Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong and Jetty, and he Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 3: After more than two hundred and thirty years in circulation,
Speaker 3: the US Mint in Philadelphia pressing the last ever American penny.
Speaker 3: US Treasurer Brandon Beach on hand for the historic moment
Speaker 3: as production of the one cent coins officially comes to
Speaker 3: an end, the final two pennies going up for auction.
Speaker 4: For better or worse. Trump is not in love with
Speaker 4: the status quo. He just does things that other people
Speaker 4: that well, but this will cause a problem.
Speaker 2: But what if that? But what if this? And what
Speaker 2: if the penny's dumb?
Speaker 4: Get rid of it. Jerusalem's a capital Isray. We all
Speaker 4: know it, right, lots of things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of it good, some of it not good.
Speaker 4: But you know, then around all these years was more
Speaker 4: on it, especially after inflation.
Speaker 2: He was already done before inflation. But an extra dumb then,
Speaker 2: Oh yes, we've outlined in the past. A penny is
Speaker 2: now worth something a tenth of a penny compared to
Speaker 2: what it was in nineteen forty whatever the year was.
Speaker 2: I can't remember, so can you imagine having a tenth
Speaker 2: of a cent coin. That's what we've got. We'll combine
Speaker 2: that with the fact that it cost four cents to
Speaker 2: make one. Right insane anyway, Goodbye penny. Old link is
Speaker 2: on there, which makes me feel bad, but he's still
Speaker 2: on the five dollar bill, and you know it can
Speaker 2: keep some pennies if you like. Just take them out,
Speaker 2: look at them and think about old Ay once in
Speaker 2: a while if that comforts you. Anyway. So this is
Speaker 2: not breaking news exactly, but you might not have heard it.
Speaker 2: Seattle has joined New York City in electing a Democratic
Speaker 2: Socialist mayor by an incredibly slim margin over a way
Speaker 2: left you know, guy who was in office before, as
Speaker 2: the The Daily Mail puts it to. Ms. Katie Wilson,
Speaker 2: age forty three, the first Democratic Socialist mayor of Seattle,
Speaker 2: ran a very similar campaign to old Mamdannie the Kamie.
Speaker 2: She's run a campaign characterized by promises to increase in
Speaker 2: affordability in the expensive city by doing policies that will
Speaker 2: accomplish exactly the opposite, as they do every single damn time.
Speaker 2: Another core of her platform is addressing Seattle's homelessness crisis
Speaker 2: by throwing money at it, which plays California. You can
Speaker 2: tell you, We'll just get you more bums and junkie
Speaker 2: Seattle one of the worst in the country. Critics have
Speaker 2: called Wilson privileged and out of touch, as the forty
Speaker 2: three year old candidate regularly receives checks from her professor
Speaker 2: parents to pay for childcare. Wow, which I'm sure she
Speaker 2: would say is just evidence of how capitalism has failed.
Speaker 2: It's funny how that excuse comes up over and over again.
Speaker 2: These critics also a highlight Wilson dropping out of Oxford
Speaker 2: University just six weeks before graduation for some reason, debt
Speaker 2: free thanks to her parents. The Other Person's reelection website
Speaker 2: highlighted a quote from a former Singing Seattle King County
Speaker 2: NAACP president of All People who said it's hard to
Speaker 2: trust a candidate running on their challenges with affordability when
Speaker 2: her family's wealth shields her from actual consequences and financial stress.
Speaker 4: I would like to say that her voting was similar
Speaker 4: to with mom Donnie. Where was in the working class
Speaker 4: that got the mayor of Saddle over the top. It
Speaker 4: was other highly educated elite people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So currently her husband does not have a
Speaker 2: paying job either, Neither one of them have a job. Well,
Speaker 2: if she's a mayor now, well, yeah, currently that means
Speaker 2: the couple's household income is below would be considered enough
Speaker 2: money to support themselves and their child in Seattle. So
Speaker 2: she gets checks from home at age forty three. Wow,
Speaker 2: she's not ashamed. It just speaks how expensive and unaffordable
Speaker 2: it is, right, she said, how about how about like.
Speaker 4: The other ninety nine it's pretty high of people your
Speaker 4: age who have figured out how to support themselves.
Speaker 2: What are they just dumb? Yeah? Yeah, wow, that is
Speaker 2: just unbelievable. Oh, good luck with that that.
Speaker 4: You're in your forties and you're still on your parents pay.
Speaker 2: Check unless you have special needs of course, of course,
Speaker 2: something different. Yeah, that's just that's just sad. That is
Speaker 2: just sad. Yeah, okay, well that's enough of that.
Speaker 4: And of course, of course you'd turn to that person
Speaker 4: for the answers to economic problems, somebody that has not
Speaker 4: figured out how to support themselves at all. Well, because
Speaker 4: she reinforces the excuses you're making for yourself in your
Speaker 4: own life.
Speaker 2: I get it. There's nothing more comfortable than a great excuse.
Speaker 2: So you know, speaking of political trends among the young.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been reading a lot about this, and
Speaker 2: there's too much to cram in here. But read a
Speaker 2: piece by a guy named Derek Thompson, The Monks in
Speaker 2: the Casine, and it's and he highlights a couple of
Speaker 2: people who have appeared in big time journalism profiles lately.
Speaker 2: The one guy is a He considered himself a porno sexual,
Speaker 2: which is exactly what it sounds like. It's just it's sick,
Speaker 2: beyond sick and bizarre. He's no good with talking about women.
Speaker 2: He thinks about sex between two people and he's troubled
Speaker 2: by it. He's frightened by it because of the impossibility
Speaker 2: of ever knowing what's really going on in your partner's head.
Speaker 2: I just feel like it's exhausting for both parties. Then
Speaker 2: there's this another guy with a gambling addiction, both of
Speaker 2: them living in their parents' house.
Speaker 4: What's a porno sexual? I mean you said it's is
Speaker 4: it all porn all the time? You prefer porn to
Speaker 4: the real thing.
Speaker 2: Uh, not that he's ever dabbled in the real thing.
Speaker 2: Been recently thinking about these guys, Derek Wrights, who are dating, less, socializing,
Speaker 2: less leaving their homes, less, filling their media with more
Speaker 2: porn and betting parlays. They seem to prefer the financial
Speaker 2: discomfort of losing a bet to the social anxiety being
Speaker 2: rejected on a date. They find intimacy scary and gambling exciting,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Monks and casinos. The title of
Speaker 2: his piece, that's troubling, wait till ai hit yeah, Oh
Speaker 2: my god. And then on that topic, Jeff Blair for
Speaker 2: The National Review, he's talking about the the woke right,
Speaker 2: if you will, the Tucker, Nick Foantes Groyper's crown, And
Speaker 2: how about thirty to forty percent of the young people
Speaker 2: who are like activists climbers in Washington, d c. On
Speaker 2: the right are probably in that crowd. They think it's
Speaker 2: just under a third to forty percent who hold the
Speaker 2: views that are I will quote characterizable beyond anti Semitism
Speaker 2: as a general belief that the system as it exists
Speaker 2: is corrupt and must be leveled along with whoever is
Speaker 2: perceived as having been its beneficiaries. Blah blah blah. And
Speaker 2: he says that's.
Speaker 4: The part of the whole movement that worries me, and
Speaker 4: I think is paying attention to I don't know that.
Speaker 4: You know, we're Germany in nineteen thirty three, that anti
Speaker 4: semitism is going to become a leading But just.
Speaker 2: The boy they're close in Canada. More on that another time, but.
Speaker 4: Just the the system stacked against me, combined with scared
Speaker 4: to talk to other human beings, just that all that
Speaker 4: anger from that. You're just unhappy with life. And how
Speaker 4: would you not be unhappy? You got no friends, you're
Speaker 4: not have any sex, you have never been in a relationship,
Speaker 4: and you don't have a job. That makes for a
Speaker 4: really angry group of people that can be a pretty
Speaker 4: powerful voting block.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And then he points out the anti semitism
Speaker 2: on the young right comes despite all the various guys
Speaker 2: and poses, from a much deeper and darker impulse, the
Speaker 2: reflexive rejection of pieties or you know, the sacred thoughts
Speaker 2: of the past. For people scolded their entire lives to
Speaker 2: think that X or why was racist or sexist, that
Speaker 2: boys or girls and vice versa, and white males are
Speaker 2: the engine of civilizational evil. It is profoundly unsurprising to
Speaker 2: see a pendulum swinging backlash in an equally ignorant opposite direction.
Speaker 2: Nihilism is contagious and it spreads quickly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did bring that up when I was watching
Speaker 4: the Nick Puentes on Tucker Carlson. The thing that I thought, okay,
Speaker 4: I could see this as an entry way into people
Speaker 4: who agree with you, especially if you're a white male,
Speaker 4: is weird. The only crowd that are not allowed to
Speaker 4: believe more of us is good, and we're being attacked
Speaker 4: from all sides. Every single other crowd gets to say,
Speaker 4: there'd this board would be better with more this school,
Speaker 4: this whatever, this company would be better with more of me, But.
Speaker 2: Not if you're a white male, right exactly, And then
Speaker 2: he makes an excellent point. Uh blah blah blah blah bah.
Speaker 2: It's not just the young dissolution right that's looking for
Speaker 2: scapegoats to blame either. As the Groyper debate has raged
Speaker 2: during the past few weeks, the thought has lurked in
Speaker 2: the back of my mind. This explains Zorn Mumdani too.
Speaker 2: The connective thread between them isn't anti Semitism, although the
Speaker 2: overlap is obvious. I believe that anti Semitism is symptomatic
Speaker 2: of a greater disease, a shared generational ferment societies have
Speaker 2: nots raging against societies haves, with the same poison coursing
Speaker 2: through the veins of both radical wings of our modern politics.
Speaker 2: And he gets into, you know, the young people in Seattle,
Speaker 2: in New York can't pay their bills, cannot save, see
Speaker 2: all of their expected career paths being swiftly foreclosed on,
Speaker 2: little optimism about the future. And let's see where is
Speaker 2: the part that he gets into. And this is something
Speaker 2: I've read about in the past and kind of forgotten about.
Speaker 2: But the overproduction of elites. You have way more people
Speaker 2: with degrees and advanced degrees being churned out of the
Speaker 2: universities than could possibly occupy the elite seats of power.
Speaker 2: He's writing a mount in Washington, d C. But that
Speaker 2: exists in Washington, DC, for instance, there's just like five to.
Speaker 4: One, which kind of means the term elite would would
Speaker 4: need a different word, right if if you don't need
Speaker 4: very many of them. Elite I'm not sure is the
Speaker 4: right word elite kind of I don't know, elite athletes,
Speaker 4: I don't know. Seems like it would have to be
Speaker 4: a commodity to the that it's good to have a
Speaker 4: lot of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, I was going
Speaker 2: to use a metaphor, but I'm not sure it's a
Speaker 2: good one anyway, So I found that that's super interesting.
Speaker 2: And then I'll end with this, And it's a really
Speaker 2: interesting take from the folks at the Federalists, who about
Speaker 2: half the time I think have lost their minds. But
Speaker 2: I don't know Kelsey Ballerini. I guess she's a big
Speaker 2: deal musician, singer. She was a judge on The Voice Okay,
Speaker 2: has had a bunch of big hits. Her new big hit,
Speaker 2: which is accompanied by a video, is called uh, I
Speaker 2: sit in Parks. Oh, I've heard about this, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: about a couple of weeks ago. When I came across this,
Speaker 2: she's she's seen through a nostalgic, warm filter, swinging on
Speaker 2: a playground as quick clips of children playing with bubbles
Speaker 2: or children being embraced by their parents cut in and out.
Speaker 2: I sit in parks. It breaks my heart, she says
Speaker 2: in the opening line. She and then talks about, you
Speaker 2: know her, what she's achieved a little bit in the verse,
Speaker 2: but by the end of the day quote, all she
Speaker 2: can see is just how far I am from the
Speaker 2: things that I want. Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought
Speaker 2: the sunscreen. The kids are laughing and crying on red Swings.
Speaker 2: We look about the same age, but we don't have
Speaker 2: the same Saturdays. And she wonders if she missed the mark,
Speaker 2: adding it's her fault for chasing things. A body clock
Speaker 2: doesn't wait for h Yet she seems hesitant to let
Speaker 2: go of the lifestyle that put her in the position
Speaker 2: in the first place. The album's, the tours, the awards,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, or what I wanted, what I got,
Speaker 2: she says. In the course to cope, she'll keep well,
Speaker 2: I'll just read the chorus. So I sit in Parks,
Speaker 2: sunglasses dark, and I hit the vape hallucinated nursery with
Speaker 2: Noah's ark. They lay on a blanket and g di it.
Speaker 2: He loves her. I wonder if she wants my freedom
Speaker 2: like I want to be a mother, like Rolling Stone says,
Speaker 2: I'm on the right road. So I refill my lexa
Speaker 2: pro thinking what's the main takeaway from this screed? Somebody's
Speaker 2: actually admitted that I've been chasing things the world told
Speaker 2: me to chase, and all I really want to do
Speaker 2: is have a family. I've heard that a lot from people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: me too. Why would you let corporate America tell you
Speaker 2: what life to live?
Speaker 4: Yeh, all your friends are doing it.
Speaker 2: It's the beauty of being an I kund of classed.
Speaker 4: Well, when we go to war with Venezuela, we won't
Speaker 4: have time to think about this sort of stuff. Are
Speaker 4: we going to war with Venezuela? We got the latest
Speaker 4: on that we've got a quarter of the US Navy
Speaker 4: there now more on that coming up. Stay here, guys.
Speaker 2: The big news in Washington today the House officially voted
Speaker 2: to end the government shutdown. Right now, people who were
Speaker 2: hoping us keept.
Speaker 1: Flying home for Thanksgiving, We're like, well, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: back to drawing and extra line in my COVID tests.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 4: Never liked those jokes about how the holiday season is
Speaker 4: trying to stay away from your family because you hate
Speaker 4: them so much? Was that actually your life? I know
Speaker 4: it's not for Jimmy Fallon, because I know something about
Speaker 4: his life.
Speaker 2: Why would it be common enough that he thinks that's
Speaker 2: a good joke, I guess, or end or maybe those
Speaker 2: of us with happy families who were happy to see
Speaker 2: think Yeah, that's too bad. But yeah, that's cynical, unfunny.
Speaker 4: I don't know have I ever talked about Universe twenty
Speaker 4: five before. I feel like we probably have, But we've
Speaker 4: been doing this radio show for thirty years, so it
Speaker 4: could have been a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five right from Heritage.
Speaker 4: Universe twenty five. It's a famous mouse experiment from back.
Speaker 2: In the day. Oh right, yeah, go aheads.
Speaker 4: Between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy two, he studied
Speaker 4: these mice. He created a mouse utopia experiment to see
Speaker 4: what would happen. I think you'll see parallels to today
Speaker 4: with these mice. The basic setup is the utopia. Utopia
Speaker 4: included an enclosure with unlimited food, water, nesting materials, and
Speaker 4: no predators for these mice. He started with four breeding
Speaker 4: pairs and then let the population develop naturally again food, weather, food,
Speaker 4: water protection, all your basic needs met and no predators.
Speaker 4: The population initially got WiFi fast streaming exactly cool Amazon Prime. Yes,
Speaker 4: the population initially grew exponentially, but at around day five
Speaker 4: sixty the growth began to slow dramatically.
Speaker 2: They stopped having little mice babies at a certain point.
Speaker 4: Despite having physical space and resources, the mice developed behavioral pathologies.
Speaker 4: Dominant males became extremely aggressive. Subordinate males withdrew completely. Some mice,
Speaker 4: mostly males, completely disengaged from social life, only eating, drinking,
Speaker 4: and grooming themselves obsessively. Female mice abandoned their young and
Speaker 4: infant mortality skyrocketed. Wow, young mice never learned social and
Speaker 4: mating behaviors from their parents, if you will, and by
Speaker 4: six day six hundred, no new mice were being born
Speaker 4: in the population eventually went extinct. Now, as it says
Speaker 4: here in the summary, people are not mice and mice
Speaker 4: are not people.
Speaker 2: There point, come on, now, Yeah, I have known a
Speaker 2: handful of people who were completely taken care of trust
Speaker 2: fund kids, that sort of person, and the vast majority
Speaker 2: of those stories do not have joyful endings or descriptions.
Speaker 4: No, but this is what I've been saying about. We
Speaker 4: stopped having babies. This is what I've been thinking of
Speaker 4: first world countries. We don't have any threats, We were
Speaker 4: not going to be invaded by another country, and we
Speaker 4: have our basic need needs met. Even if you got
Speaker 4: people marching in the street because their house is not
Speaker 4: as big as their neighbor's house or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: our basic needs of being met, and we're stopping getting together.
Speaker 2: We're starting to act weird. True. Yeah, well, and it's
Speaker 2: absolutely known scientifically that struggle raises your testosterone and victory
Speaker 2: raises it even more. We're meant to strive and fight,
Speaker 2: whether the literal battles or metaphorical battles. We're not meant
Speaker 2: to lay around to be comfortable as beings. Interesting. Okay,
Speaker 2: I've got a jiv yet informative new feature coming up.
Speaker 2: You won't want to miss it. Wel Armstrong and Getty
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 4: Bathroom here on the floor we were occupying here at
Speaker 4: the radio station, the stall where people do their you know,
Speaker 4: your main business. There's been no soap in there for
Speaker 4: like a month. Oh it's longer than that to wash
Speaker 4: your hands, and that ain't cool. So Hanson and I
Speaker 4: were just discussing it. Maybe we should bring bars of
Speaker 4: soap and set him on the counter. It kind of
Speaker 4: a hint, like we've started to bring our own bar
Speaker 4: from home for some reason. He suggested lava. Do you
Speaker 4: remember lava soap?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: It was gray and it had the grit in it
Speaker 4: to like, oh yeah, do they still make that. I
Speaker 4: think bars a lava soap.
Speaker 2: Would be perfect. One of my friend's dad was an
Speaker 2: actual auto mechanic and he did a lot of work
Speaker 2: in his own garage. I think that's where I ran
Speaker 2: in a lava soap.
Speaker 4: It was good for that sort of thing. I don't
Speaker 4: know if it was so good for like a ten
Speaker 4: year old to scrub their body in the shower.
Speaker 2: Well, we're a lot of bleeding from the hands, yeah, bulliating,
Speaker 2: exfoliating exactly. So a lot of great stuff to squeeze
Speaker 2: in this hour. But first, from the intormation mind of
Speaker 2: Joe Getty, that brought you. I do occasionally refer to
Speaker 2: myself in the third person, that brought you a look
Speaker 2: in the China cabinet. And what was one of the
Speaker 2: other ones, Michael, I can't remember if there was another one.
Speaker 2: There have been other ones. Well, it's time for the
Speaker 2: euro Bureau.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're still working on the introduction for the euro Bureau.
Speaker 2: And that was low rent. How are you kidding? That
Speaker 2: was free sign on the side of the road. I
Speaker 2: was limited on supplies. Yeah, send time. So a couple
Speaker 2: of really interesting stories from Europe, and I tell you
Speaker 2: what and a lot of you agree with this. I
Speaker 2: feel like watching my beloved Republic in our various challenges
Speaker 2: and increasing socialism and debt and the rest of it.
Speaker 2: It's a slow motion car crash. I mean, the end
Speaker 2: of this is so incredibly predictable. We become France. It's
Speaker 2: the Francification of the United States. Oh oh damn it
Speaker 2: that reminds me. I'm so pleased with this, I can't
Speaker 2: stand it. The new T shirt at the Armstrong and
Speaker 2: Getty superstore is simply on a lovely dark blue background,
Speaker 2: although you could probably get it in all sorts of colors.
Speaker 2: Ruin the entire Country, Newsome, twenty twenty eight. I like
Speaker 2: it looks great cal Unicornians and those who sympathize with
Speaker 2: cal Unicoreans carolccordians. Ruin the entire Country, Newsome twenty twenty eight. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So we all heard about the breaking at the Louver,
Speaker 2: right We're going to start in France and the euro Bureau.
Speaker 2: We all heard about that right in the Crown Jewels
Speaker 2: and all sorts of stuff. Much less reported here on
Speaker 2: the other side of the Atlantic is the fact that
Speaker 2: that was one of nine major robberies of museums over
Speaker 2: the past year in France. Didn't know that nine six
Speaker 2: French museums have been hit since the beginning of September alone,
Speaker 2: one of them twice. And they name a bunch of
Speaker 2: museums I've never heard of, but are important, I guess,
Speaker 2: including the stately Museum of Natural History. Few of the
Speaker 2: stolen works, including precious porcelain and gold crosses and statues,
Speaker 2: have been recovered. As the robberies pile up, French officials
Speaker 2: are waking up to an unsettling reality. France is a
Speaker 2: wash in cultural treasures, but has minimal resources to protect
Speaker 2: them from thieves.
Speaker 4: Well, I was going to say, after the fourth or
Speaker 4: fifth museums hit, I would have thought somebody said, hey,
Speaker 4: is the Loop protected?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's like our most famous museum. Successive governments
Speaker 2: have collapsed over efforts to rein in the country's budget deficit,
Speaker 2: leaving the state to cash strap to invest in meaningful
Speaker 2: security upgrades for the more than twelve hundred sites classified
Speaker 2: by the government as museums, and Macrohn's administration is scrambling
Speaker 2: to take a census of the country's most valuable artwork
Speaker 2: to nowhere to put their few pennies. But you've got
Speaker 2: a rising criminal class and absolutely no budget, no will
Speaker 2: to protect the country. It's just sad. Then you have
Speaker 2: this from the Wall Street Journal. Britain is preparing tens
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars twelve pounds but in new taxes. Again.
Speaker 2: The Labor government is ready to a is readying its
Speaker 2: second major tax increase in two years, as it tries
Speaker 2: to avoid spooking markets, specifically bond markets, because it's taking
Speaker 2: on so much debt and it's killing the economy. And
Speaker 2: this is a good description. The UK has long been
Speaker 2: torn between two mutually exclusive desires. Voters want European levels
Speaker 2: of welfare with American levels of taxation. Of course, we're
Speaker 2: over spending our taxation too, but by accident design, the
Speaker 2: debate is slowly being resolved in the direction of higher
Speaker 2: taxes as Britain's labor government, which can't leave office soon enough,
Speaker 2: prepares its second major tax increase in as many years.
Speaker 2: The UK is confronting an issue, facing growing numbers of
Speaker 2: rich nations, how to pay for rising government spending without
Speaker 2: taking on evermore debt and spooking financial markets. So they've
Speaker 2: got this giant tax increase coming to narrow the budget deficit,
Speaker 2: which is at about six percent of their GDP. The
Speaker 2: biggest surrounds a tax increases since the mid seventies. The
Speaker 2: increases will likely further constrain Britain's anemic economic growth.
Speaker 4: A lot of that had to do with their net
Speaker 4: zero policies around climate change, which were crazy, absolutely true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those two things are just crushing the economy. So
Speaker 2: the latest increase will raise the UK's tax rate to
Speaker 2: about thirty eight percent of annual economic output, highest level ever,
Speaker 2: compares with about thirty percent in the nineties and the
Speaker 2: low thirties and twenty tens. That puts the UK comfortably
Speaker 2: ahead of the US, which is in the mid twenties,
Speaker 2: although spending ourselves into oblivion, but still short of Germany
Speaker 2: and France. The pitfalls of such an approach are evident
Speaker 2: in Germany, which taxes wages more than any other rich
Speaker 2: country except Belgium, taking almost fifty percent of employees gross
Speaker 2: wages on average. While that approach has helped Germany balance
Speaker 2: budgets in the past, is it is eaten into Germans
Speaker 2: purchasing power, depressing consumption, and Germany that at the end
Speaker 2: of the Cold War slashed spending on defense and poured
Speaker 2: the difference into the welfare. State now needs desperately to
Speaker 2: spend more on the military and shore up crumbling infrastructure,
Speaker 2: from potholed roads to a decrepit rail system, but taxes
Speaker 2: are already very high and the growth is too weak
Speaker 2: to fund new taxes. Slow motion car wreck. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I took in a podcast about Britain's financial situation several
Speaker 4: weeks ago, and it was striking the whole time is
Speaker 4: listening to it.
Speaker 2: I kept thinking, why isn't this a bigger story?
Speaker 4: Why don't more people know this in the United States,
Speaker 4: that Britain has just ruined their economy and then there's
Speaker 4: no easy way out, and they are like our future.
Speaker 4: We can look at them and we're gonna be able
Speaker 4: to see what it's going to be like for us.
Speaker 4: I know, the world's most predictable disaster. It's so frustrating,
Speaker 4: and you didn't tune in to be frustrated, but I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just somebody comes up here on the street and says,
Speaker 4: I really like fentanyl. I'm taking more fentanyl every day,
Speaker 4: and you're thinking, well, you're going to o D and die.
Speaker 4: In fact, one hundred percent of people who you said
Speaker 4: that to. It's like you're going to O, D and die,
Speaker 4: but they just keep doing it. I feel like that's
Speaker 4: the situation we're in now because the average voter has
Speaker 4: no grasp And this is true in France, it's true
Speaker 4: in Britain, it's true in the US has no grasp
Speaker 4: of the concept of fiscal restraint. They you know, it's
Speaker 4: too easy to sell them on. You deserve handouts. I
Speaker 4: just you know, I don't know how legitimate this quote is.
Speaker 4: I've seen it a million times old. The Scottish guy
Speaker 4: that when a people realizes it can vote itself money themselves,
Speaker 4: money from the treasury, a republic is doomed. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure there's any turning it around short of a cataclysm.
Speaker 4: But you don't bounce back from every cataclysm. It was like,
Speaker 4: you're only half serious. God send me a warning, so
Speaker 4: I get really serious about getting healthy, like a minor
Speaker 4: heart attack, right, I ask God to give me a
Speaker 4: minor heart attack so I would start eating better.
Speaker 2: Well, your genius, Jack, your unappreciated genius is that's a
Speaker 2: perfect metaphor for the United States. The only thing that
Speaker 2: will stop us wolfing down bacon drinking a quarter of
Speaker 2: urban a night and smoking four packs a day is
Speaker 2: a fiscal heart attack, the problem being you don't always
Speaker 2: survive them. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, the pandemic was quite the cataclysm, and it didn't
Speaker 4: make things better anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, you know, that's funny. And when we were
Speaker 2: talking a couple segments ago, whenever it was about young
Speaker 2: people and young men and their anger and anti Semitism
Speaker 2: and that whole stew the writer that I was quoting
Speaker 2: mentioned how bitterly painful the COVID shutdowns were for young
Speaker 2: men in so many ways, and it drove them away
Speaker 2: from girlfriends and real friends and jobs and striving and
Speaker 2: pride in being a man. Blah blah blah. The COVID shutdowns,
Speaker 2: which were specifically opposite of what all the health organizations
Speaker 2: around the world had said they would do when there
Speaker 2: was a pandemic. They abandon all their plans and panicked
Speaker 2: and shut them down and kept the kids out of
Speaker 2: schools the rest of it. I don't think we've reckoned
Speaker 2: with a third of the damage that did. No definitely
Speaker 2: incredible evil that perpetrated. I'll be saying that until I'm
Speaker 2: lowered into my grave.
Speaker 4: Maybe the cataclysm that gets our attention is war with Venezuela.
Speaker 4: We've got a quarter of the Navy there now we're
Speaker 4: ready to take on the Venezuelans.
Speaker 2: They've called her what.
Speaker 4: Purpose now they've called it. I haven't gotten around with that.
Speaker 4: Probably just stopped the drug flow allegedly, right.
Speaker 2: Uh, Columbia's like cool, we'll take the business some of
Speaker 2: the details on that, among other things on the way.
Speaker 2: Stay here.
Speaker 5: The Ghiro bureau straight from our European yous desk Okay,
Speaker 5: that was Joe Getty's euro bureau.
Speaker 2: That was so horrible it was great. Oh Man Armstrong.
Speaker 6: Heetti America has blown up nineteen small boats off Venezuela's coast,
Speaker 6: and now the Navy's largest aircraft carrier is arriving. These
Speaker 6: Venezuelan military exercises broadcast on State TV suggests the threat
Speaker 6: felt by its leader Nicholas Maduro.
Speaker 4: So that's the CBS News version of what's going on
Speaker 4: with Venezuela. As you all know, well, as you voted
Speaker 4: for it was a year and three days ago. You
Speaker 4: went to the polls and voted for Donald Trump because
Speaker 4: you wanted to go to war with Venezuela. And you
Speaker 4: couldn't wait another minute. I don't recall that specifically, but
Speaker 4: go on anyway anyway, ohing too, Yeah, exactly, Thanks Ben.
Speaker 4: Kind of seems like maybe we're headed that way. Here's
Speaker 4: Jennifer Griffin and her report on this from Fox.
Speaker 1: As the US military build up in the Caribbean continues,
Speaker 1: Venezuela's defense minister ordered the countries two hundred thousand soldiers
Speaker 1: to prepare for war.
Speaker 2: If they come to touch Venezuela.
Speaker 7: There you will see a people determined to defend this
Speaker 7: homeland to the death.
Speaker 1: Colombia has halted the intelligence it will share with the US.
Speaker 1: This comes a day after Fox News confirmed reports that
Speaker 1: the UK began limiting some of the intelligence it shares
Speaker 1: with the US in the Caribbean. Both countries have concerns
Speaker 1: US military strikes against nineteen boats, killing seventy five people
Speaker 1: contravene international law and amount to extra judicial killings of civilians.
Speaker 7: We have very strong partnerships with the UK and other countries. Again,
Speaker 7: nothing has changed or happened that is impeded in any
Speaker 7: way our ability to do what we're doing, nor are
Speaker 7: we asking anyone to help us with what we're doing
Speaker 7: in any realm and that includes military.
Speaker 4: Okay, I didn't quite understand that, But then it's about
Speaker 4: blasting those people in the boats. The UK and Colombia
Speaker 4: don't want to be any part of that. By the way,
Speaker 4: a court ruled, whatever court ruled yesterday, that none of
Speaker 4: these military personnel would be on the hook for the
Speaker 4: strikes on the people in the boats. If it's decided
Speaker 4: that we shouldn't be doing this, they're not legally on
Speaker 4: the hook.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm glad. I understand the concept of you're
Speaker 2: not obligated to execute an illegal order, But I mean
Speaker 2: if it's such a gray area that like the entire
Speaker 2: country is arguing about how justified it is, Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't no, no, no, the military can't hold people responsible
Speaker 2: for following off.
Speaker 4: Well, the military would completely break down if you were
Speaker 4: on the hook for you couldn't do anything before you
Speaker 4: ran it by a lawyer.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, if there were, for instance, controversial rules of engagement,
Speaker 2: Hello Afghanistan, guys would be thinking, I don't want to
Speaker 2: get sued, So just how much firepower do we have
Speaker 2: in the region.
Speaker 1: The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest warship, is
Speaker 1: now in Latin American waters after being ordered by the
Speaker 1: Pentagon to leave its deployment to the Middle East ahead
Speaker 1: of schedule. The aircraft carrier Strike Group, with nearly four
Speaker 1: thousand sailors on board and dozens of warplanes, is being
Speaker 1: escort by three guided missile destroyers. Twenty four percent of
Speaker 1: all US Navy vessels are now deployed to US Southern Command.
Speaker 2: That's quite the armada. Well, we've got to respond to
Speaker 2: the threats of Jamaica to the Bahamas with their foreign ways.
Speaker 4: I don't have a strong opinion on this story. I'm
Speaker 4: sure we'd hate to see any Marines die landing on
Speaker 4: the beach in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: I hope that's not what's going to happen. Yeah, I've
Speaker 2: got to admit I usually have a pretty good guess
Speaker 2: as to the end game of this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I don't in this case. I get, well, we're pressuring
Speaker 2: Majuro and putting, you know, the squeeze on his regime
Speaker 2: because we want him out. It's time for regime change.
Speaker 2: But we're not going to invade or decapitate.
Speaker 4: The only thing that makes sense is what you said
Speaker 4: the other day. If we're putting so much firepower in
Speaker 4: the region that if there is an opposition group that's
Speaker 4: ever thought of, you know, pulling a revolution or a
Speaker 4: coup of some sort, they would feel like the United
Speaker 4: States is there to back us up immediately if we
Speaker 4: do this, right, give. The problem with regime change in
Speaker 4: Venezuela is that the military seems very.
Speaker 2: Cohesive and very loyal to Maduro. There have not been
Speaker 2: signs of the sort of cracks that you'd hope for.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I guess I'd forgotten i'd said that, But
Speaker 2: it was a good point, Joe, that if any of
Speaker 2: the generals are thinking, now's our chance to get rid
Speaker 2: of this fat bum, the US is saying we'll have
Speaker 2: your back.
Speaker 4: So different topic, but maybe this is tied in a
Speaker 4: little bit. Maybe you've heard some of the polling on
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, where it's not really that good right now
Speaker 4: shows it only thirty three percent of US adults approve
Speaker 4: of the job he is doing. That's from the latest
Speaker 4: Associated Press Nork poll. Now, every president goes through rough spots.
Speaker 4: I remember when Barack Obama is in the low thirties
Speaker 4: shortly after Obamacare.
Speaker 2: And he bounced back. So yeah, they go.
Speaker 4: Up, they go down, but thirty three percent approval for
Speaker 4: Donald Trump right now. He was riding pretty high there
Speaker 4: the first several months. He's only been president for what
Speaker 4: nine months? Wow, I can't take for nine months of
Speaker 4: a whole time strong enough. The numbers going down, driven
Speaker 4: in large part by a decline and approval among Republicans
Speaker 4: and independents. He had been rock solid among Republicans all
Speaker 4: through his first term and through the first couple of
Speaker 4: months of this term. According to the survey, only about
Speaker 4: two thirds of Republicans now approve of Trump's government management,
Speaker 4: down from eighty one percent in March and like ninety
Speaker 4: percent at the beginning, down to two thirds of Republican
Speaker 4: support and independence have gone from thirty eight to twenty
Speaker 4: five twenty five.
Speaker 2: Oof. Ah, that's low. U. How many bonus points does
Speaker 2: Trump get among Republicans? Because the left is so wacky
Speaker 2: and the and the attacks are so constant. Even if
Speaker 2: I don't like what Trump's doing, I'm gonna say I
Speaker 2: do despite the left in the media.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if that has you would do
Speaker 4: with approval ratings. As we've seen, he's gotten elected president
Speaker 4: twice at almost three times with very low ratings. Because
Speaker 4: when it comes down to the binary choice alternative. You
Speaker 4: think and still prefer this over that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I guess the bottom line of what
Speaker 2: I'm wondering is what's the actual approval rating among Republicans.
Speaker 2: You think it's well, they're not talking to some polster. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can almost guarantee it's lower. I just don't know
Speaker 2: how much lower it is.
Speaker 4: I know it's the word of the week, but I
Speaker 4: think this affordability thing is a huge problem, and I
Speaker 4: don't know how you're going to make people feel like
Speaker 4: things are more affordable.
Speaker 2: The great Man of the common touch, billionaire Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: practically miraculous how he connects with middle class working people,
Speaker 2: has been saying, no, you shouldn't be worried every time
Speaker 2: you go grocery shopping. The economy's great. I'm not getting
Speaker 2: enough credit. Oh man. He's got to stop saying that
Speaker 2: stuff like yesterday. Yeah, no kidding. So we do lots
Speaker 2: of hours of this. Here your radio rodeo twenty hours
Speaker 2: a week.
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