top of what they would get to the automatic thing that were in there because most people deeply appreciated the unbelievable high level of service that they would get in how these people go out of the way to service you. So I have zero sympathy for anybody whining about what I still think is a great deal . I mean go to one restaurant fifty, you know what the state I mean twenty percent of a restaurant tab . You can get to let me do the numbers. Yeah, twenty bucks a hundred dollars tab would be a twenty buck tip at twenty percent. That's one night. You're being asked to pay this for the entire damn day and it's being divided amongst everybody that you deal with on the ship. Quite you're bitchin' . You know, the same thing I think did in Spirit. Spirit's whole thing is that the airline fare was very, very cheap , but every other thing you did, they charged for. They not only char for theg leduggage that you checked, they charg ed for the carry on. None of the snacks were free. Everything was charged, charged, charged, charge, charged, and everybody is bitching about all of these charges . Well, then don't drink the Coca Cola . Don't don't lard on two carry ones. Make do with what or just go somewhere else . But people recoiled against these charges and eventually people stopped drinking coke and stop eating the snacks and Spirit's profit model fell apart because all they had were these cheapy fares and nobody was biting on all of the add ons that they were being forced. To pay Now, I know all of you have forgotten this . There is still something special that I'm going to tell you that you're going to like doing, and I haven't mentioned it yet. Since we only have one segment left , it's a pretty good bet that it's only seconds away you're listening to the Mark Gulling podcast. How much would it take for you to be wealthy and financially comfortable? Schwab recently asked Americans that question. Most said at least two million dollars . You might have a different number for yourself. Makes sense, since you have your own ideas about travel, retirement, and the legacy you want to leave. That means you need custom advice building a personalized plan. The team at Annex Wealth Management is ready to listen and help. Annex Wealth Management, give them a call, know the difference . This is the Mark Belling podcast I got very lucky . I was at the Miz Game . Now, for me to say that it was the greatest pitching performance that I've ever seen in person isn't saying that much because I've never seen all the baseball games I've been to, I've never seen a no hitter . As a brewer fan, there's only been two of them and I never saw a no hitter that was thrown against the brewers by another team , although that has happened There are some who are saying that the Jacob Mizarovsky performance in Friday night though may have been one of the greatest pitching performances in the history of baseball . Now some days are saying but he didn't even pitch a no hitter, true . Complete game shutouts, however now, are very rare because most pitchers simply don't pitch nine innings ever anymore. Mizarowski was able to do so in part because he was only throwing strikes . He threw only nine the reason that the game was fast it was a two hour and two minute game and the brewers bat the brewers at Bats actually took a while. I didn't run a clock of this, but I think that the Philadelphia that the Philadelphia half of the combined all nine innings were about thirty five to forty minutes. Those innings were bing bing , bing . The beginning of the game, Mizarovsky was just striking you out on three or maybe four pitches . Of the ninety five pitches he threw, seventy four were strikes . Now, since I wasn't watching on TV and because Major League Baseball stadium still don't put up on the scoreboard the live shot of the game. Everybody wishes that on the scoreboard you would see the same box that people see at home. So you can see where the balls and strikes are and so on. And they only show it on the challenges. Apparently, of these seventy four strikes that Mizarowski threw, just about everybody, every one of them was hitting the white line of the box. He was painting every corner that you could paint . While it was not a no hitter or a perfect game, he did face the minimum number of hitters because the only guy who got a hit and I think it's a good thing it was a solid hit. If this had been a cheap, you would have thought oh, my god Miz, came so cl ose to a perfect game. Kyle Schwarber drilled the ball into the left center field. It was it was a clean hard hit ball. There was nothing fluky about it, but he was a race on a double play . The fewest number of hitters that can come up in a nine in game is twenty seven of them in a in a losing effort, twenty seven of them. And he faced twenty seven hitters. He struck out fifteen and didn't walk anybody . The growth of this guy has been extraordinary year. when L heast came up, he threw hard, but he didn't have sharp control . He would occasionally get hit because his fastball would sometimes be right down the middle and he walked a fair number of guys. Now every pitch is painted on the stripes on the corners of the strike zone and every pitch is thrown for a strike other than the ones that he didn't want to. A couple of other things happened in the game . Philadelphia changed Mizarowski struck out eight of the first nine hitters , eight of the first nine . I mean, if you're at the game and I was, you could just by the second inning you could just see something special was going on here and he was unbelievably sharp . You can see the pitch in the first three innings his fastball, his four seam fastball was that you could and you could tell what Pitchy was saying just by the speed of the pitch was one hundred and three. I think his cutter was around ninety nine. He was occasionally throwing the slider and the change up or curb wall. I don't know which one it is would be into the eighties, but almost he was throwing the four seam fastball almost every pitch one hundred three hundred three one three and he struck out eight of the first nine hitters . You could see that as they move the second time through the lineup, the hitting coach of Philadelphia just changed the team's strategy . What they started to do because what Mr ski was doing, as I said, he was throwing his first pitch for a strike other than I think in the first hitting he got two balls on a guy. He went to a two hundred comp after that , every first pitch strike was in the strike zone and almost all of them was the one hundred three mile an hour four seam fastball. So they may I think what the coaching staff at Philadelphia did is just everybody we're all going to swing at the first pitch . Just commit to your swing. You know what's going to be a strike and you know it's going to be a fastball . I don't know if the decision was made by Mizarowski or the catcher contrarus who's always the smartest guy around , but they started changing it up and he started to throw the slider and started to drop his speed a little bit on the first pit ch. So their first pitch swinging which meant that they weren't striking out as much, but every one of these first pitches was an out . So in what they actually did is aided him so he had a number of it bats that were only one pitch which allowed him to continue to go into the game at length because his pitch count was so low . So while he did give up the one hit , the very low number of balls , the fact that he faced the minimum, the fact that he was able to strike out the highest number of hitters any pitcher struck out all year fifteen without walking anybody was just an extraordinary performance. Couple of other brewer notes . You can make the case that Mizarowski has not even been the best pitcher in baseball this year. Christopher Sanchez of the Phillies who pitched yesterday against the Brewers . He actually for the longest time had a lower ERA than Miz. And you know, Miz gave up one earned run in the month of May. Sanchez didn't give up any . Sanchez what was it six games in which he didn't give up a run . I think he gave up finally gave up one run two games ago. He's been unbelievably dominant . Anyway, Sanchez pitching yesterday for the Phillies . This is an easy question. I'll ask Jason, who's the worst hitter on the brewers? Oh, it's Blake Perkins. Blake Perkins was hitting one hundred five coming one hundred five five Blake Perkins came up against Sanchez and hit a three run homeer off of him . And I posted this on X, the immediate comparison came to me . And I know this because Bob Yuker would tell you tell this story in almost every one of his routines. Bob Eucher, who of course made a career out of making fun of his playing career. In Bob Eucher's career, he had a grand total of fourteen home runs. But one of his home runs was off of Sandy Cofax . And he'd always tell the story about how he'd have to apologize to Sandy for tarnishing his otherwise impeccable career by having hit a home run off of him. So somehow out of his fourteen home runs, Bob Yuker, who was a career two hundred hitter, did manage to have a home run off of Sandy Kofex . Would you believe that Blake Perkins's home run yesterday was the fourteenth of his career ? And it was off of Christopher Sanchez . Then I ran the at bats. They're almost identical . Blake has had about twenty more at bats than Bob Yucker did, but they have almost the exact same number of bat bats, the same number of home runs and Blake Perkins had a three run homeer off of Sanchez and the brewers won that game Kyle Harrison pitched the shutout. So I now bring up this observation . I made this point earlier in the year that the brewers, Kyle Harrison trade may be the best trade in brewers history. I think it is the potential to be one of the greatest trades in the history of baseball . Let's now look at the brewers . They now have two pitchers in their rotation that came in that trade. Kyle Harrison and it looks like Shane Drohan is at least temporarily in the rotation. He's either been a long man or a starter , but he's started his last three appearances in a row and they're starting third baseman David Hamilton . So they have two rotation starting pitchers, including Kyle Harrison, who has been one of the two or three best pitchers in all of baseball this year. Shane Drohan and David Hamilton who's emerging as a pretty good fielding and fair enough hitting third baseman and we gave up three lousy third basemen , two of one of whom is in the miners, another of whom Durb in is having an atrocious year and monster . You gave up three bad third baseman, got a third baseman who maybe just as good as what they had last year and got two starting pitchers in that deal. And the big brewer news of the day is Cooper Pratt is being called up . Cooper Pratt is one of the several brilliant infielders in the brewer's farm system. What's not worthy about him is the brewers have already signed him to a long term contract. They're doing this tactic increasingly , where they will sign a guy to a deal of at least seven years , sometimes seven years with team options to lock them up for a decade. It means that the player gets way more money his first few years than he would otherwise get. When you're in the miners, you make almost nothing. And your first several years in baseball you will only make a little bit of money. It kicks in once you're arbitration eligible. So from the perspective of the player, they start making a lot more money right away . From the perspective of the team , the player's longer term upside is limited because they aren't eligible for arbitration. Instead, they're paid the amount that's in the contract . And they can't leave your team quite as soon . So you have the player for at least seven years locked up knowing how much you're going to pay them. The risk of course is if the player doesn't pan out, you've just signed a seven year deal where you're going to be paying ten, fifteen, eighteen million dollars a year to somebody who didn't pan out at all. But the brewers are doing it increasingly. It's a very good tactic for small market teams. Cooper Pratt's one of the guys they've done it with. Of the short of the infielders that they have in their system, he's been the one that's farthest along . He has been called up . Now Now , they are not calling him up to sit on the bench because he's a still what is he twenty two, maybe ? He needs to play every day . So by calling him up, I think they intend to put him in the lineup . As for who's going to be sent down, the backup infield fielder, Luis Renhifo , he's I think he's banged up a little bit. They'll just claim he needs to go on the injured list. They can't send him to the miners because he doesn't have options. They'd have to DFAM or trade him. One of the things that one of our sports guys here at IHART Armin, who's either Armin or Hunter, might have been Hunter to ld me is because Renefel was signed as a restricted free agent at the end of last season, they can't trade him until june fifteenth. Renefel could now be traded. So that would open up the roster spot for Cooper Pratt but it would,n't open up a starting spot because Renifo is not a starter . So the question is , who goes to the bench ? This Joey Ortiz who's been a brilliant fielding short stop, I think the best in the game , but doesn't hit much, or does David Hamilton the third baseman go to the bench? You could do a rotation of each of them . You could move Ortiz to third base and have some short time at third base with Hamilton. You could do that. But I suspect Cooper Pratt's going to go to the infield and I don't think they'll get rid of one of the other two yet because they need to see if Pratt is ready . If Pratt's put in it, say it short stop and he doesn't hold his weight for two to three weeks . They might send him back down to Nashville and give him more experience, but there's a very good chance that he's up and he ain't ever got to go down. So this first line of the wave of the new brilliant brewers prospects is now up with Cooper Pratt. The brewers do not play tonight. This podcast is on Monday. They play tomorrow in are they home? They play Cleveland I don't remember if it's here or away. Somebody can check, but I'm not going to do it on the spot. All right, now this . The reason I'm doing this at the end of the program is I knew that if I did this to the middle of the podcast because podcast you'd all just stop the podcast and go do the thing that I was telling you to do . I can't play it on the air because the rules of podcasting are we can't play mus . I get asked this question all the time and it has to do with copyright . Radio stations have contracts with the two songwriters associations Ask API BMI so you can play music . There is no general agreement in podcasting to play copyrighted material so we can't play music on here unless we own the copyright in the theme music that I have, I own the copyright . So therefore I'm able to play it. I'm the owner of the music , so I can play this for you. I will, however, tell you how you can find it. First of all , whenever I bring something like this up, people who are into the subject say everybody knows that. No, everybody doesn't know that the only people who know it are the people that end up the subject if you're into country music, you know who Ella Langley is. She's already pushing superstardom. If you're somebody that just gasually pays attention to things and you don't know who a country music star is until they become like one of the judges on America's Got Talent Who does that? Is that Blake Shelton? Which one of them is on that? I think it's Blake Shelton. And then there's another one on the that's idol and so on. And anyway , Ella Langley is very good . She's good . And I've kind of sowered in some of the direction of country musically I think it has gotten too homogenized a lot of the guys to me sing about the same things and they all kind of s ound the same to me and a lot of the music has been, in my opinion predictable. Ella Langley is to me an original . She also has she has an angelic voice. And I don't mean she sings like an angel, she sings like a voice that comes from the heaven. She's really good. Anyway, here's what she's done. She's done an acoustic just strumming the guitar. There's no band, there's no there's no amplification beyond the microphone of I would say probably I think the nineties, biggest country song of the nineties, China Twain's still the wood . I mean , I'm pretty sure it was the nineties . When Shine when that song was popular, Shanaya Twain hadlined Summerfest and I was there and it was she was for about five years like the biggest thing there was not in just in country music but in music. Some cynics say that she was just the creation of her now ex husband Muttlang. My producer Paul was always on that. And others say that she carried Mutlang anyway. Shanaya Twain was just huge at that time and her song still the one was it's as big as any song I think it was the nineties. It might have been the zero but it's zero but I think it was the nineties It's just a great song and everybody knows it and it's one of those songs that's just played everywhere. It's played at sporting events. If you walk to the grocery store, you got to hear it. It's as big during the rest of the year as Mariah Carries all I want for Christmas is you is during the Christmas season. Anyway, Ella Langley has covered still the one. She did it on TikTok. For those of you who don't like to go to TikTok, you can go to the other sites and do a Google search and do it, but it's just her voice and a little guitar. So it's not really a song she's released. It's a video that she's created covering one of the most iconic female country songs ever. So I've created the progression . This is flawed, but it's pretty good . Every about twenty years comes around a female country music superstar and the torch kind of gets past . So I've got this progression . Ella Langley is taking the torch from Carrie Underwood . And I think Carrie Underwood is one of the greatest stars in the history of country music. And she was the last one of them. Who was it before Carrie Underwood? I'll say Dolly Parton . And Dolly Parton took the torch from Tammy Wynnette . And Tammy Wynett took the torch from Patsy Klein. Now my problem with that list is there's no Loretta Lin in there but Loretta Lin and Tammy Wynettn were