Dua Lipa & Microplastics

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio of the George Washington Broadcast Center.

Jack Armstrong and Joe Katty Armstrong and Dickie and he Armsrong Kennedy live from the studio.

Se Se Sen, you are a dimly lit room.

He put in the powels of the Armstrong and Getting Communications Compound. Hey, y'all, Tuesday, we're under the tutelage of our general manager.

Hey, who is your laderman? Your local air traffic controllers? Why is that our general manager?

Our nation's idiotic, antiquated, dysfunctional, dangerous air traffic control system is under scrutiny, and by Gully, the Secretary of Transportation. In contrast to the last one, it was useless.

He says he's gonna fix it.

We're gonna have a major all overall bring it into the twenty first century.

Yeah.

Well, I'll believe that when I see it. I believe it. I believe it firmly.

There is a guy in the White House, mister non believer, who was willing to shake things up. I was reading about the contrast between Pete boot Ed Jedge, who kept trying to blame the airlines for the miserable state of our air traffic control system.

And Trump's guy is saying, no, this is terrible. We've got to rebuild it. That we've got to take on that challenge.

It's great, that is good, but how has it been this bad for this long? The stories yesterday of well, fill us in on the headline story that got this conversation started yesterday.

Well, there was a loss of radar availability for sixty to ninety seconds at the incredibly busy, dysfunctional Newark Airport right outside of New York City and forty thousand pass It carries forty thousand passengers day, and it left the control tower unable to communicate with any incoming aircraft, which led to all sorts of chaos and fear and then cascading delays.

And for just a minute and a half, they couldn't talk to anybody, or couldn't hear anybody, didn't know anybody.

Was, and the pilots were just talking to each other saying, hey, I just heard that they've got no radar contact.

Oh really, holy cow?

Well, okay, so everybody was just kind of improvising and then trying to stay safe during that time. But it is a beautiful example which was well, I guess so animated and started literally pounding the table. It is a perfect example of nobody in government willing to say this needs to be fixed. Here's what needs to be fixed, here's how we're going to fix it. Let's do this.

No, they just collect their paychecks and shuffle their paper. Well, right, get into how long this has been going on. So then the stories throughout the day of like they got computers running floppy discs. Yeah, I mean so how many decades ago is that?

The eighties?

Yeah, administration after minute stra has just kind of kicked the can down the road, to cite the cliche.

So that's the frustrating thing, and everybody should be frustrated. But even if you're a big government liberal, you should be frustrated by that.

I'm not.

But we spend so much freaking money on so many freaking things.

Yeah, and you.

Can't update a computer in air traffic control from something that uses floppy disks along the way.

Yeah.

Well, if there were three competing companies and private companies and one of them was run that poorly, it would go away in the blink of an eye. It would go out of business. And and good riddance to it, because it's a government monopoly. It continues with its its awful, wasteful, dangerous dysfunction, you know, year after a year, but not anymore. I say, put him in alcatra. Whoever is in charge of that, put him in Alcola drive. Yes, everything. Trump

Yes. I didn't hear that.

Yes, fill it up and then like go upward, make it four or five stories high, whatever it takes.

They're gonna put the judges in alcatraz. I feel like that's a controversial statement.

Yes, but he didn't mean it, Which brings me to another thing I'm kind of anxious to talk about, excited to talk about.

Nobody paid attention other than a couple of.

Snippets to Trump's commencement speech at University of Alabama. Matthew Countinetti did. He watched the whole thing, and he said it was really an amazing distillation of Trump's life philosophy, and it struck me in reading it. Essentially, Trump goes through the ten points he thinks are most important for being successful in life.

And number one get a hot wife.

It struck me, and then Trader in when you know you get tired of her. It struck me that the media especially spends a lot of time talking about stuff Trump clearly doesn't mean, and then ignores when he says, all right, here's what I really believe. And he's clearly being sincere because it's not as exciting. But we'll go through that speech. I think you'll find it interesting.

Okay, that's cool.

It won't be nearly as fascinating as the incritasies of air traffic control, but it'll be good.

I am.

I think today's my last day. I think today's the day I finally die from this disease I've got. So I suppose anything I've got to say I should say today.

Since I'm probably gonna die.

How does it work with your last words? I mean, at doing what we do for a living. You could say, okay, these are my last words. The only thing that matters is family and God. But then by contract, we have to keep talking. So and you'd hate for your last words to be We'll talk about Trump's commencement speech in just a minute.

Stay with us. You know that would be dumb trouble with the royal family. Those are my last words. That'd be horrible.

The conclave stretches on, will bring you an update. Yeah, that would that would be terrible. So let's just designate your last words then I will I will agree to promote them as quote unquote your last words, right, that is it.

Yes, historians, because historians have obviously would be writing about me, would say his last words were highlights from the Diddy trial. Nobody knows why my last words are my last words? Will be a list of the people I hate the most. That'll be That's what I'm going to go with. The enemy's list, exactly. Vengeance right right to the grave.

Right, that is healthy.

Take keep breath right right as they're lowering you, you should be muttering the names of those.

You hope to take vengeance against in the afterlife.

Yeah, and my fourth grade gym teacher him, let's start the show officially.

I'm Jack Armstrong.

He's Joe Getty on this It is Tuesday, monthly in now May the six, the year twenty twenty five, war armstrung and getting we approved of this program.

Okay, let's begin then officially, according to FCC rules and regulations.

The show starts at mark.

His lawyers are aiming to convince the jury the government is trying to police consensual sex by a swinger who they say invited others into his bedroom. Yeah, yeah, the heavy hand of the law.

Wow, consensual adult sex.

Right, Friends and neighbors getting together with a createle loob and enjoying each other's company.

What's wrong with that? Wow? Bunch of puritans? Right? Poor? Did he being persecuted? Oh my god, that's the defense.

Huh.

Well, and he's got a hell of a team of lawyers.

Yeah, well, yeah, we if you're old enough to remember, OJ, you know, you have some really good, expensive lawyers.

It's amazing what they can come up with.

You're gonna hearton himself said that the colors of justice are not black and white.

The color of justice is green. If you're on that.

Thanks, So Jay, if you're on that jury, are you going to hear and see some pretty sexy stuff?

Oh yeah, yeah, it's gonna be hardcore porn really in short?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's accurate.

Yeah, I suppose there'll be a bunch of women and men there describing in great detail what they did.

Or were forced to do well.

And remember, dude kept loads of video right partly to enforce omerta. Is that all it's silence, the code of silence? Yeah, uh so.

Yeah, And if it's entered into evidence, you got to let the jury see it.

Huh.

It'd be easy to get distracted as a jur Oh that's right, this is a trial.

Yes, yes, it could cause unwanted emotional and physical reactions as you're trying to figure out whether this guy's a monster who you know, compelled people to perform various acts sex traffic, so she.

Probably shouldn't like you throw on the jury and you finally get to your first deliberation. You get in there in the room, say, let's just start with what was your favorite part? O? What my favorite part was. Hey, we'll get to deliberate and in a minute. Yeah, let's just it's just somebody, it's just everybody lay out.

What was your favorite part?

What do you think was the hottest part? Oh, my god, that's I'll bet it's it ends up just being troubling.

Yeah, it will be, because there's so much violence and drugging and everything like that. It's gonna it's gonna turn pretty sick pretty fast, I think.

Uh yeah, yeah, given his violence against women and testimony to that effect.

I wonder how many famous people are worried about their names and pictures and videos all of a sudden coming up in this.

It might be a probably a good number.

Yeah, yeah, certainly if you're a New York hip hop mogul or adjacent to them, perhaps a pop star, movie star, girl, friend wife, even if you're not like somebody who does horrible things, you know, particularly want to be have your name and face attached to some of those parties if.

People otherwise didn't know you were, you know, adjacent.

To that lifestyle, right, Yeah, I don't have a firm grasp, No pun intended on.

Charge you with a thousand bottles of baby oiled to have a firm grasp to anything, very slipper.

I don't have a firm grasp on the list of folks who might be called to testify or identified.

But yeah, it'll be uh, it'll be notable.

Sure. Yeah.

And then I'm always confused with the jury stuff. So do you you have to You can't find people that don't know anything about it. You have to find people who basically say, I've heard about it, but I don't care.

I just oll like I can. I'll keep it up in mind. I think I could I really do.

Oh yeah yeah, Well, for one thing, i'd consider it like a sacred vow under the Constitution. So yeah, I got the idea that, yeah, he's kind of a perv and may have done these things, but now the government has to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. That's an easy proposition to internalize for me anyway. And what did our reporter just say there? It's just some adults engaging in conceptual sex. Quit being such a prude.

So it's funny. A couple of things just clicked into my head. One of the themes of the Cane Mutiny, which I just read, the classic World War two novel, which is just you think you're reading a great book. Then you get to the end and you realize you've been reading a really, really great book.

Cool, I've never read it.

Just it's again, it's an incredibly compelling narrative. And then the theme kind of gets flipped on its head at the end and the author I'm not going to give away too much here, but the author essentially says, yeah, how do I I don't want to spoil this even though it's a many several generations old novel, because you're taking on an emotional intellectual journey, very much like the characters in the novel, and then at the end you

Book is three quarters of a century old.

I think you get a pass for spoilers on books that old, but it's up to you.

I don't know.

I'm thinking about our relationship with the good folks in the audience.

They're thinking the Cane Mutiny. I've never read that I'm gonna read. I don't want to ruin it for them. Ahab never catches the whale. What you know, I tell you what.

I will.

Reveal the odd parallel between the Cane Mutiny and our jury system. Right after this, okay, we got news of the headlines mail bag, all the stuff Trump's serious about, the whole pay and illegals to get out of the buying a plane ticket and giving them some cash to have him get out. Christi Noma says, one person has taken advantage of that program so far, one like the number one.

Hey, it's a start, an acorn, oak tree, et cetera.

Longest journey, one step, et cetera. Yes, right, all on the way.

Say here, Mark Alprin writing that really there are two stories, really only. I mean, if you're following politics, how this tariff thing turns out and everything else, those are the two stories. That's how big the tariff thing is. It's that and everything else. I mean, this is going to be insanely disruptive if it goes the way most people predict.

Yes, and it's going to start landing soon.

And nobody's sure exactly how it's gonna go though, who means what how long it's gonna last? It's just question marks, pylon question marks. So a couple of things. First of all, one of the one of the themes, one of the interesting things said in the King Mutiny is by one of the officers who was explaining to another guy. Look, the United States Navy is a system designed by geniuses

To be implemented by idiots.

Every single jury I have been part of, and it's just been two or three, have had people on there who scared me. They were incapable of rational thought. So I understand, Yeah, I assume you have to assume that that's always the case. I more often than not, I would guess. You know, the multiple of anecdote does not equal data. But the more I saw, the more disturbed I was. There are some people who react completely emotionally.

Anyway.

I'd go into detail, but we're pressed for time. Can't wait for Katie to get back tomorrow so she can handle the news headlines during this segment Number one, because it's fun. Number two, it's less work for us, but a handful of things going on, big stories. First of all, we've got one guess per hour for our four hours to talk about the MET gala and the fashions, the incredible outfits we saw there.

God, that is. The coverage that that gets is just incredible.

It is so for those familiar with our reference it's a reenactment of the Capital from the Hunger Games movies.

Well, I've never seen.

A super rich adorned in bizarro fashions completely drowning in their own self regard, living in a world that's so foreign from the rest of ours, and it's unrecognizable from either side. Well, right, And it fits in with a theme I've mentioned, like in the last week or so, about the number of people in America that don't want to live that lifestyle and the people who live that lifestyle don't believe it. Trust me, I don't want to be at the gal at the MET. It's not because

Of reverse makes me cool. I just think it's.

Ridiculous because you don't know what designer to go with, Armani or Gavinci.

So all your talk about it, you're not making me feel like I'm left out or anything.

Trust me.

So Israel proved plans to seize all of the Gaza strip, Germany's in chaos because their newly formed government just got voted out. Essentially, it's really pretty interesting and some really fun conclave history. If you're into the Pope coming up, stay with us.

More to come, Armstrong and Getty games off to Brown Bridges there they want to come back. You're gonna game one when for New York. A couple of upsets last night.

Denver upset okay See and the Knicks upset the Celtics game one of the semi finals. Great games. Knicks were down by twenty. But here's the interesting thing. I'm watching more basketball because I'm sick. I'm seeing more. But the sport has changed so much. There was a record set last week in three pointers. Celtics beat it. Last night they lost by one basket in overtime, missing forty.

Five three pointers the game is just so different.

People come flying down the court on a fast break, doesn't matter. If there's no defense under the basket, you could get wide open shots of any length. Everybody takes a three pointer as if that's the only option. That's just the way the game is now. And I don't know why they've all decided that's a good idea. Why there isn't a team that has said, hey, you know, for the last eighty years of the sport, you throw it to a guy who makes a twelve footer.

And it's a gimme every single time.

But they data, they don't data. They've all done the cybermetrics thing. They've analyzed if we take a.

Certain number of three point shots so we're more likely to win.

Well, I to.

Assume they know more about it than I do. But they missed forty five three pointers.

That's amazing.

Well, Jack, as a student of warfare, you'd be certainly familiar with this concept. If the defenses evolve to, you know, defend against that philosophy, that's when you shake it up.

I would think, So, you know, maybe.

You're right, you're actually ahead of your time.

I just came across this. I thought this was.

Really good or writing about again. And then I was reading this piece today about how there are really only two political stories out there, the tariff story and everything else. That's how big the whole tariff thing is, because if it goes the direction most people are predicting, it'll be the only story maybe on the planet, the loan in the United States, and.

Then we'll be dealing with shortages of both pencils and dolls.

President right, hey, do you have that Coldbert joke? Play that Coldbert joke about the dolls? It's just too good.

The crazy continued on Air Force One when Trump doubled down on the dollies.

Fifteen year old does indeed thirty seven dollars, she can be very happy with two or three or.

Four or five.

Buddy, teen year old girl is not going to be happy with two or three or four or five dolls, because a fifteen year old girl isn't happy with anything.

And if you, like me, are a parent of a teenager and I have, that's what dad, I have.

Boys, It makes me feel better to hear that, because it's.

Just like, how am I failing so badly that he's constantly miserable?

Boy?

And it's notably different with girls too. There's a special Oh.

My god, if it's another level of that, I can't even imagine.

Yeah, it's difficult to describe.

You know.

And I don't know how many fifteen year old girls want dolls, even in their best moods.

It's a toy friend a younger set.

But yeah, but the point remains cheap excess to consumerism, blah blah blah. I don't agree with him. Well, I agree with him philosophically, but not governmentally.

But here's the writing I was talking about. They're talking about Trump's inner circle and everything like that, and uh elon Musk, you know, Stephen Miller, a variety of people around him. While there's no doubt that these vote, these folks are very wealthy and very professionally successful attack and other endeavors. As one close observer of the cohort told me Monday night on the topic, they really believe they know everything, and you'd be amazed.

At how little they actually know.

This is the thing I talk about a lot because I've I've observed.

This in my life over and over and over again.

Anybody that's success, not anybody, but most people who are successful in any area of life think they know everything about every other area. Also, it's just the way we're billed, I guess, and I'm sorry. Who are we talking about here, specifically the people around Trump, the inner circle of reality

The Halberstam title of the famous Vietnam War book.

The Best in the Brightest was meant ironically, smartest folks in the world who presided over many, many mistakes and dumbness. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's funny.

A little closer to home, Jack and I've been discussing this for many, many years, having had a long, mediocre career together, and that is that as we rose up from from small towns to medium to big towns to giant, you know, the number one media market in the world or in the country. Certainly, we had expected that we would see higher and higher levels of competence, intelligence, creativity, just effectiveness in short, and there wasn't none of that.

But there wasn't nearly as much as we thought.

And there were a plenty of dopes and ineffective people and fools at the at the highest levels. They were just wrong about stuff.

And it's so difficult, I think for most Americans to imagine, for instance, the incredible dishonesty and incompetence of the Biden White House. You've got a senile fool. I mean, he's always been a fool, come on, but a senile fool announcing unconstitutional programs, denying what was clearly true, steering the ship of state directly into an iceberg. Also, they could hang on to their jobs for one more term, get the old man through the election, then we'll know, we'll

Yeah.

Yeah, the West wing of the White House was those people. And it's not impossible to believe.

Trump's got some people around him who may be a little overconfident about one idea or another.

Yeah.

Well, as I have said over and over again, and I mean it, I want to be wrong. I will happily say, look, wow, they knew what they were doing all along.

I shouldn't have doubted them. Look at me, I'm an idiot.

I'm fine saying that six months from now, a year from now, if this all turns out, right, I.

Share hope it does.

Yeah, I just my My great hope is that a lot of the tariff talk is bluff to get better trade deals, because our trade deals, many of them, are bad and can be improved. And all the stuff about oh I love tariffs, we're gonna we're gonna solve the budget, We're gonna pay off the debt with tariffs. We're gonna on shore all the manufacturing. That's it's a bluff. That'd be fine if it works. And besides, you'll have too many pencils anyway. I'm disgusted by the number of pencils

Jon Stewart has a funny clip about Trump and his view of toys.

Oh on, they don't need to have two hundred and fifty pencils, they can have five.

Trump has such a Depression era of view of what kids play with in twenty twenty five. Tends don't need twenty sets of those hoops you hit with a stick as you go down the street.

Just one hoop is Jim Dandy.

So he used some odd examples, the point being yes, cheap Chinese goods and consumerism, etc.

I'm on board coming up later.

I'm working on crafting this in a way that does not drain your life force from you and make you wish for death. The upcoming battle over Medicaid is so important, and it is going to be some of the worst, most stupid demagogy politics you've ever seen in your life. In fact, it's already begun. The Republicans are coming after

I saw you with a Kadashian Al Sharpton. Yeah, some twenty five year old pop singer.

I didn't know. Yeah, Oduo Lipa.

We danced a lot and she tried to make a move. It was late, she was drunk. I said, no, no, I'm married. No, hey, this has been fun, but hands off, sweetheart, and I knew it was time to go home.

Exactly. You don't want to get yourself in trouble. So we got mail bag coming up next day. Here, this is a good text. We got Sean Diddy. Combs is guilty of one thing. He loved too much and way too weirdly.

Yes.

To continue our discussion from the last segment, a longtime friend of mine In Friend of the Show, Mike the Lawyer in Chicago says there's an incredible bias in the legal community of big city lawyers against country lawyers. They think they're smarter and better because they make more money. But there's also a saying among lawyers with wisdom that says, somebody tells you I'm just a country.

Lawyer, You're probably going to lose.

They're just as bright, if not brighter, than so many city lawyers.

Center. That's funny.

I got a friend who moved from California to Tennessee and his kids. He's not a California He's from the Midwest. Actually, he moved with his family who had grown up in California to Tennessee small town, and his kids thought they were going to walk into school and be so far ahead all and they were so far behind all the other kids.

Oh yeah, he said.

Everybody in the California thinks they're smarter than everybody else, but they're not.

Yeah.

How interesting. Yeah, some of the best, most talented people we've ever known in the radio business decided, no, I'm going to make my life and raise my children in Cincinnati or you know, Jolie Illinois or whatever. They're every bit as talented and smart as anybody else. They just made a different life choice.

Anyway.

Here's to you in your life choices, friends, Here's your freedom loving quote of the day from the great Patrick Henry. The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. Oh Man, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, that's that you're resting in peace right now.

You have no idea.

The transactions of our rulers are so incredibly opaque and complex it would take a lifetime study to understand one one thousandth of them.

Mailbag, Well, we'll keep trying.

Drop his note mail bag at Armstrong you getty dot com is our email address.

Mail bagget Armstrong, you getty dot com.

On the topic of the rock reopening, Alcatraz is a prison Alvin and Berkeley right there by the ock, says Nancy Pelosi can see Alcatraz from her mansion on Russian Hill. Should she be worried?

I hope so he can a stick Nancy Pelosi at Alcatraz. I love it.

Back to the kentupy can Entucky derby horse. Not to beat a dead horse, but rites Kevin, I was thinking, what could be even more appropriate than a horse named Sovereignty to win the Kentucky Derby.

Under our current political climate would.

Have been the horse named journalism win, only to have been disqualified later for doping while beaten ridden by an illegal alien MS thirteen gang member with a free Palestine neck tattoo. That's about the state of journalism. Yes, journalism the horse performed well better than journalism the profession, but it did not win. If Journalism the profession ran in the Kentucky Derby, it would have stumbled out of the gate and crawled to the finish an hour after the

I don't know.

On the topic of abundance and pencils. I use the pencils from our home for my professional fence gardening layout stuff, and I get the idea. Sometimes they disappear because he's using them for work. This irritated the Princess. I turned to Amazon where I purchased three hundred pencils for a few ducats. I proceeded to add pencils to every possible place in our home. We need to keep our trade relations with China, so it can continue to troll my

That is some good marital trolling.

I remember when I was that way with the kids when they were little. I get so frustrated over there was never a binkie around when I needed one. I wanted to have so many binkies in the house that you walked ankle deepened binkies from room to room so there was always one at hand.

M let's see mess rights, Dear ang. This includes a coarse word for testicles, and I apologize for using it in advance. Once again, you two of parading around the unwelcome idea that microplastics and men's balls are the reason for declining birth rates. I say, nay, I blame American chicks.

Think about it.

Plastics started taking a foothold in the sixties. Feminism took a stronger foothold in the sixties.

The timeline for both fits.

But are other species also showing the precipitous decline in birth rates? Have baboons lost their desire to mate? Our raccoons invulnerable to having plastic in their balls, even though they wallow around in our dumpsters? And are the men in Afghanistan and every other neanderthal country somehow more resilient to the microplastics?

Imp? No, they all do lack feminism.

Well I don't know about that point, but yeah, it doesn't seem to be effecting the birth rate of your hellholes for whatever reason. And they got as much plastic, if not more, right? Uh?

Yeah, yeah, I don't That's an interesting thought. I don't know, but I appreciate the note. How about this? John no Age rites guys? Uh oh omg. He writes, he listened to the podcast yesterday. I've officially been lectured more by you than my own mother about having kids sooner rather than later. I'm starting to get antsy over here listening to the podcast. Let's not make this a regular thing. No, I was not hectoring anybody to having kids, have kids younger.

I'm not saying it's better. I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying that nobody ever explains the advantages of it, for some reason, because you're going against the tide, I guess or the.

I don't know. I think the advantages seem obvious, and I did it the other way around. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, let's see do we have time for this year? We do excellent.

Frequent correspondent Powello writes, guys, there's some controversy over the public funding of religious schools. I should mention I've got some trumpy emails here for mailbag, but we've talked enough about Trump this hour, so kind of skip them for now.

We'll get to them later.

But there's some controversy about the public funding of religious schools because that could amount to state sponsored religion.

That would not be good, and he quotes The New York Times.

The main question in the case is whether the First Amendment permits states to sponsor and if finance, religious charge schools. In other words, the Supreme Court is deciding whether charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately run are fundamentally private or public, and Paolo says, that's fine question, but why

How about this, there's.

The three RS set of things everybody. Everybody agrees we want children to be taught. Any schools certified to teach that required curriculum can teach it. The state will provide schools that teach that curriculum and only that curriculum public schools, or it will call those. In addition, the state will pay any school certified to teach the required curriculum some fixed amounts, and the schools so certified will be measured

School choice Friends, school choice.

More and more states are are moving more and more in that direction, and as we discussed several days ago, the data so far is glowing school choice works.

So if you miss a segment or now, we can grab our podcast it's called Armstrong and Getty on demand. We got a lot more news of the day and there's lots happening to come, so stay

Here Armstrong and Getty