August 4, 2025 • 36 mins
Hour 2 of A&G features...
- The jobs numbers revision
- The best mattress & being thrifty
- Redistricting in TX
- Pull ups & rope climbing
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.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Armstrong and Getty, I know he Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
One are the top BLS staffers is actually working in
the White House to help us understand the jobs numbers.
When I saw the jobs revisions, I literally called up
that person and said, I think there's a typo because
I've been following these numbers all the way back when
I worked with Alan Greenspan for something like forty years
that I've never seen revisions like this.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Okay, So that's Kevin Hassett whatever he is in the
Trump administration talking about the economy. This was for your
Trump hating news shows, the number one story all weekend long.
That so, the jobs numbers came out on Friday, we
talked about them. Trump fired the person in charge of
(01:03):
those numbers coming out, though, as I learned over the weekend,
they have very little to do with computing the numbers.
There's a giant staff of people that do that and
plugged him to formulas. And then this woman found out
about him like two days before they came out, and
then she just signs off on them.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But there's really no discretion there no. So so as usual,
Trump does what Trump does.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
So he came out and claimed that she is a
hack and political and fudged the numbers to try to
make him look bad, and that she's been doing that
quote today's job numbers were rigged in order to make
the Republicans and me look bad. And he said that
sort of thing in various forms all weekend long. And
then so there were all kinds of headlines in the
New York Times, Washington Post, those sorts of places, NBC
(01:52):
News and that sort of thing. There's Larry Summer, Summer's
up on the TV on ABC this week. I watched
him yesterday and Larry Summers actually said this is the
sort of thing Richard Nixon didn't even dream of doing,
which I was a little over the top on his end.
New York Times headline was Trump fired America's economic data collector.
History shows the perils and they go immediately into this
(02:13):
is what Hitler did.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
This sort of thing Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yeah, he
went in there and cleaned house. As you know, Hitler, will.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I wish Trump wasn't claiming that this woman was you know,
fudging the stats just to hurt.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Him in Republicans and everything like that.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
But the real story, at least as explained by this
Kevin Hassett person, I thought was kind of interesting, and
the only place I heard it was on Meet the
Press when Christian Walker asked him the question.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So here is a somewhat.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Lengthy but I think it might be helpful if you
end up with in an argument with a friend about
this explanation for what's going on here? What evidence does
the administration have that she manipulated the jobs numbers?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Right?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, what we've seen over the last few years is
massive revision to the jobs numbers.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
In fact, they were.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Extremely reliable, the kind of numbers that you want to
guide policy decisions and markets through COVID. And then when
COVID happened, because response rates went down a lot, then
revision rates skyrocketed, so that the typical monthly revision often
was bigger than the number itself. And now we had
a number that.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Just came out.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The actual number for the month wasn't so bad, but
the two months before were revised down by more than
it ever happened since nineteen sixty eight, and in twenty fifteen,
Alan Greenspan and I were asked to attend a conference
at BLS where we were asked to give advice about
how to modernize the data. And we warned that if
they didn't try to let the data collection and calculation
(03:45):
keep up with the data that was happening in the economy,
that we would have problems like this.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
For instance, a revised downward July from one hundred and
forty four thousand jobs to nineteen thousand jobs. The biggest revision,
as he pointed out, there since nineteen sixty eight COVID,
and since COVID businesses reporting their job numbers has changed,
they've stopped participating. So the numbers are all over the
place and not a whack. And he's just making the
argument that that the old formula and win of doing
(04:12):
things doesn't work. And he and Alan Greenspan went to
a conference as you just heard, and talked about it
and blah blah blah, And as he said in that
other clip, we're working with somebody right now from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics to try.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
To figure out what the numbers actually are.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Because I got these on Friday and called them up
and said, is this a typo. This can't be right,
and so it's all out of whack. That explanation makes
way more sense than the way Trump portrayed it. And
then if you you know, I don't know if you
need to fire her, but if you said, we're gonna
we're gonna get a fresh set of eyes on this.
We need to they need to redo the whole system.
(04:46):
So I've got somebody in there that's going to take
a look at it. I think that would have landed
a lot better than claiming it's a rigged system to
try to hurt Republicans.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right right, I would agree this is the twenty percent
of Trump's that even most big Trump fans wish he
would rein in a little bit. Yeah, because Hassett makes
an excellent point, and this does not smack as trying
desperately to make sense of what Trump said to me
like some other things do. If that makes sense, that okay,
So these revisions are now I mean, like an enormous
(05:17):
percentage of the total number.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
The original total number is is.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Useless, correct if it goes from one to nineteen, why
make any economic.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Decisions or markets react to be regional number? What are
we even doing?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Here right exactly, and so yeah, you know the fact
that the system was exposed as antiquated and no longer adequate,
Trump reacted in a childish knee jerk fashion. Not all
that shocking, but yeah, this this rings true to me.
The revision should not be nearly so enormous, or the
system is just completely broken.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
We need a new one again.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Whether miss Mackinharfer or whatever his name, her name is
needed to be Macintarfer, whether she actually has got kind
of a velma of the Scooby Do gang look to
her anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Find alluring or I'll just say intriguing anyway row.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Oh so anyway, but yeah, whether she would have been
a good person to be in charge of the turnaround
or not, I don't know. It's entirely it is possible
to do the right thing in the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Or it's possible that she'd have said, yeah, it's ridiculous,
I'm all for redoing the way we come up with
these numbers. Put me in charge of it. I'd love to.
But who knows. It's possible this was to bump Epstein off.
I mean, it ended the Epstein thing. Not I heard
near the word once yesterday on the Sunday shows, and
from all reporting, the Trump White House was pretty desperate
(06:51):
to finally end that damn scandal once and for all.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't know if that's what happened here or not.
It seems like I had one more thing to see. Well,
you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I'm less likely to believe that just because of Kevin
Hassett's explanation.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, because it makes perfect sense there.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, what are we even doing here with these statistics
that they're that wildly wrong?
Speaker 4 (07:10):
But Trump's portrayal of it could have been to get
everybody's attention, which it certainly did well. He is parlayed
being under attack to his advantage now his entire on
the political scene, and it's been helped along by the
fact that, well he's been under attack for most of
the time. Everybody overplays their hand, and I've been complaining
(07:31):
about this for years. If people would stop doing that,
it would be so much better. So I generally like
Larry Summers, who was president of Harvard and Obama's economic guy.
He's a generally pretty reasonable Democrat for a Democrat. I
like him better than most people they put out there.
But so he did a list of Trump of what
(07:52):
we're headed now into now is authoritarianism. Trump did this,
and he mentioned a couple of other things that were
a little uncomfortable. I'm on with that Trump has done.
And then he said in the way Trump has gone
after the colleges, Okay, why did you say that?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Why did you say.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
That Harvard had ranked last in free speech Columbia was
not allowing Asian kids or Jews. I mean, come on,
so everybody overplays their hand and then they lose all credibility.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And how desperate is Larry Summers to have status among
his peers or whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I don't know, it's inside the guys. He he's a
smart guy, but.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
He was fired by Harvard for daring to suggest, you know,
some of the imbalance in the stem fields is just
men tend to be, on average better at this stuff
and more interested in it. And for that he was
hounded off the campus by the woke left. So you'd
think he would have a little bit of a regard
for the need to reform our disgusting perverse college campuses.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Oh, Campus Madness update coming up next hour, Stay with us.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
So hopefully that wraps up another Bureau of Labor Statistics Monday.
Every Monday we check in on that bureau. Well, you
gotta get it out of the way on Monday. Well,
everybody's waiting for it over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
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Speaker 4 (10:06):
Have any opinion on the Naked Gun remake that came
out over the weekend. A lot of attention among people
who love those movies the Leslie Nielsen style of comedy.
But this one has Liam Neeson in the lead role,
and I've never pictured him really doing a comedy like that, but.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The role it was pretty funny on Saturday Night Live. True.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
The Rotten Tomatoes reviews and critics' reviews have been fantastic
on this movie.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Pamela Anderson, the old Baywatch chick, is the lead female
in it, and they are said to be dating. Now,
Oh that's right. Yeah, that's so interesting. How often people
meet on the set and end up together? Is it
just because they're all pretty people? And if you two
put two really attractive people in a room, they're gonna
end up together.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Is that? Well, there's that, I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
But having been a cesspian of some note in my
younger days, you spend a hell of a lot of
time with people. You are very close physically with them
a lot, and you know, sometimes you're interacting in a
role where you are acting various emotions and they start
to feel a little realish. In fact, that's you know,
(11:16):
one of the hazards of being married to an actor
is you just if you spend weeks on a set
or rehearsing a play pretending to be in love with
somebody who's kind of attractive.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Danger. Danger.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Yeah, I wouldn't dig if my wife or girlfriend had
a job where I'm going to be uh, six months
in a hotel with this really hot young guy pretending
to be in love with him.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Right, and we're going to go through ups and downs
and struggles and laughs and tears and frustration and all
the ups and downs of life.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
But we'll do it together. Oh boy.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Yeah, anyway, that's that story. So you said you had
a gender bending mandis update campus madness? In the campus madness.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
That's also a look, believe it or not, we're going
to go from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to congressional redistricting,
which is one of the other big controversies of the day.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
But I promise you, promise you, it's not boring.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
And this is the first day for all of us
in a world without Lonnie Anderson. More on that later stitches.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
We will Soldier.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Liz Warren fell down on the Senate floor yesterday and
to everyone's surprise, didn't even yell Geronimo.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Our new Indian name is fall on Ass.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
That's pretty funny. How y'all doing? So we got some
good Newsy stuff for you. We talked about this expensive
bed on the One More Thing podcast to watch back,
this really expensive mattress, which oh I remember that. Yeah,
I'll hit you at the price here in a moment,
because if you haven't heard about this, it's shocking. We
actually walked by one of these stores. It's Houstin's. I
(13:11):
don't know how you pronounce it, h A S T
e ns. It's Scandinavian so Hi Houston. I don't know
how they pronounce it. But they don't have many stores.
The beds are ridiculously expensive. And we walked by one
of the stores on Park Avenue in New York. We
were leaving Central Park and as we were walking along
all these ridiculously expensive stores and oh my god, it's
(13:32):
one of those bed stores. But you had to have
an appointment, and then we were not dressed for people
to go in and look at these kind of mattresses,
but I would love to have laid down one.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I don't even know if they know let us try,
poor people, we can't allow you in here. So I
don't remember how I came across this over the weekend,
and it it.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Reignited my interest in this sort of thing that it exists.
But so I went on eBay and there's one available
on eBay that's used, so they only want forty eight
thousand dollars for it. This used mattress comes with the
box spring, so it's mattress and box spring for forty.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 6 (14:06):
No.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, And the owner of it, since I put it
on my watch, sent me an offer yesterday, took four
thousand dollars off. They're only asking forty thousand dollars now
for this mattress and box spring. This mattress is made
of horsehair and some particular rare kind of horse and cotton.
(14:28):
It's all natural materials, it is said by reviewers. I
remember when I talked about this on our podcast, the
person who reviewed it, I think for the New York
Times said it's ridiculously overpriced and nobody is ever going
to buy one. Of these, But it is unlike sleeping
on anything you've ever slept on.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It's as if you're suspended. You're just floating.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
You can't even tell her anything, there's any pressure on
any of your body.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
You're just kind of floating there. And it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
But the original price on this particular mattress in box
Springs that I'm I'm you know, I'm trying. I'm deciding
whether or not to pull the trigger at forty grand
was eighty four thousand dollars eighty three Please, eighty four
thousand dollars for a mattress in box Spring.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Look, if you fly private all the time, go ahead
and buy the Horrors hair mattress.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
We prefer sex workers hair. By the way, Jack these
horse the beast of burden.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Oh, I apologize, I'd misunderstood. But if that's your lifestyle,
go ahead. If not, that's insane. Don't you remember that
email we got from a gal She said, yeah, we
bought one of these things, and you've got to like
have the Horrors hair massaged every.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Two weeks or that's the most uncomfortable thing ever. No,
that's part of the upkeep.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Yes, you have to have it's what is it called
a rejuvenation or something like that. Somebody needs to come
into your home at least once a year and re
massage it to make it. But it's just reinterview from
somebody who's got one on Reddit. They said, if you
have the person come and rejuvenate it all the time,
they've had it for four years, feel exactly like it
did on day one. If you don't get it rejuvenated,
(16:03):
you have a very expensive sack of garbage, they said.
But wow, I would like to lay down on one.
There's a store in uh Silicon Valley, No surprise, I might.
I might have to go over there sometime and I'll
wear my suit jacket and try to look like I
belong there and make an appointment and lay.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Down on one so I can repull back.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Isn't it amazing though, that anybody would ever pulled the
trigger on a four eighty four thousand dollars mattress and
box spring like a lot of things. I think it exists,
so you can mention that you have it, But I
can't believe they sell enough of them to be able
to even be a company.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You wouldn't think you'd sell to a year. Well, it's
at the store.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
There are thousands of billionaires and more every day. I
don't know that that's supposed to last billionaire.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I don't know. Maybe they get you. They sleep very
you know.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I would think if I walk into the I would
think if i'd have walked into that store in Park Avenue,
I had been the first customer six months.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
You So, I don't know anyway, you here on purpose, sir?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Oh my lord, oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Okay, okay, okay, it'll be okay, all right, here we go, right. Yeah,
you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I was just reading that according to several organizations, companies,
people that would know, American consumers are going way towards
thrifty now. A lot of luxury buying is down, generics
are up, bulk buying is on the rise. Even your
fancier burritos are going unordered in your eateries.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Your fancier burritos.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, well, trust me when I tell you, Like Chipotle,
they keep very, very careful track of what is being
ordered and what's not, and they're seeing a trend.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Toward lower dollar orders. Wow.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
So matched out credit cards, student loan payments coming back.
Probably a certain amount of uneasiness about the future. That'd
be I'm terroristed with the center. I would never buy
that bed anyway, but I would never be able to
sleep because I'd be thinking, God, if the economy early crashes,
I'm going to feel like an idiot on this eighty
three thousand dollars bed.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
She Many, Armstrong, and Getty. A high stake showdown in
Texas as House Democrats flee the state to delay a
controversial Republican led push to redraw the congressional map in
cities like Austin, Houston, and Dallas. The proposed map could
flip five seats from likely wins by Democrats to Republicans.
(18:36):
The move could help them keep their razor thin House
majority by carving up cities like deep blue Austin into
multiple red districts, leaving just one Democratic stronghold in the center.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So this is controversial, and it's not usually done midway
between censuses. Usually redistricting is done every ten years when
the census comes out. But if there is probably no
other topic in politics that has more hypocritical posturing than redistricting.
(19:09):
As each side yells at the other that, well, we'll
show you what they're yelling in a moment or two.
But the President of Texas, Greg Abbott, has told the Democrats,
you got to come back to the session or you're
maybe committing a felony and we're gonna get you. And
the Democrats reacted by quoting a famous line from Texas history,
come and get it, meaning us or something.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Well, and how do they teach us when we're seventh
graders that jerry mandering is illegal? And then you grow
up and you realize, like practical everything in the country
is jerry mandered.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Right exactly, It's just called redistricting. And the sad and
pathetic state of jurisprudence on this is actually the interesting part.
We'll get to that in a second or two. But
here's some of the heated rhetoric. Seventy two Michael.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
If Donald Trump is allowed to do this, if he
is allowed to once again cheat and get away with it, Wow,
there's no stopping this.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
This will spread across the country. This is an American
and this is undemocratic.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
Republicans are stealing our democracy right before our very eyes.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
So if you ever look at the map of districts,
you see how and the Republicans and Democrats work together
oftentimes on these so they can not battle over very
many seats. It's really ugly. But they'll like, you know,
the lines go, see, grab this part of a town
that's all going to be blue voters, and then this
(20:40):
little part of the country that's going to be all
red voters. Are separate even though the town like this
is the way it used to be in the town
I'm in now, I don't know what the lines are now, but.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
They had carved it out. It should be the whole town.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
We all live in this town, so we should be
a voting block people in this town.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
But they didn't.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
They grab part of the town where the liberals lived
and the other part of the town for one district,
another part of the town for Republicans, and just yeah,
it's ridiculous, right, yeah, do you being.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
That they want mostly safe districts so they don't have
to spend any money in them, and then they're a
handful of up for grabs districts that have great fights
in them. One more bit of heated rhetoric. This from
fat immoral child mutilator JB. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois.
Speaker 8 (21:22):
We know that you are making great sacrifices to resist
the power grab that's being perpetrated by Donald Trump, by
Governor Abbott, and by Texas Republicans. We will not let
power go unchecked for, or let your voices and their
voices go unheard.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
In a hilarious and soon to be forgotten aspect of this,
Gavin Newsom came out and said, essentially, this is thieving democracy,
this is aut American, this is immoral.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
We need to do it.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So he's threatening to re re redistrict to California to
squeeze out the few Republican seats. Actually they're a pretty
good number, but anyway, so I thought that was interesting.
Blah blah blah. They're all grand standing in Sooner or
later the Democrats will come back and there'll probably be
some sort of compromise. But that's not the interesting part. Oh,
And that's all you're gonna hear all day long is
(22:12):
they look they're fighting.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
They're fighting. But that'll get it, that'll get worked out eventually.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
What the interesting part to me is that, and this
is such a failure of our system. The status of
law about redistricting is one of those parts of the
law that everybody just kind of says, nothing to see here,
don't look too closely. So you got your Voting Rights
Act pasted a number of years ago. Supreme Court is
(22:39):
going to take on a major, may truly historical case.
They announced on Friday during the October session they're going
to rehear a redistricting challenge, and they broadened the case
even more by asking the parties to address the question
of whether the state's creation of a second majority minority
(23:02):
conjectural district violates fourteenth or fifteenth Amendments. I know this
is a little bit thick, but here it is. The
Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution says you can't change
what you do government because of the race of the
person involved, or the religion or the creed, or who
they sleep with or whatever. You can't. But Section two
(23:24):
of the Voting Rights Act says, yeah, actually you can
if they're.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Black or brown or white.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
In fact, you can draw these crazy ass districts to
make sure that there are the right number of what
they call majority minority districts, meaning, for instance, I don't
know when Kansas a lot of Hispanic people, they got
to get a district and I'm about to black folks
over by Kansas City.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
It ain't gotta have a.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
District over there, and I don't care how crazy quilt
weird looking it is, you gotta drawma district. Well, obviously
those two things are not compatible. And the Supreme Court
back in nineteen eighty six unleashed a ruling that satisfied
no one, and nobody can figure out that it requires
(24:15):
states to draw these majority minority districts if the minority
populations are large, compact, and politically cohesive, but the white
votes sufficiently as a group could defeat a minorities preferred candidate.
So it's to be it's got to be a community
(24:35):
of the racial minority people. It can't be a crazy
quilt boa constrictor you know, laid across parts of the state.
And those two things have been completely at odds for
the longest time now, since nineteen eighty six. Nobody knows
what the law is. States think, well, we can't be
(24:56):
run a fellow of the Equal Protection Guarantee. Yeah, we
can't get in trouble unders two of the voting right tack.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
So what do we do. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Let's kind of just half ass these weird districts.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
So it's long overdue.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
The Scotus is gonna say, all right, here's the deal,
and it's probably gonna be one or the other.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Boy, it'd be something if they.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Had a ruling that would cause us to redraw districts
all across the country and get it back to well something,
not what it is. Like we were just explaining, the
two major parties have worked together to make most of
the seats safe. Do you know that that's why third
parties can't ever get anywhere? They've gone out of their
(25:37):
way to make sure the Republicans and Democrats will have
a certain giant number that are almost impossible to dislodge
people from, and then they'll fight over the other fifty
or whatever number they've decided on that they'll make competitive.
And if you drew all these lines in a more
normal way, like this town is represents a group of people.
(25:58):
All the people living a rural lifestyle outside of it
are a different group of people like that, which would
make more sense. We'd have way more competitive races. And well,
does anybody think the way things are going right now
is a good thing?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
No? Nobody.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Congress has its lowest approval ratings ever, and they're like
lower than everything but paper cuts Rhea.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
And there's such an advantage to play in towards the
fringe of your own party as opposed to the middle
of the country, the middle of politics, not the middle
of the country. But it was just a little while
back that Clarence Thomas was commenting on this Louisiana case
and said, look, Court, you've got to figure this out,
because this is absurd. This is exactly what we're supposed
(26:41):
to do, and we're not doing it. Figuring out whether
the Section two or this stupid case run a foul
of the Constitution's Equal Protection clause.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
So there could be a.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Giant change coming in the way these maps are drawn
coming up in Uh, well, the session is in October.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Then when do they at least those decisions. It's not
the next June, isn't it usually the big ones?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, all right, Well twenty twenty six is going to
be a giant ear for redistricting.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I thought that was the interesting part that we've been
existing in this weird Yeah, everybody knows the Constitution doesn't
permit this, but the Court hasn't taken it on situation
that's about to end. I think we're going to get
into the whole blue jeans commercial thingy again in hour three.
Some interesting things were said over the weekend about that
whole controversy. I heard about this the Nazi eugenesis blue
(27:35):
jeans commercial. Plus speaking of that sort of thing popular
young women. Does Caitlin Clark have a civil rights case
against the WNBA?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Well, I say absolutely, shit.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Oh that'll be exciting. I just saw this headline. I'll
have to dig into it. China is standing firm again.
It's the United States demands that it stopped buying oil
from Russia and Iran. That is going to be a
big deal.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
This and they've gone back, and this varies like every
week after week. It goes back and forth. They've gone
back to choking off our supply of various rare earth
minerals and stuff we need.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
But this hole trying to squeeze Russia because they're not
cooperating with the ceasefire or whatnot. The Indian China is
going to be interesting to follow and it's going to
happen over the next couple of weeks. A lot want
to get to this story later too. Las Vegas Joe
was manding people pulling back on spending. Las Vegas is
down quite a bit year to year. Visits to Las
(28:42):
Vegas were down eleven percent in June versus a year earlier.
That's quite a bit one year year to year eleven percent.
And I would certainly put trip to Las Vegas in
the first things we cut when money gets tight category,
wouldn't you?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. I don't like these trends.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Mackenzie poll recently top concern for US consumers Forty five
percent said rising prices and inflation about thirty little under
thirty percent said tariff policies well, twenty three percent said
ability to make ends meet.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Well, that first number is quite possibly affected by that
second one. I mean, so those all could be the
same number, right, You're confirmed about concerned about inflation and
tariff could be all the same thing. I think we
all have a little PTSD around inflation. That's brutal. Inflation
is brutal, man. You lose a lot of your net
(29:44):
worth really freaking quick. Oh yeah when that when inflation hits,
it's physically frightening. Hell yeah, I don't like to think
about it. I was thinking about it on my walk
the other day, like, just how much less I make
than a couple of years ago because of inflation. Unless
you have a job where it tracks with inflation, you've
(30:04):
taken a pretty big pay cut over the last several years.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Everybody has.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
And don't forget, it's a hidden tax. So the government
class can spend lots of money and accumulate more power
and wealth themselves. They tax you by devaluing what you own.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That sucks. Fight the power, man, fight the power.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, fiscal responsibility is not just some sort of like
intellectual stance.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
It's protecting what's yours. So we'll do Lonnie Anderson the
Reynolds years. That will be our three today.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
We're trying to fit.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
We're trying to break down our Lonnie Anderson tributes into
different sections so we can on our every portion of
her life. My brother is the king of Celebrity Dead,
so I don't know what his tracking is, but he's
always the first person to ever text me anytime in
old celebrity dies. I don't know we got like TMZ
(31:02):
style connections to the undertakers of Hollywood or what he
hit me with the the world has lost Lonnie Anderson
text in the middle of the day yesterday and I said, damn.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
It was my response.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
We've got more on the ways to hear.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
President Trump is bringing back the presidential fitness test for
public schools. Teachers are excited because it means students will
have much better stamina during sex.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Oh oh wow, I saw two of those last week
of the teachers having sex with you. You know, teenage boys.
They always look the same, Yeah, pretty attractive, kind of blonde, whatever,
on the verge of losing their girlish beauty and their
power over males.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yet it's nut job.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
There ought to be like a recognized name for that syndrome,
gray haired Cinderella syndrome or something.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I don't know, but Joe and.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
I are of the generation like many of you, who
went to school during the Presidential Fitness test that John F.
Kennedy started in the early early sixties and it lasted
for fifty years.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I believe it's good for children to attempt something they
can't possibly do.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I was just reading that there's no data showing that
that did any good. First of all, there are only
four kids in a half a century in all of
the country.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
That effort did require.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Pull ups, right, I mean so, and we all felt
that way about it. I mean, there was a there
were a number of things that nobody in your school
could do, or one kid could do, And so what
were we supposed to do with that information?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I guess we're all just failures.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I mean, well, and it wasn't like that kid was
an eight year old exercise devotee. They were just very
skinny and strong for reasons of jeans, or they grow
up on.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
A farm or something.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Well, there's a certain build that works for pull ups, right, yeah,
it doesn't even matter if you're very, very fit, It
doesn't work for other people.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Anyway.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
We all recognized fairly quickly, including the gym teacher, that
what are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I mean, there's one kid in the school.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
That can do this. What are we supposed to say?
You're all gonna die? Or what is the message? It
was an unall insterior It a little jimmy. Now. I
heard somebody mentioning sitting at the bottom of the rope
that they could never climb.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Was rope climbing part of the presidential fitness thing? Oh yeah,
Oh it was. Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
I could scramble to the top and touch the beam
at the top of the gym like a monkey every time.
It was easy for me but it was horrifying. I
mean because you were at the top of a gymnasium
over a hard floor, like thirty feet in the air.
It was frightening.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
His hell, well, that was the sort of courage that
defeated the nazzies, Jack, and that's what we've lost in America.
You can't climb to the top of the rope. How
are you going to defeat the modern nazzies.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
I didn't realize. I kind of remember when it went
away ten fifteen years ago. They did away with it,
and we mocked it back then, And so it's coming back,
I hope, in a form that has some doable goals
where you could as like a seventh grader or think, oh,
I almost did it. You know, if I exercised a
little bit next year, I could do it, whereas I
(34:09):
could have worked out the rest of my life and
I was never going to be able to do ten pullups.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
But the original.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Intention of it was it was when TV became such
a fad, and JFK and the administration at the time thought,
in like nineteen sixty one, kids are watching way too
much TV, and I get it fat and lazy. Unless
we don't have the schools get involved in this, and
that's where.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
It came from. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, it's funny looking back because I couldn't climb the
rope at all, And you know I could do I
could do a reasonable number of those pullups, but I
couldn't do enough. Meanwhile, and this is twelve year old me,
trust me, I take no pride in this. Meanwhile, as
I'm utterly failing the physical fitness test, I'm running rough
(34:53):
shot over the other kids in like three different sports.
And so again, what are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Was the question we all had. I I think I
could still climb the rope. Does anybody have a rope
in the gym? They could have?
Speaker 8 (35:06):
Me?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Come, could you open the gym on a weekend? You'd
have to have a gym, oh, I see, like a
municipal gym. Sure?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Does anybody have a gym they could open on the weekend?
Nobody has a freaking rope.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We don't have like a one meter diving board in
our swimming pools because some kid might jump backwards and
crack their head open.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Please, we're in a soft country. If you got access
to an old timy gym, let me know. I'll come out.
I want to see if I can still climb the
rope to the top.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I think I could one minute. Medicine balls are back
in so old timey. What's old is new?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Jack?
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Every gym has medicine balls in it now I've noticed that.
M How I wonder is planking a thing dudes do?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
My gym? Only chicks are doing planking. Oh yeah, well
they ought to be.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
So I'm over in the planking area and it's just
it's just women talking about the new season of the Bachelorette,
and uh over in the dudes are on the other
side throwing weight around. I just wanted to mind, have
I been tricked into doing the chick exercise?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
But wow, I'm just gonna let that that hang there
in the air like somebody broke wind a check exercise.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
No check exercises.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
It's never been easier in human history to feed yourself
than now, which is interesting given some hunger PSAs I
keep hearing the blue gene ad with the sexy chick,
Trump commented on it, so did JD.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Vance Armstrong and Getty
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Armstrong and Getty, I know he Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
One are the top BLS staffers is actually working in
the White House to help us understand the jobs numbers.
When I saw the jobs revisions, I literally called up
that person and said, I think there's a typo because
I've been following these numbers all the way back when
I worked with Alan Greenspan for something like forty years
that I've never seen revisions like this.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Okay, So that's Kevin Hassett whatever he is in the
Trump administration talking about the economy. This was for your
Trump hating news shows, the number one story all weekend long.
That so, the jobs numbers came out on Friday, we
talked about them. Trump fired the person in charge of
(01:03):
those numbers coming out, though, as I learned over the weekend,
they have very little to do with computing the numbers.
There's a giant staff of people that do that and
plugged him to formulas. And then this woman found out
about him like two days before they came out, and
then she just signs off on them.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
But there's really no discretion there no. So so as usual,
Trump does what Trump does.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
So he came out and claimed that she is a
hack and political and fudged the numbers to try to
make him look bad, and that she's been doing that
quote today's job numbers were rigged in order to make
the Republicans and me look bad. And he said that
sort of thing in various forms all weekend long. And
then so there were all kinds of headlines in the
New York Times, Washington Post, those sorts of places, NBC
(01:52):
News and that sort of thing. There's Larry Summer, Summer's
up on the TV on ABC this week. I watched
him yesterday and Larry Summers actually said this is the
sort of thing Richard Nixon didn't even dream of doing,
which I was a little over the top on his end.
New York Times headline was Trump fired America's economic data collector.
History shows the perils and they go immediately into this
(02:13):
is what Hitler did.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
This sort of thing Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yeah, he
went in there and cleaned house. As you know, Hitler, will.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I wish Trump wasn't claiming that this woman was you know,
fudging the stats just to hurt.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Him in Republicans and everything like that.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
But the real story, at least as explained by this
Kevin Hassett person, I thought was kind of interesting, and
the only place I heard it was on Meet the
Press when Christian Walker asked him the question.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
So here is a somewhat.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Lengthy but I think it might be helpful if you
end up with in an argument with a friend about
this explanation for what's going on here? What evidence does
the administration have that she manipulated the jobs numbers?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Right?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, what we've seen over the last few years is
massive revision to the jobs numbers.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
In fact, they were.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Extremely reliable, the kind of numbers that you want to
guide policy decisions and markets through COVID. And then when
COVID happened, because response rates went down a lot, then
revision rates skyrocketed, so that the typical monthly revision often
was bigger than the number itself. And now we had
a number that.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Just came out.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The actual number for the month wasn't so bad, but
the two months before were revised down by more than
it ever happened since nineteen sixty eight, and in twenty fifteen,
Alan Greenspan and I were asked to attend a conference
at BLS where we were asked to give advice about
how to modernize the data. And we warned that if
they didn't try to let the data collection and calculation
(03:45):
keep up with the data that was happening in the economy,
that we would have problems like this.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
For instance, a revised downward July from one hundred and
forty four thousand jobs to nineteen thousand jobs. The biggest revision,
as he pointed out, there since nineteen sixty eight COVID,
and since COVID businesses reporting their job numbers has changed,
they've stopped participating. So the numbers are all over the
place and not a whack. And he's just making the
argument that that the old formula and win of doing
(04:12):
things doesn't work. And he and Alan Greenspan went to
a conference as you just heard, and talked about it
and blah blah blah, And as he said in that
other clip, we're working with somebody right now from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics to try.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
To figure out what the numbers actually are.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Because I got these on Friday and called them up
and said, is this a typo. This can't be right,
and so it's all out of whack. That explanation makes
way more sense than the way Trump portrayed it. And
then if you you know, I don't know if you
need to fire her, but if you said, we're gonna
we're gonna get a fresh set of eyes on this.
We need to they need to redo the whole system.
(04:46):
So I've got somebody in there that's going to take
a look at it. I think that would have landed
a lot better than claiming it's a rigged system to
try to hurt Republicans.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right right, I would agree this is the twenty percent
of Trump's that even most big Trump fans wish he
would rein in a little bit. Yeah, because Hassett makes
an excellent point, and this does not smack as trying
desperately to make sense of what Trump said to me
like some other things do. If that makes sense, that okay,
So these revisions are now I mean, like an enormous
(05:17):
percentage of the total number.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
The original total number is is.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Useless, correct if it goes from one to nineteen, why
make any economic.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Decisions or markets react to be regional number? What are
we even doing?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Here right exactly, and so yeah, you know the fact
that the system was exposed as antiquated and no longer adequate,
Trump reacted in a childish knee jerk fashion. Not all
that shocking, but yeah, this this rings true to me.
The revision should not be nearly so enormous, or the
system is just completely broken.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
We need a new one again.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Whether miss Mackinharfer or whatever his name, her name is
needed to be Macintarfer, whether she actually has got kind
of a velma of the Scooby Do gang look to
her anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Find alluring or I'll just say intriguing anyway row.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Oh so anyway, but yeah, whether she would have been
a good person to be in charge of the turnaround
or not, I don't know. It's entirely it is possible
to do the right thing in the wrong way.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Or it's possible that she'd have said, yeah, it's ridiculous,
I'm all for redoing the way we come up with
these numbers. Put me in charge of it. I'd love to.
But who knows. It's possible this was to bump Epstein off.
I mean, it ended the Epstein thing. Not I heard
near the word once yesterday on the Sunday shows, and
from all reporting, the Trump White House was pretty desperate
(06:51):
to finally end that damn scandal once and for all.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I don't know if that's what happened here or not.
It seems like I had one more thing to see. Well,
you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I'm less likely to believe that just because of Kevin
Hassett's explanation.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, because it makes perfect sense there.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, what are we even doing here with these statistics
that they're that wildly wrong?
Speaker 4 (07:10):
But Trump's portrayal of it could have been to get
everybody's attention, which it certainly did well. He is parlayed
being under attack to his advantage now his entire on
the political scene, and it's been helped along by the
fact that, well he's been under attack for most of
the time. Everybody overplays their hand, and I've been complaining
(07:31):
about this for years. If people would stop doing that,
it would be so much better. So I generally like
Larry Summers, who was president of Harvard and Obama's economic guy.
He's a generally pretty reasonable Democrat for a Democrat. I
like him better than most people they put out there.
But so he did a list of Trump of what
(07:52):
we're headed now into now is authoritarianism. Trump did this,
and he mentioned a couple of other things that were
a little uncomfortable. I'm on with that Trump has done.
And then he said in the way Trump has gone
after the colleges, Okay, why did you say that?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Why did you say.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
That Harvard had ranked last in free speech Columbia was
not allowing Asian kids or Jews. I mean, come on,
so everybody overplays their hand and then they lose all credibility.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And how desperate is Larry Summers to have status among
his peers or whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I don't know, it's inside the guys. He he's a
smart guy, but.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
He was fired by Harvard for daring to suggest, you know,
some of the imbalance in the stem fields is just
men tend to be, on average better at this stuff
and more interested in it. And for that he was
hounded off the campus by the woke left. So you'd
think he would have a little bit of a regard
for the need to reform our disgusting perverse college campuses.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Oh, Campus Madness update coming up next hour, Stay with us.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
So hopefully that wraps up another Bureau of Labor Statistics Monday.
Every Monday we check in on that bureau. Well, you
gotta get it out of the way on Monday. Well,
everybody's waiting for it over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
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Speaker 4 (10:06):
Have any opinion on the Naked Gun remake that came
out over the weekend. A lot of attention among people
who love those movies the Leslie Nielsen style of comedy.
But this one has Liam Neeson in the lead role,
and I've never pictured him really doing a comedy like that, but.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The role it was pretty funny on Saturday Night Live. True.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
The Rotten Tomatoes reviews and critics' reviews have been fantastic
on this movie.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Pamela Anderson, the old Baywatch chick, is the lead female
in it, and they are said to be dating. Now,
Oh that's right. Yeah, that's so interesting. How often people
meet on the set and end up together? Is it
just because they're all pretty people? And if you two
put two really attractive people in a room, they're gonna
end up together.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Is that? Well, there's that, I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
But having been a cesspian of some note in my
younger days, you spend a hell of a lot of
time with people. You are very close physically with them
a lot, and you know, sometimes you're interacting in a
role where you are acting various emotions and they start
to feel a little realish. In fact, that's you know,
(11:16):
one of the hazards of being married to an actor
is you just if you spend weeks on a set
or rehearsing a play pretending to be in love with
somebody who's kind of attractive.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Danger. Danger.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Yeah, I wouldn't dig if my wife or girlfriend had
a job where I'm going to be uh, six months
in a hotel with this really hot young guy pretending
to be in love with him.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Right, and we're going to go through ups and downs
and struggles and laughs and tears and frustration and all
the ups and downs of life.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
But we'll do it together. Oh boy.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Yeah, anyway, that's that story. So you said you had
a gender bending mandis update campus madness? In the campus madness.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
That's also a look, believe it or not, we're going
to go from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to congressional redistricting,
which is one of the other big controversies of the day.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
But I promise you, promise you, it's not boring.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
And this is the first day for all of us
in a world without Lonnie Anderson. More on that later stitches.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
We will Soldier.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Liz Warren fell down on the Senate floor yesterday and
to everyone's surprise, didn't even yell Geronimo.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Our new Indian name is fall on Ass.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
That's pretty funny. How y'all doing? So we got some
good Newsy stuff for you. We talked about this expensive
bed on the One More Thing podcast to watch back,
this really expensive mattress, which oh I remember that. Yeah,
I'll hit you at the price here in a moment,
because if you haven't heard about this, it's shocking. We
actually walked by one of these stores. It's Houstin's. I
(13:11):
don't know how you pronounce it, h A S T
e ns. It's Scandinavian so Hi Houston. I don't know
how they pronounce it. But they don't have many stores.
The beds are ridiculously expensive. And we walked by one
of the stores on Park Avenue in New York. We
were leaving Central Park and as we were walking along
all these ridiculously expensive stores and oh my god, it's
(13:32):
one of those bed stores. But you had to have
an appointment, and then we were not dressed for people
to go in and look at these kind of mattresses,
but I would love to have laid down one.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I don't even know if they know let us try,
poor people, we can't allow you in here. So I
don't remember how I came across this over the weekend,
and it it.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Reignited my interest in this sort of thing that it exists.
But so I went on eBay and there's one available
on eBay that's used, so they only want forty eight
thousand dollars for it. This used mattress comes with the
box spring, so it's mattress and box spring for forty.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 6 (14:06):
No.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, And the owner of it, since I put it
on my watch, sent me an offer yesterday, took four
thousand dollars off. They're only asking forty thousand dollars now
for this mattress and box spring. This mattress is made
of horsehair and some particular rare kind of horse and cotton.
(14:28):
It's all natural materials, it is said by reviewers. I
remember when I talked about this on our podcast, the
person who reviewed it, I think for the New York
Times said it's ridiculously overpriced and nobody is ever going
to buy one. Of these, But it is unlike sleeping
on anything you've ever slept on.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It's as if you're suspended. You're just floating.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
You can't even tell her anything, there's any pressure on
any of your body.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
You're just kind of floating there. And it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
But the original price on this particular mattress in box
Springs that I'm I'm you know, I'm trying. I'm deciding
whether or not to pull the trigger at forty grand
was eighty four thousand dollars eighty three Please, eighty four
thousand dollars for a mattress in box Spring.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Look, if you fly private all the time, go ahead
and buy the Horrors hair mattress.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
We prefer sex workers hair. By the way, Jack these
horse the beast of burden.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Oh, I apologize, I'd misunderstood. But if that's your lifestyle,
go ahead. If not, that's insane. Don't you remember that
email we got from a gal She said, yeah, we
bought one of these things, and you've got to like
have the Horrors hair massaged every.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Two weeks or that's the most uncomfortable thing ever. No,
that's part of the upkeep.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Yes, you have to have it's what is it called
a rejuvenation or something like that. Somebody needs to come
into your home at least once a year and re
massage it to make it. But it's just reinterview from
somebody who's got one on Reddit. They said, if you
have the person come and rejuvenate it all the time,
they've had it for four years, feel exactly like it
did on day one. If you don't get it rejuvenated,
(16:03):
you have a very expensive sack of garbage, they said.
But wow, I would like to lay down on one.
There's a store in uh Silicon Valley, No surprise, I might.
I might have to go over there sometime and I'll
wear my suit jacket and try to look like I
belong there and make an appointment and lay.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Down on one so I can repull back.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Isn't it amazing though, that anybody would ever pulled the
trigger on a four eighty four thousand dollars mattress and
box spring like a lot of things. I think it exists,
so you can mention that you have it, But I
can't believe they sell enough of them to be able
to even be a company.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You wouldn't think you'd sell to a year. Well, it's
at the store.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
There are thousands of billionaires and more every day. I
don't know that that's supposed to last billionaire.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I don't know. Maybe they get you. They sleep very
you know.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
I would think if I walk into the I would
think if i'd have walked into that store in Park Avenue,
I had been the first customer six months.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
You So, I don't know anyway, you here on purpose, sir?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Oh my lord, oh my god, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Okay, okay, okay, it'll be okay, all right, here we go, right. Yeah,
you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
I was just reading that according to several organizations, companies,
people that would know, American consumers are going way towards
thrifty now. A lot of luxury buying is down, generics
are up, bulk buying is on the rise. Even your
fancier burritos are going unordered in your eateries.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Your fancier burritos.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, well, trust me when I tell you, Like Chipotle,
they keep very, very careful track of what is being
ordered and what's not, and they're seeing a trend.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Toward lower dollar orders. Wow.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
So matched out credit cards, student loan payments coming back.
Probably a certain amount of uneasiness about the future. That'd
be I'm terroristed with the center. I would never buy
that bed anyway, but I would never be able to
sleep because I'd be thinking, God, if the economy early crashes,
I'm going to feel like an idiot on this eighty
three thousand dollars bed.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
She Many, Armstrong, and Getty. A high stake showdown in
Texas as House Democrats flee the state to delay a
controversial Republican led push to redraw the congressional map in
cities like Austin, Houston, and Dallas. The proposed map could
flip five seats from likely wins by Democrats to Republicans.
(18:36):
The move could help them keep their razor thin House
majority by carving up cities like deep blue Austin into
multiple red districts, leaving just one Democratic stronghold in the center.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So this is controversial, and it's not usually done midway
between censuses. Usually redistricting is done every ten years when
the census comes out. But if there is probably no
other topic in politics that has more hypocritical posturing than redistricting.
(19:09):
As each side yells at the other that, well, we'll
show you what they're yelling in a moment or two.
But the President of Texas, Greg Abbott, has told the Democrats,
you got to come back to the session or you're
maybe committing a felony and we're gonna get you. And
the Democrats reacted by quoting a famous line from Texas history,
come and get it, meaning us or something.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Well, and how do they teach us when we're seventh
graders that jerry mandering is illegal? And then you grow
up and you realize, like practical everything in the country
is jerry mandered.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Right exactly, It's just called redistricting. And the sad and
pathetic state of jurisprudence on this is actually the interesting part.
We'll get to that in a second or two. But
here's some of the heated rhetoric. Seventy two Michael.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
If Donald Trump is allowed to do this, if he
is allowed to once again cheat and get away with it, Wow,
there's no stopping this.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
This will spread across the country. This is an American
and this is undemocratic.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
Republicans are stealing our democracy right before our very eyes.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
So if you ever look at the map of districts,
you see how and the Republicans and Democrats work together
oftentimes on these so they can not battle over very
many seats. It's really ugly. But they'll like, you know,
the lines go, see, grab this part of a town
that's all going to be blue voters, and then this
(20:40):
little part of the country that's going to be all
red voters. Are separate even though the town like this
is the way it used to be in the town
I'm in now, I don't know what the lines are now, but.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
They had carved it out. It should be the whole town.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
We all live in this town, so we should be
a voting block people in this town.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
But they didn't.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
They grab part of the town where the liberals lived
and the other part of the town for one district,
another part of the town for Republicans, and just yeah,
it's ridiculous, right, yeah, do you being.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
That they want mostly safe districts so they don't have
to spend any money in them, and then they're a
handful of up for grabs districts that have great fights
in them. One more bit of heated rhetoric. This from
fat immoral child mutilator JB. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois.
Speaker 8 (21:22):
We know that you are making great sacrifices to resist
the power grab that's being perpetrated by Donald Trump, by
Governor Abbott, and by Texas Republicans. We will not let
power go unchecked for, or let your voices and their
voices go unheard.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
In a hilarious and soon to be forgotten aspect of this,
Gavin Newsom came out and said, essentially, this is thieving democracy,
this is aut American, this is immoral.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
We need to do it.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So he's threatening to re re redistrict to California to
squeeze out the few Republican seats. Actually they're a pretty
good number, but anyway, so I thought that was interesting.
Blah blah blah. They're all grand standing in Sooner or
later the Democrats will come back and there'll probably be
some sort of compromise. But that's not the interesting part. Oh,
And that's all you're gonna hear all day long is
(22:12):
they look they're fighting.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
They're fighting. But that'll get it, that'll get worked out eventually.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
What the interesting part to me is that, and this
is such a failure of our system. The status of
law about redistricting is one of those parts of the
law that everybody just kind of says, nothing to see here,
don't look too closely. So you got your Voting Rights
Act pasted a number of years ago. Supreme Court is
(22:39):
going to take on a major, may truly historical case.
They announced on Friday during the October session they're going
to rehear a redistricting challenge, and they broadened the case
even more by asking the parties to address the question
of whether the state's creation of a second majority minority
(23:02):
conjectural district violates fourteenth or fifteenth Amendments. I know this
is a little bit thick, but here it is. The
Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution says you can't change
what you do government because of the race of the
person involved, or the religion or the creed, or who
they sleep with or whatever. You can't. But Section two
(23:24):
of the Voting Rights Act says, yeah, actually you can
if they're.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Black or brown or white.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
In fact, you can draw these crazy ass districts to
make sure that there are the right number of what
they call majority minority districts, meaning, for instance, I don't
know when Kansas a lot of Hispanic people, they got
to get a district and I'm about to black folks
over by Kansas City.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
It ain't gotta have a.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
District over there, and I don't care how crazy quilt
weird looking it is, you gotta drawma district. Well, obviously
those two things are not compatible. And the Supreme Court
back in nineteen eighty six unleashed a ruling that satisfied
no one, and nobody can figure out that it requires
(24:15):
states to draw these majority minority districts if the minority
populations are large, compact, and politically cohesive, but the white
votes sufficiently as a group could defeat a minorities preferred candidate.
So it's to be it's got to be a community
(24:35):
of the racial minority people. It can't be a crazy
quilt boa constrictor you know, laid across parts of the state.
And those two things have been completely at odds for
the longest time now, since nineteen eighty six. Nobody knows
what the law is. States think, well, we can't be
(24:56):
run a fellow of the Equal Protection Guarantee. Yeah, we
can't get in trouble unders two of the voting right tack.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
So what do we do. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Let's kind of just half ass these weird districts.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
So it's long overdue.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
The Scotus is gonna say, all right, here's the deal,
and it's probably gonna be one or the other.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Boy, it'd be something if they.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Had a ruling that would cause us to redraw districts
all across the country and get it back to well something,
not what it is. Like we were just explaining, the
two major parties have worked together to make most of
the seats safe. Do you know that that's why third
parties can't ever get anywhere? They've gone out of their
(25:37):
way to make sure the Republicans and Democrats will have
a certain giant number that are almost impossible to dislodge
people from, and then they'll fight over the other fifty
or whatever number they've decided on that they'll make competitive.
And if you drew all these lines in a more
normal way, like this town is represents a group of people.
(25:58):
All the people living a rural lifestyle outside of it
are a different group of people like that, which would
make more sense. We'd have way more competitive races. And well,
does anybody think the way things are going right now
is a good thing?
Speaker 2 (26:13):
No? Nobody.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Congress has its lowest approval ratings ever, and they're like
lower than everything but paper cuts Rhea.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
And there's such an advantage to play in towards the
fringe of your own party as opposed to the middle
of the country, the middle of politics, not the middle
of the country. But it was just a little while
back that Clarence Thomas was commenting on this Louisiana case
and said, look, Court, you've got to figure this out,
because this is absurd. This is exactly what we're supposed
(26:41):
to do, and we're not doing it. Figuring out whether
the Section two or this stupid case run a foul
of the Constitution's Equal Protection clause.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
So there could be a.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Giant change coming in the way these maps are drawn
coming up in Uh, well, the session is in October.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Then when do they at least those decisions. It's not
the next June, isn't it usually the big ones?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, all right, Well twenty twenty six is going to
be a giant ear for redistricting.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Anyway.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I thought that was the interesting part that we've been
existing in this weird Yeah, everybody knows the Constitution doesn't
permit this, but the Court hasn't taken it on situation
that's about to end. I think we're going to get
into the whole blue jeans commercial thingy again in hour three.
Some interesting things were said over the weekend about that
whole controversy. I heard about this the Nazi eugenesis blue
(27:35):
jeans commercial. Plus speaking of that sort of thing popular
young women. Does Caitlin Clark have a civil rights case
against the WNBA?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Well, I say absolutely, shit.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Oh that'll be exciting. I just saw this headline. I'll
have to dig into it. China is standing firm again.
It's the United States demands that it stopped buying oil
from Russia and Iran. That is going to be a
big deal.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
This and they've gone back, and this varies like every
week after week. It goes back and forth. They've gone
back to choking off our supply of various rare earth
minerals and stuff we need.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
But this hole trying to squeeze Russia because they're not
cooperating with the ceasefire or whatnot. The Indian China is
going to be interesting to follow and it's going to
happen over the next couple of weeks. A lot want
to get to this story later too. Las Vegas Joe
was manding people pulling back on spending. Las Vegas is
down quite a bit year to year. Visits to Las
(28:42):
Vegas were down eleven percent in June versus a year earlier.
That's quite a bit one year year to year eleven percent.
And I would certainly put trip to Las Vegas in
the first things we cut when money gets tight category,
wouldn't you?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. I don't like these trends.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Mackenzie poll recently top concern for US consumers Forty five
percent said rising prices and inflation about thirty little under
thirty percent said tariff policies well, twenty three percent said
ability to make ends meet.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Well, that first number is quite possibly affected by that
second one. I mean, so those all could be the
same number, right, You're confirmed about concerned about inflation and
tariff could be all the same thing. I think we
all have a little PTSD around inflation. That's brutal. Inflation
is brutal, man. You lose a lot of your net
(29:44):
worth really freaking quick. Oh yeah when that when inflation hits,
it's physically frightening. Hell yeah, I don't like to think
about it. I was thinking about it on my walk
the other day, like, just how much less I make
than a couple of years ago because of inflation. Unless
you have a job where it tracks with inflation, you've
(30:04):
taken a pretty big pay cut over the last several years.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Everybody has.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
And don't forget, it's a hidden tax. So the government
class can spend lots of money and accumulate more power
and wealth themselves. They tax you by devaluing what you own.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
That sucks. Fight the power, man, fight the power.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, fiscal responsibility is not just some sort of like
intellectual stance.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
It's protecting what's yours. So we'll do Lonnie Anderson the
Reynolds years. That will be our three today.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
We're trying to fit.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
We're trying to break down our Lonnie Anderson tributes into
different sections so we can on our every portion of
her life. My brother is the king of Celebrity Dead,
so I don't know what his tracking is, but he's
always the first person to ever text me anytime in
old celebrity dies. I don't know we got like TMZ
(31:02):
style connections to the undertakers of Hollywood or what he
hit me with the the world has lost Lonnie Anderson
text in the middle of the day yesterday and I said, damn.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
It was my response.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
We've got more on the ways to hear.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
President Trump is bringing back the presidential fitness test for
public schools. Teachers are excited because it means students will
have much better stamina during sex.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Oh oh wow, I saw two of those last week
of the teachers having sex with you. You know, teenage boys.
They always look the same, Yeah, pretty attractive, kind of blonde, whatever,
on the verge of losing their girlish beauty and their
power over males.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yet it's nut job.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
There ought to be like a recognized name for that syndrome,
gray haired Cinderella syndrome or something.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I don't know, but Joe and.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
I are of the generation like many of you, who
went to school during the Presidential Fitness test that John F.
Kennedy started in the early early sixties and it lasted
for fifty years.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
I believe it's good for children to attempt something they
can't possibly do.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
I was just reading that there's no data showing that
that did any good. First of all, there are only
four kids in a half a century in all of
the country.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
That effort did require.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Pull ups, right, I mean so, and we all felt
that way about it. I mean, there was a there
were a number of things that nobody in your school
could do, or one kid could do, And so what
were we supposed to do with that information?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
I guess we're all just failures.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I mean, well, and it wasn't like that kid was
an eight year old exercise devotee. They were just very
skinny and strong for reasons of jeans, or they grow
up on.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
A farm or something.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Well, there's a certain build that works for pull ups, right, yeah,
it doesn't even matter if you're very, very fit, It
doesn't work for other people.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Anyway.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
We all recognized fairly quickly, including the gym teacher, that
what are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I mean, there's one kid in the school.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
That can do this. What are we supposed to say?
You're all gonna die? Or what is the message? It
was an unall insterior It a little jimmy. Now. I
heard somebody mentioning sitting at the bottom of the rope
that they could never climb.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Was rope climbing part of the presidential fitness thing? Oh yeah,
Oh it was. Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
I could scramble to the top and touch the beam
at the top of the gym like a monkey every time.
It was easy for me but it was horrifying. I
mean because you were at the top of a gymnasium
over a hard floor, like thirty feet in the air.
It was frightening.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
His hell, well, that was the sort of courage that
defeated the nazzies, Jack, and that's what we've lost in America.
You can't climb to the top of the rope. How
are you going to defeat the modern nazzies.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
I didn't realize. I kind of remember when it went
away ten fifteen years ago. They did away with it,
and we mocked it back then, And so it's coming back,
I hope, in a form that has some doable goals
where you could as like a seventh grader or think, oh,
I almost did it. You know, if I exercised a
little bit next year, I could do it, whereas I
(34:09):
could have worked out the rest of my life and
I was never going to be able to do ten pullups.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
But the original.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Intention of it was it was when TV became such
a fad, and JFK and the administration at the time thought,
in like nineteen sixty one, kids are watching way too
much TV, and I get it fat and lazy. Unless
we don't have the schools get involved in this, and
that's where.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
It came from. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, it's funny looking back because I couldn't climb the
rope at all, And you know I could do I
could do a reasonable number of those pullups, but I
couldn't do enough. Meanwhile, and this is twelve year old me,
trust me, I take no pride in this. Meanwhile, as
I'm utterly failing the physical fitness test, I'm running rough
(34:53):
shot over the other kids in like three different sports.
And so again, what are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Right?
Speaker 4 (35:00):
Was the question we all had. I I think I
could still climb the rope. Does anybody have a rope
in the gym? They could have?
Speaker 8 (35:06):
Me?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Come, could you open the gym on a weekend? You'd
have to have a gym, oh, I see, like a
municipal gym. Sure?
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Does anybody have a gym they could open on the weekend?
Nobody has a freaking rope.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
We don't have like a one meter diving board in
our swimming pools because some kid might jump backwards and
crack their head open.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Please, we're in a soft country. If you got access
to an old timy gym, let me know. I'll come out.
I want to see if I can still climb the
rope to the top.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I think I could one minute. Medicine balls are back
in so old timey. What's old is new?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Jack?
Speaker 4 (35:32):
Every gym has medicine balls in it now I've noticed that.
M How I wonder is planking a thing dudes do?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
My gym? Only chicks are doing planking. Oh yeah, well
they ought to be.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
So I'm over in the planking area and it's just
it's just women talking about the new season of the Bachelorette,
and uh over in the dudes are on the other
side throwing weight around. I just wanted to mind, have
I been tricked into doing the chick exercise?
Speaker 1 (35:57):
But wow, I'm just gonna let that that hang there
in the air like somebody broke wind a check exercise.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
No check exercises.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
It's never been easier in human history to feed yourself
than now, which is interesting given some hunger PSAs I
keep hearing the blue gene ad with the sexy chick,
Trump commented on it, so did JD.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Vance Armstrong and Getty
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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