Sam:
[0:01]
| Shall i just hit the button and go let's.
|
Ivan:
[0:05]
| Let's do this.
|
Sam:
[0:31]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 27th, 2024.
It's just after 3.30 UTC. I'm Sam Minter. Yvonne Boe is here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:42]
| Oots. Hello.
|
Sam:
[0:45]
| And, you know, we're going to do our normal thing. We'll do it, but first we'll go back and forth and then we'll go back and forth with more newsy things later on in the show.
Before all that, I just wanted to say Yvonne and I just figured out something that's been been screwing up yvonne's audio the last couple times he's been on you know it just it.
|
Ivan:
[1:02]
| It was funky it was just bizarre.
|
Sam:
[1:04]
| He's been sitting here in front of his nice fancy mic but it's been going through his uh earphones airpods yeah and.
|
Ivan:
[1:11]
| And yeah and and you know it's just retarded because you know they sound i mean it's okay but.
|
Sam:
[1:19]
| It's okay nowhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:20]
| Nearly as good as the microphone.
|
Sam:
[1:22]
| Yeah and what happens what happens specifically with them which is what like the thing that like like gets me when listening to them is it's sort of like, it's trying to do some sort of dynamic something.
I don't know what it's doing, but it comes in and out. So it's very highly sensitive.
Sometimes it'll sound better. Sometimes it'll sound worse.
It probably depends on exactly the position of your head. I don't know what the hell else.
|
Ivan:
[1:45]
| Well, you know, sometimes you feel like a nut and sometimes you don't.
|
Sam:
[1:49]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:50]
| As I've heard.
|
Sam:
[1:52]
| I have heard that as well. I, I've sometimes tried those candy bars as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:58]
| I, I, you know what? That I've never tried an almond joy.
|
Sam:
[2:02]
| You have never tried it. Do you hate almonds?
|
Ivan:
[2:04]
| No, I don't. You know, it's.
|
Sam:
[2:07]
| So you might enjoy an almond joy.
|
Ivan:
[2:09]
| I might, but you know what? I've never tried one. I just realized.
|
Sam:
[2:13]
| Have you, have you tried a mound?
|
Ivan:
[2:16]
| No.
|
Sam:
[2:17]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[2:18]
| I will say that my That's the two that are the nuts and the nuts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:23]
| I'm remembering correctly.
|
Ivan:
[2:25]
| I will say that I was of the preference of the plain chocolate candy variety.
So, for example, I did not like peanut M&Ms.
|
Sam:
[2:41]
| I mean.
|
Ivan:
[2:41]
| I actually as an adult, I've eaten them now and I'm like, okay, this is not as bad. bad but that's my feeling about them.
|
Sam:
[2:48]
| As well i will take them if there is not another choice but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:51]
| But you know i do i do prefer to regular m&ms and for example i was definitely, definitely on the three musketeers yeah.
|
Sam:
[3:02]
| I i can't even place like if i say three musketeers i can't place in my head what's.
|
Ivan:
[3:07]
| What that see the three musketeers were the darker chocolate with a lighter chocolate on the inside it's it's it is i mean i i think i ate one not too long ago they're still really good the i will say that the one thing that was really good about him was to put them in the refrigerator and wow that knows that that what that made up yeah this is something.
|
Sam:
[3:33]
| In general like, All chocolate candy, I refrigerate it all. I don't like it if it's at all soft.
|
Ivan:
[3:43]
| I like them soft, but there are, look, there is something to be said for the one that's refrigerated and how good it tastes.
Look, I mean, you know, when we had our my family had our store back in Puerto Rico, we had a very large selection of assorted candies. I mean, we had.
|
Sam:
[4:07]
| And you ate it all except the almond joys and mounds.
|
Ivan:
[4:11]
| Well, yeah, I did not eat them all, but I ate the varieties, the ones that I like.
But it was just when we had a wide variety of shit.
I mean, we had I remember the Frito-Lay guys told us that for not being a supermarket.
We had the largest and the most volume selling individual Frito-Lay bag stand, and we sold the most volume weekly of any location on the island, of the small individual bags, not big bags. They were small individual bags.
We sold, I would say like back then at retail value about, oh man, yeah, it was about $1,200 the $1,300 a week of those bags at you should.
|
Sam:
[4:57]
| Set up a stand like that just in your living room.
|
Ivan:
[4:59]
| That would take up a substantial amount of space in my living room I would say but the thing is that I will say that at one point we began to stock dove bars, you know either the ones that were the vanilla chocolate or the chocolate, chocolate ice cream with with the with the with the dark chocolate on the outside yeah you're making me want one oh my god holy shit those are two holy shit those are so good that that those were i'm like man i'm like oh come on yeah there's one over there the problem is that they're right there man i mean there's just it's just an entire fucking refrigerator full of these you're like like come on i remember you know the worst part i mean i remember we started stock stocking snapple, oh fuck jesus christ i mean i was like oh that was a really big thing.
|
Sam:
[6:00]
| For a few years back there.
|
Ivan:
[6:02]
| Yes and then it just imploded like but very for a while it was huge and i remember you can still find fucking though it's still yeah but it's just yeah but it's just not it's not it's not.
|
Sam:
[6:12]
| Like the a big thing it was for a little while.
|
Ivan:
[6:14]
| I'll tell you but man snapple i haven't you know man the iced tea the lemon iced tea snapple oh my god that was like delicious and they had this other one i can't remember what the hell it was right now it was peach or something whatever oh you know that that was like the worst i mean being i mean i gotta say that working the front of the store with all of these things fresh we made we we made like popcorn i mean freshly made every couple of hours so you have like the fresh pop oh my god you know how are you gonna resist not touch not eating some popcorn for god's sakes when you just when you're just you're over there on the machine you put in the kettle you're making it right there yourself of course you're gonna have popcorn popcorn okay i'm like yeah so you know and then we had what else i mean we had let's see we had the popcorn oh we had this frozen yogurt machine then we put it oh fuck man that was just that was just you know it's just just crazy, So it was just, you know, I, I, you know, so, so yeah, we, we, we really, uh, we, we ambled off the reservation. So Sam, what are we going to talk about?
|
Sam:
[7:25]
| Oh yeah. So I, well, I was going to ask you if you were just going to transform your butt first into like junk food that you enjoy.
|
Ivan:
[7:33]
| Junk food that I enjoy. I mean.
|
Sam:
[7:35]
| You don't have to, we can move on.
|
Ivan:
[7:39]
| I will say, look.
|
Sam:
[7:40]
| Yes, my.
|
Ivan:
[7:42]
| My favorite junk food. And I avoid it like the plague right now.
now plantain chips is fried chicken oh.
|
Sam:
[7:49]
| Fried chicken okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:49]
| Well the fucking well the fucking plantain chips forget oh my god yeah those those those are those are good and i'm like look i my wife was bringing a couple of months ago brought a couple of bags of those here to the house, and i mean they would be around and they would be they would be consumed way too quickly and i was it's just like, please don't bring this shit around the house again.
Because the one way that we do avoid that shit is basically my strategy is we're not having it in the house.
That's the best way. It's the best. Done. It's just not in the fucking house.
And so we just don't have it that way. It's not a problem. I don't have to resist eating it.
But look, it is fried chicken. There is no doubt about it. It's fucking fried chicken.
I mean, if you You bring a fucking bucket of like KFC original recipe.
I mean, I'll probably, I mean, if you bring a whole bucket, I might like eat.
|
Sam:
[8:51]
| The whole bucket, right? That's what it's for.
|
Ivan:
[8:53]
| I might go there or at least go through like 10 of 10 pieces easily.
And which is why I avoided like the play. Okay.
Now I will say that something that is I've found, I mean, I, I, I find myself, it seems Seems heretic to say it's tastier, but I have found it irresistible.
So our supermarket chain over here, Publix, which is the predominant chain in Florida.
It's in a couple of other states nearby, but really, really predominantly in Florida.
Man, they make this fucking fried chicken.
That, holy shit. Any time that I've bought, like, they sell this box of it, okay?
They have it right there fresh. every time they bought it i fuck i mean i'm pretty sure the box has like 10 pieces and i've gone through the whole fucking thing which is why i have not purchased it i'm pretty sure in like seven or eight years because i i just could not it's just not good for my health to have that around.
So that's my strategy basically with this kind of stuff. I don't...
How do I not eat it? Simple. Just don't have it at the house.
That's it. Period. You know?
|
Sam:
[10:21]
| Because it does...
Pizza was just a limit.
|
Ivan:
[10:28]
| Ah, there you go. Hold on. I had pizza tonight for dinner. It was great.
|
Sam:
[10:31]
| I had Wendy's on the way home from somewhere, so I am not partaking in this pizza. This pizza is for everyone else.
|
Ivan:
[10:37]
| I had pizza, but I had pizza from a nice restaurant where they made this white pizza with prosciutto on top. Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[10:46]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[10:48]
| The thing is that I will say that it sits much better in my stomach than it had because it was a white pizza. No sauce.
|
Sam:
[10:55]
| You know I'm recording, right? I'm sorry, I forgot.
Hold on. I'm trying to remember what I was about to say.
|
Ivan:
[11:04]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[11:06]
| Oh, yeah. So, yes. So, wait, you are waxing...
Well, I guess nostalgic is the right word. You are getting all excited about this chicken that you apparently have not had in almost a decade.
|
Ivan:
[11:19]
| I gotta say, I'm pretty sure it was the last time it was... I am...
I can actually pinpoint the date. Okay.
Because I bought it for a, to go to a friend of mine's house to watch a football game. Okay.
|
Sam:
[11:41]
| And.
|
Ivan:
[11:42]
| And so it was, oh, I'm pretty sure sometime in, let's see.
Oh, Okay, I'm gonna check.
Huh? Here we go.
|
Sam:
[11:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[12:00]
| I'm looking at this online. Let's see. What year was this specifically?
It was January. It was Oh, shit.
Yeah, I'm double checking. I'm double checking the dates. double checking everyone.
|
Sam:
[12:23]
| Is waiting in such.
|
Ivan:
[12:25]
| Oh i know i know it's important it was i'm pretty sure january 6th 2019 okay okay that's the last time that's.
|
Sam:
[12:39]
| Not that long ago.
|
Ivan:
[12:40]
| It's like sam that's already five years ago it.
|
Sam:
[12:44]
| Was it was like last week yeah you can't.
|
Ivan:
[12:47]
| Fool me five fucking years ago okay that's it that's the last time.
|
Sam:
[12:54]
| I know, but you said like seven or something. Anyway, so you were wrong.
|
Ivan:
[12:59]
| I was like, I'm trying. No, I'm pretty. It had to be. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[13:03]
| Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. You like the chicken.
|
Ivan:
[13:07]
| But I have not had it. I love this. And I have not eaten it in five years.
|
Sam:
[13:16]
| Very good. I am proud of you, Yvonne. Although perhaps there'll be a special occasion coming up soon where you can treat yourself.
|
Ivan:
[13:22]
| There might be.
i must.
|
Sam:
[13:27]
| Say it has not been that long since i've had fried chicken or i a kfc specifically is.
|
Ivan:
[13:33]
| I i did have kfc because kfc was my favorite but i will say that this is and we know you thought we've.
|
Sam:
[13:41]
| Talked about your popeye sandwich as well.
|
Ivan:
[13:42]
| The popeye sandwich let me let me tell you something okay i will say i have had kfc once in those five years that's that's it once i did have For a while.
|
Sam:
[13:53]
| KFC was one of the rotation of things that we did after I pick up Alex from school before we go home.
But it hasn't been a choice in a long while. Well.
|
Ivan:
[14:06]
| I don't think that they are making the chicken as well as they used to.
I don't think it's the recipe that's changed. I think the way that they are cooking the chicken, it's just not as good.
Or the chickens that they are making are not as good. it because a.
|
Sam:
[14:20]
| Lot of a lot of these fast food places are clearly cutting corners over where they were a few years back let's just put it that way i've noticed i've noticed it in more than one, location and you know and also just in consistency as well like you may get a really good one one time but the next time it's eh look you know whereas i'll.
|
Ivan:
[14:43]
| Tell you where you can get the best rotisserie chicken still and it's such a great value and they are consistent with it it's the costco rotisserie chicken.
|
Sam:
[14:52]
| Look that is a.
|
Ivan:
[14:55]
| That is a a it's a lost leader for them they admit it they lose money in each of those.
|
Sam:
[15:02]
| Like the hot dogs yeah.
|
Ivan:
[15:02]
| It's a lost leader but but but the.
|
Sam:
[15:05]
| Costco famously have stayed the same price for like 30 years or something yeah and and uh this thing.
|
Ivan:
[15:13]
| I think it's like about, $4.90. Okay, Costco. No, not grilled. Rotisserie.
Rotisserie. Let me see. I think it's about $4.99. Something like that. It's really cheap.
Yes, it's $5. It's still $5. And, man, it's a whole chicken for $5 grilled.
And it's a high-quality chicken. They're very consistent with it.
They're very much of a pain in the ass of where they source their chickens.
And I'll tell you what, you cannot get, it's like, you know, for a dinner, not just for dinner, but usually we'll bring it home, have dinner, have leftovers.
leftovers you can't beat the value of a five dollar rotisserie chicken.
|
Sam:
[16:07]
| Very good now the one last thing on this topic i will say when i do do kfc i do the extra crispy though not the original because to me it's all about the breading oh.
|
Ivan:
[16:18]
| You're heretic you're you're.
|
Sam:
[16:20]
| You know you're freaking.
|
Ivan:
[16:22]
| Heretic i mean i well gotta that the inquisition should be coming coming vehicle should be coming coming to your home like right now and drag you out for your your.
|
Sam:
[16:31]
| The the for a while they have removed it from the menu now but for a while for like a couple years they had popcorn chicken on their menu as well which was little tiny bits of chicken which just meant more surface area for the bread right so of course i would go for that because it's all breading it's basically all breading plus little tiny bits of chicken because like Like, really, for me, for fried chicken, I couldn't care less about the chicken. I want the breading.
|
Ivan:
[16:58]
| I like the chicken, which is why I like the, the, the, the rotisserie chicken.
|
Sam:
[17:03]
| I definitely.
|
Ivan:
[17:04]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[17:04]
| Anyway. So did you have a real, but first, or was this, I think, I think.
|
Ivan:
[17:09]
| I think I've used up my time.
|
Sam:
[17:12]
| Yeah. Unless you had something really pressing. Not really.
|
Ivan:
[17:15]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[17:15]
| So mine, I am continuing with my catch up of media and blah, blah, blah.
So in June of last year, I finished up a, I'm going to call it a TV series, but it's kind of a series of shorts.
Anyway, it's Mater's Tall Tales.
|
Ivan:
[17:38]
| Okay. Give me from Mater from the movie Cars.
|
Sam:
[17:43]
| Yes. So there was a series. Now, you could, if you wanted, consider this part of a larger thing called Car's Tune, but it's really separated.
Like Mater's Tall Tales has a few seasons and went over a few years, and there's a separate one called Tales from Radiator Springs, which is separate.
but this ran from mater's tall tales had 11 episodes total ran from 2008 to 2012, and basically the each of these things is only like three or four minutes long so they're like shorts it's not like a real long it's not like an episode of a show full-fledged it's like mini sodes yeah yeah how many minutes maybe like eight.
|
Ivan:
[18:32]
| Minutes like that kind of a thing.
|
Sam:
[18:34]
| Last less than than eight minutes it's like three or four minutes usually i i should check this because like i you know somebody's gonna come and be like you lie they were seven minutes and 22 seconds or whatever you know so i'm gonna check real quick how long are these stupid episodes.
|
Ivan:
[18:57]
| Okay, so you're already giving them a thumbs down since you're calling them stupid episodes?
|
Sam:
[19:01]
| No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[19:03]
| I was just wondering if that was a reflection of the quality.
|
Sam:
[19:10]
| Of course, I'm not immediately finding the answer.
|
Ivan:
[19:15]
| Of course. A sheer display of your incompetence. Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[19:19]
| Although all 11 episodes together are 36 minutes. So that gives you a sense.
|
Ivan:
[19:24]
| All 11 episodes are 36 minutes. Okay. Well, yeah, they're not very, they're like about three, four minutes tops on average.
|
Sam:
[19:32]
| Yeah. And some, like, I think the longest one probably is like five or six minutes and there are shorter ones too.
Anyway, the basic premise of these, they all have, it's all very formulaic.
Mater from the Cars franchise from Pixar comes in and is like, oh, you remember when blah, blah, blah. He's talking to Lightning McQueen.
And Lightning McQueen is like, no, what are you talking about?
And then you have like a memory Mater has of something.
And then Lightning comes back on and says, that's ridiculous.
Then Mater says, but you were there too. And then they go back to the memory and now all of a sudden Lightning is in it too.
And then they end the little thing. And then something happens in the outside of this donut structure that implies that that whatever the memory was, was real.
So for instance, episode one, Rescue Squad Mater.
Mater is working as a fire truck and has to rescue Lightning McQueen from a burning building.
After he saves McQueen, the ambulance rushes McQueen to the hospital where Mater reveals that he's also a doctor.
|
Ivan:
[20:47]
| Oh, I believe I've actually seen this one.
|
Sam:
[20:51]
| Yeah. And so, you know, I will give these a thumbs up. They're cute.
They're short. They're, you know, they're they're just sort of like little snippets of the of Mater and Lightning in in like weird scenarios. Like, you know, I read you the one.
There's one where he's like an evil Knievel clone.
There's another one where he's bullfighting in Spain.
There's another one where he's like in Tokyo.
There's another one with a UFO, monster trucks, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[21:25]
| But who doesn't go bullfighting in Spain? I mean, I thought that's like one of the things that you do. I mean, I know I have.
|
Sam:
[21:30]
| And of course, since it's the Cars universe, they're all tractors.
|
Ivan:
[21:33]
| Yeah, you haven't gone bullfighting in Spain.
|
Sam:
[21:35]
| I have not well actually the tractors the bulls are not tracked the bulls are like heavier machinery the cows were tractors sorry i do not want to get that confused anyway it was fun it's fun it's cute it's whatever this is the one that you know i had mentioned before that i had finished one and the new replacement was Law and Order.
|
Ivan:
[21:57]
| Dun dun!
Oh!
|
Sam:
[22:03]
| And this is the one that I finished that has now been replaced by Law and Order in my rotation.
So you can see very similar themes.
Anyway, thumbs up. It's fun. It's cute.
It's definitely aimed at kids, but it's like, you'll chuckle at it but it's it's nothing serious it's nothing profound it's a stupid little cartoon with mater and lighting the queen you know but it's fun there.
|
Ivan:
[22:30]
| You go okay.
|
Sam:
[22:30]
| You know so that that's all i got to say about that right thumbs up thumbs up it's and like all 11 together are only 36 minutes of course alex and i alex and i because of the way i rotate shows spread this over the course of a few months but we watched them all and of course before this officially came on my my list we'd seen all of these episodes over and over and over again just with alex watching them back when he was in his car phase much cars phase many years ago because he really liked that when when he was little yeah so he's not little anymore he's huge jesus.
|
Ivan:
[23:08]
| Christ he's huge all these kids are huge.
|
Sam:
[23:12]
| Okay what all these kids are huge.
|
Ivan:
[23:15]
| I just saw a friend of mine's uh a kid today and he's taller than I am now and I'm like holy fuck last time I saw him you shorter than I am what the fuck happened.
|
Sam:
[23:25]
| I know they have the nerve to like keep growing and like, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[23:29]
| I know.
|
Sam:
[23:30]
| You know, doing things.
|
Ivan:
[23:33]
| Yeah. You.
|
Sam:
[23:34]
| Know, cause it's, it's not just the height. It's like all of a sudden, you know, they're, they're doing things that like a two year old wouldn't do.
|
Ivan:
[23:44]
| Yeah, that's right. Bastards.
|
Sam:
[23:49]
| Okay. Anyway. So if you have nothing else and I have nothing else, let's take a break. break let's.
|
Ivan:
[23:54]
| Take a breaky breaky and.
|
Sam:
[23:56]
| Then we will start alternating on more serious things there was actually a a bunch of newsy things this week i guess i haven't shit happened it did you know as as sometimes does so here's a break, there we go oh no that's not the break okay here's the break.
Okay. So first thing I want to say, like one of the things I had intended to do over the holiday break, but did not was get a couple of new breaks into rotation to eliminate some of the breaks and like just rotate them out and get something new going.
But I, I didn't get to it. I didn't get to it. I did other stuff. Didn't get to it.
Like I had a list of like 20 to 25 things that I hoped to do during the two weeks i took off how.
|
Ivan:
[25:36]
| Many did you do.
|
Sam:
[25:36]
| I think i did maybe four of them maybe four out of the 20.
|
Ivan:
[25:41]
| Jesus christ well i guess at least you did some i.
|
Sam:
[25:47]
| Did some you know but and and to be fair it like was vacation but of course i had things i wanted to do during vacation but like you know and some of the things took longer than i thought they would and i slept more more than I thought I would.
And I, you know, I can't complain too much that I slept more and I did like more like family stuff instead of just my projects.
So I can't complain too much, you know, but you know, but it means like, there's still a bunch of things that I would like to get done someday that I never have time for normally that I was like, Oh, I'm taking two weeks off.
I'll actually have time to do stuff. But no.
|
Ivan:
[26:26]
| Well, I will say that on my list of things that I had to do, I did most of them.
So there are the one thing that I I ran out of time and I and I have been busy and not been able to get to is that there are some leftover boxes like three or four that I had not unpacked from the office move.
But that's about it. Really, it's it's not a lot.
But I, you know, we went and after a couple of weeks off, we decided to go to or we went to Orlando for a Martin Luther King holiday weekend.
And so that that made it not, you know, not possible to to to do anything that weekend.
and then like last weekend we had some people come over to the house and so that also like kind of like you know took away time from doing any of that and then i am actually going to be leaving town.
Tomorrow, coming back on Sunday, because I have, I'm going to a bachelor party for a somebody.
I haven't gone to a bachelor party in so long, but I have a friend of mine from Purdue, which you probably met, I'm sure.
But, you know, I doubt you remember that is getting married now for the first time. Okay.
And he is older than you and I. so it's his first it's his first wedding so I you know he invited me so I guess I'm going, and then but the thing is that I'm going this weekend for that bachelor party tomorrow which you know he invited me last Linnett and I'm like okay fine I'll go you know and then the wedding is next weekend, and it's in Indiana so I have to fly to the wedding in Indiana right the following weekend, So I, I, you know, I have, and then I did commit to Manu.
I don't know why the hell I did this again. I, what, what am I doing to myself?
I committed, oh, let's go back to Disney again. President's day weekend.
So, you know, I, I have stretched myself a little bit thin.
|
Sam:
[28:56]
| Okay. So that's lovely, but we're supposed to get more serious and more newsy now. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[29:02]
| So what, what, what, what happened this week? What's going on? What's the first?
|
Sam:
[29:06]
| It's your turn to pick first. There's a plethora of things.
|
Ivan:
[29:10]
| Oh, we're on the plethora level. Oh, wow.
We are at the plethora level. It should be on our scale of volume, we're in the plethora level.
|
Sam:
[29:22]
| So what do you want to talk about? What do you want to talk about? Your choice first.
|
Ivan:
[29:26]
| Let's talk about New Hampshire. Okay. So what happened in New Hampshire, Sam?
|
Sam:
[29:30]
| Trump won.
|
Ivan:
[29:32]
| Okay. Yeah. Trump won. But.
And Biden won, right?
|
Sam:
[29:37]
| Trump won, Biden won. There were no delegates awarded on the Democratic side, even though I saw mixed messages about that.
I found out even within one source, my go-to source for all this is a place called The Green Papers that tracks this in minute detail.
And on the same page in two different places, one place they said there'd be no delegates at all.
The other place they said there would be after all. I think the reality is there eventually will be because they still have 10 delegates and they have to, allocate them by the primary results, but they're not supposed to allocate them by these primary results, but it'll all get worked out.
And then, cause Biden will get all the delegates cause he's going to win.
But anyway, yeah, so that happened by, you know, there was some concern that Biden would not just would not win.
Cause he's not, he was not on the ballot, but some of his, some supporters of him unofficially not attached to the campaign waged a write-in campaign and he he got like 75% of the vote or some such anyway.
I forget what the final numbers were, but they were way up there.
And so, yeah, that's all for the Democratic side. On the Republican side, Trump won.
But first, look, there are two competing narratives coming out of New Hampshire. sure.
One is that Trump clearly won and won by a large margin.
And this was probably going to be Haley's best state on the entire calendar.
So therefore it's over because there is no place else on the calendar that Haley has a shot.
The other narratives though are like, but yes, Yes, that is true.
However, Haley outperformed the polling and it was closer than Trump had hoped.
It was it was closer even than the final polls had said. I think the final margin was around 11 percent, something like that.
And the final polls were more like 16, 17, 18.
I should look it up to make sure that is right.
Hold on. Blah, blah, blah. The final poll margin in New Hampshire, according to FiveThirtyEight's average, they had Trump at fifty three point nine and Haley at thirty six point three.
So subtracting that real quick.
That's seventeen point six percent, so about 18 percent. It turned out to be 11.
So Haley outperformed a little bit. And actually, let's be more specific here.
If you look at New Hampshire on the Republican side for the final numbers, not of delegates or of any, but just a percentage of numbers, Trump had 54.4% compared to that 53.9%.
So that was very close in terms of Trump's numbers.
Haley ended up with 43.2% compared to her 36% number. So Haley outperformed her polls by seven points.
And that also matches up with what we saw in Iowa.
Like if we're trying to impute anything to other things, like make generalizations about the general election or general, general, general, blah, blah, whatever. whatever.
What we're seeing so far in both Iowa and New Hampshire is Trump came pretty damn close to his poll averages, but the non-Trumps all did better than their poll averages.
What that implies is the undecideds are breaking against Trump.
|
Ivan:
[33:28]
| Well, I do agree that that's the case, but one thing in both Iowa and New Hampshire, There are some factors that make me still...
draw any conclusions from any of it. They deter me from doing it for a number of reasons.
Because, number one, I think you and I both agree, Trump is going to win this nomination under Republican Party.
|
Sam:
[34:00]
| We've said before, look, it's not impossible, but the scenarios that involve him not doing it are basically like, he has a heart attack or stroke and keels over.
over the people also try to stretch scenarios where like oh people suddenly start caring about.
|
Ivan:
[34:20]
| His legal issues and daily.
|
Sam:
[34:22]
| But like no maybe for the general but not yeah.
|
Ivan:
[34:26]
| So but the one thing is that we both agree on that and but but you've got two things that really impacted the results in both in both one is in iowa turnout was so much lower than it than it was the last time a republican competitive nomination was in effect it was ridiculously lower 40 percent lower and so i don't i don't know what to make of it in part because i'm not sure what was the biggest impact on it.
The weather definitely had an impact.
|
Sam:
[35:07]
| Yeah, I mean, it was the worst weather in the history of the Iowa caucus.
|
Ivan:
[35:11]
| Yeah, but at the same time, what, I mean, Trump was telling people to go out there and vote for him even if they died.
I mean, he literally said, this is not hyperbole. Oh.
|
Sam:
[35:23]
| I know, I know, we mentioned it last week, yep.
|
Ivan:
[35:26]
| He literally said this, but they still didn't show up.
|
Sam:
[35:29]
| Well, and this comes to the whole enthusiasm gap, right?
|
Ivan:
[35:34]
| Exactly. And so that was the one thing. But the thing is that because of the weather, I'm like, okay, I know that there is some of that, but what is really the enthusiasm gap that we're talking about?
So that data is very tainted. I don't know.
Okay. I think it's very difficult to draw that conclusion. And then you've got the other issue in New Hampshire, where, unfortunately, New Hampshire's an open primer, okay?
|
Sam:
[36:01]
| Yeah. Now, to be clear, New Hampshire, when you register, you have three choices.
Well, I mean, I guess there are other third parties, too, but you can be Republican, Democrat, or I forget what they call unaffiliated.
It's whatever, but you are officially uncommitted.
Right. And when you come into the caucus, sorry, primary.
|
Ivan:
[36:23]
| If
|
Sam:
[36:24]
| You are a registered Democrat, you get a Democrat ballot.
If you're a registered Republican, you get a Republican ballot.
You cannot get either one of those ballots without being registered in one of those two parties.
|
Ivan:
[36:35]
| However- How quickly can you switch registration?
|
Sam:
[36:39]
| Well, here's the thing. If you were already Republican or Democrat, if you wanted to switch, you would have had to do it in October.
|
Ivan:
[36:46]
| Ah, okay. so you couldn't do it. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:49]
| If you were actually registered as Republican or Democrat, but if you were registered as an early October too, I think it was like, you know, you had to plan it out a month plus in advance.
But if you were this unaffiliated category, then they have a booth when you come in where you can temporarily register as either Republican or Democrat, go get your ballot go vote and then they have another booth on your way out where you can switch yourself back down affiliated again nice, And in New Hampshire, I think the statistic I read, and I don't have this in front of me, so don't kill me if I get it wrong, about 40% of the electorate is in that unaffiliated capital. Jesus.
|
Ivan:
[37:35]
| So that's the problem. I mean, I don't know how many people.
Look, I've heard anecdotally, obviously, from people saying stuff like, well, I stayed register a Republican, you know, just to fuck with them, okay, in the primaries.
I've heard this anecdotally already, and I've heard it anecdotally of a lot of people just going and just, well, we're never going to vote for the Republican candidate, but we just wanted to, you know, fuck with Trump.
|
Sam:
[38:06]
| Well, according to exit polls in New Hampshire, picture, 6% of the people voting in the Republican primary self-identified themselves as Democrats.
|
Ivan:
[38:20]
| Jesus Christ. I mean, it's a significant number.
And the question is, of course, how many of these people are being honest?
Because it really seems right now that we're having an issue with, I mean, this has been going on the last couple of election cycles, or we talked about Trump voters under-identifying severely in some instances.
And then, I don't know, how many of these people really were doing that, but they didn't declare it as well.
So I just, I'm a little bit like, reticent to declare that trump is weak given these places is there.
|
Sam:
[39:00]
| Well some of the other some of the other exit poll stuff they were talking about that you can't get directly from the vote but you can get from the exit polls they were talking to into self-described independence were breaking against trump and going for haley there were a lot of people who were when they were doing the anecdotal interviewing people when they left, there were a bunch of people saying that they were voting Haley specifically as an anti-Trump thing.
They didn't care one way or another about Haley. They just didn't want to vote for Trump.
You had the numbers that people asked. We had the poll coming out of Iowa that said one third of of Republicans said that they believed a criminal conviction would be disqualifying.
In New Hampshire, that was 43%. Jesus.
So in both cases, the majority of Republicans do not think it's a disqualifier. But that's...
|
Ivan:
[40:01]
| It's a big, huge chunk, though.
|
Sam:
[40:04]
| Yes. And so how much of that is real? And of those people, you know, if push comes to shove and Trump actually gets a conviction before the election, which is by no means a given.
|
Ivan:
[40:18]
| It's not a given.
|
Sam:
[40:19]
| But how many of those people would actually vote Democrat?
How many would stay home? How many would eventually say, oh, well, you know, yes, he's bad. Yes. Well.
|
Ivan:
[40:33]
| This goes back to the enthusiasm gap, because that's the reason why the Iowa numbers were to me.
So, you know, look, you know, in a situation where there is a competitive primary, because it was that regardless of, you know, whether you want to say it's a fact, complete a Trump is the candidate.
But I mean, when 40 percent, it was over 40 percent down on turnout.
is a brutally bad number and the weather i don't think the weather could just explain it away you know because i was talking about yeah you know there was gonna be weather plus.
|
Sam:
[41:16]
| Everyone said trump was so far ahead so the vote didn't really matter.
|
Ivan:
[41:19]
| It could be that or it could be just they're holding their nose right because we've already seen a lot of this, In many special elections. So it's just tough.
I mean, the other day, I was like, there was a poll by, I think it was Reuters that commissioned a poll.
|
Sam:
[41:40]
| It was Reuters.
|
Ivan:
[41:41]
| It was Reuters. And they commissioned a poll. And I'm reading the poll results.
And I'm like, what the fuck kind of poll is this shit?
Where, well, first of all, they polled adults for the general election. Which to me is just.
|
Sam:
[41:58]
| So wait, let me, that poll released their registered voters number the next day.
They still didn't do likely voters, but they switched from.
|
Ivan:
[42:09]
| So if you look at the- When did they release that? Because I had looked yesterday and I didn't see that.
|
Sam:
[42:16]
| Today. Today. Oh.
|
Ivan:
[42:18]
| Today.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| So yesterday Reuters released their all adults number. And those showed Trump ahead by 6%, regardless of whether you included third party candidates or not.
Today, they released from that same poll, the registered voters number.
And instead of Trump up by six, it was Trump up by five.
Now they have not released likely voter numbers.
And the likely voter is really important. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[42:52]
| But here's the whole thing still. That wasn't even the problem.
The problem is it didn't change that much in this.
It's just that the total number of people on these two polls that committed to a candidate.
|
Sam:
[43:12]
| It is 73 yes 73 sam 70 fucking percent this is i've got.
|
Ivan:
[43:22]
| 27 fucking percent undecided what the fuck do i do with this shit that's that's retarded well.
|
Sam:
[43:31]
| This is the same pattern i've been seeing on the state polls on election graph all of the close states have massive numbers members in this neither category.
Now the neither category, the way I'm doing it includes both the third parties and the undecideds, but they're big.
It's huge. And both of these, of course, of course, undecided, everybody at the end has to either decide or not vote. Or.
|
Ivan:
[43:55]
| Not vote.
|
Sam:
[43:56]
| Right. The third party ones, most of those people end up picking one of the big two, historically.
|
Ivan:
[44:04]
| Historically.
|
Sam:
[44:05]
| Unless you got like a Ross Perot kind of situation. Right.
And you still always get a few percent, but it's always the number of people who say they'll vote third party months ahead of the election is always much bigger than the number who actually do.
But this is why like these hints as to how are the undeciding, how are the undecideds breaking are important.
Right now, right now in both Iowa and New Hampshire, you're only talking the Republican Republican primary or caucus, even though you got all these extra people in New Hampshire.
But if you've got even Republican undecideds breaking against Trump, that tells you something. Right.
But, but it's different Trump versus Haley than Trump versus Biden.
|
Ivan:
[44:53]
| No, I know. I know. I know. It's just right.
|
Sam:
[44:57]
| There are a lot of Republicans who will be like, I hate Trump, but Biden's worse.
|
Ivan:
[45:03]
| But but there are also a lot which we've seen in recent like special elections.
|
Sam:
[45:08]
| Yeah well.
|
Ivan:
[45:08]
| I hate you know i hate this position but i'm just not gonna go vote.
|
Sam:
[45:14]
| Yeah and this is a problem also even when we get to polling doing likely voter screens they're all guessing like i mean i shouldn't say guessing so they have different methodologies for figuring out who's likely Some of them just ask, are you likely to vote?
But a lot of it is just modeling, trying to guess who's going to show up at the polls in New York. And you can be wrong.
|
Ivan:
[45:38]
| It's just that we have never – look, it's just that we have never experienced this.
I mean, I will say because it's different –, compared to say you know we've got an incumbent president running against somebody and usually the number of undecided people yeah it's just nowhere near this big right and it i mean it's just nuts and i can't say for sure how they are breaking all we could do is okay let's look at how How any recent elections where you've had items that either party considers important and how the votes are broken.
I mean, that's one indicator, but it's just, I feel this is so nuts because it's just, we just never lived through anything like this at the moment. moment.
That's what we spoke about where so many people are still at, how the fuck are we doing Trump Biden again?
|
Sam:
[46:48]
| Right. I'll give one example from election graphs right now.
I had noted this on the Commodions Corner Slack, and I'd also posted it on the election graphs Mastodon.
Pennsylvania for the first time since October slipped from my weak Trump category back to weak Biden okay it's close either way, But so, you know, from October until a couple of days ago, Pennsylvania was on the Trump side of defense.
OK. In my five poll average. OK. It is now back to just barely Biden.
It's Biden by point nine percent. So it's a small margin.
But here's the thing that neither category we're talking about. Sixteen percent.
|
Ivan:
[47:34]
| Jesus Christ.
|
Sam:
[47:35]
| So like what we have is Biden 42 in my average and the election graph average, which includes like just under two months worth of polls at the moment.
We had Biden 42.5, Trump 41.6, but 16% saying, give me something else.
Either undecided or Kennedy or West or Stein or some nonsense like that.
|
Ivan:
[48:02]
| Yeah, exactly.
|
Sam:
[48:03]
| But the thing is, though, the margin is 0.9%.
|
Ivan:
[48:09]
| 0.9%?
|
Sam:
[48:11]
| But there's 16% out there going neither one.
And so all you need is if the undecideds, in fact, break one way or another, they make the difference here.
the the the forget forget the margin of error on the polls themselves here's the margin of error of like nearly 20 of people saying i don't know what the fuck i'm gonna do right.
|
Ivan:
[48:42]
| Right and yeah i mean that's it basically i mean it's just i i it's it's really just it's it's something that we We just have never gone through before.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| Now, it is possible that these undecided numbers collapse as we get closer to the election.
|
Ivan:
[49:07]
| I'm going to think that sometime during the summer.
|
Sam:
[49:11]
| People start paying more attention. People start actually believing that this is happening.
|
Ivan:
[49:17]
| I think that people finally, well, you know what?
Because one of the things that will change, of course, especially with the polling and whatnot, not it's that we're not pulling more for Haley we're not doing whatever look, trump is the presumptive nominee biden has no challengers by does the presumptive nominee so it really comes back to people forgetting about all these dreams about you know whatever the haley miracle or whatever the hell well.
|
Sam:
[49:49]
| Speaking of the haley miracle let's transitioned into my part of.
|
Ivan:
[49:53]
| This it's not a comet haley's comet yeah there we go haley's comet there you you go that's what we're gonna get yeah what was the last time haley's comet weather what is it well we'll be a lot will we be alive the next time it comes comes by it.
|
Sam:
[50:06]
| Depends how long we live.
|
Ivan:
[50:08]
| How old we like oh okay yeah i mean is it possible look.
|
Sam:
[50:11]
| The the comet comes every 76 years if i remember correctly and.
|
Ivan:
[50:15]
| I think we should i mean we and the last time.
|
Sam:
[50:17]
| The last time it came if i remember right i was an early teenager.
|
Ivan:
[50:21]
| So we got so if.
|
Sam:
[50:23]
| We if we live into our 80s late.
|
Ivan:
[50:25]
| 80s okay So let's see, next time, 2061. Hey, we got a shot. Fuck. Okay.
|
Sam:
[50:33]
| I have to be 90. I have to live to 90.
|
Ivan:
[50:36]
| What do you mean, 90? What year is this now?
|
Sam:
[50:40]
| Forget what year it is. I was born in 71. So 61 is 90 years.
|
Ivan:
[50:45]
| So 90. Oh, come on. We can do this. Okay, well, since I'm gambling that we'll be alive, we'll do a watch party for Haley's Comet. 2061.
|
Sam:
[50:55]
| Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[50:55]
| That's my commitment right now. I'm going to put it down on my calendar.
|
Sam:
[50:58]
| You know, by the time we get to that year, we should be able to have a picnic on Haley's Comet.
|
Ivan:
[51:07]
| That'll be something. I mean, we didn't we like with that with that dark project, we moved the comet, right?
|
Sam:
[51:14]
| What we hit a small asteroid. We moved it. We've we've like we've landed on a couple of comments.
We've looked. Yeah. Anyway. So.
|
Ivan:
[51:23]
| You want to have a picnic on the Comet. I think that's a lot of work.
I'd rather just have a watch party.
|
Sam:
[51:29]
| Especially if we're 90.
|
Ivan:
[51:32]
| And we'll have fried chicken. We'll have fried chicken.
|
Sam:
[51:35]
| Fried chicken.
|
Ivan:
[51:36]
| We'll get a sampler. We'll get like some KFC, get like some Publix. We'll get a sampler.
And by then we'll have probably have some pills that, you know, will allow us to be able to eat it without any negative health effects.
|
Sam:
[51:52]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[51:53]
| Okay. All right. So what we got?
|
Sam:
[51:56]
| Okay. So I was getting to like my section is going to be on Haley.
and like, like you said, the Haley miracle, but here's the thing.
Like the consensus is what we said. It's like, this is over.
Trump's got this in less, like practically unless he drops dead. Okay.
But right after New Hampshire, the wall street journal put out an editorial, and several other people have said, Haley should stick in this thing and keep running running all the way to the convention, even if she loses every single state.
Because it will be useful to have someone else with delegates at the convention.
For I guess the theory is that if something at the very last second happens to make Donald Trump unacceptable, they could have some sort of delegate battle at the convention.
And you could start with her group of delegates like, and you predicted at the, on our prediction show that there'd be some kind of delegate shenanigans, but here's the thing too.
Donald Trump.
His folks control the central committee of the RNC right now.
They're the ones who draft the rules about what can happen at the convention and what can't happen at the convention.
And they're not going to allow a scenario that allows some upstart with 20% of the delegates or something to come in and cause trouble.
trouble like if you remember there was some talk in 2016 of Cruz doing some bullshit like that at the convention and they shut his ass down like he got to give a speech where he didn't robustly endorse Trump but nothing else happened like there was no and then he was like kissing.
|
Ivan:
[54:01]
| The ring like.
|
Sam:
[54:02]
| Like a few days later right I mean exactly and and so like I guess the question is like If you're Haley in this scenario right now, do you, how long do you go before you drop out?
Or do you try to do this scenario where you stick it out to the convention?
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| Listen here, here. Okay. You know, right.
That after what I understood is that after New Hampshire, she had a massive surge in donations.
Okay. All right. So she has had a ton of money coming into her.
|
Sam:
[54:35]
| She's got money to stick around for a while if she wants to.
Not necessarily forever.
|
Ivan:
[54:39]
| But and and by the way, tonight, the story on The New York Times is that she's going, well, which we said now for eight years.
And I guess Haley finally decided to be the one to do it, which is kind of like bizarre.
Haley assails Trump is unhinged and dismisses calls to exit race.
Yes. So she is actually finally doing what we have said Republican opponents that wanted to beat him should be doing, which is instead of avoiding talking about him like he doesn't exist.
And attacking each other is to actually fucking attack him.
|
Sam:
[55:21]
| Well, Christie did this and he got crushed.
|
Ivan:
[55:24]
| Well, but it wasn't all of them doing it. Right. You understand what I'm saying?
I mean, Christie was doing that while they were arguing against each other and attacking each other.
And it wasn't like all of these non-Trumpers. they kept doing, you know, they kept fighting amongst themselves for the most part. Okay.
|
Sam:
[55:51]
| Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think Haley's theory of the case here is that until it was one-on-one, it wasn't time for that.
Now that it's one-on-one it's time for that. So she's been since New Hampshire, she has been getting increasingly aggressive in her anti-Trump attacks.
She's been bringing up his mental acuity. She's been bringing up the unhingedness.
She's being like, she's being more direct in the attacks than she ever was before.
Yeah. There's still some people saying she should be even more direct than that, but she's been more direct than she ever has.
Um, now will that get her more support in the Republican primaries or less?
|
Ivan:
[56:31]
| Who knows? I have no idea.
|
Sam:
[56:33]
| And what people have said overall was that New Hampshire was the friendliest state on the calendar for this kind of thing on the Republican primaries.
The only other one they say has a similar sort of dynamic is Michigan.
But everything else is much more oriented towards diehard Republicans and, You know, do you like this argument is the kind of argument that sways people who are already anti-Trump to begin with?
Does it convert any Trumpies? I'm not sure it does.
But again, what you've also got is, and I think this is part of the Haley theory too, and I'm not going to like the crazy Haley's going to win theory, but it's that as time time progresses over the next couple of months, Trump is going to get increasingly unhinged and you can make this case even hot higher.
You, you, it will resonate more.
|
Ivan:
[57:38]
| Well, yeah. And I, and I guess that that is, yeah.
And I think that that is a, look, if you're going to try to knock him off, this is a reasonable strategy.
Okay. To pursue suit because definitely he will probably go more more crazy.
|
Sam:
[57:58]
| And you've got you've got a couple things one we're and we're going to talk i'm sure we're going to talk about legal cases in the next segment if you don't bring it up i will but you know he lost money to ejc to eugene carroll he's about to lose a shit ton on his company probably next week these things are making him unhinged He's got the criminal stuff going on.
Plus, Haley is now baiting him and doing things that almost seem intentionally designed to get him going and get him to go over the edge. Yeah.
And and so I guess that's the theory there is that, like, maybe if you physically drive Donald Trump completely insane, maybe he loses some supports. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[58:55]
| Or maybe it's a heart attack for all we know.
|
Sam:
[58:58]
| Well, yeah, maybe you drive him to a heart attack. but like people have also mentioned so so one one reason like the wall street journal case is you never know something may happen it's good to have a backup ready to go you know so hayley stick it out stay in it it's it's it's healthy to go ahead even if you keep losing keep running all the way through the end right.
|
Ivan:
[59:22]
| Right right right.
|
Sam:
[59:23]
| That that's one case Another is Haley knows she's not going anywhere in 2024.
She's setting up to pick up the pieces in 2028 after Trump loses.
|
Ivan:
[59:38]
| I mean, that could be, could be, could be. That's another plan, yeah.
|
Sam:
[59:44]
| So what do you think? Is she going to stick it through to the convention?
Or like, if I had to bet right now, I'd say she's out after Super Tuesday.
She will stick it through to South Carolina because that's her state.
|
Ivan:
[59:56]
| I mean, usually, I mean, usually that is the drop that date for most of these people.
|
Sam:
[1:00:02]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:03]
| Super Tuesday is, you know, the day that, you know, you get so many results, you know, whether you're anywhere close or you're done.
And then people just, and usually the donors and everybody, just the money evaporates and it's like, whatever. What is super Tuesday, by the way?
|
Sam:
[1:00:22]
| March 5th, I believe. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:24]
| So it's a while.
|
Sam:
[1:00:26]
| I will confirm. I've got the calendar as one of my permanent tabs here.
Super Tuesday, I was right, March 5th, Tuesday, March 5th.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:35]
| You know, and remembering the last Democratic primary cycle where we weren't sure what the fuck, you know, who the fuck the nominee was going to be.
And all of a sudden, Biden scored a whole bunch of wins.
|
Sam:
[1:00:50]
| In South Carolina.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:52]
| And, but, but not just South Carolina, but, but he, he then scored more, you know, well.
|
Sam:
[1:00:58]
| Yeah, after South Carolina, a bunch of people dropped out after super Tuesday, everyone else dropped out.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:03]
| And it's one of those things where that's one of those, you know, catalysts for this kind of stuff.
And I think that also, I think it will be a catalyst for people.
Finally, us not getting polls were 30% of the fucking voters are undecided, you know, Well, because this is just, these people, get the fuck out of my face with 30% of the side.
Go fuck yourselves, all of you. I mean, this is just bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:01:29]
| You're a whole bunch of fucking liars. What is so hard about this decision?
|
Ivan:
[1:01:33]
| What is so fucking hard? I mean, get the fuck out of here, all of you. Now.
|
Sam:
[1:01:39]
| To be fair, like a significant chunk of that 30% are people who are saying like they're going to vote for, you know, Kennedy or whatever. i.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:48]
| Mean look bull fucking shit nobody you guys couldn't see you know we have video over here i'm giving the middle finger to all of these people you're all full of it you're all completely full of it you know not all of you but 90 history has shown 90 plus percent of you are all full of shit.
|
Sam:
[1:02:10]
| Yes. So anyway, I think Haley, I think there's no chance she drops out before South Carolina. That's her state.
Now she's going to get crushed in South Carolina, even though it's her state, I think, unless we have one of those mega events like Donald Trump has a heart attack or whatever.
Unless we have something major like that, she's going to lose South Carolina.
She's although I was looking let's check the latest South Carolina polls, Now, there haven't been a lot. Have there been any since? Yeah, there have been a couple since New Hampshire.
But the averages have Trump 63%, Haley 29.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:02]
| Wait, say that? Is Trump 36, Haley 29?
|
Sam:
[1:03:06]
| No, no. Trump 63. 63.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:09]
| I got that. I was like, okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:13]
| Trump 63, Haley 29 in the 538 averages right now. Well, look.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:20]
| Here's one thing. We'll see about that because one of the things is the numbers after everybody dropped out, the numbers in New Hampshire changed substantially.
|
Sam:
[1:03:31]
| There have only been two polls in South Carolina since New Hampshire.
One of them has Trump up by 40%. The other one has Trump up by 27%.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:43]
| OK, well, you know, it may may well be that that's going to be the final. Well.
|
Sam:
[1:03:48]
| And look, look, it may be. I mean, Haley's whole theory is that you got a month between now and South Carolina or almost back to the calendar when South Carolina and the Republican side, February 24th for South Carolina and the Republican side.
so you got nearly a month there and i guess her whole theory is maybe donald trump just, i i almost laugh saying it like i you try to say maybe donald trump finally does something that makes people who love him abandon him and it's like well what the fuck could he possibly do that he hasn't done already to make them abandon him you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:32]
| I don't know. Take a shit in their front porch. I don't know. Who knows?
I mean, I'm like, I swear to God, it's just these people.
|
Sam:
[1:04:43]
| There were all those news reports two or three weeks ago about how bad Trump smells.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:49]
| No, yes, I have heard.
|
Sam:
[1:04:51]
| Yeah, there are various people who have worked with Trump in the past who have basically gone on a record on TV and stuff now saying the thing nobody ever talks about is how bad he smells.
smells it's like okay this seemed like a coherent like people had decided to make a point of this for a couple weeks and okay now it's faded away again but it's like there are lots of reasons to like not like trump i'm not sure his smell is one of them but okay i.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:19]
| Mean i mean it's not helping his case on to me.
|
Sam:
[1:05:22]
| But yeah i don't know i i feel like the the the question is for I guess it always comes down to money in the end for people like Haley.
When does the funding dry up? That's when she drops out. If there really are people who are serious about, like, we're going to fund you all the way to the convention no matter what.
We know you're going to lose, but we don't care. We want you at the convention, then maybe.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:47]
| I'm pretty sure to the fund. Like I said, it's going to be Super Tuesday.
I think that's really what it all.
|
Sam:
[1:05:55]
| I think that's perfectly reasonable. reasonable like maybe maybe she gets humiliated so badly in south carolina that she drops out then but again like i said about desantis even though desantis got out earlier like once you get to south carolina it's really only like one more week to get you to super tuesday so why not wait one more week right you know i don't know yeah so anyway no shall we take take a break, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:26]
| Let's take a break. I need to go get something as well. I'm out of water.
|
Sam:
[1:06:31]
| I got a nice big bottle of water. I've been chugging it, but I still have more left. Anyway, here we go.
Here's the next break. We'll be back after this.
Do you want to understand what, And we are back. So, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:49]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:07:50]
| Your turn. Your turn. What exciting newsy thing do we talk about?
We got all kinds of things. Which one do you pick?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:00]
| Let's go to, we'll go with the legal stuff. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:08:05]
| All right.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:05]
| So, Sam, they're trying to make Donald's wallet a lot lighter.
|
Sam:
[1:08:12]
| Yeah. Yeah, so the $83.3 million is the verdict in the E.
Gene Carroll defamation trial, take two, which is it's interesting because it's take it's the second one to finish, but it was the first one to start.
They you know, this was this was a trial based on stuff he said while he was president that got delayed because he was president.
And then there was another trial that was based on things he said after he was president that actually got done first.
And that was that was actually based both on the sexual assault itself and defamation.
The sexual assault based on New York's. New York had passed a temporary time constrained thing to let people sue for sexual assault after the statute of limitations had normally expired.
So, Eugene Carroll did that, as well as an additional defamation.
She won $5 million in that case.
Then we went back to the first place, first case, plus Donald Trump defamed her some more.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:18]
| Oh, is that bad? bad.
|
Sam:
[1:09:21]
| Anyway, end result is that there were some direct damages due to pain and suffering and rehabilitating a reputation and stuff like that.
But some 60 some million out of the 83 million was punitive, basically saying that Trump was clearly unrepentant and hadn't stopped doing this and just needed to be punished for doing it.
It wasn't directly like compensating for some damage that E.
Jean Carroll had, but it was like, try to make him stop.
Now, as we're recording this, it's only been a few hours since the verdict and Trump has made some posts on Truth Social talking about how this is unfair fair and he's going to appeal and all of this kind of stuff.
But quite notably so far, I'm not sure if this will last, but so far he is not repeated the claim that she's a liar and about the whole sexual assault thing or otherwise re defamed her.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:33]
| So, so basically he decided that maybe it's a bad idea to keep adding to the bill. Well.
|
Sam:
[1:10:39]
| At least so far, you know, it's only been a few hours. I would not put it past him at all to, you know, wake up at three in the morning and start defaming her again. Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:51]
| I'm going to tell you this, that I do think that right now, one of the things in a case like this, which I've seen happen before, is that, yes, he will have that he will have to post a substantial bond to appeal.
appeal okay yes not not not one million that you know he's gonna have to post a shitload of cash okay all right yeah i mean the reporting.
|
Sam:
[1:11:17]
| So far has been essentially he has to post the full amount.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:21]
| Maybe you can get away with a little less maybe a little less but he's gotta have to post 83 fucking million dollars otherwise if he doesn't post the 83 fucking million dollars He has to do what Rudy did, which is file for bankruptcy.
Those are really his only options right now to appeal this fucking thing.
And so I'm going to guess that.
|
Sam:
[1:11:43]
| And let me throw in here, we are all anticipating that sometime in the next few days, the judge in the civil trial of the Trump org has said he expects to give his number by the 31st.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:00]
| Which is probably going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:12:04]
| Yes. Hundreds of millions of dollars for that. And so add these two together.
There's a question whether Trump can actually pull that out of stuff that's already liquid.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:18]
| It's going to be a problem. It's going to be a problem because unlike say, say, People have been talking about how Kushner's gotten a couple of billion from the Saudis.
But the couple of billion wasn't to pay a fucking lawsuit.
The couple of billion is, hey, I'm going to buy a property.
You're backing some assets. That isn't the case here.
you've got to come up with several hundreds of millions of cash basically just that you're you're lighting on fire at this point and so i i mean i'm not saying that's going to be impossible.
But i mean look we have trump in the past has had cash crunch issues it's the reason why he was so desperate to get his hands others father's properties you know back in the mid-2000s he needed that money badly okay in order to prop up his empire and then what kept propping it up later was a cash flow stream that he doesn't have anymore which was his television show and other their stuff.
And this was shown in an analysis by New York times when they finally got all the financial records and Mary Trump's lawsuits. And, uh, Look, it's, it's, this is not, this is going to be interesting to see.
That's all I'm saying. Well.
|
Sam:
[1:14:00]
| And we, we obviously don't know exactly how big the next verdict is going to be on the company.
And it's, and it isn't just him, like his adult sons are on it. The company is on it.
So, you know, but the company is likely to be frozen in New York anyway.
So there's going to be some forced liquidations regardless, probably.
so but like the exact amount is unknown right now so if the judge goes low then maybe he can pull it off you know maybe he can pay it out of stuff he already has look if the judge goes high maybe he can't i.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:35]
| Mean the estimates that i saw of most that were coming up was in the i mean the the probability is at least 200 million dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:14:44]
| Well trump claims and you know you can laugh Appropriately, any sentence that starts with that.
Trump claims that he has about 500 million in liquid cash that he can just, you know, he doesn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:59]
| Here's the thing about having 500 million in liquid cash. Okay. All right.
You know, when I was at my previous employer at Kodak, and this is publicly listed information, we showed on the, on our, on our balance sheet, 300 million in cash.
The problem was that about 200 million of it was restricted.
We couldn't really easily access it without creating a whole bunch of other problems.
And my guess is that even if he did have $500 million in cash, the problem is that putting all that cash towards this would create other problems for his businesses.
Okay? So, because they won't have enough liquidity, they won't have enough. Well.
|
Sam:
[1:15:53]
| And remember specifically in New York, again, part of the penalty is you can't do business in New York anymore. more and you so there's going to be he's going to have to liquidate stuff anyway even before you get to paying the fines that he's going to be levied.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:08]
| Well but the thing is right right exactly so yeah i mean it's it's it's problematic i mean i don't i don't see how it's i i'd be, shocked if he if it's just all of a sudden he writes a check and it's no problem well.
|
Sam:
[1:16:26]
| You know No, he said before too, like, you know, he can, any of these financial issues is no problem because the Saudis will just pay whatever for whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:36]
| Well, well, but that's, that was the point that I was making at the beginning that the Saudis will pay a certain amount of money, but I don't, I don't.
|
Sam:
[1:16:45]
| This is what you're talking about with Kushner. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:48]
| I just, I think that. Well.
|
Sam:
[1:16:51]
| The implication with the Saudi comments that have been made in the past are, it doesn't matter what this property is actually worth because the saudis will pay me 10 times that amount just because they like me.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:02]
| Oh i mean okay that that that that's that's certainly possible i mean i guess.
|
Sam:
[1:17:11]
| Of of course how well that would go off in the middle of the presidential campaign is also fantastic i'm sure it'll go all.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:17]
| Perfect down perfectly well.
|
Sam:
[1:17:18]
| You know and if the saudis don't come through i'm sure uh vlad will yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:23]
| There you go vlad vladimir will write a check i mean we always got good old vlad so.
|
Sam:
[1:17:29]
| You know no but so is the expectation that first first of all he does want to appeal these things right like so so he's gonna have to put up this money he has to put up the money so is the x so is the because i guess the alternative is don't appeal them but But then he still has to pay, right? Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:48]
| He has to pay the money and it's gone. That's it. Done. Look, I know that, you know, in our in an example, this is a case that a company, my employer was involved in and lost.
OK, recently, about a year and a half ago, Hewlett Packard had sued Oracle related to certain things that happened about a decade ago.
And there was a verdict against I guess Oracle for about two and a half billion dollars. if I remember.
And Oracle appealed it, but they had to post the $2.5 billion.
We had to... Oracle had to post $2.5 billion cash.
They had to put it up in order to appeal the verdict. And eventually, Oracle lost, and, I had to take a significant write-down for that. And, you know, HP and HP Enterprise were able to keep that money.
But it's, yeah, I mean, it's just that this is a normal thing.
If you want to fucking appeal this thing.
|
Sam:
[1:18:44]
| You need to put the money up. So, so, so let's, let's review the choices again.
So choice number one, just say, fuck it, I'll pay her. Right.
And I guess, and I guess pay the New York people. Yeah. And just, we're going to give them money.
Yep. Choice number two, you put the money in appropriate escrow and you appeal.
Yeah. Choice number three that you mentioned is let's go the bankruptcy route.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:09]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:19:11]
| What do you think the odds are of that happening and how does that complicate the situation?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:16]
| Man, I mean, shit.
|
Sam:
[1:19:18]
| Because it's not like Trump hasn't been bankrupt before, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:21]
| Well, the thing is, well, okay, he has put some of his entities into bankruptcy. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:27]
| Right, he hasn't personally been banned.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:29]
| Exactly. So that's a very different thing.
I'll talk about, you know, look, I really think that a lot of his, well, I really think, a lot of, it's a thing, this is reality.
His persona in front of the whole MAGA crowd is heavily dependent on this.
|
Sam:
[1:19:53]
| On being rich and successful.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:55]
| Right. Right. So.
|
Sam:
[1:19:56]
| Smart businessman.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:59]
| Yeah, smart businessman. I don't care what the fuck, you know, a number of those diehards, and I'm going to guess a significant number, would look at him filing for bankruptcy.
I don't think that will, he doesn't want to do that.
He doesn't want that image. So, I don't know what the hell, So, I mean, I don't know what the hell he does.
Look, your Saudi route thing is not that crazy. But that's also going to look terrible.
|
Sam:
[1:20:35]
| Well, yes, because it like completely puts out in the open the whole, like, because why would the Saudis do it?
Saudis would do it because they hope he becomes president and they have influence over buying a president.
Exactly. You know, and completely out in the open. I mean, it was it was practically out and open during his first presidency.
But like in this kind of scenario, there'd be no doubt whatsoever.
It would be like, hey, here's a few billion dollars to help you with your problems.
We trust you'll pay us back later.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:05]
| Yeah, we're buying a president. So.
I am so curious as to figure out what the fuck he's going to do.
|
Sam:
[1:21:16]
| Well, and like I said, I think a lot of it depends on exactly how much the New York judgment is.
Like it's if, if, if the New York judge low balls him and comes out with like 50 million or something, maybe he can swing all this.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:29]
| Listen, I'm telling you, I think he's going to struggle. I think, look, coming up with the 83 million is going to be a struggle.
|
Sam:
[1:21:37]
| Even without the New York.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:38]
| Yeah. Even without the New York case. It's a lot of fucking money.
|
Sam:
[1:21:44]
| A lot of his stuff, actually, now that you speak of it, is already under court supervised usage out of the New York case. Right. From the corporate entity.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:57]
| Here's the other issue that he has. I'm like somebody like, say, like Elon Musk. Okay.
Now, Elon Musk, the bulk of his wealth is tied to stock that is pretty liquid. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:22:09]
| Right. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:10]
| I mean, oh, okay, I need a few billion, I'll sell more Tesla stock.
That's pretty straightforward.
In his case, his properties, for the most part, are not publicly traded like that.
And so, if he needs to turn them into cash, he either has to borrow money or sell them for whatever they're worth.
look he's made some sales okay of properties i mean he sold the the damn hotel in washington dc okay the one that was like right by the white house and he got he got a princely price for that hotel okay i mean he got 300 million worth i remember yeah and it was it was crazy how much money he got who bought it some obscure group from miami that who the hell knows where the hell they got their money okay so money laundering yeah that's what it looked like for god's sakes, so he'd have to come up with something like that again somebody and i'm sure even after he sold it he got 300 million i i if i recall there were several hundred million in debt tied up to it But anyway, so a lot of it was Wanda paying off debt. A lot of his properties are encumbered.
Yeah. Look, the route that he described, the Saudi route, hey, I've got Trump Doral.
It's worth $200 million. Now we'll give you $4 billion.
|
Sam:
[1:23:51]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:51]
| It's not, and we'll buy a president with that. Here we go.
He's available for sale.
|
Sam:
[1:24:01]
| I don't know. Now, how much of this stuff, like, in order to appeal, he has to put up the money.
So there are not that many ways for him to delay this. No.
Because everything else, the technique has been like appeal, appeal, delay, delay, do something, something, something to put off the inevitable for months, years, whatever.
But all of these things, it sounds like, are actually going to come to a head over the next couple months. Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:31]
| Yes. This is definitely has to come up to a head. So either he's going to have to pay or he's going to put up the bond period. I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:24:38]
| Or declare bankruptcy. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:40]
| Um.
|
Sam:
[1:24:41]
| Although even if he declares bankruptcy, right. The, these, this kind of debt comes to the top of the list, right? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:48]
| Yeah. No, no. Yeah, totally. So I pulled up the information on the sale of that hotel.
So we're talking about these crazy sales. Okay.
The price was $375 million. Okay.
And the one thing is that he was able to get $1.4 million per hotel room, which is a sky-high number for a hotel that apparently the numbers that were obtained said that it lost $70 million over four years.
It's, you know, I mean, and here, has been sold by his family to a Miami-based investor fund.
|
Sam:
[1:25:38]
| So we have no idea.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:40]
| Yeah. Yeah.
For what it described as a record price per room for the city.
And so, fuck, yeah. I mean, this is an avenue that he has, yeah.
Look, I mean, there was the fucking house here in Palm Beach that he sold to a Russian for about a hundred fucking million dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:26:02]
| That wasn't worth nearly that much.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:04]
| That wasn't worth anywhere nearly that much.
So, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:10]
| Okay. so anything else on that before i pivot to something a little bit no.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:17]
| Let's pivot let's let's let's let's let's.
|
Sam:
[1:26:19]
| Pivot pivot pivot.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:22]
| Pivot pivot the pivot.
|
Sam:
[1:26:24]
| The whole couch thing yeah yes anyway you know in addition to the whole friend scenario there's a whole mathematical field of research about what shape of couch can have the most area and still go around a corner it's actually a very like there's a whole history going back decades of people researching this thing and there's like the the current world record holder is like you know it's roughly shaped like a sort of twisted beam that twisted bean b-e-a-n with like 15 sides or something then.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:03]
| Interesting.
|
Sam:
[1:27:06]
| Anyway, it's fun. Go Google it. There's some good videos on it.
Anyway, no, I wanted to hit as the last thing, and of course, it's still Trump related.
There's this whole immigration deal thing that's been going through the Senate.
Basically, here's the scenario.
Biden and most of the people in both the Senate and the House want to pass an aid deal for Ukraine, like on a bipartisan basis.
However, you know, the usual suspects in the Republican side are like, we don't want to give any more money to Ukraine.
OK, so what the Republicans did was basically put a price on Ukraine. They said.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:57]
| OK.
|
Sam:
[1:27:57]
| The only way you will get Ukraine aid is if we do a massive deal on the southern border and we massively do all the things Republicans want to do on the southern border.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:15]
| Which are like, what are those things?
|
Sam:
[1:28:19]
| Well the exact parameters of the final deal were not released and i should say final in quotes that's part of what i'm going to talk about here but basically things like you know a lot more border guards a lot more stringent like sending people back a lot more efforts to like make the border into a fortress where you don't let people in in the first place and if they do come in You send them back as quickly as possible, all this kind of stuff.
Basically, and Biden instructed his people like a month and a half ago to, okay, fine.
We agree that the southern border is a major problem.
Let's negotiate in good faith. And there was a bipartisan group of senators who spent nights and weekends and holidays.
Hashing through a deal on the Southern border.
And from all reports, Biden gave Republicans like 90% of what they wanted.
Like people like Lindsey Graham were involved in the negotiations.
And a few weeks back where we're saying, everybody, we need to take this deal and we need to take it now.
Now, this is the best thing we've had on the table in decades from a conservative Republican point of view.
The Democrats are on board and we will not get something better than this.
Even if Donald Trump is elected and we get a Republican House and a Republican Senate, we will not be able to get something this good through.
through because if this exact same thing came up in that scenario, the Democrats would block it with the filibuster. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:06]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30:07]
| Yeah. So this is, take this while it's hot.
You must take this deal. And so you had like, you know, again, Lindsey Graham, you had Romney, you had McConnell, all of these folks were really pushing this and saying, look, we've got this deal.
We're, we're hashing out the final details, but we got this. and we should do this.
Then Johnson on the Republican side, our current Speaker of the House on the Republican side, said, you know, actually, I've talked to Donald Trump about this and Donald Trump says no.
So this is dead on arrival in the House.
And more conversations came out. Apparently, Donald Trump has been doing the rounds calling various senators as well.
So a bunch of Republican senators started saying they were against it, too.
And Romney came out and said, look, here's the deal.
Here's what's going on. Donald Trump has explicitly been calling people all over the Senate and the House and saying, look, we don't want to make a deal on the immigration situation because the immigration situation looks bad for Biden right now.
And we don't want to give him a win of any sort because it's better for me to be able to say, look at how bad Biden is doing on the border.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:35]
| That actually doing anything about it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:05]
| Saying, my God, this is the most conservative, strong, meaty immigration.
It gives us like everything we've been wanting for 20 years.
And Donald Trump is going to spike it because it might be bad for his election prospects.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:28]
| Ah, well, of course.
|
Sam:
[1:32:31]
| And so that's where we are right now. Now, a lot of Democrats have potential issues with this bill, too, because they feel like it's very much leaning towards the conservative view of just keep the bastards out as opposed to let's figure out a way to humanely let them in and in a way that's controllable and we handle it properly and we have the right resources to support them and all that kind of stuff.
but at least it's yeah it's some sort of motion towards dealing with what is a problem on the border right now and it people have been saying it's like this is the republicans showing they cannot take yes for an answer basically biden and the senate democrats are saying fine we want the the ukraine aid we recognize that the border really is a problem this is not how we would deal with the border problem but we'll give you 90 of what you want 95 of what you want here is a republican bill on immigration and the border we'll give it to you and the republicans can't take yes for an answer okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:44]
| But look i mean what like history repeats itself, I mean, the Affordable Care Act was basically the same shit.
|
Sam:
[1:33:55]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:56]
| 90 plus percent of what the fucking Republicans wanted in a health care bill.
|
Sam:
[1:34:02]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:02]
| And the fuckers, not one of those bastards voted for.
|
Sam:
[1:34:07]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:08]
| And it was 90 percent their fucking bill.
|
Sam:
[1:34:12]
| Yes. Yes, absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:15]
| These guys don't want to fix anything.
|
Sam:
[1:34:18]
| Right. Right. Even when you're fixing it the way they say they want it fixed.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:23]
| Even if I'm doing it the way that you're saying it should be done.
And I don't even agree. No.
|
Sam:
[1:34:30]
| Yeah. This is not some liberal immigration bill representing.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:36]
| You know.
|
Sam:
[1:34:38]
| AOC's priorities for the border.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:40]
| No. It's not bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:34:41]
| No.
It's literally, okay, this is what you want. Fine. Here it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:48]
| It's literally the fucking GOP wish list. And these assholes say no.
|
Sam:
[1:34:56]
| Yes. And it fundamentally comes down to the electoral calculus that it's better to have the border as an issue than to actually do something about it and take it off the table.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:10]
| But that's what happens to them with every issue.
That's what they want. They don't want to do anything. They just want to be able to talk about them in the election.
I mean, fuck, Mitt Romney said this about them. None of them are interested in governing.
|
Sam:
[1:35:28]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:28]
| None of them. They want their goddamn Fox News soundbites, their tweets, their clicks. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:35:37]
| And their Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:38]
| And Donald.
|
Sam:
[1:35:40]
| And Donald. Yes. Yes. And literally, it's like it looked like this thing had a chance until Donald started calling people up and saying, no, you're not doing this.
And so really and this brings home yet again, sort of Donald Trump's stranglehold on the elected Republicans in government.
I mean, it's like going against him is, you know, there are some people who will do it, but their political lives are in trouble the second they do, you know?
So, yeah, he's got a good track record of like, if you go against him, you don't stick around very much after that. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:32]
| I was looking at the numbers right now of expulsions at the open border in the South, the so-called, the number of apprehensions.
|
Sam:
[1:36:41]
| And how they're bigger than ever?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:44]
| Let's see. During, before Biden won the election, they were at about slightly under 50,000 apprehensions by month.
Right now, in the last month, they were close to 250,000.
mm-hmm 200 they're under 50,000 they're I mean literally I mean kin tupled and yet these guys have the fucking cojones, To say that, you know, the Democrats have an open border policy.
Give me a fucking break. I would love to have an open border policy.
|
Sam:
[1:37:20]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| So.
|
Sam:
[1:37:22]
| I mean, we've talked about this before.
Like the liberal-ish solution to this is, oh, we've got a supply and demand problem.
We don't have the right infrastructure to handle the number of people that want to come in. So we need to fix that.
Make it so we can process more people more quickly. make sure there's the right resources to help them settle once they get here.
Whereas the Republican view is, keep them out!
|
Ivan:
[1:37:51]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:37:52]
| Well, at least if they're brown.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:53]
| If they're brown.
|
Sam:
[1:37:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:55]
| They're black, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:37:57]
| Yes, if they're brown or black. If they're Norwegian, that's absolutely fine.
If they're Eastern European, even better.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:04]
| Yeah, well, I'll bring them all in.
|
Sam:
[1:38:06]
| You know. Yeah, so anyway, well, I, it's, it's just, it's just fun, fun.
It's interesting to watch this process play out and just be another example of how, from a policy perspective, the Republican party right now is just completely bankrupt.
There's nothing about policy that is really fundamental there, I guess, Yes, except being, you know, anti-gay and, you know, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant as as high level principles.
But but it's all it's all not negotiable.
It's just all like they're not after results of any. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:56]
| No, no, not at all. Oh, no!
|
Sam:
[1:38:59]
| Because you could take, like, even, like, And we brought up abortion, right? Like, you know, if the ultimate goal was reduce the number of abortions, the way to do it is not outlawed anyway.
The way to do it is to have better sex education and better birth control and better all this kind of, that's not what they want.
You know, that's the best way to reduce abortions.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:23]
| No, they want it as an issue. No, they want it. Again, they want an issue. That's all they want.
|
Sam:
[1:39:30]
| Well and and abortion specifically is backfiring them on them but who knows what these other things will do but uh yeah anyway that's all i gotta say about that it's just all right there yeah it's not about the actual thing they say it's about it's just not okay okay i think we're near the end yvonne do you wanna is there anything we've missed before i say the stuff at the end you did such a good job last time of the stuff at the end like i usually take a couple minutes and you you did it all in like 20 seconds or something mac.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:04]
| At 40 can we say something about the macintosh being 40.
|
Sam:
[1:40:08]
| Yes it's 40 it's 40 okay it's pretty much the same as it was on the day at launch right.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:18]
| Yeah just exactly like it absolutely i'm sure we were podcasting i mean i don't know why we We didn't start podcasting earlier.
|
Sam:
[1:40:27]
| Yeah. I mean, I remember the, the 1984 commercial with the, the, the hammer through the screen and all that kind of stuff. Introducing the Macintosh.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:37]
| Oh God. How can I forget? Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:41]
| I remember, let's see, like my first Mac was not until a few years later.
Like I, you know, I forget what mine was.
Mine was after you, you had a, you had an Apple two when you came to not Apple two, a Mac two X or Mac two X.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:58]
| I had a, I had a Mac two X. You're absolutely right. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:01]
| And I think my first one was like, what was their names of performers?
It was like a six, 10, six.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:09]
| Six yeah i was like yeah a.
|
Sam:
[1:41:12]
| Power pc 6100 that was my first mac.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:15]
| Yeah the 6100 yeah yeah that's right i'm.
|
Sam:
[1:41:19]
| Amazed i remember this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:20]
| You got that a little you got that a couple of years after i got mine yeah because mine i mean mine was i got an 89 so yours i think you got like a 93 something Something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:41:32]
| I, I got my first Mac after I graduated from college from college in college.
I had a Toshiba 1200 HB was the laptop thing I had.
I love that little machine. It was fun.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:45]
| I liked that little machine. It was fun. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:47]
| Um, but yeah, no, what, what, once I think what brought me over to Mac world was not Mac world, the thing, but anyway, was system seven.
Yeah. Once it was in color, once it had the slightly bigger screen and hard drive based instead of messing around with floppies and all that. Oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:13]
| No, floppies. Oh.
|
Sam:
[1:42:14]
| God.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:14]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:15]
| I went Mac and I never went back, except when I was forced to for various things.
But at home, I've been Mac ever since.
And I don't regret it. I still can't like, you know, I, you know, I, I don't want to win this machine. I'm sorry.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:32]
| I don't want, I mean, I, I, I, I can't remember last time I, I, whose windows machine I was messing with.
And I realized that I just haven't.
I haven't used windows in so long.
|
Sam:
[1:42:44]
| Oh yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:44]
| I was like, fuck, how the hell do you do this? Any of this shit?
I was like, it was, it was a little bit disconcerting. It.
|
Sam:
[1:42:52]
| So sometime last year I had to touch a windows set up for some reason for a short time.
And I, I was disoriented and confused.
And I know, I know that's just because I haven't done it in so long.
And I'm sure if I had to on a regular basis, I'd get used to all this stuff quickly. But well.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:11]
| I was like, Like, you know, I kind of figured, well, we have to find this setting here.
So I'm assuming the settings are here and so forth for whatever it was. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:43:21]
| I was able to find what I needed to find. But yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:26]
| Me too. But it's a little bit like it's even I was reading an article recently how the people at Microsoft themselves are just aghast at the current user interface of Windows.
windows at this moment themselves.
|
Sam:
[1:43:43]
| And so.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:45]
| I was like if that's there if that's the micro if that's the windows team's internal assessment then by god but but you know i don't know i i i i just don't i don't use it anymore and i haven't found any need for it so i've just.
|
Sam:
[1:44:02]
| Yeah no i i mean my my son has parallels on his mac because there are a couple of like things that he wanted to do once and i'll occasionally like once every few months see it up on his machine that he's doing something on there but i don't know and and i do understand like if if you're like if you're a gamer there are a lot of things that are available on windows you know mac has just never been a gaming platform and maybe they'll get into that world at some point but that has not been a priority in a long long time and so like if you are a die-hard gamer and you're just gonna you want the top of the line you're gonna max out everything and build yourself a custom gaming rig and and and play whatever on that okay fine have fun that's not me so i.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:01]
| Was having this discussion with somebody recently and i was like building your own thing or whatever and i'm like like look i'm done.
|
Sam:
[1:45:08]
| I'm out i'm not building.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:11]
| Anymore that's it it's you know yeah i'm out.
|
Sam:
[1:45:14]
| Yeah all right okay okay all right that's enough happy birthday macintosh i guess yay happy birthday yeah okay oh i just hit something yeah anyway there you go yeah i'm i'm amazing yes, Time for the stuff at the end. You all guys know? Yeah, right? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:40]
| Did you read them all?
|
Sam:
[1:45:42]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:43]
| I did.
|
Sam:
[1:45:44]
| Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there. You can find out all the ways to reach us. Email, Facebook.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:51]
| Find the things.
|
Sam:
[1:45:52]
| The things. The things. Email Facebook Mastodon. I don't even know why we keep Facebook on there at this point.
Occasionally, someone will like the thing on Facebook.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:02]
| Some people will come up and Ed likes our podcast all the time. Yeah, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:46:07]
| Put comments.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:08]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:09]
| Anyway, you can find all the ways to contact us. Please do. We love to hear from you. We don't hear from you enough.
You can also find our archives, including transcripts, for a while now.
I forget when I started. Last year sometime. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:23]
| If we look at our Slack in general, it seems like we've had an – I think we've had somebody eavesdropping on our, on our recent conversation is all I'm going to say right now.
|
Sam:
[1:46:36]
| You've had some on the Slack, like right now, something, something new. I'm just.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:41]
| Yes, somebody posted something. Yes. On the Slack. And I'm like, I feel like what the hell the.
|
Sam:
[1:46:49]
| The little meme from Peter. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:52]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:52]
| You think he's eavesdropping on our recording right now?
|
Ivan:
[1:46:56]
| I'm like, what the hell? I mean, he's like, what the hell? I mean, it was like, like what we were talking about exactly. What the hell, man? Pete, I don't know, man.
You know, I don't know what the hell you're doing at that company that you're working at that apparently makes our computers. But, you know, whatever it is, you got to turn it off.
|
Sam:
[1:47:12]
| For our listeners who don't know what this is, he posted a meme.
Republicans say, if you want aid for Ukraine, you need to fix the border first.
Democrats say, but the Ukrainians are dying now.
Republicans say, border first. First, Democrats say, fine, let's fix the fucking border.
Then Republicans say, no, Trump needs it for his campaign.
And then the Democrats walk away.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:40]
| Exactly. That's pretty much, you know, he summarized. We spent how many minutes talking about this?
|
Sam:
[1:47:47]
| I don't know. Enough.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:50]
| Summarized it like 20 seconds.
|
Sam:
[1:47:53]
| Anyway, also on our website, on curmudgeon-corner.com, you can find a link to our Patreon where 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 sort of fun stuff at $2 a month or more.
Or if you just ask nicely, we will invite you to our Commodions Corner Slack, where you can see the meme that Peter just posted that we just talked about and a whole bunch of other things as we talk and share links throughout the week.
Peter is the latest person to join our Commodions Corner Slack, and he's been very active the last couple of weeks.
So thank you. Thank you. It's been quite lively lately.
So the more the merrier. Please come join us. So Yvonne, what is something from the curmudgeons corner slack that is interesting, exciting, and would make people want to join that we have not talked about on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:49]
| There was something I shared related to Michelin guides.
|
Sam:
[1:48:56]
| Oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:56]
| It fucks me up.
|
Sam:
[1:48:58]
| This is the rest.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:59]
| When I first heard that. Okay. Well, it's not. It's a trap. Well, travel.
|
Sam:
[1:49:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:04]
| Okay, so there were travel guides. And then there were ratings for restaurants.
They rated restaurants, okay, which were included in the travel guide.
|
Sam:
[1:49:12]
| Because a lot of people, by the way, might not be familiar with these at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:15]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:49:16]
| So you explain what they are. So you did.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:18]
| Right. So there were travel guides. And somebody who makes me feel now extremely old, it fucks me up that when I first heard of Michelin star restaurants, I was like, the tire company?
And then I was like, no, that's dumb. It has to be different Michelin.
And then it's just the fucking tire company recommending places to eat.
And the fact that somebody at this point is so disconnected from, um, decades past that has no idea where these came from made me feel my fucking god well i mean the history of.
|
Sam:
[1:49:57]
| These goes well before we were born either.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:00]
| Oh my god yeah i mean the michelin guides have been around forever i mean you know those are trap i mean you know it's kind of it's very interesting but i i remember that it wasn't just i mean michelin's guides were the most famous but But there were a lot of travel guides.
I remember gas stations and others had like travel guides for different places and stuff that you get.
It was very common. I used to have certain travel guides for their place.
Those were far more common. I think a lot of that we've replaced a lot with electronic tools and stuff. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:33]
| Yeah. Because like you, if you were driving someplace you didn't go before, you'd like stop and get maps, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:50:40]
| Right. Right. But, you know, you have the maps, so you also have the travel guides that explain to you, hey, this is your places and whatever where you go. It's a blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:49]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. But specifically, specifically, the history of Michelin goes back very close to the beginning of automobiles. A hundred.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:59]
| Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like a hundred plus years.
|
Sam:
[1:51:01]
| Yeah. And basically the deal was they wanted to get people to drive more.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:08]
| Travel. Yeah.
So they made the travel guides. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:51:11]
| So, and, and, and look, Michelin.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:14]
| You use more tires.
|
Sam:
[1:51:16]
| Yeah, exactly. Michelin wanted people to use more tires. How do you get them to use more tiles? They have to drive more.
How do you get them to drive more? You encourage the idea of a road trip.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:27]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:51:29]
| Going places. And so as they were building out the road networks and they also, Michelin was like, like, hey, let's give people guides of places to go.
And we will encourage them to go on trips. We'll make it really exciting.
And you can do the day drive to somewhere and find someplace cool to eat when you're there and blah, blah, blah.
And that was the genesis of these Michelin guides.
And as you said, a whole bunch of others too.
And then the restaurant ratings and everything else came from that.
So yes, it is the tire company because the whole reason for the existence of these things was to get people to travel and at that time travel meant drive so or at least that's the kind of that that's the kind of travel they were pushing like it doesn't do michelin any good if you take a train or by air or by air but.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:20]
| Now the guys themselves are.
|
Sam:
[1:52:22]
| Their own thing yes yeah yeah yeah but i'm talking about the genesis and where these things oh yeah yeah how.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:28]
| They he started was that way. Yes, absolutely. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:52:30]
| So.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:31]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:52:31]
| So we talked about that on the curmudgeon's car slack and you could have been part of it too.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:36]
| I'm looking at one of the first ones is like a, a, a book in 1900.
|
Sam:
[1:52:41]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:42]
| Uh, gee, uh, I think gee, gee, Michelin Michelin.
|
Sam:
[1:52:47]
| Oh yeah. Cause they're also French.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:49]
| Yes. They're French. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:52:51]
| You didn't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:52]
| Yes.
Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:52:55]
| So why, why is the Michelin man white tires as well?
|
Ivan:
[1:52:59]
| Well, I think the tires were white originally, right? Uh-huh.
|
Sam:
[1:53:03]
| Yeah. I think they were.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:04]
| So yeah, I'm pretty sure that they were.
|
Sam:
[1:53:07]
| Cause the Michelin man is a stack of tires, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:53:10]
| Is a stack of tires. Yes. I don't know if when I was little, there's a Michelin Michelin store near our house and they had a robotic Michelin man at the.
|
Sam:
[1:53:21]
| At in the.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:22]
| Yeah, they had a robotic. michelin man in the in the area like in the where they display tires the waiting room kind of thing they had this really cool robotic michelin man that would move and do things or whatever i loved when i was a little kid to see the freaking robotic michelin man they had it was so cool the.
|
Sam:
[1:53:45]
| Michelin man since we're on this of course the first character of the michelin man that started in 1894.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:58]
| Yeah it's it's old 1994 it's evolved a.
|
Sam:
[1:54:04]
| Little since then but yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:05]
| Yes Yes!
|
Sam:
[1:54:07]
| Rubber tires were originally gray-white or light or translucent beige.
They didn't become black until 1912 when carbon was added to them as a preservative and strengthener.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:20]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:54:22]
| And, oh, the Michelin Man's real name? Bibbendum.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:26]
| Bibbendum.
|
Sam:
[1:54:28]
| Bibbendum.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:29]
| Bibbendum.
|
Sam:
[1:54:30]
| Bibbendum. Okay! I think we're done. thank you everybody for joining us stay safe have a great week all of that kind of nonsense well I guess it's not nonsense we really do want you to stay safe and blah blah blah, you know we're tired come.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:47]
| On it could be a.
|
Sam:
[1:54:48]
| Break it's Friday it's tired done yeah done yeah okay goodbye everyone we'll see you next time we're out of here bye bye, oh I have to hit the outro music here we go, Hey, wow. Wow. That all actually worked. Bye, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:36]
| Bye.
|
