Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:01]
| Okay do you want to discuss anything first or just go oh.
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| God it's freezing i.
|
Sam:
[0:09]
| Don't know like plan plan okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:12]
| Well what do you want to plan what do you want to plan what's the plan.
|
Sam:
[0:16]
| No no it's fine we can just go ready okay okay okay here we go oh wait i have to flip this switch and here we, Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, February 3rd, 2023.
It's just after 4 UTC as we're starting to record I'm Sam Mentor and Yvonne Bo is here hello Yvonne, and just to point out last week we started a show by saying hey we figured out some stuff with Yvonne's audio but he's back on earpods again this week because he's traveling well let's.
|
Ivan:
[1:16]
| Be clear before.
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Sam:
[1:17]
| We
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Ivan:
[1:20]
| Were on on earpods AirPods.
|
Sam:
[1:23]
| Not earpods.
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Ivan:
[1:24]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[1:25]
| I know.
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Ivan:
[1:25]
| I keep AirPods, whatever. You know, not on purpose.
Right now, I am on AirPods on purpose.
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Sam:
[1:34]
| Okay?
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Ivan:
[1:34]
| Now, not totally on purpose, because Sam had gotten me this really nice microphone.
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Sam:
[1:40]
| Like a travel mic.
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Ivan:
[1:42]
| Like a travel mic. And as a matter of fact, I've used...
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Sam:
[1:45]
| That's like the kind you clip onto your shirt, that kind.
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Ivan:
[1:49]
| Right, but look...
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Sam:
[1:51]
| What are they? Lavoisier? Lavoisier?
|
Ivan:
[1:54]
| Sennheiser.
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Sam:
[1:55]
| Yeah, I know, but the type of microphone is...
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Ivan:
[1:58]
| Oh, God, I remember. That I don't know. But anyway, here's the thing.
I had used that microphone a lot recently, because during the remodeling of The Office, when I did not have...
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Sam:
[2:10]
| You used it for work.
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Ivan:
[2:11]
| My...
No, no, no, no. I used it for the podcast. Well, I did use it for work, but on the podcast for several weeks, that's the one I was using because I had taken down the Yeti.
|
Sam:
[2:24]
| I didn't even notice that you were doing it.
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Ivan:
[2:27]
| Because it works really well. That's why I noticed that microphone is actually quite good.
|
Sam:
[2:32]
| Because I remember one time you tried to use it like with your phone and we couldn't get it work, but working with it with a computer was good.
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Ivan:
[2:40]
| With a computer, it worked great. It sounded wonderful. The sound was great.
And then what happened was that I switched back to the Yeti and the computer, I don't know what the hell, it had been getting confused and even though I'd set it right, it kept alternating the settings and it kept not taking the Yeti.
So that was happening. But the thing is, there's a thing.
Before I left on the trip, I am like, okay, I, look, I, I had that, but I remember the last place I put it was back in my briefcase because I'm like, okay, I want it in my briefcase because it's the one I want to use when I travel.
And so my briefcase, I've got like a lot of things in my briefcase.
I have my briefcase ready to go at a moment's notice to wherever the hell I need to go. Okay.
I have in it like chargers. Right. I have a backup battery.
I have like travel glasses for like the computer.
You know i have my passport my back my international vaccination cards not the vaccination cards that we've gotten but there is like ones that certify that i've got yeah yeah the.
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Sam:
[3:52]
| Little little book for like tropical diseases and all that kind of stuff yeah.
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Ivan:
[3:56]
| Exactly i have that little book for tropical diseases you know that those kind of things that i found that i learned a long long time ago, to always keep in my briefcase.
Because every time that I actually, a couple of times that did not leave in there, I wound up almost on the way to the airport or showing up at the airport and not having shit I need.
And so, I learned, no, that's not the way to do this. You have this shit in there.
When you need to go, it's all ready to go.
I got, like, my little adapters, like for USB on my Mac which only has USB-C, okay? So USB-A.
And so it happened to be that three weeks ago, we've been having an issue because of firewalls with getting information from a customer and the files were not getting through.
Our filtering was not letting them through.
So I actually went to the customer and was able to get them on a USB stick. I had.
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Sam:
[5:02]
| So old school.
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Ivan:
[5:03]
| Well, we couldn't. Exactly. But I have my little adapter so I could put them into my computer, you know, put it on the thing and voila.
Okay. And so got that stuff in there.
So I have that. And so I had put the microphone there and somehow it's not there.
And I, you can ask my wife, I spent, I kept going up and down the house, going through everything and going, and she's like, what's wrong?
What's wrong? I can't find the fucking microphone.
What do you mean? I can't find it. I'm like, what do you mean?
But you used it a whole bunch of times. I know, but I can't find the fucking thing.
So I kept going through drawers, closets, things everywhere. where, I mean, there's no way I threw it out by accident. So it's got to be somewhere.
I don't know where. The bottom line is as I was packing up, I couldn't find it and you know, I had to pack a lot more than I planned on.
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Sam:
[6:06]
| So, by the way, just for everybody, our agenda, we're doing our but first, Ivan is launching into his and then we'll do more serious topics alternating after that. So continue, Ivan.
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Ivan:
[6:17]
| OK, I'm in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I'm here for this wedding.
I plan to go home on Sunday, but I'm going to have to I just had to book myself to fly on Sunday from Indianapolis to Guatemala City.
Because, well, it's in the news.
Originally, it wasn't. At least it's in the news in Central America.
One of our biggest customers is a cell phone carrier.
For the last eight days, and they actually finally made it public, so I can talk about it, that it's public.
They have been hacked with a massive ransomware attack. And I've talked about security and my concerns about this stuff and whatnot with different customers and how they haven't taken the measures that I think are what they should take.
And I have no idea what happened in this customer.
I'll be flat out right now. I don't want to say anything responsible and say that there is something that they did wrong.
But, you know, we've talked about how major infrastructure or something happened, how this could bring something down. Well, it brought down what is the largest cell phone carrier in Central America down to its knees right now.
They basically, people are getting cell phone service right now because basically they have to decide that, well, we can't bill, we can't sell anything, we can't do anything.
But we can just keep the network open. company so down there most carriers are most customers are prepaid customers not postpaid like in the u.s okay okay they can't they can't transact a post they can't transact any transaction whatsoever so they decided look instead of cutting off everybody because we can't bill, Right now, the network is completely open.
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Sam:
[8:17]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[8:18]
| Internet data full. You're, knock yourself out. Okay. Consider just providing free service.
Obviously, this is costing a lot of money.
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Sam:
[8:29]
| Mm-hmm.
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Ivan:
[8:31]
| They've been, right now, originally, we didn't know when it started, but it's right now, it's close to 10 days right now where they've had this issue.
And basically we're trying to help them get back on their you know, to solve these issues like right now.
But I bring it up because it's like you know, we keep talking about all these like cybersecurity attacks and whatnot and how I've said like in the US and it seems like a lot of companies don't take it seriously.
I talked about 10 years ago specifically you know, one of my customers was Sony Pictures in the US where they got hacked and they They got destroyed, and they were out of commission.
Now, the one thing is that Sony Pictures going, you know, not being able to do stuff.
I mean, it's not infrastructure, right? Okay? It's not electricity.
It's not cell phones. Now, the one thing is that I what I can say is that at least that with with what happened is that they detected it and they were able to shut off the systems and keep the network running.
Their problem right now isn't about the network itself and people being able to communicate.
It's been more about their business day to day, which is, hey, you want to buy a phone, you want to buy an accessory, you want to make a change.
Well, I mean, we charge, you know, it's not a non-profit. We charge for this and they can't build any customers.
They can't make, you can't make any changes. You can't add lines.
You can't do shit. Right.
So it's very complicated. So I'm going to I'm trying to fly down there.
We are taking some engineers and some other people to be on site because working remotely right now because of the issues is complicated.
And to be able to try to help them get back on their feet.
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Sam:
[10:33]
| Wow.
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Ivan:
[10:33]
| I don't see what else we can do. But, yeah, I mean, that was like not expected.
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Sam:
[10:39]
| And you're sure you're you you are sure you're OK talking about this. It's all good.
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Ivan:
[10:44]
| Yes, it's in the news. Like right now, they actually had to issue a press release related to this.
I mean, I'll read the the the release to the press.
So so I mean, basically what they what they revealed is let me see. I got it over here.
Hold on. And it was in it was I.
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Sam:
[11:03]
| Just want to make sure you weren't going to get in trouble at work for talking about anything.
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Ivan:
[11:08]
| No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I mean, you know, look, I'll read the public release.
I mean, where the heck is it?
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Sam:
[11:23]
| It's okay. You don't have to read it either.
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Ivan:
[11:26]
| No, no, no, because it's important because, look, this is what they were able to tell their customers, okay?
Dear customer, on the 25th of January, 2024, we identified the existence of a nominal selectivity on certain of our systems, which is why we took immediate measures to investigate.
We determined that it was an incident, a ransomware incident in some of our equipment, which is why, according to our protocols, such equipment were isolated, and we decided to shut down other systems as precautionary measures.
We have continued to give service, which is what they've been doing because they're providing service and they're not charging people, through other mechanisms.
And we're in the process of restoring our affected equipment and return it to normal operation, which is what we're assisting with in here.
We are hoping that our systems will be operating in a normal manner as soon as possible.
We appreciate your—I'm translating in Spanish. I appreciate your comprehension and trust from our customers.
So, yeah, I mean, it's a tough situation.
I have to say, I've never seen, never had to, you know, from a telecommunications company had this issue happen before.
The good news, I will say, look, forget about the money.
I mean, there's a monetary loss right now due to this, is that they've been able to keep the taps open and people are able to use their phones, which I think is the positive thing that even though it's impacted their other systems, that they have been able to keep the communications running.
Which, if they had been able to impact telecommunications themselves, then that would have been catastrophic, I think.
This is more a, at this point, a financial loss, unfortunately, for the company more than a loss.
A disruption for people. There may be some disruption in terms of people.
Hey, I need a new phone. My phone broke like that. That's more of an issue.
But they've been able to keep that running.
But man, I mean, the one thing about this. I mean, didn't we have in the news recently, we're talking about some attacks in the U.S. and how they've blocked out, you know, intrusions by foreign companies that we heard about.
Actually, I was reading about this one this week. I think it was one where apparently I think they blame China for for taking an entire army of like, I think it's well, it was old, not Cisco.
Cisco, Cisco, the Linksys, like routers, and some other brand routers like that, and that they had them as basically like a bot army that was like doing infiltrations, and that somehow they had gotten approval.
I'm not sure how to be able to send out some kind of software update to all of these to basically disable all of these.
In all the devices that were doing this this was recently in the it wasn't like a big news but i read it i didn't share our slack but i this i read it as this was happening like this week and i realized like man i mean how many yeah i think jp morgan chase said that they detected 40 billion billion attempts to penetrate their systems last year i mean billion attempts now we know that one computer you can generate it to try like many times of attempts yeah.
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Sam:
[15:15]
| I was i was gonna say like what what what do they count as an attempt right you know.
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Ivan:
[15:20]
| No no no but but but he's no no no no they're counting as an attempt that you know every single like you know like thing that they got Even if you say, hey, oh well, each attempter tried like one million of them, it's still a lot of attempts.
I mean, literally, they are like trying to prevent, I mean, literally they're like, barbarians are at their gate every day. Literally.
Trying to penetrate the banks, the telcos, and it's...
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Sam:
[15:51]
| And it completely screwed up your travel.
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Ivan:
[15:54]
| And it completely screwed up my travel, yeah. oh so anyway yeah so okay ah so yeah so you know i'm i i will not be going back home on on uh on sunday i would really like to be home i i have too many things going on right now unfortunately one of the things that's going on is that i we have, A few people have, like, changed roles and have left because of normal stuff that happens at companies.
And I'm trying to help to take up the slack, and it's just, that means it's just a lot going on, way too much.
So I really would have liked to be back home on Sunday.
And then, you know, my brother, the goodness of his heart, and actually, well, my niece had come back from being in South Korea for a long time, okay? She had been working there.
And he was like, oh, it's your birthday on Friday. What do I surprise?
|
Sam:
[17:07]
| By the way, happy birthday, Yvonne, for Yvonne's birthday is Groundhog's Day, which UTC is yesterday, but it's still today.
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Ivan:
[17:15]
| So happy birthday. thank you well you.
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Sam:
[17:17]
| Are now officially old.
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Ivan:
[17:19]
| Yes very much so and he was like oh well i'll go see her and then i'll surprise me for his birthday and then he forgot because i told him that i was leaving town did.
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Sam:
[17:35]
| He fly to your home.
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Ivan:
[17:37]
| Yes yes while you left my parents house and then they they were gonna surprise me yeah yeah yeah that's beautiful and so you know it's already happened a couple of times where we tried to like for my 40th there was an ice storm where he was at which prevented him from arriving for that party that we had done and then my 50th there was a that it it was COVID and he tried now and then I wind up not being there, but I told him, but he forgot.
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Sam:
[18:17]
| That's beautiful. Good job. Good job all around.
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Ivan:
[18:20]
| I did a good job all around. So anyway.
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Sam:
[18:26]
| Okay, you got any other but first or should I do something?
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Ivan:
[18:29]
| No, no, no. Yeah, do something. You got another movie? Are we going through all the movies?
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Sam:
[18:35]
| Yeah, I got a movie. I got lots and lots of movies and TV shows and things to catch up on.
So the next one in order, which I watched in, June of last year, was the 2001 version of dune or 2021 2021 sorry i said that wrong okay so it was it's or more specifically dune part one part two is coming out in just about another month actually so that's interesting but yeah now i watched the 2021 dune and you know here's my comparison comparison like i am of course going to compare it to the 1984 version of dune okay that's the one that had like sting in it and patrick stewart and you know dean stockwell was that.
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Ivan:
[19:28]
| One i didn't remember that.
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Sam:
[19:29]
| He he was in that yes he was okay.
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Ivan:
[19:32]
| I i shit i'd forgotten that okay.
|
Sam:
[19:35]
| And here's the thing like and i it's been a long time since i watched the 1984 one i think there was like a a Dune mini series or something that was in between at some point they've, they've made, there, there've been multiple versions of Dune. I don't know. Or maybe that was children, whatever.
Anyway, I remember the 1984 version, but the thing is like, I never really, there were some cool parts about the 1984 version, but there was also just like.
Just a twist of weirdness. It was done by David Lynch and he's, he's known for like this twist of weirdness and all the stuff he does.
And that, that actually kind of turned me off a little bit.
Like, you know, it was fine, but like there were just a few little bits of it that like, like I didn't like the, the, the, the one, one of the bad guys, you know, was portrayed as having like these big pus filled boils all over him that they would like Lance while they were talking and stuff.
And I, you know, I just, I was not impressed by that.
I don't know. And like some of the other stuff, it was just, I didn't like stinging it too much, but you know, the, the, I felt like the 2021 version was just a lot more sort of straight straight sci-fi.
It was, it was like epic sci-fi, like it's big and large scale and blah, blah, blah. And they're splitting it over.
You know, it was, it was 155 minutes for part one and there's still going to be a part two. Right.
So it's like the kind of thing that could easily have been a mini series or something instead, but, or a TV show.
But I liked the fact that it was more sort sort of straight, regular sci-fi-ish, rather than sort of the weird sci-fi that the 1984 version was.
And, you know, I'll give it a thumbs up.
Oh, it said, you know, I was mentioning there were ones in between.
There was the 1984 film, there was a 2000 television miniseries, and so So this is the third version of it.
Anyway, I'll give it a thumbs up. I liked it. It was good. I want to see the next one.
Not necessarily right when it comes out. I'm probably not going to like run to the theaters to see it next month.
But, you know, I liked it. It was good.
It apparently won a bunch of awards. You know, it was nominated for Best Picture.
You know, so I guess other people liked it too.
But you know it has let's see timothy chalamet who i guess is a big deal kind of younger actor now it's got zendaya in it jason momoa a few other folks and and look.
I guess this is based on, of course, Dune, the book by Frank Herbert from 1965, I guess.
I've also read the book a number of times, not recently, but I've read the book.
I was a fan of the book. I read some of the others in the series.
So I like the franchise in general, and I liked this adaptation of it. It was pretty cool.
I'm not going to say it's like something profound or something that's going to like, you know, like I don't remember a lot of details of it like right now.
And I, you know, it's like what, eight months later, I don't remember a lot of details.
I remember at a high level, I liked it. I had fun, but it's not like an, oh my God, this is profound.
This is awesome. This has changed my life or anything like that.
But it was a good, it was a good movie.
It was fun to watch. You know, given its length, I'm kind of glad I watched it at home on my projector and probably split it up over several times and could take breaks for food and bathroom and all that kind of stuff.
Like, I hate the really long movies at the theater. You know, it's just, you know, it's more comfortable to watch things at home. I don't know.
Like every once in a while, like the theater experience is like kind of nice.
If you're, you hear the reaction of the rest of the people in the crowd and all that kind of stuff and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
You know, I can do that every once in a while, but like, especially for long movies, it's like, really, you're going to make me sit there for 155 minutes straight and not be able to like take breaks and pause it and do other stuff. Yeah.
I, you know, they're out of their minds, you know, two hours fine once you get over two hours it's like you're really pushing it and I'd.
|
Ivan:
[24:21]
| Rather.
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Sam:
[24:21]
| Watch it at home.
|
Ivan:
[24:22]
| I mean I I don't know I know that I've watched a number of very long movies at the theater but I will say that, Man, I just watched so few movies at the theaters, like, recently, so...
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Sam:
[24:39]
| Oh, yeah. Like, I think I've watched two since the pandemic or something like that. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[24:45]
| Oh, but I'm talking about the last decade. Forget about the pandemic. I mean, I...
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Sam:
[24:49]
| Well, it wasn't, like, all the time even before then. It was, like, a few times a year. Almost all my movie watching is at home.
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Ivan:
[24:56]
| Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely. No doubt.
|
Sam:
[24:59]
| But anyway, thumbs up for this. It was a fun little science fiction thing.
It's not like anything profound, like I said, but, you know, but it's good.
It was, it was well done. You like the performances.
Yeah. The story is good and it is good enough that I, you know, I want to see the sequel. So there you go.
|
Ivan:
[25:19]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[25:19]
| Good. That's all I got for it. I take it. You have not seen this movie.
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Ivan:
[25:23]
| No, I have not.
|
Sam:
[25:25]
| You apparently did see the 1984 version, but don't remember Patrick Stewart.
|
Ivan:
[25:29]
| I think I've watched I'm actually not even sure but I've watched the entire movie I am sure that I've watched bits of it but I don't think I've watched the entire movie I remember David Bowie being in it and Sting, I remember that but not the Patrick Stewart part so you know so that's about what I remember Yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:57]
| David Bowie is not in it. It's just Sting. You're thinking of, like, Labyrinth or something.
Like, what was David Bowie in?
|
Ivan:
[26:10]
| No.
|
Sam:
[26:11]
| I'm looking at the Wikipedia page right now.
|
Ivan:
[26:15]
| Fuck. I thought it was just Sting, not David Bowie.
|
Sam:
[26:20]
| Yeah, so David Bowie filmography.
|
Ivan:
[26:24]
| Yeah, that's what I'm looking at.
|
Sam:
[26:27]
| You're thinking of Labyrinth you gotta be thinking of Labyrinth you know.
|
Ivan:
[26:32]
| Not, not, not, not, this is, okay. All right. Oh, I confused moves.
Anyway. Yeah, it was Sting. Yeah. Anyway.
Yeah. So, anyway.
|
Sam:
[26:44]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[26:45]
| Not, not, not my, not my genre of expertise.
|
Sam:
[26:49]
| Not your genre of expertise. You're, you're, you're, you're much more willing to like dive deep into like Mission Impossible and such.
|
Ivan:
[26:57]
| Yes. That, that, that, yes. Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[27:03]
| Okay. That's all I got. Let's, let's move on. And why don't we take a break?
And when we come back, we'll, we'll alternate on the more serious things that have been in the news this last week.
We've got as usual stuff that's happened.
|
Ivan:
[27:17]
| It's happened stuff.
|
Sam:
[27:19]
| Oh, you know, I got one more. I got one more, but first.
|
Ivan:
[27:22]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[27:23]
| Or we move on because you added this to our list yourself based on feedback back we got on the curmudgeon's corner slack which is ivan needs to get punished for his language on the show correct as it's not the normal swearing like the the fuck shits and stuff we've sort of gotten used to that but what do you need to get yelled at if i need to.
|
Ivan:
[27:46]
| Get yelled at about using the word retard you.
|
Sam:
[27:49]
| Know you could have just said our word to avoid actually saying it just now No.
|
Ivan:
[27:55]
| Fuck. Well, that's the word. I mean, look, let's be clear.
I want to like people who think it's something else. Let's be clear about what the fuck it is. That is what it is.
And, you know, it's one of those things. It's one of those things that that that, you know, we grow up, you know, it's one of those things that we grow up saying that so many things that I'm listening to, looking at things that were acceptable in the past and looking at old recordings and stuff.
Lot of stuff and stuff that I enjoy.
And, and I, I, I hear them now. And one of the things that I like sometimes it's like, Oh my God, how we used to throw things that were homophobic around with impunity. Like it was no big deal.
And I, I, I, I.
|
Sam:
[28:45]
| I can't say I ever did, but that's, that's your.
|
Ivan:
[28:49]
| But I'm talking to the culture in general.
|
Sam:
[28:54]
| The culture.
|
Ivan:
[28:54]
| The culture in general.
|
Sam:
[28:56]
| Like, like if you, if you look at old, like even like Saturday night live skits or whatever, but certainly like a lot of the other stuff that was going around going back to like the eighties and nineties when we were young.
|
Ivan:
[29:10]
| Young yeah you.
|
Sam:
[29:11]
| Know there was lots of racist stuff there.
|
Ivan:
[29:13]
| Was lots.
|
Sam:
[29:14]
| Of sexist stuff.
|
Ivan:
[29:15]
| There was lots.
|
Sam:
[29:15]
| Of homophobic homophobic stuff etc.
|
Ivan:
[29:19]
| And and and you didn't bat an eyelid about it okay and you know you look at it now you realize and i and i think and i will say this again that one of the the things that I do truly believe that this election in 2016, brought to light was look, people like myself, I will say me, that I sometimes heard some groups that were far more oppressed than my minority group.
I'm a minority group, but the reality is that because white even though I'm Hispanic, and I don't have an accent, I don't face as much discrimination as others.
That's just a fact, okay? And I...
You know, especially because, I mean, I've worked in such an inclusive environment where I would hear people and I'm thinking, no, we're making so much progress.
I think that we're in a better place. It's not that I'm, you know, I thought that we were in a better place.
I thought that we were in a better place. And I realized that it opened my eyes.
Fuck, we weren't. We really weren't.
And realizing that sometimes we make those jokes because i thought i'm making a joke from like a point of view of like i had something in the past whatever it's not real but but the reality is that it wasn't and that's what we really see now very clearly that none of that was, is that yeah and so that's why i cringe so much about it and i yeah and.
|
Sam:
[31:04]
| So i think bob called you out a few times in the last couple episodes you've you've used that word or variance.
|
Ivan:
[31:11]
| No and bob said that he bob said that it was the last episode he didn't say the last few episodes he's added the last up well.
|
Sam:
[31:17]
| Yeah but i don't know when he said last episode which was the last episode he'd listened to i forget exactly when it was but but in any case like i remember, like when i was editing and noticing that and thinking yeah should i edit it out and i i didn't and maybe I should have, and even more to the point, you have asked me before to call you out in real time when you say it.
|
Ivan:
[31:40]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[31:41]
| And I think I even noticed when you said it, but I was like, you were on the roll, you were in the middle of something, and I didn't feel like interrupting, and I should. No.
|
Ivan:
[31:52]
| You need to. I'm like, no, I shouldn't be saying that.
But unfortunately, sometimes I forget. Yeah, that's my vehicle, but it's not acceptable.
|
Sam:
[32:06]
| It's clearly one of the words that was routine for you in a certain meaning.
You weren't necessarily intentionally using it to slur a group.
|
Ivan:
[32:18]
| No!
|
Sam:
[32:19]
| But it's a synonym for you for stupid.
|
Ivan:
[32:22]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[32:23]
| And you just use it routinely, and it's a habit. it.
|
Ivan:
[32:28]
| But culturally it's it's used not just me the reality is i mean i still i i remember so many movies and places where it was just used all the time this it's it's a word that that that was used, it culturally across so many places and it's just not no it's not not not no not acceptable no No.
|
Sam:
[32:51]
| Okay. Well, that note out of the way, let's take a break.
And when we come back, serious topics, serious.
|
Ivan:
[33:00]
| Serious, we're going to get really serious.
|
Sam:
[33:04]
| Very, very, very.
|
Ivan:
[33:06]
| I'm going to start talking.
|
Sam:
[33:59]
| Okay, we're back. So, Yvonne, where do we start?
|
Ivan:
[34:03]
| We are going to be now very, very, very deeply serious.
That's where we're going to start. We are going to take on the serious topics and use a solemn tone.
So the first topic that I'm going to go into to maintain my ball of tone is how MAGA has melted down over Taylor Swift.
|
Sam:
[34:37]
| Okay. Bring us up to speed on that one, and then we can discuss it. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[34:42]
| So, look, I mean, I've been tracking this because I watch football. Okay? Okay.
|
Sam:
[34:50]
| I actually.
|
Ivan:
[34:51]
| The football player himself, who Taylor Schultz is dating, a guy named Travis Kelsey, is a guy that I have liked for a very long time.
You know, he's been playing football for over 10 years for the Kansas City Chiefs, which are playing in the Super Bowl.
And you know i i still remember that in this other podcast that i that i listened to, he had been invited to be on the podcast like many years ago just on a whim and it's just one of those guys that the personality was just so content you know his his charm his happiness his quit was so contagious okay there are so many sports guys that come on interviews and they are i mean they are i mean don't.
|
Sam:
[35:46]
| Use the r word don't use the r word.
|
Ivan:
[35:48]
| They're no no no don't don't don't they're so dull they are extremely oh no no they're dull it's it's just it's just an interview of you that's very wooden just a lot of like cliches you know they have like just these things down so what's gonna happen in the game on sunday well we're gonna go out we're gonna play real hard, Well, that's great. Thank you for the insight to put a plate real hard.
I mean, I don't play real hard. You tell me something more.
So the interviews are very dull and wooden. Okay.
But no, this guy was just on and he was just so funny, witty.
It just, it was just engaging. And you could tell that. It.
|
Sam:
[36:33]
| Sounds like you should be dating him.
|
Ivan:
[36:35]
| Yeah.
Not my type, okay? But, you know, it was just, you know, he's the kind of guy that if you showed up to a place, like, I was just at a dinner tonight.
It's like one of these things like having some chitchat. And I actually met some people that had a good, fun conversation.
But he is a guy that if you met, you would strike up a conversation.
And it would be witty. It would be smart. Or it would be, you know, it would be, you would enjoy the time with him.
|
Sam:
[37:06]
| So he's not just some dumb jock. Is that what you're saying?
|
Ivan:
[37:08]
| No, no, no, no. He's great. And, you know, one of the things that started earlier this year, more controversy with him, is that, you know, he decided to be.
The the star of a promotion by pfizer for people to get for the vaccine for the covet fact yes okay and you know what another player who is pseudo-intellectual anti-vaxxer took up the task like for it and you know he was just like he made some very you know he was asked for it in a in a a press, uh, press conference and he, you know, he really handled it really well.
Okay. And you could tell that the guy was like, you know what, you know why I did it? I did it for my family. I did it for my coworkers. I did it for everybody.
And I got the vaccine. I want to make sure I want to keep as many people safe and they want to make fun of me, make fun of me, but I'm going to do what's right and when you in this politicized environment to have a guy like that to go out and not just get vaccinated, be the post Pfizer and like in that sport just go and like basically take on these critics, I was just like wow, I like this I mean, that made me like them more I already liked them before, okay.
And then the reality is that you know what, look he started dealing Taylor Swift.
There was something about the story that was like very interesting about how they had met and he had tried to talk to her and somehow they connected and you know, they've been dating.
And the one thing is that I said about what I, what I, you know, it's been, I don't know.
They just started dating for some reason. And everybody Taylor Swift has been openly anti-Trump and Travis Kelsey he got his openly oh my god, he's getting vaccinated on TV okay, and promoting it, and just the MAGA world had their head just like, explode, Because they are so popular. And, I mean, this is all a psyop operation to win the election for Biden.
Literally, I just saw this week. And I guess.
|
Sam:
[39:36]
| Yeah, just to be clear, it's not just, hey, we don't like Taylor Swift because she's a liberal and we don't like.
|
Ivan:
[39:46]
| Yo.
|
Sam:
[39:47]
| What's his name? Kelsey Grammer? Kelsey. No.
|
Ivan:
[39:50]
| Not Kelsey. That's what David Letterman said.
|
Sam:
[39:59]
| I've used that same joke on this show a few months ago, too, by the way. Oh.
|
Ivan:
[40:03]
| Okay. Yeah. So that's, yeah. David Letterman called him Kelsey Graham.
|
Sam:
[40:10]
| Anyway, it's not just that they don't like them because they're liberal or they like vaccines.
|
Ivan:
[40:15]
| Scenes they've.
|
Sam:
[40:16]
| Gone well beyond that to.
|
Ivan:
[40:18]
| Oh it's.
|
Sam:
[40:19]
| All about a conspiracy to make donald trump look bad and to what all this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[40:25]
| Yes it's a day like.
|
Sam:
[40:28]
| It's some big nefarious plan that's been going on for months and they might.
|
Ivan:
[40:33]
| Not even really be there for years oh yeah yeah because they're not in love it's all fake it's all it's all fake for for political purposes and to win win the election yeah and.
|
Sam:
[40:45]
| Meanwhile there are other people just sort of this has been all over like not just like well i was gonna say not just the crazy conservative media but also fox but i mean fox is crazy enough um.
|
Ivan:
[40:58]
| But.
|
Sam:
[40:59]
| Things like there's no taylor swift should be one of us she should be conservative what has gone wrong here.
|
Ivan:
[41:08]
| Oh yeah i was like actually looking for that post where it was this one woman who said that it earned the awards enough or isn't everything enough that that that she's going to turn into witchcraft i mean it was just oh here it is this is an elected party official in georgia the official georgia republican party okay and she said grew up taylor swift grew up in church she has publicly claimed to be a christian, This recent interview she did, having a preparatory meltdown about not voting for Marsha Blackburn and justifying going against her conservative parents.
By the way, her parents are not, as far as I can tell, her mom was completely on her side.
|
Sam:
[41:53]
| Her dad was concerned about her safety.
|
Ivan:
[41:57]
| Exactly. Okay, so she's, you know, also like, you know, inserting a whole bunch of stuff.
I've watched her slip further and further into the secular in morality of the music industry.
Nothing is ever enough. Not enough awards, not enough risque songs.
Their songs are not risque.
Not enough shock. I don't know what shock Taylor Swift does.
I don't know what the fuck. Not enough money. Witchcraft and Satan await.
|
Sam:
[42:27]
| I saw one clip or quote or something of some conservative commentator saying he figured it all out.
And the reason she's dating him is because he got a $70,000 bonus once.
And it's like, do you have any idea how rich this woman is? I.
|
Ivan:
[42:49]
| Mean, it's like the fuel bill for her trip to make it to the Super Bowl. I'm just like, you know.
Oh, well, all of a sudden, by the way, Fox people were concerned about the carbon footprint she might be doing by because she's going to be having concerts and in Tokyo before the Super Bowl. So she's going to have to fly.
So you're going to have to fly to Vegas. And they were all like, oh, my God, and the carbon footprint that she's going to generate by. Right.
|
Sam:
[43:18]
| Now, this is actually something that people on the left have been criticizing her for for a while, just in terms of, you know, and a lot of celebrities, not just her, but for private jet travel and how much the carbon footprint of that is and all that.
But it's just funny coming coming from the coming from Fox people. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[43:36]
| I will say this, that I am one that I I understand how certain people cannot really travel commercial. Okay, I don't want President Biden traveling commercial.
Okay, I don't think that that would be ideal.
And I can understand how her being probably one of the biggest pop celebrities like that, if not the if not the biggest, one of the biggest, how disruptive it would be to be at an airport if she's having to travel through it as a regular person.
So I will say that I don't, you know, these people that are complaining about that, I'm like, sorry, but there are certain things that just don't work, okay?
And I get that, and I'm perfectly happy doing my personal carbon sacrifice.
So those people that we, you know, those people that aren't that famous, if they can do that, it's okay. Okay, I'm not going to begrudge him for that, but, you know, the whole hypocrisy of the right about it is just ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[44:51]
| Yes. For certain people, it's just, it's disruptive to everybody else.
It's harrowing for them. Yes.
Et cetera. And they've got the money to do it. Let them fucking do it.
I, you know, I understand the carbon footprint arguments and all that kind of stuff. But I mean.
|
Ivan:
[45:11]
| They can try to listen.
|
Sam:
[45:12]
| I understand.
|
Ivan:
[45:13]
| But at the same time, like I was talking about carbon footprint recently.
There are things that they could try to do, mitigate it. I understand that it's not the same, but they certainly – like one of the proposals that I saw, which I actually think makes sense, is that there should be heavy carbon taxes on private jet travel in order to do carbon mitigation for what that entails.
Else and i'm i'm shit i'm like oh totally for that i'm one that pays voluntarily a carbon tax of myself so i'm like.
|
Sam:
[45:50]
| Right you.
|
Ivan:
[45:51]
| Know it's all me i'm like yes yeah that's fine.
|
Sam:
[45:54]
| Just do it yes so anyway so anyway maga going crazy about this any any other like i mean it's part of it like she also when she was doing her tour i mean she's still on tour internationally but when she was was on tour in the u.s earlier she did a voting drive as part of it and apparently oh.
|
Ivan:
[46:15]
| They're all freaking out about it yes yes.
|
Sam:
[46:17]
| And and you know and yeah so maybe she will be a deliver a whole bunch of votes to joe biden okay too fucking bad yeah sorry people.
|
Ivan:
[46:30]
| I mean but but they're having I mean, I think for whatever reason, somebody had said that for some reason, people on the right side, had her as their own or they thought she was for some reason.
|
Sam:
[46:46]
| Well, the whole thing is, you know, she's from Tennessee. She's white.
She's blonde. She started in country music. You're blonde. Yes.
And so it's like if you just had to choose via stereotypes, you'd be like, oh, yeah, of course, she's going to be conservative.
|
Ivan:
[47:04]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[47:05]
| Right. You know, but no, no.
And this is also part of conservative America has had a big issue going back a long time now that sort of the cultural zeitgeist, the cultural elite is not conservative.
|
Ivan:
[47:24]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[47:25]
| Like, you know, the Hollywood liberals, they've railed about for years.
They've railed about the media in New York and L.A.
And all of this kind of stuff. And it's just at a very base level, the culture of the country, the popular culture that everybody knows and follows has been getting more and more liberal over time. Right.
And, you know, and they they they can't stand things like, for instance, you know, you go to Netflix and look at the most popular shows and they're all multiracial, multicultural families and stuff, you know?
|
Ivan:
[48:10]
| Oh, my God. The end of the world.
|
Sam:
[48:12]
| World you know yeah like what and and okay there are a whole bunch of tv shows about people who are gay or trans or whatever and it's like that shouldn't be in our our popular media that's we we need to protect our kids from that look.
|
Ivan:
[48:33]
| The other day i was watching listen the other day i I can't remember what I was watching streaming an episode of Law and.
|
Sam:
[48:41]
| Order.
|
Ivan:
[48:41]
| And for whatever reason, the commercials were all about HIV, a lot of HIV medication commercials.
|
Sam:
[48:50]
| I've seen those.
|
Ivan:
[48:51]
| And those HIV medication commercials also show a lot of gay men kissing.
And I am wondering and I'm like, I'm thinking, look, I'm I'm good with this. It's fine.
But I was thinking, oh, my God, can you imagine?
People like these conservatives watching these, if they're streaming this, what are they doing?
Are they, like, you know, kicking their TV?
|
Sam:
[49:19]
| A lot of them probably are. Or this is why they're mad all the time, right?
Like, because they get upset by things like this, and it's getting more and more unavoidable in the culture.
|
Ivan:
[49:33]
| It's, like, normal. We're normalizing it. we're normalizing this deviant behavior.
|
Sam:
[49:39]
| Exactly that that's their mindset anyway yeah like because because yes you look at all the popular tv shows and yes they're just to be clear there are lots and lots of heterosexual couples in popular media too yeah it's not like they're going away but but you know yeah you'll have the gay couple and they're there and nobody bats an eye and it's It's just normal and part of what's presented and no one cares.
And the, the show is about that, or you'll have a show that has, you know, the, the gay couple as a lead or a trans character that's just there.
And it's not even part of what's discussed. They're just there.
And, you know, it's, it's, it's, this is the kind of thing that freaks them out entirely because it's, it's sort of signs of the culture slipping away from them.
And this is the whole thing that when they say things like, you know, we're losing our America, we have to take America back and all, this is the kind of stuff they're talking about.
Like it's, it's the cultural stuff. It's the racial stuff.
It's the, it's, it's simply having anything outside of the little, like Wally and the beaver 1950s sitcom kind of world, like drives them insane.
|
Ivan:
[51:07]
| Right. Totally. They're, they're being driven nuts.
|
Sam:
[51:12]
| And so it's our fault.
|
Ivan:
[51:13]
| It's our fault.
|
Sam:
[51:14]
| We're driving. Yeah. We're, you know, we should not be shoving that stuff in their face.
|
Ivan:
[51:19]
| Yeah. Yes. Yes. We're making these people terrible.
You know, I should mention that, you know, one of the problems that we have as people who are Democrats is I got to this town in, you know, in Indiana, Fort Wayne.
There was a, I can't, I had never seen this before.
I've never seen a Democrat office like this but there's an office across the street that said whatever county Republican party office and I am like look this is our problem we don't have the same for Democrats, these guys are too organized in these places there's no way that we can sustain like, really the majority of Americans want without fucking doing basically the same thing in a whole bunch of places.
|
Sam:
[52:14]
| Well, and just to be clear, there probably is a Democratic office somewhere.
Have you ever seen it? Well, I was about to say, now that my wife is involved in Democratic Party politics, I've been at the county Democratic office.
I've been at the state Democratic office. I know that these places are out there and they exist and all of this kind of stuff.
I know where certain politicians have set up their local offices.
These things are out there. But the thing is, you're absolutely right, probably, that in redder areas, the Democratic office is not going to be flamboyantly showing their colors.
Right. You know, because they might be worried that, you know, in this environment, you know, if you're worried about safety issues, you know, you don't necessarily want to, you know, have like a big ass sign that says, hey, here's the Democratic headquarters of super red County, Indiana, you know, but, you know, certainly.
|
Ivan:
[53:30]
| But you know what? I mean, I understand that it may be riskier, but maybe we need to. And that's the problem.
We can't normalize just being intimidated by this shit.
|
Sam:
[53:42]
| Well, but it's also related to money, right? Well.
|
Ivan:
[53:46]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:46]
| Even in the county where I am, I said I've been to the Democratic County headquarters.
It's a few rooms in a basement in a building.
|
Ivan:
[53:55]
| Well, this is like a little corner in a shit building or whatever.
|
Sam:
[53:59]
| You know, because it costs money to like rent space and stuff.
And, you know, you know, especially like local organizations don't necessarily have a lot of money, you know, so they do what they can.
But, but yeah, but, but you definitely see, you definitely see differences in presentation.
You know, I mean, even, even in like a, a fairly blue area, like where I am right now, you don't have Democrats with the big ass, with a big ass blue truck with Biden flags behind it.
|
Ivan:
[54:37]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[54:38]
| You do, you do have the big ass truck with the Trump flags.
|
Ivan:
[54:41]
| You know look that's a whole different story look I I still like I'm remembering that I was worried about, in 2012 specifically how there are so many Romney signs or whatever I really don't think that the, that there isn't like a there isn't a a good correlation between that. No.
|
Sam:
[55:14]
| No, there's, there's not a correlation between that kind of stuff and like voting, but it does affect sort of the, the cultural perception of the area and how you feel about being there.
So like if I'm driving through an area and I see Trump paraphernalia everywhere, I'll be honest.
I don't want to be there. I want to get out of there as quick as is possible because I feel like I'm in enemy territory, you know, whether, whatever the actual percentages are.
Cause there are probably lots of Democrats there too. Cause like we've talked before, like, you know, even the most, even the reddest States in the country, like you look at Wyoming or something, it's still like 25% Democrat, you know, it's, it's still like.
But the perception and the feeling is different. And I'm sure it applies the alternate way.
Like If you've got deep red people visiting a deep blue city, they probably feel uncomfortable by what they see, too.
But this is where the things like the flags and the banners and all of this kind of stuff come in.
Because, yeah, where I am, I also see the rainbow flags on a fairly regular basis.
I see the little banners that say, we accept everybody and blah, blah, blah.
Those are there, too. you know but so those kind of outward presentation things affect the feel of a community even if they're not directly tied to like oh you see a bunch of romney signs therefore romney's gonna right.
|
Ivan:
[56:49]
| Right right right ah okay so anyway.
|
Sam:
[56:53]
| Okay all.
|
Ivan:
[56:53]
| Right what do we got now.
|
Sam:
[56:55]
| Should i just jump into a topic now or should we take a break and then i don't break break break take a break right.
Break break okay well you know i'm gonna play the election graphs break and then i guess we'll talk some politics stuff not that that wasn't politics stuff but a little bit different you know whatever you know blah blah blah we got trump stuff we got primaries and caucuses we got fannie willis we get that kind of stuff we'll do that in the next segment back after this.
Okay, we are back. So let me start, and this will take like five seconds.
There are primaries and caucuses that will be happening between now and our next show, but none of them are ones that anybody's paying any attention to or are going to matter that much.
So like Saturday, like, well, today, UTC, as we're recording this, Saturday, February 3rd, we have the Democratic Democratic primaries in South Carolina.
But Joe Biden's basically unopposed.
I mean, technically, we got a couple other people, Dean Phillips and Williamson on the ballot, but nobody's taking them seriously at all.
So we expect Joe Biden to basically get almost everything out of all this, both in terms of popular vote and delegates.
Some people have said you're still Still going to want to pay attention to turnout and exactly how much the margin is anyway, but there's no real suspense there.
Same thing for the Democrats in Nevada on Tuesday.
Then on Thursday and on Tuesday, there's a Nevada primary, but Nikki Haley's in it, but not Trump.
And it doesn't matter for delegates.
Thursday is Nevada for the Republicans on the caucuses, which do matter.
But on that one, Trump's in it and Nikki Haley is not. So Trump's just going to get all the delegates.
And finally, we have the Republicans in Virgin in the Virgin Islands also on Thursday, but they only have four delegates and nobody cares because it's not the mainland.
So, you know, who knows what they'll do and who cares, really, because it's a few delegates.
And, you know, sometimes I've noticed these like territories and such end up just designating people who can do whatever they want when they get to the convention anyway.
So anyway, so that's going on.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:28]
| Okay. Yeah. Sounds great to me.
|
Sam:
[1:00:35]
| Okay so with that out of the way the other main sort of political things that i want to get through today we do have sort of a bunch of trump legal stuff still going on um.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:52]
| Speaking of trump legal stuff okay so um yeah by the way i guess he he fired alina haba well.
|
Sam:
[1:01:01]
| He said he's looking for another lawyer i did not see anything official that she's fired uh but.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:08]
| Well i i will say that i was reading a little bit more into how that relationship had been going on over the last several months okay okay and one of the things that it was very clear was that she was During her representation of Donald Trump, what she was doing was basically just trying to please him.
|
Sam:
[1:01:40]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:41]
| Not really being a lawyer for him. Because a lot of times, a lawyer...
|
Sam:
[1:01:48]
| Will tell you not to do shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:50]
| Right. They'll tell you, no, that's stupid. We're not fucking doing this.
And look, I have hired...
|
Sam:
[1:01:57]
| We also know, though, but this is Donald Trump. He used to...
He has gotten rid of anybody in his life who will tell him no.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:07]
| But unfortunately, it's just... an awful way to be a person's lawyer.
And one of the things that a few people were mentioning was that if Alina Haba was in court without Donald Trump, she actually behaved like a regular lawyer.
And then when he was like right there, he would keep telling her stuff, whispering anger on, or maybe even loudly telling her that she had to do something.
Thing and so she would be a lunatic there was an incident that i was reading recently where i mean this is like a normal thing where look if you're having a deposition you're having something that's going on all day an ediation deposition whatever the fuck it is look at some point hey we're ordering lunch okay and whoever's hosting will buy lunch whatever it's no big deal you're not you're not ordering like you know steaks or whatever you're getting some sandwiches getting stuff, whatever, for people.
And I think, like, during one for Trump, where they were, it was at their location, well, she went to that, well, we'll order some lunch, and Trump went off in a rage, because they were going to get lunch.
It's like this shit like that, but it's just stupid. It's just stupid.
|
Sam:
[1:03:35]
| Well, And again, this, this characterizes Trump in general.
And I think it's getting worse as he's getting older and he's getting more desperate and he's running out of money, you know, with all of these things together.
Yeah. Like he, he wants the lawyer who's not going to tell him, no, he wants the lawyer who's going to let him write half of the like legal pleading and, and just put some legal stuff around it, but still have in the middle, the paragraph about how it's a vast conspiracy with Joe Biden doing whatever against him because he has the best polls that anybody has ever seen in the history of the universe.
Yeah. He wants all that in there. You know? And if you don't do it, he's going to fire you anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:22]
| Right.
Yep, that's exactly how that works. And he's not going to pay you.
Look, I mean, let's be clear.
Listen, Giuliani in his bankruptcy filing basically named Trump, you know, that he owed him money.
|
Sam:
[1:04:39]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:40]
| Because he didn't pay any of that shit. He refused his bills.
|
Sam:
[1:04:45]
| Right. Now, for Habba specifically, Trump posted he is looking for new lawyers for the appeal.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:53]
| Yeah, that's right.
|
Sam:
[1:05:22]
| That fresh perspective anyway, just as a good practice.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:25]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:05:26]
| So whatever. So let's hit those cases.
The one that Pabba was in was the, the, the, the, the big civil trial.
Well, this was the civil trial on the E. Jean Carroll stuff, the 83 million, blah, blah, blah.
And so that's gonna, that's gonna be appealed, but he has to put up the money.
We haven't determined exactly how he's going to do that yet, He either does the full amount or a partial amount for bond, but then somebody has to trust him with the bond, et cetera, et cetera.
We talked about that last week. The other things that are sort of ongoing right now, and there haven't actually been the new developments we've expected.
And that's the thing to talk about, actually. In the civil trial with his business, the judge had initially said that he hoped to have the final ruling with the amount of money and all the justification and everything by the end of January.
Right. End of January has come and gone. The latest reports we have are he's now targeting more mid-February-ish.
At first, it sounded like it was slipping to like February 5th and then there were more reports that maybe even later in February than that.
And so on the one hand, people are saying, well, what's taken so long, right?
But the judge did specifically say, by the way, when he said, I'm going to try to get it out by the end of January, he actually said specifically, I'm trying, I'm going to put out an effort, but I'm not making a promise.
Just to be clear, the judge actually used words very similar to that.
So, it's disappointing that that hasn't come out yet, but we shouldn't be too upset.
The judge did give warning that it was only a target.
But the one that everybody is much more frustrated about right now is the appeal to the circuit court on the whole issue of Trump's argument that he has absolute immunity as president, which would potentially make a whole bunch of these cases just go away.
Like specifically, this appeal is related to the D.C.
Trial. That's the one that would go away immediately.
There might be ramifications for others. And at the time that they did the oral arguments...
Most predictions were like, we're going to have a result in a week, maybe two weeks, but certainly not past two weeks. We're now past three weeks.
And people are like, well, for normal appeals, this is not unusual.
It's not unusual to take four weeks, a month, maybe even longer to come up with the verdicts on some of these things.
But the court had been acting like it was in a hurry.
They set very aggressive dates for the oral arguments and all of the briefings that led up to that.
And so there's been a lot of speculation on why is it taking so long?
Is it that because also everybody seems to expect that, of course, they're going to say no to the absolute immunity.
Like the arguments for absolute immunity were fairly ridiculous.
The judges seemed very skeptical of them.
And so we won't know. I've heard so much speculation on exactly what might be going on here.
Maybe they're just trying to really lock down what they come back with so it's unimpeachable and the Supreme Court will just say, oh, we like that. No need for us to review.
Maybe there's a disagreement with one of the judges out of the three that that maybe has different reasons for saying what they're saying.
Or maybe there's disagreement on what they're going to do with the mandate.
There are a whole bunch of different things, but it's all speculation.
But the point of all of this is, in the meantime, delay, delay, delay is working.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:37]
| Well, it's – well, look, he's got an $83 million judgment right now, but he's got to either – he's got to post like that kind of money just to fucking appeal that judgment.
He's got listen fab listen we're not talking that that the new york case is getting delayed to 20 27 we're i.
|
Sam:
[1:10:00]
| Was talking about the dc case.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:02]
| Oh no no no no but i'm talking i know but what you said is that delay delay delay is working it's worked on certain things but but the reality is that that delays are finally they're catching up you know yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:10:16]
| We we the the civil cases are moving right along.
The delay is working on the big criminal cases.
You're absolutely right. There's the New York criminal case that looks like, hey, the DC case is officially out of March. That means New York can go ahead.
Now, no one really wanted the New York case to be first, but okay, we'll take it.
It looks like New York's ready to go at the end of March, Right.
You know, and that's about Stormy Daniels and paying her off.
And it's being presented as well as, hey, this is election interference, too.
This was specifically about trying to keep damaging information from coming out before the 2016 election.
You know, so, but it looked, the DC trial is one that there was still a lot of hope that it would actually get moving pretty quickly.
Now, just to be clear, it's not at all clear that DC is like, oh, okay, we're missing November, right?
It may well be that at this point, maybe we're talking May, you know, instead of March. March.
It all depends on how fast the, you know, we're still waiting for the stupid answer from the appeals court.
It depends. Like if it comes out Monday, maybe the delay is not that big.
If they sit on it another month, maybe it is.
And it also depends on the mandate they put on it.
Do they, do they bring it back with the sort of default calendar that gives Trump 45 days to to ask for an in-bank hearing and even more time after that to go to SCOTUS, or do they accelerate the timetable?
And we just don't know. We just don't know what they're doing with that stuff.
But it's, and we've had a bunch of additional polls really, I mean, this is backing up stuff we've heard before, where a lot of people say a conviction would matter to their vote.
A lot of Republicans are saying a conviction would matter to their vote.
And that sort of ties in, there was a new set of polling that came out today.
And let me get the reference real quick. but basically that a huge, huge portion of the American public has no idea about any of this at all.
They're just not paying attention. I'll give the reference.
There was a Washington Post article by Philip Bump posted on February 2nd.
Most Republicans aren't aware of Trump's various legal issues.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:10]
| Well, I mean, if you're watching Fox News, it's like it's not happening.
I mean, if you're watching Fox News, what the fuck is happening?
I mean, it's all about what's his name? Hunter Biden, Taylor Swift, whatever the fuck.
I mean, yeah, it's like that doesn't None of that exists.
|
Sam:
[1:13:27]
| So here's an interesting part of the article.
So YouGov presented American adults with eight legal scenarios to judge the extent of the public's awareness.
Two were invented, that Trump faces charges related to emoluments or related to drug trafficking.
Happily, less than a quarter of respondents said that those legal threats actually existed.
Okay, that's still, like, okay. Less than a quarter, that's still...
|
Ivan:
[1:14:03]
| A quarter of Americans thought that these big churches were trafficking, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:14:11]
| Yeah. Well, less than a quarter.
But I assume when he describes it as less than a quarter, it probably means it's 20, 23 percent, something like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:23]
| Exactly. 23 percent of Americans think that there is a Trump trafficking case involving Donald Trump. I mean, fuck.
|
Sam:
[1:14:31]
| The other six were real the one that was familiar to the most people was the federal classified documents case six in ten americans said they were aware of that case that's.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:45]
| It that's it.
|
Sam:
[1:14:46]
| That's it that means four forty percent of americans have no idea that that case even exists and that is is the one that had the most awareness.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:57]
| I mean, you know...
Well, here's the reality about this.
Go back to... I still go back to when we were doing this show first in the early 90s. Look.
|
Sam:
[1:15:13]
| This.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:15]
| Lack of knowledge about what the fuck is going on hasn't really changed, okay? OK, people have no clue about nothing.
They still don't have any clue about nothing. The only change that's happened right now is you've got a hardcore base that what I have described it now recently that I came up with the best thing is that they have undergone a massive Pavlovian experiment. Okay. Right.
That all they have been conditioned to react to certain things now, even when they aren't happening for real.
And that's what it is right now.
Now, they just hear the silent whistles, all the buzzwords about vaccines, liberals, gay, whatever, and diversity.
I don't know which has been made into bad words and voila, they're all like...
|
Sam:
[1:16:32]
| So let me give some of the specific numbers, because we were guessing 23%.
And actually, for the emoluments clause one, the overall number was actually 23%. 23% believe that Trump has been charged with violating the emoluments clause.
Now, that one, by the way, the false ones, it's the Democrats who are like...
43% of Democrats believe that Trump has been charged with violating the Emoluments Clause.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:00]
| You fucking morons. You're all morons. I love you. You, come on.
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
|
Sam:
[1:17:10]
| And then the drug trafficking one, the overall number was only 9%.
So only 9% of Americans. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:18]
| Well, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:17:20]
| Now that, once again, it's the Democrats who are diluted here.
It's 17% of Democrats believe that Donald Trump has been charged with drug.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:28]
| What is wrong with you?
You idiot.
|
Sam:
[1:17:36]
| Now, are the ones that are real, So let's look. To your knowledge, has Donald Trump been found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E.G. and Carol?
Overall, 55%. Democrats, 70%. Republicans, 45% are aware that this has happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:56]
| That's not terrible. For.
|
Sam:
[1:17:58]
| Fraudulently inflating the value of his properties, overall, 47% are aware of that.
71% of Democrats, 26% of Republicans.
At charged with falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star, overall, 55%. Democrats, 74%. Republicans, 39%.
Taking the highly classified documents, overall, 59%.
Democrats 73, Republicans 45.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:31]
| Fuck, I mean, Republicans are not even over 50% on any of this.
|
Sam:
[1:18:36]
| Right. Okay, just to finish these up before we talk about them all.
Conspiring to overturn the results of the election, overall 56%, Democrats 73, Republicans 42, and being charged with attempting to obstruct the certification of the election, overall 51%, Democrats 69, Republicans 36.
So you're right. The Republicans aren't over 50% on any of these.
And this isn't like, do you feel this is justified? Do you feel this is fair?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:06]
| No, do you feel he's guilty? Do you know? Right. Do you know?
Do you know that this is going on? Right. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:19:13]
| It's not even getting to the point of like, is this fair?
It's just even being aware that this is happening at all.
And this is where the whole thing of like, oh, people say that it would change their minds if they knew he was convicted, but the indictments don't make a difference.
Most of these people don't even know the indictment has happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:44]
| No, it's crazy. I mean, it's just so insane. How could these people not know?
|
Sam:
[1:19:49]
| And this goes back to, you know, when we were talking a couple weeks ago about how the Biden campaign folks were saying, look, you know, this is all going to change when people feel that it really is Biden versus Trump.
Because everybody doesn't believe that.
One of the Biden people, unnamed Biden source, the quote was something, and I'm going to paraphrase here, but the quote was something like, you just cannot possibly believe the level that these people have no idea what's happening.
You know, and that's where we are right now.
And that is one of the things that changes as the election year progresses, is that all of this will be more in front of people's faces.
If any of these trials actually start happening, they're going to be harder to avoid.
I mean, hell, even Fox will cover some of the trials, you know, but it's just. Yeah. Yeah.
And the delay makes a difference.
Let's look at a potential current timeline.
Is that the New York trial about Stormy Daniels stuff actually does start at the end of March and lasts, let's say a month or so.
Then sometime in April, we might have an initial verdict. Obviously, there'll be appeals and blah, blah, blah.
And sentencing will be even later. But we might have a verdict in April for one of the criminal trials.
And then maybe a reasonable time for the D.C.
Case to actually get like started, assuming that they don't slow walk it too much is May or June. Right.
And then we're having like a potential verdict for that right around the conventions.
Or maybe it'll last a little while longer. Maybe that trial would be going on during the Republican convention, which is in July, I think.
I will, of course, check that. But yeah, it's July.
But you got to think that the level of ignorance will drop a little bit over the course of the year. Right.
Right. Please. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:22]
| It's crazy. It's entirely nuts at this point.
Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:22:31]
| So next up on that kind of stuff, Fanny Willis. Oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:37]
| Jeez.
Look, I am angry.
|
Sam:
[1:22:45]
| I'm angry too. I mean, this is so self-inflicted bullshit.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:50]
| This is, I'm sorry, but you needed to have done one of two things.
Either you needed to have disclosed this up front or at the moment that you just disclosed it now, you needed to have announced your resignation and who the fuck was taking over.
|
Sam:
[1:23:07]
| So there are a couple of things here. So just to be clear for anybody who's not following along, this is the whole thing with Fannie Willis apparently having an affair, with one of the lawyers working for her on this case.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:23]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:23:24]
| And the Republicans, one of the defense lawyers for the various people she's indicted, had brought this up as a reason, petitioning the court to throw them off the case because of this, because it's a conflict of interest.
And they had brought up that she had accepted basically self-dealing on money because she hired this guy, and then he paid for vacations with her. That was the argument.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:59]
| Look, look, look. Okay, let's be clear about this. I.
|
Sam:
[1:24:04]
| Was going to say, like, in the document that she submitted today to the court that admitted that she had a relationship with this guy, she also provided evidence of a couple of things.
One, she did not hire him after the relationship existed.
It was not, we have a relationship and now I'm going to hire my boyfriend. friend.
It was, she hired him and then they had an affair.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:35]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:36]
| I'm not sure that sounds a lot better, but whatever.
But also that they alternated paying for trips and stuff.
So it wasn't like she was funneling money back to her own benefit directly.
And so basically her argument in the the document right now is yes, there was an affair.
However, nothing related to this introduces the.
Anything that's unfair or biased or anything else that would affect this trial.
So there are no grounds to remove me from the trial.
And apparently there's also a thing in Georgia I heard today, and, anybody who knows different, please correct me, that there's a Georgia law that basically says if she is removed from her case, her entire office has to be removed from the case because because they are considered to just be subsidiary to her.
So there's a real question. If she is removed from this case, whether or not it continues at all, if she resigns, I'm not sure that that's clear either, whether that's somebody ready and willing to pick up or whether they have to have a special election for her position and the new person might drop it entirely. entirely.
That's not clear to me right now. I've heard a number of people say that with the document that she submitted today, the chance of the judge explicitly removing her if she doesn't remove herself is very low.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:26:10]
| Because she's provided a bunch of information that basically says the things that you were worried, the things that the Republicans were saying I was doing in terms of the monetary stuff is just not true.
And so, therefore, you know, whether or not we had a relationship is irrelevant to the case, basically, is the argument.
I don't know how this will play out, but the bottom line to me, like, I don't know if she had to resign immediately, but the whole thing just smacks of incredibly bad judgment all around.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:48]
| And that's my point. It's just really bad.
|
Sam:
[1:26:52]
| And because because here's the thing by the apparently by the time this started because she says the relationship started after she brought him on to help with the case that means the case was already ongoing highly sensitive nationally visible case with everybody fucking watching it and what do you do you decide to have an affair with someone who works for you no like even like there are very few workplaces where that's considered acceptable you know it's like okay i i understand you know sometimes people get involved with their co-workers but if you're like if it's someone who works for you you need to either not have that relationship And just fucking control yourself or you sever that relationship, you sever the professional relationship, and then you go ahead and do whatever the fuck you want.
You know, it's just like the the the poor judgment shown here, because what she has done is regardless of the truth of the matter, regardless of whether or not it affects the the trial and got bias and introduced in some way.
I don't think it does, but you have given all the Trumpies.
Something to hammer you over the head with.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:17]
| I don't even care about that. Look, that's irrelevant to me.
|
Sam:
[1:28:23]
| It's bad judgment anyway, right? Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:27]
| I mean, I don't.
|
Sam:
[1:28:29]
| But at the same time, you are giving, you are unnecessarily giving something that distracts away from this very important thing you were working on.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:40]
| And that's the point. I mean, I don't really care about, you know, in all of these things, in these situations, one of the most important things is that you need to project the correct sense, the correct impartiality in the process.
Especially when you're hiring somebody, because the one thing is that I understand the relationship is that Fannie Willis hired hired this attorney under contract to do prosecution, because I guess it's beyond the scope in terms of how much work needed to be done in order to do this.
|
Sam:
[1:29:30]
| And a bunch of other people, too, by the way. He was like one of three major people, and there were a lot of other lower-level people as well.
She staffed up to do this.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:40]
| Right, right, right, right, right. She staffed up to do this, and it's just one of these things where—, I mean, look, I've known a lot of people that have had, like, relationships with their subordinates, okay, and some that have been fine, some that have been questionable.
My whole thing is that the reality is that whenever that happens, it always raises questions about how impartial are you about how that work is going, how those payments are happening, and why, and so forth and so on.
|
Sam:
[1:30:17]
| Mm hmm. Well, and just and just in general, I'll add, like, you're absolutely right.
Just in any situation where a boss and a subordinate are getting involved, it's it's always going to be messy. And there are all kinds of questions. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:31]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30:31]
| But in this case, like you are going after the former president of the fucking United States.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:38]
| Donald J. Fucking Trump. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:30:42]
| You need to be making sure absolutely everything from top to bottom is done by the fucking book. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:51]
| Yep. Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:30:52]
| And, and that you are getting everything right.
And you are being super careful about everything and the way not to do that.
Oh, I'll, I'll just go have an affair with one of the, the lawyers I hired to run this for me.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:08]
| No, it's just, it's just stupid. It's dumb.
And I, I agree with your very first statement. I'm mad.
Yeah.
And you're you're you're potentially screwing it all up because you couldn't keep your hands off each other. Come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:39]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:41]
| You know, just just say no. As they said, you know, like, look.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:47]
| If it happened here, here's one thing they should have or disclose right away. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:31:54]
| Yeah. Make it public. Disclose right away. Say this is happening.
And and you know and if there was a you.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:01]
| And we don't i don't want to i don't want i don't want to exactly i don't want people to believe that this is you know they're there this is a and it it's because of inappropriate reasons things are happening but this happened and here's full disclosure and it doesn't take like this fucking like divorce thing to to all of a sudden force force her hand to actually come out and say it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:25]
| Or, or like I said, the, you know, if they really wanted to do this the right way, quote unquote, is that he should have resigned.
Right. So that the business relationship was no longer there and then go do whatever the fuck you want.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:41]
| Exactly. Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:32:43]
| But like get that conflict off the table right away. Like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:48]
| A hundred percent.
|
Sam:
[1:32:49]
| No, no, you know, And I know they were probably trying to keep it secret because he still had his divorce proceedings going on. He was technically still married.
And apparently this is a fairly acrimonious divorce, not one of these handshake-we're-still-friends things.
So they were keeping it secret.
And if he suddenly resigned, that would make obvious something was going on. I don't know.
But it's just really disappointing. it's like come on now from what i'm hearing it seems like the chances of this actually being a derailing event that screws up the rico charge is low right now not zero but low so okay maybe they'll get past this but it's still like okay come on it.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:41]
| Still doesn't make me i'm pissed.
|
Sam:
[1:33:44]
| Yeah i mean it's like, yeah, yeah well you know all right that that's one thing that makes lots of people stupid like you know, I'll be honest you know I've got stupid things in my history too that I've done when it comes to that kind of stuff and man you know just like libido and stuff maybe they should just sterilize everybody before they hit puberty, and... No.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:18]
| No, no, let's not, that's a bad idea.
Look, I will say that as an adult, yeah, I will say that as an adult, I have tried to steer away from those issues.
I'm not going to say that I was a saint about it, but, but, but, I definitely, especially, no, I will say that flat out, as an adult, with subordinates, No, no.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:48]
| Maybe coworkers or people, you know, in the office, yes. But with somebody that was a subordinate.
|
Sam:
[1:34:55]
| You know, I can kind of see coworkers. You know, like, look, you meet people at work. Right. That's just reality.
That's one of the main places you can meet people.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:06]
| But not a subordinate. I mean, never a subordinate.
|
Sam:
[1:35:10]
| That's just always bad news. Now. Yeah. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:14]
| No. And not that I was tempted by subordinates, but no.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Now, if that subordinate then later became a coworker of mine, that's a different story.
But no, it's just not good. Bad, bad, bad.
|
Sam:
[1:35:37]
| So one last, it's not really a Trump thing, but I think it's worth mentioning with regard to just the Trump and MAGA world's disregard at best for the violence they're inciting.
I mean, that's a big part of the whole January 6th case and all that kind of stuff.
But the latest we had was this guy in Pennsylvania beheading his father and then going on like an anti-Biden rant and all this kind of stuff.
Now, obviously, no one specifically was out there being like, hey, everybody go behead your friends and family who are liberals.
But no. And obviously, this guy has something wrong with him, undoubtedly.
But it's just this is this is the worry with the increasing stridency of of all of these conversations of like you're stealing our country from us and all this kind of stuff is that there is a significant portion of people out there who are going to take it seriously and are going to be violent.
And I just, you have Donald Trump's lawyers in one of their specific appeals related to this whole taking him off the ballot thing specifically warned and said that there was danger of, I forget the exact language they use, but massive chaos.
If you keep Trump off the ballot.
And it's just incredibly worrying, you know, that...
And you can see some of it on the Democratic side as well, but it seems to be much bigger on the Republican side right now where there's just a huge subset that's just itching for violence under the right circumstance.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:49]
| Yeah, well...
And it's, you know, we're talking about dog whistles and all this kind of stuff, right?
And, you know, we've had, this isn't the first case.
And, you know, you could say that, oh, well, there are some extremists on the left too.
But it's not at the level of vilification and extremism that you were seeing on the right. It just isn't. it's.
|
Sam:
[1:38:19]
| Part of the core brand almost at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:22]
| Yeah it is and i mean this entire vilification of all federal employees for example that anyone that works for the government is some part of a a deep state psyop whole thing and and this is like said over and over by so many in the GOP right now, where they vilify everyone in government.
We talk about all these issues, stuff like defunding the police and so forth and so on, but I don't see anybody going and beheading police officers.
You know i.
|
Sam:
[1:39:11]
| I just worry that in this environment the we're gonna have an explosion at some point well.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:17]
| Fuck i mean you don't worry got two we on january 6th for god's sakes.
|
Sam:
[1:39:21]
| Yeah no i'm just worried it's gonna get worse it's just gonna get worse and worse i don't know it before it gets better i mean eventually i have faith it'll get better but i worry that it's gonna get worse before it gets better and obviously you get you got people getting beheaded in pennsylvania i mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:40]
| Beheaded beheaded I mean it's insane no and it was just people getting beheaded it was the son of the guy that beheaded him I mean, it was his son that beheaded him alright we need to wrap up.
|
Sam:
[1:39:56]
| So anyway, the stuff at the end of the show, we're done. We're done.
Curmudgeons-corner.com. Join us there for seeing our, our, how to get in contact us, email, Facebook, Mastodon, all of that.
You can also find there are archives of our show going all the way back for years and years and years and years now.
If you're curious with transcripts on the most recent episodes, like, I don't know, going back six months now, something like that.
And of course also our patreon where you can give us cash money at various levels we will mention you on the show we will send you a postcard we will send you a mug and importantly at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we will invite you to our convergence course slack where ivan and i and various listeners are chatting throughout the week and it's a lot of fun you You should join us. Yeah.
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Ivan:
[1:40:50]
| So.
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Sam:
[1:40:51]
| Anyway, something from the Slack that's interesting.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:56]
| Well, let me try. Let me try. I'll try. Try. I'm going to try and see.
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Sam:
[1:41:01]
| Okay, try. Try. Try, Yvonne.
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Ivan:
[1:41:03]
| Okay, all right. Oh, oh, here it is. Look, somebody in Germany posted a job for a Windows 3.11 administrator.
Administrator apparently the german on rails some of them still need windows 3.11 sam can you fucking believe that is that.
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Sam:
[1:41:27]
| Still supported by microsoft.
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Ivan:
[1:41:29]
| Not even remotely i mean shit you can't even get them to give you windows 7 support or x you can't get 7 I mean, I think seven, maybe XP for sure. No way. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:41:43]
| What was it that we found out like a year or two ago that like IMAX projectors, like you had to upload the software on a floppy or they were run by a Palm pilot or something crazy like that?
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Ivan:
[1:41:55]
| Oh, yeah. Yes, that's right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:59]
| Yeah, there's still really ancient legacy hardware and software sticking around in all these obscure places where, frankly, it's like, it works.
Why would we change it? Right.
But at some point, it just gets ridiculous.
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Ivan:
[1:42:16]
| Well, I saw that also this week that apparently courts in Japan in the last week finally eliminated a requirement that certain filings also be submitted in floppy disk.
|
Sam:
[1:42:33]
| Yeah there's so much of that stuff just hiding in obscure places yes anyway that's it for the show thank you everybody for listening to yet another curmudgeons corner and we'll be back around next week hopefully and everybody stay safe have a good time all that sort of thing goodbye, bye, Okay, I'm hitting stop and hoping for the best.
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