Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Greetings, Mr. Bow.
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| Good morning!
|
Sam:
[0:03]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| Rise and shine! Your eyes look like it's 8am.
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Sam:
[0:08]
| Oh, I wonder why that might be. Yes, I've been... Hold on. Let's let the livestream start.
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Ivan:
[0:19]
| Your cough is wonderful as usual.
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Sam:
[0:23]
| Yeah, yeah. I'm going to push this button here. Where is this? Not yet. Yeah, I've been awake for maybe 10, 15 minutes. And after probably only being asleep like four hours, maybe. I don't know. We'll see.
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Ivan:
[0:41]
| Well, you're not doing too bad. Okay. And I have to, because Juana's working early voting, I have a hard stop in one hour and 30 minutes from now, exactly.
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Sam:
[0:51]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:51]
| Because I have to take Manu to music.
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Sam:
[0:53]
| Okay. So let's get this thing going. Here it comes.
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Break:
[1:00]
| .
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Sam:
[1:22]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner. I'm messing up already. Seconds in. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner. Yeah, exactly. For Saturday, October 26th, 2024, it is just after 15 UTC as we're starting to record, which is early for me. I'm not, you know, but I'm here.
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Ivan:
[1:47]
| It is quite early for Sam. Yeah. I did request that we do it at this hour. Thanks to exigent circumstances.
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Sam:
[1:54]
| But you know, you could have asked for one or two hours earlier than this. And I would have been, I would have done it.
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Ivan:
[2:04]
| Awake. You still would have awake?
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Sam:
[2:07]
| Well, I mean, I wasn't awake for this. I'm not awake right now. I'm asleep. I'm asleep at this very moment. And yes. Anyway, we're going to do our normal. We'll do a butt first with random crap.
|
Ivan:
[2:20]
| And then what did you tell our audience last week? Unfortunately, folks, last week at the last minute.
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Sam:
[2:27]
| All I said, let me finish with we'll do the other stuff and then we'll do newsy stuff, which I mean, given the date, given it is the end of October in an election year, you know what we're going to be talking about.
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Ivan:
[2:41]
| But college football.
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Sam:
[2:44]
| Exactly.
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Ivan:
[2:45]
| Yes. anyway so no.
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Sam:
[2:47]
| All i told you all i told people yvonne was that you you at the last minute were not feeling well and could not make it that's all.
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Ivan:
[2:55]
| Well well that's that's that's an understatement at the last minute okay when i woke up i we i'd agreed with sam to record this on saturday and actually had been because i had not been feeling well all week i'd gone on a business trip and i I felt sick. And I basically worked on Friday when I got back, but I was in bed. I was not well. And Saturday morning, I woke up and it felt instead of better, which I hope, hey, I'm getting some rest and drinking fluids. Fine. It felt way worse. And at that moment, I said, well, I'll go into the emergency room. This cannot be, this is not right. And at first I thought, ah, just give me some medicines and send me back home. Well, they did a CAT scan and they said, no, you're staying here.
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Ivan:
[3:51]
| Because I got a bout of diverticulitis, which is an issue with the lower intestine in which it gets infected. You know, one thing is interesting that I kept reading about it, and nobody really understands why. It's more prevalent in Asian and European men, and the location is not exactly the same for Asian and European men. And it's very painful. and it can and and if if you don't really treat it and i i you know according to the doctor i did notice it i i didn't like you know i didn't wait i went quickly that they noticed that it was like at a very early stage because it in many cases it can require surgery okay it's not good in order to treat it, they have to remove part of the, it require removing part of your lower intestine.
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Sam:
[4:47]
| You don't want that.
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Ivan:
[4:48]
| No, no. Yeah. So, you know, I actually, you know, my last couple of months, I've had some gastro issues. You guys remember a podcast I did late August. I was definitely sick recovering from specifically something about of this. And I have to think that that played a part into this at this point. I don't see how it didn't. I don't think it could be a coincidence. I haven't had a gastrointestinal virus like that in years. And then all of a sudden I get one that's like that bad. And then I wind up with an infection. But the good news is that I'm on the mend. I am not going to say that I am 100% because I am not. I can feel that I'm still a little bit.
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Ivan:
[5:38]
| Lethargic I think that's the right word overall, So, and I have to take, I'm still in the middle of taking treatment because I, okay, they gave me IV antibiotics, but now I have to go in through a round of like 10 days of antibiotics. And then, and I have to go back to my GI for a checkup. And the thing is that, you know, I had a colonoscopy like this year. They didn't really see anything to be worried about. So and you know the doctor said that well hey sometimes this thing happens just like that it just happened in in a snap so but the good news is that i didn't have to get surgery the er here thank god i went to you know was very quick i didn't really they didn't really make me wait i was like there you know i got i got put into an attending room real quick i mean probably i was, i mean in a couple of hours they already had me in the you know you know it's like yeah they did the cat scan they did the ivs and they had put me in a room and the main reason to put me in a room was they just wanted to make sure that i was recovering that uh that uh medicine was taking effect and i will say that the iv antibiotics had took in less than six hours the pain had subsided like I would say 80 plus percent. So, so that was, so that was good.
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Sam:
[7:08]
| So how long were you there for total?
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Ivan:
[7:11]
| Well, thankfully only, I only had to spend, like I got there a Saturday morning pretty early and they let me go Sunday afternoon. They wanted to see that I could have a meal because they saw that the antibiotics were having the effect that they desired. And they, they did a check and they said, you know in the morning and they said okay look let's get you real food now because i had not eaten my god that week i i barely ate um and so i i was able to eat they they what they said is look we're going to give you another round of ivs and then we're going to give you this prescription for bills and then on your way home so so i am here now so yes well i'm not you know usually at this hour on saturdays i go exercise but right now i'm like i said i'm not i can't do that right now i can't do that right now so i i i gotta i gotta get some rest and get a follow-up and hopefully then next week i can i'll try some lighter activity but not you know not like a full workout. So, yeah. But anyway, I'm here. I'm alive.
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Sam:
[8:24]
| Glad you're feeling better. Glad whatever they're doing to you is working.
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Ivan:
[8:28]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[8:29]
| Glad you didn't need surgery.
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Ivan:
[8:31]
| Oh, God. Yeah, that would have been really... That would have been, but anyway, I mean, I think that's good enough for a, but first Sam, you got a movie?
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Sam:
[8:41]
| No, I still haven't gone through and done the thing, but I do have an update for you. An important update.
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Ivan:
[8:48]
| An important update. I like important updates.
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Sam:
[8:51]
| It is related.
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Ivan:
[8:52]
| Just don't do it like my wife. My wife freaks me out by calling me and says.
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Sam:
[8:57]
| We need to talk.
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Ivan:
[8:58]
| We need to talk. And I'm like, oh my God, what? But, you know, I think the ice cubes are, you know, they're kind of stuck. Like, that's what you need to talk about? Sound like somebody's dying.
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Sam:
[9:11]
| No, no, this is an update, but it is media related update. It is on this.
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Ivan:
[9:16]
| On this?
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Break:
[9:19]
| Oh.
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Sam:
[9:19]
| So I normally only talk about a TV show if I've finished it, the whole damn thing. But I did want to update you, since I know you have a specific interest in Law & Order, that Alex and I have finished Season 1.
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Ivan:
[9:38]
| Oh my God.
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Sam:
[9:40]
| And looking at my notes here, we started Season 1 in, let me make sure I have this right, on July 9th, 2023. And we finished in the last couple weeks. I would have mentioned this last week. So that took, well.
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Ivan:
[9:58]
| That, that, I mean, that, that, I mean, so, so, so, so watching it like a regular TV show.
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Sam:
[10:04]
| I have done the, I have done the math. It took us 15 months to finish season one of law and order. At that rate, if they made no additional new episodes, which, of course, they are making new episodes.
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Ivan:
[10:19]
| But if they made no— The problem is that now they started making new episodes, so all of a sudden, you know, this has become—you know, you're like on a moving sidewalk all of a sudden. Right, but like— And you're going slower than the sidewalk.
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Sam:
[10:31]
| But if they made no new episodes, it would take us an additional 26 years to catch up to where they are now.
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Ivan:
[10:43]
| Look, at this point, I see you in like some convalescent home and Alex coming to visit you. And you guys are on season, you know, like, I don't know, 18 still. Dad, dad, we still got, come on, come on.
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Sam:
[11:00]
| We
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Ivan:
[11:01]
| Still got we still got we still gotta catch up.
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Sam:
[11:03]
| Come on let's.
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Ivan:
[11:05]
| Go let's do this.
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Sam:
[11:05]
| Yeah yeah so that that's that that's my update like you know because i i don't think like you know my rule of like we'll talk about the show once i've finished it it'll be a while it'll be a while yet for it'll be a while it'll be quite.
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Ivan:
[11:22]
| A while yes it's gonna you know um.
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Sam:
[11:25]
| I will say we have enjoyed season one Yeah. It's a good show. We're now actually a couple episodes into season two. But, yeah.
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Ivan:
[11:34]
| So, I don't know. Out of some boredom the other day, I started, I'm going through. So, I actually have, I'm pretty sure I double checked, but it's correct. On my YouTube TV DVR, I am pretty confident I have every episode recorded right now. All of them. on the Cloud DVR. Because I have not seen one missing right now. I have all the seasons. So I started going back, and I did rewatch season... I've watched season one and that's the one that has, I think George the Zunza is a cop.
|
Sam:
[12:12]
| Yes. Yes.
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Ivan:
[12:13]
| Uh, so, so I, I've been like going through it, double checking like, Hey, which episodes haven't I watched? Just double checking. Okay. You know, so I've been like going through it.
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Sam:
[12:26]
| Just making sure.
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Ivan:
[12:26]
| Which was, don't, don't I remember what happened?
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Sam:
[12:28]
| Did you get the pilot?
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Ivan:
[12:31]
| Yes, I have watched the pilot.
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Sam:
[12:32]
| Okay. Okay. Cause, cause sometimes like it was originally aired in the first season, but out of order. Like they, you know, it was the, and so we watched it properly watching the pilot first, but you know, when it was originally aired, the pilot was, I don't know, episode four or five or something. It was just like stuck in, in the middle and it would have seemed out of place because it's a slightly different style than they actually settled on for the show proper. So anyway.
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Ivan:
[13:01]
| So so yeah so so i'm i'm going back through it and uh i i think i'm on uh season six right now okay okay something around there so yeah so yeah so hi well here's the thing i don't know i especially you know i was like, I've been, like, a little bit bored.
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Sam:
[13:26]
| Mm-hmm.
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Ivan:
[13:29]
| Let me take that back. I've been super busy with work things or whatever one now. But when I went to sit down and watch any television content, one of the things, there are a couple of shows that I do like and some that have new episodes. But it's not like, okay, okay, I watched third. Okay, they had the new shrinking on Apple TV+, which is a great show.
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Sam:
[13:47]
| I think you mentioned it before a while back.
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Ivan:
[13:50]
| And so they have the new season now. And so, okay, great. But that's, okay, half hour. Okay, I'm done. Now what? Okay, so, all right. Well, let's just go back and fucking watch, you know, old Law and Order episodes. Because I went through all the Air Disasters shows.
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Sam:
[14:08]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[14:09]
| This year. I went back and I watched through every, so I did that. So now I'm back.
|
Sam:
[14:14]
| Are you at the point where you're like, God damn it, they need to crash some more fucking planes so they can make more episodes?
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Ivan:
[14:20]
| Well, there's actually a whole bunch of, you see, the thing is that Air Disasters, doesn't, in many cases, involves planes that, you know, maybe had bad incidents, not necessarily crashes. So there's a whole bunch of those. But for some reason, they've been very slow in production recently. I don't know if the pandemic impacted that because I know a lot of shows were impacted by that. The last season of Law & Order, for example, wound up being very short because of the strike.
|
Sam:
[14:51]
| Yep.
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Ivan:
[14:51]
| Okay? So there's been the pandemic, strike all these things that have slowed down tv production so i don't know if that's this what's going on.
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Sam:
[15:01]
| Yeah i don't know so maybe.
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Ivan:
[15:03]
| Who knows but but you know other than that i now yeah.
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Sam:
[15:09]
| So i don't.
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Ivan:
[15:10]
| Have anything but but you're season one.
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Sam:
[15:13]
| Season one is complete and we've started season two so as you mentioned spoiler spoilers people the the one detective from season, one was killed in the first episode of season two they killed him off yeah and and so they switched so i'm still not used to the new guy they replaced him with but you know whatever and i and i haven't looked it up do you know like did did did the actor just not want to come back or did they fire him or did he die he.
|
Ivan:
[15:43]
| Didn't want to come back.
|
Sam:
[15:44]
| Yeah he didn't want to come back okay yeah yeah so he was like uh this is not.
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Ivan:
[15:49]
| What i really signed up for blah blah blah i didn't want to come back so that's the way hey you know what do we do with the doctor well we'll just fucking kill him.
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Sam:
[15:57]
| Right. OK.
|
Ivan:
[15:58]
| There was a movie. I still I always loved this.
|
Sam:
[16:01]
| Was this nevertheless like the peak of his career and then he never did anything useful again?
|
Ivan:
[16:05]
| Basically, as far as I can tell.
|
Sam:
[16:07]
| So it's a good choice.
|
Ivan:
[16:08]
| That was one of the worst career decisions I've seen, like for somebody. I'll tell you this. You know, there was a movie called Soap Dish that is hilarious. And I that that I don't know. I will say that probably some of the humor right now could not.
|
Ivan:
[16:23]
| In retrospect right now there are some choices of humor there that are poor choices but one funny thing is that at one point they decide to try to bring back a character and the character had been written off 30 years ago and one of the writers goes back and because it's a soap the writer goes to go, this is a writer that had not been at the show 30 years before because he's long running soap operas. They run for so long that the people like some of them that are still on the air now, I mean, they're not the same writers or people or shit that actors, none of the people are the same as there were 30 years before. But they want to bring this back, the guy back that was written off 20.
|
Ivan:
[17:07]
| You know, whatever, a long time ago. So the writer goes back to see how the hell did the guy get written off? And the guy apparently was in a car accident where he got decapitated. And so the thing is that he's going to the but the producer is adamant about bringing this guy back to the show and i'm like how the hell do we bring this guy back the guy was literally in the show we said he was decapitated he doesn't have a head how do i write for a guy that doesn't have a head he said no we'll say that he went to some clinic in europe and he did they reattached his head and you know everything is fine and by the way the writer was Whoopi Goldberg earlier I'm like.
|
Ivan:
[17:54]
| What the fuck am I doing with this? Okay, fine. Whatever. We'll write him back in. He's back from Europe.
|
Sam:
[18:00]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[18:02]
| Apparently, Europe, they can attach your head.
|
Sam:
[18:05]
| He was misdiagnosed.
|
Ivan:
[18:06]
| Yes, it was misdiagnosed. So, yeah. You know, so this is anyway.
|
Sam:
[18:14]
| All right. So, Yvonne has a hard stop today. So, we're going to go ahead and cut this short, even though I'm sure we can find more TV to talk about. And we will be back to talk about the election for however long it takes. I'll probably start with poll updates and then we'll move on to everything else. Okay, here we go. This is a wiki of the day break. This is for random wiki of the day. And I actually, like, I had selected this to be on the agenda, like, last week, and it would have been, no one cares. The point is, it is the current random wiki of the day as we are recording this, not one I picked earlier. Anyway, here we go.
|
Break:
[19:00]
| Do do do. Hello, this is Neural Kajal. I'm here to let you know about Sam the Kamajan's other podcasts, the Wiki of the Day podcasts. Wiki of the Day comes in three varieties, popular, random, and featured. Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day, they just pick the articles differently. This week on Random Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary for Beta Sabab Rebellion. The Beta Sabab Rebellion, Turkish, Beta Sabab Esien, Kurdish, Sir Hildana Elka, was the first Kurdish rebellion in the modern Republic of Turkey. The revolt was led by Halid Bek Sibran of the Sibran tribe. Other prominent commanders were Isan Nuri and Yusuf Ziyabe. Its causes laid in opposition to the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by Adatürk on 3 March 1924, the repressive Turkish policies towards Kurdish identity, the prohibition of public use and teaching of the Kurdish languages, and the resettling of Kurdish landowners and tribal chiefs in the west of the country, numerous officers of the Turkish army deserted for the rebellion. The rebellion began in August 1924, when the garrison of Betasabaq revolted against the Turkish government. The rebellion proved unsuccessful and ended shortly after it began. Yusuf Ziyabi was arrested on 10 October 1924 and reportedly accused Khalid Bekzibran of having been also involved in the revolt. Khalid Bekzibran was captured in a suram in December 1924.
|
Break:
[20:25]
| Both were court-martialed in Beatleys. Although the rebellion was suppressed, another Kurdish uprising, the Sheikh said rebellion, would begin the next year. That's it. See?
|
Break:
[20:37]
| Fun, entertaining, and educational, right? Okay, now look for and subscribe to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast-playing software of choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives. Now back to Kamajan's Corner. Do do do.
|
Sam:
[20:53]
| Okay, we're back. So now, first of all, I hope everybody out there listening can now fully understand whatever the hell it was they were talking about, because I admit I like tuned out. After a few seconds and was preparing.
|
Ivan:
[21:07]
| For next sentence so i i i was not paying attention well you know was this picked because of our recent discussion about bringing back the ottoman no no.
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Sam:
[21:16]
| No this was random wiki of the day.
|
Ivan:
[21:18]
| No that's well i i imagine so that was it's very interesting because our discussion that we had a couple a few weeks ago we were talking about not well wait maybe we should bring back the ottoman empire okay in order to solve the middle east problems of course which we were being facetious we had i really don't think that that would really be a solution but you know it's one of those things but yeah you know no so so.
|
Sam:
[21:44]
| And this was the kurds and turkey and stuff like that and but it was it was post-ottoman though but it wasn't.
|
Ivan:
[21:50]
| No no it was post-ottoman yeah no i know because it was the it was the kurdish rebellion in turkey yeah no i i get that but but it talked a little bit how about it part of this originated with you know, with the fall of the Ottoman empire and stuff. No, the anyway.
|
Sam:
[22:05]
| Yeah. Anyway. So let, let, let me start out this sucker. So first of all, I'll say on just over 24 hours ago, I posted the latest of my blog post updates on election graph. So if you go to election graphs.com and hit the blog section, you will see 12 days out. What about junk polls? And so let me summarize what was there. The situation has not changed in any substantial way since I made this post.
|
Sam:
[22:34]
| As I speak, there's probably about six to eight new polls I haven't done the data entry for yet that happened since I did it yesterday before now. And yeah, I'll get them in after the show, but I scanned through the states that they are part of and nothing substantially. They're all states that don't matter, you know, which, you know, tangent, like the fact that there are states that don't matter in our presidential elections is actually a problem, but whatever. But anyway, the basic thing I did was the fundamental situation of the polls hasn't just not changed since I made this post like a day and a half ago, but really has been the same for a long time. Basically, for the last month or so, it's been best characterized as too close to call with a very slight Trump advantage. For the month and a half before that it was too close to call with a very slight harris advantage but either way it's too close to call you're just maybe the slight advantage to one or the other based on current polling but it fundamentally has not changed very much in like three months basically harris harris jumped into the race and instantly the dynamics changed from when biden was in. And then things settled down.
|
Ivan:
[23:58]
| Let's be clear. I think that it swung from... Trump with a slight lead to, depending on the averages and the estimates, you have Trump with a slight lead. Others have Harris with a slight lead. But the reality is that it was, I think, almost everybody had consistently Trump with a slight lead before Harris jumped.
|
Sam:
[24:27]
| Well, with Biden, it was a little bit more than a slight lead. It was not a huge lead. But it was more than slight.
|
Ivan:
[24:34]
| It was more than slight. It was probably like a...
|
Sam:
[24:38]
| I mean, basically, Harris moving in, Harris taking over from Biden, moved us from...
|
Ivan:
[24:43]
| Made it a toss-up.
|
Sam:
[24:44]
| Yeah, moved it from Trump has a small but consistent lead to it's a tie race. And then, depending on exactly how you're looking at the swing states and exactly what the polling is the most recent week, and which pollsters you include and which pollsters you don't. You'll get, you know, whether you give Harris a slight advantage or Trump a slight advantage varies. I think most places have, you know, things have moved very, very slightly towards Trump. If you compare now to a month and a half ago, like in between it's noisy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but very slightly towards Trump. So like the way, the way I have it has moved from too close to call with a very slight Harris lead to too close to call with a very slight Trump lead. And that's all about a handful of states. And I'll get into that. Well, let me do that first, since we're there.
|
Sam:
[25:47]
| If you just take the state averages, like my election graphs averages are based on last five poll averages. And so most of the swing states at this point, that means you're taking approximately the last week of polls.
|
Sam:
[26:03]
| Now they're there you know and i i base it based on the mid date of the dates the polls were in the field not when the polls actually came out so a couple of annoying things happen sometimes like there was a there was a franklin and marshall poll that came out a big pollster well trusted in pennsylvania blah blah blah but they used like a two-week time period in how long they were in the field so the very moment it came out it was already too old to be in current included in my current averages you know because like there were other pollsters that were out in the field for only a few days and put their results out quickly whereas franklin and marshall you know had a longer period out there and is careful and like double checks their stuff and but the result of that is by the time their results were out they were old right but but anyway the bottom line let me read you the seven states and this is well Now, you know, let me, I was going to read it off the blog post, but let me read this one off the live post. And this, again, is including everything but like a handful of polls that came out in the last 12 hours or so that I have not entered. But none of those new polls were in swing states, I don't think. So here are the seven swing states right now, according to my averages.
|
Sam:
[27:21]
| Michigan, Harris by 0.3%. Wisconsin rounds to Trump by 0.0. It's actually like Trump by 0.02 or something. You know, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia by 0.6%, Nevada, Trump by 0.7%, Pennsylvania, Trump by 1.2%. Arizona, Trump by 1.2%. North Carolina, 1.3%. Now, the key to all of that is that...
|
Ivan:
[28:07]
| I mean, it's a toss-up. Nobody has a clear lead. I mean, all of those. The New York Times did this thing where they had this chart that I shared.
|
Sam:
[28:18]
| Yeah, they've had this chart out for the last few months. It's a good chart.
|
Ivan:
[28:20]
| Well, last few months, it's a good chart that goes and shows each state that's close and what the biggest recent polling miss was, for example. And it shows the range of what it is. So, so you go say Michigan, for example. Okay. It shows, it shows that the polling miss, the biggest one was in 2022. It was a six point polling miss. Okay. And so, and this was recent. Okay. So it's not like, you know, this is not, you know, not from like 10 years ago or something, but they missed by six points. Okay. So right now, when you're looking at that number and how tight it is, it's basically flip a coin in the fucking air because it's too much. Wisconsin 2020, a nine point miss. Again, not, you know, not Asian history. This is the last election cycles. Okay. Nevada, this one is an old miss. It was four points as a 2012. So that, so they're not showing that that would, but for example, Pennsylvania, again, 2022, a five point miss again. So all of these are so important and And Arizona had a three-point miss in 2022.
|
Ivan:
[29:33]
| And if you remember, Arizona, 2020, Trump was supposedly, that was like people had been picking Trump to win and Biden won Arizona. Which is what enraged Trump when it was called that Biden won Arizona early on Fox because that had been, you know, they had thought that they had Arizona in the bag. So we add up all those fucking states and how close they are on those averages. What the fuck recently happened? Basically, it's like.
|
Sam:
[30:09]
| Yes. And look, here's the thing. With that range, if you take, well, throw Iowa and Maine CD2 into the mix too. The range at the moment, if you take all of those states and say they could go either way, because right now I have Iowa at Trump up 4.4%, that still has been lightly polled. There have only been two polls this cycle, but they showed it closer than you would have thought. So I'm keeping it in there. And then main CD2, Trump by 4.4. If you take all of those and say they could go either way, then you go from Trump winning by 86 all the way to Harris winning by 114, being well within the range of, okay, that could happen.
|
Ivan:
[30:54]
| Those could happen. Those could happen.
|
Sam:
[30:59]
| Anywhere within that range, you should not be surprised. No. You know, it's like, OK, so like and so I hate this election.
|
Ivan:
[31:09]
| Sam. I fucking hate this election. I have never hated an election with such passion. This is this has been a crescendo of 2016, 2020. And now we get this whole fucking thing again with with even more razor thin numbers and shit and whatever. I hate it, Sam. I fucking hate it.
|
Sam:
[31:33]
| Right. And one thing, since you said razor-thin numbers, I want to point out again, razor-thin numbers in these polling does not necessarily mean the actual result will be razor-thin. It might well be that this whole election hinges on multiple states that are within the realm of recounts and it gets really fucking messy. But it could easily be the ranges of that extreme.
|
Ivan:
[32:01]
| It could be a blowout for all we fucking know.
|
Sam:
[32:03]
| It could be a blowout by either side. Like, that is very possible. Like, there's so many states that are like within, because again, it's not that, oh my God, this state really is 0.03% or whatever the hell it is. It's, that's the polling average, but it could be anywhere from one side winning by 5% to the other side winning by 5%. Right. You know, we just don't know. Polling's not good enough to tell us the difference there. So anyway, the bottom line is the overall, there has not been a huge movement in that situation in a few months. So one thing I did look at, though, because like lots of people, lots of people were talking about how, oh my God, the conservative pollsters are flooding the zone with crap polls to make it look like Trump is doing better than he really is. So I did some looking at that. And so I'll go through what I found using using my averages, but also like, yeah. And look, there's some people who do it by specifically saying, OK, this pollster is a known conservative that has been known to put their thumb on the on the scales.
|
Sam:
[33:26]
| And, you know, like Rasmussen or Trafalgar or like a half dozen others. I'm like, you know, I'm not comfortable sort of making a case-by-case decision of like, okay, these guys are obviously trying to manipulate things. Let's throw that out.
|
Ivan:
[33:43]
| Sure, sure.
|
Sam:
[33:43]
| But, you know, Handy Dandy 538 runs a set of pollster ratings. Their ratings are not based on sort of, are they partisan or not?
|
Ivan:
[33:56]
| They're based on accuracy.
|
Sam:
[33:57]
| Their quotation is the historical track record and the methodological transparency.
|
Ivan:
[34:03]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[34:04]
| So basically like it's, It's not just how accurate they've been, but also how open are they about how do they get the results they do? Sure, sure. So even if someone had gotten the exact election results every single time, if they're a black box and don't tell you anything, they would lower their rating. Okay, so using these ratings, I figured I could filter out my averages. Like use my same technique for figuring out the averages, you know, last five polls, blah, blah, blah, wait, wait it when they produce multiple results, all that kind of crap, but filter it based on those ratings. So the first thing I did, and this was like a week and a half ago, when somebody asked a question on Max, Max, on Mastodon, um.
|
Ivan:
[34:50]
| Max, I want that name though.
|
Sam:
[34:51]
| Max, Max, yeah, there you go. That we should, we should build something.
|
Ivan:
[34:57]
| We should build something with that. But yeah, I like it.
|
Sam:
[35:00]
| Anyway, I used Pennsylvania as an example and used different cutoffs. Like 538 scale is on a zero to three scale, basically. Whereas three is the best and zero is your utter crap. And they actually have like, there are also pollsters that don't get a rating at all. And there can be two reasons for that. One is they've been expelled from the 538 averages because they just suck so badly. And the other reason something could have no ratings is no track record like it's a new yeah.
|
Ivan:
[35:31]
| It's a brand new pull yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:32]
| Right okay so with that using pennsylvania as an example at that time pennsylvania with my average that i i just philosophically include fucking everything i don't care i include everything let the averages watch it out i had harris up by 0.1 percent If I restricted that to only pollsters rated 1.5 and above, it moved to Harris up by 0.4%. If I further restricted it to only pollsters 2.0 and above, it went up to Harris up by 0.8%. And if I restricted it to the very highest tier, pollsters only 2.5 and above, Harris up by 1.5%.
|
Ivan:
[36:13]
| Still within the margin of error.
|
Sam:
[36:15]
| Right. Well, the thing is, with the averages, there isn't really a margin of error anymore. The margin of error applies to a single poll. But yes, let me say it is within the realm of the variation of averages like this.
|
Ivan:
[36:27]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[36:28]
| Like averages like this differ by more than one and a half percent day over day as polls come in and out of the average. As a new poll comes in, there's an outlier that does this, whatever. Polls move by a couple percent up and down. They vary within a range.
|
Ivan:
[36:46]
| I guess a margin of error isn't the right term for that. It's really within the range of what, you know, when I was talking earlier about the range of polling errors that you've had before with the average is all combined. It is within that range of that historic.
|
Sam:
[37:02]
| And here's the thing. And I did something better than just looking at one state like this. In a second, I'll talk about that. But just using that as an example, that is saying that using high quality pollsters only made Harris look 1.4% better. And as you were mentioning.
|
Ivan:
[37:25]
| Like- That's a big boom in terms of averages.
|
Sam:
[37:28]
| Well, what I was going to say is, as you were saying, 1.4 is small, it's within the margin of error, blah, blah, blah. But when you have seven fucking states that are less than 2%, 1.4 is huge. And so the example at the time that I did that initial analysis, it moves like moves the election from Trump winning by 56 electoral votes to Harris winning by 100. If you if you move, if you just moved everything by 1.4 percent towards Harris. OK, you know, now what I did, though, like that was just one state that was like a week and a half ago. I redid the analysis, but I did that same exercise for all seven swing states because, frankly, the other states, unless we are in one of those blowout situations, the other states are not going to matter.
|
Sam:
[38:24]
| And so here's what we got from there. Like the range, it differed by state. And I'm sure this would, if I repeated the analysis like several times, I'd get different, like over the course of a week or something, I'd get different results because it depends on which pollsters were in the field at the moment, blah, blah, blah, which ones I had included in my average, which ones I hadn't. But it ranged from helping Harris by 1.6% to helping Trump by 1.4 at 1.5%. So like if you averaged out those seven states on average, they helped Harris, but only by 0.2%. Okay. But, you know, if you look at, if you look instead at how it would change the tipping point, it ends up moving the tipping point by 0.7%. And in the case of when I did this blog post, that moved the tipping point from Trump by 0.6% to Harris by 0.01%. So it moves it from a small Trump advantage to a very small Harris advantage. But either way, we are not comfortable.
|
Ivan:
[39:36]
| Exactly. It's not comfortable for anybody.
|
Sam:
[39:38]
| And we're still in the too close to call situation, no matter what you do with these. So like the people who are saying that the junk polls are making it look a little bit better. Well, a lot of people are saying ignore the polls of junk, ignore the averages. The, the junk conservative polls are making it look much better for Trump than it would otherwise. From what I can tell, the junk polls are making it look slightly, slightly better for Trump than if you left them out. But either way.
|
Sam:
[40:12]
| It's not overwhelming. It's a relatively small change, but it's a small change within the realm of too close to call. So it's all too close to call no matter what. It may shift you from saying too close to call with one side having a slight edge to too close to call with the other side having a slight edge. But either way, it's too close to call. My numbers actually, and going back to at the moment rather than at the blog post I had, I have my two models that allow for time left. And the more pessimistic of them for Harris gives Harris a 17.8% chance of winning. The more optimistic one gives her a 28.5% chance of winning. I'm a little bit more pessimistic than And if you look at FiveThirtyEight, The Economist, The Hill, which is DDHQ, all of those are much, much closer to 50-50. And the reason is very specific. Like they all make a going in assumption.
|
Sam:
[41:19]
| That the direction of the polling error could be either way. Like, and they're not even going to make any assumptions about like equal chances of the polling error going towards Harris or the polling error going towards Trump. Mine looks at the last four elections and says over the course of the last four elections, on average, the polls have underestimated the Republicans. So it sort of says the lower chance for the Democrat is based on saying, okay, you need the polls to be underestimating the Democrat. And that has happened less often than underestimating the Republican over the last four elections. That's why. Now, having said that, there are a couple things to note.
|
Sam:
[42:09]
| One is that, what was I going to say? Oh, first of all, even if you, let's say you assume, oh, I'm confusing myself. I did want to make one point. If you compare, like I've got this other thing that if the election was now, okay, if you go back two or three months, these were very different from each other because they allowed for, okay, the polling averages can change in the time remaining. The events can happen that change people's opinion. At this point, those two are very close to each other. Like they only differ by like a handful of percent in the odds. And that's basically indicating we got like only 10 days left. Okay. But here's one thing.
|
Ivan:
[43:06]
| Sam.
|
Sam:
[43:06]
| Wait, wait, wait. Let me finish my presentation. Let me finish my presentation, and then you can talk. No, so what's left, all of these odds at this point are basically –, no longer saying things will change. Is there some chance things will change in the last week and a half? Sure. But for the most part, the odds are now entirely based on what you think might happen to the polling errors. And so that's why mine is more biased because in the past few elections, again, the Republicans have been underestimated more often than the Democrats, and my odds reflect that. Now, getting beyond that, like moving beyond the polls in time to sort of shift to other things. Here's why I think my own numbers are probably more pessimistic for Harris than we could say, than like my gut. And I've said before, if you waterboarded me, my gut says the polls are underestimating Harris.
|
Ivan:
[44:02]
| Okay. I'm going to, we'll hold off on waterboarding you for now.
|
Sam:
[44:08]
| For now. Like, and here's, here's the thing. Like I, I have a gut And Nate Silver put out a post as well, like this week, saying basically, he said, my gut is Trump is slightly favored here, but don't trust my gut because nobody fucking knows anything. You know, and so, yeah. Look, I mentioned last week when Yvonne wasn't here, the enthusiasm gap. That's one thing. And I still see that, even though, and I'm sure we'll get into this more, the Democrats are wetting their pants right now. I'm a little bit nervous myself, but there's still an enthusiasm gap. You're seeing the Trump folks just don't seem to have the same level of excitement as they did the last couple of times around. And that's one big thing. But another that I'll put out there that, you know, Yvonne had put on our list of potential topics a while back, something we haven't talked about yet, which is underestimating female anger.
|
Sam:
[45:17]
| And i think this is something where like all polling models and i'm not not talking about the kind of aggregating models that i do to come up with my odds and that 538 and all those are to do i'm talking about when you are conducting a poll you have to have a model of turnout that transforms your raw polls into what you are actually describing. Because like nobody, absolutely no pollsters at this point, call people until they get a thousand people to respond and then just divide. Okay. Because the problem is if you do that, either, you know, either the old fashioned by phone stuff or text or web or whatever, You end up with a group that is not representative of the overall population because you're looking at the subset of people who are likely to be engaged with polls.
|
Sam:
[46:15]
| You know, and that's that's automatically like you're going to get a different like breakdown than you would expect in the overall voting population. So every single pollster has some form of, they ask those people demographic information about themselves, race, gender, education, a bunch of other factors. And then they reweight their results to try to match what they expect the turnout to look like. But they're guessing at the turnout model. And they base some of that on like, what if it looks like last time? And I think if you've got an issue, I heard one person talking the other day, and I'm not going to be able to give a sight, but talking about why exactly did pollsters underestimate Republicans in 2016 and 2020.
|
Sam:
[47:13]
| And in 2016, it was basically that Trump's campaign spoke to a group of voters who traditionally didn't vote. Like there were a whole bunch of disaffected, less educated white folks who turned out in 2016 that had not historically turned out in other elections. And so all of the pollsters were wrong in their demographic models of who would turn out in 2016 because they underestimated that group. It 2020 was slightly different. It was the Trump campaign specifically was going after a base strategy where they were trying to get out the vote in very red counties and get more people, more of their sort of base to just come out and vote in, in places that typically were not competitive areas, but they just wanted to get the very red places to come out and vote and do their thing. And so that's why they underestimated those folks.
|
Sam:
[48:20]
| My gut, and again, this is my gut, I would never put this directly on election graphs, but I'll mention it on the curmudgeon's corner, is that this time, the models that pollsters are using are underrepresenting women. I think you're going to get a big turnout boost in women and some of the early vote numbers. Like, early vote is really, really fucking hard to interpret. Because like, you know, so for instance, there are lots of, early vote numbers that are coming out in terms of how many Republicans have returned their ballots versus Democrats in states where there is a partisan registration.
|
Sam:
[48:58]
| But the thing is with that, you're sort of gambling of, okay, but what's the messaging this year in terms of how people are going to vote? Because on the one hand, it looks like last time around in 2020, Democrats were heavily skewed towards early vote and mail-in and all the Republicans were doing day of because Donald Trump was going out there saying, don't trust anything but day of, go day of. And so that was massively skewed. And so when you see numbers that say, you know, hey, Democrats are returning a lot of return of early vote, you're like, oh, well, that's good for Democrats, right? But it's unclear because this time there are a lot of reports that Democrats are deciding that they want to vote in person and they don't want to do the early vote as much. Whereas this time around, the Republicans are doing all kinds of pushes nationwide to get their folks to early vote. So that's more muddled.
|
Sam:
[49:59]
| However, there also are some early vote stats on male versus female, And it looks like women are participating in early vote at like 55 to 45 at the moment. And unlike the Republican versus Democrat, where like the partisan messaging of like, should you early vote? Should you vote day of whatever muddles things up? There shouldn't be a gap there for male versus female. Like, and so I, I, I feel, and again, gut feel could be completely wrong, but my gut feel is that the, the, the models of turnout are underestimating. The angry women about the overturn of Roe v. Wade. And that will be one factor that makes me bet, well, bet, I don't know, makes me think that there's a good chance we're underestimating Harris this time around. But again, who the fuck knows?
|
Ivan:
[51:09]
| You know, here's one thing that I want to point out. And I made a note that you were talking about the errors and how in 2020 it undercounted the Republicans in terms of absolute votes, especially the margin of victory in like Pennsylvania and a few states that look like they were more Democrat, that look more Democratic according to the polls than the actual final results were. But here's a flip side to that. They misjudged the margin of victory, but not the victory itself. The one thing is that that happened at that election that was interesting from my perspective was those margins didn't change the result because it's based on winner-take-all electoral vote. But what did happen was that all of a sudden we thought both Georgia and Arizona were not going to be, were going to be Republican and both wound up Democratic. And so the one thing about this is that, yes, the 2020 election did underestimate the margins of victory. They were closer in some states that won't, but the changes did not impact the final result in terms of those states. What it did was it made it narrower. But but in in other cases, what we wound up doing is in states that were wound up being probably, you know, you know, that made a made a big difference in what the final result was.
|
Ivan:
[52:34]
| It moved a couple of states that people had as Republican and want to moving them, moving them Democrats. So I thought that that was one of the more interesting results of that election. And, of course, the question is, when we talk about this, is how have people compensated for that, number one?
|
Sam:
[52:54]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[52:54]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[52:54]
| Well, this is the other thing. I feel like pollsters have said, we got it wrong two years in a row. How do we fix that? Right. And they've probably overcompensated.
|
Ivan:
[53:07]
| And the other part is, like, you reiterated.
|
Sam:
[53:11]
| How much of all this argument that we just made over the last couple of minutes is us trying to make ourselves feel better?
|
Ivan:
[53:17]
| You know, I don't I don't think it's well, I don't I don't feel any better by making any of these arguments. I got to I got to be honest with you. My it goes back to what you were saying yesterday on the Slack. And Sam is like, well, you know, this, that I mean, we're so down or whatever. And I don't think it has anything to do with.
|
Sam:
[53:42]
| What I said specifically was that compared to a month and a half, two months ago, I was specifically talking about, there was this point in time shortly after.
|
Ivan:
[53:58]
| Yeah. Right.
|
Sam:
[54:00]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[54:01]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[54:03]
| Right. Right. Right around where right around when Harris pick walls, right around when the VP choice was the where there's all of there was this sort of what was described as the joyous campaign. Right. We had like it looked exciting and positive and whatever. And Walls was doing their weird thing. And that seemed to be hitting. And I'm not talking about on polls. I'm just talking about vibes, essentially. That method of argument seemed to be getting traction that, hey, Trump is dangerous, Trump is scary, had not gotten. And then it seems like more recently that that sort of their weird stuff seems to be a thing of the past and we're back to sort of trump is scary and and at the same time like the like i said the the democrats are wetting the bed they're they're but but it's because we're all saying but it's very.
|
Ivan:
[55:03]
| Simple here here's.
|
Sam:
[55:04]
| It's because it's because no but but i.
|
Ivan:
[55:08]
| I think it's also more than that.
|
Sam:
[55:09]
| Yeah we're.
|
Ivan:
[55:10]
| All what that these motherfucking right-wingers are complaining and bitching and moaning about.
|
Sam:
[55:16]
| Right?
|
Ivan:
[55:17]
| You know what? No, Harris isn't out there saying that she is going to jail her opponents. She isn't going out there and saying that she's going to take any any of the Republicans rights. None of this shit, whatever straw man they have, they have, they have, they have made up. The reality is that for the Democrats, I mean, this guy is literally said that he wants to turn the U.S. Military against his own people.
|
Sam:
[55:45]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[55:46]
| Flat out. I mean, you know, you've got women suffering from the health care decisions, from the health care positions that the Republican Party has pushed forward. And, you know, the only hopes to make perhaps a change in the future is not to reelect Republicans like right now. And if you do that, you're entrenching that further. Okay? All of these things. I mean, listen, the attacks on the transgender community, Sam. Fuck, man. If you're a transgender person and you're not petrified of a fucking Republican administration, you're Caitlyn Jenner, basically. That's the only fucking person. Because it's like the same thing as the Peter Thiel's and the Caitlyn Jenner's. They're rich enough that they think, ah, you know, I'll get my taxes. None of that shit's going to affect me.
|
Sam:
[56:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[56:44]
| Those are the people that you know, it's not happening to me you know, fuck them fuck those poor people you know, and I gotta be honest you know, we are in a world right now that even fucking Bill Gates is sick of fucking billionaires, seriously, he basically just flat out said, fuck it take most of my money away, this is not worth it not with all these other clowns fuck this, you know what I'd rather just give up all my fucking money and take their fucking money because they're just fucking everything up.
|
Sam:
[57:17]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[57:18]
| I mean, that's the fucking world we're in, where Bill Gates basically said, shit, tax me, take it all away. Out loud.
|
Sam:
[57:28]
| Right. Okay. So we're moving on at this point from the polls and the horse race to all the other campaign related stuff. So let's take a quick break and we'll, we'll go through some of the other things that are affecting this last 10 days of this race. Back after this.
|
Break:
[57:52]
| Do, do, do. This podcast is sponsored by AlexMzilla.com. Alex Mzilla is great. It's on YouTube, and it has lots of fun videos. Alex Emsola is awesome and great. I love his videos, and they are obviously better than Curmudgeon's Corner. While they're funnier, they're more interesting. And frankly, he seems at least a little smarter than either of the hosts of Curmudgeon's Corner. Honestly, it's ridiculous how endlessly talented and phenomenal Alex Emsola is. That's how great his YouTube channel is. A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A dot com. Yes. Do, do, do.
|
Sam:
[58:57]
| Okay, we are back. And real quick, just during the break, I thought of something responding to what you were talking about in how in 2020, the polls in Pennsylvania underestimated Trump. But the polls in Arizona and Georgia underestimated Biden, for instance. This is exactly why I have two models, one that's independent states and one that's uniform swing. It's because basically, when we're talking about the polling error underestimated Trump in 2020, we're talking on average. It's actually different state by state. And the difference between my two models is the independent states assumes that there's completely no relation whatsoever to the errors in every state, whereas the uniform swing one assumes that the errors are the same in every state. And obviously neither one of those things is actually true. They are correlated. Like if the, if, if the same pollsters are doing the same thing in a whole bunch of states that are likely going to make the same kind of error, but you get this kind of effect where like not every state is going to be the exact same way. So that's exactly why I have those two. Now, at some point I'd like to like merge them and maybe for 2028, I'll figure that out. Anyway, let's hit some of the other stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:00:23]
| So this week we had like... John Kelly, who was Trump's chief of staff and had a whole bunch of other things that he did before that, but basically he came out on the record. We'd heard some of these things off the record before, but he came out on the record, on audio, there were recordings of him talking about basically how Trump wants to be a dictator, how he loved Hitler. He wants his generals to be more like Hitler's generals, how like, you know, he had agreed to pay for this one funeral of of a military person who had been not killed in combat, but killed on their own base by people beating her up, apparently. But like then then he found out how much a funeral would cost and was like, you know, it doesn't cost 60,000 fucking doesn't cost $60,000.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:14]
| To bury a fucking Mexican.
|
Sam:
[1:01:16]
| Well to.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:17]
| Be fair okay in his assessment of burying anybody i mean he did bury his ex-wife in his side his fucking golf course.
|
Sam:
[1:01:25]
| Yes he did but look because we all know he's a cheap bastard like oh my god but here's the thing like this is another one of those things where in any previous universe prior to the last 10 years, this kind of thing would be the end immediately for a candidate.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:48]
| Immediately. The candidate would be, oh, it's over. It's over.
|
Sam:
[1:01:52]
| But that is not true of Donald Trump. Like all this stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:56]
| It's so ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[1:01:57]
| You know, this is all sort of baked in, as they say. And, you know, I've seen people saying, you know, we shouldn't, the whole normalized thing, we shouldn't normalize it, we shouldn't whatever but it's like at this.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:11]
| Point listen people are saying about normalizing it it is blasted you know headlines you know yeah and the kind of blasted headlines in the past brought down a immediately and right now the mega folks are like so what whatever yeah whatever that's.
|
Sam:
[1:02:30]
| Fine well and and part of this and and, I've said this before, but it's worth saying again and again and again. There's this, the Democrats going back all the way to 2015 when Trump first came down to escalator. And hell, at first the mainstream Republicans were doing this too before they all got crushed. Kept sort of feeling like all we have to do is expose how shitty a person Trump is better. We need to show the bad things he's done. We show that he's an asshole, show that he's all the bad things we know. And then at some point, all his supporters will abandon him. And look, long ago, it became absolutely clear that was never going to happen. And the reason is the Trump supporters are not Trump supporters because they don't know this stuff. They're not even Trump supporters despite this stuff. They're Trump supporters because of this stuff. They like it. They want it. So being like, oh, did you know Trump loves Hitler? That's not like, oh, crap. Well, I can't support him now. That's like, good. So do I.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:52]
| Look last week i did not not me to be clear i'm not yeah yeah you're you're acting in third person yes let's be clear sam does not like hitler uh let's clarify that for anybody who got confused and maybe all of a sudden we wind up getting a clip of sam out there how he loves hitler which that would be just hilarious but anyway you know i was thinking about how i i think a large subset of people that like Trump are like the, high school clique kind of people. They're really like you know, the guys who.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:34]
| People in high school that used to put down everybody, make fun of people, beat up on the weaker people, kind of a thing. The thing. That's what they did. You had these groups of people who would just get together and just beat up on anybody that wasn't the so-called cool people. And those people, they don't give a shit about the weak. They don't give a shit about the poor. They don't give a shit about these people. And like you said, when Trump comes out and says all these things, these are things that they, that this is what they like. You know, and, and this, this last week, you know, I had mentioned that there was a couple of teenage girls over here that, that, that made their, their got themselves a little bit famous because they're really good at driving a boat.
|
Sam:
[1:05:32]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:33]
| All right. twins young you know there's a whole bunch of people here that watch boats coming in and out of the inlet and some of our inlets are very tricky and man they were really good okay at driving a boat and then you know so i i followed them because it's pretty cool like watching you know they started doing a whole because so many people in the boating industry know about them followed them and they were doing like you know boat shows and stuff and whatnot you know which just, I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, you know, and you know, look, I'm one that drives a boat, and I was just, honestly, I was very impressed with how they drove a boat. I will tell you, better than me, and they were very young, okay? So.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:17]
| And then this weekend, like a whole bunch of them that seem like exactly this kind of high school, like, cool clique together got together. And they're all having this party. And a bunch of them are wearing MAGA hats. And they got Trump flags and all these stuff. And these people are like 20. And a whole bunch of them are like women. And they're all like, you know, oh yeah, Trump is cool. And I'm just like, oh yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's this whole high school thing, man. It's, it's literal. Look, honestly, I've said this before. I'll repeat it. Look, this is like back to the future part two, man. It's really Biff Tannen fucking becoming president. Literally the casino. The, you know, you know, controlling the government, sending us everything. It might as well, you know, fuck. It's exactly the same.
|
Sam:
[1:07:21]
| Because, of course, Biff Tannen was based on Donald Trump in Back to the Future 2. But yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:27]
| Wait, are you shitting me?
|
Sam:
[1:07:29]
| No, no. His character was based on Donald Trump. Get the fuck out of here. Not in Back to the Future 1 when he was just a kid.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:36]
| But the character that they made him into when he became famous in Back to the Future 2 was based directly on Donald Trump?
|
Sam:
[1:07:43]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:43]
| Motherfucking hell! Well, that explains a lot. Shit!
|
Sam:
[1:07:53]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:54]
| Okay. So, yeah! It's that future! I don't know!
|
Sam:
[1:08:00]
| Now, there are... I've seen some polling.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:03]
| But my point... But I didn't finish one thing.
|
Sam:
[1:08:06]
| Oh, yeah. Finish, finish.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:07]
| You know, this group of people, the whole thing is about being the it people you know we're the you know we're the ones that go to mar-a-lago so i've heard some of these people talk what you know and we're we're with the famous people and we're you know and you know we're we're hot you know you know and you know they all like you know dress very you know provocatively and you know and then they visualize trump as some sexy guy, which he isn't because he is, old and fat and out of shape, which I don't understand. I mean, I don't understand how they idealize him in that way when the guy is just an out of shape, fat fuck. I don't get it. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but the thing is that he puts himself out there like some Adonis. His followers literally draw him and caricature him as something looking like that when he is not anywhere like that. And honestly, that's one trait that he shares with Hitler. Because think about Hitler, right? Did Hitler have blonde hair, blue eyes? Was he tall? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No! No, this whole Aryan race that he talked about, he had none of those traits. These fucking people, they drive me nuts.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| Yvonne's about to run out of time. So just on the sort of, this is what they like, this is what his supporters like, I have seen some polling and a lot of anecdotal stuff about how lots of Trump supporters, just don't believe he's going to do the things he says he's going to do that people on the other side are all like upset about like oh you know he's going to use the military this way he's going to politicize he's going to go after his political opponents there is a significant.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:08]
| Number of them that do.
|
Sam:
[1:10:10]
| That are in the large.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:11]
| Yeah i think there is a significant number i'm totally sure of that.
|
Sam:
[1:10:14]
| That they just don't believe it like when they they're like you know oh all of these all of these liberals who are crying about, Trump derangement syndrome, the death of democracy, Trump's going to be a dictator, Trump's going to do this, Trump's going to do that. It's all bullshit. And look, I certainly hope the worst case scenarios pointed out by liberals will not come to true, come to true, not come to reality, even if Donald Trump wins. It will be bad. I hope it's not that bad. But, you know, the the fact that people are I mean, look, we saw what he did when he was president. And I guess the difference is like folks like Yvonne and I think that was an absolutely horrid four years where there were bad things happening practically every week due to his presidency, including, of course, January 6th at the end. And it was building.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:18]
| That's the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:11:19]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:20]
| I think people are missing the point that it was building because at the beginning there were a lot of people that were actively trying really hard. To stop him from doing the worst things. And as time went along.
|
Sam:
[1:11:32]
| People in the administration who were trying to be breaks on him.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:36]
| Yes. And as time went along, he started getting rid of every single person that told him he can't do this.
|
Sam:
[1:11:43]
| Right. And so it was getting worse. And, you know, look, and January 6th denial is out there too. I heard...
|
Ivan:
[1:11:53]
| Nobody died on January 6th, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:11:55]
| Yeah. Except the people who did. Yes. I saw one TikTok from somebody who outlined, he bumped into an old friend at a grocery store or something like that of someone who was a Trump supporter and who asked him why he wasn't because he had like Harris hat on or something. And he described January 6th and he's like, oh, I'm sorry. The other guy was like, January 6th, what are you talking about? Nothing happened there.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:23]
| A day of love. A day of love.
|
Sam:
[1:12:25]
| It was just a protest, whatever. And haven't you seen the videos of the police letting them in? It's all hyped. It's all made up. And he's like, haven't you seen the videos?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:37]
| The videos?
|
Sam:
[1:12:38]
| Of them being violent. And he's like, he hadn't. So he pulled out his phone and showed him some of those videos and says, by the reaction, it was absolutely obvious that he'd never seen any of that and had no idea that any of that had happened now he ends with like i don't know if i changed his vote or not probably not but like at the very least i i was showing him something he had no idea he had zero idea because in the media ecosystem he was in which was a doesn't pay attention for to news very much and when he does it's Fox. That was the description of this guy. And that's the description of lots of people.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:17]
| Lots of people. A lot of people.
|
Sam:
[1:13:20]
| Now, I know you got to go, Yvonne. There are a few more bullet points I wanted to hit. I could hit them after you're gone.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:28]
| Well, can we hit quick before we go? I got a few minutes.
|
Sam:
[1:13:33]
| One, there was a report this week that was going through the ecosystem. Mark Halperin started this saying that there's a story being shopped around of something absolutely devastating to Donald Trump. And then further rumors said, wait, let me say this. And then I'll, I think I'm where with you are based on Yvonne's making faces. There were further rumors that what this was specifically was there was video of Donald Trump at a recent fundraising event, groping a teenager, okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:14:08]
| I will say, listen, in terms of devastating, I don't know. But this is kind of like Comey letter type of stuff, okay? So I will say this. If you've got a video that you can circulate of this being true, it has that level of impact, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:14:24]
| Honestly, where I am at this point, it could have that impact.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:28]
| It's a small marginal impact, like all of these, because it's like all of the Christian conservatives will be like, ah, he's still giving my judges.
|
Sam:
[1:14:37]
| Right. And look, like you can imagine also a video that's somewhat ambiguous, right? Like maybe there's a video, but like, you know, from the angle, it's like, well, was he really doing that on purpose? Or look, look, we've had videos of Donald Trump groping his daughter on stage at Republican convention and stuff. You know, like, did that change anything? No. But like, here's the thing. I actually think this is bullshit. I don't think there is any such tape. If there was such a tape, we would have seen it by now. You know, I don't know. This is all just disinformation.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:13]
| I don't know. Here's the answer. I don't know. I will say that it's very plausible that such a video exists.
|
Sam:
[1:15:23]
| It is plausible. It is absolutely plausible. but I mean this guy basically.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:27]
| Said you know in the one that you know didn't bring him that one of the first ones that didn't bring him down how did he say hi to women just grab him by the pussy right.
|
Sam:
[1:15:36]
| Yeah so.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:38]
| What the fuck you know.
|
Sam:
[1:15:39]
| Oh look I I'm sure he is engaged in this behavior at various times I I would not it is completely plausible that a video exists I'm just saying like if this video existed i am surprised like it would be surprising to me that we have not seen it already like that we would get all of these rumors about they're shopping around this story but no one's taken it maybe somebody's trying to take it.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:04]
| Maybe somebody's just trying to make money off the fucking thing.
|
Sam:
[1:16:07]
| I i could see that too i could see that too like you can have this video you go where's my two million dollar give me give me my money yeah whereas reputable news organizations of course won't pay that won't.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:19]
| Pay for it right exactly so.
|
Sam:
[1:16:20]
| That so you.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:21]
| Wind up in this situation.
|
Sam:
[1:16:22]
| So somebody would pay that you know i don't know if.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:26]
| I had the money and i could validate it's real i'll fucking pay for it.
|
Sam:
[1:16:30]
| Yeah and and of course like our you know maybe validation is part of it too are we sure it's not ai generated you know all this kind of stuff you know i don't know but like yeah it falls into the category of the other stuff like i mean we are we are 100 percent in i could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and it wouldn't change a single fucking vote you know and it's true and it's true i.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:53]
| Can't believe how this guy i he was so right about himself in that way.
|
Sam:
[1:16:58]
| I mean there are those marginal folks the the other the other just maybe we shot.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:05]
| Ivanka on stage.
|
Sam:
[1:17:06]
| Well you know if ivanka came out and on camera said, yeah, he molested me my entire childhood, maybe that would move.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:18]
| That'll move a few points. Honestly, seriously.
|
Sam:
[1:17:21]
| I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:22]
| Oh, it's only a few points.
|
Sam:
[1:17:24]
| Ah, yes. No, I'm not necessarily, I obviously have no evidence about that. Yeah, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:33]
| And I got to be honest.
|
Sam:
[1:17:36]
| But would anybody be surprised?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:37]
| I wouldn't be surprised, but for the love of God, I really wish that that didn't happen.
|
Sam:
[1:17:42]
| Yeah, yeah, obviously.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:43]
| Okay, all right. You know, to be clear. Okay, nobody's wishing that Ivanka was molested by this monster. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:17:50]
| Right. Absolutely. Okay, real quick. Other things that came out this week. both Elon Musk and Donald Trump apparently talking to Putin on a regular basis over the last couple years?
|
Ivan:
[1:18:03]
| Well, now we understand why. Now it finally makes sense. Why Elon said in that interview it slipped out that said that the Democrats went, one, that he was worried that he was going to jail. And now it all adds up. Because that son of a bitch had to have that in the back of his head.
|
Sam:
[1:18:24]
| And also, apparently, Donald Trump says he's talking to Bibi almost every day.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:30]
| That's not surprising. I will say that, look, especially from Bibi, because like I said before, Bibi fucking came to Congress to campaign basically against fucking Obama in 2012. He gave a speech against him here. So what the hell is going to make me feel like this has changed in any way, shape or form that he's going and like talking to to Trump, who apparently wants to flatten Gaza and like develop it into some kind of like real estate and just kill all the Palestinians or something like that?
|
Sam:
[1:19:08]
| Yeah, the ethnic cleansing plan is almost completely out in the open now. Yeah, it's like it's yeah. Anyway, speaking of that, just to toss up a couple of last bullet points, Israel did do their attack on Iran. It looks like it was relatively limited, military targets only. Hopefully, we're done for the moment. We shall see. And also, North Korea is apparently putting troops in Ukraine now.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:44]
| Oh, and that's that's such a sign of strength by Putin that he has to grab North Korean malnourished troops to put in the front line in fucking Ukraine. I mean, you want to you want to tell me how this this is? And I guess it's just an exchange. You know, what's his name needs energy and stuff and whatever. And so, oh, well, here, I'll just send some soldiers for you to sacrifice in the front line of Ukraine. Here we go there.
|
Sam:
[1:20:08]
| Yeah. And I don't think either of those two things are going to affect the election. It's too little, too late. Like whatever's baked in there. I think the whole situation in the Middle East probably does not help Harris at all. Like the big drop in Biden's numbers actually came after October 7th of last year. I don't know. Like there seems to still be that continuous drag from very left-leaning people who are like, I can't vote for Harris because she supports genocide. That are just withholding their vote entirely, which, you know, I'm sorry.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:50]
| Yeah, to support a guy who has basically made it his banner campaign to go and ethnically cleanse the whole damn place. Yes, that's very helpful. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:21:01]
| Well, they're either withholding their vote or voting for Stein or whatever. And, you know, look, I sympathize. Like, the situation is horrible. like we should i've i've said on this show we should be withholding military support from israel at this point but you still have two people to choose from and you and one is worse and one is worse i'm sorry i'm sorry like this whole like i don't want to pick the lesser of two evils i'm sorry if that's your choice you pick if somebody offers you yeah i'm sorry you have to vote for either Hitler or Stalin who do you want to be in charge you have you still, Jesus Christ you still have to pick like you pick which one you think will be least damaging even if they both are horrible I'm sorry that well those are pretty much.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:55]
| Equally bad I gotta be honest can I be honest I mean I would say that I would say more a choice between Hitler Mussolini and probably Mussolini was less worse than Hitler, because if I recall correctly, and I may be corrected the next time, but a lot of the stuff with regards to minorities and stuff and whatever, Mussolini just went along because Hitler was basically egging him on about it, not exactly because he was all jumping up and down.
|
Sam:
[1:22:24]
| So headline out of this show, Ivan is a Mussolini apologist. No, you support Mussolini. You think Mussolini was great.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:33]
| No, all I'm saying is if my only choices were Mussolini and Hitler, I guess I'm taking fucking Mussolini.
|
Sam:
[1:22:44]
| Anyway. Yeah. So we'll see. Anyway, I got to go. Yvonne has to go. The usual, the curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there for our transcripts, our archives, all the ways to contact us, blah, blah, blah. Including our patreon where you can give us money at various levels we will mention you on the show we will send you a postcard we will send you a mug all of that sort of thing all very fun stuff at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask we will invite you to our invite you to our patreon no that's wrong invite you to our slack where yvonne and i and a bunch of listeners are chatting sharing links doing all that kind of stuff all week long we would love to have more of you, Yvonne, do you have a highlight or do you just need to run?
|
Ivan:
[1:23:28]
| No, I need to run. I need to run. No highlight this week.
|
Sam:
[1:23:31]
| No highlight this week. You need to join and then you don't need the highlights because you will have already seen them. And so for once, this actually is a short show. Amazing. But I hope you guys appreciate it. And we will come back next week with a regular show. And I think more details next week if it's true. But I think we're once again going to live stream election night as the results come in.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:23:58]
| So we'll give you more details next week. And that's it. Hey, everybody have a great week and stay safe. We'll see you next time. Goodbye. Say goodbye, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:09]
| Bye.
| |
|
