Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Greetings.
|
Ivan:
[0:03]
| No. Salutations.
|
Sam:
[0:06]
| Okay, I'll go ahead and hit the thingy thingy thing do. Here we go.
Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, February 10th, 2024.
I am Sam Minter, Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne. It's just after 3 p.m.
|
Ivan:
[0:47]
| Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.
You know, can I just say something that I just noticed about this application that we are using?
Yes. riverside it it has you know there are dumb interfaces and dialogues and many applications all over okay even some apple ones sometimes get confusing i keep seeing people post a meme and i will admit that i have fucked this up before but i am much better at this yes um when a call comes comes in and you're on a call and says, I'm frequently on calls. Yes.
Rejecting the call is no big deal, but sometimes when you want to do something, not that this presents you three options.
And a lot of people have this meme about, I look at this and I, my brain freezes.
And I, I have to say that there's been occasions where I've done the wrong selection.
They right. Where I've wound up accepting a call that I meant to reject.
|
Sam:
[1:53]
| Yup. And it also depends whether the phone's locked or not at the moment the call comes in. It's different.
And they changed it recently, too.
|
Ivan:
[2:04]
| They've changed it the last... But you don't do that many calls, so this isn't much of an issue for you.
|
Sam:
[2:11]
| Oh, yeah. I very rarely... Unknown calls go straight to voicemail, and regular calls maybe a couple a week.
|
Ivan:
[2:21]
| Week listen me and my wife we are we're like from the early 2000s my wife the other day literally told me i'm like hey i i i was gonna arrange dinner with these folks and they were answered well did you text them no i just called them and i'm like and i was like good man what the listen i'm like even i who i am a call i do call first a lot and i will tell you that there is a lot of of people at my company, I think because they're my generation, that we do a lot of call first a lot. Right.
|
Sam:
[2:56]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:58]
| You know, I recognize that even if I, there are certain groups that I will text first, I will admit. I have a separation.
There are some people, it's a text first thing. There's another group that says, just fucking call.
Okay. You know, but I recognize that I, look, I, there are only a few people I leave a voicemail for.
Most people, if they don't pick up, I will text. Okay. Okay, what the hell it is that I want works a lot easier.
But then I was on Riverside over here.
|
Sam:
[3:34]
| Yeah. Oh, we're getting back to that.
|
Ivan:
[3:37]
| Riverside is this application that we use. And the reason I was mentioning about the interface is that I realized that we had a problem with our microphones and stuff or whatever. Because the interface.
|
Sam:
[3:48]
| Your microphone.
|
Ivan:
[3:49]
| With my microphone.
|
Sam:
[3:50]
| Mine was fine.
|
Ivan:
[3:51]
| Ever since the construction where i don't know this thing got confused on my end okay yeah and it was mixing it up it wasn't doing it right but i you know and then this doesn't allow you to do changes on the fly either.
|
Sam:
[4:07]
| Like once you're recording right.
|
Ivan:
[4:09]
| Once we're recording it's like it's that microphone and that's it and you're stuck and i can't like which makes no sense to me whatsoever but i mean you know look you're an recording studio i mean we're did radio i mean switching microphones we switch microphones all the fucking time and what the fuck's the big deal it's changing the god damn microphone it doesn't that that is that is something that has no sense whatsoever in this application uh-huh you know and and you know this application but.
|
Sam:
[4:36]
| Just to be clear the the other one we used before this had the same limitation.
|
Ivan:
[4:41]
| It did yeah.
|
Sam:
[4:43]
| So like i.
|
Ivan:
[4:44]
| Must be It might be.
|
Sam:
[4:47]
| A technological limitation, not a limitation of this specific program.
|
Ivan:
[4:52]
| It still doesn't make any fucking sense that we have that fucking limitation in the year 2024.
Sorry. Okay, assholes. You got to figure it out. Okay. But the one thing that was worse is that I just realized is that when I came in, it asked you for your name.
And then there are two buttons. Okay. And then one that says I have headphones and one that says I don't have headphones.
And I realize, well, why the fuck do you need two buttons for that?
|
Sam:
[5:22]
| You mean instead of it figuring it out.
|
Ivan:
[5:25]
| There yeah i'm sorry because i got no i just don't figure it out that they put two buttons for it yeah as opposed.
|
Sam:
[5:34]
| To like a toggle or something.
|
Ivan:
[5:35]
| Right why are there two but i mean why it's before no no no no no but why no no no but that makes no sense whatsoever i mean you could you could force me to choose i mean i'm like well no it doesn't force you to choose i can join the studio without pressing it i've done that before, that makes no sense if you're gonna force me to choose then you know because it changes how.
|
Sam:
[6:01]
| It does echo correction depending on your choice.
|
Ivan:
[6:03]
| Well i get that but my point is that it's either, i mean you only need one radio button either i press that i have the headphones or i don't uh-huh okay you know i don't need one that uh yes or no for that makes no, i don't you know i i that doesn't make sense i don't fuck just doesn't make any sense.
|
Sam:
[6:32]
| It's never confused me but okay yes.
|
Ivan:
[6:35]
| It doesn't know it's not that it could just confuse That's not what I'm saying.
It just doesn't make sense.
|
Sam:
[6:43]
| Okay. I mean.
|
Ivan:
[6:43]
| Because if I can click join the studio anyway without pressing no, then what's the point of having the no button?
Do you understand what I'm saying? So what does it think when I don't press either yes or no? What?
|
Sam:
[6:55]
| I don't know. I'm sure it has a default. It probably defaults to having more echo correction.
And if you don't have the echo, so be it.
|
Ivan:
[7:04]
| Anyway, well, I just think that that's just not very...
thought out either but but but you know but we have all of those all over the place it's like some of these i'm like yeah but this.
|
Sam:
[7:18]
| Whole discussion reminds me that i should probably stop paying for the software we used before riverside.
|
Ivan:
[7:23]
| Oh for fuck's sakes look i i just wound up with my wife right now who did something just her brain just melted a few minutes ago up yeah she went to make a venmo payment and usually for this i i don't like doing any of this stuff out of checking accounts just in case i have to get the money back for some reason okay okay i have it hooked up because there's extra extra.
|
Sam:
[7:47]
| Protections with credit cards.
|
Ivan:
[7:49]
| Right so i usually have her just do it out of the amex okay i don't know why the hell she went and she, venmoed it out of her checking account and then she realized that she didn't have the money and And then instead of asking me for the money to tell me from her personal checking account, she asked her brother for the money.
But by the way, this is something I'm supposed to be paying for out of my credit card. It's not from hers.
And then I'm like, wait, you paid it from the wrong place.
Then you asked your brother for it. Now I have to pay your brother for something.
I mean, I'm going. this payment is doing three hops that should have been just one hop and i'm like why did you you know just tell me no i gotta pay your brother money for some reason he's gonna think we're crazy and you just asked him for the money for some reason oh my god i'm short on my check account send me money to our brother and i'm like, But why? Now I'm having to Venmo your brother to money immediately.
Like, in the last three minutes, I die, die, die, die.
Well, it's the memory problems, you know?
|
Sam:
[9:12]
| That reminds me, I have some, I owe my daughter some money that I promised to Venmo her for, like, last time she paid for food for my son.
And I haven't done it yet.
How long ago was that? A couple weeks.
|
Ivan:
[9:26]
| Weeks i saw that okay i mean you know look this comes from well you but listen you're good about remembering to pay for stuff actually you look you're good about paying for stuff look even if i got i don't know you know some of you that they're relatively new to here like so.
|
Sam:
[9:44]
| You're going to tell the story that about like the 25 cent checks yeah go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[9:48]
| Yeah so so back somehow Somehow, for whatever reason, in the 90s, okay, it's up, boy, it wound up that Sam would owe me money.
|
Sam:
[9:57]
| I was tight on cash for something. I needed to get like a loan from Yvonne for like, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[10:04]
| Whatever. But I'm like, listen, but I'm like, look, I was more than happy to give Sam money for whatever.
Anyway, it was no big deal. I'm like, okay, look, look, it's short, whatever.
And Sam, but Sam very dutifully and responsibly always paid back anyway.
So I had no problem. him if he needed money i'm like you know whatever you know and he would pay me back and sometimes he was low on money okay so i he had a payment methodology to apportion to his bills okay and he had some kind of priority system which you know i was like you know i mean a bankruptcy attorney would have been enthralled with your debt seniority structure okay i gotta tell you Okay, because they would have been like, oh, my God, you know, that's a lot of thought into this.
And so sometimes I would get some...
you know, payments that were, you know, $10, 20, you know, something.
And then some other times I would get like six cents.
|
Sam:
[11:02]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[11:03]
| And I want to get like six cents by mail.
|
Sam:
[11:06]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[11:06]
| Which meant the stamp that cost more than the, than the money.
|
Sam:
[11:11]
| Well, I think I did it through, I think I did it through quick and checks or something too, though. I wouldn't.
|
Ivan:
[11:16]
| No, I remember. No, no, no. You were sending for something. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. At some point you were sending paper written. No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[11:22]
| Okay. You're writing checks. I eventually transitioned to like.
|
Ivan:
[11:26]
| Yes, you eventually moved to that. But no, I'm talking all the time.
I was getting, I was gotten handwritten checks by Sam for infinitely tiny amounts of money. Okay.
Well, under this, you know, the postage value.
Yes. But, but Sam, unless Sam caught up and paid me. So, you know, I give credit. He was very, you know, Hey, may have taken.
|
Sam:
[11:50]
| Yeah, eventually, like, situation got under control, and the checks got bigger, and it got paid off. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[11:57]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[11:57]
| And by the way, I was doing the same thing to, like, half a dozen other people. Like, my parents.
|
Ivan:
[12:02]
| Yeah, I know.
|
Sam:
[12:03]
| My grandmother.
|
Ivan:
[12:03]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[12:03]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[12:03]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[12:03]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[12:04]
| Yep, yep, yep.
|
Sam:
[12:05]
| Whatever.
|
Ivan:
[12:05]
| I was, but, you know, I was on that list.
|
Sam:
[12:07]
| Eventually, my grandmother was like, for the love of God, stop.
|
Ivan:
[12:13]
| Like.
|
Sam:
[12:13]
| I forgive everything you owe me. For the love of God, stop sending me checks.
|
Ivan:
[12:20]
| Hey hey i i do admire the sense of of responsibility i am one that is like that as well that i'm like you know i mean i i had gotten somebody in an investment one time i promised that they would get the money back by a certain period of time and the investment hadn't matured in time but i was like you know it's a long time ago it was about forty fifty thousand thousand dollars okay all right that were due and i i went and i i.
|
Sam:
[12:52]
| Think i only owed yvonne like a few hundred.
|
Ivan:
[12:54]
| It was a few hundred no this was the time it was like 40 it was about 40 000 to 40 50 000 but i figured out a way i'm fronting him the money i listen i made this commitment it is supposed to be invested but i but i said that we would be out by a certain amount of time and i fronted him the money then eventually i got the money because we think we we were able to sell what it was. I got the money back.
I'm just like...
But with people and money, you know, I want to make sure that I meet those responsibilities.
I will say that when it came to more corporate stuff, look, I had to put our family company into bankruptcy. Look, I mean, there were vendors over there that were unsecured creditors.
I'm like, okay, with Big Bank or whatever. I'm like, look, didn't have the money.
bankruptcy is there for there's a corporate bankruptcy I'm like look money isn't there sorry you know that's, the way the cookie crumbles I mean you know I'm sure that if they have had a way of getting it they would have gotten it but yeah.
|
Sam:
[14:07]
| So anyway if you guys haven't figured it out I mean if there's anybody new here like anybody who's been listening for a while knows exactly how this works we're doing our lighter but first thing I guess Yvonne just did his and I'll do one in a second and then we'll take a break and then we'll be doing more serious newsy stuff for the rest of the show so that's the idea did you have anything else or shall I you know do my next movie oh.
|
Ivan:
[14:32]
| No you need to do the next movie.
|
Sam:
[14:34]
| Okay so the next movie on my list and you know we got way way way way way behind because of the strikes but strikes Strikes.
|
Ivan:
[14:45]
| Strikes? Strikes? Like what? The hoodie strikes? Strikes.
|
Sam:
[14:51]
| The writers and the actors and all that? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[14:55]
| Oh, so did we... My memory is not working. Did we suspend it?
|
Sam:
[15:02]
| Your memory is shot. Yeah. We didn't do any movies or TV shows or anything for the length of the strikes.
|
Ivan:
[15:08]
| I have to completely admit I had no idea that we did that.
|
Sam:
[15:13]
| We discussed it. We talked about it on the show. You slipped up and gave one movie review in the middle of the strike, but that's it.
|
Ivan:
[15:21]
| I mean.
|
Sam:
[15:25]
| This must mean, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[15:27]
| I'm not eligible to run for president either.
|
Sam:
[15:30]
| You clearly should not be president.
|
Ivan:
[15:32]
| No. Because I have no recollection. Seriously, I'm not making this up.
I have no recollection of this whatsoever.
|
Sam:
[15:40]
| And we'll talk about that president thing later, probably. Anyway, no, June 30th, 2023, I watched the 1993 movie Robin Hood Men in Tights.
|
Ivan:
[15:53]
| What? Robin Hood Men in Tights?
|
Sam:
[15:56]
| Yes, Robin Hood Men in Tights.
|
Ivan:
[15:58]
| I did watch that, I believe. Maybe.
|
Sam:
[16:02]
| So you're not sure. You have also failed to remember this.
So this is another indication of your lack of mental ability. yeah.
|
Ivan:
[16:11]
| My my my mind is fried.
|
Sam:
[16:13]
| Anyway i i will get right to the point i hated it thumbs down completely okay here's the thing here here's the thing this is just it's it's a mel brooks comedy and i have come to realize over time i just do not appreciate mel brooks style comedy you know i.
|
Ivan:
[16:37]
| Don't think his comedy has aged well if many of them didn't.
|
Sam:
[16:42]
| Yeah that's probably true uh you know but i don't think i particularly liked it back then either but i know a lot of people did but it's just and you know i haven't watched a lot of his movies but my basic take is i don't remember liking them the few that i've seen and certainly when i was watching this I felt like it every minute was painful.
I was like, that is just so not funny.
|
Ivan:
[17:12]
| I have to say that I, I will admit that I, I think, Now that you remind me of this, I realize I don't think I watched Roman Hood Men in Tights because I am on your camp.
I might find some scenes in Mel Brooks' comedies funny and some portions of it, but not an entire movie for the most part.
I think about the only one that I kind of enjoyed was Spaceballs.
|
Sam:
[17:45]
| You know, look, Spaceballs, just to put this out there, I have seen Spaceballs once and only once.
I was a teenager, and I saw it with my dad and stepmom.
And, you know, I was an early teenager, too. And if you know the Mel Brooks stuff, including Spaceballs, there's a lot of raunchy humor.
|
Ivan:
[18:06]
| Yes, there is.
|
Sam:
[18:07]
| So my complete memory of this is, oh, my God, I'm sitting with my parents. This is awful.
you know and i and i i also like i didn't appreciate the comedy anyway but the fact that they were like you know joking about sex and and you know all this kind of stuff at the same time and i was you know a young teenager with my parents i just felt incredibly uncomfortable through the whole thing and i felt like every joke was incredibly stupid and i think i had suggested the movie because it was a Star Wars parody. Right, right, right.
|
Ivan:
[18:47]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[18:48]
| And so I feel like, I don't know if I verbalized it, but to this day, I feel like I needed to desperately apologize for taking them to this thing.
I felt horrible about it.
And so I guess if it's not on my damn list, it is now again to see it again.
But I know I hated it then and I know I'll hate it now. And the thing is, you know, this is part of it, too.
I think this type of humor is actually a lot of it is aimed at like teenagers, you know, at least it feels late teenagers, probably not early teenagers like I was. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[19:28]
| I think it's a certain type of comedy. I'm not going to say that it's an age group because I know there were a lot of older people that really like like Brooks comedy.
Yeah. But but it's just look, there are certain comedy.
it's like you know dave chappelle for example man i never found him funny i i mean all these people i remember somebody gave me some dvd even before he got canceled yeah yeah yeah way back and like gave me some dvds and stuff oh he's hilarious whatever and i and i was like watch this and i'm like it's not funny to me you know so i i would you know so i i just think that, Some people found as funny, but it's just not you and me.
|
Sam:
[20:13]
| Yeah, I guess so. I'm looking at the Wikipedia page.
It got mixed reviews from credit from critics, but it was a boss box office success.
Yeah. If it's not obvious from the title, by the way, it's of course a parody of the Robin Hood story. It's like the Robin Hood story.
|
Ivan:
[20:31]
| But at the time also, one of the reasons it came out.
|
Sam:
[20:34]
| There was another Robin Hood movie.
|
Ivan:
[20:36]
| Right. It was a Kevin Costner. Right. Right. There was the Kevin Costner movie.
And I think that this was Prince of Thieves. And I think this was like more directly taken, you know, making fun of that movie specifically.
|
Sam:
[20:48]
| Well, there are two things like it was it was directly making fun of earlier Robin Hood movies because they were already out, but they knew while they were making it. Yeah.
That the Kevin Costner movie would come out at the same time. They were. Well.
|
Ivan:
[21:03]
| No, no, no, no. Not at the same time. I've just looked this up. Oh.
|
Sam:
[21:06]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[21:07]
| Prince of Thieves came out two years before.
|
Sam:
[21:10]
| Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Two years.
|
Ivan:
[21:12]
| That's why I was pretty sure they were aiming at that one more than anything.
|
Sam:
[21:17]
| There were lots of references. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:20]
| So, yeah. It was 91, and this one came out two years later.
So, to me, I always saw it as just making fun of Prince of Thieves.
|
Sam:
[21:30]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:30]
| Yeah. So, yeah. And even Rotten Tomatoes, look, it's not rated that well.
42% Rotten Tomatoes. Not that high.
Yeah.
So, you know, I just...
Holy shit, Dave Chappelle was in this movie.
|
Sam:
[21:48]
| Yes, he was. Yes, he was.
|
Ivan:
[21:50]
| I just realized this. Huh. Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:54]
| That must be why you hated it. No. You said you're not even sure you've seen it.
|
Ivan:
[21:59]
| Well, I don't think... I'm pretty sure I did not watch it.
|
Sam:
[22:04]
| You know, this is also the I'm pretty sure this is the first time I watched the movie, but, you know, I'd seen little clips from it and stuff over the years.
I mean, you can't avoid that kind of stuff, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[22:16]
| But Spaceballs had a higher rating, definitely like a 57.
And I'm pretty sure that I if I've on Robin Hood Men in Tights, I may have seen a few minutes of it just because back then with a linear TV.
Yeah, probably flip through one of the movie channels and some of it was on.
But I never sat and watched a movie, I'm sure.
|
Sam:
[22:40]
| If I was flipping through channels and this came on, I don't think I would have made it more than a minute or two maximum, maybe even 30 seconds before I would be like, this is horrible. I'm flipping the channel.
|
Ivan:
[22:55]
| Yeah. I'll be like, okay, I'm done. This is bullshit. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:00]
| I mean, because it came up on my list, I watched the whole thing, you know, but I was, I was regretting the fact that this stupid thing came up.
Like the whole damn time. I just, so complete thumbs down on this one for me, I guess like, Hey, if you're a Mel Brooks fan and you love his type of humor, I mean, more power to you, I guess, watch as much as you want, but it is just not for me, not for me at all.
|
Ivan:
[23:29]
| Okay. So, so two thumbs down.
|
Sam:
[23:31]
| Two thumbs down. And I have not watched space balls since I was a teenager, as far as I'm aware, but thumbs down for that too.
|
Ivan:
[23:40]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[23:41]
| And I'll put it on my list and maybe I'll watch it again and get a fresh opinion, but I can't imagine that I will like it more than I did when I was 13.
|
Ivan:
[23:50]
| I don't think that's aged well at all.
|
Sam:
[23:55]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[23:56]
| No, no, no, no, no. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:59]
| Okay. Then let us take a break.
And when we'll come back, Yvonne and I will alternate on more serious thingies.
Thingy, thingy doodles.
|
Ivan:
[24:10]
| Thingies.
|
Sam:
[24:10]
| Here we go.
And here we are, and Yvonne, it is your turn to pick the first more serious newsy topic.
|
Ivan:
[24:58]
| I'm gonna be very, very, very extremely serious.
|
Sam:
[25:05]
| Oh yeah, like you were last week. I, I.
|
Ivan:
[25:07]
| I'm so, so, so very, very, very, very serious.
|
Sam:
[25:13]
| Oh, you know, I, I just, I just want to say this before you pick your serious topic. Okay.
Last week, you know, I edited the show in such a way that hopefully you guys couldn't tell, but Yvonne was in a hotel in Indiana.
on his freaking cell phone with what supposedly was a 5G signal.
|
Ivan:
[25:37]
| Supposedly it was 5G.
|
Sam:
[25:39]
| And it kept cutting out over and over and over again.
I ended up with 11 separate bits of Yvonne, the shortest of which were just a couple minutes and the longest of which were maybe 20 minutes.
And, you know, usually like we do this recording and I end up with one big clip of Yvonne and one big clip of me and I edited it together.
But no, Yvonne kept dropping out and I'd be talking or he'd be talking, he'd be talking. And all of a sudden what I would hear is like Yvonne in a robot voice for a few minutes and then you disappear.
|
Ivan:
[26:11]
| The robot voice sounds cool. Can I just say that?
I got, I got, I got Sam at some point. It happened in most of the time.
The robot voice was the other way. It was him listening to me as a robot.
Yeah. But then it happened the other way. And I have to admit that I was just laughing.
Just, just, I couldn't. And it was like, and then it was like a robot.
And then it was like a slow, like, like a half, a half speed, quarter speed robot talking.
Okay. It was just, I mean, I, I mean, I was, I was howling. I just couldn't, you know? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[26:46]
| Yeah. Yeah. And so it was just a pain because not just like I had to edit it together later, but actually recording it is like, we'd be talking and all of a sudden it would go nuts and then he dropped completely and then we'd have to get him back and then we'd have to figure out what we were talking about.
And, you know, sometimes it was, like I said, like if, if, if we did like a good 20, 30 minute stretch, okay, fine, whatever.
But when it was like 90 seconds And then it was.
|
Ivan:
[27:16]
| Like near the end. It kept, I mean, and I was, listen, I was staying totally still.
I was like, okay, let me just make sure that I'm not moving the phone. I'm not doing anything.
Let me just stay still. It didn't matter.
It started cutting out every tweet we could get through anything.
Finally, it was just like, okay, that's it.
|
Sam:
[27:39]
| So the takeaway of this is 5G in Indiana apparently sucks, at least wherever the hell you were.
|
Ivan:
[27:47]
| Fort Wayne, Indiana.
|
Sam:
[27:49]
| And...
And next time, like, I don't know, get on the hotel wifi or something. Cause that sucked.
|
Ivan:
[27:57]
| No, no, no. I tried the hotel wifi as well. That was worse.
|
Sam:
[28:01]
| That was worse.
|
Ivan:
[28:02]
| Um, you know, so yeah, no, no, that didn't, uh, no, it's always very nice, but the wifi was terrible. You know, it's just the whole connectivity was terrible.
Uh, but, but, but, you know, uh.
|
Sam:
[28:12]
| So.
|
Ivan:
[28:12]
| So, okay. So.
|
Sam:
[28:14]
| Okay. Pick your real topic. Pick your.
|
Ivan:
[28:16]
| We're not going to count that as a.
|
Sam:
[28:17]
| That doesn't count. That doesn't count. Go, go.
|
Ivan:
[28:21]
| Okay. Okay, so we're not going to count that as a topic. Okay, so I'm going to go into some other light and frothy direction.
|
Sam:
[28:29]
| Oh, really? More light and frothy. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[28:32]
| Yeah, more light and frothy direction. Because what the hell? I mean, it's just.
|
Sam:
[28:36]
| The school shooter mom.
|
Ivan:
[28:41]
| Yes, that's so light and frothy. I mean, it's just hilarious. No, no, no, no.
|
Sam:
[28:46]
| No. No.
|
Ivan:
[28:48]
| Okay. I was going to say Elon loses $50 billion, but I'm like, okay, I'm going to stop myself from just making that. Although that is, but no, more light and frothy.
Okay, so Vision Pro launched. Oh.
|
Sam:
[29:04]
| Yes, yes, Vision Pro launched.
|
Ivan:
[29:06]
| And I think, look, I will admit from my end, I was thinking it was going to be whatever launched.
You know, because I'd seen the demos and whatever. I'm like, okay, cool. It's pretty cool.
|
Sam:
[29:18]
| Now you want one.
|
Ivan:
[29:19]
| Wait, wait, you're jumping the gun here. Now jump in the gun.
That's all I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the fanaticism with which a lot of people have been using it, just like, whoa, I was not expecting this.
Where people are on the internet.
Well, there was a guy, I don't know if you saw that was driving while wearing it, that apparently got arrested.
|
Sam:
[29:40]
| That guy admitted 24 hours later, it was a skit he put on with him.
He, he and his friends, he didn't actually drive more than about 20 feet in a parking lot.
|
Ivan:
[29:48]
| Okay. Well, it looked like it was on a highway, but, but there were, but there were, yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:52]
| Yeah. He, he, he set up the whole thing. It was, it was a, it was intentionally done as a joke to get an internet attention.
|
Ivan:
[29:59]
| But I've seen other people like, but I'm sorry, but I've seen other people like post themselves doing that.
|
Sam:
[30:05]
| I completely believe you.
That particular one where the guy was driving and then got pulled over by the cop, blah, blah, blah, that was a fake.
But I completely believe that real people are doing this as well.
|
Ivan:
[30:19]
| And then I've seen, I'll tell you what, one person that, look, she's a renowned Apple fan.
You know, iJustine was showing herself doing a whole bunch of crazy shit with them. She went into a pool with it, okay?
I saw that. And she was showing...
|
Sam:
[30:40]
| They are not waterproof, by the way.
|
Ivan:
[30:41]
| And she explained that they're not waterproof, okay? She went into a pool.
She was doing all this other stuff.
I saw people, like, they were showing a video of two people sitting together at a restaurant, actually eating while both of them were wearing their Vision Pro. I just think...
|
Sam:
[30:59]
| By the way, I've also seen people drop test them, and the result is, don't drop it. It just smashes. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[31:07]
| Oh, okay, so that's good to know. Quite an expensive... Jesus, Chris, that's an expensive test.
But I've just been seeing how...
I mean, people have been using them in all sorts of different ways that, and I think this was the whole point by Apple's for people to get this, to figure out how the fuck to exploit this. Okay.
And the excitement has been a lot more than I ever expected from this first gen device.
|
Sam:
[31:39]
| This is the history of the watch too. If you remember, like the way they marketed the gen one verse version of the Apple watch watch was very much sort of like, oh, it's a watch, it's a fashion statement, whatever.
And then they discovered that what people, and they also talked a lot about the messaging components on it.
And then what people actually used them for was health and exercise tracking.
So they pivoted in the future versions to really emphasize that as the primary focus of the device.
Yeah, it does the other stuff too. It does lots of stuff, but the primary focus became the health an exercise part of it.
|
Ivan:
[32:15]
| I saw some really cool shit that some people were showing like for example i mean one thing that i hadn't even thought of like for example say you're on a flight okay instead of like looking at your phone or whatever to fucking put on the goggles and i'm like you've got a movie theater that you're looking at in the fucking flight yep okay for example just all sorts of things like that that i i guess i hadn't like uh you know as a space for work i mean I mean, I just, I guess I was taken aback by the excitement that people had and the uses that I guess I hadn't really thought of.
|
Sam:
[32:51]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[32:52]
| Okay. And I'm not talking about the dumb uses. I'm just talking about, you know.
|
Sam:
[32:55]
| You're not going to drive using it.
|
Ivan:
[32:57]
| No, I'm not. No, no, no. You know, one of the things, like I said, I saw that I, look, even if I wanted one, like right now.
|
Sam:
[33:06]
| If
|
Ivan:
[33:07]
| You wear glasses like I do. You need to get some special attachment thing. It's not, It's difficult.
|
Sam:
[33:17]
| You have to get prescription lenses with it. I did see one person report on using it with their glasses on, and they said it's not ideal, but it kind of works.
But I presume that depends on the kind of frames you have, and it's probably less comfortable than otherwise, etc., etc.
They have a whole system set up so you can buy prescription lenses for it.
But of course, that adds to the cost more.
Of course. I've seen a lot of people in the reviews basically say, this is incredible, awesome stuff, but it's also clearly a Gen 1 product.
There are lots of issues with it, but it shows so much promise for what Gen 2 or 3.
|
Ivan:
[33:52]
| Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I mean, my thought is, holy shit.
I mean, if this is what you could do with Gen 1, just wait until you get this hardware down to size. and you get the battery life extended and you get all of this shit down, I'm like, holy shit.
|
Sam:
[34:09]
| Get rid of the external battery.
|
Ivan:
[34:11]
| Get rid of the external battery, that kind of stuff. Look, listen, I will say that if you told me that it's something that I would wear, like I wear my glasses right now, that had that kind of information display that I could choose to turn on and off at will or whatever and whatnot, an overlay.
I'll tell you what that I was looking about. Talk about field overlay.
overlay i was looking at a guy who's showing the potential for like fixing a car yes.
|
Sam:
[34:39]
| I've saw i saw that video as well you share you shared it on our convention scoring slack but i'd seen it before that.
|
Ivan:
[34:45]
| Yeah i shared it on the slack and and it was it's it's such a cool video where the guy is like you know he's not having to go and pull this manual and whatever right now he's like right there, make a door repair.
He could put exactly what he needs to look at right there in front of him so he can work.
I mean, it's, it's fucking brilliant. Okay. I was like, holy shit.
|
Sam:
[35:10]
| Part of this too, is like when, when you're talking about having sort of windows for apps or windows for your computer or whatever, you can place them in a location and then walk around your house and they're still where and.
|
Ivan:
[35:25]
| It stays at that exactly.
|
Sam:
[35:26]
| I mean and you can move them when you want to of course also but they stay so like i could have like a big huge screen up above my right my regular workspace and you know it just stays there right while i i walk and i go do something else there were parts part of the demos had like i.
|
Ivan:
[35:46]
| Saw people in the kitchen like you know showing.
|
Sam:
[35:48]
| Like how.
|
Ivan:
[35:49]
| They were doing stuff in the kitchen and they could put video right there air while they're working on it, whatever, in the kitchen and whatnot, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
|
Sam:
[35:56]
| And it stays anchored in place so that it doesn't feel weird, like a window that sort of moves around when you move.
|
Ivan:
[36:02]
| No, no, no. It stays in place. Yes.
|
Sam:
[36:05]
| And one of the things that people have compared it to is some of the cheaper tech that exists, like the whatever they're calling the Oculus now.
It's the MetaVision. Meta whatever.
|
Ivan:
[36:18]
| I just made up that name. I have no idea, but I'm thinking.
|
Sam:
[36:21]
| It's not. What is it? It's Quest. The MetaQuest.
|
Ivan:
[36:25]
| I was close. MetaVision, MetaQuest. You know.
|
Sam:
[36:29]
| If they had to pick something, they should have called it the MetaOculus instead, because the Oculus was the name that I associated with it. you know hey why why why leverage.
|
Ivan:
[36:38]
| A good brand name when you can make one up that nobody will remember that's right yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:41]
| Well it was the oculus quest i know the quest part of it and dump the oculus instead of the other way around the quest part yeah i know uh because people just called them oculus anyway whatever but they there are apps to do the same sort of thing but the tracking's not as good so like the the window doesn't stay in place quite the same way It jiggles and moves a little bit and it gets misaligned from where you were after you've used it a while.
Apparently that's a lot of the stuff that they spent a lot of money making sure, you know, that stuff's rock solid, you know, and things stay where you put them essentially.
And so, yeah, you can have a whole bunch of things up and you put them where makes sense based on what it is.
Like you said, if you're in the kitchen, you can put like a recipe app right next to the stove.
meanwhile there's a big screen movie thing in the living room by wherever you're going to be sitting and you're in your home office there's something you've got set up for work you know and you know and these things just remember the where they were and they stay now yeah it looks really cool I'm you know I like you said, Well, like you implied, I'm going to say it explicitly now, like to me, like there's no way in hell this is ever going to be in my budget at 3,500 for the gen one product.
|
Ivan:
[38:04]
| I'm not buying the gen one product. No.
|
Sam:
[38:05]
| But you know, if they reduce, reduce the weight, increase the battery life, make a few other improvements and drop the price a bit, you know.
|
Ivan:
[38:18]
| It's looking tempting there.
|
Sam:
[38:21]
| There, there, there is no way that this thing is not tempting in the gen two or gen three version.
And like, it's intended to be, you know, now this is another one of those things where people talk for years, like, will the iPad replace your laptop?
You know? And so people could be talking about, well, this thing replaced your computer.
I'm thinking probably not, but this plus a computer seems like a really awesome combination that you would want to use in certain certain situations and people have also pointed out by the way like the one thing it actually is not good at right now is the mainstay of all the cheaper things which is just gaming vr games yeah you know there's a apparently an incredibly limited selection and i think this is in part intentional because they want to like distinguish distinguish themselves.
This is not a toy. This is not a gaming system.
This is something to actually integrate into the other parts of your life.
And I'm sure games will come, but just like everything else, Apple does.
I mean, Apple is not, Apple is, has been known for decades now as if you're a gamer, Apple's not for you.
Like, yes, there are games on Apple, but like, if you're a gamer, you're not for Apple.
you're not doing it on a Mac.
|
Ivan:
[39:40]
| You know.
|
Sam:
[39:41]
| And, or, or, or iPads or phones for that matter.
That's not to say there aren't tons of games on iPads and phones, but they're the more of the casual kind, you know?
So yeah. Anyway. Yeah. It, it, it looks pretty cool.
Like I've, I've liked a lot of the demos and it's, it's been very interesting to see it sort of freed from the sort of Apple walled garden.
Cause before this last week they had all, you know, only very controlled demos to a very select group of people.
Now it's out in the wild and regular people are just using it however they want to use it.
And we're seeing all kinds of stuff about it. So we'll see.
It'll also be interesting to see how it ages.
There's a novelty factor when it's brand new. I would love to check back in with these same people in like six months and see how how much they're still using it on a day-to-day basis versus, yeah, okay, it was cool for a few weeks, and now I haven't really used it much, you know?
|
Ivan:
[40:40]
| Well, I mean, I have to say that that is an important, a very important thing, because I've seen people, for example, that I know that bought, made a quest, whatever the fuck it's called, thing, and basically it's just sitting around not being used.
And I, you know, I mean, I'm like, I know in my, my, my nephew, they, they, they had gotten one at their, at their house and I tried it.
I remember when he came out, I've never seen him play on it again.
|
Sam:
[41:07]
| My, we, we have a quest to Alex has a quest to, and we got a quest three for, for my wife for Christmas actually.
And yeah, he's okay. Okay, he's making noise right now because he's showing he's got it in his hands right now because because what what's wrong with it?
Yeah, yeah. He's got the quest. You've got the quest. Anyway, he is still... My point... Yeah?
It's not? What? Yeah, it's on. Is it broken?
What are you trying to get across to me? The light's on. I was going to tell the story about your usage.
|
Ivan:
[41:49]
| I
|
Sam:
[41:50]
| Don't... He's like sort of shoving it in my direction.
|
Ivan:
[41:53]
| Okay, well, we don't need it shoved. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[41:56]
| Anyway, so continuing with the story, though, usage of it has gone in spurts.
And this is I think the same thing will happen to my wife and hers, where when it was brand new, it got used a lot.
And then it got put on a shelf and not used for a long time.
And then it was like, oh, let's try this out again.
And then it was used again for a while. And then there was a period without it and now that now this kid he's writing his own games for the damn thing now like he's he's been working on that the.
Last week or two he had initially done that a few months ago and then he took a break and now he's doing it again he had he had me play it a couple days ago like he built bitless whole virtual environment it's a dark hallway and you can pick up stuff and, he's he's working on it like it feels like a horror game he's working on so anyway Anyway, yeah, so it comes and goes.
I think it's the kind of thing that you don't build a habit and use it like every day for months and months and months and years.
It's the kind of thing that's like you have fun with for, you know, a few days or a few weeks, and then you put it away for a few months, and then it'll be fun again the next time you pick it up, you know?
|
Ivan:
[43:07]
| Well, but I think that this happens. I will say that what you just mentioned happens to me with –, a lot of times with the console games um you know like the playstation and so forth i'll go back to my atari days and go back whatever i remember that i would play in like long spurts and then ah i'm bored okay i'll stop and then oh look some new game came out something happened i use it again and then nah forgot about it and it's the same here with with our playstation i mean, sometimes it goes months unused and then all of a sudden you know we're playing it for weeks and weeks, and then we don't play it again for months and months.
|
Sam:
[43:46]
| Right. And I think it's typical for that kind of thing. And I think that's part of what Apple's trying to do different.
They're not trying to make a thing you use for games and play in spurts and go months without.
They're trying to build something that becomes part of a daily habit that you use all the time for your routine stuff.
Now, whether they end up succeeding in that or not, I think is yet to be seen, but I think it's closer than the stuff we've seen before.
Cause it's like the second you turn it on, it's in a, especially like it's, it's also an ecosystem play, like everything Apple does. Right.
As soon as you turn it on, it's hooked up to your email, your messages, your music, your, you know, videos you've bought all of that kind of stuff is like, boom, they're the second you turn it on.
|
Ivan:
[44:34]
| Well, OK, so all right. So that's it.
Apple Vision Pro thing. OK, your turn.
|
Sam:
[44:49]
| OK, let's see where we'll go. Let's let's save all the politics stuff for the next segment.
What's something non politics to talk about for the rest of this segment?
|
Ivan:
[44:57]
| Fluffy.
Juicy.
|
Sam:
[45:03]
| Fluffy, juicy.
|
Ivan:
[45:04]
| Iran! No, that's not it.
|
Sam:
[45:07]
| No, not...
How about... You know, you'd mentioned Elon. There's also, like, economy stuff. Let's do that kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[45:18]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| So, first of all... Well, let's start with Elon, and then we'll go to, like, jobs numbers and how the economy's doing and all that kind of stuff.
Because it's been months since we've talked about that, and things seem to be going well still. But let's start with Elon.
|
Ivan:
[45:32]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[45:33]
| What happened?
|
Ivan:
[45:34]
| I mean, Elon went, he had been sued.
I think, well, to be clear, I think Tesla was sued to be precise for the, for the massive pay package.
|
Sam:
[45:49]
| By its shareholders.
|
Ivan:
[45:51]
| By its shareholders.
|
Sam:
[45:51]
| There was a shareholder lawsuit. There was a shareholder lawsuit.
Some group of shareholders.
|
Ivan:
[45:55]
| I mean, you know, one of these things, there was one shareholder that was sued.
A law firm took it on a contingency basis, and they sued on behalf of others that joined on the crazy pay package that he got, $50 billion pay package, which as a percentage of the market cap of any company, it was like that was unprecedented.
I don't think that – I think that was the biggest pay package anybody had ever been given.
And the one thing about it was what they were challenging was there's supposed to be a series of outside directors and such a package is supposed to go through a process of outside review before it gets awarded.
And I read a story that the attorney was talking about what the strategy he used against Elon to...
basically hang himself. Okay. In court.
|
Sam:
[46:56]
| Oh, okay.
|
Ivan:
[46:58]
| And basically his, his, the attorney's wife said when they were doing testimony, he said, listen, I think you got to tell him, you got to let him don't make the questions.
Yes. No, leave them open ended.
And he wants to yammer so much. He will fucking bury himself.
|
Sam:
[47:19]
| And.
|
Ivan:
[47:20]
| That's pretty much what happened with him in the trial.
This was a bench trial. This is not a jury trial.
And the evidence was pretty clear that Tesla, there are certain specific rules related to outside directors on a board.
And that basically Tesla does not have an independent board in any way, shape or form.
that there are direct financial relationships between Elon and the board, how he has direct influence on practically all of them, how none of them qualify for the definition of independent directors, which are required.
Going back to, if I remember correctly, Sarbanes-Oxley specifically that specified how many people had to be outside directors in a firm and how basically they just don't meet those fucking requirements at all.
And so therefore it was completely self-dealing. And so therefore, he awarded himself a fucking pay package that dilute all the other shareholders, you know, just to enrich himself.
And basically, during the testimony, he just, you know, allowing him to talk.
The more he talked, the more it became evident that that was the case.
And he basically just wound up hanging himself.
You gave him the rope, but he wound up hanging himself. Yeah.
genius huh yeah.
|
Sam:
[48:43]
| So like so in the end like basically they said elon has to give the money back it was.
|
Ivan:
[48:48]
| Like i don't think a lot of it had vested i mean basically they voided most of most of the unvested uh share it's not like.
|
Sam:
[48:55]
| It it's not like he has to go take something he now has somewhere else and give it back it's.
|
Ivan:
[49:00]
| Just not going to get but but but but but but there the one thing that i do that i do know is a certain bank banks had loaned him money money based on the value of those shares that had not yet vested, but that would vest in the future that he had been awarded. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[49:17]
| I probably got lost there. He pledged.
|
Ivan:
[49:20]
| Okay. All right. So I listen, he has this award.
It's not yet pledged. He went to the bank and got a loan again and said, Hey, I, yes, I need money.
Now, usually you and I can't get, you know, If we get a stock award, you can't go borrow money against those. Okay. All right.
However, however, I am pretty sure that if I was a CEO of major company XYZ and I had a stock stock vesting options vesting, you know, worth a hundred million dollars, the bank would look at that and they would say, okay, that's our guarantee on the money.
Well, we'll, we'll loan against that. Okay. Because we know where that money's coming from. Okay. So we'll do that. Okay.
But usually you won't get, you know, you know, simpletons like you and me will get that stuff. And I'm like, yes, simpletons.
We're not. Whatever. We're not. We're not that simple.
|
Sam:
[50:14]
| Poppers. Poppers like us.
|
Ivan:
[50:16]
| Yeah. Poppers. Yeah. We're not. Yeah. We're not poppers. We're not any of that shit.
Fucking overpaid hacks for the most part. But anyway, you know, so.
So, yeah. So. So he got a whole bunch of money loaned against that.
So right now, the problem is, of course, that he had pledged a lot of these shares in order to borrow money for a whole bunch of things because he has been known to not be a cash, rich billionaire okay he really has the you know he flies everywhere the jet's owned by by spacex right you know he stay you know one of the things that they've been talking about self-dealing is that spacex was building a fucking house for him for example you know he He talks about, oh, I live simply whatever, and he's really living on the dime of the companies that he is either a CEO or is part owner.
And so, yeah, I mean, one concern is that this, given that he borrowed a lot of money to buy Twitter and that basically he's tanked the value of that.
And so then you add this, basically between those two things, he's wiped out about $100 billion.
|
Sam:
[51:29]
| Beautiful.
|
Ivan:
[51:29]
| That's a lot of money, you know, for anybody, including Elon.
And there's no way he can get this pay package back. It's not happening.
I don't care if he moves a corporation to Mars, like right now.
It's not fucking happening.
|
Sam:
[51:44]
| Yeah, he said he was moving it from Delaware to Texas because the laws were different. Now, that may or may not actually end up happening.
Is he appealing this as well, I presume?
|
Ivan:
[51:55]
| He doesn't have, I don't believe he's got, I don't think he's got much of a...
|
Sam:
[51:59]
| He doesn't have grounds to appeal.
|
Ivan:
[52:02]
| Now he went to a bench trial they awarded it i don't think he's about he's got anywhere to to turn and this whole thing with him uh moving corporation to state to texas or whatever by.
|
Sam:
[52:23]
| The way it wasn't that long ago it wasn't that long ago that 100 billion was the richest person in the world.
|
Ivan:
[52:29]
| Correct anyway yeah and he's lost that much yes yes so so he you know yeah and and and yeah that yeah exactly so moving to texas isn't going to help any any of this look there is a reason why most corporations are incorporated in delaware it is much easier for corporations to handle their business in delaware than any well that's why even like any company based in texas they go to delaware so i mean elon saying that it's just so dumb the the thing is that what he did is so egregious and.
|
Sam:
[53:02]
| He has no grounds to appeal or anything.
|
Ivan:
[53:04]
| Not that i'm aware of no and the company has been like absolutely silent about it tesla has been silent on this they haven't said hey they're remembering our public company and they haven't said a word nothing has been released least about this ever since you know ever since this happened but you know well.
|
Sam:
[53:22]
| Presumably the whole notion of this is if they pull back the stock they were going to give to him it's better for the rest of the stockholders right so has the stock gone up.
|
Ivan:
[53:35]
| No but that's because well that's because there's look tesla last year, did this thing which i said was going to hurt all the tesla fans were saying oh no no this is great whatever cutting prices we're gonna get we're gonna this is a sign of strength i.
|
Sam:
[53:55]
| Remember you talking about how pissed off everyone was.
|
Ivan:
[53:58]
| It's a sign of strength okay and i'm like are you guys guy's crazy.
Nobody that is if you've got people at your door begging to buy your product and you can't sell enough no one.
Cuts their price when that's happening okay only somebody that is struggling to sell cuts prices and you know they had increased production by so much in recent times i mean tesla is a big ass car company right now they you know five six years ago they were tiny okay they were really tight no less than a hundred thousand cars a year they're now two million, car a year company okay so this is you know it's 20 times the amount of cars they used to be making it's not you know it's a it's it's a ridiculously big ramp that they managed to do but the one thing that they did you know it's being in the car business is extremely capital intensive you got to build factories and things and then they do it even more capital intensive because they don't to have dealers, so they're not putting inventory.
The moment it's built, it's not being held by somebody else.
They got to hold it on their fucking books when it's not selling.
And so when it's not selling and they need to build more factories, they need to build new models, they need to do this, this, this. Well, it's difficult.
Now, look, they are selling 2 million cars, but the reality is that all those price cuts didn't translate into some magical market Market share increase and zooming profits.
What they did was they cut into margins.
They cut into margins big time.
They have their automotive margins right now are half what they used to be.
And they've been losing market share. Okay. Even with that, because there's so many competitors in the space.
|
Sam:
[56:07]
| And they probably lost a few people just because of Elon too.
now that everyone realizes a dick.
|
Ivan:
[56:13]
| Well yeah i mean you know that didn't help it.
|
Sam:
[56:16]
| Can't help it can't help.
|
Ivan:
[56:18]
| No no it's not helping when you're a fucking company like that that that is a a consumer product the last thing you want to do is alienate your fucking customers.
And, you know, he's done a great job of being an ass, you know, to everybody, you know, in public.
You know, look, I'm very used to CEOs from when I joined Silicon Valley tech culture, which were usually even brash, mad.
Maybe you cursed sometimes. times okay but they sure as hell wouldn't be saying shit in public that would alienate big customer segments and would make the stock swing back and forth like crazy okay and elon musk does that on a regular basis and right now their stock is suffering for this okay it's it's suffering big time due to this you know they're you know they're i mean because like it like it's the one thing that you just said which is which is just so accurate that shit when you all of a sudden remove that much dilution the stock shouldn't the price be going up and shit if you You think about the fact that you went and you took 50 billion, okay, in market cap, which was basically, man, you should have had like almost a 10% pop in the stock price.
You should have had a 10% pop because it was 10% of the current market cap of the company.
And instead, in that space, the stock has gone down, what, about 15%.
Wow. And that's with, that's what you think about it.
If it wasn't because of that, then it would have been down 25%.
|
Sam:
[58:22]
| So before we move on to the economy more generally, let me ask a perhaps dumb question.
Part of the, you know, when you have something like this, okay, they, they did self-dealing. they're going to claw back the money or in this case, like cancel the stuff that they just canceled the grant.
|
Ivan:
[58:46]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[58:46]
| I mean, presumably he got at least some of it that I'll have to give back.
I don't know already. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[58:51]
| I mean, sometimes that some of these, I think it was very future.
|
Sam:
[58:53]
| It was all future.
|
Ivan:
[58:54]
| It was very backloaded. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:55]
| But the point is, they determined that they did something wrong yeah is there anything that is going to stop elon from doing it again like because he is it going to deter him he doesn't seem to ever be deterred by this kind of shit well.
|
Ivan:
[59:16]
| Look i don't think if he was going to do that i think let me see what is um.
|
Sam:
[59:20]
| Maybe he'd try to be a bit more covert about it space it out over more time How do you covert about.
|
Ivan:
[59:27]
| A stock award of basic? Listen, he wants, like right now, how do you covert about when you, he actually, yeah, covert, Sam.
He went flat out and said, hey, I want the stockholders to dilute themselves to give me 25% of the company.
|
Sam:
[59:45]
| Well, like you said, he did this spaced out over a long period of time.
Maybe he could just do it like six months at a time or one year, not declare the plans for the next 10 years.
|
Ivan:
[59:53]
| But Sam, how the hell do you get spaced out over time?
|
Sam:
[59:57]
| I don't know. I'm making it up.
|
Ivan:
[59:59]
| 25 fucking percent of the shares when he's all holding about less, a little less than half of that. Okay. Like right now.
|
Sam:
[1:00:08]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:09]
| Okay. I mean, the fuck. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:00:14]
| Well, I don't know. My point is just not that specific thing.
But Elon Musk has a history of flaunting the SEC, flaunting the rules wherever he is, whatever he's involved in, basically acting like the laws don't apply to him.
And is there any signs of a change to that? Listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:43]
| That compensation package has to go to a shareholder.
Listen, this isn't just, hey, we went and we just did it and yay.
Now, they had to file this with their annual proxy statement, okay?
And it had to be voted by the shareholders and approved.
And so if he wants to do it, it's not like he can do it in hiding.
He has to go through that process. He has to go through that process again.
|
Sam:
[1:01:12]
| I'm talking more generally. Remember, he kept tweeting stuff and he got slapped on the wrist for, hey, don't tweet stuff that's going to move the stock price without anything behind it.
For all kinds of different ventures he's been on. my point is not any specific one thing it's that elon has a tendency to flout the rules.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:35]
| I i just think oh i i mean no no he no no no he has been flouting the rules but i just think that, look it's going to be extremely difficult for him to get such a grant so let me i i'm pulling up the last proxy for for tesla where you know yeah the option expiration date that he had was january 19th, 2028. Okay.
He had 278 million, um, uh, uh, underlying securities options, exercisable.
However, how many were, you know, were, were available for him to exercise by reading this, right?
Number of securities underlie unexercised options, unexercisable.
Well, actually 278 million. They said that were exercisable, but I guess I'm looking at this day.
Yeah. Because that That was the 2018 grant.
But I'm going to guess that because of the legal action, he wasn't able to exercise them.
One twelfth of the total number of shares subject to the option become vested and exercisable each time.
Okay, so it's one twelfth of the total number of shares.
Our market cap initially reached $100 billion. Ah, and then $50 billion for each tranche thereafter.
One of 16 specified operational milestones relating to total revenue or just an EBITDA. So there were like certain metrics.
So even though they might be exercisable, they weren't unless they needed to meet these metrics according to this grant.
and so they i i just don't think that either they weren't extra they he couldn't sell them at that at the time or he could convert or you know if there was legal action related to that probably put a hold on him being able to exercise him if they were going to trial over the package this is the trial was accepted so but he wasn't you know he wasn't able to to to exercise them And it says over here, you know, yeah, because it listed $278 million as exercisable from that March 21st, 2018 grant. So.
|
Sam:
[1:03:36]
| Anyway, let's move on. Yeah, let's move on.
So there were, you know, and this is, again, me quizzing you because, of course, this is more your area than mine.
but like from what i understand we've had yet more surprisingly good economic numbers better than people expected there to be and you know and even people like kudlow are being like hey that that that recession i thought was coming looks like it's not so like what's going on i.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:12]
| Think that Well, you had over the last couple of years one big change in terms of how we have been trying to stimulate the economy.
From when Joe Biden was elected, okay, specifically to the Infrastructure and the Inflation Reduction Act, okay, bills that were passed, okay, you've had an era of corporate profits that have continued to rise, employees that have been more empowered in terms of wages, wages, and you've had an economy that instead of having rich people get tax breaks that just allow them to either hold more money in their bank and just, you know, buy maybe another yacht or something.
|
Sam:
[1:05:16]
| I
|
Ivan:
[1:05:18]
| Mean, it's not going to be wrong. I do want to buy a small, okay, a very cheap one, okay, but, okay, I digress. us.
|
Sam:
[1:05:25]
| Didn't didn't you eventually decide your last one was a mistake and like a money are.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:29]
| You crazy no i'm fucking my wife was basically told me i'm like where the hell are we getting another one no you're out of your mind okay okay and it wasn't a mistake actually that one was the most profitable one i ever bought i we sold it for like five times the price that we bought it for so no okay.
|
Sam:
[1:05:42]
| Okay okay now let me let me not just let me not distract you continue with your.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:47]
| An eco an eco-friendly one by the way i got i got my i got my my wife's uncle that has his sailboat but with solar power on it and shit. I gotta... Oh.
|
Sam:
[1:05:55]
| I thought you were gonna get one powered by mouse poop or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:58]
| I'm gonna... No, biodiesel.
|
Sam:
[1:06:01]
| Biodiesel. Okay. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:02]
| Continue.
|
Sam:
[1:06:03]
| Okay. Diesel is still diesel. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:06]
| No, it's not. Biodiesel is plant stuff. It's not... Anyway, never mind.
|
Sam:
[1:06:11]
| It's still burning carbon. Go ahead. No!
|
Ivan:
[1:06:15]
| That mission is from bio... Go look up biodiesel. Go check it out.
|
Sam:
[1:06:19]
| It lasts but not zero. Go ahead. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:21]
| Much less.
|
Sam:
[1:06:22]
| Continue. It doesn't matter. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:26]
| Anyway, the Inflation Reduction Act, I don't think the amount of investment that is going on in terms of factory capacity, chip making, a whole bunch of things.
People have been stunned by how many projects are going on right now across the U.S. related to.
|
Sam:
[1:06:50]
| And they're kicking in pretty fast. Like, cause you know, we've talked before about how often time, well.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:56]
| It's been a couple of years.
|
Sam:
[1:06:58]
| It has been a couple of years, but like very often.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:01]
| Like right now they're in a construction phase right now. They're in like, you know, the development phase right now they're in the part where man, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:07:07]
| Because money starts to get actually spent. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:09]
| And, and, and it's, and, and it's, and it's creating jobs.
It's creating a lot of jobs. And now, you know, people are saying, well, you hear all these layoff announcements.
I'm going to tell you that this week it finally clicked to me.
What the hell is going on with this? Okay.
All right. Because you look at the jobs numbers. They look good.
Okay. You know, new unemployment claims still low. Job creation is still pretty decent.
But, oh, my God. God, somebody announced that they're cutting jobs here, jobs there.
Look, back when I joined corporate America in the 90s, and I remember that one of the things that pissed me off about a lot of major companies in the 80s and the 90s was that a layoff announcement was always a stock popper. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:08:02]
| Okay. It.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:03]
| Doesn't matter whether you need layoffs, but Wall Street loves layoff announcements.
awesome it's just.
|
Sam:
[1:08:15]
| Uh uh uh uh what did you just say yvonne fuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:19]
| Me five damn it bleep me out on that one no it's just stupid okay all right yes you're gonna bleep that one out no no no okay it's it's idiotic OK, because they are they they love the damn stock pop from a damn layoff.
I mean, they hear layoffs and they're like, oh, yeah, the company is giving me, you know, working for my stock.
And usually you do get a short term pop. They usually a lot of times come back down.
But yeah, they love to hear how companies are firing people.
And it's just a quick way for a CEO or for an executive, I've always said, that has no idea how the fuck to improve his operation.
Well, hey, I'll just get rid of 10,000 employees and Wall Street is going to say, hey, look, he's doing his job.
And I think that's a lot of what's going. We are back at that era because for a while companies had been reticent to do that because.
|
Sam:
[1:09:30]
| But now, but now at the same time, Yvonne, like you're, you're talking about all the layoffs and stuff, but don't we have like record good unemployment numbers and all that kind of stuff?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:40]
| Right. That, that, that, that's what I'm saying. It's more smoke and mirrors.
It's just this thing in order for companies to show, Hey, look how we're doing.
We are in charge of the employee. Boy, we tell them to go back to the office and they're all sitting there.
Bullshit. Because, you know, like right now, listen, this week, by the way, the main thing going through Wall Street has been what I've been saying for, I've been pounding the table about corporate real estate, corporate real estate and banks having to take it on the chin to write off massive losses in commercial real estate for people that just aren't going back to the damn office, period.
Okay. OK, it's just not happening. OK, I mean, it's not happening back to where it was.
|
Sam:
[1:10:26]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:27]
| I will say the cities where I've seen that they were showing suburban cities are having a much rougher go than, say, a New York City.
|
Sam:
[1:10:38]
| Hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:39]
| New York City has had a much higher percent of people returning to the office.
And, you know, you're wondering, well, why the hell is that?
Well, look, you got to remember.
|
Sam:
[1:10:49]
| Well, because you hop on the hub, hubway, you hop on the hub.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:54]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:10:55]
| You hop on the subway, you get back to your office. It's the commute is not the same as someone who has to drive in from like miles away. But.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:04]
| On top of that, people live in a lot smaller places.
They don't have the comfort of... Those places aren't made that much to be working from home. It gets really...
Okay. Number one, I was seeing that the median rent in New York for an apartment right now is $4,200 a month still.
At $4,200 a month, those places have not gotten bigger.
|
Sam:
[1:11:47]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:48]
| You know, shit, listen, man, you're going to go to the fucking office. You can't be there.
And the great thing is that New York is a city that allows people to be able to move around with much, much greater ease than many others.
Yeah. And so so that's what you're saying. But but in man, in places where the commute is long and people were going into the city, I mean, people are like, get the hell out of here. you're a fricking driving.
I'm not doing this three hour commute again. You know?
|
Sam:
[1:12:22]
| Oh, oh, believe me. I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:26]
| And you know, they're just, and, and they are pounding the table and saying they all have to be here.
Blah, blah, blah. And still, it doesn't matter.
A lot of them are like, OK.
|
Sam:
[1:12:37]
| So wait, let me is what you're implying that a whole bunch of numbers look good right now, but we're due for a crash when all of this comes due.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:47]
| No, I don't think so, because the thing is that the exposure on commercial real estate still isn't that big.
I mean, there is that that is the weakness there you've got in commercial real estate.
But the thing is that it's what I'm talking about, about the Inflation Reduction Act and how positive it's been around communities, around construction, how there is just this boom in manufacturing how by the way you know this recently mexico surpassed china as the number one u.s trading partner.
|
Sam:
[1:13:15]
| I saw that i saw that headline i did not read the article but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:19]
| Uh and look a lot of chinese companies by the way have been driving that because they have been deciding well fuck this we're going to move the operators in china we'll put mexico i mean you know that's a friendlier place for us to do business so what the hell and and there's been been a lot of manufacturing that has under the biden administration what trump said that he was going to do but as usual didn't do shit biden has actually done in terms of bringing back a lot of those jobs and you know it's not all you know there has been a significant increase in manufacturing manufacturing investment in those kinds of jobs, that the MAGA voters are the ones that are saying that they want brought back, but reality, facts don't matter.
So I don't think that is that impactful in terms of the election?
Maybe at the margins, but again, again, Facts don't matter, so I don't know. But yes, but the reality is, but the thing is, why we don't have the recession?
Because even though the Fed raised interest rates, the reality is that they are still not.
Historical highs. And inflation came down because many of the facts that were driving inflation to be higher were, as I said, transitory. just.
|
Sam:
[1:14:47]
| Just to be clear but transitory meant a you know a year or more not a couple months and.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:53]
| Not a couple of months yeah because they didn't well because it's it's not overnight it's it's the whole thing i kept talking about people not understanding why are we struggling at filling all these jobs shit because we had millions and tens of millions of people lose their jobs and it's so much easier to fire people than to hire them.
Anybody that's hired people knows that bringing in and onboarding a new person, into a job takes, you know, I can terminate a person in two seconds.
It'll take me over a year to make a person productive.
|
Sam:
[1:15:29]
| Hell.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:30]
| How many months does it take me to find them? And then for the productive, and then maybe that person doesn't work and then I gotta get another one.
You know, you lost all those years of knowledge and experience.
And it's like, it's like taking a jigsaw puzzle that had 50,000 pieces and tossing it all in the air and then not figuring out, well, why can't we put it back together just as quick?
I'm like, it's not like that. So as the people have gotten back into the jobs, as people have learned their jobs, as that that pressure on the demand in terms of driving, you know, because people were desperate at one point or just like, oh, my God, I got to find the right person.
So I'll just offer more, more, more, more, more, more, more, all of a sudden, very quickly, which is why wages went up real quick because people were desperate.
|
Sam:
[1:16:20]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:21]
| In some places to get people.
But as that has settled, okay, those prices came down, transportation costs, they came down, the shortages that we have smoothed out, and interest rates are higher than they were.
But if you look at it in the historical context of the last 40 years, I mean, it's not cheap money, but it certainly isn't money at 13%, 14% that was the prime rate, hell, even higher, like in the early 80s.
I mean, the prime rate is still lower now than I remember in the 90s Clinton boom.
|
Sam:
[1:17:07]
| Right. right okay so i i want to wrap this up any any last thoughts on just the prospects for the next year up down sideways are where we are we happy like i.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:19]
| Mean the only thing that we can't predict is some other exogenous shock obviously like a war or something or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:17:24]
| Otherwise things are going well and people are actually feeling it more and more like it does a delay but like are you thinking like by the time we get to the fall and we are talking election stuff and we'll We'll take a break and talk more politics after that.
But like, there's a very strong correlation between how people feel about their economic lives in the fall of an election year with whether or not an incumbent wins.
Do we feel like people are going to be feeling good about themselves?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:55]
| Look, Biden is going to have that tailwind. Listen, and by the way, consumer sentiment has been all of a sudden the last few months has been has been sore. OK, OK.
|
Sam:
[1:18:03]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:03]
| And Biden is going to have that tailwind where inflation is going to be under control. The economy is doing well.
He's going to have that unless we have some kind of exogenous shock that, you know, some other damn war.
|
Sam:
[1:18:17]
| China invades Hong Kong or something. Well, not Hong Kong, Taiwan.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:21]
| Taiwan. Yeah, like invades Hong Kong. They already did. What are you talking?
|
Sam:
[1:18:24]
| Yeah, I know that that's already done. That's that's that's big. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:27]
| That's done.
|
Sam:
[1:18:28]
| Yeah, no. No, China invades Taiwan or, you know, France invades the UK, you know, whatever, Spain, you know, the Swiss decide these centuries of neutrality are bullshit and attack all their neighbors, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:44]
| I mean, you know, Switzerland will annex Monaco. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:18:50]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:52]
| That'll be interesting. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:18:54]
| Okay, let's take a break and then we'll talk some politics from now to the end of the show, We had a whole bunch of stuff happen this week. Did it?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:02]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:19:02]
| Just, let's see. We had the immunity ruling.
We had the whole drama with the legislation about the southern border.
We had the Mayorkas impeachment.
We had, anyway, we got a whole bunch of stuff. We will be back after this.
Okay, we are back. So let's try to do this roughly in chronological order, the way it happened this week, and spend a few minutes on each one of these. I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:14]
| What happened? What happened? What happened? Anything happen? No.
|
Sam:
[1:21:18]
| So number one, number one, the circuit court ruled against Donald Trump in the immunity case.
So this is specifically Donald Trump's notion that he has full presidential immunity, absolute presidential immunity for prosecution for anything that he did while he was president. End of story.
And I think he thinks after he was president, too. I don't know.
But this is specifically about during presidency.
And the appeals court basically said.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:52]
| I mean, honestly, I'm a little bit. Yes. Listen, I'm a little bit disappointed.
|
Sam:
[1:21:56]
| You're disappointed.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:56]
| Because, look, I, well, yeah, because, look, I did see an upside if Trump was right. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:22:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:05]
| Because, look, if the president is immune completely from any action, then, you know, look, I mean, so Biden could just order Donald Trump's assassination and it's all fine. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:22:19]
| Especially if he does it by nuking Mar-a-Lago. Are you close enough that you would be caught up in that?
|
Ivan:
[1:22:23]
| No, no. Yes. No, no. No, let's not nuke Mar-a-Lago.
|
Sam:
[1:22:27]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:28]
| Now, a non-nuclear bomb, a big one, I mean, I might be down for that, but not a nuke.
|
Sam:
[1:22:36]
| No. Of course, Ivan is joking. Let's just make that clear, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:22:41]
| Yes, we are, yeah, we are not, you know, really want, there's too many innocent people hurt.
No, we're not advocating the untimely destruction of Mar-a-Lago by some explosion that would just annihilate the place down to Earth.
|
Sam:
[1:22:58]
| And just to be clear, even something highly targeted for Donald Trump would probably cause a lot more problems than it would solve, just to be clear.
Like, we do not want to initiate political violence, but— No.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:10]
| No, no, but what we're talking about in the case of the president of the United States being immune, if he were immune— apparently according to donald.
|
Sam:
[1:23:19]
| It would be fine do such a thing and it would be fine yeah no no issues with that whatsoever right um yeah so the appeals court like was like no and it was unanimous and it was unanimous there was a lot of heartache going on about how long it took them to come up with this decision it took like what three and a half weeks something like that yeah where there were a lot of people thinking that because they'd been so fast in setting the schedule to to hear this case in the first place that that would probably only be like a week or two and people started freaking out, but then they released it and it's all like, it was, it was, like almost 60 pages, I think it was 57 pages or something.
And it was all like, no, this is wrong. This is wrong. This other thing is wrong.
This other, you know, and people are asking why might they have taken the time they did.
I think it's fairly clear at this point that basically they wanted to produce a written opinion that was unanimous and bulletproof.
They want something thing that is so clear about all of the issues that there is a decent chance that when Donald Trump tries to go to the Supreme court, which he has until Monday to do that, the Supreme court will just say, you know, this opinion is good enough.
We don't even have to look at it.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:45]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:24:45]
| You know, that's what they were going for. And that took a little bit of time to do.
Okay. You you know, whatever, you know, things take time.
And part of what they did is that whole thing of only giving Donald Trump till Monday, which is an accelerated timeframe.
If he doesn't submit it by Monday, then they would just give it back to judge Chunkin and, and they can go on their merry way with scheduling the, the trial.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:13]
| He's going to, he's going to, he's going to.
|
Sam:
[1:25:14]
| Of course, of course he will. He will wait till the last minute on Monday.
Cause there's no reason to do it earlier, but he'll appeal on Monday.
They also set it up so that the whole idea of first appealing and bank to the district court is not appealing because they said if he does that, the trial can still go on while he's appealing.
Whereas if he goes to the Supreme Court, then everything continues to be paused until the Supreme Court decides what they want to do. And then if it does go to the Supreme Court, there are all kinds of options depending on what the Supreme Court decides.
Like one possibility, the Supreme Court, if he submits his stuff on Monday, they'll probably give a few days for the special counsel or maybe even a couple weeks for the special counsel to reply. lie.
But the fast case is they get the appeal from Donald Trump, they get the special counsel's comments on it, and then they really quickly say, we don't need to look at this. We're done.
And then in that possibility, we could have this back in Judge Chunkin's hands by the end of this month.
And then there are all kinds of other possibilities. The longest possibility is that the Supreme Court says they do want to hear this case, but there's no time left in the current term, so they'll hear it next term in October.
That's sort of the longest timeline that is possible right now, which would put like an actual decision by the court well after the election.
The most people, I think the consensus is that we're probably closer to the shorter end of that than the longer end of that, because people think that there's the Supreme Court.
they think this issue is fairly straightforward.
Donald Trump's arguments are nonsense. The district court did a really good job explaining why, and the Supreme Court is going to want to get out of the way and just let things move.
If that indeed happens, we're now talking May or June probably for the start of an actual trial.
Obviously, there's that whole range of timeframes The Supreme court can take as long as they want on this.
So like if they want to push it out further, they can, you know, but that that's, what's going on with that one.
And any more thoughts on that one before we move on to the next bullet point?
|
Ivan:
[1:27:49]
| Well, I think one of the things about, Well, no, no, no. This is not related to the immunity case. I was thinking more about the other case. OK.
|
Sam:
[1:27:58]
| So let's let's let's hit the things in order. Let's move on.
The next thing that happened.
And we talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago so we can make this quick.
But as expected, this whole deal of having all the southern border stuff that the Republicans have ever wanted their entire lives in exchange for foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and a few other places completely and totally fell apart in the Senate.
it after the house said that that would be dead on arrival if they if it got there um now why.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:35]
| Is that sam what happened.
|
Sam:
[1:28:37]
| Well donald trump said he didn't want it because because he wants to run on the fact that the border is screwed up so if you actually do something about it before the election that is just harmful right and this is despite like and again we talked about this a couple weeks ago.
We don't have to do the whole conversation again, but the Democrats basically, said, okay, Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:01]
| Okay, fine. We'll do it your way.
|
Sam:
[1:29:03]
| We'll do it your way. Everything you want here. We don't particularly like it, but we're willing to make the deal.
And yeah, so the Republicans tanked it themselves.
Biden and the Democrats are gearing up to flip the table and basically say, you know, it's the Republicans who are stopping the border from getting fixed.
You know, and we'll see how that messaging works or not.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:29]
| I mean, look, the border situation, like I said.
Now, we've had issues with the border forever. The fact that the Republicans now make it to be worse than every election cycle.
|
Sam:
[1:29:46]
| It's always for a while in between, but every election cycle.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:49]
| But but but it's been like this forever, man. And look, I live in a, I live somewhere where, you know, we had the Marielle boat lift, for example, down here, you know, and.
We have had such massive waves of immigrants in South Florida, and we don't have a land board, okay? Right.
So many arrivals by sea, by air, people who are extending, overstaying visas.
But, you know, that's been, man, since I was growing up, I remember in Puerto Rico, so many people would make the trip from both Haiti.
the Dominican Republic to get to Puerto Rico, to be able to get on a plane, fly to New York, fly to the U S I mean, having, you know, vessels that are addicted on a regular basis, having people die at sea, having hundreds of them die at sea at once because ship sinking.
And now they're so focused on the Texas side and they're talking about how it's, it's just, Oh my God, it's dangerous and whatever, blah, blah, blah. And, and it's a lie.
You know, my brother lives there and never locks his car, never locks his door.
You can see the fucking border they're talking about from his fucking window.
This this whole thing is saying that it's some kind of like the people on the border are scared of this is bullshit.
And they've been living with it for decades. And somebody I saw, it was a TikTok video where they showed this place where Texas had put their their troops and whatever together with Florida.
And now Florida sent some people to make a scene with Border Patrol in this part of the border.
And this guy went and said, okay, let me show you. This is where they're making their little show.
And you drove a quarter mile down, and there was an opening on the border wall straight into Mexico, and not one person from CBP, from anybody, arguing about that bit.
but they've got this entire show like less than 500 meters, 600 you know, I don't know why my meters whatever because I've been out of town too long.
|
Sam:
[1:32:21]
| You've been in one of those communist places that uses the metric system.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:25]
| Yeah, I know I know the metric system, I know you know, less than half a mile away, they're all over there with their dumb razor wire or whatever you just go half a mile the other way and there's nothing Nothing.
You can just walk right through the feds.
|
Sam:
[1:32:42]
| Right. I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:45]
| So it's just a fucking show.
|
Sam:
[1:32:47]
| So anyway, the point is, because we got to get through a few more of these bullets before the end of the show, that the Republicans want the show.
They want the issue. They clearly don't want to fix it.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:59]
| They want the show to continue. They don't want to fix anything.
Look, John Boehner in his book basically said it flat out.
I was reading John Boehner's book and he said flat out, look, all these guys want, they don't want to fucking solve a goddamn thing. None of them.
None of them. They want their grift. They want their time on Fox. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:33:22]
| Right. And then by the way, they, the Senate then is looking at a, a bill.
I just had the foreign aid without the border stuff, but a whole bunch of Republicans were at that point. We're saying, wait, wait, wait, we don't want to do the aid without the border stuff.
And, and it was was like well you you you just had that like five minutes ago you.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:47]
| Just had that a while ago assholes and you said no.
|
Sam:
[1:33:50]
| Yes so like lindsey graham was one of those people lindsey graham if you remember like two weeks ago was saying this is one of the best deals we really have to take it right now because this is like the best we'll ever get and then he got wind that donald trump was against it and the house was going to tank it and then he's like no no this is bad we can't have this bill we have to fix stuff and then they killed that bill and we're introducing the other one and then he was like well we can't pass this without border stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:20]
| It's a bunch of cowards.
|
Sam:
[1:34:21]
| Such a.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:24]
| Bunch of cowards.
|
Sam:
[1:34:25]
| Okay all of them next up we had the republicans attempted to this is also border related they tried to impeach mayorkas who is it he's the he's a department of Homeland security, Homeland security.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:40]
| Homeland security.
|
Sam:
[1:34:41]
| And yeah. So the idea was he is, I don't know, some, some kind of not doing his duty, not enforcing the laws because of all the immigration stuff.
And while all this stuff was going on in the Senate, they're like, okay, we'll, we're going to impeach Mayorkas.
They've been, they've been working on this ever since, you know, the last election. But, but.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:03]
| How'd it go?
|
Sam:
[1:35:04]
| They lost. They lost the vote. They couldn't get the votes to do this.
And apparently, look, here's the deal.
They had counted. There was one Democratic congressperson that was in the hospital after emergency surgery.
And there are a couple like Republican Scalise was also he's out for cancer treatment or something. But anyway, they counted the votes, assuming that the Democrat who was in the hospital would not show up. Well, guess what?
He showed up in a wheelchair in his scrubs from the hospital to put it in.
And that was enough to kill it because we are the house is so close right now that like one or two votes make all the difference. And there were a couple of Republicans who were against this effort anyway.
And so once you add this guy, it's like they just didn't count right here.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:01]
| Here is the reality.
|
Sam:
[1:36:03]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:05]
| Hakeem Jeffries has his caucus organized like a well-oiled machine.
|
Sam:
[1:36:12]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:13]
| And the Republicans are a bunch of fools.
|
Sam:
[1:36:18]
| Well, at this point, they say that one of the people who voted against it, by the way, was a Republican who was actually for it, who changed the vote to make sure that it didn't matter.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:30]
| It still was not enough. It doesn't matter. That was just there.
|
Sam:
[1:36:33]
| Was a procedural thing in order to be able to reserve the right to bring it up again later.
And what they're saying now is as soon as Scalise can get out of his cancer treatment and come, they will do the vote again and then they think they'll win.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:49]
| We'll see about that.
|
Sam:
[1:36:50]
| Well, the thing is, their timing on that actually is very critically.
They've got a very narrow window because the special election to replace what's his name? That fraudulent guy.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:04]
| Santos.
|
Sam:
[1:37:04]
| Santos. Yes. It's coming up very fast.
It's like two weeks out, maybe something like that. Now, apparently, the polling for that race is neck and neck.
We had said we thought the Democrat would have an advantage, whatever.
But at least polling-wise, it's neck and neck right now.
This will be another opportunity, by the way, to see if Democrats outperform their polls.
But if the Democrats actually pick up that seat, it gets even harder for the Republicans to do anything. And they already can't.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:37:42]
| They already can't. So, so that'll be fun to watch.
And then immediately after the failure of the Mayorkas vote, they decided they were bringing up their own alternative Israel bill that did not include Ukraine.
And they couldn't get that done either.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:04]
| Right. Right.
look they're they're incompetent.
|
Sam:
[1:38:08]
| Yes it's johnson all the way down and i and i still fully expect at some point somebody's gonna pull the plug on johnson and we're gonna go through the whole speaker vote thing again.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:20]
| Yeah yeah yes again yes by the way just one one more tidbit i did see how i can't remember which guy i think it was ben shapiro who was having a complete meltdown over the fact that, you know, because I believe it was Akeem Jeffries arranged transportation to make sure that this guy could come in to vote. And he was having to- Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:47]
| And they had the house doctors checking on him every five minutes to make sure he was okay. Because the guy just got out of surgery.
And he left the hospital against doctor's orders. He had to sign a waiver, all that kind of stuff to-
|
Ivan:
[1:38:59]
| Right, and he was saying something about- a ruthlessness of you know i wish we could operate with a ruthlessness of these democratic bastards i'm like if it's not ruthlessness dickhead fucking people you know you know you know they're organized they know what the fuck they're doing and you guys are a bunch of you know if it's just on if it's on wits alone to fucking hammer these bastards but it's It's not about that.
|
Sam:
[1:39:33]
| Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So the next, the next thing we got two more, two more on my list was we had the argument in front of the Supreme court about Colorado's effort to get Donald Trump off the ballot because of the section three of the 14th amendment that says you cannot hold office.
If you are an insurrectionist, basically, I'm not going to try to read the exact text to, The people in favor of that position got hammered in front of the Supreme Court.
Like, it's like, you know, back in December when we talked about this, I said the Supreme Court will find a way out of this.
No matter what, there was no way this court would do this. And there are two things here. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:23]
| Let's just make sure because that was like, yeah, there's a couple of things here. It's not just one.
|
Sam:
[1:40:27]
| There are a couple, there are a few things to talk about here, but one is on the one hand, a lot of people have been saying and trying to push these efforts by saying, look, it's absolutely clear.
Of course, Donald Trump is an insurrectionist. This is exactly what the amendment is for. He should not be able to hold office.
And like at a high level, I actually agree with that.
I think this is what the amendment was for and he should not be able to hold office. However, there were always a lot of actually legitimate questions about how you decide.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:06]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:41:06]
| And because the idea that you just sort of have the Secretary of State in some random state say, Right.
He's an insurrectionist. He can't do it. Even with the little trial they had, they had like a five day trial, but it's just like it's Colorado and their rules and what's going to happen somewhere else.
And, you know, the consensus seemed to be on the court and it looks like, you know, they certainly have the five votes to overturn this.
And it, there's a chance that it's eight or nine votes because a lot of the liberal justices also clearly had a bunch of concerns. terms.
Now, some of this is just like, you guys, seriously, you do not want the Supreme Court to be the one that says Donald Trump can't be president.
You really don't want that. We don't want that. We don't want to go out on that limb, so we're going to find a way out.
But another big, legitimate part of it is if you are going to have a mechanism to do this, it really should be a federal mechanism.
It should be a way that you decide uniformly for the whole country through some sort of defined mechanism that says this person is ineligible because of X, Y, Z.
And exactly what that procedure should be is debatable.
But the fact that there should be one, I think the kind of chaos that you would get if you let each state decide independently is really messy and really ugly and causes all kinds of problems.
You want a federal method to do this. Now, of course, the problem is, in order to get a federal method to do this, Congress would have to pass something.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:48]
| Enacting legislation.
|
Sam:
[1:42:49]
| In our current environment, there's no way that'll ever happen. You know? Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:54]
| What I said, you know what I said? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:57]
| What did you say?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:58]
| Well, my plan was, in order to get the Republicans to pass all of this, would be for the Democrats to break all the rules.
|
Sam:
[1:43:06]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:07]
| Because then, immediately, they would be on the bandwagon to passing all of this stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:43:11]
| Well, because according to the Republicans' own theory of 2020, the way that you should resolve this is if Donald Trump really isn't eligible –, Then once you get the electoral votes being counted on January 6th, 2025.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:29]
| Kamala Harris just says, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:43:31]
| The Congress should reject all of Donald Trump's electoral votes as ineligible.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:38]
| And that's it.
|
Sam:
[1:43:39]
| Yeah. Now, that depends, actually. Like if that could lead it to be dropped into the House, depending on what the numbers were, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, bottom line, you have you have the Congress on January 6th figure out all these issues.
And with with Kamala in charge, she could she could do whatever she wanted, like like they wanted Pence to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:02]
| Exactly. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:44:04]
| So, like, she could declare that, you know, Donald Trump was ineligible and, you know, throw out all those votes.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:10]
| So that's why I'm saying that, you know what, what we need to do is, hey, we want to fix this.
Then we got to do what the fuck they said that Penn should have been able to do.
And then I guarantee you that those, oh, no, no, no, no, that's not the way. No, never.
No, no, no. For sure.
That's the only way these assholes operate.
|
Sam:
[1:44:35]
| Yeah you're you are right on that but i think that scenario would still cause even more problems but but.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:42]
| Listen but what what worse problems of what then letting them actually fucking eventually get away with this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:44:50]
| Uh yes uh yes well i think.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:54]
| At some point just to call their fucking bluff you know you gotta sometimes do it with these fucking people hey you want the bluff called let's just fucking do it okay fuck you all right you say that's what the law says fine let's do it like hey let's play by your rules.
|
Sam:
[1:45:09]
| You're on a roll with these things biden should order the assassination of trump and then if trump wins in the electoral college we should just invalidate all those votes you know harris should just say and probably biden should declare martial law as well right you know right sure why not oh hey, you know this is where you get to the horseshoe theory of politics when you get this kind of stuff right close enough you know when you say one of the problems all along with this and not with this specifically, but speaking a little bit broader is we've got so many people on, you know, mostly on the right at this point, but with a nice contingent on the left as well, who have basically decided the system as it exists today doesn't work.
So there's no point trying to work within the system. We need to blow it all up.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:11]
| And I'm not, I am actually, I'm not an advocate for blowing it up at all.
What I am an advocate was, and I was an advocate, and I thought that we could have gotten this action done after the last election.
It was just a fucking fix to make sure that this stuff didn't happen.
But the Republicans, because they have been with Mr.
Zor loser as their leader, they have not allowed that to happen. Well.
|
Sam:
[1:46:35]
| Just to be clear, there was legislation passed that specifically talked about what happens on January 6th in terms of the procedural stuff that the Congress does that significantly tightened up the rules and made it a lot harder to object to electoral votes and clarified that the vice president's role was ceremonial, etc. et cetera.
So they actually did pass in a bipartisan fashion legislation to make explicit, that what they wanted Pence to do last time is not allowed.
So they actually did do some of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:11]
| Damn. So.
|
Sam:
[1:47:12]
| It may not be everything, but they closed up a lot of those loopholes. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:19]
| And I remember that, but I think that- It was.
|
Sam:
[1:47:22]
| One of the things, by the way, that they did under the radar.
They did all kinds of negotiation and then passed it without getting a lot of attention for it, specifically because if there had been a lot of attention on it, Trump could have done what he did with this, border bill right now and said, no, I don't want this. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:41]
| No, no, I hear you. I think that it's one of two ways.
Either you called her bluff or like I've said, look, this son of a bitch has to die because I really think that a lot of this momentum, Unfortunately, I am down to a point right now because this is a fucking cult of personality and cults of personality usually lose.
|
Sam:
[1:48:03]
| And just to be I want to I want to say this before the Secret Service shows up at our door.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:08]
| We're not advocating at the assassination of Trump.
No, no. But I'm saying that I am like not going to shed a tear if this guy has a heart attack tomorrow.
OK. All right. On stage, under pressure from all of his criminal cases.
And these cults of personality usually fade significantly when the fucking cult leader dies.
|
Sam:
[1:48:32]
| Yeah, unless there is a replacement waiting in the wings that is already.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:38]
| But he has, you know, the one thing that's good is that basically anybody in the wings that has tried to take his mantle.
|
Sam:
[1:48:49]
| He squashes.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:50]
| He has basically, exactly, he's kneecapped them.
|
Sam:
[1:48:53]
| Yes, absolutely. Can't have that.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:56]
| Nope, can't have that.
|
Sam:
[1:48:59]
| Okay. Anyway, it looks like the Supreme Court will say that indeed Donald Trump cannot be tossed off the ballot, at least not the way that Colorado did.
There are still some questions on exactly what reasoning will they use and will they couch it in a way that's broad or very narrow?
There's some questions about that. I think their main goal is to get out of it.
So they're going to try to do it in such a way that Trump remains on the ballot, A.
And B, they're not going to say do it in such a way that only applies to the primaries, but not the general.
They don't want it coming back to them in three or four months.
They want this to be done.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:45]
| There is one thing about the supreme court case with with with donald that i i do think that it seems relevant based on what i heard because one of the things that the question was whether that applied to the president 14 and and i think it's become pretty clear from a lot of what was heard that i i don't i think that that part seems to be where everybody believes it does was.
|
Sam:
[1:50:11]
| Judge Jackson was not so sure about that. She asked a bunch of questions about that.
And in fact, introduced an argument that the Trump's lawyers were not making in terms of why it might not apply to the president.
So I'm not sure if that will be unanimous or not.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:29]
| But it seemed that that wasn't, but I'm not sure it's unanimous, but it seemed that it was.
|
Sam:
[1:50:34]
| Your position definitely has a majority. It might not be unanimous.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:38]
| Yeah. It might not be unanimous, but it seemed that that position at a majority that it does apply.
Okay. Now, so, so I think that that's the one thing that I thought was.
|
Sam:
[1:50:46]
| I think the, the, the, the answer is exactly the kind of roadmap we talked about roadmap off ramp is what people have been calling out that we talked about in December, which is you're going to rule in such a way that you basically say, yes, this could potentially apply in this situation, but the procedure that was used to get here is inappropriate.
Right. And in order to have this work properly, Congress has to enact legislation.
Oh, they haven't? Too bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:19]
| But the other thing that I heard this week that was also very important was that when this was enacted, that this was very specifically...
That states did not have the rights to determine this.
|
Sam:
[1:51:32]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:33]
| That it was a federal matter as well.
|
Sam:
[1:51:37]
| This was one of the arguments that was brought up during the oral arguments as well, basically saying, hey, the whole point of this was to take power away from the states and give it to the federal government.
Correct. The idea was to try to prevent the states from reelecting Confederates.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:56]
| Exactly. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:51:57]
| Taking back over state government specifically. Right. And Congress positions, et cetera.
Yeah. And this was one of the reasons Jackson was saying, hey, maybe they really weren't thinking about the presidency so much.
They weren't worried about that.
They were worried about state governments and the House and the Senate.
That's where they were concentrating their thoughts. Now, of course, they probably didn't want the president to be an insurrectionist either, but the exact situation that was going on then at the end of the Civil War, they were a lot less worried about that as an actual possibility that might happen.
Whereas Confederates taking back over Southern states was a very real possibility.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:39]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:52:41]
| Okay. One last thing. The Her Report.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:45]
| Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[1:52:48]
| So this is the special counsel who is tasked with investigating Joe Biden's handling of classified information.
Because, of course, after the whole Mar-a-Lago raid, if you remember, there was a couple-month period where it seemed like every other week we were finding more classified documents.
Mike Pence had some, and Joe Biden had some. Right. Mike Pence was already let off the hook.
They investigated him, saw no reason to charge him with anything a while back.
This was the end of the investigation into Joe Biden.
The bottom line of the result was that the special counsel said there's not enough evidence to charge him with anything. thing.
But then of course he went on much like Comey did back in 2016 and gave all kinds of other reasons and things.
And, you know, by the way, the special counsel is required to present a report on why they did not indict.
But, you know, he, he went on in length about things that he thinks thought that Donald, not Donald Trump, that Joe Biden did wrong with the class, the the classified document with the classified documents.
And, and he also spent a decent number of pages talking about how Joe Biden was an old man. Who's losing his memory.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:15]
| Which was, well, I, all I said was the, the, the whole, his analysis seemed like crap.
I mean, I'm sorry, but I, and, but honestly, I think as a couple of people, I said that, that, that, that I heard before, especially with like witnesses that you're deposing recollections, you know, people's memories are terrible.
It's been known historically that people's memories about events and things or whatever are fricking terrible.
And for this guy to go and singled out some anecdotes in, in some way and say that they constituted some kind of like egregious, like, lapsing memory seemed it just it wasn't it wasn't evidence-based it wasn't anything of whatever he just you know i mean people don't recollect shit i don't know i've been in that position how many times did i say i don't i don't i don't i don't i don't recollect that i don't remember well.
|
Sam:
[1:55:26]
| And and biden and the white house have pointed out multiple times this is like this This is standard lawyer advice.
Like if you're in a deposition about something.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:37]
| If you're unsure, you say you don't remember.
|
Sam:
[1:55:39]
| Yeah. If you are even slightly unsure, you say you don't remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:44]
| And that's exactly. And listen, and I've done that repeatedly because I'm like, look, I'm sorry.
It's either if I'm not sure, I'm not going to fucking perjure myself and lie and say that something was that way when I'm not when I'm not sure. Sure. So usually, yes.
When I have been in a fucking deposition, I have even the slightest doubt about something. I don't remember.
|
Sam:
[1:56:05]
| So also, you know, we'll talk about Joe Biden's response to this in just a second.
I do also want to mention that one of the things the special counsel did right in this report is they spent a significant amount of time also talking about exactly how this differentiated from the Donald Trump case and basically saying, hey, look, we're not charging.
That other case charged a whole bunch. And here are all the reasons it's different.
Joe Biden cooperated. He gave the documents back.
He did all this stuff. Whereas Donald Trump spent months and months lying about it, hiding documents, obstructing the effort, Right.
He reported, he appointed, you know, a Trump guy. And so of course we're going to get this kind of response.
I heard some people criticizing Garland earlier today with like, why didn't you do like, like bar did and tie this up for a month while you did edits and put your own spin on it and all this kind of stuff.
And I think, look, you know, as much as like Yvonne's like, Hey, use their tactics, call their bluff, do the same damn thing that they did to us. you know it can you imagine like if if, If Garland had said, no, you got to take all this stuff out, edit it out, redact all the, not even redacted, just before we release it, you're going to take out all this memory stuff because it's irrelevant and it's unnecessary.
And, you know, DOJ guidelines, you don't need to say all that stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:14]
| As long as it was properly justified. Listen, as long as it was properly justified, I'm okay.
But I look at it. Well, here's the one thing. it blew up either way it doesn't really matter i i just i i i i think that.
|
Sam:
[1:58:29]
| It would have i i guarantee you like as it is look this is this is not what biden and his team want to be talking about but you know it's february it's gonna blow over pretty soon if they had done anything at all, to try to change what was in this report to make it nicer for Biden, this would have a lot more legs.
As it is right now, this will probably blow over in a couple of weeks.
If they had done that, it would have lasted months.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:03]
| We would still- I think you're right. I think that you're right.
And it goes to the argument that I had said to you that I'm like, look, I'd rather that this report came out now than in October.
|
Sam:
[1:59:16]
| Yes, absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:17]
| I mean, I'm like, you know, whatever. It's February. You know, by the end of this month, nobody will remember it.
|
Sam:
[1:59:22]
| I think you're right. Now, the issue of Joe Biden's old is going to be with us.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:30]
| That issue, yeah, but that issue has been there exactly the whole time. So whatever.
I mean, it is what it is. And whether it's Trump is old.
|
Sam:
[1:59:39]
| Yeah. Well, one of the things people talked about is Joe Biden held this press conference to talk about it.
And a whole bunch of the reporters asked directly, like, yo, should you resign?
Are you able to be president? Are your, are your mental faculties intact?
And what was, and he got really mad. He got mad.
Like one of the things that was in the report was like, he couldn't remember when his son died and he was really pissed about that.
And he was pissed at these reporters and he showed his anger and you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:08]
| You know that here, you You know, can I just say something about having a relative die?
So I had my grandmother die at home, okay, about five years ago, okay? I can't tell you what day it was.
|
Sam:
[2:00:23]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:23]
| I can't tell you what day it was. I mean, it's not like a fucking birthday.
It's not like, you know, birthdays, you remember where you celebrate them every year.
What, you think we go around and we fucking celebrate the fact that my grandmother died every fucking summer? No!
So I don't fucking remember when the hell she died. It's sometime in the middle of 2019.
19 fuck she was in my house i'm in my fucking house and i don't fucking remember and this is why i got pissed off with this bullshit report where i'm like who the fuck remembers the exact fucking day when most people die i don't fucking remember or.
|
Sam:
[2:01:03]
| Or honestly even years on that kind of thing you know it.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:06]
| Yeah oh shit like what year i started working and then when when did i leave like a fucking job right i mean i'm like shit i was struggling when he said when his term started even i was struggling doing the fucking math when when he was a vp and not and i'm like this guy is like acting like this is some kind of fucking you know fuck i i'm struggling every every other week to figure out how old i am right now yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:01:31]
| I i had to fill out like my age or something on a form or something a couple weeks ago and like.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:39]
| I filled it out wrong in january i said i was already 53 when i was 52 well.
|
Sam:
[2:01:44]
| I i had to do the math i had to like figure out like what year was i born what.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:48]
| Year is it now.
|
Sam:
[2:01:49]
| Let's do the subtraction wait a second is it before or after my birthday because that makes a difference you.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:55]
| Know and it's like.
|
Sam:
[2:01:56]
| Yeah yeah like at a certain.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:59]
| Point i'm like going on that but the thing is that i was going through that page and i'm like you fucking asshole for For real? This is what you're bitching about.
|
Sam:
[2:02:07]
| Yeah. I mean, when I was younger, like how old I was was something I kept track of. At a certain point, I like stopped keeping track, you know?
Anyway, but let me finish on the press conference.
First of all, like I liked angry Biden. I thought like I like it when he shows passion.
Like I, I felt like, like one of my problems with Joe Biden's normal speaking is it's so dry and boring.
And I know we like boring Biden.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:38]
| It's dry and boring. God damn it.
|
Sam:
[2:02:40]
| But at the same time, like when he shows a little passion, a little emotion is that spark there.
And I think I like that. However, I heard a lot of people complaining and saying that they, they need to make sure Biden can respond in ways that he doesn't get angry because he doesn't look good when he's angry, blah, blah, blah. Well.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:00]
| I don't know. I thought he looked great. He's angry. I think it was the Fox reporters.
Like the question that he asked them was, you know, something about how by how bad it was. He said, uh, how bad is your memory?
He said, my memory is so bad. I let you speak.
|
Sam:
[2:03:14]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:15]
| That was a brilliant, like retort. Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:03:19]
| The other thing that all kinds of people brought up though is, and I barely caught this live.
People had, well, I didn't catch it live. People afterwards brought it up, is that after this press conference, he was leaving and then someone asked a question about the situation in Israel and Gaza.
And he came back to answer that question and he started talking about the situation.
And at one point when he was talking talking about Egypt, he said Mexico instead.
And so people are like, he was doing so well, and then he came back out and he got Egypt and Mexico confused and ruined it all.
Yeah. So look, the age thing is going to be with us from now till November.
There's no way that goes away.
As we've talked about on other shows, Donald Trump is showing plenty of signs of like not exactly having great mental facilities either there there was a thing just on yvonne shared it on a conventions corner slack right before we were recording the show where apparently tonight on some speech donald trump was talking about renaming the state of pennsylvania yes like okay where's that come from like and.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:39]
| Apparently he also thought today was saturday repeatedly.
|
Sam:
[2:04:43]
| Oh, okay. That's nice. Yeah. So, so look, we, we got a couple people that both have issues along those lines.
We got a couple people who are both old enough that health issues could come up randomly at any moment unexpectedly.
Like either one of them could take a fall. Either one of them could have a heart attack.
Either one of them could have a stroke. There are all kinds of things that could happen that would immediately change the entire landscape of this election.
but specifically on Joe Biden the age on a day to day basis the, It's more obvious that Joe Biden is old, even though it's kind of obvious for Donald Trump, too.
And we're going to be talking about that the whole damn time. And it's not going away.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:30]
| Well, I hate to break it to you. They're not going to get any younger by the election.
|
Sam:
[2:05:34]
| Yeah, that's not going to happen now. So anyway, I and of course, just to repeat the main point of the what was it? Her report is his name.
Her H.U.R. I think Ben Ben her.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:47]
| It's not been her. It's not like from the movie.
|
Sam:
[2:05:49]
| No not not not ben her no no no no and now i'm gonna have to add that to my list too if i don't have it already you know you keep doing these things to me yes it's h-u-r is the guy's name it.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:04]
| Is the her the her is right but i don't think it's the right first name no.
|
Sam:
[2:06:08]
| Not ben no it's not it's not it's not ben her.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:13]
| He didn't come down in a chariot one One of those.
|
Sam:
[2:06:15]
| Like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:16]
| Roman chariot things.
|
Sam:
[2:06:19]
| That would have made it more dramatic.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:21]
| That would have made it more dramatic. Yes, indeed.
|
Sam:
[2:06:25]
| Anyway, the main point of the whole report, actually, was there's no reason to charge Joe Biden with anything.
And he specifically said, look, we know there's a longstanding policy.
You can't charge sitting presidents. But even if that policy didn't exist, we still wouldn't charge him.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:41]
| Robert, Robert, her, Robert. OK, by the way, not that. It's Robert.
Yeah. Yeah. I just looked up.
|
Sam:
[2:06:46]
| Is it Robert? Okay. You looked it up. Anyway, the, the, the, even the things that he highlights as the most egregious things he thinks that Biden did later on in the report, he undercuts himself by saying there's lots of, it potentially innocent explanations for this too so.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:09]
| Well a big well my understanding is that most of the stuff that was related to was again his person it was all of this was in his personal notes yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:07:21]
| At least the main items of contention.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:24]
| The main items were all his personal notes and that's why they got it wasn't you know it wasn't the kind of folders that we saw at uh of at Mar-a-Lago, anything like that. No, it was in his personal notes.
|
Sam:
[2:07:39]
| Well, there was at least one cardboard box in the garage that looked pretty skanky too, but you know, whatever it was, it was less volume, but the one thing that is true is there were classified documents that were not stored properly that were there in his house for a few years and they shouldn't have been, he blames it on his staff.
And I actually thought that was kind of cheap to like, he should just be like, yeah, my staff messed up, but it was my responsibility.
He's like, my staff messed up and he stopped there. But whatever.
The reason there are no charges is there's absolutely no evidence that-
|
Ivan:
[2:08:18]
| That he withheld them on purpose.
|
Sam:
[2:08:19]
| That he withheld them on purpose and that as soon as they were discovered, he returned everything, he was open to the investigation, et cetera, et cetera.
Which again, in the Donald Trump case, every single one of those steps is the opposite.
Donald Trump resisted at every stage. He lied about it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Are we done, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[2:08:39]
| Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:08:40]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:41]
| Let's wrap up, please.
|
Sam:
[2:08:42]
| So the stuff at the end.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:45]
| Stuff at the end.
|
Sam:
[2:08:46]
| The stuff at the end.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:47]
| Things.
|
Sam:
[2:08:48]
| Things. Yeah. What? Stuff it. Yeah. Stuff, stuff it, stuff it, stuff, stuff me. No, no, don't stuff me.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:54]
| Stuff it expander.
|
Sam:
[2:08:55]
| Oh, I remember stuff at expander. That was still around. Is it?
I guess it probably is. is but there's no i mean.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:04]
| We still zip file.
|
Sam:
[2:09:05]
| Well yeah but like all the operating systems have that built in now so yeah yeah no but.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:10]
| But the application is still around.
|
Sam:
[2:09:11]
| And it's i mean it's got some additional features i'm sure and blah blah blah anyway while you look up stuff at expander it is.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:18]
| Stuff at stuff at dot com there it is.
|
Sam:
[2:09:20]
| There you go oh.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:21]
| No no no that website is doesn't work okay hold on.
|
Sam:
[2:09:24]
| Okay okay oh jeez, Is it dad?
|
Ivan:
[2:09:29]
| Oh, no, no, no, no. It works to stuff it. Yeah. Stuff it.com.
I don't know why I didn't before, but yeah, right there.
|
Sam:
[2:09:35]
| Very exciting. Okay. Any, anyway, curmudgeons.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:37]
| There is an iOS version. Look at that.
|
Sam:
[2:09:41]
| Yay. Curmudgeons, hyphen corner.com. Go there, find our archives, including transcripts since like June or something.
So you can do the, the, you can see the computer generated transcripts, which are sometimes funny to read because they're not perfect.
and the places where they get it wrong are often amusing.
Also there, you can find all the ways to contact us, email, Facebook, Mastodon.
We would love to hear from more of you. And importantly, our, not our Commodions Corner Slack, our Patreon, where you can give us money and at various levels, we will mention you on the show.
We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that kind of fun stuff.
And importantly, at $2 a month or more, Or if you ask nicely or just ask nicely or not, we will invite you to our Commendations Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:34]
| Chattering.
|
Sam:
[2:10:35]
| Chattering. It is great fun. We would love to have more of you. The more, the merrier.
In the meantime, Yvonne, anything from the Slack you want to highlight this week?
|
Ivan:
[2:10:44]
| Well, okay. So I actually found it like not that long ago.
It is. is she ordered an ashtray and got a can of tuna what.
|
Sam:
[2:10:54]
| I don't remember this one you put you shared this i must have missed it.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:59]
| I just put this i just found it right as the show was starting okay ah.
|
Sam:
[2:11:04]
| Okay i haven't looked since we started recording.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:06]
| So some lady went to ordered a 275 five dollar blue and white porcelain ashtray from sax okay all right and when she got it and she opened it there was a can of bumblebee tuna inside okay okay and they were talking about return fraud which it seems like somebody went and ordered one said no give me my buddy back and, nice and neatly packed a catatuna.
|
Sam:
[2:11:43]
| And they returned it and they never looked inside to verify.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:47]
| And then inside and then they sold it again and they got that. I must say that, It's just, it seems kind of, and this person apparently posted a video on TikTok and for it, it blew up.
And apparently this, there is this now new genre of videos on, on TikTok, uh, with that kind of stuff.
There's some other person that ordered a $4,800 leather and shearling bomber jacket from the luxury brand kite from the Saks website.
but when she received the item the tiktok user claimed that the jacket she'd been sent was entirely different in style shape cut to the one she'd ordered the original tag appeared to have been cut out and replaced with a sewn in kite tag so basically somebody made a fake jacket of it.
|
Sam:
[2:12:36]
| And not a very good fake either.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:38]
| Not a very good fake and uh and uh gave it an out i i will say that I think that spending $5,000 on a leather jacket is just astoundingly ridiculous. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:12:52]
| Just a little excessive.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:54]
| Yeah. I will say for a jacket, you know, but I don't know what the hell am I going to do.
|
Sam:
[2:13:00]
| And you have expensive tastes, but not that expensive. Apparently I.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:04]
| Do, but, but not, no, I, I don't think I've, I don't think I've ever purchased a clothing item itself that that cost that i mean i've bought like maybe a suit inflation adjusted might be to do that that i haven't had to buy a suit recently but i'm going to tell you something i've had to wear a suit three times in the last month and a half and i'm right now at the point that i'm getting really fucking pissed off about this about.
|
Sam:
[2:13:33]
| Having to wear it.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:35]
| Oh, fuck. Yeah. This is the third. It's the third. I mean.
|
Sam:
[2:13:37]
| You used to wear them all the time.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:41]
| I've gotten out of practice.
And traveling, which I have, I've traveled, let me put it to you this way, I've traveled more in the last six weeks than I, basically in six weeks, I traveled almost the same amount as I traveled in like about nine months last year.
|
Sam:
[2:14:04]
| Nice. Anyway, yeah, if I'm in anything other than jeans and a t-shirt, you know something weird's going on.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:12]
| Yeah, your job interview or something. So anyway, yeah, they'll call you out.
So the one good thing, look, what I do, listen, there is a thing about this.
I went and one of these, the whole point that I was wearing a suit was to make an impression.
Okay. At the customer that I went to visit. Okay.
They had no idea who the hell I was, but I did wear an extremely nice suit.
And for some reason they thought I was some kind of vice president of something, even though I'm just right now, just, and I was just like beautiful because that was the whole point.
The whole point was for them to get impressed that some executive showed up.
Well, we didn't have an executive. It's just me.
But they thought I was. And so therefore, that is one of the things that I say about sometimes, especially when you're in a customer-facing thing, where that kind of stuff works.
Okay? It did send, oh, my God, we got all these gushing calls.
Oh, my God, the executives are here. Great.
I'm laughing my ass off. I'm like, okay, perfect. Beautiful.
|
Sam:
[2:15:14]
| Nice.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:15]
| You know, so there you go. Okay. Now on the return thing, one last thing, and then we're gone.
|
Sam:
[2:15:20]
| One last thing. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:22]
| What that reminded me with the katuna can in there, I still remember one time many years ago, some friends of mine visited Spain.
And they, in Spain, they serve bread normally with your meal, like right where you're sitting down for dinner.
And the loaves of bread are actually, they're very hard on the outside.
Very, very hard. and some of them were speculating stay old or two are they reserving old bread if if nobody eats the bread do they just put it back and then they serve it again so one of them cut a very tiny, hole through one of them and filled one of the pieces of filled a few of the pieces of bread with like beans that they had ah and they put them back on the tray and then they took the tray away the next meal where they were there and this was at a restaurant stay i think it was like breakfast they came back and they were at the table and lo and behold somebody cut their bread guess what was in the bread the bean the peas beautiful so that's it that's all i got okay.
|
Sam:
[2:16:24]
| So everybody as usual have a a safe week have fun oh that that that thing with the owl is this weekend isn't it the superb owl.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:34]
| How oh yeah oh yes yes yeah and taylor swift yes she's gonna going to win. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:16:40]
| Okay. So for, for anybody paying attention to that, I guess have fun.
I probably will not even notice unless I hear like screaming from the other houses in the neighborhood.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:50]
| Maybe, maybe we put it on your new Apple vision pro. Maybe you'll watch it.
|
Sam:
[2:16:54]
| Yeah, maybe I will. Maybe I will. Yeah. Anyway, have fun, have a great week and we will talk to you next time.
Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:04]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:17:35]
| Thank you, Mr. Bo. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:37]
| Bye.
| |
|
