Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:01]
| Oh, God. Hello. Okay, so... Okay, in four minutes, I have to get his nuggets out of the oven.
|
Sam:
[0:11]
| Okay. So, want to chat about random other things on the live stream before we start the real show for four minutes?
|
Ivan:
[0:19]
| Uh, what was I gonna... I...
|
Sam:
[0:25]
| It is live streaming.
|
Ivan:
[0:25]
| Though. I know.
|
Sam:
[0:27]
| Watch what you say. Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[0:30]
| I know, I'm always so concerned. Well, because I'm not going to be giving out, I don't know, the secret codes.
|
Sam:
[0:39]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[0:39]
| Well, here's the thing. They just did and asked me to do this new authentication at work.
|
Sam:
[0:50]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:50]
| And so it involved, they're doing certain things, adding certain security measures, which I actually think make a lot of sense. Okay. right?
|
Sam:
[1:01]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:01]
| You know, think, yes. But one that was interesting is that, They're doing this new biometric one, okay? And the biometric one required that I log in and I go into this app that I have to scan a QR code with my phone. It takes pictures of my face, but I also had to submit a valid ID, like my passport or my driver's license, okay, to validate my identity. Okay. And this is all for work. And they, yeah, and then they checked that and then, you know, gave me the go ahead. Now, the one thing about this that wound up being, it's something that has happened to me repeatedly over the years and it's happened again. I, at work, my emails and everything are just Ivan Bowe. And the reason I'm Ivan Bo is because in the United States, and actually a lot of, look, it's a lot simpler to me going by Ivan Bo than Ivan Bo Diaz. Okay. Even though I am Ivan Bo Diaz. Okay. But it's just shorter. Okay. Honestly, even in Puerto Rico, I used it a lot as Ivan Bo. Okay. You know, even though my full name is Ivan Bo Diaz.
|
Sam:
[2:19]
| But there's a mismatch between your papers.
|
Ivan:
[2:21]
| Oh, fuck yeah. So the thing, the first thing it flagged is, well, the HR records have you as Ivan Bowe. Now, they had validated my identity before, because when you go in, they did this whole thing. I have to submit my password and everything. So they know that this information is correct. They said, well, okay, for this new system now, which I guess sometimes it's going to check my, it's going to look at my face to validate that it's me when I log into things. which is what it's looking like, okay? You have to change your name. Nature. Fuck. I'm like, oh, man. Ugh, shit. So I went into the system and I supplied the stuff and I submitted and they approved it. The one thing that, so all of a sudden, now, thankfully, my email did not change. Okay. It's still Ivan.BOU. But now everywhere in the system, I'm Ivan Bodiaz for everything now. And the one thing is that now, I usually have gone by initials as IB. Now we're placed to the initials as ID. that's d s is not my first last name and so it's really weird now that i am id, in a lot of places not ib and i'm wondering how many people in the company are going to be confused when they're trying at least.
|
Sam:
[3:51]
| It's not ibd for inflammatory bowel disease.
|
Ivan:
[3:54]
| That would be yeah or yeah i mean so i would be happier with.
|
Sam:
[4:01]
| Did you get a lot of people asking you if you just got married.
|
Ivan:
[4:06]
| No so but so yeah so this is this is something that has been just, like fuck but by the way this is something that has repeatedly happened over the last 25 years especially now with real id and all of this shit it happened with my driver's license i had to do that it happened at my bank, you know it it anyway the nuggets are ready let me go get Go.
|
Sam:
[4:33]
| Get your nuggets. We'll start when you get back.
|
Ivan:
[4:40]
| All right, let's roll. Okay. Plus, remember, today's Monu's birthday.
|
Sam:
[4:46]
| Oh, happy birthday, Mon. I did not remember. Here we go. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 1st, 2026. It is just before 1730 UTC, just like literally seconds before. We're like right on the dot for 1730. If I keep reamoring like this for a few more seconds, it will be 1730. Like, yeah, nine more seconds or so and I'll get there. So, you know, here we go. It is now, now, now, 1730 UTC. That's very exciting. Anyway, I'm Sam Minter. Yvonne Bo is here. This is yet another episode of Curmudgeon's Corner. And my dog is barking at somebody delivering something on the front yard. Fun stuff. Anyway, so we're going to do our usual. We're going to have lighter stuff at the beginning here and move into news towards the end. So, Yvonne, in the cold open there, we talked about your ID. Any other light, fun stuff for the...
|
Ivan:
[6:14]
| Sam, I have been now traveled the last three straight weeks. Okay. Which is one of the reasons why...
|
Sam:
[6:22]
| Were you on that, like, test Qantas flight that flew 24 hours straight?
|
Ivan:
[6:26]
| You know, I would have participated in that. If I had been offered...
|
Sam:
[6:30]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[6:30]
| If I had been saying, hey, you want to try the 24-hour flight? Yeah. Hell yeah. Sign me up. I would have done that. That sounds like fun. I mean, first of all, we're not going to be in a plane packed with like 350 people. Okay? It's going to be a light load of people, number one. Okay? So.
|
Sam:
[6:54]
| Well, just to be clear, not just because it was a test flight. They have to pare down the passengers to have enough fuel to do that.
|
Ivan:
[7:02]
| Correct, yes. I mean, you know, you can't, you know, yeah. I mean, you really need to lighten the load. You know? Oh, first of all, the A350 is, I've flown on that airplane. It's very comfortable inside, number one. Second of all, because they've done all this stuff where they've improved the humidity levels on the airplane, and also, it is pressurized to a much lower altitude than other older aircraft.
|
Sam:
[7:30]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:33]
| It's not as tiring a flight as on older generation aircraft.
|
Sam:
[7:38]
| So, what were the ends of this flight? Like, they went from Australia to the Middle East, right? I don't forget the exact cities. I don't remember.
|
Ivan:
[7:45]
| No, I didn't see where they went. I know part of the whole, the whole reason about this whole thing about the launch, this flight, that the testing they're doing, is that they're trying to launch, they want, they've been talking for decades now, nonstop service from Sydney and Melbourne to London. That's why Qantas has been doing that. Because that's like, you know, but the thing is, everybody keeps complaining that, well, it's going to be a 20 plus hour flight. But, I've always said that these naysayers are missing the point There's a lot of people that have to do that And then they have to fucking change planes somewhere Making the trip 30 plus hours So fuck it, Let's do it in one shot The hell do I want to go and like Have a goddamn stopover after flying 18 hours And then go on another 6 or something It's just, no No, I, you know, it's, it's better just to, to, to bite the bullet and fuck it.
|
Sam:
[8:46]
| I mean, I guess, I mean, if you wanted to make the most of that, you could like do an overnight stop and sort of recover, but that takes even longer. You know, if you're just trying to get there as fast as you can.
|
Ivan:
[8:57]
| Just trying to, exactly. Now, here's the thing. I don't even know if, you know, Qantas has really, uh, Dave played with the aircraft makers about this and then never bought the airplanes, even though they have been given aircraft before that can do this.
|
Sam:
[9:15]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[9:16]
| Okay. Boeing had launched the 777-200LR specifically targeting to do this, and they actually did test flights that showed that it would, but Qantas declined to do it. There was an A350 also before that, I believe, was capable of it. And that aircraft was used by Singapore Airlines for nonstop service from Singapore to New York, which that was the longest nonstop flight that there was for a long time.
|
Sam:
[9:50]
| How long was that? Like 18 or something?
|
Ivan:
[9:52]
| It's close to 20 hours.
|
Sam:
[9:54]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:55]
| Yeah. Let me, I'm going to pull that list. Now, of course, nonstop flights. let's see. So the top 10, and actually they, they are still doing it. They're doing, it's still the, not the, the longest, it is still New York, Singapore. Okay. And they are, but they've replaced the aircraft that they're, they're using for it. They, they're doing it on a three 15, 900 ULR, which is a very, it's a similar aircraft to the one they were testing. Okay. Okay. that they did a specific version of the eight three 50 to do that. They used to use an a three 40. that was specifically done for that route, okay? And it's 9,537 nautical miles. It's 19 hours, the scheduled duration. And if I remember correctly, that aircraft also is, it has very little coach seating. It's, you know, it's basically made that, you know, this is, you really don't want to cram people really tight and coach for 20 hours.
|
Sam:
[11:04]
| That actually makes a lot of sense. Like, even if you have, like, different levels within the plane, which I'm sure they still do.
|
Ivan:
[11:13]
| They do, they do.
|
Sam:
[11:14]
| If you're going to be on a plane for that long, you can't have people just crammed into like the little tiny economy seats that you're, it's not going to go well.
|
Ivan:
[11:27]
| It only has 170 seats. And that's a plane that can carry over 300 people. Okay. So it's got only 170 seats, 67 business class seats, 94 premium economy seats. So basically there are no coach coach seats.
|
Sam:
[11:44]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[11:45]
| Okay. Because, you know, premium economy is actually slightly better than domestic first class. Okay. I changed that. It's better than domestic first class. It's somewhere. So this is not a plane where people are going in there and getting cramped. Okay. But also, by the way, that reduces weight as well, which helps be able to do this. this, this flight. So, so yeah, I mean, I, I, I would have, I would have signed up. I, and look, the other, the next one is Qatar Airways does do one with the plane that Boeing had tried to sell them to, to, to do this before. There's 777-200LR, which Qatar has, has a number of those on their fleet. I've flown, I've flown on their plane a couple of times. It's the Auckland to Doha, non-stop, which is 9,032 miles, okay? 17 hours and 10 minutes, okay? Now, the flight, that Qantas is doing now, there is a non-stop from Australia to London, but only goes from Perth, which Perth is far up in the northwest, of Australia, so that makes that a lot shorter distance.
|
Sam:
[13:02]
| Right, because you think it's Australia, but Australia is a freaking continent. It's like you're on the other side of the continent makes a difference to your flight time.
|
Ivan:
[13:11]
| Oh, yeah. Big time. Yeah. And they're doing that from Perth to London on a 787-9. And that's 9,009 miles. Not nautical miles. Yeah. 9,009 miles. Yeah. Yeah. Earlier, I said nautical miles. The distance I quoted earlier are actual miles, not nautical miles. I'm sorry, because that's a big difference. 9,537 miles to New York to Singapore 9,032 miles Auckland to Doha And Perth to London is 9,009 miles And that's 17 hours and 30 minutes, Yeah, let's see. I think I have been on, let's see, what are the longest flights?
|
Ivan:
[13:54]
| What is the longest one that I've been here that's on this list? Let me see. I think it was, Dallas to Hong Kong, which is actually only 24th on this list, okay? 8,123 miles. I've done that on, I've done that one. There's the other ones where Dubai to Houston. Let's see, I'll go from the top 20, okay? Perth to Rome, okay, on Qantas, 8,298 miles. Dallas to Brisbane, okay? Which that, again, is further up north in Australia, so it makes a big difference in terms of distance. 8,303 miles, okay? Let's see, what do we got here? Then a whole bunch of flights to LA, whether it's from Dubai, Jeddah, or Doha to Los Angeles, Those are all about 8,300 miles. Different airlines fly that one.
|
Ivan:
[14:51]
| This is one that's always been long. And actually, I realized the other day, and I hadn't noticed this. You know, South African Airways is out of business. They don't really exist anymore in the way that we remember them 20 years ago. They had a very big 747 fleet, flew all over. That airline went bankrupt and is kaput. But a Delta flies Johannesburg to Atlanta, okay? And it used to be that, especially because of all the restrictions related to apartheid, South African had some of the longest routes in the world for many years because basically a lot of countries didn't let them fly there, so they had to, you know, do some very circuitous routes to get to places. So that was a thing, and they had a fleet of 747s for that. Let's see. Next is Dallas to Sydney. I've not done that. L.A. to Singapore. Yeah, but I flew to Singapore now. I flew from Doha. No, so, no, I flew from Doha, and I can't remember, I did not, New York to Auckland, New Zealand, Perth, the chair is the, prayer is the goal, Dallas to Melbourne, Australia, 9,000 miles, okay, and then the ones that I mentioned before, so yeah, so.
|
Sam:
[16:05]
| So, Yvonne. I know when you officially retire, you must take on a challenge.
|
Ivan:
[16:12]
| Challenge to complete this list. Yes, I like this.
|
Sam:
[16:15]
| Complete the top 25 list, but not only complete the top 25, but in a record-setting pace to complete all 25 in as short a time period as possible.
|
Ivan:
[16:26]
| Listen, if I'm retired, I can take on that challenge. I like this challenge. I'll go and I'll just go nonstop, one to the next, to the next, to the next. You know what I'm saying? I'll just fucking, just say fuck it. Just go for broke. You know, I'll try to see the sequence where I'm like, okay, great. I went LA to Singapore. Okay, great. I'm in Singapore. What's the next? Okay, Singapore to San Francisco. Fuck it. Let's go. Next flight. Boom. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[16:51]
| And talk to Guinness before you start so that you can like, they can be tracking you for the world record. Know what the current world record is because there probably is one. You know, and then go.
|
Ivan:
[17:04]
| This is, I like this challenge. This sounds great. I love this. As a matter of fact, you know what we could do? If somehow we figure out how to get sponsors for shit and stuff, is to have that sponsored.
|
Sam:
[17:17]
| That's the kind of thing I'm pretty sure you could probably get sponsored by the airlines that are...
|
Ivan:
[17:23]
| In the airlines.
|
Sam:
[17:24]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[17:24]
| Right. Yeah. I'm like, guys, listen, I'm going for broke. Fuck it. I'm going to see how the hell I complete the top 25 longest routes in the world.
|
Sam:
[17:35]
| Right. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[17:37]
| Let's go. Come on. We can do this.
|
Sam:
[17:40]
| Okay. Now, before I hijacked this by just saying, had you been on the 24-hour flight, you were starting to just say you'd been flying a lot lately.
|
Ivan:
[17:49]
| I've been, listen, three straight weeks that I've been going. This is why I couldn't last week. I was in the Bahamas. Let me just say, listen, the cell coverage, the data coverage and cell coverage, also the power was flaky. Okay. All right. everything was flaky over there. All right. So, so that was, that was an issue. Okay. Then I was in El Salvador. Okay. That's, I had a lot of talk about the Bukele situation with a lot of the locals, by the way. All right. Which, uh, we could, we could talk about that.
|
Sam:
[18:21]
| Okay. Elaborate. Cause I know nothing. I know nothing. Go for it.
|
Ivan:
[18:25]
| Well, I mean, look, he's been in power now for seven years. And look, he is very much Putin style. That is his MO. He came in and took over a situation where the security was shit. Okay. And the economy was crap and he fixed that. But, He's done it in a way that one person confessed to me.
|
Sam:
[18:56]
| Back up just a tad, just to specify, because I had to look it up to make sure I knew what I was talking about. Bicali is the current president of El Salvador since 2019. Yes, seven years now, yeah. And so, okay, give a little bit of history and then the current situation.
|
Ivan:
[19:13]
| Well, you got to remember that for a very long time, El Salvador, going back to like shit. Remember all the Iran-Contra shit and everything all the way back then. El Salvador was a country that was ravaged by, you know, there were paramilitary groups going all over the place. There was a lot of violence. And, you know, there were gangs. The country was not safe.
|
Sam:
[19:36]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[19:37]
| And it was also a place where turf war for many, for a long time in between, you know, part of Cold War and how Central America was part of it. You know, with Nicaragua being on one side of the communists and us trying to, and we propped up a lot of dictators in the area as well, and paramilitary groups and gave them a lot of weapons. And that caused for a long time that the security situation in El Salvador.
|
Ivan:
[20:08]
| Was horrible. It's one of the reasons why the United States received quite a lot of migrants from El Salvador and why we gave asylum to a lot of people because of the violence in El Salvador, the gangs and all these things. And, look, that election came seven years ago where Bukele took power. One of the things they were telling me about it is that his father was somebody that was a centrist and actually a leftist, okay, before. and he has come in and, The main thing that he's done is just like Putin. What he did is provide safety and stability for most people in their daily lives, at a cost of a lot of repression, and elimination of certain liberties. Okay. But the reality is that for certain people, like one guy was explaining to me, it was this lady that she met that her son was murdered. and how nobody had ever arrested the people that murdered her son, but Bukele came into power and they arrested and threw that guy into frickin' secot.
|
Sam:
[21:17]
| You know? Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[21:19]
| And so you ask that lady, I'm like, hey, why do you want to live? You want to live like the old way where you feared like even just walking the street? Or is this... And so people are like, I mean, they can't fathom going back to the level of, insecurity that happened in the past where, the murder rate in El Salvador is one of the worst in the world, where people never felt safe anywhere. And... You know, it reminded me of, oh, we talked about how after when they toppled Saddam.
|
Sam:
[21:59]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[22:00]
| How the Iraqis, in many ways, many of them were like, damn it, we were better off with Saddam.
|
Sam:
[22:07]
| After a while. Yeah, it took a while for them to get to that point.
|
Ivan:
[22:10]
| It took a while.
|
Sam:
[22:10]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[22:11]
| But they did. And it was because of the chaos and the insecurity and the violence that ensued afterwards. because even though, and this is how a lot of these people wind up getting into power. They wind up, and they were telling me that actually the previous presidents actually used the insecurity to their advantage and politically, okay? Because they controlled all the paramilitary groups in the gang, so that's the way that they were able to maintain power. So what Bukele has done is flipped the script and he's decided, it, I'm going to, well, I'm going to use the Putin script. I'm going to use the security as the way for me to get power. I'm going to, the roads are going to be paved. The airports are going to be new. How we made that, who knows, we're probably borrowing billions and, you know, and nobody will know until the economy blows up, you know, because there's no transparency on any of it. But, but the thing is that, look, the repression is real. This guy who has been a cab driver told me that he was part of a, he had a, He had a medallion to be able to pick up people at the airport, okay, through a transport union. And that one day he gets to the airport and the airport administrator grabbed.
|
Ivan:
[23:29]
| All the people that had the transport licenses at the airport and said, well, we just got a call from the president and there's a new rule related to these. If they find that any of you say anything bad about the president, you're going to lose your medallion. Straight up simple as that.
|
Sam:
[23:45]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[23:47]
| Criticize the president, lose your medallion. And a lot of people talked about how that is the way it is like right now. But the one thing is that so many people were so fed up by how things were before, that they are willing to tolerate this right now because the way it was before for most people was worse. Yes, I have my, yeah, I have my freedom of expression, but how am I living my freedom of expression if, you know, I walk out my house and I'm going to get fucking murdered and robbed?
|
Sam:
[24:20]
| Well, I mean, this tradeoff has been, you know, it's a famous tradeoff, right? I mean, there's the Benjamin Franklin quote, right? Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. You know, and you can argue whether Franklin was right, but I mean, the fundamental fact that there is a tradeoff there. I mean, this is one of the appeals of, you know, fascist governments and authoritarian governments in general is one they can give you. Well, they can give the approved groups security and safety.
|
Ivan:
[25:00]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[25:02]
| And they also, another standard thing is they can get things done faster because you don't have all this messy democratic debate and having to build consensus and all that crap. Someone just decides what to do and does it.
|
Ivan:
[25:17]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[25:18]
| And these two things together are like a big part of the appeal. And, and you can understand why in certain cases. And, and like, you know, I, I, I nodded to like some of the downsides. Usually it isn't safety for everybody. It is safety for a specific subgroup that is in favor of. If nothing else, it's safety for the people who are willing to conform, you know, but, but most generally it's wider than that.
|
Ivan:
[25:53]
| Oh yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if you actively oppose them, you're going to wind up dead.
|
Sam:
[25:59]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:00]
| Simple as that. And like, or jailed in inhumane conditions.
|
Sam:
[26:05]
| Right. And just to be clear, when I said wider than that, I meant the out group is usually wider than that. But in the narrowest cases, it's just the people who actively oppose the regime. But in most cases worldwide, they're disfavored ethnic minorities. They're disfavored religions. They certainly tend not to like LGBTQ-type folks. Oh, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:30]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[26:31]
| And they're all kinds of outgroups, often women, more generally. You know, and it's, it's just, and if you are in that favored group and sometimes, sometimes the favored group is very small. It's like wealthy landowners or something. You know, it really depends. But, you know, if you were in the favored group, you can definitely see, oh, okay, everything's nice now. This is actually better for me. If you happen not to be in that group, you're less happy.
|
Ivan:
[27:07]
| You know, the thing is that there are very few leaders that are like Joe Biden. Or I'll bring an example, not from you, Jose Mujica, who was the president of Uruguay.
|
Sam:
[27:22]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[27:23]
| Tell me more. Uruguay right now in the Americas is one of the safest, most developed countries. nations in the Americas. Okay. Strong economy, broad security, broad democracy, all the things that you, you, you really want in a democracy. And the thing is that the, the, the president, President Mujica was one of the, humblest people that you had ever met. This is a guy who did not go to be president to enrich himself. He lived, his house was I mean, a shack. And he refused to move to the presidential palace. He gave away about 90% of his monthly salary to help poor people. And it's not like the President Trump's giving away the salary where he is making all this money. He literally was drove, and I saw the pictures, a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.
|
Sam:
[28:23]
| Nice.
|
Ivan:
[28:24]
| Was it yet?
|
Sam:
[28:25]
| Was it yellow?
|
Ivan:
[28:27]
| No, I can't remember. I think it was like green, if I remember correctly. Yeah. It was blue, blue, blue, blue.
|
Sam:
[28:32]
| It was blue.
|
Ivan:
[28:34]
| He helped pass laws to make abortion legal. He passed laws to allow same-sex marriage. He made Uruguay the first nation to control and sell recreational marijuana. And this guy spent 15 years locked up as a gorilla. But this guy brought the nation together. And he did it not to make himself rich, but to make everybody's lives better. Everybody's. And, you know, I'm sorry, but Joe Biden was the same way and he tried very hard and he got treated like shit. Fortunately, this guy was not treated like shit by his people. He was revered.
|
Sam:
[29:18]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[29:19]
| And which is why Uruguay right now is one of the strongest democracies there is. As a matter of fact, I keep seeing a lot of a lot of places recommending, hey, if you want to retire, you know, a nice retirement for Americans and want to go abroad, one of the recommendations is Uruguay. definitely. And I, let me tell you something. And it is appealing. I'll tell you what.
|
Sam:
[29:38]
| It's one of the places the ex-Nazis went, right?
|
Ivan:
[29:41]
| No, that's, you're thinking Paraguay.
|
Sam:
[29:43]
| Paraguay. I mean, and Argentina, right. But I thought there was a little bit Uruguay.
|
Ivan:
[29:48]
| Probably someone to Uruguay.
|
Sam:
[29:49]
| Probably all over South America, let's say.
|
Ivan:
[29:51]
| But, yeah, but there were a lot in Brazil and they were in Paraguay. But the most famous really is more Paraguay, not Uruguay.
|
Sam:
[29:58]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[29:59]
| Paraguay is completely different from Uruguay.
|
Sam:
[30:02]
| They both end in Guay.
|
Ivan:
[30:04]
| I know.
|
Sam:
[30:04]
| It should be similar.
|
Ivan:
[30:06]
| That's how it works, right? I know. You're doing the same thing as I did with what was the African nation I went and I.
|
Sam:
[30:14]
| On Maptop?
|
Ivan:
[30:16]
| No, no, no, no. This was on a quiz that I had. I'll never forget. I was in eighth grade in my geography class, and they go with Africa. And, like, I'm terrible at African countries. And the problem also with African countries is that over the years, they change a lot. It's not very static. There's been quite a lot of changes. Countries that were there. Countries that disappeared. And so there's a lot of changes. It is an area that a lot of geography has changed a lot in the last 40 years.
|
Sam:
[30:43]
| And there's, like, an order of 50 of them as well. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[30:45]
| Yeah. And there's a lot of countries. So I still remember that there was, let me see, I think, right? It doesn't, right. It doesn't exist anymore. There was a Republic of Upper Volta.
|
Sam:
[30:56]
| Upper Volta, yes.
|
Ivan:
[30:57]
| Okay. Yes. Yeah. But which is now Burkina Faso. Okay. Since 84. You see, this is the confusing shit. And so, all right. So here's the thing about this. I knew I was doing this quiz and I was like, there's an Upper Volta. And then I thought.
|
Sam:
[31:12]
| And I'm like, missing.
|
Ivan:
[31:13]
| Country.
|
Sam:
[31:14]
| I remember this story.
|
Ivan:
[31:15]
| Yeah, I mean, fuck. I mean, if there's shit, I mean, I'm like, I don't it asked me to name, I don't know how many countries in Africa. I'm running short on this list and I'm like, fuck. Well, if there's an upper volta, there's got to be a lower volta. Well, there is no lower volta. Why the fuck? I keep going, why the fuck did you name an upper volta anyway if there's no lower volta?
|
Sam:
[31:38]
| There is a lower volta bridge.
|
Ivan:
[31:42]
| Well, yeah, but not a country, though.
|
Sam:
[31:44]
| Yeah, it is a lower Volta bridge.
|
Ivan:
[31:47]
| Yeah, but not a country.
|
Sam:
[31:50]
| It was constructed in 1965 through 1967 by German contractors. Over the decades, it suffered from poor maintenance and increasing traffic, making it dangerous for drivers.
|
Ivan:
[32:05]
| Did it collapse at some point?
|
Sam:
[32:06]
| By 2009, locals were calling it a death trap, with concerns over rusting joints and deteriorating sealants. In 2013, there was an appeal by the residents nearby of Skogopi to the Ghana Highway Authority. So, Lower Volta, the Lower Volta Bridge, by the way, is not in Upper Volta, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[32:28]
| Oh, that's even more confusing!
|
Sam:
[32:29]
| It's in Ghana. To repair the rusting expansion contraction. Despite calls for repairs, only minor fixes were made. The bridge's structural integrity continued to decline. In 2018, the government promised repairs, but reports in 2019 showed ongoing accidents, with motorcyclists being the primary victims. After a local politician's murder in 2020, protests erupted with residents blocking the bridge. The Ghana government is planning to build a new cable-stayed bridge to be started in 2021. Obviously, this information is out of date.
|
Ivan:
[33:06]
| But the bridge has not collapsed yet.
|
Sam:
[33:07]
| Apparently not. okay so.
|
Ivan:
[33:10]
| Okay but that's more even that's even more confusing anyway anyway.
|
Sam:
[33:15]
| I we we somehow got on this from you've been traveling a lot.
|
Ivan:
[33:20]
| And i'm traveling next week and maybe the other week and i'm like i don't know this doesn't stop.
|
Sam:
[33:26]
| I i will mention one one thing this episode that we are recording right now is episode 999 of this podcast so that means next week is episode 1000, wow i have in my head something i want to prepare special for the beginning of the show.
|
Ivan:
[33:48]
| Fireworks a drone show.
|
Sam:
[33:50]
| Yes fireworks a drone show indeed, You know, ritual sacrifice of a goat. I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[33:59]
| You know, I did mention this. You know, we're talking about ritual sacrifices that in El Salvador that, you know, there's a lot of volcanoes. Okay.
|
Sam:
[34:07]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[34:07]
| So I asked the customer to see if, you know, it was part of the contract negotiation, whether we just needed to, you know, offer some human sacrifices over at the top of the volcano. They didn't say no.
|
Sam:
[34:17]
| Okay. Well, that works. You know, a good way to seal a deal, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[34:22]
| Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that would be a unique, innovative way to seal the deal.
|
Sam:
[34:28]
| Right. Okay, we've got a long time. So let me just do one movie instead of two.
|
Ivan:
[34:34]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[34:35]
| Okay. From 1976, the original Rocky.
|
Ivan:
[34:40]
| Ah!
|
Sam:
[34:41]
| Now, I had seen this before. This is in the AFI list, but this time, watching it last September, was not from the AFI list. I'd seen it from the AFI list. We'll see it from the new AFI list again when we get to it. I don't remember how this came up exactly, but we watched the original Rocky. And honestly, like, surprisingly good.
|
Ivan:
[35:08]
| It is a good movie.
|
Sam:
[35:10]
| It is a good movie. It won a bunch of awards. And the thing that keeps getting, like, I've learned this several times and forgotten it several times, But Stallone wrote the damn thing.
|
Ivan:
[35:23]
| Yes, he did. He wrote the damn thing.
|
Sam:
[35:27]
| You think of Stallone as like his character.
|
Ivan:
[35:29]
| Sort of, like a dumb guy.
|
Sam:
[35:32]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[35:33]
| A dumb rube, yeah. But no, he wrote the damn thing.
|
Sam:
[35:35]
| He wrote it and was apparently a major part in the whole process of making this into a movie.
|
Ivan:
[35:43]
| By the way, they made a documentary recently about that.
|
Sam:
[35:45]
| I was about to mention the documentary. Isn't it about to come out, or did it already come out?
|
Ivan:
[35:50]
| I'm not sure if it came out, but I know that it was about either.
|
Sam:
[35:53]
| Oh, a documentary. No, the new one that's coming out is a biopic. It's a movie about the making of Rocky. That's right, yes. I saw a preview for it recently, and I was like, oh, that actually looks kind of cool. I kind of want to watch that.
|
Ivan:
[36:12]
| Yeah, I know. I saw that. I am thinking about seeing that now.
|
Sam:
[36:15]
| So, yeah. But, no, Rocky's actually a good movie. And, you know, I've only... ever we we have now subsequently seen rocky 2 so i have seen rocky 2 but i've not i have not yet made it past rocky 2 in the series, because i know there's like i don't know 12 movies now including the creed ones you know it's it's a big long series now so, i you know i don't know how it deteriorates or not but like the first movie is pretty damn good, you know and and you you feel for this guy you feel for his girlfriend you know yeah it's it's not just about the boxing it's about their relationships and what they're doing and going on yeah and and i'm looking at one best picture, uh on oscar i mentioned it's on the afi list the the afi list let me just double check where where rocky was on this, it was it was number 78 in the 1998 ranking but it moved up to 57 in a 2007 ranking.
|
Sam:
[37:21]
| But yeah, it won Best Picture. It won Best Director at Academy Awards. It was nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actors, Best Original Screenplay. It won for Film Editing as well. It was nominated for Best Original Song and Best Sound. It won some British Film Awards too. It won Best Picture for Golden Globes as well and was nominated for a bunch of others. I mean, thumbs up. It was a good movie. I didn't, I, you know, if you had to predict, Sam, will you like a boxing themed movie? The answer would be no.
|
Ivan:
[38:00]
| No.
|
Sam:
[38:01]
| But Rocky was good.
|
Ivan:
[38:03]
| Rocky was a good movie. Yes. Rocky was a good movie. Not a good sports movie. It was a good movie.
|
Sam:
[38:11]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[38:12]
| It just happened to have boxing.
|
Sam:
[38:14]
| It just happened to have boxing. Like, you know, and I've seen a couple other movies that were, had boxing as a major part of their theme and was not as impressed. This was really well done.
|
Ivan:
[38:28]
| It was really well done.
|
Sam:
[38:30]
| And again, like every time, because it just doesn't match his image. Every time you hear about like how much this movie was really just Stallone, making this thing happen.
|
Ivan:
[38:45]
| Look, Stallone, his politics lately drive me crazy, but, you know, but, but look, he made a couple of really good films, when you consider both because it's kind of interesting how the franchises turned into action franchises, but they weren't. first movies weren't because the same thing with his movie first blood.
|
Sam:
[39:07]
| And i'll say like i haven't gotten to mentioning it on here yet but we have watched first blood as well to start off that series and and i agree it was also good and not like you.
|
Ivan:
[39:19]
| Know it is not that wasn't really the the there was action and and violence in it but that wasn't the focus of like first blood.
|
Sam:
[39:28]
| Was about like.
|
Ivan:
[39:30]
| Ptsd from a warm vetsd yes that's what it was about yes and how we treated veterans when they came back home yes that was the key thing.
|
Sam:
[39:42]
| Right and so yeah so i don't know uh you know give stallone his props he did.
|
Ivan:
[39:49]
| Yeah he did good yeah he when he sat down to do those movies he really did a very good job and they weren't, some jock or action movie whatever now the fact that the franchise turned into that later because that was the way to make money it's a different thing but but definitely those two first movies were really well made, movies so indeed.
|
Sam:
[40:13]
| Okay with that let's take a break and this should have been a wiki of the day but I didn't bother preparing it so instead it's another one, this one this one and then we'll be back and we'll talk about the news of the week, back after this.
|
Ivan:
[40:34]
| Back after this.
|
Break:
[40:49]
| FreeSchoolFightDay, YouTube by night, AlexMZilla.com. AlexMZilla is, A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A, and .com is period F-M-C-O-M.
|
Sam:
[41:13]
| I will mention that yesterday, last night, for some homework assignment for school rather than do, answer the question that was actually asked alex submitted a transcript, of an episode from his channel from that he published in 2021 but was recorded in 2016 no don't give him any ideas like he can't he can't hear that, like don't don't don't give any no it was an episode from his from his channel from from 2021, and i'm sure the teacher will much appreciate that and uh, you know it's it's got him and his sister bantering about a video game again he published it sure we'll get a very high grade but it was recorded when he was 20 in 2016 so when he was seven so yeah i'm sure the teacher will enjoy that, Anyway, where do you want to start news-wise? It hasn't really been a really big news week, although we've had a few things going on.
|
Ivan:
[42:20]
| Oh, come on. Are you kidding me? There's a whole bunch of shit going on.
|
Sam:
[42:23]
| There's a whole bunch of shit, but there's not like one big dominating thing. There's lots of little things. Go ahead. Pick one.
|
Ivan:
[42:29]
| Well, let, me pick one. Pick one. Oh, let me see. I don't know. I got to look. I got to think. Thinking is overrated these days. Thinking is overrated.
|
Sam:
[42:44]
| I can see the smoke coming from the top of your head.
|
Ivan:
[42:50]
| Let's see. What do we got? Well, let's talk about... This was a late-breaking.
|
Sam:
[42:58]
| Late-breaking.
|
Ivan:
[42:59]
| And we got... Well, what happened to the prosecution of the guy that vandalized the reflecting pool? What happened?
|
Sam:
[43:09]
| They shot him in the head.
|
Ivan:
[43:12]
| Oh, they did the public square execution. In front of the golden horse.
|
Sam:
[43:16]
| No, no, in the reflecting pool.
|
Ivan:
[43:18]
| In the reflecting pool.
|
Sam:
[43:19]
| They had to take him to the scene of the crime, do the public execution. You don't want blue for the reflecting pool? Let's try red.
|
Ivan:
[43:30]
| Ah, yeah, okay.
|
Sam:
[43:32]
| Yeah, no, no. Of course, not only is it gone, It's gone because the Department of Justice themselves came and said, okay, it wasn't him. The people, the contractors screwed it up. That's what was wrong.
|
Ivan:
[43:52]
| And, and now Trump happy about this.
|
Sam:
[43:56]
| You know, just in the last couple hours, I think even since we've been on here some more, Donald Trump has indeed been ranting, about how he disagrees with Jeannie Perillo, by the way, who is the.
|
Ivan:
[44:12]
| The specific, uh, is that her name? I thought it was Piro.
|
Sam:
[44:18]
| You're probably right. It's got a P and some R's.
|
Ivan:
[44:25]
| I don't know. I actually, now that you made me doubt this, I don't.
|
Sam:
[44:31]
| It's Piro. P-I-R-R-O.
|
Ivan:
[44:34]
| Yeah, okay. That's what I thought was Piro. Yeah, not Pirillo.
|
Sam:
[44:38]
| I insert extra syllables whenever I feel like it. It is my God-given right.
|
Ivan:
[44:44]
| Well, you know, it's okay.
|
Sam:
[44:46]
| Anyway, Jeannie Pirro, who is now serving as, you know, the... The Jeannie? U.S. Attorney... Janine. Okay? Okay, there you go. You're going to drag me over the coals about getting people's names right, Mr. Irritable Bowel Disease, or whatever your initials were. You know, so... Anyway... He is saying that she was mistaken and she should not have done this. And there are obviously, obviously bad folks at play doing bad things to the reflecting pool. And he posted as proof the 8647, that was put into the White House, not the White House lawn, but the lawn in the park by the White House. Because, of course, that's part of the reflecting pool, I guess. I don't know. But, yeah, no, obviously it was miscreants. And they shouldn't have let this guy go. Right. And Ms. Pirro here probably doesn't have too much longer left in her job, I would imagine.
|
Ivan:
[46:06]
| Yeah, you think?
|
Sam:
[46:09]
| I don't know. He may, he may let her slide for a little while, but you know, he's, she's clearly not going to be on his good side now for a while.
|
Ivan:
[46:17]
| Plus she's a woman. He, he, he basically his pattern right now is, I mean, I've noticed how the men, the incompetent men keep, keep staying in their jobs, but, but not the women.
|
Sam:
[46:28]
| Hmm. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, there was no other, the only thing surprising about the developments here is, Because the DOJ actually initiated it rather than the judge dismissing it out of hand.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was the one thing. I expected it to be dismissed, but all of a sudden, I definitely did not expect the DOJ to be, well, okay. You know, we're, we, we, yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:01]
| Now, to be fair, to be fair, in a bunch of other cases, they have done similar. There have been a whole bunch of cases in a whole bunch of places across the country where they've indicted people like the most...
|
Sam:
[47:18]
| Most prevalent, I think, are people who are protesting against ICE, who are picked up for, like, obstruction and various things. Most of those, not all, there have been some that have gone to trial and some that have even been convicted. But most of them have ended up quietly dismissed a few weeks later, you know, by DOJ themselves or, you know, whichever authority was trying to go after them, saying, you know, never mind. we actually don't have any evidence against them you know it doesn't reach to the level of a crime or whatever and most of those have sort of gone quietly, and again most some have gone the distance and some people have even been convicted, most of those like the one that got the most publicity, a couple weeks ago was one where the protesters actually did get violent they actually did like you know, assault the police officer with some sort of weapon. I forget what it was. And, you know, and the police officer ended up, okay, whatever. But, you know, there actually was violence, which is very different than, you know, the protesters who are just, you know, videoing and making noise and yelling at them to go away and stuff like that. So.
|
Ivan:
[48:41]
| Hmm. Okay. So. Now. So what?
|
Sam:
[48:44]
| So, so what's the current state of the reflecting pool, by the way, it's still like drain. I think it, right.
|
Ivan:
[48:51]
| Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, right now it's, it's, it, it looks like shit. I mean, it looks like shit.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| Right. But it'll be ready for July 4th.
|
Ivan:
[49:04]
| Of which year?
|
Sam:
[49:05]
| Oh, have we already passed July 4th? Oops.
|
Ivan:
[49:08]
| Oh yeah.
|
Sam:
[49:09]
| Yeah. No. Yeah, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[49:13]
| I mean, it will be ready, I'm sure, for some July 4th. Just not sure which.
|
Sam:
[49:19]
| Well, you know, Donald Trump could say, screw it, and, like, you know, put up the, you know, little lawn umbrellas and tables like he did with the Rose Garden.
|
Ivan:
[49:29]
| Oh, God.
|
Sam:
[49:31]
| It becomes the reflecting plaza.
|
Ivan:
[49:36]
| Ah, well, that might be it.
|
Sam:
[49:39]
| Make it an actual mirror instead of water. That'll solve the problem.
|
Ivan:
[49:43]
| Make it a mirror. Or, you know what? Listen, you remember those in the Looney Tunes cartoons where they would paint a fake tunnel hole.
|
Sam:
[49:54]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you would crash into a wall. There was a story just within the last few weeks of some lady who actually crashed her car into a wall.
|
Ivan:
[49:59]
| Yeah, of somebody driving. Yeah, literally driving into one of those. Yeah. So how about we just make a paint, a fake, like, thing. So it looks like the reflecting pool is there, but it's just a fake painting of it.
|
Sam:
[50:11]
| Well, that's his problem. He put down the blue, but then he put water back in. Why do you do that? Just leave the blue?
|
Ivan:
[50:18]
| Right. Yeah. No, no, no. What you do is that you cover it up in cement.
|
Sam:
[50:23]
| Oh, and then paint the reflection of the Washington Monument.
|
Ivan:
[50:27]
| Correct, yeah.
|
Sam:
[50:27]
| So from the right angle, it looks like it should.
|
Ivan:
[50:30]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[50:31]
| Yeah. There are people who do sidewalk paintings like that that are really, really cool. Of course, the trick is you have to be at the exact right angle or you can't, it looks.
|
Ivan:
[50:43]
| Details, details. But, you know, you know.
|
Sam:
[50:47]
| You guide all the pedestrians so they can only access it from that angle.
|
Ivan:
[50:53]
| Exactly. Right.
|
Sam:
[50:54]
| There you go. I don't know. Whatever. You know, and some of the gilded horses did premiere this week as well. Like...
|
Ivan:
[51:09]
| Have we got golden horses.
|
Sam:
[51:12]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:13]
| I'm sure that's what our forefathers were thinking when they were declaring independence from the monarchy that we needed golden horses.
|
Sam:
[51:25]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:26]
| That's what they were thinking, right? I'm sure.
|
Sam:
[51:27]
| I'm sure. Okay. Shall we move on? like at this point like all of these kinds of things i'm honestly coming back towards, it's actually better if he's spending his time worrying about this kind of crap, than doing other things that could be more i mean he does he does both he does both but like the more time he spends the more.
|
Ivan:
[51:56]
| Ties he spends on this shit the better for the world.
|
Sam:
[51:58]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[51:59]
| Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree.
|
Sam:
[52:01]
| So, I mean, as bad as...
|
Ivan:
[52:05]
| No, no, no. I agree with you. I think you're right. I mean, we should encourage him to do more of this.
|
Sam:
[52:12]
| And I've heard at least some reporting that his staff is actually intentionally doing that in some cases, is like trying to keep him busy with this stuff so they can manage the other stuff that actually matters more. Now, they're not doing things I would like with the other stuff that matters more anyway, but they're still... Anyway. Okay. How about Fauci?
|
Ivan:
[52:37]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[52:37]
| Can we do Fauci next?
|
Ivan:
[52:39]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[52:40]
| So they had Fauci come to a Senate hearing, and he pled the fifth to everything, which must mean that he is guilty and the whole everything about COVID was his fault. He personally made COVID in a lab. It's not just a lab leak. Like Fauci himself created it, released it, etc. He belongs in jail for sure.
|
Ivan:
[53:13]
| No, but, this thing, honestly, first of all, Fauci did the right thing by taking the fifth and deciding not to answer any questions. Because the problem is that, as he said in his opening statement, the whole point of this exercise was to try to entrap them in some way into saying something that they could try to hang a prosecution around them. And so the way that you disable that is by basically, you know what? I take the fifth and I won't answer any questions. Simple as that. You don't even give them the fucking opportunity. Plain and stuff. That's the first thing.
|
Sam:
[53:55]
| Some of them, by the way, tried to argue that because Biden had given him, had done a preemptive pardon on his last day of office or whatever, that the fifth didn't apply. But the pardon only.
|
Ivan:
[54:08]
| That's correct. That covers previous acts.
|
Sam:
[54:12]
| But if he lied now, that would be a new act.
|
Ivan:
[54:16]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[54:16]
| Of course, what they were trying to get at and what all perjury traps are about are trying to get you to say something that you just trip up. You misremember something slightly. You say something that was correct about your belief but was not actually true. You know, things that are not an intentional lie per se, but are disagree with something enough that you can make a case of it. And we've also seen in the Trump administration, we were just talking about the stupid reflecting pool thing. They are very willing to engage in a prosecution that is unlikely to survive to a conviction just to harass you.
|
Ivan:
[55:03]
| So and comey and all these other people yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so no he did exactly he did exactly the right thing the second thing is that the senator from kentucky the one not that apparently is not, i guess medically proven to be brain dead at this i mean maybe he is brain dead hey hey i don't know.
|
Sam:
[55:25]
| It's getting better.
|
Ivan:
[55:27]
| Oh he is.
|
Sam:
[55:28]
| That's what i've heard.
|
Ivan:
[55:29]
| Oh okay, The senator from Kentucky that was present at the hearing is, uh, is, uh, Rand Paul's an abominable human being.
|
Sam:
[55:41]
| Now, the one thing I'll give him, and we've given him props before for being consistent on certain issues and, you know, his anti-war views tend to be pretty consistent. He, his anti-surveillance stuff, like he's consistent on some core libertarian principles.
|
Ivan:
[55:59]
| And he's a consistent fucking asshole when it comes to Anthony Fauci and the bullshit that he tried to pull on him. Yes, he is very consistent.
|
Sam:
[56:10]
| I saw there was one person, oh God, which I can't remember which talking head show I was listening to, but somebody described Rand Paul as... As the latest in a family of loons. And mentioned his father, Ron Paul, as well. Yeah. And how Rand Paul was carrying on the family legacy of...
|
Ivan:
[56:37]
| Carrying the torch.
|
Sam:
[56:38]
| Carrying the torch. And by the way, just recently, within the last few months, happened to come an episode of the Ron Paul podcast. And it was like, oh, wow, he's still around. He's still alive.
|
Ivan:
[56:53]
| Oh, wait, he is?
|
Sam:
[56:55]
| Yes, apparently so. I mean, he's old, but.
|
Ivan:
[57:00]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[57:01]
| I'm checking. I'm checking his, he is age 90.
|
Ivan:
[57:07]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[57:08]
| And he was born in Pittsburgh, by the way. Ron Paul, not Rand. But, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[57:16]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[57:17]
| Anyway, Rand Paul, in this, you know, Now, I'm not going to state, his humanity, but certainly in this particular area, he has been absolutely unhinged in his COVID-related stuff.
|
Ivan:
[57:34]
| Now, the reason I'm stating about his humanity is what he did with his diary. And how they managed to be able to make that public.
|
Sam:
[57:44]
| Well, it was apparently written on government machines, right?
|
Ivan:
[57:48]
| I'm not sure.
|
Sam:
[57:50]
| I think that's where part of it came. They called it a diary, but it was notes taken on government systems. I didn't dive too deep into this, but I believe these were, and they were compiled. It was not like one cohesive document to produce the diaries. They combined notes from all over the place.
|
Ivan:
[58:14]
| Well, so it's even worse.
|
Sam:
[58:17]
| Okay, go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[58:18]
| Well, the thing is that, you know, you go and you do a compilation of everything that he took notes on during his job and just dumped it like that. And then the one thing is that obviously they compiled it. So, you know, I mean, it allows for manipulation of it as well.
|
Sam:
[58:42]
| But let me just caveat before we get too much deeper that my description of these are based on hearing something in some of the talking heads talking about this a few days ago. And I did not dive into or really dig into exactly the provenance of all these documents. And I could be wrong. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[59:03]
| Okay. So, yeah. So, no. Yeah. They were his notes. But it was the source, Health and Human Services Secretary Rod F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed that his team extracted these digital documents from 11 separate government servers where they were stored.
|
Sam:
[59:20]
| There you go.
|
Ivan:
[59:21]
| And then, so, but the thing is that, again, these guys went and compiled. It's like looking through everything I've written down and then compile it. So, it obviously is open for a lot of manipulation.
|
Sam:
[59:36]
| Well, it's open for manipulation, but even so, the stuff that they revealed... doesn't reveal anything damning at all it's all at all this is very similar to like the what were they the the the the twitter files or whatever they were back then yeah.
|
Ivan:
[59:54]
| Yeah so it's just like.
|
Sam:
[59:55]
| That it's where you know you you are revealing some of the notes of the back and forth of a professional actually doing their job and doing it well and thinking about the things they're supposed to be thinking about. Yeah, there are a couple of notes where he's like, oh man, isn't it so cool I get to meet celebrities now? I'd be saying the same damn thing. You know, this is not like, me being all full of myself, but if I like, you know, hell, you know, on this show, I've talked about how because of my wife's job, I've gotten to meet a bunch of politicians that I would not have mentioned otherwise. You know, and it's like, okay, that's cool. Yeah, I'd mention that kind of stuff. But for the most part, it shows a proper deliberative process. And it does show the fact that, hey, guess what? As we went from the very beginning of this to a few months in to a couple years in, we learned stuff. In the first few months, we thought some things that turned out to be false later. We made some calls that were the best based on the information we had at the time, but turned out once we had a lot more information, we could have done something better or different. Or we did a few things that were useless. We even did a few things that were counterproductive.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:17]
| By the way, nothing in there showed that he created a bioweapon and enabled its release at the lab.
|
Sam:
[1:01:24]
| No, no, I made that stuff up at the beginning.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:27]
| No, no, no. No, I know you did. No, but I'm confirming the fact that in these documents, nothing of the sort.
|
Sam:
[1:01:34]
| No, and even with the sort of lab leak stuff, there's nothing new here with that either, because what it shows, which I believe is still the case today, which is you can't rule out any of the major causes. There's just not, you can't rule out that it was a lab leak. It might have been. You can't rule out that it evolved in naturally in the wet markets. and there are a couple of other.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:05]
| But the one thing that you can rule out.
|
Sam:
[1:02:08]
| Is an intentional release like.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:10]
| Intentionally went and like decided to develop some kind of fucking bioweapon that was released out in the.
|
Sam:
[1:02:16]
| Wild in any.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:17]
| Way shape or form.
|
Sam:
[1:02:20]
| Even in the lab leak scenario it's a lab leak scenario it's a lab that was doing research and something went wrong there is absolutely, no Nobody's even talking about the idea of anything intentional being done. And so, Yes. And, and, and look, there's so many, I saw a lot of people this week talking about, I can't believe we're talking about this again.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:50]
| Well, you know why we're talking about it again?
|
Sam:
[1:02:53]
| Because, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:55]
| Because the Epstein files are still out there. You do realize, right? And it's still not resolved. And if you think that's bullshit, let me tell you, I got another story for you. But, you know, that is you've got a war and you've got the Epstein files. It's still not going. You got Todd Blanchard over there trying to get Senate nomination. So how do we distract from everything? Let's talk about Fauci and COVID. How about that? Huh? Let's bring our base. Let's do something that we were bringing our base back, baby, because Trump's approval rating keeps dropping like a rock.
|
Sam:
[1:03:32]
| Right. Yeah. And look, and I don't know if this is, again, it's like last week when you weren't here, I talked about Trump harping on communism and how that was sort of landing flat. I feel like this is another area that tends to land flat because it's like most, look, there are a lot of people who out there who are still mad about how COVID went down, because whether or not, right, you know, best decisions that could have been made at the time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whether or not Any of that happened. They personally had a bad time during COVID and so still associate negative things for it. And somehow, by the way, they don't remember that Donald Trump was president when it happened.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:17]
| That is the biggest problem, isn't it? Right?
|
Sam:
[1:04:19]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:20]
| Who the fuck was the president?
|
Sam:
[1:04:22]
| Yes. Well, to be fair, the absolute highest peak did happen in the first months of the Biden presidency. But a lot of the.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:31]
| Initial growth— Not the peak in deaths.
|
Sam:
[1:04:34]
| Wasn't that like even...
|
Ivan:
[1:04:35]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:04:36]
| Wasn't even the peak of deaths like Delta or whatever right after Biden took over?
|
Ivan:
[1:04:43]
| Let me see.
|
Sam:
[1:04:44]
| Okay. Now we're going to go back and look up the damn COVID numbers.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:47]
| Oh, fuck you. Jesus Christ. The hell.
|
Sam:
[1:04:51]
| I have my old spreadsheet I used to like put out drafts of. I don't know if I can find it quick enough though. You can probably find it online faster than I can find my spreadsheet.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:01]
| That's what I'm doing.
|
Sam:
[1:05:04]
| Trailing seven days peak in deaths, worldwide and U.S. Tell us both.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:10]
| Hang on. Hang on.
|
Sam:
[1:05:12]
| Okay. We're hanging. We're hanging.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:15]
| We're having to use. Okay. Winter 2020-2021 was the deadliest wave. The absolute peak of the pandemic occurred in January 2021, recording in—well, he's still present in January 2021. Well, recording over 105,000 deaths in a single month.
|
Sam:
[1:05:35]
| I forget days. Like, what's the actual peak of 70?
|
Ivan:
[1:05:38]
| December 2020 and February 2021 also exceeded...
|
Sam:
[1:05:41]
| February 2021. There you go.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:43]
| Also exceeded 80,000 deaths. But let's be clear about this. It was, for the most part, still Trump's... It was like one month, really, of Biden.
|
Sam:
[1:05:53]
| I'm looking at, like, a full daily death chart, Our daily seven-week average, not seven-week day... A data point every day, looking at the previous seven days, the absolute peak is right around the transition from Trump to Biden. And I can't on this scale tell you the exact day, but it's damn close. But it continued to go quite a long way into Biden's presidency. But the point is, the point is, the mishandling that caused it to be worse than it needed to be was 100% during the Trump presidency. What Biden did was actually start the actions. Let me not overstate this. Vaccination started during Trump back in the days where he was still for vaccination. And that made a big difference.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:56]
| Well, actually, he swings back and forth to be pro and against. Yes, he does. He one day remembers, yeah, I was Operation Warp Seed.
|
Sam:
[1:07:02]
| And who he's talking to and all that. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:05]
| Right, right.
|
Sam:
[1:07:06]
| And then the Biden administration, he was already dealing with the tail. Like, it was already, you know. But the thing we pin Donald Trump on is the fact that his way of handling it was, hey, maybe we shouldn't test because the numbers look bad. Hey, what about like, I heard bleach was good. How about this horse dewormer?
|
Ivan:
[1:07:32]
| Oh, the UV light up your ass.
|
Sam:
[1:07:35]
| The UV light. Yeah. And basically consistently doing things that were unhelpful, not just like, hey, like the argument against the Fauci stuff, which was also during the Trump presidency, just to be clear, the beginning of it. Was somebody trying to do the best they possibly could with the information they had and sometimes succeeding and sometimes, falling a little bit short, usually because the information just wasn't there yet and they had to do the best they had. Whereas the Trump approach was what will make me look better in the next 24 hours or what little thing can get through my brain because I didn't understand what they were saying about the UV light. So let me just like, let's stick a UV light bulb up them and see if that helps. And nobody took that seriously, but he, it's because he heard, he heard something that was actually real with somebody talking about the virus and how it reacted to UV light when it was out on a surface or something like that. And then he just translated that into something else in an offhanded statement that he only made once, by the way. But still, like...
|
Ivan:
[1:08:55]
| Okay, still! I mean, it was the President of the United States talking to the American people about what the fuck to do about COVID. And it included statements like about injecting bleach, using horse to warmer, fucking goddamn sticking UV lights up your ass. Sam!
|
Sam:
[1:09:14]
| I think he wanted you to swallow the UV light, actually.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:17]
| Something. Whichever way. Some orifice is going to get a fucking tooth.
|
Sam:
[1:09:22]
| Or breathe it, maybe, so it's in your lungs.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:24]
| Who knows?
|
Sam:
[1:09:25]
| And anyway, but no, and this is why one of the things that came out of the diary, is Fauci talking about how much of an idiot Donald Trump was.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:35]
| Which— And who could disagree about this?
|
Sam:
[1:09:37]
| Yeah. I mean, and you could— I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:41]
| I'm like, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:09:42]
| And again, this isn't particularly new. If you look at the video of some of the press conferences.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:46]
| Oh my God, look at his face! Was he standing behind Trump? I mean, he wants to fucking, like, blow his brains out.
|
Sam:
[1:09:53]
| You know, you could see him shaking his head. You could see him looking down. You know, because of the nonsense that was coming out of there. But, you know, and look, people are fundamentally upset of like, I saw another little skit somebody did on TikTok. It's like, you're upset with Fauci because he made you stay locked down for months. And then it's like, did you actually do that? Did you stay locked up for months?
|
Ivan:
[1:10:24]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:10:24]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:25]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:10:25]
| You're upset because he made you wear a mask. Did you wear a mask? No, no, of course I didn't. All right. You know, you know, and yeah, we had in the U.S., we never had a lockdown, even even approaching what they had in many other countries.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:44]
| Like even not even remotely close.
|
Sam:
[1:10:48]
| Even when there was talk of it, like, you know, people were still going out. People were still doing stuff. we had the whole thing where we're like oh you don't have to wear masks in restaurants anymore because like you can't eat with a mask which of course like you know other places still had the restaurants shut down because of that exact reason, you know and yeah well, if i still come back to like you know we we could have had a better overall experience being even harsher with things But people are, you know, it's human nature. People don't like to be told what to do. People don't like to be given advice. And I've said before, a big part of this, especially after the first... After the first little bit, it became clear that the most important stuff was not about protecting yourself. It was protecting others from you. From, you know, when you potentially were not yet showing symptoms, but were infectious. And you wouldn't even know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:02]
| Here's the reality.
|
Sam:
[1:12:02]
| And people don't want to do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:03]
| Fuck those people, right?
|
Sam:
[1:12:04]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:05]
| Yeah, fuck those. You know, immunocompromised? Fuck you. Don't die. Don't bother me, man. You know, come on. You know, the one guy I still like laugh about.
|
Sam:
[1:12:19]
| And if anybody wants to hear us talk over and over and over at length about this, go back and listen to any episode from 2020, 2021, 2022. We talked about COVID practically every single week at length.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:35]
| But there is no funnier death than Herman Cain, who tweeted out about how we're going to have this rally for Trump for the election, and fuck you, we're not wearing masks, blah, blah, blah, gets out at a rally, gets COVID, and dies.
|
Sam:
[1:12:55]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:55]
| Deservedly so.
|
Sam:
[1:12:57]
| Well, and also another thing that we tend to forget is Donald Trump himself came very close.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:07]
| Close to dying.
|
Sam:
[1:13:08]
| And it wasn't revealed at the time, although people suspected at the time. It wasn't revealed in any sort of reliable way until years later, just how close he was when they had to take him to Johns Hopkins and he was at Johns Hopkins with COVID for a while.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:26]
| Oh, damn it. We came this close, Sam. This fucking close, man. I mean, we've come this fucking close more than once. Son of a bitch, somehow. figures out how to fucking.
|
Sam:
[1:13:41]
| Anyway fauci gets a bum rap fauci did exactly what he should have at this hearing you know there, there are absolutely things that you could especially in hindsight you know, backseat drive what fauci did during the pandemic but for the most part, the honest story here is here's a public servant doing his damn best with limited information and with superiors in the administration who are trying to undermine him at every step. And he did the best he could.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:18]
| They didn't just try. They succeeded.
|
Sam:
[1:14:21]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:23]
| I mean, it wasn't just tried. They actually succeeded in undermining him.
|
Sam:
[1:14:28]
| And by the way, just to throw it out there too, this was the end of a very long career. He also did some very significant things during the battle against AIDS decades earlier. You know, he deserves awards, not this kind of treatment. I believe Biden did give him an award of some sort.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:47]
| Biden did, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:14:48]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:50]
| Anyway, he doesn't deserve any of this fucking bullshit from damn Ron Paul. But, you know, Rand. Who always, Rand. Which always keeps reminding me why the, you know, it always seems like so justified why his neighbor basically beat the shit out of him.
|
Sam:
[1:15:11]
| I don't remember the details of that. There was some other beef going on between the two of them, I believe.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:16]
| Yeah, but, you know what? But given how his demeanor is, I'm not surprised.
|
Sam:
[1:15:24]
| I hear you. But just to be fair here, I mean— They did send the guy to jail. They sent the guy to jail. It was a significant beating. Rand Paul was in the hospital. He had significant health issues coming out of this.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:38]
| Yeah, but my point is that I can understand somebody would be motivated to do so.
|
Sam:
[1:15:43]
| You can understand, but you're not advocating. He should not have beat up.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:48]
| No, no, I'm not saying that he, you know, somebody should go and find him and beat up. I'm just saying that I understand how somebody that lived right beside him and I understood it was some dispute about, you know, like that, but where their property line ended, something, blah, blah, blah. But I could see how this guy could get under your skin to a point that you lose it and basically almost, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:16:13]
| Okay. Let's take a break. And then one more thing for you, one more thing for me, and then wrap it up. Sound good?
|
Ivan:
[1:16:21]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:16:22]
| Sound good. Sound good. Okay. break number six, uh
|
Ivan:
[1:16:30]
| Yabba yabba do.
|
Break:
[1:16:32]
| Okie dokie here it comes, it's just my internet being stupid my internet is a new song we will make, I don't want to come on, tired What's wrong? I'm really tired. It's amazing to get the show on the road. There's a road? There's a road? Oh my God, there's a road.
|
Sam:
[1:17:36]
| Okay, Mr. Bo Diaz, what is your next... Now that you've changed us at work, we have to identify you that way here forever too, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:46]
| That's fine. I probably should get used to it anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:17:48]
| Yeah. Okay. Anyway, what's your next pick?
|
Ivan:
[1:17:54]
| Are we going to have, a—is Todd Blanchett's nomination dead?
|
Sam:
[1:18:01]
| So let's give the background on this first. Probably, but it may not matter. Okay, the background is the reason this is even a question is specifically that two Republican senators publicly and reportedly even more privately—, We're really upset about that 1776 fund for people who were harmed by the weaponization of the Justice Department under Biden. Okay. And specifically, this was clearly intended to give a bunch of money to a bunch of the January 6th people. Okay. And this was part of a quote-unquote settlement of a lawsuit Donald Trump made, against the Department of Justice, which included two things. one was this settlement fund and two was a guarantee that donald trump his family his businesses etc, would not be audited by the irs ever essentially for anything that happened before some certain date okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:23]
| Is that is that hey sam let me ask a question about that is that wrong I mean, is that normal? Is that what presidents do?
|
Sam:
[1:19:32]
| Oh, yes, all the time. Oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:35]
| I mean, Clinton has this, right? And so...
|
Sam:
[1:19:37]
| Now, a judge has already ruled that this settlement was improper. Well, the lawsuit that led up to the settlement was also improper. Because Donald Trump was both sides. No shit. Really? It was Donald Trump as a private individual suing the government that he is a head of where he could tell them what to do.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:05]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:20:07]
| And but meanwhile, there is a contract. The settlement takes the form of an actual contract that says DOJ will do certain things, etc. Now, this guy, what's his name again? I've blanked out.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:29]
| Todd Blanche.
|
Sam:
[1:20:29]
| Todd Blanche. Todd Blanche.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:31]
| Was his personal attorney in this fucking thing?
|
Sam:
[1:20:33]
| He was originally the personal attorney. Most recently, he is acting attorney general after Trump got rid of the last one.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:42]
| And who, by the way, what gender was that person that got rid of?
|
Sam:
[1:20:47]
| She was female.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:49]
| Wow. So shocking.
|
Sam:
[1:20:52]
| Yes. Anyway... Blanche has been going around Congress and everybody, the press, everyone saying, it's dead. Don't worry about it. It's dead. Because it got so much pushback, even amongst Republicans, that this is bullshit. you know with the the specifically the settlement fund it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:17]
| One of the most flagrant insane ploys i i have ever seen a president do and the reality is that he's probably not done yet at trying even worse.
|
Sam:
[1:21:29]
| Well yes no i'm sure he's not and the settlement fund has gotten the most attention but frankly the immunity from audits is also pretty significant audits and yeah and prosecution based on, because you know, you know, he's got tax fraud way up over his head.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:49]
| No. No.
|
Sam:
[1:21:54]
| It's just.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:55]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:21:56]
| It's just. No. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:57]
| Donnie?
|
Sam:
[1:21:59]
| Blanche has been going around talking about, it's dead. We've heard your objections. It's dead. then people start asking well can you provide this in writing and, And he's been like, no, you have my word. That's all you need. You have my word. It is dead. It is not going to happen. And then people pointed out, by the way, look, it's a legally enforceable contract. You can say it's dead all you want. But the other side, which is Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka, the Trump organization, any one of those could take you to court. for violating your agreement because it's a signed written contract.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:48]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:22:49]
| Well, well, now that may not succeed because of the reasons we talked about earlier, but they could, they could potentially do that. So, you know, I think even the people are asking for Blanche to put it in writing, are not going far enough. They actually to properly do this, They need to revise that settlement contract by the terms specified in the settlement contract, which say that all parties have to agree to any change in writing. Not just Blanche putting out some statement in writing, but a proper annulment of the settlement that was reached previously. And then something from Blanche on top of that saying that he's not going to do that, that he's not going to do a new settlement that's similar. Now, and they're also, by the way, they're talking about even without this settlement fund, there are ways for the DOJ to give the January 6th people money without this. So they're asking for something in writing that that won't happen either. But none of that is happening almost clearly because Donald Trump himself still wants this to happen.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:59]
| Right. He is still pushing for it to happen somehow.
|
Sam:
[1:24:02]
| He's still pushing for this to happen. Even in the hours leading up to us recording, he was posting more about how it's ridiculous and they need to do this and it should still happen and blah, blah, blah. And so, of course, you don't have a guarantee that this isn't going to happen from Todd Blanche because Donald Trump still clearly wants it. He's still—the reason he's not giving it in writing is so that at some unspecified point in the future, they can easily just change their mind and say, oh, we're doing it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:36]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:24:37]
| Now, because we've got these two Republican senators on the critical committee that would approve this to go on to the full Senate against it, they don't have the votes for the nomination right now. And Donald Trump, while he has not officially withdrawn the nomination yet, he has said that, If it looks like they're not going to get this, he will withdraw the nomination and bring it back once those senators are gone. Of course, here's the thing. First of all, those two senators have made it pretty clear that they're the ones that are saying this publicly, but there are more senators who object that are just keeping their heads down at the moment. But also, who knows who their replacements will be? You know, and what this will look like in January, there's no guarantee it would look any better for Donald Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:25:39]
| So the other thing that Donald Trump and his folks have been talking about is, well, we don't need it anyway. The statutes about acting officials let them go approximately 200 days, maybe a little bit more. We can appoint an acting for 200 days, then appoint a new acting for 200 days, and then a new acting for 200 days after that. And, you know, we don't ever have to submit anyone to the Senate ever again.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:09]
| And he's done that before. I mean, I think he had an issue. If I recall, this wound up happening in his first term, where there were certain nominations that near the end of his term were basically everybody just wound up being all these jobs wound up being filled by acting people because none of them would get a Senate confirmation.
|
Sam:
[1:26:30]
| Well, yeah, and this was close to the end of his term. And some of them were even after he lost, which, you know, put a different dynamic on it. But yeah, no, this is when he discovered the whole acting thing. Right. And this second term, he's been using it a lot more. He's still, but not exclusively. I mean, we've got like, right now we've got three actings. I'm looking at his... his current cabinet. We've got Todd Blanche, who we've been talking about as acting attorney general. We've got Keith Sonderling as the secretary of labor as an acting. And we've got Jay Clayton at the director of national intelligence, which also some interesting stuff is going on there too, right now at this moment. But, you know, and in lower sub cabinet positions. He's been doing this more and more. He's been using it for some of the prosecutors in various levels as well. And he's been doing the thing where there's a law apparently that this just hit this week too, where if, There is a certain situation in which other judges can appoint a replacement, if there has been an acting too long as opposed to a proper one. And one of those happened lately. And the judges appointed somebody. This has happened once or twice now. And then they immediately fired them.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:55]
| And then Trump fired them. Right. Trump immediately fired.
|
Sam:
[1:27:58]
| They fired them the same day and appoint a new acting. You know. So he's learned this. He's learned this works. And this frankly shows a hole in, like, the reason we have acting roles for these things is that they are determined that, you know, many of these are really important. You want to always have someone in the slot. If someone resigns or dies or whatever, you don't want to gap while you're waiting for an official nomination and the Senate to do its thing, because that can be somewhat slow sometimes. So you want somebody in the spot right away. But it was intended to bridge short gaps. It was not intended to be a method to completely get around the Senate. But it's quickly evolving into that and points at needs for reform once we have.
|
Sam:
[1:28:54]
| Congress and President who are willing to look at reforms. But right now, we're certainly not there. So Blanche, regardless, he's going to be acting attorney general for a long time, even if his nomination is pulled. And we certainly, let me be honest, if we end up with a Democratic Senate, we may have nothing but actings for two years, depending on how disciplined the Democrats will be. Like, they've shown themselves not to be that disciplined. And, you know, Fetterman's always going to approve them. Hell, there's talk that Fetterman may actually officially switch parties. You know, so... Who the hell knows? But, like, there are always a few Democrats willing to go along with nominations.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:43]
| To be fair, one thing, and I don't have confirmation of this, but I did post this on the Slack, was that Kamala Harris was basically—, the people coming into the future elections are finally to the level that I would have liked that they had been, like, a couple of years ago. where it said Kamala Harris calls for revisiting Electoral College, expanding the Supreme Court and granting statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico.
|
Sam:
[1:30:08]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:09]
| Which, whomever is coming in right now, you have to come in with this. You have to be.
|
Sam:
[1:30:14]
| I was saying the day Biden won that they had to come in with this agenda and they didn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:21]
| Look, I will say that at that point I disagreed with you.
|
Sam:
[1:30:25]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:25]
| Because I was very much on thinking that Biden's approach might work. I really favored that in some way. But the reality is, it's time what Biden has covered that that was wrong.
|
Sam:
[1:30:38]
| Well, and they didn't have the votes to do it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:41]
| They didn't have the votes either, but.
|
Sam:
[1:30:44]
| Anyway, I mentioned the DNI one, so I should mention it. The replacement for DNI has been approved by the Senate as of a few days ago. What's his name? What's the new guy? The guy, the temporary guy. I don't know. Jay Clayton is the new one that was, right? There's that other guy in between. Okay, now I'm going to have to freaking look it up. Director of National Intelligence. Who was the interim? They've got him listed as assumed office. Okay, here we go. Jay Clayton is the new one. He's not an acting. Sorry. He is the new one. He was approved by the Senate on July 28th, officially. However, he has not yet been sworn in. And they apparently appear not to be in a hurry to do so.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:45]
| Because?
|
Sam:
[1:31:46]
| Well, because the interim guy, I do have to look up his stupid name. It makes no sense if I don't. A list of people. Come on. List of people. Bill Pulte was the acting.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:01]
| Oh, yeah. That guy.
|
Sam:
[1:32:03]
| From June 19th to the present. He had no intelligence experience whatsoever. His primary purpose was to find.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:13]
| No, no, no. Or was it no intelligence whatsoever or no intelligent experience?
|
Sam:
[1:32:18]
| No intelligence experience. Probably no intelligence. But, the primary mission he was given by Donald Trump was to find evidence that the 2020 election was stolen by foreign entities, thus the DNI stuff, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:32:35]
| How did that go?
|
Sam:
[1:32:37]
| Well, he's not done yet. That's why he hasn't left, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:41]
| Oh, he's trying to complete his mission.
|
Sam:
[1:32:45]
| So apparently there was a cabinet meeting yesterday at Camp David, by the way. We know how Donald Trump hates Camp David, but the cabinet meeting was at Camp David. And both Pulte and Clayton attended the meeting, but they made clear that Pulte was still acting. Clayton had not been sworn in yet, and they have not given a date that he will be. Now, it may well be that by the time people listen to this episode, they will have sworn him in. They could do it today. They could do it tomorrow. They could do it Monday, whatever. But they're delaying for seemingly weird reasons. And yeah, the speculation, I shouldn't state it as a fact. The speculation is because Pulte hasn't finished doing his job yet. Because that first presentation on 2020 kind of fell flat. And so it didn't convince anybody, didn't provide anything that could be used to charge anybody.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:44]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:33:45]
| And so maybe that maybe he's still looking.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:49]
| He's going to find.
|
Sam:
[1:33:50]
| He's going to find the real killer.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:52]
| Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's working with OJ's estate as well.
|
Sam:
[1:33:57]
| Yes. Okay, that's all I got to say. Should I pick one last thing?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:02]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[1:34:03]
| Or should we just wrap?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:05]
| No, I need to wrap because it's Manu's birthday.
|
Sam:
[1:34:09]
| Happy birthday. How old is he now?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:11]
| Fourteen.
|
Sam:
[1:34:12]
| Fourteen.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:14]
| He did just complete his first family workout. I'll send a picture of that.
|
Sam:
[1:34:19]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:19]
| We all went.
|
Sam:
[1:34:20]
| To the slot.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:20]
| We all, that was why we were, yeah, that's why we were running a little bit late. We actually all worked out together.
|
Sam:
[1:34:30]
| Very nice. Oh, God.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:32]
| Well, I'll say that I actually, look, I did a full workout. Then I stayed and worked out more to help Manu work out as well. So I did this stupid, ridiculously long.
|
Sam:
[1:34:48]
| You know the horrible thing about you saying Manu's turning 14?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:53]
| Fuck. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:34:54]
| It means this one here. is about to turn 17.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:58]
| Fuck me. Fuck Christ. Fuck this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:35:04]
| Yeah, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:07]
| Now I know why Danny Glover said he was too old for this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:35:11]
| Fuck. Okay. Let's wrap this sucker up then.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:16]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:17]
| Okay. Curmudgeon-corner.com Go there, find all the stuff. Find all our old episodes, transcript, all the ways to contact us, and of course a link to our Patreon where you can give us money at various levels, we'll mention you on the show we will ring a bell we'll send you a postcard we'll send you a mug all that kind of stuff, And, yeah, we'll do stuff and stuff and stuff. And at $2 a month or more on the Patreon, or if you just ask us and we feel like it, we will invite you to the Commissions Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of others are chatting throughout the week, sharing links, doing all kinds of fun stuff. I mentioned MapTap earlier. several Ed and Yvonne and Pete have been specifically playing lots of MapTap, which is where they give you clues about a place on the planet.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:23]
| You get with a fucking program.
|
Sam:
[1:36:25]
| Yeah yeah every once in a while I'll jump in with a Wordle or one of the other games yeah yeah yeah once a month or something I'll jump in with one exactly, but I'm not doing the daily games I just don't have I don't have the routine, deeply embedded enough. I noticed. Anyway, but MapTap, you pick places on a globe. It's an unlabeled globe and it asks you, for instance, where is Ouagadougou? And you have to put the little pin in Ouagadougou.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:56]
| Right on where the fuck it is.
|
Sam:
[1:36:58]
| And you get more points the closer you are to the actual spot. Anyway, they've been playing that a lot. All this kind of stuff. So, Yvonne, what is something from the last week of the curmudgeons course slack, that would make people really desperately want to join the slack or come back in if they haven't been for a while.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:20]
| Well i shared a couple one thing is that i i shared a picture of the fact that, I packed this week in a rush in the middle of my, my, my trip. And I went and I grabbed a tube of toothpaste. I had these little travel tubes of toothpaste, these little tiny ones. And I, I didn't realize it until I put the toothpaste on, on the toothbrush, that I, I grabbed some bubble gum flavored toothpaste that's meant for kids. And I mean, I cannot. explain how much I hate that.
|
Sam:
[1:37:59]
| So you do not like the flavor of bubblegum? Especially as a toothpaste?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:03]
| Not as... When I brush my teeth, I want it to be minty fresh.
|
Sam:
[1:38:07]
| You know, I grew up on mint and I have not been able to get used to any other flavor. Like, even when you go to the dentist and they put... They offer you, like, do you want mint?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:17]
| Do you want cherry?
|
Sam:
[1:38:18]
| Do you want this?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:18]
| Yeah, and I'm like, no, mint. Mint. I want minty fresh. And bubblegum... fuck i was like what the fuck somehow my hotel for some reason even though i didn't ask, they actually uh had left left a little like a kit with like a shaving kit and a toothbrush and whatever so i was like oh thank god so you got some.
|
Sam:
[1:38:42]
| You got some mint.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:43]
| I did get some i did get some it so that that's one thing that happened, the other thing was that i really think that But, I think the billionaires now have reached a stage where they are just trying to get everyone else to actively basically just go and like go French Revolution on them. I mean, I cannot explain anything else when I see that there's this moron. called Tobias Lutke, co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, who spoke during the Toronto Tech Week, a homecoming event in Toronto, told his social media followers this week that a tax-tiered voting system, one that would strip voting rights from anyone who pays no income tax, would be a good system.
|
Sam:
[1:39:38]
| Why don't we just skip entirely and you vote by paying? And the more you pay.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:46]
| The more votes you pay, the more votes you have.
|
Sam:
[1:39:49]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:50]
| Sure. Yeah. Why don't we just go straight to that? Why not? I think, I mean, these guys, are they living in so much of a bubble that they think that they're, they're just completely, you know, absolutely shielded from the repercussions from saying any of this shit? Because I'm. We've had this happen in the past. The early 1920s, and 30s were a big backlash to a lot of shit like this. And I know nobody remembers history, but that's the reality of what happened there.
|
Sam:
[1:40:27]
| Donald Trump keeps wanting—it has made it absolutely clear that when America was great, that he wants to go back to with make America great again, was the gilded age of the late 1800s.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:40]
| And so that's the one of these things with the robber barons with the robber barons and the crony capitalism.
|
Sam:
[1:40:45]
| So given that if you replay history a couple decades forward from the.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:51]
| Gilded Age what happens we should have another we should have the backlash yeah, we need the backlash and it needs to be brutal because I'm fucking done with these assholes.
|
Sam:
[1:41:05]
| Yeah I mean and look the more we see these people in public, by the way, the more you can tell the, it really does rot something about their brains.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:21]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:21]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:22]
| Shit, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:41:23]
| The fact.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:24]
| There are very few that get that wealthy and to remain sane.
|
Sam:
[1:41:28]
| Right. Because fundamentally you've got, and this is the old power corrupts thing, too. It's true of wealth as well. I mean, it's fundamentally if if you can basically get everything you want without pushback all the time and you end up surrounded by yes men who are constantly telling you how brilliant you are, and everybody surrounding you has an agenda, because you know they yeah they're all wanting something out of you, you know one way or another you know because.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:00]
| As a anytime.
|
Sam:
[1:42:02]
| That i got into an executive role and And there were.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:04]
| Like all these people that started coming up to me and kissing my ass. It really repulsed the hell out of me. Well, and it's one of those things that I'm just like, well, all of you look.
|
Sam:
[1:42:15]
| There are two ways it can go. Right. One is you enjoy them kissing your ass so much that you just start assuming that you deserve it. And you actually are right about everything. And you're amazing. The other, if you start, you know, your reaction, like, oh, I'm disgusted by this. You start generalizing that disgust to, well, everybody's like this, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:42:40]
| Well, there's a third. I mean, I just realized that what I had to do was to tell people, listen, stop kissing my ass.
|
Sam:
[1:42:47]
| Well, look.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:48]
| I mean, look, look, listen, we are working here. I'm sorry. I'm not a genius that knows everything. Stop kissing my ass. And that actually worked.
|
Sam:
[1:42:57]
| I would say the higher up in this strata you go, the harder it is for that to succeed and the harder it apparently is for these people to do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:07]
| No, I, I, I, no, I, I, I realize that. And I, and I realize that one of the things is that.
|
Sam:
[1:43:13]
| I mean, this is what you were saying about Joe Biden as well. Right. I mean, he was president of a freak, but you know, he's still, you know, he still wanted to maintain that like. interaction with regular people. He enjoyed that. I mean, he was in the Senate for 30 years or 40, 50, however many centuries he was in the damn Senate. And he still took Amtrak until the day he became vice president. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:37]
| He still takes Amtrak now.
|
Sam:
[1:43:39]
| Well, he takes Amtrak again now, yes. And flies, you know, on regular planes, flies commercial planes, all of this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:49]
| I am sure that there are plenty of donors that would go and like offer Joe Biden a fucking private jet ride.
|
Sam:
[1:43:56]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:56]
| I am 100% sure.
|
Sam:
[1:43:58]
| I'm sure he could as well. And he still goes up to the little ice cream stand in Delaware and has his ice cream and blah, blah, blah, hangs out with the people. You know, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter was teaching Sunday school until he physically couldn't anymore. Sometime in his 90s.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:16]
| You know, I really, I really enjoy it. There's one joy I get in life is seeing when they post new pictures of seeing Joe Biden eating his ice cream. Damn it, I really like that. Because he genuinely looks happy. And I love that.
|
Sam:
[1:44:30]
| But anyway, it is clearly whatever portion of the billionaire class who is able to not do that, I don't know, is Buffett better? Like, he's, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:44:44]
| Buffett was way better. And listen, Buffett was one that went up and gave a speech specifically saying how it was nuts that he was paying less taxes than his assistant. Literally, and said, raise my damn taxes. Literally, I mean, fucking went up and said so.
|
Sam:
[1:45:02]
| Just to be clear, you said was. He is still alive. He's 95.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:06]
| Oh, yeah, he's not. No, no, no. Well, I said was. He's no longer the head of Berkshire Hathaway. That's the reason why I was saying it. Not because he's dead. Sorry about that. Yeah, I keep thinking, yeah, because he's retired, okay, from work. But he said this, he lives in the same damn house that he lived in fucking whatever, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:45:25]
| I mean, but clearly it is the minority like.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:29]
| Well, it is the vast minority.
|
Sam:
[1:45:31]
| Although I will say, if you look at the list of like the top 100 richest people or something, there are some that live the celebrity billionaire life and there are some that you never hear from, you know?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:45]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:45:46]
| You know, I saw I saw something recently about like whoever's the heir to the Walmart fortune.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:53]
| Not a Walton's. Yeah. I've never heard from them.
|
Sam:
[1:45:56]
| But you never hear from them really. There's four of them. But the one woman who's the most prominent.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:03]
| Anne.
|
Sam:
[1:46:05]
| And lives in some town in Arkansas, fairly modestly, goes about her day, is not surrounded by a retinue. Like, the thing I saw recently was someone was doing a random TikTok video in the town and interviewing random people. and ended up interviewing her having no freaking idea who it was and then only found out later. You know, anyway... But, yeah, so, yeah, there's a, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:37]
| No, most of these people are just, just, just.
|
Sam:
[1:46:40]
| I mean, like, for my old company, Bezos, like, you could see the difference over the 20 years I was at the company.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:48]
| Oh, my God, how he has changed. Good Lord.
|
Sam:
[1:46:52]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:53]
| It is.
|
Sam:
[1:46:54]
| And there was one particular moment where it seemed like it snapped where all of a sudden he showed up on TV and he was buff and he'd done this stuff to his, how he was dressed and all this stuff and it looked like wait a second something just changed here, did you have some sort of little mental break here? What's going on? and then you know and then he cheated on his wife and then he did this and then he did that and then it's like i mean he may have been doing that stuff before who knows but it'd be all became public and he clearly like, started relishing in the i'm really had a fucking like midlife crisis that's for sure yeah, okay are we done we're done.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:41]
| Yes we've done we're done.
|
Sam:
[1:47:42]
| Okay and if any of those people by the way want to challenge me with whether i can handle the money without turning into an asshole, please, just drop a few billion. I'm happy to take that challenge. You know, I'll do my best to retain my mental health in that scenario.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:05]
| You too?
|
Sam:
[1:48:06]
| You too, Yvonne? Will you?
|
Ivan:
[1:48:07]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[1:48:08]
| Okay. Okay, here we go. Stay safe. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Bye!
|
Ivan:
[1:48:14]
| Bye!
|
Sam:
[1:48:44]
| Okay. Thank you, Yvonne. I'm out of here. Gonna do signs again last time before the primary. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:51]
| Okay. All right. I...
| |
|
