Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, shall we just go, or do you want to discuss something first?
|
Ivan:
[0:05]
| Like what? What are we discussing?
I don't know. Is there something to discuss? I mean, I don't know, other than... I don't think so.
You know, no, there's nothing to discuss.
|
Sam:
[0:21]
| Very well. Then, you know, that could be one of those, Ivan.
|
Ivan:
[0:28]
| Yes. we.
|
Sam:
[0:29]
| Need to talk we need to talk.
|
Ivan:
[0:31]
| Oh fuck no jesus you don't want to hear that no i that that's you know my wife like uses that in inappropriate moments honey we need to talk what i think we're out of cheese not like for the love of god oh okay good all right we'll get cheese okay.
|
Sam:
[0:54]
| Here we go, Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, March 29th, 2024.
It is just after 2 UTC as we are are starting to record i am salmon tree von boas here hello yvonne hello whoa you blew out the microphone for sure that bullet pull it back a little pull it back a little oh god turn down the gain like turn it the gain is all.
|
Ivan:
[1:42]
| The way down.
|
Sam:
[1:43]
| I don't you're you're screaming and yelling and then exactly yeah so anyway we're gonna do our usual which lately has met each of us is gonna do a non-newsy thing to start with and then after that we will have a couple segments of newsy stuff lately we've just been doing one from yvonne and one from me and that's been fine that's been fine we've we've managed by doing that not to have three hour shows wow stunning we've been a little shorter usually which is good stunning stunning stunning stunning so uh i'm stunned you're stunned now i'm stunned i have a challenge for you yvonne you.
|
Ivan:
[2:30]
| Have a challenge what's the challenge.
|
Sam:
[2:31]
| When you pick your topic yeah have it not be about travel well.
|
Ivan:
[2:39]
| I i wasn't planning on talking Because.
|
Sam:
[2:41]
| Like most of the time this year so far, your topics have been travel related. I'm just kidding.
It can be about travel if you really want.
|
Ivan:
[2:49]
| I mean, I don't I, you know, it seems like my life is very boring, which is I mean, I mean, I'm sure that is true.
But I, non-newsy, newsy thing.
Let's see, what's happened this week?
Well, here is the interesting thing. So, technically today is not a company holiday for me, okay?
|
Sam:
[3:18]
| And by today, you mean Friday or Thursday?
|
Ivan:
[3:22]
| I mean either Thursday or Friday, okay?
You know, it's a school holiday tomorrow, stock market holiday, but it's not technically a work holiday.
But here is the thing. I work mostly with people that are located in places where it is a holiday today, tomorrow.
And I heard that also yesterday as well.
And so yesterday I was expecting a couple of things signed from some customers.
And when I reached out, they said, well, everybody's out. They won't be back until Monday.
|
Sam:
[4:10]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[4:11]
| And literally today I did not get a single work email.
And that is normally I get a barrage. I did not get one.
I had spoken to my boss about this yesterday, and I was basically saying, look, I know it's not a holiday, but I don't think I'm getting much of any work done right now.
My pre-sales team is out on holiday.
My customers are out on holiday.
There's nobody I can work with. My boss is in a country that it's a holiday, too.
so it's kind of like you know.
|
Sam:
[4:53]
| Well you know i i realized you know tomorrow is also friday good good friday is the holiday but.
|
Ivan:
[5:03]
| It's not a it's not like a it's not a federal holiday.
|
Sam:
[5:06]
| No it's it's not a federal holiday my company does not have it off tomorrow right um and i realized that there was one thing that like i finished up today and i was going to to send out tomorrow to get feedback from some people.
And then late in the day, I looked and I realized I was getting all of these, you know, out of office.
I'm going to be out of office, like calendar blocks for all sorts of people.
And I'm like, wait a second.
It appears a lot of people are taking off tomorrow and, and all, and like, I hadn't even thought of it.
Like I, I, I'm not even remotely religious minded and I was.
|
Ivan:
[5:41]
| Not thinking about it either because.
|
Sam:
[5:43]
| You had to, you had to remind, you had to remind me like, oh, it's Easter weekend. Like, I don't give a crap. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[5:51]
| Like, look, I, I, I mean, I hear usually we do stuff for Easter weekend in my family. We'll get together and do some stuff.
|
Sam:
[5:59]
| My wife is really into like having at least something like she likes to do a fancy dinner on Easter.
She likes to do the Easter baskets and stuff. But it's like one of those things where I, it really wasn't something that I did a lot.
So I always, I get up to it and like, I'm always surprised by it, you know, where, where it happens. And the other thing I was going to say is tomorrow also, I realized I have no meetings.
Like, usually I have a whole bunch of meetings on.
|
Ivan:
[6:31]
| And all of a sudden, no meetings. Nobody is scheduling anything. You got nothing. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[6:36]
| And because I had to, like, my wife was out doing stuff, so I had to be home to deal with the kid in the afternoon on Tuesday and Thursday.
And if you remember, my company is requiring us to be in three days a week.
|
Ivan:
[6:49]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[6:50]
| Which means i did monday wednesday and i'm having to go in friday and i have no meetings and no one's gonna be there so.
|
Ivan:
[6:59]
| What are you gonna go clock in and clock out.
|
Sam:
[7:02]
| I'm i'm gonna i'm gonna take advantage of it as a time where i figure i can some.
|
Ivan:
[7:08]
| Personal so get some some stuff done that everybody else would be interrupting you.
|
Sam:
[7:12]
| Yeah like there's there's, In addition, like a lot of my job is meeting with a bunch of people and doing stuff, but I also have stuff that I have to like sit down and just write something or do something or whatever.
And like, I'm looking at tomorrow and I'm like, I've got a clear calendar.
I can get there and maybe actually knock out two or three of these things that like I've been putting off or haven't spent a lot of time on.
And because other things have been more pressing, I figure tomorrow is going to be a slow low day it's going to be kind of kind of like the week between christmas and new year do.
|
Ivan:
[7:46]
| You guys have uh unlimited vacation you guys have a vacation.
|
Sam:
[7:49]
| No no it's all clocked and stuff now okay so.
|
Ivan:
[7:52]
| No because yeah because that's the one thing me i'm like i got unlimited this is the people that i hear complaining about the unlimited vacation i'm like oh screw this i'm like these days are vacation days whatever i'm like i mean what am i gonna do i mean it's it's pointless for me to do you anything else well.
|
Sam:
[8:08]
| You know i i have an amount but like i'm always bumping up against the end because i don't use enough of them so i'm always getting these notices every few months why.
|
Ivan:
[8:17]
| Don't you take a vacation day tomorrow and that's it nobody's gonna complain.
|
Sam:
[8:23]
| Well i don't know i don't know you want.
|
Ivan:
[8:27]
| To drive to the city well the traffic will be lighter.
|
Sam:
[8:31]
| Yeah the commute's probably probably going to be fine that's.
|
Ivan:
[8:33]
| True the commute's going to be like nice.
|
Sam:
[8:35]
| The commute's going to be fine it's going to be quiet there i'll hang out for a few hours i'll get a couple things done but probably not as much as i think i might you know and you know and it'll it'll be fine i probably won't like stay till like 6 p.m.
|
Ivan:
[8:50]
| Or anything right you're not gonna you're not you're not yeah exactly you're not gonna push the push the clock but okay but you know you're you'll get that stuff done and then you'll come home yeah.
|
Sam:
[8:59]
| Yeah it'll be fine and i don't know if i find anybody there maybe i'll talk to them but more likely i'll avoid them you know so it'll it'll be.
|
Ivan:
[9:08]
| Fine and.
|
Sam:
[9:10]
| And you mentioned like and we there is school tomorrow however.
|
Ivan:
[9:16]
| Oh you guys got school for over here for whatever reason but next.
|
Sam:
[9:20]
| Week is spring break for us.
|
Ivan:
[9:22]
| Ah but we had spring break last week.
The thing is that we came back this week and there was no school Monday and there's no school tomorrow.
|
Sam:
[9:33]
| So what's the freaking point? You should have just moved spring break and had it this week.
|
Ivan:
[9:39]
| I mean, I don't know.
But bottom line is that we've got, you know, tomorrow is, you know, today I got nothing going on.
And the reality is that there are so many things right now that I am working on that are dependent on somebody's input, like right now.
|
Sam:
[10:05]
| And they're not there.
|
Ivan:
[10:07]
| And they're not there, okay? It's like, look, one thing I got stuck, we were working on designing a solution, and literally on the call on Tuesday, the call broke up because, well, we're not the right people.
we need to find the right resource.
We're going to set up and find the right resource. That's it. That's where I'm at.
I need some guy to approve something to move some stuff from data center A to B. That guy is not there either.
All the things that I need to do, very few are, so few are that I have all the, I need a couple of, i need three signed documents from three different people to do things none of those people are there i i i i went through my to-do list and i'm like yeah i could putz around and do some stuff but it's i'm not gonna get much of anything accomplished so okay so.
|
Sam:
[11:11]
| You're taking the time off.
|
Ivan:
[11:12]
| I'm taking the time off you're.
|
Sam:
[11:14]
| Gonna do anything exciting or you're just gonna hang Hang out around home and watch TV.
|
Ivan:
[11:19]
| No, to take a guess what my son asked me to go do.
|
Sam:
[11:22]
| Oh, you're going to Disney.
|
Ivan:
[11:25]
| That's why we're doing the podcast today.
|
Sam:
[11:29]
| You go to Disney like every week. I know it's not really every week, but.
|
Ivan:
[11:34]
| This year, I will say it's been at this point, it's been like once a month, like right now.
|
Sam:
[11:42]
| You're making use of those season passes or whatever the hell.
|
Ivan:
[11:46]
| Yeah the annual passes yes and you know yeah so yeah I will do that because I was like ah god I don't know I'm like he said well he asked and I was like okay fine I'm like let's just go whatever, I don't have any work, and he doesn't have school, so we'll just go do that.
But, yeah, it has got me all discombobulated, this having this.
And this happens on some occasions where there are some big holidays in Latin America.
Like, Labor Day is not celebrated the same day that we do in most places outside the U.S.
And that one's always one that gets me, okay? Okay, but then I have the opposite effect because like Thanksgiving, everybody's working.
|
Sam:
[12:37]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:38]
| And it's like, I spent this Thanksgiving with my laptop, you know, open while we were doing Thanksgiving stuff because I had a whole bunch of stuff that was going on.
So, yeah, so I have the opposite.
This whole thing with the, we should have more global holidays.
holidays well we do have some like you know that are celebrated i mean in many countries like like christmas for i mean the christmas holiday that's that's the one really where everybody's gone you know we're gone they're gone everybody's gone that well at.
|
Sam:
[13:11]
| Least at least with your folks in latin america i'm sure there's some countries where that's less of a thing.
|
Ivan:
[13:15]
| Well in the u.s officially the company closes yeah so we get that which is which is nice you know they they will We'll close from, like, I think I looked at the calendar, from the 22nd to January 2nd.
So we're officially, everybody is like, unless you're in, you know, any critical role, like, you know, to solve a customer problem or whatever.
|
Sam:
[13:39]
| An operation thing or something.
|
Ivan:
[13:41]
| Right. Everybody is like, guys, everybody go, go, go take the time off.
And I think that's, I like, they did that at HP. They actually imported that from HP here because one of the executives who passed away, he...
came here from hp and he brought that over gotcha so so that's how we did that so anyway shall i.
|
Sam:
[14:06]
| Do my movie.
|
Ivan:
[14:07]
| Do the movie what are what are we doing today what's the movie.
|
Sam:
[14:11]
| My movie this time is v for vendetta from 2005.
|
Ivan:
[14:16]
| V for vendetta not not the not not anything related to that v tv series no.
|
Sam:
[14:23]
| Not v that's on my list somewhere too like there's.
|
Ivan:
[14:25]
| Okay there.
|
Sam:
[14:26]
| Was a mini There was a mini-series, there was a regular series, there was a sequel series, and I think there were a couple sequel mini-series, and I think there was even a remake not that long ago.
|
Ivan:
[14:38]
| I got to say that I tried watching that again.
|
Sam:
[14:43]
| It doesn't- Doesn't hold up?
|
Ivan:
[14:44]
| It doesn't. No. Well, in my opinion, it did not hold up.
|
Sam:
[14:48]
| I remember really liking it when it was brand new.
|
Ivan:
[14:51]
| Me too. Yeah, I did too.
|
Sam:
[14:54]
| Too it was a it was like an event it was on nbc right.
|
Ivan:
[14:58]
| Yes it was on nbc.
|
Sam:
[15:00]
| It was an event i remember the little nbc special thing coming up yeah yeah yeah and you and there was no like dvr or anything like that so it was like you sit down in front of the damn tv to watch it well.
|
Ivan:
[15:11]
| I i i did i did tape it.
|
Sam:
[15:13]
| You had one but like uh well.
|
Ivan:
[15:16]
| Not a dvr but i i had vhs tapes yeah i i i did i did tape them.
|
Sam:
[15:21]
| You had a videotape yeah i i probably add vhs tapes too at that point but yeah but the point was the primary mode of watching was you sat down in front of the tv when it was actually coming on and you know you watch the damn thing and yes i enjoyed v but no this is not v this is v for vendetta v.
|
Ivan:
[15:41]
| For vendetta okay from.
|
Sam:
[15:44]
| 2005 uh have you seen this.
|
Ivan:
[15:47]
| I don't recall having seen this.
|
Sam:
[15:49]
| Okay. It's, it's, it's based on a comic, but it's not like, it's not really a superhero movie.
Although it's kind of like the guy does some stuff, but it's not a super, there's no like the.
|
Ivan:
[16:03]
| V for Vendetta. Yeah. Sounds like, sounds like violence will happen.
|
Sam:
[16:09]
| Yes, there, there, there is violence. So just cast for a second.
it's natalie portman hugo weaving john hurt was in it um big cast i mean yeah big.
|
Ivan:
[16:23]
| Not not not big like they're fat not not but but i mean like it's just a big cast it's a it's a it's an all star-studded cast i think that's the better word yes.
|
Sam:
[16:34]
| Star-studded cast yeah not not.
|
Ivan:
[16:37]
| Not not big like you know yeah no they're not big i don't think they're big.
|
Sam:
[16:43]
| Anyway let me let me uh give give you the uh the wikipedia the beginning of the plot summary i won't spoil it by reading the whole thing because also it's loud loud no long long uh in the near future britain is ruled by the norse file norse fire political party a fascist and totalitarian regime led by high chancellor adam sutler which controls the populace through propaganda and imprisons or executes those deemed undesirable, including immigrants, homosexuals, and people of alternative religions.
|
Ivan:
[17:20]
| Sounds like donald trump.
|
Sam:
[17:22]
| Evie hammond is the daughter of parents who become activists after her brother perished in the saint mary's school terrorist attack 14 years earlier you know yes i'm.
|
Ivan:
[17:32]
| I think that i may have like maybe not watched the the whole thing.
|
Sam:
[17:39]
| But seen parts of it yeah.
|
Ivan:
[17:41]
| Like bumped into it like in like you know when that's back when i had like linear i i canceled all those those linear like cable net movie channels.
|
Sam:
[17:52]
| Right yeah because why you know you just pick the movie you want and watch yeah.
|
Ivan:
[17:57]
| It just made no sense yeah it just made no sense anymore it's oh but back when he had those i i think i probably like scrolled past it at some point.
|
Sam:
[18:07]
| Right anyway the daughter of parents who became activists after her brother perished in the saint mary's school school terrorist attack 14 years earlier they were detained and later died in prison when she was is 12 one evening a guy fox masked vigilante v v rescues her from assault by the secret police known as the finger men and has her witness his destruction of the old bailey via bombs the destruction the following morning on the 5th of november v hijacked state-run television network to address the nation claiming credit for an attack and encouraging the populace to resist resist and join him outside the houses of parliament on guy fox night blah blah blah blah blah and he anyway like there's there's a resistance there's a plot with the the woman and the guy and there's a anyway bottom line thumbs up i enjoyed the movie okay you know it It sort of tracks the course.
|
Sam:
[19:13]
| Of the rebellion as it gets more – there's one thread of it that's like the outward political stuff and the rebellion and what's going on there.
And then there's sort of a psychological back and forth between the vigilante guy and this woman and some other things surrounded by that and who is really the guy and blah, blah, blah.
And what's his true identity and this kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[19:46]
| Anyway, you know, without going into any more plot stuff, because it's been long enough, so I don't remember the details and I don't want to just read the Wikipedia page, but I had fun. I enjoyed it.
I like remember that I came in sort of skeptical of it. And I believe it's one where like, It took me a while to get into it. Like when it started, I was like, eh, I'm not sure.
But like by the time it finished, I was like, okay, that was good. I enjoyed it.
|
Ivan:
[20:14]
| I have to say that I think I had not watched it because I was skeptical like you.
And, you know, there are certain movies that just don't grab you like right away.
It takes a little bit for you to get into it. And I think that they may have been the thing. And I, that's why I didn't watch it. Now I'm going to have to watch this damn thing.
|
Sam:
[20:37]
| And, you know, like you said, this sounds like Trump, right?
Like there were a lot of things where you were, you were, it's got this whole like allegory about totalitarianism and standing up for against totalitarianism and people like, you know, cracking down on the homosexuals and the deviants and all this kind of stuff.
And, you know, and, and there's a lot, there's, yeah, there's, there's definitely references where you're like, and, and look, this thing came out in 2005.
So long, long before the Trump era.
|
Ivan:
[21:17]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[21:17]
| But watching it just last year, recently, having gone through Trump and being in the midst of like Trump trying to come back, you definitely like felt some of that.
Now, obviously, like this is more, it's really amped up.
There are lots of, there's lots of Nazi parallels as well.
|
Ivan:
[21:43]
| Well, I mean, wait, Nazi parallels. Like what? I'm sorry. What, what, what, what's the, what's the difference between.
|
Sam:
[21:50]
| Oh yeah. I know. You're like, what, what's the distinction. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. But there was definitely a lot where you were sort of like, this is really grim, you know, but yeah, I enjoyed it. I had fun.
I don't know what else to say.
Is there something more to say? Like, I don't know. Like, but well, no.
|
Ivan:
[22:11]
| You gave her the thumbs up. And basically, I mean, I'm kind of like it like, I guess I need to watch this damn thing.
|
Sam:
[22:19]
| Yeah, no, it's definitely worth a watch. It's definitely worth a watch.
And like I said, it's sort of like was it is one of those slow burn ones where.
At the beginning, maybe not. But like by the time I got to the end, I was like, okay, you got me. I was sucked in.
I, I felt for this thing. I felt sympathy for what was going on.
And fundamentally, like, this is one of those perverse things where the guy you end up finding sympathy for it. I mean, he's a fucking terrorist.
He's blowing shit up. He's killing people. He's whatever.
and you feel bad for this guy and you feel sympathetic and at the same time he's a fucking terrorist and you know whatever but you know because it i don't know it it does do some of that stuff where you're like i i am feeling this way but i don't know if i feel good about feeling this way you know so because on the one hand he's a terrorist on the other hand he's a a terrorist against a clearly evil regime right but right still he's a fucking terrorist right right right so okay that's that's that's what thumbs up that's what i got that's what i got this time okay all right so shall we take a break and then uh newsy a file so that news news news newsify.
|
Ivan:
[23:46]
| It newsify it.
|
Sam:
[23:47]
| Newsify it newsify it, here's the first break they're supposed to say do do do do do.
|
Sam:
[24:59]
| Dad. Do, do, do! Okay, we are here.
And as is traditionally, Vaughn, you go first.
So what do you want to talk about? Newsy thing, newsy thing.
or do you want or do you do is there a big one like we've been the last few weeks we've done you don't do one big one and then i do one big one but if there are a bunch of small ones that's fine well.
|
Ivan:
[25:22]
| Let's talk about trump trump let's talk about trump money.
|
Sam:
[25:25]
| Trump money, he has, he has like quad tripled his net worth, right?
|
Ivan:
[25:33]
| He's like, well, let's start. Well, let's start first with, okay.
He got, because this happened this week.
|
Sam:
[25:39]
| Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yes. It did. The first thing.
Yes. And let's go in order.
|
Ivan:
[25:44]
| The first thing is that he got, he got the reprieve on, on the money. He got an extra 10 days.
|
Sam:
[25:51]
| And let's say we, We went through the options on last week's show, and this is one we did not even talk about because we.
|
Ivan:
[25:59]
| Almost everybody said that it was it was highly unlikely that this would be granted.
|
Sam:
[26:04]
| Yeah, no, like the general consensus of everyone you are talking about is his request to reduce the amount is going to get laughed out by the judges, especially after he went and basically bragged that he had enough money to pay it.
But nevertheless, the judges came in and said, you know, that 500 some million that was talking about before.
Yeah, we're not going to go quite down to the 100 that you were suggesting, but 175 will do.
And it was done in an order that did not explain the reasoning.
It just said, this is the change we're making.
It did not explain why. Why? So everyone's speculating. No one really knows.
There are a couple of possibilities I've heard people talk about.
One is just like, they really felt that this was an undue imposition at this point in the trial.
Let him put up a smaller amount. He can appeal.
He will still, the full amount will still be on tap at the end if he loses his appeal.
Another thing that people have been saying is, hey, maybe this is an early indication that the The appeals court thinks the amount is too high to start with and that they're likely to reduce it as part of the appeal.
I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[27:18]
| Or I listen, I actually think that probably more likely than anything is that whatever evidence he produced about his ability to produce the bond.
showed that he just didn't have the money.
|
Sam:
[27:33]
| Well, that's the other thing people were complaining about, right?
It happens all the time that people have judgments that will be a strain on them being able to pay or they'll have to sell something or whatever.
Most people don't get that amount knocked down because of that.
So people were complaining like nobody else other than Donald would have them say, say, oh, you can't pay. We're so sorry. Let's reduce the amount.
|
Ivan:
[28:03]
| Well, here's the thing. Okay. We're still three more days into this.
Still hasn't produced the money. Okay.
So we're still back in the situation where he produced $100 million bond.
Now he's got to produce another $175 million. So we're still on him having to be produced between the E.
Jean Carroll bond and this one, about $300 million. billion and and he still hasn't produced he still hasn't produced the bond.
|
Sam:
[28:31]
| Now why would first of all like the general consensus seems to be much more like okay he can probably do this amount but let's even if you can't you're saying the number of days like assume he could he has 10 days to do it why would he do it one hour sooner than he asked him no.
|
Ivan:
[28:52]
| I i mean i get that that he wouldn't produce it probably earlier.
But look, I still have my doubts about him being able to post this. And, Look, in order to post this, he needs to now put up as collateral or fork over $175 million in cash.
If he's going to go to a bonding company, they're going to demand a fee of about $17 million in cash.
Plus, he needs to post these properties as collateral, which then he can't negotiate, sell. He can't do anything.
Okay? Can't do a damn thing with them. So everybody is talking about the lifeline with the DJT stock, but nobody will take that stock as collateral for a loan, okay? It's too volatile.
And he can't borrow on margin against it because, again, it's too volatile.
The only way that he could use that is for him to sell shares.
shares and if he offers that many shares for sale.
|
Sam:
[30:09]
| It'll crash the.
|
Ivan:
[30:10]
| Oh it'll tank the stock just just brutally so that's not that's not an option.
|
Sam:
[30:17]
| If if he gets what he wants out of it maybe he doesn't care but he still has to get the the approval from the board which of course is like his son and a bunch of friends and like that they get approved but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[30:30]
| But but but all those Those guys are grifters. They want to make money.
Yeah. But, but, but listen, I'm not even sure that he may be able to, I'm not sure.
Listen, he's already on the hook for so much fucking money.
|
Sam:
[30:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[30:43]
| And we have heard how he is straining for cash right now because of the legal bills and all of this stuff.
He probably is thinking, I don't want to crater this whole damn thing completely. Okay.
Just to get this money right now. It may not be a good idea.
If I'm able to fucking like stay out of jail.
|
Sam:
[31:06]
| I don't know. Like again, like all of the people who are like, I shouldn't say all of them, but like most of the people who are trying to do analysis of this and saying, there's no way in hell he'll come up with 500.
Now that it's under 200 are like, okay, he can probably do that.
|
Ivan:
[31:26]
| I don't. Here's the one thing I don't agree.
the analysis of his cash that he had fluctuated between 300 to 500 million dollars, all the properties that he's got as we kept digging into it last week before this this this happened it was very obvious that we're super encumbered that they had loans and upon loans upon loans that the equity on any of those properties was dog shit the the hotel sell valuations.
Again, every one of those is losing money.
Everybody keeps saying he's a billionaire.
And I'm with Michael Bloomberg on his assessment that he said, look, there's only one fucking billionaire running for president when he was running for president. And that was him.
Because Michael is the same thought I am. He's not a billionaire.
He may flash money around like like a billionaire, he may have assets that maybe without all the debt may be worth billions.
But just because you have assets that may be worth billions, if you owe billions against them, you're not worth a shit.
|
Ivan:
[32:35]
| And because we can't properly assess how many debts, but every time somebody goes and looks at one of these, look, man, if he was worth $4 billion, really, really, there should have been no problem pledging an asset to get that kind of bond there should have been none and as was proven somehow because our alma mater won a lawsuit against somebody and they had to pledge a bond that was twice as big and they got it and so i don't, I don't totally agree with this thing.
|
Sam:
[33:21]
| So you think there's still a chance that he doesn't do it?
|
Ivan:
[33:25]
| If he couldn't come up with $500 million, what I'm saying is, Mr.
Billionaire, if you couldn't come up with $500 million, how the fuck can you still come up with $200 million?
Because it means basically that you are $175 million.
Which means that basically, I mean, because that means that you were at the edge of the maximum that you could produce.
|
Sam:
[33:48]
| You see.
|
Ivan:
[33:51]
| What i'm saying i mean.
|
Sam:
[33:51]
| I hear you i mean the and we didn't mention explicitly but we've implied it sort of they also gave him 10 more days they also gave him 10 more days so he's got a week.
|
Ivan:
[34:00]
| Now to go.
|
Sam:
[34:01]
| Yeah he's got a week to go it's like what is it april 4th is his deadline or something like that yeah it's a week.
|
Ivan:
[34:08]
| From today so yeah because it's three days ago so 10 days looking at the calendar calendar.
|
Sam:
[34:13]
| Yeah yeah there's.
|
Ivan:
[34:14]
| My my calendar there we go yeah it's thursday the 4th yes thursday the 4th.
|
Sam:
[34:19]
| So he's got so like people have also said even even if like let's say let's say he offered the hundred because that's what he thought he could do now he needs an only 75 now you had passed along an article on our convergence course slack yvonne about how he apparently was running around passing the hat to other billionaires asking them to like yep yeah chip in yeah it's one thing asking for 400 million million but maybe he can get 75 million out of his well it's 175 million but well no but maybe if he was willing to pay 100 anyway maybe he can get 75 from his friends is what i'm saying.
|
Ivan:
[34:56]
| You know the my having spoken to a number of people that used to do business with donald trump in the past, Nobody would, nobody trusts them with money.
|
Sam:
[35:11]
| Well, see, here's the thing. Anybody giving him money is not expecting to get it back, is not expecting to make money off a deal or anything like that.
They are giving it to him because they want to support him. End of story.
|
Ivan:
[35:28]
| I guess. I mean, so they just have to, somebody has to, but, but here's the one thing.
As of last week, nobody had ponied up money. money.
Nobody was willing to pony up the money.
|
Sam:
[35:41]
| Well, but now he's selling Bibles.
|
Ivan:
[35:44]
| Yeah, now he's selling Bibles, yes. Yes, yes.
That's, you know, I mean, in the great presidential American tradition, where our dear president or candidate for president goes on TV and is hawking, you know, bibles he's hawking bibles yes i mean that i know that look i remember when obama was selling his bibles.
|
Sam:
[36:12]
| Ah no wait back in ivan ivan yeah.
|
Ivan:
[36:14]
| No no korans.
|
Sam:
[36:15]
| Yes exactly oh okay no.
|
Ivan:
[36:17]
| Or korans i'm sorry you know with the american flag back in back in the 2008 presidential run.
|
Sam:
[36:24]
| That was.
|
Ivan:
[36:26]
| That's you know i remember those i think those were more expensive.
|
Sam:
[36:29]
| That another another interesting thing and i heard a number of people digging into this kind of stuff this week is is like people like the people who buy his bibles or buy his shoes or what or or donate to his pack to defend the election or whatever, make some assumptions about like how that money is dealt with and what it's going like Like, it's not going to the campaign.
It's like in this particular case with the Bibles, you're not even actually buying them from Donald Trump.
There's another company, which as usual for Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[37:11]
| It's paying a license.
|
Sam:
[37:13]
| He's just licensed his name. So they get to sell it. He does one like infomercial for them.
And he gets like a percentage of everyone sold or whatever. And in a lump fee for letting them use his name.
|
Ivan:
[37:27]
| Sam, let me ask you a question.
|
Sam:
[37:30]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[37:31]
| Okay. You know, there's a, you take the, take the list of the, you know, maybe the bottom, bottom billionaires.
Tell me which ones that are, that we know are real billionaires are going around and hawking Bibles. Yes.
Or, or, or gold sneakers.
|
Sam:
[37:56]
| Oh, who is that new one? Oh, oh, there was a news story this week.
Seinfeld has passed the $1 billion mark for his network.
|
Ivan:
[38:02]
| Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is Jerry Seinfeld going around the Hawk and Bibles on like some, some, some night evening infomercial?
I mean, probably, you know.
|
Sam:
[38:15]
| I, I, I, no, no, not definitely, definitely not a billionaire, but I just want to point out Mike Huckabee.
|
Ivan:
[38:22]
| Is doing.
|
Sam:
[38:23]
| Like commercials for like um.
|
Ivan:
[38:25]
| Sleep pills to help you sleep okay but that's the guy those are the guys that i totally expect i expect the mike lindell's the mike huckabees to be in need of in order to get any money to be doing this anybody who's a real fucking billionaire, isn't doing this, okay?
Which is why I keep going back to, I just don't believe he has the money.
And if he does produce this much, it will threaten, it strains his finances to the max.
|
Sam:
[39:03]
| I fully expect at this point that we will hear a few hours before the deadline that it has been paid.
And we will get no details of where it came from or what's going on.
But like, we will just hear that he's put it.
|
Ivan:
[39:20]
| Well, we got the details. Listen, we got the details the last time.
|
Sam:
[39:24]
| Well, we, we, we heard that we heard that we, we heard that, you know, it was a bond from Chubb, but we didn't hear like.
|
Ivan:
[39:30]
| The bond was reduced. Okay. They have to turn it over. I mean.
|
Sam:
[39:33]
| But right, right. But, but we don't know exactly what he put up to Chubb as collateral and things like that.
|
Ivan:
[39:39]
| Oh, no, no, no. I mean, we assume it's real estate or whatever.
Yeah. We don't know that part, but.
|
Sam:
[39:42]
| Well, no, Chubb said no to real estate too.
Like that, that was, Chubb was one of the 30 that he went to for this bigger one as well.
And they, they don't want to, they don't want to do the real estate.
They were able to do the smaller number with his other stuff.
But you know, that, that was one of the points of contention on all of these folks.
Now the question is, does he have enough to, to do it now for the smaller number?
|
Ivan:
[40:09]
| Here's listen all the calculations here's but but here's where this this is the reason why i say that even if he's reducing it this is why this gets really tricky and complicated now okay because the estimate of how much cash trump has you know cash and stocks are like between three to five hundred million dollars okay those are those are the those are the guesses that are around And so if he goes and takes that much money and he places it to guarantee the bond, because fuck, I mean, he's basically putting up the fucking money and he can't touch that money.
|
Sam:
[40:47]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[40:48]
| I mean, that money is frozen. Okay.
Then he can't. It's going to put the screws on his on him financially big time.
this is the reason why i am like i'm still a little bit on, will he be able to do it and if he doesn't what the hell are going to be the there are going to be some visible strains on donald you can expect some yeah.
|
Sam:
[41:22]
| Well and you know people have mentioned like if if it's too close to the limit he's going to have trouble meeting payroll and all this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[41:29]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[41:30]
| And actually that brings up from my understanding, I, I, this has not been talked about much, but I saw at least one graphic of this, like more than a week ago.
Like it's not actually like, he's not the only defendant here.
And this, the total amount is actually broken up with a certain amount.
That's him personally, a certain amount that is his company, a certain amount that his, his, each of his kids, a certain amount that is that, that some other officers of the company.
So like, do you know, has, has Don jr paid his bond?
Or are they bothering to appeal? Or are they all wrapping it up together?
I don't know those details.
|
Ivan:
[42:11]
| I don't know. I have to admit that I have not been paying attention to that. Okay?
|
Sam:
[42:16]
| Because there is a split. I mean, everybody talks about the whole big number, but it's actually subdivided into different bits for different ones of the defendants.
And I mean, maybe they're all rolling it up for purposes of this, and that's why everybody talks about the big number.
I don't know. No, but I, like I said, I fully expect him to roll up a few hours before the deadline and we just hear that it's paid.
Maybe we hear the name of an underwriter, underwriter, not underwriter.
That would be an entirely different thing. Yeah.
But, but we won't know the details of like, what did he have to put up?
Did he have to sell anything? Did he have to do this? Did he have to do that?
because we're now not talking about the scenarios where he has to do a fire sale on Trump Tower or something.
If he comes up with this, there'll be some other you know, I don't know.
But you think he's still you think there's a decent chance he still can't do it at all?
|
Ivan:
[43:14]
| I think there's a decent chance that he still can't do it. I think that there is a decent chance. There is a significant way above non-zero chance that he still can't do it.
|
Sam:
[43:24]
| Okay. You seem to be be the odd man out on that prediction well.
|
Ivan:
[43:29]
| You know I have seemed to be the odd man out on saying that this bastard isn't really a fucking billionaire.
|
Sam:
[43:37]
| Now a long time now now Yvonne you are once again forgetting DJT ah DJT yeah and I know it's locked up and all that but he's gone from being worth two billion to being worth like six or eight or something now because whatever yeah because the thing's gone through the roof right and, And now it's started to go back down, right?
|
Ivan:
[43:59]
| It definitely did. It hit a peak of, what the heck was it? 69.87, okay?
When originally we were talking about this thing was worth like $30, $40 a share, it went up like by over 50%.
It started coming back down today, down 6.4%. Look, but I'll tell you, look, flat out, look, man.
And this is, this, everything around this is just a classic pump and dump.
And I've been around some of these.
|
Sam:
[44:33]
| So, so, so what you're saying, Yvonne, is I should right now empty my 401k and put it all into this.
|
Ivan:
[44:41]
| Maybe like short the stock.
|
Sam:
[44:43]
| I know you mentioned that last week, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[44:46]
| Look, here is the, here is the one thing. I mean, I'll tell you, everybody wants to like, hey, you know, we do all this crowdfunding, the meme stocks or whatever. People want to meme a stock.
If I remember correctly, the way that we do this is to start.
|
Ivan:
[45:01]
| We have to buy puts just, you know, because the best way, because selling short has a problem that in a short sale, the losses can be unlimited, which is why there is substantial margin requirements on short sales, because the stock can keep going up.
So as the stock goes up, you lose, lose, lose.
So the losses can be unlimited. But, hey, start heavy action on the puts.
And by the way, apparently there are people doing that because one of the first messages that I got from Schwab related to trading around the stock, I had the window open, but also sent an notification because many people traded that damn stock in the first day.
I mean, the trading volume the first day was, it was almost double the outstanding shares.
It's like close to 50 million shares traded.
Today, only 17 million traded.
Okay. So the volume is way down. Okay.
But what that says to me is that, look, the guys that made the money, those people all cashed out.
|
Sam:
[46:16]
| Dude.
|
Ivan:
[46:17]
| Dude, I mean, those people, those people just, just, just, oh, at this price, sell everything.
But that there's also a lot of heavy options action against this.
I haven't seen the, you know, I wasn't able to go into detail to see because you can see how many, how many puts call, you know, how many bets against the stock price are out there.
but the one thing, hey, people want to bury him let's all go out and just start buying heavy, you know, Put options against the stock. Just in mass, and that way you can tank the stock and you can make them bankrupt again.
Make Trump bankrupt again. What is that? Make MTBA.
MTBA.
|
Sam:
[47:08]
| MTBA.
|
Ivan:
[47:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:10]
| That's very exciting. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue like MAGA.
|
Ivan:
[47:15]
| I know it doesn't. I know. I know it's the best I can do in short notice.
|
Sam:
[47:22]
| MABA? Make America bankrupt again?
|
Ivan:
[47:26]
| Not America!
|
Sam:
[47:27]
| That's not what you're advocating?
|
Ivan:
[47:30]
| No, not particularly, no.
|
Sam:
[47:33]
| Okay, so... Mitba!
|
Ivan:
[47:36]
| Mitba!
|
Sam:
[47:37]
| So you're still hoping for the scenario where they get to start, like, rolling up with the marshals and taking...
|
Ivan:
[47:46]
| I'm still... I still say that there is...
there is a still substantial chance that he still can't do this because I still call bullshit on how much money he really has available okay, and since they will so apparently nobody's accepting the real estate, if it's only options are that cash he has on hand what he's going to be he's going to be faced with a very difficult difficult decision Okay.
|
Sam:
[48:21]
| Very good. Any other Trumpy stuff?
Like to roll into this segment before we move on to something completely different.
|
Ivan:
[48:34]
| One of the Trumpy stuff. Anything else going on?
|
Sam:
[48:36]
| I think that the bits that are going on are his other legal case, the New York case.
|
Ivan:
[48:45]
| Well, he's going to trial. The trial date's been set. Official. 15th of April.
|
Sam:
[48:51]
| Yeah. So his team went in this week to try to argue that it should be dismissed entirely, or at But at the very least, the trial date should be significantly delayed to never.
And the judge was basically like, yeah, no, this is bullshit.
We're starting April 15th.
|
Sam:
[49:09]
| So that's very soon. And so Trump's response to this has been, well, first, he started doing his usual Trumpy stuff.
And very quickly, there was a request from the prosecution for a gag order on Donald Trump, which the judge granted almost immediately, covering court staff, potential jurors, jurors, all this kind of stuff that Trump couldn't talk about them in relation to the potential witnesses, couldn't talk about them in relation to the case.
So, for instance, like Michael Cohen's expected to be part of this.
He potentially is allowed to say Michael Cohen's a scumbag, but he can't necessarily say Michael Cohen's a scumbag who's going to come into the court and lie about everything.
Right. But generally speaking, he's not allowed to be harassing court staff, potential witnesses, all this kind of stuff.
But very importantly, the actual prosecutor and the actual judge are not included in the gag order.
So Donald Trump has been spending the last few days directly attacking the judge and the judge's daughter.
|
Ivan:
[50:30]
| So is that bad?
|
Sam:
[50:32]
| And I, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, what's the plan?
Now, I believe one of the folks on our Commendations Corner Slack said, look, the plan is you insult the judge and his family enough that then you can claim on appeal that the judge was biased against you.
Because, of course, he was biased against you because you were going after him all the time.
|
Ivan:
[51:03]
| That's that's a that's a possible i guess okay.
|
Sam:
[51:06]
| And you know but at the same time it's like really your plan here is go after the person who has a huge amount of influence over how this is going for you.
|
Ivan:
[51:24]
| It's not a great plan.
|
Sam:
[51:26]
| You know, it's not like, I mean, he did the same thing with, how do you say his name? Endergan, whatever, the civil trial.
And that wasn't even a jury trial. The judge straight up was making a decision and you keep calling him an asshole and biased and blah, blah, blah.
You're not like, you're not endearing yourself to this person who has a huge amount of power over you.
and yeah so maybe that is the appeal plan i don't know but i feel like it's not that well thought out it's just like donald trump can't fucking help himself i.
|
Ivan:
[52:04]
| Think that's more more more likely but it's that it's that instead of a strategy yes.
|
Sam:
[52:09]
| Yeah and so we're starting in a couple weeks weeks man is it going to be televised no new york does not even know no no cameras no audio damn no electronic devices at all in the courtroom so it's this thing where the the reporters are allowed in there but they have to run out and give their report and run back in you know all that kind of stuff and yeah so this might be the only one that actually happens this year.
And it's going to be the one that is the least visible.
I mean, it's, it's the least visible in terms of that kind of stuff.
It would be great to have it televised and all that. I mean, great.
It would be a front, it would be a fucking circus, but like, if we want to like really increase public awareness of his wrongdoing, the more front and center it is, the better.
Cause like even Fox won't be able to resist televising this shit.
Like if it was, if it was on TV. But...
|
Sam:
[53:10]
| Instead, this is going to be the quietest one where you're going to rely on sort of after the fact reports and transcripts and things like this.
And also it's the one that has the, people keep talking, it's the least compelling story, right?
It's he falsified some documents to hide the fact that he paid off Stormy Daniels, right?
And so it's very easy for people to dismiss that as like, oh, whatever.
like even all these polls you have of like if he's convicted of a felony then we won't be able to vote for him i could see lots and lots of people justifying oh well i didn't mean that kind of felony oh god well and also this is one that uses a unique theory to elevate it to a felony so it's also a legitimate possibility that he could could come out being guilty but only of of a misdemeanor at the end of all this.
And so, yeah, but it's what we got.
But it'll actually be starting in not very long. It'll start on tax day.
|
Ivan:
[54:17]
| Oh, God, speaking of tax day. Almost forgot about that.
|
Sam:
[54:22]
| Sorry to remind you.
Well, we don't need to go into a tangent on taxes.
|
Ivan:
[54:31]
| Taxes yeah no no no i wasn't gonna go into the taxes no what i what i was gonna say is that, today i i was looking at this thing and it's like what you mentioned it's, they they will somehow twist themselves themselves, into figuring out why even if he's convicted a lot of these diehards will just will never they will never get they will never give up this guy they just will.
|
Sam:
[55:03]
| Never give up this guy the the diehard trumpies the 30 or 40 percent like of the those guys who yeah because there is 30 or 40 percent of the american public at this point that are all in i mean nothing's going to change them but like so this is on the margins though and the margins matter like the The margins matter.
We've got a close, closely divided population.
So if you feel, if you peel off a few percent here, that's all you need.
|
Ivan:
[55:33]
| It's just not going to be a collapse in support. That's the thing.
It will peel off people, but it's not the, not, not the collapse in support.
|
Sam:
[55:42]
| Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess it depends what you mean on collapse, right? Like you're not, no matter what happens here.
|
Ivan:
[55:50]
| No, it's not going to go down to 5% MAGA support.
|
Sam:
[55:54]
| Yeah, yeah. Like, you're not going to have Joe Biden do a Ronald Reagan-style landslide, no matter what happens.
|
Ivan:
[56:03]
| Exactly. No, no matter what, no.
|
Sam:
[56:05]
| No matter what, that is not in the cards, ever.
Like, we just are not in that kind of world right now.
|
Ivan:
[56:15]
| Nope.
|
Sam:
[56:17]
| But can it make a difference around the margins? sure and i i i i was alternating between things for what i'll talk about next but since we're talking about this let's slide right into slide after this break i'm going to talk polling again a little bit so sliding sliding sliding gonna be sliding slip slipping sliding slip sliding away way. Isn't that a song? Slip sliding. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[56:46]
| Yeah, I think so.
|
Sam:
[56:47]
| There you go. Anyway, we will be back after this and I'll, I'll talk, I'll talk polls for a little while back after this.
|
Sam:
[57:38]
| Okay. So polls. Here's the thing.
Like just, just last weekend, I put out another one of my election graphs, blog posts, summarizing the situation, you know, 227 days out now with presumptive nominees.
If you want to read it, go to election graphs.com and then click on the blog piece of on the navigation and you'll get to that blog post.
And the bottom line there is, was that things were still moving in trump's direction like if you there are a bunch of ups and downs in between but if you compared like my post on march 23rd to my previous post in january like i i did one of these posts right before the iowa caucuses and then this one right after essentially like a week after both after the time both candidates clinched their nominations nations.
The movement was still overwhelmingly towards Trump in that timeframe.
And like I said, there's some jitters in between, but if you compare January to March, things had continued to move towards Trump.
|
Sam:
[58:49]
| As soon as I posted that, as soon as I fucking posted that, like every single poll since then, practically, there are a couple of exceptions, but practically every single poll since then has moved things in a Biden direction in my poll averages.
Now he's still behind. It hasn't sort of pulled things across the center line.
Like there are no states that that have flipped from Trump leading to Biden leading.
But in a whole bunch of states, Trump's margin over Biden in these polls has started to drop again.
North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona, for instance, had all had significant Trump leads, like over 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%. They have dropped down to under five now.
|
Sam:
[59:47]
| So they're within the realm of Todd again.
For a number of months, it looked like those three states, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, were like, okay, they're just way out of reach this time.
But no, they're dropping.
Now, a 4.9% lead for Trump in North Carolina is not insubstantial.
I don't want to imply that at all. Like that's still Trump's pretty decently ahead there, but it's a lot less than it was.
And same thing for Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which are the key ones that where, look, if, if, if Biden's going to win, there are very few paths to win that don't involve picking up Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:38]
| Oh, yeah, he has to take those.
|
Sam:
[1:00:40]
| He has to take those. I mean, you can imagine some scenarios like, well, Sam, what if he loses those but wins Texas?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:47]
| No, no, no, no, no. He needs Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
That's a given.
|
Sam:
[1:00:57]
| And Trump is still leading in my poll averages in all three, but by less.
And so the question is, like, are we finally seeing some movement?
Like I've been saying for a while, like Trump has to be near his ceiling, like, and all of these things have to start dragging him down at some point.
Is this it yet?
|
Sam:
[1:01:21]
| It looks like it, but I do want to be careful, right?
It has only been less than a week since the polls that really made a difference here started coming in.
Now, polls are delayed. So like some of these polls were from, you were actually in the field a couple of weeks ago and just were released this week.
And so if you, if you look at the dates of the polls, it really does look like though, the time that things started moving was right around super Tuesday ish.
And this comes back to something Yvonne and I talked about a couple weeks ago, which is so many people did not believe that we were really going to have a Trump versus Biden rematch.
And so all of their answers to hypotheticals and polls and all this kind of stuff were really affected by like, yeah, you're asking me about Biden versus Trump, but that's not going to happen.
And I think now people are starting to realize, yeah, yeah, that's going to happen.
And then we also had Biden's state of the union address, which like alleviated some of the concerns about his age.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:42]
| Well, we haven't been hearing that shit anymore. Everybody seemed like for weeks that they were fixated on that.
|
Sam:
[1:02:48]
| There was a drumbeat on that. Like the, the, it's like, it's like all of your major media folks couldn't stop talking about, well, Biden's really old and that's going to be a problem. Blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:57]
| And then, and then, then he gave the speech and everybody stopped talking about it.
|
Sam:
[1:03:01]
| Yeah. I mean, it may come back. He's still old. Yeah. You know, but, but it's certainly look, took the edge off that.
And in the meantime, I've been hearing a lot more people paying attention to Donald Trump's own issues with being coherent.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:17]
| This is a fucking that he's completely, completely incoherent every night.
|
Sam:
[1:03:22]
| Yeah. And so we'll see.
Like, but again, it has only been, you know, I, I feel like maybe I'm even premature even discussing this on here because, you know, it really has only been a few days of good polls, but there were, there were a lot of them in a lot of critical states. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:44]
| But but but here's the one thing that the state polls are always like a lagging indicator because because because they take a while.
And there's been a number of national polls that have come out also that there was shown showing a big tightening.
And in some cases, you know, a Biden taking the national lead.
OK, in in polls like the Economist polling average, for example, there's flipped towards Biden ahead for the first time. Yeah, for example.
And there were some others that had that that had that move.
And those are usually leading indicators of what's going on.
So, you know, we have to we have to wait a little bit more.
But it does seem that what you mentioned with the polls is something that is happening, that it seems like Trump had his.
you know, his best case and that the race has been numbers have been moving in the other direction.
So that's what it's looking at right now. And yeah, I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:04:42]
| And to be clear right now, Biden is still behind in these polls.
Um, but if the momentum has started to change, that's still worth noting.
And, you know, and we've talked before about, you know, the huge number of people who are are saying neither and will that collapse and when will that collapse and and and again and we have all these weaknesses that we're talking about like you know donald trump being incoherent we just mentioned donald trump potentially having to give up a bunch of money and prove that hey he's not really as rich as we all thought well not we all but as lots of people thought right we've got the even if it's not going to be televised we've got the first criminal trial coming up up shortly there's and and the other thing is just biden's actually been out campaigning the last couple weeks yes ever since that state of the union address he's been in swing states every almost almost every fucking day yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:46]
| He's been hitting the road hard and and and by the way trump has been doing the opposite.
|
Sam:
[1:05:52]
| Yes oh but wait he put out that announcement that he won the golf tournament at his.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:00]
| Oh god that was the most I mean that was the most ridiculous fucking announcement and the burn that he got from Biden on that gee, Congrats!
|
Sam:
[1:06:13]
| Great accomplishment.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:15]
| Way to go! You won the tournament at your own place! Wow!
|
Sam:
[1:06:21]
| Yes.
Yeah, so we got a lot of things.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:25]
| Sam, I think I won, at my place. You know, we've been playing a lot of Dig Dug.
|
Sam:
[1:06:36]
| Ooh, Dig Dug. On that little console that you bought, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:39]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:40]
| I got to get mine set up. It's been in the hallway for like three or four years now.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| I'm the champion.
|
Sam:
[1:06:46]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:47]
| I'm the champ. Right here, buddy.
|
Sam:
[1:06:50]
| My machine, if we ever set it up, it's got a bunch of games on it, but it's a Tempest. It's got Tempest.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:55]
| Oh, it's got Tempest? Shit. I'm going to have to go up there.
You know, Madu loves Tempest. You know, his doesn't have Tempest.
I'm going to have to finally come back to visit again, and Madu and I will have to assemble bullet.
|
Sam:
[1:07:07]
| So we can finally play.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:08]
| On the damn thing.
|
Sam:
[1:07:09]
| Yeah exactly it's.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:11]
| Probably will be wow.
|
Sam:
[1:07:12]
| It's got like tempest and centipede and all those oh shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:15]
| Oh i love that.
|
Sam:
[1:07:16]
| Because it's got it's got the controller that's the little spinny knob so it's got all all the games that like use that fuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:23]
| I'd have to okay i have to come visit.
|
Sam:
[1:07:25]
| Seattle it didn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:28]
| Take it only took me a few hours to put it together so.
|
Sam:
[1:07:30]
| Yeah so anyway uh okay so.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:34]
| So so yeah so so aside from me you know i'm the dig duck champion yeah i mean it's just i mean he's really stopped campaigning.
|
Sam:
[1:07:43]
| Yeah because and he's going to be tied up in fucking court anyway like that's the thing about the the criminal trial like the civil ones he was showing up anyway because he wanted to make a spectacle of it but he has no But he has no choice on the...
|
Ivan:
[1:07:58]
| And by the way, Obama's also seemed to... By the way, Obama's also hitting the road. Been hitting the road.
and publicly to campaign for Biden. I don't know if you've seen this too.
So that was a yesterday or today.
|
Sam:
[1:08:12]
| It was today.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:13]
| The massive fundraiser in New York that they had, where apparently they raised 25 million in one fundraiser.
|
Sam:
[1:08:22]
| Well, and you interrupted. I just wanted to say like, yet the thing, the difference between the civil trial where Trump has been showing up because he wanted to make a spectacle, a spectacle the the criminal trial he has no choice he has to be there every day of it you know oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:41]
| Isn't that great.
|
Sam:
[1:08:41]
| So that'll be fun but oh but but money but money here's the other thing yeah biden is way way way ahead of trump in fundraising and not just not just biden but also the democrats versus the republicans they're you know the the rnc, is almost out of fucking money listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:08]
| Okay let's be clear but it's not just it's it's just almost fucking out of money.
|
Sam:
[1:09:14]
| Well and they're paying the legal fees anyway well.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:17]
| No no but it's not beyond that so yes the first thing they did they installed laura trump in charge of the rnc OK, they fired everybody who knew anything about anything at the RNC.
They fired everybody who was in charge of, like, for example, the mail in ballot.
Get people voting. They fired all those people, too.
And so now it's another one of his crony moron operations. OK, so.
where and they fired all the experienced people with how many months to the election like seven months that's insane.
|
Sam:
[1:10:02]
| Minus four yeah whatever it's seven my math is hard i mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:08]
| It's it it's insane sam they fired everybody that knew how to do anything over there oh and apparently they want to bring back paul manafort.
|
Sam:
[1:10:17]
| Yes they wanted to have have paul manifort run the convention again um and and and have.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:25]
| Like jail cells at the fucking convention you know.
|
Sam:
[1:10:28]
| Well and i i was joking about you know joking about uh the rnc paying his legal fees the r laura trump has actually said the they're not gonna pay his legal fees yeah yeah bullshit however however wait no no the rnc themselves are not going to but here's where here's how they're structuring it for instance they were having a fundraiser for the rnc, but the but the way have you have you heard this have you heard how this works i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:02]
| Pretty sure i've heard i've heard that now for the fundraiser the money that.
|
Sam:
[1:11:07]
| Let me let me say it so for for the fundraisers they've had this is like they had one this week that was officially an rnc fundraiser where they're hoping the rich people come and dump tons and tons of money on it, okay?
Here's how it actually works. Remember, it's an RNC fundraiser, and the RNC has said they will not pay his legal fees.
But the first $6,000 that you give, go see his legal fees and then the next 6 000 and this is per individual not for the whole event right every individual giving like the first 6 000 and i forget the exact order of these so forgive me if i get them wrong but you'll get the the just the general idea of the scam is in here the first 6 000 goes to like his his campaign the sick the second 6 000 goes to his super pack and his super PAC is giving to the legal fees.
And then once you get past the $12,000 limit, then anything else you give goes to RNC.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:13]
| Dad, the RNC may get a few bucks.
|
Sam:
[1:12:17]
| Yes, yes. Right. And so the idea is, yeah, no, the RNC is not paying his legal fees technically, but the RNC fundraiser is still raising funds for his legal fees.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:31]
| All the money that is being raised for the RNC is first going to Trump and his legal fees, and then after that, they will get the scraps.
|
Sam:
[1:12:42]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:43]
| So basically, the RNC is fucked.
|
Sam:
[1:12:46]
| Well, and down-ballot Republicans are scared.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:51]
| I mean, there will be no money.
|
Sam:
[1:12:53]
| Yet one of the primary sources of funding for like if you're running for the House or the Senate or even local races, you hope to get some money from the RNC and the RNC is not going to have jack to give you.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:09]
| They're not going to have any money. Nothing.
|
Sam:
[1:13:12]
| I mean, they've they've got a little bit right now, but I remember a few months back there were reports that they were scraping the bottom just to make payroll and stuff. You know, the RNC is in financial trouble.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:26]
| Well, but they made this worse now. Yeah.
I mean, they've made this very worse. But Sam, talking about the polling and talking about everything else.
So we have skipped one subject related to, well, it's related to polling, but it's a result. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:13:43]
| All right, go for it. I know what you're talking.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:46]
| Explain to me what happened with the Democrats taking a House seat in Alabama.
|
Sam:
[1:13:51]
| State House. State House.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:53]
| Was that? No, I kept reading it. So it is a state.
|
Sam:
[1:13:55]
| It is a state house. Not the.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:58]
| Why the house? Okay. Because that's what I kept. I kept reading it again.
Wait, is this? Okay. So that was a state house seat.
|
Sam:
[1:14:04]
| Yes. Yes. And it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:07]
| I kept reading it again and reading it again. And I'm like, well, I don't remember any fucking Alabama. about you know house congressional 10 district and i'm like fuck i mean is this a house seat.
|
Sam:
[1:14:17]
| No no it is it is a state house seat if this was a house seat there would be a much bigger deal about it being talked about because it would affect the balance of the chamber okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:26]
| I i figured it had to be something like that or we already had counted it one or the other okay but okay.
|
Sam:
[1:14:31]
| No no it it is a state house seat but nevertheless this is some this is a trump district where this This exact person had run before and lost by like 7, 8% in this district.
The person that had won ended up having to resign. There were ethical issues.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:54]
| Jeez, what a shocker.
|
Sam:
[1:14:56]
| Oh, I remember what it was. I heard a report on this. It was discovered that he did not live in his district.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:03]
| What a shocker.
|
Sam:
[1:15:04]
| And so there were fraud issues on both like him voting. another.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:10]
| Republican committing fraud.
|
Sam:
[1:15:12]
| Yeah oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:13]
| My goodness i mean i i sam no no.
|
Sam:
[1:15:19]
| So anyway he was being charged by stuff and he resigned his seat and so there was a there was a special election for his seat and again just recently like this guy had beat her and she had lost by like, just under double digits it was like eight or nine percent i forget exactly what it was but But it was like that.
This time, not only did she win, she won by a 25% margin.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:49]
| That's why I was looking at the number. I'm like, whoa.
|
Sam:
[1:15:52]
| Now, I don't know who they put up against her.
I haven't read a lot about what this was, but I have read about what her campaign was about.
Her campaign was 100 fucking percent about abortion.
These fuckers are getting into our personal life.
She had an on-air commercial talking about her own medical history and the abortion that she had and how they were trying to reach in to the medical and personal decisions of women in Alabama.
And this was the theme of the campaign.
She completely leaned into this. Like they're, they're still Democrats nationally who are like, yeah, okay.
It's an issue, but we can't push too hard on that bullshit.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:44]
| And they got a fucking, they, they, listen, it, this has been proven time and time again right now that this thing is a fucking winner.
|
Sam:
[1:16:53]
| Yeah. I think in general, and I, you know, this is something.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:57]
| And actually Biden has been like repeat, at least, you know, he's been, you know, he's been banging the drum on this too, on the national stage too.
|
Sam:
[1:17:04]
| He has, and Kamala Harris is their big mouthpiece on this. She's been talking about it a lot.
Yeah. But I think in general, and I know I've said this before on the show going back a long time, but I think the Democrats are finally, finally starting to pay attention here.
Not to me, because whatever.
But it's like- Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:26]
| We don't know. Maybe they're listening to this at the DNC every day for all we know.
|
Sam:
[1:17:30]
| Biden is basing his entire strategy off listening to curmudgeon's corner and following our advice.
No, it's the Democrats for years and years and years when it came to quote unquote culture war issues, which is not just abortion, but is also LGBT issues.
It is also...
What was I going to say? All of the sort of cultural touch...
I know, did I have enough letters?
All of the cultural touchstones about gay rights, trans rights, multicultural diversity, immigrants, certainly abortion and women's rights and women's place in the world and all this kind of stuff.
The Democrats have been defensive about all that stuff.
and have sort of whenever the Republicans have brought it up on an issue as an issue, have sort of said, let's go talk about the economy or something, you know, instead of just outright saying, yes, we're for all that stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:40]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:18:41]
| And you guys are evil for not being for it. And you are cruel and heartless.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:47]
| And this is a fucking winner.
|
Sam:
[1:18:50]
| All of this is a winner. And I think maybe it wasn't 30 years ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:54]
| Oh, but it is now. It is now, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:18:58]
| And so they have to lean into all this stuff and just own it.
Own that. Yeah, I remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:05]
| I remember in the 90s, even still with Clinton, how.
Saying that you were pro-choice back then was kind of a double edged sword.
It was seen like it. OK, you know, you know, you don't want to be too loud.
about it you know you don't want to alienate the conservative Democrats okay which there were such things okay a lot of them actually, But now it's like, no, no. It's like right now, coming out full-throated in favor of that is the winner.
|
Sam:
[1:19:41]
| Of all of these things. All of these issues. I mean, maybe some more than others.
But I think across the board, I mean, you were talking about going back to the Clinton administration, but hell, even in the Obama administration on gay marriage, right? That was a big whole deal.
And when Joe Biden was the first one to say, yeah, I'm for gay marriage, he was way out ahead of Obama.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:07]
| And I'm going to say right now, we'll talk about people, the Democrats, the one that died this week. No, I was going to talk about Lieberman.
|
Sam:
[1:20:17]
| I want to talk about Carville in a second, but go ahead, talk about Lieberman.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:20]
| Well, okay, we'll save Carville. I want to hear the Carville part.
I was going to talk about Lieberman, who last week I saw him on TV, okay, before apparently he died due to a fall, okay, injuries from a fall.
|
Sam:
[1:20:33]
| Yeah, he like fell down the stairs or something and suffered enough injuries that he didn't make it.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:39]
| I saw him on TV last week, and, you know, I was, look, Joe, rest in peace, okay, because I don't think you're a bad guy, but you're wrong, okay?
On this whole thing, well, the Democrats are too liberal, blah, blah, blah. We need something new. No.
Bullshit. No. No, no, no. Debt wrong. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:21:02]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:02]
| Because here's the one thing that I've seen. What I've seen is even that AOC, for example, one attitude change that I've seen from her, which I really have to give her credit on this, which is that she has seen the governing governing is hard.
|
Sam:
[1:21:21]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:22]
| It's not that the Democrats are there, oh, you guys don't want to pass these things to help these people. And it's like, no.
It's just that it's impossible to pass with the people there.
We get your point, but stop ripping the Democrats in charge.
They're not the ones blocking it. You have to look at the spectrum.
There is no way to get the support. And she gets that now.
|
Sam:
[1:21:48]
| OK, yeah, I remember when she first burst onto the scene and especially her first session in Congress where she did like there were a number of committee hearings where she was just outstanding, like in terms of how how she questioned people and what she brought up and stuff.
I was like, this woman has lots and lots of potential.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:09]
| Fuck you.
|
Sam:
[1:22:10]
| She just has to get some experience under her belt and grow up a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:14]
| And she has before our eyes and she has. And I think that she's going to prove to be a very strong leader in the future because she's going to bring the strength of those ideas.
But now she understands that it's not it's not the people on her side that are trying to block it.
It's just that it's hard to get it past. Right. Any of this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:22:31]
| Well, and to what I was saying about lean into the culture war issues, I would stop short of leaning into like full Bernie Sanders socialism stuff.
Like you want to push to some degree in that direction, but I think it's the social issues that are the key winners.
The economic ones, maybe in another couple of election cycles.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:53]
| Look, health care is a winner.
|
Sam:
[1:22:55]
| Yes, I agreed.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:57]
| You know, look, health care is a winner. People's rights are a winner.
And I think that, you know, hell, defending Social Security is a winner.
|
Sam:
[1:23:05]
| Oh, yes, absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:06]
| Medicare is a winner.
|
Sam:
[1:23:08]
| OK, you don't have to be Bernie Sanders to be defending Social Security. Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:12]
| And you could expand on those and expand on health care.
You know, I think that the one thing is that these guys, I mean, fuck Trump, but these guys are talking openly about gutting, gutting Social Security and Medicare.
I mean, it's crazy. Okay. They're talking about it. Oh, yeah, we're going to gut this shit. This all is bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:23:34]
| Shit right okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:35]
| I was just like what you know so so yes joe is wrong but anyway carvel what did carvel say.
|
Sam:
[1:23:42]
| Okay so i i posted this and here the article there's an article in the hill, but the the key port portion of it is i guess i guess it was actually from a an interview, i'm trying to go to a stupid article and there are all these pop-ups coming up about subscribing to the fucking newsletter and shit oh fuck jesus christ all.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:08]
| These terrible websites now which it's just ad and pop up and add and pop up and another ad and pop up like god for the love of.
|
Sam:
[1:24:16]
| God yes so anyway the actual interview was with maureen dowd from the new york times but it's been all over the place here is the quote from her from him from carvel from him right.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:29]
| Go to buy maureen.
|
Sam:
[1:24:32]
| And he was talking about, Let's see. Carville voiced concerns about the culture of the Democratic Party and how it could be impacting Biden's support among voters, especially those that are male.
Quote, a suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females.
Don't drink beer. Don't watch football. Don't eat hamburgers.
This is not good for you, he said.
The message is too feminine. everything you're doing is destroying the planet you've got to eat your peas and i responded to this on mastodon with james carville can go fuck himself, you know like i don't.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:16]
| Agree i i don't agree that.
|
Sam:
[1:25:18]
| I i think i said frack because i wimped out on saying fuck but you know no for the loser anyway but but i i this is like no james carville no No, maybe this was true when you were saying the economy's stupid in in 92 or whatever.
But this is not today's world.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:39]
| He's doing the same thing as Lieberman is Lieberman. OK, you know, now, now you guys.
Yeah. Oh, listen, you guys are are past your expiration date.
That's what you're showing. Like with this shit. OK, sorry. No, no. Yeah, that's not. That's not. No.
|
Sam:
[1:25:55]
| At this point, you've got to lean into this, especially 100 percent.
When you have somebody like Donald Trump actively trying to push the other direction on every single one of these issues, the American public at this point is overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage.
They're overwhelmingly in favor of abortion rights.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:19]
| And fuck those fragile males. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:26:21]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:21]
| All right. Seriously. Seriously.
|
Sam:
[1:26:24]
| Absolutely like those people aren't going to vote for you anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:27]
| No they're not the.
|
Sam:
[1:26:30]
| The people who are really like all upset about this kind of stuff they're flocking to donald you're not going to convince them.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:37]
| They're driving this 10 mile per gallon pickup truck with a fucking trump sticker on the back like i just saw one today trump 2024 and then on the side talking about jesus christ on a fucking like driving a pickup truck that literally a ford raptor against 10 miles per gallon look this son of a bitch you're never getting this asshole right on the democrats and me never meanwhile.
|
Sam:
[1:27:02]
| Like if if anything is true about where biden has to sort of beef things up it's you are getting some of the the young folks who are are are disappointed that he hasn't gone gone far enough you've got the thing you've got everybody upset.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:21]
| Ah it's the same fucking thing they said about obama i'm so pissed off it's like all these fucking people i.
|
Sam:
[1:27:28]
| I know i know i know i know but like you but if.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:32]
| You are going.
|
Sam:
[1:27:33]
| To take action to try to pull somebody in you want to convince those folks that you're doing the best you fucking can as opposed to trying to get those those other people.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:43]
| And talking about the young people i will tell you the one thing that that obama of obama that biden did very well this week in a few in a few of the campaign places where there were some young people that were started protesting relating to gaza and you know what he did he didn't treat him like shit no.
|
Sam:
[1:28:05]
| He said they got they have a point.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:07]
| They he said they have a a point. Okay. He acknowledged them and he, he, he agreed that.
Yeah. I mean, you guys have a point. Okay. And, and, and I, and I think, And the U.S. right now, after giving some leeway to Israel for some time, look, I mean, they just pushed this U.N. resolution now. It finally got through.
|
Sam:
[1:28:29]
| With a U.S. abstention, not a vote for, but still.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:32]
| Still. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:28:35]
| It's the first time the U.S. has not blocked a resolution like that in living memory.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:41]
| I mean, well, listen, I'm sorry, living memory. He says, since I remember, this is the creation of Israel, period.
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:48]
| They have they have never done that. So, you know, I, you know, I think that that he's trying to.
Yeah, I think he's come on the campaign trail looking good, like right now.
And and so I think that that's what's helping a lot of things. So, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:29:09]
| And so, so just to summarize again, like the polls have started to move towards Biden a little bit, but I want to wait a few more weeks to really judge.
Cause like they started, you know, according to some of my measures, things were moving towards, you know, Trump had peaked at the very beginning of January and, you know, but like that was a very temporary like thing.
and then it started moving.
There was some weird jagged up and downs in the thing, but it turned out that the movement towards Biden that looked like it was happening in January was very temporary.
And it reversed and started going back to Trump again after that.
So it is early, but unlike that time where there didn't seem to be anything directly associated associated with the movement.
This time, it does seem to coincide in time with the candidates clinched their nominations.
Biden had a really good speech and Biden started hitting the trail.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:15]
| Yep. Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:30:16]
| Yep. So we'll, we'll see. We'll see.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:18]
| All right. Well, I got, let's see, I'm not sure who's been picking what, but I've got, we, we haven't, we got a couple of things that maybe we want to hit. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:30:27]
| Do you want to do like, we were, we're just, we were just going to talk talk about this stuff and then wrap it up. But if you got a couple of quick hits you want to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:34]
| Well, but there's a couple of quick hits, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:30:38]
| Okay, in that case, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with some quick hits.
Okay, and we're back, and your first quick hit is?
|
Ivan:
[1:31:23]
| One is, okay, let me give a quick hit. DeSantis, okay, folded against Disney, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:31:29]
| Now, I heard some people saying that the final thing was actually in DeSantis' favor, no?
|
Ivan:
[1:31:34]
| No, that's what DeSantis said, but that's not correct. Ah.
Okay, because, okay, Disney and DeSantis agreed to terminate all litigation, okay?
Okay. Well, guess what? But that by doing that, Disney completely won.
OK, because what happened is the thing that the Santa's, the board had come in and were aghast and wanted to block was that right before the turnover.
over disney went and legally passed this long-term plan that allowed them to do whatever the fuck they wanted for the next 30 years okay yes and that it was irrevocable okay that that that the new board couldn't do shit and basically took away literally almost any decision making from the board except to basically run ambulances and and and fix potholes and some shit like that and that's it. Okay?
So, by him saying, oh, oh, All right, litigation's over. We're going to stop. Whatever.
Basically, he completely capitulated.
|
Sam:
[1:32:45]
| Okay. So Disney got what they wanted, actually.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:48]
| Oh, yeah. Disney completely got what they wanted because they had set it up because they said, oh, you're going to take the board, basically.
Okay, we're going to take away all their power.
And that's what wound up happening. The board still exists.
And even him, Violet, even appointed some people that actually know shit about the kind of things that the board is responsible for.
He switched out the political hacks that he first put in that did nothing and wound up putting people like somebody that had been in charge of the Department of Transportation under Charlie Crist or, you know, people that knew shit about what they were supposed to do.
And that's pretty much the end of it.
|
Sam:
[1:33:25]
| Okay. What's your next quick hit, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:29]
| We had a bridge collapse.
|
Sam:
[1:33:31]
| Yes, yes, yes, we certainly did in Baltimore. I'm pretty sure I've been over that bridge many times.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:37]
| And I've crossed that bridge, too, I'm sure. Well, according to some right-wing news sources, it appears that a combination of, oh, what was it?
DEI, open borders, the Affordable Care Act, caused the bridge to fall, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:33:59]
| Of course it did.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:00]
| Somehow. I mean, usually what makes bridges fall, I guess.
|
Sam:
[1:34:06]
| And again, this is the kind of thing that, going back to what we said in the last segment, Democrats should absolutely lean into just mocking this shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:19]
| And they have been now. I think that's one thing that they haven't been doing is actively, but now...
This is happening more often, you know? Yeah. So, so yeah.
So yeah. So you don't think it's not.
|
Sam:
[1:34:35]
| It's not bad. And of course it's not that the actual situation was of course bad, just not related to those things, you know, tanker lost power, potential maintenance issues on the tanker, potential issues about how fortified the bridge itself was what rules are on when tugboats do things there are all kinds of stuff but bottom line you know massive massive shipping container boat boat is you should i call it a ship shipping container ship it's a container ship container ship there you go yeah it's not built out of shipping containers it carries shipping Anyway, it's a container ship.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:15]
| Okay, here we go. And let me see. I found the summary was better.
According to the right-wing media, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg use Hunter's Lantau and DEI to steer a ship full of vaccinated immigrant drag queens into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore this morning.
Taylor Swift is also implicated in the crash.
|
Sam:
[1:35:33]
| Of course she is.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:34]
| And the thing is, is that satire? And the truth is, it's not that far off of what they were talking about in the news.
|
Sam:
[1:35:40]
| No, it's not. I saw there were, you know, at first you heard about this stuff and thought, oh, OK, ha ha. Funny.
But then you see actual clips of the people on Fox trying to make this case sort of halfheartedly.
And it's like, really, really.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:55]
| I mean, Maria Bartiromo, who I know has been a hack for 20 years.
I mean, she got fired from CNBC because specifically she was taking payoffs and doing shit from the people she was reporting on, which is why she wound up on fucking unemployment.
And she goes, well, how has the open borders cost this accident? And I'm like, what?
|
Sam:
[1:36:17]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:18]
| Live on TV. And I'm like, huh? Huh?
|
Sam:
[1:36:23]
| Okay, next up, I will give a quick hit.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:27]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:36:29]
| NBC hired Rona McDaniel, a former head of the RNC that we were talking about before, and she was going to be one of their paid...
paid commentators, paid experts, whatever, to talk about Republican politics.
And they hired her. And there was an immediate rebellion within NBC News and MSNBC.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:55]
| I don't understand who thought this was a good idea. I mean, this woman is vile.
|
Sam:
[1:37:01]
| Well, some of the quotes that are coming out from the people who were involved in that decision were, well, presumably they're leaks from the Rona McDaniel side of things, but were basically all about how they'd been courting her for months about wanting to have alternative viewpoints to present because they have to be fair and provide a wide range of viewpoints and all this kind of stuff.
Meanwhile, she is directly implicated in some of the potential criminality.
She wasn't one of the ones charged yet, but she was one of the ones doing stuff with the fake elector scheme.
She was calling people and promising that the RNC would help with their legal defenses if they got in trouble and all this kind of stuff.
up and so basically it started with chuck todd who was the former host of meet the press she went on the air and did one interview on meet the press with the the new host which is chris kristin walker i think uh kirsten walker something like that and she did an interview haven't.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:06]
| Watched beat the press and i don't know like.
|
Sam:
[1:38:09]
| Since tim russert died basically yes yes which was a long long time ago now.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:13]
| Time ago.
|
Sam:
[1:38:14]
| But that's about when I last watched it too. At least watched the whole thing. But anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:20]
| Not clips right. Yeah. I'm not media clips right now. Right. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:24]
| And then right after Chuck Todd came on and said, our bosses owe you an apology for making you do that interview.
Cause we have no idea like who she's speaking for and why, because she says that when she was on the RNC, she said some of those things, not because she believed it, but because they, they were the ones paying her and that was the job. And now, well, now she's working for NBC.
So who's she talking for now? Does she believe what she said just now?
And, and then I, I, I, I was at work for most of it and tuning in or out, but it was very evident on the fall.
This was the, the announcement that she was hired happened on a Friday.
And then the meet, the press interview happened on Sunday and Monday on MSNBC.
|
Sam:
[1:39:16]
| Every single host from morning joe at the beginning of the day to what's her name who does the 11th hour at the end of the day and everybody in between dedicated part of their show to talking about how bad it was that they had hired rona mcdaniel the the msnbc management Backed off fairly early and said, and, you know, and they're big hitters. Like what's her name?
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel Maddow, of course, was one of these, like all of them dedicated time.
Rachel Maddow did like half her freaking show on it and did her usual whole historical context and blah, blah, blah.
And compared Rona McDaniel to a Nazi enablers in the thirties and all this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:09]
| Sounds about right. Yeah. I mean, she's right. Yeah. I mean, that's a good comparison. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:15]
| And so anyway, the first MSNBC management backed off and said, okay, yes, NBC has hired them, but...
she's not going to be on the air on msnbc and then a day later nbc dropped her as well, and it turned out in part of the reporting they she rona mcdaniel wanted to be on nbc but did not want to come on msnbc because she thought it would be too hostile, and so they gave her more money so that she would go on msnbc too.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:50]
| It's not exactly like they offered her like like like you know millions.
|
Sam:
[1:40:55]
| Well no the the deal the deal was 600 000 over two years and so now of course what i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:00]
| Saying 300 300 000 for a year it's not you know what i mean i figured you know one of these psychophants would be going and like be able to get at least a million dollars a year or something on the speaker circuit or some shit.
|
Sam:
[1:41:18]
| Yeah i mean remember too this is not a full-time gig this is like a come well.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:23]
| Okay that's fair now so this is this is going to be a part of our portfolio of like making you know grifting okay.
|
Sam:
[1:41:29]
| Yes but but yeah anyway so then nbc dropped her and of course now she's gonna if they don't just pay her the 600 grand she's gonna sue them but of course they probably will just pay her.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:40]
| No let's just write her a fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:41:41]
| Show the writer to check and make her go away but like back to your point it's like, what the hell were they thinking?
And yes, there, there were things. And, and, and Rachel Maddow also, it wasn't just her, maybe it was one of the others who said this part, but there was an interview with someone who'd written a book on fascism or whatever.
And he, the point that he brought up was like, look, this is just the company putting their toes in the water on how to deal with what if Trump wins.
And now, and we have to reorient to make sure we still have access into the new Trump administration.
We have to make sure that we're not alienating Trump voters, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, Come on. And in this particular case, also, again, she's directly implicated in some of the potential crimes.
Right. And, you know, I guess...
|
Ivan:
[1:42:39]
| She's an asshole. She's a fucking asshole.
|
Sam:
[1:42:41]
| You know what?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:43]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:42:44]
| Brzezinski on Morning Joe said, look, we have no issues with soliciting and having conservative opinions on here or even Republican opinions.
companions but this is but they have to be ones that are grounded in reality and care about the truth and are not freaking criminals themselves essentially right and the problem is all of those okay you are limiting yourself to okay let's have liz cheney and adam kinzinger like the rest of of the republican party has gone down that path yeah but you could.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:24]
| But but say for example you could you could put up a fucking rick scott who you know he wasn't calling as far as.
|
Sam:
[1:43:33]
| Maybe maybe the j6.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:34]
| People or marco rubio who is a dumb fuck it's all fucks to.
|
Sam:
[1:43:40]
| Be clear msnb msnbc has tons of republicans and ex-republicans on there but they're all never trumpers they have of michael steel who's a former rnc chairman she was the he was the one right before rona mcdaniel actually if i remember correctly and he's got a weekend show on there now you know right and we've got what's her name the one the one in uh by the way anyway let's not forget.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:07]
| About let's not forget that how much of a a fucking sellout rana is she changed her fucking name.
|
Sam:
[1:44:17]
| She literally.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:19]
| Changed her fucking name to fucking curry favor with trump.
|
Sam:
[1:44:27]
| Yes. And the other one I was thinking of was Nicole Wallace, who worked for McCain and other Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:34]
| Sam, if I told you that you're going on to work for him, Sam, you know what?
That meant their last name. That's horse shit.
You know, we got to call you something else because the boss doesn't like it.
So let's call you Antonio.
Yeah, you're just Samuel Antonio.
|
Sam:
[1:44:52]
| Well, the, and the difficulty that like NBC management had with all this is the fact that if you only want reality based Republicans, you're, you're really only, you're only dealing with never Trumpers and people who've been exiled from the party.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:10]
| No i i think no no no but but look like i said look you could put up a barco rubio who'll say a lot of shit you disagree with but but you know he you know he didn't go and say you know due to j6 you you could put up uh lindsey grant well no lindsey grant was also involved what the fuck am i talking about well um yeah who else i don't know there's gotta be some other fucking senator The problem is the.
|
Sam:
[1:45:35]
| Litmus test you would need is say flat out that Donald Trump lost fair and square, say flat out Donald Trump is unfit for office and should not be running.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:47]
| Oh, no, you don't even have to say that. No, no, no, no, no, no. Tell me Donald Trump lost. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
And that you're against, like, election subversion. And I'm okay.
|
Sam:
[1:46:00]
| Well, and what Rona McDaniel said on Meet the Press is, yes, Biden won, but there were questions that needed to be looked into.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:12]
| No, no, there weren't any fucking questions, you bitch. No, fuck you.
|
Sam:
[1:46:19]
| Okay. Any other quick hits? Quick hits.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:25]
| Ah let me see hang on did he I mean no.
|
Sam:
[1:46:35]
| No
|
Ivan:
[1:46:36]
| I think that's I think that's it I think I think I think we got everything that I think we could have should really cover.
|
Sam:
[1:46:42]
| Okay that's fine believe it Harry and with that let's wrap it up you know I was gonna wrap it up like you know at the end of the polling thing but now we had we.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:54]
| Had we had a lot of quick hits we had we had some quick hits.
|
Sam:
[1:46:57]
| Quick hits it's good well you know and we actually managed to keep them mostly quick yeah yeah okay we.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:04]
| Did better than usual.
|
Sam:
[1:47:05]
| Better than usual so to wrap things up the usual things at the end of the show go to curmudgeons-corner.com go to curmudgeons-corner.com it's good to articulate well when giving a url for people to go to on the internet on the internets on the internets and i i guess should i even say url anymore it's like just address i don't know did am i am i showing my age and my geekiness by saying url i think you.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:35]
| I think i think that to you and me it's like url sounds like perfect but i think that you may be right and we're talking going over people.
|
Sam:
[1:47:42]
| The modern term is uri isn't it, Instead of URL.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:47]
| Is it?
|
Sam:
[1:47:48]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:49]
| Universal resource indicator.
|
Sam:
[1:47:51]
| And is something, yeah, I don't know something. I don't know. Anyway, anyway, if you go there, you can find all the ways to contact us.
Email, Facebook, Mastodon.
You can find our archives. Oh, that reminds me like, you know, I, I was going to say we have our archives and I have transcripts for the last like six months or so, or a little bit like almost nine months now.
but I built the transcripts in like the most fragile way possible that I was building them based on an HTML transcript and modifying the HTML to make it look the way I wanted. And they went and freak the tool.
I used a phonic to generate the transcripts, change the format of their HTML.
So the transcript for last week's show still works, but it doesn't look quite right.
It doesn't look like the others. So one of these weekends, I'm going to have to go in there and figure it out and fix it again.
And meanwhile, there's a new standard for including transcripts within the podcast itself so that podcast players can like read along as you go.
And so I can probably do that too, but I have to figure out how to do that and blah, blah, blah. So I don't know.
You know, Pete, you're listening out there. I know you were the one who pushed me for transcripts in the first place.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:09]
| So like, yeah, tell them how to do it. Yeah. Fix it for me.
|
Sam:
[1:49:12]
| Yeah, do it for me. Do it for me. Like, I don't want to do this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:17]
| There you go. Anyway, he does, but he doesn't. Okay. That's yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:49:22]
| Like, I want to do it. I just don't want to spend the time to actually do it.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:26]
| You do, but you don't.
|
Sam:
[1:49:28]
| I guess the better way to put it is I would like to have it done. I don't want to do it.
But I will, at some point, try to expend some effort to at least fix what I already have to make it look nicer again.
But on the other hand, it works. You can still read the transcript.
It's just not formatted in the way that I liked it for the other ones.
Anyway, you can find our transcripts. You can find our archives.
You can find all this stuff.
And of course, you can find a link to our Patreon where you can give us money.
If you were the person in New Jersey who won the mega millions and i know we have listeners in new jersey i.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:05]
| Know i was gonna call you this week because i realized damn it sam you didn't win.
|
Sam:
[1:50:08]
| I didn't win but you know well on the ticket for that drawing i think i did win 20 oh now i paid 30 for the ticket but you know yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:19]
| Well so you only lost ted.
|
Sam:
[1:50:20]
| Yeah so as so it can can can i buy a yacht for that no no new house no airplane plane no no damn it.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:32]
| Maybe be one of those little like toy planes.
|
Sam:
[1:50:35]
| Oh okay that'll do i'll do like the little ones you buy at the airport the little metal ones yeah yeah yeah yeah anyway yeah if you're if you're the person who in new jersey who won the mega millions please uh write us a check just write us a check that's fine don't.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:51]
| Ask why just write us a check.
|
Sam:
[1:50:52]
| Big one eight figures yes Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:55]
| That should be fine.
|
Sam:
[1:50:57]
| Yes, exactly. So anyway, if you want to donate to us at various levels, much less than a billion dollars as usual, we will send you a postcard.
We'll mention you on the show. We'll send you a mug, all this kind of stuff. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:09]
| You write us an eight-figure check. We'll send you a mug.
|
Sam:
[1:51:12]
| Yes, exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:14]
| Two mugs. Two mugs.
|
Sam:
[1:51:15]
| Two mugs. Two mugs. Two?
|
Ivan:
[1:51:17]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:51:18]
| And a postcard.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:20]
| And a postcard.
|
Sam:
[1:51:21]
| Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, and at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Commodions Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I chat throughout the week with various listeners and we share links and interesting stories and we debate things and all this kind of stuff.
So Yvonne, what is the story of the week from the Commodions Corner Slack that you would like to share with our listeners who don't come to our Commodions Corner Slack?
And I don't know what you're thinking. We're offering it for free.
Just ask and you can come, but no.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:56]
| Well, I'll tell you it was a late breaking story.
Yes. Okay, so this is from a publication called Electric. Okay.
Electric went and posted an article saying Tesla starts using supervised full self-driving language.
Okay. This is when the lawyers finally got your attention and said listen, I don't think you're understanding the problem that you're getting us with this, okay?
You need to call this something else.
So Tesla and Elon Musk have started using the term supervised full self-driving when discussing their self-driving efforts.
What does it mean? Tesla and especially its CEO Elon Musk had used controversial language when discussing self-driving effort. It started with calling and selling something called Full Self-Driving Capability Package all the way back to 2016.
Jesus, man, they've been selling this damn thing that still, eight years later, does not work 2016, okay?
And it's going to be a robo-taxi and all this stuff.
And so now, all of a sudden, it is now called Supervised Full Self-Driving.
|
Sam:
[1:53:12]
| Nice, because the driver is supervising, right?
Right. Correct. would get into a situation where it didn't know what to do, it would call home and someone would take over the car, basically remote control and manually get the car out of whatever position was confusing it.
And it turns out for every car they had on the road, they had more than two employees who were actually on call to drive that car at any moment.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:10]
| Get the fuck out of here.
|
Sam:
[1:54:11]
| If the car called for help, you know, so yes, the car was theoretically self-driving, but in actuality on a ongoing regular basis, they had two people on call to at any moment, take over the driving of each one of these cars.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:31]
| Oh, that's okay. Well, that's not very good.
That's not very good at all.
|
Sam:
[1:54:40]
| Yes, because they got the hell.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:42]
| What were we going to go? So we sell a million cars. So we're going to have a 3 million remote drivers.
|
Sam:
[1:54:49]
| Well, if you're going to have the remote driver, you might as well just have the remote driver. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:55]
| My work. Let's just drive the fucking car.
ah okay then.
|
Sam:
[1:55:05]
| Yeah so anyway and with that we're done so.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:09]
| Now yeah supervised supervised now say.
|
Sam:
[1:55:13]
| Supervised self-driving well yeah you know you you're still gonna have a few of these stories every year of the people killing themselves because they're like playing video games while all the self-driving is on and they run into a semi or whatever well.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:27]
| It's this whole thing with listen you know with ai right and there was uh you know as i also shared on the that apparently you know ai now is like the word turbo was in the 80s it's it's slapped on everything and so apparently world b has a toothbrush that now says world b genius x ai i programmable toothbrush everything is fucking ai my stereo says it's ai everything says.
|
Sam:
[1:55:54]
| Well and as as we've talked about before all of the big companies are in fear of missing out mode in fomo mode yeah where they have to like go all in on this stuff and and again there are lots of places where this technology is really awesome and does some cool stuff and i understand that to get it to the next level, you have to push it back your back.
You have to push it past the comfort boundaries to some degree.
But some of the stuff that's out there is just so bad.
It's like you're you're going to lose so much trust.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:31]
| So basically the toothbrush is not AI.
|
Sam:
[1:56:35]
| Well, I don't know what it does. Maybe it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:39]
| Maybe it is.
|
Sam:
[1:56:40]
| Maybe it is. Maybe as you are brushing, it's going to be chatting to you about what you're doing wrong.
And no, go over here a little bit. No, go over there.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:52]
| Supervised. Supervised self-brushing.
|
Sam:
[1:56:56]
| Supervised self-brushing. And because these AI things do what they do, you're going to be brushing your teeth and then it's going to start giving you like programming advice and, and, and start talking about like, you know, and I think your wife may be cheating on you, you know?
So, cause you're going to go.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:15]
| Go to go off to reservation. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:57:17]
| Okay. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:17]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:57:18]
| So anyway. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:19]
| Well, it's AI. Yes. Yes. All right. We're done.
|
Sam:
[1:57:21]
| We're done. And next week's show will be done entirely by AI.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:24]
| Oh, yes. There you go. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:57:27]
| Okay we are done thank you everybody for joining us as usual stay safe have a great week and we'll talk to you next time goodbye manana oh nice nice little song at the end, oh yeah nicole wallace worked for w as well not just mccain okay she ended up, working in the press office or communications i forget what the hell she was anyway it's one of One of those things.
And I'm going to go by Yvonne. I'm heading. Stop.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:30]
| Sayonara.
|
