Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hold on a second.
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| There we go.
|
Sam:
[0:04]
| Okay. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah. All good?
|
Ivan:
[0:09]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[0:10]
| Blah.
|
Ivan:
[0:10]
| Blah.
|
Sam:
[0:11]
| Let's do this. Hold on. I'm booking something in the other window.
|
Ivan:
[0:18]
| Booking.
|
Sam:
[0:20]
| Booking. Booking. Schedule. Okay. Did that. I should put it in my calendar. you know that's annoying okay there it is plus paste let's see if this does it right, sorry give me one second 15 this becomes 23 okay good good good good okay ready to go or do we have preliminaries to work out first you're kind of blurry and frozen right now Oh.
|
Ivan:
[0:59]
| I, I, okay. I think I know why. Hold on. You see something. Oh, what am I doing? Okay. No, close. Okay. Let's see. Blurry and frozen. I.
|
Sam:
[1:10]
| Oh, let me.
|
Ivan:
[1:11]
| Okay. I.
|
Sam:
[1:12]
| Back to the right window.
|
Ivan:
[1:13]
| Well, I, I, I mean, I'm looking at my video. Looks fine.
|
Sam:
[1:16]
| Okay. Let me look at what. Yeah. On, on YouTube, you look. Wait, now we both look good. We look amazing.
|
Ivan:
[1:25]
| It's almost like. It's only. You mean, not that we look good. You mean the signal quality is, the video quality is good.
|
Sam:
[1:35]
| Oh, no. I mean, we're horribly attractive people.
|
Ivan:
[1:39]
| Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah. You know, I got to, you know, as I walk through the mall, I'm just like, you know, pushing them away.
|
Sam:
[1:46]
| Of course. Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:48]
| That's how it works. Like, look, I'm married. Get off of me. What are you doing? Jesus Christ, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:56]
| Both men and women. All of them, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:58]
| Of course. Of course. And probably the reindeer at the Santa display, too.
|
Ivan:
[2:04]
| Oh, yes. Yes. And the dogs.
|
Sam:
[2:06]
| And the dogs. Yes. They all love you. Shall we get started before this goes south any further?
|
Ivan:
[2:14]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[2:16]
| Here we go.
|
Ivan:
[2:17]
| Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
|
Sam:
[2:40]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Thursday, December 11th, 2025. It's just after 22 UTC as we are starting to record. And yeah, that's the thing. Before I forget, before I forget, I'm going to give something I promised last time. And I will be mentioning this every week until the time comes. which is that the Google Doc for making suggestions of things for us to predict on our annual prediction show is now up. The URL is tinyurl.com slash ccpred2026.
|
Sam:
[3:31]
| So I expect all of you out there listening to go in and start dropping in. And flood it. Yes, flood it. Flood the zone, as Steve Bannon says. It is divided up into sections, you know, politics, international, economy, technology, hodgepodge, and each one of those sections further has some subsections. Feel free to add bullet points with your questions that you want us to predict. I do ask that you sign your submissions. Just at the end of the question, do dash and your initials. It doesn't even have to be your real name or anything. Just dash something that's identifiable so we can thank you for the question when we actually do the show.
|
Sam:
[4:13]
| And put in however much you want. If there's so much there that I'm like, okay, we're done. I don't need any more. Then we won't add our normal things because they'll already be there. But if there's not enough, then we'll sort of fill it in with the stuff that we usually make predictions about and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, this is all because our annual prediction show will be our last show of the year. And then our first show of the new year will be reviewing predictions from that we made about 2025 to see how we did. So anyway, I wanted to get that out of the way before I forgot, because I knew I would forget if I did. So again, it's tinyurl.com slash ccpred2026. So go there. Add stuff that you want us to predict.
|
Ivan:
[5:02]
| Things.
|
Sam:
[5:03]
| It'll be exciting. Exiting. Exiting.
|
Ivan:
[5:06]
| I mean, I don't understand. How the fuck are you supposed to know the difference between exciting, exiting? Say you're a new person coming to the language. Actually, they don't. This is the problem with English. It's very different. Many times, it's now phonetic. Unlike Spanish.
|
Sam:
[5:24]
| It's contextual.
|
Ivan:
[5:25]
| Yeah. Well, not even that.
|
Sam:
[5:28]
| Well, usually you can tell the difference between exiting and exciting by the sentence that's around it. Well, the pronunciation isn't automatic.
|
Ivan:
[5:37]
| But if you're looking, let's say, but yeah, true. The context helps. But if you're looking at a list of words, say you're new to the language. is I remember we had these quizzes for language to learn new words at school, and they just gave you this list of 10, 20, 30 words to learn for this week. I mean, if, you know, unless you had pronunciation guides, you had no idea really how to pronounce a lot of words.
|
Sam:
[6:06]
| Well, yes, and I will point out those two words are spelled differently.
|
Ivan:
[6:10]
| They are spelled differently, but the reality is that you could read them in either way. I mean, if you don't know the language that well.
|
Sam:
[6:18]
| Yeah. I mean, there's the extra letter in exciting.
|
Ivan:
[6:22]
| Yeah, but still.
|
Sam:
[6:24]
| So it's the sound. So it's X-citing versus. Or sitting. X-itting.
|
Ivan:
[6:29]
| But it's a C.
|
Sam:
[6:29]
| It is a C. And Cs can be different things depending on all kinds of different things.
|
Ivan:
[6:35]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[6:35]
| There are some letters that have like four or five different ways to say them depending on the word.
|
Ivan:
[6:40]
| But one thing but the one thing is that what I'm saying it's in Spanish you know we take English and Spanish I mean you just you know all the letters sound the same you learn the sounds and you put them together and you read it and you should be able to you know read the words, so that's the thing which brings me to like my but first Sam you're.
|
Sam:
[7:06]
| Go for it yes yes.
|
Ivan:
[7:07]
| My son laughing, Appears to know Japanese.
|
Sam:
[7:15]
| Now, how did this happen, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[7:17]
| I'm pretty confident.
|
Sam:
[7:18]
| Now, I swear, I saw a TikTok about another little kid who, like, was not speaking English, but, like, it turns out, oh, they picked up Japanese from TV.
|
Ivan:
[7:30]
| Yeah. Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he learned language that way. Look, I learned English by just watching TV as well when I was little.
|
Sam:
[7:44]
| Have you had him watching all kinds of Japanese TV shows in Japanese?
|
Ivan:
[7:48]
| I haven't, but he has been on YouTube watching a lot of YouTube videos in Japanese about stuff that he likes. He kept finding all these videos about vehicles and things and whatever, and these people playing with toy construction vehicles, all sorts of, you know, all these videos about stuff that he likes in Japanese. and you know i knew he knew words in japanese you know because i had quizzed him on because i know that he saw and you could i could ask him all sorts of construction vehicles and words and things like you know and he he knew the right words okay i i checked the words and i was like oh no so you know what a fire truck is a police car this way so i was like you know but i wasn't I wasn't taking that he knew just the words into full sentences, okay, into just language, into watching a clip from a Japanese TV show and knowing what the fuck they're saying. But the, but the thing is that I recently kept watching them, you know, it came up that I stumbled across a video that visually was funny from, you know, from these crazy Japanese game shows. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[9:09]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:09]
| Where they do all sorts of really crazy stuff. Okay. And I saw this, and this was this thing about this person walking into an elevator. Okay. thinking it's an elevator. And then all of a sudden, as she is just standing there, the floor opens and they go down to slide into another room out of, you know, to completely take it by surprise.
|
Sam:
[9:32]
| Okay, interesting.
|
Ivan:
[9:32]
| Yes. And so it was hilarious. And Manu watches the video and I hear him repeating what it says. And then out of curiosity, because I'm hearing him really pronounce very well what the Japanese announcers say. And I ask him, hey, what is he saying in English? And he went very quickly and translated what he said. And I checked, see if it was correct. And lo and behold, yes, it was. And, you know, just to be clear.
|
Sam:
[10:00]
| By checking, how did you check?
|
Ivan:
[10:03]
| I found something that there was a translation, subtitles or whatever, where I could see what the fuck the guy was saying and it translated. And it was, you know, it was what the guy was saying. It was right.
|
Sam:
[10:14]
| So now what I'm...
|
Ivan:
[10:15]
| And I found some other clips, whatever, and I found another clip But I asked him again, hey, what does this guy say?
|
Sam:
[10:22]
| Boom.
|
Ivan:
[10:23]
| Translated what the fuck the guy was saying, too. So, here's the thing, right? So, you know, I had him watch a lot of videos in Spanish when he was growing up. But I don't think that the material itself was the stuff that he really liked. Okay?
|
Sam:
[10:44]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[10:46]
| So, he found this stuff that he really liked wasn't Japanese. And so his Spanish is far, his Spanish is way worse than the Japanese.
|
Sam:
[11:02]
| Now, what I suggested on the curmudgeon's corner slack when you first mentioned this is when are you going to find a native Japanese speaker to go have lunch with or something?
|
Ivan:
[11:12]
| You know, I have, as a matter of fact, a few weeks ago, not a native Japanese speaker, but I have a, I have a friend who worked with me. I, I, I actually, I, I helped him with his career a couple of times, you know, from Puerto Rico who lived in Japan for a couple of years and speaks Japanese. Okay. I got to go and like get him to say, to, to, to, to talk to him.
|
Sam:
[11:39]
| Yeah. Go, go have lunch or something. and like, you know, see how, see how it goes.
|
Ivan:
[11:45]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[11:45]
| Yeah. Yeah. You never know. Like it, it may unlock things that like, you know, he may, he may have conversations in Japanese that he's not willing to have in English. Right.
|
Ivan:
[11:59]
| I'm not fucking moving to Japan.
|
Sam:
[12:02]
| Hey, I know you're, you're working on the whole Spain thing, but Japan just wasn't on your agenda.
|
Ivan:
[12:08]
| No. I don't speak the language. What, now I got to learn Japanese? I mean, I guess I could try.
|
Sam:
[12:16]
| Manu will translate for you. You're all cool. You don't have to know it yourself.
|
Ivan:
[12:20]
| I could get those AirPods with a simultaneous translation. So I guess, you know, that is a thing.
|
Sam:
[12:26]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[12:28]
| So anyway, I, you know, yeah. You know, Japanese. I don't, I, you know, he's struggled with language. a lot it's been hard you know he still has speech regularly.
|
Sam:
[12:46]
| You just weren't talking about the stuff that he was he was interested in.
|
Ivan:
[12:49]
| Apparently not.
|
Sam:
[12:51]
| You know so Japanese it is.
|
Ivan:
[12:54]
| Japanese it is.
|
Ivan:
[12:57]
| So the other thing I was going to mention I put this down as a topic but I put it down more because I was going to talk about it a little bit like more duh, but first is that I went to this I took my car to the shop that I had worked on it done before for like the, the, the, bullshit that I do to Karst anyway. Nothing really important what it is. This guy is a Colombian immigrant. He's been here for a couple of years. I was waiting for my wife to arrive, and we're talking about what the hell's going on with stuff. I can't remember how this came up, but we started talking about everything that's going on with immigration and health and some other stuff and whatever. One thing that he told me, him as a business owner, He is from Columbia. He is here legally. The thing is, he has a business in it, and it sells a pretty decent amount a month. But, you know, he's telling me that because, you know, it's his own business, health insurance is so expensive that he basically, you know, he had gotten a quote just for himself. Okay. And it's like $1,500 a month, something like that. Okay. So for him and his wife, it was over $3,000 a month, something crazy. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[14:19]
| So, but he told me that his solution that he is doing in terms of for a catastrophe or something that he gets, say he gets diagnosed with cancer or something like that, for example.
|
Sam:
[14:28]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[14:28]
| So how, what's the solution to get treatment? Well, he told me that, look, he keeps paying premiums for health insurance back in Columbia. He has an active health insurance policy in Columbia. And so his plan is, look, if I get diagnosed with something like that, I'm going to go home to go get treatment because the premiums over there are so much lower that I can afford to pay that and be covered just in case I have a catastrophe. Okay?
|
Sam:
[15:01]
| Right. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[15:02]
| But look at the ridiculous shit. The extent that people have to go in order to get health insurance in this fucking country. Okay. It's crazy. I just, you know, he told me that. And then one of the things he was also talking is that he has as employees, two people that have been granted asylum, I believe from Venezuela. Okay. And the thing is that they have hearings at court next year for their asylum cases, okay? And they entered, they were granted asylum. They came in legally. They got granted. They were granted asylum. They came in legally or whatever. They right now are almost, they're like, they don't want to go to the hearing.
|
Sam:
[15:45]
| Right. Because they've been picking up people who have done everything right, jumped through every hoop they were asked for, picking them up at hearings and or even the naturalization ceremony.
|
Ivan:
[15:59]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[15:59]
| And picking them up and...
|
Ivan:
[16:01]
| I haven't heard about naturalization ceremony. What I've heard is more like the final green card interviews.
|
Sam:
[16:09]
| They've done the green card interviews, but there was also an article, it was in Massachusetts where it happened most recently, where they... They I don't think they actually picked them up at the naturalization ceremony, but they canceled the naturalization ceremony at the last moment and then issued orders for them to be deported.
|
Ivan:
[16:30]
| That's no that's that's that's wait. But but I don't mean that's not even legal. You know, the reality is the ceremony is more formality than anything else at that point. They've already been granted citizenship. They've got papers that say they're granted citizenship. You go to the ceremony, it's like, you know, you know, we talk about going to, you know, when you go to that the president is president, even if he's we don't swear.
|
Sam:
[16:55]
| Even if they haven't. Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[16:58]
| I mean, what I understood is the ceremony is basically kind of like that. You already been granted fucking citizenship. It's not, you know.
|
Sam:
[17:05]
| This was this was a couple of weeks ago where I saw an article, so I don't have it handy. But yeah, no, they were they were rescinding at the very last possible moment of someone who was like about to do the last legal steps, including the ceremony and and. Torpedoing it at the last second.
|
Ivan:
[17:27]
| So, yeah, I mean, and the one thing that he told me was like, OK, if I can't, if these guys can't stay here legally, OK, he's struggling to figure out how the fuck he's going to hire people for the business. He said it's like, I mean, I'm sorry, but it's not like I've got like, it's not like I'm turning away U.S. citizens for this job.
|
Sam:
[17:49]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[17:50]
| You know, it's the kind of work that U.S. citizens really are going out there and really, you know, banging at the door to get.
|
Sam:
[17:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[18:00]
| And so, yeah, that was just like my morning convo with, about that. It's just how, you know.
|
Sam:
[18:08]
| What industry are we talking?
|
Ivan:
[18:10]
| It's in the car detailing industry. Car, you know, they do car detailing, they do car treatments and stuff or whatever. It's just aftermarket stuff. You know, they work on expensive cars and things and they just do stuff to them. But just, but it's just, it's...
|
Sam:
[18:26]
| It feels like that, like, I mean... It feels like you could get Americans in that job.
|
Ivan:
[18:33]
| You could. But there's not as many, is my point.
|
Sam:
[18:38]
| No, yeah, I understand.
|
Ivan:
[18:39]
| It makes it far more difficult to recruit and keep.
|
Sam:
[18:44]
| Well, in a lot of these things, the answer, of course, is you probably could, but you'd have to pay them so much that it becomes uneconomical or something.
|
Ivan:
[18:53]
| Well, the thing is that a lot of people, look, these were legal immigrants, okay, that are doing this work, okay? And it's just, it's one of those things that, it's one of those things that people that, especially if they're struggling still with the language, you're struggling with getting acclimated to the country, they don't, they maybe not, don't have the right certifications, education or whatever. It's the kind of jobs that a lot of these people go for. And it's like what we're talking about, you know, we're talking a little bit about how they go and they try to say that, you know, that these people this week, they were talking about how these people are coming in and why is the price of houses so expensive? Oh, because they're coming in and buying the houses. Look, let me tell you something. None of these people are coming in and buying $700,000 houses. You know, they can't get mortgages. They don't grant mortgages to non-U.S. citizens. It's one of the requirements of fucking getting a damn mortgage is you've got to show citizenship or legal. You know, you have to have, you know, you need legal status.
|
Sam:
[19:59]
| I'm sure your illegal migrants are just paying cash for them.
|
Ivan:
[20:02]
| Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. And that was the funny thing. We're saying they're paying cash. But at the same time, somehow they're all on welfare, too.
|
Sam:
[20:10]
| Right. Oh, of course. Yes. You know, they're using their welfare checks to buy to.
|
Ivan:
[20:16]
| Go buy the $700,000 houses.
|
Sam:
[20:18]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[20:19]
| In cash.
|
Sam:
[20:20]
| In cash.
|
Ivan:
[20:23]
| And it's just, you know, and, you know, and what he said is he was talking about, man, you know, him as an immigrant himself, okay, just talking about these fucking people talk like we're a whole bunch of lazy fucks coming over here, just leeching, mooching off the government. It's nothing even remotely, not even remotely close. They can't even get health care, Sam.
|
Sam:
[20:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[20:51]
| They can't even get fucking health care.
|
Sam:
[20:54]
| So, yeah, as I've said many times when we end up talking about immigration, the people who actually have the motivation and fortitude to pick up their entire lives and move across the world to a whole different country where often they don't know the language and are starting from scratch are the people who show the kind of qualities that you want.
|
Ivan:
[21:26]
| They are the guys that really believe in the American dream.
|
Sam:
[21:30]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[21:30]
| Like, I mean, they really believe in it, you know? And it's an American dream, you know, on the back of hard work. Not, you know, not giveaways. Hard work. you know but this guy i'm not you know well i am actually he's here legally nobody did johnny who i was talking to today and you know he's built up a business with him his wife you know his kids sometimes work there you know because it started from a smaller shop built it into a bigger shop he's got to be doing like right now like you know over a million dollars in business over there you know, doing work on cars and stuff or whatever, you know, hard work every day in the shop every day. Yeah. And you know, what I hear from these people, you know, you hear how they're, they're taking their jobs, taking our homes or taking our whatever every fucking day. There's nothing, nothing even remotely of the sort. There's people just coming over to go break their backs, doing jobs that most Americans don't want. Simple as that. Simple as that. So, yeah, so that was my morning convo after I jumped my son off to lunch, you know. So, I mean to lunch.
|
Sam:
[22:51]
| To school. To school. To school. Lunch school.
|
Ivan:
[22:55]
| Well, yeah, there was lunch afterwards. Yeah, I took him lunch bag. I sent him, well, because of his food allergies, we sent his food. That's one of, so he'd pack his lunch.
|
Sam:
[23:05]
| There you go. So meanwhile, my son is not at school right now because he decided to stay up all night. Like we all fell asleep. He was up all night. He was still awake at eight in the morning, you know, and then he finally like went to sleep around eight, eight 30 in the morning and there was no getting him up again. So school did not happen today. I sent in a note to school.
|
Ivan:
[23:35]
| Oh, wow. So anyway, we got more movies, Sam.
|
Sam:
[23:41]
| We got more movies.
|
Ivan:
[23:43]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[23:44]
| Let's let's let's first stop that I watched at the end of January. Oh, of course. Now my son's waking up.
|
Ivan:
[23:52]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[23:52]
| He's here now. Anyway, first up watched at the end of January from 1977. Oh, God.
|
Ivan:
[24:03]
| Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[24:05]
| There you go. Exactly. With George Burns.
|
Ivan:
[24:07]
| George Burns.
|
Sam:
[24:09]
| George Burns.
|
Ivan:
[24:10]
| I remember watching that movie.
|
Sam:
[24:12]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[24:13]
| Wait, back when? I'm pretty sure I haven't watched it since then.
|
Sam:
[24:18]
| Yeah, I think this is one of the ones where I had probably seen parts of it, like, over the years.
|
Ivan:
[24:24]
| Well, I know that I watched the whole movie.
|
Sam:
[24:25]
| I don't know that I'd seen the whole thing.
|
Ivan:
[24:27]
| This one, I'm positive I watched the whole movie. It was on HBO. That's where I watched it.
|
Sam:
[24:33]
| Yeah. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[24:34]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:34]
| And?
|
Ivan:
[24:35]
| That was when we had the little HBO.
|
Sam:
[24:36]
| Do you have thoughts about the movie?
|
Ivan:
[24:37]
| By the way, the one thing that we had, this is at the time, where HBO was like on channel like three, something like that. But you needed this little decoder thing that you plugged into. The cable came in and you plugged it in. And then you, the cable coming down from that went to that little Y splitter thing. You remember we had that little box thing that was like the little Y things that went into the back of the TV, you know, because you were used to plug in an antenna. So that was how that went into the TV. And so this box, all the sole function of this box is when you tune to the channel where HBO was, it was kind of fuzzy. So you turn the box to on and it unscrambled the signal. Okay. Right. So that was like how you got HBO back then.
|
Sam:
[25:29]
| Right. Right.
|
Ivan:
[25:29]
| At least in Puerto Rico in the late 70s. Okay.
|
Sam:
[25:32]
| Yes. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[25:33]
| And so I watched the movie and what I remember, I remember it was funny. Okay. All right. a whole bunch of things happened to what was his name uh the the blonde guy the whatever uh oh god was what was the guy's name the the john denver it.
|
Sam:
[25:50]
| Was john denver uh.
|
Ivan:
[25:52]
| Yes i thought you were reaching for the character name no no no no for john john denver all the stupid follies that happened to him like during the time and everybody thought that he was completely crazy and you know the movie is what i remember the movie was funny, For my memory, I would give it a thumbs up, but I haven't watched it in like 40 years. Holy shit. Almost 40 years.
|
Sam:
[26:16]
| Yeah. I think my thought, I'm not going to give it a thumbs up. I mean, it was okay, I guess, but it really did feel very dated. It did not feel like.
|
Ivan:
[26:29]
| Also 1977.
|
Sam:
[26:30]
| I know it's 1977, but like some old movies really hold up and some don't.
|
Ivan:
[26:38]
| It wasn't an Academy Award winning movie from 1977.
|
Sam:
[26:42]
| Well, no.
|
Ivan:
[26:43]
| Did it get any awards by any chance?
|
Sam:
[26:45]
| Did it get any awards? Let me scroll down.
|
Ivan:
[26:48]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[26:49]
| It received an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.
|
Ivan:
[26:54]
| Oh, look at that. Holy shit. I didn't realize that.
|
Sam:
[26:57]
| A Saturn Award for Best Writing, the Writers Guild Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium. So I guess like.
|
Ivan:
[27:06]
| Okay, shit. So, okay. So it was more regarded than I recall. Okay.
|
Sam:
[27:10]
| And it was adapted. So like what? Was it a book?
|
Ivan:
[27:14]
| Or a play? What was this?
|
Sam:
[27:15]
| A play? What was this? Based on the 1971 novel by Avery Corman. So, okay.
|
Ivan:
[27:22]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[27:22]
| So it was a book at some point. Yeah, like, I just felt like, I don't know. Like you could see where some of the stuff might've been funny or whatever, but like, I felt like it was.
|
Ivan:
[27:36]
| The one scene that I remember was funny was the one where the car got flooded where he wanted Ray.
|
Sam:
[27:41]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[27:42]
| There was a scene in his car.
|
Sam:
[27:44]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[27:45]
| That was funny.
|
Sam:
[27:46]
| I, you know, and you know, the other thing that got me and this, this is coming from me as a very secular, non-religious person. the fact that it actually took sort of the religious part of this somewhat seriously like the you know god came down and was giving a new message to the people and all this kind of stuff so it was a comedy and all but you know it it treated the religious aspects with i don't know i'm sure it was controversial anyway for not like being not treating god as seriously as they could But at the same time, it was sort of like, I don't know, if they tried to make this today, it would be different, I think, you know, in a variety of different ways.
|
Ivan:
[28:40]
| Well, I don't think you could get the movie made today. I got to tell you that right now.
|
Sam:
[28:44]
| Probably not. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[28:46]
| In large part because they didn't take that, even though they did include the religious aspect, they didn't really take God that seriously.
|
Sam:
[28:54]
| Well, because here's what you had back then. You had a significant part of the population that were quote-unquote mainstream Christianity, whereas you still have some of that, but the percentage of the population has declined. And what you've had is a divergence into either folks that, Or are sort of the crazy right-wing Christians. And the people who are in the middle.
|
Ivan:
[29:25]
| So nobody would be happy with this movie. Right. None of them would be happy.
|
Sam:
[29:32]
| This was aimed squarely at folks who were sort of religious in the sense of going to the church all the time. and sort of had the general beliefs but weren't dogmatic about it and weren't wanting to impose their beliefs on everybody necessarily and weren't the literalists or, you know, or whatever. You know, it was sort of—and that group, it still exists. I mean, the denomination my mother is a part of is that kind of, you know, mainstream sort of liberal-ish Christianity or centrist Christianity even. But those groups have declined relative to conservative Christians and the secular folks who aren't religious at all. And and so, like, this kind of thing, I think that that might be part of the reason it feels dated, in fact, like that it represents this sort of this view of religion that is something that just.
|
Ivan:
[30:34]
| Really doesn't exist that much anymore. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[30:38]
| Yeah, I mean, I don't want to. It does still exist. It's just it's declined since the 70s.
|
Ivan:
[30:46]
| It's declined a lot, Sam, a lot.
|
Sam:
[30:50]
| And, you know, and I don't know, like maybe it's just I didn't appreciate the specific types of humor as well. I mean, I'm not saying it was bad, so maybe I'll give it a thumb sideways, but not a thumbs up. I wasn't like coming out of it. I wasn't laughing out loud. I wasn't like, oh man, that was awesome. I want to see it again. You know, the sequels are now on my list. Of course, there are two sequels. Oh God, book two from 1980.
|
Ivan:
[31:17]
| I remember the sequels were not.
|
Sam:
[31:18]
| And Oh God, you devil from 84.
|
Ivan:
[31:20]
| The sequels were not. None of those sequels are very good. I mean, that I recall, compared to the original one, look, if you didn't like this one, you're not going to like the sequels. I got to tell you that right off the bat.
|
Sam:
[31:37]
| Oh, and I've neglected reading the beginning of the plot summary from Wikipedia, so I should do that. God appears as a kindly old man to Jerry Landers, an assistant supermarket manager. He tells Jerry that he has been selected to be his messenger to the modern world, much like a contemporary Moses. Landers tells his wife, children, and a religious editor of the Los Angeles Times of his encounters with God and becomes a natural icon of comedic fodder. Jerry appears on television with Dinah Shore. Yes, national icon. and describes the look God takes when he encounters him the next day after Jerry is stranded from a car break down.
|
Ivan:
[32:20]
| Yeah, and they do a sketch on the show. Yeah, and then they showed a movie, and then the audience is like, burst out laughing because nobody believed him. They all thought he was nuts.
|
Sam:
[32:31]
| God appears as a taxi driver to take him home where they are met by a bunch of chanting religious nuts. Before he disappears, God consoles Jerry that he has the strength that comes from knowing. Landers finds his life turned upside down as a group of theologians attempt to discredit him. They challenge him to answer a series of questions in Aramaic while locked in a hotel room alone to prove God is contacting him directly. After an agonizing wait, God delivers food to Jerry and answers the questions, dot, dot, dot. It continues, et cetera, and, you know, adventures ensue. Yeah, so thumb sideways for Oh God. And one more, one more movie, because I'm trying desperately to catch up. From 1946, this time from the AFI list, 1998 rank number 11. For the 2000 list, it has slipped to number 20. Oh, and by the way, updates on the 2000 list, or the 2007 list, Alex and I are already up to, or down to 93. And I'll also give another update. We're working our way through Law and Order as well. We just finished season five. So we're working our way.
|
Ivan:
[33:49]
| Jesus Christ. Only season five. Okay. Well, that's not bad, actually, considering.
|
Sam:
[33:53]
| Yeah. I think we're going faster than one season per year. Yeah. So.
|
Ivan:
[34:01]
| Well, I guess maybe, you know, you have some extra time lately to catch up.
|
Sam:
[34:07]
| Well, and also right now, at the moment, three of the shows we were watching, we finished. But because I'm behind in logging my stuff, we haven't replaced them yet. So there are fewer shows to pick from when we're picking shows. So each one of them is moving faster as well. So anyway, this movie from 1946, ranked 11 on the 1998 list, is It's a Wonderful Life.
|
Ivan:
[34:35]
| You know what? I'm not sure I've watched It's a Wonderful Life.
|
Sam:
[34:40]
| This is another one where I'm going to answer. You don't think so?
|
Ivan:
[34:46]
| Probably I've seen, I've been like with you, where I saw clips, but not the movie.
|
Sam:
[34:51]
| Right. And I think that was my case with It's a Wonderful Life 2. I'm pretty sure I'd seen bits and pieces of it. I'd probably seen the ending after flipping through channels and I watched the end. And, you know, I may have seen little bits back and forth, but I don't think I'd seen it end to end.
|
Ivan:
[35:07]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[35:08]
| Anyway, classic Christmas movie. Let me start this time with the plot summary, the beginning of it. On Christmas Eve, 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey contemplates suicide. The prayers of his family and friends reach heaven, where guardian angel second class Claris Oddbody is assigned to save George in order to earn his wings. Clarence has shown flashbacks of George's life. He watches 12-year-old George rescue his younger brother Harry from drowning in a frozen pond, leaving George with deafness in his left ear. George later saves pharmacist Mr. Gower from accidentally poisoning a customer. In 1928, George plans a world tour before college. He is reintroduced to Mary Hatch, who has loved him since childhood. When his father dies from a stroke, George postpones his travel to settle the family business, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan.
|
Sam:
[36:05]
| Avaricious board member Henry F. Potter, who owns most of the town, seeks to dissolve the company, but the board of directors votes to keep it open if George runs it. George works alongside his uncle Billy, giving his tuition savings to Harry with the understanding that Harry will take over the company when he returns. One more paragraph. Harry returns from college married and with a job offer from his father-in-law, and George resigns himself to running the building and loan. George and Mary rekindle their relationship in Mary, but abandon their honeymoon to use the savings to keep the company solvent. During a run on the bank, dot, dot, dot, things continue.
|
Sam:
[36:44]
| And spoilers, it does have a happy ending. Anyway, you know, this is a classic Christmas movie. I think it's a classic Christmas movie for a reason. It's good.
|
Sam:
[36:59]
| It's definitely like we're talking about dated movies. This is dated, but in a different way. This is dated in that, oh, okay, this is obviously set in the 1940s. You know, it's not a modern movie. It's a little bit slower in the style, you know, etc., etc., etc. But it still hits the emotional strings it's supposed to. You still feel sympathetic to the characters. This one has a little bit of a religious undertone, too. I mean, there are angels in it, for God's sake. But, you know, it's not overwhelming. And, you know, it basically...
|
Sam:
[37:42]
| Again, spoilers for anybody who hasn't seen this movie from, you know, 80 years ago. It's, this guy is all down on himself because he didn't get out, get what he wanted out of life. But then, you know, he's basically shown the positive effect he's had on the life of so many other people. You know, and teaches a little lesson, makes you feel like a little warm inside. The guy, like, you know, feels better about himself at the end, etc. You know, it's and it is stylized like movies of that time. But, you know, it's a fine movie. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. OK, I will make one other note. There is a point where there are two characters talking to each other that are not the main character. They're sort of side characters, but they're talking to each other and they're named Bert and Ernie.
|
Ivan:
[38:40]
| Ah!
|
Sam:
[38:41]
| And they're bantering back and forth and you realize that, wait a second, this, like, some of how they interact with each other quite possibly was an inspiration for the Sesame Street characters.
|
Ivan:
[38:59]
| Interesting.
|
Sam:
[39:00]
| Okay. And then I saw recently a clip of a Sesame Street holiday special, where Bert and Ernie walk past a TV in the shop that is playing the scene of Bert and Ernie in this movie talking to each other.
|
Ivan:
[39:19]
| Nice!
|
Sam:
[39:20]
| Anyway, so, fun stuff.
|
Ivan:
[39:23]
| I loved Bert and Ernie. I remember they were one of my favorites when I was growing up, I must admit.
|
Sam:
[39:30]
| They're they're they're good.
|
Ivan:
[39:32]
| They're good hilarious love to watch burton ernie.
|
Sam:
[39:38]
| Yeah i i'm definitely like yes and and of course there are other you know you you can you can you can map them towards the odd couple as well yeah yeah yeah there are a variety of other sort of characters you can map into and then of course there's been the age old you know are burton Ernie gay? Are they a couple? And of course there's a whole, you know, there are people who like, you know, give all the evidence for. Now, Sesame Street's official position is that they are puppets.
|
Ivan:
[40:12]
| Right!
|
Sam:
[40:13]
| Thank you very much. And that you don't need to think quite this deeply about this question. Yes. But, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[40:20]
| Let's just say the odd couple. I was watching it the other day for some reason. It was on TV.
|
Sam:
[40:26]
| Now, there have been many versions of the article.
|
Ivan:
[40:29]
| Too. Well, I'm talking about the Walter Matthau, Jack Lepp.
|
Sam:
[40:32]
| Oh, the movie version, not the TV version.
|
Ivan:
[40:34]
| Yeah, the movie version. I got to say that if Sam and I had lived together, that may have been us. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It would have been. I mean, that would have been. Yeah. I was like, what the hell? Jesus Christ. But look, I was wise. I saw how Sam lived on his own. Unless I was in poverty in some way that I could not afford my own place. And I'm sure that Sam would not have let me sleep on the streets. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty confident that, you know, that that would have happened. That, you know, I would not have moved in with him. However, I know that I would have driven him crazy if I lived there because... I would have been, hell, I drive my wife crazy because I'm, you know, I'm constantly like, why the fuck is this thing over here? Why did you, like, just everything must be, by the way, in that, in that note, aside from my son learning Japanese the same way I learned English, he also keeps picking up after his mom.
|
Sam:
[41:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[41:43]
| Also.
|
Sam:
[41:44]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[41:44]
| So he's got both, he's like, he got both. She'll forget to close a door in a closet and Madhu was like right behind her, wham, they're closing. What are you doing?
|
Sam:
[41:55]
| I will say it would be nice actually to have somebody in the family who was a neat freak because while I am not capable of actually keeping things nice and tidy, I have come to learn that about myself. I do appreciate a place that is and I feel better when I am in a place that is.
|
Ivan:
[42:15]
| I will say that Sam, the times that I came into his place and I did go and do cleaning, was not really displeased.
|
Sam:
[42:26]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[42:27]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:28]
| Like, it's not like I hate a clean place.
|
Ivan:
[42:31]
| It's just that it doesn't come out of you naturally.
|
Sam:
[42:34]
| It does not come out of you naturally.
|
Ivan:
[42:36]
| And if I left it for you clean, you would be like, oh, this is nice.
|
Sam:
[42:39]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[42:40]
| I like this.
|
Sam:
[42:40]
| And it would last for approximately three hours, and then it would be trashed. But, you know.
|
Ivan:
[42:46]
| No, no, no. Some of the things I did last a lot longer.
|
Sam:
[42:49]
| Oh, yeah. And yes, anyway, it's, you know, I, and, you know, a few, and I actually don't necessarily mind the physical acts of cleaning either. However, what, what I and everybody in this household is missing is the ability to do that sort of spontaneously as other things go on.
|
Ivan:
[43:16]
| And on a consistent basis, right.
|
Sam:
[43:19]
| Right, as opposed to, like... If I decide, okay, I am cleaning now, I will go spend some time cleaning. I will clean a specific area out. But that is an entirely different skill than, you know, I finish something and when I'm finished, I put it away instead of just dropping it where it is until the next time I actually am cleaning.
|
Ivan:
[43:43]
| And it's a thing of like your method of like working through your task list. Look, I realized the other day that you said that you were going to do Wordle. Okay. All right. And that you put it on your task list. And I realized that a number of days have elapsed that you have not done it. And I realized that it's on his task list. And because of the way and method that he arrives at doing things, he may not do Wordle again until 2026.
|
Sam:
[44:10]
| Right now, Wordle, and we talked a few weeks ago about my to-do list mechanism and the randomization and all that. It has been two days, 20 hours, and eight minutes since the last time I did Wordle. And if I would roll to pick a task to do right now, Wordle has a .296 chance of coming up as the task gets picked.
|
Ivan:
[44:31]
| Yeah, so I'm accurate. It's highly likely that I will not see you do another Wordle until 2026, given the few number of days.
|
Sam:
[44:39]
| It's only a few weeks away. So, yeah, it's possible. I mean, I am picking tasks most days, like, you know, maybe 15, 20 times. So, like, something that has, like, a .2, .3 chance can come up.
|
Ivan:
[44:55]
| It can come up, but I got a good shot at seeing you at 2026.
|
Sam:
[45:00]
| You do. You do indeed.
|
Ivan:
[45:03]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[45:04]
| Okay, I think that's time for our break.
|
Ivan:
[45:07]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[45:08]
| Than to talk about, you know, other stuffs.
|
Ivan:
[45:11]
| Stuff.
|
Sam:
[45:12]
| So, stuffs. So I have to pick. Here comes the break. Enjoy. Enjoy, enjoy.
|
Break:
[45:21]
| Okie dokie. Here it comes. T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t. It was just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. do believe in the morning balloon, i'm tired what's wrong i'm i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing to get the show on the road there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road.
|
Sam:
[46:25]
| Okay all right here we are we're back we're back so you know up until like an hour before we recorded this show there was like, almost nothing on our list for this week and then both yvonne and i dropped some things in real quick because we're also doing this a little bit earlier in the week than we usually do, even when we do it thursday night u.s time we usually do it thursday night u.s we're doing it thursday well thursday afternoon here for me on the west coast it's like after what almost six o'clock there it's almost yeah yeah yeah but um east coast west coast north coast south coast whatever you know there could be a.
|
Ivan:
[47:07]
| North coast south coast.
|
Sam:
[47:08]
| There is a south coast there is a north coast yeah.
|
Ivan:
[47:13]
| There's you know it's coast all over the place.
|
Sam:
[47:15]
| Go up to hudson bay.
|
Ivan:
[47:17]
| That's a good point. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:19]
| So anyway, what do you want to talk about, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[47:23]
| Oh, let's see. We did put a whole bunch of things down, but let's see. Talk a little bit about some elections politics kind of a thing, because there's a couple of things in here related to those.
|
Sam:
[47:37]
| Election politics kind of a thing.
|
Ivan:
[47:40]
| Yes. So, well, the reason I mentioned both, I'll talk first. Well, we just had this. This just happened as we were just before we started recording that Indiana rejected the redistricting that that Trump was pushing and rejected it by fairly substantial margin. I saw over here that the vote was 19 to 31 to defeat it. So it wasn't even like it's not like it was close to passing. It was quite a wide margin. And so I did see that Trump was using his usual charm to try to get the people in Indiana to vote for him. I pulled this up on one that says President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders. If the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. There are stakes and every no vote will be to blame. It sounds really democratic.
|
Sam:
[48:49]
| Is that not how things are supposed to work, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[48:52]
| I mean, I guess it depends where, I guess it's how things are supposed to work depends on where you're, where you've lived for all your life, I guess.
|
Sam:
[49:02]
| Well, I'm thinking Indiana for this. Yeah. Is it not how things are supposed to work in Indiana?
|
Ivan:
[49:07]
| It's not how things have worked in the past. This is kind of like the, this is kind of like the Trump's administration requirement that people provide with no details how this is supposed to happen. But five years of social media history when they are doing their electronic visa application, which is like something that is like for people that are that already, you know, they have like visa free access. You do this ESTA form, which is just electronic like thing that you submit to do that. And, you know, it says that you're supposed to do it with no explanation as to how. You know, right. How do you provide five? I don't. How do I provide five years? So what do I, I would.
|
Sam:
[49:46]
| You print it out, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[49:47]
| You print it out.
|
Sam:
[49:48]
| You take it with you to the airport.
|
Ivan:
[49:49]
| Yeah, you show up and I'm like, here you go. Okay, here is, you know, there's a crate, I guess, in cargo that has five years of my printed social media history. So go knock yourself out, start looking through it. Anyway, but yeah, I mean, this has been the threat that it really seems like from what I was reading that. Basically, the threats just pissed off people.
|
Sam:
[50:15]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[50:17]
| This wasn't like any encouragement. It was just, you know, this is what you're threatening. You know, we need to, you know, do this. And I guess that it seemed that they were only going to be able to pick up. Did I understand that basically that they could have maybe picked up like one seat?
|
Sam:
[50:34]
| Two from Indiana. There are two Democratic seats in Indiana right now. And our goal was to wipe them both out.
|
Ivan:
[50:41]
| Yeah. But I saw I was seeing that maybe they thought that even like with this, maybe they could get realistically in the end, like one. But but I'm just, you know. I do think that this is part of a little bit of Donald Trump is turning into a little bit of a lame duck.
|
Sam:
[51:02]
| Oh, a little bit. I think that's accelerating very quickly, you know, because people are starting.
|
Sam:
[51:10]
| You know, the whole thing about Donald Trump capturing the Republican Party was that everybody was afraid of him and afraid of his supporters. Right. OK, but what's happening so far in this second term, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, one, he's becoming increasingly unpopular, even among Republicans. Now, to be clear, he's still got a lot of support among Republicans, but it's less than it was by a decent amount. And and two, he's showing himself more and more to be less effective. And when people have gone against him, they haven't necessarily suffered the same sort of negative consequences. Now, you do have even like MTG is resigning Congress. She's not fighting there. She's not trying to stay. so there you could say there are still negative consequences but his endorsement hasn't meant as much as it has in the past he's endorsed people who have lost he has not endorsed people who have gone on to win and it's just showing his weakening power and you expect that as you approach the lame as you approach the second half of a presidential of a second presidential term anyway but i think.
|
Sam:
[52:35]
| There is more and more of the Republican Party who's starting to actively think about, well, what's next after him and are starting to position themselves for that. And so, yeah, 100 percent lame lame duckness is increasing as time goes on. And it doesn't help that like half the time these days he's looking confused and like he doesn't know where he is and he's falling asleep in cabinet meetings and all this kind of crap.
|
Ivan:
[53:08]
| He went on this like to do this speech somewhere that apparently like it was in a tiny place that not a lot of people actually showed up to do something on affordability. And then they decided, oh, we're going to bring a working person to show over here how this whole affordability thing is a hoax. And the person that they brought up on stage basically just ripped them to, I mean, it was, they, they basically came up and just said, I just get a paycheck and I, all my money goes out to pay bills and I can't afford anything. So it looked very well planned. Indeed, what the hell they did like this week was just, you know, ridiculous, you know, this entire thing, you know, and but but the fact nobody showed up. This was just I this is the the contrast versus how it used to be whenever Trump went somewhere or whatever and how this thing just, you know, he went off the rails as usual, but that's not unexpected. I mean, whatever. He was just talking like meandering and whatever, whatnot. That is a big deal. But the fact that very little, very few people showed up and, and, and look, in a demonstration of how, uh, the, he is a lame duck and he is struggling with support and aligning people. Well, what happened here in this, in the city of Miami? So let me start first by explaining what the hell the city of Miami is.
|
Sam:
[54:36]
| Which is not Miami-Dade County. Because we had yet more elections. We had yet more, like we had elections a few weeks ago. We got even more now.
|
Ivan:
[54:42]
| In Florida, there were like three state Senate, you know, state legislature seats that, by the way, they all swung heavily Democratic. Right. I mean, by my substantial margins. Like, I mean, they, you know, Florida last election cycle, all the places that I knew that were heavily blue, they really, really, really had been a lot redder than they ever had been, ever. Okay. But that apparently has self-corrected quite quickly with everything that's been going on, especially because they talk about affordability and whatever, and it's a blue state problem. Look, Florida is the epicenter of shitty affordability. OK, all right. I mean, this is this is ground zero to this right now, especially because there's never any Medicaid expansion. This is the reason why I was talking earlier about the guy I talked about and health insurance and how nobody can afford fucking health insurance in this state, okay? If you're earning 60-some-odd thousand dollars a year, Which, by the way, is not enough to live in this state. Basically, when median rents are $2,000 a month, all of a sudden, we have the worst housing affordability right now in the nation, in this state. This is just the reality.
|
Ivan:
[56:06]
| One of the things that happened also is with the city of Miami. And look, the city of Miami, which is not Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade County is 3 million people, has a lot of cities. City of Miami Beach is a separate city. City of Miami Lakes or City of Doral, where Doral has his fucking golf course. City of Miami itself is the downtown Miami area. It includes a little Havana and whatever. It's got about 600,000 people, OK, out of three million plus. That is the entire Miami-Dade County. And by the way, the reason they changed the name from Dade County to Miami-Dade County is people didn't know where the fuck is Dade County for a while. So many years ago, they changed it to Miami-Dade County. So you knew what the hell it was. OK. Right. City of Miami had not elected a Democrat to the mayor. 30 years, Sam. 30 fucking years, okay?
|
Sam:
[57:01]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[57:02]
| And they elected a Democrat, and it was by an overwhelming margin that they elected a Democrat, okay? Not just that, the one thing that happened with this last cycle, there was a series of Cuban Republican family dynasties that were in government both at the county level and at the city of Miami level. There are the Carollos, OK, number one. OK, these guys are awful people. OK, Joe Carollo is mayor of Miami. He was in the he was the city council in Miami. He had been in power there for 30 years. This is a guy that that, you know, did so much corruption and never. I mean, he had been tried in federal court. He lost the case, a civil suit that a bard had against a ball and chain for abusing city resources. to basically try to shut down a business that annoyed him personally. That's it. There's nothing else. He lost a lawsuit. They were foreclosing on his house. They were trying to take everything. He figured out some fucking way. I think Trump also and their DOJ helped and him not being able to have taken all his stuff away. But he had been, you know, he had, you know, this guy wound up being back in government every time. It's like you could never get rid of him, okay?
|
Ivan:
[58:26]
| And so they set a new term limit thing so the thing that the Corollos would do oh I'm not running I'm going to put my brother, They would keep flipping back and forth, okay? His brother or him. Well, guess what? They all lost. Term limits got put in. His brother lost. He lost. The Suarez's, there was this guy who kept appearing with Trump recently. He was the mayor of the city of Miami who was a crypto bro, okay? All right? He was the son of the old fucking mayor, okay? And if you go with Francis Suarez, this guy, look, you looked at him as the prototypical slick-haired crypto bro that you see these days. That guy, the Suarez's, also, they got booted out.
|
Ivan:
[59:06]
| They lost their power as well. There's another one I'm forgetting, like right now, that also, but the thing is that they also put, finally, in the city of Miami, for the first time, okay, real term limits. Lifetime term limits. Not that you can't, you know, forget about this thing because the way we do is, oh, two terms or whatever. Now it's like, yeah, because then, oh, well, I skipped one term because I put my brother and then I can come back, right? No, that's it. Done. No more fucking term limits. OK. All right. They're done. They're over. Finally, for fucking once. OK.
|
Sam:
[59:41]
| The opposite. Not no more term limits. We have real term limits.
|
Ivan:
[59:44]
| I mean, no. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the opposite. Yeah. No more. Yeah, exactly. No more. No more lifetime terms for these people. They're done. OK. They finally were able to pass the term limits in a real way that their lifetime term limits that you can't find some loophole or to get get get a turn around. You know, there was this family, the Escalonas, for example. Okay. Well, actually, the Escalonas got a broke Corolla streak. The Corolla family had a 16-year streak occupying the District 3 seat in the city council. 16 years. Okay. That they were there. And this guy's also mayor and whatever. Mayor Francis Suarez, who was the guy that I told you, the crypto bro, he came in sixth where he was running. Okay. Okay. And so under Regalados, Regalado was also a guy that was a mayor of Miami and his brother was also running for something and he lost the special election as well. So these were like families that had, you know, the Regalados, the Suarez's, the Corollos. They, man, you know, they had power in Miami that had transcended decades and decades. And these guys were all Cuban. They were Republicans. OK, that's the main thing. And all of them, finally, all gone in one fell swoop, completely. So...
|
Ivan:
[1:01:11]
| For that to happen, when you got rid of those three dynasties in Miami, and how the margin for the Democratic— Man, this has been like razor-thin margins there, you know, all this time. The margin was so overwhelming for the Democrat that— I think you're getting—I think that the people in Miami, with everything that's happened, especially with— Listen, especially with the affordability crisis, okay? All right. Because the city of Miami is in Miami-Dade County is the place of the state. The affordability is just just gone like off the deep end because you had so many of these people from Wall Street and other places that came in and, you know, and started bidding everything up. OK, and all these people that were following Trump's coattails because he's down here in Doral. He keeps spending all this time down here, whatever. where all these people fall in his coattails. I mean, there were tens of, they came in with a lot of money. And a lot of them were selling from higher property states that come down here. They bid up everything. They've made everything unaffordable. Salaries don't go up because this state doesn't believe in like raising people's salaries. Fuck the healthcare or whatever. So they can't afford to live. They don't have enough wages or whatever. Man, they all got fed up. And they just voted all these people out.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:37]
| So I didn't see what happened in other states, but I was paying close attention to what happened down here. It was just quite surprising given the swing that happened from just a year ago. It was, it was, it was a swings over 10 plus points in a lot of places. And, um, right.
|
Sam:
[1:02:57]
| So I, I, I had given a summary from, from Tanneel, who is at, I have mentioned him before, it is a publication called bolts does a lot of local coverage of local politics all across the country. Anyway, the summary of his huge nights, huge night for Democrats, starting with what you mentioned. They flipped Miami's mayorship. They flipped a state house district in Georgia that had voted for Trump by 13%.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:26]
| Jesus.
|
Sam:
[1:03:28]
| And this was posted right after Tuesday. I haven't looked at the follow-up. They were on track to keep the Albuquerque mayorship while a liberal faction flips the city council there. And big overperformance in the two Florida specials you mentioned, plus 17 and plus 22 in the two. And this is one of the themes as we go through these specials is even if the Democrats don't win, they're doing huge amounts better than the Democrat is quote unquote expected to do in regions all across the country. And it's one where if you translate that same amount of movement into all of the races that are supposed to be in 2026, you're talking a big blue wave if this continues. Now, we're 11 months out yet from that election. Lots of stuff can happen in 11 months.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:24]
| Here's the one thing. But the stuff that's happening as we're recording, the fucking Senate basically told everybody, fuck you, it told everybody, oh, your health premiums, fuck you, they're going up and we don't care.
|
Sam:
[1:04:37]
| So why don't you start talking about that? What's...
|
Ivan:
[1:04:41]
| Well, in the Senate...
|
Sam:
[1:04:43]
| I will start. I will start. Remember the Democrats' deal to end the government shutdown was that they would get a vote on these health care premium things. Well, the vote happened today. And as expected, nothing passed. nothing.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:02]
| It was, it was a 50, you know, 54, they got 54 votes if I remember correctly, 53 or 52 votes. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:05:10]
| This is why when you make a deal, you don't, The cost of the deal shouldn't be you get a vote on something that you don't think you're going to win. If you actually want that thing, you have to make that part of the deal in the first place, not, oh, we'll have a vote a few months from now. Yeah. Come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:32]
| And so, yeah, this was not good. But, I mean, politically, who's getting killed are the Republicans. Are the Republicans regardless. And this is honestly.
|
Sam:
[1:05:43]
| Honestly, that was part of the justification for the deal was like, look, this is just going to be bad for the Republicans anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:51]
| So but I didn't want people to get killed without their health insurance premiums. You see, my thing is, and I get it, that politically, strategically, yes, this was better. But the reality is I'm not into this. I'm not into a lot of this shit for the just for the politics, just for that. I mean, I, you know, I really wanted people not to have their insurance premiums soaring.
|
Sam:
[1:06:16]
| The calculation was the Republicans were never actually going to cave on that. And so the question was just how long the government stays closed. Now, having said that.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:26]
| The final vote was 51 to 48. So they presented both the Democrats, which is extend the health care subsidies for three years. and the idiotic fucking like Republican proposal, which basically did nothing. It gave you like, oh, here, I'll give you $2,000 now so you can try to afford your $3,000 a month premiums. Not really exactly that helpful.
|
Sam:
[1:06:51]
| Yeah, no, I was just going to say, back to the government shutdown ending, the thing that got me about it is the timing because at the moment they capitulated, it looked like the Republicans actually were on the ropes and were starting to crack. And that was the moment they decided to like.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:08]
| But but OK, but but here is the thing. If if what we're talking about is a one year cost. Because we think we could turn this back later, but I don't know. The Senate really map isn't changing that much. You know, is the problem.
|
Sam:
[1:07:23]
| Yeah, I mean, well, the the best case scenario. Well, I'd say at this point with the numbers we're seeing, rather than the Senate being a lost cause for the Democrats, is at least a chance. but they're certainly not favored in the Senate. I think the, and we'll have our prediction show coming up very soon. And I'm sure one of the predictions is what's going to happen to now in the Senate, but it's looking like the Democrats have a very, very good chance of flipping the House. The Senate is still a long shot, but they've got a better chance now than it seemed like they would have a few months ago. So, and of course, even if they flip both the House and the Senate, it, you know, Donald Trump's going to veto anything they want to do anyway. So it's not like they'll be able to legislate and get things done necessarily.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:12]
| Well, exactly. It's not like they're going to get 60 votes in the Senate is my point.
|
Sam:
[1:08:16]
| And they probably won't have enough. Even if they get a majority, they're probably not going to have enough to kill the filibuster either. So because, you know, lots of Democrats don't want that anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:27]
| I mean, it's just there are so few here that is even possible. It's just, yeah, I mean, all you've got is a little bit where you can get, just get a little bit over 50, but that's it. I mean, it's not like, I mean, they're not going to get, well, but no, it's just not, they're not enough seats to, you know, there's just, you know, you're not going to get, well, I mean, we did get Alabama once.
|
Sam:
[1:08:52]
| Once.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:52]
| I say that.
|
Sam:
[1:08:53]
| There were special circumstances.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:55]
| There's one Kentucky Open. There's an Alabama Open one.
|
Sam:
[1:08:58]
| It looks like the Democrats have the best shot at Maine that they've had in a long time. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:03]
| I mean, it's one of those things where I guess it's possible, but it's highly, highly, highly, highly, highly, highly unlikely. Unless, you know, it's just, I mean, I don't know. But it's just, basically, I'm not putting money on it that we could get to, we could turn the clock back to 2008.
|
Sam:
[1:09:31]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:32]
| But the way, you do realize the way that, you know, of course, which, again, because I don't like people getting hurt, I'm not advocating for this. The way that we got to 60 votes in 2008 was because basically the Republicans finished destroying the academy.
|
Sam:
[1:09:50]
| Mm-hmm. And they nominated a few real clunkers for their Senate races as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:55]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:09:56]
| I mean, you mentioned Alabama. They nominated somebody who then, who was revealed, was like molesting children or something. And so you never know.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:10]
| Let's face it. I mean, I don't know. We've got a child molesting president right now anyway, as far as we was, you know, it's pretty clear. So not like that's been a showstopper.
|
Sam:
[1:10:21]
| Ah, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:24]
| So anyway, anything else that we got in politics like right now, I don't know. Anything else that happened, let me see. I mean, Venezuela is not. I mean, I don't know what the fuck. Are we going to war, Sam?
|
Sam:
[1:10:40]
| Are we talking Venezuela? If we're going to talk Venezuela, let's take a break and then do that. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:45]
| All right. Let's take a break. Let's talk about whatever the fuck else is on here. Okay. All right. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:10:51]
| Ah, here we go.
|
Break:
[1:10:55]
| You're listening to this podcast do you like it no do you want to support the show no well after you have subscribed to the show followed us on facebook and told all your friends they should be listening to what else can you do i won't subscribe you can help fund our patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the show, and maybe every once in a while, some much needed sedatives for Yvonne.
|
Break:
[1:11:39]
| At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, our curmudgeonscorner postcard, or even a curmudgeonscorner mug. Fun stuff. Not fun! In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the show. I really, really hate Curmudgeon's Corner! Are we worth a buck a month? No! Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. One hundred billion! Billion dollars! Even though you don't have anywhere near a billion dollars! If we're worth anything to you at all, send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. Alex hates, really, really hates curmudgeonscorner! That's really mean, isn't it? But I hate curmudgeonscorner, but I really do!
|
Sam:
[1:12:35]
| Okay, we are back. So, you know, there were a couple things I was trying to decide between for a topic for the last segment. But since we brought it up, let's talk about Venezuela. you know we've had first of all we've had my question is simple.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:48]
| Are we going to war.
|
Sam:
[1:12:50]
| I, you know, I am torn at this point between.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:55]
| I'm not saying if you like the war. I ain't going to war.
|
Sam:
[1:13:00]
| I'm not answering what, you know, do I want to go to war? I'm not answering like, you know, if I was president, would I go to war? I'm your question is, will we? And I'm still torn about that because on the one hand, you have Donald Trump. You know, as we mentioned, there are all kinds of reasons where it's seeming like he's more and more ineffective. Well, the one place where he can sort of just do stuff and, well, it's not the only place, but like he could decide to do this as a way to show his manliness and to show he's in charge and to, you know, make them stop me. I mean, we've got that little controversy over that double tap.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:40]
| I gotta be honest, I'd rather have him like pull out his pee-pee in public in order if he wants to do that instead of going to war.
|
Sam:
[1:13:48]
| But on the other hand, we've got taco from Always Chickens Out. That's true. And so, you know, we apparently, like, what was the most recent thing? We boarded a tanker and took over a tanker that we said was sending oil to Iran or whatever. We've got these continued attacks on boats.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:14]
| Is that something about, it was a sanctioned... Sanctioned, it had sanctioned oil, they said.
|
Sam:
[1:14:20]
| Yes. Well, the story is that it was intended to deliver oil to Iran, which is not allowed under the Iranian sanctions, and that's why they boarded it. I don't know what proof they do or do not have on that. Who knows? It might be. They might be telling the truth. I don't know. But, and then they keep attacking these boats that they say are drug boats, and we've got The whole thing about the killing of the two survivors that Hegseth ordered, that has been, you know, I think that had already happened by the time we talked last week, I forget. But, like, it has not gone away in the intervening time. People are still talking about it and the circumstances and will they release the video. At one point, Donald Trump said they would, and then they sort of seemed to back down from that. And you've got Republicans saying that, oh, it was completely justified anyway. They were still a threat. And then the Democrats saying that when they watched the video, it certainly didn't look like that to them. You know, they were two barely alive survivors hanging on to the wreckage and trying not to drown and then went back for a second attack and killed them.
|
Sam:
[1:15:32]
| It's a mess. And if there is a Trump always chickening out moment, I don't think it's yet. I think we escalate further before we back down. And Donald Trump has been saying he's like all four going in, not just boats, but attacking on land, using the Air Force, going after the regime.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:59]
| Well, apparently one thing is that with U.S. help, it has been claimed, the lady that was a presidential candidate that actually got the Nobel Peace Prize, they helped her escape to, I guess she was in Oslo. Is this what they were showing her like today? So, yeah, they helped her escape from Venezuela. And she said that it was like the U.S. helped her escape.
|
Sam:
[1:16:29]
| Right. Yes, I had heard that.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:32]
| So, I mean, so that was a, but obviously that's another action that seems to insinuate that we have infiltrated the country. That's what I'm saying. Physically with like people somehow. Not sure what kind of.
|
Sam:
[1:16:46]
| I'm sure. Donald Trump publicly signed an authorization for CIA covert action within Venezuela like almost two months ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:56]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:16:56]
| And normally, you sign an authorization for covert action. It's supposed to be covert, and you don't announce that you've done so.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:04]
| Oh, so that's the way that works. You don't go and say, hey, people, I'm doing covert actions over here.
|
Sam:
[1:17:14]
| Yes. Now, I suppose the individual actions are still, they're trying to do it undercover and stealth and all that kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:20]
| Still.
|
Sam:
[1:17:21]
| But it's been acknowledged that we are doing that. So, yes, I'm absolutely sure there are covert CIA agents and quite possibly covert military of various sorts operating within Venezuelan borders. The question is, what exactly do they do? And do we escalate to overt? Do we have the Air Force explicitly bombing targets? Do we have ground troops going in specifically to try to take over pieces of territory? Do we do that kind of escalation or no? Yeah. And like I said, I feel like this is one of those cases where Donald Trump can still make that call in the end, but Donald Trump is unstable. And what he does.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:16]
| Wait, Donald Trump is unstable? So wait, they're going to hold a 25th Amendment?
|
Sam:
[1:18:23]
| No, of course not. But they will. Well, yeah. And a lot of stuff is going to happen because like, you know, we all know, we've talked about for years how like it's the last person who whispers in his ear. So they're going to try to control very carefully who's the last person who whispers in his ear and have it be the one who does the things that whoever, you know, whether it's Miller or who, whoever, like there are people. Well, it seems fairly obvious at this point that the folks in the Trump administration, in the various zones of the administration, are basically running their own areas because they can whisper in Trump's ear, say what they want to say, and he'll just say, yeah, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:14]
| Well, but I'm sure that everything will be solved by the switch in fonts at the State Department.
|
Sam:
[1:19:21]
| You know, I figured you would save that for the what's something we talked about on the Slack that we haven't talked about on the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:27]
| I thought that was a critical thing for a nation's security.
|
Sam:
[1:19:31]
| This is how Rubio is making his big mark on the State Department. Because we have to go back to using Times New Roman instead of the sissy font they decided to use instead. Like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:46]
| I'm sure they said it was woke and gay. they did say it was woke oh they said it was woke oh shit okay I was only half right well.
|
Sam:
[1:19:56]
| The whole yeah, On the one hand, who gives a shit about the stupid font? On the other, it actually was changed for a specific reason, which is that it's easier to read.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:11]
| Yes!
|
Sam:
[1:20:12]
| Which, by the way, it's easier to read for everyone, but it specifically makes a difference for people who have trouble with things like dyslexia. But it's easier for everyone, including the dyslexics. But it was done to make it easier for people to read who had, like, reading impairments of various sorts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, of course, we need to undo that.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:38]
| Of course.
|
Sam:
[1:20:38]
| To bring back Times New Roman.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:40]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:20:40]
| Because Times New Roman, it's the Romans.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:43]
| It's a real manly font.
|
Sam:
[1:20:44]
| It's manly. It's the Romans. It's got those twiddly little serifs.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:49]
| Yes. Yes. Yes, of course.
|
Sam:
[1:20:51]
| And that's, of course, very manly when you have the little twiddly font.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:54]
| I mean, you want a real manly font. You don't want like the sissy, you know, woke... Font at the State Department. Yeah, when you're getting a letter from the State Department, it needs to not be woke. It needs to be, you know, it needs to have Department of War vibes, not Department of Defense. It needs to be war, Sam. You understand?
|
Sam:
[1:21:18]
| You know, given that, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:21]
| You're in the fucking dumbest timeline, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:21:24]
| Yeah, it should it should be like one of those fonts that looks like the old military stencils.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:30]
| I mean, if they wanted that, they should have gone to Courier. Honestly, fuck this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:21:35]
| No, I'm thinking more like, you know, the logo for the A-team.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:39]
| Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That, you know, damn it. That would have been. Let's not say this too loud because all of a sudden.
|
Sam:
[1:21:47]
| For everything, not just the titles and stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:50]
| Right. Why are we giving ideas? because this is like, you know, they'll hear this. They're like, oh, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:21:56]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:57]
| Anyway, this is the dumbest fuck. I mean, every fucking day, these assholes take their time to attend to the dumbest, most useless shit just to make some kind of score, some kind of points with, you know, I don't know. incels.
|
Sam:
[1:22:25]
| I don't know. It's all, you're right. It's all dumb. It's all performative. Well, not all. Look, the problem is the performative dumbness is done in a way that actively hurts people.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:41]
| It's made to hurt people. Yes. It's made absolutely, absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:22:45]
| It's not just, like, if they were just changing the font and that was all the stuff they were doing, then, okay, whatever. Change the damn font. but it's everything. And it's like, even the font change is specifically like, Oh, people who have trouble reading, fuck them.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:05]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:23:06]
| You know, but everything else. Oh, let's, let's attract, attack random boats near Venezuela. You know, let's, let's do, The most.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:20]
| But Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:23:21]
| Let's do deportations in the most harmful way we possibly could.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:25]
| Trump said that they're full of drugs. Oh, yes. Coming to the U.S. You know, with all these terrorists.
|
Sam:
[1:23:32]
| I mean, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:33]
| They check they check the boats, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:23:36]
| Well, and I was talking to you. I was mentioning harmful things that I keep thinking in between shows like the we've talked about the the harmful way. they're doing deportations and stuff. But I think it does not get enough attention that we've got tens of thousands, getting close to hundreds of thousands, of people under detention because they can't deport them immediately. We're just pulling people off the street who don't have their papers 100% in order and putting them into really...
|
Ivan:
[1:24:09]
| And people who... Wait, wait, wait. We're pulling people who have their papers in order, but they decided that they don't want them on the street anymore.
|
Sam:
[1:24:17]
| That's true. And even occasionally rounding up American citizens in the process.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:23]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:24:24]
| But from all reports, these detention centers are absolutely horrid in terms of the conditions.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:33]
| Oh, so they're not the Ritz-Carlton, Sam, is what you're saying.
|
Sam:
[1:24:35]
| They're not the Ritz-Carlton. They're not even close. They're worse than most prisons. And prisons are bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:43]
| And prisons are bad.
|
Sam:
[1:24:44]
| You know, and— I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:46]
| Actually, you know what? It would be a favor to send him to a regular federal prison.
|
Sam:
[1:24:50]
| In many cases, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:52]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:24:54]
| And we, because... Because we can't keep up with everything and we can't maintain a continuous level of outrage over everything all the time, I feel like some of these atrocities that are happening on a regular, everyday basis sort of fade into the background. And I don't know the right way to combat that, but I feel like some of these things aren't getting enough attention because the new shiny thing gets attention instead. But, like, I mean, we've got fucking concentration camps, essentially.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:30]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:25:31]
| You know, and, you know, I've heard some stuff recently. You know, I guess I have not listened to it, but Rachel Maddow put out a new podcast in the last couple weeks about the history of the Japanese internment camps during World War II and some of the debate and back and forth that went on with that. And I'm actually listening to an audio book right now that covered some of the same ground in some of the chapters I was listening to recently in terms of the debates that happened over that and how basically the folks that were against it just lost out completely. And we're 100% there again right now. You know, it's atrocious. And the problem is there's so many things that are atrocious. What do you do?
|
Ivan:
[1:26:14]
| Uh but i i mean it it look it it's it's hard other than what we do and talk about you know i i think that we're we're trying to keep the visibility of this every week where we talk about it in our tiny little podcast and but but also it's difficult to have people look it's it's what happens to everybody in general when look if you're being subjected to to miserable conditions every day. Eventually, at some point, you start actually getting used to the miserable conditions. Okay? All right? It's just, you turn numb to it, to a certain extent.
|
Sam:
[1:26:51]
| I mean, this is what people were talking about eight years ago with, like, normalization.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:55]
| Right. You know? And, you know, we spend time here, every week and we keep pounding the pavement on it because i don't want people to feel that this is normal people shouldn't feel that this is normal and i see you know like i said today look i had my time that i spent today talking to people that for real are getting really hurt by this shit, Yeah, and I do spend my time talking to people that are getting hurt by this regularly, unfortunately. You know, people that are scared to drive around. They're just scared to drive around. They don't want to go to events. They don't want to do anything. Even though, again, in many cases here, these people are here legally.
|
Sam:
[1:27:49]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:50]
| But they don't have a green card. They don't have citizenship. And they are scared to go and live their normal lives.
|
Sam:
[1:27:59]
| Which, by the way, seems to be a significant part of the goal. That's exactly what they want. They want folks to become less visible.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:08]
| I know. And it's horrible.
|
Sam:
[1:28:11]
| This applies to immigration. This also applies to the trans issue. They just want these people to go back into hiding. They don't want this to be visible as something you see. they you know whether whether it's gay and trans people or whether especially trans they've sort of seems like the republicans are almost used to gay folks at this point but you know they feel like they can still win on trans they they don't want that to be a visible part of what they see when they go outside and they don't want to see not people who aren't white either you know yeah They.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:47]
| Definitely don't want people that are not white or to speak another language, for that matter.
|
Sam:
[1:28:54]
| Oh, yeah. That's not acceptable. You've got to speak American around here.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:00]
| Yeah, you've got to speak American, yes. Very American.
|
Sam:
[1:29:04]
| Okay, so let's see. What else do we have on the list here? I think we've—oh, well, what do you think is going to happen in Venezuela? You asked me, but you didn't. What's your own thought?
|
Ivan:
[1:29:17]
| I keep thinking that Trump is going to get tempted into bumping off Maduro. And by the way, here is one thing. In terms of, I would like to see Maduro gone. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:29:28]
| Because you don't like him either.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:30]
| It's not just that I don't like him either. He's made millions of Venezuelans suffer. I mean, the massive exodus of Venezuelans to places around the world because of how his regime has made conditions in Venezuela untenable. Forget about even if you're aligned with him politically. Venezuela, violence that went through the roof. Venezuela has had shortages of everything possible. The economy has imploded. Safety is not there. you know, they went through this process of destroying all the institutions and Maduro violently attacks anybody who expresses dissent as well. So it's not like Maduro is some kind of benevolent dictator. Look, Maduro has been holding on to power illegally for a long time. and so if you ask me in an abstract what do i want maduro gone yes i want maduro gone, i would like it to see if it could be done through diplomatic channels there had been some indications that he had been willing to leave given the pressure that had been put on but my concern is that, What Trump is doing isn't in any way really inclined to do something good because he never does that.
|
Sam:
[1:30:59]
| I'll just say you're absolutely right about Donald Trump. But even more generally, the U.S. has such an amazing record over the last, you know, 50, 60 years. Listen, the last time that we do interventions for regime change, whether it's in Latin America or the Middle East or anywhere else.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:21]
| Here's the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:31:22]
| We don't have a good record.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:24]
| No, we don't, which is a problem. But the last time that we did one in Latin America, it actually turned out positive, okay, which was in Panama when we arrested Noriega. If you ask the Panamanian people, are they better off without Noriega, their resounding answer is a yes, okay? They thank God that the U.S. got rid of Noriega, okay? Okay. So, so, so do you have that, but at the same time, a couple of times we tried to do an intervention in Haiti, it never really, never really worked. Nothing really positive came up, came of that. Haiti is still in crisis. Actually, the crisis has gotten worse. I don't think it really had to do with any intervention. So it would have been just as bad if we had intervened, Whatever. I think that that one, whatever we did had no effect. But then you think about what's happened in Iraq, for example, and, you know, all we did was chaos. But the reality is that there has been no country.
|
Sam:
[1:32:31]
| I'm just going to give you one quick comparison in terms of if you want somebody to have a chance of not completely screwing up a foreign engagement. Who would you prefer, Donald Trump or George H.W. Bush?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:51]
| Fuck, I'm voting with Bush. H.W. or W?
|
Sam:
[1:32:56]
| H.W. We were talking Panama. That was H.W..
|
Ivan:
[1:33:00]
| Right? Exactly. Well, yes, H.W. did that. Exactly right.
|
Sam:
[1:33:04]
| And look, I'm not saying that I approve of everything George H.W. Bush did. However, like, put on a comparison.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:13]
| There's no comparison. I mean, there's no fucking comparison.
|
Sam:
[1:33:16]
| I mean, frankly, with his son, either. I mean, George H.W.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:20]
| Fuck, I'd say W. probably still over Trump doing this. Because even W. in his misguided idiocy. Wait, wait, wait. But here, W. in his misguided idiocy actually wanted something positive. It was just misguided and stupid and naive as all hell.
|
Sam:
[1:33:39]
| Yeah, I mean, look, we've said before. I mean, pick any random person off the street. You've got a 95% chance they'll do better than Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:50]
| Donald Trump, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:33:52]
| You know, could you find worse? Yes, but you'd have to work at it.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:58]
| You'd have to work at it, yes. You'd be hard-pressed. Yeah, so that's my problem. The problem is it's so much to go.
|
Sam:
[1:34:06]
| You've been going around in circles. What do you think is going to happen in Venezuela?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:10]
| I think he's going to do it. i think the bastard's gonna do it you know i think the bastard's gonna do it because this is trump 2.0 unchained unchained right so right now his popularity is in the shit what what but what do you think though.
|
Sam:
[1:34:24]
| Are you predicting sort of targeted assassination or are you talking like full.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:29]
| Out right no i think he's gonna do the decapitation thing okay just knock you know just just fucking like, You know, take out Maduro.
|
Sam:
[1:34:39]
| Maybe he learns from his mentor and he falls out a window.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:42]
| Maybe. There you go. That could be. Yes. Because that always keeps happening. Trump signs executive order for single national AI regulation framework. What the fuck? Does he even know what he's talking about?
|
Sam:
[1:34:56]
| I saw something about that happening like a day or two ago. Did he actually sign it just now?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:02]
| Apparently, he just signed it just now.
|
Sam:
[1:35:04]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:04]
| Does he even know what he's signing?
|
Sam:
[1:35:06]
| I'm sure he doesn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:08]
| Yeah, I'm sure he doesn't either.
|
Sam:
[1:35:10]
| You remember that, what country was it the former president of that he just pardoned for drug charges?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:18]
| Oh, my God. The Honduran guy.
|
Sam:
[1:35:22]
| Jesus Christ. Now, when asked about the specifics of that scenario, Donald Trump very, no qualms whatsoever. He said, like, oh, I don't know about the details of the case, but people I trust told me he was railroaded just like I was railroaded. And it was weaponization of politics and the people who, you know, his opponents didn't like him. And that's what this was. And that's why I pardoned him. but it didn't even pretend to know any details whatsoever about the situation or even who the guy was. Same thing. He pardoned some crypto guy, uh, like last month or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:09]
| Just criming. Like, you know, well, actually no, the one that last month, right. But, but there's a guy that he pardoned like about, you know, I can't remember when it was like recently that you just went back to fraud, like right away. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:36:22]
| Is there another reason you'd pardon them? You want them to do that, right? I don't know. Like.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:29]
| Well, by the way, here's one thing. Honduras itself has issued an arrest warrant to go and throw this guy in jail.
|
Sam:
[1:36:38]
| You know what would be really amusing? The guy apparently, the Honduran president who was released, was released for a prison in Kentucky or whatever. So I guess he's just wandering around in Kentucky right now or something like that. But it would be really hilarious if ICE picks him up now.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:55]
| That would be great. That would be hilarious.
|
Sam:
[1:36:57]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:36:58]
| And they deport him to Honduras.
|
Sam:
[1:37:00]
| What is exactly his visa situation at the moment?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:02]
| Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[1:37:05]
| Does he have a work permit?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:06]
| No, no, no, no, no. You know what he's going to do? He's going to, you know, they opened that Trump gold card thing this week.
|
Sam:
[1:37:13]
| Oh, yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:14]
| So he's just going to buy a Trump gold card and that's it. Problem solved.
|
Sam:
[1:37:17]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:18]
| There you go. Listen, here's the amazing thing. Right now, we won't give asylum, we won't do anything, whatever, but, but, but, if you buy a Trump gold card and you go to Mar-a-Lago and buy a membership, damn it, we're going to give you citizenship, Sam. Right away.
|
Sam:
[1:37:36]
| Of course. Yes. Of course, one of the things that there were new stats and polls on this recently, but it's been building for a long time. The number of people who actually want to come is, of course, plummeting, which is, of course, what these guys want. Right. They don't want people to want to come. They want them to stay away. But it's working like tourism is down dramatically.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:01]
| Oh, my God. Tourism. We have lost so much money. We've lost about $30 billion.
|
Sam:
[1:38:06]
| People don't want to go to university. People don't want to go to university here anymore. People don't want to visit here for tourism. People aren't wanting to come for jobs, you know, because we're making it a hostile place.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:19]
| Well, look, there is a reduction in demand. It's not like nobody's coming. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:38:22]
| Well, yes, there is a reduction. It's not going to zero. No.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:26]
| But there is definitely... I mean, we're driving people away. We're driving money away. Okay? We're driving students away. And it's just, my whole thing is that they're all framing this somehow as a positive to the economy. And it never has been. All the nations that we know around the world that have low immigration, their economies have been in the shit. Okay? Okay. Immigration, almost everything you see has been a net positive for the economy. And so, you know, when they try to, you know, now they're trying to blame immigration for all the problems when they, now that they deport all the people to make economy worse, what are they going to blame it on now? Well, they're going to blame Biden. Obviously, that's the first person they're going to blame. It's just going to blame Biden. But you still got to blame Biden.
|
Sam:
[1:39:21]
| No, you blame Biden, but then you start blaming the internal folks who don't fit the mold that you want. You're going to blame non-white people. You're going to blame the gays. You're going to blame the trans. You're going to blame non-Christians. You're going to blame, you know, whatever. And of course, the liberals. Anybody who's liberal, progressive, you're obviously a traitorous third column, right? You know, and yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:48]
| But my point is, yeah, yeah, but, but, but, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:39:51]
| This is how these kinds of regimes work, right? Like they, the, the, the universe of who's the enemy grows.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:59]
| But I hate to break it to you, Sam, that doesn't make you a lot more popular.
|
Sam:
[1:40:04]
| No. Which is why it is often paired with increasingly brutal crackdowns as you narrow that universe of who the good guys are. And then one way or another, hopefully you snap out of it at some point.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:21]
| One of the things that I'm starting to see, like, it's just that for one of our advantages in these scenarios, because even as they spend all this money and whatever, because you've seen how they're struggling to hire competent people, like for this massive budgetary expansion for ICE and whatever. I mean, like right now, they're basically just hiring. I mean, they're hiring. They're down to hiring, like, you know, just totally unqualified people. They can't even do the job. No training whatsoever.
|
Sam:
[1:40:56]
| Yvonne, I am job hunting.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:59]
| Nice. Hey, they got $50,000. You know, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. They got that $50,000 bonus. Okay. All right. Find out what you got to do to get the $50,000 bonus and then quit.
|
Sam:
[1:41:12]
| And then immediately quit.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:13]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:13]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:14]
| I do like this thought. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:17]
| I disrupt from within by like intentionally being incompetent and unable to do the things they want you to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:27]
| You know, I think, you know, the problem is, Sam, that they're not struggling at fighting those people. Can I be honest?
|
Sam:
[1:41:34]
| They're already nicely incompetent. No, I don't think that that is something I could consider. It's just like morally Republican.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:44]
| The thing is, what I'm saying is that because the United States doesn't really have like a lot of other countries—, Police, the largest law enforcement is a federal police, a national police. Okay. All right. Russia has a national police. Okay. This is not in control of like individual like states, governments, or whatever, whatnot.
|
Sam:
[1:42:10]
| By comparison, like the FBI is small.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:13]
| The FBI is tiny. Okay. The FBI is like, you know, I think total employees like 10,000, something like that. It's not a hell of a whole lot of people. Okay. FBI is a tiny organization, okay? So whereas, you know, you go to like, I'm going to look up like, say, Russian National Police. I mean, that's got to be larger than Army, you know, for example. And so the one positive thing that you have is that we don't have that structure, okay? They have 900,000 people in the Russian National Police, for example. 900,000, almost a million people. And national police forces are of that kind of a size, you know, a million people, 2 million, you know. And so he doesn't have that, okay, at his disposal. And so that's the benefit of, so it makes it more difficult. He is obviously trying to inflict pain from all the points that he can to make it miserable for people. But it's difficult in the U.S. as a president, as much as you want to try.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:26]
| And, you know, that's one thing that the Constitution didn't fuck up, to be honest, that it does make it difficult for a president to be as repressive as they are in other countries. They just don't have the scope of the control that's all the way down. Obviously, it's not like they haven't made it miserable so far. but I do think.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:50]
| These guys, they're trying all this shit. A lot of people are not happy with them.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:58]
| Even with all the threats that he did to Indiana, they went and they said, no, we're not doing this. And like we talked about, we talked about the lame duck thing. The lame duck thing has an effect. So, you know, he can go and like there's still. Listen, I'm not saying that he is not going to continue to inflict misery on us because he will. Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future. But it's just his, you know, he is not, thankfully, I think that his effectiveness at doing this is weakening to a certain extent.
|
Sam:
[1:44:38]
| Right. Okay. Anything else we want to cover here before we start wrapping things up?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:46]
| Let me see. Anything? Well, I'll mention one thing. They couldn't reindict Letitia James, huh? No matter how much they tried, huh?
|
Sam:
[1:44:58]
| Well, who knows? They may try again. So far, two grand juries have said that they're not going to indict her. They tried once, like, last week, and they just tried again today, apparently, and the new grand jury backed up what the first one said and was like, are you kidding me? No. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:21]
| That's pretty pathetic.
|
Sam:
[1:45:24]
| Just in general, the increase of, like, you know, the standard line that people repeat over and over again is grand juries will indict a ham sandwich. They're just a rubber stamp off whatever the prosecutors want. And it's not really an effective step in the process because it's very close to a rubber stamp. Over the last few months, this administration has been showing, Well, the reason that's true is because, in general, prosecutors do their job well and don't even take it to a grand jury unless they're fairly sure they've got a really good, unless there's really a case. Over and over and over again, over the last couple months, this administration has been trying to indict people for one thing or another, and grand juries have been saying, no, are you kidding me? They wouldn't indict that sandwich-throwing guy.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:24]
| Nope.
|
Sam:
[1:46:24]
| They're not indicting James. And this was after, of course, the first indictment where they did get an indictment over both James and Comey.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:33]
| And then those got dismissed.
|
Sam:
[1:46:34]
| Comey, was it?
|
Ivan:
[1:46:36]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:36]
| Well, those were thrown out because the prosecutor was illegally appointed.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:46:42]
| Because they didn't even follow the right procedures for that. Although apparently I heard today earlier they have actually nominated her officially to go through the Senate process. So we'll see what happens there. And apparently they did it a while ago, but they just didn't issue a press release on it. Like normally, whenever the president nominates somebody for some position.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:06]
| They make a big deal out of it.
|
Sam:
[1:47:08]
| They make a press release. They introduce blah, blah, blah. Apparently, weeks ago, they sent over this nomination to the Senate without mentioning it in any other way other than transmitting the nomination to the Senate committee who needs to receive it. That's it. So they, but they are apparently trying to do that at this point because, you know, you know, cause, but here's, let's be clear. This is not the only person they've appointed illegally.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:41]
| They're, they're not getting, but my point is that look, this is another part of it. Look, it's not getting, listen, he's been trying, he's been trying for months. Okay. To get these people like to, to like court, the closest he got was, you know, to, to show up at court and to have, the case dismissed like right out of hand.
|
Sam:
[1:47:58]
| Right i i'm still waiting for the the indictments of hillary clinton and and biden and obama and all of those kinds for some reason he's being slow with those i don't i don't know why yeah maybe maybe he'll skip that part entirely and invite them to see if maybe they'll accidentally be on a boat north of Venezuela.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:27]
| They're going to decide to take a cruise on a boat north of Venezuela. That's what you're saying. Hey, we got a little, boat. We're going to go north of Venezuela. The discussion I was having about this, this is something I mentioned when I was over in Guyana. I was talking about people like, you know, they're afraid to go on their fucking boats just to go fishing around there, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:48:51]
| Right, of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:53]
| I mean, they're all, like, just freaked out. They're like, well, shit, I might get blown out of the water. This is a ridiculous shit that this president does.
|
Sam:
[1:49:02]
| Well, and so far the administration has not actually provided any proof that these boats are what they say they are at all. They just like trust us.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:10]
| You know.
|
Sam:
[1:49:11]
| And of course, they're the most trustworthy in the world.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:13]
| You know, every fucking day that I see these people with a false equivalency saying, well, Obama executed people, you know, with drones. And I'm like, look, in each one of those, there was some kind of process where there was a finding done. Who is it that we're targeting? Why are we targeting? They went through a process. They didn't just go and just randomly shoot some fucking boats in the water. And look, you can still and you may still argue that that was an illegal act. But the reality is that if you go to every single one of those, this was not just, you know, out of pulling out of your ass, deciding, hey, there's a boat over there, looks like drug runners, let me just shoot at it. That's not what was done.
|
Sam:
[1:50:00]
| Yes, they had a process, and they did make some mistakes. They killed some civilians that they shouldn't have, but in most cases, they admitted it, they apologized, they sent money, blah, blah, blah, you know, et cetera. But yes, there was a process. They were criticized that the process was too heavy and too slow. And, of course, that's part of the reaction in the Trump administration is against some of that stuff. You know, they don't want a process.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:26]
| They want to just be able to do whatever—.
|
Sam:
[1:50:29]
| Exactly. Do whatever the hell we want, and we don't have to follow rules. That's the whole point of almost everything they do.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:36]
| Rules?
|
Sam:
[1:50:37]
| Yeah. They don't believe that the presidency should be constrained by rules or process imposed from outside. At all.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:47]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:47]
| Yeah. That's the whole idea behind the whole unitary executive thing that the Supreme Court seems to like a lot at the moment.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:56]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:57]
| Okay. Can we wrap it up?
|
Ivan:
[1:51:00]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:01]
| Okay. Go to curmudgeon-corner.com. You can see all our stuff, all the ways to contact us, all our old shows, transcripts of shows. You know, I was talking to somebody at one of these Snohomish podcast thing events yesterday who said they don't have time to listen to our show. It's too long, but they read the transcript.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:28]
| Oh, you know, that I've done that with certain shows that I'm like, well, I don't have time to read, but I'll read a transcript of the show. Yeah. I'll do that.
|
Sam:
[1:51:38]
| So I'm like, okay, cool. I guess I'm glad I added those. Thanks to Pete for suggesting it a few years back. But yeah, no, I kind of laughed. Like, okay, fine. That's fine. You can do that. But anyway, yes, our transcripts are on there, all the ways to contact us, old shows, blah, blah, blah. and uh alex wants me to tell people that at that event i did wear an ugly sweater that he made there and uh emily from the no serve podcast posted it on her instagram i believe if you want to go searching for that but basically i'd been this this meeting was supposed to have like an ugly sweater theme for like ugly christmas sweaters and as i was getting ready to go i'd been telling Alex, you know, I looked through my sweaters and none were sufficiently ugly. I mean, I'm not to say that none were ugly at all, but none were sufficiently ugly for that kind of theme. So of course he pulled out an old ratty, one of his sweaters and decorated it by hand in various ways to make it even uglier.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:49]
| I gotta admit that he did a great, he did a great job of painting the Abel's May symbol on it too.
|
Sam:
[1:52:53]
| He did paint the Abel's May symbol on it. And on the back of it it had like the pattern from a minecraft character i had from the skin and then there were some like some some sort of fluffy stuff that looked like a vaguely santa-like blob on it that was all glued on it in various ways anyway i won the ugly sweater contest yeah oh god yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:17]
| Well i you should yeah damn yeah if you didn't win.
|
Sam:
[1:53:20]
| With that i mean fuck yeah so anyway so yes anyway importantly also on curmudgeon-corner.com you can do what.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:32]
| Oh yes.
|
Sam:
[1:53:33]
| You can give us money patreon.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:34]
| At money yeah at this point and right now we need we sure need it.
|
Sam:
[1:53:43]
| That is right it is important give us tons tons and tons of cash and let's see there we go and yeah so at various levels get mentioned on the show we can ring a bell we can send you a postcard we could send you a mug but at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we will invite you to Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are sharing links and chatting throughout the week. So, Yvonne, what is something that has been talked about on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack over the last week that we have not mentioned on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:54:24]
| Woman-hating podcaster admits that he's never slept with a woman. Nick Fuentes addresses intimate affairs as he sparred with conservative pundit Pierce Morgan. So, Nick Fuentes goes on some kind of show with Piers Morgan, not exactly like Mr. Paragon of Journalism guy here, and admitted under questioning that he, by the way, if I remember correctly, he's the first guy that said, your body, my choice. Okay. That was him. So Mr. Your body, my choice, basically. No, no, no. I'm remembering the phrase. I know he's the one that said it, But I was trying to say, yeah, it's your body, my choice. That's what he said. So he said this shit. Well, guess what? Apparently, no, he hasn't had any choice with anybody because no woman will sleep with him.
|
Sam:
[1:55:18]
| Now, is he an incel or is he gay?
|
Ivan:
[1:55:21]
| He said he's an incel. Basically, he said he said he's not gay. He declared that he's not gay.
|
Sam:
[1:55:27]
| Well, do you trust that coming out of these kind of folks? So, but he could be both. He could be both.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:37]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:55:38]
| Now, he did not say he did not have sex with men. He only apparently said he didn't with women. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:46]
| Okay. And, you know, so, but yeah, but this is the, this is the, uh.
|
Sam:
[1:55:52]
| And back when, back when that whole Kirk thing came up, like the guy who shot Kirk and they were talking about like, uh, apparently there, there's stuff that came out about that sub various subcultures that I did not know about before, but apparently on the conservative side of things, there is a subculture.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:11]
| What do I know about now that you're going to tell me?
|
Sam:
[1:56:14]
| This is the subculture of femboys who are not, they distinguish themselves from trans people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:24]
| But that's, okay, but what has it got to do with conservatives? I mean, yeah, those exist.
|
Sam:
[1:56:28]
| No, it's because you have these conservative incels who, because of their positions and their attitude towards women, are actually repulsive towards women. But they are actually attracted towards women. So there's this culture of femboys who will dress up as and act as women to be the sex object of these conservative incels because they can't get actual women, but they can get men who pretend to be women, but who aren't trans and who aren't otherwise identifying themselves that way, but who—they will say they're men. They will say, I am a man, but I am a man who likes to dress as a woman and act like a woman and be as feminine as I possibly can. And these conservatives who are otherwise incels feel that, well, at least I can get these femboys. And I'm not gay either. I'm not gay. I'm not gay at all. But because, you know, they act like women. And this was one of the things that came up after the whole Charlie Kirk thing is that there's apparently this whole subculture of this kind of stuff going on, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:47]
| Wait, why does this have to do with Charlie Kirk? Why did this have to do with Charlie Kirk?
|
Sam:
[1:57:51]
| Oh, because they were talking about how the guy who killed him had a boyfriend who was trans or had a girlfriend who was a trans woman. But then there were people saying, no, no, she was not a trans woman. She was a femboy or he was a femboy.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:07]
| Okay, so that's what.
|
Sam:
[1:58:08]
| And that's where the connection comes in and people were talking. Now, none of this was necessarily verified at the time, but people got into these.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:18]
| That was the conversation, okay? Came up about these.
|
Sam:
[1:58:20]
| The conversation started talking about this subculture that exists there, which, of course, all seems to tie into very highly repressed people who just can't admit, like, their actual orientation and preferences because they believe it's wrong. So they jump through all these hoops to try to like, oh, I'm I'm not actually gay. This is a femboy or whatever, or somehow justify to themselves like, you know, whatever is going on. And it's just or I'm not whatever, you know, it's just it was a bizarre subculture that I had not known anything going through.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:00]
| These are the hoops that they're going through in order to try to say that they're not gay.
|
Sam:
[1:59:05]
| They're not gay they're not trans they're whatever instead there are these other subcategories and and look i i'm not denying that there may be all kinds of subcategories that people that are valuable and people should pay attention to but this just seems like high just like highly repressed people trying like somebody.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:25]
| Said that basically.
|
Sam:
[1:59:26]
| I don't know just.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:27]
| Went that like, I mean, are you telling me that the fucking solution is just to get all these people laid in some way? No, apparently not, because the problem is that they feel guilty about it. Because this is the big problem about this and why this entire thing about anti-trans is so bad, okay, to me. One of many reasons, but yes. But one of the big reasons is because how it drives these people into actually questioning their own personhood, into questioning what they like and what they don't like and make them depressed about how they feel because they make them feel like it's wrong. Okay? And this is the reason why, unfortunately, trans people have such a high rate of suicide.
|
Sam:
[2:00:13]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:14]
| And it's assholes like this driving this stupid bullshit, you know, narrative, acting like this, talking like this, being the, you know, the whatever macho guy. And all you are is just somebody who has been so fucked in the head, you know, with all these thoughts that you're just lashing out at society and everybody else.
|
Sam:
[2:00:36]
| Yeah. I mean... All of this stuff, like, shame-based culture and purity-based culture and all of this kinds of thing is just incredibly toxic. Just as long as nobody's hurting anybody else or doing something non-consensual.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:54]
| Don't knock yourself out.
|
Sam:
[2:00:55]
| Then let people do whatever the hell they want to do. But you do realize that most of the people that behave like this thick cuentas.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:02]
| They're a combination of either these incels. or you've got the other ones that I said or the female abusers. It's one or the other. It's one or the other. This is this group. They're all like Trump, Epstein and all these people that abuse women, treat them like they're less than men or whatever.
|
Sam:
[2:01:24]
| I want to be absolutely clear when I said consensual, fully consensual among adults, blah, blah, blah. Right. That is not saying go and do whatever the hell you feel like, including if you want to rape children. No.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:36]
| No, no, no, no, no. Consensual amongst adults is what I'm saying. Anything consensual amongst the adults, well, consensual against teenagers, because teenagers will do, you know, you know, stuff. I mean, you know, look, I mean, that's a reality. But the reality is that you can't shame these people into what they feel.
|
Sam:
[2:01:54]
| Well, it's a completely different thing with two 17-year-olds doing something consensual versus, you know, the 45-year-old and the 17-year-old.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:03]
| You know yeah and and and and and why it's so difficult to explain to people why that is so it's just i just, Oh, anyway. Anyway, I thought I found something more funny. Don't we have something more fun?
|
Sam:
[2:02:20]
| Yeah, I was about to say, can we have something more funny? I mean, you were trying to make fun of him because he admitted, yo, but.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:26]
| Well, I was just trying to bring up the fact that the hypocrisy. Well, I will say something more funny. I posted this thing where I put our electric car to charge, and they have idle fees for some reason overnight, which I think is stupid because it's so what I did is in order to not have to pay the idle fee, I can adjust the speed of charging on the car. So I slowed it down. So it was charging slow enough that in the morning it was going to be ready.
|
Sam:
[2:02:57]
| Okay. Very clever of you. Get back at the new people in charge, right?
|
Ivan:
[2:03:04]
| Yeah, basically, yes.
|
Sam:
[2:03:05]
| Because they took over from you when you resigned.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:08]
| Right, and I didn't use to charge such kind of fees. So, like, these assholes are starting to charge an idle fee at night. You know, it's like, who the hell is going to go plug in at 2 in the morning? You idiots. You know, why are you charging me an idle fee at 2 in the morning? Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:03:23]
| You never know if someone could.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:25]
| I actually watched a video you know, check surveillance for many reasons no, rarely no, never.
|
Sam:
[2:03:34]
| I will mention one more thing from the curmudgeon score slack and then we can shut up I posted an article about Bill Gates' daughter securing $30 million in funding for an AI app.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:46]
| That must have been so difficult for Bill Gates' daughter to secure that funding oh my god.
|
Sam:
[2:03:54]
| Sam. Yes. All I'm saying is if anybody wants to give me $30 million for my to-do list thing, for Robin Letter, for Juke Potter, for any of these things, I'm wide open. You know, send me the check. I will make good use of it.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:12]
| Listen, I think that your first start is to call Bill Gates's daughter.
|
Sam:
[2:04:17]
| You know, I remember talking to somebody a few years ago, like when When my daughter was at a prep school around here, she never actually met Bill Gates' daughter, but she had friends that were friends with Bill Gates' daughter.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:33]
| So there you go.
|
Sam:
[2:04:35]
| Yeah, so, anyway, she, yeah, but I never got introduced, you know, I should have, you know, it would have been a good thing.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:44]
| That's your missed opportunity right there at your funding. I mean, come on, man, you had the golden ticket right in front of you.
|
Sam:
[2:04:52]
| Yeah, yeah. You know, I heard every once in a while Bill Gates just, like, goes up to hamburger places and orders a burger in line and stuff, and I should just go stalk those places waiting for him to show up. right does that work yeah yeah yeah that's what you got to do i'll be i'm sure i'm sure if i found him he would immediately hand me a 30 million he just.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:14]
| Exactly he would just pull it out of his pocket no.
|
Sam:
[2:05:17]
| No no.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:17]
| No cash cash.
|
Sam:
[2:05:19]
| Exactly oh yeah cash that'd be awesome like get the big briefcase or or even better like the scrooge rick duck money bags yeah.
|
Ivan:
[2:05:29]
| Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
|
Sam:
[2:05:31]
| Okay 30 million in pennies okay uh okay we're clearly well past done thank you every for thank you everyone for joining us have a great week stay safe have fun blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and we are out of here goodbye bye, Okay. Thanks, Yvonne. We'll talk to you later.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:27]
| Okay. Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:06:28]
| Bye.
| |
|
