Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:00]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[0:01]
| Everything working? Hello.
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| No, not everything's working. No.
|
Sam:
[0:07]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:07]
| I, I, well, the problem isn't, I'm having a problem with my mail client.
|
Sam:
[0:13]
| Okay. Like, just the Apple Mail program or using something else?
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Ivan:
[0:18]
| No, the Apple Mail program. I, I don't know, what the fuck? It started happening the last few days. And I've been... Not receiving email, just sitting there.
|
Sam:
[0:32]
| Oh, that's not good. You know, since we're in the world of AI stuff, Claude just solved the fact that my contacts weren't syncing from my phone to my computer.
|
Ivan:
[0:47]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[0:48]
| It actually hadn't been syncing properly. It calculated the exact date. It was over three years ago. Nice. But it found the problem and fixed it.
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Ivan:
[0:58]
| Well, Claude has not found a problem. I have been trying to. And, I, it is not, I actually had to, it was trying a wild goose chase that I had to stop it from doing. Because I was like, no, no, that's not it. No, just stop it. No.
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Sam:
[1:21]
| It did fine for me. Like there was a Apple mail in, what'd you call it? Golden Gate. Handles vip senders differently than in the the old one and it's a it's something i'd used like i i had a whole bunch of rules and stuff that did stuff based on vip senders so and, and it handles those in a much less efficient way trying to be smart, and and which caused like performance issues well it's still causing performance issues but it's causing me to like redo what my normal work my, my normal mail workflow is in a couple of ways to stop using messages messages were i know you're just not getting anything i know period.
|
Ivan:
[2:08]
| They were just not coming in it was just, You know, apparently a lot of people are reporting issues with Golden Gate and mail.
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Sam:
[2:17]
| And mail?
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Ivan:
[2:18]
| Yeah, I must have broken something.
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Sam:
[2:21]
| Like, can you still see your mail if you, like, go to iCloud or whatever?
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Ivan:
[2:25]
| Oh, yeah, and iCloud on my phone and whatever, it's fine. It's just on the damn computer. As a matter of fact, because I have this MCP connector for Claude in order not to, you know, to read my email. It that's it's comparing it's like shit i'm looking at the server all this shit is there and it's not on your computer what the fuck right, so anyway it's we just did something i don't know let's see if that works, monday is a holiday.
|
Sam:
[2:57]
| Monday is a.
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Ivan:
[2:58]
| Holiday for some yeah i know you don't you know yeah i i know yeah i realize that this is like you know something that is It's not very important. Columbus Day, or whatever it's called now.
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Sam:
[3:11]
| Oh, okay.
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Ivan:
[3:11]
| Maybe it's back to Columbus Day because, you know, we're under Republican rule.
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Sam:
[3:19]
| My son didn't have school Friday, but I didn't hear about Monday. I'm going to check.
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Ivan:
[3:24]
| Yeah, right, because, you know, it's Washington State. I'm sure that they, you know, they're not going to celebrate Columbus Day. Right. Indigenous People's Day. Right. Depending on who you are.
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Sam:
[3:36]
| Key dates. Let's see. First day of school. What month is it? It's October.
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Ivan:
[3:43]
| Yeah, it's October.
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Sam:
[3:45]
| Yeah, no, we had yesterday off as a, but no, no. Monday is school. Any other status stuff, or should we start?
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Ivan:
[4:01]
| Let's get the show on the road.
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Sam:
[4:03]
| Oh, okay.
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Ivan:
[4:04]
| And I've taken the time to start writing for a sub stack.
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Sam:
[4:09]
| Now, okay, shall we talk about that on the show?
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Ivan:
[4:13]
| Well, that we can talk at the show, yes.
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Sam:
[4:15]
| Okay, here we go.
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Ivan:
[4:17]
| I spent a lot of time on this.
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Sam:
[4:39]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, October 10th, 2026. It is just before 18 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Mentor, Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
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Ivan:
[4:54]
| Live long and prosper.
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Sam:
[4:57]
| Live long. Wait a second. Do I have this right?
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Ivan:
[5:00]
| Yeah, I got this right.
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Sam:
[5:01]
| You have it right. It's just I was stunned. Like, I used to be able to do this no problem, and now I...
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Ivan:
[5:08]
| Well, Sam, what the fuck? I mean, Spock is your guy. I mean, seriously.
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Sam:
[5:12]
| I know. I'm doing the Spock thing, and I did do it successfully.
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Ivan:
[5:15]
| But I had to think about it. It took you a lot more trying than me.
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Sam:
[5:18]
| Yeah, and normally I've never had problems with that before. Ever? It's just another feature of becoming old and decrepit, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[5:28]
| How's your water drinking going?
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Sam:
[5:31]
| It's still going good. I just, I pulled the stats yesterday. I've been going just about three weeks now with the app that Alex set up for me. And I've only missed my target three days out of those three weeks. And those were by minuscule amounts. And I actually think those were, I'm not sure those were correct. Because I have found there is an issue. And I don't know if it's, I think it's not actually his app. I think it's Apple Health and the way it does stuff and the bottle and when it reports. Like sometimes drinks right around the boundary between days get misattributed to the wrong day. And I think that whatever small little delta is in that boundary. So, because everyone, the three days I missed were like just barely. It was like by one swig of water, right? You know, but yeah, no, basically, I've been making my target ever since.
|
Ivan:
[6:40]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[6:41]
| I haven't missed one. And, you know, I have found a few bugs in the app. And Alex has outright refused to fix bugs, or to polish it, to make it so that we could actually put it on the app store or anything. He says he's done his job. This is all up to me now.
|
Ivan:
[7:03]
| Okay, this is like, he is the Linus Torvalds of this kind of app. Like basically, oh, you fought a bug? Fuck you!
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Sam:
[7:15]
| Fix it yourself.
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Ivan:
[7:15]
| Fix it yourself!
|
Sam:
[7:17]
| Exactly. So I have, I have gone ahead and like, you know, I have, I have a whole bunch of different projects I'm working on and I, and yeah, yes, I, I use Claude for all this stuff and I've got them all organized in certain ways in terms of like, I've got a backlog, I've got sort of rules on like how to do things. I've got like source control and Git, I've got like, and GitHub, I've got all of this, your sort of standard stuff that i do with these projects to keep track of what i'm doing and what's next and all that kind of stuff and so i did move the water bottle thing into that framework, so i i've not and i and i added my first bug to my my list where i keep that kind of stuff i have not actually done anything with it i have not actually attempted to fix anything or change anything on on, hydration lock is what it's called i have not actually changed anything yet but i have i put it into the framework.
|
Ivan:
[8:17]
| Of all the damn apps that i've been built i'm thinking you know sam, I think this thing has a potential to be more profitable than any other fucking thing that we've been fucking around with. It's the sheer simplicity of it. And it's the fact that so many people are addicted to this fucking water drinking, you know, to carrying a water bottle and whatever, whatnot.
|
Sam:
[8:42]
| Well, I'll tell you, first of all, I have done I did do some market research. There are three or four apps that basically do the same thing already.
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Ivan:
[8:49]
| Oh, there are.
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Sam:
[8:50]
| OK, there are now. Now, and they all have monthly, they all have subscriptions.
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Ivan:
[8:56]
| Well, duh.
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Sam:
[8:58]
| Which range from $10 a month to $4 a week.
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Ivan:
[9:04]
| You know what? Listen, this is something that what you would want to do in order to make it painless for people. $0.50 a month.
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Sam:
[9:12]
| Well, I figured I just undercut everybody. That's the way to get into this.
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Ivan:
[9:16]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I'm saying. So you go in $0.50 a month, Sam. You know, fuck it.
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Sam:
[9:21]
| Does Apple let you go below a dollar? I think a dollar is the limit.
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Ivan:
[9:25]
| I think the limit is a dollar. I think you're right.
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Sam:
[9:27]
| A dollar a month.
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Ivan:
[9:28]
| Because the thing is, Apple has this thing where they, you know, even on your card, they won't be banging you for like a single charge at the same time because it causes some issues in terms of like transaction costs and whatever or not. So they will accumulate like smaller charges and then like dump, you know, put them all at once. Okay. And then give you an itemized. You paid for a bop, bop, bop. So I think, yeah, whatever the lowest price that you can charge on Apple for a month, you take that. Okay? And that's what you do. Okay? Or do. Or do. The other apps are charging what? Like, Jesus, what? $50 a year? $100? No. No. $5 a year.
|
Sam:
[10:14]
| Right. Right. Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[10:18]
| Annual subscription, five bucks.
|
Sam:
[10:21]
| There you go. No, definitely, like, there's possibilities out there. And I will note that, like, the locking thing is what makes it only three or four apps. If you look for apps that try to help you remember to drink water, not alcohol, just to be clear.
|
Ivan:
[10:38]
| I was going to say, I'm like, well, there's another possibility here. I was thinking.
|
Sam:
[10:44]
| But, like, if just apps to remember to drink, there are hundreds of them. Hundreds of them.
|
Ivan:
[10:50]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but the thing is, right, the thing, yeah, apps are whatever, it's like, you know, like your watch tells you to stand or walk or whatever, you know, that shit, yeah. But no, but this is, look, this is truly useful because you've got the fucking water bottle, it's measuring how much you're drinking. I mean, this is real, you know, this is real information, you know?
|
Sam:
[11:10]
| Well, no, just to be clear, let's separate the two things. The app here just looks at Apple Health to say, how much does Apple Health say you've drunk?
|
Ivan:
[11:21]
| Yeah, because Apple Health takes the information from the bottle.
|
Sam:
[11:27]
| Right. But Apple Health can get that information from other places. You can manually tell it you drank something.
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Ivan:
[11:33]
| Yeah, but manually telling it, come on, man.
|
Sam:
[11:37]
| Or you can have one of these friendly reminder apps. One of the apps that I saw that interfaces with Apple Health that's supposed to encourage you, in order to prevent you from lying about how much you drink, it requires you to take a picture of what you're drinking and then gauges how much is in there and uses that to log it instead of you telling it.
|
Ivan:
[12:00]
| Yeah, that's not, you know, that's...
|
Sam:
[12:03]
| Of course...
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Ivan:
[12:04]
| I mean, I can just show, you know, the bottle, like, you know, I haven't touched it. I can just keep showing it. I mean, what the hell? It's bullshit.
|
Sam:
[12:11]
| Exactly. You can't take the picture after you've drunk it.
|
Ivan:
[12:14]
| Right. What kind of fucking bullshit is this?
|
Sam:
[12:19]
| No, but I will tell you, actually, Alex last night, we were out to dinner, and he has been tracking various projects that we're working on. And, which have the most money-making potential, according to his conversations with Claude. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[12:45]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[12:46]
| Now, what's the right way to put this? There are a couple that won't make sense until I've read the others. But here are items that are on the choice. What he calls the Alexi Next Horror Game for Amu, which is a horror game he is building himself. Then the curmudgeons corner spinoff tv show is another option okay, dorfus comics which is a comic strip thing based on something i did a couple years ago, juke potter one of my projects i've worked on jukepotter.com helps you find new podcasts to listen to then another one that I'm saving the details of because, I hope to like actually do something with it later. But like the label is dead arachnid empire plus Florida circus and rentals.
|
Ivan:
[13:50]
| Oh, oh, oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[13:54]
| Okay. If I do things right, there will at some point be more details coming on the dead Arachnid Empire, okay? He's produced lots of information on this, and I do intend to sometime in the future share it, but I need to have the right format for sharing it. Spoilers. Okay then the fnaf inspired clicker game i shouldn't be reading these in the, that that's the the apple fnaf thing i've talked about before that i've done and then online round robin letters my my robin letter stuff plus a dnd mode for it, and then so he he's i i accidentally read these in the order the ai has ranked them in in terms of money making potential, except I left out at the very top, the ultimate crossover TV show that combines all of these ideas into one thing.
|
Ivan:
[14:56]
| Oh, I see.
|
Sam:
[14:59]
| That's apparently the biggest money-making thing. Claude says it has an extremely high ceiling. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[15:05]
| Ah, yeah. Okay.
|
Sam:
[15:08]
| Now, it caveated that earlier by the extremely high ceiling for the crossover show assumes that all the rest are highly successful first.
|
Ivan:
[15:19]
| Oh, of course. Yes.
|
Sam:
[15:21]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[15:23]
| I mean, it's like if I'm Michael Jordan and I decide to make a TV show about myself, well, it's highly possible that it probably be successful. Yes. Yes. Yeah, sure. Yeah, exactly.
|
Sam:
[15:36]
| Exactly. And so and it ranked second, the the his horror game. Third, the curmudgeon's corner spinoff TV show. So, you know, we got to get on that. Right. Of course, you know, again, that assumed the underlying property was already highly successful. You know, so...
|
Ivan:
[15:56]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[15:58]
| Right. Yes. Anyway, those are all these. So it says, final verdict. The crossover has the highest speculative entertainment franchise ceiling, but not necessarily the largest realistic market. If the seven original properties become successful independently, a crossover could be enormously valuable. If they don't, the crossover would effectively be launching an entirely new show without the benefit of established audiences. Ranking, number one for maximum hypothetical potential with very high uncertainty. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[16:37]
| Interesting.
|
Sam:
[16:38]
| So, obviously, we have to start with the Curmudgeon's Corner TV show.
|
Ivan:
[16:43]
| The Curmudgeon's Corner TV show.
|
Sam:
[16:45]
| We are live streaming this right now on YouTube. Doesn't that count?
|
Ivan:
[16:48]
| Uh-huh. Right.
|
Sam:
[16:50]
| We've got right now. Oh, we did get two views. Average view duration, five seconds. So far, this episode.
|
Ivan:
[17:02]
| Somebody was very impressed and decided to, you know... Well, I don't think that any of these, I think any of these are going to be about as profitable as my new sub stack.
|
Sam:
[17:22]
| Okay. So you want to talk about your sub stack, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[17:25]
| Look, I just decided, you know what? I look for those of you that don't know, I am soon to be unemployed. Okay. Not yet, but in a couple of weeks. Okay. And I have been, you know, having some more additional time on my hands as I look for work, which I'm actively doing at this point. And hopefully, maybe we'll have something in that front soon. But in the meantime, I've been doing, I've been doing, I've been keeping very busy. Okay. With, with, with not just looking for work, but doing other things. And so one of the things I did is like I did all the accounting books for our condo association for two years, which they thought would take months. And I they're still in shock that I did them in like two weeks.
|
Ivan:
[18:16]
| The people actually those people may want to hire me right now, the company that that because the guy went and said, oh, this guy says he could do the books in less than 90 days. By the way, I said 90 days. They were like, ah, it's impossible. And I did them in like 10 days. Okay, so they were all like, wait, anyway, I'm pretty good at that part, as Sam knows where it comes to money. So I did that. But so one of the things is I, you know, there's a few items on which I have, been wanting to write about. So I just started researching some subjects to just write some stuff. So I wrote one specifically on... Recently in the news, there's been all this talk about how, you know, the EV market is a disaster and people generalize the US for like as a proxy for the world, which is, you know, you know, pretty inaccurate. And they were talking about, you know, what's happened in the EV car market and everybody kept comparing last quarter to last year. Oh my God, look, sales collapsed. Oh my God. You see, nobody wants to buy an electric vehicle. And I'm like, look, there was a massive incentive that was due to expire. And as has happened before, and I didn't actually mention the cash for clunkers in the past or other things.
|
Ivan:
[19:41]
| Whenever there's been one of these huge incentives, after the incentive, sales collapse, people. It's just, look, you put a cliff out there, and yes, now sales are lower, but the impact is a lot less than what people have been making it out to be. There's a whole bunch of bright spots in the market. There is, especially in Europe, Okay. And Asia, a huge uptick in electric vehicle car sales. And in the US, a number of brands that are doing certain specifically successful things are doing well. Well, the one problem, and I will admit that I avoided mentioning this one, because it's just the reality is that what's happening with Tesla.
|
Ivan:
[20:36]
| Has a lot more to do with Elon Musk than the car company itself. Okay. The fact that he isn't injected himself so much into politics and stuff has, distorted significantly sales of that company. And so, you know, it's like hard to, how do you separate the impact? How do you separate the impact of people not wanting to buy a car from Elon Musk versus people not wanting an electric vehicle? Because honestly, if Tesla was not owned by Elon Musk, I may have.
|
Ivan:
[21:16]
| If my wife had told me she wants a Tesla, I would have been like, fine, whatever. I don't like it. But hey, go ahead. No problem. But look well Elon Musk owned it I'd be dead before I fucking buy a fucking Tesla, Period. And you are not millions and millions of people agree to the point that it tanked sales in so many places. OK. And so this is an issue that that kind of like colors the the discussion on electric vehicle sales like like right now. And so when I analyze when I was analyzing what's happening, I left that out. But the one thing that I did bring, which I knew about, and what I did is quantify the data, was what happened in Germany a few years ago, where they had similar incentives that expired.
|
Ivan:
[22:12]
| But they expired in a similar way as over here. There's a political deal for a budget. The political deal ended the incentives. It led to a race to buy electric vehicles before it. And then there was a subsequent crash in sales because people like jammed in their purchases before the incentives ended. The reality is that in the U.S., prices of EVs, well, the leasing specific, was super favorable under those rules. OK, because leases depend on what, you know, the purchase price versus what the price is going to be at the end of the lease. The $7,500 incentive had a massive effect on reducing lease payments, okay? Like disproportionately versus like what would be a purchase price.
|
Sam:
[23:00]
| I got my Ioniq 5 in the last days before the lease expired, before the incentives expired. And technically, I didn't get the incentive, but I got something that Hyundai did to match the incentive. but whatever like the yeah, i ended up with a lease for the first time ever i've never even considered a lease before because it.
|
Ivan:
[23:22]
| Because of the incentives like really made it that leasing was the way to go in order to get the cheapest fucking price and so so so so that's the thing this because of that when when you looked at the at the price that you would pay in a lease back then versus now for the same vehicle there was a very disproportionate effect okay and so So what you've got is an effect of, hey, prices went up, like way, way up. And so, look, of course sales went down. But what Germany showed is that, you know, we are back at about 84% of what the sales level was prior to the expiration.
|
Ivan:
[24:06]
| Of, you know, the huge surge that happened near the expiration, okay? So we are back at about, you know, at that run rate, even without the incentive. But in Germany, what it shows is that a month later, as time progressed, now sales are way up. Market share for EVs in Germany has soared, okay? And in the EU in general. And by the way, another impact that we've got right now is just, look, fuel prices, right? Fuel prices are going to keep propping up EV sales because fuel prices, where they are, are just so persistently high. And that's the big difference that people, why are the Republicans getting, this also goes a little bit to politics, why are they getting so killed right now with these fuel prices? Well, Biden had a higher fuel price. Well, if you look at the chart that I put in the article, it was a spike, okay? There was a spike and it came down and it started coming down pretty quickly. This time, no. The prices have remained persistently high for an extended period of time right now. And the reality is that historically it's been shown that persistently high oil prices wind up with people going to more fuel-efficient cars. Okay? It just does it. Okay? I mean, the cost right now of fuel for people. I showed that. I was in California last weekend, which is why I wasn't here. I was, like, drinking wine. Okay? Right?
|
Ivan:
[25:31]
| It was fun. And I went to gas up just to return this SUV that I had rented. We were six, seven of us, so I had a big vehicle. Ten fucking gallons is almost $100. It's 11 gallons. It was crazy. Especially because I don't go to the gas station that much ever anymore. I was like, holy shit, what the fuck? I didn't even fill up this thing. I mean, it would have been close to almost $200 if I had to fill up that damn thing. OK, so imagine that. I mean, the sticker shock is crazy. And, you know, when when I go and I charge my wife's BMW i4, which for a week of driving is nineteen dollars, you know, basically at the cost that our our community, you know, charge station, if I did it at home, it was it would be even less. Ten bucks versus paying two hundred dollars for a week of driving in a fucking gas powered car. Jesus Christ, it adds up quick. OK, OK.
|
Sam:
[26:28]
| And I was just looking because I was going to say like a couple of years ago, Washington state was briefly more expensive than California for a while. But no, right now I just looked up gas buddy, gas prices by state. Number one is California at 628 per gallon or 6, 620. Let me round 630 per gallon. Then Hawaii at 564. Then Washington state at 543. Then it goes Nevada, Oregon, Alaska are the next highest, the cheapest in the country, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Mississippi, and Tennessee. And they're at like $370.
|
Ivan:
[27:11]
| $380, $390. This administration keeps doing shit, like stupid shit. Oh, we're going to waive the fuel economy standards so you could get cheaper cars. And supposedly how that is supposed to save $1,300 a vehicle, which is basically a figure that is, honestly, it's not completely pulled out of their ass, but it might as well be. Because they estimate, oh, later the cars will be $1,300 cheaper. And that's bullshit.
|
Sam:
[27:48]
| Well, even if it was, you'll make that up in gas in the first five minutes.
|
Ivan:
[27:51]
| Exactly, because right now, exactly. The savings, the one time savings are way outweighed by how much extra fucking gas you're going to be paying at these stupid prices, which listen, this administration has absolutely no clue or strategy to solve this problem at all. At all. They have none.
|
Sam:
[28:19]
| First it was Venezuela.
|
Ivan:
[28:20]
| Right? The fucking Venezuela thing, right? Remember Venezuela? Hey, are we swimming in oil now for Venezuela? Apparently not, because gas prices are actually higher than Venezuela things. So that didn't work. Now he called Putin.
|
Sam:
[28:37]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[28:39]
| Look at that! So Putin is going to come rescue us, Sam.
|
Sam:
[28:43]
| Of course.
|
Ivan:
[28:44]
| I mean, imagine that. by throwing a pittance of like a couple of days of diesel fuel supply out there and think that that's going to make a fucking dent in the world price of diesel. But especially since they have diesel shortages in Russia, they don't have that amount of diesel lying around, okay, to go and like give to anybody. And the fact that Trump is such a fool to go and like, Well, actually, either, well, it's either he's a fool, which he is, but at the same time, he's a liar.
|
Sam:
[29:19]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[29:20]
| So he just lied about it. We're going to get all this Russian oil. It's going to be awesome.
|
Sam:
[29:26]
| And it gives him a chance to give money to Putin, which he likes to do anyway.
|
Ivan:
[29:30]
| Which he likes to do. Right.
|
Sam:
[29:32]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[29:33]
| So anyway, but I did write the article.
|
Sam:
[29:38]
| A couple of things on your Substack first. You've mentioned it, but you have not actually given the reference to it at all. So it's dataplainly.substack.com, correct?
|
Ivan:
[29:51]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[29:51]
| And the article is, the EV crash is a subsidy hangover, posted by IMB three hours ago as of when we're recording this. Now i have a i have a follow-up question though.
|
Ivan:
[30:03]
| You have a follow-up.
|
Sam:
[30:04]
| Because i did not make it to the end but i read most of this article, right before the podcast actually a little bit before the podcast i have a question, yes this does not actually sound like you this sounds like okay.
|
Ivan:
[30:20]
| That okay you're incorrect.
|
Sam:
[30:23]
| I did.
|
Ivan:
[30:23]
| Write a lot of it what i.
|
Sam:
[30:25]
| Did ask.
|
Ivan:
[30:25]
| Claude to do was to fill in the The data, because I didn't memorize the data. Okay. Obviously, so here's the thing that I did. I generated the data.
|
Sam:
[30:34]
| There are lots of claudism phrases. There are lots of phrases. There's claudism. And there's a level of. But it's because it's edited.
|
Ivan:
[30:40]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[30:40]
| There's a bunch of verbosity. There's a bunch of. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[30:45]
| Wait, wait, wait. I'll go back to number one.
|
Sam:
[30:47]
| No, no, no, no, no. You did not say fuck once in this article.
|
Ivan:
[30:49]
| Okay. First of all, I'm trying to do it on purpose where I am not going to. Oh, let me start a substack that I'm going to start saying fuck all over the place.
|
Sam:
[30:57]
| First of all, I'm kidding on that last.
|
Ivan:
[30:59]
| OK, the second thing is, OK, the process is that I actually write out what I'm what I'm doing. And I have and I have this I have this thing written out where a lot of the things what I do is first. No, first I research the data. So I spent a lot of time researching the data. I've got this entire data, which, by the way, all the references that are there for the data, because we were researching, you know, hey, let's pull the data, let's compile it, let's look at what the trends show. I have a very cool detailed chart of all the sales, global data, because, by the way, nobody is actually publishing that information. So it took a lot of getting the information together. So then I went through like the major findings that I got and then I wrote out, OK, what what what my findings were. And I asked Claude to include, OK, the the data. And then I went back and forth and edited. And yes, it may include some of the language for them. But the original this was edit. This was taken what I wrote, heavily edited together with Claude and then and then prepared it. I didn't tell Claude, hey, write an article on fuel prices. No, I actually wrote out. I actually wrote out the article.
|
Sam:
[32:08]
| But then you told Claude, make it nice or something like that?
|
Ivan:
[32:12]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[32:13]
| I'll tell you. Like, you know, the end result is like sort of, it's definitely Claude-ish. Like, you don't like, like, it probably killed your actual voice, right? When it transformed it into its edited version.
|
Ivan:
[32:35]
| Okay, understand something. No, no, no. I think you're confusing two things. One thing is that I'm writing this on purpose where I was writing it that I am not writing in my own voice.
|
Sam:
[32:45]
| Mm-hmm. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[32:48]
| You know, I'm sorry. You think if I write? Okay. So you're taking it.
|
Sam:
[32:52]
| Whether or not it's your voice, the result is quad voice. It's like me podcast. The result is quad voice.
|
Ivan:
[32:56]
| Me podcast. Me podcast.
|
Sam:
[32:59]
| It read like an AI article. That's the bottom line. It read like something that was written by AI.
|
Ivan:
[33:04]
| Okay, I'm sorry. I wrote the entire first draft of this.
|
Sam:
[33:11]
| And then you told AI to AI-ify it.
|
Ivan:
[33:14]
| No.
|
Sam:
[33:15]
| No, no. On the curmudgeon's corner slack, not publicly. Post your first draft as a comparison.
|
Ivan:
[33:22]
| Fuck, I don't have it now. It compressed the goddamn conversation.
|
Sam:
[33:27]
| I bet your original would read more authentically than the Claude edited version of it.
|
Ivan:
[33:36]
| Okay, I think that you're being an asshole right now.
|
Sam:
[33:40]
| Okay, all right.
|
Ivan:
[33:40]
| And you can go fuck yourself because I spent two days writing that fucking thing for you to try to tell me that Claude wrote it. So go fuck yourself. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look, you know what? I spent two fucking days on that damn thing. Kiss my ass.
|
Sam:
[33:59]
| I want to make it.
|
Ivan:
[34:01]
| Specifically. No, no, no. Specifically, because I'm saying it specifically. Hey, I need to write something in a professional tone. Okay. which I'm trying to put if somebody to go and like, like write it. And so, you know, so no. And by the way, my writing, when I spent a lot of time on it, gets super verbose. So no, no. So go, go, go, go kiss my ass on this. Because when I start writing long form, I get super verbose. And now you're good. Now you think, oh, no, I said, yeah, come on. Fuck you.
|
Sam:
[34:31]
| I'm super verbose too. Now, I want to be very clear on what I am saying. I am not implying in any way that the ideas, the structure, the basic work you put into it is not there. What I am saying is that Claude's editing of it, to make it sound professional, ends up making it sound Claude-ish.
|
Ivan:
[34:57]
| Not and i i i look i i you know i think you're being an asshole.
|
Sam:
[35:07]
| Well look i look i i i i i do i use.
|
Ivan:
[35:10]
| Vine coding for everything no i think you're being an asshole i think i i think that i think the biggest reason why why you're saying it is because i actually made it cite a lot of the data in it and when i make it cite the data it it does use that language because I'm like, look, I, you know, I made notes of what, okay, this is, hey, you know, cite this, cite this. And so it writes a lot of the data for that, specifically because there's so many, so many data points that I had to cite.
|
Sam:
[35:37]
| Okay. Tell me about this sentence.
|
Ivan:
[35:41]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[35:41]
| Relief is not around the corner. There is no ceasefire.
|
Ivan:
[35:46]
| Yeah. Did that come from you? Okay. I wrote first and I argued with it. What I wrote was... Oh, God. Now, I'm going to have to pull up exactly what I wrote and how we reframed it into this because I kept arguing with Claude about what the right wording for it was. So this is the thing. It's like sitting with an editor. I wrote something different that Claude argued with me about what to write.
|
Sam:
[36:09]
| And then you were convinced by Claude.
|
Ivan:
[36:11]
| Yeah. On that one, yes. So on that one, I wrote something.
|
Sam:
[36:16]
| That's the kind of phrase I'm talking about. Phrases like that scattered throughout the whole thing.
|
Ivan:
[36:20]
| Yes, Sam. But the problem is, and it's this thing. If you ever said, let's say you work for a newspaper, right? And you're sitting down with your editor. Your editor is telling you, well, hey, we're going into the business section. This is, you know, this is a little bit aggressive. I'm like, ah, fuck, fine. So let's, okay, let's change. Let's tweak the language a little bit. So yes, that, that, you know, but you're taking that into, there was a, there was depreciation.
|
Sam:
[36:49]
| Depreciation is the honest catch. Honest catch is a phrase that sounds just like Claude.
|
Ivan:
[36:55]
| Okay. Okay. Depreciation. Okay. What I, you see, this is again where I wrote like the depreciation. You see, you're like.
|
Sam:
[37:04]
| Did you use the phrase honest catch?
|
Ivan:
[37:06]
| I did not use honest catch. These are the things I'm talking about. Yeah, but what I wrote was depreciation is the catch. And it said it's the honest catch.
|
Sam:
[37:17]
| Well, yeah, but that's exactly what made it sound like AI is that kind of wording.
|
Ivan:
[37:21]
| Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[37:22]
| That's all I'm saying. It's like reading this from beginning to end, I kept hitting phrases. I said I didn't make it to the end. Reading this from beginning to middle.
|
Ivan:
[37:32]
| Yeah, you didn't even make it to the end, which is, look at what the fuck you're talking. You can't even fucking read a 1500 article like to the end, for God's sakes, and I'm getting your shit. Go fuck off. Let's talk about something else. Okay? Where are your fucking movies? You know, you can't even make it to the fucking end.
|
Sam:
[37:49]
| I'm, Okay. Sure. I'll do a movie. I mentioned this last time you were on it. I didn't get to it. Do the Right Thing from 1989. Have you seen Do the Right Thing from 1989?
|
Ivan:
[38:04]
| I thought you said Do the Right Thing the last time.
|
Sam:
[38:06]
| Did you mention that it was coming? I mentioned it was coming. I mentioned two movies that were coming. I did one TV show last week with Ed. I did Modern Family, so I didn't do two. I did, which by the way, I, I, I have done some of my logging as people on a curmudgeon score slack probably noticed for movies and TV shows. I'm not done with my round of that. I'm going to do more this evening, but I finished out 2025 for like logging. And it turns out I watched 91 movies in 2025, which is like 91, 91 movies. in 2025 so like.
|
Ivan:
[38:49]
| Basically like almost two a week.
|
Sam:
[38:53]
| Yeah about two a week well not quite two weeks so like my my two a week target for like talking about them here will catch up but it'll take many years to catch up if i do that, yeah if i keep up this pace but i i think you know i think there was a spike in the pace, that may recede again, but yeah, I don't know. But yes, almost two a week in 2025. Anyway, whatever. Do the right thing. 1989. Have you seen it?
|
Ivan:
[39:24]
| I don't...
|
Sam:
[39:24]
| Spike Lee.
|
Ivan:
[39:26]
| I'm gonna say, I think no.
|
Sam:
[39:29]
| Okay. So, it is the quick, I'll do the first couple paragraphs of the summary, like I often do. 25-year-old Mookie lives in Bedford, Studevent, Brooklyn, with his sister Jade. He has a toddler son named Hector with his Latina girlfriend Tina, and works as a delivery man at a pizzeria owned by Italian-American Salvatore Sal Frangioni. Sal's oldest son, Pino, is a racist who holds contempt for all the black residents in the neighborhood. Sal's younger son, Vito, is friends with Mookie, which Pino feels undermines their fraternal bond. Other residents of the neighborhood include friendly drunk Damer, who dispenses unsolicited wisdom, mother-sister, who observes the block from her brownstone, Radio Rahim, who blasts public enemies fight the power on his boombox, Buggin' Out, a fast-talking young man who talks about black civil rights to anyone who will listen, Smiley, a mentally disabled man who meanders around town with the hand-colored pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and a local DJ, Mr. Senior Love Daddy.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| At Sal's, Buggin' Out questions Sal about his wall of fame, which is decorated with photos of famous Italian-Americans. He demands that Sal put up pictures of black celebrities, since the pizzeria's customers are mostly black. Sal refuses, feeling he had no obligation to put other photos on the wall, and ejects him. Buggin' Out attempts to start boycotting the pizzeria, but only Rahim and Smiley join him. During the day, local teenagers open a fire hydrant to beat the local heatwave before white police officers Mark Ponte and Gary Long intervene. Mookie confronts Pino about his contempt towards African-Americans. Later, Pino expresses his hatred for African-Americans to sell, who insists on keeping the business in the majority African-American neighborhood. And then things start escalating and escalating. And, you know, spoilers, I guess. It ends up in, like, you know, someone gets killed. There's a massive riot. The pizza shop gets trashed, etc. And, you know, so and that's basically the movie.
|
Sam:
[41:46]
| It's like a snapshot of sort of racial tensions in New York in the 1980s is basically where it comes down to. And, you know, I'm reading here, it has a quote-unquote ambiguous and controversial conclusion, which sparked widespread debate about the nature of protest, responsibility, and moral judgment. It got nominated for some Academy Awards, etc. I am doing this because of the AFI list. It was in the 2007 re-rank. It was number 96. Anyway, I'll give it a thumbs up. It was a good, interesting movie. It made you think. There were interesting characters. You started to care about them, and you started to feel like, what the hell is happening when things started to go bad? Like you're like can't they just work this out what's going on anyway thumbs up for do the right thing it is uh.
|
Ivan:
[42:49]
| Yeah by your description i have no i'm pretty now i'm very confident that i have not watched a second of this movie.
|
Sam:
[42:54]
| Okay yeah no it was good let's see we got, awards nominated for academy awards uh one boston film critics critics one chicago film critics won some spirit awards Los Angeles Film Critics, etc. MTV Movie Awards. It won the Silver Bucket of Excellence. A bunch of other stuff, you know? And yeah, so good. And let's see, in popular, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no, I don't have a lot else to say with it. It's a good movie. It's somewhat of its time, but that's fine. I mean, some of the themes, honestly, you know, have not changed. Like, you know, you could redo this movie in today's world and a lot would be the same.
|
Ivan:
[43:47]
| That's so sad. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[43:51]
| So anyway, thumbs up for do the right thing. And I will really quickly do one more because as I have just pointed out, in order to keep up with last year's pace, I have to be doing two a week and not like, you know, doing one or zero. Or I could just stop doing this. I could stop doing this, you know. Or, you know, I could list them and just do thumbs up, thumbs up, thumbs up, thumbs up, catch up in one week, you know. Anyway, the next one And I think you'll be able to tell right away My thoughts on this will be slightly different A 2004 movie called Christmas with the Cranks.
|
Ivan:
[44:27]
| I also did not watch this one And this one does not sound good.
|
Sam:
[44:32]
| Ha ha ha ha.
|
Sam:
[44:36]
| The plot summary of this one. After Riverside couple Luther and Nora Crank see their daughter depart for a Peace Corps assignment in Peru on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, Empty Nest Syndrome sits in. Luther calculates that they spent over $8,000 during the previous year's holiday season and suggests they invest the money on a 10-day Caribbean cruise this year instead. The Cranks discover they are considered pariahs for choosing to skip the holidays. Most vocal in their objections are neighbors Vic Fraunheimer and Walt Scheil. Vic, the self-proclaimed leader of the street, organizes a campaign to force the cranks to decorate their home. Walt seems to dislike Luther, so his efforts are primarily personal. However, Walt's wife Bev is suffering from cancer, perhaps dampening his holiday spirits. Children, led by Vic's son Spike, push them to put up a Frosty the Snowman decoration, and Christmas carolers try to revive the Crank's holiday spirit by singing on their lawn, which Luther stops by icing. The newspaper prints a front page story complete with a photograph of the unlit Crank house and Luther's office colleagues, Scout Tree salesmen, and police fund collectors are also annoyed. Dot, dot, dot, it continues. It's, it's, uh, you know, obvious, this is intended to be a comedy. It is a comedy. it is not my kind of comedy it is.
|
Ivan:
[46:05]
| Not your kind of comedy so you're going thumbs down I.
|
Sam:
[46:07]
| Assume I'm definitely going thumbs down with this thing it's like, It's kind of, it reminded me a little bit of Christmas Vacation, because they were both comedies set on Christmas, blah, blah, blah, about, you know, and it's that same kind of, like, people being stupid comedy. Like, I can appreciate some comedy, but I like the, I don't know, I like comedy that's, I don't know. It's hard to describe what you like and what you don't like in comedy, but what I can tell you what I don't like is the kind where it's just like people being dumb, on purpose and just like making fun of like the physical comedy, like people falling and tripping, people insulting each other, people like just doing stupid things and having consequences for doing. That's not the kind of comedy I like anyway thumbs down for Christmas with the Cranks apparently there are sequels are there sequels? No yeah good, anyway that's it that's all I got shall we take a break and talk about news.
|
Ivan:
[47:28]
| Is there a news? there's some I heard we're executing somebody live on tv.
|
Sam:
[47:37]
| Yeah something like that okay we'll be back.
|
Ivan:
[47:40]
| Are they gonna do it like at a stage the white house or something.
|
Break:
[47:46]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No!
|
Break:
[47:51]
| Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show And maybe every once in a while some much needed sedatives for Yvonne.
|
Break:
[48:30]
| At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show Our curmudgeons corner postcard, or even a curmudgeons corner mug Fun stuff Not fun, In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Curmudgeon's Corner! Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more? 100 billion! Billion dollars! Even though you don't have anywhere near a billion dollars! If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates curmudgeonscorner. That's what we mean, isn't it? But I hate curmudgeonscorner. But I really do!
|
Sam:
[49:26]
| Okay, we are back. So, news, newsy stuff. You mentioned a couple things right before a break. What do you want to start on? You want to start on the public executions or something else?
|
Ivan:
[49:40]
| Sure. Okay, so... Well, I mean, it's just, this is just another one of these, the public execution thing is just another one of these, we are going to be, what, more macho, more aggressive, more, I don't know, whatever, another one of these empty, you know, like, why the fuck did we have a UFC fight at the White House? And now we're going to just execute somebody live?
|
Sam:
[50:14]
| Yeah, I mean, look, we've talked before. Neither one of us is in favor of the death penalty at all.
|
Ivan:
[50:21]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[50:21]
| But, you know, and the public, the idea of doing this in a publicly live-streamed way, which, by the way, since Hank Seth's announcement of this, there's been some back and forth even within the administration. Like Vance has said, I'm not sure that'll really happen. But then Trump apparently says, then it's reported that Trump personally authorized it. You know, so it may happen. It's just, I think you're right. It's this public display of, you know, it's not just masculinity. It's glorification of violence, period. You know?
|
Ivan:
[51:02]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:03]
| It's, and attempted normalization of this. And look, somebody pointed out like, you know, oh, this is the first public execution since the 1930s or something. And then someone said, well, what about, you know, these various cases of, you know, ice shooting people, you know.
|
Sam:
[51:30]
| Or, you know, various situations of police violence over the last couple of decades that have been highly publicized as well. Honestly, those aren't quite the same, but it's, you know, this is not just, look, those Those are cases of where you can argue the whole system is screwed up and more violent than it should be, et cetera, et cetera. But this is a very conscious decision to take, you know, this form of punishment and say, we are going to make a spectacle out of it. This is not, yeah, I agree. Like, you know, George Floyd gets killed on the street with dozens of witnesses. In some forms, that is a public execution. But it's not, this is like, I'm not going to say worse, but it's a different kind of thing. And this is very much a deliberate, we are going to show you and put in your face like.
|
Sam:
[52:35]
| And state violence and the ability, like, I think it was either Hegsess or Vance or one of them was saying, like, you know, we got to show them, you know, this is this is the whole idea of like execution being an incentive against further crime, because people will be like, oh, well, they'll kill me if I do this. So therefore, I won't be a terrorist or whatever. Yeah. And that's just it's not how the incentives actually work. You know, the deterrence effect of execution has never been shown to be all that great. And you can argue that even if it even if that worked 100 percent, it's still not the moral choice.
|
Sam:
[53:19]
| But the live streaming it, it's just grotesque. And I feel like this is something where this is yet another thing that's going to backfire on them. You know, if, if they actually, I mean, look, they're the scheduled execution is December. It's after midterm. So maybe they just don't care, but like, I mean, they just don't care. I mean, people have pointed out like, Oh, well, I almost, I almost shared, but didn't. A TikTok I saw of somebody like, you know, making, I'm pretty sure it was satirical, but it was somebody like who was pretending, I think they were pretending, to be actually in favor of Republicans winning, but begging the Republican leadership to please just try to be normal for a month before the election. Like, let's not, like, start calling for public executions. Let's not be, like, raging about the ballroom or the arch. Let's not, like, be defending child molesters. Let's just try to be normal for a month.
|
Ivan:
[54:33]
| How about, how about, let's not make a fuel deal with Putin?
|
Sam:
[54:38]
| Exactly. That may have been on the list. You know, the fuel deal with Putin, the ranting about the fucking Nobel Prize again. Again, yes. You know, all this kind of stuff, you know, you know, I remember back in 2016 after Trump won, one of the factors that we said led to his narrow victory in the end, was Steve Bannon took away his goddamn phone for the last month before the election.
|
Ivan:
[55:13]
| That's true.
|
Sam:
[55:14]
| Yeah. You know, and you basically, like, shut him up, stopped him from doing, like, crazy crap. But, you know, at this point, it's not just Trump. It's all these other people, too. It's, you got Hegseth, and you got RFK, and you've got Steve Miller. Steve Miller, not Steve Miller. That's the musician. Who am I thinking?
|
Ivan:
[55:38]
| Yeah, that's... No, but it is Stephen Miller.
|
Sam:
[55:43]
| It is Stephen? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[55:44]
| Well, there's a Steve Miller band. Yeah, but no. Yeah, but.
|
Sam:
[55:48]
| Okay. I mean, yeah. Is it really the same guy?
|
Ivan:
[55:53]
| Wait. Yeah, it's the same guy. Yeah, I mean, it's Steve. I mean, it's, I don't think people call, I mean, do they call him Steve?
|
Sam:
[56:03]
| They don't call him Steve. That's what's.
|
Ivan:
[56:05]
| That's the thing. That's the thing. They don't call him Steve, but it's Stephen Miller. Yeah, Stephen.
|
Sam:
[56:10]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[56:10]
| That ph ph steven.
|
Sam:
[56:13]
| That's ee anyway i i don't know if the like, i i don't know if they'll go through with this and if they do you know people are talking about i hope social media is on top of not letting people share the video blah blah blah blah blah and i'm like some social media might be or might try to be, it's always really hard to prevent those things but on the other hand, X is going to be like, hey, let's promote this to everybody, you know? I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[56:43]
| Look, Trump right now is on popularity freefall.
|
Sam:
[56:48]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[56:50]
| This is the current reality of the Republican Party is that they are definitely afraid because all the polls, are really, really bad, and Trump isn't doing anything to make any of them be better. That that's that that's the that's the problem that you've got right now.
|
Sam:
[57:11]
| Well, it's not only he's not doing anything to make it better.
|
Ivan:
[57:15]
| He's doing it worse.
|
Sam:
[57:16]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[57:17]
| Yes, he's actively. Yeah, it's not exactly. It's not just making it better. He's actively making every single thing worse.
|
Sam:
[57:23]
| I mean, it's one of the things are literally begging him not to come to their state.
|
Ivan:
[57:27]
| Look, exactly. And going back to why I was talking, look, this whole convoluted thing on electric vehicles and fuel prices and whatever. But look, one of the key problems here, why this is even an issue right now, and I'm bringing it up, is because you've got this entire issue with gas prices. Okay. And look, gas prices are persistently and stubbornly high. That's just the current reality. It is worse than it's ever been. And this has been the issue that has really, really fucked with this administration. Look you've got interest rates that are soaring you know the interest rates are soaring i mean right now the 30 the you know if you're going to buy a house a 30-year mortgage, is closing in on eight percent right now in a shitty economy, where people are struggling to find jobs it's it's it's a horrible situation for people and so their pocketbook is getting killed he's not doing anything to help it. He's actually doing things that are making it worse repeatedly. And he keeps talking about golden ballrooms and he keeps talking.
|
Sam:
[58:47]
| I mean, it's interesting to see, like, he is on a tour of, like, you know, pre-election. He's going on tour, going to a bunch of places. While there are a couple of exceptions, he's been to Texas a couple times. For the most part, they're sending him to deep red states. Yeah. He's not going to the swing states. He's going to places where he will get a friendly reception still. And frankly, even in some of those, he's, you know, seeing some protesters, he's seeing low attendance, he's seeing people walk out like during his, at the end, before the end of his speech, you know, all this kind of stuff. I will caution, before the 2024 election, one of the things that we were seeing in the couple months before that was extremely low enthusiasm at Trump events. But he still won.
|
Ivan:
[59:49]
| Yeah, but I think this is different, man. You know, this is so different.
|
Sam:
[59:57]
| I would agree. And the fact, but I think the key element here is not even the, you know, the low enthusiasm at the events he is holding, but the fact that he's only holding the events in the deep red states, he's avoiding the places that are actually in contention, mostly with, again, one or two exceptions. I think that tells you a lot because basically they're deploying him to places, where he can do the least damage as opposed to trying to deploying to places that he might help. No, like it's it's like where he wants to be involved. He wants the election to be about him. The actual Republicans for office are trying to distance themselves from him, but have to play a little dance because they can't distance themselves from him too much or he'll turn on them, which will not help, you know. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:52]
| Well, that's not going to help the fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:00:55]
| Right. They don't want to be too close to him, but they can't be too far from him either. And so it's a really complicated dance for those candidates. And meanwhile, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:07]
| I think ideally, David, as I started with our Star Trek theme when I said hi today, I want to put him in a holodeck and think he's talking to a very effusive crowd like all the time. They should stick him somewhere where they just they just set him somewhere and hire a whole bunch of actors. And like, here, look.
|
Sam:
[1:01:23]
| Here, go in there. We have actually talked about this before, that we should Truman show him.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:28]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[1:01:29]
| And let him have his little pretend universe where everybody loves him, and then let somebody else run things. Yes, perfect.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:38]
| Beautiful. Lovely. We could spend several billion dollars, even a trillion dollars at this point would be a bargain to get that done.
|
Sam:
[1:01:46]
| Yeah. You know, anyway, but yeah, no, they're, they're, they're, he is, he is a liability. And every time he opens his mouth, he's hurting the Republicans more. And this is where the person who was pleading, like, can you please just be normal for a month? You know, and directed not just at Trump, but at the rest of the administration, because every time they, you know, he, they do this stuff. at this point it's turning people off. There was a point where people were like, Oh, look at him. He's sticking it to them. You know, he's, you know, he's sticking it to the libs. He's sticking it to the establishment. He's doing this. He's doing that. And now people are just like.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:32]
| He's sticking it to me.
|
Sam:
[1:02:34]
| Right. Like, what the hell are you talking about? Fix my gas prices. Why are you talking about the damn ballroom? You know, or whatever, or, you know, it's, I feel like ballroom is getting old at this point. He hasn't really been going on about the ballroom very much for a few weeks because now they're building the damn thing. You know, he won his little court cases. And well, but he was going on about the Kennedy and yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:05]
| But yes, he is going on about the Kennedy Center shit, the Nobel Prize. I don't know every other fucking little petty thing. Anytime that he gets in his head. But look, the thing that I keep going back to is this entire problem where everything that he is doing is actively making shit worse to what people are truly feeling. And like how every metric keeps showing that people are really not feeling it, man.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:40]
| It's just you know whether it's how mcdonald's sales are down whether it's interest rates being up whether it's gas prices being high, whether you know when you when i mentioned that you look at the s&p 500 which is like at a at an all-time high but when you when you look at it deeper there, we had a record number of stocks hit all-time lows recently right, while the overall composite at average was high, which is nuts, okay? It's just that, you know, this entire thing where the economy and everything they promised about the economy has been shown to be absolutely just bullshit. How the tariffs have increased prices, how this war has increased prices, how all his policies have not done any of the shit that he said he would do, how the wars aren't popular and how.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:41]
| We're still technically in a war that just hasn't ended because the Iranians control the Stura Hormuz no matter how many times he says that we do. We don't.
|
Sam:
[1:04:52]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:54]
| The number of ships going through there is still a trickle, and there is nothing that he has done that will change that anytime soon. So, everything's going great. And I guess the Republicans are very optimistic about keeping the Senate, right?
|
Sam:
[1:05:12]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:13]
| I mean, they don't have a lot of competitive races in places they didn't expect to be competitive, right? Because they put up some really solid candidates.
|
Sam:
[1:05:22]
| Well, some of what you're seeing here is like, they're reshuffling resources. Like there was a note that the national funding for Senate campaigns, the Republican Senate Campaign Committee or whatever it is, is pulling their money out of North Carolina, as an example, you know, because they basically have determined it's a lost cause to try to win in North Carolina. And they're redeploying that money to states that were not expected to be in place. Some of it to Texas, but some of it to places further down the line. Look, we've talked about this before, so I'm feeling redundant, but the bottom line is, yes, things are looking bad for them, but I do.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:14]
| Want to— But look at all the seats, look, that we're talking about right now, a number of which we never thought would be in play. Texas, for example.
|
Sam:
[1:06:21]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:22]
| Listen, that Texas seat, I mean, listen, I know that we've been loosey'd before with this, but the polls are really bad for pecs. right now, okay? I don't think that any time before we had had such bad polls for Republicans. Even when we thought... It was always like Beto was closed or shit like that, but not this. No, no.
|
Sam:
[1:06:45]
| Talrico is running several percentage ahead of what Beto was ever doing.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:51]
| Yeah, exactly. So that's one. Alaska, for example. That's another one. Fuck. I mean, they're going to lose a seat in Alaska? When the fuck's the last time a Democrat sat in for Alaska, for God's sakes? Had to be a long time ago.
|
Sam:
[1:07:06]
| Well, the one that's the most, I think, no, I'll check Alaska, but the big one is Kansas. Like, Kansas is...
|
Ivan:
[1:07:16]
| Oh, well, shit, I hadn't gotten to that. Well, actually, I pulled up a list. I hadn't gotten to that one yet. Yeah. Holy fuck, Kansas.
|
Sam:
[1:07:23]
| Holy fuck, Kansas. Kansas is close and competitive. If the Democrat actually pulls it off in Kansas, it will be the first time since 1930-something.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:34]
| Holy shit. Shit, even Nebraska is close. Now, Nebraska's close. I don't see any polling on South Carolina, though.
|
Sam:
[1:07:46]
| There is some. The bottom line is that it is a lot closer than...
|
Ivan:
[1:07:50]
| It's probably like a Republican, but it's a lot closer than it should be.
|
Sam:
[1:07:53]
| Yes, it's closer than it should be, but still likely Republican. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:58]
| Maine, that one, you know, look, well, that one, like, you know, we've suspected, but, well, Iowa.
|
Sam:
[1:08:05]
| The thing on all of these I want to be cautious of is that when you look at, yes, there are a lot of these that are polling much more Democratic than anybody expected. However, most of them are still close. You know so when you look at the the various people who are modeling like what's happening in the senate etc it's not people have to be very careful about overconfidence here like.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:37]
| It's not listen no no no listen i'm not talking about about confidence here in any way i'm talking about listen let's, i'm not talking vibes let's talk about just numbers the reality is that when we were going into the senate map a couple of years ago yeah we kept saying that This is a very difficult Senate map.
|
Sam:
[1:08:54]
| We said there's almost no chance.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:55]
| There's almost no chance.
|
Sam:
[1:08:57]
| It would take a miracle.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:59]
| It would take a miracle. And Trump delivered the miracle. Okay. All right. Trump delivered the miracle of being able to fuck up so badly, okay, that it put many seats in play that we thought had no chance at all.
|
Sam:
[1:09:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:16]
| OK, so that's so that's the reality that you're facing going into this where Trump has, you know, again, not helped one bit in anything related to Senate and House races, not one bit at all. And why he is being asked and told, just get the fuck away. Go campaign. I don't know. Go, go campaign North Dakota.
|
Sam:
[1:09:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:42]
| There's no seats up for the, I think they got one house seat or something like whatever. Yeah. There we go. You know, I'm sure that that's, that's in play. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:09:51]
| So, so I, a lot.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:53]
| Go campaign to Wyoming. No, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:09:56]
| I, I don't want to minimize in any way. The fact that all of these things are competitive are show giant strength for the Democrats. But I'll do a decision desk HQ just because I have it up right now for what their chances are right now. Right now, in the House, they're only giving a 76% chance of the Democrats winning. Now, 76% is pretty good, but that means, you know, 24% chance, one in four, that the Republicans actually pull off a miracle and keep the house.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:34]
| For the senate look can i just say that i think that almost all of these people are underestimating the democrats yeah and they're doing it on purpose because, we've been burned before look i mean look, i mean nobody is going to do again for at least for for while, you know, for the time being and go and predict another 2016.
|
Sam:
[1:11:00]
| Yeah. Well, as I always say, even in 2016, they were predicting a 14% chance of, uh, of, of Trump, which is not zero, except for that one guy, except for the one guy whose name I'm blanking on right now, who percent, who, who predicted 99 point 99% plus chance of Hillary Clinton and said he would eat a bug on live TV if she did not win and he did eat the bug. That was the guy based out of Princeton, the election forecaster based out of Princeton.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:32]
| Yeah, but it was still most—everybody had it over 90% chance back then. And you know what? I haven't seen anybody forecast any 90% chance of anything right now anymore at this point.
|
Sam:
[1:11:42]
| No, as I said, the average of all the forecasters was 14% chance for Trump. That was like 80-something, not 90.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:49]
| No, no, no. No, wait, wait, wait, wait. But are you—at what point in time?
|
Sam:
[1:11:54]
| Right before the election. Right before the election.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:56]
| Exactly. Because right before an election dipped a lot, if it was like, a month before it was like 90 everybody was over 90 it was like right after the fucking call me letter that that that that the percentages dropped to like end up in the in the 80s but it was still.
|
Sam:
[1:12:17]
| Ridiculously high sam wang sam wang was the guy who ate the bug because he said 99 plus chance of hillary clinton winning but no let me let me let me finish these i was i was giving the numbers, yeah so they so decision desk hq and other forecasters have different numbers and they incorporate and by the way these are, i was listening to a youtube video that decision desk hq did on their methodology yesterday uh so this is a mix it mixes polls with fundamentals and they do have, i i kind of disagree with this part but they do include a bit from betting markets as well which seems self-referential and counterproductive i don't know i mean anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:01]
| They probably got a betting market sponsor now.
|
Sam:
[1:13:04]
| They do. I'm pretty sure. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:05]
| Ah, maybe we should get a betting market sponsor. There we go. What the hell? Why, what are we doing? Come on, let's get a fucking, let's like, you know, look, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:13:13]
| Anyway, uh, 76% chance Democrats take the house, but their odds for the Senate are 56%. So Democrats are favored now, but just barely, that's basically a coin toss for the Senate. When you put everything out, And then they have a nice little thing where you can combine both options. The chance they give of Democrats sweep, taking both the House and Senate, they have that at 54% right now. Democrats taking the House but not the Senate, 22%. Republicans keeping everything, House and Senate, 22 percent. And then the lowest chance, the Republicans keep the House but lose the Senate, 2 percent. So, again, it looks very good for the Democrats. But, you know, like you said, I don't want to be burned again. Same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:12]
| But again, but again, my whole point wasn't the fact that that the Democrats, you know, that the odds aren't like guaranteed to the Democrats. The reality is that what we thought 18 months ago was that this was impossible. Everybody thought that there was almost no scenario under which you could take back the Senate.
|
Sam:
[1:14:35]
| The Democrats could take the Senate, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:37]
| Right. And right now, it's actually, the odds actually favor them. They said, 18 months ago, we thought it was impossible.
|
Sam:
[1:14:46]
| Right. Yes. No, that is absolutely true. And I think the... You said it in terms of Donald. It's self-inflicted.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:59]
| A hundred percent.
|
Sam:
[1:15:00]
| It's all self-inflicted. Or Donald Trump inflicted mainly.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:04]
| Donald Trump inflicted. Let's be clear. This is Donald Trump inflicted. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:15:08]
| I mean, if you took... I mean, even the race in Texas, the reason we have Paxton instead of a...
|
Ivan:
[1:15:19]
| Why in God's name do they have Paxton instead of some other... Any fucking Republican would be winning that seat.
|
Sam:
[1:15:27]
| Because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump, his competitor was, what's his name, Kornian? How do you say his name?
|
Ivan:
[1:15:34]
| Yeah, yeah, Kornian. Oh, yeah, that's right. This was because he pushed out Kornian. That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| Yeah, Kornian had gone against Trump, had actually voted for his impeachment, if I remember correctly, and otherwise had made Donald Trump unhappy. And so Donald Trump was for whoever was against him. And so, you know, wanted Paxton. And, and if you still had Cornyan, this would not be like this.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:04]
| That's correct. If we still had Cornyan, he probably would be in the lead. Yes, I totally believe that.
|
Sam:
[1:16:11]
| Right. You know, and this is so just another example of self-inflicted damage because, Donald Trump is uncontrollable and is doing whatever he's doing. And it's all about, you know, transactional quid pro quo stuff. And it's not about anything else. And he doesn't give a shit about the Republican party. He only cares about himself. And that, that is infused in every decision he makes about anything. And then you go and, Oh, let's do tariffs. Oh, let's do a war in Iran. Oh, let's do this. Let's do that. And yeah, it's burning people. And you keep seeing these interviews with Trump supporters.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:01]
| So look, I pulled up to do some averages of what the polls are out there right now for the different states, for the races. Okay, so all right, so let's go. North Carolina right now with four polls, I pulled up D plus 9.5, which is why obviously they're pulling out there. They're like, fuck it. We're done. Texas, Tallarica versus Paxson. So we got six polls, D plus 3.8. OK, Ohio, Brown versus Houston, eight polls that we've got in the polling average, plus three point D plus 3.7. Alaska with four polls, D plus 3.4. Maine, Maine is tighter. And I thought it is based on the polls like right now. Five polls, the D is ahead by 1.5. Iowa was six polls. The Democrats ahead by 1.1. Nebraska, there's only one poll. That's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:53]
| So that's the independents up by one. Kansas, it's five polls. So it's a good number. But this race is ridiculously tight. D plus 0.4. God's sakes. South Carolina, it's two polls. Republican plus 1.1. And I know there's only three polls. This is just, to me, so disheartening. I just, this is what kills me, is a fucking, like, Florida, Nixon versus Moody. It's like, I mean, Moody is up by 6.5. It's just a fucking Republican. It's just disgusting. Now, here's the interesting thing, though, the plot twist here in Florida. So the Senate is like this. However, in the governor's seat, the Democrats ahead in Florida. Yes, yes. Because, you know, the Republicans being the racists that they are, they put, you know, it's kind of similar to the thing they did with Pax. So, so Trump liked this guy. I can't wait what the hell Donald's is. Donald's is African-American. The Republicans are racists. They don't really want to vote for the African-American whack job.
|
Sam:
[1:19:04]
| Yes. So the one thing that prompted me to think about is most of the attention has been on the House and Senate, understandably.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:12]
| But— There's a whole bunch of governor's races that right now that they're— And not only governors.
|
Sam:
[1:19:18]
| But state houses as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:20]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:19:21]
| And frankly, like, people underestimate—like, people—, Including us, to be frank. Like, spend a lot of time thinking about national, Congress, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:32]
| Look, listen, it's been to our detriment. It's the fucking reason why we have had such dominant Republican control over so many things for a long time.
|
Sam:
[1:19:43]
| Because we ignored local.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:45]
| Yes, we ignored local. And by the way, this was like, unfortunately, this was a mistake by the Obama campaign team a lot of times. Where they spent, it comes from there, where instead of going 50 states and trying to win the local races, kept focusing only on the national races because that's the only thing that matters. Wrong. This is a reason why we've been in this situation that even though you've got national numbers that show that you should have democratic advantages, not working those local races costs us dearly.
|
Sam:
[1:20:18]
| Yes, absolutely. We've relitigated this over and over in the decades. It's been true, but goddammit.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:26]
| But the point we're bringing it up right now is because all of a sudden, there is quite a lot of local strength with Democrats in many different places.
|
Sam:
[1:20:34]
| Well, here's the thing that the Democrats have to figure out as well. Like, first of all, people always sleep on state houses. And, of course, I'm more aware of this now that my wife is a state rep. No, really?
|
Ivan:
[1:20:48]
| You pay attention now? Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:20:49]
| Well, it's still not enough. But anyway, but people sleep on the state houses because the state houses determine the redistricting. The state houses determine, you know... All sorts of policies that are critically important to how things play out nationally as well. But.
|
Sam:
[1:21:15]
| The redistricting is a key part. It's not that long till 2030 and the next census and the next round of redistricting. And of course, we've had these interim redistrictings that have been plaguing us the last year. You know state houses matter and a lot of and what we're seeing too like with how like various states have reacted after roe versus wade you can it was overturned you you can see like how important, state government is to things that really do affect people's lives, even though typically people ignore state government you know like at least people you know the overall pundits whatever, you know, it sort of flies under the radar. And the fact that it's flown under the radar has enabled all sorts of damage in many states that otherwise should be purple states, but ended up captured and redistricted by Republicans because, you know, Democrats weren't on the ball. And like you said, when you give up on the, you know, oh, this is a red state, it doesn't make sense to spend any money here. Well, you give up.
|
Sam:
[1:22:29]
| The building process that you need to be able to grow that and change that over time. And you have to play for the long term. Yes, you do investments that might not pay off for 15, 20 years. But if you don't do them, You're not going to get there. And the Republicans figured that out and did that correctly, you know, starting back like in the 80s.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:52]
| And, you know, listen, Florida is a great example. OK, Florida was a Florida and Texas. OK, by the way, Florida and Texas are both democratically controlled states. They had a Democratic governors. They had Democratic state houses and stuff or whatever. And the Republicans made a focus of getting control of both of those states at the ground level. And the impact of that on national politics has been huge. The fact that they were able to get those two states controlled by Republicans. It's just, you know, in terms of, you know, we had we used to have two Democratic senators from Florida. We used to have Democratic senators from from Texas. And we lost that completely in the House as well. I mean, it's, you know, yeah, the impact of that shift from 20, 30 years ago into politics now is one that we have been paying the price for a long, long time.
|
Sam:
[1:23:48]
| Yeah. And so assuming, let's assume for a second the Democratic wave does happen. We win a lot of governorships and we win the House, we win the Senate, we win a lot of governorships and we make significant ground in state houses around the country. Right. Then you then you still have to like right now as we said a lot of this wave is not because of anything the democrats are doing it's because donald trump is tanking everything, yeah you know so if the democrats win they have to figure out how to capitalize that in such a way that they can retain those gains once Donald Trump is gone.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:31]
| Well, I mean, you know, The one thing is that Trump isn't going away. Well, at some point, he's going to drop dead. Well, yeah, but it's not happening, like, right away. And the one thing is that I think because of his self-destructive tendencies, he will probably make it even worse for Republicans next year. You know one thing that Donald Trump doesn't want? What is probably the biggest thing that he wouldn't want? Like, say he leaves the White House. What would he hate the most?
|
Sam:
[1:25:11]
| Well, he still doesn't want anybody who will go in and try to, like, prosecute him for anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:16]
| Well, no, no, no. But one thing they would hate most.
|
Sam:
[1:25:18]
| Imagine if, like, a Republican... Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:21]
| A Republican that comes in and does better than he does.
|
Sam:
[1:25:25]
| Oh, right. I thought you were going to say tear down his gold shit. But, yeah, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:31]
| No, no. No, but a Republican that comes in and looks better than he does.
|
Sam:
[1:25:37]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:38]
| That would be his worst nightmare.
|
Sam:
[1:25:41]
| Which honestly would be pretty much any Republican.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:44]
| Right. But he will sabotage every single one of them. Because if they say that they're going to improve things, what are they saying? They're saying that Trump sucked.
|
Sam:
[1:25:57]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:59]
| So then the Republican has to go and like what campaign that he was great when his popularity isn't the shitter.
|
Sam:
[1:26:07]
| Yes. It'll be very interesting. You know, the traditional kickoff for the presidential race is midterms.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:16]
| That's right. Yeah. Coming around the corner.
|
Sam:
[1:26:18]
| So, I mean, there's already been a little bit of invisible primary action, blah, blah, blah. People positioning themselves on both sides. But, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the Republican side plays out. I mean, assuming Donald Trump doesn't try to put, you know, play any third term shenanigans. But, you know, if he doesn't do that, you still have exactly the dynamic you're talking about. Every Republican running for president in 2028 is going to have the same kind of issues we were talking about with people running right now for the Senate or the House.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:52]
| All I know is this. All I'm going to say is this.
|
Sam:
[1:26:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:57]
| If Trump tries to put himself on the top of the Democratic ticket.
|
Sam:
[1:27:00]
| Republican.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:01]
| I mean, the Republican ticket. If we don't fucking put Obama on the fucking top of the fucking Democratic ticket, we are insane. Because, I mean, we got to go, Barack, I'm sorry, I know you hung it up, but this is your moment right now.
|
Sam:
[1:27:22]
| Yes. You know, if they're letting him run, why the hell not?
|
Ivan:
[1:27:29]
| Yep. Fuck this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:27:32]
| And Obama's still pretty popular.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:34]
| He is very popular.
|
Sam:
[1:27:36]
| Yes. He's certainly more popular than any of the active Democrats right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:41]
| He is more popular than any of the active Democrats and any of the active Republicans.
|
Sam:
[1:27:46]
| Although you could argue that part of his popularity is due to the fact that he's not active. And, you know, if he, but, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:55]
| No, no, I don't think so. I think that one of the things is that people like what happens, like retrospective, like that, you know, gives you better fond memories of what the hell happened. And I think that's what it is. Okay. And in retrospect, this administration was very good at a lot of things as well. Now you think about it from the prism of looking at it through this shit show to his, you're like, damn, he was good.
|
Sam:
[1:28:17]
| Although you got to remember. Which part? There's a whole generation at this point of adult voters who don't really remember the obama administration very well because they were young children of course those young people don't vote anyway exactly so give.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:38]
| Me a break come on.
|
Sam:
[1:28:38]
| You know what.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:40]
| The fuck what the fuck are we doing fuck are we doing come on yeah do fucking shit you know yeah the fuck are we.
|
Sam:
[1:28:47]
| Doing well like one example of that sort of effect, you know, relating to the guy who's going to be publicly executed, you know, he, he, the crime he was committed, he, he went onto some, uh, some, some military base and shot a bunch of people. And J.D. Vance called it, you know, the, the greatest, the, the greatest terrorist attack on American soil besides 9-11. And then people pointed out that, well, what about the Oklahoma City bombing? And there were two retorts for that. One was just, you know, hey, he doesn't count white nationalist terrorism as terrorism. That doesn't count. It's only Muslims that count, which is probably true. But the other one was J.D. Vance was 11 when that happened. Fuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:41]
| 11?
|
Sam:
[1:29:42]
| When Oklahoma City happened. How old is he? 40 something I think yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:50]
| Hey, Siri, how old is J.D. Vance?
|
Siri:
[1:29:54]
| J.D. Vance is 42 years old.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:57]
| Fuck me. Jesus. How could he turn into such a raving asshole by age 40? God almighty.
|
Sam:
[1:30:12]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:14]
| Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:30:15]
| Okay. Okay, uh, shall we take a break or should we just wrap it up?
|
Ivan:
[1:30:21]
| Well, before, before we wrap it up, I pulled up some stuff on which, which races are actually very close, like our governor, the governor's races. Okay. So I see that Iowa right now is actually leaning Democrat. Okay. Which would be a flip for the Democrats. Alaska is also very close. Okay. But they've got the rank choice round. So we should, that, that, that one's like always interesting. Ohio. Okay. Which also, Ramaswamy is behind. Nevada is a toss-up. Georgia is also a toss-up. Texas is super close. And Florida, as I mentioned. So you've got all of those right now that are very close. They're not like, they are not as, I don't think they've been polled as heavily as a Senate and other stuff. So we don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:12]
| But those are, again, states where, you know, in Ohio, you would have thought there's no chance, but, you know, they decided to go with Ramaswamy. And, well, Ramaswamy, aside from being a smug asshole, is also not white. So, therefore, you know, again, you know, I mean, that's a thing. Houses that are in play, Arizona, you know, state chambers, that one. That one is one that could flip for Democrats. Michigan, because the House is Republican, so that could be a possible flip. Wisconsin, which the Chambers are Republican, that's also, you know, could be a flip. Minnesota, that one is possible there. We've got Pennsylvania also that's competitive right now. New Hampshire, where they have an R trifecta and who the hell knows, because, you know, with people being pissed off. And You know, that's it. So those are the ones that I see that I could pull up that were competitive right now. So there's a big number of some significant states there that could have significant changes in control.
|
Sam:
[1:32:21]
| Right. And, you know, even in states where you're not flipping the chamber or killing a trifecta or gaining a trifecta, you know, Changes to the margin do actually matter.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:33]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:32:34]
| You know, there's a difference between, you know, being.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:38]
| Supermajority, like here in Florida, where Democrats have absolutely no say in anything. They can't stop anything. They're just sitting around just, you know, watching the Republicans do stuff. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:49]
| Well, and even if you're not at the supermajority boundary either, it makes a difference whether your majority is two seats versus five seats versus ten seats. you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:00]
| Right right right right totally.
|
Sam:
[1:33:01]
| You know because it's easier the the the, bigger a majority is the easier it is to get things done that applies to both sides obviously and so if you've got a red state and you can deteriorate the republican majority that matters even if you don't flip this flip the state you, know so all of these matter we've only got a few weeks left you know and then we'll see, which also means i i gotta get a move on on election graphs, i've done a lot of like a lot of preliminaries are actually done i just have to like finish up a couple things but, you know i usually target right after midterms the reality is the last few cycles i've actually launched closer to january than november but you know we'll see, i don't i don't really have a lot of excuses this time around for not launching in November you know so, we shall see Yvonne's muted now he's trying to say stuff and can't hear him, he's just like I can see his mouth moving but like he's getting more and more agitated as his mouth moves but there's no actual sound coming out that I could hear anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:34:21]
| Hold on, Where's the people? Let's see. Okay, talk, Yvonne. Yeah, no, definitely not. I got the meters up so I could see Yvonne just like waving his hands, doing sign language, thumbs up, you know, all that kind of stuff. Well, I will start wrapping things up while Yvonne like impotently gesticulates, and tries to figure out what's wrong with his setup. But anybody watching the video will be quite entertained by what Yvonne's doing. But I'll just wrap up. Thank you, everybody, for joining us on yet another Curmudgeon's Corner. Go to our website, curmudgeon-corner.com. Yvonne's still talking.
|
Sam:
[1:35:10]
| You can see all our archives are there. You can listen to old messages, old shows going back 19-plus years. You can read transcripts over the last couple years you can you can see all the ways to contact us send us emails whatever and all that is fun and so let's see what, and then there's our patreon you can give us 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 that kind of stuff and at two dollars a month or more, or if you ask us and we, enjoy it, uh, Yvonne is saying that I should look at my texts. I don't have, I don't have a new text. Oh, on the Slack, maybe on the Slack, on the Slack. No, Yvonne is like writing me a note. Yvonne is writing me a note on paper and pen because I don't have a text from him. I don't have a, let's see on the Slack. So Riverside chat. Oh, I was looking at YouTube chat. Let's try Riverside chat. Oh, there it is. Four messages on.
|
Sam:
[1:36:22]
| The public chat. I didn't touch anything. I am connected. My fun bit of slack was Hitler Mussolini. Okay, I was going to ask you about that in a second. Anyway, so yes, the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-boo-boo-boo, no, the, what was I saying? Oh, yes, the Slack. At $2 a month, ask us, we'll invite you to Slack if we feel like it. Okay, so Yvonne has identified his thing. Now, I just have to find the link, to properly quote it myself. Was this in random? Was it in random, Yvonne? Yes, it is. Okay, so here we go.
|
Sam:
[1:37:10]
| There is a—I'm bringing up the article. Come on. Article, please. Where's—there we go. Okay, BBC article. Man named Hitler Mussolini elected mayor in Peru. Published one day ago. A man named Hitler Mussolini Simeon Flores has secured a narrow victory in Peru's local elections exit poll show. The candidate for the center-left Ahorra Nacion Party was elected mayor of some town in a remote district in Peru in the Andes. Some 229 residents voted for the 45-year-old, putting him ahead of the second-place candidate from right-wing Renovacion Popular Peru by just 25 votes. I'm going to skip ahead to.
|
Sam:
[1:38:00]
| Another important part that he shares his name with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini two of the most well-known figures of the 20th century European totalitarian regimes has made his candidacy a striking event local outlet Peru 21 reported, despite the curiosity generated by his name local media noted that Hitler Guzion Alba Sanchez had been elected mayor of Yungar in 2018. Now, here we go. He reportedly beat rival candidate Lenin-Vladimir Rodriguez Valverde after campaigning on the slogan, I'm the good Hitler. There we go.
|
Sam:
[1:38:43]
| Yvonne is still gesticulating, and I see his mouth moving, but there's no audio coming through. Yeah. So, I guess Yvonne can't say goodbye. I'll say goodbye. Thanks for listening again, and have a great week. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye! And goodbye from Yvonne, too. So, he's waving, making faces. is goodbye all here comes the music Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and that's it. I'm hitting stop. Later, Yvonne. Later, everybody else.
| |
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