That Freaks Me Out, Man

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty.

Arm Strong and Jetty and no he Armstrong and Yetty.

Wicked hits theaters tomorrow.

Here you.

And so far the movie is getting rave reviews. They're very interesting that check out what they said. For instance, this review said magical and uplifting and hang on, that's actually a review for the shrooms your cousin brings to Thanksgiving and that's sorry. This next review called it the tale of two people who has.

Passed never should have crossed.

Hang on, that's actually a review for Mike Tyson versus Jake PAULMS.

This is a mistake. I'm so sorry. Here's another.

This review said Oz is back. This is insane. Don't get ahead of me. I heard of you for Trump putting doctor Oz and chars and medicare.

That's yeah, this is a likable guy.

So uh uh.

Seinfeld says Fallen is the most normal person he's ever met in short show business, which always sticks in my head.

I find that very interesting.

Uh So, Wicked is a reimagining of the Wizard of Oz movie correct, and it's supposed to be really cool, so I might actually take the kids to that. I mean, my high schooler will hate it, but he hates everything, So what are you gonna do?

Ye the novel Wicked, and then you had the musical, and this is yet a different mutation of it that I don't think resembles the novel much, but I don't know.

So I want.

I only bring that up because I thought the novel was fantastic.

Oh you did really interesting? Okay, cool, Well then the movie might be good. It's kind it might be wildly different. It's got a ton of big stars in it, which is why on Saturday Night Live they did a sketch about the screen tests for Wicked and all the different people who had tried out for it. I meant to grab this audio, what I never did, but so one of them was Bernie Sanders trying out for a part in Wicked, and it's Bernie Sanders says, the.

Wizard has millions and billions of dollars.

Well, meanwhile, the munchkins are living paycheck to paycheckutiful.

I thought that was hilarious. Yeah good, yeah, Oh, coming up.

We did one of those war game simulation thingies, which I don't know how they work or how accurate they are, but the Pentagon does it to see if we could win a war, for instance, against China f China tries to take Taiwan, and they briefed Congress on that yesterday and some of the results are horrifying.

So stay tuned. Yeah.

I actually read something a couple of weeks ago about a father and son I think they're Brits that came up with a computer game that was like the game Risk, but not so boring and long. But it was essentially wargaming, a wargaming computer game where you would assign assets and weapons systems and move it around and employ different strategies

There's a major caveat to this report, major, like so major it makes you wonder why you even read the report at Stay tuned.

Okay, all right, fair enough, So we have been trying to help people understand for a long time about how artificially mandated minimum wages, essentially the government mandating, let's see, for that work, you shall pay them that amount, is a terrible idea. It's bad for workers, it's bad for business, is bad for the economy, and that's just not the way the labor market works, and it causes real damage.

Wow. Now, now non Californians are saying.

Well, didn't y'all raise it to twenty bucks? No, that was just for fast food workers for some reason. Actually, the reason is because the Service Employees International Union wants to unionize fast food work.

Fast food that doesn't serve bread in some capacity.

There was a weird carve out for putting Rona Gavin's buddies.

Yeah, exactly.

But anyway, the folks at the Employment Policies Institute of California had took a serious look at what has happened since the increase in the fast food minimum wage. The rejection comes on the heels of California's twenty dollars minimum wage law for fast food workers that seen severe backlash from employees and business owners alike and led to a notable amount of business closures and job losses that should be numbered.

Not amount. You need me as your editor.

Anyway, Californians are sending Gavenusom in the SEIU a clear message they're sick of being lab rats for the pet projects devastating economic fallout center.

Here are the specifics.

After the implementation of the twenty dollars minimum wage. The EPI survey found that the majority of restaurants say they have the majority they've raised menu prices ninety eight percent.

Yes, we've raised menu prices.

So they called almost all the majority nice writing also.

Well, katie's busy and she's fabulous. Anyway.

Now, the devil's ad position might be, well, there's been there are other reasons for raising prices, you know, inputs, inflation and stuff like that. You're absolutely right, But the idea that labor is in a significant part of the cost of a fast food restaurant you don't know anything about fast food restaurants anyway. What percentage of fast food

Wow, well, of course, of course, what are you gonna do? I mean, I just I don't I don't understand. This is one of those where you always say, like, if you had ten minutes with people, you could have convinced them to vote the other way if you have to pay more for your workers. It's because so many people believe that prices are just like random, arbitrarily set. Yeah,

That just doesn't make any sense if you're a child.

Right, right, it really doesn't. And again, it doesn't take a lot of economics training to understand the supply and demand curves and elasticity. What elasticity is, anyway, has nothing to do with your sweatpants.

You're wearing their to your Thanksgiving dinner. Michael, And what's your favorite example of inelastic product? I have mine from economics in college. I always always my.

Favorite example snake bite anti venom.

That's a pretty good one. Salt you're gonna buy the same amount of if it was twice as much or half as much, it's twice practically nothing.

Yeah, but you know, elasticity essentially means the tendency of people to increase or decrease their purchase of it based on price. So if if I walk into the hospital and say, I just got bit by a rattlesnake, which I've avoided through the years, it's more rare than you think. But there are a lot of rattlesnake anyway, Sorry, I just had to kill one not long ago. I meant relocated. I relocated it right to a farm upstate. Anyway, me

I'll pay you the five one hundred dollars.

And if they said, did we say five hundred dollars, it just went up to five thousand, and you're going to be dead in half an hour. If so, you've got no time to go to the other hospital. I'm saying five grand. It is dot cook me up. There's zero elasticity there.

It's one as opposed to a particular restaurant that raises their prices and you just think this is worth it, and you don't go there anymore.

You go to other restaurants or eat home. Right, Yeah, exactly. You have many, many alternatives anyway, So how about next year?

The restaurants surveyed said next year, ninety three percent are going to raise their prices again.

They'll have to Wow.

Man, I'm glad she wrote about this. I wish more people were aware of this. They should be teaching this in school. Going forward, eighty.

Seven percent said we're going to reduce employee hours even more. Eighty seven percent, reduce staff or consolidate positions that means fire people seventy four percent.

So three quarters of them are going to reduce people. So your effort to to make a better life for employees for a whole bunch of them. You made their lives much worse as they no longer have a job. Yeah, which is the most practically the most well, is the most frightening thing that can happen to you job wise, losing your job.

Yeah.

The best number that the good folks at the Employment Policies Institute can come up with last year as a net job I'm sorry, since January is a net job loss of forty four hundred jobs.

Yeah, well California.

Well, I would like to know for the cut hours thing, which you said, what was ninety percent of them? Because employers don't like to fire people, see, but they probably cut a ton of people's hours.

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, forty five hundred people or so now have no job at all because of this, many many thousands have fewer hours and have had to pick up another job. Thanks, Gavin, You're a real friggin saint. And more to come. This year, almost without a doubt, the state has seen the first fast the worst fast food job growth rate since the Great Recession.

Anyway, that's I can't believe the voters were into this enough to reject an all out minimum wage race for everyone and.

I thought I read the other day, is the first time a minimum waged prop had lost in America since the nineties mid nineties. I'm glad people have caught onto this the way it works. Man, if everything had gone up to eighteen dollars an hour in California, wooh, that'd have been rough.

Yeah.

I love the idea of the states being laboratories at democracy. It's a wonderful, wonderful vision. I just it depends on the lab results being reported accurately to everybody else to hear how it came out, and the prejudices of our media.

You know.

I would like to think if I were staunchly in face of a policy and it turned out to be a disastrous mistake, I.

Would say so.

In fact, I have said so through the years. I can think of a couple of different examples. What's the matter with you? Moral cowards? And you liars?

Who can't you just I don't know what's.

Wrong with you that you won't say, Wow, I was My intentions were great, honest to God.

Because I think a lot of you are.

You think this is a good idea to help poor people, You're wrong. That doesn't make you a bad person. But when you won't admit you're wrong and let the damage continue to more and more poor people, that does make you a bad person.

But so like Bernie, I think Bernie's completely sincere on this, and he talks about a living wage. How has he not come across the information that if you paid people a wage where they could support their family, you wouldn't have a single restaurant in the country.

Certainly fast food. Yeah, I don't know. I'd love to have that conversation with him, But like both, my kids can't wait till they can work jobs. Unfortunately, in modern society you have to be sixteen. I was working when I was twelve, thirteen, whatever. But my son, who's going to be fifteen here soon, I can't wait to get a job be less like much less likely a job.

If they raise the minimum waged eighteen, it could be that many fewer jobs for people with his skills, which are.

Zero, right, right, And actually it occurs to me what Bernie's answer would be. But we don't really have time now, but we'll squeeze it in a bit.

This whole war games thing with China is super duper interesting. Well, we got to tell you about that. If you haven't heard the as tech death whistle. You won't forget it. You won't forget it. I don't want to hear it again. It frightened me too badly the first time.

Okay, stay tuned. I don't want to know how I spent the commercials.

Besides writing down the phone numbers and names of all of our clients, i's been.

Reading up on its sponsors.

Haven't been reading up on the as techs since we're about to hear a weird sound. The as techs indigenous to Mexico and thriving civilization city states. Everything very modern, any like anything Europad. I've been to the big pyramid there outside of Mexico City. That's bigger, as big as the pyramids in Egypt. It's really quite amazing. But the Aztecs were conquered in fifteen twenty one when the Spanish showed up and killed them off. But the Aztecs were

Oh yeah, can you.

Imagine sacrifice to prisoners of Waria.

Between one thousand and twenty thousand annually at least. But can you imagine eighty thousand slayings of humans in four days, just the organization of that, what it would be like.

Well, and it's thought that during before those those rituals, they would blow the Aztec death whistle, and archaeologists uncovered this and noticed it was a musical instrument looking thing, but blew through it.

Now they blow through three D.

Replicas of it, so they're not messing with the actual artifacts. And then they've done psychological experiments on how people react to this whistle. And if you're listening, if you've been listening, if you're listening to the podcast in the future, First of all, did Elon make it to Mars the.

Whole trump thing? How'd that work out?

Anyway, we played this earlier and people drove off the road and we apologize for that. But this is the whistle that they would blow during the ceremonies.

Oh, like that freaks me out. Man. Imagine if you had a whole bunch of people blowing that at the same time.

Oh my god, oh, on each side of you as you're the young boy about to be sacrificed, and you got that going on or completely.

Oh please, so I haunt my dreams.

I've eaten some ass tech food when I was down in Mexico and stuff like that, and visited the sites and done all the stuff, you know.

Blah. But the sacrifice and killing.

They would sacrifice French warriors from all the tribes that they conquered, or they could sacrifice their own people to various gods and everything like that. But the idea of colonialism and how awful it is, and the Spanish came and destroyed their culture and all that sort of thing. You think the Aztecs wouldn't have done that to Spain if they'd have had the right ships and could have done it.

Of course they would have.

They just slaughtered them by the tens of thousands, in the same way.

They did nearby tribes.

Yeah, and they wouldn't have kept their warriors in nice camps and fed them. They'd feed them into volcanoes and blow the damn death.

Oh my god, that's right. There are some cultures that are better than others. Ours is better than the Aztecs or the Chinese Communist Party. It was hell bent on taking over the world, with one step being taking Taiwan. We did some war games recently on how we would fare in that battle. How did it come out?

Well?

The report was released yesterday Armstrong and Getty.

A new escalation, massive explosions rocking Russia's cursed regions, Ukraine launching at least ten British made storm shadow cruise missiles. Ukraine fighting to hold onto a small patch of Russian territory, is holds in Kursk to use as leverage, but Russian forces, assisted by thousands of North Korean soldiers, are slowly pushing them back. The US in another policy reversal, now allowing Ukraine to use anti personnel land mines to try to slow the Russians down, with.

The theory being that we're trying to or Biden's trying to get Ukraine in the best position for making some sort of deal.

I guess.

Russia did or didn't fire a ballistic missile today That'll be sorted out throughout the next hours in a provocative of move. But I suppose, well, one if the war ends, we stop expending a lot of our munitions, which is going to fit in with our next story, but you know, and people stop dying, and then also the opportunity for it to spire. A lot of control goes way down if there's a settlement of some sort.

Hey, I think I have breaking news.

Breaking easy for me to say, I'm not a Ukrainian who's about to give up twenty percent of their country to an evil, murderous dictator.

But that's probably what's going to happen.

I win, I win. Matt Gates dropped out. He did withdrawing his name from consideration. Wow, does it say what age, what turned the tide? What made the difference, because I mean, as of yesterday he was walking the halls. Although he was walking the halls talking to senators.

I wonder if he talked to enough senators that said, look, I'm one hundred percent of no, one hundred percent, and once he got past four, which is all he could lose, and maybe he got to like twenty two who said I'm an absolute no, no matter what happens, I'm a no.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He said he didn't want to be a distraction of the transition.

Well, remember I opened this clastic, you know, political statement.

I didn't predict he's gonna drop out, but I did say this morning when we started, like does the Trump administration want this to be the lead story every day because it was the lead story last night, it was a lead story this morning. There's always a new thing, like it was the canceled checks they found from Gates to the girls. It looks like for the sex and the party and everything like that, they're just gonna let Matt Gates be the lead story every news cycle for two months.

Well, there are times you want to defy the media.

If they all right, you make it the number one story, we're gonna win this one.

But there are times it's just not worth it. I'll be interested in hearing the reporting.

No what what? What made the difference?

Maybe there was something that was so bad that somebody said we're gonna let this come out and he said, okay. Could be that could be from that report. There might be, Hey, we know about the and who knows what that is? Yeah, and they let him knowing that, Oh, I didn't think anybody knew about that. I liked your senator theory more because he and his people have been going around and getting Hey, Matt.

I like you.

But I'm not going to die on this hill just because the Biden justed the Justice administration the investigated the guy for two years. I don't think decided not to charge they would have leaked anything that would damage any Republican.

I don't think these Republican senators would have said, hey, I like you, but I'm a no vote. They would have said, I hate you, and there's no way I'm allowing you to be attorney general. Based on everything I've read, everybody hates him except for like three people, Marjorie Taylor Green and you know, Nancy Mace. Every other member of the House, the Republicans and the House and the senators that are Republicans hate him, absolutely loathe him. So they

Well, and my final comment on this will be and I think I made this point earlier, and I compared it to Rosa Parks being the perfect plaintiff in the Birmingham bus case because she was unimpeachable, unimpunable as a human being, and Gates is a scumbag, and he might have been effective and some of the allegations against him might be exaggerated or even false, but he's.

Not a good guy.

If you have somebody go into the Justice Department to really strip it down and get rid of the rod, and that person is like universally respected and is a good scholar, and just you're in so.

Much better a position, way, way, way better.

I know you want a bomb chucker, but have it be a bomb chucker who can't be disregarded for dopey reasons. Again, it's about effectiveness above all else.

I don't know if Trump had any role in this whatsoever. If, like you know, Susan Wiley is that her name, If she went to Gates and said, hey, Trump, Trump wants you to get out because he gets out now, it'll be forgotten. It'll completely be forgotten. It did no damage whatsoever. It'll be forgotten to history. It's overright. Whereas if you let it drag out over the next couple of months, it could be a really big deal.

I asked Susie Wiles, Susie Wiles, there you go, Yeah, here you go, Here you go.

Mister Gates accompanied VP elect Jdvans across the Capitol, meeting with Republican senators to win their support for his confirmation. Many senators in both parties have expressed concern over the choice of mister Gates to lead the Justice Department. That's the way you phrase it in public. Behind the scenes, you phrased it the way you just phrased Matt, I'm a hard no.

Don't waste your time, right, And there's a bunch of us, Like I mean a bunch. Well, remember the Wall Street Journal reported that there were thirty hard nos of the Republicans. They said there were thirty people that said no way. So if there was any number like that, of course

And this might not necessarily refute that. But in addition to his ethical and legal challenges, mister Gates has a long record of gleefully disparaging some Republican.

Senators right whose votes he now needs to be confirmed. Yeah, that's why they hate him. And they would say look, I hate you.

You have a.

Wipe off the sofa where you're sitting. Fraidy Cassam, your orgy hung on there. Huh you'r orgy monk. Hey, don't get any orgy on my upholstery.

You disgusting walking STD who said that the other day. Oh, there's been dominant who couldn't be a bigger Trump honked like.

To try to do anything to help Trump with everything. Yeah, and he called him a walking STD.

Oh all right, I feel like we need to take a break and come back with the how the war games went between US and China.

Yes, oh yeah, And I'll make this very very short.

But we were asking before what Bernie Sanders response would be to the the inevitable and obvious result of artificially raised minimum wages, and that is that thousands of people got laid off, many many thousands in California.

Got their hours reduced, et cetera, et cetera.

He would advocate, I'm sure for a government mandated maximum level of profit and any profit beyond that.

Would be distributed to the workers.

Workers would own the businesses in like the spirit of the Soviet fantasy, and that less profitable to build businesses would be subsidized by the high taxes on the more profitable businesses, so everybody made a living wage, even if their job was to, you know whatever, flip burgers or something any child could be taught to do in ten minutes.

By the way, I wouldn't cry any tears for Matt Gates if you were a fan. I'm sure he's going to work for some very lucrative company that his dad sets him up with, and he'll live his party, privileged lifestyle for the rest of his life. He'll be perfectly fine without the scrutiny of the country. Bunch of good stuff on the way, we will finish strong. Stay here. Country music superstar Jelly Roll lost over one hundred pounds, which you would have noticed if you watched the CMA's last night.

You walked out.

A tiny sliver of what he has been as a giant guy. See how long that lasts. Unfortunately, the diante, oh you know how that works. Would the US win a war with China over Taiwan? US lawmakers briefed on the potential outcome yesterday in Congress. Here are some of the headlines we uh the rest of the world could probably stop China from taking Taiwan, But you would lose

Are we operating at a wartime footing? We are not?

Now has a shipbuilding capacity two hundred and thirty times greater than the United States, making a potential invasion of Taiwan a night not unlikely outcome.

I think I've heard enough.

Well, if it were not for China's financial and demographic problems, if you're going to ask me what's the next thirty years look like geopolitically, Joe, I'd say, well, they have two hundred sometimes our shipbuilding capacity, and naval power is going to be one of the deciding factors. So game over.

Yeah. To steal a Joe Getti routine, it would be shocking.

China has twice the shipbuilding capacity I'm sorry, twenty times, No, two hundred and thirty times. The shipbuilding capacity in the United States that is shocking. US military analysts have projected twenty twenty seven is the year by which China would be fully equipped for a military invasion. Explains how they do the whole war games thing to try to figure this out in China invading Taiwan, et cetera. During the simulation,

Two.

There's no Ukraine model here where the United States can slowly escalate. It must decide immediately whether it's fully coming to Taiwan's defense. That's where the rubber meets the road really stole the words out of my mouth. Yeah, all of this depends on the will to engage in it. What military operations would be conducted through Japan. For the US needs to immediately increase its supply of anti ship missiles.

I really love every member on their podcast.

When they had this topic last year, sometimes said I don't think we would, and I don't think we should expend that level of expenditure three thousand. They don't think the United States would have put up with the population would be in.

Favor of it.

You know, we're you know, the politics runs our war machine. The person that makes the decision as an elected official. Three thousand deaths, two aircraft carriers, four hundred planes. Is the average American into that for protecting Taiwan? They don't even know what Taiwan is probably.

Not right right, and we could make our own chips eventually, et cetera, et cetera, not our issue.

China would then control.

I think the numbers are between twenty five and thirty percent of international shipping. It would no longer be open waters around the world as we have kept it since World War Two, and the bridge kept it before then that would be over.

Right, right, Barbary pirates, et cetera.

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how this is not true. I think we are heading toward another period of wars of conquest. Vlad Putin kicked it off. Really, China's going to continue it. China has made enormous inroads in our hemisphere. In South America, by the way, I've been reading a great deal about this as well, and they're doing it by hook and crook and loan and assistance and trade relationships and all sorts of stuff. As we've ignored our

There it's some country country X.

Where the government officials or would be government officials become more and more in league with China for their own profit, and forces within that country decide to resist that because they know how unholy and destructive that would be long term. And the war is on with China backing guerrilla factions, even if it's not overt first, you know, like non proxy wars of conquest. They're backing of military factions in our hemisphere.

I think is about to explode.

Yeah, and I think we don't come to Taiwan's defense, which would be a great shame for the United States of America, as we have promised that sort of thing.

But I think there'd be a hell of a strong response, but not trodding the full horse of the Navy and our fighters out there.

Now, Boy, would there be a strong response. As the war games say, you're either all in or there's no point. I'm sorry immediately quotes strong response. I should have said sanctions. You announced the toughest sanctions.

I wasn't going to use the S word, jack, but you've laid it on the table. That's right, sanctions, the toughest sanctions anyone has ever seen.

It will be a pariah.

China is now a pariah and they're isolated as Russia's economy is growing faster than ours currently.

They're isolated. Look up and smell reality.

Strong Strong, You're ready?

Yes, we love that one. I can back to a simpler time, doesn't it.

That was a hit song back in the day. Did you know that, Katie? Maybe they're young. Here's your host for final thoughts, Joe Getty.

Let's get a final.

Talk from everybody on the crew. To wrap up the show. There is our technical director, Michael Angelow, laboring away in his cage, pressing the buttons. Michael, what's your final thought? Well, we're one week away from Thanksgiving, and so the following phrases is what I'll be saying to my.

Relatives next week at this time.

Let's see we got.

Quit watching me too?

And yes, this is my third plate, and you think you're better than me? And finally, yes, I grab mashed potatoes with my hand, deal with it.

Wow, I place my rules.

Katie Green are esteemed Newswoman. As a final thought, Katie.

I'm gonna get my hands on one of.

Those Aztec death whistles and just blow at whatever somebody's bothering me.

Wow, that'd be funny and horrifying. Jack final thought for us, Yeah, I was just thinking.

I need to set my parameters for the year on weight gain. What am I willing to put up with during this holiday season? Because if I don't have some sort of range of acceptance, that could get out of hand very quick.

Yeah, it's funny.

I was gonna mention and I went to my Bourbon Appreciation Society dinner last night and my weight has been really, really good.

But the dessert was.

A pecan pie with a full sized Reese's Peanut butter cup on top of it.

Of course, of course, the course plays off a little of the pie, then a little of a cup.

Put it in your mush and know that God wants us to be happy.

Of course, the pie has a giant Reese's Peanut butter cup on top of it.

Of course I never eat stuff like that. I looked at it, I'm like, what is this a joke? Well, I'll try.

It featuring pie surely. Yeah, that's true, that's Truely.

Armstrong and getting wrapping up another grueling four hour workday.

So many people thanks a little time.

Good Armstrong and Getty dot Com, the superstore, get your cut.

The crap T shirt. It's time to stand up to the madness. The woke lunatics. Cut the crap back to sanity. Why did Gates drop out?

Spend the day looking into that, and we'll have all the news for you tomorrow.

God bless America. I'm strong and it's mere sound could could make you insane.

Such as the what this one actually and I couldn't believe it?

Okay, what in the hell I mean? This feels like a more red alert moment for democracy.

So let's go with a buying so they like shelaq the banana or pray shellac in the banana is not something we need at all, not during the holiday season.

Is strong and Getty