Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Arm Strong and he.
Armstrong and Getty.
But pardon me that, Advice President. The question was, how are you going to pay for it?
Well, one of the things I'm going to make sure that the richest among us who can afford it, pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations.
And I plan on making that fair.
But we're dealing with the real world here.
But the real world includes how are you going to get this to Congress? You know, when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in cong they know exactly what I'm talking about because their constituents though exactly what I'm talking about. Their constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses. Their constituents are middle class, hardworking folks.
That was one of the few times last night that I was bothered by because I thought the sixty minutes was more aggressive than I was expecting to them be more follow ups. But I wish instead of accepting her BS line and acting like, well, the reason that's BS is because you couldn't get it through Congress.
No, the reason it's BS is because it's BS.
It's BS that the rich pay more than their fair share, and it's ridiculous to keep leaning on that as the answer to our fiscal problems.
Also from the Department of Populist clap traps, she said billionaires in America's great corporations. Everybody into corporations pays taxes, and raising corporate taxes makes goods more expensive, it cuts down on investment, it hurts your furrow. One it comes out of the paychecks of the people who work there. A corporation is just a collection of humans. Well, so that's such a dog.
And what she said about when you talk to people in Congress, you know, in private, it's the opposite of what she said. You talk to people in Congress in private, and they would say, well, yeah, we can't, We're not gonna raise taxes on corporations or you know, try to figure out how to tax unrealized gains because it would doom the economy. But this plays well in public. So I'm willing to go on stage and say originally to pay the fair share, because it polls well.
Those who have been blessed the most, who have disproportionately attracted by whatever skill, more and more from the national wealth, they're gonna have to share more of that.
That is one of the worst utterances in the history of American politics. The former governor of California Jerry Brown, suggesting that if you are, for instance, a successful entrepreneur, you build a small business, you employee dozens of people, you feed your clothes, you medicate them, You put out products that people.
Want to buy, and they buy them from you.
You've extracted from the public wealth.
Right, you took something from someone else, it would be their money if you hadn't taken it, Which is as illiterate economically as you could possibly get.
Carl Marx wandered away from that, muttering.
That's not how it works, dude, that's unbelievable anyway. So we could certainly torture your ears with more kamm la on sixty minutes and mean, we may on and off throughout the show, But that actually leads rather beautifully to a new study that came across about income inequality. And I found it really interesting. I hope you do too.
It's you know, the concept of income inequality just drives so much of our politics these days, and it's so frustrating if you understand how economies actually work to listen to it.
But I really ought to be used to it at this point in my life. So there's a.
Big study from the National Bureau of Economic Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, Vanderbilt University, Princeton. I mean, this is a big, big, you know, the high Class study. It used a rich vein of survey data tracking individuals far back as nineteen seventy nine. They found that a major determinant hello again that word is determinant of total lifetime hours worked is individual choice. Oh, I'm sorry, I kind of started in the middle. I
skipped a part i apology. The more you work over your lifetime, the more you earn. Now, so far, so obvious as they write, but the surprises lurk, and an explanation that's more complex than you'd think. They found that a major determinant of total lifetime hours worked is individual choice.
Some people just.
Prefer to work more, while others might prioritize other activities. But it's not just that they worked more. The paper finds that those who work more earn more because they
accumulate more skills during the extra time they work. The overlapping effects of different preferences for work and different levels of skill acquisition account for a hefty share of overall differences in lifetime earnings, and it seems to operate independently of other factors like level of education or skills, or how much money you had before you entered the labor force. In other words, income inequality is in part a matter of choice rather than an intractable economic or social force.
Sorry, socialists, well, trying to make that fly in a populous era, even if it's true. But it's always these sort of things are just tough for me because of our career or what do we do for a living. I just it's such a not regular job. I always have to try to picture a regular job because I can work more hours. I'm not picking up any skills. I mean, I got no skills. I started with no skills. I've gained no skills. I could do two radio shows
a day. I still have no skills. But so for regular jobs, though you put in more hours and you pick up more skills.
And that's where become more useful, of course, of right different ways well, and honestly, if you were to put in another ten hours per week and devote it to learning video editing, we might be able to have a more robust video presence on YouTube or something like that. But anyway, the other thing that bothers me about some of the income inequality analysis is that it frequently casts people who've made deliberate and to me completely defensible decisions
as somehow victims. Right, I mean, the obvious thing would be a woman who decides I'm not going to bust my ass to be a big law lawyer and work seventy hours a week. I want to be a mom and I'm going to practice law, but on my terms because I think my life will be a better life, more satisfying service to God.
However, you define a good.
Life if I don't entirely devote my energies to making more money, And that woman is frequently portrayed as a victim of something when I, personally, for what it's worth, thinks she's made a brilliant decision.
Right, or even maybe slightly more subtle as somebody who's moved around the country and I often think about the decisions, those decisions and how they affected my life and my kids' lives and that sort of stuff.
It's been good for me career wise.
But so if I had made the decision, you know, I'm going to stay in the area where all my family is, so I have the close family ties and all the fun stuff that comes with that, I'd be making a lot less money. That's not I wouldn't be a victim of something. I chose a different lifestyle that maybe would have been better.
Yeah, yeah, I agree completely.
I have a close relative whose point of view is I will make enough to get by, and I will spend the rest of my time exploring art and nature.
And friends and whatever else.
That was not my priority really as a young man, partly because I was raising kids and everything, like I'd better build an s egg because I was terrified all the time of letting my family down. But again, it's not a question of victimhood. It is a question, over and over and over again, of choices. But you know, it's so easy to throw back self righteously. Oh so people are choosing to be poor, The white man says, they're choosing to be Okay, right, and you lose, you're
done at that. So I'm not bragging on this, I swear I'm not. It's just the way I made when I was taking econ classes back in college, which was roughly the horse was just giving way to the motor car.
You did all your problems on an abacus.
Yeah, there were lessons in principles that the professors would teach us that I was sitting.
I would more than once.
I sat there thinking real people don't act like that. It's not like I knew more than them, and I didn't form up some revolutionary theory of economics or I just went off chasing girls and drinking beer. But anyway, I I thought this was so interesting. The economics of identity is a growing field. A Nobel Prize winning economist, a couple of guys you've never heard of, were I came up with this principle that identity may be the most important economic decision people make. How you view your
role in the world will affect your choices. Yet even the great economic thinkers of academic history, you know, economics in general, had not incorporated identity into a formal economic model. Sociologists and psychologists, they spent half their time about you know your self image, what image you want to project to others, you know what groups you're part of, as being like incredibly important. But economics had ignored it, and
they talk about being a Trump voter, Harris voter. It's an expression of identity that goes along with many other expressions from the car you drive to the clothes you wear, and it's it's there's a lot of social pressure in it. And he mentions the two economists who came up with this idea, your identity can be buttressed, threatened, changed, or influenced by others, not merely by your own preferences and decisions that who am I, how do I want others to see me?
And who are we?
So these two economists, for instance, talked about how being an academic economist is a social category and among the prescriptions for academic economists might include owning a practical car, wearing comfortable shoes, and living a certain I'm an academic
economist lifestyle. And if you were to run out and buy a Porsche or a pair of five hundred dollars loafers or something like that, not only would it cause a real economist to feel bad, but you'd immediately be scorned and mocked by your colleagues.
Wow, so you're supposed to be in a Honda accord and where where you know something you got at the mall, at the walking store that that that fits in with the whole identity thing.
Yeah, a couple other examples.
Uh So, this model posits that individuals gain from both material outcomes and actions that conform to their identities. In the labor market, workers are motivated by wages as well as by how well their jobs aligned with their identity. A corporate job might offer financial stability, but if it conflicts with an individual's identity as an environmentalist, for instance, or an iconoclastic artist or whatever, that's mismatch can lead
to dissatisfication, dissatisfaction, and underperformance. In this vein, trying to train coal miners to be nurses may be futile. And there's there's a great deal more to this. I love to draw on and on about this stuff.
Yeah.
That that's that's damned interesting. That is not thought about enough. Whenever I hear, you know, teaching coal miners to code or whatever that politicians throw around, that sort of stuff. I know enough working class people in in my life. That what an identity that is? This is this is who I am. I'm a farmer, I'm a you know. I I work with my hands. I work outside to do whatever I would. I would hang myself before I would sit in an office in code all day long.
So the idea that I mean, because of the identity stuff you're talking about, this is not just just to make a living. This is who I am, this is what This is what I projected the world. This is what I want to project to my family and friends.
Thanks Matt, Jack, you hit me with one of the best examples of this I've ever heard. Michael's getting nervous because we need to take a break. I'll keep it short. But at one point we were talking about the concept of keeping it real, how athletes and rappers and all they they got to act like they're still of the hood or what have you. And and it's an interesting topic because sometimes it hurts you in your life or
your earning capabilities or whatever. But at one point I'd mentioned to Jack that I had always done my own yard work, gardening, mowing, trimming, blowing, all of it because I couldn't stand the idea of me being the guy who hires a gardener, and you said, you're keeping it real right for your people, that's exactly Yeah, yeah, we don't have servants. And finally, the yard was just too peg and I would have spend all my time doing
it and I would have neglected my children. So I hired a guy for you know, much less than it would have cost me in my life. But yeah, that concept of keeping it real, your self image, your identitybody, it would affect your economic decisions.
It's enormous. It was completely missing from economics. Yeah, it's the way we're built. Interesting.
I want to talk about the Nobel Prize in uh that came out today, and also an overview of the polling, not in individual polls or anything like that that I guarantee you will find interesting.
All on the way.
Well, listen to this McDonald's issuing major beef producers for allegedly conspiring to limit their supplies.
Meanwhile, Arby's is like this does affect us? Wow? Wow? What is it? It just doesn't affect us? What is it?
What the late night guys war on Arby's on a fine meat he sandwich purveyor.
I don't know. I don't know, I don't get it. I've enjoyed many delicious sandwich at Arby's. I agree.
So the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to a couple of scientists working on AI, John Hopfield and Jeffrey Hinton, who we've talked about before, who's often considered the godfather of AI or something like that, have showed a completely new way for us to use computers to aid and guide us in solving problems. The committee said, I felt like this is the sort of thing that's going to be looked back on years from now, kind of like Oppenheimer, you know, cracking the code for making a bomb. Oh,
what a breakthrough for mankind nuclear energy. Look everybody, and yeah, they have showed a completely new way for us to use computers to guide and tackle me any of the challenges society faces. Machine learning based on the human brain is currently revolutionary, revolutionizing science, engineering, and daily life. Yeah, it's the daily life part of it. I think that most of us are worried about and like it might
render the need to work completely. You know, they will go away, and it will restructure society in a way that has never even been considered in the history of mankind, but yeah, good for you. In the Nobel Price, I just saw it really downplayed the significance of what this could be. So I don't know, And it was all cheery talk. That's what seemed to her to me. It was just all happy cheery. Isn't this great?
If only we could find a wise and beneficent, magnificent philosopher king who could judge will this overall would be a good thing or a bad thing? Because I'm not sure Cherry's still out.
How much time I got, Michael? Maybe four months with the Yeah, no, you got about a minute.
It's not really long enough. We do this all the time, starting to really drive me crazy. The stuff I most want to talk about we leave no time for. How do we fix that problem?
Is it fix them alone?
Yeah?
Sure, I don't think it is. We've been doing this for the next years. We get there years. There's no way we can current correct our mistake. You need to leave behind your preconceptions, man, old dog new tricks doesn't work. Just do what you want to do. Had no time, yes, time for this.
You brought up nuclear power. We are It's like most people don't want to think about death. Iran is working as hard as it can to get the atomic bomb as quickly as it can, and it's run by Islamic lunatics l l L.
Nobody wants to talk about it or do anything about it.
The Secretary of State set himself that there are a couple of weeks from breakout.
If they decide they want to do it, a couple of weeks.
If we're and decide, go let's get a nuclear weapon, it would take them a couple of weeks to have a nuclear weapon.
Not amazing.
And if old weird Beard decides to end the Jews, he's got the power to do it.
Good Lord, hold weird.
Beard Armstrong and getdy.
A quarter of registered voters still say they don't know you. They don't know what makes you tick, and why do you think that is what's the disconnect.
It's an election bill, and I take it seriously that I have to earn everyone's vote. This is an election for president of the United States. No one should be able to take for granted that they can just declare themselves a candidate and automatically receive support.
You have to earn it.
And that's what I intend to do.
That I don't I wish I could put my finger on why her answers bother me so much, but they do. Her tone of voice is this is obvious, it's simple and very impressive.
When it's never any of those, No, it is not, it's it's usually trite. It's no selection bill. What nobody knows what you believe? Like you don't have any You've.
Got to earn the votes. What what?
But the question was, why do there's a court or why do a court of the people say they don't know who you are.
So you haven't earned them yet? Is that what you're saying?
Is I wish she was trying to say anyway, I want to get to this overarching polling stuff, which I think you will find interesting.
I really do. But here's a little more. He followed up on that.
Tell you what your critics and the column this say.
Okay, they say, the reason so many voters don't know you is that you have changed your position on so many things.
You are against fracking, now you're for it.
You supported looser immigration policies, now you're tightening them up. You're for medicare for all now you're not so many that people don't truly know what you believe or what you stand for, and I know you've heard that.
In the last four years, I have been Vice president of the United States, and I have been traveling our country and I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground.
I believe in building consensus.
We are diverse people geographically regionally.
In terms of where we are in our backgrounds, and what the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus where we can figure out compromise and understand it's not a bad thing as long as you don't compromise your values to fine common sense solutions.
And that has been my approach.
She's completely full of crap. And I think you're supposed to call her a mid brain these days.
Oh, I don't know that.
I mean, yeah, yeah, they're just there's so many ways she could answered that question more skillfully and.
She knows words. Yeah, I don't know.
That's a tough one to answer because you flip flopped one hundred and eighty degrees on like six major topics.
Well, then think she's a midbrain. Is she was onto something there? The idea that hey, we've got to reach consensus and compromise and she could have said, Look, as a senator, I'm one of a hundred, and I was advocating for a particular point of view. But I'm running to be the president of all Americans, so yeah, I'm not. I'm going to try to find ways to bring the sides together. So yeah, if I sound more moderate now, it's because I want to be a moderate present it's
an election. Bill, you know what, given how stupid politics is r am you know, her rambling nonsense answer, maybe that's a better one.
I don't know. Selection of our lifetime.
I was pretty happy with sixty minutes Bill Whitaker. There are a couple of times that I really like he accepted her answer in a way that I really hated. But he did the what Tim Russer used to do on Meet the Press. You follow up and then like basically the second time they do their non answer, you let it lay there with like, Okay, you told people you don't want to answer this question, so we will move on. And I think that's fine. I mean, he gave her, you know, two chances there. People don't know
who you are. Here's all the things you flip flopped on. She did her weird Kamala Harris Circular something or other, and okay, I think that did her more harm than good.
That segment.
It led a whole bunch of people that might not have known that that she flipped off, flip flopped on all those issues, and she didn't really have a reason why she did well.
I'm reminded of the post debate analysis or polling, in which I was quite gratified even though Trump was awful to hear the number of folks undecided voters who said, you know, yeah, Trump was awful, but she didn't say anything. She didn't say anything specific. She didn't give me any clue as to how she would govern. And I think, you know, last night was another go round to that sort of thing.
It's an election. Though. What'd you think of Taylor's outfit last night? Didn't see it?
Pretty demuror.
Oh you didn't see it. I didn't see it. Take any of the follow up coverage from the New York Post. She's back in the stadium.
It looks like she and Travis have worked things out if they were on the rocks, because she wasn't the last two games.
Ah No, okay, I watched the Manning cast mostly for some of the first half. They did have a shout of Travis sitting on the bench, and I did say, by Gully, he's a handsome man. No wonder Taylor's happy to be with him. But that was my only thought of her for like the last three weeks.
So, yes, Michael, I was just thinking, the Chiefs are five and o though, and she hasn't been at the games if she if they start losing, they're gonna blame her.
Absolutely, she's a bad loss. They should. Yeah, that's just science.
To the presidential election. I thought this was interesting. So the New York Times had one of their biggest polls in the field. As we get closer to the election four weeks from today, it's actually starting to get pretty close. And it was mostly good news for Kamala Harris. She increased her lead nationally a little bit, and she continues to have higher approval ratings. She'd closed the gap on the economy and the border. How why, I have no idea,
but it is and that's that. But here's so if you're a Harris fan, you'd be pretty happy with that. Here's from Mark Alprin's newsletter today, and he talks to people that have their own internal polls a lot, and he can't, you know, flat out say what they are, because you know that's not cool. But he characterizes this stuff, and that's one of the reasons I like reading his newsletter. He writes today, there are many reasons to believe that
Kamala Harris can win this election. The cross tabs and issues questions and the times today are strong for her. But there is a group of Republicans and Democrats with data some without, who now believed that Trump will win the election handily. Adherence to the point of view, whether they are found in mar Lago, congressional campaign offices, Wall Street, or just in DC are in front of a computer
screen that looks at reams of data. They might turn out to be wrong, but their current certainty or near certainty is striking, both for its quite confidence and because at the moment there's no analog on the Harris will win side. So he's seeing a number of people Republicans and Democrats with quite a bit of certainty that Trump's gonna win, but nobody with certainty that Harris is gonna win. I'm highlighting this perspective today for at least three reasons.
One it's interesting and important that it exists to it might be correct. Three Harris supporters, rather than being upset, should be prepared for an outcome that will rock their worlds if they think that she can't lose. There are a lot of ways to qualify and quantify this point of view. But I think that's interesting too.
The people that have the most inside information.
There are people that believe Trump's absolutely gonna win, but nobody believed that Harris is absolutely gonna win.
Huh. I wonder what they're looking at, well, Helperton.
If Helpern wasn't such a sober and smart analyst of this sort of stuff, I'd be more skeptical than I am. He seems to think they have really good, solid data and we're rationale for their point of view.
And I will never forget Carl.
Rove, right, Yeah, election night, what was it, twenty twenty twelve, twenty twelve, And that's why my area goes, That's why my brother became as cynical as he did. I sent a picture of us with Carl Rove from the convention, and he's like, I don't want to see that. He's still met at Carlolf Because Carl Rove spent that entire cycle, if you don't remember it, with his whiteboar kind of laughing, chuckling at all. The polling was, the polling was wrong.
They're missing the Democrats. Look at how many Democrats they pulled versus Republicans. You're gonna find out an election night. And he had a lot of people convinced boys that they're gonna be surprised come election night. Mitt Romney is actually ahead, there's no and the polls turn out to be the actual poll The voting turned out to be exactly what the poles were saying.
And so that blew up a lot of these models for a lot of people by kicking the gut.
But I think Karl Orb had a particular reason to talk to the Fox crowd and keep them happy through the whole election. That's not really Mark Halprin's model. Oh, I'm trying to prepare. This is not just a normal election, as everybody knows. I'm trying to prepare for what it's going to be like in this country emotionally. If Trump wins, Oh, there's no preparing for that, and that's what I'm hoping for. But if Trump wins, it's going to be.
It's going to be.
Well, Halpern himself says there's going to be a mental health crisis coast to coast for a certain crowd.
Oh yeah, that's undeniable. Yeah, it will be.
And that's not like a whimsical description of it, like people will be freaked out and pissed off. No, there will be an actual mental health christ Oh.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
There will be articles in the New York Times about how to deal with the new reality.
And it's that sort of thing.
Five million news XANAX prescriptions written today for the fourth day in a row following the election of Donald Trump. Katy Perry's crying, Madonna's crying.
But it's going to be way beyond that the way it was when he beat Hillary. I think it's going to be a level we haven't seen. Like you just said, I think you're right, there's no preparing for this.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, and given the left's willingness to burn it all down if they think they're in our self righteously righteous position, Yeah, it could be a poostorm.
The one thing that I do want them I'll shut up about it.
I hope whoever wins it's it's it's clearly they won.
They won by enough states.
There's not one state hanging out there mostly male in ballots.
You know. Just whoever wins.
It's gonna be twenty seven votes spread over four states.
How does that taste? The twenty seven votes? Now, shut up about it. Like you said, here's.
The word from our friends that simply Save Home Security. They have this fast protect monitoring and liveguard protection. Simply Save agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm, can even see and speak to intruders to stop them in their tracks, and significantly tell the cops this is not a false alarm.
I'm looking at the scumbag right now.
You get over there and give them a wood shampoo, or at least put them in cuffs.
Easy to install, I've done it a couple of times. And activate your Simply Safe system in less than an hour, or you can choose professional installation if you want to.
To me, the proof is in the pudding.
Always has been the fact that they don't have long term contracts, the fact that they're comfortable at Simply Safe, that you're going to use a product like the product and want to stick with it.
Pricing is transparent and affordable at less than a dollar a day. No hidden fees ever, and again no contracts, easy to install and activate.
Protect your home with fifty.
Percent off of new simply Safe system plus a free indoor security camera when you sign up for fast protect monitoring. Just visit simply Scafe, simply safe dot com, slash armstrong. That's simply safe dot com slash armstrong. Hey, and check out the high death night vision cameras. Oh they're so great. Simply safe dot com slash armstrong. There's no safe like simply say.
Milton, the fourth strongest hurricane ever recorded since they've been able to measure these sorts of things. And uh, we're going to try to help out the victims of the last hurricane, and uh, maybe get prepared for this next one. A bunch of other stuff on the way, stay with us.
Hey, what does.
The states the storm zone need, mister President? So what are the states of the storm zone?
What do they need?
What you call today calling the storm zone? Yes, sir, I'm learning what.
Storm resulting about.
They get everything they did. They're very happy off the board.
I've heard that twenty times. Is still amazing.
That is a guy who's no longer in UH has a control of his brain.
That is non compassmentus, and he's the leader of the free world.
Great Scott, I just saw the headline that Joe Biden has had an overseas trip planned. I think that's to get him out of the country so that he's less involved in the campaign. That's actually a strategy from what I read. Anyway, He's going to stay in DC to monitor the hurricanes. Okay, well as you just heard there, what storm? Oh, I didn't know what storm you were talking about? Not big one, the biggest one in the country. Then everybody's talking about that one.
Milton, Milton Bradley, Milton Friedman.
A lot of folks, including ourselves, have looked upon the devastation of the North Carolina Hills, especially with astonishment and sadness and worry, as a lot of these people did not have flood insurance because it never floods there, and their homes and businesses were swept away, and a lot
of folks would love to help if they can. We have done some vetting and digging and looked into who's actually on the ground doing great work there and helping people at the point of the disaster, and it's tough to beat the United Way of the counties involved. If you would like to kick in a few dollars, we certainly encourage you to do that. Just go to Armstrong and Getty dot com, scroll down a tiny bit and it's donate here.
It's super easy.
Again, we've talked to these folks man that everybody needs food, clothing, water, everything, everything. Everything's gone medicine and they're uninsured. It's just it's a nightmare. So anyway, if you'd like to help, good Armstrong and Getty dot com.
Yeah, so this is the United Way for that from that very county that's getting the most attention. And you know these are people that live there, not coming in from somewhere else and trying to figure out how to handle it. They they this is their community. So yeah, go to Armstrong Getty dot com. That's what you do.
Yes, that's what I said. Repeat Italy.
So you got another hurricane barren down and who knows what this is going to do to FEMA. I came across this from some national meteorologist last night. Uh, this is nothing short of astronomical. I'm at a loss for words to meteorology, meteorologically describe you the storm's small eye and intensity eight hundred and ninety seven millibars. Is that
what they use of pressure? With one hundred and eighty mile an hour max sustained winds gusts of two hundred this is now the fourth strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure on this side of the world, and the eye is tiny in all caps, which I guess matters. At nearly three point eight miles wide, this hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth's atmosphere can produce. Yikes, it's almost at the peak of what could even happen on the planet.
Last night, wivey, and so Tampa Bay is particularly vulnerable. That's where the hurricane appears to be headed. It's densely populated, fast growing area, and I was astounded to learn it hasn't been hit by a major hurricane in over a century. It has dodged numerous storms over the year until two
weeks ago when Helene made landfall to the north. But it really hammered Tampa Bay with a powerful storm surge, which is essentially the force of the storm pushes ocean water up onto shore, and the speed of the winds is a horrendous problem obviously, and the rainfall is a big deal. But the size of this storm and its ability to create storm surge, I guess is also you know,
at the tip top of the scale. They're predicting a storm surge at ten to fifteen feet for the Tampa Bay area and up to fifteen inches of rainfall across parts of Florida and Tampa and Saint Pete most vulnerable to flooding damage, according the most vulnerable metro area in America to flooding damage more than New Orleans because of a shallow continental shelf off the coast and a funnel effect in Tampa Bay that creates the potential for a
huge buildup of water that can just wash away neighborhoods.
And Mike's Katrina was a three when it hit shore. So the category it is when it hits shore is not the key to the whole thing.
Right right, Well, it's it's twin menaces, different menaces. And I had not realized the Tampa Bay metro area is now three point two million.
People, So the mayor, so I was down in Florida one time before or after Hurricane I don't remember. I was down in Key West and talking to some of the Key West locals in the bar or whatever, and like, did you stay?
We always stay.
They always tell you got to leave every hurricane three times a year. They tell us this is going to be the worst one ever and whatever. And they were very blase about it. You know that's true until it's not. And the mayor of Tampa is saying if you do not leave, you will die. That was her declarative statement. If you do not leave, you will die. Wow, that's something.
Yeah, yeah, well Tampa's I mean, have you ever been to Florida? Tampa is as flat as a frying pan, and the drainage systems aren't the best, and so yeah, they think there's a tremendous potential for unthinkable loss of life and property.
Anyway, we've just got a minute. That's too bad.
We've got a couple of great emails from folks who've dealt with FEMA.
HM.
We wish you could come next hour with that because that's the hot topic man. And again, this could be a huge political issue because the current administration is going to get tagged with any failures and FEMA's already stretched thin, claiming they're out of money, and this Milton's about to hit Florida, and it ain't like the people in North Carolina are all of a sudden not gonna need help once Tampa Bay's getting all the attention.
Well, given the fact that the Department of Homeland Security oversees all of this, I will not hear a suggestion that Alejandro Mayorkis is anything less than a stellar beer.
I've got a busy day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on.
So the world's stupidest waste of skin is.
In charge of all of this. God save us Armstrong and Getty