Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:00]
| Hello uh hello all right so now i i today for it shall we.
|
Sam:
[0:11]
| Start and then you talk or yeah.
|
Ivan:
[0:13]
| No no no i today noticed accidentally i realized i've been lifting a lot of weights my arms used to be very tiny. And I just realized, I looked on the side and I realized, holy shit, my arm is huge. I hadn't really noticed that.
|
Sam:
[0:33]
| Congratulations on your huge arms.
|
Ivan:
[0:36]
| I don't, here's the thing. I'm not exactly sure I'm happy about that.
|
Sam:
[0:42]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:43]
| Okay i i mean i wanted them like say tone but not necessarily bigger and so a little bit like that's not really what i wanted i understand so i'm i'm kind of a little bit on but i i can't you could amputate oh yeah that solved the problem i would quickly yeah yeah i I mean, amputation, always a solution to a lot of problems. You know, you think about it, you know, you.
|
Sam:
[1:15]
| Don't like your arms, get rid of them.
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Ivan:
[1:17]
| I mean, it's, it's the method of like, don't, it's problem elimination.
|
Sam:
[1:22]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:23]
| Yeah. I mean, you don't look, I mean, head hurts.
|
Sam:
[1:27]
| Chop it off.
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Ivan:
[1:28]
| Decapitation. Yeah. Yeah. Right away. And head's never going to hurt again.
|
Sam:
[1:36]
| No, no, it's not.
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Ivan:
[1:37]
| No. So that never going to bother you again. Sure. There may be other problems. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:46]
| So shall we just jump right in?
|
Ivan:
[1:49]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[1:50]
| Here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, July 6th, 2024. It is 2.13 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Materi, Von Boze here again. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:27]
| Ah, aloha.
|
Sam:
[2:29]
| Is that right?
|
Ivan:
[2:30]
| Yeah, aloha. Yeah, no.
|
Sam:
[2:31]
| Every once in a while you go with the aloha greeting. That's fine. It works.
|
Ivan:
[2:35]
| I mean, aloha is a greeting. Yeah, aloha is a greeting, you know.
|
Sam:
[2:39]
| So we're just going to do our usual. Yvonne and I will do something a little bit less newsy to start with, and then we will move on to the news stuff. I think there are a couple of big, obvious things from this last week to talk about. We'll see if I'm right. Because once again, as usual, we have not actually planned or specified or done anything, but I just have a hunch a few things will come up.
|
Ivan:
[3:06]
| You know sam there were many years ago yes.
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Sam:
[3:12]
| Many years ago.
|
Ivan:
[3:12]
| Where we lived in a happier time i i am going to flat out say that it was a happier time okay somebody was mentioning that maybe the perhaps the peak was in the 90s and i am like tending to agree that the late 90s were a hell of a lot better than this shit storm that we've got right now. Even if some things had not been legalized by then, even if some things were not perfect, the thing is, is where things were going and what the overall attitude was. We were optimistic.
|
Sam:
[3:50]
| Yeah. Well, here's the thing. And I think we've had this conversation before, but like there is a conversation I had while we were walking the dog with a The friend of my son's a couple of years ago, this just lived in my head ever since where they, and look, this was like a couple of years ago now. So they were, I don't know, 11 or 12, but, but what's the right way to say it? They, they were talking about how things were in the world and how, how bad things were right now. they.
|
Ivan:
[4:27]
| Were 11 and 12 and they were talking they were that young they were talking that way.
|
Sam:
[4:33]
| Yes and and like this is a person but i'm leaving them anonymous but leave them anonymous they're they're anonymous but they're they're they're on the lgbtq spectrum okay yeah.
|
Ivan:
[4:46]
| Yeah yeah okay.
|
Sam:
[4:47]
| They're in that and they were talking about you know and specifically how it was bad for or people like me. And I wasn't fully 100% sure at that point of their identity, but it was well suspected. Okay, let's just put it that way. And I think it's clearer now. But the... And I remember saying, well, no, you know, look, it was a lot worse like in the 80s or whatever it was. And it was. And then I realized shortly thereafter, and I ever since I've wished I realized it in time to say it during this conversation, but I've said it on the show since then. The difference is not the absolute level of how good or bad things are. It's the trajectory. trajectory it's that for the first time in it it's it's seems to be clearly getting worse yeah not the first time ever but like in in my sort of for.
|
Ivan:
[5:48]
| The first time in our lifetimes.
|
Sam:
[5:49]
| In in our lifetimes for up until i i you know i'm not sure i put the boundary of the 90s i might go a little further under obama like you know i i i mean honestly no.
|
Ivan:
[6:03]
| No no it's not that the boundary was there but i think that listen people were there was there was more optimism.
|
Sam:
[6:11]
| There was confidence that things were getting better exactly.
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Ivan:
[6:16]
| That we're going in the right damn direction.
|
Sam:
[6:19]
| And it felt like that like and on all kinds of objective measures that things they felt like things were getting big, better. Yeah. I mean, you had Obama talking about the long arc of history and all that kind of stuff. And I know that was an MLK quote as well, but like you, you felt that, that like, you know, yeah, things aren't great. There are lots of things that could be better, but at least we're going in the right direction. And now I feel like that feeling is gone.
|
Ivan:
[6:50]
| Russia and America were friends.
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Sam:
[6:53]
| Well, and I just want to say this too, And it's not even like a, you know, liberals feel this way because the right is winning. The right feels like it's going the wrong direction, too. Too?
|
Ivan:
[7:04]
| Yes. They're even more, listen, they feel the way they feel because they're even, they feel worse.
|
Sam:
[7:14]
| Yeah. Yeah, and so it's very frustrating, you know, that, yeah, there's this fundamental pessimism around everything right now. And I think it's, like I said, it's not even a left or right thing. It's society-wide. Everyone's sort of like, everything's screwed up, and it's not getting better. And, you know, and I feel like, you know, the big, to me, anyway, the big problem. But discontinuity has to be Trump winning in 2016.
|
Ivan:
[7:59]
| I think that was, I think that, that definitely.
|
Sam:
[8:02]
| That was, well, and I guess for the right, it was Obama winning, uh, eight years earlier, but, but like for, for me, you know, it was like the Obama period was an optimistic period. It was a, you know, things are, things are going well.
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Ivan:
[8:20]
| But remember one thing, that during the Bush administration, not only did we have a war in the Middle East, but we had average Americans', living standards go down, more people without health insurance. You know, it was, I mean, at the end of that administration, it was horrible. I mean, the Bush administration, you know, did not create jobs in years. And the net was a loss of incomes, loss of jobs, loss of security. I mean, you know, in the world, where the hell were we, for God's sakes, you know, with the Middle East, it was a disaster. I mean, Obama inherited, I mean, the budget deficit, Sam, do you remember that in 1999, 2000, we actually hit surplus? We fucking hit a surplus. And I mean, you know, by the time that W walked away, it was a multi-trillion dollar deficit. Multi-trillion.
|
Sam:
[9:34]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[9:34]
| I mean, Obama fights tooth and nail to bring this back, but all these fucking assholes on the right are so upset that how the fuck could our nation now be run by a black man? And this is the fucking reality. Those people were incensed that a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama was president of the fucking United States.
|
Sam:
[10:08]
| Period. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[10:11]
| And so, you know what? You asked me about when we go and try to sit down and talk about topics. You don't even need to sometimes sit down to talk about topics because so much, you know, the shit storm that we're living under regularly now, it's just self-evident. We used to have to sit down to do the show and we're like, well, this week has been boring. What are we going to talk about? You know, I don't know. Nothing happened really. Right. I mean, you know, we're going to talk about this. Well, well, I always heard a good old days. Yes. And you know we're not in the good old days.
|
Sam:
[10:48]
| Yeah and and look there was a little bit of a slow period at the beginning of the biden administration where we were back into sort of that mode for a little while well.
|
Ivan:
[10:57]
| Because we thought this rat fucker wasn't going to be back running for fucking president too.
|
Sam:
[11:02]
| Right like the the whole mood of things frankly like if if nikki haley had won the goddamn republican nomination i.
|
Ivan:
[11:10]
| Mean we're like okay whatever We.
|
Sam:
[11:12]
| Would be having different conversations.
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Ivan:
[11:16]
| Now, it's Nikki Haley. I mean, she's a bitch or whatever, but you know, yeah, but you know, whatever.
|
Sam:
[11:22]
| There's a lot of that. Look, there's a lot of evidence that the Republicans are so far magified right now that Donald Trump could take a one way trip, a trip to the moon. And most of these problems would still exist because because MAGA has gone crazy.
|
Ivan:
[11:38]
| But but it's but it's a different scale. It's always, man, this is like, man, these trumps of personality. And I was thinking about this. It's just, I mean, look, think guys like Mussolini, for example.
|
Sam:
[11:53]
| Trumps of personality. Interesting how you said that. I know you meant cult, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[11:58]
| Cults. Well, it's close enough. You know, you got Mussolini, you know, Eva Peron, you know, like people like, you know, Pinochet, you know, Hitler. I mean, Stalin. I mean, all these fuckers, you know, a lot of what they it really, really carries a lot around that person. And so many times it crumbles once that once they're out there in large part because those people, those people keep everybody around them loyal, not because they're loyal, but because they fear him. So even though I know that all these people are right wing psychopaths, the reality is that so many of them off the record despise them. I mean, there's been so many. Just look at that Fox News case where they they they had to do discovery and showed all the text messages, all these fuckers that are on TV, you know, praising Trump, you know, in hiding. They're all talking about how they despise him. So, yeah, so we're at a different time, Sam. So, so we really don't need to do planning. We, we, we, those happy times are not here.
|
Sam:
[13:13]
| Well, I think certainly from now until January, it's going to be pretty obvious what we're talking about every week. I mean, it's, it's going to be related to the presidential race race. What's going on? What's not going on?
|
Ivan:
[13:33]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[13:35]
| And I mean, I guess you've got mixed in there, like Trump legal developments, but that's still about the presidential race, essentially.
|
Ivan:
[13:43]
| It's all this shit.
|
Sam:
[13:45]
| It all relates to that one way or another. And yeah, look, I'm sure we'll have an occasional something else to talk about, but this is going to be dominating for the rest of the year. There's no avoiding it.
|
Ivan:
[14:02]
| I mean, why am I getting a hurricane? Well, actually, not right now. That hurricane's not coming.
|
Sam:
[14:08]
| Not to where you are, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[14:09]
| No, no, barrel is... It did hit Mexico, but it's not... It's either going to hit Northern Mexico or, or, or Texas. Who the hell knows? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[14:20]
| And who cares about Texas, right? It's not like it's hitting a real place, you know? Right.
|
Ivan:
[14:25]
| Exactly. Sweet Texas, right? We're kidding. We're kidding. Okay. But, but yeah, but, but you know, ah.
|
Sam:
[14:34]
| So I guess the whole first segment is less newsy is thrown out the window. Anything else you want to talk about? Cause I'll have a, not, I have a semi newsy thing to put in this segment too.
|
Ivan:
[14:44]
| Well, I had like, no, you know, once again, my holiday, my current work assignment makes it that the holidays are pretty much impossible to, to really have happen without me being bombarded with messages from work because they're not off. Right.
|
Sam:
[15:05]
| Cause cause July 4th is, you know, a U S holiday for obvious reasons.
|
Ivan:
[15:12]
| Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, I don't, I really spent most of yesterday and today for the most part doing a lot of work, not as much yesterday. I definitely did try to spend less time.
|
Sam:
[15:28]
| Now, I, I, even though I took the entire previous week off, I did not do anything for work on July 4th. And I also took off Friday, July 5th. like i'm and i'm.
|
Ivan:
[15:41]
| I i actually worked i i worked some yesterday but today i had a full day today i had a completely full day i was just like fuck you know i mean can i get and you know a part of it is there there is this cyclical thing related to the to the business unfortunately when When I, when, when our fiscal year ended, they gave to me, assigned me one of the biggest contracts that we have that unfortunately expired actually five days ago. And I am in the process of trying to negotiate an extension to it, unfortunately, but it just basically hit me at the, you know, I've, I finished all this other stuff that I had in my previous assignment and it should have been a little bit less stressful. And I'm like, no, no, I wound up getting, you know, basically parachuted into a mess.
|
Sam:
[16:37]
| Oh, nice.
|
Ivan:
[16:38]
| Unfortunately. And, and I, I, and I'm like, man, it's just, so it's been sucking up many of my cycles and, and also I, I will have to travel on Monday for work again, like, you know, oh, so I'm not, I'm sick. But I did, you know, on just to leave it on a happier note before.
|
Sam:
[17:01]
| We get back into the disturbing stuff.
|
Ivan:
[17:03]
| In a little bit. Yeah, I have been binge watching Star Trek Picard, which I had refused to watch because I will admit that very stubbornly I had refused to to get Paramount Plus to buy Paramount Plus. I was just on this thing where I had signed up already for. I don't know. I got HBO Max. I got Amazon Prime. I got Netflix. I got Apple TV Plus. I'm just, you know, I have cable. I have you. I'm like, oh, come on, man. It's not that I couldn't afford. I'm just like, man, I'm I'm I'm putting my foot down now.
|
Ivan:
[17:39]
| And so it happens that my wife, my wife was binge watching NCIS for whatever reason on Netflix. And on June 30th, they pulled all of NCIS from Netflix. OK. OK, right when she was only on season three. And that show has like 17 seasons. And so my wife was like, but I'm like, oh, fuck, going to have to sign up for Paramount Plus. And so I'm like, OK, fine, because I didn't want to watch. Picard and I am finally look I've been watching enough that I I've been doing two things I've been reading a book okay actually I've noticed that I've been reading a lot of books lately I can't forget I was I'm reading a just a just a book nothing, very fluffy book not really anything like political or anything whatever it was just first I don't know why the hell I wound up buying it but anyway it's been good so far and and then I've been now all of a sudden binge watching Picard I am in season three and I will say that at.
|
Sam:
[18:45]
| Three out of three right three is the last one.
|
Ivan:
[18:47]
| Three out of three three is the last one I've loved every minute it's great the show's really good I really like it so far I'm just like damn this is really good very.
|
Sam:
[18:59]
| Very cool I I have let me tell you this is one of those ones where you know I I mentioned in our commensal score slack I theoretically I'm I'm working my way through the Star Trek universe. But of course, being me, I'm doing it in order slowly over time.
|
Ivan:
[19:18]
| Oh, fuck. So what are you watching right now? Well, okay, let's.
|
Sam:
[19:24]
| Well, no, I'm not watching. I'm not watching any of them right now because I'm on the movies right now. And when I do the movies, it's not automatic that the next one comes right away. It has to come up.
|
Ivan:
[19:34]
| Wait, wait, wait. Oh, one second. You're on the movies. But but listen, I mean, you watched all the movies.
|
Sam:
[19:39]
| Well, no, I not all the I've watched all the original ones and some of the new ones. I haven't watched all of the new set of movies.
|
Ivan:
[19:48]
| Wait, what?
|
Sam:
[19:50]
| Like the most recent one in the Kelvin universe I never saw.
|
Ivan:
[19:54]
| Are you serious? Yes. So, so which, what did you stop at?
|
Sam:
[20:00]
| Well, the, the, the, the Kelvin, the last Kelvin universe one, the, the, the, so there've been three in the reboot series that started and I've only watched the first two of them.
|
Ivan:
[20:11]
| Oh, you said, oh, but so, so it's only one that you're missing.
|
Sam:
[20:14]
| Yes. But, but what I say, when I say I'm doing the movies, I, I'm, you know, I will intersperse all the TV series as well. Well like so like be after i finish the the original cast movies i'm going to watch all of tng and deep space nine and all of those before i do anything else but the way i do movies is wait.
|
Ivan:
[20:35]
| Didn't you already watch all the episodes of tng.
|
Sam:
[20:38]
| No i did the original series and the animated series and now wait.
|
Ivan:
[20:43]
| Have you wait wait wait.
|
Sam:
[20:43]
| And i've done you've.
|
Ivan:
[20:45]
| What wait wait wait you you have I've watched Star Trek TNG.
|
Sam:
[20:48]
| Oh, you mean when it was on originally? Yes, of course! When it was actually on TV and there were new episodes all the time. I think I've seen all of them. If not, I've seen almost all of them.
|
Ivan:
[20:59]
| Almost all of them. Come on. Yeah, I mean, you watched almost all of those. Come on.
|
Sam:
[21:03]
| Yeah. Like, when they were new series, I watched, like, almost all of those. Right! But see, the way I do the movies is, like, the last movie I've watched, It was the 1979, you know, Star Trek, the motion picture. And we talked about it on the show.
|
Ivan:
[21:22]
| So, okay. I know we talked about it on the show, but I don't remember this right now. Did you not watch it originally when it came out?
|
Sam:
[21:29]
| Oh, no. I watched all of the original Star Trek movies. I not only watched, I watched them all on opening night in the theaters.
|
Ivan:
[21:35]
| Yeah, because I watched some of them with you. Oh.
|
Sam:
[21:38]
| I don't remember that, but okay. I believe you.
|
Ivan:
[21:41]
| Dude, we went to Toronto.
|
Sam:
[21:42]
| Oh, I remember that. I remember.
|
Ivan:
[21:45]
| Now you remember. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[21:46]
| Well, I knew, I remembered going to Toronto. I didn't remember why.
|
Ivan:
[21:49]
| Yeah, we went to watch the damn premiere of Star Trek Undiscovered Country, damn it.
|
Sam:
[21:54]
| Oh, okay. Okay. I believe you. But yeah, I saw all of those on opening.
|
Ivan:
[22:01]
| Talk about Joe Biden. We got you, for God's sakes. Can't fucking remember anything.
|
Sam:
[22:05]
| Thing anyway but the way i do movies since i watched the next not the next generation the motion picture the next movie wrath of khan which i yes i've seen before yes i saw an opening day when it came out where way back when but like i.
|
Ivan:
[22:21]
| I saw that one that was great.
|
Sam:
[22:22]
| And i've seen i've seen a variety of i've seen it many times in between to be honest but it goes on to my My list of movies is actually divided into several sections. It's a big list of just anything. It's a list of the AFI Top 100. It's a list of movies that I own but have never watched. And then finally, it's a list of continuing. And every time I roll a movie. So I'm watching 10 things. I call it picking a one through 10 when my son and I sit down to watch something. And I have 10 things on the list, one of which is we're going to not watch a TV show, we'll watch a movie. If I pick roll a movie, then we will pick random number one through four to pick which of those four categories. And then if, we've picked a continuing series. One of the items on the continuing series list is the next Star Trek movie. So a number of things have to go right to get to that next Star Trek movie. Once you get past a few movies and then like you get to win the TV series, the next generation comes in, then the next generation will go into my list of potential next series to add when one of the 10 gets finished. So, so it'll be decades and decades and decades to get to, wait, wait, what.
|
Ivan:
[23:49]
| What what i what listen yeah what problem i have right now.
|
Sam:
[23:53]
| Yeah yeah i i just want to get i just want to get to this it'll be many many decades probably until my third or fourth like reincarnated lifetime in before i get to picard okay we.
|
Ivan:
[24:06]
| Gotta fix this somehow.
|
Sam:
[24:08]
| But but but but But here's the thing. Like when Picard was on TV.
|
Ivan:
[24:16]
| They did put it on TV.
|
Sam:
[24:18]
| What TV? Whatever, you know, Paramount plus. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[24:22]
| Oh, okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:23]
| I'm not, I'm not talking like broadcast TV.
|
Ivan:
[24:26]
| No, no, no. I'm like, wait, it was on CBS. Oh no. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:30]
| No, no, no, no, no, no. But when it was on, when the new episodes were coming out, people would be posting clips of it on TikTok all the time. And TikTok figured out I like these clips. So every time there was an episode, I would see all the highlights of the episode. Out of order, random, like in between other things.
|
Ivan:
[24:52]
| So you wouldn't skip these to like follow some rule. You were watching them.
|
Sam:
[24:57]
| I was watching them. So I've like, I've sort of seen the highlight reels of Picard, but not any actual episodes. But I've seen like, you know, all sorts of clips, people reacting to the episodes, people like being excited, talking about what they thought about them. I've seen all that kind of stuff, but not the episodes themselves.
|
Ivan:
[25:19]
| Interesting. Well, to be fair, look, I am one that, I will say this, that I watched, look, the original series, Next Generation, but I have been reluctant to watch almost any of the spinoffs, like Deep Space Nine, any of those. Now, all the movies I've watched, okay, you know, all the movies, including the Kelvin Timeline movies, I've watched all of them. I mean, you know, I will say that, you know, the movies from the Next Generation cast were, eh, weren't that great. But, you know, I watched them all. I mean, you know, I can't say that I hated any of them, but they weren't, like, they weren't great, okay? Okay, I will say that I like from the original cast, their movies were better, except, you know, that one, you know, that we all know this sucks.
|
Sam:
[26:11]
| The Star Trek Let's Go Meet God one?
|
Ivan:
[26:15]
| Yeah, exactly. That one was just horrible. But, you know, that thing should somehow be scrubbed from existence. It's just so bad. But other than that, I mean, you know, we got.
|
Sam:
[26:27]
| Well, I've heard good things about a lot of the modern series. The latest batch of TV series.
|
Ivan:
[26:34]
| Oh, oh yeah. This stuff is real. I mean, listen, the, the, the Abrams movies.
|
Sam:
[26:40]
| Let me say this on the, on the new TV series. Like, And again, having not watched any of them myself, but having watched lots of commentary about them.
|
Sam:
[26:52]
| Lots of people like different ones of them. Like the different series are different styles. So there's some people who love Picard, but hate Discovery, for instance. And there are other people who love Discovery, but hate Picard. And it seems like they've made a bunch of these different series that appeal to slightly different kinds of people and slightly different audiences. And there's a core group that likes all of them, but there's a bunch of people who sort of like, oh yeah, I like these two series, but not these two series. And because they have different styles, they emphasize different things. They do different kinds of storylines. Like, you know, they've got the cartoon one, Lower Decks, that's like a parody of things. But some people absolutely love that thing and think it's one of the most brilliant things out there. There's another series, that Prodigy, that's like aimed at more a younger audience. But people it's, it's like second season just came out or something and people are raving about it, you know? So like, you know, but, but I think it's that, you know, I think it's, they, they have intentionally sort of splintered it out. So there's like five different shows or whatever. I haven't counted that. Like each sort of are intentionally stylistically different from each other. So you'll find at least one of them that you like.
|
Ivan:
[28:20]
| So I'm looking at it here. So we've got the original series, the animated series, which I'm sure I watched, but I'm like having vague recollections of that one. Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, which I definitely did not watch, or did I watch Voyager, nor did I watch Enterprise.
|
Sam:
[28:37]
| I liked those three.
|
Ivan:
[28:39]
| I did not, but you watched, so you did watch those.
|
Sam:
[28:42]
| When they were new. I actually never made it to the end of Enterprise. My wife did. Enterprise is her favorite of the Star Trek series.
|
Ivan:
[28:49]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[28:49]
| But like I somehow like I got out of I got out of the regular habit of watching things while Enterprise was on the air and I've never gone back to finish it. And given the way I do things now, like I said, it'll be a long time.
|
Ivan:
[29:03]
| Yeah, but OK, so then we've got Discovery, which is still ongoing. And then we got Picard and Lower Decks, which you got a few of you guys mentioned. It's really funny. Prodigy. I watched that one. Strange New Worlds. So the only one that I've watched basically does not. That one is Picard.
|
Sam:
[29:18]
| People have really said good things about Strange New Worlds as well. But again, it's one of those, they've got a variety out there that each are approaching things differently, and you might like one but not another.
|
Ivan:
[29:32]
| All right. So there you go. So that was my, my turning back, turning, turning misery into, into.
|
Sam:
[29:38]
| So you, you, you have not, you have not finished season three yet. You have not wrapped it up, but so far thumbs up.
|
Ivan:
[29:45]
| Oh yeah. Yeah. Thumbs up. Season one, season two thumbs up. And whatever I watched the first few episodes of season three, all thumbs up.
|
Sam:
[29:52]
| Excellent.
|
Ivan:
[29:53]
| Across the board. I mean, yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:55]
| So yeah. Okay. I, yeah. Having not seen the show, I, I was like, Like, okay, I won't give you any spoilers for how it ends because I know how it ends because I've seen the clips of the ending. But like, anyway, no.
|
Ivan:
[30:11]
| Shut up.
|
Sam:
[30:13]
| I haven't actually seen the show.
|
Ivan:
[30:15]
| Shut up.
|
Sam:
[30:17]
| Okay. I don't spoilers. No spoilers. Okay. So I guess we are doing the light stuff for this. I guess I was going to do some election graph stuff, but I'll throw that in when we're doing the politics stuff. I will go with a movie.
|
Ivan:
[30:31]
| Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[30:33]
| And this is one that we have talked about before on the show. Actually, we've talked about it multiple times on the show, I think. But I most recently watched this movie in January. And this is once again, I mentioned it last week on the show that this was coming up. 2001 A Space Odyssey. I watched it again. And, and here, here's my thought that I find interesting about this. I have, I have reviewed this on the show before and I've given it a thumbs up before as like a really classic movie. It's holds up. Well, it's good. Blah, blah, blah. But I will say, here's the problem.
|
Ivan:
[31:13]
| What's that?
|
Sam:
[31:14]
| I did not enjoy it as much this last time I watched it. And I think the reason was I watched it again too soon. the last time i watched it was in 2022 and i watched it again in 2024 how.
|
Ivan:
[31:28]
| Come okay i'm confused why would you wind up watching it twice like in such a short span when you've got so much other shit.
|
Sam:
[31:36]
| Because the first time it came up because i think it came up on its own and the second time it came up from the afi list when i was going oh okay so i watched it so basically in august 2022 i watched 2001 oh because it was on the owned list because brandy had bought it because she had to watch it for a class so we actually had like a purchased apple version of it and so i was like okay we have a purchased version that i haven't seen the purchased version yet so i'll watch it and then in january 2023 and we watched 2010 okay very different kind of movie also very.
|
Ivan:
[32:22]
| Totally different yeah.
|
Sam:
[32:23]
| Thumbs up thumbs up it was also good though and then a.
|
Ivan:
[32:28]
| Lot of people i notice hate that movie though.
|
Sam:
[32:30]
| I i liked i liked it.
|
Ivan:
[32:33]
| I liked it i thought it was really good.
|
Sam:
[32:34]
| Yeah. Anyway. And then January 2001 came up again, but because of the AFI list, so I watched it again. And here's the thing. I loved the movie, but I feel like this is the kind of movie that... Has the impact and you can get really into if it's been like 10 years since you saw it last you know like you don't remember every detail and you can just sort of lay back and experience the movie blah blah blah this when i watched it again in january i was like it's too soon i feel like i watched it last week it's.
|
Ivan:
[33:15]
| Too soon it's too soon.
|
Sam:
[33:17]
| You know and i can recognize that it's good but But at the same time, I'm like getting a I'm like, I'm kind of bored.
|
Ivan:
[33:25]
| Well, the thing is, you remember? Yeah, because it is a very long and plodding move. Let's be clear about this. So if you don't remember it because you haven't watched a long time, you're like, whoa, you know? Yeah. OK, sure.
|
Sam:
[33:38]
| And you're willing to just lay back and experience the movie and wash over. It's really that kind of movie.
|
Ivan:
[33:45]
| Exactly. But when you watched it too recently, then you're like, oh, come on, hurry the fuck up.
|
Sam:
[33:50]
| You know you know it's like i saw this part so like we were doing things like, when when when what's his name floyd or whatever, is in the shuttle heading to the moon and goes to the bathroom yeah we paused to read the instructions that were on the wall for how to use the bathroom yeah, And so we read them in detail and went over every line and double checked it with the internet to make sure because it was like parts of it were obscured. So we were like, okay, what does it really say? And stuff like that. And a little bit more talking through it because I don't know. It's a wonderful movie. I still give it a thumbs up. But it's not the kind of movie you can watch over and over again. And all that i mean sure i mean i'm sure there are people who do who like this is their favorite movie and they watch it every week or something but you know.
|
Ivan:
[34:52]
| But yeah no no no no it's it's very long and plotting no no you can't no i i yeah that that cannot be denied from that movie it's you know the the pacing is you know i don't care for what era because i've watched the movies in that era the pacing for that movie is slow so my conclusion is.
|
Sam:
[35:11]
| Two years is too soon and.
|
Ivan:
[35:14]
| It's It was actually.
|
Sam:
[35:14]
| Like not even two years. It was like a year and a quarter or something, you know, a little bit more than a year and a quarter. Not long enough. Not long enough. Like I'm sure like after a decade. Okay. Ready to go again. You know, but like, and maybe even five years would be okay. But like a year and a bit, not long enough, not long enough at all. Like, yeah. So yeah. Okay. That's my movie for the week, 2001.
|
Ivan:
[35:47]
| Well, you've been stalling enough. Let's take a break, you know, that we can hit the heavy lumber.
|
Sam:
[35:54]
| I think the two things, just to be clear and put it out there.
|
Ivan:
[35:59]
| Copa America?
|
Sam:
[36:01]
| Yes, again, Copa America. No, the Costco chicken bag.
|
Ivan:
[36:05]
| Oh, the Costco chicken bag. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I got thoughts on that thing. Let me tell you. Although I will say that I understand it's very eco-friendly, but it's a lot more difficult to cut the chicken.
|
Sam:
[36:17]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[36:18]
| Because I shouldn't have taken a picture because I posted a story and we, you know, it wasn't the first time I bought one in the new bag. I got I got another one like this week and I'm like, damn it. This is a lot more work, but I am totally on board that it has to be done because it's a lot more equal.
|
Sam:
[36:35]
| OK, OK. No, I jump in if I'm wrong here.
|
Ivan:
[36:39]
| Four ninety nine for a chicken, whole chicken, big chicken.
|
Sam:
[36:43]
| Hot dogs. The hot dogs are cheap, too.
|
Ivan:
[36:45]
| Yeah. Yeah. But four ninety nine for a whole chicken. And listen, it lasts three or four meals at least, you know, for a few people. It's great. Great value. Highly recommend.
|
Sam:
[36:57]
| Okay. Anyway, I think the two topics are the Supreme Court on presidential immunity.
|
Ivan:
[37:05]
| Oh, yeah. That was this week.
|
Sam:
[37:06]
| That was this week. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[37:09]
| Jesus fucking Christ. Felt like it was like three years ago now.
|
Sam:
[37:14]
| And, you know, I was upset. like I intended to get our last show out before the ruling went out, but I missed it by like 20 minutes. Like I put the show out like 20 minutes after the ruling went out. So I included in the description that we wouldn't talk about that, but I didn't insert it into the show that we didn't talk about it. Cause that was already baked. And I was just like doing the final thingy anyway. Anyway, so presidential immunity and the continued travails of Biden is old. And what do we do about that or not? And all of the drama surrounding that, which has continued to spiral.
|
Sam:
[37:53]
| OK, so with all of that being said, it is time for a break. Which one is this one? We'll be back after this. Thank you. Sort of add suddenly.
|
Ivan:
[38:59]
| Yes. Very abruptly.
|
Sam:
[39:00]
| It's okay. We just made a loop and made it run twice. Yeah. So.
|
Ivan:
[39:05]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[39:06]
| Yeah. You may not have guessed, but I am not actually, you know, a musician and composer.
|
Ivan:
[39:14]
| Well, to be fair, considering that you're neither of those. That's not terrible. I mean, I've heard a lot of other.
|
Sam:
[39:21]
| I like the beat. I like.
|
Ivan:
[39:24]
| It's got a decent beat. Look, I've heard other intentionally made music that is far worse.
|
Sam:
[39:31]
| You know, yeah, we, we, we banged some random notes and then did, there's a, there's a tool in Logic Pro that like quantizes to sort of make sure the timing is even and stuff. And we added a couple of things to it and, you know, it's whatever, you know, it was, it was fun to do whatever I, you know, I still. One of those things that is still on my list to someday do but is not a priority is switch out make some new breaks and switch out some of the existing ones but you know or yeah whatever i i mean yeah.
|
Ivan:
[40:07]
| I mean i i i promise some and i've been yeah doing about as well as you have but.
|
Sam:
[40:12]
| Yeah exactly like you know i had several ideas i've forgotten what the ideas are at this point I.
|
Ivan:
[40:21]
| Had some ideas, too. I can't remember any of them anymore. Speaking of memory.
|
Sam:
[40:27]
| Memories all alone in the moonlight. Something, something. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[40:33]
| The way we were. Scattered pictures.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| Okay, let's do immunity first, since it was first, like, early in the week. And the Biden stuff has just been ongoing the whole time. Their new developments. So let me just say on immunity, first of all, the general outlines, at a high level of what the court did was what I predicted and what most people predicted was that they would develop some sort of definition of what is and is not immune and then send it back to the lower court for the lower court to go and figure out the specifics. But the definition they provided and the guidance they gave around that topic was much more expansive than what almost anybody expected them to do. It wasn't a very narrow core concept. Bit of presidential actions that were immune. It was, it was basically the, yes, there was a core group that had absolute immunity, but that core group was bigger than people thought. And then they granted a presumption of immunity that was much, much broader. Well, and wait, okay.
|
Ivan:
[41:53]
| Wait, hold on.
|
Sam:
[41:53]
| Yes. And let me finish.
|
Ivan:
[41:56]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[41:56]
| And they also put into place some restrictions in terms of, Even if you're trying to figure out something that is private and not in scope, they put in major restrictions on using evidence that was presidential protected in terms of proving that things weren't. So they basically put lots and lots of obstacles in place here and made the presumption just very, very broad and put the burden completely on prosecution to prove that something is not. I guess here's one way or some way. Well, they put the presumption on the prosecution to prove that something was not protected, and they made it very hard for them to do so by restricting what evidence could be used for that. In case of Donald Trump's specific case, the one set of charges that were around trying to convince the Department of Justice to do bogus investigations, they said that is 100% protected and completely out, and you have to consider the other stuff. Go ahead, Yvonne. Sorry, I keep interrupting.
|
Ivan:
[43:04]
| Well, here is the thing. I mean, I...
|
Ivan:
[43:07]
| OK, maybe, you know, I'm reading it because I also heard a couple of other people that didn't take it, that it was as expansive a protection as you as you're what you explained right now, because the one thing is that I thought what it did is it separated two things into what were official acts and non-official acts. Start off with that okay and then anything that is an official act okay is you know is presumed to be protected or not but but the one thing that they did is that they left it very unclear as to they i here's my problem they didn't explicitly say what the fuck an official act is they clearly define it well is what you said when they said that they jump about the torts They basically said the way that they wrote it was, well, you know, it could be an official act. But if a prosecutor brings it up to court and us as the courts look at it and we define that it's not an official act, then it's not an official act. And so I was like, so I'm like, wait a minute. And what I felt is what I felt is is basically because we saw this in the previous case that they did with the what the hell what they did with the federal agencies. Agencies, okay, and the regulatory power, where this was a judicial power grab on both sides, okay, all right? They basically went and said, you know, they took away from the executive, here's the funny thing, they took away from the executive the right to make, you know.
|
Ivan:
[44:36]
| Rules that were binding, any rules that an agency makes can be challenged, okay, all right? You know, so that was one thing. And then in this case, they basically created this definition of official acts that basically, well, if us as a judiciary would decide that it's not official, then it's not.
|
Sam:
[44:53]
| Well, it's more than that, though, because of the evidentiary stuff that they put in there, which Barrett also... Barrett broke from the rest of the conservatives on evidentiary part, but it didn't matter. They still had the majority because they make the presumption essentially is that it is an official act unless you can prove otherwise. wise. But they highly restrict what evidence can or cannot be used in order to prove it's not an official act. And they specifically say you can't inquire into the president's motive. And the president's motive is often the exact thing that would make it not an official act because they're They're doing it for themselves rather than for the job.
|
Ivan:
[45:50]
| Well, the problem is inquiring. Well, the problem. Well, the thing is, of course, inquiring of the motive, unless, you know, he made it clear what the book it's what. And I get what the hell they're saying.
|
Sam:
[46:02]
| Well, but for instance, like you can't like one of the examples they brought up essentially is that like you cannot interview administration officials to find out like what the president was saying about why they did it. And they're intending to protect that universe of presidential decision-making from outside inspection. But in order to prove that you were not doing it as part of your official duties, but were doing it for personal reasons, that is sort of critical information. Fundamentally, part of the... Well, let me back up one second, because I know you and I disagreed about this when we talked about this case months ago. But like to me.
|
Sam:
[46:51]
| Understanding whether the president committed a crime with their official duties is actually more important than their unofficial duties. It's basically the definition of abusive power is using your power to accomplish things that are illegal or improper or whatever. And to me, those require higher scrutiny, not less. like, yeah, because you are using the official powers of the office for things that are not for the public good, but are for your own good for whatever reason. And basically this ruling made it near, not impossible, but nearly impossible to look into that whole realm of things from a criminal point of view. Basically what they've said is like the remedy for all of that kind of stuff is impeachment. End of story.
|
Ivan:
[47:41]
| Impeachment. I think that, that, that I think is what they They were trying to to bring up is I think that and that's and that's the thing that I that I think that what they made.
|
Sam:
[47:52]
| And there and there are many problems with having impeachment. The only way to deal with that.
|
Ivan:
[47:56]
| But the reality is that, can I be honest, that's what the framers of the Constitution really thought was the remedy for for for for in terms of.
|
Sam:
[48:05]
| Well, no, but the impeachment clause itself says that they could be liable in the normal course of criminal actions after the impeachment. It specifically says that the fact that they're impeached would not restrict that.
|
Ivan:
[48:24]
| But here's the point about that, and it goes back to, okay, so for example, You said that part of the investigation that needed to happen in order to uncover motives for something happening, okay? So say you're somebody from DOJ and the president hasn't impeached. You can't do that. However, an impeachment inquiry could do so. And if they take away that veil and reveal that all the actions were criminal then it would go back into criminal because the court can then decide oh yes here it's clear that it was criminal and because the damn stupid ruling gives us that leeway you could you could do that but here listen the reality is that what i felt about this when it came out is that basically said you know what But Congress, do your fucking job.
|
Sam:
[49:18]
| No, but wait, wait.
|
Ivan:
[49:20]
| It's what it screamed at to me at the top of its lungs because I do think that it's really weird. I will admit that it's really strange to have a DOJ that is directly under the president investigate himself. And listen, this has been problematic throughout, you know, I mean, going to Nixon, going to Clinton, going to, you know, what's happened with Trump. It's been problematic. Okay. Look at what happened with, what's his name? With, oh, the stupid dog guy, whatever his name was. You know, the guy that looked like a dog who was the attorney general. You see i can't remember the names of anybody either you know what i'm talking about right bar that's it bar bar okay what did he do when he came in first thing he did this is nothing shut it down bye see ya yeah.
|
Sam:
[50:15]
| So look the.
|
Ivan:
[50:16]
| Reality is that but but like people have pointed out that.
|
Sam:
[50:19]
| Under this current this current regime if it if this decision had been made in the Nixon era, he never would have had to give up the tapes. He never would have resigned. He never would have likely been able to, you know, he would not have had to get a pardon because there would be no opportunity to do it because much of the evidence against him, was from White House staff who were acting in their official duties. One of the charges One of the possible charges against him was misusing the IRS and the CIA against his political enemies. That would have been shut down because it was official acts. He was telling the CIA to do stuff.
|
Ivan:
[51:07]
| Well, let me ask a question. I can't remember. I thought it wasn't Congress, the one that obtained the tapes. Or was DOJ?
|
Sam:
[51:15]
| Go look it up. I think it was DOJ. In any way, it went to the Supreme Court. I think it was DOJ. But confirm for us. But I've heard a number of legal scholars talk about how this essentially, in a stealth way, undid the Supreme Court rulings that were critical in the Nixon administration in the Watergate case. But look, the bottom line, though.
|
Ivan:
[51:44]
| It was the House Judiciary that got the tapes. Okay. Yeah, because remember, there was a Saturday Night Massacre where Nixon fired everybody.
|
Sam:
[51:54]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[51:54]
| And so he stopped the DOJ from looking at it. And once again, it wound up, like I said, it was on April 11, 1974, the U.S. House Committee and Judiciary subpoenaed the tapes of 42 White House conversations. Later that month, Nixon released more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts, refused to resend the actual tapes. And what went to the Supreme Court was that, yeah, that he wound up having to submit to Congress to release the tapes. And I will, I think.
|
Sam:
[52:20]
| So maybe not, maybe I misspoke on the tapes, but a lot of the investigation was, you know, all the White House staff who flipped on Nixon and talked about what he was doing and blah, blah, blah, you know.
|
Ivan:
[52:31]
| No, I do get that. And I understand that that's what happened. But I do. But I think that what I'm what I'm what I'm saying, OK, is that I think that over the last 30, 40 years, OK, so I'm looking at that, that that the House and Senate have abdicated a lot of their oversight responsibility and and especially on what the president does. And and this we saw with trump specifically i mean you know i'm sorry but this should have been a slam dunk impeachment there is no reason why this guy but mcconnell himself relied.
|
Sam:
[53:06]
| On the fact for his no vote that he thought that trump was gonna be handled by the criminal justice system and this ruling basically says that won't that can't happen for most things.
|
Ivan:
[53:16]
| Well well basically well here's the one thing here well here's what i'm saying basically this is them telling telling these motherfuckers that, you know what, that that's not the avenue to fucking dilucidate this person. The first fucking avenue has to be you assholes have to fucking impeach this son of a bitch.
|
Sam:
[53:34]
| I think you are giving them way too much credit. I don't think the justices who voted for this are like, damn it, Senate, you should have impeached him when you had a chance.
|
Ivan:
[53:43]
| I'm not talking about, no, I really do. No, I do think that as many have over the last few decades protected presidential power a lot, okay, over, you know, over time. And I do think that this decision wasn't just thinking about dickhead, okay?
|
Sam:
[53:58]
| All right? This is a massive increase in presidential power.
|
Ivan:
[54:01]
| No, I totally agree that it's a massive increase in presidential power.
|
Sam:
[54:06]
| This this makes it so hard to hold presidents accountable. And it is specifically for.
|
Ivan:
[54:13]
| Yeah, but but.
|
Sam:
[54:15]
| Well, well, it is specifically for things where Congress passes laws to restrict what the president does or passes laws. Just this case isn't even about a law that was passed specifically to restrict the president, which would have other issues implied. This is just the president violated a flat out law that applies to everybody.
|
Sam:
[54:36]
| And they're putting huge obstacles. Like there's a portion of Jack Smith's case that goes away instantly. The rest of Jack Smith's case becomes significantly harder than it would have been otherwise with this. It may not all be dead. Like there's going to be the hearings. There's going to be back and forth. Like, one thing I haven't heard yet, which I'm surprised it's been a week and we haven't heard yet, is anything from the lower court on scheduling hearings around these issues. Because now their job is going to be, okay, from everything that's left in the case, what's official, what's not, how do we go forward? Word, Jack Smith may adjust the indictment to try to get around some of these issues.
|
Sam:
[55:26]
| There's a bunch of that kind of stuff that may happen. I haven't heard dates for that yet, which is interesting, but I suspect we very soon will start hearing dates for that. But what SCOTUS has done for sure is made Jack Smith's life a lot harder to get to these same But I think more importantly is the broader thing that they have just made it a lot easier for a president to abuse their power without being concerned about being held responsible for it after they leave office. They may still have to be concerned about the impeachment, but let's be clear on impeachment too.
|
Sam:
[56:06]
| Impeachment has proven itself to not work.
|
Ivan:
[56:10]
| Yes. How much, even going back to Nixon, how well have we done in terms of really holding a president accountable for their official actions?
|
Sam:
[56:20]
| Well, I think you could actually say that since Nixon, a lot of the kinds of behavior that Nixon was doing that was commonplace before Nixon, I mean, Kennedy and Johnson also abused the FBI to go after their opponents. That's true. And I think for decades after Nixon, this whole culture in DOJ of like we can't even talk to the president because we have to be independent was directly a post-Watergate effect where people were like –.
|
Sam:
[56:53]
| FBI was being misused. We have to make sure that never happens again. There, there, I think there have been all kinds of cases where presidents might've been tempted to do stuff, but held back what this says is, Oh, sorry, no need to hold back anymore. And you know, if you got somebody like Biden in there, he's, he's going to do the right thing anyway, but probably, probably there There might be some edge cases where even he will be willing to push the envelope now that this is the case. But certainly if you get Trump in there, like any previous worries he might have had, all gone. You know, the way they defined this, like this was actually something that Roberts in the oral argument had concern about. And then in the final opinion was like, I don't have to worry about that after all, is that the way it's written, you can't even prove a fucking bribery case because you can prove that they got money, but the actual act of, say, appointing an ambassador or giving out a pardon is unquestionably an official act and you can't bring in evidence about the official act. So how do you prove that the bribery had to do with the official act? You're screwed. It's a catch 22.
|
Sam:
[58:14]
| And so like, you know, and people have brought up like the scenario that people keep talking about, about order seal to order seal team six to kill your opponent, blah, blah, blah. They're like, well, yeah, that's still illegal. Like you might not be able to charge the president for it because the president is doing an unofficial act, but the general that he orders it to isn't going to do it because it's an illegal order. And, but it was pointed out, well, all the president has to do is pardon them in advance. You know, yes, I'm going to give you an illegal order, but you are here with a pardon for anything you do in order to, act on that illegal order. And now some things might imply state or local crimes, not just federal, but, but you get the idea. There's, there's all kinds of obstacles that could be put in place there.
|
Ivan:
[59:02]
| Yeah. I mean, still Tim six goes and murder, say Trump here in Florida. Yeah. Uh, you know, they're, they're liable for murder here in Palm state, football beach.
|
Sam:
[59:12]
| Well, and I, and I will, I will say this as well. Like people have brought in all these examples of like, well, given this ruling, Obama can, no, Obama, Biden.
|
Ivan:
[59:22]
| You keep saying Obama.
|
Sam:
[59:24]
| I know. They look the same. I can't tell the difference. Anyway, no, people keep giving examples of like, well, Biden could go kill Trump now. Biden could go just put Trump in jail as a national security risk. Biden could do this.
|
Ivan:
[59:40]
| I've been saying that for a long time.
|
Sam:
[59:43]
| Biden could immediately just get rid of all the student loan debt with an executive order. The Supreme Court said he can't, but what are they going to do about it now? They just said, you know, they can't like hold them to it or anything. So just do it. There are all kinds of things like that. But, but here's the thing. I 100% guarantee you that with this court, what you just said is exactly what would happen. Like if Biden abused his powers in the exact Exact same fucking way. Donald Trump has already abused them and is in the J six case, for instance. And that is.
|
Sam:
[1:00:22]
| That would immediately, it would go back to SCOTUS and SCOTUS would be like, oh, well, not like that. This scenario is different. And here's why. You know, and because like, yeah, I know you still have some level of confidence that these decisions are being made on a sort of let's think about the law and the general implication for all presidents. And I think it is very clear at this point that a majority of the court in a majority of the cases is simply acting to get the political result they want and is making up the legal justification in a post-hoc way. Like, what's the right legal justification that gets us to what we want here? Because there's not even necessarily consistency between their own rulings. in some of these cases. It's like, no, what we want here, we want to massively expand presidential power. We want to delay this as long as we can for Donald Trump. We want to make it really difficult for the prosecution to make a case. So how do we justify that? That's what we're going to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:37]
| A great day for democracy, huh?
|
Sam:
[1:01:38]
| And, and honestly, this is the kind of thing where, you know, even because of the way precedent works, you know, even if Donald Trump loses, this puts in a time bomb for whenever we get the next president who wants to massively abuse their power. It just makes it very difficult to deal with it. I mean, it's already difficult to deal with that situation. This makes it worse. It almost gives them a green light. Now, some people have said, you know, this is not the kind of decision that I feel like will stand the test of time over decades and decades because it will be sort of narrowed back down. And I tell you, it'll be narrowed back down exactly in the way I just said. A president that the court disagrees with.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:33]
| Well that's why that's what i that's what i would like with that's what i would love for a fucking you know honestly for biden to push.
|
Sam:
[1:02:42]
| The limits of this.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:43]
| Fuck yeah okay this is the way you guys think it should work okay let's start pushing the limits on this fucking thing i mean if it were if it were me if it were me i would i don't know that joe biden would but i guarantee you joe biden would but but me oh fun i would be listen i would be on day one okay bringing down all my my White House staff, how the fuck are we going to make, you know, we're going to push the limit on this fucking thing to see what the fuck happens. Period. Flat out.
|
Sam:
[1:03:11]
| Well, just one simple example. One of the, Trump refrains for years and years and years now is how all this is a witch hunt. It's all out to get him. And this was all driven by Joe Biden. And that makes it improper. Well, the Supreme Court just said, if that's what Joe Biden wants, that's absolutely fine.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:32]
| I know. So let's sink in every fucking prosecutor on Trump's ass. Yeah. Oh, my God. Let's just, you know what? let's just blizzard him with fucking arrests and beat the subpoenas let's just let's just you know what let's just i mean.
|
Sam:
[1:03:50]
| Yeah dig into everything you've ever done in your freaking life ever.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:54]
| Ever i mean you know i mean yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:03:58]
| Because i'm it's a target rich environment as i've said many times before i'm sure they can find more stuff on him.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:04]
| And everybody on his family.
|
Sam:
[1:04:06]
| And everyone on his and.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:08]
| Old fucking family let's just you know ivanka jared everybody we fucking go send it to the fbi and arrest them just arrest you know what are we being charged we don't know yet.
|
Sam:
[1:04:20]
| We'll figure it out later yeah no we'll.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:23]
| Figure it out later.
|
Sam:
[1:04:24]
| Well and this is exactly the kind of stuff that is potentially enabled by this because specifically to be clear it's be you know the rest of the case and blah blah blah aside they they specifically said the president's directives to government agencies are 100 100 official and 100 protected so like that scenario of joe biden directing the department of justice to do xyz that that is 100 protected and immune right according to like yes You know, yeah, you could go impeach him over it. And frankly, you know, the Republic, this would actually give the Republican house something to actually impeach him on that. I would not disagree with, to be honest, but like, but the, the democratic Senate could still acquit him and then you're done.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:20]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:05:21]
| You know, that's it. And it goes back to the very early days of the Supreme Court when, who was it, Andrew Jackson or somebody who said the Supreme Court has made their decision, now let them enforce it?
|
Ivan:
[1:05:33]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:05:33]
| But the fact that administrations of both parties have fundamentally felt like, yeah, we have to abide by the law, including the court's judgments on that law, has been sort of fundamental. pedal.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:51]
| Wow. Okay, well, wow, wow, wow. To be fair, look, there's a lot of people that said that there should have been criminal charges brought against a lot of people in the, including george w bush over the how the iraq war was run.
|
Sam:
[1:06:05]
| Well and i well i agree with them on the torture part like i think there were there are actual statutes against what was done and the bush administration should have been held liable for it yeah so we.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:17]
| Didn't do that either.
|
Sam:
[1:06:18]
| We should have damn it and also we and and and you know doj should have gone after the obstruction of justice on the muller report issues as soon as they got into power too which by the way also would be taken out of play by this supreme court ruling as well oh yeah because the obstruction of justice was around things like firing the fbi director telling doj to do x y right yeah and all of those out out the window yeah and and like fundamentally that this is where i i come back to like to me official acts need more protection not less but you know but even if you're going to have this back to the beginning of this but.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:00]
| Even even without this ruling it was very difficult to do anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:07:04]
| Oh no it was it was difficult anyway but this just makes it so much harder because even with this sort of even if you agree which i don't this should be sort of a core group of executive power that's protected and immune. They have made it so expansive. The presumption of executive immunity is very expansive. The way to burst that presumption is very, very hard. They have extensively limited what kind of evidence you can or cannot use to even make those arguments, or even to use as evidence for other cases that are clearly private. it. So it's, it's just, it's a mess. And I think this is one of those decisions that Trump or not, I think it's much worse if Trump wins, obviously, but Trump or not, this decision will have negative implications lasting the rest of our lives, you know, in total, or unless, you know, some future court overturns it. But the problem is to get to the point where a future court overturns it. You have to have a president who does very abusive things. Well, actually, I'm not even sure who has standing in that case. How do you even roll this back? Because like DOJ, it's not like DOJ can bring a court. I guess DOJ would have to go after an ex-president anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:33]
| Ex-president.
|
Sam:
[1:08:34]
| They would have to go after an ex-president anyway using evidence and things that were considered immune by this case and it would have to make its way back up to a some future scotus who would say who instead of reaffirming the previous decision would say the previous decision was wrong and overturn it but we.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:55]
| Just need i mean i i keep saying it i don't and why don't we pack this fucking we need to.
|
Sam:
[1:09:02]
| Well, and this, this ties to another thing that, you know, has come up again in terms of court packing, but I think has come up over and over again for the last couple of times. Democrats have had control of either the house or the senate is that there's very much a, if this if if there's not a path to this thing actually becoming law then don't even try, you know so for instance oh in order to pack the court we would need to eliminate the filibuster no we don't um and we don't have the votes oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:43]
| And we need to eliminate yeah we do yeah what am.
|
Sam:
[1:09:45]
| I I say yes the.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:46]
| Opposite right I thought for some reason I it's my age.
|
Sam:
[1:09:49]
| Yes it's it's your your bite yeah I know intellect yeah anyway you would have to eliminate the filibuster and so we know since we don't have the we we don't have the votes we're not even going to try and I think there's a, a real case that even for first of all there are ways to be a first of all you you potentially actually could eliminate the filibuster. I know we didn't have the votes to eliminate the filibuster, et cetera, et cetera. But even the act of trying something that you know is going to fail makes the other side stop you. And then you can say, look, I tried, but they stopped me. It's their fault. If you just sort of start with the presumption of defeat and don't do it at all, than what it looks like to your own supporters, especially low information supporters, are they didn't even fucking try. We voted for them so that they would do XYZ and they didn't even fucking try. And that's what it ends up looking like.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:56]
| Yeah, well, it wound up looking like that, but the reality is that you had, the majority was super tenuous, and the two critical votes for that basically said no way in hell.
|
Sam:
[1:11:07]
| Well, I know, but what happened is- No.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:09]
| I know, that's what they say. Listen, I know that's what the low information voters say.
|
Sam:
[1:11:12]
| But- No, no, but what I'm saying is the difference is, the Democratic strategy in that scenario is, we don't have the votes, therefore we're not going to push this right now. Now, the alternative is push it anyway, lose.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:27]
| And they don't give you credit for that shit. Look, I mean, you know, how many times have Republicans pushed through these votes on bullshit that I know that, you know, even their base doesn't recognize that they tried to do anything related to that stuff. We'll bring up a vote 100 times. We'll, you know, we'll push to impeach whatever it's, you know, failed votes. Listen, we're talking about low-information voters. Low-information voters, they fucking don't even pay attention to the votes that actually happen. You think you're going to fucking pay attention to a failed vote? I didn't even notice this shit. People don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:12:04]
| At least you could make the story of it. You could cut the commercials that say, we are pushing for blah and they stopped us. Instead of saying, vote for us again and we'll do this, and then not do it yet again.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:18]
| Oh, I mean, you can do what the fuck we do. We just say that we're pushing for it, and it didn't happen. I mean, you know, you can just say it. They don't count the fucking, they don't look at the, listen, Sam, you're saying, oh, the fuck we could use it as a fact that they would look at what facts, what nonsense, what are you talking about? What the hell are you saying? Like, the fucking facts don't matter to these people. I don't know anything. I'm sick and tired of all these assholes. I'm so sick and tired of them. Yeah. And we're fucking like right now hostage to an entire class of idiots, Sam. It's a complete fucking mass of low information morons.
|
Sam:
[1:13:01]
| I think we have a title for the show. Class of idiots.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:05]
| I'm so sick and tired of all of them. They don't know shit about nothing. Every time I hear shit like I've heard like over the last, you know, I don't know how many years. Well, you know, the Democrats didn't, you know, could have passed legislation to protect abortion across the nation, but they decided that not to in order to fundraise over the issue. And I'm like, what fucking reality? Which planet do you live on, asshole? You know, the filibuster? What the fuck are you talking about? Are you, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:13:40]
| So and and and and just to be clear on that particular issue, even when the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, they did not have the votes on the abortion issue.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:52]
| I shouldn't issue because there were like conservative Democrats anyway. Yes. Fuck it. But Sam, this is the shit that they spew. Or how about this one? This one was a gem. I always loved this. Well, you know, because Obama has weakened the military. and right now our military is weaker than russia and china and i'm like fuck oh we.
|
Sam:
[1:14:15]
| Spend more than the.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:17]
| Next 10 nations combined and what are you talking about oh really and.
|
Sam:
[1:14:27]
| I've said this before but to like the vast i shouldn't say vast majority but probably the vast majority of people that the it really doesn't go any deeper than when you're talking about president or anything else it's like did something bad happen if so who you know whoever's president is to blame yeah basically period period period like and there's no further analysis any deeper than that there's no No understanding of, I mean, I heard someone, maybe it was a conversation on Mastodon a while back, the last month sometime, somebody asking, like, do they actually teach like civics in high school anymore? Because nobody seems to understand how any of the basics of this stuff even works.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:20]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:15:21]
| And I'm like, look, first of all, I think that is highly dependent on exactly where you live. but frankly when I was a kid they did teach that in high school but, Yes, there are wonks like me and you, but the vast majority of people did not care, did not pay attention.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:41]
| They just want, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:15:43]
| It's like maybe they'll pay attention enough to like, you know, pass the quiz this week. But then the second it's over, they forgot.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:51]
| It's like completely deleted.
|
Sam:
[1:15:53]
| Yeah, because they didn't care to begin with. like you know meanwhile yeah i i've i've been interested interested in the intricacy yeah i've been interested in the intricacies of how this stuff works since like seventh or eighth grade you know and like you know i i loved like reading the goddamn constitution and understanding okay well how how would the 22nd amendment play out if somebody actually had to use it blah blah This is not most people, clearly.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:25]
| I literally met with a Palestinian group like 30 years ago to understand some of the issues between Israel and Palestinians at Georgetown for my amusement purposes. I went to a seminar where we were talking about Iran-Contra, where I was rightly so basically told that I was a moron and didn't know what I was saying. And that professor that said that to me was absolutely correct. And I did learn from that.
|
Sam:
[1:16:57]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:58]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:16:59]
| So anyway, let's take our second break. and then we will switch into joe biden joe.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:11]
| Good old joe.
|
Sam:
[1:17:12]
| Good old joe and his whole everything that's going on and so the the next break is an election graphs break and so i will start out the next segment by talking about some of the things i launched on there this last week and then we'll move into the rest of the joe biden stuff back after this.
|
Sam:
[1:18:34]
| Okay. So election graphs, just real quick. I took last week off, as I mentioned on the show, to add probabilistic estimates that actually take into account the amount of time left before the election. This was basically, for a long time, I've had probabilities that took the.
|
Sam:
[1:18:53]
| Final election graphs averages from 2008 to 2020, compared them to actual election results, Did a bunch of mathematical analysis that I won't bore you with here to use that to sort of on a state-by-state basis say, if the candidate is ahead by this percentage, either Republican or Democrat ahead or behind, what are the chances of them actually winning? winning. Basically, an easy way to think of that is say, it's not quite, it's a simplification of the actual mathematics, but one way to think about it is say, okay, let's say Donald Trump has a 3% lead in some state. Let's look back at 2008 through 2020 and look at all the times the Republican has had a 3% lead approximately, what percentage of that time did they end up winning?
|
Sam:
[1:19:51]
| And then using that information on a state-by-state basis to do a simulation of national blah, blah, blah. But all of that time, it's been an if the election was held today, which alternately is the same as if the polls don't change at all between now and election day. And obviously the election is not Not today. And obviously, polls will change a lot between now and Election Day, the up, down, sideways, left, right. So what I did over the week I took off and a couple days after was basically add in all the infrastructure to say.
|
Sam:
[1:20:26]
| To do that same comparison, but instead of always using the very last final election graphs averages before the election, was to look at the averages X number of days before the election. So for instance, right now, as we're recording, it's 122.8 days before polls start to close on election night. So I would look at everything that's 122, 123 days before the election. What were my election graphs averaged that far before each of the last four elections? And how much did things change? Now, it's still sort of modeling based on the actual last four elections. And so you've always got this, you know, future results, or no, past results may not be indicative of future results, right? Yeah, I think the phrase in the market is on returns.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:21]
| That's correct. Yes. Past returns do not indicate future returns. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:21:27]
| Exactly. And so you've always got that caveat that just because this is sort of how it worked out for the last four election cycles does not mean this is how it'll work out this time. And specifically, the fact that's relevant here, aside from the ups and downs within the time is also that for only one of those last four election cycles have the polls underestimated the Democrats. There was one where they were pretty spot on and two where they fairly significantly underestimated the Republicans, specifically Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. And so my odds kind of assume that, The polls, if they're doing anything, are probably underestimating Trump a little bit. They don't feel really secure that there's a 50-50 shot of who wins a state unless the Democrat is ahead by like 1.5%. I forget the exact number, 1.2, 1.3, somewhere around there.
|
Sam:
[1:22:30]
| And so anyway, the bottom line is that's been added. If you go to electiongraphs.com, you can check out all that out. I did a little redesign of how the pages are laid out. There's these views are on both the state detail pages and also the national. So just to, and I still have both the uniform swing and independent states version of this, which basically, so they're now four probabilistic views to confuse everybody.
|
Sam:
[1:22:59]
| Because basically the independent states assumes that if there's an error in one state, it doesn't affect the errors in other states at all. They're all completely independent of each other, where basically the uniform swing says if the errors are underestimating the Republicans by 2% or whatever, then that's the same in every state. But I honestly, I think the truth is closer to the uniform swing than it is to independent states, simply because the same pollsters are often doing polls in all the swing states. And so like if let's say if pollster A is tending to underestimate one party or the other and they do polls in all the swing states where they're well, they're likely to be making the same error in all the states. So I think the states are probably more correlated than not. So just as an example, I'm only going to talk uniform swing right now. As of right now in the polls, and there are not a lot of state polls since the debate, for those of you asking. So this is sort of a right before the debate scenario. There have been a couple polls, but not really any that have changed things too much. If the election was now, Biden's chances of winning 15%.
|
Sam:
[1:24:20]
| Given the amount of time left before the election and current polling, based on the history, Biden's chances of winning 24%. So basically, the bottom line is he's behind. He's been behind for a while. His chances are not zero because there's plenty of time to turn things around yet.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:40]
| Well, better chances than you gave Trump in 2016.
|
Sam:
[1:24:45]
| Yes. Yes. Well, I didn't give chances in 2016. I added that in 2020.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:51]
| Well, I believe that. Well, that's true. But I believe that you were asked the question.
|
Sam:
[1:24:55]
| In 2016, I tracked other people's odds and the median of everybody giving odds was 14% for Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:06]
| Unfortunately, you faithfully went like the week. It's very close to the election, like before at some point a friend of ours asked you and you you told us that there that there was like a 99 chance that hillary was going to win.
|
Sam:
[1:25:22]
| Unfortunately you.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:24]
| Did say that.
|
Sam:
[1:25:25]
| To kathy i do not believe i said 99 i did yeah and and also i believe that was a month out two weeks out at our two weeks out i was i was saying that we're in the cone if we if this was a hurricane we are in the cone of danger were my exact words. But anyway, the point is, 24% is not zero. 24%, as you said, is better than the odds people gave Trump in 2016. However, it's not good.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:01]
| Well, let's say, we're not, listen, it's not, all I will say, all I will say is, is in almost every recent election after 2020, we've been positively surprised by the Democrat turnout.
|
Sam:
[1:26:21]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:22]
| And it's turned into positive results. And so I know that it's still four months still to the election. So I'm optimistic that somehow, Somehow, especially because we have so much noise from a third party candidate. And one of the things, you know, We haven't had a third party candidate pulled as high since going back to, uh, what's his name? Peru, right?
|
Sam:
[1:26:51]
| Peru. Peru. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:52]
| So I really think that that's also adding a measure of, you know, of, of noise to all of this.
|
Sam:
[1:27:00]
| Well, as I've said before, there are all kinds of reasons that you can come up with for why this time, maybe the polls are underestimating the Democrat, even though they haven't done that in the last couple of weeks. cycles. And some of those may turn out to be true, but the way I look at it is you have a, you have to be really.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:21]
| It's a stomach churning situation. Okay. You know, that's the reality. And I think that that plays into the freak out that we had this week.
|
Sam:
[1:27:29]
| Well, let me, let me finish my statement. You just have to be really careful. I think about motivated reasoning that like you allow yourself to think about all the reasons the polls may be wrong, but not the reasons the polls may be right. And so I, the way I look at it is I'm going to take them at face value and I'm going to look at what historically has happened, which, and look, here's, and I also think it's healthier to think of that anyway. Like we're going to talk about Biden's interview and other stuff in a second. Like, I think there's a level of denial of the fact that yes, you are behind. That's not necessarily healthy that, because the way to, I think the way to play this is even if you are ahead, act like you're behind.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:18]
| I, I, I a hundred percent agree. That was my point. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. It should, it should be, don't, don't think, you know, you can't think, well, the polls are wrong and just not do anything. Now you gotta put, you know, you gotta to be all in on doing everything. I mean, think like you're completely behind. Look, it's kind of like the way I work in sales, which sometimes is a little bit like exhausting, which is, you know, I may have like last year, I was over a hundred percent of my plan and people didn't understand why the hell I was still killing myself, you know, chasing deals. And I'm like, listen, I, I, I, i could be at 130 i could be at 20 i'm going after everything like i've got nothing, Okay. Like I'm, I'm going after everything. Okay. You can't be complacent. There is no, there is no complacency, especially when the numbers aren't painting a rosy picture right now.
|
Sam:
[1:29:26]
| Right. And, and, and, you know, I said there weren't very many Nash or sorry, there weren't very many state level polls, which is what election graphs does since the, since the big debate, but there've been lots of national ones and the consents there, There's some are more, some are less, but the consensus seems to be on a national level. The polls have cost Biden or not the polls have cost the debate cost Biden two to 3% or so, uh, in terms of a margin. And he had just in the, like in the national poll averages right before the debate, he had just caught up with Donald Trump for the first time ever that the, the, the, the The averages at 538 and other places were showing Biden with a very, very slight lead for the first time since they started tracking them. And now he's back to being behind several percent.
|
Sam:
[1:30:21]
| And so that's the immediate effect of the debate in terms of that. Now, normally, I'd say, you know, the history of debates is that whatever effect they have one way or the other is almost always short term. Lasts a few weeks, and then you're back to where you were before. But the pile-on on Joe Biden has been incessant. There has been no let-up. Even after this interview today, there's more.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:59]
| By the way, the second one that he has done this week. Third.
|
Sam:
[1:31:03]
| Third. There were at least two radio interviews, maybe more, before this one this week. since the debate before this big televised one. But like, just to give you an example of like the pylon, I just saw this on Mastodon, like literally in the last three minutes. This is from a Jared White who's been watching ABC's new ABC's post interview coverage of how Joe Biden did at his big interview with George Stephanopoulos on Friday evening. ABC News has some expert on to comment on the interview. And she's saying that a good interview performance is actually a worst case scenario for the Democrats because it simply prolongs the inevitable.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:50]
| This guy basically can't, you know, they have all made the decision that Joe Biden is Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:59]
| It's basically, Biden's interview went well here's why that's bad news for Biden.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:08]
| I mean, look.
|
Sam:
[1:32:12]
| Yvonne has been sputtering and angry about this on the curmudgeon's course slack all week long. So let's let's go. He's speechless now.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:23]
| The Republic. Well, here's the reason why I'm speechless. You didn't talk about the actual interview.
|
Sam:
[1:32:27]
| Yeah, let's let's do that real quick.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:29]
| All right. Which which you you you promise that you were going to give your thoughts about the interview, which I actually gave you a little bit. My thoughts about the interview as it happened because unfortunately sam due to certain issues.
|
Sam:
[1:32:40]
| Oh i wanted to complain about this i'm sorry tangent yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:44]
| Well it's an important tangent i.
|
Sam:
[1:32:46]
| Was all set up and ready to go to watch this damn interview because it's being it's being all it's been all hyped up all this week that oh joe biden's giving this big interview with george stephanopoulos and like this is where he's going to show that he's you know it was all an aberration and everything's fine. Right. I get everything turned on because this was going to be at 8 p.m. Eastern.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:33:07]
| So that's 5 p.m. Pacific. I get all set up. It's like 445. I've got up the TV. I'm like, I put on ABC. Nothing. It's the local news. And they're talking about they give like a 10 second clip of the interview and say they're going to have it'll be on at eight. And I'm like, what? So apparently, and I look at my, you know, like online guide thing and yeah, it's at eight. So there, look, the thing was not live anyway. It was recorded early in the afternoon, but it was being aired on the East coast in prime time at 8 PM. And apparently it was just being aired at 8 PM on Pacific too, which is three hours later. I'm like, this is not how you handle a big fucking news event. And I'm like, okay, well, surely they'll just have it on abcnews.com or on abc.com. No, no. Both of those places are like, no, dumbass. You're on the West Coast. You have to wait three hours. And I'm like, and look, I am sure, you know, Yvonne asked me if I had a VPN. I don't have one set up. I should have even tried just like, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:34:27]
| I'm sure there are ways I could have fooled it. into giving me the East Coast feed. But I was just angry at this point. And it was only a 22-minute interview, so it was already halfway through the damn interview as I'm looking for this stuff. I'm like, Okay. I understand primetime interview on your broadcast channel. Fine. Put the damn thing at 8 PM local time, whatever, you know, but you, I shouldn't be able to go to the website and see it. I should be able to go to your stream. They're streaming news channel, ABC live news, or whatever the fuck streaming news, ABC channel was in my package. It was also three hours delayed. you delay a news channel three hours right what the fuck right no no yeah this is it's ridiculous what what freaking decade is this no yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:27]
| Uh yeah i know so we solved the problem.
|
Sam:
[1:35:30]
| I solved the problem yvonne facetimed me and like pointed his phone at his tv TV and then, and then rewound to show it.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:38]
| Well, well, no, no, I, I, no, no. Well, no, no. Well, I, first I did the phone. I realized that that was bad. So I actually took my webcam.
|
Sam:
[1:35:46]
| Right. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:47]
| And, and then, and then pointed it, then FaceTime you again, and then pointed it at my, my TV, which thankfully, because I do have that TiVo service. I like the other ones. I mean, I don't have to be watching.
|
Sam:
[1:35:58]
| You can re yeah, you can rewind and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:01]
| I don't have to be. and it has well the thing the great thing about it is that it has all the live channels they're always on a buffer you.
|
Sam:
[1:36:09]
| Don't even have to be recording it right they're always yeah right.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:12]
| They're always buffered so i don't you know whatever any live channel i go to oh i missed the start of this boom go back whatever it shows so yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:21]
| The the other thing sort of technically on the thing at first i i was like telling yvonne a few times i'm having trouble hearing and i was and he improved the microphone and it was a bit better but then i realized there were other people online comparing complaining about the audio quality as well i.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:38]
| Found the audio quality was fine.
|
Sam:
[1:36:40]
| Well because i after we were off yvonne i i saw some live some some better clips of it and i still noticed the same problem there was a lot of background noise behind biden okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:53]
| Oh i did hear some background noise occasionally on the back it sounded like Like somebody dropped something, whatever, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:59]
| Well, no, it was just constant sort of buzzing background in a bunch of it. And so I heard some people online were saying, look, this is what probably happened is he wasn't speaking that loudly and they boosted the mic up to get him and it just got a lot more background noise and stuff like that. So the audio quality wasn't great. And if someone's speaking not that loud.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:25]
| I thought that they would have mic'd them up, though.
|
Sam:
[1:37:27]
| Well, it looked like they were using a boom mic. I didn't see a laugh.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:32]
| Well, that's not the best. Yeah, that's not the best. Yeah, you're right. He didn't have a, he didn't clip a mic on him. Well, that was a poor choice of, I mean, boom mics are not, yeah. And the thing is that he was sitting back. Well, I think the problem is, as you have complained that I did, because Biden was sitting back, okay, with his legs crossed, okay? And if you've got a boom mic and it's in the middle over there, well, that's not exactly going to be great to pick up what the hell you're doing. So, yeah, they probably had to boost up the damn mic.
|
Sam:
[1:38:08]
| Yeah, and so you'd think they would work all. I mean, it's a fucking national news network. Come on, figure that shit out. But whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:17]
| I mean, I would have thought. I mean, I totally expected that he would have been mic'd up. But on my end, it sounded fine. I mean, I only occasionally heard a strain. I mean, I.
|
Sam:
[1:38:26]
| Had the sort of double effect of like going through your webcam, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:32]
| But well, yeah, you had the effect. Yeah, that that that. But on on here on the TV, it sounded fine.
|
Sam:
[1:38:38]
| I mean, when I watched real clips of it on on on replay after we watched it over FaceTime, it was a lot better. But there were still a few places where I was distracted and it was is a little hard to get them at some points. But anyway, the bottom line, I'll give you my impression since when we were watching it, I promised Yvonne I would save my impressions.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:00]
| He saved it for the show.
|
Sam:
[1:39:02]
| He did fine, but I don't think fine is good enough given the scenario and the media pile on. Like he he did not tank this he did not do badly but like he i don't think this was, given the sharks that are circling i don't think this will make that go away by itself now the thing that i think that joe is doing that if he sticks to it everybody's just gonna to have to shut the fuck up is he's saying over and over again, I'm not going anywhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:39:39]
| Fuck you all. I'm not going anywhere. Now, I wish he'd actually said, fuck you all.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:44]
| I really wish at some point that he would have said that. But he's had Fetterman has said it for him. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:39:51]
| Fetterman has said it for him. One of Stephanopoulos' questions was, there have been reports just in the last hour in in the New York times that Senator Warner is organizing a group of senators to come tell you to drop out. What do you think of that? And he was, and he, and he was like, well, nobody's told me anything yet. And I don't think they will. They will. They're not going to. That's the moment I really wanted him to say, fuck John Warner. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:20]
| Yeah. Yeah. I was like, come on. Now, I will say that I saw two different versions of this story. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:40:28]
| The Senator Warner story.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:29]
| Yes. There is. I've seen two versions of that story. Okay. And I, and I point that out because especially because a lot of the coverage that has been And this week, to me and to many that have observed what's been going on in the last couple of decades with the news media, I mean, look, the GOP has for the last couple of years, number of years, been saying that Biden is mentally ill and competent. Same fucking thing that they did with hillary that she was ill that she had schizophrenia that she had whatever the fuck and then everybody started questioning her health because she passed out from the flu like during the during the campaign and stuff and they were saying that she was dying or whatever and they they created a fucking mega cycle of this shit during that campaign too and you know and it's the same thing that i'm i'm in this cycle where the gop and all All of this information machine going on out there that we know also includes a lot of bots and a lot of stuff and whatever has been pushing the story about Biden being incompetent, Biden being whatever. And all the same stories are the same thing. Oh, my God, Biden was in a room with photographers.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:37]
| And I don't know. He wasn't effusive. And when he said hi, and I'm like, and then somebody made a joke about his age. And this was, by the way, the the evidence, the anonymous sourced evidence that cited his, you know, incompetent. And I'm like, what the fuck? And and the thing that with the Warner story, I saw two versions. I saw one where it said that Warner was putting together a group of senators to go talk to Biden about what to do with the campaign.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:10]
| Another news source said that they were going to go ask him to drop out. Now, those are two very different things. And I saw two, you know, respected. And I say that in quotes right now because some of the shit that I saw this week, news sources say it. And one of them categorically said it that differently. And so I was like, hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:31]
| You know, and and there's man this week was just the unnamed source, you know, a thon of, you know, all these anecdotes of, oh, Biden went and like went into a room and couldn't remember, confused this guy's name. And oh yeah and Biden went in this meeting and you know he miss you know miss said the name of the country that we're talking about and I'm like.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:05]
| And it goes back to the standard you were saying about this interview with that interview, calm down anybody where I'm just like, I don't listen that there is an entire group of Democrats that are petrified at what the polling polls say. Yeah. And there has been chum in the water having been laid by all of these people related to Biden's ability to run. And then he look, he fucked up the debate. OK, and that was his fuck up, which he, by the way, took ownership repeatedly on the interview and said, look, this is this is on on me. And it's a fuck up that he did. And, and I, you know, I was remembering there was, you know, there was one time that I, that I went for a speaking engagement that I was supposed to do. Okay. That I prepared like crazy. And so I thought, and man, I, oh my God, I fucked it up so bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:03]
| I mean, it was just, it was just a disaster. I mean, it was a disaster. master and and i've spoken like to meetings events conventions presentations so many times but fuck man you know there's one of those days were and i thought that i was prepared and i thought that i'm going in there and i'm this thing and i just went in there and just laid a massive turd I'm like you know you know and man you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:40]
| I, you know, where we're talking about, he hasn't given interviews or whatever. I know he hasn't given press conferences, but he has given press conferences. I looked at the ratio. He's been, it's on the low end. This year hasn't done many, but he, you know, he's done close to like what some other presidents have done. It's not, it's at the low end of presidencies.
|
Sam:
[1:45:00]
| But it's not the lowest.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:02]
| It's not the lowest. Okay. So that's one thing. And look, he has actively avoided a couple of publications for interviews because you know what? I think he's pissed at him and with good reason. Okay. For a number of reasons. So the New York times has been.
|
Sam:
[1:45:18]
| I mean, yeah, a lot of people have been like the New York times has been going after him so much just because they're holding a grudge because he won't talk to them.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:25]
| That's right. Okay. Because there have been several stories that have reported that the publisher or times is pissed that he has refused to grant them an interview. Okay. And so, you know, all of a sudden this thing happened. So many, let's be clear, more pundits freaked out. And it was just like, oh, it's a disaster. It's over. And it became this entire feeding frenzy cycle where all of a sudden all these examples of anecdotes of him like, you know, I realized maybe I was more conscious this week. Let me play devil's advocate for just a second. Wait, wait, wait. No, no. You can play. Let me finish this part. pardon you can be but it was an advocate later and i was like this week and i'm like i'm realizing that i've got this one very important customer that i deal with okay it's really has been my largest customer the last 18 months okay i have been in meetings several times with all these people and i still keep saying the wrong names for the people that are at this fucking customer okay and i have been and i have been and not just that but there is a solution that we are selling and I keep fucking saying the wrong name for what the fuck it is that we're putting in. And every time I'm going and I'm like, oh, we're doing the stupid thing called. Oh, yeah, yeah, the thing. Right, right, the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:42]
| By the way, I called the guy. Shit. Look, actually, no, it wasn't on a call with the customer. Thank God. But I was on an internal call where they asked me what the name of the guy is of the customer. I gave the wrong name and somebody had to call. Oh, no. What's his name? Yeah, whatever. I'm like, oh, jesus christ i could not call this guy by the right name my life depended on it and and i'm like you know look if this is a sign of i don't know what the fuck it's a sign of it's a sign of that i've been very bad with names and i've historically been very bad with names and and joe biden has been a gaffe machine his entire life and i mean shit derailed his shit like 35 40 i mean the first time i remember running for president which is against dugakis it completely derailed that bid. And so, I mean, he certainly hasn't improved with age. Right. So, you know, so that's.
|
Sam:
[1:47:30]
| So let, let me, let me play the devil's advocate here for a little bit. And I know people are like, you know, devil's advocates are hated for a reason. Um, but let, let's, let's assume that a lot of the elected officials who deal with Joe Biden have actually noticed explicitly a significant decline in his abilities since his presidency started and the reason that the panic is here is not like oh this debate happened and he did badly at the debate and maybe that's an indication of something else but instead it's a yeah we've known he's not been great for a long time, but we've been keeping it quiet. This is what the Olivia Newsy story essentially said, which was one of the ones with unnamed sources that you're mentioning. Right. But we've known he's been bad for a while, but we were hoping that this could all essentially be kept under wraps until after the election. And, but now it's all out in the open. And so now that's why we're panicking because we, we actually know he's in bad shape. It's not Not just one bad debate. We know he really is in bad shape behind the scenes. And that's why we're panicking. And that's why they're driving this conversation now.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:53]
| I honestly, I mean, I know that that's what they're saying, but let me put it to you this way. It went with the shit that Trump had, you know, done when he with his inner circle. If, you know, Biden hasn't had a lot of turnover in his inner circle. OK, I mean, almost zero. I mean, who the hell has left the administration? administration.
|
Sam:
[1:49:19]
| Well people have said even aside from his administration his actual core group of advisors is apparently the same people have been with him for 30 years.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:27]
| Yeah so you know so none of those people are actually you know the source for this stuff okay and that's part of the problem where because you know those guys are that loyal and the other guys around and haven't quit whoever the hell is sourcing this is not really getting direct information which is why it seems on almost every story it's so peripheral in terms of what they're referring to because i would expect for example that if he went to a meeting with a foreign dignitary and he really screwed the pooch okay man that would that would come out hard to hide it you know if you're meeting with with a foreign dignitary or something he's been meeting with a lot of those recently you know he was at the d-day event he was with salinski he was you know he's been on the phone that yahoo he's been been doing a whole bunch of this stuff and it hasn't come out from any of those folks and so i'm just you know what he's done a whole bunch of interviews that i've listed because you mentioned like about that when i was mentioning to you guys you spent over an hour with howard stern for example doing a fucking interview.
|
Sam:
[1:50:30]
| For like a couple months ago right recently.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:32]
| Yeah a couple of months ago it was recently this was not two years ago it sounded perfectly fine pro publica one and published one unedited that he had like in the last year also. He also sounded perfectly fine. Sounded no different than from when he was on this interview today with Stephanopoulos.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:48]
| And so I hear all this from people. And honestly, it all sounds like it's a lot of people from like unnamed sources. And mostly for the most part, it seems to be sourced on the same bullshit that we've been hearing on the Internet from everybody, by the way, from the fucking GOP that have been the people pushing this. And I I just think that everybody just because they are so afraid that Trump will win, that that was the panic. And but like I said, you know, I said last week, I'll say it again. No smart decisions come from fucking fear. OK. And what's happened this week has been with so many people, such a ridiculous fear freak out of fearing Trump that it's it's like indicates even like, for example, one thing that was some I know I did part of it. A number of people have done that if you read the transcript of the fucking debate instead of actually you know how he sounded that he sounded awful okay it it wasn't an incoherent bunch of drivel okay as many people are trying to make it be he did sound bad but you know he wasn't up there like some doddering fool just you know saying bunch of nonsense right it's just that it's just Just that the presentation was awful. And by the way, presentation is important. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:52:08]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:09]
| Unfortunately, which I have said on the Slack and I was pissed off that unfortunately his inner circle, they fucked up with him because they should have understood that.
|
Sam:
[1:52:21]
| Well, on the interview today, he talked about how exhausted he was and how when the doctor.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:29]
| Man, I can't imagine how the fuck would he not. Listen, I I I think about the schedule that he holds, Sam. Fuck. I've done those like executive like trips like that where there is a calendar that's packed one behind the other with public meetings and shit and whatnot. Not as often as Biden has to do it. man i wound up from doing one of those like two months ago okay i was so fucking exhausted by the end of it i was just i i i was getting to the hotel room and i am like i i'm like how the fucking you know i was i was literally thinking about this i don't know how he does it i mean now i well.
|
Sam:
[1:53:11]
| And and but again this this gets back to you saying you know his staff fucked him to a degree well he says he did he didn't trust his own instincts on this stuff as well but like the bottom line you knew the debate was coming clear the calendar from as much as you fucking can for like a while before it.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:28]
| They should have well fuck well wait wait wait why the fuck did they schedule it that day they knew they had the d-day shit they knew they had the other stuff the week before what the fuck are you piling this into that there you need to have cleared yeah i.
|
Sam:
[1:53:42]
| Mean they agreed they They agreed to the date that whatever. And I mean, you can't clear a president's calendar entirely. They've got a busy.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:49]
| But you didn't have to have a fucking trip to Europe and whatever the fuck and all this other shit before.
|
Sam:
[1:53:54]
| Although people have pointed out, it was a number of days after he got back from that trip. But, but wait, there are a couple of things. One, two, Yeah, he got back from Europe, but he made a couple of trips back and forth to the West Coast.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:08]
| The West Coast.
|
Sam:
[1:54:09]
| B, he was sick.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:11]
| And sick.
|
Sam:
[1:54:13]
| You know, so, yeah, I mean, it was badly handled. But, like, here's the other thing. And I know we talked last week, so we won't rehash this. Like, if something happens to Joe, you still got Kamala, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:28]
| Well, that's why I'm like, this is the whole thing that I understand the Democratic freakout. out i'm like listen the vp can.
|
Sam:
[1:54:34]
| You're buying the team you're.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:36]
| Buying the team so what i mean i'm like what's the fucking concern.
|
Sam:
[1:54:41]
| Well and i i wanted to point out i saw a clip on tip on tip top on tip top tip top tip top it's.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:49]
| A new app we should start that app.
|
Sam:
[1:54:50]
| We should start that one right away yes anyway i saw a clip on tick tock of piers morgan who's a british interviewer guy guy.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:58]
| Asshole.
|
Sam:
[1:54:59]
| Yeah. Complete asshole. But he was talking to some guy and I unfortunately don't know the person he was talking to. He was talking to an American and he was asking the American about Joe Biden. And the guy was like, look, I don't care. Like Jill Biden could, could wheel him out in like a coma. I'm still voting for Joe Biden over. And then like he went further, he said, But Jill Biden could come out holding an urn with Joe Biden's ashes and I'd still vote for him.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:32]
| Exactly. I mean, I don't understand. You know, what the hell are we talking about here?
|
Sam:
[1:55:41]
| You know, yes. Yes. And because Kamala is there, and again, I know the whole right-wing ecosystem would sort of love to just go after Kamala as well. They've already started a few tentative things against her in the last week, just in case. Because they think she's going to be weaker or whatever. By the way, I didn't mention on election graphs, you can flip over to see Harris versus Trump. At the moment, she is doing better than Joe Biden in my probabilistic averages. But big caveat, there were never a lot of state polls on her. And all of the data there is really, really old. Because the primaries have been over for a while. And there wasn't enough to have a good picture of her anyway. So like, you know, there have been a handful of national polls that basically hold her doing about the same as Biden.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:41]
| But by the way, let me read some of the health stories about Hillary that we forget.
|
Sam:
[1:56:45]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:46]
| OK. Carl Rove helped plant. This is a CNN story. Carl Rove helped plant the seeds in 2014. You know, he said suggesting Clinton had suffered brain damage in 2012. OK. OK, you also can see that, you know, and it said that she allegedly had seizures. The rumor that traveled the remarkable spleen through the pipeline connecting small conservatives or right wings that she was having seizures, a stroke that she I mean, this is, you know, and then the fall. OK, and then there was a syringe with fake medical records. It's the same fucking horse shit. OK, textbook, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:57:23]
| Look today, today, right before we came on the show. Oh, Senator Mike Lee was spreading rumors about a medical emergency involving Joe Biden on Air Force One.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:35]
| Air Force One!
|
Sam:
[1:57:36]
| Completely not true. By the time he even tweeted that, Joe Biden was already at home. He was already at home.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:44]
| But this is the shit that we're talking about. This level of shit, Sam. And what I found, and I'm going to tell you, look. I'm sorry, but almost everybody in the media fell into a fucking, you know, fucking tornado with all this fucking Biden shit. You know why? The Washington Post is losing money. CNN is losing viewers. All these fucking people. And it's and they were like, no, no, no. But we're not trying to get Trump to win. No, no, no. It's not that you're intentionally doing drama.
|
Sam:
[1:58:14]
| Drama.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:14]
| You exactly. You want clicks. You want drama. And this thing gets clicks. And so that's why you're just like fucking like sharks to chum where, oh, there's this there. So let's just, you know what, make make a thousand articles that are super poorly sourced. Because by the way, right now, nobody gives a shit about this anymore. more.
|
Sam:
[1:58:36]
| Well let's talk about like some of the pilot first of all the media like you said every single media outlet has been all over this non-stop it's drowned out everything else.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:47]
| I mean the new york times editorial board went like two days afterward calling you know but made fucking i mean they're a joke right now to me they have turned themselves into a joke calling for biden to withdraw why the fuck didn't they call for trump to withdraw you know make the same fucking thing when trump Trump was convicted of a felony.
|
Sam:
[1:59:06]
| Right. Well, because everyone expects that of Trump, right? Right!
|
Ivan:
[1:59:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:59:13]
| But look, you have all the media pylon, and some of the things reported in the media as part of that pylon. We mentioned the senators potentially meeting. We just had a report within the last couple hours that Hakeem Jeffords is also meeting with a bunch of House leadership about what to do about the scenario.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:32]
| Yeah, what to do, Hakeem? Go in there, beat the shit out of all of them right now is the first move that you need to do.
|
Sam:
[1:59:38]
| We've got stories about donors going on a pause until Joe Biden drops out to try to exert financial pressure for him to leave. Apparently, one of the headliners there is Abigail Disney, heir to the Walt Disney fortune, as one of the people who's like, you know, I'm a big Democratic donor. I'm not going to donate any more until Joe's out because we have to do something in order to win. And so there are a bunch of these things, which is where, and so a lot of people continuing more conversations about, well, what are the right people that can go to Joe Biden and tell him the hard truth and make him, you know, make him go home so that we can get on with getting somebody else. And that's why I said earlier, first of all, I mentioned there's potentially a two to three point damage to Biden based on this. And people have said, well, two to three points, not that much. People have also pointed out though, that it seems like the window in which people are able to trade votes back and forth is actually pretty narrow right now. So 2% is kind of a lot, but, but also that 2%, like I, that two to 3%, I feel like the debate itself probably had very little effect.
|
Sam:
[2:01:06]
| What's having an effect is the goddamn pylon. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:09]
| What is having an effect is the pylon because the debate itself, look, my wife, for example, she, she, I mean, she's not disengaged, but she's not, she's not like us. Okay. You know what she watched the debate okay and objectively and she not she hasn't been really you know she was like following like all these stories about biden this age and whatever and you know what her impression was like well she said look simple biden sounded tired okay all right and she heard him today and then remarked like geez he sounds a lot better because he sounded tired the other day but that's the only thing he didn't say he hasn't seen i was he said it sounded tired okay and he sounded sick okay but that oh my god that it was like She listened to Trump for two seconds, and it's like, wow, all these sputtering lies. Who the fuck can believe this shit? That was the impression from like, and she's not following this as we are on every day. I heard other people that unfortunately, you know. Their opinions were based more on the form function. Well, well, he sounded like, you know, a super old and I'm like, well, yeah, it was more to sound more than the content, but right. But I really don't, you know, once again, are these debates who watch who watches those debates? You would like, because we had a lot less viewers in this debate that we had on the last one that we had in 2020.
|
Sam:
[2:02:28]
| That's, that's true. Now, here's the thing though, with, in terms of how this plays out, and then we should wrap this up. Like, we are again at the point where people are talking about, well, I don't think this interview stemmed all the concerns.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:41]
| Oh yeah, I've been listening to those people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, he didn't like, I don't know. He didn't solve, you know, quadratic equations live.
|
Sam:
[2:02:52]
| Well, and people are saying that, you know, they talk in their, the reporters are all saying, in my conversations with Democrats behind the scenes off the record, They're still very concerned, blah, blah, blah. Here's the thing. It though, again, the only realistic way for the nominee not to be Joe Biden is if Joe, if Joe Biden himself says, I'm out. Right. His statements that are like, I'm in, I'm not going anywhere. I am running. I am not leaving, have gotten stronger and stronger over the last 24 to 48 hours. And if he keeps that up, then frankly, like everybody else who's trying to figure out how to pressure him to drop out at some point, they've got to realize they are causing more damage without any chance of actually getting him to drop out. And they are only hurting the cause. Yes. And so they need to shut the fuck up and, you know, sorry, you may not like it, but this is the candidate you've got. So you are either helping him or hurting him. And right now you are hurting him.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:07]
| Look on on, you know, when he landed Biden today, I don't know where he was that he came to some reporters and they asked him about, you know, they threw him some questions, you know, and he was he was bantering with with with the reporters also. So he's doing this, which I think is helpful, by the way, also.
|
Sam:
[2:04:25]
| Yes. He needs to do this all the time, every day.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:28]
| He needs to be doing this more often. Even if he makes a gaffe or says something wrong, it's better to do this than to avoid it. Okay?
|
Sam:
[2:04:35]
| Yeah. They've been hiding him away, and that's part of the problem. I mean, again, unless all the stuff is true and he's just got bad days and good days, but his bad days are really bad, you know?
|
Ivan:
[2:04:46]
| No, they may not. I'm 100% convinced. Look, I'm totally convinced that his staffers are hiding. Because of what we know from Biden, because he's done this his whole life. Like you said, that circle of staffers has been around him for 30 years for a reason, because they know Biden's strengths and weaknesses. But he went and he was like, he threw out of the slide saying, you know what, hell, you all were wrong in 2020. You all were wrong in 2012. You all were wrong about me. You're going to be wrong again. Had just walked away which i that was a great 2022 22 well you know my my you know whatever one of those years again.
|
Sam:
[2:05:27]
| Your your biden-esque intellect is showing.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:30]
| You need to talk to my boss okay you know because i i i might need to step away from my duties.
|
Sam:
[2:05:36]
| Yeah exactly yeah yeah you're done you're clearly you're clint you're mentally fried the senility is.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:45]
| I'm done i'm clearly i I clearly need a neurological exam.
|
Sam:
[2:05:52]
| You do.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:52]
| By the way, which, you know, the whole question, like, Stephanopoulos asked this question more than it was. And actually, Biden did answer it. I wish he would have been a little bit more forceful around it. I'm like, listen, you don't go to a neurologist to get a workup unless your general doctor says that you have a problem. He can't diagnose it. Then you go to that for a workup. That's not something that's a normal fucking, like, thing. You know, if you're going to GP.
|
Sam:
[2:06:15]
| Donald Trump should not be like going, I passed it. I passed it. Most people don't pass it.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:21]
| No, most people don't have to pass it because the only reason you get that test is because people really are questioning your sanity. And oh, by the way, nobody mentioned also, you know, that Trump got offered equal time by ABC and he declined it.
|
Sam:
[2:06:37]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:38]
| I'm surprised.
|
Sam:
[2:06:41]
| Well, he, I think he's actually following advice right now for the most part. And there've been a few exceptions, but like, this is your standard. If your opponent is hurting themselves, just step out of the way. Like if, you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:56]
| But he's not, he's, but he never listens to that advice. He likes the attention. I'm surprised. I mean, we're going to give him like 20 minutes in prime time.
|
Sam:
[2:07:03]
| I mean, so far, like there was that one clip of him on the golf cart that leaked out. But like he is for the most part for the last eight days since the debate, he has kept his ass quiet.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:14]
| No. Yeah, I know. He said, no, no, no. Well, here, listen, that's not good. OK, I will say that because in the past, when Trump has shut up.
|
Sam:
[2:07:26]
| That's when he does the best. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:28]
| Yeah, that's right. That's what his poll numbers do the best. So that's not good news. No, it's not.
|
Sam:
[2:07:34]
| Like, like big part of his win in 2016 was Manafort or whoever took.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:42]
| Away his phone.
|
Sam:
[2:07:43]
| Took away his phone and got him to shut the fuck up for a couple of weeks.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:46]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[2:07:47]
| For the last couple of weeks before the election, got him to basically behave himself.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:51]
| You know, I will say that I think that he is shut up now for a little bit. But look, this guy.
|
Sam:
[2:07:57]
| He can't sustain it.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:59]
| Exactly. No, there's no way.
|
Sam:
[2:08:01]
| Well, he's got the damn convention coming up. Oh, oh, oh, we we we completely neglected when we were talking about immunity that it is, in fact, affected the New York case. Because last week you were talking about, oh, don't worry, he's got the sentencing coming up. Nope. Sentencing now pushed back to at least September, probably actually further because there'll be appeals and stuff. And no, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:24]
| No, no, no, no. The sentencing will happen. but they'll appeal the sentence.
|
Sam:
[2:08:27]
| No, no, no, they will.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:29]
| Oh, they'll appeal the immunity decision.
|
Sam:
[2:08:31]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:33]
| Because somehow, well, even though there doesn't seem to be much of a reason why this should be, well, I do think, I understand why the judge is doing it.
|
Sam:
[2:08:46]
| Well, we don't have to dig into it. The point was that event is not happening.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:52]
| Yeah. Well, the point is that Trump decided to challenge the sentence based on the immunity decision. And the judge, instead of just dismissing it out of hand, said, okay, fine, send in the briefs, we'll evaluate. And I think that the reason why he's doing it is because, since we all know he's going to appeal, if he didn't consider it, then that would make it even a basis for an appeal. and so on.
|
Sam:
[2:09:22]
| Yep. Yep. Yep. No, I, I, I think that I, I, I will predict right now we will not have a sentencing in the New York case before the election because the, you know, they'll make a decision on the, on the immunity issue at the beginning of September, Trump will immediately appeal if he loses and that'll push they'll. And then that'll go, that has to go through the New New York appeals, and then after the New York appeals are over, then he can repeal it to SCOTUS. Add all that in, you're next year.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:53]
| Well, the good news is that he can't stop that process. Okay? So he would have to be defending, even if he would, he would have to be defending himself from criminal charges in New York, even as president.
|
Sam:
[2:10:05]
| Yes. And, and, and also, well, they might, I could see it getting paused until he's no longer in office, but, and also he is also put in earlier today. He filed with judge cannon in Florida to also do things with that case because of the immunity rule.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:25]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[2:10:26]
| So anyway, and we don't have to get into details of those, but just to sum out and then be done, I think we are at the point where there will be still, I think the amount of pressure on Biden to get out is still going to increase for a little while longer. I don't think this interview will stop at cold. I think these things you're having play out with people in Congress and with donors and with the media are still going to spiral for a little bit longer. And the question is, as long though as nothing else big, bad happens with Biden having a really bad incident of the same level as the debate or worse, or some sort of physical problem, absent something like that, if he just sticks it through and says, no, I'm running, I'm running, I'm running, I'm running, Then this stuff has to start dissipating after a couple more weeks. It just, they have to back off at some point. Now, if there is another incident, all bets are off again, you know, off to the races. It happens all over again. Now, how Joe Biden actually does between now and November, completely different question.
|
Sam:
[2:11:45]
| But there we are. And like, if we do get a scenario where he does drop out, we can talk more about it. That point, but like right now he and everyone around him are adamant that the answer is no, he is not dropping out. He is running the end. And as long as he sticks to that and is strong about it, they can't make him. And so the question is, how long do they keep damaging him before they give up?
|
Ivan:
[2:12:10]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:12:12]
| Okay. We're done.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:13]
| All right. We're done.
|
Sam:
[2:12:16]
| Thank you everybody for joining us at curmudgeon's corner. Once again, at curmudgeon's corner. Is that the right way to say it? You know, if it was an actual physical corner where people were joining us.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:27]
| Didn't like we, Oh yeah. That was like one of the stories that you got from chat GPT about, about the curmudgeon's corner movie. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:12:36]
| Yeah. That my son made up for. Yeah. Yeah. In any case, go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You'll find our transcripts. You'll find our recent episodes, how to subscribe, email, Mastodon, Facebook, all that kind of lovely stuff. You'll also find a link to our Patreon where you can give us money at various levels. We will mention you on the show, ring a bell, send you a postcard, send you a mug, all that kind of fun stuff. And at $2 a month or more, at $2 a month or more, or Or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our, you see, I can't talk anymore either. Just like Joe Biden can't talk. It's like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:18]
| We're terrible anyway, uh.
|
Sam:
[2:13:22]
| $2 a month or more. We, or if you ask nicely, we will invite you. We will invite you to our curmudgeon's corner slack where Yvonne and I, and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, all that kind of stuff. We would love to have more of you on there. So Yvonne, do you have a highlight from, uh, this week's Slack?
|
Ivan:
[2:13:40]
| Fuck. I'm looking to see which one is, uh, uh, uh, Damn it. I mean, a good story.
|
Sam:
[2:13:49]
| I mean, I have to look to.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:51]
| You know, I actually already scrolled through it and I'm not convinced. Well, there was the the only the only funny there's two funny clips that I don't know if I mentioned the last last week and maybe I didn't. But there was in in Japan, a candidate in the Tokyo gubernatorial race. You see, we didn't have this happen in the debate. Now, this would have been something. OK, yeah. But Uchino Airi, a candidate in the Tokyo gubernatorial race, stripped down during her official public television speech, asking viewers that they thought she was sexy. She asked them to add her as a friend on messaging app line and pledged to respond to everyone. And we didn't get that at the debate.
|
Sam:
[2:14:32]
| Which one did you want to strip, Yvonne, Biden or Trump?
|
Ivan:
[2:14:37]
| Neither. But I mean, I mean, if I mean, that would have that would have definitely changed. I mean, listen, I will say this, that Biden given how badly he was doing, if he decided to strip down and ask for votes, that probably would have gotten a lot more attention.
|
Sam:
[2:14:53]
| Should we just decide the election through a mud wrestling match between the two of them?
|
Ivan:
[2:14:57]
| I think that would be something. I mean, that's an interesting option. You know, I don't know what other things that we could do. You know, I mean, a mud wrestling, perhaps arm wrestling. sampling you know how.
|
Sam:
[2:15:13]
| About a good old-fashioned hamilton style duel.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:15]
| Well you know i was thinking instead of a duel have you seen that there is this i i think we've talked about this on the show that there is this like slap league where people like stand there in a like a slap off duel and you know they go they slap each other that would be that would be a way but what i would suggest I think that obviously the candidates themselves, that doesn't sound like a great idea to do that, but that we should, you know, the Democrats should select a champion.
|
Sam:
[2:15:46]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:47]
| A champion slapper to go against the GOP champion slapper and a slap off.
|
Sam:
[2:15:54]
| I'm left speechless. A slap off.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:58]
| You know, much better than our election process. You know, I envy the British.
|
Sam:
[2:16:04]
| Oh, yeah. Labor won by a lot.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:09]
| Yeah, they completely. I mean, the conservative. I mean, like, I mean, they're.
|
Sam:
[2:16:13]
| And like 12 hours later, the new prime minister is sworn in.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:18]
| Yeah, I would like that process. Can I be honest? And the thing is that the election is short.
|
Sam:
[2:16:24]
| Yeah, it was only a few weeks.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:26]
| I mean, all you've got is a few weeks of campaign and then boom, you're done, you're in. Honestly, I like that process.
|
Sam:
[2:16:35]
| You know, the other part that I like about the British process is that all the people who are running for prime minister and stuff are also running for local seats in parliament. Right, yeah. And they have this little counting ceremony at the end where all the candidates have to stand there on a stage together while the results for that particular, what do they call it, district writing, whatever, district.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:02]
| Whatever, are announced.
|
Sam:
[2:17:05]
| And so you always have the major parties. And then all the kooks who run for office are standing right there on the stage next to them. So you got like Lord Buckethead and you got the guy dressed as Darth Vader and you got this guy, that guy, and they're all right there next to like the major candidates. And it's just it's just amusing and it's humbling. You saw like, what's her name? The one who was prime minister for five minutes. What's her name? I've already forgotten.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:34]
| Oh, yeah. What's her? Fuck the lady, right? Trust.
|
Sam:
[2:17:39]
| Yeah. Trust. Like she lost. She lost her seat.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:43]
| Yeah, she lost her seat, too. That's right.
|
Sam:
[2:17:44]
| Like, and, you know, she was right there, right next to her opponent when the official announcements were read. And so you don't get that here in the U.S. But you see them right there together. They have to, like, acknowledge the results, shake hands, go away, whatever. And boom, right there. A lot of good things.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:07]
| Maybe they should have a slap off there.
|
Sam:
[2:18:12]
| Yes, Yvonne. you're all about the slaps.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:15]
| I mean, I, you know, I wasn't quite, I mean, I've saw people get concussed with one, like one slap. I mean, so hard.
|
Sam:
[2:18:23]
| Okay. Maybe that's not as good a night. Of course I was suggesting a duel.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:27]
| So I mean, I, I mean, I, at least I brought it down from guns. I mean, you're just giving a concussion. You want to kill him.
|
Sam:
[2:18:37]
| To, to be clear. I don't actually want to fight to the death between Trump and Biden. I mean, Trump would probably just sit on him and that would be bad.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:47]
| That might be bad, but I will say this, that despite, you know, Biden being old, you know, Biden is in better physical, athletic condition than that unathletic dumbass.
|
Sam:
[2:19:00]
| I don't know. Like, I think what you say would have been true like two years ago. I think it's less true now.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:06]
| I saw him bike riding like recently again. I was lonely a couple of weeks ago. He seemed okay.
|
Sam:
[2:19:11]
| Yeah. anyway he admits he's a little stiff these days.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:15]
| Well shit i mean who the fuck is i.
|
Sam:
[2:19:18]
| I know i like my back and neck have been sore like exact.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:23]
| I mean what the i mean you know the thing is that i hear these questions like wow have you lost a step i'm like well what the fuck you think.
|
Sam:
[2:19:31]
| Who asked.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:34]
| Anyway all right.
|
Sam:
[2:19:35]
| Okay we we are way over we're done thank you very much for joining us for yet another curmudgeons corner stay safe have a great week i hope you didn't blow up anything that you shouldn't have with fireworks and we'll talk to you again next week goodbye bye, Bye. Thank you. okay later yvonne all.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:28]
| Right let's save this puppy come on baby upload yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:20:33]
| Don't be like christy No. Save the puppy.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:36]
| I won't shoot the puppy, and I won't eat it either.
|
Sam:
[2:20:39]
| Good job. Yeah. Not like RFK Jr.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:44]
| No. Yeah, and I won't try to rape, like, you know, to help or anything.
|
Sam:
[2:20:50]
| You're not going to rape the puppy either?
|
Ivan:
[2:20:52]
| No. Nor the nanny or anybody.
|
Sam:
[2:20:57]
| Probably. Good thought. Okay, I'm hitting stop.
| |
|
