Man... That Was Low Rent

Hour 3 of A&G features...

• No more pennies, new socialist mayor of Seattle & the woke right
• Universe 25
• Joe Getty's "The Euro Bureau!"
• The Venezuela conflict

Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Arm Strong and Jetty, and he Armstrong and Yetty.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
After more than two hundred and thirty years in circulation,
the US Mint in Philadelphia pressing the last ever American penny.
US Treasurer Brandon Beach on hand for the historic moment
as production of the one cent coins officially comes to
an end, the final two pennies going up for auction.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
For better or worse. Trump is not in love with
the status quo. He just does things that other people
that well, but this will cause a problem.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
But what if that? But what if this? And what
if the penny's dumb?

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Get rid of it. Jerusalem's a capital Isray. We all
know it, right, lots of things like that.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, most of it good, some of it not good.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
But you know, then around all these years was more
on it, especially after inflation.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
He was already done before inflation. But an extra dumb then,
Oh yes, we've outlined in the past. A penny is
now worth something a tenth of a penny compared to
what it was in nineteen forty whatever the year was.
I can't remember, so can you imagine having a tenth
of a cent coin. That's what we've got. We'll combine
that with the fact that it cost four cents to
make one. Right insane anyway, Goodbye penny. Old link is

(01:28):
on there, which makes me feel bad, but he's still
on the five dollar bill, and you know it can
keep some pennies if you like. Just take them out,
look at them and think about old Ay once in
a while if that comforts you. Anyway. So this is
not breaking news exactly, but you might not have heard it.
Seattle has joined New York City in electing a Democratic

(01:49):
Socialist mayor by an incredibly slim margin over a way
left you know, guy who was in office before, as
the The Daily Mail puts it to. Ms. Katie Wilson,
age forty three, the first Democratic Socialist mayor of Seattle,
ran a very similar campaign to old Mamdannie the Kamie.

(02:12):
She's run a campaign characterized by promises to increase in
affordability in the expensive city by doing policies that will
accomplish exactly the opposite, as they do every single damn time.
Another core of her platform is addressing Seattle's homelessness crisis
by throwing money at it, which plays California. You can
tell you, We'll just get you more bums and junkie
Seattle one of the worst in the country. Critics have

(02:33):
called Wilson privileged and out of touch, as the forty
three year old candidate regularly receives checks from her professor
parents to pay for childcare. Wow, which I'm sure she
would say is just evidence of how capitalism has failed.
It's funny how that excuse comes up over and over again.
These critics also a highlight Wilson dropping out of Oxford

(02:54):
University just six weeks before graduation for some reason, debt
free thanks to her parents. The Other Person's reelection website
highlighted a quote from a former Singing Seattle King County
NAACP president of All People who said it's hard to
trust a candidate running on their challenges with affordability when
her family's wealth shields her from actual consequences and financial stress.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
I would like to say that her voting was similar
to with mom Donnie. Where was in the working class
that got the mayor of Saddle over the top. It
was other highly educated elite people.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, yeah, So currently her husband does not have a
paying job either, Neither one of them have a job. Well,
if she's a mayor now, well, yeah, currently that means
the couple's household income is below would be considered enough
money to support themselves and their child in Seattle. So
she gets checks from home at age forty three. Wow,
she's not ashamed. It just speaks how expensive and unaffordable

(03:57):
it is, right, she said, how about how about like.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
The other ninety nine it's pretty high of people your
age who have figured out how to support themselves.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
What are they just dumb? Yeah? Yeah, wow, that is
just unbelievable. Oh, good luck with that that.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
You're in your forties and you're still on your parents pay.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Check unless you have special needs of course, of course,
something different. Yeah, that's just that's just sad. That is
just sad. Yeah, okay, well that's enough of that.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
And of course, of course you'd turn to that person
for the answers to economic problems, somebody that has not
figured out how to support themselves at all. Well, because
she reinforces the excuses you're making for yourself in your
own life.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
I get it. There's nothing more comfortable than a great excuse.
So you know, speaking of political trends among the young.
You know, I've been reading a lot about this, and
there's too much to cram in here. But read a
piece by a guy named Derek Thompson, The Monks in
the Casine, and it's and he highlights a couple of

(05:03):
people who have appeared in big time journalism profiles lately.
The one guy is a He considered himself a porno sexual,
which is exactly what it sounds like. It's just it's sick,
beyond sick and bizarre. He's no good with talking about women.
He thinks about sex between two people and he's troubled
by it. He's frightened by it because of the impossibility

(05:26):
of ever knowing what's really going on in your partner's head.
I just feel like it's exhausting for both parties. Then
there's this another guy with a gambling addiction, both of
them living in their parents' house.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
What's a porno sexual? I mean you said it's is
it all porn all the time? You prefer porn to
the real thing.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Uh, not that he's ever dabbled in the real thing.
Been recently thinking about these guys, Derek Wrights, who are dating, less, socializing,
less leaving their homes, less, filling their media with more
porn and betting parlays. They seem to prefer the financial
discomfort of losing a bet to the social anxiety being
rejected on a date. They find intimacy scary and gambling exciting,

(06:05):
et cetera, et cetera. Monks and casinos. The title of
his piece, that's troubling, wait till ai hit yeah, Oh
my god. And then on that topic, Jeff Blair for
The National Review, he's talking about the the woke right,
if you will, the Tucker, Nick Foantes Groyper's crown, And

(06:26):
how about thirty to forty percent of the young people
who are like activists climbers in Washington, d c. On
the right are probably in that crowd. They think it's
just under a third to forty percent who hold the
views that are I will quote characterizable beyond anti Semitism
as a general belief that the system as it exists

(06:48):
is corrupt and must be leveled along with whoever is
perceived as having been its beneficiaries. Blah blah blah. And
he says that's.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
The part of the whole movement that worries me, and
I think is paying attention to I don't know that.
You know, we're Germany in nineteen thirty three, that anti
semitism is going to become a leading But just.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
The boy they're close in Canada. More on that another time, but.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
Just the the system stacked against me, combined with scared
to talk to other human beings, just that all that
anger from that. You're just unhappy with life. And how
would you not be unhappy? You got no friends, you're
not have any sex, you have never been in a relationship,
and you don't have a job. That makes for a
really angry group of people that can be a pretty

(07:36):
powerful voting block.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, yeah, And then he points out the anti semitism
on the young right comes despite all the various guys
and poses, from a much deeper and darker impulse, the
reflexive rejection of pieties or you know, the sacred thoughts
of the past. For people scolded their entire lives to
think that X or why was racist or sexist, that

(08:02):
boys or girls and vice versa, and white males are
the engine of civilizational evil. It is profoundly unsurprising to
see a pendulum swinging backlash in an equally ignorant opposite direction.
Nihilism is contagious and it spreads quickly.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
Yeah, I did bring that up when I was watching
the Nick Puentes on Tucker Carlson. The thing that I thought, okay,
I could see this as an entry way into people
who agree with you, especially if you're a white male,
is weird. The only crowd that are not allowed to
believe more of us is good, and we're being attacked

(08:38):
from all sides. Every single other crowd gets to say,
there'd this board would be better with more this school,
this whatever, this company would be better with more of me, But.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Not if you're a white male, right exactly, And then
he makes an excellent point. Uh blah blah blah blah bah.
It's not just the young dissolution right that's looking for
scapegoats to blame either. As the Groyper debate has raged
during the past few weeks, the thought has lurked in
the back of my mind. This explains Zorn Mumdani too.
The connective thread between them isn't anti Semitism, although the

(09:10):
overlap is obvious. I believe that anti Semitism is symptomatic
of a greater disease, a shared generational ferment societies have
nots raging against societies haves, with the same poison coursing
through the veins of both radical wings of our modern politics.
And he gets into, you know, the young people in Seattle,

(09:31):
in New York can't pay their bills, cannot save, see
all of their expected career paths being swiftly foreclosed on,
little optimism about the future. And let's see where is
the part that he gets into. And this is something
I've read about in the past and kind of forgotten about.
But the overproduction of elites. You have way more people
with degrees and advanced degrees being churned out of the

(09:53):
universities than could possibly occupy the elite seats of power.
He's writing a mount in Washington, d C. But that
exists in Washington, DC, for instance, there's just like five to.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
One, which kind of means the term elite would would
need a different word, right if if you don't need
very many of them. Elite I'm not sure is the
right word elite kind of I don't know, elite athletes,
I don't know. Seems like it would have to be

(10:27):
a commodity to the that it's good to have a
lot of.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, I was going
to use a metaphor, but I'm not sure it's a
good one anyway, So I found that that's super interesting.
And then I'll end with this, And it's a really
interesting take from the folks at the Federalists, who about
half the time I think have lost their minds. But
I don't know Kelsey Ballerini. I guess she's a big

(10:54):
deal musician, singer. She was a judge on The Voice Okay,
has had a bunch of big hits. Her new big hit,
which is accompanied by a video, is called uh, I
sit in Parks. Oh, I've heard about this, Yeah, yeah,

(11:16):
about a couple of weeks ago. When I came across this,
she's she's seen through a nostalgic, warm filter, swinging on
a playground as quick clips of children playing with bubbles
or children being embraced by their parents cut in and out.
I sit in parks. It breaks my heart, she says
in the opening line. She and then talks about, you
know her, what she's achieved a little bit in the verse,

(11:37):
but by the end of the day quote, all she
can see is just how far I am from the
things that I want. Dad brought the picnic, Mom brought
the sunscreen. The kids are laughing and crying on red Swings.
We look about the same age, but we don't have
the same Saturdays. And she wonders if she missed the mark,
adding it's her fault for chasing things. A body clock

(12:00):
doesn't wait for h Yet she seems hesitant to let
go of the lifestyle that put her in the position
in the first place. The album's, the tours, the awards,
blah blah blah, or what I wanted, what I got,
she says. In the course to cope, she'll keep well,
I'll just read the chorus. So I sit in Parks,
sunglasses dark, and I hit the vape hallucinated nursery with

(12:21):
Noah's ark. They lay on a blanket and g di it.
He loves her. I wonder if she wants my freedom
like I want to be a mother, like Rolling Stone says,
I'm on the right road. So I refill my lexa
pro thinking what's the main takeaway from this screed? Somebody's
actually admitted that I've been chasing things the world told

(12:44):
me to chase, and all I really want to do
is have a family. I've heard that a lot from people. Yeah,
me too. Why would you let corporate America tell you
what life to live?

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yeh, all your friends are doing it.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
It's the beauty of being an I kund of classed.

Speaker 4 (13:02):
Well, when we go to war with Venezuela, we won't
have time to think about this sort of stuff. Are
we going to war with Venezuela? We got the latest
on that we've got a quarter of the US Navy
there now more on that coming up. Stay here, guys.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
The big news in Washington today the House officially voted
to end the government shutdown. Right now, people who were
hoping us keept.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Flying home for Thanksgiving, We're like, well, I guess I'm
back to drawing and extra line in my COVID tests.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Here we go.

Speaker 4 (13:38):
Never liked those jokes about how the holiday season is
trying to stay away from your family because you hate
them so much? Was that actually your life? I know
it's not for Jimmy Fallon, because I know something about
his life.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Why would it be common enough that he thinks that's
a good joke, I guess, or end or maybe those
of us with happy families who were happy to see
think Yeah, that's too bad. But yeah, that's cynical, unfunny.

Speaker 4 (14:02):
I don't know have I ever talked about Universe twenty
five before. I feel like we probably have, But we've
been doing this radio show for thirty years, so it
could have been a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Project twenty twenty five right from Heritage.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
Universe twenty five. It's a famous mouse experiment from back.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
In the day. Oh right, yeah, go aheads.

Speaker 4 (14:22):
Between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy two, he studied
these mice. He created a mouse utopia experiment to see
what would happen. I think you'll see parallels to today
with these mice. The basic setup is the utopia. Utopia
included an enclosure with unlimited food, water, nesting materials, and

(14:46):
no predators for these mice. He started with four breeding
pairs and then let the population develop naturally again food, weather, food,
water protection, all your basic needs met and no predators.
The population initially got WiFi fast streaming exactly cool Amazon Prime. Yes,
the population initially grew exponentially, but at around day five

(15:08):
sixty the growth began to slow dramatically.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
They stopped having little mice babies at a certain point.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
Despite having physical space and resources, the mice developed behavioral pathologies.
Dominant males became extremely aggressive. Subordinate males withdrew completely. Some mice,
mostly males, completely disengaged from social life, only eating, drinking,
and grooming themselves obsessively. Female mice abandoned their young and
infant mortality skyrocketed. Wow, young mice never learned social and

(15:41):
mating behaviors from their parents, if you will, and by
six day six hundred, no new mice were being born
in the population eventually went extinct. Now, as it says
here in the summary, people are not mice and mice
are not people.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
There point, come on, now, Yeah, I have known a
handful of people who were completely taken care of trust
fund kids, that sort of person, and the vast majority
of those stories do not have joyful endings or descriptions.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
No, but this is what I've been saying about. We
stopped having babies. This is what I've been thinking of
first world countries. We don't have any threats, We were
not going to be invaded by another country, and we
have our basic need needs met. Even if you got
people marching in the street because their house is not
as big as their neighbor's house or whatever it is,
our basic needs of being met, and we're stopping getting together.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
We're starting to act weird. True. Yeah, well, and it's
absolutely known scientifically that struggle raises your testosterone and victory
raises it even more. We're meant to strive and fight,
whether the literal battles or metaphorical battles. We're not meant
to lay around to be comfortable as beings. Interesting. Okay,

(17:04):
I've got a jiv yet informative new feature coming up.
You won't want to miss it. Wel Armstrong and Getty
in the.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Bathroom here on the floor we were occupying here at
the radio station, the stall where people do their you know,
your main business. There's been no soap in there for
like a month. Oh it's longer than that to wash
your hands, and that ain't cool. So Hanson and I

(17:35):
were just discussing it. Maybe we should bring bars of
soap and set him on the counter. It kind of
a hint, like we've started to bring our own bar
from home for some reason. He suggested lava. Do you
remember lava soap?

Speaker 5 (17:45):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (17:46):
It was gray and it had the grit in it
to like, oh yeah, do they still make that. I
think bars a lava soap.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Would be perfect. One of my friend's dad was an
actual auto mechanic and he did a lot of work
in his own garage. I think that's where I ran
in a lava soap.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
It was good for that sort of thing. I don't
know if it was so good for like a ten
year old to scrub their body in the shower.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Well, we're a lot of bleeding from the hands, yeah, bulliating,
exfoliating exactly. So a lot of great stuff to squeeze
in this hour. But first, from the intormation mind of
Joe Getty, that brought you. I do occasionally refer to
myself in the third person, that brought you a look
in the China cabinet. And what was one of the

(18:28):
other ones, Michael, I can't remember if there was another one.
There have been other ones. Well, it's time for the
euro Bureau.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, we're still working on the introduction for the euro Bureau.
And that was low rent. How are you kidding? That
was free sign on the side of the road. I
was limited on supplies. Yeah, send time. So a couple
of really interesting stories from Europe, and I tell you
what and a lot of you agree with this. I

(19:06):
feel like watching my beloved Republic in our various challenges
and increasing socialism and debt and the rest of it.
It's a slow motion car crash. I mean, the end
of this is so incredibly predictable. We become France. It's
the Francification of the United States. Oh oh damn it
that reminds me. I'm so pleased with this, I can't

(19:29):
stand it. The new T shirt at the Armstrong and
Getty superstore is simply on a lovely dark blue background,
although you could probably get it in all sorts of colors.
Ruin the entire Country, Newsome, twenty twenty eight. I like
it looks great cal Unicornians and those who sympathize with

(19:50):
cal Unicoreans carolccordians. Ruin the entire Country, Newsome twenty twenty eight. Anyway,
So we all heard about the breaking at the Louver,
right We're going to start in France and the euro Bureau.
We all heard about that right in the Crown Jewels
and all sorts of stuff. Much less reported here on
the other side of the Atlantic is the fact that

(20:11):
that was one of nine major robberies of museums over
the past year in France. Didn't know that nine six
French museums have been hit since the beginning of September alone,
one of them twice. And they name a bunch of
museums I've never heard of, but are important, I guess,
including the stately Museum of Natural History. Few of the

(20:33):
stolen works, including precious porcelain and gold crosses and statues,
have been recovered. As the robberies pile up, French officials
are waking up to an unsettling reality. France is a
wash in cultural treasures, but has minimal resources to protect
them from thieves.

Speaker 4 (20:48):
Well, I was going to say, after the fourth or
fifth museums hit, I would have thought somebody said, hey,
is the Loop protected?

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I mean, that's like our most famous museum. Successive governments
have collapsed over efforts to rein in the country's budget deficit,
leaving the state to cash strap to invest in meaningful
security upgrades for the more than twelve hundred sites classified
by the government as museums, and Macrohn's administration is scrambling
to take a census of the country's most valuable artwork

(21:17):
to nowhere to put their few pennies. But you've got
a rising criminal class and absolutely no budget, no will
to protect the country. It's just sad. Then you have
this from the Wall Street Journal. Britain is preparing tens
of billions of dollars twelve pounds but in new taxes. Again.

(21:39):
The Labor government is ready to a is readying its
second major tax increase in two years, as it tries
to avoid spooking markets, specifically bond markets, because it's taking
on so much debt and it's killing the economy. And
this is a good description. The UK has long been
torn between two mutually exclusive desires. Voters want European levels

(22:03):
of welfare with American levels of taxation. Of course, we're
over spending our taxation too, but by accident design, the
debate is slowly being resolved in the direction of higher
taxes as Britain's labor government, which can't leave office soon enough,
prepares its second major tax increase in as many years.
The UK is confronting an issue, facing growing numbers of

(22:24):
rich nations, how to pay for rising government spending without
taking on evermore debt and spooking financial markets. So they've
got this giant tax increase coming to narrow the budget deficit,
which is at about six percent of their GDP. The
biggest surrounds a tax increases since the mid seventies. The
increases will likely further constrain Britain's anemic economic growth.

Speaker 4 (22:49):
A lot of that had to do with their net
zero policies around climate change, which were crazy, absolutely true.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, those two things are just crushing the economy. So
the latest increase will raise the UK's tax rate to
about thirty eight percent of annual economic output, highest level ever,
compares with about thirty percent in the nineties and the
low thirties and twenty tens. That puts the UK comfortably
ahead of the US, which is in the mid twenties,
although spending ourselves into oblivion, but still short of Germany

(23:18):
and France. The pitfalls of such an approach are evident
in Germany, which taxes wages more than any other rich
country except Belgium, taking almost fifty percent of employees gross
wages on average. While that approach has helped Germany balance
budgets in the past, is it is eaten into Germans
purchasing power, depressing consumption, and Germany that at the end

(23:42):
of the Cold War slashed spending on defense and poured
the difference into the welfare. State now needs desperately to
spend more on the military and shore up crumbling infrastructure,
from potholed roads to a decrepit rail system, but taxes
are already very high and the growth is too weak
to fund new taxes. Slow motion car wreck. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
I took in a podcast about Britain's financial situation several
weeks ago, and it was striking the whole time is
listening to it.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
I kept thinking, why isn't this a bigger story?

Speaker 4 (24:16):
Why don't more people know this in the United States,
that Britain has just ruined their economy and then there's
no easy way out, and they are like our future.
We can look at them and we're gonna be able
to see what it's going to be like for us.
I know, the world's most predictable disaster. It's so frustrating,
and you didn't tune in to be frustrated, but I mean,

(24:38):
it's just somebody comes up here on the street and says,
I really like fentanyl. I'm taking more fentanyl every day,
and you're thinking, well, you're going to o D and die.
In fact, one hundred percent of people who you said
that to. It's like you're going to O, D and die,
but they just keep doing it. I feel like that's
the situation we're in now because the average voter has

(24:59):
no grasp And this is true in France, it's true
in Britain, it's true in the US has no grasp
of the concept of fiscal restraint. They you know, it's
too easy to sell them on. You deserve handouts. I
just you know, I don't know how legitimate this quote is.
I've seen it a million times old. The Scottish guy
that when a people realizes it can vote itself money themselves,

(25:23):
money from the treasury, a republic is doomed. I'm not
sure there's any turning it around short of a cataclysm.
But you don't bounce back from every cataclysm. It was like,
you're only half serious. God send me a warning, so
I get really serious about getting healthy, like a minor
heart attack, right, I ask God to give me a

(25:45):
minor heart attack so I would start eating better.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Well, your genius, Jack, your unappreciated genius is that's a
perfect metaphor for the United States. The only thing that
will stop us wolfing down bacon drinking a quarter of
urban a night and smoking four packs a day is
a fiscal heart attack, the problem being you don't always

(26:08):
survive them. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Well, the pandemic was quite the cataclysm, and it didn't
make things better anywhere.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, Oh, you know, that's funny. And when we were
talking a couple segments ago, whenever it was about young
people and young men and their anger and anti Semitism
and that whole stew the writer that I was quoting
mentioned how bitterly painful the COVID shutdowns were for young

(26:38):
men in so many ways, and it drove them away
from girlfriends and real friends and jobs and striving and
pride in being a man. Blah blah blah. The COVID shutdowns,
which were specifically opposite of what all the health organizations
around the world had said they would do when there

(26:59):
was a pandemic. They abandon all their plans and panicked
and shut them down and kept the kids out of
schools the rest of it. I don't think we've reckoned
with a third of the damage that did. No definitely
incredible evil that perpetrated. I'll be saying that until I'm
lowered into my grave.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
Maybe the cataclysm that gets our attention is war with Venezuela.
We've got a quarter of the Navy there now we're
ready to take on the Venezuelans.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
They've called her what.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Purpose now they've called it. I haven't gotten around with that.
Probably just stopped the drug flow allegedly, right.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Uh, Columbia's like cool, we'll take the business some of
the details on that, among other things on the way.
Stay here.

Speaker 5 (27:44):
The Ghiro bureau straight from our European yous desk Okay,
that was Joe Getty's euro bureau.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
That was so horrible it was great. Oh Man Armstrong.

Speaker 6 (28:04):
Heetti America has blown up nineteen small boats off Venezuela's coast,
and now the Navy's largest aircraft carrier is arriving. These
Venezuelan military exercises broadcast on State TV suggests the threat
felt by its leader Nicholas Maduro.

Speaker 4 (28:22):
So that's the CBS News version of what's going on
with Venezuela. As you all know, well, as you voted
for it was a year and three days ago. You
went to the polls and voted for Donald Trump because
you wanted to go to war with Venezuela. And you
couldn't wait another minute. I don't recall that specifically, but
go on anyway anyway, ohing too, Yeah, exactly, Thanks Ben.

(28:46):
Kind of seems like maybe we're headed that way. Here's
Jennifer Griffin and her report on this from Fox.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
As the US military build up in the Caribbean continues,
Venezuela's defense minister ordered the countries two hundred thousand soldiers
to prepare for war.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
If they come to touch Venezuela.

Speaker 7 (29:03):
There you will see a people determined to defend this
homeland to the death.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Colombia has halted the intelligence it will share with the US.
This comes a day after Fox News confirmed reports that
the UK began limiting some of the intelligence it shares
with the US in the Caribbean. Both countries have concerns
US military strikes against nineteen boats, killing seventy five people
contravene international law and amount to extra judicial killings of civilians.

Speaker 7 (29:31):
We have very strong partnerships with the UK and other countries. Again,
nothing has changed or happened that is impeded in any
way our ability to do what we're doing, nor are
we asking anyone to help us with what we're doing
in any realm and that includes military.

Speaker 4 (29:43):
Okay, I didn't quite understand that, But then it's about
blasting those people in the boats. The UK and Colombia
don't want to be any part of that. By the way,
a court ruled, whatever court ruled yesterday, that none of
these military personnel would be on the hook for the
strikes on the people in the boats. If it's decided

(30:05):
that we shouldn't be doing this, they're not legally on
the hook.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad. I understand the concept of you're
not obligated to execute an illegal order, But I mean
if it's such a gray area that like the entire
country is arguing about how justified it is, Yeah, you
can't no, no, no, the military can't hold people responsible
for following off.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
Well, the military would completely break down if you were
on the hook for you couldn't do anything before you
ran it by a lawyer.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Well yeah, if there were, for instance, controversial rules of engagement,
Hello Afghanistan, guys would be thinking, I don't want to
get sued, So just how much firepower do we have
in the region.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest warship, is
now in Latin American waters after being ordered by the
Pentagon to leave its deployment to the Middle East ahead
of schedule. The aircraft carrier Strike Group, with nearly four
thousand sailors on board and dozens of warplanes, is being
escort by three guided missile destroyers. Twenty four percent of

(31:03):
all US Navy vessels are now deployed to US Southern Command.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
That's quite the armada. Well, we've got to respond to
the threats of Jamaica to the Bahamas with their foreign ways.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
I don't have a strong opinion on this story. I'm
sure we'd hate to see any Marines die landing on
the beach in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
I hope that's not what's going to happen. Yeah, I've
got to admit I usually have a pretty good guess
as to the end game of this sort of thing.
I don't in this case. I get, well, we're pressuring
Majuro and putting, you know, the squeeze on his regime
because we want him out. It's time for regime change.
But we're not going to invade or decapitate.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
The only thing that makes sense is what you said
the other day. If we're putting so much firepower in
the region that if there is an opposition group that's
ever thought of, you know, pulling a revolution or a
coup of some sort, they would feel like the United
States is there to back us up immediately if we
do this, right, give. The problem with regime change in
Venezuela is that the military seems very.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Cohesive and very loyal to Maduro. There have not been
signs of the sort of cracks that you'd hope for.
And yeah, I guess I'd forgotten i'd said that, But
it was a good point, Joe, that if any of
the generals are thinking, now's our chance to get rid
of this fat bum, the US is saying we'll have
your back.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
So different topic, but maybe this is tied in a
little bit. Maybe you've heard some of the polling on
Donald Trump, where it's not really that good right now
shows it only thirty three percent of US adults approve
of the job he is doing. That's from the latest
Associated Press Nork poll. Now, every president goes through rough spots.
I remember when Barack Obama is in the low thirties

(32:48):
shortly after Obamacare.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
And he bounced back. So yeah, they go.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
Up, they go down, but thirty three percent approval for
Donald Trump right now. He was riding pretty high there
the first several months. He's only been president for what
nine months? Wow, I can't take for nine months of
a whole time strong enough. The numbers going down, driven
in large part by a decline and approval among Republicans

(33:14):
and independents. He had been rock solid among Republicans all
through his first term and through the first couple of
months of this term. According to the survey, only about
two thirds of Republicans now approve of Trump's government management,
down from eighty one percent in March and like ninety
percent at the beginning, down to two thirds of Republican

(33:34):
support and independence have gone from thirty eight to twenty
five twenty five.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Oof. Ah, that's low. U. How many bonus points does
Trump get among Republicans? Because the left is so wacky
and the and the attacks are so constant. Even if
I don't like what Trump's doing, I'm gonna say I
do despite the left in the media.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, I don't know if that has you would do
with approval ratings. As we've seen, he's gotten elected president
twice at almost three times with very low ratings. Because
when it comes down to the binary choice alternative. You
think and still prefer this over that?

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, I just I guess the bottom line of what
I'm wondering is what's the actual approval rating among Republicans.
You think it's well, they're not talking to some polster. Yeah,
I can almost guarantee it's lower. I just don't know
how much lower it is.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
I know it's the word of the week, but I
think this affordability thing is a huge problem, and I
don't know how you're going to make people feel like
things are more affordable.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
The great Man of the common touch, billionaire Donald Trump,
practically miraculous how he connects with middle class working people,
has been saying, no, you shouldn't be worried every time
you go grocery shopping. The economy's great. I'm not getting
enough credit. Oh man. He's got to stop saying that
stuff like yesterday. Yeah, no kidding. So we do lots

(34:59):
of hours of this. Here your radio rodeo twenty hours
a week.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
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Speaker 2 (35:15):
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