Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:22]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, December 21st, 2024. It's just after 18 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bo is here. And we're doing something a little different this week than our normal. Instead of having our butt first where Yvonne and I just talk about whatever stuff, we have like a guest. So let me introduce... Yes, I know.
|
Ivan:
[0:49]
| We do this every once in a while. Sam, we can't treat people.
|
Sam:
[0:53]
| Oh, yes.
|
Ivan:
[0:53]
| Yeah. Well, yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:56]
| Seriously.
|
Sam:
[0:57]
| We do this every once in a while, but not commonly. So our guest today is Monica Chilton. I'll let her introduce herself more fully in a second. We have her on because she, this year, was one of Washington State's electors for the Electoral College, which voted this last week. And I thought it would be interesting to have her on and talk a little bit about that. So, Monica, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit more fully?
|
Monica:
[1:25]
| Yeah. Good morning, Sam. Good morning, Yvonne. Good morning, audience. I'm Monica Chilton. I am one of the two what's called state committee members for the Snohomish County Democrats. I was previously the chair of the Snohomish County Democrats for four years, but I've been in leadership. And actually, after this, I need to log off and go to an executive board meeting for that organization. So always working, as it were, for the volunteer job. I guess we're all a little bit cuckoo for democracy, as it were. So anyway, it's a pleasure to be here this morning. And yeah, anything you want to ask, fire away.
|
Sam:
[2:03]
| Sure. And this doesn't need to be a formal interview. We can do a sort of conversation, but I'll start off with a few things. First of all, I will mention, and I don't know if you know this, Monica, but you are the second elector we had on the show. Because we had on Chiafalo when he was doing his sort of rogue elector faithless stuff and the Supreme Court case. We talked to him after the Supreme Court case as well. And now your situation was a little bit different. You did not go rogue, I don't believe.
|
Monica:
[2:43]
| No, no. And the staff that worked very hard and treated us very nicely, was very, very grateful for the lack of drama. So, the gallery was substantially not as full as it was in 2016, according to staff. And I think that's because, again, the lack of drama. And, of course, the result was not as we had hoped.
|
Ivan:
[3:12]
| Well, Monica, one question. You talked about the lack of drama. We've been talking a little bit about this in recent weeks with people's reaction to the recent election results. And I guess, I mean, is that your feeling like right now in terms of emotionally that a lot of people are just, I mean, they're like, just, okay, I'm done.
|
Monica:
[3:37]
| Well, there are people who have more than rung the alarm bell for years and years and years.
|
Ivan:
[3:46]
| Us here.
|
Monica:
[3:47]
| Right, right. And black women, and I know a lot of black women in person, not your wife, Representative Donaghy, but who just basically decided, you know what? I'm going to live my best life. I'm going to sip the tea while Rome is burning. And you know what? They have absolutely earned it because I feel like my demographic has just been a bunch of, I freely cop to it. We're quizlings. We have voted for the wrong side, at least according to me, the side that is the autocratic, oligarchic side in the last three elections. And that is just really breathtaking.
|
Sam:
[4:26]
| You're talking white women specifically.
|
Monica:
[4:28]
| Yeah, white women.
|
Ivan:
[4:29]
| Yeah.
|
Monica:
[4:30]
| And it's just, it's very, very annoying and very, very aggravating. So, but I can see it's been, yeah, it's been a drama. And we have a whole generation of younger people, especially who didn't have the luxury of, our generation did of say a fairness doctrine press.
|
Ivan:
[4:51]
| So my god yeah i forgot about that there is a post-fairness.
|
Monica:
[4:56]
| Doctrine press there is 24 7 news there is misinformation and misinformation being spread all over in all sorts of different ways you know slice dice whatever and and i i'm afraid that the kids kids you know i mean they're adults but you know to me they're kids they're kids with a 28 year old daughter right.
|
Ivan:
[5:18]
| But let me tell you something there are more kids than we were and i you know i don't know what why we have done this but i was having this discussion with somebody that that i that i know that their their daughter is like 15 and they were asking about going on their first trip by themselves right because they had and at the end that they were scared of doing that and i'm remembering that shit i was well define trip i was go to i i'm from puerto rico i went to new york by my i went to washington dc basically with one chaperone that we never saw for like a couple a couple of weeks okay all right to row amazing actually like 13 14 you know i was 13 14 and i'm like and that and that wasn't you know i remember amongst my generation i'm like the fullest closure i'm like what 50 gen x i'm 54 i'm dumb on now not yet i'm turning 54 in february let me not get out of myself not yet but i do that on.
|
Monica:
[6:14]
| The age the.
|
Ivan:
[6:15]
| One yeah but but that wasn't that uncommon back then it happened a lot it's not like it's all and if somebody heard that it happened or like oh okay they weren't teenagers they went on a trip to you know whatever and now it's like, they they man i mean we barely let them out of the house i mean let me let me pull us back for a second for pull us back yeah but but going back to to this young generation specifically you were talking about and what you know but that they're kids i i do think that in certain terms and i've seen especially sometimes in just the perspectives that they carry sometimes i i feel like i i don't know it does feel like we've we've turned them more into kids than they used to be.
|
Monica:
[7:01]
| I'm not so worried about them. I mean, they care. That's important.
|
Ivan:
[7:06]
| Oh yeah, they care. Totally.
|
Monica:
[7:08]
| The thing that worries me is just, there's not as much, what do we say? I think we have this fire hose of information and very poorly, relatively poorly developed tools of what I like to call discernment and critical thinking skills so that we can, so that younger set especially, and some of the older set, frankly.
|
Ivan:
[7:31]
| A lot of them.
|
Sam:
[7:33]
| Yeah, I was just talking to my wife, who was referring to, she had had a, you know, a conversation with somebody she knew from way back, who was talking about, you know, the presidential race and things they'd heard about, you know, Harris being the border czar and all this, which wasn't true at all. It never happened. But they were convinced. They were absolutely convinced. Well, I heard it. And yeah, so it's definitely a thing. I mean, Yvonne and I have talked about this on here quite a few times in terms of the information environment and how uninformed lots of people are and information silos and all this kind of stuff. But I do want to pull us back real quick to the other thing. And then maybe we can talk about other stuff for a little bit. But back in 2016, I went to the state convention and witnessed some of how electors were picked back then. And I had some thoughts. But how were you picked this time around? And has the process changed at all? What do you think about the process to actually choose electors? Because, you know, obviously in 2016, we ended up with a bunch of faithless electors here in Washington state.
|
Monica:
[8:51]
| Oh, four.
|
Sam:
[8:52]
| Yes. Well, that's a bunch. That's like one of the biggest number of faithless electors ever.
|
Monica:
[8:57]
| That will be a third because there were 12 electors. So if that was still the same number of electors, that is a third of the body that would be there.
|
Sam:
[9:05]
| So have they changed anything in the intervening years? And specifically, how was it done for you? How did you get this part?
|
Monica:
[9:13]
| This was actually pretty chill. The state committee had us, if we wanted to, write a bio or a statement of Canada to see that sort of thing. It's just like you're running for an office or an e-board position or anything like that. And I actually wound up penning mine on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision. So I kind of used that as a springboard, you know.
|
Monica:
[9:40]
| So I thought, I tried to, I tried to write something that pulls people in, you know, kind of gets them their thinking rather than, oh, I'm blah, blah, blah, you know, that sort of, sort of thing. Something that has some gravitas and some meat for them. But the, the CD one, that's the first congressional district, the one that I live in, that was pretty, pretty interesting because I didn't realize at the time that I wrote, I wrote my statement of candidacy and I was, thought I was speaking to all of the state committee members who are going to decide. And what really happened was it was the state committee members of that specific congressional district. So there was a grand total of five of them who decided who was going to be the elector and who was going to be the alternate. and there weren't really a whole heck of a lot of candidates. I think there were like three of us and the CD2 one, that was my former district that I got to redistrict from and that was a pretty, I wouldn't say contentious race, but it definitely had a lot of candidates going for those two spots. So that would be like the elector and the alternate and there were some other at-large positions as well. I think CD2 is the one that wound up with an elector, one of the at-large alternates came from CD2. So that's a pretty important congressional district as far as representation.
|
Monica:
[11:01]
| But yeah, the state committee members of the congressional district are the ones that select the electors for that to represent their congressional districts.
|
Sam:
[11:12]
| And then there's some statewide, the at-large ones, right?
|
Monica:
[11:15]
| Yeah, at-large, yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:16]
| Like in 2016, the at-large ones were picked at the convention, at the state convention. Is that what happened this year as well?
|
Monica:
[11:23]
| No, that was different. It was all one meeting, all one process. I'm trying to remember how long it took. Maybe a couple hours, something like that. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:33]
| Yeah, no, that sounds good.
|
Monica:
[11:36]
| But it was all amazing.
|
Ivan:
[11:38]
| But this year, no drama versus.
|
Sam:
[11:40]
| Yeah, the process at the convention in 2016 was the one that really baffled me. It was just so chaotic. There were people running for it who didn't know what they were running for. There were people voting for it who didn't know what they were voting for. It was just nuts. and yeah so um so what was the actual experience of being an elector like you know obviously harris won washington state.
|
Monica:
[12:06]
| And therefore.
|
Sam:
[12:08]
| You got to vote but how did how what what are the logistics of of being in this position finding out like where you go win and blah blah.
|
Monica:
[12:18]
| Blah so the staff was was very good so there was a point of contact and stewart jensen reached out to everybody so you know stew basically this.
|
Sam:
[12:29]
| Are these like representatives of the actual state or.
|
Monica:
[12:32]
| The democratic party or these are actually folks with the secretary of state's office so this is all steve hobbs is good and yeah so steve was there and that was great and anyway let's see so yeah stew you know called all the electors and you know made sure that we have like you know the per diem expense things which i just finally filled out yesterday and you know because you You get like a podium for the hotel, if you so choose, meals, if you so choose.
|
Sam:
[13:01]
| Because you all have to drive into the state capital or whatever.
|
Monica:
[13:04]
| Right. And then, you know, if I came from, I don't know, Walla Walla or Spokane, I could have flown in maybe. So that would be airfare as well. I can't remember. I think they did rental cars, but I can't remember. But, yeah, you get that information. You get the paperwork. And it's all very professional and interesting. Yeah, just very, very, very, very good. And at the parking pass, you go in and they had somebody there out there. It was raining like crazy all that whole time. And she's out there with this humongous golf umbrella, Hannah was, to make sure that we were parking in the proper place. Everybody was terribly good.
|
Sam:
[13:45]
| And you physically did it at the state capitol building?
|
Monica:
[13:47]
| Yeah. So it was really awesome. I mean, I'll never be able to park that close to the state capitol ever again.
|
Ivan:
[13:54]
| Unless you're going to be an elector again.
|
Monica:
[13:56]
| Right. Right. Well, you know, I would love to be able to be an elector and elect the first liberal democratic woman president. I qualify. So
|
Ivan:
[14:09]
| Yeah well man.
|
Monica:
[14:11]
| Feels like.
|
Ivan:
[14:13]
| I mean it.
|
Monica:
[14:14]
| And and i have to do i and i'm gonna i'm going to segue a little bit okay well we're.
|
Ivan:
[14:21]
| Good at segueing here.
|
Monica:
[14:22]
| This is this is the this is the trademark of this show they segue i mean just completely go off the yeah yeah my personal feeling is that the two women who have been the Democratic nominees were in a position where they were almost set up to fail. You look at the fella from, I think, St. Louis who had those 13 factors. One of the most interesting things he put in for Hillary Clinton in particular is how difficult it is for a person of the same party to win a third in a row election. That was a big thing. And beyond all the other stuff, she's still pretty much, I mean, if we had gotten rid of the Electoral College, she would have won. No questions. This thing with Kamala Harris is... She had less than 120 days to campaign, fewer than 120 days to campaign. Yeah, she went at it like gangbusters, but it was so quick, and there really just wasn't, I don't think, enough time. And frankly, if I were in a swing state and I got barraged with all that stuff, I probably would have been very tempted to just tune out.
|
Sam:
[15:36]
| You know well and you know and you know in the end it's perceived as like you know a a big loss simply because well a it's winner take all in these things uh and and also you know hey she lost all seven of the swing states but six of those seven were very close you know it would have only taken a relatively small number of changed votes for her to win if you look at popular vote. It was the closest in like forever. Um, you know, so it, it actually was a close race. She almost pulled it off, but not quite. And there, there are all kinds of things you can point to her. We we've had arguments on here about various factors. I think we're there and we don't necessarily have to rehash those now, but the, but she was close and any one of a number of things changed. She could have pulled it off, but she didn't. Um, and that's where we are.
|
Ivan:
[16:33]
| Well, one thing is that... Globally and this is not just here i was discussing this repeatedly but there's this entire anti-incumbency thing that isn't just here and and it's an entire mistrust actually did of and.
|
Sam:
[16:54]
| And she actually did better than any other major country election for the how much was lost by the.
|
Ivan:
[17:02]
| Incumbent party.
|
Sam:
[17:05]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[17:05]
| Yeah, and it's just, and there is this, you know, we're talking a little bit about information, how people are receiving information and so forth and so on. And there is this entire problem with this reality where facts don't matter anymore to a lot of people. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can, you can.
|
Monica:
[17:30]
| It's reality.
|
Ivan:
[17:31]
| I mean, man, come on. We got flat earthers walking around like right now. Okay. At this point in time in history, I mean, we got pictures from the moon of the earth showing you how it's round that you can prove they are from the moon. And they still believe on flat earth. These guys are using satellites. Okay. That couldn't operate most of the time if the earth wasn't round. Or if the earth don't understand hey why do we need so many of them well because the earth is round it's not flat so that's why you can't see them it doesn't matter it doesn't matter i mean you can show people hey all these people were saved by these vaccines look we had we had kids' cemeteries. We used, this was a thing. You know, where we saved all these lives. Eh, whatever.
|
Monica:
[18:32]
| Or my layperson's research is worth more than your professional expertise.
|
Ivan:
[18:38]
| Absolutely. Absolutely. I was telling Sam, and I know he's bored to death about this, about the drama that I had at our condo board here, where I was in charge for, was president for a long time. And that, you know, people were complaining about excessive dues and whatever. And I could show, I told the people I felt like Biden because I could show them that, hey, five years, the last five years, average condo dues in South Florida where I live are up 60%. Ours are only up 30, okay, versus an average of 60. And oh, by the way, we spent millions fixing stuff during that time. And your condo dues are up half the half the median and they're like ah we need to get rid of you i'm like uh fine.
|
Monica:
[19:30]
| Be my guest.
|
Ivan:
[19:31]
| I i'm like and and that's how i feel yeah i i you know what the thing is i actually won the election but i got so fed up with the attacks i resigned because i just couldn't take it anymore i just i i just i just getting they get these people they get they don't talk to you. They don't look at the facts, and then they get personal and start attacking you like you're a crook, you're a thief. We're going to investigate you all. And it's like, Oh, and here was a crazy tidbit. One of the guys that led this.
|
Monica:
[20:03]
| You see what this is?
|
Ivan:
[20:04]
| Oh, this is the bizarre thing. He works on his law firm. He works on this law firm. You, for some reason, like, pooh-poohed this fact. He works for an attorney that was one of the biggest defendants of J6ers.
|
Monica:
[20:19]
| Really?
|
Ivan:
[20:20]
| Yes. Now, that's what we actually expected from him, but he was like.
|
Monica:
[20:23]
| Huh?
|
Ivan:
[20:24]
| I was like, yeah, whatever. He was one of the guys. And I'm like, I'm not I'm not understanding. Why is why am I explaining facts to this guy? He doesn't listen to anything. And I saw his law firm. And then I click on the link and I see the attorney that he works for. And I see it. I'm like, all of a sudden, oh, shit, look at this. He is a big he's a guy that's defended the most J6ers. This is how this all adds up.
|
Monica:
[20:47]
| Well, I mean, as a legal professional myself, theoretically, you do have a duty as an attorney to make sure that people get quality representation. And if that were the thing, great. But if it were a situation where, hey, I really think these guys are great, then yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:09]
| No, this guy thought they're great. These.
|
Monica:
[21:12]
| Well, they're not. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:14]
| And it's like, you know, he really is all in for quality representation. You know, one thing, there's something, man, now I got to look up. I can't remember the attorney's name, but there was one thing that was very interesting. He had a hearing where he was representing 16 of them in one place, and he did not show up to the hearing.
|
Monica:
[21:32]
| Hmm. Interesting if you were an attorney, because I knew there are a lot of, I shouldn't say a lot of, there are some people who pose as attorneys.
|
Ivan:
[21:37]
| No, no, this guy is actually an attorney. And I looked above, he had actually been part of a law firm where they threw him out, financial, you know, financial issues. One of his law firms went under, then he started another one. It's, but, but it's this entire, what I, what I always, what, what I always brought that up as an example is, is because I see this everywhere. It's, it's like the anger level, man, whether you're driving, whether you're, at school, how teachers get attacked by people, nurses, principals, hospital administrators, the rage at airports, airlines, all of this. I keep seeing this. It's like, this is really permeated. It's not just the elections. It's permeated through society in general and even globally for crisis. It's not just here because these people are bent on certain. it's not just the U.S. It's a global thing that they're trying to work.
|
Monica:
[22:36]
| One of the reasons I got involved in democratic politics to begin with was because I saw this wave of nationalistic populism and it scared the bejesus out of me.
|
Ivan:
[22:47]
| Yeah.
|
Monica:
[22:47]
| You know, Assad, Duterte. It's like, people were like, what's he going to do if, you know, if Donald Trump becomes president? I said, well, all you have to do is look at the Philippines. That's what's going to happen. And now I think it's like his son and Aquino's daughter or something like that, they're ruling over there. And what's his name? Maduro, who is basically Chavez 2.0. And the AF Day, who Elon Musk is plumping for?
|
Ivan:
[23:17]
| Yeah.
|
Monica:
[23:17]
| I mean, alternative for Deutschland. And you're going, what the hell?
|
Ivan:
[23:21]
| Maloney and you've got Le Pen in France.
|
Monica:
[23:25]
| Yeah, La Pena France, who's decided to make her party a kinder and gentler looking no-death valet.
|
Ivan:
[23:32]
| Valet in Argentina. We had Bolsonaro, who got voted out. It's just all over the place. Now, one thing I will say that the Latin American ones, you know, I'm... The one thing is that they all are authoritarian. They all grab at whether it's right-wing ideology or left-wing ideology, but the whole desire of these people is to be an oligarchy, to enrich themselves in one way or another. There is no altruistic thing about helping my people. They really disdain a lot of the supporters that they have, but to them, they are useful idiots and they go around and just, you know, well, think about, for example, oh, we're going to give tax breaks to the rich and the Affordable Care Act. Like, who are the people that benefit the most from this? Most of their voters. and and they are just like yeah yeah yeah we need you to go in there with like take about i'm like uh today what do you what are you doing but i.
|
Monica:
[24:34]
| Well no it's basically a situation where whoever what i say whoever talks the loudest and the longest yes needs to have the the floor and the yeah and the locks you're talking about how the anger in the world well this of course started before Trump and before COVID, but I think COVID, four years, three, four years of COVID has basically exacerbated what was already a poor situation. And I have to say the isolation, while necessary, turned a lot of us feral. So we're still, I think, trying to, I guess, suss out and navigate how to deal with each other in a one-on-one interpersonal in you know physical environment and oh that was the other thing I wanted to circle back to is that COVID I mean, To be really bluntly honest, if COVID hadn't have broken out and gotten as bad as it had, I think we would be looking at the end of the second Trump presidency.
|
Ivan:
[25:39]
| I agree with you.
|
Sam:
[25:40]
| I think you're absolutely right.
|
Ivan:
[25:40]
| I totally agree with you.
|
Monica:
[25:42]
| And that was a big factor. I think people forgot how bad it was because a lot of people just had the attention span of a gnat.
|
Sam:
[25:51]
| Oh, yeah. Like, you see so many interviews.
|
Ivan:
[25:54]
| You're a woman after my own heart. Yes, that's exactly the reality. They don't remember anything.
|
Sam:
[25:59]
| So they don't remember anything and they misattribute where it was from. You talk about like, like if you even ask people about like the pandemic, they associate it with Biden, not, you know.
|
Monica:
[26:11]
| And Trump cut those checks out of his own.
|
Sam:
[26:14]
| Oh yeah, absolutely. And like, and to be fair, the highest spike of the, of the pandemic did occur at the beginning of the Biden administration. But there are things like people associate one of the, the anecdotes I heard that was, first of all, absolutely right. They thought that these were personal checks from Donald Trump, but also a lot of the COVID aid ended during Biden's administration. Now, the actual reality is the Democrats wanted to keep it, keep the aid going longer and the Republicans wanted to kill it. But people blame the fact that their aid ended on biden because.
|
Monica:
[26:55]
| He was.
|
Sam:
[26:55]
| President when it happened you know and.
|
Ivan:
[26:59]
| Similarly they were saying that they needed to end the aid and the act.
|
Monica:
[27:02]
| That's 2018 i mean that 2018 congress really did a lot of good i think and really it's 2026 gang and i i get a little impatient with people who are talking about 2028 now and i'm thinking, You don't understand, gang, if we don't have a 2018 level retake of the House, there will not be a 2026 that's worth, you know, that's actually competitive, shall we say.
|
Sam:
[27:31]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean 2028, if not 2026.
|
Ivan:
[27:35]
| But I will tell you one factor, another one, not just the pandemic, but the one that everybody's memories are terrible, which it was the one, the inflation, which is the one that really, look, inflation historically has upended governments. This is this goes back, you know, go back to the Weimar Republic in Germany, for God's sakes, you know, how they got appended after World War I because inflation was completely out of control, you know, and, you know, and Carter, you know, I mean, Jimmy Carter, one of the things that that that in his administration, you know, inflation was was, you know, raging as well. And that was one of the factors that really threw his administration into problems because of inflation and how interest rates were rising at the time and so forth. I mean, that was definitely a big factor. But they go on to blame Biden also for the inflation. And the reality is I kept talking to Sam during 2020, and Trump's still present during the pandemic. I, I, I'm one that I used to import a lot of containers from China during that time. So the business that I, that I was managing at the time. And the thing is that typical container right before the pandemic would cost me about $4,000 to ship something from China to, to, to anywhere, to, to anywhere in the Americas for the most part. And all of a sudden I'm seeing shipping costs go like north of 20,000 a container, 25,000 a container.
|
Monica:
[29:00]
| Please.
|
Ivan:
[29:01]
| And I'm, I'm, I'm going and I'm like shortages of everything and shortages of everything. So, so all of a sudden, you know, I'm getting demanded more money for, for anything that we're buying. And I'm like realizing, okay, so that didn't translate to consumer prices immediately, but look, it's, these are all leading factors. And it's like that entire wave started during that moment. It was like, it was during the pandemic. It's when it started and then it's so difficult to explain to people well where the hell is that inflation coming from and i'm like start blaming biden for the damn inflation when i mean it was a pandemic induced inflation that there was all what what the biden administration do is manage it better than every other country in the world, That's the reality.
|
Monica:
[29:47]
| And the world sees it, but the people in our country, definitely in the heartland, don't seem to see it. And I wouldn't call it so much inflation as greedflation.
|
Ivan:
[29:57]
| Well, but part of it, look, I'm a business guy. Look, supply and demand, look, when you've got everybody angling to get a container, to put it on a ship, and you're desperate, you're going to start bidding up the prices. It's just, hey, you've got – and it was crazy. I mean, the backup at the ports turned insanity. I couldn't find where the hell my damn shipments were. The people couldn't find them because they said, listen, the port is complete. We don't know where the hell these containers are. They wouldn't wind up. There were so many of them. One of them wound up tracking. Oh, yeah, we dropped it off at the wrong country. I'm like, I'll get the hell out of here. No.
|
Monica:
[30:34]
| Wow.
|
Ivan:
[30:35]
| The container. Well, yeah, it was supposed to be in Argentina. Yeah, yeah. We dropped it off in Brazil. Sorry. We're going to have it. I'm like, oh, come on, guys. You guys are killing me. OK. Okay. And, but look, one of the things about it, there is part of it that of course, you know, like everything, some people will take advantage of their monopoly situations in order to also increase prices. That, that is always a certainty is why monopolies are bad is why oligarchies are bad. It's why you always been a regulated capital capitalist, because I don't believe that unregulated markets always tend to monopolies period. And the end of story there. It's just, that's just the fact.
|
Sam:
[31:13]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[31:13]
| And so but but you had a lot of real factors where you had shortages of stuff. You've got other stuff. And economics, unfortunately, those will drive up prices. And the other problem is that you start putting in artificial price controls. What happens is people say, well, OK, I'm not going to do anything because I'm not going to get paid. I'm going to start losing money because the other people are demanding more money from me. And then you're telling me that I can't pay it for it. So the hell with it. I'm not going to do anything. So it's always, during those times of peaks like that, it's always extremely complicated. But in the end, it happened in 2020 is my whole point. And everybody is like, no, it happened in 2020 and everybody's going, well, Biden is inflation. I'm like, oh, God.
|
Monica:
[31:57]
| But that did not affect the price of eggs in this particular.
|
Ivan:
[32:01]
| Yes, the famous price of eggs, which, you know, I'm pretty sure that everybody complaining about the price of eggs had not bought a damn carton of eggs in recent memory.
|
Sam:
[32:11]
| I saw someone who actually got out the actual, I think it was Jamie Belay, who's a columnist for New York Times on TikTok, but he got out a graph of the actual, like, stats on the price of eggs over the last few years. And there was a pandemic-related spike. And then it went way back down again. And then in 2024, earlier in the year, there was another spike due to bird flu, where egg prices went up for a little bit. But it actually didn't last very long and was well on the way back down again. And you still had a situation where by the time we got to the election, were eggs higher than they were four years ago? Yes, but they were way down from the peak. but people don't like recognize that and the story sticks now now i i promise we can get back to talking about other stuff but i i did want to let monica finish her story of the actual being an elector i'm sorry we totally went off oh yeah she got oh it's okay it's okay but she we got we went on a tangent oh you you had gotten as far as parking in the parking lot And she got in.
|
Ivan:
[33:23]
| Yes. Okay.
|
Monica:
[33:26]
| It's beautiful. They've decorated it for Christmas. You know, there's like, what, marble and everything. And it's gorgeous. And they lead you into the Senate chamber. And the Senate chamber is very intimate, actually.
|
Monica:
[33:38]
| You have your desk and the desk has the, you know, the very nice blue, you know, what, like your certificate and your, oh shoot, I should have, actually I sent these I think to Brandy and some folks where the actual certificate of, yeah, the electors are, you know, where you, you know, sign for the vice and the sign for the president. And the pen is like just like a it's a ballpoint pen but this like has like the white quill on it, i have since misplaced that pen and i'm a little pissed about it i think it fell out of something or other because i didn't have a proper portfolio i mean this was like a big old what at least, 11 and a half by 14 sort of nice portfolio you know cool you know whole paper thing that they put in there you know hard paper so i have to figure out okay how do i get that you know nicely framed or where am I going to stick that? Now, my friend, Jack Aaron's a blessed memory. He was the elector last time for CD2. I don't know where he did it, but he had his whole elector shtick nicely framed and everything he had in his foyer. It was beautiful. But yeah, you had the certificate that you're an elector. You've got another beautiful certificate. You sign the ballots, the nice ballots that they collect. And those are the ballots that are going to go into the boxes that you saw the girls have to, you know, tote away from the Senate chamber to get rid of the insurrectionists.
|
Sam:
[35:04]
| Right, on January 6th when they saved the ballots or whatever.
|
Monica:
[35:09]
| And then there were, I want to say, six copies that we would sign, and those would go to different places, among which would be the National Archives. And so I'm wondering, oh, gee, do I get to see my own signature if I go back to D.C. later on?
|
Ivan:
[35:23]
| Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah.
|
Monica:
[35:26]
| And the final thing that we'd signed was a document signed by all of us that basically verified. And I think I've kind of lost track of where everything went. But, you know, Steve Hobbs, I'm sure, is on it. Maybe you can have him as a guest. That would be kind of cool. Maybe you get Brandy to say, hey, Steve. you.
|
Sam:
[35:45]
| Know i i i've i've tried you know i've i've known you in person which is why i felt comfortable asking you but you know we're a small tiny like personal podcast.
|
Monica:
[35:56]
| So like i i.
|
Sam:
[35:57]
| Haven't felt comfortable asking brandy hey can you get us.
|
Monica:
[36:00]
| Guests that actually matter.
|
Sam:
[36:01]
| Because i mean we've got like 50 people a week thanks for.
|
Ivan:
[36:05]
| Like dunking on.
|
Sam:
[36:06]
| Monica sam really appreciate you know no no no no.
|
Monica:
[36:09]
| You don't.
|
Ivan:
[36:10]
| Want to come out i mean you.
|
Monica:
[36:12]
| Know that's what it's all about it's all about relationships and politics too i mean that's the thing i mean it's not the smoke-filled room but it's also not i mean you're talking about people who are running to be an electorate who didn't know what they were running for and people didn't know what they were voting for and it is imperative i think upon the people if they want to be involved in the democracy You have to educate yourself and not assume that your internet research is going to save you. You have to ask questions. That's one of the things I did when I got involved. I asked questions of people who I might have called the old salts, folks that have been around, folks like Linda Toste-Lane, K.O. Cholanu, people have been Todd Nichols, professionals who have been involved for years and years and years. And, you know, let's see. Anyway, but going back to the thing. So when you come to the Senate chamber, very intimate space with the desks and all that stuff. And the gallery is on, you know, on one side and the other.
|
Monica:
[37:09]
| The gallery didn't look too terribly big, actually. But, yeah, Shasti Conrad, the state chair, was there. And David Green, the vice chair, was there in the gallery. And some other folks that I didn't see. Like my first while colleague, Lynn Campbell, who is a Skagit County Dems chair, was up there in the gallery. And yeah, you cast your votes and you do the Pledge of Allegiance and they certify the minutes. Oh, and the guy actually, one of the people at the State, Secretariat of State's office, let me use the seal stamper. So, yeah, the official, I have a little thing that has, like, the official government seal or the state of steel.
|
Ivan:
[37:49]
| I love those.
|
Monica:
[37:50]
| So, yeah, they use the seal for all of those things that we signed. And it's huge.
|
Ivan:
[37:56]
| It's a big one?
|
Monica:
[37:57]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[37:58]
| Awesome. I love these.
|
Monica:
[38:00]
| And then I think the most awesome thing that I thought, though, was I looked up and around, so the Senate chamber is a square room, and around the ceiling, they have engraved each of the 39 counties' names. So that was interesting to see that. And, you know, I had to find Snohomish. And, of course, King is right up there by the dais. But Snohomish is, like, more towards the right side as you're looking at the dais. And we all had our, our microphones. So if we wanted to speak, we did. I really didn't think I was going to speak, but then everybody else did before me. So I'm like, oh, hell, I'm not going to be the only person who didn't speak. So I did. I said my bit and.
|
Sam:
[38:46]
| Sam from the future here. I thought this would be an appropriate place to insert Monica's actual speech that she just talked about. So here it is.
|
Monica:
[38:56]
| Monica Chilton First of all, thank you. Hi, my name is Monica Chilton. I am the elector for the First Congressional District. Thank you, Mr. Secretary of State. Thank you, Mr. Governor. Thank you to all of my colleagues here in this room today. I hadn't really planned to speak, but I feel kind of impelled to do so after hearing such wonderful remarks from my colleagues beforehand.
|
Monica:
[39:24]
| Yeah, I was thinking about rights. And I belong to a generation that has more rights than the generation that has them now. I was born in 1973, the year that Roe v. Wade was decided. And yes, it was my hope that we would be able to elect a woman president of the United States twice, you know, but it just didn't happen. And I just think it's really important that everybody in this room and those of you who are watching, sorry, I'm very moved right now. This is a very awesome honor to be in this room with all of you, that we all rededicate ourselves to preserving democracy, which is fragile now, but with constant engagement can be robust and can stay robust, and can champion the right, the good, the true, and the beautiful. And finally, I'd like to say a quick word to the memory of my dear friend Jack Ahrens, who sat in your position last time in 2020. I'm sorry we couldn't keep it up, Jack, but I do pray that you look out for us and help us get it back. Thank you very much.
|
Sam:
[40:45]
| And now back to our conversation. Do, do, do. So, so did you, was it all little speeches about why you were voting for Harris?
|
Monica:
[40:55]
| No, not necessarily that. Just, you know, like, for example, Julie Johnson, she was, I can't remember what CD she's in, but among other things, she's a Native American. And she pointed out that there were three indigenous folks among the actual electors that were there, which I think is like some sort of a new threshold. So, even though it's kind of, in a weird sort of way, it's kind of a dark victory, as it were, because even though we've stolen the land, at least now they're back there at the table, you know.
|
Sam:
[41:32]
| Right.
|
Monica:
[41:33]
| Yeah. And that's important. And then we had some folks talk about how, gee, I'm happy to be an electorate, but there shouldn't be an electoral college. And I get that. I understand. Not sure that that's quite the occasion, because one of the things that, I don't think it was Steve Hobbs, but I think it was, oh, God, maybe whomever served as Sergeant at Arms pointed out was how special this occasion was and how important it was to savor it. And I did. And it was, like I said, very awe-inspiring and very humbling at the same time to know that you had that responsibility, that people entrusted you with that responsibility. And I know the folks in 2016 felt that they had a different responsibility and I think, you know, it is what it is, and that's their choice. But my responsibility was to—well, I originally signed up to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But yes, my responsibility was to elect the Democratic candidate and the running mate. And that's all good.
|
Sam:
[42:48]
| So just timing-wise, that's interesting to me. They selected the electors before the nominee was official for the Democrats?
|
Monica:
[42:57]
| Yeah, well, he was basically presumptive.
|
Sam:
[43:00]
| No, I know he was presumptive, but imagine it was actually a contentious primary.
|
Monica:
[43:05]
| I want to say it was, yeah, it was like maybe a month or so before, a month, I would say, before that fateful debate.
|
Sam:
[43:14]
| So it was sort of after, like, assuming you had a race like 2016 or something. It was after the primaries were over, but before the convention.
|
Monica:
[43:24]
| Yes, definitely. Yeah. Well, I think there are some really late primaries that are knocking on the door. They go through June. It's kind of interesting, yeah.
|
Sam:
[43:33]
| The last primaries are in June.
|
Monica:
[43:35]
| Let's see. So I think that was, yeah, it was maybe two hours. Oh, the most important part, I shouldn't say most important part, but equally important part, is that Governor Inslee invited us to his office.
|
Ivan:
[43:45]
| Oh, that's cool.
|
Monica:
[43:46]
| Yeah. So we went over there and he had some nice words to say for us and got to take a look at his office and he pointed out some things, including a picture, a portrait rather, original portrait of Abraham Lincoln. And he mentioned how his dad ran for, I think, and didn't win, but he ran as a Republican. So that was interesting. and you go inside the outside of the governor's office and you see all the paintings of the former governors, only one, Chris Gregoire, that needs to change, but that's just me. Yeah. And, yeah, a bunch of us had our pictures taken, you know, not necessarily with the governor, but, you know, in the office, which is, you know, really cool, too. And just for giggles, I crossed the hall and poked my head in the Secretary of State's office to see what that was all about. And as I got in there, they were wheeling in that big seal, which was on a platform that they, yeah, it's heavy, so they'd have to put it there.
|
Monica:
[44:49]
| It was a lovely experience it was easy to get out it was a little tricky to it was easy to get in it was a little tricky to get out because uh it was a different it's not like the main entrance that they let you into it's like a lower entrance and you took the elevator up to the main thing and then went into the into the actual senate chamber oh funny story so my seatmate me too lona wilbur I don't know her I couldn't pronounce her her native name but she decided that she would go ahead and try so they've got these microphones they've also got phones at the desk that are outgoing phones she's like you know what you'll live once she picks up this phone at the senate chambers and the senate chambers phone's a friend first friend she phones goes right to his voice but voicemail phone's a second friend and the second friend answers and says hey what are you doing you're supposed to be at the electoral college casting your vote hang up i thought well you know i i was tempted myself to you know look up you know say say your wife and say you know call her and you know just say it was kind of a kick and she's like well you know it would have been even bigger kick if you'd been in the the house chamber and called me for my own desk so yeah you're right but very very meta but i just thought that was kind of funny it's like girl or woman rather you it took some guts i i am i am impressed.
|
Monica:
[46:12]
| So that was a good good experience and i'm probably talking because it's trying to reconnect hang on shoot no internet your call cannot be completed.
|
Sam:
[46:26]
| As dialed please check the number and dial again uh oh uh.
|
Ivan:
[46:31]
| Oh yeah oh.
|
Sam:
[46:32]
| Monica's freezing see if she comes back message her yep, she says her internet connection went sideways hold on a second okay.
|
Monica:
[47:15]
| Okay i do not know what the heck that was fun you're back it.
|
Ivan:
[47:19]
| Was uh the the the new administration coming in.
|
Monica:
[47:23]
| Yeah i blame them yeah so you.
|
Sam:
[47:25]
| Were you were telling the phone a friend story when we.
|
Monica:
[47:27]
| Yes yeah yeah yeah so no that was pretty much it i just thought it was just kind of cool that she she did that i'm like what are you doing you're going to do that that was pretty awesome no no it's funny as we pay for comcast in this particular house household i'm surprised that every now and then it will want to get xfinity wi-fi rather than the perfectly fine perfectly secure home connection very weird that's my other thing about monopoly i mean you're talking about you know unrestricted capitalism or whatever you know we only have I think two choices and both of them are kind of in terms of being able to select internet providers in this particular residence. So you're going, you know.
|
Ivan:
[48:15]
| So that's one of those things. Yeah, I know.
|
Sam:
[48:19]
| So, so any other highlights of the elector experience you want to call out in terms of your, your own experience or just general thoughts on how that whole thing works or anything like that before we move on to other things?
|
Monica:
[48:33]
| Yeah, the day was just really nice. It was, you know, the secretary of state staff was really great. I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if say Kim Wyman were there and, you know, say a Republican rather, and you have that staff.
|
Sam:
[48:45]
| She was the previous secretary of state that, for those who don't remember, the fact that Biden picked her for something national, it started the chain of events that led to my wife being in the state legislature to begin with.
|
Ivan:
[48:58]
| Yeah.
|
Monica:
[48:59]
| So that's the other thing. I mean, And we, I think, the Democratic Party invites. We don't, you know, we just want things to get done. You know, done and done well. I mean, the whole reason that this, what, this temporary budget thing actually passed, It's because, you know, we basically, we know how to govern, I think.
|
Ivan:
[49:21]
| I agree. Look, even John Boehner is one that said it best related to this, that this entire generation of people that are, that have come into government now, they're, you know, in the republic, in his party. It's one of the reasons why he left was precisely because they were interested on getting just attention, grifts, you know, they want it. They want it clicks. Everything they do is all about that. It has nothing to do with fixing any problems. It has everything to do with how they are going to get their grift done. That's it. And everybody else can be damned.
|
Sam:
[50:02]
| You tie that to a whole philosophy of government that is that government shouldn't do stuff for the most part. Like that, you know, and that's not all like some of them are pure grift. Like if they thought they could make more money by government actually actively doing stuff, they would. Yes. But others are sort of philosophically very much in the view of like, well, no, government shouldn't be doing anything anyway. And so a course of action that leads to nothing is actually preferred.
|
Monica:
[50:32]
| And Boehner himself, he's the one who got rid of earmarks, so he kind of reaped the whirlwind.
|
Sam:
[50:37]
| Yeah, I mean, this is one conversation I've had a few times in the past.
|
Ivan:
[50:41]
| But that one was one that was, you know, I will say that before that happened, the philosophical thought, hey, how do we make government run better? There was a lot of agreement. Oh, getting rid of earmarks will help. Yeah, that was.
|
Sam:
[51:01]
| But I think it's actually backfired quite a bit. And I'm not the only one to have said this. I heard it somewhere first and then I've repeated it a lot of times because, you know, I resonated with it, is that actually earmarks were the grease that helped things happen. That's how people made deals that was like, okay, I will give you what you want on this.
|
Ivan:
[51:25]
| And I will get our, you know, park.
|
Monica:
[51:29]
| Pretty much. I mean, yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:31]
| And, and, and in exchange, like policy things that would happen as well, it wasn't just like your pork for my pork. It's like, I will agree to your policy thing that I otherwise would not in exchange for some pork for my district. And, and it led to a lot more ability to make deals in bipartisan ways to make things happen. Now, of course, there's also been this whole like partisan sorting that's been happening. It makes things more difficult. But I think that earmarks accelerated, getting rid of it, accelerated that process because it took away a major tool that people could use to sort of paper over differences.
|
Ivan:
[52:13]
| Yes. So yeah i'm with you on that working today all right i think mine froze again did we lose you yeah yeah she's she's she's either she's stunned by what we said or she's frozen one or the other, well it was kind of stunned she's stunned oh there you're back you're back again we were saying that we were saying that damn it we said something so earth shattering you're just sitting there stunned you're stunned she's like i mean my god i mean look we managed to stun somebody this is what happens when you invite people sam yeah you know no.
|
Monica:
[52:50]
| I i was just i was hearkening back to when i was young and in college and so i come from west central missouri across the border is on northeast Missouri. Back in the day, Harold Volkmer was a FDR Democrat. And that horse trading back in the day got a really decrepit bridge that crossed the Mississippi River, turned into this nice, pristine Harold Volkmer bridge, called for him because he actually lost the election to one of those Newt Gingrich Republicans. So- So, yeah, I mean, and again, it's my own thesis, and maybe it's because I come from a different generation, but you're not going to get people, you're not going to hook them on ideology, I don't think. It has to be interactional. It has to be one-on-one. It has to be about relationships, because if we basically toss somebody out because they have this really peculiar way of thinking, still, there's other things you can talk about. There's always a hook somewhere.
|
Ivan:
[53:57]
| And the MAGA hook, the number one MAGA hook is is hate. OK, yeah. That's what I hate is an ideology.
|
Monica:
[54:06]
| You can't get anywhere with hate. You really can't.
|
Ivan:
[54:09]
| I mean, well, well, well, I mean, they can't get anywhere. Look, these bastards just won the stupid election running completely on a platform of hate.
|
Monica:
[54:17]
| I mean, there's something about populism. And this is my own my own personal theory. Yes, you can organize. Yes, you can campaign. Yes, you can even win an election. The one thing you can't do, and I'm losing my thing again, which is really annoying.
|
Ivan:
[54:34]
| You're still there.
|
Sam:
[54:35]
| We still have you.
|
Monica:
[54:36]
| Okay. The one thing you can't do is govern. And that's why these things— But they hate government.
|
Ivan:
[54:43]
| Listen, they hate government. They think, you know, the absurdity of this weekend's negotiations, for example.
|
Sam:
[54:52]
| We're oh yeah we will take a break and actually have that as a topic you.
|
Ivan:
[54:57]
| Want to talk about that as a topic all right.
|
Sam:
[54:59]
| Yeah no no okay monica can you stick around a little bit or do you need to drop why not all right let's take let's then break come on and we'll talk about this.
|
Ivan:
[55:09]
| Idiotic negotiations yes.
|
Sam:
[55:11]
| Okay we'll take a quick break and then we will be back and we will start talking about the whole nonsense with the, government shutdown that didn't happen but was delayed and elon musk and blah blah blah and all that yes yeah yeah we'll be back right after this okie dokie here it comes.
|
Ivan:
[55:42]
| It's just my internet being stupid my internet being stupid is a new song we will make What the fuck is that? What the fuck? I'm just losing more to mind. Come on, come on. I'm tired what's wrong i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing to get the show on the road there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road that.
|
Sam:
[56:39]
| One cracks yvonne up.
|
Ivan:
[56:40]
| Every time we oh my god well it's not just that it's that we get a guest for the first time in a long time and this is the we don't get like say the ray lynch break or something no no we get this psychedelic lunacy of a break in order to come in yes which is actually hilarious but oh god okay well well she stepped away for most of it so she may not have heard it, okay well.
|
Sam:
[57:11]
| Well we're back anyway so so yvonne why don't why don't you intro what is the craziness that have happened.
|
Ivan:
[57:17]
| For the last few days. Well, I mean, look, we had an impending government shutdown, okay, that, you know, a deal had been done. And as usual, like the Republicans, you know, one of the, you were talking about how hate doesn't work. One of the things about these kinds of groups of people that they don't like the government is, that they can never honor a deal amongst themselves. Every time what they will wind up doing is, they think that everybody else is a corrupt. They will not trust anybody. So they will wind up the moment they see something. They see an opportunity, they will backstab. Other person. That is a trait. That's how they work. And so this entire thing with the shutdown where they actually have a deal and they agree to a deal and then all of a sudden- There was a deal.
|
Sam:
[58:07]
| That had been negotiated over the course of many months.
|
Monica:
[58:11]
| A bipartisan deal.
|
Sam:
[58:13]
| A bipartisan deal. The Republican leadership was on board. The Democratic leadership was on board. How not even just the Republican leadership they had. And, you know, I mean, I'm sure the usual people who would vote no to anything would vote no, but they had it all set. It was ready to go. And then.
|
Ivan:
[58:30]
| And then and then they go and, you know, Trump and Musk. I can't remember which one was.
|
Sam:
[58:35]
| It was all Musk.
|
Ivan:
[58:37]
| That was Musk first started torpedo, you know, you know, calling for this thing to be to be scrapped, for this thing to be stopped, for this thing, whatever. And then they start demanding a $2.5 trillion cut in the budget in order to accept the deal.
|
Sam:
[58:56]
| So wait, wait, wait. You're skipping a few steps.
|
Ivan:
[59:00]
| Well, skipping a few steps. Yeah, I was oversimplifying. Okay. So say I'm being the logical Spock guy to my being more like Captain Kirk crazy going, okay? I realized the other day that this is how our dynamic is. I've just realized. Okay, so go ahead.
|
Sam:
[59:17]
| So here's the thing.
|
Monica:
[59:18]
| I got to play on the color commentator.
|
Sam:
[59:21]
| So first Donald, no, so first Elon Musk comes in with a tweet storm lasting hours and many tweets talking about how this is a bad bill, how he'll go and he'll bankroll primarying any Republican who votes against it, et cetera, et cetera. And so that initial deal that had been negotiated over months and months died. Like they voted for it. It failed utterly. And they were also trying to do it, by the way, they were trying to do it under a suspension of the rules, which required not just a majority, but a two thirds majority to do. And so they were nowhere close. They were nowhere close. And then they scrambled and came up with a Trump and Musk-approved deal. That deal added some stuff with the debt limit because that was what Donald Trump's demand was. Donald Trump came in later, by the way. Only after the tweet storm, then Donald Trump was like, oh, okay, I agree, this is bad. But only after everything Musk had done. And that first one died. The second one was a Trump and Musk approved version that added some stuff with the debt limit and had some more cuts and blah, blah, blah. Then that died too. That one died as well. And then they were like, oh, well, now what do we do? We have no plan C.
|
Sam:
[1:00:48]
| And then eventually on Friday, hours before the deadline, they came up with something again. It did not have the debt limit stuff in it. And it was basically back to close to what the original deal was, although they did take out funding for a few things, some of which got added back separately. But for the most part, they took out funding for a few things, but it was it was nominal for the most part. It was very similar to the original deal.
|
Sam:
[1:01:22]
| And and they got it done. But the John promise is the thing. Yes, there are two there are two two things that came out of this. What first of all, Donald Trump got a list of 38 Republicans who would be willing to vote against him from that middle vote. OK, so that did he did get that. And then the Johnson promise that you mentioned is that apparently the deal to get Republicans on board, to get the reluctant Republicans on board with this final deal, and Donald Trump and Musk, was that they basically promised, okay, they will do a debt limit increase in six months or whenever that comes up. But they promised they'd increase the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, but they'd make up for it with $2.5 trillion in spending cuts.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:16]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:02:18]
| Which which is what the the the elon musk's doge thing has been promising that they want to do anyway or what i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:27]
| At a 2.5 trillion or what time frame because that's the other thing i didn't see anybody mention a time frame.
|
Sam:
[1:02:33]
| Nobody ever does they always use they always finesse over those kinds of things usually it's the 10-year budget horizon but you know who knows wait.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:41]
| Why are you Like these people, the usual, I'm sure that they are thinking 2.5 trillion in one year.
|
Sam:
[1:02:50]
| There are probably some people who are thinking that and some people who are thinking 10, they leave it intentionally ambiguous so everybody can read into it what they want.
|
Monica:
[1:02:58]
| Oh, wow.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:00]
| But it's 2.5 trillion in one year is the most, I mean, hey, do you want to cause the most chaos at a recession? And like, just, I don't know. Listen, you have to cut it. It's just about everything.
|
Sam:
[1:03:13]
| It it it's impossible it's impossible that i mean and the thing is there was reporting i believe it was in the hill that you know the republicans who agreed to it based on this promise know it's bullshit they know it's bullshit they know it but they need the cover of the promise in order to be able to say that they agree this.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:35]
| Is the whole thing that you were talking about their lack of interest in any governing whatsoever and that it's just all about fluff and promise and bullshit and And here's another thing. Forget, you know, I realize that Sam always reminds me this again. It doesn't matter to actually do it because even if they don't do it, they will say they did. And lie about it. They will just say, oh, oh, yeah, we cut. Yes, we cut a trillion dollars out of it. They didn't do anything, but they will say they did.
|
Monica:
[1:04:00]
| And people will believe it because basically it's getting to be to the point where they tell people what they want to hear.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:08]
| Yep.
|
Monica:
[1:04:08]
| And whether it's the truth or not.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:11]
| I don't know how to go check.
|
Monica:
[1:04:12]
| Yeah, no, even if they could, where would they go?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:15]
| Right. Who's reliable? God. Well, I keep popping tile and all of a sudden every day.
|
Sam:
[1:04:23]
| Because a major part of this is make it so you don't trust anybody. Like, they don't mind that you don't trust them because it means you don't trust anybody else either. And so you're susceptible to whatever.
|
Monica:
[1:04:32]
| And that's straight out of, you know, Putin's playbook, as it were.
|
Sam:
[1:04:35]
| Yeah, well, replayed from the Nazis. I mean, I think the whole thing about, like, flood the zone and make them not trust anything, not trust truth, that was Goebbels.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:49]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:04:49]
| So.
|
Monica:
[1:04:50]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:04:51]
| Oh, anyway, so we have the budget deal, but we've kicked out, like Trump wanted to actually get rid of the debt limit entirely, which by the way, this is one of those clock stopped things. Like we should get rid of the debt limit entirely.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:08]
| Sam, Sam, but wait a second. Hold it. Hold it. Trump said that next year he was going to pay off all the debt.
|
Sam:
[1:05:18]
| He said that a few times in the past. Right. has he said it recently? I don't know.
|
Monica:
[1:05:24]
| I don't think he's talking about the debt. He's going to take care of grocery prices?
|
Sam:
[1:05:26]
| Yeah. He's going to take care of groceries. Although he did in an interview last week say that, oh, maybe, maybe not that, that sounds kind of hard. But, but no, we have, we have, we have the deal. He did not get rid of the debt limit. He had the promise for another debt limit increase. Like he's explicitly said he wanted to have this crisis now so it can be blamed on biden rather than in nine months when it'll be blamed on him no you know.
|
Monica:
[1:05:58]
| Really nah nah.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:00]
| Nah he would never do that what do you what come on now.
|
Monica:
[1:06:04]
| Two things i'm following right now one is and you've probably got this marked in your calendar yvonne is january 15th that is when the deadline for the so the longshoremen when they were striking or going to strike. They agreed with Biden to go ahead and agree to an extension. That extension expires on January 15th.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:27]
| Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah.
|
Monica:
[1:06:29]
| The other thing is the emergence of this bird flu, which seems to be already at epidemic levels and may reach pandemic levels very, very soon. Now, when is that going to happen? And what are those things that'll look like in a new, as i call it trump regime so these people who have the attention sensitive than that everything's going to come home to roost probably within two weeks of the new regime being.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:55]
| Installed here here's going to be the thing uh vaccines will be developed again and none of them will take it yeah and you know we'll have to go to canada maybe rfk.
|
Sam:
[1:07:09]
| Will make sure they're not approved anyway for.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:11]
| Any right well we'll have to go to canada or somewhere to get them. Okay. And, you know, here, the one thing is to me is to these people, even with so many dead, always, I had relatives that died in the pandemic. Okay.
|
Monica:
[1:07:27]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:28]
| I mean, some of these people had people die in their families and they still like.
|
Monica:
[1:07:32]
| They don't connect.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:34]
| No, they won't. They can't connect the dots. They can't connect the dots.
|
Monica:
[1:07:38]
| They connect the dots. They connect the completely.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:40]
| Well, they connect the dots that they want to connect.
|
Monica:
[1:07:42]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:44]
| You know, we'll skip over a few. And like, you know, this looks like a plane. I couldn't help something. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:07:51]
| But anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:52]
| Yeah. It's going to be. I mean, I, one of the things that is definitely very scary is what happens in another public, if we get another public health emergency like this. I actually, to be honest, like I, I, I, I'm praying that it doesn't turn it to that.
|
Sam:
[1:08:07]
| Well, just generally any emergency slash crisis, like, you know, it just happened that the pandemic was the one that actually hit the previous Donald Trump administration. But basically, as long as he's coasting on things that are sort of acting normal, you know but like as soon as there's a crisis uh.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:25]
| I will i will say one look i i to be to be clear i despise trump to the to to my core and i've done the worst thing is why is i have always sam knows this i was not new to hating trump even before he ran for president i thought trump was a scumbag dating back to the 90s i mean i you know it's just i'm always bewildered by all this trump adulation you know so i i always just like that's the bad's up that's a terrible business man but and so uh i happen to actually have the fortune also of working out for several years with somebody who was a big person in commercial real estate uh in new york at that time okay right who actually was my workout partner for about three or four years and he told me all these stories about how nobody would do business with trump on any deals because they all knew that he was like a fake that everything was just all bullshit and that there was no way to ever do your.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:22]
| Business so i kind of like that background that he doesn't pay he doesn't pay the deals that he that he does are losers you know he'll always welch on any deal it was just it was just well known in the commercial in commercial real estate and so it's one of those things that that had me on that but the one thing that i will say after caveating all that that i i will say that about Trump is positive. He's very gun-shy.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:47]
| Literally in terms of armed conflict. Okay. That is the only thing that I can say that I, I, I, thankfully that he, he showed, because there was a couple of incidents where I do think that if it was a democratic president, they may have launched like airstrikes or done some other stuff or whatever. There was this Iran attack that happened on this base and where we did a very limited response where I know John Bolton was shopping at the bit at launching some massive attack against they're on and trump said no and so that is about the only instinct that i have seen that this man has that i'm like maybe that could avert something okay but other than that the guy is just terrible other.
|
Sam:
[1:10:31]
| Than that we're sort of counting on like i mean if he does everything he said he wants to do it would be awful we're sort of.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:38]
| Counting on incompetence.
|
Sam:
[1:10:42]
| Again yeah we're counting on incompetence. And one of the things that have been said this time around versus last time around is A, all of the guardrails are gone. B, there are some people that he has brought on board that have spent the last four years trying to figure out how to actually do it this time. But the one thing I'd say is his cabinet choices so far are leaning towards the incompetent side.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:10]
| So So I mean, incompetence likes company, you know, Trump is very good at service.
|
Sam:
[1:11:18]
| Yeah. But speaking of incompetence in this, back to the events of the last few days with the budget stuff or the spending stuff, whatever it is. Musk a lot has been said about how like musk drove this he started it he pushed it like yeah and he got all of the attention and what does this mean in terms of and and musk's role going forward and how pissed is trump about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:46]
| And and and and that's my thing because at some yes listen number one person that wants adulation is trump if if elon must start stealing the spotlight at some point he is going to turn oh yeah he's going to turn against him i have zero doubts about this no.
|
Monica:
[1:12:04]
| No definitely i mean yeah definitely well i think that was probably musk flexing his muscle to see what he could do in terms of influence.
|
Sam:
[1:12:14]
| Well apparently you can do a lot well yeah but the thing is at the end though he did well no he he he but he didn't get what he wanted it then, although there were a few token things in there, so he can claim he got something. But he showed that he was able to throw a wrench in the works and stop something cold. The fact that he wasn't able to replace it with his preference, okay, maybe shows the limits of that, but he was able to stop it cold and cause a 48-hour delay or whatever it was in getting this thing done. So he did absolutely flex that he's got a bunch of power right now. He kind of showed that maybe he didn't quite understand what all the moving bits were and how to actually get something done. And I saw people talking about this in terms of a conflict between.
|
Sam:
[1:13:18]
| A Washington DC culture of process versus a Elon Musk text tech bro culture of just worry about the result and don't worry about how you get there. And, and the, and the clash of cultures that will cause and, and was shown this week. Um, but I, I don't know. I think it's, I think there's several dynamics there. One is that Elon Musk has shown that he has a lot of weight to throw around. It shows that he doesn't know how to use that weight to actually accomplish a goal. And it puts him up against Donald Trump because even if Trump hasn't said anything yet, this has got to be the kind of thing that pisses him off because there are all these memes going around. I mean, the Democrats are doing it intentionally, of course, calling like President Musk, President-elect Musk, blah, blah, blah. Oh, Donald Trump's just acting as vice president now. Like, Musk is clearly the one in control. And they're doing just to get under Trump's skin. And the thing is, it's the kind of thing that does get under Trump's skin.
|
Monica:
[1:14:29]
| He is that shallow. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:32]
| Yes, absolutely.
|
Monica:
[1:14:34]
| He shouldn't even have been in charge of his family's business. He ran that into the ground. I used to joke, I said, you know, that man shouldn't have been allowed to run that. He couldn't even run the Bluth Popsicle, a banana stand, much less anything else. so i don't know it's just.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:51]
| Very very but.
|
Monica:
[1:14:53]
| The weird thing is that people see themselves in him they get they buy into that what they see as glamour what they see as wealth and prestige and they think oh i can i can have that i can do that and i can be that that crass jerk and get ahead and it just doesn't work that way i.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:13]
| Unfortunately can i can i yeah unfortunately in many cases they to get away with this shit i wish less i wish less did but there is a subset there is a significant subset of these grifters me living i i i unfortunately you know well no i'm not gonna say unfortunately because i like living in pall beach county despite the fact that we've been invaded a lot more by these guys coming in recently okay you know i've met so many of these different real estate developers like this okay that i've had clashes with over certain things in business, okay? And man, they all operate very similar way. They're all slumlords. They all cheat. They don't pay their vendors. They try to like just, you know, snow you with lawyers and shit and, you know, and they will just, you know, spend every dime they can on every lawyer to obstruct everything. And yet somehow, even after criminal actions against them or whatever, they figure out another way to get another hundred million to borrow somebody and bamboozle a whole bunch of other people. But it's a horrible, I can't understand how they, it has to be, how they live with themselves screwing that many people. Because I just cannot, I cannot fathom it, but it's their MO and they double, triple down on it.
|
Monica:
[1:16:39]
| I'm not necessarily talking about those sorts of folks. They're kind of higher up on the Ponzi scheme. I'm talking about the rank of file. People say- Oh, those guys. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:50]
| Oh, those guys are all useful idiots to them. They're all good.
|
Monica:
[1:16:53]
| Yeah. And I don't, I really haven't figured out how to, we say, oh, we want to educate them. Now, the new thing is like, oh, well, screw education. That's not going to work. We have to manipulate them.
|
Sam:
[1:17:06]
| Well, this brings me back to one of the things that I've said repeatedly on the retrospectives of the campaign, and Yvonne's going to be like, oh, there he goes again. But the weird thing was working. like that i think and i'd actually said this for years the way to burst this bubble is not by talking about how trump and his cronies are dangerous or any of this because people like dangerous yeah people want that people want like somebody to to break up the system and bust it down no the mocking him and belittling him the the they are weird they're weirdos they're the belittling him as like, oh, look, he's stupid, he's whatever. The mocking in general, the putting him down in that way, the making fun of him, the laughing at him, not being scared of them, but laughing at them. If you look at, on my electiongraphs.com site, when you look at the odds curve for how they were doing for the election, the entire time that the Harris campaign was being positive about themselves and mocking about the Republicans, they were improving every week. As soon as they switched to emphasize the danger of Donald Trump, they started losing ground.
|
Monica:
[1:18:32]
| It started to sound a lot like the Clinton campaign. And that really bugged me. I mean, half of the Clinton campaign was about, oh, love Trump's hate. And you're putting Trump and the damn slogan.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:41]
| Yeah, I know.
|
Monica:
[1:18:42]
| And I'm wondering, I really...
|
Sam:
[1:18:45]
| Yeah, and they made it about him again. And when it's about Trump, he wins.
|
Monica:
[1:18:51]
| And I'm just feeling like, it's like, I think...
|
Sam:
[1:18:55]
| Well, they made it about the danger specifically.
|
Monica:
[1:18:58]
| The Pod Save America gang might not have been the right... Call for the Harris campaign, they probably shouldn't end up completely different people entirely.
|
Sam:
[1:19:08]
| Yeah. I mean, they brought in a bunch of Obama people around that time. And I think this was their influence primarily. And there are all kinds of other factors, but like we said, there were global headwinds. There were all kinds of things. They might've been in a no-win scenario anyway, but I think they actually came close and I think they did rely on the wrong people and took the wrong direction in the last like 30 to 40 days of the.
|
Monica:
[1:19:36]
| Campaign and my hope is they don't do what we did after 2016 and went oh yeah we sorry uh we need an old way.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:46]
| You can curse i mean jesus we.
|
Monica:
[1:19:48]
| I don't know why we've been on our we can't have a woman run for president i mean we had a glut of there were 29 democratic camp candidates in 2020 including telsey gabbard No. By the time Super Tuesday ran around, four women United States senators were out of the race. I believe, and this might be a minority view.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:09]
| That 2028, if we get there.
|
Monica:
[1:20:12]
| Touch wood, is the prime time to champion a woman candidate. Because our people, by that I mean the public, will have had four years of chaos and God knows what else, maybe pestilence and all the other four horsemen named hog lips.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:30]
| I always, listen, I will say this. Look, I always liked Joe Biden. Okay, all right? I'm going to be on that camp. Okay, all right. But one thing is that I did not vote for him in the 2020 primary. Okay? I voted actually for Harris. Okay? At the time opportunity.
|
Monica:
[1:20:48]
| Otherwise I would have done.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:49]
| But I voted for Harris and, you know, she didn't get the nomination and, you know, I, you know, one of the things that I, I hate getting into perfectionist squabbles is that, you know, man, Joe Biden is a, is a great person. And I, I had no qualms about the fact that, Hey, if he's, if he's on the top of the ticket, I'm, I'm all for it because he is a great person and showed himself to actually be a great president. You know, that there is no doubt about that. I mean, well, there's no doubt about anybody.
|
Sam:
[1:21:27]
| Even though nobody remembered, nobody cared. Nobody cares.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:32]
| He got a ton of stuff done. Okay. Compared to many other administrations. And so the reality is that for me, for 2028, I'm one that, you know, we, we just, Thank you. And perfectionism is the one thing that keeps getting us into trouble and having these situations like this.
|
Sam:
[1:21:54]
| Like all the people saying that because Biden had the wrong position on Gaza, they weren't going to vote at all or they were going to vote for Stein or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:03]
| Exactly. And it's just like, OK, you know, you're literally instead of like, OK, you know, you've got one guy that's heading in the same direction you are. Doesn't it's not 100 percent, but it's close. Instead, you choose to vote for somebody who basically will try to do the opposite, who had a son-in-law that basically said that Gaza should be flattened and condos should be built. And I'm like, how is that helpful?
|
Monica:
[1:22:27]
| Again, facts. Facts are irrelevant, as you positioned earlier.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:31]
| Yeah. fuck no i know well i said fuck actually not facts because it's like you know just these people's oh yeah there's that yeah yeah i mean it's like every it's everything is a what the fuck moment every time i hear one of these damn explanations yeah it's true because.
|
Monica:
[1:22:48]
| I mean i i am an i wouldn't say an older older person but i'm a mature person and there are.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:55]
| Some i'm older i'm not gonna say i'm mature, but definitely I'm older.
|
Monica:
[1:22:59]
| Mature years, let's put it that way.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:01]
| Mature years, yeah.
|
Monica:
[1:23:02]
| Not young anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:03]
| That's for sure.
|
Monica:
[1:23:05]
| And I was able to get, I think, a pretty good education. I mean, granted, I'm not Yale Law or anything like that, but I had a pretty good public school education. I got my mother's teachers when they were, I got, my mother's teachers were young when she went to high school. I got the older version. And then I wound up going to Northwestern, but I transferred back to a Catholic college to be closer to the FAM. And I went to law school. So I got the education that I think I needed and the skill set that I needed. And a lot of folks don't have that these days.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:42]
| But listen, do you understand that these people are like, expertise and knowledge are bullshit now.
|
Monica:
[1:23:50]
| They're all they all you know it's like oh gosh i think it's fahrenheit 451 isn't it when he talks about how we got how the how his part of society wound up getting to the point where they burned books right and it was about how they didn't want to marginalize this person or that person so they wound up just basically getting rid of everything And nobody knew anything anymore. And that's kind of where we're headed towards. And it is very, very scary. And I tell people, I feel like I'm like the prophet Jeremiah shouting in the wind sometimes. I say, you know, don't confuse information with knowledge. And don't confuse knowledge with wisdom.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:37]
| And don't confuse people that know how to make money with them being smart. Which is a bigger problem that we have.
|
Monica:
[1:24:45]
| I used to get on my goat a lot of times. I thought to myself, why am I not in a huge firm making bank? Because I've got the education. What am I struggling for? But then I realized money was not what motivated me. Education was. Arts were. And the only reason people who are wealthy are wealthy is because they are motivated by money.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:11]
| Yeah wait wait wait hold on not totally that okay all right you know there are, you know i will say now i will say this there are and it's not the only reason but the thing is that you have to be multifaceted to do that and the thing is that it that making money doesn't make you the fact that you can make money or you're good at one skill that gets, remunerated greatly, say like a great surgeon. Okay. For example, a great surgeon may be very good at surgery and they may be very good at the procedure and making money in there and they know about the procedure and whatever. It doesn't mean they have general knowledge about everything. And that's a reality of a lot of folks that they may have one skill, which they excel that gets them, that gets them greatly remunerated.
|
Sam:
[1:25:57]
| But, but also, you also got to remember in all these situations when you're judging like the person who is successful whether it be wealth fame whatever there is also always a huge portion of it that's just plain luck you know there is, skill matters but so does including the luck of your birth like yeah no no no totally when you were born yeah.
|
Monica:
[1:26:23]
| Generational things i mean i do not come from wealthy people i mean i don't come from broke people, but I don't come from wealthy people either.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:31]
| But I think it's just that there is this spectrum of where you've got, different motivations, different sets of skills and, and, and what makes, but, but again, the one thing is that I, I, I, we have so many Americans that idolize just the fact of making money as equating that with any smarts. And, and that, that, that is, that is not, that is not the case. It, you know, it's like, there are so many other things that, that come into play about somebody being, being, being smart. I mean, we, we talk about like, for example, I'm somebody that's business, you know, in terms of knowledge, I, I go and I, and I say that what I have is broader knowledge, but only in depth in certain things. Well, one of the important things about that I say quality of the smartest people that I've met is, is that to know what, you know and to know what you don't know. And so if you're good at saying, well, I don't know about this, I need an expert, then you wind up excelling more than many others. And that's the one thing that I think that a lot of people right now, because they make so much money on one thing, they come to think that, well, they must know about everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:50]
| And that's not the case. But the other thing also is, what do you want to balance in life? I have a brother-in-law who works at one of those big law firms okay all right and and is making that kind of money okay and now i will say that i think probably more primary motivation for him is he wanted to to make money but he has six kids one of them with like autism that is very severe and i i think that one of his primary things has been well i need to make sure that they're taking care of that especially you know, that they're taken care of as best as possible, you know, afterwards and make sure that every one of my kids has an education and that every one of them is able to be independent on their own, you know, and those things. And, you know, when you have six of them and you want to like give them all a, as good as, as you can, something as good as your, your father did when you only were two brothers, you know, you only were two or three, it, it, it drives certain things. I think that everybody values, you know, certain things differently. And... Making the money some people value the money just for the money you know uh and that that's those people are for some people.
|
Sam:
[1:29:02]
| It's how you keep score.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:03]
| Yes it's how you keep score.
|
Monica:
[1:29:04]
| What's the most choice wins.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:06]
| Yeah yeah i'm one that i i will say i i do like to make money but at the same time i do it but but sam knows that i'm like i value my quality time i i i like to do to do it in order to i don't know my love my son loves to go to disney a lot and i'm like he's 12 years old he's got autism and i'm like well damn it he doesn't know the difference between one one cent and one billion dollars and i'm like you know what i said fuck make enough money so i can take him as many times as he damn wants you know and that to me is more important than than, than most other things so you know it's always like different uh what motivates and drives people i say sam i know wants to order pizzas delivered so he doesn't have to cook he hates to cook well he doesn't well no he doesn't know i saw him cook well it's not a lot of cooking he does know how to put stuff in a microwave and in an oven sam when we were in college i.
|
Sam:
[1:30:02]
| Have a i have a limited repertoire that.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:04]
| I could conceivably do but sam used to in college go make this massive massive bowl of pasta and stick a pound stick a whole thing of butter in it and that was his meal for 24 hours i learned that from you you're.
|
Sam:
[1:30:19]
| The one who taught me that.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:20]
| That's right but i didn't tell you the whole that that's true i did teach you how to do that and it was like his meal for a while or just just a massive or just massive bowls of popcorn with just like enough salt to basically like you know mummify something you know exactly yeah that was like those things yeah and uh and uh and the frozen rolls the frozen oh.
|
Monica:
[1:30:43]
| Yes yes yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:44]
| He had a little like uh crescent rolls and things. He had a little toaster oven. He could put those in the oven. Yeah. He got an endless supply of those.
|
Monica:
[1:30:52]
| Well, that could be an entirely different podcast to what you all cooked when your wife was taking care of her mother.
|
Sam:
[1:31:01]
| Oh, we didn't. We didn't. The giant bowls of popcorn and ordering food delivered the entire time. Okay.
|
Monica:
[1:31:10]
| I guess that's why the good Lord made Grubhub.
|
Sam:
[1:31:12]
| Yes exactly exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:14]
| Exactly that's you've got now now you understand that you know if you told sam what do i want to make money for so i don't ever have to, go to a store or cook anything ever again. And that would be like, that's his nirvana.
|
Sam:
[1:31:31]
| My, my, my good wife of course disagrees, but I have been quoted before complaining on why I couldn't buy a, rent an apartment or buy a house without a kitchen. Cause it was the most useless room in the house.
|
Monica:
[1:31:45]
| Well, well, maybe a little kitchenette. I mean, all these things.
|
Sam:
[1:31:50]
| Well, fridge, whatever you can put that into bedroom. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:55]
| Maybe a little bit different.
|
Monica:
[1:31:56]
| Well, it'd be like college again, wouldn't it? You have your micro fridge or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:00]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we want. That's all you need. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:32:03]
| That's all you need.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:04]
| You need to move back to Hampshire Hall.
|
Sam:
[1:32:07]
| Since we're going off track, shall we take another break real quick and then wrap it up with whatever is left?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:32:13]
| Okay. And Yvonne complained last time that the break we had was one with us making goofy noises and sound.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:20]
| No, no, I did not complain.
|
Sam:
[1:32:22]
| And he said, if only that break had been the Ray Lynch break, because that would be more impressive for Monica.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:29]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:32:30]
| As it happens, I pick these breaks randomly, but the next one is the Ray Lynch.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:35]
| Oh, thank God. This is great. We're all complete. Well, we are nuts, but not completely off the rails.
|
Sam:
[1:32:42]
| So here we go. Here's the two minute Ray Lynch break, and then we'll be back and I don't know. I'll pick something to talk about and then we'll wrap it up. Here we go.
|
Monica:
[1:32:50]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:34:51]
| Okay we are back okay so i i was thinking you know there are a lot of things on on the potential topics list you know the the tiktok ban the the funny willis the gates report uh the potential speaker race all this kind of stuff but since since we have monica i i want to get uh her her take on a little bit. Because in terms of what the Democrats are currently doing in Congress nationally, one of the things that happened in the last week was this whole thing with AOC running for the chair of the House Oversight Committee and Pelosi and company actively lobbying against her to get, you know, this guy was ahead of her in seniority. He's in his 70s. He was just diagnosed with throat cancer. He's, you know, but he's part of the old guard. And I'll tell you my take on this is that, first of all, you know, when AOC first came on the scene, I felt like, you know, there are a lot of policy things where I felt like she was very naive and her approach was very naive in a lot of things.
|
Sam:
[1:36:12]
| But I felt like she, from the very beginning, had a lot of energy and appeal as well. And I think after a few years in Congress, she's matured a lot. She's grown up. She knows the ropes a little bit. Now, a lot of people on the progressive side seem to think that she's betrayed them in some way because she's willing to work the system. But at the same time, I feel like this whole Pelosi putting the thumb on the scale and them going with the old guy rather than the young blood is a mistake. That I think like just in general, the, the old guard that's not, not even boomers, we're talking silent generation, still like having trouble letting go and not necessarily having the right time. Approach to be like, we're about to enter at least two years, maybe for where like the Democrats are 100% in the opposition nationally.
|
Sam:
[1:37:20]
| And how do you make the best of that bad situation? And I feel like a lot of the old school Democrats are still feeling like, okay, well, we'll try to figure out how to work with the Trump administration and we'll do this and we'll do that. And, and to some degree, like you want to mitigate the damage and to some degree that requires negotiations, blah, blah, blah. But I feel like the just general approach of like, has not been working in terms of what they've been doing. And for God's sake, it's time to let the new blood in, even if it's, even if they aren't going to do exactly what you hope they would do? I don't know. What are your thoughts, Monica?
|
Monica:
[1:38:08]
| I think this might be one of those things where we might disagree.
|
Sam:
[1:38:11]
| Okay, that's cool.
|
Monica:
[1:38:12]
| The first thing that I really do wish a layperson would realize, and when people say they get on their horse about, oh, why didn't so-and-so do this or why didn't so-and-so do that? I wonder what sort of things are going on that we are not privy to. At all. And I hearken back also to my former congressman, Rick Larson, who is the ranking member of the Transportation Committee. So he's ranking member of the Transportation Committee. He started being the ranking member of the Transportation Committee in 2022. Rick was elected to Congress in 2001 or 2000. So that's 20 years before you get to be ranking.
|
Sam:
[1:38:59]
| Oh, there's certainly a put-in-your-dues structure.
|
Monica:
[1:39:04]
| That's what I'm thinking.
|
Sam:
[1:39:05]
| And a lot of it, by the way, is deserved because you learn the ropes and you learn what works and what doesn't and what's important and how to get things done. And so there is a strong argument for put-in-your-dues.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:20]
| Yeah, but I'm also remembering that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama got to be president before they were 50s. Okay frankly i didn't.
|
Monica:
[1:39:29]
| Vote for either of them i.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:31]
| Voted i.
|
Monica:
[1:39:32]
| Voted for barack obama in 2012 but i could never bring myself to vote for bill clinton because i hated how he treated the women in his life.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:39]
| Well i was well but but but you know but i'm not even bringing that i'm not saying about about whether one voted or not what my point is the age okay the reality is that this was much they were much younger you know and you know a lot of times i do get the waiting like.
|
Sam:
[1:40:02]
| What less than less than a.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:03]
| Full term in the senate full term in the senate i i do think that i i get for wait looks i do understand how committee assignments and certain things that you want certain people to have certain experience and i get that but i also still see a lot of like not wanting to let go of power and that's the part where i'm just like look guys okay i'm sorry you're already past 80. Okay. Look, I'm like, at least for God's sakes, and maybe, you know, and by the way, Gen X has bored a brunt more of this. And it's not just the government, but across the board and in every, in every, in every, in everywhere. You know, I remember when I joined Hewlett Packard back in the nineties. Okay. And every leader that was in executive positions was in their forties. Okay. Okay. And I still remember how most of those leaders never let go. So we would get those jobs like they just wouldn't at all, ever. They just wouldn't let go. And when they would wind up promoting us into those positions many times, they would wind up giving us half the money that we're getting paid, which I'm just like, well, you're just some young, dumb, whatever. Now you're not making up by you, you, you, you, you, you gotta pay less. And I'm like, what the hell is this? Okay. And I think that I'm one that I get maybe not talking about AOC specifically, just taking that aside.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:30]
| You know, I know that Hakeem Jeffries is right now the leader of the House.
|
Sam:
[1:41:36]
| Yeah. Like Pelosi did step aside. Yeah. Pelosi did step aside.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:42]
| Yeah. But she's still exerting a lot of influence.
|
Sam:
[1:41:44]
| She's still exerting a lot of influence. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:47]
| Yeah. Yeah, it is a thing.
|
Monica:
[1:41:48]
| How much do we actually know that it was Nancy that did it? And the other.
|
Sam:
[1:41:53]
| Thing is— There was a lot of reporting that she was going around with.
|
Monica:
[1:41:56]
| Yeah, reporting. Again, how much of that is accurate? I mean, I posit this to you. You have a problem with age right now. If we didn't have the problem with age that we have, Joe Biden would be president next month.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:09]
| I'm with you, and I would have voted for Joe Biden in a heartbeat. But here's the one thing. But there's two different things in play here. One is, look, to be fair, by the way, like I said, I love Joe Biden. I'm like, look, I would have voted for a corpse against Trump. OK, all right. You know, literally. I mean, if the candidate had died before and is still on the ballot, I would have voted for the dead guy.
|
Monica:
[1:42:36]
| Sure.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:36]
| OK, so there is this one thing, and it doesn't mean that I don't love it. But I do think that we, look, amongst leadership in this country in general, okay, I'm talking in general. We have had a stint of a generation that basically has held on to many reigns of power, whether it's in corporate America, political America, far longer than previous generations used to. In part because not so many of them lived that long.
|
Sam:
[1:43:06]
| But also, just to be clear, it's not just – yeah, I know. It's definitely like there's that population bulge that's working its way out of their system.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:16]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:43:16]
| But it's also – it's not just about age. It's also about approach. I think part of the problem, and getting back to politics as opposed to business, although the same thing may apply in business, there's a lot of, you know, this is the way we do it because this is how we've always done it, which is not working in the modern day and is revealing sort of a lack of understanding of a lot of dynamics. Like one of the things that was brought up as a critique of the Harris campaign was a lot of emphasis on traditional media. Like they were buying tons of commercials everywhere. And whereas a lot of what was actually reaching people was Internet stuff that they emphasized less. They didn't do nothing, of course, but they emphasized less. And does part of that come from just having people in charge who grew up when, of course, that's how you do it? And one of the criticisms of Biden was he spent way too long trying to get back to, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:44:21]
| The ideal of how we do things is bipartisan deals and we work with the other side and we make blah, blah, blah, whereas we have a Republican Party now who's not interested in doing that. And so maybe he should have jettisoned a lot earlier and said, okay, we're going to go full speed ahead with what we can do on our own, which he eventually did. But it took him a long time to get there. And just in general, that a lot of the leadership that we're talking about, oh, they're hanging on longer than they should. But part of it is not just, okay, they've been around a long time, they're old. It's that they're still pushing old approaches where we really need something fresh.
|
Monica:
[1:45:04]
| You have to balance that, though. Here's what I see. I see folks who are very eager to try something new simply for the sake of trying something new.
|
Sam:
[1:45:16]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:17]
| True. True.
|
Monica:
[1:45:19]
| And at least specifically the proverbial case at Barr with Representative Ocasio-Cortez. Yes, he is very media savvy. That is not the same thing as chairing an oversight committee. I don't know. It doesn't seem like the fellow that they ultimately selected is all that great either.
|
Sam:
[1:45:38]
| Frankly. Well, the thing is, too, just as a member of the oversight committee, she has... Shown on a number of different occasions, the ability to use that platform very, very well. And so the idea is maybe because she's done very well as a member of that committee, maybe she could do well as a chair. You're right. It's not necessarily the skillset. And she can continue to do well as a member, as a member.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:04]
| Well, Monica, I will say one thing. My advocacy for something new is not just because of something new i i i have observed over the last decade plus we talk about the media landscape changing where the biggest influence where the biggest influences in the media landscape are new media not old media and the reality is that the younger generation is a lot savvier than that and for whatever the hell damn reason the the right wingers have been the ones that have been the most adept at using that new media in large part because they used to be listen because their views were so insane that that okay yes we're not going to put nazis on nbc right right because that we're not doing that we're okay you know we're not platforming nazis we're not we're not we're not platforming you know people that hate homosexuals we're not gonna we're not gonna go and like platform people because it it seemed like on a general basis that that seemed especially given from where we came from, the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and this evolution that we did in rights amongst groups, that that's not the right thing to do. Well, all those rails, like you talked about, equal time or whatever, are gone. And the reality is that when you look at the most popular platforms in that space, they're all right-wing.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:31]
| I mean, they're all right-wing. the Infowars, Joe Rogan, all these damn, all these damn people. And I, and I'm just like, look, unless we bring in a generation that is as savvy as using that and using that power and harnessing it to communicate a different message, these people have an advantage right now that is, is difficult to overcome. And that's my thought in terms of bring them in younger that, that are a lot to our cause. They know how to use that platform. We need them to use that platform. We need them to be out there in order and we need to empower them so they can be heard more. That's, that's my thing. And it's not, you know, I, you know, yeah, I'm not trying new things for new things. I'm like, there is some specific, hole that we have right now. And somehow that needs to be filled. And I don't think that I'm going to get Nancy or a whole bunch of people that are from her group to be TikTok stars right now.
|
Sam:
[1:48:36]
| I want to see Nancy Pelosi's TikTok dance.
|
Monica:
[1:48:40]
| So because a person can't dab, they can't be president? Or I don't get it.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:44]
| It's not that they can't. No, it's just, it's not that they can't dab, they can't be president. It's just that I'm not even saying, I'm not saying about the presidential candidate. I'm saying that we need to move more of those people into the forefront of certain leadership positions and places so they can influence the agenda out there. And it doesn't mean that they are going to be the presidential candidate, but it does mean that the social discourse needs to change where only the right wingers are the ones monopolizing it. Even on the Republican side, it's not that those people are the ones that wound up being president. They push for Trump, who couldn't do a TikTok if his life depended on it, okay, and probably needs his daily instructions on how to even post something on Truth Social, okay? So, yeah, no, but either we get that group together. In those positions. I mean, look at the damn people that he surrounded himself with in his cabinet, like guys like Steve Miller, for God's sake, psychopath, lunatic. But the guy, you know, uses that stuff. Alex Jones, Steve Bannon. I mean, who was a pioneer in that space?
|
Monica:
[1:49:46]
| That's, you know, because I do have.
|
Sam:
[1:49:49]
| Yeah, yeah. I was about to say, we're running up against the two hours and Monica has somewhere to go. So let's give her the last word on that.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:57]
| Let's give her the last word.
|
Sam:
[1:49:57]
| And then we can do the usual wrap-up of the show. So last word on this topic, Monica, you get to close it out.
|
Monica:
[1:50:07]
| I think that we need to do a lot more listening and a lot more learning and a lot less posturing. I think it's the time to do some reflection. And this particular holiday season, as Kamala Harris said, is the time to reflect and to go back with your families and to just think of what really matters to you and focus on a couple of things rather than try to fight the fire hose. Because it's coming. Get your energy, conserve your energy, get your group of folks. I mean, don't silo yourself, obviously, but you're going to need your friends for the next two to four years, definitely. And try to keep your relationships together and take a step back sometimes. Because I think a lot of times when we get to this non-legacy media stuff, this and when I say nascent media, back, back in the days of the Nazis, it was the radio, right? It's, we figured out.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:14]
| Exactly.
|
Monica:
[1:51:15]
| We figured out a way to, to do it. I think to be a little more reflective, to be a little more thinking things through, as we talked about earlier, rather than, you know, saying, okay, we got to do this. We got to do that. We got to do that. But maybe think those things through a little bit further and see where kind of the likely things, because we are going to be going up against people who, frankly, they don't care about our country. They just want to get as much money or whatever they can for themselves out of it, which to me is comical because we're only here on this planet for 70, 80 years. Then where does it go? And so I guess that's basically it. I'm going to try to listen more, as I have done here, and try to talk to some folks and see what they have to say, new and old. And try to use the brain of mine and hopefully form some conclusions that, that will work at least in my own backyard, if not, not nationally. But thank you both for letting me come onto your show. It was a lot of fun.
|
Sam:
[1:52:24]
| Oh, absolutely. And you're, you're, you're welcome to join us in the future as well. And, but yeah, I had a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming. Our wrap-up that we're about to do usually takes about 10 minutes you're free to drop off we have.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:41]
| To do it in like two minutes sam i already got the call.
|
Sam:
[1:52:43]
| Okay we'll do we'll do the speed version of it but anyway thank you mona thanks.
|
Monica:
[1:52:49]
| Very much have a good holiday season.
|
Sam:
[1:52:51]
| You too as well okay we.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:54]
| Have to do the super speedy version.
|
Sam:
[1:52:56]
| Hopefully she remembers to like save the thing uh anyway oh yes so the super speedy version first of all i meant to say this at the very beginning of the show, but we ended up just jumping into it. Next week is our prediction show. Next week, the link is tinyurl.com slash ccpred2025. If you want to add things that you want us to make predictions on. Ed and Bruce have already added a bunch of stuff, but we need more. So if you have not done this yet and you want to contribute and give us things that you want us to make predictions on next week. Do it now. We haven't decided exactly what day next week that we're going to be doing the show, but get it in early. Don't wait. As soon as you hear this, jump in and add things to the list. And then, yeah, so that's that. And once again, tinyurl.com slash ccpred2025. And yeah, curmudgeons-corner.com for the rest. All of our archives, our old shows, transcripts, links to our Facebook and email and all of this kind of stuff, all the ways to contact us. And of course, our Patreon, where you can give us money, various levels. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. We will...
|
Sam:
[1:54:13]
| Do all kinds of other stuff. I'll mention you on the show. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Curmudgeons Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week. And Yvonne, do you have something in mind or do you want to just jump out?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:30]
| No, no, we got it. We got to jump.
|
Sam:
[1:54:32]
| Got to jump out.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:32]
| Sorry, we got to jump today.
|
Sam:
[1:54:34]
| Yeah, sorry. Yvonne's got to go take care of his family.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:36]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:54:37]
| Who are still hospitalized in their bedrooms.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:40]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:54:40]
| Okay. Goodbye, everybody. Everybody. buddy. Goodbye. You know what I'm talking about. Have a great week. Stay safe. Have a good time. Oh, have a good holiday for anybody who's celebrating holidays. And we'll see you next week for The Prediction Show. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:57]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:55:29]
| Okay, that's it. Hitting stop.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:31]
| Stop.
| |
|
