This is America's Trucking Network with Kevin Gordon Vulvaable.
Thanks for tuning in on this Tuesday morning, the first show of December for America's Struck a network who says nothing good happens after midnight. I hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving. We couldn't have had a better Thanksgiving in the Gordon household if we tried. There were a couple wrinkles along the way, but all in all, it just it. You know when you go into something and you think it's going to be a problem and then all of a sudden, everything just kind of comes together.
Yeah, it's been I mentioned this last week.
It's been several years since we've hosted our Thanksgiving meal with our family.
Our son, who's a chef.
A few years ago we pre play Endemic, decided that he wanted to start doing it. When they moved back from a facility he was managing a restaurant banquet facility at a university and they came back to the area they had been here. They moved over there, then came back and wanted to start hosting Thanksgiving because they had a little bit bigger house. They had a bigger dining room, and plus they had some family friends of theirs that they wanted to have over as well, so we beg
we kind of acquiesced to them having Thanksgiving. Now, there's been a couple of years when about three years ago they moved up to the Northwest and because I was filling in for one of the shows, we couldn't get up there, so we had a little Thanksgiving ourselves, and so it's been kind of weird that we haven't really hosted anything. But this year, with him being up in the northwest Port part of Ohio, his daughter who is still living down here, had to work at three o'clock.
I mean this I think last week, and so they decided to come down here and then have Thanksgiving at noon, which normally we in the past have always had it around five o'clock in the afternoon, so that kind of moved up the timetable and everything. So we decided to just go ahead and have it here. And we had
it all planned out. I mean we began weeks before kind of saying, okay, here's what we need to buy here, made the list of all the ingredients and stuff that we're going to purchase, and then kind of set out a timetable of when we start on, like well dethawing. Well, we didn't have to defaw the turkey because we actually got a fresh turkey, an organic turkey this year, which by the way, was seventy cents a pound less than what we paid last year, which was kind of phenomenal.
But anyway, so we go ahead and order that and then we didn't have to thaw it out, so we didn't to add that to the timetable. We got some of the stuff done over the weekend, desserts and some of the things that we would normally have to you know, has to sit around for a little while to firm up, and the flavors gel and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, so everything was working real fine, and so we had planned on Wednesday. I had filled in on the morning
show for our sister station. I've got home at around eleven o'clock that Wednesday, eleven o'clock in the morning that Wednesday, and we started saying, okay, we're going to get all this stuff done. And originally we were thought thinking of doing the turkey the night before, then wrapping it up and then just heating it and up the next morning, and I kind of came I kind of thought, no, I don't want to try that because it might get dry.
And we've never over.
The last thirty five years that we've done Thanksgiving, we've never had a dry turkey, and I want to break that string. So I figured, all right, Well, by the time I finish atn that Thanksgiving morning and get home, get a couple hours of sleep, maybe throw the turkey in, you know, get all the stuffing and everything into it by about starting about six o'clock in the morning, get it in and start roasting it around seven o'clock in the morning, because it takes about four four and a half hours.
So I figured, okay, no problem.
So Wednesday afternoon, we're getting everything prepared and everything and lo and behold, wouldn't you know that throw a monkey wrench into it and we wind up we have a toilet that decided that it was going to can you say crap out?
Now? Well it stopped working.
There's just a little floatation device in there, flow mass at whatever they call it there. Anyway, the float when it's supposed to rise and then it cuts off the water. Well, it cut off the water before it was actually filled and it take maybe about five minutes for the toilet of the tank to fill. So figured, okay, that's going to get a little bit of use on Thanksgiving, so
I better go get I better replace that. And I thought, okay, according to the instructions and everything, it's only going to take about thirty minutes. I figured, well, since I'm not really you know, I'm not a pro at this, I don't do it every day, so I figured, okay, it's
going to take about an hour. So we began starting to do this thing with the with the toilet, with the back of the toilet, the tank and everything, and lo and behold, I have to take and I have to remove this cabinet that's around the toilet in order to get to it, in order to get everything disassembled out of the tank, and so I had to unattach this thing from the wall, move it over, and so then I get into the thing and find out, of course, you know, obviously you're going to be missing a piece
or or something's going to break, and so then you have to run up to the store and get that. So this half hour project wound up being about four hours long by the time I got the cabinet off, got everything repaired, then reattached the cabinet and got it going. So I kind of pushed this back a little bit. So I figured, all right, my wife is busy getting the desserts and everything ready Wednesday night, and so I figured, okay,
no problem. When I get back from ATM doing the show, I figured, well, just a couple hours of chopping, you know. Put it aside. I had all the broth made the night before, with the neck and cleaning the turkey, so I had that already before I even did the show, and so I figured, not a problem.
I'll just come home, do.
The chopping of the all the stuff for the stuffing, get that all ready to go, go to bed for a couple hours and get up and so anyway, that a couple hours of chopping wound up taking me about two and a half hours, so anyway, not much sleep. But then we got I got up at six o'clock and got everything ready, put some coffee on, and then
started stuffing. And from start to finish, by the time you saw tay the onions, the celery and that, and then put it in with the bread cubes and then add the seasoning and all that sort of stuff and then stuff the turkey. I figured that I've written my notes down over the years and said, oh, that's going to take you about an hour, And it took us
exactly an hour. So we got the turkey in at seven thirty in the morning, and so I figured, all right, well, going to be here to about eleven o'clock thereabout, so I'll sneak in a couple hour and naf And so,
as it turns out, everything just went fantastic. Our son got here about an out, well about an hour before, about eleven ten forty five or so, and because a chef being a chef, he kind of had well, he knows how to kind of time everything in terms of putting the cast roles in, heating up the potato, getting the gravy ready, carving the turkey, all that sort of stuff once it comes out, and so you know, he kind of came in kind of pulled everything together and
all the time, and which was a tremendous help, and just it's kind of interesting watching somebody that has done this and knows how to do these things doing it. And so everything turned out fantastic. It was probably the best turkey we have had in as long as I can remember everything. I mean, it was it was juicy,
it was just tender. It was fantastic. All the juices into the stuffing were just fantastic, all the sides and everything, and it was just it was one of the best Thanksgiving dinners we've.
Had in memory.
And you know, normally the advantage of hosting a Thanksgiving dinner is that you have lots of leftovers, and it's kind of like one of those things where you don't you know, it's kind of a good thing and a bad thing, because I guess, I mean, there's a lot of people that apparently don't once they get stuffed with turkey and stuff, they're not interested in leftovers, and you always kind of wonder, well, if nobody's taking any leftovers, do they really enjoy the meal?
But then by the same token, they come.
Back year after year and rave about wanting to be there, and then you see them fill their plates up and gobble down everything, so you know, they kind of appreciate it a little bit. But this year it was interesting because our the granddaughter lives down here that had to work at three, she asked if she could have some leftovers, and so we put up some containers, and then our other, the next in line, granddaughter, who is a freshman in college.
We didn't know that, but she pulls out this thermal bag that has all these containers and it she goes, I want to get some leftovers take back to me because I can have them, you know, maybe in the in the dormitory and whatever, because I really love the meal I want to have. I want to have the leftovers.
So she had all of her containers. And then by the time we got everything packed up and everything, we're looking around at what was left over, you know, for us, because you know, God, I love one of the best things about the Thanksgiving are the turkey sandwiches the next few days or even a week afterwards, and we really had not that much leftover. But all in all, it was fantastic. I don't think we could have had a
better Thanksgiving. Everything turned out fantastic, even with the little wrinkle of the of the toilet the day before throwing the schedule off. It's one of those things that you think, oh my god, this is going to be a disaster, and then all of a sudden everything starts falling into place and everything turned out right. And I know We're going to be talking about this and thinking about this that day for a number of years.
Coming up.
The Christmas season has finally begun for me. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network, seven hundred W l W. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's struck In Network, seven hundred W LW.
And of course, before I get into.
You know, the Christmas season officially starting, kind of finishing up my thoughts as I was thinking about it during the break about Thanksgiving and everything, you know, not only that we have the the you know, the the meal and everything turned out fantastic. Then of course that night watching the Bengals, you know, it was one of those things where the Bengals were playing and I'm thinking, oh god, you know, am I gonna be able to you know,
is it going to give me in? You know, you got to pull for the home team, and you know, it's always been one of these things where it's like you get all these expectations and then they disappoint. But I gotta tell you that that that game was absolutely fantastic. Also, our granddaughter who came with the thermal back and she was all prepared with her various containers because she wanted
to take leftovers home with her. This is the same girl that about two three years ago we asked her for her her Christmas list, and she runs upstairs and she comes back down with it, and she's got this thing on a list, and it was on this little narrow piece of paper, and this list was as tall as she is. We were just by her precision of making sure how she, you know, had everything.
Listed out and all this sort of stuff well over the weekend.
We asked her, by the way, we forgot to ask you, you know, your list for Thanksgiving. So she sends us a link to her spreadsheet now for her Christmas gifts. I'll tell you she is quite a character. It was, oh my goodness, a great weekend. Fantastic weekend, and just communications back and forth and then a little character.
It was just fantastic.
By the way, I mentioned earlier that Christmas season has finally started for me. You know most people, you know, some people, the Christmas season begins right after Halloween. I mean, if you you know, obviously, if you go into some of the big box stores, I noticed that they were starting to put out their Christmas decorations off to the side in one corner before they started infiltrating the rest of the store, you know, because they were competing with
Halloween decorations and so on. But I started seeing some of the Christmas decorations back in Geez even September, first part of October, and then of course one's Halloween was over. The store was completely flooded. The candy aisles and all that sort of stuff we're taking care of. For some people it's, you know, the beginning of December. Some people it doesn't start until the first snowfall in December, which you know, depending upon where you live, that's not going
to happen real soon. And for some people it's you know, the Christmas season begins the day after Thanksgiving. Well for me, it is it's a Christmas season until I see the Corona built beer commercial and it's just one of those things that it pops up every year and it's and it okay, it's now Christmas season. I can begin the Christmas season. I'm a I'm not a you know, I
don't drink Corona beer. I'm not really fond of it, but just seeing that commercial every year, and by the way, for the last thirty five years, and I got some interesting facts about this.
I mentioned this last year a little bit. I don't know if you remember this.
But anyway, this ad pops up and it's been going and they said that it will be going on about eighty It'll run about eighty thousand times during all kinds of sporting events over the next up until Christmas. This commercial first air in nineteen ninety and remains one of the longest running commercials ever Let Me See when it first let me see. According to let Me See Corona Beer, they call it the o Tan and palm ad ad pops up every year without fail, without virtually any updates.
It's simple, it's calming, and it'll play approximately eighty thousand times during every sporting event for the late oct November and into Christmas or into New Year's Day. Now, this has this Florida feel to it. It kind of has that, you know, vibe of its being down in Florida, and you kind of get that impression. But then they pointed out in their fun facts about this that with the exception of the mountain range off in the distance, which
Florida just doesn't have these mountain ranges. And so I'm apparently well I never noticed that before. But this commercial was filmed in Mexico, which is the hub and you know the vibe of Corona beer. Although Corona O Tan and Palm Christmas commercial looks very Floridian, with the exception of the small cameo of the mountain or cliff in the background, it was filmed in Acamal, Mexico. Acamol is a beach front town that relies heavily on tourism. Is
about two hour car ride south of Cankun. Now, if you look at the map and drawing a trace, it's basically a diagonal line directly from the tip of Florida down to the Yucatan Peninsula. And a YouTube commercial or story it was ten years ago to celebrate the thirty fifth anniversary of the iconic commercial. The creator, Mike Rogers said that he had to shoot and wanted to shoot in Mexico because it was the heart of the brand. Roger said he's been to Acamel on a family vacation,
so you know what it was like. Location was incredibly important, Rogers said in the Corona video interview. We wanted the cabana to set out right over the ocean, and we wanted it there to be a palm tree that was the perfect shape, so we started looking for a place and had the perfect tree. Commercial is thirty five years old as of this year. It's hard to believe that that commercial is that old, and it hasn't lost this luster.
It's still one of those things that just captures that feeling.
Yead originally ran in nineteen ninety, almost a decade after Ellie or before led Christmas lights came up, so that soft glow that you see with those lights are the incandescent light bulbs, which makes it even more co The cost of the commercial was fifty thousand dollars to make at the time, or approximately fifty two packs of twenty four Corona Extra bottles. Even better because there was no actors and the company doesn't have to pay royalties or
residuals for any of the characters involved. Commercial may not have been shot in Florida, but the crew's experience shooting the commercial screams Florida. What you don't see in the commercial, according to Mike Rogers, is that where they set up the camera angles and of course they're going through and they look at the site and they try to figure
out okay, what's the best angle. What just so happened that the place where they were going to shoot happened to be occupied by alligators, So they had to hire some wranglers to get the alligators out of the area so they could set up the shop shot rather and they promise the camera people, all right, just go ahead and get it set up and then you can escape, because the camera people were extremely nervous about this, and so they went ahead and got the wranglers to get
all the alligators out of the way and then they.
Shot the commercial.
But just amazing when you go behind the scenes in terms of this particular commercial, how much time effort and not necessarily money, but where to set up the shot, where they should do the location, and just getting it running and the fact that this commercial has run for thirty five years now is just absolutely phenomenal. And they've mentioned that they've tried to change the commercial, they try to update the commercial or maybe go in a different direction.
But every year they look at that and they see some of the storyboards that come up and they say, you know what, we just can't beat it. And so again, for me, the Christmas season has begun because with the football games over the weekend, I saw that pop up, I think it was Saturday afternoon for the first time, and I said, all right, the Christmas season has finally begun coming up. We've got a little Christmas present possibly in the way. Well, I'll just have to tease you
on that. We've got a possible Christmas gift coming up from the present. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network, seven hundred WLW.
Here's your trucking forecast for the Try State and the rest of the country. In the Try State, a winch of weather advisory and effected till ten o'clock Tuesday morning. Overnight, we'll see snow two to four inches of accumulation possible to low down to twenty eight. Chance of early snow Tuesday, otherwise mostly Claudie. A high of thirty four mostly Sunday. Wednesday highs in the upper thirties, partly Sunday. Thursday a high of thirty one Nationally. The first winter storm of
the season, impacting the Midwest and lower Great Lakes. We'll be moving into the New England States and the interior mid Atlantic Tuesday with heavy snow and impactful icing. This is called temperatures will continue across much of the eastern and central US.
Seven hundred WLW. I'm Kevin Gordon. This is America's truck a Network. America's trucking network supports submission Rees across America. You can hear us every truck and Tuesday at five am and ten am Eastern on Reese Across America Radio, available on the iHeartRadio app.
Search the word.
REAS now that's wr EA t HS for Reese Across America Radio. And thank you to all our truckers for supporting the mission of Reese Across America. And don't forget mark on your calendar that does Saturday the thirteenth will be the date that they do the laying of these wreaths. If you haven't signed up yet, if there's a local cemetery, actually what you do is you can go to their website, reescross America dot org and you can there is a place on there where you can find a cemetery close
to you. You can sign up to participate and they will contact you tell you all the ins and outs and time to show up and so on. It's a lot of fun and there's a link on there where you can actually contribute or actually sponsor a wreath some and you can specifically specify what cemetery or what location you want that wreath, or you can just do an overall contribution and support number of wreaths only seventeen bucks a wreath, which is the same price as last year.
So anyway, that's coming up on the thirteenth, and well, I won't be able to participate this year because we'll be down in Nashville for the Rush Truck Centers Tech Rodeo event, which I'm really looking forward to.
That's going to be a lot of fun. And we'll talk a little bit more about that the closer we get now.
Also, November thirtieth mark the end the official end of the Atlantic hurricane season. And if the hurricane season seemed like it was a little calm.
Compared to other years, well you're not wrong.
What's interesting in this is that the fact that the twenty twenty five hurricane season, which officially ended November thirtieth, was notable for its striking contrasts, wavering between periods of relative calm and bursts of intense activity generating very powerful storms. Overall, the season fell within the predicted ranges for named storms,
hurricanes and major hurricanes. What was unusual is the fact, according to Neil Jacobs, PhD, under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere at.
Noah Administrator North.
So let me see the hurricanes section, for the first time in a decade, not a single hurricane struck the US this season, and that was a much needed break. Still, a tropical storm caused damaged casualties in the Carolinas. Distinct distant hurricanes created rough ocean waters caused property damage along the East Coast, I believe along Cape Hatterason there in the outer Banks, there were I think twelve structures that were, you know, on the stilts, and the waves coming in
dropped those, so there were twelve houses. But as far as lives are concerned, I don't remember seeing any casualties in terms of lives lost. But again, for the first time in decade, in a decade, a hurricane did not
hit the continental the United States. And what's interesting is is that looking at these over the year, because again I pay attention to this simply because at the beginning of every hurricane season, all we hear from the climbiness is that this is going to be the worst hurricane season on record because of climate change, and you know, if we don't do something about that, we're all going to die and all this sort of stuff. Well we were all supposed to die about what seven years ago.
That hasn't happened, by the way, just so you know we're still around.
And all this. And it's such a line.
I don't know if you saw this what they call the Conference of Participants number thirty that was down there in Brazil. We reported that, how you know, just absolute hypocritical they are.
I mean, they've.
Got people from they had thousands of people attend this convention down there as to ways to stop climate change and so on, and to accommodate these people, to have a highway because this thing sits out on a peninsula, and rather than traveling to the peninsula, of course you've got to drive through, you've got to go to a private airport so that you can fly your private jets
in there. And they constructed this three mile road paved to this resort, chopping down one hundred and ten thousand trees. One hundred and ten thousand trees in the middle of the rainforest. Now, aren't we told years ago that we've got to do something to preserve the Amazon jungles, that that is the lungs of the of the world, and that these people coming in and clearcutting this this.
Is a this is a war, or this is a what was.
An outlaw or should be outlawed, That this is a threat against mother nature herself, and this is an attack on mother nature. And yet for these climinus, and I call them climinus because if you look at what they're talking about, they have nothing to do with They're not concerned about saving the planet. It's all about control, and it's all about where you live, how you eat your home, how you cook your food, what food you can eat, when you can eat it, and so on, and it's
all about control. So they have more in common with the communists than they do as far as a climatologists or a cologists and so on. So environmentalism to me has become the new communism. And so I just mashed the two together and call them climbinus. And so these guys attend this meeting, and I don't know if you saw some of the nonsense that came out. There's some
sort of dance ritual that they did. They're doing a rap music to where they're talking about, you know, for the for you know, now they're gonna want you to they're trying to teach you how to breathe properly. So it's in through the nose, out through the mouth. And they started doing this and all these people were doing this dance to it, and it was just absolutely ridiculous. And then in the middle of this, they had some fire at some one of their tents or something along
those lines that they didn't prepare for. So there you got those pollutants in the air, plus the hundred and ten thousand trees that were destroyed. I mean, this just unbelievable. So anyway, at the beginning of the hurricane season, yeah, we're gonna have the worst hurricane season ever.
There's gonna be all these name storms.
Now in here they mentioned in the story, they say that it was right in line with everything that they predicted, the number of named storms. But since none of the storms hit the continental United States, a lot of these named storms were out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and never really went anywhere. They formed. They formed this great amount of you know, thrust and winds and all this sort of stuff and qualified as a hurricane, but dissipated before it did any damage or even went
even towards land. So it's like, you know the old saying that if a tree falls in the middle of a forest and nobody's around to hear, it doesn't really make a sound. Well, if a hurricane is out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and churns up all this water, all these winds and everything and never makes landfall, did it really occur? I mean, you know, it's one of those things. And so they made it. You know,
any little tropical storm that came up. They started naming these storms when they were just basically off the west, because all the stuff from these hurricanes, it begins from the west coast of Africa and then moves across the Atlantic Ocean and hits our eastern seaboard. So when these things are like one hundred miles off the coast of Africa,
they were quick we got to name the storm. All of a sudden, they were coming up with the name of the storm, and it was just it almost seemed like they were naming these storms just to prove themselves right. Atlantic Basin produced thirteen named storms winds of thirty nine miles per hour or greater. So I guess where I live in Wilder, Kentucky on top of the hill there, we must have tropical storms at least once a month because we're always getting wind gus up there about forty
miles per hour. So anyway, Basin produced thirteen named storms winds of thirty nine miles or greater, of which five became hurricane winds of seventy four miles or greater, including four major hurricanes with winds reaching one hundred and eleven miles per hour, and average season as fourteen named storms, seven hurricanes, three major hurricanes.
I guess a couple of them.
Actually hit the category five, which is kind of interesting, but again no damage, according to Ken Graham, director of NAA's National Weather Service, he mentioned that while the CLI climatological peak of the hurricane season was quiet with no tropical activity, the season generated three five category five hurricanes, second most on record in a single season. Fortunately, short term weather patterns largely steered tropical systems away from the
United States, and it was interesting. In one case, there was two hurricanes. I don't remember which ones. Let me see which ones. Oh yeah, Okay, Humberto was churning and then it collided. Let me see, Amelda collided with Humberto. And so these two storms were out there in the ocean and they kind of collided with each other, dissipated, knocked each other off their course again away from landfall, which was kind of a unique pattern and a Unix
system in the Atlantic Ocean. So anyway, the climatologists, the climbunists that we're telling us that we're going to have a horrible hurricane season. Once again, the so called experts were wrong. Coming up, I mentioned I was going to mention this in the previous in this particular segment, but the White House is talking about giving us a Christmas present by Christmas, a Christmas present issuer. I'm Kevin Gordon, america'struck a Network seven hundred WLW. This is Americastrucking Network,
seven hundred WLW. If you miss any of our previous shows or any of our shows, any particular segments, Hi, if that iHeartRadio app brought to you by a Thrush truck Center.
I mentioned this gift from the White House.
Scott Besson, there's a very good chance that Trump will name a new FED chairman by Christmas. Treasury Secretary of Scott Besson said last week he expects President Donald Trump to make a decision on the new Federal Reserve chair by the holiday season. Trump has been a fierce FED critic and recently said he had loved to fire Powell and encourage Besson to work on the chair to get
the Central Bank to lower interest rates. And I have been a critic well, actually I have been a critic of Jerome Powell even back during the Biden administration when I think they should have started raising you know, if they were trying, if their mandate is to rein in inflation, then they shouldn't have stood sat there for a year and a half and talked about.
That the.
Inflation was transitory, which in the definition means that it's temporary. Well, temporary doesn't mean a year and a half of rising of inflation with a peak of nine point one percent in June of twenty twenty four, twenty two. Rather so the fact that they were to raise interest rates at that time to slow down the economy, to hold back and rein in inflation wound up with inflation getting extremely
out of control. So he didn't do a good job back then, and he's even admitted of looking back, they made a mistake.
And yet now, instead of.
Wanting to spur the economy, which everybody talks about interest rates, lower interest rates means more consumption. People have more money in their pocket, they go out and spend more, which, by the way, spurs the economy and increase his activity. Apparently he didn't read that part of the economics book. So the fact that, and I've been saying pretty much since the beginning of the year, I had heard this theory.
I don't know who it was from. I don't know if it was Kevin.
O'Leary or whether it was Lou Dobbs or one of the folks on Fox Business, but I heard the theory. Maybe it was Scott Besten to raise the anyway, it doesn't matter that possibly what the president should do, because it was kind of clear that, well, he can fire
the FED chair for cause. But this moon federal regurgitators in the mainstream media would have a field day with that, and they started whining about the independence of the Federal Reserve, even though we know that the Federal Reserve is not independent. Otherwise they never would have lowered interest rates six weeks before the election in twenty twenty four to try to get Kamala over the finish line. But again that's a story.
We've talked about that extensively on this program. So again I guess to avoid the firestorm, he didn't fire Joan Powell, saying that of course his term ends in May of next year. But the theory was floated that possibly what could happen is that he should appoint or announce who is FED chairman is going to be get that by the Congress and Senate because it has to be a confirmation process, and then that person would be the Federal
chairman Federal Reserve Chairman in waiting. And so what they were talking about at the time was that if they did that, then it could be a situation where if something came up as far as the economy, he or she could weigh in on that and have their opinion hitting the networks and hit the news cycles, which it would possibly be in contrast with what the FED current
FED Chairman, Lion Jerry Powell is doing. And so the fact that they were talking about that, I thought it was an excellent idea and should have been followed through.
Now apparently.
I mean, here we are in December, we've got the new FED chairman going to be done by May of next year. But if they announce who the fedchairman is going to be before Christmas, that should spur things in terms of the economy as far as people looking ahead and thinking, Okay, this guy knows what he's doing, or this guy has a track record and we can see good things coming in towards May thereabouts. So hopefully they will determine who that's going to be and come up
with the names. Now, what they've been talking about is there's several names that have been floated.
Let me see if I can find those. Oh yeah.
In the meantime, Beston has continuing to interview chair candidates. The slate of finalists he believed to include National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, former Governor Ken Walsh, Blackrock executive Rick Ryder, and current FED governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman. So doing the interviews of those, they may settle on
somebody and announce that. Now a lot of people are saying that they believe that it's going to be Kevin Hassett, but of course that's what people are assuming or beenulating on.
I'm sure there's some.
Sort of odds in Las Vegas where people are putting odds on who the person will be, and maybe those surprises and come up with somebody completely different. But I sure like to see who that person is going to be and see what happens as far as that, because I think the markets would really appreciate knowing that there is going to be a steady hand instead of line. Jerry Powell involved as far as the as far as the Federal Reserve is concerned, well, we've saw some of that.
We're beginning to see some of the results for Black Friday and the holiday weekend, the Thanksgiving weekend in terms of retail sales. That was interesting that they said that one of the things they tracked, consumers spent record amounts online on Black Friday. But it's less clear how traditional retail stores did on the official kickoff of the peak holiday shopping season, with one tracking company showing a slight increase in foot traffic and another showing a big drop.
So again depending upon the tracking in information in terms of where they what, who was doing what, and depending upon what company or which agency does these an analyses,
which one is going to be accurate. Now as far as what we're seeing as far as online sales, the online sales, they said, we see Adobe, which studies date the date called from over one trillion visits to US retail stores, reported that US e commerce sales reached a record eleven point eight billion dollars online for Black Friday, up nine point one percent year over year. That exceeded Adobe's forecast of eight point three percent e commerce for
Black Friday. Between ten am and two pm on Black Friday, online shoppers spent twelve point five million dollars every minute. Twelve point five million do every minute. So they're talking about it being off to a strong start. AI driven traffic is up one eight hundred and five percent. I'm not so sure that I would trust AI driven, you know, pushing where you should buy and all that sort of
stuff traffic teriffts that contributed to. Now they're saying that they're seeing some price increases, but again overall they're not seeing a major effect from that. What talking about customers or consumers shopping with surgical precision, they're being very specific as to where they're spending their money. And one of the things that I thought was very interesting is that gen zers are showing up in retail stores looking for deals.
You would think that what we've been hearing from that generation, that a lot of their stuff would have been doing They would have been doing this online. And of course there are stories out and of course we don't know yet, but Cyber Monday could break spending records. Let's see, shoppers will spend fourteen point two billion dollars on that day. So all this talk of a weak economy, things aren't as strong as they should be.
That people are worried about the economy.
As I've been saying for months, I think it's one of those situations where you've had such a drum beat of negativity from the spoon fed regurgitators in the mainstream media trying to talk down the economy, trying to, in my opinion, manufacture or recession. And so they're at the point where they have put these ideas in people's head. Yet they're saying that, you know, my economy is pretty good, my job seems to be relatively safe, I feel good about my family situation.
Here's what I'm thinking in terms of the economy. But I'm so worried about my neighbors. I'm worried about other people. I'm worried about.
What I'm hearing is far as these other people out there talking about the economy, and it's starting to drag people's optimism down. But the numbers are reflecting something far different. Well, folks, we are up against the clock here. Stay tuned for Red Eye Radio at top of the hour. I'm Kevin Gordon, Americas struck In Network seven hundred W LW