May 6, 2025 • 35 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- The Conclave...
- Newarks air traffic woes...
- Tribalism run amok.
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty arm Strong
and Jetty and now he Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Were just under forty eight hours until the first votes
are cast. The most powerful men of the Catholic Church
are focusing their minds and mostly keeping their silence.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Eminence. Hello, what I said? How is today's meeting? Eminence?
How is today's meeting?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's the daily dance of the cardinals and the journalists.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
But the countdown is on.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
How many of these journalists give a crap who the
next pope is?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And I don't know, they're told to go cover it. I
guess is this touch with this?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I feel like I care more about the Catholic Church
than the average person I know, and I'm not hanging
on every moment.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, I'm not contemptuous of it, but like, I don't
care who wins the NBA Final, but people enjoy it,
so that's okay.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I do care who's the NBA Final. I'm rooting for
the next I think, assuming the Warriors. I'm a Warrior
band wagon wagon jumper, fake fan, That's what I say.
In the brunts and jersey today, you're the pope a
bandwagon jumpin' Well, I was I gonna say, but it's
got a bit of a combination of the met Gala
and royal family in terms of covering it, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's just that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, certainly the
direction doctrine wise of the Catholic Church going forward has
significance to mankind. I just definitely I don't have the
bandwidth to understand who these people are and root for
one thing or another. Just let me know who you
choose to be pope and I'll go from there. I
(01:45):
thought this was funny, though funny interesting. ABC News last
night was breathless and taking it one hundred percent seriously
and looking desperately for clues in the next Climichael.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
But the Archbishop of Jakarta, Indonesia did stop to offer
a clue. He's one of the one hundred and thirty
three cardinals who will choose the next pope.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
What kind of leader would you like? You can't hear
the rest of it. He's murmuring, but he's saying, Francis's
name has come up many times. What does that mean? Simplicity?
Simplicity of doctrine of lifestyle and then he wandered off
(02:25):
and ABC News they teased like four times a clue
from one of the archbishops. I just thought the whole
thing was a little overcooked. And I believe they overegged
the pudding.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
And if you found out today who the Pope was
going to be two days before they announced it, what
would you do with that information?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And markets I'd attempt to profit coming up some hilarious
and bizarre historical notes from the conclaves back in history.
But first, what about the pope meme put out by
the White House? S Dounnell J. Trump in Pope garb
Ai generated? What of that? Ninety three? Michael, Yes, ma'am,
(03:08):
thank you Cathic. We're not so happy about the image
of you looking like the Pope. Oh I see.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
You mean they can't take a joke. You don't mean
the Catholics, you mean the fake news media, not.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The Catholics loved it. I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the
Pope and they put it out on the internet.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
That's not me that did it. I have no idea
where it came from. Maybe it was Ai maybe yeah, yeah,
just silly. Okay, we're outraged or pretending to be anyway,
because yeah, there are various Catholic officials and said I
didn't think that was appropriate, and some have said that
was really funny. So we're fine. The world is fine.
(03:49):
We have like one thousand and seventy seven bigger problems
than that. Why don't we concentrate on those? I thought
this was amazing looking back to you yesteryear, and when
I'm talking really yesteryear. The year twelve sixty eight, jack, Wow.
The conclave in the town of Faturbo near Rome was
the longest in history. The cardinals were bitterly divided over
(04:12):
the next pope. The Italian prelates wanted an Italian pope,
the French wanted a Frenchman, and neither side budged for
nearly three years. Wow. So to break the deadlock, the
local population I guess they were sick of all the
cardinals in town or something, sucking up the good hotel
rooms and crowding the restaurants, like having the Super Bowl
(04:33):
in your town for three straight years. I don't know.
They locked the cardinals in the hall of the papal palace,
reduced their diet to bread and water, and bricked up
all the windows. That's the way they even Oh, they
even removed the roof, which they said was to allow
the Holy Spirit direct access, but in truth was to
(04:56):
expose all the cardinals to the elements, so they'd be
so miserable they'd come to a damned decision. That conclave
was the longest in history, and it actually gave papal
elections their modern name comclave Latin for with key. Well,
back meeting, you're not coming out of there until we
let you.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Back in the day, though, who the pope was and
from what country, and that carried so much important economical, political, political,
and military power.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I mean it was, you know, it's a big deal.
That's not the case now. So the eventual winner, Pope
Gregory the tenth, sought to avoid a repeat by imposing
some ground rules that still governed conclaves today from the
year twelve sixty well seventy one, I guess, including strict seclusion,
daily voting, and some degree of discomfort and roof. This
(05:45):
is not going to be one of those junkets like
your local political hacks go on to Hawaii where they
go to like one meeting a day for an hour
and spend the rest of the time on the beach. No,
it's the kind of the opposite. A couple more tales
from history from the book behind Locked Door is a
history of papal elections. Let's see, that's only mildly interesting.
(06:12):
In early Christianity, this election of the Bishop of Rome
was a fluid process, often involving local clergy, powerful notables,
and popular acclaim. Cardinals didn't even exist until the eleventh century.
Initially there were only twelve of them. I tell you
what one thing to know, because there is power in
the papacy, whether it's you know, it's kind of the
(06:34):
modern version, which is still pretty significant, or the more
ancient version, which was ginormous power political, financial, economic, et CETERA.
First conclave in the Sistine Chapel took place in fourteen
ninety two, the year Christopher Columbus launched the debut election
(06:55):
in the chapel, marred by scandal. Jack Pope Alexander, the
sixth member of the wealthy Borgia family, known for his
lavish lifestyle and many children Wait a minute, many children, yeah,
secured his election by bribing fellow cardinals with land money,
and lucrative positions in the Vatican's bureaucracy. There you go, yeah,
(07:16):
so uh anyway, uh so oh one more note. After
the Assistine Chapel became the fixed setting for conclaves, cardinals
shared sleeping quarters in what used to be Alexander the
Fourth's Fresco department in the Vatican. It was not comfortable.
It's mean he has six cardinals shared a room with
makeshift partitions for privacy, bathrooms were few, and cardinals were
given commode chairs essentially wooden potties to keep next to
(07:37):
their beds. It's a seat with a hole. When cardinals
were voting in the Sistine Chapel, staff were coming to
clean and prepare the rooms for the day after clean
and dumping their their their bed pots or what any
of chamber pots. Holy it was a very hot year.
Let's just say they didn't enjoy staying in these rooms,
said the historian. You you is right, Jack. At least
(08:00):
they're not locking them in a church and breaking up
all the windows, taking the road. You're staying in there
for you anyway, There you have the conclave, which is
apparently going on now or something. Wake me when it's over.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
A combination of the Met Gala and the royal family
and the Kardashians.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
You know, I did actually scroll through the inevitable New
York Times incredibly long photo gallery of the Met Gala.
I am horribly embarrassed and connected and celebrities go do
what they do whatever. It was horribly embarrassed to say
that I did the same. I can't.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And while I was doing it, I thought, why are
you thumbing through pictures of people you don't even know
who they are to see what they wore, which you
don't care about, to an event you despise. Why are
you doing this? But I did it anyway.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Earlier in the show, I compared it to the capitol
in the Hunger Games movies, and Jack has not seen those.
Number one, absolutely appropriate for your teenage boys. It's shockingly
brutal for a PG thirteen movie. It's not horribly graphic,
but the themes are very, very mature. It's about a republic,
(09:15):
if you will and stop me if this sounds familiar, friends,
a republic where the capital has become so rich and
so isolated from the lives of normal people. It's become
utterly divorced from them. Abusive of them exploits their riches,
and the people, the denizens of that capital, dress an
(09:35):
incredibly elaborate showy self regarding fashion and congratulate each other
for being a superior race of human beings. Again, if
that sounds oddly familiar, I'll give you a second and
make the connection in your own brain.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, well, that's what's interesting about something like the met galawhich,
of course, happens in New York City. So New York City,
which is as lefty and progressive as you can get
as a city in America. And you know, AOC got
so much attention for eat the rich on her dress
at the metal. They aren't doing this in Omaha. They
aren't dressing up like this and owing and aweing over
who's there and in their clothes. They're doing it in
(10:09):
the progressive town. Doesn't that strike you as odd that
you're fawning over, you know, conspicuous consumption and wealth and
fame in your progressive areas where they don't do it
in the conservative Doesn't that seem backwards to you somehow?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, it all to you, But they're utterly without, you know,
self perception. Progressivism wants to gather as much power as
it conceivably can, and then direct everything. Who gets into schools,
how the economy works, who can say what, who gets
to keep their job, who teaches at my university. We
(10:46):
want to control everything absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I started reading Joonah Goldberg's book from years ago, Liberal Fascism,
last night, and that's exactly what he talks about. Fascism
is way more of a left thing than it is
a right thing. How it got tagged is a right thing?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I don't know. Yeah, you know, there's a great quote.
I think it's I think it's Ein rand Er, somebody
quoting her, thinking that the difference between communism and fascism
is absolutely negligible. They both believe in subjugating the individual
rights of human beings to serve the state, which is
(11:21):
always the party in charge those with power there. You know,
they have like interesting doctrinal differences, but to the average
human being being trampled, those doctrinal differences don't amount to
a hill of beans. It's all about exploiting the working
people and trampling on individual rights.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, one of the main points early is that the
term fascism is almost useless. So here we are throwing
it around much to come stay here.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
And finally, a Brazilian nun died last week, just several
weeks shy of our one hundred and seventeenth birthday.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There's a lesson for everyone there. Always pack your own shoot.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Funny, it would be a dying joke there, Michael, because
that's what I was going to talk about, is I
don't think I'm going to reach my next birthday with
this disease I've got. I'm a sickly man and I'm
not long for this world. Actually got some texts from
people who have got this or they've got family members
who gotten it, and I hope this is some news
you can use rather than me just complaining about being.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Sick for so long.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
There's some sort of cold something going around that lasts
way longer than these things usually.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
At last, we like, we got this text. This is
for Jack.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I'm a healthy woman, rarely sick, but I've had the
same thing that you have. It's taken me seven weeks
for my cough to leave. The doctor said the cough
with last six to eight weeks. He was right, wow,
And the doctors told me, and the doctors are struggling
with it because everybody's naturally, you know, calling them up
after a month or a month and a half and saying,
what's the.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Deal, Why do I still feel so crappy?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
And Doctor's having to say it's just something that's going
around that takes like two months to kick.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So I don't know what to do with that information.
The Uri Djore upper respiratory infection. Is doctor Fauci behind it?
Has he been working in some secret lab in the
congo or something gain a function.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I haven't read a word about this, and I'm surprised
I haven't. It's that it's not some mutant strain of
something that combined with something, or our immune systems got
affected or something. Doesn't seem odd that all of a
sudden we've got some two month cold that is hanging around.
It doesn't feel like anything else I've ever had in
my life. Yeah, we got on the topic of last
(13:47):
words earlier, as I think I might. I was worried
that I'm going to die during the show and my
last words are going to be coming up next details
from the Diddy trial, and then I'll die and those
will be my last words.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right That would be humiliating.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, a lot of people's last words are similar to
that in that they weren't expecting. You know, some people
have last words laying in bed, knowing they're likely to
be their last words, and they're often very profound or
touching or interesting or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And actually or whether those were actually the last ones,
or if you just agreed with your good bodies, can
you say these are my last words? I'll bet that
happens a lot.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, which is fine because a lot of the last words,
at least on this list that I'm looking to, or
just the last thing you said, Like Benjamin Franklin said
something about I can't get it comfortable in no matter
what I try to do, you know, something like that
his daughter roll over on his side, and I can't
get comfortable no matter how I lay. Well, that's not
a good last word from one of the great wordsmiths
(14:42):
of all time. Agreed, Yeah, Or you get to choose
not literally your last word. That's a silly you know,
I think about it at my advanced stage.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
That's just a silly way to silly thing to even
call it. How about you last message? Yeah, that makes
more sense. Yeah, I mean common. You could be Abraham
Damn Lincoln and your last words might be I need
to pee. I mean, Ryan, what that's going to echo
(15:16):
through the ages? Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, did I already mention the one one of your
great thinkers who said dying is boring? I think that
was George Orwell dying is boring, which I'm.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Sure it is.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I like this one from some murderer that got the
firing squad. Here's probably a horrible person. They said, do
you have any last words? He said, bring me a
bulletproof vest. I'm here all night. Well for the next
five minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I salute you in hell wherever you are, sir. That's funny. Yeah. So,
coming up a couple of governmental issues that I am
going to work diligently to make not dry, not overly dry.
Number one, the air traffic control system in our country
is an embarrassment. Needs to be fixed, and to its credit,
the Trump administration is going to try like hell to
(16:05):
fix it. Also, if you think you understand what medicaid is, weld, yes,
that is the medical aid program for the poor. You
have no idea. It is a gigantic scam, which we
will explain I'm thinking during our three of the show.
(16:25):
And part of the reason it's important to know that
is that as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress
are trying to fix it, they will be accused over
and over again of trying to balance the budget on
the back of the poor and take away people's medicaid benefits,
when that is the polar opposite of what they're trying
to do. That's frustrating. Oh yeah, yeah. Democracy is a
(16:50):
terrible system. It can't work.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
What's going on with Ukraine and Russia. There's the latest
turn on that. Man I Trump is sending him some
of the most advanced air defense systems from Israel to Ukraine.
Now that's interesting, It is interesting. Don't I have no
idea what's going on behind the scenes on that. Neither's
anybody else. Anyway, We've got a lot on the way.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Stay here, Armstrong and Getty growing.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Alarm at Noork's Liberty Airport tonight, ABC News learning air
traffic controllers lost radar and communications with planes packed with
passengers for sixty to ninety seconds last week. A system
wide outage last Monday at a Philadelphia facility that manages
the airspace around Newark Airport caused controllers to lose the
ability to see, hear, or talk to all arriving and
(17:42):
departing aircraft at one of the busiest airports in the country.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Ninety seconds is a long time. Yeah, really shocking. A
one more note on how it unfolded next clip. Then
we'll discuss pilots can be heard learning of the outage
over the radio. I discusshold it approach loss. All the radars.
Three of the core radar screens wet black, and they have.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
No frequency controllers from another tower advising pilots that radio frequencies.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Have failed, and they want you to be advising. They
may not be able to raid our contact to you
because of the radar issues, and they may lose you
on for certain times of when you're applying. I have
a handful of friends and neighbors who are frequent flyers,
business people, and we have agreed number one, air travel
is degenerated significantly in its pleasantness over the last you
(18:32):
know number of years.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Luckily that I won't have to deal with it anymore
because I didn't get the real ID, so it'll no
longer be.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
A problem for me. Hey, it's the curse, that's a
blessing exactly.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And we've also agreed that even when it goes well,
it goes poorly right the air travel these days. So
I thought this was really interesting. I mean, putting aside
that incident, which is terrible, We'll not putting it aside.
Let's just put it over there and we'll talk about it.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board with a great piece
about the America's air traffic fiasco, and they focus on
(19:09):
Newark Airport. And if you've never had the pleasure quote
unquote of flying into Newark, I suggest you never do.
If you're going to New York and Jfkin Laguardi are
booked up, why don't you fly to Bridgeport, Connecticut and
walk into New York City before you go to Newark.
So thousands of flights in and out of Newark in
(19:30):
recent days have been delayed, diverted, or canceled because of
air traffic control failures. And President Trump and his transportations
are actually taking steps to fix this, which we'll talk
about in a minute. But the headaches at Newark began
last Monday when the Philadelphia Air Traffic Control facility what
they were just saying, had equipment malfunctions. So the FAA
(19:52):
finally resolved the technical snaffoos, but flight disruptions persisted because
of a shortage of controllers. How is there a short controllers?
How do we not have I mean, given the priority
that that is, how do we not pay them en
off and treat them well enough to have enough of them?
Bureaucracy is the answer, honestly. But United Airlines on Friday
(20:13):
canceled thirty five daily round trip flights at the airport.
For instance, the CEO said he decided to walk out
by more than twenty percent of the controllers at the site.
Flight delays at Newark averaged four hours on some day.
My god, that was the average, and it continued Monday,
and such delays could be the new normal this summer.
(20:34):
But then they credit Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for at
least acknowledging government is to blame, unlike his Biden predecessor
Pete Buddhage Edge and Edge who blamed airlines well doing
little to nothing to fix long standing problems. Then they
describe what the long standing problems are. And folks in
(20:55):
private enterprise, particularly anybody who leans on tech deals with tech,
you're gonna if you don't already know about this, you're
gonna just be astounded. Congress in twenty oh three. Those
not gifted in the arts of mathematics, it's twenty two
years ago directed the FAA to modernize its systems, so
(21:19):
they started the next gen overhaul, which is set to
be completed in the year twenty thirty. Wow, all you
tech guys and gals are saying the same thing. Whoa whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa whoa. No, No, that's not a thing. You
don't start something in twenty oh three and stick with
it through twenty thirty. You've overhauled the system sixty nine
(21:41):
times in that period, not stuck with the same quote
unquote overhaul that was started in oh three. Well, we're right.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
You're talking about a tech overhaul that started before smartphones existed.
I mean, that's how much technology has changed since night.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
It's like you and your your wife looking at your
three month old child and saying, we need bigger clothes
because the kid is growing fast. Let's study the problem
and will implement a bigger closed plan when he's twenty four.
I mean, your kid's gonna be naked for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah, except clothes don't change that much. The whole tech thing.
Tech has changed so much in that amount of time.
What about tsking they laid out in the beginning is
pointless now.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh yeah, it's utterly irrelevant. So as mister Duffy the
sectrans notes, the FAA literally still uses floppy discs. Does
gen Z even know what those are? Few technicians can
even repair its aging systems, some of which are more
than sixty years old. It's like trying to find some
handyman to fix your Victrola that you inherited from your
(22:48):
great grandma.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
That's got to be pretty funny for a tech guy
to come in and he's never seen a floppy disk,
or maybe even never heard of one.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I'm old, so I've seen them.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
But we did get a number of texts when we
mentioned this earlier that is that on purpose because they're unhackable.
You can't can't hack into floppy discs like you can
every Internet based modern thing.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Well if so, if so, say so. But surely a
thumb drive is a better idea. A not connected to
the Internet and a floppy disc they're both discrete carriers
of data.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
I think you're giving too much credit if you think
it was some on purpose thing.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, please just get lead follow er, get out of
the way. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that
seventy six percent of FAA systems are unsustainable or potentially unsustainable,
which may have quote critical operational impacts on safety and efficiency.
Bloomberg News reports that controllers guiding planes at Newark lost
(23:40):
radio and communications and radar for more than a minute
on Monday, like we were talking about, Luckily there were
no accidents. Boys.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
That has to be just that everybody in the air
during those ninety seconds just went ahead and kept doing
what they are doing. If one person thought, oh boy,
no connection, I better pull up and land after we
get this straightened out, well, then you could have just
had a cascading series of disasters.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah. I don't I have not actually heard anybody describe
what pilots did if they were, you know, two minutes
out from landing, if they were in their final approach,
what did they do? I don't know. But ninety seconds
is a long time.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I mean, you could be from way the hell up
there to on the ground in I guess, oh.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you're going. You know, it's certainly you're
sloan for landing in this scenario, but you're going a
couple hundred miles per hour. Certainly anyway DA or oh
get this. The GAO Government Accountability Office is quote completion
dates for planned investments for systems. It deems quote especially
(24:48):
concerning we're at least six to ten years away. Can
you imagine again it consultants. You get hired by some
I don't know, chain of restaurants or something whatever, some
significant sized local business and they say, hey, we really
need to upgrade our systems, and you tell them, yep,
we're going to need six to ten years. You'd be
(25:10):
hooted out of the place. Now, Technological obsolescence is common
among the federal across the federal bureaucracy because there's no
financial motive to become more efficient singing from Tim Sanderfer's
hymn book here. FAA labor agreements also require the government
to work collaboratively with the Air Traffic Controller union on modernization,
(25:32):
which can delay upgrades or divert staff from their day jobs.
It's much like the ports, where the powerful long shoreman's
union prevent any technological upgrades on. But you know in
that world we're talking about, yeah, the technological stuff involving
the cranes and all that matters. The you know, the
(25:54):
automation matters, but a lot of it's just as silly
as having a human read license plates instead of US scanner.
Just to keep the jobs. But this is the faa
This prevents people from dying in horrible fiery wrecks. The
FAAC says it needs three thousand controllers to be fully staffed,
and shortages are especially acute in the New York City region.
(26:15):
Blah blah blah. Well, he's one thing.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
We keep talking about danger, which I understand, especially if
there was a you know, a blackout there for ninety seconds.
But flying is insanely safe. It's the safest thing I'll
do every time I do it. The hassle part of it, though,
as you mentioned earlier, has gotten exponentially worse. I think
we all go to the airport with the expectation of
(26:37):
a delay now as opposed to that is a you know,
an aberration, that's what you expect. It's somewhat shocking when
you walk up to departure and see that you're actually
leaving when you were supposed to leave.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
One more note, and they go through some of the
labor disagreements with the union, government employee unions are a
force for evil. I understand why they exist, even FDR
thought they should not. As a topic for another day,
but I wanted to get to this part. Americans who
want to become controllers must undergo three to five months
(27:10):
of paid training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City,
followed by a three year apprenticeship at a control facility.
The Obama administration eased standards to boost minority enrollment at
the FAA Academy Affirmative Action FAA DEI. FAA lower standards
have resulted in higher attrition. Half of the students who
(27:31):
enter the academy don't finish their training. It's a lot
like promoting kids who can't hack the elite universities to
the elite universities to improve their numbers, when those kids
would be so much more likely to be happy and
successful at not quite so brutal a facility. The airline
(27:53):
says the FAA could be could better screen applicants and
reduce certification times by thirty percent with more effective training,
including high fidelity simulators. In short, to behave much.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
More like a private enterprise, but three years of training
and in the three year whatever like an internship.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It's like becoming a doctor.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
To be a air traffic controller.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
It's three to five months of paid training and then
a three year apprenticeship. You're an assistant controller. It's you know, well, yeah,
but you are going to hear guaranteed, you're gonna hear
the Secretary of Transportation whose name keeps flitting out of
my head. These a hero to millions. Everybody knows, I'm
(28:36):
Sean Duffy. That's it. You're going to hear him and
Trump talk about how we need to do this, and
you're gonna see Chuck Schumer on the steps of the
Capitol talking about they're trying to undercut a hardworking controllers
with these radical changes that will endanger airline passion because
he's just a slave to the unions.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Wow, that is disturbed. So you pushed a bunch of
people onto that career path who probably thought it pays
how much and whatever, Sure I'll sign up, but you
just can't cut it for whatever reason. To try to
end up with all that's a disparate impact thing that's
not good, right.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Just coming up maybe next hour, trying to squeeze it
in the next hour. It strikes me that these two
things are very much connected. Matthew Countinetti, who's with the
Free Press now, actually listened to all of Trump's address
to the University of Alabama. They're a commencement speech thing.
And Trump went through his ten guiding principles, and one
(29:42):
of them had to do with the need to change
things when they need to be changed, and not be
so enamored with the status quo that you lose your
ability to see what needs to change. I'm paraphrasing a
lot here, but this is a perfect example of that.
Obama Biden. They were not going to say this is
(30:03):
broker fixing it. They would say, ah, let's tweak around
the edges. We don't want to offend this constituency. We
got this union mad at us. That would cost a
lot of money. They're not innovators. And Trump, for all
of you know his quirks that make me insane, Trump
is a guy who will say, Nope, we're getting rid
(30:24):
of this because it doesn't work, and thank goodness, because
it really needs to happen.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Cool Michelle Obama says she's in therapy and reveals why.
As divorce rumors swirl continue to swirl, among other incredibly
unimportant stories we can get to stay with us.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Ture is filling out this written questionnaire saying there may
be graphic and sexually explicit evidence in connection with the case,
and asking if they're anything that would make it difficult
for you to be fair and impartial many perspective. Touris
also saying they recognized the names of other celebrities that might.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Come up at trial. The judge tried to.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Keep things moving, so when the defense asked for a
bathroom break, Colms apologize, saying, sorry, Judge, I'm a little
nervous today. His lawyers are aiming to convince the jury
the government is trying to police consensual sex by a
swinger who they say invited others into his bedroom.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Consensual sex. I'm just a swinger. I invited people to
my bedroom. Is that what invitations are out of bounds?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Now? Why is the government trying to criminalize my freewheeling lifestyle? Right?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Just because your vanilla doesn't mean that I have to be.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Sure I'd beaten, kick women and drug people and threaten
them and transport them across the state lines, which doesn't
trouble me. I've been transported across state lines and I
came out fine. But that video, that video is what's
going to do him.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
In the video of him dragging that, I mean once
you either are a guy who can do that or
you're not all right. And you know that's that speaks volumes,
And most of the jurors asked yesterday said they had
seen that video.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah. Yeah, if you are being accused of brutality and
can watch brutality, yeah, that's gonna help convict you. Yeah,
it kind of hurts the hole.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I'm not the kind of guy that would ever do
that if they've got a video of you doing that.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
But again, as I've said many times, wait till the
defense takes its shot, because that can really change perceptions.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Update on that Pittsburgh Pirate fan who did a summersault onto.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
The field last week.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Took us a couple of days to get the information
that he was had taken off his shirt and poured
beer on his head.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
While the Pirates were rallying, Yes, very excited before he rolled.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Out of his seat onto the field, so it seemed
that exuberant partying may have played a role.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Authorities believe alcohol was involved as the operative phraser.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Twenty year old Caven Markwood took his first depths yesterday. Yeah,
he broke his neck, his back and his collar bone.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Oh, had to be some brain injury there too, huh.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
They haven't said anything about that. They're doing a GoFundMe
to try to help pay his medical bills. But you know,
and it's nice, you know. I mean, man, there's a
lot of charities out there. There are a lot of
charities out there that need money. And guy who strips
off his shirt, pours pier on his head and tumbles
onto the field.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Choose your charity dollars, how you want to spend him.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
But we've got to discuss think about whether we want
to do this. There's a story out there this gal
was dropping in bombs in a park and it went viral.
She's defiant in the video, and she was docked and
(34:00):
exposed and berated blah blah blah by progressive types. In return,
the far right has come to her aid and she's
getting close to a million dollars on her not GoFundMe,
but a similar page. We become so tribal. If they
are against somebody, we are with her, at least in
(34:26):
some quarters. It's a troubling, troubling tale of modern tribalism.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
I don't like doxing almost never. But then you're donating money.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
To this cost. Yeah, she was dropping n bombs on
a child. Somebody called her on it. But should you
that's bad behavior?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
But should the world then unite and make sure she
can't work ever again in her life.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
And run her out of her home? Yeah, I'm not
saying yeah, I'm saying yes, that is the case.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Some people refer to that sort of thing, dosing a
woman like that, the woke right doing the same thing
that the Wolke left was doing.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
For so long. Right, right, but now but now she's
going to become wealthy, right response right? Yeah, why that
is a headspinner, one of the good guys in this story.
You know what, I'll be fishing if you need me,
modern world, I'm worn out again.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
There's a lot of really good charities out there toose carefully,
all right. If you miss a segment, get the podcast
Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty arm Strong
and Jetty and now he Armstrong and Yetty.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Were just under forty eight hours until the first votes
are cast. The most powerful men of the Catholic Church
are focusing their minds and mostly keeping their silence.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Eminence. Hello, what I said? How is today's meeting? Eminence?
How is today's meeting?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's the daily dance of the cardinals and the journalists.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
But the countdown is on.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
How many of these journalists give a crap who the
next pope is?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And I don't know, they're told to go cover it. I
guess is this touch with this?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I feel like I care more about the Catholic Church
than the average person I know, and I'm not hanging
on every moment.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, I'm not contemptuous of it, but like, I don't
care who wins the NBA Final, but people enjoy it,
so that's okay.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I do care who's the NBA Final. I'm rooting for
the next I think, assuming the Warriors. I'm a Warrior
band wagon wagon jumper, fake fan, That's what I say.
In the brunts and jersey today, you're the pope a
bandwagon jumpin' Well, I was I gonna say, but it's
got a bit of a combination of the met Gala
and royal family in terms of covering it, doesn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's just that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, certainly the
direction doctrine wise of the Catholic Church going forward has
significance to mankind. I just definitely I don't have the
bandwidth to understand who these people are and root for
one thing or another. Just let me know who you
choose to be pope and I'll go from there. I
(01:45):
thought this was funny, though funny interesting. ABC News last
night was breathless and taking it one hundred percent seriously
and looking desperately for clues in the next Climichael.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
But the Archbishop of Jakarta, Indonesia did stop to offer
a clue. He's one of the one hundred and thirty
three cardinals who will choose the next pope.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
What kind of leader would you like? You can't hear
the rest of it. He's murmuring, but he's saying, Francis's
name has come up many times. What does that mean? Simplicity?
Simplicity of doctrine of lifestyle and then he wandered off
(02:25):
and ABC News they teased like four times a clue
from one of the archbishops. I just thought the whole
thing was a little overcooked. And I believe they overegged
the pudding.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
And if you found out today who the Pope was
going to be two days before they announced it, what
would you do with that information?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And markets I'd attempt to profit coming up some hilarious
and bizarre historical notes from the conclaves back in history.
But first, what about the pope meme put out by
the White House? S Dounnell J. Trump in Pope garb
Ai generated? What of that? Ninety three? Michael, Yes, ma'am,
(03:08):
thank you Cathic. We're not so happy about the image
of you looking like the Pope. Oh I see.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
You mean they can't take a joke. You don't mean
the Catholics, you mean the fake news media, not.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The Catholics loved it. I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the
Pope and they put it out on the internet.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
That's not me that did it. I have no idea
where it came from. Maybe it was Ai maybe yeah, yeah,
just silly. Okay, we're outraged or pretending to be anyway,
because yeah, there are various Catholic officials and said I
didn't think that was appropriate, and some have said that
was really funny. So we're fine. The world is fine.
(03:49):
We have like one thousand and seventy seven bigger problems
than that. Why don't we concentrate on those? I thought
this was amazing looking back to you yesteryear, and when
I'm talking really yesteryear. The year twelve sixty eight, jack, Wow.
The conclave in the town of Faturbo near Rome was
the longest in history. The cardinals were bitterly divided over
(04:12):
the next pope. The Italian prelates wanted an Italian pope,
the French wanted a Frenchman, and neither side budged for
nearly three years. Wow. So to break the deadlock, the
local population I guess they were sick of all the
cardinals in town or something, sucking up the good hotel
rooms and crowding the restaurants, like having the Super Bowl
(04:33):
in your town for three straight years. I don't know.
They locked the cardinals in the hall of the papal palace,
reduced their diet to bread and water, and bricked up
all the windows. That's the way they even Oh, they
even removed the roof, which they said was to allow
the Holy Spirit direct access, but in truth was to
(04:56):
expose all the cardinals to the elements, so they'd be
so miserable they'd come to a damned decision. That conclave
was the longest in history, and it actually gave papal
elections their modern name comclave Latin for with key. Well,
back meeting, you're not coming out of there until we
let you.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Back in the day, though, who the pope was and
from what country, and that carried so much important economical, political, political,
and military power.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I mean it was, you know, it's a big deal.
That's not the case now. So the eventual winner, Pope
Gregory the tenth, sought to avoid a repeat by imposing
some ground rules that still governed conclaves today from the
year twelve sixty well seventy one, I guess, including strict seclusion,
daily voting, and some degree of discomfort and roof. This
(05:45):
is not going to be one of those junkets like
your local political hacks go on to Hawaii where they
go to like one meeting a day for an hour
and spend the rest of the time on the beach. No,
it's the kind of the opposite. A couple more tales
from history from the book behind Locked Door is a
history of papal elections. Let's see, that's only mildly interesting.
(06:12):
In early Christianity, this election of the Bishop of Rome
was a fluid process, often involving local clergy, powerful notables,
and popular acclaim. Cardinals didn't even exist until the eleventh century.
Initially there were only twelve of them. I tell you
what one thing to know, because there is power in
the papacy, whether it's you know, it's kind of the
(06:34):
modern version, which is still pretty significant, or the more
ancient version, which was ginormous power political, financial, economic, et CETERA.
First conclave in the Sistine Chapel took place in fourteen
ninety two, the year Christopher Columbus launched the debut election
(06:55):
in the chapel, marred by scandal. Jack Pope Alexander, the
sixth member of the wealthy Borgia family, known for his
lavish lifestyle and many children Wait a minute, many children, yeah,
secured his election by bribing fellow cardinals with land money,
and lucrative positions in the Vatican's bureaucracy. There you go, yeah,
(07:16):
so uh anyway, uh so oh one more note. After
the Assistine Chapel became the fixed setting for conclaves, cardinals
shared sleeping quarters in what used to be Alexander the
Fourth's Fresco department in the Vatican. It was not comfortable.
It's mean he has six cardinals shared a room with
makeshift partitions for privacy, bathrooms were few, and cardinals were
given commode chairs essentially wooden potties to keep next to
(07:37):
their beds. It's a seat with a hole. When cardinals
were voting in the Sistine Chapel, staff were coming to
clean and prepare the rooms for the day after clean
and dumping their their their bed pots or what any
of chamber pots. Holy it was a very hot year.
Let's just say they didn't enjoy staying in these rooms,
said the historian. You you is right, Jack. At least
(08:00):
they're not locking them in a church and breaking up
all the windows, taking the road. You're staying in there
for you anyway, There you have the conclave, which is
apparently going on now or something. Wake me when it's over.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
A combination of the Met Gala and the royal family
and the Kardashians.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
You know, I did actually scroll through the inevitable New
York Times incredibly long photo gallery of the Met Gala.
I am horribly embarrassed and connected and celebrities go do
what they do whatever. It was horribly embarrassed to say
that I did the same. I can't.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
And while I was doing it, I thought, why are
you thumbing through pictures of people you don't even know
who they are to see what they wore, which you
don't care about, to an event you despise. Why are
you doing this? But I did it anyway.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Earlier in the show, I compared it to the capitol
in the Hunger Games movies, and Jack has not seen those.
Number one, absolutely appropriate for your teenage boys. It's shockingly
brutal for a PG thirteen movie. It's not horribly graphic,
but the themes are very, very mature. It's about a republic,
(09:15):
if you will and stop me if this sounds familiar, friends,
a republic where the capital has become so rich and
so isolated from the lives of normal people. It's become
utterly divorced from them. Abusive of them exploits their riches,
and the people, the denizens of that capital, dress an
(09:35):
incredibly elaborate showy self regarding fashion and congratulate each other
for being a superior race of human beings. Again, if
that sounds oddly familiar, I'll give you a second and
make the connection in your own brain.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, well, that's what's interesting about something like the met galawhich,
of course, happens in New York City. So New York City,
which is as lefty and progressive as you can get
as a city in America. And you know, AOC got
so much attention for eat the rich on her dress
at the metal. They aren't doing this in Omaha. They
aren't dressing up like this and owing and aweing over
who's there and in their clothes. They're doing it in
(10:09):
the progressive town. Doesn't that strike you as odd that
you're fawning over, you know, conspicuous consumption and wealth and
fame in your progressive areas where they don't do it
in the conservative Doesn't that seem backwards to you somehow?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, it all to you, But they're utterly without, you know,
self perception. Progressivism wants to gather as much power as
it conceivably can, and then direct everything. Who gets into schools,
how the economy works, who can say what, who gets
to keep their job, who teaches at my university. We
(10:46):
want to control everything absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I started reading Joonah Goldberg's book from years ago, Liberal Fascism,
last night, and that's exactly what he talks about. Fascism
is way more of a left thing than it is
a right thing. How it got tagged is a right thing?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
I don't know. Yeah, you know, there's a great quote.
I think it's I think it's Ein rand Er, somebody
quoting her, thinking that the difference between communism and fascism
is absolutely negligible. They both believe in subjugating the individual
rights of human beings to serve the state, which is
(11:21):
always the party in charge those with power there. You know,
they have like interesting doctrinal differences, but to the average
human being being trampled, those doctrinal differences don't amount to
a hill of beans. It's all about exploiting the working
people and trampling on individual rights.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, one of the main points early is that the
term fascism is almost useless. So here we are throwing
it around much to come stay here.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
And finally, a Brazilian nun died last week, just several
weeks shy of our one hundred and seventeenth birthday.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There's a lesson for everyone there. Always pack your own shoot.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Funny, it would be a dying joke there, Michael, because
that's what I was going to talk about, is I
don't think I'm going to reach my next birthday with
this disease I've got. I'm a sickly man and I'm
not long for this world. Actually got some texts from
people who have got this or they've got family members
who gotten it, and I hope this is some news
you can use rather than me just complaining about being.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Sick for so long.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
There's some sort of cold something going around that lasts
way longer than these things usually.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
At last, we like, we got this text. This is
for Jack.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I'm a healthy woman, rarely sick, but I've had the
same thing that you have. It's taken me seven weeks
for my cough to leave. The doctor said the cough
with last six to eight weeks. He was right, wow,
And the doctors told me, and the doctors are struggling
with it because everybody's naturally, you know, calling them up
after a month or a month and a half and saying,
what's the.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Deal, Why do I still feel so crappy?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
And Doctor's having to say it's just something that's going
around that takes like two months to kick.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So I don't know what to do with that information.
The Uri Djore upper respiratory infection. Is doctor Fauci behind it?
Has he been working in some secret lab in the
congo or something gain a function.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I haven't read a word about this, and I'm surprised
I haven't. It's that it's not some mutant strain of
something that combined with something, or our immune systems got
affected or something. Doesn't seem odd that all of a
sudden we've got some two month cold that is hanging around.
It doesn't feel like anything else I've ever had in
my life. Yeah, we got on the topic of last
(13:47):
words earlier, as I think I might. I was worried
that I'm going to die during the show and my
last words are going to be coming up next details
from the Diddy trial, and then I'll die and those
will be my last words.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right That would be humiliating.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, a lot of people's last words are similar to
that in that they weren't expecting. You know, some people
have last words laying in bed, knowing they're likely to
be their last words, and they're often very profound or
touching or interesting or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And actually or whether those were actually the last ones,
or if you just agreed with your good bodies, can
you say these are my last words? I'll bet that
happens a lot.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, which is fine because a lot of the last words,
at least on this list that I'm looking to, or
just the last thing you said, Like Benjamin Franklin said
something about I can't get it comfortable in no matter
what I try to do, you know, something like that
his daughter roll over on his side, and I can't
get comfortable no matter how I lay. Well, that's not
a good last word from one of the great wordsmiths
(14:42):
of all time. Agreed, Yeah, Or you get to choose
not literally your last word. That's a silly you know,
I think about it at my advanced stage.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
That's just a silly way to silly thing to even
call it. How about you last message? Yeah, that makes
more sense. Yeah, I mean common. You could be Abraham
Damn Lincoln and your last words might be I need
to pee. I mean, Ryan, what that's going to echo
(15:16):
through the ages? Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, did I already mention the one one of your
great thinkers who said dying is boring? I think that
was George Orwell dying is boring, which I'm.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Sure it is.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I like this one from some murderer that got the
firing squad. Here's probably a horrible person. They said, do
you have any last words? He said, bring me a
bulletproof vest. I'm here all night. Well for the next
five minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I salute you in hell wherever you are, sir. That's funny. Yeah. So,
coming up a couple of governmental issues that I am
going to work diligently to make not dry, not overly dry.
Number one, the air traffic control system in our country
is an embarrassment. Needs to be fixed, and to its credit,
the Trump administration is going to try like hell to
(16:05):
fix it. Also, if you think you understand what medicaid is, weld, yes,
that is the medical aid program for the poor. You
have no idea. It is a gigantic scam, which we
will explain I'm thinking during our three of the show.
(16:25):
And part of the reason it's important to know that
is that as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress
are trying to fix it, they will be accused over
and over again of trying to balance the budget on
the back of the poor and take away people's medicaid benefits,
when that is the polar opposite of what they're trying
to do. That's frustrating. Oh yeah, yeah. Democracy is a
(16:50):
terrible system. It can't work.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
What's going on with Ukraine and Russia. There's the latest
turn on that. Man I Trump is sending him some
of the most advanced air defense systems from Israel to Ukraine.
Now that's interesting, It is interesting. Don't I have no
idea what's going on behind the scenes on that. Neither's
anybody else. Anyway, We've got a lot on the way.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Stay here, Armstrong and Getty growing.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Alarm at Noork's Liberty Airport tonight, ABC News learning air
traffic controllers lost radar and communications with planes packed with
passengers for sixty to ninety seconds last week. A system
wide outage last Monday at a Philadelphia facility that manages
the airspace around Newark Airport caused controllers to lose the
ability to see, hear, or talk to all arriving and
(17:42):
departing aircraft at one of the busiest airports in the country.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Ninety seconds is a long time. Yeah, really shocking. A
one more note on how it unfolded next clip. Then
we'll discuss pilots can be heard learning of the outage
over the radio. I discusshold it approach loss. All the radars.
Three of the core radar screens wet black, and they have.
Speaker 5 (18:03):
No frequency controllers from another tower advising pilots that radio frequencies.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Have failed, and they want you to be advising. They
may not be able to raid our contact to you
because of the radar issues, and they may lose you
on for certain times of when you're applying. I have
a handful of friends and neighbors who are frequent flyers,
business people, and we have agreed number one, air travel
is degenerated significantly in its pleasantness over the last you
(18:32):
know number of years.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Luckily that I won't have to deal with it anymore
because I didn't get the real ID, so it'll no
longer be.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
A problem for me. Hey, it's the curse, that's a
blessing exactly.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
And we've also agreed that even when it goes well,
it goes poorly right the air travel these days. So
I thought this was really interesting. I mean, putting aside
that incident, which is terrible, We'll not putting it aside.
Let's just put it over there and we'll talk about it.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board with a great piece
about the America's air traffic fiasco, and they focus on
(19:09):
Newark Airport. And if you've never had the pleasure quote
unquote of flying into Newark, I suggest you never do.
If you're going to New York and Jfkin Laguardi are
booked up, why don't you fly to Bridgeport, Connecticut and
walk into New York City before you go to Newark.
So thousands of flights in and out of Newark in
(19:30):
recent days have been delayed, diverted, or canceled because of
air traffic control failures. And President Trump and his transportations
are actually taking steps to fix this, which we'll talk
about in a minute. But the headaches at Newark began
last Monday when the Philadelphia Air Traffic Control facility what
they were just saying, had equipment malfunctions. So the FAA
(19:52):
finally resolved the technical snaffoos, but flight disruptions persisted because
of a shortage of controllers. How is there a short controllers?
How do we not have I mean, given the priority
that that is, how do we not pay them en
off and treat them well enough to have enough of them?
Bureaucracy is the answer, honestly. But United Airlines on Friday
(20:13):
canceled thirty five daily round trip flights at the airport.
For instance, the CEO said he decided to walk out
by more than twenty percent of the controllers at the site.
Flight delays at Newark averaged four hours on some day.
My god, that was the average, and it continued Monday,
and such delays could be the new normal this summer.
(20:34):
But then they credit Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for at
least acknowledging government is to blame, unlike his Biden predecessor
Pete Buddhage Edge and Edge who blamed airlines well doing
little to nothing to fix long standing problems. Then they
describe what the long standing problems are. And folks in
(20:55):
private enterprise, particularly anybody who leans on tech deals with tech,
you're gonna if you don't already know about this, you're
gonna just be astounded. Congress in twenty oh three. Those
not gifted in the arts of mathematics, it's twenty two
years ago directed the FAA to modernize its systems, so
(21:19):
they started the next gen overhaul, which is set to
be completed in the year twenty thirty. Wow, all you
tech guys and gals are saying the same thing. Whoa whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa whoa. No, No, that's not a thing. You
don't start something in twenty oh three and stick with
it through twenty thirty. You've overhauled the system sixty nine
(21:41):
times in that period, not stuck with the same quote
unquote overhaul that was started in oh three. Well, we're right.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
You're talking about a tech overhaul that started before smartphones existed.
I mean, that's how much technology has changed since night.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
It's like you and your your wife looking at your
three month old child and saying, we need bigger clothes
because the kid is growing fast. Let's study the problem
and will implement a bigger closed plan when he's twenty four.
I mean, your kid's gonna be naked for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah, except clothes don't change that much. The whole tech thing.
Tech has changed so much in that amount of time.
What about tsking they laid out in the beginning is
pointless now.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh yeah, it's utterly irrelevant. So as mister Duffy the
sectrans notes, the FAA literally still uses floppy discs. Does
gen Z even know what those are? Few technicians can
even repair its aging systems, some of which are more
than sixty years old. It's like trying to find some
handyman to fix your Victrola that you inherited from your
(22:48):
great grandma.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
That's got to be pretty funny for a tech guy
to come in and he's never seen a floppy disk,
or maybe even never heard of one.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I'm old, so I've seen them.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
But we did get a number of texts when we
mentioned this earlier that is that on purpose because they're unhackable.
You can't can't hack into floppy discs like you can
every Internet based modern thing.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Well if so, if so, say so. But surely a
thumb drive is a better idea. A not connected to
the Internet and a floppy disc they're both discrete carriers
of data.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
I think you're giving too much credit if you think
it was some on purpose thing.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, please just get lead follow er, get out of
the way. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that
seventy six percent of FAA systems are unsustainable or potentially unsustainable,
which may have quote critical operational impacts on safety and efficiency.
Bloomberg News reports that controllers guiding planes at Newark lost
(23:40):
radio and communications and radar for more than a minute
on Monday, like we were talking about, Luckily there were
no accidents. Boys.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
That has to be just that everybody in the air
during those ninety seconds just went ahead and kept doing
what they are doing. If one person thought, oh boy,
no connection, I better pull up and land after we
get this straightened out, well, then you could have just
had a cascading series of disasters.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah. I don't I have not actually heard anybody describe
what pilots did if they were, you know, two minutes
out from landing, if they were in their final approach,
what did they do? I don't know. But ninety seconds
is a long time.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I mean, you could be from way the hell up
there to on the ground in I guess, oh.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you're going. You know, it's certainly you're
sloan for landing in this scenario, but you're going a
couple hundred miles per hour. Certainly anyway DA or oh
get this. The GAO Government Accountability Office is quote completion
dates for planned investments for systems. It deems quote especially
(24:48):
concerning we're at least six to ten years away. Can
you imagine again it consultants. You get hired by some
I don't know, chain of restaurants or something whatever, some
significant sized local business and they say, hey, we really
need to upgrade our systems, and you tell them, yep,
we're going to need six to ten years. You'd be
(25:10):
hooted out of the place. Now, Technological obsolescence is common
among the federal across the federal bureaucracy because there's no
financial motive to become more efficient singing from Tim Sanderfer's
hymn book here. FAA labor agreements also require the government
to work collaboratively with the Air Traffic Controller union on modernization,
(25:32):
which can delay upgrades or divert staff from their day jobs.
It's much like the ports, where the powerful long shoreman's
union prevent any technological upgrades on. But you know in
that world we're talking about, yeah, the technological stuff involving
the cranes and all that matters. The you know, the
(25:54):
automation matters, but a lot of it's just as silly
as having a human read license plates instead of US scanner.
Just to keep the jobs. But this is the faa
This prevents people from dying in horrible fiery wrecks. The
FAAC says it needs three thousand controllers to be fully staffed,
and shortages are especially acute in the New York City region.
(26:15):
Blah blah blah. Well, he's one thing.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
We keep talking about danger, which I understand, especially if
there was a you know, a blackout there for ninety seconds.
But flying is insanely safe. It's the safest thing I'll
do every time I do it. The hassle part of it, though,
as you mentioned earlier, has gotten exponentially worse. I think
we all go to the airport with the expectation of
(26:37):
a delay now as opposed to that is a you know,
an aberration, that's what you expect. It's somewhat shocking when
you walk up to departure and see that you're actually
leaving when you were supposed to leave.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
One more note, and they go through some of the
labor disagreements with the union, government employee unions are a
force for evil. I understand why they exist, even FDR
thought they should not. As a topic for another day,
but I wanted to get to this part. Americans who
want to become controllers must undergo three to five months
(27:10):
of paid training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City,
followed by a three year apprenticeship at a control facility.
The Obama administration eased standards to boost minority enrollment at
the FAA Academy Affirmative Action FAA DEI. FAA lower standards
have resulted in higher attrition. Half of the students who
(27:31):
enter the academy don't finish their training. It's a lot
like promoting kids who can't hack the elite universities to
the elite universities to improve their numbers, when those kids
would be so much more likely to be happy and
successful at not quite so brutal a facility. The airline
(27:53):
says the FAA could be could better screen applicants and
reduce certification times by thirty percent with more effective training,
including high fidelity simulators. In short, to behave much.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
More like a private enterprise, but three years of training
and in the three year whatever like an internship.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
It's like becoming a doctor.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
To be a air traffic controller.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
It's three to five months of paid training and then
a three year apprenticeship. You're an assistant controller. It's you know, well, yeah,
but you are going to hear guaranteed, you're gonna hear
the Secretary of Transportation whose name keeps flitting out of
my head. These a hero to millions. Everybody knows, I'm
(28:36):
Sean Duffy. That's it. You're going to hear him and
Trump talk about how we need to do this, and
you're gonna see Chuck Schumer on the steps of the
Capitol talking about they're trying to undercut a hardworking controllers
with these radical changes that will endanger airline passion because
he's just a slave to the unions.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Wow, that is disturbed. So you pushed a bunch of
people onto that career path who probably thought it pays
how much and whatever, Sure I'll sign up, but you
just can't cut it for whatever reason. To try to
end up with all that's a disparate impact thing that's
not good, right.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Just coming up maybe next hour, trying to squeeze it
in the next hour. It strikes me that these two
things are very much connected. Matthew Countinetti, who's with the
Free Press now, actually listened to all of Trump's address
to the University of Alabama. They're a commencement speech thing.
And Trump went through his ten guiding principles, and one
(29:42):
of them had to do with the need to change
things when they need to be changed, and not be
so enamored with the status quo that you lose your
ability to see what needs to change. I'm paraphrasing a
lot here, but this is a perfect example of that.
Obama Biden. They were not going to say this is
(30:03):
broker fixing it. They would say, ah, let's tweak around
the edges. We don't want to offend this constituency. We
got this union mad at us. That would cost a
lot of money. They're not innovators. And Trump, for all
of you know his quirks that make me insane, Trump
is a guy who will say, Nope, we're getting rid
(30:24):
of this because it doesn't work, and thank goodness, because
it really needs to happen.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Cool Michelle Obama says she's in therapy and reveals why.
As divorce rumors swirl continue to swirl, among other incredibly
unimportant stories we can get to stay with us.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Ture is filling out this written questionnaire saying there may
be graphic and sexually explicit evidence in connection with the case,
and asking if they're anything that would make it difficult
for you to be fair and impartial many perspective. Touris
also saying they recognized the names of other celebrities that might.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Come up at trial. The judge tried to.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Keep things moving, so when the defense asked for a
bathroom break, Colms apologize, saying, sorry, Judge, I'm a little
nervous today. His lawyers are aiming to convince the jury
the government is trying to police consensual sex by a
swinger who they say invited others into his bedroom.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Consensual sex. I'm just a swinger. I invited people to
my bedroom. Is that what invitations are out of bounds?
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Now? Why is the government trying to criminalize my freewheeling lifestyle? Right?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Just because your vanilla doesn't mean that I have to be.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Sure I'd beaten, kick women and drug people and threaten
them and transport them across the state lines, which doesn't
trouble me. I've been transported across state lines and I
came out fine. But that video, that video is what's
going to do him.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
In the video of him dragging that, I mean once
you either are a guy who can do that or
you're not all right. And you know that's that speaks volumes,
And most of the jurors asked yesterday said they had
seen that video.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah. Yeah, if you are being accused of brutality and
can watch brutality, yeah, that's gonna help convict you. Yeah,
it kind of hurts the hole.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I'm not the kind of guy that would ever do
that if they've got a video of you doing that.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
But again, as I've said many times, wait till the
defense takes its shot, because that can really change perceptions.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Update on that Pittsburgh Pirate fan who did a summersault onto.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
The field last week.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Took us a couple of days to get the information
that he was had taken off his shirt and poured
beer on his head.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
While the Pirates were rallying, Yes, very excited before he rolled.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Out of his seat onto the field, so it seemed
that exuberant partying may have played a role.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Authorities believe alcohol was involved as the operative phraser.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Twenty year old Caven Markwood took his first depths yesterday. Yeah,
he broke his neck, his back and his collar bone.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Oh, had to be some brain injury there too, huh.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
They haven't said anything about that. They're doing a GoFundMe
to try to help pay his medical bills. But you know,
and it's nice, you know. I mean, man, there's a
lot of charities out there. There are a lot of
charities out there that need money. And guy who strips
off his shirt, pours pier on his head and tumbles
onto the field.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Choose your charity dollars, how you want to spend him.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
But we've got to discuss think about whether we want
to do this. There's a story out there this gal
was dropping in bombs in a park and it went viral.
She's defiant in the video, and she was docked and
(34:00):
exposed and berated blah blah blah by progressive types. In return,
the far right has come to her aid and she's
getting close to a million dollars on her not GoFundMe,
but a similar page. We become so tribal. If they
are against somebody, we are with her, at least in
(34:26):
some quarters. It's a troubling, troubling tale of modern tribalism.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
I don't like doxing almost never. But then you're donating money.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
To this cost. Yeah, she was dropping n bombs on
a child. Somebody called her on it. But should you
that's bad behavior?
Speaker 3 (34:49):
But should the world then unite and make sure she
can't work ever again in her life.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
And run her out of her home? Yeah, I'm not
saying yeah, I'm saying yes, that is the case.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Some people refer to that sort of thing, dosing a
woman like that, the woke right doing the same thing
that the Wolke left was doing.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
For so long. Right, right, but now but now she's
going to become wealthy, right response right? Yeah, why that
is a headspinner, one of the good guys in this story.
You know what, I'll be fishing if you need me,
modern world, I'm worn out again.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
There's a lot of really good charities out there toose carefully,
all right. If you miss a segment, get the podcast
Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
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