Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Greetings, Mr. Bo. Hold on, let me make sure the singe is singing.
|
Ivan:
[0:05]
| Greetings and salutations.
|
Sam:
[0:08]
| Whoa, echo.
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Ivan:
[0:10]
| No, no, I'm very far from the microphone. There we go. Now, greetings and salutations. There we go.
|
Sam:
[0:14]
| Do you have another hard stop this week or no?
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Ivan:
[0:16]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[0:18]
| Same time?
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Ivan:
[0:18]
| Same. Same.
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Sam:
[0:19]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[0:19]
| Same. All same, because I got to take my new month. So everything is the same. Yeah.
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Sam:
[0:25]
| Hold on. I just did something stupid. Okay, there we go. Sorry. me this wasn't there we go hit the button okay let's start this and just go, ready for me to hit the button hit the button long ago ready okay come on, welcome to curmudgeon's corner for saturday november 2nd 2024 it is 1507 utc as we're starting to record this so once again it's an 8 a.m morning call for me 11 a.m i guess for yvonne, And, yeah, I'm Sam Menter, Yvonne Bowes here, Curmudgeon's Corner, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Ivan:
[1:31]
| Blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Sam:
[1:32]
| This is our last show before the election, Yvonne. Yvonne, once again, has a hard stop. So this will be a shorter show than normal. And we're going to sort of try to rush through things. Our normal structure is this. But first, I don't know how much we'll do in order to save time today, maybe. But then after that, look, it'll be all election stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:54]
| I'll be you know i'll.
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Sam:
[1:56]
| I'll do an update on polls and then we'll talk about everything else but that's the plan.
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Ivan:
[2:02]
| That's the plan that's it's a plan you know so uh i mentioned i i think i mentioned on the slack that and i've noticed this is elections approach in the last couple of presidential cycles where basically I, you know, almost everything that involves people talking, even if it's, if I tune into a business show or a podcast of some other nature or program, people start talking about the election. One thing that I realized is that, I mean, a long, long time ago, not recently, I pretty much got fed up with most of the public talk on any of these subjects because it involves a lot of people that just have no clue about anything. And all it does is, for the most part, just aggravate me.
|
Sam:
[3:10]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[3:10]
| And it becomes far more aggravating as we close in on an election like this. And these last elections have been far more aggravating than any other elections that I have ever lived through. And so, like, this week, I wound up getting in a rental car, or I was, and choosing to absolutely just... I didn't want to hear anything in the car, which is not normal. I usually would be playing music, something or whatever. And I was just like, okay, just turn it all off. I don't want to, I don't want to hear anybody talking. I don't want to hear any music. I just, I don't want to hear anything.
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Ivan:
[3:56]
| And I will give credit to ESPN for one thing. A few years ago, they got into some issues with some announcers that decided, that they wanted to talk about politics during sports. And you can debate whatever the merits of what ESPN was doing or not, because they actually reprimanded a few of them. Some of them quit, some of them left or whatever. But one thing that I could do to watch something where people would actually act like the election doesn't exist was to tune into ESPN. And they reliably, regardless who was on, it was like it didn't exist. And so I don't really watch ESPN that much anymore because or because one of the things that's happened with the current media landscape is you can get so much other and probably more.
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Ivan:
[5:00]
| Attuned to your tastes information from a whole bunch of other sources. Okay. And so, you know, it used to be that 20, 30 years ago, if you wanted to find out what was going on in sports, the only place you could really go to was ESPN. I mean, because they were like the worldwide leader, but now there's so many little websites, podcasts, this YouTube, whatever. There's quite a lot of very creative people on YouTube doing some fun content and sports and whatnot, you know, that I can just get whatever the heck I want without, in the style I want, and probably focused on specifically what I want to find out is going on, without having to go through a lot of other generic information, which a channel with large, not just national, includes a global audience, even though they have like European ESPN, they have ESPN in Espanol, They have other versions, but, but that channel is played in many places in the world. It's got to be far more generic. And so that's the one thing about that. But I could tune in to ESPN this week and listen to not one mention, not one of anything that was happening in the election. I was like, oh, this is good. I mean, because right now all we're doing, including us at this point, mind you, is.
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Sam:
[6:22]
| Is repeating over and over and over. It's too close to call and we'll see what happens on election night and trying to read meaning into little bits of noisy data that like.
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Ivan:
[6:35]
| You know, yeah, we're going, look, look, there's a 0.01 move here and another little one there. And oh my God, who's the pollster that came into the thing?
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Sam:
[6:45]
| Oh, and here's some early vote numbers that may or may not mean anything.
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Ivan:
[6:49]
| Oh, may not mean anything. Look, look, look, you've got, oh my God, look at the numbers and the turnout. Out like, hey, Sam, you know, 50% of the people in Florida have already voted. Does that mean anything?
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Sam:
[7:00]
| Maybe.
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Ivan:
[7:04]
| You know, I, it's, it's, it's down to just, you know, such by douche. So that was the one thing I was doing. The second thing is my wife is working early voting. Okay. So she has done this now. It's, it's early voting will be finished in Florida on Sunday before the election. Monday, no, no voting. Then, then Tuesday, the poll. So at least one thing is that they've had already about 50% of registered voters turn out at this point, but, but that still leaves quite a lot of people to turn out on Tuesday.
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Ivan:
[7:43]
| Yeah. So, so that leaves that, that big a number. Well, one of the things is that because my wife was out of town, she actually asked her aunt, but because I, because my wife, I'm not out of town because she's been working and I have had to go out of town for a couple of days. My wife's aunt from colombia uh came and has stayed with us to help us help us with mon okay um since since that's been going on one interesting thing i asked her yesterday because i wanted to get her take she has not been she's rarely visited the u.s in recent decades okay she she she did live in the uk for many years but has lived in colombia most of her life and one of the interesting things that I had, she's around 70-something years old, was, okay, what was the impression that you had of what you expected to see when you came to Florida versus, you know, what is it that you've seen versus what you thought in your head, okay? Or would you be based on what you heard? I will say that there was one very interesting thing, and it revolves around immigrants, especially about Hispanic immigrants. Because as you know, there is so much propaganda going around of what's going on with immigration in the U.S.
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Ivan:
[9:03]
| And from a lot of what she had heard, she's a very well-educated person, by the way. Okay, so this isn't, you know, this is just the reality is of where she gets her news and what she sees. It's just, you know, what she hears. You know, always perception is not reality. I mean, I remember when I came to the U.S. For the first time, what I thought that I would see versus what you see in reality is always different. And so for me, I wanted to see what she heard. And one thing is that she admitted, look, this comes from the fact that I hadn't been here.
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Ivan:
[9:35]
| Well, I hadn't been in Florida, period. I expected that I would see all these Latino immigrants all over the place, like on street corners and everywhere begging them. Like like homeless like harassing people because of all this shit that i've heard about that's what she expected to see yeah because that's what's because that's that's the message that keeps being probably spread more loudly about how immigrants in this country and how they're trying to throw them out and blah blah blah and the mass deportations blah blah blah and so what she got in her head from all of this very loud messaging that's going on right now which you know it goes about the messaging versus reality right is that oh my god i just expected all of these people to be panhandling and like harassing people because of all the complaints i heard and i've been here for two weeks i haven't seen a single one no one and i was like and that was like a very shocking thing to her to see and actually to get somebody with the fresh eyes of seeing what the right-wing propaganda.
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Ivan:
[10:42]
| Has made as the message of what is going on with the immigrants and how it's seen by people who don't see it. And when they actually come in and see it and they're like, what the fuck are they talking about?
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Ivan:
[10:55]
| And so to me, that was a very shocking thing. The other thing I think that she heard repeatedly is how, because of America is some kind of like a hellscape, like of something you know based on what's been going on recently and she was like and especially you hear that a lot not just from right-wing people like trump who keeps calling places that the u.s is garbage and whatever or not because that's what they're saying very loudly right now violent this violent cesspools garbage cities you know destroyed blah blah blah and you get that a lot also from the ultra left in in in uh latin america and she was like holy shit everything is like so perfect i i i'm right i'm still like everything is like beyond perfect i could never imagine that things anywhere could be so perfect that she went to visit his school and she worked in public schools in columbia okay and she had heard all this shit about u.s education whatever about whatever she went to manu school and she was like this place is a fucking palace the fuck are they talking about and it's and i i just thought that these things and the perspective of.
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Ivan:
[12:11]
| What it is that is said in the in the propaganda war because sam because we are in the middle of what truly is a massive propaganda war. Okay?
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Sam:
[12:26]
| Mm-hmm.
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Ivan:
[12:27]
| It has nothing to do with facts. It has everything to do with what the propaganda is and what the effect of that propaganda has on people and the perspective of what they see.
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Sam:
[12:40]
| Well, we haven't talked about it as much this time around as in 2016, obviously, but the sort of international players trying to, quote-unquote, interfere with elections is actually only part of it. First of all, international players, including our government, I am goddamn sure, are working to interfere with elections all over the freaking world.
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Ivan:
[13:05]
| They always have.
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Sam:
[13:05]
| And they all are. So we had a lot of focus on Russia. Russia's still at it. But so is China. So is Saudi Arabia. So is Iran. So is Israel. Israel. I would be surprised if there is any major country that isn't.
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Ivan:
[13:24]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[13:25]
| And they're and they're doing it to every election for every country that they care about in whatever way, shape or form to some degree or another, but also completely outside of elections.
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Ivan:
[13:37]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[13:37]
| They're still trying to influence the internal politics of countries who are relevant to their own.
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Ivan:
[13:44]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[13:44]
| You know, because you want to move things in a direction that's positive towards you.
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Ivan:
[13:51]
| Right.
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Sam:
[13:51]
| And or or you just want to foment chaos. In countries that are your adversary. So they won't be as effective as being at being your adversary.
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Ivan:
[14:00]
| Absolutely.
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Sam:
[14:00]
| And, and, and this is absolutely like, even though we're talking about it less than we did eight years ago, it's happening a lot more than it was eight years ago.
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Ivan:
[14:12]
| This is happening so much more. It's happening way, way, way more. Yeah. But it's just, and this.
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Sam:
[14:19]
| And this, by the way, leads to the increase in people feeling that, well, they can't trust anything. Facts don't, facts don't matter because there's no way to know what's true because everybody's bullshitting you.
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Ivan:
[14:32]
| You know, and the thing is that what, well, I had first, I had that as a, but first I wanted to mention this before I got this, but making a segue into some of the, you know, what the punditry is doing out there. Nate Cohn, who is the data analyst at the New York Times, put out a column today on why it's so hard to defeat Trump. And I read it, and I didn't even share it because he's a good data analyst. But I'll tell you that that was the most disingenuous note I ever read in my life.
|
Ivan:
[15:07]
| Because it was one of these things where what he said, well, the issue is that – and I actually heard somebody else this week, Bob Costas on another. On a sport podcast went and veered into this for a little bit and i wound up having to hear a little bit of this and it's this whole disingenuous thing well the problem is that the democrats have been on the wrong side of certain positions and and policy and i'll and i'm like i'm looking at this and i'm like how how how in today still to this day i still keep hearing people saying this complete sheer nonsense. It's got nothing to do with any of the fucking democratic positions. Most of them that if you actually poll, you find that most people support. It's all the fake straw man that are being built up and all the fake propaganda that says that the main issue is America, is that you're going to send your child to school and they're going to make a sex change operation and return it to him as a girl, or a boy, or whatever other thing. This is the problem.
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Sam:
[16:17]
| And immigrants are coming to, like, rape your children as well.
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Ivan:
[16:20]
| And eat your cats and dogs. And they're overrunning the country. And they're panhandling and every day. Amcorner doing nothing and taking government benefits and voting illegally. It has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with actual facts. It has to do with the entire GOP being in on absolute propaganda of shit that isn't real and that the facts have not mattered. And it doesn't matter because Bob Costas on this podcast saying, well, the thing is that they take some positions or whatever that feed Fox. No, no, no. They will make it up. It doesn't matter. You could sit over there and not say one damn thing. And they will say that you are out there going and say, hey, violent criminals, go crime all you want. Hey, you know what? You know, we want pedophile teachers, you know, gay pedophile teachers that are fucking every child at school. They will make they will make right now there you you can sit there. 90% of the shit that you're talking about is not based on any talking point that the Democrats have actually ever made. It's completely made of bullshit that they repeat and they repeat and they push. I mean, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[17:44]
| Well, and I'll add one thing that even in the best of days, people didn't really ever make their decision on policy anyway. They based their voting decision on two things. One is sort of a, and this has increased over the last few decades, it used to be a lot less like this, but sort of tribal association with a party, like everybody you know and all your friends are with this party, so you are too. And like I said, this didn't used to be that way. We used to have radical swings, election from election, where lots of people switched parties.
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Ivan:
[18:21]
| It would go for Democrats. Yep, yep.
|
Sam:
[18:22]
| Yeah. People were not set in stone with a particular party and lots of people actually would switch election from election. Not anymore. Now that tribalism is a very strong part of what's going on. But then beyond that, it's about vibes and emotion and feeling and that kind of thing. And that is very, very susceptible to all of the stuff you're talking about, even more so than sort of facts and policy and blah, blah, blah, because you're not really trying to get people to agree on any sort of policy position. You're just trying to pull the right emotional strings you know and and whether that's you know fear or hope or whatever you're it's it's about like getting that emotional resonance that people feel like you're the one that's speaking to them and how they feel about life.
|
Ivan:
[19:29]
| Look it's like the whole 20 plus years ago, James Carville had to, it's the economy, stupid thing, right? Here's the one thing. Back then, at least, one big difference was that if the economy was bad, everybody would acknowledge the economy was bad for the most part. It wasn't like the Republicans were trying to say, oh, no, no, no, the economy is great. They were like, no, yeah, no, we've got these issues, but we're going to do this to fix it, whatever. And the Democrats would say, well, we're going to do this to fix it. Right now, we have a completely different problem. Right now, like as a few polls that I've seen, poll people and say, hey, how are you doing economically? You. 70% of them say, we're doing great. Then you take that exact same sample. Hey, what do you think? How do you think the economy's doing? 70% of them say it's terrible. And you're like, what? How? It's the same group. And they, I mean, 70% of them say they're doing great. And then 70% say the economy is terrible. There, there could, if there isn't anything that can show you the massive effect of the fucking current propaganda environment that we're in, like right now, as that, there is no, no other data point that to me crystallized it.
|
Sam:
[20:44]
| The other one that immediately comes to mind for me is crime. Oh, where every crime, where everybody, like, if you poll people, crime is up. Crime is horrible. Crime is like a big, huge problem that's worse than it's ever been before in their lives. When in fact, there was a little bit of an upswing over the course of the pandemic in a couple of years that we're mostly back down from. But if you look decade over decade over decade, it's practically the safest it's ever fucking been in the United States. You know, maybe we're slightly up for Marlowe's a couple of years ago, but it's slightly, you know, and, but that's not the perception.
|
Ivan:
[21:24]
| No, you know, you're like.
|
Sam:
[21:28]
| Oh, same, same, same thing. Crime related. I just want to say people's perceptions are, you know, the cities are hell escapes a cesspool of crime and the cities are dangerous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you actually look at it on a per capita basis, the cities are safer than rural areas.
|
Ivan:
[21:53]
| Yes, that's correct.
|
Sam:
[21:54]
| You know, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[21:56]
| Well, well, the problem also about immigration, right? Oh, my God. We're having more illegal immigrants than ever, Sam. Ever, ever, ever, ever.
|
Sam:
[22:10]
| Ever, ever, ever.
|
Ivan:
[22:12]
| No, no, we're not.
|
Sam:
[22:13]
| So, your butt first immediately started getting into actual things related to the election. I... I almost want to skip mine so we can keep the election focused, but I do want to briefly mention one thing, because I had an actual non-newsy but first. The only relation to the...
|
Ivan:
[22:34]
| Well, mine was kind of... Well, you know, I was... Unfortunately, my but first, the issue was that it got kind of like got spun into an issue because of what the fuck is going on.
|
Sam:
[22:48]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[22:49]
| Yeah, I'm sorry.
|
Sam:
[22:49]
| Okay, so the one relation I can give to the election is that because of what I'm about to mention, I got like a day and a half behind on putting in data for election graphs. And I caught up last night, actually, by the way.
|
Sam:
[23:11]
| I've only had two hours sleep last night. I finished catching up on the election graphs poll, slept for actually, yeah, more like 90 minutes, then got up and I'm doing this podcast. So I'll probably crash again afterwards. Yeah, we'll see. But no, I wanted to mention this. My son, Alex, for years now, he's 15 now, probably since he was like seven or eight, for his quote unquote Halloween costume, has ridden around the neighborhood, pulled in a radio flyer wagon, a heavy duty radio flyer wagon, that my wife, way back years ago, dressed up as a train. And the first version for one year was basically just cardboard. The second year, it was more elaborate, sort of a more elaborate foam board kind of thing and handcrafted by my wife. But, My son has, and my son, you know, very much wanted to, this is what he wants every freaking year. He wants the train. He doesn't want to do anything different. He wants to do that. Okay. And, but there's a little bit of a problem in that he's now six foot one.
|
Ivan:
[24:30]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:30]
| He does not fit into the train that my wife built him when he was seven.
|
Ivan:
[24:36]
| Probably. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:39]
| And there are two problems. One was doesn't fit. The other is that him plus the train are now heavy enough that pulling this thing is, let's just say, at the absolute limits of my ability to pull even a short distance. Okay. But here's the thing. and last year last year well two years ago we warned him like we won't be able to pull this thing anymore it's it's too hard you barely fit in it we're you know and and i can barely pull the thing but two years ago we did take them around the neighborhood one year ago we stuck to our guns and we're like no i can't can't do that i can't pull you around in this thing you you don't really fit in it and you're too heavy and so we didn't pull them around the neighborhood We took the train out and it was in our driveway. All the trick-or-treaters could see the train, blah, blah, blah. But I did not pull him around it. He was devastatingly upset last year.
|
Sam:
[25:46]
| So he remembered this year, but not until a few weeks before Halloween that he wanted to do this. And we kept saying, look, we're not pulling you. We're not going to do this and you don't fit in the train. And so he started probably a month before Halloween and, wanting me to like move stuff around in the garage. And I didn't understand exactly what, but I cooperated and every few days I'd spend like an hour moving some stuff in their garage, going through some boxes. It took me a couple of weeks of doing this before I realized that he was trying to A, extract the train from where it was in the garage and to make room so he could work on the train. Once I knew what he wanted, which of course he refused to communicate in any way other than he wanted me to move stuff around in the garage, I was able to extract the train and make room for in a few hours in one burst. And then from that moment on, he wanted to work on the train. He had us go to Lowe's. We got a whole bunch of supplies. Like I'm talking lumber, tools, all this kind of stuff and he he would not communicate his detailed plans to me he would not like say that.
|
Ivan:
[27:08]
| Makes it a lot easier.
|
Sam:
[27:09]
| No no he's just like you know he we go he would indicate that he wanted to go to lowes we would go to lowes he would wander around lowes putting stuff into the cart i have no idea what the various things are for i agree i realize it's related to the train, but that's all I realized. And I willing, you know, I let him spend a bunch of his own allowance money and then I'm like, okay, fine. I realize you're doing something. It's important to you. I'll put in some of my money too. Because like this ended up being a few hundred dollars in the end of supplies from Lowe's over several different trips. But in any case, and I'm going to go through this quickly so we can get back to election stuff, but he He ended up building... A new version of the train designed to be a replica of the one that my wife made him years ago, but scaled up so that it was big enough for him to get inside again. Now, this, by the way, does not solve the weight problem. It, in fact, makes the weight problem worse. Because not only did he scale it up, but he also made it out of beefier materials. So like stuff that was just foam board before now has a frame made out of lumber okay.
|
Ivan:
[28:31]
| Well you could have like uh you know what you need is uh some to find you know they have these like wheels that have these ball bearings that are super super super super slick yeah yeah you would need to find well the thing is set of those the thing is this is that basically make this thing like glide we I mean.
|
Sam:
[28:53]
| It's built off the regular radio flyer off the shelf thing. Now it is the heavy duty one, but like replacing the wheels would, it's not just you need wheels. You need the whole assembly to attach.
|
Ivan:
[29:05]
| You need the whole, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:07]
| Now, another thing we've offered him, by the way, we offered him. And the thing is, like the time to bring all this stuff up is not October before Halloween. And I told him this previous years, it's like, if you want to do this, like do it months in advance. I've told my wife the same thing too, about like Halloween prep she wants to do, but of course it always ends up in the last few hours. But we offered like, hey, instead of the radio flyer wagon that I have to drag around, let's buy you a fucking go-kart to build this thing on top of that has an actual engine that you can drive. You know, you know that and one that's built for your size and weight. Right. So that you and you build that and then you can build it on top of that. And it would be and then, you know, you eliminate the problem. Anyway, the bottom line, he spent for the last week before Halloween on the order of close to 12 hours a day working on this freaking train between going to the store, building stuff, cutting stuff, whatever. Now, of course, I got roped into helping with lots of it. There were power tools involved. I mean, he used the power tools. I used the power tools. There was cutting. I, I, I, I.
|
Ivan:
[30:27]
| I, this is really scary to hear that the both of you using power tools, because I don't really see that. I see more Alex, like inheriting your clumsiness with those things rather than your wife's aptitude.
|
Sam:
[30:43]
| Well, I'll tell you what he's got is he's got the, the, the creative handiness. Like he designed this whole fucking thing and he had a plan from the very beginning. Like it was unclear to me until it started coming together, but he clearly had a detailed plan of exactly how this thing was going to be built. Exactly what like parts he needed, exactly what tools he needed. And you know, he had it all worked out in his head. Um, okay. and so what.
|
Ivan:
[31:13]
| About the execution.
|
Sam:
[31:14]
| Uh it was good now the the people watching will not be able to see this but i am going to send to the curmudgeon yeah listening the well even the people watching on the live stream because i'm just i'm just going to text it to the let's see do i still have this here, paste. I'm going to have to do this. Hold on. I didn't have it. This one's the right one. Okay. So I just sent it to the random channel on the curmudgeons corner slack for anybody who goes there and everybody else you're going to miss out. Sorry. But anyway, so he succeeded. He built this thing. Now he was a little, go ahead that's a choo-choo train yeah so it really.
|
Ivan:
[32:04]
| Looks like it.
|
Sam:
[32:04]
| It's a train it's got lights it's got whatever it's painted you know he did all all the painting how long.
|
Ivan:
[32:12]
| Did this take.
|
Sam:
[32:12]
| Well he was working about 12 hours a day for a week wow you know maybe not quite that maybe eight hours a day for a week and it wasn't all efficient time right like it wasn't like non-stop go go go go go and sometime and for most of it i was working along with him there were lots of late nights there was whatever he didn't quite make it in time for for trick-or-treat like we ended up this thing got finished i would say about an hour after the last trick-or-treater came to our house okay and close enough we got about we we got about 150 trick-or-treaters each time around and it was busy and lots of people. But so after he was finally done, we wheeled the thing out and I did manage to pull this thing with him in it from our house, up the driveway.
|
Sam:
[33:09]
| Two houses over, turn around, come back, and then go back down to driveway. He was thrilled. He was happy. He accomplished his goal, even though we didn't actually trick or treat at any houses or whatever because all that was up all that it was late it was over and look if one of the two houses right next to us had had like just a bowl of candy left out for like anybody stragglers just take the candy we would have done that but no now i will say me pulling at that distance what was roughly Yeah.
|
Sam:
[33:43]
| You know, I would pull for maybe 10 feet and then, and then I would like have to catch my breath. I'd be leaning over and then like, and then try again after we went up and back, like I sat in a chair in the freaking rain for 20 minutes to recover before I like did anything else. But anyway, I just wanted to point out he succeeded. He did his task. He built a freaking train. Now it is basically like modeled in every single detail after the old one my wife built, but just scaled up heftier, stronger materials, all of that kind of stuff, which again, it solves the problem of him being able to fit in it. It does not solve the problem of the combination is too heavy for me to pull around. It's also probably over the weight limit of the wagon itself. At any moment, I'm waiting for like it to collapse under the weight or for parts of it. Like the little pull handle you pull the wagon with feels like it could break off at any moment because it just can't handle pulling that much. And the floor of the wagon feels like it could break too under his weight. So I told him for next year, he has to motorize it. Like if he's going to do this again next year, it must be motorized. Okay, anyway, that was...
|
Ivan:
[35:12]
| Or like I said, you need to find lower friction.
|
Sam:
[35:17]
| Lower friction wheels. Yeah, well, the thing is he insisted too on building it on top of the same wagon. Like, you know, we offered like, let's get a new wagon that's built for more weight and is intended for like this because they make they make heavier duty ones that are made for like lugging hundreds of pounds of cargo or whatever, you know.
|
Ivan:
[35:40]
| Sure. I mean, that's how how do you think those people do that? Exactly. I mean, the wheels on those basically are extremely low friction wheels that allow, you know, somebody to be able that isn't, you know, Hulk Hogan. Oh, God, bad reference. Somebody very strong. Not that asshole. Okay. He's probably like, you know, probably not really as strong as he is. Yeah. You know, but it's a very strong. You don't have to be a very strong person to push a couple of hundred pounds.
|
Sam:
[36:08]
| Yeah, no, he insisted on building it on top of the same old platform that was on before. I am hoping if he really wants to do this next year, that he will be convinced to move to a motorized platform. Like maybe what you're talking about, but ideally a motorized platform that he can.
|
Ivan:
[36:26]
| Ideally motorized, but yeah. But, you know, the one thing I will say is like, think about, you know, cars ride on those. Okay. Just to give an example. Okay. Because if you think about this, a car, most people on a flat surface can push a car. Now, why would that be? I mean, 4,000, 5,000 pounds, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 pounds. It really is in large part, the biggest thing is because the bearings on which the wheels sit, are extremely low friction, okay? It allows for, you know, somebody, just a, usually, you know, a normal person putting enough force behind it can move a car. I mean, and you could move a car a pretty significant distance, by the way, okay? Just pushing it, okay? So that's what I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[37:20]
| Let me give you one thing.
|
Ivan:
[37:22]
| The wheels make a difference.
|
Sam:
[37:23]
| Let me give you one thing, and we'll wrap this up. I'll take the break, and we'll start talking election. But i will say along the lines of you can push a car i will say i i i we never got to talk about it on a show but i did have an opportunity to deal with a situation where my car had to be pushed a couple months ago and without going into detail i was a dumbass i ran out of gas okay uh okay let's just surprise surprise just but well it was the first time, I had it on my topic list. I listed it as the Taco Bell incident, but like it did not come up. It did not come up on the show. We have other things going on. But look, I was a dumbass. I ran out of gas. The car had to be pushed out of the way while I waited to like get gas.
|
Ivan:
[38:14]
| Were you able to push the car?
|
Sam:
[38:16]
| Well, here's what I was going to say. Here is an important tip when trying to push the car. Because of course I had the, you know, I was sitting in the driver's seat and someone tried to push it. Here's an important, important tip.
|
Ivan:
[38:29]
| Leave the ignition key on.
|
Sam:
[38:32]
| Well, no, I was going to say, not only do you need to put it in neutral, but importantly, important tip, you must take your foot off the brake.
|
Ivan:
[38:42]
| No shit.
|
Sam:
[38:43]
| Which I did not do initially. So, and so it was like, we couldn't push it.
|
Ivan:
[38:50]
| We could no shit anyway.
|
Sam:
[38:53]
| Yes okay with that.
|
Ivan:
[38:55]
| Top another top tip for us if you're going to have somebody push you in the car lift your foot off the brake and that's the kind of quality analysis and insight that you get from a top quality show like curmudgeon's corner.
|
Sam:
[39:13]
| Exactly okay and.
|
Ivan:
[39:15]
| Yes and.
|
Sam:
[39:16]
| It's time for a break and i swear i didn't rig this because last time i played And I was like, this is probably going to be the last time for four years. But no, no, it came up randomly one last time. So here comes the election graph break. And then I'll give the update from election graphs back after this.
|
Break:
[39:37]
| Do you want to understand what is really going on with the presidential election cycle? Then go to electiongraphs.com right away. There you'll find charts and graphs covering the nomination processes in both parties and the general election race for electoral college votes. For the delegate races, we track not just delegate totals, but also the ever-important analysis of how each candidate has to do with the remaining delegates in order to actually win. For the Electoral College, we track state-by-state poll averages to categorize which states are actually in play and which are not in order to show you the range of likely electoral results and how that changes over time. Sure, you can get some of this stuff elsewhere, but not in exactly the same way. and not from me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon. I think my election trackers are better than the rest, so come look at mine, electiongraphs.com.
|
Sam:
[40:38]
| Okay, we are back. And so starting with the polling update, we are, as we are recording this, let me refresh, get 3.3 days from the polls starting to close. And oh first before anything else i meant to say this at the beginning of the show but we yvonne and i have agreed to do the live stream on election night again so if you are interested in that mark your calendars and all of that kind of stuff to come see like us yammer as election results come in youtube.com slash at curmudgeons hyphen corner. That'll get you there. And the live stream will show up there. There'll also be an announcement posted on their curmudgeons corner Mastodon when we start. But yeah, I think we will, my plan is I will start the live stream approximately zero UTC that evening. So on election night that is 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. And yeah, you'll get to hear Yvonne and I react in real time as results start to come in. We'll see how that goes. And Yvonne, I don't know if you'll be able to join at exactly that time, but that's when I'll start.
|
Ivan:
[42:02]
| I should be joined. I'm just, like I said before, I'm just not, right now, I'm just dreading this.
|
Sam:
[42:12]
| Whole thing.
|
Ivan:
[42:12]
| I i i just i.
|
Sam:
[42:14]
| So the poll update and then we'll take a break and then we'll talk about everything else the the poll update really the summary is close to what and i said at the very beginning of the show it is still too freaking close to call, there are still let's see what's the current count yes we're we are back at all at, Yeah, all seven, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Well, six states under a 2% margin in my averages and seven under 2.5. Arizona is at 2.1. So it's Trump ahead by 2.1. And then there are a couple other close states. We now have New Hampshire in the game where Harris only has a 3.3% lead in the average. And there still hasn't been a second poll. there's still only been one freaking poll in Iowa. And so it's still showing up in this swing state category. Although really, I think it's probably not, but the one poll we had was remarkably close. So maybe Iowa really isn't playing. I don't know. There's just not enough polling to say for sure. I guess there were two polls.
|
Sam:
[43:23]
| Anyway, bottom line, we are still in the same damn situation. If you trust the polls as they are, there is still a slight Trump advantage. Like if, if with these averages as they exist, as we are recording right now, uh, if you just gave every state to whoever's ahead by even the tiniest amount, you would end up with Trump winning by 36 electoral votes. Okay but that's tons of these close states now if you assume as well like my models do right now that since over the last four elections more often than not polls have underestimated the republican then you give it even more to him you know as okay this is probably a trump thing um but but yeah i.
|
Ivan:
[44:10]
| Will say what i will say one thing.
|
Sam:
[44:12]
| That i was thinking about this thing about us underestimating Trump.
|
Ivan:
[44:15]
| You know, I was thinking about this underestimating of Trump the last couple of years and what would be the reaction, say, if I'm a pollster, right?
|
Sam:
[44:22]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[44:23]
| And I kept thinking, man, look, I keep having to think that we got this wrong. We're not going to do this a third time. We're going to, we're going to shift our model to, to be more on the other side. So we don't underestimate them anymore. And of course, the result of that could wind up being, The totally opposite of what they expect, because and in such a close election, it winds up mattering a lot.
|
Sam:
[44:57]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[44:57]
| OK, is is the problem. And I keep thinking, man, if they got it, they under accounted him twice. There's no fucking way that they didn't compensate significantly on that side. There's no way. There's no way. I mean, that would be this normal human reaction.
|
Sam:
[45:17]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[45:17]
| OK. Even if they're not explicitly saying it, I don't know. Look, I know myself, for example, as a financial analyst who kept doing forecasts all the time. And I remember a couple of times where I kept like either – that actually what I wound up doing was over forecasting, over forecasting, and we came in under. Believe me, after I did that a couple of times, you bet your ass that the next time around, I way under forecasted. And then we overshot that we kept overshooting it.
|
Sam:
[45:48]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[45:48]
| And that was because that's human nature. You don't want to keep fucking, you know, hitting the number wrong. And so I, man, if, if there wasn't a significant moving of that in the other direction by all these pollsters, which either makes it two things, two, two possibilities out of this, A, they're right on the money, which means that, that, that in so many of these where Harris has this tiny margin, that's actually the right number. Okay. Or B, they're right on the money. They did it way over on the other direction, which means that they're way over counting Trump and Harris is really significantly ahead. Those are the only two possible outcomes I see based on this. Now, listen, do I have hard data that can show this? No, no, no, because there isn't because the margins are that small.
|
Sam:
[46:39]
| We'll find out in a couple of days.
|
Ivan:
[46:41]
| But we'll find out in a couple of days. But all I've got to go on is just too many years of seeing how humans react to this kind of mistakes of how the hell they reacted. Usually the way that they react is, well, shit, if we underestimated them the last two times, we're sure as hell not going to do it again.
|
Sam:
[46:58]
| Yeah, no, absolutely. There are a few indications. And to be clear, either way, let's say there's a couple point error. I mean, look, this is the whole reason I do this whole category of all the states under 5%, assume they could go either way, right? Because assume there's a systematic error of a few percentage in each direction. That's where you get this range of outcomes. At the moment, my range of quote-unquote reasonable outcomes saying that any close state could go either way goes from Harris winning by 112 electoral votes to Trump winning by 94 electoral votes.
|
Ivan:
[47:39]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[47:39]
| Yes. If everybody wins the states they're ahead on, has Trump slightly ahead of Biden right now, but really that whole range is possible. Now I will be completely honest. I would feel, oh, so much better if the straight poll average had Harris ahead, even if it was a small amount, right? I would feel better if we did that.
|
Ivan:
[48:04]
| But look, but also, you know, you talked about last week, the analysis that you did on in terms of the number of shit polls that have been coming out. And there was an article this week also in the New York Times that specifically talked about this as well, how they have noticed this as well.
|
Sam:
[48:20]
| I think the effect this has is about a percent on the tipping point, although that's going to vary day to day as the new polls come in and what's in and out. I'm probably going to do another election graphs update this afternoon, so after this is all recorded and done. So go check electiongraphs.com on Sunday or something and see, because I am going to repeat that analysis. I did not repeat it in the most recent post I put out, but I will repeat it in the next one. And probably also in the final, I'll probably do two more posts before election results start to come in. And I will include that analysis in both to see what that's doing. But from the previous analysis, it was about a point. It was about one percentage point. And when you, and if you move all the, if you move all the polls by a percent, it makes a big difference. Well, right now, this very second, if you moved all the polls 1% to the left, it would only add Pennsylvania to Harris's totals, but that would be enough to switch it from a Trump win to a Harris win.
|
Ivan:
[49:22]
| Exactly. I mean, that's it. This is how the ridiculously stupidly closest stupid thing is. This is just why it's just not.
|
Sam:
[49:33]
| I hate this thing and and i think and i think that we will know in a few days but like i i feel i feel like, you know my my my odds right now are giving harris let's see according to my models, and and accounting for the fact that i trust the uniform swing run a little bit better or the truth is closer to that one about a 25 chance a one in four chance if like the polling errors are like they have been the last four years. But I think there's a lot of good arguments for what you just said, that the polling errors are probably the other direction this time around. Now, I'm not putting that in my models. The models assume that the past is a good predictor of the future. But as they always say, you know, past performance is not an indicator of future results.
|
Ivan:
[50:28]
| You know, it goes back to the gambler's fallacy, man.
|
Sam:
[50:31]
| Yeah. So, okay.
|
Ivan:
[50:32]
| So, you know, it's like, hey, just, you know, hey, you know, oh, well, I didn't hit a six the last few times. I'm definitely, you know, the last 20 times.
|
Sam:
[50:40]
| I'm due.
|
Ivan:
[50:40]
| Yeah. My odds, I'm due for a six. No, no, you never are. No, the odds are still the same. Every damn time.
|
Sam:
[50:47]
| Well, the thing is with this kind of problem, though, the kinds of logic, it's not independent. Like for the gambler's fallacy, it's each time is independent. Like, but the argument you gave, wait, wait, the argument you gave is a prime example why that's not the case. There is an expectation you can build that it will be wrong in a certain way because of what's happened in the past. Now, sometimes it's like the intention of me using the last four elections was sort of like, hey, over the course of four, and I intend next time around in four years, I'll use five. Like I was going to, the desired timeframe was five elections, but I hadn't been doing this yet for five elections. So I had to use four. But the idea is over the course of that much time, there'll probably be errors in both directions. and you're basically measuring the magnitude of the variance and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and it'll sort of wash out. The reality of the last four election cycles is that if you average them out, they've underestimated a Republican more than a Democrat. So that's the way it works this time. But like, but yeah, it's not completely random, but it's still...
|
Sam:
[52:01]
| Yeah, maybe it's more likely, slightly, that they, all things being equal, that the Republicans would be underestimated again, but all things aren't equal. Right. Exactly. All of the things that you talked about before, and I'll also add now that we do have the early voting tea leaves and bones to shake and read like the entrails and all this kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[52:26]
| Like the one thing, like most of the early vote stuff at this point, I discount. Like they do partisan breakdowns, like how many Republicans have returned, how many Democrats have returned, blah, blah, blah. But that is impacted by a whole bunch of things. That involves cases where you're just moving votes and like, you know, people are early voting this time that that in person a day of voted last time and the other way around. And so it washes out. Also, you know, a big part of the Harris campaign is trying to appeal to Republicans. So you may have registered Republicans voting for Harris at numbers that are unknown right now. You know, and maybe some the other way, registered Democrats voting for Trump. And so it's hard to read that into the partisan numbers, but we have had some numbers on gender and age. And those right now are looking really good for Harris in terms of women are way overrepresented in those numbers.
|
Sam:
[53:31]
| The last numbers i saw were in terms of early vote it's like 55 45 women right now, and women on all the other polling when you look at crosstabs the gender gap is huge this year, and you know of course a lot of that is due to abortion a lot of that is just you know donald Trump is a misogynist pig, you know? And so you, you have that effect. Now I did see one thing that showed in at least some States. Yeah, it's 55, 45, but it was four years ago too. Like apparently women just like early voting more than men, you know? So maybe it's hard to read that it does look like younger people are, are at higher percentages than normal as well. They were really high in 2020 and 2022 as well, by the way. But younger folks are also another demographic that is highly skewed to Democrats right now. And so those, those all look good. So those all make me feel optimistic.
|
Ivan:
[54:43]
| I really hope. I, I, I, I, that young people turn out a lot more than they have before and not, and, and not with the bullshit that.
|
Sam:
[54:54]
| And no, no Jill Stein votes.
|
Ivan:
[54:56]
| Yeah. And, and I do think that from what, you know, we talk about vibes and we talk about what we hear.
|
Sam:
[55:03]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[55:04]
| The vibes in this election are totally different than 2016 in terms of who the woman is at the top of the ticket. A lot of young, a lot of young people distrusted Hillary.
|
Sam:
[55:13]
| Well. Well, it's not just young people. Remember, before she ran for president, there's been a campaign going decades to vilify Hillary Clinton.
|
Ivan:
[55:24]
| But I'm talking specifically about the younger demographic. They did not see Hillary the way that they see Kamala.
|
Sam:
[55:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[55:35]
| Okay? There is a totally different vibe. And another thing, younger people in general, in these generations, have been far more known to publicly express their sexual orientation, their sexual preference, to know a lot more people that are transgender, that are gay, than previous generations.
|
Sam:
[56:04]
| Absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[56:04]
| And I really hope that they take that messaging that the GOP is doing, which is basically vilifying so many of them, so many of their friends, so many of their family. And understand how important it is to not allow somebody that wants to make their expression of their true self a crime.
|
Sam:
[56:35]
| Yeah. I mean, like for, I mean, and of course this is going to vary from red state to blue state to purple state and from community to community, but there are huge portions of that generation, well over half, huge portions of that generation, that the fact this is even a question is offensive to their core.
|
Ivan:
[56:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[56:58]
| You know, the fact that it's even being discussed as opposed to taken as the absolute default that, of course, these people should be who they are.
|
Ivan:
[57:10]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[57:11]
| You know, and, and, you know, a whole bunch of the, this is why right now, the, that generation, well, this is why, this is one of the reasons why that generation is skewed highly Democrat right now. Now at some point presumably parties evolve and change and the republicans will evolve their positions to something different in response to the public pressure but that's not right now right now that's not right now right now they are doubling down on all this stuff doubling doubling down.
|
Ivan:
[57:48]
| They're they're they're advocating violence against these people they're they're they're criminalizing being who they are and let's not forget about women's rights.
|
Sam:
[57:58]
| As well.
|
Ivan:
[57:59]
| Shit man there's a whole bunch of republicans this week talking about you know they want to get rid of the 13th amendment.
|
Sam:
[58:09]
| Well and and more i mean.
|
Ivan:
[58:11]
| They really they they they they wanted to eliminate the.
|
Sam:
[58:15]
| Women's right to vote there have been i was like said that specifically there have been but even more so this week what has been going around i mean is that extreme is is the the harris campaign that built off this was building on social media anyway but the harris campaign actually put out an ad basically talking to women whose husbands were diehard maga saying you know this is private you don't have to tell them you know right you can vote for harris you know you don't have to tell them it's private it's completely like whatever, and a whole bunch of conservative men including high profile oh my god like burst a gasket over this that the the mere conception that their wife might not vote the way they want them to was throwing them into conniption fits.
|
Ivan:
[59:10]
| You know, it's so ridiculous. My mom and my dad, since I was very little, have not voted aligned. My mom in Puerto Rico voted for the statehood party. My dad voted for the party that wanted to remain in the current status quo. And that was a known... And by the way, those... Listen, those back then... It was so controversial. I mean, listen, this is the kind of stuff that erupted into violent fights, okay, in places. But my mom and dad showed me that, hey, you know what? You can't be, you know, now neither of those parties had positions like these psychopaths, okay? It was just about, you know, about the status of our political relationship with the United States. But they voted. it man my mom was very pro one party my dad was very pro the other party and that was perfectly fine that's okay when i hear people in 2024 where i got raised in a family that had that happen regularly and i hear this and i am like well i mean i'm like what the hell well.
|
Sam:
[1:00:17]
| Look at this at this point by the way like i honestly see like a difference of that sort like if you're if you're a diehard mega on one side of the couple and on the other side of the couple you're like.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:29]
| I don't even know how the hell the thing is i'm like hard maga the diehard maga right now is holding positions that basically are that women have no value yeah like i and i i don't see how you i don't see how you i see.
|
Sam:
[1:00:44]
| This as a perfectly valid reason for divorce i mean this is what happened to george conway right.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:49]
| Yes but.
|
Sam:
[1:00:51]
| Like i don't see how that survives in unless you really like don't care much, but if, but the point is, I see it as a legitimate reason to like dump your damn husband. But the, the idea that the sort of the, the thing that is being openly expressed by many of these conservative men is that I am the head of the household. I am the leader. I get to decide what is happening here. And it is my wife's duty. To vote the way i tell her to um you know uh what what's his name uh one of the people on fox i forget which one it was waters uh waters waters said specifically that if my wife was voting against my issues that's the same as cheating on me.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:37]
| Well let me let me break it to mr waters you know i know his mom despises his political.
|
Sam:
[1:01:43]
| Positions as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:44]
| And has openly said it on television, that basically his son is a fucking grifter loser. That's pretty bad. I'll tell you what, man, if I had my mom going out there calling me out that bad, you would think that you would be embarrassed, but that guy is just...
|
Sam:
[1:01:59]
| We need to move on to other things. So one more polling thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:02]
| Other things?
|
Sam:
[1:02:02]
| One more polling thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:03]
| One more polling thing.
|
Sam:
[1:02:04]
| You had talked about the potential effects, and we'll talk more about this in the next segment, I'm sure, but potential effects of the Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden. And we'll talk about the actual rally later. I'm only going to talk about polling. There has been a bunch of polls since then. The effect was somewhat mixed in the polls, but overall, it did seem like that caused a significant approximately one percentage point dip in the tipping point in the days immediately after that event that in in the polls afterward and by the tipping point by the way this means primarily pennsylvania because you know because pennsylvania has been the tipping point for the last week or two yeah well occasionally other things but mostly pennsylvania pennsylvania yeah like so it looks like about a one percent move because of that towards harris but since then that's popped back up in the other direction, back to almost where it was. But, but, and I want to put this out there explicitly, it looks like.
|
Sam:
[1:03:20]
| That is due to a couple of outliers that I don't necessarily believe. If you take them out, I think we're actually seeing approximately a 1% move so far, and we may see more of a move as more polls come in. Now, we have had a bunch of polls that are after that event. However like it takes a while for those like for those things to soak in to everybody who might care like there's some people who hear about it right away and change their minds and blah blah blah but it takes a while to soak in so we still have three days left we might see a little bit more of an effect from that like because because i think here's one thing here's my bottom line i think there was a 1% effect from it. That looks, it looks in the numbers that it's been reversed, but I think that's due to outliers that probably aren't real. So there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:17]
| Here's one thing about what I'm seeing about the effect of this. There was a poll down here in Florida where they pulled Puerto Ricans. They only pulled Puerto Ricans. They didn't pull Latinos, but they pulled Puerto Ricans. And there was a massive shift against Trump because I had mentioned before that puerto ricans had been like supporting trump in some 70 percent rate.
|
Sam:
[1:04:37]
| And by the way they're in florida there haven't been any polls that are entirely after this.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:43]
| Event now and so there is but but they did do a poll of puerto rican specifically to see that you know to track what the shift was it was a 20 shift amongst puerto ricans it was not a small shift and and and by and a 20 shift is a couple of hundred thousand votes it's not it's not in consequence Well.
|
Sam:
[1:05:01]
| Yeah, I was going to say, in Pennsylvania specifically, there are about 500,000 Puerto Ricans.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:06]
| Yeah, Puerto Ricans are going to be voters. Okay, right.
|
Sam:
[1:05:09]
| Yeah, Puerto Rican voters.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:10]
| Right. So it was a pretty significant shift. But there is one thing that I think probably polling is probably not able to capture, especially at this late time.
|
Sam:
[1:05:21]
| Yeah, because there's just not enough time.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:23]
| No, but it's not just, the thing is that there has been a lot of other Latino groups that had been, you know, they have talked about the effect that Trump was having in grabbing Latino voters and how he had been, you know, successful in grabbing them. This thing, the effect it had in Puerto Rico is there has been many other Latino groups that have also, I've seen the public...
|
Ivan:
[1:05:51]
| Messaging has been extremely supportive of Puerto Ricans in the face of this, how they have been in sympathy. So I would not be surprised that this isn't just, this thing didn't just have an impact in terms of Puerto Rican voters, which is a significant block, okay? The thing is that it's very misunderstood, okay, which is another issue, okay? But the fact that many, many of the other Latino groups, I would, based on what I've seen in the public comments, I've also had a shift. I am going to surmise that when you aggregate all the Latino groups, that this had a significant impact on their voting intention, okay? It was just that shocking of a statement. You know, very few, very, very few candidates I have seen, or campaigns in this case specifically, have made a statement that has been so polarizing to one group specifically.
|
Sam:
[1:06:54]
| Now, Yvonne, Trump says he had nothing to do with that. Even this morning, he was saying he still hasn't even seen the joke.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:02]
| Uh-huh. Yeah, sure. Uh-huh.
|
Sam:
[1:07:05]
| Because it wasn't him, it was some jackass comedian, but his script was vetted by the campaign. They made him take out a reference to Kamala. All being a cunt. I was going to say the c word thank you ivan but yeah to kamala being yes they they they made him take out that reference but leave all the other stuff in so obviously at least someone on the campaign was like.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:29]
| Oh yeah porto ricans are garbage yeah yeah that's good uh yeah kamala being a cut uh no no no that's good no no no that's too far that's too far i'm like you know who the hell goes through that and it like arrives at such a fucking you know conclusion it's like just has to be the most.
|
Sam:
[1:07:49]
| Okay, okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:49]
| But anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:07:50]
| We're running out of time. We're running out of time before you have to go. I'm going to run the next break, and then we will come back. All I wanted to say on the polling for that event was it looked like about a 1% effect before it reversed, but the reversal may be an illusion to the outliners. Maybe. Anyway, here comes a break. It's a wiki of the day, and when we come back, we'll power run through as much as we can get through before Yvonne has to leave. Here we go.
|
Break:
[1:08:16]
| Do, do, do. Hello. this is Neural Kimberly. I'm here to let you know about Sam the Curmudgeon'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 popular Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary for Singham Again. Singam Again is a 2024 Indian Hindi language action film written and directed by Rohit Shetty, who also co-produced it under Rohit Shetty Pictures, alongside Reliance Entertainment, Geo Studios, and Daivin Films. The film stars A.J. Daivin, Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Tiger Shroff, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Kapoor, and Jackie Shroff. It is the fifth installment of Shetty's Cop Universe franchise and a direct sequel to Singham Returns, 2014. The film was announced in September 2017 under the working title Singham 3, and the official title was announced in December 2022.
|
Break:
[1:09:27]
| Principal photography began in September 2023, and wrapped in September 2024. The film was shot in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka. It was released on November 1, 2024, coinciding with the Volley in standard and IMAX formats.
|
Break:
[1:09:47]
| That's all there is to it. See? Fun, entertaining, educational. And short. 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 curmudgeon's corner. Do do do.
|
Sam:
[1:10:10]
| Okay, one thing I forgot to say on the polling, just to, and I did this in my last blog post on electiongraphs.com if you want to look at that. But that was titled, what did I call it? More of the same, six days out, more of the same. But I did an exercise where instead of just looking at the current values, I took all of the central seven states and just looked at the overall trends and said, okay, if you actually trust the polling is roughly on, but don't look at the current value, look at sort of where they've been bouncing around and what's the center of that range. Here's my take on where you'd be. I'd give Wisconsin, Michigan to Harris for sure. I'd say Pennsylvania and Nevada are true toss up states. And you probably end up giving Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona to Trump. If the polls are roughly on track, and you just take the center of the ranges that they've been bouncing around on. And if you do that, if they're in that order. Nevada doesn't matter. It's too small. And guess what? It all comes down to Pennsylvania.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:13]
| Yeah. That's what I was thinking. It all fucking comes down to Pennsylvania.
|
Sam:
[1:11:17]
| If that's where it is. If the polls are systematically underestimating Harris, then Harris wins. If the polls are systematically underestimating Trump, then Trump wins. So there you go. That scenario that all comes down to Pennsylvania is the scenario where the polls are roughly right.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:33]
| So let me get this clear, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:11:35]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:36]
| We don't know what the fuck is going on, and then we'll just bite our nails until the fucking night of the election.
|
Sam:
[1:11:41]
| That's right. That's right. And maybe the week of the election. It might take a while to get results in key states if they really do.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:49]
| It might take a while.
|
Sam:
[1:11:52]
| And by the way, even the popular vote margin has narrowed. So I fully expect Harris will win the popular vote no matter what. But if it's really close, at first it will look like Trump is ahead in the popular vote. And Harris will only catch up once California finishes counting the votes, which takes like weeks.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:15]
| Yeah, they're super slow.
|
Sam:
[1:12:17]
| Okay. So what else should we have? I do want to, there's more presidential stuff, but I don't want to ignore, like, what are our final thoughts on the House and Senate?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:29]
| It's too close to call.
|
Sam:
[1:12:30]
| We also don't know. Same damn thing. We don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:34]
| It's too close to call. I mean, I just, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:12:39]
| If I had to guess, my guess is the same as it was at our prediction show last December. Democrats take back the House, but they lose the Senate. If I had to guess. But these are also too close, and it depends on if they're all too close to call. And if Polo.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:56]
| They're all too effing close to call. I mean, look, you know what I was talking about, you know, and some of the coattails related to some of the stuff. You know, I don't know, man. I don't know. You know, Ted Cruz is a deeply unpopular guy. Ted Cruz is unpopular amongst Republicans. And the guy who's been running against them has been running a very good campaign and that campaign was close that fan pain was in close i mean a lot closer than it would be with the same, republican okay it always say if i would put mitt romney in texas okay he would probably be ahead by 15 points okay but instead it's ted cruz and so you've got this this nail biter the same in florida But look, some of the recent polls had Rick Scott ahead by four. Rick Scott isn't as hated as Ted Cruz, but man, that guy is not loved either. There is no, you know, passionate Rick Scott supporters don't really exist. Okay. The guy is just one of these like real weasels. And it's just, you know, he managed to win. The 2018 by less than 20,000 votes. It was super thin. It was paper thin, the margin.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:24]
| He has a woman running against him. There's an abortion thing on the ballot. Rick Scott this week was scrambling to disassociate himself to all the Puerto Rico is garbage comments this week. Because he knows that this can be close because he's lived it before. And so I don't know. But, I mean, given how the state has been, I mean, you have to give the edge to Scott there. I just don't, I don't know. I don't know. Look, in 2020, we thought that we wouldn't get a single Georgia seat.
|
Sam:
[1:15:07]
| Right. And you ended up with two.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:08]
| And we got, and we ended up with two. So that's the whole thing about this. The data tells you that the odds are stacked against the Democrats, but at the same time, that's what we thought four years ago, and it turned out that, well, we got the Senate.
|
Sam:
[1:15:26]
| Well, I think there is potentially a coattails effect here, right? If we, in fact, if polls are systematically understating Harris, Kamala.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:37]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| I've been saying Harris because I keep messing up her first name. Sorry. But if the polls are systematically underestimating her and she's actually doing strongly in all of these states, then that there may be Senate coattails that go along with that. On the other hand, if they're underestimating Trump again, remember what happened to the Senate races four years ago. Like we thought like Lindsey Graham was in danger. We, you know, there are a whole bunch of Republican senators we thought were in danger that it was going to be close. It was going to be way closer than it had been in the past. And instead, the Republicans handily won those races. It wasn't close.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:20]
| Yeah, but we won Arizona.
|
Sam:
[1:16:22]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:24]
| But there were counters to that. Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. I mean, we had a number of those that turned the other way. And it's just because it's so close. So therefore, it's like, I wouldn't be surprised by any of the outcomes like right now at this point in the Senate. But I just would not.
|
Sam:
[1:16:43]
| And honestly, I wouldn't be surprised by either outcome in the House either. Although I think the Democrats have a stronger case there. But again, the same effects make this close too and could go either way. Okay, we got the House and the Senate.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:16:58]
| And we've talked the presidential to death. A final prediction for me. I'm going to say, despite what my models say, that she only has a 25% chance, I'm going to say Harris pulls it out and wins. And maybe it's not even close. Maybe she wins easily. But I'll be fully honest. A lot of this is my hope speaking. Like i i have reasons that seem rational to do that but maybe i'm like i'm trying to find the reasons to get the answer i want but i'm gonna predict harris wins because frankly the alternative is really bad you know i well.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:43]
| I i'm gonna go with like look i'm not gonna make any.
|
Sam:
[1:17:47]
| Predictions right.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:48]
| Now uh i i i i sincerely hope that harris wins but my prediction already for this year i I already.
|
Sam:
[1:17:56]
| Lost.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:59]
| Well, that was pain was one.
|
Sam:
[1:18:00]
| Fidel Castro will die.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:01]
| Always.
|
Sam:
[1:18:02]
| Again.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:03]
| Fidel Castro will die again. Okay. I think he's still dead. But I believe, I predicted that Biden would win. Obviously, already wrong. I already lost.
|
Sam:
[1:18:13]
| My prediction.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:14]
| I don't think I'm allowed. I don't think I'm allowed.
|
Sam:
[1:18:17]
| No substitution.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:18]
| No, I said, but no substitution. So I already lost that prediction.
|
Sam:
[1:18:23]
| My prediction was Trump was going to win back from in December. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:30]
| I, you know, so I, I'm already lost on that one. I am, you know, I am really hoping that, you know, that, that, that Trump loses. I don't know if that's going to happen. I i don't know what's going to happen all i know is what i hope is going to happen that's all okay and in other news just to just to provide an update because we used to go to this restaurant very much okay newsflash just came in fridays file for break fridays file for break yep i see.
|
Sam:
[1:19:03]
| It on my screen right now too.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:05]
| It just popped up in the news you know and man we used to go very we talked.
|
Sam:
[1:19:11]
| We talked a little while ago about like uh the closest one to me and i got it wrong and then we looked it up and the closest one to me is.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:18]
| Spokane. The Chili's.
|
Sam:
[1:19:19]
| Oh, that was Chili's? No, that was Chili's. No, no, it was about Chili's. Oh, that was Chili's. You're right, you're right. That wasn't Friday's. But yeah, Friday's, Friday's filing for bankruptcy. Now, filing for bankruptcy does not mean necessarily that all the stores will disappear. They might.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:35]
| But they've been doing terribly for a long, long time. I think that many of the restaurant chains that have been doing poorly before the pandemic with all the changes that happened. It just really, if they were like.
|
Sam:
[1:19:51]
| Okay, you got to go soon. Let's finish up the election stuff. Because you got to leave very soon.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:58]
| Well, sorry, but we had a- Breaking news.
|
Sam:
[1:20:00]
| Breaking news. It's important.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:01]
| Breaking news.
|
Sam:
[1:20:03]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:05]
| Isn't that the place that Rebecca threatened Pete with a knife?
|
Sam:
[1:20:08]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:10]
| Well, anyway, Pete, if he listens to this, I think it was Rebecca that threatened Pete with a knife.
|
Sam:
[1:20:13]
| Out of Friday.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:14]
| Not somewhere i think it was a fridays i think it was at a fridays that's it yeah well this is the kind of stuff that happened we're in college and drunk sorry.
|
Sam:
[1:20:23]
| Yeah okay anyway anyway, And anything more about the Madison Square Garden Nazi slash Klan rally that had there? I mean, aside from Puerto Rico comment.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:35]
| Aside from aside from that, you know, the thing is that what that probably wasn't even the most offensive thing that happened as far as I could tell.
|
Sam:
[1:20:44]
| It just happened to be the one that Greg on our Commudgeon's Corner Slack just pointed out, in addition to the PR garbage, it had somebody who called Harris the Antichrist.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:55]
| Harris.
|
Sam:
[1:20:56]
| Tucker made a racist statement about her as well. There were practically, oh, and Giuliani said some really unhinged stuff there too. It was just the whole thing. I've seen people describe it as just, it was just a hate speech event from beginning to end practically. It was alienating to anybody who is not a straight white male Christian, like, was pushed away by that.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:31]
| I try to see if I can find somebody summarizing all the things, the offensive things that happened, but, you know, I haven't found it yet. But it's just, but I, you know, you know, but there were just, somebody said msg rallies right sets a bar not as bad as hitler.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:58]
| This is this is this is the bar at or or at you know it's just i i, you know i don't know what what what to say about this it's just you know when that's the bar, oh it's just i i just you know it's just crazy i mean this is the bar that we're at this is you know oh oh oh yeah i i mean and by the way i you know they say it's not as bad as hitler but mass deportations you know was a big part of what hitler did now he's not he's not saying that they're going to get sent to you know the gas chambers maybe that's about the only thing that we he's not he hasn't purported that he's going to set up gas chambers but but hey you know don't put it past them um yeah i mean he didn't want he didn't want a firing squad for for liz cheney this week well.
|
Sam:
[1:23:01]
| And in terms of the deportation they they've explicitly said they want like camps to put these people in before they can deport them.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:11]
| And what.
|
Sam:
[1:23:12]
| The hell you're and you're talking millions of people that they want to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:15]
| And by the way concentration camps okay good and and and.
|
Sam:
[1:23:19]
| Basically and by the way they've made it clear at this point that they're not just talking illegal immigrants, there's a significant chunk of legal immigrants that they want to deport to.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:31]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:23:31]
| They want to revoke their immigration status and send them the hell out of here. And they've previously made statements. They want to get rid of birthright citizenship as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:40]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:23:41]
| You know, so it's not even legal and illegal. It's not just illegal immigrants. It's not just legal immigrants. It's also people who are born citizens but they don't think you had the right parents.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:55]
| Yeah you don't have the right parents that's right.
|
Sam:
[1:23:58]
| And and so yeah this is okay uh at the at the rally one other thing trump made a comment about some sort of secret plan he had with speaker johnson.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:09]
| Oh here's one here's a good one i found hinge one other hinge clip go hey when it comes to israel and palace by the way i am quoting a joke i do not endorse this joke i want to be clear, I think it's I think it's disgusting when it comes to Israel and Palestine we're all thinking the same thing send all your stuff already best out of three rock paper scissors you know Palestinians will throw a rock every time and also we know Jews have a hard time throwing that paper, you know these are the kind of i saw one person and and these latinos they love this is they some other speaker and these latinos they love making babies too just know that they do they do there's no pulling out they don't do that they come inside just like they did to our country i.
|
Sam:
[1:24:54]
| Think that was the same guy actually.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:55]
| I don't know if that's the same guys like i guess it kind of looks like the same guy well it's got an asshole face i saw one person say that she's some Some sick bastard that Hillary Clinton. What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party. A bunch of degenerates, low-life Jew haters, and low-lifes. Every one of them. Every one of them. Let's see. Da-da-da. America. Steve Miller. America is for Americans, and Americans only. Steve Miller. Let's see. Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone calls Mark Cuban a simp and says Kamala has pimp handlers. He then says of Democrats, we need to slaughter those other people.
|
Sam:
[1:25:35]
| Okay. We get, we get the point. I saw one person try to say, I don't know how serious they were, but basically that one comedian, like half of the things you read were from that one comedian. Like that he was actually, he, he must actually be a plant that is trying to make them look bad and hurt them. Uh, I don't think so. I think he met every single one of those things.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:00]
| You know it's a sam it's this whole thing where there is there is a very big divide amongst comedians right now related to this and you and i talked about this a while back where one of the things that what why we don't support this kind i don't support this kind of comp more i thought like maybe 30 years ago ha ha ha they were they were just trying to make jokes whatever is that we've i i have come and and you as well to the realization these guys yeah never they actually mean.
|
Sam:
[1:26:26]
| They're using, oh, it's a joke as a cover to say what they actually believe.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:31]
| As a cover to say what they actually believe. Exactly. So no. No. These guys are not joking. And that's the problem. And there have been some, this has created a significant divide amongst the comedian community where some comedians will defend this guy but some others that have been around and said listen stop the bullshit these guys really mean it they're using comedy as a way to hide you know which is you realize you gotta you gotta stop giving them any slack yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:56]
| I i mean vance said people need to get over it and not be so offended by every little thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:02]
| Oh yeah i mean and they got offended by by by a a made up By them taking comment that Biden did, okay, and framing it differently and saying that he called them garbage. And they're all like, oh, my God, look, I call me garbage. Oh, my God, Jesus Christ. These Democrats, they're getting me. I'm like, you know, they love to have it both ways every fucking time. I'm sick and tired of them.
|
Sam:
[1:27:29]
| Yeah, just to be clear, this was Biden says what he said was that the only garbage he saw was Trump's supporters, supporter apostrophe S garbage, speaking about the comedian spewing garbage.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:44]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[1:27:44]
| But of course, this was taken as Trump supporters are garbage, which took over the media cycle right when all of the stuff about Madison Square Garden. Yeah, for a short amount of time. But like maybe that little reversal I saw wasn't like fake outliers. It's really like a reversal based on like people stopped talking about Madison Square Garden and started talking about this. I don't know. But like we'll see what the next few polls say. We've got time for a couple more polls before the election. But the bottom line, though, is I think anybody who is pushing that narrative was completely disingenuous. But at the same time, like for 24 hours, everybody was talking about this Joe Biden gaffe and how it changed everything and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:33]
| And it pissed me off. The worst thing is that people that are Democrats were saying it was a gaffe instead of like, no, that's not what he said. I heard it specifically. It's not what he said. And you guys are saying that he's made a gaffe when he didn't. That's not what he said. Damn it.
|
Sam:
[1:28:49]
| And so Harris had to distance herself from it and say, look, I would never say anything about that based on how people vote, blah, blah, blah. I will, though. Trump supporters are garbage. Sorry.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:59]
| I will, too. Some Trump supporters are garbage. Fuck. Fuck. OK. All right. But Biden didn't say that because he's a much classier guy than I am.
|
Sam:
[1:29:07]
| Yeah. There you go. OK. All right.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:10]
| We got to go.
|
Sam:
[1:29:11]
| I know the Trump Johnson secret. I think if basically this is being assumed to be as if the house goes Republican again, that Johnson will use his powers to try to gum up the works on this January 6th. In a way that did not succeed last time around, but they'll try again. That's how it's being interpreted. And I will say also on that there's massive setting the stage for that, because while on all of the sort of mainstream and liberal media, everybody is like, we have been today. It's too close to call. It's too close to call. It's too close to call. If you go on any conservative media whatsoever.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:54]
| They're saying that Trump is winning.
|
Sam:
[1:29:56]
| That Trump is winning. He's got it in the bag. It's not even going to be close. Trump's ahead. And all of that is setting up the narrative that if Harris quote unquote wins, it's because she cheated and it's stolen and there's shenanigans and it's setting up to repeat what we'd had four years ago. Um, that's exactly right. Uh, Bruce asked if there was an October surprise this time around. If so, what I would say there've been attempts at an October surprise, but none that have really been there. If the Madison square Garden is the closest thing there is to an October surprise to Trump's October surprising himself but really self but yeah basically but but honestly I don't think there's been a successful October surprise there is no Comey letter this time around no um no uh we have the tide of Harrison endorsements after Madison Square Garden we talked about the vibes the European Green parties asked Jill Stein to drop out. Of course, she's not going to end. It's too late anyway, even if she did. And that's the end of our list.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:00]
| So that's the end of the list.
|
Sam:
[1:31:02]
| So I will remind people again, we will be live streaming election night. So zero UTC as polls are closing, which is 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific U.S. time. We will be live streaming. The place to go look for that is... Youtube.com slash at sign curmudgeons hyphen corner. Go there for our live stream. We will be on for hours while we watch the stuff come in. We'll probably include a shortened edited down version of that at the end of our next actual show, which we will record at the usual time later in the week. Otherwise, curmudgeons hyphen corner.com. You can find our transcripts, links to all the ways to contact us, a link to our Patreon where you can give us money. At various levels. We'll send you a postcard, a mug. We'll mention you on the show, all that kind of stuff at $2 a month or more. Or if you just ask, we will invite you to our Commissions Corner Slack where you can hang out with Yvonne and I and other listeners to share links and chat and all that kind of stuff. I'm assuming you don't have time for a highlight from the Slack, right, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:14]
| Gosh. No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:32:20]
| No. And so that's it. Uh, next time we talk, well, if you listen to the live stream, you'll hear our reactions live for election night. Otherwise our next regular show will be after the election. In the meantime, check election graphs.com daily for my poll updates and check the blog section. I'll probably do two more blog posts before election night with updates. And that's it. Hey, good luck, everybody. If you haven't voted yet and you are going to vote for Harris, please go vote if you're going to vote for Donald Trump, go fuck yourself and leave yeah, sorry the same, yes okay, and that's it good luck, have a great week stay safe, vote blah blah blah, here comes the outro, are you ready to say goodbye Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:15]
| Bye bye Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:33:16]
| Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. One more goodbye from Yorban.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:20]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:33:51]
| Okay, I'm off to put in all the polls that have come in while we were recording. There were like a half dozen. Okay, bye, Vaughn.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:59]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:34:00]
| Here comes the stop button.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:01]
| Okay, go, go, go.
| |
|
