The Left Hook - Super Beets and Super Powers

The show opens with Mark Bland and Jason Kull and a quick post-season autopsy of the Cubs' loss to the Padres — Pete Crow-Armstrong vs. Fernando Tatís, and the unwritten rule that you never root for a division rival like the Brewers — before pivoting to the economy. Mark argues that voters who pulled the lever in 2024 expecting cheaper gas and groceries "on day one" got the opposite, pointing to a $41 tab at Steak 'n Shake for three people and $100-plus bills at mid-tier sit-down chains as evidence that prices have outrun promises. From there he takes aim at pressure on the Fed and Jerome Powell, the "alpha-male testosterone" branding coming out of Pete Hegseth's War Department (complete with Lincoln Memorial photo ops featuring Dana White and the Paul brothers), and the rebranding of AI as "superintelligence," which he calls the tell of someone who doesn't actually understand the technology. He also riffs — half seriously — on relocating the capital to the center of the country for security reasons, and makes the case for an age cap on the presidency, sharing personal stories about his seventy-nine-year-old father The centerpiece is a breakdown of Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt's Senate subcommittee grilling of former special counsel Jack Smith, where Schmitt pressed Smith on whether he'd attended a Warriors–Hawks game in Atlanta the day after the Fani Willis–Nathan Wade revelations, accused him of perjury, and closed by calling him a "total dirtbag." After Sen. Amy Klobuchar insisted the witness actually be shown the exhibit, Smith explained he'd attended a Maryland–Iowa women's basketball game to see Caitlin Clark — Hawkeyes, not Hawks. Mark calls it a failed "coming-out party" and a lesson in performative politics, comparing it to Josh Hawley's January 6th fist-pump. The back half lightens up with a rundown of this year's trending Halloween costumes (Freaky Nikki, Bad Bunny's halftime show, Taylor Swift and friends at the Knicks game, The Odyssey, Chad Powers, K-pop Demon Hunters, Dolly Parton, Olivia Rodrigo, Spider-Man — and a protest over Michael Jackson landing all the way down at No. 18), before Mark closes with his standing prediction that Republicans could effectively send Congress home through the midterms, leaving Trump to govern by executive order in what he's long described as "a coup in slow motion." Catch old and new episodes at markbland.net.