September 2, 2025 • 37 mins
Hour 3 of A&G features...
- Joe's observations on London's inhabitants...
- The Brits want to allow the kids to vote...
- Jack & his son visit a bit of family history...
- The Russia/China/India summit.
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Ketty arm Strong
and Jetty and he.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I think we say this every single vacation we come
back from. But I would like to endeavor to not
talk about things that nobody will care about at all
in a week. If it can't even last a week
of being important, it doesn't deserve any gums to be flapped.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Listen to mister fancy pants. Just a significance and enduring importance.
I want to whip people into momentary anger and or
pleasure and pander.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Important, just entertaining. And I'm not entertained by fang that
don't are They're not funny, they're not interesting, and they're meaningless.
That combination is bad. Of course, that's why cable ratings
are what they are. Each show on cable has like
eighty thousand people watching it in the entire country.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Coming up, Trump under fire for firing the undersecretary of
secretary under fires. All right, So my sweetheart Judy and
I spent eight days in London and had an absolutely
wonderful time. I loved England as I suspected I would.
It's a very interesting place. I've become a fan of
(01:36):
day drinking, and not in that like vacation drinking all
day long way, but in the like you have a
pint at lunch at a pub and then you go
do what you're going to do. You're not quote unquote drinking.
You just have a beer because it's nice and it
(01:56):
makes you feel slightly more cheerful.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Why did we e how did we develop our attitude
we have in the United States over the years, Because
I remember when I was in Italy thinking the same thing.
Everybody would come in to restaurants, like people who are
working their jobs. They'd have a glass of wine, eat
their food and then go back to work. And that
is seen in the United States is just insane, just
absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, the Europeans have what I would call a very
European look or view of drinking that I found refreshing.
Speaking of pubs, So we rented a flat in Mayfair
if you know where that is, doesn't matter, New Bond Street,
lots of like crazy high end shopping, mostly populated by
(02:37):
Kuwaiti oil money.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh wow, by the bye.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Guys walking up the street with four chicks and the
beekeeper out really going into perfume stores and spending just
do godly amounts of oil money and a lot real.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That's not an exaggeration. You saw a guy walking up
the street with four women in the beekeeper.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Up in eight days many times? Yes, wow, I mean
to one to six women in the beekeeper.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Anyway, Oh, they are basically sex slaves or cleaning your
house slaves or whatever, and everybody just tolerates that with
no rights. That's correct, yes, And Brits are not super
duper happy about the completely wildly unfettered immigration from Muslim
lands over the last twenty years. More on that another time,
but anyway, but out our windows onto the street, there
(03:28):
was a little like just had half a block long
street and there was a pub on each side of it.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
At the other end.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
It was one hundred yards from us maybe as we
looked out the window, and it was so cool every
day and more and more as the week went on.
At four thirty or so, certainly by five o'clock there
would be so many people standing in and outside the
pub having a pint with their coworkers and friends and
(03:57):
a laugh and a conversation before they went home for
the day.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Sounds like a recipe for sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh my god. And it wasn't. They were drinking.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
No, they were talking with people because they worked with people,
and they met their buddies, and they talked about the
football match, which is soccer, and it just it was
so nice.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Anyway, Yeah, and I thought, wow, I could get used
to this. In our hurry.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Although the pub thing, we went to this one historic pub.
We met our next door neighbors from home.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Weirdly enough, they were over there at the same time
we decided to get together. We go to this pub,
hundreds of years old, pub, drenched in history, legendary, the
Prince something or lord, what's it there, I don't even
remember the name, but it was very atmospheric.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
But anyway, so.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
We're sitting there having dinner and or we're having, you know,
a couple of pins, and we decided it's time to
eat and we ordered like four small plates off the
menu and the waitress come I'm back and says, I'm
so sorry. We're actually out of the calamari and the
pucker fish or whatever the hell it was, and also
the beef Wellington and We're like, oh okay, it's like
(05:15):
six o'clock at night, how are you all right? All right,
all right, we'll order those other things. Then she comes
back in like two of those three are out.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So should she ever get around to admitting we're not
actually a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
We don't have any food at all. We just have
a menu.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
We just hope we're working on the end. Most people
start drinking, they forget if they're hungry.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
So at one point I said, it would save time
if you just told me what you do have, but
we end up with this mess of food.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Did you say that I shouldn't have? But I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And finally so at the end of the evening and
it was lovely, she comes and says, can you tell
me what you actually ordered?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And got oh boy?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
And I'm like, wait a minute, that's your job. We're
support no, no, no, you tell us. And it was
just part of it is tipping is not really a
thing there. Now they've got a service charge that's like five, six,
maybe ten percent, but.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
You feel it because they're not earning it. They're like, look,
I'm getting my six percent. Oh okay, no matter what, gotcha?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So if you have to like, order twenty four foods
before I bring you three, just because we're playing this
little game of we.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Might have it, we might not. Why don't you order
find out.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
So you know it's it's pluses and minuses, because the
whole tipping thing is it's stressful, especially if you don't
know the local customs.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
But yeah, Michael, how was the food over there? Overall?
In England? Uh?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Overall kind of good, not great, But once you realize
how to order and what to order, it's it's better.
But yeah, the Brits are not famous for food for
a good reason. If you say, hey, what's a great
meal around here, people will send you to an Italian
restaurant or an Indian restaurant for a good reason. But
(07:12):
the other thing about workers that I found interesting. We
had a tour guide at the British Museum who was
just terrific. He was a professor of history, and he said, yeah,
that exhibit is shut down because there's just no employees.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
There's no one to work. I said, what that's odd?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
He said, oh, yeah, since COVID, everybody stays home, they
live with their parents, they're collecting government checks.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
You can't get people to work. Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I thought that was so interesting and exactly what you
hear from so many employers in the States. Yeah, we
had that conversation with my family in the Midwest of
the United States. I don't go to other countries and
give them my money. I stay in the United States
and I'm for you. But we had the same conversation
on how number of restaurants, including the one we were at,
(07:56):
was really they weren't seating all the seats because they
were crowded, but because they didn't have enough help. How
is that still a thing?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah, I know, it's amazing and universally universal apparently.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
But so speaking of.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Things that are are shared between our two peoples, one
of the headline stories on the Sunday Times of London
this past Sunday was the Lefty Party, the new left
Wing Party is.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Has it has got the edge?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It looks like it's going to happen getting the vote
to sixteen and seventeen year olds.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So the left Left Party you led with, it looks
like it's going to happen. They're actually going to let
sixteen year olds vote. The last thing has been trotted
out all the time here, there and everywhere, but it's
always gets laughed at and shot down. It's actually going
to happen.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, and the left Left Party is going to beat
out the kind of left the Labor Party, because they
will have the children's votes. Because you can so easily
dupe children into voting for feely, good sounding policies. It
doesn't would never work in real life.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It doesn't occur to people that we've never let children
vote anywhere ever for a reason.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
No, they make emotional sounding arguments about it.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And if anything, if we're going to change voting age,
just as we all know culture has changed so much,
at least in Western society, voting age should go up
to like thirty because people aren't grown ups until then, right,
I agree absolutely more on that on the other side
of the break, A quick note from our friends at
web Route. If you've ever talked to anybody who's had
(09:41):
their bank account hacked, and I have fairly recently, it's
a nightmare. It takes you months and hours and hours
and hours and hours of work to bounce back. How
do you avoid that? With webroot total protection. It monitors
for stolen identities, credit fraud. It even scans the dark
web looking for infos you'll know that it's stolen. So
here's the offer right now, get fifty percent off webroot
(10:03):
Total Protection or Webroot Essentials at webroot dot com.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Slash Armstrong, and in the very unlikely possibility something does
go wrong and you get to your identity hacked, you're
backed with up to a million dollars in reimbursement.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
By the way, it's fast, lightweight, installs in minutes, no
annoying pop ups like a lot of programs, have, just
strong protection.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
And it even includes a VPN for secure browsing and
a password manager to keep your logging safe. If you're
not familiar with VPNs, do some reading up and then
get in touch with our friends at webroute.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Don't risk being the next victim. Get fifty percent off
webroot Total Protection or webroot Essentials right now webroot dot
Com slash Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So anyway back to the whole letting children vote sing
I'm horrified by this. Yeah, I know, it's absolutely awful.
And they did a bunch of polling the Sunday Times
of how this would affect voting, and it would swing
everything way to the left. As I've made the point
many times. The idea of sixteen seventeen year olds voting
is entirely a lefty proposition, because again, you can dupe
(11:04):
children into believing things that adults who've been around the
block a couple of times realize are false promises, or
they remove the incentives and disincentives for people to do
the right thing. And it's terrible, terrible policy. But even
will fall for this when you're that young. It's even
we tried this a dozen years ago, but you were four,
so you don't remember.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Right, and it was a miserable failure.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
In fact, it gets run up the flagpole every generation
and fails every generation. But you're a child, so you
wouldn't know that. You shouldn't know that anyway. It will
be the biggest change to the franchise. Oh I'm sorry.
Last month the government confirmed plans to lower the voting
age from eighteen to sixteen in time for the next election,
bringing Westminster in line with blah blah blah. It will
(11:47):
be the biggest change to the franchise since the voting
age fell from twenty one to eighteen and nineteen sixty nine,
and it makes sixteen and seventeen year olds targets for
political parties to woo and they a thousand of them,
and essentially the farthest left party is going to have
a hey day. I want to get to some other
results of this poll, the differences between boys and girls.
(12:12):
I'm not going to call them young men and young
women because a sixteen year old as a child that
I find really really interesting. But instead of rushing through,
why don't we take a quick break and come back
with that?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
All right? And I do want to talk about the
visiting my dad's one room schoolhouse from when he was
a kid with my son. It was really really interesting
in a number of ways. All on the way, stay here.
Congress is back in session. Summer's over, school has restarted.
Life is serious again. The frivolity of summer is over.
(12:45):
No more hot dogs and beer and laying around, no
more brat girl summer or whatever the hell that is.
Time to get serious.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
So the story behind the story of the whole Britain
is going to have children vote now is the lefty party.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
The Labor Party thought, hey, this is a great idea
because kids will fall for anything.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
But then a far lefty party emerged and said, yeah, no,
we're even crazier than you, and the kids will flock
to us.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
And according to the bulls, they're right. Probably. Yeah, it's
because they're.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Selling childlike fantasies of what the government ought to do.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, Kurre, if you're a normal Democrat in the United States,
you would not want sixteen year olds to vote because
they would all become Bernie AOC.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Types, right, right, So I found this very interesting ask
to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of zero
to ten, Girls in Britain nearly twice as likely as
boys to choose an answer between zero and three. What
was the question, rate your life satisfaction on a scale
zero between zero and three. Yeah, twice as many girls
(13:50):
as boys. On the other end of the scale, fifty
eight percent of boys rate their life satisfaction as seven
out of ten or higher, compared to only thirty seven
percent of the girls.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Man, if you're saying your life satisfaction between zero and three,
you need a dose of perspective.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
According to the poll by the think tank that there's
a gender split in other things too, boys are nearly
twice as likely to support right wing parties as girls.
Keeping in mind, right wing in Britain is fairly moderate right.
Some forty five percent of boys age sixteen seventeen would
vote for one of the more conservative parties. Forty five
(14:26):
to twenty four of the girls the super lefty.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Let's see is well, it's the reverse.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
More than a third say they sympathize more with the
Palestinian side and the Gaza war. Nine percent side with
Israel almost half. That's a very British thing to ask.
Almost a quarter of the sixteen and seventeen year olds
say they suffered from anxiety. Thirty four percent among the.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Girls, Well, that's probably accurate.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Nearly three and five said they had stayed home from
school due to anxiety.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Wow, sixty percent of the kids say they stayed home
for anxiety when I was in school. When you're in school,
that would be roughly zero zero people stayed home from
school for anxiety. Sixty nine percent of the girls h
Forty eight percent of the boys more than four and
ten spend more than six hours a day on their phone,
(15:24):
six and nine spend more than ten hours. Says a
guy who probably spends eight hours a day on the spot.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
That number.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Seven out of ten girls have stayed home from school
from anxiety.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Yeah, Wow, and just that that great sex divide of
girls like women in the US because we don't let
children vote, are way way farther.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Left than the boys politically speaking.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
So would you guess this is an experiment that will
be done away with letting children vote or I'm leaning
toward this. Once you give that age group the right
to vote, it will never go away. You'll be no
getting rid of it. I don't know, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I think it might be one of those things that
rectivizes itself, rectifies itself over the long term, because it
will be a miserable, miserable failure.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
But it takes so long.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I mean, it's like, how long did San Francisco take
to come around?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I just happen to be reading that their.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Commercial real estate situation has really turned around now partly
because of it, well largely because of AI, but in
the streets of San Francisco much cleaner, the bum junkie
camps far fewer and smaller. San Francisco's really turned itself around.
Credit where it's due. But how long did that take?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
But I don't know, years and years and years of
the failure being just plain everybody could see how miserable
a failure.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
All those policies were.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
But in this particular case, you give the sixteen and
seventeen year olds the right to vote, I don't see
how you to ever get rid of it. It's going
to change the politics so drastically, so quickly. How would
you ever end up with a majority that wants to.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Do away with it?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Oh wow, that's an interesting point. Yeah, it's a perpetual
motion machine. Yeah, I don't know. I last I think
that could be one of the most disastrous experiments ever conducted.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yes, I agree, this could be huge unless these sixteen
year olds when they're forty look back on it and
think I should not have been voting to do away
with it. But that could take a long time. Obviously,
you can do the math on that well.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Right in the new crop of sixteen seventeen year olds
lacking all perspective and wisdom because that's the way you're
supposed to freaking be as a child, there's no avoiding it.
They will say, oh, yeah, yeah, no, we know what's
right for the world. Up with whatever as opposed to
male white landowners over thirty, which is what it should be.
I'm willing to expand the tent a little bit anyway. Yeah, yeah,
(17:57):
I don't know. The Western world is not looking super
healthy to me.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Wow, that is crazy. What it'll be fun to watch,
you know, to get to have that experiment not in
the United States and see how it turns out a
lot more in the way. If you miss a segment,
get the podcast Armstrong and.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Getty on the Man Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
For some reason, I was just shared contemplating, like what
is my point to this story, and then realizing there
doesn't have to be a point. It's just something that happened.
I guess I got sucked into the talk radio vortex.
So it has to have some greater overall point. And
I'm not tired to Trump, don't worry, And I'm not
sure it does.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
So.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
My dad grew up in rural Iowa. He turns eighty
eight tomorrow, eighty eight years old tomorrow. He's one of
seven children in his family that lived on a farm
with no electricity or running water. Then they moved into town.
Using my finger quotes, I don't know what it was,
(18:58):
one hundred people or something like that, also with no
electricity or running water. And we were there sitting with
my with my son. He wanted to see some of
this stuff and meet some family. And we were in
Iowa at my aunt's house. That's my dad's older sister.
She's ninety four and still way more with it than Joe.
Biden ever was there at the end, but they were
(19:21):
talking about their childhood and everything like that, and just
I was struck, first of all, how hard it would
have been, Just how much more difficult life would have been.
If you live in an urban area or on the coasts,
you quite possibly are completely unaware that rural areas, particularly
(19:41):
of the Midwest and South, it was like it was
eighteen fifty up until like nineteen seventy, I mean in
a lot of places, and you just didn't know that.
I read a book, Freedom from Fear. Great book won
the Pultrer Prize about FDR through the Great Depression in
World War Two. But any he sent it turned out
(20:02):
to be Hoover, who ended up being president, out to
canvas the United States and bring him back a full
assessment of how people were doing. This was during the
Great Depression, and he came back and told FDR, we
got lots of people in this country. They don't have
any electricity, or running water. It was shocking to the
elite in Washington, d c. And New York and San
(20:24):
Francisco and Chicago, who had had electricity since like eighteen
sixty that there were people in nineteen fifty that or
nineteen forty that had no electricity. And so that's when
they started the rural electrification program and the government attempted
to get electric lines all across the country. But the
elite to the country, the big cities didn't know everybody
(20:45):
who was living such I don't know if you use
the term backward or non modern lives would be a
better way to put it, non modern lives. And my
dad is one of those people, his seven brothers and sisters.
It was in the fifties. He graduated high school in
nineteen fifty five. He went to school in a wagon
drug buy horses.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
If you live in San Francisco and there were cars
and electricity in the eighteen hundreds, you can't even imagine
that that's true. But anyway, the first half of his
schooling was in a one room schoolhouse where all the
grades were in one room and it was only a
dozen or so kids. Kindergarten through senior year, and it's
some of those schools are still out there and their
(21:27):
historic artifacts. There's a sign out front that says Diamond School,
Iowa Historic Register. It's out in the field. It's now
overgrown with bushes and trees. You can't even hardly tell
it's there. In fact, we missed it a couple of
times driving down this dirt road that leads to it.
It's so covered up with overgrowth that we couldn't even
(21:47):
find it, even though my dad knew where the school was,
so we stopped. We walk over there to it. My
dad gets out of his pocket knife and cuts away
all the vines and stuff near the front door, and
we managed to pull open the front door and actually
go inside. And I got a good pick of him
and my son in there at the chalkboard where my
dad would have learned his letters and math and stuff
like that way back in the day as a little kid.
(22:07):
And about the gender bred person, and of course you
have about the different genders that you can be. And
there was a pride flag in the corner because they
spent an entire month celebrating all that. I kid, of course,
my son was really fascinated by that obviously as you
would be seeing your family heritage, not to mention just
the time machine that that whole thing is. And it
(22:30):
didn't have electricity your plumbing either. The overgrown little hot
overhere is behind the bushes, but I my dad showed
that was the girl's out house and the one over
here was the boys out house. And if you were
there in class and you needed to, you know, do
number one or two, you'd go out in the dead
of winter in Iowa where it might have been thirty
below zero and walk across this little field and sit
(22:51):
there on a wooden plank with a hole in it
and do your business as an eight year old girl
before you go back over to the school and learn
you're reading and writing.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
I've got frost bite. My Willie, oh.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Good lord, absolutely amazing, night after night. And my aunt
who's ninety four, talking about even when they moved to town,
it was her job when they got home from school
every day to get several buckets and go to the
town pump and full fill it up with water to
bring water back to the house that they would use
(23:22):
for cooking and doing laundry. And then they got into
the conversation on how much work. Laundry was the women
did about it all day long. It was just it
was just it was such a project just to have
clean clothes, obviously, and so what do you do with
that information about how much harder life was physically anyway,
(23:46):
but so much less depression, anxiety, complaining it seems right, yeah,
feeling oppressed or you know, we're doing that. We've done
a couple of studies today, both in the United State,
it's in Great Britain about people who have so much
anxiety and they feel like their lives will never get
better and they're miserable.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Right now, your life is so much easier than the.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
One I just described. I mean, it's like it's being
a different species. It's so much different, right, easier. Well,
I think if you if you separate yourself and your
life and a feeling of being judged from the conversation,
and you just ask the question.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Human beings have always had work, and in certain periods
of history leisure time different people, different amounts, right, and
labor saving devices technology to lessen your work and increase
your leisure time have been you know, worked on and
(24:53):
developed and embraced just you know, from the dawn of
time purely abstract discussion. Is there a point where you
go too far?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Obviously?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Well, yeah, to me, the answer is obvious, absolutely obvious.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
If you got up in the morning and they probably
all had to work together to get some sort of
breakfast together and get dressed and everything like that, and
then get the horses ready and hooked up to the
wagon and all the different things just to get to
school and then school being what it was, and then
get home and then have work immediately. As soon as
you got home. You wouldn't have a lot of time
to ponder how happy you were.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Right none actually, or to worry about.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Crap, yeah, to worry about brow And then there's also
the just expectations I would imagine, because he told me
he'd never been to des Moines until he was I
don't remember how old. You wouldn't have anything to compare
it to. Obviously, without any sort of social media or
(25:56):
every town around you being exactly the same, and you
weren't going anywhere anyway. That's a lot of where happiness
or fulfillment comes from. We've talked about the studies before,
where you know, if somebody gets you might be perfectly
happy with your house, but if somebody builds a nicer
house next to you, your happiness goes down. I mean,
so it's all just comparing things as opposed to what
(26:17):
you have.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Well in studies have shown that if you're making eighty
thousand dollars next to somebody who's making seventy, you're happier
and perceive yourself as better off than if you're making
ninety next to someone who's making one hundred.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
We even a more stark example of this is we
Henry saw as first Amish people, which me being around
Iowa a lot, I'd seen that a lot. But we
stopped at a little, very rural town gas station and
there were some Amish there and they had their buggy
parked with their horses, living in their Amish lifestyle and
just like you see in TV in the movies, the
big long beards and everything like that. And they had
(26:58):
a table set up and they were selling stuff, and
Henry bought some sort of like apple pie treat thingy
that was delicious fanamic and I was wondering, I'll bet
there's not a lot of depression and anxiety medication going
on with those Amish children. Not probably not a lot,
and probably not a lot needed. No, No, will we
will we recognize this at some point as the society
(27:20):
and decide to Will we be able to pull back?
Will there be any push to pull push to pull
back from any of this to make ourselves happier? Or
is that just it just is an inevitable head toward
modern convenience, more stuff, faster, until we're so crazy we
all just I don't know, implode.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
That one, the second one, the second one.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
I just I don't think. And everybody can form their
own opinion of this, obviously. I think the percentage of
the human beast, the humankind, that actually thinks about this
sort of stuff is fairly modest. I think a lot
of people just do what they see other people doing
(28:04):
around them, and they don't ever think. Mark Zuckerberg isn't
trying to make me happy. He's trying to make more money.
His offerings, as shiny and as directive as they are,
are not good for me. I'm going to reject them. Well,
that's not the majority of people that don't think, Well,
how about just for your own self? Then?
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I always use the example of those of us who
ever lived any other way are going to be dead soon,
And then if you were staring at a phone your
entire life. You can't have the memories like Joe and
I have, or anybody over the age of whatever who
can at least look back and say, I remember when
I could sit down with a book in the quiet
and read for a couple hours and be perfectly happy.
And I can't do that anymore. But there won't be
(28:43):
anybody that can remember that. Yeah, or drive down, go
on a road trip with no podcast Netflix for the
kids in the car, or anything like that, and we
just looked out the window and talked and everybody was
perfectly fine. There won't be anybody of them. There won't
be anybody around who can even remember.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That, right, right, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I don't know as wild though to hear a life
described like that, which I'm sure was really freaking hard,
but yet it sound appealing on some levels like it
did to me. It was like, what sounds kind of nice?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Right? No? Yeah, absolutely, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
We probably ought to take a break, but there are
a hell of a lot of people can oh, we
gotta okay, right, I forgot privilege. Delighted to bring you
a message from our friends at Trust and will you
need an estate plan? Yeah, who's going to get the
buggy and the donkey? You don't know? You know, and
that you don't have to have a legal battle over
(29:46):
that when you pass away. Who's going to get the donkey?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Kids both think they ought to have the donkey and
end up hating each other. And then the government takes
most of the donkey, which is really an unpalatable you
know metaphor.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
At the end of me, you think, I don't believe
anyone won here who wants a third of a donkey
in the final analysis, we didn't think this through.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So trustinwill dot com. This is so great.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
You know you should do this. Get the security and
peace of mind by making an estate plan. You can
create and manage your custom estate plan starting at just
one hundred and ninety nine bucks.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, it starts a one hundred ninety nine dollars. You
have all your important documents in one place with bank
level encryption. It's built for the laws in your state.
And then if you have any trouble putting this together,
and I don't think you will, but if you do,
live customer support through chat, phone or email it's super easy.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
YEP, step by step start to finish. They guide you
secure your assets, protected loved ones with trust and will
get an entire donkey to the people you love. Get
twenty percent off on your estate plan documents by visiting
trustinwill dot com slash armstrong. That's trust and will dot
com slash armstrong.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
We got this text. Was there still a stove in
the corner of the one room schoolhouse? Yes, there was.
That's how you stayed warm, even had some sort of
stove thingy on the wagon that the horse has pulled
because the winners are brutal part of the country to
keep you warm enough to not die on your way
to school.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Human beings want to be occupied doing something productive at
our core.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
That's what we're made for.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
We are not built to be amused. There is nothing
an evolution that built us to be amused all the time.
Yet that seems to be what most of us are
seeking all day, every day. More on the way steering.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
The leaders of China, India and Russia tonight hand in hand,
shoulders to shoulder, all smiles, laughter, and a clear message
to President Trump. The warm words are an effort to
show a stable and alternative world order. President hu Jinping
ruling out the red carpet. Hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(31:55):
Summit and alliance have some of the world's most powerful nations,
not all to the US a challenge and a response
to President Trump and Europe over sanctions and tariffs.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, I declared, this is the biggest thing going on
in the world. I definitely think it is. You know,
you can do a cable news all day long about
a judge says Trump can't immigration, blob blob whatever, But
the biggest story in the world is this. Here's Ian
Pannell with a little more on ABC News.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Vladimir Putin promoting a system that would replace the obsolete
Eurocentric and Euroatlantic models. In another apparent dig at the US,
India's prime minister who's locked in the battle with the
US oversweeping tariffs, pledging raumatized with China aiming to be partners.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Nothing lasts forever, and it couldn't last forever that the
United States gets to dominate the world scene and keep
the seas open to commerce and all those sorts of things,
just like the Brits couldn't keep it forever. But we
ain't gonna like what's coming next?
Speaker 3 (33:01):
No, I would agree completely, and I just I'm not
thrilled with the way Trump is handling that aspect of
foreign power. I think he sees the entire world through
a commercial lens, and if anybody wants access to our markets,
they're gonna dance to our tune. And if they don't,
(33:22):
screw them, how about and they will be punished by
not having access to our markets. But I think that's
it's a too narrow view and too short term. Here's
the Devil's advocate view of that would be feel free.
Trump realizes that's where the world's going anyway. So we're
gonna make our best situation we can given the fact
(33:46):
that the world is absolutely screaming toward different spheres of
Influencer's gonna be China's chunk of the world, and there's
gonna be our chunk of the world. And I'm just
trying to set the best best parameters for that.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Now.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, that's that's fine. I just feel like he's giving
up too much territory too quickly. I mean, I mean,
like India, India has no reason to ally themselves with China.
It's it's it's no, they have much much, much more
in common with the US than China.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
You think that culturally, politically that sort of thing. I
wonder how uh slutty, if you will, India will be
in terms of going back and forth between China and
the United States with whoever just offers him the best
deal as opposed.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
First, first of all, I don't appreciate the slut shaming,
but secondly, very very slutty.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I always have been.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
But but Russian and China are going to be together,
probably North Korea, Iran, and then there's.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, there's the axes of a holes. Doesn't bother me.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Really, they're they're gonna do what they're gonna do and
they can only be managed.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
But India bothers me. It's the most populous country on Earth.
It is rounding into form as an economic superpower, or
certainly a manufacturing superpower, and I just think they need
to be wooed a bit more carefully, a little more
carrot delicious curry to carrot perhaps, and a little less
stick well.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Agreeing with Joe as David Ignatius of The Washington Post.
Speaker 5 (35:13):
Three years into this war, he is now claiming this
was the West's fault, and he's as an audience of
prominent world leaders who agree with them, including somebody who
was a key person in America's efforts to create a
new kind of informal partnership to contain China, namely India.
(35:35):
India's repositioning toward Russia and China reverses diplomacy that's been
conducted since the administration of George W. Bush at least,
and it's a really significant setback.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, if India ends up semi permanently with China and Russia,
that is not good for the planet.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Right, It's awful.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
You know. One of the downsides of democracy in general
is that we change, you know, administrations, we change people,
and to some extent, we change policies every two to
four to eight years.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
That's fine, it's just you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
But there's been a caution about changing things too violently,
too quickly by most presidential administrations because the siren song
of Xijin Ping is that, look, I'm in charge. Someday
I'll handpick my successor, but we will not jerk you around.
(36:33):
If you want a long term economic relationship with me,
I'll dictate how our society goes. You get it as
a joke because I'm a dictator. I don't think you
get it anyway, and I just I think Trump has
been far too cavalier with drastic jarring changes to relationships
in ways that in the long term will not be
(36:55):
good because he sees everything is transactional, and everything is
transactional that includes long term transactions.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
They're having that big summit today or more of that
big summit today. I'm sure there will be headlines out
of that we will be discussing on tomorrow. But that
is a that is a giant story. So we do
a lot of hours and segments of radio every single week.
If you miss any Get the podcast, you should subscribe.
Subscribe is the word to Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Subscribe What are Strong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Ketty arm Strong
and Jetty and he.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I think we say this every single vacation we come
back from. But I would like to endeavor to not
talk about things that nobody will care about at all
in a week. If it can't even last a week
of being important, it doesn't deserve any gums to be flapped.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Listen to mister fancy pants. Just a significance and enduring importance.
I want to whip people into momentary anger and or
pleasure and pander.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Important, just entertaining. And I'm not entertained by fang that
don't are They're not funny, they're not interesting, and they're meaningless.
That combination is bad. Of course, that's why cable ratings
are what they are. Each show on cable has like
eighty thousand people watching it in the entire country.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Coming up, Trump under fire for firing the undersecretary of
secretary under fires. All right, So my sweetheart Judy and
I spent eight days in London and had an absolutely
wonderful time. I loved England as I suspected I would.
It's a very interesting place. I've become a fan of
(01:36):
day drinking, and not in that like vacation drinking all
day long way, but in the like you have a
pint at lunch at a pub and then you go
do what you're going to do. You're not quote unquote drinking.
You just have a beer because it's nice and it
(01:56):
makes you feel slightly more cheerful.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Why did we e how did we develop our attitude
we have in the United States over the years, Because
I remember when I was in Italy thinking the same thing.
Everybody would come in to restaurants, like people who are
working their jobs. They'd have a glass of wine, eat
their food and then go back to work. And that
is seen in the United States is just insane, just
absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, the Europeans have what I would call a very
European look or view of drinking that I found refreshing.
Speaking of pubs, So we rented a flat in Mayfair
if you know where that is, doesn't matter, New Bond Street,
lots of like crazy high end shopping, mostly populated by
(02:37):
Kuwaiti oil money.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh wow, by the bye.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Guys walking up the street with four chicks and the
beekeeper out really going into perfume stores and spending just
do godly amounts of oil money and a lot real.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That's not an exaggeration. You saw a guy walking up
the street with four women in the beekeeper.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Up in eight days many times? Yes, wow, I mean
to one to six women in the beekeeper.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Anyway, Oh, they are basically sex slaves or cleaning your
house slaves or whatever, and everybody just tolerates that with
no rights. That's correct, yes, And Brits are not super
duper happy about the completely wildly unfettered immigration from Muslim
lands over the last twenty years. More on that another time,
but anyway, but out our windows onto the street, there
(03:28):
was a little like just had half a block long
street and there was a pub on each side of it.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
At the other end.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
It was one hundred yards from us maybe as we
looked out the window, and it was so cool every
day and more and more as the week went on.
At four thirty or so, certainly by five o'clock there
would be so many people standing in and outside the
pub having a pint with their coworkers and friends and
(03:57):
a laugh and a conversation before they went home for
the day.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Sounds like a recipe for sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh my god. And it wasn't. They were drinking.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
No, they were talking with people because they worked with people,
and they met their buddies, and they talked about the
football match, which is soccer, and it just it was
so nice.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Anyway, Yeah, and I thought, wow, I could get used
to this. In our hurry.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Although the pub thing, we went to this one historic pub.
We met our next door neighbors from home.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Weirdly enough, they were over there at the same time
we decided to get together. We go to this pub,
hundreds of years old, pub, drenched in history, legendary, the
Prince something or lord, what's it there, I don't even
remember the name, but it was very atmospheric.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
But anyway, so.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
We're sitting there having dinner and or we're having, you know,
a couple of pins, and we decided it's time to
eat and we ordered like four small plates off the
menu and the waitress come I'm back and says, I'm
so sorry. We're actually out of the calamari and the
pucker fish or whatever the hell it was, and also
the beef Wellington and We're like, oh okay, it's like
(05:15):
six o'clock at night, how are you all right? All right,
all right, we'll order those other things. Then she comes
back in like two of those three are out.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So should she ever get around to admitting we're not
actually a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
We don't have any food at all. We just have
a menu.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
We just hope we're working on the end. Most people
start drinking, they forget if they're hungry.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
So at one point I said, it would save time
if you just told me what you do have, but
we end up with this mess of food.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Did you say that I shouldn't have? But I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And finally so at the end of the evening and
it was lovely, she comes and says, can you tell
me what you actually ordered?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And got oh boy?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
And I'm like, wait a minute, that's your job. We're
support no, no, no, you tell us. And it was
just part of it is tipping is not really a
thing there. Now they've got a service charge that's like five, six,
maybe ten percent, but.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
You feel it because they're not earning it. They're like, look,
I'm getting my six percent. Oh okay, no matter what, gotcha?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So if you have to like, order twenty four foods
before I bring you three, just because we're playing this
little game of we.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Might have it, we might not. Why don't you order
find out.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
So you know it's it's pluses and minuses, because the
whole tipping thing is it's stressful, especially if you don't
know the local customs.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
But yeah, Michael, how was the food over there? Overall?
In England? Uh?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Overall kind of good, not great, But once you realize
how to order and what to order, it's it's better.
But yeah, the Brits are not famous for food for
a good reason. If you say, hey, what's a great
meal around here, people will send you to an Italian
restaurant or an Indian restaurant for a good reason. But
(07:12):
the other thing about workers that I found interesting. We
had a tour guide at the British Museum who was
just terrific. He was a professor of history, and he said, yeah,
that exhibit is shut down because there's just no employees.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
There's no one to work. I said, what that's odd?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
He said, oh, yeah, since COVID, everybody stays home, they
live with their parents, they're collecting government checks.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
You can't get people to work. Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I thought that was so interesting and exactly what you
hear from so many employers in the States. Yeah, we
had that conversation with my family in the Midwest of
the United States. I don't go to other countries and
give them my money. I stay in the United States
and I'm for you. But we had the same conversation
on how number of restaurants, including the one we were at,
(07:56):
was really they weren't seating all the seats because they
were crowded, but because they didn't have enough help. How
is that still a thing?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah, I know, it's amazing and universally universal apparently.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
But so speaking of.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Things that are are shared between our two peoples, one
of the headline stories on the Sunday Times of London
this past Sunday was the Lefty Party, the new left
Wing Party is.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Has it has got the edge?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It looks like it's going to happen getting the vote
to sixteen and seventeen year olds.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So the left Left Party you led with, it looks
like it's going to happen. They're actually going to let
sixteen year olds vote. The last thing has been trotted
out all the time here, there and everywhere, but it's
always gets laughed at and shot down. It's actually going
to happen.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, and the left Left Party is going to beat
out the kind of left the Labor Party, because they
will have the children's votes. Because you can so easily
dupe children into voting for feely, good sounding policies. It
doesn't would never work in real life.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It doesn't occur to people that we've never let children
vote anywhere ever for a reason.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
No, they make emotional sounding arguments about it.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And if anything, if we're going to change voting age,
just as we all know culture has changed so much,
at least in Western society, voting age should go up
to like thirty because people aren't grown ups until then, right,
I agree absolutely more on that on the other side
of the break, A quick note from our friends at
web Route. If you've ever talked to anybody who's had
(09:41):
their bank account hacked, and I have fairly recently, it's
a nightmare. It takes you months and hours and hours
and hours and hours of work to bounce back. How
do you avoid that? With webroot total protection. It monitors
for stolen identities, credit fraud. It even scans the dark
web looking for infos you'll know that it's stolen. So
here's the offer right now, get fifty percent off webroot
(10:03):
Total Protection or Webroot Essentials at webroot dot com.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Slash Armstrong, and in the very unlikely possibility something does
go wrong and you get to your identity hacked, you're
backed with up to a million dollars in reimbursement.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
By the way, it's fast, lightweight, installs in minutes, no
annoying pop ups like a lot of programs, have, just
strong protection.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
And it even includes a VPN for secure browsing and
a password manager to keep your logging safe. If you're
not familiar with VPNs, do some reading up and then
get in touch with our friends at webroute.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Don't risk being the next victim. Get fifty percent off
webroot Total Protection or webroot Essentials right now webroot dot
Com slash Armstrong.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
So anyway back to the whole letting children vote sing
I'm horrified by this. Yeah, I know, it's absolutely awful.
And they did a bunch of polling the Sunday Times
of how this would affect voting, and it would swing
everything way to the left. As I've made the point
many times. The idea of sixteen seventeen year olds voting
is entirely a lefty proposition, because again, you can dupe
(11:04):
children into believing things that adults who've been around the
block a couple of times realize are false promises, or
they remove the incentives and disincentives for people to do
the right thing. And it's terrible, terrible policy. But even
will fall for this when you're that young. It's even
we tried this a dozen years ago, but you were four,
so you don't remember.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Right, and it was a miserable failure.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
In fact, it gets run up the flagpole every generation
and fails every generation. But you're a child, so you
wouldn't know that. You shouldn't know that anyway. It will
be the biggest change to the franchise. Oh I'm sorry.
Last month the government confirmed plans to lower the voting
age from eighteen to sixteen in time for the next election,
bringing Westminster in line with blah blah blah. It will
(11:47):
be the biggest change to the franchise since the voting
age fell from twenty one to eighteen and nineteen sixty nine,
and it makes sixteen and seventeen year olds targets for
political parties to woo and they a thousand of them,
and essentially the farthest left party is going to have
a hey day. I want to get to some other
results of this poll, the differences between boys and girls.
(12:12):
I'm not going to call them young men and young
women because a sixteen year old as a child that
I find really really interesting. But instead of rushing through,
why don't we take a quick break and come back
with that?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
All right? And I do want to talk about the
visiting my dad's one room schoolhouse from when he was
a kid with my son. It was really really interesting
in a number of ways. All on the way, stay here.
Congress is back in session. Summer's over, school has restarted.
Life is serious again. The frivolity of summer is over.
(12:45):
No more hot dogs and beer and laying around, no
more brat girl summer or whatever the hell that is.
Time to get serious.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
So the story behind the story of the whole Britain
is going to have children vote now is the lefty party.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
The Labor Party thought, hey, this is a great idea
because kids will fall for anything.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
But then a far lefty party emerged and said, yeah, no,
we're even crazier than you, and the kids will flock
to us.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
And according to the bulls, they're right. Probably. Yeah, it's
because they're.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Selling childlike fantasies of what the government ought to do.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, Kurre, if you're a normal Democrat in the United States,
you would not want sixteen year olds to vote because
they would all become Bernie AOC.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Types, right, right, So I found this very interesting ask
to rate their life satisfaction on a scale of zero
to ten, Girls in Britain nearly twice as likely as
boys to choose an answer between zero and three. What
was the question, rate your life satisfaction on a scale
zero between zero and three. Yeah, twice as many girls
(13:50):
as boys. On the other end of the scale, fifty
eight percent of boys rate their life satisfaction as seven
out of ten or higher, compared to only thirty seven
percent of the girls.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Man, if you're saying your life satisfaction between zero and three,
you need a dose of perspective.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
According to the poll by the think tank that there's
a gender split in other things too, boys are nearly
twice as likely to support right wing parties as girls.
Keeping in mind, right wing in Britain is fairly moderate right.
Some forty five percent of boys age sixteen seventeen would
vote for one of the more conservative parties. Forty five
(14:26):
to twenty four of the girls the super lefty.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Let's see is well, it's the reverse.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
More than a third say they sympathize more with the
Palestinian side and the Gaza war. Nine percent side with
Israel almost half. That's a very British thing to ask.
Almost a quarter of the sixteen and seventeen year olds
say they suffered from anxiety. Thirty four percent among the.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Girls, Well, that's probably accurate.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Nearly three and five said they had stayed home from
school due to anxiety.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Wow, sixty percent of the kids say they stayed home
for anxiety when I was in school. When you're in school,
that would be roughly zero zero people stayed home from
school for anxiety. Sixty nine percent of the girls h
Forty eight percent of the boys more than four and
ten spend more than six hours a day on their phone,
(15:24):
six and nine spend more than ten hours. Says a
guy who probably spends eight hours a day on the spot.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
That number.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Seven out of ten girls have stayed home from school
from anxiety.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Yeah, Wow, and just that that great sex divide of
girls like women in the US because we don't let
children vote, are way way farther.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Left than the boys politically speaking.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
So would you guess this is an experiment that will
be done away with letting children vote or I'm leaning
toward this. Once you give that age group the right
to vote, it will never go away. You'll be no
getting rid of it. I don't know, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I think it might be one of those things that
rectivizes itself, rectifies itself over the long term, because it
will be a miserable, miserable failure.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
But it takes so long.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
I mean, it's like, how long did San Francisco take
to come around?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I just happen to be reading that their.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Commercial real estate situation has really turned around now partly
because of it, well largely because of AI, but in
the streets of San Francisco much cleaner, the bum junkie
camps far fewer and smaller. San Francisco's really turned itself around.
Credit where it's due. But how long did that take?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
But I don't know, years and years and years of
the failure being just plain everybody could see how miserable
a failure.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
All those policies were.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
But in this particular case, you give the sixteen and
seventeen year olds the right to vote, I don't see
how you to ever get rid of it. It's going
to change the politics so drastically, so quickly. How would
you ever end up with a majority that wants to.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Do away with it?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Oh wow, that's an interesting point. Yeah, it's a perpetual
motion machine. Yeah, I don't know. I last I think
that could be one of the most disastrous experiments ever conducted.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yes, I agree, this could be huge unless these sixteen
year olds when they're forty look back on it and
think I should not have been voting to do away
with it. But that could take a long time. Obviously,
you can do the math on that well.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Right in the new crop of sixteen seventeen year olds
lacking all perspective and wisdom because that's the way you're
supposed to freaking be as a child, there's no avoiding it.
They will say, oh, yeah, yeah, no, we know what's
right for the world. Up with whatever as opposed to
male white landowners over thirty, which is what it should be.
I'm willing to expand the tent a little bit anyway. Yeah, yeah,
(17:57):
I don't know. The Western world is not looking super
healthy to me.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Wow, that is crazy. What it'll be fun to watch,
you know, to get to have that experiment not in
the United States and see how it turns out a
lot more in the way. If you miss a segment,
get the podcast Armstrong and.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Getty on the Man Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
For some reason, I was just shared contemplating, like what
is my point to this story, and then realizing there
doesn't have to be a point. It's just something that happened.
I guess I got sucked into the talk radio vortex.
So it has to have some greater overall point. And
I'm not tired to Trump, don't worry, And I'm not
sure it does.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
So.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
My dad grew up in rural Iowa. He turns eighty
eight tomorrow, eighty eight years old tomorrow. He's one of
seven children in his family that lived on a farm
with no electricity or running water. Then they moved into town.
Using my finger quotes, I don't know what it was,
(18:58):
one hundred people or something like that, also with no
electricity or running water. And we were there sitting with
my with my son. He wanted to see some of
this stuff and meet some family. And we were in
Iowa at my aunt's house. That's my dad's older sister.
She's ninety four and still way more with it than Joe.
Biden ever was there at the end, but they were
(19:21):
talking about their childhood and everything like that, and just
I was struck, first of all, how hard it would
have been, Just how much more difficult life would have been.
If you live in an urban area or on the coasts,
you quite possibly are completely unaware that rural areas, particularly
(19:41):
of the Midwest and South, it was like it was
eighteen fifty up until like nineteen seventy, I mean in
a lot of places, and you just didn't know that.
I read a book, Freedom from Fear. Great book won
the Pultrer Prize about FDR through the Great Depression in
World War Two. But any he sent it turned out
(20:02):
to be Hoover, who ended up being president, out to
canvas the United States and bring him back a full
assessment of how people were doing. This was during the
Great Depression, and he came back and told FDR, we
got lots of people in this country. They don't have
any electricity, or running water. It was shocking to the
elite in Washington, d c. And New York and San
(20:24):
Francisco and Chicago, who had had electricity since like eighteen
sixty that there were people in nineteen fifty that or
nineteen forty that had no electricity. And so that's when
they started the rural electrification program and the government attempted
to get electric lines all across the country. But the
elite to the country, the big cities didn't know everybody
(20:45):
who was living such I don't know if you use
the term backward or non modern lives would be a
better way to put it, non modern lives. And my
dad is one of those people, his seven brothers and sisters.
It was in the fifties. He graduated high school in
nineteen fifty five. He went to school in a wagon
drug buy horses.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
If you live in San Francisco and there were cars
and electricity in the eighteen hundreds, you can't even imagine
that that's true. But anyway, the first half of his
schooling was in a one room schoolhouse where all the
grades were in one room and it was only a
dozen or so kids. Kindergarten through senior year, and it's
some of those schools are still out there and their
(21:27):
historic artifacts. There's a sign out front that says Diamond School,
Iowa Historic Register. It's out in the field. It's now
overgrown with bushes and trees. You can't even hardly tell
it's there. In fact, we missed it a couple of
times driving down this dirt road that leads to it.
It's so covered up with overgrowth that we couldn't even
(21:47):
find it, even though my dad knew where the school was,
so we stopped. We walk over there to it. My
dad gets out of his pocket knife and cuts away
all the vines and stuff near the front door, and
we managed to pull open the front door and actually
go inside. And I got a good pick of him
and my son in there at the chalkboard where my
dad would have learned his letters and math and stuff
like that way back in the day as a little kid.
(22:07):
And about the gender bred person, and of course you
have about the different genders that you can be. And
there was a pride flag in the corner because they
spent an entire month celebrating all that. I kid, of course,
my son was really fascinated by that obviously as you
would be seeing your family heritage, not to mention just
the time machine that that whole thing is. And it
(22:30):
didn't have electricity your plumbing either. The overgrown little hot
overhere is behind the bushes, but I my dad showed
that was the girl's out house and the one over
here was the boys out house. And if you were
there in class and you needed to, you know, do
number one or two, you'd go out in the dead
of winter in Iowa where it might have been thirty
below zero and walk across this little field and sit
(22:51):
there on a wooden plank with a hole in it
and do your business as an eight year old girl
before you go back over to the school and learn
you're reading and writing.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
I've got frost bite. My Willie, oh.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Good lord, absolutely amazing, night after night. And my aunt
who's ninety four, talking about even when they moved to town,
it was her job when they got home from school
every day to get several buckets and go to the
town pump and full fill it up with water to
bring water back to the house that they would use
(23:22):
for cooking and doing laundry. And then they got into
the conversation on how much work. Laundry was the women
did about it all day long. It was just it
was just it was such a project just to have
clean clothes, obviously, and so what do you do with
that information about how much harder life was physically anyway,
(23:46):
but so much less depression, anxiety, complaining it seems right, yeah,
feeling oppressed or you know, we're doing that. We've done
a couple of studies today, both in the United State,
it's in Great Britain about people who have so much
anxiety and they feel like their lives will never get
better and they're miserable.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Right now, your life is so much easier than the.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
One I just described. I mean, it's like it's being
a different species. It's so much different, right, easier. Well,
I think if you if you separate yourself and your
life and a feeling of being judged from the conversation,
and you just ask the question.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Human beings have always had work, and in certain periods
of history leisure time different people, different amounts, right, and
labor saving devices technology to lessen your work and increase
your leisure time have been you know, worked on and
(24:53):
developed and embraced just you know, from the dawn of
time purely abstract discussion. Is there a point where you
go too far?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Obviously?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Well, yeah, to me, the answer is obvious, absolutely obvious.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
If you got up in the morning and they probably
all had to work together to get some sort of
breakfast together and get dressed and everything like that, and
then get the horses ready and hooked up to the
wagon and all the different things just to get to
school and then school being what it was, and then
get home and then have work immediately. As soon as
you got home. You wouldn't have a lot of time
to ponder how happy you were.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Right none actually, or to worry about.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Crap, yeah, to worry about brow And then there's also
the just expectations I would imagine, because he told me
he'd never been to des Moines until he was I
don't remember how old. You wouldn't have anything to compare
it to. Obviously, without any sort of social media or
(25:56):
every town around you being exactly the same, and you
weren't going anywhere anyway. That's a lot of where happiness
or fulfillment comes from. We've talked about the studies before,
where you know, if somebody gets you might be perfectly
happy with your house, but if somebody builds a nicer
house next to you, your happiness goes down. I mean,
so it's all just comparing things as opposed to what
(26:17):
you have.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Well in studies have shown that if you're making eighty
thousand dollars next to somebody who's making seventy, you're happier
and perceive yourself as better off than if you're making
ninety next to someone who's making one hundred.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
We even a more stark example of this is we
Henry saw as first Amish people, which me being around
Iowa a lot, I'd seen that a lot. But we
stopped at a little, very rural town gas station and
there were some Amish there and they had their buggy
parked with their horses, living in their Amish lifestyle and
just like you see in TV in the movies, the
big long beards and everything like that. And they had
(26:58):
a table set up and they were selling stuff, and
Henry bought some sort of like apple pie treat thingy
that was delicious fanamic and I was wondering, I'll bet
there's not a lot of depression and anxiety medication going
on with those Amish children. Not probably not a lot,
and probably not a lot needed. No, No, will we
will we recognize this at some point as the society
(27:20):
and decide to Will we be able to pull back?
Will there be any push to pull push to pull
back from any of this to make ourselves happier? Or
is that just it just is an inevitable head toward
modern convenience, more stuff, faster, until we're so crazy we
all just I don't know, implode.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
That one, the second one, the second one.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
I just I don't think. And everybody can form their
own opinion of this, obviously. I think the percentage of
the human beast, the humankind, that actually thinks about this
sort of stuff is fairly modest. I think a lot
of people just do what they see other people doing
(28:04):
around them, and they don't ever think. Mark Zuckerberg isn't
trying to make me happy. He's trying to make more money.
His offerings, as shiny and as directive as they are,
are not good for me. I'm going to reject them. Well,
that's not the majority of people that don't think, Well,
how about just for your own self? Then?
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I always use the example of those of us who
ever lived any other way are going to be dead soon,
And then if you were staring at a phone your
entire life. You can't have the memories like Joe and
I have, or anybody over the age of whatever who
can at least look back and say, I remember when
I could sit down with a book in the quiet
and read for a couple hours and be perfectly happy.
And I can't do that anymore. But there won't be
(28:43):
anybody that can remember that. Yeah, or drive down, go
on a road trip with no podcast Netflix for the
kids in the car, or anything like that, and we
just looked out the window and talked and everybody was
perfectly fine. There won't be anybody of them. There won't
be anybody around who can even remember.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
That, right, right, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I don't know as wild though to hear a life
described like that, which I'm sure was really freaking hard,
but yet it sound appealing on some levels like it
did to me. It was like, what sounds kind of nice?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Right? No? Yeah, absolutely, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
We probably ought to take a break, but there are
a hell of a lot of people can oh, we
gotta okay, right, I forgot privilege. Delighted to bring you
a message from our friends at Trust and will you
need an estate plan? Yeah, who's going to get the
buggy and the donkey? You don't know? You know, and
that you don't have to have a legal battle over
(29:46):
that when you pass away. Who's going to get the donkey?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Kids both think they ought to have the donkey and
end up hating each other. And then the government takes
most of the donkey, which is really an unpalatable you
know metaphor.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
At the end of me, you think, I don't believe
anyone won here who wants a third of a donkey
in the final analysis, we didn't think this through.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So trustinwill dot com. This is so great.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
You know you should do this. Get the security and
peace of mind by making an estate plan. You can
create and manage your custom estate plan starting at just
one hundred and ninety nine bucks.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, it starts a one hundred ninety nine dollars. You
have all your important documents in one place with bank
level encryption. It's built for the laws in your state.
And then if you have any trouble putting this together,
and I don't think you will, but if you do,
live customer support through chat, phone or email it's super easy.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
YEP, step by step start to finish. They guide you
secure your assets, protected loved ones with trust and will
get an entire donkey to the people you love. Get
twenty percent off on your estate plan documents by visiting
trustinwill dot com slash armstrong. That's trust and will dot
com slash armstrong.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
We got this text. Was there still a stove in
the corner of the one room schoolhouse? Yes, there was.
That's how you stayed warm, even had some sort of
stove thingy on the wagon that the horse has pulled
because the winners are brutal part of the country to
keep you warm enough to not die on your way
to school.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Human beings want to be occupied doing something productive at
our core.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
That's what we're made for.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
We are not built to be amused. There is nothing
an evolution that built us to be amused all the time.
Yet that seems to be what most of us are
seeking all day, every day. More on the way steering.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
The leaders of China, India and Russia tonight hand in hand,
shoulders to shoulder, all smiles, laughter, and a clear message
to President Trump. The warm words are an effort to
show a stable and alternative world order. President hu Jinping
ruling out the red carpet. Hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(31:55):
Summit and alliance have some of the world's most powerful nations,
not all to the US a challenge and a response
to President Trump and Europe over sanctions and tariffs.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, I declared, this is the biggest thing going on
in the world. I definitely think it is. You know,
you can do a cable news all day long about
a judge says Trump can't immigration, blob blob whatever, But
the biggest story in the world is this. Here's Ian
Pannell with a little more on ABC News.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Vladimir Putin promoting a system that would replace the obsolete
Eurocentric and Euroatlantic models. In another apparent dig at the US,
India's prime minister who's locked in the battle with the
US oversweeping tariffs, pledging raumatized with China aiming to be partners.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Nothing lasts forever, and it couldn't last forever that the
United States gets to dominate the world scene and keep
the seas open to commerce and all those sorts of things,
just like the Brits couldn't keep it forever. But we
ain't gonna like what's coming next?
Speaker 3 (33:01):
No, I would agree completely, and I just I'm not
thrilled with the way Trump is handling that aspect of
foreign power. I think he sees the entire world through
a commercial lens, and if anybody wants access to our markets,
they're gonna dance to our tune. And if they don't,
(33:22):
screw them, how about and they will be punished by
not having access to our markets. But I think that's
it's a too narrow view and too short term. Here's
the Devil's advocate view of that would be feel free.
Trump realizes that's where the world's going anyway. So we're
gonna make our best situation we can given the fact
(33:46):
that the world is absolutely screaming toward different spheres of
Influencer's gonna be China's chunk of the world, and there's
gonna be our chunk of the world. And I'm just
trying to set the best best parameters for that.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Now.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Yeah, that's that's fine. I just feel like he's giving
up too much territory too quickly. I mean, I mean,
like India, India has no reason to ally themselves with China.
It's it's it's no, they have much much, much more
in common with the US than China.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
You think that culturally, politically that sort of thing. I
wonder how uh slutty, if you will, India will be
in terms of going back and forth between China and
the United States with whoever just offers him the best
deal as opposed.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
First, first of all, I don't appreciate the slut shaming,
but secondly, very very slutty.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I always have been.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
But but Russian and China are going to be together,
probably North Korea, Iran, and then there's.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, there's the axes of a holes. Doesn't bother me.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Really, they're they're gonna do what they're gonna do and
they can only be managed.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
But India bothers me. It's the most populous country on Earth.
It is rounding into form as an economic superpower, or
certainly a manufacturing superpower, and I just think they need
to be wooed a bit more carefully, a little more
carrot delicious curry to carrot perhaps, and a little less
stick well.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Agreeing with Joe as David Ignatius of The Washington Post.
Speaker 5 (35:13):
Three years into this war, he is now claiming this
was the West's fault, and he's as an audience of
prominent world leaders who agree with them, including somebody who
was a key person in America's efforts to create a
new kind of informal partnership to contain China, namely India.
(35:35):
India's repositioning toward Russia and China reverses diplomacy that's been
conducted since the administration of George W. Bush at least,
and it's a really significant setback.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, if India ends up semi permanently with China and Russia,
that is not good for the planet.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Right, It's awful.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
You know. One of the downsides of democracy in general
is that we change, you know, administrations, we change people,
and to some extent, we change policies every two to
four to eight years.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
That's fine, it's just you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
But there's been a caution about changing things too violently,
too quickly by most presidential administrations because the siren song
of Xijin Ping is that, look, I'm in charge. Someday
I'll handpick my successor, but we will not jerk you around.
(36:33):
If you want a long term economic relationship with me,
I'll dictate how our society goes. You get it as
a joke because I'm a dictator. I don't think you
get it anyway, and I just I think Trump has
been far too cavalier with drastic jarring changes to relationships
in ways that in the long term will not be
(36:55):
good because he sees everything is transactional, and everything is
transactional that includes long term transactions.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
They're having that big summit today or more of that
big summit today. I'm sure there will be headlines out
of that we will be discussing on tomorrow. But that
is a that is a giant story. So we do
a lot of hours and segments of radio every single week.
If you miss any Get the podcast, you should subscribe.
Subscribe is the word to Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Subscribe What are Strong and Getty
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.