I Ain't Dying In Crocs

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

Jack Armstrong is Joe Getty arms Strong and Jetty and he Armstrong and Yetty.

People don't want to hear about these stupid ideas that they have transgender for everybody. And again the men and women's sports. What is that a ninety to ten deal. I don't even know who the ten would be, but they were in the fighting for it.

And I try and.

Say to myself, because you always like to understand where your opponent is, whether it's in business or anything else. Is there something I don't understand, but we don't understand it.

So Trump did a big interview with Maria Barbromo yes day and a lot of different issues, but this is what's getting the most attention, so we can discuss.

Look, I know that you inherited a mess, and you say, I don't been here far.

Are you expecting a recession this year? I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. That's a big thing, and there are always periods of it takes a little time. It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.

I mean, I think it should be great.

So the fact that he didn't immediately say no, there's not going to be a recession.

Him understanding the way the media.

Works and everything means something, right, right, I thought his very brief screen about you know, it's important in any sort of negotiation, I ask yourself, is there something I don't understand about the other side?

Occasionally, because Trump's.

Very simple populist messaging sometimes strikes people including me, is like crazy oversimplified, but that's often intentional, and occasionally he shows a glimpse behind the curtain, and he's much more analytical than he comes off. I think, right, can we break out of the either like Trump or you don't like him for just a minute to have this conversation.

Sure, so he's talking to the listener, I know you can, But.

I'm thinking about friends I know who would never never be able to get past the they hate Trump so much or whatever. But he talked a little bit about having long term goals, thinking long term, how China thinks in centuries in the interview, and I thought it was interesting. On MSNBC this Morning where they do hate Trump so much they can hardly see straight. David Ignatius of the Washington Post saying this, He made a.

Very interesting comment yesterday that I did pay attention to where he said China works on one hundred year cycle of planning in the United States goes horror to quarter, something I've heard from corporate CEOs for for years, and I think he's right about that. I mean, it's not to endorse the policies, but we do tend to get so caught up in these short term movements that we forget about what would be good.

In for the long run in the country.

But in any event, Wall Street's got the jitters today.

All right.

And it reminded me is that we've been saying for years on this show. You always say that, you know, the Dow is not the economy, or what's happening with the stock market is not the economy. And Wall Street, man, the Wall Street Journal gets quoted all the time. We quoted all the time, and it's a great newspaper, but man, they're a quarter by quarter what's best for the next quarter newspaper and a bunch of people who make a lot of money off of being able to read what's

Started changing chasing that quarter.

And if you've ever worked for a big company, you've seen them do things that you know is structurally a bad long term idea. But they did it because it's going to boost the stock price this quarter, and they're not worried about the next quarter till they get to the next quarter. And that's what Trump's trying to talk about. And I don't know if you can actually do it. I don't know if you can bring manufacturing back to

That is the challenge because it could easily take thirty years to do it thoroughly. And it's so easy to demogogue, right, difficult in between period in a democracy from the left and the right.

Oh sure, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

I mean if if a you know, Jos Shapiro whatever, decided that, you know, that's right, we got to onshore a bunch of stuff because China are dirty communists and bent on world domination and evil and it's it. But it would take a couple two three decades to thoroughly restructure the economy that way, and it's very difficult for democracy to do that. And of course Trump's only got four years and if his successor, whoever that might be,

I mean, that's a hell of a lot of voters.

And you can you can get those people fired up and cut off the world's wisest long term plan at the knees without even trying this.

This is a really big picture issue though. I mean, I think this gets to the core of is an authoritarian system where one guy makes the decisions like China better than our system on this issue. We can people govern themselves on this issue, think long term and the reality of the new world.

No, but thank you for asking.

The other point I was going to make is actually kind of a preemptive answer to that question, and that is another thing democracy are famous for is being reactive. One of my favorite quotes from Churchill was when he said nothing changes until you're invaded. You can't get people to vote for strong national defense until the poo has hit the fan. I was thinking about this, oh, I was listening to a good podcast and really thinking deeply

Want old people to starve?

And honestly, I couldn't come up with anything that would work. We will do nothing about those situations until they crash, and then everybody will say how did this happen? And we will have to enact strong, unpalatable measures to save those two programs.

I just I don't know how to head it off in a democracy.

I'm sorry to be discouraging, well like a bad talk show host, and I apologize.

Dave Chappelle had a joke over the weekend of uh, this all sounds great until you're paying nine thousand dollars for an iPhone.

The problem being.

If China gets what they want, they're just gonna They're just gonna take the Apple factory, and we'ren't right and unless we're willing to send in the Marines, there's not gonna be any getting it back. And then we'll have to all of a sudden figure out how to make the iPhone or MacBook or whatever in the United States or in India or some friendly country or whatever. So it's either there'll be fifty thousand YUS four or five years.

So it's either plan ahead or or it's gonna be worse.

Since again, but if we can't deal with the simple math of social security as an issue as you've been talking about. Well, then we're certainly not gonna deal with the complexities of bringing manufacturing back to the United States because we found out during COVID all the medicines and masks and every every single thing you needed was made in China or somewhere else, because we don't make anything right.

Yeah, other than certain aspects of Trump's foreign policy, which I don't like it all, there a hell of a

I just I'm a little concerned. There's so much going on.

Well, if you could get a group of economists to discuss this and check their trump fear, slash, love or hatred at the door, do we need to think? Okay, the whole globalization thing is over. That moment is over. China is going to have their sphere of influence and it might be half the planet. Everything is going to divide. We need to bring everything back or to friendly countries.

Period.

Would most economists agree with that or not? I wonder I think they would.

Yeah, Yeah, I don't unless they have a much rosier view of China and its future than any sane human being could have.

Yeah, they'd agree.

If that needs to happen. There's going to be an ugly period of making that happen. Yes, or more likely it's going to be what you said, when when it all collapses or the war starts or whatever, that's when we'll have to figure out how to make a car in the United States, an iPhone in the United States, all that sort of stuff. I just I'm not I don't I can't go with you that far that it's all going to be made in the United States. I

Uh.

You don't want to go full protectionist, mercantilist, isolationist economics because that would that would so radically remake the economy, that would shake out over you know, half a century or more. I like the idea of a much tighter regionalism, but that's gonna involve because you know, Mexico, Guatemala, some of the South American countries have much lower labor costs. That's gonna involve some of the mass production being there

Is probably the sweet spot.

But the Bernie crowd's got to be happy about trying to bring the jobs back to the United States.

Right, Yeah theoretically, Yeah, well that's interesting stuff.

Again, he's got three and a half years to do it, whereas China's got a hundred year plan and one guy makes all the decisions.

That's gonna be fun to watch. Tell you will it? Stock up on dried goods and ammunition.

Folks, or horrifying A bunch of things to update you on. Gene Hackman, Lebron James.

My favorite gender bending madness story of the year thus far.

Oh boy, that sounds good. All on the way stay here. Prime has launched.

A new tool that will use AI to dub movies into English from foreign languages like Spanish, Korean, and Sylvester Sloan.

Oh I love that man, so AI could uh, I don't have to read the dang foreign film.

That's cool.

So it's gonna I put my headphones on late. The audio track is actually going to be translated. Yeah, AI could do that obviously with good acting skills. I don't know about that.

But I hear the past in the voice.

But if I'm reading it, what are my acting skills? I'm reading the well, you hear the.

Voices on screen? Right.

It's like the the Everywhere all the time, up and down and behind you movie that I thought was so good.

I finally watched Ye so prime a new prime minister in Canada? Trudeau's out? Is that correct?

Well?

Not yet? Not yet? Okay, they haven't voted for a new one yet.

The exciting realities of Canadian politics to come.

Also next hour.

What China is up to and how they're doing it is absolutely clear now, dramatic, shocking, terrifying.

Stay with us. I just wondered if Christine was out yet.

Speaking of gender bending madness, this may be my favorite gender bending madness.

Story of the year thus far, though it is early.

So in San Francisco, you got the uh, you got one full nude Russian bath house.

Okay, I don't know what you're doing. I'm not a Russian. What what do is do?

What?

Everyone I've heard the term bath house and then jokes about it. But I don't really know what a bath house is.

You go, it's like a hot tubbery are you so can it's you soak in the hot tubs, into the mud baths or whatever. And but I don't know.

I don't go to them, or are they a sexual thing or are there are there above allegedly no?

In reality, yeah, that was the big hookup place in San Francisco for years.

That's where the aids spread so so rapidly. I was really ignorant on this topic.

But so they are like real bathhouses that just regular people not wanting to have sex go to. I never talked to anybody's Yeah, got back from the bathouse, is going to go.

Had a good time? Oh yeah.

In a lot of cultures, and we're actually using up all the time for the actual story I wanted to tell.

But you know what the hell?

Uh yeah, Russians, Finns, your Northern Europeans bathhouses, hot springs, mud baths, saunas where you're naked, all that stuff is super common. But anyway, so this all nude Russian bath house, uh really it wants to have a ladies' night, so so the women's there can just be there if of whatever religious bent they are, that they're not supposed to be naked around men, or just don't want to be

But then that was hosted.

Of course, everything lives forever on the internet, and there are protests and counter protests and people yelling online and that sort of thing. Even though they quote several transgender people former fellas saying, look, it's one night a month.

No sane person.

Goes to the banya every day of the month anyway. But so then, and I'm going to hurry through this, they had to change it because nobody could agree on the terms to fallus and nonfallous nights, phallic and non phallic nights. Because if you're a woman and you go to the bath house on Women's night and there's a wang there, it is not women's night.

Well, yes, it is.

Trans women are women jack. According to people mostly in San Francisco and places like that. But the bath house is like, all right, what do we call it? So nobody with a chance shows up. As are going through about six different iterations, they came up with non phallic knight. Thank you for making the point better than conservatives ever could.

I'm Christian, friends, Armstrong and Getty.

This is what it sounds like at the Highatt Regency Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, hundreds of high school students from the Kentucky All State Choir uniting each night to sing our national anthem, a longtime tradition in the Bluegrass State, going all the way back to nineteen eighty seven.

Braid, Yes, Brade, I knew how it ends.

Bran.

Let's get to come up. We've got things to do wrong. I'm sitting here with chills, my soul stir. Jack's bitching about how long it is? Wow?

Nice little wow, let's move the metromenome up five clicks?

All right, little kind of built to that moment. Fucking okay. I like the story for a little long, nice story. That is a beautiful set and beautiful singing. Yeah, I mean it was absolutely lovely coming up. Have cars gotten too technologically advanced. Now they're making everyone insane. I've been saying this for thirty years. Of course I'm a ludite. You are ali it, but and you like fast anthems. Everybody knows about you. But on the opposite end of

But two technical notes.

Lately, as it's become kind of the experimenting experimental ground for all sorts of weapons systems that will be unleashed on other human beings for you know, the next half century. Promly, Russia is doing two things to adapt to the technology

But again, you're not going to send.

One five miles away, obviously, it's you know, you're there at the front, and the other thing is on the Eastern Front, Russia is saddling up a mainstay of battlefields from centuries earlier to counter Ukraine's drone army.

Horses and donkeys.

The behooved animals carry supplies and soldiers to avoid the attention of drones, which can easily spot and strike armbored vehicles and other vehicles.

Moving near the front lines.

But you use a horse and a donkey, especially you know, in the dusk or dark hours, and then you can get by. So they're you know, it's not super widespread right now, but they're using horses and donkeys and manual trolleys now to move wood, supplies and even the injured for miles to and from the front because they're much less easily observed.

Anyway.

Ukrainian forces are also experimenting with various unmanned land droney devices, including something a very dog like looking beast that looks like exactly out of one of those Boston Dynamics videos that inspire us all even as they're really freaking us out and giving us nightmares.

Yeah.

Yeah, So the next war we're involved in is gonna look a lot different than the previous ones, like that we're actually fighting. We're involved in all kinds of military conflicts around the world, but like where we actually have.

Boots on the ground.

As they say, it's funny that we haven't developed nomenclature what to call are various levels of violent involvement of the members of the military.

Well, all that, because it gets to the whole Only Congress can declare war, but for the past however long, you use the same nine to eleven justification for every act you do all over the world, and the President can make the calls, right, the President or you know, the Secretary of State or even the CIA can declare not war. But I want you armed fellows to kill those people over there, right, Yeah, which is I'm sure Madison.

Would go, wow, we never even thought of that. Anyway.

On the other end of the technological spectrum, drivers are finding they wish smart technology in their cars was just a bit dumber. Now, Jack, you have always been a bit of a light eight when it comes to cars. You know, it's a matter of preference. I tend to like a little more technical sophistication in my automobile.

They, in my opinion, you can't improve upon what the air conditioning system was. Forever you got a knob, you turn it toward blue for colder, red for warmer, and the speed of the fan.

It worked perfectly fine. I don't know why we ever had to change it.

Because a thermostats are a thing, and they're great. I want it to be seventy two degrees in my car. It'll get it there and hold it there for me.

You don't have it. You don't want a red and blue thing in your home? Do you like?

You're saying it's some cheap motel with cinder block walls. Come on now, anyway, Oh, teach their own, I say. But automakers have been adding more and more new tech features that go beyond the just the touch screens, assisted driving systems and companion home maps that have become ubiquitous.

I know, I mentioned, I know the feeling. How many times have I screamed in my car various other places. But quit trying to help me with various things where they think they're doing me a favor.

Stop trying to help me. Have we hit the point of too much. Yes, many driver states too much. The sharew had positive feelings about the intuitiveness of their car's controls was seventy nine percent in the year twenty fifteen, seventy nine percent. Nine years later's fall into fifty six percent, twenty three point drop.

That is interesting. The trend was.

Similar for and this is what really rung a bell with me, driver's perceptions of dashboard displays, screen interfaces, and the layout of instrument panels. Overall, people like it pretty well, but touch screens and it's funny. I've got a newish car and I've been thinking about this a lot lately. They quote this one bloke. He sees them as both an annoyance and potential hazard. Changing settings can require multiple taps and usually doesn't deliver physical.

Feedback like the twist of a knob or the press of a.

Button that you can actually feel for twist, how far you've twisted it, or whatever.

He says.

Quote, you have to sit there and stare at what you're doing, which means you're taking your eyes off.

The road, no doubt.

Yeah, I've got a really cool car, but the touch screen is way too cumbersome.

Yeah, I shouldn't have to look and touch that many things just to turn on the radio. Too many screens flying around, too much attention. Yeah, it's quite amazing. Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

Some twenty eight percent of new car buyers favorite buttons over touch screens, with that number is growing. And then they get into a story that I don't know anything about, but I guess with a lot of electric cars, including Tesla's, but in this case a Volkswagen model, they're like crazy technically.

Advanced, is that the right word.

But this guy who lives in Canada, I believe, went out on a really cold morning and he's gonna try to remotely start charging it blah blah blah. But the doors wouldn't open because their sensor equipped handles were on the fritz in the cold. He had one of those cars that like senses your approach and the handles emerge and then they sense your fingers and blah blah blah.

So he couldn't get into the car.

He had to shimmy into his car through the trunk, like you had to back when your car was falling apart many years ago.

My car does that because of the app on my watch, which I find just amazing. So because I'm wearing my watch with the car app on it, it opens the doors when I walk up to it.

Now, you wouldn't think the three point one percent or three point one problems per one hundred vehicles of owners complaining about their door handles being different difficult sounds like a lot three point one per one hundred vehicles. But that's almost well, it's three percent. That's up from two tenths of a percent in twenty twenty. Was anybody unhappy you reach out and you pull on the handle and the door opens, right?

See, that's another one to me? Was anybody unhappy with the door handle situation?

Before? I thought it was fine?

So there, it's about sixteen times as many problems now that they're so advanced and futuristic.

So it would appear, at least for now that we are at the end of.

Fancy and computer driven and futuristic is automatically a good thing.

Yeah, it's tough.

I don't even know myself because I am a I am do lean toward the luod eyed end. But like the Tesla stuff and Apple stuff, I really really like. I feel like they do a really good job of figuring out what you want in a way that you want it versus a lot of other products. So there is a it's not all one or the other, it's all in the execution. So top of the list that people do, like wireless phone charging pads, yeah he did.

And ventilated seats. Oh I'm a big fan, a little bougie for me. Oh please please, hot hot summer day. You got an air conditioner blown right on your heinis it on earth.

Makes me feel like my pants are wet. And secondly, it's just it's it's to your pants are wet. It's too chancy. I feel like it's just setting myself up for a failure. I I'd rather be hot or cold than use that technology.

Wow, please email.

Your theories about what's going on there. That's a mail bagging armstrung and get eat one also very popular. Jack waiting on this for the ludite crowd because I'm sure you're representing a certain percentage of people.

Rain sensing wipers. Yeah, I haven't found that many that work that well.

Yeah, great in theory. Yeah great.

How about built in vacuum cleaners. Yeah, wait a minute, that's a thing. Yeah, who's got those?

I don't remember where I came across that, but it's yeah, it's it's internal in the car. And then you like, you can just plug in the hose. It's like if you've got the vacuum system in your house, which I've only seen on the whole house vacuum, but yeah, you've had that because I am bougie. Yeah, you just have a hose you plug into verious parts of the car. That would be pretty handy.

So at the bottom of the wish list are passenger side screens like hmm, like screens to look at it.

Yeah.

I was in somebody's fancy Mercedes lift over the weekend with my kids. We ended up with a fancy uber and it had a guy was showing me the screen on the passenger side.

It was just for the passenger. That was pretty cool.

Oh wow, Okay, so people are not impressed with that. I've never seen one. An augmented reality visible on the windshield. Well, if you want to have a head on wreck, it sounds like a great idea.

I don't know.

And according to JD Power, drivers are underwhelmed by gesture controls, where one can say, increase the volume by rotating an imaginary knob in the air. You're an imaginary knob. Wow, that sounds great in theory. Again, but I could see like you try it, and you try it again and try.

It again, like the Apple Vision pro. So you're doing things with your hands that its interesting.

Well, if it.

Worked, it might be fine. Again, it's the execution of all these things. A lot of these things would be great if they worked the way they said they were going to work.

Right, And then they mentioned that with all the sensors on cars now for backup camera well forward cameras too, and parking sensors and whatever, a fender vendor can can cost you a hell of a lot of money, which has raised insurance rates as well.

Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Speaking of Tesla is because of the aluminum body and the sensor and stuff like that, you get a tiny dent, You're going to spend fifteen thousand dollars on a tiny dent. Elon claims because the newer Teslas have a different sensory system than the other ones did with the cameras and everything like that. Elon claims they're going full You don't have to pay attention auto driving end of twenty six.

Color me skeptical. I'm pretty skeptical too.

Final note of the evils of technological development. Here's a dude who likes to start his twenty four Toya, a tound of pickup remotely. He lives in you know, high elevation in Nevada, but that function doesn't reliably work with his key fob, so he begrudgingly starts it through Toyota's app, which charges a subscription fee. He points out, I got a thousand dollars a month payment. Now I got to pay another fifteen bucks a month just to be able to start it remotely.

Wow.

Yeah, the subscription fee thing, we've talked about that that's a growing you know you want you want this horse power because they can adjust it.

You want this horse power, you pay extra per month. This upgraded stereoah, which I always get. Yeah, you gotta pay a fee per month. Interesting And they mentioned finally Jack and this will glad in your heart. After owning the truck for a year and a half, he also recently bought himself a nineteen eighty five Chivy Silverado, which he can fix himself.

Yeah.

Yeah, And sometimes when you get in those, if you ever get a chance to drive something like that, there's something like maybe it's nostalgia, but there's just something because it's so simple.

It's just like.

Relaxing in a certain way. So like, I know, I know everything that's going on here. I don't have to think at all. You have any thoughts on that, you can text us. We got more in the way to stay here.

Arstro he Yetie, an Australian man who was credited with saving more than two million babies by repeatedly donating his blood, has died.

At the age of eighty eight.

Doctors pronounced him dead when they heard this sound.

Wow christ Oh, that's kind of funny. Wow.

It's an easy transition from that to the firing squad execution that happened in South Carolina over the weekend. We've only executed four people in this country by firing squad in the last half a century. We did one the other day. He's a scumbag by the way, or he you know, I don't know where his brain was. Now. He became a Christian and says he's remorseful or whatever, but he committed horrible, horrible crimes, beating to death people

Actually, wow, oh, inappropriate.

His ankles and wrists were shackled so that he couldn't like jump around, move around whatever. And he chose they. He chose the firing squad because he thought it was the least gruesome of the other alternatives, the other alternatives being in South Carolina eaten by dogs.

And I don't know that is incorrect. I need a source that information.

Actually, the other choices were actually the electric chair, which he said would cook him alive, so he didn't want that. And they do lethal injection like most states do who have the death penalty, and he was worried that there would be a rush of fluid into his lugs and lungs and he would drown. So he sounds like a bit of a whack job in addition to being a murderous scumbag. His final statement was to be one of love and calling to my fellow Christians to help us

You know what's interesting. Two perspectives on that. Number one.

I was reading Theologian the other day talking about how the whole eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth thing is not a cry for vengeance.

It's a cry for proportionality.

What they're saying is if somebody does something offensive, to you don't kill them in their family. Keep it proportional, otherwise it escalates and gets incredibly ugly. Second thing is I was reminded that Thomas jes Edison rather allegedly invented the electric chair to prove that alternating current AC power was unsafe because it could kill a person, and DC his preferred method of electrifying things was much safer and better.

H So a number of states have turned to the firing squad. I guess if they ever start executing people again. There is some belief that it is incredibly painless. You will instantly die and feel milky you whatsoever? No, no sudden shock. But was it super bloody?

Did they mention or anything? They did not? It's almost got to be, doesn't it. I heard it it was.

I wonder if he was wearing some sort of special garment so it wouldn't be too much of a cleanup.

I ain't dying in crocs. I'll tell you that you might have your standard. I'd like to go out with some dignity.

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