Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4: And now, here's Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3: Joe really going heavy on the air guitar with that
Speaker 3: opening music.
Speaker 4: Even throw in a little Gene Simmons tongue. I hope
Speaker 4: you dug that.
Speaker 2: Ah!
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Your guitar.
Speaker 3: Gotta have a guitar face.
Speaker 4: You gotta be ready to rock.
Speaker 3: That's clearly true. Live from Studio C. C Senior. A
Speaker 3: dimly lit room deep within the bowels of the Armstrong
Speaker 3: and Getty communications compound. Today we're toiling under the title
Speaker 3: of the show.
Speaker 4: Grim Anniversary's Approach.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Or on a cheerier note. I'd like the economic war
Speaker 4: with a side of missiles, please. Back to shooting at
Speaker 4: the Iranians in various islands nobody had heard of before
Speaker 4: this conflict. We'll see how hot that gets.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if we brought it up last week,
Speaker 3: but the Pentagon announced we had cleared all the mines
Speaker 3: out of the Strait of Hormuz. And then yesterday, Iran thought,
Speaker 3: let's put some more mines back in there. And we said, no,
Speaker 3: you didn't. No, you ain't. And we blasted their mine launchers.
Speaker 3: They launch mines on rockets. I guess that's how you
Speaker 3: put mines in the street.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we blasted the hell out of them.
Speaker 4: These days, yeah. Yeah, I was surprised to hear that myself.
Speaker 4: I thought you kind of just went out in a
Speaker 4: boat and lowered them into the water or something. I
Speaker 4: assumed a boat was involved.
Speaker 3: My knowledge of underwater mines, though, is minimal at best. But, yes,
Speaker 3: we blasted them, and then they started shooting back at
Speaker 3: a variety of things, including our bases, which in the past,
Speaker 3: they've done some pretty serious damage to and killed people.
Speaker 3: What they did yesterday, I don't know. We're reporting we
Speaker 3: shot down all the rockets. We're not always honest about that,
Speaker 3: which is okay. We don't need to be honest about that,
Speaker 3: but just because we reported that none of the rockets
Speaker 3: got through or whatever doesn't mean that that's true.
Speaker 4: Correct. Yeah, I guess they really went after our bases
Speaker 4: in Jordan in particular. And there are a lot of
Speaker 4: thousands of our folks there.
Speaker 3: One of your other big stories, not important, but the
Speaker 3: nation is following. The Lindsay Clancy jury resumes deliberations today.
Speaker 3: So we'll have our eye on that if for some
Speaker 3: reason they come up with a fact that it's taking
Speaker 3: a long time. Does that mean anything to you? That
Speaker 3: lean push one direction or the other? I feel like
Speaker 3: that pushes further away from clearly guilty of flat out murder. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I've tried to follow the conventional wisdom on that through
Speaker 3: the years, especially after I served on a handful of juries,
Speaker 3: and gosh.
Speaker 4: It's just hard to say. As we discussed last week,
Speaker 4: it's a case with a bunch of kind of fuzzy
Speaker 4: concepts at play. It's not, was he the guy with
Speaker 4: the gun at the liquor store? It's very, very complicated
Speaker 4: in dealing with human psychology and that sort of thing
Speaker 4: in a way that's going to take a while to
Speaker 4: sort out. And it depends how many lunkheads are on
Speaker 4: the jury, too. You never hear this from legal analysts,
Speaker 4: but you will hear. It depends how many dopes, lunkheads,
Speaker 4: prejudiced people there are on the jury and how hard
Speaker 4: their arms have got to be twisted.
Speaker 3: Dopes and lunkheads.
Speaker 4: Sometimes literally.
Speaker 3: D's and L's. Dopes and lunkheads. You got to deal
Speaker 3: with them. Right. Everybody does in life. In fact, I've
Speaker 3: been talking to my youngest kid about that with school.
Speaker 3: You got to deal with dopes and lunkheads. It's part
Speaker 3: of part of the whole life experience.
Speaker 4: Oh, my. Yeah. Yeah. I remember giving the boss who's
Speaker 4: an idiot speech to one of my kids. I think
Speaker 4: it was my youngest. She was in a class. I
Speaker 4: won't say which at what level of school. It's unimportant
Speaker 4: because those people listen and I don't want to make
Speaker 4: it personal, but She said, essentially, this teacher's a dope,
Speaker 4: doesn't know what they're doing. Their standards are weird. Nobody
Speaker 4: can quite figure out what's happening. And my advice to
Speaker 4: her was do your level best and manage that person
Speaker 4: because that's the most important life skill you're going to
Speaker 4: pick up in this class by far. You will have
Speaker 4: an idiot professor. You will have an idiot boss, maybe
Speaker 4: more than one. And dealing with that, frustrating as it
Speaker 4: can be, man, that's a valuable life skill. So I
Speaker 4: know it's frustrating, but once in a while, remind yourself,
Speaker 4: I'm learning something very valuable here.
Speaker 3: You'll certainly have an idiot co-worker. I mean, that's guaranteed.
Speaker 4: Please, look around the room. You guys are looking right
Speaker 4: at me. Well, you're looking at me.
Speaker 3: Speaking of school and lunkheads, Wall Street Journal, of all places,
Speaker 3: With a long article trying to throw cold water on
Speaker 3: the cell phone ban in schools. And it's not really
Speaker 3: doing that much, which I just thought was ridiculous. And
Speaker 3: the way it was written was and like making conclusions
Speaker 3: that were just dumb to me. And so I want
Speaker 3: to talk about that later because I hate pushback against
Speaker 3: eliminating cell.
Speaker 4: Phones from school rooms, which is obviously a good idea.
Speaker 4: I'm astounded by that. I miss that. I want to
Speaker 4: hear it. I want to know who wrote it. I
Speaker 4: want to go to their home. I want to grab
Speaker 4: them and shake them.
Speaker 3: Well, part of it was. Part of it was that
Speaker 3: initially a lot of people were upset. Now, since then,
Speaker 3: some people have calmed down.
Speaker 4: It's like, what? Who cares?
Speaker 3: And then secondly, that test scores haven't gone up as
Speaker 3: much as people were hoping because that again, who cares?
Speaker 6: I mean, I'd like test scores to go up. It's
Speaker 6: got what difference does it make? You can't teach a
Speaker 6: kid when they're sitting there staring at their phone and
Speaker 6: it's disruptive. I don't even know why we're having this conversation.
Speaker 6: It's like they're smoking pot in the classroom. And, you know,
Speaker 6: two weeks into the new, you can't smoke pot in
Speaker 6: the classroom. You know, tests have only gone up by 8%.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure it's doing it.
Speaker 4: That's just idiotic. My God. I do want to go
Speaker 4: to their homes and shake them. We're keeping a live
Speaker 4: tiger in the studio. Live tiger's been in there for
Speaker 4: an hour and nobody's been bitten. It's not a good idea.
Speaker 4: Trust me. Oh my God. Anyway, it's a television set.
Speaker 4: You morons, you old, this is you older morons. You
Speaker 4: can't have kids have a TV set in the, well,
Speaker 4: of course you can't have a TV set in the classroom.
Speaker 4: That's what it is. Except it's hooked up to the
Speaker 4: best entertainment ever divided by mankind. My God, people, I
Speaker 4: think they.
Speaker 3: Were focusing on the LA school district. I don't remember
Speaker 3: which is a second biggest school district in America, but, um, uh,
Speaker 3: One part mentioned that you take away the phones, but
Speaker 3: in one class, a lot of kids were continuing to
Speaker 3: watch YouTube videos on their computers.
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: How in the world?
Speaker 3: If you know they're watching YouTube videos on your computer,
Speaker 3: how do we not have a world where the teacher
Speaker 3: can just close the computer and take it and say,
Speaker 3: you get it back after class or whatever? How is
Speaker 3: that not the world we live in? Well, we know
Speaker 3: why teachers unions and all kinds of crap around that.
Speaker 3: But that's insane that they're sitting there watching YouTube videos.
Speaker 4: Therefore, the cell phone ban is just not that useful. Oh,
Speaker 4: my God. I was just going to say, if you're
Speaker 4: conducting an experiment, we all learn the scientific method in school,
Speaker 4: or at least we should have. You can only have
Speaker 4: one variable to draw any sort of conclusions. I was
Speaker 4: just going to point out that the L.A. schools, I mean,
Speaker 4: my God, they've got, you know, a solid four to
Speaker 4: eight things terribly wrong with them. So just tweaking, fixing one, well,
Speaker 4: it's not going to hurt, but no, that's not going
Speaker 4: to straighten things out overnight. Oh my gosh, people. People
Speaker 4: make me insane.
Speaker 3: So I want to talk about the details of that article.
Speaker 3: And then one that's got tongues wagging on the Sunday
Speaker 3: talk shows and then still today was, was it the
Speaker 3: Washington Post or the New York Times? One of your
Speaker 3: big papers with an expose on how, I think it
Speaker 3: was the New York Times Sunday story on how we
Speaker 3: can't protect ourselves as a country in a way that
Speaker 3: has never really been true because we've used so much
Speaker 3: of our good stuff on this war in iran and
Speaker 3: giving it to ukraine and all kinds of different things
Speaker 3: and we're really vulnerable right now and that has got
Speaker 3: lots of people talking and and trump's threatening to uh
Speaker 3: to sue because that information shouldn't come out which probably
Speaker 3: shouldn't announcing to china that hey man we're really low
Speaker 3: if you're ever thinking of attack now is the good
Speaker 3: time because we are really that's probably not good to
Speaker 3: be uh reporting that on the other hand if You know,
Speaker 3: similar to the Pentagon Papers and the war in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: If it's the only way you can let the public
Speaker 3: know what's really going on, then maybe it's a service.
Speaker 4: Trump also going after Kristen Welker and Kirsten Kirsten, Kristen
Speaker 4: Welker and ABC News for because she said he's got
Speaker 4: a mixed record of his endorsements. And then he says,
Speaker 4: I win practically every one. So he's going to sick
Speaker 4: the FCC on her. Please. Can we please just stop?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Put her on a boat and send her out in
Speaker 3: the middle of the Sea of America. That's what I say.
Speaker 4: The American Ocean or the U.S. Ocean.
Speaker 3: We'll rename both of them. Let's start the show officially.
Speaker 3: It's the last day of this month. I'm Jack Armstrong.
Speaker 3: He's Joe Getty.
Speaker 4: On this, it is.
Speaker 3: Monday, August 31st. So is today our anniversary? Michael, you're
Speaker 3: the one who keeps track.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is.
Speaker 3: So we've been doing this for 29 years, the Armstrong
Speaker 3: and Getty Talk Show?
Speaker 4: We started in 98. So 28.
Speaker 3: Sounds like 28 years to me. 28 years we've been
Speaker 3: doing this. It seems like a long time.
Speaker 4: Is that long enough?
Speaker 3: Maybe it's long enough.
Speaker 4: 28th anniversary. I believe the traditional gift is pistachios, if
Speaker 4: you'd like to send some to the studio. We are
Speaker 4: Armstrong and Getty, and we approve of this program. Let's
Speaker 4: begin then, officially, according to FCC rules and regs. Here
Speaker 4: we go, leaping into action at mark.
Speaker 3: It is completely ridiculous.
Speaker 7: It's laughable to say guys like myself, guys like Abdul El-Sayed,
Speaker 7: we hate America.
Speaker 3: I say I hate America all the time.
Speaker 8: A lot of motherfuckers want to kill me over that take.
Speaker 3: But at least I say it with my fucking chest.
Speaker 4: People will be like, Hasan, you hate America. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 3: I do hate America.
Speaker 4: Marxists lie. They lie and they lie and they lie.
Speaker 4: That's Hasan Piker denying he's ever said he hates America.
Speaker 4: He says it all the time. Is his moment about
Speaker 4: over so I don't have to talk about him anymore?
Speaker 4: Is it about over? I hope so. You know, I
Speaker 4: certainly hope so too. He is on stage campaigning with
Speaker 4: perhaps winning candidates for the United States Senate. I know
Speaker 4: he's a punk and a shock jock or whatever he is,
Speaker 4: and a self-promoter and an a-hole and a rich socialist
Speaker 4: and an Islamist, the rest of it, but By God,
Speaker 4: if Ken Paxton were campaigning with the Grand Imperial Wizard
Speaker 4: of the local Klan chapter, we'd be hearing about it. Probably, yes.
Speaker 3: That'd be a bad move. If I was his campaign manager,
Speaker 3: I'd say, I don't think this is a good idea.
Speaker 4: That's what El Acai does every week. Campaigns with Islamist
Speaker 4: radicals and communists.
Speaker 3: So we got headlines on the way to get into
Speaker 3: some more of the news stories today and then a
Speaker 3: little more depth on what we've talked about and a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of other stuff. It's going to be a
Speaker 3: big day. And then we got the bleak anniversary to
Speaker 3: talk about, partially because Joe tweeted out this Wall Street
Speaker 3: Journal documentary about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, specifically what happened
Speaker 3: at Abbey Gate. You know that story if you're a
Speaker 3: news junkie. And it is gruesome. And the fact that
Speaker 3: this is not more of a conversation is disturbing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have a lot to say about it. It was harrowing.
Speaker 3: It was gruesome. It was angering.
Speaker 4: It was sad. And it reminded me anew of how
Speaker 4: horrific a failure that was and how little accountability, practically
Speaker 4: no accountability.
Speaker 3: Practically none. Practically none. And yeah, we'll have a lot
Speaker 3: more on that later. So Katie's Headlines next.
Speaker 4: Stay here.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: I think I'm going to decide. I haven't decided how
Speaker 3: many or what the list will be, but I'm going
Speaker 3: to have a list or a number of things that
Speaker 3: I care about at any given time in my life.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Any flexibility to that? I mean, if you've fulfilled your
Speaker 4: list of five and then your car breaks down, how's
Speaker 4: this going to work?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to rank personal issues way above 99%
Speaker 3: of the things that are in the news, I guarantee you.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm just going to have a very tight
Speaker 3: list of things I give a crap about. Just like
Speaker 3: perusing the Twitter and looking at all the TV. Most
Speaker 3: of the stuff that gets reported, I just don't care.
Speaker 3: It's not important, and I don't care.
Speaker 4: Boy, if one man is angry online, I want to
Speaker 4: know about it.
Speaker 3: I know. For real. Give me the tea.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 4: Let's figure out who's reporting what. It's the lead story
Speaker 4: with Katie Green.
Speaker 2: Katie.
Speaker 1: All righty.
Speaker 9: The major networks. Nepal, Tibet, flood. Death toll surpasses 900.
Speaker 9: More than 4,700 still missing.
Speaker 3: Race against. Oh, this is from CNN.
Speaker 9: Race against time to find workers missing in the Nepal
Speaker 9: hydropower tunnels and CBS. Nepal's hesitance to accept foreign help
Speaker 9: for flood relief is under scrutiny.
Speaker 3: So I think everybody saw the initial videos that came
Speaker 3: out from Nepal and we we watched them and talked
Speaker 3: about them. But since then, they've gotten more graphic because
Speaker 3: they've found more cameras. I don't want to see them.
Speaker 3: We're into snuff films now. They're just snuff films. I mean,
Speaker 3: why are... What's... Another video showing, and it's just like
Speaker 3: a close-up of somebody dying.
Speaker 4: What is that? What's the news value? So many bodies. Right.
Speaker 2: NBC.
Speaker 4: Follow the drone.
Speaker 9: How Ukraine captures Russian prisoners with uncrewed vehicles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm happy about that. But Russia had their deadliest
Speaker 3: attack in several years on Ukraine over the weekend.
Speaker 4: So they're using drones to round up prisoners? Yeah, I'd
Speaker 4: like to know more about that. Crazy.
Speaker 3: From the New York Times.
Speaker 2: U.S.
Speaker 9: And Iran exchange strikes overnight after month-long calm.
Speaker 4: Talked about that earlier.
Speaker 9: New York Post, Lindsay Clancy verdict, live update, jury deliberations
Speaker 9: hit day three. I don't know if you saw this,
Speaker 9: but one of the psychologists that they had as a
Speaker 9: witness ended up being, I don't know if he was
Speaker 9: fired or he resigned after he just got ripped for
Speaker 9: smiling while he was answering questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. It was a big deal over
Speaker 3: the weekend.
Speaker 4: Washington Post.
Speaker 9: Trump says he will report NBC host to FCC for
Speaker 9: rebuke or punishment.
Speaker 3: Kristen Walker.
Speaker 4: Trump is the, like, test case opposite of choose your battles.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's like the ground, you know, the starting point of
Speaker 3: choose your battles. Because he does not at all. He
Speaker 3: chooses every battle always.
Speaker 4: Right, right. In contrast to Churchill, stops and chucks rocks
Speaker 4: at every dog that barks. Yeah, nice. Plus, The free
Speaker 4: speech stuff, sorry, no, wrong, 100% wrong, ugly, un-American, stop it.
Speaker 9: The Wall Street Journal, car sunroofs keep spontaneously exploding, and
Speaker 9: the problem is getting worse.
Speaker 3: How often does this happen? They're saying, well, I.
Speaker 9: Don't know how often it happens, but they're saying heat, debris,
Speaker 9: and manufacturing defects, meaning that owners are experiencing this more often.
Speaker 3: Well, is it a particular model, or is it happening
Speaker 3: to everyone?
Speaker 9: They're pointing out the Lexus SUV as a highlight in
Speaker 9: this article, but.
Speaker 4: It shatters, right? It doesn't explode per se. I read
Speaker 4: the first paragraph or two.
Speaker 3: I don't want it to shatter either.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 9: And finally, from the Babylon Bee, Darlene Graham quietly Googles, quote,
Speaker 9: what does a senator do?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's unfair.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 4: That's unkind.
Speaker 9: That was rude.
Speaker 3: I just lost her brother. I like this headline, which
Speaker 3: is real. Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario.
Speaker 3: I give up.
Speaker 4: Maybe use Google Translate. Set it to English.
Speaker 3: Is it the Zepbound?
Speaker 4: Is that what's happening?
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 5: Battle over the name of Lake Ontario after President Trump's
Speaker 5: executive order to rename it Lake America. That has set
Speaker 5: off a pitched social media battle with the White House
Speaker 5: celebrating the change on Google Maps, although other mapping services
Speaker 5: are still using the historic name.
Speaker 3: That's actually what I was attempting to say before the break,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't able to get it out of my mouth.
Speaker 3: I think because of that bond, my tongue has gotten
Speaker 3: too skinny and it flaps around in there and doesn't
Speaker 3: work anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Google Maps went ahead and changed Lake Ontario to Lake America.
Speaker 3: Apple Maps didn't. And some of your other whatever. This
Speaker 3: would list this would be on my list of stories
Speaker 3: I don't care about. I'm not going to pay attention
Speaker 3: to in my life.
Speaker 2: Right. Right.
Speaker 3: Doesn't make the narrow. I pay attention to this group.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Google Maps within the US changed it. If you're across
Speaker 4: the border and you Google it, it has the traditional name,
Speaker 4: which is fine. I say change the Atlantic Ocean to
Speaker 4: the American Ocean. I mean, what's Atlantic mean anyway? Nobody knows.
Speaker 4: And the Pacific Ocean, Pacific implies peacefulness, right? The peaceful ocean.
Speaker 4: Have you ever seen the Pacific Ocean? It's not peaceful
Speaker 4: in the least. It's a violent, cold ocean. Call that
Speaker 4: the U.S.
Speaker 2: Ocean.
Speaker 4: So we got the American Ocean and the U.S.
Speaker 2: Ocean.
Speaker 4: Just change them all. Lake Winnebago. Well, Winnebago's are American.
Speaker 4: Why aren't we selling sponsorships? It's got to be like
Speaker 4: sports stadiums.
Speaker 3: It's like Toyota until its contract runs out, and then
Speaker 3: it's a different lake.
Speaker 4: Right, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea. And it's Lake Verizon Wireless.
Speaker 4: Trump's got a bizarre unholy oil deal going in Venezuela
Speaker 4: that we can talk about at some point. But, yeah,
Speaker 4: why not sell naming rights to the lakes, and why
Speaker 4: not the states?
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, Illinois, what is that, French or something? Come on.
Speaker 4: Name it, I don't know, General Motors, in Illinois. I
Speaker 4: love that idea. So speaking of machinery and progress and
Speaker 4: that sort of thing, place 21, would you, Michael?
Speaker 1: 154.
Speaker 4: You are good to go.
Speaker 8: NASA's Roman Space Telescope, barrel-shaped, about the size of a
Speaker 8: tour bus.
Speaker 4: Destination?
Speaker 3: Deep space.
Speaker 8: From an orbit one million miles from Earth, Roman will
Speaker 8: map the cosmos inside the Milky Way and far beyond
Speaker 8: with jaw-dropping sweep and detail.
Speaker 4: So we are continuing to explore the cosmos, to press
Speaker 4: further out into the universe with increasingly sophisticated equipment, And
Speaker 4: I think that's incredibly important for human beings. And I'll
Speaker 4: get to why in a moment. But I was weirded
Speaker 4: out the whole weekend because I kept hearing like, what's
Speaker 4: the audio equivalent of out of the corner of your eye?
Speaker 4: Out of the corner of my ear, I kept hearing
Speaker 4: about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: what's a Roman Space Telescope? And why the hell did
Speaker 4: they name it after that cable news joke, Nancy Grace?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 4: And I kept not digging into it. And then I
Speaker 4: finally learned that, indeed, the full name of a prominent
Speaker 4: female astronomer of your, I guess, I don't know much
Speaker 4: about her, is Nancy Grace Roman. But, yeah, keep calling
Speaker 4: it the Roman Space Telescope because calling it the Nancy
Speaker 4: Grace Roman is just confusing. I'm sure that the husband
Speaker 4: did it. Anyone can see the husband did it. No,
Speaker 4: she has nothing to do.
Speaker 3: O.J.
Speaker 4: Simpson's guilty, y'all. It has nothing to do with the telescope.
Speaker 3: A quick space note before we get into something I
Speaker 3: know you have is serious. I heard this yesterday and
Speaker 3: it's kind of blown my mind. Scientists saying we can
Speaker 3: send a spaceship out into space to visit the far reaches,
Speaker 3: but a hundred years from now, whatever we invent will
Speaker 3: go further, will.
Speaker 4: Pass that one.
Speaker 3: Like, so there's no point in it going Because in
Speaker 3: 100 years, we'll invent one that goes significantly further past
Speaker 3: that one. I mean, like, see you later.
Speaker 4: Well, the obvious problem that leaps to my mind is
Speaker 4: in 100 years, they'll say, yeah, what's the point? 100
Speaker 4: years from now, we'll have a far better one. We'll
Speaker 4: never learn anything.
Speaker 3: Because there's almost nothing in between. And even at the spaces,
Speaker 3: at the speed that they travel. So it's waiting to
Speaker 3: get somewhere to give us some new information. Chugging along
Speaker 3: out there. And then a century from now, we'll invent
Speaker 3: something that just goes right on by.
Speaker 9: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3: That's funny.
Speaker 4: That's a funny notion. It's probably true. But it was
Speaker 4: a SpaceX rocket that took off a Falcon Heavy, I believe.
Speaker 4: And it went off flawlessly and was great fun to
Speaker 4: watch online, which I did. And we wish them well.
Speaker 4: It's going to send back just those mind-blowing pictures of
Speaker 4: various cosmic energies that I barely comprehend, including dark matter.
Speaker 4: So that'll be fun. I listened to an explanation of
Speaker 4: what dark matter was, and again, you might as well
Speaker 4: try to explain the Julian calendar to a dog. I just,
Speaker 4: it's some sort of, it's kind of like gravity, but not. Anyway,
Speaker 4: I love that. Oh, here's why it's important we keep exploring.
Speaker 4: And it's all of a package, I think, with free
Speaker 4: markets and free people, as opposed to just looking inward, navel-gazing,
Speaker 4: giving up, socialism. It all, it's like of a package.
Speaker 3: A free market people, a free people who practice free markets,
Speaker 3: it's practically, we have to explore.
Speaker 4: We have to learn more and see more and know more.
Speaker 4: It's all part of, you know, just the free market
Speaker 4: is in that, just liberty in general. But that inward,
Speaker 4: just failing, British, sad, Waiting for the end thing. That's
Speaker 4: that's the people who say don't spend money on the
Speaker 4: space program. Use it for housing for the unfortunate. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we can do both.
Speaker 3: Well, kind of fitting in with my I've decided I'm
Speaker 3: going to have like five things I pay attention to
Speaker 3: because most of it is crap. The attention economy, which
Speaker 3: is a term I really like, just everybody battling for
Speaker 3: your attention and they're winning. taking all of our attention
Speaker 3: all the time. I hope it becomes really cool at
Speaker 3: some point. Like, you're sophisticated artist thinker types. I can't,
Speaker 3: you know, be distracted by every stupid story that comes along.
Speaker 3: I need to, you know, be able to focus on
Speaker 3: things deeper, bigger, think about them, whatever. I can't spend
Speaker 3: the day thinking about did vandals actually damage the reflecting
Speaker 3: pool or not and how it's being reported or whichever
Speaker 3: story it is that has no meaning to me whatsoever. And,
Speaker 3: you know, think on a bigger, deeper level. I hope
Speaker 3: that becomes cool at some point.
Speaker 4: I agree with you 100%. Just in terms of approaching
Speaker 4: the show, I'd rather, you know, just concentrate on big
Speaker 4: things and big ideas than just the rigmarole of daily life.
Speaker 3: Like all your philosophers, would Immanuel Kant have not, like,
Speaker 3: thought of anything if he had been born now because
Speaker 3: he'd just been constantly scrolling through crap?
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, because they had time to think. There was
Speaker 3: nothing else to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: There's such a thing as too much time to think,
Speaker 4: but we're so far away from that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's not worry about that. Like when people start
Speaker 3: working out, and I'm worried about getting too big.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's circle back to that. Hey, this
Speaker 7: is a little grimish, but a word from our friends
Speaker 7: at Incogni. When the monster in Minnesota... killed a lawmaker
Speaker 7: and her husband in their own home, and they searched
Speaker 7: his car. They found a notebook with a list of
Speaker 7: 11 websites that weren't like weapons and ammo.
Speaker 4: They were data brokers. He's trying to figure out where
Speaker 4: people lived so he could do terrible things. And just
Speaker 4: why not get your stuff off the Internet to whatever
Speaker 4: extent is humanly possible?
Speaker 3: First time I did this a couple of years ago,
Speaker 3: I went to a people search site, and I was
Speaker 3: blown away by how much information you can get about
Speaker 3: any just regular person. Type your name into one right now.
Speaker 3: There you are. Your address, your phone, your family's names,
Speaker 3: maybe a photo of your front door. Anyone can look
Speaker 3: you up in seconds and you'll never know who did.
Speaker 3: That's why we use Incogni. It forces data brokers and
Speaker 3: people search sites to delete you. Then it keeps checking
Speaker 3: over and over because the data creeps back in. Love that.
Speaker 4: And there's so many sites. I mean, you can't do
Speaker 4: it manually. You need the awesome power of Incogni dot com.
Speaker 4: Go to Incogni.com slash Armstrong. You get 60% off. That's
Speaker 4: I-N-C-O-G-N-I dot com slash Armstrong because the next time a
Speaker 4: stranger searches your name, let them find nothing. Incogni.com slash Armstrong.
Speaker 4: So moving along to other fare and not quite as
Speaker 4: awe-inspiring as exploring the galaxy and once again, well done,
Speaker 4: Elon Musk. Oh, you know what? Now is the perfect
Speaker 4: time to do this. Talked about this months ago, but
Speaker 4: I re-came across it And the fellow, he's actually a
Speaker 4: French thinker who retweeted it, mentioned that it's gotten something
Speaker 4: like 80 million likes. And I thought this is straight
Speaker 4: out of the, you know, liberty is only a generation
Speaker 4: away from going away. However Reagan put it, that was
Speaker 4: five times more eloquent than what I just said. But
Speaker 4: this guy's tweeting about Elon Musk and something he said that,
Speaker 4: Beyond a certain level of wealth, money is no longer
Speaker 4: about consumption. It's about capital allocation. And he goes into
Speaker 4: a really good example of kids on a playground trading
Speaker 4: Pokemon cards and how the free market works out 100
Speaker 4: different questions automatically without anybody thinking about it. Then the
Speaker 4: teacher looks in and sees kids, different kids with different
Speaker 4: numbers of cards and says, That's unfair. So she confiscates, redistributes,
Speaker 4: enforces equality. So the good players stop playing because what's
Speaker 4: the point? The bad ones have no reason to improve
Speaker 4: because they'll get their share anyway, so they don't bother.
Speaker 4: Trades collapse. The playground is equal and dead. She maximized
Speaker 4: equality or equity and destroyed happiness. And then he gets
Speaker 4: into the fact that the teacher's problem is that she
Speaker 4: can't have the information the playground has collectively. Goes into
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union. with its shortages, lines, economic collapse, because
Speaker 4: of central planning. Not because the Soviets were dumb, but
Speaker 4: because the problem is mathematically unsolvable in centralized mode. And
Speaker 4: here's the part that nobody gets, particularly on the young
Speaker 4: socialist end of things. When Elon Musk has $ 200 billion,
Speaker 4: he doesn't consume it, he allocates it. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, XAI,
Speaker 4: and he's just one example, obviously, but Every dollar is
Speaker 4: a bet on the future, and he has a track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX.
Speaker 4: He's demonstrated he knows how to spot massive problems and
Speaker 4: allocate resources to them with spectacular returns. The state has
Speaker 4: a track record, too. Hospitals collapsing, education declining, debt exploding,
Speaker 4: public services degrading despite constantly rising budgets. The market identifies
Speaker 4: good allocators. Politics identifies good communicators or beggars or bribers.
Speaker 4: But just to take it a little further, profit isn't
Speaker 4: an end goal. It's a signal. It says you've allocated
Speaker 4: scarce resources to a use that people value enough to
Speaker 4: pay for. The bigger the profit, the greater the value created.
Speaker 4: When Starlink turns profitable, it means millions of people in
Speaker 4: rural areas finally have Internet. When a ministry runs a deficit,
Speaker 4: it means it's consuming more than it produces. One creates,
Speaker 4: the other destroys, and we call that redistribution. Then he
Speaker 4: gets into the two categories of actors, entrepreneurs and bureaucrats,
Speaker 4: and the difference between them. Entrepreneurs take risks. If they're right,
Speaker 4: they win. If they're wrong, they lose. But the bureaucrat
Speaker 4: takes no personal risk. His salary is guaranteed. At best,
Speaker 4: he maintains an existing rent balance. At worst, he destroys
Speaker 4: it through over-regulation, forced bad allocation, perverse incentives that discourage
Speaker 4: those who produce, but in no case does he create.
Speaker 3: And if it's a good-sounding idea, you can make the
Speaker 3: argument at the end of your failure that it's because
Speaker 3: you didn't have enough money. Imagine if you could do
Speaker 3: that in a free market. My muffin shop isn't getting
Speaker 3: enough customers, so... You need to double down on it,
Speaker 3: make it bigger, spend more money on it with no
Speaker 3: customers for the next two years and see.
Speaker 4: If that helps. It's the ultimate foolproof argument. If you win,
Speaker 4: you win, and you get more money. If you lose,
Speaker 4: you get more money.
Speaker 3: Man, did you see the viral video that's going around
Speaker 3: about Berkeley, that woman who took her kid to Berkeley
Speaker 3: to drop him off at the University of Berkeley?
Speaker 4: Oh, oh, oh, with the junkie cans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the junkie cans. The homeless encampment, yes, with
Speaker 3: the drug addict camp. Just incredible.
Speaker 4: Horrific.
Speaker 3: Absolutely incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. People talk about L.A. and the big cities
Speaker 4: with the junkies and bums, Portland, Seattle, Sacramento. It's practically
Speaker 4: all of them.
Speaker 3: If you allow it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in particular, university towns, Davis, Berkeley, all of them.
Speaker 3: I live right next door to a town where they
Speaker 3: don't allow it. Vacaville, California. We've had the police chief
Speaker 3: on before. He doesn't put up with that. And he
Speaker 3: has spoken to the whole state when they get together
Speaker 3: for cop stuff and everything like that. But, you know,
Speaker 3: you got to live in a town where they want
Speaker 3: you to prosecute people or or hold people to the law.
Speaker 4: I believe there is an Armstrong and Getty T-shirt and
Speaker 4: force the law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you haven't seen it, we should tweet that
Speaker 3: out or put it on the website or something. If
Speaker 3: you haven't seen that video of taking your kid to
Speaker 3: one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and
Speaker 3: then you see that, you've got to think, is this
Speaker 3: where we want to be?
Speaker 9: Yikes.
Speaker 3: Oh, my God. Mailbag on the way next. Stay here.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: Quick headline we'll tease to a conversation we'll have later.
Speaker 4: U.S.
Speaker 3: Household leverage, that would be your liabilities to net wealth,
Speaker 3: is the lowest in 50 years. That's probably not good.
Speaker 4: Liabilities to net wealth or net wealth to liabilities? I'm confused.
Speaker 3: We will discuss later. Liabilities to net wealth and how
Speaker 3: much you owe out there versus your net wealth.
Speaker 4: Okay. All right. Okay. Here's your freedom-loving quote of the day.
Speaker 4: From C.S. Lewis. Have a great one from Churchill, but
Speaker 4: it's too long. We'll do it tomorrow. Maybe we'll have
Speaker 4: a little more time.
Speaker 1: C.S.
Speaker 4: Lewis, I love this. I'm going to get this tattooed
Speaker 4: on my chest. Progress means getting nearer to the place
Speaker 4: you want to be. And if you have taken a
Speaker 4: wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you
Speaker 4: any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress
Speaker 4: means doing an about turn and walking back to the
Speaker 4: right road. And in that case, the man who turns
Speaker 4: back soonest is the most progressive man.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's really good.
Speaker 4: Absolutely love that, especially for those of you who are
Speaker 4: sleepy-headed or not paying attention using the term progressive at
Speaker 4: the end. Yeah, so-called progressives are taking us away from
Speaker 4: where we want to go. Turn around. From where they
Speaker 4: want to go off, and that's what I don't get. Yeah, well,
Speaker 4: that's the nature of cults. They don't serve your best interest.
Speaker 4: You've lost your capacity to think rationally. Mailbag. Drop us
Speaker 4: a note. Mailbag at armstrongandgetty.com. Here's a nice note from
Speaker 4: Jan with some advice about your constipation, Jack. What have
Speaker 4: we become?
Speaker 3: Is that what the show is now?
Speaker 4: What have we become? We were once so young and handsome.
Speaker 3: It's probably more common now because GLP-1s cause that problem
Speaker 3: and lots and lots of people are on that drug.
Speaker 7: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yep, indeed. Mike, the lawyer from Chicago, writes on the
Speaker 4: topic of the cell phone ban in schools. A middle
Speaker 4: schooler I met with told the adults at the party
Speaker 4: that the students don't care. They're bringing dummy phones to
Speaker 4: school to hand in first period, so the school thinks
Speaker 4: all the students are handing in their phones. That's one
Speaker 4: of the things the Wall Street Journal mentioned. And then
Speaker 4: he says, as a law school lecturer, I deal with
Speaker 4: students on their phones. I simply tell them, hey, law
Speaker 4: school's a choice. It's an investment. You're ruining your own investment.
Speaker 4: I like that. We are scroomed.
Speaker 3: At that level, I love that. Hey, you're paying for
Speaker 3: this class, and you're going to go out in the
Speaker 3: world and try to make a living. If you want
Speaker 3: to screw that up, go ahead.
Speaker 4: We are screwed. Screwed and doomed. Let's see. We'll save
Speaker 4: that one for later. How about this from Al Anonymous?
Speaker 4: After becoming a jilted member of the terrible breakup club,
Speaker 4: I took Jack's advice as an experiment and went to
Speaker 4: the chatbots for advice and therapy. I found that chat
Speaker 4: GPT constantly regurgitated what I told it and came back
Speaker 4: with the same self-affirming snowflakey message every time. Followed up
Speaker 4: by questions about whether or not I was planning on
Speaker 4: hurting myself. So I told Grok that chat GPT sucked
Speaker 4: at therapy and couldn't do better. Grok was much more
Speaker 4: clinical and less emotional. You know, it's funny. I don't
Speaker 4: use Grok anymore because it keeps paywalling me. I find
Speaker 4: Claude to be the best of those for that sort
Speaker 4: of thing. Yeah, yeah. But they do vary a great deal.
Speaker 4: Keep up the fight against Snowflaker and the BS that
Speaker 4: happens when people use AI to affirm their emotions instead
Speaker 4: of reality. Grok paywalls you. Well, I like ask it
Speaker 4: something very simple. Then I try to follow up and
Speaker 4: it says you've reached the limit.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think I'm paying for the advanced something or other,
Speaker 3: which is probably stupid.
Speaker 4: How much time do we have, Michael?
Speaker 2: A minute 30.
Speaker 4: All right. Brian writes, he mentions Ted Cruz wrote a
Speaker 4: book about Clarence Thomas and did a two hour, two
Speaker 4: part podcast. Getting a lot of attention. Yeah, good. And
Speaker 4: it should. Clarence Thomas finally getting the attention and plaudits
Speaker 4: he deserves. Near the end part, Justice Thomas tells a
Speaker 4: story about Justice Breyer in a fond way. He was
Speaker 4: a liberal. When gathered among a group of colleagues, Breyer
Speaker 4: was telling a story about how he had been robbed
Speaker 4: while at his vacation home and went something like this. Clarence,
Speaker 4: imagine you're on your porch with your wife and another
Speaker 4: couple playing bridge and a man walks up to you
Speaker 4: and demands your wallet. What would you do? Thomas responds, well,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be playing bridge. Breyer says, OK, OK, OK.
Speaker 4: What if you're on your porch with your buddies playing
Speaker 4: poker and a man walks up and demands your wallet?
Speaker 4: What would you do? Thomas replies, well, I wouldn't be
Speaker 4: playing poker. Breyer replies, OK, if you're on your porch,
Speaker 4: what would you be doing? Thomas replies, I'd probably be
Speaker 4: cleaning my guns. I'm looking forward to hearing that. I
Speaker 4: think I will. Although I'm informed there are no other podcasts.
Speaker 4: This is the only one.
Speaker 3: He's the boogeyman of the left. You know, Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 3: he's the scary justice.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, I know. They got to have one.
Speaker 3: We've got so much on the way, and if you
Speaker 3: don't get it or hear it live, you can get
Speaker 3: it in podcast form. Armstrong and Getty On Demand. If
Speaker 3: you subscribe, you'll get it all the time, which is
Speaker 3: really cool.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty.