August 8, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- Gerrymandering & furious democrats
- Weight limits, green dildos & crypto
- The Nazi jeans & the Monkey Trial
- The grand experiment & bingo, bango, bongo
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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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 and Joe, Katty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Arm Strong and Yetta and he.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Arms Strong and Yetty before Yes, you have no memory
of it, which is understandable because we were wasted.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
Okay, I light a cigarette and I'm smoking it and
you stop and you come over to me and you
grab it and you crinkle it and you go, these
things will kill you.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And you threw it.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
And then I and I go, uh, I go, dude,
I go, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Rich, You're rich. I have to put that cigarettes.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Are expensive in New York City.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yell, and you just and all of a sudden your
face changed and you look sad.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
And then you left. Yeah, and see it.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
And then ten minutes later you come back with a
fresh pack of parliaments and you hand them to me
and you go here, and I go, that was really sweet.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
You want me to die? Guttfeld on Jimmy Fallons Show.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
That is a great comedy bit at the expensive Fallon.
So stories we've got to talk about today. We got
to talk about Trump's plan to allow four to one
k plans to use crypto or have crypto in them,
which is kind of interesting, and then factors into another
crypto story that I want to get to.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Also, one of Biden's top aides, who I've hated forever,
Anita Dunne, testified yesterday about Biden's cognitive decline in ways
that we've not heard before. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Interesting. Which of those folks take the fifth and which
don't because several of them have not.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Uh yeah, why would you take the fifth?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
One is aiding and betting a mummy a crime? I mean,
what are you protecting yourself against? Exactly? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I had another good tease I wanted to do. Oh
so the whole putin Trump Zelensky summit thing. I heard
the funniest commentary from the London Telegraph on that yesterday.
I heard the guy say, I believe he was talking
about this possible somebody. He said, I believe the nothing
chefs are getting there. Nothing Spatul is out and getting
(02:31):
the grilled but nothing grill hot so they can serve
their nothing burger Delightsul's done. And then one more tease
if I might, And I'm not sure when we'll get
to this, but make sure I do.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Somebody. Uh Jack did a fabulous job the other day,
ate it, and I betted by myself in highlighting how
badly and without context the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
have been taught for years and years and years, specifically
leaving out the millions and millions and millions of people,
(03:08):
including hundreds of thousands a month, that the Japanese war
machine was killing as we dropped those bombs. Those bombs
stopped many, many, many times more killing than they caused.
But that's left out of the progressive experiment because I'm
sorry the progressive description progressive history, because they've taken over
(03:28):
our institutions of learning over the last fifty years or so. Anyway,
in that same way, one of my favorite incidents in
fairly modern American history, the so called Scopes Monkey trial,
very different perspective on that. You remember that was the
Tennessee teacher who was prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I don't know enough about that story. I should do
a deep dive on that sometime I read a book
or watch a documentary or something.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Oh, stay tuned, I'll bore you to tears. So anyway
that's coming up, stay with us. Totally different topic, the
whole hilarious kind of jerrymander thing that's been going on. Specifically,
Texas announces it's going to midway between the censuses redistrict,
therefore creating more Republican seats and fewer Democratic seats. You've
(04:20):
probably been following the story Democrats walked out in Texas.
They went to the most gerrymandered state in America, Illinois,
to protest it. Blah blah blah. Even if Texas goes
through with the plan, they'll still be way over gerrymandered
by a couple of Democratic states, and everybody's doing it.
And it's just another example of for better or worse,
(04:43):
Democrats abandoning certain norms for a long time, Republicans shouting
that you must not abandon these norms and losing, and
the Republicans finally saying, to hell with the norms, We're
gonna fight fire with fire. I might like that and
think is about damn time. Or you might think, well,
this is really unfortunate and now where we have no norms,
(05:07):
whatever point of view, you have, the idea that the
Republicans are leading the way towards some sort of new
gerrymandering craze is just silly. It's changed a little bit. Anyway,
I would love to see something done about it. Here's
the interesting person.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There are other examples of norms going away where maybe
the Republicans started it, But either way, we keep doing this.
It's a race to the bottom on all of our norms. Yeah,
I would say, and it's troubling and it won't end well,
but I don't know what to do about it. So anyway,
I thought this was super interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
The always insightful Kim Strassel of The Wall Street Journal,
pointing out, here's the Democrats, furious that Republicans might do
what Democrats do, erupted in feigned outrage, condemning a partisan,
craven political power grab attempted by the President of the
United States lords of Massachusetts Governor Or A. Heally. If
(06:00):
left at that, Kim rights, Republicans would probably have contained
their cynical jeremandering ambitions to Texas and maybe even suffered
voter blowback for the partisan move. The left's mistake was
to take the dare and escalate. Gaviy Newsome and other
Democratic governors fanned out to declare that they had no
choice but to redraw their own lines, and Kim points out,
(06:22):
it's a mystery what Democrats thought they'd accomplished beyond provoking
Republicans to escalate further. And the problem is and the
irony is delicious, and this makes me a bad person,
if you needed any further proof of that. In the
nationwide redistricting race, Democrats don't have much running room. They've
(06:43):
already redistricted the dickens out of their states. They're so
jerry mandered already beyond where the Republicans are right now.
They have no headroom.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Right and the worst.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Thinking you can do is get into a redistrict acting war,
because the Republicans have been much more restrained, not restrained,
but more restrained.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Like I said yesterday, Colbert pointed that out to the
governor of Illinois on his show the other night, which
I appreciate even for Colbert. As Mark Alpern wrote yesterday,
the media continues to make heroes out of the Democrats
who are talking about redistricting Texas. I'll continue to say
Mark Alprin said, if you're outraged about what Texas is doing,
you should have been outraged about what Illinois did, Outraged
about what New York did outraged about what California did
(07:29):
a long time ago. There's no mention of that in
like the NPR coverage, the CBS evening news coverage at all,
not at all. Do they not know that's possible? They
don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Is it ignorance or bias? I don't know, I do
not know, probably both. So a couple more factoids. Consider
New Jersey, where Democrats controlled nine of twelve congressional seats
despite forty five percent of House votes going to Republicans.
In Illinois, it's fourteen of seventeen seats, though Democrats one
only fifty three percent of the vote, fourteen out of
(08:04):
seventeen when they barely win half of the total votes. Oregon,
Democrats own five of the six seats despite a GOP
vote of forty two percent. Or Miss Haley's Massachusetts, where
Democrats control all nine congressional seats.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It's so easy to do. I mean, surely you all
understand this. You take a chunk of Oregon, for instance,
and you draw a district that has a little bit
of Portland which has a very dense population, and a
whole bunch of rural which has a very light population.
To make sure that there are more blues in that
segment than there are reds. And then you've dominated that
(08:41):
whole chunk of red that will have a blue House member.
And then you call you.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Flushed away those red votes, those Republican votes.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You carve up Portland or Eugene, whatever liberal dense areas
you want to, and just put enough blues spread into
the red districts to dominate them. And that that's what
they did in calip That's what they've done in Illinois.
It's awful. It shouldn't happen anywhere. It shouldn't happen in
Texas and the reverse. But I don't know if we're
ever going to be able to stop it.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So final note, here's a bit of math provided by
the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee that shows how effective the
party's been at jerrymandering. Starting with Democratic state legislative majorities.
I'm sorry. States with Democratic state legislative majorities currently control
the lines for about thirty five GOP seats, So the
Democrats could mess with about thirty five GOP seats. That's
(09:31):
all that's left after their aggressive maps. By contrast, Republican
state legislative majorities control the lines for fifty five Democratic seats.
The difference is the GOP advantage in the war, Democrats
have escalated whoops, so fifty five to twenty five. As
the race to the bottom continues.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It's very frustrating. I don't know if there's any fixing this.
And again, there was an Ego poll the other day
six percent approval for jerrymandering. People don't like it in
general for obvious reasons. But it's one of those things
that I don't know if we have a well I
suppose we do have a democratic way to fix it,
(10:10):
but boy, you'd have to have a really informed population
paying attention and people running for office that yeah, I
just don't see it happen.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, it would have to be passed in the House
of Representatives, unless the Supreme Court could because the Supreme
Court has ruled on redistricting and jerry mandering before, but unfortunately,
the most important ruling was so completely muddled nobody has
any idea what it means to this very day. But
(10:41):
the problem is, and if you gave me and a
handful of people I chose, a couple of weeks, we
could come up with a pretty damned rock solid constitutional fair,
sane set of standards for the setting of congressional districts.
I'm confident we could. But then it would go to
the House of Representative to be voted on, which is
(11:01):
hilarious where all the jerrymander does safe district people reside
and they'd be like, what, this may be the single
last thing in the universe that we would vote in
favor of.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Have you seen the video of the flight where the
phone chargers started smoking in the I have ah that
would freak me out.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I would think it was a transatlantic Atlantic flight too,
so you would be, uh, thank you, this is very bad.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, I think I would be preparing myself mentally for
it to be over. If there's smoke inside the cabin. Yeah,
let's try to avoid that people.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Is there a whale we could land upon out here
in the ocean.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
That's an interesting plan. I had anything real third tier
backup plan. Let's land on a whale. We now that's
a last resort, no doubt. We now know who is
throwing the marital aids onto WNBA court and it fits
in with the new four to one k rules. How
do those come together? Stay tuned, are strong and getty.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
So we're doing weight on Miss now her writer to scale,
This is what we're doing now, is what we're doing now.
I am shunk, and this is not America. This is
not America.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
What is not America? Apparently what is not America is
having rules on water slides at the park. Is that
woman was upset about the three hundred pounds limit at
that particular water slide.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Oh boy, can we hear it again now that we
know the context, So we're doing weitl.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Miss now her writer, j scale is what we're doing now,
is what we're doing now. I am shunk America.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
My kids have been on lots of water slides where
you have to step on a scale first, lots of them.
They usually how many kids? Okay, three of you can ride? Yeah,
you sit on the little thing or whatever, the little sled.
Three of you you get on there and way, because
you can't wait for three undred pound This woman, apparently,
on our own crosses the three hundred pound barrier would appear.
(13:25):
It would appear. So oh you've seen the idio bigel
I have big goal.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, and look we all have struggled with our weight
at times in our lives. Who are we to judge?
But no, if no, how can you not be aware
of that sort of thing? It's the self delusion that's
weird to me. I mean, hell, I've I've gone to
various horseback riding things. I can think of a dozen
different activities where there is a weight limit, and we've graduators.
Speaker 6 (13:51):
We've graduated into this life where instead of seeing yourself
and doing what the normal person would do and lose
the weight, now we've graduated into well they need to
accommodate me.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Well, right, but you don't need to lose the weight.
Just accept that at three hundred pounds, I'm not going
to be able to do everything I want to do. Right,
So there's that good news. I guess we now know
who's throwing marital aids on the floor of w NBA courts.
Turns out it's a crypto group. There was one in
(14:22):
getting tension for their cryptocurrency. An anonymous spokesman for the
group that reportedly goes by at daldo d A L
d O on social media that some crypto creators who
had a meme coin called I don't use this word,
(14:42):
don't don't bother green d word coin is the name
of their goodness point. Their crypto coin, and so they're
throwing green d words on the court.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
That whole crypto coin and yeah, I know, Trump did it,
the whole meme coin thing, where you just run it
up the flagpoles, people speculate, try to get in and
out and make a profit before it inevitably crashes, and
it will the people who launched it make money, and
then it crashes and a bunch of people lose their
money and then it's never spoken of again.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
This is one of those. Okay, so that combined with
this story. Trump order clear an order from yesterday that
he signed clears the way for crypto and private equity
and four one ks. I didn't actually know that my
four one k couldn't include crypto. I hadn't really looked
at it, but I guess, yeah, I guess that's not
an option. But we'll be in the future if this
(15:35):
goes through. And of course there's all kinds of concern
that his family is now involved in crypto and it's
got something to do with that, or sometimes crypto goes south,
as Joe just explaining, people lose their money. Well, that's
your choice. Don't put your four one k in crypto
if you think it's too dangerous.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
But if then you have no money as an ulster,
you're gonna come yelling that you need more benefits, right right.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Thus is the problem, Thus the problem with socialism. If
we're gonna bail out people who put all their four
o one kne crypto and don't have anything left.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Then yeah, you know, not every slope is slippery, jack,
but the slope of socialism slipperer.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Than wells not very slippery. Yeah, you can slide down
the slope of socialism. I don't care if you're four
hundred pounds. It's there for you. Oh, it's there for
everyone when you hit bottom.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
By gosh, I haven't figured out how the end this,
but anyway, Ah, So that's enough of that.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Is Trump going to meet with Putin in like just
a couple of days, as is being claimed by some
or not? God would that God if he comes out
of a meeting, if he meets with Putin and then
comes out and says, we had a fantastic talk, We've
discussed many things, and acts like, I don't know what
(16:52):
to think about that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah. If the whole thing is fraught with bad will,
bad faith, dishonesty, manipulation, cruelty and debt.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Well, which is fine if Putin tries that. And Trump
has reached the end of the road of credibility, but
I don't know if he has.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Armstrong and Getty, we have a lot to get to today.
There are way too many things going on. As Joe
started the show with, the two wars were sort of
involved with have had a major inflection point in the
last twenty four hours. So more on that later.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
So one of the big stupid stories of recent days
has been the fake reversy over Sydney Sweeney's jeans commercial
for American Eagle Outfitters, the white supremacist jeans Jack is wearing.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
That might be my new favorite pair of jeans, Like
I really like them, partially because they promote eugenics.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, well don't we all. So that was one of
the key words that was discussed as the fake progressive
outrage was mostly laughed at by America, which I think
is the important part of the story. Honestly true, the
reaction wasn't Corporation's running recover and taking the genes off
the market and jailing Sydney Sweeney. The reaction was from
(18:05):
practically everybody everybody but the mainstream media. The reaction was
shut up.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
You're right, that is a big deal anyway.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So, in a somewhat related topic, are you familiar with
the Scopes monkey trial?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
What had that monkey done?
Speaker 1 (18:23):
You don't even want to know.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So, the trial for the crime of throwing your feces.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
How do you plead so? Back in July of nineteen
twenty five, a high school teacher name of John Scopes
was put on trial in Tennessee, Dayton, Tennessee, specifically for
teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, which was a crime under
state law. It was a crime to teach evolution one
hundred years ago, correct, Yes, yeah, almost exactly one hundred
(18:54):
years ago. I've read a tremendous amount about the Scopes
monkey trial, partly because my hero hl Menken, a contemporary journalist,
wrote brilliant column after column about it. He was in Dayton, Tennessee,
Oh Okay for the lead up to the trial and
the trial, and he wrote with humor and compassion and
(19:15):
eloquence about both sides, about the two opposing attorneys, the
famous Clarence Darrow and the famous WILLIAMS. Jennings, Bryan William
Jennings Bryan, and it immediately became a symbol of the
epic battle science and rationality versus religion and superstition.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Will you, gentlemen, you no, I will not yield to
this monkey court or whatever this thing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
This is not a monkey court. So where's the clip
from the trial?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So William Jennings Bryan and went on to be a
three to or had already been a three time presidential candidate. Yeah,
was one of the lawyers. Yeah I didn't know that.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
It was the two most famous lawyers in America going
at each other, and Daryl ran rings around Brian.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
But because he said at the end, if it does
not fit you to quit, and they had a glove
and the monkey couldn't put it on.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
If the monkey doesn't show, you must have quit. Anyway.
So and again read H. L. Menken's columns about the
absolutely brilliant But to get back to the modern day thread,
this author points out that, writing recently in The New
York Times, historian Michael Kaysen or Kazen called the trial
quote a momentous clash between modern science and traditional Christianity,
(20:25):
and he gives a couple more examples of how it's
always characterized like that. Well, here's where I bring it home.
Liberal commentators always failed to mention an inconvenient fact about
the actual textbook at the center of the tribe that
mister Scopes was teaching from, a fact that helps explain
why Tennesseeans found it so morally offensive. It presented a
(20:47):
defense of eugenics wrapped in pseudoscience and Darwinian biology. William
Hunter's A Civic Biology, which was published in nineteen fourteen,
the best selling text in its field at that point,
argued unapologetically for eugenics as the obvious social implication of
Darwinian evolution, referring to families that produced feeble minded and
(21:10):
criminal persons. Hunter rendered this judgment in the school textbook.
Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other
plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society,
largely for them. The poor house in the asylum exists.
If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill
them off to prevent them from spreading.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
So I'm trying to wrap my head around this as
I'm we're.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Just beginning the description of what was in the text.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
World as I'm learning this, so I'm guessing that for
a lot of people at that time, the term evolution
included that.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
They were closely tied.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
In your mind, it would be if somebody's teaching evolution,
who was teaching that poor stupid people should be you
should not be allowed to breed?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yes, yeah, and in fact he hints that they should
be killed off in a high school textbook.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So yes, if it's at the point that it's in
a high school textbook, it's safe to say that the
trend of progressives tying eugenics to the theory of evolution
was very, very common.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Moving along a civic biology. In fact, the name of
the book reinforced a host of illiberal impulses, racism, white supremacy,
and contempt for the poor and those with disabilities. The
end goal Hunter wrote was to prevent the perpetuation of
those who take from society but give nothing in return,
a notion I am sympathetic to, but not when it
(22:42):
comes to killing off poor people. That means asylum's restrictive
marriage laws and the forced sterilization of undesirables.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Well, the problem with that whole take from society and
don't produce anything. It's not genetic that you do that,
it's cultural.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Mostly progressives believed it was geneticent.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah. Darwin himself had speculated about the desirability of eugenics
based social engineering. Quote. Thus the weak members of civilized
societies propagate their kind, he complained in The Descent of
Man in a preview of the movie Idiocracy. No one
who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will
doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race
of man. And I could go more into degenerates, imbeciles,
(23:27):
the feeble minded, etc. But by the nineteen twenties, when
the Scopes Monkey Trial took place, all those people were
targeted by academics, politicians, activists, and scientists. Indeed, the eugenic
idea seized the imagination and the medical and scientific communities.
In the early twentieth century. Premier scientific organizations who might
(23:48):
even be lecturing us today on certain topics, like the
American Museum of Natural History and institutions such as Harvard
and Princeton, promoted sterilization laws and preached the eugenics gospel
through lectures, conferences, and research papers. And progressives led the
drive for eugenic policies on all fronts, and the Democratic Party,
(24:10):
the party of segregation in the Jim Crow South, became
their chief political sponsor. By the end of the twenties,
thirty three states passed eugenics laws and carried out thousands
of forced sterilizations. Tennessee was among those states that would
not pass a compulsory sterilization law. They found it repugnant
and unchristian. Thirty three states decided, yep, eugenics is a
(24:36):
way to go. We need to reproduce the successful people
and sterilize the people that aren't. That's wild. And then
a great quote Dennis Sewell, who is the author of
a book called The Political Gene that I know nothing about,
but he acknowledges that the rural folk of Tennessee may
not have had a sophisticated grasp of Darwinian evolution quote,
(24:58):
but they knew the progress is. Progressives who preached Darwinism
in the cities despised country people, sure, and poor people,
I would add, calling them imbeciles and defectives, and would
sterilize them if they got half a chance.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Well, okay, well this changed. This is what I was
talking about the other day. I get so frustrated with
why do we even read history? Narratives catch on, they
obliterate the reality sometimes and last forever.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Right, right. And then the pattern of resistance to eugenics
at the time was plain. It came from religious communities Protestant, Catholic,
and Jewish, deeply attached to the authority of the Bible.
It is, of course true that the Bible Belt states
such as Tennessee approved of segregation in other racist policies.
They are not pure hearted, wonderful people. Nevertheless, those who
(25:44):
opposed the eugenics agenda of the social Darwinists believe that
the Bible was the word of God, that men and
women were created by him and carried his divine image,
and that they shouldn't let progressives put people to death
or force sterilization upon them. That was as much as
perhaps just a rejection of the theory of evolution because
of creationism, etcetera. I don't want to get into that argument,
(26:06):
but it was horror at the progressive eugenics policies that
motivated a good deal of the resistance. Yeah, I know,
I know. The more you learn about history, the more
you realize you've been misinformed and lied to.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Wow. So the anniversary, the one hundred year anniversary was
last month that I'm just learning this now.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, And I've been reading and thinking about this trial.
I don't know why. I just I've always liked really
good legal arguments. I've been fascinating for it by decades
or by it for decades. And yeah, I'd not really
heard this argument laid out in this way. But it's
(26:50):
it's absolutely ironclad. It's absolutely true. I've dug into it.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I remember the bab Boon took the fifth.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, well it's smart. No matter what level primate you are,
don't talk to the cops without a jeez. So, by
the way, it's worth mentioning that Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendel Holmes, hero of progressivism and horrible Supreme Court justice,
in nineteen twenty seven wrote in the majority the infamous
(27:18):
majority opinion Buck v. Bell, which upheld the forced sterilization
of one Carrie Buck quote, three generations of imbeciles are enough.
The eugenics movement was in high gear.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Three generations of imbeciles is enough. Wow, So we need
to sterilize these people? That is absolutely amazing. So no
wonder people were so upset about the trial and then
the outcome of it. You had a belief that the
government was going to come into your house and sterilize you. Well, right,
(27:53):
and much like the DEI Woke movement.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I always call it neomarxism because that's what it is,
even though it dupes people into thinking they're making a
moral argument. But that's the problem with if you allow
DEI into your company, or just have one struggle session
where white people are informed that they are the cause
of pain and misery around the world and should shut
up and sit down. If you allow that stuff in,
(28:21):
you're allowing the whole package in. And to some extent,
at least the people at Tennessee thought no, no, no.
The Darwin part is just part of it. They didn't
want to let it.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
In, right. That is really interesting. I'm gonna have to
spend more time on that story. I just saw that
one of the three NFL games last night. I didn't
watch any of them this preseason kicks off Raiders and
Seahawks ended in a tie. Will see tend a preseason game,
(28:54):
God bless you, and it ends in a tie. Who
that is a nothing burger with nothing cheese, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh yeah, well yeah, and I don't know preseason football,
it's it's just a scrimmage.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
How amaze that people actually show up. You gotta really
really enjoy football. Yeah, And or you can't afford regular
season tickets, so you want to see fifty guys that
aren't going to make the team bashing each other.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I guess whatever do you do?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You You wouldn't like what I do with my time either.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
You know what, fool your kids and thinking it's a
regular season game. Everybody has a big time. You save
some money. I'm in favor of this.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Fool your kids line to them, tell them to the playoffs.
What a lie is a strong word.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Then during the ragular, during the regular seaton, you got
to tell all these players are hurt. That's right, they're
not on the field exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, it'll work. Uh, we got more on the waist
to hear. They're expecting it.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
Then you was coming. The market was down, but not
as much as it could have been. The grand experiment
has begun times the like of which is no I've
been seen for a century now in place, and really
we just wait and say.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Nip a global trade world. Well, a global trade war
the likes of which we haven't seen in a century,
and the world was so much different one hundred years ago.
I don't even think that's worth mentioning. I mean, everything's
different in terms of the ability to trade and the
sorts of things we trade. So who knows the grand
experiment has begun?
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Why is my tariff news being delivered by a member
of the Royal Shakespeare Troop. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Like a card experiment has begun. I like it. It
gives it a little jazz.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Is it up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Got a few news items to hit, which we can
ponder at length or not at all, depending on how
much Joe wants to talk about him. I'm the first
one to mention the E word today. Epstein Mark Alpern,
who has some of the best sources in all of reportings,
says that Trump is apparently seriously pondering a Maxwell pardon Halprinrice,
(30:57):
the implications of which, if done, are not something even
the small artist person in the world could game out.
Who knows how that would play out. I don't know
why he would pardon Maxwell or what he thinks he
would get out of that, but.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Wow, this is a great sign that the Trump administration,
like the last one, might be too online. Uh, I
don't think the rest of us are thinking about that much.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
No, And yeah, the hardcore of the hardcore of MAGA
are really into it. But man, you're gonna lose more
than you gain, I think.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
But well, unless she's pardoned because she has given up
some enormous trove of very important information, all it will
be is turning loose a child exploiter. That that would
be a horrible tactical move.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Another Trump's story, he's apparently warming to the idea of
letting TikTok go dark, at least briefly. Charles C. W.
Cook points out in The National Review that that would
be executing a law that Congress passed and the Supreme
Court upheld nine nothing. Yes, that TikTok is supposed to
go dark. It's supposed to mean we outlawed it in
(32:02):
the United States. Congress did, and when it was challenged
the Supreme Court nine nothing said yeah, they can do this.
And the for whatever reason, nobody's forced action on this.
How would you force action if the president doesn't want
to execute it. The executive has just.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Sue sue based on the non execution of the law
showing that it had damaged to you somehow.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Or you'd have to go down the impeachment road, which
nobody's going to impeach over this. I don't think. By
the way, every commentator in the world agrees that if
the Dems take the House back next year, they will
impeach Trump again. I don't know if I can live
through another impeachment. I might have to either go down
to the rope store, which coincidentally, as Norm MacDonald said,
(32:48):
is right next to the rickety stool store, and or
take a sabbatical or something. But I don't know if
I could live through another half ad impeachment.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Maybe it's just my mood, but I think that would
be uh cynical, good time. Maybe the grand standing, the stupidity,
the lying.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I suppose it depends on what they're impeaching him over.
But it's a guarantee they will if they take the House,
and historically they will based on history.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
And that's breaking news. President Trump has secretly signed a
directive to the Pentagon to begin to begin using military
force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration
has deemed terrorist organizations. That's the New York Times reporting
moments ago military force against Latin American drug cartels.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
In what context, in what geography?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Put a fifty million dollar bounty on the head of
old Maduro? Is that who it was?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Right? Yeah, yesterday Madureau head of the Kami Venezuela. Right.
So well, wow, I mean I totally get. This is
such an interesting question that to say, all right, you
got this incredibly well armed Mexican cartel, they're coming across
the border with guns. Well, the Nogallas, Texas Police Department
can take them on. I mean, that's absurd.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So you're gonna send the Marines into one of those
South American countries and deal with them there?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I'm thinking about it. Well, no, no, probably not. I'm
just which was what I was driving at with my
in what geography question? Do we only use the military
if they're on American soil? Do we declare a five
mile safety zone of five miles into Mexico? Do we
spend do we send a sealed team six like they're
(34:45):
going after Osama bin Laden wherever we damn well please
and knock out whoever we damn well please? When we
damn well, please to do it. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Well, that'll be fun to follow.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Sorry about the news about the TikTok though of you
TikTok fans, it might be going away. Read a book,
Read a book.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Arm Strong and Yetta and he.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Arms Strong and Yetty before Yes, you have no memory
of it, which is understandable because we were wasted.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
Okay, I light a cigarette and I'm smoking it and
you stop and you come over to me and you
grab it and you crinkle it and you go, these
things will kill you.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
And you threw it.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
And then I and I go, uh, I go, dude,
I go, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Rich, You're rich. I have to put that cigarettes.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Are expensive in New York City.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Yell, and you just and all of a sudden your
face changed and you look sad.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
And then you left. Yeah, and see it.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
And then ten minutes later you come back with a
fresh pack of parliaments and you hand them to me
and you go here, and I go, that was really sweet.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
You want me to die? Guttfeld on Jimmy Fallons Show.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
That is a great comedy bit at the expensive Fallon.
So stories we've got to talk about today. We got
to talk about Trump's plan to allow four to one
k plans to use crypto or have crypto in them,
which is kind of interesting, and then factors into another
crypto story that I want to get to.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Also, one of Biden's top aides, who I've hated forever,
Anita Dunne, testified yesterday about Biden's cognitive decline in ways
that we've not heard before. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Interesting. Which of those folks take the fifth and which
don't because several of them have not.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Uh yeah, why would you take the fifth?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
One is aiding and betting a mummy a crime? I mean,
what are you protecting yourself against? Exactly? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I had another good tease I wanted to do. Oh
so the whole putin Trump Zelensky summit thing. I heard
the funniest commentary from the London Telegraph on that yesterday.
I heard the guy say, I believe he was talking
about this possible somebody. He said, I believe the nothing
chefs are getting there. Nothing Spatul is out and getting
(02:31):
the grilled but nothing grill hot so they can serve
their nothing burger Delightsul's done. And then one more tease
if I might, And I'm not sure when we'll get
to this, but make sure I do.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Somebody. Uh Jack did a fabulous job the other day,
ate it, and I betted by myself in highlighting how
badly and without context the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
have been taught for years and years and years, specifically
leaving out the millions and millions and millions of people,
(03:08):
including hundreds of thousands a month, that the Japanese war
machine was killing as we dropped those bombs. Those bombs
stopped many, many, many times more killing than they caused.
But that's left out of the progressive experiment because I'm
sorry the progressive description progressive history, because they've taken over
(03:28):
our institutions of learning over the last fifty years or so. Anyway,
in that same way, one of my favorite incidents in
fairly modern American history, the so called Scopes Monkey trial,
very different perspective on that. You remember that was the
Tennessee teacher who was prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I don't know enough about that story. I should do
a deep dive on that sometime I read a book
or watch a documentary or something.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Oh, stay tuned, I'll bore you to tears. So anyway
that's coming up, stay with us. Totally different topic, the
whole hilarious kind of jerrymander thing that's been going on. Specifically,
Texas announces it's going to midway between the censuses redistrict,
therefore creating more Republican seats and fewer Democratic seats. You've
(04:20):
probably been following the story Democrats walked out in Texas.
They went to the most gerrymandered state in America, Illinois,
to protest it. Blah blah blah. Even if Texas goes
through with the plan, they'll still be way over gerrymandered
by a couple of Democratic states, and everybody's doing it.
And it's just another example of for better or worse,
(04:43):
Democrats abandoning certain norms for a long time, Republicans shouting
that you must not abandon these norms and losing, and
the Republicans finally saying, to hell with the norms, We're
gonna fight fire with fire. I might like that and
think is about damn time. Or you might think, well,
this is really unfortunate and now where we have no norms,
(05:07):
whatever point of view, you have, the idea that the
Republicans are leading the way towards some sort of new
gerrymandering craze is just silly. It's changed a little bit. Anyway,
I would love to see something done about it. Here's
the interesting person.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There are other examples of norms going away where maybe
the Republicans started it, But either way, we keep doing this.
It's a race to the bottom on all of our norms. Yeah,
I would say, and it's troubling and it won't end well,
but I don't know what to do about it. So anyway,
I thought this was super interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
The always insightful Kim Strassel of The Wall Street Journal,
pointing out, here's the Democrats, furious that Republicans might do
what Democrats do, erupted in feigned outrage, condemning a partisan,
craven political power grab attempted by the President of the
United States lords of Massachusetts Governor Or A. Heally. If
(06:00):
left at that, Kim rights, Republicans would probably have contained
their cynical jeremandering ambitions to Texas and maybe even suffered
voter blowback for the partisan move. The left's mistake was
to take the dare and escalate. Gaviy Newsome and other
Democratic governors fanned out to declare that they had no
choice but to redraw their own lines, and Kim points out,
(06:22):
it's a mystery what Democrats thought they'd accomplished beyond provoking
Republicans to escalate further. And the problem is and the
irony is delicious, and this makes me a bad person,
if you needed any further proof of that. In the
nationwide redistricting race, Democrats don't have much running room. They've
(06:43):
already redistricted the dickens out of their states. They're so
jerry mandered already beyond where the Republicans are right now.
They have no headroom.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Right and the worst.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Thinking you can do is get into a redistrict acting war,
because the Republicans have been much more restrained, not restrained,
but more restrained.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Like I said yesterday, Colbert pointed that out to the
governor of Illinois on his show the other night, which
I appreciate even for Colbert. As Mark Alpern wrote yesterday,
the media continues to make heroes out of the Democrats
who are talking about redistricting Texas. I'll continue to say
Mark Alprin said, if you're outraged about what Texas is doing,
you should have been outraged about what Illinois did, Outraged
about what New York did outraged about what California did
(07:29):
a long time ago. There's no mention of that in
like the NPR coverage, the CBS evening news coverage at all,
not at all. Do they not know that's possible? They
don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Is it ignorance or bias? I don't know, I do
not know, probably both. So a couple more factoids. Consider
New Jersey, where Democrats controlled nine of twelve congressional seats
despite forty five percent of House votes going to Republicans.
In Illinois, it's fourteen of seventeen seats, though Democrats one
only fifty three percent of the vote, fourteen out of
(08:04):
seventeen when they barely win half of the total votes. Oregon,
Democrats own five of the six seats despite a GOP
vote of forty two percent. Or Miss Haley's Massachusetts, where
Democrats control all nine congressional seats.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
It's so easy to do. I mean, surely you all
understand this. You take a chunk of Oregon, for instance,
and you draw a district that has a little bit
of Portland which has a very dense population, and a
whole bunch of rural which has a very light population.
To make sure that there are more blues in that
segment than there are reds. And then you've dominated that
(08:41):
whole chunk of red that will have a blue House member.
And then you call you.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Flushed away those red votes, those Republican votes.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You carve up Portland or Eugene, whatever liberal dense areas
you want to, and just put enough blues spread into
the red districts to dominate them. And that that's what
they did in calip That's what they've done in Illinois.
It's awful. It shouldn't happen anywhere. It shouldn't happen in
Texas and the reverse. But I don't know if we're
ever going to be able to stop it.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So final note, here's a bit of math provided by
the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee that shows how effective the
party's been at jerrymandering. Starting with Democratic state legislative majorities.
I'm sorry. States with Democratic state legislative majorities currently control
the lines for about thirty five GOP seats, So the
Democrats could mess with about thirty five GOP seats. That's
(09:31):
all that's left after their aggressive maps. By contrast, Republican
state legislative majorities control the lines for fifty five Democratic seats.
The difference is the GOP advantage in the war, Democrats
have escalated whoops, so fifty five to twenty five. As
the race to the bottom continues.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It's very frustrating. I don't know if there's any fixing this.
And again, there was an Ego poll the other day
six percent approval for jerrymandering. People don't like it in
general for obvious reasons. But it's one of those things
that I don't know if we have a well I
suppose we do have a democratic way to fix it,
(10:10):
but boy, you'd have to have a really informed population
paying attention and people running for office that yeah, I
just don't see it happen.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Well, it would have to be passed in the House
of Representatives, unless the Supreme Court could because the Supreme
Court has ruled on redistricting and jerry mandering before, but unfortunately,
the most important ruling was so completely muddled nobody has
any idea what it means to this very day. But
(10:41):
the problem is, and if you gave me and a
handful of people I chose, a couple of weeks, we
could come up with a pretty damned rock solid constitutional fair,
sane set of standards for the setting of congressional districts.
I'm confident we could. But then it would go to
the House of Representative to be voted on, which is
(11:01):
hilarious where all the jerrymander does safe district people reside
and they'd be like, what, this may be the single
last thing in the universe that we would vote in
favor of.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Have you seen the video of the flight where the
phone chargers started smoking in the I have ah that
would freak me out.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I would think it was a transatlantic Atlantic flight too,
so you would be, uh, thank you, this is very bad.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, I think I would be preparing myself mentally for
it to be over. If there's smoke inside the cabin. Yeah,
let's try to avoid that people.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Is there a whale we could land upon out here
in the ocean.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
That's an interesting plan. I had anything real third tier
backup plan. Let's land on a whale. We now that's
a last resort, no doubt. We now know who is
throwing the marital aids onto WNBA court and it fits
in with the new four to one k rules. How
do those come together? Stay tuned, are strong and getty.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
So we're doing weight on Miss now her writer to scale,
This is what we're doing now, is what we're doing now.
I am shunk, and this is not America. This is
not America.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
What is not America? Apparently what is not America is
having rules on water slides at the park. Is that
woman was upset about the three hundred pounds limit at
that particular water slide.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Oh boy, can we hear it again now that we
know the context, So we're doing weitl.
Speaker 5 (12:47):
Miss now her writer, j scale is what we're doing now,
is what we're doing now. I am shunk America.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
My kids have been on lots of water slides where
you have to step on a scale first, lots of them.
They usually how many kids? Okay, three of you can ride? Yeah,
you sit on the little thing or whatever, the little sled.
Three of you you get on there and way, because
you can't wait for three undred pound This woman, apparently,
on our own crosses the three hundred pound barrier would appear.
(13:25):
It would appear. So oh you've seen the idio bigel
I have big goal.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, and look we all have struggled with our weight
at times in our lives. Who are we to judge?
But no, if no, how can you not be aware
of that sort of thing? It's the self delusion that's
weird to me. I mean, hell, I've I've gone to
various horseback riding things. I can think of a dozen
different activities where there is a weight limit, and we've graduators.
Speaker 6 (13:51):
We've graduated into this life where instead of seeing yourself
and doing what the normal person would do and lose
the weight, now we've graduated into well they need to
accommodate me.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Well, right, but you don't need to lose the weight.
Just accept that at three hundred pounds, I'm not going
to be able to do everything I want to do. Right,
So there's that good news. I guess we now know
who's throwing marital aids on the floor of w NBA courts.
Turns out it's a crypto group. There was one in
(14:22):
getting tension for their cryptocurrency. An anonymous spokesman for the
group that reportedly goes by at daldo d A L
d O on social media that some crypto creators who
had a meme coin called I don't use this word,
(14:42):
don't don't bother green d word coin is the name
of their goodness point. Their crypto coin, and so they're
throwing green d words on the court.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
That whole crypto coin and yeah, I know, Trump did it,
the whole meme coin thing, where you just run it
up the flagpoles, people speculate, try to get in and
out and make a profit before it inevitably crashes, and
it will the people who launched it make money, and
then it crashes and a bunch of people lose their
money and then it's never spoken of again.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
This is one of those. Okay, so that combined with
this story. Trump order clear an order from yesterday that
he signed clears the way for crypto and private equity
and four one ks. I didn't actually know that my
four one k couldn't include crypto. I hadn't really looked
at it, but I guess, yeah, I guess that's not
an option. But we'll be in the future if this
(15:35):
goes through. And of course there's all kinds of concern
that his family is now involved in crypto and it's
got something to do with that, or sometimes crypto goes south,
as Joe just explaining, people lose their money. Well, that's
your choice. Don't put your four one k in crypto
if you think it's too dangerous.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
But if then you have no money as an ulster,
you're gonna come yelling that you need more benefits, right right.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Thus is the problem, Thus the problem with socialism. If
we're gonna bail out people who put all their four
o one kne crypto and don't have anything left.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Then yeah, you know, not every slope is slippery, jack,
but the slope of socialism slipperer.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Than wells not very slippery. Yeah, you can slide down
the slope of socialism. I don't care if you're four
hundred pounds. It's there for you. Oh, it's there for
everyone when you hit bottom.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
By gosh, I haven't figured out how the end this,
but anyway, Ah, So that's enough of that.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Is Trump going to meet with Putin in like just
a couple of days, as is being claimed by some
or not? God would that God if he comes out
of a meeting, if he meets with Putin and then
comes out and says, we had a fantastic talk, We've
discussed many things, and acts like, I don't know what
(16:52):
to think about that.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah. If the whole thing is fraught with bad will,
bad faith, dishonesty, manipulation, cruelty and debt.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Well, which is fine if Putin tries that. And Trump
has reached the end of the road of credibility, but
I don't know if he has.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I hope so.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Armstrong and Getty, we have a lot to get to today.
There are way too many things going on. As Joe
started the show with, the two wars were sort of
involved with have had a major inflection point in the
last twenty four hours. So more on that later.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
So one of the big stupid stories of recent days
has been the fake reversy over Sydney Sweeney's jeans commercial
for American Eagle Outfitters, the white supremacist jeans Jack is wearing.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
That might be my new favorite pair of jeans, Like
I really like them, partially because they promote eugenics.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah, well don't we all. So that was one of
the key words that was discussed as the fake progressive
outrage was mostly laughed at by America, which I think
is the important part of the story. Honestly true, the
reaction wasn't Corporation's running recover and taking the genes off
the market and jailing Sydney Sweeney. The reaction was from
(18:05):
practically everybody everybody but the mainstream media. The reaction was
shut up.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
You're right, that is a big deal anyway.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So, in a somewhat related topic, are you familiar with
the Scopes monkey trial?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
What had that monkey done?
Speaker 1 (18:23):
You don't even want to know.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So, the trial for the crime of throwing your feces.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
How do you plead so? Back in July of nineteen
twenty five, a high school teacher name of John Scopes
was put on trial in Tennessee, Dayton, Tennessee, specifically for
teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, which was a crime under
state law. It was a crime to teach evolution one
hundred years ago, correct, Yes, yeah, almost exactly one hundred
(18:54):
years ago. I've read a tremendous amount about the Scopes
monkey trial, partly because my hero hl Menken, a contemporary journalist,
wrote brilliant column after column about it. He was in Dayton, Tennessee,
Oh Okay for the lead up to the trial and
the trial, and he wrote with humor and compassion and
(19:15):
eloquence about both sides, about the two opposing attorneys, the
famous Clarence Darrow and the famous WILLIAMS. Jennings, Bryan William
Jennings Bryan, and it immediately became a symbol of the
epic battle science and rationality versus religion and superstition.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Will you, gentlemen, you no, I will not yield to
this monkey court or whatever this thing.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
This is not a monkey court. So where's the clip
from the trial?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So William Jennings Bryan and went on to be a
three to or had already been a three time presidential candidate. Yeah,
was one of the lawyers. Yeah I didn't know that.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
It was the two most famous lawyers in America going
at each other, and Daryl ran rings around Brian.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
But because he said at the end, if it does
not fit you to quit, and they had a glove
and the monkey couldn't put it on.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
If the monkey doesn't show, you must have quit. Anyway.
So and again read H. L. Menken's columns about the
absolutely brilliant But to get back to the modern day thread,
this author points out that, writing recently in The New
York Times, historian Michael Kaysen or Kazen called the trial
quote a momentous clash between modern science and traditional Christianity,
(20:25):
and he gives a couple more examples of how it's
always characterized like that. Well, here's where I bring it home.
Liberal commentators always failed to mention an inconvenient fact about
the actual textbook at the center of the tribe that
mister Scopes was teaching from, a fact that helps explain
why Tennesseeans found it so morally offensive. It presented a
(20:47):
defense of eugenics wrapped in pseudoscience and Darwinian biology. William
Hunter's A Civic Biology, which was published in nineteen fourteen,
the best selling text in its field at that point,
argued unapologetically for eugenics as the obvious social implication of
Darwinian evolution, referring to families that produced feeble minded and
(21:10):
criminal persons. Hunter rendered this judgment in the school textbook.
Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other
plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society,
largely for them. The poor house in the asylum exists.
If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill
them off to prevent them from spreading.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
So I'm trying to wrap my head around this as
I'm we're.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Just beginning the description of what was in the text.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
World as I'm learning this, so I'm guessing that for
a lot of people at that time, the term evolution
included that.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
They were closely tied.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
In your mind, it would be if somebody's teaching evolution,
who was teaching that poor stupid people should be you
should not be allowed to breed?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yes, yeah, and in fact he hints that they should
be killed off in a high school textbook.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
So yes, if it's at the point that it's in
a high school textbook, it's safe to say that the
trend of progressives tying eugenics to the theory of evolution
was very, very common.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Moving along a civic biology. In fact, the name of
the book reinforced a host of illiberal impulses, racism, white supremacy,
and contempt for the poor and those with disabilities. The
end goal Hunter wrote was to prevent the perpetuation of
those who take from society but give nothing in return,
a notion I am sympathetic to, but not when it
(22:42):
comes to killing off poor people. That means asylum's restrictive
marriage laws and the forced sterilization of undesirables.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Well, the problem with that whole take from society and
don't produce anything. It's not genetic that you do that,
it's cultural.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Mostly progressives believed it was geneticent.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah. Darwin himself had speculated about the desirability of eugenics
based social engineering. Quote. Thus the weak members of civilized
societies propagate their kind, he complained in The Descent of
Man in a preview of the movie Idiocracy. No one
who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will
doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race
of man. And I could go more into degenerates, imbeciles,
(23:27):
the feeble minded, etc. But by the nineteen twenties, when
the Scopes Monkey Trial took place, all those people were
targeted by academics, politicians, activists, and scientists. Indeed, the eugenic
idea seized the imagination and the medical and scientific communities.
In the early twentieth century. Premier scientific organizations who might
(23:48):
even be lecturing us today on certain topics, like the
American Museum of Natural History and institutions such as Harvard
and Princeton, promoted sterilization laws and preached the eugenics gospel
through lectures, conferences, and research papers. And progressives led the
drive for eugenic policies on all fronts, and the Democratic Party,
(24:10):
the party of segregation in the Jim Crow South, became
their chief political sponsor. By the end of the twenties,
thirty three states passed eugenics laws and carried out thousands
of forced sterilizations. Tennessee was among those states that would
not pass a compulsory sterilization law. They found it repugnant
and unchristian. Thirty three states decided, yep, eugenics is a
(24:36):
way to go. We need to reproduce the successful people
and sterilize the people that aren't. That's wild. And then
a great quote Dennis Sewell, who is the author of
a book called The Political Gene that I know nothing about,
but he acknowledges that the rural folk of Tennessee may
not have had a sophisticated grasp of Darwinian evolution quote,
(24:58):
but they knew the progress is. Progressives who preached Darwinism
in the cities despised country people, sure, and poor people,
I would add, calling them imbeciles and defectives, and would
sterilize them if they got half a chance.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Well, okay, well this changed. This is what I was
talking about the other day. I get so frustrated with
why do we even read history? Narratives catch on, they
obliterate the reality sometimes and last forever.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Right, right. And then the pattern of resistance to eugenics
at the time was plain. It came from religious communities Protestant, Catholic,
and Jewish, deeply attached to the authority of the Bible.
It is, of course true that the Bible Belt states
such as Tennessee approved of segregation in other racist policies.
They are not pure hearted, wonderful people. Nevertheless, those who
(25:44):
opposed the eugenics agenda of the social Darwinists believe that
the Bible was the word of God, that men and
women were created by him and carried his divine image,
and that they shouldn't let progressives put people to death
or force sterilization upon them. That was as much as
perhaps just a rejection of the theory of evolution because
of creationism, etcetera. I don't want to get into that argument,
(26:06):
but it was horror at the progressive eugenics policies that
motivated a good deal of the resistance. Yeah, I know,
I know. The more you learn about history, the more
you realize you've been misinformed and lied to.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Wow. So the anniversary, the one hundred year anniversary was
last month that I'm just learning this now.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, And I've been reading and thinking about this trial.
I don't know why. I just I've always liked really
good legal arguments. I've been fascinating for it by decades
or by it for decades. And yeah, I'd not really
heard this argument laid out in this way. But it's
(26:50):
it's absolutely ironclad. It's absolutely true. I've dug into it.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I remember the bab Boon took the fifth.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, well it's smart. No matter what level primate you are,
don't talk to the cops without a jeez. So, by
the way, it's worth mentioning that Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendel Holmes, hero of progressivism and horrible Supreme Court justice,
in nineteen twenty seven wrote in the majority the infamous
(27:18):
majority opinion Buck v. Bell, which upheld the forced sterilization
of one Carrie Buck quote, three generations of imbeciles are enough.
The eugenics movement was in high gear.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Three generations of imbeciles is enough. Wow, So we need
to sterilize these people? That is absolutely amazing. So no
wonder people were so upset about the trial and then
the outcome of it. You had a belief that the
government was going to come into your house and sterilize you. Well, right,
(27:53):
and much like the DEI Woke movement.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I always call it neomarxism because that's what it is,
even though it dupes people into thinking they're making a
moral argument. But that's the problem with if you allow
DEI into your company, or just have one struggle session
where white people are informed that they are the cause
of pain and misery around the world and should shut
up and sit down. If you allow that stuff in,
(28:21):
you're allowing the whole package in. And to some extent,
at least the people at Tennessee thought no, no, no.
The Darwin part is just part of it. They didn't
want to let it.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
In, right. That is really interesting. I'm gonna have to
spend more time on that story. I just saw that
one of the three NFL games last night. I didn't
watch any of them this preseason kicks off Raiders and
Seahawks ended in a tie. Will see tend a preseason game,
(28:54):
God bless you, and it ends in a tie. Who
that is a nothing burger with nothing cheese, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh yeah, well yeah, and I don't know preseason football,
it's it's just a scrimmage.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
How amaze that people actually show up. You gotta really
really enjoy football. Yeah, And or you can't afford regular
season tickets, so you want to see fifty guys that
aren't going to make the team bashing each other.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I guess whatever do you do?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
You You wouldn't like what I do with my time either.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
You know what, fool your kids and thinking it's a
regular season game. Everybody has a big time. You save
some money. I'm in favor of this.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Fool your kids line to them, tell them to the playoffs.
What a lie is a strong word.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Then during the ragular, during the regular seaton, you got
to tell all these players are hurt. That's right, they're
not on the field exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, it'll work. Uh, we got more on the waist
to hear. They're expecting it.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
Then you was coming. The market was down, but not
as much as it could have been. The grand experiment
has begun times the like of which is no I've
been seen for a century now in place, and really
we just wait and say.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Nip a global trade world. Well, a global trade war
the likes of which we haven't seen in a century,
and the world was so much different one hundred years ago.
I don't even think that's worth mentioning. I mean, everything's
different in terms of the ability to trade and the
sorts of things we trade. So who knows the grand
experiment has begun?
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Why is my tariff news being delivered by a member
of the Royal Shakespeare Troop. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Like a card experiment has begun. I like it. It
gives it a little jazz.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Is it up a little bit?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Got a few news items to hit, which we can
ponder at length or not at all, depending on how
much Joe wants to talk about him. I'm the first
one to mention the E word today. Epstein Mark Alpern,
who has some of the best sources in all of reportings,
says that Trump is apparently seriously pondering a Maxwell pardon Halprinrice,
(30:57):
the implications of which, if done, are not something even
the small artist person in the world could game out.
Who knows how that would play out. I don't know
why he would pardon Maxwell or what he thinks he
would get out of that, but.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Wow, this is a great sign that the Trump administration,
like the last one, might be too online. Uh, I
don't think the rest of us are thinking about that much.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
No, And yeah, the hardcore of the hardcore of MAGA
are really into it. But man, you're gonna lose more
than you gain, I think.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
But well, unless she's pardoned because she has given up
some enormous trove of very important information, all it will
be is turning loose a child exploiter. That that would
be a horrible tactical move.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Another Trump's story, he's apparently warming to the idea of
letting TikTok go dark, at least briefly. Charles C. W.
Cook points out in The National Review that that would
be executing a law that Congress passed and the Supreme
Court upheld nine nothing. Yes, that TikTok is supposed to
go dark. It's supposed to mean we outlawed it in
(32:02):
the United States. Congress did, and when it was challenged
the Supreme Court nine nothing said yeah, they can do this.
And the for whatever reason, nobody's forced action on this.
How would you force action if the president doesn't want
to execute it. The executive has just.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Sue sue based on the non execution of the law
showing that it had damaged to you somehow.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Or you'd have to go down the impeachment road, which
nobody's going to impeach over this. I don't think. By
the way, every commentator in the world agrees that if
the Dems take the House back next year, they will
impeach Trump again. I don't know if I can live
through another impeachment. I might have to either go down
to the rope store, which coincidentally, as Norm MacDonald said,
(32:48):
is right next to the rickety stool store, and or
take a sabbatical or something. But I don't know if
I could live through another half ad impeachment.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Maybe it's just my mood, but I think that would
be uh cynical, good time. Maybe the grand standing, the stupidity,
the lying.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I suppose it depends on what they're impeaching him over.
But it's a guarantee they will if they take the House,
and historically they will based on history.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
And that's breaking news. President Trump has secretly signed a
directive to the Pentagon to begin to begin using military
force against certain Latin American drug cartels that his administration
has deemed terrorist organizations. That's the New York Times reporting
moments ago military force against Latin American drug cartels.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
In what context, in what geography?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Put a fifty million dollar bounty on the head of
old Maduro? Is that who it was?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Right? Yeah, yesterday Madureau head of the Kami Venezuela. Right.
So well, wow, I mean I totally get. This is
such an interesting question that to say, all right, you
got this incredibly well armed Mexican cartel, they're coming across
the border with guns. Well, the Nogallas, Texas Police Department
can take them on. I mean, that's absurd.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So you're gonna send the Marines into one of those
South American countries and deal with them there?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I'm thinking about it. Well, no, no, probably not. I'm
just which was what I was driving at with my
in what geography question? Do we only use the military
if they're on American soil? Do we declare a five
mile safety zone of five miles into Mexico? Do we
spend do we send a sealed team six like they're
(34:45):
going after Osama bin Laden wherever we damn well please
and knock out whoever we damn well please? When we
damn well, please to do it. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Well, that'll be fun to follow.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Sorry about the news about the TikTok though of you
TikTok fans, it might be going away. Read a book,
Read a book.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Armstrong and Getty
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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