Sam:
[0:00]
| It says it's doing something here we go here we go here we go excellent connection and it says we're live no picture yet but i'm at oh there we go there we go yay and then i'm gonna do the little thingy bop to make sure do wop do do do do wop do what do do wop we're those handsome idiot Idiot Kids.
|
Ivan:
[0:25]
| Whatever, yeah. Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[0:27]
| I like Idiot Kids. They did a new version of that song just last year, within the last year.
|
Ivan:
[0:34]
| I think I heard about that.
|
Sam:
[0:35]
| It was like Mbop version two or something.
|
Ivan:
[0:39]
| I mean, with these kids that, what, they're like, what, 50 years old now?
|
Sam:
[0:44]
| Yeah, they're like our age. I don't know. Now you have to, you are required to look it up now that you've invoked it.
|
Ivan:
[0:50]
| Fuck. Jesus Christ.
|
Sam:
[0:52]
| While the announcement goes out that we are live, it takes a minute. How old are the Mbop kids?
|
Ivan:
[1:03]
| I just, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:05]
| I used to always, with our collective friend Rebecca, I used to make fun of her and say they were girls. Because they had long hair. But they're not.
|
Ivan:
[1:17]
| That's a... God. God. Let's see here. Uh, songwriter. Uh, this is about the song. We're come on. Where the fuck?
|
Sam:
[1:29]
| They were like brothers, weren't they?
|
Ivan:
[1:31]
| I think so.
|
Sam:
[1:33]
| It's like three brothers. I can't.
|
Ivan:
[1:35]
| Here we go. Hans. Isaac Hanson, Taylor Hanson, Zach Hanson. Yeah. Okay. Uh, come on. You. Well, no, he's not. No, they're younger. Taylor Hanson's 41. Okay. apple oh that's close enough yeah i mean it's not it's not like they're 25 and.
|
Sam:
[1:57]
| The and the beginning of this is why i never go to karaoke with my wife amongst other reasons.
|
Ivan:
[2:03]
| Let's see one of them was born in 80 the other one 83 and the other one 85 so the one born in 80 would be i guess the oldest one yeah duh good.
|
Sam:
[2:15]
| Job good job.
|
Ivan:
[2:17]
| Oh yeah great analysis the analysis is going you know hard and fast here folks let me tell you whoa getting getting impressive information at least 44 well not yet so the other was 41 i guess the other one's 39 so we're like early 40s so yeah so so should.
|
Sam:
[2:44]
| Should should we start.
|
Ivan:
[2:46]
| Yeah this actual show yeah thing yeah whatever.
|
Sam:
[2:49]
| Thing three ah yeah that okay uh yeah if we flip over to here flip over to here flip over to here and intro. Go! Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 17th, 2024. It's 2.41 UTC as we're starting to record the show. I'm Sam Mentor. Did I say that? And here's Yvonne Bowe. Hi. Yvonne Bowe is back after like, you know, a multi-decade absence. So here we go.
|
Ivan:
[3:44]
| Multi-decade.
|
Sam:
[3:45]
| Welcome back.
|
Ivan:
[3:45]
| Yes. I am now 70 years old.
|
Sam:
[3:49]
| Yes, exactly. It's been.
|
Ivan:
[3:51]
| That's what happened.
|
Sam:
[3:51]
| Happened there was a cryo chamber involved in some way like your your head was frozen in a jar and and and.
|
Ivan:
[4:00]
| And we're we're in space.
|
Sam:
[4:02]
| Space yes we're.
|
Ivan:
[4:06]
| Doing this from the space station orbiting the moon right.
|
Sam:
[4:09]
| Yes that the the moon space station yes yeah that's that's where we are so anyway we're gonna do our usual which is we'll have a but first section where we talk about at whatever. And then we'll have more serious news sections. One generally driven by Yvonne and one generally driven by me. That's the plan. I will start out before I even get to my real, but first, which of course I have a movie, but is that I said right before we, we hit the theme song and started, I said that what you heard of my rendition of Mbop was one of the reasons why I do not go to karaoke with my wife, but I will mention the other her, Reason. Well, one of many other reasons, but another reason I do not go to karaoke with my wife is last weekend. My wife indeed went to karaoke. And what did she bring home for the whole family?
|
Ivan:
[5:05]
| Tequila COVID. Oh, well, okay. Well, that's something.
|
Sam:
[5:09]
| So she, she got COVID at the stupid karaoke and she.
|
Ivan:
[5:15]
| Oh, but come on.
|
Sam:
[5:16]
| She had it.
|
Ivan:
[5:17]
| Karaoke too.
|
Sam:
[5:19]
| And she had, And now we have it all.
|
Ivan:
[5:24]
| First of all, there's been COVID going around a lot. Okay. I mean, we have our listener, Bob, who said his wife got karaoke. I mean, karaoke.
|
Sam:
[5:34]
| He caught karaoke. Yes. She caught karaoke. It was a horrible.
|
Ivan:
[5:40]
| I mean, all of a sudden she came home and just started singing. And then he saw, you know, it's just one of those things. Yes. It's a terrible disease. No she got covid and i'm sure she wasn't at a karaoke bar i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna put my money on that one so i.
|
Sam:
[5:58]
| I i like to blame it in general there are a couple things first of all first of all any crowded event it was a crowded event with a bunch of our friends in like nobody taking any precautions of course and then also as has been shown way back when when covid was the thing and we were all excited about it and talking about it every week excited yes excited I didn't, it was, it was.
|
Ivan:
[6:20]
| We were probably despondent. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[6:23]
| Well, you know, the, one of the key events that started to show that in fact it was airborne and not through droplets or whatever was the singing. There was a choir event that where there was a massive spread and the, just in general singing events are, you know, One of the things that can, yeah, make it go boom. Make it go boom.
|
Ivan:
[6:56]
| Boom, bop.
|
Sam:
[6:57]
| Do-de-wee-bop-bop, boom. Yes. Anyway, no. And look, this is one of the things where I had been seeing for weeks and weeks and weeks the handful of people who still bother and give a shit and post things about COVID that, posting about how like wastewater levels of COVID in places that still monitor it are the highest they've been in over a year and are super high levels and test positivity levels where they are still reported, which is very few places are also through the roof. And in basically most of the country is in a really hot COVID wave right now. All right.
|
Ivan:
[7:40]
| And, you know, but, but, but, but, but, but, but look. Yeah. You don't sound, you have COVID. Listen, I know you guys have been like us, that we've been like every booster.
|
Sam:
[7:53]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[7:54]
| That's come out.
|
Sam:
[7:55]
| Well, here, let me tell you, I tested positive for the first time about 24 hours ago as we're recording this.
|
Ivan:
[8:03]
| And I say, you don't sound bad.
|
Sam:
[8:04]
| And at the moment I tested positive, I hadn't even noticed that I had any symptoms. I was like, I don't have any symptoms. Systems. And then my, my son tested first, like, cause we, we made him go to a therapist appointment. We, we, we had checked our COVID tests. We had checked COVID tests Wednesday, evening. Cause we knew my wife had it and she'd been isolating. She'd been staying in her room, door closed, blah, blah, blah, mostly closed. And like, and when I had to go into the room, she was in, I wore a mask and blah, blah, blah. So she'd been isolated. And, but we were trying to decide whether to take my son to his weekly therapist appointment on Thursday evening. And so what we had told the therapist, we would, we would check tests on Wednesday. And if we were both negative and we both had no symptoms, then we would go. And she agreed to that. And we tested Wednesday evening and no symptoms. And so we went on Thursday and, Alex was resisting going on Thursday, but he didn't want to go anyway. So, and he said he had a sore throat.
|
Ivan:
[9:11]
| It wasn't because, yeah, it wasn't because he was sick. He didn't want to go, period.
|
Sam:
[9:15]
| He didn't want to go, period. He said he had a sore throat, but there wasn't anything we could tell. Like, it wasn't visible. So, we went to the therapist thing. As soon as we got home, he grabbed himself a COVID test, and he took it. And then a few minutes later he excitedly ran to us to show us that he was positive he was so happy and thrilled that he was positive and there there were a couple reasons for this one he didn't have to isolate from his mother anymore and two it proved he was right he was trying to tell us he didn't feel good and we made him go anyway and i will but look let me say i was saying so i then immediately after that took one myself i also tested positive and this was also what by the way you know how you're supposed to wait 15 minutes to see if you can see the little line on the test blah blah for both alex and i and my wife a few days before that the line was like nearly instant.
|
Sam:
[10:20]
| Like I had a dark, dark black band on the treatment line before the control line even showed up on the stupid test. It was like mere seconds and the darkest I've ever seen. And so, but at the time I didn't feel any like symptoms, but then of course, like within half an hour of the positive test, I'm like, okay, but wait, do, do, is my chest a a little tight? Do I have a little bit of attic? Because psychosomatically, now that I've tested positive, I'm looking out for every little bit.
|
Ivan:
[10:52]
| Yeah, of course. That doesn't help either. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[10:53]
| But yeah, no. But by the time I woke up this morning, though, it felt like somebody was sitting on my head. And so I'm all stuffy, congested, a little bit of a cough. And from talking to my wife as well, like, you know, it took a few days for her symptoms to ramp up. My symptoms are still every few hours are worse than a few hours previously. So I'm still on the getting worse side of this as opposed to the getting better side of this. So we'll see. I, I also like for like, this is only my second time testing positive for COVID. The first time, I hardly ever felt anything. I felt maybe a few very mild symptoms, but I'm not sure. Like, it was not bad. But let's be fair about this.
|
Ivan:
[11:46]
| You got, listen, right now, you got your COVID booster how long ago now?
|
Sam:
[11:51]
| Oh, long enough it doesn't matter anymore.
|
Ivan:
[11:53]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[11:54]
| And also, the current one, like, the last time I was at my doctor, I'm like, can I have the next one? And she's like, no, current recommendation. You could. You could have it now. But current recommendations are you wait. They're coming out with a new one in September that is effective against the current set of variants. And the one that's out right now isn't really that effective against the one that's out right now, that's going around right now. And so she recommended I wait. So I waited. And of course, I ended up with COVID. But my point though was what i wouldn't probably wouldn't matter yeah what i wanted to say though is that last time i just pushed through and i worked anyway like i was like i work from home and it doesn't matter i'll just continue to work this time two things one as soon as my wife had it i told work like i'm not coming into the office like i know you're doing this right office thing I'm testing negative right now. I have no symptoms, but I could be a carrier because very often you are contagious before you notice the first symptoms, before you test positive. So I'm like, I'm exposed. I'm clearly in a situation where I'm exposed.
|
Ivan:
[13:11]
| Well, here is the good thing about having to go to the office. You see, you don't feel compelled to work.
|
Sam:
[13:19]
| Well, yeah, because here's what I did this time. Like this last time I pushed through this time, first I said, I'm not coming into the office, but I'll work from home. But I told my boss right at that moment and, and he, we had a back and forth and he sort of agreed. I'm like, look, if I test positive, I'm just piecing out. I'm like, I am going to shut, I'm going to shut down the computer. I am not going to work. I am going to, I'm just going to try to rest as much as possible until I. Yeah. Until I actually test negative again. And Thursday night I tested positive. So like an hour later, I was like on the company Slack saying, Nope, I got COVID. I'm, I'm checking out. I'll be back when I test negative again. And, you know, and yeah, okay, fine folks, I am doing this podcast. I've entered a few things on election graphs, but otherwise I've been sitting on the damn couch. I've been lying down immediately before this podcast. I took a two-hour nap.
|
Sam:
[14:21]
| I've been trying to be good. I've been trying to basically relax because at this point, they've figured out, and I've taken my first Paxlovid, the whole family's on Paxlovid right now, but they've figured out basically amongst the other factors, trying to push through it generally makes it worse and increases your chances of long COVID stuff. So you really, your recommended course of behavior is do as close to nothing as possible until you're past it. So that's my intention. So there you go.
|
Ivan:
[14:58]
| So this wasn't your butt first.
|
Sam:
[15:01]
| Oh, oops. Yeah, no. I mean, I can save my movie for next week. It's Howard the Duck, Yvonne. It's finally Howard the Duck.
|
Ivan:
[15:08]
| Okay, no, no. We got to talk about Howard the Duck. No, no, no. We can't skip that. No.
|
Sam:
[15:15]
| Should I roll right into Howard the Duck if you want to do something first?
|
Ivan:
[15:18]
| Yes, please. No, no, no, please. How was it, Sam?
|
Sam:
[15:22]
| Okay, so you and... Alex is trying to give me the timeline. He says, Daddy has COVID. Timeline. Mommy has COVID. Then Alex spends time with Mommy. Okay, Alex-y, are you happy now? He writes down Alex-y instead of Alex. Alex-y spends time with Mommy. Mommy tests positive for COVID. Daddy spends time with Alex-y. Doggy spends time with Mommy. Doggy has COVID. I have no evidence one way or another, whether our dog has COVID doggy spends time with daddy and Alexi mommy spends time with caddy caddy has COVID daddy spends time with caddy and Alexi Alexi feel sick. Alexi indicates sick. Daddy says liar. Daddy spends time with Alexi. Daddy spends more time with Alexi Alexi feels. And that's the end of the thing. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:17]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[16:18]
| Howard the duck.
|
Ivan:
[16:19]
| Howard the Duck how was it?
|
Sam:
[16:23]
| Here's the thing you had mentioned on the show one week we were talking bad movies and you mentioned how awful, Howard the Duck is and then so I was going to add it to my list but in fact it was already somewhere on my list and it just happened by pure coincidence in the week after you had mentioned it on the show I had rolled something about doing the Marvel Cinematic Universe And as it turns out, Howard.
|
Ivan:
[16:50]
| Yeah. And I completely forgot that how this stuff was part of it. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[16:53]
| It is Marvel. And so I had, I, I came up and I watched it like a week later. And of course that was months ago. That was in March. And, But here's the deal. I didn't hate it.
|
Ivan:
[17:06]
| You didn't hate it?
|
Sam:
[17:07]
| I'm not giving it. I'm going to go with the thumbs sideways, not a thumbs up. But I did not hate it at all. I was amused by it. I found it like, you know, okay. And what's her name in it? Like Lee Thompson, right? Is that her name?
|
Ivan:
[17:22]
| Yeah. Yeah. Leah Thompson.
|
Sam:
[17:25]
| And I like her.
|
Ivan:
[17:27]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[17:28]
| And here is the thing.
|
Ivan:
[17:30]
| I think that this may be a thing of expectation. okay i gotta tell you why because when it came out i think expectations were very high for that movie okay and and you know when you have this expectation this thing is going to be awesome and it's what howard the duck was then i think you're like oh come on what the fuck okay yeah i mean and and so so i think that was part of it and so i went and i set the expectations so low for you maybe maybe because i that because i literally saw like well it's not exactly you're you're like well it's not the worst ever right and so so yeah it's one of those things where i do think that when it came out and i think i'm pretty sure i saw it at the theaters, okay i was just like what the fuck is this yeah.
|
Sam:
[18:28]
| I mean and look i mean i was mildly amused by.
|
Ivan:
[18:32]
| It like it was it was fine.
|
Sam:
[18:35]
| It was okay like i there were moments that i thought were somewhat funny like i said i i i'm a fan of lee thompson i like this like she's cute i like the thing she does The duck is.
|
Ivan:
[18:47]
| Not cute. The duck is not cute. No. Not at all. No, not in the slightest.
|
Sam:
[18:55]
| But it was fine. It was okay. And you may be right. There may be an expectation setting. There were probably a few WTF moments in this thing, but it just seemed like, okay, fine. It's a movie. It's whatever. Whatever. And I... Yeah. I... I don't rush to rewatch anything, but I certainly wouldn't watch rush to rewatch this. But I saved the thumbs down for the things where throughout the whole movie, I'm like, Oh my God, this is awful. I wish I was done. I wish I had never selected this. I forced myself to finish them rather than watching them. But, and that, that's a good way to put it. Like I save thumbs down for ones that I have to.
|
Ivan:
[19:46]
| You're like, I have to force myself to finish. Okay.
|
Sam:
[19:49]
| I did not have to force myself to finish the Howard, finish Howard the duck. It was fine. It was entertaining. I, I had no problems with it. It had some good moments. It was an exceptional in any way, shape or form. No, it was not exceptional in any way, shape or form, but it was fine. It wasn't. And, and I wasn't screaming like, Oh my God, please turn this thing off. So it gets a thumb sideways for me.
|
Ivan:
[20:12]
| Okay. So, so, okay. So that's, that's, you know, know better than i expected uh by comparison the.
|
Sam:
[20:18]
| Other one which this will now be the third or fourth time it's been mentioned on the show that you mentioned once and had me add to my list and i watched which did absolutely merit that thumbs down category was low blow.
|
Ivan:
[20:32]
| Oh yes because you did watch low blow i.
|
Sam:
[20:35]
| Did watch low blowing yes.
|
Ivan:
[20:37]
| Look yes and that and that movie definitely is way way way worse than howard the duck yeah i mean that yes i i don't think that um that that cannot be argued yeah like uh yeah i i you know i'm looking at howard the duck rotten tomatoes gives it a 13 it's got a imdb of 4.7 which is quite low as well you know but it's not low blow right Low Blow, if I remember correctly, scores way below that. It's got a 4.1 IMDb. For some reason, it's got a 21% Rotten Tomatoes. I just think that's got to be just people just, you know, just say, wow, it's so bad that I'm just going to give it a thumbs up. But yeah, no, this thing is just, you know, a 4.1 IMDB rating is very hard to get. It has to be. Yeah. So, yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:42]
| So Howard the Duck is a cinematic masterpiece compared to Low Blow. Yes. And yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:47]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[21:47]
| Absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[21:48]
| 100% agree. Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[21:50]
| Okay. Anyway, that was my movie for the week. Do you have a butt first of your own before we slip into real things?
|
Ivan:
[21:58]
| What the fuck was I thinking about my butt first for my own? What have I been doing? I don't know.
|
Sam:
[22:05]
| You were gone for decades, like I said. And now you're fondling your microphone.
|
Ivan:
[22:10]
| Yeah, I'm fondling the microphone. phone well the only thing i'll make an observation about is i posted a picture of my wife and son playing on the beach um last week and this hotel that i i i have been staying at is is is uh is a hotel that's it's a resort okay but i've been they have a very good corporate rate so i've been staying at that hotel for work. And I had my wife and my son go with me last week to, to this hotel.
|
Sam:
[22:45]
| So wait, so the deal was you were, you were doing something for work and they just tagged along.
|
Ivan:
[22:51]
| Well, the thing is, so we were supposed to go on vacation last week, but work interfered.
|
Sam:
[22:55]
| Ah, okay.
|
Ivan:
[22:56]
| And so what I said is, look, I got to go back to Puerto Rico. So why don't you guys just come with me? Okay.
|
Sam:
[23:02]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[23:03]
| And so, so I, I brought him along and, And the one thing is that they were playing on this beach. Now, the beach is in San Juan, and this is a north facing beach that unlike a whole bunch of beaches that are in the northern part of Puerto Rico, doesn't it's not in a bay. There isn't the reef to block off the waves. OK, so you get some really, really big waves. And this beach, the last few years, has been the scene of a number of drownings by people not heeding the flags at the beach. Okay? Almost every day I've been there, a red flag was up. Basically, red flag, don't go in the fucking way. This beach is public in large part because all the beaches in Puerto Rico are public. You can't really block access to any of the beaches in Puerto Rico. So there aren't lifeguards posted and people have argued. It's like, why the hell?
|
Sam:
[24:16]
| Why don't you have lifeguards?
|
Ivan:
[24:17]
| But there's been a number of people that have died. I did post a picture and a friend of mine was like, say, hey, you know that that beach is bad. I'm like, listen. a door. My son doesn't even go. My son will play like at the edge of the water, but they don't, he doesn't like to go in swimming and like get himself inside the water. So he doesn't go in there. He prefers to go on the thing. So and then the other day, the weather was exceptionally bad. So on top of the red flag, I saw that the hotel, posted a another flag on the beach itself, like right at the the shore with some skull and crossbones on it red basically trying to warn people not to go into the water and as i see this some tourist clowns went in and were jumping into the water at these waves and i i just don't understand these fucking people i i'm just like guys look at the fucking waves the fuck are you doing i mean it's it's it's not it's nice to sit like brighter water it's nice to get wet a little bit but but when you have the fucking red flag stuck right there with it's called crossbones at the entrance of the beach why are you going into the water why why what's wrong with you yeah.
|
Sam:
[25:37]
| It's like those people you always get the video of the people like surfing because the hurricane's coming and stuff like that.
|
Ivan:
[25:43]
| Yeah yeah yeah there was i'll tell you what there was there was one that i i'll never forget you know the kite board thing kind of thing you know they go with a kite yeah they're they're like they've got this kite it's it looks like a parachute it's dragging them and they're on a board right right i saw this guy on on a hurricane approaching fort lauderdale that did this and they were recording on video and the wind dragged them towards a couple of cement walls and slammed them on live video into into a wall i either he died or let's just say he had almost every bone in his body broken could.
|
Sam:
[26:21]
| Beautiful.
|
Ivan:
[26:22]
| And I'm just like, you idiots. What do you think was going to happen? A 70 mile an hour gust adores a whole bunch of concrete over there. Where are you going to land softly? Anyway.
|
Sam:
[26:36]
| No airbags?
|
Ivan:
[26:38]
| No, no airbags. No. Yeah, that guy really. I do think he survived, but let's just say it wasn't easily. Easily speaking of airbags that you mentioned this i i only saw this recently i'm seeing these people like competing in like uh motorcycle competitions right with the motorcycle airbag things yeah yeah well have you seen it's it's like a suit yeah that they wear and and apparently, when they i i didn't realize this until recently that if they get launched off the thing that the The thing trigger pops. Yeah. It triggers these airbags on the body. That's pretty fucking cool.
|
Sam:
[27:17]
| I have, I have seen like some sort of like video showing how it works that like there's a cord that attaches between their suit and the motorcycle. And if it gets snapped, which like happens if they're more, if they get pulled more than like a foot and a half away from the motorcycle, two feet, whatever it is, it triggers the airbag. And it's like, I don't know, milliseconds for the thing to expand. Just like a regular airbag i also remember sharing with somebody they've they've prototyped the same kind of technology for the elderly that just detects all they sure they just wear they wear the suit and it detects if they trip or fall before they hit the ground fuck.
|
Ivan:
[28:01]
| That's a that's a great idea actually.
|
Sam:
[28:04]
| You know so yeah it'd be.
|
Ivan:
[28:06]
| Kind of funny to trigger it on them on purpose.
|
Sam:
[28:09]
| Well, if you Google it, and I forget what it's called, I'm sorry, but, you know, here, I'll...
|
Ivan:
[28:16]
| When you're old, I'll visit Sam with a suit, and all of a sudden, I'll just fucking trigger that thing. I'm like, gosh! Sam's like the Michelin Man all of a sudden.
|
Sam:
[28:23]
| Well, and it's like that. The YouTube video... Okay, now I have to find this for you now. I'll either find it quickly here. There we go. Let's see. Yeah, I want the YouTube video. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[28:41]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[28:42]
| Here we go. I won't play the video. Okay. This is from nine years ago. Let's see. Is this the video I'm thinking of? Yes, it is. It is. Absolutely. So if you search YouTube for wearable airbag protects elderly from falls, you will get a nice little five minute demo video from nine years ago from some company that was trying to do this. I haven't seen much more about it, and it was nine years ago, so maybe their company didn't succeed, but it's got some videos of some guy testing it out.
|
Ivan:
[29:22]
| Okay, I just saw that Amazon has S-Airbag Unisex Elderly Anti-Fall Airbag Vest Wearable Airbag Smart Vest for Seniors.
|
Sam:
[29:35]
| I guess they have production.
|
Ivan:
[29:36]
| And the price is not that bad, $999. Okay. It's not that bad. If you get one of those at a discount from work okay as well i make sure that when you're older i know i know i know it's like my core it's like any of the discounts i've ever had from work never been that good but i'll i'll i'll make sure to just trigger it for the hell of it like you know when i'm visiting you yeah.
|
Sam:
[30:01]
| Where where just.
|
Ivan:
[30:02]
| To see well you know.
|
Sam:
[30:03]
| The the thing is anyway if you search for this video they've got some some a volunteer testing out the thing.
|
Ivan:
[30:09]
| Falling you get to see it yeah yeah yeah they've got some pictures here of the guy and stuff and everything yeah this is you know i should get this for my dad you.
|
Sam:
[30:18]
| Know well and you got to think though like have they fully perfected the technology or is this thing going to go off in your face when you're not falling because that would probably be bad.
|
Ivan:
[30:27]
| Well you know it doesn't hurt you i mean it's just you know as long as it's just well i mean regular.
|
Sam:
[30:31]
| Like regular car airbags for instance do potentially do some damage to you it's just it's less damage than not having it so you.
|
Ivan:
[30:40]
| Don't you.
|
Sam:
[30:41]
| Don't want the airbag in your car going off randomly.
|
Ivan:
[30:43]
| It makes like so your nose or something or whatever but it's you know but not you know but but you know you know can i say that the only corporate discount that i've ever had for a job that ever was any good okay was the one that It involved working as a travel agent.
|
Sam:
[31:03]
| Oh, OK.
|
Ivan:
[31:04]
| Those discounts back then, and I know that they're not not as good now where, man, there are like, I mean, 75 percent off. And, you know, airfare. In some cases, I got with one airline, I remember that I got absolutely free travel, which it was basically there was a small carrier that flew between. San Juan and some small islands of the Caribbean around there. And if I showed up, And there were empty seats. I showed my travel agent ID, which I had an official travel agent ID from the International Airline Transportation Association with that and my ID. They would, if there was an empty seat, they would let me get on for free.
|
Sam:
[31:53]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[31:54]
| And almost, back then invariably, there were always almost empty seats. I, the load factor on a typical flight was 60 some odd percent. I mean, the chances of, The only days you wouldn't get a seat like that was like Thanksgiving weekend or something like that. But any other day, mundane day, you would get on a damn. There was always an MTC. It's stunning to me like right now how almost every flight I get on that I got on the last few weeks was 100% full. Not one MTC. And that, I mean, that's, that did not happen before. It's, it's crazy how that's changed in the industry. but anyway all.
|
Sam:
[32:38]
| Right anyway so we're done but first but the hell but first is all done um first second it's third the next up then we are going to take a break and it is an apple dream, so i so i saved this from last week it would have otherwise been last week i will warn you this one's a couple minutes long like three minutes long but it's it's an apple dream so i'm we'll we'll see if yvonne has any reactions to this one and then then when when we get back from the apple dream it'll be yvonne's turn to like pick stuff because light it up baby because i've got the whole covet brain fog thing going on can't think oh yeah yeah yeah go and.
|
Ivan:
[33:21]
| Like just said yeah okay yeah yeah yeah whatever.
|
Sam:
[33:23]
| Excuses excuse here you go apple dream i.
|
Break:
[33:29]
| Was not sure which one. I was at some place eating. I was with a group. There was a woman with the group that I knew, and I didn't know the rest of the people. And I don't know. The The person seemed very familiar, but I can't quite place them. It was not Clara from Doctor Who, but it looked kind of like her. In any case, I had cashed out. Well, no, it was time to pay. And they told me they couldn't take my U.S. credit card. And so I was like what do I do because I hadn't cashed out to any of the local currency because of course I hadn't and I asked if they took any of the.
|
Break:
[34:32]
| Common electronic payment apps like can i use cash app can i use venmo can i use whatever and they're like no but we take this and it was like someone i'd never heard of.
|
Break:
[34:47]
| And i was like okay i'll install it and get it set up but i couldn't get the internet to work on my phone except my phone wasn't a phone it was like a stick of gum well an electronic device the shape and size of a stick of gum but i couldn't get internet on it and so the woman who was with me was like i have cash i'm like can i just vent can i just use one of these apps to give you the money and she's like she hadn't used any of them before either but i was like i'll help you it's easy i can set you up with one of them or i can help you get set up with one of them, and she's like okay whatever and i look at the bill and i try to figure it out and apparently i was at a starbucks i mean it didn't seem like it was a starbucks before but the receipt had like starbucks stuff on it and at first i couldn't tell which one was the total because like there There were lines for like how many Starbucks points I had and stuff on the receipt. But then I finally figured out which one and I owed like 126 of the local currency or whatever. And the woman who was with me paid. And...
|
Break:
[36:07]
| Then we were getting ready to go, and I was going to talk to her more about how I pay her back. And there was more, like, we were going to go somewhere, but it was somewhere specific with the whole group, not just with her. And there was stuff that happened before we stopped to eat. Like, there were more people with us, and there was stuff going on that we were doing, and we just stopped for a snack or whatever. But the only thing I can remember now is the stop for the snack and the paying part and not being able to pay because they didn't take cards and I had no cash and they didn't take the apps. But the person with me could pay. But now I had to pay her back. Yeah. Then I woke up. Bye.
|
Sam:
[37:04]
| And that's it.
|
Ivan:
[37:06]
| You know, yesterday, yesterday, yes, my wife was trying to send money to one of her relatives in Colombia. And they just went through what you were describing. Hey, can I Venmo it to you? No. Can I send it through Apple Cash? No. Can I to PayPal? No. I've never been able to get it to work. We're going through this exact same thing. And then she says, hey, I got this app. It's called Wise. wise i used it to send money i'm like fuck i've never i you ever heard of wise i never know wise no so i'm using that one because so and i went through the thing so i went to install i had to go and install it on her phone and figure it out or whatever, like get it to work in order to first i was i've been trying to check on her iphone whether they have apple cash in columbia and i guess they don't okay okay so but we installed the wise and and and then i connected it i saw that you could add the money through apple pay to it okay you had to load it and you had to check your id and all of this stuff or whatever the interesting thing about it is that i'm going to send it but there were fees involved with sending the money okay it wasn't just it wasn't fearless but at first we were trying to just send 14 dollars not a not a big amount but at first it wanted to charge me it almost.
|
Sam:
[38:32]
| Seems at this point like is it even worth it for 14 dollars you know it's like.
|
Ivan:
[38:36]
| You know what she was trying to buy something for her cousin she wanted to send the money she wanted to make the point of paying for fucking 14 okay and so it wasn't 14 to you.
|
Sam:
[38:46]
| It was you were paying 14.
|
Ivan:
[38:47]
| Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right and so and and then at first they wanted to charge five dollars said 14 i'm like five fucking dollars to pay 14 this is idiotic but as as i went and i kept doing more setup on the app it dropped the fee down to a buck okay somehow yeah so i was like okay a buck if i'm setting 14 i'm getting charged a buck i'm like ah okay fine a buck okay you can do the buck but i had to wind up basically yeah i had to go went through the same problem that your apple dream had just yesterday right okay yeah apparently a real problem and and then and then today i tried to pay this check at this restaurant that we went to and they have you know have you seen the uh Now they've got the receipt. There's a QR code out. You can scan and pay at some places. There are certain restaurants that have that. You just go.
|
Sam:
[39:42]
| I think I've encountered that once. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[39:45]
| So you can just go. You don't have to. Whatever. Just scan the QR code. Boom, boom, boom. And you pay right there. No, you don't have to do anything else. And so this restaurant had it. And I'm like, oh, I'll just pay with a QR code. Well, I don't know what problem they had. It kept declining the transaction. It kept saying gateway doesn't work. i actually got even transaction declines on my apple pay and i'm like what the hell the transaction applies doesn't make any sense so i have to give the guy the card give the guy the card they run it it comes back he brings me the little folder with the thing with the credit card but you have to wait a while because it was a lot of people and i didn't bring back my card the card's not in there and i'm like okay dude the card's not in there and he's saying no yes Yes, it is. No, it's not. Damn it. We've got you brought six folders to the table. All the bad cards except mine are going through every fucking folder. You know, going through it, looking through the floor. Get the manager. Guys, where the fuck is my credit card? You guys, he just ran it and I didn't bring it back. I need my fucking card back. You know, restaurants, they keep the lights dim. They have to turn up. They turned on all the lights in the fucking restaurant. The guy had gone after he ran it. He was running multiple cards. He has set it on top of the printer on the machine. My card was black. The printer is black.
|
Sam:
[41:00]
| Gotcha.
|
Ivan:
[41:01]
| He didn't see that. I was like sitting right there.
|
Sam:
[41:04]
| Nice. But they found anyway.
|
Ivan:
[41:06]
| But they found. yeah but anyway okay so we gotta yeah.
|
Sam:
[41:10]
| You your choice your your body your choice you you you pick what we're going to talk about.
|
Ivan:
[41:17]
| My body my choice what am i having sex on this show now okay um not not usually.
|
Sam:
[41:24]
| That you know there.
|
Ivan:
[41:25]
| Are many aspects to.
|
Sam:
[41:26]
| This show but that is not usually.
|
Ivan:
[41:28]
| Well listen yesterday i was trying to you know going through this with my wife and her online line i was seeing on the on the this thing about do you realize that all these people like to just log into like aa meetings online and expose themselves and masturbate online for the hell of it and that they have to keep kicking them out all the time at least the guys thinks this is funny i.
|
Sam:
[41:50]
| Have not heard this about aa meetings.
|
Ivan:
[41:52]
| Constantly it is ridiculous i don't understand what's wrong with these fucking twisted because i.
|
Sam:
[41:59]
| Guess they publicly post the login information to it because anybody is welcome, blah, blah, blah. And then random folks do that. I mean, I've heard of like web apps where that happens, you know, where like, like these chat roulette things and stuff like that, where the people who like participate in them just assume that like one out of 10, like ran, like the concept of some of these apps is you get connected with random people for video chats. Yeah. Which, okay, what are you going to expect?
|
Ivan:
[42:33]
| You're playing Russian roulette with that.
|
Sam:
[42:35]
| Yeah, exactly. And then apparently a certain percentage of the time you just expect are going to be people doing things that maybe you would not.
|
Ivan:
[42:43]
| You don't want.
|
Sam:
[42:44]
| You don't want. Although, you know, if the ratio is that high, I suppose the people participating actually do want that.
|
Ivan:
[42:50]
| I guess, yeah. I mean, they must know. I mean, you're obviously trying to find one of these, for God's sake. So anyway.
|
Sam:
[42:56]
| Anyway, but AA is different. that is not like.
|
Ivan:
[43:00]
| That's me that's not what you're there for no no no so so let's see i'm going through here uh let's talk a little bit about something that you probably wouldn't bring up um at this moment so this week we got new inflation data oh you're.
|
Sam:
[43:20]
| Gonna do economy stuff okay go for it.
|
Ivan:
[43:22]
| Do some economy stuff because there's been a whole bunch of economy stuff last Last week we had this, like everybody for some reason, there was the Japanese stock market had like tanked. I'm trying to remember exactly the main reason.
|
Sam:
[43:35]
| There was a day where, and I remember it was, it was over the weekend.
|
Ivan:
[43:40]
| It was like about a couple of weeks ago.
|
Sam:
[43:41]
| We were coming in, like it was Sunday night and we started getting all these alerts that Japan was going crazy. It was crashing. It would be horrible. The, the, the, the futures for the U S markets were way down. Europe was having issues, too. And, you know, the Japanese markets actually had like a really huge one day crash. It was not a great day in the U.S. either. But then things seem to have popped back pretty quickly. But what was going on? What's it was fears of this and there was going to be a recession after all and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[44:17]
| Okay, the whole thing about the whole thing with Japan had to do with, this this yen carry trade that's been going on for a long time okay and the what what's happened is that the the yen has been cheap and gotten cheaper i mean we've talked about it on the slack okay one of our one of our listeners pete was talking about going to japan went on a trip to japan and we're talking about all the yen the yen he actually was.
|
Sam:
[44:49]
| On the show talking about that trip right after he got back.
|
Ivan:
[44:52]
| It was i mean the yen dropped from i remember when i i worked for a japanese company for many years and we were always very concerned about the yen dollar exchange rate in large part because we japanese companies unlike most american companies they're not still have not as diversified in terms of their manufacturing base even though they are diversified not like it used to be there was a hundred percent japanese manufacture a hundred still they have a bigger concentration of exposure to the yen than i would say that almost any american multinational or even european multinational in my experience okay okay and so when the yen got very strong or you know it it really did impact our our pricing and sales and we were always very concerned about that and we were actually talking our meetings how well if the yen gets to this level of whatever to 80 we're talking about at that point you know that that That would be pretty painful, blah, blah, blah, whatever, and so forth right now. So the yen right now, we're talking about 80. This was about 12, 13 years ago. We're talking about a yen that was about 160, like right now, okay?
|
Ivan:
[46:00]
| It's a massive, massive devaluation of yen. It's made everything in Japan stupidly cheap compared to how it used to be. But it seemed that there had been a big swing in yen dollar in the opposite direction about a couple of weeks ago. And the thing is that a lot of people...
|
Ivan:
[46:26]
| They do a lot of trading. They borrow in yen because the interest rates in Japan have been so low. They will go and they will borrow in yen at almost 0%. And then, you know, do investments in dollars. They do this trade that depends on where the currencies are. And somewhere earlier this month like around you know there was in in the last couple of months there was a big shift in the yen okay we had one that it went from it when it was at 160 it dropped really quickly down to 7th down to 144 okay so it's a very quick shift okay and apparently a lot of that stock trading was related to unwinding a whole bunch of positions that that were very exposed to that currency shift and that's why all of a sudden it had nothing we're talking about where's a recession economics or whatever no it's because so many people have plowed so much money into this yen carry trade that when the fucking yen went like it was at ones you know at the end of July, it was like 160 and it dropped all of a sudden to 144. It fucking caught people off guard because that was a huge, huge shift in a very short amount of time. And.
|
Ivan:
[47:55]
| It went and it spooked people, and then all of a sudden people were dumping the stocks because people will do these moves. So they were borrowing the money, purchase the stocks, then take those, margin those, purchase other assets. So you've got this sequence of assets. And if all of a sudden one of them moves in a direction you don't want, it winds up unraveling the trade. So you have to go and say, oh, shit. I, damn it, I, you know, I borrowed that money over there. Now I got to pay that money back. So I got to sell the shares and then I got to go sell those shares and then give that money back, the money back that I borrowed in yen. There's this entire sequence of how the assets have been tied. And so that's what happened there in Japan. Obviously, everybody sees that that huge sell off. People freaked out and it sparked other sell offs at the same time. But it had nothing to do with the economic data. It really had more to do with that sudden move into yen and how it impacted how people trade in the yen, borrow, and invest in other places because of the ultra low interest rates that Japan has had for a long time. And that's all it really was related to.
|
Sam:
[49:14]
| Because at the time it was happening, all the coverage was frankly not around Japan-specific stuff.
|
Ivan:
[49:22]
| No.
|
Sam:
[49:22]
| It was like, what's happening in Japan is a warning for the rest of the world and everything else is going to go and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[49:29]
| And then one week later, nothing happened. No, it had nothing to do with any of that.
|
Sam:
[49:34]
| And so, yeah, like everything bounced right back.
|
Ivan:
[49:37]
| Well, because, you know, the sell-off happened. I mean, people took the losses, paid back, whatever. I mean, there is a situation right now where, at this point, there is still a record amount of people that are holding cash. Cash holdings are in ridiculous levels all around. One of the reasons why people have been holding more cash recently is because interest rates have been high. Okay, so you'll hold cash and invest it and get 5, 6%. You know, versus how it used to be like 10 years ago, where if you had cash or if you were gaining half percent or one, you were lucky. So so there's been a lot more of a return on cash with higher interest rates. But if you want a higher return, the only place that you can turn to is to stocks. I mean, that really is you either you have to go into stocks because even bonds now bonds are probably going to have a rally with interest rates going down. But you're in an environment right now where interest rates are high. Unemployment is still at good levels. Economic activity is still at good levels. All the economic data that we've had has been solid. Consumer spending in July was robust.
|
Sam:
[51:05]
| Now, there was that one jobs report that freaked people out.
|
Ivan:
[51:09]
| But then, you know, because it was slightly above, but at the same time, because they thought, well, that's a signal that maybe spending is bad or profits are not going to be good by companies, but companies that reported good profits, still the number of unemployment number, it came in like maybe off by 10,000. But then there were a whole bunch of adjustments that showed, ah, the numbers are about in line with what everybody expected. And then you also had this inflation number that showed that inflation is continuing to come down. But the one thing is that all of this points to the fact that the Fed will lower interest rates. And if the Fed lowers interest rates, what people are going to do is borrow more money and invest because you could make more money with lower rates. If you borrow money, it's as simple as that. Look, if you, you know, lower rates right now at this economy, which has been doing good, you get a drop in the mortgage rate right now from six and a half back to like five, four and a half.
|
Ivan:
[52:21]
| There is so much pent-up demand for people to buy homes that have been holding off because rates are too high. Buying automobiles. You think about companies borrowing money and investing. You do that kind of a rate drop, it's going to drive the economy. And rates dropping means that those people with cash, what are they going to want to do with the money? They're going to want to buy more stocks. They're going to want to invest. They don't want to be sitting on fucking cash, earning and losing, you know, going from 5% earnings to two and a half. Also, your return is down 50%. No, they're going to want to move the money into some other assets to make more money. So I think that it was kind of a what happened with that stock market drop is that people didn't understand what the hell it was. And they were trying to say, oh, it's a signal of this, that or whatever. Then all the economic data came in and said, nah, it's none of that shit. So because it was none of that shit then people are like oh okay well never mind and then off to the races again yeah basically because the economy has been doing really well.
|
Ivan:
[53:31]
| You know the one thing that we've had the last couple of years has been a lot of investment, in america and a lot of things that are creating jobs and that are creating things that are or have long-term returns on that investment, when you fix up bridges, when you're putting all this money towards Inflation Reduction Act money, towards renewable energy projects, when you're doing all this stuff for what you would call the CHIPS Act, all that CHIPS manufacturing, all of those things have big multiplier effects in the economy. And the one thing about those is that they're not like one time hits because you build a factory that you spent five hundred million dollars. That factory then is going to employ thousands of people. Then that's going to have an effect. It's not like I just gave people a thousand dollars to spend it on alcohol. Now, yeah, that has an effect. One time you took a vacation, you're done. Now, we're talking about money that's being invested, that's creating manufacturing jobs, that's going to create permanent jobs, that then has an effect all around multiplier around those communities.
|
Ivan:
[54:53]
| You know, we talk about infrastructure and the effect it has on long-term on economies and how it allows certain places to have progress. Remember when we had that ship that hit that bridge in Baltimore?
|
Sam:
[55:10]
| Yes, yes, of course.
|
Ivan:
[55:11]
| And how big of a negative economic impact it has when you cut off a bridge when you don't have that access. But when you invest in infrastructure and then all of a sudden goods can flow free or people can go and say, hey, oh, I'm going to put my wheat in the farm and I can bring it to market faster. It allows me to be able to sell more. That means that I'm going to be able to take advantage of my opportunity.
|
Ivan:
[55:36]
| It's a multiplier effect, all these damn things. things it's these are not this is not this is very different economics than from trickle down economics trickle down economics is this thing where we just hey you're rich we're gonna let you make more money well rich guy x for the most part what they do i mean how many fucking yachts can they buy as well as gordon get you know as charlie she told gordon gecko in that in wall street i mean they're not going to invest it for the most part you already got 100 billion dollars you know you got 120 billion a lot of these people just sit on the money but when you push it on the other direction it has sustained economic impact it's it's the reason why you've have gotten from the the trump tax cuts 2018 they showed very little economic impact almost none these things that have happened the last couple of years in the biden administration have been very targeted into specific things that will provide long-term returns that have provided Why did, for example.
|
Ivan:
[56:48]
| You're looking at the best wage gains that lower and middle income people have had the last 20, 30 years. And it's also done that the economy, even after having to spike from some of the cash that people had in their pockets because their balance sheets are healthier and all this other stuff.
|
Ivan:
[57:13]
| It's it's provider right now that everybody's like well we thought we're going to go in a recession and people are now looking at it more it's like well apparently not because, the one great thing that the fed has done is that by keeping rates high and not having to resort to like things like quantitative easing and other things which means that they're they're putting money in the economy but that's but but that that didn't have a direct effect on people's pocket What you've got right now is that, hey, I drop half a point right now on quarter point or half a point on the on the Fed funds rate. Credit card rates are going down. Home equity loan rates are going down. Mortgage rates are going down. All these things. These are all things that every American will have money in their pocket immediately. Immediately and so and those tools right now are readily available at the fed to act right now especially now that they're seeing that inflation is coming under control back.
|
Sam:
[58:14]
| To quote-unquote normal.
|
Ivan:
[58:15]
| Back getting back close to normal in.
|
Sam:
[58:18]
| The latest update it was under three percent again which was back roughly where it was before pandemic right yeah.
|
Ivan:
[58:25]
| Getting close to that yes And I and I and I think that a lot of people that were like poo pooing this whole thing about transitory effects or whatever, whatnot, many people on TV talking out of their ass. And I notice now that a lot of those people aren't even showing up on TV anymore right now. One of the things is like, oh, this Fed thing saying the transitory is bullshit. Look, one of the things that there were a whole bunch of transitory effects and everybody keeps forgetting that all of a sudden we had a fucking Putin startup.
|
Sam:
[58:51]
| Well, yeah, the fundamental problem with that was just like wording and expectation setting, right? Like when you say transitory people, the expectation that comes to a normal three months or not, even people are thinking weeks.
|
Ivan:
[59:06]
| Weeks, you know? No, it's not that things don't happen that fast in a supply chain economy. It doesn't move that fast, especially not when you get an exogenous shock like a fucking war that spikes energy prices, too.
|
Sam:
[59:22]
| Well, and I'd love to hear how long they were really thinking when they said the word transitory. But, like, it might have.
|
Ivan:
[59:28]
| I think it was more like a two-year window because that is how long it took for supply. Listen.
|
Sam:
[59:34]
| Well, right. Maybe it's just in my head.
|
Ivan:
[59:36]
| Well, here's the thing.
|
Sam:
[59:39]
| Like, if they were thinking two years, the word transitory should never have come out of their fucking mouth because that's not how people interpret the word. You know what I mean?
|
Ivan:
[59:50]
| Maybe that's – Well.
|
Sam:
[59:51]
| Like every – Okay. Here's the thing. I mean, to some degree, everything is transitory, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:01]
| Well, yes and no because – no, no, no. Because there's structural change and there's transitory change. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:00:06]
| And that's what I'm saying.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:08]
| The whole point about saying transitory is that what happened with the pandemic was not a structural change.
|
Sam:
[1:00:16]
| Right. Well, and again, like there were better ways to say that. Right. Like I understand what you're getting at. Like this was this is the kind of change that will eventually revert to the previous state is one thing. Saying transitory implies it's going to be short. And so they just screwed themselves with the terminology. And the reason is that you may be quite right that from an expert point of view, everybody who heard that was clear that, oh, transitory just means not permanent.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:55]
| Right. It's not a structural change. It's not like, hey, all of a sudden, The port capacity in the West Coast got reduced by 50% permanently, and we're not going to recover for 20 years. And we have no plans of increasing it. That's not transitory. But a spike in shipping rates, for example, that happened. That went from like $2,000 a container from China to $20,000 to $30,000 a container from China, that that was for a year. The following year, by the end of the second year, it was back to $2,000, $3,000. Right. Okay? And those are the things that I'm talking about. But I do think, by the way, that the thing about the window is, and what really got more messed up about the transitory thing, it is the stupid war.
|
Sam:
[1:01:48]
| Right. Okay. OK, I people like they weren't counting on that. They were like, OK, pandemic. We factored that in, but they did not factor in. Let's have a new war.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:58]
| Exactly. And I I'm telling you that that that damn war exacerbated the effects of inflation and spiked them for another 18 to 20 months. OK, and right when they were right when everything was trailing off, really those levels of inflation that we're getting now should have been here in about 2022.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:20]
| But when you've got that massive spike in energy prices all of a sudden, and also supply constraints with food, because you got to remember that the war not just constrained energy, but wheat production, wheat exports from the Ukraine, one of the biggest exports, those were shut down when the war started. So it had an effect on energy and it had an effect on food and it was a massive effect right when you know we thought everything's going and then you get fucking putin started word i'm like oh fuck this shit well you know so yeah it it really delayed everything substantially and i and i i i i think that if you look at where everything was trending before the war we would have gotten there earlier but But that just impacted everything. I mean, it's impacted. I mean, that's stupid war. It's impacted air travel, a whole bunch of commerce in terms of shipping, you know, food prices, energy prices, so many things at the same time. Now, one thing that people like right now are also they keep getting worried about companies reporting pullbacks and spending in certain areas. And they're like, well, what's happening? Why is this company also saying demand is down 5%? But the economy is not down.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:48]
| We also had a whole bunch of really weird shifts the last couple of years between how people allocated their spending between services and goods.
|
Sam:
[1:03:58]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:59]
| Okay. You had this massive shutdown of services that all of a sudden spiked in a ridiculous way, goods purchases. I mean, you know, factories that did refrigerators, washing machines, all this other stuff, whatever, could not keep up to the demand. I mean, computers, like other stuff and whatever. And then a whole bunch of that then started coming back down to a certain extent. You're seeing people right now also that we're spending a lot of money on like, travel and experiences all of a sudden shifting this money again to some some other stuff and so what you're seeing is it's not that the economy is going down is that people have done some really really sharp shifts that normally don't happen in recent you know in the economy where they moved from goods, all of a sudden the goods demand soared, then they dropped, then they moved to, oh shit, we're traveling, like there's no tomorrow. And then all of a sudden, oh, well, we've traveled way too much. Okay, and we went to too many fucking restaurants. Let's get back at that. Let's spend on something else, whatever the fuck it is. Let's save some money.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:16]
| Even Home Depot was seeing some stuff, but you see that the overall spending in the economy isn't going down. But also people are shifting money where, well, we spent so much money on the vacation, so let's not shop at the more expensive place. Let's go back to Walmart.
|
Sam:
[1:05:31]
| Right. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:33]
| Which Walmart had seen, you know, softening demand and all of a sudden Walmart reported gangbuster results because they're like the shifts that have been going on, Sam, it's shifts in spending that in four or five years that maybe you see normally over 15, 20 years, all of a sudden happened like in a very, very compressed timeframe. And so I think that that's also, that data is throwing people off when they're seeing that. And, and, you know, all of a sudden you see McDonald's say sales are down 5%, but then you see casual restaurant spending is actually up.
|
Sam:
[1:06:14]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:15]
| As an aggregate. So you're like, okay, so what, what's going on? You know, where's this?
|
Sam:
[1:06:20]
| I saw someone describe that as just like, you know, McDonald's prices went up enough that when people were otherwise considering McDonald's would be like, well, if we're going to spend this much anyway, why don't we go somewhere nicer?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:34]
| We're going to a nicer place. Exactly. That, that was, that was the one thing I was like, what the hell? I mean, what the fuck? If I'm going to pay $14 a fucking McDonald's that I might just go $14 and go to fucking Chili's. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And so I think that that that has been a big and that's been I'll tell you, those are the kind of crazy shifts that you're seeing people making. And that sometimes what's happening is that people see the results that one company is reporting and they think, oh, my God, people are not buying. No, no, no, no, no. People have been reconsidering their purchasing in a crazy way to like that, like we've never seen the likes of before. okay so so.
|
Sam:
[1:07:12]
| Bottom line economy is still doing great and people.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:17]
| Are starting.
|
Sam:
[1:07:18]
| To finally notice it maybe.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:21]
| Yes and not just that that i think people are feeling better because inflation is going down but not just that but that the good news is that we're well positioned to maintain momentum in the economy because the fed has the tools to be able to help people, with lower interest rates.
|
Sam:
[1:07:40]
| Okay. Now, as will surprise absolutely no one, when we switch to my topic, I'm going to be talking politics, is do we have enough time left that anything the Fed does actually will impact what people feel before November?
|
Ivan:
[1:07:56]
| Yes. I will tell you that because the Fed cut rate is, they're expecting that the Fed will cut rates in September. Right now, just the expectation of that has created a surge in mortgage refis of over 100% of where we were about a month ago. Okay? That Fed rate cut will spur that even more.
|
Sam:
[1:08:21]
| So this isn't something where the average voter will feel a difference in six to nine months. You think they'll actually feel a difference right away?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:31]
| They're going to see all of a sudden, oh, wait, oh, that's more affordable. Oh, wait, oh, my credit card payment went down. Oh, yeah, that's going to be an immediate effect.
|
Sam:
[1:08:42]
| Okay. Now, even when people are affected immediately, sometimes it takes a while for them to notice that they're affected and to internalize, oh, yeah, something actually changed.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:54]
| I think that my experience has been that interest rates, especially when mortgage rates go down and credit card rates go down, that gets noticed really quick.
|
Sam:
[1:09:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:05]
| A lot faster than other things.
|
Sam:
[1:09:07]
| So you think this will actually just be additional positive tailwinds for the Democrats coming into November?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:17]
| Oh, hell yeah. Okay. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:09:19]
| As opposed to like a few weeks ago when people were like, oh shit, recession.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:24]
| No, no, you're not going to get a recession. No, no, no. Fed's cutting rates next month. Not going to get a recession. and yeah, not happening.
|
Sam:
[1:09:32]
| Okay. Anything else you want to sub up or can we take a break and move on?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:37]
| We can take a break and move on.
|
Sam:
[1:09:39]
| Okay, here we go.
|
Break:
[1:09:41]
| You're supposed to say do-do-do. Do-do-do! Alex Zemzula! Alex Zemzula is awesome. Its videos are fun. And today, once again, we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome Alex Zemzula is. I'd say, on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Zemzula is awesome at, I don't know, 37? 82? he's pretty radical his videos are phenomenal they're full of creativity and they're so funny and exciting to watch wow what happened to your voice then Amy was that dad pretending to be you because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to yes good job on remembering dad do do do Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:10:41]
| We're back. So like, this segment will be politics in general, but as will become more and more common as we are getting really close to the end here, I will start out with an election graphs update. So last week, I talked about it how, you know, we'd had this big move towards Harris after Biden dropped out, but then we had a little bit of a bump up back towards Trump. And And that's where we were, I think, last week. Maybe it started to reverse again. This last week, things have been moving back towards Harris again. So that little bump back towards Trump, which frankly was only really in Pennsylvania. And maybe it was just a coincidence with what pollsters were in the field in Pennsylvania. Like everywhere else has continued to move towards Harris. And Pennsylvania has started to move back towards Harris again.
|
Sam:
[1:11:36]
| So over the last couple of weeks, we now have Harris firmly in the lead, in the lead in the national polls, in the lead when you look at state polls like I do on electiongraphs.com as well. That need that lead is still narrow, but about a percent in the, in the tipping point state right now, which is close enough that like, Hey, the polls in 2016 and 2020 were off by more than 1% underestimating the Republicans in the last two cycles. So if they do that again, Harris being leading in the critical states by about 1% isn't enough. She might still lose. So like no room for complacency yet. But things have been continuing to move in the Harris direction. They were really rapid right after Biden dropped out. It's been moving less quickly since then, but still moving generally in the Harris direction. A couple of things.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:44]
| Well, I think the important thing is it's been a consistent movement. It hasn't stopped. It's not like, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:12:50]
| It hasn't stopped yet. All of the states that were sort of, I mean, the critical, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, at the moment Biden dropped out, even if you looked at Harris averages, but certainly for Joe Biden, were all on the Trump side of the line. Now they are all on the Harris side of the line. Other states, Arizona in my poll average is now just barely on the blue side of the line. Nevada is very close on the Trump side. It's only a 0.2% Trump lead at the moment. It had actually been blue for a little bit, moved back with the latest poll. Georgia is close again. North Carolina is close again. And even states like Florida, they're not close in my poll averages yet, but they're not as red as they were a month ago.
|
Sam:
[1:13:48]
| And so we're seeing that kind of movement everywhere. It is still continuing. It does not seem to have bottomed out quite yet. And in a few days, we've got the DNC starting. And a few days after that, we've got Trump legal shit happening. So I feel like we're probably not at the bottom yet. Like, I will fully admit that bump of polls back towards Trump had me doubting for a little while, but then a whole bunch more polls came in that got reversed again. And we're still like heading towards Harris and she's running on all cylinders and seems to be doing everything great. Whereas Trump seems to be flailing still. And we'll talk about that in a second. One more thing. One more thing I want to say about the current polling before we move on to that.
|
Sam:
[1:14:38]
| This is one of those, oh, my God, that will never happen things. But I just want to say at the current configuration of where all the states are lined up in my poll averages, the chances of a 269 to 269 tie are higher than I have seen them in a long time. This is because basically if you take all of the states that right now Harris is ahead head in the polls, except Arizona, where she's only ahead by 0.2% at the moment.
|
Sam:
[1:15:13]
| Give Arizona back to Trump, you end up in a 269-269 tie. My odds, depending on which of the models, range between a 1.7% chance of the tie to a 9.1% chance of the tie. That is annoyingly high because that would take you into the whole the house of representatives has to decide scenario and it would be the new house of representatives not the current house of representatives so that might change balance however it's not the house voting as a whole it's a house vote voting by state delegation which is republican dominated right now and even if the democrats take the house back, it is quite likely that the Republicans will still dominate in terms of state delegations in the house. And so the ties are pretty much still probably Trump wins.
|
Sam:
[1:16:11]
| But anyway, you have Harris ahead in the straight, if you trust polls view the, in the, taking into, in the stats I do that take into account the poll errors in the previous few elections and the amount of time left. You now, for the first time this week, have Harris's odds of winning greater than Trump's. At the moment, I have Harris at 46.8%, Trump at 44%. But this is in the uniform swing mode, which I think is the closest of my models to what's probably true. But you have that 9.1% that throws it into the house. And that would still go to Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:54]
| Yeah, that would be interesting.
|
Sam:
[1:16:55]
| Oh, yeah, just a tad. You think January 6th was fun. Do January 6th. They certify the electoral results, but then there's no winner, and then it has to go into the House and start this kind of stuff. And of course, the way it works also, by the way, just to play out House of Cards slash West Wing scenarios for a second, the House determines the president, but the Senate determines the vice president. So you have potential scenarios where you could get like, you know, Trump is president, but Walls is vice president. You know, things like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:34]
| Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[1:17:37]
| Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:39]
| Christ sakes.
|
Sam:
[1:17:41]
| Anyway, the bottom line is polls are still going great for Harris. I will add everything I just said. I mentioned I took a two-hour nap right before recording the podcast. There are several new polls that came in during those two hours that I haven't entered yet, including one for Pennsylvania, which is still one of the tipping. The whole tie scenario is because the tipping point right now is actually not a single tipping point. It's between Pennsylvania and Arizona. Like for Harris to win, she has to win all the states up through Pennsylvania plus Arizona. For Trump to win, he has to win everything up through Arizona plus Pennsylvania. So the tipping point is actually in between. But I did take a quick look at those Pennsylvania polls. I think they make it even better for Harris again. I could have done the math wrong in my head, but I'll be entering those soon. And by the time you listen to this, there'll probably be even more polls. They're coming out all the time. So anyway, that's it for the polling update. You had started to mention, Yvonne, and we talked about it, or I talked about it a little bit last week, but I'd love to get your take on the Donald Trump flailing that we have seen the last couple weeks because I think it's just getting worse like he's not like he's not figuring out the right way to attack Harris and going after at least I don't I don't.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:02]
| Think I listen I don't I think it's it's it's a lot more basic.
|
Sam:
[1:19:07]
| Okay this.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:09]
| Is more existential Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:19:10]
| You think he's lost it.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:12]
| Well it lost it because look He knew his only ticket out of jail. Was to win this fucking election. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:19:22]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:23]
| And he started getting comfortable that maybe he was going to win. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:19:28]
| He was sure he was going to win. When we had, he was.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:31]
| He, he, yeah, he wasn't just comfortable.
|
Sam:
[1:19:34]
| It was like the thought of music wasn't in his mind anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:37]
| Right. He, he, he hit the convention and he, you know, was deluding himself into this is done.
|
Sam:
[1:19:47]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:47]
| I won. I'm done. This is going to be easy. Street you know i'm taking this and all of a sudden he is angry.
|
Sam:
[1:19:57]
| Yeah he.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:59]
| Is angry that joe biden.
|
Sam:
[1:20:00]
| Actually dropped out dropped out that they're cheating him also people have pointed out like part of this is like the thought of somebody doing this is completely alien to donald trump He can't imagine how this could have happened. Now, you and I were still like, hey, Biden says he's in. He's staying in. But then, you know, Biden didn't. But Trump's view of it is like he can't imagine himself ever doing that.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:30]
| Dude, he actually went. One of the things that he posted on Truth Social was that Biden was going to show up at the convention.
|
Sam:
[1:20:38]
| And try to take it back.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:40]
| And take it back.
|
Sam:
[1:20:41]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:42]
| Yeah. I mean, it's shit like this. It's unhinged. Crazy. Look, but but look, the whole thing is I win. I'm out of jail. All my problems are solved.
|
Sam:
[1:20:56]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:57]
| Right now, it's fuck. Not only am I falling behind, I'm going to fucking lose and I'm going to go to fucking jail. Because those are your scenarios if you're Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:21:11]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:13]
| I mean, the reality to him that he is fucked is making him completely unhinged. These guys are trying to, I thought the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen is that they trotted him out for this press conference with these props. Like, it sounded like infrastructure week, but now we're going to talk about inflation. And I guess they bought some.
|
Sam:
[1:21:36]
| Like boxes of cereal and stuff. yeah and.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:39]
| You know what he was on subject for like about a millisecond and then just started ranting and raving like well.
|
Sam:
[1:21:46]
| And not only that he explicitly addressed it he was like they're telling me i need to stick to things like the economy and i should lay off on the personal attacks but fuck that i think i'm entitled to personal attacks and so i'm gonna you know because he literally.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:02]
| Said this and he.
|
Sam:
[1:22:03]
| Literally said this and then went off about how Kamala Harris is stupid and blah, blah, blah, and he doesn't like her and whatever. And the theme of the last week or so has been other Republicans begging Donald Trump to please get on some sort of issue-oriented message and maybe attack Democrats in some of the areas where where they seem weak or maybe talk about issues. And, and Donald Trump is basically telling those people go screw them. Fuck you.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:38]
| No, here, here is the, here is the problem. Eight years ago when Donald won, yep. The way that he won was because basically he shut the fuck up for about 30 days.
|
Sam:
[1:22:55]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:56]
| They took away his phones. They took away his shit and said, you shut the fuck up. You don't say another word and you know some events happened you had the comey letter you had all this shit happening and then that happened okay the last election okay, you know, he was close even with all the shit that happened. But the reality is that right now he is 100% surrounded himself with people that will just let him do whatever the fuck he wants. And if they can't and they won't, they're not going to shut up.
|
Sam:
[1:23:39]
| He just brought Lewandowski back into the campaign, which one of the things people have talked about is this time around, he's had a more disciplined campaign. He's had a more professional campaigns, uh, staff around him, but the, the move, and I forget the name of the guy was something, something, whatever, but it's less Evita.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:00]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:24:01]
| Less Evita. And basically less Evita is one of the folks telling him to try to be more disciplined, try to stay on message, blah, blah, blah. And now he brings in Lewandowski. Who's one One of the folks who was involved in 2016 that, and basically that people are reading this as they probably can't both be there. LaCivita may be on his way out. If not officially, then it's certainly in terms of influence because Trump is not liking the advice that's telling him to, oh, go, go talk about the economy. Go talk about taxes. Go, go talk about, you know, immigration, whatever. And he's like, fuck all that. I want to rant and rave. And yeah, so...
|
Sam:
[1:24:47]
| I don't know. There are people surrounding Trump who know the formula to get him ahead again. And I'd mentioned one of my four models. I'd mentioned the straight trust the polls now has Harris ahead. One of my four models has Harris ahead. Just to be clear, Trump is still slightly ahead in the other three of my probabilistic models. But to get back on track, there are people around Trump who know how to do this. But it involves the kind of discipline. And like you said, last time they took away his phone. Basically, it's get him to seem normal for a little while. Get him to seem competent for a little while. That's the magic formula. If you do that, then you're competitive and you can potentially pull this out. If you continue to go crazy, then you're potentially losing people. Now, the other thing that is not on election graphs proper, but I've seen a bunch of analysis from people who've looked at the same polling before and after from the same group of pollsters and things like that.
|
Sam:
[1:26:05]
| There are a couple of things we're seeing. One is that it's really, so far, Trump's numbers haven't actually changed very much. I look mostly at margins on election graphs. But if you look at Trump's numbers versus Harris's numbers, Trump's numbers haven't changed all that much. What's happened here is that people who are undecided in the Trump versus Biden race are breaking overwhelmingly to Harris.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:31]
| Well, this is the- And that's what's happening.
|
Sam:
[1:26:33]
| Remember- And also I thought I saw one other number. I just want to say this. I saw one other number earlier today. I wish I'd like re retweeted it or whatever. Cause I didn't. And now I can't find it, but somebody also did a breakdown of men versus women. For men, the race is basically not changed for men. They are supporting Trump at the same level. They are supporting Harris at about the same level they supported Biden. But for women, there has been a huge move towards Harris, where women who were not on board with Biden are now on board with Harris. And so those are a couple of the big moves.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:14]
| Look, one of the things that I had been observing, like before we've gotten to this point now in middle of August, was when you added up the percentages of what they were voting towards, you know, Biden versus Trump, that in so many of the polls, like I'm going to talk more specifically about the national polls specifically, which, you know, which are, you know, they're leading indicators to a certain extent.
|
Sam:
[1:27:40]
| They move faster because there are a lot more of them happening, you know, blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:44]
| And the one thing about those is that so many of them weren't even at when you combine it, the combined total of Trump and Biden combined. Yeah, exactly. There were like even at 90 percent in a lot of cases. They were like and I kept saying, listen, man, we're not getting to a fucking election. We're 10 percent of the fucking voters are going to wind up fucking voting independent. My fucking ass hasn't happened. No fucking way. one way or another this is going to coalesce in some other way or another the two things that have been happening but the effect that you've had right now is that the rapidly coalescing event was biden saying i'm out bring harris in and that decided that moved all those fucking people that were basically just oh okay fine i made the decision it's harris and it's been like it and And in mass. Absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:28:40]
| Now, I think... Honestly, a lot of those undecided people may have eventually come around to Joe when they finally were like, oh, fine. God damn it. It's my only choice. I'll go for Joe.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:53]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:28:54]
| But it would have been a long, hard battle going over the course.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:58]
| It would have been a harder battle.
|
Sam:
[1:28:59]
| And it would have been a slow process over the next few months where people slowly, like, finally admitted, oh, my God, this is what I have to do. But Harris jumping in made that happen in a matter of days. All of that motion happened within the first week to two weeks after she jumped in. Huge numbers of undecideds have stopped being undecided and are now Harris. They were holding back when it was Biden, but now they're like, okay, I'm in on Harris. And also, I'll put out there as well, this was always going to happen, but this has also accelerated over the last month, the complete collapse of Kennedy. His numbers are like a third of what they were a couple months ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:45]
| I mean- And then Kennedy was trying to get a cabinet job on the fucking Harris administration.
|
Sam:
[1:29:49]
| Wait, he tried with Trump first.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:52]
| He tried with Trump first, and now he's calling Harris. Yeah, Trump said no.
|
Sam:
[1:29:57]
| And apparently he tried to talk to Harris. He actually got a phone call with With Trump, Harris wouldn't even take his call.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:03]
| Yeah, fuck that guy. What the hell? I'm taking this stupid fucking call.
|
Sam:
[1:30:08]
| You know, but yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:09]
| But look, I'll give you, you know, look, how much the race has been shifting. And I'm going to focus on on the national polls just because they're they're further ahead. OK, I'm looking at I just pulled up the latest polls on. Five thirty eight national polls margin for Harris or Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:30:34]
| OK, I'm looking at that.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:35]
| I'm going to go back.
|
Sam:
[1:30:35]
| By the way, their polling average right now has Harris up by two point six. Like 24 hours ago, it had Harris up by three. So it's down a little bit from the max. But go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:44]
| But but but look at these. Look at these polling numbers like going back to like ten days. It's it was August six. It was plus one. Even Harris plus four. Harris plus one. Harris plus one. One Trump plus two Harris plus three Harris plus four Harris plus three Harris plus three. Even Trump, Trump plus one Harris plus two Harris plus five Harris plus five Trump plus two Harris plus six Harris plus six. I mean, this is this is this isn't slowing down in that direction. The numbers keep getting bigger. OK, toward Harris right now as we're heading towards the convention. Convention and so i mean this is i mean this is obviously the ideal scenario that you want like right now in terms of this if i'm a candidate i've got momentum in my direction and i'm gonna have a fucking convention that's gonna get everybody's attention fuck yeah that's what you want right now oh absolutely i.
|
Sam:
[1:31:47]
| I think that we probably are going to get a bump out of the convention. Although like, you know, Harris's big bump was clearly when she got in, like, you're not going to have that kind of movement again. That was a massive.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:00]
| But I think you'll get another point. I think it's good for another couple of points.
|
Sam:
[1:32:05]
| I think you're going to have more movement. And then going back to the Trump thing, um, We've got Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:11]
| Listen, here's the thing. Trump, this the convention you want to talk about? He's already been melting down about how much attention he's not getting. Right. It's why he was on with fucking Elon on on X Twitter bullshit spaces. Faces, whatever, talking for a couple of hours, which apparently everybody that listened to it was like, what the fuck is this? Okay. But he's going to be even more unhinged with the convention. I mean, that's not going to improve his mood.
|
Sam:
[1:32:45]
| Right. And I think like, well, and people are, one, you're talking about his mood. Two, people are, now that Biden is out of the race, people are pushing on you know what his mental capacity really is and right and we've talked about it wasn't that great to begin with like even eight years ago no no i mean we we had all the reports about from the from his administration of like hey he can't actually read a report so we have to like condense everything down into like basically slides with cartoons on them in order for him to understand you know so and that and that was eight years ago or seven years ago whatever oh and that that.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:26]
| That this week he decides to once again shit on the military.
|
Sam:
[1:33:33]
| Yes well yes and i'm like what the fuck well the things that yeah because he can't help himself And this gets back to like how in control of himself is he? What's his mental capacity anyway? Is his mental – forget about like Alzheimer's or whatever. He's clearly a mentally ill man. Is it getting worse? You know? Yes. And I think the answer is yes because it's all being put under stress. And the stress will – forget about – I'm sure there are aging effects here. Too. There absolutely are. But you take pre-existing, the whole people, I know people are like, oh, you can't diagnose him without properly, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's so many mental health professionals at this point who've been like, look, no, I have not had him in my office, but there's so many hours of public behavior you can just observe. He's clearly, what do they call it, a malignant narcissist or whatever, and all of these other things associated with that.
|
Sam:
[1:34:47]
| And you're putting all of that under pressure. You're putting things that pressure his ego, that relies on everybody loving him and looking up to him, and he's the best person ever. And every piece of evidence that you put in front of him that challenges that, whether it be him being behind in the polls or him getting convicted of something and having some sort of sentence happen, like challenges that kind of stuff and, and, you know, makes him act out more and more. And that's exactly what we're seeing so far. Now, can his staff at some point do a 2016 and take his damn phone away from him and, and lock him up and not going to happen this time. Lock him up.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:32]
| Well, that would, that would help everybody.
|
Sam:
[1:35:35]
| Oh, I mean, if you, if you control his exposure to the public to be only.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:40]
| But, but listen, listen he he has changed listen he was i think up until 2020 somebody that to a certain point was allowing himself to be managed okay right up to a point right now that he has basically removed every fucking safeguard of anybody that has any fucking you know common sense to really stop him or if there are around them none of them will none of them will will even like attempt to stop okay so i right now they are basically i mean sam held one rally this week where the fuck did he go for a rally uh montana oh yeah the great state of montana right i'm sure that that was definitely you know helping him move the needle in his direction okay what the fuck who the hell in a campaign that at like his that is flailing decides to hold a fucking rally and fuck it so montana i'll.
|
Sam:
[1:36:51]
| Tell you the theory behind that rally like.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:54]
| Okay you can do.
|
Sam:
[1:36:55]
| This logic or not.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:55]
| This is.
|
Sam:
[1:36:57]
| One of the states that the republicans are trying to pick up in the senate So nominally, he was there to support the Republican candidate going against Senator Tester.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:07]
| Which is a point of parliamentary procedure. Yes. You remember what happened in Georgia in 2020? Yes. There were two Senate seats on the line. Yes. Did Trump give a fuck about the Senate?
|
Sam:
[1:37:23]
| I'm just telling you that's nominally why he was there.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:26]
| No, no, no. Did Trump give a fuck about the Senate?
|
Sam:
[1:37:30]
| No. No. And in fact, he did things that, like, I think— Actively undermined them. I think, like, when Trump was doing the whole stop the steal, call the Secretary of Defense, try to get them to, like, whatever, And the statements he was making there against some of the local people, like if he'd shut the hell up, the Democrats might not have won those two Senate seats.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:00]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:38:01]
| Like I think Trump actually actively participated in the Democrats winning the Senate that year. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:10]
| And so that's why I call bullshit on him going up there for that. I think that he wanted to go to some fucking place that filled two things. By the way, I do think that after he got shot. Yes. I think he's a little bit afraid for his safety.
|
Sam:
[1:38:30]
| I think that's true.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:30]
| And I do think that that is, I think that that is also impeding his ability to go out and do a round.
|
Sam:
[1:38:37]
| And he basically said, and I mentioned this last week, but he said like he wasn't planning on really hitting the campaign trail again until after the Democrats convention was over, which basically took him out of commission for a month other than a handful of small events. And I think you're probably right. Part of it is probably him being spooked by the assassination attempt. And my God, I mean, I would be too. Let's be honest.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:02]
| I mean, fuck. Listen, like I said, listen, it is about the only one of the few fucking human reactions this bastard apparently has. Because, look, the first thing I said about when he got what when they tried to kill him, what I remarked was how fucked up his reaction was. Right. Because it was just nuts, okay, how he reacted. And now it's like almost post-traumatic where it's actually, oh, fuck, they did almost kill me.
|
Sam:
[1:39:37]
| Right. And, you know, now the Secret Service is like, okay, we're going to have bulletproof glass in front of him or bullet-resistant glass in front of him so he can do public events again. Again, like the few, the Montana event and a couple others were, were smaller. They were indoors, I believe.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:54]
| They were smaller and it was, I mean, it's fucking Montana. I mean, no way.
|
Sam:
[1:39:58]
| And then, and then his press conferences, he's done at Mar-a-Lago and Belminster. Belminster? Bedminster.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:05]
| Bedminster. Not Belminster. Jesus Christ, we're butchering every fucking name today. We need to talk.
|
Sam:
[1:40:09]
| Go to the police. Oh, but for the record, my election graphs average for Harris versus Trump in Montana right now has Trump ahead by 16.7%.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:22]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:23]
| Now, that includes the- Very important. That includes the 2016 and 2020 elections because there have only been three polls in Montana since Biden dropped.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:32]
| Listen, there is no fucking way that this guy went over there to support a fucking senator. I, I, I have no, this guy has not cared about anybody else in any race other than himself. And so I'm not sure what, I think that what in his mind going to Montana was like a safe place that he could go and do an event where he would get a crowd that he was comfortable with.
|
Sam:
[1:41:07]
| So, by the way, the Republican going up against Jon Taster is Tim Sheehy.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:15]
| Huh?
|
Sam:
[1:41:16]
| Tim Sheehy.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:17]
| And how's he doing?
|
Sam:
[1:41:18]
| Well, let's put it this way. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:25]
| That's interesting.
|
Sam:
[1:41:26]
| I'm like, what the fuck? Why isn't there? How can this even be true? Like I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for the 2024 United States Senate election in Montana. It shows Jon Tester versus Tim Sheeney.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:40]
| By the way, I just saw, I pulled up something for 14 hours ago. Montana Senate new poll has Tester beating Sheehy 49-44. four. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:54]
| Which by the way, like we had talked about, like when we, when we did predictions for this year, like in order for the Democrats to keep the Senate, they have to do a clean sweep. They basically have to wait every state and right now it's looking like they might.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:10]
| Sam, this was a Rasmussen poll and it has tester up by five. Holy shit. They might keep tester.
|
Sam:
[1:42:20]
| Yeah i mean this is one of the ones that democrats thought they would probably lose so not looking like it the the ohio race was also one that they thought and the democrats i believe still up narrowly in the polls in ohio as well you can check if you want avon, you know there are a few of those like now i i'm not yet saying that it looks like we're it's it's It's going to happen, but the chances are a lot better than it looks.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:49]
| I just looked at, listen, listen. I mean, listen, I'm sorry, but Rasmussen polls have their thumb on the skin.
|
Sam:
[1:42:54]
| That's just a reality. Yeah, yeah. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:56]
| And if Rasmussen is posting a fucking poll that they just posted right now and has Tester up by five, that means Tester may be up by eight or ten.
|
Sam:
[1:43:03]
| Right. Yeah. Yeah, and there are a number of other states, too, and people are talking about, you know, again, Democrats pretty much have to do a clean sweep of all of the states they are defending in the Senate in order to do it. And like a few months ago, people were thinking, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:20]
| That's not going to happen. Every single poll that I've pulled up, the last has browned up by four points.
|
Sam:
[1:43:28]
| And so now it looks like the Democrats might get that clean sweep that they need to keep the Senate. And I've even heard people speculating about, is Ted Cruz in trouble in Texas?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:41]
| I mean, look, Republicans hate Ted Cruz. The problem that Ted Cruz has is that even their fucking Republicans cannot stand.
|
Sam:
[1:43:50]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:50]
| And so that is the only reason why Ted may be vulnerable is because it's just the guy is just. One of the most unlikable pieces of shit out there. And so there, the one thing that you could have, how could Ted Cruz lose is a lot of Republicans go to the polls and they're just like, fuck this. I'm not, I'm, I'm not even marking them off. Fuck this. I can't do it.
|
Sam:
[1:44:20]
| Well, this is the thing too. Like people are talking about, like one of the reasons the Democrats actively pushed Biden out is they were worried about negative coattails where, you know, the, the, The Democratic Senate candidates were doing better than Biden, and they were worried that Biden would drag them down. Now we're talking about traditional coattails instead. How is Harris going to help the Democrats? Is the enthusiasm about Harris going to, I'm going to use the word twice in one show, like give tailwinds to all these Senate candidates and help push the Democrats over the edge in the Senate, obviously the House as well? You know so right now like all trends are blue like and to be clear the overall, we're still in toss-up territory everywhere toss-up for the presidency toss-up for the house toss-up for the senate but right now all the trends are moving towards blue now will that last all the way from now till november i don't know i'm gonna tell you another guy who is.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:25]
| Not but who is deeply hated by a lot of people. It's Rick Scott. Okay. In Florida, Florida Atlantic, which is a university near me. They've actually the, the I've seen that they're polling over the last few election cycles has been pretty spot on what the fuck is going on. Okay. They've got that race right now. The last few polls at recently where they've got Scott up by four, but it's a 4743 split, which means that there's a lot of people out there that are like undecided like right now on that.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:59]
| Listen scott when he won six years ago i think won by less than 10 000 votes right okay it was paper thin it was it was just stupidly thin and people don't like rick scott i mean the guy I just, he's a douchebag. Just, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, maybe he's just, he's a little less disliked than Ted Cruz, but not by a lot. And so that's another one where, the the only reason i bring it up is because you know what the last time it was paper thin it was i mean it was just so close so you know and by the way it wasn't expected to be that close right um so let me let me pull up the the final tally of that election but yeah it was yeah Yeah. 10,000 votes. Rick Scott had 4,000,099. Bill Nelson came up with 4,089. I mean, it doesn't get a lot closer than that. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:15]
| And since we're talking Florida, let me just talk Florida for the presidency as well. First of all, where the polling ended for Biden when people stopped polling him had Trump ahead by 5.7% in Florida and with 13.9% in the category that said neither.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:39]
| Undecided. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:40]
| Undecided or third party. um yeah that's my election graphs average of course for harris right now that's actually about the same it has like trump ahead by six okay but i will point out trends like just looking at oh i have to say has trump had by six but that that neither group is down to 6.7 okay but.
|
Sam:
[1:48:07]
| Aside from the average itself, I want to point out the trends on that.
|
Sam:
[1:48:12]
| There was a poll of Harris versus Trump right before Biden dropped out, where Trump was ahead by over 10% in Florida. And then if you look at the polls since then, there's a couple of outliers from this trend, but we had an insider advantage poll, Trump by 10. Then we had a redfield and wilton trump by eight then you university of north florida trump by seven then uh redfield and wilton trump by six then suffolk trump by five then we just had a poll come out this week for mainstream uh for main street and if you average the with and without kennedy trump only two and a half two and a half uh now there were a couple outliers there was an additional Trump by 8.2 from ActiveVote and McLaughlin by 8 that were not on that trend line I showed. They were a little higher. But the trend is almost every poll that has come out has showed Florida closer than the poll before. Like I said, in the end, the average right now is still Trump up by six. And that's over the last two weeks. So that's a fairly recent polling.
|
Sam:
[1:49:31]
| So i'm not ready to say florida's in play yet but the trend in florida just like everywhere else has been moving rapidly towards harris if it moves a few more percent then yeah florida's in play too you know i.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:45]
| Think the one thing the one other state that you know like georgia i mean biden won georgia okay you know that that's that that that what that that was one and look like right Right now, it's at the same margins or like Biden won the last time. Listen, this is a state that is winnable.
|
Sam:
[1:50:07]
| Oh, yeah. My poll average in Georgia right now has Trump up by 0.8%.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:12]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:50:13]
| This is another one where, you know, let me let me check the Biden number real quick. Biden's final number was trumped up by four and a half in Georgia. Harris has it at point eight. And again, with a rapid trend towards her over the last few weeks. Now, again, at some point, the move towards Harris has to stop. You know, we're not going to have, you know, Harris winning 48 states in D.C., you know, but.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:40]
| But well, I mean, I don't know. But I mean, for all we know, Trump could come out and like, I don't know, maybe shoot Melania or something for all we fucking know.
|
Sam:
[1:50:48]
| Yes. Well, I heard people spinning scenarios at this point of like, OK, well, Trump clearly at this point thinks Vance was a mistake. Maybe he dumps vast Vance. And then the only possible rational replacement would be Haley.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:03]
| Ivanka Haley.
|
Sam:
[1:51:05]
| Although Trump hates Haley. But they're like, well, but the party would force him to pick Haley. Yeah, right. right, whatever. Pick Haley. And then Trump trumps out. And then we have Harris versus Haley. And then that changes everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:17]
| That wouldn't happen in one billion years. Well, I mean, the part where Trump dumps vans, I see that, or tries to dump them. Can he dump them? Can he just say, fuck you? How does that work?
|
Sam:
[1:51:37]
| Well, I mean, remember there was that, who was it? Eagleton, who got pushed out by the Democrats in, I forget, 68, 72. Many i forget when that was um okay but basically that can happen basically and to show how times have changed the reason i mean it came out that he had seen a psychiatrist and oh fuck and then he and so he had to drop out good hell and i think he cried or something like when he was asked about it um oh for fucking christ's sakes what the fuck what.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:10]
| The oh okay well all right.
|
Sam:
[1:52:13]
| Anyway anyway like So it has happened where the vice president has been pushed out after the convention. Basically, the RNC would have to meet and pick a new one.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:22]
| Okay, so they could do that.
|
Sam:
[1:52:25]
| But look, he's not listening here. How is he going to pick? We got ballot deadlines too, though. At this point, we are now several weeks past where we were talking about it is now getting difficult to change ballots. So some states you can change it. Some states you can't. At some states, you can change it only under certain circumstances. But the bottom line, protection against all of this stuff is in the end. It's the electors voting. And so almost up to the very last minute, the RNC could tell electors do something else. Now, there are a few states that bind them, so that induces complications.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:01]
| He might just shoot Vance.
|
Sam:
[1:53:05]
| Yeah, actually, because it's easier to replace somebody on the ballot if they're dead. If someone is dead, it's easier to replace them on the ballot than if they're not.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:13]
| That's why I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[1:53:15]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:15]
| Well, I think here's one thing, though. Look, he's not going to put Haley. I mean, have you seen all the backlash that J.D. Vance's wife has gotten because she's of Indian heritage?
|
Sam:
[1:53:30]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:31]
| I mean, so what? You think this is going to appease the racists that put Haley on?
|
Sam:
[1:53:38]
| Although in that interview that came out where Vance apparently agreed with the notion that the only purpose of postmenopausal women is to be grandmothers to their grandchildren. children. That same interview that he also sort of not, now to be clear on all of this, Vance did not say this himself. The interviewer said it and Vance sort of made affirming, uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, noises. And Vance is now saying he didn't really agree with him. He was not along to the thing he said before that and didn't realize. But also he said, the interviewer said, and Vance seem to agree that apparently one of the big advantages of marrying into an Indian family was that the grandparents were even more dedicated to this kind of stuff. Because they like, apparently his mother-in-law had a fairly high powered job and quit the job and moved in with them to help with care of the baby after they started having kids and lived with them for like a year. And like in the interviewer, it's like, well, that's one of the advantages of marrying into an Indian family. They're like that, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:47]
| Okay, so, all right.
|
Sam:
[1:54:49]
| So, yes, the racism.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:53]
| Yes, how does this address the racists? Were you putting in Haley? Wait, we got the misogynists and the racists. So you got, you know, it's a, you know, I don't see how, I mean, it would be Haley. Is going to be somebody it's got to be some other.
|
Sam:
[1:55:15]
| You know i honestly i think at this point at this point he's sticking with vance i think the maximum danger point for vance has passed, and i think unless more comes out they're sticking with vance like because because at this point there's a cost to it i still don't i still don't although we thought that with biden we thought there'd be a cost to a switch and there wasn't so maybe maybe trump could dump somebody dump vance and pick somebody that miraculously will completely undo all of the poll changes in the last one.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:44]
| I know. I got the answer. I got the perfect answer. She's available. Palin.
|
Sam:
[1:55:52]
| I thought that's the solution i thought you were gonna say fiorina.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:56]
| Oh well that's you know yeah that's another no no no.
|
Sam:
[1:55:59]
| Palin man okay i.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:03]
| Mean why not recycle palin.
|
Sam:
[1:56:05]
| Yeah i could see that like but yeah the at this point like to really i mean to really shake this up and reverse the trends that we've been seeing over the last month I think, you know, we've talked about like, can Trump discipline himself and have come to the conclusion? No, that that would be one way to stabilize this is if Trump actually acted normal from now until the election. The other would be that you do have a trump replacement on the republican side and we don't end up with the trump part of the biden versus trump either and then depending on who the rnc put in completely different race but like you know unlike biden there is no freaking way trump would do that himself so i think that would only happen you know if trump was if trump actually died or was physically incapacitated in such a way that he couldn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:57]
| This Republican Party is so beholden to Trump. Never have. I don't. They are, they, it's like a suicide pact at this point.
|
Sam:
[1:57:10]
| Yeah, it is. And and look they'll you know what was it um oh i'm blanking south carolina senator guy what's his name i just blanked graham yeah lindsey graham lindsey graham went back in 2015 early 2016 when he was running against trump said explicitly if if we pick trump it will destroy the republican party now he ended up winning but i think his prediction of it destroying the republican party is still playing out i mean frankly even if trump wins this time around like the what survives of the republican party going forward after trump whenever trump is gone is gonna be nothing is nothing nothing like all of the principles that the republican party traditionally held are gone no but like no.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:10]
| But but even beyond that sam.
|
Sam:
[1:58:12]
| The organization the machinery that's all raising out yes it.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:17]
| He has completely decimated that.
|
Sam:
[1:58:20]
| All of it yes all.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:22]
| Of it all of it the local organizing, the field offices, everything. He has completely, completely decimated that. Look what's been happening, all these parties in different states where you've had these crisis, where they've had no money, where they're fighting amongst each other. They can't decide anything. They can't do anything. This has been an ongoing saga that you've seen. And listen, if Trump, like right now, loses again. They are in exactly that scenario. They've got nothing left. And the problem that they've got is that, my thought is, even if he loses, if he's not dead, he's going to try to run again.
|
Sam:
[1:59:10]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:12]
| That that's what i totally believe.
|
Sam:
[1:59:14]
| I could see that you're not he's i could see him announcing his candidacy the day after well after he loses well he's never he's never going to admit he loses either he's going to contest it again just like he did last time and pretend it's a steal and blah blah blah go through all the courts try to get another riot try to get the house to do something you blah blah it probably won't succeed but he's going to try all of that stuff again end so he'll never admit he loses and then but then i can see him immediately thereafter being like well you know 2028 2028 is coming up you know now just just like we he is deteriorating with age though like i can't imagine adding another four years to this donald trump yes listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:58]
| I i i understand how bad it would be but i'm telling you that.
|
Sam:
[2:00:01]
| He's trying oh yeah yeah Yeah, I don't disagree.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:06]
| So, Jesus Christ, can't get this son of a bitch. It's like a fucking cockroach. Never been able to get rid of this bastard. God, son of a bitch.
|
Sam:
[2:00:16]
| Well, yeah. You keep predicting every year he's going to have a heart attack. Hasn't happened yet. Except there was that one mysterious visit to the hospital that we never found out what happened.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:28]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[2:00:29]
| Well, shit.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:30]
| Well, Sam, I mean, Jesus Christ, and talk about my death prediction. And I'm sorry, but a bullet came within what? How many inches of fucking doing it? Like what? Maybe one inch?
|
Sam:
[2:00:38]
| Yeah, something like that. Two inches? Boom.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:40]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[2:00:41]
| So. Okay, did we miss anything, Yvonne? Or can we wrap this sucker up?
|
Ivan:
[2:00:46]
| No, you can wrap this sucker up.
|
Sam:
[2:00:48]
| Okay. Thanks, everybody, for listening to yet another Curmudgeon's Corner. As Yvonne and I ramble on about this and that and that and this. Go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can find all the ways to contact us. You can find an archive of our shows, including transcripts recently. Well, recently it's been.
|
Sam:
[2:01:09]
| Three quarters of a year now. I don't know. It's been a while since I added transcripts. You can find all that stuff. I have not yet added a link to the YouTube. If you want to go to the YouTube, I'll do it eventually. But you know, now I have the I'm sick excuse, you know, so, but it's youtube.com slash at curmudgeons hyphen corner. If you want to check any of these episodes out on video and like, and subscribe and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can be be notified of the live streams when they happen blah blah blah blah blah blah yeah i i post about the live streams in on mastodon and you can have youtube notify you if you want to see last week when i was by myself the entire time it said somebody was watching but i'm not sure if that like that might have been me i might have accidentally opened it in another window and seen it that way i don't know but anyway if you're interested in that you can have the unedited version with all the ums and ahs and interruptions and of course the website curmudgeons-corner.com also links to our patreon where you can give us money at various levels we will send you a post card we will send you a mug we will mention you on the show we will ring a bell all that kind of fun stuff and at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we will invite you to the curmudgeons corner slack where yvonne and i and a bunch of listeners are chatting and sharing links and blah, blah, blah, more, blah, blah, blah, more.
|
Sam:
[2:02:33]
| Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we're doing that all week long. It would be great if more of you could join us. So if you're interested, let us know. So Yvonne, what's something from the curmudgeon's corner Slack in the last week that we have not talked about on the show that would entice people to come join our Slack because they have missed it because they weren't on the Slack?
|
Ivan:
[2:02:59]
| Musk's new AI image generator immediately used to troll him and images flooded and videos images what the heck images flooded X showing Musk carrying out a school shooting with Mickey Mouse or being let on a leash by Donald Trump and I'm looking at a picture so disgusting of Donald and him kissing no.
|
Sam:
[2:03:25]
| No men kissing is fine.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:28]
| Now.
|
Sam:
[2:03:29]
| Admittedly, it's Donald and Elon.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:31]
| That's what I'm saying. I mean, listen, I kiss guys, okay, as a hello, okay? It's not a big deal.
|
Sam:
[2:03:39]
| With tongue, I'm sure.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:40]
| But not with tongue. I don't kiss like casual. Listen, I don't kiss casual people with tongue, okay? It's only, you know, for a few years.
|
Sam:
[2:03:49]
| Tongue in the ear?
|
Ivan:
[2:03:50]
| No, no, on the cheek.
|
Sam:
[2:03:52]
| You know. You just lick their cheek. cheek.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:55]
| Yeah but but see.
|
Sam:
[2:03:56]
| These two clouds, what's the name of this thing grok is it it's grok grok xai yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:08]
| So, well, people... Rock 2, the latest version of the chatbot startup, is available on X premium subscribers. Appears to let users make images that would fall foul of content restrictions used by some similar tools. As a result, bizarre and occasionally disturbing images were shared on X, depicting real people, including Musk himself.
|
Sam:
[2:04:28]
| You mentioned Mickey Mouse. It's not just real people. It's also copyrighted intellectual property stuff that like a lot of these other AI generated tools, they're not very good at it. You can get around it. So like if you want to do like Disney characters doing stuff, you can do it in the others. But most of the others have some level of protection to make it harder to do that. Apparently, Grok has none of that because it's like, you know, free speech or whatever. and and as one of them shows the tesla.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:58]
| Boss holding a sign simply reading i am a pedo.
|
Sam:
[2:05:02]
| Nice but like the the copyrighted stuff is going to get them in trouble even faster than this stuff i mean like elon's probably going to freak about these and people are have probably already been fired over this i'm sure they're already shut it down but but uh mickey mickey but like mickey.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:16]
| Bow saluting adolf hitler and donald duck using heroin.
|
Sam:
[2:05:20]
| But how long how long will it take before four Disney's lawyers have talked to Hacks about this.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:26]
| I'm sure they're already doing so right now.
|
Sam:
[2:05:28]
| Yes. Like, yeah. Like, this is the kind of thing that Disney does not smile at.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:35]
| No, not particularly. No.
|
Sam:
[2:05:37]
| Disney is one of the companies that is well known for being really aggressive about their intellectual property.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:43]
| Here, I'm going to say that.
|
Sam:
[2:05:45]
| To the point where they were, I think they've calmed down a little bit on this, but for a while they were like, they were in the news for like going after like preschools that had hand painted Mickey's painted on the walls and stuff. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:59]
| They don't go after that. But for example, I do.
|
Sam:
[2:06:01]
| They used to, they stopped because of the bad.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:04]
| They, they don't, but I know for a fact that they, they will, for example, uh, You know, like certain plays made out of Disney movies, they will allow it, but you better stick to their rules and restrictions around those, or otherwise you're done. Right. Okay? Like you can't live. Okay, you want to do the play? Great. You can't live stream it. You can't post it on YouTube. You can't do that. You know, you have to do all these things around them, for example. If not, then don't drop the hammer on you. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:06:37]
| And of course, with all of these companies, if you do that, you generally have to pay a license fee anyway. But I think Disney is pretty aggressive about that. It varies by company, but Disney is one of the more aggressive in terms of those kinds of things. Anyway, I'm sure Disney and others will be going after X for what Grok is doing. But like I said, I don't think you even need it. Because it's showing Elon himself in a negative light, he's going to crack down on them.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:09]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:07:10]
| He'll take care of this himself. So anyway, basically.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:14]
| All right. Okay. We're done.
|
Sam:
[2:07:16]
| We're done. Okay. That's it. Thank you, everybody. Have a nice, safe, exciting week. Do we have anything? Is there anything? Like, is it a holiday yet? No, it's not. It's not the holiday yet. We got a couple more weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks. Olympics are over. over, oh, we got the DNC coming up. So before we have our next show, the Democratic National Convention will have happened. Hopefully it will be fun and exciting and Harris will do well and all of the ex-presidents and Hillary Clinton will be there and do exciting things. It's feeling like it's going to have a lot more energy than the RNC had. We'll see.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:57]
| But let's just say that what i you know the one thing that i found exciting and i i'm hoping that he's well enough to be there jimmy carter basically said that he wants to just right now stay alive to vote to vote for harris yeah that was one of the fucking coolest things i've heard yeah i must say yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:08:20]
| And i i yeah so he's yeah yeah that was touching.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:25]
| Like and yes and and And.
|
Sam:
[2:08:27]
| You know, he's been on hospice for like a year. You know, and I've heard interviews with his grandson saying like, you know, when he entered hospice, we were expecting days. It's been a year, you know, so he's hanging.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:39]
| And look, hospice, you know, like sometimes people think it's like, you know, they're they're they're ill enough that they need that care sometimes. Yeah. And people expect that they will die, but it's not like they're actively trying to have them die. Right.
|
Sam:
[2:08:54]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:54]
| All right. I just think that he will, but it's been the best, most palliative treatment for him in order for him to be as comfortable as possible. And well, there you go. Managed to be around me.
|
Sam:
[2:09:08]
| So we'll see. Yeah. But we'll see if he makes it. But the convention itself, I mean, to be clear, the Republicans had a bunch of energy. They were sure they were like on a glide path to a win. And now everything's changed. We'll see how the Democrats do. I think it's going to be good.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:25]
| But it was, let's be clear, using a term, it was weird energy. I mean, the people they had on stage talking, I mean, they had Hulk Hogan. What the fuck?
|
Sam:
[2:09:39]
| Well, they had a bunch of sort of washed up 80s people, and people have pointed out, well, Trump is mentally stuck in the 80s, so it all makes sense.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:46]
| Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:09:49]
| We were saying goodbye. Bye, everybody. Have a great week. Stay safe. we'll talk to you next time goodbye say goodbye yvonne bye, okay thank you yvonne i'm gonna probably go crash and get more covid rustle fun fun fun all right i'll do that.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:39]
| Bye okay let's upload.
|
Sam:
[2:10:41]
| Hitting stop stop.
|
