Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hello, Ed.
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Ed:
[0:01]
| Uh-oh. Oh, I know, just a second. Okay. I have to turn on my headphone.
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Sam:
[0:07]
| Ah, yes. Okay. How you doing?
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Ed:
[0:12]
| I am doing great. Much better than I was a couple weeks ago.
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Sam:
[0:17]
| Good. Now, we're live streaming on video now, so point that at your face so we can see you.
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Ed:
[0:24]
| I gotta move that a little bit more than it will be. You want to see my shirt, too?
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Sam:
[0:30]
| Sure. Oh, yes.
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Ed:
[0:33]
| You may shock your regular participants.
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Sam:
[0:39]
| Okay. So are we ready to go?
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Ed:
[0:42]
| I think I am.
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Sam:
[0:44]
| Okay. Let me, a quick note. Okay, here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 3rd, 2024. It's just after 1 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bo is not here. A few days ago, he let us know that he was going to be doing stuff and traveling. I think it's his kid's birthday. His note about it just said he, but I'm just assuming he means his son, but he didn't actually say that, but I, I think that's what's going on. So he's, he's traveling a bit. His son has a birthday. They're doing stuff and he is out not only this week, but also next week. And for this week we have ad hello, ad welcome back to, yeah, welcome back to curmudgeon's corner. Let's see, when was your last time? I've got to check this.
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Ed:
[2:02]
| I'm going to guess sometime in May.
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Sam:
[2:04]
| Close. April 13th.
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Ed:
[2:07]
| Oh, well, only off by a month.
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Sam:
[2:09]
| Yeah. So pretty, pretty good. And so, yeah. So here we are. And as usual, when we have a guest, most of the agenda will be from Ed. Now he just told me before we started, he wants to talk about child tax credits, tariffs, and the recent prisoner exchange with Russia. So we're going to cover those. But given we're like right smack in the middle of presidential season, Ed was like, we've talked a lot about Biden lately. Let's talk about something else. But I will not be able to resist talking a little bit about the presidential race. We got some stuff going on with how well Kamala Harris is doing in the polls and also the.
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Sam:
[2:59]
| The veep stakes, the whole who will end up being her vice presidential candidate has had some additional developments. But by the time most people listen to this, it will very likely be known already. Like I intend to get this out relatively quickly, like on Saturday or something. But Harris has said she'll announce the vice president by Monday. So if you are not listening right on time, as soon as I get this out, you may already know. There are already rumors. That it's already a done deal. But anyway, we'll talk about that stuff. But as usual, we will also do a little bit of non-newsy political stuff.
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Sam:
[3:40]
| Not political, non-newsy, non-political stuff here at the beginning of the show. I have a movie, and Ed, I don't know if you got, do you have anything in the fun stuff category for the beginning, or just news? Not news. Things that aren't news, or at least not news.
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Ed:
[3:58]
| The only movie I've seen lately was pretty bad. It was something called Long Legs, and advertised as a horror movie, and it was disturbing, I would say, more than horror. Okay so the only other things happened is since the last time i was on here i had a fairly vigorous health scare which i developed a condition called pericarditis in which the, pericardium the sack that surrounds your heart becomes inflamed and it fills up with fluid and begins suppressing the heart so your heart can't work very well i ended up in the hospital three times and having to have a procedure where they put a little drainage tube into the pericardium I'm, I'm much better now, but I am, it's a, it's going to be, it's going to be a very hard recovery because I need to start doing a lot more walking and the temperature is 90 to 95 every day. So I'm, I am not pushing at age 82 for the walking outdoors too much, but I'm getting better. I really feel better.
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Sam:
[4:56]
| Well, I'm glad you had shared a little bit of that on our Commodions Corner Slack, and we are very happy that you are feeling better. So good.
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Ed:
[5:06]
| Yeah. And I could put in a plug for a drug that was first discovered somewhere around 2000 B.C., which is now the drug of choice for pericarditis. I was laying in the hospital hurting all over like you do when you have a real bad flu, running a temp of 101. And they came in, they gave me my first dose of that by mouth. And an hour later, my temperature was normal. The aching was all gone. My heart was still being pressed and compromised. compromise, but I immediately, as like someone threw a switch, I felt better. It was incredible. If you ever get pericarditis, tell me you want colchicine right away.
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Sam:
[5:46]
| I, you know, I can tell you right now, if, and when I do, I'm not going to remember that.
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Ed:
[5:54]
| Think of it, think of it as gout. This is the drug of choice for gout.
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Sam:
[5:59]
| Oh, okay. Anyway, glad you're feeling good, a lot better. So that movie, it was long legs again. I take it. That's a thumbs down from you for long legs.
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Ed:
[6:10]
| I would say it was a thumbs down. It was It wasn't as bad as a movie that I just saw this week as rated as one of the best horror movies of the past hundred years. That was this Blair Witch Project, and it got a number one rating.
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Sam:
[6:27]
| You have complained about Blair Witch on this podcast before, and you went and saw it again?
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Ed:
[6:32]
| No, I didn't. Oh, it wasn't as bad. They rated it and saying it was one of the best. It's the only movie that I have ever walked out of. it was just terrible but anyway they loved it.
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Sam:
[6:45]
| Okay okay yeah we we've talked about uh blair witch on the show before i found i found it okay you hated it so there we go and i have now added long legs to my list despite your negative review um and we'll see if it ever comes up okay it has nicholas.
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Ed:
[7:07]
| Cage in it.
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Sam:
[7:08]
| Which is kind.
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Ed:
[7:09]
| Of interesting you.
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Sam:
[7:11]
| Know he's fine but like you know i i i don't i'm not like a particular fan it's like okay it's got nicholas cage it's not like something that's gonna weigh on me one way or the other as like i want to see this or i don't you know it's just yeah okay fine okay my movie one flew over the cuckoo's nest from 1975, have you i take it from your reaction you have seen this i.
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Ed:
[7:41]
| Have not seen it i read the book.
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Sam:
[7:43]
| Oh you've read the book okay i've never seen the movie well how was the book tell us about the book it's.
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Ed:
[7:49]
| Been a long time but i recall it was it was a fascinating book it was a good read.
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Sam:
[7:53]
| Well worth it well the movie for any I'm gonna, I'm torn between sideways and up. So that tells you a little bit where it is in the end. I guess I'll give it an up. It was a good movie. Basically for those who don't know the basic beats, it's about a criminal who pretends to be insane so that he can be transferred out of the prison where he was about to have to do hard labor into a mental ward and it's about his adventures there with a bunch of other patients and he's basically a troublemaker and there's a you know authoritarian type figure miss nurse ratchet or who you know keeps control over the ward and he sort of disrupts that and causes all kinds of chaos and And things happen.
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Sam:
[8:53]
| And it's Jack Nicholson as the main character. And he's good. Jack Nicholson is always good at these things. And he especially is good at playing crazy people. In this case, it's someone pretending to be crazy. But either way, Jack Nicholson is really good at that. And, you know, the, the, I had not seen the movie before I'd heard of it. I knew some very high level things about it, but I didn't know any of the detailed plot points. I didn't know how it ended. You know, there, there are a few portions of it that are disturbing. The ending is disturbing without giving it away. The ending is disturbing, but it keeps your attention. it makes you think and it's well done, it's really well done and it won it won all favorites.
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Sam:
[9:50]
| It won all five major Academy awards, best picture, best actor, best actress, director, and screenplay. And so, and I was watching it because it was on the, the a hundred years, a hundred movies list. Let's see. It was as check for check for accuracy. Where was it on the list? One flew over the cuckoo's nest in the 1998 version of the list, which is the one I'm using. It was number 20 it's apparently dropped to number 33 in their 2007 ranking but i good movie again it's not one of those like happy jumpy like you're just in there having a fun ride movie it's it's a more serious movie than that even though there's some comedic moments but it was good good there you go any other thoughts on uh sort of the fun stuff before we take a break and get back to news and politics.
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Ed:
[10:49]
| No i think that pretty much covers up for me anyway.
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Sam:
[10:53]
| Okay so with that then we will take our first break and then the first segment will be all the stuff ed wanted to talk about and then the second segment will be all the stuff i want to talk about and that'll be a show so here we go and appropriately well not because we won't talk about till the next one but But the first break is the Election Graphs break. Here we go.
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Break:
[11:23]
| Do you want to understand what is really going on with the presidential election cycle? Then go to electiongraphs.com right away. There you'll find charts and graphs covering the nomination processes in both parties and the general election race for electoral college votes. For the delegate races, we track not just delegate totals, but also the ever-important analysis of how each candidate has to do with the remaining delegates in order to actually win. For the Electoral College, we track state-by-state poll averages to categorize which states are actually in play and which are not in order to show you the range of likely electoral results and how that changes over time. Sure, you can get some of this stuff elsewhere, but not in exactly the same way. and not from me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon. I think my election trackers are better than the rest, so come look at mine, electiongraphs.com.
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Sam:
[12:23]
| Okay, so we are back. Now, Ed, let's start with the prisoner exchange stuff, and then we can end up with the tax credits because that'll transition Right into the veep steak stuff that I want to talk about. So we had the quote unquote biggest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War. The U.S. and our Western allies let loose a bunch of Russian criminals of various sorts that basically were talking spies and assassins and folks like that. And the Russians released a bunch of folks that the West describes them anyway as unjustly detained people, either on trumped up charges or really minor things that were blown up. But basically, journalists and businessmen and on the Russian side, dissidents who were basically anti-Putin agitators within Russia. And that's the high level outline of the deal. Apparently, they'd been working on this for a long, long time. And it finally came together this week. And the trade happened. So what do you want to add to that, Ed?
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Ed:
[13:41]
| Well, a couple of the interesting things, one of which is that this deal apparently was almost completed back in February-March range and included the person, the assassin that was in prison in Germany, was to be exchanged for Navalny.
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Sam:
[13:59]
| Right.
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Ed:
[14:00]
| And then Navalny suddenly died, and that sort of threw a monkey wrench in the whole thing. And most people expected that it might not occur because that was a key to the whole exchange. What happened, and I can't know if this is absolutely true or not, but in the press, what I've seen reported is that Biden personally called the chancellor of Germany and explained how important it was to get this trade done. And would he make the exchange even though he wasn't going to have Navalny free? And he is quoted as having said, I would not have done that for anybody but Mr. Biden. I have that much respect for him. That sort of blew me away considering everything we've been reading.
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Sam:
[14:46]
| The quote he apparently told Biden directly was, I'll do it for you.
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Ed:
[14:52]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[14:54]
| And what people have pointed out too is that, yeah, he said he'd do it for him as in Joe Biden, but also all of these deals. Cause like it wasn't just Germany, Slovenia and I forget which other countries, but there were like three or four countries that ended up giving up prisoners who were all people that they legitimately had in custody. And some cases were convicted on very serious items and they wanted to. They wanted to keep them in jail. And those countries were not necessarily getting something out of this exchange themselves.
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Sam:
[15:33]
| And so people have pointed out, this is part of having long-term alliances and friendly relations with other countries that aren't just transactional on a case-by-case basis. So it's not just, hey, Germany, do this for us and you'll get this. Yes, it's, hey, Germany, we have a long-term good relationship. Please do this for us.
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Sam:
[16:03]
| I'm sure someday down the line, something else will come up, but we can't promise you anything right now. That's not part of the deal. It's just like, hey, can you help out? And the answer in this case was yes. Another thing to point out is on Slovenia specifically. Specifically, apparently Biden was on the phone with the prime minister of Slovenia working this deal one hour before his announcement that he was dropping out of the race. So like even like right up into the run run up of like I'm dropping out because I can't apparently be an effective person running for president right now. Now he was doing the job of president and doing it effectively right through then and right through now. And of course, you know, we've talked over and over again, you know, there are differences between what you need to be president and what you need to run for president. And you've got a team behind you. And even if he was doing a great job, he was doing horribly in the polls and wasn't showing that he could do that. But, you know, hey, it's just credit to him that he's he was doing that right on the same day he was making that big announcement.
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Ed:
[17:15]
| Absolutely. He could have just said, well, screw all of you. I'm going to go home and and said he's still still doing his job.
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Sam:
[17:24]
| Right. Right. And so, you know, with this deal, you know, it was big. They exchanged a lot of people. Apparently one of the Russian dissidents who was released was like, thank you, but no, thank you. Really? Like I actually, yeah, I, I, I didn't, I wouldn't have accepted a deal where part of the deal was I had to be exiled from Russia, which is what happened here. He's now in the West somewhere. And he's like, you know, I do intend to go back. You know, and that's the same as, you know, like Navalny, you know, he went back, he went back knowing he would probably be jailed. And he did it anyway, because part of it was like, you know, to be an effective dissident, I have to be there. I can't be doing it from the UK or Germany or somewhere. Yeah, yeah.
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Sam:
[18:43]
| Gives them an incentive to just sweep up more now the US has been telling people for years now, don't go to Russia. If you're an American citizen, don't go to Russia. It's just not a good time for that. But of course, people still do. For various reasons, there's family, there's whatever, they need to do whatever. But, But it's now like it's there. There's still people held, by the way. There's still Americans held. There's apparently a teacher that's still in Russian custody right now that did did not make the cut to be part of this deal.
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Ed:
[19:13]
| I guess he had a couple of grams of marijuana prescribed for him by a doctor, and he may not get out for 23 years.
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Sam:
[19:21]
| Yeah. And yeah, like it. You know, first of all, don't go if you don't have to go. So if you do have to go, pay attention to the details of those laws. You know, you can't assume that because something is legal in the US and in that particular case, medical marijuana is only legal in some parts of the United States. But you can't assume that it's okay there, too. You know, follow local laws to the fucking letter, you know? Yeah.
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Ed:
[19:57]
| We went on tour through Europe a year ago, one of the Viking cruise ships that went through a number of countries. I take the CBDs that help my arthritis pain, not marijuana, just the straight CBD. That's still illegal in a number of countries. The first thing I did before I left was to find out if any of the countries on our trip, it would be an issue. One or two of them, it was questionable. I left the damn stuff at home. Didn't take it.
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Sam:
[20:25]
| Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. People have even had that problem in the US going state to state. There was a prominent case I watched. I think it was a frontline, but somebody was traveling...
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Sam:
[20:40]
| From one state to another had a prescription for medical medical marijuana but got pulled over by the cop cops for some like speeding transaction or something halfway there in a state where it wasn't legal ended up serving years in jail for it you know and it's you know yeah you had the prescription but you went through whatever state it was where that was still not okay um and so So anyway, but certainly like it, if you're going to Russia, if you're going to like quite a few Middle Eastern countries, if you know, all sorts of like check, well, even if you're going to a country that's got a reputation is super, super friendly, check, you know, there there there's, and we're not just talking marijuana. We're talking about certain prescription drugs as well that are legal in one place and not the other. And, you know, so check everything, like don't, don't make any assumptions, but anyway, so Putin pretty much knows, like he's, he's going to be sending, they're, they're going to be spies and, and he's all about the assassins. He's got like assassins all over Europe. I mean, it's a thing like his people have killed people in Germany with a, where the one who was released this time was in the UK. They've made attempts in other places.
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Sam:
[22:07]
| So they're going to be assassins caught. They're going to be spies caught. There's going to be whatever caught. And so he knows now that all he has to do is always make sure he's got a handful of people in custody that he can trade for them. You know, another thing I saw that was interesting about this trade, one of the folks that was traded, I can't remember if it was the Slovenian one. I think it was the Slovenian one was a pair of deep cover spies of the sort that are undercover. cover. They go live there. They have a whole cover story life set up and just in the meantime are acting as spies, taking back information to the Russians and are working for the Russians, doing whatever they need to. In this case, they were posing as a couple from Argentina, and they had two kids, an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old who had no freaking clue As far as they knew, they were from Argentina. They did not know Russian. They only knew Spanish and probably some Slovenian since they were living in Slovenia. And they were told about all this once they were on the plane to Russia to be greeted by Vladimir Putin.
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Sam:
[23:30]
| And like, I just, I feel sorry for those kids. I mean, like if they didn't already have trust issues, you know, you, you find out your whole life has been a lie. Your parents aren't who you thought they were. And boom. I mean, they're get it. I saw a couple of the pictures. They looked absolutely shell shocked. And I guess their parents had been picked up and arrested anyway. way. So they may have had some inkling before this because presumably they were doing something else, but the kids were part of the trade too, even though, yeah, I don't think the kids were in jail, but, uh, yeah, not good. I just, that's screwed up. I mean, I know it's done and it's part of the deep cover. They had to, they were a family, they had kids. It made them seem more trustworthy, I guess. I don't know. But like, yeah, anyway. So any more about the grand trade?
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Ed:
[24:27]
| No, I think that I just thought it was worthwhile mentioning. The only thing from the right side came that Mr. Vance announced that it never would have occurred except that Putin is afraid of Trump and wanted it done before Trump got in office.
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Sam:
[24:41]
| Oh, yeah. Well, the other thing was Biden's mic drop on this when he held a press conference about this trade and was told that Trump was like, I could get these people out overnight. Biden says, well, then why didn't you do it when you were president? And then walks out of the room. So anyway, okay, next up, you want to talk policy. So first, tariffs. You've talked about tariffs before here. Donald Donald Trump loves tariffs. So what's the deal with tariffs? What do you want to?
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Ed:
[25:15]
| I think, yeah, it's probably nothing much new. It's just that it's it's a significant difference of opinion on the two sides. The actually not just Trump, but an awful lot of the people in the in the megaverse. Believe that tariffs are the way to protect our industry. And the only thing that, obviously, Biden did not cut back on all the tariffs that Trump went in. He cut back on a number of them. But industry, for the first time in a couple, three decades at least, has been expanding quite a bit. And it did it after the infrastructure bill and the other bill that encouraged investment, investment federal dollar investments in various factories and businesses one of those just came online i think here in pennsylvania that's going to employ several hundred people i i remember what i saw in the news earlier this week comment that the factory is now hiring and going into operation, that has a hell of an impact whereas tariffs all the tariff does is raise our cost it doesn't affect the exporters from the other countries at all it might slow down their sales well it doesn't Yeah.
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Sam:
[26:25]
| In theory, that's the whole notion of tariffs. And look, I think it's stupid, but let me say what the way it's supposed to operate is you make the foreign goods so expensive that Americans won't buy them. And because of that, A, the foreign company that's doing the making or the country involved makes less money because they can't sell to your market. But also part of the theory is in response to the foreign products being so expensive, you will get domestic people stepping up and producing whatever it is that people were getting from the foreign companies before. So instead of imports, you encourage domestic production to take their place. But if that happens at all, and I think that's probably debatable, it's a long-term effect. Like if you right now just closed the door and said, we can't get anything from China anymore, which is effectively what raising the tariffs, I mean, you make the price higher, but if you make it high enough, you effectively price them out of the market. it...
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Sam:
[27:42]
| Domestic producers would take years to be able to ramp up and produce the same products if they do it all. In some cases, they just won't be able to. So the short-term effect is just making things more expensive. So if you're worried about inflation, for instance, hey, what's a great way to make everything cost more? Slap huge tariffs on it. You know, and maybe you get a new equilibrium years down the line where domestic production takes up that slack, but that's at best that's long term. And so, you know, and you keep here whenever Donald Trump talks about it, he talks about how, you know, we added the tariffs and the Chinese had to pay, blah, blah, blah. No, that's not who pays the tariff.
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Ed:
[28:33]
| You know the customer pays the tariff or the businesses that sell the stuff pay one or the other the others don't anyway it's a, long term it's just another example of how you make inflation worse and punish people a lot of the things that we import we don't even make you know you're right Right. Not only would it be a long time, there would be a shortage, which means when there's a shortage of a product that people want, what happens to the price with or without a tariff? It goes up.
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Sam:
[29:13]
| Right. So, look, this is just another example of Donald Trump has no idea what he's talking about almost ever in terms of real policy things, in terms of thinking it through. Like, look, there are some people who will make actual arguments in favor of tariffs. They may be wrong, but they understand it and make an argument around it, sort of like the one I just made. Donald Trump isn't even there. Like, he just thinks, you know, tariffs are a way to punish the other country, and it sounds good, and I can make it sound good. What it actually does, how it actually works, this is not part of his thought process at all. I don't think he even cares because I'm sure people have told them that's not how tariffs work over and over and over again. He doesn't care. You know, that's just not the point.
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Ed:
[30:09]
| In his world, there are winners and losers, and there isn't any negotiation where everybody wins. There's winners and losers, and he considers, gee, if I charge a $5,000 tariff on every car they import, then our government will get an extra $5,000, and that makes me a winner.
|
Sam:
[30:31]
| Okay, so your last item. You had mentioned that Governor Tim Walz, W-A-L-Z is how you spell it, who's reportedly one of the finalists to potentially be Kamala Harris's running mate, had some policy proposals that you thought were interesting. He was being interviewed or something, probably in relationship to the VP thing, and he talked about policy a little bit.
|
Ed:
[30:59]
| It was a podcast. When I go on hikes, I put my earphones on and I listen to podcasts, including Curmudgeon Corner. But on the podcast, it was one of the, I think it was the New York Times podcast. I'm not sure.
|
Ed:
[31:13]
| They were interviewing him about a number of things, including his life and that sort of stuff. I'm sure it had to do with the vice presidency. But really, they were talking about how did you become interested in politics. He used to be a teacher. And he said, well, I thought I could fix things. And so I ran and I won in this very red district. And then I won. I think he was three or four terms in the state house. And then he ran for governor.
|
Ed:
[31:40]
| And as governor, he's done a number of things. One thing he did, for instance, he put through that the schools would provide free school lunches for all students, regardless of their income level or anything. The kids go to school, they get fed out of nutritious lunch. The other thing he did is there's the child tax credit program that's been a federal one for a number of years, but recently has been cut back a little bit. In Minnesota, apparently, he made that more effective, expanded it, and has really defended it very strongly. And his point on that was there are two ways you can encourage people to have children. One is to make it possible for them to have children by providing this tax credit so they have a little better income. Another way is to make sure that there's daycare facilities at a reasonable price so that they can afford to have children and on and on and on. And he said, the other way to do it is to, you know, charge more tax to people who don't have children and to make them feel like they're incompetent or something of that sort.
|
Ed:
[32:48]
| He really explained it far better than I'm able to. But I found his ideas on the free lunch. The kids, interestingly, one of the things they noticed is within a couple months of having the free lunch, so the kids all got a big lunch, was that their discipline problems dropped significantly. Attendance went up, and the kids' grades started improving. Guess what? If a kid's not hungry, he listens to the teacher.
|
Sam:
[33:15]
| Shocker there.
|
Ed:
[33:16]
| Isn't that amazing?
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Sam:
[33:17]
| Well, it not, not even listening to the teacher, right. Just in general, like if, if you're hungry, you're not going to perform as well, like in anything, you know, you're going to be distracted by that. And it's going to be hard to keep on task and it's going to be hard to think about whatever you need to think about. Yeah. I know this is true of me, but if I'm hungry, I can go get food. It's not a problem for me. For lots and lots of kids, it's a problem. Their families can't afford enough, so they're hungry on a regular basis. And it's been shown over and over and over again in that various programs to make sure kids have access to food at school helps that amazingly.
|
Sam:
[34:11]
| And, you know, there, there are some, there, there are some questions on the methodology, right? Like there, there are these ones that, you know, the subsidized lunch where you have to sort of identify yourself and ask for it and you have a special card or something and you stand out from the other kids as, Oh, they're the ones that needs the free lunch, you know, or the free breakfast or whatever. There are others that just try to, they just give it to everybody. And those are, I think those are the best variety of those. Cause even the ones that have like, you know, where they give you lunch, but you run a tab and then you hear these stories about how their kids with unpaid lunch bills and their various things that people like you hear stories of like the generous person from the community went in and paid the overdue lunch bills for all the kids or whatever. And it's like, come on, do you really have to structure something? So that's even necessary come just just just include it like you know include it in what is funded as part of going to school you get your breakfast you get your lunch you get some snacks whatever you know i don't know but yeah yeah so you don't make them pay.
|
Ed:
[35:28]
| For their textbooks in grade school either do we we give.
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Sam:
[35:31]
| Them free textbooks usually yes so.
|
Ed:
[35:35]
| Anyway i i really enjoyed listening to him and he's seen without accusing anybody or saying anything negative about anybody said this is why this works this is why that doesn't work and it was a it was a pleasant thing it was a politician who sounded like someone i'd like to sit down and have a beer with the obama technique okay.
|
Sam:
[35:59]
| So given that i'm going to transition i'll we'll take a quick break and then we'll transition i And I guess I'll start with the VP stuff rather than the poll stuff, because Walsh is one of the guys who's being considered for the VP slot. And so we'll start a little bit, I guess, by talking about him. So we will be back after this.
|
Break:
[36:29]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne. At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our Curmudgeon's Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. Fun stuff. Not fun! In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Commodity's Corner. Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. 100 Billion!
|
Break:
[37:51]
| Worth anything to you at all send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeon's corner alex hates really really hates curmudgeon's corner that's really mean isn't it i hate curmudgeon's corner but i really do okay.
|
Sam:
[38:09]
| We are back and before i forget i meant to mention this at the beginning of the show because i've mentioned it at the very end of the show the last two weeks but this is the last time I'm going to ask this on the show. I have been editing the show a little bit differently the last couple of weeks and this week as well. I will, right now I'm recording, but when I edit it, I will edit it the same way I have the last couple of weeks. So I'm asking and have yet to receive any feedback, which I'm going to interpret a certain way. A, has anybody noticed any difference in listening to the last couple of weeks shows compared to shows before that. So I'll ask you, Ed, have you noticed any difference?
|
Ed:
[38:53]
| I was just going to say, I keep forgetting to write and comment, but I can't say that I've noticed a difference overall. Okay.
|
Sam:
[39:01]
| So that that's an answer from Ed. So for all of you listening, let me know, have you noticed a difference? And then B, if you have noticed a difference, which Ed hasn't, so he's not, so my question would be meaningless in that case. Do you like it better the old way or the new way?
|
Sam:
[39:22]
| And based on any answers I receive, I will determine what to do next week and beyond. And if no one tells me they can tell the difference at all, then frankly, I'm going to do the way that's easier for me and takes less time for me. Regardless that was my recommendation yeah so and you you guys may not be surprised to know the change i've made is a change that makes it quicker and easier for me to get the stuff done that i need to get done to get the show out the door so if nobody can tell the difference then there's no reason not for me there's no reason for me not to do it the quick way so there you go now if he if people were like yes sam i can tell the difference and it sucks now it was good before and now it sucks or it was mediocre before now it sucks whatever then then there would be a reason to go and keep doing it the way that takes me a little bit longer but you know whatever so so far i've got a lot of no comments and one person saying they couldn't tell the difference. So that tells me a lot. Okay. Time for the vice presidential search. So first of all, the final six, according to all the reports, are Governor Beshear of Kentucky.
|
Sam:
[40:42]
| Pritzker of Illinois, Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Waltz of Minnesota. Those are all governors, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. So those are apparently the finalists. I will add that there have been reports that Shapiro in Pennsylvania is the front runner. In fact, a few hours before we're recording this show, apparently the office of the mayor of Philadelphia released a video that has Shapiro as the vice president to Harris. And apparently it was a video that wasn't reportedly wasn't supposed to be released until Monday as part of the announcement, but it, it, it hasn't been, it wasn't taken down. So, and it's like, it was a mistake, blah, blah, blah. It's not real.
|
Sam:
[41:45]
| So on the one hand, people are like, well, that's it. And it's Shapiro. Like they just accidentally released the information a couple of days early, but then other folks are like, Like, nah, this sounds like some sort of aspirational video that might have been done to promote Shapiro, but it's not really the decision yet. So we'll see. But Shapiro is the front runner in the betting. And we'll talk more about him in a second. But since you were just talking about Walls. You mentioned a couple of policy things from him. What did you, what do you think of him as a potential VP? You listened to the interview. He had a lot, we didn't even mention him last week, but he, he's had a lot of buzz over the last week. Apparently the more progressive side of the democratic party really likes him. He's been really vocal. He, you know, like all these other people on this list, he's been out there doing events and people have liked sort of how aggressive He was against Donald Trump. Apparently the whole weird thing that maybe we'll talk about before we end. He was one of the first ones to push that attack on the Trumpies, and that's been very effective. So what do you think? What do you think, Ed? What do you think of this Walls guy? I honestly have paid a little bit less attention to him, but some people seem to really like him.
|
Ed:
[43:04]
| I haven't heard much about him either until I listened to this interview. I found him very personable and a good sense of humor. He did talk about the weird thing. They asked him about that, and he said, you know, it just sort of came up. I didn't want to say nasty things about people. And then I realized that, gee, when they say something that irritates and antagonizes large percentages of the population, that's really weird, isn't it? And so I just started saying, well, that's really weird what they're doing. And I have to agree. I mean, look, that interview that Trump had with the black journalists this week. I mean, I can't imagine people of color wanting to vote for that man after that interview. So he turned off and antagonized a large bunch of people, I think.
|
Sam:
[43:55]
| Well, here's... Yeah, let's tangent to that for a second. Obviously... People of color have not been his prime demographic anyway, let's say. But there had been repeated reports this year of him making additional inroads, of him polling higher among men, and specifically Black men, than he had been before. Not of men, of Black people, specifically Black men, than he had before. There have been more reports about his percentages in the Hispanic community increasing as well. And as Yvonne would always tell us, not a monolithic community. It very much depends on which part of that community you're in. But he's actually done pretty well in the past in that community and apparently was doing even better. And so I don't know that it's – in the big picture, these aren't communities that were really strong Trump communities anyway. He clearly – his main focus is and has always been white people, even more so white men, even more so non-college-educated white men.
|
Sam:
[45:12]
| Yep. And, but in a close election, like if you had increased your percentage among black people from 5% to 10%, that could be a big deal, you know? And I think he killed that with this. But also, you know, people have talked about like, look, on the one hand, yes, this is just this is another opportunity where he shows off that he's dumb. He shows off that he's racist and he is and it's just out there for everybody to see. And in this new context, maybe that's hitting harder than it has at times in the past. Right.
|
Sam:
[45:59]
| Whereas people are saying like, look, he doesn't care. It's attention. He's taking the, for the last 12 days, everything has been about Kamala Harris. Everything, all the news cycles, everything has been talking about how great she's doing and, you know, how, how excited everybody is and blah, blah, blah. And that's all that's been in the news. All of a sudden he goes and does this and he's in the news again. Maybe it's not super positive but he's in the news again and the story is once again about him and maybe that's what he wants out of this um i kind of feel like this is i mean this is an age-old debate we've had before is is trump being like super savvy politically and playing 12 dimensional chess i don't think he is i think he's got a certain set of instincts and he goes by those instincts and sometimes they serve him well and sometimes they don't but i don't think there's a lot of deep thought behind it.
|
Ed:
[47:03]
| I'm not sure he's capable of it that's just me.
|
Sam:
[47:08]
| And you know we'll get back to the vps in a second i promise but like since since we're on weird now, the this is the weird thing has really been hitting in a way that other attacks haven't.
|
Sam:
[47:27]
| And, you know, when, when you start to think about it, I'm like, okay, look, they've talked about Donald Trump is dangerous. Well, lots of people like that. That's why they're like, he's dangerous. That's a good thing. Like he'll, he'll piss off the liberals. He'll, he'll be, he'll break down the status quo. He'll do things. Dangerous is good. We want dangerous. There's a group that feels that way. If you talk about him being racist, there's a whole bunch of people who like that. That's why they vote for the man. You know, same thing if you talk about his misogyny. Well, he's a real man. You know, there are people who like that and make that a positive thing. All of these attacks, or he's scary. Well, good, he should scare the damn liberals. That's why we want him. All of these things that have been sort of common attacks on Donald Trump before, that A, they take him seriously, and B, are calling out things that are horrific to the left side of the spectrum, but are actually appealing to a huge population. Portion of Donald Trump's base.
|
Sam:
[48:44]
| I think the weird thing is different because the weird thing is not something, at least so far, maybe they'll co-opt it, but the weird thing is something that makes them feel deeply uncomfortable because part of the whole psyche of the American right at the moment is that they represent real America. They represent what is good and true and great about America. They represent the way things should be, the way that things are good. And if you react to that, not with fear, not with, oh my God, this is dangerous, this is whatever. But instead, you react to it with, what a bunch of fucking freaks. They're a bunch of weirdos. They are the outcasts. They are the ones who are not acceptable in normal society. You know, I think that hits them a very different way.
|
Sam:
[49:57]
| It makes them feel deeply uncomfortable. It's exactly what they're nervous about. The reason they're reacting in the way they are and are so panicked is they see the country moving away from them and their values. And this just reemphasizes it and says, no, you're the weirdos. Yes.
|
Sam:
[50:18]
| You're the ones who are out of step. And I think they're having trouble figuring out how to react to that.
|
Ed:
[50:24]
| I should stick in here that that Waltz in that interview made it very clear that when he's talking about weirdos, he's talking about the politicians, not the people who vote for him. He tried his best not to irritate those people.
|
Sam:
[50:37]
| Yeah, well, I think that's going to get away from them. But like and I think that's OK, because like it makes you like if you get the impression out. There and get people actually worried about like no no if you support these jackasses yeah you're the weirdo you are also the outcast yeah there are people that there are people who will double down in response to that but there are people who are on the edges who will be like i don't want to be a weirdo you know they're right donald trump and jd vance are weirdos they really are what why do i want to associate with them and i think that's why this attack is hitting differently it's It's a, it's mocking them, which has always been, you know, there have been people arguing that the right way to attack Donald Trump is mocking him going back to the very beginning. And some people tried somewhat unsuccessfully, but I think this, this is hitting this time. Now, will it continue to? I don't know. I saw some people saying that they, they would have preferred like creepy or something than weird because there's good weird too.
|
Sam:
[51:46]
| And I've seen a number of good responses to that. One person said, look, this is feminine coded. If we just say weird, we are talking creepy. If we're talking about sort of the cute, lovable geek, that's good weird. That's different. And we would say good weird.
|
Sam:
[52:09]
| I saw someone else, and I'm sorry I don't have quotes for who said these things. They're just random things I saw at Mastodon and such, someone else who said, look, if you are told you are weird and you respond with awesome, yes, absolutely. I am. That's great. I try to be, then that's good weird. And you're not who this is aimed at. Part of the whole issue here is these are the type of people who, when they're called weird, get all upset about it and all triggered by it. And that's bad weird and that's what we're talking about here and the fact that these folks are, seemingly through, I mean, look, the whole Trump campaign and Vance and everybody associated with it have been completely and totally thrown off their game by Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris. Um, I'm trying really hard. I'm sorry.
|
Ed:
[53:08]
| You listen, you listen to Trump too much. You're copying his pronunciation and this is deliberate.
|
Sam:
[53:14]
| Yeah. Well, in any case, they've been thrown off. They don't know how to deal with someone younger. They don't know how to deal with a woman. They don't They don't know how to deal with a black woman. They don't know how to deal with being mocked and ridiculed and called out. All of these are things that Biden never succeeded in doing. He made a couple of attempts, but he never was able to do this in the way that the Harris campaign is doing this now, including the circle of the vice presidential candidates who are all doing this kind of thing at this point.
|
Sam:
[53:51]
| And they're reeling right now. They don't know how to deal with it. Uh, you know, we'll talk polls in a minute. Uh, Trump has been falling in the polls for the last 12 days dramatically. And will they figure it out before November? Maybe like, I think there are ways to counter this, but it's, it's clearly, they don't know how to think about this. They were 100% prepared for the entire election to be about Joe Biden is old and Joe Biden is senile and he doesn't know what he's doing and he can't handle it. And, oh, and maybe a little touch of Hunter Biden is bad. And the, the, you know, the Joe Biden crime family or all that nonsense, everything, everything they were planning was all about that. And so now they don't know what to do. And so you get Donald Trump flailing. You mentioned his performance at that Black Journalist Conference, the National Association of Black Journalists.
|
Sam:
[54:54]
| Part of what he's going on about and has doubled down on since is this whole Kamala Harris isn't really black thing. It's like, what are you doing? Who is this appealing to? And I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to sort of other her and say she's not only not white, she's not black either and blah, blah, blah. And there's this whole implication they're trying to do with the DEI candidate and everything where she couldn't possibly be there under her own merits. She's only there because they wanted a black woman. And look, she's not even black. She's Indian. And whereas this is, and I know it's a strategy of attack someone's strength, but frankly, all of that stuff is her strength. That's part of what makes her appealing. And I don't know that it's, it's just, they don't know what they're doing right now and they haven't figured it out. And they, we haven't even got to the democratic convention yet. I feel like they've got to, at some point, get their act together a little bit, but they certainly haven't yet. They they're just like spinning.
|
Ed:
[56:08]
| Well, I think at the time they began recovering from the weird and figure out what to do, we should start talking about them being asleep, as opposed to they're accusing us of being woke. They're asleep because they refuse to have history taught because the history might upset children. So we won't teach history of what happened in the country. We'll pretend like it just has always been like it is now. And we don't want to teach the science of environmentalism because people will feel guilty about it. Instead, we want to burn more oil and they're asleep and they refuse to wake up. They've turned off the alarm clock and they refuse to wake up and listen to the world that's around them. So we should talk about them being asleep as soon as they get over being weird. They're weird sleepers.
|
Sam:
[56:58]
| You're absolutely right. A few people have tried that exact way of saying things before and it hasn't really hit. But I feel like the Harris campaign can find a way to make it stick because that that's the other thing that like Biden and company and sort of your old school Democrats, if you like, you hear like James Carville or whoever talking. Fucking, they're afraid of this stuff and they automatically sort of get defensive. Like somebody's calling them woke. They sort of, Oh, we're not. What are you talking about? No, let's talk about it. No, own it. Damn right. We're woke. You're not, you're asleep. Like you said, and we're woke. And that means we know what the fuck is going on.
|
Ed:
[57:46]
| How in the hell have they convinced us that we should consider a company that's following diversity and equity and what's the I?
|
Sam:
[57:55]
| Inclusion.
|
Ed:
[57:56]
| Inclusion. That those are bad things. How in the hell are we convinced that? That's like saying giving money to a man who's starving to death is bad. Come on. DEI? I want companies that are diverse and do indeed include everybody.
|
Sam:
[58:14]
| Well, you know, look, DEI is just their code. DI is just their code word because they're not allowed to say the N word. You know, that's the reality of how they.
|
Ed:
[58:25]
| Absolutely. Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[58:26]
| You know, it's, it's not actually, I mean, they don't, they don't believe in those things anyway. They don't believe in diversity. They feel that strength is in uniformity and everybody believing and doing the same thing and looking the same, or at least within a very narrow band that is considered acceptable. They don't believe the strength and diversity. They don't believe in equity. They believe that absolutely.
|
Sam:
[58:53]
| If you, if you're come from a family who's gotten ahead, then you should be ahead, you know, and inclusion, the same thing. Like, no, like we want our, we want our walled gardens. We want to protect what we've got and keep the external people out. You know, so, yeah, like there's a fundamental disbelief in that any of those three things, diversity, equity and inclusion are good things, you know, but but and I've said this before. The Democrats have to not run away from these culture war things and instead own them and be proud of the fact that they are on the right side of these culture war issues. Yep. Like, don't don't try to, like, downplay them or run away or, oh, let's talk about the economy instead. No, the culture war is the major defining aspect of modern politics and own it, defend it, be proud of it, be aggressive, make it their liability that they want to pull everybody back 50 years, a hundred years, whatever, to a world that doesn't exist anymore and shouldn't exist anymore because it was bad. You know? Absolutely.
|
Ed:
[1:00:21]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:00:22]
| So anyway, were we talking about vice presidents? I think we were.
|
Ed:
[1:00:27]
| So we're talking about vice presidents other than Waltz. I like Waltz. I like Waltz. I like all of these. Any of the people on that list would be fine by me. I think they're all excellent people.
|
Sam:
[1:00:40]
| So let me talk. I don't really have much to say about Bashir. I mean, I don't have much to say about Pritzker. I really haven't spent a lot of time thinking about either of them or researching them or knowing them. I know they're each contenders. The three that remain that we haven't talked about are Shapiro, Buttigieg, and Kelly.
|
Ed:
[1:01:02]
| Is Whitmer clear out of the running?
|
Sam:
[1:01:05]
| Whitmer took herself out of the running.
|
Ed:
[1:01:07]
| Oh, that's right. Okay, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:01:08]
| And so did Cooper from New York. Whitmer took herself out. There wasn't a lot of talk about why. Cooper from, not New York, from North Carolina, Cooper from North Carolina pulled himself out specifically because he said, Look, I've got a lieutenant governor who is an absolute wacko, right winger. And the way the law works in North Carolina, if I leave the state, he's in charge. And so I would have to leave the state to campaign. And I don't want to give this guy the opportunity to screw things up in North Carolina while I'm gone. So I think it's a guy I should look up his Lieutenant governor, but anyway, they're, they're, they're apparently somebody he's worried about. Um, there may, there may be other reasons too. That's the, the public reason that was given, but of the remainder remainers of the remainder, uh, Let's talk Shapiro first. Let me start with your impression. You're in Pennsylvania, right?
|
Ed:
[1:02:16]
| Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:02:17]
| So you know probably more about Shapiro than I do. There have been a couple things in the news in the last day or two that I want to bring up. But what's your general impression of the guy? Do you advocate his choice?
|
Ed:
[1:02:34]
| Absolutely. He was the attorney general here for a number of years. Interesting. I think he was the district attorney here in Bucks County, where I live, before I moved here. But then he was the attorney general in the state. And then when the previous governor retired and went out of office, Shapiro ran and the Republicans put up, hell, I can't remember his name, but a guy who pulled, I think he ended up pulling around 35, by 40% of the vote. Shapiro was very popular here. The people in Pennsylvania, for the most part, really like him. He's done good things. He's fairly honest. He's open. He doesn't take a whole lot of crap. Something bad came out this week. They talked about some sort of an investigation in the past on one of his staffs about some sexual abuse that he supposedly quashed. I don't know. I don't know if it's true, not true. It's not a good thing to have done. if he did it, but I don't know that it's a deal breaker.
|
Sam:
[1:03:37]
| The two things that have come up, that is one of them, is that he has been accused in the last few days of, like you said, quashing that investigation. And basically, the person who was accused was a member of his staff who was also a friend of his, and he kind of made the allegations go away, and not in a way that was the most friendly to the woman involved. And so people are saying that basically, look, this day and age, that's inappropriate. That should be a disqualifier. Please don't pick him. The other thing that has been said over and over again about him is that of all of these VP contenders, he is the most strongly pro-Israel and has said things in the past that can be interpreted as actually anti-Palestinian. And he served apparently in the IDF as a volunteer in Israel at one point.
|
Ed:
[1:04:46]
| Oh, you know, I saw something like that. He served on one of the farms. He was not in the IDF at any time.
|
Sam:
[1:04:54]
| Okay. But he apparently- But he was there.
|
Ed:
[1:04:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:04:57]
| He apparently volunteered. I guess he wasn't called up or whatever, but he wanted to. But in any case, a lot of folks, especially on the more progressive side, the more Palestinian-friendly side of the Democratic coalition, are really, really uncomfortable with the degree of support he has given the Netanyahu government over the the last few months since October. Basically, still at the 100% back them up, they're going to do what they have to do rather than acknowledging some of the problematic aspects, to say the least, of how they have approached the situation since October. Now.
|
Sam:
[1:05:43]
| People will say, well, look, he's talking vice president. He's going to follow the policies of the presidential candidate regardless. And on the one hand, yes. But of course, the whole point of a vice president is to become president if something happens to the actual president. And so their policy preferences do potentially matter because they may end up being president. President now maybe you think about that a little bit less with kamala harris as the president versus joe biden as the president just because of her age but you never know i mean we saw the attempt on trump just a couple weeks ago you know something could happen always there could you know there could be an assassination there could be an accident you could have a health scare even on a younger person. You never know. And so, yes, that does matter. And I think the thing to me is like, I definitely, I'm not with the most rabid anti-Israel portions of the Democratic coalition.
|
Sam:
[1:06:50]
| But I'm also not with the most pro-Israel elements of the Democratic coalition. I feel like this is an area where you need to acknowledge that there's been evil done on both sides, and you try to figure that out, and you try to push for a different approach in terms of what's going on there. And Shapiro, maybe not in that spot, but even if I had no concerns about Shapiro's position myself at all, he is the only one, the only one of these six where I've heard people saying outright that, that if she picks Shapiro, it's a problem for me. I have not heard that about any of the other five. Now, maybe I'm just listening in the wrong place, but I saw one person post earlier today that he's becoming increasingly convinced that if, let's see, who was this? It was Dan Gilmore on Mastodon. He said, I will vote for and contribute to Harris no matter who is the VP, but I'm increasingly convinced that picking Shapiro would be an unforced error on her part.
|
Sam:
[1:08:17]
| And I think that's why. I think that there are these two issues.
|
Sam:
[1:08:23]
| One, his stance on the Middle East is disturbing to a significant chunk of the Democratic coalition. abolition and two, whatever this thing is with the sexual harassment stuff just does not look great. Now, who knows? Something may come up with one of the other candidates that's equally bad. We don't know. On the flip side of these negative concerns, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. He's really popular in Pennsylvania. You said you like him from everything I've heard from polling and other things. Just in general, he's well-liked. He runs ahead of where Joe Biden was in polls. You know, he is more well-loved in Pennsylvania than your quote-unquote average Democrat.
|
Sam:
[1:09:10]
| And Pennsylvania is absolutely like the paths to victory in this election run through Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania can you imagine ways to win without Pennsylvania sure but all of the really likely ways to win involve Pennsylvania you need Pennsylvania now the latest polling and I'll get to polling in a second in the end but Harris has pulled ahead in the poll average in Pennsylvania so maybe she could get Pennsylvania without him but she's just barely ahead in Pennsylvania so So it's not like it's a secure lead there. And so if Shapiro brings Pennsylvania reliably, maybe that's a good bet. The other thing that's been said is Harris has apparently known this guy for almost 20 years. She's got a relationship with him. She knows him. She's worked with him before. And that's potentially important in picking a vice president. And of course we've got these rumors that she's actually already picked him and it's just, it leaked out early, but that's what it's going to be. So like, interesting.
|
Ed:
[1:10:21]
| The most recent rumor I heard that was not him. And I'm trying to remember who it was now.
|
Sam:
[1:10:29]
| Probably Kelly?
|
Ed:
[1:10:30]
| Yeah, that's right. It was Kelly. I just heard that like an hour or two ago. They were saying that they're quite certain it's going to be Kelly. I don't think any of us really know.
|
Sam:
[1:10:40]
| And like I said, by the time people listen to the show, you might know already. Yeah. It depends how long after I put out the show. It depends when I put out the show and how long it takes you to listen to it.
|
Ed:
[1:10:51]
| As far as Pennsylvania goes, I think if we can keep Trump campaigning the way he is and keep Harris campaigning the way she does, she will sweep Pennsylvania. Fifty five to 60 percent of the vote would be my guess.
|
Sam:
[1:11:06]
| Well, we'll see. I think I don't know. Like, I still think like if I had to bet right now, I think I'd still say Shapiro. But these two things that have come up in the last couple of days, give me some doubt. I feel like maybe it's one of these deals where she kind of wants Shapiro. She knows him. He's got Pennsylvania, but she's got to be thinking about these two things too. Like that's going to get him negative attention from certain parts of the coalition. And can she just avoid that? You know, if she wins, she can always put them in the cabinet. You know, there are a number of things she could, she could make him chief of staff if she really wants him around all the time.
|
Ed:
[1:11:52]
| I like him here in Pennsylvania as a governor.
|
Sam:
[1:11:55]
| Well, when, when's his term end? How long has he got?
|
Ed:
[1:11:58]
| I, I think he can run two terms with, so that would be eight years.
|
Sam:
[1:12:02]
| Okay. So, so he's, but he's not like right at the end of his term or anything anyway.
|
Ed:
[1:12:06]
| Oh no, no, no. He's in the middle of his term basically.
|
Sam:
[1:12:09]
| Right. So let's hit the other two real quick. We got Buttigieg and Kelly. Kelly is the other front runner. I would say, like you said, you heard rumors within the last hour or so. He's also been pretty good at, going on the offensive and making a good case. He's sympathetic because of his wife, Gabby Giffords. He was an astronaut. He's got a bunch of things going from him. He is also from a swing state. You know, Arizona would be really nice for the Democrats to get. I think it's less clear that he could deliver Arizona. It's, it's a bit redder like Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is like prototypical purple at this point. Arizona's a bit more red, but trending blue. Could he bring Arizona over the edge? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure.
|
Sam:
[1:13:06]
| But also, you know, the Senate is at play too. And even if for the short term, because they've got a Democratic governor at the moment in Arizona, he might be replaced in the short term by a Democrat. But then they're going to have an election to fill that spot. And the Democrats may or may not win that. And you really need the Senate. Um, and the, and right now, like the Senate is a really hard ask for the Democrats right now. I've said this before in the show, they have to win pretty much every single state that is in contention for them in order to keep the Senate. They can't lose anything. And so, you know, putting another state potentially in play for the Senate, it's kind of risky. So like, do you really want to do that? But she might because like, he's got some positives to, you know, all of these people do. Finally, Buttigieg, as far as I can see, A, there's the risk of like, okay, are there some swing voters who will be like, I don't want a gay guy?
|
Sam:
[1:14:21]
| And there might be. I wish that wasn't even a part of the conversation, but it still is, unfortunately. Unfortunately and but i don't know that you can i don't know if you can run afraid from that.
|
Sam:
[1:14:38]
| At some point you just have to like do it anyway but the time to do it anyway is when you got a nice healthy lead and can spare a few points yeah like if you're right on the edge and right now Now we're right on the edge. Then, you know, maybe it's best to not do the risky thing on the plus side for Buddha. He is really, really good. Um, at like taking it to conservatives and tearing their cases apart like one of the things he's well known for is he is one of the few people in the administration that regularly goes on fox news and they bring him on fox news every time even though every time he goes on fox news, he makes a really damn good case and the people interviewing him are often left sort of speechless list of like uh uh uh uh because like whatever they said he turned it right around on them and ripped it apart and comes off looking good in in front of the fox news people who usually don't even see those arguments he's very fast.
|
Ed:
[1:15:52]
| On his feet yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:15:53]
| He's very fast on his feet he can react in real time he performs well in interviews um and again sort of to lean in on the culture war thing yeah he's a gay guy he's a gay guy with kids you know he's got a good well a family that looks great on tv his husband is out there on a regular basis also like being supportive and making good, interviews of his own you know campaigning everything like he is so if you want to lean into to, yeah, we're the new America. We're the coalition of the modern America, and the modern America includes gay people. It includes gay married people with kids and a family. And I know the whole right wing goes into seizures thinking about that. Well, I shouldn't even say that. Not really. Not really. Like the people in control of the party and the people who are writing like Project 2025 and stuff want to roll back all this stuff. But at this point, like support for things like gay marriage is almost universal on the Democratic side, but it's a majority position even on the Republican side.
|
Ed:
[1:17:15]
| It's about 75, 80 percent nationwide.
|
Sam:
[1:17:17]
| Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's like taking the retrograde positions on this isn't necessarily a winner, as long as the Democrats can actually make a good positive case for it instead of running away from it. Yeah.
|
Ed:
[1:17:34]
| Well, I think it's probably time that they do more of that instead of backing off on these silly accusations. Yeah, that's right. I do believe in gay marriage. I do believe in gay citizenship and so on and so forth. What the hell? Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?
|
Sam:
[1:17:51]
| Yeah lean into it oh and you are weird for not being for.
|
Ed:
[1:17:56]
| It yeah there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:17:57]
| You are a weirdo freak uh who needs to wake up who is spending too much time thinking about what other people do in the bedroom yep you know why are you why do you care you're the freak why do you care Nobody reasonable would care, you know, it's anyway. Um, okay. I, I, I, I do want to hit the polling before we finish up. So here, here's the fundamental thing on polling Kamala Kamala Harris is absolutely kicking ass. Like, I will say once again, I said this at one point last week, but I'll say it again here. I was wrong. Like, I was completely wrong on this transition thing from Biden. Now, I was worried about, like, some sort of battle instead of coming quickly to Harris. Harris, but I fundamentally thought even if Harris came out, first of all, I thought there'd be a messy transition. There was no messy transition. It was like, boom, here you go.
|
Sam:
[1:19:11]
| But also I thought whoever took over from Biden would start out roughly at the same place as Biden and maybe they'd be able to better prosecute the case than Biden, but it would be a long, hard slog to sort of make up the lost ground and blah, blah, blah. No, we are 12 days past Biden dropping out.
|
Sam:
[1:19:39]
| And Harris has taken the lead. You know, I mean, in the national polls as well, the national polls either have her neck and neck or just barely in the lead, depending on who you look at, what aggregator, whether they count polls that have Kennedy in them or not, things like that. But basically from national polling, it's now a dead heat. Whereas, you know, right before Biden dropped out, he was behind by several percent nationwide. wide. And looking at all the swing states, I do election graphs. And there were a few straggler Biden versus Trump polls that came in after he dropped out, reflecting things before he dropped out. In the end, my final averages for Biden versus Trump had the tipping point, meaning the the margin in the state that would put the winner over the edge at a 5% Trump lead in North Carolina with Pennsylvania being even further behind. Biden was behind by 5.2% in Pennsylvania.
|
Sam:
[1:20:47]
| And, you know, meanwhile, at this point, like, and Harris, my averages for Harris had her start out at like on that tipping point metric behind by about 2.9%. Because it wasn't quite where Biden was, but also there weren't a lot of good polls in a lot of states. So I figured it would sort of move up towards where Biden was and then maybe start getting better. No, it started getting better instantly and it started getting better fast. And there's basically been a step change in the polls. My average moved over the course of the last 12 days, but if you look at it, there's a Harris versus Trump polling before she became She became the actual candidate and those had her about where Biden was. But then as soon as she became the actual candidate instead of a hypothetical candidate, boom, she was doing much, much better. And so my averages for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which are the three key states for any victory for the Democrats, have all now moved to zero.
|
Sam:
[1:21:59]
| Harris leads, small Harris leads, very small Harris leads, 0.8 in Michigan, 0.5 in Wisconsin, 0.4 in Pennsylvania. But she's taken the lead in all three of those states. And also states that were further out that looked like they might not be in contention in a Biden scenario, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina are now also all close. They all still have Trump's lead, They all have Trump in the lead now, but they're all close now. They were not close before. And this has all happened in less than two weeks.
|
Sam:
[1:22:38]
| So I was wrong. Harris is instantly, instantly doing much better than Biden. It's like, and you, and you hear like anecdotal things as well. Like I've heard interviews with people who are like, yeah, I voted for Donald Trump twice and I was kind of sick with sick of him, but there's no way I could have voted for Biden, but I might vote for Harris.
|
Ed:
[1:23:06]
| I think she's going to pull in a lot of the people that were in the middle.
|
Sam:
[1:23:10]
| Oh yeah. That's why I'm really.
|
Ed:
[1:23:12]
| She's going to run very strong.
|
Sam:
[1:23:13]
| The quote double hater grouping that's been talked about, it seems like that double hater group still hates Trump. But it's pretty okay with Harris. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's all you need. That's all you need to, to, to change this.
|
Ed:
[1:23:32]
| Um, he is, by the way, I understand in this straw poll they're doing, he has already accumulated enough votes that she's got the number.
|
Sam:
[1:23:39]
| Oh yeah. Yeah. She, she, the, they, she had informally before the real vote hit, like last, last week, she already had enough people who'd sort of pledged themselves to her. But the, the, the, the, virtual roll call is what they're calling it that started and almost immediately as soon as they started the damn thing she was over the top it's going to be oh it's going to be unanimous i mean she she was the only one who ended up being eligible no one else ended up putting in their name so even rfk jr not even rfk jr not joe mansion not williamson i i williamson may have wanted to but she didn't like you had to get like a couple a few hundred delegates signing their name saying they supported you and yeah right you know so no so yes so she's there and look this whole thing the energy behind it i mean you know we talked last week about how good her first week of fundraising was her second week was even better yeah like they just announced i think I think it was like $312 million in July, something like that, compared to like $110 or $130 maybe for Trump. So they're raking in the money. A lot of it is from first-time donors who have never done this before.
|
Sam:
[1:25:08]
| The excitement is palpable. I've heard anecdotal things as well from... Younger people who are in their first or second presidential elections that they're voting for, who were really completely unenthused about the Biden versus Trump choice.
|
Sam:
[1:25:29]
| And maybe we're going to vote, but we're really thinking that they would just sit it out. Like, there's no way I'll vote for either of those people who are now excited about Harris, you know, who are posting things online with like the coconut tree meme and things like that. Um, and there's, and there are tons of these people signing up as volunteers as well. There's just the level of excitement is insane. If she doesn't make a bad choice on the VP that pops that excitement in some way, you know, there's just, you know, the enthusiasm gap is going to be huge. Like we, we had the situation when it was Biden versus Trump that neither side was really enthusiastic. Now we have one side that is. And if this ends up being just a turnout election where you're not really convincing a lot of people, but it's a question of who actually bothers to vote, the enthusiastic side wins. Yeah now on top of that i think they are convincing some folks like i said there are these these double haters seem to be coming to the harris side and there seem to be some.
|
Sam:
[1:26:41]
| Disillusioned republicans who were never ever ever going to vote for biden who are at least giving harris a serious look and that that changes everything and i don't know like i you know on On electiongraphs.com, and I'm not going to make any promises. I was thinking of doing another election graphs blog post this weekend, even though I did one last weekend, just because Harris took the lead. That's a big news thing to say. But if you compare to 2016 and 2020, she is still way, way, way behind where Biden was in 2020 and where Clinton was in 2016. And we all remember that in 2020, it ended up being super close. And in 2016, Trump won.
|
Sam:
[1:27:38]
| And right now, you know, according to my tipping point right now, right now the tipping point is Harris ahead by 0.04%. At this same time, in the same number of days, 98 days before the election as we're recording this, or actually, wait, no, we're 95 days before the election. 95 days before the election, 94 in a fraction. We have Harris ahead by 0.04%. But Biden was ahead by 4.6% and it was super close. And Clinton was ahead by 3.2% and she lost. So like, it is not time to get complacent. Now, I don't know that she- Well.
|
Ed:
[1:28:25]
| You've said numerous times that the Democrat needs about a 4% to 5% lead in order to win the election because how the electoral college falls.
|
Sam:
[1:28:33]
| I think you're right. Yeah, well, just on an individual state basis, the way I do my projections is looking at how the averages have differed from the actual results over the last few election cycles. And if you average all that out, to even have a 50-50 shot of winning, I believe the number, and I should look this up, but I'm not going to, I'm going by memory, was about 1.2%.
|
Ed:
[1:29:02]
| Oh, I thought it was more than that.
|
Sam:
[1:29:03]
| Well, the Democrats have to be ahead in the polling average for a state by 1.2% to have a 50-50 shot of winning. So to what you are saying, to actually feel confident of winning, they need to be ahead by even more. Like all of these states where you're 2%, 3% ahead, yeah, you're favored, but you should not feel at all confident. There's a decent chance you could still lose. like famously there was one state that like clinton was ahead by like eight nine percent and she's still lost yeah like so the the poll averages were you know way off and i'm i should look up exactly how far ahead let me check that you know i like to get my facts correct, it was wisconsin she was ahead by 7.1 percent in wisconsin and still lost the state that was in the final poll average that i had for this for wisconsin but so you know i i don't i i am very very grateful that harris is now ahead instead of behind that's great progress but i I won't feel confident until she's not just a head, but a head by a lot.
|
Ed:
[1:30:33]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:30:33]
| Now, now having said that, which we may or may not get, At the moment, I am not yet convinced that she's leveled out yet. Like, we are still at the point that practically every new batch of polls shows her doing better than the previous batch of polls. And I don't think Donald Trump has been helping himself these last couple weeks either. And we've got the Democratic Convention coming up very soon as well.
|
Sam:
[1:31:03]
| So I feel like, you know, maybe it's wishful thinking here. But I feel like her momentum has not yet slowed. I agree with that. At some point, it probably will. You know, we do not live in a country where we're going to have polling showing her, you know, winning 70-30 or something. That that's we're not going to have you know this country is no longer structured in such a way at least for now where either party can have like ronald reagan's style landslides where you win every state except one or whatever that's it no nothing like that is going to happen it's going to be a close election but i think like i anticipate that she will before things level off and start just bouncing around normally i think she's going to still improve a little bit from where she is at some point it will level off like this initial honeymoon isn't going to last all the way to the election but i think she's still in her bounce i you know who knows i could be wrong could talk to you like a week from now and Trump's taking the lead again. But I feel like she's still got room to grow.
|
Sam:
[1:32:22]
| Where clearly Biden was struggling and, you know, and people like getting behind a winner too. And right now she looks like a winner. Yep. She's young. She's enthusiastic. She's got, it's not just her campaign. Her herself like is exuding positive energy. And that's another part of it. Like the whole Donald Trump campaign is about grievances and negativity and being upset and mad. Bad like kamala harris seems joyful yeah you know and positive and you know there's an appeal to that wasn't you know even though even among the sort of grumpy middle like you know was.
|
Ed:
[1:33:08]
| It hubert humphrey they called the happy warrior.
|
Sam:
[1:33:10]
| I don't know that was before my time i know i know you're You've been up there, but.
|
Ed:
[1:33:18]
| I can't remember. It's been so long. I can't remember if I voted for him or not, but he was a very likable guy and he was always happy to engage in battles. He was always a smile.
|
Sam:
[1:33:30]
| No, like mood makes a difference. And, and, you know, on the, you're back to weird stuff. I mean, George W. Bush on Donald Trump's inaugural, in his inauguration, when he gave his inaugural speech, George W. Bush, after it leaned over to Hillary Clinton and said, that was some weird shit. Yep. Think, you know, you don't need to gaslight people. by saying that there are no problems. I'm not suggesting that at all. There are lots of problems and we need to make them better. But coming in with that positive, excited mood that's optimistic for the future, I mean, that's the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama formula for big democratic victories.
|
Ed:
[1:34:45]
| Yeah, absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:34:47]
| You know, and that's, you know, Biden won based on a, you got to stop Trump message and he managed But that's the other big change is that this, like when it was Biden versus Trump, it was all about you have to stop Trump. There was a little bit Biden was trying to say about his accomplishments, but there wasn't a lot about Biden's positive vision or what was good about Biden with Harris versus Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:35:18]
| Yeah. With Harris versus Trump, the mood, like the vibe you get from all of this is it's not all about, she's not Trump. There is lots and lots and lots of excitement around Kamala Harris herself and that people are excited about her. It's not just a, we have to stop Trump and that It changes the mood entirely. And I think that's shown up in the polling, even in 12 days. I think you're going to get more of it. I don't know how much more you can get, but you can get more. Whereas I think that Trump has been bouncing along his ceiling. Like Trump's not going to get more support. Like it's a question of turning out the people who already like him or, or who are already have a mild preference for him. But I think the mild preference people are the ones that are looking at Harris.
|
Sam:
[1:36:18]
| You know, Trump, Trump was, and Trump wasn't even trying like with his, with his JD Vance pick. He wasn't trying to bring in anybody who didn't already like him.
|
Ed:
[1:36:29]
| No, no.
|
Sam:
[1:36:30]
| And he make, he makes almost no attempt at it. He's, he's preaching to the people who already like him. And his, his gamble was that would be enough because the Democrats are demoralized and they're not going to turn out for Joe Biden. Well, guess what? We're in a different world now. And we'll see. In terms of my back to election graphs for just a second, I have these four probabilistic models. Two of them are if the election was today, which it is not. Those were my old models. I now have my preferred models that take into account the amount of time left before the election. And then I have one that assumes like the polling errors are going to be completely independent and all the States. So like if the polling is off in Nebraska, it's going to, it can be off in a completely different way in Virginia. And I guess Nebraska may not be the best example, like, but in Nebraska, The other one assumes that the errors are all very highly correlated. It actually assumes they're perfectly correlated.
|
Sam:
[1:37:38]
| So if there's a polling error in one place, you're going to have the same kind of error everywhere. Now, neither one of those two extremes are true, but I've become more and more convinced over the last couple of years that the uniform swing one where the errors are the same everywhere is closer to true, at least in the states that matter. And the reason is, it's the same small group of pollsters polling over and over and over again, especially in the swing states. Some of the states that are way out there, like if somebody polls Wyoming.
|
Sam:
[1:38:15]
| It might be a Wyoming-only specialist who's polling a local congressional race and polls the presidential race while they're at it at something, and they may have their own issues. But for almost all the swing states, you've got the same relatively small group of pollsters polling over and over and over again. And so if they have a methodology issue, they're going to be wrong in the same way in Wisconsin as they are in Pennsylvania. Yeah. And so I've become convinced that the uniform swing one is probably closer to the truth. So having said that, the range between those two models for the ones that allows time for the election, I'm not even going to look at if the election was today, but the range right now is from 13.9% win for Harris in the independent states view to 43% in the uniform swing view. And I think the uniform swing view is closer to the truth. If you want to say it's not quite there, maybe put it at 40 instead.
|
Sam:
[1:39:17]
| And so you're really looking right now at a 40-60 race. So it's really close to a coin toss, but with Trump slightly favored. And the reason I am still slightly favoring Trump right now is what we were talking about before. Over the last few presidential elections, the polls in the close states have tended to underestimate the Republicans by a couple percent.
|
Sam:
[1:39:44]
| And right now, Harris's margin in the close states that matter is like less than a percent. So that's why it's like, okay, if the polls are wrong in the same way they've tended to be wrong, those polls that say she's ahead like by half a percent, probably actually mean Trump's ahead by half a percent or something. Either way, it's really close. We're close to a toss-up at this point. So I want her to continue strengthening a little bit more.
|
Sam:
[1:40:13]
| But because, you know... We expected a nail-biter this year, but I would much rather we get to the end of October, beginning of November, with Harris having a fairly substantial lead, please, not a nail-biter. But I wouldn't be surprised if we have a nail-biter. And we've been talking on the Commodions Corner Slack a bit. Bob brought up some articles recently about how there are a whole bunch of Republican election officials in a whole bunch of swing states who are essentially promising not to certify results, um, which could cause mischief.
|
Sam:
[1:40:55]
| That mischief matters if it's close. If it's not close, then maybe you don't have to worry about that now. And I also said, of course, this all depends like if the polls are off in the same kind of way they were off the last few election cycles, they may well be off in the other direction. Yeah. In which case the Democrats are doing even better than we think. And the reasons to think that, that might be the case. I'm not going to assume it. I'm going to continue assuming that the polls are going to be off in the same kind of way as they were that last few elections. But all of these pollsters who got it really, really wrong in 2016 and 2020, there's no way they didn't modify their methods to try to fix that error. And maybe they overcompensated. That's one. And two is on all of these, you know, special elections since the midterm, the Democrats have been overperforming polls. Yeah. So maybe they are here too. So we'll see. We'll see. Okay. Any last thoughts, Ed? No, I think that- It's time to wrap things up.
|
Ed:
[1:42:02]
| Yep. Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:42:05]
| Okay. Well, time for the things at the end. Go to election graphs. No, not election graphs. Got elections on my mind. Yeah. Go to election graphs too, but go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You'll find all the ways to contact us. You'll find our archives, you know, all that kind of fun stuff. You will not yet find a link to our YouTube. I mentioned we've for the last month or so, we've been live streaming all of these episodes. According to my dashboard, there's been one person who's actually been watching for nearly the entire show, Ed. Really? So I don't know. I don't know who you are or if you're real or whether you're just an artifact of me having checked the stream at the beginning of the show and forgot to turn it off or something. So maybe it's me. Maybe it's me who's watching. But if it's somebody else, thank you for watching the live stream. Just a second, Ed. If anybody does want to see it, youtube.com and then you can search for curmudgeons corner. But if you do that, there's like three curmudgeons corner. You have to find the one that's actually us. Or it's youtube.com slash at curmudgeons hyphen corner. And then you'll find us and subscribe and click the little bell icon for notifications. Then you'll get an alert when we go live. Okay, Ed, yes, yes.
|
Ed:
[1:43:19]
| I was going to say, whoever that is that's watching needs to be told that I am wearing shorts. Because you keep seeing my bare leg there. I do have shorts on. I'm not like in a virtual office. I'm dressed.
|
Sam:
[1:43:35]
| That's right.
|
Ed:
[1:43:35]
| It's over 80 degrees in this room, so I'm wearing minimal clothing.
|
Sam:
[1:43:40]
| And that is true. If you watch the live stream, unlike the podcast, you can actually see us while we talk. Of course, it's also like, you know, on the podcast, I have tools that automatically eliminate ums and ahs and times where we pause and things like that. If you're watching live, of course, you get all that. So like if you're a fan of ums and ahs, you should watch the live stream. You know, or long pauses where we stare at each other while we're thinking about what to say next, you know, any of that stuff. And also of course, on the site, you will find a link to our Patreon where you can donate money to the cause of this great and wonderful podcast at various levels. There, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that sort of fun stuff. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, We will invite you to the Commodions Corner Slack where Yvonne, myself, Ed, and others are just hanging out through the week, sharing links, talking about the news, doing all that sort of fun stuff, having great discussions, sharing cool links, both on politics and this kind of serious news and also on tech and fun stuff and all of that kind of thing. So it's a lot of fun. The more the merrier. Please join us. And let's see, Ed, do you have something from the Slack you want to highlight or should I find something?
|
Ed:
[1:45:10]
| Oh, I was just going to point out that, oops, I had it here, that you posted earlier this week a scientific study finding out which paper is the worst for paper cuts. And it turns out that it's the dot matrix printers. Yep. Now, I have two questions. Number one, why would they study that? Number two, who's using dot matrix printers in this day and age?
|
Sam:
[1:45:33]
| You know, they're very, very rare. Like, I think you'd have to hunt for them. I think there might be certain businesses that still use them for something that for one reason or another haven't updated and are on really old systems still. I don't know. Like, you know, the last few times I've heard people talk about them, it's been as a novelty or as like, you know, or, you know, one of these aficionados of obsolete equipment or something. But, you know, now why you would study it. Well, because it's interesting, right? They tested all kinds of different kinds of paper and figured out, like, which thickness of paper would most effectively cut you and what angle of incidence between the paper and your flesh would most effectively cut as well. Because if the paper is too thin, it doesn't cut well. If it's too thick, it just sort of bends and pushes on you instead of cutting. So there's a sweet spot right in the middle where, well, I don't know if it was right in the middle, but there's a sweet spot somewhere in that range that, that cuts really well. And apparently it's the thickness that old dot matrix printer paper used to be, but I'll, I'll tell you like a couple of days ago.
|
Sam:
[1:46:55]
| I cut myself, not on a piece of paper. I cut myself on my laptop, on my work laptop specifically. And I'm like, how did I do that? I didn't even know it had a sharp surface. But I picked up my work laptop and all of a sudden my knuckle was bloody.
|
Ed:
[1:47:16]
| Yikes.
|
Sam:
[1:47:17]
| And I went and put a Band-Aid on it. It's fine. It's not like I needed stitches or to go to a hospital or something. But I cut myself on my laptop. I can guarantee you my laptop was not the thickness of a dot matrix piece of paper. Not even close. I'm sure not. You know, and I know there used to be those Apple commercials with the laptop that fit in the envelope. Like, this wasn't even a laptop that would fit in an envelope. It was bigger than that. So, anyway, but I don't know. I've paper cut myself many times in the past. I'm sure I will do it again. I am not going to go out and intentionally buy the kind of paper that does the worst cuts though. No, no, I might.
|
Ed:
[1:48:03]
| I generally, when I buy paper for my printers, I generally find out which is the cheapest and that's the, what I get.
|
Sam:
[1:48:11]
| Well, you know, I honestly, I print stuff so rarely these days. Like the, the one printer in my house is it in my wife's home office because she uses it more than I do. She uses it to print some stuff related to her campaign and things like that. And fine. But like, it is so, so rare. I mean, at this point, I think, like once every three or four months i'll print some stuff out that's all like so it's just rare, and uh occasionally i'll need like i'll want to hand write something because i want to i want to i don't know take some notes or do a scratch calculation or something i can never even find a piece of paper so i end up doing my doing it on my computer i get it.
|
Ed:
[1:48:58]
| Out of my printer.
|
Sam:
[1:48:58]
| Well like when i really have had to do that i've gone downstairs and pulled something out of my wife's printer because i don't have one anymore and i don't have a supply of paper in my office like i'll look around and i'll find there is paper in my office don't get me wrong but it's all none of it's blank paper it's all paper with stuff on it so anyway but but like you know and by the way the way they did this study they did not use actual hands they used They used fake hands made of gelatin that has the same consistency as human flesh. I see.
|
Ed:
[1:49:35]
| Because that picture looks like blood.
|
Sam:
[1:49:38]
| Well, they probably did a picture of a real paper cut or at least a fake real paper cut. But for their study, they used artificial skin.
|
Ed:
[1:49:50]
| Fingers. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:49:51]
| Well, that's good. The other way to do it would have been like, I presume this research was done at a college of some sort. They could have done the thing where, you know, hey, we need students for a research study. We'll pay you five bucks for the study. Oh, what's the study going to be? Oh, we're going to slice you open with paper.
|
Sam:
[1:50:14]
| So okay that's his life yep such as life well thank you for joining us yet again ed it's always good to have you and continue your recovery please get well soon uh get the exercise you need to get and all of that kind of stuff and we'll you know next week you know next week we're going to have another co-host i don't know who's going to be on with me next week or you know if If nobody steps up, I will be on my own. If you are interested in co-hosting and you have not been one of the last few people to co-host, drop me a line at curmudgeons-corner.com has all the ways you can contact me. Most of you who might be interested are going to be on an email I send out asking for potential co-hosts anyway. Anyway, but if you are not, if you are just a listener and have are just interested, drop me a line. I may not put you on as co-host right away the first week if we haven't gotten to know each other at least a little bit yet. But reach out, get in touch. We can get you on the curmudgeon's corner slack. You can start participating. And then maybe after a while you can be on the show. I don't know. Anyway, that's it. Thank you, Ed and Yvonne. I hope you are having fun, whatever you are doing. And hey, everybody, stay safe. Have a good week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ed:
[1:51:37]
| Goodbye.
| |
|
