Bruce: Well, hello.
Sam: Hello, Bruce.
Bruce: Okay. Can you hear me?
Sam: Yes, I can hear you just fine.
Bruce: Okay, great. I can hear you too.
Sam: Spiffy. I can see you get the microscope and electronic equipment behind you
Sam: and everything. Excellent. Cool.
Bruce: Oh yeah. Yeah. This is my, my, my workbench. It doesn't get much use now.
Bruce: It's just used for storage and I can talk about that.
Sam: Cool. Okay. Then let's, let's get this thing started. Here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, May 31st, 2024. It's just after three
Sam: UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Minter as announced last week. Yvonne is out this week and he'll be
Sam: out next week as well. This week.
Sam: Bruce has volunteered to join us. Hello again, Bruce. It's been a little while.
Bruce: Hello. Yes, it has been a while. I think this is, based on our agenda today, this is very timely.
Sam: Yes.
Bruce: The Libertarian talking about the Libertarian Party, so this will be good.
Sam: There we go. Yeah. Let me check. The last time you were on was last July.
Bruce: Oh, okay.
Sam: Almost a year. Almost a year, not quite.
Sam: But yeah, so you mentioned the agenda. Look, a few hours ago,
Sam: as we're recording, we got the Donald Trump convictions in New York.
Sam: So obviously, we're going to talk about that. There's not going to be any avoiding that.
Sam: As Bruce alluded to, the Libertarians had their national convention to pick
Sam: a presidential candidate this week as well.
Sam: I was paying some attention to that, but I'm pretty suspect that Bruce was paying
Sam: a lot more attention to it than I was because he associates himself to some
Sam: degree with the libertarians and has paid attention for a long time.
Bruce: Yeah, I'm not a member of the libertarian party, but I have been in the past.
Bruce: I do identify as a libertarian.
Sam: Right. So we will talk about that. So I think the order we're going to do things
Sam: in, we're going to do our regular but first thing.
Sam: I've got a book, Bruce has something, and then we're going to talk about Donald
Sam: Trump, and then we're going to talk about the libertarian And then that'll be
Sam: a show pretty much. I think that'll be plenty.
Sam: And just as a heads up to folks, Yvonne, as I said, could not make it this week.
Sam: He's actually in Guatemala at the moment, but minutes before we started recording
Sam: the show, he sent me an audio clip of his reaction to the Donald Trump news.
Sam: It's about just, it's between six and seven minutes long, I think.
Sam: So we will, when we get to that segment, we'll play it.
Sam: And then Bruce and I will react to it and then go on our merry way on our conversation. So,
Sam: I guess you can start, Bruce. What's your butt first?
Bruce: It's been a while, and I have had a job change since the last time I was on.
Sam: Remind me, first of all, you were on the show for the first time when you were
Sam: working for Ocean Gate, which, of course, had a famous little incident.
Bruce: Well, no. That wasn't the first time. My first time on the show was way back in 2012 or something.
Sam: Oh, okay. Okay. I thought the first time you were already in OceanGate,
Sam: but okay, maybe you were before that and then you moved to OceanGate.
Sam: Yeah. Okay. So it's been a while.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: And then, so you've been in a couple places since then?
Bruce: Yeah. Well, after leaving OceanGate about, well, now it's been two and a half
Bruce: years ago, I went to this company called BrightAI. It's an AI startup.
Bruce: And that was a work-from-home job. And so I had my lab bench here,
Bruce: so just in my home office.
Bruce: And I loved that. being able to work from home and.
Sam: Just just to lab bench you're an electrical engineer.
Bruce: Yes i'm an electrical engineer so.
Sam: It's it's not like some biological like creating super weapons or something you know.
Bruce: Okay that's no no i yeah i so i've been able to do testing and development prototyping
Bruce: and and designed right here at home.
Bruce: But unfortunately, that company started having problems and delays and lack
Bruce: of funding because interest rates are higher.
Bruce: And so they were struggling. And so I ended up getting laid off last November.
Sam: Oh, wow.
Bruce: And that was, I really love that job. I worked harder in that job than I have on any other job.
Bruce: Well, maybe except for Ocean Gate. I worked really hard there too,
Bruce: but we're nights and weekends and stuff, but I loved it because it's working
Bruce: from home and doing actual hands-on design.
Bruce: And so it was a really hard layoff. I've had, I've had many layoffs in the past,
Bruce: but this was the hardest.
Bruce: And so then I, but before long, just a few weeks later, I was able to get another
Bruce: job at a large aerospace company here in the area. Hmm.
Sam: I wonder who that might be.
Bruce: Yeah. And we're talking like Seattle area.
Sam: By the way, for those who don't know.
Bruce: Yeah. And within a couple of weeks of starting to work there,
Bruce: boom, tragedy followed me.
Bruce: It seems to follow me everywhere in my career.
Bruce: It's like one company after another
Bruce: crashes and burns. If this company crashes, well, I guess we'll see.
Bruce: See but but yeah it's and it's it's
Bruce: been a really hard transition going from a company of when
Bruce: i was at ocean gate like 15
Bruce: people to bright ai which i like about
Bruce: 50 people and now a company that's got
Bruce: like maybe over a hundred thousand people on it it's just like incredibly
Bruce: bureaucratic and things are
Bruce: highly regulated move very slow and it's
Bruce: like it's it's been a hard transition for me i have to say but it pays well
Bruce: and it's uh oh well and the other thing is i'm not working for home anymore
Bruce: i gotta be on site five days a week so ouch yeah now most tech companies are
Bruce: have switched to with you know three days on site two days at home yep.
Sam: That's where i am.
Bruce: And that's what i was expecting but that just didn't work out so it's been hard but but you know now Now.
Sam: You don't have a long commute, though, right?
Bruce: No. With traffic, it ends up being about a half hour each way.
Bruce: Okay. That's not that bad.
Sam: That's not that bad.
Bruce: Not nearly as bad as driving to Seattle.
Sam: Yeah, yeah.
Bruce: I would not have taken a job down in Seattle. It's like I get queries from Meta
Bruce: almost weekly just asking, begging me to work down there.
Bruce: And it would be a lot of fun. There's no way I could commute to Kirkland every day.
Sam: Right. We're up near Everett, Washington, for anybody who knows.
Sam: We're in the sort of general Seattle area, but they're different places.
Bruce: Yeah, north of Seattle.
Sam: Yeah, north of Seattle. yeah actually i'm near everett bruce is even further north you know so.
Bruce: Yeah yeah so uh so yeah that's that's basically what's going on with me and
Bruce: there's a lot of other things but,
Bruce: but that's i.
Sam: Don't i don't suppose it's been long enough that you can talk about ocean gate yet.
Bruce: I i'm more comfortable talking about now it's been almost a year yeah.
Sam: So do you want to add anything to all the discussions that around ocean gate
Sam: for anybody who doesn't remember that's the company that had the sub trying
Sam: to go down to the titanic and uh.
Bruce: It imploded.
Sam: Everyone was killed and yeah and.
Bruce: Bruce used to work there yes yeah i i was the electrical engineering the company
Bruce: i designed all the electronics and built it and tested it and i went on the
Bruce: first expedition to the titanic that they did in 2021 and i'm fine but you didn't
Bruce: go down you stayed on the boat i i did not go down the titanic i did go on some shallow dives,
Bruce: in the sub uh to do some testing but
Bruce: nothing deep and uh i was
Bruce: on the surface when we reached the titanic so that was that was really exciting
Bruce: i i i for myself i feel totally free to talk about it but out of respect for
Bruce: my colleagues who who are who do have some legal concerns,
Bruce: i'm i've kept quiet because you know just to protect them but but yeah like
Bruce: the coast guard hasn't even contacted me.
Bruce: And people have said, wow, they were really surprised that the Coast Guard hadn't
Bruce: talked to me because they've talked to all my colleagues.
Sam: I figured when it happened, there'd be people on the phone with you right away
Sam: as a witness and somebody that was going to be questioned in terms of all the
Sam: investigations and everything.
Bruce: No? Nope, not at all. Because I guess, and I'm sure they know that electronics
Bruce: had nothing to do with this whatsoever.
Bruce: So, um, but there was electronics that would, that monitored the state of the hall.
Bruce: There was a strain sensors and acoustic sensors to monitor the, the, the whole health.
Bruce: And when there's a lot, there's been a lot of misinformation out there,
Bruce: a lot of confusion out there that this was an untested hall and that it was
Bruce: all cobbled together and,
Bruce: you You know, there's unprofessional people designing it, which was the case for the first haul,
Bruce: but not for the second haul.
Bruce: The first haul, it was beginning to fail.
Bruce: No one died in it. But then...
Bruce: And when they realized that they needed to do a redesign, they fired basically
Bruce: all the engineering staff and they hired a whole new set of people.
Bruce: And I was among that new set of people.
Bruce: And there's some quotes from Stockton Rush saying that he didn't want to hire
Bruce: 50-year-old white guys to design the hull.
Bruce: Well, you know what? It ended up being a bunch of 50-year-old white guys that
Bruce: designed the new sub. So, yeah, he hired a bunch of like fresh out of college
Bruce: students before and that didn't work out too well.
Bruce: But yeah, I could talk a lot more about it. I think once the report comes out,
Bruce: then I'll be absolutely free to talk about it.
Bruce: And that'll probably be another maybe six months or so.
Sam: Okay. So in the meantime, so I won't ask you about like that kind of detail
Sam: though, but since we haven't talked about it, like when the thing was going
Sam: on, can you tell us a little bit about sort of.
Sam: The emotional rollercoaster you must've been on while that was transpiring and
Sam: people were figuring it out.
Bruce: Yeah, it was, it was a real rollercoaster because like the day of,
Bruce: I got a, I got a call from one of my colleagues saying, Hey babe,
Bruce: the subs lost and they can't find them.
Bruce: And so me and the other guys were like brainstorming what's,
Bruce: you know, what could have happened, trying to think of what are the different ways to fail.
Bruce: And we had multiple layers of safety.
Bruce: For every system on the sub, except for one, and that's the hall itself.
Bruce: There's no backup for the hall, except we do have hall monitoring.
Bruce: We have two forms of hall monitoring.
Bruce: But yeah, we had so little issue with the hall, actually no issues whatsoever
Bruce: with the hall, it was the last thing we would consider.
Bruce: We couldn't even imagine that it had been that.
Bruce: And so especially Especially when during the week that they were looking for
Bruce: them, there was reports that there was a banging that they heard.
Bruce: And that is exactly what would happen is if you're in a lost sub,
Bruce: if you're entangled, that was my biggest theory was that they were entangled in the wreck.
Bruce: Because there's a lot of loose cables down there and they could have gotten
Bruce: stuck down there that way.
Bruce: And if you're stuck in the bottom on a sub, the way to message back if your
Bruce: batteries are dead or even if your sub is completely inoperable,
Bruce: you can bang on the hull and sound travels very well underwater.
Bruce: And so they were trying to search for that banging, but they couldn't find it, obviously.
Bruce: Obviously and then so when it actually came out
Bruce: that they found debris then then we knew what
Bruce: was the cause it was yeah it
Bruce: was real shock and i felt most badly for
Bruce: that that teenager that or that i guess he was maybe 20 years old going uh down
Bruce: there he should not have been on it so the other guys they were elderly they
Bruce: knew what they were getting into i i don't really feel much remorse for them
Bruce: because they were explorers,
Bruce: but the teenager should not have been on them. That was just a real tragedy.
Sam: Yeah, there were reports he didn't even really want to go to,
Sam: and he was doing it because his father wanted him to or whatever.
Bruce: Yeah, I heard that too. And then all my colleagues who were on the surface,
Bruce: how uncomfortable and it's just tragic to be on the surface for a week with the families of,
Bruce: of the people who were in the sub who had just died.
Bruce: And everyone on the ship eats together, and it's hard to avoid people on a ship.
Bruce: And the weird thing is, you know,
Bruce: having built that sub and designed it with my own hands, i had more of an emotional
Bruce: connection to the sub than really to the people,
Bruce: and so i felt more emotion i feel more emotion when i think about the tragedy
Bruce: of that sub being destroyed than actually the people that probably sounds really
Bruce: weird but just a little uh but if If it's hard to explain unless you've like,
Bruce: unless you've like put invested so much into an inanimate object and to see it destroyed. Yeah.
Bruce: It's kind of like how you feel if your home was getting burned up or something. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, definitely like if your home was burned up or if,
Sam: especially like if, if, like you said, if you've ever made anything yourself,
Sam: Like that you've put a lot of time and effort into that's a one of a kind thing
Sam: that you couldn't necessarily make again.
Sam: And, you know, yeah, I, I under, I understand having some emotional attachment
Sam: to that, you know, and, and you, you knew that object, you didn't know the people as well.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: So I understand. Yeah.
Bruce: So yeah that's that's how i
Bruce: felt and and we've and my colleagues the other engineers we've we've been keeping
Bruce: in touch and and about all of our experiences and about the different contexts
Bruce: we've had you know i've had newspapers and tv stations all contacting me trying
Bruce: to get me to interview and like you know so right.
Sam: Well thanks for talking to us.
Bruce: Yeah absolutely just.
Sam: This last Last week, there were some news reports about a new billionaire going
Sam: down and a new sub in the same place. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Bruce: Well, I think that's a good thing. I really support that.
Bruce: I don't know. I've never heard of that guy before, but he is going to build
Bruce: that sub with Triton Submarines.
Bruce: Triton Submarines is the world expert on deep submergence vehicles.
Bruce: They built, the head of that company, the founder of that company is Patrick Leahy.
Bruce: And he and his company before, they were hired by this other multimillionaire
Bruce: who wanted to build a sub that could go repeatedly to the Marriott's Trench.
Bruce: And Victor Vescovo is his name. So
Bruce: Victor Vescovo is like this Wall Street investor, made a bunch of money.
Bruce: And so he hired Triton Subs to build this sub called, it's called,
Bruce: I can't remember the name of it.
Bruce: I forget the name of the sub. But anyway, it's a titanium sphere.
Bruce: It holds two people and went repeatedly down to the Maranis Trench.
Bruce: And it's an amazing structure.
Bruce: It's an amazing vehicle. And they actually use the same batteries that we used on the Titan.
Bruce: But anyway, yeah, this guy, I think that's a good thing to do.
Bruce: I think Triton, if they were to build a sub to do that, it probably would take
Bruce: them a cost about $15 million, and they would do it right.
Bruce: And Triton, they're the ones that make these really cool-looking glass subs
Bruce: where you're in like this plexiglass sphere.
Bruce: And you can see in all directions.
Bruce: I remember reading that they could theoretically build a glass sphere that could
Bruce: breach 4,000 meters, which is the depth of Titan.
Bruce: And so, of course, it would be very thick.
Bruce: But it would be optically clear. And can you imagine being there at the Titanic,
Bruce: being able to look at it, not through a little portal, but all around in all directions.
Bruce: And that's, that is what Triton sumps could possibly try to do.
Bruce: And if they were to do that, it would be pretty amazing.
Sam: Well, and just in general with this kind of thing,
Sam: I know the rap on this was like, oh, huge act of hubris and reckless person
Sam: who wasn't paying attention to all of the safety things he should.
Sam: But at the same time, when something like this happens, you hope that you learn
Sam: from it and use the learnings to do something better the next time around,
Sam: as opposed to like, you wouldn't want the outcome from this to be like,
Sam: oh, well, we'll never do that again. You know?
Bruce: Yeah. And I think that may be the case when it comes to carbon fiber holes.
Sam: Right. Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, when you learn, part of it is like,
Sam: hey, this particular technique was flawed. Let's do something else.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: But the goal, you know, like there are all sorts of reasons to have subs that
Sam: go at depth that are, you know, of this type, you know.
Sam: It's not just, hey, billionaire doing tourism.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, more power to them.
Bruce: I think they should definitely do that. I'm glad to hear that somebody is willing
Bruce: to actually try to mend the reputation of the deep submergence submarine community.
Bruce: So, okay.
Sam: Well, I mentioned I have a book.
Sam: This is one I actually listened to as an audio book. It's a 1956 history book
Sam: called Bible and sword by Barbara Tuckman.
Bruce: Uh, I get on your list.
Sam: I don't know. Like, you know, the list has thousands of things on it.
Sam: I don't know how they get there.
Sam: I ever, I used to, when I first started the list, make a point of always noting
Sam: what, where I heard about it or why, what made me like add it to the list.
Sam: I stopped that years ago. So like, they're just things on the list.
Sam: I don't know how they got there.
Sam: At some point in the last 10 years, I heard about it and it was like,
Sam: oh, that sounds like it might be cool.
Sam: So this is a, it is specifically a history of the relationships between England
Sam: and Palestine going from the Bronze Age through to the Balfour Declaration in 1917.
Bruce: Oh, wow.
Sam: So it's sort of history of Israel before modern Israel was created after World War II.
Bruce: Yeah, and that Balfour Declaration is the whole reason why we have the situation we have right now.
Sam: Well, it's like the whole situation in the Middle East, right?
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: Just to, since I mentioned it, bring up what that is.
Sam: Well, there are a whole bunch of post-World War I things that led to everything we've got.
Sam: Balfour Declaration specifically was the British government in 1917,
Sam: while the First World War was still going on, announcing that it supported the
Sam: establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine,
Sam: which was still ruled by the Ottomans at that point.
Sam: So anyway, he.
Sam: Bottom line, I'm actually going to give it a thumbs down, but I don't have like,
Sam: it really is personal reasons for it.
Sam: Like, I feel like there's two things here.
Sam: Like, I feel like this topic feels like it should have been super,
Sam: super interesting to me.
Sam: Like it's, it's history. I like history.
Sam: It's the history of a region of the world that is in the news these days.
Sam: So having the background is useful.
Sam: It has an interesting twist that it's not just a history of Israel slash Palestine.
Sam: It's a history specifically of how that related to England, you know,
Sam: going back through the Crusades and all of this kind of stuff and how England thought about,
Sam: that region and how England thought about Jews and how like all of these things came together.
Sam: And all of that seems like it would be right up my alley, but just that I think there are two things.
Sam: One, just the style of writing.
Sam: Like, I mean, I mentioned this was written in 1956.
Sam: It was just a little stilted and the way that it was talking about just had
Sam: trouble holding my attention and that was amplified by I listened to this as
Sam: an audio book and the actual person who was reading it.
Sam: Just between their way of speaking and their accent, which was a British accent,
Sam: I don't know what variety of British accent,
Sam: but I kept having trouble sort of getting locked in and really paying attention.
Sam: Between those things, I would put it on, and then after a couple minutes,
Sam: I would realize that I hadn't absorbed anything in the last few minutes.
Sam: You know and again part of it is sort
Sam: of the style of the talking some of it was the
Sam: voice i don't know and maybe i would
Sam: have felt different if i was actually reading this sort of words
Sam: on a screen or words on paper i'm not sure but the audiobook experience of it
Sam: it really was almost a chore to me to sort of force myself to like okay i want
Sam: to pay attention to this i want to learn because there's interesting things going on here,
Sam: but it never really clicked with me.
Sam: And as I sort of got towards the second half of the book, I was like,
Sam: it's never going to click for me.
Sam: I'm just going to let it wash over me as I listened to it.
Sam: I don't know. But like, I mean, there's clearly some interesting history there.
Sam: And, and she pointed out a whole lot of things in terms of, you know,
Sam: it wasn't just sort of a snap thing in 1917.
Sam: And most things aren't, right? Like there was a whole buildup to the relationship
Sam: between like how the Anglican church in England really had a lot of how they
Sam: thought about themselves based on their relationship
Sam: to the plight of the Jews in Palestine.
Sam: And there was a whole lot of stuff there in terms of how there were a lot of
Sam: interconnections between how England thought of itself and how...
Sam: It thought about what was happening in the Holy Land.
Sam: And part of this goes, you know, I mentioned the Crusades. Part of this relates to the Crusades.
Sam: There was a whole, you know, several centuries where England and a variety of
Sam: parts of Europe centered a lot of what they were thinking about in terms of
Sam: we have to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims.
Sam: And and so it how these
Sam: things interacted you know was did have a bunch of fascinating stuff and there
Sam: was a whole segment getting towards the end of that period before balfour there
Sam: was a lot of talk about like yes the jews need a homeland but why don't we buy
Sam: them some land somewhere else yeah.
Bruce: I've heard that.
Sam: There was talk of like buying them some land in south america or in africa or i.
Bruce: I was just going to say that. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. There were a variety of locations that were actually scouted out,
Sam: but like the Zionist community at a certain point, there was apparently one
Sam: big conference where they seriously considered it and almost went for the idea
Sam: of one of these Jewish homelands on some other continent.
Sam: But the, the faction that was like, no, no, it's Palestine or nothing. One out.
Sam: Um, you know, so there's a lot of, you know, what ifs there as well.
Bruce: Only there's one little problem there. There's people already there.
Sam: Yes. Pretty much anywhere you go, there's people already there.
Sam: Not only Palestine, but these alternative locations they were thinking about
Sam: too, also already had populations.
Sam: It's just a question of who you would displace.
Sam: I mean, there are very few places that are completely unpopulated on the planet,
Sam: and they're generally unpopulated for a reason.
Sam: But there's still a lot of interesting sort of what-if scenarios.
Sam: Like if you go back to the late 1800s and say, what if they had established
Sam: a Jewish homeland somewhere in South America? How would that change everything?
Bruce: Yeah, it's kind of hard to even imagine.
Sam: Right.
Bruce: Yeah. But yeah, was there anything about how they drew the lines in the Balfour Declaration?
Bruce: Like at the end of World War I, they kind of cut up the Ottoman Empire.
Sam: Yeah, that's actually different than Balfour. Like Balfour was just the UK saying
Sam: they were in favor of a Jewish homeland.
Sam: The actual, what was it called?
Sam: I should look it up, but the actual treaty that divided up the Ottoman Empire was different.
Sam: Like, okay, now you're going to make me look it up.
Bruce: Yeah, because they purposely drew those lines to divide tribal populations so
Bruce: that no one ethnicity was in control of each country.
Bruce: Because Iraq has both Sunni and Shia Muslims, and same thing with Jordan and Syria.
Bruce: They're all kind of like they're cobbled together, these ethnicities,
Bruce: and so they fight among themselves.
Sam: And that was the standard playbook all over the world.
Bruce: Oh, yeah, because the British were experts at that. They had been the global
Bruce: empire for hundreds of years, and so they knew they were at the peak of their expertise,
Bruce: but little did they know that would be, it would continue to be a problem.
Bruce: And well, they probably thought their
Bruce: empire would continue and the empire basically ended after one war too.
Sam: Yeah, I'm looking, it looks like there, I thought that was like one name that
Sam: they put to all of it, but there, there are a whole series of treaties and mandates and.
Bruce: Treaty of Versailles was what ended the.
Sam: Well, that, that was the end of the war.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: But apparently, in terms of how they divided up the land and everything,
Sam: not just in the former Ottoman Empire, but in all of the areas that were affected
Sam: by World War I, there was apparently a whole bunch of them.
Sam: Sykes-Picot, that's the main one, I think, that people talk about. out.
Sam: The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a 1916 secret treaty between the UK and France
Sam: with the ascent of the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy to define their
Sam: mutually agreed spheres of influence and eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.
Sam: So there was that secret agreement, and then there were a whole bunch of treaties
Sam: and other agreements and blah, blah, blah to implement that after the war actually ended.
Sam: But this is the one people talk about, Sykes-Picot.
Bruce: So what's kind of crazy, I think, is that some people consider the Ottoman Empire
Bruce: to be the actual last remnants of the Roman Empire.
Sam: Well, most people say the Byzantine Empire that the Ottomans eventually conquered
Sam: was the last true Roman one.
Sam: Because the Byzantines considered themselves the Roman Empire.
Sam: They actually called themselves the Roman Empire. And I read once quite clearly,
Sam: you know, a few decades ago now, a big, long history of the Byzantine empire.
Sam: And, you know, a, a, a through line of it is to the very end.
Sam: They claimed they were the Roman empire.
Sam: They, you know, they were the legitimate Roman empire up until the day that
Sam: the Ottomans took over Constantinople.
Bruce: Yeah. You know, it was a really good series on Netflix about that.
Bruce: And that's, I highly recommend.
Sam: Yeah. And, you know, people, cause people think of the Roman empire as dying
Sam: a lot earlier, but I mean, culturally the Roman empire didn't really end until
Sam: the end of the Byzantines.
Sam: Although of course, you know, if you compare the beginning of the Roman empire
Sam: to the end, there's huge cultural shifts anyway.
Bruce: Yeah. As any, any country would be anyway.
Sam: Way anything that lasts thousands of years i mean even
Sam: if you look at it a hundred years apart it's not really the same thing
Sam: but there's a continuous evolution and you certainly
Sam: got that here but yeah no it's
Sam: again like i feel like for this book in particular and again the title is bible
Sam: and sword by barbara tuchman i feel like the topic should have been really interesting
Sam: to me it's the kind of stuff I get interested in,
Sam: but the actual presentation of it just had a hard time keeping my attention.
Bruce: You know, Sam, I was just planning on reading that book and thank you for keeping me from reading that.
Sam: Well, again, maybe I would have had a better time if I was really doing the
Sam: print version rather than the audio book.
Sam: I don't know. Or if there was a different voice. Well.
Bruce: Maybe be able to give it a try either.
Sam: Way it was tough for me like and
Sam: yeah i kept yeah it just i
Sam: kept trying at first and then eventually i sort of gave up and just let it roll
Sam: over me i still think i got most of the high level themes but none of the details
Sam: were sinking in at all it was just sort of like yeah blah blah blah more stuff
Sam: happened blah blah blah more stuff happened blah blah blah you,
Sam: know so i can't i can't even give it a thumb sideways i mean it won the puller
Sam: surprise at the time in 1956 okay.
Bruce: Well that's probably the list that you pulled it from.
Sam: Yeah maybe i don't know i i feel like i don't know i have no idea where it came
Sam: from but anyway i i think that's enough for this segment we will take a quick
Sam: break and when we get back we'll start talking about donald Trump.
Sam: And we'll kick that off with whatever Yvonne had to say, which I have not listened to yet.
Sam: So it'll be brand new for all of us back after this.
Break: Do you want to understand what is really going on with the presidential election cycle?
Break: Then go to electiongraphs.com right away.
Break: There you'll find charts and graphs covering the nomination processes in both
Break: parties and the general election race for electoral college votes.
Break: For the delegate races, we track not just delegate totals, but also the ever-important
Break: analysis of how each candidate has to do with the remaining delegates in order to actually win.
Break: For the Electoral College, we track state-by-state poll averages to categorize
Break: which states are actually in play and which are not in order to show you the
Break: range of likely electoral results and how that changes over time.
Break: Sure, you can get some of this stuff elsewhere, but not in exactly the same way.
Break: And not from me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon. I think my election trackers are
Break: better than the rest, so come look at mine.
Break: ElectionGraphs.com.
Sam: There we go.
Bruce: That sounds so much weirder at 1x.
Bruce: I'm so used to hearing that at 1.5.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. All of this does. Whenever I'm listening to anything at 1x,
Sam: I'm like, what's wrong with them?
Sam: And especially like music and breaks and stuff. Like if you're used to it at
Sam: the fast speed, listening to it at normal speed is just weird.
Sam: Anyway, so here, like Yvonne sent me this literally right before we started recording.
Sam: I am pretty sure he just recorded it as a voice memo on his phone.
Sam: So here we go. We'll listen to Yvonne's thoughts on the Donald Trump situation.
Sam: And then Bruce and I will react to what Yvonne said. and then just talk about
Sam: the issue in general. So here we go. Here's Yvonne.
Ivan: Well, hello, Cormacians. Sorry I'm not there, especially at this elated time
Ivan: where we get Donald Trump to be finally be called, what is he now? Convicted felon.
Ivan: Ex-president Donald Trump. It's such a great day for me personally.
Ivan: I would say I was nervous.
Ivan: I saw that all of a sudden I thought that they were going to adjourn for today,
Ivan: and I was working because I knew that this stuff was going on.
Ivan: I was keeping tabs on it to see what was going on.
Ivan: And all of a sudden they said they had a verdict and I was nervous.
Ivan: I will say I was like, but I also So, my first instinct was that it was guilty.
Ivan: I mean, because if they took this long and there was no, obviously,
Ivan: there was no hung jury because they had a verdict, then it had to be guilty.
Ivan: There was just no other option.
Ivan: Now, the one thing I thought is that, and because somebody else mentioned this,
Ivan: that because they were taking a substantial amount of time to fill out the forms
Ivan: and do it, that maybe there were some counts that they could say he's not guilty. Okay?
Ivan: And so I thought that that was a possibility at that moment.
Ivan: I figured it was most of them was going to be guilty, but maybe they figured
Ivan: out something that it wasn't.
Ivan: But no, they came back and we have convicted felon ex-president Donald Trump
Ivan: because I'm not going to give him the credit of getting served,
Ivan: getting called president.
Ivan: So I will say that it's a great day for our democracy.
Ivan: I know that it doesn't really change a lot in terms of practical terms right
Ivan: now because he will appeal and it will take a while for the appeals to go through.
Ivan: But the reality is that given what the conviction was based on,
Ivan: that unless there was some kind of egregious error on the part of the jurors,
Ivan: it's very difficult to, not the jurors, in terms of the egregious error,
Ivan: in terms of part on the trial itself,
Ivan: it's very difficult to get such a verdict overturned.
Ivan: A lot of discussion about what, you know, what the sentencing is going to be.
Ivan: Because the maximum jail term is four years for this. It could be zero to four years later.
Ivan: I mean, they're not going to make it. This is not a capital crime.
Ivan: They're not going to make them consecutive.
Ivan: It will be concurrent for sure. I mean, if I'm the district attorney, I'm asking for jail.
Ivan: Because it really shows, as we know, that this isn't just some mistake or something, whatever.
Ivan: This is conduct that he knew was illegal.
Ivan: He did it. And I don't think that a defendant in any case learns anything if
Ivan: you just go and just give him a slap on the wrist in probation,
Ivan: which he could have gotten if he had plea bargained on this because of what
Ivan: the potential penalties were.
Ivan: But he decided not to do it, and he wanted to vociferously claim to everybody
Ivan: that he is a victim, and he isn't.
Ivan: He's a crook, and now he is a convicted one.
Ivan: And I really wish that all the other legal processes around all the crimes that
Ivan: Donald has committed over time had been moving more quickly,
Ivan: and we would get a lot more of these guilty verdicts.
Ivan: The reality is that my hope is that I think that the prosecutors will request
Ivan: and will get jail time for him That even if he wins the damn re-election That
Ivan: this bastard will go to jail afterwards The only way that he'll freaking avoid jail is if he dies.
Ivan: So, you know.
Ivan: That's the reality we are in right now I think it's a great day.
Ivan: Where justice has finally been served to this guy and i the one thing that i really,
Ivan: loved is the fact that he had this such a defeated look on his face and it's
Ivan: just so great because this guy has been a cancer on this country he has been
Ivan: a cancer for a very long time,
Ivan: he's been a liar his entire life.
Ivan: Everything that he purports to be is all a fraud,
Ivan: he builds on that fraud it's a whole his life is a damn ponzi scheme his entire
Ivan: damn life and then you know he he has had this ambitions of being president,
Ivan: and and he does it by vilifying,
Ivan: and lying and vilifying people that really have contributed a lot to this country
Ivan: over the history of time.
Ivan: And he's a racist and just a hateful person. And I really hope that.
Ivan: He gets the worst of anything because he doesn't deserve anything good.
Ivan: And so he has really hurt a lot of people.
Ivan: And so I'm happy today. I celebrated a little bit. I must admit, quite happy.
Ivan: And I know that this doesn't decide the election itself,
Ivan: but I do think that it's a hell of a lot easier to run against him when he is
Ivan: convicted felon ex-president, Donald Trump.
Ivan: So guys, I'll leave you to Sam
Ivan: and Bruce, which I know are covering the show. I'm sorry I'm not there.
Ivan: I'm in Guatemala, and lately connectivity from these places has not been very good.
Ivan: So I'm just recording this message and sending it out. But thanks,
Ivan: everybody, and hopefully I'll be back online soon. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
Sam: Okay. So that's what Yvonne had to say. I'll let you react first, Bruce.
Bruce: Well, for someone who's been And he's so happy to have Trump convicted.
Bruce: He didn't seem too happy listening to him.
Bruce: I've heard him be a lot happier, but I think I don't think I'm sure.
Sam: He's tired to every.
Bruce: Time he's been in Guatemala.
Sam: He's been talking about how he's exhausted at the end of the day, et cetera.
Sam: And he's like more time zones over than he usually is as well,
Sam: I think so, or whatever. He's in a different time zone than that.
Bruce: I think it's just central time zone over there.
Bruce: But I'm sure he would probably not feel that he said that justice has been served,
Bruce: but I don't think justice is going to be served until he actually pays a price
Bruce: or loses the presidency because of this.
Bruce: So that remains to be seen.
Sam: Yeah, and he was like sentencing, it's going to be jail.
Sam: I'm not confident. I think he's right that the prosecutors will ask for jail.
Sam: Jail i don't know that the judge is going to
Sam: give him jail because like this is a class
Sam: e felony that apparently very rarely gets
Sam: jail as part of the sentence and he's
Sam: a first-time offender as much as all this other stuff is going on this is the
Sam: first time he's been convicted of anything and between those two things and
Sam: the fact that he's an ex-president he's got secret service protection he is
Sam: a candidate currently for the presidency what.
Bruce: Does secret service protection mean in jail would they be like standing outside his jail cell.
Sam: Probably yeah while.
Bruce: He's walking around the yard walking right beside him or what.
Sam: Yeah it would probably be exactly that but like no but with all of this kind
Sam: of stuff it's like it's hard to imagine the judge actually saying okay,
Sam: the sentence is X number of months in jail or whatever.
Sam: Maybe, I mean...
Sam: Maybe he will. I mean, the things
Sam: that people have said are reasons why it might get bumped up to jail.
Sam: Like despite the, okay, class E felonies usually don't get this,
Sam: et cetera, are A, there were 34 counts.
Sam: That's a lot of counts. B, he's shown absolutely no remorse or admission of
Sam: guilt or even acknowledgement that he's done anything wrong ever.
Sam: However, two, he had the 12 counts of contempt of court during the trial and
Sam: just generally his behavior around that.
Sam: And also the judge is allowed to consider the fact that he is on trial for other
Sam: things or has been indicted for other things.
Sam: Obviously, he hasn't been convicted of those other things. But the fact that
Sam: he's indicted for them, the judge is allowed to take that into account as he
Sam: looks at the bigger picture.
Sam: And so people argue that when you add all of those things in,
Sam: maybe the jail time really is a possibility.
Sam: As Yvonne said, though, even if the judge sentenced him to jail,
Sam: it's going to be in appeals for years and years and years, assuming he doesn't
Sam: even win the presidency.
Sam: Presidency like if he wins the presidency this
Sam: is a state court so certain things can proceed
Sam: but a lot of talking heads
Sam: i've heard talk about this say basically what would likely happen if he won
Sam: the presidency and there were still ongoing things in state court is that they
Sam: would basically pause those state court activities until he left the presidency again you know yeah.
Bruce: That's that's That's what I would think too. Yeah. For me, I'm, I'm surprised.
Bruce: I thought that it would be a hung jury because all it takes is one person.
Sam: Yeah. I, I, you know, as I mentioned on the show a couple of times ago,
Sam: I didn't, I wasn't predicting a hung jury, but it was definitely a significant chance of it.
Sam: And like the Trump folks were, we're talking even, uh,
Sam: today this morning before it came out that
Sam: well there were reports that off the record trump
Sam: team people were saying they felt really good about
Sam: the hung jury scenario because there was this one juror juror number two apparently
Sam: who in the jury selection process had said they like get some of their news
Sam: from truth social had also whenever like these conservative luminaries had
Sam: sat in the courtroom next to Donald Trump and sort of smiled and looked happy and like, Ooh,
Sam: there's this person, the Senator, whoever, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And so like, apparently there was some contingent among the Trump folks who
Sam: were like that one, that one's going to hang the jury for us.
Bruce: Yeah. Well, you know, it takes someone with extraordinarily thick skin.
Bruce: If it's a single juror, it's not like the, you know, 12 angry men where one person can.
Sam: Can swing the whole jury i.
Bruce: Recently served on a jury it was for a civil trial and we were bumping up against
Bruce: a deadline where we would have to come back it was like a friday and we would
Bruce: have to come back on monday.
Sam: Right and.
Bruce: Nobody wanted to have to do that so we were like all right let's get this decided
Bruce: and i could and it was the same situation here right i think they were gonna
Bruce: have to if they didn't decide today they were gonna have to be.
Sam: Well no they could they would have been able to continue tomorrow
Sam: but and that's why everybody sort of thought one
Sam: way or another they'll make a decision by friday because they don't want to stay
Sam: the weekend yeah but but thursday but and
Sam: and a lot of the punditry was like if if
Sam: they you know if they decide something thursday it's definitely a conviction
Sam: if it goes till friday then we've got a serious consideration of a hung jury
Sam: now if if they had been hung like the way it typically works is the judge makes
Sam: them keep trying for a while.
Sam: Like, they're not going to say on Friday, oh, sorry, we can't come to a decision,
Sam: and the judge says, okay.
Sam: No, the judge would be like, you're coming back Monday, and you're going to
Sam: keep trying for at least another week. You know, so like –.
Bruce: It's kind of like punishing him.
Sam: Yeah. But, I mean, and we did have in one of the previous civil cases,
Sam: I can't remember if it was an E. Jean Carroll or one of the monetary ones.
Sam: I think it might have been E. Jean Carroll. Carol, there, there was,
Sam: there was a person on the jury who is an out and out Trump supporter.
Sam: Like they were a Trump fan, like they, you know, and they voted to convict anyway.
Sam: And they were interviewed afterwards as saying like, I'm a Trump supporter.
Sam: I like the guy, but I was on the jury and I had to do my duty and the charges
Sam: against him were true, you know?
Sam: So, so yeah, I mean, I mean, I would not have been surprised by a hung jury,
Sam: but this is not a surprising outcome either.
Bruce: Yeah. So, but in the end, how will this affect the election?
Bruce: That's the real question that everyone's asking.
Bruce: Will this, as you were saying, there be no, he won't be going to jail.
Bruce: He won't be actually having to pay any price. He's going to appeal and that
Bruce: will at least push this out until after his second term, if he wins.
Sam: If he wins.
Bruce: Will he win? Is this enough to sway that, you know, the middle voters to say,
Bruce: oh, wow, this guy is a convicted felon. Are we going to vote?
Sam: Right. Well, and this is, you know, I hate to do the thing I always say,
Sam: which is we'll have to wait and see.
Sam: Like because there have been all kinds of questions about this asked of people
Sam: like for months and months and months people have been polling republicans and trump supporters,
Sam: asking if he's convicted would it change your mind and there's a significant
Sam: chunk who have said yes it would like five to ten percent fifteen on the upside
Sam: and you know you'd say Okay, that's a small percentage.
Sam: But if 15% defect and either don't vote or vote for Biden or even vote for Kennedy
Sam: or somebody, then that's enough to swing the election.
Sam: I mean, it's a, the race is a few percentage points at this point in the critical states.
Sam: But here's the thing, like, I...
Sam: If you look at this there, I can fully imagine that the reaction at this point is yes. Okay, fine.
Sam: But when you said, would you change your mind if he was convicted?
Sam: I was thinking of like murder or something.
Sam: This is some paperwork crime. He did like, you know, okay.
Sam: So he lied. And I mean, like the details of this crime are actually kind of hard to follow.
Sam: It's a several step thing. And it's in the end, it's about, you know, you,
Sam: you wrote things down as if this was a legal expense where actually you were
Sam: reimbursing somebody for paying off the porn star and the paying off the porn
Sam: star. Isn't the problem.
Sam: The problem is that you declared it as something it wasn't, and it was really
Sam: a campaign expense and you should have declared it that way.
Sam: It gets messy and complicated and you can easily have people dismiss that and
Sam: say, yeah, okay, that's a crime, but it's not really a crime.
Sam: And then also you have, oh, it's still under appeal.
Sam: You have Donald Trump and a chorus of surrounding Republicans saying,
Sam: witch hunt, it's political,
Sam: it's Joe Biden going after him, it's completely bullshit, there wasn't anything
Sam: here, and this is a huge miscarriage of justice, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: And for certainly any of the true believers are going to buy all of that hook,
Sam: line, and sinker, and they're not going to change their minds.
Sam: And so the difference, again, is like on the margins. Do you have a few percent
Sam: defect because of this? And...
Sam: Do not have that compensated for by outraged MAGA people who become more likely
Sam: to vote because this has happened.
Bruce: Yeah. And if this was happening at the end of October rather than the end of May.
Sam: Yeah. There's also lots of time to recover.
Bruce: Yes. There's just five months, five months from now, people will be barely remembering
Bruce: this. It's, it's gotta be ancient history.
Sam: Well, there are a few things like we're going to, the sentencing isn't until
Sam: the middle of July. So we'll have a little boost there when sentencing happens.
Sam: And then, of course, that will be immediately followed by the Republican convention,
Sam: which will probably undo anything.
Sam: They're like so close together, there won't even be any polling that can distinguish those two events.
Sam: And then we might,
Sam: we probably won't have actual trials for anything else, but also very likely
Sam: in the beginning of July will be the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity,
Sam: which after that decision, regardless of what happens to it,
Sam: there will be developments in the DC trial.
Sam: Like the trial won't start most likely, but there will be developments and things
Sam: happening and things in the news about that trial.
Sam: Now, whether any of those will break through to public consciousness, who knows?
Sam: And I think, you know, I mentioned sentencing in July.
Sam: I think a lot dependence depends on that too. Like if the judge does say,
Sam: you know, probation, a fine and probation, then everybody's going to be like,
Sam: well, that was a whole lot of nothing.
Sam: Maybe he is a felon, but you know, he got a fine and probation, big fucking deal.
Sam: Like, and you know, and I think anything short of, okay, he's actually in jail.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. may have problems making a huge difference.
Sam: Yeah. But again, you don't need a huge difference. You need a small difference
Sam: to make, you know, like right now,
Sam: I did an update on election graphs this last week.
Bruce: I noticed that. I just saw that you finally got another block.
Sam: Yeah, I've been running every couple months or so.
Sam: I really need to get more frequent now that we're less than six months away from the election.
Sam: But just to give the reference, on electiongraphs.com, on the 28th,
Sam: on May 28th, I posted 162 days out as summer starts.
Sam: And the bottom line on that is there has been a recent, just in the last week
Sam: or two, movement towards Biden.
Sam: But I don't know if it's a lasting movement.
Sam: There were a couple of false starts, both in January and in March,
Sam: where it looked like things were moving towards Biden and they went a couple
Sam: percentage and then it reversed. So it's probably those might have just been noise.
Sam: Now, this is so far a bigger move than that. But I still don't know.
Sam: Is it like long lasting? Is it real?
Sam: Or is it just like a blip and it's going to go back where it was?
Sam: I just added right after the verdict today, like on election graphs,
Sam: I do these little vertical lines on all my graphs of where sort of news events happen.
Sam: And so I just added one for the verdict and in terms of will,
Sam: do we see a movement in the polls?
Sam: There's, first of all, I would not be surprised if there are snap national polls
Sam: released as early as Friday of this week, tomorrow,
Sam: as we're recording this of like an initial impression based on what happened with the verdict.
Sam: But and there and you'll start getting some national polls right away because
Sam: their new national report their new national polls released pretty much every
Sam: day we'll probably get the first state polls that include the time frame after
Sam: the verdict middle to end of next week but like,
Sam: You won't have enough for the poll averages in all of the swing states to reflect
Sam: post-verdict for probably a month.
Bruce: Because you do averages of five, right?
Sam: Yeah, I do last five poll averages. And in all the swing states right now,
Sam: that generally has ranged anywhere from the last three weeks to get five polls
Sam: to the last month and a half, depending on the state.
Sam: But in another month we'll have an idea did
Sam: this move poles at all but honestly at this point like i don't know i i want
Sam: to feel like this has to hurt i mean how can it help but at the same time there
Sam: are a lot of weird dynamics here he's being persecuted he's being persecuted exactly,
Sam: there uh now and and him being persecuted is the kind of thing that gets you
Sam: know there's a lot of analysis that's been posted over the last couple of months as well,
Sam: related to a lot of the Donald Trump support is among people who did not vote in 2020.
Sam: And so there's the question of, do you have a lot of people who are riled up,
Sam: but actually won't turn up at the end?
Sam: Or do you have actual people will turn up again because one of
Sam: the things that happened in 2016 is donald trump got a whole bunch of people
Sam: to vote who had not voted previously and who were not regular voters but they
Sam: were excited by donald trump and so they were undercounted i don't know i i
Sam: just don't know like so i don't know so yeah well.
Bruce: Just just uh for listeners the the tldr is a couple weeks ago your uniform swing odds were.
Sam: 96.6%.
Bruce: Chance for Trump to win and today it's 87 or 81.7% chance of Trump winning.
Sam: The one important thing about those odds that you just gave as well that I pointed
Sam: out in my blog post and elsewhere is that these are all if the election was today.
Sam: You know, if the polls...
Sam: Are like they are now on election day, then those are the odds because what
Sam: I have on the site right now does not take into account at all how much things
Sam: tend to change over time.
Sam: And like right now, as of today, as of when we're recording,
Sam: we are 158.9 days away from when polls start to close on election night.
Sam: A lot can happen on that timeframe, including, hey, he just got convicted of a bunch of crap.
Sam: So things may change. I have started and have begun work on the models necessary
Sam: that actually take into account how much the polls usually shift when there
Sam: are X number of days left.
Sam: But honestly, in order to finish that, I need to have two or three days straight
Sam: where I just work on that.
Sam: And it's really hard to get time to do it. I I'm actually considering taking
Sam: some actual time off later this month to finish that up.
Sam: I have some data cleaning to do. Cause like, uh, right now I have all of my,
Sam: I I've written all the scripts to do the calculations based on 2020 and 2016 data,
Sam: but I really want to include 2012 and 20 and 2008 and 2008 data as well.
Sam: But in 2016 and 2020, I had the election graphs website up and basically its current form.
Sam: And I had all the data in easily digestible forms that I could run scripts on in 2008.
Sam: And in 2012, I just had hand done Excel spreadsheets.
Sam: So I have to go find that data, convert it into the right format, run my new scripts on it.
Sam: And then after I've done all that, I have to, that gets me sort of the math
Sam: that tells me like, uh, if it's X number of days until the election and the
Sam: poll says this in a particular state,
Sam: what are the chances of the Republican and Democrat winning?
Sam: And then I have to run simulations on that. And then I have to make new graphs and charts.
Sam: So there's, there's, there's a number, there's, there's a significant chunk
Sam: of work I have to do to get that done.
Sam: So like, I don't know when it's going to be done, But like, I feel like it's
Sam: important because like, you know, people, people get hung up on those numbers and the whole thing.
Sam: Well, the election's not today, so is this useless?
Sam: And the answer, it's not useless. It tells you who's ahead or behind right now
Sam: and how much work they have to do in order to change that.
Sam: But it would be helpful to have something that says, you know,
Sam: how much is it likely to actually change between now and election day?
Sam: How accurate do things tend to be this far out?
Sam: And the answer is there's a lot of wiggle room.
Sam: If you've got states that are under 5%, 6% margin, there's a non-trivial chance
Sam: they flip before Election Day in either direction this far out.
Sam: Once you get to the last few weeks, it's a lot tougher to change the picture.
Bruce: Unless there's an October surprise.
Sam: Unless there's an October surprise. prize. Like in, in, in both 2016 and 2020,
Sam: there were things that showed up just in the last week or two in the polls,
Sam: you know, in both cases, the polls moved in the Republican direction in the last two or three weeks.
Sam: And so we'll see, we'll see. I have to put all this stuff in and do all this
Sam: stuff. But yeah, anyway, I, I didn't mean to do an election graphs rant.
Sam: You, you, you led me to it.
Bruce: Well, you needed to because you need to let everyone know about the,
Bruce: that's why I brought up the you got to later, you got a blog post up.
Sam: Yeah, no, read the blog post for more, but I'm really interested to see what
Sam: happens in the next couple of years.
Sam: Two, three, four weeks of polls and whether we actually see a movement or not.
Sam: Cause I think depending on what happens there, like if, if we see a movement
Sam: towards Biden in the next month, I'll be like, okay, that, that finally makes some sense.
Sam: I understand that if we actually see things move towards Trump in the next few
Sam: weeks, I'll just throw my hands up in there and say, okay, he's winning. I don't know.
Bruce: Yeah. Cause if, if this doesn't take them, then it's going to take something really big then.
Sam: What will what you know.
Bruce: Well yeah i well my my hope would be that biden will actually do something i
Bruce: mean i don't like either one of them and you know that the listeners should know that too uh but well.
Sam: And and it's not just you like this is repeatedly in the polls like one of the
Sam: problems in this whole election cycle is that almost everybody in both I shouldn't say almost everybody,
Sam: but a significant group of people in both parties just wish,
Sam: could we have two different people? Just not these two.
Bruce: Please. Well, we're going to talk about one of them in just a few minutes.
Bruce: But my point was that if Biden could do something really significant before
Bruce: his election, like maybe end the Ukraine war or end the Israel-Hamas war.
Sam: I don't think either of those are happening.
Bruce: Yeah, I doubt he'd be able to. I mean, you'd think that he has the power.
Bruce: He's the leader of the most powerful country in the world, and he's been dumping
Bruce: all kinds of weapons in both those.
Bruce: You'd think that he could do something to end those. I think that would be significant
Bruce: enough to really shift the polls because people are not happy about either one of those wars.
Sam: Well, yeah. I mean, honestly, it doesn't line up exactly,
Sam: but Biden's big fall, the big move towards Trump, aligns pretty closely with
Sam: the October incident in Israel.
Sam: Like it like i said it doesn't line up exactly it looks like but it's it's close
Sam: like there's definitely an effect there where.
Bruce: Because because if you look at the plot there's a big shift
Bruce: in late what's this yeah you're right yeah it's like right at october early
Bruce: october it before then it was trump's chances were hovering around 65 percent
Bruce: and then it jumped up to 90 per.
Sam: Yeah. You can, you can see the line. If you're looking at my charts,
Sam: you can see there's a line for
Sam: the Israeli Hamas war begins and it's right there where that movement is.
Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.
Bruce: Wow. That's a good point. Interesting.
Sam: And so, and you know, is that, is, is it really related to.
Bruce: Oh, wait. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. You're right. That one.
Sam: I mean, is it really like, cause when you look at like polls,
Sam: like, yeah, there's a bunch of people who care about this issue,
Sam: but it's not the number one issue for most people, but is it really,
Sam: and usually international events aren't like a big deal in American elections really.
Sam: It's all about the economy or social issues.
Sam: In this case, we got abortion as a major issue. I guess that's a social issue.
Sam: But it's usually domestic stuff that drives the agenda in presidential elections.
Sam: So do you really have a big freaking move based on an international incident
Sam: that only indirectly even involves us?
Sam: Maybe. I mean, if people are blaming Biden for it,
Sam: And also, the fact that this is aligned with when the Hamas attack happened makes me wonder,
Sam: because Biden hadn't even had a chance to react to it yet at that point.
Sam: So all the complaints about how Biden has handled it really are at least a little
Sam: bit after that. You know, I don't know.
Sam: But yeah, so I agree.
Sam: If you ended one of the big international conflicts and Biden got credit for
Sam: it, does that make a big difference?
Sam: Maybe it does. But I really don't see either one of those conflicts ending before November.
Sam: Probably not even in 2025, to be honest.
Sam: It's going to go on a long time in both cases.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah.
Sam: And what else are the factors that could happen?
Sam: I mean, you talk about the economy, and people all like poll after poll after
Sam: poll say people think the economy sucks, whereas all the actual numbers say
Sam: it's actually doing really well.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: So you can't say like what if happens if Biden, if something good happens in
Sam: the economy, right? If something good already happened in the economy, he gets no credit.
Bruce: Well, the thing that would be good in the economy would be for inflation to
Bruce: go back down below 2% that I think people would be.
Bruce: If he was able to get inflation down below 2% without their- Below.
Sam: 2% is actually really rare. But yeah, it could go down a little bit more.
Sam: But the problem with this, and a number of surveys have also supported this,
Sam: is that as much as you talk about what the inflation rate is,
Sam: what gets mentally stuck in people's heads is not the inflation rate, it's prices.
Sam: And people don't mentally start thinking like things are better as long as the
Sam: price is still higher than it was. And you need negative inflation for that.
Bruce: Yeah. And prices are not going to go back to what they were.
Bruce: There's no way. Yeah. Exactly.
Bruce: So, yeah, it's just because if inflation, people are having them in the back
Bruce: of their minds, unless they are,
Bruce: are smart, which most people aren't, when they think that inflation is going
Bruce: back down to zero, doesn't mean that prices go back down to what they were before. No.
Sam: Now, prices have gone down in some specific areas, but that's not...
Sam: And also certain prices, people don't like when they go down.
Sam: If the price of your home goes down and you're already a homeowner,
Sam: you're actually upset by that.
Sam: Now, if you're in the market to buy one, you might be happy but like you know
Sam: it anyway like yes certain prices have gone down but on the whole,
Sam: it's actually a bad thing if prices overall
Sam: go down you know people have
Sam: also pointed out that if you know
Sam: wage inflation is part of this too but like
Sam: if if you get a raise at work you
Sam: say oh it's because i'm awesome i deserve
Sam: that rate whereas if the price of eggs goes up you're like god damn the economy
Sam: is horrible whereas often cases your own like whether you get a raise or not
Sam: is also very dependent on the economy but you know i mean not to say that you're You're not great,
Sam: but you know, yeah.
Sam: So I don't know. I mean, on the other hand, if, if something bad happened to
Sam: the economy, Biden would get blamed instantly for that, you know, et cetera.
Bruce: Um, but that has been holding it together for him. That's, um,
Bruce: I'm, I'm, I'm just amazed that we can have interest rates this high for this
Bruce: long and it not affect the economy.
Bruce: And it's just, just shows how resilient this, this economy is.
Sam: Well, and they've, you know, it feels like they've actually learned a bunch
Sam: on that, quote unquote, how to do this from the last few cycles where they've done stuff.
Sam: And basically they're threading the needle to get the sort of mythical soft
Sam: landing for where you bring inflation back down without having a recession,
Sam: you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: It could still fall apart, but it's looking good so far. And,
Sam: and I don't know if they'll be able to replicate it next time around,
Sam: but I don't know. They've, they've learned some techniques. They're doing some things differently.
Sam: There's, you know, and I don't know. They're doing a good job,
Sam: I guess. Or they're lucky.
Bruce: They did it very gradually. And so, yeah, all it takes is a black swan event and then.
Bruce: Then there's a crisis. But at least right now,
Bruce: they have now like bullets in the chamber, you could say, that if a crisis were
Bruce: to happen, they have a lot of runway to reduce interest rates down to zero if
Bruce: something were to happen.
Bruce: Right. And that would be a hugely stimulus for whatever could happen.
Sam: And you mentioned if they solved the wars.
Sam: There's also, of course, the possibility that either or both of those could escalate and get worse.
Sam: Several countries in Europe have now said, and the US, it was reported today,
Sam: has secretly given Ukraine the okay to use American weapons attacking the Russian homeland.
Bruce: That's extremely dangerous.
Sam: Dangerous in in areas right near the border not
Sam: to attack moscow or something but the the u.s
Sam: has said okay fine you can you can respond using american weapons to attacks
Sam: on kharkiv and so yeah there's possibility of escalation now of course one of
Sam: the ways to potentially end the war as you said would be a massive escalation just nato goes all in oh.
Bruce: My gosh no that's that's the the end of humanity so don't even talk about that.
Sam: Maybe maybe it'd be a risk you know uh too much yeah um so anyway just to wrap
Sam: up trump and then we'll take a break and we'll do libertarians,
Sam: we have the verdict like we probably will not get any of the other three trials
Sam: at best one of the
Sam: other three trials might start before the end
Sam: of the year i think the possibilities of any of them
Sam: ending before the end of year are gone and probably any
Sam: of them starting before the certainly before the election probably before the
Sam: end of the year you know as as yvonne said we don't really know what scotus
Sam: is going to do on the immunity thing but my i suspect expect that they will
Sam: do something that will guarantee that this doesn't happen before the election.
Sam: That's my gut. That's what most people's gut is.
Sam: Yvonne's the outlier on that one. So I think this is the one we've got.
Sam: The rest may or may not happen in 2025. And I'm,
Sam: Yeah. So we'll see what impact this one has and all of the other factors we were talking about.
Bruce: And all eyes on the polls.
Sam: All right. Well, you know, although like, you know, we talked about polls before,
Sam: just the all eyes on the polls, except nobody has a lot of confidence in them
Sam: right now, because, you know, in,
Sam: in both 2016 and in 2020,
Sam: they significantly underestimated the Republican Republican,
Sam: this year, the last two times, it was the Republicans who were going,
Sam: we're going to unskew the polls,
Sam: and this is all the reasons they're wrong, and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: This year, it's the Democrats talking like that, who are like,
Sam: here are all the reasons that the polls are probably wrong.
Sam: And I could rattle off a list of five or six reasons to doubt them or to think
Sam: that they might be underestimating the Democrats this time.
Sam: I talked about one of them already where like, hey, it looks like unlikely voters
Sam: are overrepresented in a lot of these polls.
Sam: But frankly, it's almost impossible to avoid sort of motivated reasoning in
Sam: those situations where you don't like what they're saying,
Sam: so you come up with reasons to not believe them.
Sam: And maybe those reasons will turn out to be right. Maybe they won't.
Sam: We won't know until the election's actually over.
Sam: In the meantime, it's like, okay, well, you know, so yeah, I'm going to watch
Sam: the polls because I do this election graph things and I find it fascinating.
Sam: But a lot of folks are at the mindset now of like.
Sam: The polls have been wrong so much that it's useless to pay attention to them.
Sam: So I don't know. I think it's still useful to pay attention to them. But anyway.
Sam: Okay, let's take a break. And then we will talk about the libertarians,
Sam: the Libertarian Convention,
Sam: Donald Trump at the Libertarian Convention, RFK at the Libertarian Convention,
Sam: the internal divisions between, how do you say it, the Mises Institute?
Bruce: Yeah, I'll get into it.
Sam: And the other libertarians and who won, who lost, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: We'll be into all of that right after this.
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Sam: Okay, there we are.
Bruce: That's one of my favorites, actually.
Sam: I really do need more breaks. It's just another one of those things that just takes time to do.
Sam: So we've had the same 10 in rotation for a couple years now.
Bruce: For years, I've been thinking, I need to come up with an ad for the Libertarian
Bruce: candidate and have you put it on the show or something.
Sam: Thing yeah like uh you know we're looking if
Sam: somebody out there has some spots that would be interesting and
Sam: like you know are like there are
Sam: a couple times i've put on things that are only good for a couple weeks but
Sam: usually i like to have things that like once i put it in rotation let me leave
Sam: it there for a decade right you know but i don't know anyway uh someday i'll
Sam: have time there's at least one that i have in mind right now that wouldn't take
Sam: me that much work but But even things that don't take that much work,
Sam: it still requires like you to sit down and have time and like do whatever, you know?
Sam: So anyway, so Bruce, what's going on with the libertarians?
Bruce: Okay. The Libertarian Party is the nation's third largest party,
Bruce: has been for a very long time.
Bruce: And as you mentioned, Donald Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party.
Bruce: This is the first time that a leading party candidate has spoken at the LP convention.
Bruce: And I'm not sure it might even be the first time that the leading party candidate
Bruce: has spoke at any third party convention.
Sam: I would imagine so.
Bruce: So, but this, one thing that everyone should understand about the Libertarian
Bruce: Party is that it is a party based on a set of ideologies versus the other two major parties,
Bruce: which are just basically dividing the people on an arbitrary set of standards
Bruce: that people tend to congregate into.
Sam: Well, they're ideological things.
Bruce: Too.
Sam: But they're complex coalitions of different interests to make them that big as well.
Sam: So there's no purity on either side, really.
Bruce: Oh, exactly. So what happens is you end up with libertarians are their own worst
Bruce: enemy when it comes to ideological purity.
Bruce: And so you have basically people are constantly conducting litmus tests on others
Bruce: and on candidates that they like or don't like.
Bruce: Like, oh, he's not really libertarian. That's not libertarian.
Bruce: And so you end up with degrees.
Bruce: Of course, libertarian philosophy is basically...
Bruce: It boils down to sides of government and how much freedoms do we have versus
Bruce: how much power does the government have.
Bruce: If you have – so there's a degree. There's some libertarians who are just small
Bruce: government people who would be happy if we were just abiding by the Constitution
Bruce: all the way to anarchists.
Sam: Right. And the anarchist side is basically no government at all.
Bruce: Exactly. And so that's one dimension of differentiation between libertarians.
Bruce: There's also the left libertarians and the paleo libertarians.
Bruce: And that is also called the Mises caucus, as in Ludwig von Mises,
Bruce: which is an Austrian economist.
Sam: Which is also – to compare them, I mean we're talking left libertarian versus
Sam: right libertarian essentially.
Bruce: Yes, exactly.
Sam: And a big part of that is also – there's these old political quizzes that try
Sam: to put – instead of a left-right spectrum,
Sam: you have one spectrum that's an economic scale and it's a social scale in terms
Sam: of how much government intervention should be in each.
Sam: And with the notion that the libertarians are in the corner with less intervention on both axes,
Sam: whereas like, you know, traditionally, Republicans have been less intervention
Sam: on economics, but more intervention on social,
Sam: whereas Democrats have been more intervention on social, less on,
Sam: wait, more, other way around, more economic, less social for the Democrats.
Sam: But even within the libertarians, there are divisions in terms of like how much
Sam: you really care about the social side versus it being a pure economic exercise.
Bruce: Yeah. So there are two, having been a libertarian a long time,
Bruce: I've noticed that there are actually two issues that really divide that the
Bruce: left versus the right and within the libertarian party.
Sam: Within the libertarians, yeah. Yeah.
Bruce: And that is immigration and abortion.
Sam: Right.
Bruce: The left libertarians tend to be in favor of abortion rights and in favor of open borders.
Sam: Right.
Bruce: And just the opposite for the paleo libertarians.
Bruce: They are for anti-abortion and they want closed borders by really highly controlled. old.
Bruce: And it's now, which one am I?
Bruce: Well, I'm in between. I am, I am, I'm anti-abortion, but I'm also for open borders.
Bruce: So I don't feel like I fall in, in either one of these camps.
Bruce: So it's, so I'm,
Bruce: I'm fine with.
Sam: You are a political orphan within a group of political orphans.
Bruce: Yes, you could say that. You could say that. So getting to the LP convention,
Bruce: and what's interesting to note is that two years ago, the Mises Caucus,
Bruce: the paleo-libertarians, the more conservative libertarians, the more of the
Bruce: anarchists, they took over the party two years ago.
Bruce: Right. And the expectation was that they were going to get in their candidate.
Bruce: It was going to be Dave Smith, who is a podcaster, comedian,
Bruce: who's very well-spoken.
Bruce: He has a really, what would you call it, a laser tongue or whatever he is.
Bruce: Okay. He can speak very well.
Bruce: But he decided for some reason to not run.
Bruce: And there was another paleo libertarian, his professor,
Bruce: Michael Rechtenwald, who had taken on that mantle and he was expected to win
Bruce: because libertarians are controlled by the paleos and he solved that.
Bruce: But it turned out that the LP convention is not like the major party conventions
Bruce: engines where the candidate is known ahead of time. They don't even have- Well.
Sam: Theoretically, the major parties could end up in this situation.
Sam: It just hasn't happened in like 50 plus years.
Bruce: Yeah. And they don't have primaries. So basically the delegates are- There are some actually.
Sam: But yeah.
Bruce: Yeah, at least not here. But yeah, so delegates are sent to the convention and
Bruce: they are, most of them, I believe, are uncommitted.
Bruce: They can vote forever they want. lot. And this is the type of party convention that you would love.
Sam: Because it's complete chaos.
Bruce: Because it's complete chaos and the outcome is not known and it's the delegates who are in control.
Bruce: And they did not select the candidate until the seventh ballot.
Sam: Right.
Bruce: And it turned out to be someone by the name of Chase Oliver.
Bruce: Now, Chase Oliver is actually a left libertarian. fame. He's a white 38-year-old gay guy from Atlanta.
Bruce: And his claim to fame was that he forced... He ran for Senate in the Georgia Senate race in 2022.
Bruce: And since he only got 2% of the vote, but that was enough to force a runoff in Georgia.
Bruce: And that was a big deal,
Bruce: So, uh, because I think, was it the, the guy who was the football player ended
Bruce: up losing Herschel Walker, Herschel Walker. Yeah.
Bruce: Yeah. I don't, I don't think too much about him, but, uh, so that's,
Bruce: so it's, so it's interesting.
Sam: That was Warnock was the Democrat who actually ended up winning due to that.
Sam: I I'm looking at the results of that right now in, in the, before the runoff
Sam: Warnock Buck 49.44%, Walker 48.49%, Oliver 2.07.
Bruce: Yeah. So he's running, and he's the one I will be voting for.
Bruce: I don't agree with everything he's for, but he's more libertarian than anybody
Bruce: else in the ballot, and so I'll be voting for him.
Bruce: So a lot of people may wonder, well, why would you vote for a third party?
Bruce: This is such a really close election, and you've got to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Bruce: And I've talked about this before. I actually looked it up.
Bruce: The first time I was on your show was episode 280, and we talked about the –
Bruce: it was in 2012, October 2012.
Bruce: And I talked about the strategic logic of voting third party,
Bruce: and I'll mention it again.
Sam: Especially in a state that is not competitive. like Washington State.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah. So I feel extra free to do it. But I voted Libertarian even in Florida
Bruce: in 2000 with the butterfly ballot.
Bruce: And that race was decided by just a few hundred votes in a state with like,
Bruce: what, 20 million people?
Bruce: And so the logic, the reason why I feel like it's important to vote for third party is that,
Bruce: And for the loser of that election,
Bruce: if the libertarians can be the difference between the winner and loser and split
Bruce: the vote, kind of like what Chase Oliver did in Georgia and what will likely
Bruce: happen in this election,
Bruce: is that the loser will look and say, dang it, I want those votes.
Bruce: I'm going to try to get those votes, and that will try to move that candidate
Bruce: in a more of a libertarian direction.
Sam: Do you think that happened in Georgia?
Bruce: No, but I want to give an example of where it is happening.
Sam: Okay.
Bruce: Donald Trump spoke to libertarians. Right.
Bruce: And he asked for their vote because he knows that the Libertarians typically
Bruce: get 3% of the vote and that if he were able to get some of that 3%, he would win.
Bruce: And so that was enough of incentive for him to go and speak. And he gave a speech.
Bruce: That was very good speech, actually. From a libertarian perspective,
Bruce: he gave point after point. He said all the things you wanted to hear?
Bruce: Yeah. Not all the things I wanted
Bruce: to hear. I wanted to hear about slashing government and slashing taxes.
Bruce: Well, he did talk about slashing taxes, but shrinking the size of government, but no.
Bruce: And about medical freedom, and he's Mr. Lockdown, and he created the vaccine and all that stuff.
Sam: The one good thing he did, but go ahead.
Bruce: He listed off a whole bunch of libertarian-ish things that he has accomplished.
Bruce: He even promised to free Ross Ulbricht, who is the creator of Silk Road,
Bruce: who was, in me and many libertarians' views,
Bruce: unjustly imprisoned for, I think he's in there for life, for basically creating
Bruce: a cryptocurrency marketplace where people could buy and sell things using Bitcoin.
Bruce: And so Trump said that he would free Ross Ulbricht on day one and that he would
Bruce: put a libertarian on the cabinet.
Bruce: And so there were a lot of people who booed him, and I think it was good for
Bruce: people to see on the news that libertarians were booing Donald Trump because we could see.
Sam: Well, because there was actually some talk, which turned out to be completely unfounded,
Sam: that there might actually be some support for him there, that the libertarians
Sam: had moved enough to that side of things that they'd be swayed by Donald Trump
Sam: and would do something. And no, not at all.
Bruce: No. Well, you can imagine the type of libertarian who would actually go to the
Bruce: convention is not your typical libertarian, but yes.
Bruce: They are, they boot him. They, they saw right through his BS.
Sam: And cause I was going to say like, he may have given that speech,
Sam: but how much of it do you actually believe? Like in terms of his promises?
Bruce: Oh yeah. I mean, if, if it hadn't been anybody else giving that speech,
Bruce: if it had been just some unknown guy, I'd be like, all right,
Bruce: I'm booked for this guy. All right. Heck yeah.
Bruce: And I mean, but still to have someone who is the front runner in this election,
Bruce: sorry Sorry to say it, but he is right now.
Bruce: To be speaking to libertarians and promising things,
Bruce: that is a result of libertarians using this strategy of voting for their candidates
Bruce: and being that pool of voters standing for a set of issues and swaying those politicians.
Bruce: Maybe if it's just for a few things in our direction, it's the least that we
Bruce: can do to get it. Otherwise, we'd get nothing.
Sam: You're going to get nothing anyway, Bruce, just to be clear.
Bruce: Hey, if Ross Ulbricht gets set free, it'll be worth it.
Sam: Even if Donald Trump gets elected, he will have forgotten that promise.
Sam: And oh, not only that, like since he was booed, he'll do the opposite just out of spite.
Bruce: Yeah, maybe right. Maybe right. We'll see.
Bruce: But, but yeah, that's, that was, you know, he was, Biden was abided too,
Bruce: but Biden didn't come to speak.
Bruce: Kennedy, he was actually nominated and he got 2% of the delegates,
Bruce: but he lost in the first round.
Sam: Yeah, he got 19 votes out of 919.
Sam: Trump, I believe, he did not submit the necessary paperwork for it to count,
Sam: but he did get like one or two votes or something stupid like that. But anyway.
Bruce: And Vivek Ramaswamy also spoke. I didn't see his speech, but I heard that he
Bruce: gave a good speech there.
Sam: And also, just one additional story.
Sam: Apparently, Kennedy gave out squeaky rubber chickens for people to use during
Sam: the Trump speech, but the Secret Service confiscated them before Trump came on.
Bruce: Well good for kennedy that was good good idea yeah you know well if it wasn't
Bruce: you know if it wasn't if i wasn't a libertarian on the ballot i'd probably vote
Bruce: for kennedy because at least i think that he'd be more anti-war he's.
Sam: Such a quack but okay yeah.
Bruce: Yeah i'm sure yeah but yeah Yeah, when it comes to, like I said,
Bruce: I don't like either Biden or Trump.
Bruce: If you put a gun to my head and say, who do you prefer?
Bruce: I really would have a hard time
Bruce: because on one hand, I'd love to see Trump stick it to the lips and see...
Bruce: The meltdown on the left. And I also think that there would be a better chance
Bruce: of Trump negotiating an end to the Ukraine war, which is the most dangerous
Bruce: thing to humanity right now.
Bruce: On the other hand, strategically- Just to be clear.
Sam: His negotiated end would be basically Ukraine give up all the territory Russia
Sam: has already taken and just freeze the lines and make that official.
Sam: He's pretty much explicitly said that and it's been rejected. by both sides but yeah.
Bruce: Well not by the russians well no the russians.
Sam: Want more than that but yes yes.
Bruce: But that would be fine with me but anyway
Bruce: if on the other hand i would i biden
Bruce: would be good to win because the best hope for liberty in my perspective is
Bruce: for there to be a divided government because it looks like the republicans are
Bruce: going to take over the or continue control of the House and take over the Senate. If that's the case.
Sam: The last thing we want. I don't know about the House. I think it's almost certain
Sam: that they take the Senate. I think they probably lose the House.
Sam: Oh, really? But either way, you get your division.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah. So a gridlock is best in my mind.
Bruce: Because when you end up with one party in power, if Trump wins and has control
Bruce: of the House and Senate, it, it's going to be bad news for a lot of things.
Bruce: I don't think the Republicans, I don't think, I think a lot of people,
Bruce: it's always happened in the past where, oh, great.
Bruce: The, you know, one party, you know, the Republicans are finally in control or
Bruce: the Democrats are finally in control or finally going to be able to pass our agenda.
Bruce: And no, because then the priority, instead of passing the agenda,
Bruce: becoming the priority, the priority is to maintain the power.
Bruce: Once they get the power. They want to maintain the power.
Sam: Well, as a lover of the status quo, I mean, the, the, our system is specifically
Sam: set up to make it hard to move forward fast, no matter what.
Sam: And the biggest factor in that right now is the filibuster, which basically
Sam: says you, you don't in, and again, they could get rid of the filibuster or with
Sam: a simple majority if there was the willpower to do that.
Sam: But there are a lot of reasons that people are hesitant to that.
Sam: But with it in place, you don't just need a majority.
Sam: You need to control the presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court,
Sam: and have a super majority in the Senate to actually be able to just run with
Sam: an agenda the way you said.
Sam: In the absence of that, there's compromise at every level that has to happen.
Bruce: Well, thank goodness for the filibuster in my mind.
Bruce: I like slowing things down. It's good for me.
Bruce: But yeah, that's how I'm going to vote for Chase Oliver. Chase Oliver for president.
Sam: So just real quick, backing up. Oliver versus Rechtenwald, who were the final two.
Sam: Although Raiden was actually the final one that Oliver was up against.
Bruce: None of the above.
Sam: Yeah, sorry. None of the above was the last one he was up against.
Sam: Because if none of the above had won, the libertarians would officially have run nobody.
Sam: And none of the above ended up with 37% of the vote at the convention in the
Sam: final ballot, by the way.
Bruce: That just shows you the split between the left libertarians and the paleos.
Sam: So, but what's like, this division is likely to continue.
Sam: And you said you were sort of homeless and neither one of them was where you sit.
Sam: But just within the libertarians between sort of the Oliver types and the Mises
Sam: Institute folks, are you happier that Oliver won?
Sam: Or did you feel neutral about that?
Bruce: You know, I really have not studied the positions of Rechtenwald or Oliver, so I really didn't know.
Bruce: I'm not sure.
Bruce: It really depends on what Rechtenwald's position is on immigration.
Bruce: If he was open borders, then yeah, I definitely would be in favor of him.
Sam: Well, just from how you defined these two groups, he's not, right? Right?
Bruce: Yeah, but there are definitely overlaps.
Bruce: Yeah, there's some people who associate with the Mises caucus,
Bruce: but are for open borders.
Bruce: So it's hard to know. But I don't really care.
Bruce: It's like I don't have a dog in this fight. I just want whoever is going to
Bruce: be the best communicator.
Bruce: And from what little I've seen of Chase Oliver, I think he is more of an effective communicator.
Sam: So well and also i'll tell you like from a non-libertarian point of view he seems less insane.
Bruce: Good good well then he's probably the better choice.
Sam: You know and the fact that you know oh okay he's a gay guy he's he prioritizes
Sam: the liberty on some of the social issues are important to him To me,
Sam: I used to identify more with the libertarians and the libertarian philosophy,
Sam: but what turned me all the way off of it was the emphasis on the economic stuff
Sam: and people that seemed to actually not really care about the social stuff.
Sam: They just gave it lip service, whereas the social stuff was what actually mattered to me.
Sam: That's what I care the government stays out of my business. I couldn't care
Sam: less about the economic side, which is why I'm more on the liberal side now than a libertarian.
Sam: But between the left libertarians and the right libertarians,
Sam: the left libertarians, I'm like, okay, that makes sense to me.
Sam: The right libertarians, I'm like, you guys are a bunch of assholes. Yeah.
Sam: But yeah.
Sam: But honestly, though, in the current scenario, I suspect the libertarians are
Sam: not going to have a great performance even compared to their usual performance.
Bruce: No, probably not. I think the real problem is it's a problem.
Bruce: They need to elect a candidate much earlier.
Bruce: In previous elections, there has been a presumptive candidate.
Bruce: Harry Brown, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, who were people who had a name and a reputation
Bruce: outside of the Libertarian Party.
Bruce: When they ran, then they could actually be running for president for the whole year.
Bruce: What the Libertarian Party needs to do is they need to move their convention
Bruce: to November, one year before the actual general election.
Bruce: That way they can have a already selected candidate who is out there running for an entire year.
Bruce: It would be yeah outside of that there are some big names libertarians who could
Bruce: actually be a presumptive candidate but they didn't decide to run this year.
Sam: Well well you know i'm
Sam: not sure the timing is the big issue i think and just look i'm looking at a
Sam: graph right now of libertarian performance since they were founded in 1972 yeah
Sam: their peak performance was in 2016 with gary johnson yeah and five percent three
Sam: and a quarter it looks like i thought.
Bruce: It was five okay.
Sam: In a quarter um but and with a little bit more than four million votes and i'll
Sam: tell you what the thing with gary johnson is he was a well-known established
Sam: politician who had actually held office and been well liked in those offices before.
Bruce: He was governor of New Mexico.
Sam: He was governor of New Mexico. And he, you know, he was a little quirky, but he was well known.
Sam: He seemed like not that far from the mainstream.
Sam: And, you know, people could look at him and say, he's got a track record.
Sam: I understand where he's coming from.
Sam: And he also specifically, he was like, yeah, I'm libertarian.
Sam: And I believe in these things, but I don't agree with all the crazies behind me in the party.
Sam: They're off the wall and they're, and you can get more support that way.
Sam: What doesn't work is nominating complete unknowns with no track record who have never held office.
Sam: And I know like, and one of the things that's been said before is like,
Sam: if you really want to run for president, you, you build up your bench first,
Sam: you get some people who've run one locally,
Sam: and then you get some people in Congress, and then you get some senators,
Sam: and then maybe some governors, and then you work your way up,
Sam: and then you get that track record.
Sam: And I feel like in the absence of a complete party collapse from one of the
Sam: major parties where you have to have one replaced because that's the way our system works,
Sam: you have to sort of build things up in that way.
Sam: Like every time you get just these nobodies and, and before like Ron,
Sam: Ron Paul was the biggest one before that.
Sam: And he also had a record as a Congressman, as a Republican Congressman.
Sam: And so I think that kind of history where you can point to, I'm not just a random
Sam: crank, but I actually know how to do stuff.
Sam: I've done it before. I've got a record.
Sam: That's when you get a little bit more traction.
Sam: I think that makes a lot more difference than the timing issues.
Sam: Of course, the problem with that is that doesn't jive with the people who are
Sam: really, truly ideologically pure.
Sam: Yeah.
Bruce: And that's what the problem I said, where you have the ideological test that
Bruce: everyone has and not calling them truly libertarian.
Bruce: And yeah, a lot of people on the paleo side didn't like Gary Johnson and especially
Bruce: did not like his VP candidate, Bill Weld, who was also a former governor.
Bruce: But you got to say, he's got a track record.
Bruce: The important thing, it's this...
Bruce: Let me tell you a secret, the libertarian's never going to win.
Bruce: Okay? I know that. Everybody knows that.
Sam: Shocker.
Bruce: The purpose of the Libertarian Party running a candidate is not to get someone elected.
Bruce: It's so that they can have someone who will get on the media,
Bruce: get interviewed by 60 Minutes, or get on the news channels, and so that people can hear those ideas.
Sam: Well, you know, the thing is, though, if you actually wanted to advance that
Sam: agenda, the way to do it is not any of that.
Sam: It's to elect people who aren't even close to ideologically pure,
Sam: but agree with you in some key issues and get them in office and promoting those
Sam: particular issues that you care about.
Sam: They may not be ideologically pure across the board, but maybe they agree with
Sam: you on issue X and actually in office, they can push that in,
Sam: push things in that direction.
Sam: And that's how you, if you actually care about like wanting to move policy in
Sam: the direction that you're talking about running third party candidates is not the way to get there.
Sam: It's to try to influence policy from within the existing parties.
Bruce: Well, it's a multi-product approach. There are definitely libertarians who are
Bruce: working on setting the policy agenda.
Bruce: There's the Cato Institute and there's other think tanks out there.
Bruce: There's magazines, there's podcasts, there's – All.
Sam: I'm saying is the way you move things, you look at the progressive caucus and the Democrats.
Sam: The AOCs and the Bernie Sanders and all of those folks, they have a very different
Sam: set of positions than the mainstream Democrats,
Sam: but they are moving the Democrats in their direction from within and they're doing it effectively.
Bruce: Well, yes. Within the Republican Party, there is a Republican Liberty Caucus.
Bruce: And when I was active in the Republican Party,
Bruce: I tried to get that to work, but it was just, there's just no way in a local level.
Bruce: Well, first of all, the normal everyday Republican party activists locally,
Bruce: it made me sick to even interact with them because I just couldn't stand the
Bruce: things that they believed in.
Bruce: Right. And so, you know, we agree in some things wholeheartedly,
Bruce: but the few things that we disagreed with, it was just.
Sam: Things that really mattered to you.
Bruce: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So it's, yeah.
Bruce: So yeah, it's, it's hard. So yeah, all those things that you're saying,
Bruce: libertarians and various stripes are trying to do different things.
Bruce: Some, and so it's not, it's not any one strategy. It's everything.
Sam: Right. So my, my guess is they're back under 1% this year.
Bruce: We'll see.
Sam: Yeah. Cause if, if, if nothing else, like the people who are just like, I'm pissed off.
Sam: I don't like either of the two major candidates are going for Kennedy.
Bruce: Yeah. Well, yeah, that's true. That's the protest vote. And more power to them.
Bruce: So what do you think would be, if you were to add up all the third parties together,
Bruce: what percentage do you think those will get?
Sam: Well, right now, in most states, if you add up all the third parties,
Sam: including – and the libertarians haven't been in most of the state-level polls,
Sam: and when they are, they get like one – Well.
Bruce: It's because we don't have a candidate yet. Well, yeah.
Sam: There were a bunch of polls with Mapstead who got eliminated in the second or
Sam: third ballot, I forget which, in the Libertarian Convention.
Sam: Let me make sure I will get that fact since I had that in front of me.
Sam: Of course, I closed the window. It doesn't matter. Of course,
Sam: now that I've said it, it matters. Damn it.
Sam: Mapstead was eliminated after the fourth round.
Sam: So Mapstead has been in a couple of polls. I found Oliver was in one poll of
Sam: Texas a couple months ago, and he was at like 1% or something.
Sam: But if you add up, typically Kennedy is getting 8% to 10%.
Sam: Sometimes he goes a little bit above 10%. And I've seen as high as 12 or 15.
Sam: It depends on the state. Let's call it 10 for Kennedy.
Sam: Stein and West, between them, depending on the state as well,
Sam: sometimes West gets more, sometimes Stein gets more.
Sam: But if you add up their two votes, it's usually around 4%.
Sam: And then anybody else is one. So we're at about 15% between all the third parties.
Bruce: Wow. That's approaching Ross Perot territory.
Sam: Right now. I predict by the time we get to election day, that's down to 10.
Sam: And they probably add up all the third parties, you're probably between 5% and
Sam: 10%, which is still a relatively high number and possibly enough to make the
Sam: difference in a bunch of states.
Bruce: Once the last time that's been around that territory, it would be,
Bruce: you'd have to be like 96 with Ross Perot's second election, right?
Sam: Yeah, I think it's typically been below five, like all in.
Bruce: And I think that's indicative because a lot of people are just fed up with having
Bruce: these, both Biden and Trump. So it will be the protest vote.
Sam: Yeah, and of course that assumes that all of them are still there by the time
Sam: we get to November. There's always the chance that, you know.
Bruce: They could drop out.
Sam: Well, yeah. I mean, I was more thinking any of them could die.
Sam: Why? I mean, Kennedy, Trump, and Biden are all kind of up there and all have their- Well.
Bruce: Kennedy is very fit. If Kennedy were to die or if he were killed, oh my gosh.
Sam: Kennedy was on some interview. I forget if it was 60 Minutes or somewhere else.
Sam: I heard him on an interview. No, it was on Ari Melber on MSNBC.
Sam: He sounded horrible. And I'm not talking what he was saying i'm talking about
Sam: like physically how he sounded oh.
Bruce: Yeah well that's that's his voice has been like that for years.
Sam: I mean, Biden sounds old, and he is.
Sam: Donald Trump sounds confused, and he sometimes is.
Sam: Kennedy sounded like he could keel over at any instant when I heard that interview.
Sam: I don't know. Maybe it's just the way his voice sounds.
Sam: And there are scenarios where they don't have to die.
Sam: There could be all kinds of issues
Sam: that could cause a last-minute health problem or something like that.
Sam: I did hear some people speculating after Trump's legal issues today that,
Sam: hey, the Republicans still have a chance to dump him. And I'm like, oh, come on.
Bruce: No, no way.
Sam: No, no. That's not happening. But, you know, all kinds of oddball events can happen.
Sam: You can never discount something unexpected happening. But I'm pretty sure we'll
Sam: end up with the people we see today are the people we're going to have in November.
Sam: And there's still, though, in polling, there's still a significant chunk of
Sam: people, even now, who don't believe it and who still think it's not going to
Sam: be Biden versus Trump in the end.
Sam: And it's like, I'm sorry, people. That's what it is.
Bruce: Yeah yeah wow okay it'll be very interesting any.
Sam: Last thoughts bruce before i go to like all the stuff at the end.
Bruce: No that's uh just like i said vote chase oliver he's the best choice for america
Bruce: and he will he will be the he's he's a nice young guy 38 years old how awesome would would that be?
Sam: Good luck with that.
Bruce: Half the age of both of them. Yes.
Sam: Okay. Well...
Sam: Let's wrap this sucker up then. As usual, the stuff at the end,
Sam: go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You can see all our archives the last year or so with transcripts.
Sam: You can find out all the ways to contact myself and Yvonne, Facebook, email, Mastodon.
Sam: Bruce, how would you like to be contacted if somebody wants to get in touch with you?
Sam: You can always say, contact me and I'll relay it.
Bruce: No, I am on X under BYU fan.
Sam: Still hanging in there how is that.
Bruce: These days.
Sam: By the way is it good again oh.
Bruce: It's fine i i look at it every day although i stopped subscribing to it because
Bruce: yeah i paid eight dollars a month,
Bruce: and i i'm still seeing ads i'm just i don't see any and so i just stopped paying
Bruce: the richest man in the world yeah okay so and i see no difference i see no benefit to i'm.
Sam: Obviously not honored at all myself, but from what I've heard second or third
Sam: hand, it's sort of leveled off.
Sam: There were, there, there were a lot of issues and people complained and a lot of people left,
Sam: but then things have sort of stabilized and Elon's back backed off from some
Sam: of the things that just didn't work and has adjusted and things are sort of more stable now.
Bruce: But I think it's great. I think you're missing a lot. Uh, come,
Bruce: come in at the, the water's nice and comfortable.
Sam: Yeah no i i don't miss
Sam: it i'm not coming back i i'm on
Sam: mastodon and i'm on threads i don't i don't post
Sam: on threads but i check in there
Sam: to people i'm subscribed to that haven't yet shared turned on the setting to
Sam: share with mastodon but because not enough people have clicked that setting
Sam: yet but anyway because it's not complete yet it's only one way it's weird like
Sam: when they finish the feature, maybe more people will. I don't know.
Sam: Anyway, you can find all the ways to contact us. You can contact Bruce as well.
Sam: And importantly, you can go to our Patreon to donate cash money to us because
Sam: that's always fun for us.
Sam: And at various levels, we'll send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug.
Sam: We'll mention you on the show, all that sort of stuff.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or...
Sam: If you just ask us nicely. Oh yeah, Bruce is showing, you guys listening can't
Sam: see, but he is showing his Curmudgeon's Corner mug.
Sam: It is a nice mug. You should get one.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, we will invite you to our Curmudgeon's Corner Slack
Sam: where Yvonne and I and a whole bunch of other people, including sometimes Bruce,
Sam: you've been on there a little bit less lately than you used to be, but.
Bruce: Yeah, well, that's because at my last job, I communicated with everybody in
Bruce: the company through slack so i.
Sam: Was so.
Bruce: The coverage recorder convergence quarter channel was just one click away so i i was i had it open.
Sam: All day long every day but.
Bruce: Now at my current company they don't use slack which is like so i know that's
Bruce: like back to email oh i can't stand email.
Sam: Yeah we we use
Sam: slack at my company now too so i'm in
Sam: the same scenario i've got one tab for convergence quarter one tab
Sam: for work and i'm flipping back and forth between
Sam: them through the day whenever i see an alert come up that somebody said something
Sam: so but yeah join us on the conventions corner slack it's it's a lot of fun and
Sam: we we share news stories we chat we do all that kind of stuff bruce i don't
Sam: know if you have a highlight from the slack you want to give if not i have one uh no.
Bruce: I have not really been catching up but since i've been on the show this week
Bruce: i will be checking in more so that i for any feedback that comes in from the show.
Sam: Okay. If anybody is on the Slack and has feedback for Bruce,
Sam: just say so in the Slack. He'll be watching for it.
Bruce: Yeah.
Sam: I will highlight one. It was from the random channel that Yvonne posted lately.
Sam: And this is just stupid, funny, whatever.
Sam: And I'd seen things like this before. I
Sam: don't know if this one's come around before for or whether it's an
Sam: actual new one but it was going all around social media and
Sam: i swear i'd seen this before but maybe i just saw a
Sam: similar one anyway it was a it's it's
Sam: a zoom video of a court hearing where you know there's a court hearing for the
Sam: the the suspect or whoever he is has a suspended driver's license and he calls
Sam: into the zoom from his car while driving driving.
Sam: And the judge is just like, excuse me, are you driving?
Sam: You have a suspended license, right? Okay, this hearing is done.
Sam: You're going back to jail.
Sam: And the guy's like, oh, man, I screwed up.
Bruce: So dumb.
Sam: People are so stupid. And first of all, you shouldn't be driving on a suspended license anyway, duh.
Sam: But if you are going to do so, you do not zoom call into your hearing with the
Sam: judge about your suspended license while you're driving.
Bruce: Yeah, that's kind of dumb. Yeah.
Sam: Okay, that's it. So just, hey, Bruce, thank you for joining us again and picking up in the end.
Sam: Yvonne is out again next week. I will send out another email to our usual group
Sam: of people minus the last three people who have done it to get variety to look for a co-host.
Sam: But if you're listening and you want to be a co-host, contact us.
Sam: If you're brand new and I've never heard from you before in any way,
Sam: shape, or form, I might not say yes.
Sam: But, you know, hey, make contact anyway, you know. And if you are a listener
Sam: who just isn't on those other lists and hasn't been around and you're interested, just let me know.
Sam: No, we will probably record Thursday or Friday night next week, U.S. time.
Sam: Just let us know if you're interested. We would love to have somebody new.
Bruce: It's fun.
Sam: As long as you're not crazy. If you're completely crazy, you know, whatever.
Bruce: No one crazy would listen to your podcast.
Sam: No, no, no. dog. There, there was, there is one person who co-hosted once who
Sam: is just ended up being like toxic enough.
Sam: I have not invited them back, you know, but not just because of what they said
Sam: on the podcast, but also like I follow them on social media and they're out
Sam: there, they're out there on a whole bunch of things.
Sam: And I'm just like, Nope, no need to encourage that again.
Sam: So anyway, Anyway, with that said, hey, everybody, stay safe.
Sam: Have a great week. Thank you again, Bruce.
Bruce: Anytime.
Sam: We will talk to everybody again next week.
Sam: I'm sure there'll be more news. But this trial's out of the way,
Sam: so I don't know what the big news next week will be.
Sam: Anyway, here we go. Bye, everyone. Say bye, Bruce.
Bruce: All right, bye.