February 14, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour 3 of A&G features...
- Tim Sandefur talks to Jack Armstrong!
- Valentine's Day in school
- Are orgasms good for your health?
- DOGE & federal agencies layoffs
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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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, Joe Getty, Armstrong and Jetty
and He Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The pizza chain Papa John's has announced it will offer
a limited edition garlic dipping sauce bath Bomb. It's the
perfect thing to put in your bath if you're working
your way up to toaster.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
That's pretty funny. Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Joe is off today. We've got a friend who we
have a guest regularly. He thinks Joe and I should
alternate Fridays off because he likes the different feel of
the show when one.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Of us hosts.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And he says that way we could each get a
three day week every other week, and then the audience
would get the unique version of one of us being
on the air.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I don't know. I think most of you'd probably rather
we're both here all the time.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
But Joe is off because it's his big birthday week
and he's taken a day off.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
And I had another point to make about that, but
I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh, we got a text yesterday saying, if you're having
trouble telling which one is which Jack is the dumb one.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh, that's handy. That'll speed things up for you.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
I'd like to welcome to the Armstrong and Getty show.
Tim the Lawyer. It's Tim Sanderfer. He's the vice president
of Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. He's an adjunk
scholar with the Cato Institute. Tim, what is an ad
junk scholar.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
It means that I get my picture on their website,
but I don't get any money from them.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Okay, so it's a cool name.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Now, now the idea of you of doing Fridays alternating,
I don't like this idea. It's like Laurel without Hardy.
It would be like Penn without Teller. It would be
like Salt without Peppa. I don't think it works.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Gotcha, so quickly before we get to a couple of
other things to talk about it, I wanted to I assume,
since you tweeted it out, you're willing to go on
the record with this, because you've put it out there
into the world. You tweeted Playboy Magazine is back. I
do hope it succeeds the anti sex, anti intellectual culture
of the past decade has got to be overturned.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Thought that was an interesting take from you.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, as our culture has decayed over the last several decades,
Playboy magazine seems at a very high level of culture
in our biocurrent standards.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Oh well, what's happened? What I mean by the anti
sex culture is things like the glorification of ugliness and
the hatred of beauty, which has become such a pervasive tone,
especially on the left, but also on the right. This
idea of elevating ugliness and pretending that it's beautiful, while
at the same time denigrating things that actually are beautiful.
(02:53):
And you find this in things like the locust attitude
towards you know, the so called male gaze, and how
we're all supposed to be ashamed of you, beautiful Victoria's
secret models. We can't have that, you know anymore. We
have to cancel those kinds of shows. And this is
all rooted in the same philosophy that motivates the bad
politics of today, which is this idea that equality is
(03:16):
the same thing as justice, that equal outcomes is what
justice demands. That's a perverse and false notion, because of course,
there are no equal outcomes in all of the world.
And therefore, if that's what you think justice requires, then
you are perpetually at war with nature and you have
to break down everything that is great in order to
make it the equivalent of things that are not great.
(03:37):
And that's been what's motivated everything from You remember a
few years ago Playboy, before it went out of publication,
they stop running nude photos. We're playing along with this
woke attitude that we're the male gaze is a bad thing.
And if we're returning to a culture that celebrates beauty,
including female beauty, I see that as a healthy development.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
And from the anti intellectual part of it, Playboy magazine
people used to always joke about it. I get Playboy
magazine for the articles, hahaha. No, I actually did look
at Boy. He can find naked girls lots of places.
But they had great short stories and interviews and think
pieces and stuff like that. And not to stand up
for Playboy, but just in general we need more of that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Absolutely great writers and great thinkers and people I usually
disagreed with, but they were worth reading. I mean. Williemough
Buckley wrote for Playboy Magazine for Crying Out Loud that
this is the I think this is a step. I
hope it's a step toward adults coming back and actually
running the culture instead of of people who have no
idea what they're talking.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
I don't like our chances, Tim, but anyway, thanks for
the hope. I'm looking at the headline Goldwater Institute where
you actually do get paid. Does the Arizona Constitution allow
juryleist trial by bureaucrats? It says here you're suing over
DEI and doctor nation requirements for professors.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Also, what is that all about?
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Yeah, so well, we're doing the case we filed some
months ago against Arizona State University for illegally requiring their
employees to undergo these you know, cultural sensitivity its DEI
whatever they call it, training programs that tell you that
white people should be ashamed for the historical oppressions of
(05:24):
the past, and that you know, to say nothing against
racism is complicity and all these sorts of these leftist
indoctrination is actually illegal in Arizona. Some years ago, we
got a law passed in the state that prohibits the
government from requiring employees to engage in training that is
based on what the law calls race based blame or judgment,
(05:48):
and that is any training that says that you should
feel bad because of what other people of your race
have done in the past. And yet that is what
ASU requires and other employees. And so we've gone to
and we're suing over that, and we've won a preliminary
stage of that case, and I'm optimistic about our chances there.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
We well, speaking of having you know, higher level intellectual discussions,
the whole DEI thing has gotten uh, well, I should
stop being on Twitter because you know, it gives me
a negative view of the world and how and how
and how things can get watered down into where everything
is called DEI. But DEI in its worst form, we'll
explain what DEI looks like in its worst form.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Well, in its worst form, DEI says that what has
made America great, to use the words of the sixteen
nineteen Project, what has made America great has been slavery
and the oppression of minorities. That the whole idea of
the American dream is a lie, and that every great
advancement that Western civilization has made has been at the
(06:49):
expense of the exploitation of the huddled masses of who
have suffered under the evils of capitalism. It's just ordinary
anti capitalism dressed up in a new outfit with you know,
wearing wearing tight jeans instead. It's and the problem with
it is that America is the only country that has
a dream, and if you're going to break down the
(07:12):
American dream, you will destroy something absolutely essential to what
makes America such a special place, precisely for immigrants and
members of minority groups who don't have the kind of
political influence to make it in countries where everything's run
by the government. Freedom allows people to rise. It has
always allowed people to rise. And we destroy something and
(07:33):
do something really damaging to the greatness of America if
we downplay that or act like it's a bad thing.
And unfortunately, higher education in this country is totally oriented
toward teaching young Americans that patriotism is a lie, that
believing in the Declaration of Independence is foolhardy, that the
America is founded as a pro slavery nation, and that
(07:55):
white supremacy, to quote Tana Hessekoats, the darling of the Left,
the white supremacy is at the heart of American culture
to this day, none of which is true. And yet
impressionable minds are taught this, and professors are forced to
undergo indoctrination in this idea, so that people graduate from
college now not knowing the basic facts of history, but
(08:18):
having their brains full instead of loathing it for America.
And it's not only is that a travesty, but the
Goldwater Institute has published a report just recently showing that
about two billion dollars a year are spent in higher
education in this country on classes that teach this nonsense.
Two billion dollars a year. Now, keep in mind that
(08:38):
does not count the amount of this nonsense that smuggled
into other classes. That's just counting classes devoted to teaching
this anti American, anti white, anti capitalist, anti male.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up, because I
was about to interject that I met Harold Bloom before
he died. He was like the great Shakespeare expert from Yah.
I remember seeing him on Charlie Rose and him complaining
that there's not a Shakespeare class you could take in America.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And this was ten years ago, twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
That didn't run all the Shakespeare plays through some sort
of identity politics as part of the class where you
just studied.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
The literature, or or just take take your average let's
take your average high school graduate. Ask a high school
graduate just randomly that you pick, ask what he knows
about Thomas Jefferson. And what that person will know about
Thomas Jefferson is that he had children with a slave.
That's what that student will know about Thomas Jeverson. He
might know that Jefferson was responsible for the Louisiana purchase,
(09:37):
and that's about it, you know, And that's a disgrace.
What it's not only a disgrace just for normal patriotic
cultural reasons, but it's a disgrace because it's based on
a fundamental lie, the idea that America is at heart
a racist nation, that the founders didn't mean all men
are created equal, and that capitalism is built on this,
(09:58):
and therefore capitalism too is tainted with and that goes
back to what we're talking about before, this basic notion
that equal outcomes is what justice requires, when that is
not at all what justice requires, in fact, that it's
very frequently unjust to impose equal outcomes when people deserve
unequal rewards.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
How many years have you been calling into the armstrong
and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Do you know, Oh, it's been I think twenty years.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, I'd say it's at least that And I was
going to make the point that you were quite a
young man when you first started calling in his tim
the lawyer, and then we saw I'm.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Old and gray and grizzled, right, grown, not only gray
but almost blind in the service of my friends. But
the problem out there, you kids out there who don't
know what that means. That's a sly reference to George Washington.
He was the first president look it up.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Which, yes, And the reason I brought that up was.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
My concern that this stuff has been in the schools
K through twelve and then onto college for so long
we may have already lost the battle. The people that
are going to run the country grew up with the
only thing they knew about Thomas Jefferson was he, you know,
fathered children with a slave girl. I mean, they're going
to take over soon and won't be dead.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, one of another project that
we're working on at the Institute here is we're talking
about the influence of the communist writer Howard Zinn on
American history classes across the nation. We've published a report
about this, and we now have probably the second generation
of teachers, right, your high school teachers who themselves never
(11:34):
learned the facts of history because they were spoon fed
anti American propaganda in their colleges, right because their teachers
were also spoonfed. I mean you're talking about since at
least the nineteen seventies, right, So that's a half century
where now you have teachers who don't They honestly don't
even realize they're teaching the propaganda because that's all they've
ever known in their lives. So, yeah, it's a terrible thing,
(11:55):
but there's no reason that we cannot fix it tomorrow
if we chose to do so.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That is the point that I was making, that we're
so far into it. I want to hear about the
fixing it part, if you can stick around for one
more segment. We got Tim Sandifer will be back with
all this interesting stuff in just a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Hetty, I'm so danced to this one a few times.
Huh huh.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
My son's got a Valentine's Day dance at the high
school tonight.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Is he gonna wear a pink?
Speaker 3 (12:29):
I don't know, I don't know. I'll talk more about
that later this hour, because that's a thing. Welcome back
to the show. Tim Sandfer, Goldwater Institute and one of
the great defenders of personal freedom in America. George Will
called Tim Sandifer a national treasure. I've never even been
referred to as a municipal treasure at any point in
(12:49):
my life. Welcoming back, Tim, Hey, before we get back
to you know, things that mattered a lot, Tim, or
maybe you think this matters. Remember when you texted a
while back that you got to tour the Way facility
where they make the autonomous cabs that they use in
San Francisco. The facility is Phoenix. Tell me a little
bit about that. Why were you so blown away by that?
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Oh? It was the most amazing thing. These are truly autonomous,
self driving cars that are all over Phoenix. And I
got to see the facility and they actually served us
lunch in the garage where the cars come in to
get recharged. And these cars are driving in and finding
parking spots for themselves, and you watch them and it
looks exactly like me at the airport looking for a
(13:31):
parking spot. I mean, they drive exactly like human beings would,
except there are no scuff marks on any of the
walls or anything, because these cars are so accurate that
they can drive in the narrowest little spots and not
run into anything because they're so safe. And then after
lunch they let us take a ride in one, and
it was just it was breathtaking. The technology is so good.
(13:55):
And I said to the guy, said, if this is
even just, all it has to be is slightly safer
than a human and that's not a lot. And they
operate with all sorta They operate with sonar, radar, light, ore, video,
all sorts of different things in order to be able
to see what's going on so that if a car,
in fact, my wife wrote in one the other day,
(14:17):
and if the car is going to run the red light,
the car can see that and stop so that it
doesn't get in the way and get hit by the
human drivers running the red light. And this is going
to make driving as safe as flying. And I said
to the guy, they've been operating for a couple of
years now, you have almost certainly saved at least ten
thousand lives easily, right, maybe one hundred thousand lives already
(14:38):
in all the markets they've been operating. It is such
a beautiful thing to see. I'm so enthusiastic about Waimo
and I just I can't say enough about how blown
away I am by this technology.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I keep meaning when I'm in San Francisco to download
the app and actually ride in one night.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Just haven't yet.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Hey, we've only got a couple of minutes. Are you
a fan of the Department at Education? Do you think
it's necess for the federal government to have that role?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
No, not only.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
That, but it's very counterproductive, as you can see how
much education has improved in the half century that we've
had it, right, No, this is not something that the
federal government should be in charge of. It should be
done at the local level, if at all, I mean ideally,
it would be done at the city, at the individual level,
where you get to choose what schools your own kids
go to, instead of being mandated top down by bureaucrats
(15:26):
in Washington, d C. Who have all the money that
they've taken from you, and that's so you have to
obey their orders to get your own money back. No,
it's a terrible thing and it should be abolished.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
I want to keep hearing I keep asking for please
make the argument for why we have one hundred and
forty percent more mid level managers in schools while enrollment
of students has only gone up eight percent over the
last fifty years.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
What's the argument for that?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Was by the Carter administration as a handout to teachers' unions,
and that's what it's always been ever since.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Wow, that's so frustrating as a guy with the kids
in school. We're about out of time and I have
to let you go. But Tim always appreciate you coming on.
You're you're just so damned interesting. Whether I agree with
you or not on the topic of the you know,
the arguments you make just fascinating guy.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Thanks much, Jack, I'd love to do it again.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Jim Sanderfer And if you if you don't follow his
Twitter or read any of his books, I mean they're
just really really it's it's my life is actually better
for knowing Tim and being able to throw something at
him every once in a while, like what do you
think of this, or what's the argument for that?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Or whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Uh, it's it's it's handy having smart friends when you're
a dullard like myself. Dullard is an actual designation slightly
below average intelligence, and that's what I believe I am.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I'm a dullard. You can look it up.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
There's dullard, there's imbecile, moron. These are actually different categories
of where your eyekim with. I'm not I'm not a
moron or an imbecile, but I do think I'm a dullard. Uh,
I'm south of the Mendoza line, whatever that is. Have
a little more Valentine's Day stuff I need to get too,
because people continue to text about that story I told earlier.
(17:04):
I hope your kids aren't going into the emotional lord
of the flies that Valentine's Day used to be in
grade school when I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I hope they're not dealing with that today. A lot
more on the way, stay here, Armstrong and Getty and
out of Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
The fast food chained Shake Shack is offering buy one,
get one free smoke Shack Burgers. And if you're wondering
what that has to do with Valentine's Day, you'll need
someone to give you their heart.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
So we had one text or say Valentine's Day or
they as they referred to it as Single Awareness Day,
Singles Awareness Day is there's a certain truth of that
told the story earlier, because we're still getting tons of
texts about this and all the related tangents to it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
A little fourth grade girl who.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
This fourth grade boy has a crush honor and on
Valentine's Day at school. This is years ago, back when
they allowed this sort of thing to happen. My kids
have gone through the modern Valentine's Day where you're only
allowed to bring cards. They all have to be the
same and no names, so it's just everybody gets the
same thing, which on one hand isn't cruel, but on
(18:17):
the other hand means nothing. So it's just a nothing.
You might as well just skip it, which might be
the best plan. Actually, it might be the best plan
for little kids to just skip Valentine's Day and not
you know, have love and emotion and crushes and the
most traumatic things you ever deal with in your life
injected into the school room.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It's not might be the best thing. That is the
best thing.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And then I brought up the idea that and Katie
had never heard of this, getting texts from people saying,
oh my god, I'd completely forgotten about Skunk Valentine's Day cards.
Got a text from a moment and said, I always
got the skunk cards on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I didn't end up in prison, though, But somebody should
do a documentary.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Go back to Hallmark or whoever made these Valentine's Day
card packages and the set tventies and eighties, and if
you bought a package of fifty Valentine's Day cards, there'd
be a couple of skunks in there.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And the idea was that he gave the skunks to
the using my finger quotes.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Because this is a horrible term, but it's often used
by grade schoolers, he gave the skunk cards to the
ugly girls. Oh it's just and so it was a
it was a day of let's single out who is
perceived as the least attractive either in personality or looks
girl in the class. I mean, just you couldn't You
(19:33):
couldn't hardly manufacture a more cruel thing to do to
a ten year old girl. No, but that's what happened
in schools all across the country all the time.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Anyway, did I finish my story?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So this little boy's got a crush on her in
fourth grade shows up with a little bear Flowers card.
She throws it in the trash and in front of
the whole class. He cries the rest of the class
and ended up with a life of crime and prison.
Would she poor little guy? Gosh, I know it is
just so awful. I can totally picture the skunk cards now.
(20:10):
How terrible is that? I know? I can't believe that
our parents let us do it skunk cards? Does that
really any different from modern dating apps where you're judged
by swiping?
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
The big difference is you willingly get on a dating app.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
You're not forced into it, and you're not nine right,
would be the big difference. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Oh my god, that's horrifying.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
I can't I have my mind is so blown by
the skunk card because I mean, this.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Is the first I've ever heard of it.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Really, Yeah, I was pretty amazed by it as a kid,
and like I said, I felt bad for the girls
who got them. As a kid, I just thought, oh,
this is sore. I feel so bad for her. That
girl over there is just you know, she's just quiet
and awkward, but she gets all the skunk cards. An
a cute, outgoing girl who's just born with an outgoing personality,
(20:59):
all the cute ones. Ah, yeah, that's awful after that horrible,
sad story. I just said a prayer for my nine
year old grandson. He has a gift for his girlfriend
today at age nine. Uh, we got this. I'm gonna
keep this in mind. All cruelty is evil. Quote a
(21:22):
friend that is That is a good way to remember
that if you're ever being cruel to someone, no matter
even if there's a justified reason, it is evil and
should be avoided. Totally agree, but it should.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Be off limits now.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Less cute couple of things. And I'm gonna get to
this why orgasms are good for your health study.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That came out on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Oh god, I can't wait. I saw this meme Valentine's Day?
You mean Penis Christmas? This is the guy's good Lord,
come on jack.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Jack Ah.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
So I was talking to a therapist about this the
other day, you know, getting around the damage of that
poor little kid and what happened with him. We are
human beings designed psychologically to be able to deal with
what modern society has created around relationships.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
For most of history. You paired up.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
With somebody at a fairly young agent stayed with that
person for the rest of your life. I remember reading
a story about a presidential election.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I think it was like in nineteen oh four or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Well, one of the big issues was, see with that
party in charge, we've doubled the divorce rate in this country,
almost doubled it from one and a half percent to
three percent. That's how low the divorce rate was in
the early nineteen hundreds. You met somebody, you got together,
and you stayed married no matter what. Now, not getting
into the debate over whether that's good or bad, just
(23:01):
what it would mean is you are not going to
go through Like I just I'm almost four years out
from when my wife told me she wanted a divorce.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
It's still brutal. I mean, so people didn't have.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
That emotional trauma of divorce, and now in the modern world,
with more divorce more so, you just have more relationships.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Period, more heartbreak.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
We might not be designed psychologically for three to eight
times falling in love or twelve times of falling in
love in your life where it turns out badly.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
We're not designed for that.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, a couple of childhood crushes that go aside, but
then one big love. You stay married, and that's it
for the rest of your life, not over and over again.
All the chemicals and emotions that come with fallen in
love and the investment and this and that, and then
you get rejected.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
We're not built for that. Evolution didn't account for that.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
I have a friend that I grew up around, and
she fell in love a few times, and she really
fell in love back in two thousand and nine, was
with this guy. They broke up in twenty ten. She
has still not recovered.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
I well, I don't think I guarantee you. Evolutionary we
are not designed to deal with that because human being's
never dealt with that before.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
You just didn't. Yeah, So a therapist was telling me
the other day.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
People are who are like all my close friends have
been married for like thirty five years, Joe, and all
my early roommates for college, they've all been married for
But if you're not one of those people, you've had
a whole bunch of just soul crushing defeats out there.
And so the idea being anybody who is not. You know,
(24:52):
if you're of a certain age and you're still singer,
you are by definition damaged.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
You're just damaged. Everybody is.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I don't think there's any getting around it, like I said,
because I don't think our psychees are built for this
and I don't and that hasn't been accounted for in
our culture.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
I don't know if it varies state to state, but
I do know that getting a divorce in the state
of California is a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
There's a Neil Young song when when he got divorced
and he mentions, now we're going through the big divorce
California style because it is a completely different thing. But again,
don't want to get up on that topic. Right, So
Valentine's Day is different, you know, if you've been married
for thirty years and you got together in your twenties
than it is if you're out there in single and
(25:39):
you've had soul crushing defeat you know, a dozen times
in your life.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
So hey, here's love day, you know, here's relationship day,
and then chocolates and flowers and stuffed animals that collect dust.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Good times and which side of that you're on out there? Right?
Speaker 5 (25:54):
Well, it is so unnecessary. This honestly, this quote unque
about holiday. It upsets me because it hurts more people
than it does anything else.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Good question, does Valentine's Day make more people happy or
more people unhappy?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I would be shocked if it's not the latter. Yeah,
same here, shocked.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Okay, So this why orgasms are good for your health.
I don't know if this fits in. I don't know
if this fits in with Valentine's Day at all. If
this is on your menu, it's not on mine. According
to this, more than a quarter of men struggle to
reach this, and fifteen percent of women have never had one.
(26:36):
I believe that really. Okay, so you talk to girls
and friends. Fifteen percent of women have never had one. Well,
you could understand why they might not be super interested
in sex very often, because what's the payoff. It's the
same reason I don't do that claw machine at the fairy.
You do it a couple of times, you never grab
a prize, it's not enjoyable, you don't put you don't
(26:58):
try it again.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yes, Mike like that. Yeah, it's exactly like the climb machine, Jack.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
You've tried it a couple of times, no payoff, not
doing that again.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
You see another one and you're like, oh, screw that.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
You know the point of this article is how it's
good for releasing emotional tension or something this or that,
and I don't know if that's true or not. I
just thought it was interesting. Fifteen percent of women have
never had one, and you think that that sounds right? Wow, Okay,
I believe that that's rough.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Oh that's rough out here. You know.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I don't know. I don't know where to take that.
That's unimaginable as a guy. I mean, yeah, it really
takes practically nothing. Well, oh, I don't know. We can't
go any further down this road. Hr is standing and
looking in the window right now. Yes, exactly, so we
won't go there further saying yes, Michael, I already have
to go to church.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I lost the red paint off first.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Got some doge stuff to tell you about. Haven't mentioned
for a while.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
JD.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Vance's interview with The Wall Street Journal actually said, US
troops on the ground in Ukraine on the table.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Have you heard that? Stay tuned.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
Elon. You can't just call anything you want waste and
just get rid of it.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
You can't do that.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
Like in the Department of Defense, we do like lots
and lots of online training every year. That's totally not
a waste of time and teaches us great skills that
we use every day. And you should not use doage
to eliminate that. You don't. Please don't do that.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Please think that's some pretty good sarcasm. So there are
headlines out there thousands and thousands of people in the
federal government in the last twenty four hours have found
out that they're losing their jobs, many thousands, and what
(28:55):
the total number is gonna end up being. I don't
know how many of them will stick. I don't know
a lot of the firings y're not technically firings because
almost everybody involved so far, you get a one year
two year probationary period of something before you get the
full civil servant protection laws that we have in this country.
(29:16):
For some flip and reason, I don't know why, after
you've been in a job for two years you're basically unfireable.
In some cases, you like short of murder, are unfireable.
Why do we allow this to happen? I have no idea.
A text I read earlier about somebody was talking about
the tech sector in the Silicon Valley area. Remember on
(29:39):
Facebook fired whatever was twenty thousand people and Intel laid
off tens of thousands of people, and Elon came out
to run Twitter efficiently and fired.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Lots of people lose their jobs all the time for
all kinds of different reasons, and the idea that the
federal government has put in protections that you can't is nuts.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Anyway, I was quoting somebody.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I'll be very vague because I want to get in trouble,
but they work in the federal government and their boss
was very sad last night that he had gotten the
nod that he had to let six people go. And
this person had never really worked in the private sector.
So it's just horrified that the boss had to get
rid of some people, saying, these people moved here for
this job, and now I have to tell them with
(30:22):
one day's notice that they're being fired. Yeah, happens in
the private sector all the time. It's just life, and
everybody knows it. And I'm trying not to have this
about revenge against government workers or whatever for those of
us who live in the private sector.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
And you know, this is another thing. If you have.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
An unfireable position, which is many many government jobs, do
you realize that the rest of us think about getting
fired every day, every day of our lives. We wonder
if today's the day. If the boss walks by and says, hey,
can I come by my office a little later, you're
certain you're getting fired every time without a doubt. So
(31:06):
imagine what it's like to have a government job where
you know that's not on their mind, and you'll go
see the boss if he wants or not, if he
doesn't want to know what differences to make or she.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
The rest of us were worried about it all the time.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
That's just part of life, and you get used to
it and you just accept it as the human condition.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Here's David Axelrod regular on CNN, Obama's campaign manager, talking
about how awful this is.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
I think government can be more efficient, Every bureaucracy can
be challenged and refined. But you can't send people in
overnight and assess large organizations and say you're worth something.
You're not worth something. This whole organization isn't worth something.
And the message that's being sent here is very, very discouraging,
(31:53):
deta grading and completely unfair of the people who you're
leaving out in the middle of nowhere in the no
man's land, and so yeah, I think one of the
lasting pieces of damage that I am worried about is
that it will send the message, particularly to younger people,
that public service somehow is not worth pursuing.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
First of all, if you're a long time listening, you
know how annoyed I am by the term public service.
I know lots of people that have gone into, for instance,
state work in California. Wasn't a single one of them
that did it for the public service. They did it
(32:33):
for the benefits and the fact that they couldn't get fired.
As funny as around some dude the other day who
had been out of work and he got a state job,
and he announced it in this little group are sitting
with and everybody's like, oh my god, nice job, patting
him on the back because everybody knows it's like winning
a lottery ticket. You got a state job, you can't
get fired. He's not doing it for public service. He's
(32:54):
doing it because it's a cush I get to work forever.
Thing did the public service That makes me annoying. Now
I know people. I have a relative that has a
I think it's a city job, actually city or county,
and it is definitely public service. They are someone that
could make more in the private sector. And it's a
rough job. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but there's
(33:15):
a lot of people in public service who either aren't
working very hard or making a really good living one
way or another, coming out of government richer than when
they went in. But that aside, I wish I had
written down all those words that David Axelrod used there.
It's denigrating, it's depressing, it's jarring. It's again that happens
when you get fired at, for instance, a radio station two.
(33:39):
Somebody comes in and decides overnight, As he was just saying,
you can't just come in overnight and decide a whole
bunch of people aren't needed. I've seen it happen a
hundred times in my life. I've always been in radio,
so I have to use radio station. I've seen it
and having radio stations one hundred times. New boss comes
in and decides, basically overnight, all these people aren't needed,
and some really good people end up getting thrown out
(34:00):
with the bathwater, denigrating, depressing, whatever those phrases he was using.
So why why would we design a system Why if
you're getting paid by the taxpayer. You don't have to
live by any of the rules that the rest of
us live by. Somebody explained that to me, I don't
stop ranting about That drives me nuts.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
Yeah, it's just, you know, that's something that so many
people worry about every single day. It's like a slap
in the face for them to be like, oh, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
I mean, that's why it strikes those of us in
the private sector is so incredible, because you do think
about it every day of your life.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Yeah, there are probably people getting fired today, Sure, Jod,
they've been working at forever.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I'm sure there are, and in some cases doing a
really really good job, and for no good reason whatsoever,
you're out of work and you might have to move.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
It happens.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, we do four hours of this hoot and nanny
every single day. If you don't get all of them,
you can grab a segment or an hour, and there's
been some really good ones today. You gotta hear the
Valentine's Day story. You gotta have the hear the Mike
Lyons interview about JD Vance and JD Vance saying we
might send troops to Ukraine. Wow, all that in earlier segments.
You can find our podcast It's Armstrong in Getty on demand.
(35:12):
Good stuff coming up in our four by the
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Way, Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong, Joe Getty, Armstrong and Jetty
and He Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The pizza chain Papa John's has announced it will offer
a limited edition garlic dipping sauce bath Bomb. It's the
perfect thing to put in your bath if you're working
your way up to toaster.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
That's pretty funny. Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Joe is off today. We've got a friend who we
have a guest regularly. He thinks Joe and I should
alternate Fridays off because he likes the different feel of
the show when one.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Of us hosts.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And he says that way we could each get a
three day week every other week, and then the audience
would get the unique version of one of us being
on the air.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I don't know. I think most of you'd probably rather
we're both here all the time.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
But Joe is off because it's his big birthday week
and he's taken a day off.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
And I had another point to make about that, but
I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh, we got a text yesterday saying, if you're having
trouble telling which one is which Jack is the dumb one.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh, that's handy. That'll speed things up for you.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
I'd like to welcome to the Armstrong and Getty show.
Tim the Lawyer. It's Tim Sanderfer. He's the vice president
of Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. He's an adjunk
scholar with the Cato Institute. Tim, what is an ad
junk scholar.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
It means that I get my picture on their website,
but I don't get any money from them.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Okay, so it's a cool name.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Now, now the idea of you of doing Fridays alternating,
I don't like this idea. It's like Laurel without Hardy.
It would be like Penn without Teller. It would be
like Salt without Peppa. I don't think it works.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Gotcha, so quickly before we get to a couple of
other things to talk about it, I wanted to I assume,
since you tweeted it out, you're willing to go on
the record with this, because you've put it out there
into the world. You tweeted Playboy Magazine is back. I
do hope it succeeds the anti sex, anti intellectual culture
of the past decade has got to be overturned.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Thought that was an interesting take from you.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, as our culture has decayed over the last several decades,
Playboy magazine seems at a very high level of culture
in our biocurrent standards.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Oh well, what's happened? What I mean by the anti
sex culture is things like the glorification of ugliness and
the hatred of beauty, which has become such a pervasive tone,
especially on the left, but also on the right. This
idea of elevating ugliness and pretending that it's beautiful, while
at the same time denigrating things that actually are beautiful.
(02:53):
And you find this in things like the locust attitude
towards you know, the so called male gaze, and how
we're all supposed to be ashamed of you, beautiful Victoria's
secret models. We can't have that, you know anymore. We
have to cancel those kinds of shows. And this is
all rooted in the same philosophy that motivates the bad
politics of today, which is this idea that equality is
(03:16):
the same thing as justice, that equal outcomes is what
justice demands. That's a perverse and false notion, because of course,
there are no equal outcomes in all of the world.
And therefore, if that's what you think justice requires, then
you are perpetually at war with nature and you have
to break down everything that is great in order to
make it the equivalent of things that are not great.
(03:37):
And that's been what's motivated everything from You remember a
few years ago Playboy, before it went out of publication,
they stop running nude photos. We're playing along with this
woke attitude that we're the male gaze is a bad thing.
And if we're returning to a culture that celebrates beauty,
including female beauty, I see that as a healthy development.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
And from the anti intellectual part of it, Playboy magazine
people used to always joke about it. I get Playboy
magazine for the articles, hahaha. No, I actually did look
at Boy. He can find naked girls lots of places.
But they had great short stories and interviews and think
pieces and stuff like that. And not to stand up
for Playboy, but just in general we need more of that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Absolutely great writers and great thinkers and people I usually
disagreed with, but they were worth reading. I mean. Williemough
Buckley wrote for Playboy Magazine for Crying Out Loud that
this is the I think this is a step. I
hope it's a step toward adults coming back and actually
running the culture instead of of people who have no
idea what they're talking.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
I don't like our chances, Tim, but anyway, thanks for
the hope. I'm looking at the headline Goldwater Institute where
you actually do get paid. Does the Arizona Constitution allow
juryleist trial by bureaucrats? It says here you're suing over
DEI and doctor nation requirements for professors.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Also, what is that all about?
Speaker 4 (05:00):
Yeah, so well, we're doing the case we filed some
months ago against Arizona State University for illegally requiring their
employees to undergo these you know, cultural sensitivity its DEI
whatever they call it, training programs that tell you that
white people should be ashamed for the historical oppressions of
(05:24):
the past, and that you know, to say nothing against
racism is complicity and all these sorts of these leftist
indoctrination is actually illegal in Arizona. Some years ago, we
got a law passed in the state that prohibits the
government from requiring employees to engage in training that is
based on what the law calls race based blame or judgment,
(05:48):
and that is any training that says that you should
feel bad because of what other people of your race
have done in the past. And yet that is what
ASU requires and other employees. And so we've gone to
and we're suing over that, and we've won a preliminary
stage of that case, and I'm optimistic about our chances there.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
We well, speaking of having you know, higher level intellectual discussions,
the whole DEI thing has gotten uh, well, I should
stop being on Twitter because you know, it gives me
a negative view of the world and how and how
and how things can get watered down into where everything
is called DEI. But DEI in its worst form, we'll
explain what DEI looks like in its worst form.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Well, in its worst form, DEI says that what has
made America great, to use the words of the sixteen
nineteen Project, what has made America great has been slavery
and the oppression of minorities. That the whole idea of
the American dream is a lie, and that every great
advancement that Western civilization has made has been at the
(06:49):
expense of the exploitation of the huddled masses of who
have suffered under the evils of capitalism. It's just ordinary
anti capitalism dressed up in a new outfit with you know,
wearing wearing tight jeans instead. It's and the problem with
it is that America is the only country that has
a dream, and if you're going to break down the
(07:12):
American dream, you will destroy something absolutely essential to what
makes America such a special place, precisely for immigrants and
members of minority groups who don't have the kind of
political influence to make it in countries where everything's run
by the government. Freedom allows people to rise. It has
always allowed people to rise. And we destroy something and
(07:33):
do something really damaging to the greatness of America if
we downplay that or act like it's a bad thing.
And unfortunately, higher education in this country is totally oriented
toward teaching young Americans that patriotism is a lie, that
believing in the Declaration of Independence is foolhardy, that the
America is founded as a pro slavery nation, and that
(07:55):
white supremacy, to quote Tana Hessekoats, the darling of the Left,
the white supremacy is at the heart of American culture
to this day, none of which is true. And yet
impressionable minds are taught this, and professors are forced to
undergo indoctrination in this idea, so that people graduate from
college now not knowing the basic facts of history, but
(08:18):
having their brains full instead of loathing it for America.
And it's not only is that a travesty, but the
Goldwater Institute has published a report just recently showing that
about two billion dollars a year are spent in higher
education in this country on classes that teach this nonsense.
Two billion dollars a year. Now, keep in mind that
(08:38):
does not count the amount of this nonsense that smuggled
into other classes. That's just counting classes devoted to teaching
this anti American, anti white, anti capitalist, anti male.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I'm glad, I'm glad you brought that up, because I
was about to interject that I met Harold Bloom before
he died. He was like the great Shakespeare expert from Yah.
I remember seeing him on Charlie Rose and him complaining
that there's not a Shakespeare class you could take in America.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And this was ten years ago, twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
That didn't run all the Shakespeare plays through some sort
of identity politics as part of the class where you
just studied.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
The literature, or or just take take your average let's
take your average high school graduate. Ask a high school
graduate just randomly that you pick, ask what he knows
about Thomas Jefferson. And what that person will know about
Thomas Jefferson is that he had children with a slave.
That's what that student will know about Thomas Jeverson. He
might know that Jefferson was responsible for the Louisiana purchase,
(09:37):
and that's about it, you know, And that's a disgrace.
What it's not only a disgrace just for normal patriotic
cultural reasons, but it's a disgrace because it's based on
a fundamental lie, the idea that America is at heart
a racist nation, that the founders didn't mean all men
are created equal, and that capitalism is built on this,
(09:58):
and therefore capitalism too is tainted with and that goes
back to what we're talking about before, this basic notion
that equal outcomes is what justice requires, when that is
not at all what justice requires, in fact, that it's
very frequently unjust to impose equal outcomes when people deserve
unequal rewards.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
How many years have you been calling into the armstrong
and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Do you know, Oh, it's been I think twenty years.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, I'd say it's at least that And I was
going to make the point that you were quite a
young man when you first started calling in his tim
the lawyer, and then we saw I'm.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Old and gray and grizzled, right, grown, not only gray
but almost blind in the service of my friends. But
the problem out there, you kids out there who don't
know what that means. That's a sly reference to George Washington.
He was the first president look it up.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Which, yes, And the reason I brought that up was.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
My concern that this stuff has been in the schools
K through twelve and then onto college for so long
we may have already lost the battle. The people that
are going to run the country grew up with the
only thing they knew about Thomas Jefferson was he, you know,
fathered children with a slave girl. I mean, they're going
to take over soon and won't be dead.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, one of another project that
we're working on at the Institute here is we're talking
about the influence of the communist writer Howard Zinn on
American history classes across the nation. We've published a report
about this, and we now have probably the second generation
of teachers, right, your high school teachers who themselves never
(11:34):
learned the facts of history because they were spoon fed
anti American propaganda in their colleges, right because their teachers
were also spoonfed. I mean you're talking about since at
least the nineteen seventies, right, So that's a half century
where now you have teachers who don't They honestly don't
even realize they're teaching the propaganda because that's all they've
ever known in their lives. So, yeah, it's a terrible thing,
(11:55):
but there's no reason that we cannot fix it tomorrow
if we chose to do so.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That is the point that I was making, that we're
so far into it. I want to hear about the
fixing it part, if you can stick around for one
more segment. We got Tim Sandifer will be back with
all this interesting stuff in just a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Hetty, I'm so danced to this one a few times.
Huh huh.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
My son's got a Valentine's Day dance at the high
school tonight.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Is he gonna wear a pink?
Speaker 3 (12:29):
I don't know, I don't know. I'll talk more about
that later this hour, because that's a thing. Welcome back
to the show. Tim Sandfer, Goldwater Institute and one of
the great defenders of personal freedom in America. George Will
called Tim Sandifer a national treasure. I've never even been
referred to as a municipal treasure at any point in
(12:49):
my life. Welcoming back, Tim, Hey, before we get back
to you know, things that mattered a lot, Tim, or
maybe you think this matters. Remember when you texted a
while back that you got to tour the Way facility
where they make the autonomous cabs that they use in
San Francisco. The facility is Phoenix. Tell me a little
bit about that. Why were you so blown away by that?
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Oh? It was the most amazing thing. These are truly autonomous,
self driving cars that are all over Phoenix. And I
got to see the facility and they actually served us
lunch in the garage where the cars come in to
get recharged. And these cars are driving in and finding
parking spots for themselves, and you watch them and it
looks exactly like me at the airport looking for a
(13:31):
parking spot. I mean, they drive exactly like human beings would,
except there are no scuff marks on any of the
walls or anything, because these cars are so accurate that
they can drive in the narrowest little spots and not
run into anything because they're so safe. And then after
lunch they let us take a ride in one, and
it was just it was breathtaking. The technology is so good.
(13:55):
And I said to the guy, said, if this is
even just, all it has to be is slightly safer
than a human and that's not a lot. And they
operate with all sorta They operate with sonar, radar, light, ore, video,
all sorts of different things in order to be able
to see what's going on so that if a car,
in fact, my wife wrote in one the other day,
(14:17):
and if the car is going to run the red light,
the car can see that and stop so that it
doesn't get in the way and get hit by the
human drivers running the red light. And this is going
to make driving as safe as flying. And I said
to the guy, they've been operating for a couple of
years now, you have almost certainly saved at least ten
thousand lives easily, right, maybe one hundred thousand lives already
(14:38):
in all the markets they've been operating. It is such
a beautiful thing to see. I'm so enthusiastic about Waimo
and I just I can't say enough about how blown
away I am by this technology.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I keep meaning when I'm in San Francisco to download
the app and actually ride in one night.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Just haven't yet.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Hey, we've only got a couple of minutes. Are you
a fan of the Department at Education? Do you think
it's necess for the federal government to have that role?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
No, not only.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
That, but it's very counterproductive, as you can see how
much education has improved in the half century that we've
had it, right, No, this is not something that the
federal government should be in charge of. It should be
done at the local level, if at all, I mean ideally,
it would be done at the city, at the individual level,
where you get to choose what schools your own kids
go to, instead of being mandated top down by bureaucrats
(15:26):
in Washington, d C. Who have all the money that
they've taken from you, and that's so you have to
obey their orders to get your own money back. No,
it's a terrible thing and it should be abolished.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
I want to keep hearing I keep asking for please
make the argument for why we have one hundred and
forty percent more mid level managers in schools while enrollment
of students has only gone up eight percent over the
last fifty years.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
What's the argument for that?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Was by the Carter administration as a handout to teachers' unions,
and that's what it's always been ever since.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Wow, that's so frustrating as a guy with the kids
in school. We're about out of time and I have
to let you go. But Tim always appreciate you coming on.
You're you're just so damned interesting. Whether I agree with
you or not on the topic of the you know,
the arguments you make just fascinating guy.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Thanks much, Jack, I'd love to do it again.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Jim Sanderfer And if you if you don't follow his
Twitter or read any of his books, I mean they're
just really really it's it's my life is actually better
for knowing Tim and being able to throw something at
him every once in a while, like what do you
think of this, or what's the argument for that?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Or whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Uh, it's it's it's handy having smart friends when you're
a dullard like myself. Dullard is an actual designation slightly
below average intelligence, and that's what I believe I am.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I'm a dullard. You can look it up.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
There's dullard, there's imbecile, moron. These are actually different categories
of where your eyekim with. I'm not I'm not a
moron or an imbecile, but I do think I'm a dullard. Uh,
I'm south of the Mendoza line, whatever that is. Have
a little more Valentine's Day stuff I need to get too,
because people continue to text about that story I told earlier.
(17:04):
I hope your kids aren't going into the emotional lord
of the flies that Valentine's Day used to be in
grade school when I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I hope they're not dealing with that today. A lot
more on the way, stay here, Armstrong and Getty and
out of Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
The fast food chained Shake Shack is offering buy one,
get one free smoke Shack Burgers. And if you're wondering
what that has to do with Valentine's Day, you'll need
someone to give you their heart.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
So we had one text or say Valentine's Day or
they as they referred to it as Single Awareness Day,
Singles Awareness Day is there's a certain truth of that
told the story earlier, because we're still getting tons of
texts about this and all the related tangents to it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
A little fourth grade girl who.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
This fourth grade boy has a crush honor and on
Valentine's Day at school. This is years ago, back when
they allowed this sort of thing to happen. My kids
have gone through the modern Valentine's Day where you're only
allowed to bring cards. They all have to be the
same and no names, so it's just everybody gets the
same thing, which on one hand isn't cruel, but on
(18:17):
the other hand means nothing. So it's just a nothing.
You might as well just skip it, which might be
the best plan. Actually, it might be the best plan
for little kids to just skip Valentine's Day and not
you know, have love and emotion and crushes and the
most traumatic things you ever deal with in your life
injected into the school room.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It's not might be the best thing. That is the
best thing.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
And then I brought up the idea that and Katie
had never heard of this, getting texts from people saying,
oh my god, I'd completely forgotten about Skunk Valentine's Day cards.
Got a text from a moment and said, I always
got the skunk cards on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I didn't end up in prison, though, But somebody should
do a documentary.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Go back to Hallmark or whoever made these Valentine's Day
card packages and the set tventies and eighties, and if
you bought a package of fifty Valentine's Day cards, there'd
be a couple of skunks in there.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
And the idea was that he gave the skunks to
the using my finger quotes.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Because this is a horrible term, but it's often used
by grade schoolers, he gave the skunk cards to the
ugly girls. Oh it's just and so it was a
it was a day of let's single out who is
perceived as the least attractive either in personality or looks
girl in the class. I mean, just you couldn't You
(19:33):
couldn't hardly manufacture a more cruel thing to do to
a ten year old girl. No, but that's what happened
in schools all across the country all the time.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Anyway, did I finish my story?
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So this little boy's got a crush on her in
fourth grade shows up with a little bear Flowers card.
She throws it in the trash and in front of
the whole class. He cries the rest of the class
and ended up with a life of crime and prison.
Would she poor little guy? Gosh, I know it is
just so awful. I can totally picture the skunk cards now.
(20:10):
How terrible is that? I know? I can't believe that
our parents let us do it skunk cards? Does that
really any different from modern dating apps where you're judged
by swiping?
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
The big difference is you willingly get on a dating app.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
You're not forced into it, and you're not nine right,
would be the big difference. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Oh my god, that's horrifying.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
I can't I have my mind is so blown by
the skunk card because I mean, this.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Is the first I've ever heard of it.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Really, Yeah, I was pretty amazed by it as a kid,
and like I said, I felt bad for the girls
who got them. As a kid, I just thought, oh,
this is sore. I feel so bad for her. That
girl over there is just you know, she's just quiet
and awkward, but she gets all the skunk cards. An
a cute, outgoing girl who's just born with an outgoing personality,
(20:59):
all the cute ones. Ah, yeah, that's awful after that horrible,
sad story. I just said a prayer for my nine
year old grandson. He has a gift for his girlfriend
today at age nine. Uh, we got this. I'm gonna
keep this in mind. All cruelty is evil. Quote a
(21:22):
friend that is That is a good way to remember
that if you're ever being cruel to someone, no matter
even if there's a justified reason, it is evil and
should be avoided. Totally agree, but it should.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Be off limits now.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Less cute couple of things. And I'm gonna get to
this why orgasms are good for your health study.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
That came out on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Oh god, I can't wait. I saw this meme Valentine's Day?
You mean Penis Christmas? This is the guy's good Lord,
come on jack.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Jack Ah.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
So I was talking to a therapist about this the
other day, you know, getting around the damage of that
poor little kid and what happened with him. We are
human beings designed psychologically to be able to deal with
what modern society has created around relationships.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
For most of history. You paired up.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
With somebody at a fairly young agent stayed with that
person for the rest of your life. I remember reading
a story about a presidential election.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I think it was like in nineteen oh four or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Well, one of the big issues was, see with that
party in charge, we've doubled the divorce rate in this country,
almost doubled it from one and a half percent to
three percent. That's how low the divorce rate was in
the early nineteen hundreds. You met somebody, you got together,
and you stayed married no matter what. Now, not getting
into the debate over whether that's good or bad, just
(23:01):
what it would mean is you are not going to
go through Like I just I'm almost four years out
from when my wife told me she wanted a divorce.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
It's still brutal. I mean, so people didn't have.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
That emotional trauma of divorce, and now in the modern world,
with more divorce more so, you just have more relationships.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Period, more heartbreak.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
We might not be designed psychologically for three to eight
times falling in love or twelve times of falling in
love in your life where it turns out badly.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
We're not designed for that.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, a couple of childhood crushes that go aside, but
then one big love. You stay married, and that's it
for the rest of your life, not over and over again.
All the chemicals and emotions that come with fallen in
love and the investment and this and that, and then
you get rejected.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
We're not built for that. Evolution didn't account for that.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
I have a friend that I grew up around, and
she fell in love a few times, and she really
fell in love back in two thousand and nine, was
with this guy. They broke up in twenty ten. She
has still not recovered.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
I well, I don't think I guarantee you. Evolutionary we
are not designed to deal with that because human being's
never dealt with that before.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
You just didn't. Yeah, So a therapist was telling me
the other day.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
People are who are like all my close friends have
been married for like thirty five years, Joe, and all
my early roommates for college, they've all been married for
But if you're not one of those people, you've had
a whole bunch of just soul crushing defeats out there.
And so the idea being anybody who is not. You know,
(24:52):
if you're of a certain age and you're still singer,
you are by definition damaged.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
You're just damaged. Everybody is.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I don't think there's any getting around it, like I said,
because I don't think our psychees are built for this
and I don't and that hasn't been accounted for in
our culture.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
I don't know if it varies state to state, but
I do know that getting a divorce in the state
of California is a nightmare.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
There's a Neil Young song when when he got divorced
and he mentions, now we're going through the big divorce
California style because it is a completely different thing. But again,
don't want to get up on that topic. Right, So
Valentine's Day is different, you know, if you've been married
for thirty years and you got together in your twenties
than it is if you're out there in single and
(25:39):
you've had soul crushing defeat you know, a dozen times
in your life.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
So hey, here's love day, you know, here's relationship day,
and then chocolates and flowers and stuffed animals that collect dust.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Good times and which side of that you're on out there? Right?
Speaker 5 (25:54):
Well, it is so unnecessary. This honestly, this quote unque
about holiday. It upsets me because it hurts more people
than it does anything else.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Good question, does Valentine's Day make more people happy or
more people unhappy?
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I would be shocked if it's not the latter. Yeah,
same here, shocked.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Okay, So this why orgasms are good for your health.
I don't know if this fits in. I don't know
if this fits in with Valentine's Day at all. If
this is on your menu, it's not on mine. According
to this, more than a quarter of men struggle to
reach this, and fifteen percent of women have never had one.
(26:36):
I believe that really. Okay, so you talk to girls
and friends. Fifteen percent of women have never had one. Well,
you could understand why they might not be super interested
in sex very often, because what's the payoff. It's the
same reason I don't do that claw machine at the fairy.
You do it a couple of times, you never grab
a prize, it's not enjoyable, you don't put you don't
(26:58):
try it again.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yes, Mike like that. Yeah, it's exactly like the climb machine, Jack.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
You've tried it a couple of times, no payoff, not
doing that again.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
You see another one and you're like, oh, screw that.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
You know the point of this article is how it's
good for releasing emotional tension or something this or that,
and I don't know if that's true or not. I
just thought it was interesting. Fifteen percent of women have
never had one, and you think that that sounds right? Wow, Okay,
I believe that that's rough.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Oh that's rough out here. You know.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
I don't know. I don't know where to take that.
That's unimaginable as a guy. I mean, yeah, it really
takes practically nothing. Well, oh, I don't know. We can't
go any further down this road. Hr is standing and
looking in the window right now. Yes, exactly, so we
won't go there further saying yes, Michael, I already have
to go to church.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I lost the red paint off first.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Got some doge stuff to tell you about. Haven't mentioned
for a while.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
JD.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Vance's interview with The Wall Street Journal actually said, US
troops on the ground in Ukraine on the table.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Have you heard that? Stay tuned.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
Elon. You can't just call anything you want waste and
just get rid of it.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
You can't do that.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
Like in the Department of Defense, we do like lots
and lots of online training every year. That's totally not
a waste of time and teaches us great skills that
we use every day. And you should not use doage
to eliminate that. You don't. Please don't do that.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Please think that's some pretty good sarcasm. So there are
headlines out there thousands and thousands of people in the
federal government in the last twenty four hours have found
out that they're losing their jobs, many thousands, and what
(28:55):
the total number is gonna end up being. I don't
know how many of them will stick. I don't know
a lot of the firings y're not technically firings because
almost everybody involved so far, you get a one year
two year probationary period of something before you get the
full civil servant protection laws that we have in this country.
(29:16):
For some flip and reason, I don't know why, after
you've been in a job for two years you're basically unfireable.
In some cases, you like short of murder, are unfireable.
Why do we allow this to happen? I have no idea.
A text I read earlier about somebody was talking about
the tech sector in the Silicon Valley area. Remember on
(29:39):
Facebook fired whatever was twenty thousand people and Intel laid
off tens of thousands of people, and Elon came out
to run Twitter efficiently and fired.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Lots of people lose their jobs all the time for
all kinds of different reasons, and the idea that the
federal government has put in protections that you can't is nuts.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Anyway, I was quoting somebody.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I'll be very vague because I want to get in trouble,
but they work in the federal government and their boss
was very sad last night that he had gotten the
nod that he had to let six people go. And
this person had never really worked in the private sector.
So it's just horrified that the boss had to get
rid of some people, saying, these people moved here for
this job, and now I have to tell them with
(30:22):
one day's notice that they're being fired. Yeah, happens in
the private sector all the time. It's just life, and
everybody knows it. And I'm trying not to have this
about revenge against government workers or whatever for those of
us who live in the private sector.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
And you know, this is another thing. If you have.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
An unfireable position, which is many many government jobs, do
you realize that the rest of us think about getting
fired every day, every day of our lives. We wonder
if today's the day. If the boss walks by and says, hey,
can I come by my office a little later, you're
certain you're getting fired every time without a doubt. So
(31:06):
imagine what it's like to have a government job where
you know that's not on their mind, and you'll go
see the boss if he wants or not, if he
doesn't want to know what differences to make or she.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
The rest of us were worried about it all the time.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
That's just part of life, and you get used to
it and you just accept it as the human condition.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Here's David Axelrod regular on CNN, Obama's campaign manager, talking
about how awful this is.
Speaker 7 (31:32):
I think government can be more efficient, Every bureaucracy can
be challenged and refined. But you can't send people in
overnight and assess large organizations and say you're worth something.
You're not worth something. This whole organization isn't worth something.
And the message that's being sent here is very, very discouraging,
(31:53):
deta grading and completely unfair of the people who you're
leaving out in the middle of nowhere in the no
man's land, and so yeah, I think one of the
lasting pieces of damage that I am worried about is
that it will send the message, particularly to younger people,
that public service somehow is not worth pursuing.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
First of all, if you're a long time listening, you
know how annoyed I am by the term public service.
I know lots of people that have gone into, for instance,
state work in California. Wasn't a single one of them
that did it for the public service. They did it
(32:33):
for the benefits and the fact that they couldn't get fired.
As funny as around some dude the other day who
had been out of work and he got a state job,
and he announced it in this little group are sitting
with and everybody's like, oh my god, nice job, patting
him on the back because everybody knows it's like winning
a lottery ticket. You got a state job, you can't
get fired. He's not doing it for public service. He's
(32:54):
doing it because it's a cush I get to work forever.
Thing did the public service That makes me annoying. Now
I know people. I have a relative that has a
I think it's a city job, actually city or county,
and it is definitely public service. They are someone that
could make more in the private sector. And it's a
rough job. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but there's
(33:15):
a lot of people in public service who either aren't
working very hard or making a really good living one
way or another, coming out of government richer than when
they went in. But that aside, I wish I had
written down all those words that David Axelrod used there.
It's denigrating, it's depressing, it's jarring. It's again that happens
when you get fired at, for instance, a radio station two.
(33:39):
Somebody comes in and decides overnight, As he was just saying,
you can't just come in overnight and decide a whole
bunch of people aren't needed. I've seen it happen a
hundred times in my life. I've always been in radio,
so I have to use radio station. I've seen it
and having radio stations one hundred times. New boss comes
in and decides, basically overnight, all these people aren't needed,
and some really good people end up getting thrown out
(34:00):
with the bathwater, denigrating, depressing, whatever those phrases he was using.
So why why would we design a system Why if
you're getting paid by the taxpayer. You don't have to
live by any of the rules that the rest of
us live by. Somebody explained that to me, I don't
stop ranting about That drives me nuts.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
Yeah, it's just, you know, that's something that so many
people worry about every single day. It's like a slap
in the face for them to be like, oh, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
I mean, that's why it strikes those of us in
the private sector is so incredible, because you do think
about it every day of your life.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Yeah, there are probably people getting fired today, Sure, Jod,
they've been working at forever.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I'm sure there are, and in some cases doing a
really really good job, and for no good reason whatsoever,
you're out of work and you might have to move.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
It happens.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah, we do four hours of this hoot and nanny
every single day. If you don't get all of them,
you can grab a segment or an hour, and there's
been some really good ones today. You gotta hear the
Valentine's Day story. You gotta have the hear the Mike
Lyons interview about JD Vance and JD Vance saying we
might send troops to Ukraine. Wow, all that in earlier segments.
You can find our podcast It's Armstrong in Getty on demand.
(35:12):
Good stuff coming up in our four by the
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Way, Armstrong and Getty
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