The A&G Replay Thursday Hour Two

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

Strong and Getty and Pee Armstrong and Getty Strong and.

Philadelphia Zoo announced last week that a pair of nearly one hundred year old tortoises recently welcome their first hatchlings. You may have seen the tortoises on the MTV show ninety nine.

Pregnant markets are surging if you're listening to us live, so the bounce back has begun. And get into that later. Also, latest polling on the whole tariff thing, get into that later also. And oh and I just saw the real

I'll like your high school teacher assigned you a book report due in twenty years and you waited until the last night and you're up all night, right, that is going to happen to me? Yeah, it's funny, Judy, And I heard that report, and I have a feeling. I spoke for many, many millions of Americans when I said, do we have real IDs? I've completely lost track? Is ours real? She looked at it and said, yeah, yes we do. How that happened?

I don't recall, but I sure don't have one? Are you sure? I'm positive you might. When did you last for new year license?

I don't know?

So, so your driver's license?

Is it?

Yeah?

Oh it is?

Well, maybe I did have a real like the updated does it have like a hologrammy looking thing on there?

Or yeah? Yeah, there you go. Maybe I do have.

It done and done, sir. That's my point. Nobody has any idea. Yeah.

So, speaking of economics and that sort of thing, which a lot of people are doing these days in reference to the tariffs.

But to this too shall pass, I hope eventually. Uh And and some of.

The support and lack of support are coming from some interesting areas for the tariffs, and we can talk about that more later, but I'm kind of tariffed out.

We brought this up kind of briefly at the end of the.

So you see I could talk about tariffs for many more hours.

Well you should feel free. How about one room over anyway? I found this so interesting, big survey of America's employers, especially manufacturers. They cannot find reliable, conscientious workers who can pass a drug test. A good worker, like a good man,

So failing the drug test, is it mostly the marijuana, the Mary Jane, the lettuce, the hippie let?

Yeah, I don't know. I suspect so though. Sure I think it's mostly pot. But I think that it's just brilliantly simply put, we are showering benefits on able bodied people and subsidizing useless college degrees as as a people because the government is theoretically doing our work right.

Well, I for one, don't like either end of that anyway.

Forty percent of small business owners and March reported job openings they could not fill. Construction companies fifty six percent said, yeah, we have unfilled jobs and we can't find anybody. Transportation, I have a feeling that's mostly truck drivers fifty three percent manufacturing, which the President is, according to many people, admirably trying to shepherd back inside the country. More forty seven percent of manufacturers say, no, we've got openings we can't fill.

Well.

So, according to the last week's National Federation of Independent Business survey, that might.

Be a flaw in the president's plan that hasn't been discussed enough. He wants to bring back the fifties or seventies or whatever golden era of manufacturing that we used to have.

But back then people would do those jobs.

If half the manufacturing jobs out there or you can't fill.

Now, what if manufacturing did come.

Back to the United States, who, in theory is going to do those jobs?

Well, not illegal immigrants, because thank god, the border has been closed and the statistics are astounding.

Biden was a scoundrel anyway.

Was it going to be the woman who studies major from your local university that goes works, They're probably not well.

It could well be the dudes who have no disability on disability who are heaved off of that system, but that would take some tough love, and that's not very popular politically speaking. I mean, if you go into one of the districts of the rust Belty places or Appalachia or whatever where you have just ludicrous levels of people on disability. Happened to read a couple things about this recently.

That's even possible.

Once people are on the toll man, once people have a benefit, whether legitimate or perhaps questionable, taking it away as political poison as you know, Labor Department's job openings and labor turnover survey of businesses tell a similar story. There are twice as many job openings in manufacturing now than in the mid two thousands as a share of employment. Save for the pandemic, America's workers shortage is the worst

Well, that's just true. It's undeniable.

So I've not done a manufacturing sort of job before, so I don't know what it's like, but I certainly feel like there's a social stigma around it that doesn't help true.

Why it is?

Why there's not a social stigma around having a meaningless, soul deadening paper pushing job in a cubicle, I don't know why that is. I mean, maybe the other way around should be. There shuldn't be any stigma around any jobs. Working for a living is considerably better than not whatever the hell you're doing.

So why at least the vestige of the twentieth century where a job where you used your brain as opposed to your back was seen as a higher status job.

God, I don't know some of these jobs or you use your brain.

That's barely not much, I mean, but they certainly don't seem like they'd be much more enjoyable as starter jobs.

Right, Tedious is tedious.

I had a sort of manufacturing job for one summer, and it was pretty tedious. Honestly, but I'm sure it is. You know why I go went ahead and took it and kept it. It was because it paid pretty good. It was my best hop right. So yeah, and well you should have to make a living. You got to support yourself somehow.

No, you don't. What kind of monster are you listen to this? Would you?

So?

Where have all the good working men gone? Some are subsisting on government benefits, are living off their parents. About seventeen percent of working age men are on Medicaid, seventeen percent, seven and a half percent on food stamps, and six point three percent on Social Security, many claiming disability payouts.

According to the Census Bureau.

Many spend their days playing video games and day trading, well, day trading hilarious, speculating on meme stocks, or you tell somebody your day trading. I don't know how often you're actually trading and making any money, because you don't want to say I just play video games and live in my parents' basement, so you say you're your day trader. So I don't remember our a good friend, Craig the

Now it's covering percent.

Now it's covering And that would have been like the old and you know people that I got all kinds of physical or mental problems.

Now it's seventeen percent of.

Working age men, not not like senior citizens.

That's nice.

Yeah, a couple more stats. Other missing men are taking longer to finish college or pursuing graduate degrees. Only about forty one percent amen complete a bachelor's degree in four years, even though study after study shows they don't teach, you don't have to work.

There's great inflation. It's dopey.

Only forty one percent and a quarter take more than six years.

Wow, because you're in no hurry to get out of college. My dad used to comment about perpetual college students, and I never really understood what he was talking about. And I'm sure it was a small number of people back when he was in college, but now it is a lot. Apparently, I'll just stay in college. I'll just keep borrowing money. And because I'm too young or unwise to understand what

Yeah, and I have disability. My thumb hurts on Thursdays. Final stat Then will I will stop? We're just we are a fat, lazy, comfortable society. We're headed to front denial, right, we are headed straight toward France.

Yeah.

The unemployment rate Jack considered this among recent college grads with a sociology degree is about seven percent, and their median wage, if they do have a gig, is forty five thousand dollars.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank.

Social grads could earn twice as much working on an auto assembly line, which pays an average hundred thousand dollars a year. Good gig, but not many want it. The reality is that masses a young people, writes Alicia Finley, who, again as a genius, has been taught that capitalism is exploitive. They don't want to work in factories. They'd rather mooch off to their parents. How CHORL Marx is that?

Yeah, some of it is that, I'm sure, But I just I think a lot of it is just the cultural that would be embarrassing for your parents and for you if you worked over at the whatever factory yeah, more embarrassing in our current society than if you just live at home and you know, you say you're a day trader. It should be more embarrassing to have a job at a plant than to live with your parents, but I think it is.

Or having taken six years to get an undergrad degree in gender studies, you're now getting a master's degree in the theoretical decolonialization of art, or whatever the s.

Wait they.

Sometimes think for soft people. Man, there is no more iron law of humanity than that.

The armstrong and getting shot.

So I've waited on more people at this restaurant than you have in your goddamn life, say the waiters and waitresses of Washington, DC, Jack, where you just were.

The Washingtonian, which is read in the self obsessed Nation's Capital, has a piece about how DC restaurants have long been like politically neutral spaces. Obviously, to cite the cliched example, you got Reagan coming in, you got Tip O'Neil coming in, right, so you treat everybody with respectfully.

But that changed during the Trump years.

Restaurant owners became much more politically outspoken.

They were part of the resistance, and Trump.

Officials became social pariahs when dining out. You remember several incidents involving Ted Cruz and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who got kicked out of a restaurant in West Lexington, Virginia. Homeland Secretary Kirsten Nielsen's dinner at a DC Mexican resta Mexican restaurant was interrupted as.

They yelled shame.

Steven Miller tossing eighty dollars worth of takeout sushi after somebody cursed him and flipped him off at a sushi place, somebody on the staff. But anyway, in the Washington Washingtonian, anyway, you got all these restaurant tours and waiters and bartenders saying, we're not going to be silent, We're not going to be quote unquote civil.

Let's see, here's this guy.

What does he do. He's a DC restaurant. He's a manager at a club, big club in DC. If you're just going out for a nice dinner at your anniversary, your birthday, and God forbid, RFK Junior is sitting X to you now, you're going to be dealing with whatever repercussions happened from that. He's saying all this restaurant staff is justified into cursing these people out and yelling at him and kicking him out.

Well, we'll see if this actually happens or not. Like I said, bumping around d C, it was quite a bit different than the last time I was in DC when Trump got elected, he was being treated like a regular president. I mean, the number of Trump shirts, hats, pins, inauguration forty seventh president stuff that I saw. There was nothing like that in twenty seventeen when I was there for the inauguration.

Right.

Yeah.

In fact, that was my question. I wonder if this is just big talk by little people.

I'd be my guess.

Here's a woman who's a server and manager at a saloon on Capitol Hill.

Quote.

People were a lot more motivated the first time around to do these kinds of shows of passion. This time around, there's kind of a sense of defeat and acceptance. But I hope that people will still do stand up to this administration and tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior as they're trying.

To get a ham sandwich at lunchtime.

Here's my biggest question about restaurants DC restaurants, because I had this and I tweeted it out and it's the most controversial tweet I've ever put out ever. It got more responses than anything I've ever tweeted this question. So I mean it in Gordon Ramsey's restaurant, which I wish i'd ha spent the time to look into what it costs to eat there, because it's the most expensive meal I've ever paid for for me and my two kids.

Partially because.

There was the we've added to twenty percent already thing that restaurants are doing sometimes now.

And so service charge is that what they call it?

Earth It just said, yeah, we've we've added to twenty percent service charge to your bill, and then it's got the line for the tip, and I thought, do I tip on top of this or not? And I tweeted that out. I googled it and tweeted it, and same result either way. Plenty of people say, absolutely, that's not the tip. You need to tip on top of that ere screwing your server or one hundred percent that's the tip,

Forty percent on top of my meal to no go.

That's that second group that that is the tip. No freaking way I'm eating there. A whole bunch of people adamantly said, no, that goes to the restaurant. The server will get nothing, and you absolutely need to tip on top of that. Maybe that's true, but I'll never eat at a restaurant that does that. You can't pay forty percent on top of your bill. Nobody's doing that. That's ridiculous.

The Armstrong and Getty shirt?

So this is so interesting. I came across this the other day. A couple of scientists writers commentaries who ran into each other after the one published a piece on why young men have turned against the Democratic Party, and this other guy, this other researcher, said, hey, you know, I've actually been doing studies in that area, let's get together and talk about it and compare notes. And they came,

But they point out that this.

That it the one report they looked at very the most interesting finding, which is that conservatives have much higher self reported mental health than liberals.

Is this surprising to anyone?

No?

No, The really interesting part is still to come self reporting grain assault, but just a grain, not a shaker.

Why.

I don't know on self reporting on your mental health.

It could be that in certain communities it is taboo to be honest about your mental health.

I think it's more likely the other direction, But yeah, I'm just trying to be in there that in more communities, it's the greatest prize of all to explain how I have anxiety and depression and OCD and all these other things.

I agree with you completely, and I'm glad you pointed that out.

Blah, blah blah.

It's a wide gap.

Too between conservatives and liberals, according to this giant study with sixty thousand respondents that provides the opportunity for highly detailed democratic demographic analysis. Among people who report excellent mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals fifty one to twenty as a ratio, but liberals out number conservatives forty five to nineteen among those voters who say they have poor mental health. This

I think i'd go, what would you say for yourself? I'm going I would say very good. Oh, there's might disagree with me who know me, but I feel like I'm very good.

Yeah. Can we have a round of rating where we rate each other too? Even a town full of people who are crazy? So that helps me stand out? I feel like, are you graded on a curve in this?

I don't know.

So here's the first thing that popped in on my mind is and part of the reason I leapt to this thought was because we came across an absolutely fantastic quote which I've misplaced, damn it, that women more than men, not all women, but women in general, and like effeminate men, filter information through a process not of is this true? But will believing this gain me social currency and acceptance?

That's roughly where I would be.

But liberals report an average score of fifty three and conservatives sixty eight.

Moderates not shockingly right in the middle at fifty eight.

Anyway, they take advantage of that's a moderate for you, always moderating anyway, take advantage of the large sample size in this CEES study. Let's see how this difference holds up against a wide array of demographic and political characteristics. Let's see gender men tend to be conservative men at a sixty nine giggity liberal men of fifty six. Conservative women up there at sixty six, liberal women way down at fifty one. Average mental health score white fault. That's that.

I realize what you just said about all these things. But man, because I'm surrounded by this world, you would really stand out as like you might be kicked out of the herd if you were to say, you know, I think I'm perfectly fine.

Yeah, Whereas I live in a world of hey, we're all here for you. Have a drink, you'll be fine, and most people are. Let's see black in his I'm sorry, white black and Hispanic and Asian conservatives are virtually.

Tied at sixty eight. Sixty eight sixty five sixty five.

Liberal, White, Black, Hispanic and Asians is fifty two sixty fifty one fifty one, like a fairly consistent fourteen point gap. Young people age gen Z that's ninety seven or later, it's fifty six to forty gen Zers. Liberal gen zers are among the most miserable people in America. The older you get, the highers, the scores get on both ends of the scale, and we could get into education that sort of gen zers report the most.

Yeah, it's tough to break all this stuff down. And I realize they tried to control for all these things, But I can't imagine being a twenty year old in a lot of your blue cities and telling your parents not I think I'm fine. You wouldn't want to disappoint your parents like that by telling them you don't have anxiety or depression or any of those things.

Yeah, your parents are horrified.

I know several young people, some of whom I may be genetically related to, who are seem to be very bright, very well adjusted, happy with their lives, but have some of these modern emotional problems, and it makes me really curious. As we've discussed many times through the years, what environmental causes are going on. Is that the never ending barrage of inputs, that's my greatest suspicion.

Yeah, so yeah, we're.

Never quiet, we're never alone, we're never bored.

You're right in presenting this information, we're kind of or I was kind of presenting it like this is all somewhat imagined. But we have talked a lot about it, and I know, I got one kid who has for real anxiety depression OCD all that sort of stuff, and it's been struggling with it his whole life and on medication, and I've seen a gazillion psychiatrist and doctors and blah

So bad if you're keeping track at home. Just for the record, Jack came to judge, Joe came to understand.

Damn right, I came to judge and then brag about it. So let's be fair. I bragged about it anyway.

Uh So this is as I as I mentioned last segment, the most miserable pastors in America appear to be progressive bisexuals. If you are bisexual or other, and apparently there are some conservatives there are at a fifty nine, which ain't great. But if you're a progressive bisexual, you're at you selfrate yourself at thirty five, which is I mean, like, by far the most miserable people in America. I heard one prominent lesbian writer. I read her right, well, what do

I feel like I know a lot of baristas that meet that description and they look unhappy. I don't know that that's our facial expression anyway.

Yeah, and their voice buncle fry fizes. Interestingly, people who have high interest in news and politics on both sides of the aisle tend to be more happy with their mental health.

Really.

Yeah, I'm somewhat surprised by that, because it's enough to make you insane.

Trust me, I do it for a living.

Huh.

And it declines low news and political interests significantly lower on both sides.

Wow. Hmm. So they just take in the information about the world just kind of the way they hear it from people and get despondent over it.

Yeah.

Yeah, having more income does seem to make you more positive about your mental health.

That could be the other carosation correlation.

Yeah, reverse, Yeah, you're much more likely to make more money if you're mentally Okay.

No meaningful difference in mental health between Catholics, Protestants, and adherents of other organized religions. The differences between liberalists and conservatives persist there, but religious adherence does soften them somewhat.

I'm glad to see there's not a big breakdown between Protestants and Catholics.

Married people and people, and well, I know you want to start another Holy war.

You're a big fan of Joan of arc.

But married people and people in domestic partnerships are happier than those who are separated, widow, divorced, or who have never been married.

That has been true for as long as we've been doing radio and reading these studies that married people tend to report being happier more than single people, which is interesting given that so much of the single world looks at married people. Is like, I'm glad I'm not in that prison when statistically that is not born out at all.

Oh, not at all.

It's interesting they phrased it as happier when it's self reported mental health. I'm not sure those are synonyms, but I guess they're close.

I make they're pretty close.

Yeah, yeah, those are the main takeaways. Why are young liberals so depressed? Matt Iglesia showed about.

You'd be depressed to the.

Part of it, the weird hair color and the thing through their nose, old white couple, old white men. I can't stand it, and he points out, Jack, you'll be gratified by this that there may be a performative axed aspect to this. Yes, liberals may express negative sentiment as a sign of solidarity with the movement that thinks there is profound injustice in the world. How can I act happy with all this injustice?

You shouldn't.

Everybody will judge me.

You think you could walk into your hipster coffee shop where you're a barista and there's like nine other employees and be a everything's fine. You know, life is what life is. I just I roll with the punches. You think you could be that person?

Oh? Yeah, good days, bad days. What are you gonna do.

Let's make some coffee. Right, he's gonna be drummed out. Let's just see what Trump did.

Oh my god, it is so clearly a fascist dictatorship. Right to live. I've considered moving to Belgium.

I couldn't find a parking spot because of the patriarchy.

Jack Armstrong and Joe, The Armstrong and Getty Show, The Armstrong and Getdy Show.

Here's your freedom living quota today is from a gentleman who celebrated his seventy seventh birth day yesterday. And he should be a hero to young children, particularly black children, all across America.

That's Clarence Thomas.

But he's been so denigrated in bad mouthed by the liberal media.

He's not, but he was talking.

He gave a speech not too long ago about the importance of standing up for truth, even if you're the only one doing so. And here's the quote. You can be in the middle of a hurricane, or you can be on a calm day. North is still North. You could be in a thunderstorm. North is still North. People can yell at you. North is still North. It doesn't change fundamental things. And in this business right is still right even if you stand by yourself. Yeah, different version of two plus two equals four.

No matter what, anybody else is.

Right exactly, Well said Clarence, and happy birthday, sir, mail bag.

I've got a couple more later in the.

Week from Clarence Thomas drops a note mail bag at Armstrong in getty dot com.

Dirk's the German Rights It was a mostly peaceful bombing.

See.

Iran is a nation of over six hundred one thousand square miles. The US bomb three small nuclear sites to protest Iran's nuclear ambitions. It was clearly a mostly peaceful protest. That's fantastic, Well done, Dirk.

How come nobody's commenting on the rest of Iran the vast ninety nine percent of Iran that was untouched by bombs.

It RAN's a very big country.

It was just downtown Nukeville that had the problems.

Well play. Dirk uh Don writes.

If President Trump Wonseranian women's support of regime change, could she should offer swapping their burkes and other oppressive head coverings for red make around Great again ball caps. Wow, just ship cases of those over to Iran. Yeah, my hair's covered with this truvy redhead. I just got take that secret police. Of course, they've probably got the hell beat out.

Of them for that, and then you'd be tortured and then executed.

Yeah, let's see why I am not stressed out by Steve and Everett Washington. Seems to me that two very important metrics should be considered whether or not we're at peace with the regional conflicts in the Middle East. One did oil prices increase or decrease? It decreased significantly more than ten bucks in barrel. Two did the Dow Jones increase or don't look at the Dow, look at the S and P five hundred? Did the S and P increase or decrease? It increased the better part of one percent.

Yeah. Up again today on the ceasepire talks, although might have more to do with the FED chair and what he said about interest rates.

I was just reading about how uncertainty affects hiring and investment in business, and I find myself wondering whether at some point we become just more comfortable with a higher level of volatility uncertainty as a culture.

Get we better get used to it or we're going to go crazy.

Yeah, Poollo with an interesting topic. It looks like Iran has at least a fly in the ointment of its nuclear ambitions. It's probably only a bump in the road for them. But it's not just Iran and nukes. We have to worry about the development of technology and learning generally is snowballing, and eventually just about everybody will have the capacity to do great harm. May take a while, I hope, very long while, but it's inevitable. How can we avoid it except by our destruction or some sort

That's a decent point considering I saw a montage of Clinton Obama, Biden all saying Iran will never get a nuclear weapon and doing very little about it, doing very little about it in some cases helping them come along.

Let's see Tim who hates US rights?

Yay ww three a disgusting escalation guaranteed to give J and J little chubbies in their dockers. Wow, that's unnecessarily a graphic. And I'm not wearing docers sir as they bloviate with that special studio.

Courage they're known for. Yeah, okay, your type.

So we have less of a chance of World War three if Iran has a nuclear weapon. Explain that to me.

Well in the false arguments and bad faith arguments in a very short email.

You know what.

I respect your ability to cram so many bad faith arguments into the sentence and a half.

A chubby in my dockers.

Let's see Byron rights and there have invariations on this attempt at humor. Trump's newest golf project is coming together. He just established the first three holes of his new eighteen hole golf CORER.

There you go.

That would be the nuclear facility as of Iran. Jack the holes in the ground.

I was tracking instead of yes, okay, It wasn't that I didn't laugh, because understand it. I understood how I see Armstrong and Getty