Welcome to the three martini lunch.

Grab a stole next to Greg Carumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review.

Three martini's coming up.

So glad you're with us for the Friday edition of the Three Martini Lunch.

Hope you enjoyed Thursday's special on our most favorite, least favorite and craziest election

nights that we can remember. Jim and I certainly enjoyed geeking out over those different

election cycles. Jim and I are both technically away today or officially away, and so our special

today is one that we did a few months ago, stories that kind of slipped through the cracks, easily

could have been martini's, but other stories just kind of push them off the page. So we've got some good, we've got some crazy. I've actually got two good ones, Jim. I don't know if you've got one of each, but it's just amazing. Some of these stories that only happened a couple of weeks ago, and it feels like they happened about six months ago. It's just the way the news cycle goes. You know, I probably would characterize these as bad, bad, and potentially bad. We'll see.

Well, it's a weird day when I'm the optimist, but we'll see how this unfolds as we go along.

But all right, Jim, I'm excited for this juxtaposition of pessimism and mostly optimism with a little bit of frivolity at the end here.

But what's your first story that fell through the cracks here? It's not like they don't cover inflation,

but there's an aspect of inflation rate that doesn't get nearly enough attention.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board did notice this,

but I've seen very little discussion of this anywhere else.

So I went back and checked.

Every month since June 2024, the U.S. inflation rate on a year-to-year comparison was between 2.3% and 3%.

With most months, it's pretty close to 3%.

In September, it was 3%.

So, you know, that's obviously better than it was, it was 9% in the, you know, middle of the Biden years in June 2022. But 3% the Wall Street Journal editorial board argues is not really what we should consider to be good. The Trump administration keeps saying, you know, this is a real, they basically are saying mission accomplished to think back to Bush and the aircraft carrier. They put out statements every month taking a victory lap.

And here's the thing. Let's say we were at that 2% goal, which is what the US Federal Reserve

had been saying, is that the aim for what we want the inflation rate to be. So you got a dollar

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