Sam:
[0:02]
| Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:05]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[0:08]
| Ta-ta-ta. Okay. Any prep work we need or just start? I ask this every week and you always just say just start, so I might as well not ask. But, you know, I should see your face come up and just like start the music.
|
Ivan:
[0:28]
| Let's just start. You know, we're, we're, we're doing the same thing now every week.
|
Sam:
[0:37]
| Every week, every week we're in another rut.
|
Ivan:
[0:41]
| You know, I like ruts. I like certain ruts.
|
Sam:
[0:46]
| Ruts can be good.
|
Ivan:
[0:47]
| Yes. I mean, you know, for a while, I don't even remember, but every Friday we would go to eat at Chili's.
|
Sam:
[0:56]
| Oh, back in school. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[0:58]
| Yeah, and we went every Friday to Chili's. That was not a bad rut. It was pretty good.
|
Sam:
[1:05]
| It's been a long time since I've been to a Chili's. They don't have them around here.
|
Ivan:
[1:09]
| It's been a long time since I've been to a Chili's as well, but what I'm saying is that we did that probably every week for I don't know how long. I mean, was that bad? Oh, it was good? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26]
| I'm just checking.
|
Ivan:
[1:28]
| Yeah. Any Chili's near you?
|
Sam:
[1:30]
| No, no, not at all. I didn't think so, but I wanted to find out where the closest one was.
|
Ivan:
[1:35]
| I know I got Chili's close. There are definitely Chili's close to where I am.
|
Sam:
[1:41]
| Let's see. Few all. Yeah, they're not in my state. I just want a national map.
|
Ivan:
[1:51]
| There are no Chili's in the state of Washington? No. Wow. I didn't think it was a regional thing. A chain? I thought for sure it was like... Huh.
|
Sam:
[2:03]
| Map of Chili's locations.
|
Ivan:
[2:08]
| Huh.
|
Sam:
[2:08]
| Nice map. Okay, here we go. Here's a nice map. I don't know how old this is.
|
Ivan:
[2:14]
| Uh-huh.
|
Sam:
[2:15]
| But it would appear to be... That the closest chili to where I am Chili's to where I am is in Utah.
|
Ivan:
[2:24]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[2:27]
| And the second closest is in Southern California.
|
Ivan:
[2:29]
| Wow. That's okay. That's a stunning factoid for today. There are really no Chili's in Washington state.
|
Sam:
[2:41]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:41]
| Wow. Okay. Okay, I'm pretty sure that I have...
|
Sam:
[2:48]
| Looks like you got one in Orlando.
|
Ivan:
[2:50]
| Oh, no, I'm a lot closer than that.
|
Sam:
[2:53]
| Maybe the map I have is... I see.
|
Ivan:
[2:56]
| Use current location.
|
Sam:
[2:57]
| Oh, let's see. Okay, here's another map.
|
Ivan:
[3:02]
| Well, I think I see the states. Hold on.
|
Sam:
[3:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[3:05]
| You all... No, there it says here. Browse Shillings City location. It says Washington State.
|
Sam:
[3:13]
| Yeah, click it, and it'll say there aren't any. Oh, what? I was just there.
|
Ivan:
[3:16]
| No, it says Spokane. There is one in Spokane, downtown.
|
Sam:
[3:24]
| I just did, and I found another map that appears to agree with you, but I was on the Chili's website a few seconds ago, and it said no.
|
Ivan:
[3:32]
| I am at the Chili's website. No, there is one. There is one in Spokane.
|
Sam:
[3:37]
| Yes. The word was so small.
|
Ivan:
[3:40]
| I know. I just realized that I almost thought it was a mistake, but yeah, Yeah, but there it's, it's definitely, I, I.
|
Sam:
[3:45]
| I, I just thought that was empty. I saw no answers there.
|
Ivan:
[3:49]
| No, no, no. I, I, I, I, I, the, you know, that is a very poorly designed website. I agree with you.
|
Sam:
[3:56]
| It is like, I mean, I thought that was just a blank. Oh, there's nothing here, but you are right in very small letters in the center, much smaller than the browse chili location in your state. There's the one thing. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[4:09]
| One location. Yes. Now what you should do is we should make a point that you should go to that location and I will go to the closest one I have. Mine is a lot more, more convenient.
|
Sam:
[4:24]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[4:24]
| There is one in there. There are two locations within five miles of my house.
|
Sam:
[4:30]
| Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I found another nice little map that had like dots all over the place. So my, my initial thing that I said was completely wrong, completely wrong well.
|
Ivan:
[4:43]
| You were close there's only one location in the whole state yes okay that that is i'm surprised that there's only one location the whole state that that's that's quite a, that's quite a small amount of locations let me see they have the chicken crispers still on the menu and but but no curly fries that's been something that they took got rid of a long time time ago and something that I have not forgiven them for that. That was a Cardinal sin.
|
Sam:
[5:10]
| The curly fries. Yeah. Or the chicken. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[5:13]
| They still have curly fries. No, they still have the chicken crispers.
|
Sam:
[5:17]
| Okay. I will, I will text you the better map I found after my initial failure. So there, there, there's, but yeah, there's only one in the state and then there's another one like in Idaho, right across the border. But yeah, So the closest one is not in Utah and the second closest one is not Southern California. That was complete fake news on my part.
|
Ivan:
[5:42]
| Oh boy. The famous fake news.
|
Sam:
[5:45]
| Famous fake news. Anyway, now that we initially started by saying we'll start immediately and then spoke for like five minutes, let's actually run the music and start. Here we go.
|
Ivan:
[5:55]
| Run it. We run it.
|
Sam:
[5:57]
| Run it. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, April 27th, 2024. It is just after 2.30 UTC. I'm Sam Mentory. Yvonne Bow is here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[6:33]
| Hello. Hi.
|
Sam:
[6:35]
| We're going to do our usual, I think. We're going to do a but first, where both Yvonne and I have something a little less newsy. Mine is going to be a movie. Surprise, surprise. We'll find out what Yvonne's is in a few minutes. and then we'll have two segments of newsier stuff the first one will be chosen by yvonne and the second one will be chosen by me that's the plan we.
|
Ivan:
[6:58]
| Are going to be the chosen ones you.
|
Sam:
[7:02]
| Know i i had thought oh well maybe there's enough going on this week that we can like like plan okay we do this then this then this but no no that's just too much thought too much work planning what planning Planning, you know, the thinking about things in advance. Yeah. Anyway. So Yvonne. Yeah. You got something for our, but first segment, something not particularly newsy, but interesting and fun or just interesting or just boring, whatever, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[7:36]
| Boring. Something boring.
|
Sam:
[7:39]
| Please don't intentionally pick something boring. You accidentally pick boring things way too much anyway. So, you know, you don't need to do it.
|
Ivan:
[7:45]
| Oh, gee, thanks, Sam. Appreciate it. I'm glad I'm here to bore everybody to death on a regular basis. I don't know. What's been going on this week?
|
Sam:
[7:55]
| We could talk more about chilies.
|
Ivan:
[7:57]
| I mean, well, okay. Well, continuing on the food theme. Okay.
|
Sam:
[8:04]
| On the food theme. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[8:06]
| Now, I think I may have mentioned this on the Slack. I was talking about, you know, tipping hotels and this kind of stuff and i'm not talking about in the travel realm right now but one thing is it i have tried i try to when i am going to do something frequently, try to go back to the same place like for certain things repeatedly so that.
|
Sam:
[8:41]
| You can get a relationship with the people who are there they recognize you you're a common.
|
Ivan:
[8:45]
| Customer. Yes, yes, yes. And you know, that does work.
|
Sam:
[8:52]
| I'll tell you, I'll tell you, you can continue in a second, but I just want to say like, I have been resisting this a little bit lately, but my, for most of my life, my pattern has been, if the, if I go somewhere and the person recognizes me or says like, do you want your usual or something like that? Then I, That's the last time I'm going there. Like I'm done.
|
Ivan:
[9:18]
| The last, wait, whoa, you won't go back?
|
Sam:
[9:23]
| Well, maybe not forever, but I will wait a long time.
|
Ivan:
[9:27]
| Why?
|
Sam:
[9:27]
| Because I'm like, I'm like, oh shit. They know me that it's, uh, it's, I don't, I don't want to be recognized and blah, blah, blah. Now, like I said, I've been trying to resist that temptation, but this has been my pattern nearly my whole life. like if if they recognize me that is an indication to me that i've been there too much and i need to stop no.
|
Ivan:
[9:47]
| No oh come on no no that's but.
|
Sam:
[9:51]
| More recently like for instance there is there's a new diner that opened up near me like a few months ago and i basically at this point i'm going there for breakfast once a week okay and and they are starting to recognize me well they've started to recognize me a while ago and they reckon and they are starting to remember my order my usual order and stuff like that and i i do admit i have not stopped going there oh wow but i have been like okay maybe once a week is too much like i'll shake it up and go somewhere else sometimes you know so no.
|
Ivan:
[10:28]
| Well you know so that discussion today with my wife was that i'm going i was going going to go to lunch on this i go to lunch on this place on friday i i like going to lunch to specific to be specific to j alexander's restaurant which is near the house and you know i i had gone to a number of different places but for a few reasons between the menu convenience there was There's a number of things that I started preferring this location, okay? And so I go there enough that the people... At the bar know me you know and i usually will sit at the bar i don't want to read you know usually i'm going to lunch by myself i don't i don't want to be you know sitting at a table and the the thing about at the bar is that usually the people behind the bar are usually the same folks okay so also i'll.
|
Sam:
[11:25]
| Tell you i'll tell you on that my approach is also like i like having a booth, anyway even if i'm by myself except if the place is somewhat full like i will go sit at the counter if the place is somewhat full if like because i i don't want to feel like.
|
Ivan:
[11:43]
| I don't want to wait for a table like.
|
Sam:
[11:45]
| If i have to wait i'm not even going there at all.
|
Ivan:
[11:47]
| But but.
|
Sam:
[11:49]
| If but i don't want to like block a booth from somebody else who actually is coming there with a family or somebody if i'm just by myself.
|
Ivan:
[11:58]
| Okay makes sense um okay but.
|
Sam:
[12:00]
| So but like if the place has lots of open spaces and blah blah blah i'll take a damn booth because i i like it better.
|
Ivan:
[12:07]
| You know the thing is that if you're behind the bar okay if you're sitting at the bar usually whenever you want something it's much faster okay i mean they are right there so you know and and if you go there oh.
|
Sam:
[12:22]
| You just sort of wave at them and say yeah.
|
Ivan:
[12:24]
| And if you're if you go there frequently one thing is that i will tell you that you know these guys work very hard to overwork or whatever and they're actually i think they you know they do tune out a lot of stuff in order to work but they will not tune out the people who are come frequently and that usually will tip well okay so, You know, I, I, I think I had mentioned this about this to, to Bob. We're talking about this on the Slack and he mentioned that.
|
Sam:
[12:54]
| And by the way, I should, I should say, cause you've mentioned the Slack twice now. We are talking about the curmudgeons corner Slack where Yvonne and I, and a bunch of our listeners chat throughout the week. At the end of the show, you will get information about how to join us on the Slack if you want to, but basically it's just like contact us and ask. Okay. Continue.
|
Ivan:
[13:11]
| And so he had mentioned that he had gone to a hotel, one of his bosses that he went frequently and realized oh shit he gets treated here like you know like really well this is nice okay you know and so i i you know i i went and i'm like i told my wife well i'm gonna go to lunch at this place and i'm like oh my god again i'm like look she usually doesn't go with me to lunch she's doing something else or whatever but today her usually she works out at around that time but her knee has been bothering her and she just went to the doctor a couple days ago and they stuck a needle in her damn knee okay and did it help it well not yet okay okay and so she's not feeling great so she didn't go to the she didn't go to to work out she canceled because she should just, knee wasn't feeling right and so i said well come on let's go to lunch and she's like where are you going going to this place she's like oh my god again you're gonna get listen could you just trust me okay just come to the place and you know the waitress is there michelle is there she's like Like, oh, dope, great, whatever. And then she's, like, later realizing, oh, now I know why you come here. I mean, they fucking, like, treat you like you own the fucking place. Well, yes, okay, exactly. And that's just, it just gets, you know, there was a guy on the side of the bar on the opposite side. It was needing something. I think he asked somebody, like, three, four times. They didn't give him the time of day. I'm like, you know, oh, look, I just raised my hand. Oh, yes, oh, here, here's your thing, Mr. Bowe. I'm like, okay, exactly. You know, that's a.
|
Sam:
[14:41]
| A, you come there all the time. So they know you and B you probably tip really well.
|
Ivan:
[14:46]
| I usually tip at least 30%. Okay. You know? Yeah. I, you know, so yeah, they know, you know, they know. Yeah. They don't forget that. So, yeah. So, you know, when I come in, they're like, you know, they already know. Usually, you know, with lunch, I'll have a, I'll have the old way. They'll like a Pellegrino, which they know, and a glass of wine. I have like one, maybe two. But that's it usually it right now i am down to like where that glass of wine may be about the only glass of wine i drink in a week you know because i i don't but but i i like to have you know i i like to taste the wine so i'll go and i'll have one maybe two you're.
|
Sam:
[15:31]
| You're not doing the old-fashioned 1960s business person alcoholic lunch.
|
Ivan:
[15:35]
| No no no no no i'm not doing a liquid lunch No, no, no. The, you know, three or four martini lunch. I've had those in the past. Okay. You know, in business meetings, I got, I still will never forget that there was one for a business meeting in Venezuela, Caracas, about 25 years ago. Go okay okay or so that i i was taken you know and as one of my first now i had been to venezuela for business but it was like one of the first trips really third or fourth trip something like that i've not been frequently to venezuela for a business trip and we meet this guy for for lunch okay and the thing is that he is a business person in the country that ran a medical supply business that was very large okay one of the largest medical supply distributors in the country but But the other thing I had happened to have hired his son in the finance department in in in in the region.
|
Ivan:
[16:33]
| And so we had gone back because we had been sponsoring for an H-1B and we had to I don't know, I had to take care of some stuff and whatever went down. They said, look, my you know, my father, you know, he wants to meet you guys. He wants to meet you, too. So these are coming down to whatever. So we'll go to lunch and he's there and this started around 12 and he has this table apparently. And this is like, I don't know if it's every day, but it was relatively frequent. Okay. Where basically he wasn't, he would go to the office, do some work and then meet socially with everybody else. He did business there. And it was like a table where he met with people the whole day and people would cycle in and out of this place and he would be there. And oh my god there was a lot of scotch okay and look we were there and i i actually so during all these people cycling in and out and i get introduced that i work at hp and finance and so forth it comes up that one of the people that's cycling through in and out happens to be a big hp customer but is it just a big hp customer they owed hp past due several million dollars Okay?
|
Ivan:
[17:50]
| All right, so I'm spending this lunch. We're drinking, whatever, and he tells me, hey, you know what? I've been trying to work out a payment plan, whatever, but look, I'm trying to reach somebody because what I wanted to do is we had some... They had some assets, they had some property, some buildings that could be appraised that were worth, you know, more than enough to satisfy the debt or at least a big part of it. Maybe a bit of cash. And he wanted to see if HB would accept those for that. And I said, look, not my area, but I know who the person is that that you would need to talk area. I would need to talk to when I get back to Miami. I'll bring it up. so this lunch started at 12 I did not get back to the office until 11 o'clock at night and I mean I did not get back to the office until 11 o'clock at night and listen I was like hammered I mean I had been drinking the whole damn day okay literally I was drinking there for 11 hours, and yeah you.
|
Sam:
[18:58]
| Know you know Yvonne at some point during that I know you were like talking with people and blah blah blah but you could have switched to like a cola or something.
|
Ivan:
[19:07]
| They kept offering me and i was like ah sure why not i could have i'm sure but i i just they kept they just kept you know i think that listen they were so efficient over there i think i just had my glass out wait don't come they'll be pouring shit back in my drink i wasn't even asking for it uh they were already pouring it in my in my thing but anyway look But here's the thing. I did come back to Miami. I did talk to the credit guy. The credit guy at first said, I'm out of my mind. We're not going to do that. And I'm like, okay, fine. Well, look, here's the contact information. Here's the guy I talked to. This is the stuff, you know, look, your call. But, you know, he wanted to talk with you.
|
Ivan:
[19:53]
| So a couple of months later, we're in a staff meeting. Okay, because this was in finance and I'm in finance. It's just that was not my area. of finance right right finance and the credit guy gets into a staff meeting and is ebullient celebrating how they recovered the past new millions of dollars from this customer because we're accepting the buildings after he told me he wasn't gonna do it like you bastard you told me you weren't gonna do it and now now you're taking credit for the fucking deal i've worked now i got myself drunk that whole day so i guess not that bad look i i did collect it was over three million, past due so if you inflation adjusted so it's over five six million now yeah so yeah very nice by basically drinking scotch the whole day but.
|
Sam:
[20:48]
| That was not a place that you regularly frequented that was a one.
|
Ivan:
[20:52]
| No no that that is not a place i regularly frequented yes no i that is not i don't think i've ever returned to that place but.
|
Sam:
[21:01]
| You highly advocate picking places that you.
|
Ivan:
[21:05]
| Like and going.
|
Sam:
[21:07]
| Back to there on a regular basis, get to know the people, tip them well, et cetera.
|
Ivan:
[21:14]
| Yes. And they will treat you back very nicely, okay? They will treat you back very nicely. I am not advocating for going out and drinking for 11 hours. I have no idea how the hell I was able to do that back then and still be standing up. We were not driving, obviously.
|
Sam:
[21:35]
| And you also do not recommend as soon as you realize that they recognize you running away, screaming and never coming back.
|
Ivan:
[21:44]
| That sounds like a terrible plan.
|
Sam:
[21:46]
| Really? I don't know. It seems fine to me, but.
|
Ivan:
[21:52]
| The screaming part would be great. I'd like to get this on video. You know, if you're going to be doing this, you know, we'll just, you know, I'd like this on video. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And maybe we'll set your hair on fire or something as you run screaming okay maybe i'm enticing you with my offer okay there you go very.
|
Sam:
[22:14]
| Enticing okay are we done with that is the time for my movie.
|
Ivan:
[22:17]
| We're done with that we're yeah let's go to your movie what about what about the movie okay.
|
Sam:
[22:21]
| My movie this time which let's see how far back are we now i watched in october, October 23rd. Let's see. So should I attempt, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you Yvonne, this movie was in Spanish with English subtitles. Should I attempt the Spanish language version of the title or just do the English language version?
|
Ivan:
[22:50]
| Go with the Spanish language. What is it?
|
Sam:
[22:53]
| Mar Edentro. Mar Edentro.
|
Ivan:
[22:56]
| Adentro mar adentro mar adentro adentro yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:59]
| There you go close close enough damn it okay.
|
Ivan:
[23:02]
| That's not that have.
|
Sam:
[23:03]
| You heard of the movie.
|
Ivan:
[23:04]
| What what is that what is the english translation of it the sea inside yeah okay all right pretty very literally yeah have you heard of the movie no okay.
|
Sam:
[23:16]
| And it it is not it's yes it is spanish language.
|
Ivan:
[23:20]
| But it is also spanish it is from spain but now one it is from say who's the who's the director alejandro amenobar okay i haven't heard of him the one thing is that that seems like a literal translation yeah instead of like the actual what it what maradentro means which maradentro means like when you're out in the, out in the middle of the ocean okay you know yep and that's you know yeah if you're maradentro You're like, you know, you're, you're out there in the middle of the ocean. It's really what, but not the sea inside, but it's a saying you're like inside the sea.
|
Sam:
[23:59]
| Like you're inside the sea than the sea inside.
|
Ivan:
[24:03]
| Yeah. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:04]
| Basically.
|
Ivan:
[24:05]
| Yes. So, yeah, they did a terrible job translating that title. Unfortunately.
|
Sam:
[24:10]
| It was like.
|
Ivan:
[24:12]
| Really bad. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:17]
| So it's from 2004. It won the Academy Award that year for Best Foreign Language Film. It is based on a real-life story, but it's obviously a fictionalized version of it. It's about this guy, Ramon San Pedro, who was left quadriplegic after a diving accident. Okay. And he spent the next nearly 30 years campaigning in support of euthanasia and the right in his own life.
|
Sam:
[24:57]
| And basically, this is his story. I mean, at least the last few years of his story, it talks about, it goes through basically, as he's campaigning for this, his struggles with his family who don't want him to die. And his interactions with a couple advocacy groups that are working for this, a neighbor and her family who become attached to him, a few other things. Basically, there are folks trying to convince him not to do this and there are folks that are trying to help him and he's going through legal battles to go up and down with the courts to try to get permission to do this.
|
Sam:
[25:47]
| And it's a true story, so I won't worry too much about spoilers. In the end, he loses all his legal gambits to try to get Spain to say that this is okay. But he does it anyway in the end with the help of some friends. And I will go ahead and give this a thumbs up because it's sort of thought-provoking. But I with some caveats like first of all it is of course a heavy movie this is not like a light fun.
|
Ivan:
[26:23]
| Movie yeah no kidding she's brought the you brought the decibels I'm talking about getting myself hammered after 11 hours of drinking and then we're talking about you know. This poor guy.
|
Sam:
[26:38]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:39]
| I'm reading the story. It's so.
|
Sam:
[26:42]
| And, you know, and also I'll say it's, it's sort of a slow movie. It's, I mean, it's all psychological. I mean, you know, there's, and it's, it's a true story. So there's not this sort of like, Oh, it builds to a dramatic. Here's what's happening. And here's, it goes through the stages of his thing. And it's sort of, it's not, your sort of typical narrative arc of like something that was written i mean obviously somebody wrote the adaptation but because it's based on a true story the beats of the story are a little bit different so it's it's not yeah so it's it's the kind of movie that it's not like pulling you along at every moment like oh my god what's going to happen next it's just sort of a slow.
|
Sam:
[27:34]
| Here's what's going on. And there's a lot to think about. There's a lot of monologuing about like the various people expressing their opinions and, and just sort of some of the, the trauma that exists and sort of slice of life type stuff. So I give it a thumbs up, but a qualified thumbs up. It's the, it's the kind of movie you, you kind of really have to be in the mood for, or at least, I mean, I guess you're never really in the mood for this kind of a movie it's it's more like it's a it's a serious thought-provoking movie and so you know that which is very different than a fun movie so anyway you were reading his story any thoughts it's awful Awful. But yeah, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[28:21]
| But I, I, I get. Yeah. A story, you know, he became, you know, paralyzed at a very young age and spent basically most of his life trying to get, be allowed to die. Yeah. Because he couldn't really die by his own hand.
|
Sam:
[28:43]
| Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you sort of, on the one hand, you know, you understand the people are like, you know, you seem to be like one of the themes in it was that he seemed, despite his disability, he was lively, he was interactive, he had, you know, he dealt with a lot of people and blah, blah, blah. So like you're sort of like, why do you have to die? You're, you know, there are other people in your condition who've made a different decision and they're thriving and are happy. But in the end, it's like.
|
Sam:
[29:29]
| He clearly was well within his faculties. It's not like he was, you know, in some sort of distressed emotional state and just suicidal. It was not. No, he'd very, very carefully thought about this. And this is the conclusion he made for himself. And you sort of you want to distinguish on the one hand. And I don't necessarily want to take a position that says anyone who ever wants to kill themselves anytime should just be able to. And like, you shouldn't try to help them and stop them and get them help and blah, blah, blah. But on the other hand, you know, if you are of sound mind and you have made this determination and you have sort of good reasons, it's not just, you know, you're going through a depressive episode or something in the end it's your life.
|
Ivan:
[30:26]
| Well the one thing is i don't know you said good reasons i don't know if anybody can judge any reasons as other.
|
Sam:
[30:33]
| Than the person themselves right you know but.
|
Ivan:
[30:36]
| Yeah i mean you know it's i think that the things that that that as he mentioned it are the responsible things to do is to determine whether the person is impaired in some way in the the middle of some kind of.
|
Sam:
[30:51]
| Um, some sort of crisis that will resolve itself.
|
Ivan:
[30:56]
| Temporary event crisis. Exactly. Those kinds of things in order to not to have somebody do that, you know, at a moment of. You know, something spurred a moment that in, in another moment, the person would not be wanting to do that because that happens. Yeah. Okay.
|
Sam:
[31:14]
| I mean, my, my, my wife and my daughter have both had close friends commit suicide. I luckily have not, but you know, it's, and in all of those cases, it seemed to be like with the right help, maybe it could have been avoided. Maybe the situation could have gotten passed, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[31:36]
| But they didn't have, they, they didn't reach out for it. They didn't have access or, or whatever, whatever the reason. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[31:44]
| And, and, you know, and those kinds of ones, you feel like, you know, society as a whole should be doing everything we can to try to prevent those situations. But this kind of situation where you have somebody with a permanent long-term disability they they are not happy with their quality of life they are you know it seems heartless to not let them make their own decision in these kinds of scenarios.
|
Ivan:
[32:16]
| Yeah so so sam you, and it's such a you're.
|
Sam:
[32:26]
| Gonna run out and watch this.
|
Ivan:
[32:28]
| I like my watch i mean this is this is a kind of a movie of the type that i i i i do like to watch in part because of the thought-provoking, things that you mentioned related to the movie i mean i think that's them, that's the reason because it deals with certain real issues and we're talking about something think that happened to in the to a real person and so it's it's, It's thought provoking. It brings you insight into certain things that are difficult. And so I, you know, I mean, I, it's so, yeah, I mean, I, I might someday take upon the opportunity to watch this. I'm not going to say it's going to happen anytime soon. I think recently my, my, I have been watching more movies.
|
Sam:
[33:24]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[33:25]
| And I have been watching more new TV shows. i have to say and i'll make a comment about this as we were on the movie and subject that i am like right now at this point one series that i did take the time to watch every episode and came away really pissed off at this moment is this one on apple tv plus cult constellation okay i have not heard of this okay well you know maybe.
|
Sam:
[33:51]
| I haven't just.
|
Ivan:
[33:52]
| You can look it up but it was recently it It finished, and I'm not going to give any spoilers, but the problem was that the ending of it was inconclusive. They were kind of like intimating. This was like a one season series, and right now, everybody that finished watching it is scratching their head as to, are they going to make a season two, or did they just end this thing like shit? it.
|
Sam:
[34:21]
| Or were they thinking there might be a season two but then it's they just didn't get renewed because it didn't get enough traction or something.
|
Ivan:
[34:28]
| Right or something like that but i and so yeah it's just there was such a fucking inconclusive ending to the first season that which is like well here's the problem as a cliffhanger it was still bad anyway so i i just it just ended very poorly so i no not not really a fan previous to that i saw a movie called this is where i leave you let me just say before you move on i just want.
|
Sam:
[35:01]
| To sympathize with you there are a number of shows that like for whatever reason end on a cliffhanger that is never resolved because Cause it was never renewed or whatever. And those are just so frustrating.
|
Ivan:
[35:17]
| Listen, there was another one like that, that I watched. It had two seasons of that as called boss that was on stars. It was with the guy from Frazier. Okay. And he was as the mayor of Chicago. And that was actually a pretty good series, but apparently I guess. The, the numbers, the money, I think stars invested in a lot of original content and then they weren't getting money for it. And so they fucking didn't do a third season and it was meant to go into a third season.
|
Sam:
[35:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[35:50]
| And they just didn't redo it. And I'm like, mother fuckers.
|
Sam:
[35:56]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[35:57]
| That would still pisses me off to no end. Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:00]
| You know, this is one of those things where, you know, if I was a billionaire, if I had bill gates money or whatever i would take like shows that ended like that that i was a fan of and i would just be like okay i'm bankrolling the next season you have to finish it i'm sorry.
|
Ivan:
[36:16]
| Or you could do like you know larry david just did which you know he he wrote the it's a finale for seinfeld after he went away for the show for two years i've heard about.
|
Sam:
[36:26]
| This and then they.
|
Ivan:
[36:27]
| Criticized them to no end okay and then then he went and like i have i will say i don't think I haven't watched more than maybe a few minutes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. For whatever reason to me, it didn't appeal to me. But I heard that basically in the finale, he basically gave everybody a fuck you and recreated in Curb Your Enthusiasm, the finale, the ending of Seinfeld. Literally.
|
Sam:
[36:52]
| He did accept it the very last second after they were in the jail cell. Seinfeld came and busted him out of jail.
|
Ivan:
[37:00]
| And busted him out. sorry for all the spoilers if you haven't seen it but they've been all over the damn person yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[37:07]
| Okay sorry the movie you were about to mention.
|
Ivan:
[37:09]
| So yeah so so so i i watched let me tell you movies i watched one that was called this is where i leave you which is some romantic comedy where you know what had jason bateman tina fey adam driver whatever supposed to be some kind of like whatever it had i saw a bio biographical movie on on enzo ferrari for each of.
|
Sam:
[37:29]
| These you You don't have to give a full review, but at least a thumbs up or thumbs down for each of them.
|
Ivan:
[37:34]
| This is where I leave you. I'll give it a thumb sideways. Okay. Funny moments and some stuff or whatever, but it wasn't as good as it could have been. Ferrari, the story of Enzo Ferrari, the guy that created the, you know, the car maker Ferrari thumbs up. Very good. That was very well made. It had Penelope Cruz. It had this Adam driver as well. I saw whiplash. Yeah. Whiplash was acclaimed for many years. I had never seen it. Gets a thumbs up. 2014. It's about a very young and ambitious jazz drummer that gets written into the ground by a sadistic bastard fucking music teacher. Okay? Okay. That one gets a thumbs up. I watched Anyone But You, which apparently is a very popular rom-com that came out recently. Recently uh rom-coms were thought to be dead and for some reason they came out with a rom-com and it worked because people i think have been wanting one of these and so it was funny i'll give it a thumbs up it's it's funny light entertaining and i also watched this movie called fast charlie with fierce brosnan where where fierce brosnan is an assassin of.
|
Sam:
[38:48]
| Course he is.
|
Ivan:
[38:49]
| Basically and that was you know not academy award material but you know if you want some action crime thing whatever it's a thumbs up it's a light and frothy thing you know with just you know so that let's see what what other one i those are those are recent ones that i that i okay go back go back.
|
Sam:
[39:12]
| Real quick what were the thumbs for constellation and boss.
|
Ivan:
[39:14]
| Constellation right now Now, unless there is a season two gets a ton of thumbs down because that ending was shit.
|
Sam:
[39:26]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[39:27]
| Okay. It was shit. It was, it was, it was, it seemed to be climbing towards some very, uh, It's something that seemed like very complicated, very convoluted, something to where you would like be like wowed and it was shit.
|
Sam:
[39:44]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[39:45]
| So that's a thumbs that. Yeah. Boss gets a thumbs up. Unfortunately, it's very good, but fuck. Caveat is, well, I don't know if you can, you'd find it anywhere like right now, but the second thing is it's not finished.
|
Sam:
[40:02]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[40:04]
| It's, it's, it's not finished. you know so it it's that's that's your problem it's it's not finished so you know it it is available i see in itunes they got both seasons on there yeah you can buy it 20 episodes you got 20 episodes okay so you've got a lot of watching okay okay um and if you look if you like politics it's great, it just ends abruptly it just ends abruptly because they decided not to fund season 3 motherfuckers.
|
Sam:
[40:40]
| Well I don't think there's going to be a sequel to The Sea Inside.
|
Ivan:
[40:44]
| Probably not.
|
Sam:
[40:48]
| Okay shall we take a break and move on to news stuff.
|
Ivan:
[40:50]
| Yes okay.
|
Sam:
[40:52]
| Hold on here we go here we go this one back after this You're supposed to say doo-doo-doo. Doo-doo-doo! Alex Zemzula! Alex Zemzula is awesome. Its videos are fun. And today, once again, we have one of our most loyal subscribers here is. I'd say on a rate from one to ten alex emsler is awesome at i don't know 37 82 he's pretty radical, Dad. Doo-doo-doo! Okay, we are back.
|
Ivan:
[42:02]
| So we did doo-doo.
|
Sam:
[42:03]
| We did something like that. We'll have to clean it up later.
|
Ivan:
[42:09]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[42:11]
| This segment's yours, Yvonne. What are we talking about first? Newsy. Stuff. tough current events something that's been in the news this last week there's plenty to choose from this is this has actually been a fairly heavy news week lots of all.
|
Ivan:
[42:30]
| Right so let's let's talk about the the the campus protests i.
|
Sam:
[42:34]
| I had a feeling that you might pick that given i was thinking.
|
Ivan:
[42:38]
| To avoid it to be honest.
|
Sam:
[42:40]
| Okay because right before we started recording the show on the curmudgeons corner slack you know ivan and and pete were both sort of ranting about this for a a while and going back and forth on stuff so give us first catch everybody up to speed who might not know what's been going on and then give us your thoughts on it and we'll go go from well.
|
Ivan:
[43:02]
| There's been ever expanding number of protests and encampments at different universities across, the u the u.s and a number of different universities have been responding to these in many different ways and i i think that the the biggest issue has been the well the one that's brought most of the attention has been the reaction to the removal of some of these where there have been these encampments and i i haven't found in most cases that whatever exactly has been been going on with the encampments has been, Explain clearly. Okay.
|
Sam:
[43:54]
| I think it's also been very different in different places.
|
Ivan:
[43:58]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[43:59]
| And even within the same place, there's been some activities that have been on campus and some that have been off, and those have been different from each other. And so people have been talking about Columbia and New York versus UTexas and Texas, and those are very different, what was going on. So there's a lot of variation here.
|
Ivan:
[44:16]
| There's a lot of variation. So it makes it a very fuzzy subject. But from both sides, what you have been hearing are a series of complaints. The Jewish students, in many instances you've heard, many of them complain that they've been made to feel unsafe by these protests, by some of the slogans and things that have been thrown around and said repeatedly over and over. So on the flip side, you have a number of people that are advocating for Palestine who have many say that they're just advocating for peace, but many have claimed that a lot of the things that they're using are anti-Semitic.
|
Sam:
[45:00]
| Um and and also there have been a number of reports of like some of the protests have actually heavy jewish participation as well but again like there's lots of complexity here and lots of different situations and it's not it's not a.
|
Ivan:
[45:18]
| It's not a homogeneous.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| Situation you know it's.
|
Ivan:
[45:21]
| It's it's composed you know very differently in every place and the reasons.
|
Sam:
[45:27]
| Although i i think there's some commonality that seems to exist, though. That one, there is definitely a sort of pro-peace, the Palestinians are victims, what the Israelis are doing is wrong, kind of protest that is, well motivated like people have the right goal they want they want peace they want to stop stop the killing all that kind of stuff but i am.
|
Ivan:
[45:56]
| I'm for that we we talked about it here we are.
|
Sam:
[45:58]
| We are for that absolutely but we've got a couple other components that seem to always be in place too one there's a lot of people who have not spent the time to know any of the complexities at all and so are simplifying the situation or are jumping onto slogans like, you know, from the river to the sea without knowing the implications of those statements, et cetera. And then on top of that ignorance, you have some people who are clearly, clearly vehement anti-Semites who are sort of rushing in to take advantage of the situation yes and then try to sort of direct it in certain ways and then the people who don't know any better get all caught up in it right and so you've got that dynamic going on so you may well have like you know 80 90 percent of the people there who absolutely mean well and are looking for peace and all this kind of stuff But are just manipulated into a situation where they are making people feel unsafe and they aren't taking into account the full situation.
|
Ivan:
[47:22]
| You know, I summarize the situation, all the points that you said in one sentence today. I said that what I see is a lot of anti-Semitism with a dash of ignorance mixed in with good intentions. Yeah. And it really is. That is the and that's the problem. And, you know, I heard from some people, well, but they're protesting for peace. Why can you you know, how could you go against them? You know, even if there's a couple of bad apples. And, you know, I was thinking about this and I thought, you know what, if there was a protest of white Republican students, OK, protesting Obama's policies and a number of them had nooses, OK, carried around. Round. Would anybody not go and say, this is a whole bunch of fucking racists. You people need to go to hell. Well, I didn't know what a noose means. Fuck you. You don't know? You should have researched it before you went to a fucking protest with a whole bunch of those people. Because if I'm going to go fucking protest somewhere, because I have, I sure as hell am not going to go and join a whole bunch of anti-Semites, you know, fucking, you know, people just saying ignorant, evil things.
|
Sam:
[48:45]
| Yeah. And if you start hearing it, you leave.
|
Ivan:
[48:49]
| Exactly. If I hear it, I'm immediately, either I leave or if it's a minority, I'm grabbing a group of people and saying, hey, you fuckers, you're out of here. No, you're gone. Nobody wants your shit here. Because I've been in protests where that's happened, where all of a sudden you've got a whole bunch of people. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You fuckers get out. We're not having you here. But man, one of the things that Pete shared today was something that happened at Columbia, where somebody went and gave a speech advising them about, hey, what are you guys doing? You're saying full-throated, anti-Semitic slogans. you know, slogans. This is not helpful for the, this is not helpful for the cause. What are you guys doing? Okay. You need to think about who you're trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish. And if you're going to use those methods, then, you know, you're not, you're, you know, you're not going to get support. And somebody went and grabbed the microphone right immediately and shout it to the top of their lungs, the anti-Semitic slogan, and nobody even react and so you're left with what the fuck.
|
Sam:
[50:00]
| And and the key well not not the key like they're one of the aspects of that is that in these situations you're hurting your own cause like if theoretically what you are after is like an equitable peace that's good for everybody in the the region and all of this kind of stuff, then allowing this kind of extremist rhetoric into your midst does nothing for that goal. And it in fact discredits you and hurts you. Now, if your actual goal is aligned with the radical anti-Semite racists, that changes things.
|
Ivan:
[50:44]
| But well, but that's part of the problem. The problem is that I see that being anti-Semitic is kind of I see that so many people fall into anti-semitism so easily people who you wouldn't expect it on on all sorts of social situations where I hear people just throw anti semitic shit like around like it's like I mean it's okay.
|
Sam:
[51:08]
| And the other thing that people, yeah, and people are also in both directions, have a really hard time separating being against the policies of the Israeli government.
|
Ivan:
[51:20]
| Which is deplorable at this moment.
|
Sam:
[51:22]
| Right. Versus being against Jews.
|
Ivan:
[51:26]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[51:26]
| And the problem goes in both directions. In some cases, people are just against the policies and are trying to be clear about that, but they get accused of anti-Semitism. But there's also people who- Well.
|
Ivan:
[51:40]
| You've got that. Yeah, I agree.
|
Sam:
[51:43]
| You've got that, but then you've also got the people who look at what's happening in Israel and make the immediate jump to Jews are bad.
|
Ivan:
[51:51]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[51:52]
| You know, and it's just like we've we've talked over and over and over here. There's a complicated history here. There is wrong on both sides. And it's it's a valid thing. To be against Israel and against Hamas and to be against and by Israel, I mean, the current government of Israel and their current policies, not the existence of the state of Israel. And it's also legitimate to recognize that, yes, the Palestinians were screwed by the creation of Israel in the way that it happened and that some sort of just solution needs to happen that tries to make everybody happy. But we're not in that right now. Obviously, we're nowhere near that.
|
Ivan:
[52:43]
| Well, we're nowhere close to that. We you know, like I said, we were like in the 90s. We thought we were really close to it. And, you know, there's going to be a trade of land for peace. You know, we're going to have this or whatever. But look, one of the problems that I've seen, I remember that the first time I met with a Palestinian group was in the 1980s in Georgetown. I used to go almost every summer for international relations programs at Georgetown University to learn on various, you know, foreign policy subjects. And I learned a lot about a lot of different things, and it really helped me, you know, learn a death about certain issues that I only knew superficially at the time. And one of them was Palestine. We had a very lengthy discussion on Palestine. We met with a number of Palestinian leaders and people, and they were explaining the situation in terms of land, how they're looking for their rights, how they were basically getting screwed by the government. So by the way, of every country around them, not just Israel, okay? Which is one thing that people keep missing about this, is that every government, it's not Israel, just Israel. I mean, they are bordered by a number of other countries, all of them that have basically fucked them over. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[54:00]
| Closing their, you know, well, Israel closed their border. Well, you know what? There's other countries that are around them and they also closed their fucking border and didn't let any food, didn't let any aid, didn't let any of them out, didn't let them anything. And whenever it suited their political purpose, they went and they used them as you know as as pawns for that political situation okay they've been used by iranians that were used by the egyptians have been used by the syrians have been used by the by the jordanians they've been used by the saudis okay they've been used by every fucking group around them for decades okay yeah yeah and you know none of them have really really, truly helped resolve the situation in any way, shape, or form. And so, yes, there is also, like, right now, the situation. And look, when Hamas took over, basically, since that time, everything has slid backwards, okay?
|
Ivan:
[55:05]
| With good reason. The moment I said Hamas took over, I'm like, well, hey, you asked them, They were repeatedly asked, hey, will you renounce your charter? No. Oh, okay. Well, then what the fuck are we talking about? You know, I was like, what, what, what, what, you know, why is America going? I mean, me thinking from the American standpoint, it's like, why the fuck am I dealing with you? You're not going to renounce the charter. So you want, want us to support you? Screw you. Get the fuck out of here. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[55:32]
| But look, although apparently the Netanyahu government was actually helping support Hamas.
|
Ivan:
[55:38]
| They were actually here's here's the funny thing that the past few years leading to this, they thought. That they were helping kind of like some status quo and well, that's just, you know, we could just keep doing whatever we're doing in the West Bank and everything will be OK and we'll support Hamas and everything will be OK. We'll let the Qatari money come in, we'll let them develop and we'll be fine. And then this happened. Okay? Because, in part because, well, the situation was still shitty. Okay? Even though it may have been getting better, it was still pretty shitty. Okay? It wasn't a long-term solution. They were just basically just, not like saying, well, I feel like it's, I've seen this happen with some divorced, well, some couples that are looking for a divorce. Okay? Hmm.
|
Sam:
[56:30]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[56:30]
| Um, Okay, we're not moving out. We're not moving out. No. We're going to live in the same house. And they're at each other's throats for a divorce. And they're still sleeping. I've seen some of them even sharing the same fucking bedroom, even though they hate each other's guts.
|
Sam:
[56:49]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[56:50]
| Well, at some point, that's going to blow up.
|
Sam:
[56:54]
| Yeah. You're not in a sustainable situation there.
|
Ivan:
[56:57]
| No. And that's basically what that was. That was not a sustainable situation. I mean, they may have been making it better, more palatable in some way, but it was still shit. So, you know, Netanyahu, for some reason, thought that this will work. Oh, yeah, this will work. How the fuck is this going to work?
|
Sam:
[57:16]
| And meanwhile, as he's doing that, he's still screwing the West Bank even worse, more and more.
|
Ivan:
[57:22]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[57:23]
| Et cetera.
|
Ivan:
[57:24]
| They're just putting the screws around them and making them feel more miserable. Like, well, how the fuck is this going to work?
|
Sam:
[57:29]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[57:29]
| You're not doing anything to make it palatable. and look, Hamas was looking, look, Hamas has no compunction of using people as meat shields and pawns or whatever and they were like, look what are we going to do, what can we do that generates the most attention, yeah, oh fuck yeah we'll do this, and you know what we'll guarantee that the right wing the right wingers, nobody will stop them and it will be a PR victory for them, and it's been a huge PR victory for them Because they don't give a shit about the people either. None of these assholes give a shit about the people. It's the fucking thing that pisses me off the most about this. None of these people give a shit about the civilians. Fuck them. They're just pawns.
|
Sam:
[58:18]
| Circling back to the protests real quick, one other commonality between these protests all over the country that I didn't mention before is overreactions by the authorities that serve serve nothing like like no those don't help like some of these colleges have been like calling the police who are coming in and violently trying to remove these people and which just no we just riles up students more like you and i we everybody Everybody listening here probably remembers being college aged. And if somebody tells you, you can't do this when you are doing something that you feel is righteous, this just gets more people on board.
|
Ivan:
[59:06]
| No, this will make it worse. No, this will make it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just dumb. I think that there were a lot better ways of dealing with it. And it, yeah, it.
|
Sam:
[59:18]
| It, it spirals and, and, and like, you know, someone pointed out, we are not all that far from the end of the school year.
|
Ivan:
[59:26]
| Right?
|
Sam:
[59:27]
| They just had to just let them do their thing for a few more weeks. It would Peter out on its own. The kids would go off and do finals and graduate and it would be done.
|
Ivan:
[59:38]
| You know, here's the one thing I just think that my.
|
Sam:
[59:43]
| My now, obviously where, where people I wanted to go a little bit beyond that. I just want to say this one thing. Where people were actively being threatened, that is, of course, a different situation. You have to deal with that.
|
Ivan:
[59:55]
| And that's what I'm saying. I'm like, you have to find a way that you could... Listen, I said to a lot of people, you have to find a way, That people needed to be able to protest the injustice that is happening, while at the same time making sure that the stuff that was threatening other people didn't have a difficult task. I understand, but you know what? Having some people from the school going and talking to the students and working with them and explaining and doing something more constructive that way instead of sending just the fucking police in was the appropriate thing. I don't think that sending the police on these encampments, unless they were being violent, okay, was appropriate. And if some people were being threatened, then those needed to be addressed directly. That's what I think. You know, if you had, like, some people, like, one of the things that came out is that one of the leaders in the protest in Colombia happened to be a guy that was, like, basically taken to an interview. You know was brought to a meeting at the university and basically he had said basically i want all the jews dead and he's like are you okay well that's not acceptable and he's like i don't care and.
|
Sam:
[1:01:09]
| And just right well just to be clear also this was a recording surfaced of him from a while back it wasn't like he was at the.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:17]
| It was january yeah well the point that a while A while back.
|
Sam:
[1:01:21]
| Meaning just before these protests, you know, but.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:24]
| But it shows what.
|
Sam:
[1:01:26]
| Oh yeah, no, absolutely. No, no, no disagreement. It's just what, what.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:30]
| What it shows is that that's what, this is what his intent was with this. Okay. If this was his, this was his conviction.
|
Sam:
[1:01:40]
| Yeah. He kept, he, the Zionists must die. Well, he kept saying they don't deserve to live was the words that he.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:46]
| They don't deserve to live. Well, close enough. Yeah. I mean give me a fucking break.
|
Sam:
[1:01:53]
| Yeah I mean and if I listen I listen to one quote of him at first he said don't deserve to live in peace, which is yet a little bit different and then he just dropped in peace and just said don't deserve to live which is still a which is still a step short of saying please kill them but it's no.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:14]
| Okay, Sam you don't deserve to live yeah I mean, yeah. So, you know, look, I just, And it's, and, and, and yes, it's complicated. Like everything is with this and, you know, yeah. And I, and I get, you know, I, I really, it really drives me crazy when institutions like this don't figure out the proper way to deal with these kinds of situations. And I don't think that they've been prepared for a lot of the stuff that's been happening this last few years in general with the grilling that a lot of university presidents got recently where these guys went up there and I'm thinking these are educated people. They're going to be prepared for this, right? And they look like fools.
|
Sam:
[1:03:09]
| And several of them are gone now.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:11]
| And several of them are gone. Not because they did anything wrong, but because basically they couldn't figure out how to handle a fucking PR crisis.
|
Sam:
[1:03:18]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:22]
| I mean, that was it. I mean, they went up there and looked like idiots and basically wound up making themselves expendable. I'm like, look, if you cannot be our standard bearer for communicating a message properly, then fuck you get the hell out of here. year.
|
Sam:
[1:03:35]
| Well and and honestly it's not just the communication part in this case it's also they they just didn't know what the hell to do like.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:43]
| They didn't know what the hell to do they were just you know i admit it's.
|
Sam:
[1:03:49]
| A tough situation there are a lot of no-win scenarios there like.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:53]
| Say it's a tough situation but you know what they're getting.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:55]
| Paid millions of dollars a year for this kind of shit okay i'm sorry but you know what that's what you're getting paid for you know i've been in position of responsibility for a lot of things of which i get paid some which i don't and i'm like if i come up looking like a moron like that and i have no idea what to do i deserve to get fired yeah yeah i mean i deserve to get fired and.
|
Sam:
[1:04:23]
| Presumably like it's it's not just like the one guy doesn't know what to do they've got they've got resources to call upon.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:31]
| Got a staff they've got i mean they've got money to go with like it bring advisors be arkansas whatever the hell you need a.
|
Sam:
[1:04:42]
| Crisis manager you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:44]
| All this shit no no we're like you don't know what to do and again in the.
|
Sam:
[1:04:52]
| End they end up settling on something that's very likely to make it worse rather than better and like let's just call the cops.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:59]
| The problem is that, you know, I think the biggest problem is that, institutions of higher education since the the MAGA movement got going have been under attack.
|
Sam:
[1:05:14]
| Yes for.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:15]
| The last decade for various reasons.
|
Sam:
[1:05:18]
| Oh and and and by the way i mentioned like people coming in and trying to take advantage of the situation you had like speaker johnson coming into columbia doing exactly the same thing too there there were reports of you know rallies that were organized and like pro-Israel, blah, blah, blah, that turn out to be white Christian nationalists, you know, organizing the thing and trying to sort of trick people into supporting their agenda, all kinds of people like diving in, trying to take advantage of this situation to promote their own agendas.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:53]
| Yeah. And, and that's, and that's the biggest issue. So you've had this, You've had this situation where, well, exactly, that happens there, this is happening, and the leaders of these institutions are acting like it's 1999. 99 and and like you know uh it's all just about academia it's all just about whatever not about the community not about the pr and they have no clue about what the fuck to do about these situations or they don't have the the intelligence to go and hire people to help them navigate through the damn situation which is a which is which is even worse okay it speaks to their lack of leadership in general, executive leadership and management skills.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:47]
| Yeah, so and maybe it's just that the need for who that person is there now, considering all the attacks that they are under, the profile of the person has changed. It can't just be an academic anymore, okay? It has to be now somebody that can deal with all of these different pressures that are coming in from different sides and be able to do that. And so, because these institutions are under attack from all different sides, and I don't think it's going to get better soon. I think it may be a decade or more before the situation is really back to where it was. So it demands that the leadership that you got better be prepared for this.
|
Sam:
[1:07:41]
| Well, yeah, I mean, because fundamentally, like, backing up a little bit, the culture wars and MAGA and all of this kind of stuff, there is a very, very high correlation, like practically more than most other things you can look at, that this is really a movement that is anti-education, anti-intellectual, anti-higher education, etc. et cetera. Like, you know, people have said for a long time, the biggest divide is urban versus rural. And it probably is still, but the second biggest correlation you can find is education.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:20]
| Oh, a hundred percent. Education is the, is the second biggest one. Totally.
|
Sam:
[1:08:25]
| Right. Like you look at income, for instance, people, people like it's not income. It's not income.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:31]
| It's education because you've got, you know, you definitely have a lot of MAGA people that have money. That's for sure. I mean I was reading an article today about some, That douchebag. They were talking about the $400,000 tax. Are you rich at $400,000? 41-year-old African-American guy makes over $400,000 that feels that Biden is out to get him and he's going to vote for Trump. And I am just like, I want to grab this guy. Well, first of all, he's not rich, okay? And second, he's getting screwed by the taxes, and he's African-American, he's going to vote for Trump. And I just want to punch him dead in the face.
|
Sam:
[1:09:20]
| $400K a year is very near the top of the U.S. income distribution. I think it's 1% in most states.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:30]
| Maybe 2%. In a lot of states. Not in all of them, but it's close enough.
|
Sam:
[1:09:33]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:33]
| Now you're in the top 3%, at least for sure.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| At least. And probably less. I mean, you're not in the top 0.01%, but you're, you're, you're doing damn good.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:43]
| You're doing damn good.
|
Sam:
[1:09:44]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:45]
| You know, and if you're probably like not being able to struggling with cash, the bank account is probably because of that last vacation that you took and the damn, you know, the damn $1,500 car payment that you've got. Okay. So, you know, you're breaking my heart.
|
Sam:
[1:10:00]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:01]
| Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. okay one.
|
Sam:
[1:10:05]
| Other thing i want to mention before we move on and it's time to move.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:08]
| On oh oh oh wait wait no no no before i you know i know i also was looking today that there was also some some, 24 year old colombian woman you know my my wife's colombian so that's why it grabbed my attention oh.
|
Sam:
[1:10:25]
| That that colombia not the university we were just talking about.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:28]
| Yeah no no colombia the country tree okay and it's spelled with an o no with o's not with a u okay it happens all the time fucking you know it's that she does she's my wife is not from the space shuttle okay all right or the district the.
|
Sam:
[1:10:43]
| District she's from the district right.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:45]
| That's where yeah she's not from the district and she's not from the fucking space shuttle born.
|
Sam:
[1:10:49]
| In walter reed.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:49]
| Yes yeah but that would be well born in walter reed that would have been something you know she was running for what What was it? It was a secretary of state of Missouri. Okay. And 24 year old. And she was came out with a machine gun saying Magus coming for your votes. And I'm like, what in the fucking hell is wrong with this woman?
|
Sam:
[1:11:18]
| That was a bit of a tangent, but okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:21]
| No, but it's the same as this other fucking guy. I mean, it's like a fucking Latino, you know, carrying a fucking gun, like going full MAGA. What, what, what, what, what, what is, what, what, 24 years old? What's going on? The fuck is going on, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:11:43]
| If I knew.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:46]
| What the fuck is going on?
|
Sam:
[1:11:52]
| Okay oh she.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:53]
| Also had a video of her flame throwing books that she was going to outlaw when she became secretary of state.
|
Sam:
[1:11:59]
| Nice oh this was all in like her campaign commercial or something the stuff you're talking about okay i got i was missing that piece of context i i thought she was just going wild and on the street or something no.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:11]
| No what her campaign materials.
|
Sam:
[1:12:15]
| Okay i guess that's slightly better than just running around like downtown with the machine gun or whatever well.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:24]
| Yes that is slightly better but if this is a fucking candidate for the gop is voting up for secretary of state well.
|
Sam:
[1:12:32]
| This is almost mandatory in the gop at this point in many parts of the country like you your campaign stuff you have to be you have to be holding a a nice big gun. Or two. Or three.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:43]
| Huh. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:12:45]
| Nice flag behind you, too. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:50]
| And an NRA hat. Here it is. It's, uh, Missouri Secretary of State candidate uses flamethrower to burn books. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:13:00]
| That's lovely.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:01]
| A Republican candidate for Missouri Secretary of State posted a video of a book burning on social media. Valentina Gomez posted a video where she used the flamethrower to light fire the books on the social media platform X Tuesday afternoon. When I'm Secretary of State, I will burn all the books.
|
Sam:
[1:13:18]
| Books? Books? Burn the books!
|
Ivan:
[1:13:25]
| I don't know why I put that. I'll burn all the books that are grooming, indoctrinating, and sexualizing all children. MAGA. America First.
|
Sam:
[1:13:39]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:40]
| Fuck is going on, Sam? Fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:13:48]
| You done now?
|
Ivan:
[1:13:49]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:13:51]
| I just wanted to point people to, we were talking about all the protests. There was an op-ed in the New York Times dated April 26th that I thought was sort of nicely even-handed, talked about sort of all the complexity and weirdness that was going on in these demonstrations and all the various, forces going back and forth. It was by Lydia Paul Green. The student led protests aren't perfect. That doesn't mean they're not right. And it talks about a lot of the same stuff that Yvonne and I talked about. And I thought it was well written and good overview.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:28]
| I'm going to say that there was one last thing on protesting. There's one thing that it reminded me deeply of. There was a number of Puerto Ricans that were Very Fidelistas, pro Fidel Castro.
|
Sam:
[1:14:41]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:42]
| And advocating for independence of Puerto Rico, which I'm fine with you advocating for independence of Puerto Rico. I don't see a problem. But the thing is that the model they pointed at was Fidel. Okay. And how they praise Fidel and idolize Fidel. And I'm just like, you guys are praising and analyzing a fucking monster. A guy that, you know, with no compunction assassinated his opponents, jailed them, arrest them, beat them. I mean, he beat people that are, you know, that are in my family by marriage and jailed them and they had to leave the country because of it. And, you know, and I'm just like, I don't understand this fucking fetish of whether it's on the left or on the right of idolizing these fucking thugs.
|
Sam:
[1:15:32]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:36]
| And, and, and I was like, I'm seeing them and they're using as a standard bearer. And I'm like, this is your standard bearer for your protest. Fuck you. Okay. I'm just, you know, I'm sorry. You lost me because I've got, you know, my wife's father-in-law was jailed and beaten by this monster for no good reason whatsoever. You had to fucking get on a goddamn boat across the Miami to redo, to basically rebuild this life from scratch. I'm sorry. and you want to tell me how great he is fuck you, no and no no you're all over your mind you're all fascist now yeah okay they're the fascists but he's just the saint.
|
Sam:
[1:16:23]
| Okay let's take a break we'll come back it'll be my turn and as seems to be my role in the last couple months I am of course, I'm going to pick all the Trump stuff there's been a ton oh god we're.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:42]
| Not going to talk about the weather.
|
Sam:
[1:16:44]
| Nah you know what else was on our list we got, TikTok we got the TikTok ban TikTok TikTok ban yeah oh well no I'll feed that in with the Trump stuff in the next thing we'll be back after this Yes. Okay we're back and it's not, you know harry's robot, checking one thing real quick i'm i'm struggling.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:23]
| With pronouncing the word book and.
|
Sam:
[1:19:25]
| Book you know book gotta have the book book.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:29]
| Books gotta have the book.
|
Sam:
[1:19:32]
| Okay yeah every time we play the ray lynch thing i i just go check his like wikipedia page make sure he's still okay everything's fine you know blah blah blah yeah uh he's still fine he's 80 years old now so okay okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:50]
| Well that's good.
|
Sam:
[1:19:50]
| Anyway first off before any other trump stuff a correction an important correction Correction.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:59]
| Correction.
|
Sam:
[1:20:00]
| Last week, I repeated on the show that Michael Cohen had said essentially, and I was paraphrasing, but essentially that if Donald Trump went to Barron's high school graduation, it would be the first graduation of any of his kids he actually went to.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:19]
| Oh, we didn't say that correction on the show? Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:20:21]
| No, that was last week that we said it the other way.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:26]
| Oh, I thought it was longer. I don't. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:20:31]
| Ed, Ed, Ed jumped in on our commudgeon's course Slack and said that Snopes had actually looked into this. And in fact, he had attended all of his kids' graduations, except Don jr. I believe was the one that did not happen because he had some sort of other obligation, but he has gone to all the other kids' graduations. And so Michael Cohen, uh, Was not telling the truth, which, you know, Michael Cohen.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:02]
| He has a little bit of a history with.
|
Sam:
[1:21:04]
| Yeah, he's got a history of that. And, you know, I think he was, you know, to give the most possible benefit of the doubt, he was just jumping in and saying it because it was funny and it was indeed funny. And of course, like meets everybody's preconceived notions of what Donald Trump is like. So I stupidly repeated a thing that Michael Cohen had said without independent verification, and I got burned by misinformation. So Donald Trump has gone to his kid's graduation.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:42]
| Let's see.
|
Sam:
[1:21:45]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:46]
| Wait, hold on. Let me double check.
|
Sam:
[1:21:48]
| Are you double checking to make sure Ed didn't lie to us about Snopes?
|
Ivan:
[1:21:52]
| Yeah. I'm just reading this to those subscribers.
|
Sam:
[1:21:56]
| Ed probably lied to us. Ed's like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:59]
| And nearly all, yeah, reports nearly place former President Donald Trump, and apparently it's false. Trump has been present at each of his children's high school and college graduations according to Tom Perini's reports and a recollection of other attendees. So, yes. So, it's basically, it's been confirmed by multiple sources.
|
Sam:
[1:22:19]
| There you go. So. Okay. Okay, there you go. So I guess Ed told the truth. He's not a liar like Michael Cohen.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:27]
| No, no, no, no. I told the truth. I just wanted to, I was just reading it. I got to here and it was a little bit confusing. There was a double negative. And I was like, wait, what? I'm like, no, no, no. It's correct.
|
Sam:
[1:22:39]
| Okay. So other than that, we had, there's a bunch of Trump news this week, just as big categories. We've got the the new york trump trial has been going on we've got not just jury selection now we've got actual trial happening witnesses all that kind of stuff happening we had new, indictments of trump related folks in arizona and both arizona and michigan declaring trump an unindicted co-conspirator these are related to the fake elector cases cases. And, oh, and Trump's bond was accepted with a few slight modifications, despite, you know, how, how sure Yvonne was. One more thing, let me list all of the things. And then, and then finally, of course, the Supreme Court case on immunity. Okay. You can talk about the bonds first and then we'll go through the others.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:43]
| Well, the bit, well, listen, the simple thing, the biggest modification that was made was that it was a discussion that we had about that, the fact that it wasn't backed, By the money that it was backed by an account, but that they had the right to take over the account. So the money was sort of pledged.
|
Sam:
[1:24:03]
| They had verified the balance once and had the right to take over the account at some point in the future. Right. The modification is basically, no, you take over the account right now and you keep it. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:13]
| And so they, they, they, so, right. So they, they, they were forced to turn over the, the account. So, so that was, you know, so that, that folded. Fulfilled the bond, and I guess so it stood because he basically has had to put up the $175 million, even after he basically tried to weasel his way around it, but eventually had to be boning up $275 million somehow.
|
Sam:
[1:24:40]
| Yeah, it's still kind of annoying that they lowered it from the original amount, but, you know, whatever. Yeah. And so that, well.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:50]
| The good news is that he seems to be trying Continuing to the fame, uh, each and Carol.
|
Sam:
[1:24:56]
| Yeah. He's doing that too. And, and by the way, his appeal that this bond is for it is September, I believe.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:05]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:25:07]
| September is not that far away. So no, of course that's the first appeal. I'm sure there'll be more after that. Right. Like he'll, he'll appeal all the way. Just go to everything else. He does.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:21]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:25:22]
| Okay. Yes. Next up, the New York trial itself. So far, we've had the ex-editor of the National Enquirer, Pecker. What's his first name? All I know is it's Pecker.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:36]
| I think it's David.
|
Sam:
[1:25:37]
| David Pecker.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:38]
| I think it's David Pecker.
|
Sam:
[1:25:40]
| Anyway, because, of course, nobody can resist the Pecker jokes.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:45]
| I mean, the best thing would have been if he was Richard. If he would have been Richard Pecker, then that would have been fantastic. That would have been epic, but no, we didn't get that.
|
Sam:
[1:25:57]
| Yeah. I'm confirming. Yes. It's, it's David Becker. Anyway, he, he was the first witness called. And then we've, since then we've had, uh, Trump's executive assistant from the Trump org and a banker that was one of the bankers for Cohen. But the big one this week was was Packer. And basically, he outlined the whole way catch and kill worked at the National Inquirer, how he did it twice. Twice once for the doorman who accused Trump of having a love child with a maid, which apparently has been confirmed to be false. I, you know, and I remember when this rumor was out there and I was like, oh, of course that makes sense. But again, it's, this is one where apparently it's not true. Apparently the, the doorman made it up to try to get some cash and he did get some cash. And so, and then the, the, the playboy model as well, also that he had a one year affair with, and she was also paid off by the national inquirer.
|
Sam:
[1:27:09]
| And, you know, in that case, like she was given money, but she was the whole thing. She, she was trying to get a contract to actually like restart her career and write articles for the magazine and all this kind of stuff. Off you know as far as the magazine was concerned it was really it was just a cover for keeping her quiet but she like honestly like wanted like you know to be a writer and to go to red carpet events and cover things as a reporter and blah blah blah and they basically screwed her on all that stuff too they eventually published a few of her articles i think but and and then he talked about how the The third time for Stormy Daniels, the quote was, I am not a bank. I'm not paying for another one of these. Why don't you do it yourself? And that's where the whole Michael Cohen getting a second mortgage in order to pay Stormy and then getting paid back by Donald Trump. That was the genesis of all that. And- Yeah. And that's basically where we are now. Any thoughts on where this has gone so far? I mean, some of this testimony has been, I mean, none of it's been good for Donald Trump this week. Even when his defense got to cross examine these people, they didn't make much headway.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:30]
| I mean, so far, a lot of this we had heard from before all of.
|
Sam:
[1:28:39]
| All of, I mean, I think all of this, and I think this is going to go through the whole trial, like the general outlines of this have been known for years and years and years.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:48]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:28:49]
| There are a few additional details. There's a few additional confirmations, you know, some hearing some of it said out loud is like still like, oh, wow, that's interesting details. But, you know, well.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:04]
| You know, I think it has I think it has a bigger impact when, OK, you've heard about these stories about Mr. Pecker. OK, right. I like calling him Mr. Pecker. But, you know, the thing is that to hear him have to take the stand and declare that all of that was exactly as we have heard has a different impact, at least to me. And I think it had a different impact to the jurors, even to just sort of third hand. This is, you know, look, it's. Pretty much outlined by him that all of that that we'd heard about this was pretty much accurate and.
|
Sam:
[1:29:37]
| To to be clear too like the stuff that he had been testifying to so far wasn't the illegal part like the the sort.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:47]
| Of catch and.
|
Sam:
[1:29:47]
| Kill operations that were done by the national.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:50]
| Well wasn't the illegal part for this case right the the reality is that a lot of this is campaign finance violations Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30:02]
| Well, and he specifically talked like a couple of important parts here were one, he knew this was illegal because he'd done it before for Arnold Schwarzenegger and gotten in trouble for it.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:16]
| Ah, that I didn't hear.
|
Sam:
[1:30:18]
| Hear oh you didn't hear this he apparently when arnold schwarzenegger were running for governor arnold schwarzenegger came to pecker and asked him to help with these scenarios and and pecker helped cover up 30 different people schwarzenegger was having affairs with, yeah well something like 30 i i forget the exact number but it was a it was a large number I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:45]
| You know, Arnold has basically himself admitted to this as much.
|
Sam:
[1:30:51]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:51]
| So, okay. It's just the number is just always like, wow. Damn.
|
Sam:
[1:30:55]
| Well, and so, and so, and apparently this was a California campaign finance issue and he started to be investigated and blah, blah, blah. And apparently he got out of it by the skin of his teeth.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:10]
| So, so he knew, so he knew that this was illegal. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:15]
| So he specifically testified this week that yes, he absolutely, the two, two important things. One, he was absolutely clear and repeated over and over and over again that this was all about the campaign. It was about protecting the campaign. It wasn't about protecting the family or keeping Melania from finding out or anything like that. It was 100% totally about the campaign. and he said that yes I absolutely knew this was a crime great, and by the way he has immunity he has immunity he made a deal that's what and the deal involves he has to be completely forthright say all this stuff not not keep anything back etc you.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:03]
| Know Melania's prenup was really suck.
|
Sam:
[1:32:08]
| Because she's still there oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:09]
| My god yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:32:11]
| She did a fundraiser today.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:13]
| I know she looked totally unthrilled. I mean, that's why I'm like, I mean, this prenup was really, really suck.
|
Sam:
[1:32:27]
| Yes anyway so so number one was it was all about the campaign and number two they knew it was a crime or at least packard knew it was a crime i mean i'm sure they're gonna argue that trump or cohen or somebody didn't but oh come.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:42]
| On to fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:32:44]
| You know because you know it would have been yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:47]
| A guy that hire that basically has lawyers for breakfast lunch and dinner basically has been lawyered up for decades, had no idea that this is a crime. Yes, that's right.
|
Sam:
[1:33:00]
| Like what might have been a plausible case before Pecker's testimony, I mean, and barely plausible, but let's call it, I mean, it's basically like if you remember in the Mueller investigation, There was a question about whether there were campaign finance violations in some of the interactions that were had where where Junior was trying to get information from the Russians and stuff like that. And the reason that muller identified that they couldn't charge don jr was they thought he was too dumb to know it was a crime that he just was ignorant of the campaign finance laws and had no idea the argument here for trump would be like hey he'd been doing this stuff with pecker apparently for over a decade, long before he was running for president. And so it only became potentially illegal when it was related to the campaign. Maybe he just didn't know. Now, it seems like with this Pecker testimony.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:13]
| That's less liable. But there was also, I'm remembering that, there was an audio tape of him in an interview talking about the Edwards case.
|
Sam:
[1:34:29]
| Of Trump talking about it?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:31]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:34:32]
| No, Trump. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:34]
| And talking about and talking about the campaign finance aspects of it and all this shit. So, you know what? I am sure that the fucking prosecutors have this tape. Bullshit. He didn't know. As usual on somewhere, Mr. Blabbermouth blasted it out.
|
Sam:
[1:34:59]
| Right. So anyway, all of this stuff that's been going on so far is basically, people have called it setting the table. It's basically talking about all of these events that led up to things. Remember, the actual crime that's charged here is fraudulently describing the financial transactions. It's the business records being wrong. So all of this information about the actual, you know, here's all the catch and kills, here's all the NDAs that were set up, paying the hush money itself, all of that is background information, essentially. The crime that's being charged is falsifying the business records to cover all of that up.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:48]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:35:50]
| And because the stuff that's being covered up is a crime.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:54]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:35:56]
| That is what bumps it to a felony. So we shall see one of it. Two other things, two other things on New York before moving on to the others. One is the judge still hasn't ruled anything on the violations of his gag order. They already had a hearing on 10 incidents where the prosecution claims the gag order was violated. The another five have been submitted that since then and a new hearing has been scheduled for next week on the next batch of five but the judge still hasn't ruled on the first batch as of you know friday night when we're recording this so we don't expect anything till next week he's not going to rule something over the weekend or at least that'd be really surprising and they have monday off as well and so there's some people are speculating on why is the judge waiting so long Is it because he's just collecting more and more examples?
|
Sam:
[1:37:01]
| Is it because he wants to retain that leverage as long as possible? Because sort of if he just at the end of this issue some fine, then Trump will be like, oh, it's just all he's going to do is fines. I can keep going. Or does he issue a fine plus a warning? warning, people have said if he does at some point want to do jail time, first of all, he probably wouldn't do that on the first round. But if he did do that on, say, the second round, the smart thing to do would be to, it's criminal contempt. Say criminal contempt, you're going to spend X amount of time in jail. The maximum is 30 days for this apparently.
|
Sam:
[1:37:39]
| But that's suspended until after the trial is over. So they don't, don't interrupt the trial in any way. It's sort of at the end of the trial, we'll throw you into slammer. Or if you're good for the rest of the trial, then we'll, we'll waive it at the end. And maybe that's the way to actually, like, if your goal is to actually shut them up, maybe that's what you do. You go ahead and give them the jail time, but with a carrot that says, if you behave yourself for the rest of the trial, then we will expunge that at the end. And you won't actually have to do that. I don't know. Cause it also seems like at least in some ways, it looks like Trump would actually is saying that would be great for me. I would love the PR throw me in jail for a couple of days. Now I'm not sure he wants to do 30 days, but like, Like, you know, overnight, a few hours, he would probably, you know, be okay with that and mine it for everything it was worth politically. I don't know. But he hasn't stopped yet, which is why, like, every few days the prosecution is submitting another notice of, like, here's the next set of stuff he did. Here's the next set of stuff he did. So we'll see what the judge does here. It can't really do nothing. It's got to do something.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:58]
| I'm sure it's upward. I'm just wondering what the heck it's going to be. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:39:03]
| Now, one thing that I heard pointed out that I honestly don't think would materialize into anything, but is theoretically possible, is that Trump's conditions of release for his other three trials, The one in Georgia, the one in Florida, the one in D.C. All specify that he can't commit any additional crimes. If the judge finds him guilty of contempt of criminal contempt of court even if he only gives him a fine technically speaking he is being found guilty of another crime and would be in violation of his conditions of release in all the other jurisdictions and so theoretically one of those other three judges could decide to revoke his bail and throw him in jail until the trial. Now, I do not think that this is going to happen. No. Well, judge cannon, surely she would, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:18]
| Yeah. Yeah, sure.
|
Sam:
[1:40:19]
| She is. She's first in line.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:20]
| First in line.
|
Sam:
[1:40:21]
| First in line. No, but I, I honestly don't think any of them would do that. They might give him an additional warning or something, but yeah, Especially if it's like, hey, yes, it's a crime, but the penalty has already been applied by the other judge. I've heard somebody, like I said, I heard somebody talking about this and saying, well, they could do this. Yeah, they could. Maybe. They won't. The the final thing uh on new york is i realized we hadn't sort of put in our predictions beforehand, we've talked before about the possibility of a hung jury i i think the right now if i had to put odds i'd go 50 50 between a conviction and a hung jury like and and possibly no way listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:15]
| I'm gonna No, I put the chances of a hundred and three.
|
Sam:
[1:41:21]
| At least on some charges. Actually, if I'm going to throw it out there completely, I would say... We're going to have a split verdict. It won't be the same for all the charges. There will be, you know, I don't think anything's going to be completely acquitted. I don't think he's going to be able to do that. There's a chance that he gets convicted on the misdemeanor, but not the felony. There's a chance of a hung jury. And there's a chance he gets, just gets flat out convicted. Any one of these have reasonable probabilities, maybe 50, 50 is wrong. Well, I'll take back to 50, 50, but, All three of those outcomes have non-trivial possibilities here. And, you know, I bring up the hung jury because, like, at least one of the jurors said on their little forum that they have a truth social account. Now, they also said they watch MSNBC. So it may just be like.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:17]
| They got a truth social account.
|
Sam:
[1:42:19]
| Yo, Joe Biden has a truth social account.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:22]
| Exactly. That doesn't mean shit.
|
Sam:
[1:42:27]
| So I don't know. What do you think? You were about to say you think he's getting convicted? You think this is looking really bad?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:33]
| I think he's getting convicted. The question is going to be at what level, but I think he's getting convicted. I would say that the chance of him not being convicted...
|
Sam:
[1:42:47]
| All it takes is one for that hung jury.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:50]
| But a hung jury... Okay, but I still... I really think that the chance of a hung jury is probably less than 10%.
|
Sam:
[1:42:59]
| What is going to the misdemeanor? Would you say you might convince me here?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:04]
| I'd say that that one, like being the misdemeanor is more of 50, 50.
|
Sam:
[1:43:08]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:09]
| But, but the hung jury, I'd say it's less than 10% because I think that it's going to be.
|
Sam:
[1:43:15]
| What about hanging on some of the charges, but not all of them?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:20]
| No, I really think the chance of the hurry jury being hung is less than 10%.
|
Sam:
[1:43:25]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:25]
| I, I, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:43:29]
| I mean, the other thing that is clear, like, I mean, we're, we're, we're, we're only a small way in. We've had a couple of days of testament of testimony, but so far, like the defense hasn't had a lot going for them. You know, they've been, you know, the prosecution has been laying out, here's fact, here's fact, here's fact, here's fact, here's fact. And, you know, the prosecution, I mean, the defense, when they've cross-examined, haven't made a lot of headway to knock any of that stuff down. And in fact, in a couple of times where they tried with Pecker, they actually ended up making it worse for themselves based on his answers.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:11]
| Which is why I keep saying that he's going to get convicted I'm pretty sure you know, I, especially if that's the way that they're handling, like the, the cross-examination, basically the prosecution is getting, is laying out a case and they've got almost no answers for it. And look at what happened with E.J. and Carol. I mean, I'm telling you, I think he's going down. I mean, I think it's more than 90% for sure that he's losing.
|
Sam:
[1:44:48]
| And so, like, to split that up, because you said 50-50 misdemeanor, so 10% chance hung jury, 45 convicted on misdemeanors, 45 convicted on felony. Is that what you're saying?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:04]
| Jesus Christ. I'm saying that he's got a 90% chance of being convicted of at least a misdemeanor. Okay and and that it goes higher to like it goes lower to like 50 of the felony but that he's going to be convicted it's higher than 90 is 90 or higher chance okay.
|
Sam:
[1:45:31]
| You you've you've moved me off my 50 but i'm not going as high as 90 i'll go to 75 chance of conviction 25 hundred because Because again, it only takes one. It takes one asshole getting in and they can screw the whole thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:48]
| Yeah, it's fucking New York. You know, one of the things about that I've found in New York is that it's hard to find people that like Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:45:56]
| Well, yeah. Well, that was his whole argument about it's unfair to try me in New York. We got to move. They took that argument.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:07]
| Literally, that is his fucking argument.
|
Sam:
[1:46:09]
| Well, it's one of them. He made a whole bunch of different motions.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:12]
| Yeah, but literally that he had that as an argument.
|
Sam:
[1:46:15]
| One of them was he needs to change the venue because there's no possible way he could get a fair trial in New York. Because everybody hates him there.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:25]
| I mean, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:28]
| But, you know, they found some, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I keep getting softer. Maybe I'm up to 80 now. there you go i don't know but i don't want to discount like i feel like until i see the conviction i don't want to rule out the possibility of a hung jury you know it it it it it's you know that's all he's looking for is to inject that benefit of the doubt or you know into the, One juror who says, you know, I have, I have reasonable doubt.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:11]
| But, but like I said, you know, look, as much as they know, they went through the jurors, there's a pool. This is still a New York jury pool. I mean, I, and he is not helping himself.
|
Sam:
[1:47:23]
| He keeps falling asleep and.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:25]
| He's not helping. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:47:26]
| Yeah. He hasn't like gone all out. Like when he testified in the E.G. and Carol.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:36]
| I thought Biden was Mr. Low Energy.
|
Sam:
[1:47:38]
| Yeah. When he testified in the E.G. and Carol trial, he hurt himself to no end because he just proved to everybody everything was true.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:47]
| Exactly. So how do you expect this to go any better? I mean, that's the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:47:53]
| But, well, so far we've only had reports that he's falling asleep in trial. Not that he's, like, making horrible faces and rolling his eyes.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:01]
| No, he has been making horrible faces. What are you talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:48:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:05]
| He has been making faces. He's been rolling his eyes. He's been doing all of that shit, too.
|
Sam:
[1:48:12]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:13]
| And farting.
|
Sam:
[1:48:14]
| I hadn't heard that as much this time. Well, and the farting, that definitely has been reported. Reported that apparently there is an odor issue in the courtroom.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:29]
| You know just just because of the smell let me just convict them quickly because i want to get the fuck out of here.
|
Sam:
[1:48:36]
| The only people mentioning the smell by the way it was off the record by a trusted source blah blah no one will officially say that the one One quote that was on the record that I thought was apt and is backed up by other people. Rachel Maddow attended and was in the room for one of the days of court. MSNBC has been rotating in and out their anchors so they can all experience it directly. But her quote after that day was, he seemed old and tired and mad. And a lot of people describing him have said things like he he looks diminished he definitely looks older than he has in the past he looks out of his element he's you know etc and and basically like this is taking a toll on him good and he himself has been complaining about how cold it is in the in the room and how they won't do anything about it and he has to sit there all day and blah blah blah and you know i'm so sorry for him can.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:44]
| We throw pity fucking party for him.
|
Sam:
[1:49:47]
| Uh Okay, we're running out of time. So I'll just real briefly say the Arizona and Michigan stuff is interesting because in both of these cases, in Michigan, I think it was basically just, no, no, I won't even say that. In both these cases, it's the fake electors and I think some surrounding officials. The one that was just indicted in Arizona once again gets like Meadows and Giuliani and oh, Christina Robb, who is the RNC's chief of like, you know, election integrity or something, is one of the ones indicted for this. This oh my god the.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:36]
| Fucking chief of election integrity.
|
Sam:
[1:50:39]
| Yes literally yes anyway a whole bunch of trump circle people jesus.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:49]
| Christ it's a fucking circus.
|
Sam:
[1:50:53]
| Anyway there are a whole bunch of charges surrounding the fake elector scheme both of these cases in arizona and michigan are moving forward. Neither one of them indicted Trump himself, although he was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in both. The Michigan one, he isn't specifically called out in the indictment, but there was some court activity that named him that this last week. In Arizona, he's specific. One of the things was like, individual one who is president of the United united states it's like okay well yeah yes yeah it was biden i it specified the dates in which this was happening but yeah anyway and there's some speculation and people saying well why wasn't he indicted one thing i've heard is like the reason georgia could do it is they have him on tape. They've got that whole tape with him and Raffsenberger. They've got really solid, okay, look, here he is. We've got all of this. And maybe the direct evidence on Donald Trump just wasn't as strong in these other cases where it was Meadows or Giuliani or whoever doing all the dirty work. There are reports that Donald Trump called people in Arizona too, but there's no tape.
|
Sam:
[1:52:22]
| You know, so, or maybe they'll, they'll be a superseding indictment later that does add him. Or maybe the prosecutors there want to see how this works out in the other states before they take a shot. You know, there, there are all kinds of reasons why, why they might not have indicted him, but I, it would have been really amusing if another indictment got dumped on Donald Trump right in the middle of his other trial, but no, But still, all the people around him did. And of course, yeah, we have seen how slow these things are. So these aren't going to see the light of day in terms of an actual trial this year for sure. But more wheels are turning elsewhere. Finally.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:10]
| Finally.
|
Sam:
[1:53:11]
| Finally. Finally. And we probably should have saved more time for this. But the argument on absolute immunity for the president from criminal prosecution when in front of the Supreme Court, the consensus from the talking heads, look, first of all, I made a prediction on the Commodions Court Slack. I forgot to do it last week on the show, but basically saying, hey, what the court is going to do is they're not going to say there is absolute immunity. But they're going to say there is some immunity and they're going to define some guidelines around that. And then they're going to kick it back down to the lower courts to decide the details of what is or is not covered under the new guidelines they've given. And that will extend the DC trial so that it can't possibly start this year.
|
Sam:
[1:54:07]
| The consensus seems to be that's where it is, But also, I'll say, like, so many of the legal talking heads I've listened to this week seem to, before the arguments themselves, be sort of holding out the position that, yes, it's a conservative court. Yes, they chose to wait a long time and hear this now where they could have heard this a lot earlier or just affirmed the lower court's judgment and not heard it at all. But this is clear cut. There is no such immunity. There's 200 years of history that there's no immunity. And so of course, they're going to rule that there's no immunity. They just want to put their stamp on it. Because fundamentally, there may be ideological disagreement, but all of these justices do really care about the law and blah, blah, blah. I heard a lot of these same talking heads come on and say, I was wrong.
|
Sam:
[1:55:13]
| The conservative justices on the court, at least four of them, maybe five of them, actually five of them, with the exception of Coney Barrett.
|
Sam:
[1:55:26]
| Didn't seem to even be really making legal arguments. They were seemed to be starting from the premise that we have to find a way to not let this happen to Donald and figure out a justification for that. There was a lot of talk of official versus private acts and whether or not there would be immunity for everybody seemed to agree no immunity for private acts. But that there could be immunity for certain official acts. Well, I shouldn't say all the conservatives agreed that there was all agreement on private. On official acts, the conservative justices seem to think there might be some immunity for some official acts. And so we have to really explore that and determine where the boundary is, blah, blah, blah. Whereas the argument that the special counsel was making and that the lower courts accepted was, no, there's no immunity. And even if there is some sort of immunity for some narrow group of official acts, it doesn't matter because none of those are implicated in this case.
|
Sam:
[1:56:48]
| Whereas, all of the conservative... I just want to say, all of the conservative justices this time, whenever it was brought up like, well, let's talk about the specific situation here, are like, no, no, no, no, no. We want to talk about the general situation.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:04]
| Well, and I think that that was... Well, I'll start with this thing. Number one is the reason why we're here at this moment is because, unfortunately, it took way too damn long to even indict President Trump on J6. It shouldn't have taken this long. That's the fucking reason why we're here. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:57:32]
| Every once in a while, I hear people trying to sort of justify, oh, actually, Garland was doing a lot before, and it just was not visible stuff, and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:43]
| I'm sorry. It may have been. Okay, fair. It may be true. Still, doesn't recognize the peril that he put everything in by taking so damn long. And that's why we're here. Everything else to me is bullshit, because that's the only reason we're here. And I, I'm one where I was seeing, I was reading what, what the justices were talking about. And well, George Conway, who's also an attorney, I actually seem to agree with what I read, which was, look, they're, you know, what they're trying to do here is. One of the main arguments, which I understand, and I understand what they were saying, is we don't want to go to something I've seen in a lot of other countries where a president is president, and then somebody from another party takes over, and the previous presidents are always prosecuted. For official acts, for policy decisions.
|
Sam:
[1:58:56]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:56]
| And that is just a terrible way of governing. And they're right, okay? I understand that. And I think that there needs to be something that is defined as where the line is of the official acts for which you you you can't be prosecuted so you know there are certain things but but i i because i'll look i'm like right now like president of the my condo association okay and one of the things that these boards and be president of these is that you know there is there is like some level of, protection that I get for the acts I do as president. But there is no protection for criminal acts. But, You know, my, we have insurance for our official acts where, you know what? Hey, we decided to hire construction company. Hey, it didn't turn out well. Well, I can't be, you know, I can't be sued for that. Okay. Just because, you know, for those kinds of acts.
|
Sam:
[2:00:23]
| Right. Well, the Supreme Court has already decided for civil liability, the president absolutely does have immunity for everything that's an official act, but not for private acts. The question here is, how does it apply for criminal? And personally, I would say that official acts should also be subject. If there's criminality involved, they absolutely should be fair game. And of course you would have to prove it and blah, blah, blah, and all that kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:55]
| I'm just wondering where that line is for, for what kind of an official act can be construed as criminal.
|
Sam:
[2:01:02]
| Right. Well, they're like one of the examples that's been brought up a few times is should you have been able to charge George Bush, George W. Bush for the fact that his administration used torture? And frankly, I think the answer is yes. Yes, you should have have been able to do that.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:22]
| Well, frankly, I think the answer is no.
|
Sam:
[2:01:26]
| Well, the U.S. had laws against torture. He ordered people to violate those laws. I think that should be chargeable. But wait, here's the thing, though. Here's the thing in this case. The court is jumping in and basically saying we want to define that line right now. And so what they're probably going to do is define Find some set of rules to define exactly the line you're talking about and then send it back down to the lower court to then decide in this particular case on each element of the crime. Is it what side of the line is it on? And then adjust things accordingly.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:07]
| Basically, I think that they may define a line, but I finding it hard for them to anything that he did is an official protected act.
|
Sam:
[2:02:17]
| Well, exactly. Here's the thing. They are going to define some sort of set of rules and send it down to the lower court in order to define these things. And that is just all about time. People have pointed out, and you mentioned Conway. One of the things that Conway, what did they call it? Rethreading on threads? Anyway, George Conway rethreaded something from somebody called Randall Eliason, who said this. A SCOTUS majority could make this quick and easy. Quote, there may be some core presidential duties where some degree of immunity would be appropriate, but we leave that difficult decision for another day. Right. Whatever the scope of official duties that might be entitled to immunity, the actions alleged in this indictment clearly fall well outside that scope.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:08]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[2:03:08]
| Therefore, presidential immunity to the extent it exists is not an issue in this case. The trial can proceed.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:14]
| I mean, that would be, you know. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:03:17]
| Yeah, but but that's not what they're going to do, because the whole purpose like we've got Roberts may be the key vote here.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:26]
| I don't know. Honestly, I don't know what they're going to do. I understood what I heard in the questions. But, you know, from.
|
Sam:
[2:03:35]
| Everybody I've heard, listen to that. And you're right. Like, nobody knows what they're going to do until the day they do it. Because speculating based on oral arguments can often go awry.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:45]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:03:45]
| But what most people I have heard talk about this since hearing the arguments are saying that basically it sounds like to them that all the four or five key justices here were all and they're predicting sort of a boys versus girls split where you have the three women liberal justices plus plus Coney Barrett on one side and the five conservative men on the other side, but maybe with justice Roberts in the middle.
|
Sam:
[2:04:25]
| Maybe flipping or deciding to do something a little bit different. That's the wild card. But basically the speculation is that from all indications that were in the oral arguments, that they're all on board with delay, delay, delay, basically. So they will do something that, uh.
|
Sam:
[2:04:45]
| Kicks it back to lower court in such a way that it adds several months at least to the timetable and pushes this whole case out past election day. Now, there are some of the legal talking heads who have pointed out that even if they do this, it might delay the start of an actual trial to next year. But if they kick it back asking for the trial judge to make determinations on what's an official act and what's not an official act, they could hold hearings on that question. And in those hearings, they could call all the same witnesses that would be at the actual trial. But apparently there's another way that they could kick it back down, but not to the trial judge, but back to the the dc circuit and and ask the dc circuit to spend more time instead of the supreme court writing the rules themselves kick it back to the the circuit ask them to write the rules and then whatever they write will be appealed by one side or another back to scotus and you add more delay so like but it looks like they're all on board with delay so it sounds like the scenarios that get you to a a trial this year on the dc one oh.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:00]
| It's gonna be hard yes.
|
Sam:
[2:06:02]
| Have have got have gone from slim to nearly none yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:06]
| Well all depends on what happens so we'll see but yeah it's i mean but yeah it's it's not good so oh can i mention one thing.
|
Sam:
[2:06:16]
| Yes you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:22]
| The GOP now is the party of killing puppies.
|
Sam:
[2:06:28]
| Ah, yes. So we're, we're, we're moving on from SCOTUS. I thought you went, well, we're, you know, this could have been your, your item for, uh, the, from the slack.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:38]
| I know. I thought about it. I was thinking, well, no, no, no, I have got something else for item for the slack.
|
Sam:
[2:06:45]
| You've got something else for this. So let's, we're done with SCOTUS. We could talk about SCOTUS for like another hour, but we're well past our target time, so we won't. And we'll just leave it to... Oh, the other thing on SCOTUS I predicted, and I stand by now, they will not release the decision on this until the very last day of their term. They are in no hurry whatsoever. They're going to wait till the last day of their term. They're going to release the decision. And then they're going to release a decision that maximizes the amount of time before the trial can start. Even even if in the end trump isn't actually immune from any of this stuff and there's some you know there was some argument that the coney barrett made the trump's lawyer admit to like four different items that are in the charges being private acts and so there's a possibility as well that the prosecutors could narrow their case to only be related to those private acts okay now done with scotus tell us about the puppy yvonne well.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:52]
| I guess it's the new gop campaign thing, Just fucking shoot your puppies.
|
Sam:
[2:08:04]
| This is a Christie gnome who is the governor of which Dakota. She's, she's a governor of a Dakota, right? South Dakota.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:12]
| One of those Dakotas, one of the, one of those who fucking gives a shit. Fuck you. Dakotas, whatever you, you got a governor like this. Fuck you both. Okay. All right. And you're the other one's getting shit because for the other one. Okay. Whatever. Jesus. Okay. I mean, she apparently, okay, wrote in a book. She wrote this.
|
Sam:
[2:08:38]
| Right, yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:39]
| She apparently had a dog that was a misbehaving dog.
|
Sam:
[2:08:44]
| South Dakota, by the way. It is South Dakota.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:46]
| Well, you know, I mean, I got to blame them both. They have to share the name.
|
Sam:
[2:08:51]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:51]
| Anyway, so she had a dog that was a misbehaving dog. when he went hunting he wouldn't behave i mean oh my god it was just but.
|
Sam:
[2:09:05]
| By the way all all of the quote-unquote misbehaving that seemed to be absolutely normal puppy things to me.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:11]
| Correct i mean the one thing that she thought was the most heinous crime was apparently that the dog was able to get into a chicken coop and kill the chickens. And that was apparently the last straw, and so she took the puppy out behind her house and fucking put a bullet in him.
|
Sam:
[2:09:35]
| Yep. 14-month-old puppy.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:37]
| 14-month-old. You know, I... The worst thing about this that I see is she, for some reason, was enraged by it. And how could he be so happy? Well, he's a fucking dog, you idiot. You know, they like to go after chickens. I was telling the story on the Slack about the fact that we had this happen in our house. We had a chicken coop at our house.
|
Sam:
[2:10:07]
| And dogs.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:08]
| And dogs. And we had the chicken coop very enclosed precisely because of fear that that would happen. Well, I don't know what happened with the fencing around it, but they found a way in. And they did this with the chickens. They fucking killed almost all the chickens. Chickens we eventually have to just you know yeah just just kill the rest of the chickens okay and, we had a lot of chicken for a while i mean we were making chicken every style we had to give away chicken but we understood that you know the dogs i mean the dogs are dogs and you know I mean, it was our, I don't know how we failed with the protection because it worked for a couple of years without an issue. And I don't know what the hell happened. It broke and they got in. But it's just normal dog behavior. And the fact that she could be so enraged by a dog that just didn't behave the way that she wanted and just went and murdered. And, oh, by the way, she decided to do the same with a goat.
|
Sam:
[2:11:18]
| Yeah, she did the same with the goat. And in response to all this being reported, she mentioned that she shot a couple of her horses a few weeks ago, too. You know, here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[2:11:30]
| I mean, she's just OK to me. It just seems to me that she's into animal cruelty. She wasn't doing it for food. She wasn't doing it for whatever. She's just like, oh, I don't like you. Boom.
|
Sam:
[2:11:47]
| And look, I dispute in the dog case. It doesn't seem like health issues or whatever. But normal dog issues seem to be here. Like, hey, if you have a dog that doesn't work with your family.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:02]
| Rehome them.
|
Sam:
[2:12:03]
| There are places to take them. You can get them rehomed. I mean, I know there's a glut of dogs out there. There's there's more dogs that need to be rescued than there are people taking them. But you can take it to a shelter.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:17]
| Yeah. But but the whole thing was she was she got angry with his dog and decided to shoot him.
|
Sam:
[2:12:23]
| Yes. Or well, I was going to say worst case, if you actually have like an animal that's vicious and dangerous and blah, blah, blah. You know, there are ways to do this humanely at a vet, you know. And if the other animals had health issues, there's ways to do that humanely with a vet. You don't just go shoot them yourself. And I realize that's a cultural thing. And maybe in her world, this is all normal. But I don't want to live in that world.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:55]
| Listen, I don't know what world she lives in that a misbehaving dog is just summarily executed. Because I've never heard of this. she.
|
Sam:
[2:13:05]
| Made a quote something like yo you have to make tough decisions on the farm.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:11]
| I lived on a I lived on a farm we never made tough decisions like this even with the horses we had horses, we never did shit like this I've never heard of people doing shit like this horses are expensive horses are valuable.
|
Sam:
[2:13:27]
| I saw somebody on Mastodon say I've lived on a farm all my life we don't go and shoot our dogs We.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:33]
| Don't know! I don't know anybody on the fucking farm that goes and shoots their dogs!
|
Sam:
[2:13:40]
| You know, and my, immediate thought on this is like, all of these people are fucking sociopaths. All of them.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:50]
| They're sadistic bastards! All of them!
|
Sam:
[2:13:54]
| And I said, look, you know, I understand, as, you know, both you and I are carnivores, we eat meat so like at some level it's a little bit hypocritical to be like oh, kill the poor animal but at the same time, there's a difference of just taking your puppy, and just shooting it you know, I'm sorry that's different and you know, her daughter came home from school like a few minutes later or whatever and like, where's my puppy?
|
Ivan:
[2:14:25]
| Yeah! oh, I shot him jesus talk about being the daughter of the sociopath imagine doing something wrong in this fucking house sam.
|
Sam:
[2:14:38]
| Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, I would not want to be in this family, quite obviously. And of course, the reason that she's being talked about right now is she's one of the ones that's apparently in the running to be Donald Trump's running mate. In the running to be a running mate. Running, running, running, running. Running but and honestly like i don't know she put this in her book she said if i was a better politician i wouldn't put this in writing well yeah probably but at the same time maybe this is a gamble that like this makes her this makes her look tough mega loves this stuff right right.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:19]
| I mean i i think this is like you know in the eyes of the gop like i we said there is no bottom them and this is probably in their eyes oh shooting the puppies yes we're tough tough this.
|
Sam:
[2:15:38]
| Is one of those things that in the past has been used as a joke on like you know how a politician can you know they're fine unless you find out they shot puppies or something well.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:53]
| We've descended beyond that.
|
Sam:
[2:16:00]
| Are we donning fun yeah thank you all for joining us for another curmudgeons corner you know the drill go to curmudgeons-corner.com where you will find our archives and i and i must mention the last few weeks i've talked about how recent transcripts have been messed up formatting wise I fixed it last weekend. Of course, I've still fixed it in an incredibly fragile, stupid way. It's just a bunch of like find and replace text manipulation to change one format of HTML to another. It's incredibly fragile. It'll break again, I'm sure. But for the moment, it's all fixed. Anyway, you can find our transcripts or you can find our archives there, including including transcripts from almost a year now of transcripts, not quite, but you know, getting there.
|
Sam:
[2:16:54]
| And you can find all the ways to contact us, email, Facebook, Mastodon. And importantly, you can find our Patreon where you can give us money. And at various levels there, we'll mention you on the show, we'll ring a bell, we'll send you a postcard, we'll send you a mug. And this, as I previewed early in the show, if you pay $2 a month or more, or if you contact us in any of those ways I listed and asked nicely, we will invite you to the Commodions Course Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of our listeners this week, we've mentioned Pete and Ed there.
|
Sam:
[2:17:31]
| Pete, We will invite you and it's fun. You should be there. We're sharing links and stories and chatting wordles and yeah, good stuff. So Yvonne, you said you had something in mind. Yeah. Highlight from the Slack. What did you have in mind?
|
Ivan:
[2:17:49]
| You know, I was yesterday, I was downtown Coral Gables. And for some reason, the Miami Marlins had this little robot going around downtown, like saying, hey, buy tickets, scan this QR here. It was this little robot box like this, and it kept going up and down the sidewalk trying to convince me to go to a baseball game.
|
Sam:
[2:18:09]
| Did I miss this on the Slack? I don't remember this.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:12]
| I did not. No, but the reason I put this on the Slack is because apparently you shared a story about you can now buy a flamethrowing robot dog for under $10,000. Dollars the therminator the first flamethrower wielding robot dog is completely legal in 48 u.s states because apparently i guess nobody thought of outlawing flamethrowing robot dogs right so maybe we should send this dog to christy noem's house perhaps okay and how about trying to shoot this you fucking psycho bitch okay you know here we go take a shot at this one motherfucker okay you know this one shoots back a little bit you know yeah yeah so i'd say, you know we make a collection we get this flamethrowing dog and we send it over to our house apparently it's legal apparently.
|
Sam:
[2:19:11]
| So in i think it was 48 states.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:13]
| 48 yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:19:15]
| Something like that.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:16]
| So apparently some there were two states in a union that had the foresight to ban a flamethrowing dog.
|
Sam:
[2:19:25]
| Well, I think they just banned flamethrowers in general, and the dog comes along for direction.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:30]
| Ah, okay. Well, that could be.
|
Sam:
[2:19:33]
| But yeah, like, you know, everybody, if you give...
|
Ivan:
[2:19:37]
| It includes a... It also includes a LiDAR sensor for mapping and obstacle avoidance, laser sighting, and first-person view navigation through an onboard camera. It's pretty slick.
|
Sam:
[2:19:51]
| If all of you give enough to the curmudgeons corner patreon we will get yvonne a flamethrowing dog.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:00]
| There you go okay here it is specific restrictions exist in maryland where flamethrowers require a federal firearm slices to own in california where the range of flamethrowers cannot exceed 10 feet for some reason california routes allows the flamethrowers but they can't exceed 10 feet, i'm like i don't even understand why flamethrowers are legal in the first place Well.
|
Sam:
[2:20:26]
| And apparently the dog does more than 10 feet, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:30]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:20:31]
| Well, presumably the flamethrowers are, I think in an article I read like for like clearing brush and stuff like that. But the other hand, like, isn't that a way of like, aren't you going to be starting forest fires and stuff? Like, is that a good idea?
|
Ivan:
[2:20:46]
| Okay. That could be a problem. I could see that.
|
Sam:
[2:20:50]
| And California is prone to that. So you could see why they want to keep it to nine and a half feet.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:56]
| Yes, because that margin is really going to make the difference. I see that, yes. That's the margin of error. The start of four is fired and devours the whole state, yes.
|
Sam:
[2:21:10]
| And I guess the flamethrowing robot dog is better than just strapping a flamethrower to your regular dog.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:19]
| I would say that's safer.
|
Sam:
[2:21:21]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:22]
| Yeah. And on another note, open sourcing MS-DOS 4.0. Apparently now you can download MS-DOS 4.0 for free. I know that all of you were waiting.
|
Sam:
[2:21:35]
| Well, you've been able to get MS-DOS 4.0 for free for a while, but they've released the source code to it.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:42]
| This is the source code this time. Well, I know that all of you were waiting for that as well.
|
Sam:
[2:21:48]
| Yes, definitely. Got to do that. Oh it's just it's actually really cool like all these old operating systems you can now run most of them in a browser it's.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:00]
| Great i've done that well.
|
Sam:
[2:22:02]
| There's a website that has like all the old versions of mac os going back to the beginning and like when it was system whatever instead of mac os and sevens yeah and and it just all runs in your browser it's like it's pretty impressive stuff and like all because because of course compared to a modern system all those old, computers were like nothing right so i.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:29]
| Mean i i mean me that i'm running what what the heck am i running i mean i'm like right now i'm running what i can't even remember how much i've got 64 gigs of ram on this thing yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:22:39]
| I mean what oh and along those lines along those lines and this is is the last thing I promise because we were really way over at this point they managed to fix Voyager 1 oh yes, they did Voyager 1 started like sending back five months ago and like nonsense like instead of sending back telemetry and science data which it's still been this thing was launched in like the mid 1970s, You know, and it had been sending science and telemetry data. And then five months ago, it started just sending random noise, but they managed to find some commands that got it to do a, send back a memory dump instead. And they figured out that there must be this one chip that's bad. And they uploaded a software update to work around that one part of memory or whatever. And it's, it's sending back telemetry data again. and they're working on an additional update to restart the science data. And it's like, you know, and speaking of computers with zero power, right? Yeah. You know, this is like ancient computers. It literally has a tape drive.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:55]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:23:56]
| Like it's off like however far in space with like a 1970s tape drive that's still functional, you know? Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[2:24:05]
| And I think it's nuclear powered, if I remember correctly.
|
Sam:
[2:24:08]
| Like it's got a nuclear battery, which will eventually run out and they've been shutting down instruments one by one over the decades. And, but yeah, so it's, and you know, they had some pictures of like, you know, some, some old folks who've been on this mission since the seventies, who are the only ones who know what to do with this crap. And they they figured it out and and the other thing it's almost a 48 hour round trip so if they send a command up there they have to wait 48 hours for it to get there the system to do something and send back the results so you can see what you did and it didn't have the effect you wanted so like yeah anyway quite an achievement congratulations voyager.
|
Ivan:
[2:24:56]
| One right now is at At 15.1 billion miles from the sun, 15.1 billion miles from Earth right now. That's fucking, and it's really in the cosmic sense, it's barely moved.
|
Sam:
[2:25:18]
| Yes. And, and yeah, anyway, amazing feat by the Voyager 1 engineers. Congratulations. Okay. Now, as I said, I promised we are really, really, really, really, really, really done now. So have a great week, everybody. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah. Say goodbye, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:25:48]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:25:50]
| There we go. Okay, that's it. We're out.
|
Ivan:
[2:26:26]
| Out.
|
