Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty arm Strong
Speaker 1: and Jetty and now he Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 2: Were just under forty eight hours until the first votes
Speaker 2: are cast. The most powerful men of the Catholic Church
Speaker 2: are focusing their minds and mostly keeping their silence.
Speaker 1: Eminence. Hello, what I said? How is today's meeting? Eminence?
Speaker 1: How is today's meeting?
Speaker 2: It's the daily dance of the cardinals and the journalists.
Speaker 1: But the countdown is on.
Speaker 3: How many of these journalists give a crap who the
Speaker 3: next pope is?
Speaker 1: And I don't know, they're told to go cover it. I
Speaker 1: guess is this touch with this?
Speaker 3: I feel like I care more about the Catholic Church
Speaker 3: than the average person I know, and I'm not hanging
Speaker 3: on every moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not contemptuous of it, but like, I don't
Speaker 1: care who wins the NBA Final, but people enjoy it,
Speaker 1: so that's okay.
Speaker 3: I do care who's the NBA Final. I'm rooting for
Speaker 3: the next I think, assuming the Warriors. I'm a Warrior
Speaker 3: band wagon wagon jumper, fake fan, That's what I say.
Speaker 3: In the brunts and jersey today, you're the pope a
Speaker 3: bandwagon jumpin' Well, I was I gonna say, but it's
Speaker 3: got a bit of a combination of the met Gala
Speaker 3: and royal family in terms of covering it, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It's just that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, certainly the
Speaker 1: direction doctrine wise of the Catholic Church going forward has
Speaker 1: significance to mankind. I just definitely I don't have the
Speaker 1: bandwidth to understand who these people are and root for
Speaker 1: one thing or another. Just let me know who you
Speaker 1: choose to be pope and I'll go from there. I
Speaker 1: thought this was funny, though funny interesting. ABC News last
Speaker 1: night was breathless and taking it one hundred percent seriously
Speaker 1: and looking desperately for clues in the next Climichael.
Speaker 2: But the Archbishop of Jakarta, Indonesia did stop to offer
Speaker 2: a clue. He's one of the one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: three cardinals who will choose the next pope.
Speaker 1: What kind of leader would you like? You can't hear
Speaker 1: the rest of it. He's murmuring, but he's saying, Francis's
Speaker 1: name has come up many times. What does that mean? Simplicity?
Speaker 1: Simplicity of doctrine of lifestyle and then he wandered off
Speaker 1: and ABC News they teased like four times a clue
Speaker 1: from one of the archbishops. I just thought the whole
Speaker 1: thing was a little overcooked. And I believe they overegged
Speaker 1: the pudding.
Speaker 3: And if you found out today who the Pope was
Speaker 3: going to be two days before they announced it, what
Speaker 3: would you do with that information?
Speaker 1: And markets I'd attempt to profit coming up some hilarious
Speaker 1: and bizarre historical notes from the conclaves back in history.
Speaker 1: But first, what about the pope meme put out by
Speaker 1: the White House? S Dounnell J. Trump in Pope garb
Speaker 1: Ai generated? What of that? Ninety three? Michael, Yes, ma'am,
Speaker 1: thank you Cathic. We're not so happy about the image
Speaker 1: of you looking like the Pope. Oh I see.
Speaker 3: You mean they can't take a joke. You don't mean
Speaker 3: the Catholics, you mean the fake news media, not.
Speaker 1: The Catholics loved it. I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3: Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the
Speaker 3: Pope and they put it out on the internet.
Speaker 1: That's not me that did it. I have no idea
Speaker 1: where it came from. Maybe it was Ai maybe yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just silly. Okay, we're outraged or pretending to be anyway,
Speaker 1: because yeah, there are various Catholic officials and said I
Speaker 1: didn't think that was appropriate, and some have said that
Speaker 1: was really funny. So we're fine. The world is fine.
Speaker 1: We have like one thousand and seventy seven bigger problems
Speaker 1: than that. Why don't we concentrate on those? I thought
Speaker 1: this was amazing looking back to you yesteryear, and when
Speaker 1: I'm talking really yesteryear. The year twelve sixty eight, jack, Wow.
Speaker 1: The conclave in the town of Faturbo near Rome was
Speaker 1: the longest in history. The cardinals were bitterly divided over
Speaker 1: the next pope. The Italian prelates wanted an Italian pope,
Speaker 1: the French wanted a Frenchman, and neither side budged for
Speaker 1: nearly three years. Wow. So to break the deadlock, the
Speaker 1: local population I guess they were sick of all the
Speaker 1: cardinals in town or something, sucking up the good hotel
Speaker 1: rooms and crowding the restaurants, like having the Super Bowl
Speaker 1: in your town for three straight years. I don't know.
Speaker 1: They locked the cardinals in the hall of the papal palace,
Speaker 1: reduced their diet to bread and water, and bricked up
Speaker 1: all the windows. That's the way they even Oh, they
Speaker 1: even removed the roof, which they said was to allow
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit direct access, but in truth was to
Speaker 1: expose all the cardinals to the elements, so they'd be
Speaker 1: so miserable they'd come to a damned decision. That conclave
Speaker 1: was the longest in history, and it actually gave papal
Speaker 1: elections their modern name comclave Latin for with key. Well,
Speaker 1: back meeting, you're not coming out of there until we
Speaker 1: let you.
Speaker 3: Back in the day, though, who the pope was and
Speaker 3: from what country, and that carried so much important economical, political, political,
Speaker 3: and military power.
Speaker 1: I mean it was, you know, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: That's not the case now. So the eventual winner, Pope
Speaker 1: Gregory the tenth, sought to avoid a repeat by imposing
Speaker 1: some ground rules that still governed conclaves today from the
Speaker 1: year twelve sixty well seventy one, I guess, including strict seclusion,
Speaker 1: daily voting, and some degree of discomfort and roof. This
Speaker 1: is not going to be one of those junkets like
Speaker 1: your local political hacks go on to Hawaii where they
Speaker 1: go to like one meeting a day for an hour
Speaker 1: and spend the rest of the time on the beach. No,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of the opposite. A couple more tales
Speaker 1: from history from the book behind Locked Door is a
Speaker 1: history of papal elections. Let's see, that's only mildly interesting.
Speaker 1: In early Christianity, this election of the Bishop of Rome
Speaker 1: was a fluid process, often involving local clergy, powerful notables,
Speaker 1: and popular acclaim. Cardinals didn't even exist until the eleventh century.
Speaker 1: Initially there were only twelve of them. I tell you
Speaker 1: what one thing to know, because there is power in
Speaker 1: the papacy, whether it's you know, it's kind of the
Speaker 1: modern version, which is still pretty significant, or the more
Speaker 1: ancient version, which was ginormous power political, financial, economic, et CETERA.
Speaker 1: First conclave in the Sistine Chapel took place in fourteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, the year Christopher Columbus launched the debut election
Speaker 1: in the chapel, marred by scandal. Jack Pope Alexander, the
Speaker 1: sixth member of the wealthy Borgia family, known for his
Speaker 1: lavish lifestyle and many children Wait a minute, many children, yeah,
Speaker 1: secured his election by bribing fellow cardinals with land money,
Speaker 1: and lucrative positions in the Vatican's bureaucracy. There you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh anyway, uh so oh one more note. After
Speaker 1: the Assistine Chapel became the fixed setting for conclaves, cardinals
Speaker 1: shared sleeping quarters in what used to be Alexander the
Speaker 1: Fourth's Fresco department in the Vatican. It was not comfortable.
Speaker 1: It's mean he has six cardinals shared a room with
Speaker 1: makeshift partitions for privacy, bathrooms were few, and cardinals were
Speaker 1: given commode chairs essentially wooden potties to keep next to
Speaker 1: their beds. It's a seat with a hole. When cardinals
Speaker 1: were voting in the Sistine Chapel, staff were coming to
Speaker 1: clean and prepare the rooms for the day after clean
Speaker 1: and dumping their their their bed pots or what any
Speaker 1: of chamber pots. Holy it was a very hot year.
Speaker 1: Let's just say they didn't enjoy staying in these rooms,
Speaker 1: said the historian. You you is right, Jack. At least
Speaker 1: they're not locking them in a church and breaking up
Speaker 1: all the windows, taking the road. You're staying in there
Speaker 1: for you anyway, There you have the conclave, which is
Speaker 1: apparently going on now or something. Wake me when it's over.
Speaker 3: A combination of the Met Gala and the royal family
Speaker 3: and the Kardashians.
Speaker 1: You know, I did actually scroll through the inevitable New
Speaker 1: York Times incredibly long photo gallery of the Met Gala.
Speaker 1: I am horribly embarrassed and connected and celebrities go do
Speaker 1: what they do whatever. It was horribly embarrassed to say
Speaker 1: that I did the same. I can't.
Speaker 3: And while I was doing it, I thought, why are
Speaker 3: you thumbing through pictures of people you don't even know
Speaker 3: who they are to see what they wore, which you
Speaker 3: don't care about, to an event you despise. Why are
Speaker 3: you doing this? But I did it anyway.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the show, I compared it to the capitol
Speaker 1: in the Hunger Games movies, and Jack has not seen those.
Speaker 1: Number one, absolutely appropriate for your teenage boys. It's shockingly
Speaker 1: brutal for a PG thirteen movie. It's not horribly graphic,
Speaker 1: but the themes are very, very mature. It's about a republic,
Speaker 1: if you will and stop me if this sounds familiar, friends,
Speaker 1: a republic where the capital has become so rich and
Speaker 1: so isolated from the lives of normal people. It's become
Speaker 1: utterly divorced from them. Abusive of them exploits their riches,
Speaker 1: and the people, the denizens of that capital, dress an
Speaker 1: incredibly elaborate showy self regarding fashion and congratulate each other
Speaker 1: for being a superior race of human beings. Again, if
Speaker 1: that sounds oddly familiar, I'll give you a second and
Speaker 1: make the connection in your own brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's what's interesting about something like the met galawhich,
Speaker 3: of course, happens in New York City. So New York City,
Speaker 3: which is as lefty and progressive as you can get
Speaker 3: as a city in America. And you know, AOC got
Speaker 3: so much attention for eat the rich on her dress
Speaker 3: at the metal. They aren't doing this in Omaha. They
Speaker 3: aren't dressing up like this and owing and aweing over
Speaker 3: who's there and in their clothes. They're doing it in
Speaker 3: the progressive town. Doesn't that strike you as odd that
Speaker 3: you're fawning over, you know, conspicuous consumption and wealth and
Speaker 3: fame in your progressive areas where they don't do it
Speaker 3: in the conservative Doesn't that seem backwards to you somehow?
Speaker 1: Well, it all to you, But they're utterly without, you know,
Speaker 1: self perception. Progressivism wants to gather as much power as
Speaker 1: it conceivably can, and then direct everything. Who gets into schools,
Speaker 1: how the economy works, who can say what, who gets
Speaker 1: to keep their job, who teaches at my university. We
Speaker 1: want to control everything absolutely.
Speaker 3: I started reading Joonah Goldberg's book from years ago, Liberal Fascism,
Speaker 3: last night, and that's exactly what he talks about. Fascism
Speaker 3: is way more of a left thing than it is
Speaker 3: a right thing. How it got tagged is a right thing?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, you know, there's a great quote.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's Ein rand Er, somebody
Speaker 1: quoting her, thinking that the difference between communism and fascism
Speaker 1: is absolutely negligible. They both believe in subjugating the individual
Speaker 1: rights of human beings to serve the state, which is
Speaker 1: always the party in charge those with power there. You know,
Speaker 1: they have like interesting doctrinal differences, but to the average
Speaker 1: human being being trampled, those doctrinal differences don't amount to
Speaker 1: a hill of beans. It's all about exploiting the working
Speaker 1: people and trampling on individual rights.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the main points early is that the
Speaker 3: term fascism is almost useless. So here we are throwing
Speaker 3: it around much to come stay here.
Speaker 4: And finally, a Brazilian nun died last week, just several
Speaker 4: weeks shy of our one hundred and seventeenth birthday.
Speaker 1: There's a lesson for everyone there. Always pack your own shoot.
Speaker 3: Funny, it would be a dying joke there, Michael, because
Speaker 3: that's what I was going to talk about, is I
Speaker 3: don't think I'm going to reach my next birthday with
Speaker 3: this disease I've got. I'm a sickly man and I'm
Speaker 3: not long for this world. Actually got some texts from
Speaker 3: people who have got this or they've got family members
Speaker 3: who gotten it, and I hope this is some news
Speaker 3: you can use rather than me just complaining about being.
Speaker 1: Sick for so long.
Speaker 3: There's some sort of cold something going around that lasts
Speaker 3: way longer than these things usually.
Speaker 1: At last, we like, we got this text. This is
Speaker 1: for Jack.
Speaker 3: I'm a healthy woman, rarely sick, but I've had the
Speaker 3: same thing that you have. It's taken me seven weeks
Speaker 3: for my cough to leave. The doctor said the cough
Speaker 3: with last six to eight weeks. He was right, wow,
Speaker 3: And the doctors told me, and the doctors are struggling
Speaker 3: with it because everybody's naturally, you know, calling them up
Speaker 3: after a month or a month and a half and saying,
Speaker 3: what's the.
Speaker 1: Deal, Why do I still feel so crappy?
Speaker 3: And Doctor's having to say it's just something that's going
Speaker 3: around that takes like two months to kick.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what to do with that information.
Speaker 1: The Uri Djore upper respiratory infection. Is doctor Fauci behind it?
Speaker 1: Has he been working in some secret lab in the
Speaker 1: congo or something gain a function.
Speaker 3: I haven't read a word about this, and I'm surprised
Speaker 3: I haven't. It's that it's not some mutant strain of
Speaker 3: something that combined with something, or our immune systems got
Speaker 3: affected or something. Doesn't seem odd that all of a
Speaker 3: sudden we've got some two month cold that is hanging around.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like anything else I've ever had in
Speaker 3: my life. Yeah, we got on the topic of last
Speaker 3: words earlier, as I think I might. I was worried
Speaker 3: that I'm going to die during the show and my
Speaker 3: last words are going to be coming up next details
Speaker 3: from the Diddy trial, and then I'll die and those
Speaker 3: will be my last words.
Speaker 1: Right That would be humiliating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of people's last words are similar to
Speaker 3: that in that they weren't expecting. You know, some people
Speaker 3: have last words laying in bed, knowing they're likely to
Speaker 3: be their last words, and they're often very profound or
Speaker 3: touching or interesting or whatever.
Speaker 1: And actually or whether those were actually the last ones,
Speaker 1: or if you just agreed with your good bodies, can
Speaker 1: you say these are my last words? I'll bet that
Speaker 1: happens a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is fine because a lot of the last words,
Speaker 3: at least on this list that I'm looking to, or
Speaker 3: just the last thing you said, Like Benjamin Franklin said
Speaker 3: something about I can't get it comfortable in no matter
Speaker 3: what I try to do, you know, something like that
Speaker 3: his daughter roll over on his side, and I can't
Speaker 3: get comfortable no matter how I lay. Well, that's not
Speaker 3: a good last word from one of the great wordsmiths
Speaker 3: of all time. Agreed, Yeah, Or you get to choose
Speaker 3: not literally your last word. That's a silly you know,
Speaker 3: I think about it at my advanced stage.
Speaker 1: That's just a silly way to silly thing to even
Speaker 1: call it. How about you last message? Yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: more sense. Yeah, I mean common. You could be Abraham
Speaker 1: Damn Lincoln and your last words might be I need
Speaker 1: to pee. I mean, Ryan, what that's going to echo
Speaker 1: through the ages? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, did I already mention the one one of your
Speaker 3: great thinkers who said dying is boring? I think that
Speaker 3: was George Orwell dying is boring, which I'm.
Speaker 1: Sure it is.
Speaker 3: I like this one from some murderer that got the
Speaker 3: firing squad. Here's probably a horrible person. They said, do
Speaker 3: you have any last words? He said, bring me a
Speaker 3: bulletproof vest. I'm here all night. Well for the next
Speaker 3: five minutes.
Speaker 1: I salute you in hell wherever you are, sir. That's funny. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: coming up a couple of governmental issues that I am
Speaker 1: going to work diligently to make not dry, not overly dry.
Speaker 1: Number one, the air traffic control system in our country
Speaker 1: is an embarrassment. Needs to be fixed, and to its credit,
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is going to try like hell to
Speaker 1: fix it. Also, if you think you understand what medicaid is, weld, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the medical aid program for the poor. You
Speaker 1: have no idea. It is a gigantic scam, which we
Speaker 1: will explain I'm thinking during our three of the show.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason it's important to know that
Speaker 1: is that as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress
Speaker 1: are trying to fix it, they will be accused over
Speaker 1: and over again of trying to balance the budget on
Speaker 1: the back of the poor and take away people's medicaid benefits,
Speaker 1: when that is the polar opposite of what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do. That's frustrating. Oh yeah, yeah. Democracy is a
Speaker 1: terrible system. It can't work.
Speaker 3: What's going on with Ukraine and Russia. There's the latest
Speaker 3: turn on that. Man I Trump is sending him some
Speaker 3: of the most advanced air defense systems from Israel to Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Now that's interesting, It is interesting. Don't I have no
Speaker 3: idea what's going on behind the scenes on that. Neither's
Speaker 3: anybody else. Anyway, We've got a lot on the way.
Speaker 1: Stay here, Armstrong and Getty growing.
Speaker 5: Alarm at Noork's Liberty Airport tonight, ABC News learning air
Speaker 5: traffic controllers lost radar and communications with planes packed with
Speaker 5: passengers for sixty to ninety seconds last week. A system
Speaker 5: wide outage last Monday at a Philadelphia facility that manages
Speaker 5: the airspace around Newark Airport caused controllers to lose the
Speaker 5: ability to see, hear, or talk to all arriving and
Speaker 5: departing aircraft at one of the busiest airports in the country.
Speaker 1: Ninety seconds is a long time. Yeah, really shocking. A
Speaker 1: one more note on how it unfolded next clip. Then
Speaker 1: we'll discuss pilots can be heard learning of the outage
Speaker 1: over the radio. I discusshold it approach loss. All the radars.
Speaker 1: Three of the core radar screens wet black, and they have.
Speaker 5: No frequency controllers from another tower advising pilots that radio frequencies.
Speaker 1: Have failed, and they want you to be advising. They
Speaker 1: may not be able to raid our contact to you
Speaker 1: because of the radar issues, and they may lose you
Speaker 1: on for certain times of when you're applying. I have
Speaker 1: a handful of friends and neighbors who are frequent flyers,
Speaker 1: business people, and we have agreed number one, air travel
Speaker 1: is degenerated significantly in its pleasantness over the last you
Speaker 1: know number of years.
Speaker 3: Luckily that I won't have to deal with it anymore
Speaker 3: because I didn't get the real ID, so it'll no
Speaker 3: longer be.
Speaker 1: A problem for me. Hey, it's the curse, that's a
Speaker 1: blessing exactly.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 1: And we've also agreed that even when it goes well,
Speaker 1: it goes poorly right the air travel these days. So
Speaker 1: I thought this was really interesting. I mean, putting aside
Speaker 1: that incident, which is terrible, We'll not putting it aside.
Speaker 1: Let's just put it over there and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal editorial board with a great piece
Speaker 1: about the America's air traffic fiasco, and they focus on
Speaker 1: Newark Airport. And if you've never had the pleasure quote
Speaker 1: unquote of flying into Newark, I suggest you never do.
Speaker 1: If you're going to New York and Jfkin Laguardi are
Speaker 1: booked up, why don't you fly to Bridgeport, Connecticut and
Speaker 1: walk into New York City before you go to Newark.
Speaker 1: So thousands of flights in and out of Newark in
Speaker 1: recent days have been delayed, diverted, or canceled because of
Speaker 1: air traffic control failures. And President Trump and his transportations
Speaker 1: are actually taking steps to fix this, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in a minute. But the headaches at Newark began
Speaker 1: last Monday when the Philadelphia Air Traffic Control facility what
Speaker 1: they were just saying, had equipment malfunctions. So the FAA
Speaker 1: finally resolved the technical snaffoos, but flight disruptions persisted because
Speaker 1: of a shortage of controllers. How is there a short controllers?
Speaker 1: How do we not have I mean, given the priority
Speaker 1: that that is, how do we not pay them en
Speaker 1: off and treat them well enough to have enough of them?
Speaker 1: Bureaucracy is the answer, honestly. But United Airlines on Friday
Speaker 1: canceled thirty five daily round trip flights at the airport.
Speaker 1: For instance, the CEO said he decided to walk out
Speaker 1: by more than twenty percent of the controllers at the site.
Speaker 1: Flight delays at Newark averaged four hours on some day.
Speaker 1: My god, that was the average, and it continued Monday,
Speaker 1: and such delays could be the new normal this summer.
Speaker 1: But then they credit Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for at
Speaker 1: least acknowledging government is to blame, unlike his Biden predecessor
Speaker 1: Pete Buddhage Edge and Edge who blamed airlines well doing
Speaker 1: little to nothing to fix long standing problems. Then they
Speaker 1: describe what the long standing problems are. And folks in
Speaker 1: private enterprise, particularly anybody who leans on tech deals with tech,
Speaker 1: you're gonna if you don't already know about this, you're
Speaker 1: gonna just be astounded. Congress in twenty oh three. Those
Speaker 1: not gifted in the arts of mathematics, it's twenty two
Speaker 1: years ago directed the FAA to modernize its systems, so
Speaker 1: they started the next gen overhaul, which is set to
Speaker 1: be completed in the year twenty thirty. Wow, all you
Speaker 1: tech guys and gals are saying the same thing. Whoa whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa whoa. No, No, that's not a thing. You
Speaker 1: don't start something in twenty oh three and stick with
Speaker 1: it through twenty thirty. You've overhauled the system sixty nine
Speaker 1: times in that period, not stuck with the same quote
Speaker 1: unquote overhaul that was started in oh three. Well, we're right.
Speaker 3: You're talking about a tech overhaul that started before smartphones existed.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how much technology has changed since night.
Speaker 1: It's like you and your your wife looking at your
Speaker 1: three month old child and saying, we need bigger clothes
Speaker 1: because the kid is growing fast. Let's study the problem
Speaker 1: and will implement a bigger closed plan when he's twenty four.
Speaker 1: I mean, your kid's gonna be naked for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, except clothes don't change that much. The whole tech thing.
Speaker 3: Tech has changed so much in that amount of time.
Speaker 3: What about tsking they laid out in the beginning is
Speaker 3: pointless now.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's utterly irrelevant. So as mister Duffy the
Speaker 1: sectrans notes, the FAA literally still uses floppy discs. Does
Speaker 1: gen Z even know what those are? Few technicians can
Speaker 1: even repair its aging systems, some of which are more
Speaker 1: than sixty years old. It's like trying to find some
Speaker 1: handyman to fix your Victrola that you inherited from your
Speaker 1: great grandma.
Speaker 3: That's got to be pretty funny for a tech guy
Speaker 3: to come in and he's never seen a floppy disk,
Speaker 3: or maybe even never heard of one.
Speaker 1: I'm old, so I've seen them.
Speaker 3: But we did get a number of texts when we
Speaker 3: mentioned this earlier that is that on purpose because they're unhackable.
Speaker 3: You can't can't hack into floppy discs like you can
Speaker 3: every Internet based modern thing.
Speaker 1: Well if so, if so, say so. But surely a
Speaker 1: thumb drive is a better idea. A not connected to
Speaker 1: the Internet and a floppy disc they're both discrete carriers
Speaker 1: of data.
Speaker 3: I think you're giving too much credit if you think
Speaker 3: it was some on purpose thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please just get lead follow er, get out of
Speaker 1: the way. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that
Speaker 1: seventy six percent of FAA systems are unsustainable or potentially unsustainable,
Speaker 1: which may have quote critical operational impacts on safety and efficiency.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News reports that controllers guiding planes at Newark lost
Speaker 1: radio and communications and radar for more than a minute
Speaker 1: on Monday, like we were talking about, Luckily there were
Speaker 1: no accidents. Boys.
Speaker 3: That has to be just that everybody in the air
Speaker 3: during those ninety seconds just went ahead and kept doing
Speaker 3: what they are doing. If one person thought, oh boy,
Speaker 3: no connection, I better pull up and land after we
Speaker 3: get this straightened out, well, then you could have just
Speaker 3: had a cascading series of disasters.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't I have not actually heard anybody describe
Speaker 1: what pilots did if they were, you know, two minutes
Speaker 1: out from landing, if they were in their final approach,
Speaker 1: what did they do? I don't know. But ninety seconds
Speaker 1: is a long time.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could be from way the hell up
Speaker 3: there to on the ground in I guess, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you're going. You know, it's certainly you're
Speaker 1: sloan for landing in this scenario, but you're going a
Speaker 1: couple hundred miles per hour. Certainly anyway DA or oh
Speaker 1: get this. The GAO Government Accountability Office is quote completion
Speaker 1: dates for planned investments for systems. It deems quote especially
Speaker 1: concerning we're at least six to ten years away. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine again it consultants. You get hired by some
Speaker 1: I don't know, chain of restaurants or something whatever, some
Speaker 1: significant sized local business and they say, hey, we really
Speaker 1: need to upgrade our systems, and you tell them, yep,
Speaker 1: we're going to need six to ten years. You'd be
Speaker 1: hooted out of the place. Now, Technological obsolescence is common
Speaker 1: among the federal across the federal bureaucracy because there's no
Speaker 1: financial motive to become more efficient singing from Tim Sanderfer's
Speaker 1: hymn book here. FAA labor agreements also require the government
Speaker 1: to work collaboratively with the Air Traffic Controller union on modernization,
Speaker 1: which can delay upgrades or divert staff from their day jobs.
Speaker 1: It's much like the ports, where the powerful long shoreman's
Speaker 1: union prevent any technological upgrades on. But you know in
Speaker 1: that world we're talking about, yeah, the technological stuff involving
Speaker 1: the cranes and all that matters. The you know, the
Speaker 1: automation matters, but a lot of it's just as silly
Speaker 1: as having a human read license plates instead of US scanner.
Speaker 1: Just to keep the jobs. But this is the faa
Speaker 1: This prevents people from dying in horrible fiery wrecks. The
Speaker 1: FAAC says it needs three thousand controllers to be fully staffed,
Speaker 1: and shortages are especially acute in the New York City region.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. Well, he's one thing.
Speaker 3: We keep talking about danger, which I understand, especially if
Speaker 3: there was a you know, a blackout there for ninety seconds.
Speaker 3: But flying is insanely safe. It's the safest thing I'll
Speaker 3: do every time I do it. The hassle part of it, though,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned earlier, has gotten exponentially worse. I think
Speaker 3: we all go to the airport with the expectation of
Speaker 3: a delay now as opposed to that is a you know,
Speaker 3: an aberration, that's what you expect. It's somewhat shocking when
Speaker 3: you walk up to departure and see that you're actually
Speaker 3: leaving when you were supposed to leave.
Speaker 1: One more note, and they go through some of the
Speaker 1: labor disagreements with the union, government employee unions are a
Speaker 1: force for evil. I understand why they exist, even FDR
Speaker 1: thought they should not. As a topic for another day,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to get to this part. Americans who
Speaker 1: want to become controllers must undergo three to five months
Speaker 1: of paid training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: followed by a three year apprenticeship at a control facility.
Speaker 1: The Obama administration eased standards to boost minority enrollment at
Speaker 1: the FAA Academy Affirmative Action FAA DEI. FAA lower standards
Speaker 1: have resulted in higher attrition. Half of the students who
Speaker 1: enter the academy don't finish their training. It's a lot
Speaker 1: like promoting kids who can't hack the elite universities to
Speaker 1: the elite universities to improve their numbers, when those kids
Speaker 1: would be so much more likely to be happy and
Speaker 1: successful at not quite so brutal a facility. The airline
Speaker 1: says the FAA could be could better screen applicants and
Speaker 1: reduce certification times by thirty percent with more effective training,
Speaker 1: including high fidelity simulators. In short, to behave much.
Speaker 3: More like a private enterprise, but three years of training
Speaker 3: and in the three year whatever like an internship.
Speaker 1: It's like becoming a doctor.
Speaker 3: To be a air traffic controller.
Speaker 1: It's three to five months of paid training and then
Speaker 1: a three year apprenticeship. You're an assistant controller. It's you know, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you are going to hear guaranteed, you're gonna hear
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Transportation whose name keeps flitting out of
Speaker 1: my head. These a hero to millions. Everybody knows, I'm
Speaker 1: Sean Duffy. That's it. You're going to hear him and
Speaker 1: Trump talk about how we need to do this, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna see Chuck Schumer on the steps of the
Speaker 1: Capitol talking about they're trying to undercut a hardworking controllers
Speaker 1: with these radical changes that will endanger airline passion because
Speaker 1: he's just a slave to the unions.
Speaker 3: Wow, that is disturbed. So you pushed a bunch of
Speaker 3: people onto that career path who probably thought it pays
Speaker 3: how much and whatever, Sure I'll sign up, but you
Speaker 3: just can't cut it for whatever reason. To try to
Speaker 3: end up with all that's a disparate impact thing that's
Speaker 3: not good, right.
Speaker 1: Just coming up maybe next hour, trying to squeeze it
Speaker 1: in the next hour. It strikes me that these two
Speaker 1: things are very much connected. Matthew Countinetti, who's with the
Speaker 1: Free Press now, actually listened to all of Trump's address
Speaker 1: to the University of Alabama. They're a commencement speech thing.
Speaker 1: And Trump went through his ten guiding principles, and one
Speaker 1: of them had to do with the need to change
Speaker 1: things when they need to be changed, and not be
Speaker 1: so enamored with the status quo that you lose your
Speaker 1: ability to see what needs to change. I'm paraphrasing a
Speaker 1: lot here, but this is a perfect example of that.
Speaker 1: Obama Biden. They were not going to say this is
Speaker 1: broker fixing it. They would say, ah, let's tweak around
Speaker 1: the edges. We don't want to offend this constituency. We
Speaker 1: got this union mad at us. That would cost a
Speaker 1: lot of money. They're not innovators. And Trump, for all
Speaker 1: of you know his quirks that make me insane, Trump
Speaker 1: is a guy who will say, Nope, we're getting rid
Speaker 1: of this because it doesn't work, and thank goodness, because
Speaker 1: it really needs to happen.
Speaker 3: Cool Michelle Obama says she's in therapy and reveals why.
Speaker 3: As divorce rumors swirl continue to swirl, among other incredibly
Speaker 3: unimportant stories we can get to stay with us.
Speaker 4: Ture is filling out this written questionnaire saying there may
Speaker 4: be graphic and sexually explicit evidence in connection with the case,
Speaker 4: and asking if they're anything that would make it difficult
Speaker 4: for you to be fair and impartial many perspective. Touris
Speaker 4: also saying they recognized the names of other celebrities that might.
Speaker 1: Come up at trial. The judge tried to.
Speaker 4: Keep things moving, so when the defense asked for a
Speaker 4: bathroom break, Colms apologize, saying, sorry, Judge, I'm a little
Speaker 4: nervous today. His lawyers are aiming to convince the jury
Speaker 4: the government is trying to police consensual sex by a
Speaker 4: swinger who they say invited others into his bedroom.
Speaker 3: Consensual sex. I'm just a swinger. I invited people to
Speaker 3: my bedroom. Is that what invitations are out of bounds?
Speaker 1: Now? Why is the government trying to criminalize my freewheeling lifestyle? Right?
Speaker 3: Just because your vanilla doesn't mean that I have to be.
Speaker 1: Sure I'd beaten, kick women and drug people and threaten
Speaker 1: them and transport them across the state lines, which doesn't
Speaker 1: trouble me. I've been transported across state lines and I
Speaker 1: came out fine. But that video, that video is what's
Speaker 1: going to do him.
Speaker 3: In the video of him dragging that, I mean once
Speaker 3: you either are a guy who can do that or
Speaker 3: you're not all right. And you know that's that speaks volumes,
Speaker 3: And most of the jurors asked yesterday said they had
Speaker 3: seen that video.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, if you are being accused of brutality and
Speaker 1: can watch brutality, yeah, that's gonna help convict you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of hurts the hole.
Speaker 3: I'm not the kind of guy that would ever do
Speaker 3: that if they've got a video of you doing that.
Speaker 1: But again, as I've said many times, wait till the
Speaker 1: defense takes its shot, because that can really change perceptions.
Speaker 3: Update on that Pittsburgh Pirate fan who did a summersault onto.
Speaker 1: The field last week.
Speaker 3: Took us a couple of days to get the information
Speaker 3: that he was had taken off his shirt and poured
Speaker 3: beer on his head.
Speaker 1: While the Pirates were rallying, Yes, very excited before he rolled.
Speaker 3: Out of his seat onto the field, so it seemed
Speaker 3: that exuberant partying may have played a role.
Speaker 1: Authorities believe alcohol was involved as the operative phraser.
Speaker 3: Twenty year old Caven Markwood took his first depths yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he broke his neck, his back and his collar bone.
Speaker 1: Oh, had to be some brain injury there too, huh.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: They haven't said anything about that. They're doing a GoFundMe
Speaker 3: to try to help pay his medical bills. But you know,
Speaker 3: and it's nice, you know. I mean, man, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of charities out there. There are a lot of
Speaker 3: charities out there that need money. And guy who strips
Speaker 3: off his shirt, pours pier on his head and tumbles
Speaker 3: onto the field.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Choose your charity dollars, how you want to spend him.
Speaker 1: But we've got to discuss think about whether we want
Speaker 1: to do this. There's a story out there this gal
Speaker 1: was dropping in bombs in a park and it went viral.
Speaker 1: She's defiant in the video, and she was docked and
Speaker 1: exposed and berated blah blah blah by progressive types. In return,
Speaker 1: the far right has come to her aid and she's
Speaker 1: getting close to a million dollars on her not GoFundMe,
Speaker 1: but a similar page. We become so tribal. If they
Speaker 1: are against somebody, we are with her, at least in
Speaker 1: some quarters. It's a troubling, troubling tale of modern tribalism.
Speaker 3: I don't like doxing almost never. But then you're donating money.
Speaker 1: To this cost. Yeah, she was dropping n bombs on
Speaker 1: a child. Somebody called her on it. But should you
Speaker 1: that's bad behavior?
Speaker 3: But should the world then unite and make sure she
Speaker 3: can't work ever again in her life.
Speaker 1: And run her out of her home? Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying yeah, I'm saying yes, that is the case.
Speaker 3: Some people refer to that sort of thing, dosing a
Speaker 3: woman like that, the woke right doing the same thing
Speaker 3: that the Wolke left was doing.
Speaker 1: For so long. Right, right, but now but now she's
Speaker 1: going to become wealthy, right response right? Yeah, why that
Speaker 1: is a headspinner, one of the good guys in this story.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'll be fishing if you need me,
Speaker 1: modern world, I'm worn out again.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of really good charities out there toose carefully,
Speaker 3: all right. If you miss a segment, get the podcast
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty