No One Looks Like That!

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: "No One Looks Like That!"

Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Jack Armstrong (with guest host Craig Gotwells)
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode of Armstrong & Getty features Jack Armstrong hosting solo (with Joe Getty vacationing in England), joined by frequent contributor Craig Gotwells (formerly known as "the Obamacare lawyer"). The conversation traverses a range of contemporary topics—from navigating the US healthcare system and getting second medical opinions, to the transformative impact and risks of AI, and then pivots to a robust discussion on the realities of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The episode closes with a lighter commentary on current events in baseball and the contentious remodeling of restaurant chains like Cracker Barrel and Hooters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Navigating Second Medical Opinions

[00:16 – 04:45]

• Jack introduces the challenge of getting a second medical opinion, highlighting how it's often suggested casually but can be a complex and emotionally fraught process.
• Craig details the mechanisms by which second opinions are obtained, depending on your insurance type (PPO vs HMO) and the challenges of leaving your primary doctor or group.
  • For PPOs, the easiest way: choose a different PCP in a different group and start the diagnostic process anew.
  • For some, consider paying out-of-pocket for a direct-care doctor for an independent view.
• Jack shares a personal anecdote on how medical advice often seems based on guesswork, especially with serious illnesses.

Notable Quote:

"There's way more guessing than I ever believed was the case. And you can talk to a couple of different people and they have completely different opinions."
— Jack Armstrong [03:55]

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2. The Rise and Risks of AI in Legal and Everyday Life

[04:46 – 17:22]

Efficiency and Pitfalls in Professional Use

• Jack and Craig discuss AI’s dual role—as a tool of incredible productivity and as a potential job displacer.
• Craig, as a lawyer, describes using ChatGPT to summarize and compare large, complex contracts, saving significant time but needing final expert review due to AI’s tendency to “hallucinate” or introduce inaccuracies.
• Jack expresses concern that non-experts may risk more by relying on AI outputs.

Notable Quote:

"If you weren't a healthcare attorney, for example, and you didn't know where it was wrong. Because it's wrong. As you guys have reported, it's wrong...but when you're already an expert in an area...it saved me four hours."
— Craig Gotwells [07:21]

Which AI Tools for What?

• Craig prefers:
  • ChatGPT (paid version) for legal and writing tasks.
  • Google Gemini for spreadsheet tasks.
  • MidJourney for image generation and unique presentation visuals.
  • Jack is intrigued by MidJourney and notes he hasn't tried Gemini yet.

AI in Academia and the Telltale Signs

• AI-generated content is rampant in education, making it difficult for teachers to assess student work authenticity.
• Both agree that AI-generated writing can usually be spotted by:
  • Overuse of long dashes (“—”)
  • Excessive or odd emoji use
  • Insertion of literal “lines” (dividers) in memos/letters
  • AI detectors (available online) are used by professors to catch fakes.

Notable Quotes:

"The long dash, the ridiculously long dash that none of us ever grew up using. But AI uses like it's going out of style."
— Craig Gotwells [14:14]

"54% of everything on LinkedIn is AI generated...it's higher now."
— Craig Gotwells [16:01]

The AI Images Problem

• Jack feels AI images are immediately “off”—“no human being looks like that”.
• Craig shares a college intern's trick: deliberately adding typos to their own writing to avoid AI suspicion.

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3. The Russia–Ukraine War: Hardheaded Realism versus Idealism

[18:15 – 30:04]

Media Spin and Reality Checks

• Jack plays a segment from Russian FM Sergey Lavrov denying targeting Ukrainian civilians.
• Jack summarizes Russia’s history of brutal tactics, calling Lavrov’s statements “a load of crap”.

Should the US Keep Arming Ukraine?

• Craig represents a “radical pragmatist” viewpoint:
  • Ukraine vs. Russia is not a fair fight—Russia is a nuclear superpower and will ultimately prevail unless the West is prepared to intervene directly.
  • US and EU arms shipments only “prolong the meat grinder” rather than allow a swift end.
  • Argues that realpolitik (“might makes right”) is the historical and likely future norm.

Notable Quote:

"All we're doing in Ukraine is prolonging the bloodbath. We're making it so that they lose a little more slowly and that more people die...And Russia's gonna win because they have...a 7 or 10 to 1 advantage in manpower."
— Craig Gotwells [21:16]

• Jack floats the domino effect argument: "If Putin gets away with it, won't China be emboldened to take Taiwan?" Craig and Cato’s Justin Logan respond: that’s always been the world’s way; the recent era of “international norms” was a short-lived historical anomaly.
• Both express emotional difficulty reconciling these views with the suffering on the ground, but see little alternative given nuclear realities.

Notable Quote:

"Ultimately, I view war as might makes right. So unless we're willing to go stand there and fight against them, I just think all we're doing is playing games. We're depleting our own weaponry, and we're not doing any favors to the world."
— Craig Gotwells [21:16]

• Jack acknowledges a possible shift in his own thinking after hearing this argument.

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4. Lighter Topics: Baseball, Cracker Barrel, and Breastruants

[31:44 – 37:25]

Baseball in Sacramento

• The Oakland A’s are playing at a minor-league stadium in Sacramento; Jack expresses amusement at the intimacy and excitement for local fans.
• Surprise: The Milwaukee Brewers have the MLB’s best record, beating the expensive LA Dodgers.

Casual Dining and Hooters’ Identity Crisis

• Ongoing debate around Cracker Barrel’s interior redesign (“woke or not?”).
• Discussion on “casual dining” and specifically the “breastaurant” genre (Hooters).
  • Hooters’ attempts to rebrand amid business losses: perhaps lengthening shorts, but still upholding style/image standards.
  • Jack questions how these hiring and image requirements will fare under scrutiny from “body positivity” advocates.

"All of my red flags are going up because here comes the body positivity people going, well, technically, according to my doctor, I'm perfectly healthy."
— Jack Armstrong [36:21]

• Both agree Hooters’ appeal is somewhat baffling, as most sports bars have similar attire and personnel.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the healthcare system:

"The main thing I learned from when I had cancer is there's a lot of guessing. There's way more guessing than I ever believed was the case."
— Jack Armstrong [03:55]

On AI efficiency and danger:

"It saved me four hours...but when you're already an expert in an area...it did. Within like 10 minutes, I had this unbelievable chart."
— Craig Gotwells [07:21]

AI’s signature writing style:

"The long dash, the ridiculously long dash that none of us ever grew up using. But AI uses like it's going out of style."
— Craig Gotwells [14:14]

The modern workplace and AI:

"54% of everything on LinkedIn is AI generated. I swear to God, it's higher now."
— Craig Gotwells [16:01]

Stoic realpolitik on Ukraine:

"All we're doing in Ukraine is prolonging the bloodbath...Russia's gonna win because they have...a 7 or 10 to 1 advantage in manpower."
— Craig Gotwells [21:16]

The new world order:

"Warfare has always been about might makes right."
— Craig Gotwells [28:36]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:16] – Introduction, Joe Getty’s absence, show theme
• [00:43 – 04:45] – Second medical opinions and challenges
• [04:46 – 11:02] – AI use in law and business; efficiency vs. accuracy
• [13:23 – 17:22] – AI’s impact on academia; detecting AI-generated content
• [18:15 – 30:04] – The Russia-Ukraine war: US and global response, pragmatism vs. idealism
• [31:44 – 37:25] – Baseball in Sacramento; Cracker Barrel and Hooters rebranding; “casual dining” musings

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Episode Tone & Style

The episode maintains Armstrong & Getty’s signature conversational, irreverent, but intellectually curious style. Jack and Craig combine humor with skepticism, and their banter covers practical how-tos as well as big-picture, often controversial, geopolitical analysis.

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For Further Engagement

• Find Craig Gotwells at: gotwalls.substack.com
• Archived episodes and segments: Armstrong and Getty On Demand

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Transcript

[Jack Armstrong]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Craig Gotwells]

Broadcasting live.

[Jack Armstrong]

From the Abraham Lincoln radio Studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center.

[Craig Gotwells]

Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong and Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

And now here's Armstrong and Getty. Yo, yo, yo. Thanks for joining us. Joe is in. He's the Getty half of Armstrong and Getty. Joe is in England on vacation. I think he's going to call in a little bit later. Half in his cups, drunk on Bass ale. But we're having a variety of guests on today to keep me sane, including who we used to call Craig, the Obamacare lawyer, back when we were trying to work our way through what the hell Obamacare was or is, which continues to be the law of the land. Right, Craig, Welcome. Craig Gotwell's Obamacare still, just, still the law of the land just became status quo as, as we all predicted it would be. And, and all of our deductibles went way, way, way, way up. And we all just accepted that that's the way they're going to be for the rest of our lives. So that's the way that turned out. Hey, I do have a quick health related thing for you before we get into some other stuff that you and I were texting about last night. I got a, a friend who's got a pretty bad health diagnosis and I suggested, man, you ought to get a second opinion. But people throw around the whole get a second opinion, like it's easy to do. I've never actually done it. How do you even go about doing that? Does your insurance let you do that? What do you do? Do you go to a completely different doctor group or what is, what is that? What is the second opinion?

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, some of that's going to depend on what kind of plan you're on, whether it's a PPO or an HMO or like what we call an open access plan. But what are most people.

[Jack Armstrong]

Let's start there. What do most people have who have people in America?

[Craig Gotwells]

Some form of a ppo.

[Jack Armstrong]

Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. Most of us have a ppo. So if we have a ppo, how do we get a second opinion?

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, the easiest way to get a second opinion in that case would be to pick a different primary care doctor in a different medical group and just go through the process again. Because if you stay within the whole.

[Jack Armstrong]

Process again, go through the whole process again while you're probably not feeling very good, maybe feeling terrible.

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, it, it, it's a good point. So it's going to come down to how much you trust Your doctor and the medical group, because if you stay within the same medical group, they're going to have a pretty strong bias to confirm what's already been done.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, that.

[Craig Gotwells]

Exactly, yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

There's two things wrong with it, several things wrong with it. And it's a. Tell me it's not a common phrase. Well, you should get a second opinion. People throw that around all the time. Like it's an easy thing to do, but. So I'd have to go through the whole process. Am I, am I kind of like half firing my primary doctor? I've had maybe for years, I'm probably friends with at this point. How offended is he or she going to be?

[Craig Gotwells]

Well, most plans will have a mechanism in there for a second opinion so that it's not. So that you're not. Now if it's an hmo, which a lot of people are on in larger cities, they kind of are firing that doctor because you'd pick a different primary care doctor, come back to them in a future month. But most PPOs will have a mechanism. You can do it the other way to do it if you have a little bit of means at all is to go out into the market and find a direct primary care doctor, somebody who's left the system and sees you for like 100 or $125 a month fee. That way you can keep doing what you're doing with your system doctor on your, your plan at work, for example, but then you can spend a couple hundred dollars and go off to the side and see one of these direct primary care doctors who's left the system and will then give you a truly independent analysis that if you have some means at all, that's what I would recommend.

[Jack Armstrong]

Okay, that's a little frustrating. I mean, they don't, they don't offer that up to you, certainly after they give you a diagnosis. And the one thing I learned, and I tell people all this time, the main thing I learned from when I had cancer is there's a lot of guessing. There's way more guessing than I ever believed was the case. And you can talk to a couple of different people and they have completely different opinions. So.

[Craig Gotwells]

Well, not just cancer. I mean, all these complicated, I mean if we just start looking at autoimmune diseases and then the way these, the new, the new drugs are affecting that, it's, it's, you know, because of what I do, I have a lot of good friendships with doctors. And it's shocking how you can talk to two very well respected doctors that have Been doing this for decades and they'll have incredibly different opinions on how you should treat X, Y or Z. Especially when we get to like autoimmune or even cancer.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yep. I have that exact situation with my son where they have, I have two PhD level been around forever people with almost 180 degree apart opinions and what am I supposed to do with that information? Anyway, that's enough of that health stuff for now. So this is interesting. So we talked to, I know you're friends with Tim Sandifer. We had Tim the lawyer on last hour and we were talking about AI and all the different sort of stuff. And I, I'm fascinated by AI and I read lots of books and listen a lot of podcasts because I think it's, I think it's going to be a really big deal. I don't know if it's going to be as biggest fire like the guy from Google says to mankind, the invention of fire. But I mean if, if it's half that, it would be shockingly huge. A lot of people are worried about AI taken so many jobs. We're going to have to come up with some sort of guaranteed income thing to pay people to stay home and play the flute because there just aren't going to be enough jobs. AI is going to take it over. Tim says this is going to be like every other technology that's come along. It's going to develop all kinds of new jobs that you've never even thought of yet. It'll take care of itself. The cotton gin didn't eliminate all farm workers. It started all kinds of other different things and you end up with more jobs. Where are you on that question? Because Tim, Tim, Tim thinks now that he's not worried about it. I am. I think, I think it's going to destroy the entire world. Go ahead.

[Craig Gotwells]

I fall. I fall much closer to Tim. Oh, gosh. Back that.

[Jack Armstrong]

I hope you're both right.

[Craig Gotwells]

I'm using it. I'm using it every day at work. In fact, everybody in my office is. We're using it regularly. And what it's done is it's allowed me to just become so much more efficient with not wasting a lot of time on some of the more menial tasks that I don't want to have to burn time on. I can use AI to standardize and templatize a lot of the things that I'm doing quickly. I'll give you an example, Jack, because, you know, I'm a lawyer and I'm reviewing healthcare contracts. Just recently I Took six different pharmacy benefit manager PBM contract. So it's the part of your health plan that deals with all the drugs. Six different contracts. All of them were between 50 and 100 pages. I uploaded all of them into ChatGPT, I said, and then I gave it like a whole page of instruction on what I wanted. I wanted to compare and contrast this. I wanted to know the weaknesses and strengths. I wanted to know where I could find A, B and C and D in each contract. And I wanted it to put it all in a grid for me. So it didn't. It did. Within like 10 minutes, I had this unbelievable chart that it spit back to me where then I could go back and just hit the highlights of the contracts in my review. Now, where that would be devastating is if you had zero idea what you were doing. If you weren't a health care attorney, for example, and you didn't know where it was wrong. Because it's wrong. As you guys have reported, it's wrong. A good clip at a time, it'll make things up or it'll have something totally off, but when you're already an expert in an area to take care. I mean, it saved me four hours doing what it did. And then I could just spend one hour fine tuning it and making it exactly what I needed to see for my clients.

[Jack Armstrong]

But you do have the problems of hallucinations or whatever. It just makes stuff up now then.

[Craig Gotwells]

Absolutely, yeah. You have to watch it. What I tell my coworkers is when it tells you something that you think is just maybe not quite right, you have to tell it, give me a source for that, and then you have to hit that source and you have to go look at it because it will get things completely wrong. You know, I, I've read the stats that say 50% of the time, I think that's too high, but I see it getting things wrong 20% of the time anyway.

[Jack Armstrong]

Really? Okay, that's interesting.

[Craig Gotwells]

Oh, yeah. Where it sends you to a link that doesn't exist or it. Or just says something that's not right.

[Jack Armstrong]

Okay. So I ask it a lot of questions that I have no expertise in. And so it could. Maybe it's lied to me way more often than I realize. And then I probably repeat it on the radio. But I'm, I'm, I've mentioned this a thousand times. I'm reading the book Ulysses by James Joyce. I'm trying to fight my way through that book. And I've been using chat GBT when I get stuck on something. But I Had one the other day where it was just. I knew it was completely wrong. Like, just as wrong as wrong could be. And I wonder how often that happens. Asking a question yesterday about taking zinc when you got a cold and the information it spit out for me for different ages and different studies and stuff like that, as far as I know, was absolutely fascinating and so fast. So, which you mentioned Chat GPT several times. There's a whole bunch of AI apps or programs or whatever you even call them, chatbots out there. How many of them are you using?

[Craig Gotwells]

Yes, so I'm using. I'm using an upgraded version of Chat GPT that I've paid for, and I've trained with a lot of what I do for healthcare law.

[Jack Armstrong]

Do you think the paid for one is. Do you think the paid one. Paid for one is worth it for the average person or only if you have an expertise in something?

[Craig Gotwells]

I think if you're using it for work, the paid for one is worth it. I mean, if you're just using it for fun and for social, you know, I don't think you need to pay for it, but I lean on it pretty heavily at times. And ChatGPT seems to be the best one for, like, legal analysis and writing and writing templates. When I have to. When I start working with Excel spreadsheets, for example, when I want to compare large Excel spreadsheets and I want to. I want to have AI shortcut some of that for me, I find that Gemini Google's seems to be the best one for me in that lane. And then the other thing that we use a lot at work because we do a lot of presentations for clients and a lot of visual stuff, we'll use Mid Journey to create art and imagery, which is, I think, the industry leader easily for, you know, creating those pictures and those. And those slides that are.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh. So if you want to do. If you want to do images and stuff, you like Mid Journey, which I'd never even heard of.

[Craig Gotwells]

Mid Journey. Yeah. Midjourney is amazing. And I actually learned that an artist friend of mine in the Bay Area who said that's the only one artists are using is Mid Journey. Jer.

[Jack Armstrong]

That, Katie, because I know you do a lot of that. That's a good one. Mid Journey. All right. Is that just something like I can put on my phone, get an app?

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, Midjourney. It's just a web link or there's probably an app, but I just. I just hit it on a. On a. On a webpage, browser. And I actually do pay for the upgraded version of that one as well. Because we hit it a lot for creating. You know, you see a presentation at your job, right? And you get so sick of seeing the same clip art over and over. Well, we'll just use Mid Journey to create unique art that way. I know that when I'm giving a presentation to a client, they've never seen this imagery before. It's not, you know, some stock imagery, but we hit it. But use a free version of it as well.

[Jack Armstrong]

Mid Journey. I'm looking for it. Okay. I haven't messed around with Google Gemini. I need to do that just because I know they're pouring so many billions of dollars into that sort of thing because there's a big belief among Eli and Eli Elon and Google and, you know, a couple of different people that whoever emerges as the leader, there's trillions of dollars involved in that and. And it's worth trying to be the best. So I need to figure out what Gemini is up to. We'll talk more with Craig here in just a little bit about a bunch of different things. He's got some strong opinions on the war in Ukraine that I think are going to be a lot closer to a lot of you, our listeners, than. Than I have been on Ukraine. So we'll get to that. Among other things. Coming up in just a little bit. Want to tell you about Webroot. If you're into tech stuff at all and you spend any time on your phone, you should probably have Webroot. Have you ever known anybody who had their bank account hacked? And the nightmare it was to try to untangle that mess and maybe get your credit rating back and all those different sort of things. That's why we trust Webroot Total Protection. It monitors for stolen identities, credit fraud, even scans the dark web for your info. Because if it shows up on the dark web, something's gone wrong. So we're hooking you up with a great offer right now. You can get 50 off web root total protection or webroot [e-mail] Armstrong if something goes wrong, you're backed up with up to $1 million in reimbursement. It's fast, it's lightweight, it installs in minutes. No annoying pop ups, just strong protection. Even includes a VPN for secure browsing and password manager to keep your login safe. Love it. Don't risk being the next victim. Get 50% off web root Total Protection or Webroot Essentials right [e-mail] Armstrong whole bunch of different things we're going to talk about that are interesting coming up. Stay here.

[Craig Gotwells]

Armstrong and Getty. The FDA is warning consumers not to eat frozen shrimp from Walmart because it may contain radioactive material. Also because it's frozen shrimp from Walmart.

[Jack Armstrong]

Aren't you an elitist? You don't eat shrimp from Walmart. I don't either. We're talking with Craig Gotwells, who is a health care expert. Actually, we're talking about other things, but if people want to get a hold of you, like for some health care advice, how do they get a hold of you?

[Craig Gotwells]

The easiest way probably got walls.substack.com okay, cool.

[Jack Armstrong]

We're just talking about AI and want to finish up that conversation because I'm fascinated by it and man, if, if you're not brushing up against it yet, you will be. So I, I suggest get on the front end of checking some of this stuff out. But I was talking to a teacher, my next door Neighbor, she teaches 9th grade English and I asked her about AI and I could tell her eyes lit up and she kind of rolled her eyes like, oh yeah. It's really hard now to figure out if a kid wrote his paper and you know, all this different sort of stuff. I know you've taught college classes in the past working with people. How do you, is there, is there a way to tell if something's AI or if some. It's actually a human being's work.

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, it's becoming, it's becoming increasingly easy to tell honestly because I use it so much. I can see how it writes and I see how it work. It does things. Katie mentioned one earlier in the week, or maybe it was last week, the long dash, the ridiculously long dash that none of us ever grew up using. But AI uses like it's going out of style.

[Jack Armstrong]

True.

[Craig Gotwells]

And it's not just like I'm typing, I put a dash and I keep typing and it puts a little dash in there. No, it's a, it's a dash that goes all the way from one word to the next. If you see that in a response that you get, you know that was written by AI.

[Jack Armstrong]

That's true. I'm looking at my, yeah, I'm looking at my chat GPT question about I was getting, getting seasick on my sailing lessons and asking about what medicine is the best for that.

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

And all the answers, really long dashes in there. Okay.

[Craig Gotwells]

A ton of them too. And I've even, I've even gone into AI. Remember, I've got the upgraded Version that I've trained and I've said, stop using that. I don't write that way. I. I've routed it back to all of my articles that I've written and said, this is how I write. Write this way. Don't use those dashes. And for whatever reason, I can't get it to stop doing that. So I don't know how smart AI is when that's our reality. Right, right. The other one is emojis gone wild. It will put so many emojis in a response a lot of times, especially people that are using it to put up posts on like LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. You'll see just way too many emojis and all these like crazy emojis that humans don't ever use. It's just, it's a total tell that it's a hi. Oh, and then the last one, and this is a simple one. But if you have it, write a memo or if you have it, write like a formal letter. It puts lines, like actual lines between the sections. And so sometimes I'll get something from somebody that's got the lines in it still. And I'm like, dude, you didn't even bother to delete the lines out of this pure AI that you just regurgitated back at me.

[Jack Armstrong]

So a lot, a lot of LinkedIn is AI, you tell me.

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, 50. And this was according to a study done back in October. I swear to God, it's higher now. 54% of everything on LinkedIn is AI generated.

[Jack Armstrong]

Wow.

[Craig Gotwells]

Even even this is my favorite. There's a few attorneys that I like and I follow on LinkedIn that we share ideas. One of them has in their bio 100% non AI generated. So I'm reading one of. I won't even say the gender. I'm reading one of their posts the other day and it says, and I'm reading it and I'm going, this is AI. I can tell by the, the, the. All the little catchphrases it uses. All the, all the, you know, here's the deal and all the, all the kind of almost like the Biden isms that it throws out there. And I'm like, this is a I. So then here's another trick you can use. Go to Google and just type in AI detection tool and you'll be able to pull up dozens of different websites where you copy the text, paste it in, and then it'll tell you with pretty good likelihood what percentage of that text generated was AI. So this is what university professors are using and high school teachers are using to detect it because it has all these tells in it that you just get used to over time. Yeah, that's really interesting.

[Jack Armstrong]

I'm not smart enough or haven't spent enough time with it to pick it up in print, but I feel like I can tell an AI image immediately. They're just too something. They're too something. They're too perfect. There's no human being that looks like that.

[Craig Gotwells]

The other tell this is. This is fascinating. So we had a college intern working with us this summer, and she was shadowing me for a couple of weeks. She told me it's so prevalent in her university that she will purposefully submit papers with five or six grammatical errors in them because she does not want to even come close to getting accused of using AI to write her papers. Oh, wow.

[Jack Armstrong]

So you get AI to write a paper for you, then you go back in and put in some grammatical errors, and that's the way you trick your teacher. Okay, I do want to get to that Russia, Ukraine stuff in just a second. There was, I think, a fair amount of movement that on that. On Sunday with Lavrov on one of the talk shows, we'll play you what he had to say and then discuss how much we should get into this war or not. If you missed a segment or an hour, get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on demand.

[Craig Gotwells]

Armstrong and Gettysburg would know, should know by now that never ever Russia deliberately targeted any sites which are not linked to military abilities of Ukraine.

[Jack Armstrong]

So that's Sergey Lavrov. He's the spokes hole for Vladimir Putin. Has been for many, many years. He's a. Well, I was going to say he's a paid liar. He is, uh, he is also in the situation that if he didn't lie properly for Putin, he would get. He would fall out of a window all of a sudden and his whole family would probably be killed. So that's a pretty big motivator to get out there and lie, too. He's pretty good at it. Anyway, he was on Meet the Press on Sunday. Kirsten Welker, the host, brought up the fact that Russia regularly targets civilians. He says they did not, and they went further with that conversation. Russia has hit maternity wards, churches, schools, hospitals, a kindergarten just this past week. So either the Russian military has terrible aim or you are targeting civilians. Which is it?

[Craig Gotwells]

Look, NBC is a very respectful structure, and I hope you are responsible for the words which you broadcast. I ask you to send us or to publicize the information to which you Just referred because we never targeted the civilian targets of the, of the kind you, you cited.

[Jack Armstrong]

So obviously that's a load of crap. But he's able to say, look, NBC is a very respected news organization. If you have the proof, send it to me. There would be no proof you could send to him that would satisfy him. And, and it's not like Putin just emerged on the scene. Not only is he doing it in Ukraine, he helped Bashar Al Assad do it in Syria, you know, bombing the hell out of civilians, killing hundreds of thousands of their own people to try and stay in power there. He blew up all those people in his own country, in his own hotel, his own Russian citizens. He blew up in a hotel to make it look like the Chechens had attacked. So he had a reason to go into Chechnya. I mean, he's, he's an evil guy. He's willing to do anything. Which leads us to this. So we have Craig Gotwell's joining us today, usually on talking about healthcare, but I wanted to talk to Craig about the Russia, Ukraine situation because he's closer to where a lot of you are on your opinions about US involvement in Ukraine. Joe and I are pretty big cheerleaders for arming the Ukrainians and pushing back hard and all that sort of stuff. Craig is not. So, I don't know if you were listening earlier, Craig, when we had Justin Logan on from Cato, he is closer to you with a pretty cold eyed reality, look at the whole thing. What, what is your position on Russia, Ukraine?

[Craig Gotwells]

Yeah, this is one. I, I just, I haven't changed my opinion on this since day one of the war. And I just look at this and think, well, this is unfortunate. I don't like it, I don't support it. But the reality is you've got a giant nuclear power, one of the three largest powers on the planet that's gonna, that's gonna do whatever they want to do and they're gonna, they're gonna take over one of their former client states and we're not gonna do anything about it. Whether it's China, whether it's America, if might makes right. And if in the world of war, if we have the might and we have the manpower and we're willing to do whatever it takes. Like, I think about it this way, like imagine northern Mexico got so out of control with cartel behavior flowing into us and we just decided, look, we got to go in and fix it. Now I'm not saying what Russia is saying is right. I'm just saying if we decided we needed to go into northern Mexico, how, How would we like it if all of a sudden China and Russia were funding the Mexicans with arms and with munitions, we wouldn't like it at all. We'd say, stay out of our neighborhood. This is our world. This is what we do. We're the world power. Back off unless you're willing to come here and fight us one on one. And I just feel like all we're doing in Ukraine is prolonging the bloodbath. We're making it so that they lose a little more slowly and that more people die. And the quote from Marco Rubio you guys had a week or so ago I thought was phenomenal. It's a meat grinder. And all we're doing is making it so that we can prolong the meat grinding. And Russia's gonna win because they have what it was like a 7 or a 10 to 1 advantage in manpower. And then on top of all that, even if somehow, some way, we were to arm Ukraine enough that Ukraine could push him back a little, I think Putin's actually shown restraint by not using a tactical nuke or really even waving that flag around, because you know what? He has it. And ultimately, I view war as might makes right. So unless we're willing to go stand there and fight against them, I just think all we're doing is playing games. We're depleting our own weaponry, and we're not doing any favors to the world. Now, I realize your comeback Jack, is gonna be. So you just let Putin take it. And the answer is, yep, you let him take as much as he's gonna take. And once he's taken enough that we say we're willing to go send our kids over to fight, that's when it'll stop.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. That was my response to Justin Logan from Cato earlier this morning. And if you didn't hear that, that was our one. And you can find the podcast Armstrong and Getty on Demand. But I said, so won't this set up a situation if Putin gets away with it, using my finger quotes, get us away with it. Where China will decide, well, we get to take Taiwan or any other bigger country gets to take. And he said, well, that's the history of the world. It's always been that way. It's only this tiny happen.

[Craig Gotwells]

We're only going to do anything about it.

[Jack Armstrong]

It's only this tiny blip of recent history where that hasn't been going on, because the United States and the Soviet Union at the time were so big and powerful, they stopped. Nobody did anything without their approval, really, in their own spheres, but. And then the Cold War ended, and we were the lone superpower for, really, the blink of an eye. And now we're back to, you know, a uni unit. More than a uni power world. There are a couple of different powers in the world, and that's just the way it's always been and it's always going to be, and there's really not much you can do about it. It's hard to argue with that.

[Craig Gotwells]

I. I don't like it. I just. I think the. The phrase I used with you and Joe the other day was just radical pragmatism. Like, what's. I've. Ever since this thing started, I never was emotional about it. I've always just thought, well, what's the end? Well, the end is Putin's going to take whatever he wants because we're not going to go fight. And if we're not going to go fight, he's going to win. I mean, that's just the. I just don't know any way around that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, it's hard to not be emotional about it. Obviously, if you, you know, you watch the news and you hear from some of these Ukrainians who are. Who are literally fighting to save their families. I mean, because their children might be rounded up and taken away from mom to Russia, never to be seen again. Mom might be raped or killed. I mean, it's. It's pretty hard not to get emotional about it, but you can get as emotional as you want. But if you're not going to give them the arms or the troops or whatever it would take to win, there's no stopping.

[Craig Gotwells]

And I don't think. I don't think the arm. I think the arms is a red herring. I think all we're doing with the arms is prolonging the pain and the agony because we're not going to give them nukes. Right. So ultimately, Putin has nukes, and he'd be willing to use them because he's that crazy, I think. So what the hell are we doing? Like, this is, to me, what we're doing is dangerous and scary because ultimately he has nukes, and he would be willing to use them.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah.

[Craig Gotwells]

So what are we even doing giving him arms?

[Jack Armstrong]

When we were talking to Mike Lyons, our favorite military guy yesterday, he. He seemed to think, he wouldn't be very surprised if Putin some point, uses a tactical nuke on one of those cities, kills like 10,000 people in one, you know, little shot. Of a small nuke, just to let everybody know, hey, I'm serious about this. And he thinks the world would probably back off. The world would not say, okay, we're at war now. NATO's not going to go to war.

[Craig Gotwells]

We're going to go to nuclear war over that. Yeah, I mean, that's. And that's now today. And I respect Mike Lyons opinion a lot on these matters, obviously. And that's today. That's with Putin basically winning and getting everything he wants right now. Imagine if somehow, some way, we gave enough that somehow Putin got pushed back and we had Ukrainians moving into Moscow. Come on, what's going to happen then? Then he's really going to use a nuke, and then we've really done it. I just, I, I've never understood the idea that we can prolong this war enough that Ukrainian. The Ukrainian people could somehow win. I just. I've just never gotten it well.

[Jack Armstrong]

So I always think about China and Taiwan whenever we're having this conversation. And there's. There's a quote that. I don't know if it's been verified or not, but apparently Trump said at some point to someone, if China decides they're going to take Taiwan, they're going to take Taiwan. Because I think it's a similar situation. Are we going to go to war with China over that? No, we're not.

[Craig Gotwells]

No. No. It. It. I, I think if we tried to take Mexico, we would take Mexico. I just think it's the same, like, no one's going to stop us. If we wanted to take Mexico, yeah, we would take a black eye. The liberals would scream about it, but it's. It's not going to stop it. I, I just. Yeah, I feel the same way. I just, I have family friends that just. The grandparents just moved back to Taiwan. And I said, man, aren't they worried? And the response was, They're 85. They're not too. You know, if they get taken over by China at this point, you know, they're going to ride it out that way. But I feel the same way. I just think Taiwan is there. We're not going to go to war over Taiwan. We're just not.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, it's going to be a much different world in the near future, because if China controls that entire chunk of the ocean, the free sea lanes of the world that we have kept for 80 years, that'll be the end of that. But like the guy from Cato said, this was a blip in time. The history of the world is more like what's coming and what has been. That's really interesting stuff.

[Craig Gotwells]

Warfare has always been about might makes. Right.

[Jack Armstrong]

It's just, yeah, that is, that is, you know, I don't have a, I don't have a counter to that at this point. I could see where Europe might decide it's there, in there. They didn't. And they're not going to. I mean, if they were going to, you would have thought they would have earlier. I could see how Europe, since it's their own damn backyard, would decide we're going to put up quite a fight here. But they didn't. I mean, I mean, and, and they were willing to continue to. I mean, we canceled the Nordstream pipeline. The Germany was all for continuing to buy natural gas from Russia after the war started. So, yeah, that's just reality of the world. I may have moved on this topic. Took me three years to get.

[Craig Gotwells]

Shocking. I can't believe how long it's gone on. Again, I think it's restraint of Putin that's allowed it to even go on this long, because I think he probably could have won this thing earlier had he been even more brutal and violent. And, you know, the guy is a, he's a lizard, he's a shark. I think he's played this thing just about perfectly. And I can't even fathom when we get these hot mic moments of Trump saying to Macron, I think he wants to do a deal for me. I mean, come on, Trump dealing with this is better than Biden, but not a whole hell of a lot better after I hear things like that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, that was one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, was talk about that, to get that point of view on. And I may be convinced at this point. Hey, Craig Gotwells, appreciate your time today on all these different topics. You're a smart guy and like hearing what you have to talk about. And again, if somebody has healthcare questions, you run a business, you need advice. How do they get a hold of you?

[Craig Gotwells]

Dot walls, two t's one l dot substack dot com okay, thanks, Craig.

[Jack Armstrong]

Appreciate it. I want to tell you about Simply Safe, because I just think it's a really, really good idea to have home security of some sort, and you might as well have the best. And one where you're not locked into a contract. A lot of those companies, they lock you into a contract because they are afraid you're not going to like it or use it and decide you want out. Simplisafe doesn't have to do that because they know you're going to like it and you are going to use it. No contracts, no hidden fees. This is what you do. You visit simplisafe.comarmstrong to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. So it's about a dollar a day to have the number one customer service rated home security system out there. I got the cameras, I got the sensors, I got all the stuff and it's absolutely fantastic. SimpliSafe.com Armstrong to claim 50% off a new system that SimpliSafe.com Armstrong there's no safe like simply safe. Do you have any pushback to perhaps my newfound view on the Russia, Ukraine war? If you do, I'd like to hear it on the Text line at 415295, KFTC. Otherwise we got some other stuff to move into. So the cracker barrel remodeled. Getting so much damn attention. Of course, Hooters is trying to make a big push for a comeback with like a new vibe. Hooters of all places. But a lot on the way. Stay here.

[Craig Gotwells]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

The Oakland A's baseball team now plays in Sacramento, California. That's where this radio show is based. Actually they play in West Sac, which is its own individual town, West Sacramento. Anyway, so it's been very exciting that this Major League Baseball team is playing in this tiny minor league park and so you can go to these Major League baseball games and ev the worst seat there is quite possibly the best seat you've ever had at a Major League Baseball game. I mean, it's that much smaller than a Major League baseball park. What does it seat, like 11,000 or 9,000 or something like that, as opposed to 55,000 if you go to a regular. But they beat Detroit last night. You know, it's one. One game doesn't really matter. The A's are in last place. But so it made me look up the where the baseball season is currently. I'm not a hardcore fan. I will watch when the playoffs start. They're about 130 games in. They play 162 per year. So we've got about 30 games left. Do you know what team has the best record in all of Major League Baseball? It's the Milwaukee Brewers. With 82 wins in the National League. They've won seven more games than the LA Dodgers, who have a payroll of about nine quintillion dollars and have tried to buy every all Star that exists in the entire sport. So the brewers are way ahead of the Dodgers in terms of a record. So that is going to be a fun one to watch. They might be on a collision course, the Dodgers and the brewers and perhaps the Padres also and the Phillies, but would love to see the Dodgers Brewers. Man, you talk about a tiny market against the biggest of big dogs. Yeah, that'd be pretty fun. Different story. Been a lot of talk about Cracker Barrel and their remodel, which I, I don't like the looks of the, the new insides, if that's actually going to happen and whether or not it's woke or not and all that different sort of stuff. What do you call that kind of dining? There's a name for it. Is it comfort food or. Well, I don't know. I don't know what you call the place. Like, like your Applebee's, your Chilies, your. Your Cracker Barrels. They're not fast food. There's a name for it. It's just chain restaurants. Yeah, they're chains, but there's a name for that kind of dining. Anyway, you know, it's, it's obviously a way, a step ahead above fast food, but it's certainly not fancy by any means is Hooters. I think Hooters is one of those two. But Yooters obviously had its own brand for the chicks wearing those ridiculous outfits. I mean, they're just stupid looking outfits. I don't care how hot you are, it's still a stupid looking outfit.

[Craig Gotwells]

Apparently it's referred to as casual dining.

[Jack Armstrong]

I think it's casual fast or some people call it brass and glass. But yeah, Hooters totally falls into that with their raunchy outfits. So they were calling it a breastaurant, by the way. Yeah, and we've never quite understood the hubbub over Hooters because it's a sports bar with young attractive women wearing shorts and tank tops. You know what other sports bars are out like that. Every single one of them in the country is like that. Young, attractive women usually bartend there because they make good tips and they wear shorts and tank tops. So I know Hooters is nothing different than that. But anyway, apparently there's a. I don't know anything about the Hoo Hooters business model. Don't quote me onto this. I don't care. But they were going out of business or one section of them was going out of business or 50 locations I know were bankrupt and they're so they're trying to come up with a, a rebrand where perhaps the girls wear longer orange shorts. But still the tank Tops. But according to their website, they're still looking for servers who will maintain a glamorous hairstyle and have the ability to maintain attractive. An attractive fit image. Oh, oh, there's the problem right there. So I don't know, we were talking with Tim, the lawyer about this earlier, where this moving company might be in trouble because they only hire young, strong men to move furniture. They're not hiring a lot of 63 year olds with a bad background. And whether or not that, you know, is an equal employment problem or whatever, I don't know what Hooter, what situation Hooters is in. If you have to have a glamorous hairstyling. According to who? Them. And maintain an attractive and fit image. See, that's where I. All of my red flags are going up because here comes the body positivity. People going, well, technically, according to my doctor, I'm perfectly healthy.

[Craig Gotwells]

I don't.

[Jack Armstrong]

I don't know how you get around that stuff. I mean, I've known people who ran sports car bars. I've. I've known owners who own sports bars and all the chicks at work there were attractive and wear shorts and tank tops. But I don't think anybody said anything. I don't think it was a rule. It's just he hired people that he thought would look good and they knew what they were supposed to wear or were perfectly happy wearing that because that was what's going to make the most tips. I don't know that it had to be in writing, but we'll see if Hooter does away with those ridiculous shorts and having them wear them. Do they still wear the nylons? I haven't. I think I've been in a Hooters once in my life and I thought, this is not my kind of place. Yeah, they wear the nylons with the stupid little shorts.

[Craig Gotwells]

I have not been since high school.

[Jack Armstrong]

I don't remember next to a Hooters as a drunk. I lived a block away from a Hooters. I never went in there. If you miss a segment, get the podcast. Armstrong and Getty on demand.

[Craig Gotwells]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Jack Armstrong]

This is an I heart podcast.