Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Jetty and he Armstrong and Letty.
Speaker 3: Images of the homemade explosive devices authority say shamsu Dingjabbar
Speaker 3: brought to Bourbon Street the night of the New Year's
Speaker 3: terror attack. Surveillance video shows the suspect planting a pair
Speaker 3: of coolers they are on the street early that morning.
Speaker 3: Authorities say inside they discovered a steel galvanized pipe with
Speaker 3: two end caps surrounded by two dozen rolls of nails,
Speaker 3: along with the radio controlled receiver. They also say they
Speaker 3: found jars of flammable liquid inside the truck the suspect
Speaker 3: used to barrel into those Bourbon Street crowds, killing fourteen
Speaker 3: people and injuring dozens more.
Speaker 1: Okay, I heard that last night when I was watching
Speaker 1: ABC News. I got a question about that. But this
Speaker 1: is what the FBI had to say. This is not
Speaker 1: a terrorist event. What it is right now is there
Speaker 1: improvised explosive devices that was found and we are working
Speaker 1: on confirming if this is a viable device or not. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm a little confused by that. Also, so I
Speaker 1: have a lot of questions here. So I heard that
Speaker 1: on ABC News and I thought, Okay, if I put
Speaker 1: a bunch of crap in a bottle, nails and other
Speaker 1: stuff that could cut you and hurt you and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and I got a cell phone with some
Speaker 1: batteries taped to it, does that count as a bomb?
Speaker 1: Even though it might not. I couldn't have done anything
Speaker 1: with it. I mean, they didn't specifically say that the
Speaker 1: guy could have set that it would have worked, that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a crazy person throwing it together. So
Speaker 1: maybe you know if it was or not. But they
Speaker 1: didn't say.
Speaker 4: Reports i've heard said that he was shot down before
Speaker 4: he could detonate them. I have not heard, which does
Speaker 4: not disprove anything, but I have not heard anything. But yes,
Speaker 4: they could have exploded, okay, but I might have missed that.
Speaker 1: The person there just said at the end they're not
Speaker 1: sure if they were viable or not. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that.
Speaker 4: That is the same FBI person who said this is
Speaker 4: not a terrorism a terrorist event, which is unbelievably irresponsible,
Speaker 4: and I would say inexplicable, but I'm about to explicit
Speaker 4: because it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: A guy with a truck that has an ISIS flag
Speaker 1: on it, drives through a crowd. He's been to Egypt.
Speaker 1: All his website stuff says he there's a video of
Speaker 1: him you can look at of him swearing allegiance dices
Speaker 1: this isn't a terrorist event.
Speaker 4: And he slaughters a bunch of people. That is today's
Speaker 4: FBI apparently, or just ALTHEA Duncan, the FBI assistant special Agent.
Speaker 1: Charge that part of the country. That's shocking. I didn't
Speaker 1: like Trump forcing Ray out before his term is up.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with it now. I mean that if that's
Speaker 1: Ray's FBI, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, it is. It.
Speaker 4: It's another example of what we were talking about yesterday
Speaker 4: with the absolutely horrific Muslim immigrants raping children in Britain's
Speaker 4: story and the cover up of it by law enforcements,
Speaker 4: social services, local government, federal government in Britain. And this
Speaker 4: is it's the same motivation that would have the FBI say,
Speaker 4: and you know, I've had the privilege to, you know,
Speaker 4: go on various ride alongs and talk at length to
Speaker 4: investigators of very sorts, including murder investigators.
Speaker 1: And the one sacred.
Speaker 4: Rule is thou shalt not leap to conclusions because that
Speaker 4: cloud's your judgment.
Speaker 1: You've got to take in all of the evidence and.
Speaker 4: For her like and that was the next day to say,
Speaker 4: this is not a terrorist event. That is spectacularly irresponsible.
Speaker 4: What would motivate something so irresponsible, Well, that pathetic need
Speaker 4: to oh, you know what, to cause an anti Islamic
Speaker 4: backlash or whatever the hell it is.
Speaker 1: Well, I I'm not worried about terrorism. Like in my
Speaker 1: own life, I've never been afraid of it. This is
Speaker 1: from Meet the Press on Sunday. The country is on edge.
Speaker 1: We're mocking that the country is not on edge. I
Speaker 1: traveled around. I was in Washington, d C. The next day,
Speaker 1: hours after this happened. In the news broke. There were
Speaker 1: people staying in line for every freaking thing that was
Speaker 1: going on. Nobody seemed to be on edge. We're all
Speaker 1: fine at the same time. There's no reason to downplay
Speaker 1: it either. Just tell me what is And clearly this
Speaker 1: guy was inspired by ISIS. He might be a nut job.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if he directly talked
Speaker 1: to anybody in ISIS. Let's find out, right, he is.
Speaker 4: A dead ender and a loser who was angry about life,
Speaker 4: and he latched onto a particular ideology that justified him
Speaker 4: hurting people, which is what he wanted to do. He
Speaker 4: was hurting, so he wanted to hurt. That's the description
Speaker 4: of virtually all of these guys in school shooters or whatever.
Speaker 4: But yeah, again for the FBI, you don't say that
Speaker 4: sort of thing unless you have a particular motivation, which
Speaker 4: I think I've already laid out. But I find that
Speaker 4: absolutely obscene. Another aspect of this that's gotten a fair
Speaker 4: amount of attention is and I wish I had it
Speaker 4: in front of me.
Speaker 1: I got so much stuff.
Speaker 4: But is all the news media that reported that an
Speaker 4: inanimate object had done the killing in New Orleans pickup
Speaker 4: truck plows into crowd, Jills twelve or whatever, Ford f
Speaker 4: one point fifty plowed into the They wouldn't say a person.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't say an Isis devotee. They wouldn't say even
Speaker 4: a murderer. The inanimate object did it, which is bizarre,
Speaker 4: but is also explained by then they don't have to
Speaker 4: get into the person and their motivation, and we don't
Speaker 4: want to have an anti Islamic backlash.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I saw a tweet from Laura Logan,
Speaker 1: who you know, formerly of sixty Minutes, who I often
Speaker 1: find a little off the rails in her comments nowadays.
Speaker 1: But she said, after decades of working with the you know,
Speaker 1: following the news and questioning the FBI and everything like that,
Speaker 1: she said, they never say anything in the early days.
Speaker 1: You can't get a word out of them about anything.
Speaker 1: For the person to come out and specifically say this
Speaker 1: was not to make a declarative sentence is really something
Speaker 1: the FBI doesn't and then to have it be the
Speaker 1: opposite of what everybody's seeing with their own eyes is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's troubling, and troubling isn't a good enough word.
Speaker 1: It's worries activist by far.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I would agree. I would agree it's incredibly troubling.
Speaker 4: And then I want to get into the bigger picture.
Speaker 4: Maybe next segment. But there was one more just it
Speaker 4: probably doesn't matter, but an incredibly annoying note.
Speaker 1: And I didn't watch the Sugar Bowl.
Speaker 4: I didn't watch much football other than my fighting line,
Speaker 4: I bravely beating down the favorite game Cocks. Pardon me
Speaker 4: of South Carolina, get a better name, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Did you see the Oregon spanking that happened. Holy crap,
Speaker 1: that was one of the most extraordinary things in college boards.
Speaker 1: I've ever seen the undefeated, far and away number one Oregon.
Speaker 1: They were down thirty eight to nothing in the first quarter.
Speaker 1: Oh by the mighty Ohio Ones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I uh, And I'd watched Oregon summ and they
Speaker 4: looked like an NFL style off.
Speaker 1: I was astounded by the game. Well anyway, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got more to the way the so many players leave
Speaker 1: before the bowl games happened. Which team had it had
Speaker 1: seventeen players that didn't play in their game? They opted out,
Speaker 1: as they say, that's I don't know.
Speaker 4: They got to fix that somehow. But anyway, back to terrorism,
Speaker 4: I don't think you can in America anyway. We can
Speaker 4: talk about that later. So it's the All State Sugar Bowl,
Speaker 4: and the CEO of All State decided he needed to
Speaker 4: and I'm sorry. The Sugar Bowl was in New Orleans
Speaker 4: the day after the terrorist slayings on the street. They
Speaker 4: postponed it by a day, and then the All State
Speaker 4: to CEO, Tom Wilson, decided he should make a statement
Speaker 4: before the game on the TV.
Speaker 5: And here it is welcome to the All State Sugar
Speaker 5: Bowl Wednesday, tragedy struck the New Orleans community. Our prayers
Speaker 5: with the victims and their families. We also need to
Speaker 5: be stronger together by overcoming an addiction to divisiveness and negativity.
Speaker 5: Join All State, working in local communities all across America
Speaker 5: to amplify the positive, increase trust, and accept people's imperfections
Speaker 5: and differences.
Speaker 1: Together we win well. First of all, the leader of
Speaker 1: Vices has said, I.
Speaker 4: Was brought to tears by the head of All State
Speaker 4: saying we should not be so divisive. He's right, good God,
Speaker 4: And to me, a tragedy is an earthquake, not a
Speaker 4: terrorist slaying of innocence.
Speaker 1: I'd say that's a horrible crime. Why did he speak
Speaker 1: at all? He could have just said nothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is no need for him to come out and
Speaker 1: give a speech. But then he does come out and
Speaker 1: give a speech before the game. What was his goal there?
Speaker 4: Well, and I could think of a dozen approaches better
Speaker 4: than Hey, we're too divided. We got to there's too
Speaker 4: much negativity. That's the problem. That's why a sworn adherent
Speaker 4: of issis slaughtered a bunch of innocence in a violent
Speaker 4: and horrific manner, including children. We have too much divisiveness.
Speaker 4: What the hell was that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I you know, we do this sort
Speaker 1: of thing for a living, and I heard that, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know what his intention was with
Speaker 1: that message, with that crafting of that message. Play that
Speaker 1: one more time.
Speaker 5: Michael, Welcome to the All States Sugar Bowl. Wednesday, tragedy
Speaker 5: struck the New Orleans community. Our prayers are with the
Speaker 5: victims and their families. We also need to be stronger
Speaker 5: together by overc coming in addiction to divisiveness and negativity.
Speaker 5: Join all state working in local communities all across America
Speaker 5: to amplify the positive, increased trust, and accept people's imperfections
Speaker 5: and differences.
Speaker 1: Together we win. I thought he praised the Incadella's rights.
Speaker 6: We spent too much time thinking about our difference is
Speaker 6: I thought he was going to go with some sort
Speaker 6: of But we decided to play the game because the
Speaker 6: players and fans and we need something to root for
Speaker 6: or something like that.
Speaker 4: The people of New Orleans have been such great hosts.
Speaker 4: Were horrified and saddened by the terrible thing they've endured,
Speaker 4: but we've decided to play something route that s.
Speaker 1: I should use the word back to the attack itself.
Speaker 1: One of the first things I thought was because the
Speaker 1: reason I bought an electric car is not because I
Speaker 1: care about climate change, because they're so freaking fast and
Speaker 1: it's really fun. And one of the first things I
Speaker 1: thought is he picked that lightning f one fifty electric
Speaker 1: truck because of the power of acceleration. It has more
Speaker 1: than any other truck you could possibly drive if you
Speaker 1: want to hit a bunch of people and.
Speaker 4: Kill him that. I don't know if he does, but
Speaker 4: it's true. Just keep this in mind. Clip seventy four.
Speaker 1: Michael, this is not a terrorist event. That's right there.
Speaker 1: You have it.
Speaker 4: That's the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigating. You're in good hands, folks.
Speaker 1: Who, as Laura Logan pointed out, only ever says we're
Speaker 1: still in the process of investigating, so we have nothing
Speaker 1: to say at this time always, but in this instance
Speaker 1: they decided to say something, and it was that how
Speaker 1: do you explain it?
Speaker 4: We got more on the ways to hear after a
Speaker 4: word from our friends that prize picks Michael, Is that correct?
Speaker 1: All right? Great? So the football playoffs are just starting.
Speaker 4: This is not the college Fellows obviously, but Prize Picks
Speaker 4: is an easy, fun way to get involved and capture
Speaker 4: all that excitement.
Speaker 1: This is not the college felas I like that very
Speaker 1: home had fun. You can now win up to a
Speaker 1: thousand times your money on Price Picks with these amazing
Speaker 1: games and the amazing plays in there. Is there going
Speaker 1: to be more or less on all the stats. I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to starting to dig into it before the weekend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it can be as few as two players or more.
Speaker 4: And Prize Picks invented the flex play, which means you
Speaker 4: can still cash out if your lineup is not perfect.
Speaker 4: You can double your money even if one of your
Speaker 4: picks does not hit. Prize Picks now offers MasterCard for
Speaker 4: quick and easy deposits into your account this sports season.
Speaker 4: Download the app today. Use the code Armstrong to get
Speaker 4: fifty dollars instantly after you play your first five dollar lineup.
Speaker 4: You don't have to win, you get the fifty dollars
Speaker 4: bonus instantly when you play five dollars again, remember that
Speaker 4: code Armstrong.
Speaker 1: It's the Prize Picks app. Prize Picks run your game.
Speaker 1: I just see Trump doubled down on taking Greenland. I
Speaker 1: think Greenland might actually become a sting.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, Greenland's like in the Danish You're like,
Speaker 4: what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: H huh. We got more, by the way, Armstrong the
Speaker 1: only thing by being the oldest president. I know more
Speaker 1: world leaders than any one of you ever met in
Speaker 1: your whole goddamn wife, and I know how they see
Speaker 1: not a joke. Oh yeah, So somebody stuck on microphone
Speaker 1: in the face of that old man for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on there. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Wow, the senile, bitter old president who's trying to do
Speaker 4: as much damage to the Trump administration in advance as
Speaker 4: he can, you know, blocking off loyal oil leases and stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that down the roadeen days.
Speaker 4: I'd sell you what I've waited on more people at
Speaker 4: this restaurant than you have in your goddamn life, say
Speaker 4: the waiters and waitresses of Washington, d C. Jack, where
Speaker 4: you just were. The Washingtonian, which is read in the
Speaker 4: self obsessed Nations Capital, has a piece about how DC
Speaker 4: restaurants have long been like politically neutral spaces. Obviously, to
Speaker 4: cite the cliched example, you got Reagan coming in, you
Speaker 4: got timp O'Neil coming in right, so you treat everybody
Speaker 4: with respectfully.
Speaker 1: But that changed during the Trump years.
Speaker 4: Restaurant owners became much more politically outspoken. They were part
Speaker 4: of the resistance, and Trump officials became social pariahs when
Speaker 4: dining out. You remember several incidents involving Ted Cruz and
Speaker 4: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who got kicked out of a restaurant
Speaker 4: in West Lexington, Virginia. Homeland Secretary Kirsten Nielsen's dinner at
Speaker 4: a DC Mexican Mexican restaurant was interrupted as they yelled
Speaker 4: shame Steven Miller tossing eighty dollars worth of takeout sushi
Speaker 4: after somebody cursed him and flipped him off at a
Speaker 4: sushi place, somebody on the staff. But anyway, in the
Speaker 4: Washington Washingtonian, anyway, you got all these restaurant tours and
Speaker 4: waiters and bartenders saying we're not gonna be silent, We're
Speaker 4: not gonna be quote unquote civil.
Speaker 1: Let's see, here's this guy. What does he do.
Speaker 4: He's a DC restaurant. He's a manager at a club,
Speaker 4: big club in DC. If you're just going out for
Speaker 4: a nice dinner at your anniversary or birthday, and God forbid, RFK.
Speaker 1: Junior is sitting s to you.
Speaker 4: Now you're going to be dealing with whatever repercussions happened
Speaker 4: from that. He's saying, all this restaurants to have is
Speaker 4: justified in cursing these people out and yelling at him
Speaker 4: and kicking him out.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll see if this actually happens or not. Like
Speaker 1: I said, bumping around d C, it was quite a
Speaker 1: bit different than the last time I was in DC
Speaker 1: when Trump got elected, he was being treated like a
Speaker 1: regular president. I mean, the number of Trump shirts, hats, pins,
Speaker 1: inauguration forty seventh president stuff that I saw. There was
Speaker 1: nothing like that in twenty seventeen when I was there
Speaker 1: for the inauguration. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: In fact, that was my question. I wonder if this
Speaker 4: is just big talk by little people.
Speaker 1: I'd be my guess.
Speaker 4: Here's a woman who's a server and manager at a
Speaker 4: saloon on Capitol Hill. Quote, people who are a lot
Speaker 4: more motivated the first time around to do these kinds
Speaker 4: of shows of passion. This time around, there's kind of
Speaker 4: a sense of defeat and acceptance. But I hope that
Speaker 4: people will still do stand up to this administration and
Speaker 4: tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior as they're trying
Speaker 4: to get a ham sandwich at lunchtime.
Speaker 1: Here's my biggest question about restaurants, DC restaurants because I
Speaker 1: had this and I tweeted it out and it's the
Speaker 1: most controversial tweet I've ever put out ever. It got
Speaker 1: more responses than anything I've ever tweeted this question. So
Speaker 1: I mean it in Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, which I wish
Speaker 1: I'd had spent the time to look into what it
Speaker 1: costs to eat there, because it's the most expensive meal
Speaker 1: I've ever paid for for me and my two kids,
Speaker 1: partially because there was the we've added to twenty percent
Speaker 1: already thing that rustaurants are doing sometimes now, and so
Speaker 1: service charge is that what they call it? Earth It
Speaker 1: just said, yeah, we've we've added a twenty percent service
Speaker 1: charge to your bill, and then it's got the line
Speaker 1: for the tip, and I thought, do I tip on
Speaker 1: top of this or not? And I tweeted that out.
Speaker 1: I googled it and tweeted it and same result either way.
Speaker 1: Plenty of people say, absolutely, that's not the tip. You
Speaker 1: need to tip on top of that. You're screwing your
Speaker 1: server or one hundred percent, that's the tip, No way
Speaker 1: you should give any more money. I still don't know
Speaker 1: what the answer is on that. But obviously, if they
Speaker 1: add twenty percent and I didn't know they were going
Speaker 1: to do that, or I wouldn't have gone. If they
Speaker 1: add twenty percent and I'm supposed to tip twenty percent,
Speaker 1: that's forty percent on top of my meal, that's a
Speaker 1: no go. That's a second group. That is the tip.
Speaker 1: No freaking way I'm eating there. A whole bunch of
Speaker 1: people adamantly said no, that goes to the restaurant, that
Speaker 1: the server will get nothing, and you absolutely need to
Speaker 1: tip on top of that. Maybe that's true, but I'll
Speaker 1: never eat at a restaurant that does that. You can't
Speaker 1: pay forty percent top your bill. Nobody's doing that. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It is ridiculous. I don't know what the correct answer
Speaker 1: is either, or if it varies from restaurant to restaurant.
Speaker 1: If you know, text line four one five two nine
Speaker 1: five KFTC. But what the hell Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4: A lot of people this year texted me their holiday card,
Speaker 4: and that.
Speaker 1: Is I just want to say, that is unacceptable. I
Speaker 1: want you. I won't even look at those. I would
Speaker 1: rather have no card. And in fact, that is what
Speaker 1: you sent. No card. I did not send a holiday card.
Speaker 1: A card is a card. I want something I can
Speaker 1: take out of the envelope. Look at Ask my wife,
Speaker 1: who are these kids?
Speaker 6: Never figure it out between us and then throw it
Speaker 6: in the garbage.
Speaker 1: Christmas, more than.
Speaker 6: Anything, is about killing trees, and I want that sacrifice.
Speaker 1: When I got the card, texting a holiday card, that
Speaker 1: is the least I could do, as the saying goes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that brought me down. And it's because Judy
Speaker 4: and I cannot get our act together to send out
Speaker 4: a holiday card. I'm glad I'm not the only one
Speaker 4: because it hurts my psyche every year.
Speaker 1: Well and mostly it's that we don't think of it
Speaker 1: until November thirty seventh, you know, Yeah, I just I don't,
Speaker 1: and and I'm a worse human being for it. I
Speaker 1: admit that. Yes, Michael, maybe this is the ear. It's not.
Speaker 4: I bought Christmas cards, I bought New Year's cards, and
Speaker 4: none of them got.
Speaker 1: Out well, and then it made that critical first step.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but that you could pull off fairly late
Speaker 1: in the game. But if you're going to do the
Speaker 1: big family photo and have that turned into a card.
Speaker 1: It takes a little planning ahead of time. And I
Speaker 1: feel like those of you and I have many friends
Speaker 1: workers stuff like that. I believe you're only sending them
Speaker 1: to me as a reminder of how much better you
Speaker 1: are than me. I feel like it's just an attempt
Speaker 1: to make me feel bad. It's a flex. It's absolutelyness.
Speaker 1: Look how organized we are. We got family photos, turn
Speaker 1: them into a card, know your address, and got them
Speaker 1: in the mail in time. So take a you know,
Speaker 1: looking looking forward to getting the same from you. Oh
Speaker 1: you couldn't. Didn't get that together, too unorganized. Oh sorry
Speaker 1: to hear that couldn't be troubled.
Speaker 4: M No, all right, So I love this and this
Speaker 4: this story why the economy is trouncing Europe's It's from
Speaker 4: Edward Cannard in the Wall Street Journal. But it reminds
Speaker 4: me so much of that Twitter thread we brought you
Speaker 4: last year, and I wish I had bookmarked it because
Speaker 4: it was so terrific. It was by your brit who
Speaker 4: is explaining the difference between Britain and the United States
Speaker 4: culturally speaking.
Speaker 1: And we'll refer back to that in a second.
Speaker 4: But this this piece opens with, and I love this
Speaker 4: that economists never cite one of the most significant statistics
Speaker 4: about the US economy.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to that. But according to.
Speaker 4: Data released last week by the OECD, the Organization for
Speaker 4: Economic I sound like Joe Biden Organization for Economic Corporation
Speaker 4: and Cooperation and Development. Only about twelve percent of Americans
Speaker 4: score at the highest levels on internationally administered academic tests
Speaker 4: twelve percent, while thirty four percent score at the lowest levels,
Speaker 4: nearly three lower scores for every high score. Germany's figures
Speaker 4: are nearly even, not three to one low to high
Speaker 4: eighteen at the highest level, twenty percent at the lowest.
Speaker 4: Put another way, Germany's ratio of high to low scores
Speaker 4: is almost three times Americas. Scandinavia's is five times better,
Speaker 4: Japan's seven times better. These enormous differences, there's twist, have
Speaker 4: profound economic implications. With more talent and fewer needy people.
Speaker 4: Is it any wonder that northern European countries can afford
Speaker 4: more generous welfare policies than their neighbors to the south.
Speaker 4: Yet you're right to be Yet America excels relative to Europe.
Speaker 4: Despite these enormous differences. While Europe has created fourteen companies
Speaker 4: worth more than ten billion dollars in the last half century,
Speaker 4: with about four hundred billion dollars of market value in total,
Speaker 4: I realize that's a lot of money. Uh, fourteen companies
Speaker 4: worth more than ten billion dollars, Americans have created nearly
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty such companies, or thirty trillion dollars,
Speaker 4: not forty four hundred billion.
Speaker 1: And of course that is an amazing stat right it is.
Speaker 4: It's mind blowing that success is driven up America's middle
Speaker 4: class incomes the median disposable US household income income.
Speaker 1: To inequality income inequality.
Speaker 4: The median disposable US household income, according to the OCOECD,
Speaker 4: is now twenty five percent greater than the median in
Speaker 4: Brainy Brainy Germany, and sixty percent greater than the median
Speaker 4: household in Italy, for instance.
Speaker 1: Do you have it for Great Britain? Now they don't
Speaker 1: have that. It's interesting just because Charles CW. Cook of
Speaker 1: The National Review, who is a brit who has moved
Speaker 1: to the United States, constantly says Americans have no idea
Speaker 1: how rich they are compared to Europeans. The average American, right,
Speaker 1: and a poor American now compared to a poor American,
Speaker 1: say eighty years ago.
Speaker 4: Is vastly wealthier, vastly, But that's useless politically to point
Speaker 4: that out.
Speaker 1: Grievance gets people to the polls. Anyway.
Speaker 4: Europeans incomes would be even lower compared to Americans if
Speaker 4: they weren't free riding on American innovation, defense spending, and
Speaker 4: higher drug prices which instead of ize research. Oh. I
Speaker 4: was talking to a good buddy of mine who's a
Speaker 4: doctor the other day, and he was talking about how
Speaker 4: there's no money in antibiotics, and so the the big
Speaker 4: pharma companies that are so you know, demonized in reasonable fashion,
Speaker 4: justifiedly in some cases, but there's no incentive for them
Speaker 4: to innovate and come up with new antibiotics. And he's
Speaker 4: he happened to be a urologist, and he said, we
Speaker 4: used to run into these unconquerable infections like once every
Speaker 4: six months, and now it's once a week really, and
Speaker 4: he was talking about a hospital setting. But yeah, the
Speaker 4: infections they fight and fight but can't beat are becoming
Speaker 4: more and more and more common. As the then to
Speaker 4: get off on a not to get off on a
Speaker 4: too long at tangent, But as people use antibiotics for
Speaker 4: things they don't need them for, or take them just
Speaker 4: until they feel better, which is like a super power
Speaker 4: training program for microbes. It's selecting only those that can
Speaker 4: survive the first seventy percent of your treatment and turning
Speaker 4: the loose on the world. Now, if you'd finished your treatment,
Speaker 4: you'd have kill them all. But this is rampant in
Speaker 4: Africa for instance. Anyway, why do you.
Speaker 1: Stop taking your antibiotics once you start feeling better? I mean,
Speaker 1: I just you don't feel like you need medicine anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I'm a slacker, but I
Speaker 1: take the full ten days or whatever. Yeah, do that? Friends,
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 4: Of course, you're up against tens of millions of Africans
Speaker 4: who don't, and they sell antibiotics over the counter there.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we'll all be dead soon.
Speaker 4: To get back to the article, So Europe would be
Speaker 4: even worse off if they didn't piggyback on American technological
Speaker 4: developments in military spending that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And here's the point.
Speaker 4: The outside success of America's talented entrepreneurs doesn't stem from
Speaker 4: their superior intelligence or even education. It comes from working
Speaker 4: at companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple that mind
Speaker 4: the technological frontier and expose employees to alluable knowledge, insights,
Speaker 4: and opportunities.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true.
Speaker 4: But unlike Europe, the enormous success of American entrepreneurs motivated
Speaker 4: an army of talented Americans and motivates them us every
Speaker 4: day to get valuable on the job, training, work longer hours,
Speaker 4: take risks, and succeed. A small amount of success bubbles
Speaker 4: up from large pools of failure.
Speaker 1: And we have two things.
Speaker 4: Number one we have and this is critical and if
Speaker 4: we ever lose this, God help us.
Speaker 1: We have a culture of let's try it.
Speaker 4: Europe and Britain in particular, and this was the Twitter
Speaker 4: thread that I thought was so great, has a culture
Speaker 4: of you'd better not to fail. It would be really embarrassing,
Speaker 4: it'd be humiliating. You're much better off not trying. And
Speaker 4: we have a what the.
Speaker 1: Health culture that we're trying to stamp out as fast
Speaker 1: as we can, with places like California where you have
Speaker 1: so many different regulations and hoops to jump through that
Speaker 1: people say I'm going to try it, and then you
Speaker 1: go down to the office to get the various permits
Speaker 1: and you think, ask screw it. Yeah, absolutely true.
Speaker 4: And the other thing is, and they point this out
Speaker 4: and I came across it was it was a little
Speaker 4: long and dry to present on the show, but it
Speaker 4: was a discussion of.
Speaker 1: Was it Denmark one? Are you your super oil.
Speaker 4: Rich Scandinavian countries and their tax policies and how they
Speaker 4: have driven all of their entrepreneurs out of the country
Speaker 4: and now it's just oil revenue. But the other point
Speaker 4: they make in the journal is that in Europe, even
Speaker 4: more than the US, which has a very progressive tax code,
Speaker 4: but if you're successful in America, we punish you by
Speaker 4: raising your taxes.
Speaker 1: If you're a little successful.
Speaker 4: We punish you a little bit, if you're moderately successful,
Speaker 4: we punish you moderately. And if you're very very successful,
Speaker 4: we punish you pretty badly by taking more of your money.
Speaker 1: In Europe, it's extreme.
Speaker 4: I mean, they treat you like you or a child
Speaker 4: murderer if you come up with a brilliant idea that
Speaker 4: succeeds brilliantly. And what they're urging is that let's not
Speaker 4: lose those two things.
Speaker 1: Number One, let's.
Speaker 4: Continue to be a what the hell, let's try it
Speaker 4: society because we're the beacon to the world in innovation.
Speaker 4: And number two, let's not demonize people who have a
Speaker 4: great idea, take a risk, bust their ass and succeed
Speaker 4: with it. That would choke us to death.
Speaker 1: I know, I just I'll never understand how you get
Speaker 1: to the Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren mindset or a lot
Speaker 1: of college students were billionaires. Shouldn't exist? How do you
Speaker 1: not understand what you're saying? Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: I have an idea that people love, and if I
Speaker 4: sold it to one person, I'd make a dollar.
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 4: Okay, same idea, more people hear about it, one hundred
Speaker 4: people hear about it. I make one hundred dollars than
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand people. Now a billion people have heard
Speaker 4: about my idea. They all like it. I make a
Speaker 4: dollar per Now I'm a billionaire. I shouldn't exist. Explain
Speaker 4: that to me, please, Chay Marx Sanders Warren guovera, you
Speaker 4: idiotic college kid.
Speaker 1: You stupid effing moros. Oh I'm sorry. I'd vowed to
Speaker 1: be more restrained in.
Speaker 3: The new year.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, it's not an interesting Gallup poll right at
Speaker 1: the end of the year. But people's attitudes about all
Speaker 1: kinds of things about their own lives, which you can
Speaker 1: compare and contrast see if you fit in. And also,
Speaker 1: I've decided to embarrass myself as a punishment to try
Speaker 1: to get myself to better behavior. I'm embarrassing myself today
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do on a daily basis. Wow,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a carrot and stick. I'm going
Speaker 1: with this stick. I'm going with the stick approach with
Speaker 1: myself to try to make my behavior better. Self flagellation exactly.
Speaker 1: We'll explain that coming up, among other things. Stay here first.
Speaker 1: The way that I'm going to embarrass myself into changing
Speaker 1: my behavior, I could lap, and I'm doing it today.
Speaker 1: I was looking through my closet to try to find
Speaker 1: my large dress shirts that actually fit, as opposed to
Speaker 1: my medium dress shirts that I was wearing throughout most
Speaker 1: of last year that fit at the time. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna wear my medium dress shirt
Speaker 1: that gaps in the front and show my bare chest
Speaker 1: because they're too small for me. And and so every time
Speaker 1: I look in the mirror, I see it so that
Speaker 1: I need better at home, I get it out in
Speaker 1: the world. At work, I'm embarrassed to walk around in
Speaker 1: this shirt. I find myself hunching my shoulders to try
Speaker 1: to get my shirt to go together. Oh, I know
Speaker 1: that move, but I'm going to do it. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to embarrass myself until I finally come correct.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's an interesting lever to pull. But whatever works
Speaker 4: for you, see if it works.
Speaker 1: My brother was talking about a winter coat that he's
Speaker 1: got that he really likes. That he can't come with
Speaker 1: the foot of getting the zipper to come together, but
Speaker 1: he's still holding out hope. We all do it so pathetically,
Speaker 1: we all do it. That is correct. So also seeing
Speaker 1: my family, we got on the conversation about the pandemic.
Speaker 1: As we're at the five year anniversary mark, it was
Speaker 1: five years ago, we'll start hearing the dates five years
Speaker 1: ago the first case was seen in wherever it was,
Speaker 1: Washington State or whatever. And in March we'll have the
Speaker 1: five year anniversary of them canceling the March Madness and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget in my life. When they announced at
Speaker 1: the school they're calling it off for a month, and
Speaker 1: everybody was like, why I'd just how could that possibly happen?
Speaker 1: We all know how it played out. But so this
Speaker 1: gallop pole is I think mostly about just where we
Speaker 1: are psychologically since the pandemic, because it's comparing Americans' satisfaction
Speaker 1: with aspects of their life twenty nineteen versus end of
Speaker 1: twenty four Oh interesting coincides with pre pandemic and several
Speaker 1: years you know after most of it's over. Depends on
Speaker 1: where you live, as back in Kansas, where the pandemic
Speaker 1: was completely over in twenty one, as opposed to living
Speaker 1: in California, where the pandemic ended for some people hasn't
Speaker 1: ended yet still earn masks. But I thought these numbers
Speaker 1: were Some of these numbers were quite amazing. Your personal health.
Speaker 1: Fifty four percent of Americans were satisfied with their personal
Speaker 1: health in twenty nineteen, over half, and it's now forty one,
Speaker 1: a thirteen point crop. So is that just like a
Speaker 1: psychological thing? Are that many people less healthy? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's your own attitude. It's not
Speaker 1: like a measurable number. Yeah, I'm shocked by that. How
Speaker 1: about this one theory? Your family life a ten point
Speaker 1: drop from pre pandemic till now from seventy six percent,
Speaker 1: which I'm glad to hear, was that I three quarters
Speaker 1: of people satisfied with their family life. It's now down
Speaker 1: to sixty six percent, two thirds. Huh, how would you
Speaker 1: explain that.
Speaker 4: The only thing I can offer to you, and I
Speaker 4: was going to get into this at some point, is
Speaker 4: a study that was done that showed, well, there are
Speaker 4: a couple of studies out lately. One that is about
Speaker 4: how girls have not bounced back academically and now are
Speaker 4: falling behind boys in several subjects in a way that
Speaker 4: was the reverse of the trend for a very very
Speaker 4: long time. And a sister bit of information, which is
Speaker 4: that neurologist say girls' brains aged during the pandemic in
Speaker 4: a way they've never seen before. Wow, the lack of
Speaker 4: socializing was crippling to the neurological development of young girls.
Speaker 1: One more example of how the.
Speaker 4: COVID eer restrictions were not only unsupportable at the time
Speaker 4: but absolutely did obscene damage to our young people.
Speaker 1: Well, that could have something to do with this number, then, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that's what I was working toward. If developmentally speaking,
Speaker 1: it's been it was that devastating to young women, that
Speaker 1: that might be a lot of that. Sure, my wife
Speaker 1: dumped me during the pandemic, so my family life is
Speaker 1: less than it was before. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of divorces during the pandemic, So maybe that's some of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, But ten point drop, I wonder some
Speaker 1: of the other big drops. Your community is a place
Speaker 1: to live A ten point drop six people were satisfied
Speaker 1: with where they lived now fifty one percent because of
Speaker 1: the way it handled the pandemic. Or just is everybody's
Speaker 1: overall attitude worse? Does that explain all these everybody's just
Speaker 1: got a worse attitude in general?
Speaker 4: You're a in my mind, I was just going to say,
Speaker 4: Or is it just that that whole period pissed everybody
Speaker 4: off and we're in a foul mood. When you're in
Speaker 4: a foul mood, flowers smell bad, meals taste bad.
Speaker 1: You don't care? True, true, if things aren't going your way,
Speaker 1: a beautiful, nice day and a cute puppy is annoying
Speaker 1: that god damned thing out of my way. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: almost got to be it now that I think about it.
Speaker 1: For instance, your job or the work you do was
Speaker 1: an almost double digit drop and people being satisfied. So
Speaker 1: I think it might just be we just aren't. We're
Speaker 1: just have a worse attitude. It somehouse killed our will
Speaker 1: to live or our ability to enjoy life. This is
Speaker 1: a little partisan, but I can't resist.
Speaker 4: I also think that the folks that have been in
Speaker 4: charge for a while on the progressive side of things,
Speaker 4: there are things. Their message is, this is a bad country.
Speaker 4: You're a bad person, You're defined by your race. I'm
Speaker 4: judging you harshly. I'm going to shout you down if
Speaker 4: I disagree with you. It's not a growth.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 4: Positive American spirit on the progressive side gotta get rid
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: If you miss an hour, get the podcast Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Getty on demand Armstrong and Getty