Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:03]
| There we go, and then I make sure it shows up over here, and I retweet it, and then put this back over here. Okay, all the preliminaries are done, let's get this sucker started!
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Sam:
[0:50]
| Welcome to Curmudgeons Corner for Saturday, July 12th, 2025. As I'm starting to record, it is just after 18 UTC. I am Sam Minter, and we do not have Mr. Yvonne Bowe with us today.
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Sam:
[1:08]
| He called out sick. He messaged me Friday morning U.S. Time saying, Hey, I'm sick. I don't think I can record. I've called out of work, too. And at the time he mentioned it to me, I was still at home, but just barely. I had to leave and run to work. And so I left and ran to work and blah, blah, blah, and didn't get to send out my email to folks, say, asking for co-hosts until I got home, like, many hours later. And no responses this time. Because, I mean, I gave only one time I could possibly record, and I didn't give much notice. And, you know, sometimes nobody's available anyway. So it's just me. I'm going to do a solo. As usual, when I do a solo, I'm going to, you know, you'll listen to one episode unless you're on the YouTube live stream. But, you know, in reality, I'm going to record each segment separately. And in between the segments, I'm going to go off and do other things for hours. I have, like, stuff to do and things I want to do. So I'm not even going to go two hours straight. I mean, I could do two hours straight. It is possible. I have done it. I do it with Yvonne all the time. I could do it solo, too. But, you know, whenever I have the extra freedom of it just being me, I take breaks. Like, I do a little bit, take a break, do a little bit, take a break, you know.
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Sam:
[2:34]
| Anyway, agenda-wise, this first sort of but firsty segment, I'm going to give an update on my car situation. I mean, I did put a little thing at the very end of last week's episode for anybody who stayed past the closing music. But I'll give an update on my car situation. and do a couple movies. And that'll be it. And then I'll take a break and we'll come back with more newsy stuff. But honestly, honestly, as I sit here looking at it right now, I'm like, I don't know. There's not that much exciting on the list. I mean, look, as always in every week, things happened. I mean, if Yvonne was here, we'd probably talk about tariffs. There was more crazy, stupid tariff stuff. There's stuff about the Epstein investigation. Not the investigation itself, because there's really been nothing new there in years, but about the Trump administration people self-imploding over the fact that they built up a conspiracy theory and then had to come out and say, oh, really, there's nothing there. You know, other stuff, Elon's starting a new political party, or said he was anyway.
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Sam:
[3:49]
| Well, we'll talk about something. But first, yeah, but first, that's why I call it the but first segment is because sometimes I call it but first. You know, actually, I stole that. There was a podcast called Tank Riot that I used to listen to. They haven't put out a new episode in a decade plus. I think it's defunct. I think one of the co-hosts died, I think, or one of their close family members died or something and they just stopped. But i liked it because what they did was they would have this but first segment where they talked about bullshit oh they talked about like you know whatever and it was just random and all over the place sometimes personal stuff sometimes media sometimes whatever and then after doing that for a while they would go on to their official topic of the show generally speaking it wasn't like a news and politics show like we do here. It was sort of a, they would pick a topic to deep dive into.
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Sam:
[4:56]
| And then they would spend time talking about the topic. And anyway, it was, I liked that podcast. I had fun with it. And they did the but first. And anyway, that's where that comes from. I think their archival episodes are all still up online. You can go check them out, Tank Riot. It was fun. And sometimes they did talk about politics and stuff too. It just wasn't the always consistent theme like we sort of do, although we get away from it sometimes. Anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Sam:
[5:30]
| I'll start with the car stuff. For those of you who listened past the end of the episode last week, you know I did go out and get a 2025 Ioniq 5 SEL model. Actually, I don't know if I said that in the after podcast, but it was the SEL trim level. I'll talk about that a little bit in a second.
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Sam:
[5:50]
| Basically the, you know, I'd been looking at them for a while. You know, I sort of had it in my mind that that's the one I kind of wanted if we could swing it. And it was probably a little bit more money than we would actually want to spend. As I told Yvonne, the amount of money I wanted to spend is zero, you know, like, yeah, like I didn't want to buy a new car right now. I'd hoped that this one would last a couple more years you know i knew it was in bad shape in various ways but i hope it would last a couple more years and yes yvonne was like oh let's uh get the prius just get the prius but i kind of wanted to do the all electric thing the subsidies were you know are being canceled in a couple months so like if i'm gonna do it like now seems like a good time to do it i'd been looking at this one for a while as they pass me on the street i'd been like you know hey, that looks cool. I think I like it. I was like, I need to see the interior. I'd only seen them passing by. And I had tried to peek in the windows of some parked ones, but I was always a little self-conscious about that and only took a quick glance. I didn't actually stop and stare.
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Sam:
[7:07]
| So I hadn't really gotten a good view of the interior. My wife had at least one friend, i think two who actually had them already and so she had actually ridden in them and said yeah it's a nice car you know i don't know her worry was it was like slightly bigger than my current car and it was like i i've said over and over again like the the size of car i had in the 2012 subaru imprasa was just about what i wanted like i i could see i didn't really want to go any smaller, but I also didn't really want to go much larger. I'd consider a little bit larger, but not a lot larger. Like when occasionally when my car's been in the shop and I've gotten loaners from Subaru, they've put me in like Foresters or Outbacks or, you know, things like that. And I immediately felt like they were too big. I did not like them. I mean, they were fine. And after I drove them for a little while, I got used to them, but, Size-wise, I didn't like them. So she was worried that, you know, look, you may not think so, but the Ioniq's actually bigger than your current car. And I looked up the dimensions. It's a little bit bigger. It's like, you know, a couple inches wider and like four or five inches longer. I forget the exact numbers, but it was a little bit bigger.
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Sam:
[8:26]
| But you know so that was a concern and and also yeah like you know if you if you did a straight up purchase the the monthly payments were pretty large like larger like and i guess in the in the grand scheme of things i mean lots of pain lots of car payments are like that level you know yeah it was it was like a 700 and change car payment if i did a straight up purchase of the model i wanted and like you know it's i've it's been years since i've had any car payment i'm like i don't want any car payment and when i did like the last one was a lot less than that it seems like i mean it was you know what 12 plus years well i guess i'm still paying it for a while after that but like it's been a long time so things were cheaper and so like i get sticker shock anyway so those those were all concerned so i was like okay fine yvonne i'll look at the other ones too and like blah blah blah i'm i i didn't look at the other ones at all so my wife had a friend of hers yeah okay fine they they she has friends who own the dealership the hyundai dealership so she texts her friend is like you know hey we're looking for a new car it was unexpected yeah unexpected like it was an old car we knew it would happen sometime but we didn't know it was going to happen at that moment.
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Sam:
[9:51]
| And we wanted you know what do you have you know and she's like i i talked to my folks we have something in mind for you come on in we'll take care of you so you know i will say and i and look it it's been however long i mean my car brandy's car it's been forever since last time we bought cars the last couple of times we've had one connection or another that you know i mean.
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Sam:
[10:25]
| It it helps like i am the kind of person who like i don't want to go in and haggle i don't want to go in and do whatever like i i want to look at the sticker say this is what i want buy it and out you know i've talked to yvonne about this before like my car before the subaru was a saturn and And that was their whole deal was like, yo, no haggle. It's just the sticker price. Go. I love my Saturn, by the way. I like that car. I like the Subaru too. You know, even though I wish it had lasted a little bit longer, I liked both those cars. Oh, I went through, I tried to figure out my entire car history. And I can't remember all the years. And I have this sneaking suspicion that maybe I forgot one, but I don't think so. So I think it was the first one was a 1976 Dodge Colt that had originally belonged to my grandmother. I called it puke green. It was sort of a shiny metallic green. I still have its dashboard in my garage to this day because when it finally died, I removed the dashboard and I kept it. Anyway, 1976 Dodge Colt. That was my grandmother's, then it was my mother's, then she let me drive it. I guess I technically never owned it. It was always my mother's, but I got to drive it. Then there was a Ford Taurus station wagon. It was blue.
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Sam:
[11:54]
| And that was also my mom's, but I got to drive it. And then after the Ford Taurus died, i got a toyota corolla and i had that that that's the one i remember the least about because it didn't last that long it got totaled in an accident i got rear-ended like i got in a multi-car pile-up where i was driving along the highway and you know i i had to stop because there were people stopped in front of me i successfully stopped you know i was not moving and then multiple cars hit me from behind and that one i i had bought used and wasn't worth that much to start with probably and yeah it was totaled by that accident luckily everybody walked away it was like you know multi-car pile up but nobody's severely injured i think i ended up going to like a chiropractor for a little bit which like it was a sports medicine slash chiropractor because like Like, yeah, I guess my back was hurt a little bit, but I don't know. Well, I don't even remember. It was a long time ago. But then after that, I got the Saturn.
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Sam:
[13:08]
| Green Saturn SL2, I think it was, and then the Subaru Impreza, and now Hyundai Ioniq 5. That's my entire history of cars, my entire life, unless I forgot one. I feel like maybe there was one in between the Taurus and the Corolla, but then I think back and I think there wasn't that much time in that interval. There can't have been. That has to have been it. And I'm hallucinating that There might have been another because I also can't remember anything about another car. So I think that's probably just it. I just like keep thinking, did I miss one? Is there? No, but I think that's the entire history.
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Sam:
[13:49]
| Anyway, it helps to have someone like because apparently it's a family business. The person who's a friend of my wife's wasn't there. She was traveling, but her daughter was there. And so her daughter came in. And her daughter did sort of the beginning and end of the process. And in between, they assigned us to some regular salesperson to do the test drive and all the intermediary stuff. But it was very smooth. There was no hassle. We didn't do any negotiation. They gave us a price. I mean, I did send pictures and everything to Yvonne. And Yvonne's like, that's a good deal. Go for it. You know, like if Yvonne had told us they're screwing you, you have to like negotiate or do, then we would have tried. But like, no, the very, the first thing I sent, you know, it's like, it's like, okay, they're taking care of you.
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Sam:
[14:49]
| Anyway, I, we did the test drive and, you know, the worries about it being bigger or whatever, it felt the same to me. Like, I mean, I know, I know intellectually it was slightly bigger. I can feel a few things where like it's slightly taller off the ground, slightly, but not a lot. And like the other dimensions may be a little bit bigger, but not a lot. It wasn't enough that like when I, I mentioned, I felt sort of uncomfortable in the forest or the outback or whatever. I got into them and I immediately felt like, oh my God, this thing's huge.
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Sam:
[15:24]
| And I didn't feel that with this. Like it immediately felt like a normal, I'm just normally driving the car, whatever. And, and I liked it. And the, the one thing that bugged me, I'll tell you the one thing that bugged me, I bought it anyway, but this is one of those things where I'm like, why would people do this? This seems like an obvious flaw is that from the driver's position, at least at my height and, I guess, my posture and where I like to set the seats, although I tried to adjust it to avoid this and couldn't, the bottom left corner of the infotainment display screen, not the one with the dials directly in front of you, but the infotainment display screen, the bottom left-hand corner is obscured by the steering wheel.
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Sam:
[16:18]
| And I'm like, all you have to do is move it an inch to the right and you wouldn't have this issue. But no, no. And so my wife's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I can see it all. I'm like, and I'm looking at the geometry and trying to do physics in my head. And I'm like, there's no way you can see it all. You're just, you just don't care or don't notice, or, you know, you just automatically sort of move your head a little bit to the right. Because you can see the bottom left of the screen if you move your head a little bit over to the side, you know, or maybe she just sits tilted to the side. I don't know. And of course the, and so I'm like, I want to see that corner of the screen. They could have just moved it an inch and it would have been fine.
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Sam:
[17:07]
| You know, I'm like, I'm not going to let that stop me from getting the car, but it did sort of annoy me. You know, but nothing else annoyed me. Everything else was like nice. I enjoyed it. I tested the stuff. I had asked to test the SEL trim from the beginning because I'd read somewhere, I think it was car and driver or somewhere, that that was sort of the sweet spot between cost and value of the packages you can get on it. I think there's two packages below and two packages above, if I remember right. I'm not going to look it up. But here's the thing, and I talked a little bit about this on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack with our listener, Bob, who also has an Ionic 5. He got it a few months ago, and he apparently has the next trim level up for me, like the Limited or whatever. I don't know. I did not, I could have looked and said, okay, I remember that the review said SEL was the sweet spot.
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Sam:
[18:12]
| But what's in the next level up? I did not do that. I intentionally avoided that. I did look at one level down, and I asked him, okay, one level down, what's it missing? What doesn't it have? And the big thing for me was actually the wireless charging pad in the middle. And I know they're slower than plugging it in, but it's so convenient. You just put the thing down, and you're done. and it it it the the speed of it is annoying compared to a wired one i i will give you that but it's so convenient and also like apparently a power adjustable passenger seat as and back seat for that matter as well as the driver's seat and like those things are cool i i would want that i would miss not having the wireless charging pad and i would be annoyed knowing that the driver's seat has, you know, is powered, but the others aren't. I would just be, if I ever have to ride as a passenger, that would annoy me.
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Sam:
[19:19]
| But here, this is exactly though, why I didn't look at the next level up. Cause I knew 100% that if I looked up what was in the next level up, I would convince myself that I had to have them. I still, to this moment, have not looked up what's in the next level up because I know if I did, I'd be like, oh man, I could have got that. It was only like this many dollars more and we could have folded that in and the monthly payment would have only been like 20 bucks a month more or something. And I could have done that. And oh my goodness. and now I'm missing out on doodad X. I 100% know that if I'd looked at the higher trim levels, I would have talked to myself all the way up to the maximum trim level.
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Sam:
[20:14]
| And because I know myself, I know I would have done that. I know I would have been like, and you know, I know, I just know. It doesn't even matter what those things were. You know i would have convinced myself i needed them as it is i got what i got and i'm happy i'm like this is an amazing upgrade from a 2012 subaru impreza like and and look a lot of the things i'm amazed in i guess just to finish that up i guess at some point maybe i'll look up what was in the higher trim levels, but I'm going to wait. Like, yeah, I know I could do it instantly. I could bring up another window right now and check, but I don't want to, because right now I'm happy. And I know if I looked up those trim levels, I'd be like.
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Sam:
[21:12]
| Sad that i didn't get them because i know like our finances are such that i wanted to spend as little money as possible i mean and obviously not as i could have gotten something much much cheaper than what we got yeah i could have gotten a really basic traditional gas car with no bells and whistles and you know i i could have gotten something for half the price of what i got there are still cars out there for 25k or so not very many but you can get cars you know you can get basic cars with absolutely nothing hell i could have gotten a used car i i could have gotten a a newer used car i i could have spent a lot less than i did but you know i wanted this but, I could have spent more like, you know.
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Sam:
[22:07]
| They're, they're, you know, and I know I could have convinced myself up, up, up a trim level or two that once I, I mean, the big decision was you're getting this car one, once you're within that range. You know I know it was a better choice to be more frugal the stupid review said this was the sweet spot so I let myself fixate on that and get this one and it's probably the right thing to do but I know the moment I look at those other trim levels I would be like oh man.
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Sam:
[22:44]
| I should have done that I could have done that oh I'm missing the blah blah blah.
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Sam:
[22:51]
| And yeah, anyway, so I've been driving it around for just under a week now. I ended up getting it driving away from the lot Saturday night or before sunset. So it's still light out, you know, so it's, and it's Saturday midday as I'm recording this. So not quite a full week, but close. I am enjoying it. I like the car. I am having, having fun with it. I've, I've, I've charged it up twice now. Once I didn't really need it yet, but I was like, you know, I was at like 50% or something. I'm like, I want to figure out how to do it. Both times I've charged, I've charged a supercharger. I have not tried the trickle charge at home because I know Yvonne and others were saying if I trickle charge at home overnight, that's probably enough for my daily commute. And so I only need to do something else if I'm really going somewhere. Honestly, my daughter's car has been parked in my parking spot in the garage. Not in the garage, in the driveway. My daughter's car has been parked there. And so I've been parking on the street.
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Sam:
[24:09]
| So further away that I could stretch an extension cord. Because I'm parking on the street down the block. She she's due to like take that car and drive east to pennsylvania to to live with her grandmother for uh for like at least a year soon she's been she's been preparing to leave for over a month now as she like makes sure she feels like everything is settled and then she was going to drive cross-country which by the way she's got an even older car she's got like a 2002, pontiac aztec so who knows if it'll even make it cross country but fingers crossed anyway.
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Sam:
[24:51]
| Yeah the charging was fine went so the first time i had to charge it took took some figuring out had to like okay how do you do this exactly what do you what do you push and where do you plug and what do you do the 2025 ionics use the new standard port that's the old tesla port that Now everybody's standardizing on, you know, and so like using the Tesla supercharger, I didn't have to use any adapters or anything. It's, it came with a bag full of adapters for other types. I haven't tried any other types yet. I've got chargers at work. But, you know, the thing I've noticed is when I come in in the morning, all the chargers are always full. By afternoon, they've emptied out. But if I want to do that, I have to remember. I'd either have to get there earlier or remember somewhere midday to go move my car to the work chargers. And I don't think they're the fast chargers like superchargers. They're a lot slower. But, you know, I will at some point experiment with them as well. But charging was fine.
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Sam:
[25:56]
| When I was at 50%, it took like 15 minutes. The second time I charged, I'd let it get down to like 25 or something, and it was like half an hour. And that's charging to 80%, because apparently the advice, I don't know, like anybody else with an electric out there, feel free to give me advice on this. I saw in a number of places saying generally speaking try to keep it between 20 and 80 percent.
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Sam:
[26:19]
| And only charge to 100 if you're actually like you're gonna need it you're like on a large road trip and you feel like you're gonna need it just better for the long-term health of the battery whatever so i've i have it set to charge to 80 at the moment and you know yeah it's different than like the quick, you know, fill up at the gas station and go, but it's not bad. And I do plan, I, we, we will get one, an L2, I guess, whatever they call it, the next level up charger, we will get one installed at home. That is part of the plan. The, it, it came with a coupon for free hardware for that. You still have to pay installation, but it comes with the, you know, so it came with, you know, here's a $600 value or whatever, 500, $600 value for the actual hardware for the charger, and then you got to get somebody to install it. And so I'll go through that process. I started that process. Like I, I clicked the button to claim the coupon code or whatever. And as soon as the coupon code arrives, they said it'll take a few days and then I'll get.
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Sam:
[27:28]
| And then I'll just like plug it in and charge in my driveway. And that'll be, you know, a lot more convenient. But even the superchargers aren't not convenient.
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Sam:
[27:38]
| And anyway, so the main things I'm struck by in the actual car, and I don't know, this is not a car review podcast. And I'm not a car person. But, you know, mainly the main things are just the kinds of things you'd see in almost any transition from a 2012 to a 2025 and not a top end 2012 either. Like, so like there are a lot of features that were already in like luxury car models that weren't in a 2012 Subaru Impreza that are just standard features now that I think I have experienced in loaner cars, but have not had in my daily driver. And so most of it was like, these aren't even new things. These have been around for many, many years, but it's the first time I've had them in my primary car. And so things like the backup camera, you know, things like having a whole bunch of charge ports built in instead of a couple cigarette lighter adapters that you have to like, you know, put your little charger doohickey in and then plug into. Having a built-in screen for like apple carplay instead of having an aftermarket one that i added a couple years ago and before that bluetooth only you know but you know all this kind of stuff.
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Sam:
[29:08]
| And and the biggest one though that actually will make that has made an impact in my daily quality of life is modern cruise control. And by modern, well, what do I mean? Well, first of all, even my regular cruise control hadn't worked in my old Subaru in years. It's one of the things that stopped working. I'm pretty sure when the second or third time the rat ate through the wiring harnesses and we decided just not to repair it this time. So I hadn't had any cruise control at all. But 2012 Subaru Impreza was old-fashioned cruise control. You set it at a speed and it goes that speed. End of story. Modern cruise control.
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Sam:
[29:58]
| Detects the traffic in front of you and adjusts your speed appropriately. You set a maximum speed, but it slows down if you need to. And it detects the lanes and helps you stay in the lanes. For my 25-mile approximately, slightly less than 25-mile, 25-mile approximately commute each direction into work now that I have to go five days a week into the office in Seattle from where I live, where a significant, like sometimes the entire length of that drive is heavy traffic. But even the sort of normal is at least half of it is. And, oh my goodness, letting the car deal with most of that, you know, I put myself in the correct lane, like for where I need to be, like right when I get on the highway.
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Sam:
[31:01]
| And set the cruise control for, okay, a couple miles above the speed limit, speed limit 60. I put it at 65. I will admit, because if you actually set it to 60, people will just get really annoyed at you. Some people do want to go 70, but 65 seems like a reasonable compromise. And most of the time, not going anywhere close to that anyway. There are only a few open stretches where you actually get up to that. But having it deal with speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, stop, wait 15 seconds, start again.
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Sam:
[31:42]
| And, you know, drive around the curves and stuff. I mean, you know, this is not even, you know, full self-driving where people are tempted to, like, read a book or whatever or play video games or whatever those Tesla people do who end up getting in severe car crashes. I mean, I can't not pay attention. This thing is not that smart.
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Sam:
[32:07]
| But it's pretty good. And, you know, just the amount of mental energy required for the drive is less. Even if you are still paying attention and making sure it's not doing anything stupid and blah, blah, blah, the amount of mental energy needed is less. Even in just the one week driving to work, I can tell I arrive at the office less tired because one of my complaints, generally speaking, about, you know, since I've been commuting every day again, is just that no matter how much sleep I've had the night before, I arrive at the office already tired and feeling like I need a break before I can start for real because I've just been in the car. You know, if a really good traffic day will be less than an hour, but, you know, like Fridays are usually a little bit better than the rest of the week. If you're around a holiday, it's better. But I'd say my typical time is approximately an hour. And if it's a bad day If there's bad weather Or there's been accidents or whatever It can hit an hour and a half.
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Sam:
[33:28]
| One day this week And I was so glad I had the car helping with this But it did take me over an hour and a half To get into work, But here's the deal You know, it's 25 miles to work.
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Sam:
[33:47]
| The last mile the exit ramp off the highway and the like four blocks from there to my actual building took more than half an hour all by itself you know it was actually you know a decent drive and then boom you hit you hit the line waiting to get to the exit to get off at the exit and then it was crawling forever I remember like I messaged the person I was supposed to be meeting and had to like.
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Sam:
[34:26]
| Move a reschedule apologize for being late whatever because like it wasn't happening yeah i i'd left enough buffer that i was intending to be at the office half an hour before this meeting i ended up 15 minutes late to it anyway if the the the finance person when we were signing all the papers asked me what's the favorite thing about the new car and i was like i haven't really driven it yet i hadn't driven the actual car yet because like the one we test drove was a different color it was otherwise identical so i i didn't say okay i need to test drive this actual vehicle i'm like it's the same other than the color right and they're like yeah it's the same other than the color so i hadn't actually driven the vehicle at all yet so i don't know i'm like what's my favorite thing oh so i said the the modern things that would be in here that weren't in a 2012 12. But I will say after driving a week, it's the goddamn modern cruise control. And I know this is not new.
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Sam:
[35:31]
| You know, I know cars have had this for like a long time. It's just, this is the first one I've had that has this, and it makes a big difference to my quality of life with my commute. So anyway, I'm happy with the car. I'm happy to have switched to a full electric. So far, you know now we have i haven't tried doing any road trips there are no road trips on the agenda i haven't done that kind of i haven't done a serious road trip in a long long long long time the last time was probably like a decade ago where i had a work i had a conference i was going to in at work in san francisco and for some damn reason i decided hey it'll be fun to drive instead of instead of taking a plane so i drove back and forth to the conference in san francisco which seattle to san francisco is a decent hike, And, you know, so I did that. Let's see. How long is that? Let's just check Google Maps real quick.
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Sam:
[36:36]
| Maps.google.com. Let's do this. So let's see. From my home to, let's just say San Francisco without specifying a specific place. And if I can spell Cisco correctly. Okay it says oh i had looked something up earlier as a pedestrian 313 hours as a pedestrian if you were going to walk from my house to san francisco now let's let's put this in a car 13 hours 13 hours and change okay 12 hours 34 minutes 831 miles for the preferred route the fastest route.
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Sam:
[37:24]
| Yeah and and i stupidly as well decided i would do that in one day you know you can do 12 hours in one day but it's nicer to split that up anyway i did it in one day in both directions, i'm just dumb i mean i call it one day but i actually ended up like you know taking naps at rest stops and stuff like that for multiple hours anyway that's probably the long time i've done a real road trip and we have none planned i am i am thinking like since i have a new car i'm like you know maybe not road trips like that oh because we also yvonne convinced us it was okay to get a lease because there were all kinds of additional deals and the the the the rebates and stuff due to the that's ending and blah blah blah you could get into with a lease in ways you couldn't get through a purchase although i believe there was a there was a weird thing around that with we actually got a subaru rebate instead because the particular model we got wasn't eligible for the other but they matched the price anyway blah blah blah whatever we we we had plenty of rebate the.
|
Sam:
[38:35]
| Anyway what was i saying oh yeah you know i i used to do these random trips that were like you know pick a random spot that's less than a certain amount of airfare go there the next one for a long time for like 20 plus years has been to Quintana Roo, Mexico. We still haven't gone. Maybe eventually I'll go. Yvonne said he'd go with me.
|
Sam:
[38:57]
| I want to do that someday. But in the meantime, I was thinking short-range random trips, like within 20 miles. Like pick a random spot within 20 miles. I recently fixed up my random spot generator on abelsmay.com so it works again. And it had been broken for years because it used an old Google Maps API that had been deprecated and I updated it. And it's now, yeah, got a cool like spinning globe map that like when you pick a random spot and you know the actual random spot picking never broke but the part that showed you where it was on a map had broken anyway i'm thinking you know i could do that i you know just you know random spot within 20-25 miles drive there see what's there explore a little bit that would be like a fun thing to do on weekends It's not that I have a lot of extra time on weekends and, you know, I could like do a quick, like mount my phone and do a time-lapse of the trip or something and, and make, make, make TikTok content out of it or something. I don't know. Of course that makes it even more work.
|
Sam:
[40:07]
| I don't know. I want to do something, but even that's like, that's a short drive, like no, no road trips spent. Anyway, like the range anxiety, I don't think it'll be a real problem because my actual driving doesn't require the main thing is i probably will have to charge more often than i filled up with gas but again the plan is to get one of those chargers for home and then that won't really be an issue you know just plug it in at home when you park at night like not even every night but every few nights you do that i don't know okay enough about cars and i think enough for this segment. I do have, I do want to talk about one movie and one book, but let's wait for the next segment to do that. I will take my break. I will do other things that I want to get done. And we'll come back and talk about that. And then I don't know what I'll do for the third segment. I don't know if I'll do a third segment. We'll see how it goes. Like none of those topics really excite me. Maybe while I take my break, there'll be some really exciting breaking news. And then there'll be something to talk about. I don't know. Anyway, so this is it for part one.
|
Sam:
[41:17]
| I hope you enjoyed part one. It was another story time. It was the continuing of the thing, the story from the other day. Oh, you know, the break I'd had picked is a new break. I'll save that for one where Yvonne is here. And the next break was an apple dream, which he hasn't heard. So I'll save that for Yvonne, too. So I'll just do this other break We'll do those others And the new one's really short It's like the shortest break we have in rotation But you know whatever It was something.
|
Sam:
[41:51]
| Alex had me record like A long long time ago And I just recently told him Hey if you send me that I'll make it a break So anyway, But that's not what you're going to hear now This is one of the other breaks So here goes We'll be back to talk about movies and books after this, and after I take many hours. For you, it'll be short. Here you go.
|
Sam:
[42:59]
| And we're back. As I said, for me, it's many, many, many, many, many, many hours later. For you, it's probably just a minute or two later, unless, unless you also paused the show, went and did other stuff and came back. Which if you did, awesome.
|
Sam:
[43:19]
| Anyway first up the this will be the media segment i'm going to talk about one movie and one book i think it's becoming clear as the weekend progresses that absent some new breaking news the last segment is going to be about the epstein stuff because the maga implosion appears to be growing again no new actual revelations on anything actually epstein related but the reaction in MAGA world seems to be spiraling. So we'll talk about that a little bit. But first, first, a movie and a book. So the movie is Why We Fight from 2005. This is a documentary. So it's probably unlikely that many of you have heard of it. It was i guess it was at sundance it's like one of these film festival release films, it won it did win a prize for documentary there i guess and also won another award in like the information and culture category in germany and and it won a peabody so what is it i i i said what it was, right? Why we fight 2005. Yeah. Here's the synopsis from Wikipedia. And we'll go from there. Synopsis.
|
Sam:
[44:49]
| Why We Fight describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial complex and its 50-year involvement with the wars led by the United States to date, especially its 2003 invasion of Iraq. The documentary asserts that in every decade since World War II, the American company was, American company, the American public was misled so that the government, incumbent administration, could take them to war and fuel the military industrial economy, maintaining American political dominance in the world.
|
Sam:
[45:30]
| Interviewed about this matter are politician John McCain Political science and former CIA analyst Chalmer Johnson Politician Richard Pearl, Neoconservative commentator William Kristol Writer Gore Vidal And public policy expert Joseph Cerinconi I probably murdered that last pronunciation, sorry Why We Fight documents the consequences of said foreign policy with the stories of a Vietnam War veteran whose son was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks and who then asked the military to write the name of his dead son on any bomb to be dropped in Iraq. A 23-year-old New Yorker who enlists in the United States Army because he was poor and in debt, his decision impelled by his mother's death.
|
Sam:
[46:22]
| And a military explosive scientist, An Duong, who arrived in the U.S. As a refugee child from Vietnam in 1975. So that's the synopsis. Basically, I mean, it seemed like a well-done enough documentary. It seemed well put together. You know, production values was good. It sort of tried to make its case. And, you know, there were good interviews and there's lots of, you know, good backing information that, you know, his thesis is at least part of the picture and that, you know, you need to give the military something to do and you need to have something for all the military contractors to do and build and make money and blah, blah, blah. But I kept thinking honestly through the whole thing that, yeah, Yeah, I'm sure that factors in in some places, but this made it seem like they were trying to convince you that that was the whole thing. And I just don't buy it. I don't even buy that it's the biggest thing. Obviously, lots of people make money off war and want to make money off war.
|
Sam:
[47:34]
| But in each one of the situations they talk about, and it really was mostly about, you know, the 2003 invasion of Iraq. You know, I remember 2003, you know, I was, I was there. I mean, I didn't go to Iraq or anything, but I was paying attention to the news and I was following what was going on. And look, yes, there were lies about this. But, you know, from other interviews I've seen from the participants in that and the people who drove us to war, I honestly believe that there was actually a lot of self-delusion in there. Like, you know, the whole, you know, there's weapons of mass destruction.
|
Sam:
[48:20]
| A lot of the people involved believed it. You know, it turned out to be completely false. And of course, lots of us were pretty sure it was completely false. And there were plenty of warning signs that it was pretty false. And they selectively paid attention to things that supported their case and ignored things that didn't. And there were, you know, there were motivated informants who made up stories because they wanted to get the U.S. Involved and all of this kind of thing. And look, even when there were even for those who sort of like maybe they knew that they were lying about weapons of mass destruction, they had other larger agenda things, too. I mean, a lot of the neocons felt that George H.W. Bush had betrayed them by not going all the way in the first Gulf War and that this was unfinished business left over from the first administration and they needed to deal with that. They needed to deal with Iraq and that there were sort of geopolitical power play things about, you know, advantages in the region if you took over Iraq and if you controlled that. And, you know, I think there certainly were a lot of people who knew, look, fundamentally, you know, that it was sold to the public. And if you were paying attention carefully and parsing words carefully.
|
Sam:
[49:49]
| You know, no one in the administration ever said Iraq was involved in 9-11. You know, but they said things in a way that left the implication that dealing with Iraq was part of the retribution for 9-11. When you parse them carefully, it was sort of more like, if we leave Iraq alone, they could do something like 9-11 or, you know, after 9-11, they've supported terrorists more generally, not just the, you know, anyway, there was a lot of, you know, manipulation where, you know, if you do the careful parsing of language, like lawyer style, you realize that they're not saying what the casual observer would think they were saying from not paying very much attention.
|
Sam:
[50:48]
| And look, that's a theme. I think you're getting a lot of Trump supporters right now who are like, wait, what do you mean he's doing X, Y, Z? Well, that's what he said. Well, that's not what I thought he said. You weren't paying attention. But anyway, I think, and especially if you expand the scope to every decade since World War II, I just never bought the thesis here that it's all about, you know, the American public was misled so the government could take them to war and fuel the military industrial economy, maintaining, you know, maintaining American political dominance in the world. Yeah, the second part. The first part, the fuel the military industrial economy, I think is something that the people involved would say is a beneficial side effect. Of course, they like that. Of course, they want that. But I don't think that's the primary goal. The second part there, maintaining American political dominance in the world. Well, of course, I don't think any of them would even deny that. I'd say they'd like say that that's one of the primary goals of American foreign policy and should be. Now, you may disagree with that statement, but I think the...
|
Sam:
[52:06]
| Foreign policy consensus, both Republicans and Democrats through all of those years is going to be that, yeah, of course, to serve American foreign policy interest, you want America to be as dominant as possible. Now, you're going to have disagreements on exactly what that means, economic, political, how is influence, are you using soft power, are you using hard power are you doing this whatever but yeah the the i don't think the notion would be controversial that well yeah of course like if you're serving american form american interests you're going to want to be able to exert influence all over the world as much as possible.
|
Sam:
[52:56]
| Now, we now have the growth of sort of the isolationist views as well that say, you know, no, let's worry about home and the rest of the world can do whatever it wants. And we're starting to see some of the consequences of that. And even there, it's mixed. I mean, we still attacked Iran, you know. But anyway, I just fundamentally don't buy the premise. I think there's all kinds of the military industrial part of it anyway. The dominance in the world part, sure. But I don't think that's surprising or interesting in any sort of way. I think that's like, you would expect that kind of behavior on any large country. I mean, if you're like some tiny country, maybe you don't have visions of grandeur where you're going to take over the entire world. But any, and it may not be take over I'm being, you know, it's, it's exerting influence for your own benefit, but. Anyway, because I just think there are all kinds of other factors. There's the there's the personalities of the individual presidents involved. There's what they want politically. There's just generally like what is the situation going in at that moment? You know in the 2003 example again i i honestly feel that george w bush.
|
Sam:
[54:22]
| Wanted to bring democracy to iraq and like that's part of his vision of like what he wanted and the benefit that he thought would be great and get rid of the dictator bring in democracy though greet us as liberators blah blah blah blah blah and in an alternate universe maybe that could have worked out better. But of course we had no idea what we were doing, which seems typical in many of our foreign interventions where we, we, we come in and whatever our stated goals are, we screw them up royally and end up with something different. Anyway, it is a good enough movie. It was, it was thought provoking. I will, I will give it a thumbs up. You know, if you're interested in this kind of thing, watch it. This does not mean I agree with it, but, uh, it's thought provoking and you listen to what they have to say. And then, you know, you can decide, like, again, I was not convinced, but it just seemed too simplistic in the end to me. It tried to boil everything down to one or two factors where I think the real world is complicated and all kinds of, there's all kinds of reasons for everything and it's multifaceted and all kinds of things come together. It's not a simple, you know, this thing caused that. It just boils it down way too much. Okay.
|
Sam:
[55:50]
| And then the book. Complete shift. First of all, this is the first book I've talked about in a while. The whole book stream here has slowed down dramatically. I am now reading absolutely everything out loud with my son, have been doing this for several years now. Now, I've actually got, well, three, actually, three, two, I've got three streams related to books. Okay. I've got my main reading stream, which is I alternate a fiction and a nonfiction book from myself for myself. And this comes from my big master list of books I might be interested in reading someday, which have so many thousands of books, I will never complete them in my lifetime.
|
Sam:
[56:38]
| And I have that. I also have a list that I'm specifically choosing to read with my son that, you know, I don't have a big master list. It's sort of like we went through the Lord of the Rings Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings series. Then we finished up a book that we'd been reading together that he had been assigned for school. Wait, no, wait, I'm forgetting.
|
Sam:
[57:02]
| I'm jumping ahead of fear. We'd read The Lord of the Rings, and then we were reading The Hitchhiker's Guide series. So these were sort of like things I remember enjoying when I was younger, around his age, and let's read them together kind of thing.
|
Sam:
[57:18]
| And the one I'm going to read is in The Hitchhiker's part. But subsequently, we did read a book that he was assigned for school, and now we're doing some stuff on the Earthsea series, if any of you know those. But we'll get to those in good time. But this book is the sixth and final installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy. So the increasingly inaccurately named, as they said. The last one of these I talked about on the show was Mostly Harmless, which was the last one actually written by Douglas Adams. And I when I reviewed this on the podcast I mentioned that you know this was a 1992 book and he he ended it in a really depressing way he basically killed all the characters he put them all into really like depressing scenarios and then killed them all and that expressed later that, he kind of regretted that and he was at a dark time in his life or whatever when that happened and maybe he would write another book to sort of not end it that way. And then he died.
|
Sam:
[58:48]
| Yeah, he died at age 49. So he was not an old guy, but this next one they brought in another author to sort of bring it up. It was Eoin? I don't know how to pronounce this name. It's E-O-I-N, Culfer. And anyway, they brought him in, was given permission by Douglas Adams' widow to basically fix that bad ending. I want to say tie off loose ends and stuff, but a lot of the loose ends were actually tied off by killing everybody. But, you know, and sorry, spoilers for that previous book, Mostly Harmless. But anyway, this one came out in 2009. So years and years and years after Mostly Harmless, which was 1992.
|
Sam:
[59:51]
| And look, the whole series, like this is one of those, I've talked about this phenomenon before in terms of this particular book series and also in terms of movies, where the first one, maybe two or three, are really unique and interesting and have something. And then it's like, okay, now you're just doing the money grab. And sort of, like, they become less interesting. They become very repetitive. It's sort of greatest hits. This one is even more so than the last couple in this series. I'd say, first of all, they do some sort of random thing to pluck these people out the moment before they are killed so that the story can go on. And then there's a story. I mean, the story's kind of interesting. I won't read the whole plot summary, but they're taken off to a colony of surviving humans, which is, of course, weird, and having an internal war, and they're shopping for a new god.
|
Sam:
[1:01:11]
| One of the main characters is friends with Thor, so they try to get Thor to be their god, and then there's stuff going on. It's all rather silly, which of course the whole series is rather silly, but this really felt like, okay, we're going to bring up fan favorites from the previous books, especially from the first few books that were the ones that are really more classic. And we're going to talk about, we're going to bring them back up. We're going to reuse that idea, that trope, that character. or we're going to bring it back. And you can tell it's an author sort of trying to emulate the Douglas Adams style, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't.
|
Sam:
[1:02:02]
| And then since they reanimated everybody and brought them back to life, they now have other things to close off. And there were some things that weren't completely resolved from the previous books. So, yeah, they look bottom line, thumb sideways at best. This seemed like.
|
Sam:
[1:02:29]
| It seemed unnecessary. I mean, I didn't like how they closed off the last book either. I wish you'd ended it some other way, or maybe just ended the whole damn series a couple of books earlier, because they were declining in quality and interest over the course.
|
Sam:
[1:02:47]
| If you're being a completist about this series, read it. If you're not, don't bother. It wasn't outright bad. I'm not giving it that thumbs down. It wasn't painful to read or anything like that it just wasn't it didn't have like it it didn't have what made the first couple of books interesting it didn't have that new unique flavor it didn't have like the i don't know and and i've said even for the first couple they to some degree They seem to be ones that I enjoyed more as a teenager than I do as a 50-plus-year-old guy. And some of that may be a product of the time. Some of that may be a product of my age and the target group. I don't know. But yeah, it's just sort of, it exists. And it wraps up some things. some things still aren't like fully wrapped up in a way I would consider satisfying but I guess that's okay.
|
Sam:
[1:04:01]
| Yeah, anyway. That's it. It's called And Another Thing. Did I ever actually give the title? And Another Thing, dot, dot, dot, from 2009, the sixth and final installment of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, they say, and final, this is one of those franchises where every couple decades they're going to do something new with it. I kind of doubt there'll be more books you never know i guess but it's one of those things where every once in a while they make a new tv show or a new movie or whatever but i imagine those are going to if they happen again they will as they usually do start from the beginning of the story i doubt any will ever get so far as to get to the events that happened in this sixth book, Really, anything really interesting happens in the first two, maybe three books. And then, you know, I don't know. I can remember that things happen in the other books. It's just, I don't know. It goes downhill as the series progresses. What can you say?
|
Sam:
[1:05:14]
| Okay, that is it. We're going to go get some food now. My wife and I and maybe my son. I don't know. And I have to hurry because I have a call scheduled, so I have to make sure to eat and be back in time. Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we're going to play a break. We're going to play a break. We're going to play this break right here, and then I'll be back, and we'll talk about the Epstein stuff, I guess, unless there's some other cool breaking news that changes everything. Here we go.
|
Sam:
[1:06:41]
| And I'm back. Had some food, did some stuff with my son Alex, and now it's time to finish out the podcast. As I said, we will do the Epstein stuff. Epstein, Epstein, whatever. And, you know, in introing it earlier in the show, I've said a couple times now, There's nothing actually new here. You know, there's fundamentally—look, there may be more Epstein revelations to come at some point, we'll see, but this week particularly, we haven't learned anything. There's no new facts. There's no release of something that was private before and is now public.
|
Sam:
[1:07:29]
| Everything that i mean look we've known for 20 years about like epstein being a scumbag about donald trump being associated with him about a whole bunch of other prominent people being associated with him in terms of like riding on his plane visiting his island all of that kind of stuff. Way back in the 2016 campaign, we had reports on this. We had people passing around the pictures of Trump and Epstein together. We had call, not call logs, but passenger logs from the plane revealed that showed like Clinton and Gates and all kinds of other people on the plane. So we've known all of this, but the fundamental thing that is happening this week is that, look.
|
Sam:
[1:08:24]
| The MAGA side of the world, remember, a whole bunch of them are all associated with the QAnon thing, too, like at least some of these rabid ones that posits that there's this vast conspiracy specifically among Democrats and liberals to do child trafficking for sexual purposes. Remember, that's the whole Pizzagate thing was related to that, too. And so there's this fundamental thing that's been propagated within those circles for years and years and years now that the Epstein files contain a client list and that Epstein was procuring girls for all of these clients and specifically that these clients include all sorts of prominent Democrats.
|
Sam:
[1:09:22]
| And that's the reason they care about this, is that we're going to expose all these prominent Democrats and the fact that they were actually clients of Epstein and he was procuring teenage girls for them to have sex with. And that's what's going on. And that's the big thing that Donald Trump and his administration, when they got back into power this time, were going to reveal the full Epstein files. And specifically, they were going to reveal that client list. And that client list would have a whole bunch of evil Democrats on.
|
Sam:
[1:09:57]
| That was the bill of goods that was being sold.
|
Sam:
[1:10:01]
| And, you know, part of the problem here now is that some of the prominent people like, how do you say his name? Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, Boingo, whatever, you know, and Kash Patel and our our lovely attorney general. All of these people fed into this, like, conspiracy theory. And then they ended up in the administration. Now, I'll point out, first of all, a lot of the stuff that happened with Epstein actually being convicted and him dying in jail and all this kind of stuff happened while Donald Trump was president the first time. So, like, if all of this information was in the FBI's files and they wanted to reveal all this stuff, they could have done it last time, too.
|
Sam:
[1:10:54]
| And I know deep state, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The FBI was against them last time. And this time they have their, their people, their really their people in there. I mean, you know, look, honestly, like, it seems like what happened to me seems like what happened to me. No, it seems to me that what happened is that these folks who'd been pushing these conspiracy theories all along got in there, actually saw the information, and realized there wasn't a lot there there. Now, I want to be clear what I mean by that, because clearly Epstein was doing a lot of bad things, and clearly there were a lot of famous people that were in or around that. Now, how many of them partook in, you know, doing something with the young women who were coerced into this? I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:11:57]
| What I suspect is there isn't anything as straightforward as a client list. Like where Epstein was going around and saying like, oh, okay, Bill Gates is coming this week and I have him on the list and here's what we're going to do for Bill Gates and we're going to get like these women or whatever. I'm just picking Bill Gates as one possible name. Sorry, Bill, if you're listening or Bill Clinton or anybody else. Donald Trump because he was also very associated with this. Now, all of the people who are upset, of course, never, to them, it's always about like all the prominent liberals that might have been involved here. They always sort of ignore the fact that Donald Trump was in this circle as well. I don't know, but I suspect there wasn't like just a straightforward list. Like everybody's saying client list, client list. And I know that Pam Bondi actually said, I have the list on my desk. Well, she later says she met the files, not just the list. And there is no list now is what they're saying. But I want to be careful about like, I think people are very intentionally mixing up a few different things. There's a client list. There's just some list, like maybe the passenger list from the plane, which actually was made public a long, long time ago.
|
Sam:
[1:13:21]
| And then there's just evidence of association with Epstein. And then there's evidence of actually participation in these, I want to use the right word. I mean, essentially this is statutory rape because there's no consent for underage people. Yeah. Especially with older people. I mean, They carve out gray areas if you're 17 and you're doing something with a 19-year-old because you're really close in age still. There's some exceptions for those kinds of things. But fundamentally, 50-something-year-olds. And a 16-year-old, that's just not legal. That's rape no matter what. And because the younger person is not considered legally able to consent to that, regardless of what else is going on. So there's rape, prostitution, all kinds of things that are potentially involved here.
|
Sam:
[1:14:20]
| And there may be evidence of that kind of stuff. And that still wouldn't be a client list necessarily if it wasn't like a list. And people are sort of alighting all these things together. So I think, like, my guess, if you really had to put all this together as to what's really going on here, is that when people like Bondi and Boingo Boingo and Kash Patel and all these folks actually got to see the stuff, they realized that there is nothing as straightforward as here's the list.
|
Sam:
[1:15:01]
| And I suspect, you know, I know a lot of people are jumping straight towards like they're covering this up because they realize Donald Trump is on the list. And the way Donald Trump seems to be panicking about this, the more he panics about it, the more it seems like he's got to be implicated somehow. But let's back up from that a little bit and we'll return there in a minute. I suspect there is nothing as straightforward as a flat out list. Like these, you know, where there's a direct like single sheet of paper saying these 30 people, I went out and we got underage girls to have sex with these men. Like, like a written confession, essentially. Like if, if such a thing existed, I think it would have come out years and years ago.
|
Sam:
[1:15:51]
| Now i know even there there's like questions of well they would have kept it secret if if they couldn't prove any of this right because just because epstein wrote something down on a piece of paper doesn't necessarily mean it's true but there's also you know there are apparently like a whole bunch of flash drives that were confiscated when they arrested the guy years back and that supposedly have video on them of these underage people with people. I suspect on that, like they've said, well, we can't release that, obviously, because it's underage girls in compromising positions and...
|
Sam:
[1:16:34]
| It's illegal to even possess this stuff other than law enforcement. And we obviously can't release that, even like redacted versions of it. We want to protect the victims here. And I actually buy that to some extent. But I also think part of the problem, like if I had to guess, and this is all guessing and speculation, that identifying the men on these is not straightforward, like or is not like solid enough that you could prove it in a court of law. Like, you know, you could say, oh, it looks like it might be Bill Clinton or Donald Trump or whoever. But, you know, you got like fuzzy video in bad lighting and just enough that there's like plausible doubt there. And so they didn't think it was enough to run on. I mean, you've got, this stuff has been through enough different people in enough different administrations that I feel like if they had something absolutely solid on anyone, Democrat, Republican.
|
Sam:
[1:17:47]
| Unspecified partisan celebrity, whatever, I feel like it would have leaked by now. Like the specific leak. Now you've had a few people like who, who've made comments, like they've seen some of these things and they are incriminating and blah, blah, blah, but they're all reluctant to give any specifics. And some of them like are clearly pushing the, this for their own personal motives. So I don't trust it.
|
Sam:
[1:18:16]
| So I think it's, I suspect that it's a bunch of people like on the MAGA side who were really pushing this because their agenda was there's these secret Epstein files that show that Democrats are corrupt child abusers. And so in furtherance of that conspiracy theory, they talked about the list and they talked about videos and they talked about whatever. And then they actually came into their positions in the administration and got to see everything that was there and realized that it just wasn't substantive enough to do anything with. Like maybe there's some ambiguous stuff, but there wasn't the smoking gun. And they actually realized it. In other words, I think to some degree, they're telling the truth now for the first time where all of this, they just sort of realized that, you know, there is no there there.
|
Sam:
[1:19:35]
| And I suspect, well, let's put it this way. Prior to the latest round of Trump's rants about this, that's where I thought things lay. You know, look, it's simply a matter of now they didn't want to admit there was nothing. Instead, because they'd riled up their base. So this is, this is a matter of like people who had lied and lied and lied for years coming face to face with, oh shit, it actually is. There's, there's nothing we can do there. He really did commit suicide and there's no smoking gun there. It is probably all kinds of incriminating stuff, but not any smoking gun on any of the big, you know, we're going to go after the Clintons and Bill Gates. And I keep mentioning those two names because those are the ones I keep remembering are mentioned all the time. But like, there's really a list of all kinds of people that they think are associated.
|
Sam:
[1:20:41]
| And, and so we're just going to say that now. Now, of course the push is, well, okay, then release the files. And they say they can't release the files because of protecting the victims. Well, look, there are ways to redact the victims out of things if you wanted to.
|
Sam:
[1:20:57]
| But Yeah. And, you know, look, MAGA is really, really upset. They were promised this and they're not getting it. And so what next? Well, then Donald Trump started protesting so hard, like, get over it, move on, like, look somewhere else. And, you know, a lot of people have said, like, this is a, you know, he protests too much kind of moment. Like, they're not, you know, you'd think the natural thing if they really, if they specifically, they said all this stuff and then they got in and they saw the details and they realized, sorry, we were wrong. There's nothing here. The way to clear it up, be transparent as possible, is release as much as you possibly can. Obviously redact names and pictures and everything else of the victims, but release as much as possible. But Donald Trump comes in like being all paranoid, telling people to move on, blah, blah, blah. It's just the more he does of this, the more it leads credence to the alternate theory that the reason they don't want to release everything has nothing to do with everything I just said, but instead has to do with Donald Trump's all over the stuff. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:22:16]
| You know but i'll add honestly you know we had four years of a biden administration in between, if there was stuff in there that was definitively you know evidence against donald trump that you could definitely say donald trump did xyz let's like go after him for that then you'd think they would have done something with it. You know, so I feel like even if there is something on Donald Trump in the unredacted files, it's probably not conclusive stuff where, you know, it probably shows Donald Trump palling around with Epstein. But we knew that already. Maybe worst case scenario, there's a video somewhere of something that you could like say, maybe that's Donald Trump in that video doing something he shouldn't, but we can't really tell for sure. You know, again, it's blurry, it's dark, it's whatever, and we can't tell for sure. And so it's unusable in a court of law.
|
Sam:
[1:23:25]
| And that's a worst case scenario. There may not even be that. But it may just be that Donald Trump finds this whole thing embarrassing. But the fact that he's protesting so hard is spinning everything up. You know, someone commented on Blue Sky, I think, that he apparently hasn't heard of the Streisand effect, which is that if you want something to go away and tell people, please don't pay attention to this, all it does is get more attention to it. And what we've got here, you know, look, Bottom line, I suspect that there's not anything actually actionable in the actual Epstein files. If you and I got to look at the unredacted version of all this and went through it all, I suspect that although we might find a whole bunch of things that would make you suspicious of various prominent people being involved in things, there isn't enough to prove anything about anybody other than Epstein and Maxwell, who have already been through a process, and Epstein is dead and Maxwell's in jail.
|
Sam:
[1:24:40]
| But that doesn't mean there might not be lots that's embarrassing or might make you say it's not provable in a court of law, but it's enough that the average person on the street would be like, oh, yeah, that's them. They were clearly involved. Clinton's guilty. Trump's guilty. Gates is guilty. All these other people are guilty, too. And probably on both sides of the political spectrum and a whole bunch of celebrities who aren't publicly associated with either end of the spectrum politically, but just not provable. And so they can't just put that out in that form.
|
Sam:
[1:25:28]
| MAGA's going crazy because they have been spun up so much on these files and on Epstein and how it was, you know, surely it was going to take down all the liberal elites. And now Donald Trump himself is saying, no, forget about it. And they are pissed.
|
Sam:
[1:25:49]
| Like, if you looked at social media all weekend this weekend, there's all kinds of, you know, screenshots. I'm not on Truth Social. I am not on X, but there are screenshots from both of them circulating about hundreds and hundreds of people reacting to things like that from the MAGA side who are clearly incredibly angry about this and believe that they have been betrayed, that Donald Trump is turning on them and why would he do this? And some are blaming him on Pam Bondi. I think Pam Bondi is the natural scapegoat that everybody's trying to, like, make the target of this. Because a lot of these MAGA folks, although they feel betrayed by this, they're still sort of in the mode of, this can't possibly really be what Donald Trump wants. This is like Pam Bondi. It's her fault. And let's get rid of her and then we can get back to business. And then Donald Trump will do the right thing. And I don't think a lot of them have flipped to the position of, oh, Donald Trump is resisting this because he's in the files, because he's actually guilty.
|
Sam:
[1:27:02]
| I've seen a bunch of this anger, but not very many people on that side of the fence going there. I've seen liberals going there. But for the most part, the MAGA folks are upset at the situation. They're upset at Bondi. They're upset at Trump. But there's a lot of like, I don't understand why this is happening. There's not very much, oh, this must be because Donald Trump himself is guilty. But there are a lot of people that are so upset about this and some of them are adding it and saying on top of like you know the the big beautiful bill isn't what we asked for the, you know we thought only criminals were going to be deported this isn't what we asked for so there are a bunch of those kinds of things going on there too and so there are a lot of people out there saying i can't support donald trump anymore a lot in quotes a lot of sort of vocal people on social media. And I have to say, some of that traffic may be fake from people who aren't real people who are just like troll bots and all this kind of stuff. But it includes a lot of prominent MAGA people that you know are real.
|
Sam:
[1:28:17]
| Like Laura Loomer is mad, for instance. And a bunch of others whose names I'm not going to recall off the top of my head. But a bunch of these folks are mad and upset and believe they've been betrayed. And it is fun to watch for the Schadenfreude. Is that how you say it? Schadenfreude? Whatever. You know, to watch because this is, Out of all the times that Donald Trump has seemingly gotten in trouble for something.
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| I mean, people on the left-hand side of the spectrum are mad at whatever he does every single day because his entire existence practically is offensive. You know, everything he does every day, the way he does it, what he is advocating, what he is pushing are things that we fundamentally believe are wrong and, in many cases, evil. And I shouldn't say his existence.
|
Sam:
[1:29:18]
| If he was just a reality TV star doing his thing, he'd be an offensive little person, but we wouldn't care and we wouldn't necessarily call it evil. But as president of the United States with power, he's doing a lot of stuff that is bad, but like it's no surprise when someone on the left is upset by Donald Trump in one way or another, either something new he's done, something he's said, something revealed about his past, no surprise. And we've occasionally had sort of the situations where sort of middle of the road Republicans temporarily seem upset. We had that at the Access Hollywood tape. We had that after January 6th, where a bunch of these folks are like, now he's passed the line. Now we're moving on. And then of course they come back into the fold a few days later. So, but this seems to be for almost the first time where we've seen not just like, you know, old school mainstream Republicans saying, okay, maybe now's the time we can escape Donald Trump, but we're seeing sort of MAGA faithful who are upset and pissed and expressing their extreme discontent.
|
Sam:
[1:30:39]
| So we'll see how long this lasts and for what, we'll also see how big it is. Once we see some polling that actually reflects this, I mean, Donald Trump's overall approval rating has been dropping lately anyway. It's not at his all-time lows. That was back in May. He hit a low in May and then he improved a bit. Now he's heading back down, but he hasn't gotten worse than he was in May yet as of I checked yesterday, I think. We'll see how it affects polling and all of that kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:31:12]
| But what's important to remember about this is the people who seem to be upset this time are not your marginal Donald Trump voters. They're not the people who were Trump-Biden-Trump voters or were non-voters who went to Trump for the first time this time around or anything like that. The people who seem to be upset seem to be the diehard, the people who actually show up at MAGA rallies and who wave the flags and wear the red hats. And so not just a Republican who's like, okay, Donald Trump isn't great, but he's better than the Democrats. No, this is like, this is the people who've been all in on him for a long time, or a lot of people like that anyway. And so even if the numbers are small, this particular group defecting seems like a significant blow if it sticks.
|
Sam:
[1:32:16]
| Like one possible way out for Donald Trump right now, assuming his underlying issue isn't just that there's evidence here that shows that he's directly guilty. I mean, remember, there was that one case that disappeared right before the 2016 election where a girl was in the process of submitting a lawsuit saying that Epstein and Donald Trump raped her together. And she provided all kinds of lurid details in her deposition. And then she withdrew it all and disappeared. And that's never been fully gone back to like what she paid off. Was she just scared?
|
Sam:
[1:33:06]
| Had she made it up completely and it wasn't true and she just couldn't stand the heat and so decided to, you know, cut that off before she got caught having made it up? We don't know. But, you know, assuming it's not just that Donald Trump knows that these files include stuff that would show his own guilt. The smart thing to do, fire Bondi, blame her for this recent decision to say that there's nothing else to see here, everybody move on, and promise to double down and investigate further, and we will release the stuff, and we will go through the process, and then just kick to count the can further down the road. Don't have to actually, I mean, if it really does show nothing of substance, like I was speculating earlier, figure out how you can release a lot more of it. Now, the true conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied no matter what you do. And you have to be smarter about it. I mean, this time, one of the things to prove that Epstein had actually committed suicide, they released some video of the hallway.
|
Sam:
[1:34:19]
| But then what they released had a one-minute gap in it and evidence that it had been multiple clips compiled together and put through imaging editing software a couple of times. Now, who knows whether what they released was actually manipulated in some way or whether it was just, hey, we're going to use, and I heard someone say it was Adobe Premiere, we'll use Adobe Premiere to assemble clip A and clip B, so we put them together and then we'll save it to a new format, blah, blah, blah. But then they released that as if it was the original. Like, you can make up an innocent explanation for that. But if it really was truly innocent, that is not what you do. You're not sloppy like that. If you say you're releasing the originals, you release the goddamn originals. You know, without any... Messing with them so that you don't get the conspiracy theory people saying, well, what about the missing minute? And why was this edited? And what did you change? And blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:17]
| But you could recommit to say, okay, we really will release everything. And we, of course, we'll redact the stuff about the victims and that'll take some time and we'll get back to it. And we will do this right. And we will release everything. And you guys will see at that point There's nothing to see. And again, you'll never convince the truly diehard conspiracy theory folks. One of the nature of these kinds of conspiracy theories is because you're telling people that the elite is out to manipulate it, you will never believe anything they present. But you could do more of this and you could delay it. And potentially Trump could kick this can all the way through the rest of his administration. Or he could actually present something in a few months that showed this. Of course, that doesn't work as well if there really is incriminating material in there.
|
Sam:
[1:36:09]
| And so, I don't know. Again, my initial impression of all this was there really is nothing there, or at least nothing usable that could lead to a prosecution. And all of these folks who had been pushing the conspiracy theories, just once they were in there, were confronted with the reality that there really isn't anything there there. Again, at least nothing usable. Maybe there's some of that stuff that would be scandalous, but not actually usable in a court of law. And then there are all kinds of, you know, maybe they leak some of that. I don't know. But like, there are all kinds of reasons why you wouldn't want to leak that.
|
Sam:
[1:36:49]
| And I, you know, that was my initial inclination that there really is nothing there there because with 20 plus years of investigations into this man, you'd think if there was, they would go somewhere. Now, we know, like, the first time he was investigated, a lot was swept under the rug. And he got off really, really light. And it was the second time around, only after press investigations from the Miami Herald, I believe, that led to the second round of prosecutions that led to him actually going to jail. And even then, again, the call is like, well, what about everybody else involved? Like, he wasn't just doing this for himself, right? There are reports of parties and there are all these other people. Can't we nail any of them? And so the question is, is there really evidence that could nail anybody else other than Epstein and Maxwell?
|
Sam:
[1:37:41]
| And I just, it seems to me like with all of these years spanning multiple investigations by multiple parties, if there was enough to go after anybody else, either Trump in his first round or Biden or somebody would have gone after that. There's state authorities involved too. Somebody would have gone after him. They can't all be intimidated by everybody. I mean, they could even be selective. Like the Republicans could only go after the Democrats and ignore the evidence against any Republicans. The Republicans could have done it the other way around and gone after, did I say that that way? Anyway, each party could go after the other party if they wanted to be unfair. Now, I would hope that if the evidence did exist, they'd go after a person no matter who they were. Republican, Democrat, famous, not famous, poor, rich. If they were implicated in a way that you could prove in all of this stuff, we should be going after them. End of story. Done.
|
Sam:
[1:38:44]
| But at the very least, you've got to think like, okay—, If the Biden administration had concrete evidence on Trump, wouldn't they have gone after him? If the Trump administration had concrete evidence against Clinton, wouldn't they have gone after him? It's hard to believe they didn't. So I feel like the most likely thing is still that there's nothing usable there. But the fact that Donald Trump keeps protesting about this makes you think like, what? Why? Why is he protesting this hard if that's not the case? Why don't they just release enough to prove what they're saying, if not to their diehard supporters, to everybody else? But yeah, and the Democrats are, I think, piling on this in the right way. I know sometimes the advice is if your enemy is destroying themselves, just leave them alone. But I see no problem with the Democrats piling on here and saying, you know, let's have hearings. Let's talk about why we're not releasing the documents. Let's look into who funded what, when, where, and what the details of this were. And they're asking all kinds of questions. They're making hay out of the fact that Donald Trump Jr. A few years ago was talking about the releasing the files. And George Conway responds to the old tweet from years ago by saying, but your dad says not to.
|
Sam:
[1:40:13]
| I love it. They're trolling them. They're pushing forward, all this kind of stuff. So we'll see where it goes. I mean, I should look up the right way to say Boingo, Boingo, Boingo name, Dan Bogino. Anyway, there are reports that he's considering resigning. There were reports that Cash Patel was considering resigning, but he has denied them. There's questions about will Bondi get pushed out. I don't know how it's all going to play out, But right now, all of this conspiracy mongering on the MAGA side has been blowing up in their faces, and it's fun to watch.
|
Sam:
[1:40:50]
| So we'll see how it plays out. And with that, I am done. Let's close out the show. Everybody go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can see all the ways to contact us. I still have not linked our TikTok. I will say, last week's show, I have not posted any TikToks. And the reason is like riverside produces little automated clips that i can post that i usually either take as is or make really minor tweaks to in their internal editor but this time for whatever reason my voice and yvonne's voice were misaligned by like five seconds so when we were like would go back and forth instead of i talk then yvonne talks then i talk it was more like I talk, then there's a five second gap. Then Yvonne and I start talking at the same time. One of which is what Yvonne should have said in that gap. And one of which is my response to what he said. And it just came up a muddled mess. So I posted nothing from last week's show. And like I try, their editor lets you mute parts out and stuff. But as far as I could tell, didn't let you slide things around. Maybe there's a way, but I couldn't find it. And I just decided not to worry about it. Anyway, that I was reminded all of that because there's no link yet on the webpage to the TikTok.
|
Sam:
[1:42:13]
| Anyway, I guess TikTok is staying around forever at this point. Like Donald Trump is illegally extending and extending and extending without any sort of resolution what's going on. So yeah, I'll add the logo eventually, I guess. But anyway, the website includes all the other ways to contact us. I said that already. And our archives, transcripts for the last couple years of shows, all that kind of fun stuff, our archives going back all the way to 2007. Wow. It's been a lot of years. Anyway, and of course, a link to our Patreon, where Yvonne and I, no, no, that's our Slack. Our Patreon is where you can give us money because we like money. And the 25 or so dollars a month we make off this right now is not enough for either Yvonne or I to quit our day jobs and do this full time. And that is the goal here. So you folks have got to step up a lot more than you have.
|
Sam:
[1:43:20]
| Yeah, no, I'm kidding. But you know, hey, if anybody wants to help out with the minor expenses and all that kind of stuff for the show, we do appreciate it. And at various levels, we will mention you on the show, we will send you a postcard, we will ring a bell, We'll send you a mug, all this kind of stuff. I still owe a couple cards. I owe cards to, oh man, my little log of who I owe stuff to. I owe Pete and Greg a card, which I have already written, but I have to finish up and send to Yvonne so he can add stuff to the cards and then mail to you guys. And I just never get around to it. And I owe Todd a mug. I'm just so bad at this. I owe Todd a mug for actually co-hosting the show like a month and a half ago or something. So eventually, I think I owe him a mug. I don't think I've done it already. You know, it's all, I'll figure it out someday.
|
Sam:
[1:44:14]
| But anyway, importantly, at $2 a month or more, we will invite you to our Commissions corner slack where yvonne and i and all kinds of other folks have been sharing links talking about the news talking about other stuff you know i mentioned my new car i talked a lot about like new car stuff on there oh by the way during this last break i did actually look up some of the things that are added between the sel version of the onyc 5 and the limited version which is the the the next one up there's also an xrt or something but that's that's specifically like marketed to off-roading and stuff and i'm i don't know anyway there are a number of things i was right there's some i'm there's some i'm jealous of like i think the the automatic seats have a few more features like there's a a better audio system like slightly better speakers honestly the seat stuff i could see that being cool the speakers okay that's cool but i don't really care like i mostly listen to podcasts the audio quality is not a big deal for me i sometimes listen to music but i'm i'm not the kind of person who would be like oh man that speakers so much better quality. I wouldn't notice that. There are, there are some things with like.
|
Sam:
[1:45:43]
| A couple safety features I would like. Apparently, if you're backing up and you're about to run over or anything, like something automatic breaks in that situation.
|
Sam:
[1:45:56]
| And I forget if it was the XRT or Limited or both. It has like a 360 camera thing. So on your little screen, you can see all around your car. That is cool. I would miss that. But then it has a heads-up display. I don't think I really would care about that.
|
Sam:
[1:46:13]
| Like i've never used one but when i've seen them i haven't been all that impressed that mean like i feel like i need that and like a sun or moonroof whatever the it's not the kind you can open and stick your head out of but it's the kind that like you know you can see the sun through the top and i don't think i would have wanted that anyway and i think i saw that it it's like slightly bigger wheels and I wouldn't care about that. In fact, I think I saw it like reduces the range slightly because of that. So I don't know. I'm not, I'm not as upset as I thought I would. There's some of the features on the limited. I would be like, yeah, that would be cool. It'd be nice to have, but there's none that I immediately was like, oh man, I should have gotten that instead. And I'm really pissed I got the one I did. I have not felt that way. It's mostly like, yeah, okay. And I think the price difference would have been another $4,000 or so. And I'm like, eh, I like what I have. So I'm okay. I'm not as upset as I thought. So, oh, oh, way distraction.
|
Sam:
[1:47:27]
| We talk about all that kind of thing on the, what I just said that I actually looked at the list, I have not said on the Slack yet. So, and I'm not going to before this show is out. So you listeners have a heads up on the Slack on that one, but we do usually give a something from the Slack story we shared. So I will give the latest one that I shared on the random Slack channel. We divide it up into this one that's more serious stuff and the one that's more random stuff. And so this is from the random one. This is an article from the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, from As It Happens, which is one of their radio shows. Good show, available as a podcast. I recommend it. It's a fun sort of news, but feature news. Like it's, you know, a bunch of interesting stories and stuff like that. I don't listen to it every day or even every week, but it's a fun show. If you're not in Canada, you can get it as a podcast, as I said, or all sorts of other ways. But I guess in Canada, you could actually listen to it on the radio, but who does that anymore?
|
Sam:
[1:48:34]
| Anyway, it's chimps are sticking grass and sticks in their butts, seemingly as a fashion trend. And it says the new phenomenon appears to be a fresh spin on an old fad of wearing grass in the ear and so yeah they talk about this apparently a couple generations of chimps ago there was a chimp that started sticking grass in their ear as sort of a fashion thing as far as they can tell and then a whole bunch of the other chimps started imitating and that actually got passed down a generation or two before it faded out. But then recently they started doing it again for first in the ear, but then some chimp apparently came up with the innovation that instead of sticking the stick sticks and grass in their ears, they could stick it in their butts. And that has now been spreading through this particular chimp community. They speculate that sticking it in the ear may have come from them watching humans, because apparently these are a population of captive chimps somewhere. And apparently one of their caretakers was like cleaning their ear with grass. And I'm like, really? Do people do that? You know, I've, I've heard of people doing it with Q-tips and I've, and I've stuck like pencil erasers in my ear. And I know you're not supposed to do that.
|
Sam:
[1:49:58]
| Like I've seen like, I've seen Dr. Mike on YouTube talking about how you should not stick Q-tips and other objects in your ears. If you're trying to clean out your ears, they're, they're like liquids that you can do if you really need to, but you should not be like just sticking stuff in your ear because the chances of damage are high because you can screw up and like mess up your eardrum. But like, I don't know. And two responses that my wife asked, and I had thought about this, but she said it out loud, you know, could they have picked it up from watching people wear earrings?
|
Sam:
[1:50:35]
| Did they really have to see someone sticking grass in their ear? They could have generalized this. But then she also said, okay, if they picked up the grass in the ear from watching humans, where exactly did they pick up the sticking sticks up your butt from? Were they seeing humans do that too? And I'm like, no, the article says they innovated that themselves. And she's like, really? Are you sure? Anyway, apparently this is now the big fashion trend among chimps at the Chimfunci Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia. That's where this is going on, but this is apparently all the rage, and they're doing it and passing the behavior on to each other, teaching each other how to do it, I guess. I don't know. And apparently it's a fashion statement of some sort. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:51:31]
| That seems like a good place to end. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for Curmudgeon's Corner again. Have a great week. Hopefully, Yvonne is feeling better next week. I saw some updates from him on the Slack that he still wasn't feeling great as of at least Sunday night, maybe, or at least Saturday night, maybe even Sunday as I'm recording this. This is now Sunday afternoon as I'm recording this, U.S. time. And yeah, hopefully he's feeling better and we do a normal show next week. But with that, we end the show. Stay safe, everyone. Goodbye. Okay. Hitting stop. No, no, no. Alex threw stuff at me. Goodbye, folks. Hitting stop.
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