Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hey, Sam from the Future here. Just a quick note, a whole bunch of times during the show that you're about to hear, Yvonne and I talk about the Curmudgeon's Corner meetup scheduled for Wednesday, July 2nd, and how if you're interested, let us know, blah, blah, blah. Well, as it turns out, Yvonne had something happen that kept him from actually leaving Florida on Sunday night. So he's not going to be around on Tuesday after all, or Wednesday after all, or any of the days in between. He may or may not want to talk about that next week. I don't know. But in any case, he's not going to be around. If anyone wants to hang out with me, still feel free to let me know. I'm happy to do something Wednesday night, July 2nd. And maybe we can like, I don't know, FaceTime Yvonne or something. But he's not going to be in town after all. Plans got shifted around and canceled at the last minute, and yeah, so maybe we'll do that another time. Who knows when Yvonne and I will be in the same place at the same time again, but it's not going to be this coming week.
|
Sam:
[1:06]
| And the only reason you have this note at the beginning is because I am also late getting this stupid podcast out. It's not stupid. It's a very intelligent, amazing podcast. But in any case, yeah, so keep that in mind. When you hear all the notes about that, like, let me know if you want to hang out, but it'll just be me. You know, we did have a couple of people express interest, but I don't know if we'll still do the same thing in the same way when it's just me.
|
Sam:
[1:33]
| It is what it is. Here comes the real show. Do, do, do.
|
Ivan:
[1:40]
| Zero. Liftoff.
|
Sam:
[1:42]
| Whoa. It's going, it's going, it's blowing up.
|
Ivan:
[1:47]
| It's blowing up. Yes. If this were a Elon Musk record, that's exactly what it'd be doing. Yes. We're kind of, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:56]
| Yeah, there we go. Our stream is going.
|
Ivan:
[1:59]
| Streaming.
|
Sam:
[2:01]
| Streaming.
|
Ivan:
[2:02]
| Streaming it.
|
Sam:
[2:03]
| All of the lovely streamers of the world. And this thing is here.
|
Ivan:
[2:10]
| A strong, powerful stream.
|
Sam:
[2:14]
| Sure.
|
Ivan:
[2:16]
| God.
|
Sam:
[2:17]
| Got a nice little cough going. I got a nice little cough going this morning too. I don't know why.
|
Ivan:
[2:21]
| Well, I, I, okay. I am sure that our reasons are different.
|
Sam:
[2:25]
| Uh-huh.
|
Ivan:
[2:26]
| I, I, I, I just finished a, a very strenuous workout. And, uh, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[2:32]
| I did not. I did not.
|
Ivan:
[2:33]
| And I, and I.
|
Sam:
[2:34]
| I, I just woke up.
|
Ivan:
[2:36]
| I tend to, you know, after doing extreme cardio to have a bit of a cough afterwards.
|
Sam:
[2:46]
| Okay. There we go. The little notice just went out. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I got it. Okay. I guess, i guess we can just go yes yes yes here here here goes the going here.
|
Ivan:
[3:10]
| Goes the going okay.
|
Sam:
[3:33]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 28th, 2025. It's just after 17 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter, Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[3:47]
| Hello.
|
Sam:
[3:48]
| Before I forget, before we say anything else, I just want to mention again, I put this in the Sam from the Future at the beginning of last week's show, but I'll say it here too. We are going to have a curmudgeon's corner meetup in Seattle in the next few days. So Wednesday.
|
Ivan:
[4:06]
| In the next few days. On Wednesday.
|
Sam:
[4:08]
| Well, I'm not saying it's going to last several days. We're not having like a fire festival of curmudgeon's corner. You know.
|
Ivan:
[4:15]
| That would be. Let me call that fire fest guy and say, hey, look, we're trying to organize an event. And can you organize, you know, the Firefest Carbungeon's Corner special?
|
Sam:
[4:35]
| Yes, exactly. No, Wednesday, July 2nd, we will be getting together in the Seattle area, probably in Seattle proper, although we haven't decided the exact time and venue yet. It'll be July 2nd. That's Wednesday. Yes. In the evening.
|
Ivan:
[4:54]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[4:54]
| Um, you know, and we will settle an exact time and place based on interest and who's coming. Uh, so, you know, basically, uh, if, you know, if, if you're on our curmudgeon's corner slack, you have heard about this already. If you're on the email list that I use to get like substitute co-hosts, you've heard about this already. But if you are just listening, you may not have heard about this, especially if you hadn't listened to last week's show yet. So here's the deal. Um, yeah. We always tell you to go to curmudgeons-corner.com and find all the ways to contact us. Pick any way of contacting us that you would like, and let us know that you're interested in coming. And if you do that, we will make sure to get back to you with the exact time and place. Again, it's going to be July 2nd in the evening in Seattle, probably in Seattle, in the proper Seattle.
|
Ivan:
[5:49]
| I mean, you go to work in the city.
|
Sam:
[5:52]
| Like, I'll be at work in Seattle during the day.
|
Ivan:
[5:54]
| And I'm staying in the city, so, yeah.
|
Sam:
[5:57]
| And, you know, now, we realize a couple of our listeners are north of Seattle. I actually live north of Seattle. So if we had, like, massive demand, maybe we'd move it slightly north. But I think downtown Seattle is probably where it's going to be. We're probably going to pick some restaurant. But if you are interested in coming, please pick any one of the ways of contacting us on curmudgeons-corner.com. let us know and we will put you on the list to tell you exactly where and when it's going to be and also if you have any constraints like hey i'd really love to come but i can only come if let us know we'll see if we can accommodate we may be able to we may not we'll.
|
Ivan:
[6:40]
| Try to be flexible.
|
Sam:
[6:41]
| So far we have confirmation from uh bruce i.
|
Ivan:
[6:45]
| Think bob didn't bob say he was going to try to figure it.
|
Sam:
[6:48]
| Out but bob said he'd try to figure it out too but we don't have final confirmation yet okay so but we get we probably got bruce and bob okay there may be others there may not be like i think my wife has said she can come oh yeah oh cool so uh okay so.
|
Ivan:
[7:03]
| That way because i was telling my wife i'm like hey so she was asked is brandy gonna be there and i said well uh it's, I hope so.
|
Sam:
[7:10]
| I think so. We shall see. Nothing's final. Nothing's final.
|
Ivan:
[7:15]
| Nothing's final. Nothing's final. This is fluid. Plans are fluid. You know, it was like, well, I, of course, realized this was now, but Sam was also kind of like me where it seemed like, oh, I'm flying up there. It's like months away.
|
Sam:
[7:32]
| Yeah, it's the future.
|
Ivan:
[7:33]
| It's the future. Somewhere in the future. You know, and I'm like, no, the future is like now. I'm flying Sunday.
|
Sam:
[7:43]
| Yes. Which, as we're recording, is now tomorrow.
|
Ivan:
[7:47]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[7:47]
| So, you know, there is a good chance Yvonne will actually be in Seattle before I push out this podcast.
|
Ivan:
[7:55]
| It's possible.
|
Sam:
[7:55]
| You know, because I got other things to do today after we record. So I'm probably not going to get to it until tomorrow. So, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[8:02]
| Well, I mean, I'm flying at night. So, you know, I'm flying at night. I'm taking this flight that leaves at 8 o'clock, which is the flight that I took six years ago to get there. That was delayed to oblivion. Okay? That was literally left like 10 hours, 8 to 10 hours late. Hopefully, that won't be the case this time.
|
Sam:
[8:25]
| Right. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[8:27]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[8:28]
| Hopefully.
|
Ivan:
[8:28]
| That was bad.
|
Sam:
[8:33]
| Yeah. Yeah, so this is one of the few times Yvonne and I are in the same part of the world at the same time. So we're having a meetup. So let's see. And we know we have a few listeners in the Seattle area. So, you know, come on board.
|
Ivan:
[8:47]
| Come on down.
|
Sam:
[8:48]
| I just yelled for no reason there. Okay, so the show as a whole, we will do the usual thing. But first, I'll do a couple of movies. Yvonne will use the timer to keep me honest.
|
Ivan:
[9:02]
| Oh, oh, oh, shit. Let me get the, yeah, hold on.
|
Sam:
[9:07]
| And then we'll do more serious things. And, you know, this is the kind of week I figure, like, we will let each other choose and maybe somebody will go rogue. But really, I think there's three big things this week, right?
|
Ivan:
[9:23]
| I like, I have no idea. I gotta be honest. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[9:28]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:28]
| No, no. In terms of, like, look, I know a lot of stuff's happened. But I'm in a little bit of a blur, like right now, because so much, so much shit's been going on. I, I, I'm like, I, I. It seems like a blur.
|
Sam:
[9:45]
| To me, the three big things of the week seem like, first of all, you'll be amazed. Wait, wait, wait.
|
Ivan:
[9:53]
| This week, did we bomb? Was this?
|
Sam:
[9:55]
| Yes. The bombing of Iran was since we recorded the last show.
|
Ivan:
[9:59]
| Since we recorded the last show. Okay.
|
Sam:
[10:01]
| I did insert a Sam from the Future at the beginning saying we bombed Iran.
|
Ivan:
[10:04]
| Right, right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[10:06]
| Because we recorded Friday night and then the bombing was Saturday.
|
Ivan:
[10:10]
| Okay. That's why I said it's a blur. I wasn't even sure. Hey, did this happen since the last show? The answer is yes.
|
Sam:
[10:19]
| Yes. Yes. So we bombed Iran. We had the New York mayor primaries. That's right.
|
Ivan:
[10:27]
| That was this week, too.
|
Sam:
[10:29]
| That was this week, too. And we had a bunch of SCOTUS rulings at the end of the week. I think those are the three big things.
|
Ivan:
[10:35]
| You know, I am debating something. I came home. My wife tries to avoid the news. It gives her a lot of anxiety. and i totally get it i can.
|
Sam:
[10:44]
| See that yeah.
|
Ivan:
[10:44]
| I i look i i get it i i get it there's this just you know yeah so i came home i don't know she saw something in the news and and i'm like i could see her face like something's but i'm like and i'm like what happened i'm like i don't know i just saw something in the news and i was just like oh fuck what the fuck you know it's all i am like yeah okay i i get that okay all right yeah i i get it so i i i was debating sam yes let me give you if i gave you an offer right now say look we got a mission to jupiter i and in order to do this we need to put you in a cryogenic sleep for three years okay, To make it there. So right now, we will put you on a cryo sleep. Basically, you will not age.
|
Sam:
[11:35]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:36]
| So we will send you to Jupiter. Okay?
|
Sam:
[11:39]
| To Jupiter.
|
Ivan:
[11:39]
| Basically, you're not going to lose those three years. Actually, I would like to see if I could take my family so that way I'm like, you know, they don't lose time either. Take a family. We're going to put you on a cryo sleep.
|
Sam:
[11:49]
| So we're taking the whole family. We're doing like lost in space style going to the flying saucer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[11:55]
| Yeah. I'll put you in a three-year cryo sleep.
|
Sam:
[11:58]
| And the question is, does Mr. Smith speak in and send us off course? Okay, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[12:04]
| Well, but hopefully not. Okay. So we'll put you in a cryo sleep. So the question is, would you take the gamble now on taking a three-year cryo sleep and that when you wake up, things will be better than it is now? Which, you know, say you're not going to age.
|
Sam:
[12:23]
| Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you're saying that gamble. You're just saying right now that in the end, the end of the scenario is if you could just jump forward three years, do you think it'll be better or worse than now?
|
Ivan:
[12:36]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[12:37]
| It's going to be worse. No question.
|
Ivan:
[12:39]
| You think it's going to be worse three.
|
Sam:
[12:42]
| Years from now? It's going to be worse.
|
Ivan:
[12:43]
| I actually think that we will hit the bottom somewhere through the three years. So then it's going to be at least the one thing is that while it may be worse, there will be the pendulum swing starting to hit the other way. So it won't feel as bad.
|
Sam:
[13:03]
| OK, so for instance, Dems take the House.
|
Ivan:
[13:07]
| Right. Dems take the president.
|
Sam:
[13:10]
| At least that. Well, three, three years. were not going to be passed.
|
Ivan:
[13:14]
| Oh, well, I meant four years. Well, yeah, four years, not three. Yeah, right.
|
Sam:
[13:19]
| Well, there's a difference there.
|
Ivan:
[13:21]
| Yeah, four, four, four, four. Sorry, sorry. My math got fucked up. Yeah. Four, four years.
|
Sam:
[13:27]
| Math is hard, like Barbie once said.
|
Ivan:
[13:32]
| No, if I gave you the gamble, this is the gamble. Sam, Sam, I'm going to give you the gamble right now. Listen, you're not going to age one day.
|
Sam:
[13:42]
| No, no. I still think it'll be worse in four years. Here's the thing. You may be right that we may have turned the corner. Maybe.
|
Ivan:
[13:48]
| That's what I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[13:50]
| But it'll still be worse than today.
|
Ivan:
[13:51]
| It'll be worse, but here's the thing. Don't you prefer that it'd be worse, but eggs. You see what I'm saying?
|
Sam:
[13:59]
| Well, this is that thing that, I mean, I've mentioned a few times.
|
Ivan:
[14:02]
| Because it is going to get worse. You're just not going to know. You're just not going to be living all those moments. You understand what I'm saying? So when you wake up, you're going to be like with people that are like trying to fix the mess. I mean, that's the gamble. Or the problem is, right, that you're taking that gamble and whether you wake up four years from now, and not only is it worse, but they're making it worse. So which one are you betting on? Because remember, yes, you're right. It is going to get worse. The question is whether at that moment the swing is still.
|
Sam:
[14:38]
| It's great that that part's not even a question. The question is only is it getting better or worse when you wake up? There's no question whatsoever. It's going to be worse. Sorry.
|
Ivan:
[14:46]
| It's going to be worse. The question is whether we turn a corner or we're kind of like heading again in the other direction.
|
Sam:
[14:53]
| Here's the deal. even if we're heading the right direction again it's gonna be a very very long slog i get that but here's what.
|
Ivan:
[15:04]
| I'm the option.
|
Sam:
[15:05]
| You just want to you just want to skip the trauma of watching it get worse day yes yes um yes.
|
Ivan:
[15:13]
| I'm just like oh look i know it's gonna get worse why do i need the details. I don't need the fucking details. I don't need the damn details, okay? I know it's happening.
|
Sam:
[15:27]
| I would not skip it. I would stick around.
|
Ivan:
[15:33]
| No, but wait. But you see, the thing is, I'm sending you on a trip to Jupiter.
|
Sam:
[15:37]
| Yes, I know.
|
Ivan:
[15:38]
| So when you wake up, we're going to be at the Jupiter star base.
|
Sam:
[15:43]
| Uh-huh.
|
Ivan:
[15:46]
| That is not by Elon Musk because Elon Musk will be dead in Mars. Hopefully when you wake up. He will have crashed. You wake up. And part of the good news is, Trump is, okay, you wake up. Imagine you skip all of this. You wake up. Okay. Everything's the shit, but Trump is dead. Musk crash landed into Mars.
|
Sam:
[16:06]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:08]
| And yeah, everything else is worse, but you get those two bits of news when you wake up. Shit. I'm like, ah, thank God.
|
Sam:
[16:16]
| See, I would still like to experience the four intervening years and be awake when those things happened. If they happen. I don't think Elon's actually getting to Mars and Trump will live until he's 193. So, but it's an interesting thought exercise. And look, it does, it does tie into, like, I was going to say, yeah, I keep coming back to this conversation I had with a friend of my son's, like a number of years back at this point who was talking about how they would have loved to live in the 80s because things were better in the 80s and they they they were and i was like no things were not better in the 80s and they were imagine.
|
Ivan:
[17:08]
| If you're listen think about if you're gay by imagine being gay, You know, say you're a gay person now. Move to how gay people were treated in the 80s.
|
Sam:
[17:22]
| Well, and here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[17:24]
| Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[17:25]
| You know, I'm not going to go out of school. This person is one of the letters on the LGBTQ spectrum. And the thing that I did not think to say at the time. Like I got to the point of saying, no, things weren't better in the 80s, especially because they said, especially for people like me. And I'm like, no, things were not better. However, what I didn't realize until weeks later or at least days later, and I never went back and finished the conversation with this person. But the difference is the direction of change.
|
Ivan:
[18:06]
| Well, that is. Yes. But still, you know.
|
Sam:
[18:08]
| It was worse. It was worse.
|
Ivan:
[18:10]
| One of those things that I know.
|
Sam:
[18:11]
| It was worse.
|
Ivan:
[18:12]
| It's way worse.
|
Sam:
[18:13]
| Whereas now it's objectively better in some ways, but rapidly getting worse.
|
Ivan:
[18:19]
| And well, okay, Sam, I think you're minimizing how really bad it was.
|
Sam:
[18:27]
| Oh, I know. I know. But what I'm saying is the levels, it was worse than better now. The direction is the difference. It was getting better than and getting worse now.
|
Ivan:
[18:37]
| This is one of these things where it's like, hey, I lived in a mud hut with no running water, okay?
|
Sam:
[18:47]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[18:48]
| Because literally that's where gay people were. And, oh, by the way, there were people trying to kill me regularly and attack me and harass me and refuse me jobs. These literally we would refuse people jobs over being gay. but I still remember, One story about an AIDS patient that, well, this is at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. When they came to our store, okay, to purchase medication at the pharmacy counter, people were so freaked out because nobody understood anything about this, that after the person left, cornered off the prescription counter and like Clorox bleached the entire area.
|
Sam:
[19:36]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[19:37]
| Because they were scared they were going to get AIDS from touching the counter. All right?
|
Sam:
[19:42]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[19:42]
| I mean, think about... I mean, that's...
|
Sam:
[19:46]
| No, no. Look, I get it.
|
Ivan:
[19:48]
| So my point is that right now, they have jobs. They have power. They have a lot of things. But, obviously, a lot of those things are being attacked. But it is from a position that is like exponentially, exponentially better than it was.
|
Sam:
[20:08]
| Two things. How successful that is depends a lot on where you are. But also, my whole point was this is exactly parallel to your Jupiter.
|
Ivan:
[20:15]
| But globally, Sam, it's not just here.
|
Sam:
[20:16]
| No, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. But my point is just this is exactly parallel to your Jupiter scenario, right? It is that what you're talking about is not the absolute levels. It's the direction. You want to skip the years because you hope it's getting better instead of worse, you know?
|
Ivan:
[20:34]
| No, I get that. No, but my point is that, yeah, but look, one thing that I always, you know, always have to be reminded is, unfortunately, how, you know, because we look at it from the perspective of, you know, our humanity and how our lives are relatively short in the grand scheme of things. Because that's just the reality. And that historically, you know, progress has never been linear. And that's just the damn reality of it, you know?
|
Sam:
[21:05]
| What was it? Hegel's dialectic.
|
Ivan:
[21:08]
| Okay, I'm not familiar with that one.
|
Sam:
[21:10]
| It's basically that you make progress and then there's a counterreaction and you end up in the middle and then you make progress and there's a counterreaction and you end up in the middle and this process continues. Continues. I will look up whether I'm remembering the right thing or if I just made something up.
|
Ivan:
[21:28]
| It sounds, you know.
|
Sam:
[21:31]
| Well, I know it's the thing, right? That I just don't know if that's the right name. Hold on. Okay. Hegel's dialectic.
|
Ivan:
[21:48]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:49]
| And the answer is... I am making sure... From Wikipedia. Dialectic, also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to derive at the truth through reasoned argument. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hegelianism... We figured dialectic to no longer refer to a literal dialogue. Instead, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions. Dialectical materialism, a theory advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into a materialist theory of history. The legacy of Hegelian and Marxian dialectics has been criticized by philosophers such as Karl Popper and Mario Bungi, who considered it unscientific. It implies a developmental process and so does not fit naturally within classical logic. Nevertheless, some 20th century logicians have attempted to formalize it. Let's see.
|
Ivan:
[22:57]
| That was a very big word salad that didn't actually say anything, can I be honest? Sounds like AI wrote that damn thing.
|
Sam:
[23:04]
| Here we go. The dialectic is sometimes—this is the part I was saying about it in the middle. The dialectic is sometimes presented in a threefold manner as first stated by Heinrich Mortise Chalibaus—I'm sure I murdered that—as comprising three dialectical stages of development. a thesis giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis, although Hegel opposed those terms.
|
Ivan:
[23:41]
| Anyway.
|
Sam:
[23:42]
| So yes, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. We also talk about this as the pendulum swinging back and forth. I think you even started talking about that.
|
Ivan:
[23:52]
| Yeah, I did say that.
|
Sam:
[23:53]
| But it adds the notion that each time the pendulum swings, you're actually moving a little bit forward. You don't end up exactly where you were before. Of course, I think that's sort of optimistic. There are certainly periods of history where, yeah, your pendulum is swinging back and forth, but you end up worse than you were for a long time.
|
Ivan:
[24:20]
| Well, it's for a long time, but like I said, you know, one of the things that go back to the fact that, yeah, we don't, the relative, grand scheme of things in terms of the history of the universe, you know, our lives are just a minor spec in the in in in that time frame yeah and so if you look at it like overall you know through the hundreds of thousands of millions of years well yeah things have moved forward in some way you know people aren't just hunter gatherers you know doing subsistence out like you know attacking i don't know i keep thinking about this there's visual when you go on spaceship earth at epcot which goes through the history of, uh, of humanity as shows, shows humans communicating for the first time and like attacking some kind of very large animal, you know, to try to kill it and eat it, you know?
|
Sam:
[25:16]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[25:16]
| Uh, yeah. So, so it's kind of like that visual that I, that I keep thinking about, you know, back then in the middle of like a winter storm, you know, you know.
|
Sam:
[25:26]
| I mean, eventually we'll get another asteroid killing us. like they killed the dinosaurs and then, you know, we'll be done. Unless we've all moved to Elon's Mars colony. But, you know, the thing is, You know, we talk about these swings back and forth, but it is, you have to remember that sometimes the swings are very, very long. Arguably, after the Civil War, we had Reconstruction, and then we had the end of Reconstruction, and arguably we didn't get back to the same place in terms of civil rights progress for 100 years, or nearly 100 years. and then you know and hell you know the roman empire fell and europe didn't get back to the same levels of technology and enlightenment and blah blah blah years for hundreds of years you know so you know and hopefully this is a pendulum swing that lasts you know well one thing that is i suspect i will say we're not going generations i.
|
Ivan:
[26:31]
| I don't know about generations i mean well Well, generations, well, generations are really short, so that's like.
|
Sam:
[26:36]
| General generation usually means about 20 years.
|
Ivan:
[26:39]
| Yeah, 20 years. I think that one of the things that I see from a lot of what's, you know, what's going on is that you see, you shared a recent survey that showed like, hey, how do you feel about this whole immigration policy right now, now that it's in force? And like literally like 70% of people say they hate it. 70%. 70%. I mean, it's not like kind of like this isn't like like many other divisive issues where people are like, whatever people in theory thought it sounded great in practice. They like we hate this. So, you know, it doesn't even take that long in terms of like getting the general populace to hate it. Of course, now now, of course, it's how this turns into some kind of a political change. But, you know, I don't know. I'm an optimist. So I think that somehow, even through all of this fucking bullshit that we'll figure out.
|
Sam:
[27:40]
| I, I, I'm a long-term optimist. Like if you come back in 50 years, I'm fairly sure things will be better.
|
Ivan:
[27:48]
| But I, you know, I, but I, I say I am.
|
Sam:
[27:53]
| I am less optimistic if we're talking five or 10.
|
Ivan:
[27:57]
| I think it's, I think if you look at how things have progressed, you look at, look at every 10 decade, every 10 year mark of the last 50 years. and you see how things radically moved each one of those 10 years. I mean, think about it. Look, just 10 years ago, who was president?
|
Sam:
[28:17]
| Abraham Lincoln. What? Am I wrong?
|
Ivan:
[28:21]
| You're a little bit off. It was Obama, for God's sakes.
|
Sam:
[28:26]
| Oh, yes, yes. That guy.
|
Ivan:
[28:28]
| I mean, think about what we thought. Listen, let me put it this way. Think about if you were a conservative back then, how you thought, how bleak it was for your thinking. and think about the opposite how we thought at that time I was like ah, they're done it's over and look at that the flip in 10 years and look at the flip 10 years before and look at the flip 10 years before that look I don't I think we're always prisoners of the moment okay alright, and you know so we'll see 10 years from now hopefully we're still both alive and we'll be 64 years old, and recording this podcast at 64.
|
Sam:
[29:10]
| There's a song being 64.
|
Ivan:
[29:13]
| There's a song about 64? Fuck, I don't know that song.
|
Sam:
[29:16]
| The Beatles song. I hate the Beatles.
|
Ivan:
[29:20]
| I gotta admit, I don't like the fucking Beatles. I'm sure that is an unpopular opinion. I'll get roasted on. But I'm just not a big... I'm not gonna say I hate the Beatles, but I'm just like, the Beatles, I'm like, eh.
|
Sam:
[29:35]
| The song is when i'm 64 by the beatles written by paul mccartney he it was one of the first songs he ever wrote when he he wrote it when he was about 14 years old jeez but the song came out in 1966 when he was a little bit older than 14 so he's 83.
|
Ivan:
[29:55]
| Now paul mccartney so yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:57]
| So anyway very popular beatles song and you're you're like i've never heard of it i don't know what they're talking about.
|
Ivan:
[30:05]
| I don't, I don't, I don't particularly, I, I, look, like I said, I'm, I have never been big. I, I'm just like the Beatles. I'm just, to me, I'm like, eh, whatever.
|
Sam:
[30:17]
| Yeah. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[30:17]
| I'm not a big Beatles guy. Never have been.
|
Sam:
[30:20]
| How about the actual insects?
|
Ivan:
[30:23]
| Oh, I like those better than the, than the actual musical Beatles.
|
Sam:
[30:26]
| I'll mail you some.
|
Ivan:
[30:28]
| And there's plenty here. We're good. Okay. We don't need any in the mail.
|
Sam:
[30:32]
| Oh, no.
|
Ivan:
[30:33]
| Okay. No, no. We're good. We're good.
|
Sam:
[30:37]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[30:37]
| You can give them to me when I get there. There you go. You don't have to mail them.
|
Sam:
[30:40]
| Oh, right.
|
Ivan:
[30:41]
| Oh, that would be so nice for me. Oh, hi. I haven't seen you in a few years. Here's some Beatles.
|
Sam:
[30:47]
| I'm sure the restaurant we'll be at will appreciate it, too.
|
Ivan:
[30:49]
| Oh, yeah. They'll be so thrilled by this. Yeah, absolutely. Of course.
|
Sam:
[30:53]
| When I open up the box at the table and they start running around.
|
Ivan:
[30:57]
| Oh, yeah. I'm sure the restaurant will be just thrilled with us there. Okay. All right. So let's move into movies.
|
Sam:
[31:03]
| Movies. I got two.
|
Ivan:
[31:05]
| So I got to give you your seven and a half minutes.
|
Sam:
[31:08]
| Give me five minutes each.
|
Ivan:
[31:10]
| Seven and a half. Five minutes. All right. I got five minutes. Okay. You're on the clock.
|
Sam:
[31:14]
| I do. Wait, wait, wait. No, don't start again. I need to mention something. Alex has been bugging me. He hijacked the curmudgeon's corner Mastodon to post a poll after last week's show. for who should host the next episode of Curmudgeon's Corner and I need to report the results.
|
Ivan:
[31:32]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[31:33]
| Because he is mad at me because I am talking to you right now rather than respecting the results of this poll.
|
Ivan:
[31:39]
| Okay, so how many people voted on the poll?
|
Sam:
[31:42]
| Two. And they were both my son. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[31:44]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[31:45]
| Stealing various other people's iPads.
|
Ivan:
[31:47]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[31:48]
| Or various accounts. So the choices were Yvonne Yeah. got zero votes. Sorry. Screw GPT.
|
Ivan:
[31:58]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[31:59]
| So not Yvonne GPT. Screw GPT. Screw GPT, which is a custom GPT that Alex has constructed on his chat GPT account, or on mine, yours, right? On his chat GPT account, that he is, I guess, trained in some specific way that I guess he wants it to be the co-host. I don't know what he's trained it on or why, but anyway. then choice also got zero votes choice three was yvonne and screw gpt okay together and zero votes zero fine and the fourth choice which got two votes a hundred percent was yvonne and screw gpt special victims unit.
|
Ivan:
[32:46]
| There's a screw gpt special victims unit.
|
Sam:
[32:49]
| Apparently, apparently. Oh? I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[32:54]
| Okay. Okay, I guess I have to talk to Special Victims Unit to see what its opinions are on stuff.
|
Sam:
[33:01]
| Yeah. Anyway, so I needed to report on that.
|
Ivan:
[33:05]
| And so those are all the polls we got?
|
Sam:
[33:07]
| That's all the polls we got right now. And maybe...
|
Ivan:
[33:10]
| I guess we should start doing polls.
|
Sam:
[33:11]
| Maybe the next time you're out, Yvonne, I will try to talk to ScrewGPT. You know, after the experiment with YvonneGPT, I figured, let it go at least a year before I try to talk to AI again. because it was an interesting experiment, but it wasn't quite good enough yet. But after a year, it will have improved. Yeah, it was dull.
|
Ivan:
[33:34]
| He was not there.
|
Sam:
[33:35]
| Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I told him.
|
Ivan:
[33:39]
| And he was very agreeable. He just agreed with you on everything.
|
Sam:
[33:43]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[33:43]
| That's all he did.
|
Sam:
[33:44]
| Well, and I gave a transcript and said, try to be like Yvonne. And I think that failed entirely. Maybe.
|
Ivan:
[33:51]
| And then curse once.
|
Sam:
[33:52]
| No, and maybe what Alex has done is trained it more specifically, telling it characteristics of you it wants it to follow. I don't know. But the screw thing, like, it may be somebody else. He may be training it on. He's got a character called Screwdriver in one of his stories. Maybe he's training it on that. I don't even know. Anyway, movies. Movies.
|
Ivan:
[34:12]
| All right, five minutes. Okay, you're on the clock. Go.
|
Sam:
[34:15]
| Got two films, five minutes each. The next one is, once again, from the AFI list. This was number 18 in the 1999 AFI 100 Years 100 Movies list. In 2007, it moved up to 14th place. Anyway, Psycho from 1960.
|
Ivan:
[34:37]
| Oh.
|
Sam:
[34:38]
| You ever seen it?
|
Ivan:
[34:39]
| Yes. It's obviously a big show. Long, long, long time ago.
|
Sam:
[34:44]
| So this is when I— Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[34:45]
| What's his name? Who was the star—I know the guy was Norman Bates as the character.
|
Sam:
[34:49]
| Anthony Perkins. Anthony Perkins and of course it was an Alfred Hitchcock movie, you know this is here's the thing, I, of course, had heard of this movie. I had seen clips of the famous shower scene, but I had never actually watched the entire movie. I think I'd had spoilers for certain key, like, ideas from the film. You know, like, I wasn't entirely surprised by the ending because, you know, this thing's been in the cultural zeitgeist for what 65 years so is that right 65 40 plus 20 yeah yeah 65 yeah you know but i'll give it a thumbs up it was it didn't i don't know like i don't know how much of it was like okay i knew some of the main beats so it wasn't as surprising as it would have been for new viewers in 1960 Uh, it's also, you know, it does move slowly, you know, it, but that's the style of the time. It's the Hitchcock. It's sort of a slowly building tension, et cetera, that gets resolved at the end. I didn't know any of the, you know, the main plot and the main characters, you know, like what was going on with the woman that ended up in the shower?
|
Ivan:
[36:18]
| You know what.
|
Sam:
[36:19]
| Was going on you know with with her boyfriend you.
|
Ivan:
[36:23]
| Know who's.
|
Sam:
[36:24]
| Also a main character in the movie i had no idea about any.
|
Ivan:
[36:28]
| Of that well shit i haven't i mean i've i watched this movie i have to be honest it has to be well over 40 years ago i have not re-watched it since so the details of it other than some of the, The scenes are famous.
|
Sam:
[36:41]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[36:42]
| I don't, shit, I don't remember.
|
Sam:
[36:45]
| Yeah, so it was interesting to me. I'm giving it a thumbs up. It was interesting to fill in the blanks from, you know, the knowing just those famous scenes and knowing some of the twists, but not actually knowing the plot of the movie, not having any idea about the actual main characters of the movie. Norman Bates is not the main character of the movie. Like there's, there's this couple who's on the run who ends up stopping at that motel in the middle of the night. And then the things happen to him with Norman Bates and, and Norman Bates' mother comes into the plot as well in a famous way.
|
Ivan:
[37:26]
| Yeah. The mother. Yes.
|
Sam:
[37:28]
| You know, so all of that, but it was, it was interesting to fill in the gaps and it was well constructed and it's, it's a good movie it deserves to be high on the list here but you know it you do have to put yourself into that 1950s 1960s sensibility of movies that do the the pacing is slower and you know all of this kind of stuff but that doesn't make it bad like these slow burn movies that sort of gradually build up over the space of you know the length of the movie this is 109 minutes i'm looking you know can be good and it's it's done well here you know so uh good movie okay i didn't even use my five minutes you know you didn't you.
|
Ivan:
[38:15]
| Still got a minute you still got a minute.
|
Sam:
[38:17]
| Left you got any comments on no comments on psycho okay no next a very different kind of movie and by the way we're we're still in movies i watched like last september or something okay we got.
|
Ivan:
[38:30]
| Some time to catch up.
|
Sam:
[38:30]
| Yeah guy this yeah september 22nd and 24th for these two movies very different kind of movie from 1992 under siege with steven seagal.
|
Ivan:
[38:42]
| Oh shit you watch that movie now okay you know oh okay.
|
Sam:
[38:52]
| You have an interesting reaction here. Did you restart the five minutes?
|
Ivan:
[38:57]
| Yes, I did restart the five minutes. Well, the thing is, it has fucking Steven Seagal. That, you know, right now, as much as I remember that that movie was, to my mind in the past, a good movie, okay, that was my opinion. I can't get past the fact that it's fucking Steven Seagal, who is a complete and utter douchebag right now.
|
Sam:
[39:21]
| Yeah, I mean, I didn't think about that. I didn't even look it up. I am sort of remembering that that's going on.
|
Ivan:
[39:30]
| Like, I mean, he got Russian citizenship, Sam.
|
Sam:
[39:35]
| Yeah, I'm looking. I'm looking.
|
Ivan:
[39:37]
| I mean, he was at a Putin parade like a couple of months ago. The guy is like a complete fucking Putin psychophant. and oh by the way all the stories that have come out about him being a fucking asshole to everybody on a set treating people like shit left and right overstating all his martial arts you know training which everybody then found out that it was all a fucking lie that people would come up and he would just lie about all his skills okay yeah this guy is an asshole, but the Putin part is he is a fucking Fucking absolute, as been for over a decade, a Russian psychophant.
|
Sam:
[40:19]
| Okay. Lovely. Lovely man. So, have you seen the movie, though?
|
Ivan:
[40:24]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[40:25]
| What did you think of the movie?
|
Ivan:
[40:27]
| I liked it.
|
Sam:
[40:30]
| I must admit, I liked it, too.
|
Ivan:
[40:34]
| It had, the plot was, you know, other than some gratuitous, like, stupid sex, you know, There was like some added, like, I don't know, the whole thing with the playmate coming onto the ship and the blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[40:49]
| He jumped out of a cake or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[40:51]
| Cheesy, he's kind of cheesy. But it was par for the course at the time. I think the entire plot was actually pretty good about the whole damn thing. I mean, you know.
|
Sam:
[41:00]
| There was a lot that was like clear, and just for anybody who doesn't know, action thriller film, 1992. The fundamental thing is that there is a battleship and there is an attack on the battleship where they sort of take over the ship.
|
Ivan:
[41:17]
| As it was on its way to being mothballed, basically.
|
Sam:
[41:20]
| Yeah, or whatever. It was like the final thing on it, blah, blah, blah. And they...
|
Ivan:
[41:27]
| They wanted to steal nuclear weapons.
|
Sam:
[41:29]
| They wanted to steal stuff. There was a whole thing. They wanted, they had a nefarious plot that was going to do all kinds of horrible things. This guy, Steven Seagal's character, was a cook. And, but he was formally, before he was a cook, he was like special forces and all this kind of stuff. And he ends up in a scenario where they take over the entire ship, except the damn kitchen. And then it's a one-man operation where he has to rescue the day, you know, basically.
|
Ivan:
[42:00]
| Well, he did recruit a number of help.
|
Sam:
[42:03]
| Along the way, he recruits people. But, like, he starts out as— He started out by himself. He started out by himself.
|
Ivan:
[42:10]
| Yeah, because what had happened was that he had basically done something that got him reprimanded, you know, significantly. You know, he had done some insubordination of a high level and it wound up with him basically that the only post after he's he like as punishment was that he could be only a yeoman or a cook. I remember the line specifically. And it was like, and that's how we wound up. We decided, well, instead of just being some shipmate that just like, you know, I don't know, carries lines and like just, you know, ties ties the boat up or something. I'd rather just cook. So he wound up being the cook on the ship.
|
Sam:
[42:48]
| Yeah so anyway very unrealistic of course but movies like this always are right like you know if this scenario actually played out in real life this is not how it would he.
|
Ivan:
[43:00]
| Probably would have been like well it starts off with the fact that if he had been that bad probably he would have been you know forced out of.
|
Sam:
[43:08]
| Oh there's our five minutes yeah okay so what's.
|
Ivan:
[43:12]
| Your conclusion on the movie wait.
|
Sam:
[43:13]
| I give it a thumbs up it was a fine like again this was one of these We had.
|
Ivan:
[43:18]
| One minute left from the other one. So there you go. So you can.
|
Sam:
[43:21]
| Okay. This is, you know, it's, it's the kind of brainless action movie. That's kind of fun to watch, but it's not like, it's not deep in any way, shape or form. It's just, you know, the whatever action movie. I thought the premise was fun. You know, it was, it was like, you know, okay.
|
Ivan:
[43:40]
| And they almost do Honolulu.
|
Sam:
[43:44]
| 103 minutes of like escapism. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[43:48]
| They almost knew Conolulu, and it got stopped at the last minute.
|
Sam:
[43:52]
| Oh, spoilers, Yvonne. You just gave away the ending of the movie.
|
Ivan:
[43:58]
| The movie was from 1992, okay? 1992. Okay, people? I mean, give me a fucking break, okay?
|
Sam:
[44:11]
| And I'm sure no one could possibly have imagined that a movie like this ends with the hero succeeding.
|
Ivan:
[44:18]
| Yeah! I mean, my God!
|
Sam:
[44:22]
| As opposed to...
|
Ivan:
[44:23]
| I mean, because of course, in all the Steven Seagal movies, he actually fails at the end! That's the one part that's very predictable about all of them.
|
Sam:
[44:31]
| The five-minute montage of people dying painfully in Honolulu after he's failed his mission.
|
Ivan:
[44:37]
| Yes! Yes, of course.
|
Sam:
[44:39]
| That's how movies like the nuclear holocaust.
|
Ivan:
[44:42]
| Yeah and that's it and then they they knew conolulu and the end.
|
Sam:
[44:46]
| Exactly that's how it is yes that's how it ends okay let's take a break and then when we come back unless you have other things yvonne i'm thinking i ran then the new york mayor then scotus okay all right okay sounds good okay uh break time break time. We're going to start out with this one.
|
Break:
[45:15]
| AlexMZilla.com by Alex and Dad. Gaming videos and more from Alex. Elementary School by day. YouTube by night. AlexMZilla.com, AlexMZilla is A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A and .com is period F-M-C-O-M.
|
Sam:
[45:46]
| Okay, we are back.
|
Ivan:
[45:49]
| So we're back.
|
Sam:
[45:50]
| We obliterated Iran or something like that.
|
Ivan:
[45:53]
| We obliterated. Okay, listen, this is the wackiest entire sequence of events involving some kind of an attack on another country because okay so after we finished recording the podcast that we kept thinking that trump was going to not taco this yeah he was going to taco this thing all of a sudden we start getting news alerts that we we that you know we had set launched b2 bombers they got there undetected they they dropped a ton that dropped a whole bunch of bombs. We can't be exactly sure what bombs they drop, but we think it's the Bunker Busters. Okay.
|
Sam:
[46:38]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[46:38]
| Most of them were on the big site on...
|
Sam:
[46:42]
| Frodo.
|
Ivan:
[46:43]
| Frodo. Frodo. Frodo.
|
Sam:
[46:45]
| Frodo. It's not Frodo.
|
Ivan:
[46:47]
| Frodo. Fredo. Okay, not Fredo. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[46:51]
| And apparently we did do the thing where we dropped it into the AirVent Star Wars style.
|
Ivan:
[46:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[46:58]
| Because there was the one vulnerability of the, you know, ventilation shaft.
|
Ivan:
[47:04]
| Yeah. I mean, it's from the visuals that you can see. It's very difficult to assess what the damage is because these bombs are meant to burrow into the ground and explode underground. And so even from a satellite view, you can't really see what the hell happened underground.
|
Sam:
[47:26]
| And also there's a lot of question about like how deep were the actual facilities versus how deep these bombs are supposed to go. So, you know, although they do a strategy where they drop multiple. So the first one will dig down a certain amount and then the second one will dig down more.
|
Ivan:
[47:41]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[47:42]
| Yeah. So unclear.
|
Ivan:
[47:44]
| Unclear.
|
Sam:
[47:45]
| Well, let me say this. Part of what came out is there was a leak of an initial assessment that said that we didn't get them. There was damage, but maybe not a lot. they basically, hey, we might have set them back a few months, but not like set them back years or completely eliminated the capabilities. There are also reports that since, you know, Donald Trump was talking about like, hey, evacuate Tehran and we might do this, we might not, we might do this, we might not, for like a week before we did it, that they'd actually taken some or all of the actual refined uranium that they had there out and moved it to locations unknown. And one thing to keep in mind, The estimates of how much highly refined uranium that the Iranians had, I've seen vary from 600 to 900 pounds. Most estimates around 600, 900 pounds. That's not a lot.
|
Ivan:
[48:42]
| And the thing is— You can move that one truck.
|
Sam:
[48:45]
| Well, not just one truck, but also remember, like, size-wise, I made a joke under Commissions Corner Slack of I'd hate to be the one, like, military guy, low-level military guy who got the assignment of, like, taking this out in his pants. But, you know, look, that amount of uranium, uranium is very dense.
|
Ivan:
[49:08]
| Right, it's very heavy. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[49:11]
| It would fit in three shoeboxes.
|
Ivan:
[49:13]
| So that's not a hell of a whole lot.
|
Sam:
[49:16]
| Volume-wise, this is not a lot. It would be easy to, you know, three very heavy shoeboxes, you know.
|
Ivan:
[49:23]
| Well, so I'm saying you still need a truck because it's 900 pounds. You can't just put it in the truck and the car.
|
Sam:
[49:29]
| You split it up into a lot of smaller bits, right?
|
Ivan:
[49:32]
| Yeah, you got to, right, right, Zach. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[49:35]
| You know, so you could actually smuggle it out in your pants, putting it in your pocket. You just, each person takes a small amount, you know?
|
Ivan:
[49:42]
| Yeah, a very small amount.
|
Sam:
[49:44]
| Of course, you probably don't want to be sticking highly radioactive uranium in your pockets, but, you know, to each their own.
|
Ivan:
[49:52]
| Especially lead-lined pants.
|
Sam:
[49:54]
| Yeah, there you go. But anyway, so there's a question about all this. The administration, of course, went nuts about the leaked preliminary report and blah, blah, blah, and how bad that was. And the CIA put out a report a few days later saying, no, no, no, we did tons and tons of damage.
|
Ivan:
[50:09]
| Now, I will say that, look, the thing is, I think right now, very difficult to know. I mean, for us, I'm sure that there are certain people that know really what the damage is. Here's the thing.
|
Sam:
[50:28]
| Yeah, here's the thing. The Iranians themselves know we probably have some good intelligence somewhere, but nobody involved in this entire picture, and I put this in the Sam from the Future last week. Nobody involved in this is a trusted narrator. You cannot trust what's coming out of the Trump administration. You cannot trust what's coming out of the Iranians until or unless we have a neutral third party evaluation by like the IEA or whatever the acronym is or whatever. We don't know, Jack.
|
Ivan:
[51:00]
| No, no, no. I don't know. It could be far more out of commission than the assessment. I mean, it could be not even because I'm saying I'm lying at that assessment. I think in part because, you know, it's very difficult to get that information when we're not, you know, it's not like we sent troops on the ground to go and dig in there and, you know, find out exactly, take pictures and tell me what exactly what the damage is. We got to be gathering intel probably from second or third sources.
|
Sam:
[51:28]
| And honestly, even if you don't, even if you do do that, you don't know for sure if there's not another undetected facility that we didn't know about.
|
Ivan:
[51:37]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[51:38]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[51:38]
| Right. Right. So, so, so yeah. So it's, it's a tough assessment. Okay. You know, no matter how you slice it.
|
Sam:
[51:45]
| But anyway, so we, we've had the, the, the sort of the people who, when you listen to experts talking about this and, and again, understanding the exact damage, who knows. But the experts who talk about this say, like, even if the attack was massively successful, you're still probably only putting them back a year or something because they could rebuild from scratch if they needed to, you know, and and that it would take some time, but not forever. Right. But you've you. And meanwhile, you've got the administration has their talking points from Donald. It's like you all have to say obliterate every time. That's just like, it's obliterate.
|
Ivan:
[52:27]
| Well, we had that amazing press conference the other day at 8 a.m.
|
Sam:
[52:33]
| Hegseth?
|
Ivan:
[52:34]
| Yeah, who gave a press conference basically to an audience of one. I mean, that was just all so he could, so Fox could put it on TV so Trump could see it at the White House so he could see that on Fox, what he wanted said was being said. That's it, right?
|
Sam:
[52:57]
| Yeah. And meanwhile, by the way, we did have an Iranian response, which apparently, like Donald Trump's own description of this.
|
Ivan:
[53:07]
| Oh, fuck.
|
Sam:
[53:08]
| This is comedic. They called up and said.
|
Ivan:
[53:11]
| Hey, we're going to, hey, guys, yo. Okay, yeah, you know, yeah, you bombed us. Hey, listen. All right, look, we're going to bomb you at 8 o'clock, 8.30 tomorrow at this place.
|
Sam:
[53:26]
| They asked what time would be good.
|
Ivan:
[53:28]
| Oh, no, oh, wait, well, no, I forgot. Yes, what time would be good for us to bomb you? Oh, okay. What place? Oh, okay. Oh, great. Okay, well, all right, so it's a date. All right, we'll send the bombs at that time. Make sure to be ready, okay? Yeah. Okay, great. Bye. What the fuck is going on, Sam? The hell is this?
|
Sam:
[53:55]
| I think I think George Conway actually put this best, that it looks like both what Donald Trump did and the Iranian response were both primarily performative. Like it is all about like, OK, let's do the show of doing this. Like and again.
|
Ivan:
[54:14]
| It's the same thing that happened. Remember when when when when Trump went and like killed that that general?
|
Sam:
[54:21]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[54:21]
| And then we had the attack on the military base by the Iranians. And then everything was like, you know, whatever. I'm just like, what?
|
Sam:
[54:30]
| Right. And look, the thing, again, and the attack on the nuclear facilities may have done a lot of damage. Again, we don't know. We just don't have a trusted source there. But even if it did, it does not, quote unquote, end their nuclear program forever.
|
Ivan:
[54:50]
| Wait, wait, wait. But listen, here's the thing important about that program.
|
Sam:
[54:58]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[54:59]
| Almost all the information that we had leading up to that attack said that it seems that the Ayatollah and his, they didn't want to build a nuclear bomb.
|
Sam:
[55:12]
| Well, yes.
|
Ivan:
[55:14]
| Everything's indicated that they weren't really trying to build a fucking nuclear bomb in the first place.
|
Sam:
[55:20]
| Well, here's the, yes, but I think this comes down to the key difference between, you know, we talked last week about the intelligence saying exactly what you just said versus the rhetoric about they could have a bomb in two weeks. And I think the actual reality From, again, when you listen to expert experts Is the actual time frame If they decided they wanted a bomb Would have been six months to a year Like if they made the decision And I think that the key is that, On the one hand, you have people saying, look, there's no evidence they're actually building a bomb.
|
Sam:
[56:01]
| They've actually got mandates saying they're not going to from their religious leader. And so this isn't an urgent situation. And the other side saying, we don't care about whether or not they've made that final decision. We want to make sure that if they decide that, they can't actually do it at that point in any sort of reasonable time frame, that we couldn't stop them. Because we don't want to be in a situation where, okay, they've not built a bomb, they haven't decided to build a bomb, but suddenly one Wednesday, you know, the Ayatollah wakes up and says, okay, now I want a bomb, and they have it two weeks later. You know, they want to prevent that scenario. And people have pointed out, by the way, if you want countries that are in that scenario, like Japan's probably in that scenario. Basically, any country with a large-scale civilian nuclear power capability, if they decided to, okay, we need bombs, they could do that fairly quickly.
|
Ivan:
[56:59]
| No, and that's true, but the one thing is that even though those bombs, I mean, they're kind of like, look, uranium bombs are like very basic nuclear bombs in the grand scheme of things. They're not, they're, they're.
|
Sam:
[57:19]
| They're, we have much better bombs now that could have like a thousand times the destructive capability. But having said that, I mean, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not, nothing to be sneezed at.
|
Ivan:
[57:33]
| No, no, no. True, true. But the thing is, is the size, it's the delivery of the bomb. It's, you know, all of these things, you know, right? It's not a very sophisticated bomb. It's not one that...
|
Sam:
[57:47]
| Let me get back to my point, because we've gotten far afield. My point was simply that it looks like from both the American and Iranian sides in this...
|
Ivan:
[57:59]
| We're just trying to do a firework show using the military.
|
Sam:
[58:03]
| Now, look, I do.
|
Ivan:
[58:05]
| Between the U.S. and Iran.
|
Sam:
[58:06]
| Do I think Donald Trump actually wanted to obliterate the Iranian nuclear program? Yes. And he was probably told that this would do it. But I think in the end, it doesn't matter because what matters is the show.
|
Ivan:
[58:20]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:20]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[58:21]
| Yeah. Number one is the show. And then he could say it was a blitz. But that's the one thing. Sam, listen, Sam, come on, man. Since when does Trump need facts? Look, here's what he needed. He needed a show.
|
Sam:
[58:36]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[58:36]
| And let's face it, sending a squad of B2, what is more showing? That sending an entire fucking squadron of fucking B2 bombers undetected, you know, all the way over there and back, okay, and dropping Bunker Buster bombs, and then whatever the fuck really happened, hey, you just say whatever the hell you want to happen from it anyway, right? I mean, it's about the biggest spectacle you can do.
|
Sam:
[59:05]
| Now, here's a couple things in terms of what has gone on since then as well. First of all, you get the show. He was feeling shown up by the Israelis, and so this helps do that. But Donald Trump doesn't want this hanging on. He doesn't he he does not want the big war with Iran. You know, like people were saying, oh, look, anti-war Donald just did some bombing. But he very much wanted this to be a one and done. So immediately afterwards, he signaled it was a one and done. He then like did that whole back and forth with the Iranians, say, you know, to make sure that their retaliation caused no real damage. And then he announces a peace deal. He announces that, you know, there's a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. And let's just, everybody's done what they need to do. Let's call this a...
|
Ivan:
[1:00:05]
| Okay, I haven't checked. Well, I haven't heard anything else. Did the Israelis and Iranians stop shooting at each other?
|
Sam:
[1:00:13]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:14]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:00:15]
| The peace deal is holding. There was one thing, and this is where Donald Trump ended up saying they don't know what the fuck they're doing, where after the time set for the peace deal, Iran sent one more missile. And that missile got intercepted, but then the Israelis retaliated for that one missile with another barrage on Iran. And Donald Trump was really upset because they'd both broken the ceasefire. he was mad at Israel because he's like look they shot one missile it might not even have been on purpose and you intercepted it it did nothing why did you even bother retaliating so he was mad at both of them he yelled at both of them he said they don't know what the fuck they're doing but since then, the ceasefire's held they both look, and well.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:04]
| I mean BB got what he wanted.
|
Sam:
[1:01:06]
| BB got what he wanted absolutely now I mean still no ceasefire Gaza, by the way, that's still going on. Different story.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:14]
| Like Trump gives a shit about that. Yeah. I mean, actually, he believes already he should be getting the Nobel Peace Prize, right? I mean, he's going over, what is it, Copenhagen, right? Where they get the nobles?
|
Sam:
[1:01:25]
| He has lined up. He and his people have been stating that he should get a Nobel Peace Prize for the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Rwanda coming together that he's apparently working on. although when somebody asked him about details he had no idea what was going on there but but apparently they are working on something there and it's his usual it's his usual thing where he's trying to Oslo I guess he's trying to buy them off just like he did with the Abraham Accords in the in the Middle East he wants a he wants a peace prize for that as well by the way and he wants a peace prize for India and Pakistan and he's is is he's been nominated by Pakistan Yeah, well, and he was nominated for a couple—remember, anybody can nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize and— I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:16]
| I know, I know.
|
Sam:
[1:02:18]
| But, yeah, he's been nominated for a few of these at this point. I don't think he's going to get one right now, but, you know, look, here's the thing, though. You know, his little peace thing—I mean, it's been holding so far between Iran and Israel. It's been less than a week, but, you know, it's been holding. Who knows what's happening with the Congo and Rwanda? I have not read very much about this, but it seems to be the bottom line is he's offering both sides a whole lot of investment from people that he will make money off of in order to come into their countries and flood them with money in exchange for them to stop shooting at each other.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:03]
| Trump phones. They're going to make the Trump phones over there.
|
Sam:
[1:03:06]
| No, it's it's it's mining rights and things like that. But yes, not Trump phones, mining rights, real estate, whatever, you know, the usual kinds of thing or resorts.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:17]
| Casino, golf courses. But honestly, because that is, you know, I mean, casinos and golf courses are really the crux of our economy. You do realize that.
|
Sam:
[1:03:30]
| But look, here's the thing. If he can actually, like, go to one of these places and flood it with money and get them to stop shooting each other, I guess I have to reluctantly say, okay, like, fine. But anyway, no, he's rooting for his Nobel Peace Prize. But, you know, in the end, if this does end up completely performative, like sort of everybody does a couple shots at each other and then a week later it's done. He's calling the Israel-Iran thing the 12-day war. and then I, he won. I mean, he got exactly what he wanted out of it. It looks good for him in the end. And, you know, we, we, and all the people, once again, all the people talking about the worst case scenario end up looking like, oh, you're a bunch of fools. None of that happened. It was fine. He, he, he hit the place in Iran. He wanted to, he had some good results. He obliterated it. And now we, now two weeks later, we've moved on and we're talking about other things.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:32]
| You know, this is the thing about, I hate about people playing Russian roulette, okay? You know, just because, you know, you hit a fucking empty chamber, okay, this time, it doesn't mean it was a reasonable thing to do!
|
Sam:
[1:04:49]
| It was fine, Yvonne. It was just fine.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:53]
| Yeah, it's fine. Keep playing Russian roulette with this shit, you know, oh, yeah, the chamber was empty. You see? There's nothing to worry about.
|
Sam:
[1:05:03]
| Well, and this is, I mean, we're seeing this over and over and over again where Donald Trump does the very risky thing and he either tacos or he gets lucky.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:20]
| Speaking of risky things, which wasn't on the agenda, but since you're talking about risky things, okay, look, everybody keeps talking about how, well, oh, yeah, well, you see, the economy hasn't crashed, right? Listen, every fucking sign right now is pointing to a seriously deteriorating economy, Sam. And it's just, you know, oh, he hasn't crashed. You see, he hasn't crashed it yet. I mean, the inflation, he keeps insisting on the Fed-loving rates. Inflation is showing higher. New college graduates are finding the worst job market they have ever found. Housing sales are slowed into the crapper. I mean, every, you know, by the way, the revision on Q1 GDP came in and it showed that it was even slower than originally thought.
|
Sam:
[1:06:16]
| It was negative, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:18]
| Yeah, it was negative in the first one, but the horizon more negative, okay? I mean, I, and I'm like.
|
Sam:
[1:06:25]
| You know, when do we get the Q2 number? When do we know if we've got the two quarters in a row of decline?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:30]
| Well, soon. Quarter ends now. It's soon. It's in a few weeks.
|
Sam:
[1:06:34]
| A few weeks. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:36]
| Like, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:36]
| Yeah. I wasn't sure what the delay was on the June numbers. Like we got sometime in July.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:41]
| Yeah. It's sometime in July. It's like mid July.
|
Sam:
[1:06:43]
| So what's your bet? Two negative quarters in a row or no?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:46]
| I think that the answer is going to be yes, because there's been quite a lot of layoffs and things. And, you know, this economy is not firing an all cylinder, Sam. You know, all these immigration raids are causing problems to farmers, problems in a whole bunch of industries, construction, all over the place. You know, this is, you know, this is not, this is all bad. It's all bad right now. And the thing is, it's like everything. It's not happening at the snap of a finger right now. A lot of what we're seeing is a lot of stagflation. OK, and so, you know, they're all saying, hey, right now, you know, I haven't seen the prices go up. Just listen, just wait. You know, anybody is going to shop for toys this Christmas. What we got in tariffs right now is going to be in for one hell of a surprise.
|
Sam:
[1:07:53]
| So, there was a specific report on toy prices in, I don't know, the New York Times or somewhere the other day. And it's saying, oh, toys are starting to really go up, blah, blah, blah. And then you read the article and it was only like 2% or something on average. Now, there's some things like they're going up more, some less. But, and I was like, oh, 2%, that's not that high yet. Like, because what we've been hearing is things like, things are going to double. We're not seeing that.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:23]
| But here's the thing. Right. But, you know, look, like this is, man, this is a repeat of 2020 with inflation.
|
Sam:
[1:08:32]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:33]
| Where we had the shortages and whatever and the prices didn't spike immediately. Then six to 12 months later, everything started shooting up. It's not immediate. This is, you know, people are the worst at what shit that has delayed effects.
|
Sam:
[1:08:51]
| But just to be fair, though, like just a couple of months ago on this show, we kept talking about when are we going to actually start seeing the effects of this?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:59]
| And I said, wait till July. We're not July yet. OK, listen.
|
Sam:
[1:09:04]
| I remember early conversations where you gave earlier dates. They've moved back.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:09]
| No, no, no, no. Go back and look. I said that you're going to start seeing the effects trending into July. And the reason I said that was because of the huge inventory buildup that happened prior to that, okay? Because, well, we also had, remember, we also had the delay on a whole bunch of them as well.
|
Sam:
[1:09:29]
| This is what I was going to say. It's like we talked a number of times very early on about potential effects hitting as early as like March or whatever. But what's happened, and this is where the taco comes in, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:43]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:09:43]
| We, things keep getting pushed back, delayed, lowered, whatever. So at one point we were talking about the, you know, okay, the, the, the, the tariffs on China that would be like, I don't know, 8,000% or whatever the high number was 150, whatever they, and they were lowered. after one of the back and forths. There have been multiple delays where there's going to be this big high tariff as of this, oh, 60-day delay, 90-day delay, 30-day delay, whatever. And then by the time we get almost to the point where it's going to hit again, oh, guess what? It's delayed again or it's modified again. And so a lot of things that were going to be 30, 40, 50, 80, 100 percent are the actual tariffs that have really been in place have been much lower, like 10%, 20%.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:35]
| Yeah, right. We're at the baseline of the 10.
|
Sam:
[1:10:38]
| And this is the kind of thing, by the way, where lots of folks have said, you know, the 10% to 20% tariffs, things in those ranges, a lot of businesses can absorb some of that in their profit margin. And a lot of people don't, the 10% difference is harder to notice. And the question is, when or if do the really big ones actually hit that, you know, that people will notice right away.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:10]
| Listen, right now we are getting close to the.
|
Sam:
[1:11:13]
| Even by the way, the 10, 20% people will eventually notice and, oh shit, this is more expensive.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:18]
| But here's the one thing.
|
Sam:
[1:11:20]
| Remember, again, inventories, inventories.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:23]
| Inventories, price protection, inventories. Companies are kind of like gambling. Listen, a lot of companies right now have been gambling a little bit on, oh, the taco thing. OK, so at first, remember, a lot of companies went and said, no, we're going to hold prices until so and so forth. New model year for vehicles is coming up pretty soon. OK, a lot of the deadlines are coming up like right now. OK, so so you're going to have it's just because he keeps negotiating. But if not, listen, right now, we are not close to any deals with anybody, any real deals, okay, at all. So, and the other effect that you're seeing is that in the economy, this is where it starts really, people are not hiring. They're not spending. They're not investing. This gets, you know. This starts translating into it. And by the way, the labor shortages, Sam. What happened the last time we had labor shortages? What was the thing that happened relatively quickly?
|
Sam:
[1:12:32]
| You mean you're talking to employers?
|
Ivan:
[1:12:34]
| They started desperately paying people more.
|
Sam:
[1:12:37]
| Yeah, and you're talking more in pandemic during that period.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:40]
| Yeah. Listen, at some point, that's going to start translating into stuff. It's just, it's kind of hard to predict. It's something that, because the supply, because things don't happen like in some kind of like a linear pattern. It's kind of like, it's like kind of pushing on a string. Okay. As these things happen. Okay. So the effect exactly, hey, you know, you do this over here and it has to translate through so many channels. When exactly do you see it at the other end? Predicting that exact timeline is, is, is, is hard. But listen, you've already done all those shocks over here. It's reverberating through the damn supply chain. At some point, as, you know, the other day, Ford went and said, hey, we just had to shut down a factory for several factories for three weeks because we can't get magnets. Okay? Hey, you've got farmers continually saying, hey, we can't pick fields. We don't have people. Okay? These are the fucking waves in the middle. Those don't translate immediately to the field. But this shit keeps piling up. And more and more and more of it. Listen, I can't tell you exactly when, but I can tell you it will happen. It's just a question of when, but it's tough to tell you exactly when it gets through it.
|
Sam:
[1:14:09]
| And also, like, it's hard to say how, just how bad, especially with a lot of these numbers fluctuating and policies changing all the time. Like, are we going to have, you know, is inflation going to spike to 5% or is it going to spike to 30%? Exactly. And there's a big difference in how those would be experienced by the general public.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:34]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:14:35]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:36]
| Listen, we've already seen that people, 10% inflation, might as well be 100% in the U.S.
|
Sam:
[1:14:45]
| Well, because, I mean, eggs. That's why Harris lost, right? Right. Eggs.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:51]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:14:52]
| Which, by the way, have not gone back down. At least not in a lasting way.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:58]
| So wait, so he didn't, I thought, they would go down on day one. Wasn't that the thing?
|
Sam:
[1:15:05]
| Eggs. Yes, yes. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:07]
| So no, no, no, he didn't get the price of eggs down on day one.
|
Sam:
[1:15:11]
| You know, Donald Trump could solve the egg problem with, you know, a WKRP-style helicopter drop.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:20]
| Oh, yeah, that would be. Anyway. All right. So moving on.
|
Sam:
[1:15:24]
| Or an egg's out of the helicopter. Give it to the masses.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:26]
| It's like I inserted a subject in the middle. Okay, moving on. What are we going to talk about now?
|
Sam:
[1:15:31]
| Yeah, we were supposed to be talking about Iran. Did we finish Iran?
|
Ivan:
[1:15:34]
| Yeah, we finished Iran. Okay, we ran it out of town.
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| Then let's take a break. And then we will come back and talk about the New York City mayor and all of the implications because, you know, Some people are very happy. Some people are freaking out. Let's, let's, we'll, we'll talk about all that. Here we go.
|
Break:
[1:16:00]
| Okie dokie. Here it comes. It's just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. more than you believe it oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired. It's amazing to get the show on the road. There's a road? There's a road? Oh my God, there's a road.
|
Sam:
[1:17:05]
| Okay, we're back.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:08]
| We are back. So what do we got now? The New York City mayor.
|
Sam:
[1:17:13]
| Yeah, now we have not talked about this at all on the show, and it's barely even showed up on the first time.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:19]
| So communism, Sam, well, here's one thing. I had seen that a lot of the polls showed Osio. I mean, Cuomo. I'm sorry. Get that name confused. Anybody that read the book Primary Colors understands why they call him Osio.
|
Sam:
[1:17:34]
| That was about his father.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:37]
| It wasn't even him. Well, Cuomo was in the lead, but, you know, polling for these is kind of like, especially with the ranked choice. Well, it was, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:17:52]
| Here's what people expected.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:53]
| People expected to go into a second round.
|
Sam:
[1:17:55]
| Well, here's what people expected, even with the ranked choice, was that Cuomo would lead in the first round.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:02]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:18:02]
| And then once you added up all the ranked choice, it would be really close between Cuomo and Mamdani. Now, that had changed over the last few weeks. If you had looked two to three weeks ago, everybody was sure this was just Cuomo. Done.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:20]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:18:21]
| Cuomo would win.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:21]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:18:22]
| Mamdani, over the last few weeks, closed the gap to the point where people thought he would lose the first round. but after ranked choice it could go either way.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:33]
| So he got some key endorsements. AOC came out for him. Bernie came out for him. You know. And lo and behold, Sam, he won!
|
Sam:
[1:18:44]
| He won. Now, he has not officially won yet because they haven't done the ranked choice calculations but he had enough of a lead and enough of sort of cross endorsements from people at third place and below that he, everyone expects that he's.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:03]
| Cuomo conceded.
|
Sam:
[1:19:04]
| Yes. Cuomo conceded the primary, but has not yet ruled out running as an independent in the general.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:12]
| I mean.
|
Sam:
[1:19:14]
| And Adams is running as an independent in the general.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:17]
| You know, I listen.
|
Sam:
[1:19:19]
| And of course, there's a Republican.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:21]
| This is, by the way, when, when people tell me about we're going to, we want to do something to get rid of certain people in the Democratic leadership. This is the kind of people I do, I agree, we need to get out of the fucking Democratic leadership, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:19:37]
| Like Cuomo.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:37]
| Like Cuomo. Cuomo.
|
Sam:
[1:19:39]
| Listen, listen, fuck a Cuomo.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:41]
| Okay? Listen, Cuomo, the Cuomos need to be gone, okay? The Schumers, the Cuomos, you know, those people need to be gone.
|
Sam:
[1:19:53]
| This is the thing that was extremely disappointing to me about this, looking at the New York race, is not just Cuomo himself, but all the endorsement Cuomo had from the Democratic establishment.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:05]
| Listen, I'm sorry. Fucking Cuomo.
|
Sam:
[1:20:08]
| There was a reason he quit for being governor.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:11]
| The guy is a fucking scumbag. I don't care if he has the positions I have. Now, look, if you're telling me that we're running fucking Cuomo versus Trump, would I hold my nose and vote for Cuomo? Yeah. shit, man. This guy is shit. It's just he's less shit than the other guy. It's the only reason I would wind up voting for him, but I don't want him.
|
Sam:
[1:20:40]
| The only acceptable response from the quote-unquote Democratic establishment to Cuomo even trying to run is that they.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:50]
| Should have just said, fuck you, get out.
|
Sam:
[1:20:53]
| Yeah. I mean, there should have been endorsements.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:57]
| There shouldn't.
|
Sam:
[1:20:57]
| Have been money you.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:58]
| Know what we had what's his name up in minnesota franken franken franken fucking i mean jesus christ what the fuck what the hell did we make franken resign for over what what over some pictures that were like kind of suggestive because everybody around there actually said no he wasn't like that it's just the pictures kind of like made it look bad and i'm like i got But this motherfucker who, on the record, there is a series of serious accusations against this bastard. And then we've got people all endorsing him. I do think that there is a number of them that I've seen that flipped already and have already endorsed. I can't pronounce his last name.
|
Sam:
[1:21:40]
| Momdani.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:41]
| Momdani. I've got to pronounce it. That have already flipped and have endorsed Momdani after he won. Okay. Or, you know, Elise is projected to win. at this point that I've already done that, okay? And, you know, they need to get with the program, but it's just, we can't be running these assholes. We can't be running Cuomo's.
|
Sam:
[1:22:02]
| Well, even afterwards, you mentioned there are some people that have flipped. There are some people hedging their bets who have congratulated him but not endorsed him. And it's like, come on, people.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:14]
| I mean, the voters have loudly told you, okay? we don't want more fucking cuomos end the story and and you know what and and what what this guy is bringing to the table, I don't, you know, he keeps being said that, you know, he's some kind of fucking communist. He's bringing to the table the energy and the kind of stuff that we need right now.
|
Sam:
[1:22:42]
| We have talked before about energy and fight and just being, getting it.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:48]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:22:48]
| And Mom Donnie does those things.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:52]
| All those things.
|
Sam:
[1:22:53]
| Like he's charismatic. He's, yes, he's young. and he is unapologetic about his views. Now, you know, people have, you know, oh, he's way to the left. He's talking about, like, government-run grocery stores. He's talking about free buses. He's crazy. He's, he's...
|
Ivan:
[1:23:13]
| Mike, I'm sorry. Here's my problem with people. Would they think that, for example, free buses are some kind of fucking, you know, like fidel castro kind of program i mean what what the fuck i'm sorry you know what i actually i thought about it like he's totally right why the fuck aren't the buses free the only people that take the fucking buses are the poorest that we have out there, You know, I know towns that have free trolleys and shit and whatever, whatnot for people to move around town. Okay? Why the fuck shouldn't the goddamn buses be free? We're charging the people that can least afford that and that are the ones that use the damn service the most.
|
Sam:
[1:24:00]
| Just to be clear, in a city like New York City, buses and subways are used by lots of people who aren't just the bottom line.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:07]
| No, subways more. Buses not as much. Okay? And it's very important to make that distinction because the subway is far more, you know, across the economic spectrum, but not as much the buses. OK, if you go to almost any city, the buses are usually, you know, because some guy that, you know, you see like people go into the train station. Right. And they drive their car to take a transit to take, you know, the top metro, but, you know, on railways, pass, whatever those right. They go in a car. Then you've got the people that need to take the bus to get to the damn station. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:24:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:43]
| Those people are far lower in the economic strata. So you know what? They should be getting a damn bus for free.
|
Sam:
[1:24:51]
| Well, and there was an interesting thing where I think it was, was it Bill Kristol, famous conservative?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:59]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:24:59]
| Who like made a comment on one of the social medias this time around saying, actually, you know, So free buses might be okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:10]
| Yes. What the hell?
|
Sam:
[1:25:12]
| Because he's like, it's a common good. It's positive externalities. It might actually make sense to use taxes for this instead of user fees.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:24]
| Sam, I cannot come up with a good fucking reason. Why the hell we need to charge for the fucking buses? Can you?
|
Sam:
[1:25:35]
| Well, the counter-argument would, of course, you would have to raise taxes to cover it a different way.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:40]
| Oh, by how much, Sam? Come on. Give me a fucking break.
|
Sam:
[1:25:46]
| Yeah, anyway, like, the point is, my point is, even if, like, if you actually look at the policies he's proposing, none of them are actually all that crazy.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:55]
| No! None of them! But listen, this whole thing is, Sam, the whole thing about, first, to start off with this, I do think that, African-Americans in New York City voted more for Cuomo than from than for him. But I do think that in part that is because African-Americans and I and I understand why they they tend to vote more for the Democratic establishment more than others because they've gotten burned so many times by other fucking people. OK, so they are loathe to vote against the people that for the most part have delivered for them. okay and i get that and i get that concern okay given that in our country probably the class that has gotten the shittiest deal over our history has been them okay you know i i i get it so you don't what why do you want to vote against the guys that have consistently delivered for you even if it's fucking cuomo okay all right so i get that so that's one group that i understand I also think that some people like Bloomberg probably in their head are more like thinking of, ah, general election, electability.
|
Sam:
[1:27:15]
| Well, look.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:16]
| You know, the kind of like.
|
Sam:
[1:27:18]
| Here's the thing. Here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:21]
| That bullshit. You know what I'm saying?
|
Sam:
[1:27:23]
| Yeah, I know completely. And this ties exactly to what we've been saying and why Zamdani is a breath of fresh air again here.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:31]
| Zamdani? Zamdani?
|
Sam:
[1:27:34]
| Did i did i mangle it mom mom donnie what are you doing.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:39]
| To the poor guy.
|
Sam:
[1:27:40]
| I like the guy i got to.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:42]
| Pronounce his name i i like this guy i really like this guy by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:27:46]
| I gotta find this stupid clip from his debate and i'll maybe when we take the next break i'll i'll like find the clip of of when he spells his name and stuff but anyway people have like done like remixes into music and all this kind of stuff of mispronunciations of his name yeah it's it's a clip from the debate where he starts out slamming cuomo about like all the things that cuomo has done that you know that are bad and and then he and because cuomo was also routinely mispronouncing his name and so he ends the whole things by saying by the way it's donnie m-a-m-d-a-n-i you should learn how to pronounce it anyway i love.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:33]
| That you see i love that energy fuck you know yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:28:36]
| Here's the thing with all of those positions whether you agree with them or not he doesn't apologize for them he owns his position and he defends them like and one of the things that and i mentioned this last week and the week before and probably more often, there was a brief moment where it looked like the Democrats had learned their lesson and would actually stand up and defend their positions. But then they started retreating again from all kinds of things.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:08]
| Yep. Yep. This has been happening in recent time. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:29:11]
| You have them running from defending You had like.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:14]
| You had fucking like Newsom for a couple of months like, you know, trying to ingratiate himself with like fucking like right-wing lunatic and stuff or whatever, bringing him on the podcast or whatever right now. I did more than once, like, you know, and he has completely done a 180 on that. I give him credit because he's completely done a 180 on that.
|
Sam:
[1:29:35]
| The thing is, like, Mom Donnie, like, in New York City with lots of Jewish people, was asked about whether he believed Israel should exist as a Jewish state. And his answer was, I believe Israel should exist as a state with equal rights for everyone. I don't believe in states based on ethnicity or religion. I don't think that should be a thing. And he said it outright and defended that position. He didn't run from it. He's being accused of being a socialist for the buses and the grocery stores and all this other. He embraces the positions and goes for them. Whereas you've got like all kinds of Democrats like running from the trans issue, running from the immigration issue, running from all kinds of issues where where they are.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:26]
| Like I said, it's like this whole thing about instead of like explaining, oh, well, you're pro abortion. No, I'm not pro abortion. I'm by choice. Then they go like, well, we need to consider the, you know, the religion. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, asshole. No, stop fucking like apologizing for being pro choice. Stop fucking apologizing for being pro-human rights.
|
Sam:
[1:30:47]
| Yes. For a while, they were running from guns, too. Like, no, just don't. You know, and this is the thing that one of the reasons everybody, and I hate sounding like a 2016 Bernie Sanders supporter, But one of the things that the Democratic establishment is like pissing their entire base off is because they're trying to do this triangulation. They're trying to. They're being so afraid of alienating the median voter. They're they want to like they're all focused on how do we get back the Trump voters. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:28]
| And so we have to moderate and we have to be more conservative and we have to run away from all the liberal views, let alone progressive or socialist views. And in the process, they make themselves seem like weasels who don't actually believe in anything. They're doing polls and trying to modify their positions to match the polls and all that. No, you want to lead and you want to lead with a bold vision. And I mean, look, fucking Donald Trump, you know, like it's, it, I hate the stuff that he is one on, but the thing is he, he will unapologetically come out there and say the Mexicans are fucking rapists and, and, and people, even when, you know, he lies constantly, but people view him as authentic and they resonate with that. And Mandani, the same thing. Like he's, he's just.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:36]
| Well, he's not doing the lying part.
|
Sam:
[1:32:38]
| No, no, no. But the same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:40]
| No, but not about, not apologizing.
|
Sam:
[1:32:42]
| Not apologizing for his views. I have this view. I have this position and I will defend it. I'm not going to go in there and, oh no, some donor said that this made them uncomfortable. So I'm going to change my position or I'm going to hide it or I'm going to do whatever or, oh, no, there was an attack ad. No, own it. Run with it. Defend it. Say. And again, like maybe some of his position, I mean, so far I haven't heard anything actually too unreasonable from this guy. But let's say some of his positions are too far left for me. He is still, I still will respect him because of this, because he will come through and because, and also just from a other stylistic point of view, he's interacting directly with the people he's doing, he's doing social media well. He's, he's, you know, walking up and down, you know, Manhattan, like saying hi to people on the street and stuff. And, you know, doing all of that. He, I mean, it all comes back to, he's not hiding. He's not like everybody on the democratic side. No, I shouldn't say everybody. big chunk of the leadership on the democratic side. And like some of this, I know Yvonne gets testy when people say this, some of it does correspond to age, but not entirely.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:05]
| Not entirely.
|
Sam:
[1:34:06]
| Like the key, you know, I'd say there is a tendency for the people who've been there for 30, 40 years to be less in touch with the, than the newer people, but it's not universal. There's some older folks that get it. There's some younger folks who don't.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:21]
| But like, there's a whole bunch younger folks that don't. Look at fucking Steve Miller, for God's sakes.
|
Sam:
[1:34:27]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:27]
| The fuck, you know, look at all these fucking people, like, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:34:33]
| No, but my point is, though, like, this whole tendency in a lot of the Democratic leadership to be so shell-shocked, and even more so after they lost this last election. They're all, like, in a defensive of Crouch again and not willing to actually be bold about fucking anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:58]
| There is one thing about all of this. But there is one thing about this. It's only been a few months. As much as we want to make it, oh my god, whatever, in real terms, it's only been a few months. And I think that what needs to happen and what is starting to happen is guys like him okay start getting support okay guys like newsom start fighting the people like aoc keep the fucking pressure like bernie all these people get out of this fucking like ridiculous position of trying to and and no and go out and tell these people to go fuck themselves okay literally this is what starts happening. But I do think that the voters... The significant thing about New York is to show you, hey, stop being a fucking chicken and go out and fucking fight instead of trying to ingratiate yourselves with these ridiculous positions and people, period.
|
Sam:
[1:36:08]
| And look, there's some people saying that, look, hey, this may work in New York, but it's not going to work in the rest of the country.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:15]
| Bullshit.
|
Sam:
[1:36:16]
| And look, there are two things here. One, you know, calling yourself a democratic socialist and pushing for government-run grocery stores might not work in, you know, purple parts of the country. No. Maybe it would, honestly, but maybe not. But the thing that matters, and this is another democratic wonk thing, they all get back to like, well, this policy, that policy, this policy, that. The important thing here is attitude.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:47]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:36:48]
| You know, now, of course, I don't want somebody with a great attitude with policies I absolutely despise. But you need someone with the right attitude coming into this. And Mamdani shows that. And the folks we have in leadership are, like, paralyzed. And maybe you're right. Give them a little time. They'll snap out of it. But I feel like you need to have the Mamdani's of the world actually win. And like, he's still got a general election. He may, I think he's got a good shot, but you know, who knows what will happen in November.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:28]
| I mean, let me, can I be honest? Eric Adams way overestimates his popularity.
|
Sam:
[1:37:34]
| Oh, I think so.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:35]
| I mean, and Cuomo is going to find that his popularity right now after people realize that Thank you. How do I say his name again?
|
Sam:
[1:37:48]
| Mamdani.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:50]
| Mamdani?
|
Sam:
[1:37:52]
| Mamdani.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:53]
| Mamdani. I promise to get it right in the future. After Mamdani's real polls and numbers and support comes clear, Cuomo is going to collapse very quick. That's my feel.
|
Sam:
[1:38:09]
| I, I, I know he, from what I understand, he's waiting until he sees, does he close the gap a little bit after the rank choice calculation happens? And if he makes it closer, he may do the run as an independent thing. I hope he doesn't. But here, but here's the thing too, that you've seen so much panic, like there are lots of democratic establishment folks who have been like, mom, Donnie is going to hurt the Democrats overall. This is the worst possible thing that could have happened to the Democrats.
|
Sam:
[1:38:44]
| You've got like wall street types, like expressing panic over, oh my God, the socialist one, you know, they need to get the fuck over that. And I think, you know, you've got a lot of these establishment folks who just fundamentally are stuck in, we're going to do it the way we've always done it. And part of this is you have to be next in line and you have to wait your turn and blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, of course, the person who's been there 30 years is going to do stuff and be the one in charge. There has to be a pragmatic, what works, what doesn't, what excites people. I've seen people criticize. They're commissioning all sorts of studies and stuff to try to figure out why Democrats lost young male votes and why the base wasn't excited and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just take a look. Take a look at what's actually working here.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:51]
| Um
|
Sam:
[1:39:52]
| Yeah this isn't something you need to spend millions of dollars on consultants to tell you you need like a joe rogan of the left or whatever no.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:02]
| By the way to see joe rogan has been lately like ripping trump and the administration over and over on a whole bunch of different things he had bernie sanders on recently.
|
Sam:
[1:40:13]
| By the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:14]
| And all of a sudden he's been, I don't know. He's been... Yeah, but you don't need these studies. I mean, it's very... The reason why is very... It's right in front of your face. And they're fighting it for no good reason whatsoever. I mean, they're fighting the solution for no good reason whatsoever.
|
Sam:
[1:40:37]
| Right. Okay. And as promised, I looked up that debate clip of Mamdani. So here's a little bit of the mayoral debate. It includes Mamdami talking, then a little bit of Cuomo, then Mamdami's response. It's about a minute long. Here we go.
|
Mamdani:
[1:40:54]
| My name is Assemblymember Zahran Mamdani, and I am running to make the city affordable. I'll freeze the rent for millions of tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal childcare. And before you ask, I'll pay for it by taxing the rich.
|
Cuomo:
[1:41:07]
| To put a person in this seat at this time with no experience is reckless and dangerous.
|
Mamdani:
[1:41:17]
| To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo. And furthermore, the name is Mamdani, M-A-M-D-A-N-I. You should learn how to say it because we got to get it right.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:50]
| Oh, my God, he would abolish stuff. Jesus Christ.
|
Sam:
[1:41:53]
| Yeah, I mean, and that has been that's the one I've seen the most. And like I said, people have been making remixes of it, putting a beat behind it, all this kind of other stuff. but that is typical of how he is responding to things and and again it's it's about the energy.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:10]
| Yeah you.
|
Sam:
[1:42:11]
| Know and yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:13]
| No and it's about you know like how he didn't you know let it pass for example the fact that he's a accused credibly accused sexual assaulter who resigned in disgrace and all the other.
|
Sam:
[1:42:29]
| Things he listed.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:30]
| And all the other things he listed it's like the same thing It's like when you approach Donald Trump and you normalize him instead of, like, you know, basically referring to him as Mr. 37 felonies.
|
Sam:
[1:42:41]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:42]
| I mean, because that's who he is. He is a convicted felon who happens to be president of the United States and a convicted rapist also, because he was found to be a rapist by a civil court as well and liable for it. OK, OK. And the famer.
|
Sam:
[1:43:02]
| Technically not convicted. It's found liable. But yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:06]
| That's what I said. Found liable.
|
Sam:
[1:43:07]
| Yeah, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:08]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:43:08]
| You said convicted first. I was making it clear for the record.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:11]
| Well, convicted. But it was, but you know, it was in a, I said civil court. I did not say criminal.
|
Sam:
[1:43:15]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:16]
| Okay. You know, you know. So, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:43:19]
| Let's take a quick break and then zoom through some SCOTUS stuff. We're, you know, and then wrap this sucker up. Back after this.
|
Break:
[1:43:28]
| You're supposed to say do do do do do do do alex emzela alex emzela is awesome its videos are fun and today once again we have one of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you how awesome alex emzela is i'd say on a rate from one to ten alex emzela is awesome at I don't know, 37, 82. He's pretty radical. His videos are phenomenal. They're full of creativity. And they're so funny and exciting to watch. Wow, what happened to your voice then, Amy? Was that dad pretending to be you because the audio was distorted when it really wasn't because I told him to? Yes. Good job on remembering, Dad. Do, do, do!
|
Sam:
[1:44:27]
| Okay. Supreme Court. There were a number of cases. As usual, the majority of them were bad in one way or another. There was, the Supreme Court upheld age verification for porn in Texas. The Supreme Court ruled that a law requiring parental opt-out for any book with gay characters was legitimate in schools. There were a couple others. But the one that got the biggest attention, people have been calling it the birthright citizenship case, but it's not actually about birthright citizenship because it is prompted by that case. But the appeal that was in front of the Supreme Court was about nationwide injunctions. Yeah. and whether or not those were appropriate. And basically the court said, no, no more nationwide injunctions. I think they allowed some very limited cases to it.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:36]
| Well, no more nationwide injunctions unless the cases were class action suits.
|
Sam:
[1:45:44]
| Well, no, the class action suit wouldn't be a nationwide injunction. It would be an injunction on the class action.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:52]
| Against the class. Against the class. So the thing is that they just said that you couldn't get blanket injunctions like that unless, A, I guess you filed in every jurisdiction. You had to like, or B, it was against a class, a specified class that was nationwide. There was a whole bunch of things.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:11]
| Here's my, look, listen, here's my problem with this case. My hot take is very simple, okay? During the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, we had we had a lot of we had a lot of people, conservatives specifically, went and shopped for certain jurisdictions that would go and like look at certain cases and issue this kind of injunction because they would find one friendly jurisdiction that would take it and they would always go there. In Texas, there was one specifically that was famous for basically taking a lot of these cases, and they would wind up blocking a lot of actions like on student debt and a whole bunch of stuff or whatever using this tool, okay? And it was very, I mean, it was very obstructive, okay? I don't and so I found it that you know I remember that one of the things that kept one of the changes that happened during time was that it was making it more difficult for people to shop jurisdictions that could give those injunctions okay for a while because those injunctions were very they were happening by some low-level court on some fucking case where all of a sudden presidential you know any policy could get blocked real quickly okay. And so now, of course, Trump is the one that goes, challenges it.
|
Sam:
[1:47:35]
| Well, no, just to be clear, this had been- Challenging the policy. No, no, but just to be clear, nationwide injunctions had been challenged before by Biden most recently, but the Supreme Court declined to do anything about it while Biden was president.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:50]
| Right. And now they did it when Trump was president.
|
Sam:
[1:47:53]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:54]
| And so the thing is that in a vacuum, This had been something that, yeah, Democrats had challenged repeatedly over had failed. And now the thing is that's annoying is that it happened now in this way. So in a vacuum, it's, you know, I'm like, okay, this kind of makes sense. But in terms, in practical terms, what it's what you said, they declined to hear it when Biden was president, and then Trump is president. And then all of a sudden, oh, yeah, you're right. This shouldn't happen.
|
Sam:
[1:48:29]
| So here's the thing. A lot of these can go through as class actions instead. And so that's already happened in the birthright citizenship.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:39]
| That's already happened.
|
Sam:
[1:48:40]
| There have been several cases already filed just within the first 48 hours, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:45]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:48:45]
| To do this as a class action instead. um but this affects potentially all kinds of policies of all different sorts that some of them are maybe more amenable to class actions than others right and so where what we end up in is potentially a situation because what they said specifically is you can enjoin an action but only in respect to the specific plaintiffs that have a complaint at a given time right now if you have a natural class, then, oh, okay, we'll do a class action lawsuit. And then if we get an injunction, it'll be against the whole class. Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:24]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:49:25]
| But in cases where it's harder to clearly identify who will be affected as a class, what it essentially ends up being is that until or unless you actually sue and get an injunction individually, one by one. your rights can't be respected. Yes, exactly. Because what we've said here is the court can't just say, this law fundamentally violates people's rights. So nobody can act on this law until it finishes going through the legal process. And by the way, even with all of these other injunctions, of course, typically speaking, they would make their way up through the courts and they would eventually get resolved one way or another. The injunction was until it could be resolved in that way.
|
Sam:
[1:50:16]
| But in this case, it's potentially saying like the birthright citizenship case can be done as a class. So it may not be the best example, but let me use it as an example for simplicity. What it would be saying right now is that Trump's policy of saying, you are not a citizen just because you were born here. You have to have had parents that were born here in certain circumstances, blah, blah, blah, as well. You couldn't have been under certain visas. You couldn't have been here illegally. All of the things he's trying to put in there. you couldn't just say, no, no, no, until that's all legally resolved by the Supreme Court, you guys are, you still have all your full citizenship rights. Instead, you could say, none of these people have citizenship rights unless they sue for them and win the first round in court to get an injunction. And so what some of the dissents from the liberals said is basically this automatically says, essentially.
|
Sam:
[1:51:21]
| That the government can violate rights left and right unless you are savvy enough to get a lawyer, you can afford to get a lawyer, and it can be a good lawyer who gets you in. Like, the default is, you know, government decides to start violating some rights, they get to do so in total or in less. And so it just puts a lot more power on the government. And you're absolutely right. both Democrats and Republicans, assuming we have a Democratic president again sometime in the future, it puts a lot more power in the executive. And this is in complete keeping with this court's general philosophy of expansive executive power. They are reducing the power of the courts. They are reducing the power of Congress. Generally speaking, they, well, with a few notable exceptions, But they, generally speaking, believe that, yes, the president should hold very, very strong powers to be able to do a lot of things unsupervised and without checks and balances.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:32]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:52:33]
| You know, fundamentally, like, back when I was listening to Schoolhouse Rock, it seemed like, you know, checks and balances were the entire fucking point of the Constitution, you know, is to make things hard, to make sure you didn't have concentration.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:53]
| Well, but let's be clear about this. The biggest problem here has been, like, over time, the fucking Congress has abdicated their fault.
|
Sam:
[1:53:03]
| And now the courts are too.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:04]
| Grisbop. Well... To a certain extent, yes, the courts have said, well, we shouldn't have jurisdiction on it. And Congress, you know, has basically washed our hands and said, you know, it's not our thing.
|
Sam:
[1:53:17]
| And look, this has been a continuous trend since the country was founded. Slowly but surely, more and more power has gone to the executive. It's just with, you know, some ups and downs along the way. But if you compare to, you know, the amount of power George Washington had to the amount of power Donald Trump is accumulating and look at the trend in between, it's gone one way, basically. The president accumulating more and more power over time.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:49]
| Well, we had a minor blip.
|
Sam:
[1:53:52]
| We've had a few blips along the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:54]
| We've had a few blips.
|
Sam:
[1:53:56]
| But the overall trend is not.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:58]
| We had two blips. I think FDR had a pushback. Well, think about, for example, how we had the amendment limiting presidential terms to two.
|
Sam:
[1:54:06]
| After he died.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:07]
| After, yeah, after he died. But yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:54:09]
| There wasn't any pushback while he was alive.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:11]
| But hey, it happened. Okay. All right. So, you know, so you had that and then Watergate.
|
Sam:
[1:54:18]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:18]
| I do think it's like everything, man. I don't know. I have to believe the pendulum will be a pushback.
|
Sam:
[1:54:26]
| Pendulums.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:26]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:54:26]
| Pendulums.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:27]
| There's going to be a pushback against. this because it's just you know it's just ridiculous i mean at some point you're gonna get another speaker at a house that's more tippo neil less this loser that we've got right now what's his name you know johnson whatever johnson whatever fucking name and i'm supposed to know his name i he's so forgettable you know we'll get some guy but he's lost it we.
|
Sam:
[1:54:50]
| All thought he would be gone much much.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:52]
| Sooner listen i gotta give him credit for survival but i also think it's it's i I also believe that part of it has to do with the fact that nobody wants the fucking job. Because I've seen this happen before, like in companies, where all of a sudden, so how did this guy get to have ESV paid? It's like, well, nobody really wanted that fucking job.
|
Sam:
[1:55:13]
| Yeah. Anyway, the SCOTUS stuff ties back into the optimism and pessimism we started the show with. Because this is one of the things where even if, you know, we end up in 2029 with a democratic trifecta. They take the presidency, they take the Senate, they take the House, which, you know, look, if Donald Trump keeps screwing things up and makes things worse, then that's the natural reaction to that, right? But even if we have that, it's still going to be a long time before the balance in SCOTUS changes, unless you have a Democratic Congress and president who's actually willing to reform the court, which we did not have. Last time around.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:03]
| No, but I got to tell you something. Whoever is a Democrat wins. I foresee far more... Momdami?
|
Sam:
[1:56:13]
| Momdami.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:14]
| Momdami?
|
Sam:
[1:56:15]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:16]
| For sure.
|
Sam:
[1:56:16]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:17]
| And look, I'm not going to... I'll say this again because I love Joe. I think Joe had a good idea. His idea of what he wanted is an idea that, I mean, in a vacuum appealed to me.
|
Sam:
[1:56:29]
| Going back to, like.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:31]
| Decades-old Republicans and Democrats working together. That appealed to me.
|
Sam:
[1:56:35]
| Blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:36]
| But unfortunately, the reality wasn't that.
|
Sam:
[1:56:40]
| Well, and I think that's one of the things we have to see is how all of this plays out between establishment Democrats and the new wave as it is. At this point, I'm rooting for the new wave.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:54]
| I'm rooting for the new wave. I'm new wave. Fuck this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:56:59]
| Don't have what it takes.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:01]
| Catch the wave. Coke.
|
Sam:
[1:57:04]
| Coke. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:06]
| Oh, no, it's not. That's not the wave we're talking about.
|
Sam:
[1:57:09]
| Catch the wave.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:09]
| That's Coke. That was the slogan for Coke for a while.
|
Sam:
[1:57:11]
| Oh, that's right.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:12]
| Catch the wave, Coke.
|
Sam:
[1:57:13]
| It was. It was. But Pepsi's got the little wave on their bottles, too. The little ball. The little ball has a wave in the middle.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:20]
| You're like a yin-yang ball, isn't it?
|
Sam:
[1:57:22]
| Sort of. But yes, Coke has the wave. Like, yes. Yes. Anyway, yeah, I feel like the Supreme Court is one of the reasons why the damage from Trump, both terms, I think has a lifespan of many decades.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:43]
| Not something that gets flipped right away. Hillary's emails, man. Come on. Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[1:57:50]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:50]
| They're fucking emails.
|
Sam:
[1:57:52]
| I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:53]
| In an unsecure server. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:57:56]
| You know, those recipes.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:58]
| Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:58:00]
| Yes. Even after like after the 2016 election, I said it would be take decades to recover this, recover from one term of Donald Trump. Hell, even before the election, I said even the fact that he was the nominee would take a long time to recover from, even if he lost in 2016. I think the fact that not only did he win, but then he won again, admittedly after a break, but he won again after January 6th, after a completely disastrous first term. He still won again. And, you know, the damage that we are going to see over this is going to last a long time. I hope your optimistic view is right and that, you know, we get a lot of dramatic change to undo this stuff quickly once he's no longer in power, but I'm not sure. I think it's going to take a lot longer than that because we also have to remember that what he's stirred up is not just him anymore. You know, it is an entire movement. It is more than half of the voters. I'm not going to say they wanted this because there were a lot of ignorant people who at this point are being like, I didn't vote for that.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:26]
| But I do think that, OK, I know that there is a lot of it tied to that, but I think that there is a significant, significant portion that is just a cult of Trump. And so that's one of the things about getting rid of Trump, that despite the fact that I know that it is a big movement, it's a cult. It's a cult of the person.
|
Sam:
[1:59:47]
| Yeah. Listen, so far, nobody else in MAGA has shown like Vance.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:52]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:59:54]
| I mean, and I know he's been pumping up like Trump Jr. or something. But really, you know, nobody else on that side has yet to show a lot of strong signs of being able to be the natural air to pick up in the same way as Donald has. And so we'll see. You're right. Lots of times when these personality driven movements have the leader die or otherwise move off the stage, they fall apart. cross my fingers.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:30]
| Okay, I need to stop for one second. An alarm is going off. I don't know what the hell's going on. We need to wrap this up. I don't know. Quickly. Two seconds. I don't have time for this.
|
Sam:
[2:00:40]
| I hear you. Okay. Well, that's about it. Yeah. Well, as usual, we'll see how the future plays out. Like we don't get to actually skip ahead years like you suggested at the beginning. Anyway, curmudgeons-corner.com. You know where to find us. All the ways to contact us. Again, if you are interested in the Curmudgeons Corner meetup on Wednesday, July 2nd. Contact us in any of those ways there. Let us know, and we will let you know the exact place and time as soon as we know it. And, you know, just give us feedback anyway. Tell us what you think of the show. Also on there, you can find our transcripts, all of that. Archive of old shows. You can, what? Oh, yes, you can give us money on the Patreon.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:26]
| Met up. I need to go. Thank you, everybody. I need to go. Okay? All right. Goodbye, everybody.
|
Sam:
[2:01:34]
| I'll wrap it up without you, Yvonne. Go.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:36]
| Okay. But how is that going to work?
|
Sam:
[2:01:40]
| I will still be here once you just hang up. And, of course, go to our Patreon. You know, give us money. We like money. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. And at various levels, we will mention you on the show. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. The mugs are nice. I've been drinking out of the mug during the podcast here. and at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the Commudgence Chorus Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week. Normally I would ask Yvonne right now to give a highlight from the Commudgence Chorus Slack, but he had to run because like an alarm was going off at his house or something. So I'm closing up without him. And yeah, if you are in the Seattle area, we would love to see you. drop us a line. We'll let you know where we're meeting. It'd be great to see you and talk to you in person. Other than that, hey, everybody, have a great week. Have a fun time. Do good things. All that goody, goody gumdrop stuff. Gumdrop stuff.
|
Sam:
[2:02:53]
| Anyway, have a great week. We'll talk to you next time. Hopefully we'll see some of you in person between now and then. And We'll see you on the next show. Goodbye. Hey, forgot the outro. Here we go. Once again, goodbye.
|
Sam:
[2:03:41]
| Test one, two, three. Okay, folks, for anybody wondering after Yvonne disappeared so abruptly, what had happened was his son was opening or closing a window or something, bumped into it wrong, set off the alarm, and Yvonne tried to turn it off and struggled with it, eventually got the sound off, but was still worried that it was going to call the police because that's what alarm systems do. and the mechanism that was on the alarm had gotten knocked out of position or something, something, something. Anyway, he eventually got it all fixed. He texted me later, reported all is good, all is fine. But yeah, he had to run. Anyway, goodbye for real. Wait, let me try that again. Goodbye for real.
| |
|
