January 13, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- The Pete Hegseth hearing & the definition of stupid
- LA fires sparked by fireworks?
- Katy Grimes from The California Globe talks to A&G
- A little bingo, bango, bongo!
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Armstrong and Jetty and know He Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
FBI releasing these images of the Super Scooper aircraft struck
by a drone while battling the Palisades fire Thursday. That
whole about three by six inches in size.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
There's so many unauthorized drones in the area that they
are impacting law enforcement and firefighters' efforts to suppress this
fire and actually get it continued. I don't know how
we're going to get a handle on this. It might
be like the looting thing we were talking about last week.
You just got to make the penalty so high that
people won't want to do it and get caught.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, put out the word far and wide. These people
don't mean any harm, but they could do enormous harm.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Oh yeah, heck, well, if you ground a plane that is,
you know, delivering water to the fires, that would be
that's bad. Now. I suppose the drone people would say
it's the government trying to stop us from seeing what's
going on.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Perhaps, which is a decent argument. Goodness, Yeah, that is intriguing.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Speaking of which, Mark Zuckerberg increasingly open about the censorship
that they endured by the executive branch of the United
States government.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
First Amendment, you say, pshaw.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
More on that next hour, Well got the fabulous Katie
Grimes of California Globe this hour to talk about how
awful awful governance left California and Nelle in a position
that they could not react to what is unquestionably a
natural disaster.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
This is not the time, finger pointing, Joe, Yes, it is,
It's perfect time.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm literally not a firefighter. I'm not involved in rescuing people.
So I have all the time in the world and
happy to do it. So also to come at some point,
whether today or just this week, a lot of the
crucial meetings and hearings are about to start for Trump's
transition cabinet members. That sort of thing Pete hegseeths I
(02:14):
think is going to lead off the parade for a
Secretary of Defense, and that hearing could be really really interesting.
Some of the facets of that, some of the factors
involved are they.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Are they going to have him stand up, take off
his shirt during the hearing and go over each tattoo
one by one to explain what they mean.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It will come up absolutely. Elizabeth Warren's going big on it.
And and they've identified the main whistleblower who was spreading
stories about Pete being a hard drinking womanizer, etc. And
it's a disgruntled old employee. No anyway, more on that
to come this week. So I came across this. I
thought it was very very interesting. Callum Borcher's was writing
(02:57):
about a book. It's a little known book called well
the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by an Italian economic
historian who died back in two thousand and he's writing
about it, and it's so interesting. The chief thing to
note about this guy's name is simpler Carlo Sippola.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
The chief thing to note about.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Simple as conception of stupidity is that it is not
synonymous with what smart and illustrious people think is ill
advised or foolish. It's far more interesting than that. He
insists that stupid people are evenly distributed throughout society. And
this is I've been saying for years. The relationship between
intelligence and wisdom is far from tight. You have people
(03:43):
who have enormous candlepower, who are just fools. They just
can't perceive reality in the way human beings function and
the results of their grand schemes, even though they're very,
very bright.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Anyway, Well, and then that gets the definition of smart,
since the whole point of life is too navigate life. Well,
I would think smart would encompass the wisdom part more
than the candlepower part.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Sure, from an early age we've all run into the
question of street smart versus book smart, for instance. These
are all kind of expressions of the same thing. But
so he insists that stupid people are evenly distributed throughout society.
For Cipla, there are, per capita is many stupid people
among go kart salesmen and swamp dwelling gator hunters as
there are among laureled economists and tenured intellectual Why.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Did go kart salesmen come in for a kicking?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I would have to ask Callum Porcher's I can't imagine
that's his sentence.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I'm borrowing. I wouldn't have never car sales.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
I would have never assumed, were I to go buy
a Go Kart, that the guy selling it to me
was for some reason stupid because he was in that business.
I've never had any opinion whatsoever on Go Kart saleswa
other than that they're a great place to go to
purchase a go cart.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
It's an odd example. You're so right moving along. So
Sipla divides people into four categories, helpless, bandit as in like, thief, intelligent,
and stupid. In any normal interaction between two people, he contends,
(05:16):
the helpless suffer. The helpless person suffers a loss while
the other gains. They're just not They're not smart enough
that they're not.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
They just they lose. The other guy wins.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Okay, the bandit exacts a benefit while levying a loss
on the other.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
So the bandit and the helpless often get together.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
The intelligent person gains while enabling the other person to
also gain. The defining trait of the stupid person is
that he gains nothing while.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Obliging the other to take a loss. To wit.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
The astounding fact of recent years, oh they mentioned. One
of the blurbs on the book jacket seem to imply
that like Trump is not smart, because one of the
quotes is I'm like a smart guy. But, as Bortier's writes,
if the publicity of people who read the book at
all they would have realized that's utterly inaccurate. The astounding
factor of recent years is that mister Trump's chief political opponent,
(06:17):
Miss Joe Biden, is a perfect specimen of Simple's idea
of stupidity. For four years, Biden has made decisions and
pursued policies that made his supporters, party, country, and foreign
allies worse off, and in almost every case he gained
nothing and very often suffered commensurate political losses. You could
make a coaching argument that mister Biden belongs in the
(06:39):
category of helpless. So often do his decisions benefit as
political adversaries, chiefly mister Trump, But those blunders principle among
them his insistence that he was capable of running for reelection,
have exacted massive costs on the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Here's some examples. So again, a stupid person is a.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Person who causes other people suffer and gains nothing from it.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Well, do we all move between these different categories or
are we? Do we tend to be just one category?
You're either one or one or the other.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
No, I think the first one is right, But it's
a question of percentage. I like to think I don't
do many things or say many things that gain me
nothing and hurt you know, everybody else. But anyway, here's
some examples, just to solidify it in your head. For
three years, Biden made it policy to do nothing on
the country's southern border apart from revoking Trump's executive orders.
(07:35):
What did he gain from this dereliction nothing? The answer
is not obvious at all. Mister Biden overwrote his military
advisors and insisted on a total and immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan,
with no clear plan to extract Afghan allies, US citizens,
or American military hardware. A loss for the US, for sure,
But where was the benefit to mister Biden or his administration.
(07:57):
Starting in twenty twenty one, Jack, You'll love this one,
the President repeatedly compared an innocuous post pandemic election reform
in Georgia to Jim Crow, maybe the most toxic accusation
that it's possible to make an American politics. In doing so,
he made himself odious to the opposition party and ensured
he would pass nothing further from its support.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
What was in it for him?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Maybe momentary momentary enthusiasm of his base. Mister Biden openly
defied the Supreme Court's ruling on his student debt cancelation plans.
The Justice has tried to block me, but they didn't
stop me.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Jack.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
He thus managed to sew resentment among Americans whose debts
he did not forgive, encouraged a generation to indulge in
foolish borrowing, and make himself look like the lawless strong
man he accused Trump of being. In each of these instances,
and there are many others, mister Biden not only created
ruined discord and embarrassment for those who wished him well,
he did so without gaining any advantage for himself.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Biden's giving his final foreign Paul See speech today, and
so that came up on some of the shows over
the weekend, and I heard a clip from I think
the National Security Advisor who is.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Abe Lincoln? Uh Sullivan? I get them mixed up. The names, Yeah,
I know them when I see them.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
But anyway, who said history is going to judge this well,
the the leaving Afghanistan it's getting better by the day.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And I thought, wow, I don't think that's accurate, but.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Wow, well, I think he's spinning madly. It's not a
question of whether we left it Afghanistan. It's how and when.
My gosh, the dishonesty is unbelievable. And Borchers gives a
couple more examples, But yeah, I think he's right, you know,
the communing of the death sentences, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
He gained nothing and hurt America. What a dope. He
can't be gone soon enough one week?
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Well, the flip side of stupidity being intelligence or whatever.
I'm surprised we haven't gotten better at nailing down terms
for that or ways to look at it as opposed
to just a blanket statement of somebody smart or not.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, I prefer wise or unwise, honestly too smarter or not. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I mean I've known some people who are quote unquote
simple of you know, education and speech and manner or whatever,
but they would not make a misstep.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
They're very wise, right right. Yeah, that's a good one. Hmm.
And that's its own intelligence, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
So I do amazingly dumb things, I mean just shockingly dumb.
Sometimes sometimes I sit down and I look at look
at it, look at the mirror, and think, how could
you possibly have done that or made that decision?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
That's just I mean shocking to me, what's that the core?
Do you suppose? Distraction? Hastiness? I mean, you're not a
stupid man by anybody's definition, but hastiness, that's a good one.
Maybe that's it. I don't know. I think it might
just be dumb. It might just be dumb. Man. Why
(11:09):
don't we have folks right in?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Four one, five, two nine five KFTC is playing on
the text number like I often tweet things out knowing
some of the reactions I'm gonna get, and I get hateful,
hateful reactions, and showing to my kids just to give
them an idea of what the world is like.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
They can't believe some of the things people say. I mean,
just show horribly bad things.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I was in a discussion with some friends the other
day about I'll keep it vague, but people who like
expressed strong opinions over stuff they had no right to
about my friends' lives and generally young, semi woke, full
of themselves people. And I said, you know, it's mildly annoying,
but I just don't worry about it. I've spent thirty
(11:54):
plus years having people saying you suck, You're a bad American,
You're bad at your job, you're a bad parent.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You should die. So it's like, eh, there's another one.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
The appropriate finger pointing has begun on the whole fire
debacle in LA.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It didn't have to be this bad. Who's to blame?
Speaker 4 (12:12):
We're gonna talk to Katie Grimes, great reporter about California
politics coming up this hour, and get into that, among
other things.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Stay here by sign.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Washington won a wild card game, won a playoff game.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It was two thousand and five. Here chance to do
it with Gonzales from thirty.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Seven to send Washington to the final eight.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
The Washington coming head. Here's a thing is tight, Klain
tell the defensive round.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Believe I have seen it all now I even get
a defensional thy.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That's twice in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
The Chiefs did it a couple of weeks ago, and
that that's why they have the best record in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
To home field throught is hit up right and the
ball bounces through. How does that happen twice in a
couple of weeks in important games? It's interesting.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
You gotta rub that ball up with vasolene before you cant.
This is also dumb if it were the Washington Redskins.
I'd have been pretty excited about that game and them winning,
But because they changed their name to Commanders, I got
no feeling for it, which is all completely made up
in my head, imaginary.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Because of your racism. Just like I don't know, I
don't know, I have no feel. My boyfriend's a big
Commanders fans converted.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
I think every NFL team that was supposed to win
one all the favored teams once, so they're no upsets
first round, although we got one more game tonight Rams
Lions in Arizona because of the fires, not Rams Lions,
Rams Vikings.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Sorry about that.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
So I'll get to why my teenage crush is on
my side of the story on looting in a second,
but a couple of just before we get to the
politics of it, next segment of what's going on in California,
which could have affected a lot of things politically. Really,
(14:11):
millionaires in the Palisades area are shelling out two thousand
dollars an hour for private firefighters as various neighborhoods are
being abandoned, it says here by the official firefighting teams.
I think that's a prejudicial term. I mean they've only
got so many resources, and they can only go so
many places. And I don't know if you're two thousand
(14:31):
dollars an hour, private firefighters will do you any good
or not.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I have no idea. Probably depends on where you are.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
The Palisades fire, the biggest fire that's still barely contained
and has burnt down most of the buildings.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Likely caused by.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Of fireworks, they think, now, really, yeah, some fireworks that
went off and then the fire didn't get completely put
up from from New Year's Eve. That's what the New
York Poster was reporting last anyway, So he smoldered for
a while, right, yes, And that was the whole story
about how these things about how hard it is to
put out a campfire and you got to be certain
and drown it and water, then drown it and water again.
(15:11):
And they think that's what happened here with fireworks. I
have no idea if that's what happened or not now,
But that was the reporting in the New York Post.
The death toll is now twenty four and what a horrible,
horrible story. We'll talk about the politics coming up a
little bit. So Gavin Newsom, he was very unhappy that
people were talking about looting being legal in California. He
(15:32):
put out this tweet yesterday. Stop encouraging looting by lying
and telling people it's decriminalized.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It's not.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
It's illegal, it always has been. Bad actors will be
arrested and prosecuted. Okay, well, if you live in California,
you know how bad actors have not been arrested and
prosecuted for quite some years now, Justine, and in fact.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Those that were were turned loose from the prisons.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Gavy, my teenage crushed Justine Bateman, who is Michael J.
Fox's sister on Family Ties, and when I was like
thirteen years old, I thought she was the cutest singing
had ever lived, and just like had started all the
chemicals flowing in my brain. She is now a regular
tweeter on x. She tweeted it like he because she
was a liberal. She is definitely not in real life.
(16:16):
She tweeted out, you and Gascone and Bass sent out
the invitations long ago to all criminals to come to
California and LA and practice their craft. You boasted that
you would not prosecute rioters, trespassers, looters, shoplifters, et cetera,
and they came from other states, from other countries. You
created a hostile living environment for all of us. That
anyone thinks they can loot and commit arson in Los
(16:37):
Angeles or anywhere in California with impunity is because you
made sure they got an invitation. That is certainly true
of Gascone and a lot of the not prosecuting crime
all across California. You've created a culture where people think
they can steal and get away with it. Denying that
Gavin is living in a fantasy world. All right, he
(16:58):
knows what he's done. Happy that my teenage crush is
on the right side of this argument. That is fabulous
on many levels.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
The fabulous Katie Grimes of the California Globe knows everything
there is to know about California politics and what's going
on in LA with the fires.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Stay with us, Armstrong and Getty. Did they fail you?
Speaker 5 (17:17):
That is our job and I tell you that's why
I'm here. So let's get us what we need so
firefighters can do their jobs.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Do they fail you? Yes.
Speaker 5 (17:26):
When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect
there's going.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
To be water. We don't control the water supply.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Our firefighters are there to protect lives and property and
to make sure that we're properly trained and equipped.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Does the buck stop with you? I mean, hey, you're
governor of California. Inviting it will be the mayor of California.
We're all in this together. We're all better off.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
We're all better off, we're all better off, and we're
working together.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
To take care of people.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
So at first clip happened on Friday. It's La Fire
Chief Kristin Crowley. They had to drag the answer out
of her, but she finally did offer up.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
They the city council and the mayor failed us, and
then Gavin Newsom mashed this morning or last night?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Does the buck stop with you? Hamanahuamanahamana hamna bad answer?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Politically indeed, to discuss the politics and the realities of
the fire and how they intertwine. Please welcome to the
show the editor in chief of the California Globe, Katie Grimes,
who's been writing about California politics for Ages and Ages.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Katie, how are you?
Speaker 6 (18:26):
I am well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Jack and Joe, Oh, it's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So I want to use as a springboard your last
couple of columns for The Globe at first of all,
which published last week, which touches on a couple of things.
I just if you can give the nickel version for
people of the insurance crisis in California, how many people
weren't insured or had just gotten dropped and why that is?
(18:49):
Because I heard an utterly, utterly misleading description of it
from professional liar Kristin Welker on Meet the Press Sunday.
But go ahead, Katie, what's the real situation insurance wise?
Speaker 6 (19:01):
Well, the insurance crisis in California is devastating and it's
hitting people, you know, north State, South State, everywhere. I
don't think we have any numbers at the moment of
how many people, say in Pacific Palisades, had their fire
insurance canceled, or even homeowners in many cases with insurance companies,
(19:21):
you know, fleeing the state along with half of California,
it seems. But it is absolutely devastating because you know,
you think back to the campfire up here in Paradise, California,
your Sacramento, and you know that was unbelievably devastating, but
it was also unbelievably costly for insurers. And then the
(19:45):
calder Fire a couple of years later, and then.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
We're just looking for broad strokes, just a very quick
description of what's wrong with insurance in California.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
What's wrong with it is politics purely. And this goes
back to Proposition one O three, which was put on
the ballot to essentially tap the amount of premiums insurance
companies could impose on the insured, rather than fixing the
problem of why it costs so much to build and
rebuild here in California.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
And it ordered them to only look at historical data
as opposed to current data for building costs, and the
rest of it is utterly unrealistic.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
It is entirely unrealistic. And boy, we're going to see
what a disaster, a financial disaster this is going to
be following the fires.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And then I know you wrote about water as well,
in the fact that California has built no water storage
in generations, even as the populations doubled.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
It's just terrible governance.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
Yes, absolutely, Not only have we not built any water
storage in years, the voters have passed over thirty two
billion dollars in water bonds to do just that in
thirty years, and the last one was Proposition one in
twenty fourteen, which would it set aside two point seven
billion dollars so that we could build the site's reservoir
and the Temperance Flat reservoir, none of which has been done.
(21:10):
And in the meantime, the amount of water that flows
from our snowpack melt and our rain has increased from
fifty percent of the state's water to eighty percent of
the state's water goes straight out to the Pacific Ocean
to save some fish that aren't even indigenous.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Well, yeah, how fair is it to lay blame at
the foot of either the mayor of Los Angeles, the
governor of California City Council of LA or you know,
government officials in this soon to be biggest disaster in
California history.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Well, I think Avenussom's responses show you exactly how fair
it is. He's running as fast as he can from responsibility,
and yet this is what he signed up for. When
you sign up to be governor of California, you do
sign up for the good, bad, and the ugly. And
he's not handling this very well. It is fair to
point fingers at him because so many of his policies
(22:07):
have led us to this place, even policies who supported
long before he became governor. Leftism in California has gotten
us here.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, I know your recent column, which is terrific, the
anti American agendas California's Democrats catching up. You point out
that southern California is on fire. But here are Newsom's
priorities and what he has been focused on. Newsom created
the California abortion sanctuary state. He legalized abortion up until birth,
authorized a trans sanctuary state, allowing children to receive hormone
blockers chemical carastration without parental consent. He exacerbated the homeless crisis,
(22:40):
spending tens of billions of dollars to get more bums.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And junkies, he said.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
He's embraced illegal immigrants, even providing health insurance. He's also
on board for the bottomless pit of the high speed
rail project. So, and it reminds me of a conversation
we had Friday. Instead of doing the blocking and tackling
of governing, they have all these pie in the sky
progressive you know, just agendas that they're pursuing instead.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And you didn't mention the most recent trump proofing California
against the evil dictator is about to go in.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Go ahead, Gatie.
Speaker 6 (23:13):
Yeah. I devoted an entire article to that one. Yeah,
And I think this shows I mean, as ridiculous as
this list sounds, when we lay it all out together,
it does show you he's doing everything but governing. And
I assume governing is not always very sexy. It doesn't
always get great headlines. And yet you know, he and
his PR team could certainly have written good headlines for
(23:34):
all the hard work he was doing behind the scenes.
But that's not what's happened. He is he's adopted this
absolutely unbelievably radical, radical agenda of things that Californians and
even those who didn't vote for him, they don't want.
They want water to be in their fire hydrants. We
want decent roads and good schools, and we want to
(23:55):
make sure that our cal Fire and the local firefighters
have everything they need in terms of, you know, budget
and equipment.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
You've been following politics in California for a long time.
I was reading Mark Halprin's newsletter today and he said, hell,
hath no fury like a homeless celebrity. A Los Angeles
conservative is a liberal actor who blames NWSO and BASS
and decades of liberal governments governance for their houses burning down.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Do you think this is like perhaps a seed change
politically for LA or maybe the state.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
It could be. And Mark Halpern's absolutely right. And I
think the reason we're getting so much attention focused on
California as opposed to say North Carolina right now, which
people are still living intents, is because of Hollywood and
the celebrities and people being you know, they have a
platform from which they can speak and they are describing
(24:45):
what's going on. And as I said, I think even
people who voted for Gavin Newsom are really really pissed
off right now and they want answers. They want to
know why this happened, and that will lead to some
changes voting, I hope.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, and I'm sure Gavious people would say, look, we
could walk and chew gum at the same time. We
can pursue these grand progressive schemes and be good governors.
But they can't if the walking is you know, having
a bullet train squander hundreds of billions of dollars that'll
never exist, and the chewing gum is making sure that
there's enough water storage for forty million people.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
No you can't. You haven't.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You've proven it over and over again, and to the
rest of the country listening, you're like, well, why doesn't
why don't you vote Democrats out office? It's because all
of the public employee unions are so powerful in the
try lawyers that they all show up, every single one
of them and vote Democrat every single time because they're
getting their backscratched slash paid.
Speaker 6 (25:47):
Yeah, exactly. It's a huge problem we have in California
in that, and I think this last election showed us
there's a lot more independent slash right of center voters
as we saw who voted for Trump over six million.
But yeah, when you fight that with the public employee unions,
(26:07):
which are just ruthless, Yeah, it seems like too much
of a heavy lift.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, the regular folks really just they can't accumulate enough
mass to take it back. Katie Grimes is the editor
in chief of the California Globe California Globe dot com.
You ought a bookmarket check it all the time if
you're of a conservative bent really in any state in
the Union, or you'd just like to have your eyes
open to the truth.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
California Globe dot Com. Katie great to talk to you. Thanks,
thanks very much so.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
The Brentwood neighborhood, which you probably recognize that name if
you follow the celebrity news, has the fires bearing down
on it. With it, it's going to be a couple
of really really windy days. That neighborhood where OJ.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Was framed for a crime.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
That's right. And that neighborhood is also home to former
Senator Kamala Harris. Maybe you've heard of her, Lebron, James,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, doctor Dre among others. And those
are some names that can get a lot of attention.
Like Katie just said, there people are still living in
tents in North Carolina because of the biggest disaster they'd
(27:08):
ever had in that part of the country, but not
enough celebrities to get attention for that.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I actually appreciated sixty minutes last night going heavily at
all the thousands, you know, highlighting the many thousands of
working class folks, just regular people in various sections of
the greater Los Angeles metro area that are now homeless
and hopeless, and all of their baby pictures are gone.
They don't know where they're going to go and what
they're going to do. I mean, obviously baby pictures is
(27:37):
one example.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
But it's just heartbreaking the number of people I've seen
on TV saying, literally, the only thing I had of
what is have is what you see me wearing.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I can't imagine the to do list you have when
you're in that situation. Where do you start? Oh my god,
would that be overwhelming?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And as I said before, just to put a cap
on this, has it been an extremely dry year in
southern California?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Were those incredibly powerful wins freakish and rare? One hundred percent.
There are aspects of this fire that are not the
fault of governance. On the other hand, there are aspects
of it that are. And if this draws people's attention
to the utterly incompetent, doesn't even describe it. It's incompetent, dishonest,
(28:30):
just klepto, main maniacal governance of California over the last
quite a few years. If it draws attention to that good,
whether it directly applies to how a particular fire started
or not. Karen Bass is an avowed communist. She cut
the fire budget, according to her chief, to a damaging
level to support drug addicts and illegal immigrants and proudly
(28:54):
did so.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Uh did you see over the weekend where she was
at least hinting that people are criticizing her because she's black.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Oh yeah, a couple of celebrities are out saying that.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, go ahead, hey, put the final nail in the
coffin of your fake accusations of racism.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Do it now. That was perfect.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
And the state level, when you start talking about not
having enough money for this or that, come on, you
don't get.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
To say that.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
As long as there's a bullet train project. You gotta
end that before you can ever say a word about
not having enough money for this or that.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Amen. Oh my god, we got more on the ways there.
We're all better off. We're all better off. We're all
better off, and we're working together.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
I read over the weekend and a very interesting book
about violence, Why duels are a good idea and should
be brought back do what.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
It's fascinating. I'd never thought about it before. Maybe I'll
get to that. Wow, that's madness, folks. I disagree and disapprove.
I don't think you will. I don't think you will. Actually, well,
then I will have a on air conversion. Won't that
be exciting?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
All sorts of great stuff to get to, including I
want to go big on it's.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
The first freaking amendment.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Mark Zuckerberg is finally out explaining how severe the pressure
was from the Biden administration to censor free speech that
the government didn't like. If you don't get that that's
a problem or why it's a problem, go from me.
May your chain sit lightly upon you, lick the hand
that feeds you, and made posterity forget you were our countryman,
(30:32):
Sam Adams. Roughly anyway, So a couple of completely non
political notes. I'm not going to be labor the first
one because we all know it. Physical inactivity is linked
to increased risk of nineteen different chronic health conditions. According
to a University of Ioa study analyzing over forty thousand
patient records. The couch is is the cigarette pack of
(30:55):
the modern world. Just even moderate activity a few times
a week is so so, so much better. And you
know what, We'll post this at Armstrong and getty dot com.
The simple thirty second exercise survey all it takes to
know your health in general. Anyway, moving along, because we
(31:16):
all know that I thought this was interesting. Our legendary
and beloved newsguy Marshall Phillips used to bring us at
least one study about coffee and drinking coffee per week,
and the first one would be contradicted by the second one,
then go back and forth.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
It just never ended.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
But here's a giant meta study of caffeine and coffee studies.
Two to three cups in the morning is like, by
far the best option, including not drinking coffee at all.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Really, you're better off drinking a couple of two to
three cups than not drinking coffee.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Research so far suggests that drinking coffee does not raise
the risk of heart disease, seems to lower the risk
of some chronic diseases given the effects that caffeine has
on our bodies. Says the head scientists, we wanted to
see at the time of day when you drink coffee
has any impact on heart health. And they had three
different groups morning drinkers, all day coffee drinkers, and non
(32:17):
coffee drinkers, and long story short, the results significantly better
for early coffee drinkers in terms of heart disease and
all causes.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
This may very well be true, but I got to
say most of this sort of stuff I ignore at
this point in my life. So many of them have
gone back and forth so many times in my adult life.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It's shocking.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
On alcohol and coffee and different diets and all kinds
of stuff, different studies.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I'm going to quote somebody now, I'm not saying it's true.
I'm not saying I believe it. We were talking about
cigar smoking. Myself had a handful of fellows I had
lunch with on Saturday, and the topic of and one
of the guys actually getting treated for cancer right now,
and one has gone through it several times. And they
were talking about hanging out with a bunch of doctors
after round of golf the other day and they're all
(33:10):
smoking cigars and they're all like that, that's genetics. So again,
I'm not telling you to go and live your life accordingly.
I'm just telling you what was said living along.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Speaking of health, if you're over fifty, relationships friendships are
as important as virtually everything you can do health wise.
According to statistical studies, having a circle of people you
trust and like in exchange views with the rest of it.
It's incredibly important. Isolation kills.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Screaming down a road culturally where there's more isolation.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, great peace in the Atlantic.
It's overly long, of course, because everything is about what's
the title of it, The Anti social Century?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Absolutely. Yeah, here's another one.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
We're going fast, We're going swiftly here, folks, take notes
if you can, even if you're driving. Americans are tipping
less than they have in years. Frustration with rising menu
prices and the ubiquitous tipped prompts guilt tipping have led
to a six year low.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I don't doubt that. I also, for some reason, I
don't like the you tell me how much eighteen.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Percent is? I don't know why. It's just just a
little more looking over your shoulder. I don't know. I
just I don't like it. I don't like it fits
in with all the other too much telling me to tip?
I will tip. I've always tipped. Would just quit quit?
What the telling me to tip?
Speaker 1 (34:44):
You're right, I don't mind the math because I can,
you know, quickly do it instead of doing it in
my head, which is probably good for my brain.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
But it's all the Here are your choices, Yeah, feel
to it. Oh whoa, whoa. My choice is whatever the
hell I.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Want, exactly exactly. I'm sitting here determining how good I
thought the service was. Just don't tell me my three options,
which are all really high by the way, Armstrong and
Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Armstrong and Jetty and know He Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
FBI releasing these images of the Super Scooper aircraft struck
by a drone while battling the Palisades fire Thursday. That
whole about three by six inches in size.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
There's so many unauthorized drones in the area that they
are impacting law enforcement and firefighters' efforts to suppress this
fire and actually get it continued. I don't know how
we're going to get a handle on this. It might
be like the looting thing we were talking about last week.
You just got to make the penalty so high that
people won't want to do it and get caught.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, put out the word far and wide. These people
don't mean any harm, but they could do enormous harm.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Oh yeah, heck, well, if you ground a plane that is,
you know, delivering water to the fires, that would be
that's bad. Now. I suppose the drone people would say
it's the government trying to stop us from seeing what's
going on.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Perhaps, which is a decent argument. Goodness, Yeah, that is intriguing.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Speaking of which, Mark Zuckerberg increasingly open about the censorship
that they endured by the executive branch of the United
States government.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
First Amendment, you say, pshaw.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
More on that next hour, Well got the fabulous Katie
Grimes of California Globe this hour to talk about how
awful awful governance left California and Nelle in a position
that they could not react to what is unquestionably a
natural disaster.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
This is not the time, finger pointing, Joe, Yes, it is,
It's perfect time.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Oh okay.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I'm literally not a firefighter. I'm not involved in rescuing people.
So I have all the time in the world and
happy to do it. So also to come at some point,
whether today or just this week, a lot of the
crucial meetings and hearings are about to start for Trump's
transition cabinet members. That sort of thing Pete hegseeths I
(02:14):
think is going to lead off the parade for a
Secretary of Defense, and that hearing could be really really interesting.
Some of the facets of that, some of the factors
involved are they.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Are they going to have him stand up, take off
his shirt during the hearing and go over each tattoo
one by one to explain what they mean.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It will come up absolutely. Elizabeth Warren's going big on it.
And and they've identified the main whistleblower who was spreading
stories about Pete being a hard drinking womanizer, etc. And
it's a disgruntled old employee. No anyway, more on that
to come this week. So I came across this. I
thought it was very very interesting. Callum Borcher's was writing
(02:57):
about a book. It's a little known book called well
the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by an Italian economic
historian who died back in two thousand and he's writing
about it, and it's so interesting. The chief thing to
note about this guy's name is simpler Carlo Sippola.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
The chief thing to note about.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Simple as conception of stupidity is that it is not
synonymous with what smart and illustrious people think is ill
advised or foolish. It's far more interesting than that. He
insists that stupid people are evenly distributed throughout society. And
this is I've been saying for years. The relationship between
intelligence and wisdom is far from tight. You have people
(03:43):
who have enormous candlepower, who are just fools. They just
can't perceive reality in the way human beings function and
the results of their grand schemes, even though they're very,
very bright.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Anyway, Well, and then that gets the definition of smart,
since the whole point of life is too navigate life. Well,
I would think smart would encompass the wisdom part more
than the candlepower part.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Sure, from an early age we've all run into the
question of street smart versus book smart, for instance. These
are all kind of expressions of the same thing. But
so he insists that stupid people are evenly distributed throughout society.
For Cipla, there are, per capita is many stupid people
among go kart salesmen and swamp dwelling gator hunters as
there are among laureled economists and tenured intellectual Why.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Did go kart salesmen come in for a kicking?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I would have to ask Callum Porcher's I can't imagine
that's his sentence.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I'm borrowing. I wouldn't have never car sales.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
I would have never assumed, were I to go buy
a Go Kart, that the guy selling it to me
was for some reason stupid because he was in that business.
I've never had any opinion whatsoever on Go Kart saleswa
other than that they're a great place to go to
purchase a go cart.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
It's an odd example. You're so right moving along. So
Sipla divides people into four categories, helpless, bandit as in like, thief, intelligent,
and stupid. In any normal interaction between two people, he contends,
(05:16):
the helpless suffer. The helpless person suffers a loss while
the other gains. They're just not They're not smart enough
that they're not.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
They just they lose. The other guy wins.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Okay, the bandit exacts a benefit while levying a loss
on the other.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
So the bandit and the helpless often get together.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
The intelligent person gains while enabling the other person to
also gain. The defining trait of the stupid person is
that he gains nothing while.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Obliging the other to take a loss. To wit.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
The astounding fact of recent years, oh they mentioned. One
of the blurbs on the book jacket seem to imply
that like Trump is not smart, because one of the
quotes is I'm like a smart guy. But, as Bortier's writes,
if the publicity of people who read the book at
all they would have realized that's utterly inaccurate. The astounding
factor of recent years is that mister Trump's chief political opponent,
(06:17):
Miss Joe Biden, is a perfect specimen of Simple's idea
of stupidity. For four years, Biden has made decisions and
pursued policies that made his supporters, party, country, and foreign
allies worse off, and in almost every case he gained
nothing and very often suffered commensurate political losses. You could
make a coaching argument that mister Biden belongs in the
(06:39):
category of helpless. So often do his decisions benefit as
political adversaries, chiefly mister Trump, But those blunders principle among
them his insistence that he was capable of running for reelection,
have exacted massive costs on the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Here's some examples. So again, a stupid person is a.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Person who causes other people suffer and gains nothing from it.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Well, do we all move between these different categories or
are we? Do we tend to be just one category?
You're either one or one or the other.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
No, I think the first one is right, But it's
a question of percentage. I like to think I don't
do many things or say many things that gain me
nothing and hurt you know, everybody else. But anyway, here's
some examples, just to solidify it in your head. For
three years, Biden made it policy to do nothing on
the country's southern border apart from revoking Trump's executive orders.
(07:35):
What did he gain from this dereliction nothing? The answer
is not obvious at all. Mister Biden overwrote his military
advisors and insisted on a total and immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan,
with no clear plan to extract Afghan allies, US citizens,
or American military hardware. A loss for the US, for sure,
But where was the benefit to mister Biden or his administration.
(07:57):
Starting in twenty twenty one, Jack, You'll love this one,
the President repeatedly compared an innocuous post pandemic election reform
in Georgia to Jim Crow, maybe the most toxic accusation
that it's possible to make an American politics. In doing so,
he made himself odious to the opposition party and ensured
he would pass nothing further from its support.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
What was in it for him?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Maybe momentary momentary enthusiasm of his base. Mister Biden openly
defied the Supreme Court's ruling on his student debt cancelation plans.
The Justice has tried to block me, but they didn't
stop me.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Jack.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
He thus managed to sew resentment among Americans whose debts
he did not forgive, encouraged a generation to indulge in
foolish borrowing, and make himself look like the lawless strong
man he accused Trump of being. In each of these instances,
and there are many others, mister Biden not only created
ruined discord and embarrassment for those who wished him well,
he did so without gaining any advantage for himself.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Biden's giving his final foreign Paul See speech today, and
so that came up on some of the shows over
the weekend, and I heard a clip from I think
the National Security Advisor who is.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Abe Lincoln? Uh Sullivan? I get them mixed up. The names, Yeah,
I know them when I see them.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
But anyway, who said history is going to judge this well,
the the leaving Afghanistan it's getting better by the day.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
And I thought, wow, I don't think that's accurate, but.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Wow, well, I think he's spinning madly. It's not a
question of whether we left it Afghanistan. It's how and when.
My gosh, the dishonesty is unbelievable. And Borchers gives a
couple more examples, But yeah, I think he's right, you know,
the communing of the death sentences, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
He gained nothing and hurt America. What a dope. He
can't be gone soon enough one week?
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Well, the flip side of stupidity being intelligence or whatever.
I'm surprised we haven't gotten better at nailing down terms
for that or ways to look at it as opposed
to just a blanket statement of somebody smart or not.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, I prefer wise or unwise, honestly too smarter or not. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I mean I've known some people who are quote unquote
simple of you know, education and speech and manner or whatever,
but they would not make a misstep.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
They're very wise, right right. Yeah, that's a good one. Hmm.
And that's its own intelligence, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
So I do amazingly dumb things, I mean just shockingly dumb.
Sometimes sometimes I sit down and I look at look
at it, look at the mirror, and think, how could
you possibly have done that or made that decision?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
That's just I mean shocking to me, what's that the core?
Do you suppose? Distraction? Hastiness? I mean, you're not a
stupid man by anybody's definition, but hastiness, that's a good one.
Maybe that's it. I don't know. I think it might
just be dumb. It might just be dumb. Man. Why
(11:09):
don't we have folks right in?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Four one, five, two nine five KFTC is playing on
the text number like I often tweet things out knowing
some of the reactions I'm gonna get, and I get hateful,
hateful reactions, and showing to my kids just to give
them an idea of what the world is like.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
They can't believe some of the things people say. I mean,
just show horribly bad things.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Right right.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I was in a discussion with some friends the other
day about I'll keep it vague, but people who like
expressed strong opinions over stuff they had no right to
about my friends' lives and generally young, semi woke, full
of themselves people. And I said, you know, it's mildly annoying,
but I just don't worry about it. I've spent thirty
(11:54):
plus years having people saying you suck, You're a bad American,
You're bad at your job, you're a bad parent.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
You should die. So it's like, eh, there's another one.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
The appropriate finger pointing has begun on the whole fire
debacle in LA.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It didn't have to be this bad. Who's to blame?
Speaker 4 (12:12):
We're gonna talk to Katie Grimes, great reporter about California
politics coming up this hour, and get into that, among
other things.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Stay here by sign.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Washington won a wild card game, won a playoff game.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It was two thousand and five. Here chance to do
it with Gonzales from thirty.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Seven to send Washington to the final eight.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
The Washington coming head. Here's a thing is tight, Klain
tell the defensive round.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Believe I have seen it all now I even get
a defensional thy.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
That's twice in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
The Chiefs did it a couple of weeks ago, and
that that's why they have the best record in the NFL.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
To home field throught is hit up right and the
ball bounces through. How does that happen twice in a
couple of weeks in important games? It's interesting.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
You gotta rub that ball up with vasolene before you cant.
This is also dumb if it were the Washington Redskins.
I'd have been pretty excited about that game and them winning,
But because they changed their name to Commanders, I got
no feeling for it, which is all completely made up
in my head, imaginary.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Because of your racism. Just like I don't know, I
don't know, I have no feel. My boyfriend's a big
Commanders fans converted.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
I think every NFL team that was supposed to win
one all the favored teams once, so they're no upsets
first round, although we got one more game tonight Rams
Lions in Arizona because of the fires, not Rams Lions,
Rams Vikings.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Sorry about that.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
So I'll get to why my teenage crush is on
my side of the story on looting in a second,
but a couple of just before we get to the
politics of it, next segment of what's going on in California,
which could have affected a lot of things politically. Really,
(14:11):
millionaires in the Palisades area are shelling out two thousand
dollars an hour for private firefighters as various neighborhoods are
being abandoned, it says here by the official firefighting teams.
I think that's a prejudicial term. I mean they've only
got so many resources, and they can only go so
many places. And I don't know if you're two thousand
(14:31):
dollars an hour, private firefighters will do you any good
or not.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I have no idea. Probably depends on where you are.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
The Palisades fire, the biggest fire that's still barely contained
and has burnt down most of the buildings.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Likely caused by.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Of fireworks, they think, now, really, yeah, some fireworks that
went off and then the fire didn't get completely put
up from from New Year's Eve. That's what the New
York Poster was reporting last anyway, So he smoldered for
a while, right, yes, And that was the whole story
about how these things about how hard it is to
put out a campfire and you got to be certain
and drown it and water, then drown it and water again.
(15:11):
And they think that's what happened here with fireworks. I
have no idea if that's what happened or not now,
But that was the reporting in the New York Post.
The death toll is now twenty four and what a horrible,
horrible story. We'll talk about the politics coming up a
little bit. So Gavin Newsom, he was very unhappy that
people were talking about looting being legal in California. He
(15:32):
put out this tweet yesterday. Stop encouraging looting by lying
and telling people it's decriminalized.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It's not.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
It's illegal, it always has been. Bad actors will be
arrested and prosecuted. Okay, well, if you live in California,
you know how bad actors have not been arrested and
prosecuted for quite some years now, Justine, and in fact.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Those that were were turned loose from the prisons.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Gavy, my teenage crushed Justine Bateman, who is Michael J.
Fox's sister on Family Ties, and when I was like
thirteen years old, I thought she was the cutest singing
had ever lived, and just like had started all the
chemicals flowing in my brain. She is now a regular
tweeter on x. She tweeted it like he because she
was a liberal. She is definitely not in real life.
(16:16):
She tweeted out, you and Gascone and Bass sent out
the invitations long ago to all criminals to come to
California and LA and practice their craft. You boasted that
you would not prosecute rioters, trespassers, looters, shoplifters, et cetera,
and they came from other states, from other countries. You
created a hostile living environment for all of us. That
anyone thinks they can loot and commit arson in Los
(16:37):
Angeles or anywhere in California with impunity is because you
made sure they got an invitation. That is certainly true
of Gascone and a lot of the not prosecuting crime
all across California. You've created a culture where people think
they can steal and get away with it. Denying that
Gavin is living in a fantasy world. All right, he
(16:58):
knows what he's done. Happy that my teenage crush is
on the right side of this argument. That is fabulous
on many levels.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
The fabulous Katie Grimes of the California Globe knows everything
there is to know about California politics and what's going
on in LA with the fires.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Stay with us, Armstrong and Getty. Did they fail you?
Speaker 5 (17:17):
That is our job and I tell you that's why
I'm here. So let's get us what we need so
firefighters can do their jobs.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Do they fail you? Yes.
Speaker 5 (17:26):
When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect
there's going.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
To be water. We don't control the water supply.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Our firefighters are there to protect lives and property and
to make sure that we're properly trained and equipped.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Does the buck stop with you? I mean, hey, you're
governor of California. Inviting it will be the mayor of California.
We're all in this together. We're all better off.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
We're all better off, we're all better off, and we're
working together.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
To take care of people.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
So at first clip happened on Friday. It's La Fire
Chief Kristin Crowley. They had to drag the answer out
of her, but she finally did offer up.
Speaker 5 (17:57):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
They the city council and the mayor failed us, and
then Gavin Newsom mashed this morning or last night?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Does the buck stop with you? Hamanahuamanahamana hamna bad answer?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Politically indeed, to discuss the politics and the realities of
the fire and how they intertwine. Please welcome to the
show the editor in chief of the California Globe, Katie Grimes,
who's been writing about California politics for Ages and Ages.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Katie, how are you?
Speaker 6 (18:26):
I am well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Jack and Joe, Oh, it's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So I want to use as a springboard your last
couple of columns for The Globe at first of all,
which published last week, which touches on a couple of things.
I just if you can give the nickel version for
people of the insurance crisis in California, how many people
weren't insured or had just gotten dropped and why that is?
(18:49):
Because I heard an utterly, utterly misleading description of it
from professional liar Kristin Welker on Meet the Press Sunday.
But go ahead, Katie, what's the real situation insurance wise?
Speaker 6 (19:01):
Well, the insurance crisis in California is devastating and it's
hitting people, you know, north State, South State, everywhere. I
don't think we have any numbers at the moment of
how many people, say in Pacific Palisades, had their fire
insurance canceled, or even homeowners in many cases with insurance companies,
(19:21):
you know, fleeing the state along with half of California,
it seems. But it is absolutely devastating because you know,
you think back to the campfire up here in Paradise, California,
your Sacramento, and you know that was unbelievably devastating, but
it was also unbelievably costly for insurers. And then the
(19:45):
calder Fire a couple of years later, and then.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
We're just looking for broad strokes, just a very quick
description of what's wrong with insurance in California.
Speaker 6 (19:55):
What's wrong with it is politics purely. And this goes
back to Proposition one O three, which was put on
the ballot to essentially tap the amount of premiums insurance
companies could impose on the insured, rather than fixing the
problem of why it costs so much to build and
rebuild here in California.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
And it ordered them to only look at historical data
as opposed to current data for building costs, and the
rest of it is utterly unrealistic.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
It is entirely unrealistic. And boy, we're going to see
what a disaster, a financial disaster this is going to
be following the fires.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And then I know you wrote about water as well,
in the fact that California has built no water storage
in generations, even as the populations doubled.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
It's just terrible governance.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
Yes, absolutely, Not only have we not built any water
storage in years, the voters have passed over thirty two
billion dollars in water bonds to do just that in
thirty years, and the last one was Proposition one in
twenty fourteen, which would it set aside two point seven
billion dollars so that we could build the site's reservoir
and the Temperance Flat reservoir, none of which has been done.
(21:10):
And in the meantime, the amount of water that flows
from our snowpack melt and our rain has increased from
fifty percent of the state's water to eighty percent of
the state's water goes straight out to the Pacific Ocean
to save some fish that aren't even indigenous.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Well, yeah, how fair is it to lay blame at
the foot of either the mayor of Los Angeles, the
governor of California City Council of LA or you know,
government officials in this soon to be biggest disaster in
California history.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Well, I think Avenussom's responses show you exactly how fair
it is. He's running as fast as he can from responsibility,
and yet this is what he signed up for. When
you sign up to be governor of California, you do
sign up for the good, bad, and the ugly. And
he's not handling this very well. It is fair to
point fingers at him because so many of his policies
(22:07):
have led us to this place, even policies who supported
long before he became governor. Leftism in California has gotten
us here.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, I know your recent column, which is terrific, the
anti American agendas California's Democrats catching up. You point out
that southern California is on fire. But here are Newsom's
priorities and what he has been focused on. Newsom created
the California abortion sanctuary state. He legalized abortion up until birth,
authorized a trans sanctuary state, allowing children to receive hormone
blockers chemical carastration without parental consent. He exacerbated the homeless crisis,
(22:40):
spending tens of billions of dollars to get more bums.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And junkies, he said.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
He's embraced illegal immigrants, even providing health insurance. He's also
on board for the bottomless pit of the high speed
rail project. So, and it reminds me of a conversation
we had Friday. Instead of doing the blocking and tackling
of governing, they have all these pie in the sky
progressive you know, just agendas that they're pursuing instead.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And you didn't mention the most recent trump proofing California
against the evil dictator is about to go in.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Go ahead, Gatie.
Speaker 6 (23:13):
Yeah. I devoted an entire article to that one. Yeah,
And I think this shows I mean, as ridiculous as
this list sounds, when we lay it all out together,
it does show you he's doing everything but governing. And
I assume governing is not always very sexy. It doesn't
always get great headlines. And yet you know, he and
his PR team could certainly have written good headlines for
(23:34):
all the hard work he was doing behind the scenes.
But that's not what's happened. He is he's adopted this
absolutely unbelievably radical, radical agenda of things that Californians and
even those who didn't vote for him, they don't want.
They want water to be in their fire hydrants. We
want decent roads and good schools, and we want to
(23:55):
make sure that our cal Fire and the local firefighters
have everything they need in terms of, you know, budget
and equipment.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
You've been following politics in California for a long time.
I was reading Mark Halprin's newsletter today and he said, hell,
hath no fury like a homeless celebrity. A Los Angeles
conservative is a liberal actor who blames NWSO and BASS
and decades of liberal governments governance for their houses burning down.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Do you think this is like perhaps a seed change
politically for LA or maybe the state.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
It could be. And Mark Halpern's absolutely right. And I
think the reason we're getting so much attention focused on
California as opposed to say North Carolina right now, which
people are still living intents, is because of Hollywood and
the celebrities and people being you know, they have a
platform from which they can speak and they are describing
(24:45):
what's going on. And as I said, I think even
people who voted for Gavin Newsom are really really pissed
off right now and they want answers. They want to
know why this happened, and that will lead to some
changes voting, I hope.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Well, and I'm sure Gavious people would say, look, we
could walk and chew gum at the same time. We
can pursue these grand progressive schemes and be good governors.
But they can't if the walking is you know, having
a bullet train squander hundreds of billions of dollars that'll
never exist, and the chewing gum is making sure that
there's enough water storage for forty million people.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
No you can't. You haven't.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
You've proven it over and over again, and to the
rest of the country listening, you're like, well, why doesn't
why don't you vote Democrats out office? It's because all
of the public employee unions are so powerful in the
try lawyers that they all show up, every single one
of them and vote Democrat every single time because they're
getting their backscratched slash paid.
Speaker 6 (25:47):
Yeah, exactly. It's a huge problem we have in California
in that, and I think this last election showed us
there's a lot more independent slash right of center voters
as we saw who voted for Trump over six million.
But yeah, when you fight that with the public employee unions,
(26:07):
which are just ruthless, Yeah, it seems like too much
of a heavy lift.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, the regular folks really just they can't accumulate enough
mass to take it back. Katie Grimes is the editor
in chief of the California Globe California Globe dot com.
You ought a bookmarket check it all the time if
you're of a conservative bent really in any state in
the Union, or you'd just like to have your eyes
open to the truth.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
California Globe dot Com. Katie great to talk to you. Thanks,
thanks very much so.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
The Brentwood neighborhood, which you probably recognize that name if
you follow the celebrity news, has the fires bearing down
on it. With it, it's going to be a couple
of really really windy days. That neighborhood where OJ.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Was framed for a crime.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
That's right. And that neighborhood is also home to former
Senator Kamala Harris. Maybe you've heard of her, Lebron, James,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, doctor Dre among others. And those
are some names that can get a lot of attention.
Like Katie just said, there people are still living in
tents in North Carolina because of the biggest disaster they'd
(27:08):
ever had in that part of the country, but not
enough celebrities to get attention for that.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
I actually appreciated sixty minutes last night going heavily at
all the thousands, you know, highlighting the many thousands of
working class folks, just regular people in various sections of
the greater Los Angeles metro area that are now homeless
and hopeless, and all of their baby pictures are gone.
They don't know where they're going to go and what
they're going to do. I mean, obviously baby pictures is
(27:37):
one example.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
But it's just heartbreaking the number of people I've seen
on TV saying, literally, the only thing I had of
what is have is what you see me wearing.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I can't imagine the to do list you have when
you're in that situation. Where do you start? Oh my god,
would that be overwhelming?
Speaker 1 (28:00):
And as I said before, just to put a cap
on this, has it been an extremely dry year in
southern California?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Were those incredibly powerful wins freakish and rare? One hundred percent.
There are aspects of this fire that are not the
fault of governance. On the other hand, there are aspects
of it that are. And if this draws people's attention
to the utterly incompetent, doesn't even describe it. It's incompetent, dishonest,
(28:30):
just klepto, main maniacal governance of California over the last
quite a few years. If it draws attention to that good,
whether it directly applies to how a particular fire started
or not. Karen Bass is an avowed communist. She cut
the fire budget, according to her chief, to a damaging
level to support drug addicts and illegal immigrants and proudly
(28:54):
did so.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Uh did you see over the weekend where she was
at least hinting that people are criticizing her because she's black.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Oh yeah, a couple of celebrities are out saying that.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, go ahead, hey, put the final nail in the
coffin of your fake accusations of racism.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Do it now. That was perfect.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
And the state level, when you start talking about not
having enough money for this or that, come on, you
don't get.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
To say that.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
As long as there's a bullet train project. You gotta
end that before you can ever say a word about
not having enough money for this or that.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Amen. Oh my god, we got more on the ways there.
We're all better off. We're all better off. We're all
better off, and we're working together.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
I read over the weekend and a very interesting book
about violence, Why duels are a good idea and should
be brought back do what.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
It's fascinating. I'd never thought about it before. Maybe I'll
get to that. Wow, that's madness, folks. I disagree and disapprove.
I don't think you will. I don't think you will. Actually, well,
then I will have a on air conversion. Won't that
be exciting?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
All sorts of great stuff to get to, including I
want to go big on it's.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
The first freaking amendment.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Mark Zuckerberg is finally out explaining how severe the pressure
was from the Biden administration to censor free speech that
the government didn't like. If you don't get that that's
a problem or why it's a problem, go from me.
May your chain sit lightly upon you, lick the hand
that feeds you, and made posterity forget you were our countryman,
(30:32):
Sam Adams. Roughly anyway, So a couple of completely non
political notes. I'm not going to be labor the first
one because we all know it. Physical inactivity is linked
to increased risk of nineteen different chronic health conditions. According
to a University of Ioa study analyzing over forty thousand
patient records. The couch is is the cigarette pack of
(30:55):
the modern world. Just even moderate activity a few times
a week is so so, so much better. And you
know what, We'll post this at Armstrong and getty dot com.
The simple thirty second exercise survey all it takes to
know your health in general. Anyway, moving along, because we
(31:16):
all know that I thought this was interesting. Our legendary
and beloved newsguy Marshall Phillips used to bring us at
least one study about coffee and drinking coffee per week,
and the first one would be contradicted by the second one,
then go back and forth.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
It just never ended.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
But here's a giant meta study of caffeine and coffee studies.
Two to three cups in the morning is like, by
far the best option, including not drinking coffee at all.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Really, you're better off drinking a couple of two to
three cups than not drinking coffee.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Research so far suggests that drinking coffee does not raise
the risk of heart disease, seems to lower the risk
of some chronic diseases given the effects that caffeine has
on our bodies. Says the head scientists, we wanted to
see at the time of day when you drink coffee
has any impact on heart health. And they had three
different groups morning drinkers, all day coffee drinkers, and non
(32:17):
coffee drinkers, and long story short, the results significantly better
for early coffee drinkers in terms of heart disease and
all causes.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
This may very well be true, but I got to
say most of this sort of stuff I ignore at
this point in my life. So many of them have
gone back and forth so many times in my adult life.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
It's shocking.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
On alcohol and coffee and different diets and all kinds
of stuff, different studies.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I'm going to quote somebody now, I'm not saying it's true.
I'm not saying I believe it. We were talking about
cigar smoking. Myself had a handful of fellows I had
lunch with on Saturday, and the topic of and one
of the guys actually getting treated for cancer right now,
and one has gone through it several times. And they
were talking about hanging out with a bunch of doctors
after round of golf the other day and they're all
(33:10):
smoking cigars and they're all like that, that's genetics. So again,
I'm not telling you to go and live your life accordingly.
I'm just telling you what was said living along.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Speaking of health, if you're over fifty, relationships friendships are
as important as virtually everything you can do health wise.
According to statistical studies, having a circle of people you
trust and like in exchange views with the rest of it.
It's incredibly important. Isolation kills.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Screaming down a road culturally where there's more isolation.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, great peace in the Atlantic.
It's overly long, of course, because everything is about what's
the title of it, The Anti social Century?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Absolutely. Yeah, here's another one.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
We're going fast, We're going swiftly here, folks, take notes
if you can, even if you're driving. Americans are tipping
less than they have in years. Frustration with rising menu
prices and the ubiquitous tipped prompts guilt tipping have led
to a six year low.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I don't doubt that. I also, for some reason, I
don't like the you tell me how much eighteen.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Percent is? I don't know why. It's just just a
little more looking over your shoulder. I don't know. I
just I don't like it. I don't like it fits
in with all the other too much telling me to tip?
I will tip. I've always tipped. Would just quit quit?
What the telling me to tip?
Speaker 1 (34:44):
You're right, I don't mind the math because I can,
you know, quickly do it instead of doing it in
my head, which is probably good for my brain.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
But it's all the Here are your choices, Yeah, feel
to it. Oh whoa, whoa. My choice is whatever the
hell I.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
Want, exactly exactly. I'm sitting here determining how good I
thought the service was. Just don't tell me my three options,
which are all really high by the way, Armstrong and
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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