Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe.
Speaker 2: Katty arm Strong and and he is Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3: And coming up hot.
Speaker 4: People complain about the horrible experience of being good looking.
Speaker 4: Stay with us, Hurst, you don't like being hot, disfigure
Speaker 4: yourself then, apparently, whoa lord?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: What but first foreigners in their wacky economies.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 4: I asked kild to get something ready, and this is
Speaker 4: what he came up with.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so bad.
Speaker 5: It's wonderful horns with a cash register sound foreigners and
Speaker 5: they're wacky economies.
Speaker 4: All right, I gotta get myself together. The first story
Speaker 4: makes me so happy. Do you have any memory of
Speaker 4: when Javier Malaya is at Malay? I can never remember.
Speaker 4: Got elected to run Argentina after years of socialists and
Speaker 4: totalitarian rule.
Speaker 2: And he's a libertarian type guy.
Speaker 5: He's also with all his dogs, he calls his kids
Speaker 5: and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But I like his politics right in a wacky haircut
Speaker 2: and the rest of it.
Speaker 4: And because the media could portray him as somehow trumpy,
Speaker 4: he got a lot of attention. But now that he's
Speaker 4: actually been in power and is trying to do what
Speaker 4: he promised he would do. It's funny. The mainstream media
Speaker 4: is more or less ignoring it. But here's here's a
Speaker 4: headline for you. For years, argent Tina imposed one of
Speaker 4: the world's strictest rent control laws, meant to keep homes
Speaker 4: in Buenos Aires it's elsewhere affordable, But instead officials say
Speaker 4: rents sword Well, holy cow, who saw that coming? Well,
Speaker 4: anybody who understands a lick of economics. If you control
Speaker 4: rents and make it much less attractive for people to
Speaker 4: rent properties, you get fewer rental properties. But now the
Speaker 4: country's new president has scrapped the rental law, along with
Speaker 4: most government price controls, in a fiscal experiment he is
Speaker 4: conducting to revive South America's second biggest economy. Wall Street
Speaker 4: Journal rights the result, the Argentine capital is going undergoing
Speaker 4: a rental market boom. Landlords are rushing to put their
Speaker 4: properties back on the market, with Buenos Aires rental supplies
Speaker 4: increasing by over one hundred and seventy percent, that's nearly tripling.
Speaker 2: Friends.
Speaker 4: Renters are getting better deals than ever, with a forty
Speaker 4: percent decline in the real price of rental properties. When
Speaker 4: a usted for inflation. According to a local economist, Malaise
Speaker 4: moved to undo rent control regulations has resulted in one
Speaker 4: of the clearest cut victories for what he calls economic
Speaker 4: shock therapy. He is methodically taking a part a system
Speaker 4: of price controls, closing government agencies and lifting trade restrictions
Speaker 4: built up over eight decades of socialist and military rule,
Speaker 4: in an effort that's upended the lives of many Argentinians.
Speaker 5: And about twenty four hours from now, Kamala Harris is
Speaker 5: going to introduce her policies of probably that price fixing
Speaker 5: and rent control.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely disastrous. And it is so interesting to
Speaker 4: put aside my disgust with these policies because they are doomed,
Speaker 4: I mean one doomed to failure.
Speaker 2: They have to fail.
Speaker 4: The very basic laws of economics doomed them to failure.
Speaker 4: And yet, and this is the really interesting part, people
Speaker 4: by large majorities at first blush think that's a good idea,
Speaker 4: which just goes to show you a basic education is
Speaker 4: so important but infrequent.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's enough about Argentina. I'm gonna keep my eye
Speaker 2: on them.
Speaker 4: I would love to go to Argentina someday this freaking job.
Speaker 4: This job stops you from going there. Get vacation time.
Speaker 4: Go to Argentina one week, but.
Speaker 2: Do you take two.
Speaker 4: You take a couple of days to travel, a couple
Speaker 4: of days back.
Speaker 2: That means you really have to take two weeks off.
Speaker 4: And every time we take proposed taking two weeks off,
Speaker 4: everybody poops.
Speaker 2: Their drawers like we bran surgeons are.
Speaker 4: The world will stop or infants will die or something.
Speaker 2: Anyway, riding a.
Speaker 4: Burrow, I think you can get to Argentina in one fight.
Speaker 4: Have you ever tried to get to Argentina? It's no
Speaker 4: simple matter. Underestimating the difficulty of Argentine travel is another
Speaker 4: common misconception.
Speaker 2: Joe's riding a burrow into Argentina. Well, I want to
Speaker 2: blend in. That's what they did.
Speaker 4: They have cars there all right. Moving along to the Chinese,
Speaker 4: gonna blend in.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 4: The Chinese economy, they just made a series of blitz measures,
Speaker 4: according to once again the Wall Street Journal, to try
Speaker 4: to turn their more abund economy around and their stock
Speaker 4: market which is just going down down down, dropping interest rates,
Speaker 4: all sorts of incentives for this and disincentives for that.
Speaker 2: As the Central planning.
Speaker 4: Communist Party is trying to stave off the sort of
Speaker 4: economic problems that bring on terrible unrest, the threatens of
Speaker 4: one party government's rule.
Speaker 2: And we'll have to see how that goes.
Speaker 4: And if you've not been following this, trust me when
Speaker 4: I say they have awful economic problems in China. They
Speaker 4: are on the knife's edge of plunging into, like I said,
Speaker 4: destabilizing problems. And in a closely related story, one of
Speaker 4: the top economists in China, this guy vaunted economist head
Speaker 4: of this think tank, which is closely tied to the
Speaker 4: Communist Party. He said, you know, top lecture at universities.
Speaker 4: It had quoted all the time in that Chinese press. Well,
Speaker 4: he was on social media a little while back, and
Speaker 4: evidently he made a couple of comments, and they frame
Speaker 4: it in vague terms, but he made some comments on
Speaker 4: we chat I think it is, which is kind of
Speaker 4: the Chinese Twitter or whatever. He made some impolitic remarks
Speaker 4: in a private chat that referenced Chijin Ping's lifespan. And
Speaker 4: you have to kind of piece it together, but I'm
Speaker 4: sure I'm at least close to right. What he said
Speaker 4: is the only hope we have for a better economy
Speaker 4: in China is that Shixi and Ping can't live forever.
Speaker 4: And wow, gal, gosh, golly, try to find him if
Speaker 4: you can.
Speaker 2: He has disappeared. Wow.
Speaker 5: So not even clear it was a threat of any
Speaker 5: kind that close to a suicide or to an assassination threat.
Speaker 2: That's the way to deal with him in China. No,
Speaker 2: not even close.
Speaker 5: We let you lay in a golf course with a
Speaker 5: rifle and get ready to aim at the president.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So his remarks included comments about China's flagging economy and
Speaker 4: veiled criticism of Shiji Ping that referred.
Speaker 2: To his mortality.
Speaker 4: One of the people said, his name has disappeared from
Speaker 4: every institution that he was a major part of.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows where he is. Wow. Man, it's not surprising. Oh,
Speaker 2: I like this part.
Speaker 4: So they've cracked down like crazy on any criticism of
Speaker 4: sijiin Ping.
Speaker 2: Any Hong konger can tell you that.
Speaker 4: But he coincided with an indoctrination campaign for the staff
Speaker 4: of this giant thing tank and aimed at enforcing compliance
Speaker 4: with the Communist Party rules. Party membership and leadership roles
Speaker 4: were required to sign formal pledges and instilling discipline and
Speaker 4: reminded to obey the ten prohibitions, a list of band
Speaker 4: activity that includes publishing improper material and collaborating with foreign
Speaker 4: entities without approval. I've got to find out what the
Speaker 4: ten prohibitions are. You can size chesion ping, no gene
Speaker 4: shorts on the golf course, don't swim within a half
Speaker 4: hour of beauty, that's right, no breaking wind and mixed company,
Speaker 4: and several others. I haven't found the complete list, but
Speaker 4: I'll see if I can for you, and we'll we'll
Speaker 4: figure out what the Kami devils don't want you to say.
Speaker 2: I'm looking up at the TV. There's a Road Diary.
Speaker 5: There's a new Bruce Springsteen documentary that's gonna be on Hulu.
Speaker 5: Looks really good. God, I wish I wasn't. I wish
Speaker 5: I wasn't so turned off by his politics now that
Speaker 5: I can barely enjoy his amazing music that I like
Speaker 5: so much.
Speaker 4: The berring progressivism of a multi millionaire who's never had
Speaker 4: a real job.
Speaker 2: Yes, it can be off putting a little hard to take.
Speaker 5: And then the other thing they had up there entertainment wise,
Speaker 5: Marvel debuts first look at Thunderbolts there's a new Marvel
Speaker 5: movie with a with a Is it an avenger or
Speaker 5: just a anyway? Looks like an avenger? A new one Thunderbolt.
Speaker 5: I'm not familiar with Thunderbowl anyway.
Speaker 4: I get telling me that there's a great new clogging
Speaker 4: review making its way around the country. That may be,
Speaker 4: but I'm not interested. Oh my kids dig it. And
Speaker 4: some of the Marvel movies are great. Some of them
Speaker 4: are horrible, but some of them are great. How about
Speaker 4: the last three or so? I don't know what's the
Speaker 4: one with the girl? The girl one was horrible.
Speaker 2: You gotta ask somebody who cares.
Speaker 1: Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show, The.
Speaker 6: Armstrong and Getdy Show.
Speaker 7: Meet Ghana's Yahoo Boys online shortsters who swindle Americans out
Speaker 7: of millions of dollars praying on lonely older men over
Speaker 7: the age of sixty. The scammers pretend to be white
Speaker 7: American women residing in the US, tricking men into falling
Speaker 7: in love with them. They message constantly, laying the attention
Speaker 7: and flattery. Then it's more expensive gifts to create the
Speaker 7: perception they are independently wealthy. When a victim insists on
Speaker 7: a video called Voodoo hires online pawn stars and records
Speaker 7: them acting out scenarios that he directs from the mundane
Speaker 7: to them all raunchy. If the victim gets suspicious, he
Speaker 7: uses the image of one of his pawn stars to
Speaker 7: forge an American passport as proof of identity. For in
Speaker 7: person visits, they hire escorts who get a cut of
Speaker 7: the profits. Building trust can take months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a lot.
Speaker 5: There was a level of this I had never seen before,
Speaker 5: where they really are playing the long game, where they
Speaker 5: actually have pictures of women and then if they need to,
Speaker 5: they you can actually meet a woman and you think, okay,
Speaker 5: well it's actually a woman, and now I've met her
Speaker 5: and I've seen her passport, and yeah, that's that's not.
Speaker 2: A long great too, it's fantastic. Let's tear a little
Speaker 2: more of this before we come in.
Speaker 7: The setup often centers around gone as globally renowned gold mines.
Speaker 7: The scammers, still posing as a woman, claim they're in
Speaker 7: line to inherit one of these minds. The victim is
Speaker 7: invited to invest in the mind with the promise of
Speaker 7: huge returns that will secure the happy couple's future together,
Speaker 7: all sealed with a forged ownership document, complete with an
Speaker 7: official seal.
Speaker 5: That's where it crosses into the really. So now you're
Speaker 5: dating somebody hotter than you've ever dated in your life
Speaker 5: who happens to be the heir to a gold mine. Hey,
Speaker 5: it's about time I got a good break. My ship
Speaker 5: came in at sixty five. Yeah, fantastic news. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: just interesting to hear the way the business works. They
Speaker 5: invest so much in the long con and then they
Speaker 5: convert a certain number of the prospects into customers, I guess,
Speaker 5: and so it's worth the money. But I'll tell you
Speaker 5: what if I had and I've dealt with this sort
Speaker 5: of thing before, friends, acquaintances, loved ones getting scammed online.
Speaker 5: And it's tough to watch because it is they can't
Speaker 5: see what you can see because I've seen it too,
Speaker 5: for whatever reason of love or optimism or what have you.
Speaker 5: But if I had a friend who unspooled, you know,
Speaker 5: the first sixty percent of that story, and I said,
Speaker 5: but have you met this woman?
Speaker 2: And he said, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: We spent the weekend in La It was great. We
Speaker 4: went to the Dodgers game, we took a walk along
Speaker 4: the beast.
Speaker 2: Fantastic.
Speaker 4: We got a long I think, Oh, okay, all right,
Speaker 4: I guess I don't know. I was just afraid you
Speaker 4: are getting scammed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because yeah, most of these low rent versions, it's
Speaker 5: it's it's some dude pretending to be.
Speaker 2: A woman and you've never met them or talked to him.
Speaker 4: Is that? And yet there is a hired escort involved. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and a really well done passport. They showed it on
Speaker 4: a CBS news right, just a higher level of sophistication.
Speaker 4: Again though, when it gets to the I'm an air
Speaker 4: to a gold mine, Oh my god, how for me?
Speaker 2: Wait?
Speaker 4: Now, it's Gold's interesting that you, being attractive and an
Speaker 4: air to a gold mine need to date online and
Speaker 4: you know, to meet me.
Speaker 2: But and it's not even like my dad owned two
Speaker 2: car dealerships or anything. It's a gold mine, a literal
Speaker 2: gold mine.
Speaker 4: Anyway, it was in July that the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 4: had a fascinating piece that I kept around, and I
Speaker 4: found it again very similar. It actually takes a look
Speaker 4: at the other side of the coin of similar scams.
Speaker 2: I'll just read the first part to you because it's
Speaker 2: really well written.
Speaker 4: In late December, Garacha, the rest of his name is
Speaker 4: very long, helped lead a small but brazen rebellion. He'd
Speaker 4: been enslaved for sixteen months in a twisted new criminal
Speaker 4: empire in which Chinese gangsters trafficked people from around the world,
Speaker 4: often to remote and lawless parts of Southeast Asia, and
Speaker 4: forced them to sit at computers all day scamming strangers online.
Speaker 4: The cyber frauds they're forced to committer called pig butchering,
Speaker 4: named for the way the perpetrators fatten up their victims
Speaker 4: by gaining their trust before taking their money and cutting
Speaker 4: them loose behind the scenes, though the scammers are victims too,
Speaker 4: and they kidnapped these poor people. Generally, they forced them
Speaker 4: to memorize a manual on how to seduce men online,
Speaker 4: manipulate them into pouring their money into bogus investments.
Speaker 2: And if these guys.
Speaker 4: Dare resist or try to get away, they are beaten
Speaker 4: and tortured and starved. And then and this guy whose
Speaker 4: stage done an uprising was literally taken to a bathroom
Speaker 4: stall and tortured for another week. His captors beat him
Speaker 4: and said he'd have to scratch up seven thousand dollars
Speaker 4: if he wanted to be freed. Finally, and this guy's
Speaker 4: all scarred and broken, and finally his family scraped up
Speaker 4: seven grand and paid his ransom.
Speaker 2: So he and three others with.
Speaker 4: Him were among a few hundred who have made it
Speaker 4: out in recent years from industrial scale scam enterprises built
Speaker 4: on modern days slave trade, so to the just.
Speaker 5: The lonely dating thing, and man, there's a horrible story
Speaker 5: out there, similar sort of thing. My main point being,
Speaker 5: this guy was getting talked up by a stripper at
Speaker 5: a strip club and she offered sex for money at
Speaker 5: the hotel. He went to the hotel and got robbed
Speaker 5: and then murdered. It's still a mystery as to why
Speaker 5: they murdered him, because that seems like a bad idea.
Speaker 5: But anyway, in general, if somebody much younger and much
Speaker 5: hotter than has ever been interested you in your life
Speaker 5: is all of a sudden interested in you, you gotta
Speaker 5: be like beyond skeptical. And I understand, I understand it completely.
Speaker 4: If I'm sitting at a bar in Vegas and a
Speaker 4: twenty two year old super hotty dressed as a short
Speaker 4: skirt and high heels comes up and sits next to me,
Speaker 4: I just it would be nicer, ver true.
Speaker 2: But I gotta know it's not true.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, the really is citious part of
Speaker 4: this is I might be fully cognizant. Oh okay, she's
Speaker 4: a orking girl, and this is going to cost me
Speaker 4: some money, okay, but you don't expect to be papped
Speaker 4: over the head and have like everything taken.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, the whole. If the stripper doesn't actually like you,
Speaker 5: the super chick at the bar doesn't really like you,
Speaker 5: and if you're all of a sudden in a different league,
Speaker 5: just put up your antenna like really really high.
Speaker 2: Yeah it seems like go or yeah.
Speaker 4: A final note on the lonely heart scams, there is a.
Speaker 2: The scammers know that. For instance, Christian.
Speaker 4: Dating sites are a great place to fish wow, because
Speaker 4: if the scammer, you know, says what you say as
Speaker 4: a Christian, there's an immediate level of trust that you
Speaker 4: don't get other places.
Speaker 2: They are utterly heartless, soulless, and brutal. You know.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of what I was going to say.
Speaker 5: This is just a modern version of something that's been
Speaker 5: around forever. Don't take any wooden nickels. News reports say
Speaker 5: there are nickels out there that shiny and silver but
Speaker 5: are actually made of wood. Experts are saying you should
Speaker 5: bite into them or check to see if they're well.
Speaker 5: You know, there's just been, always been scams, and eventually
Speaker 5: we all catch on to them, right, smart people do. Anyway,
Speaker 5: quick question for you, what if you happen to miss
Speaker 5: this unbelievable radio program.
Speaker 4: The answer is easy, friends, Just download our podcast Armstrong
Speaker 4: and Getty on Demand. It's the podcast version of the
Speaker 4: broadcast show, available anytime, any day every single podcast platform
Speaker 4: known demand.
Speaker 2: Download it now. Armstrong and Getty on Demand.
Speaker 6: Armstrong The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 4: As promised, science has nailed down when your vacation pleasureeeks
Speaker 4: peak vacation happiness. You know how articles always have to
Speaker 4: open with a person's story.
Speaker 5: I always skip it every article I read, I skip
Speaker 5: down to where they actually get to the meat of
Speaker 5: the article.
Speaker 4: Yeah, damn near everyone for me, just because I get it.
Speaker 4: This affects real human beings, human beings like me. How
Speaker 4: about I imagine how it affects me? Instead of hearing
Speaker 4: about what's this guy's name? Uh? Florian vang langen Donk,
Speaker 4: the Typeay based Belgian photographer wait a.
Speaker 2: White who whoa whoa? Whoa?
Speaker 4: Don't don't do a story about how the typical traveler
Speaker 4: enjoys a vacation and use the example of a Typeay
Speaker 4: based Belgian photographer. He has a completely different life than
Speaker 4: virtually anybody else on earth.
Speaker 5: Who decided every newspaper article or magazine article needs to
Speaker 5: start this with Jenny Smith, spread out.
Speaker 4: To personalize it so people realize it affects real people.
Speaker 5: It's just dumb. I skipped down to the meat of it. Anyway,
Speaker 5: I when is peak vacation and I've got a story
Speaker 5: about that.
Speaker 4: Only you'll get a story about American families having difficulty
Speaker 4: making ends meet. Jane Jones has three children and no
Speaker 4: husband and a dead end job down at the dairy
Speaker 4: Queen and having She says, some.
Speaker 2: Days I worry whether I can pay the bills. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: the headline.
Speaker 4: I know. I know there are people like that. That's
Speaker 4: why you wrote the article, Because there are people like that.
Speaker 2: I don't need you to give me the specifics.
Speaker 4: A one wow, three kids and works at the dairy Queen.
Speaker 4: I just don't like her chances can't keep a man either.
Speaker 2: Evidently. Anyway, where were we.
Speaker 4: Ah, Yes, peak pleasure on vacation, Yes, A twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: survey of tourist said an all inclusive resort in the
Speaker 4: Dominican Republic, determined that vacationer's average happiness rose steadily from
Speaker 4: the moment they left home, then peaked around our forty
Speaker 4: three of the trip.
Speaker 2: Really then the first forty eight hours you peak.
Speaker 4: That's true about the enjoyment starts even with the shlub,
Speaker 4: because you're on vacation, the shlip rather not the slub.
Speaker 4: I'm the shlub, the schlub, the slub slip, the slip
Speaker 4: away shlub. The enjoyment starts with the schlap. Even the
Speaker 4: bags in the car and the uber to the airport
Speaker 4: and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: There's nothing enjoyable about that. But you're just you're already
Speaker 2: on vacation and it's growing and its enjoyment.
Speaker 4: All right, So I gotta to analyze this. You leave
Speaker 4: the house at eight o'clock in the morning, you got
Speaker 4: a couple of flights. You end up at the resort
Speaker 4: that you're going to at like four point thirty in
Speaker 4: the afternoon, although you left eight o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: So twenty four hours would be eight forty eight hours
Speaker 4: would be eight o'clock.
Speaker 2: The next morning, forty three hours to be in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night. That's right. Ten, you just had X.
Speaker 4: It's five o'clock the second day, you're there roughly. Okay,
Speaker 4: that brings true to me. That's the peek, like the
Speaker 4: entire vacation, the greatest thing ever, Honey, you know that
Speaker 4: that is.
Speaker 2: I don't want this to be true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm thinking about this ridiculously expensive Hawaiian vacation. I
Speaker 5: went on to not too long, but I don't want
Speaker 5: this to be true. But yeah, the you've got there
Speaker 5: the second day and the cool place you are is
Speaker 5: kind of that.
Speaker 2: This is awesome. Part of it might be the whole.
Speaker 5: It seems like the vacation's gonna last forever already at
Speaker 5: that point because a week yes, yeah, he doesn't take
Speaker 5: very long into the vacation for me at least, and
Speaker 5: where I realized Jesus half over.
Speaker 4: You're settled in, you got the lay of the land.
Speaker 4: Maybe you got a couple of pops in you it's
Speaker 4: it's dinner time, it's you're just so relaxed. Maybe a
Speaker 4: little sweet afternoon love has taken place. I don't know anyway,
Speaker 4: but there's wait, there's there's more. Key to this good
Speaker 4: vibe spike is dishabituation. Perspective refreshed one gets from a
Speaker 4: change of pace.
Speaker 5: What's a dishabituation? So getting out of your habits?
Speaker 4: Yes, Esley The word people use more than any other
Speaker 4: to describe the parts of the holiday they liked best
Speaker 4: was first, first view, the ocean, first cocktail, first sand castle,
Speaker 4: et cetera. You kind of habituate to joy, to the
Speaker 4: great things around.
Speaker 5: You, all interesting. You habituate to joy.
Speaker 4: Right, and the ways to finding ways to dishabituate again
Speaker 4: and again is the secret to making the most of
Speaker 4: every vacation day. They also say you could do more
Speaker 4: like three day trips. I was about to say, it
Speaker 4: sounds to me like vacations, don't. You'd be better off
Speaker 4: with three three day vacations than one nine day vacation
Speaker 4: from a pleasure standpoint, Yeah, maybe, although I would dispute
Speaker 4: that because that feeling of the clock is ticking and
Speaker 4: it's almost the day we have to pack and have
Speaker 4: you you know, have you what do you call it?
Speaker 4: To check in for the flight? Honey, I've got such
Speaker 4: a negative mindset. I have to fight the vacations. Already
Speaker 4: thirty percent over yeah, like a ninety vacation. We're already
Speaker 4: three days in. Oh my god. So the other way
Speaker 4: to dishabituate, says this travel expert. If you're going on
Speaker 4: a vacation, it's quite long, you might want to make
Speaker 4: it more varied. Anytime we change our environment, change our circumstances,
Speaker 4: change what we're doing, that causes dishabituation. Hopping between countries
Speaker 4: or cities guarantees diversity. But you can also mix things
Speaker 4: up by trying a new tu sport or trending activity beach.
Speaker 2: Tennis, anyone. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I also really like when you don't have to pack
Speaker 4: and unpack multiple times day trips.
Speaker 2: It's all about day trips, right.
Speaker 5: So I think about this a lot because this happened
Speaker 5: on my very starkly when I was on my honeymoon
Speaker 5: in Mexico. I think it was like a week and
Speaker 5: a half. Gladys, what you'll break your fingers. I think
Speaker 5: she's just I think she's just working for us now
Speaker 5: for the insurance. I don't think she cares about her job.
Speaker 5: She just wants the health insurance. Well, she unionized last week.
Speaker 5: Don't you qualify for medicare? You're like one hundred and six.
Speaker 4: You didn't see the memo, Union says she has twenty
Speaker 4: seconds to get ready and crack her knuckles and before
Speaker 4: she unleashes her little lick there on the harp.
Speaker 5: Anyway, I'm in Mexico. I got this place right on
Speaker 5: the ocean. So I'm sitting there looking out the window
Speaker 5: at the ocean, and it's as beautiful and nice as
Speaker 5: anything can be, and all week long, like a week
Speaker 5: and a half or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 4: Then on the last day leave the next day. But
Speaker 4: this is the last full day of being there, I'm
Speaker 4: sitting there and I'm all stressed out about you know,
Speaker 4: thinking about going back to work and just all these
Speaker 4: different things, and I'm like unhappy. And I thought, Oh,
Speaker 4: you're sitting in the exact same spot, looking at the
Speaker 4: exact same view that you were euphoric about for the
Speaker 4: last seven days.
Speaker 2: The only thing that's changed.
Speaker 4: The only thing is your attitude, per respective, etc.
Speaker 2: The only thing.
Speaker 4: And I thought, how often does this occur, not quite
Speaker 4: as starkly as this, to where the only thing really
Speaker 4: going on is my attitude and what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 5: Everything else is fine, And I've thought about that a
Speaker 5: lot over the last fifteen years. I guess it is
Speaker 5: now about that just there's nothing. Everything that I'm stressed
Speaker 5: out about is in my head. There's nothing actually occurring
Speaker 5: at this moment stressful or unpleasant, and I try.
Speaker 2: To combat that. Yeah, yeah, well you gotta disabituate, man.
Speaker 2: I wish I could.
Speaker 5: I suppose people who are really zen or Buddha or
Speaker 5: Gandhi or whoever.
Speaker 2: Can make the other happen.
Speaker 5: And I've heard about this with people who are being
Speaker 5: held hostage or whatever really unfortunate circumstance you have. You
Speaker 5: can be in a bad situation and bringing in all
Speaker 5: the good thoughts and have the complete You know, life
Speaker 5: is fantastic thing going on when you are surrounded by
Speaker 5: freely negative things. Certainly I do the opposite regularly. Everything
Speaker 5: is fine here, I'm in a nice place with a
Speaker 5: nice view.
Speaker 4: Nope, but I'm bringing in all these pressures on myself
Speaker 4: for no reason. Stray thought, but related that might be
Speaker 4: one of the keys to aging gracefully and happily. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there are aspects of it to kind of suck, but
Speaker 4: you know, find the good stuff.
Speaker 5: I plan to age angrily and finger pointedly. That's my
Speaker 5: glass shout at lawnedly, it's you keeping me down and unhappy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're to blite or.
Speaker 4: A Clint Eastwood and El Camino aging process. Somebody referenced
Speaker 4: that movie to me the other day. Oh so I see, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you're saying my finger pointedly. Yeah, exactly when the young
Speaker 4: Korean kids would ride by and he'd go pomp. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's not a relaxed way to live your life. No, indeed,
Speaker 4: what else are we doing this out right? I remember
Speaker 4: there's a lot of it.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't want to be so dark, but I
Speaker 5: think it's absolutely true. This op ed in the Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal about World War threes on the way, and
Speaker 5: we're all ignoring it. We're either of the candidates asked
Speaker 5: about this yesterday. Hey, do you see the sixty minutes
Speaker 5: piece of Miss Harris or mister Trump about Philippines and
Speaker 5: the Chinese boats ramming them, and how maybe one more
Speaker 5: time and the Philippines go to war and we've got
Speaker 5: a treaty obligation to back them up, we'd be at
Speaker 5: or with China. Where would you be on that? No,
Speaker 5: we're talking about cat eating or whatever.
Speaker 4: For the entire history of the nation, it was considered
Speaker 4: universally to be very important to hear the candidates' views
Speaker 4: on this stuff. Now not so much. We just got
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Speaker 8: Meanwhile, in Kharkieth, after more Russian glidebaum struck residential buildings,
Speaker 8: President Zelenski asked again for the restrictions on long range
Speaker 8: US weapons to be lifted.
Speaker 9: Just sevitator, the only way to counter this terror is
Speaker 9: with a systemic solution. This solution is long range capabilities,
Speaker 9: which will enable US to destroy Russian military aircraft at
Speaker 9: their basis. This is an obvious logical decision.
Speaker 5: Huh yeah, decisions that will be discussed for decades or
Speaker 5: centuries to come, depending on how all this turns out.
Speaker 5: The Biden administration being so slow to approve Ukraine defending
Speaker 5: itself against Russia while China is now helping Russia, which.
Speaker 2: Leads us to a bigger picture.
Speaker 5: This piece in the Wall Street Journal Today by Walter
Speaker 5: Russell meet who's I don't know if you've ever seen
Speaker 5: him speak or listening to his podcast Stuff Super smart
Speaker 5: guy been writing opinions for the Wall Street Journal for
Speaker 5: as long as I can remember.
Speaker 4: Us shrugs as World War three approaches. And let me
Speaker 4: skip to down in the article to this. The reason
Speaker 4: he wrote this is there is a Commission on the
Speaker 4: National Defense Strategy to put out a report. It's a
Speaker 4: panel of eight experts named by senior Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 4: on the various committees that consulted widely across the government,
Speaker 4: reviewing both public and classified information, and they issued a
Speaker 4: unanimous report. This is one of those deals where Republicans
Speaker 4: and Democrats come together and agree on a report that
Speaker 4: they want to put out and as Mead.
Speaker 5: Rights here and kind of what we've been talking about.
Speaker 5: In a healthy political climate, this would be the central
Speaker 5: topic in national conversation.
Speaker 2: Not that's so funny.
Speaker 4: I was about to say, Oh, they've released the report,
Speaker 4: I haven't heard about it.
Speaker 5: Not a central topic. The central topic, says Meed.
Speaker 4: The bipartisan report details a devastating picture of political failure,
Speaker 4: strategic inadequacy, and growing American weakness and a time of
Speaker 4: rapidly increasing danger. Now I skipped over the first part,
Speaker 4: but you all know this. You got Ukraine and Russia,
Speaker 4: you got Israel, Hamas, you got China doing what they're
Speaker 4: doing in the Philippines. You got all this stuff happening
Speaker 4: at the same time, each country helping each other, and
Speaker 4: all of that, the US faces the most serious and
Speaker 4: most challenging threats since nineteen forty five, that'd be the
Speaker 4: end of World War two, including the real risk of
Speaker 4: near term major war. The report warns the nation was
Speaker 4: last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War,
Speaker 4: which ended thirty five years ago. It is not prepared today.
Speaker 2: Worse.
Speaker 5: China and Russia's No Limits partnership formed in February twenty two,
Speaker 5: just days before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Speaker 2: That's when.
Speaker 5: She said to Putin caught on Mike, the world is
Speaker 5: about to change, and you and I are going to
Speaker 5: lead that more or less. In other words, the United
Speaker 5: States is not going to be the boss anymore. The
Speaker 5: new alignment of nations opposed to US interests. Along with Russia, China,
Speaker 5: North Korea, Iran, these countries aligned creates a real risk,
Speaker 5: if not the likelihood, that conflict anywhere could be a
Speaker 5: multitheater or global war should such a conflict break out.
Speaker 5: The commission finds that the US military lackxble the capabilities
Speaker 5: and the capacity required to be confident it can deter
Speaker 5: or prevail in combat. To summarize, World War three is
Speaker 5: becoming more likely in the near term, and the US
Speaker 5: is too weak either to prevent it or should warcome,
Speaker 5: be confident of victory. This is not or should not
Speaker 5: be a part.
Speaker 2: Of an issue.
Speaker 5: No recent president and no party escapes responsibility for our
Speaker 5: current plight. Red and Blue America will suffer equally if
Speaker 5: the global slide toward war continues unchecked.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: You know it's frustrating to me as a big history fan.
Speaker 5: Is this is what happens over and over and over
Speaker 5: again and is probably inevitable, which is why it's kind
Speaker 5: of depressing. There's just no getting around it. You're the
Speaker 5: big dog for a long time, and you get soft
Speaker 5: and you come to believe you'll always be a big dog.
Speaker 2: And just through.
Speaker 5: If you're a sports fan, you see it with sports
Speaker 5: teams that you come to believe that just because you're
Speaker 5: wearing the uniform that is won in the past, that's
Speaker 5: just going to prevail. That you don't need to continue
Speaker 5: to have the right players or to be able to
Speaker 5: perform at the same level. Just your uniformal went out
Speaker 5: and it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 4: Right, And there's absolutely a feeling of or a history
Speaker 4: of When the call does come again, you turn to
Speaker 4: your people and your tools that in the past have
Speaker 4: been successful and you realize, oh, it's all hollowed out.
Speaker 4: All we have is the edifice of a super powerful
Speaker 4: navy for instance. I mean Putin certainly found this out
Speaker 4: in invading Ukraine, but I mean I know a fair
Speaker 4: amount about the Navy since my brother was a career officer.
Speaker 4: And then we've got a couple of listeners, several listeners
Speaker 4: who are navy or merchant marine, you know, veterans who
Speaker 4: understand that our ability to get weaponry and people and
Speaker 4: goods to the theater is now a vestige of what
Speaker 4: it once was. I mean, it's shriveled. That is what
Speaker 4: I was talking about about being hollowed out. We're gonna
Speaker 4: say we're going to take the fight to them, and
Speaker 4: the question is going to be, how are we going
Speaker 4: to get the tanks over there? And the answer is
Speaker 4: going to be, we don't have enough fighting ships to
Speaker 4: protect the transport ships to get the stuff where it
Speaker 4: needs to go. We got some of those shiny aircraft
Speaker 4: carriers and stuff like that. And by god, they are
Speaker 4: awesome and they're peopled by you know, the best and
Speaker 4: the brightest. But do we have down to the brass
Speaker 4: tax the logistics ready to go. No, according to the
Speaker 4: people I trust.
Speaker 2: Right, And then I think it comes down to it's
Speaker 2: just not a.
Speaker 5: Priority for the American people. It's just not something we
Speaker 5: think about and are probably that.
Speaker 4: But gigantic wars are extremely expensive, and we in the
Speaker 4: past have borrowed butt loads of money that's a technical term,
Speaker 4: uh to to finance the wars. That's the time we've
Speaker 4: ever run debt like we have now, or deficits like
Speaker 4: we have now. We have accumulated gigantic deficits hence and
Speaker 4: hence death during affluent peace time. So what comes when
Speaker 4: we have to borrow zillions of dollars?
Speaker 2: What's the world going to say to us?
Speaker 4: I have to mention the fact that the interest on
Speaker 4: the dead is now more than the Defense Department back
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 5: I've tried to talk about this with like smart people
Speaker 5: I know many many times, and they just look at
Speaker 5: me like I'm crazy.
Speaker 9: I just.
Speaker 5: It's just well, New York Times had a great opinion
Speaker 5: piece about this last year. I don't think I ever
Speaker 5: got around to reading where they basically was this argument
Speaker 5: that we've just come to believe that it couldn't happen,
Speaker 5: China's never going to attack us with Russia and Iran
Speaker 5: at the same time, and this just wouldn't happen. Well,
Speaker 5: it can happen, and the history of the world would
Speaker 5: suggest it's absolutely.
Speaker 2: Going to happen. Yeah, that's what always happens.
Speaker 4: Well, if Winston Churchill were to be raised from the
Speaker 4: dead and join us in the studio number one, probably
Speaker 4: what my pants, but he would say, Yeah, the only
Speaker 4: way to wake people up is to get attacked. It's
Speaker 4: just the way it is. Boys, good luck. Yeah, highly troubling.
Speaker 4: So this report comes out, bipartisan report. You can't word
Speaker 4: it much more starkly than you just heard, that World
Speaker 4: War three is on the horizon and we don't think
Speaker 4: we could win it if it happens. And we argue
Speaker 4: about transgender bathrooms or cat eating or whatever the daily
Speaker 4: news cycle story is, Yeah, neither candidate will be asked
Speaker 4: about any of this, or put out a or try
Speaker 4: to lead us in any direction. The idea of trying
Speaker 4: to lead America into being concerned about this is never
Speaker 4: going to happen, and the press isn't even asking the question, Hey,
Speaker 4: the Giant report just came out and we have our
Speaker 4: pants down. What's your plan for fixing that? It's a
Speaker 4: non topic.
Speaker 5: No, it's going to be very annoying when this eventually happens.
Speaker 5: And those of us who knew what was going to happen,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I won't get any plasure out of that.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty