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 Getty and He Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3: He was a two time Oscar winner, nominated five times
Speaker 3: over a career spanning forty years. Hollywood This Morning remembering
Speaker 3: Gene Hackman, found dead alongside his wife Betsy Arakawa, and
Speaker 3: their dog at their New Mexico home yesterday, the sheriff
Speaker 3: saying overnight, I want to assure the community and the
Speaker 3: neighborhood that there's no immediate danger to anyone, the sheriff,
Speaker 3: not providing details on cause of death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you don't have your radar detector up to
Speaker 1: speed or something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there have been a couple of cases lately were
Speaker 4: the cop shops.
Speaker 1: There's no TURL threat too, yeah, right, And it was
Speaker 1: a murderer. You're right, that had just a targeted murderer.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that happened here, No, I suspect not.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. So Gene Hackman my favorite actor
Speaker 1: of all time, and in his early nineties, his wife
Speaker 1: in her early sixties.
Speaker 2: And I was just reading because he.
Speaker 1: Retired from acting a long time ago. I'll bet not
Speaker 1: realized he was. He was past ninety her I bet
Speaker 1: her life had early on when they got together. He
Speaker 1: was like early sixties and she was thirty. At that
Speaker 1: point she was marrying one of the biggest movie stars
Speaker 1: in the world. But I gotta believe for the last
Speaker 1: quite a few years, decades, maybe it was just like
Speaker 1: it had. His acting life had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: their life at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody's talking about him is acting in his
Speaker 1: acting roles, but I bet it played no, no, had
Speaker 1: no purchase in their lives on a daily basis, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: walk by an arm past. Yeah he's got on the
Speaker 1: fireplace maybe somewhere, but they probably didn't even talk about
Speaker 1: it or anything like that. He's been his sculpting and
Speaker 1: painting mostly good for him, Yeah, good for the soul.
Speaker 4: The only other thing I had to say about Gene Hackman,
Speaker 4: who is a genius actor, but we don't you know,
Speaker 4: we don't lionize actors really much around here, but that
Speaker 4: he told the story that was incredibly touching on the
Speaker 4: what the inside the actor's studio or whatever it is called.
Speaker 4: The show I used to watch fair amount. He explained
Speaker 4: that when he was a very young boy. I think
Speaker 4: he might have been five. His father drove away and
Speaker 4: never came back. Yeah yeah, And his father gave him
Speaker 4: a casual wave outside the window, and he said he
Speaker 4: knew at that moment his father was never coming back somehow,
Speaker 4: And as he told the story, sixty years later he
Speaker 4: had to choke back tears, or sixty five years later,
Speaker 4: something like that got But he said he he realized
Speaker 4: as he thought about it, the power of one small gesture,
Speaker 4: and he thought that may be one of the reasons
Speaker 4: he was a very good actor, because that made a
Speaker 4: real impression on him that small things can yeah, sick
Speaker 4: meaning interesting.
Speaker 2: I was reading about that last night.
Speaker 1: He was thirteen years old and he's playing in the
Speaker 1: street with his friends and his dad pulls out of
Speaker 1: the driveway. He's getting a wave and drives away and
Speaker 1: never comes back. Can you imagine anything horrible?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: Three years later he joins the Marines, lies about his age.
Speaker 1: Joins the Marines as a sixteen year old and is
Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps for four years. He didn't try
Speaker 1: his hand at acting until he was dang near thirty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know. Just for the record, my son
Speaker 2: is a trained and gifted actor, and the.
Speaker 4: Art of it is really interesting to me, like a
Speaker 4: lot of arts are. It's the self aggrandizement and self
Speaker 4: congratulations and lecturing people on moral questions that Hollywood does
Speaker 4: that's repugnant. I have nothing against acting anymore than I
Speaker 4: have against playing the obow. Just don't do it around me,
Speaker 4: okay the oboe.
Speaker 1: Specifically this in the New York Times about Gene Hackman,
Speaker 1: which I thought was good. He seemed to have been
Speaker 1: born middle aged, slightly balding, with strong but unremarkable features,
Speaker 1: neither plane nor handsome, more likely to melt into a
Speaker 1: crowd than to stand out in one. That is not
Speaker 1: usually what makes you, you know, at the very highest
Speaker 1: level of being a movie star, the kind of person
Speaker 1: that would blend into a crowd rather than stand out
Speaker 1: in one. And he did seem to be born middle aged.
Speaker 1: You can't find any even really early roles of him
Speaker 1: where he doesn't seem like he's fifty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I had that I'm a real human being
Speaker 4: quality about him that sometimes the pretty boys don't.
Speaker 1: My first introduction to Gene Hackman was The Poseidon Adventure. Oh,
Speaker 1: if you're old enough to remember, that movie from the seventies.
Speaker 1: There was a period in the seventies where disaster movies
Speaker 1: were just so big. Airplane disasters, boat disasters, trained disasters, earthquakes,
Speaker 1: all that sort of thing, and all your biggest stars
Speaker 1: would be in these films. Anyway, Beside Adventure was a
Speaker 1: sort of a Titanic like movie, and he was a
Speaker 1: He played.
Speaker 2: A major role in that.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, anyway, he will be missed. And I had
Speaker 4: no idea he was in his nineties, soone time marching on.
Speaker 4: Speaking of celebrities, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, teased yesterday
Speaker 4: on Jesse Waters Show that the Justice Department will likely
Speaker 4: release the documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein today as we
Speaker 4: speak on Thursday, the twenty seventh of February, the year
Speaker 4: of our Lord twenty twenty five, including the plane logs
Speaker 4: of who was on his planes to his pleasure Island
Speaker 4: as pervert Island.
Speaker 1: Right, So, well, first of all, I'll ask you, do
Speaker 1: you think that much of any interest is going to
Speaker 1: come out of that gossip?
Speaker 2: Lots of really great gossip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know people, and because I float around in
Speaker 1: social media, I've read some of the stuff. But I
Speaker 1: personally know people who are just convinced that Hillary Clinton's
Speaker 1: about to go to jail, the whole movie star pedophile
Speaker 1: thing is about to be blown up, or about to
Speaker 1: find out all the details on this, Yeah, the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party pedophile ring thing.
Speaker 2: You're being manipulated, and it makes me sad.
Speaker 4: There may be some significant revelations because they're absolutely rich
Speaker 4: and powerful people that go along with perverse stuff. But
Speaker 4: the only note of caution I would strike is that
Speaker 4: we have all or most of us been involved in
Speaker 4: say an organization or even like a golf club or
Speaker 4: a friend group or whatever, and we you know, play
Speaker 4: golf and have a few drinks or whatever, and turns
Speaker 4: out that some of the guys you know on that
Speaker 4: level are off doing something else.
Speaker 2: You're not included in it.
Speaker 4: You're not part of that subgroup that's doing you know,
Speaker 4: crazy stuff with drug sex, white swapping, whatever.
Speaker 2: And wife some of these people might have what do
Speaker 2: you call it these days? Swinging?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because the wife has agency too. I mean, my god,
Speaker 4: what an antiquated term. Swinging is the term?
Speaker 2: Right? It makes it seem like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hey, sorry, dear, I just I've swapped you with
Speaker 4: Bill over there.
Speaker 1: I deal I just made a deal with Bill. You
Speaker 1: need to go to his house tonight. What exactly, so
Speaker 1: we'll go swinging.
Speaker 4: But anyway, because it's conceivable, because this was a rich
Speaker 4: guy who lived a super rich guy life which included
Speaker 4: underage girl porno, sick sexual exploitation. But not everybody who
Speaker 4: had lunch with him was part of the super pervos stuff,
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying. But because he was a super
Speaker 4: rich financier and a mover and a shaker.
Speaker 1: Well, I think he killed himself in jail because he
Speaker 1: lived the life of luxury and wealth and nothing good
Speaker 1: was going to happen at his life at that point.
Speaker 1: I think he killed himself. I don't think somebody slipped
Speaker 1: in and stuffed him or something like that. That personally,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of weird how those cameras didn't work,
Speaker 1: that is. But the weirdest thing of the whole Epstein's
Speaker 1: story has always been, what in the hell was that
Speaker 1: giant painting of Bill Clinton in a dress right in
Speaker 1: the doorway when you walk into Epstein's house, pointing.
Speaker 2: At you, What the hell is that?
Speaker 4: I'm worried about the victims Jack, not the painting, But
Speaker 4: that was an odd piece of heart.
Speaker 1: Well, it means something. It gets to the victims, it
Speaker 1: means something. What the hell is that? Help me understand?
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, but I've always I've always thought
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're a mover and a shaker in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: where the Clintons are idolized and Bill Clinton was their god,
Speaker 1: and you have in your home. What how would you
Speaker 1: describe it as anything other than mocking of Bill Clinton?
Speaker 1: You got him in a dress? Right, I remember your
Speaker 1: old theory? Do you remember your old theory?
Speaker 2: And he's pointing at you.
Speaker 1: I think it's a I've got something on this guy
Speaker 1: and he knows it, and he better remember I got
Speaker 1: something on this guy.
Speaker 2: I think that's what it is. And many many other
Speaker 2: guys too, right, Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I would agree.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're going to find anything out
Speaker 1: about that from the paperwork that Pam Bondi releases today.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So so many directions we could go. I've been
Speaker 4: wanting to get to the story of this awful broad
Speaker 4: daylight assault in La on the street. This gang of
Speaker 4: twenty to thirty bicyclists, late teens men. They're young men.
Speaker 4: They rove around like a gang. They intimidate drivers, they
Speaker 4: kick their cars, whatever, and terrorize pedestrians.
Speaker 2: The rest of it almost got yeah.
Speaker 1: Almost certainly riding s E bikes because that said, like
Speaker 1: the bike my son rides.
Speaker 2: The bike crowds do this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll ride that brand for some reason, and they wheeling
Speaker 1: around and intimidate you.
Speaker 2: I've been in the midst.
Speaker 4: Of oh yeah, interesting so But anyway, this guy got
Speaker 4: out of his car to confront some of them after
Speaker 4: they struck and kicked his vehicle. Yea, and the startling
Speaker 4: video preps you've seen it showed the teens ganging up
Speaker 4: on the man, relentlessly punching, kicking, and stomping him as
Speaker 4: he laid defenseless on the ground. Other suspects rode up,
Speaker 4: leafed off, leaped off their bikes, threw them off in
Speaker 4: the excitement to join in the attack. The hoodie wearing
Speaker 4: teens rode off after beating the man to a pulp
Speaker 4: scene lying motionless on the ground.
Speaker 2: That's horrible.
Speaker 1: So one time I'm in Old Sacramento and a bunch
Speaker 1: of bikes come at me as I'm driving down the street,
Speaker 1: and I'm like they're coming straight at me, so I
Speaker 1: hit the brakes and they ride. They continue to ride
Speaker 1: toward me until they're like on top of me. They're
Speaker 1: doing wheelies the whole time on their se bikes, and
Speaker 1: they have the ability to swerve. Like the last second
Speaker 1: before they hit your car, I thought they were gonna
Speaker 1: run right into me. I didn't think they were even
Speaker 1: seeing me, And they swerve, and then they go on
Speaker 1: around me and they just they all go around really
Speaker 1: close your car. Nobody was kicking the car or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but I didn't know what to do. It was.
Speaker 2: It was intimidating in a way, like what is this?
Speaker 4: And of course, because the victim was white and many
Speaker 4: of the attackers young men of color, we will not
Speaker 4: be describing the race of anyone involved. Of course, according
Speaker 4: to our policy, if the roles had been reversed, we
Speaker 4: would make it all about.
Speaker 2: That for weeks at a time back town.
Speaker 1: And the only reason I bring up the brand of
Speaker 1: bikes is I know a store, a very popular bike store,
Speaker 1: that won't sell that brand because it's associated with this
Speaker 1: kind of bad activity, even though it's a great bicycle.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: I had no idea of that crazy coming up later
Speaker 4: in the hour, the most obvious, egregious, instructive example of
Speaker 4: the homeless industrial complex and how it squanders money you've
Speaker 4: ever heard stay with us on the.
Speaker 5: Way, Michael Moore warns that America could be deporting illegals
Speaker 5: that might one day cure cancer or stop an incoming asteroid,
Speaker 5: or even more troubling, they may fail to deliver his
Speaker 5: meat lover's pizza.
Speaker 2: He's a big man, Michael Moore.
Speaker 1: Got you see the whole deal of us getting some
Speaker 1: of the money and rights to rare earth metals in
Speaker 1: Ukraine and whether or not that's come to come together.
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal with some interesting reporting on that. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get to later this hour. I know, Joe, you've
Speaker 1: got some homeless updates for.
Speaker 4: US homeless industrial complex. Yes, the profit that is there
Speaker 4: for pretending to deal with transient drug addicts.
Speaker 1: So my son's got a big science project. This is
Speaker 1: like one of the big parts of your grade for
Speaker 1: the whole semester, my seventh grader, And it's one of
Speaker 1: those they give you like a six weeks to do it.
Speaker 1: And he, unlike his old man, has started the project
Speaker 1: weeks before it's due, whereas I would have turned my
Speaker 1: attention to what the project was going to be in
Speaker 1: roughly five and a half weeks. But so we went
Speaker 1: to the hardware story yesterday and here's what he's going
Speaker 1: to do. Is hypothesis is that plants grow better being
Speaker 1: nurtured by water than they will with coca cola. And
Speaker 1: so we bought eight different little tiny pots. It's going
Speaker 1: to plant strawberry seeds in each one, but four of
Speaker 1: them will only get coca cola and four of them
Speaker 1: will get water. They all get the same amount of sun,
Speaker 1: have the same amount of soil, all that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff a single variable. The only variable is water versus
Speaker 1: coca cola. The problem, of course, is what if the
Speaker 1: strawberries grow better on coca cola? Then what do we
Speaker 1: do do I have I discovered something important and I
Speaker 1: need to figure out a way.
Speaker 2: To become rich.
Speaker 4: Try Brono. Next, they got that gatorade like a drink.
Speaker 4: In the thought it was a comedy.
Speaker 1: It's a documentary idiocracy exactly like what if the strawberries
Speaker 1: are like deliciously sweet and just a bit fizzy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole science experiment thing, it's fantastic. What a great
Speaker 1: idea to teach people the scientific method, which is amazing
Speaker 1: that it was such a breakthrough for humanity to come
Speaker 1: up with. You know, you try something, Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: a you know, non variables, and you have as few
Speaker 1: variables as you can one variable as best and compare
Speaker 1: it and then you can move on forward. I mean
Speaker 1: it got us out of, you know, quite the jam
Speaker 1: human beings were in, what laying around in their own filth?
Speaker 2: Sure of the dark ages.
Speaker 4: Yeah, although the woke crowd want to take us back
Speaker 4: to pre enlightenment, two plus two does not necessarily equal four.
Speaker 2: If they can get you to repeat that, they can
Speaker 2: get you to repeat anything.
Speaker 1: So Zelensky might become into Washington, d C. To sign
Speaker 1: the rare Earth's Metal deal that Donald Trump is writing up.
Speaker 1: Wallstre Journal reported yesterday that Zelensky said he wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if he would go or not. The financial benefits of
Speaker 1: the deal remain up in the air, right to the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal. The text of the deal, which has
Speaker 1: been viewed by the Wall Street Journal, includes the creation
Speaker 1: of a fund co owned by the two countries, with
Speaker 1: the details of the financial arrangement to be determined down
Speaker 1: the line. That's interesting those details seem to be the
Speaker 1: whole thing to me, the details of the financial It's
Speaker 1: like taking a job. The details of the financial arrangement
Speaker 1: will be determined down the line, like what you get
Speaker 1: paid and how often you have to work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the whole enchilada right there. That's the way
Speaker 4: the whole thing has struck me all along. There are
Speaker 4: so many gigantic question marks. I don't what in what
Speaker 4: sense is there an agreement? How are you going to
Speaker 4: sign it?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Is it one of those frameworks to proceed on the
Speaker 4: framework of an agreement?
Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't fly to DC for something that skimpy. Yet,
Speaker 1: the agreement lacks explicit security guarantees for Ukraine, which Zelensky
Speaker 1: had previously said would be necessary for any mineral right now,
Speaker 1: and nods toward Kiev's need for such assurances. One clause
Speaker 1: of the agreement says the US supports Ukraine's efforts to
Speaker 1: obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting piece, which of
Speaker 1: course is meaningless language. But Mark Alpern writes of this
Speaker 1: today in his newsletter. If Trump hass to negotiate the
Speaker 1: final details with Zelenski in the room right before the
Speaker 1: pack is signed, he's fine with that, But as important
Speaker 1: as the US Ukraine agreement is, keep your eyes on
Speaker 1: the real prize, which is the US Russia deal. Trump
Speaker 1: is sequencing all this to position himself to drive a
Speaker 1: harder bargain with Putin, much harder than many people seem
Speaker 1: to realize.
Speaker 2: Rights Mark Alprin m.
Speaker 4: We will see, Yeah, the whole Uh, what can we
Speaker 4: offer Putin? To what extent can we pry him from China?
Speaker 4: Is there anything we can offer? How is an agreement
Speaker 4: going to be enforced? That is such a kettle of fish?
Speaker 4: These are question marks piled on question marks.
Speaker 1: Although yesterday in that press conference Cabinet meeting thingy, Trump
Speaker 1: made some noises out, well, if we're invested in the
Speaker 1: minerals and we got people and trucks in there, then
Speaker 1: I mean that's some.
Speaker 2: Security right there.
Speaker 1: Isn't because nobody's going to mess with our stuff, Trump said,
Speaker 1: which I think might be true explicitly or not. Armstrong
Speaker 1: and Getty, we need to.
Speaker 2: Change the conversation.
Speaker 6: And that's why I'm launching a new podcast, and this
Speaker 6: is going to be anything but the ordinary politician podcast.
Speaker 6: I'm going to be talking to people directly that I
Speaker 6: disagree with as well as people I look up to. Look,
Speaker 6: there's an onslaught of information that we take in, So
Speaker 6: let's take it to the sources without the typical political
Speaker 6: mumbo jumble. In the first few weeks, we're going to
Speaker 6: be sitting down with some of the biggest leaders and
Speaker 6: architects in the Mega movement.
Speaker 1: That's a Gavin Newsom, maybe you don't recognize voice governor California.
Speaker 1: He's got a site set on being the nominee for
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party in someday president of the United States.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great idea his new podcast. As
Speaker 1: we know, as we are in the business, it's all
Speaker 1: in the execution, and we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 4: Right. Indeed, he got credit for sparring with Ron DeSantis
Speaker 4: on Hannity's show, and he obviously fancies that if he's
Speaker 4: seen as the brave defender of progressive values against the
Speaker 4: mean old mega people, it will vault him into, you know,
Speaker 4: the presidential race. As I've said many times, I hope
Speaker 4: he runs because his humiliation will be delicious to observe.
Speaker 4: If indeed there is a God for a number of reasons,
Speaker 4: including as any cal Unicornian knows, pouring billions and billions
Speaker 4: of dollars into so called homeless programs, and not only
Speaker 4: without any accountability, without even a mechanism for accountability, there
Speaker 4: was no mechanism for even asking is any of this
Speaker 4: stuff doing any good?
Speaker 2: But it is enormous scandal and the bullet train.
Speaker 1: Of course, first of all, Hanson, I don't know if
Speaker 1: anybody knows that is he is this going to be
Speaker 1: a like every weekday or once a month, or do
Speaker 1: we have any idea on how often he's doing his podcast?
Speaker 2: Unknown?
Speaker 4: Perhaps weekly huh, yeah, yeah, it's got to be a
Speaker 4: periodic thing. But I just wanted to mention Gavy and
Speaker 4: the homeless thing to get us into the next discussion,
Speaker 4: and I mentioned I think it was yesterday the Biden
Speaker 4: EPA on the way out the door announced that it
Speaker 4: had selected an organization named Young Gifted and Green that
Speaker 4: was run by Latricia Adams, who was simultaneously serving as
Speaker 4: a member of the top White House Advisory Council. But
Speaker 4: twenty million dollars to Young Gifted and Green. How sweet
Speaker 4: a name is that under it so called Environmental and
Speaker 4: Climate Justice community change program.
Speaker 1: God, some people get thrilled when they hear names like
Speaker 1: that I hold onto my wallet and think what a
Speaker 1: wasted time and money as soon as I.
Speaker 2: Hear anything with those words.
Speaker 4: If we had more time, we could play a game
Speaker 4: where Jack would name like, I don't know, spending uh
Speaker 4: fifty thousand dollars on sail boats sail repairs, and then
Speaker 4: I would have to justify that within environmental and climate
Speaker 4: justice community change programs, which could mean anything.
Speaker 2: The point is to dole out as.
Speaker 4: Horrific amounts of money to your cronies always, which brings
Speaker 4: us to this city journal doing a really good story.
Speaker 4: Interesting is Longish but Son John Friedman. Urban Anarchy, a
Speaker 4: San Francisco's nonprofits rise, illustrates the unaccountable growth of homeless services.
Speaker 4: And this is about the so called homeless industrial complex,
Speaker 4: which is not probably a big deal in some places.
Speaker 4: It's a ginormous deal in Blue states and ambition in California.
Speaker 4: And they focus on this group Urban Alchemy, a San
Speaker 4: Francisco based homeless services non profit. They mentioned once you
Speaker 4: notice Urban Alchemy employees on the street corners, clad in
Speaker 4: their signature camouflage pans and high visibility vests, you'll start
Speaker 4: seeing them everywhere. They patrol subway stations, downtown staff, public
Speaker 4: toilets and libraries, sweep streets, mill round homeless shelters.
Speaker 2: In the morning, they watch silently.
Speaker 4: Is the local night market, an informal gathering of junkies,
Speaker 4: drug dealers, and stolen goods vendors disperses for the day.
Speaker 4: They're not security guards or police officers. They're actually, interestingly,
Speaker 4: almost all ex convicts who allegedly that gives them well.
Speaker 4: On its website, Urban Alchemy believes that quote the trauma
Speaker 4: of long term incarceration compels individuals to undergo inner work
Speaker 4: that transforms the self, equipping them with extraordinary emotional intelligence
Speaker 4: and leadership skills, and uniquely qualifying them to connect with
Speaker 4: the most marginalized in our society. That last part I'm
Speaker 4: willing to buy, at least partially. But the idea that
Speaker 4: you've got to be incarcerated for a long time to
Speaker 4: really get the wisdom you need to deal with lise
Speaker 4: so bizarre an ocean. But here's the point of all this.
Speaker 4: I just want to explain who these people are. At
Speaker 4: his founding in twenty eighteen, Urban Alchemy's annual revenue was
Speaker 4: thirty five thousand dollars. To do what they wanted to do.
Speaker 4: Gleaned mainly from contracts to operate public toilets. Today that
Speaker 4: figure exceeds Brace yourselves, seventy million dollars.
Speaker 2: Seventy million.
Speaker 4: I was expecting a big number, but wow, stemming largely
Speaker 4: from government contracts to perform a range of additional public services,
Speaker 4: including running homeless shelters, cleaning streets, de escalating non urgent
Speaker 4: street conflicts across seven cities nationwide. And you just know,
Speaker 4: whenever they're throwing money around with these things, you could
Speaker 4: show up and say, hey, I've got a plan me
Speaker 4: and my buddies for de escalating street conflicts.
Speaker 2: We both I don't know.
Speaker 1: He has a master's in philosophy, whatever you coint.
Speaker 4: He's marginalized in a person of color, which makes him
Speaker 4: obviously an expert. Yes, writer, he lived on the street
Speaker 4: for a while, So give us five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: and we will dedicate our time.
Speaker 2: It'd be so easy to grab onto chunks of this money.
Speaker 2: You just know it would be. There are a number
Speaker 2: of aspects of this that are super interesting.
Speaker 4: Here's one of them. How did they go to a
Speaker 4: seventy million dollar organization? Most immediate explanation is Progressive America's
Speaker 4: fatish interest in alternatives to policing after George Floyd. Though
Speaker 4: Urban Alchemy's employees are neither licensed to security guards and
Speaker 4: are properly accredited in crisis management, They've been contracted to
Speaker 4: respond to non emergency nine one one and three one
Speaker 4: one homeless related calls in certain neighborhoods San Francisco and LA,
Speaker 4: and run sanctioned homeless encoumpments in Portland the Broader Bay
Speaker 4: area San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, things often go awry. UA employees
Speaker 4: have shot and been shot, dealt drugs, sexually assaulted clients
Speaker 4: on the job, and there is scant hard evidence that
Speaker 4: their street psychology based interventions have improved public safety at all. Shocking, and,
Speaker 4: as they write in City Journal, Urban Alchemy is a
Speaker 4: case study in the expansion of the multi billion dollar
Speaker 4: homeless services industry. Most of us are now familiar with
Speaker 4: the phrase homeless industrial complex and the fact that increased
Speaker 4: investment in our unhoused neighbors seems to only beget worse outcomes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I've been saying this for years.
Speaker 1: Show me an example of a homeless program that doesn't
Speaker 1: result in more.
Speaker 4: Homeless people, right, Yeah, yeah, on paper, urban alchemy. It
Speaker 4: does not police the homeless. It goes in and runs
Speaker 4: things in ds blah bamah. We described that this model
Speaker 4: often leads to subpar results, to put it generously on
Speaker 4: the ground, both for UA employees and their clients. In
Speaker 4: sas Alito, a wealthy Marine county town that's brought the
Speaker 4: organization into work in several city sanctioned homeless camps. They're
Speaker 4: not homeless camps. By the way, Transient drug addict is
Speaker 4: a much more accurate right, if.
Speaker 1: You're worried about being homeless, why in the hell would
Speaker 1: you live in Sasilito, California, one of the most expensive
Speaker 1: little tiny plots of land on earth? Right, Good lord,
Speaker 1: I know very few people in my entire life who
Speaker 1: could afford to live in Sacelito, California.
Speaker 4: But Jack, if I were a transient drug addict, why
Speaker 4: would I want to live in Sasolito?
Speaker 1: Because they're going to hand out money to you, and
Speaker 1: the weather's nice and it's incredibly pleasant. Yeah, the views
Speaker 1: are magnificent. I can't afford to live there, and I
Speaker 1: got a lot of money.
Speaker 4: Anyway, where were we In sauce Alito, they run several
Speaker 4: city sanctioned drug addict camps for the San Francisco Standard.
Speaker 4: Homeless residents alleged that UA practitioners ran a criminal syndicate
Speaker 4: that involved trafficking crystal meth in the camps and sleeping
Speaker 4: with and is physically assaulting residents. There's an ongoing federal
Speaker 4: rico lawsuit, and you know, we will post the link
Speaker 4: to this if you want to read it. It's great journalism.
Speaker 4: It goes into a great deal of depth. It names
Speaker 4: a bunch of names who set them up with the
Speaker 4: contracts and how it worked. But the tens of millions
Speaker 4: of dollars just to this organization, and the billions and
Speaker 4: billions of dollars that are being squandered in the blue
Speaker 4: left coast of America just breathtaking.
Speaker 2: But and this is.
Speaker 4: Bless one oh one, and you're probably fully up on this.
Speaker 4: I apologize for insulting your intelligence. But if you can
Speaker 4: attach even the thinnest of feel good rationales for it,
Speaker 4: the good decent people of America say, wow, these poor
Speaker 4: people are homeless because housing is high. I heard, and
Speaker 4: they just had one medical bill they couldn't pay, and
Speaker 4: now they're homeless, and so this is good that the
Speaker 4: people who actually pay taxes, their dollars are being confiscated
Speaker 4: and given to these poor homeless people. It sounds good.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can dig like an inch deep and
Speaker 4: you realize what a load of crap it is. And
Speaker 4: to get back to how we introduced it, you go
Speaker 4: to the average soft headed American who doesn't pay attention.
Speaker 4: Maybe they're busy, maybe they're dumb, and those are two
Speaker 4: very different things, right, right, right. I know people who
Speaker 4: are brilliant, they make me look like a dog, but
Speaker 4: they're busy with business or whatever, and they don't really
Speaker 4: pay attention to politics.
Speaker 2: And that's fine.
Speaker 4: I get that, although you know, James Madison Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 4: would say it's not fine at all.
Speaker 2: You're a citizen. You need to be responsible anyway.
Speaker 4: Tangent on a tangent, you can easily picture soft heads
Speaker 4: of reasonably good conscience responding to the group young, Gifted
Speaker 4: and Green spending twenty million dollars on environmental and climate
Speaker 4: justice and community change.
Speaker 2: That all sounds so good. But that's the scam, friends,
Speaker 2: that's the scam. God, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've always been struck right away by the people who
Speaker 1: are homeless in really nice areas of the country because
Speaker 1: I've lived in lots of crappy places, cheap towns or
Speaker 1: crappy apartments because there's all I can afford. I would
Speaker 1: love to have lived over there, but I couldn't afford it.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why. The first thought when you've got
Speaker 1: someone homeless and sauce Alito is.
Speaker 2: Go somewhere cheaper.
Speaker 1: It's like a shopping at saxophonth Avenue and saying I
Speaker 1: can't afford any shoes. Well, then we need to come
Speaker 1: up with the programs you can afford shoes as supposed
Speaker 1: saying go to Target.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, great square, but they have much cheaper
Speaker 4: shoes over there. Yeah, yeah, I had another thought. It
Speaker 4: flitted right out of my head. That's a good metaphor, though.
Speaker 2: And uh steal man this for me.
Speaker 1: Your Gavin Newsom doing the podcast and I ask why
Speaker 1: why does your state have half the homeless people in
Speaker 1: the entire country?
Speaker 2: And what would his response be.
Speaker 4: Eh, the high housing costs of California restrictive zoning, which
Speaker 4: we're working to overcome high medical costs brought about by Republicans,
Speaker 4: and we're taking this challenge head on.
Speaker 2: He's really good at that.
Speaker 4: He's really good at pretending that that Democrat progressive policies
Speaker 4: which have brought the night Mayor of crime, junkies, the
Speaker 4: rest of it on the Blue States of the left coast,
Speaker 4: that they felt like rain. He woke up one day
Speaker 4: and it was there, and he is bravely confronting.
Speaker 2: It like the hero he is. That's his thing, that's
Speaker 2: his trademark.
Speaker 4: Oh and the thought that flitted out of my head,
Speaker 4: I remember this, and I just I've got to do
Speaker 4: a touchdown dance. So obviously, as a show that's been
Speaker 4: based in northern California for many, many years, we were
Speaker 4: very early to the junkie camp homeless industrial complex story.
Speaker 4: And I remember distinctly when Jack and I would talk
Speaker 4: to people who were like recovering drug addicts and had
Speaker 4: spent time in the junkie camps and would come to
Speaker 4: us and say, dudes, it's eighty percent of it's just junkies,
Speaker 4: and a lot of them are from other places that
Speaker 4: came because the benefits are so great and it's so easy.
Speaker 4: You never get arrested, You get food, you get clothing,
Speaker 4: you get syringes, you get everything.
Speaker 2: These people have come from all over the country.
Speaker 4: The activists and the progressive government people would sternly say
Speaker 4: to us, that's not true. These are poor and unfortunate
Speaker 4: people who live here who have been marginalized by the system. Well,
Speaker 4: now it's becoming utterly clear, and nobody's even bothering to
Speaker 4: deny it anymore. That where you have you know, what
Speaker 4: was the name of the organization. We were just talking
Speaker 4: about this group, Urban Alchemy, And you have tens of
Speaker 4: millions of dollars being poured into the junkie camps, and
Speaker 4: more and more junkies every day. There is almost not
Speaker 4: an exception of that rule. They always grow, That's all
Speaker 4: they do is grow. It is clearly people flocking there
Speaker 4: to enjoy how easy and comfortable it is to be
Speaker 4: a junkie in those places.
Speaker 2: Period.
Speaker 1: So at Columbia, you know university, the whack job pro
Speaker 1: terrorist college students took over a building again yesterday and
Speaker 1: with a bunch of demands and the chants and whatnot.
Speaker 2: We like to hear people's chants.
Speaker 4: The old demand and chant isnt all that's the old playbook, Jack.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll get to that in an hour. Three.
Speaker 1: We've also got a late night joke off at some plate.
Speaker 1: I hope you can stick around.
Speaker 7: Shop authorities sounding the alarm after multiple freight train robberies
Speaker 7: targeting shipments of Nike sneakers in remote areas of the
Speaker 7: Desert Southwest. The most recent heist January thirteenth and parent
Speaker 7: Arizona thieves allegedly using this box truck, grabbing nearly two
Speaker 7: thousand pairs of brand new, unreleased Nike sneakers worth four
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars. Thanks to tracking devices inside some of
Speaker 7: the cargo, eleven people were arrested.
Speaker 2: They get on it, they.
Speaker 6: Cut a brake line, stop that train, and it's basically
Speaker 6: a shopper's delight.
Speaker 7: At least ten heists since last March, netting more than
Speaker 7: two million dollars in stolen Nikes. Authorities say criminal gangs
Speaker 7: linked to the Sinaloa cartel are behind the thefts.
Speaker 1: Wow, I wasn't ready for that twist. At the end,
Speaker 1: it to Mexican drug cartels the key word in that
Speaker 1: whole thing, because my son is A is a sneaker yunkie, unreleased.
Speaker 1: So the unreleased Nikes, man, those things go on sale,
Speaker 1: they sell out immediately, and they're on eBay for two, three, five,
Speaker 1: fifteen times what they cost if you can get them
Speaker 1: originally when Nike releases them.
Speaker 2: So those unreleased shows, you can make a lot of
Speaker 2: money on those.
Speaker 4: The cartels are absolutely operating in the United States now
Speaker 4: at a high level.
Speaker 1: So next hour Columbia students idiots took over a building yesterday,
Speaker 1: had demands and the administration bowed to them as they
Speaker 1: usually do.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous and you've got to hear their chanting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some of the chanting is extra stupid.
Speaker 1: And oh and if you maybe you I hate to
Speaker 1: say fell for it because it makes it seem like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you fall for something, you're a you know,
Speaker 1: you're a dupe or dumb or naive or something.
Speaker 2: In the world of AI, we're all going to fall
Speaker 2: for things all the time.
Speaker 1: You need to come up with a different term that
Speaker 1: doesn't have any you know, negative prejudice to it, because
Speaker 1: we're all going to get fooled by AI.
Speaker 2: In all kinds of different ways. Yeah, yep, agreed.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Don Junior clip that was floating around yesterday and
Speaker 1: we'll play that for you in hour three. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: going to read it. Dear Abbey and Joe can react
Speaker 1: to a joke Joe's big. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: like Katie. Do you know what Dear Abbey is? I
Speaker 1: don't know how long? When when did Dear Abbey have
Speaker 1: its main traction? I don't know when Dear Abby went
Speaker 1: out of style. Used to be you get your daily newspaper,
Speaker 1: made on actual paper, out on the drive. You don't know,
Speaker 1: Dear Abby, you got it was an advice column, and
Speaker 1: it was like you'd call in with your problems of
Speaker 1: my mom meets with her mouth open and it drives
Speaker 1: me crazy and I don't know what to do. Dear
Speaker 1: Abby tell me what to do, And then Dear Abbey
Speaker 1: would write, well, try to have a conversation with your
Speaker 1: mother where you both can keep your tempers and come
Speaker 1: to a reasonable agreement. Yeah, it was from the fairly
Speaker 1: silly and light too sometimes fairly serious problem. I don't
Speaker 1: know who writes to your issued advice Caline. I don't
Speaker 1: know who writes Dear Abbey anymore. But here's one I
Speaker 1: came across in the New York Post. Dear Abby, I've
Speaker 1: been in a relationship with someone for eleven months. We
Speaker 1: were both each other's first relationship after being single for
Speaker 1: a few years following traumatic breakups.
Speaker 2: I was like that he had a traumatic breakup.
Speaker 1: All breakups are traumatic, with very very rare exceptions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 1: During our entire relationship, he has not cut his hair,
Speaker 1: left his house, or socialized with anyone besides me except
Speaker 1: via text.
Speaker 2: He doesn't visit me, but he always leaves his door
Speaker 2: open to me.
Speaker 1: We've discussed going out, but he always finds a reason
Speaker 1: to stay inside. After a while, I realized these were
Speaker 1: just excuses. He says he loves me, but he will
Speaker 1: not leave the house.
Speaker 4: What should I do, Dear Abby, find a boyfriend who's
Speaker 4: not an agoraphobic hermit.
Speaker 2: I feel sorry for that.
Speaker 1: Usually that that was always my reaction to any dear
Speaker 1: Yavy column was feeling sorry for the person who wrote
Speaker 1: the letter. You don't know what to do in this situation.
Speaker 1: You got to find a different boyfriend. He's a crazy person. Well,
Speaker 1: and you got to ask a newspaper columnist. I mean,
Speaker 1: they get like thousands of letters, so you get a
Speaker 1: one in a thousand chance of any answer whatsoever.
Speaker 2: And this is plan A. You're just gonna date the
Speaker 2: guy who never leaves his house. Armstrong and Getty