Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, let me make sure we've got the live stream thingy.
|
Ivan:
[0:05]
| Live stream thingy with the thingy and the thing. All the beautiful thingies with the thing. All gorgeous.
|
Sam:
[0:20]
| You know when you do that.
|
Ivan:
[0:22]
| Yeah, they all wind up later like used, yes.
|
Sam:
[0:28]
| That will absolutely be in our cold open. Sing some more, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:33]
| The thingies with the thing and the thing, thing, thing. We love little thingies over here. We have a lot of them. We keep them in our place. We share them with everybody, the nice little thingies. Thingy, the thingy, the beautiful little thingy.
|
Sam:
[1:01]
| Okay, with that, shall we start?
|
Ivan:
[1:03]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:04]
| Okay, here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, November 22nd, 2025. It is just after 3 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter. Eddie Vonbo is back! I take it you're feeling better. You're recovered. You're doing great.
|
Ivan:
[1:45]
| I am feeling a lot better. You know, as mentioned, a few weeks back, I got this hernia surgery. I got my nephew giving me shit about it, saying, ah, it's just hernia surgery. I'm like, listen, asshole, you know, you got it done when you were 15. Let me tell you something. All of these things, when they happen as we are older, are all just harder. I have noticed that any healing in general, like any cut or something, takes longer to ever, like, heal than it used to.
|
Sam:
[2:21]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:21]
| Especially the last, like, five years that I've noticed this, okay? So, yeah, you know, it's like, you get a cold now, you're coughing for weeks on end after the damn cold. You know, in the past, it was like, ah, three, four days are done. Now I got a cold, I'm hacking for two more weeks after it's done.
|
Sam:
[2:43]
| Yeah, well, I guess it's not entirely done in that case, huh?
|
Ivan:
[2:48]
| Well, it's done in the sense like, you're not contagious. You know, you are past the area where you're like.
|
Sam:
[2:56]
| You're past the worst of it, but it lingers for quite a while.
|
Ivan:
[2:59]
| It lingers, exactly. You get this lingering thing for a long time, and, you know, that's a thing. But honestly, I did, I, my sister-in-law, who's a doctor, before I went to surgery, she's the one that actually got, you know, my brother and my sister-in-law are the ones that got me the doctor that treated me because she you know she had before the surgery she had given me certain supplements to take specifically to heal faster afterwards and to not, get a swollen up, be as bad, you know, right afterwards. And they seem to, it seems to have help because I know that I went to the doctor and as a matter of fact, the checkup, I did it, the first check I did about four or five days after I was out at a hospital. And he was like, surprised, wow, very little swelling. This is right. You know? So, so yeah, he expected more swelling and he was like, no, no, you're, you're, this is really good. So, so yeah, but I was like, Like, the first bit was very tiring. But, Sam, what the fuck has been going on, for God's sakes? Look, I'm gone for two weeks.
|
Sam:
[4:12]
| Yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[4:13]
| MTG quits. I don't know. Like, Mom Dami and Trump are in the White House kissing each other or something. You know, we've got stocks are going to hell. You know, they're all over the place. I don't understand what, you know, what the fuck?
|
Sam:
[4:39]
| This is what you get for leaving. It's all your fault.
|
Ivan:
[4:43]
| Good God almighty. Probably. I'm going to take probably. It might well be. I mean, yeah. Maybe you have to take some responsibility. Own it here for a little bit.
|
Sam:
[4:55]
| No, I mean, I was noticing as I was putting together like the notes that I, you know, we have a channel on our conventions corner Slack for potential show topics. But right before the show, I copy it over into another document and make it a little neater and stuff like that. And just the sheer number of things this last week in particular. I mean, you were gone. I mean, usually in recent weeks, Well, it's, yeah, there have been a few things, but there hasn't been, you know, this time, like I'm looking at, you know, I added a couple of movies and books, but we have the Epstein Files vote. We have MBS at the White House. We have the Quiet Piggy comment. We have Olivia Nuzi.
|
Ivan:
[5:40]
| Oh my God, fucking Olivia Nuzi. Oh my God, Olivia Nuzi. Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[5:47]
| You put in something about the water at McDonald's. Who knows what that is? The Syrian president was at the White House.
|
Ivan:
[5:52]
| Too.
|
Sam:
[5:53]
| Oh, water at McDonald's?
|
Ivan:
[5:53]
| You know, well, it's simple. Yeah. But yes, there was something that happened with Trump and water at McDonald's, yes.
|
Sam:
[6:00]
| Okay, okay. I didn't even know it was Trump-related. I thought you personally had a bad experience or something. Okay. You had put in something about Trump's net approval ratings. We wanted an update on the UPS plane crash. There's been development. There have been developments on the Texas redistricting. Right! There's been developments in the Comey case, Dick Cheney's funeral. There's a Ukrainian peace deal on the table that's being discussed. I had said in the context of that, we should revisit what's happening in Gaza, too. There's the Mom Downey Trump stuff you mentioned. And just a couple hours before we started recording the show, there's this MTG resigning thing. That follows on a rift between her and Trump that's been growing over the last few weeks. So, yeah, lots of stuff going on, and I'm sure I haven't even mentioned everything. This is just the things that one or the other of us put on the commutage score slack to say maybe we should talk about. You know, so Christ.
|
Ivan:
[7:06]
| What the fuck is going on, Sam?
|
Sam:
[7:09]
| So we got lots of, we got lots to talk about.
|
Ivan:
[7:12]
| We got lots to talk about.
|
Sam:
[7:14]
| So just to, just to wrap it up though, surgery successful, you're feeling better. Are you a hundred percent yet? Or like 80?
|
Ivan:
[7:21]
| No, God, no, no, no. Listen, here's the thing. No, I am not. I, there's still, I'm still taking pain meds three times a day for it. It's gone down. It's gone down, gone down, gone down. But no, I still have some discomfort from the surgery. Right now, it's like 90 plus percent down. First of all, but fuck, right after surgery that I woke up. Holy shit was I in pain. And I had given me morphine. And I'm like, nurse, yeah? Look, whatever you gave me, not enough. Give me more. Well, I got to check with the doctor. I don't give a shit what the hell you gave me. Whatever the fuck it is, not enough. I need more. Now.
|
Sam:
[8:10]
| More, more, more, more, more. More.
|
Ivan:
[8:12]
| I don't know what the fuck it is they gave me, but that worked. Okay?
|
Sam:
[8:16]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[8:16]
| Went in, injected me. One funny thing about this whole thing is my brother was there with me the whole day. He decided because my mom's older. You know, she was taking care of helping me at the house. Okay. But at the hospital, it was uncomfortable and stuff. My mom, you know, she's 80. She's tired. You know, my brother said, listen, mom, stay over there at the house. Then my wife's, you know, my sister-in-law, they're going to go pick you up. Come over to the hospital later when he's out. I'll take him. You know, I have to get to the hospital like at six in the morning. Okay. By the way, the thing about the hospital is my sister-in-law's office is at that hospital. So it's at the same facility. So this was, you know, very easy. So one thing that happens is that I show up to get the pre-op. Oh, Mr. Bo, yes, I keep calling your wife's office all the time and talking to you, whatever. And I'm like, wait, no, no, no. I'm his brother. Gosh, but you guys look so much alike. I'm like, are you guys twins? No, no, no, we're not twins. Okay. But listen, we look so much alike. My brother's face ID on his phone has confused me with me.
|
Sam:
[9:32]
| Me with me?
|
Ivan:
[9:33]
| I mean, me with me. Me with me. Hit him with me. I grabbed his phone and swiped the face ID.
|
Sam:
[9:40]
| You sure they didn't operate on your brain?
|
Ivan:
[9:43]
| No, they didn't get that yet. But, you know, that's later. But I grabbed his phone, and his phone thought I was him. Okay. I didn't realize. I swiped it up. I started using it. And I realized, wait, I didn't ask, didn't ask me for the password. Because usually, you know, you grab like your wife's sword.
|
Sam:
[10:03]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[10:03]
| You got to get the passcode.
|
Sam:
[10:05]
| Put it in the car.
|
Ivan:
[10:05]
| Now, it doesn't happen all the time, but it has confused me with him on various occasions. So that's how much we looked alike. So I went in in the morning and he said, no, your brother can't come in yet. So a nurse comes in and like just asked, who am I looking for to bring over? Because there's another nurse. go out there, look at the guy who just looks like me with more gray hair. That's it. That's basically all it took. It just kept happening. We spent so many days together, everybody kept like, wait, who's what? No, I'm the brother. He stayed with me the whole day at the hospital. He brought his laptop, he had some work to do, he stayed there or whatever. So he took care of me for the day So that was good So everything went fine No problems Like right now Been working, The first week and a half That was hard But this week's been Been a lot easier The travel's not as bad as I expected Thank god So that was good You.
|
Sam:
[11:19]
| Rode a bike back to Florida right?
|
Ivan:
[11:21]
| Rode a bike.
|
Sam:
[11:23]
| Thank you.
|
Ivan:
[11:23]
| No, no, took a, took an airplane. You know, thankfully one of them happened to be, I actually planned this on purpose. There's, there, there are, so America between Dallas and Miami on certain, on, on, on certain flights that, you know, for, they, they need to move an international aircraft between one of the other, one of the other hubs. Okay. So there's times that there's always a triple seven that's flying between Miami and DFW, just short flight. But, look, I wanted to get that plane because, you know, because I could get on a seat that was a bed.
|
Sam:
[12:01]
| Right. Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:02]
| Okay? Which was, you know, I'm like, no, I don't want to be stuck for three hours sitting... You know, I had been, I told you that I've been, I've been traveling, like even in regular domestic first class and I'd been in pain. Okay.
|
Sam:
[12:15]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:16]
| And I'm just like, I want to, and so I looked, oh, wait, if I leave at this hour, I can get on a flight that's actually, you know, has an international business class seat. That's, that's, you know, that I could lie down on. And, you know, and because I always get upgraded on those flights, I always get, there's like 60 first class seats. You get, you get a fucking upgrade. Okay. You know, I got, I got an upgrade very easily. Like we had my boss. So that way I knew that. I was like, Oh God, I was able to, to lay down on, on the flight down. And because air traffic control had been like, you know, messy getting, look, getting out the, we weren't majorly delayed, but it was slow. Okay. It was slow. getting from and dallas is a big airport just even getting to from from you get leave the gate and they tell you yeah the flight might be two hours and some minutes but well we're gonna wait 35 minutes for takeoff i'm like fuck jesus christ you know plus you realize you you you put it all the time first boarding you know another half hour 45 minutes and then you got another half hour sitting here it turns into easy three four hours sitting in a fucking place and i'm like And I'm not feeling all that great. So I'll try to avoid that. But anyway. Everything's everything worked out.
|
Sam:
[13:44]
| Okay. Well, before we I'm glad you're alive. I'm glad they didn't accidentally remove something they shouldn't have removed.
|
Ivan:
[13:52]
| Hey, anything like that? You know, you know, that's the one thing. You know how they did this thing. I, you know, they mark you, right? You know, so they ask you multiple times.
|
Sam:
[14:03]
| Why are you in here? Like my wife had her knee surgery just a few weeks before you had yours, your your hernia surgery. And I was there for all the prep stuff and like they ask over and over and over again why are you.
|
Ivan:
[14:18]
| Here again let's make sure it happens that those errors still happen okay I mean because I heard of an error like that recently happening and I'm like stunned how the hell could this still happen okay and they even marked with permanent ink okay on my leg you know on the side This is the fucking side. This side. You know? I believe, I did ask, first thing I asked when I woke up from anesthesia, and people do exactly what I meant. Like, I said, is he alive yet?
|
Sam:
[14:53]
| Oh.
|
Ivan:
[14:55]
| That was my first question.
|
Sam:
[14:57]
| Is he alive?
|
Ivan:
[14:57]
| Unfortunately, they said, and unfortunately, they said, told me yes. It would have been nice if I could have gone with, you know, with, you know, let me tell you, that anesthesia, I mean, fucking anesthesia, I mean, you know, it's amazing. I mean, I don't remember it. I mean, it's like, boom, gone. All of a sudden, I just wake up. It's like, oh, you know, it's like amazing. It's just gone. I don't, no drink, nothing. Just, just.
|
Sam:
[15:24]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[15:24]
| And then I woke up.
|
Sam:
[15:26]
| That's the way you want it. You know, you don't, like, occasionally you hear about a story where somebody was accidentally, like, they were conscious during the entire surgery. Yes. Like, unable to move or anything, but they were conscious. They knew what was going on. They felt everything. You do not want to be that person.
|
Ivan:
[15:43]
| No. No. No. No. And Dr. Marquez is a wonderful doctor, by the way. Just to be clear.
|
Sam:
[15:49]
| That's incredibly rare.
|
Ivan:
[15:51]
| It's incredibly rare, but it has happened. But Dr. Marquez, who treated me, wonderful doctor, by the way, great guy. You know, one thing about it, he was also very reassuring, calming. You know, there is this thing, you know, he has this really, honestly, it's this very fatherly presence. He's, you know, he must be in the 60s. He's been doing this for 35 years. It's very nice and reassuring to get a doctor. It makes you feel, like, all, like, comfortable. I got to admit that that doesn't suck. Especially when they're going to cut you open. So anyway all right.
|
Sam:
[16:28]
| Enough of.
|
Ivan:
[16:28]
| My fucking you know.
|
Sam:
[16:30]
| What i was gonna say is before we get to the serious stuff like the entire time you've been gone there have been co-hosts and they get to pick the topics and none of them decided to ask me about my tvs tv or movies or anything so that's been in suspended animation and you know also we need to catch up with me having you know, less schedule obligations. I'm watching more shit anyway. So, like, I'm falling further and further beyond. So, let's just knock out, you know.
|
Ivan:
[17:02]
| Let's knock some of them out.
|
Sam:
[17:04]
| Well, yeah, okay. So, I told you before you left that the very next one was going to be the TV show, The Twilight Zone, the original Twilight Zone, that ran from 1959 to 1963. You know, I have watched.
|
Ivan:
[17:21]
| I i mean i recently watched a few episodes but i.
|
Sam:
[17:24]
| Remember like.
|
Ivan:
[17:25]
| Back i mean i'm i've watched a lot of the episodes it's a good show.
|
Sam:
[17:30]
| It is a good show i mean there are 156 episodes total over the course of five seasons now obviously there are some episodes that are famous that have gotten into the cultural zeitgeist and like even if you are not a twilight zone watcher you may have been aware of a twilight zoner yes you know and there and and you know i even describing some of these episodes like the whole thing is if you haven't seen them they're usually some twists they're usually some things that are surprising. So if you say, well, the one where blah, blah, blah, if you haven't seen it, you just gave it away. You know, not always. Some of them, there's no real twist. It's just the whole thing is kind of eerie and weird and blah, blah, blah. In others, there's some sort of twist, but there's usually some sort of twist. I will say.
|
Sam:
[18:32]
| The episodes that are super famous are super famous for a reason. They're good. They're well done. They have, you know, that sort of twist at the end that sort of gets you or it's just saying something that's, you know, I don't want to say profound, but maybe a little profound, you know, and there's a few of those. But I'd say if you look at the whole thing, though, It's a little uneven. There are some episodes that aren't that great as well, you know, but on average, it's consistently pretty decent. There are only a few clankers in there. And even the episodes.
|
Ivan:
[19:24]
| Well, 150 episodes. I mean, damn it. That's a lot of work.
|
Sam:
[19:27]
| That's a lot of episodes.
|
Ivan:
[19:28]
| And let me say, the thing is that the show was very creative. Okay. Yes. And so I can see how it had to occasionally have a misfire. I mean, because a lot of other shows have, you know, some themes like very recurring, like the same characters or whatever. But if you think about it, the Twilight Zone, they never really had the same cast of characters. The stories were almost every single one originally self-contained.
|
Sam:
[19:55]
| Well, yes. I mean, that's the whole thing. It's an anthology series. Each episode is self-contained. There's no continuing story. No nothing like that. It's just a different thing. Now, you do see some of the same actors and actresses come back.
|
Ivan:
[20:10]
| But they're playing different people.
|
Sam:
[20:11]
| Right?
|
Ivan:
[20:12]
| Exactly. Right.
|
Sam:
[20:13]
| And I'd say, you know, of the five seasons, the one, and I will mention there's one episode that is not usually included. Like if you go online to the places that have all the episodes, there's one episode that was like a French short movie that was repurposed, that they licensed as a Twilight Zone episode.
|
Ivan:
[20:36]
| Interesting.
|
Sam:
[20:37]
| But only for like the original airing. So if you want to be complete, you have to go find that French movie, that French short movie. And it is available on YouTube, fairly low quality. But we were complete. We watched that one, too. But no, I'd say the one place where they sort of went off. Okay, two things. One, you're right. There's a lot of originality there. But by the time you got to the end of the five seasons, there were...
|
Ivan:
[21:06]
| Probably running out of ideas.
|
Sam:
[21:07]
| Yeah, you started seeing some things where this feels kind of familiar. Oh, they're looking at this town where something weird is going on, and the exact weird thing might be a little bit different, but it has the same vibe.
|
Ivan:
[21:24]
| Yeah, I gotcha.
|
Sam:
[21:26]
| Or, you know, they're landing on an alien planet, and something weird is going on, and then there's something that happens as a twist. And it's, you know, it's not exactly the same as the previous episode, but it feels familiar. So that's sort of.
|
Ivan:
[21:40]
| Well, if you think about it sometimes, I mean, yeah, I get it. And I mean, but yeah, but like I said, you need 150 and the originals were so original. At some point you start like, okay, guys, what the fuck are we going to write about now?
|
Sam:
[21:53]
| Yeah. Now I will say the one place where I think they went wrong and they realized it and they went back the next season was season four. They, for seasons one through three, there were 20, the episodes were 25 minutes long for season four. They made 51 minute episodes. Yeah. Instead that that got too long it was it was it was stretched out they were clearly filling the space and it worked much better with the shorter episodes the longer episodes you sort of were like and by the way like i think like for if if you go for like what were the famous episodes that lots of people know about those weren't the 51 minute episodes you know those were the nice short you know you're you're gonna have you know it moves quickly it gets to the point you you have you know rod sterling come up and make his little statements you know that also were a critical part yeah exactly season four they really did drag it was just you know for this kind of material stretching it out to almost an hour was too much and so for the fifth season they went back to the 25 minute episodes. But overall, thumbs up for Twilight Zone. If you're at all into this kind of stuff, it's worth watching the original.
|
Sam:
[23:20]
| You know, I have on the list to check out, there have been four now. There was the original that ran from 1959 to 1964. Then there was the Twilight Zone movie, of course. And then you had three more TV series. They're all named The Twilight Zone. There was one from 1985 to 1989. There was one from 2002 to 2003. And the most recent was from 2019 to 2020.
|
Ivan:
[23:49]
| I don't think I watched any of the newer ones. I did watch the Twilight Zone movie. That I definitely watched. It was controversial in and of itself. Not so much because of the crash. Because of the crash.
|
Sam:
[24:00]
| Yes. Yeah. For anybody who doesn't remember, there was a helicopter crash. A bunch of the actors were killed. Yeah. Et cetera. And there was some controversy over exactly how that was laid out and safety and blah, blah, blah. I remember watching the 1980s version of Twilight Zone as well. Now, I say I remember watching it. Do I remember any of the episodes? No.
|
Ivan:
[24:25]
| So it was obviously not that good. I will say there was one episode. Listen, there is one episode of Twilight Zone that always, in my mind, has always stuck with me. That's the one that had Burgess Meredith. I looked it up. It was in season two, episode 29. the obsolete man is the is the episode where apparently in a it's a i looked up the plot in a future totalitarian state romney wordsworth spoilers coming spoilers coming spoilers coming romney wordsworth is put on trial for being obsolete his reverse occupation as a librarian is punishable by death as the state has eliminated books and that episode well i'm not going to go the rest of the details because I think it was... It was very interesting. It always stuck to my head how they, you know, this entire thing.
|
Sam:
[25:19]
| Well, when you mentioned Burgess Meredith, I thought you were going to go for time enough at last, which is another episode that he's in that's very famous because of how it ends.
|
Ivan:
[25:30]
| Yeah. Well, I don't know. We'll avoid more spoilers, but Burgess Meredith is very good in the Twilight Zone. He really did a great job. In there. And so, yeah. So he was... It was just... You know, you think about some of these where we're talking about how maybe they sounded like kind of off the wall-ish. But shit... Stuff going on now they're not they don't sound so crazy after all now.
|
Sam:
[26:01]
| Well and and the thing too is that you know 1959 to 1960 what what did i say four yeah 1964 59 to 64 that was a long time ago but most of these episodes hold up really well.
|
Ivan:
[26:24]
| Well yeah that's the.
|
Sam:
[26:26]
| Thing i mean you can laugh at some of the special effects and you can laugh at some of the stylized acting and things like that. But for the most part, the thing that they're trying to get across and the thing that sort of punches you at the end of each episode still works in many, many of these episodes. There are a few that don't, like I said, but on most of them, they're hitting some sort of timeless theme that still applies today. Now, some of them, like, you know, there are a few that didn't last as well, especially the ones where they're, like, talking about, like, you know, some technology thing that, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[27:13]
| Sure, but the thing about it, there aren't that many shows that are that old that really they hold up as well as The Twilight Zone. I, I, it's just, they, they really, it was really, it's a great show.
|
Sam:
[27:31]
| Yeah thumbs up watch twilight zone most of it's uh i think it's on uh paramount so it's on paramount plus streaming okay there you go except for those like one or two episodes with licensing issues and if if you hit one of those you can uh you can find them online okay you can you can you can find them just use your google foo all.
|
Ivan:
[27:51]
| Right so we got so we got you got twilight zone what else.
|
Sam:
[27:54]
| Should i do one more let's yes i'll do yes i'll do one more one more i mean to really catch up, I'd need to do a whole bunch, but like one more is enough. Okay. The next one, oh man. And I forgot to bring up the, this is an AFI list one. So let me bring it up. Sunset Boulevard from 1950, number 12 in the 1998 AFI 100 movies list, number 16 in the 2007 list. This is, I'll read the first couple paragraphs of the plot, the first three paragraphs. At a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, police officers and photographers discover the body of Joe Gillis floating face down in the swimming pool. In a flashback, Joe relates the events leading to his death. Six months earlier, Joe, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter, tries to interest Paramount Pictures in a story he submitted. Script reader Betty Schaefer harshly critiques it, unaware that Joe is listening. Later, while fleeing from repo men seeking his car, Joe turns into the driveway of a seemingly deserted mansion inhabited by forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond.
|
Sam:
[29:12]
| Learning that Joe is a writer, Norma asks his opinion of a script she has written for a film about Salome. She plans to play the role herself in her return to the screen. Joe finds her script abysmal, but flatters her into hiring him as a script doctor. Joe moves into Norma's mansion at her insistence and sees that Norma refuses to believe that her fame has evaporated. Her butler, Max, secretly writes all of the fan mail she receives to maintain the illusion. At her New Year's Eve party, Joe realizes that she has fallen in love with him. He tries to let her down gently, but Norma slaps him and retreats to her room, distraught. Joe visits his friend, Artie Green, and again meets Betty, who thinks a scene in one of Joe's scripts has potential. When he phones Max to have him pack his things, Max tells him Norma has cut her wrists with his razor. Joe then returns to Norma, and their relationship becomes sexual. Dot, dot, dot. It continues. The two of them sort of circle. They have a relationship. It becomes clear that, that she is more and more delusional as time goes on and you deal with all the aftermath of it.
|
Sam:
[30:34]
| No spoilers for the exact ending, but the last line of the movie is iconic. She comes up to the camera and goes, all right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up, and approaches the camera and comes straight into her face. It was good. Thumbs up. I can see why it's up there. Again, for a movie of its time, I say this repeatedly whenever we're talking about 40s or 50s movies, it is stylized. It is not super realistic. The characters are sort of caricatures. But it's okay. It gets the point across and you understand what's happening and you get caught up in the drama of it and this sort of tragedy of what happens. Wikipedia says it's a dark comedy film noir.
|
Sam:
[31:28]
| And yeah, it's good. I don't have a lot to say about it, but it does what it's supposed to do, I guess. And you do have a few things like, the last line is about Cecil B. DeMille. He plays himself in this movie. There are a bunch of other people that play himself themselves. HB Warner of Warner Brothers plays himself. Buster Keaton played himself. There are a few others sort of famous actors and directors who show up playing themselves.
|
Sam:
[32:06]
| It's good. I mean, it's sort of obviously it's a Hollywood movie about Hollywood and it's very self-referential, but that's okay.
|
Sam:
[32:16]
| You know, it was good. I like it. It went well. Gloria Swanson was Norma Desmond. That's another name that might be recognizable. William Holden played Joe Gillis, another name that, you know, recognizable. He's been in a bunch of stuff. Who else? Jack Webb was in it. Those are big names I see here, other than the people playing themselves. So, yeah. Have you ever seen this movie?
|
Ivan:
[32:45]
| No.
|
Sam:
[32:46]
| No. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[32:47]
| No.
|
Sam:
[32:49]
| It's definitely, you know, look, if you like 40s and 50s movies, this is a good example of 40s and 50s movies. If the second it shows up in black and white and with the stylized characters that are caricatures, you get turned off, then you're not going to like this either. But, you know, there you go. That's all I got to say about that. All right. Shall we take a break and then start, like, I don't know. Picking a few of these many, many things that we listed at the beginning of the show that happened.
|
Ivan:
[33:21]
| Yes, many, many wonderful things.
|
Sam:
[33:24]
| Wonderful, yeah, okay. Maybe some of them are wonderful.
|
Ivan:
[33:27]
| Many, many.
|
Sam:
[33:27]
| Some of them less so. Okay, let's hit the break. Here we go. And we're back.
|
Ivan:
[34:41]
| And we're back.
|
Sam:
[34:44]
| So where do you want to start? We got all of these things.
|
Ivan:
[34:47]
| Try to look through this list of shit.
|
Sam:
[34:49]
| Do we want to just try to lightning round this and like jump out of order? Or do we want to like concentrate on a couple of big things?
|
Ivan:
[34:56]
| No, no, no. Let's lightning round this. I think, okay, I'm going to start with one thing because it's a little bit older subject, but I wasn't, I couldn't talk about it. The UPS plane crash. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:09]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[35:11]
| NTSB came out already pretty quickly with a with a report confirming what some of the initial reports showed a whole bunch of people just saying stupid things but bottom line is that before the the preliminary NTSB report which confirmed what what basically most people speculated I mean that that. Let me change that. People that knew about their shit speculated, okay?
|
Ivan:
[35:47]
| So UPS flies MD-11s and DC-10s. So does FedEx. You know, they're big.
|
Ivan:
[35:57]
| Good for cargo carrying, okay? They've been converted. They've been retrofitted. These aircraft have been heavily maintained and updated over time. The DC-10 originally had, in the first decade, had a series of accidents that made people be afraid of flying it at first.
|
Ivan:
[36:22]
| Most of the accidents were related to cargo door-related issues. Those are the big ones that happened at first, where the design of the cargo door failed on a couple of occasions, bringing down, in one case, it almost brought down the plane, another one that killed everybody. And then a big one that is actually, there was a Sioux City accident where an engine blade failed. The engine motor failed. The fan blade failed. It was discovered that, you know, it was a crack in it that was undetected, and that's why it failed. And that's something that actually by the way happened with other aircraft and the inspection process on those changed over time to be able to detect those so the inspection process was better to be able to detect that but this accident goes back to something that happened with american airlines flight in 1979 in chicago which is a major accident is one of the biggest one of the biggest aviation accidents that ever happened was a dc-10 american airlines taken off at o'hare it lost an engine when it lost the engine and.
|
Ivan:
[37:32]
| The airplane very quickly veered off and crashed, and there were no survivors on that flight. And it was found to be that American Airlines at the time, to do maintenance on the engines, had not been following the book procedure exactly to remove those engines and reattach them back to the airplane for an inspection, okay?
|
Ivan:
[37:59]
| You were supposed to take the engine off, and then the pylons that attach, then you remove that from the wing, okay? Because there are these pylons, there are these screws, there's a system that holds it. You see the little pylon, this thing that sticks out, and you see that's holding the damn engine, okay? And then the engine's attached below it. You're supposed to take the engine off of it and then remove the pylon. American had been removing everything in one piece from the wing. What happened was that that was stressing where the engine and the pylon met, was causing a lot of stress. It fatigued it. The people didn't know that they were doing that. And that's why when that engine separated, and at the point that it separated, which is the problem, So it caused it. Well, that also uncovered a whole bunch of other things that happened because it made that. If I remember the slats retracted, which reduced lift. So there was a loss of control. There was a loss of lift on that wing and it made the plane uncontrollable. And it happened at a moment when it was right at takeoff and crashed the plane. Well, in this case.
|
Ivan:
[39:16]
| And the pictures, the video kind of showed it that the plane was rolling normally. And then at the moment of takeoff, right after it reached the point of no return, because there's a speed, reference speed called V1. Once you hit V1, it's a speed usually. So if you take off, say, at 150 knots, V1 is usually about 120 knots. And that's a speed that after that, you can't reject the takeoff. You're too far in. you're better off taking off okay so they were well past v1 they were as a matter of fact when this happened the plane was at v2 speed which is this which is the speed at which you rotate you go and you take off there the plane was rotating as the plane rotated the left engine just all of a sudden became unattached and because of the motion of the engine it's why it unattached in the direction where it turned up.
|
Ivan:
[40:14]
| Probably because of the pushing from the air, coming from under it, pushed it up, and the rotation of the engine made it that it went over the damn MD-11. It flew over it and fell on the right side of the plane. The way that it detached, it caused a massive fire immediately, And debris from that engine hit the number two engine, the tail engine, the one at the top. So they were screwed. It's not like this happened early enough when they could reject the takeoff. They were rotating to take off.
|
Ivan:
[40:57]
| The damn engine came off. It damaged another engine. They were done. There's nothing that they could do. Analysis, like right now, came back and discovered that there were undiscovered cracks in the engine pylon, that it had been developing cracks. That plane had been in a heavy maintenance recently ago, a couple of months ago. So for some reason, they went undetected. Either they went undetected or something happened when they reattached it that caused it to crack. Bottom line is they grounded the entire fleet until they could figure out why the hell that damn thing cracked. But these aircraft have been, they're taken care of very well. UPS has a great reputation of maintenance, okay? They don't skimp on shit. So whatever the hell it is that happened, it's happened because they didn't know. Is something that for some reason went undetected, or they could have been a flaw in that pile-on specifically, and the inspection process is not catching it. But it definitely, another thing that came up is that apparently during the takeoff roll, some master caution alarm went off. Not sure exactly at what moment, but it's very likely that it probably happened after the speed that they could reject the takeoff. The reality is, if they're rolling.
|
Ivan:
[42:22]
| They get that master caution. They're looking at all their dials. Everything looks normal. The procedure you're taught is, listen, which is the one that in norm 99% of the cases works because having an engine fail on takeoff or something like that, it's not something that it's something that a pilot, it's not routine, but it's something that a pilot expects to happen and trains for. And the way that you do is that you take off, you will go around, you'll dump some fuel, you'll come back and you'll land again because the the plane is designed to be able to take off with a failed engine okay it should be able to without a problem so it's not like you know there was no reason to stop a takeoff and the safest and safer thing to do is to do that we've seen pilots try to reject takeoffs late man listen you're gonna overrun the runway you're gonna crash into shit, okay? So that's not an option, okay? Once you reach that moment, the reason you do the math on this in order, what is the takeoff speed at what time? You go, it's because once you get there, if you try to stop, you will not stop. You're going to go off the end of the runway and crash, okay? So you're safer going up. But they don't, why that fatigue has failed?
|
Ivan:
[43:43]
| It's up to, like, right now, figure that out. But the reality is that, in terms of general passengers being concerned about anything. Look, passengers don't fly on MD-11s anymore.
|
Sam:
[43:53]
| Nobody's flying on MD-11s. Aren't they doing a check of that entire fleet for similar problems? Because it isn't one concern. It's just plain age and the inspections weren't finding the type of cracks that we're probably developing here.
|
Ivan:
[44:10]
| Probably.
|
Sam:
[44:11]
| So they might need better inspections to keep these things running.
|
Ivan:
[44:16]
| Yeah, that is probably it. But look, there's a lot of old airplanes flying out there, man. You know, there's so many old planes flying. I mean, I will say that the MD-11s, DC-10s that are flying out there are some of the oldest that are out there. Now, I will say that I know that FedEx retired.
|
Ivan:
[44:37]
| They had these, the DC-10s, which they converted. They called them MD-10s. And what they did is they actually, they took the old DC-10s that required three, they required three crew members. They required a pilot, copilot, and engineer. They had converted those so you could operate them with only two. Replaced the whole glass cockpit. All the avionics got replaced with modern stuff. A lot of upgrades happened to these planes. You know, for cargo airlines to take a plane like that, that has that kind of capacity and spend money is worth it. Because, look, a brand new 777F, okay, you know, brand new freighter, similar to that, costs $200 million, okay? It's not cheap, okay? You could take a 30, 40-year-old MD-11, okay, that used, you could probably get for just a couple of million bucks. Even if you spend 10 million like refitting this thing modern whatever man it's a it's a much better proposition than spending right now 200 million bucks if you can still milk some life out of that airframe okay so you know the the oldest ones of these had been retired which are the the md-10s the ones that were dc-10s converted to that i know fedex retired them i don't think that even UPS flies any of them, but FedEx retired them.
|
Ivan:
[46:04]
| The MD-11s are a lot newer. MD-11s started flying in the 90s.
|
Ivan:
[46:08]
| These are not as old as that. 35 years. Well, 35 years. They're old, but they're not as old as the, I mean, I remember seeing an MD-10 that landed when I was plane spotting like a couple of years ago that was like 40 plus years old, some shit like that. You know, it's like, yeah, I mean, you know, you know, that's really old. And look, our strategic air, you know, air command, you know, we're flying B-52s that were built in the 1950s for God's sakes. Okay. Right. You know, age isn't really that big an issue.
|
Sam:
[46:44]
| Well, you have this whole ship of Theseus effect, right? When you're basically replacing every part of the plane over time. Yeah, absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[46:54]
| The fucking thing is barely, there's almost nothing original left of the damn airplane. Yeah. Right. So, you know, but I felt, you know, the one thing is that, Man, I just felt kind of like, I saw it and I saw what happened. I was just like, fuck these pilots. What a helpless moment. Because usually you're a pilot. You think, look, we can do something to save this plane. We'll do something, right? And there was nothing they could do. They had no shot. They had no way to save that plane. It happened. It's just one of those things when it happens at the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Happened exactly with the wrong fucking moment that just left with no way to do anything to save the aircraft.
|
Sam:
[47:46]
| Which also, in this case, there were a lot of people killed and hurt on the ground as well.
|
Ivan:
[47:52]
| Most of them that were killed wound up being on the ground.
|
Sam:
[47:55]
| Because the crew was small.
|
Ivan:
[47:57]
| Yeah, there were only three people on the plane.
|
Sam:
[48:00]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[48:01]
| Yeah. Look, thank God it didn't hit. But because there is a Ford Motor auto plant right by there where apparently a few thousand people worked every day. Thank God it didn't hit that. But it's not exactly on the flight path, thank God, which I guess is a good thing. But look, I mean, we've had...
|
Ivan:
[48:25]
| You know, planes fly over populated areas regularly. It's a risk. It happens. Still never, you know, one of the worst that I always remember that was with a cargo plane, an LL-747 that hit a frickin' They had a problem after takeoff. It was trying to return to Schiphol, and it hit a fuckin' apartment building. Sliced it in half. I mean, you want to talk about the worst, you know, what are your worst fuckin' nightmares? is to have a 747 slam into a fucking apartment building, of all things. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's just unfortunately one of those things. But luckily, they don't happen very often, thank God. Okay? So a lot of work goes into making sure that that doesn't happen. But yeah, but these guys had no shot, unfortunately. What happened was totally unexpected. And now they're right now yeah we know what we know what happened just not why and so until they figure it out and i think boeing by the way right now is being very because of all the shit that's happened with boeing the last couple of years they've been like yep whatever he says and just yeah just.
|
Sam:
[49:43]
| Just to be clear even though it's an md for mcdonald douglas they were bought by boeing a long time ago.
|
Ivan:
[49:48]
| Yeah i mean boeing and mcdonald douglas merged like what the heck was it 25 26 years ago almost 30 years ago so yeah so these are these are all there may be mcdonald douglas but, boeing owns mcdonald douglas so that's all that on them now so right you know i i flew on the dc10 a, You know, it felt very spacious inside. I don't know. I always liked just the, here's the thing. They used to, airlines used to fly a lot more of these wide bodies on domestic flights. Okay. Back then, 70s and 80s. They thought that was the way, and so they had a whole bunch of these. And I remember being able to fly a freaking, you know, more ordinary like flights, you know, that now you get a 737 on a DC-10. And it was, it was awesome. I like that. It's huge. But they used to have on American Airlines for a few years, back in the 80s, they had this camera that was in the cockpit that would on the televisions inside the plane would show the departure, would show live video of the departure and takeoff. Right. Which they turned off after there was an accident that happened. It wound up like people, I guess, were watching the accident. They were like, I guess, let's just not turn those on.
|
Sam:
[51:15]
| Yeah. I mean, now you have those little displays with the map and stuff. But, yeah, the cameras are cool.
|
Ivan:
[51:22]
| The cameras are cool. Airbus actually does a lot more where they actually put this camera view that I find that's really cool. That's at the top of the stabilizer wing. Right at the top. So, you get this view, like a video game view of the plane as it's flying. Nice. And that view is super cool. And you usually select that in the planes that have that on the entertainment screen. You can pick to watch that view. You can see the takeoff and landing and everything of the plane. That view is super cool. Okay? I got to tell you, that is a super cool view. Yeah. If you get on an Airbus, A380s, A330s, A340s, they usually have that. If you get on one of those, make sure to pick that view. You will not regret it. You'll love it.
|
Sam:
[52:10]
| Okay. Shall we move on?
|
Ivan:
[52:12]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[52:13]
| Okay. Let me hit these in order. We've got things we haven't talked about in previous weeks besides the UPS crash, but let's just stick with this week. We had the vote on the Epstein files. And it was nearly unanimous. It was unanimous in the Senate. It was nearly unanimous in the House. I think there was one person who voted against it.
|
Ivan:
[52:39]
| And I thought it was like, so it was nearly unanimous. Okay.
|
Sam:
[52:45]
| Yeah, I think in the end there was one.
|
Ivan:
[52:47]
| Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. It was like 400 something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:51]
| Yeah, to one. And apparently there was some back and forth. Like, did he really mean it? Or was it an accident? Or what was going on? But whatever. Anyway, bottom line, it was nearly unanimous in the House and it was actually passed by unanimous consent in the Senate. And look, the deal was that it was clear that they had the numbers and it would pass in the House by a very significant margin. So Trump a few days before the vote just went I don't care vote for it I'll sign it I'm for this go ahead and clearly he was not actually happy about it but he was in a position where he was gonna get absolutely rolled anyway like if he continued his opposition of it he was still gonna lose badly so he flipped it up and was like okay no I'm for it and as soon as he said that, All the Republicans were on board, you know, and so it's.
|
Ivan:
[53:57]
| It's just it. But, Sam, this is just going to expose the Democrat pedophile ring.
|
Sam:
[54:04]
| Right? Oh, yes. Yes. This is only the Democrats. Look, here are a couple of things with this that people are talking about now that it's passed. First of all, like when this first started being discussed, I had at one point said on the show that I thought they were just doing a resolution with no legal force. No, no, no. This was an actual law saying you must release this, etc. However, there are a bunch of caveats and exceptions. And first of all, they give 30 days for the release. Second, anything that would affect ongoing investigations is exempt. Also, of course, there's instructions to redact anything about the victims, which you would expect anyway. A bunch of other things. The biggest thing here is that it gives the ongoing investigation situation. The Trump administration's official line up until about a week and a half ago was, we've already examined all this fully. There's no potential other cases to examine. There's no evidence here that he was blackmailing people. There's no other people that we have the evidence to bring to trial, etc which, who knows may be true, may not be true who knows, but that was the line they had but.
|
Sam:
[55:30]
| Then, as it became clear that they were going to lose and this thing was going to pass, all of a sudden, Donald Trump is, okay, you're going to open an investigation into all the Democrats. And Bondi was like, yes, sir.
|
Ivan:
[55:45]
| Yes, I will. Only the Democrats.
|
Sam:
[55:47]
| And only the Democrats. Yes. And and so now there's the potential that after the 30 days are up, they'll do something like, well, we can't release most of this because it's pertinent to our ongoing investigation of the Democrats.
|
Ivan:
[56:04]
| I fully expect I fully expect right now for Bondi to do the same thing that she did in February.
|
Sam:
[56:14]
| Give out the empty folders.
|
Ivan:
[56:16]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[56:18]
| Well, I mean, people have said, you know, one possibility that comes out of this is a whole bunch of pages of stuff that is almost 100% redacted gets released.
|
Ivan:
[56:28]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[56:29]
| You know, and... I guess part of the calculus here is, look, this ended up with massive bipartisan support for transparency and release the files. You got things coming out of this with basically the Republicans went back to their districts over the long government shutdown break, and they heard from their constituents, their ruby red MAGA constituents, release the files. And a big part of that is because they want to get that Democratic pedophile ring. And they felt like that's one of the main reasons they were into this thing from the beginning. It's because they thought Donald Trump would get the Democratic pedophile ring. And so what the hell is happening? Release the files and get those folks. And they heard that over and over and over from their constituents. So the question is, if they do try to stonewall and say, well, we can't actually release all of it, or what we can release is, you know, black pages. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[57:40]
| And 90% is covered in black.
|
Sam:
[57:43]
| Yeah. You know, the MAGA base is not going to react well to that, you know?
|
Ivan:
[57:50]
| But they aren't reacting well to it right now. Listen, people, listen, there are so many MAGA people that I keep seeing disappointed, defrauded. Fuck, I mean, it goes even to the whole, MTG just quit, man.
|
Sam:
[58:07]
| Yeah, and we'll talk about her more later probably.
|
Ivan:
[58:11]
| But my point is that what you keep hearing is complete, utter disappointment. Right. They are just completely, you know, there was an article on Epstein's emails, I think it was November 13th, okay? And they did this thing where they were like mapping, this is in the New York Times, they were mapping the name mentions in his emails, the ones that they got.
|
Sam:
[58:41]
| Ah, right, yes.
|
Ivan:
[58:42]
| And it showed that basically when you when you looked at names that were mentioned in Epstein's emails, it was like fucking Trump was like overwhelmingly mentioned.
|
Sam:
[58:56]
| The one thing I have to say about this is that if you look, the chart showed mentions over time as well.
|
Ivan:
[59:04]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[59:05]
| And what happened is before 2015, there were sporadic mentions of Trump and lots of mentions of other people starting 2015 and accelerating into 2016, 17, 18. Suddenly, the mentions of Trump exploded. But here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[59:25]
| Well, he was running for president.
|
Sam:
[59:27]
| He was running for president and then he was president. I mean, our mentions of Donald Trump on this show exploded dramatically in 2015 as well.
|
Ivan:
[59:36]
| No, but but but my I get that.
|
Sam:
[59:39]
| And like a lot of a lot of the conversations seem to be around. It wasn't just like, oh, we're talking more about Donald Trump because he's more involved. It was we're talking about Donald Trump because he's president. Now, there was an undertone of and we've got shit on Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[59:58]
| That's what I'm talking about. Because the entire undertone of all of those was that we've got the goods on this bastard.
|
Sam:
[1:00:07]
| Right. But the emails that we've seen so far don't actually have the goods. They just talk about...
|
Ivan:
[1:00:17]
| But they talk about it.
|
Sam:
[1:00:19]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:20]
| Well, listen, I...
|
Sam:
[1:00:22]
| And that's, of course, why there's the push to release everything, because this is just the emails that were released by the Epstein estate. What the FBI has, theoretically, is everything they got by raiding this guy's house, which there's been inventories of them that have been published, where there's lots of video recordings. Sam, let me ask you a question. There's lots of logs. There's lots of this. There's lots of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:49]
| I fully—OK. I fully expect that they will stonewall even further. Now, the one thing about all the stonewalling, Sam, I mean, Sam, I've never seen anybody look more guilty in my life and afraid of something coming out than Donald Trump with these Epstein files. Because what in all fucking hell if he didn't think that Epstein had him by the balls? And apparently it could be literally here.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:26]
| What that, why would he be stonewalling this much of it? You know, it's like, let me give you my personal example, okay? You know, I was over here when I was president of the condo board and all these people started accusing that supposedly, you know, a whole bunch of people were upset because of a project and they said that I was on the take, that I was taking money under the table. My whole thing was, here, take the presidency, take all the records, here are all the records. Here's everything. Go through it. Knock yourself out. Tell me what you find. You're a fucking smoking gun. Go through everything. Here's everything. Let me know. That's what you do when you're confident that you never did anything. That's exactly what you do. You know? You just turn over everything. You're like, here, knock yourself out. You know? Plus, in an investigation specifically, you know, if you get a subpoena for something, like many times, if they discover some ancillary stuff, but they're looking for X, they can't, they can't use that. Okay. Except in very rare cases. Okay. They can't, if you're, you can't just go, it's not a fishing expedition. Okay. Right. You're looking for records.
|
Sam:
[1:02:48]
| You have to be looking for specific things.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:49]
| Exactly. You're looking for it that ties this to that. You know, you find the other stuff too bad okay you didn't have probable cause to look for you can't you can't use it and so forth but so but this i i've never seen anybody ever act more guilty than donald trump and scared right i mean that's the.
|
Sam:
[1:03:12]
| Whole theme here and and and also the, I'm going to use the word cover-up. The cover-up here has been so blatant and so obvious that they've been doing everything they possibly can to avoid this stuff coming out, that it's become obvious even to the MAGA faithful.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:34]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:35]
| You know, who are looking for every possible excuse to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt. Even they are scratching their heads and going, what's he doing here?
|
Ivan:
[1:03:47]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:48]
| You know, and if we go through these 30 days and then, as everybody seems to expect, there's more stonewalling, there's more obfuscation, there's more, you know, hey, we're going to release stuff, but it's all redacted. Oh, but, oh, look, you see all the Democratic names, but no Republican names. If you see all the, it's all, it's all just going to make them look even worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:16]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:04:17]
| And, of course, you also have, by the way, you still have all these people on the right going, well, how would you feel if Bill Clinton's in there? Fuck him.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:29]
| So he's in there. And that's always the guilty hypocrite line, which I always love. So, you know, or the guilty hypocrite guy in a cult line. One of your guys in there. Well, I'm not in a fucking cult, so if my guy's in there and he's guilty, fucking send him to jail, asshole. I'm not in a cult. You are!
|
Sam:
[1:04:56]
| Yes, exactly. And we keep hearing, like... I don't know. We keep hearing more things. We talked on last week's show about the whole thing about Bubba.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:09]
| Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[1:05:11]
| The latest I heard from apparently a British— Well.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:16]
| It's not Bill Clinton, and it's not a horse, apparently. So what's the latest?
|
Sam:
[1:05:20]
| No, no, no, not about Bubba. The latest thing I heard, there's a British reporter saying he had a story that he was going to use for his book or something years ago, but the publisher wouldn't go with it, but now he's talking about it, was apparently he has plenty of evidence that, well, yeah. It's just another interesting thing that- Plenty of evidence that what? A previous girlfriend of Epstein's, in addition to Ghislaine, was Melania before she got traded to Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:56]
| The fuck?
|
Sam:
[1:05:59]
| Now i have not seen this confirmed by anybody else but it was in like one of the british newspapers, and apparently there are quotes in the email about some other one that epstein was done with and he said so i gave her to trump yeah but apparently that may have happened with melania as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:23]
| Fucking hell.
|
Sam:
[1:06:24]
| Now, Melania wasn't 13 at the time, but still.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:29]
| Still.
|
Sam:
[1:06:30]
| Anyway, this is all messy.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:32]
| But you know where this goes, this way of...
|
Sam:
[1:06:36]
| And by the way, like I said, I've heard one reporter talk about this. I haven't seen it confirmed, so it may be bullshit. So I just want to say that.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:43]
| Listen, this whole theme of talking about women like their property, okay, is so prevalent amongst the right-wing male.
|
Sam:
[1:06:55]
| Which, and by the way, publicly too, I mean, Donald Trump was talking about, you know, how Epstein stole his staff from Mar-a-Lago just a few weeks ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:07]
| No, but I was thinking the other day, Jesse, I don't know why the fuck I watched a clip of Jesse Waters. Okay, all right.
|
Sam:
[1:07:16]
| Oh, yeah, I think I saw this.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:18]
| He is such a pig of a of a of a of a band there is some discussion related to podcasts and some podcasts that was first where there was a discussion i can't remember exactly is somebody famous and he started talking to these are the women that are on the show with him okay all right and he started talking to them like it was just the most disrespectful way to talk about a woman or to to talk to a woman that i ever see and i'm like thinking holy fucking hell how how are these women sitting at that desk working with this man and not i mean because if i would have been there i would have fucking i mean i might have punched him in the face okay because he was that disrespectful but i realize that this passes as you know whatever fucking dumbass show at five o'clock in the afternoon they put on fox as normal this is the way to talk to women, and i'm just sitting there and i'm like holy shit, And it's just this whole entire continuum of how all of these people, like the Charlie Kirks and all of these people, talk about and treat women.
|
Sam:
[1:08:45]
| Well, and I think part of it is right-wing. I think part of the culture that we're talking about, like it's specifically in Epstein circles, are these. Oh, God. Not only like many of them right-wing, not all of them, but like mostly rich white men, right? that are just absolutely entitled and feel that they are owed everything. And if they want something, they should get it. Period. End of story.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:14]
| And it's not just the rich guys. Look, there's a reason why we have all these incels. Okay. The incels believe that they are entitled to fucking sex and the women are denying it to them, but they're not the rich billionaires that could just buy it.
|
Sam:
[1:09:28]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:29]
| So you've got this generation. Yes, you've got of the rich guys that do this. But then you've got the other guys that don't have that money who believe they're entitled to it anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:09:41]
| Yes. It's disastrous. But I think what you're seeing, and I don't know. I honestly hope that we at some point actually get these, a fairly good view of these files, because I think you are going to find that, you know, there were probably dozens of these rich, influential men who participated directly. And then you've probably got hundreds of people that were around and surrounding and knew what was going on and just shrugged and did nothing and allowed it to happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:22]
| Yeah. And that's a lot of what you've got. Yeah. Ah, I, I, I. This is not going away anytime soon, Sam. You know, they've tried to make it go away. And what they've made it is maybe it's subdued for a little bit. And then every time it comes back, it comes back worse.
|
Sam:
[1:10:44]
| Right. I mean, if you remember, you know, we were talking about, like, this stuff back in 2016, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:10:55]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:10:55]
| Before Donald Trump was elected the goddamn first time.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:00]
| But it wasn't Epstein directly. It wasn't all Epstein.
|
Sam:
[1:11:05]
| Well, I mean, if you remember that one 13-year, that one woman who was putting the lawsuit that said she was raped by Donald Trump when she was 13, it was Epstein and Trump that was in that case. And then she withdrew the case because she was getting death threats. And, you know, look, and so we, we have heard this and there were, you know, their interviews, there was, you know, recently within the last few weeks, I, somebody reposted an audio interview with that woman and I had remembered the case. I had not remembered hearing the audio of her deposition before. And it was absolutely explicit and going into all this detail. And it was out in 2016. It was out there and it was mostly ignored. And there were other examples. There were people who, in various other contexts, talked about Donald's exploits and all the things he'd done. And then, you know, we had, what was it, like nearly 20 women who explicitly came out and accused him of assault before the 2016 election.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:23]
| And of course we had to grab him by— But those were—I remember those were adults. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:12:28]
| Those were adults. I remember that they were adults. With the exception of the 113-year-old, those were adults.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:32]
| The 113— And of course we had to grab him by the pussy. Now this is the next level.
|
Sam:
[1:12:36]
| Yes. Yes. But no, there were even like some interviews out there talking about Donald Trump with underage people, even back then, even if, you know, even if there were some.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:48]
| No, no, no, we talked. We had heard the stuff about him walking into the beauty pageants with the teenage girls undressed and all this other stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:12:58]
| And, you know, collectively, you know, enough Americans didn't give a shit that he became president. And twice now, twice now. So, but I think you're right. It's not going away.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:14]
| Well, the thing is that a big portion of the MAGA contingent believed that all of that was BS, but that the Democrats were running a pedophile ring out of, you know, out of a pizza joint in Washington, D.C.
|
Sam:
[1:13:33]
| Yes, absolutely. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:37]
| It's amazing how they will ignore the factually documented shit right in front of their face, but will make up, will go through every contortion to try to make up some alternate reality that fits their story.
|
Sam:
[1:13:56]
| Indeed. Okay. Your turn.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:59]
| Another happy subject.
|
Sam:
[1:14:00]
| Should we take a break and do another two since we've taken this much time? Sure.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:03]
| Or should you want to do two more and then a break? No, no, no, no, no. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, yeah, no, go, go, go. Yeah, let's take a break.
|
Sam:
[1:14:08]
| Okay, here comes a break. OK.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:00]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[1:15:00]
| We're back. So let's do two more. Another break, then two more, then be done.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:04]
| Comey. Hey, how's that case going? It is, is, is, you know, look, is Lindsay Halligan apparently a crack attorney? She seems to be really, really good, right? She did everything by the book, right?
|
Sam:
[1:15:19]
| Yes, of course. She's she's crushing it. But I mean, the case hasn't been dismissed yet, but it seems like every other day they find something else wrong with it. Like, you know, we know that they were, you know, they're trying to dismiss it on the grounds that she was appointed inappropriately. They're trying to dismiss it on the grounds that this is selective prosecution. Both of those are in play because it looks clear that both of those things are true. She was, she was not appointed legally. And so therefore anything she did is probably void. And there's lots of clear evidence that there are lots of similar cases out there that they're not going after. And Donald Trump specifically called for this. And it's like, you know, selective prosecution is apparently really, really, really hard to prove. But like in this case, you've got a lot of the key players basically saying so out loud that that's what they're doing. And then the latest thing is apparently they neglected to actually pass the final version of the indictment past the grand jury.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:29]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:16:30]
| Like what happened was they gave a copy of the indictment with three counts to the grand jury. The grand jury said no to one of the three counts. But what you're supposed to do, apparently, is then resubmit the indictment with only the two counts and have them vote on that.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:48]
| But I also thought that they made changes to the other two, to one of the other two counts as well, on top of the fact that they fucking resubmitted it. So therefore, it's like, whatever, you didn't present the fucking charges back to the grand jury to approve.
|
Sam:
[1:17:05]
| That appears to be the case. And so they basically just treated it as, you know, oh, well, on the first time around, they voted no for this one, but yes, on these two. So therefore, we can just go ahead and submit the one with these two, and it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. They didn't follow the procedures, which, by the way, this is also why, if you remember, when this was first submitted to the judge, they accidentally submitted the one with three. As well as the one with two. And the judge is like, what the hell is this? Why do I have two? And why are they different?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:17:42]
| Well, and apparently this is why. And so the final version of the indictment was not actually approved by the grand jury. Apparently it was signed off on by the foreman, but that's not what you're supposed to do. You need the whole grand jury to vote on the actual indictment that's being presented. And apparently that didn't happen. So this just adds yet another layer of the things that they've done wrong on this. And by the way, a whole bunch of these, you know, the first two that I mentioned also applied to the Letitia James case. The last one was specific to the Comey case. But also there's some additional questions about who is actually present when in the grand jury and whether there was a gap in the transcripts that wasn't supposed to be there of what happened to the grand jury. There are a couple of incidents they've mentioned where apparently whoever was talking, whether it was what's-her-name or somebody else, actually misrepresented the law in a certain case.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:49]
| Oh, that's right. I also saw that, yes, that they actually misrepresented the law as well, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:18:54]
| And then there's one place where they said, now, don't worry if you don't see all the evidence and what we're showing you. Trust us, we have a lot more than we're showing you. Um that's all no you know that's all the other no no so yes thing after thing after thing after thing that they're doing wrong um, You know, these things are going to get dismissed. They will not make it to trial. It's amazing. And frankly, they will be lucky, you know, if they don't come out of this with like without losing their bar licenses.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:31]
| I don't think they're going to be that lucky, Sam. Look, almost every lawyer that Trump has forced to do shit like this has wound up being the spark.
|
Sam:
[1:19:45]
| There has been a long trail of those yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:48]
| Yeah i mean these people like somebody said that they have decided that in order to go to be at the altar of trump they've decided to just go and like basically just burn their fucking bar license in service of trump but and you know they're going to wind up like, you know, what's his name? Fucking Giuliani.
|
Sam:
[1:20:13]
| Yes. One of many. But yes, Giuliani is one of those.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:18]
| Where all his assets are being auctioned, where everybody is after him, where he is just completely, you know, living up. You know, he's not, he's not destitute as far as I can tell, but he's not living it up as he used to be. That's for damn sure. He is under siege.
|
Sam:
[1:20:33]
| He is probably the most. He is perhaps the most dramatic fall from grace of all of these people because, you know, he was America's mayor and all this after 9-11. And, you know, and then over the course of time since then, by by hooking his star to Donald Trump, he's completely destroyed his reputation. You know, hell, even among mega people, like they don't have a high opinion of Rudy Giuliani at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:02]
| No, no.
|
Sam:
[1:21:02]
| Because he's proven himself to be an utter clown.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:06]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:21:06]
| You know, and part of this, I think part of this is age related, to be honest, with Giuliani as well. Like he does not have the same faculties he did a couple decades ago. But also it's just like. Oh, but come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:21]
| He's just another fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:21:23]
| He's just an asshole.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:24]
| He's yeah he's just another grifter like all of these are you know they're all the same it's so fucked up it's all the same shit you know he he thought that he could make you know he was a partner at a major law firm making millions of dollars for basically doing jack shit nothing Just putting his name under on their fucking, you know, roster of attorneys. It lifted prestige. That's it. And for that, he made 4 million, 5 million a year. He burned that to the, he burned that to the ground for what? You know, he made millions of consulting and whatever. Now he's just, nope, who's going to hire him? Nobody hires him.
|
Sam:
[1:22:11]
| No. No. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:13]
| But Trump did pardon him, I guess, right? Finally Trump did finally pardon him. I thought I heard that recently. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:22:20]
| I thought that recently. Look it up. I hadn't heard that.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:24]
| You know, and you know.
|
Sam:
[1:22:25]
| Most of his stuff is civil anyway. It's not like he was under.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:30]
| Yeah, no, no, no. But no, no, no. Obviously that can't discharge that. But, yeah, on November 10th, Trump partners Rudy Giuliani, another of key figures, allegedly. So he decided involved to overturn the 2020 election. So, you know, he did give him a pardon. But, of course, that doesn't help him with the financial issues. But he finally gave him a pardon.
|
Sam:
[1:22:52]
| Was he actually in Sidney Powell?
|
Ivan:
[1:22:54]
| Was he under any federal?
|
Sam:
[1:22:57]
| Are these preemptive? Or was he actually under federal indictment?
|
Ivan:
[1:23:00]
| Well, he had been under investigation in the past. He wasn't under indictment, but I guess he gave him one of these preemptive pardons.
|
Sam:
[1:23:06]
| Well, and I know there were various state efforts that included him, but that's a different ballgame.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:10]
| Too. Yeah, but that doesn't.
|
Sam:
[1:23:11]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:12]
| Yeah. So, yeah. So, he did do that for him. Gave him a pardon. Doesn't really help that much because he didn't really have any federal charges, but...
|
Sam:
[1:23:25]
| Okay. We were talking about Comey, right? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:31]
| But it's this whole thing. But the whole thing is, you know, again, it goes back. The reason I mentioned Giuliani is because all these people keep shredding a bar license to go and do Trump's bidding. And Lindsey Halligan and whoever the hell. So the people are going to be up the bat. They're going to shred their bar licenses.
|
Sam:
[1:23:51]
| Another example that I don't think is going to last long, but it was just reported in the last 48 hours that another portion of the DOJ was actually investigating the folks that were going after all these people for mortgage fraud, for having improperly brought on board people to the investigations who weren't authorized to do so. Now, I suspect, you know, this is some, you know, career person in the DOJ who's trying to actually do their job the way it used to, the way it was supposed to be done, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:24:29]
| We're going to just end that. Following the law, that ends now.
|
Sam:
[1:24:35]
| They will be fired. As soon as we find out about it. I'm surprised they have not already been fired. They will be gone. These investigations will be over because the thing that's absolutely clear is the Trump DOJ is intended to operate under his direct command to go after the people he wants to have gone after. End of story. End of story. And they should, you know, any time they're going after somebody that Trump actually likes, those people are getting fired, regardless of whether the thing they're going after has any merit or not. That is not part of the equation.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:13]
| That has no bearing on it.
|
Sam:
[1:25:15]
| So... Anything else on this, or it's my turn now?
|
Ivan:
[1:25:20]
| It's your turn now.
|
Sam:
[1:25:21]
| Okay. Let's talk about this Ukrainian peace deal thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:26]
| Oh, come on, man. The Ukrainian peace deal. It's, what, another fucking joke? I mean, all of these are a joke. There is no peace deal. This is a Ukrainian capitulation document.
|
Sam:
[1:25:45]
| Essentially, yes. I mean, the key elements. Now, the one thing I will say for it is it does include one element that you and I have said might be part of any ceasefire, which is the Russians have agreed that the territorial concessions to Russia will just recognize the facts on the ground and not the legal claim. So that it says we'll freeze the lines of combat.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:16]
| The lines of combat where they are.
|
Sam:
[1:26:18]
| Right. And any further discussion of this has to happen through diplomatic means, not through force. But it doesn't require the Ukrainians to give up their claim to that territory. That's the one thing that I can say is a slight concession because the Russians previously had wanted the Ukrainians to outright just give them the territory.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:38]
| Yeah, but come on, man. Look, they've occupied Crimea for like a decade. And, you know, like that is, you know, I mean, the Russians are not going to give up anything back like that once they have it. So it's just, you know, whatever. There were a couple of other things that were positive. And look, there was this one part where apparently the deal had something where Russian assets that were foreign could be given to Ukraine in order for them to rebuild. There was like a substantial amount of money discussed in there over $100 billion of frozen assets that could be used by Ukraine.
|
Sam:
[1:27:18]
| This is typical, of course, for Donald Trump deals where he thinks like, just pay them, undoes everything, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:26]
| But but that was that was in there. But other than that, I mean, it's just now, man.
|
Sam:
[1:27:32]
| Well, I mean, it's full of things like NATO promises that Ukraine will never be part of NATO.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:38]
| Right. And they're supposed to put I can't remember something in the Constitution, barring them from stuff. It's just from attempting it.
|
Sam:
[1:27:46]
| And caps on the size of the military and and and restriction on NATO can't put forces in Ukraine either.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:54]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:27:54]
| Right. All kinds of stuff like that. It basically says if Russia wanted to, at some point, try again, They're making sure that Ukraine would not be in a position to defend themselves a second time there. Now, it does say Ukraine can apply for EU membership. So it does have that. Not NATO, but EU.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:17]
| There are also a thing about security guarantees. But listen, this deal is very one sided and just it's just one thing I saw.
|
Sam:
[1:28:27]
| One thing I saw actually since we started the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, of course. I just want to say this. I saw this out of the 28 points. I saw this one posted right when we were starting the show. And I probably should verify this, but what the hell? If this is wrong, I'm sure somebody will correct me. Point 27 apparently is structured specifically for Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:58]
| I don't think this is real.
|
Sam:
[1:29:00]
| I don't think this is real. So I shouldn't say it.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:02]
| I don't, no.
|
Sam:
[1:29:04]
| I don't, I'm looking at it. I know the Peace Council things.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:07]
| It sounds, it sounds, I thought I had read the point, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:29:12]
| Let's do, let me bring up the Axios version of this that I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:16]
| All of these powers continue forever, even after he leaves office?
|
Sam:
[1:29:20]
| Well, what they what they're doing is setting up a commission, an independent commission that just happens to be headed by Donald Trump that makes a bunch your decisions. Let me look up the, like I said, I'm going to look up Axios. Hold on. Hold on. Give me a minute.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:34]
| Beep boop, beep boop.
|
Sam:
[1:29:36]
| Uh here we go okay here here is axios put trump's full 28 point ukraine russia peace plan and so let's see you're kidding me i i saw more of this here now now i'm hitting a paywall i didn't hit the paywall the first time i looked at this damn thing let me see peace plan blah blah blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:03]
| It is on.
|
Sam:
[1:30:05]
| What's the name of the thing yeah okay the article in Axios Trump's full 28 point Ukraine Russia peace plan I'll look it up in Apple News too at the same time you'll probably get to it for faster.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:21]
| 28 point oh wait here we go Trump's full 28 point Ukraine peace plan here you go I'll send you the Ah! It crashed!
|
Sam:
[1:30:33]
| Okay, I've got it in front of me. Okay, here are the 28 points.
|
Sam:
[1:30:41]
| Doo, doo, doo. Same from the future here. I am about to embark on reading all 28 points of this thing. And it's not even the actual like text, text. It's like a summary of them. But anyway, it ended up taking about six and a half minutes for me to do so. And then afterwards, Yvonne and I started talking about how, well, actually, maybe that was a little bit excessive. Maybe I didn't need to do all that. Maybe I should go back and insert something to tell you guys to, you know, if you normally listen at 1x speed, maybe go to 1.5. If you normally listen at 1.5, maybe go to 2x. If you normally listen at 2x, I don't know, maybe just skip the whole six and a half minutes. Maybe just skip the whole six and a half minutes anyway. I don't know. Anyway, we talk about the 28 points, but like, yeah, most of the discussion is after I read them all. And that's, you know, six and a half minutes of your time that you could like speed up or whatever.
|
Sam:
[1:31:44]
| Ivana actually suggested that I just go ahead and preemptively speed up the six and a half minutes to make it take a lot less time, you know, do like the chipmunk effect and stuff. I said, no, I wasn't going to do that. But I did agree in the end to put in this little notice before I do the 28. Of course, I'm rambling so long that you could have just listened to the six and a half minutes. I mean, not quite, but close. Anyway, you have been warned. Do, do, do!
|
Ivan:
[1:32:18]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[1:32:19]
| Number one, Ukraine's sovereignty will be confirmed. As I can lose my ability to speak. Number one, Ukraine's sovereignty will be confirmed. Number two, a comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine, and Europe. All ambiguities of last 30 years will be considered settled. Now, this is one of those things, by the way, a comprehensive agreement will be concluded. This is not the comprehensive agreement, right? This This is all like vaporware. Number three.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:51]
| This is like a letter of intent, basically, is what you've got here.
|
Sam:
[1:32:55]
| Number three, it is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and NATO will not expand further. Number four, a dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security and increase opportunities. That's another letter of intent.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:18]
| The disagreement will be legally binding. Okay, by the way, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:33:21]
| Don't jump ahead. Let me give all 28.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:24]
| All right, fine, fine.
|
Sam:
[1:33:26]
| Fine. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees. Specifically, the U.S. and its NATO allies would treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire transatlantic community, which is interesting because that's essentially what NATO membership would give. Number six, the size of the Ukrainian armed forces will be limited to 600,000 compared to their 850,000 or so that they actually have right now. Seven, Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future. Eight, NATO agrees not to station troops in Ukraine. Right. Nine, European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland. Ten, the U.S. guarantee. The U.S. will receive compensation for the guarantee. If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee. If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated. Recognition of the new territory and all other benefits of the deal will be revoked. If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St. Petersburg without cause, The security guarantee will be deemed invalid.
|
Sam:
[1:34:38]
| Eleven, Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market. Twelve, a powerful global package of measures to rebuild Ukraine, including but not limited to the creation of a Ukraine development fund. The United States will cooperate with Ukraine to jointly rebuild, modernize, and operate Ukraine's gas infrastructure, join efforts to rehabilitate war-affected areas, infrastructure development, extraction of minerals and natural resources, and the World Bank will develop a special financing package. Number 13, Russia will be reintegrated into global economy, lifting of sanctions, a long-term economic cooperation agreement with the U.S., and Russia will be invited to rejoin the G8. Number 14, frozen funds will be used as follows. $100 billion in frozen assets to be invested in U.S.-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine. The U.S. will receive 50% of the profits from the venture, of course. Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:35]
| Wait, no. Wait, no. Donald Trump will receive 50% of the profits. What are you talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:35:41]
| Europe will add $100 billion to increase the amount of investment available. Frozen European funds will be unfrozen. 15, a joint American-Russian working group on security issues. 16, Russia will enshrine and allot its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine. 17, United States and Russia will agree to extend the validity of treaties on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Eighteen, Ukraine agrees to be a non-nuclear state. Number 19, the Zafirina, however you say that, nuclear power plant will be launched under the supervision of IAEA. Electricity produced will be distributed equally between Russia and Ukraine. Twenty, both countries undertake to implement educational programs in schools and society and get promoting understanding. Twenty-one. So look, most of these points, by the way, are either just.
|
Sam:
[1:36:34]
| Diplomatic gobbledygook, like we'll have a commission, we'll talk about whatever, letter of intent kind of stuff. There are a few that aren't, that seem fairly innocuous and potentially positive. The key ones about, they're not necessarily mechanisms in place to really enforce some of these and distinctly limiting Ukraine's ability to defend itself. Anyway, 21. Territories. Crimea, Lushank, and Donetsk will be recognized as de facto Russian, including by the U.S. Kirsten and Zafiriza will be frozen along the lines of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the lines of contact. Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside of the five. Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk oblast that they currently control. Withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer.
|
Sam:
[1:37:30]
| Number 22, after agreeing on future territorial arrangements, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force. Any security guarantees will not apply in the event of a breach of this commitment. The key element here is they're agreeing to de facto control, but not de jure. So Ukraine is not giving up its claims. 23, Russia will not prevent Ukraine from using the Dnieper River for commercial activities. Number 24, humanitarian committee will be established to resolve outstanding issues like prisoners, detainees, family reunification. Number 25, Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days. Number 26, all parties involved in this conflict will receive full amnesty for their actions. And I'll skip 27 because that's the key one that we were talking about. 28, once all parties agree to this memorandum, we'll take effect immediately. And back to 27, agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council headed by President Donald J. Trump. Sanctions will be imposed for violations. And that's all it says on that item.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:38]
| Well, that's all it says, but it doesn't guarantee the term or whatever. I mean, come on, give me a break. I mean, even if he heads it, I mean, somebody else is president. They're going to dump him on that. This isn't exactly what I'm saying. This isn't exactly like, oh, my God, he's been named forever to a fucking council. This is one of those positions, like, you know, the moment the new president comes in, oh, you're ahead of that? Fuck, you're gone. Bye, see ya. You know, so...
|
Sam:
[1:39:01]
| Yeah, yeah. I mean... The other things that were in this post.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:08]
| Listen, I think the main thing about this treaty is that it's imposing on Ukraine right now. Just it's this whole thing that they have been adamantly opposed the entire time. That, you know, which is why Russia has been fighting for inches of territory. Inches. Because what they want is, oh, we'll stop the war just where the lines are frozen. That's it. And that's ours.
|
Sam:
[1:39:37]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:38]
| They aren't, you know, and usually in a lot of these conflicts like this, the aggressors Russia is forced to give back significant parts of territory in order to get the...
|
Sam:
[1:39:50]
| I mean, there's so many conflicts that end by essentially freezing the lines. I mean, look at Korea. I mean, how did the Korean War quote-unquote end? It's not officially over yet, is it?
|
Ivan:
[1:40:02]
| It's not officially over, so therefore, what are we talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:40:06]
| But.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:07]
| The thing is that in in other conflict this isn't a compromise in any way that's what i'm saying.
|
Sam:
[1:40:13]
| Right no this this is basically give the russians what they've been asking for with the exception of you know the de jure versus de facto thing that i mentioned yeah that's it aside aside from that everything on this list is this is what the russians wanted along with with the possible exception that Clearly, when the full-scale invasion started, Putin wanted to take over the whole damn country and have Ukraine cease to exist as an independent country. So the Russians have clearly given up on that. But everything else here is what they've been saying they wanted for years. You know, and there's no real concession to what the Ukrainians have said they wanted, which is for the Russians to get out of their territory and to join NATO. and the EU. That's what they've consistently said they've wanted for years now. And by the way, even before the, that's the whole excuse for this invasion from the Russian side is we can't let Ukraine go to NATO. But NATO had actually been slow walking it and saying no. Right you know before this all happened anyway but you know if you if you go through a point by point which i'm sorry that took a long time because there were 28 damn points but you most of them you can go.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:37]
| And what you can do is like when you.
|
Sam:
[1:41:39]
| Actually finish.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:40]
| The process yes you will you'll go and put that section at 1.5 like for everybody so that way you can go through all the points yes so.
|
Sam:
[1:41:49]
| For those of us who already listened to it sped up it's gonna be, yes i won't do that however anybody who is bored by it i'm sure skipped ahead or increase the speed on their own.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:01]
| Okay you know.
|
Sam:
[1:42:03]
| If i'd thought about saying it.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:04]
| Before no no no that's what you got okay so now what you got to insert is and if you got to go back and post or insert this saying bing bing bing i am about to read a very long list of things if you don't want to hear them all read, please, you know, or want to hear faster, please accelerate your podcast client. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:42:27]
| Maybe I'll do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:29]
| Maybe I'll do that.
|
Sam:
[1:42:31]
| I'll consider it. I will think about it. You know, I got other things to do other than spend time editing.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:37]
| No, you don't. No, you don't. What the fuck are you talking about? No, you don't, you asshole. I got a whole bunch of other things to do. I got a job and shit or whatever. What the fuck are you talking about? No, you don't. You got plenty of fucking time.
|
Sam:
[1:42:50]
| I have other things I want to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:54]
| Oh, okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:42:56]
| You know, I'm getting a haircut tomorrow, for example. You know, I've got a haircut scheduled tomorrow. So, you know, if I spend all this time editing, I might have to miss my haircut. Or I might have to do it myself.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:12]
| Oh, my God. You know, heaven forbid.
|
Sam:
[1:43:14]
| Get out the flowbie.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:16]
| Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:43:18]
| Anyway, no. No, what I was saying is, in isolation, a bunch of these points actually do sound reasonable. Together as a package, it's essentially a complete capitulation of Ukraine to everything Russia wants.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:34]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:43:35]
| You know, and so we have yet to see what, Zelensky has not given an answer yet. So far, everything you said is we'll consider this, blah, blah, blah, because he's under extreme pressure about this. But on the other hand, if he agrees to all this, he was probably going to be done internally in Ukraine, too, because the population is very tired of the war, but I'm not sure that they're ready for complete capitulation like this. But, you know, you've got a war-weary population. It's been years. Lots of people just want it to be over. And, you know, and you can understand that. On the other hand, there is a complete, There is not trust that Russia will live up to one iota of anything it agrees to. And also, there's not a lot of trust in the security guarantees either. Will they really come through? Especially the U.S. under Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:39]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:44:40]
| You know, is he really going to come through or is in the end he's going to be like, well, you know, I remember you wouldn't investigate Hunter Biden when I told you to. You know. It comes up, comes back to that. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:56]
| I mean, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:44:58]
| Okay. Let's take, let's take a third break and then, then we'll do two more and wrap it up. Okay. Two more quick ones. Let's, let's make a lightning round. Actually lightning this time. This last one is an Apple dream, but it is an Apple dream that I have actually used on the podcast before. I pick from all the Apple dreams and I did publish a new one on Tik TOK this last week. Apple dream 74 came out this last week. So, but you have to find that on Tik TOK on my personal Tik TOK.
|
Sam:
[1:45:30]
| Not the curmudgeons corner Tik TOK. You will see Apple dream 74. It's a brand new one, but no, this one is Apple dream 12. Cause I randomly picked out of all 74 Apple dreams, which one, and this has actually featured on the show before, but probably a long time ago. So here's Apple dream 12. Enjoy everyone. That was it.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:59]
| Okay, then. My wife had a dream yesterday where apparently she kept trying to pack a bag, but she kept packing and packing and packing and she couldn't. It's like she could never finish packing. Because the packing kept going on, like, endlessly. As it does.
|
Sam:
[1:47:13]
| So that was her.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:14]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:16]
| Okay, last topic from you, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:19]
| Last topic from me. Okay, let's talk about, because I didn't watch a lot of this. Mondami went to the White House, met with Trump. How did it go, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:47:31]
| How did it go? It was a love fest. It's like, what the hell? Both of them were saying positive things about the other. You know Mandami was very civil, very polite, which you kind of expect when you go to the White House but like, you know he was.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:52]
| Working very hard to talk about their points of agreement, you've had times when even if you're going polite to the White House, or you've had shit that happened to Zelensky for example, where all of a sudden he was berated there or whatever, and I thought maybe that's what they were planning on doing But no.
|
Sam:
[1:48:12]
| He was like, Donald Trump was talking about how we both love New York and how we agree on lots of things. And he's got great ideas about affordability and, you know, and how, like, he ran a great campaign and he beat a lot of people and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, Donald Trump was was glowingly positive about Mandami.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:37]
| And this is like bizarre, this whole fucking thing.
|
Sam:
[1:48:40]
| And, and like at one point, like Mandami was asked, you know, Hey, you, you've caught Donald Trump fascist. Do you, do you still believe he's fascist? What do you think here? And, and Mandami starts to say, well, you know, blah, blah, blah. And Donald Trump is like, it's okay. You can just say yes. It's cool. It's easier than trying to explain it.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:49:02]
| Of course, there are a couple of ways to interpret that one. He was just laughing and friendly. The other is like, yeah, I don't mind being called fascist because like, you know, I am, it's okay. But, but it is all, it was all very congenial. It was all very, very happy go lucky. They were all talking about places where they want to work together. And, and, you know, look, I understand. And Donald Trump kept saying like, all my policies are going to be great for New York. So like, it's going to help you succeed, you know, stuff like that. And, and every time something was brought up where they disagree, Mondami was very much, you know, Hey.
|
Sam:
[1:49:38]
| Of course there are areas where we disagree, but I want to concentrate on the, the places where we can work together and where, and he's like, look, one of the things, lots of, lots of people in New York moved over to vote for Donald Trump. And when I talked to him, the reason was affordability, cost of living, affordability, cost of living. And that's one thing where I think we can agree that that's a problem and we'll work together and blah, blah, blah. And that's basically how the conversation went. Now, people also point out that as usual, Donald Trump's view of the world tends to be driven by the last person he talked to. And this was right after he had his meeting with Mandami. And Mandami is very charismatic and very personable. And so Donald Trump probably came out of a meeting, having had a great conversation and liking Mandami personally, and so was all positive about him. And probably 10 minutes after this press conference was over, he goes to talk to Miller or somebody, and he probably has a different tune by tomorrow.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:38]
| Did he bring him a clock, maybe? Or a gold little plaque or something? You know, I mean...
|
Sam:
[1:50:45]
| A key to the city.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:47]
| Yes, a real... That's it! He brought him a real gold key to the city!
|
Sam:
[1:50:55]
| You know Trump probably Trump probably has four or five of those already from previous mayors but you know not a real gold not.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:00]
| A real gold one.
|
Sam:
[1:51:02]
| Ah maybe, Giuliani might have sprung for the gold, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:51:06]
| I don't know. They didn't seem to be that friendly back then when he was mayor.
|
Sam:
[1:51:13]
| Well, they did that, like, skit where, like, Giuliani wore the dress, remember?
|
Ivan:
[1:51:19]
| Oh, yeah, that's right. But, listen, but back then, you know, I don't... Well, what's another... I mean, listen, do you think Trump would not turn away another gold key to the city?
|
Sam:
[1:51:35]
| No, he would not. No, he would not.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:36]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:51:37]
| He'd be wondering what door it actually opened.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:39]
| Especially if it was engraved with 45, 47 thing.
|
Sam:
[1:51:43]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:44]
| Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like, you know, hey, bring him gifts, flatter him, and he'll do whatever you want.
|
Sam:
[1:51:53]
| And, you know, I'm sure Mandami is fully aware of that dynamic, just like anybody else who meets him these days.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:52:02]
| That if you, you know, and there probably was some sort of, I don't know, you know, it doesn't even have to be a really expensive gift. It just has to be one that tickles his fancy in the right way. Expensive helps. Expensive helps. yeah okay however gold gold colored helps gold colored yes yes from spray painted from home depot yes um but yeah but yeah i'm sure mandami flattered him and and said some nice things and i don't know i i feel like the trump tower looks fantastic.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:41]
| It's such a great building we want to make sure that it's taken care of very well under me as mayor blah blah blah there you go easily boom.
|
Sam:
[1:52:49]
| Well and yeah i mean and part of what you know people have been reacting to this is like, the republican party as a whole had been salivated at using mandami as like the new face of the democratic party to paint them all as like radical socialists yes yes and and now And now we've got Donald Trump being all chummy with him and talking about how great he is.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:17]
| Oh, tell me how you're doing, buddy. Yes. You know, and all the Republicans in the House are going, what the fuck just happened?
|
Sam:
[1:53:27]
| Exactly. Now, that's not necessarily going to stop them, just to be clear. But it just, he's not helping.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:40]
| Not helping. Not helping.
|
Sam:
[1:53:43]
| Anyway, I was listening to this while I was driving my son to school. And I was like, what the hell am I listening to? This is just bizarre.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:55]
| I kept hearing you say it I'm like because I don't know what the hell I was so I was busy whatever you know and I'm like what is going on I don't understand because I fully expected this to be a shit show.
|
Sam:
[1:54:09]
| More like the Zelensky meeting yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:12]
| Right I expected a Zelensky style meeting not all of a sudden like them standing there like all grinning and happy yes and joking Are you positively kidding? I'm like, what the hell? What happened?
|
Sam:
[1:54:28]
| Now, again, I have confidence that, like, in this, like, Mendami can probably get the better of Trump in terms of manipulating him at this point. Like, whatever skills Donald Trump has had in the past in that area have been slipping. And now everybody knows how to get what they want out of Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:53]
| Look, I, Mom Dami is quite charismatic. So you mentioned her.
|
Sam:
[1:55:00]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:00]
| I mean, he is quite, you know, from what I've heard, executives in New York, business executives that were really afraid of him, that have sat down and met with him, walked away with, oh yeah, we can work with him. We can figure stuff out, you know. Once they got past all the... We'll pay for the damn free buses. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to bet you that that's something that will happen.
|
Sam:
[1:55:32]
| Yes, the chase one bus line or whatever, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:38]
| Listen, let me tell you something. There is nothing that Trump really likes once more than flattering in some way. And credit for something, whatever. Okay? Okay, so if you can maneuver it properly, then yeah, you can get whatever the fuck you want out of him. It's just know how to just sweet talk him into it. Look at a Swiss. Listen, I've never seen a more abrupt turnaround than what happened with Switzerland. I mean, because they had been getting hammered with the tariffs. They'd been getting fucked and they had gotten nowhere. And somehow, you know, they went, they decided, fuck this. We're going to get a meeting with Trump and we're going to bring the goods. And the goods being a custom made Rolex desktop clock. OK, but that must be very impressive. And I want to see a fucking picture of this damn clock. Okay i really want to see this okay and a solid i mean think about you know you talked about gold a solid gold bar yes great personally engraved with the 45 47 bullshit audit trump whatever on a solid a solid gold bar this.
|
Sam:
[1:57:07]
| Is what menendez is in jail for.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:09]
| Right now yes geez like and all of sudden tariffs went from 37% to 50%, boom!
|
Sam:
[1:57:16]
| Just like that. People pointed out, like, you cannot get a more literal interpretation of what the emoluments clause was designed to prevent than a foreign government handing the president a gold bar to get specific policy results.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:35]
| Right!
|
Sam:
[1:57:38]
| Okay, last topic from me. We previewed Marjorie Taylor Greene.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:43]
| Okay, yes. Yeah, we can't skip that one.
|
Sam:
[1:57:47]
| Okay, so here's the thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:48]
| Okay, what the fuck? I mean, what the fuck happened? This happened quickly.
|
Sam:
[1:57:56]
| So look, it's been building, but specifically, let's go through the last couple months. Couple of months, yeah. Specifically the the newest rift and they've had a few places where they've disagreed in the past related to even like getting rid of the previous speakers in those speaker battles right like yeah they were on opposite sides of that but recently this has been all about the epstein stuff she was one of the key republican defectors that gave them the numbers to do this discharge position, and she has been vocal about it, and she has talked about it repeatedly, and she has not budged from her positions on that, because where she came from was... Was QAnon. Right. Marjorie Taylor Greene was all about the QAnon.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:52]
| She is the big QAnon.
|
Sam:
[1:58:54]
| And the Pizzagate and all this kind of stuff. Everything we were talking about, about the whole point of this is we have to dismantle the Democratic pedophile ring. That was a big part of her thought process. The Epstein stuff was important to her from the beginning. She honestly felt like this was a complete betrayal by Donald Trump and how could he possibly be against releasing this stuff? This is one of the things he promised to do. And so she was consistent on this from the beginning. She would not give in to any pressure on it. And this was a part of it. And she started openly speaking about it. And then the government shut down. She started going against the Republican line on the government shutdown as well, talking about how the healthcare subsidies, the Democrats had a point. It was hurting her own family. and blah, blah, blah. And let's just make a deal and end this thing and let's fix the healthcare stuff. And so she started doing a bunch of those things. But what happened in the last week is apparently she started getting deluged by death threats. Okay. Oh my God. By MAGA folks.
|
Sam:
[2:00:15]
| And, you know, she was asked in an interview, You know, this goes to what we've talked about before, about like none of these things matter to these people until it happens to them. She's like, you know, all of a sudden you're, you're really, you're worried about this because you're the target. You didn't seem to care at all when the target of MAGA death threats were, you know, Schiff or other people on the other side of the aisle. And she actually said, I don't want to give her a lot of credit, but she actually said, that's on me, and I was probably wrong.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:55]
| Sam, I have never seen a more transformation occurring faster than this. I mean, top to bottom.
|
Sam:
[2:01:09]
| To be clear.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:10]
| She was a Jewish space lasers lady.
|
Sam:
[2:01:13]
| I know, but to be clear, she's not turning into a Democrat. She's not turning into a liberal.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:19]
| No, no.
|
Sam:
[2:01:19]
| If you read her statement, if you read her statement where she's axing, she's got like all kinds of anti-trans crap in there. She's got all kinds of standard conservative tropes in there as well.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:30]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But all the things that she has backed off on.
|
Sam:
[2:01:37]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:38]
| And how quickly she did.
|
Sam:
[2:01:40]
| Well, I mean, I think, and I don't know if this is a canary in the coal mine, I cross my fingers, but is this, like, starting to snap out of the cult and realize, like, oh, my God, he actually has been fooling me all these years?
|
Ivan:
[2:01:57]
| If you look at the polling data, if you look at all the information that we're getting right now, it's looking like that is what's happening, okay? And that's the one thing that, you know, we could, you know... Add to this you know i had mentioned in one of the topics talking about that trump right now is at all-time low for this term okay well he hasn't hit the low an approval for no he on.
|
Sam:
[2:02:23]
| Some of the.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:24]
| Poll he has.
|
Sam:
[2:02:25]
| He has hit the net approval lowest of both terms.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:29]
| Oh he's hit for both terms okay for both terms okay now now this depends this depends a little bit because that includes COVID.
|
Sam:
[2:02:37]
| Right. That depends a little bit on the, on which average you use. Cause it's close. Okay. But there, there are several factors. The first thing was just the low for the second turn. The next was below where he was at the exact same time, eight years ago. And then the last milestone was the lowest of both terms. And on some poll averages, he did hit that a few weeks ago, he's bounced up a little bit since then.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:03]
| But it's crazy. But then on top of that, Sam, and I think what MTG was looking at, that fucking generic ballot, okay, alright? The margin that the Democrats have right now is for a wipeout of epic proportions, okay, for the Republicans, okay? You know, forget it. I mean, right now, here's the thing that's happening. The gerrymandering that they wanted has been stalled. A whole bunch of states that they want, they thought that they would get on board to doing stuff. I refuse to do it. They've just refused to do it. Then you've got the problem that the Texas maps have been blocked, like, right now?
|
Sam:
[2:03:44]
| Well, SCOTUS just unblocked them a couple hours ago, but yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:49]
| Oh, what?
|
Sam:
[2:03:50]
| Yes. SCOTUS has allowed the maps to remain in effect while the appeals process continues.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:57]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:03:58]
| As of, like, just a couple hours ago.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:00]
| Okay. But, okay, fuck, fuckers. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[2:04:05]
| But the thing is that— That's one of the things that just one justice can do that, and it's just until the process plays out. Okay, but bottom line is that— I wouldn't be surprised at all if SCOTUS backs up Texas in the end, but go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:21]
| But the thing is that it's gotten—they thought that, you know, Trump had asked all these states to do it. The reality is that they're not getting anywhere as far as they thought they would with the maps. But then you add the fact that the ballot looks that bad, that it may not fucking matter, okay? If the polls aren't that bad, even the gerrymandering isn't going to save their asses anyway.
|
Sam:
[2:04:46]
| Right. Yeah. And this was the summary that I believe it was DDHQ put out an analysis of this, but also the gerrymander project out of Princeton also did something similar. Basically, if you net out all of the gerrymandering efforts, both Republican and Democrat, blah, blah, blah, it gives perhaps a mid-to-high single-digit additional advantage to Republicans. But in a way of election, the movement can be like 20, 30 seats. And that completely swamps the like seven or eight seats that the Republicans may be getting. Exactly. Now, it still makes it seven or eight seats harder. But if there really is a way of election, then that gets blown away.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:40]
| It doesn't matter. And that's what it's looking like. I mean, at this point. So, I mean, I think MTG is just reading the tea leaves also. You know, she's an asshole. I don't think she's a stupid asshole.
|
Sam:
[2:05:56]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:57]
| I think.
|
Sam:
[2:05:58]
| Wow.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:59]
| No, no, no. No, no, Sam. No, no, no, no. She's a fucking grifter.
|
Sam:
[2:06:05]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:06]
| She's an asshole. This is all fucking grift. That's all you got to remember.
|
Sam:
[2:06:12]
| I think she's a true believer in some places as well.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:15]
| I think there may be a thing here or there that she's a true believer, but for the most part she's just a fucking grifter. I really do. Because I'm sorry, you can't switch positions on that much shit like she did in two months unless you're that much of a grifter. Sorry, but it just doesn't happen. Not if you're a true believer.
|
Sam:
[2:06:36]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:36]
| So I just think that she saw the tea leaves. She said, we're going to get fucked. I got to get off this train before it crashes into the station. So let me just jump off now. And let me let, you know, Johnson and all these other idiots go and crash into the station. You know, I'm off. Bye. So I think that's what she's doing. I think the death threats don't help.
|
Sam:
[2:07:01]
| No. And I think that's one of the... Look, I honestly think that's a big part of this. The quote from her that I'm going to read real quick. And, of course, I brought it up. And then I, like.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:15]
| Of course, changed the screen.
|
Sam:
[2:07:17]
| Okay, from her statement, I do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president. I refuse to be a battered wife, hoping it all goes away and gets better. There's no plan to save the world or a 4D chess game being played. You know, I think she basically, the president was going to war against her for her being an insubordinate. And she's just like, I'm out. I'm not playing that game. Now, does she come back playing another game? I mean, there's lots of speculation of her running for Senate. She has said she's not going to run for president, but who knows? But there's lots of speculation that she wanted to run for Senate. And one of the reasons for this rift was Trump was not backing her for Senate.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:09]
| Here's the other thing. she likes money okay all right so she's been very and so there is a lot of grifts that you can carry out like right now with all these people of.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:23]
| Far more, not being in the house and being this person that's out there that talks, she'll get paid to be on Fox and this, that, and the other thing. She'll get paid appearance fees. I had shared this thing about this, this swimmer, Riley Gaines, this video about how she's being, you know, how she is the one that really launched this entire anti-trans movement. She was the, she was the, the lightning rod for this. Okay. and how she is just getting paid left and right to go and like spew this shit all over the place. It's a moneymaker. How she realized all of a sudden that she could turn this into fame and money and all of a sudden she's just out there as the fucking champion of whatever talking about the swimmer that supposedly, by the way, that didn't even... Tied her for fifth place. That's all that happened. By the way, tied her for fifth place. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:27]
| And, and oh, by the way, you know what? Didn't say anything about the coach. It was supposedly talking about how that person like caused her trauma, but not talk about the coach. That was her coach that got, you know, into trouble and fired for sexually assaulting the other swimmers on her team. while she was on the team.
|
Sam:
[2:09:53]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:09:55]
| So, nay, let's not go against the actual fucking sexual assaulters. Let's make up a story about somebody who didn't do anything. Because that one makes money. Because, by the way, the other story, just like the Epstein victims, does that make money? Guess what? No!
|
Sam:
[2:10:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[2:10:15]
| So, on that happy note.
|
Sam:
[2:10:18]
| Yes. Let me give one last analysis related to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Somebody put out, this is Lisa Desjardins, who's a journalist who's been in a couple different places. I forget where she is right now. Folks, MTG just cranked up the stakes in the Tennessee 7 special election on December 2nd. And here's why. Currently, we have 219 Republicans and 213 Democrats.
|
Sam:
[2:10:50]
| On December 13th, if the Democrats win in Tennessee, it becomes 219 to 214. January 6th, once Marjorie Taylor Greene is gone, it drops to 218 to 214. In January 31st, there's a special election in Texas's 18th, which is expected to go to the Democrats, which will make it 218 to 215. And then in April, there's another special election in New Jersey's 11th, which the Democrats are expected to potentially hold, which would make it 218 to 216, which means that only one defector from the republicans on any given bill makes it to 217 to 217 tie which fails to pass wow so we take an already close house and potentially make it much much closer in a couple months now apparently the new jersey one isn't an entirely given for the democrats, and the one in Tennessee is not a given for the Democrats. This is a scenario.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:06]
| Here's another thing that you might get. By the way, given how MTG resigned, you got a couple of other resignations from Republicans that pretty much think that they're going to lose and they wanted to get ahead for this and this fucking thing, this is game over.
|
Sam:
[2:12:19]
| Potentially. I think there'd be a lot, a lot of pressure for folks. If you were the one vote that kept the Republicans in the majority, they're going to do everything they can to keep you from the side.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:31]
| Yeah, but if you're that pissed off about shit that's happened to some of these, they're just, you know, they're not going to care. It's a very tight, it's a very, very, very, very tight situation.
|
Sam:
[2:12:45]
| Yes, it is. And we're going to have, by the way, we're going to have another, like, government funding thing in January, you know, because they only kicked the can down the road a few months. You know, so.
|
Ivan:
[2:12:59]
| I don't know. Hey, Sam, how's the economy doing? It's doing great. Any layoffs that you're worried about or any stuff like that?
|
Sam:
[2:13:07]
| I don't know. I've heard there might have been a few layoffs. Yeah, I've heard about that, right? I don't know who might have been affected there.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:12]
| Jeez, I don't know. We're going to have to look up the records. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[2:13:15]
| Well, and there have been more since the one I was involved in. There have been more, you know.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:21]
| There's been layoffs everywhere. It's fucking crazy. I mean, look, I keep.
|
Sam:
[2:13:25]
| Today was Verizon, right?
|
Ivan:
[2:13:27]
| Yeah, but look, HB Enterprise, where I was working, look, I had a friend of mine that worked there 28 years. They got laid off, too. They had announced the big layoff. They were one of the first people that got laid off in the layoff.
|
Sam:
[2:13:42]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:43]
| It's really bad out there.
|
Sam:
[2:13:45]
| And I don't know. I am pessimistic. I'm expecting it to get worse before it gets better.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:50]
| But Trump is doing all these things to improve the economy with the tariffs. We're going to get those tariff refund checks.
|
Sam:
[2:13:59]
| Indeed.
|
Ivan:
[2:13:59]
| Dividend checks or whatever. I don't know. What do they call them? What do they want to call them?
|
Sam:
[2:14:04]
| The important part is his signature will be on them.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:07]
| Ah, I see.
|
Sam:
[2:14:09]
| That's what matters.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:10]
| I mean, the tariff dividend check or the part where it's like my tax refund, I guess. It's kind of like that. That's all it is. He's just so stupid.
|
Sam:
[2:14:23]
| Anyway, let's wrap this thing up. It's time.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:26]
| Yeah, let's wrap this thing up.
|
Sam:
[2:14:27]
| It's past time. It's past time. Go to curmudgeon-corner.com.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:32]
| The tide is high.
|
Sam:
[2:14:33]
| Are you going to sing some more? Sing, sing more?
|
Ivan:
[2:14:36]
| No, no, no, no, no.
|
Sam:
[2:14:37]
| I'll assist. Why don't you sing the whole bit about going to the website to find all our information?
|
Ivan:
[2:14:44]
| I don't think, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can swing that one that quickly.
|
Sam:
[2:14:48]
| No, no.
|
Ivan:
[2:14:49]
| Go to our website. Do, do, do, do. Curmudgeon.corner.com It's a fabulous website. Do, do, do, do. It's got all our podcasts in there for many, many, many years. Do, do, do, do.
|
Sam:
[2:15:08]
| That's lovely. Go to curmudgeon-corner.com not curmudgeon.corner.com or whatever the hell you said.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:15]
| I said curmudgeon-corner.
|
Sam:
[2:15:18]
| Dash works.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:19]
| Dash.
|
Sam:
[2:15:19]
| I guess dash.
|
Ivan:
[2:15:19]
| Dash works.
|
Sam:
[2:15:20]
| You know i say hyphen but yes it's a dash it's a dash anyway because that damn domain squatters on curmudgeonscorner.com without a hyphen um anyway anyway yeah yeah they wanted like thousands of dollars for it we're not we're fine with the we're fine with the hyphen dash thing whatever, anyway go go to our website curmudgeons-corner.com for our archives to see all our old episodes transcripts all the ways to contact us. And of course, a link to our Patreon, where you can give us cash money. And at various levels, we will mention you on the show, we will ring a bell, we will send you a postcard, we will send you a mug. And importantly, at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, we will invite you to the curmudgeons corner slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of others are on there all the, Emily and Sammy from the UMSUR podcast, join us on the Slack. And oh yeah, I'm on their podcast this week as well. The last two weeks I've been on their podcast. Go check out those episodes. And yeah, join our Slack. It's a lot of fun. The more the merrier. And so Yvonne, what's a highlight from the Slack that we have not mentioned on the show and will be so exciting and compelling. people will want to join the Slack and tune in every day to see what we're talking about.
|
Ivan:
[2:16:49]
| I just shared this almost right before we went to record. Serious question for the millennials. My older cousin said she used to burn CDs for her crush, like with fire? Was that a ritual? Did it work? You guys were dot, dot, dot. So, Sam, is that how you burn your CDs and you use fire?
|
Sam:
[2:17:11]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:12]
| Yes? Oh, nice.
|
Sam:
[2:17:13]
| Really good with marshmallows.
|
Ivan:
[2:17:15]
| Oh, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. Just do a little campfire with, okay. That sounds good. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Here's the thing. I realized that that question was not that unserious. I think that was a real question. I don't think somebody made that up. The reality is that if you're a young person and you hear about, you know, when's the last time you burned a CD? I don't remember. I don't remember the last time I burned a DVD.
|
Sam:
[2:17:44]
| I was about to say, I'm not sure I ever actually burned a music CD. I burned data CDs. But I don't remember if I actually burned an actual regular music. I might have done it once at a request for somebody else. I'm not sure. I know I burnt data onto CDs a few times. but that's a, that's different.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:05]
| You burned a CD, maybe not for music, but you burned a CD.
|
Sam:
[2:18:08]
| Yeah. But, but even then it was rare. I remember, I remember.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:12]
| I, I, I did a lot.
|
Sam:
[2:18:14]
| I did.
|
Ivan:
[2:18:14]
| I burned a lot of, I did a lot of like CDs, MP3 CDs. I even burned, I did not as many, but I did burn a few DVDs video, you know, recorded video that I transferred onto a DVD to give to somebody. So I did do all of those. Yeah. I mean, I definitely did. A lot of burning. I mean, I got rid of, I had a lot of blanks because I did regularly burn so many of them that at some point then with MP3 players and whatever, iPods or whatever, then obviously that practice stopped.
|
Sam:
[2:18:47]
| There are plenty of places on YouTube and TikTok where you can get really hilarious, videos of Gen Xers like us or even older millennials with younger generations, trying to get younger folks to use old technology. You stick them in front of a VCR and say, see if you can make this play. Or a rotary phone. Like, how would you make a call on this thing?
|
Ivan:
[2:19:19]
| Now, I can see how that one, I mean, would stump quite a lot of... I mean, that one's fucked up. I mean, for the... Yeah, they've never seen anything like this.
|
Sam:
[2:19:28]
| You know, all this kind of stuff And just asking for references of things that, you know, anybody in our generation would be instantly familiar with. But, you know, someone who's in their 20s right now, what the hell are you even talking about? This is ridiculous. You know, and I'm sure the, you know, to some degree the same was true, you know, comparing what we were familiar with with folks from 30 or 40 years previously. But the pace has accelerated, I think.
|
Ivan:
[2:19:58]
| The pace is way accelerated.
|
Sam:
[2:20:00]
| Of course, everybody, every generation thinks that, right?
|
Ivan:
[2:20:03]
| Like loading a dot matrix, loading paper on a dot matrix printer. Can you imagine trying to get a millennial, hey, you need to print something on a dot matrix printer. Go load paper on a dot matrix printer. That probably just completely just, they're like, what? What is this? That would be, and that was one that was common that we have to do all the time.
|
Sam:
[2:20:23]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:24]
| Floppies.
|
Sam:
[2:20:26]
| Yeah. I've seen TikToks within the last week about people like being, you know, comparing the looking at the three and a quarter floppies and are like, or three and a half and are like, this isn't floppy. What are they talking about? And then people being, well, you see the, but the bigger ones are floppy and there's still a floppy thing inside it.
|
Ivan:
[2:20:47]
| There is a floppy thing inside.
|
Sam:
[2:20:49]
| Yeah. Right. Right. You know, but it, you know, So, when we first did Curmudgeon's Corner in college, it was a little bit ironic because we were like 20, 21 years old, and Curmudgeon is like a cranky old guy. But now, decades later, we earned the title. We are, in fact, cranky old guys.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:16]
| The reality is that we were already cranky at age 20.
|
Sam:
[2:21:18]
| We were always Curmudgeon's. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:21]
| We were already cranky by then, anyway. so you know.
|
Sam:
[2:21:24]
| Yes exactly we we we we embodied we may have been 20 but we already had the mind of like 70 year olds yes okay what the fuck is.
|
Ivan:
[2:21:38]
| This you know anyway stuff like that yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:21:41]
| Kids these days goddamn fuckers yes anyway we're out of here uh thanks everybody for joining us have a great week oh this i guess the this coming week is thanksgiving for those of you in the u.s who celebrate so enjoy your your turkey or whatever else you have for your your thanksgiving meal if you have one we we had i i didn't tell the story here but we we had a we had a kitchen accident, that caused significant damage to our stove about a week and a half ago. And we are getting it repaired, but it won't be repaired until after Thanksgiving.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:27]
| Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[2:22:28]
| So it involved an exploding can of corn that hit brandy in the face when it exploded and broke the glass cooktop on the stove.
|
Ivan:
[2:22:40]
| Oh, jeez. Oh, so, well, Oh, okay. Wow.
|
Sam:
[2:22:46]
| Everyone's fine. Everyone's fine. It was scary when it happened, but everything's fine. Yeah. We're having to like, you know, pay to get that fixed. And our refrigerator's failing at the same time. So we're also having to get a refrigerator. All good timing to happen right after I get laid off, of course. But, you know, whatever. We'll deal with what we have to deal with. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:09]
| All right. Good.
|
Sam:
[2:23:10]
| Yeah. Is your refrigerator supposed to be almost 60 degrees? I don't think so.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:15]
| Right? No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[2:23:17]
| And we could get that repaired too, but it's a piece of shit. So we're getting a new refrigerator. No Samsungs.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:23]
| Yeah, no Samsungs.
|
Sam:
[2:23:25]
| Samsung sucks. Yes. Sorry.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:27]
| You know, I got a GE to replace the Samsung that basically that was problem after problem after problem after problem.
|
Sam:
[2:23:36]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[2:23:37]
| The GE, 10 years, not one service call.
|
Sam:
[2:23:40]
| Not one anyway the point of all that was happy Thanksgiving enjoy your Thanksgiving happy Thanksgiving everybody yes and that's it here comes the goodbye music stuff thing thing here you go bye, There was corn everywhere. The entire kitchen covered in corn.
|
Ivan:
[2:24:33]
| It was fun.
|
Sam:
[2:24:35]
| Okay, hitting stop. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[2:24:37]
| All right. Bye.
| |
|
