Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:01]
| Welcome get the stream gun being very corporate today you are yeah i see your.
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Sam:
[0:12]
| Sponsorships okay let me do this, okay blah blah, and then do that. Okay, shall we just dump in or are there any preliminaries?
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Ivan:
[0:42]
| Not that I can think of right now.
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Sam:
[0:43]
| Okay, here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 25th, 2025. It is just after 18 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam and Trayvon Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
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Ivan:
[1:24]
| Hello.
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Sam:
[1:26]
| It is a day. So we're going to do our usual.
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Ivan:
[1:29]
| No, really?
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Sam:
[1:31]
| I know it is a day.
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Ivan:
[1:34]
| A day.
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Sam:
[1:35]
| A day.
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Ivan:
[1:36]
| Not the day. Not the day. Not D day.
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Sam:
[1:40]
| A day. A day. Okay. Tomorrow will be B day.
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Ivan:
[1:46]
| Okay. So this is the way we're starting this. Okay, good. All right.
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Sam:
[1:49]
| Very good.
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Ivan:
[1:50]
| We've got everything in order. Okay, great. Great.
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Sam:
[1:52]
| Okay, we're going to do our usual but first with random things to talk about. And then our two more serious segments after that. But, you know, nothing's happened this week, has it? It's going to be boring.
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Ivan:
[2:03]
| I mean, how much of real true substance happened? There is a number of things of true substance, yes. But there is a lot more smoke than actual substance so yeah a lot of stuff happened yes I mean I think we're finally going to get to the bottom of who killed JFK, You know, stuff like that, you know, stuff like that, very critical, critical, critical.
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Sam:
[2:34]
| OK, well, we'll get to the newsy stuff in the next segment. But you got any anything that non newsy, non less serious, whatever that you want to talk about, Dave? I know I have I have something on my agenda. I have two things on my agenda, actually.
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Ivan:
[2:49]
| You have two things. Wow.
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Sam:
[2:51]
| Two things.
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Ivan:
[2:52]
| Well, you know, I'm sitting here opening mail. OK. Yes. And I, you know, I still.
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Sam:
[3:02]
| Physical mail, to be clear.
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Ivan:
[3:03]
| Physical mail.
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Sam:
[3:04]
| We talked about email last week.
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Ivan:
[3:06]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This week I'm back on the subject of physical mail. You know, and one of the things about physical mail, you know, I still regularly check it. You know, not the way that I used to check it, I will admit. I used to be somebody that made sure that I got the mail every day.
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Ivan:
[3:31]
| You know, that was very important. And the mail had a lot more stuff. One of the big things that used to come in the mail, which is why I checked it every day, was like magazines and stuff. You know, so where you were going to read stuff, you know, but what the hell is going on? You know, I mean, those came in the mail, especially when I lived in Puerto Rico. It was like tougher to get those on the newsstand. You could, but there were not as many stores, especially around where I lived, to go get those. So you want to get the magazines in the mail, okay? All right. That's very, very critical. I remember that for a while, we also got the Wall Street Journal sent through the mail. It didn't print it in Puerto Rico. And that arrived usually like about four or five days after the day at print. Still a lot, you know, the daily news stuff, maybe not as relevant. As some of the, you know, more like analysis on other things that whatnot, but still pick that up. Had a guy that at our store that his number one job, literally his main job was to go to the post office to get the mail. There are two jobs that he had. Okay. Go to the post office and get the mail.
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Sam:
[4:44]
| Okay. Yeah.
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Ivan:
[4:44]
| Then go to the bank and deposit money because we ran a retail store and we got every day, lots of cash.
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Sam:
[4:52]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[4:53]
| I mean, you know, we, we had to, you had to go to the bank every day.
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Sam:
[4:57]
| You had to go physically deal with the cash.
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Ivan:
[4:58]
| Yes. There was, it was literally, I mean, even back in the day, thousands of dollars every day. I mean, on a, on a very, very busy day, I will say probably like one of the busiest days, it could exceed $20,000 in cash.
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Sam:
[5:13]
| Right. And just to be clear, we're not talking crazy numbers. This is just you have a store and people are coming in and buying stuff throughout the day. I mean, this is what happens. This is what happens.
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Ivan:
[5:25]
| You know.
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Sam:
[5:25]
| And like you said, back in the day, most of this was cash.
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Ivan:
[5:29]
| Like today- Most of it was cash. It was so rare that people paid with a credit card at our store. People pay with a credit card more often at the travel agency. And even that wasn't the preponderance of it. But in the 80s.
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Sam:
[5:44]
| Whereas today, cash has to be the exception, even at most stores.
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Ivan:
[5:48]
| Yeah. Yeah. Hell, there are stores now that don't even want to take cash. But every day, Marcial was the name of the guy. Rest in peace.
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Ivan:
[5:57]
| Old guy. Okay. He was old when I knew it was little. I mean, he had been a guy that, you know, we talk about immigrants and labor. He had, when Puerto Rico went through a very tough economic period in the 50s, he had emigrated to the U.S. And had worked the steel mills in Allentown, okay, for many years. Then he worked as not the driver because he couldn't really drive but as the as the sidekick for an ambulance driver service where they would go you know pick up paramedics where he wasn't really a paramedic he was just the the driver's sidekick okay basically okay and so he would he would run the sirens he would do the flash the lights he would do that stuff and then at some At some point, he retired, okay, and my grandfather knew him, and he was kind of bored puttering around. He had been divorced. He had kids, but they didn't live in Puerto Rico, and he moved back to our small town in Puerto Rico, very tiny town. And my grandfather basically gave him, you know, his odd job was go to a post office every day, go to the bank every day.
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Ivan:
[7:11]
| And to be clear, there is a reason why that was a job that took hours every day. This wasn't just a two minute run. OK, the the post office where, you know, we got most of our mail delivered. We had a P.O. box.
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Ivan:
[7:31]
| If any items that couldn't fit inside the P.O. box, you would have to make a line at the counter to pick up all this stuff. And because we got so much stuff, he would have to go over there and pick up the stuff, and then he would walk back, and then he would go and pick up the money and then go to the bank. And look, going to the bank, there was a big line.
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Ivan:
[7:55]
| I mean, this whole thing took an entire morning. Okay literally to get this shit done every day okay and and then by the way he would run and get me breakfast which that was great okay by the way because i liked it you know he would bring me my perfect cheese sandwich with with uh with my with my with my little cup of coffee you know with back then i drank it with milk i don't drink with milk but a perfectly made cup of coffee with milk was great all of a sudden i get i guess i got i got money in the bank and i get my i get my breakfast which is fantastic that was always very nice by the way he got pissed off if i asked somebody else to go get my breakfast okay that was his job okay nobody takes my job here and i'm sitting over here and opening opening the mail and i realize that back then because we got so much of it yes yeah yeah well you know because the courier but what is the reason it reminded me about the guy is because of the mail well we have these you know i have these little these little things that I would insert at the end of each letter envelope in order to quickly yeah I had these letter well you got the ones that are like a knife, not the letter openers but there are ones that were like a little like curved that had a little like blade in it you would just insert it and you could open and you needed that shit and when you're opening in a day.
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Ivan:
[9:15]
| 40, 50 letters you know every damn day you need one of those damn letter openers to go through all this shit okay, um you know so so yeah i mean i'm like right now realize that i'm opening this stuff and i'm like i'm kind of like wishing i had a letter opener right now you know but but but i don't have a letter opener and and the volume of mail i get i mean i literally i i go now that it's like once a week uh it's not a lot okay let me let.
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Sam:
[9:44]
| Wait let me let me tell you because you will be amused by this because of course like everything else i log this electronically i'm i'm showing the people on the screen. But, but so here, here, here's what I got. First of all, you caught me at a good time. It has only been a, one week, four days and 16 hours since the last time I've checked my mailbox.
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Ivan:
[10:06]
| Okay.
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Sam:
[10:06]
| Okay. But to be clear, the last time it had been over six weeks and they had put a little note in it that said, your mailbox is full. You had to go to the post office, which they do like if, you know, if it gets full and which happens to us once or twice a year. And so I did have to go to to post office and, you know, pick up a large bin of mail that had accumulated. And I actually had to go to the post office twice. Cause like what you were saying about lines at the post office, still true, actually.
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Ivan:
[10:37]
| Like I went to the employees now.
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Sam:
[10:41]
| So I went like the day that I was supposed to go to Olympia to witness my wife's swearing in, like, I was like, I'll go to the post office on the way. And it was like, you know, 9am or something. And I had to be there by noon and it's like a two hour drive to get there, whatever. So I went to the post office. I got there. There was a long line. I'm like, okay, I can wait in line. It'll move pretty quickly. It did not move pretty quickly.
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Ivan:
[11:06]
| It was a lot of people shipping parses is what I.
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Sam:
[11:09]
| There's a lot of people shipping partial. That's the most that by far that seems to be the biggest activity. And, but it was going really, really slowly. And so I got, I wasted about 20 minutes in line. And then I was like, I was looking at ways. I was looking at the amount of time it would take me to get to where I was going. And I was like, I can't, I gotta, I gotta bail. So I bailed out of the line. I went, and then I came back the next day. And when I had more time and I waited in line, I got my mail and it was a big, big package. But the point I wanted to make further is that it seems like, okay, six weeks, one time. Right now it's like a little, almost two weeks since last time you checked your mailbox. That's not too bad. But see, here's the thing. In our entryway, I have set up a whole set of bins to contain the mail. So I have a bin for Brandy, a bin for me, a bin for her campaign stuff, a bin for Alex, a bin for Amy.
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Ivan:
[12:08]
| So you open the front door of your house and you have mail bins. I mean, this feels like the time when I worked at HP where I had a mail slot for me.
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Sam:
[12:21]
| Exactly. Exactly like that. Except they're bigger than the mail slots you typically have. what I actually have, these are, these are the, it's the kind of container that's built for like shoes and stuff. So they're the size of shoe boxes. They have little doors on the front. I have labels on them, all of this kind of stuff. And so whenever I do get the mail, I sort them into these bins. And then I have sort of reminder tasks that I occasionally do to actually go through the bins and deal with whatever's inside. So how long do you think it's been since I have looked at my own personal bin to sort through and find and go through my stuff and see if there's anything important, throw away the stuff that's not important?
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Ivan:
[13:07]
| A year.
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Sam:
[13:10]
| Not quite that bad right now. 41 weeks.
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Ivan:
[13:13]
| Close.
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Sam:
[13:14]
| Specifically 40 weeks, six days, and 23 hours. Yeah.
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Ivan:
[13:17]
| Yeah. So so about 10 months.
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Sam:
[13:19]
| It was April 13th. It was April 13th. The last time it happened. The last time we've sat down and gone through Brandy's email. 62 weeks.
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Ivan:
[13:27]
| You mean mail, mail.
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Sam:
[13:29]
| Mail, mail, not email. 662 weeks, four days, 16 hours.
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Ivan:
[13:32]
| Okay, but if the notice is like, say, for example, I just pulled up a W-2, okay, which for something that my wife's doing, that they don't send an electronic W-2, for example.
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Sam:
[13:45]
| So here's what would happen.
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Ivan:
[13:47]
| Do you pull that stuff out first?
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Sam:
[13:50]
| No, but I don't even look at it. I only look at the name. I don't look at the sender. I don't look at anything about it whatsoever. So if there was something important in there, like a jury duty summons, or I'm being sued, or what, I guess you have to do some of those things in person. But if it was something important, like your house will be torn down by bulldozers in five weeks if you don't respond.
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Ivan:
[14:14]
| Unless you don't respond to this notice.
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Sam:
[14:15]
| I would not know. I would not know.
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Ivan:
[14:19]
| That's great, Sam.
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Sam:
[14:20]
| Now, here's the thing. The, yes. So what would happen in that case is when we sat down to do our taxes, if we recognized that something was missing, I would go look for that missing thing. But I would not find out.
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Ivan:
[14:36]
| Of course, here's the rub in this. You might not know that something came in for your taxes, okay? That may be in there. That sometimes happens because you didn't expect it. It was something new. Something changed. And so, you know, you get one of those. Like, you get a letter that you owe the money.
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Sam:
[15:01]
| Well, yes. Yes. And as you know, that particular thing with the IRS has caught us before. But, you know. You know so i'll eventually look at okay but here's another one while we're talking about this yeah i also have on my little thing that i note how long do you think it's been since i've listened to my voicemail.
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Ivan:
[15:23]
| Oh fuck well i think well do you okay probably.
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Sam:
[15:29]
| Or looked at i have that's barely or have you looked at it.
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Ivan:
[15:33]
| And just read the transcripts.
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Sam:
[15:35]
| No oh fuck you.
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Ivan:
[15:36]
| Don't even but do that. So, so a year.
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Sam:
[15:38]
| 88, at least 88 weeks.
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Ivan:
[15:42]
| So almost two years. Okay.
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Sam:
[15:43]
| It was May 15th, 2023 is the last time I've done that. And when I do it, I only usually listen to a month of voicemail. So I won't be catching up anytime soon. Maybe next time I'll do more than a month, you know? So I will, which of course I will listen to the old ones first. I'm not going I have to go in order.
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Ivan:
[16:06]
| Right. Yeah, of course. Those are more important right now. Yes. If two years ago they said that, hey, we're late delivering your pizza. Okay. That is definitely more important than any message that you've got like that. Yes. Of course.
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Sam:
[16:19]
| Exactly. And so that is the plan. Yeah. Voicemails. Now now to be clear if i am expecting a call that is different i will look and and i will sometimes read the thing if it's that or if it's a recognized thing where i like i'm like oh this is from somebody that i know well.
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Ivan:
[16:48]
| I i'm guessing that if i called you because i don't call you anymore okay.
|
Sam:
[16:52]
| All right.
|
Ivan:
[16:52]
| That if i called you would be like shit what the fuck is going on let me pick up the phone.
|
Sam:
[16:57]
| Yes, I mean, I will generally pick up the phone from, if the voicemail is, not the voicemail, if I see the caller ID, it's someone I know, is like a human being, and I know them, I will generally pick up. I have it set so unknown numbers go straight to voicemail, it doesn't even ring the phone.
|
Ivan:
[17:17]
| You know, that makes sense. i i i mean i you know yeah i mean right now with the with the scourge of unknown number you know so much bullshit calls like yeah i mean like i answered the phone today i usually do that but i i answered a call today because i left my son at a singing class and i was working out and i saw that a call came in from a phone in the right area code okay and i'm like wondering hey is everything okay let you pick up the phone i found some fucking realtor trying to fucking like I don't know, trying to get me. There's a thing that keeps happening. They keep calling me to see if I sell my parents' house. I mean, just regularly. They just fucking keep calling me about it. I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ, stay the fuck away from me. I don't want to sell a fucking house. Just leave me alone.
|
Sam:
[18:02]
| Yeah, so I will, like, if I'm expecting something or otherwise see a phone call come in that I haven't picked up but was from a recognized number, I will go scan the voicemail and maybe in that situation. Look at the transcript maybe you know and i have accidentally i have accidentally hit play a couple times and heard part of a message and i'm like oh shit i'm hearing it out of order no no.
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Ivan:
[18:31]
| No no you're like abort abort abort abort.
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Sam:
[18:36]
| Exactly now uh alex brought up a few things on my tracking list that so the it is it has apparently been 66 weeks six days and 20 minutes since i worked on abel arcade which is a project for him except i worked on it last night didn't i so i i can mark this i can mark this oh so here we go reset to now well i should reset it to last night right, okay i should reset it to last night i did it around midnight last night so here we go here we go. I'm setting this set to now, and then I'm moving it back to midnight. So boom, boom. Okay. So Apple Arcade has now been 10 hours since I last worked on that. And it's been eight weeks, five days, and 18 hours since I last worked. It did an Apple dream, a new Apple dream. And the other one that came up, oh, I have a thing like, You know, for those techies out here, you'll appreciate this. I've been trying to, abblesmay.com, which I've had forever, is still on network solutions as a provider, okay?
|
Ivan:
[19:45]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[19:46]
| And I want to move it on to DreamHost, where I have everything else that I have for consistency. And I want to then add SSL to it. Because at this point, like from some browsers, you go to applesmay.com, you get a warning just because it doesn't have SSL on it. And yeah, and it makes it easier for me to do that. If I have it with my hosting company, I can just hit the button, have it done. I'm not, I know there are ways I could do it anyway, but like it becomes like a one click thing. If I, if I have everything done at my hosting provider. And so i've tried to do this a couple of times and failed because you know i mentioned i was having email problems and some things not getting through some things disappearing etc one of those things i tried to do was have network solutions unlock the domain so i could move it and they send you on an authentication thing and like sometimes i haven't even been able to get logged in there because i don't get the authentication sometimes i've logged in and then they're supposed to send me an email and one time i i i had i used to have ablesmay.site as well okay okay and i decided to test moving the domain using ablesmay.site i started the process and they say okay we'll send you a code on your email within the next three days which by the way is ridiculous it should be fucking instant okay they'll send it to you within that that really.
|
Ivan:
[21:13]
| Makes no sense yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:14]
| So I did that. And then I, you know, I'm not going to sit there in front of my computer for three days waiting for the email. So I went off and did other things and I completely forgot about it. When I went back and looked weeks later, they had sent me the code. Then a few days later, they had, I got a notice that said, so-and-so is trying to move your domain was that you will assume it is unless you click this button to say it's not. And then a few days later saying your domain has been successfully transferred. It was not to me.
|
Sam:
[21:48]
| Someone stole applesmay.site from me. And it is now like, you know, out there. One of those things where you can buy it back if you want. Now, I didn't actually use applesmay.site for anything. It was just a redirect to applesmay.com. But it made me really nervous about doing it with applesmay.com to make sure I was at a time where I was going to be paying attention carefully to my email. Right day, blah, blah, blah. And make sure nothing like that happened. And the last time I did it, I didn't get an email after a couple of days and I was like, screw it. And I relocked it and blah, blah, blah. And so I haven't tried it again. Anyway, the last, since the last time I tried to deal with that 86 weeks. So eventually i'll i'll look at it again i figure at this point like if i'm gonna do it i need to like call them and do it through like you know whatever i don't know how i have to do it with a person on the line or a chat or something to like i don't know anyway i got off on a real tangent there sorry about that yeah.
|
Ivan:
[22:51]
| That that had nothing to do.
|
Sam:
[22:52]
| With my with.
|
Ivan:
[22:54]
| My with with my with anything I had started talking about.
|
Sam:
[22:57]
| Well, I talked about how long it is between times I checked.
|
Ivan:
[23:00]
| It takes you to review things.
|
Sam:
[23:04]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[23:05]
| Yes. Okay. All right. Great. Beautiful. All right.
|
Sam:
[23:08]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[23:08]
| So up to your subject.
|
Sam:
[23:10]
| Okay. I had two things, both of which are not that long, I presume. Of course, you know, poison words whenever I say that. But uh number one number one is i mentioned on the show a couple weeks ago that i my chair was having issues yeah okay and so last week it actually just broke completely nice like now i i presume like realistically what happened loose screws got looser and looser and fell out And then, like, you know, then it sort of started coming apart. Like, the back is a thing that happens.
|
Ivan:
[23:54]
| I mean, you know, that is a thing that happens.
|
Sam:
[23:59]
| So, yeah, so I theoretically, I probably could have, like, tried to, like, find the screws, screw it back together, blah, blah, blah. But I'd been complaining on here about it anyway. I, you know, I had complained on the show that it was getting uncomfortable that, you know, etc, etc, etc. I mean, I was complaining that it was loose as well. But like, yeah, I could have tightened that. But it was getting uncomfortable and just like starting to look ratty already. And it was less than a year old. And I was like, I cheaped out on this chair. Let's get the better one. You and I talked about it. You, you looked at Costco and we're like, look, this chair looks fine. It's $160 chair on Costco.
|
Ivan:
[24:39]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:40]
| Yeah. And I was ready to order it. And my wife was like, well, do you want to like see it in person at first? You know, can we go, should we go to Costco? And I like the website.
|
Ivan:
[24:52]
| You're going to, wait, wait, you're going to go to a store.
|
Sam:
[24:54]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[24:55]
| Try something.
|
Sam:
[24:56]
| I know. And I was like, well, the website doesn't even say they have it in stock at the local store. So why would we do that? And she's like, oh, let's go. And so we went. We went in person. It turns out they did have it in stock. Okay, great. They did not have a display model. So I could not try it.
|
Ivan:
[25:15]
| Oh, yeah. Because they do sometimes have some screwed in so you can sit on it. But they will have it in a box.
|
Sam:
[25:21]
| Yeah. They just had it in a box. They did not have a display model. But then she was like so do you just want to get it since we're here and like the if i bought it online it would have been like three to four days until it arrived and like it's it's right there in front of me i'm like right okay let's buy it so okay i bought i bought the damn chair okay took, Well, wait, wait, this is a more important stuff. I put the box right next to the box for the arcade cabinet that Alex gave me four to five years ago. That has not yet been assembled. And so I immediately was like, well, I guess this is where it's going to sit for the next five years.
|
Sam:
[26:13]
| Because I have to assemble it. So nothing's ever going to happen here. Now, to be fair, when I set up the whole office last April or May or whenever it was, I assembled the table. I assembled the chair. I did the whole thing because it was like a major project I had taken time off to get all the new stuff set up but this time I hadn't done any of that but, my son Alex came to the rescue I told him that I would pay him to build the chair.
|
Sam:
[26:53]
| He agreed he actually negotiated a bit there was something else he wanted there was something he wanted other than money, okay and so i agree i agreed to whatever the other thing was i don't even remember what it was but i agreed to it and i my conditions were basically he had to assemble the damn chair on his own i didn't really have to do anything i i ended up helping at one or two little spots where like he'd lost a screw and i helped find it or he wanted me to like oh my god well heaven.
|
Ivan:
[27:25]
| Forbid that you could help him find a screw. My God, what the hell has Earth come to, for God's sake, Sam?
|
Sam:
[27:33]
| I know. It was, and a couple times I held the camera for him because, of course, he wanted to video.
|
Ivan:
[27:38]
| Oh, my God. Wow.
|
Sam:
[27:43]
| Oh, oh, oh. He is giving me a screenshot of what the deal was for it. For the entire duration of the chair construction, I needed to either be the camera person or be playing Beat Saber on the Oculus.
|
Ivan:
[27:58]
| Okay, so what did you choose?
|
Sam:
[28:01]
| I alternated. I alternated.
|
Ivan:
[28:03]
| Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[28:03]
| All right. And by the time of chair completion, at least 30 minutes of each must have been completed unless chair took less than 45 minutes. So there you go. I did that.
|
Ivan:
[28:17]
| That's pretty good.
|
Sam:
[28:17]
| And I ended up giving them the cash too. as well because he built the whole chair he built the whole chair he built it efficiently he built it well it's all done i am sitting in it right now it is okay what's your my by the way take on the chair this is the 160 costco chair so okay we had talked about like look there there are many chairs that are a lot more than that there are some chairs that are cheaper. I was thinking move up my previous chair that didn't even last a year was about 60 or 70 bucks. I forget in that, in that range, this one is, was one 60 plus change. I think it is clearly sturdier and more comfortable than the previous chair, even when the previous chair was brand new.
|
Ivan:
[29:05]
| Okay. Well, so you made the right call.
|
Sam:
[29:08]
| Will it last much more than a year? I don't know. we'll find out but certainly at the beginning usually you know.
|
Ivan:
[29:15]
| The great thing uh costco items are are made to be they test them.
|
Sam:
[29:21]
| For durability and that kind of stuff the actual brand it's a lazy boy yeah so it's it's a known brand it's not like kazizzle coup.com whatever no name random series of letters like many quote-unquote brands are that are just imported you know, Asian stuff from wherever. Now this is an actual known brand name. Now, of course, I'm sure it's still made in some Asian factory somewhere, but you get the brand name that supposedly is doing some quality control, both Lazy Boy and Costco, presumably.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| Yes, yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[29:57]
| Okay, now that's that for that. One final thing that I promised we would do for this week is our Patreon stuff, which I will mention at the end of the show. But for the last couple of weeks, I've been saying, you know, several people increased their Patreon contributions. And I would look up what our official levels were and what they deserve for this. So just to review all of our levels which i never do at the end of the show, for one dollar a month on patreon we will mention you and thank you in the first show we record after the pledge we didn't quite make the first show but oops then we have that's the patron level then we have the slacker level which is we will mention you and thank you and invite you to join the curmudgeon's corner slack. We always say that's at $2 a month. At $5 a month, it's everything that I've already mentioned, plus we ring the bell. At $10 a month, it's everything I've mentioned previously, plus a postcard signed by the hosts. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[31:09]
| Okay. So, by the way, we do have a new Patreon member, right?
|
Sam:
[31:13]
| Yeah, we have several. So let me go through this.
|
Ivan:
[31:16]
| We have several. Okay. So wait, wait. I got the bill ready. Hold on.
|
Sam:
[31:19]
| You got the bill. I'm going to go through the whole list and we'll give each person everything they deserve. I have just a minute.
|
Ivan:
[31:25]
| I'm going to give these bastards everything they deserve.
|
Sam:
[31:28]
| Exactly. No, at $20 a month, that's when you get a mug. And then nobody has ever done this. But at the $50 a month level, we invite you to record a 30 to 90 second audio clip that we will play on the show, subject to our censorship, if you do something like we don't.
|
Ivan:
[31:49]
| I mean, I don't know, like a Nazi salute, basically. I mean, because otherwise, yeah.
|
Sam:
[31:53]
| Yeah, exactly. And so those are the tiers that we have right now. And so here is the list. So first of all, oh, and by the way, several people out there have mugs who are not patrons because I also, for the last few years, I didn't do this at the very beginning of the show. We didn't even have Patreon. We didn't have mugs. We didn't have anything. But for the last few years, if somebody has guest hosted on the show, I've also given them.
|
Ivan:
[32:20]
| They got, right.
|
Sam:
[32:21]
| Or if we interview them on the show, like either way, they get a mug as a prize for doing that. So Pete, for instance, already had a mug. Yes, you can bell Pete, sure. But Pete mentioned that the mug is staring at him and he feels guilty for not having contributed to us. But also, he doesn't like Patreon. So he instead wanted to know if there was another way to give us money. And what I did was point him at the fact that Election Graphs has a tip jar that's just based on PayPal and is a one-time only thing. It's not a recurring thing. because for election graphs, I didn't feel right doing recurring because the site's only active like a couple of years and then it's dormant a couple of years and blah, blah. I'd have to turn things on and off and it would be stupid. Anyway, I'm not sure. So he donated through PayPal. So thank you very much. And since it's not a monthly number, it's hard to determine exactly what he deserves here. But mentioning him for sure, Yvonne has done the bell. I will do some bell too. There we go. Bells from both of us.
|
Ivan:
[33:29]
| Bells!
|
Sam:
[33:30]
| I figure, Yvonne, that Pete also deserves a card.
|
Ivan:
[33:34]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[33:35]
| All right. You know, this will be, I still have this. This has sat on a shelf for years and years and years, and we have never sent one. But we have curmudgeons corner postcards.
|
Ivan:
[33:49]
| As a matter of fact, oh, you got the postcards, not the business cards.
|
Sam:
[33:52]
| Not the business cards.
|
Ivan:
[33:54]
| A postcard. Okay. Send it. Send it. Send it.
|
Sam:
[33:58]
| So what I was going to do, actually, Vaughn, and the next person on the list gets this too is i was going to sign it then mail them to you and then you can mail them to the people okay all right and then so we can both sign them and we can i.
|
Ivan:
[34:12]
| I like this plan okay yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[34:14]
| Yeah sure so i i will try to do this soon i'm putting it on my desk so i don't forget so anyway pete thank you for your contribution yes bells.
|
Ivan:
[34:25]
| Bells are ringing.
|
Sam:
[34:26]
| And we'll get you a card and then greg increased his his level, i'm like trying to hit my bell and missing there we go and so at his new level he also gets a bell and a card so there we go and we'll send the card for you too bob increased his level No, no, sorry. Yeah, I put this in the wrong thing. Bob, at his new level, gets just a mention and a bell. No card sword.
|
Ivan:
[35:01]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[35:02]
| Bob, no card. I know you're broken up about this.
|
Ivan:
[35:06]
| Yeah, I know. He's right down, my God. He's going to tear down one of the rooms in his new house, like right now, because of this. Yes.
|
Sam:
[35:14]
| Okay, now next, Ed has joined for the first time. Ah! Ed actually already has a mug for two reasons. One.
|
Ivan:
[35:25]
| He's co-hosted.
|
Sam:
[35:26]
| Well, he hosted. He has hosted. So he has a mug from that. But also his son-in-law, John, at one point also contributed to our Patreon, but asked that his mug be sent to Ed.
|
Ivan:
[35:41]
| Ah, okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[35:43]
| But Ed, his current level gets a mention and a bell. Yeah. But he has said, he told us on the curmudgeon's corner slack that his wife has stolen his mug. And he would like a mug of his own.
|
Ivan:
[35:58]
| Oh!
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| And also, specifically, he requested that we give him a version of the mug similar to the I Hate Curmudgeon's Corner mug that we once gave my son Alex.
|
Ivan:
[36:13]
| I like this idea. It's great. Good, good. Yes. Yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[36:18]
| So I will try to make that happen. I believe Alex has said that I should not send one that's actually identical to his mug. because that was a unique one-off, but I will do something.
|
Ivan:
[36:30]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:31]
| I'll do something along those lines. And then we have Nick also is a brand new member. And I mentioned, you know, you gave him extra. At his level, he's only supposed to be mentioned. No bell. You know, but Nick, I will bell you too.
|
Ivan:
[36:52]
| There you go. Yes, yes, we're getting bell, bell, bell, bell, bell.
|
Sam:
[36:55]
| You know, Nick actually, to get back to what I mentioned last week about like email being a slog, Nick actually joined back in August and I didn't notice until I went looking at Patreon to find out all this information today. So I apologize, Nick, for not noticing for months and months and months that we had a new patron because I just have not slogged through the email to find that. And they did send an email telling me about you, but I didn't notice until now. So I feel bad. Anyway, Nick has, we've mentioned Nick and he has been invited to the Comendance Core Slack. And then finally, someone else did something that I didn't even know was possible. They joined our Patreon, but without any donation at all. They left it at a zero cash level. And that would be my mom who joined in August. Alright but okay but I'll still mention her I'll still mention her in theory according to the levels we set up I'll get one ring I'll.
|
Ivan:
[38:04]
| Get you one.
|
Sam:
[38:07]
| There you go according to our Patreon levels at one dollar you're only supposed to be mentioned and at zero nothing but you know hey it's my mom it's your mom here's the bell here I'll.
|
Ivan:
[38:17]
| Do one ping.
|
Sam:
[38:20]
| Okay there you go And that, I believe, is it. If anybody out there has actually increased their Patreon or joined for the first time that I did not notice, please let me know. This also changes my joke. For years, I've said I make 15 bucks a month off the Patreon. We are now up to $26.80 a month. And of course that split between yvonne and i technically although i've i've stopped keeping track i i i should start again but i apologize yvonne that's okay we got the uh i mean we are.
|
Ivan:
[39:01]
| Incurring a few more expenses but.
|
Sam:
[39:03]
| The reality is we are spending more than 26 and 80 cents a month on the podcast anyway. So whatever, but you know, Hey, that's it. And if anybody does want to join it, that $50 a month level or higher to get an audio clip on the show, you know, feel free, you know? Okay. And that is more than enough of that. We will now take a break and which, which break am I supposed to play? I have my little notes here. Break 8! Which is this one. Okay, we're going to take a break and we will be back and then we'll start talking the actual news. Back after this.
|
Ivan:
[39:46]
| News!
|
Sam:
[39:47]
| News.
|
Ivan:
[39:49]
| News! Alex and the.
|
Sam:
[40:27]
| Okay, we are back.
|
Ivan:
[40:29]
| So I'm going to, I'm going to, by the way, I think You were talking about the domains just before we go into the heavy subjects. I think I'm going to buy the domain. I hate Alex Emzala.
|
Sam:
[40:45]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[40:45]
| I'm going to link it to that.
|
Sam:
[40:50]
| There you go. I hate AlexEmzala.com. Excellent. I've actually been buying more domains lately because I've had a few ideas for things I want to do and i've bought domains for them none of them are ready to like launch or do anything i mean we've met i mentioned on the show this apple fnaf game that alec oh yeah yeah yeah so i bought i bought a domain for that there's nothing there yet like it's it's just the hosting company's placeholder i have there's nothing there at all but like i have that i have another project that I've just started working on that I bought a domain for. I've got some placeholder text up there, but I'm not ready to share quite yet. You know, so... Anyway, I've been like at this point, there's some I got for my wife. I've I've bought like some some name domains for like, you know, for my daughter and myself that aren't used for anything yet as well. I don't know. Whenever I've thought of something, I've been like, OK, I'll go. It's 10 bucks a year. I can pay 10 bucks a year for random idea domain. And if I never do anything with it. Oh, well, if I do something with it.
|
Ivan:
[42:07]
| Yeah. 10 bucks a year is fine. I mean, you know, if you were telling me it's like, you know, you know, a lot more than that, then yeah, no, but 10 bucks a year. Yeah, whatever. I mean, you know, who knows? Maybe you pick the domain that's the jackpot.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| Yeah, exactly. Now, and there are two ways to go jackpot, right? One is that you actually do something with the domain yourself and the other.
|
Ivan:
[42:25]
| Somebody needs it.
|
Sam:
[42:26]
| Somebody needs it.
|
Ivan:
[42:28]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:31]
| Yeah. And it's like, no, I had it first. Pay me $8 billion and I'll give it to you.
|
Ivan:
[42:38]
| I love that number. Eight billion. Yes. Very, very good and specific. Yes.
|
Sam:
[42:44]
| Yes. So, you know, at some point I should go through and at least put a placeholder page on every domain I have. But I haven't done that. So.
|
Ivan:
[42:54]
| No.
|
Sam:
[42:54]
| Okay, Yvonne. All right. News. You go first. Obviously, this was, as I said at the beginning.
|
Ivan:
[43:04]
| I mean. yeah i think the thing is that there's a lot of things in here.
|
Sam:
[43:09]
| And uh i don't know if each one wait this is exactly the point like this is this is this whole shock and awe thing that there is and and this was a a feature of the first trump administration first that there's so much random them shit every single day practically that it's impossible to keep track of it all and it all sort of washes over you this is steve bannon's flood the zone of shit with shit but and in this case some of it is just verbal posturing and some of it now is actual executive orders and actual things happening and blah blah blah and it's all mixed together but there's so many things any one of which you could potentially get outraged about but there's so much what the thing is.
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| That that's what they're trying to do right i mean they're trying to get us to be just totally outraged that that is the that is the point of this you know so.
|
Sam:
[44:13]
| Well but which is on the one hand they want you the flip side they want you outraged and bubbling and incoherent and oh, look at there being evil. But the opposite of that is if you just ignore it and be like, oh, whatever, then you're just letting the bad stuff happen.
|
Ivan:
[44:34]
| Like letting the butt stuff happen like letting it happen like that like we have any choice right but exactly because there you know because there are things that stuff can be done about there are things that stuff can't be done can't you can't okay so like you know for example this whole thing with the border and a whole bunch of the stuff that he's announced i mean like he shut down CBP1, the app that was put in place for asylum applications, which, by the way, just only makes this entire thing harder. This is the thing about this. These are counterproductive.
|
Sam:
[45:12]
| It was actually taking an illegal motive, like people crossing the border without authorization and then applying for asylum, which actually technically is legal, actually. I should correct myself like what applying for asylum is legal in that.
|
Ivan:
[45:26]
| Sense correct you get to the border post and and you apply and you apply for asylum yeah but.
|
Sam:
[45:32]
| In this case with the app it was completely like regularizing it making it fully 100 like legal you would.
|
Ivan:
[45:39]
| Show up at a border crossing.
|
Sam:
[45:42]
| With an appointment.
|
Ivan:
[45:43]
| Exactly instead of like you know it made it that it actually stopped reduce the number of illegal border crossings okay right by by giving people an avenue to not have to do that and many of those were rejected supporting.
|
Sam:
[46:00]
| A legal mechanism of immigration to be clear asylum is legal.
|
Ivan:
[46:04]
| Exactly and many of those wired by international law yeah and and many of those were rejected and right people were sent back it's not like it was some automatic thing It just gave them a process to do that. So going and doing that is just, you know, idiotic. It really actually, but well, idiotic from the standpoint of you want to tackle the immigration problem. Because the reality is that as everything that these guys do. It's all straw man. Most of it. I mean, 90% of it, they make up straw man to attack. Or they claim victory when even they haven't done anything.
|
Ivan:
[46:48]
| So it's like, first thing this week, ah, the deportation flights are finally starting. The Biden administration has been doing deportation flights. And not just that they've been doing it. They amped up that number over the last few years. And they're claiming, oh, you see, now we started them. So it's claiming victory for something that already happened, which is standard operating procedure. I mean, it's totally what we expect from these guys, which is why, I don't know, man. And, I mean, so much of this stuff is, is there stuff that is really hurting people? Of course there is.
|
Sam:
[47:35]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[47:36]
| You know, I mean, you had this entire thing where all these career people in government all of a sudden just got fired.
|
Sam:
[47:46]
| Yeah. High-level career people who are, you know, I'm sure low-level career people are getting fired too. But they the one was they they are dismissing all of the anybody involved in DEI in any way, shape or form is being dismissed, but also a variety of high level people at various organizations. And in last night, a whole bunch of inspector generals.
|
Ivan:
[48:10]
| And by the way, a lot of those are going to wind up in the courts, you know, and by the way, they'll probably lose, which is the other thing, you know. But he wants to do it anyway, because that's the impact that he wants to do.
|
Sam:
[48:24]
| Well, there are a lot of things, and some of these we may talk about in more detail, some of them we won't. But the other is the birthright citizenship executive order, which went to court and was suspended instantaneously. But that was the expectation. They want to get that out into discussion. They want to force the legal issue. They want to get it to SCOTUS. You know, so it's not like they expected that to actually stick immediately. In many cases, they are they want the lawsuit.
|
Ivan:
[49:01]
| Yeah, so I mean, the thing is that. Well, let's talk about why people voted for him, right? Okay.
|
Sam:
[49:12]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[49:13]
| How's the price of eggs doing, Sam?
|
Sam:
[49:15]
| I've heard it's up.
|
Ivan:
[49:17]
| Yes, it's way up. As a matter of fact, it's at a record.
|
Sam:
[49:21]
| Well, and I've heard that part of this was...
|
Ivan:
[49:25]
| Bird flu.
|
Sam:
[49:26]
| Bird flu. But also, by the way, all bulletins from CDC have been stopped. So we don't know anything new about bird flu, other than it was growing rapidly. As of the last week of the Biden presidency.
|
Ivan:
[49:40]
| Well, if you don't track it.
|
Sam:
[49:41]
| You know, we have no idea.
|
Ivan:
[49:42]
| It's not happening. If you don't track it, it's not happening. Right. So, so yeah. So you've got that. I mean, it's like, you know, look, he declassified the JFK assassination files.
|
Sam:
[49:56]
| Well, he made an order to do so. The agency in charge has some amount of time to come up with a plan and then to do it. But, and by the way, This is the remaining like small portion, like 97%, I believe is the number of these files were already released in the past. There's a little tiny one or two, 3% that were still being held back. So he'll be releasing the remainder of those.
|
Ivan:
[50:21]
| You know, and by the way.
|
Sam:
[50:24]
| Judging, judging from previous releases, that isn't so much bombshell new revelations about those assassinations that's in those three. Well, we don't know what's in the 3%, obviously. But from previous releases, it hasn't been big new revelations. It's just been private citizens whose names were redacted have died. And so now it can be released without the redaction.
|
Ivan:
[50:49]
| Yeah, but it's just, I don't know, man. Look, what do we gain right now by... Going through a lot of this look these guys are already starting to fight against each other um i mean in in like open warfare you know doge already started as as quickly as doge came together doge is hemorrhaging people as quickly as it got put together all right from.
|
Sam:
[51:26]
| Recent reporting in the last few days reducing the scope of what it's looking at as well.
|
Ivan:
[51:31]
| Right. Because already, you know, it's just, you know, they basically got told you, you fuckers are idiots. You can't do what the fuck you're doing. You're out of your minds. I honestly look, what is the, if all of this high level noise that does impact certain individuals, a number of people badly, it's like the whole trans thing, right? Look, these people have made Trans people, the evil scourge of the earth. They're banning, they want to ban them as being athletes. And then, you know, there was a recent data that's showing, okay, great. How many athletes are we talking about in the NCAA that among the thousands, tens of thousands that are, that are really impacted by all of this horse shit they're talking about? You want to know the number? Take a guess.
|
Sam:
[52:17]
| I forget. It's like, it's like 40 or something out of the entire tens of thousands.
|
Ivan:
[52:22]
| 10. 10. 10.
|
Sam:
[52:24]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[52:25]
| 10. They've literally, you know, taken to creating this entire fucking straw man of vilifying this evil scourge for ten fucking people!
|
Sam:
[52:38]
| But also, like you mentioned, like things they're trying to do, they're already taking action.
|
Ivan:
[52:44]
| But they're using, my point is that they're using this in order to, what is it that they really want to do? Look, the Republicans are, this is our moment for more tax cuts. This is our moment to, to really, you know, cut Medicaid. This is our moment to really, you know, you know, eliminate all this regulation that we hate. Okay. You know, this is, this is what they're really, you know, what, what, what is the, what is really the, the, the main crux of what we're trying to do and using the smokescreen at the top for this. I'm going to tell you, you know, one thing about immigration and all the the shit that they're doing for show, because, you know, we already had this idiotic fight already about this where a couple of weeks ago that has started a big crack between Elon Musk and his ilk and the the the other, you know, the MAGA people. I mean, Steve Bannon has basically said that, you know, fuck Elon Musk, because Elon Musk is pro-immigration.
|
Ivan:
[53:55]
| And, you know, he has basically said, you know, fuck you. And so because, you know, now he's come out that he's pro-immigration. And by the way, I guarantee you one thing, that Elon Musk will convince Trump not to cut anything related to his companies that will hurt him. Specifically, all these, you know, all these incentives for electric cars. This is just, you know, there is, I mean, no way in all hell that that guy will go and torpedo his fucking biggest investment by doing that.
|
Sam:
[54:37]
| Well, specifically on that, Elon himself has been one of the biggest advocates for getting rid of the subsidies.
|
Ivan:
[54:42]
| Yeah, that's right. But the reality is that there is, again, there is the, hey, I am for, you know, controlling the border and getting rid of all these fucking people. Then when you ask them, well, but not my immigrants. So this is the whole thing where he's been talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck the incentives, fuck the incentives, rah, rah, rah, until he's CFO. I'm sure his CFOs are already grabbed by the ear and said, listen, motherfucker, we're not, we can't afford, you know, we're, we're spending, we have capital outlays next year of $15 billion. Okay. All right. We, our cashflow is $15 billion. You can't take 10 billion out of our cashflow. You lunatic.
|
Sam:
[55:28]
| Yes. What, what, what he's of course said is that it will hurt the other car companies more. So.
|
Ivan:
[55:34]
| No, it won't. That's the problem. No, it won't. Anyway that's I'm just saying no that's what he says but this is but again Sam what they say versus what they do do okay fuck the immigrants blah blah blah fuck the immigrants no no no don't touch my immigrants, I mean Trump himself oh yeah we got all these immigrants at my clubs no we're not getting rid of those, right Jesus Christ and by the way I keep being just stunned by the lack of so many people still at, at national levels that still don't get that the winning strategy that they really, really had. It's all this homophobia. That was the number one thing that they did. It really staggers me. By the way, why do you think they keep saying it? Why do you think you got people arguing about bathrooms in the Capitol? All of this shit.
|
Sam:
[56:40]
| Because unfortunately it works.
|
Ivan:
[56:41]
| Yes well i right they know it works and how many how many people that are liberal that are blind to the fucking fact because because okay you're like thinking well it's inconceivable it could be it could be that no it is you idiots number one thing that cuts across every group, is that transphobia?
|
Sam:
[57:07]
| Number one. The key elements were that and general homophobia as well. Trans specifically, but general homophobia. And then the anti-immigration stuff was cutting across, and then finally the thing is.
|
Ivan:
[57:27]
| The thing is that.
|
Sam:
[57:30]
| One cuts The combination is important of those three things because each of them get slightly different slices of beef.
|
Ivan:
[57:39]
| But just anti-immigrant wouldn't have done it, is my point. And by the way, you could have done it just anti-gay and transphobia and not anti-immigrant, and that would have done it too. Does that add to it? Yes.
|
Sam:
[57:53]
| But I'm telling you right now. I'm not sure. I don't think any one of those things will work.
|
Ivan:
[57:56]
| I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you. Let me tell you why. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Let me tell you why. Because the anti-immigrant thing has been there, and that had never peeled off as many Hispanics as they did this time. And the way that they got them was with that. Okay? And that's what people don't get. Why did Hispanic support rise so much from the other times? Because the anti-immigrant stuff was there. But the anti-immigrant stuff maybe got you 20%, 30%, you know, of that. Didn't get you 45%. Okay? It's, you know, that's the thing. It's that huge gain is all based on that. And when people finally get their head out of their ass about it, maybe they'll understand why the fuck that was so effective.
|
Sam:
[58:43]
| Well, I mean, I don't know that this is fruitful, but I think we're in the same situation as 2016, where it was so damn close in the end that any one of dozens of factors could have made it go the other way. And I think.
|
Ivan:
[58:58]
| But it's just that was a decisive one. You know, the thing is that I have been spending so much time talking to people recently, but I've been traveling that much and seeing the entire attitude about this around. And I realize how much people like really missed how that issue was so potent to people. When I keep hearing it mentioned over and over again.
|
Sam:
[59:21]
| Like when you buy Hispanics. Okay. Buy Hispanics. I hear you buy Hispanics. When you look at the overall polling across everybody, it was one of the top three, but it wasn't the overwhelming one.
|
Ivan:
[59:39]
| But Sam, it goes back to, you know what, the Republicans for... Going back to H.W. Bush, have been so good at finding what the issue is that people, maybe they won't admit, but that they do have a prejudice against. Okay. And maybe, you know, and I'm not saying that not all of them will admit, but a significant portion of them, they know that underlying, even if they say, oh, yeah, we're for this, right?
|
Sam:
[1:00:11]
| Even if they say it's eggs.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:13]
| Exactly. That's right. that that will, that underneath gets them. It's the whole, you know, how they used that rate, that, that, the racism. Okay. All right. I guess black specifically that, because that was the primary driver that, that the Republicans used to use for an extremely long time. Okay. To get the white vote to be so solid for them. Okay. It's that underlying racism. Okay. All right. That is there and they know that people would sit at a dinner table and whatever and they wouldn't admit it but these people knew that that was latent and it's the same thing with this these guys have been the masters at exploiting latent prejudice, this is their fucking winning card every time and we keep underestimating it.
|
Sam:
[1:01:13]
| Well and underestimating the amount of that that exists in society too.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:18]
| Correct yes we keep that's exactly we keep underestimating how much there is in society nah come on how many people really hate all the gay trans people a lot more than we that we think damn it that's the answer by the way african-americans kept telling this to us for 30 40 for 30 years they kept telling this to us for 30 fucking years, okay? And we were like, nah, come on. It can't be that bad for, you know, I'll say I stopped saying that a long time ago. But for a period of time, I was like, oh, come on. We've made a lot of progress. It's not that bad still. I mean, it's we've gotten better. It's still not. It's not that bad. No, no, come on. And I'm like, I realized, no, they're fucking right. 100% right. Well, listen, the DEI shit.
|
Sam:
[1:02:06]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:08]
| The fucking DEI shit, okay? I mean, that's another one that's like, you know, that's another, you know, racial card right there. You know, you can buy the transphobia, the DEI, the bot. I mean, it's all one fucking hate package. You know, let me tell you. I don't know what the right answer to that, but my point about this, going back to what's been going on this week, is that this is where they're focused on. This is what they're focused on, and they've been focused on at the high level, at fanning that flame. Well, underneath, you've got these guys in Congress that are planning on these massive regulatory cutbacks and tax hikes. Trump is saying that he declared an energy emergency, which sounds to me also like he also declared infrastructure weak many times in the past. I'm not sure what energy emergency he is talking about because production for energy in the U.S. Is at an all-time high of all sorts.
|
Sam:
[1:03:13]
| Wait, wait, wait. I want to answer that question because he actually specifically tied that to his AI initiative as well. Because he said in order to build out all the AI stuff he wants to build and support- No.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:26]
| You need more energy.
|
Sam:
[1:03:27]
| You need more energy. You need like 50% more energy than the all-time highs we have right now. So it's not that we're not at an all-time high. It's that to build out all of this AI stuff, we need to like double the energy.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:41]
| That's true. And they're going to go to Texas. And here's the one thing. In Texas, the number one fastest growing energy has been clean energy. Wind, solar, anything that is clean energy. You want to know why?
|
Sam:
[1:03:54]
| But wait, isn't he outlawing that? Didn't he say no more windmills? I don't think there was an executive order.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:00]
| I don't think he can outlaw windmills. However, the reason is it doesn't matter about outlawing it. It's cheaper is the whole point. That's the reason. Listen, Texas is a deregulated energy market, and all the clean energy sources are cheaper than all the other ones, which is why they had been on a tear growing like crazy. And then the Texas government all of a sudden realized, oh, shit, they're growing so fast. Maybe we need to stop them. Because, and everybody's like, but wait, it's meeting our energy needs and it's cheaper. What the fuck is your problem?
|
Sam:
[1:04:39]
| So wait, Yvonne, you've got this wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:42]
| Okay, I got this wrong.
|
Sam:
[1:04:43]
| The purpose of energy policy is not cheap energy for the population to support things. It is to make sure the stock prices of the oil companies and other fossil fuel companies go up.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:00]
| This is where i get confused it has nothing to do with energy with actual energy it has everything to.
|
Sam:
[1:05:07]
| Do with exxon.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:08]
| That's this is where i always get confused i know i i always i i lose the plot i get i got lost yeah okay well that that explains that okay yes now.
|
Sam:
[1:05:20]
| Of course all these companies could have pivoted to just being general energy companies decades ago and they decided.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:28]
| Not to. A number of them are to a certain extent.
|
Sam:
[1:05:31]
| To a certain degree. There was apparently in the 1980s like several of the big ones made big moves in that direction and then decided it wasn't cost effective and way curtailed that.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:41]
| But some are now, and even like one of the things I was just seeing like right now that there is this effort in Europe more specifically about e-fuels which are okay, these are, e-fuels is these are basically something that is a clean liquid fuel to replace gasoline.
|
Sam:
[1:06:07]
| Cleaner. As long as it's carbon-based, it's not clean.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:11]
| It's not totally carbon-based. It basically, it's, okay, so are made by, e-fuels are made by combining renewable electricity, water, and carbon when electricity is sourced from excess renewable energy, and the carbon comes from waste CO2. So it is something that definitely reduces the carbon output of existing gasoline-burning vehicles by a lot. Okay, it's not zero emissions. But it definitely is something that very quickly, if you were able to scale doing those. And there are a number of European companies that are pushing on this, like right now. And also because you can use it to replace, like, in one of the places where you have the bigger problems, it's just like airplanes and that kind of stuff. You know, where if you're able to do that, then you can get clean energy up there. But my whole point is, going back to this stupid administration and what the fuck they're doing, the whole point is that they, you know... They keep doing this entire smokescreen of all this shit like over there in order to be able to help their big corporate donors and themselves to make money. Did you buy that Trump coin?
|
Sam:
[1:07:37]
| I have not bought the Trump coin.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:39]
| What about the Melania coin?
|
Sam:
[1:07:44]
| I suck. I have not. And I didn't buy DJT either. I'm just not. i i have i have not properly playing this administration monetarily.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:56]
| Well well by the way yeah well good news is that you're not properly played as administration because apparently so like the trump coin came out and then the melania coin came out and then immediately after the the melania coin came out the trump coin dropped like 80 percent people lost about 40 billion dollars apparently but you know the people left caught holding the bag basically just just you know they did the traditional pump and dump they got they got caught holding the bag and now a whole bunch of crypto people are pissed off at at trump because because they each has basically screwed them, i would never do that what are you talking about i i know i know i know i it must be it must you know, it can't be true now. I know. So I just think that this week has been just this entire thing where also Trump is basking in the number one thing that he wanted, which is attention.
|
Sam:
[1:08:58]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:59]
| Now he's got the world's attention.
|
Sam:
[1:09:05]
| Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:07]
| Now it's like, I mean... He has the world's attention. Everything that he says moves markets.
|
Sam:
[1:09:17]
| I was watching last night. I watched the most recent Frontline, which came out on the 21st, the day after the inauguration. And it was about Donald Trump's comeback. So it basically reviewed Donald Trump's entire life, but with emphasizing all of the times he's come back from failure. The most recent of which was the most recent election. And one of the things that one of his former aides, I forget which one was talking about, or no, maybe it was one of the Fox news people, whatever. Somebody was talking about exactly what you just said about it is all about dominating attention. And like with everything else going on i mean he wants to be a winner he can't conceive of himself as a loser but he absolutely positively wants to dominate attention at all times and his whole thing for the first administration which he is reprising from the second administration is he runs it as a tv show it is all about like what is the plot of today's episode and how are we going to get attention today? It is not about what are we going to achieve? It is not about governing. It is about how can we drive the media cycle this day, this week, this whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:10:38]
| And, you know, and it is all about driving that attention. And in the meantime, by the way, you know, a lot of things do happen. I mean, we talked about this before, how often the flashy thing that's getting all the attention isn't necessarily the most impactful thing. Thank you. You know, so, you know, he will, we will have Elon giving a hit.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:58]
| Well, like the judges. Look, the judges. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:11:01]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:01]
| The last time around. Very clear. That wasn't the one thing that he was talking about all the time. But damn it, you know what? The damage that, that the long-term, you know, implications that all those judges that they ram through.
|
Sam:
[1:11:16]
| Yeah. Not just SOTUS, but at all levels.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:18]
| At all levels. At all levels. Yeah. I mean, that's a clear example right there.
|
Sam:
[1:11:26]
| Yeah, absolutely. And so even now in this week, I was going to say we have people all going crazy about Elon giving the Nazi salute. And I mean, my God, Elon gave the Nazi salute. But does that actually have an impact on anything directly? No.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:42]
| No, you know, it just continues to reduce Musk's popularity, which probably Trump is happy because I'm sure he hates that Trump, that Musk getting more attention than him.
|
Sam:
[1:11:56]
| Well, and like you said, I was just using that as one example, but there's also like, oh, we're sending people on the deportation flights again, but that's actually not a change yet at this point, but he's going for the attention of it. Meanwhile some of the all of these firings up and down the federal government that has gotten some attention but that's probably more impactful in the long run because he is systematic and by the way all of this stuff despite all the denials like something like 60 70 percent of what we've seen in this first week is straight out of project 2025 you know it was laid out in detail there so So all of the like, oh, that wasn't Donald Trump. There's nothing to do. Whatever. Fuck you. Yeah. But the, the, the, the firings are all about decimating from top to bottom in the federal government, all of the institutional protections against misusing those institutions. They've, he fired all the inspector generals yesterday or all but one or two.
|
Sam:
[1:13:04]
| And those specifically are watchdogs that are intended to be independent overview to make sure agencies are doing what they're supposed to do in the way they're supposed to do it. All those folks are gone, going to be replaced by loyalists. Threw out a bunch of people at DOJ, career people, not political appointees who were, like, for instance, I think he got rid of almost everybody at the Civil Rights Department, you know, and halted all those prosecutions.
|
Sam:
[1:13:34]
| Et cetera, et cetera. And I just saw a quote. Where was this quote? Charlie Kirk. This was actually a few days ago, but after inauguration. Let this be a warning to any federal official that delays or doesn't listen to the president's orders. It won't end well for you. Don't get cute. Do your job and listen to orders. and this is you know now really do your job actually like done correctly your job.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:08]
| Is counter to listening to orders.
|
Sam:
[1:14:09]
| Well yeah do your job actually involves pushing back when the orders are back right correct yeah exactly you know but that's not that's not the vision here the vision here is loyalty and pure 100 obey immediately do what you're told or else and and that that's The purges that are happening are to make sure the entire federal government is aligned from top to bottom from day one to implement the MAGA agenda without complaint, even for the illegal things. So, for instance, just the firing of the attorney generals, by the way, and this is where the attorney inspector generals, which, Yvonne, you mentioned there are going to be lawsuits on a lot of these. Well, apparently, the law actually required 30-day notice to get rid of these people.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:00]
| That's exactly right. Two Congress, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:15:03]
| There was no notice given. So that act of firing itself was probably- Was illegal. But who's going to do anything about it? Nobody. There's nobody in any sort of...
|
Ivan:
[1:15:15]
| Well, I mean, yeah, it's very difficult to...
|
Sam:
[1:15:19]
| There will be lawsuits, like you said. There'll be lawsuits on this.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:23]
| But there is nothing to do immediately that it's going to fix it.
|
Sam:
[1:15:26]
| Well, but even like you said, though, the courts are full of Trump sympathizers at this point, including SCOTUS. Now, sometimes they will push back anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:37]
| But listen...
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| But a lot of these things will go further than you think they would because of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:41]
| No, no, I agree with that. But the reality is that in many cases already in the past, even when things have been egregiously, across the law, for the most part, not in all cases, okay, the courts have for the most part sided on the part of the law, even like a lot of his appointees, which is to his chagrin, by the way. But I'll give you an example.
|
Sam:
[1:16:05]
| This particular one, the 30 days notice to Congress before you can fire something, fire somebody. One of the things the current court seems to be you know have a majority for is very strong executive powers that should not be limited by congress so a law that says you have to notify congress is exactly the kind of thing that i'd say there's at least a 50 chance that they're going to say is unconstitutional when it gets to them.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:30]
| I i hear it but but again the thing is I don't in many of these cases like this one for example, What the remedy that may be obtained is probably – it's not that these people are going to be instituted back. It's not that the administration is going to go to jail for it. It's none of that. Probably some civil – some payment to them. They'll get money for violation of the – because they were fired illegally, but that's about it. You're right in the sense that they're basically taking the attitude, which, by the way, in some cases, depending on what country. I've been in contractual situations where the penalty is worth it. What the fuck's the penalty?
|
Sam:
[1:17:24]
| The penalty is worth it.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:25]
| And I'm just like, fuck it, do it, whatever. We'll pay the ticket and get the fuck out of here. And that's the attitude that I think that they are taking right now, where in many of these cases.
|
Sam:
[1:17:35]
| We have specifically criticized the Democrats in some cases for not being aggressive like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:41]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:17:41]
| Do the thing and take it to court. Don't just say, oh, well, this is unconstitutional.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:47]
| Oh, this is illegal, so we're not going to do it. And I'm like, at this point, like right now, we're at a point where you have to be more aggressive than that.
|
Sam:
[1:17:55]
| You have to fight.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:56]
| The other side, because the other side isn't playing by those rules. You can't be in a game where the other side is ignoring the rules completely and you trying to play by the rules completely. I'm not saying to be- Which.
|
Sam:
[1:18:10]
| By the way, just simply at the inaugural, there's a lot of criticism just for Democrats going along and playing the game and being like, oh, we'll do this. It is nice and civil. We'll laugh and we'll shake their hands and we'll attend and blah, blah, blah. and saying, you know, well, you spent months...
|
Ivan:
[1:18:29]
| To be fair, the lip reader read that Obama walked up to W, okay, and basically said, how do we stop this shit? And W just exploded laughing. I mean, because he's like... Because, how do we stop this shit? Look, listen, I'm okay with... Listen, I get about opposing doing whatever. But the problem is that that wasn't the moment.
|
Sam:
[1:18:58]
| Well, yeah, but.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:00]
| The moment was when we should have when Biden should have packed the court, fucked up, you know, fucked up, the whatchamacallit, the filibuster, filibuster, that kind of shit. But but also, but on the flip side, OK, look, in Biden's defense, I will say myself that I agreed with Biden's approach. I thought that maybe that would be the best way to get things back to some kind of normalcy. I'm going to say it. I thought that his approach, I agree with his approach. The fact that it didn't work now, I realize that, you know, I mean, we can't whatever we're doing right now has to be an all bets are off fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:19:40]
| Well, here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:41]
| The thing is, is.
|
Sam:
[1:19:42]
| Is at the start of the Biden presidency, I was pushing for all bets are off. I was like, make states, pack the court, do all this stuff right now, kill the filibuster, do a whole bunch of stuff. But the problem was you were.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:53]
| But I wasn't.
|
Sam:
[1:19:53]
| No, I know. I know you weren't. But the problem was even for first of all, Biden did not. The rest of the Democrats weren't there anyway. Like there, he could not, you know, you had at least Manchin and Sinema, but probably four or five more Democrats who didn't want to go along with any of that agenda anyway. And so like, even if Biden had been pushing it, it would not have gone there. But yeah, I feel like the moment for timidity and let's act like everything is normal has long since passed. And so Democrats need to be aggressive. So I'm, I am actually a little, now, would I have attended the inauguration as Biden? Yes, I would have. But, you know, I feel like there's a lot of the Democratic approach so far has not, I mean, there's a question of what the hell they can do.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:48]
| No, right now, at this moment, there's not much you can do. But the approach going forward has to be a complete change of what the fuck the approach is. This has to be like, you know, this has, right now, bottom line, the approach has to be scorched earth. Fuck this shit. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:21:00]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:00]
| But not today. But I'm telling you, it's not today. And I'm going to tell you why. Because right now, you're going to go scorched earth. You're going to be exhausted by the time that you actually need to go scorched earth. So you can't do it like right now. You can't sustain scorched earth nonstop. Okay. All right. Unless you're a psychopath. Okay. And that's a problem. OK, because only the psychopaths can sustain that a long time. And actually, eventually they go and blow up, too. But speaking of blowing up.
|
Sam:
[1:21:26]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:27]
| Trump in California. The trees are loaded with water. They suck that water on the ground. It's called management of the floor. Also, Trump in California, apparently there's a big valve.
|
Sam:
[1:21:41]
| Yes, we know about the valve. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:44]
| There's a valve. Apparently there's a valve, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:21:47]
| He's been talking about this valve and spigot for months, and it has not stopped. He's still talking about it today.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:53]
| We need to open the valve. This is the whole problem. Do we go and drive around and find a valve maybe that's what we should do we should go out you know like one of those random trips we're going to take a car we're going to rent an SUV and we're going to go and try to find the California valve.
|
Sam:
[1:22:16]
| There we go yes let's find that.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:19]
| I mean let's find the California valve we're going to go drive it around we're going to be looking through places yeah we're going to go find a valve i.
|
Sam:
[1:22:27]
| Saw someone speculating that the reason that donald trump thinks that there's a valve that will take.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:33]
| Stuff from like.
|
Sam:
[1:22:34]
| Oregon and go down to california is exactly because california is lower than oregon on a map.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:41]
| Yeah so gravity yes yes yes yeah yeah you know water flows only north to south.
|
Sam:
[1:22:52]
| There was, yes, speaking of that, there was another good article. I shared this on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack. Let me find it real quick. But of someone pointing out just the, Not all the evil stuff, but all the stupid stuff that is also back now that we have Donald Trump. I'm going to find this. Give me a second.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:21]
| Oh, it was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the one about him just being an idiot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on. Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[1:23:30]
| Oh, here we go. It was an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Trump Returns and So Does His Astounding Ignorance by Dana Milbank, posted on January 24th. And it just goes through the list of just absolutely moronic things that indicate he has no freaking idea.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:58]
| About anything.
|
Sam:
[1:23:59]
| About anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:01]
| Anything. Anything. Look, here is, listen, let me be straight up on this. Why he has succeeded. There is one thing that he has succeeded going back to the 70s and 80s. He is a good con man.
|
Sam:
[1:24:21]
| Yes. He has an instinctual notion of how to influence people in a way that he wants. He will understand their weaknesses. He will understand the things he cares about. Like you said before, he will understand what prejudices you can work on. All of this stuff to move things in a direction he wants. Now, what that direction is that he wants is almost always his pocketbook. Yes. Or otherwise, attention to him.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:58]
| Attention to him and money. Attention to him, money.
|
Sam:
[1:25:01]
| Yes. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:02]
| That's it. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:25:03]
| You've solved Donald Trump. And –, I think he does have direct antipathy and hatred for a few groups.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:12]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, oh, totally. Absolutely. Yes, he does have. He hates Puerto Ricans. I know that for sure. He said that. It's been documented many, many times. So that's why he wanted to sell us to Denmark, which I fucking look. I will say again, Denmark, look.
|
Sam:
[1:25:29]
| You're ready for that trade.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:31]
| Look, guys, I'm willing to make a deal. I'm willing to make a deal Believe me I will take, If we If Puerto Rico becomes part of the EU And we're in Denmark I'll probably move back to Puerto Rico, I'm not kidding Okay I will probably move back to Puerto Rico Very soon afterwards, You know It's because you're all about the Danish's, Yes I love the Danish's Actually those are good but I like their butter more ah okay look that lure pack let me tell you something that's some serious shit okay so, so yeah I mean it's yes as long as it feeds his prejudices get some attention and you know gets money in his pocket all aligned.
|
Sam:
[1:26:31]
| Okay let's do this this let's take another break real quick and then i do want to get into two specific, trump actions and talk a little bit more about those and those are going to be the january 6 pardons and the anti-dei moves across the federal government and but yeah let's let's take a break and then we'll get into those and then we'll wrap this sucker up so here is the break, Okay, we are back. So let me start January 6th pardons. We haven't even mentioned them. One of the things here is that.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:51]
| I mean, it's one of those things that I'm just like.
|
Sam:
[1:28:54]
| Well, yeah, I mean, every single thing on this list. I mean, Trump has not done anything, not a single thing in this first week that he is not completely telegraphed throughout the last four years. Like he has said he would do all of this kind of stuff on the january 6th pardon specifically though up until the day before the inauguration people in his orbit were saying we will be careful we will look at each case individually we will do this we'll like vance was on the sunday morning shows the day before the inauguration saying that of course we wouldn't pardon the violent ones, and okay so.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:42]
| So i mean.
|
Sam:
[1:29:44]
| I mean so by the way there's an abort part of the story is apparently they were trying to go through case by case with donald trump and talk about this and they were talking about they're doing the research and figuring out what was okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:59]
| Read can't read.
|
Sam:
[1:30:00]
| A comic book yes yes so here's they were they were having the meeting with Donald Trump trying to decide who would get nothing, who would get a commutation, who would get a pardon, blah, blah, blah. Trump got sick of this right away. And the direct quote is, fuck it, release them all.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:19]
| That makes total sense. You see, the thing is that instead of going one by one, if they really wanted to do that, they should have already said, okay, these are the violent ones, these are the violent ones, these would know. These, good, okay? Already haven't done it. And then he would have been like, okay, fine. But you want to go through him like one by one. I mean, you know, the guy that has the attention span of a fucking squirrel.
|
Sam:
[1:30:42]
| I think they weren't even actually at the point of going through one by one, but just trying to tell him what would be involved in looking at all of the cases.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:51]
| You needed to have, one of the things that I have noticed with him that works is presenting him fair complete.
|
Sam:
[1:30:57]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:58]
| You know, you already presented to him and it's like, look, this is what you asked. It's good. Whatever. Got done. Fuck it.
|
Sam:
[1:31:06]
| Right. And the thing here is, now he did commute a small number of them who were mostly proud boys, definitely violent. But there's a total of, I believe it was almost 1,600. I think it was 1,582 or something like people out of this. Of which like 600 were violent in some way shape or form and something like 200 had inflicted serious injuries on police officers you know and and so all all you know and look, And there are interviews with a bunch of these people as they're being released that are, for the most part, completely unrepentant. There's this one grandmother who made the news because she's like, I don't want the pardon. I'm refusing the pardon because I'm guilty and I now realize what I did was wrong and I deserve to be punished.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:07]
| Probably the rare, rare exception.
|
Sam:
[1:32:10]
| Yeah, this is one out of almost 1600. okay and i don't know if that if if actually like rejecting a pardon is even legally a thing like you can say you don't want it all you want but it's it's in legal force and it can't be undone you know but in any case most of these people completely under repentance saying they would do it again the the q anon shaman or whoever he was the guy who was wearing the horns and the face makeup and all whatever his quote is was like whoa i'm gonna go buy some guns you know so.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:50]
| Sounds i mean.
|
Sam:
[1:32:52]
| And and lots of lots of these people came out essentially swearing their allegiance to donald trump and saying they'd do it all over again the second he asked you know um and they're ready to fight there's a couple of them came out and said that it's now time for our revenge and our vengeance and we need to be going after all of those people who investigated us yeah so so i i don't know look maybe it'll come to nothing but like these folks are dangerous oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:24]
| No these folks are individually dangerous i mean and i and i get that but also you know they're they're also aligned with the biggest blowhard in the history of mankind.
|
Sam:
[1:33:33]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:33]
| And look, for, you know, I'm just like, you know, I mean, yeah, sure. Listen, a few of them already have managed to get themselves arrested again.
|
Sam:
[1:33:43]
| Oh, I know. It didn't take a, it didn't take a.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:46]
| It didn't take a, like, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:33:49]
| I heard of one. Is there more than one now?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:53]
| I heard of two that I recall right now. But come on, they haven't been out of 24 hours. You're already getting arrested. I mean, what the fuck? I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:34:08]
| And there's a lot of legal disentangling to be done. So, for instance, there was one case I heard of who someone who. Had gone to jail, was out, but had an ankle monitor, and then destroyed the ankle monitor and went on the run for a couple of days, and then was caught again, and got additional, sentencing for trying to evade the sentence. They're now in court trying to argue whether or not the additional sentence from getting rid of the ankle monitor was also pardoned, or only their actual activities on January 6th.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:53]
| Gotta love these people. I mean, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:34:59]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:00]
| Nothing but the best people, Sam. Nothing but the best people.
|
Sam:
[1:35:03]
| Nothing but the best. But, you know. Yeah. I was going to mention Officer Fanone, who has been on talking about how him and his family are getting death threats.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:16]
| All the time is that the guy that said to go fuck that uh you would tell him to go fuck themselves on cnn live yes.
|
Sam:
[1:35:22]
| It was that was him.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:23]
| Great um but by the way i don't know they've been harassing his mom is there a way is there a place to donate money to to like get him like protection just gotta be somewhere because we we gotta promote that because these guys i'm sorry one thing that i that i am for is like there's a number of these people and they're i don't know somebody probably.
|
Sam:
[1:35:41]
| Is they're probably.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:42]
| There we gotta we we gotta like you know fuck Whatever the fuck one of these people need to be defended against these clowns, I'm like, I'm all for fucking like, you know, making sure that they need to get whatever the fuck help they need. Well, because I'm going to let these assholes let them be intimidated.
|
Sam:
[1:35:58]
| Fanon was mentioning in an interview that after the pardons, because of the volume of death threats against him and his family, him, his ex-wife, his children, his mother, all getting threats, all getting physically harassed, like people showing up at his mom's house and throwing shit at her, literally, threw a bag of shit at her, this kind of stuff. And things are more violent than that, two death threats all the time. He went to try to go to court immediately after the pardons to get like restraining orders or whatever put in place and was basically told that it would be a long, complex process.
|
Sam:
[1:36:36]
| He would have to individually serve notice to every specific person he was worried about and that even then it would only be a limited time frame. Like that was covered and then they'd be free again. And, and so he's like, what do I do? What do I do? You know, and he's not the only one, obviously. And he, and in his case, like this, this is general, by the way, like absolutely anybody on the anti-Trump side who was prominent, especially people who testified in front of the January 6th committee. This has been true of their lives ever since they testified but in the case of finone and others he specifically got like he was beaten on the day of he was tased he had a heart attack on the scene he had traumatic brain injury on the scene all this kind of stuff some of the people released are the specific people who did that to him you know and you know so anyway like But again, I have heard multiple people express surprise that were like, well, we expected him to pardon people, but we thought that he was going to be careful about the violent versus not violent, whatever. And it's like, no, people, come on. Of course he was going to do this. It would have been the surprise if he'd been more measured.
|
Sam:
[1:38:03]
| He is paying off the people who supported him. He is getting them out. He is, to some degree, getting sort of a small reserve army to call upon again in the future. And, duh, of course. And like you were saying, Yvonne, like, really, you are going to expect Donald Trump to sift through the subtleties of 1,600 different cases and make a nuanced decision?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:30]
| By the way, I am sharing this. There is a recent GoFundMe that is verified. That is, it just started recently. I'm going to put it on our Slack. Furfanone, yes, I am about to donate money right now to help him. So yeah, if you guys, you know, a pony up and give this guy some money because he definitely needs the support from people.
|
Sam:
[1:38:55]
| And to be clear, though, it's not just him. He's one of the ones that's most vocal.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:59]
| But yeah, he's one of the ones that has been most targeted. So yeah, I mean, but you know, look, whatever you can do to help this guy. Yeah, go.
|
Sam:
[1:39:09]
| And for people not on the GoFundMe, I'll just read it out. It's GoFundMe.com slash F slash support hyphen hero hyphen Michael hyphen Fanon hyphen and hyphen his hyphen family.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:26]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:39:26]
| There you go. And you said this is properly verified and everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:30]
| Yes. I just double checked it. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:39:31]
| Yeah. So anyway. So yeah, there, there, there, there we go. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:38]
| Oh, it's a, it's a, it's going to be a long four years.
|
Sam:
[1:39:47]
| Okay. So the other, the other thing in our last few minutes is to just talk about the DEI stuff. Cause you know, we had a nice discussion on the Slack, by the way, of DEI. So for those of you not on the Slack, you're missing out. You should check it out. But basically what Donald Trump has done is immediately suspended anybody, anywhere in the federal government doing anything related to DEI. But also, and for the moment, they are on paid leave and their departments have been instructed to figure out the right way to actually fire them. But they also put out a notice to all federal agencies. And it was a different notice at each agency, but they basically were the same, telling people that sometimes people try to do DEI under other names and to please, if you see any of this happening, report it. And they gave an email and a phone number and blah, blah, blah, which apparently- Let me ask a question.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:52]
| Did they explain what they mean by DEI?
|
Sam:
[1:40:56]
| I could get up one of these particular notices. I don't think so. But basically, look, what they're actually targeting is actually far wider. I've seen reports that they're also like shutting down all affinity groups. Like if you have like, yes, that is correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:11]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:11]
| Like, you know, women engineers working at NASA or something. Sorry. No, you're done. You can't have that group anymore. And all of this kind of stuff, because basically, look, and Yvonne, I'll let you in a second, because you did it well on our Slack. But, and I have another pointer to somebody else who did it well, but the, What they mean by DEI quite clearly, regardless of what it really is, what they mean quite clearly is hiring anybody who's not a straight white male.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:46]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:41:48]
| You know, well, if, you know, basically that's what should be there. And if you're not that, then you're a DEI hire. You're a DEI hire. You're a woman.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:01]
| You're black. You're a minority. You're Hispanic. panic, you're a DEI hire.
|
Sam:
[1:42:05]
| And look, they mischaracterize routinely. And this is like, like you said, it's all about finding people's prejudices and exploiting them. They've tried to characterize this as, you know, the DEI stuff, by the way, and you can have an argument on affirmative action, affirmative action too, but this isn't even old school.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:26]
| This is not affirmative action.
|
Sam:
[1:42:28]
| But they mischaracterize it from top to bottom as hiring unqualified people just because of their race or ethnicity in order to be woke. And that's how they characterize everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:43]
| And it's got, it isn't. I mean, the main thrust of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it's clearly spelled out, is to root out one of the biggest problems that happens in hiring processes, which is that qualified candidates that are of groups outside of, you know, say you're a white manager. And so you get like a whole bunch of like, you wind up hiring amongst your friends and, And maybe all the people that you know are only, and I'll go, I'll give a more different example, bring an example to myself, a white Hispanic, okay, all right, I went to business school, okay, the number of women that were in business school was very small, okay, so one of the things that would happen, and I almost, all the people I knew exclusively for those jobs were men, okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:43]
| The thing about it is, okay, when you're going to go do an interview process is to make sure you're not just interviewing your fucking white male friends. It's to go and say, hey, let's make sure that we source a diverse candidate pool of people so you're not just looking at your old boy network and you interview across the board, all sorts of, you know, a good subset. To make sure that you are being inclusive of who you're being hiring to make the final selection. And one of the things that I did, especially, actually more relevant, in tech sales, I will say, which this was the one that was more important. Is that by doing that, because so many of the people historically, tech sales, extremely male dominated. Okay? Very much. You know, so we sourced a whole bunch of female candidates. Okay? And, you know, we wound up picking up a whole bunch of female candidates because when we sourced those female candidates, we found, holy shit, these are some very qualified women that probably, if we didn't spend the time looking for them, we wouldn't have hired, okay? And, by the way, they turned out to be the best fucking salespeople consistently.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:56]
| And if it wasn't that we went and, like, made that pool purposely, you know, bigger to give them a chance to interview for the job, then you wouldn't have done it. Because, man, I remember one thing that kept happening, especially recruiters and HR suck. Okay, and almost every company, they're terrible. The new systems that they have for apical tracking or whatever. Look, man, I honestly, me as a manager, got so frustrated because what I got through them was shit. I got so, such a stream of like limited pool of bad applicants, not qualified. And I'm just like, don't have the qualifications. And I saw how so many managers would get frustrated because they would post a job. They're like, okay, they're doing their job. Most managers, by the way, hate doing the hiring process. My experience, 90% of the people, they got an open job, stays open a long time. They're like, oh my God, I got to interview people. I got to do this. I got to whatever. I don't have the time for this horseshit.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:05]
| So I will wind up getting like a couple of bullshit candidates. And I'm like, okay, look, give me the whole fucking stack of resumes. I want to see who that fuck is being filtered by this stupid system. Okay. And all of a sudden I kept seeing a lot of more qualified people. The stupid system kept rejecting. And I'm just like, what the fuck? So no, I'd start putting, okay, let's put together a pool of people. Look, you got these people, you got, and all of a sudden you wind up with a diverse pool of people. You wind up interviewing and all of a sudden you're like, holy shit, look at these people and stupid systems left out. The recruiters kept bringing me shit when inside those resumes, there was a stack of very qualified people, diverse people. And you had a pool to choose. And, you know, you wind up with a team that is diverse. You wound up looking at candidates who you didn't consider. You wind up hiring people that many times wind up surprising you. You know, like I said, 15 years ago, stereotype all the tech salespeople are women. Man, you know what? Such a horseshit stereotype. I mean, it's like so many of them are great. But it was a stereotype back then. It was like it was a male-dominated profession. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:14]
| You said women, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:16]
| Yeah, but it was, yeah, no. But it's like it was such a male-dominated profession. And, you know, getting them in the door to be presented, qualified, whereas before we didn't bring them to the table. And that's the whole thing about the EI. It's to bring qualified people to the table to get a look. that you get a diverse look. Not that you hire, because they're thinking more about a front of an action in the old way where they're in some places where there are, oh, well, we have to have quotas. And that's not what this is doing. But they frame it as that.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| And it's more than that too. It's not just hiring. It's also post-hire, making sure the environment isn't exclusionary, making sure that people understand the diversity of people out there.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:05]
| Yeah, once you get them in the door, exactly. That you're not, you know, like, I mean, totally, 100%. That, you know, people have so many different needs. They come from so many different backgrounds. Make sure that you're respectful of all of those things. You know, I mean, it's so important, you know. And I know that I remember when I was, like, younger, coming into a career, that probably a lot, we did probably a lot more things that were some people, for example, having a happy hour, okay? Bringing people alcohol. There's a number of people that don't drink.
|
Sam:
[1:48:45]
| Right?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:46]
| And they don't feel comfortable with that environment as that being the only social type of interaction that there is for the group, for example. I mean, if you don't drink, you'll wind up feeling uncomfortable. And so making sure that you bring people together to do something that that isn't the only social event that the the events that the company's having aren't just alcohol you know booze fests is important right for example and it's something that 20 plus years ago we didn't give a shit about that's inclusion well.
|
Sam:
[1:49:18]
| Yeah 20 20 plus years ago it wasn't just like you know you you go out and drinks you know you go do drinks at the strip club, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:49:27]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:49:28]
| Correct.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:30]
| And, you know, drag the women along. Some that didn't want to go. Some wanted to go. But some that didn't want to go. And they felt like this is, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:49:43]
| And by the way, some that didn't want to go but felt like they had to act like they did want to go.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:51]
| Exactly. Yeah. I'm saying this because I've been invited to strip clubs by women. So that's not told yet. I'm sorry to tell you that that doesn't work that way.
|
Sam:
[1:49:59]
| I understand. I'm just saying.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:01]
| But at a work environment.
|
Sam:
[1:50:03]
| If you're doing that, the whole thing about the work environment.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:06]
| The people feel pressured. Yes, they don't feel like they have freedom of decision.
|
Sam:
[1:50:10]
| Yes, there's a reason they call it mandatory fun. Because people don't feel like they really have the option to opt out. I mean, maybe even they technically could opt out, but then they feel like if they do, there will be negative consequences to them. maybe not explicit negative consequences, but if you're not in the club, you're not going to get some sort of benefits. People aren't going to think about you as much people, you know, all this kind of stuff. And, uh, so DEI includes all that kind of stuff too. It includes like being sensitive to, Oh, this guy has these particular rigid religious restrictions that you should think of.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:52]
| Correct. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:53]
| No, this, this person.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:55]
| Oh, it's not just Merry Christmas, motherfucker. You know, for example.
|
Sam:
[1:51:00]
| This person was a vet who has PTSD. And so maybe don't go dropping things around him or you're sneaking up behind.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:07]
| Let's not go to a gun range for fun.
|
Sam:
[1:51:11]
| You know, like there are all kinds of things. And basically, it's really all about, hey, let's be thoughtful and actively try to combat our own internal unspoken prejudices and make sure we're being fair. And so that is anathema to the current Republican Party.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:37]
| A hundred percent, a hundred percent, you know, totally a hundred percent. And it's a thing of like letting, letting the team really be to a lot of times, like within reason, be the driver of what the, the activities that, that are being done and so forth and make sure that they, you know, that you carefully consider that, that, you know, they, they are, you know, they, you know, that they are inclusive. Okay. And it's something that I flat out, I know 20 plus years ago, we couldn't give two flying fucks about. And and I worked in an environment that many times that maybe, you know, I know that the women I work with know that more because they've known me for this long. They know that they weren't being pressured into it. But it was that wasn't like their favorite. That wasn't what they really wanted to go to. OK. And, you know, because it was almost all of our friends. But they were like, yes, I prefer to do something else. But but we know that you were like, OK, well, you know, but that was the learning experience.
|
Sam:
[1:52:34]
| Well, that's the whole thing with this kind of thing as well. It is in many cases, and this applies not for all of these groups and all of these sensitivities, it's not necessarily something that the person is going to say no to or even immediately be offended by, but it sort of wears them down over time because they're being asked to do something or the whole microaggression thing, right? You're constantly over time doing small little things that none of them on their own are necessarily like a big deal. But when you add them all up, are creating an environment that is hostile.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:16]
| Yes. And the one thing is that thankfully we didn't have, you know, the only reason I know is because most of these people that I work with like early in my career are friends to this day. That I know at least, thank God, we didn't have an environment of microaggressions, but we did things that for the people that didn't, that weren't, knew us very well, they just weren't inclusive, okay? It made it that, you know, that new members, they didn't, it's uncomfortable. So, you know, but you learn, you evolve, and those are the things that you learn now. And that's the whole, but it's the whole point about the DEI. It's to teach... About this stuff. It's not about hiring some unqualified minority. It has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with it. But the GOP has weaponized it into hiring unqualified minorities.
|
Sam:
[1:54:15]
| Right. But to be fair, that's the wrong way to say it. You're absolutely right. It's weaponized about hiring unqualified people. But also, even if it was just about what we just said about like being sensitive to other people's needs and concerns. That's like weak, woke bullshit, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:35]
| Yes. That's weak, woke bullshit. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:54:37]
| You know? And so the other thing to point out is over and over again, people have found out when they've really looked into this, that when you are inclusive and when you get a wider variety of people, Okay. Sorry, tangent. I have to say this too. Another thing that people do all the time is talk about like this candidate is a diverse candidate and stuff like that drives me absolutely nuts.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:06]
| It is the first candidate. It's like, it's not a diverse candidate or candidate pools that you make that are diverse. It's not a.
|
Sam:
[1:55:13]
| Yes. Yeah. Because people have effectively, that is changing the word diverse into meaning minority that's getting some privilege. Which is not what it is at all. The point of diversity is diversity in the group of people you're looking at. It's basically saying diversity is a strength. The wider variety of people you have working on things, which, yes, includes race, includes ethnicity, includes gender, includes sexual orientation, but also, by the way, includes like type of education, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:55:51]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:55:52]
| Yes. What job history prior to the current job, like veterans versus civilians, people who, you know, do you have people that at one time in their life actually did work retail jobs? Or do you only have like trust fund people who jumped straight into college in a high paying job? Yeah. You know, there's a difference.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:15]
| Very much so.
|
Sam:
[1:56:16]
| You know, all of this kind of stuff matters and it is not, you do not have, you know, this person is diverse. This person does that. No, it's, you are looking for diversity in your overall group of people. And the reason why, which is what I was about to say before that tangent, is that time after time, after time, people who have looked carefully into it have found that you get better results with the diverse group.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:45]
| Oh, a hundred percent.
|
Sam:
[1:56:46]
| Because they are bringing in perspectives that you do not have if you have sort of this homogenous you're all straight white guys yeah you know or or even for that matter if you're homogenous anything else or like anything else yeah you know like it does not serve you to have a group that has the in entirely the same viewpoint entirely the same background, entirely, the more variety you get, the better your results in the end, because you look at things in those different ways, you get to hash out the results, etc. Assuming, by the way, the diversity itself is not enough, you also have to have a environment, that is trusting enough that all of those people actually get a say and can express themselves and you can actually have those conversations.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:46]
| Well, I think that's the most important.
|
Sam:
[1:57:47]
| If you have the diversity, but then you have a top-down, like what we were saying with, you know, just obey orders mentality, then none of that helps at all anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:00]
| Well, that part is the crucial part of that, is to have the environment that really fosters that open communication amongst people and that is is a good working environment okay and so i i i now i have had the the the great fortune of for the most part working in pretty, diverse environments, you know, for most of my career. And I, you know, many times I think, especially when I started working, you know, I think especially that diversity, opened my eyes about when I was younger about some preconceptions that I had that were misplaced about who knows what or whatever. And very quickly, when you have a group like that is good, it dissolves that so quickly that it makes it that you work so much better. And I think that that is the huge value of that in terms of... Getting people get over some pre-held stereotype that they have about a group of people. I'll give you a great example of one.
|
Sam:
[1:59:24]
| I forgot earlier.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:25]
| You heard that.
|
Sam:
[1:59:26]
| I forgot when I was listing things earlier, country of origin, language. There's so many different things you can think of.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:34]
| Yeah. I remember, look, one of the best examples. And this is something that got thrown around so much when I was younger. Yeah, you've been lazy Mexicans, lazy Mexicans, lazy Mexicans, Mexicans are so fucking late. You know, you hurt growing up. I'm sure you heard talk about how the Mexicans are so lazy.
|
Sam:
[1:59:57]
| Right? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:00]
| So so I mean, I'd heard about this. I never worked with Mexicans, but it's something that gets told in your head. So you think I think first time I'm going to go to a business trip to Mexico City, I'm expecting people knock off work early. You're not going to be that hardcore, whatever. Listen went to the hp mexico office first time is in the summer of 97 internship those fuckers got there at eight in the morning on the dot and they at the 8 p.m at night that office was still packed with people barely anybody had left i've never seen it i've never seen an office with people working their ass off more than at that office literally packed at 8 p.m, and i was like holy fuck how could people say that these people are lazy where the fuck, could i mean and and it's just one of those things that quickly showed me how, a stereotype just gets thrown around about people that's just complete bullshit right and that was a real eye opener for me i'll tell you that one and i was like that really to me i was like I learned from that one. Anything you heard about any country, about anybody, how it works and their work culture, just throw it in the garbage because it's just bullshit. Immediately that was like in the dustbin immediately.
|
Sam:
[2:01:23]
| Yes. Yeah. I mean, and the reality is, and this is true generally when doing group comparisons is the difference between individuals swamps, any sort of global difference anyway, you know, if, if you, and the global differences are usually tiny, minor, random, like, or due to something other than, you know, like the pernicious thing is people assume it's sort of like any differences you see are due to some internalized well let's put it right out people think it's genetic people think it's like oh this yeah group is dumb this ethnic group is smart this ethnic group is lazy this or whatever and it's not and the reality is any differences like that have ever been looked at tend to first be swamped by individual differences so are not meaningful at all when you're looking at individuals that you're interacting with. And second, have readily explainable alternate explanations related to infrastructure, education, previous bias, you know, people, all kinds of opportunities that weren't available, all kinds of other things, as opposed to being like, this group has some property that just doesn't seem to really exist so.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:46]
| Well what listen i i think that one of the things that i you know is one of the most difficult ones to explain to people in the, in management positions in the U S that had never worked outside the U S they kept thinking that sales outside the U S of product A, B or C. Oh my, well, it's so different over there. You guys don't understand. And I'm like, it is the biggest utter bullshit there. What are the realities is about the last 21st century is that the differences really between the, the knowledge of the products, the sales process, the transaction, whatever, are actually far less than what the people are. That the interactions and how people work and how they buy products across the globe are far more similar, especially than you will ever believe. And that the differences in terms of sometimes just local work culture have sometimes to do just with like laws and certain things or just how, you know, Well, like in the EU, for example, they're far more strict about working hours.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:00]
| Okay? People staying late. In the Netherlands, if you stayed late, they actually would put a monitor on you for health and wellness to make sure that they put this very cumbersome one in order to make sure that you were okay at your desk, that nothing happened, okay? All right? Because they just didn't want you to stay working late, you know? You know the work day's done go go go right so so but if you did well well then you know we've got some you know some cumbersome monitor to make sure we're gonna check on you yes not unlike the u.s where i can't remember where the hell it was i think it was a wells fargo or some other company where the lady died it was dead for like four yeah they didn't notice for three or four days now over there they're like no no we're gonna put a monitor make sure that you're safe and if you haven't exited by a certain time security's coming around so so those are more to the different things, but my thing is that things are far more similar than they are different. And that's the reality. So anyway, all right. We've beaten everything to death.
|
Sam:
[2:05:01]
| I just want to wrap up in a couple of ways. One, I had mentioned another person who had summarized the DEI stuff nicely, I thought. Christy Coulter, who was once a guest on this show a few years back. K-R-I-S-T-I Coulter. C-O-U-L-T-E-R. Made a Facebook post yesterday, I think it was. Anyway, it's public. It's available to the web.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:25]
| Basically what I was saying, that people keep confusing affirmative action. It says here, I think a lot of people have DEI confused with affirmative action, but they have largely separate things. When you think quotas, preferential, higher, and legal mandates, you're thinking about AA.
|
Sam:
[2:05:41]
| But her post goes on for quite a bit and goes into a lot of detail on a bunch of different things. Very articulate, very well done. I mean, she is a writer, so of course it is.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:53]
| A writer who writes always.
|
Sam:
[2:05:55]
| Yeah, she is, but worth reading, go, go search for it. And yeah, so that, and then also just finally the, in terms of the DEI stuff, actually helping and helping with good results. You know, I was thinking on the one hand for, you know, to Donald Trump and the feds, you know, okay, well getting rid of this, they'll eventually regret it because not as good results. But then I realized, no, no, no. Because again, they're not looking for the best results out of these agencies. A, they don't want the agencies to succeed anyway. They don't believe in most of these agencies. Maybe Department of Defense is an exception or whatever. But even there, again, this is the difference in culture. The culture is the culture of obeying. The measurement is not, do you get the best results on some sort of objective scale? The measure is did you jump as quickly and as high as the boss told you to that's it that's the only measure and on that scale having a bunch of clones who agree with you 100 percent probably is the best way to get that result look.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:14]
| The one thing is but again it's not even results it's like whether you could, convince them that you actually did something that you didn't even do look, it's the entire smoke and mirrors thing, it's not about facts or substance, It's about how you can bullshit and whether your bullshit is believable.
|
Sam:
[2:07:36]
| Well, yeah, but in the specific case of people working for you in the workflow, in the workforce, in the federal workforce, one of Trump's biggest frustrations in his first term was he would say, I want X, Y, Z to happen, and it wouldn't happen because of institutional inertia and resistance.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:57]
| And he wants to blow through that. Yeah, but here's what I'm trying to tell you, okay, all right. One of the things that I'm realizing as we're going through this is that, Sam, it doesn't even matter that you did it or not.
|
Sam:
[2:08:15]
| I know, I know.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:16]
| No, no, no. Exactly. Because the reality is, I've experienced in corporate America, how many times have I seen people that got promoted, not because they actually did anything, but because they sold very well that they did something that wasn't done. So in order to succeed in this administration, the problem is that to these people, the truth is a problem. Because you get told to do something. What you get told to do is impossible to do, right? So you report back that, okay, I told them to do this, right? Okay. You know, I told them to open the valve.
|
Sam:
[2:09:00]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:01]
| Okay. Mr. President, we couldn't open the valve. Trump gets pissed. Well, no, you can't do that. What you have to do is, sir, the valve's been opened.
|
Sam:
[2:09:11]
| We're good.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:13]
| You could go ahead and tell people the valves been open and the problem's been solved okay right and you do something else to whatever to make it like smoke and beer or whatever this is where we get into trouble sam because so much of what he asked for is impossible to do, so it turns you into just basically just having to see how well you can lie yes.
|
Sam:
[2:09:37]
| Impossible and or obviously destructive and or whatever. But yeah, you're right.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:44]
| But so many of them are impossible too, Sam.
|
Sam:
[2:09:47]
| Yeah, no.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:48]
| Hey, I want you to get rid of like 10 million people by next week. Okay, you can't get rid of 10 million people by next week. But maybe you can convince them. Send him a whole bunch of pictures of some loaded planes and places with a whole bunch of people. And you're like, Donald, we're getting the job done. Look at this. Look at this.
|
Sam:
[2:10:10]
| Well, and the one thing that we can say is that this last election proved all that works.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:10:18]
| It's the impression that matters, not the reality.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:24]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[2:10:24]
| You know and god help you if you're still you.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:30]
| Tell the truth.
|
Sam:
[2:10:31]
| Yeah if you tell the truth if you're still stuck on like i want to pick the policy that's going to have the actual best result and oh by the way it's going to take 10 to 15 years for the results to happen i mean if you if you're working to make those things happen great but you can't you have to sell it on the illusion anyway it's like yes it's.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:55]
| That that's the problem sam this is the situation where they're where they're in it doesn't fucking listen the many like i said you know they have to just become complete and utter bullshit artists.
|
Sam:
[2:11:07]
| Well and the thing is at this point the best you can hope for is the bullshit artist that's still behind the scenes wants to do something that's useful as opposed to the bullshit artist who actually just wants to enrich themselves and that's it you know i don't know i i feel like there's still some folks on the democratic side of things who are trying to be honest and do the right thing but i worry that it doesn't work, you know that well.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:40]
| I i do think look why and i we we need to wrap up at some.
|
Sam:
[2:11:44]
| Point is getting like.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:45]
| A log out or log. But what I had said to you, what I had said on Slack this week is that you need to, listen, the change has to be a change in mentality towards, like I said earlier about scorched earth. You need to go, listen, you need to pull the Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt plan, which what the thing about that Roosevelt did that was very effective was that A, he was constantly battling Congress. He was constantly, you know, he was, if you're going back into government, you have to constantly be bending the envelope, try to pack the courts, try to do this. I don't give a shit that they reversed it. You have to go scorched earth like that and you have to brand it because believe it or not that fucker hey the new deal fuck we still remember that damn name yep you need you know you need a 21st century new deal not just is what you need the package not.
|
Sam:
[2:12:44]
| Just quietly do the thing and no one knows it was you.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:47]
| Exactly you need to do the 21st century new deal that's what you need to put you need to brand it and you need to sell it and you need to say, hey, this is what we're doing. And then you need to be aggressive and you need to say, fuck, you know, fuck, fuck, work with them, whatever we're going to do, whatever the fuck it takes. Okay. And you sell it that way.
|
Sam:
[2:13:09]
| Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. And I will add one thing that is just of the various Democrats over the, since the election, only one of them has really stood out to me in terms of, seeming to do this the right way in terms of the communication.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:29]
| Which is?
|
Sam:
[2:13:30]
| AOC.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:32]
| I was going to say exactly. The only one. She's the only one that gets it. Motherfucker, she's the only one that gets it. Son of a fucking bitch. She's the only one that gets it.
|
Sam:
[2:13:42]
| Yeah, I mean, I look at Hakeem Jeffries and his speeches and stuff and I'm like, oh, come on.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:49]
| No. No, she's the only one that gets it. She's the only one that gets it.
|
Sam:
[2:13:53]
| And like, you know, Yvonne and I both, when she first came on the scene, was like, ah, she's naive. She's naive. She's not doing this the right way. She's causing more problems than she's worth. She has matured so fucking much. And right now she runs circles around anybody else.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:12]
| Around all of them. All of them.
|
Sam:
[2:14:13]
| Because she knows how to message in such a way that she's making the right point. Like you've got so many Democrats right now who are in a stupor who are like, oh, the lesson out of this election is we have to move right. We have to become more conservative to get the people in the middle.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:31]
| No, no, no. And it's not about moving right or left. It's about being aggressive with your fucking message.
|
Sam:
[2:14:41]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:42]
| Packaging it and selling it the right way.
|
Sam:
[2:14:45]
| The right answer to this is, oh, we can be aggressive to immigrants too. We can deport more people. No, this is not the right way. And yeah, she's the only one. She's the only one right now.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:01]
| She's the only one. She's the only fucking one. Everybody else is failing the test.
|
Sam:
[2:15:06]
| And they're not taking advantage of that either. Like they're, they're threatened by her. And so, you know, they, it's the wrong approach. Like they should be taking her and saying, damn, you're good. Let's go in front of more people more.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:27]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[2:15:28]
| And give you more responsibilities. Yeah. Yes. You are the face of the new democratic party. And look, honestly, on some things, she's more left than I am. And I would not agree with her on an issue by issue basis on everything. But God damn it. She knows how to get the message across and none of these other jackasses do.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:48]
| But, but this goes the one thing she gets me in the direction I want to go. No, you know, okay. I, I'm not, I don't, I don't need to agree with somebody on everybody. I didn't agree with Biden on everything either, but he can't get me going in the direction. I want to go. She gets me in the fucking direction. I want to go. And that's good. That's, that's more than good enough for me. That's good for, that's great for me. Okay. All right. that's what I want to do.
|
Sam:
[2:16:14]
| Yeah, there was an interview with Jon Stewart in the last couple of days. I have only seen clips from it. I have not spent the time to watch the whole thing and I feel like I need to fix that. But I will, if you just Google Jon Stewart and AOC, you will find it. It's from the weekly show with Jon Stewart podcast. I'm going to put it into Cummudgeons Corner Slack as well. And yeah it it is one of many things she's posting on her own tiktoks and youtubes and stuff like that all the time as well she's just good pay attention she is she is a rising star if the democrats don't fuck it up and intentionally screw her she's i i don't know which.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:59]
| Direction listen listen we need we people we need to stand we need to more forcefully more of us need to stand behind her and support her, to go there that's what we need to do we need to stand up and we need to fucking say this is this this is the direction that we need to go stop with the fucking bullshit yeah period.
|
Sam:
[2:17:20]
| Like I've said before, either House leadership moving to the Senate or even moving to the executive side and running for president, I don't know what she's going to do, but the Democrats make a mistake in not using her for everything they can. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:38]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[2:17:39]
| We're done.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:40]
| Wrap it up.
|
Sam:
[2:17:40]
| Go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can find our archives. You can find all the ways to contact us. You can find a link to our Patreon. I talked a lot about Patreon earlier in the day, so I won't like repeat it all, but go there to give us money and at various levels, we'll send you stuff and at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, we will invite you to the curmudgeon's quarter slack where, you know, earlier I mentioned Nick was getting his invite. He is now actually on the slack. He has joined while we've been recording here and is on there now. So come in and you should join us too. Ask. The more the merrier. It's a lot of fun in there. Yvonne and I and a bunch of our listeners are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all that sort of stuff. Yvonne, do you want to, do you have one to highlight for today that we have not talked about?
|
Ivan:
[2:18:28]
| Oh, fuck me. Well, I ha I was very happy to report on, on, on, on the random channel on Slack that with the new changes, in the in the algorithm at facebook i'm getting really the recommendations that okay really, need and so all of a sudden i'm scrolling through and i get this recommendation that says a title your relations ukrainian women know how to take care of men and some picture of some attractive blonde girl my family rations for like com for men 50 plus ukrainian women and a little fire logo on the side so uh excellent i i suck is getting you know this is straightening, definitely has the house straight in order.
|
Sam:
[2:19:26]
| Indeed oh by the blue sky by the way um i'm not going to talk about this topic in whole but like i had put on the list a couple weeks ago of their their follow problem i i have been inundated in blue sky and apparently a whole bunch of other people have too oh.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:47]
| Uh sex bots.
|
Sam:
[2:19:47]
| Yes sex bots following like well yeah presumably oh yeah random accounts with like i mean i was getting hundreds of these damn things and and just i'm.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:01]
| Not that popular.
|
Sam:
[2:20:02]
| And look well see the thing was on all of my socials lately i'd had a policy that if someone followed me that had more followers than i did i would follow them back just sight unseen i would follow oh god so i was doing that with some of you so you basically You basically.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:21]
| Filled your feed with porn.
|
Sam:
[2:20:23]
| Well, my feed is all like, they weren't actually posting, so they weren't showing up in my feed. They would try to DM me and be like, hello, handsome.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:33]
| Oh, okay. So you were being DMed. Oh, so no, no, exactly. So you're being flooded with poor DMs. Okay, great.
|
Sam:
[2:20:39]
| And so I eventually, I gave up my strategy, which had worked on other socials just fine. And I unfollowed everybody I followed like that. And I'm like, fuck it. I'm not following anybody again, like for that, because they followed me. Like, I'll go back to my other strategy of only following people who I see a post from them that seems interesting. And that's it.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:03]
| I don't have a lot of followers. Here's the interesting thing. Blue Sky says I have 31 followers. Follow that. Can't pronounce followers. But for some reason, when I look at the list, I only see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 on the list, even though it says I have 31 followers. I, so I don't know what the hell that means. Out of those... One seems to be selling gold.
|
Sam:
[2:21:30]
| Oh, good. Good.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:32]
| Yeah, I know. I know. I know. Pete, I'm going to I'm going to for I'm going to have him connect with you so you can buy some gold. Another one that says lovely and caring. But actually, that one doesn't seem like that. That one doesn't seem like porn. But this one here, D Rose, am looking am period space looking for a man who is emotionally mature, ready for a real relationship and values deep conversations. Someone who's comfortable being himself, who knows how to laugh at life and isn't afraid to take chances when it comes to love. I mean, that sounds and let me and I.
|
Sam:
[2:22:09]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:10]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm seeing her pictures and. Well, OK. All right. Let me not go into the pictures right now.
|
Sam:
[2:22:17]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:18]
| OK. Let me see. Sarah Morgan follows me. I see the picture looks provocative, but maybe she's just a person. I don't know. she doesn't have to say anything i mean possible i mean i don't know i mean but but those are the only ones that that really like stood out to be that are like like that the rest are you know look like normal things but the one thing i don't understand why the hell this thing got 31 followers my list only shows 11 what are the other 20 you know anonymously counting.
|
Sam:
[2:22:48]
| Is hard for computers it's one of the things.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:50]
| That well that is that is a problem yet they haven't quite mastered yet That's why we're working on AI.
|
Sam:
[2:22:56]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:56]
| And once we got the AI, then we'll be able to count.
|
Sam:
[2:22:59]
| That's right. That's right. So, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:02]
| Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:23:03]
| Okay, we are done. Thanks, everybody, for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's Corner. Tell your friends, all that kind of stuff. And stay safe. Have a good week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:15]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:23:47]
| Okay, hit and stop. Later, Ivan.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:50]
| All right, let's see. Save. Thank you.
| |
|
