Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Beep. Hello. Oh, you can still hear a beep?
|
Ivan:
[0:06]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[0:07]
| Always hear a beep. Yeah, I think there's at least two at the moment somewhere in the house when I think to notice them. Yeah. Ah, shall I just...
|
Ivan:
[0:19]
| Oh, you look... You look... What the... Did you just take a shower or...
|
Sam:
[0:25]
| Yeah, I got out of the shower like 15 minutes ago.
|
Ivan:
[0:28]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[0:30]
| Is that bad? Should I not take showers?
|
Ivan:
[0:32]
| Well, no. The thing is that your hair looks like soaking wet.
|
Sam:
[0:35]
| Well, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, fresh.
|
Ivan:
[0:39]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[0:40]
| All right.
|
Ivan:
[0:41]
| I just wanted to make sure it wasn't sweat since you were at the hospital.
|
Sam:
[0:44]
| No. I, I, I.
|
Ivan:
[0:46]
| Okay. All right. So I'm like, I figured. I'm like, wait, either he got out of the shower or he's like sweat like bullets. Okay. So, okay. Shower.
|
Sam:
[0:54]
| It is a shower and it is a shower. All right.
|
Ivan:
[0:57]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[0:57]
| So that's fine. I don't blow dry it or anything. I just let it drip dry. So, like, I mean, I do, like, run a towel through it. But I don't, like, you know, I don't make sure it's dry, dry.
|
Ivan:
[1:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:10]
| Yeah. So, shall I hit the go, the start?
|
Ivan:
[1:15]
| Yeah, we got to go because I have a hard stop in an hour and 22 minutes.
|
Sam:
[1:21]
| Okay. Let's do this.
|
Ivan:
[1:23]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:25]
| Let's light this candle. Here you go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 15th, 2026. It's just after 1739 UTC. As we're starting to record, I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bowe is with me. As you knew, last episode was 1,000, so this is 1,001. Very exciting. Very exciting.
|
Ivan:
[2:17]
| It would sound better if it was 2,001. Then we could play the music.
|
Sam:
[2:21]
| Or we'd just have to go another 20 years. Well, 19.
|
Ivan:
[2:25]
| I mean, that sounds doable, actually.
|
Sam:
[2:28]
| We could get there, maybe.
|
Ivan:
[2:30]
| I mean, if we did, yeah. I mean, we could be doing this at 75. I mean, what the fuck? Actually, it's more likely that I'll have more time then to do this than less.
|
Sam:
[2:44]
| We can get to 2000 faster if we convert it to a daily show.
|
Ivan:
[2:49]
| I mean, if after I retire, I've got more time, then maybe, yeah, we could do several shows. Maybe not daily, but several shows a week.
|
Sam:
[2:59]
| I was going to say, I'll be honest. I don't think I would be up for daily, even no matter what.
|
Ivan:
[3:05]
| But a couple of times a week, maybe, for that board.
|
Sam:
[3:07]
| Maybe. You know, I think weekly's a good cadence.
|
Ivan:
[3:11]
| Weekly's a good cadence, but what I'm saying is that I don't know how bored I will be in retirement. So my thing is that maybe I'm just like, Sam, you know, we, we got to, you know.
|
Sam:
[3:23]
| I got nothing to do this afternoon. Let's, let's record something.
|
Ivan:
[3:27]
| Let's do right.
|
Sam:
[3:28]
| Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[3:30]
| Well, it's, it's possible. I'm not saying it's likely to just.
|
Sam:
[3:34]
| So, as usual, we'll do less newsy stuff at the beginning, more newsy stuff at the end. I will start with my update. For those of you who are on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, you already know, and Yvonne alluded to it in our cold open.
|
Sam:
[3:50]
| I had the fun excitement of, once again, doing the health issue hospitalization thing for just under 48 hours this week. Yeah. So the quick version of it is Monday night I started having UTI symptoms. They were gone basically Tuesday during the day. So I was like, yeah, whatever. Like I went to the Snohomish Podcast Network, social event Tuesday evening. By the time I got home from that, though, I was starting to feel like crap again. Tuesday night was, like, horrible at home. And then I slept most of the day Wednesday. But by the time I got up on Wednesday, you know, I'd sent, like, Tuesday, I'd sent, like, a note to my urologist who, like, took care of me when I was, like, having all my issues at the first part of the year. And through like, you know, the electronic messaging system.
|
Sam:
[4:53]
| But he hadn't answered yet because that's like, you know, they answer those in two to three days. Those aren't like, you know, they get to it like instantly and answer. So we called the office and I left a voicemail. But then my wife called a few hours later when they hadn't responded yet and said, what do we do with this guy, basically? And they're like, eh, take him to the ER. Because I had a fever at this point. You know, I had all the classic symptoms, blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[5:20]
| So we went to the ER, they looked at me for a few hours and they gave me some IV antibiotics and they were like, you know, we might be able to send you home today, but, you know, we're going to watch you for a few hours first. And like at the end of the few hours, I was responding, but not quite as well as they had hoped. Like my heart rate was still elevated. Some other stuff, like my fever wasn't going down yet. So they're like, yeah, we want to admit you to watch you for a couple days.
|
Sam:
[5:52]
| But the place that I went to was basically, it's an emergency room only. Like they don't have a hospital upstairs to send you to. And the closest one in their little network with openings was like 30 miles away. But they were like, unlike my time in February, where they just shoved me in an ambulance and took me to the place where they were admitting me. They're like, it's fine if your wife takes you. So my wife drove me to the other hospital. I got in there, like, just after midnight. So this was, like, 1 a.m. Thursday morning. I was in the hospital, and, you know, this was not anything close to the intensive experience I had, like, at the end of January last year, beginning of February, where, you know, I had all the, like, live monitors on me. I had tubes in me everywhere, blah, blah, blah. None of this. Like they just like had a bed every couple hours. They came in and checked my vitals, made sure I had the meds I needed to have. You know, even the IV meds they gave me was like once a day. It wasn't like a, you know, I had anything continuous in me. And they basically just, once they had me.
|
Sam:
[7:15]
| They kept me until like the cultures arrived that were taken at the very beginning, to make sure that whatever bug I had was susceptible to the stuff they were going to send me home with. And it was. So they sent me home with the appropriate pills and I've got antibiotics that I have to take for like a week or whatever. But basically, you know, the fever broke after the first day and like, you know, or not even, like after the first 12 hours. That I was in the hospital anyway. Anyway, I'm home. I'm feeling okay. You know, a little bit of a headache. You know, whatever. Nothing unusual for me. All the, you know, I'm home. So that's my update on that kind of stuff. Very exciting. It's wonderful to be at the age we are where, you know, the body slowly decays. And more and more goes wrong with it over time. That's great. That's wonderful. I'm thrilled to be here. Well, I am thrilled to be here. The alternative is much worse.
|
Ivan:
[8:27]
| Yes, the alternative would be bad. Yes. Either you'd be hospitalized or dead or who knows.
|
Sam:
[8:35]
| Yeah. So anyway, this was, and it was one of those things too, though, where, you know, they're like, and look, I'm always like, do I really have to like call anybody? Like, you know, I sent the electronic message first because I didn't want to call or talk to anybody. They probably would have told me to go in and get looked at 24 hours earlier if I'd just called the first time I had symptoms. And then even then, well, I'll be honest. This time, I was a bit gun-shy. Well, gun-shy is the wrong word. Normally, in the past, I would have been resisting at all costs the idea of going to the yard. I'd be like, no, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. I don't need to do any of that crap. I'm sure it'll be fine. Let's just give it time. Blah, blah, blah. This time, I was kind of like, Brandy, should I go to the ER? Because, like, I don't want to be in the hospital for, like, five days like I was last time. I don't want to end up with sepsis.
|
Ivan:
[9:45]
| Sepsis is bad.
|
Sam:
[9:47]
| Last time, you know, the infections spread from being a UTI to my blood. That's what sepsis is. It was very serious.
|
Ivan:
[9:55]
| Did I mention that I had an employee from my travel agency back in Puerto Rico that almost died of sepsis? That they actually, it got to the point that they actually gave them last rites.
|
Sam:
[10:05]
| Mm. No.
|
Ivan:
[10:07]
| Yeah. This was like, well, obviously this is such a long time ago, but yeah, I had Marisol. Lovely. God, she was so great.
|
Sam:
[10:16]
| I vaguely remember the name.
|
Ivan:
[10:17]
| Yeah, because she worked at the office. So, you know, and damn it, I mean, she almost died on me, man. Now, I, you know, after that, she couldn't come back to work. She was like, I really, I'll tell you one thing, that the reason I don't have the travel agency in part is because she got sick and I lost her and we had to, the replacement wasn't anywhere nearly as, as good as she was. I mean, she just couldn't come back to work. She was just like, you know, she's, you know, as somebody that I've lost track that I would love to know how she's doing. I got it. You know, I got to ask Edie's who I do have tracked. I was like, uh, that was a, you know, she, she, you, you knew you, you met Edie's, I believe. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[10:59]
| Probably.
|
Ivan:
[11:00]
| Yeah. Yeah. No, you did. You did. I have pictures of you with her.
|
Sam:
[11:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:04]
| So yeah. So I know for a fact that you better. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. I had, you know, I had good staff. Man. I've been lucky. I've had good staff.
|
Sam:
[11:14]
| But yeah. Bottom line. I, I, this time I was actually like, maybe, maybe I should go. Like maybe I should get seen.
|
Ivan:
[11:20]
| I don't understand this thing about being reluctant. Like, listen, when I had, like, my diverticulitis, okay, you know, and I tried a couple of days, you know, medication, whatever, because I've had my stomach feeling bad. But the moment I felt acute pain, you know, I didn't even ask my wife. I told my wife, listen, I'm going to the ER. You're staying here because, Manu, I will let you know what the fuck happens. But I immediately went to the ER. I'm not fine. I wasn't fucking around.
|
Sam:
[11:48]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[11:49]
| So. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:50]
| Yeah, and they did tell me, like, look, if you'd waited another 24 hours, it could have been a lot worse.
|
Ivan:
[11:55]
| So could you stop? Like, you know, look, it's just, yeah, you are not one of these people that is like overusing the health system. You actually have. Because there are, there are people that just, you know, every time it's like, you know, you know, they just, you know, overuse, overuse it. But you're not one of them. No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[12:20]
| Yeah. I mean, if, if anything, like I said, I probably should have called 24 hours earlier, you know, at least to consult with my doctor. They might've sent me, you know, who knows? They might've sent me some antibiotics at home without going to the ER, but, or maybe they would've said, just go to the ER. They might've said, just go to the ER or go to urgent care or whatever, you know? But no no i did wait the first day well in part because you know it came on like the symptoms first came on at like 11 p.m, and basically you know i took some drugs i already had at home it eased by like one o'clock in the morning and i went to bed, and i felt better in the morning so i'm like ah it was a it was just a thing it lasted a few hours it was done so but then uh The next night is what really sucked. Yeah, but yeah. Anyway, so I probably should have gone to the ER while it was really sucking that one night instead of waiting until I woke up the next day. But, you know, whatever. Good enough. It's all done. Feel better now. Have some pills to take. That's my update. I'll have a movie in a second, but you got any but first for you, Yvonne, Mr. Bo? Oh, Mr. Bo Diaz. We said we always had to call you Bo Diaz now.
|
Ivan:
[13:36]
| Well, now I am Mr. Bo Diaz. Okay. Yeah, officially. Manu decided sometime last, Thursday night, he usually grabs my phone and looks at my calendar and stuff, whatever. That's adorable. But he decided to go to my work email and start responding to calendar invites. And the thing is that he responded to one that was an invite from my boss for an important meeting with a neighbor. And my boss was not happy about that. So I get an email like bright and early, like before six in the morning. He's an hour ahead. And he's like, the hell you mean, maybe we need to do. You need to be there. What the it's it's an account review for your account. And I'm like, I'm looking at it. I'm like, I'm like, boss, I have no idea why the hell you got a maybe. And it happened while I was sleeping. I need to find out what the fuck happened. Okay. So then I look at the phone and then I look at the sent items and I see four or five things answered maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. And Manu, for some reason, said to all of them, maybe. Okay. At least it didn't say no, which I'm like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[14:48]
| And I left him a WhatsApp message. I was laughing. I'm like, boss, you're not going to believe this. My son grabbed the phone and answered all my appointments with a baby. So we were having a massive laugh about it.
|
Sam:
[15:07]
| As far as I remember, Alex never answered any work emails for me. But what he does routinely is he will steal both my phone and my wife's phone, not at the same time necessarily, but he and he routinely reads the entirety of our conversation with each other. Okay. And every once in a while.
|
Ivan:
[15:30]
| Wait, time out.
|
Sam:
[15:32]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[15:32]
| Time out. But you don't need both phones to read the entirety of the conversation.
|
Sam:
[15:39]
| Well, that's what I said. He doesn't steal them at the same time.
|
Ivan:
[15:43]
| Oh, I see. He'll steal whichever one is convenient. Okay, I see.
|
Sam:
[15:48]
| He'll steal whichever one is convenient, and he will catch up with our conversations with each other. Okay? Okay. And for, and, and so if there's anything we really want to talk about that we don't want to include him, we have to use some sort of side channel. And he does know most of the side channels. Like we'll occasionally like use, use Facebook messenger or signal or something. And he knows about all of those, but he checks them less often. Okay. So like if we really want to like plan something out or we want to we just want to have a conversation where the 16 year old is not listening we have to plan out another way to have that conversation.
|
Ivan:
[16:32]
| Oh for the love of god.
|
Sam:
[16:34]
| Including in person you know like we we could you know go somewhere where he isn't and actually like talk but you know that's strange who would who the hell would talk when you can text, you know? So anyway.
|
Ivan:
[16:46]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[16:47]
| But the thing he does occasionally, which he has gotten, well, sometimes he does it for his own purposes that is fairly obvious, but sometimes he does it just to be whatever, is he will steal one of our phones and try to have a conversation and fool the person on the other side into thinking it's actually the other person, and see how long he can go, okay? And so, like, now, if it's something like, you know, Alex thinks he needs, you know, we've determined we need to give Alex a new, like, thing, okay, or something, or, you know, then it's obvious right away, like, he's just, like, trying to pretend to be the other parent to get something, right? But sometimes he'll just jump into the conversation and, you know, pretend to be the other person. And usually we catch on pretty quick. But sometimes he's managed to, like, keep it going a couple minutes before it's like, wait a second. You're not Brandy. You're Alex.
|
Ivan:
[18:05]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[18:08]
| You know, and this is, you know, and this is like normally, like, you know, we've mentioned on the show before, he doesn't talk. When he texts, he usually does not do complete sentences. But when he's pretending to be Brandy to fool me about something, he absolutely does.
|
Ivan:
[18:25]
| What a fucking asshole. Fuck you. Fuck it, dude.
|
Sam:
[18:37]
| And, and yeah, so he's, he's sometimes, he's sometimes got me for several minutes before I realized. And then the trick, the one trick that, so like usually when I'm like, if, if so, for instance, like he likes to borrow his mom's computer when he goes to school, like to use in the car on the way there. Because he's got a bunch of stuff he's working on on her computer. And sometimes he'll bring it to the car and I'll ask him, do you have permission? And he'll, of course, say he does. So I'll text Brandy to see if he has permission to use the computer. But like, I have to specify that she has to respond using swear words because Alex doesn't like swear words.
|
Ivan:
[19:23]
| That's right. There you go. I love this. Yeah, so that's what you'd have.
|
Sam:
[19:28]
| So she can't say, yes, he has permission to use the computer. She has to say, yes, he has my fucking permission to use the fucking computer.
|
Ivan:
[19:38]
| I like this. This is good. This is great.
|
Sam:
[19:41]
| I love this. And then I know it's really her.
|
Ivan:
[19:43]
| This is actually fantastic.
|
Sam:
[19:46]
| So anyway, that's my story.
|
Ivan:
[19:51]
| Let's move on because we gotta.
|
Sam:
[19:53]
| I gotta. Okay. Uh, let, let me do a quick movie. This will be quick because we've talked about it multiple times before. Cause I've watched it multiple times before, since we've been talking on the show multiple times, this is the latest viewing last October of cars two from 2011. And my quick synopsis of my opinion on cars two is that of Of the three Cars movies, I think it's the weakest, but it's still fine. It's still an okay movie. Like, I think Cars 1 is the best. Cars 3 is probably second. Cars 2, I'd put at number three of the three. But it was still a decent movie. I think it was a disappointment after Cars 1, because it's a totally different vibe. It's a totally different kind of movie. It's more about Mater. It does all this spy stuff. It's whatever. And I think Cars 3 gets back to the right tone that sort of matches the Cars 1 tone. Cars 3 is more of a sequel to Cars 1 than Cars 2 is. Cars 2 is sort of out of, you know, just a little bit out of sync from what the vibe seems like it should be for the Cars series. But if you judge it not necessarily as a sequel to Cars 1, but just sort of as a standalone, it's a fine little movie. You know, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[21:14]
| Manu has been having me watch this movie now recently. He's been watching a few times. I... It is the weakest of them, but it's not a bad movie is what I realized.
|
Sam:
[21:26]
| Yeah. I mean, I think in previous cycles, I've probably given it a thumb sideways. I think I'm moving up a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[21:33]
| Maybe not straight thumbs up. I'll go to a thumbs up. But relatively to Cars 3 and the first Cars, it's the weakest of the three.
|
Sam:
[21:44]
| The problem is it leans too hard into the comedy as opposed to actually the emotional resonance between the characters. I feel like Cars 1 and Cars 3 both lean into the actual story arcs of the characters and how they're feeling about things, and there's some sort of emotional progression. There's character development. And, you know, we're talking about fucking cartoon cars, but this character development in Cars 1 and 3, there really isn't in Cars 2.
|
Ivan:
[22:21]
| Well, it's cartoon cars being used as avatars for people. I mean, you know, it's like, I, mean, in some cases, actual, like, real people. In the first one, Michael Schumacher makes an appearance, like a Formula One driver, who unfortunately, he's been, well, nobody really knows in what state he is in. He suffered a terrible accident soon after they made that movie, a skiing accident that left him in a state where we know he's not dead, but that he has not made a public appearance ever since. People that have knowledge of the situation i mean i guess he doesn't come i i don't nobody it's the biggest mystery nobody really knows publicly what is, what his health state is but it's bad enough that he hasn't been seen in public and since like soon after cars one was released right yeah, So anyway, I think it's more five or six years, but anyway, but I won't even I won't even give the regular plot summary.
|
Sam:
[23:31]
| You know, because it's Clark Cars 2. I won't give straight thumbs up, but between thumbs sideways and thumbs up, it's like, you know, weakest of the three, but still decent. You know, we're working our way through the Cars franchise, not just the three movies, but all the TV shows, all the shorts, all the, you know, everything. And of course the associated movies like the planes series and you know all that kind of stuff so okay that's it let's take a break ready for a break break break break yes, and then we'll we'll figure out the news of the week that we want to talk about back after this.
|
Sam:
[25:00]
| Okay, we are back. So, Yvonne, we've had a number of things in the news this week. Where would you like to start?
|
Ivan:
[25:07]
| Why don't we go through the election results? We had more primaries and things.
|
Sam:
[25:12]
| Oh, yes, we did have an election result.
|
Ivan:
[25:14]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:15]
| So, I guess the big one was Wisconsin. Let's see, I wasn't prepped. Let me bring up Wisconsin Senate 2026 election results as I type into my browser in the other window, and let's see where we were. Okay, that is wrong. It was, not the Wisconsin State Senate. Come on. Okay. this is not what i want at all let's see u.s senate, 2026 primary wisconsin senate let's try again, all right let's try that let's try that you know i suck at this i suck at this if find the thing This is the guy and no, this is the girl. Help me. Help me, Yvonne. I'm struggling. I'm falling. I'm falling and I can't get up.
|
Ivan:
[26:26]
| I figured that you're the expert at this. I figured you'd have to fold your fingertips.
|
Sam:
[26:32]
| And it was on. Oh, you know why? You know why? It's the governor, not the damn Senate.
|
Ivan:
[26:39]
| Yeah, but well, not. Yeah, the different. The one with the Senate was Minnesota, right? Yeah, we had the Senate seat thing, thing. Oh, God, we are so we're we're we're we're we're we're so great at this.
|
Sam:
[26:59]
| OK, so I finally have the right election, to at least talk about the the the one that I had on the list was the Wisconsin governor race, which, by the way, was right here on my screen in front of me. Like, is that Wisconsin?
|
Ivan:
[27:16]
| Is it? Is it? Oh, yeah. Is it? That's the one Lindell ran on the Republican side. Did he do well?
|
Sam:
[27:23]
| Was Lindell also, uh, Lindell did not win. Uh, you can, you can break.
|
Ivan:
[27:28]
| He did well, right? I mean, Trump endorsed him, right?
|
Sam:
[27:33]
| No, he, he, this was, he was not in the Wisconsin governor. No.
|
Ivan:
[27:37]
| Was it Minnesota then?
|
Sam:
[27:39]
| He was, he's Minnesota something.
|
Ivan:
[27:41]
| Okay. Yeah. He's Minnesota governor. Wow.
|
Sam:
[27:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[27:44]
| I got, okay. Now I got Wisconsin governor.
|
Sam:
[27:47]
| You talk Lindell first and then I'll talk about the governor race in Wisconsin.
|
Ivan:
[27:51]
| Well, let's see.
|
Sam:
[27:51]
| We are so with it today. Okay, so with it.
|
Ivan:
[27:53]
| Okay, in Minnesota, Governor, you had, Klobuchar on the Democratic side, who won overwhelmingly. I mean, Jesus, 90% to six, okay?
|
Sam:
[28:09]
| She didn't have real opposition.
|
Ivan:
[28:11]
| Right, so she's in for Governor, and I mean, she would be replacing Wolfs, right, if she wins. On the Republican side, you had DeMuth and you had Lindell. I think Lindell was endorsed by Trump, if I remember correctly, right?
|
Sam:
[28:30]
| I think so, yes.
|
Ivan:
[28:31]
| Yeah, yeah, he was. And he came in with only 32%. So he didn't do very good. Somebody who's called DeMuth, I have no idea who they are. One. But it's most likely that they're going to lose anyway, so whatever. Whoever the hell, I mean, the Republican there is going to lose. So that's that one. Lindell took it very well. There was some interesting video.
|
Sam:
[28:57]
| Yes, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[28:58]
| Oh, he did? Oh, no. Yeah. Also, he shared a video of him talking about this while he was in his car, supposedly.
|
Sam:
[29:11]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[29:13]
| The car is moving, but he's not even touching. I don't. He's not. Okay. He's driving an Audi. And he's driving an Audi that looks about 10 years old, similar to one that I had before. So I know how this car is. This car does not have any self-driving capability, but he is sitting in the car, facing sideways, talking as the background is moving very fast behind him. And everybody is confused. Is he like on a movie set? How is this video working?
|
Sam:
[29:50]
| So that was very confusing yeah okay.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| But lindell did not take it well.
|
Sam:
[29:57]
| Okay shall shall i talk about the race i was actually going to the wisconsin.
|
Ivan:
[30:03]
| Thing was the surprise i guess.
|
Sam:
[30:05]
| The wisconsin governor race okay specifically on the democratic side yeah on the republican side there was not a real race. Tom Tiffany won. It was another like 95% to five kind of thing with some token opposition against him. On the Democratic side, we had the two biggest candidates were David Crowley, and Francisca Hong. Okay. Now polling coming into this had Francisca Hong winning by high double digits. Like, not just like 10%, but she had polls showing her coming in winning by 20%. Crowley had actually, like a month ago, dropped out of the race because everybody had told him that, you know, there was no hope, blah, blah, blah. And then a week later, he got back in because people were like, no, no, we need somebody. Because he was sort of an establishment-type candidate, centrist establishment, whereas Hong is one of these sort of progressive upstarts, more left-wing.
|
Sam:
[31:22]
| But the polling had her up like 20% anyway. And then when the results came in, it was neck and neck all night. And crawley ended up pulling it out and winning by a tiny margin i'm looking at he got 39.81 she got 39.33 and then a bunch of other smaller candidates got other percentages, now the the thing here is so people were looking at this what is what happened to the polls, g elliot morris of who has a substack strength in numbers did a detailed analysis because he had the access he had access to the internals of one of the poles and so he used that to do a post-mortem of poles.
|
Sam:
[32:14]
| So the centrist won, the progressive did not. The postmortem seems to point at a couple different things. And I'm looking not just at G. Eliot's thing, but a few other things that people have come out with since then. But the biggest thing, and there's some modal reasons too, but basically they overestimated the youth turnout.
|
Sam:
[32:38]
| They you know and and apparently look here's one thing that all of the pollsters have been up front about and said you know, whatever you say about general election polls and their accuracy primary polls are worse oh yeah because because they don't know how to properly model primary turnout, and how it affects the type of, you know, contests you have in primary battles. It's very different than generals and they're not very good at it. So like the, the accuracy of primary polls is far worse than the accuracy of general election polls. And of course, people complain the general election polls aren't that super accurate either, you know? And so but the number one it looks like they overweighted young people and this this seems like you know something that happens you know to to pundits all the time i'm a little bit surprised, that it's happening to the that pollsters aren't taking better account of this but it happens to pundits all the time where it's like look this time the youth are so excited they're surging they're doing this they're doing that and then the youth don't turn up, Well, you know, it's a typical pattern is.
|
Ivan:
[33:57]
| Yeah. But but look, let me let to be fair. Progressives in general have done quite well in recent.
|
Sam:
[34:06]
| Yes, they have.
|
Ivan:
[34:07]
| You know, elections. I think that just because in one race. The other candidate won and it was very close and the polls were off i don't think indicates that all of a sudden that that they have that that you know progressive candidates have lost momentum i just think.
|
Sam:
[34:27]
| No i don't think so either i don't think so either.
|
Ivan:
[34:31]
| Some people said that they were like.
|
Sam:
[34:33]
| Oh my god look you see.
|
Ivan:
[34:37]
| And i'm like.
|
Sam:
[34:38]
| I think the fact that it was even close already tells you something anyway but right look the the other part uh and this relates to the youth thing, but in the polling most pollsters now by the way don't only do phone because so few people answer the phone they do a lot of text polling too where they'll text you, i i get these semi regularly now i'll get a text from you know hey would you participate in such and such poll and you click through and you end up going to a website and you answer a bunch of questions, right but the and i and i have been polled numerous times now usually for washington state stuff sometimes even by the way for my wife's race recently i have not been polled.
|
Ivan:
[35:21]
| Recently i must admit.
|
Sam:
[35:23]
| And again i've been polled for my wife's race which is always interesting it's like hmm i wonder what i'll answer here anyway but often, i some of these are push polls too where They're clearly like the questions are slanted in a way that try to get you to answer. Anyway, I'm getting off. But they still were overweighting. They were overweighting the text polls to the phone polls. Because guess what? The older people answered the phone. The younger people answered the texts. You know, yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| And that also relates to a strategic issue. There are a few things on this race. One, like Hong, one of the things that was hung around her neck is apparently a few years ago, she made some comments about how Thanksgiving was bad.
|
Sam:
[36:15]
| You know basically the the holiday of thanksgiving you know being a colonialist artifact and celebrating and like it's harmful to native americans and, like you know and maybe we shouldn't celebrate it in the way we have blah blah blah and she's since moderated all those comments but nevertheless the fact that she said all that however many years ago, was all over the place in the commentary against her, especially in the last week or two. And this once again is, you know, potential late movement in the polls as well that was not captured, late movement that was not captured in polls.
|
Sam:
[36:56]
| The other thing, and this is also, it's the same kind of thing, but almost in reverse. She intentionally did not advertise on linear broadcast media. She concentrated exclusively on online. And guess what? There are still lots of people, especially lots of older people, who pay attention to linear media. And like lots of us are like you know i can't imagine that who who does that, except for like a handful of live events live sports live news why would anybody be watching linear media but her opponent, blanketed the airwaves with commercials on linear media and she did she did zero on linear media and was online only and so guess what i mean that's the more moderate Right.
|
Ivan:
[37:54]
| That's going to miss a big chunk of people. The same way is if, you know, you state simply linear media, you're going to miss a whole chunk of people.
|
Sam:
[38:05]
| Yeah. And so a lot of people who were, and look, who are you trying to go after too? I mean, yes, she wasn't, I guess maybe she felt like that audience wasn't one that she could penetrate anyway, because she was the progressive candidate and he was the moderate candidate, but yeah. If you don't try, you lose. And so it seems like that might have been a strategic mistake. I mean, and people talk all the time about Democrats, specifically old style establishment, older traditional Democrats missing the boat on new media. This is the opposite. You know.
|
Sam:
[38:54]
| The older politicians may still rely on television in a way that they shouldn't, but the newer, younger candidates can't ignore it and can't be like, online is all that exists. Who the hell watches TV anymore? Because, you know, lots of reliable voters still watch linear media. And don't look at all these online media properties that you think are what everybody watches. It's just the way it is, you know? So anyway, so we have Crowley, the moderate, winning here instead of the progressive, which is sort of the opposite. We had, what's his name? L whatever his name in that other state for Senate.
|
Sam:
[39:46]
| El Saeed, El Saeed, where we did get the progressive win. And we're going to we're going to see in this November what those gambles look like, because the first few polls coming out of the El Saeed election for Senate, have the Republican winning, you know. And even before that primary election, that's what the polls were saying, where he was slightly behind, whereas if his primary opponent had won, she'd be slightly ahead. And so it's a gamble. You're potentially saying, I will take the slightly weaker candidate in the general election because I prefer them ideologically in the hopes that they can make up that ground before the general. And maybe he can. I've seen some of El Saeed's commercials and stuff. He's trying to do the same sort of like, I think he's playing from the Mamdani, playbook, where he's just trying to be so cool that people like him no matter what his policies are, kind of. And he's also trying to humanize the policies. Like, you know, really, you know, it's not some ideological thing. It's like, I want to help the people. You know? Heaven for a while. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[41:02]
| Help helping people. What the what what what what what what what kind of a fucking maniac are you?
|
Sam:
[41:09]
| Speaking of Mom Donnie, since I mentioned him, I just want to say in the last week, he's been doing this all along, but there have been quite a few of them, in the last week where basically people are making little TikTok videos or whatever, pointing to the little things in their neighborhood in New York that are broken. Like, you know, some stairs with a hole in them or a pothole in the street or a subway entrance that's closed or whatever, or, you know, all kinds of just little maintenance things around the city, things that are broken, and they're like, Mom Donnie, come fix this. And he's got a team that is on this crap. And so if one of these starts getting attention, he sends a team out and fixes the damn thing like right away, and people are like posting follow-up videos of like i posted a video about this pothole and 12 hours later it was fucking gone it had been here like six months and we've been complaining and nobody did jack and i sent a video and mom donnie fixed it and like you just, and there's just a barrage of these kinds of videos i've seen those yeah, and and it's the kind of like you know look.
|
Sam:
[42:31]
| He and he said like we're looking at big things and small things and big things take time but he's making an impression through the small things, and you know i and i don't know like if you looked at if you actually had like statistics on is he cleaning up potholes faster than the previous administration i don't know what the answer would be. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but he's going to, being visibly responsive to people who complain visibly, and maybe that's the the squeaky wheel gets the grease but it makes it look like he's being super responsive and he responds to joke ones of these too like yeah there was some guy, who posted look mandami here's a problem look at those stairs you see what's missing from those stairs my man because i don't have a man, and I need a man and you need to help me fix this Mamdani. Mamdani answered with, you know, some information about some social mixer events to find, you know, like singles events in that guy's neighborhood.
|
Ivan:
[43:40]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[43:41]
| Nice. And so, and by the way, there's a spread. Like I've seen like people internationally are trying to get into this, like, thing and say, Mom Donnie, please help me. I've got this pothole. I'm in Lisbon, but, you know, please come help. I've got this pothole. You know, whatever, from, like, cities all over the world. You know, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[44:06]
| I think, well, Trump is doing the same. Look, Trump is getting videos, and, you know, he's getting, you know, questions about, you know, feeding, you know.
|
Sam:
[44:17]
| That the troops need food because of the update something I just said update, a new poll on Michigan Senate actually has El Saeed now ahead of Mike Rogers 50 to 44 yeah, So just one poll, but just one poll. I'm not saying the poll average or anything like that, but new poll just came in, shows him ahead.
|
Ivan:
[44:42]
| So maybe, maybe his cool.
|
Sam:
[44:44]
| Cool act is working. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[44:46]
| He has a lot of charisma, man.
|
Sam:
[44:48]
| He does. And there was one TikTok, there was one TikTok I saw today that was like Fox news host can't stop talking about how hot El Saeed is. And basically it's a Fox News host I forget which one who's talking about El Saeed and saying, all kinds of things about how he's socialist and bad and whatever but every time she describes him she's like but can this young attractive like guy, overcome the fact that he's a socialist you know but every time she mentions him she's like talking about how like attractive he is and how cool he is and how whatever he is. She doesn't like him.
|
Ivan:
[45:33]
| Huh? She doesn't like him, huh? Obviously, doesn't like him at all, no.
|
Sam:
[45:41]
| Anyway, but yeah, you're right.
|
Ivan:
[45:43]
| By the way, he's actually flat out gone and said that he is a capitalist, by the way. But he actually said exactly, he is a capitalist exactly as I call myself a capitalist. He does not believe in an unregulated capitalist economy. Because he has said that explicitly, which I 100% agree. But, you know, it's just, you know, you cannot have a society like that winds up with just the shit that we're getting right now, basically. It's just no. But, you know, as I was saying, Trump is trying to do the same as Momdami. He is going and posting videos of all the things that he is doing to help us all out. I'm looking at one video right now where he is on some kind of like tour of the ball of of his completed ballroom in the future. And I think he's trying to show George Washington how it looks.
|
Sam:
[46:45]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[46:47]
| Yeah, I mean, I think that that addresses the affordability crisis, right?
|
Sam:
[46:53]
| Yes. And they announced there was a revised picture of like what they intend to build for the ballroom, which included all kinds of gold accents on the outside of the building as well, by the way.
|
Ivan:
[47:04]
| You know, even Obama was making fun of them. You know, so he's doing this show with Larry David. I guess the joke was, he goes, you know, I never thought of, you know, damn it, you know, kicking myself. I never thought about, you know, putting gold letters outside saying that this is the Oval Office.
|
Sam:
[47:23]
| How would anyone know you.
|
Ivan:
[47:26]
| Know how would anyone know it's the Oval Office.
|
Sam:
[47:29]
| Speaking of videos, and I know we're tangenting like we always do, did you see the one Elon Musk posted?
|
Ivan:
[47:37]
| The what?
|
Sam:
[47:39]
| The video Elon Musk posted of himself.
|
Ivan:
[47:42]
| Oh, God, no. What the fuck did he post?
|
Sam:
[47:45]
| Oh, man. I did not share it to the QMG's Corner Slack or anywhere. Basically, it's like a seven-minute AI-generated video of Elon Musk walking through in all kinds of contexts of like, you know, he starts out in a hallway in a white suit, and then later on he's in like a gladiator uniform with a sword, and later on he's in a space suit on Mars, and later on he's in this and that, and he's...
|
Ivan:
[48:20]
| Look, if it's seven minutes and it's Elon Musk, there's no way I would have gotten past the first 30 seconds.
|
Sam:
[48:27]
| Well, I got through maybe two or three minutes. I did not make it to the end. It was very repetitive. And it's just Elon Musk in heroic poses, in heroic costumes.
|
Ivan:
[48:44]
| These guys love to make fake videos of them doing all the time. These heroic things that they would never do.
|
Sam:
[48:52]
| Yeah anyway it honestly more than anything else it was pitiful, but yeah it's it it's the same kind of crap as donald trump in the ballroom with george washington i mean they they love the ai slop too oh yeah you know well especially because you know.
|
Ivan:
[49:13]
| They tend to like, you know, lose like 50 pounds on each one of these and make themselves look like, you know, way, you know, way more, you know, younger and virile. Well, not virile. I mean, you know, healthy. They try to make, you know, they completely change how they look.
|
Sam:
[49:34]
| You know, I've, look, I've played with the AI image generation stuff. I've had fun with it. I've sent a couple to a couple people, but they're all clearly jokes. They're all clearly mocking.
|
Ivan:
[49:50]
| No, no, no. These people, yeah. Well, I did one once where I actually made myself bald.
|
Sam:
[49:56]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[49:58]
| I did that.
|
Sam:
[49:59]
| I did one.
|
Ivan:
[50:00]
| I don't look that good. I must admit, I don't prefer the bald look.
|
Sam:
[50:04]
| Okay. Yeah. I think I did one of like my dog driving a spaceship or something. Things like that, you know.
|
Ivan:
[50:15]
| You know, many years ago, they had this, the Reface app, which I think I used. I did a couple of clips of it. I made myself look like, I don't know, this guy from Pirates of the Caribbean. Like I was, I was in there. And also like, yeah. And well, like I was, no, but I was like in the movie. Right. I was Jack Sparrow. And then I, and another one I made myself be like Matt Damon, you know, like, but, but like Jason Bourne.
|
Sam:
[50:46]
| You know, you look kind of like Matt Damon.
|
Ivan:
[50:49]
| Oh yeah. Oh, I see it in your face.
|
Sam:
[50:53]
| I see it in your face.
|
Ivan:
[50:55]
| Yes, of course.
|
Sam:
[50:56]
| You know. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[50:57]
| I did do another one where I was also like rowing Atkinson, where I was like, you know, preparing a turkey. I think that was more apropos.
|
Sam:
[51:06]
| Anyway, yeah, they seem to, like, I don't know, like, take these seriously in some way.
|
Ivan:
[51:14]
| Here's the truth. They don't really like themselves. And this is why do you have to do this? Because you totally want to change who the hell you are.
|
Sam:
[51:27]
| Yeah, I don't know. I don't get it. Like, I can see using these things as, ha, ha, ha, this is funny, ha, ha. I mean, some people hate them even there.
|
Ivan:
[51:39]
| Look, I had like three or four years, I can't remember, some years ago, somebody took a picture of me with somebody at a birthday party. And before they posted the pictures on Facebook, they sent me a very heavily edited AI version of it where it looked like I had lost like 30 pounds. And, oh, is this the picture you want me to post? I'm like, no. It, doesn't look like me at all. You know, what the fuck? Post how I look. This is ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[52:12]
| Right. Yeah. Okay. Shall we take a break and then pick up on a few other things?
|
Ivan:
[52:20]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[52:21]
| Okay. Next break. Here we go. Enjoy.
|
Sam:
[53:25]
| Okay, before getting into other things, I just want to make one note. At the end of last week's show, we had the Alex special 1,000 episode thing. And Yvonne listened to the first few seconds, but then chopped out. So you don't know, Yvonne. The way the thing worked is it was a compilation of all 1,000 episodes on each other, but delayed. So it started out a little bit of first episode, then added more, then added more, then added more. And so for the first few seconds, you could hear voices talking and more and more and more until it was like white noise.
|
Ivan:
[53:56]
| Yeah, and this cacophony of voices. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:58]
| And then it became complete white noise because it was so many episodes on top of each other.
|
Ivan:
[54:02]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[54:02]
| But then at the end, it started unstacking and it started coming out. You know, and so what you would love, and Alex does not, but he apparently let it go through this way anyway, as it unstacks, the very last thing you hear before it ends is Yvonne saying, fuck it!
|
Ivan:
[54:28]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[54:30]
| So, perfect ending.
|
Ivan:
[54:31]
| Oh, beautiful. Okay, that's perfect. Okay.
|
Sam:
[54:35]
| So, anyway, just thought I'd let you know that. Okay, we have a number of other things to talk about. Shall I pick one to start with?
|
Ivan:
[54:43]
| Yep, because I picked the other one, so yeah.
|
Sam:
[54:46]
| Apparently, when Trump left Turkey, it wasn't actually that he went on the old Air Force One because it had, anti-missile defenses and a secure communication facility. In fact, he did not leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at all.
|
Sam:
[55:10]
| He got onto the old Air Force One, saying they couldn't take the new Air Force One, and making that excuse, but then he went out the other door, into a catering truck and then went off onto a regular unmarked Air Force plane and went on the next leg of the flight on that. Leaving behind all of the press corps and most of his staff taking only a few people with him including the woman Natalie Harp who's been described as the human printer, because she used to go around like printing out things on a portable printer of articles that were positive about him, and more recently has been rumored to be helping basically being a personal assistant to his physical needs when he has, issues, like he needs a change of pants or whatever. Just rumors. Just rumors. I should say that. Just rumors. Anyway, and a few other people did make it onto the other plane. But what do you think of all this? The press are particularly upset about this because they feel like they were left as bait for whatever Iranian threat there might have been.
|
Ivan:
[56:28]
| Well, yeah, they were. I mean, they found a security threat and they decided to... you know, leave the rest of the people as bait and, you know, have him whisked off. You know, the supposedly brave, you know, guy goes and escapes in a food truck.
|
Sam:
[56:56]
| Now, let me say, he's been getting a lot of criticism for the press about this. There are other ways they could have done this. And I'm sure there are other ways they could have done this. But frankly, I am not actually surprised at a situation where if there is a credible threat to the president, the Secret Service deals with the president and leaves everybody else behind. Isn't that what they're supposed to do?
|
Ivan:
[57:26]
| Look, but if there is a credible threat against Air Force One, okay, against that aircraft, exactly. Right. You get everyone off the fucking plane. You get everyone that's civilian off the fucking plane. Maybe you'll send like, you know, military crews are obviously, you know, they, you know, they know it's part of the job to have risk. So maybe you still send the plane, but you don't just, you don't send all these other people anywhere over there as bait for it. Maybe you have the plane hold off on the tarmac as he wore it off and then they cancel the flight and then they move the people on the other plane. You know, you do something, but you just don't send them out when the reason you're doing it is because there is a security threat.
|
Sam:
[58:12]
| I mean, the counter argument would be if you reveal that you know about the threat, then they can react to that.
|
Ivan:
[58:20]
| Now, what I'm saying is that there is a way of handling it that doesn't tip your hand and gets the president out. And also protects the rest of the people.
|
Sam:
[58:29]
| You could have evacuated the press, kept them locked in a room at the airport, had the plane take off anyway, with just a skeleton crew of military who knew the risks, etc. You absolutely could have done that. There are all kinds of alternatives. But apparently they only had a couple hours to decide what to do.
|
Ivan:
[58:49]
| The reality is that the reason it wasn't done that way is because Trump doesn't give a fuck. I mean, that's been repeatedly showed. I mean, look, this whole thing that we're having right now happen with the crews and the air carrier carriers that apparently they're not letting them come home and they're being basically.
|
Sam:
[59:07]
| You know. Let's get to that in a minute. But just finishing up on the Air Force One.
|
Ivan:
[59:11]
| But it's just the same thing. He doesn't give a shit about anybody else. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[59:16]
| Well, and he does care about how it looks, by the way. He did not want this to become public. Correct. You know, it leaked. Because people were pissed about it.
|
Ivan:
[59:27]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[59:28]
| Yeah. People who were left on the plane were not happy they were left on the plane when they found out that this happened.
|
Ivan:
[59:34]
| Who the fuck would be happy?
|
Sam:
[59:39]
| I mean, there are rumors that this is why Carolyn Levitt left. Like, she resigned this week. Yeah. Now, there are rumors there are other reasons, too, blah, blah, blah. But, yeah, this was apparently one factor.
|
Ivan:
[59:52]
| I mean, shit. it it's a pretty good one i would say it's one good fucking reason to be residing.
|
Sam:
[1:00:00]
| And so i don't know like look i i think the press i think is making a bigger, deal of it because they were the ones that were used as bait.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:13]
| Oh fuck yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:00:15]
| But, I mean, yes, I mean, I'm not, I'm not calling it a non-issue. It's definitely not the right way to handle this situation.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:26]
| It's not the right way to handle the fucking situation. And, you know, and for Mr. Macho Man, okay, bullshit. The fact that, you know, he ran off like a scared little cat. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, you know, I'm wondering what the hell they're screwing around with Air Force with a regular Air Force One. I mean, I'm sorry, but that plane, not his fucking the Qatari one, was built to be able to handle these situations. That's the whole fucking point.
|
Sam:
[1:01:02]
| Well, I think that I think that might be why they use that one as the decoy plane instead of the Qatari plane. In case it was actually shot at, they'd still rather not have the plane destroyed, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:01:16]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:01:17]
| But, well, and also, if there was going to be a plane destroyed, Donald Trump would rather it be the old Air Force one.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:25]
| Oh, of course. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:01:27]
| Yeah. So now also, apparently, the intelligence of this was pretty weak. It was an intelligence tip from the Israelis to the CIA. The CIA said they had low confidence in it. They took action anyway, because, you know, I guess better, better safe than sorry. If someone is talking about a threat to blow up Air Force One. Right. I can't quibble with that. You know, I agree.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:58]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:02:00]
| But there was low confidence in this. The Iranians, of course, have denied it. But more to the point, it was one Iranian official who posted on social media, we don't have to blow up Donald Trump. He's destroying America for us on his own. Why would we do that?
|
Ivan:
[1:02:19]
| I mean, look, to be fair, if I'm the Iranians, the last thing you want really is really getting rid of Donald Trump, because then you might get somebody that knows what the fuck they're doing.
|
Sam:
[1:02:29]
| Right. Exactly. I mean, would they? Yes. I mean, I mean, J.D. Vance is next in line. J.D. Vance ain't great, but for all his flaws.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:43]
| He is smarter. And listen, he is an asshole. I mean, a complete, you know, irredeemable asshole, somebody I despise, but I have full on, I would bet my bottom dollar that J.D. Vance is 10 times smarter than fucking Donald Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:03:04]
| Yes. And could handle this situation better. I mean, Donald Trump has dug the U.S. into a hole here. We're in a bad situation no matter what. Right. Vance would have a better shot of finding the least bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:23]
| And coming up with some kind of a better plan to extricate ourselves from this, than anything that Donald Trump is doing right now. Because right now, Donald Trump with Iran, all he's done is sink us even deeper and worse. He has not fucking solved anything about it at all.
|
Sam:
[1:03:43]
| And to be clear, we're talking about finding the least bad path out. There is no good path out. There is no winning. You're finding the least bad path out. But even that is better than whatever. It seems at this point we're not even digging ourselves deeper. We're wandering aimlessly and randomly changing policy every few weeks.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:13]
| Correct. We are randomly just, just, just, just, just, yeah, we're just... You know, banging around in the dark, basically. Just, I mean, Donald Trump is just aimlessly just saying shit, not backed by any reality, repeatedly over and over, you know, changing his mind every other day, not really negotiating in any good faith whatsoever, because he doesn't know how to negotiate in good faith, which is a problem.
|
Sam:
[1:04:45]
| Which, which at this point, I ran and everybody else knows. So there's like, what's the point? Like, your best bet is to maintain as close to the status quo as you can until Donald Trump is gone and then negotiate with whoever comes next.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:04]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:05:05]
| Yeah. So, okay. We had turkey.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:10]
| Got turkey? 12-inch turkey?
|
Sam:
[1:05:12]
| Oh, oh, you know, we did all the election stuff in the last one, but I can't leave out. We forgot Count Benface.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:21]
| You know what? I was going to say something about it, and I forgot. Yeah. What happened to Count Benface?
|
Sam:
[1:05:26]
| So, unfortunately, Count Benface lost. However, he did get 27% of the vote against Nigel Farage in this by-election in the UK.
|
Sam:
[1:05:41]
| So, the... To be clear on the history, Nigel Farage, head of the Reform Party, member of parliament, resigned his member of parliament seat in the midst of scandal. Like people were bringing up things about money he had taken that they said he shouldn't have taken. It was being investigated, etc. He resigned and said, let the people decide. I will run again in my parliamentary, in my member of parliament, MP seat, and let the people decide. All of the major parties in the UK, other than his, of course, declined to run a candidate. They said, this is a joke. We're not even going to participate in this farce. So instead, 30-something joke candidates did decide to participate, most prominently Count Ben Faye's. Count Benface has never gotten more than 2%. He runs in all kinds of elections in the UK. He's never gotten above like 2% before. This time he got like 27%. And, you know, his best performance ever. He was on interviews saying it's a 1,000% improvement over his performance in the last election he was in. So, you know, he did pretty well, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:04]
| He did pretty well.
|
Sam:
[1:07:06]
| It's it it's kind of you know this is like the most apparently like i don't know a lot about detailed uk politics but this is apparently one of the, friendliest districts to the reform party in all of the uk, yes and you know faranj could only manage yeah what what is the percent 60-some-odd percent. 60-odd-some percent, yes. Yeah. And he should have done better. And so this whole exercise... Okay, 63.3% for Farange, 26.7% for Count Binface, and then all the rest trailing after that. Anyway, they... And, and look, Ben faces some, some of his platform started getting apparently more serious than his previous versions. But one of them was like, Hey, it should be a rule that if you resign from your seat to set up a by-election like this, you can't run in the election to replace you.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:16]
| Right. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:08:18]
| Seems reasonable.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:19]
| Seems reasonable.
|
Sam:
[1:08:21]
| Yeah. Well, prevent these kinds of farce situations in the future. Anyway, just had to mention Count Binface. I've seen a number of people asking if he can run for anything here in the U.S. You know, we've got our own candidates like this. We've got that guy with the boot on his head that always runs in New Hampshire and stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:42]
| We had the rent is too damn high guy. I like that guy.
|
Sam:
[1:08:46]
| We had him. Yeah. Yeah. There's a variety of people. Okay, what else we got? You got something? I got a couple more things on the list here. You got something you want particularly? Or should we? We're close to your wrap up time, aren't we? We should wrap up.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:00]
| Yeah, we are. We are. We are. Let me see anything else. Bin face. Wisconsin. Trump. No, I don't. Yeah, because, I mean, the other thing is the Mangione plea, but the Mangione plea was just on this federal case. It doesn't really, like, resolve his other case. I'm not sure what's next after that.
|
Sam:
[1:09:25]
| He's hoping to get out of that through a double jeopardy type thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:32]
| I don't think that's the way that works.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| Anyway, apparently there's another case in New York.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:39]
| Double jeopardy doesn't really attach between federal and state charges. And I mean, that's been historically the case.
|
Sam:
[1:09:46]
| Apparently, there are some state New York cases that have ruled in the past that it was substantially similar enough that it did count. And he's counting on that because of some historical stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:58]
| But what he pleaded guilty to was stalking. So unless the charges are the same, because, you know, it's not even the same charges. That's the thing that I was reading. I'm like, OK, I'm not sure how this works. Well, I think, look, I think that given how bad his situation is, it's not the worst strategy. Okay. It's, I mean, it's, I mean, you might as well give it a try. You're not sitting in a good situation from a legal standpoint. So, hey, try. They got nothing to lose. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:10:36]
| And just to mention the last thing on our list that we haven't mentioned, Donald Trump's administration has announced that they are basically ignoring some money laundering laws that were passed a few years ago that made it mandatory to report the true ownership of companies registered in the United States.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:55]
| And that also, not only that, they wanted to destroy the information.
|
Sam:
[1:10:59]
| Yes, they're deleting the database that was already collected. So I wonder who could take advantage of that and why.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:07]
| You know, no idea. I wonder if there is some guy in high office who recently was debanked because of money laundering alerts. Sam, is there some guy in high office that is having legal issues that is in a lawsuit with a bank and that they had to go in federal court and basically declare that it was because their investigation uncovered, signals of money laundering?
|
Sam:
[1:11:38]
| I don't know. Is there somebody? It was probably Joe Biden.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:41]
| It's probably Joe Biden. That may be it. Yeah. Maybe Obama.
|
Sam:
[1:11:46]
| It's usually Joe Biden. Obama.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:48]
| Yeah. Yeah, or Obama.
|
Sam:
[1:11:50]
| Yeah. We haven't heard much about Hillary lately. It's probably her.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:53]
| Nice. Yeah, right. Hillary. You know, the fact that nobody has the fact that nobody has batted an eyelid about the fact that it came out in federal court, because of a lawsuit that he himself filed. The fact that an investigation basically flagged his organization potentially for money laundering. And nobody seems to give a shit.
|
Sam:
[1:12:18]
| Right. Well, because, you know, so what? It's Tuesday. You know, you hear about things like this every day. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:26]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:27]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:29]
| But that's the point where we are.
|
Sam:
[1:12:31]
| And that's part of Donald Trump's magic. You know, it's part of the whole flood the zone thing. It's part of what, because he powers forward, does what he wants, does it anyway. There's something new, something big, something flagrant every single freaking day.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:48]
| Money laundering, pedophilia. Like, you know, tax evasion. Fuck, you know, fraud.
|
Sam:
[1:12:56]
| Oh, you started to mention, you know, the people starving on the aircraft carrier.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:01]
| Yes. Troops starving on fucking aircraft carriers. Because they don't give a shit.
|
Sam:
[1:13:08]
| Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, let's wrap this up.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:14]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:13:15]
| Curmudgeons hyphen corner.com. Go there. Look at all our old episodes. See all the ways to contact us. See old transcripts. You can click through to our YouTube, see our live streams too. If you actually want to see us instead of hear us, look on YouTube. All our live streams are there. Since we started doing that, I forget how long it's been a year or two. I don't know. Anyway, check those out. Have fun. Enjoy. Watch as many as you want. Contact us. Send us messages. We enjoy all that. And of course, there's a link to our Patreon where you can give us money. We appreciate money. At various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. All of those kinds of fun things. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask nicely and we feel like it, we will invite you to to Commudgeons Core Slack, where Yvonne and I and others are chatting all week long. Yvonne, what is a highlight from the last week that would make people want to join the Slack or just show up more often in the Slack if they're already in there but don't visit regularly?
|
Ivan:
[1:14:24]
| Let me see. Is this right? Let me check. Oh, God. Oh, no, that's the wrong thing. Well, this one was interesting.
|
Sam:
[1:14:35]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:35]
| Yeah. There's two. What is...
|
Sam:
[1:14:39]
| Two.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:39]
| One where American does this thing where they have flights coming and going to places with the same fucking flight number. And they do this, but usually using the same aircraft will go, say, from Chicago to Phoenix, and then that aircraft, the next return flight will fly back, and it's got the same flight number. This is a very irritating thing.
|
Sam:
[1:15:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:04]
| OK, all right. It's very irritating. Now, the thing is that usually the same aircraft, so both planes won't be in the air at the same time. I don't know what the fuck they did, but they did something where there was a flight to Phoenix and they had the aircraft going and coming both in the air at the same time, almost coming a little bit close. They weren't that close, by the way. They were actually outside the separation. OK, you know, so I don't know why people were making that big a deal, because, you know, usually you get sometimes plane will go over. The problem was the confusion was the confusion was more to communication because both flights have the same number.
|
Sam:
[1:15:46]
| Well, here's the thing, too. The communication could have resulted in a problem because if the controller said to both, not knowing he was talking to two planes, said to both planes, go to the same altitude.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:59]
| Yes, that could have been a big problem.
|
Sam:
[1:16:01]
| They would have been on a collision course.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:02]
| Right. You know, because they were on intersecting courses. But the controller identified it early enough that it was not an issue. They were always at more than enough separation, okay? But, it was a ridiculous incident, okay? And American needs to stop doing this damn thing with reusing the fucking flight numbers going back, going into both directions. They have, like, there's 10,000 flight numbers.
|
Sam:
[1:16:34]
| Yes, the quote-unquote, it could have been catastrophic that somebody said, I think the controller even said it, was if both, if he had spoken to just the flight number, had not realized the duplication, and did not clarify, and both planes had followed the same instructions, that could have resulted in something bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:53]
| Yeah, but the controller and everybody was aware, and so nothing happened.
|
Sam:
[1:16:56]
| They handled it properly.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:57]
| They handled it properly. Okay, all right. Now, the other one, which is just so fucking bizarre. This fucking world is so nuts. Anthropics boss's wife tried to raise money from Epstein, Epstein for a porn business. What the fuck?
|
Sam:
[1:17:15]
| Yeah. What year? When did this happen?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:19]
| Ah, they see what year this happened. Billionaire's partner sought investment from Disgrace Finance here to create luxury adult content. I'm not really understanding what the fuck luxury adult content is, I gotta be honest.
|
Sam:
[1:17:31]
| It means it's more expensive.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:33]
| I guess that's what it is. You actually can't. This story fucking has a goddamn paywall. It doesn't say what year. But, yeah, at some point, you know, yeah, she was trying to raise money.
|
Sam:
[1:17:48]
| I presume this was after his initial arrest in Florida that he got the sweet deal on before he was re-jailed.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:57]
| Yeah. Still, the whole thing is just bizarre.
|
Sam:
[1:18:02]
| Yes. And I'm surprised you didn't pick the story on the AI company paying people to masturbate.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:12]
| I forgot about that one. To help train their sex bot software. You know, the thing is, when you're talking about flooding the zone with shit, okay, this is the problem, okay? Oh, which one do I pick? Do I pick about the luxury porn business or do I pick the one about, you know, a masturbation exercise to AI?
|
Sam:
[1:18:37]
| Okay, I think we're done.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:18:40]
| Thank you everybody for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's Corner. Have a great week. Stay safe. All that. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:48]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:19:20]
| Okay. And I'm obviously still not 100% better because after that I feel wiped already. So I'm going to go sit and do something quiet. So enjoy.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:33]
| It's my father's like, my brother came in from Texas for my father's 85th birthday.
|
Sam:
[1:19:38]
| Oh, nice.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:40]
| So that's why we need to rush off. Happy birthday to your dad. Juana's not here. She's still working elections. You know, so I got to skid out.
|
Sam:
[1:19:48]
| Do your thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:49]
| Okay. Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:19:51]
| Later. Bye.
| |
|
