Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Greetings greetings salutations uh okay you hear me okay uh-huh okay i know and get this a little closer i don't know where'd i go here we go blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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Ivan:
[0:18]
| Blah blah blah that's what we could do why don't we just do a whole show where instead of actually saying any words.
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Sam:
[0:25]
| Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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Ivan:
[0:34]
| Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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Sam:
[0:38]
| Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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Ivan:
[0:40]
| Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
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Sam:
[0:41]
| Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and the thing got boo-boo. There we go.
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Ivan:
[0:48]
| Boo-boo.
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Sam:
[0:50]
| Shall we just jump right in then?
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Ivan:
[0:53]
| Yeah, I mean, yeah.
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Sam:
[0:55]
| I can only see half your head.
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Ivan:
[0:57]
| Half? Half?
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Sam:
[0:59]
| I can see your nose and one eye. Because you're leaning back. Oh, well, because the riverside, like, is showing me the center, not the hole.
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Ivan:
[1:14]
| Oh, I see. And actually what I saw, okay, I, I did. Okay. Here's the, because it does.
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Sam:
[1:19]
| It's showing me like a vertically.
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Ivan:
[1:21]
| Okay. All right. You've got the vertical. I've got it, or it's horizontal one on the top of the other. So I see me in there. No problem. Now, if I, what now, if I go and I widen the, the, my browser, then it puts me vertical. Then I can't see myself. Then I just see an elbow. well that sucks hold on well okay hang on wait wait wait okay oh fuck what you're just gonna put yourself in the middle no i gotta okay i have to oh fuck hold on i can i can i can fix this i can do this oh.
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Sam:
[2:00]
| You're you're gonna do the auto tracking thing of course that makes.
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Ivan:
[2:03]
| Me dizzy the whole damn no no i'm not gonna do the auto tracking what i'm gonna do is i can there we go I can pan and Manually?
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Sam:
[2:15]
| Okay Yes.
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Ivan:
[2:16]
| You can do it manually So I just pan the camera.
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Sam:
[2:19]
| Good enough You can be laid back in your chair like you are Instead of sitting up straight Right.
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Ivan:
[2:26]
| Because I'm old I'm tired I did I understand.
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Sam:
[2:33]
| Shall we just start the show? Yes Okay, here we go here we go bleh.
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Ivan:
[2:40]
| Bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh get Sam dizzy.
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Sam:
[2:44]
| It's a wonderful world here you go, Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, April 18th, 2025. It's just after 2.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Inter and Yvonne Bo is here again for the whole show, not just the 15-minute recording he sent in. So, welcome, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[3:26]
| At least I did send a recording. Hello.
|
Sam:
[3:28]
| No, no, that was great. That was great. And, you know, I talked around. I reacted to you.
|
Ivan:
[3:34]
| I did the best I could. But I, you know, I went to three funerals for four people in one week.
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Sam:
[3:45]
| That is quite a lot.
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Ivan:
[3:47]
| I don't, and I don't remember when the last time I had been to a funeral. It had to have been years and years. Well, the last funeral that we had in the family, unfortunately, was during COVID. We couldn't get together for it.
|
Sam:
[4:05]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[4:06]
| It was right at the start of a pandemic.
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Sam:
[4:09]
| I think I had two last year. One was for an uncle of mine that I attended via Zoom. And the other was for my sister's grandfather, my step-grandfather, as it were, that I attended a few months earlier. And I included the eulogy for that in on the show.
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Ivan:
[4:36]
| Yes, yes, yes, yes. I remember this. Yes.
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Sam:
[4:38]
| But, but, and then my, my mother's last remaining brother passed away last year as well. And that one, that one's the one I attended via zoom.
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Ivan:
[4:49]
| Um, well, so, so the thing is that there was only one, the, there was only one relative of mine. And actually the one for my relative is the one that caused me to have to change all my plans. Because the thing is that this is my, one of my, my father's first cousins. And I did share, you know, her a bit on our Slack, because during a time when women never got educated, okay, I had two of my elderly, like, women, you know, ancestors, okay, my grandmother and this first cousin, that both graduated from college before the age of 20. Because they were that fucking smart, okay? Right. And proceeded to go and, like, get master's degrees and shit like this.
|
Sam:
[5:43]
| And what years are we talking? Like, when would they have been here? In the 20s.
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Ivan:
[5:47]
| In the 1920s and 30s.
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Sam:
[5:49]
| Wow, yeah.
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Ivan:
[5:49]
| Yeah, this is not normal. This is a time when no women did this, okay?
|
Sam:
[5:56]
| Or at least it was very rare. It was very rare.
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Ivan:
[6:00]
| It was very, very rare.
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Sam:
[6:01]
| I believe my grandmother, my mother's mother, also was college educated in the 1920s, early 30s, whatever. But yeah, it was, it stood out a lot.
|
Ivan:
[6:15]
| It was more rare from Puerto Rico, okay, all right? Add to that, Puerto Rico was extremely poor and uneducated at that time, okay? So, and the fact that she came to the U.S. To do her master's, okay, also, that was not normal. She went to the University of Florida and was doing that, and she met her husband there.
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Ivan:
[6:42]
| The person who became her husband. And they moved. He happened to be from Palm Beach County. And so they lived here. I'd seen him a few times. I didn't see his office as I would like. But we did have a good. We just had a good relationship with them. Always very helpful. Always very kind. And so she passed away. She was 95. The one thing is that she also. She was very. With my brother specifically. She was very close. So my brother. Who was in Texas. You know. Hard to do is he hopped on a plane and came over for, for the service. And so, you know, so I had to, you know, I was like, well, I didn't have to, but I'm like, my brother's coming to town. He doesn't live here. And I'm like, well, you know, fuck, I'll, I'll go pick you up at the airport. And, but the thing is that in between all of that, the weekend before I had, I have like three friends that went to school with me in Puerto Rico that live here that I talked to that are close. Two of them had their fathers die, okay? Pretty close to each other, okay? And then one of them had their sister die as well. Unfortunately, at age 49 of cancer. So the service the week before was for the father and the sister at the same fucking time.
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Ivan:
[8:03]
| You know, so it was... Yeah. Now, what do you think about this is that I this is somebody who while I was growing up from very, you know, elementary school all the way through high school, I slept at their house all the time. It's the place that I slept away from my house the most during that time. OK, during all those years. And so i spent a lot of time so i knew her you know i knew her parents or brothers cousins you know i i stayed i stayed with him a lot i mean i stayed over there a lot i mean and you know so so we were that close and so but one thing is that you know we never really went to church but we did a catholic service and i was like i was making the joke that to them because there was like still four four male brothers that are alive okay all right you know and i said uh you know what the fuck is this we've got the worst bunch of fucking catholics do the catholics.
|
Ivan:
[9:11]
| Why the fuck are we doing this y'all laugh i was like what the fuck else are we supposed to do well yeah good boy the hell else are we gonna do also from that one is you know as i came to find out one of the cousins who came was some MAGA dickhead and he started spouting up some MAGA stuff and my the discussion started it was around asylum specifically.
|
Ivan:
[9:36]
| I guess he was very upset about people getting asylum and that the that that that that uh that the u.s so why the fuck do we have to take more people you know why the hell do we get give asylum to more people than anybody and my buddy who went to high school by the way remember this guy i don't think i think that his education whatever it was is not very good you know my my my my buddy whose dad passed his sister remember it was his brother sister okay yep he went to johns hopkins okay all right you know he's an engineer he's a pretty bright guy okay you know i got me i'm not that stupid either and i got this moron well i mean no no no we know no no no no no we know this guy i mean if this guy maybe got a certificate from trump you or something he's starting to argue with him about statistics he's arguing with a guy whose father died at his house and so he starts giving her shit i i i i hear this and i hear him trying to tell him how he knows more about it and i you know saying how all these immigrants get everything they want and and i just look i saw his girlfriend's also looking at rolling her eyes at this and i just i fucking lost it i went and i I just said, listen, fucker, free shit. You mean to tell me that all those fuckers that are cutting the grass outside of here and fucking fixing the roofs? They're coming in and they're living.
|
Ivan:
[11:01]
| What free shit are they getting, you dumb dickhead? And let me tell you. And after I said that, let me tell you something. I don't even want to have this fucking discussion. We're at a fucking funeral. And these kind of gatherings, you don't talk about politics or fucking religion. So why don't you just shut the fuck up?
|
Sam:
[11:17]
| And then there was a round of applause.
|
Ivan:
[11:20]
| Basically what I heard afterwards was that that's exactly what happened that they all like just were like oh thank god somebody shut him the fuck up right, So that was my good deed for that weekend. And then came the next weekend where the funeral mass was for this other friend that I, I know her, I hadn't been as close with her, but she went with me also from elementary school. These are two people that died are both people that I went to elementary school that I've known through my life. Okay. So it's, it's, you know, it's, it's quite a long ways. We were in the same class together and her father died. And the thing is her, I told her, yes, I'm going to come to the mass, you know, because I met your dad. I've seen her dad, but we, we socialize regularly. So I, it's not like I don't see her. So, so I said, no, no, no, I'm going to come over, you know, because I know, you know, they're going to do it here because her parents have moved up here. And so that was at 10 AM. And then at one o'clock was the other service. And so I, I, I literally, the day of those services to go through all these services, pick up my brother, take him up to go back. I wound up driving over 200 miles to go all over to, to do this.
|
Ivan:
[12:29]
| You know, the service for my friend was very small, but my dad's cousin, she had seven kids. And then I listen, the number of seven kids, those got married, grandchildren. Listen, there were hundreds of people at the service. This is just just the family part, just the family part. Right. Just a ridiculous amount of people. OK, so that was an awful big service. The other one was very small, okay, in part because they hadn't lived up here that long. And I think some people did come from out of town, but not as many. I think they actually went to Puerto Rico to do a service there. So this was like a final service, but they did something there. So this shit's not fun.
|
Sam:
[13:20]
| No, no. I mean, people always try to make like funerals like a celebration of their life and a happier thing. But they're still sad.
|
Ivan:
[13:31]
| I did, you know, I did, you know, there were some funny jokes that were thrown around and some stuff. And it was sometimes good to see certain people you hadn't seen in a while. And I, and I, and I, I will say that one of the biggest reasons to, to do this is to provide some comfort to those that are the closest to them.
|
Sam:
[13:50]
| Yeah. It's just suffering, you know.
|
Ivan:
[13:52]
| Because it's, you know, it's hard. Yeah. I mean, I, I, so that, that's basically the main thing. you go there to be there for them. And actually, one of the things, you talk about a celebration, we do make, it is funny to bring up some anecdotes about stuff that happened with them and stuff over the years. You laugh about shit, whatever, whatnot. That's always, and you get to, sometimes there are certain people that you haven't seen in a long time that you get to see. So, you know, and I took the opportunity that because my brother was here that, you know, I mean, my brother doesn't live here. So you don't get to do this that often. Take out, take my dad and my brother. We all went to lunch with mom and two. So we all, so we all got to do that. So, you know, so that was a thing. But yeah, so my, my somber.
|
Sam:
[14:52]
| I am hoping there will be less funerals for you next week.
|
Ivan:
[14:56]
| Well, here's the one thing. We got less people to kill now.
|
Sam:
[15:00]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[15:01]
| It is one thing about, I guess, getting to a little bit to this age. Everybody starts fucking dying. I also had, I found out that my, actually, I was told last, last Friday when I came in, I bumped into who is my boss's boss's boss, who's a friend, who's a, who's a friend of mine. So I know when I took my brother to lunch after the airport, he goes and he sees me, what are you doing? Aren't you working? And I'm like, dude, I'm going to look, he was, he was giving me shit. He's like, is this at a rest at a restaurant? He was at the fucking restaurant. I'm like, listen, yeah, we're going to a fucking funeral. Give me a fucking break. And he's like, oh, get out of here. I'm like, and I found out that my, that the guy who is his direct report, who's my boss's boss.
|
Sam:
[15:50]
| His father was in hospice.
|
Ivan:
[15:52]
| Okay. Right. And he just happened to pass away. Yesterday as well. Now, he happens to be in Argentina, so I sent his condolences. I don't think I'm going to... To Buenos Aires for that one. I didn't actually know him. I mean, I know him, but I don't know his father. And that one, I just sent my condolences. I mean, that was... So that one... But yeah, so I don't know. Getting too many people dying around me right now. I hope this isn't rubbing off. I got wood or something. Gotta do something. What do you do for good luck? Like, toss salt over my shoulder? I don't know. Something.
|
Sam:
[16:34]
| Well, the wood thing is one of the superstitions. The knock on wood thing.
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Ivan:
[16:39]
| I don't know. Yeah, this is okay. Wood. Wood. Okay. Yeah. Wood. Wood is one. I don't know. Is it real wood?
|
Sam:
[16:47]
| Or did you just knock on plastic or something? No, no, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[16:49]
| No. There's real wood there. Yes, there's real wood. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[16:53]
| There you go. There is real wood.
|
Ivan:
[16:54]
| Then it's okay.
|
Sam:
[16:55]
| Then it'll work. You know, because if it's fake wood.
|
Ivan:
[16:58]
| Then I'm going to kill. That means I just sent in somebody's death. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[17:02]
| That's how it works.
|
Ivan:
[17:03]
| That would be bad.
|
Sam:
[17:07]
| Okay all right so okay.
|
Ivan:
[17:08]
| All right enough with the with the gloom and doom which which by.
|
Sam:
[17:12]
| The way actually i don't know what.
|
Ivan:
[17:13]
| The hell i'm talking about we're gonna talk about the news the fuck am i saying.
|
Sam:
[17:16]
| Yeah well we'll take a quick break this is the happy.
|
Ivan:
[17:20]
| Frothy part at this point well.
|
Sam:
[17:22]
| I i will do a movie next however it's a kind of dark movie too so oh fuck this can't you pick.
|
Ivan:
[17:29]
| No no no pick a happy movie no no.
|
Sam:
[17:33]
| I'm going in order oh fuck this so and then after that like you said we'll take a break what is a Schindler's List that we got.
|
Ivan:
[17:42]
| Like now or something Jesus Christ not.
|
Sam:
[17:44]
| Yet although I did watch that recently that is a fucking.
|
Ivan:
[17:52]
| Depressing movie it's a well made movie and it's fucking like depressing as all I'm.
|
Sam:
[17:57]
| Not going to talk about it now like it's but like Alex and I watched that like within the last few weeks so it'll it'll probably be a year to try to explain to people oh We are talking about it. No, no, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[18:12]
| No, no, no. I'm going to talk about Liam Neeson, who's trying to explain to people that Liam Neeson was a serious, like dramatic actor and that he didn't become an action star until many, many, many years later. It's one of those bizarre things that you realize that how fucking old we are, because you get, oh, no, Liam Neeson, like, you know, all these action movies, whatever action. Yeah, yeah, that's, listen, even Liam Neeson himself said, as an older guy, he was like, listen, I don't know, they said that I should do this movie, I thought it was crazy, how's this going to work, I'm an old guy, now I'm going to be an action star, and then all of a sudden, blambo! I'm like, you know, the action star of the...
|
Sam:
[18:58]
| Let me tell you, and this is getting ahead of things, but we watched Schindler's List one week, which has Liam Neeson. Yeah. The very, I'm pretty sure it was the very next movie we watched was The Phantom Menace, which also has Liam Neeson.
|
Ivan:
[19:18]
| Now, now, but here's the thing. Somebody was arguing with me, oh, he was in The Phantom Menace. That's an action movie. I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. No. I'm sorry, nobody equates like Chuck Norris. Like action movie with like Star Wars. Star Wars is a sci-fi movie that had action. Let me add.
|
Sam:
[19:42]
| Then within a short amount of time after that, we also watched like Batman Rises or whatever it is, the third Batman movie, which had him in it as well as a cameo. You did that one too?
|
Ivan:
[19:54]
| Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[19:55]
| He was in Batman Begins in a more prominent role, but it had flashbacks to that one. Listen, can I be honest? Anyway, but the point is we had like multiple movies in a row with Liam Neeson.
|
Ivan:
[20:06]
| And I was like.
|
Sam:
[20:07]
| What the hell? Is this the same guy?
|
Ivan:
[20:09]
| It's like, can I just say something? It's like, I lost.
|
Sam:
[20:12]
| It's like Schindler really took a turn later and became a Jedi. What the fuck?
|
Ivan:
[20:17]
| Well, I think he was a Jedi first before he was, he was, oh, wait, no. Schindler first. Right. Then he became a Jedi. And then he became an assassin.
|
Sam:
[20:27]
| And, and yeah. And whatever he was in Batman. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[20:31]
| Well, here, but, but here's, okay. Can I just say that you just mentioned these Batman movies? And a bunch of other stuff. Listen, they've made so many Batman movies. I gotta be honest. I watched the Batman that had Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Yes, yes. And I think that I watched...
|
Sam:
[20:54]
| By the way, I just want to say, the movie that I will be talking about is a Jack Nicholson movie. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so there we go.
|
Ivan:
[21:01]
| We got Jack Nicholson. and then I think I watched The Dark Knight. Okay.
|
Sam:
[21:08]
| That's it.
|
Ivan:
[21:09]
| And I think, and by the way, I did not watch The Dark Knight because I wanted to watch it. It's just because I was somewhere and somebody put it on. But, There have been so many fucking Batmans and Batman movies in the last 30 fucking years. It's fucking confusing. I don't, I, and they've, they've re, I mean, I've never seen, how the hell could they reboot the same fucking character like five fucking different times in 30 years? And they've milked the shit out of it somehow. And people keep watching it too. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:50]
| And there have been multiple Supermans and multiple Spamans. Spider-Men and, you know. I don't think there have been.
|
Ivan:
[21:55]
| As many fucking, well, the Spider-Mens are also confusing. I think I also watched the first one and then the rest, I'm like, I'll fuck off.
|
Sam:
[22:02]
| Well, and then they brought them together. Like the different. Anyway, yes.
|
Ivan:
[22:08]
| Come on, get the fuck out of here. You guys, just, you know.
|
Sam:
[22:13]
| Fuck all of you.
|
Ivan:
[22:14]
| I mean, seriously.
|
Sam:
[22:15]
| Okay so my actual movie for today is another one of these afi 100 years 100 movies once and i as as folks who've listened a while know i've been slowly working that the this is the 1998 list that came out on the 100th anniversary of the invention of movies and so So it was the 100 best movies from the first 100 years that movies existed. They put out an updated list in 2007, but it's a 1998 list that I'm going through. I am pretty sure I started at number 100, if not in 1998, then fairly soon afterwards. So you can tell it's been a while. As of the one I'm going to talk about today, what I'm talking about today is number 19 on the list. But I will mention that I watched the... We watched this back in July and we have accelerated because as of right now, this very second, we're about to enter the top five. Like the next one from this list that I'm going to watch is number five. So we're almost done. And Alex and I have actually decided that once we have finished with number one, we're going to start the 2007 list. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[23:39]
| And so just.
|
Sam:
[23:40]
| At number 100 and work our way back up because they revised it. They dropped some things. They added some things, whatever. Anyway, number 19 was Chinatown from 1974. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[23:52]
| I think I've watched this movie.
|
Sam:
[23:55]
| It's Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. And obviously, we're at the point in the top 100 list where every single one has won lots of awards and been nominated for more. It was it had 11 academy award nominations best picture best director best actor best actress best original screenplay etc etc etc you know and fundamentally like i i won't spoil the end but like the beginning of the plot summary in on wikipedia in 1930s los angeles a woman identifying herself as Evelyn Mulray, hires private investigator J.J. Jake Gittes, that's who Jack Nicholson plays, to trail her husband Hollis, the chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power. Gittes photographs Hollis in the company of a young woman, and the pictures make their way to the post record exposing their apparent affair. Gittes is then confronted by the real Evelyn Mulray, who threatens to sue him. He concludes that the imposter was using him to discredit Hollis. And then it continues. There's like corruption in like 1930s LA with the government and the contracting for the water and this organized crime and blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[25:21]
| And, you know, all of this and all kinds of intrigue.
|
Sam:
[25:27]
| Up. It was very good. I will tell you the ending, like I had not seen this movie before. I had not heard of the movie. Well, I'd heard of it. I had not known the plot of this movie. So I basically came in knowing nothing about this movie other than, you know, it was called Chinatown and it was on the AFI list. You know, that was about all I knew. And it had Jack Nicholson. The ending gutted me you know it was like a because i i did not know what was coming i had no spoilers and it was very powerful ending and the whole thing was good i mean you would expect that from being at number nine now i'm not sure if i didn't.
|
Ivan:
[26:11]
| That i that i watched this okay so now i'm gonna have.
|
Sam:
[26:14]
| To fucking.
|
Ivan:
[26:15]
| Watch this damn thing and.
|
Sam:
[26:17]
| Apparently there was a 1990 sequel called the two jakes i heard about that i have not watched that yet i assume it does not have the same reputation as the original but you know whatever you know i'll probably watch the two jakes eventually but the but chinatown and it's sort of like one of these what's a you know normally like i don't like 1970s movies i've found but but it's i think it's really the 1970s movies set in the 1970s that are really trying to like there's this sort of you know aesthetic of show all the the grunge and everybody's bad and no one's sympathetic and like you know i i'm thinking of various ones where there's like corrupt boxers or druggies or whatever. And it's like, I just don't, I don't sympathize with anybody in this. And it's sort of just like horrible people being horrible.
|
Sam:
[27:24]
| This one like tried to have, I mean, it felt like a move. I mean, it was set in the 1930s And it honestly felt more like a movie from a couple decades earlier, a little more violent, a little bit more overt violence than a movie like actually from like the forties or fifties or whatever. But it had that sort of slow burn where you know it's not non-stop action or anything like that it's sort of the situation slowly builds up and the danger escalates and you're wondering what's happening and who you can trust and what the motivations are and what's going on and yeah, Thumbs up. I liked it. Good movie. That's, that's about it. I mean, I, you know, and I really should like do better. I need to catch up on these damn movies. Cause when I try talking about them, like I watched this in July. So that's been what? August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April. That was nine months ago. So my memory fades. I should do a better job of like talking about, or you're just trying to make work for me. Well, that's what I do.
|
Ivan:
[28:50]
| I was just.
|
Sam:
[28:51]
| Going to say I should like catch up and like be review these within a couple of weeks of actually watching them because then things would be a lot fresher in my mind. But I do remember I enjoyed it. But it was one of those that, you know, we were, you know, I'll eventually get Schindler's List. But Schindler's list for instance is the kind of movie that you watch it and you're like, wow, that was an incredibly good movie. I do not want to watch it again anytime soon. No, no. Yeah. And I think, I think Chinatown felt, fell in that same category for me. Like it was good. I recognized it as good. It is not one I'm going to want to watch again anytime soon. You know? Okay, so I.
|
Ivan:
[29:37]
| Checked this last list that they have at the AFI. The 2007 version? Yeah, the latest one, they've got the top 100. I've only watched about 29 of them.
|
Sam:
[29:51]
| Okay, you just went through the whole list?
|
Ivan:
[29:53]
| Yeah, and I've watched like 29 of them. Okay.
|
Sam:
[29:58]
| Yeah, and by the way, Chinatown, like Wikipedia has the 1998 and 2007 list right next to each other and sortable. So you can tell like Chinatown was 19 on the 1998 list, but dropped to 21 for. Yeah. It's yeah.
|
Ivan:
[30:12]
| It's over here at 21. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[30:15]
| And, but yeah. Yeah. So I will.
|
Ivan:
[30:18]
| I've only watched like about a third of them. So like. You got some.
|
Sam:
[30:23]
| Work to do. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[30:25]
| Well, it seems, you know.
|
Sam:
[30:26]
| I, I was telling people on the show last week that you weren't in that, you know, I am sure you watch more movies than what you talk about here, but I have a list. And so like, it's all organized. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[30:39]
| I, I, I, you know, I, I, and books and TV shows.
|
Sam:
[30:44]
| I mean, I've, oh yeah.
|
Ivan:
[30:46]
| I mean, for sure. I mean, I, I've, I've read, I've finished several, I mean, I've finished a number of books the last couple of years. So, yeah, I mean, for sure. I think you've talked about one of them. Yeah. And it's funny that I keep, you know, I read books and I realize I'm like, huh, maybe I haven't read books. Then I'll go through, oh, shit, I did read a whole book. Never mind. Okay, yes, I did read a few books. So even when I get slow, I'm still reading a number of books. You know, so, yeah. I will say that there is a movie that this list was done what year?
|
Sam:
[31:21]
| The original list was 1998. The revised list was 2007.
|
Ivan:
[31:27]
| Look, with all this financial stuff going on, I went and I rewatched recently this movie called Margin Call. Okay. That.
|
Sam:
[31:36]
| Was done in.
|
Ivan:
[31:36]
| The last 15 years. I will say that that is one of the best movies in terms of financial drama that showed probably more of how things in corporate environments work and how certain decisions get made and how shit happens. It was a really well-put-together drama. And the cast was excellent. And, man, that's gotta be... Watched it to go back and some people just notice that it's it's an amazing movie so it's in a very powerful movie as well yeah so if you don't have it on that list you need to add it i just i just.
|
Sam:
[32:24]
| Added it again and i i think i might have had it already because you might have mentioned it before but it's been added again now.
|
Ivan:
[32:31]
| So that was one that i watched in part because of some of the, there is a line in that movie uh i bring it up from the terms of movies you know later on we'll talk about all the stuff that's going on and i mean it's a big truism people people think that a lot of these executives like that they know everything that's going on that they're geniuses in some way of some sort i would say that most good executives aren't they're probably no more it's wide rather than deep okay and if you're really good then you know that you don't know you you're you need experts to tell you about certain things because you don't know the details you can't know the details about every single area so that's why you hire really good people or experts that can give you the recommendations so then you can make the decision you know that you need to make based on that and and the line that is very relevant to a lot of the stuff that's going on like right now was that the chief executive the chairman of the of this investment bank said you know why he asked everybody at the table do you know why i get paid all this money, and people were like because i get paid to listen to the music and to figure out when the music stops so we can get off and let me tell you something right now i don't hear a thing.
|
Ivan:
[33:56]
| And, you know, Donald Trump is push it's a scary thing. I wound up a few months ago, buying gold because I'm scared of that right now. Should.
|
Sam:
[34:11]
| And then get into the actual news now? Sounds like we're transitioning. But I brought it up for the movie because that was a very.
|
Ivan:
[34:21]
| He was at the boardroom with everybody, and they were bringing him the analysis. And it's one of those analysis that goes back to how people figured out that we were at the financial crisis in 2008. You know, I.
|
Sam:
[34:34]
| Will say this. One of the movies that I watched more recently, so it'll be months and months and months until I talk about it on the show, also took place during the 2008 financial crisis. Can you guess what it was? It wasn't March and Call.
|
Ivan:
[34:50]
| It was the other one with Michael Burry and the other people. It was the one that was more famous. I don't think it's... It had the Australian blonde woman. It had, what's his name? Steve Carell in it. No.
|
Sam:
[35:05]
| That's not that one either? That's not that one. No, it was the sequel to Wall Street. Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. Oh, Wall Street Money.
|
Ivan:
[35:13]
| Oh, Money Never Sleeps. Okay. Yes.
|
Sam:
[35:16]
| So, anyway. I will give my opinion of that in like 10 years whenever I get to it in order. Okay. Well, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[35:22]
| We've got plenty of time. Okay.
|
Sam:
[35:24]
| Let's take the little breaky-breaky. You know, according to my random rules, the next one should be a wiki of the day one, but I didn't have time to prepare it. So we'll do a different one and we'll do the wiki of the day next time. So, uh, okay. So here we go. Break number three. Do, do, do.
|
Break:
[35:46]
| This podcast is sponsored by Alex Mzilla.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! Okay.
|
Sam:
[36:50]
| We are back. The one you were trying to struggle to get the name of, The Big Short. The Big Short. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[36:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:58]
| So I looked it up during the break. Okay, there you go. Okay. So, and I added it to my list. There you go. So, okay. News. Newsy stuff. I guess since you were starting with the economic Donald Trump stuff, why don't we, are you confused now? What's going on? No, no, no. it's just that i okay earlier.
|
Ivan:
[37:17]
| I had close slack and i can't you just broke everything.
|
Sam:
[37:23]
| There we go okay there so let's start with the donald trump economic stuff and then in the next segment we can do i don't know the donald trump legal stuff so you know when i when i recorded the show last week was, you know, your, your little 15 minute segment had included his back down on tariffs. And then by the time I recorded, he'd also backed down on electronics and some other things and for China, even leaving some other things in place. And, you know, you made the point and I talked more about everything that was wrong with that. What, what's happened since then? I mean, the most recent thing, he's threatening to fire the Fed chair, even though he doesn't have the legal authority to do so. You know, fun stuff like that.
|
Ivan:
[38:18]
| Look, the thing is that still to this moment, we're having a sell-off of dollar assets.
|
Sam:
[38:28]
| Wait, everything hasn't, like, popped back up and, you know, we're not all good? So we had this massive.
|
Ivan:
[38:35]
| Like, bump, like, one day. that one day yes that one day because of the the announcement but but you know the, continuing to see pressure on treasury rates and interest rates in general. Trump is under the delusion that the Fed can somehow, in a very quick way, bring that down. But they can't. they can't it's it's it's, it's not just setting rate policy which the rate policy drives short term rates and that usually translates down into the 10 year and the 20 and the 30 year more 30 year rate and they are they are somewhat connected but they're not directly connected you can control the short term right but also the Fed has multiple they.
|
Sam:
[39:36]
| Have they can do balance.
|
Ivan:
[39:38]
| Sheet stuff right right no but what i was just going to say but.
|
Sam:
[39:41]
| Their mission is multifaceted they're supposed to take action number one thing is.
|
Ivan:
[39:48]
| Price stability well number one important thing is price stability okay and that's the thing that just donald doesn't want to accept or understand that because everything he has done, even with the backtracking, still massively inflationary. Which he fundamentally doesn't believe.
|
Sam:
[40:15]
| He doesn't believe it. Because, of course, the other countries pay the tariffs. That's how it works. Right. Because he doesn't fucking.
|
Ivan:
[40:22]
| Understand how anything works. The Fed just can't drop rates. I mean, I guess. Because that is also very inflationary. Because dropping the rates drives dropping the dollar. I mean, they theoretically could do whatever.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| Right? The question is, is it wise and what are the effects of that? No, well, could you drop rates?
|
Ivan:
[40:43]
| Yes, but it would drive a bigger sell-off of dollars. Right. So it would be massively, you've got two inflationary pressures at the same time. Okay. because then you're going to goose the economy while you've got inflationary pressure. Prices only go way to go up, so inflation is going to get way worse. And then it creates the problem also of the liquidity of treasuries. I mean, rates are moving where it is obvious that people are selling dollar assets. And the reality is that Why are people now, unlike at other times, of crises, not buying dollars? There's only one fucking reason. It's called Donald J. Trump. Because... In the investment world now knows that he is a lunatic. I think that many of them thought that what would happen was, like in the first term, that a lot of this stuff would be offended off by those around him. Yeah, and I will tell you.
|
Sam:
[42:11]
| He's just a bunch of talk. He's using it as a positioning statement for negotiations, whatever. None of this will really happen. Or if a little bit does, it won't be that much. Because, like, he did put on some tariffs in the first term that did cause some damage. You know.
|
Ivan:
[42:28]
| But.
|
Sam:
[42:28]
| They weren't anywhere.
|
Ivan:
[42:29]
| Nearly as expansive as this. And so that's the situation. You've got this where some tariffs got dialed back. But most of them have. But a lot of them have not. Okay. A lot of them have not.
|
Sam:
[42:46]
| And even the ones that did dial back a few days later, him and his team are talking about, oh, well, they'll they'll be back, though. And they keep talking.
|
Ivan:
[42:57]
| About going and like imposing even more tariffs on other places. I mean, they keep talking like, oh, we're not done with imposing tariffs. Well, right. Right. I like when, when he.
|
Sam:
[43:07]
| Said the specific thing, when they backed off and said, okay, well, no, no, no tariffs on the electronics coming out of China, which gave like Apple and other companies a big sigh of relief. A couple of days later, they come on and say, oh no, but we are going to be tariffing the semiconductors. We just haven't figured that out yet. We'll do that next month.
|
Ivan:
[43:28]
| So it really, I mean, this is why the markets have started selling back off again.
|
Ivan:
[43:42]
| And trust is difficult to build. It's easy to break. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[43:51]
| And the one thing that the U.S. has had is, and Mr. We Have Been Screwed Over by Everybody doesn't understand that the one advantage that the U.S. Has had for a long time is that the U.S. Dollar has been the reserve currency of the world. Everybody, when they wanted to put their money in safety, buys dollars. It's why we have so much cheap capital. And that is one thing that really boosts the economy more than it is one of the biggest drivers of the economy. It's also why, you know, companies come and list their shares in the U.S. They sell bonds in the U.S. Even some foreign governments wind up selling bonds in the U.S. Like Argentina, that does repeatedly because nobody would buy a bond issued under the laws of Argentina because they didn't trust those laws. But they would come to the U.S. and they would feel that in the U.S. They would get a fair shake, you know, if there's a legal dispute to get paid. OK, but when you are basically just saying that you're going to flout all the laws that you're going to impose, you know, basically just try to bully everybody into shit and, you know, just fuck with the economy like it's just a toy.
|
Ivan:
[45:16]
| You know, people are leaving. I mean, he has been threatening to delist shares of Chinese companies, for example. So what is, I mean, when you start doing those kinds of threats, then what that means is that you're going to be, well, wait, I can't, I don't want to list my shares in the U.S. then. It's just everything that he is doing is horrifically damaging to the American economy at this moment. And.
|
Ivan:
[45:44]
| Seen the the the effects of the pricing but they're coming you know a lot of importers have already talked about this though they're trying to clear shipments they also were trying to now impose some additional fees on chinese ships arriving in the u.s as well which i saw there i actually had seen this while i was in puerto rico because a couple of people that i know down there are in the ship are in the shipping industry because everything to puerto rico comes by ship So I was talking to some people that were in the shipping industry and that they had proposed these rules that basically about Chinese ships and how they would be taxed and how if you use Chinese ships, you would be extra taxed and levied and blah, blah, blah. And I saw the document. It was just total insanity as well. It would increase the cost of shipping anywhere, anything that happened to move like between points in the U.S. By ship in an astronomical fashion. Okay. It's just the kind of idiotic bullshit that this administration keeps doing that has no rhyme or reason with any of the data or economic fact. And it's everything that this administration does. It doesn't matter if it's—the economy is like one part that he's fucking with heavily. Health care whether it's immigration health care whatever the fuck the weather i mean.
|
Ivan:
[47:12]
| You know there is nothing everything here it's just you know my gut feeling, is that we're getting screwed and so we're gonna do this then today what the hell was it that he said he said this thing that was hilarious he said where the heck did, here. Trump says he's reluctant to keep raising tariffs on China. President Trump has said he's reluctant to continue ratcheting up tariffs on China because it could stall trade between the two countries. No shit, Sherlock! Really? Now you figured this out? So, I mean, I've seen...
|
Sam:
[47:52]
| China was, like, going to restrict.
|
Ivan:
[47:54]
| Deliveries of Boeing aircraft, which is our number one export. Okay? Our number one export, period. OK, a dollar value item that we that we sell is fucking aircraft. OK, so China was saying, hey, you can't buy any more Boeing aircraft. We're going to block deliveries of the fucking Boeing aircraft. OK. All right. It's catastrophic. OK. All right. To do that as well. I mean, this is all so fucked up. And by the way, they talked about the set was we're going to do these bespoke negotiations with everybody over the next 90 days. Sam, 70 negotiations with 70 countries at the same time you do them in 90 days. Well, just kind of like just a trade agreement.
|
Sam:
[48:48]
| I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[48:49]
| Wait, wait, wait.
|
Sam:
[48:49]
| I don't know if you heard this part. but you know those law firms that donald trump like strong-armed into saying they would do pro bono work for causes that he appreciated yeah so apparently he has been saying over the last week that part of what he intends them to do is all these trade negotiations for him what the fuck does that.
|
Ivan:
[49:13]
| I mean, still, regardless. Which, by the way, by the way.
|
Sam:
[49:18]
| That is insane. Well, it also isn't legal, apparently, because they can do pro bono work, but they can't do pro bono work for the government. Right. It's nuts.
|
Ivan:
[49:29]
| Well, of course, now all these fucking legal firms are realizing what they should have known in the first place, which is that you can't say yes to a fucking bully, which is what I've been saying since the beginning. These guys are going, I'm like, oh, yeah, we'll just make a deal and then go away. No, when you fucking say yes to one of these assholes that it's like it's like saying yes to the mob. OK, right. It is totally like saying yes to the mob. It is saying yes to the mob.
|
Sam:
[49:53]
| It is saying yes to the mob. OK, but look, going back to what you said a little bit ago about just sort of Donald Trump not understanding. I've heard a number of, if you try to piece together some of the statements that he and the pro-tariff people around him have been saying, they say repeatedly things like the income from the tariffs will make up money that we can, will make up for income tax so we can drop taxes, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. It almost is reliant on the assumption. First of all, The other countries are paying the tariffs, but also that the amount of product sold and traded isn't going to drop, isn't going to drop. It's just going to be exactly the same, but we'll make more money. This is the moronics.
|
Ivan:
[50:48]
| This is the part where apparently, you know, failing economics 101. Hey, Sam, you know, as the curve of prices went up in econ 101, what happened to the curve of demand? Well, here's the thing. He doesn't think the.
|
Sam:
[51:02]
| Price will change because China will just pay the tariff.
|
Ivan:
[51:08]
| You're right. Yvonne is dumbfounded.
|
Sam:
[51:11]
| I'm just, you know.
|
Ivan:
[51:13]
| It's just, he doesn't understand, you know, where the fuck the, how the tariffs get paid. I just, he just, and even it's just, you know, people are just going to write a check, you know, for more. I don't, it's just, it is so dumb. The whole thing is so fucking dumb. It is beyond dumb. There is no, you know, there's just no logic to any of this. None. None, none, none. We're dealing with a psychopath. Well, he said repeatedly.
|
Sam:
[51:44]
| Look, in the golden years of the 1880s and 1890s, there was no income tax and we just made all the federal government's money off tariffs. And that's what he wants to go back to. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:57]
| We had no roads. We had no airports. We had no, you know, what the fuck didn't we have, Sam? We didn't send rockets to the moon. We didn't pay social security. We had no medicare we had no medicaid okay well they don't want any of those things either so well they don't want any.
|
Sam:
[52:15]
| Of those things either.
|
Ivan:
[52:16]
| You know what the fuck didn't we have we didn't have shit i mean i this is just this thing is this mess is not old okay look gold is up 20 percent do you just keep fucking buying gold i bought gold i said this months ago look i, what are the fucking smartest things i've i've done let me tell you i did say it on this show so if you didn't do it that's your fucking problem okay but i'm it's just.
|
Ivan:
[52:54]
| There's no there is no positive end game in the way that they are doing this like right now you know there just isn't I mean, everything every leading indicator for the economy isn't shit you've got I've got car you know for example I've got a car dealer that I bought a car from desperately calling me to renew a lease. And the reason why I know they're desperate to do it is because they're worried about tariffs. Okay? Because those tariffs haven't been lifted. The tariffs on the cars, they're still in place, 25%. Right. That didn't go away. So we got a tariff of 25% of fucking cars coming in right now. 10% on everything else. Then we got 100 plus percent tariffs on China. except those electronics.
|
Sam:
[53:54]
| Except those electronics.
|
Ivan:
[53:55]
| So I so stupid the whole fucking thing is so stupid it's just so stupid Sam I in my life, And it's just such level of just grotesque stupidity in doing policy. And this is what we're up against right now.
|
Sam:
[54:19]
| Well.
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| And this comes back to the.
|
Sam:
[54:21]
| Conversation you and I have had a number of times. But it's worth bringing up over and over again because it's like, okay, is it really stupidity or is this what he wanted? Now, he has no clue, Sam.
|
Ivan:
[54:36]
| He really is this clueless. He is this dumb. There is nothing from what he says that betrays that there is any intelligence or master plan behind it.
|
Sam:
[54:49]
| Five dimensional chess, Yvonne. Yeah, the five dimensional chess. He's a genius.
|
Ivan:
[54:53]
| Just trust in Trump.
|
Sam:
[54:55]
| It'll all be better. The one reason.
|
Ivan:
[54:57]
| Why he backed off massively last week was because Scott Bacent showed him the fucking chart on what the hell was happening with the treasury market. And he told him that, look, this thing goes, we're in a fucking heap of trouble. Then we have to go back to, we're back to 2008 measures. I mean, literally, this is the kind of financial crisis shit we're talking about. We're talking about going back to 2008 measures, where the treasury is going to have to go into to the bond market and just start doing quantitative easing again they're gonna have to just go in and just start buying you know just printing dollars by the way that's also fucking you know gonna devalue the dollar which also raises rates and prices yeah yes it's just it's it's it's a fucking shit show in every direction. I don't know what the hell the only, I don't see a good end, OK, the only endgame that happens that I think is the tariffs start hitting everybody's pockets in the coming weeks and months.
|
Sam:
[56:20]
| People start getting really angry.
|
Ivan:
[56:24]
| The constituents start getting really angry already. A lot of the smaller businesses that are involved in importing shit are getting the sticker shock already right now. OK, right. They're starting to get the bills. but that hasn't translated yet directly into the inventory of people now, timu shine and all of these are already getting fucked so anybody all these people that like that shit they're already they're already hit with tariffs okay there's no exemptions okay so i guess if you if you're buying something i mean right i mean right now i haven't looked but i mean i've never bought from this but i'm guessing that you know if you're used to seeing And some prices, those are going to go up. I've never bought anything for Tim. Have you? No, no. I haven't even been to the website.
|
Sam:
[57:14]
| Okay. I just went to the website for the first time.
|
Ivan:
[57:16]
| But it's so popular, though. Oh, yeah. And so the only way that this gets to stop is by massive discontent. That's the thing. There is no other way to make it stop. People, the people have to get angry. What one thing that he is say, calculating, he's not calculating that he isn't. Seen is that he idolizes Putin. But one thing that Putin has been adept at is managing the economy. You know, he has done his crazy shit, but he also has a number of people around him that are smart economists that have figured out ways to reduce the impact of his, of the things that he's done. Okay. They have looked for ways for people to be able to get food, to get stuff, to get whatever, how to, okay, great. I'm going to go launch a war. I'm going to get years of international sanctions and everything else.
|
Sam:
[58:34]
| Still collapsed. Right.
|
Ivan:
[58:37]
| Right. But but he's got smart people that he's listening to to say, OK, great. I wanted to invade Ukraine. I got these sanctions. What do I do to get around? OK, that's not how Trump is operating. Trump is operating that he's going to do this shit and he doesn't need to do anything to mitigate the impact of any of this. So because if you want, OK, I want to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. Well, what Biden was doing was doing that. OK, because the problem is that after 30 or 40 years of of of so much manufacturing moving offshore. You couldn't bring it back overnight, number one. But the second problem is that there's a lot of manufacturing and the jobs, the number of jobs and the things you don't need as many people as you used to to make a lot of shit that we used to make. The second problem is that back in this golden age, like in the 50s and 60s, where we had, as a percentage of the world, so many of the manufacturing jobs other countries didn't, well, the U.S. Was 60% of the GDP of the world. Okay? Right. It's not— Just as a reminder to people.
|
Sam:
[59:47]
| In part because most of the rest of the world was devastated by World War II. Correct. Okay? Exactly right.
|
Ivan:
[59:55]
| And that was the 50s and 60s. Now the U.S. Is around 30, 40%. It's still a large percentage. But the world economy grew a lot. It's so much bigger. Okay? So if you're building, if you're Apple, you don't want all of your business.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:18]
| You don't want all your costs in only one country when 60% of your sales come from outside the United States. You need to spread that out throughout the world because that is one way that you would do the so-called natural hedging against currency effects. Okay, so this hit a lot of companies back in the 80s, okay, when we were still coming off of how the post-World War II world was in terms of manufacturing. There was a massive devaluation of the dollar, okay? And when that devaluation happened, okay, Germans, Germans specifically, actually Germans and the British, okay, both of them, they sold a lot of cars in the U.S. Well, there was a 50% devaluation in the dollar. That meant that the price of their cars doubled overnight. Their sales plummeted, okay? Porsche almost went bankrupt, okay, over this. And beginning at that time, and it came to fruition into the 90s, well, the Germans decided, look, we can't just manufacture cars in Germany and sell cars in Germany. We need to diversify. And they have manufacturing plants in the U.S. Or they buy parts and other things from the U.S. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:01:35]
| Or from the different markets where they sell. So there are BMW cars that are assembled in China, in the U.S., in Germany, not just in Germany, because in order to protect yourself against that. So he's trying to say to Apple, hey, bring all that manufacturing back to the U.S. Well, shit. I mean, if I sell 60% of my total phones outside the U.S., even if I wanted to, I can't bring all that manufacturing to the U.S., number one, because that exposes you to way too much risk. And then the second thing is that nobody wants those fucking jobs. Nobody wants those fucking jobs, OK, here in the U.S. Because people moved on from that. okay there are people it's just there was a survey recently that showed how americans you know said hey do.
|
Sam:
[1:02:31]
| You think it's.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:32]
| Great for america to have you know bring back all the manufacturing 80 of them said yes yes let's build build build build build okay great how many of you really want to have, jobs. Only 20% of them said they wanted manufacturing jobs. They don't want the fucking jobs. They don't want to be in a fucking factory. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:57]
| It's not what the U.S. Economy has developed over the last 20, 30, 40 years. It's turned into a service economy. They're still manufacturing, by the way. The one thing is that if you look at the manufacturing output, it's not like it's decreased but the manufacturing employment sure as hell has but because of automation automation yes technology efficiency so we still build a lot of shit here but damn it you know people don't want to fucking go back to you know they're not going to be sewing sneakers and you know putting little screws and iphones and and even if you wanted it to happen yeah like Like I've seen industries be protected by tariffs in certain places. Hey, you know, do a bidder or whatever. You see a tariff, OK? Well, you do a tariff when you're protecting an industry that's there. OK, you're trying to give them time to see if they could, you know, invest, do some incentives or whatever. But by putting the tariffs right now, when there's no capacity here, the only thing that can happen is if you need the item, you're going to have to pay more for it. That's it. There's nothing else I can do because we're not going to get a fucking iPhone from anywhere else. and and one of.
|
Sam:
[1:04:04]
| The there's there's an interview with tim cook that's been floating around where he talks about people who are like look there's this myth that the china is about low labor costs it's not about low labor costs they've now labor costs have pretty much caught up it maybe it's a little bit cheaper but not much it's about the skill set and the tooling and everything else that's there. The entire ecosystem. He brought a particular example of like, you know, if you wanted to get a you know, of tooling and manufacturing into a room, like there's probably like 30 people in the entire United States with that skill set. You go over to China, there are tens of thousands. Listen, I was looking into manufacturing an.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:52]
| Electronic product sometimes like about 10, 15 years ago. Okay. And, you know, I went, I talked to a couple of different manufacturers, a few little factories in Shenzhen. And it was just amazing the capacity that they had. Oh, This is what you want to build. Oh, we need this component. We need this. We need that. Listen, you couldn't do any of that here. There's nobody to talk to to do that. They were, I mean, they, they, they have such an entire ecosystem to do that so easily over there. And, and when he's talking about the labor rates, he's, he may be exaggerating it a little bit. They are a lot higher than they used to be. Okay. They're not totally the same, but they're still cheaper, but it's not.
|
Sam:
[1:05:34]
| But it's not what it used to be.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:37]
| It's not the biggest driver. Because, look, I had an operations center in Shanghai, specifically, okay? And the average person at the Shanghai operations center was making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year. It's not like they were making $5,000 a year. And that's similar to some of the labor rates here. So really, in Shanghai, for example, the reality is he's right. It wasn't paying any fucking, it was not cheaper. It was maybe somewhat cheaper, but not that, not like 2% versus, you know, not 80% less. No. So, yeah, I mean, he's right about that. It is the entire manufacturing, the supply chain, the ecosystem, everything that's over there, how you know they've got that all put together in order to be able to make the products ship them and and distribute them very easily so but i'm talking about, you just got a psychopath at the wheel i mean that's our problem and the reality is that i was talking about the end game earlier when people get upset the only thing is that congress needs to act and congress can good.
|
Sam:
[1:06:53]
| Luck with that.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:54]
| Well i mean listen yeah we talked well they were talking about lisa murkowski was talking yesterday how she admitted that they were scared they're they're scared. But at some point, what I'm saying about the constituents getting angry. At some point, they get more afraid of their voters than.
|
Sam:
[1:07:15]
| Of Donald Trump. And that's exactly what needs to happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:19]
| At some point, because, and the way that that happens is people showing up at their fucking car dealer trying to buy a car realize that they can't afford a fucking car anymore because it's 25% more expensive. Well, but the thing we talked We talked.
|
Sam:
[1:07:32]
| About a couple of weeks ago when we talked about what would it take for enough Republicans to bail on Trump in order to do these kinds of reversals from the Congress. You know, the conclusion we came to at the end of that discussion was it's far more likely that before it gets to that point, Donald Trump does one of his traditional flips and goes backwards just in time to avoid it. And claims victory somehow. And claims victory somehow.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:00]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:08:01]
| But here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:02]
| At this point, he still hasn't budged. He is still under the dilute. You know what? He caved on some of the things because of the things that he understands. And he didn't on a whole bunch of others. And I don't think he still realizes that the shit that he still enforced has a lot of really negative impacts still. I think that's the problem. I mean, this guy, the guy's never been shopping to a store in his life, right? I mean, he's never been to a grocery store, right? It's an old it's an old-fashioned word that people are talking about.
|
Sam:
[1:08:34]
| A lot recently groceries right but but this guy this.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:38]
| Motherfucker's never been to walmart what you know what the fuck would he know about prices at walmart okay right he doesn't know anything he doesn't understand that all those fucking products that are lined up over there and people go buy they come from fucking china right and so at.
|
Sam:
[1:08:54]
| Some point people.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:54]
| Are going to be showing up at the fucking store they're going to see the widget that they bought last year to go to the barbecue and the beach was, you know, $100, and now it's $250 because of the tariff, they're going to be like, what the fuck happened? It was Joe Biden's fault.
|
Sam:
[1:09:08]
| Biden's fault. Yes, clearly.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:11]
| It's all Joe Biden's fault. Well, I mean, that's what strategy says Joe Biden's fault. Everything's Joe Biden's fault. I mean, look.
|
Sam:
[1:09:18]
| Yes. I think there's the delay, too, right? Like you said, you know, prices and the recession and the unemployment.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:29]
| Believe me, because we're getting all of these things. Sam, we're getting a fucking recession. We're getting a recession. We're getting more unemployment. You know, businesses are not they're not investing Sam they don't want to hire they're scared of hiring and they're not investing man they're looking at it and they're like shit we don't know what we're going to do we have to wait to see what the fuck happens right well because and I talked a little bit.
|
Sam:
[1:09:55]
| About this last week and we've talked about it before too because on top of everything else is the one thing is the policies are bad for all of these objective reasons but the The other thing is the freaking uncertainty because he changes his mind every five minutes. Yes. So how the hell can you plan for it? You can't. And that's the problem.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:17]
| And they went. Listen, a whole bunch of executives met with him. OK, this is roundtable, went to him and said this. Hey, you know, we need some certainty to understand so we can plan. And he brushed it off and said, these fucking guys, they want certainty, whatever. Who gives a shit? Yeah. And that's what he said.
|
Sam:
[1:10:35]
| So they're all like.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:36]
| What the fuck? But, you know, the other day, the one thing that's very crystal clear, what this whole battle is, look, these guys, honestly, their ideal world, which guys, which guys, these billion.
|
Sam:
[1:10:52]
| These guys like.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:53]
| Trump and his billionaire friends or whatever, the guys I want to, the guys I want to go and set up, they are fucking like free, you know, you know, this, this libertarian, like freedom state in Greenland or wherever the fuck or yes, where the hell they, they want to do it or wherever the hell they want to do it. I think their entire, vision is that we can go set this up. They're going to replace all the professional class of people like you and me with AI. And then we can pay a whole bunch of low-level schlubs to do the rest of the shit that we can't do with AI. I mean, that's what they want. Mm-hmm. This is.
|
Sam:
[1:11:39]
| Why they are so.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:41]
| Hell-bent on, you know, anybody who is some kind of smart, educated, professional with information, fuck you, no. RFK Jr. is going to tell you what the results are going to be of the autism research. You know, you could replace RFK Jr.
|
Sam:
[1:12:00]
| With an AI, too. Well, actually, we could.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:04]
| Listen, if we put an LLM right now versus RFK Jr., we would be getting better results. I mean, a lot better results. So this is a case where I would be in favor of AI taking over, like, immediately.
|
Sam:
[1:12:19]
| As long as you don't train it on RFK Jr.'s writings. You know, I, years ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:28]
| Yes, years ago.
|
Sam:
[1:12:30]
| Somebody had posed.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:31]
| This question to me about different managers and, you know, what their effects are on companies. And I had segmented people as leaders into a few different categories, okay? So you got the guys who are the visionary, proactive guys, okay? Come into a company, say a guy like Steve Jobs, okay? This guy is visionary. He understands and he also is a leader and he also is able to recruit a lot of talented people and he was able to change things and he was able to develop things and he was able to grow a business and he was able to, to, to take something in a, you know, that was being run before by some maybe professional management, but didn't have the right vision into something that, that is, that grows and, and that people want to be working at. And that is, that is heavily improved. Okay. So you got that guy. Then you've got the guys that I say, these are, these are the lazy executives. Okay. They don't, they may not be necessarily out, but you know, they may be very smart. They may be dumb, whatever, but it's the, it's the lazy class. And the lazy class is, Hey, if I come into a company that's, Hey, everything's running fine or whatever. I'm just getting my checks. There's a good professional staff in there. I'm not going to do anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:52]
| I'm not going to fucking do anything. Why the fuck am I going to do anything? Everything's working. All these people write my reports. I just show up. I'm like Queen Elizabeth going around here.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:03]
| Whatever. I collect for a few, five, four, five years. Student numbers go to the next job, whatever. And I didn't fuck up anything and nothing happened. Everything's good. And I had some of those managers. It was great. You know, look, you had an executive. He was the leader. He wasn't involved in anything. Listen, no problem. Just don't say anything. Don't do anything. Don't worry about it. We got everything covered. We don't really need you. We don't need you to do anything. Don't worry about it. Okay. Just stay over there. All good. Everything will be fine. Don't worry about it. Just don't. Yes. Don't. We don't need your idea. We don't need any. We don't. We don't really need anything. Just, just stay over there. You know, go, go fly business class, go spend money. You're good. You're good. No, no problem. So you got those. But then you get, unfortunately, you know, you get the, the, the idiot proactive people. So this is the, football okay and this is really like donald trump okay really where the guy is a moron okay yes okay but instead of.
|
Sam:
[1:14:58]
| Doing like the lazy.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:59]
| Executive which you could just listen everything was running sam you didn't have to do anything all you have to do is like look i'll just name a few generic guys look there's a lot i come in there there's a lot there's a lot to be said for.
|
Sam:
[1:15:15]
| If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yes! Yes!
|
Ivan:
[1:15:19]
| You just come in, fuck, you go down to Mar-a-Lago, you play golf, you go and, like, you know, you fuck all the hookers that you want. I don't care. Give all the pardons you want. Pardon whoever the fuck you want, whatever. But, you know, you put a few competent people around and these different things, you just sit around and just say, hey, as long as I get my pardons, as long as I get my whatever, you do whatever you know don't worry about it whatever but no no that's not what we got what we got is proactive and dumb where basically he thinks he needs to fix everything but he's an idiot so basically everything that he done is a wreck and I've seen these guys in corporate, these are the same shit as what this guy is doing they don't know anything they have all the wrong ideas they don't listen to anybody that's smart and they keep just plowing ahead until they fucking just fuck up everything. And this is what we do. This is what we have. It's the class of executive, the worst I've always feared. These are the worst people that there is. I am all for having lazy executives, to be honest. Okay. I, you know, I'm happier with a fucking lazy executive.
|
Sam:
[1:16:33]
| I
|
Ivan:
[1:16:33]
| Mean, look, there are certain.
|
Sam:
[1:16:35]
| Situations where if you just coast like that, eventually it causes problems. But a lot of the time, it's not that bad. plus if you have to if you're in a.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:45]
| Healthy place to stay if you hired the right people yes yes then they'll call.
|
Sam:
[1:16:51]
| Hey boss we.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:52]
| Got a fire okay well can you can you you know can you can you extinguish a fire, yeah yeah yeah I got okay great do it okay alright let me know if you need anything okay bye that's it, you know I don't want anything else, but we're not in there Sam we have, in Spanish I called him my nickname for this guy I just haven't found how to translate this well it's a proactivo pendejo okay that this is.
|
Sam:
[1:17:21]
| This is the type of.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:22]
| Manager that that you know that Donald Trump is he's proactive, and my pendejo is dumbass he's inept but proactive it's the worst combination ever to have somebody that's inept and proactive you don't want that ever you really don't want that But we've got that. And Sam, you know, it's only been two months. Well, three now.
|
Sam:
[1:17:51]
| Almost. Almost three.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:53]
| February, March, April.
|
Sam:
[1:17:55]
| It's only been three fucking months, man.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:01]
| And so many, he right now has the worst approval rating of anybody in this short amount of time, except himself. Although that still, by the way, gets me.
|
Sam:
[1:18:13]
| Like every time people bring up that stat, I'm like, really? He is more liked now than at the same point eight years ago? I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to tell you why.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:25]
| I'm going to tell you why. because a big part in the first time that he lost some of the MAGA people because he wasn't doing what he's doing now, because they expect to be more aggressive instead of naming these the Rex Tillerson's of the world and that kind of stuff. So now those guys are a little bit more solid because he's doing that part. That I think is the difference. Yeah, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:18:55]
| Like, to me, it's just objectively, like, he's so... Like, he was bad last time, but he's worse this time. He is actively way.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:06]
| Way, way worse. Yes. But you're just saying some people actually like the worse.
|
Sam:
[1:19:13]
| And so that's why... Correct. Whereas before, he was pissing off.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:16]
| Those guys because he wasn't doing enough, and pissing us off because he was still being... Incompetent idiot. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:19:26]
| Well, I mean, incompetent idiot, because that was the whole immigration thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:29]
| That now, now we're even, you know, in a worse thing. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:19:34]
| Let's, I think we should take our break now. Cause we're, we're, we're running low on time and I do want to make sure we do cover the legal stuff. Cause there's the whole, is he finally just actively defying SCOTUS at this point? And that whole, Well, before we go to legal stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:53]
| Well, actually, before we go into that, do one quick thing. Just one quick subject before we get into the legal. Okay. Insert this. Because there was a whole bunch of women went into space, and they got a lot of hate. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:20:07]
| We'll just throw this in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:11]
| It's just the intermission between the, you know, continue to talk about it. Intermission, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, are they just getting hate because people are just pissed off at the billionaires like right now? I guess that's, I mean, it's a good reason, but is that it?
|
Sam:
[1:20:27]
| No, I think there's a little bit more to that. I mean, yes, people are pissed off at the billionaires. Yes, people are pissed off that it was just a bunch of famous people. But I think part of it was also the disconnect between like the marketing of it was like, oh, look, so inspiring, an all-woman crew, blah, blah, blah. Whereas the reality was it's a bunch of rich tourists on an 11-minute ride. Meanwhile, you've had really prominent, serious women astronauts for a long time now. Ah, but the thing is.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:02]
| This wasn't.
|
Sam:
[1:21:03]
| Well, and look, and they sort of acted kind of silly, too. So they weren't like, ooh, serious, blah, blah, blah. They acted silly and goofy on their thing. And, you know, it was just sort of the, it was almost tried to show, down people's throats, look, this is an amazing milestone of the all-female crew and blah, blah, blah. Whereas the way this particular space capsule works, they're all just passengers. It's all remotely operated. They're not doing anything. It just goes up and down. I saw a lot of people as well saying things like, wait, I thought Katy Perry was going to be in space for like a month or something. It was 11 minutes. What the hell are you talking about? She's back already. But I do think that and I listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:53]
| I think this translates from everything that's going on in terms of the backlash is because of what is this assault on on? It's this assault from the billionaire class on what is the I call now it's like the medium upper class of America. That that is because that is what it is and i and i think that's that that's the whole thing where you know they go around riding in rockets where you know you've got must saying that you know oh you're a scientist and they and age fuck you you're you know you're worthless well and i i think that's a number of people have pointed out the disconnect of.
|
Sam:
[1:22:37]
| Like celebrating like this all woman crew etc while meanwhile they're laying off hundreds, hundreds of women scientists at NASA. Exactly. Right. And CDC and wherever. So that's in the middle of all of this, it's kind of like just.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:55]
| You know, fuck off. Really, you know, whatever. I get it. Yeah. So, okay. Okay. We can take that break now? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:23:04]
| Okay. Here we go.
|
Break:
[1:23:08]
| You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe!
|
Break:
[1:23:29]
| You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne. At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our Curmudgeon's Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. Fun stuff. Not fun. In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Curmudgeon's Corner. Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. One hundred billion! Billion dollars! Even though you don't have anywhere near a billion dollars. If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates, curmudgeonscorner! That's really mean, isn't it? Bye-bye. hate for my kids' corner, but I really do! As usual, I should point out that.
|
Sam:
[1:24:50]
| That break is actually wrong and you do have a billion dollars you can send our way, please feel free. Yeah, I mean, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:58]
| We'll make good use of it.
|
Sam:
[1:25:01]
| Yeah, we'll definitely make it. And look, instead of sedatives.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:04]
| Send me whiskey. Send me scotch. We'll go on Jeff Bezos' spaceship.
|
Sam:
[1:25:14]
| I don't want.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:14]
| To go on a fucking spaceship. I don't know. I'll wait for once I can go to orbit.
|
Sam:
[1:25:20]
| I want it to go like.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:22]
| You know, in like 2001. Those might be more dangerous than helicopters.
|
Sam:
[1:25:25]
| Listen, I want it to go.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:27]
| I wanted it to be like it was in the movie 2001. Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:25:31]
| You say, you know, we get on this.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:34]
| Plane and we get to the space station. That's a hotel. If it was like that, then yes. You know, it feels like going on an airplane trip, kind of like that. Then yes, that's what I want. You don't want to pay.
|
Sam:
[1:25:44]
| A million dollars plus for an 11-minute ride up and down again? Not exactly, no. No?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:50]
| No no no.
|
Sam:
[1:25:52]
| Not at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:53]
| I don't see why not it's.
|
Sam:
[1:25:55]
| A little bit uh pricey.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:57]
| A little pricey i'm sure the price.
|
Sam:
[1:26:00]
| Will come down at some point hope.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:02]
| You know 50 be like a helicopter ride but of course you know those aren't very safe as i've mentioned i'm sure like yeah yes.
|
Sam:
[1:26:12]
| Eventually you know So SpaceX and Blue Origin have done well so far. They haven't killed anybody yet. But look, let's be honest. It's only a matter of time, right? Listen, I want, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:28]
| And if it's going to be that they're going to kill somebody, may it please be Elon Musk and his maiden voyage. As I've pointed out before.
|
Sam:
[1:26:36]
| He's the only one of these billionaires who hasn't ridden on their own spaceship. Well, you know what?
|
Ivan:
[1:26:41]
| Maybe he's not as dumb as I thought he is.
|
Sam:
[1:26:45]
| Okay, so let's start. The main legal thing is there have been a number of cases bopping up and down the court system, but the one that has gotten the most attention over the last week, although I shouldn't say that, there's competition for this. I mean, most attention. It's like, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:06]
| Every day is a fucking like shit show of, you know, new shit that we're arguing about. Well, the one I was going to.
|
Sam:
[1:27:14]
| Start with is the case about what was his, what's his name? I always, you know, I suck at names. Which one? Which one? The guy mistakenly sent to El Salvador. Kilmar. Kilmar.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:27]
| Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. There you go. But I'm going to pronounce it Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. I'm not even going to attempt that.
|
Sam:
[1:27:38]
| Anyway, that made it all the way up to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS basically said, yes, the lower court is right. Facilitate getting this guy. They did say something about like, let's clarify what they meant by effectuate, but we're going to say facilitate. And so it went back down to the lower court and the lower court needs to make it happen. Well, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:00]
| But they wanted to specifically.
|
Sam:
[1:28:01]
| Say like what was within scope and what was not like, for instance, you could argue that effectuate means do it at all costs. If you have to, if you have to send the army to invade and physically take over the country in order to get him back, the court is ordering that. And the Supreme Court might not go along with going that far. But you clearly wouldn't need to go that far, right? Donald Trump could say, we changed our mind, bring him back, and he'd be back. Given that the Senator Chris Van.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:35]
| Hollen very doggedly and persistently finally got to meet him. Right. But anyway, the point was.
|
Sam:
[1:28:42]
| SCOTUS said, facilitate it. It went back to the lower courts. The lower court was like, I want you to tell me right away, what's this guy's current status? What are you doing to get him back? And the Trump administration has been basically bullshitting him over and over and over. He asked for daily updates. They've given him bullshit daily updates and basically have said they're not doing anything and there's nothing they can do. They at one point said, like, we believe our obligation to facilitate is done if like, if, at the border. We acknowledge that he showed up and we arrest him, but we can't make El Salvador do anything. And meanwhile, you know, the president of El Salvador is like, what are we going to do? Smuggle him back to the U.S.? In the Oval Office, by the way, this conversation happening. But basically... Well, I'm hoping that the.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:44]
| Senator goes and gets a private jet, just loads them up and just brings them over.
|
Sam:
[1:29:52]
| So far, the president and vice president of El Salvador have both posted after that meeting, basically making fun of the whole thing and saying, like, look, look, he got out of the death camp and was sitting there having margaritas with the senator. And now his reward. Well, those two guys are clowns.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:14]
| And now the reward.
|
Sam:
[1:30:15]
| He can go back into the custody of El Salvador. They're not giving him up right now to the senator. At least not. Well, let's be clear. Let's be clear.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:25]
| For days, they were refusing to even let him meet him. Right. They finally wound up letting him meet. And apparently the senator is very fucking persistent. Okay. So I'm going to give him.
|
Sam:
[1:30:36]
| I keep wanting to turn back to the main point here is not actually what's going on with this guy. Although it's the fact that the Trump administration has been blatantly not cooperating. With what the Supreme Court said to say. I mean, what they have been hiding behind.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:00]
| And they've done this on purpose, obviously. They have been trying to say.
|
Sam:
[1:31:05]
| According to on— Hey, he's a citizen from El Salvador.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:09]
| And we sent him to El Salvador. What can we do? Well, right. They've been doing that.
|
Sam:
[1:31:14]
| They've been quibbling about the wording. They've been saying the courts can't tell the executive branch how to do foreign policy. They're right. But they've also at various points been refusing to actually give meaningful updates on the status. Right. They've been refusing to say what we what they have done. They've they've, you know, basically, like they have been trying to make arguments about why what they're doing is actually in compliance. And in fact, like Stephen Miller and Donald Trump have even been saying that the Supreme Court ruling was 9-0 in their favor, as opposed to 9-0 against them. They're trying to like distort reality like they do. And they're trying to.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:03]
| Yes. But, but the, the.
|
Sam:
[1:32:05]
| The, the, the judge in this particular case as ordered a week and a half of discovery of like, you know, you're going to bring in people to testify to tell me exactly when, where, and how, you know, things have been going on. The other court dealing with the more general transportation of people to that prison has already said that there, I forget the exact terminology. It's one step short of them, but it probably will cause that they are in contempt of court or something like that and has issued more conversations. I always get these two cases confused, so I apologize because they're going on parallel tracks. But both of them are essentially at the point of declaring the administration in contempt. On contempt. And some of the questions are who exactly would be in contempt? Is it the lawyer who's saying something? Is it some administration official? I would start with a fucking lawyer.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:05]
| And then work your way up, right. Yeah, basically, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:33:08]
| Well, and, you know, they— And this is criminal contempt.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:12]
| So— Potentially, but there's a problem there.
|
Sam:
[1:33:15]
| Too, because normally, how would criminal contempt work? It would be a referral to the DOJ in order to go after them. No, no, no, no, no, no. The judge— Wait, wait.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:26]
| Wait. No, no, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:33:27]
| No, no. That's not— No.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:29]
| The judge can do— The judge.
|
Sam:
[1:33:30]
| The judge can do certain things.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:32]
| The judge can declare that they are, okay, this is, no, you're talking about, you're confusing it in error of contempt. No. No, you're talking, no, no, no. A judge can, listen, a judge can declare you in contempt of jail and order you to jail. Yes, yes, yes, they can. But a couple of different things.
|
Sam:
[1:33:48]
| The particular modes of contempt that are being talked about here, there are a couple options that have been talked about. One is the referral to DOJ, which would obviously go nowhere. One of the judges had specifically said they would assign a different lawyer to do the prosecution. And then, as you said, under certain circumstances, the judge can just say, you're going to jail until you cooperate. Yeah. You know, and.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:14]
| That's yet a.
|
Sam:
[1:34:15]
| Different type. So all of these are potentially in play, but the question is who, what, where, how the administration has already appealed one of the notices of potential contempt. And so, and that, yeah, these things are bound.
|
Sam:
[1:34:33]
| Down the courts. It is inevitable that this will go back to SCOTUS again, but probably both of these cases will end up at SCOTUS again. And then we see, does SCOTUS get even more strenuous in what they say, or do they try to back down a little bit? I mentioned last week that even within SCOTUS's orders here, they left wiggle room for the administration to play the kind of games they're playing. Do they order, do they issue another ruling with less wiggle room or not? Cause they don't really want the straight up confrontation with Donald Trump. They want to avoid that. They're hoping at some point, like you said, like maybe this gets resolved because you know, the, the, the, they end up, the guy gets to go home. Now, Stephen Miller and others have said like explicitly okay the when we messed up here it's because there was a judge's order on the book saying we couldn't send him back to el salvador it doesn't say anything about anywhere else in the world if he steps foot back in the u.s we're immediately going to expel him again but send him to yamina or somewhere i mean for.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:51]
| For what reason they had no reason to expel him anyway, either. Well, they claim.
|
Sam:
[1:35:57]
| There are many reasons. Of course, that's all in dispute and they haven't provided the evidence needed, which is why, you know, yes, yes. And so the thing is with all of this is, you know, people have been trying to parse words or of like, when do we hit the constitutional crisis? Like on one extreme, like you could say the very first time that Donald Trump didn't do exactly what the lower court judge said, you were already there. Now there's an argument that says, well, now he's directly violating what SCOTUS said. So now we're there for sure, right? And then you could argue, well, yeah, but SCOTUS left some wiggle room. Let's let it get back to SCOTUS again, and then maybe we're there. But the bottom line, I think, is that absolutely everything Donald Trump has been doing his second term is a constitutional crisis from beginning to end. Because the one fundamental characteristic of Donald Trump's presidency the second time around is to not worry about the law is, just do whatever the fuck you want and wait for them to stop you. And fundamentally, as far as I'm concerned, you're already at a crisis at that point because you've lost the respect for the process. But I'll tell you what.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:17]
| Listen, the main reason of a crisis right now is because you simply have one branch. Okay, you have the executive branch who is basically saying, I'll do whatever the fuck I want. Okay? The judicial branch has been making orders against them. They have been ignoring them. But the reality is that your third check and balance here is supposed to be our Congress. And Congress has basically abdicated their responsibility to do anything about this guy well i mean they they're they're they're but look at all but look at all the ways like with with with expenditures with the tariffs no i know but here's the thing though and i know we talked about murkowski.
|
Sam:
[1:38:06]
| Talking about how.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:06]
| People are scared.
|
Sam:
[1:38:07]
| And we've talked about that before but yes there are some people who are scared but the current congress is, MAGA than it was two years ago or four years ago or eight years ago, there is a significant portion of the Congress who is absolutely fine with this. It's not that they are like, oh, we want to restrain him, but we're afraid. I mean, there certainly are some people in that category, but for the most part, like they're, they're like, I'm not going to say for the most part, because we know, okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:41]
| They are complicit, but you've got, remember, you've got the different groups here. Okay. You do. You do. And there is, and a lot of the Republicans, you know, a significant number. Okay. All right. You know, more than enough to be able to impeach Donald Trump. Okay. Despite something that he's doing is illegal, but, but their constituents would hang him on effigy or hang him directly.
|
Sam:
[1:39:05]
| Or hang him directly, which that's been their.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:07]
| Their, their fear. So, you know, and, and that's the reality. You've got a number of people there. more than enough to take action that aren't doing it simply because they are scared and that's why Alyssa Markoski was saying it because she knows that that's the case I think realistically whatever their.
|
Sam:
[1:39:25]
| Motivations or not the we are so far away from a scenario where this Congress would actually do jack well and that's the reason why I.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:37]
| To a certain extent unfortunately and I not that I I relish having a, economic, you know, recession or worse at this moment, but it's about the only thing that's going to shake people out of this is that, you know, it's like I mentioned, there's just no other way that it's going to shape Congress into action. None other. These guys are not going to do a damn thing unless their constituents all of a sudden are unemployed, can't afford shit, and they're all pissed off yelling at them about what the fuck. Well, and the key part.
|
Sam:
[1:40:14]
| There is the general population in those red districts has to not only be in pain, but actually blame Donald Trump for it. Yeah. And I have no confidence that they will. I think that one thing when it comes to the economy.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:30]
| They always blame whoever the fuck is president. Hmm. You know, that's just the fact. You know, look, W1 re-election, you know, even with all the shit that happened and whatever, and the Republicans didn't get their asses handed to them until they fucking crashed the economy. Simple as that. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:51]
| You know, as much of a shithead as Carville is these days, the economy, stupid, was, you know, right on. He's fucking right.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:03]
| These guys are not going to change their worldview until it fucking slams their pocketbook. Period. It's all self-interest. Everything. every single one of these guys that you've seen that are there were all that that are like all of a sudden there were that are all that i'm not not on social media not only self-interest but immediate.
|
Sam:
[1:41:29]
| Right now impossible to ignore self-interest because if you try to explain to them how something.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:36]
| Will affect them.
|
Sam:
[1:41:37]
| Like five years in the future no no no no well i'm talking about.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:40]
| I'm talking yeah we're talking about how all these guys on social media that right now are crying that they voted for trump and they lost their job because he didn't think he was coming after them or they got the or they got or they got profiled he didn't think he was coming after them or blah blah blah it's it's all because it hit them straight you know on that forehead with a two by four that's what that's how they realized oh fuck yeah he really was he really fucked me, well even then i.
|
Sam:
[1:42:09]
| Like i heard who who was it there was somebody doing interviews with like farmers that were getting screwed by the tariffs that are already in place, right? Well, I'm sure there are a number of stuff still.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:23]
| You know, still will fucking like smash your balls with a hammer anyway. Well, no. They specifically said, well.
|
Sam:
[1:42:31]
| We got hurt by the tariffs last time Donald Trump was in here, but he saved us with a bailout. We expect him to do it again. Yeah, that's true, but he's not.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:39]
| Going to bail out people who are going to go shop for cars pretty soon. He's not going to be able to. Yvonne, I think you're missing.
|
Sam:
[1:42:47]
| I think you're missing something important.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:50]
| Which is? The launch of the new Trump-branded automobiles.
|
Sam:
[1:42:56]
| Oh, those are going to go up against the Teslas.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:59]
| Huh? Teslas already have a T.
|
Sam:
[1:43:01]
| You just have to change the front. That was just Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:05]
| Fuck Tesla. It's going to be the Trump Model Y. In gold. Gold edition.
|
Sam:
[1:43:11]
| Gold edition.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:13]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:43:14]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:15]
| I like this.
|
Sam:
[1:43:16]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:17]
| Every car now we're back in the 90s we're gonna have gold editions they're gonna have little gold like doorknobs little gold striping a little fake gold you know shit all over the place like the fucking oval office now we see fucking oval office looks like a goddamn fucking like room at a vegas brothel now, Well.
|
Sam:
[1:43:44]
| Ed, you know, and the government could pay Tesla for the Trump branded cars and give them out free and give them out free. Yes, we will give.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:55]
| You know, so it's it's so it's like it goes back to the Nazi plan, the car for everybody, the Volkswagen, the Volkswagen. Yes. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:44:05]
| The people's car, the people's car.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:07]
| There we go okay anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:44:13]
| I think the whole back and forth okay i think here's.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:19]
| One thing i i want to make sure and if if anybody didn't understand something i want to make a point very clear right now i'm not sure if i made this very very clear but i want you all to know that i absolutely despise Donald J. Trump. No one would have.
|
Sam:
[1:44:37]
| I just want to make sure that if that wasn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:40]
| Clear up until this moment, I wanted to make sure that to make it very clear. You know you want a Trump mobile.
|
Sam:
[1:44:47]
| If I got a free Trump mobile.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:49]
| I would probably do one of the least ecological things that I would ever probably do. You would burn it. Burn it to the ground. I would burn the fucking thing.
|
Sam:
[1:44:57]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:59]
| Of course you would.
|
Sam:
[1:45:01]
| Okay. Like, so I think that the back and forth between the courts and Trump is going to go on for a while. I think it will be increasingly clear. This is my prediction. It will be increasingly clear that Donald Trump effectively is ignoring it and is doing whatever the fuck he wants anyway. But he will continue to put out enough fig leaves or fig leaves to keep it going up and down and up and down in the courts. And he won't at any point directly say, fuck you, Scotus, I'm, you don't matter. He won't make it that clear, but the effective result will be the same because he'll figure out one way or another to do what he wants anyway. That's my take. He may occasionally throw a fig leaf. Maybe this guy in El Salvador, some compromised thing happens to him maybe probably not though because donald trump fundamentally believes that backing down is losing listen like everything you.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:13]
| Know something will happen that he can declare a victory in some way so that's what i'm saying like for example because what has what could happen is that the the the president of el salvador somehow in order to i'll say face just sends them back, you know, or some shit like that. Or I decided that.
|
Sam:
[1:46:31]
| You know. You.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:33]
| Know, if I.
|
Sam:
[1:46:35]
| Were to design an actual way out. Yeah. It's a neutral third party, neutral third country. We'll send them to Mexico. A neutral.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:45]
| Third country offers.
|
Sam:
[1:46:47]
| Asylum for this guy and his whole family. Yeah. Yeah, there you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:52]
| Yeah, that's the kind of thing I could.
|
Sam:
[1:46:54]
| See as a way out. He doesn't come back to the U.S. He doesn't stay in El Salvador. Okay. Can we get that offer?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:02]
| Can we get that offer?
|
Sam:
[1:47:04]
| For a neutral third party to take us in? Yeah. Yeah. Like, can we get asylum in.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:09]
| Like, Italy? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:13]
| The person in charge of Italy is, like, not that great either. Maloney, no. Well, Switzerland.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:18]
| Switzerland. They get an asylum offer. They're neutral. You know, neutral. You know, neutral. They're very neutral. Yeah. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:26]
| I was thinking more Scandinavia, but too cold for you. You know, I love.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:33]
| Like, you know, I love Scandinavia conceptually.
|
Sam:
[1:47:36]
| Just not the weather too cold.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:41]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:42]
| I mean, shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:43]
| Don't you have like some, yeah, like, like the, the French have these overseas departments. Okay. You know, like, like the Caribbean.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| Right?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:52]
| Well, Denmark does have Greenland.
|
Sam:
[1:47:55]
| Okay. That's not helping. Like, you know, they have like something like.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:01]
| You know. Look, I'm still open to Puerto Rico joining, you know, being turned over to Ted Mark.
|
Sam:
[1:48:08]
| Don't some of those actually still have some Caribbean islands? Yeah, the French do. Martinique, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:14]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do the British as well. There's a few British overseas territories, yes. I mean, one time when we went to Anguilla, I had to get my wife a British visa to go over there. Right. Way back when, before she decided.
|
Sam:
[1:48:27]
| To become a.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:27]
| Citizen. Now, of course, I'm exploring getting citizenship somewhere else. Yes, you've mentioned it.
|
Sam:
[1:48:33]
| Okay, we should wrap up. There's all kinds of other stuff that happened. Just to throw out a couple bullet points. Okay, by the way, there is one thing about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:43]
| None of it is good. Oh, the other things that have happened, you mean?
|
Sam:
[1:48:47]
| Yeah, none of them are good. Are any of them good?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:52]
| Well, the list I was going to go through.
|
Sam:
[1:48:54]
| Yes, you go through. You go through. Well, let's see. For example, I was looking at the list that we put up.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:59]
| On the thing. The Slack. Yeah, on the Slack, direct negotiations with, which seemed like a joke. Okay. And I guess maybe, is that why they had all those bombers at Diego Garcia? I guess they were thinking about. Yeah. Okay. Apparently, apparently, by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:49:21]
| On that, Israel was about to attack. Yeah. That's what, and, and apparently the U S Donald Trump specifically said, no, no, no, we're going to negotiate with Iran. You got to hold off. So I guess like, I, I, I don't disagree with, let's start negotiating with Iran again. Do I have trust that Donald Trump can do it in a way that makes sense? No. But I think it's better than bombing them. You remember USMCA?
|
Ivan:
[1:49:52]
| Look, if he wants to do USMCA too, but like the Iran nuclear agreement too, that's basically the same thing as it was before. It was almost the same shit as NAFTA, except with some minor changes. So there you go. Okay, I'll go with that. Yeah, he could do something like that.
|
Sam:
[1:50:07]
| I mean, probably you'd have to give Iran some more concessions than they had last time. But, you know, but at a fundamental level, I don't disagree with negotiate rather than bomb. But yeah. Okay, go ahead. Okay. Even though- 224 pounds.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:22]
| That's how much, I was going to say.
|
Sam:
[1:50:24]
| How much Ivan weighs, but no, that's a Donald Trump, right? That's how much Donald Trump weighs. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:30]
| At six foot three. I mean, I, this is, he released his medical reports this week.
|
Sam:
[1:50:38]
| It's just, and he's of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:40]
| Like, you know, a handsome.
|
Sam:
[1:50:41]
| Healthy man. We didn't mention.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:45]
| Anything about Harvard saying, go fuck yourself. And then a number of universities actually like now decided that, you know, it's not a good idea to negotiate with Donald Trump. And by the way, a whole bunch of law firms actually also decided, what the fuck are we doing? What are we negotiating with this asshole? Yeah, I mean, there were a.
|
Sam:
[1:51:03]
| Handful of law firms that had already taken him to court and won every single one. But there were tons that were capitulating. Yeah. And hopefully these reverse. But there were idiots. I mean, there were.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:16]
| Idiots that I think a number of them are realizing that they were idiots. And now they're like, oh, you know, they want to fight us for more. We're like, fuck you. No. So, yeah. There was the homegrown next. What the hell was the homegrown next thing? No, this was Trump and what's his.
|
Sam:
[1:51:31]
| Name from El Salvador? What's the president's name? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That he's going to deport American citizens.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:36]
| Deport American citizens. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:51:39]
| Basically, he told the president of El Salvador, you need to build a bunch more prisons like this because we want to send a bunch more people to you. No, by the way, he doesn't have the money.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:50]
| But thank God El Salvador doesn't have the fucking money.
|
Sam:
[1:51:52]
| But anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:53]
| Including the homegrown ones next. Well, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:51:55]
| Donald Trump could pay for it. He doesn't like paying. construction will.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:59]
| Exactly. Number one, he doesn't like to pay for anything. Number two is, how fast did that wall go up, Sam, in Texas when he was president? Exactly. EO against Krebs and Taylor, you know, so he targeted a couple of people, more people that said anything about him. He keeps targeting people that say anything about him.
|
Sam:
[1:52:19]
| No, but the specific thing here is this one was, well, no, yeah, but no, but this was the most direct one yet in terms of he issued an order directly to the DOJ to investigate these two people. Yeah, I know, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:36]
| The Bernie AOC tour. You know, the only thing I'll say about this is.
|
Sam:
[1:52:41]
| You know, whether or not it's effective in the end, I don't know, but I like it. Like these two. I think that this needs to mushroom into.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:50]
| Like, massive protests at some point. This needs to go from this. There were, but no.
|
Sam:
[1:52:55]
| We need to bigger.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:57]
| No, I know. And the protests are.
|
Sam:
[1:53:00]
| Like, a monthly thing. They're on a schedule. They're going to happen more. But, like, no. The thing is, and it's not just, like, that Bernie and AOC are filling up, like, large venues in red states. It's if you listen to what they're actually saying. Oh, yeah. It's great. It's great.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:21]
| It's great.
|
Sam:
[1:53:22]
| It's passionate. One thing, there was one five-second clip of AOC who was like, people ask us why we even come to Idaho. It's because you matter. I love it. Love it.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:39]
| She said more that was great.
|
Sam:
[1:53:41]
| But just that one thing to like, say we, but I, There was a poll.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:47]
| By the way, there was a poll, if she primaried Schumer for the Senate, where she was beating him 65-35. Yeah, no, I believe that for the primary.
|
Sam:
[1:53:58]
| I'm waiting for the general election polls to see if she could win in the general election. Yeah, that's, you know. But, you know, Schumer needs to go anyway. Yeah, he needs to go. You know, but anyway, no, I like what they're doing. I like that they they are active. They speak well. They are not compromising on their values. No, to try to like attract centrists or anything. No, no, no, no. They're not wishy washy. They're clear on what they believe. And if you don't like it, you don't like it. But they will they will listen to the people who disagree with them, but they will still like go right on. And there are a few others that have been doing this kind of thing. I've seen Buttigieg out a bunch lately. I've seen Walls out a bunch lately.
|
Sam:
[1:54:46]
| There's another one whose name I'm forgetting right now, I'm sorry, who's been on TV a lot and just calling out the administration left and right. We talked about the Booker thing, you know, all the sort of a one-off. But like what is not working right now is the people who are just like, oh, we'll be quiet and we'll wait for the administration to like shoot itself in the foot and then we'll be well positioned. I mean, they may be right. I mean, if they tank the economy. But, you know, I tell you, I am really thinking positively right now about the Democrats who are being out there and vocal and visible and combative against the the current regime, as opposed to the ones who are being quiet. Yeah. And part of this is I saw someone on TV or a podcast or whatever, and again, I'm not going to remember who or where it was, was saying they've got to stop. Thinking of themselves at this point. For this particular moment in history, you need to not think of yourself as like a traditional American party in the minority that's just waiting for their next term. You need to think of yourself more like the opposition movements, like solidarity in Poland during the last bits of the Cold War. Hey, good news. That kid, the.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:13]
| Kid that was American that the fucking police held up in northern Florida. They released him. Yeah, we hadn't mentioned that one.
|
Sam:
[1:56:20]
| But he was an American citizen who... Yeah, but at the court hearing, they were like waving his birth certificate around and stuff like that. Oh, he's got an ice hold. I'm like, he's a fucking American citizen.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:33]
| You assholes. And the judge was like, oh, sorry. Yeah, the judge was like.
|
Sam:
[1:56:37]
| I see a birth certificate. I can't do anything about it. Well, the problem is, yeah, he couldn't overrule the ice hold.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:43]
| The sheriff had to fucking go look at what the judge said and say, oh, okay, fine. Anyway, I like the Bernie AOC tour.
|
Sam:
[1:56:53]
| I'm liking those two more and more as every week goes by, and there are a few other Democrats who are doing it right and a bunch that are doing it wrong. Okay, go ahead. And the last one that we didn't talk about.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:04]
| Is RFK on autism. I think I may have mentioned a little bit but RFK is RFK Jr. Is a complete fucking moron. Yes. He knows nothing about nothing and thinks he's smarter than everybody else. He's an idiot. He has never met a person, Very clearly, obviously. Never fucking met one. For some fucking reason, he advocates about, you know, the vaccines cause of autism, but this motherfucker has never, ever met somebody with autism. He is a joke. And this guy, I probably would get arrested if I fucking met. I mean, he is.
|
Sam:
[1:57:48]
| Not just ignorant. He is... He's dangerous. he's dangerous and actively harmful in any everything he is doing right now yes uh and like you know if if we we could have done a whole segment on him and autism you know and and what he's doing but like it's just one facet of all of the harmful things he's doing across all kinds of different areas which of course what he's doing is a small fast of what the whole damn administration is doing that's right. But, and that's why like each little slice of it gets a little bit of attention because there's so much, it's just this active destruction, of all sorts of things that are helpful and positive, replacing them with things that are not just neutral, but actively harmful. And that's where we are right now and where we probably will be for the next few years. And thank you so much for everybody who voted for him or you jackasses who stayed home because Harris wasn't pure enough for you. Okay. On that happy note.
|
Sam:
[1:59:04]
| Yes. On that happy, wonderful, exciting note. Hey, everybody, you know the deal. Go to curmudgeon-corner.com. You can find all of the stuff, all the ways to contact us, all our archives, transcripts of recent shows, all of those fun things, all the ways to subscribe, follow us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, except TikTok. I still haven't linked to TikTok. You know, I keep putting it off. At this point, I'm not sure if TikTok is going to disappear or stay or whatever. I'm hoping for certainty. But in the Trump administration, you never get certainty about jack shit. So maybe at some point i'll add the little logo for tiktok too but anyway i links to all of those things and also of course to our patreon where you can give us money at various levels we will send you a postcard we will mention you on the show we will send you a mug blah blah blah blah blah and yes i still owe pete greg and eggs egg not egg eggs eggs hit an all-time new high price-wise, didn't they, Yvonne, recently? They had been going down, but then they went back up. Nah, they're expensive.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:12]
| They're staying expensive, yeah. You know, now I want them.
|
Sam:
[2:00:17]
| I found eggs at Costco.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:19]
| Actually, the ones at Costco, they've been able to source them at my old price. Oh, there you go. That's what I saw. There you go.
|
Sam:
[2:00:26]
| Anyway, yes, Pete, Greg, and I said egg again. Greg and egg, egg. Pete, Greg, and Ed, I will eventually get you the things I owe you. And yeah, at $2 a month or more on the Patreon, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the Curmudgeons Corner Slack. Whereas we, you know, over the course of this show, we've mentioned like at least half a dozen different things that we'd shared on the Slack or talked about on the Slack. It's a lot of fun. Yvonne and I are there. A bunch of listeners are there. We share links. We chat about the news. We chat about other things. It's great fun. You should join us. So be in contact. Let us know and start participating in the Slack. And those of you who are members of the Slack, but aren't in very often, visit more often. Come play with us. It's a lot of fun. Okay, Yvonne. So, what's something from the Slack that's worth mentioning before we say goodbye? What's something from the Slack?
|
Ivan:
[2:01:26]
| Okay. I'm so alone. Crosswalk speakers across Silicon Valley hacked the play AI audio of Musk begging for friends. Oh.
|
Sam:
[2:01:39]
| Is that sweet it's so yeah sweet i feel so bad for him so so sad.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:45]
| Yeah poor poor little elon well he's he's also apparently.
|
Sam:
[2:01:50]
| On the outs now from the administration so you know he's working his way back to his company slowly he's been in much less visible the last two weeks i don't know well i mean neither has.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:04]
| Yeah, Navarro has a...
|
Sam:
[2:02:08]
| Navarro. Ever since the initial rollout of the tariffs didn't go quite as smoothly as they hoped, for some reason... Liberation day, Sam!
|
Ivan:
[2:02:19]
| Liberation day.
|
Sam:
[2:02:23]
| Should I go import some things from China? I did go and buy those.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:28]
| Tires that I wanted to get to beat the tariffs. i i i you know i.
|
Sam:
[2:02:33]
| I i said last week they they've delayed the tariffs on the electronic items except for the 10 so i'm back to my plan of waiting till the the next new iphones come out before upgrading my iphone in i think that's like right waiting for the 17s not the 16s the the only thing like right now i don't know if you.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:55]
| Saw that that you guys had stayed until the end of the podcast Uh, Apple for earth day is running a promotion. They hadn't run in the past recently, but apparently you can get a whole bunch of discounts. If you turn in old Apple products and there's a list of them that are usually get no trade in that they're, that they're useless and don't work, but they'll give you money. They'll give you a discounts. Uh, So they've got that.
|
Sam:
[2:03:22]
| Promo for Earth Day I am once again thinking Going through the whole thought process Do I want an iPad? And we talked about that before How there's the iPad ladder Let me tell you something And I don't say that.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:34]
| Right now I.
|
Sam:
[2:03:36]
| Find myself using.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:37]
| My Because my old iPad There were certain reasons I used it, but not as much This one, to do one I find myself using it quite a lot I figure at this point.
|
Sam:
[2:03:48]
| Like if i were to go ipad again i i would i would intentionally go mid-range i don't think i can like like i'd go for an air and one thing i realized i don't need all the storage.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:04]
| Not now because everything's.
|
Sam:
[2:04:06]
| A lot of content.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:06]
| Everything's on the.
|
Sam:
[2:04:07]
| Cloud i didn't really you.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:09]
| Know before i needed all the all of it especially when i was flying because many times like there was an internet on the flights but you know what it does have enough of a cache and and now on on i i can stream audio and video on the damn planes anyway yeah i mean i can i keep thinking.
|
Sam:
[2:04:26]
| Like you know at minimum i want the same amount of memory that i have on my phone but i'm thinking you know i probably don't even need that you know so anyway i'm thinking about it we'll see i don't it would be a splurge, but like, we'll see. Anyway, we are done. Thank you everybody for joining us yet again. Have a great week. Stay safe. Have fun, but not too much fun. You know, all the stuff I usually say like, and Yvonne and I, if all goes well, nothing unexpected happens. We'll be back again next week. Goodbye. Bye.
|
Break:
[2:05:07]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:05:36]
| Okay, that's it. Have a lovely evening, Yvonne. Thank you. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:43]
| Bye.
| |
|
