Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| So where are you? Are you in Puerto Rico again?
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| No.
|
Sam:
[0:03]
| No?
|
Ivan:
[0:04]
| No, I'm in Orlando right now.
|
Sam:
[0:06]
| Oh, okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:07]
| I was in the Dominican Republic. I was in Puerto Rico. Now I'm in Orlando.
|
Sam:
[0:12]
| Okay. Disney weekend?
|
Ivan:
[0:16]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Sam:
[0:18]
| Yeah, okay. Here we go. Here's the music stuff. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, September 13th, 2025. It's just after 2.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Mentor, Yvonne Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:57]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[0:58]
| You look tired.
|
Ivan:
[1:01]
| Sam asked me, where am I? And I'm like, I'm glad you knew. That's like, he's like, are you in Puerto Rico? And I'm like, no, I'm not in Puerto Rico. And I'm like, you know, I've been, I was in Dominican Republic. I was in Puerto Rico. I am now in Orlando. I should be home Sunday.
|
Sam:
[1:24]
| Okay. my my wife i mentioned this briefly last week she's been in denmark all week she comes back having a.
|
Ivan:
[1:34]
| Much better time than we are.
|
Sam:
[1:36]
| She's yeah she and and touring all over the country by the way not like she flew to copenhagen but then she's been every day she's in one or two different towns by bus as as this whole this whole group of like legislators and other civil civil servants gets tours of various transportation infrastructure and other crop around the country of Denmark.
|
Ivan:
[2:02]
| You know, good. You know, a lot of things that, uh, in terms of, I will say this, look, I experienced transportation across the world. Okay. You know, I'm not going to say we have, we, you know, we, we sometimes are very hard on when it's like, we have the worst infrastructure. We don't, we don't have that. That's, that's always an exaggeration, but, well, we sure can learn certain things about how other countries do certain things for sure to bring into the U S. My experience, especially in those countries around Europe and that area, around Denmark, the Netherlands, I still always am amazed that the first time I went to the Netherlands, where I landed at Schiphol, and basically I went through immigration, I took this elevator downstairs, and there was this sprawling train station there, and it took me wherever the hell I wanted to go in the country. I mean, literally where I got to on the train was I did take a cab for a little bit because I had a couple of bags. But if I had a smaller bag, I could have just walked to the hotel.
|
Sam:
[3:15]
| Right. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[3:16]
| You know, so it was just very easy to do. And I've been there twice, both times. It was not in Amsterdam. It was in some other location. And same thing. Went down, took my train, got to the town, short distance. It was just so convenient. That is, you know, definitely.
|
Sam:
[3:44]
| Well, I'll tell you, like, you know, the trip is to, like, go see all kinds of things that are actually related to her job and such. But about an hour ago, she texted me and was like, is the podcast done yet? And I'm like, we haven't even started. We're not going to start for like an hour. And she's like, oh. And I'm like, wait, isn't it like four in the morning there?
|
Ivan:
[4:09]
| No, the other way.
|
Sam:
[4:10]
| No, no. yes oh.
|
Ivan:
[4:13]
| No yeah she's contact right oh i thought she's asking you four in the morning.
|
Sam:
[4:16]
| No no i was asking her isn't it like four in the morning there why are you texting me right now and and she's like oh i was at the casino with a bunch of these folks and like so yeah she she was out all night at like one of apparently six casinos in the entire country of denmark like and she's like it was small i'm like did you win us millions of dollars at least and she's like she started with 699 kroner and ended with 716 so I guess at least she was up you know but, but yeah I.
|
Ivan:
[4:50]
| Mean I you know I don't I don't do a lot of going out of like trips anymore hell.
|
Sam:
[4:59]
| Every night she's been talking about like she's gone out to one place she's gone out with various people she's with the one.
|
Ivan:
[5:07]
| Thing is that she is traveling with a group.
|
Sam:
[5:10]
| Yeah, she is traveling with a group.
|
Ivan:
[5:11]
| And so when I have wound up in past traveling with a group, then you guys we tend, you know, say, hey.
|
Sam:
[5:18]
| What do we do this? You have dinner together, you go out and see the sights together a little bit.
|
Ivan:
[5:23]
| Exactly, right, right, right. So you tend to do that. But like, for example, like, I go on a damn business trip. I'm going by myself. I finish my fucking meetings. I'm going to the fucking hotel. I, you know.
|
Sam:
[5:35]
| Get some food, go to bed.
|
Ivan:
[5:37]
| Yeah. Watch TV. That's it. I, you know, I will say when I was younger, I used to definitely go out all the time on the on these trips. But right now, I don't care. And I don't, you know, there are times when I, you know, like a couple of weeks ago, we had a dinner with a group. Okay, that was nice. But that's like, that's an outlier. Okay. All right. I don't, you know, I don't, you know, especially when I go to certain places where I go very often. It's like, what am I going to, it's like, some people ask me, it's like, is she going to take your family out to dinner? I'd come over here every couple of weeks. How many fucking times? You know, they got lives. Things. I mean, I don't see my parents that often. They live nearby. What am I going to do? I mean, it is a location where I go and I talk to them. I see them. I do stuff or whatever. but fuck I don't go every time so most of the time I just work go to a hotel go to find a restaurant nearby go watch TV.
|
Sam:
[6:39]
| Understood so anyway as usual on this show we're going to do our little but first thing I'm going to talk about a couple movies I don't know what else Yvonne has to talk about.
|
Ivan:
[6:49]
| And then we'll talk about the serious stuff before I forget because it talked about the casino the last hotel I was in that I slept in before this one, Wednesday night, has a casino. A nice casino. And I've stayed at this hotel quite many times. I have not gambled a dollar at this casino.
|
Sam:
[7:12]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[7:13]
| And I used to like going to the casino a lot. And I haven't gambled a, And the one thing is that if I'm going to a hotel with a casino on 15, 20 times a year, I don't want to be gambling at a casino 15, 20 times a year. The last time I went and gambled to the casino was about a month, about a few weeks ago, because I went to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida for a concert with my with my wife. And she wanted to gamble. And we very promptly lost one hundred dollars.
|
Sam:
[7:45]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[7:46]
| Inside like five minutes literally.
|
Sam:
[7:48]
| That sounds like so much fun which.
|
Ivan:
[7:52]
| I was just like well fuck this no that's it i i have 100 bucks that's why i love it i'm like.
|
Sam:
[7:57]
| You know speaking of that kind of stuff like we did have the powerball was over a billion dollars for a few drawings so i did spend some money on powerball tickets well for the very last drawing you know I spent $40 and won 18 for the, for the couple of drawings. So I'm down, you know, it's, it's not actually up, but it's not the usual, which is the last couple of drawings before that I spent 40 bucks and got nothing, you know, but I am, but my, my, my rule at this point, like it used to be if the lottery was over 500 million, I'd buy a ticket. Then that started happening way too often. So now it's, I'm only buying a ticket over, now it's a billion. I think I did a little while at $750, but then I decided that was happening too often too.
|
Ivan:
[8:46]
| Yeah, you know, a billion, come on.
|
Sam:
[8:49]
| Yeah, if it's a billion, I'll put in the 40 bucks and, you know, and I know you can buy a single ticket for less, but I just max out what you can buy at the machine in one shot. And that's the 40 bucks.
|
Ivan:
[9:02]
| Well, anyway, because I'm here at a hotel and my son, I know at some point when I realized that I'm a hotel, we'll get irritated if I do a podcast for too long here.
|
Sam:
[9:12]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:12]
| Let's try to get to your movies.
|
Sam:
[9:14]
| Okay. We'll jump straight to the movies. One thing I do want to mention on movies. I've been talking for a long time that ever since 1998, I've been going through that AFI 100 movies, 100 years, 100 movies list. I'm not going to talk about the movie until I get to it in order but I will say this week Alex and I watched number one we finished off the list and not only that, number one is Citizen Kane I won't review it right now but I will say by pure coincidence last weekend last Saturday night I was on the verge of going to bed And number one, Citizen Kane was the next one on our list. And I was scrolling TikTok before I fell asleep. And I hit a video that's like, hey, everybody, for one day only this month, if you want to see it, Citizen Kane is in the theaters. So I went and checked what day it was. And it was that day. You know, like this was Saturday night. It was going to be Sunday. So we bought tickets and saw Citizen Kane in the theater. on last Sunday.
|
Ivan:
[10:29]
| Wow. Okay. Talk about a fucking coincidence.
|
Sam:
[10:32]
| Yeah, exactly. And it was like, apparently, this is Regal Cinemas in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies. The entire month of September, every day is playing some classic movie. But it just happened that the day I saw this on TikTok was for Citizen Kane, and it was the next movie on the list. And I was like, screw it. We have to go see it at the theater. it's number one on the damn list after having gone through this list since 1998 you know and so we saw it in the theater and someday i will give my review of that but that is not one of the ones for today and by the way i think i mentioned this on the show again alex and i have agreed that we next time this comes up in our rotation we are starting the 2007 re-ranking from number 100 so okay okay but the next movie on the list is actually also from the 100 years 100 movies list uh but it's number 14 in the 1998 list number 22 into 2007 list which is some like it hot from 1959 okay it's a marilyn monroe movie with tony curtis and jack lemon and billy wilder Okay.
|
Ivan:
[11:48]
| Has Jack Lemmon in it too?
|
Sam:
[11:51]
| Yes. Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder.
|
Ivan:
[11:54]
| I don't remember if I was... Let me see. Did I ever see this movie? I don't think so.
|
Sam:
[12:01]
| So I am going to give this... I am vacillating between a thumbs sideways and actually a thumbs down. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[12:10]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[12:11]
| This is intended to be a comedy, but it's all just, you know... Let me read you the first paragraph of the plot, and you'll see where this goes. In Prohibition, Chicago, Joe is a jazz saxophone player and an irresponsible, impulsive gambler and ladies' man. Jerry, his anxious friend, is a jazz double bass player. They work in a speakeasy owned by local mafia boss Spatz Columba. Tipped off by informant Toothpick Charlie, the police raid the joint. Joe and Jerry escape, but accidentally witness Spatz and his henchmen gunning down Toothpick and his gang in revenge. An incident inspired by the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which of course is real. Spatz and his gang see them as they flee. Broke, terrified, and desperate to leave Chicago, Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as women named Josephine and Daphne so they can join Sweet Sue and her society's syncopators, an all-female band headed to Miami by train. On the train, they befriend Sugar Cane, the band's vocalist and ukulele player, who's played by Marilyn Monroe, of course.
|
Ivan:
[13:21]
| Marilyn Monroe.
|
Sam:
[13:22]
| So this whole movie, it's supposed to be sort of a slapstick comedy, but all the comedy is about sort of the gender bending, like they're dressed up as women, people are confused, with, oh look they're dressed up as women, there's some gay jokes there's some trans jokes I mean they didn't even call it that but it's all, just like stupid comedy about, oh my god they're wearing dresses and they're in with all the women but they're actually like horny men, and that kind of stuff it's.
|
Ivan:
[14:00]
| Like something that could be comedic.
|
Sam:
[14:03]
| You know it's the kind of humor I can see where I can see, It just very much is the kind of humor that has not aged well.
|
Ivan:
[14:15]
| I haven't watched it, so I have no idea.
|
Sam:
[14:18]
| I mean, even if you sort of discount the sort of homophobic and transphobic elements of it, it's just the kind of stupid humor that I don't tend to enjoy all that much. Ah, it's just like, you know, there's some physical humor. There's, there's like, it's just very lowbrow. And, you know, meanwhile, you know, this apparently got like, it opened to critical and commercial success and is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. Received six Academy Award nominations, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay.
|
Ivan:
[14:59]
| You can give it a thumbs, okay, give it a thumbs, you can give it a thumbs down.
|
Sam:
[15:03]
| Thumbs down. I mean, at best, a thumbs sideways. But I, thumbs down.
|
Ivan:
[15:10]
| Not your cup of tea.
|
Sam:
[15:12]
| Not my kind of movie at all. I mean, and, you know, it's not even one of those where I can say not my kind of movie, but I can appreciate the artistry. I just felt like it was dumb.
|
Ivan:
[15:24]
| No, you just didn't like it. Okay.
|
Sam:
[15:26]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[15:27]
| Hey, fair.
|
Sam:
[15:29]
| So, next, Ouija. How do you say it? Like Ouija boards? Ouija. I guess it's Ouija. Ouija from 2014.
|
Ivan:
[15:37]
| Can I just say that until probably like in my late... It had to be I was over 18.
|
Sam:
[15:45]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[15:46]
| Alright. The way that we pronounce that in Puerto Rico. Aweja.
|
Sam:
[15:50]
| Aweja. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[15:52]
| Aweja. Aweja.
|
Sam:
[15:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[15:56]
| We're going to play Aweja. So when all of a sudden I heard people in the States call it a Ouija board.
|
Sam:
[16:03]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[16:03]
| Like, I kept thinking, W-E-E-G-E, what the hell? What the hell is a fucking Ouija boy? So, that was very confusing to me for a while until I figured out what the hell people are talking about.
|
Sam:
[16:17]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[16:18]
| So, I still don't even understand how the hell that turns into Ouija, but it's O-U-I-J-A.
|
Sam:
[16:25]
| I mean, entomology. Well, it's because it comes from the French, we, and German, ja, or ja, ja, ja.
|
Ivan:
[16:36]
| Ja, ja. Yeah, but okay, we, okay, but it's ja.
|
Sam:
[16:39]
| So it should be we, ja, not g. Wait, wait, wait, sorry. The popular belief that it comes from those two words is a misconception. Oh. In fact, the name was given from a word spelled out on the board when medium Helen Peters-Nosworthy asked the board to name itself. When asked what the word meant, it responded, Good luck.
|
Ivan:
[17:04]
| Okay. So the pronunciation is just whatever.
|
Sam:
[17:07]
| It's just a made-up word, and it's made-up pronunciation.
|
Ivan:
[17:10]
| And somebody made up the fucking pronunciation. Okay, great. Beautiful. All right. Awesome.
|
Sam:
[17:15]
| Okay. So I will give the first... This is a 2014 movie. It will not go on anybody's top 100 list of anything. When we say that...
|
Ivan:
[17:28]
| What about bottom 100 list?
|
Sam:
[17:30]
| I don't think so. I mean, I'm probably going to give this one a thumb sideways. So I'm going to give this one a better ranking than the one that was 14 on the other damn list. But it's a stupid horror movie. Okay. Like the first paragraph of the description again, Debbie recalls playing Ouija with her best friend Lane as children. In present day, she throws her Ouija board into the fire and implies to Lane that something strange happened with the board. After Lane leaves, the Ouija board reappears in Debbie's bedroom. Debbie becomes possessed and hangs herself inside her home. That's how it starts.
|
Ivan:
[18:13]
| Jesus Christ. Okay.
|
Sam:
[18:16]
| And then, you know, they attend the funeral. And then the friends decide to communicate with the Ouija board again. And the typical things that happen in horror movies proceed to happen throughout the rest of the movie.
|
Ivan:
[18:30]
| Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[18:32]
| And I'm, I'm giving this a thumbs sideways rather than a down because I remember actually being somewhat amused and entertained by the movie.
|
Ivan:
[18:43]
| Like, okay, well that's important.
|
Sam:
[18:45]
| And like, now can I say like, you know, was I, I don't remember being like super scared. as opposed to pausing the movie frequently to confer with Alex on how stupid the characters were being and how they were going into situations where they were doing exactly the wrong thing at every turn. And just, you know, sort of your standard horror movie tropes of like, oh, look, there's something weird going on here. What shall we do? Oh, let's try to talk to the dead spirits. Oh, let's try to go into the haunted house. Oh, let's go deeper in. Oh, why don't we separate and go different directions so we can look in different parts of the house? You know, all this kind of stuff, you know? It's just your standard sort of people in a horror movie being stupid. And, of course, a bunch of them get killed. You know, the question is sort of what is the mystery that's behind all this in the end? And you find out and who survives and who doesn't. And, of course, they, I believe they're, am I incorrect? Yeah. And then, apparently, we have not yet seen it, but there is a prequel to this that has subsequently come out. So, we will probably eventually see the prequel.
|
Ivan:
[20:09]
| Okay, all right. Yeah. Okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[20:14]
| So, that's it.
|
Ivan:
[20:16]
| I'm sure I'll never watch this.
|
Sam:
[20:22]
| Oh, and I'll note, like, you know, the Wikipedia says, you know, based on Ouija, the game by Hasbro.
|
Ivan:
[20:31]
| Well, you know, they were making fun on this TV show, the studio on Apple TV. How one of the things that they decided was, I can't remember what other product, they were looking at the movies like the, you know, we recently had that Minecraft movie and stuff like that. So, the studio head was all excited because they bought the rights to be able to make the Kool-Aid movie. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[21:00]
| I could see, you know, you got that pitcher guy, you know, that breaks through the walls, you know?
|
Ivan:
[21:06]
| Yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[21:08]
| I could see that. Now, wait, since we're talking Kool-Aid and the Kool-Aid man, The very important question that I've seen debated online earnestly by people, is the Kool-Aid man the pitcher or is he the liquid inside the pitcher?
|
Ivan:
[21:26]
| God, I thought it was the whole thing.
|
Sam:
[21:28]
| Or is he the pitcher and the liquid inside is his blood?
|
Ivan:
[21:32]
| Well, it's like, are you the body? Exactly. It's what I'm saying. Are you the body or the blood? No, it's everything. I figured the liquid is kind of like the blood.
|
Sam:
[21:40]
| So then when the Kool-Aid man is handing out Kool-Aid, he's handing out his blood?
|
Ivan:
[21:44]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[21:45]
| Okay. That's fine, then.
|
Ivan:
[21:48]
| Basically.
|
Sam:
[21:50]
| Well, you know, their whole religion is based around drink my blood, you know?
|
Ivan:
[21:55]
| Exactly. That's what I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[21:56]
| Exactly. Okay, well, anyway, I think that's enough movies. Let's see, a preview, what's next? Astro Boy from 2009, next week, and also the 1958 French-language version of Les Miserables.
|
Ivan:
[22:16]
| 1958, okay.
|
Sam:
[22:18]
| Non-musical, dramatic version, not the musical.
|
Ivan:
[22:22]
| Not the dramatic one. I mean, I actually, Jesus Christ, I read the book in French class. Still remember.
|
Sam:
[22:29]
| You know, anyway, that's that's for next time. So let's take a break real quick and then we'll talk serious stuff. Obviously, there was a bunch of serious stuff that happened this week. And Yvonne, you'll be able to tell us where to start when we get back.
|
Ivan:
[22:43]
| Oh, whoopee.
|
Sam:
[22:45]
| Yeah, I know. Back after this.
|
Break:
[22:48]
| You're supposed to say do do do. Do do do. Alex Amzala. Alex Amzala 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 Emsla is. I'd say on a rate from 1 to 10, Alex Emsla 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:
[23:46]
| Okay. We are back. What more serious newsy topic would you like to start with, Yvonne? We've got the Epstein book. We've got Russia, like, sending drones into Poland. We've got Charlie Kirk, of course. And a few other things, too. I think those are the three biggest ones.
|
Ivan:
[24:06]
| Talk about the big elephant in the room. Talk about Charlie Kirk. Okay. You know, the thing this week, first of all, my, my, I don't understand still at this point. And it's something that is, I think we've seen other things like this happen in the past. I've said this before, where I don't understand why it's become so hard in recent times for when the death of somebody notable, whether it's good or bad in any way.
|
Ivan:
[24:44]
| Turns into this political game. You know, people can't just go and, like, number one, be appalled at the violence. It's just very, it's not that hard to be appalled at the political violence that caused this. But, you know, at the same time, it doesn't whitewash this, you know, how the person lived just because he was, you know, murdered in a way that is deplorable. You know, it doesn't do that. But also, the fact that the entire, because this was the entire Republican Party's reaction, first was not to wait to see who it was and start flinging all sorts of false accusations that the person that committed the murder was some trans, you know, the first thing they said, it must have been a transgender person for whatever the hell reason. By the way, how many transgender murderers have we had in recent years, Sam, that have done anything like a school shooting? Anything, Sam? Is there a lot of those?
|
Sam:
[25:56]
| This obviously was the back and forth he was having right when the guy was shot. The answer the person in the audience gave, and I believe we'd looked this up on the Corregions Car Slack a couple weeks ago, too, when we came up with that last school shooting or whatever. In terms of mass murders since 1970 or whatever, or no, not mass murders, specifically mass shootings, there were something like five over the course of decades, as opposed to 1,500 plus in the same time frame of cis white men. You know, so it's like a tiny percentage.
|
Ivan:
[26:38]
| And, you know, there's a whole other thing on the radical leftists that go and do murder. You look at the stats, the same thing. Basically, the whole damn lot of them are right wing.
|
Sam:
[26:50]
| So someone specifically looked at political violence and specifically political murders going back the last few decades. It wasn't quite as dramatic as cis versus trans, but in the United States, right-leaning domestic terrorism was typically about double left-leaning political terrorism.
|
Ivan:
[27:12]
| Exactly but all these people without even knowing who they are let's wait for the facts let's talk about it started just making up all these accusations and threatening I mean just the threats of violence this is war, I'm just and in threatening war accusing the left of this is the of bad rhetoric and I'm like, You want to tell me where, you know, I mean, we literally had a week when the president of the United States threatened the city of Chicago with the U.S. armed forces.
|
Sam:
[27:54]
| Yes. Although now he's sending them to Memphis, I think, right? Tennessee.
|
Ivan:
[27:59]
| Who knows? And, you know, and these people have the balls to go and, like, try to tell me that the left is inciting this violence when it's, like, literally everything, you know what? I said, you know, today we were talking about this. We don't know the reason why this kid unfortunately chose to do this. What, you know, and by the way, as soon as they found out it was this white dude, the rhetoric went from kill them all, burn them all, prosecute them, whatever. Oh, what turned this sweet boy into such a bad kid? right because it was a white dude.
|
Sam:
[28:48]
| Right immediately i mean well not not only i'm not even acknowledging any not only a white dude but a white dude from a conservative gun loving family right right exactly is and i just saw like i was gonna say the thing about his his father being a retired sheriff or whatnot but just within the last couple hours apparently the sheriff's office where he supposedly worked was like, no, he wasn't. So I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[29:17]
| No, I actually saw in some other place that he had some kind of business, okay, all right, is what he did. So I think that whole thing about the police was mistaken. But regardless, I'm just, you know.
|
Sam:
[29:32]
| Oh, apparently he had the same name as somebody who was the sheriff.
|
Ivan:
[29:35]
| And that's why I got confused. Okay. Look, this, you know, events like this, really, call for trying to bring calm, the right reaction should be to not inflame the situation, but to calm it down. You know, and the thing is that regardless of what is it that radicalized them, what I said is that I guarantee you that two factors that are absolutely a factor in these in all of these happening is this entire glorification of guns and this entire just culture of hate that we have right now in so many platforms and so many things. The exact details about it, you know, probably, you know, change exactly whatever. But those two factors are critical factors in driving, you know, these kinds of kids to do these kinds of acts. I mean, just like the kid that tried to shoot Trump, you know, last year.
|
Sam:
[30:48]
| Well, one of the things that's been pointed out, and as you said, we don't really know his motives yet. There are a lot of people speculating based on incomplete information, right? Right. Some of the latest stuff is that he might be like affiliated with these this griper trend or whatever with Nick Fuentes, which is basically a group that is was complaining that Charlie Kirk was too liberal. You know, he wasn't conservative enough.
|
Ivan:
[31:19]
| Listen, but these guys were freaked out enough that, you know, Laura Loomer and these guys started deleting tweets, right?
|
Sam:
[31:29]
| Yes, yes. I know Laura Loomer had been really critical of Charlie Kirk for the last month or so, saying he wasn't a real Trump supporter and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There was a variety of stuff. But I just want to say on this guy, maybe he is this griper thing or however the hell you say it. There are also a few, you know, people pointed out like some of the bullets had sort of anti-fascist slogans on them and stuff like that. But apparently all of those things were related to online gaming meme culture and in some cases are typically used ironically. So it's hard to say what that really means. Like in one, in one of the games, it's, it's apparently like, this is an anti-fascist slogan, but it's used by people who are clearly fascists in the context. So it's like part of the end joke that it's an anti-fascist slogan being used by fascists. But, you know, maybe he is like, maybe he did have like a switch and it turns out he is anti-fascist. Right. But you don't know. But like one of the things that's being that's somewhat a trend in some of these recent events is people where you actually can't really nail them down on any sort of consistent ideology ideology on a left right spectrum.
|
Ivan:
[32:49]
| No, you're right.
|
Sam:
[32:50]
| It's more like it's a random hodgepodge of views, some typically associated with the right, some typically associated with the left, but like a big ongoing... But wait, I was just going to say, but the big ongoing theme being burn the fucking system down, we hate everything, you know, like let's... And glorification, like you said, of violence.
|
Ivan:
[33:16]
| And look, it's glorifying the violence, glorifying the hate, but also, by the way, I think a big thing about our current culture is the attention.
|
Sam:
[33:25]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[33:26]
| Because this is a huge thing where, you know, the social media culture is, what can I do to draw more attention, more attention, more attention? Well, hey, you ought to talk about getting attention today. You know, he certainly, he certainly, you know, did that. And, you know, heck, there were a lot of people that glorified, like, the Columbine shooters.
|
Sam:
[33:51]
| For example.
|
Ivan:
[33:52]
| And such kind of murderers.
|
Sam:
[33:53]
| And there were copycats for years.
|
Ivan:
[33:56]
| Yeah. Yeah. And so there is this culture of glorifying a lot of this as well, where they think that they're going to be seen as heroes, martyrs, something. I don't know. And just the whole thing about being, you know, getting the attention is more than anything.
|
Sam:
[34:12]
| Even when they go into it knowing it's going to be like suicide by cop or whatever, it's going out in a blaze of glory.
|
Ivan:
[34:20]
| Blaze of glory. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[34:21]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[34:22]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[34:22]
| And so we will learn more about this guy in particular.
|
Ivan:
[34:26]
| But the whole political response from Trump all the way down, I mean, it's just so appalling.
|
Sam:
[34:33]
| Well, it almost seems like once it came out, like you said, you know, white guy, middle class family, conservative-ish family, Utah Mormon, you know.
|
Ivan:
[34:46]
| Trump, by the way, couldn't give a shit, like, very, very, very soon after.
|
Sam:
[34:50]
| Well, that's what I was going to say. It's almost like you could feel the disappointment because they were all riling themselves up to use this as an excuse to crack down on Democrats and liberals everywhere. You know, there were people reposting things from, let me find one of them that I shared on the Curmudgeon Corner Slack a little bit ago. But there.
|
Ivan:
[35:14]
| All the very aggressive things, posts. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:18]
| Yeah. Let me find one of them real quick and then I'll read a bunch of these.
|
Ivan:
[35:22]
| Here we go. I like the one about the Reichstag fire. Is that one there? About the guy, this is our Reichstag fire. I'm realizing these people don't know what the Reichstag fire was.
|
Sam:
[35:34]
| Well, or they don't care. Like it was the Nazi, you know, yeah, they don't care. You know, it was an excuse to consolidate power. And that's, you know, so here's the thing. And someone pointed out, these aren't just random right-leaning accounts saying the things I'm going to read. These are some of the most, these are a lot of really popular accounts that I'm going to quote from. Libs of TikTok, this is war. Joey Manorino. The Democrat Party must be classified as a domestic terror organization and their members, leaders treated accordingly. Enough is enough. Brian Eastwood. Charlie Kirk.
|
Ivan:
[36:20]
| Can I stop you on that one? Can I stop you on that one? Enough is enough because of what? Can you please list the entire streak of violence incited by the damn Democratic Party? I mean, it's just the utter gall of these comments. Go ahead.
|
Sam:
[36:41]
| Here's another one. And like some of these I recognize, some I don't. I've seen this shared a few places with people saying like, trust me, like a lot, these folks have lots of followers. Okay. And I do recognize a bunch of the names, just not all of them. Brian Eastwood, Charlie Kirk getting shot is the shot heard around the country. I'm ready for civil war. You want to fight and you're going to get it. Oilfield Rando. I don't want the National Guard sent to Democrat cities anymore. I want the Air Force sent. Sean Davis, when Democrats lose elections, they couldn't steal. They murder the people they were unable to defeat. Ron...
|
Ivan:
[37:20]
| Can he also... By the way, can he provide me a list of the people we have murdered from this last election since the November 6th Joe Biden loss? Can I please have the detailed list? Sam, what fucking delusional world are these people living on? Or is it just that, you know what, the lie needs to be just.
|
Sam:
[37:44]
| You know, as big as possible? Obviously, I haven't been watching the last little bit, but I saw a post on Mastodon in the last hour saying that Fox News tonight is continuing along with the rhetoric about it being the liberals' fault despite this. You know, and I'll add, you know, Donald Trump's initial statement was all about how it's, there were a few statements about we all have to calm down, but there was a lot about how it's the radical left. And, you know, he was talking on Fox and talking about how, yeah, well, yeah, there's a radical right too, but they're not really a problem. The radical left is the right.
|
Ivan:
[38:25]
| No, no, no. No, no, no. Let me be clear. He said beyond that, he said, hold on, i couldn't care less.
|
Sam:
[38:32]
| Right and they're.
|
Ivan:
[38:35]
| 80 of the source of the violence and i couldn't care less.
|
Sam:
[38:39]
| Here here are a couple more of those gunther eagleman they've declared war, esthetica there's no going back after this there's no more words to be said the only way this ends is the complete annihilation of the democrat party you know no, And look, I'm sure you can find folks on the left who've said incendiary things, too.
|
Ivan:
[39:02]
| I mean, not that not as popular, not as with many followers and not as many leaders saying these kinds of things. It's the stuff like Nancy Mace, for example, coming out and like saying shit like this herself. OK.
|
Sam:
[39:19]
| And, you know, look, I've said I've said on this show.
|
Ivan:
[39:23]
| Donald Trump said it himself.
|
Sam:
[39:24]
| Well, yeah. And look, I have said on this show myself that this this is actually like a battle for the soul of the civilization and someone will win and someone will lose. But I'm not suggesting we go out and murder all the Republicans. But I do want their ideology extinguished. I think it's toxic and needs to go away, but not necessarily.
|
Ivan:
[39:44]
| The lead senator from Utah, another prominent one, he was also one that said some very vicious things, okay, about this, which then he walked back, but he said shit like this, too. And I'm sorry, but there is no senator or Democratic leader, you know, you can find that says anything.
|
Sam:
[40:10]
| Well, in fact, there are a bunch more of these quotes, but I don't have to read all of them. In fact, we had the exact fucking opposite. We had every freaking Democratic leader, first of all, bending over backwards to condemn this, say this is not violence is never the solution. This is horrible.
|
Ivan:
[40:31]
| I don't need to bend over backwards to condemn the violence. I'm sorry. Yeah, right.
|
Sam:
[40:38]
| That was the wrong word. It was an automatic condemn to violence. There was no bending over backwards for that. The bending over backwards came when quite a few of them went further than that and started talking about how great a guy Charlie Kirk was.
|
Ivan:
[40:53]
| Well, that's the one where I'm just like, no, hey, hey, hey, stop.
|
Sam:
[40:57]
| You know, and how he exemplified the desire for people to talk.
|
Ivan:
[41:03]
| No, no, no, no, none of that. No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[41:06]
| And we should put the flags at half-mast all over the country.
|
Ivan:
[41:10]
| I'm like, yeah, no, no, no, no, none of that. But yes, this is something that I find appalling.
|
Sam:
[41:17]
| But my point is that Democrats, unanimous, I have seen there were.
|
Ivan:
[41:23]
| It was unanimous.
|
Sam:
[41:24]
| There, I've seen a few people.
|
Ivan:
[41:27]
| I'm sure there's an exception.
|
Sam:
[41:28]
| Yeah, there are a few people who are, you know, there are always some exceptions. There have been no prominent exceptions. But without exception, like elected Democrats and prominent Democratic pundits have said, this is inexcusable. This is never a solution. The violence is bad. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like I said, a good deal of them went further and started talking about, like, saying good things about this guy. And I think that's excessive because I think you can have—both things can be true. That killing somebody like this is inexcusable, counterproductive, and horrible and can only lead to bad things.
|
Ivan:
[42:20]
| So more, more bad things.
|
Sam:
[42:22]
| And also this guy was a scumbag. Absolutely had everything he stood for was horrific, you know, and is complete opposite of my own values. And I feel like he was a destructive force in society and, you know, was negative. And these things can go.
|
Ivan:
[42:46]
| Listen, there's something I saw tonight. Somebody, there were two founders of Turning Point USA. And you can confirm that this is true.
|
Sam:
[42:53]
| Yeah, I saw your quote on this. I don't know if it's true.
|
Ivan:
[42:56]
| Well, you check to see if Bill Montgomery died of COVID because he said, Bill Montgomery was against masks and vaccines and died of COVID. Charlie Kirk was anti-gun regulation and killed by a gun. Not only is he anti-gun, he actually, there is a quote directly by him saying that the cost of the Second Amendment is that we're going to have a few people killed. That was basically.
|
Sam:
[43:18]
| Bill Montgomery for as per Wikipedia, co-founded Turning Point USA, died of COVID on July 28th, 2020. I don't know whether it's true.
|
Ivan:
[43:31]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[43:32]
| He spoke out against all the stuff.
|
Ivan:
[43:33]
| Probably. Oh, I'm sure he had a problem. If it was by July, that's when the tide had already turned about. All these guys were all anti-everything, anti-mask, anti-vav, whatever.
|
Sam:
[43:48]
| And he was 80 when he died. So he wasn't a young one like Charlie Kirk.
|
Ivan:
[43:54]
| Yeah. No vaccines available by the time he died, I don't think so. July 2020?
|
Sam:
[44:01]
| July 2020. So that was really early in the...
|
Ivan:
[44:03]
| Yeah, that was really early in, yeah. But anyway, I, okay, look, I don't even want to, I don't want to keep talking about Charlie Kirk because I honestly, because he doesn't deserve it. I mean, to me spending this much time on him. So let's move on to another subject.
|
Sam:
[44:23]
| Okay. Do you want to just go ahead and take a break and then I pick something else entirely and we, we move right along? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[44:30]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[44:30]
| So let's see. What's that? What's the next break? We already did one break. So, okay, the next one is this one. We'll be back right after this, and I guess I'll pick a topic. And, yeah, I'll leave you in suspense for a few minutes on what that will be.
|
Ivan:
[44:45]
| Here you go. Suspense.
|
Sam:
[44:47]
| However long this break is. I don't know. Here we go.
|
Break:
[44:53]
| You're listening to this podcast do you like it no do you want to support the show no.
|
Break:
[45:02]
| Well after you have subscribed to the show followed us on facebook and told all your friends they should be listening to what else can you do i won't subscribe you can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne.
|
Break:
[45:37]
| At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our curmudgeons Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. Fun stuff. Not fun. In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Curmudgeon's Corner. Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. One hundred billion! Billion dollars! Even though you don't have anywhere near a billion dollars. If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates, curmudgeonscorner! That's really mean, isn't it? But I hate curmudgeonscorner. But I really do!
|
Sam:
[46:32]
| Okay. We're back. We're here.
|
Ivan:
[46:35]
| We're back.
|
Sam:
[46:36]
| It's exciting.
|
Ivan:
[46:36]
| Okay. So, so, Sam.
|
Sam:
[46:38]
| Have I left you in suspense long enough? Has it been long enough?
|
Ivan:
[46:42]
| I'm tingling.
|
Sam:
[46:42]
| I could keep it going longer.
|
Ivan:
[46:44]
| I'm tingling.
|
Sam:
[46:46]
| Tingling?
|
Ivan:
[46:47]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[46:48]
| That's nice. I'm happy for you. Enjoy the tingle. No, I figure we had the Epstein book come out.
|
Ivan:
[46:59]
| Oh, my God. You know, the news that we have to discuss are so disgusting. thing oh my god that Epstein book.
|
Sam:
[47:11]
| So we had we had heard about the one page from Donald Trump we hadn't seen the actual picture of it we'd heard it described but we got released the entire book not just the Donald Trump page but all these other people who contributed it with various things.
|
Ivan:
[47:31]
| Holy shit Sam, That book was disgusting.
|
Sam:
[47:36]
| I did not go through all the pages. I saw some highlights.
|
Ivan:
[47:40]
| Neither did I, but I saw some of the highlights. The lowlights. Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[47:45]
| There was a piece of artwork, just as an example, that had Epstein giving balloons to obviously small girl children and with a year marked, and then another year marked like 10 years later where they've all grown up but not grown up too much and they're all hanging over him like in scantily dress.
|
Ivan:
[48:08]
| And massaging him in scantily dress.
|
Sam:
[48:11]
| The one theme throughout this entire book was, oh yeah, we're making jokes about how we know you like little girls.
|
Ivan:
[48:20]
| Basically. Holy shit! Yes!
|
Sam:
[48:23]
| And some of them implying that, you know, they had some experiences together but all of them with with the possible there were a couple of exceptions that were more innocent like there was a letter from bill clinton in this book he he was one of the few did that did not seem to be making a sly joke about epstein's pedophilia okay he said some other things about how his contributions to society or some bullshit but like almost everything in this book the most generous interpretation is they knew he liked little girls and were making jokes about it. That's the most generous interpretation.
|
Ivan:
[49:08]
| Let's be clear. The Trump one, okay, that was in there. The one, the real one versus the sketch that we saw. The artist's recreation showed a woman that from her features was older.
|
Sam:
[49:24]
| Right. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[49:25]
| And the one that was drawn by Trump, actually pretty much showed I mean, not a pre-pubescent girl, but definitely a young teenager. A young teenager. Yes. I, I, this thing is just, It's revolting. I just, you know, it was just revolting. And, of course, now all of a sudden we have the book, we have Trump's signature, and everybody's now arguing, oh, well, that's not Trump's signature. I mean, it's a fucking— It's ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[50:08]
| It's absolutely ridiculous.
|
Ivan:
[50:10]
| I mean, it's a spot-on match. It's a spot-on match.
|
Sam:
[50:15]
| People instantly produced dozens of contemporary examples from the same time frame. The difference compared to his current signature, this is where he's just signing Donald as opposed to signing Donald Trump. And it's like, you know, what, 20 years ago. So it's evolved a little bit over time. But, you know, a whole bunch of people ranging from Mary Trump, his like, what is he, a cousin? Whatever she is.
|
Ivan:
[50:42]
| Niece.
|
Sam:
[50:43]
| Niece, cousin, whatever. whatever niece niece niece what's his name cohen produced some examples some several journalists produced examples like there were dozens of easily available versions of his signature from about the same time where he just signed donald and they all looked identical you don't even need to be an expert could it have been right and someone pointed out like oh yes what's the theory here But someone forged this 20 years ago with a nefarious plan of waiting 20 years and then exposing it as a fake Donald Trump thing, knowing that 20 years from now, he's going to be president.
|
Ivan:
[51:23]
| Well, of course. I mean, that's how Democrats work.
|
Sam:
[51:26]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[51:26]
| I don't think I don't think you understand how good a conspiracy we are. I mean, we see into the future.
|
Sam:
[51:33]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:33]
| And with all that George Soros AI money back from the 1990s AI, we could predict this. I don't think you understand. I don't think you understand how good that George Soros AI money is.
|
Sam:
[51:50]
| Right. Yeah. I mean, look, the thing that comes together off all of this, and this goes back to what some of the survivors were saying last week as well, that we talked about. They're like, you know, yes, they're probably other men, you know, and we know like Prince Andrew was explicitly named by the one who had suicide. We know there are probably other names, but most of the survivors were like, what we really want to get at is all of the people who enabled him. You know, there's people who knew about this and who did not report it. There were people who knew about this and laughed and facilitated. And, you know, there were stories this last week about how various financial institutions, he was setting off money laundering flags left and right. And executives at those companies signed all the paperwork to exempt him from some of that stuff.
|
Ivan:
[52:51]
| Well, specifically JPMorgan Chase, apparently one of the one of the key one of a high executive at JPMorgan Chase basically kept signing off on everything. Now he's buying. He's buying.
|
Sam:
[53:01]
| Right. right and you know and and so there's a lot of like can we follow the money can we see who he's enabling him what was behind that sweetheart deal in florida like 15 years ago or however long it was that basically gave him a slap on the wrist and let him go on his way and continue to abuse women or girls i should say uh girls not women yeah and you know that that's what they're like Yes, again, there may have been other men who also abused women, and we certainly want to get them if they're out there and if there's evidence, but there was a much larger circle. of people who contributed to this happening in one way, shape, or another by ignoring it, by enabling it, by facilitating it in one way or another, by letting him off the hook instead of prosecuting him down in Florida, all of this stuff. And that's sort of part of what, you know, they want to get to the bottom of. I mean, some of those survivors last week specifically said, We're not even accusing Donald Trump of anything, so we don't understand why he's blocking this. And, of course, like, the natural response here is, there's got to be a reason.
|
Ivan:
[54:17]
| There's got to be a reason.
|
Sam:
[54:19]
| You know, it's.
|
Ivan:
[54:20]
| Got to be a fucking reason.
|
Sam:
[54:22]
| There was one of the survivors who was interviewed is like, you know, I voted for Donald Trump. And part of it was because I believed he would help get to the bottom of all of this. So I don't understand what he's doing now.
|
Ivan:
[54:38]
| Yeah. So it's, it's, it's so fucked up. I really, I mean, I shared some of them and I was just, I, I, I was, I mean, seriously, I was nauseated. It was revolting.
|
Sam:
[54:52]
| And, and, and it was page after page after page from one prominent person or another. are like some of the names I recognize some of them I didn't, but like they're all sort of wealthy, well-known people within those various circles. There was one, I don't think it was part of this book, but also released this week, there was a note from Dershowitz, I think, basically saying, from him to Epstein, basically saying, I took care of that one story that was being published, I talked to them, and I made sure to redirect it, so instead of mainly talking about you, it's going to be talking about Bill Clinton. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[55:34]
| And he was patting himself on the back about that.
|
Sam:
[55:37]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[55:38]
| I'm sure he's not getting a perogy from that guy and he's been arguing with and martha's vineyard.
|
Sam:
[55:44]
| Well and it was very interesting by the way how this book came about like that it it came out that you know they were busy they're arguing in congress about trying to get the doj to hand over the documents they had was apparently someone pointed out exactly someone pointed out, and apparently this actually happened live on a conversation on an MSNBC show, where somebody told the member of Congress who was on the oversight committee, by the way, the Epstein estate is going to have this book. And DOJ may not want to give it to you, but if you subpoena the Epstein estate, they will. And they're like, let's talk right after of the show and they got the right and they got the the subpoena going like the next day and that's where this came from from the epstein estate and they gave a bunch of other stuff apparently uh just yesterday i think a trove of emails was also released from from between epstein and maxwell you know going back and forth about various things so this stuff is still trickling out.
|
Ivan:
[56:50]
| Trove.
|
Sam:
[56:51]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[56:51]
| And let me tell you, that trove was dammit.
|
Sam:
[56:55]
| I haven't paid as much attention to it, so tell me a little bit about that.
|
Ivan:
[56:58]
| Well, listen, when I read, well, I didn't read the details of the emails, but the summaries I saw was that the emails showed very clearly that they were completely in cahoots in this damn enterprise. That this was not, like, Ghislaine was no innocent bison. No. It just clearly proved what we know and is the reason why she is in jail. So, you know, it's... And, of course, now she's sitting in minimum security.
|
Sam:
[57:31]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[57:32]
| Which, by the way, let me tell you something. Minimum security, Listen, they don't call it Club Fed for nothing, okay? It really is very different, okay? It's not, I mean, I know that we talk about rehabilitation a lot for criminals. We're talking about also punishment. You know, that part really lightens up the punishment part quite a lot. And for people I know that have been there, okay?
|
Sam:
[58:03]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[58:04]
| It's it's it's i mean it it was a huge huge concession to move her to to that facility okay it's not no small thing right in exchange for.
|
Sam:
[58:19]
| Her saying you know donald trump was always a gentleman he wasn't involved with anything.
|
Ivan:
[58:23]
| Yeah basically.
|
Sam:
[58:25]
| I mean it's it's fairly clear.
|
Ivan:
[58:29]
| No, no, no, wait. I didn't see anything I thought was inappropriate, which, by the way.
|
Sam:
[58:37]
| You know. She doesn't think anything was inappropriate, and she's completely.
|
Ivan:
[58:40]
| Exactly. Of course. Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:44]
| And she, look, the thing is, this is continuing to dribble and dribble and dribble. It's not going away yet. The discharge petition in the House is one vote away. They need one more Republican to have that go forward. Now, even if it goes forward, it doesn't mean that everything's automatically released or anything like that. There was a vote in the Senate that failed, for instance. But one vote away. I don't know if they'll get that vote or not. There's been a lot of pressure on congressional Republicans not to sign on to this thing, obviously. But they're close, you know?
|
Ivan:
[59:24]
| You know, asking Ghislaine Maxwell, who is inappropriate, is like if a cop asked me, hey, do you think you were going too fast? I would say no.
|
Sam:
[59:36]
| Not at all.
|
Ivan:
[59:37]
| I wasn't, sir. Not at all.
|
Sam:
[59:39]
| 135 was perfectly appropriate for the conditions. For the conditions, yes.
|
Ivan:
[59:44]
| I don't see what your problem is. I thought it was fine.
|
Sam:
[59:49]
| Yes, yes. Okay. I think we have exhausted Epstein. Did you want to... I saw you out on another topic.
|
Ivan:
[59:59]
| Okay, I did add another topic.
|
Sam:
[1:00:01]
| Should I take another break? or should you just want.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:04]
| No no no no let's do this no let's do because we took a break you know let's let's do two and then we can take another break before that i added this one on, the the accusations to get fed governor oh god what's her name i was gonna say lisa cook or linda cook oh god it's a lisa it was did i have it right the first time okay you should check i.
|
Sam:
[1:00:25]
| Think it's lisa.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:25]
| I have double checking yes it was lisa cook i had it right the first time So Reuters went and checked and pulled, apparently, the loan applications in question, you know, to see if what she was being accused of was, in fact, the case, that she had claimed this second home as a primary home. Well, apparently Reuters got the documents I'm not sure how exactly It was first reported by Reuters Here it is, And they pulled the document And it read The loan summary from bank fund staff Federal credit union May 21 reads Property use, vacation home So it was properly done So this whole thing I think even there were lawyers I guess at some point And maybe we were like wondering why didn't they go and categorically do it when they didn't have the information man was like, Hey, maybe it's a clerical hero, but maybe, you know, You know, make sure. But apparently, when Reuters went and got the documents, it showed that, no, this accusation by Bill Pulte is false.
|
Sam:
[1:01:46]
| Nice. Well, they're still going to investigate, right? And now that there's an investigation open, they may find something else.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:52]
| Well, they could go and investigate, but, you know, they've got nothing on this.
|
Sam:
[1:01:57]
| Well, look, here's the thing. And, you know, and by the way, a court also said that he couldn't fire her yet. Like, it's going to be appealed.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:07]
| He couldn't fire her. Look, the reason wasn't good enough.
|
Sam:
[1:02:10]
| You know, because you can fire for cause.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:13]
| Yeah, but there is, look, cause has certain definitions. Okay, all right? And that's the thing about it. The word cause isn't used where you can just invent what cause is. I mean, that's the main thing.
|
Sam:
[1:02:28]
| Well, we'll see when it gets to SCOTUS. They may redefine it.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:32]
| Well, but here's the reality. Well, yes. I mean, who knows what the SCOTUS is. They even have a fucking lower courts, like basically right now, they're getting into an argument with the fucking lower courts because they're telling them that, you know, who the fuck knows what you guys mean anymore? Okay? You know?
|
Sam:
[1:02:51]
| It's real easy. They mean whatever is beneficial to Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:55]
| Yeah, to Trump. To Trump at this point, yeah. But look, like right now, the main basis of the accusation is pretty much you got documents flat out that show that it's not accurate.
|
Sam:
[1:03:06]
| Right. Well, the thing is, and I think we talked.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:10]
| We've got the prosecution is not going to. By the way, the prosecution is not going to go anywhere because nobody's going to build this either. Because one of the problems with this is it's how selective it is. But you can see that, you know, they can pull errors and they're not. They're only prosecuting her. So we're all the other.
|
Sam:
[1:03:25]
| But here's the thing. In the end, if your goal is simply to make my life miserable for your enemies, none of that matters.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:36]
| No, none of that matters.
|
Sam:
[1:03:38]
| I mean, none of that is a big part of it. You start the investigation, and they need to hire lawyers, and they need to spend time, and they need to defend themselves. You fire her, and she has to go to court to try to get it reversed, and then that's going to be appealed, and you're going to make it impossible for us.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:55]
| No, I know, and that's part of the whole thing. I get it, but... But the problem is, but Sam, on the flip side, my whole point about this is that on every one of these, you have to fight. Because they're trying to do this. Unfortunately, the other flip side is that it doesn't matter how big or small, you're basically down to, at this point, you have to fight them on every single thing. Every comma, every T, every damn thing. There is no thing about working on them on any of these. You have to fight them at every corner.
|
Sam:
[1:04:29]
| Well, ideally you absolutely would, but the reality is lots of people who get attacked this way won't have the ability or resources to do so.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:38]
| Listen, most of the big targets that they are going after can't.
|
Sam:
[1:04:43]
| The big targets will get attention, but that's actually part of the problem is they're doing this at every level. They have decimated DOJ. They have decimated FBI, they have fired, you know, entire, agencies are nearly gone. And yeah, the people at the top of that chain might be able to afford it or have pro bono people come after them. The people at the bottom are just screwed.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:10]
| Listen, actually, I know that there's a lot of people I understood at the bottom. But the thing is that you get more attention to these. But it goes back to this whole thing that George Will said about the article where he's saying, unfortunately, that the wheels of this kind of stuff slowly, especially if you've got a Supreme Court that has enabled them in certain cases. But the reality is that, yes, they are getting the advantage on this. But it doesn't matter. When you're thinking about the long term, you still have to keep fighting all of these anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:05:45]
| Yeah, I'm not disagreeing.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:46]
| It doesn't really matter. You have to fight wherever you can. You have to fight every single one of these. and it's one of the reasons I'm telling you like why the hell Trump had to finally back off on all his bullshit threats to Chicago and now why he's going to fucking Memphis yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:02]
| I think it's.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:03]
| Memphis right or whatever New Orleans whatever I think it's.
|
Sam:
[1:06:08]
| Memphis I'll check while you talk it.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:10]
| May be Memphis but you have to do it that way unfortunately it's exhausting but it is what it is I don't see what else we can do at the moment And, eventually Donald Trump will have a heart.
|
Sam:
[1:06:26]
| Attack it is Memphis I had it right.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:29]
| Eventually Donald Trump will have a heart attack.
|
Sam:
[1:06:32]
| Well yes something will happen there are more rumors about that this week too did he have a stroke was his something going on with the side of his face something looked.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| Off with his face.
|
Sam:
[1:06:46]
| And did they doctor the video of him talking about Charlie Kirk to like changes face and you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:55]
| Listen, listen, what I said, I didn't say like I said on the Slack. I did not think it was AI.
|
Sam:
[1:07:02]
| Some people did.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:03]
| But it did look like I didn't, I didn't, but I know some people did, but I thought that they went in and they touched it up.
|
Sam:
[1:07:12]
| At the very least, what appear there are a few there was at least one of, and maybe more of something they call a morph edit, which is basically like, you know, if, if you are talking for a while and you mess up and then you repeat and, you know, when you splice those together, instead of just doing a sharp cut, use a morph effect to try to smooth it out. And that looks weird. Like there was one place where people were pointing out, it looks like his finger disappeared. It was a morph edit, you know, so this was obviously done in multiple takes and then sliced together and then people were pointing out just things like more standard video effects like they pumped up the the the the color uh right you know they they they might have added some smoothing effects you know some stuff like that that's.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:05]
| The kind of shit that i'm talking about they they just really like just pumped up all that shit they like they pumped it up to the max.
|
Sam:
[1:08:12]
| Well and so yeah like i think and we're having the health conversation again apparently Look, it's clear the guy is aging. It is clear he's got health issues of one sort or another. I've said on the Slack a few times, and I said on this show on the time I was solo here, like, look, when we get to something really, really acute happening, I don't think they'll be able to keep it secret very long. Like, you know, people were talking about maybe he died days ago and they're keeping it secret. No. If the guy drops dead, we will know about it really fast.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:50]
| Listen, we kept how bad Reagan was for a long time.
|
Sam:
[1:08:53]
| Yes. And that's the kind of thing, like, it is very easy to imagine that, you know, how people were talking about is that what happened with Joe Biden, right? Like, were they covering up how bad his true situation is? And I think like disappear.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:10]
| Like in any way like like that.
|
Sam:
[1:09:14]
| There was a lot talked about how they were very productive of who got to see Joe Biden and for who for how long and stuff like that. So, look, this is all very believable. It's happened to presidents before where there are health issues of both parties where there are health issues and the people around them try to hide it and make it, you know, and protect the president from those things. Look, that's very believable. And I could very much see, you know, if he is gradually deteriorating and getting worse, they're going to try their best to hide that as long as they possibly can. All I'm saying is if something really acute happens, like he has a full-blown heart attack, he has a debilitating stroke, anything that would actually require, oh, we're going to rush him to the hospital, we will know about them. They're not going to keep that secret for days.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:12]
| Dave!
|
Sam:
[1:10:12]
| Yes, I know, Dave. Dave. I'll add it to my list yet again to watch again. But, you know, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:20]
| I mean, we can get Dave. All of a sudden, we get this nice Trump. That's what happened in the movie. The original Dave was an asshole. And so I went and changed it into Dave, and Dave was like this great president.
|
Sam:
[1:10:36]
| Exactly, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:37]
| Well, all of a sudden, we got this guy walking around as Donald Trump, and all of a sudden he's saying, I love America, I love immigrants. And everybody's going, what happened?
|
Sam:
[1:10:49]
| Yes. Well, since we're drifting into this kind of stuff and sort of not the same as Charlie Kirk, but I will mention, like, there was a thing this last week as well, where some, first of all, it started with some reporter saying, you say Washington, D.C. has gotten so much safer because of the National Guard. Well, we haven't seen you go to a restaurant. And so Donald Trump was like, OK, fine, I'll go to a restaurant. And so he went to a restaurant that's just right across the street from the White House. So it's not like he went far. But then protesters there started immediately yelling.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:30]
| As far as I can tell, there were other patrons at the restaurant.
|
Sam:
[1:11:34]
| No, no. Here's an interesting part. Like, I thought so at first, too. First of all, he went over the president, the vice president, several cabinet members. I think Rubio was there. I think several other people pointed out.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:49]
| Isn't that like really bad protocol to have all the people together?
|
Sam:
[1:11:53]
| I mean, basically, we're talking a designated survivor situation if somebody took out that restaurant, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:11:59]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:11:59]
| You know, like you're taking out half the line of succession because they're all there in one room at some restaurant.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:05]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:12:06]
| And to what you were saying, it was just other patrons there. I can't believe it was coincidence because it turns out the protesters, it was Medea Benjamin. You remember her? Code pink. She is a very prominent career protester in Washington, D.C. Now, is it possible she just happened to be at that restaurant when Donald Trump decided to walk over? Maybe she spends a lot of time in D.C. protesting all kinds of crap. Right. Okay. She protests things at Congress. She protests all over the place. She is a professional protester, okay? A professional far-left protester. But here's the thing, and I saw a few people point it out later. All of the initial coverage was about, oh, look at Donald Trump. Look at how upset he is by the protesters. But then, people started pointing out, you have a whole crowd of like six or seven protesters here in this restaurant, 10 feet or less away from the president. What the fuck is the Secret Service doing? You know, now they have the right to protest, but normally the Secret Service would go in there and sweep the place. Like I said, this is a well-known leftist agitator. You think they'd let her stay or they'd let trump come in.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:31]
| Look i mean i i mean i mean i mean i mean maybe they have look here okay look there was this one time where i bumped into right he was president yes into into hw bush okay okay right so i this is a time when i went during this presidential classroom, and I was roaming the halls of Congress. Okay? Literally just going around, checking out what the hell is there. The place is huge.
|
Sam:
[1:14:05]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:06]
| Okay? So I'm walking towards the place and I was heading towards the gallery. Okay? All right? I was heading towards the Senate gallery, if I remember correctly. Yeah, exactly. I was heading towards the Senate gallery. And all of a sudden, as I'm walking, Me, this 18-year-old at that time, a Secret Service agent, an agent, which I didn't know was a Secret Service agent, tells me to stop.
|
Sam:
[1:14:31]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:32]
| Okay, you can't keep going. And I'm like, okay. And lo and behold, it's H.W. Now, I'm remembering, no, this wasn't, it was still beat. He wasn't president, okay? It was beat because he had to go in to cast a tie-breaking vote. And that's what I was, I wanted to, that's what I was going to the gallery to watch this. Because there was a tie, okay? And there was going to be a tie-breaking vote, okay? And so, and that's why he was there. But the reality is they had, I mean, I don't know. I was like a few feet from him. I mean, it's not like they searched me or anything.
|
Sam:
[1:15:15]
| Well, even a few years later, when I got to go to the White House with WRCT the year after you left, and I know you're still upset you didn't get to go on this.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:26]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:15:27]
| But, you know, I was sitting 10 feet away from Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Tipper Gore, several cabinet members.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:35]
| We didn't guys have to go through security to get there.
|
Sam:
[1:15:38]
| We had to go through security to get there. But I was stunned at how lax that security was. And remember, this was before 9-11. Everything's been way tightened up since then. But I remember back then being surprised at how little security there was. I mean, it was like the same kind of security that I got a few weeks back when I went to the fair here. some like some guy looked inside my bag and was like oh there's nothing there but they didn't even pull the stuff out to look at what was underneath right and i'm like there could have been something in there what the hell search me better you know but yeah so i but you'd think right now i mean, People tried to kill him twice already, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:16:32]
| The bill that I saw, okay, by the way, the bill that I saw passed was the catastrophic health care bill. This was a bill, Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which for some reason caused a lot of controversy because this is one of those things that's a precursor of the kind of stuff we're talking about, trying to broaden, like, oh my god, health care coverage to everybody. And how there was opposition to that for some reason. And that bill required a tie-breaking vote by H.W. Bush when it passed in 88. So I was right. He was still VP. He was soon president, but it was right before. And for some reason, because of a whole bunch of reasons that I don't really recall, many people were pissed off about it for some reason, and it was repealed basically like a year later. It didn't even last that long. But by the way, the one thing about it is that you think about the changes that we've had since the now Republican policy, But H.W. went to cast a vote in favor of it to pass it.
|
Sam:
[1:17:55]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:56]
| OK. And then, of course, it didn't happen. And so that's how I wound up seeing.
|
Sam:
[1:18:02]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:03]
| And having H.W. Bush say hi to me.
|
Sam:
[1:18:06]
| Excellent.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:06]
| Which I was, like, stunned. I'm like, hi.
|
Sam:
[1:18:10]
| Like, hi. Very nice. But yeah, no, my point on this was just the fact that so many angry people were allowed to get only 10 feet away from the president, seems like a security failure.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:28]
| Seems like a security situation that could bring some catastrophic consequence at any point in time. And let's be clear about this. This administration is so incompetent in so many levels and so many things with the signal breaches, all this other stuff or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:18:42]
| And just to be clear, I want to be absolutely clear just like the Charlie Kirk situation. If somebody did get Donald Trump that way it would be bad for the country. As much as I hate Donald Trump and think he's a horrible president.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:56]
| It would be horrible. It would be horrible. All right. So this is not good. This is what they're doing. This is not good. And it's going to lead into something bad happening to one of these guys because of how lax they are with everything. I just don't understand. Given the incitement of violence that they have done across the board and how they are also lax on the other end is preposterous.
|
Sam:
[1:19:23]
| Yeah, I mean, look.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:25]
| You told me your wife was concerned. They're all actually looking at the other thing.
|
Sam:
[1:19:29]
| Let me tell the—I'm going to say what I feel like I can say.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:35]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:19:37]
| My wife is a state legislator. As I said, she has been on a trip in Europe with a whole bunch of other state legislators and some other people who are involved in state government in various ways. bipartisan group to be clear so she's been hanging out with both republicans and democrats and they've been you know they're going out and socializing and they're going out drinking in the evenings and they're talking about stuff and a i want to say that that's actually like a good sign that's good that you know at least at the state level in washington state you can have republicans and Democrats from across the aisle who go out together socially and have a good time.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:25]
| I think that's a good thing. I think that's a great thing.
|
Sam:
[1:20:27]
| And, you know, like my wife has worked with various Republicans on bipartisan stuff and gotten things done. And it's good that that kind of thing can still happen at certain levels. Okay. But as part of their conversations, and I don't think I'm violating a conference here. If I am, I apologize to my wife. But people on both sides are incredibly nervous about the environment getting more dangerous.
|
Sam:
[1:20:57]
| And this is not the Democrats are afraid or the Republicans are afraid. This is everybody is getting really nervous about what's the security situation. Do we have to change our habits? Do we have to think, change how we think about security? Do we have to like not be doing the things we've been doing? And I guess I said changing habits, but like you just just things like, you know, where you go, what kind of events you have, what things you participate in, you know, if you have a town hall for your district, are you putting your life in danger because you never know what kind of Yahoo is going to show up from the opposing side? You know, in both directions, right? And because the environment all across the board is just getting more tense and people are more angry and there are a lot of crazy people out there. And yes, there is easy access to guns and, and, you know, and to some degree, I'm like.
|
Sam:
[1:22:01]
| I want to be able to say, don't worry about it. You're exaggerating. It's not a big deal. But, you know, state legislators were killed, you know, just a couple months ago in Minnesota by some nut job who had a list of Democrats in the state legislature to go after, you know? And by the way, that's another contrast I meant to bring up earlier. Like with Charlie Kirk, everybody's talking about, is this a big changing point? like before they found out he was a white guy. You know, is this a changing point? Is this a part of a civil war? Blah, blah, blah. This guy blew away the former Speaker of the House in Minnesota, her husband, her dog, and they shot another legislator and his wife.
|
Sam:
[1:22:50]
| And it disappeared out of the headlines in a few days. You know, and nobody was talking about, is this going to change everything? you know um you know and you know no one was you know donald trump's made all the made all these comments about how wonderful charlie kirk was and how much of a serious situation i don't think he ever said a damn thing about the situation in in minnesota even though it was it turned out that one was a conservative guy with a hit list of liberals yep you know and yeah so anyway yes The environment is tense and getting tenser, and I feel like it's going to get worse before it gets better. I actually think, you know, it's a good thing this wasn't some far-left, you know, Bernie Sanders, AOC nutjob who killed Kirk, because I think that's the path that would be more likely to lead to an immediate escalation. this path I feel like the a lot of the conservatives who are getting riled up for civil war have sort of been like oh never mind then yeah basically but at the same time it's.
|
Sam:
[1:24:07]
| This is, there has been a slow, gradual increase of this kind of stuff. A few people have rattled off like the list of political violence in the last decade. And there's been a lot of it, but well, quote unquote, a lot. Relatively speaking, the United States has less of this than most places, but it's been increasing. You know, we had, how we had January 6th was 100% political violence the state legislatures i mentioned nancy pelosi's husband someone mentioned yeah someone tried to set fire to the governor the governor's mansion in pennsylvania right well i tried to they did they did they did they tried to.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:52]
| Kill they tried to kill the governor.
|
Sam:
[1:24:53]
| And they escaped uh there was that plot to to kidnap gretchen whitmer whitmer it also failed but a bunch of people were caught for that. And yeah, there's a lot of this, there's a lot of this and it seems to be accelerating. Yeah. I remember a couple of years ago, we had this conversation on here and we listed a whole bunch, but we're like, well, luckily most of them have failed. You know, there are a bunch of failed attempts. There are some people who got hurt, but nobody's been killed. And well, we've had a bunch of people killed now.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:28]
| Yeah. So well, and unfortunately I listen, Even though we Close this subject out Sorry, But even though This is going to get worse I don't I don't see how This is not going to get worse.
|
Sam:
[1:25:49]
| So i i can't disagree with you i want to disagree with you like i said i wanted i wanted to tell my wife you're overreacting blah blah but i can't i can't i can't say that.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:59]
| Oh she's not overreacting.
|
Sam:
[1:26:01]
| You know she's like should i should i buy body armor like i'm like maybe you know if you're out doing public events and stuff i mean didn't help kirk you know but yeah but yeah I don't know. It's just like the situation is tense and getting tenser.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:24]
| And is that the right way of saying that?
|
Sam:
[1:26:27]
| I don't think so.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:28]
| It's getting tenser.
|
Sam:
[1:26:29]
| It sounds weird. I keep thinking of the mathematical tensor every time I say that. I've been watching too many general relativity things lately. I'm reading a physics book with my son right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:39]
| I heard you say it earlier, and I didn't say anything.
|
Sam:
[1:26:42]
| More tense. Tenser. Well, again, I keep thinking the mathematical version. because I am currently with Alex reading a book that includes some, we're in a general relativity chapter right now. We're talking about tensors and metrics and all that kind of stuff. That's spelled differently, of course, T-E-N-S-O-R. But it's basically a certain matrix type of thing, you know, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:06]
| But I'm trying to see, wait, hold on. All right, hold on more. More 10s? Wait. Okay, more tense or tensor.
|
Sam:
[1:27:23]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:24]
| Both more tense or and tensor are grammatically correct comparative forms of the adjective tense.
|
Sam:
[1:27:31]
| It did sound weird, though. I admit. I was thinking it sounded weird while I was saying it.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:37]
| Well, tensor is a valid comparative form, often following the rule of adding er, more tense. More tense is used for multi-syllable adjectives. has become the more natural and preferred choice.
|
Sam:
[1:27:50]
| Okay, well, as I said, I much prefer, in mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects associated with a vector space.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:05]
| Well, that's the tensor I'm thinking about. Try to say that without reading it.
|
Sam:
[1:28:15]
| Anyway on the lovely note of you know political violence probably getting worse before it's better.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:20]
| Let me say that you know aside from poland firing uh drones that you know getting drones fired at it that the one good news in the world is how the hell does brazil have a better democracy than ours yes.
|
Sam:
[1:28:33]
| Okay let's take a break and then we'll hit those things one two three.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:36]
| Well, there's no hitting. No, we're going to end the show after this.
|
Sam:
[1:28:42]
| No break.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:43]
| I think we're good. I think we're good. It's just, all I'm saying is...
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| It was not a really short break. I was excited.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:51]
| Okay, all right. We'll take the break. We'll go and wrap up after that. Okay, here we go. All right, come on. All right.
|
Break:
[1:28:56]
| I want to be on top of the tree. I want to be on the floor when I fall off the tree.
|
Sam:
[1:29:13]
| There you go. See, that was worth it.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:16]
| Wasn't it? Okay, that was worth it. Okay, all right. Oh, yeah, now I'm wondering why we don't get more listeners. Anyway. God sakes. After me singing last week.
|
Sam:
[1:29:30]
| Yes. I put that right at the beginning so no one could miss it.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:33]
| Yes. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:29:37]
| That actually, the song from last week, it happened in the middle during one of the times my computer crashed and Yvonne was vamping while I was rebooting my computer. And I pulled it out from there.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:47]
| He said for me to do something to kill time.
|
Sam:
[1:29:49]
| Yes, I did. And Ivan did.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:51]
| I just started singing. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:29:55]
| Anyway, Poland and Brazil. And we had the coup in Nepal, too. Or not coup. The revolution, whatever happened in Nepal.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:05]
| Well, listen, we had the mass protest that led to the resignation of the prime minister and an undecided political situation.
|
Sam:
[1:30:12]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:13]
| And the mass protests were very violent. I don't know violent in terms of how many people they killed, because aside from the military that killed some of the protesters, I know they set a lot of buildings on fire and things on fire, but I don't know if they actually killed a lot of people.
|
Sam:
[1:30:28]
| I don't think there was a lot, but I honestly am not sure. I did see one clip going around on the situation in Nepal where there was a tourist bus that was trying to get through the protesters in front of the parliament building that was on fire. And the protesters, just made way for the bus. They were waving at the bus saying, welcome to Nepal. Thanks for coming and waving at them.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:55]
| Well, that's nice of them.
|
Sam:
[1:30:57]
| And meanwhile, you know, the parliament building or whatever it is burning right behind them, you know, as they're going through.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:03]
| Well, that's nice of them, at least, you know. They're like, you know, okay, that's cool.
|
Sam:
[1:31:10]
| Anyway, yes. And just to finish up on Nepal, I have not followed it closely, but the bottom line is apparently the government there has had corruption issues for generations and the younger generation had just had enough of it but they it was triggered by them trying to shut off access to all kinds of social media and they were like no and they protested enough like you said the the the prime minister resigned and now there's an uncertain situation going on that will resolve itself one way or another.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:42]
| So, I mean, the other two things, look, we have those drones that that that Poland shot down that Russian drones, which, you know, it's like it's always when it's a friend of Trump. If it's a friend, if it's a friend of Trump, then it's like, oh, well, maybe an accident. Yeah, I didn't mean to, you know, shoot. I mean, I'm just anyway, always. But, of course, he wants, for some reason, he wants, for some reason, the EU...
|
Sam:
[1:32:14]
| I was just going to say on Brazil.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:15]
| Oh, well, we've got the Venezuela thing.
|
Sam:
[1:32:17]
| Well, no, I was just going to complete on Brazil. Like, yes, Brazil took action against Bolsonaro, who had basically...
|
Ivan:
[1:32:25]
| Who tried! They tried to do the same...
|
Sam:
[1:32:27]
| They tried to do January 6th, and they also failed.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:30]
| And the solution was that they're throwing the bastard into jail for 25 fucking years.
|
Sam:
[1:32:35]
| Yeah, they arrested him. They went to trial. They're throwing him in jail. But, you know, Trump is mad about it. Rubio is threatening things. They're threatening more tariffs. They already added some tariffs because of this. They're threatening more.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:47]
| And they have said, go fuck yourselves.
|
Sam:
[1:32:49]
| Yeah. And.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:52]
| He's not getting out of jail. He's going to jail for 25 years. Good luck.
|
Sam:
[1:32:55]
| And this is the right answer, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:58]
| And that's the right answer.
|
Sam:
[1:32:59]
| You know, and if the U.S. wants to make fools of ourselves by throwing on tariffs.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:06]
| And tripling coffee prices or whatever president of brazil was not that popular okay all right because he's also one that's been involved in some corruption scandals and got brought back you do realize that the thing that they have done with attacking him once again as he has done with other foreign leaders is that his popularity has soared right and by the way the other thing is that on the tariffs on the terror front, Because our president is an idiot, okay? One of the things is that he's also handed a whole bunch of trade victories to Brazil by selling soybeans and other products to China at the expense of American exports, which now are super expensive and collapsed.
|
Sam:
[1:33:50]
| Yes, and someone pointed out, by the way, the tariffs that are being proposed right now, two things, of course. One is what I mentioned before. As with all the tariffs— We actually have.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:02]
| A trade surplus.
|
Sam:
[1:34:03]
| With Brazil already. Right, right. But as with all tariffs, the people who pay the price are the Americans buying the product. So in the case of Brazil, that's like coffee and beef, okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:13]
| Coffee is soaring. And beef is soaring.
|
Sam:
[1:34:15]
| But also, somebody did the analysis of what parts of Brazil would get hurt the most by the tariffs. And they're the parts of the country that support Bolsonaro anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:27]
| Yeah, so fuck them.
|
Sam:
[1:34:29]
| Yeah, so it's just all ill-conceived. Okay, moving on from Brazil. Did we talk about Baltimore?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:37]
| We talked about Baltimore. Yeah, it sounds like it. But the one final one that I wanted to say that I didn't put on the topics is apparently we're a threatened war on Venezuela.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:49]
| They're actually, look, in Puerto Rico, a whole bunch of troops have arrived to Puerto Rico, which would be pretty much an ideal springboard to be launching shit to Venezuela from. In case of an attack. I am pretty sure that most of the Venezuelan diaspora is in favor of the United States attacking Venezuela and knocking down Maduro. I don't have a doubt about that. The whole problem with this whole thing and adventure is that most of the time that we do this shit, it never works out well.
|
Sam:
[1:35:25]
| That's an understatement, I think.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:27]
| But there are cases it does. Listen, if you ask the Panamanians, if they are happy that the U.S. took out Noriega, they pretty much unanimously are, thank God.
|
Sam:
[1:35:40]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:41]
| Okay. So, I mean, look, if you ask the Europeans whether it was good that we went to the Japanese, if we went and we invaded them, they also are probably on the side of, yes. Right. There's the last surveys I saw. So therefore, you know, there are cases. But the reality is that most of the other ones, we fucked this up. But the other thing is, my biggest problem with this is that the only reason that Trump wants to do this is to curry political favors with the Venezuelans, which right now are super pissed at him because he ended TPS for the Venezuelans that had left. That's the only fucking reason that I see that this is happening. And it's simply a political move. And it's also, well, it's also for immigration reasons, because reality is that Venezuelans have been leaving Venezuela in droves because of what's happening with the dictatorship that is in place right now. and I know that there's a lot of Venezuelans that will return for sure if, this regime falls there's a lot of them that will so, Again, the reason is you think he's he's not doing it for altruistic reasons. The only fucking reason he's doing it is because he thinks there is political gain and money to be had by doing this.
|
Sam:
[1:37:06]
| Of course, it's it's always self-serving. I mean, I'm sure like if like what you said, if a whole bunch of Venezuelans decide to self-deport and leave and go back to Venezuela as a result, all these folks would be thrilled. You know, the Trumpists don't want him here anyway. you know so they'd be happy about that now the question is as with all of these things, there's the one scenario where they go in they depose the guy instantly we set up our puppet there really quickly and things go relatively smoothly well there is actually.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:47]
| A guy that was.
|
Sam:
[1:37:48]
| I know, I know, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:49]
| That was elected. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:37:52]
| No, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:52]
| But that, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:54]
| That's the one scenario. The other scenario is it becomes an ongoing military morass lasting years, you know? Or even if we go in quickly, if the scenario becomes messy, like Iraq became messy, for instance.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:11]
| I will tell you this, that in the Venezuela case, I'm pretty confident that if they knock them off and they take out the military leaders, there's nothing, that ends quickly. This is all being held by force at the top because they have the money and they have the control of the military at the top and they are paying these people. This is one of those where that's the only thing that's holding this together. It's kind of like, if you think about with Assad in Syria, how he held the country together. That was not by popularity. I mean, he basically like bombed them to submission, okay? for years and years until all of a sudden he just couldn't hold it together anymore for whatever reason. So I don't think that's the case, but my whole point is that I think that probably, this is one of the few times that this may be productive, but my whole thing is that the only reason Trump wouldn't be doing it is for all the wrong fucking reasons.
|
Sam:
[1:39:09]
| Well, but if he were to have a military.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:14]
| Who is a fucking like.
|
Sam:
[1:39:16]
| Incompetent. No, no. But let me just put this out there.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:19]
| Secretary of Defense.
|
Sam:
[1:39:20]
| If Trump had a military adventure, despite all the people who are like, hoping that trump would be anti-war and stuff if he has a military adventure but it actually goes well it's successful it gets good results he'll.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:35]
| Want to do another one.
|
Sam:
[1:39:36]
| Well no he'll want it but also his popularity is going to go right back up people will get excited and rally behind the flag and all this kind of stuff and you know no no listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:47]
| When by the way and when we go to what you know you go to one of these places it's like we went to hate and nobody gives a shit about that, this isn't like, you know, this isn't like, I mean, it's going to be like Grenada. Literally. Okay? This will be over almost before it started. Seriously.
|
Sam:
[1:40:05]
| You really think a big country like Venezuela would fall as quickly as something like Grenada?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:11]
| Listen, I'm telling you that this is only, listen, Maduro falls, that place falls apart in two seconds. This is one of those where it's just this is being held together just by the control that he has of the money the control that he has at the top of the military if he didn't have that this thing listen you this thing topples in two seconds okay and i guarantee you that a whole bunch of even the generals and everybody which is like oh yeah we're so glad he's gone i i don't know as you.
|
Sam:
[1:40:45]
| Say that i just keep having flashbacks to we will be greeted as liberators in Iraq.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:51]
| No, no, no. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, but this is, Venezuela is not Iraq. And listen, Venezuela is not Iraq. And listen, Venezuela is in such dire straits right now. They're dying to get rid of this guy. They can't get rid of this fucking guy.
|
Sam:
[1:41:05]
| Right. Okay, one more thing. I actually, like, zoned, I guess. Like, we went past Poland so quickly. I had a couple more thoughts on Poland. One is just to put this straight out there. This is, despite any protestations, this might have been an accident. This was clearly not an accident. This was Russia. This was Russia testing. And with Donald Trump, Poland called an Article 4 conference. So it's not Article 5, which says we've been attacked and therefore we've all been attacked and NATO has to defend it. Article 4 was an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.
|
Sam:
[1:41:53]
| The U.S. did not even send their high-level representatives. They sent some low-level guy to that meeting. So basically, if this was a test by Putin, we have failed that test already. Because the response from the U.S. specifically has been tepid. Now, NATO planes, Polish planes, and several other countries got up. They intercepted these things. They shot a bunch of them down. There was no damage done in Poland. So it was successfully defended. Now, nobody wants to immediately make this an escalation, right? Like, Poland's not going to go and counterattack Russia or decide that we have to, like, you know, we're now going to be on the ground or in the air in Ukraine. That's not happening. No one wants to escalate it right now. But it's basically what Putin has seen is, yeah, he can throw some drones into NATO territory and have no significant consequences come out of it. so this will only get tested further as we move on and you know i.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:09]
| I think you know my problem with this stupidity is the whole thing about poking the bear you want to really listen even though trump keeps saying this other thing he's going and like asking the eu and and and like to To tariff China and India To punish them for purchasing Shit from Russia To 100% tariffs Which I'm still a little bit like Are you shitting me? Really? This is what you want to do? Which is This whole thing is a little bit nuts But look.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:47]
| I've said this before, Russia's military might is not really as mighty as it's purported. And the reality is That even just German French Fucking forces Doing a fucking, Counterattack To neutralize shit In that area Would be devastating To whatever the fuck they're gonna hit in Russia So if he wants to really start Poking the bear, And try to see how hard he gets To get back, He's gonna, you know Putin's been exposed more than once as a paper tiger. The only reason right now why Ukraine, he is even like gaining inches, is it is it is an immense expense of human capital and resources, you know, with minimal gains that he is able to do. And that and literally they're throwing everything they've got at them.
|
Sam:
[1:44:57]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:57]
| Think about this. And they're going just against Ukraine. Okay? Honestly, I don't really know what the... you know, he really wants to do with this? Is it just to test the unity? Is it, like, whatever? Because, obviously, I know that one of his key focus, more being a KGV guy, has been at that. At the head games, which, by the way, he's done quite well seeing where the fuck we are like right now with this fucking situation. But in terms of military, actual strength, he has continuously overestimated what his actual troop strength is versus the reality of what they can do.
|
Sam:
[1:45:37]
| Right. And of course, the reason everybody is hesitant is, of course, nukes. That's it. You know, like, if Russia did not have nukes, I can almost assure you that we would have had a Gulf War I type response to the very first invasions of Ukraine when they took over Crimea and, you know, way back then you know it it would have been the same kind of thing as we had in kuwait where we said no no you can't iraq you can't have kuwait we're taking it back you know right that's it basically that would have happened a long time ago if it was simply conventional and no one was worried about nukes exactly i mean not the fucking nukes yeah you have to worry about the nukes you have to worry about the fucking nukes you know one more foreign policy thing and then let's close it up. Donald Trump is also mad at Israel right now because they bombed Qatar.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:39]
| Oh, fuck, because they bombed Qatar. What the fuck? Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[1:46:45]
| In order to get some Hamas leaders. And apparently they didn't get all the people they were trying to get either.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:51]
| But holy shit, man.
|
Sam:
[1:46:53]
| Specifically, the intention was to kill the people who were actively negotiating.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:01]
| Negotiating to end this, right? Let me tell you something right now. If Bibi doesn't go to jail for war crimes at this point, I don't understand what kind of fucking justice we have in this world.
|
Sam:
[1:47:15]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:16]
| That guy is just a war criminal.
|
Sam:
[1:47:19]
| I'll tell you, and I think the same thing. I mean, I know he's got his own trials going on for corruption-related stuff. Corruption. But I will predict, I mean, obviously Donald Trump got out of all his legal cases already and he's president. I feel like for both Netanyahu and Donald Trump, they'll die of old age, you know, and not in jail, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:45]
| Well, of course, Netanyahu has not been able to stop the cases against him.
|
Sam:
[1:47:48]
| No, he has not at this point. Yes, he has not.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:51]
| So that's the one thing.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| He's been able to slow them down, but he has not been able to stop them. Yeah. Okay. Shall we wrap things up?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:58]
| On that happy note.
|
Sam:
[1:47:59]
| Yes. And I will, just 10 minutes ago, I received feedback on last week's show. So before we, before we give like the website and everything like that, I am going to relate the feedback.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:14]
| What's the feedback?
|
Sam:
[1:48:17]
| This is from my mother. And it's specifically about you, Yvonne, and things you said.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:24]
| Oh, shit. Oh, God. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:48:27]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:28]
| Sorry, Bob.
|
Sam:
[1:48:31]
| Been listening I'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:32]
| Already saying I'm sorry.
|
Sam:
[1:48:36]
| Been listening to the beginning of your last podcast forward this to Yvonne or tell him, Yvonne, thank you for the long segment about possible Spanish citizenship. Very important that you have figured it out. But to me, it was all brand new stuff to think about. Most of us are taught almost nothing about Puerto Rico in school. I grew up in Vermont through 12th grade where French Canadians were next door and among us and Portuguese, Italian, and Polish immigrants also in significant numbers in school and our communities. But anyway, I was very interested in all you said, and it is a wonderful case history of how folks need to deal with anxiety caused currently in this country.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:26]
| Okay, there you go. I thought it was about my singing.
|
Sam:
[1:49:30]
| Okay, all right. No, I was like.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:32]
| Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[1:49:33]
| Okay, all right. You did not need to apologize. It was not about your cursing. All right.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:37]
| It was not about the singing. All right, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:49:39]
| It is actually, like, thanking you for an interesting segment.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:45]
| Okay, all right, excellent. Okay, beautiful.
|
Sam:
[1:49:47]
| Okay, with that, let's close it up. curmudgeons-corner.com. You guys know the drill. You can go there, find our archives, transcripts, all the ways to contact us, all of that sort of stuff, links to YouTube. There is no link to TikTok yet. I'm still, like, a month behind posting things to TikTok, but I don't know. Eventually, I'll catch up, I guess. I don't know. and importantly there is a link to our patreon where you can give us money at various levels we will mention you on the show we will ring a bell we will send you a postcard we'll send you a mug or at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask we'll invite you to our commudgeons corner slack where yvonne and i and a bunch of our listeners are hanging out throughout the week, chatting about stuff, the news, sharing links, funny, funny news stories, serious news stories, random things about our lives. Yo, Yvonne and Pete were talking about financial planning and stocks earlier today, and I mostly tuned it out.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:51]
| I don't know why we were talking about stocks.
|
Sam:
[1:50:54]
| It was a really long conversation.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:57]
| It was something to happen with a company this week.
|
Sam:
[1:50:59]
| I i i got out of the shower because you know time zones are different and all that i got out of the shower before going to work and all of a sudden there was like pages and pages and pages of discussion of like investment strategies and i was like and so i japanese.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:19]
| Stocks swiss stocks, You know, we talk about, for example, stuff, gold. Yeah, we, we, we, you know, we talk about all those, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:28]
| Individual company stocks being overweighted in them versus, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:32]
| Overweighted, right. Exactly. Yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:34]
| Anyway, so there's that kind of stuff. But Yvonne, what was something else that was mentioned on the Commissions Core Slack that we have not talked about on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:51:42]
| Okay, look, I, this is something I sent just today because I was driving. and all of a sudden I don't know if you saw this picture I posted Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:51:56]
| I'm not sure.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:56]
| There was a truck okay there was a truck on the road.
|
Sam:
[1:51:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:00]
| And I shared this picture on random. Sam can you read the logo on the back of this company? What is the logo on the back?
|
Sam:
[1:52:07]
| It's an Enron logo.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:08]
| What is the name? That's right. It says Enron.com. Right. I mean Enron they were supposed to be dead and it says on the side Nuclear You Can Trust. Okay? And I was like, what in the fuck? What do you mean? Enron is dead. And it's the same logo as before.
|
Sam:
[1:52:31]
| Well, did you follow up by going to Enron.com and checking out the site?
|
Ivan:
[1:52:35]
| Yes. And there is, they've got, okay, first came the news that, this is a New York Times article they have a link to from their website from January 9th, 2025. First came the news that Enron was back. Yes, Enron, the energy company whose profits were built on long-term fraud, which ended with filing what was in 2001 the largest bankruptcy in history. Last month, people began noticing a website for a seemingly reborn Enron, using the same logo and branding, announcing an ambitious mission, solving the global energy crisis. Then on Monday, the new Enron emerged with a glitzy marketing video announcing its new product, the Enron Egg, which the company proclaimed to be the world's first micronuclear reactor for residential suburban use. What?
|
Ivan:
[1:53:32]
| I, I, you know, the first, you know, as you may have guessed, is so was Enron a corporate really about to unleash nuclear reactors' homes around the world? As you may have guessed, the answer is no. The announcement indeed was an expected return of Enron itself was part of an elaborate stunt. But I don't, I still don't understand why is there a truck going around like it's hauling stuff for Enron? Apparently, this guy, Mr. Gaines, bought the Enron trademark for $275. Not bad, I guess. I mean, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:54:10]
| That could have been you, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:12]
| Yeah, it could be the new Enron. You know, the power of the atom, flashy graphics. Still, anyone thinking the product was genuine might have given additional pause when told that the key component was something called erroneum ore. erroneum is really just a funny way of renaming materials that are already sort of in the zeitgeist this gabbling good continued after Mr. Gatos introduced Enron's chief technology officer Daniel Wong who reassured any nervous observers that the egg was only used as only 20% enriched uranium far too low to make an atomic weapon, I don't I don't understand it's gotta be a joke.
|
Sam:
[1:54:58]
| Right I mean, I know you said it was written up in the New York Times, but come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:03]
| But it was not just in the New York Times. There's a series of articles in here. They have a website that is up. And they've got a truck running around with, I don't know, with the logo on the side on it. So what are they carrying in that truck?
|
Sam:
[1:55:18]
| Those eggs, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:55:20]
| Uranium?
|
Sam:
[1:55:21]
| We have been talking about the price of eggs. Is this what they meant?
|
Ivan:
[1:55:25]
| Jesus Christ. so some scammer listen let me tell you something i shared earlier on the slack that there was another one that bought the theranos brand in south florida and had been and i have another one to talk about in.
|
Sam:
[1:55:40]
| A second after you do.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:41]
| That that had been pasted buying up billboards and he is trying to rehabilitate elizabeth holmes for some reason i think this guy wants the banger or something, I swear to God. It's some dude that looks, if you think about one of these guys with like gold chains, expensive car, you know, dude, South Miami, that's the image you've got. And he's saying Theranos, and he's saying that he built the fucking machine that didn't work. And that he's an inventor of some kind. So you got a guy reviving Theranos, you got a guy reviving Enron. What the, I mean, this is the era of all scams. Which scam did you see?
|
Sam:
[1:56:27]
| Okay, so the one I want to talk about, about other companies sort of back from the dead, is Commodore, of the Commodore Vic 20 and Commodore 64.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:37]
| Well, is that one a scam?
|
Sam:
[1:56:39]
| Well, I don't think so, actually. But here's what's going on with them. A bunch of the original employees of Commodore from like the 1980s got together and bought up the remnants of the trademarks and IP and things that still existed. Who knows what long chain of ownership those went through over the years. But they got together, they pooled their money, they bought the rights to the name back and everything, and are reviving the company to launch a new Commodore 64.
|
Sam:
[1:57:17]
| And if you go to Commodore.net, you can see some of this stuff. They've been posting updates on TikTok, and I've seen a few of them as they've gone through this process. basically there have been a few like commodore 64 emulators that you could buy over the years you know just like you showed on the podcast a few weeks you got a atari one that's like thousand games in one blah blah blah blah blah and there have been a few of those you could get like for commodore games too over the years that were basically emulators on newer attack with an you know hdmi port and all this stuff their approach here is different not an emulator not a pc retro gaming heaven in three dimensions they are it's powered by a recreation of the original motherboard with you know and they're they've got one that's modern components i guess they've got one that's uh in the classic look and feel and they're doing another one that's like transparent with leds all over the place and stuff like that but they're basically recreating the original tech, the original old tech, and just putting out a new version of it, apparently. Now, this is something, I mean, The appeal of this is not, there are not a lot of people who want to buy this thing, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:58:31]
| No, no, no. There's a specific niche group of people who might be interested in this. I've seen other people, by the way, with retro computing projects. Somebody took original Commodore 64 hardware, but built a new operating system for it that was more modern, could use a mouse, could take internet access. They hacked it into like, you know, Ethernet at like a slow, whatever, slow pace the thing could do and did some proof of concepts of it interacting with the Internet in various ways. There are a lot of people there. There are people who are into retro computing, but it's a small market.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:12]
| It's a tiny market.
|
Sam:
[1:59:14]
| These people are clearly people who they were involved in the original company. They love the concept. They love the old hardware. They're bringing it back for nostalgia. I don't think they're anticipating that they're going to make fortunes off of this stuff, but they're bringing it back for the folks who might.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:31]
| So you don't think they're going to dethrone any of the. Microsoft and Apple are safe.
|
Sam:
[1:59:37]
| I think they're safe. I mean, like, look, there were some interesting things that Commodore had, like the Amiga, in some ways, was ahead of its time. Hell, even the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 in some ways were ahead of their time. But they obviously lost that war.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:00]
| Badly.
|
Sam:
[2:00:01]
| Badly. They were not even second or third in that battle. No, they were, they were, you know, but, but you know, I have, I have lots of nostalgia for my Vic 20 and my Commodore 64. I always wanted an Amiga, but I never got one, you know, and it's a cool little thing. They're going to, they're going to price the thing at two 99. They're going to price the thing at two 99. And you know, I don't know, it might be cool. It might be fun. I don't know. I mean, honestly, I have my original Commodore 64 and my original VIC-20 in the garage somewhere. I just have to find them and pull them out. They probably still work. I mean, there are some components that degrade over, like, however many fucking years it's been. You know, since, I mean, what was the 1984 or something for the VIC-20?
|
Ivan:
[2:00:50]
| It was 40 years ago.
|
Sam:
[2:00:52]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:52]
| 45 years ago.
|
Sam:
[2:00:53]
| But they can be repaired, even if, like, some capacitor has, like, gooed all over the place or something, you know?
|
Ivan:
[2:00:59]
| Actually, those are actually even simpler to repair. Yeah, exactly. You replace a few components.
|
Sam:
[2:01:04]
| You can do it.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:05]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:01:05]
| But anyway, I found it interesting. I saw, I've, like I said, I've watched a few of the videos. Serial.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:11]
| But I was bringing, I'm bringing back scammers. You're bringing back like this is real. You want people to spend money. I'm talking about. I'm talking about bringing back fraud.
|
Sam:
[2:01:19]
| The last video.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:21]
| Like a real fraud.
|
Sam:
[2:01:22]
| The last video I saw from them on TikTok was, the serial number 0001 of the new motherboard coming off the assembly line and a bunch of them signing it and i guess they're going to put like some sort of like if if you're the one who actually gets number one there's some sort of prize or something that comes with it you know when okay if you buy the thing but yeah they're selling it for 299 that's not bad i yeah i could do $299 for a piece of nostalgia. Now, having said that, you can get those, like, 1,500 games in one for less than that. A lot less than that.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:00]
| Yes, way less than that.
|
Sam:
[2:02:01]
| And this would have less capability than that. But, you know, whatever. It's cool. It's the old-looking thing. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:09]
| Does it got the little RF adapter?
|
Sam:
[2:02:10]
| No, although they have done some improvements. I'm looking at the back. It's definitely got a few modern ports in the back of it that were not in the original Commodore 64.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:20]
| I was just curious if you had to use a little RF adapter with a little slide.
|
Sam:
[2:02:25]
| I'm trying to pause this thing. Does it have an HDMI? I don't know. It would be crazy if they don't.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:32]
| If they didn't, they're not a fucking plug-in into anything without a fucking HDMI. It's got to.
|
Sam:
[2:02:38]
| Let's play 10,000 plus original games with more RAM. You can plug in the old original cartridges if you have some, or read from the data cassettes if you have them.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:50]
| 10,000 games on it.
|
Sam:
[2:02:52]
| 10,000 original games. But yeah, if you have the old drives, old data cassette drives, disk drives, whatever, they'll all work. It can hook up to a CRT TV if you've got those. No disk drive needed. You can load them off USB. Let's see, more memory, faster speed. So it's not just the original. It is upgraded. And yes, it does have HDMI. So...
|
Ivan:
[2:03:17]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:03:17]
| Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:18]
| All right, well, let's wrap up.
|
Sam:
[2:03:19]
| Okay, we are done. Thank you, everybody. Yeah. Have a great week. Stay safe. All the stuff we usually say. And we'll see you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:31]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:04:02]
| Thank you. Okay, that's it. I managed to get through the whole show without crashing once. That's good, right?
|
Ivan:
[2:04:07]
| So that must have been that external drive, you think? One of the external drives?
|
Sam:
[2:04:12]
| I'll continue to troubleshoot. It might be.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:15]
| I think it has to be if you were able. Yeah, because he had no issues today.
|
Sam:
[2:04:19]
| There are only 4,785 of these C64s available to buy still in their first batch. So you better get right on that.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:27]
| Oh, yeah. I'm running out the door right now.
|
Sam:
[2:04:29]
| Shipping November 2025. You can get it for Christmas.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:32]
| Yep. Excellent. Excellent. I'll make sure that, you know.
|
Sam:
[2:04:36]
| Okay. I'm hitting stop. Later, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:39]
| All right. Stopping.
| |
|
