Speaker 1: Damn broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Caddy arm.
Speaker 2: Strong and Jettie Gee Armstrong and Jetty Strong.
Speaker 3: A friend of mine who's slightly overweight, to put it mildly,
Speaker 3: went to a drug store in London and he was
Speaker 3: able to get one.
Speaker 2: Of the fat shots. I caught the fat shots, said.
Speaker 3: Jan, if you lose weight, he knows exactly who I
Speaker 3: was talking about.
Speaker 2: He called, He said that was interesting. He said he
Speaker 2: was very concerned that I might use his name. It
Speaker 2: might slip. Now he doesn't have to work, but he
Speaker 2: called me. He said, Hey, a strange thing happened.
Speaker 3: I just bought the drug, same company, plan, same everything.
Speaker 3: Everything was the same in New York thirteen hundred dollars,
Speaker 3: and in London.
Speaker 2: I'm paying eighty eight dollars. He said, what's going on now?
Speaker 3: He knew not that he's a very smart guy, he's
Speaker 3: a very rich guy. His big problem is he's seriously overweight.
Speaker 3: But I don't think the drug worked. Okay, to be
Speaker 3: honest with you, but it makes him feel good anyway.
Speaker 4: That's like day three of Trump's story about his fat
Speaker 4: friend his drugs.
Speaker 2: He so workshops his comedy routine, you know, tries it
Speaker 2: for different audiences.
Speaker 4: I don't want to. I'm gonna get into the foreign
Speaker 4: policy speech he gave yesterday. I want to get sidetracked
Speaker 4: by this whole drug prescription thing. It is so complicated, though.
Speaker 4: I've listened to a number of podcasts where they got
Speaker 4: into the details, and it's so easily easy to be
Speaker 4: misled by a lot of statistics. So a lot of
Speaker 4: the now it sounds like they're his fat friend, very fat,
Speaker 4: incredibly fat. His fat friend there was paying thirteen hundred
Speaker 4: dollars in New York, can pay eighty dollars in London.
Speaker 2: Want to know why. That's a perfectly reasonable question, like.
Speaker 4: Why am I paying so much in the United States
Speaker 4: and so cheap here when we developed in the reasonable question.
Speaker 4: But just in general, a lot of the stuff you
Speaker 4: hear about drugs, the statistics for costs, it's for the
Speaker 4: name brand, which practically none of us are actually getting.
Speaker 4: We're getting the generic, so it's the tiniest percentage of that,
Speaker 4: so it misleads the statistics. There's all kinds of things
Speaker 4: going on in that world that make it hard to
Speaker 4: nail down and the.
Speaker 2: Way money flows into and out of various entities, from
Speaker 2: your insurance company to the pharmacies, to the drug companies
Speaker 2: to the pharmacy benefit managers. An unholy group of humans
Speaker 2: if there ever was. When yes, so complicated.
Speaker 4: I'm on eight drugs for the whooping coth right now,
Speaker 4: which is crazy. But like so, I went to the
Speaker 4: doctor on Saturday after spending time there, and I think
Speaker 4: I picked up four new drugs, just like everybody else
Speaker 4: when they go to pharmacy. I have the slightest idea
Speaker 4: what the little screen was gonna say they cost, had
Speaker 4: no idea. I wasn't very worried about it because it
Speaker 4: probably wasn't gonna be very much.
Speaker 2: So, like one of them was three cents, one.
Speaker 4: Of them was a dollar five, one of them was
Speaker 4: forty four bucks, and then the other one was like
Speaker 4: four and I just pressed okay and tapped my card
Speaker 4: and walked out the door.
Speaker 2: And I don't have any imagine if groceriy st are
Speaker 2: like that. Let's see, this ham will be one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy five dollars, this bread is two cents, this
Speaker 2: cheese will be a dollar one. And you think.
Speaker 4: Okay, right, and I don't have Well, it's way more
Speaker 4: complicated than even that example, because like somebody may have
Speaker 4: that one that cost eight cents, my insurance company might
Speaker 4: have paid a five hundred dollars for and I got
Speaker 4: spread around everybody else that's insured by that company for
Speaker 4: some reason.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know any idea what it actually cost the
Speaker 4: insurance company. And then what are what are my options
Speaker 4: anyway to not press? Okay, I will not pay forty
Speaker 4: four dollars for whatever that drug is.
Speaker 2: It should be much less than that and incur the
Speaker 2: wrath of the already surly pharmacy employee.
Speaker 4: No way, I feel bad for those people. The other day,
Speaker 4: I got to the pharmacy. I've been there way too
Speaker 4: much lately. I get there and some old guys walk
Speaker 4: in my way and he says he said something old time.
Speaker 4: He says, like railroading. Me, it's train robbery or something
Speaker 4: like that. I said, what's that and he said, it's
Speaker 4: train robbery around here, that's what it is. I just
Speaker 4: kind of said, tell you, like the poor girl who's
Speaker 4: you know, at pharmacy school, has any role in it whatsoever?
Speaker 2: What's she supposed to do. I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's your insurance. I work for CBS. They I don't
Speaker 4: know what am I what do you want?
Speaker 2: Such a mess?
Speaker 4: Okay, different topic than Trump's fat fat friend. Who people
Speaker 4: who know Trump and his friends are trying to figure
Speaker 4: out which fat friend that he's talking about. So Donald
Speaker 4: Trump gave like a forty five minute sp each yesterday
Speaker 4: in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: And this was Mark Halprin's ride up of.
Speaker 4: It today, in which he said Trump's Tuesday speech, which
Speaker 4: shockingly gets almost zero coverage in the American media, was
Speaker 4: one for the ages, with some observers not unreasonably calling
Speaker 4: it extraordinary and some supporters saying it was one of
Speaker 4: the best and most important addresses by a US president
Speaker 4: in many, many years. It warn't your time to watch
Speaker 4: it and full if you have not to understand Trump's
Speaker 4: unusual distinctive worldview. And I'm gonna read a little bit
Speaker 4: from you that will portray that worldview. But I also wonder,
Speaker 4: since Trump is a very interesting guy. He's primarily interested
Speaker 4: in economics and that sort of stuff, although he was
Speaker 4: pretty hardcore anti the Iraq war back in the day, Like,
Speaker 4: how much of this speech did he sit down with
Speaker 4: speech writers and explain to them what he wanted to communicate.
Speaker 2: Did Jade Vance write most of this?
Speaker 4: And Trump is like, sure, fine, I don't care, or
Speaker 4: what I don't I don't actually know, but let me
Speaker 4: read some of it. He's talking about the success of
Speaker 4: all the people in that room, because he had people
Speaker 4: from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and you know, those incredibly
Speaker 4: rich areas of the Middle East that we see with
Speaker 4: their gleaming buildings and more modern than anything we've got
Speaker 4: in the United States. It's crucial for the wider world
Speaker 4: to know this great transformation has not come from Western
Speaker 4: interventionists or flying people in beautiful plains giving you lectures
Speaker 4: on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.
Speaker 4: In the end, the so called nation builders racked far
Speaker 4: more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening
Speaker 4: in societies they did not understand themselves. No, the gleaming
Speaker 4: marbles of Riad and Abu Dhabi were not created by
Speaker 4: the so called nation builders, neo cons or liberal nonprofits
Speaker 4: like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing
Speaker 4: to develop Bagdad and so many other cities.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Now, this is very JD. Vanside.
Speaker 4: That's what I thought, solidly reasoned so far decent point.
Speaker 4: Though we poured trillion I don't know about trillions, but
Speaker 4: lots of money into Baghdad. It's still everything it's ever
Speaker 4: been Abu Dhabi and ryodd that was ground up from
Speaker 4: the inside.
Speaker 2: Anyway, back to every mind the zillions of dollars spent
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been
Speaker 4: brought by the people of the region themselves, the people
Speaker 4: that are right here, the people that have lived here
Speaker 4: all their lives, Developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your
Speaker 4: own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your
Speaker 4: own way. They told you how to do it, but
Speaker 4: they had no idea how to do it themselves. Peace, prosperity,
Speaker 4: and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of
Speaker 4: your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and
Speaker 4: embracing the same heritage that you loved so dearly. You
Speaker 4: achieved a modern miracle, the Arabian way. No wonder.
Speaker 2: People respect you so much. I thought that was a really.
Speaker 4: Yeah, agreed, it's really good outreach too. I think it's savvy.
Speaker 2: The most gleaming modern.
Speaker 4: Looked like something from the jets and cities in the
Speaker 4: world did come from those local societies. Whether you hate
Speaker 4: their culture or politics or the way they treat women
Speaker 4: or whatever, they were able to build these unbelievable cities.
Speaker 4: And we've tried so hard to turn Kabul and Baghdad
Speaker 4: and a whole bunch of other different places in the
Speaker 4: Middle East into god, you know, anything close to Cincinnati,
Speaker 4: and we haven't come within a million miles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this it gets a little more complicated, but you know,
Speaker 2: the broad outlines of your point I think are true.
Speaker 2: It helps to have unlimited numbers of petro dollars. And
Speaker 2: the whole modern gleaming thing is partly because there wasn't
Speaker 2: anything there twenty years ago. So yeah, it's it's modern
Speaker 2: gleaming because what else would it be. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: think a certain amount of it has to do with.
Speaker 4: Taking off the restrictions of here's the way we feel
Speaker 4: like you need to treat women, gay people, minorities, the disentrenchised,
Speaker 4: all this different sort of stuff, all these ties that
Speaker 4: come with it. As opposed to Trump saying, hey, it's
Speaker 4: your society, it's your customs, it's your heritage.
Speaker 2: You know, you're building it the way you want, and hey,
Speaker 2: look at your city. And honestly, in spite of the
Speaker 2: lack of success with China doing this, I think there's
Speaker 2: probably a fair amount of Hey, let's get these guys
Speaker 2: up and involved in world economics and international diplomacy and
Speaker 2: have them intertwined with bunches of other countries and it'll
Speaker 2: drag them into the modern era much more effectively than
Speaker 2: browbeating them will. Anyway, Well, there's.
Speaker 4: Zero is there any Are there any good examples of
Speaker 4: us trying to build from the ground up one of
Speaker 4: these uh, turn one of these citters around having it work.
Speaker 2: Certainly not in the Middle East. Yeah, it depends you know,
Speaker 2: how much involvement over what period of time you're t
Speaker 2: talking about. And interestingly enough, there were some pretty good
Speaker 2: success stories in Africa, but those have gone completely to
Speaker 2: hell now and you could argue that, well, that's because
Speaker 2: they didn't build up the infrastructure. It's like we're watching
Speaker 2: the we're doing a bit of a remodel on our house,
Speaker 2: and it's been super interesting to see how they dig
Speaker 2: the hole for the footings and then pour the foundation
Speaker 2: and all the rebar and the cinder blocks and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. And we've made the point many times that
Speaker 2: our system of government, our rights that we enjoy, our
Speaker 2: constitution are built on the concrete and rebar and cinder
Speaker 2: blocks of hundreds of years of English common law, Judeo
Speaker 2: Christian principles, the rest of it. And then if you
Speaker 2: try to build, at the risk of belaboring the metaphor,
Speaker 2: if you try to build the house of that sort
Speaker 2: of thing on sand, it's not going to work. And
Speaker 2: so Trump is saying, y'all build your foundations the way
Speaker 2: you want and then let's do business.
Speaker 4: So you think JD. Vance had a hand in that
Speaker 4: whole speech, both hands. It was completely It's a complete
Speaker 4: rejection of George Bush's ideas of nation building, and it's
Speaker 4: a rejection of democratic presidents with their coming in there
Speaker 4: with we'll give you money, but here's the way we
Speaker 4: think you should live. It's a complete rejection of that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still for the record, I'm super uncomfortable with
Speaker 2: the fact that Cutter, for instance, is trying to buy
Speaker 2: influence in America hundreds of billions of dollars, perverting our colleges,
Speaker 2: having them become just viper's nests of Islamism, anti Israel rhetoric,
Speaker 2: the rest of it. There are huge supporters of the
Speaker 2: Muslim Brotherhood on Islamist organization that would like Sharia law
Speaker 2: to conquer the entire earth, and they're not spending hundreds
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars backing that because they don't believe
Speaker 2: it or don't agree with it. But things, we don't
Speaker 2: have to let them do that.
Speaker 4: We can let them build their big, gleaming city, we
Speaker 4: don't have to let them, you know, influence our colleges.
Speaker 2: Well right now, well right, yeah, for instance, that's not
Speaker 2: going to happen, but more on that later. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: Well the argument would be, well, we don't want to
Speaker 2: participate in enriching them so they have even more finances
Speaker 2: to back terrorism. But you know, if jdve Aansw were
Speaker 2: to say to me, dude, that'll go away of its own.
Speaker 2: That's what I think on a cord. It's not a
Speaker 2: stupid argument. I'm not sure I agree with it, but
Speaker 2: it's it's worth considering.
Speaker 4: They play, they beat, they more than play footsy with
Speaker 4: the terrorists, no doubt about it. But I don't think mbs.
Speaker 4: His goal in life is not to establish a Muslim caliphate.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. No, he wants to be starving
Speaker 2: poor when the oil runs out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, Jack Armstrong and Joe, The Armstrong and Getty Show,
Speaker 5: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4: You want to know if your marriage is heading to splitsville,
Speaker 4: don't check your partner's phone, check their face, like.
Speaker 3: Any of that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's so many.
Speaker 4: Stupid things out there, you know, the one sign that
Speaker 4: he's gonna cheat or whatever the hell I mean, They're
Speaker 4: just all dumb, but click bait. The subtle smirk of
Speaker 4: superiority is the number one red flag for divorce, according
Speaker 4: to this psychologist. And they get into why. Research found
Speaker 4: that four nasty little habits, criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling
Speaker 4: are the four horsemen of the apocalypse when it comes
Speaker 4: to dooming relationships.
Speaker 2: I'll read those four again.
Speaker 4: Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. But contempt is the kiss
Speaker 4: of death. That's the one, and you've said that for years.
Speaker 4: That's the one you can't get past.
Speaker 2: Done. The largest marriage experiment ever done.
Speaker 4: They think of couples that you know, survive and don't
Speaker 4: survive body language experts, which we've mocked for years and
Speaker 4: all that sort of thing because they're usually stupid. Also
Speaker 4: well on cable TV they are. Yeah, brought couples into
Speaker 4: a lab. And if one member of the couple shows
Speaker 4: a one sided mouth raise, which I had never heard
Speaker 4: before as like a physical contempt thing. But I guess
Speaker 4: we're just programmed. When we're feeling that feeling of contempt
Speaker 4: for something or you know, the old pleaser get out
Speaker 4: of here with that BS or whatever feeling, you raise.
Speaker 2: One side of your mouth. It's funny.
Speaker 4: If one member of the couple shows a one sided
Speaker 4: mouth raise towards the other, he can tell you if
Speaker 4: they're going to get divorced, because it's contempt. He could
Speaker 4: predict divorce with an astonishing ninety four percent accurate fear. Now,
Speaker 4: this is the part I thought was really interesting. Fear
Speaker 4: comes in a burst, and then you calm down. Happiness
Speaker 4: comes and then you go back to normal. Anger comes
Speaker 4: and then you calm down, but not contempt. If you
Speaker 4: feel scorn or disdain for someone else, and if it's
Speaker 4: not addressed, it just festers and grows and stays at
Speaker 4: the same level fear, anger, and then obviously happiness you
Speaker 4: get back to a normal level.
Speaker 2: Contempt does not go away, you know. In a definition
Speaker 2: of contempt, the feeling that a person or a thing
Speaker 2: is beneath consideration, worthless or deserving scorn. Yes, coming back
Speaker 2: from that.
Speaker 4: I've not felt contempt, but I have been on the
Speaker 4: wrong end of contempt, I think. And having read this,
Speaker 4: I thought, yeah, that's what was insurmountable. I mean, because
Speaker 4: once you have contempt for someone you don't agree, you
Speaker 4: don't think they are worth listening to on anything.
Speaker 2: Right, this is how I feel. This is my priority care. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a tough one to get past. So look
Speaker 4: out for contempt and whatever started to bring it on.
Speaker 4: The point is you start to deal with it right away.
Speaker 2: Otherwise it does.
Speaker 4: Just grow and faster, and then it gets into a
Speaker 4: situation where it might might not be reversible. They also
Speaker 4: believe that many couples get stuck in an endless loop
Speaker 4: of the same three arguments throughout the relationship. They just
Speaker 4: don't realize it. And if you can nail down what
Speaker 4: your three most common arguments are you and your partner,
Speaker 4: you can solve a lot of problems. Like you get
Speaker 4: into something, you say, okay, here we're in argument number
Speaker 4: two again. We always argue about this, and you can
Speaker 4: you know, realize that you know, you don't see eye
Speaker 4: to eye in this particular thing, and how you've dealt
Speaker 4: with it in the past, which.
Speaker 2: Is a pretty good key. Yeah, Actually, distracted by the
Speaker 2: details or the trivia, you realize, oh, this is argument.
Speaker 4: B Yeah, yeah, and that interesting. Back to the contempt
Speaker 4: thing discussed. And contempt are to a relationship with gasoline,
Speaker 4: and matches are to a fire. The telltale signs are irolling, mouthcrimping,
Speaker 4: and then subtle fidgeting like picking it close or cleaning
Speaker 4: fingers mid conversation as signals of disdain. This person said
Speaker 4: that they dubbed this move the lint picker, a behavior
Speaker 4: that he says, screams contempt.
Speaker 2: Louder than words ever could. Interesting. You know, it's probably
Speaker 2: worth presenting the other side of the coin at some point.
Speaker 2: We don't have time now, But how do you prevent
Speaker 2: that sort of thing? Niff it in the bud, having
Speaker 2: lint on your shirt, no contempt in your.
Speaker 5: No arm Strong and Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 6: Why is spok at a bipartisan event to encourage Democrats
Speaker 6: or Republicans to work to protect social security together, which
Speaker 6: seems about as likely to happen as a reboot of
Speaker 6: Fiddler on the Roof starring Kanye West. But social security
Speaker 6: is number one for Joe Biden. Literally, his social Security
Speaker 6: number is one.
Speaker 4: That's kind of interesting as a lead into this. Republicans
Speaker 4: neverkats not being able to work together, it would seem
Speaker 4: that they could work together on cutting spending based on
Speaker 4: this polling that just came out from the Cato Institute.
Speaker 4: CATO is a serious think tank. It's a conservative think tank.
Speaker 4: They worked with you GOV on this survey, and it's
Speaker 4: one of your really big, large number of people, wide reaching,
Speaker 4: lots of questions sort of survey that comes out every
Speaker 4: once in a while from these think tanks. I don't
Speaker 4: know which of these numbers is my favorite. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of them that are just mind blowingly make me happy,
Speaker 4: But I can't believe because public will is a real
Speaker 4: big part of getting anything done in a democracy.
Speaker 2: Obviously, if you got big.
Speaker 4: Majorities of people that want something to happen, you should
Speaker 4: be able to get it to happen and run on it.
Speaker 4: Here's my favorite of all the spending we've done in
Speaker 4: the last ten years, and we've done a lot of
Speaker 4: spending in the last ten years.
Speaker 2: Five percent. Now that's a big number.
Speaker 4: Whenever you get eighty five percent of people in agreement
Speaker 4: on something.
Speaker 2: You'd think you could get political will to do something.
Speaker 4: Eighty five percent say that spending is either not helped
Speaker 4: them or made their lives worse.
Speaker 2: Eighty five percent. That's astounding.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't get that from taking it in through the
Speaker 4: mainstream media, who feels like all government programs are wonderful
Speaker 4: and doges trying to cut back on any of them
Speaker 4: as a horror. Eighty five percent of Americans say all
Speaker 4: that spending has either not done anything for me or
Speaker 4: actually made my life worth the worse. Forty two percent
Speaker 4: no impact. Forty three percent say it reduced to their
Speaker 4: quality of life.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's got to be inflation, which is the greatest
Speaker 2: teacher of economic principles in the history of mankind.
Speaker 4: Well, ors, it's just I regularly say, and this is
Speaker 4: true for me in my own personal life. I believe
Speaker 4: the government stops me from doing things more than it
Speaker 4: helps me.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4: I mean, and well, do you drive on the roads. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we we know you're an idiot. Course else I'm not
Speaker 4: even gonna explain why you're moro.
Speaker 2: I know, moron.
Speaker 4: And by the way, this is a non partisan observation.
Speaker 4: Eight and ten Democrats and nine and ten Republicans believe
Speaker 4: that the increase in federal spending has either made their
Speaker 4: lives not better or worse.
Speaker 2: Boy, this is really heartening. I know, if the Republican
Speaker 2: if the Republicans can keep between the ditches and not
Speaker 2: roll the car of their messaging over, it seems to
Speaker 2: me like the ground is super fertile for some good
Speaker 2: solid conservatism in the years to come.
Speaker 4: Three quarters of Americans say the government spends too much.
Speaker 4: Love that, seventy six percent the government spends too much.
Speaker 4: And again, it's not a partisan thing at all. Majorities
Speaker 4: of Democrats fifty nine percent of Democrats think the government
Speaker 4: spends too much money. Well, you'd never get that from
Speaker 4: the main from your mainstream media coverage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the question of what do you cut and
Speaker 2: how and how much? That's the devil is in the details.
Speaker 2: But we do have an enormous generalized agreement that Yeah,
Speaker 2: we need to cut again two thirds.
Speaker 4: You get the opposite message from all of the coverage
Speaker 4: of doges, for instance. So almost everyone agrees there is
Speaker 4: waste frauden abuse in the federal government. The number is
Speaker 4: ninety eight percent. I don't know if I've ever seen
Speaker 4: a poll that reached ninety eight percent. Usually you have
Speaker 4: more than two percent. They're like, no opinion, I don't know,
Speaker 4: refuse to answer. Yeah, but would you like me to
Speaker 4: stab you right now? You might get ninety eight percent
Speaker 4: saying no, no opinion?
Speaker 2: Ninety I'm not sure stab me as what.
Speaker 4: Ninety eight percent broadly agree there is waste frauder abuse
Speaker 4: in the federal government. Of course, just to say no,
Speaker 4: you'd be a crazy person. About half say there is
Speaker 4: a great deal. Oh yeah, percent a moderate amount.
Speaker 2: If hundreds of millions of dollars isn't a great deal
Speaker 2: to you, what are you elon musk or something?
Speaker 4: Man? Yeah, Like I said, there's so many good numbers here,
Speaker 4: I don't even know which ones to pick out the
Speaker 4: most this one. One of the reasons this got attention
Speaker 4: was some of the tax stuff yesterday. Fifty five percent
Speaker 4: of Americans think their taxes are too high, which I
Speaker 4: thought was really interesting, especially especially given what we were
Speaker 4: talking about yesterday on Tax Day, that the top forty
Speaker 4: percent or so of income levels pay all of the
Speaker 4: income tax, but fifty five percent of American seat or
Speaker 4: taxes are too high. Fifty five percent same number believe
Speaker 4: they pay more than their fair share in taxes. That
Speaker 4: obviously is interesting given the fact that half the country
Speaker 4: does not pay federal taxes federal income tax.
Speaker 2: Although you do have to remember, you know, a property
Speaker 2: tax hammers a lot of people, sales tax, sales tax.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably what gets a lot of people. Sure.
Speaker 4: How about the controversial Trump tax cuts from twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: and whether they should be extended or not. According to this,
Speaker 4: eighty five percent of Americans support extending the twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: tax cuts.
Speaker 2: Eighty five percent. It's a gift of million as and
Speaker 2: billion as. How is this a controversial issue? If the
Speaker 2: mainstream media was not what they are, could Democrats win
Speaker 2: a single election as they're currently constituted. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: They need some of the best wordsmiths. Well, actually most
Speaker 2: journalists are wordsmiths at all. They're parrots. But they need
Speaker 2: the power of the media colossus to polish their their
Speaker 2: poop if you will. I'm sorry, I just didn't want
Speaker 2: to use that common expression polishing a turd because it's disgusting.
Speaker 2: But that's essentially But it's good though.
Speaker 4: It's illustrative, Jack, I mean, it really makes the point
Speaker 4: there's got to be a better doing.
Speaker 2: It's got to be a better one, is there? It
Speaker 2: got to be that doesn't include the T word. Thoroughly
Speaker 2: lipsticking the pig of their policies. I don't know.
Speaker 4: So three quarters of people agree with the statement the
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen tax cuts should be made permanent because businesses
Speaker 4: and families need stability of the tax code to plan
Speaker 4: for the future. Three quarters agree with that. Also, three
Speaker 4: quarters agree that tax cuts should be made permanent because
Speaker 4: taxes are too high. Three quarters of Americans think the
Speaker 4: Trump tax cuts should be made permanent because taxes are
Speaker 4: too high.
Speaker 2: Wow, did you hear the pot about the millionaires?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: You did?
Speaker 2: Oh you're rejecting it. I gotta get to that.
Speaker 4: Then, since you brought that up, do the spending because
Speaker 4: you'll that fits in perfect what you just said. A
Speaker 4: majority of Americans admire the rich sixty five two thirds
Speaker 4: disagree with the statement wealth should be taken from the
Speaker 4: rich and given to the poor.
Speaker 2: Two thirds of Americans disagree with that.
Speaker 4: Wow, this is a different country than the media would
Speaker 4: have you believe.
Speaker 2: I'd zastly different.
Speaker 4: Three out of five Americans strongly agree ninety percent strongly
Speaker 4: or somewhat agree that quote there is nothing wrong with
Speaker 4: trying to make as much money as you can. Ninety
Speaker 4: percent strongly or somewhat agree with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When asked specifically about billionaires, seventy one percent disagree that
Speaker 4: it's immoral for society to allow people to become billionaires.
Speaker 4: Seventy one percent don't agree with that statement. You hear
Speaker 4: it all the time from the AOC Bernie crowd, Elizabeth
Speaker 4: Warren crowd, and they put it on the news like
Speaker 4: that's you know, representing half of America.
Speaker 2: Right right. Yeah. And anybody who does think we should
Speaker 2: make it impossible to you know, become a billionaire, you
Speaker 2: just you're so dumb. You are so dumb. We just
Speaker 2: need you to get out of the way, please. As
Speaker 2: if you come up with a great idea that one
Speaker 2: person likes and it makes you a dollar, that's fine.
Speaker 2: If a million people like that, idea and give you
Speaker 2: a dollar, that's fine. But if a billion people like
Speaker 2: that idea and give you a dollar, that's wrong. Moral
Speaker 2: to borrow.
Speaker 4: Again, you're just so dumb you need to get out
Speaker 4: of the way. Well, not near as many people agree
Speaker 4: with that as I thought. And I've been misled myself.
Speaker 4: And you know, we're in the industry and taking lots
Speaker 4: of media and read lots of polls, but I've been
Speaker 4: misled to think there that in modern America there were
Speaker 4: way more people that hate the rich and think something's
Speaker 4: wrong there that it seems to be true. Two thirds
Speaker 4: think wealth should not be taken from the rich and
Speaker 4: given to the poor.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I just didn't know. So I think part
Speaker 2: of the reason that our perception might be a little
Speaker 2: warped is that even some of my favorite conservative journalists
Speaker 2: are of the coastal elites variety, and they're nice fellas
Speaker 2: and they have great principles, but I don't think they
Speaker 2: know America and listen to say, absolutely do not. This
Speaker 2: is going to sound awfully like a self backpadding, but
Speaker 2: I think as a couple of guys from you know,
Speaker 2: fairly average families in the Midwest, I don't feel like
Speaker 2: an elite anything. I've never hung out with those people.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be comfortable there. I would much rather, you know,
Speaker 2: a drink beer with my neighbor, Larry the truck driver.
Speaker 2: I just and I think maybe we have that advantage
Speaker 2: and we, all of us friends, have to trust our
Speaker 2: own perceptions instead of that of the bizarro funhouse mirror
Speaker 2: of the media. I know a lot of you already
Speaker 2: believe that the.
Speaker 4: Fact that eighty five percent of people say all that
Speaker 4: government spending has done nothing for them or made their
Speaker 4: lives worse is amazing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know over half of people say my
Speaker 2: taxes are too high.
Speaker 4: All that fitting together, how do we not get a
Speaker 4: government that spends less and keeps taxes low?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you know, part of the answer would
Speaker 2: be the swamp, which includes many Republicans and Democrats who
Speaker 2: have a absolutely enormous financial interest in keeping government huge.
Speaker 4: Right, there are solid majorities, and I could do more
Speaker 4: of the numbers, but I don't want to bore you
Speaker 4: to death. But the solid majorities of people that thinks
Speaker 4: it's the spending, it's not the taxing. I mean that
Speaker 4: that is that is a settled issue in this country.
Speaker 4: It's the spending, not the taxing, and we need to
Speaker 4: deal with it from a spending standpoint. So we're not
Speaker 4: getting the government we deserve on this front. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: so true. It's encouraging people believe that in the numbers
Speaker 4: that they do. It is discouraging that we are fighting
Speaker 4: to make.
Speaker 2: Any progress in reigning in the insanity.
Speaker 4: But uh right, yeah, because it's our duty, is citizens,
Speaker 4: So I guess we keep trying. Sometimes it's barely uh,
Speaker 4: you're barely able to believe that democracy works. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, look at the border issue. That's what I've
Speaker 4: been saying for years. It's not controversy at all either.
Speaker 4: Like nine people want to secure border, but we haven't
Speaker 4: been able to do it in my entire adult.
Speaker 2: Lifetime, right right. Very frustrating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it is nice job of those of you
Speaker 4: out there who agree that all this spending has made
Speaker 4: your life worse of anything.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: Armstrong and.
Speaker 2: See Armstrong and Getty show. Absolutely need a moonshot style
Speaker 2: effort to reform education in this country because it is
Speaker 2: absolutely killing us. Michael. It's a campus madness update. Good
Speaker 2: and bad news editions, Good and bad.
Speaker 4: News can screaming, how's madness, you idiot?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's quite scream Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 4: So a disembovement figures into the story somehow, so well
Speaker 4: metaphorically speaking. So we'll start with some good news, really
Speaker 4: interesting piece about Tufts University, which is to the left
Speaker 4: of Trotsky, Boston area. But there's a professor by the
Speaker 4: name of Hirsch there who teaches a class on American
Speaker 4: Conservatism that is always one hundred percent enrolled and extremely popular,
Speaker 4: and he a man of the sane center left, has
Speaker 4: them read Frederick Hayek's Road to Serve them at Ininran's
Speaker 4: The Nature of Government, and then has lefty writers assigned
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: That says, all right, let's talk about this issue.
Speaker 4: And it is a classic American education where you have
Speaker 4: to understand both sides before you say which.
Speaker 2: One you're on. And he is systematically steel manning conservative
Speaker 2: arguments for the college kids. And the really encouraging part
Speaker 2: about this is the kids love it. That's interesting. And
Speaker 2: poll after pol has shown that a lot of college
Speaker 2: kids resent the cancel culture and the bully culture and
Speaker 2: the radical culture, but they just they're afraid or you know,
Speaker 2: intimidated into silence, and there's a lot more curiosity out
Speaker 2: there than I think you would think from looking at
Speaker 2: college camp. God, are we.
Speaker 4: Actually coming out of peak that? And we'll never have
Speaker 4: to deal with it again, at least in our lifetimes.
Speaker 4: I mean, did we just live through the pendulum swinging
Speaker 4: to the far end of that nuttiness?
Speaker 2: I share hope. So I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm a little afraid of it. Being like a sports
Speaker 2: team that you know, has a very bad beginning of
Speaker 2: the season, then they win six in a row and
Speaker 2: you think, all right, and then that is just a
Speaker 2: blip and they go back to being bad. I think
Speaker 2: there's so much of a fight to go on, but
Speaker 2: let me plunge on here. We can talk about this
Speaker 2: at length.
Speaker 4: A great piece in the Free Press about how all
Speaker 4: over the country, including in some surprising places, educators are
Speaker 4: covering up for their own failures wholesale.
Speaker 2: We should have the best education system in the world,
Speaker 2: they write, we should have an education system that reflects
Speaker 2: us being a superpower. But there's no one with a
Speaker 2: straight face who can say that the United States has
Speaker 2: a world class education system. And that's from a higher
Speaker 2: up in the New Jersey Department of Education now retired,
Speaker 2: but they go through place after place where because they
Speaker 2: are failing to meet any standard, they are systematically changing
Speaker 2: the standards, including this shock to me. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: Oklahoma schools seemed to perform a miracle. They went from
Speaker 2: twenty four percent proficiency in reading to forty seven percent
Speaker 2: in two years. You see number doubling the previous figure.
Speaker 2: You see that number in a year. You know something
Speaker 2: funky happen? Yeah? Yeah, Indeed, if it sounds too good
Speaker 2: to be true, that's because it was. In Last year,
Speaker 2: Oklahoma lowered its cut scores, the score a student needs
Speaker 2: to hit on a test to be considered proficient. Unbelievable,
Speaker 2: God's good hearts law. Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Once, once a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to
Speaker 4: be a good measure.
Speaker 2: Yep. Trend is also happening in New York State. After
Speaker 2: not a single eighth grader in the upstate city of
Speaker 2: Schenectady tested proficient in math in twenty twenty two, state
Speaker 2: officials lowered the scores. The following year, Wisconsin lowered cut
Speaker 2: scores last year, Illinois is about to lower its scores.
Speaker 2: Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: We did it.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of blue states, but Oklahoma shocked me.
Speaker 2: And we've done it in California a couple of times.
Speaker 4: Well, it speaks as much to the nature of bureaucracy
Speaker 4: as liberalism. Well, it's a good hearts law. I mean
Speaker 4: that seems to be a law no matter what you
Speaker 4: no matter your politics, you come up with a goal
Speaker 4: or you measure something. Then you come up with a goal,
Speaker 4: and then you just fudge to meet the goal, and
Speaker 4: so the measure doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 2: And that's it happens, over and over again.
Speaker 4: I can come up with one hundred examples off the
Speaker 4: top of my head, because I think it's a fascinating
Speaker 4: aspect of the way the human brain works. But how
Speaker 4: are there not People raise their hands, say, we can't
Speaker 4: be lowering the standards.
Speaker 2: We need to raise the quality shield tradition. Yeah, right right,
Speaker 2: lift up the children, don't drop the standards. That'd be
Speaker 2: a good slogan. Veering back to good news, The Department
Speaker 2: of Education on Friday, Cancer which still exists, apparently canceled
Speaker 2: fifteen million dollars in federal grants that were used to
Speaker 2: fund diversity programs at three universities in California, State, La,
Speaker 2: Virginia Commonwealth, and University of Saint Thomas and Minnesota all
Speaker 2: had received giant, multimillion dollar grants, part of a billion
Speaker 2: dollars a billion that the Biden Education Department spent on
Speaker 2: diversity programs in America's schools, nearly half of which went
Speaker 2: to grants for race based hiring. That is, at least
Speaker 2: temporarily on the way out. Now back to bad news.
Speaker 2: Two stories here that are adjoined at the hip Brown
Speaker 2: University Medical School that's one of your elite IVY leaguers.
Speaker 2: By the way, elite. I almost vomit when I say
Speaker 2: that about these universities. But they now give diversity, equity
Speaker 2: and inclusion more weight than excellent clinical skills in its
Speaker 2: promotion criteria for faculty, raising questions duh about the equality
Speaker 2: of teaching in patient care at the elite medical school
Speaker 2: and underscoring how deeply deis penetrated medical education. Again, when
Speaker 2: they decide what faculty to promote, they now give DEI
Speaker 2: more weight than excellent clinical skills. I saw that over
Speaker 2: the week in medicine. I meant to mention on the
Speaker 2: air that is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 4: I was looking at the actual paperwork, the criteria, and
Speaker 4: really your plan for how you're answering the question of
Speaker 4: how you're going to get diversity, equity and inclusion into
Speaker 4: your your medical practice is more important than your actual skills,
Speaker 4: right that is? How or as important is that even possible?
Speaker 1: The Armstrong and Getty Show or Jack your Joe podcasts
Speaker 1: and our hotlinks at dot com