April 24, 2024 • 35 mins
Hour 4 of A&G features...
- Joe Getty radio theater--Vladimir in Omaha....
- One of our favorite explanations of the game of baseball...
- A solid explanation of a recent government rule change...
- Final Thoughts!
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):
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center. Is Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and
Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
In the next few hours, literally the few hours, we're
going to begin sending him equipment to Ukraine for air defense, munitions,
for artillery, for rocket systems, and armored vehicles. You know,
this package is literally an investment not only in Ukraine security,
but in europe security and our own security. We're sending
(00:37):
Ukraine equipment from our own stockpiles. Then we'll replenty those
stockpiles with new products made by American companies here in America.
Patriot missiles made in Arizona, javelins made in Alabama, artillery
shows made in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In other words,
we're helping Ukraine well at the same time investing in
our own industrial base.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
So he's making the argument. He signed the bill into law.
The Senate passed it yesterday seventy nine to eighteen, the
ninety five billion dollar aid package for UK and Israel Taiwan,
and then they also passed the TikTok thing, but seventy
nine eighteen it wasn't even close. But he's making the
argument to mostly those Republicans who say we're giving money
(01:21):
away and lowering our stockpile. He's trying to make that argument.
He goes on to say that this is in our
direct national interest in that if Russia takes Ukraine next,
they'll be going after a NATO country, and then we
are drawn in. He goes on to say this.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You know, he's maybe we should take a little bit
of a step back and realize what a critical moment
this was for the the United States and for NATO.
This is a historical moment. In the last two years,
we've helped unify, strengthen, and expand NATO. Imagine if instead
we had failed, we had failed to step up now
(01:58):
and support Ukraine, all those gains would have begun to unravel,
the cohesion of NATA would have been weakened, and our
national security would have been undermine Without any question.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, I think all that did happen.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
Am I supposed to pretend he's not a slurring old
man for the purposes of this discussion so he can
stick to the main threat of it, or can I
mention even like that Charlottesville speech he made that we
played the audio of he sounds like a different human being.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right from four years ago, three years ago.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, absolutely, Putin started this war, but change his strategy
and failed. We stand with our friends and bow to
no one. He went on to say, all right, still
no talk of what a win looks like.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Maybe now is not a good time because so unlikely
to get a win. So Ian Bremer's take on this
was America continuing to send Ukraine sixty billion dollars in
support year after year is unrealistic no matter who wins
the presidency. What you really want to do at this
point is position Ukraine as well as possible for eventual negotiations.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
I say, I suppose you wouldn't say that out loud.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
No, Yeah, we sent I can't remember the figure, one
hundred and thirty billion or something like that to get
them ready for their great counter offensive, which practically went nowhere.
You know, it kept the battle lines more or less
where they were, which is, you know, it's better than
the alternative. But yeah, So the idea that this sixty
(03:32):
billion dollars is somehow going to be decisive and turn
the tide, No, it's just not realistic. But yeah, the
Biden administration not going to talk about winning, because I
don't think is possible at this point, especially with this
level of support.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, and what will be lost to history because nobody
will remember how this unfolded is if we had given
them the stuff that we eventually gave them. Anyway, right
at the beginning, when Russia was on the run, very
likely could have actually pushed them completely out of the country,
given them a hell of a spanking, and they would
never think about doing it again. I look forward to
getting further in this David Sanger book. I'm reading about
(04:05):
how these decisions were made behind the scenes of no way,
we're sending bullets that would be too provocative, We'll end
up in a nuclear war. Okay, we'll send the bullets,
but no way, we're sending you know, the next size shell.
But no way, it'll start a nuclear war. Okay we'll
send it. No way, we're sending tanks it would started. Okay,
we'll send it planes, training the pilots. All the things
(04:26):
that we eventually did that didn't start a nuclear war.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
Yeah, Joe Biden's a spineless coward. He is the issue.
And I'm not saying there's nothing we would have done
that could have provoked an escalation, but at least he agrees. Yeah,
And the idea that there's either a win driving Russia
completely out of Ukraine or it's a loss is it's
a false choice. It's a win for NATO to make
(04:55):
Putin's quote unquote victory so incredibly painful and expensive that
he never wants to attempt anything like that. Again, I mean,
that's a huge win historically speaking. Now, the Ukrainians wouldn't
be satisfied with that, but as a realist, I don't
see the Biden administration giving them nearly the backing it
would take to win, especially because Russia's entrenched now. It's
(05:18):
not like you can do tomorrow which you didn't do
today in warfare. As Mike lyons, I'm sure would agree, right.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
And I have no idea where Trump is on this
if he ends up winning, no idea.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
They're surrounding us. But let's not do anything crazy. Let's
think about it for a few days and then we
can do something about it. Yeah, it doesn't work like that.
But anyway, again, saying that either they drive the Russians
completely out of Ukraine or it's not a win, it's
just the wrong way to look at it. There aren't
wins and losses in history likes people seem to think
(05:49):
there are. There are occasionally, like World War Two, that
was like it was an enormous conflict, but that was
one of many, many, many conflicts the United States has
been in through the years. Some are clear winds, some
are clear losses. Most of them are kind of in
between somewhere. The clear winds happen when you go all in, right.
(06:11):
That's why I'm reading that book, Sherman's March to the
Sea about the Civil War.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Just we went all in. We're gonna just devastate you
until the military and the population says uncle, make.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
When we say unconditional surrender, you're gonna say yes, please.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Right, which we did did Germany and Japan. That's the
only time you really get the clear wins, and usually
you either can't do it or you don't have the
stomach for it.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
In the modern world, yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
I'm not sure complete victory was ever on the table
against Russia. It's too big, it's too well manned, too
well equipped. In spite of their you know, crappy, crappy
military and their corruption, the rest of them, they're just
too big.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Another interesting part of this David Sanger book I'm reading,
is you you forget how much courting of Putin ever
he did not did does so much talk about Trump
and the coddling authoritarians or whatever. George Bush met with
Putin twenty two times, met personally with him twenty two
(07:13):
times in his presidency, is to try to get him,
you know, you know, be friends with him and move
our direction and toward Europe. And there's even talk of
eventually letting having Russia in NATO. That was on the
table with Condoleeza Rice in the Bush administration.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
That's how far.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
We were wrong about what Putin's actual intentions were. And
then we probably do remember Barack Obama then sending Hillary
over there with the big giant red reset button because
we're gonna be friends with you and we can work together.
I mean, everybody completely misread what an evil bastard Putin is.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Please tell Vladimir I'll have more flexibility after the election.
That's famous, and w famously clownishly saying I looked into
his eyes and I saw a good man. I think
I could see his soul or whatever he saw good board.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, Putin, It's not like he became the evil, ruthless, murdering,
child abducting, horrible human being he is. He was always
that guy, but he completely fooled a bunch of our presidents.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
Yeah, America's naivete is one of our defining characteristics.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Men were easy to do that.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And we assume everybody wants to live like us, which
they should. I mean, it's a better way, but they don't,
or at least their governments don't. Well, son of a gun,
what are you gonna do? It'd be something. It's got
to be something for George W. Bush to see what
Putin's doing now, I mean, just the absolute just worst
(08:52):
things you can imagine he does. He bombs schools with
little kids in him. I mean, that's the kind of
guy he is. Well, he tasab kill all those people.
Bush who met with him, sat down and you know,
laughed and drank vodka with him twenty two times.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
I'd be weird if Vladimir Putin were listening to the
show right now. Number one, Vladimir, thanks for listening to
the Armstrong and Getty Show. Secondly, I'm sure, in fact,
let's do this's here's a little Joe Getty's radio theater Michael,
do you have the theme music next color? Vladimir in
(09:33):
omahago ahead, Vladimir. I think it's a funny. You just
explaining Sherman's strategy for total victory, then condemn me for
bombing school same thing, right, although Sherman didn't, you know,
burn schools with kids in them. Yeah, he has the
stomach for total victory, for decimating people, wiping it off
(09:57):
the face of the earth if necessary, to take their
land and their resources.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Anyway, the pat Joe Biden signed to this stuff, and
he says we're going to be sending equipment within hours
to Ukraine, and the cheers went up in the Ukraine
Parliament with US flags everywhere and chance of USA USA.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
And worth mentioning again that the vote in the Senate
was seventy nine to eighteen, seventy nine eighteen overwhelming, damn
near unanimous.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yep, But the majority of Republicans in the House voted
against it, which is interesting. Anyway, more on the White
stay here. Man is the book industry in trouble yipes
and I was a big fan of books.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
I hate to hear that, but more on that later.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Yeah, I got the major FTC ruling against noncompete clauses.
That's an interesting discussion. There a lot of what's going
wrong with America on the show today, and we thought
we'd take him home for not only a bit of humor,
but something great about America. For instance, that we make
up complicated sports then make the rest of the world
play them. This is a German comedian actor full of
(11:13):
borg enjoy baseball.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
We have some pillows, We have some pillows on the dirt,
and then we have some grass, and then we have people, says,
stand all around to make a grabbing of the of
the downstairs scrap of crowd, look around, look around. Then
men with stick is dere and then then he bomb.
He throw throw a bowl to the stick man and
the stick man may hit. If he make a miss
(11:36):
of three times, then out. But if he hit the
ball very far, then he may run on all the
pillows around the pillows and the boys, the boys in
the in the trench. They sit in the trench and
they look around and they the spit spit, spit spit
and the hat and then clap, clap and spit spit
(11:59):
and then they run dande rontusa field. But time out
after seven times I've gone on field, everyone sings a.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Song about popcorn.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
And Dan day, Dan Day, two more hits and throws.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
What I would listen to that if it went on
for another five minutes and then after seven times they
stop and sing a song about popcorn.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Buddy, that is funny.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So which came first baseball or cricket in India?
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Is a baseball come out of cricket or that's the story? Yeah? Yeah,
I think.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
And there was a game called Rounders that was based similar.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Anyway, And I mean I could google it if I
cared enough, and I don't. But uh so, there's a
fair number of Indians in the town I live in,
Indians from India, I suppose to the people running the
casino over there, and they play cricket in this one
particular field not for from my house. And when we
go on bike rides, we go buy the cricket match
on Saturday's regularly and there's a big crowd that comes
(13:08):
and watches and everything like that. And I've stood there
and watched the cricket match.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
And again.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Another thing I could google if I cared enough to
find out what the rules are, But I just try
to pick it up by watching, and it's just completely
confusing to me.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
I just had a picture the bowler, which is ridiculous
because he's not bowling, and there are some wickets which
don't appear to be sticky. I think you're supposed to
hit those or avoid them or something. And the guy
with the bat is actually a spatula, not a bat.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
So you got spatula guy.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
I ought to do an American version over that. German
just said spatula man appears to be angry that the
bowler is trying to knock his favorite sticks down.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Boy, So little happens, And I realize if you're not
a fan of baseball, that's what it seems like when
you watch it. But watching cricket is just like nothing
is happening. And I'm sure if somebody understood that, they
would say, oh, the strategy that's happening here tense and amazing.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
But it just looks like a lot of people standing
around cricket makes baseball look like hockey. Crick is amazing. Well,
don't they play for like three hours, then they break
for lunch. They play for like three days, right, and
then they come back and play for more hours and
it goes on and on. Oh, I'm sure it's fine.
(14:22):
Let me save you right in the email. Guys, it's
worth checking out. Once you get to know what Cricket's
all about, you're gonna love it as much. Okay, thank you,
thank you. Our friend Craig.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Sent this because he's written books and he just came
across this about the published industry and industry and talking
about how.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Depressing this is.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Did you know that ninety six percent of books sell
less than a thousand copies in the modern publishing world?
Speaker 4 (14:55):
So what are you even doing? And this goes back
to it.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
There was a there was an attempt to a couple
of big companies to get together a couple of years ago,
and it become a giant court case. A Penguin Random
House wanted to buy Simon and Schuster, but there was
a concern that it would become a monopoly. And then
in the court case a lot of the numbers about
the publishing industry came out. So these numbers are kind
of old. It's probably worse now than it was then,
(15:21):
but it's amazing how few books are actually sold and
how narrow the whole thing is. In twenty twenty only
two hundred and sixty eight titles sold more than one
hundred thousand copies. See here about a million seller book
or whatever. Only two hundred and sixty books that year
sold more than one hundred thousand copies, and ninety six
percent of books sold less than a thousand. There's about
(15:46):
fifty authors that really sell any books at all in
the entire United States.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Fifty total, fifty.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So you're what's his name Patterson with his crime novels,
or he puts his name on the front and somebody
else writes them at this point, and you know, various
people like that, and then a handful of diet books.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
There's just like there's hardly any Yeah, there's like six
mystery people, six spy novel people, and then then JK.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Rowling.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I I just as I, as
I texted back to Craig yesterday, I said, well, if
if the average person under thirty spends seven hours on TikTok,
which is what the average is, doesn't leave you a
lot of time to read a book.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
I've long been thinking about writing a book, and I
think I'm probably going to. But I've finally gotten past
the fact that nobody wants it, and there's no point.
It's like the same reason I wrote songs and made albums.
Nobody's dying for them. It's the process is fun, it's
good for my brain. I enjoy it, so I'm going
to do it for that reason. But just with all
(16:51):
content available all the time everywhere, seems silly to introduce
more into the marketplace.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Not yeah, but that do mean you good stuff is
still good stuff?
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Of everything and want it, it won't be good. It
was a dark and stormy night. Have I sent you
the galleys already? Is it that whale you've been trying
to get for all these years?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (17:13):
And the captain he really wants to kill that whale.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
The FDC is finalized or rule that will eliminate the
vast majority of non compete clauses in people's contracts. A
noncompete clause is a provision that basically prevents people from
taking a job with a competitor or starting a competing business,
usually within a particular geographic area and for a certain
(17:40):
period of time.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
That's a pretty good description. I'm not sure why it
needs synthesizers, strings and muted nylon string geitar behind it.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So they eliminated non compete clauses. Who's this affecting?
Speaker 5 (17:54):
I am so.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Conflicted on this. There are lots of stuff going on here.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
First of all, that the head of the FTC, this
woman Khan, is that her name? I can never Ria
Khan Trade Trade Commission exactly. Yeah, Lena Khan is a lefty.
She is a lefty among lefties. She believes the government
ought to run everything, and she's running a super activist FTC.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I'm not a fan.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
The libertarian in me looks at noncompete agreements, non compete clauses, whatever,
and says, all right, on the one hand, and this
is the idea that, for instance, to cite a fairly
defensible example, all right, I am going to bring you
on here at Apple, and you are going to become
completely acquainted with our engineering, our manufacturing practices, the rest
(18:47):
of it. I'm going to pay you a bunch of
money in return you agree you're not going to quit
and go work.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
For Samsung next week.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
And that's that's a fairly squared deal, especially if I'm
well compensated.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
I understand that.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
But and so the libertarian in me thinks, well, if
you don't want to make that agreement part of your employment.
Go work somewhere else. You're free to go work wherever
you want.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
The other side of me sees the way it's often abused,
Like in Florida, for instance, it's extremely widespread. If you
go work for a hair salon as a haircutter for
a very modest amount of money, very modest, you have
to sign an agreement saying I will not, for the
rest of my life leave this salon and cut the
(19:36):
hair of any of its clients.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Well, how did the free market not fix that to
where the hair salon that doesn't make you sign that
wouldn't get all the good haircutters.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
That's the interesting part. It's maybe it's not overtly collusion,
but it's collusive in a way that I need to
seek out some counsel from my libertarian brethren and folks
you know more about the law. If virtually every hair
salon in Florida does that, because everybody does that, and
(20:07):
it's so common.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
That you just can't find a place to work.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
That doesn't make you sign something like that, then you
really don't have an effective alternative. I mean, you're already
fairly poor, You're never gonna make a lot of money
cutting hair and you're not going to like go from
Pensacola to Miami to seek freedom of clippers. You don't
have the resources and the idea that a simple hourly worker.
(20:32):
And the problem with it is it's run rampant now
into places where it's just it's indefensible. You know, tax preparers,
just every every company that has any sort of client
or regular customer, you have to say you will never
do business with any of those customers, sometimes for unreasonable
lengths of time. And so the idea of after I leave,
(20:54):
you have not rewarded me for signing this clause. I
kind of had to because everybody's doing it. For the
rest of my days. I'm constrained by my relationship from
you from engaging in commerce willingly with people who want
to engage with me.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
That bothers me a lot, haven't We had no complete
non compete cup clauses.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, they're illegal in a handful of states California.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
We couldn't quit our radio job and then go work
for another company for a while, usually as a period
of time, not forever, like the hair cutting thing.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I didn't know that was the thing.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Famously the company we worked for at the time, because
we said, no, we think we can for these reasons,
and they said, well, you're probably right, but we'll spend
you into bankruptcy. We have attorneys on retainer. It doesn't
matter to us. And we thought, well, that's a powerful
argument and one we will consider. So we bided our
time and did it later. Yeah, it's interesting. There are
(21:53):
definitely competing you know, energies here that are all about
liberty and people freely associating, doing business and that sort
of thing, and I'm just not quite sure where I arrive.
I could see there are some situations where it's absolutely legitimate,
particularly if there is compensation that's clearly in return for
(22:18):
making that agreement. But the tough part is when you
got you know, low wage people constrained from making a
living because you know, when they were a nineteen year
old shampoo girl, they signed a contract with you know
what would be a good hair salon name Curl Up
and Die, you know, in suburban Pensacola, Florida.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
God, somebody I used to have there was a long
running joke about how dumb the names are of all
places where they cut hair. It's like this part of
getting your license, you had to come up with a dumb.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Name, the clip joint. Yeah, we're a cut above because
we're on the second floor, you see. Uh, let's see. Yeah,
I guess that's it. That's pretty good. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh back to the book you mentioned you were you
thought about writing a book, so I was bringing you
those book statistics about how few books make it. Ninety
percent of books sell fewer than two thousand copies, fifty
percent of books published. Now, these numbers are from twenty
twenty from a court case, so I don't know how
accurate they are. Now. Half of books published now, I'm
assuming they're not talking about just self published.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Yeah, I just wrote a book and listed in Amazon.
I assume they're not talking about those.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
I don't know that though fifty percent of books published
sell less than a dozen copies, half of books discouraging.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
That is highly discouraging.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
Because if your sibling right, because you're your children and saying,
have you got the chance to buy a copy yet,
I'll give you the money back.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I feel like I can count a mom and dad.
We'll buy one and share it, Okay, what I'll buy
it in two and we haven't gotten around to it, dear,
but we will.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's like getting people to buy your kids girl Scout cookies.
Similar deal. Half of all books published so less than
a dozen copies. That is a discouraging profession. Uh, well,
you're gonna write fiction or nonfiction? You got a novel
in you.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Still working on your novel?
Speaker 5 (24:31):
I am working on a fiction thing. What I'm thinking
of that I'm definitely gonna finish is nonfiction. Okay, it's
a it's an unauthorized biography view. Frankly, it's a tell all.
It's uh, it's unvarnished.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Joe Getty breaks his silence. What have I ever been silent?
In your experience? In this essay, no one will read
your book talks about how the big publish houses invest
small sums in lots of books and hopes that one
of them will break out and become a unicorn, which
actually makes enough money to fund all the rest of
the books. The unicorn happens every five to ten years
(25:13):
or so. That's how seldom a book actually breaks out
and becomes a hit and sells a bunch of copies.
So what I was wondering about this is how is
there so many. Michael Cohen, maybe Hillary Clinton's a bad
idea because she was actually Secretary of Statement.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
These giant.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Advances they give to any celebrity of any level that
writes a book that nobody's going to read, and then
they go on all the shows and talk about their
book as if any somebody's going to buy it.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
How does that work?
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I think some of that's publicity crap because some of
the numbers, it's like NFL contracts. You know, Peyton Manning
signed an eight hundred million dollar contract. Well, a lot
of that's incentives, and if he retires or doesn't make
the team or whatever, they trade him and he doesn't
get the money in those A lot of those are
advances against sales. Sometimes it's just a signing bonus and
(26:02):
that's legit. But if it's an advance against sales, that
essentially means, all right, we're gonna give you a million
bucks up front, your first million bucks of sales. You
don't get anything because we already paid you for them.
It's advance royalties. That's the rock and roll bands have
that all the time or dead back in the day.
I think that's part of it, and there might even
be you got to return it if you don't sell
(26:23):
this many clauses. But nobody says that because that would
ruin the splash of the publicity.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
What isn't in these stats is are people reading significantly
less well?
Speaker 4 (26:34):
I gotta believe that's the case.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
I do because my attention I have to work at
reading books because my attention span is not what it
used to be.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah, and there's just there's so much to look at
and do and take in.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
God, I'm trying to get my fourteen year old to
be a reader, and both his mom and dad are
always reading books, so I thought that would wear off,
But of course he's grown up with a faster paced
world than I did. By far, I.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Mean, it's not even close.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
And he just finds the idea of reading a book
just painful. And even though he's practically locked in his
room for a half hour every night before lights out,
just I would think, out of something to do, you'd
want to read?
Speaker 4 (27:19):
And just I just bought him a copy of.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, just trying to come up
with something that I thought would hook him and be
really interesting and like, you couldn't not want to read it.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
But I'll see how it goes.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
Pow trudging around in the ruins of Dresden. Teenagers love
that sort of thing. What do you recommend? Do you
recommend something? Well, you've done like the Hardy Boys and
stuff like that. Oh yeah, he's way past that. Yeah, intellectually.
Has he done the Harry Potter books?
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Okay, all right, well that's good.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, Like I'm Henry. He had to read Animal Farm
for school, hated.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
It, but read it.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
So much of that stuff is not four kids, since
you've brought up many times, they make you read stuff
you can't conceivably relate to or appreciate.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
No, you just don't have the life experience or anything
like that too. Yeah. Why did they do that?
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Oh well, I think in the case of Animal Farm,
it's because we were in a global conflict with communists.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
But you wanted to teach the kids the principles of
anti communism.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
I could come up with a bunch of examples. But why,
we're why they teach you stuff in schools. This came
up yesterday with Henry. So we're driving around and he
was talking about he had been looking in the back
of his history book in school, and he's really disappointed.
He doesn't think they're going to get to some of
the stuff that he really wanted to get to in
his history book. And I told him how, And I
would like to know this my whole life.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I wanted to learn about World War two.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
And we would get our history book at the beginning
of the year and I would turn toward the back
and there'd be World War two, And I think I
can't wait. And we never, not one time in my
entire school career, kindergarten through graduating high school, did I
learn a word about World War Two. Now, people complain
about schools today, but that's a pretty big knock on
schools back then. What is it with public education and
(29:17):
not getting to the biggest event in human history?
Speaker 5 (29:22):
Just learn about the Stamp Act over and over again
every year?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
But seriously, so they're still doing that.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Why Why don't we do a better job of figuring
out what do we want kids to learn and what
is not that important?
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Why don't we do a better job of that? Goodness?
Speaker 5 (29:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
You can't even come up why I can't even come
up over like a lefty teachers union.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Reason?
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Is it just laziness, or they just don't give a
crap enough to look into it, or what I don't
know no clue. I'm highly troubled by what you learn
and don't learn as a kid. Those years are so valuable.
It's such a rare time in your life where you're
going to go be in a building for six eight
hours to learn, and we waste it on a bunch
of crap. A lot of times you.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
Have a capacity to absorb it like you'll never have
again in your life too. Now there's a fair amount
of enthusiasm for teaching history in recent decades because it's
Howard Zinn's history of why you should hate the United States.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Right that gets in there.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
And you see the bloom of that flower at Columbia
University in yu Berkeley, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
He's doing a.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Little study right now on Abraham from the Bible, which
I was happily surprised by. I didn't know that would
be okay, trouser, but it was on the list of
characters to choose from to do a biography of.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Let's see.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
As a kid, I loved strange but true hockey stories.
I read that over and over again. Strange but true
baseball stories. How about fifty Shades of Gray? Has he
read that?
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Yeah? I read a lot of Mad Magazine? Probably cumulative.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I spent more time in Med Mad Magazine than anything
else in my life.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Which and I graduated at National Lampoon, did a lot
of reading of that wonderful back in the day.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
And what good does it done mean?
Speaker 8 (31:08):
Now?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I make a living trying to make jokes. Does that
doesn't mean a good Well? I guess maybe it did.
We will finish strong next stage.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Armstrong, Hey, Getty.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Is that cheering or booing? So that's a nine year old,
probably younger than normal for competing in the twenty twenty
four gull screeching contest? How much can you sound like
a seagull? This is a nine year old. That's pretty good,
right there, Jack. They weren't booing. They were saying Coop,
name's Cooper?
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Okay, let's hear it again.
Speaker 8 (31:57):
Boom boom. I would say he has a career advantage.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
He's a child. His vocal cords haven't changed yet. We
had to have an age limit.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
On this damn gull screeching purists. That's a kid who
sounds just like a seagull. Right there, really, Gully, there's
no arguing in that. I congratulate the young man, and
I hope this is his springboard to greater success in
the future. Sounding like other shore birds, you know, when
(32:28):
I was a young dad, if there had been some
sort of national animal noise contest, I feel like I
could have at least fought my way to the state finals.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
I mean, I worked hard at all animals or any
particular animal that you're going all year.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Your standard barnyard animals, most last post, give me a
pig that hurts my throat.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
I'm old now, all right? Whatever?
Speaker 5 (32:53):
Huh?
Speaker 4 (32:53):
Admit me to this history? What who plague? Like your
patients prey gently to hear, kindly to judge.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
Good final thoughts of Armstrong and getting.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Some spotlight's on here and you turn away.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
I'm old and my vocal cords are worn out, but
let me try.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
That's a pretty damn good pig. Thank you, Thank you.
Here's your host for final thoughts. Katie looks disturbed. Pig.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
Let's get a final thought from everybody on the crew,
beginning with our beloved Michael Angelow. Press the buttons. Mike
got what your final thought? Yeah? I bought my nephew
a book, and about a year later I saw the
book holding up the table's leg.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
So, yeah, kids aren't reading.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
Kids aren't reading anymore, apparently, how disappointing for everyone, Katie
Green are Newswoman. As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
I'm trying to get over that noise you just made,
but I'm gonna go ahead and have my final thought just.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Be please don't ever do that again.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Well, the idea that pig say in ink oinkin, if
you've ever heard a hog, it's.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
Just not the case.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Jack of final thought, Mine is a serious one. The
biggest live fueling the antisemitic student uprising from National Review.
The youth are not leading some sort of insurgency against
the powers that be.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
They are tools of the powers that be.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Yeah, I agree, one hundred percent. One hundred percent. The
youngsters have no idea what they're doing. They've been duped
and they've been mobilized by their Marxist overlords. And I'm
not trying to be funny. It's clearly what's happening.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
And it's growing, not shrinking currently. So what's to be done.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
Dismantle every DEI program everywhere it exists.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Start today, Armstrong and Geddy wrapping up another grueling four
hour workday.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
So many people, thanks so a little time. Good Armstrong
and Getdy dot com.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Pick up an ang T shirt. We have a number
of amusing designs.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
You can drop us a note at mail bag at
Armstrong and Geddy dot com. The hot links are fantastic,
very entertaining and informative. They refer to articles that we
said we would poke, so go read them.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Follow us on Twitter if you want to do. We'll
see tomorrow. God bless America.
Speaker 5 (35:10):
So far as I know, you don't pay someone one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars not to have sex with you.
Speaker 8 (35:13):
I'm strong and get take, but you have to pay
attention to the cries that people have.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Absolutely we're in We're in a battle for the soul
of the country.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I don't care if I never get back. You're about
to open a pit of hell. You gonna make a
very obvious point out It's true that I know.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (35:36):
Good night everybody. Armstrong and Getty
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center. Is Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and
Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
In the next few hours, literally the few hours, we're
going to begin sending him equipment to Ukraine for air defense, munitions,
for artillery, for rocket systems, and armored vehicles. You know,
this package is literally an investment not only in Ukraine security,
but in europe security and our own security. We're sending
(00:37):
Ukraine equipment from our own stockpiles. Then we'll replenty those
stockpiles with new products made by American companies here in America.
Patriot missiles made in Arizona, javelins made in Alabama, artillery
shows made in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In other words,
we're helping Ukraine well at the same time investing in
our own industrial base.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
So he's making the argument. He signed the bill into law.
The Senate passed it yesterday seventy nine to eighteen, the
ninety five billion dollar aid package for UK and Israel Taiwan,
and then they also passed the TikTok thing, but seventy
nine eighteen it wasn't even close. But he's making the
argument to mostly those Republicans who say we're giving money
(01:21):
away and lowering our stockpile. He's trying to make that argument.
He goes on to say that this is in our
direct national interest in that if Russia takes Ukraine next,
they'll be going after a NATO country, and then we
are drawn in. He goes on to say this.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
You know, he's maybe we should take a little bit
of a step back and realize what a critical moment
this was for the the United States and for NATO.
This is a historical moment. In the last two years,
we've helped unify, strengthen, and expand NATO. Imagine if instead
we had failed, we had failed to step up now
(01:58):
and support Ukraine, all those gains would have begun to unravel,
the cohesion of NATA would have been weakened, and our
national security would have been undermine Without any question.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, I think all that did happen.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
Am I supposed to pretend he's not a slurring old
man for the purposes of this discussion so he can
stick to the main threat of it, or can I
mention even like that Charlottesville speech he made that we
played the audio of he sounds like a different human being.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Right from four years ago, three years ago.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah, absolutely, Putin started this war, but change his strategy
and failed. We stand with our friends and bow to
no one. He went on to say, all right, still
no talk of what a win looks like.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Maybe now is not a good time because so unlikely
to get a win. So Ian Bremer's take on this
was America continuing to send Ukraine sixty billion dollars in
support year after year is unrealistic no matter who wins
the presidency. What you really want to do at this
point is position Ukraine as well as possible for eventual negotiations.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
I say, I suppose you wouldn't say that out loud.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
No, Yeah, we sent I can't remember the figure, one
hundred and thirty billion or something like that to get
them ready for their great counter offensive, which practically went nowhere.
You know, it kept the battle lines more or less
where they were, which is, you know, it's better than
the alternative. But yeah, So the idea that this sixty
(03:32):
billion dollars is somehow going to be decisive and turn
the tide, No, it's just not realistic. But yeah, the
Biden administration not going to talk about winning, because I
don't think is possible at this point, especially with this
level of support.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, and what will be lost to history because nobody
will remember how this unfolded is if we had given
them the stuff that we eventually gave them. Anyway, right
at the beginning, when Russia was on the run, very
likely could have actually pushed them completely out of the country,
given them a hell of a spanking, and they would
never think about doing it again. I look forward to
getting further in this David Sanger book. I'm reading about
(04:05):
how these decisions were made behind the scenes of no way,
we're sending bullets that would be too provocative, We'll end
up in a nuclear war. Okay, we'll send the bullets,
but no way, we're sending you know, the next size shell.
But no way, it'll start a nuclear war. Okay we'll
send it. No way, we're sending tanks it would started. Okay,
we'll send it planes, training the pilots. All the things
(04:26):
that we eventually did that didn't start a nuclear war.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
Yeah, Joe Biden's a spineless coward. He is the issue.
And I'm not saying there's nothing we would have done
that could have provoked an escalation, but at least he agrees. Yeah,
And the idea that there's either a win driving Russia
completely out of Ukraine or it's a loss is it's
a false choice. It's a win for NATO to make
(04:55):
Putin's quote unquote victory so incredibly painful and expensive that
he never wants to attempt anything like that. Again, I mean,
that's a huge win historically speaking. Now, the Ukrainians wouldn't
be satisfied with that, but as a realist, I don't
see the Biden administration giving them nearly the backing it
would take to win, especially because Russia's entrenched now. It's
(05:18):
not like you can do tomorrow which you didn't do
today in warfare. As Mike lyons, I'm sure would agree, right.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
And I have no idea where Trump is on this
if he ends up winning, no idea.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
They're surrounding us. But let's not do anything crazy. Let's
think about it for a few days and then we
can do something about it. Yeah, it doesn't work like that.
But anyway, again, saying that either they drive the Russians
completely out of Ukraine or it's not a win, it's
just the wrong way to look at it. There aren't
wins and losses in history likes people seem to think
(05:49):
there are. There are occasionally, like World War Two, that
was like it was an enormous conflict, but that was
one of many, many, many conflicts the United States has
been in through the years. Some are clear winds, some
are clear losses. Most of them are kind of in
between somewhere. The clear winds happen when you go all in, right.
(06:11):
That's why I'm reading that book, Sherman's March to the
Sea about the Civil War.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Just we went all in. We're gonna just devastate you
until the military and the population says uncle, make.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
When we say unconditional surrender, you're gonna say yes, please.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Right, which we did did Germany and Japan. That's the
only time you really get the clear wins, and usually
you either can't do it or you don't have the
stomach for it.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
In the modern world, yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
I'm not sure complete victory was ever on the table
against Russia. It's too big, it's too well manned, too
well equipped. In spite of their you know, crappy, crappy
military and their corruption, the rest of them, they're just
too big.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Another interesting part of this David Sanger book I'm reading,
is you you forget how much courting of Putin ever
he did not did does so much talk about Trump
and the coddling authoritarians or whatever. George Bush met with
Putin twenty two times, met personally with him twenty two
(07:13):
times in his presidency, is to try to get him,
you know, you know, be friends with him and move
our direction and toward Europe. And there's even talk of
eventually letting having Russia in NATO. That was on the
table with Condoleeza Rice in the Bush administration.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
That's how far.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
We were wrong about what Putin's actual intentions were. And
then we probably do remember Barack Obama then sending Hillary
over there with the big giant red reset button because
we're gonna be friends with you and we can work together.
I mean, everybody completely misread what an evil bastard Putin is.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Please tell Vladimir I'll have more flexibility after the election.
That's famous, and w famously clownishly saying I looked into
his eyes and I saw a good man. I think
I could see his soul or whatever he saw good board.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, Putin, It's not like he became the evil, ruthless, murdering,
child abducting, horrible human being he is. He was always
that guy, but he completely fooled a bunch of our presidents.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
Yeah, America's naivete is one of our defining characteristics.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Men were easy to do that.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And we assume everybody wants to live like us, which
they should. I mean, it's a better way, but they don't,
or at least their governments don't. Well, son of a gun,
what are you gonna do? It'd be something. It's got
to be something for George W. Bush to see what
Putin's doing now, I mean, just the absolute just worst
(08:52):
things you can imagine he does. He bombs schools with
little kids in him. I mean, that's the kind of
guy he is. Well, he tasab kill all those people.
Bush who met with him, sat down and you know,
laughed and drank vodka with him twenty two times.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
I'd be weird if Vladimir Putin were listening to the
show right now. Number one, Vladimir, thanks for listening to
the Armstrong and Getty Show. Secondly, I'm sure, in fact,
let's do this's here's a little Joe Getty's radio theater Michael,
do you have the theme music next color? Vladimir in
(09:33):
omahago ahead, Vladimir. I think it's a funny. You just
explaining Sherman's strategy for total victory, then condemn me for
bombing school same thing, right, although Sherman didn't, you know,
burn schools with kids in them. Yeah, he has the
stomach for total victory, for decimating people, wiping it off
(09:57):
the face of the earth if necessary, to take their
land and their resources.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Anyway, the pat Joe Biden signed to this stuff, and
he says we're going to be sending equipment within hours
to Ukraine, and the cheers went up in the Ukraine
Parliament with US flags everywhere and chance of USA USA.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
And worth mentioning again that the vote in the Senate
was seventy nine to eighteen, seventy nine eighteen overwhelming, damn
near unanimous.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yep, But the majority of Republicans in the House voted
against it, which is interesting. Anyway, more on the White
stay here. Man is the book industry in trouble yipes
and I was a big fan of books.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
I hate to hear that, but more on that later.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Yeah, I got the major FTC ruling against noncompete clauses.
That's an interesting discussion. There a lot of what's going
wrong with America on the show today, and we thought
we'd take him home for not only a bit of humor,
but something great about America. For instance, that we make
up complicated sports then make the rest of the world
play them. This is a German comedian actor full of
(11:13):
borg enjoy baseball.
Speaker 6 (11:15):
We have some pillows, We have some pillows on the dirt,
and then we have some grass, and then we have people, says,
stand all around to make a grabbing of the of
the downstairs scrap of crowd, look around, look around. Then
men with stick is dere and then then he bomb.
He throw throw a bowl to the stick man and
the stick man may hit. If he make a miss
(11:36):
of three times, then out. But if he hit the
ball very far, then he may run on all the
pillows around the pillows and the boys, the boys in
the in the trench. They sit in the trench and
they look around and they the spit spit, spit spit
and the hat and then clap, clap and spit spit
(11:59):
and then they run dande rontusa field. But time out
after seven times I've gone on field, everyone sings a.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Song about popcorn.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
And Dan day, Dan Day, two more hits and throws.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
What I would listen to that if it went on
for another five minutes and then after seven times they
stop and sing a song about popcorn.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Buddy, that is funny.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So which came first baseball or cricket in India?
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Is a baseball come out of cricket or that's the story? Yeah? Yeah,
I think.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
And there was a game called Rounders that was based similar.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Anyway, And I mean I could google it if I
cared enough, and I don't. But uh so, there's a
fair number of Indians in the town I live in,
Indians from India, I suppose to the people running the
casino over there, and they play cricket in this one
particular field not for from my house. And when we
go on bike rides, we go buy the cricket match
on Saturday's regularly and there's a big crowd that comes
(13:08):
and watches and everything like that. And I've stood there
and watched the cricket match.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
And again.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Another thing I could google if I cared enough to
find out what the rules are, But I just try
to pick it up by watching, and it's just completely
confusing to me.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
I just had a picture the bowler, which is ridiculous
because he's not bowling, and there are some wickets which
don't appear to be sticky. I think you're supposed to
hit those or avoid them or something. And the guy
with the bat is actually a spatula, not a bat.
Speaker 4 (13:35):
So you got spatula guy.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
I ought to do an American version over that. German
just said spatula man appears to be angry that the
bowler is trying to knock his favorite sticks down.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Boy, So little happens, And I realize if you're not
a fan of baseball, that's what it seems like when
you watch it. But watching cricket is just like nothing
is happening. And I'm sure if somebody understood that, they
would say, oh, the strategy that's happening here tense and amazing.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
But it just looks like a lot of people standing
around cricket makes baseball look like hockey. Crick is amazing. Well,
don't they play for like three hours, then they break
for lunch. They play for like three days, right, and
then they come back and play for more hours and
it goes on and on. Oh, I'm sure it's fine.
(14:22):
Let me save you right in the email. Guys, it's
worth checking out. Once you get to know what Cricket's
all about, you're gonna love it as much. Okay, thank you,
thank you. Our friend Craig.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Sent this because he's written books and he just came
across this about the published industry and industry and talking
about how.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
Depressing this is.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Did you know that ninety six percent of books sell
less than a thousand copies in the modern publishing world?
Speaker 4 (14:55):
So what are you even doing? And this goes back
to it.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
There was a there was an attempt to a couple
of big companies to get together a couple of years ago,
and it become a giant court case. A Penguin Random
House wanted to buy Simon and Schuster, but there was
a concern that it would become a monopoly. And then
in the court case a lot of the numbers about
the publishing industry came out. So these numbers are kind
of old. It's probably worse now than it was then,
(15:21):
but it's amazing how few books are actually sold and
how narrow the whole thing is. In twenty twenty only
two hundred and sixty eight titles sold more than one
hundred thousand copies. See here about a million seller book
or whatever. Only two hundred and sixty books that year
sold more than one hundred thousand copies, and ninety six
percent of books sold less than a thousand. There's about
(15:46):
fifty authors that really sell any books at all in
the entire United States.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Fifty total, fifty.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So you're what's his name Patterson with his crime novels,
or he puts his name on the front and somebody
else writes them at this point, and you know, various
people like that, and then a handful of diet books.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
There's just like there's hardly any Yeah, there's like six
mystery people, six spy novel people, and then then JK.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Rowling.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I I just as I, as
I texted back to Craig yesterday, I said, well, if
if the average person under thirty spends seven hours on TikTok,
which is what the average is, doesn't leave you a
lot of time to read a book.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
I've long been thinking about writing a book, and I
think I'm probably going to. But I've finally gotten past
the fact that nobody wants it, and there's no point.
It's like the same reason I wrote songs and made albums.
Nobody's dying for them. It's the process is fun, it's
good for my brain. I enjoy it, so I'm going
to do it for that reason. But just with all
(16:51):
content available all the time everywhere, seems silly to introduce
more into the marketplace.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Not yeah, but that do mean you good stuff is
still good stuff?
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Of everything and want it, it won't be good. It
was a dark and stormy night. Have I sent you
the galleys already? Is it that whale you've been trying
to get for all these years?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (17:13):
And the captain he really wants to kill that whale.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
The FDC is finalized or rule that will eliminate the
vast majority of non compete clauses in people's contracts. A
noncompete clause is a provision that basically prevents people from
taking a job with a competitor or starting a competing business,
usually within a particular geographic area and for a certain
(17:40):
period of time.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
That's a pretty good description. I'm not sure why it
needs synthesizers, strings and muted nylon string geitar behind it.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So they eliminated non compete clauses. Who's this affecting?
Speaker 5 (17:54):
I am so.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Conflicted on this. There are lots of stuff going on here.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
First of all, that the head of the FTC, this
woman Khan, is that her name? I can never Ria
Khan Trade Trade Commission exactly. Yeah, Lena Khan is a lefty.
She is a lefty among lefties. She believes the government
ought to run everything, and she's running a super activist FTC.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I'm not a fan.
Speaker 5 (18:23):
The libertarian in me looks at noncompete agreements, non compete clauses, whatever,
and says, all right, on the one hand, and this
is the idea that, for instance, to cite a fairly
defensible example, all right, I am going to bring you
on here at Apple, and you are going to become
completely acquainted with our engineering, our manufacturing practices, the rest
(18:47):
of it. I'm going to pay you a bunch of
money in return you agree you're not going to quit
and go work.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
For Samsung next week.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
And that's that's a fairly squared deal, especially if I'm
well compensated.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
I understand that.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
But and so the libertarian in me thinks, well, if
you don't want to make that agreement part of your employment.
Go work somewhere else. You're free to go work wherever
you want.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
The other side of me sees the way it's often abused,
Like in Florida, for instance, it's extremely widespread. If you
go work for a hair salon as a haircutter for
a very modest amount of money, very modest, you have
to sign an agreement saying I will not, for the
rest of my life leave this salon and cut the
(19:36):
hair of any of its clients.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Well, how did the free market not fix that to
where the hair salon that doesn't make you sign that
wouldn't get all the good haircutters.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
That's the interesting part. It's maybe it's not overtly collusion,
but it's collusive in a way that I need to
seek out some counsel from my libertarian brethren and folks
you know more about the law. If virtually every hair
salon in Florida does that, because everybody does that, and
(20:07):
it's so common.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
That you just can't find a place to work.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
That doesn't make you sign something like that, then you
really don't have an effective alternative. I mean, you're already
fairly poor, You're never gonna make a lot of money
cutting hair and you're not going to like go from
Pensacola to Miami to seek freedom of clippers. You don't
have the resources and the idea that a simple hourly worker.
(20:32):
And the problem with it is it's run rampant now
into places where it's just it's indefensible. You know, tax preparers,
just every every company that has any sort of client
or regular customer, you have to say you will never
do business with any of those customers, sometimes for unreasonable
lengths of time. And so the idea of after I leave,
(20:54):
you have not rewarded me for signing this clause. I
kind of had to because everybody's doing it. For the
rest of my days. I'm constrained by my relationship from
you from engaging in commerce willingly with people who want
to engage with me.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
That bothers me a lot, haven't We had no complete
non compete cup clauses.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, they're illegal in a handful of states California.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
We couldn't quit our radio job and then go work
for another company for a while, usually as a period
of time, not forever, like the hair cutting thing.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
I didn't know that was the thing.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Famously the company we worked for at the time, because
we said, no, we think we can for these reasons,
and they said, well, you're probably right, but we'll spend
you into bankruptcy. We have attorneys on retainer. It doesn't
matter to us. And we thought, well, that's a powerful
argument and one we will consider. So we bided our
time and did it later. Yeah, it's interesting. There are
(21:53):
definitely competing you know, energies here that are all about
liberty and people freely associating, doing business and that sort
of thing, and I'm just not quite sure where I arrive.
I could see there are some situations where it's absolutely legitimate,
particularly if there is compensation that's clearly in return for
(22:18):
making that agreement. But the tough part is when you
got you know, low wage people constrained from making a
living because you know, when they were a nineteen year
old shampoo girl, they signed a contract with you know
what would be a good hair salon name Curl Up
and Die, you know, in suburban Pensacola, Florida.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
God, somebody I used to have there was a long
running joke about how dumb the names are of all
places where they cut hair. It's like this part of
getting your license, you had to come up with a dumb.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Name, the clip joint. Yeah, we're a cut above because
we're on the second floor, you see. Uh, let's see. Yeah,
I guess that's it. That's pretty good. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh back to the book you mentioned you were you
thought about writing a book, so I was bringing you
those book statistics about how few books make it. Ninety
percent of books sell fewer than two thousand copies, fifty
percent of books published. Now, these numbers are from twenty
twenty from a court case, so I don't know how
accurate they are. Now. Half of books published now, I'm
assuming they're not talking about just self published.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
Yeah, I just wrote a book and listed in Amazon.
I assume they're not talking about those.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
I don't know that though fifty percent of books published
sell less than a dozen copies, half of books discouraging.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
That is highly discouraging.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
Because if your sibling right, because you're your children and saying,
have you got the chance to buy a copy yet,
I'll give you the money back.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I feel like I can count a mom and dad.
We'll buy one and share it, Okay, what I'll buy
it in two and we haven't gotten around to it, dear,
but we will.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's like getting people to buy your kids girl Scout cookies.
Similar deal. Half of all books published so less than
a dozen copies. That is a discouraging profession. Uh, well,
you're gonna write fiction or nonfiction? You got a novel
in you.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Still working on your novel?
Speaker 5 (24:31):
I am working on a fiction thing. What I'm thinking
of that I'm definitely gonna finish is nonfiction. Okay, it's
a it's an unauthorized biography view. Frankly, it's a tell all.
It's uh, it's unvarnished.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Joe Getty breaks his silence. What have I ever been silent?
In your experience? In this essay, no one will read
your book talks about how the big publish houses invest
small sums in lots of books and hopes that one
of them will break out and become a unicorn, which
actually makes enough money to fund all the rest of
the books. The unicorn happens every five to ten years
(25:13):
or so. That's how seldom a book actually breaks out
and becomes a hit and sells a bunch of copies.
So what I was wondering about this is how is
there so many. Michael Cohen, maybe Hillary Clinton's a bad
idea because she was actually Secretary of Statement.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
These giant.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Advances they give to any celebrity of any level that
writes a book that nobody's going to read, and then
they go on all the shows and talk about their
book as if any somebody's going to buy it.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
How does that work?
Speaker 5 (25:41):
I think some of that's publicity crap because some of
the numbers, it's like NFL contracts. You know, Peyton Manning
signed an eight hundred million dollar contract. Well, a lot
of that's incentives, and if he retires or doesn't make
the team or whatever, they trade him and he doesn't
get the money in those A lot of those are
advances against sales. Sometimes it's just a signing bonus and
(26:02):
that's legit. But if it's an advance against sales, that
essentially means, all right, we're gonna give you a million
bucks up front, your first million bucks of sales. You
don't get anything because we already paid you for them.
It's advance royalties. That's the rock and roll bands have
that all the time or dead back in the day.
I think that's part of it, and there might even
be you got to return it if you don't sell
(26:23):
this many clauses. But nobody says that because that would
ruin the splash of the publicity.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
What isn't in these stats is are people reading significantly
less well?
Speaker 4 (26:34):
I gotta believe that's the case.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
I do because my attention I have to work at
reading books because my attention span is not what it
used to be.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah, and there's just there's so much to look at
and do and take in.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
God, I'm trying to get my fourteen year old to
be a reader, and both his mom and dad are
always reading books, so I thought that would wear off,
But of course he's grown up with a faster paced
world than I did. By far, I.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Mean, it's not even close.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
And he just finds the idea of reading a book
just painful. And even though he's practically locked in his
room for a half hour every night before lights out,
just I would think, out of something to do, you'd
want to read?
Speaker 4 (27:19):
And just I just bought him a copy of.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, just trying to come up
with something that I thought would hook him and be
really interesting and like, you couldn't not want to read it.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
But I'll see how it goes.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
Pow trudging around in the ruins of Dresden. Teenagers love
that sort of thing. What do you recommend? Do you
recommend something? Well, you've done like the Hardy Boys and
stuff like that. Oh yeah, he's way past that. Yeah, intellectually.
Has he done the Harry Potter books?
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Okay, all right, well that's good.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, Like I'm Henry. He had to read Animal Farm
for school, hated.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
It, but read it.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
So much of that stuff is not four kids, since
you've brought up many times, they make you read stuff
you can't conceivably relate to or appreciate.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
No, you just don't have the life experience or anything
like that too. Yeah. Why did they do that?
Speaker 5 (28:19):
Oh well, I think in the case of Animal Farm,
it's because we were in a global conflict with communists.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
But you wanted to teach the kids the principles of
anti communism.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
I could come up with a bunch of examples. But why,
we're why they teach you stuff in schools. This came
up yesterday with Henry. So we're driving around and he
was talking about he had been looking in the back
of his history book in school, and he's really disappointed.
He doesn't think they're going to get to some of
the stuff that he really wanted to get to in
his history book. And I told him how, And I
would like to know this my whole life.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I wanted to learn about World War two.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
And we would get our history book at the beginning
of the year and I would turn toward the back
and there'd be World War two, And I think I
can't wait. And we never, not one time in my
entire school career, kindergarten through graduating high school, did I
learn a word about World War Two. Now, people complain
about schools today, but that's a pretty big knock on
schools back then. What is it with public education and
(29:17):
not getting to the biggest event in human history?
Speaker 5 (29:22):
Just learn about the Stamp Act over and over again
every year?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
But seriously, so they're still doing that.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Why Why don't we do a better job of figuring
out what do we want kids to learn and what
is not that important?
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Why don't we do a better job of that? Goodness?
Speaker 5 (29:38):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
You can't even come up why I can't even come
up over like a lefty teachers union.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Reason?
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Is it just laziness, or they just don't give a
crap enough to look into it, or what I don't
know no clue. I'm highly troubled by what you learn
and don't learn as a kid. Those years are so valuable.
It's such a rare time in your life where you're
going to go be in a building for six eight
hours to learn, and we waste it on a bunch
of crap. A lot of times you.
Speaker 5 (30:05):
Have a capacity to absorb it like you'll never have
again in your life too. Now there's a fair amount
of enthusiasm for teaching history in recent decades because it's
Howard Zinn's history of why you should hate the United States.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Right that gets in there.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
And you see the bloom of that flower at Columbia
University in yu Berkeley, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
He's doing a.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Little study right now on Abraham from the Bible, which
I was happily surprised by. I didn't know that would
be okay, trouser, but it was on the list of
characters to choose from to do a biography of.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Let's see.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
As a kid, I loved strange but true hockey stories.
I read that over and over again. Strange but true
baseball stories. How about fifty Shades of Gray? Has he
read that?
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Yeah? I read a lot of Mad Magazine? Probably cumulative.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I spent more time in Med Mad Magazine than anything
else in my life.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Which and I graduated at National Lampoon, did a lot
of reading of that wonderful back in the day.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
And what good does it done mean?
Speaker 8 (31:08):
Now?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I make a living trying to make jokes. Does that
doesn't mean a good Well? I guess maybe it did.
We will finish strong next stage.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Armstrong, Hey, Getty.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Is that cheering or booing? So that's a nine year old,
probably younger than normal for competing in the twenty twenty
four gull screeching contest? How much can you sound like
a seagull? This is a nine year old. That's pretty good,
right there, Jack. They weren't booing. They were saying Coop,
name's Cooper?
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Okay, let's hear it again.
Speaker 8 (31:57):
Boom boom. I would say he has a career advantage.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
He's a child. His vocal cords haven't changed yet. We
had to have an age limit.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
On this damn gull screeching purists. That's a kid who
sounds just like a seagull. Right there, really, Gully, there's
no arguing in that. I congratulate the young man, and
I hope this is his springboard to greater success in
the future. Sounding like other shore birds, you know, when
(32:28):
I was a young dad, if there had been some
sort of national animal noise contest, I feel like I
could have at least fought my way to the state finals.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
I mean, I worked hard at all animals or any
particular animal that you're going all year.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
Your standard barnyard animals, most last post, give me a
pig that hurts my throat.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
I'm old now, all right? Whatever?
Speaker 5 (32:53):
Huh?
Speaker 4 (32:53):
Admit me to this history? What who plague? Like your
patients prey gently to hear, kindly to judge.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
Good final thoughts of Armstrong and getting.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Some spotlight's on here and you turn away.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
I'm old and my vocal cords are worn out, but
let me try.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
That's a pretty damn good pig. Thank you, Thank you.
Here's your host for final thoughts. Katie looks disturbed. Pig.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
Let's get a final thought from everybody on the crew,
beginning with our beloved Michael Angelow. Press the buttons. Mike
got what your final thought? Yeah? I bought my nephew
a book, and about a year later I saw the
book holding up the table's leg.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
So, yeah, kids aren't reading.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
Kids aren't reading anymore, apparently, how disappointing for everyone, Katie
Green are Newswoman. As a final thought, Katie.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
I'm trying to get over that noise you just made,
but I'm gonna go ahead and have my final thought just.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
Be please don't ever do that again.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
Well, the idea that pig say in ink oinkin, if
you've ever heard a hog, it's.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
Just not the case.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Jack of final thought, Mine is a serious one. The
biggest live fueling the antisemitic student uprising from National Review.
The youth are not leading some sort of insurgency against
the powers that be.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
They are tools of the powers that be.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Yeah, I agree, one hundred percent. One hundred percent. The
youngsters have no idea what they're doing. They've been duped
and they've been mobilized by their Marxist overlords. And I'm
not trying to be funny. It's clearly what's happening.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
And it's growing, not shrinking currently. So what's to be done.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
Dismantle every DEI program everywhere it exists.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Start today, Armstrong and Geddy wrapping up another grueling four
hour workday.
Speaker 5 (34:44):
So many people, thanks so a little time. Good Armstrong
and Getdy dot com.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Pick up an ang T shirt. We have a number
of amusing designs.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
You can drop us a note at mail bag at
Armstrong and Geddy dot com. The hot links are fantastic,
very entertaining and informative. They refer to articles that we
said we would poke, so go read them.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Follow us on Twitter if you want to do. We'll
see tomorrow. God bless America.
Speaker 5 (35:10):
So far as I know, you don't pay someone one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars not to have sex with you.
Speaker 8 (35:13):
I'm strong and get take, but you have to pay
attention to the cries that people have.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Absolutely we're in We're in a battle for the soul
of the country.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I don't care if I never get back. You're about
to open a pit of hell. You gonna make a
very obvious point out It's true that I know.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
Hi.
Speaker 4 (35:36):
Good night everybody. Armstrong and Getty
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