Well whiskey coming, don't you.
From power Line blog dot com and produced by Ricochet dot Com. This is the three Whiskey Happy Hour with your bartenders Steve Hayward, John Yu and power Lines International Woman of Mystery Lucretia.
You gotta given that wild where you're being in Loud Down and Lode.
Welcome everybody to a super special anniversary episode of the Three Whiskey Happy Hour. Because Steve Hayward didn't tell anybody about this anybody, but this is the five hundredth anniversary of the Three Whiskey Happy the five hundredth episode. I don't even know what, Steve, what is the word for that's it goes way beyond sesque tenial or whatever? Yeah, it would it be pentitenial. What is the fifth hundred and you, Steve, I assume you were there for episode number one.
No no, no, no, no no, no, you've got you haven't quite got it right. It's the five hundredth episode of the power Line podcast, which is of course our umbrella thing, right, And it began way before I joined Powerline in twenty eleven. But back then it was just you know, Jon Scott and Paul and they were very intermittent about it. I mean they didn't do it regularly.
Oh yeah, so, I mean if it was three Minnesotans, it was just like who could be the friendliest person on the podcast? Where as instead we jazzed it up by adding someone who's the opposite of the friendliest person on podcasting, the famous Lucretia.
I am a midwestern Er, Thank you very much.
You are.
Everyone associates you with the great Southwest. How are you from the northwester?
I have lit I grew. I was born in Io, and then I went to live with relatives in Minnesota, and then I moved to California in my high school years, and then I traveled the world and ended up in Arizona. So there you go.
But you remember, John, she's from Iowa originally, And whenever I think of Lucretia coming from Iowa, I think of those lyrics from the Music Man about we can be cold as a following thermometer in December if you ask about her weather in July. Right, Well, how was the other one, Lucretia. It's we're so by god stubborn anyway. Anyway, so there's a different Steve.
How many is this do you remember how many episodes has it been with this configuration with you Lucretia. I, of course, am just a late night carpetbagger who only joined about a year and a half ago because Steve had to go on his bi annual pilgrimage to a distillery country like I think you were in Ireland or Scotland. I don't know where you were allowed me to sneak in. But Steve, how many is this for you?
Well that's actually three years ago now, John, So it's got to be at least I haven't counted, but this has to be at least one hundred and fifty episodes now. Of well, if before you joined this was just me and Lucretia, it's got to be two hundred and fifty episodes by now. I think, yeah, I know.
Those were I have to say I was a regular listener before I joined, and those were great episodes. Because now, for those of you who don't know, Steve brought me on is just to divide the targets of attack for Lucretia, so it's not just focused on him, and let me bring us back to the actual events of the show, because that might be what's happened now with Kamala Harris.
She's picked a vice president, Tim Waltz, the governor of Minnesota, which now provides Donald Trump with two targets to shoot at, not just one. Steve, what's your thought on this new pick by comust First, just I think we should both talk about both you and Lucretia ask you both this, what do you just think about him as the candidate on the merits? But then two, does it change the race at all?
I think? Well, so, first of all, it proves that she can be intimidated, right, I mean all those signs where she wanted to pick Shapiro, by the way, all the news stories that well, they didn't get along in their conversation, she wasn't comfortable with him, you know, or he backed I think all those are lies. I think that she was intimidated out of picking him because so many people on the left are saying, we can't have this pro Israel, anti Palestinian. This is all code words
for a Jewish running mate. Right, and picking walt she doubled down on her own brand. She didn't pick a moderate the way du kau Kistan in eighty eight to balance the ticket. She picked another progressive just like herself, and I think that pleased the progressive base of the Democrats. I think it shows that she's insecure. And then yeah, he's just terrible. I mean, I've been kidding Scott and
John about Ah. Now we can have a debate about who has the worst governor California with Newsom or Waltz in Minnesota, because he's, you know, just as progressive in all the awful ways as Newsome is. I do think here Lucretia will have a lot to say. I do think that's interesting how this business about his resigning from his National Guard unit once he learned he might be deployed to a rock might have some legs. It's starting to get out into the mainstream media, you know, CNN's
and a couple of things on this. Our pal mac Owens had a piece in the Providence Journal yesterday saying, look, I'm not going to accuse him of stolen valor, but it's really an offense against the honor of serving military people to bail out the way he did. And apparently they had to shut down the comment thread for the article because it's excited so much controversy.
He was wrong about it, not being stolen valor. I mean, I read the article too, and it was a good article. But you've got all of these people out there who are.
Show well. Just my conclusion on this is is that I think it's very unlikely he get dropped from the ticket, because that would just be fatal to Harris and be like McGovern dumping Eagleton fifty years ago. But I think this is going to be a problem for them. And my prediction is in his speech to the convention this week coming up, he won't talk about his military service. This is going to be memory hold.
Yeah, they've actually showed an apology saying he didn't, but the campaign did that he misspoke. So yeah, there's a couple of issues. First, let me go back to what Steve said about why Waltz was chosen. I don't disagree with anything Steve said at all. He's absolutely right, but I do think there's a little bit more to it. It's not just that those conversations say with Shapiro didn't go well, or she didn't feel a vibe or whatever
you want to call it with Shapiro. I think that the others recognize that there's very little chance that she's likely to win in November, the Whitmers and the others who just can't afford it. Walls supposedly said he has no interest in being a president, so he posed no threat to Amala Dayamalama ding Dong. That's my new name, and I'm never saying it any other life I can remember.
Can I just say, I can't even remember now what the word was before, Like, what was it ding dong? Now I can't.
It's Shamalama ding Dong from oh okay, right, yeah, I'll just leave that one alone. So so I think that there were a lot of things coming together that made Waltz perfect for Kamalama ding Dong, but not necessarily for a wider view. I did think that they probably know there's now there's no way that they can win. They cannot put this story down. One of the things that I posted go back to the whole thing about stolen valor.
He didn't resign from his unit, Steve. He retired, and of course, you know, everybody keeps arguing after twenty four years in the National Guard, he has every right to retire, but first of all, he had he had enlisted for a six year term. It takes quite a bit to get out before your reenlistment. I mean, that's the whole point.
You might get out, you might be medically separated or something like that, But retirement would have required somebody with some power in the chain to have agreed to this. And he did, in fact know people are saying this. Also, he did in fact know that his unit was deploying. He promised to deploy with his unit to Iraq, and then, of course quietly in the background, put in his paperwork to retire. That. You know, again, it's if you don't spend as much time with military folks as I do,
and I've spent a lot of time. In last couple of weeks, I took a visit to Fort Jackson, which is the number one basic combat training base now for the Army. About sixty percent of all basic training recruits go through there. I spent a week there. And you know, so I know a lot of people who are command sergeant majors. They are, in fact everything that Tim Mama Law supposedly claims to be or Daddy Waltz. They really are the cohesiveness that holds a unit together. The officers
have a different kind of relationship with the soldiers. I don't want to go into that. There's enough about it out there that our listeners will know. But it was a huge, a huge betrayal of his battalion. There's no way to put that down. The funny thing I think about it is that they knew this was true. They knew that he had claimed to be a command sergeant major and not a master sergeant once he was actually retired and demoted. They knew all of that in the campaign,
but they didn't think it mattered. It reminds me of that time Biden went to Georgia after the Bulldogs won their first national championship and he doesn't say it word. They're so stupid, those millennials inside the campaign that they didn't think it was it would matter.
Well, this did come up in his first governor's race in twenty eighteen. Ye they're such about so they should right.
Yeah, yeah, of course they knew about it. I mean the Tribune, as you would expect, to covered it up to or said, you know, it's a non story in this and that there aren't major military bases in Minnesota, but in places like Pennsylvania. By the way, John, there are eight hundred thousand veterans in Pennsylvania, there are six hundred thousand in Georgia. There are four one hundred and fifty thousand in Arizona. Now none of those veterans unless there are they, you know, nowadays you get more of
the rabid lefties and among the veteran population too. But even leftist or non political soldiers that I've talked to lately, especially senior and CEOs, who know nothing and care nothing about politics, but they really don't. They are adamant that that this is disqualifying, that this guy is a trader, that you know, that it's stolen valor, and there's nothing
that you could do to offend veterans more. I think what's going to happen is that veterans who would not otherwise, would not otherwise have voted at all, are going to vote against Waltz, and I think the VP choice matters in this case. The last thing, the last thing I'll say about that is that talking to people here in Arizona, soldiers here where I.
Believe Kamala is coming today for a big rally.
She was there yesterday. Oh yes, Tamilama ding Dong was in Phoenix. And the funny let me come back to that, but really quick, a lot of these soldiers, you know what they said to me, Why wouldn't she choose Mark Kelly? He's an astronaut. Now, of course you knew what I think of Mark Kelly. But my point is these are not people who are political. This isn't a political decision. This is I would never vote for someone I consider to be a liar and a cheat and a betrayer
of his troops. And so anyway, I think I think it's going to be bigger than people are trying to make it out to be. Back to Kamalama ding Dong in Arizona, the interesting thing is watching how they are desperately trying to make it look like her rallies are as big as Trumps. Now again, Trump's in Montana yesterday. Montana is not in play for the presidency. He went
to go support Tim Sheehy. The line started in the morning, and you know, they had to put up big screen TVs outside because there wasn't room for everybody that wanted to get in. In the case of Kamalama ding Dong's rally in Phoenix, they covered the upper stores. What would you call the upper bleachers with black cloth so that the pictures wouldn't show them being empty seats. They bring in man. And the other thing is every single one of her rallies has has featured people I of course
have never heard of. You know, anybody who'd actually go listen to some hip hop singer deserves to vote for Kamala ding Dong in my opinion. But she brings in these god awful supposedly popular hip hop or rap singers or whatever. And then that's why and their free concerts, and that's why people show up that And if you've seen pictures over the rally, somebody did this. It was so damn funny. It was just a bunch of old, fat women who all look like they owned multiple cats.
I just I'm just gonna leave it.
At that, Okay, Steve, Steve, do you think it makes a difference? So does this just have the effect of neutralizing any advantage Harris might have gone and from picking Waltz? And then you know, just a few weeks ago people were bemoaning the choice of JD.
Vance.
There's some buyers horse there even leaking out of the Trump camp. Maybe both sides have made a kind of misstep here and they cancel each other out, and we're just back to a race between Trump and Harris.
Well, and look, it usually comes down to the top of the ticket. The evidence is kind of weak that running mates make a difference, except say LBJ in nineteen sixty. But I still think that the smart play would have been for Harris to pick Roy Cooper of North Carolina, who took himself out, or Andy Basher of Kentucky. Somebody who's you know, balancing in the old fashioned way might appeal to some of those states where Harris is weak.
And Okay, I think Vance looks better now because he actually did serve in the combat zone, and I think he's up his game. I've been paying a little bit of attention. I think he did a brilliant move the other day when he landed on the same runway as hair Russ plane and walked across the runway to the reporters saying, well, you guys are kind of lonely, no, since you won't talk to you and anyway, I think
he stepped back up his game. He's looking better. I think this was I think you shouldn't John have bought the media kool aid about Vance. I mean, he's you know, it's sort of an uneven starred and he's got a lot of baggage that always comes out with running mates in the first two three weeks, baggage we say. Sorry. What I mean by baggage is in the ordinary conventional sense of stuff, the media and the opponents are going to exploit the childless and stuff. And that doesn't bother me.
I mean, i'd carry Why would.
It bother anybody but a childless cat lady.
Who apparently there seemed to be a number of them in the suburbs Michigan. That's the problem.
Will never vote for Trump anyway. They're they're still offended because he said he'd grab them by the you know what. You know, they're so repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, maybe just for for childless cat ladies.
I think the uh real, I mean real question, John, is maybe your topic number two on the Trump campaign. I don't know, are you done with Waltz or I'm done with the guy?
But here's one other thing, is both of you have said quite at odds with the way the media is presenting Waltz as a sort of grandfatherly mass Midwestern dad football coach. I mean There's been an enormous number of stories about how football coach will appeal to h young men, vote me, you young male voters. But he's a terrible progressive. He's a terrible progressive.
Are an assistant football coach?
Yeah, I mean I think he's a pretty good one. Well, we'll see, but never mind that.
Matter. High school football coach, coach, coach, Give me a break. Oh my god, I'm sorry.
See this is this actually shows a gender divide because he was like his coach assistant.
He's a social studies teacher. I mean, the dumbest people on the planet are next to early childhood people are social studies teachers who are coaches. That's the only reason they get a degree, because that's what they want to do. They want to hang out in the gym or on the field all day. And one has to wonder. Never mind, I'll just leave it alone. But he was not the coach. He wasn't even good enough to rise to the level of coach. He was the assistant coach.
Well in high school.
Yeah, in high school.
In high school. It's not talking about the NFL here, But what does this Why do you guys say he's such a big progressive. You're seeing almost none of this filter through into the in the mainstream media. You know, I scour the New York Times, in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal every day, as Lucretia constantly criticizes me for, But I don't actually see that much that seems to bear on him being this wild eyed progressive.
Oh, there's might be, but the problem always keep in mind at you know, what's the old line, does a fish know it's wet when it's in the ocean? Right? The reporters, now for the media, they don't think that they're liberal or leftists. They don't think that progressive ideas are controversial, and so of course they're not going to say, gosh, you know, Waltz insisting on signing a bill holding tampons and boys restrooms in K twelve school, you know, from
fourth grade to twelfth grade. Right, fourth grade. Oh, that's an interesting thought. Tampon's in the fourth grade in elementary school, boys bathroom. But so there you go. He's got all kinds of barnacles that way, every bit as much as newsome. And so it's on the truck th COVID correct. Yeah, I think that's right.
Newsen never had a snitch line.
I think he thought about it, but it doesn't matter, right, he had a snitch line and all the rest of that. So look, I mean, also, John, I guess do you not read the Wall Street Journal editorial page they've taken long? I do, Well, you'll learn the truth there at least. See this is the paper where you begin with the editorial page, and then if you have time, you read the news pages. That's what I say about the journal.
So oh, I do too, I have to admit. Okay, well, okay, let's turn. Let's turn to our second topic and start with lucretia, which is what the hell is going on with the Trump campaign. It seems to me that the Trump and Vance, and I don't blame them, were kind of wrong footed by this swap of Harris for Biden. They seemed a little, I don't know, they seemed a
little passive for about two weeks. They seemed confused about what kind of strategy to you, And then there have been this criticism of Trump for instead of trying to bring to light all of the bad policies that Harris has stated she supports. And now your guys are adding Waltz to he's instead focusing his attacks on Kamala Harris's identity, and then we start this feud with the governor of Georgia.
These are all great stories, but they allow Kamala Harris the breathing room to define herself and run all these positive ads about her during the Olympics.
Thank you Mitt Romney for setting the question up for me so well.
I totally sorry.
Trump has an hour long, seventy minute long press conference, and you know, he talked about how bad her policies are. He talked about the fact that she hasn't given a press conference, the fact that he hasn't had seventeen rallies like she has. I don't think is necessarily proof that they that they were off their game. I don't believe that it's wrong to attack Harris for her DEI lack
of qualifications. Personally, I think she's a moron. I think proof of the fact that she's a moron is that they simply won't let her in front of an interviewer who would ask her any real question questions. I guess I don't see it. Maybe because I'm the beneficiary. I have a junk email and many many years ago, my brother in law sent me a pro Obama thing which got me on a list. So I get all the
Republican conservative email and I get all the Democrats. You know, the best that Kama can do is I'm so excited about having Daddy Wild to be part of the ticket. Hey, can you please send I know you haven't sent any money yet, but can this be your first twenty five dollars? It's I think it's a false narrative that says Trump's campaign isn't doing well. I think the other false narrative is that the polls are showing X, Y and Z. I don't think the polls are showing anything of the kind.
I think they're made up polls designed to try to build some momentum for Harris. And I think that when it comes down to it, we're going to see that this whole last couple of weeks was a bit of a fairy tale invented by the mediagasm. That's my belief, the Camalama ding Dong media gasm.
I'm mark right, yeah, Steve so, But I mean the media is always going to be against Trump. I mean, it's just something he has to take account of, is he missing his chances or is Lucretia right. Actually Trump's doing a lot better than the media and the polls reflect, and they haven't been making the serious mistakes that you know the commentariat is claiming. Even conservative commentariats or like even Laura Ingram attacked Trump on TV this last week saying, you know, get onto the issues.
Yeah, so everybody is anxious and jumping the gun. Look, I think it's very shrewd of them to wait and as you put it, be passive, not the word i'd use, but for a bunch of reasons. The Olympics are on, it's still summer, people are on vacation, spending a lot of money on TV ads right now. They're doing some, by the way, but I think would be just wasting
the money. I think you want to keep your powder dry risks since it's a short campaign, But I think there's an interesting strategy to sit back and wait and see. First of all, I got to let the media gasm, as lucrease she puts it run its course. And by the way, this in the last two three days, you're starting to see some media people, mainstream media people, say hey, you know, she really does need to do a press conference. Oh what she is doing. By the way, this has
been reported just in the last day or two. She's apparently spending a lot of time with reporters strictly off the record on her plane, so she's giving them quote unquote access, but she's not giving them anything on the record. I think this is like spring training for I think the campaign knows that she's prone to blowing it, and she's trying to get a game rhythm going. But I think it's a wise idea to let Harris flush herself out. She's going to flip flopping on everything, and flip flopping,
by the way, always hurts candidates. So let her keep revising her positions. Let her say things like what you say this week, I'm going to bring down prices on day one in January and when I'm president, and like, well, why don't you do it now? You actually have a phone number for the tye right runs the country.
And she's just she's just announced she's gonna engage on wager price controls and those are of course.
Look, I think here's the thing. The other thing is is right now, Harris has a standard stump speech. She's saying the same thing in every one of these rallies. That's pretty normal. I mean, I remember following George W. Bush around to a few rallies in two thousand, so that's normal. What does Trump do? He gets up and you never know what he's gonna say. He never knows what he's going to say, right however, Well that means is the media. He gets huge media coverage. They hang
on every word. They're going to report the crazy things he says, like attacking Governor camp in Georgia. But I also think that the press conference a couple of days ago, it shows him energetic. It shows that he can stand up to the media. The subtle message is pretty clear that Kamala can't. And I also think that like Nick in sixty eight, you know, Nixon did these town halls.
He go all over the country and he would talk for an hour with the I mean the pre screened audience of Republicans, perhaps, but the point was is they got out of that lots of footage for TV spots. And by the way, the guy who organized eyes that was Roger Ayles, and he said, we're going to show Nixon a good light with the way he answers to questions from people. I think you can get a lot of ad footage out of the Trump rallies and Trump
press conferences that'll do well for him. And then finally, you know, I have said before that this election looks like in some ways a rerun of nineteen eighty eight when Ducoctus's leftism was exposed steadily. A lot of that was done by independent campaigns. You the Willie Horton ads
were not done by the Bush campaign. And I think also you're going to see a lot of the attacks on Harris will come from the campaign and from third not third political parties, but you know, independent efforts, and that's going to turn the tide for Trump.
So I listened to your your guys both a guest appearance on the Ricochet podcast or I felt like the child of divorce. My two parents went off and did some other podcasts without me. I'm gonna throw a temper tantrum and refuse to eat dinner until you get me some present.
Okay, So well, I missed you, John.
But one thing I heard, one thing I heard Lucretia say about you quite quite amusingly, Steve, was it you always decide things based on historical analogies, and those historical analogies don't fit, right, they don't fit. You're gonna have to quit, right, Lucreature just said, Steve, why do you keep referring to all these things in the past. That was like fifty years ago, that was before the internet, that was before TikTok, that was before modern politics as we know it.
Lucretias, I put something up just John, just this is a desperation. So maybe Steve wants to put it up. I'll explain it. So it's a thing from Twitter. It's a picture describing what I spoke of a moment ago, which is putting up the black curtains so that you can't see that the upper levels of the bleachers have no people in them, but one of the Kamala Harris's what would you call it, psychophants or whatever sycophants put
up said Trump has ordered breaking. Trump has ordered his team to literally cover up entire levels of venues he's unable to fill with black cloths to make it appear as if there aren't thousands of empty seats with a fat laughing emoji. Except everybody and their brother pointed out, it's the Harris Waltz rally. It's not that that's how
desperate they are. Okay, why would you ever do something like that if you knew that that Harris was so popular that she could not only fill an entire stadium but also fill you know, have huge crowds out waiting in line outside. I just this is part of the whole made up thing, just like the Poles as well. I'm saying Trump is doing fine.
JD.
Vance is popular. They're doing everything they can to make him unpopular, but it's not working with anybody that matters. You know, the childless cat ladies aren't going to vote for Vance. I get it was out a reason. I mean, I think that the difference is Trump recognizes that somebody young and accomplished and smart like Vance, and he's not in any way intimidated by that. But it does it does. I mean, remember how worried all of us were if something happened to Biden that we'd end up with with
the moron Kamala M. Dingdong as our president. She was an insurance policy. Whatever else you can say about JD. Vancy's not an insurance policy for Trump, right, And I just think that this is all a media subterfuge to try to get Conservatives to be somehow as usual firing at each other inside the firing squad instead of where they're supposed to be firing. That's what I think. There, You have it.
Good.
So look, you guys are speechless now.
No, I'm just a contrary to press the impression you get from the press. Lucretia's argument is right, Trump's in good shape. All this, all this media hype about Harris is just illusory. So let me just ask you in a kind of just bottom line fashion percentage chances that Trump's going to win sixty percent, sixty percent? Jesus, I mean sixty five sixty five percent.
You're expecting more?
No, I was expecting something a little closer.
Wow.
Okay.
One of the other things, John, that's happened is that more and more states, and in some cases even like in Georgia, the the suspect states from the twenty twenty election, are implementing doing a much better job of implementing protections against voter fraud.
Uh.
And I think that Republicans this time around are not going to be caught with their pants down on the whole issue of of you know, mail in ballots and so on. And I think that that's going to make the difference. You know, the the more extreme people that I respect and follow.
When you say extreme, does that mean that they're more extreme than you?
There might be more extreme than I'm willing to admit to be.
John.
We we forgot our need to I need to I mean, to some of these websites so I can turn them into Google for censoring.
We forgot our tinfoil hats this morning, John. That okay, next time.
Sorry to interrupt. I was just stunned by that statement.
They you know the big here. This is a common theme. I'll just put it this way. No, you don't want to talk about it, John, But the common theme is is so popular and so likely to win in a landslide that the only thing that will stop that is the same kind of voter fraud and cheating that occurred
in twenty twenty. That's the argument you hear everywhere. And so even though there's a focus on you know, Waltz, and there's a focus on what an idiot Kamala ding Dong is and all of that, you keep seeing reminders just remember, we've got to win by so much. They can't cheat. Just remember, we've got to keep them from cheating. We've got to stop mail in ballots for anybody. But X Florida just passed legislation that removed a bunch of
foreigners from the roles, dead people from the roles. Other states are starting to do that, so it's going to be more difficult for the Democrats to cheat this time, fair and square. As Steve would say, right, do you have.
Any last thoughts before we turn to stories that are important? Important story but flying under the radar because all the intention on the presidential left shore.
No, We're going to be kicking this around for the next four months, So I'm happy for the moment.
Four months is going to be years and years of this.
What are you talking about?
Is it really four months away still?
Or three? Whatever it is?
Yeah, can you imagine if Trump wins? I mean, we'll never stop talking about all these issues or Harris too. So one of the stories that seems to be under the radar is the collapse of one of the great American companies. What is happening at Boeing? And I raised this in part to give Steve a hard time, who comes from a family of aeronautic industry, engineers and the appreciative who works with the military. What is going on with Boeing? And it wasn't just because of this airplane
that fell out of the sky in Brazil. The first thing I thought was, oh God, not another Boeing. It's not airbus, right, not to be an air bus. But Boeing has been suffering from failure after failure. We just saw the news. I you know, you barely see it in the news. Once upon tome Many this would have been a big story. Is that the two astronauts that went up and the Boeing Starliner can't come back down until next year. Until next year, they're supposed to come
back after a few days. Now they're and I bet they're going to be coming down on a Russian probably awesome kind of Russian contraption. But Steve, Steve, what is going on with Boeing is this? Is this the laws of another great American company? I mean, Boeing used to stand for American technical excellence. It was the great maker of airliners.
What's happened? Yeah? So, by the way, for people who know good old sci fi comedy shows, I said, the next step is going to be for NASA to start sending really cheesy movies to the astronauts. They control the monitor. Right if if you're an old mystery science theater at three thousand FA as, I am.
Oh god, okay, stuffing.
Of course you don't. It's okay.
I know what he's talking about. And I can't even believe you brought it up.
Oh we are you guys? Are you guys are Kretns and Philistines. I'll just say that, uh, I have settle theories here. By the way, they do have a new CEO who took charge this week, and he did something I think took a very good, significant first step. He said, I'm going to be based in Seattle, which is the beating heartbeat of our passenger planes. And I think there are two or three problems aside from the DEI issue,
which a lot of people talk about. One is, you know balling, as you say, John used to specialize in airplane, you know, commercial aircraft, chiefly some I mean they made bombers in World War two and so forth. But they decided to become a big defense contractor several decades ago, and their business has been tilting that direction. So that's when they first moved headquarters to Chicago and then to Ardenton, Virginia.
Chicago wasn't close enough the Pentagon, right, and I think that that has distracted them, made them I won't say lazy, but I think that it's often the case that if you go back and look at corporate history, a lot of conglomerates form and then they break up because they realized that you know it, and t to an old company that no longer exists, can't do all these far flung different kinds of businesses. Second, what was the second point?
They decentralized too much. They contracted out too much. I think I know the sort of deputy general counsel of Boeing a little bit had dinner with him a year or so ago, and he was telling me, yeah, well we now have I think I think he said a number was fifty thousand suppliers outside suppliers, right. So you know, my family's company was one of them fifty years ago. You know, my dad got to fly in one of the first test flights of the seven forty seven in the late sixties.
Wow.
And you know in those days it was I know this because they you know, he would fly My dad would fly to Seattle a lot from la and and you know, nothing but respect and an admiration for the Bowling engineers and for how well the company ran. I can tell lots of stories about that that would take too long to unspool. But I suspect that older culture has gone, as so much of our older corporate culture has gone.
Right.
You know, I'm watching our car companies right now to figure out if they're going to survive the electric vehicle mandate. So there's that. I do think. I'll say one last really politically incorrect thing. Actually, this may this may upset you. John. Do you remember the seven, the triple seven airplane Korean Airlines that crashed in San Francisco about five years ago?
I remember it. I was on a plane about I was on the plane.
Yeah, I was not on the plane, but I was.
I was actually on a plane just about to land right behind it, and we were coming in for landing, and then the pilot just read the engines and pulled up and we landed in San Jose Airport. So why then you could see on the TV screens in the plane, oh what had happened?
Is so?
Yeah, I was actually coming into planes behind that on some Southwest flight just out of Orange County. So yeah, I was so.
Now, without verging into the territory of the cliches about Asian drivers, Oh come on, oh.
Steve, I guess Asians that I love. A good racial stereotype is not just the mess and x men. And I would say, the last place you ever want to try to park is in the parking lot at an Asian grocery store. I admit it, terrible parkers. I don't know why I count when I park at an Asian grocery store. I park all the way in the back where there's lots of spaces empty on both sides of me. What come on, it's Steve flying to seven seven seven with four guys in there in the cockpit.
Well yeah, but I mean that that crash. I believe I'm right that crash was attributed to pilot error, you know, insufficient training and experience, and not the racial And this draws me back to the two max jet crashes five six years ago that started Boeing's downward spiral. And so they'd install this new automatic pilot system to compensate for the redesign. And that's a long story that was driven partly by environmental nonsense. And those two crashes were by
third world pilots, I'll put it. Do not say say third world anymore, but they were. Now they're probably perfectly well trained pilots in the conventional sense, and Boeing should have done a better job of training pilots and simulators for the new system. American pilots, most of them come from the military. They've flown F sixteen's and right, they're used to flying really sensitive airplanes. I don't think and we Westing. I did write this up once and heard
from a lot of people who think I'm right. I don't think very many American pilots would have made the mistakes those foreign pilots made that caused those two crashes. Boeing is too chicken to say out loud. Look, these pilots should have known to disengage the automatic pilot system and leveled out the plane. They didn't do that. They you know, they made all kinds of mistakes. And it is on Boeing, as I say, for not being more
aware that this problem could happen. But I don't think any American pilot would have had a moment's difficulty getting out of the problem that new system caused.
But Steve, the answer is for us to give third world countries propeller planes with wires that pull the runners back and forth, and the lighters.
Well, I don't know. You know, my dad learned to fly for the Navy and the old the World War One style biplane in nineteen forty because that's all we had to track the pilots. Yeah, I've got these great pictures and looking like you know, Snoopy in the sopwith camel.
So lucretia. What is going on at Boeing? You have the military key, expect that Boeing has a huge military business. What is going You see the same kind of competence going on. What the hell's going on?
It's incompetence, but it's it's Everything Steve said is of course accurate, but it's a tiny part of what's really going on. And what's really going on is from kindergarten all the way through college, graduate school, and into the corporate world. We have now instituted affirmative action DEI. For the longest time, engineering and the other hard sciences were able to we're able to avoid the worst accesses of the DEI push but I mean, look at Budling is
the perfect example. The idiot CEO. So that was the most important thing that they cared about. And we see, just like with United, exactly what that ends up doing. You know, United. The United CEO so that he wanted fifty percent of his pilots to be women and minorities. Sorry, I want my pilot to be I'll just say it, a white man who actually went through school when it mattered.
And well, have you guys heard the comedian Rob Schneider stick on diversity in pilots at United Airlines? Well, if not, here it is Airlines. Last month the CEO he announced of all the hiring for all the new pilots that are coming up, is here all the hiring for the new pilots. The main focus is going to be diversity. What diversity?
Not the best pilots you can find, the.
Ones with the most hours in experience.
There's the dog that's wrong. No diversity.
I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of flying all the time with these white pilots landing safely and on time.
Oh so you want you want, you want Tim Waltz fly on your plane?
No, No, no, because, oh, did you see this stuff about how Tim Wltz is trying to pretend that he's somehow folks see because he went to some crappy state school in Minnesota, whereas U. G. D Vance is an elite. He went to Yale.
I didn't break.
These people are so not going to work the way back back to de I for a second. So the reason I think that's interesting. However, I don't want to harp on it because I've talked about it before. But I also think it's interesting that these major corporations Bowing because it's a defense contractor in the whole defense industry along with the military, has become DEI and woke. But John Deere, Harley Davidson, right now, those companies that decided they had to be woke, they had to be DEI,
they had to be all of these these things. They had no clue about who their audience was, just like bud Light, and those particular companies are being bud lighted. Excuse the expression, right.
Actually my joke was John Deere, send a Dear John letter to the DEI world.
So the good, I mean, the bad news is is that we're going to see some of the ramifications of that DEI, especially for an important company like Boeing before it all gets fixed. But the good news is is that you know you, you can be one of those CEOs that wants to be in the club with the other CEOs and prove how woke you are. But it's going to cost you and more and more people are are looking at saying, you know what, you don't get
my business. If I get during the entire Pride month, if I got a solicitation email or an urtisement email that had a Pride flag on it, I didn't even look at it. I deleted it. Oh excuse me, I take it back. I went to unsubscribe, unsubscribed and then deleted it, and I get a little email now, So
it's kind of nice. So anyway, that's my thought about Boeing. Okay, the idea that they that they can't figure out how to bring the astronauts home, Steve, you might know something more about the technicalities of that than I do, but what an incredible embarrassment, right, And they are probably going to have to send Elon Musk is probably going to have.
To price it.
Yeah, seriously.
So okay, so one more, Actually we have. I think we have time for one more under the radar story, which on any normal time would be fully covered dominating headlines. But actually maybe it intersects with the election. What is going on with the financial markets? We saw the stock market on Monday take a pretty steep dive, right, I think the markets lost what over three may be close to four percent of their value in one day. What did this normally be the occasion for much tearing of
the hair? As you know, people's retirement accounts are falling under uh an administration that is touting its economic record is unmatched, right the Yeah, I mean people were saying on the Democratic side that this has been one of the most successful presidencies in the history of the United States. Yeah, but again, you know the markets and the economy. You barely hear about them now, Steve, what is so First? What does that show us about what's going on with politics?
But also what's going on with the economy. Have you sold all of your four oh one k accounts and moved them into gold or bitcoin?
Yet?
I know the preach has.
Got a significant bitcoin holding. I think she's actually mine bitcoin right now.
I'm invested in guns. John, There you go.
Have you really I love it?
Well, it was Milton Freeman's birthday, a couple of Milton Freeman's birthday was a couple of weeks ago. And is he like to say markets will fluctuate. Uh, Look, there's been storm clouds for quite a while that were the economy is slowing down and maybe going to head into recession. It may be some months off, it may happen quickly. Employment, the employment reports, what's originally set this off. Plus a surprise move in the Central Bank of Japan to raise
their interest rate caught everybody by surprise. Uh and in fact, quite the opposite. John, when the Japanese market went down twelve percent last Monday, I went and bought a japan fun because you know, when they're saying you really, I did, because it's already bounced back.
I did not know this about you. Not only have you been on the Rickash on the not the Rickash of the Parilin podcast for hundreds of episodes. You are a gambler. You are a gambler.
This is this is it's already bounced back five percent since anyway, look the what do you say?
Uh so, Steve, you're a by on the dip man.
Yeah, I kind of and well also, I mean, uh, I don't like to play stock market tout, but right now the stock market is giving us a distorted pick. You can say it's way overvalued, and it's not really true. What's overvalued or the seven or eight high flying tech stocks, energy stocks, old fashioned energy stocks meaning oil and gas companies are still unbelievably undervalued, and everything else. It's kind of be in the line where it's been in the
last twenty years. Now. They will go up and down with the fortunes of the general economy and interest ration and so forth. But I think everyone's panicking and overreacting. But you have to have well gambling. I just say, you just have to some nerves and don't use leverage. A lot of people who got bit in the Japanese stock markets were heavily leveraged with what they call the yen carry trade. You borrow yen for nothing and then
you know, you buy Japanese stocks on margin. Well suddenly, if you've got to pay higher interest rates your end, you're going to be in trouble. So I think this is all a temporary blip, not to say the market won't go down when the economy tanks in a few months, but everybody should just relax.
So that got my conspiracy hat this morning. Uh, but I actually find it incredibly odd that that it blipped so quickly, Steve, and I actually I do because I know that you had people probably over exaggerating the threat to the long term health of our economy and so forth on Monday afternoon. But I mean it was it wasn't even a story the next day. It was not even a story anyway. So I don't know enough and
never cared enough to learn about it. I just find that suspicious, shall we say, because I mean, there is no doubt that that would have I had that continued, had the that actually put us into recession, had the stock market crash continued into a week or more, it would have in fact blown any chance that Harris ever had of winning the presidency. I believe that, and that's why I believed that there was probably some manipulation going on.
Well, I don't know, stay tuned, I could. I mean there's two you know, John, what a day for me to annoy Lucreature with my historical analogy man?
Well, well, yeah, so here he is, folks analogy man one of Reagan.
One of Reagan's great moments. There are two great moments, with Reagan's stock market in the eighties and the fall of eighty one, when the stock market was tanking. A reporter says to Reagan in a press conference, gosh, Wall Street doesn't seem to think much of your economic program, and Reagan replied, I've never found Wall Street to be a very good source of economic advice, which is totally
hinter Knox for Republican right. But then you know, look the crash, Steve, Yeah, the crash of eighty seven, which I remember vividly. That was twenty two percent in one day. What was it the other day, John, two percent or something. No, I don't think there are that big and it bounced back. To the point is is after the eighty seven crash, the left in particular said, well it's over, it's nineteen twenty nine all over again. Turned out not to be true at all. It took the market eighteen months to
recover that loss. That was largely an interest rate problem. That's a long story and some other weirdness. But the point was is that wasn't an indicator at all of the underlying strength of the economy as the next two years proved. So that's why I think people should not get overly excited and changes in the stock market.
The difference is analogy.
Man.
The indicators of the underlying economy in this case are not strong.
Yeah, they're weakening.
And that's why I mean, I'm not really jumping quickly to these conspiracy conclusions, but the economy's not strong. Inflation is still a very big problem. Sure enough, the stock market has been doing great under Biden, with the unemployment, all of those things, and they needed to fix that situation quickly, and or I think it would have been catastrophic. I still don't think she's gonna win, but that's my belief, but you know, based on nothing other than my my cute little tinfoil cowboy hat.
Okay, last issue again, I think this is a really important issue that it seems to be getting, you know, not even on the front page these days. Is Ukraine has invaded Russia. What's some success American weaponry with so you know, the Lucretia go ahead?
Does this?
Is this bringing World War three even closer? As you say, the units Ukraine has been achieving, the success with American armor American tactic strategy, ammunition. That much vaunted offensive that Ukraine was supposed to carry out last year, which failed, seems to be now having moved into Russia proper. Is this really for this again? Is this brakemanship of the worst order? Or is this yes?
Yes, absolutely, First letting and and the the despicable news pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning actually actually had a story saying Ukraine needs more men, but everybody who wants, who is willing to fight, is already has already signed up, has already gone, They're already dead. This is I just want to make it a bigger story for right now, because, believe it or not, John, this is where I get the most negative comments, even more than from the women who don't like me, calling them
childless cat ladies. And that is that you know, somehow I'm a stooge for for Putin et cetera, et cetera.
Really do you atoo for? I mean everyone knows Putin is your stooch?
Yeah, exactly, he wishes. Seriously, seriously, no, I might argue. Before my argument, I just want to say, part of the reason that you saw Republican establishment type being so upset about Jade Vance as he has the same opinion about the Ukraine situation that I do. And I'm just going to make the bigger argument without getting into tactics and all those other things, that the thing that worries me the most right now about the entire international situation
is the idiots in charge. They don't know what they're doing with Iran. They don't know what they're doing obviously with Israel. With Iran, Israel has belawed that whole thing. They don't know what they're doing with Ukraine, and I do think that they're stupid. I believe in the what would it be, the structure of our American foreign policy has some stability to it that even idiots like Jake Sullivan and Blincoln and all those others can't quite overcome yet.
But it's been disintegrating, and I'm worried. I'm worried that something like a you know, a larger conflict that they won't necessarily see as a terrible thing because it'll be the rally round our great commander in chief Kamalama ding Dong. All of those things concern me. Again, we could spend a lot of time we don't have time debating the wisdom of Ukraine's offensive here, but they need I'm hoping Trump wins so that he can get in there negotiated
settlement and get it over with. Stop killing Russians, stop killing Ukrainians, bring some measure of stability. I don't know if I'd call it peace to that area and get it out of the headlines.
That's my hope, Steve, Yeah, so a two sentence detour. There was some reporting here a few days ago, including in the Wall Street Journal, that one of the reasons you got the hostage swap of ten days ago now was because the Russians were worried about what Trump might do with this issue. That was actually in the reporting. I wonder if something similar happening now with the dynamic over Ukraine. Look, I've never been as hostile as Lucretia
to backing our back in Ukraine. I have been deeply skeptical and critical from the beginning for the same reasons as her, that our strategist, our leaders, Biden and all
the rest don't know what they're doing. So there was reports here in the last couple of weeks that the Ukrainians, using our weapons wanted to target apparently a whole lot of Russian aircraft at an air base where they, I guess improbably have lined them up next to each other like we did at Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one, and we said no, I mean, we're actually vetoing targets
inside Russia. We have been preventing them from attacking very seriously inside Russia, which is what you would do if you wanted to force either a win or b increase the pressure to force the negotiate a settlement. So what's surprising to me about what's happening is is clearly we have given them the green light to attack inside Russia Ukraine, which is for the reasons Lucretia mentioned short of manpowers decided it's worth while taking the gamble to do this.
It looks like it's paying off if you believe the news reports. Who knows. I think Russia is badly extended, but they do have deeper reserves of people and material to throw at this problem. So the two questions are, again, what is our Do we have a clear strategy or are we improvising like we did in Vietnam in the same stupid ways? And second, how long we're gonna keep shoveling huge sums of money. I do believe that the equalizer is if we give them enough money and weapons,
we can keep them in the fight. But I don't see what the endgame here is and so I don't know. And then then there is this risk that if you do back, if you do allow Ukraine to be more aggressive and attack deep inside Russia. By the way, Ukrainians could attack Moscow and other major sites if they wanted to, and you know, how would Putin react? Who knows, But if they you know, if he starts using tactical nuclear weapons, Europe is just gonna come. We're gonna freak out and
come apart. And so it's very higher what's going on. And I wish I had more confidence that these people knew what the heck they were doing.
Analogy, man, I can't believe you missed it. What to talk about what happened in nineteen eighty with the Iranian hostage quickly and how quickly those hostages were released once Reagan was.
Yeah, like that, that has been on my mind so right, and you know, the hostages were there, and Reagan kept calling them barbarians, and you know, privately, the Carter people were quite correctly briefing the Reagan team every day and what was going on, and the Reagan team said, well, we're going to stay out of the way. We're not going to give you suggestions.
You know.
It's but the Reagan people didn't really have a plan, they didn't know what they were going to do. They were relieved when they didn't have to deal with it on day one. But the joke going around, and I remember there were a couple of newspaper editorial cartoons. The joke was, what's black flat as a pancake and clothes in the dark? Answer Iran? After Reagan comes president. One of the editorial cartoon shows a couple of malas saying,
maybe we got to think about this problem. And so, yeah, I do think that, you know, Reagan's tough talk and the uncertainty of what he might do contributed to settling that problem by January twenty and the same thing could happen. Now that's the optimistic case. But on the other hand, we have a bunch of clowns running things.
And so for the five hundredth episode of the Powerling podcast, there you have Lucretia actually asking analogy man for an historical analogy.
Michaelus is a win.
What a way to celebrate.
Well, last last topic, I forgot to tell you. I wanted to talk about it, John really quick. The Olympics. I know Steve said he watched a few. I've seen a couple of clips.
I've been watching them. I watched them all the time. I love the Olympics, I do well. I think I love the reaffirmation of people rooting for the nation state, even though the whole damn thing's organized by a typical globalist delete. But people don't care about those people. What they really want to see is their country win. I love the patriotism of it. I love it when those the crazy Dutch get out there and show their national spirit, even though we know they don't have any left.
Yeah.
Well, I'll just say the the fifteen hundred meter men's finals the greatest fifteen hundred meter race ever run.
I'm just I did watch clips of that mean one where the Americans snuck in nobody was watching for him, and he won the gold medal.
Yeah that was awesome.
Yeah, the little British girl who just took off, the pretty little blonde British girl running against all the other and she was just in the pack and then she just took off like she hadn't been trying. I only mentioned that because that also shows to John's point that there's a little bit of something to be proud of left in the UK. Not much though, not much at all.
And by the way, I hope you know, I told I told these guys that I repost everything I possibly can on on x that is that might contribute to rioting in the UK by white ring white right wing what does he call them something? Yeah, anyway, So I'm hoping, because I told them the Lucretia compound needs a little bit of a live target practice, I'm hoping that the British Bobbies that I've done show up at my house to extradite me to England for fomenting riots with my
social media posts. Yeah, I'm still I'm upset about I'm upset that we tolerate a man uh winning the women's boxing. The fact that that's tolerated really really bothers me. From beginning to end, the whole thing has been not not the athletes for the most part that like you say, it's it's it's amazing to watch human what are probably superhuman feats of athleticism. You know, slugs like me can only sit there and just sort of dream about it.
But I agree with that, But the whole thing has just been really, really disturbing, I guess is the best way to put it.
I agree. I mean, you have a wonderful national patriotism on one side, but you do have, unfortunately, the influence of this ridiculous global elite and allowing men to be in the boxing competition. Also the weird sports. Although I know Steve is probably all in favor of breakdancing being Olympics, I find that ridiculous.
Yes, it is. There's too many of these strange sports.
You know. It's wasn't that the one where they push the disc down the wooden.
Of That's Winter Olympics. That's Winter Olympics. Yeah, totally. I'm not even sure why there is a why there should be in our Olympics. But anyway, we've got to the end of our show, and so I believe Steve is going to post about this. But because we've removed our bite in references in our closing segment, we need to replace it with something new. And I believe Steve said
that we were going to invite the listeners. Yeah, to make various proposals and suggestions about what our new sign off should be in the age of Harris.
Yeah.
You know, I haven't really pushed that idea because I don't think I have any from listeners yet, so I'm still.
So let's put it out there now.
Listen right next, listeners, please to celebrate our five hundredth universary, you yourself have the opportunity right and to come up and suggest.
But don't you skip me, John, because I have some great Babylon Bees.
No, this is the only part we're keeping, is the Babylon Bee.
I'll just say this as a guideline to listeners who are interested in this contest, and maybe I'll make one of my new book collections by available as a price. You always want to take something a leftist has said that you can mock, so you know, for a while I was using Samantha Power saying talking about wanting to milk the soft power dividend, which is one of the silliest things I'd ever heard.
So, yes, we used to do that, and now is the time to do what we've been doing in that time is every day. But we made our own that was now is the time to drink the whiskey that we have been drinking, right, and that time is every day. Yeah, that wasn't a bad one, but I think we have to do a better Kamelamma ding Dong And there's plenty of things to choose out there, all right, So Babylon Beat.
Speaking of kam Lamma ding Dong, she desperately googles what is a stock market crash spend's flight looking for cloud where her data is stored, and it's a picture of her looking out the window of her airplane. Trump's concerned if he beats Kamalama ding Dong in a debate, they might replace her with someone good this time. Well, that's funny back a little ways, you know, this was This was really all absolutely current only a week ago. Now seems like ancient news. Josh Shapiro annoyed he got this
death to Israel neck tattoo for nothing. Democrats worried choosing Jewish vice president would have cost them the all important Death to America vote. The my Olympics sad Olympics official unable to get female boxing gold medal over giant Adams Apple John Does I get it? Get it all right, another ancient history, Now suspicions rises, new footed shows secret Service helping a just Trump shoot scope. Oh yeah, okay, And I'll end with a few. Tim Waltz says, one
man's gulag is another man's vacation resort. Tim wal says, guy guarding tomb of unknown soldier, why he doesn't just desert him? Jim walds to make America as great as Minneapolis. And I'm gonna end with this one for Steve. Boeing compensates stranded astronauts with fifty dollars red lobster gift cards.
Right, that sounds about right? Yeah, all right, John starting to launch us.
Out, and we always drink your whiskey meat and we need a replacement for Let's go Brandon, Steve.
Yeah, it's the three whiskey happy Hour, unburdened by what has been anxious for what might yet be. Bye bye, everybody, see you next week.
Bye everybody.
And Ricochet joined the conversation.