November 19, 2025 • 36 mins
Hour 4 of A&G features...
- The democrats used Epstein to bad mouth Trump
- Trump derangement syndrome
- Understanding "6-7" & net socialism
- Final Thoughts!
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 and Joe Ketty arm Strong
and Jack Kid and he.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Armstrong and Eddy Tonight.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
New questions about Democrats' intentions. The Washington Post reports House
Delegate Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the Virgin Islands, was
caught texting with Epstein during a twenty nineteen congressional hearing
in which President Trump's the attorney Michael Cohen was testifying.
Epstein appeared to feed Plasket information in real time about
(00:43):
the President's finances and his aid, which she then used
in her questioning of Cohen.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Do you all remember that hearing? We took some of
it live, the fixer of the idiot, Michael Cohen, Trump's
lawyer on it.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
What pulls all of them?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Okay, that guy Michael Cohen, when he was being questioned
by Congress. One of the Democrats was texting with Epstein
during the hearing, and he was feeding her questions to
try to get into Trump's finances.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
And if you've seen the captioning of the texts in
real time with the video of the questioning, which they
now have, it is it's funny, but it's beyond.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Doubt exactly what was happening there.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
They were using the House Democrats were using Epstein as
a how do we bad mouth Trump?
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Uh source in real time?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, now that I think about it, I was
about to say that the crazy thing about the whole
Epstein story is there are people of all political stripes
that were hanging around with him, flying on his plane,
friends with him.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
But somehow, like the current mainstream media version of it is,
it's a Trump thing or a republic thing thing. But
Trump was a Democrat back in the day. He was
a Democrat his whole life, basically up to the moment
he decid I did run for president. So are there
any Republicans, like big name Republicans that were tied in
with Epstein A lot? I can't think of any of them.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
That I've come across. Nothing leaves to mind. I'm I'm
just saying there aren't.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
He was a big player in New York and New
York's almost entirely Democrats.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Certainly, he was kind.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Of a fake Democrat honestly. I mean, he was always
pro choice. But yeah, hey, just a quick observation here,
It is a hearing where they're trying to discredit Trump
with Michael Cohen on the stand getting fed information by
Jeffrey Epstein himself, And at no point did Epstein say,
ask Trump about November of twenty oh seven at the
(02:41):
Island the pool party. He had nothing on him other
than he didn't like him and he thought he was,
you know, fast and loose with his finances or whatever.
He was literally on the line with Democrats when they
were trying to impugne Trump, and he didn't offer anything up.
Can we stop talking about that aspect of this now.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
All all the emails and phone calls and everybody to
know him, there's not one where he makes it like
even pretty clear that Trump was having sex with underage girls.
And of the thousand victims out there, not one of
them have come forward and said, yeah, I had sex
with Trump in two thousand, blah blah blah.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Yeah, their references to Trump knew about the girls or whatever,
but that's not necessarily the underage girls and having a
notion that you know, I think he made like a
young girls is different than participating in any way. I'm
not saying it's right if you know about it, and
don't say anything, but come on, by.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
The way, as we are live on the radio right now.
The Senate has sent the bill to the President's desk.
It is the most bipartisan, fastest piece of legislation, by
the way, the only piece of legislation that has passed
in the last sixty days. But it's the most bipartisan,
fastest piece of legislation outside of a declaration of like
(03:53):
National Cookie Day, that I can think of in many, many,
many years. And now it's going to the President's day.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Every day is National Cookie Day, and.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
They're going to disclose all kinds of different stuff that
normally doesn't come out from investigations. And that's where I
get to Mark Alprin's newsletter for today, which I thought
was really interesting. He writes, I had a realization this
morning about the Epstein files and Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
If Trump were a normal.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
President, one whose motives weren't viewed through a funhouse mirror
by both fans and foes. It gets to Trump derangement syndrome,
which Joe is going to talk about later. The reasons
not to release the Justice Department the materials would be familiar,
even boring to most people. Presidents have always found virtue
in withholding information from investigations. The list of reasons any
(04:42):
irrational president would resist pulling back to curtain is long
and predictable.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Starting here, that's getting to the.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Whole Why would he be fighting it so hard? Well,
he could be doing it for the right reasons, like
the impropriety of flinging around FBI three to zero two's.
Those are the the investigation documents that they use to
look into people's lives that kind of violate your normal
constitutional standards, but they get a special uh A three
(05:10):
to oho two warrant to be able to look into
your stuff. That stuff's not supposed to come out public,
especially if you haven't been charged or convicted.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Of anything, right, right, And then those files can include,
you know, people saying I saw him, he did it.
It can include innocent mentions, it can include people who
later turn out to be liars at what they say
or all in those those files. That's why they're not
automatically admissible in court.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And this sort of stuff is going to be flying
around here within the next thirty days when the when
the Justice Department turns this stuff over. So the impropriety
of flinging FBI three oh two's national security and law
enforcement documents and grand jury material all into the all
into the public law to consume the way it will
helping rites. That's how republics slide toward reality television. Yeah,
(05:57):
if you start doing this all the time, with every
big investigation, and you just let everything out there, everybody's names, circumstances,
quotes that, as Joe said, might be made up. It
turns out to be someday, but that won't matter for
the time being. The collateral damage, reputations, civil liberties, livelihoods
shredded for sport when the mob gets a peak at
(06:19):
the raw material of the justice sausage making. Absolutely, that's
where we're headed. And is this going to set a
new standard for doing it in the future.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And given the nature of our media right now, it'll
be substantially one sided too. They will ignore stuff that
doesn't fit the up with Democrats narrative.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
God, how many times have we been through this?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Somebody brought up the other day Trump didn't release his
taxes when he ran for president, and that had been
the standard for quite some time. He wouldn't release his taxes.
There's got to be something there. Why would he fight
so hard to keep his taxes secret, obviously there's something there.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
And then finally.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Somebody illegally leaked Donald Trump's taxes.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Nobody's ever paid a price for it.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I mean, what could be worse than that somebody who
had his taxes, probably at the IRS, leaked them. I
think it was to the New York Times, and they
all came out. Awful, awful crime. Nobody ever prosecuted for it,
Nobody even talks about it. Anyway, Trump's taxes come out.
There was nothing there, nothing nothing. Do you remember the story? No,
(07:25):
you don't, because there was nothing there.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Well, all there was was a risk guy with good
tax advice, maximizing his returns and minimizing his liabilities, which
was then portrayed just ridiculously. But I look at him,
look at him trying to minimize the amount of tax
he paid, and he answered back, yeah, that's the same
thing Hillary does, and everybody else does a get good
tax advice.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
If you don't like it, change the tax law. But
there was nothing explosive there that he was hiding. That's
the point I'm making because the assumption here is that
he's fighting to keep this Epstein to stuff from coming out.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
It might be just like his taxes. It's just going
to be I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
There's also the knowledge that conspiracy theorists, Epstein, hobbyists and
profiteers will Profiteers is a big part of it. People
that get money off of clicks for suggesting something.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, a lot of the conspiracy theorists are profiteers.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
None of these people will ever be sated by any
level of disclosure. The appetite for scandal is the one
that human hunger that grows with the eating, and that
is certainly true. Right, endless hours are going to be
spent dealing with the fallout rather than governing for quite
some time. We're all going to deal with that. And
then Halpern also brings back presidents in the past that
(08:40):
have fought all kinds of disclosure on a whole bunch
of different things. See Barack Obama and his long form
birth certificate, Think Bill Clinton in Whitewater, Hillary and her emails,
George W. Bush and the missing IRAQ WMD memos, Reagan
and Iran contra. It's just a thing presidents do to
fight to keep all this information coming out on the
sorts of things because it's just it's a distraction, it's
(09:02):
a mess, it can be used improperly, et cetera. So
to me, that answers the whole Why was Trump fighting
so hard to keep this vote from happening?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
It's just what presidents do. They don't want more information.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
They're not sure how it's going to be used when
it gets out there, you know, disclosure.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Right right, right, Well, I've got to admit, now that
it's happening, I'll be curious to see whether anybody is
specifically named as violating the law well as opposed to
hanging around with Epstein or staying in touch with him
after his first conviction, or you know, just to you know,
getting drunk on the island or whatever, specifically being sexually
(09:45):
with underaged girls.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Right, So there's that, But then there's all how many
Larry Summers are there going to be. I'll bet there's
going to be a bunch whose lives are changed. They
didn't do anything illegal, but their lives are going to
be changed by their association with Epstein and seeing various connections.
And wait a second, you told me you weren't. You
didn't talk to him anymore after two thousand and eight
(10:08):
or whatever. Yeah, from a wife or a boss or
all kinds of different situations.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Now here are your Here are your two reactions to that.
The first reaction is good, their lives should be changed.
They're they're they're despicable people. They're amorl people, and we
ought to know what sort of people they are Larry
Summers I'm thinking of specifically. And but the second reaction is, beware, friends,
(10:35):
this is the tempting case where you can rationalize why
you ought to throw out all investigatory norms and just
throw out all these the FBI forms you were talking
about before. It's so tempting and almost justifiable. Let's throw
out all the norms and everybody who's name, who ever
came up, no matter how, what, how or what context,
(10:57):
let's throw that name out into the media. But the
next case, the next two cases, the next two hundred
cases that come along, are gonna be much less compelling,
much less excuse to do that. And what you've done
is explode the norm that unless the government, and oh
you have great trust and love for the government, you
(11:17):
do since when if the government investigates you but decides
there's nothing we can charge here, So It's nobody's damn
business what we found out, because this is a private
citizen and we only looked at them in the context
of a criminal investigation. We're not in a who's a
good person who's not investigation, So we can call TMZ.
(11:40):
That's not what the government's supposed to do. And beware
encouraging them to start doing that.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
God help us.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
As a republic slides toward reality TV.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
My last thought on the Epstein thing for today anyway,
uh will be what Mark Alpern was talking about and
several people have written about in the last couple of days,
finding out that so many of the rich and powerful
are perfectly okay having Slee's ball friends. They just don't
think anybody's gonna.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Notice or care or catch on or whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Because I mean a lot of the hanging around Jeffrey Epstein'
stuff happened after he was convicted once and spent thirteen
months in jail, and lots of powerful people, Hollywood types,
political types, you know, the super rich, they were perfectly
okay having him as a friend and hanging out in
those circles. What other kinds of human beings are they
(12:37):
all okay with hanging out with right.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
Uh so it was Bria? What was what was the
name was Stalin's guy? I can't remember Labyrinth Berea who
originally said, give me the man and I will find
the crime. Or show me the man and I'll show
you the crime. This back to my previous point, and
(13:01):
then I'll shut up. Show me the man and I'll
show you the character assassination. Who's that character? Do you
need to be assassinated? Okay, Jack Armstrong, let me think,
give me a couple of days. I'll figure out what
investigation I can come up with that will get close
enough to him. We can drop his name and darkly
suggests that he's guilty of something that should give you
(13:22):
long enough that you'll win the bid on the apartment
complex or whatever. Yeah, effortless if the government turns toward
the job of character assassination in a kind of open
William Hilly way. At the same time, Epstein was a
perv his rich friends or perves, and it's all sickening,
but beware, beware the temptation.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Good stuff, Trump derangement syndrome an actual medical thing, among
other things to talk about. On the waystair, do.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
You wear Armstrong?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And getty sweatshirts, hat stuff out and about in public.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Katie, Oh, yeah, all the time you do, Joe.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Yeah, occasionally the less provocative stuff, because in real life,
I don't really want to talk politics.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I feel uncomfortable wearing my own wearing my own swag
in public.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
But eh, get over it. Some of it's really cool.
Get over it.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Yeah, I agree that I can't wait to get my
ruin the entire Country Newsome twenty twenty eight shirt. I
will wear that everywhere I go. Yeah, available right now.
Oh and the f Yaolickin Party. I really like that
one too. I want people to ask that, ask what
does that mean? F f Yaolickin. It's both parties are
phonies in it for themselves. I want to start a
(14:34):
new party.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I don't know what I think of the salty language.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, I hear you. So, I'm not sure we have
time for this now. But is Trump derangement syndrome real?
A actual psychiatrist or a psychotherapist whatever he is. As
writing this article, he says, no serious mental health professional
would render such a partisan and derogatory diagnosis. Yet I've
seen it in my own psychotherapy pract You know it's
(15:01):
funny because we talk about Trump derangement syndrome as it's
like a weird form of partisanship where you never allow
that the other side is right about anything, you never
agree that your side is wrong about anything, and within
a Republican party, like you're never Trumpers share Trump derangement syndrome.
It's like they can never admit when he gets something right.
(15:22):
But this guy's approaching it a little differently. He says
he's seen it in his own psychotherapy practice. Patients across
the political spectrum have brought Donald Trump into therapy not
to discuss policy, but to process obsession, rage, and dread.
Their distress is symptomatic, not ideological. Clinically, the presentation aligns
with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders, persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation,
(15:49):
and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking,
in physical adjecation.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I know a couple people like this that that fits
perfectly with them.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Many confess they can't stop thinking about Donald Trump even
when they try. They interpret us every move is a
threat to democracy and to their own safety and control.
Call it a obsessive political PreO preoccupation, an OCD spectrum
presentation which a political figure becomes the focal port point.
I'm sorry, I'm hurrying, so I'm getting every third word wrong.
(16:21):
Idiot becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal,
and compulsive monitoring, and he says, you're a child. I
initially view this as an ideological reaction, but he says,
over time, the more I see it, it looks more
like a fixation that distorts perception and consumes attention. One
patient said she couldn't enjoy a family vacation because quote,
(16:44):
it felt wrong to relax while Trump was still out.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yes, I know, people like whatever whatever, people like this sleeplessness.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah, I know people like.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
This that you can't you can't like enjoy your vacation
because Trump is president.
Speaker 5 (16:59):
Interestingly, as Trump himself is in the pathology, he's the
trigger for many. He functions as a psychological screen on
which unresolved fears and insecurities are projected.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Wow, it'll be so fascinating when he's gone from the scene.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
If this persists and they just attach it to something else.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Yeah, we need to take another look at this. When
we have more time art, strong, and getty.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
When the phrase six seven exploded online this year, he
was fueled by Generation Alpha kids fifteen and younger, who've
begun forging a dictionary's worth of often baffling vocabulary. Still
it's lingoed that's burst into classrooms. Like Amy wargoes, how
often are you hearing phrases like this every day?
Speaker 4 (17:40):
What do you think that's about? Having something to actually
bring them together?
Speaker 6 (17:45):
Many younger Gen Alpha kids started school during the isolation
of the pandemic. Wargo says that attachment to the virtual
world remains in a way that differentiates them from Gen.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Z previous kids.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
It was fidget spinners and bottle flipping.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Now at anything they hear on.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
TikTok, a shared experience which we just don't have anymore. So,
whether it was you know, the pandemic's hurrying it along,
it was going to happen anyway because we just don't
have shared experiences anymore.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Yeah, yeah, how interesting. Apparently Peter thiel I wrote a
piece recently about how capitalism the free market is failing millennials.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Here's an interesting dude that Peter thele is PayPal mafia
billionaire duty that has gone out there and do all
different kinds of stuff. He's all over the map politically.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Sometimes I agree with him vehemently and sometimes I don't.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Yeah, he's behind Pallanteer too, which is doing amazing work
and really patriotic anyway. But he was reaching out to
Facebook executives of all people. But he said, when seventy
percent of millennials say they are pro socialist, we need
to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that
they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed. Try and understand why,
which is absolutely true.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Then the free.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Press is Sean Fisher sat down with Theel to talk
about what he saw in twenty twenty that made him
write that more recently and just a super quick summary.
Capitalism is not working for young people, Fel said, citing
burdensome student debt regulations putting home ownership out of reach
for many. Quote people assume everything still works, but objectively
(19:27):
it doesn't. If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn't
be surprised if they eventually become communists. Now I wish
I had more of the piece in front of me,
I don't I could have grabbed it. But what the
free press did was they ran a bunch of reactions
to it from people both you know, people you may
have heard of and some you didn't. I love this
(19:49):
one from Blake Shole, who's the founder and CEO of
something called Boom Supersonic, which I have no idea what
that means. It might be a dance video platform, it
might be an air plane, it might be a drug
or a social network. Anyway, perhaps Katie could endeavor to
figure out what Boom Supersonic is, just to amuse me
(20:09):
if you don't mind.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
But what he said was really cool. Any idea not yet? Okay,
getting there? Okay, here's what he said.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
If you insert enough socialist elements into a capitalist system,
when the socialist elements inevitably cause problems, people will blame
the capitalism ah and then turn socialist. That's what's happened
in New York City, for example, where Mamdani voters are
motivated by high rents and crippling student debts. Even the
rent control drives up housing prices, and government subsidies for
(20:44):
higher education encourage universities to raise tuition.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
You know, because I can wait, there's more real quick.
Speaker 5 (20:52):
Likewise, you insert enough capitalist elements into a socialist system,
the system sort of begins to work and people think
socialist works.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
That's what happened in China. Damn it.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
But I can see how I've even done that. I've
talked about this many times over the years. I just
did a few minutes ago. Since we do live in
a welfare state, then I think the government should be
able to do this. I don't justify the uh, you know,
more socialism so much, but the more government control aspect
of it. If you're going to allow if some of
(21:29):
my money is going to go feed people who lose
all their money gambling, then I think society ought to
be able to outlaw gambling, which just you know, just
it is an argument towards bigger government making more decisions
for us.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So, yeah, you inject a little bit of.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Socialism because I don't care if people just use staying
on this example, I don't care at all if somebody
spends their life savings on gambling and runs out of
money and less at the end of that story, when
you and your kids are hungry, you take my money.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Now all of a sudden, I care.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
So you've injected some socialism because we do do that,
I said, doodoo.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
We feed the hungry, So now I'm feeding you with
my money.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Now I get to decide whether or not you gamble,
which is kind of an element of big government socialism.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
And getting back to Blake Sholl, the founder and CEO
of boomster Personic, which is the largest chain of car
wash centers across America.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Or I don't know what is it, Katie, Have we
figured that out?
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Yeah, it's a company that's aiming to make commercial supersonic
flights more accessible.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Oh, okay, okay, interesting anyway, So he goes on, at
the root of this, at the root of this terrible
confusion is a failure of our education system and our
media to give the next generation a proper history education.
Today's problems of affordability almost exclusively come from our most
socialist institutions, such as are heavily regulated, subsidized, in centrally
(22:52):
planned healthcare and education systems. By contrast, the free or
more capitalist industries such as electronics and computers have driven
enormous improvements across the board in real world standards of living.
The closer we get to capitalism, the more everyone is
better off.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
In real terms.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
The closer we get to socialism, the more death and
suffering result. We can't let capitalism be socialism's fall guy,
fall guy. It's almost to help the next generation separate
the capitalist wee from the socialist chaff so we can
all enjoy a freer and more prosperous future.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That's my social answer, the socialist noise from the capitalist signal,
as people like to say nowadays.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, Interestingly, a couple of my other favorites, we're
all about life choices.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
That is really good. So just to do dwell on
that second before you get to the life choices. So
you have a socialist society, you do a little capitalism
like that in China, which helped them make a lot
of money, and you credit socialism.
Speaker 5 (23:55):
Right, And if you insert enough socialist elements into a
capitalist system, when the socialist elements inevitably cause problems, people
blame the capitalism and then turn socialist.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
That's unfortunate.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
It is good.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
So there's a lot of stuff about personal choice, and
we talked about this earlier. It is the eight hundred
pound gorilla you know in a pet store full of
little kittens. In terms of how people's lives turn out.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Well, clean up on out five there is.
Speaker 5 (24:32):
There are a number of different things that can affect
your life in a material way, from your upbringing, to
your genetics, to your race, to a whole bunch of stuff.
But the idea that personal choices, your life choices aren't
listed as the king of the hill. Are not just
(24:53):
not listed as the king of the hill. They're not
discussed at all.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
No.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
In fact, it's frowned upon if you look at them.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
It's that what is an excuse what I would call governmentalism,
the idea that government should solve all of our problems.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You're shop if you're gonna take it exactly right.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Yeah, But I thought it was interesting that so many
really brilliant and persuade of people wrote about about personal choices.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Jim, uh, the gorilla is in the kit nile.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Oh boy, not again, Okay, say no more.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
And the other thing that they talk about is over
regulation and how and oh man, I just came a
crate across a great example of this. And and most
people don't know this. I didn't know it until fairly
late in life. A lot of regulations are attempting to
stifle competition. The big guys figure all right, compliance with
(25:58):
these complex regulations will cost us three percent of our revenue.
But a plucky startup with good ideas that wants to
come and take our market share, that'll be like fifteen
percent of their revenues and they could never afford it.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
So we will.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
Quash any competition with regulations that sound like they're protecting
the consumer or the environment or whatever. But they lobbied,
the big guys lobbied to regulate their own industry to
crush competition. Did you know that's a thing. It's a thing, folks.
And finally, this love Jason Riley Wall Street Journal, and
(26:40):
he wrote a great piece about this incredible school, Pineywood
School in Mississippi. It is again, yet again, the classic
educational success story. A lot of poor kids, a lot
of black kids doing amazing things, achieve learning, getting into college,
(27:02):
the rest of it. Why, high standards, strictly enforced discipline,
and high expectations of the kids, and the kids love
it and.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
They excel like crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Sounds like white supremacy to me.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Oh my lord.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
And Jason Riley with a great piece about that. But
I was going to use that to introduce another one
of my favorite black thinkers, Roland Fryar, who's writing about
the economics of culture, which we were just talking.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
About life choices.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
People from cultures that emphasize productive habits tend to advance.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
The reverse is also true.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
I mean, that's one of the most self evidently obvious
things you could possibly say. But man, that is strict
for boten on the left to say that. That is
why you hear those idiotic things like punctuality is white supremacy,
and trying hard is white supremacy and exceptionalism, or what's
the the you promote people based on their excellence? Is
(28:05):
white supremacy meritocracy? Meritocracy? Yeah, exactly. But Roland writes, and
you may know, he was the guy who came out
with a carefully constructed study early in his career that said, no,
young black men are not disproportionately shot and shot dead
in America by police. It's not true, and it was
(28:28):
unassailable research. But the left essentially made him a propriate.
But anyway, he writes, culture is one of the most
underrated ideas in economics. For decades, economists avoided invoking cultures.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
The shue you are, you are scratching the biggest itch
I've got this. This is wow. Really my this is
my thing right.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Here, Putting aside the highly troubling metaphor, I'm glad to
be doing so. For decades, economists avoid invoking culture the
share values, norms, beliefs, preferences, and behaviors of a group
as an explanation for economic outcomes. It seemed too intangible
to measure and too messy to model. Thomas Sowell, Oh
(29:14):
my god. Two of my favorite thinkers happened to be
black men. Quoted in the same thing, whose legacy was
celebrated recently at Stanford's Hoover Institution changed that. He was
among the first economists to treat culture as an important
economic variable. Mister Soel has argued that both human capital
and culture drive mobility, more so in his view, than
discrimination or external barriers. Groups that develop productivity enhancing traits
(29:38):
such as skills, an orientation toward education and work, and
thriftiness tend to advance. Those whose cultures don't emphasize these
things tend to fall behind. In mister Sowell's view, culture
is a form of capital, an accumulation of habits and
know how that powerfully influences a group's project. Progress could
(29:58):
not be Brewer, and you know, I'd like to read
this whole thing because it is so incredibly important. I'll
bet he goes into a bunch of different studies.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Go ahead, I'll bet that the reason it's so recent
that anybody talked about it, wrote about it, is that
we just were all in agreement up until fairly recently,
midsh twentieth century that yeah, of course, being thrifty and
working hard is a good idea and everybody should do
it. It was mostly in agreement. It wasn't until we started
(30:31):
to well, I get back to Elvis and the Beatles
and the devolving of our culture.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
I think it all fits together. Actually, So again we're
pressed for time.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
But so he goes into his research in his academic background,
and he talks about cultural differences across racial and ethnic
groups are unmistakable. And then he talks about various shows
and how popular they are among cultures. But for social scientists,
the hardest part of studying culture is trying to find
a way to measure it. And in the early to
mid two thousand, Stephen Levitt and I tried to ease
(31:02):
from the free economics guy tried to answer that question
by focusing on one small but revealing expression of cultures
the names parents give their children. Man, it's long and interesting,
but here's here's the most revealing part of this. They
went into other parts of the world, other countries with
cultures you know nothing about, and you had two groups
(31:26):
of people that looked just like this, just the same,
similar religions, et cetera. But over here they valued hard work, savings, education,
et cetera. Over there, they didn't guess what the first
group did way way better than the other ones. And
it wasn't white supremacy because there weren't any damn white people.
They refer to the fact that and what's the number
(31:47):
I wish I could find it that Pakistani Americans earned
sixty cents on the dollar to Indian Americans because of
what white racism?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5 (32:01):
No?
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Cultural dorms.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
It's like the most important thing in the world, and
nobody wants to talk about.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
It because I chickens. But I don't care. I'll talk about.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
It, sir, chickens. We'll finish strong next time.
Speaker 8 (32:16):
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman shared some dating advice
every the week on AX and said that he would
ask may I meet you before engaging further in a conversation,
and claimed he quote almost never got to know. However,
he did get a lot of six digit phone numbers.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, that was his opening line. He'd walk up to
women and say, may I meet you? And he said
it worked a lot. Guess what, he's a pretty good
looking guy. See, that's the thing with everything when it
comes to dating. That opening line works if you look
like him. Practically, any opening line would work if you
look like him, Almost none would work if you don't.
(32:56):
And it's the same with just all kinds of different days.
That Colonne smells good on.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
You because you're attractive.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
It's making it just all kinds of different things like that.
It's just I've always had.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Study that came out that good looking guys are almost
never cited for a sexual harassment, whereas the plain looking
sort are all the time for precisely the same thing.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Chris Rock has a routine where he talks about the
guy who gets the most girls sets the fashion sense
for your friend group when you're young. And I was
looking back on my life and that's very, very true.
And he said, like, you know, there's a group of
four or five dudes are all friends. The guy who
girls like the most. You look at his outfit and you think, yeah,
those are pretty cool shoes. I need some shoes like that.
(33:36):
You think that that's like the key and it's and
it's not rich. The most expensive piece of modern art
sold yesterday sought to be sold this painting from nineteen fourteen.
This is really early modern art. I don't mind early
modern art because it actually looks like art. But it's
sold for two hundred and thirty six million dollars in salteds.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
This one particular painting, Clint. It's in my family room.
Looks great over the sofa. Cool Yeah, nice.
Speaker 9 (34:10):
Down Strong, down strong, Ready, Katy Strong.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Geddy.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
Let's get a final thought from everybody on the crew
to wrap things up for the day. There is our
technical director, Michael Langelow. Michael, final thought.
Speaker 7 (34:32):
You are so correct about life being all about choices
you make.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
I think back, and I think if I'd made that choice,
that my life would be different.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
But I'm pretty happy with the way things worked out.
I'm good for you.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
There you go, Katie Greener Esteemed Newswoman As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
We were calling raccoon's trash pandas my two other favorites,
gators are murder logs and peacocks are disco chickens murder.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
They're both great. Jack of final thought.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Just a justify us talking about it a lot today.
Latest poll eighty percent of Americans wanted the Epstein files
to come out, including two.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Thirds of Republicans.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Lots of people agreed with that.
Speaker 5 (35:11):
My final thought is also raccoon related. I'm fascinated by
this article from Scientific American talking about how raccoons are
doing exactly what dogs did way way way back in
the day, hanging around kind of at the edge of
our campsite, picking at the garbage, and the more friendly
ones and the less aggressive ones are getting closer and closer.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Soon somebody's gonna pet one.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
You know, they may get their hand chewed off, but
maybe not hat raccoons in.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
Thirty years, one hundred years, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
We're going to talk about that more in the One
More Thing podcast?
Speaker 5 (35:42):
Are we not?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I thought we were?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
I don't remember when I would not. Armstrong Inghetti wrapping
up another grueling.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Four hour workday.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
You gotta go to armstrong Ayetti dot com check out
the Armstrong a Getty Swag store.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
Pickup a T shirt, a hat for yourself or your
favorit at Angie Fan.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
We'll see you tomorrow. God bless America.
Speaker 9 (36:05):
I'm Strong and Getchy. There's a fantastic podcast that you
gotta listen to every day. It's got Jack and Joe,
Katie and Michaelangelo.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
It's called I'm Strong and Geddy on them End.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
Subscribe now wherever you download your podcast.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
Ar'm Strong and Geddy On the End Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Ketty arm Strong
and Jack Kid and he.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Armstrong and Eddy Tonight.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
New questions about Democrats' intentions. The Washington Post reports House
Delegate Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the Virgin Islands, was
caught texting with Epstein during a twenty nineteen congressional hearing
in which President Trump's the attorney Michael Cohen was testifying.
Epstein appeared to feed Plasket information in real time about
(00:43):
the President's finances and his aid, which she then used
in her questioning of Cohen.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Do you all remember that hearing? We took some of
it live, the fixer of the idiot, Michael Cohen, Trump's
lawyer on it.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
What pulls all of them?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Okay, that guy Michael Cohen, when he was being questioned
by Congress. One of the Democrats was texting with Epstein
during the hearing, and he was feeding her questions to
try to get into Trump's finances.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
And if you've seen the captioning of the texts in
real time with the video of the questioning, which they
now have, it is it's funny, but it's beyond.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Doubt exactly what was happening there.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
They were using the House Democrats were using Epstein as
a how do we bad mouth Trump?
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Uh source in real time?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You know, now that I think about it, I was
about to say that the crazy thing about the whole
Epstein story is there are people of all political stripes
that were hanging around with him, flying on his plane,
friends with him.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
But somehow, like the current mainstream media version of it is,
it's a Trump thing or a republic thing thing. But
Trump was a Democrat back in the day. He was
a Democrat his whole life, basically up to the moment
he decid I did run for president. So are there
any Republicans, like big name Republicans that were tied in
with Epstein A lot? I can't think of any of them.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
That I've come across. Nothing leaves to mind. I'm I'm
just saying there aren't.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
He was a big player in New York and New
York's almost entirely Democrats.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Certainly, he was kind.
Speaker 5 (02:17):
Of a fake Democrat honestly. I mean, he was always
pro choice. But yeah, hey, just a quick observation here,
It is a hearing where they're trying to discredit Trump
with Michael Cohen on the stand getting fed information by
Jeffrey Epstein himself, And at no point did Epstein say,
ask Trump about November of twenty oh seven at the
(02:41):
Island the pool party. He had nothing on him other
than he didn't like him and he thought he was,
you know, fast and loose with his finances or whatever.
He was literally on the line with Democrats when they
were trying to impugne Trump, and he didn't offer anything up.
Can we stop talking about that aspect of this now.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
All all the emails and phone calls and everybody to
know him, there's not one where he makes it like
even pretty clear that Trump was having sex with underage girls.
And of the thousand victims out there, not one of
them have come forward and said, yeah, I had sex
with Trump in two thousand, blah blah blah.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Yeah, their references to Trump knew about the girls or whatever,
but that's not necessarily the underage girls and having a
notion that you know, I think he made like a
young girls is different than participating in any way. I'm
not saying it's right if you know about it, and
don't say anything, but come on, by.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
The way, as we are live on the radio right now.
The Senate has sent the bill to the President's desk.
It is the most bipartisan, fastest piece of legislation, by
the way, the only piece of legislation that has passed
in the last sixty days. But it's the most bipartisan,
fastest piece of legislation outside of a declaration of like
(03:53):
National Cookie Day, that I can think of in many, many,
many years. And now it's going to the President's day.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Every day is National Cookie Day, and.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
They're going to disclose all kinds of different stuff that
normally doesn't come out from investigations. And that's where I
get to Mark Alprin's newsletter for today, which I thought
was really interesting. He writes, I had a realization this
morning about the Epstein files and Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
If Trump were a normal.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
President, one whose motives weren't viewed through a funhouse mirror
by both fans and foes. It gets to Trump derangement syndrome,
which Joe is going to talk about later. The reasons
not to release the Justice Department the materials would be familiar,
even boring to most people. Presidents have always found virtue
in withholding information from investigations. The list of reasons any
(04:42):
irrational president would resist pulling back to curtain is long
and predictable.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Starting here, that's getting to the.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Whole Why would he be fighting it so hard? Well,
he could be doing it for the right reasons, like
the impropriety of flinging around FBI three to zero two's.
Those are the the investigation documents that they use to
look into people's lives that kind of violate your normal
constitutional standards, but they get a special uh A three
(05:10):
to oho two warrant to be able to look into
your stuff. That stuff's not supposed to come out public,
especially if you haven't been charged or convicted.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Of anything, right, right, And then those files can include,
you know, people saying I saw him, he did it.
It can include innocent mentions, it can include people who
later turn out to be liars at what they say
or all in those those files. That's why they're not
automatically admissible in court.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And this sort of stuff is going to be flying
around here within the next thirty days when the when
the Justice Department turns this stuff over. So the impropriety
of flinging FBI three oh two's national security and law
enforcement documents and grand jury material all into the all
into the public law to consume the way it will
helping rites. That's how republics slide toward reality television. Yeah,
(05:57):
if you start doing this all the time, with every
big investigation, and you just let everything out there, everybody's names, circumstances,
quotes that, as Joe said, might be made up. It
turns out to be someday, but that won't matter for
the time being. The collateral damage, reputations, civil liberties, livelihoods
shredded for sport when the mob gets a peak at
(06:19):
the raw material of the justice sausage making. Absolutely, that's
where we're headed. And is this going to set a
new standard for doing it in the future.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And given the nature of our media right now, it'll
be substantially one sided too. They will ignore stuff that
doesn't fit the up with Democrats narrative.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
God, how many times have we been through this?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Somebody brought up the other day Trump didn't release his
taxes when he ran for president, and that had been
the standard for quite some time. He wouldn't release his taxes.
There's got to be something there. Why would he fight
so hard to keep his taxes secret, obviously there's something there.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
And then finally.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Somebody illegally leaked Donald Trump's taxes.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Nobody's ever paid a price for it.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I mean, what could be worse than that somebody who
had his taxes, probably at the IRS, leaked them. I
think it was to the New York Times, and they
all came out. Awful, awful crime. Nobody ever prosecuted for it,
Nobody even talks about it. Anyway, Trump's taxes come out.
There was nothing there, nothing nothing. Do you remember the story? No,
(07:25):
you don't, because there was nothing there.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Well, all there was was a risk guy with good
tax advice, maximizing his returns and minimizing his liabilities, which
was then portrayed just ridiculously. But I look at him,
look at him trying to minimize the amount of tax
he paid, and he answered back, yeah, that's the same
thing Hillary does, and everybody else does a get good
tax advice.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
If you don't like it, change the tax law. But
there was nothing explosive there that he was hiding. That's
the point I'm making because the assumption here is that
he's fighting to keep this Epstein to stuff from coming out.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
It might be just like his taxes. It's just going
to be I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
There's also the knowledge that conspiracy theorists, Epstein, hobbyists and
profiteers will Profiteers is a big part of it. People
that get money off of clicks for suggesting something.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, a lot of the conspiracy theorists are profiteers.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
None of these people will ever be sated by any
level of disclosure. The appetite for scandal is the one
that human hunger that grows with the eating, and that
is certainly true. Right, endless hours are going to be
spent dealing with the fallout rather than governing for quite
some time. We're all going to deal with that. And
then Halpern also brings back presidents in the past that
(08:40):
have fought all kinds of disclosure on a whole bunch
of different things. See Barack Obama and his long form
birth certificate, Think Bill Clinton in Whitewater, Hillary and her emails,
George W. Bush and the missing IRAQ WMD memos, Reagan
and Iran contra. It's just a thing presidents do to
fight to keep all this information coming out on the
sorts of things because it's just it's a distraction, it's
(09:02):
a mess, it can be used improperly, et cetera. So
to me, that answers the whole Why was Trump fighting
so hard to keep this vote from happening?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
It's just what presidents do. They don't want more information.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
They're not sure how it's going to be used when
it gets out there, you know, disclosure.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Right right, right, Well, I've got to admit, now that
it's happening, I'll be curious to see whether anybody is
specifically named as violating the law well as opposed to
hanging around with Epstein or staying in touch with him
after his first conviction, or you know, just to you know,
getting drunk on the island or whatever, specifically being sexually
(09:45):
with underaged girls.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Right, So there's that, But then there's all how many
Larry Summers are there going to be. I'll bet there's
going to be a bunch whose lives are changed. They
didn't do anything illegal, but their lives are going to
be changed by their association with Epstein and seeing various connections.
And wait a second, you told me you weren't. You
didn't talk to him anymore after two thousand and eight
(10:08):
or whatever. Yeah, from a wife or a boss or
all kinds of different situations.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Now here are your Here are your two reactions to that.
The first reaction is good, their lives should be changed.
They're they're they're despicable people. They're amorl people, and we
ought to know what sort of people they are Larry
Summers I'm thinking of specifically. And but the second reaction is, beware, friends,
(10:35):
this is the tempting case where you can rationalize why
you ought to throw out all investigatory norms and just
throw out all these the FBI forms you were talking
about before. It's so tempting and almost justifiable. Let's throw
out all the norms and everybody who's name, who ever
came up, no matter how, what, how or what context,
(10:57):
let's throw that name out into the media. But the
next case, the next two cases, the next two hundred
cases that come along, are gonna be much less compelling,
much less excuse to do that. And what you've done
is explode the norm that unless the government, and oh
you have great trust and love for the government, you
(11:17):
do since when if the government investigates you but decides
there's nothing we can charge here, So It's nobody's damn
business what we found out, because this is a private
citizen and we only looked at them in the context
of a criminal investigation. We're not in a who's a
good person who's not investigation, So we can call TMZ.
(11:40):
That's not what the government's supposed to do. And beware
encouraging them to start doing that.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
God help us.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
As a republic slides toward reality TV.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
My last thought on the Epstein thing for today anyway,
uh will be what Mark Alpern was talking about and
several people have written about in the last couple of days,
finding out that so many of the rich and powerful
are perfectly okay having Slee's ball friends. They just don't
think anybody's gonna.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Notice or care or catch on or whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Because I mean a lot of the hanging around Jeffrey Epstein'
stuff happened after he was convicted once and spent thirteen
months in jail, and lots of powerful people, Hollywood types,
political types, you know, the super rich, they were perfectly
okay having him as a friend and hanging out in
those circles. What other kinds of human beings are they
(12:37):
all okay with hanging out with right.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
Uh so it was Bria? What was what was the
name was Stalin's guy? I can't remember Labyrinth Berea who
originally said, give me the man and I will find
the crime. Or show me the man and I'll show
you the crime. This back to my previous point, and
(13:01):
then I'll shut up. Show me the man and I'll
show you the character assassination. Who's that character? Do you
need to be assassinated? Okay, Jack Armstrong, let me think,
give me a couple of days. I'll figure out what
investigation I can come up with that will get close
enough to him. We can drop his name and darkly
suggests that he's guilty of something that should give you
(13:22):
long enough that you'll win the bid on the apartment
complex or whatever. Yeah, effortless if the government turns toward
the job of character assassination in a kind of open
William Hilly way. At the same time, Epstein was a
perv his rich friends or perves, and it's all sickening,
but beware, beware the temptation.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Good stuff, Trump derangement syndrome an actual medical thing, among
other things to talk about. On the waystair, do.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
You wear Armstrong?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And getty sweatshirts, hat stuff out and about in public.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Katie, Oh, yeah, all the time you do, Joe.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Yeah, occasionally the less provocative stuff, because in real life,
I don't really want to talk politics.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I feel uncomfortable wearing my own wearing my own swag
in public.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
But eh, get over it. Some of it's really cool.
Get over it.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Yeah, I agree that I can't wait to get my
ruin the entire Country Newsome twenty twenty eight shirt. I
will wear that everywhere I go. Yeah, available right now.
Oh and the f Yaolickin Party. I really like that
one too. I want people to ask that, ask what
does that mean? F f Yaolickin. It's both parties are
phonies in it for themselves. I want to start a
(14:34):
new party.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I don't know what I think of the salty language.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, I hear you. So, I'm not sure we have
time for this now. But is Trump derangement syndrome real?
A actual psychiatrist or a psychotherapist whatever he is. As
writing this article, he says, no serious mental health professional
would render such a partisan and derogatory diagnosis. Yet I've
seen it in my own psychotherapy pract You know it's
(15:01):
funny because we talk about Trump derangement syndrome as it's
like a weird form of partisanship where you never allow
that the other side is right about anything, you never
agree that your side is wrong about anything, and within
a Republican party, like you're never Trumpers share Trump derangement syndrome.
It's like they can never admit when he gets something right.
(15:22):
But this guy's approaching it a little differently. He says
he's seen it in his own psychotherapy practice. Patients across
the political spectrum have brought Donald Trump into therapy not
to discuss policy, but to process obsession, rage, and dread.
Their distress is symptomatic, not ideological. Clinically, the presentation aligns
with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders, persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional dysregulation,
(15:49):
and impaired functioning. Patients describe sleepless nights, compulsive news checking,
in physical adjecation.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I know a couple people like this that that fits
perfectly with them.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
Many confess they can't stop thinking about Donald Trump even
when they try. They interpret us every move is a
threat to democracy and to their own safety and control.
Call it a obsessive political PreO preoccupation, an OCD spectrum
presentation which a political figure becomes the focal port point.
I'm sorry, I'm hurrying, so I'm getting every third word wrong.
(16:21):
Idiot becomes the focal point for intrusive thoughts, heightened arousal,
and compulsive monitoring, and he says, you're a child. I
initially view this as an ideological reaction, but he says,
over time, the more I see it, it looks more
like a fixation that distorts perception and consumes attention. One
patient said she couldn't enjoy a family vacation because quote,
(16:44):
it felt wrong to relax while Trump was still out.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yes, I know, people like whatever whatever, people like this sleeplessness.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Yeah, I know people like.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
This that you can't you can't like enjoy your vacation
because Trump is president.
Speaker 5 (16:59):
Interestingly, as Trump himself is in the pathology, he's the
trigger for many. He functions as a psychological screen on
which unresolved fears and insecurities are projected.
Speaker 4 (17:08):
Wow, it'll be so fascinating when he's gone from the scene.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
If this persists and they just attach it to something else.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Yeah, we need to take another look at this. When
we have more time art, strong, and getty.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
When the phrase six seven exploded online this year, he
was fueled by Generation Alpha kids fifteen and younger, who've
begun forging a dictionary's worth of often baffling vocabulary. Still
it's lingoed that's burst into classrooms. Like Amy wargoes, how
often are you hearing phrases like this every day?
Speaker 4 (17:40):
What do you think that's about? Having something to actually
bring them together?
Speaker 6 (17:45):
Many younger Gen Alpha kids started school during the isolation
of the pandemic. Wargo says that attachment to the virtual
world remains in a way that differentiates them from Gen.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Z previous kids.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
It was fidget spinners and bottle flipping.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Now at anything they hear on.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
TikTok, a shared experience which we just don't have anymore. So,
whether it was you know, the pandemic's hurrying it along,
it was going to happen anyway because we just don't
have shared experiences anymore.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Yeah, yeah, how interesting. Apparently Peter thiel I wrote a
piece recently about how capitalism the free market is failing millennials.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Here's an interesting dude that Peter thele is PayPal mafia
billionaire duty that has gone out there and do all
different kinds of stuff. He's all over the map politically.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Sometimes I agree with him vehemently and sometimes I don't.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Yeah, he's behind Pallanteer too, which is doing amazing work
and really patriotic anyway. But he was reaching out to
Facebook executives of all people. But he said, when seventy
percent of millennials say they are pro socialist, we need
to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that
they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed. Try and understand why,
which is absolutely true.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Then the free.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Press is Sean Fisher sat down with Theel to talk
about what he saw in twenty twenty that made him
write that more recently and just a super quick summary.
Capitalism is not working for young people, Fel said, citing
burdensome student debt regulations putting home ownership out of reach
for many. Quote people assume everything still works, but objectively
(19:27):
it doesn't. If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn't
be surprised if they eventually become communists. Now I wish
I had more of the piece in front of me,
I don't I could have grabbed it. But what the
free press did was they ran a bunch of reactions
to it from people both you know, people you may
have heard of and some you didn't. I love this
(19:49):
one from Blake Shole, who's the founder and CEO of
something called Boom Supersonic, which I have no idea what
that means. It might be a dance video platform, it
might be an air plane, it might be a drug
or a social network. Anyway, perhaps Katie could endeavor to
figure out what Boom Supersonic is, just to amuse me
(20:09):
if you don't mind.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
But what he said was really cool. Any idea not yet? Okay,
getting there? Okay, here's what he said.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
If you insert enough socialist elements into a capitalist system,
when the socialist elements inevitably cause problems, people will blame
the capitalism ah and then turn socialist. That's what's happened
in New York City, for example, where Mamdani voters are
motivated by high rents and crippling student debts. Even the
rent control drives up housing prices, and government subsidies for
(20:44):
higher education encourage universities to raise tuition.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
You know, because I can wait, there's more real quick.
Speaker 5 (20:52):
Likewise, you insert enough capitalist elements into a socialist system,
the system sort of begins to work and people think
socialist works.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
That's what happened in China. Damn it.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
But I can see how I've even done that. I've
talked about this many times over the years. I just
did a few minutes ago. Since we do live in
a welfare state, then I think the government should be
able to do this. I don't justify the uh, you know,
more socialism so much, but the more government control aspect
of it. If you're going to allow if some of
(21:29):
my money is going to go feed people who lose
all their money gambling, then I think society ought to
be able to outlaw gambling, which just you know, just
it is an argument towards bigger government making more decisions
for us.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So, yeah, you inject a little bit of.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Socialism because I don't care if people just use staying
on this example, I don't care at all if somebody
spends their life savings on gambling and runs out of
money and less at the end of that story, when
you and your kids are hungry, you take my money.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Now all of a sudden, I care.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
So you've injected some socialism because we do do that,
I said, doodoo.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
We feed the hungry, So now I'm feeding you with
my money.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Now I get to decide whether or not you gamble,
which is kind of an element of big government socialism.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
And getting back to Blake Sholl, the founder and CEO
of boomster Personic, which is the largest chain of car
wash centers across America.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Or I don't know what is it, Katie, Have we
figured that out?
Speaker 7 (22:28):
Yeah, it's a company that's aiming to make commercial supersonic
flights more accessible.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
Oh, okay, okay, interesting anyway, So he goes on, at
the root of this, at the root of this terrible
confusion is a failure of our education system and our
media to give the next generation a proper history education.
Today's problems of affordability almost exclusively come from our most
socialist institutions, such as are heavily regulated, subsidized, in centrally
(22:52):
planned healthcare and education systems. By contrast, the free or
more capitalist industries such as electronics and computers have driven
enormous improvements across the board in real world standards of living.
The closer we get to capitalism, the more everyone is
better off.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
In real terms.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
The closer we get to socialism, the more death and
suffering result. We can't let capitalism be socialism's fall guy,
fall guy. It's almost to help the next generation separate
the capitalist wee from the socialist chaff so we can
all enjoy a freer and more prosperous future.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
That's my social answer, the socialist noise from the capitalist signal,
as people like to say nowadays.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, Interestingly, a couple of my other favorites, we're
all about life choices.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
That is really good. So just to do dwell on
that second before you get to the life choices. So
you have a socialist society, you do a little capitalism
like that in China, which helped them make a lot
of money, and you credit socialism.
Speaker 5 (23:55):
Right, And if you insert enough socialist elements into a
capitalist system, when the socialist elements inevitably cause problems, people
blame the capitalism and then turn socialist.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
That's unfortunate.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
It is good.
Speaker 5 (24:09):
So there's a lot of stuff about personal choice, and
we talked about this earlier. It is the eight hundred
pound gorilla you know in a pet store full of
little kittens. In terms of how people's lives turn out.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Well, clean up on out five there is.
Speaker 5 (24:32):
There are a number of different things that can affect
your life in a material way, from your upbringing, to
your genetics, to your race, to a whole bunch of stuff.
But the idea that personal choices, your life choices aren't
listed as the king of the hill. Are not just
(24:53):
not listed as the king of the hill. They're not
discussed at all.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
No.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
In fact, it's frowned upon if you look at them.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
It's that what is an excuse what I would call governmentalism,
the idea that government should solve all of our problems.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You're shop if you're gonna take it exactly right.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
Yeah, But I thought it was interesting that so many
really brilliant and persuade of people wrote about about personal choices.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Jim, uh, the gorilla is in the kit nile.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Oh boy, not again, Okay, say no more.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
And the other thing that they talk about is over
regulation and how and oh man, I just came a
crate across a great example of this. And and most
people don't know this. I didn't know it until fairly
late in life. A lot of regulations are attempting to
stifle competition. The big guys figure all right, compliance with
(25:58):
these complex regulations will cost us three percent of our revenue.
But a plucky startup with good ideas that wants to
come and take our market share, that'll be like fifteen
percent of their revenues and they could never afford it.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
So we will.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
Quash any competition with regulations that sound like they're protecting
the consumer or the environment or whatever. But they lobbied,
the big guys lobbied to regulate their own industry to
crush competition. Did you know that's a thing. It's a thing, folks.
And finally, this love Jason Riley Wall Street Journal, and
(26:40):
he wrote a great piece about this incredible school, Pineywood
School in Mississippi. It is again, yet again, the classic
educational success story. A lot of poor kids, a lot
of black kids doing amazing things, achieve learning, getting into college,
(27:02):
the rest of it. Why, high standards, strictly enforced discipline,
and high expectations of the kids, and the kids love
it and.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
They excel like crazy.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Sounds like white supremacy to me.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Oh my lord.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
And Jason Riley with a great piece about that. But
I was going to use that to introduce another one
of my favorite black thinkers, Roland Fryar, who's writing about
the economics of culture, which we were just talking.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
About life choices.
Speaker 5 (27:32):
People from cultures that emphasize productive habits tend to advance.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
The reverse is also true.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
I mean, that's one of the most self evidently obvious
things you could possibly say. But man, that is strict
for boten on the left to say that. That is
why you hear those idiotic things like punctuality is white supremacy,
and trying hard is white supremacy and exceptionalism, or what's
the the you promote people based on their excellence? Is
(28:05):
white supremacy meritocracy? Meritocracy? Yeah, exactly. But Roland writes, and
you may know, he was the guy who came out
with a carefully constructed study early in his career that said, no,
young black men are not disproportionately shot and shot dead
in America by police. It's not true, and it was
(28:28):
unassailable research. But the left essentially made him a propriate.
But anyway, he writes, culture is one of the most
underrated ideas in economics. For decades, economists avoided invoking cultures.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
The shue you are, you are scratching the biggest itch
I've got this. This is wow. Really my this is
my thing right.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Here, Putting aside the highly troubling metaphor, I'm glad to
be doing so. For decades, economists avoid invoking culture the
share values, norms, beliefs, preferences, and behaviors of a group
as an explanation for economic outcomes. It seemed too intangible
to measure and too messy to model. Thomas Sowell, Oh
(29:14):
my god. Two of my favorite thinkers happened to be
black men. Quoted in the same thing, whose legacy was
celebrated recently at Stanford's Hoover Institution changed that. He was
among the first economists to treat culture as an important
economic variable. Mister Soel has argued that both human capital
and culture drive mobility, more so in his view, than
discrimination or external barriers. Groups that develop productivity enhancing traits
(29:38):
such as skills, an orientation toward education and work, and
thriftiness tend to advance. Those whose cultures don't emphasize these
things tend to fall behind. In mister Sowell's view, culture
is a form of capital, an accumulation of habits and
know how that powerfully influences a group's project. Progress could
(29:58):
not be Brewer, and you know, I'd like to read
this whole thing because it is so incredibly important. I'll
bet he goes into a bunch of different studies.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Go ahead, I'll bet that the reason it's so recent
that anybody talked about it, wrote about it, is that
we just were all in agreement up until fairly recently,
midsh twentieth century that yeah, of course, being thrifty and
working hard is a good idea and everybody should do
it. It was mostly in agreement. It wasn't until we started
(30:31):
to well, I get back to Elvis and the Beatles
and the devolving of our culture.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
I think it all fits together. Actually, So again we're
pressed for time.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
But so he goes into his research in his academic background,
and he talks about cultural differences across racial and ethnic
groups are unmistakable. And then he talks about various shows
and how popular they are among cultures. But for social scientists,
the hardest part of studying culture is trying to find
a way to measure it. And in the early to
mid two thousand, Stephen Levitt and I tried to ease
(31:02):
from the free economics guy tried to answer that question
by focusing on one small but revealing expression of cultures
the names parents give their children. Man, it's long and interesting,
but here's here's the most revealing part of this. They
went into other parts of the world, other countries with
cultures you know nothing about, and you had two groups
(31:26):
of people that looked just like this, just the same,
similar religions, et cetera. But over here they valued hard work, savings, education,
et cetera. Over there, they didn't guess what the first
group did way way better than the other ones. And
it wasn't white supremacy because there weren't any damn white people.
They refer to the fact that and what's the number
(31:47):
I wish I could find it that Pakistani Americans earned
sixty cents on the dollar to Indian Americans because of
what white racism?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5 (32:01):
No?
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Cultural dorms.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
It's like the most important thing in the world, and
nobody wants to talk about.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
It because I chickens. But I don't care. I'll talk about.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
It, sir, chickens. We'll finish strong next time.
Speaker 8 (32:16):
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman shared some dating advice
every the week on AX and said that he would
ask may I meet you before engaging further in a conversation,
and claimed he quote almost never got to know. However,
he did get a lot of six digit phone numbers.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, that was his opening line. He'd walk up to
women and say, may I meet you? And he said
it worked a lot. Guess what, he's a pretty good
looking guy. See, that's the thing with everything when it
comes to dating. That opening line works if you look
like him. Practically, any opening line would work if you
look like him, Almost none would work if you don't.
(32:56):
And it's the same with just all kinds of different days.
That Colonne smells good on.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
You because you're attractive.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
It's making it just all kinds of different things like that.
It's just I've always had.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Study that came out that good looking guys are almost
never cited for a sexual harassment, whereas the plain looking
sort are all the time for precisely the same thing.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Chris Rock has a routine where he talks about the
guy who gets the most girls sets the fashion sense
for your friend group when you're young. And I was
looking back on my life and that's very, very true.
And he said, like, you know, there's a group of
four or five dudes are all friends. The guy who
girls like the most. You look at his outfit and you think, yeah,
those are pretty cool shoes. I need some shoes like that.
(33:36):
You think that that's like the key and it's and
it's not rich. The most expensive piece of modern art
sold yesterday sought to be sold this painting from nineteen fourteen.
This is really early modern art. I don't mind early
modern art because it actually looks like art. But it's
sold for two hundred and thirty six million dollars in salteds.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
This one particular painting, Clint. It's in my family room.
Looks great over the sofa. Cool Yeah, nice.
Speaker 9 (34:10):
Down Strong, down strong, Ready, Katy Strong.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Geddy.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
Let's get a final thought from everybody on the crew
to wrap things up for the day. There is our
technical director, Michael Langelow. Michael, final thought.
Speaker 7 (34:32):
You are so correct about life being all about choices
you make.
Speaker 5 (34:35):
I think back, and I think if I'd made that choice,
that my life would be different.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
But I'm pretty happy with the way things worked out.
I'm good for you.
Speaker 5 (34:43):
There you go, Katie Greener Esteemed Newswoman As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
We were calling raccoon's trash pandas my two other favorites,
gators are murder logs and peacocks are disco chickens murder.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
They're both great. Jack of final thought.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Just a justify us talking about it a lot today.
Latest poll eighty percent of Americans wanted the Epstein files
to come out, including two.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Thirds of Republicans.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Lots of people agreed with that.
Speaker 5 (35:11):
My final thought is also raccoon related. I'm fascinated by
this article from Scientific American talking about how raccoons are
doing exactly what dogs did way way way back in
the day, hanging around kind of at the edge of
our campsite, picking at the garbage, and the more friendly
ones and the less aggressive ones are getting closer and closer.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Soon somebody's gonna pet one.
Speaker 5 (35:34):
You know, they may get their hand chewed off, but
maybe not hat raccoons in.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
Thirty years, one hundred years, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
We're going to talk about that more in the One
More Thing podcast?
Speaker 5 (35:42):
Are we not?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
I thought we were?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
I don't remember when I would not. Armstrong Inghetti wrapping
up another grueling.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Four hour workday.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
You gotta go to armstrong Ayetti dot com check out
the Armstrong a Getty Swag store.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5 (35:58):
Pickup a T shirt, a hat for yourself or your
favorit at Angie Fan.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
We'll see you tomorrow. God bless America.
Speaker 9 (36:05):
I'm Strong and Getchy. There's a fantastic podcast that you
gotta listen to every day. It's got Jack and Joe,
Katie and Michaelangelo.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
It's called I'm Strong and Geddy on them End.
Speaker 5 (36:24):
Subscribe now wherever you download your podcast.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
Ar'm Strong and Geddy On the End Armstrong and Getty
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