March 13, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- Don't be afraid of tariffs & shoppers skipping on snacks
- Old Kinderhook!
- Putin isn't interested in a cease fire & football injuries
- Politics in the Philippines
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, Katty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Arm Strong and Jackie and he Armstrong and Eddy.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Now, as the President defends his.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Tariffs over on Capitol Hill, the government is engine closer
to a shutdown after Senate Democrats announced they were nuts enough.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
I can't hear anymore, and I don't want to lose
a whole audience. Oh, I don't want to lose a
whole audience. My only question on the whole shutdown is
who's this for? Is it just?
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Who? Are there people that care about?
Speaker 5 (00:49):
These shutdown conversations where they talk about it endlessly and
write about it endlessly, and then nothing ever happens. And
even if something does happen, it's for a couple hours
and nobody ever remembers it. I mean, it just said,
it has no impact on anybody. The only part I
remember is how stupid and phony it is, the efforts
to gin up people caring about it. Eh yeah, yeah,
(01:11):
I just think you know, all of us lacks self awareness.
Sometimes the major media is completely Beltway obsessed.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh I was.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Watching and don't understand that their audiences are not nearly,
So I mean, we care, but we're not obsess. I
flipped on Fox and Friends this morning, and I had
to keep fast forwarding and fast forwarding and fast forwarding
to get through I don't know, twenty five minutes of
government shut down back and forth before he got anything
I could possibly care about.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Who's this for?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Right?
Speaker 5 (01:38):
So you think American politics are screwed up, I need
to tell you about Filipino politics right now. Later on
in the hour, if I wrote this into a book
like a novel, the editor had say, Joe, you got
to rework that part because it's too crazy. That would
never happen in the modern world. So stay tuned for that,
if you will. Closer to home, some economic stuff. Oh,
(02:00):
that's right, I wanted to hear. This is Mike Dubkey,
who's an official with Blackrock, the giant investment firm. He's
among several folks that the Trump administration is trotting out
to say, Hey, the whole tariff thing, don't be afraid
of it.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's going to pan out fine.
Speaker 6 (02:13):
In Donald Trump, We've got a politician that actually is
doing what we claim we've wanted for years. Looking past
the next election, he believes in tariffs. I'm not a
particular fan of these tariffs either, but he's actually putting
his money where his mouth is and trying to say, look,
this is a long term solution. We finally have got
to do it. So either folks are going to get
(02:35):
behind that and move forward, or we're just going to
jump back in and create certainty for the markets, but
that doesn't necessarily create a economy that's going to be
better for the country.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
That's the best spin I've heard, and spins not always
a negative connotation. It's just you know, your way you're
portraying meation, Yeah, the way you're portraying the story that, yeah,
everybody's always talking about, we've got to quit just play
in for the next election, the next midterm or the
next presidential election. We got think long term on this stuff.
And you know, this is what he's doing. Whether it's
gonna work or not, I don't know, but he is
(03:07):
definitely playing the long game, right. And I appreciated that
clip because it's a very armstrong and Getty esque way
to approach it. New listeners all the time, and we
thank you for being here. I hope you enjoy yourselves.
Who are you listening to before Bongino you miss him?
Or Glenn Beck? Maybe you're listening to Glenn maybe bon Jovi,
maybe get tired of music in the car. We replaced
(03:29):
them and ye, and you're probably a little angry about that.
But now we're here, and I think if you get
it from time, as we always say, a little bit time,
you don't like it, give it some more time.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
But anyway, we're neither never ending cheerleaders for Trump, even
when he does stuff we think is dumb. Nor are
we you know, Trump derangement syndrome type. They're just kind
of calumn as we see him. But I appreciated that
because he said, look, I don't exactly agree with the
tariff stuff, but here's what he's doing, and you've got
to admire that. I wanted to keep my ear out
for Mike Dubky. I like the cut of his Jibway.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Wait, the whole tariff thing.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
I will say this just as a like a sports
analyst talking about you know, they've committed to the passing
game even though the air two best receivers are injured.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Trump ran on really.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
Three things, the border, check, getting rid of the woke stuff,
check as fast as he can. He's doing a good
job so far. And three and maybe this ought to
be number one. Prices, inflation, the economy, the hurt in
your pocketbook. And in the short term at least, he
is really gambling because there's a very good chance that
(04:40):
prices are going to rise in the short to medium
term because the whole tariff thing, which is turning into
a bit of a trade war. Whether those tariffs stay
in place and for how long hard to say. Well,
his belief is were such the giant four hundred pound
gorilla that we will win every trade war.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Isn't that his belief? Over time?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Down, Yeah, after a period of disruption, As he said,
there are some captains of industry who are normally very
Trump friendly, who are saying, hey, we make investments that
pay off in decades, not in quarters or years, and
we need some level of certainty please.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So we'll see.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
But that's what Mike Dubkey was saying, that creating certainty
doesn't necessarily create a better economy over the long term,
So we'll all find out together. I found this very interesting.
Shoppers are skipping on cigarettes, Doritos, and Twinkies, US convenience
store sales fell four point three percent by volume year
to year February to February. Let's see, according to market
(05:43):
research firms Sircana, among snacks purchased in these stores, rice
cakes dropped most.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Sharply man.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
This is a detailed survey, followed by dips, nuts and jerky. Well,
I noticed the other day when I was buying my
weekly supply of rice cakes how much the price would moved. Well, yeah,
people are buying fewer of them. I like dips, nuts
and jerky. It sounds like, hey, honey, did you like
the new Men's club you went to the meeting him?
(06:10):
Please it's a bunch a dips, nuts and jerky. Refrigerated
products dropped by about seven percent by sales volume, which
is damn significant.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Chocolate candy fell by six percent.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
The lower but I haven't had an egg in a month,
and I'm dying over here. The lower tier of consumers,
folks with less money, are seriously cutting back on purchases.
Let me navigate over to this, which is a similar tale.
Is from the Wall Street Journal. Consumer Acts is striking
all income levels signs of weakness or showing up and
(06:44):
spending on everything from basics to luxuries. This is interesting
because it was no more than a few weeks ago
we brought you the story that the top ten percent
of incomes in the United States are driving like fifty
six of consumer spending something like that, way outsized even
by comparison with what's normally going on. And they have
(07:06):
a tendency to spend when the stock market's doing well
and pull back when it's not, even though it's not
like actually affecting your cash flow today, it's just the
way you feel. So American consumers, according to the Journal,
have had a lot to fred about so far this year.
Between never ending tariff headlines. I'm not sure how much
the average consumer, particularly like your bottom twenty percent quintile,
(07:29):
pays attention to tariff headlines that don't know, stubborn inflation
that's true, and most recently, fresh fears about a recession.
These concerns seem to be hitting spending by both rich
and poor, across necessities and luxuries all at once. In
an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago in late February,
Walmart chief executive Doug McMillan, no politician, he I mean,
(07:50):
that's if you want to know what's going on with
the American consumer. I don't know if you can do
better than asking the guy from Walmart. He said, budget
pressured customers are showing stressed be behaviors. They are buying
smaller pack sizes at the end of the month because
quote their money runs out before the month is gone. Interesting,
McDonald said it's most recent earnings call. In its most
recent earnings called that the fast food industry has had
(08:12):
a sluggish start to the year, in part because of
weak demand from low income consumers, and that has echoed
across the US fast food industry. Sales to low income
guests down by double digit percentage in the fourth quarter
compared to the previous year. And things don't look much
better on the higher end American consumers. Spending on the
luxury market, which includes high end department stores and online platforms,
(08:35):
fell nine point three percent in February from a year previous,
worse than the five point nine percent decline in January.
And I was in the Nieman Marcus in Beverly Hills
a couple of weeks ago on my birthday, and.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Wow, mister fancy over here.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
I looked at some stuff. I didn't buy anything. I
didn't realize had a like a cafe in there. I
had a salad. It was one of the best salads
I've ever had. But anyway, oh yeah, place was empty
and there were so many sales clerks around, and I thought,
how did they turn a profit on a place like
this when you got like a hundred salespeople just standing
(09:14):
around waiting for a customer to come in and buy
some really overpriced crap.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
It's the anti home depot.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Hello, hello, hello, hello, can you help me find this screw?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Ooh ooh.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
Well, in a place like Nieman Mark is the sort
of person that goes there. They expect someone to be
there to help them answer a question immediately. But I
don't know how you turn a profit on that. And
you know, and it's down ten percent. God, I would
think those places you talk about something that's elastic in
terms of purchasing, right, yeah, costco who is membership fee
(09:48):
paying customer, not pee faing. That's not word fee paying
customer base scus Higher Income said last week the demand
has shifted towards lower cost proteins such as ground beef
and poultry. Members are being very choosy, and the Cohle's
CEO said consumers making less than fifty grand a year
are pretty constrained on discretionary spending, but added quote, it's
(10:10):
also pretty challenging for those making less than one hundred
grand between fifty one hundred.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Obviously, they just gave.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
A Wall Street a weaker than expected sales forecast, so
I should explain this briefly. You know what I do
at a place like Neiman Marcus. I try on a
certain brand of something to see what size I need,
and then I find it on eBay used, whether it's
you know, lightly used by some fashionista who changes what
(10:37):
they wear every three, four or five months, or somebody's
who's gone to meet God. Yeah, some of it's dead people,
but yeah, I can't. I don't know who you are
that buys these things full price, but somebody must.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
The airlines they quote as well that customers are pulling
back on air travel. It could be interesting times economically
ahead for the rest of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I'cy yeah, well, and I guess you know.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
The point politically is that Trump is gambling with prices
and the economy, perhaps for wonderful long term reasons. We'll
leave that up to y'all to decide individually, but at
just the time when things are looking a little shaky. Well, right,
I mean he's gambling with his presidency the way he's
(11:27):
viewed throughout history. And I mean he's not just doing
the easy expedient what's going to make the most people
happy thing, right, that's for certain. Well, and it's all
about me, Jack, you know that. And he's also gambling
with our abilities, conservatives, to get done certain really really
great things.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Because if the Republicans.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
Get murdered in the mid times because the economy has gone,
you know, sideways, that's that's gonna hurt getting rid of
the DEI and the idiotic regulations at least to some extent.
So I'm you know, I'm rooting forward to work out
for obvious reasons. I'm also a part of the economy.
I'm a consumer as we all are. Russia has said
no basically to the cease fire deal. I don't know
(12:08):
where that leaves the world, and a bunch of other
stuff on the way.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I've read that the maker of the Room but Vacuum
has substantial doubt the companies can survive.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Yeah, it's not that the Room but sucked it's just
that it didn't suck enough.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
I only tried the first generation room but and did
not have much success with it, and I haven't tried
the previous improvements.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Maybe they're better.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
Yeah, yeah, I had a you know, probably third generation
something like that is pretty good. There's just so much
stuff you had to pick up and rearrange your room
and everything like that to use it. I felt like
it didn't save me time over just pushing my vacuum around.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
I keep threatening to unleash it in a part of
our house where we don't go very often, but I
haven't done it yet.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And that kind of that's you know, that tells you
everything you need to know. Right, Oh quick, I'm sorry.
I had one more note.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
I wanted to throw in the economic stuff we were
talking about, and I forgot a great note from Scott
in Beautiful Hillsburg, California. Wednesday's he's talking about the top
of the hour. Network News reporter Kelly O'Grady did a
story on the lower than inspected inflation, those numbers that
came out yesterday, right, and she made sure to point
(13:19):
out that a reduction in inflation doesn't mean a reduction
in prices. Wow, the mainstream media finally suddenly understand understands
how inflation and prices work.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Where was that reporting for the last four years?
Speaker 5 (13:33):
And he did the MSM replace DEI training and trans
messaging with financial training and Jim Kramer reruns that's hilarious.
So when it was Biden, they pretended the rate of
inflation going down.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Means prices have dropped. Why aren't you happy.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
Now it's a Trump You point out, Well, that doesn't
mean the prices okay, all right, Well, and this Scott
also points out they either knew how it works and
were lying or selectively reporting, or were completely ignorance of
the topic.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And suddenly they're they're wise to it.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Please shere about the woman who ran off the road,
broke so many of her bones and she was trapped
in her car for an entire week before they found
her and she's alive. Now that's quite the story. In fact,
that's funny. I mentioned it, and there I se see
the story up on TV right now. We'll have that
a little bit later. And Russia ain't gonna agree to
a cease fire, I don't think. But I'm texting my
(14:28):
youngest the other day. My thirteen year old Henry and like,
you know, get ready to go. I'm gonna be home
in a second. We're gonna go to the grocery store.
Henry spawns old Kinderhook, which I didn't know what that meant.
Maybe you know what that means, Joe, I don't know. Yeah, okay,
I didn't know what it meant. Anyway, I said, what
the hell was that? So when I got home, he
explained it to me. It's from an episode of The Simpsons.
Well that's not where it originated. That's where he came
(14:49):
across episode of The Simpsons where people are talking about
I forget what they're talking about. They're throwing around a
whole bunch of abbreviations, you know, FBI, CI, C, I,
A ap ar or whatever and Moses. All right, that's it.
No more abbreviations from now on. It's old Kinderhook around here.
And okay. Martin Van Buren ran for president in nineteen
(15:12):
forty on okay, old Kinderhook. He was from Kinderhook, New Jersey,
New York, where he's from, and it became a thing. Okay,
as an older Kinderhook, like you know, he's a good
man of the people, sort of thing. The opposition who
ended up winning. Harrison's campaign used okay to mean the
way people generally use the word okay, like he's okay.
(15:33):
His first term was okay, but that's not good enough,
so AnyWho. It became used on both sides of the campaign,
and both shades of meanings survive. How interesting. Yeah, well,
nobody's exactly sure where okay came from. It could go
way back to the Greeks or Native Americans. There's a
lot of confusion over where it actually started, but it
(15:55):
definitely was used as old kinderhook at that time. I
just thought it was funny that my son hit me
with that. I had no idea what he was saying. Yeah, yeah,
clever lad, old kinderhook And that's a pretty good you know,
you can picture that in modern politics.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
So they try to use an abbreviation, you capture that abbreviation,
turn it into a negative. The Harrison campaign who ended
up winning, except their candidate was the oldest person ever
elected president at age sixty eight, and then he gave
his famous speech in the cold and died in a month.
(16:31):
But sixty eight, that'd be a young president now. Yeah, No, kidding.
I appreciate Moe's stance. As you know, I'm staunchly against
silent letters. And I'll tell anybody who will listen from
now it's old kinderhook around here. That's funny. How about
Putin showing up to the front lines yesterday in military
(16:53):
garb to cheer on the troops and make it to
me just ultimately clear that he planned to keep fighting.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
That's the best response is going to be, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, Well who knows in Filipino politics, Holy
crapp er, they screwed up. Stick around if you can't
grab the podcast Armstrong and Getting.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
On demand Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 7 (17:18):
Vladimir Putin said, there is that, first of all, the
Russians want to kick all of the Ukrainians off their
territory and also create a buffer zone in that area,
which obviously could take months of combat operations to do so.
The Russians right now feel that they have the edge
on the battlefield and that they are not going to
be pressured or rushed into any sort of ceasefire agreement.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Well, we've finally gotten our first response from Russia after
Ukraine agreed to the US plan for a cease fire.
You know, Marco Rubio and both he and the president
yesterday saying, hey, the ball is in Russia's court. Well,
Russia responded, finally, we'll get to that in a second.
But yesterday the Russian military took back Sudza. Sudza the
(18:00):
biggest town held by Ukraine in the Kursk region, which
is in Russia. If you remember, Ukraine had gotten into
Russian taken some of their territory. Well, Russian military took
back the biggest town after taking several villages, and appears
to be on the verge of booting all the Ukrainians
out of any of Russian land. And Putin was there
on the front lines in his military fatigues, acting like
(18:23):
a wartime leader and not acting like a guy who's
looking for a ceasefire. Certainly, and the response to from
a Russian negotiator, senior aide to Vladimir Putin said, this
is nothing other than a temporary time out for Ukrainian
soldiers and nothing more. In his rejection of the ceasefire proposal,
(18:45):
our goal is a long term peaceful resolution. Steps that
imitate peaceful actions are not needed through victory, he left
unspoken right the complete conquest of as much a Ukraine
as we can. Then the you know, demilitarizing of their military. Well,
(19:06):
also unspoken is the I think we're winning and we're
gonna win, so why would we stop? And as long
as Kim Jong un is willing to sell us twenty
year old machine gun fodder, we're we're doing.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Okay, God, that's brutal.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Moscow part of their plan has been Moscow insists on
keeping it minimum eighteen percent of Ukrainian territory, about the
fifth of the country that they took. It wants to
reverse policies that have sideline Russian cultural influence in Ukraine,
preclude the country's membership from NATO, which has already been
(19:42):
announced by you know, our second deaf and other people.
And uh, Zelensky and his government have to go. The
Russian said, which you don't get to decide that. Zelensky
has said he would step down if it, you know,
let piece. But yeah, but the Russians, that's not what
(20:03):
they mean. They want to install a puppet regime, right
or eventually, you know, if not immediately. Uh yeah, Well,
how do you think this is going to play out?
So Trump's guy is over there now, somewhere meeting with
Russians apparently, And how do you think this is going
to play out? Is at any point, at any point
(20:24):
is the president, Marco Rubio, anything, anybody gonna put any
pressure on Russian and say, hey, this is a bunch
of crap and you know it.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
If you don't, if you.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
Don't, if you don't come up with better, something better
than that, full sanctions, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Well, I can't answer your question because that X, that variable,
that unknown is huge. Now what does Trump slash the
United States do?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Say? What's the strategy?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Now?
Speaker 5 (20:49):
What was you know to those who thought he was
playing you know, some three to seven dimensional chess by
beating up Zelenski, perhaps with Zelenski's permission, to bring Putin
to the table, et cetera, et cetera. I have no
idea what the next step is. Putin and I've been
saying this from the beginning, has no intention of a
(21:11):
peace settlement. At this point. He's on the front foot,
he's gaining ground. It would be insane for him to
come to the table unless he is forced to the table.
And whether there's the will to do that remains to
be seen. Right now we heard those economic stats yesterday
about Russia which are pretty horrible forty percent inflation and
(21:31):
a variety of things. But you don't know what to
what extent Putin's being short up by China or will
be shored up by China or Iran or whoever is
willing to help him out. Well, and because we have
a at least semi rational form of government and elections,
I think Americans tend to underestimate the extent to which
(21:52):
foreign leader dictators specifically can be not entirely rational. And
I don't mean psycho, but like when we found out
Shijin Ping is a committed communist. He's not pretending to be,
because that holds the country together, the communist part of it. No,
he believes in communism Stalin. You know, certainly the early
(22:14):
leaders of the Soviet Union, they thought they were right
about you know, Marxism in the history of mankind and
blah blah blah blah blah, and potent actually has Tsarist
impulses to reassemble the greatness of the Russian Empire.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
I believe that firmly.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
And for those of you who don't want us to
be involved in Ukraine and think it's not our business.
I just feel like World War three is more likely
if we had forced Zelensky into peace and Russia, you know,
they're just kind of regroup and then try to take
another chunk of Ukraine or the whole thing right well,
one hundred percent, or one of the Baltic states.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
In China.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Speaking of China, Jian Ping's doing the same thing, constantly
probing for weakness in the sea, on land all over
Asia and the and the oceans in that part of
the world. Every single day, he has his navy, his armies,
his secret agents, whatever, probing to see what the reaction
of the Western world is going to be, and pushing
(23:11):
and pushing and pushing. And you know, you need not
be a PhD in history to understand. When people like
that find weakness, they thrust. They don't say oh sorry, no,
they go as far as they can, as fast as
they can. The withdrawal I'll see, here we go. You're
a neo Khan here egg. You're an old Boomer generation,
(23:31):
actually bastards. I'm a boomer. Anyway, there is a fantasy.
And I'm not saying we can't have a transition to
a different world order because the world order is always changing,
and I have a pretty open mind about this stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
But the one thing that bothers me about some of.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
The new more isolationist spheres of influence, conservatives, whatever you
want to call them, is they have an incredibly naive
view in my mind, Talk me out of it if
you can, that the withdrawal of American power will lead
to some sort of calm neutrality. Yep, a lot of people,
(24:10):
as opposed to a mad, feverish rush to fill that
vacuum with the lusts of evildoers, be they putin or
oshesion PingER, Kim Jong Uhner, the mull isn't freaking around.
We're trying to get the nukes as fast as they anyway. Yeah, man,
I heard a good podcast the other day. If people
making the argument, I never looked at it this way before.
But the whole we pay for everything, We pay for
(24:31):
the UN, we pay for the WHO, we pay for NATO.
You know, we're none of these organizations would be anything
without us, because we support so much of them. Is
to our advantage in that we get to call the shots.
So I mean, it's expensive and it's you know, unfair.
Using my finger quotes in a certain way that we
provide the uh, you know, we we we are the
(24:53):
teeth and NATO and everything like that, but we get
to call the shots that way. And if we're eny
of us the greatest economy and history of.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
The world anyway.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
One more, A little piece of news here from the
New York Times on what happened yesterday. The loss of
Ukraine's toe hold and Kursk, where at one point it
had captured in Ary roughly the size of Los Angeles,
would mark a significant defeat for Kiev. Russia has thrown
enormous resources into the campaign to recapture its territory, deploying
North Korean troops and staging daring operations. One unit crawled
(25:25):
through a disused section of natural Geist's gas pipeline this
week to outflank Ukrainian troops defending that big city, with
several dying of methane poisoning, according to pro Kremlin war bloggers,
while they had North Koreans crawling through gas pipes to
come up behind the Ukrainian troops, Yeah wow, You know,
(25:45):
dying of methane poisoning is probably a better fate than
they would have enjoyed if they'd emerged from the other
end of the pipe. Right, God, dang it, it's almost
hard to believe that this still exists on planet Earth.
In the air twenty twenty five. You know, human nature
doesn't change. But he got like you said, these twenty
year old North Koreans who at the point of a
gun are just being safe. Run that way, but they're
(26:06):
shooting machine guns of me.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Run that way.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Anyway, or I'm gonna shoot you here. Would you rather
be shot over there? Shot over here, and then crawl
through this pipe?
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Where's it go? I don't know find out. Yeah. God,
that's brutal.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
It's the Russian tradition going back hundreds. It is, It
absolutely is. Young men exist to die in war. One
more thing before we take a break. Volleyball practice last night,
my son's volleyball team. I wasn't there, but guy's knee
popped out of its socket. Oh my right, he said.
(26:41):
It was pretty gruesome to see high school high school. Yeah,
a dislocated knee, Yeah, he said. It was just like
nobody could look at it and everybody was like, oh,
I got an immediately called nine one one, and you know, yeah,
have they gotten a dude on the team. I'm sorry,
I mean a transgender. Oh they are that wouldn't work. No,
(27:01):
they're all dudes.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, so that doesn't work the other way, which is funny,
isn't it. Huh huh? But ooh, that is maybe an adult,
youngish looking twenty four year old.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
I don't want to see somebody's knees sticking out.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
He said.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
It was just amazing, how far out of where it
should be.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
I don't even want to hear. I know when he
was telling me about it, I was getting light.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Yeah, I guess that was the end of practice. They
shut down practice after that. And it's not like volleyball,
is you know, football? You don't expect that sort of thing. Well, no, no, indeed,
can we talk about something else. We're going to have
to institute a program of I approve these little tests
from real life in advance. That's disgusting, you know, grewesome
(27:46):
football injury or whatever that they show three times on
the telecast.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I won't. I don't look either. Why would I want
to see that. I have no interest in him, though,
But somebody likes it. Most people must like it, because
that can't be can it. Yeah?
Speaker 5 (28:00):
Most people want to see you.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, you're crazy high dollar football telecasts. They know what
their audience wants. They study it carefully.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
Remember the most famous injury and no football television.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I'm not going to not have my approval to bring
it up.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
I'm not going to talk about what happened, but just
the the coverage of it.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Joe th Eisman, which I've never seen.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
He was a quarterback and he got hurt, and they
just replayed it over and over and over again, and
there was a lot of pushback after that. I'm like,
why did you keep showing this awful injury over and
over again? And but it doesn't seem to have slowed
down the media. They still do that. See right there
where he plants his foot. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I broken leg, Yes, yes, I get it. Why are
you showing me this?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Dah?
Speaker 3 (28:45):
All right, that's enough of that. Oh, so you think
our politics are screwed up?
Speaker 5 (28:48):
You're gonna think I'm making up what I'm about to
tell you about politics in the Philippines, And this is
one of our most important allies in the region.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Oof.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I mean, can you imagine, like you know, whenever you've
accidentally hurt yourself, why would you ever want to see
a video of that in slow motion never never anyway,
stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Arm Strong and do you know who she is?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Do you know who she is?
Speaker 3 (29:16):
It is you better off get better off not knowing.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
So that's Trump in the Oval office with the do
they have a prime minister in Ireland? There's a fancy
Irish urn for it, but yeah, that's what he is,
and saying you know because Rose Odonnald moved to Ireland
because of Trump whatever.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And put out a statement saying she's going to stay. Well,
do we have it? We have it handy right twelve Michael.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Mayor in Ireland and it's beautiful and warm, not physically
it's actually quite cold. Moved here in January fifteenth, and.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
It's been pretty wonderful.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And when you know it is safe for all citizens
to have equal rights there in America, that's when we
will consider coming back.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
And is that over the alleged transphobia? Trump cracking down?
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Oh, I'd listen to.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Gay marriage will be over, that's right, transgender people hunting
down in the streets by the secret police or something.
NPR had a feature yesterday on Mayor's fighting back against
the Trump administration. I think this mayor was Cincinnati from
Cincinnati they had on He talked about how we immediately
before the inauguration had an emergency five hundred thousand dollars
infusion to transgender youth to protect I thought half a
(30:36):
million dollars you found somewhere from an emergency injection into
shoring up transgender youth.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Whatever the hell that means, handing it out to your cronies,
that's what it means.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Oh my god. An NPR was just so happy that
that happened. Unbelievable. Cincinnati used to be such a sane,
nice conservative city. Anyway, So Rosie O'Donnell is in Ireland.
Enjoy our delusional cast offs Ireland and we got this
note from b I wonder if Rosie's okay with the
abortion laws in Ireland up to twelve weeks wow, only
(31:10):
beyond that if the mother's health is in serious question.
According to amneste dot Org, four thousand women leave for
England annually to get an abortion. Since Rosie's so concerned
about freedom, wonder how she squares this. It's as if
she's a dip ass who doesn't know what she's talking about.
Very crazy anyway, speaking of fur and lands and their
odd laws, the Philippines. You're familiar with the history of
(31:31):
our relationship with them, key in World War two. MacArthur,
I will return baton Deathmarch, all sorts of bases, their
US military bases there. It's a huge strategic asset for
the United States, very close to China. Indeed, China is
bullying the heck out of the Philippines recently, and I've
been rooting for the Philippines and AUS to back them up. Anyway,
(31:55):
here's what's going on politics wise. Do you remember hearing
about r Rego to Terte, their old president who announced
this war on drugs, and he initially was very popular,
but he sent his goon squads forth, some in uniform,
some not to seek out anybody who's selling drugs, doing drugs,
looked at drugs whatever, and depends who you ask. At
(32:19):
least ten thousand people were killed in extra judicial killings,
and maybe a couple of tens of thousands, again depending
who you asked. He just was killing anybody he thought
had anything to do with drugs or was kind of
inconvenient to his regime. Well, I I was going to say,
do we believe that he was just like obsessed with
the drug problem? Or where was it just a cover
(32:40):
to take out anybody you wanted. It's hard to picture
somebody who is sincerely interested in the health and safety
of his people and willing to conduct ten to twenty
thousand extra judicial murders. No trial, no hearing, no warrant,
no nothing, just gunning people down in the streets.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Anyway, So you got him.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
He's out of office now, and they just took him
into custody at the behest of the International Criminal Court,
which we the United States ignores because of his crimes
against humanity allegedly what we were just talking about. So,
the guy who's now president has a great nickname, Ferdinand
Bong Bong Marcos. I don't know if he's just really
(33:21):
into the gang or if it's some Philippine nickname, but anyway, yeah, exactly,
he is the grandson I think of the longtime dictator
Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Emmel de Marcos with
his seven thousand pairs of shoes and all that.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
He's their grandson.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
His vice president is Sarah Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo
du Terte, who committed all those killings and was just
taken into custody. So tensions have been building for months
between the president and vice president, who are the two
big powerful families. Powerful families are an ugly, stupid thing
in a democracy, you don't want that. But anyway, she
(34:02):
was starting to say that she fears for her safety
because she thinks the president, the current guys goon squads
are going to take her out. So at a mid
morning news conference and how did this not make the
news much? In November, she said she had asked a
hit man to assassinate the president, along with his wife
(34:23):
and the speaker of the country's House of Representatives. I said,
do not stop until you kill them all, and he said, yes,
it's all hired, it's all arranged. If I disappear, he's
going to take out your whole family. That's the vice
president to the president.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Wow, holy crap.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
So I've been following a little of the trial of
the old guy who was killing all these people because
he was pushing people out of helicopters and all kinds
of crazy stes. Oh yeah, that was his favorite way
to get rid of people because there's no paper trailer evidence.
You just take him up in a helicopter and push
him into the ocean. Now, his daughter's the VEEP and
(35:04):
threatening to rub out the president if anything happens to her. So,
you know, as Chuck Schumer is lying and trying to
start a government shut down, and they're a clapping bag.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Jd Van says this, it could be worse. Buy your
champagne today.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Two hundred percent tariffs according to Trump, among other things
we'll talk about in an hour.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Three Suck Reflue Armstrong, and Geeddy
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 Jackie and he Armstrong and Eddy.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Now, as the President defends his.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Tariffs over on Capitol Hill, the government is engine closer
to a shutdown after Senate Democrats announced they were nuts enough.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
I can't hear anymore, and I don't want to lose
a whole audience. Oh, I don't want to lose a
whole audience. My only question on the whole shutdown is
who's this for? Is it just?
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Who? Are there people that care about?
Speaker 5 (00:49):
These shutdown conversations where they talk about it endlessly and
write about it endlessly, and then nothing ever happens. And
even if something does happen, it's for a couple hours
and nobody ever remembers it. I mean, it just said,
it has no impact on anybody. The only part I
remember is how stupid and phony it is, the efforts
to gin up people caring about it. Eh yeah, yeah,
(01:11):
I just think you know, all of us lacks self awareness.
Sometimes the major media is completely Beltway obsessed.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Oh I was.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Watching and don't understand that their audiences are not nearly,
So I mean, we care, but we're not obsess. I
flipped on Fox and Friends this morning, and I had
to keep fast forwarding and fast forwarding and fast forwarding
to get through I don't know, twenty five minutes of
government shut down back and forth before he got anything
I could possibly care about.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Who's this for?
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Right?
Speaker 5 (01:38):
So you think American politics are screwed up, I need
to tell you about Filipino politics right now. Later on
in the hour, if I wrote this into a book
like a novel, the editor had say, Joe, you got
to rework that part because it's too crazy. That would
never happen in the modern world. So stay tuned for that,
if you will. Closer to home, some economic stuff. Oh,
(02:00):
that's right, I wanted to hear. This is Mike Dubkey,
who's an official with Blackrock, the giant investment firm. He's
among several folks that the Trump administration is trotting out
to say, Hey, the whole tariff thing, don't be afraid
of it.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's going to pan out fine.
Speaker 6 (02:13):
In Donald Trump, We've got a politician that actually is
doing what we claim we've wanted for years. Looking past
the next election, he believes in tariffs. I'm not a
particular fan of these tariffs either, but he's actually putting
his money where his mouth is and trying to say, look,
this is a long term solution. We finally have got
to do it. So either folks are going to get
(02:35):
behind that and move forward, or we're just going to
jump back in and create certainty for the markets, but
that doesn't necessarily create a economy that's going to be
better for the country.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
That's the best spin I've heard, and spins not always
a negative connotation. It's just you know, your way you're
portraying meation, Yeah, the way you're portraying the story that, yeah,
everybody's always talking about, we've got to quit just play
in for the next election, the next midterm or the
next presidential election. We got think long term on this stuff.
And you know, this is what he's doing. Whether it's
gonna work or not, I don't know, but he is
(03:07):
definitely playing the long game, right. And I appreciated that
clip because it's a very armstrong and Getty esque way
to approach it. New listeners all the time, and we
thank you for being here. I hope you enjoy yourselves.
Who are you listening to before Bongino you miss him?
Or Glenn Beck? Maybe you're listening to Glenn maybe bon Jovi,
maybe get tired of music in the car. We replaced
(03:29):
them and ye, and you're probably a little angry about that.
But now we're here, and I think if you get
it from time, as we always say, a little bit time,
you don't like it, give it some more time.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
But anyway, we're neither never ending cheerleaders for Trump, even
when he does stuff we think is dumb. Nor are
we you know, Trump derangement syndrome type. They're just kind
of calumn as we see him. But I appreciated that
because he said, look, I don't exactly agree with the
tariff stuff, but here's what he's doing, and you've got
to admire that. I wanted to keep my ear out
for Mike Dubky. I like the cut of his Jibway.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Wait, the whole tariff thing.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
I will say this just as a like a sports
analyst talking about you know, they've committed to the passing
game even though the air two best receivers are injured.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Trump ran on really.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
Three things, the border, check, getting rid of the woke stuff,
check as fast as he can. He's doing a good
job so far. And three and maybe this ought to
be number one. Prices, inflation, the economy, the hurt in
your pocketbook. And in the short term at least, he
is really gambling because there's a very good chance that
(04:40):
prices are going to rise in the short to medium
term because the whole tariff thing, which is turning into
a bit of a trade war. Whether those tariffs stay
in place and for how long hard to say. Well,
his belief is were such the giant four hundred pound
gorilla that we will win every trade war.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Isn't that his belief? Over time?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Down, Yeah, after a period of disruption, As he said,
there are some captains of industry who are normally very
Trump friendly, who are saying, hey, we make investments that
pay off in decades, not in quarters or years, and
we need some level of certainty please.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
So we'll see.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
But that's what Mike Dubkey was saying, that creating certainty
doesn't necessarily create a better economy over the long term,
So we'll all find out together. I found this very interesting.
Shoppers are skipping on cigarettes, Doritos, and Twinkies, US convenience
store sales fell four point three percent by volume year
to year February to February. Let's see, according to market
(05:43):
research firms Sircana, among snacks purchased in these stores, rice
cakes dropped most.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Sharply man.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
This is a detailed survey, followed by dips, nuts and jerky. Well,
I noticed the other day when I was buying my
weekly supply of rice cakes how much the price would moved. Well, yeah,
people are buying fewer of them. I like dips, nuts
and jerky. It sounds like, hey, honey, did you like
the new Men's club you went to the meeting him?
(06:10):
Please it's a bunch a dips, nuts and jerky. Refrigerated
products dropped by about seven percent by sales volume, which
is damn significant.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Chocolate candy fell by six percent.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
The lower but I haven't had an egg in a month,
and I'm dying over here. The lower tier of consumers,
folks with less money, are seriously cutting back on purchases.
Let me navigate over to this, which is a similar tale.
Is from the Wall Street Journal. Consumer Acts is striking
all income levels signs of weakness or showing up and
(06:44):
spending on everything from basics to luxuries. This is interesting
because it was no more than a few weeks ago
we brought you the story that the top ten percent
of incomes in the United States are driving like fifty
six of consumer spending something like that, way outsized even
by comparison with what's normally going on. And they have
(07:06):
a tendency to spend when the stock market's doing well
and pull back when it's not, even though it's not
like actually affecting your cash flow today, it's just the
way you feel. So American consumers, according to the Journal,
have had a lot to fred about so far this year.
Between never ending tariff headlines. I'm not sure how much
the average consumer, particularly like your bottom twenty percent quintile,
(07:29):
pays attention to tariff headlines that don't know, stubborn inflation
that's true, and most recently, fresh fears about a recession.
These concerns seem to be hitting spending by both rich
and poor, across necessities and luxuries all at once. In
an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago in late February,
Walmart chief executive Doug McMillan, no politician, he I mean,
(07:50):
that's if you want to know what's going on with
the American consumer. I don't know if you can do
better than asking the guy from Walmart. He said, budget
pressured customers are showing stressed be behaviors. They are buying
smaller pack sizes at the end of the month because
quote their money runs out before the month is gone. Interesting,
McDonald said it's most recent earnings call. In its most
recent earnings called that the fast food industry has had
(08:12):
a sluggish start to the year, in part because of
weak demand from low income consumers, and that has echoed
across the US fast food industry. Sales to low income
guests down by double digit percentage in the fourth quarter
compared to the previous year. And things don't look much
better on the higher end American consumers. Spending on the
luxury market, which includes high end department stores and online platforms,
(08:35):
fell nine point three percent in February from a year previous,
worse than the five point nine percent decline in January.
And I was in the Nieman Marcus in Beverly Hills
a couple of weeks ago on my birthday, and.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Wow, mister fancy over here.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
I looked at some stuff. I didn't buy anything. I
didn't realize had a like a cafe in there. I
had a salad. It was one of the best salads
I've ever had. But anyway, oh yeah, place was empty
and there were so many sales clerks around, and I thought,
how did they turn a profit on a place like
this when you got like a hundred salespeople just standing
(09:14):
around waiting for a customer to come in and buy
some really overpriced crap.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
It's the anti home depot.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Hello, hello, hello, hello, can you help me find this screw?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Ooh ooh.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
Well, in a place like Nieman Mark is the sort
of person that goes there. They expect someone to be
there to help them answer a question immediately. But I
don't know how you turn a profit on that. And
you know, and it's down ten percent. God, I would
think those places you talk about something that's elastic in
terms of purchasing, right, yeah, costco who is membership fee
(09:48):
paying customer, not pee faing. That's not word fee paying
customer base scus Higher Income said last week the demand
has shifted towards lower cost proteins such as ground beef
and poultry. Members are being very choosy, and the Cohle's
CEO said consumers making less than fifty grand a year
are pretty constrained on discretionary spending, but added quote, it's
(10:10):
also pretty challenging for those making less than one hundred
grand between fifty one hundred.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Obviously, they just gave.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
A Wall Street a weaker than expected sales forecast, so
I should explain this briefly. You know what I do
at a place like Neiman Marcus. I try on a
certain brand of something to see what size I need,
and then I find it on eBay used, whether it's
you know, lightly used by some fashionista who changes what
(10:37):
they wear every three, four or five months, or somebody's
who's gone to meet God. Yeah, some of it's dead people,
but yeah, I can't. I don't know who you are
that buys these things full price, but somebody must.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
The airlines they quote as well that customers are pulling
back on air travel. It could be interesting times economically
ahead for the rest of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I'cy yeah, well, and I guess you know.
Speaker 5 (11:07):
The point politically is that Trump is gambling with prices
and the economy, perhaps for wonderful long term reasons. We'll
leave that up to y'all to decide individually, but at
just the time when things are looking a little shaky. Well, right,
I mean he's gambling with his presidency the way he's
(11:27):
viewed throughout history. And I mean he's not just doing
the easy expedient what's going to make the most people
happy thing, right, that's for certain. Well, and it's all
about me, Jack, you know that. And he's also gambling
with our abilities, conservatives, to get done certain really really
great things.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Because if the Republicans.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
Get murdered in the mid times because the economy has gone,
you know, sideways, that's that's gonna hurt getting rid of
the DEI and the idiotic regulations at least to some extent.
So I'm you know, I'm rooting forward to work out
for obvious reasons. I'm also a part of the economy.
I'm a consumer as we all are. Russia has said
no basically to the cease fire deal. I don't know
(12:08):
where that leaves the world, and a bunch of other
stuff on the way.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I've read that the maker of the Room but Vacuum
has substantial doubt the companies can survive.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Yeah, it's not that the Room but sucked it's just
that it didn't suck enough.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
I only tried the first generation room but and did
not have much success with it, and I haven't tried
the previous improvements.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Maybe they're better.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
Yeah, yeah, I had a you know, probably third generation
something like that is pretty good. There's just so much
stuff you had to pick up and rearrange your room
and everything like that to use it. I felt like
it didn't save me time over just pushing my vacuum around.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
I keep threatening to unleash it in a part of
our house where we don't go very often, but I
haven't done it yet.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And that kind of that's you know, that tells you
everything you need to know. Right, Oh quick, I'm sorry.
I had one more note.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
I wanted to throw in the economic stuff we were
talking about, and I forgot a great note from Scott
in Beautiful Hillsburg, California. Wednesday's he's talking about the top
of the hour. Network News reporter Kelly O'Grady did a
story on the lower than inspected inflation, those numbers that
came out yesterday, right, and she made sure to point
(13:19):
out that a reduction in inflation doesn't mean a reduction
in prices. Wow, the mainstream media finally suddenly understand understands
how inflation and prices work.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Where was that reporting for the last four years?
Speaker 5 (13:33):
And he did the MSM replace DEI training and trans
messaging with financial training and Jim Kramer reruns that's hilarious.
So when it was Biden, they pretended the rate of
inflation going down.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Means prices have dropped. Why aren't you happy.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
Now it's a Trump You point out, Well, that doesn't
mean the prices okay, all right, Well, and this Scott
also points out they either knew how it works and
were lying or selectively reporting, or were completely ignorance of
the topic.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And suddenly they're they're wise to it.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Please shere about the woman who ran off the road,
broke so many of her bones and she was trapped
in her car for an entire week before they found
her and she's alive. Now that's quite the story. In fact,
that's funny. I mentioned it, and there I se see
the story up on TV right now. We'll have that
a little bit later. And Russia ain't gonna agree to
a cease fire, I don't think. But I'm texting my
(14:28):
youngest the other day. My thirteen year old Henry and like,
you know, get ready to go. I'm gonna be home
in a second. We're gonna go to the grocery store.
Henry spawns old Kinderhook, which I didn't know what that meant.
Maybe you know what that means, Joe, I don't know. Yeah, okay,
I didn't know what it meant. Anyway, I said, what
the hell was that? So when I got home, he
explained it to me. It's from an episode of The Simpsons.
Well that's not where it originated. That's where he came
(14:49):
across episode of The Simpsons where people are talking about
I forget what they're talking about. They're throwing around a
whole bunch of abbreviations, you know, FBI, CI, C, I,
A ap ar or whatever and Moses. All right, that's it.
No more abbreviations from now on. It's old Kinderhook around here.
And okay. Martin Van Buren ran for president in nineteen
(15:12):
forty on okay, old Kinderhook. He was from Kinderhook, New Jersey,
New York, where he's from, and it became a thing. Okay,
as an older Kinderhook, like you know, he's a good
man of the people, sort of thing. The opposition who
ended up winning. Harrison's campaign used okay to mean the
way people generally use the word okay, like he's okay.
(15:33):
His first term was okay, but that's not good enough,
so AnyWho. It became used on both sides of the campaign,
and both shades of meanings survive. How interesting. Yeah, well,
nobody's exactly sure where okay came from. It could go
way back to the Greeks or Native Americans. There's a
lot of confusion over where it actually started, but it
(15:55):
definitely was used as old kinderhook at that time. I
just thought it was funny that my son hit me
with that. I had no idea what he was saying. Yeah, yeah,
clever lad, old kinderhook And that's a pretty good you know,
you can picture that in modern politics.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
So they try to use an abbreviation, you capture that abbreviation,
turn it into a negative. The Harrison campaign who ended
up winning, except their candidate was the oldest person ever
elected president at age sixty eight, and then he gave
his famous speech in the cold and died in a month.
(16:31):
But sixty eight, that'd be a young president now. Yeah, No, kidding.
I appreciate Moe's stance. As you know, I'm staunchly against
silent letters. And I'll tell anybody who will listen from
now it's old kinderhook around here. That's funny. How about
Putin showing up to the front lines yesterday in military
(16:53):
garb to cheer on the troops and make it to
me just ultimately clear that he planned to keep fighting.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
That's the best response is going to be, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, Well who knows in Filipino politics, Holy
crapp er, they screwed up. Stick around if you can't
grab the podcast Armstrong and Getting.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
On demand Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 7 (17:18):
Vladimir Putin said, there is that, first of all, the
Russians want to kick all of the Ukrainians off their
territory and also create a buffer zone in that area,
which obviously could take months of combat operations to do so.
The Russians right now feel that they have the edge
on the battlefield and that they are not going to
be pressured or rushed into any sort of ceasefire agreement.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Well, we've finally gotten our first response from Russia after
Ukraine agreed to the US plan for a cease fire.
You know, Marco Rubio and both he and the president
yesterday saying, hey, the ball is in Russia's court. Well,
Russia responded, finally, we'll get to that in a second.
But yesterday the Russian military took back Sudza. Sudza the
(18:00):
biggest town held by Ukraine in the Kursk region, which
is in Russia. If you remember, Ukraine had gotten into
Russian taken some of their territory. Well, Russian military took
back the biggest town after taking several villages, and appears
to be on the verge of booting all the Ukrainians
out of any of Russian land. And Putin was there
on the front lines in his military fatigues, acting like
(18:23):
a wartime leader and not acting like a guy who's
looking for a ceasefire. Certainly, and the response to from
a Russian negotiator, senior aide to Vladimir Putin said, this
is nothing other than a temporary time out for Ukrainian
soldiers and nothing more. In his rejection of the ceasefire proposal,
(18:45):
our goal is a long term peaceful resolution. Steps that
imitate peaceful actions are not needed through victory, he left
unspoken right the complete conquest of as much a Ukraine
as we can. Then the you know, demilitarizing of their military. Well,
(19:06):
also unspoken is the I think we're winning and we're
gonna win, so why would we stop? And as long
as Kim Jong un is willing to sell us twenty
year old machine gun fodder, we're we're doing.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Okay, God, that's brutal.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Moscow part of their plan has been Moscow insists on
keeping it minimum eighteen percent of Ukrainian territory, about the
fifth of the country that they took. It wants to
reverse policies that have sideline Russian cultural influence in Ukraine,
preclude the country's membership from NATO, which has already been
(19:42):
announced by you know, our second deaf and other people.
And uh, Zelensky and his government have to go. The
Russian said, which you don't get to decide that. Zelensky
has said he would step down if it, you know,
let piece. But yeah, but the Russians, that's not what
(20:03):
they mean. They want to install a puppet regime, right
or eventually, you know, if not immediately. Uh yeah, Well,
how do you think this is going to play out?
So Trump's guy is over there now, somewhere meeting with
Russians apparently, And how do you think this is going
to play out? Is at any point, at any point
(20:24):
is the president, Marco Rubio, anything, anybody gonna put any
pressure on Russian and say, hey, this is a bunch
of crap and you know it.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
If you don't, if you.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
Don't, if you don't come up with better, something better
than that, full sanctions, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Well, I can't answer your question because that X, that variable,
that unknown is huge. Now what does Trump slash the
United States do?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Say? What's the strategy?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Now?
Speaker 5 (20:49):
What was you know to those who thought he was
playing you know, some three to seven dimensional chess by
beating up Zelenski, perhaps with Zelenski's permission, to bring Putin
to the table, et cetera, et cetera. I have no
idea what the next step is. Putin and I've been
saying this from the beginning, has no intention of a
(21:11):
peace settlement. At this point. He's on the front foot,
he's gaining ground. It would be insane for him to
come to the table unless he is forced to the table.
And whether there's the will to do that remains to
be seen. Right now we heard those economic stats yesterday
about Russia which are pretty horrible forty percent inflation and
(21:31):
a variety of things. But you don't know what to
what extent Putin's being short up by China or will
be shored up by China or Iran or whoever is
willing to help him out. Well, and because we have
a at least semi rational form of government and elections,
I think Americans tend to underestimate the extent to which
(21:52):
foreign leader dictators specifically can be not entirely rational. And
I don't mean psycho, but like when we found out
Shijin Ping is a committed communist. He's not pretending to be,
because that holds the country together, the communist part of it. No,
he believes in communism Stalin. You know, certainly the early
(22:14):
leaders of the Soviet Union, they thought they were right
about you know, Marxism in the history of mankind and
blah blah blah blah blah, and potent actually has Tsarist
impulses to reassemble the greatness of the Russian Empire.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
I believe that firmly.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
And for those of you who don't want us to
be involved in Ukraine and think it's not our business.
I just feel like World War three is more likely
if we had forced Zelensky into peace and Russia, you know,
they're just kind of regroup and then try to take
another chunk of Ukraine or the whole thing right well,
one hundred percent, or one of the Baltic states.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
In China.
Speaker 5 (22:50):
Speaking of China, Jian Ping's doing the same thing, constantly
probing for weakness in the sea, on land all over
Asia and the and the oceans in that part of
the world. Every single day, he has his navy, his armies,
his secret agents, whatever, probing to see what the reaction
of the Western world is going to be, and pushing
(23:11):
and pushing and pushing. And you know, you need not
be a PhD in history to understand. When people like
that find weakness, they thrust. They don't say oh sorry, no,
they go as far as they can, as fast as
they can. The withdrawal I'll see, here we go. You're
a neo Khan here egg. You're an old Boomer generation,
(23:31):
actually bastards. I'm a boomer. Anyway, there is a fantasy.
And I'm not saying we can't have a transition to
a different world order because the world order is always changing,
and I have a pretty open mind about this stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
But the one thing that bothers me about some of.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
The new more isolationist spheres of influence, conservatives, whatever you
want to call them, is they have an incredibly naive
view in my mind, Talk me out of it if
you can, that the withdrawal of American power will lead
to some sort of calm neutrality. Yep, a lot of people,
(24:10):
as opposed to a mad, feverish rush to fill that
vacuum with the lusts of evildoers, be they putin or
oshesion PingER, Kim Jong Uhner, the mull isn't freaking around.
We're trying to get the nukes as fast as they anyway. Yeah, man,
I heard a good podcast the other day. If people
making the argument, I never looked at it this way before.
But the whole we pay for everything, We pay for
(24:31):
the UN, we pay for the WHO, we pay for NATO.
You know, we're none of these organizations would be anything
without us, because we support so much of them. Is
to our advantage in that we get to call the shots.
So I mean, it's expensive and it's you know, unfair.
Using my finger quotes in a certain way that we
provide the uh, you know, we we we are the
(24:53):
teeth and NATO and everything like that, but we get
to call the shots that way. And if we're eny
of us the greatest economy and history of.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
The world anyway.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
One more, A little piece of news here from the
New York Times on what happened yesterday. The loss of
Ukraine's toe hold and Kursk, where at one point it
had captured in Ary roughly the size of Los Angeles,
would mark a significant defeat for Kiev. Russia has thrown
enormous resources into the campaign to recapture its territory, deploying
North Korean troops and staging daring operations. One unit crawled
(25:25):
through a disused section of natural Geist's gas pipeline this
week to outflank Ukrainian troops defending that big city, with
several dying of methane poisoning, according to pro Kremlin war bloggers,
while they had North Koreans crawling through gas pipes to
come up behind the Ukrainian troops, Yeah wow, You know,
(25:45):
dying of methane poisoning is probably a better fate than
they would have enjoyed if they'd emerged from the other
end of the pipe. Right, God, dang it, it's almost
hard to believe that this still exists on planet Earth.
In the air twenty twenty five. You know, human nature
doesn't change. But he got like you said, these twenty
year old North Koreans who at the point of a
gun are just being safe. Run that way, but they're
(26:06):
shooting machine guns of me.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Run that way.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Anyway, or I'm gonna shoot you here. Would you rather
be shot over there? Shot over here, and then crawl
through this pipe?
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Where's it go? I don't know find out. Yeah. God,
that's brutal.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
It's the Russian tradition going back hundreds. It is, It
absolutely is. Young men exist to die in war. One
more thing before we take a break. Volleyball practice last night,
my son's volleyball team. I wasn't there, but guy's knee
popped out of its socket. Oh my right, he said.
(26:41):
It was pretty gruesome to see high school high school. Yeah,
a dislocated knee, Yeah, he said. It was just like
nobody could look at it and everybody was like, oh,
I got an immediately called nine one one, and you know, yeah,
have they gotten a dude on the team. I'm sorry,
I mean a transgender. Oh they are that wouldn't work. No,
(27:01):
they're all dudes.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, so that doesn't work the other way, which is funny,
isn't it. Huh huh? But ooh, that is maybe an adult,
youngish looking twenty four year old.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
I don't want to see somebody's knees sticking out.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
He said.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
It was just amazing, how far out of where it
should be.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
I don't even want to hear. I know when he
was telling me about it, I was getting light.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
Yeah, I guess that was the end of practice. They
shut down practice after that. And it's not like volleyball,
is you know, football? You don't expect that sort of thing. Well, no, no, indeed,
can we talk about something else. We're going to have
to institute a program of I approve these little tests
from real life in advance. That's disgusting, you know, grewesome
(27:46):
football injury or whatever that they show three times on
the telecast.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I won't. I don't look either. Why would I want
to see that. I have no interest in him, though,
But somebody likes it. Most people must like it, because
that can't be can it. Yeah?
Speaker 5 (28:00):
Most people want to see you.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, you're crazy high dollar football telecasts. They know what
their audience wants. They study it carefully.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
Remember the most famous injury and no football television.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I'm not going to not have my approval to bring
it up.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
I'm not going to talk about what happened, but just
the the coverage of it.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Joe th Eisman, which I've never seen.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
He was a quarterback and he got hurt, and they
just replayed it over and over and over again, and
there was a lot of pushback after that. I'm like,
why did you keep showing this awful injury over and
over again? And but it doesn't seem to have slowed
down the media. They still do that. See right there
where he plants his foot. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
I broken leg, Yes, yes, I get it. Why are
you showing me this?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Dah?
Speaker 3 (28:45):
All right, that's enough of that. Oh, so you think
our politics are screwed up?
Speaker 5 (28:48):
You're gonna think I'm making up what I'm about to
tell you about politics in the Philippines, And this is
one of our most important allies in the region.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Oof.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I mean, can you imagine, like you know, whenever you've
accidentally hurt yourself, why would you ever want to see
a video of that in slow motion never never anyway,
stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Arm Strong and do you know who she is?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Do you know who she is?
Speaker 3 (29:16):
It is you better off get better off not knowing.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
So that's Trump in the Oval office with the do
they have a prime minister in Ireland? There's a fancy
Irish urn for it, but yeah, that's what he is,
and saying you know because Rose Odonnald moved to Ireland
because of Trump whatever.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And put out a statement saying she's going to stay. Well,
do we have it? We have it handy right twelve Michael.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Mayor in Ireland and it's beautiful and warm, not physically
it's actually quite cold. Moved here in January fifteenth, and.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
It's been pretty wonderful.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
And when you know it is safe for all citizens
to have equal rights there in America, that's when we
will consider coming back.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
And is that over the alleged transphobia? Trump cracking down?
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Oh, I'd listen to.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
Gay marriage will be over, that's right, transgender people hunting
down in the streets by the secret police or something.
NPR had a feature yesterday on Mayor's fighting back against
the Trump administration. I think this mayor was Cincinnati from
Cincinnati they had on He talked about how we immediately
before the inauguration had an emergency five hundred thousand dollars
infusion to transgender youth to protect I thought half a
(30:36):
million dollars you found somewhere from an emergency injection into
shoring up transgender youth.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Whatever the hell that means, handing it out to your cronies,
that's what it means.
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Oh my god. An NPR was just so happy that
that happened. Unbelievable. Cincinnati used to be such a sane,
nice conservative city. Anyway, So Rosie O'Donnell is in Ireland.
Enjoy our delusional cast offs Ireland and we got this
note from b I wonder if Rosie's okay with the
abortion laws in Ireland up to twelve weeks wow, only
(31:10):
beyond that if the mother's health is in serious question.
According to amneste dot Org, four thousand women leave for
England annually to get an abortion. Since Rosie's so concerned
about freedom, wonder how she squares this. It's as if
she's a dip ass who doesn't know what she's talking about.
Very crazy anyway, speaking of fur and lands and their
odd laws, the Philippines. You're familiar with the history of
(31:31):
our relationship with them, key in World War two. MacArthur,
I will return baton Deathmarch, all sorts of bases, their
US military bases there. It's a huge strategic asset for
the United States, very close to China. Indeed, China is
bullying the heck out of the Philippines recently, and I've
been rooting for the Philippines and AUS to back them up. Anyway,
(31:55):
here's what's going on politics wise. Do you remember hearing
about r Rego to Terte, their old president who announced
this war on drugs, and he initially was very popular,
but he sent his goon squads forth, some in uniform,
some not to seek out anybody who's selling drugs, doing drugs,
looked at drugs whatever, and depends who you ask. At
(32:19):
least ten thousand people were killed in extra judicial killings,
and maybe a couple of tens of thousands, again depending
who you asked. He just was killing anybody he thought
had anything to do with drugs or was kind of
inconvenient to his regime. Well, I I was going to say,
do we believe that he was just like obsessed with
the drug problem? Or where was it just a cover
(32:40):
to take out anybody you wanted. It's hard to picture
somebody who is sincerely interested in the health and safety
of his people and willing to conduct ten to twenty
thousand extra judicial murders. No trial, no hearing, no warrant,
no nothing, just gunning people down in the streets.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Anyway, So you got him.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
He's out of office now, and they just took him
into custody at the behest of the International Criminal Court,
which we the United States ignores because of his crimes
against humanity allegedly what we were just talking about. So,
the guy who's now president has a great nickname, Ferdinand
Bong Bong Marcos. I don't know if he's just really
(33:21):
into the gang or if it's some Philippine nickname, but anyway, yeah, exactly,
he is the grandson I think of the longtime dictator
Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Emmel de Marcos with
his seven thousand pairs of shoes and all that.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
He's their grandson.
Speaker 5 (33:38):
His vice president is Sarah Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo
du Terte, who committed all those killings and was just
taken into custody. So tensions have been building for months
between the president and vice president, who are the two
big powerful families. Powerful families are an ugly, stupid thing
in a democracy, you don't want that. But anyway, she
(34:02):
was starting to say that she fears for her safety
because she thinks the president, the current guys goon squads
are going to take her out. So at a mid
morning news conference and how did this not make the
news much? In November, she said she had asked a
hit man to assassinate the president, along with his wife
(34:23):
and the speaker of the country's House of Representatives. I said,
do not stop until you kill them all, and he said, yes,
it's all hired, it's all arranged. If I disappear, he's
going to take out your whole family. That's the vice
president to the president.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Wow, holy crap.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
So I've been following a little of the trial of
the old guy who was killing all these people because
he was pushing people out of helicopters and all kinds
of crazy stes. Oh yeah, that was his favorite way
to get rid of people because there's no paper trailer evidence.
You just take him up in a helicopter and push
him into the ocean. Now, his daughter's the VEEP and
(35:04):
threatening to rub out the president if anything happens to her. So,
you know, as Chuck Schumer is lying and trying to
start a government shut down, and they're a clapping bag.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Jd Van says this, it could be worse. Buy your
champagne today.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Two hundred percent tariffs according to Trump, among other things
we'll talk about in an hour.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Three Suck Reflue Armstrong, and Geeddy
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