Sam: Hello, Ed.
Ed: Uh-oh. Oh, I know, just a second. Okay. I have to turn on my headphone.
Sam: Ah, yes. Okay. How you doing?
Ed: I am doing great. Much better than I was a couple weeks ago.
Sam: Good. Now, we're live streaming on video now, so point that at your face so we can see you.
Ed: I gotta move that a little bit more than it will be. You want to see my shirt, too?
Sam: Sure. Oh, yes.
Ed: You may shock your regular participants.
Sam: Okay. So are we ready to go?
Ed: I think I am.
Sam: Okay. Let me, a quick note. Okay, here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 3rd, 2024.
Sam: It's just after 1 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bo is not here.
Sam: A few days ago, he let us know that he was going to be doing stuff and traveling.
Sam: I think it's his kid's birthday.
Sam: His note about it just said he, but I'm just assuming he means his son,
Sam: but he didn't actually say that, but I, I think that's what's going on.
Sam: So he's, he's traveling a bit. His son has a birthday.
Sam: They're doing stuff and he is out not only this week, but also next week.
Sam: And for this week we have ad hello, ad welcome back to, yeah,
Sam: welcome back to curmudgeon's corner.
Sam: Let's see, when was your last time? I've got to check this.
Ed: I'm going to guess sometime in May.
Sam: Close. April 13th.
Ed: Oh, well, only off by a month.
Sam: Yeah. So pretty, pretty good. And so, yeah.
Sam: So here we are. And as usual, when we have a guest, most of the agenda will be from Ed.
Sam: Now he just told me before we started, he wants to talk about child tax credits,
Sam: tariffs, and the recent prisoner exchange with Russia.
Sam: So we're going to cover those. But given we're like right smack in the middle
Sam: of presidential season, Ed was like, we've talked a lot about Biden lately.
Sam: Let's talk about something else. But I will not be able to resist talking a
Sam: little bit about the presidential race.
Sam: We got some stuff going on with how well Kamala Harris is doing in the polls and also the.
Sam: The veep stakes, the whole who will end up being her vice presidential candidate
Sam: has had some additional developments.
Sam: But by the time most people listen to this, it will very likely be known already.
Sam: Like I intend to get this out relatively quickly, like on Saturday or something.
Sam: But Harris has said she'll announce the vice president by Monday.
Sam: So if you are not listening right on time, as soon as I get this out,
Sam: you may already know. There are already rumors.
Sam: That it's already a done deal. But anyway, we'll talk about that stuff.
Sam: But as usual, we will also do a little bit of non-newsy political stuff.
Sam: Not political, non-newsy, non-political stuff here at the beginning of the show.
Sam: I have a movie, and Ed, I don't know if you got, do you have anything in the
Sam: fun stuff category for the beginning, or just news?
Sam: Not news. Things that aren't news, or at least not news.
Ed: The only movie I've seen lately was pretty bad.
Ed: It was something called Long Legs, and advertised as a horror movie,
Ed: and it was disturbing, I would say, more than horror.
Ed: Okay so the only other things happened is since the last time i was on here
Ed: i had a fairly vigorous health scare which i developed a condition called pericarditis in which the,
Ed: pericardium the sack that surrounds your heart becomes inflamed and it fills
Ed: up with fluid and begins suppressing the heart so your heart can't work very
Ed: well i ended up in the hospital three times and having to have a procedure where
Ed: they put a little drainage tube into the pericardium I'm, I'm much better now,
Ed: but I am, it's a, it's going to be, it's going to be a very hard recovery because
Ed: I need to start doing a lot more walking and the temperature is 90 to 95 every day.
Ed: So I'm, I am not pushing at age 82 for the walking outdoors too much,
Ed: but I'm getting better. I really feel better.
Sam: Well, I'm glad you had shared a little bit of that on our Commodions Corner
Sam: Slack, and we are very happy that you are feeling better. So good.
Ed: Yeah. And I could put in a plug for a drug that was first discovered somewhere
Ed: around 2000 B.C., which is now the drug of choice for pericarditis.
Ed: I was laying in the hospital hurting all over like you do when you have a real
Ed: bad flu, running a temp of 101.
Ed: And they came in, they gave me my first dose of that by mouth.
Ed: And an hour later, my temperature was normal. The aching was all gone.
Ed: My heart was still being pressed and compromised. compromise,
Ed: but I immediately, as like someone threw a switch, I felt better. It was incredible.
Ed: If you ever get pericarditis, tell me you want colchicine right away.
Sam: I, you know, I can tell you right now, if, and when I do, I'm not going to remember that.
Ed: Think of it, think of it as gout. This is the drug of choice for gout.
Sam: Oh, okay.
Sam: Anyway, glad you're feeling good, a lot better. So that movie,
Sam: it was long legs again. I take it. That's a thumbs down from you for long legs.
Ed: I would say it was a thumbs down. It was It wasn't as bad as a movie that I
Ed: just saw this week as rated as one of the best horror movies of the past hundred years.
Ed: That was this Blair Witch Project, and it got a number one rating.
Sam: You have complained about Blair Witch on this podcast before,
Sam: and you went and saw it again?
Ed: No, I didn't. Oh, it wasn't as bad. They rated it and saying it was one of the best.
Ed: It's the only movie that I have ever walked out of. it was just terrible but anyway they loved it.
Sam: Okay okay yeah we
Sam: we've talked about uh blair witch on the show before i found i found it okay
Sam: you hated it so there we go and i have now added long legs to my list despite
Sam: your negative review um and we'll see if it ever comes up okay it has nicholas.
Ed: Cage in it.
Sam: Which is kind.
Ed: Of interesting you.
Sam: Know he's fine but like you know
Sam: i i i don't i'm not
Sam: like a particular fan it's like okay it's got nicholas
Sam: cage it's not like something that's gonna weigh on me one way or the other as
Sam: like i want to see this or i don't you know it's just yeah okay fine okay my
Sam: movie one flew over the cuckoo's nest from 1975,
Sam: have you i take it from your reaction you have seen this i.
Ed: Have not seen it i read the book.
Sam: Oh you've read the book okay i've never seen the movie well how was the book
Sam: tell us about the book it's.
Ed: Been a long time but i recall it was it was a fascinating book it was a good read.
Sam: Well worth it well the movie for any I'm gonna,
Sam: I'm torn between sideways and up.
Sam: So that tells you a little bit where it is in the end.
Sam: I guess I'll give it an up. It was a good movie.
Sam: Basically for those who don't know the basic beats,
Sam: it's about a criminal who pretends
Sam: to be insane so that he can be transferred out of
Sam: the prison where he was about to have to do hard labor into
Sam: a mental ward and it's about his
Sam: adventures there with a bunch of other patients and
Sam: he's basically a troublemaker and there's a you know authoritarian type figure
Sam: miss nurse ratchet or who you know keeps control over the ward and he sort of
Sam: disrupts that and causes all kinds of chaos and And things happen.
Sam: And it's Jack Nicholson as the main character.
Sam: And he's good. Jack Nicholson is always good at these things.
Sam: And he especially is good at playing crazy people.
Sam: In this case, it's someone pretending to be crazy. But either way,
Sam: Jack Nicholson is really good at that. And, you know, the, the,
Sam: I had not seen the movie before I'd heard of it.
Sam: I knew some very high level things about it, but I didn't know any of the detailed
Sam: plot points. I didn't know how it ended.
Sam: You know, there, there are a few portions of it that are disturbing.
Sam: The ending is disturbing without giving it away.
Sam: The ending is disturbing, but it keeps your attention. it makes you think and
Sam: it's well done, it's really well done and it won it won all favorites.
Sam: It won all five major Academy awards, best picture, best actor,
Sam: best actress, director, and screenplay.
Sam: And so, and I was watching it because it was on the, the a hundred years, a hundred movies list.
Sam: Let's see. It was as check for check for accuracy. Where was it on the list?
Sam: One flew over the cuckoo's nest in the 1998 version of the list,
Sam: which is the one I'm using.
Sam: It was number 20 it's apparently dropped to
Sam: number 33 in their 2007 ranking but
Sam: i good movie again it's
Sam: not one of those like happy jumpy like
Sam: you're just in there having a fun ride movie it's it's a more serious movie
Sam: than that even though there's some comedic moments but it was good good there
Sam: you go any other thoughts on uh sort of the fun stuff before we take a break
Sam: and get back to news and politics.
Ed: No i think that pretty much covers up for me anyway.
Sam: Okay so with that
Sam: then we will take our first break and then
Sam: the first segment will be all the stuff ed wanted to talk about and then the
Sam: second segment will be all the stuff i want to talk about and that'll be a show
Sam: so here we go and appropriately well not because we won't talk about till the
Sam: next one but But the first break is the Election Graphs break. Here we go.
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
Break: way. and not from me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon.
Break: I think my election trackers are better than the rest, so come look at mine, electiongraphs.com.
Sam: Okay, so we are back. Now, Ed, let's start with the prisoner exchange stuff,
Sam: and then we can end up with the tax credits because that'll transition Right
Sam: into the veep steak stuff that I want to talk about.
Sam: So we had the quote unquote biggest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War.
Sam: The U.S. and our Western allies let loose a bunch of Russian criminals of various
Sam: sorts that basically were talking spies and assassins and folks like that.
Sam: And the Russians released a bunch of folks that the West describes them anyway
Sam: as unjustly detained people,
Sam: either on trumped up charges or really minor things that were blown up.
Sam: But basically, journalists and businessmen and on the Russian side,
Sam: dissidents who were basically anti-Putin agitators within Russia.
Sam: And that's the high level outline of the deal. Apparently, they'd been working
Sam: on this for a long, long time.
Sam: And it finally came together this week.
Sam: And the trade happened. So what do you want to add to that, Ed?
Ed: Well, a couple of the interesting things, one of which is that this deal apparently
Ed: was almost completed back in February-March range and included the person,
Ed: the assassin that was in prison in Germany,
Ed: was to be exchanged for Navalny.
Sam: Right.
Ed: And then Navalny suddenly died, and that sort of threw a monkey wrench in the
Ed: whole thing. And most people expected that it might not occur because that was
Ed: a key to the whole exchange.
Ed: What happened, and I can't know if this is absolutely true or not,
Ed: but in the press, what I've seen reported is that Biden personally called the
Ed: chancellor of Germany and explained how important it was to get this trade done.
Ed: And would he make the exchange even though he wasn't going to have Navalny free?
Ed: And he is quoted as having said, I would not have done that for anybody but Mr. Biden.
Ed: I have that much respect for him. That sort of blew me away considering everything we've been reading.
Sam: The quote he apparently told Biden directly was, I'll do it for you.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: And what people have pointed out too is that, yeah, he said he'd do it for him
Sam: as in Joe Biden, but also all of these deals.
Sam: Cause like it wasn't just Germany, Slovenia and I forget which other countries,
Sam: but there were like three or four countries that ended up giving up prisoners
Sam: who were all people that they legitimately had in custody.
Sam: And some cases were convicted on very serious items and they wanted to.
Sam: They wanted to keep them in jail. And those countries were not necessarily getting
Sam: something out of this exchange themselves.
Sam: And so people have pointed out, this is part of having long-term alliances and
Sam: friendly relations with other countries that aren't just transactional on a case-by-case basis.
Sam: So it's not just, hey, Germany, do this for us and you'll get this.
Sam: Yes, it's, hey, Germany, we have a long-term good relationship.
Sam: Please do this for us.
Sam: I'm sure someday down the line, something else will come up,
Sam: but we can't promise you anything right now.
Sam: That's not part of the deal. It's just like, hey, can you help out?
Sam: And the answer in this case was yes. Another thing to point out is on Slovenia specifically.
Sam: Specifically, apparently Biden was on the phone with the prime minister of Slovenia
Sam: working this deal one hour before his announcement that he was dropping out of the race.
Sam: So like even like right up into the run run up of like I'm dropping out because
Sam: I can't apparently be an effective person running for president right now.
Sam: Now he was doing the job of president and doing it effectively right through
Sam: then and right through now.
Sam: And of course, you know, we've talked over and over again, you know,
Sam: there are differences between what you need to be president and what you need
Sam: to run for president. And you've got a team behind you.
Sam: And even if he was doing a great job, he was doing horribly in the polls and
Sam: wasn't showing that he could do that. But, you know, hey, it's just credit to
Sam: him that he's he was doing that right on the same day he was making that big announcement.
Ed: Absolutely. He could have just said, well, screw all of you.
Ed: I'm going to go home and and said he's still still doing his job.
Sam: Right. Right.
Sam: And so, you know, with this deal, you know, it was big.
Sam: They exchanged a lot of people. Apparently one of the Russian dissidents who
Sam: was released was like, thank you, but no, thank you. Really?
Sam: Like I actually, yeah, I, I, I didn't, I wouldn't have accepted a deal where
Sam: part of the deal was I had to be exiled from Russia, which is what happened here.
Sam: He's now in the West somewhere. And he's like, you know, I do intend to go back.
Sam: You know, and that's the same as, you know, like Navalny, you know,
Sam: he went back, he went back knowing he would probably be jailed.
Sam: And he did it anyway, because part of it was like, you know,
Sam: to be an effective dissident, I have to be there.
Sam: I can't be doing it from the UK or Germany or somewhere. Yeah, yeah.
Sam: Gives them an incentive to just sweep up more now the US has been telling people
Sam: for years now, don't go to Russia. If you're an American citizen, don't go to Russia.
Sam: It's just not a good time for that.
Sam: But of course, people still do. For various reasons, there's family,
Sam: there's whatever, they need to do whatever. But,
Sam: But it's now like it's there.
Sam: There's still people held, by the way. There's still Americans held.
Sam: There's apparently a teacher that's still in Russian custody right now that
Sam: did did not make the cut to be part of this deal.
Ed: I guess he had a couple of grams of marijuana prescribed for him by a doctor,
Ed: and he may not get out for 23 years.
Sam: Yeah. And yeah, like it.
Sam: You know, first of all, don't go if you don't have to go. So if you do have
Sam: to go, pay attention to the details of those laws.
Sam: You know, you can't assume that because something is legal in the US and in
Sam: that particular case, medical marijuana is only legal in some parts of the United States.
Sam: But you can't assume that it's okay there, too.
Sam: You know, follow local laws to the fucking letter, you know? Yeah.
Ed: We went on tour through Europe a year ago, one of the Viking cruise ships that
Ed: went through a number of countries.
Ed: I take the CBDs that help my arthritis pain, not marijuana, just the straight CBD.
Ed: That's still illegal in a number of countries. The first thing I did before
Ed: I left was to find out if any of the countries on our trip, it would be an issue.
Ed: One or two of them, it was questionable. I left the damn stuff at home. Didn't take it.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely.
Sam: People have even had that problem in the US going state to state.
Sam: There was a prominent case I watched.
Sam: I think it was a frontline, but somebody was traveling...
Sam: From one state to another had a prescription for medical
Sam: medical marijuana but got pulled over by
Sam: the cop cops for some like speeding transaction or
Sam: something halfway there in a state where it wasn't legal ended up serving years
Sam: in jail for it you know and it's you know yeah you had the prescription but
Sam: you went through whatever state it was where that was still not okay um and so So anyway,
Sam: but certainly like it, if you're going to Russia, if you're going to like quite
Sam: a few Middle Eastern countries,
Sam: if you know, all sorts of like check, well, even if you're going to a country
Sam: that's got a reputation is super, super friendly, check,
Sam: you know, there there there's, and we're not just talking marijuana.
Sam: We're talking about certain prescription drugs as well that are legal in one place and not the other.
Sam: And, you know, so check everything, like don't, don't make any assumptions, but anyway,
Sam: so Putin pretty much knows, like he's, he's going to be sending,
Sam: they're, they're going to be spies and, and he's all about the assassins.
Sam: He's got like assassins all over Europe.
Sam: I mean, it's a thing like his people have killed people in Germany with a,
Sam: where the one who was released this time was in the UK.
Sam: They've made attempts in other places.
Sam: So they're going to be assassins caught. They're going to be spies caught.
Sam: There's going to be whatever caught.
Sam: And so he knows now that all he has to do is always make sure he's got a handful
Sam: of people in custody that he can trade for them.
Sam: You know, another thing I saw that was interesting about this trade,
Sam: one of the folks that was traded, I can't remember if it was the Slovenian one.
Sam: I think it was the Slovenian one was a pair of deep cover spies of the sort
Sam: that are undercover. cover. They go live there.
Sam: They have a whole cover story life set up and just in the meantime are acting
Sam: as spies, taking back information to the Russians and are working for the Russians,
Sam: doing whatever they need to.
Sam: In this case, they were posing as a couple from Argentina,
Sam: and they had two kids, an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old who had no freaking
Sam: clue As far as they knew, they were from Argentina.
Sam: They did not know Russian. They only knew Spanish and probably some Slovenian
Sam: since they were living in Slovenia.
Sam: And they were told about all this once they were on the plane to Russia to be
Sam: greeted by Vladimir Putin.
Sam: And like, I just, I feel sorry for those kids.
Sam: I mean, like if they didn't already have trust issues, you know,
Sam: you, you find out your whole life has been a lie. Your parents aren't who you thought they were.
Sam: And boom. I mean, they're get it. I saw a couple of the pictures.
Sam: They looked absolutely shell shocked.
Sam: And I guess their parents had been picked up and arrested anyway. way.
Sam: So they may have had some inkling before this because presumably they were doing
Sam: something else, but the kids were part of the trade too, even though,
Sam: yeah, I don't think the kids were in jail, but, uh, yeah, not good.
Sam: I just, that's screwed up. I mean, I know it's done and it's part of the deep
Sam: cover. They had to, they were a family, they had kids.
Sam: It made them seem more trustworthy, I guess. I don't know.
Sam: But like, yeah, anyway.
Sam: So any more about the grand trade?
Ed: No, I think that I just thought it was worthwhile mentioning.
Ed: The only thing from the right side came that Mr. Vance announced that it never
Ed: would have occurred except that Putin is afraid of Trump and wanted it done
Ed: before Trump got in office.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Well, the other thing was Biden's mic drop on this when he held a
Sam: press conference about this trade and was told that Trump was like,
Sam: I could get these people out overnight.
Sam: Biden says, well, then why didn't you do it when you were president?
Sam: And then walks out of the room.
Sam: So anyway, okay, next up, you want to talk policy. So first, tariffs.
Sam: You've talked about tariffs before here. Donald Donald Trump loves tariffs.
Sam: So what's the deal with tariffs? What do you want to?
Ed: I think, yeah, it's probably nothing much new. It's just that it's it's a significant
Ed: difference of opinion on the two sides.
Ed: The actually not just Trump, but an awful lot of the people in the in the megaverse.
Ed: Believe that tariffs are the way to protect our industry.
Ed: And the only thing that, obviously, Biden did not cut back on all the tariffs
Ed: that Trump went in. He cut back on a number of them.
Ed: But industry, for the first time in a couple, three decades at least,
Ed: has been expanding quite a bit.
Ed: And it did it after the infrastructure bill and the other bill that encouraged investment,
Ed: investment federal dollar investments in various factories and businesses one
Ed: of those just came online i think here in pennsylvania that's going to employ
Ed: several hundred people i i remember what i saw in the news earlier this week
Ed: comment that the factory is now hiring and going into operation,
Ed: that has a hell of an impact whereas tariffs all the tariff does is raise our
Ed: cost it doesn't affect the exporters from the other countries at all it might
Ed: slow down their sales well it doesn't Yeah.
Sam: In theory, that's the whole notion of tariffs.
Sam: And look, I think it's stupid, but let me say what the way it's supposed to
Sam: operate is you make the foreign goods so expensive that Americans won't buy them.
Sam: And because of that, A, the foreign company that's doing the making or the country
Sam: involved makes less money because they can't sell to your market.
Sam: But also part of the theory is in response to the foreign products being so expensive,
Sam: you will get domestic people stepping up and producing whatever it is that people
Sam: were getting from the foreign companies before.
Sam: So instead of imports, you encourage domestic production to take their place.
Sam: But if that happens at all, and I think that's probably debatable,
Sam: it's a long-term effect.
Sam: Like if you right now just closed the door and said, we can't get anything from
Sam: China anymore, which is effectively what raising the tariffs,
Sam: I mean, you make the price higher, but if you make it high enough,
Sam: you effectively price them out of the market. it...
Sam: Domestic producers would take years to be able to ramp up and produce the same
Sam: products if they do it all.
Sam: In some cases, they just won't be able to.
Sam: So the short-term effect is just making things more expensive.
Sam: So if you're worried about inflation, for instance, hey, what's a great way
Sam: to make everything cost more?
Sam: Slap huge tariffs on it. You know, and maybe you get a new equilibrium years
Sam: down the line where domestic production takes up that slack,
Sam: but that's at best that's long term.
Sam: And so, you know, and you keep here whenever Donald Trump talks about it,
Sam: he talks about how, you know, we added the tariffs and the Chinese had to pay, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: No, that's not who pays the tariff.
Ed: You know the customer pays the tariff or the businesses that sell the stuff
Ed: pay one or the other the others don't anyway it's a,
Ed: long term it's just another example of how you make inflation worse and punish
Ed: people a lot of the things that we import we don't even make you know you're right Right.
Ed: Not only would it be a long time, there would be a shortage,
Ed: which means when there's a shortage of a product that people want,
Ed: what happens to the price with or without a tariff? It goes up.
Sam: Right. So, look, this is just another example of Donald Trump has no idea what
Sam: he's talking about almost ever in terms of real policy things,
Sam: in terms of thinking it through.
Sam: Like, look, there are some people who will make actual arguments in favor of tariffs.
Sam: They may be wrong, but they understand it and make an argument around it,
Sam: sort of like the one I just made.
Sam: Donald Trump isn't even there. Like, he just thinks, you know,
Sam: tariffs are a way to punish the other country, and it sounds good,
Sam: and I can make it sound good.
Sam: What it actually does, how it actually works, this is not part of his thought process at all.
Sam: I don't think he even cares because I'm sure people have told them that's not
Sam: how tariffs work over and over and over again. He doesn't care.
Sam: You know, that's just not the point.
Ed: In his world, there are winners and losers, and there isn't any negotiation where everybody wins.
Ed: There's winners and losers, and he considers, gee, if I charge a $5,000 tariff
Ed: on every car they import, then our government will get an extra $5,000,
Ed: and that makes me a winner.
Sam: Okay, so your last item. You had mentioned that Governor Tim Walz,
Sam: W-A-L-Z is how you spell it, who's reportedly one of the finalists to potentially
Sam: be Kamala Harris's running mate,
Sam: had some policy proposals that you thought were interesting.
Sam: He was being interviewed or something, probably in relationship to the VP thing,
Sam: and he talked about policy a little bit.
Ed: It was a podcast. When I go on hikes, I put my earphones on and I listen to
Ed: podcasts, including Curmudgeon Corner.
Ed: But on the podcast, it was one of the, I think it was the New York Times podcast. I'm not sure.
Ed: They were interviewing him about a number of things, including his life and
Ed: that sort of stuff. I'm sure it had to do with the vice presidency.
Ed: But really, they were talking about how did you become interested in politics. He used to be a teacher.
Ed: And he said, well, I thought I could fix things. And so I ran and I won in this very red district.
Ed: And then I won. I think he was three or four terms in the state house.
Ed: And then he ran for governor.
Ed: And as governor, he's done a number of things. One thing he did,
Ed: for instance, he put through that the schools would provide free school lunches
Ed: for all students, regardless of their income level or anything.
Ed: The kids go to school, they get fed out of nutritious lunch.
Ed: The other thing he did is there's the child tax credit program that's been a
Ed: federal one for a number of years, but recently has been cut back a little bit.
Ed: In Minnesota, apparently, he made that more effective, expanded it,
Ed: and has really defended it very strongly. And his point on that was there are
Ed: two ways you can encourage people to have children.
Ed: One is to make it possible for them to have children by providing this tax credit
Ed: so they have a little better income.
Ed: Another way is to make sure that there's daycare facilities at a reasonable
Ed: price so that they can afford to have children and on and on and on.
Ed: And he said, the other way to do it is to, you know, charge more tax to people
Ed: who don't have children and to make them feel like they're incompetent or something of that sort.
Ed: He really explained it far better than I'm able to. But I found his ideas on the free lunch.
Ed: The kids, interestingly, one of the things they noticed is within a couple months
Ed: of having the free lunch, so the kids all got a big lunch, was that their discipline
Ed: problems dropped significantly.
Ed: Attendance went up, and the kids' grades started improving. Guess what?
Ed: If a kid's not hungry, he listens to the teacher.
Sam: Shocker there.
Ed: Isn't that amazing?
Sam: Well, it not, not even listening to the teacher, right. Just in general,
Sam: like if, if you're hungry, you're not going to perform as well,
Sam: like in anything, you know, you're going to be distracted by that.
Sam: And it's going to be hard to keep on task and it's going to be hard to think
Sam: about whatever you need to think about.
Sam: Yeah. I know this is true of me, but if I'm hungry, I can go get food.
Sam: It's not a problem for me. For lots and lots of kids, it's a problem.
Sam: Their families can't afford enough, so they're hungry on a regular basis.
Sam: And it's been shown over and over and over again in that various programs to
Sam: make sure kids have access to food at school helps that amazingly.
Sam: And, you know, there, there are some, there, there are some questions on the methodology, right?
Sam: Like there, there are these ones that, you know, the subsidized lunch where
Sam: you have to sort of identify yourself and ask for it and you have a special
Sam: card or something and you stand out from the other kids as, Oh,
Sam: they're the ones that needs the free lunch,
Sam: you know, or the free breakfast or whatever.
Sam: There are others that just try to, they just give it to everybody.
Sam: And those are, I think those are the best variety of those. Cause even the ones that have like,
Sam: you know, where they give you lunch, but
Sam: you run a tab and then you hear these stories about how their kids with unpaid
Sam: lunch bills and their various things that people like you hear stories of like
Sam: the generous person from the community went in and paid the overdue lunch bills
Sam: for all the kids or whatever.
Sam: And it's like, come on, do you really have to structure something? So
Sam: that's even necessary come just just just include it like you know include it
Sam: in what is funded as part of going to school you get your breakfast you get
Sam: your lunch you get some snacks whatever you know i don't know but yeah yeah
Sam: so you don't make them pay.
Ed: For their textbooks in grade school either do we we give.
Sam: Them free textbooks usually yes so.
Ed: Anyway i i really enjoyed listening
Ed: to him and he's seen without accusing anybody or saying anything negative about
Ed: anybody said this is why this works this is why that doesn't work and it was
Ed: a it was a pleasant thing it was a politician who sounded like someone i'd like
Ed: to sit down and have a beer with the obama technique okay.
Sam: So given that i'm going to transition i'll we'll take a quick break and then
Sam: we'll transition i And I guess I'll start with the VP stuff rather than the poll stuff,
Sam: because Walsh is one of the guys who's being considered for the VP slot.
Sam: And so we'll start a little bit, I guess, by talking about him.
Sam: So we will be back after this.
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Sam: We are back and before i forget i meant to mention this at the beginning of
Sam: the show because i've mentioned it at the very end of the show the last two
Sam: weeks but this is the last time I'm going to ask this on the show.
Sam: I have been editing the show a little bit differently the last couple of weeks and this week as well.
Sam: I will, right now I'm recording, but when I edit it, I will edit it the same
Sam: way I have the last couple of weeks.
Sam: So I'm asking and have yet to receive any feedback, which I'm going to interpret a certain way.
Sam: A, has anybody noticed any difference in listening to the last couple of weeks
Sam: shows compared to shows before that.
Sam: So I'll ask you, Ed, have you noticed any difference?
Ed: I was just going to say, I keep forgetting to write and comment,
Ed: but I can't say that I've noticed a difference overall. Okay.
Sam: So that that's an answer from Ed. So for all of you listening,
Sam: let me know, have you noticed a difference?
Sam: And then B, if you have noticed a difference, which Ed hasn't,
Sam: so he's not, so my question would be meaningless in that case.
Sam: Do you like it better the old way or the new way?
Sam: And based on any answers I receive, I will determine what to do next week and beyond.
Sam: And if no one tells me they can tell the difference at all, then frankly,
Sam: I'm going to do the way that's easier for me and takes less time for me.
Sam: Regardless that was my recommendation yeah
Sam: so and you you guys may
Sam: not be surprised to know the change i've made
Sam: is a change that makes it quicker and
Sam: easier for me to get the stuff done that i need to
Sam: get done to get the show out the door so if nobody
Sam: can tell the difference then there's no reason not for
Sam: me there's no reason for me not to do it the quick way so there
Sam: you go now if he if people were like yes sam
Sam: i can tell the difference and it sucks now it
Sam: was good before and now it sucks or it was mediocre before now it sucks whatever
Sam: then then there would be a reason to go and keep doing it the way that takes
Sam: me a little bit longer but you know whatever so so far i've got a lot of no
Sam: comments and one person saying they couldn't tell the difference.
Sam: So that tells me a lot. Okay.
Sam: Time for the vice presidential search. So first of all, the final six,
Sam: according to all the reports, are Governor Beshear of Kentucky.
Sam: Pritzker of Illinois, Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Waltz of Minnesota.
Sam: Those are all governors, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
Sam: and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Sam: So those are apparently the finalists. I will add that there have been reports
Sam: that Shapiro in Pennsylvania is the front runner.
Sam: In fact, a few hours before we're recording this show,
Sam: apparently the office of the mayor of Philadelphia released a video that has
Sam: Shapiro as the vice president to Harris.
Sam: And apparently it was a video that wasn't reportedly wasn't supposed to be released
Sam: until Monday as part of the announcement, but it, it, it hasn't been, it wasn't taken down.
Sam: So, and it's like, it was a mistake, blah, blah, blah. It's not real.
Sam: So on the one hand, people are like, well, that's it. And it's Shapiro.
Sam: Like they just accidentally released the information a couple of days early,
Sam: but then other folks are like, Like, nah, this sounds like some sort of aspirational
Sam: video that might have been done to promote Shapiro, but it's not really the decision yet.
Sam: So we'll see. But Shapiro is the front runner in the betting.
Sam: And we'll talk more about him in a second. But since you were just talking about Walls.
Sam: You mentioned a couple of policy things from him. What did you,
Sam: what do you think of him as a potential VP? You listened to the interview.
Sam: He had a lot, we didn't even mention him last week, but he, he's had a lot of buzz over the last week.
Sam: Apparently the more progressive side of the democratic party really likes him.
Sam: He's been really vocal. He, you know, like all these other people on this list,
Sam: he's been out there doing events and people have liked sort of how aggressive
Sam: He was against Donald Trump.
Sam: Apparently the whole weird thing that maybe we'll talk about before we end.
Sam: He was one of the first ones to push that attack on the Trumpies,
Sam: and that's been very effective.
Sam: So what do you think? What do you think, Ed? What do you think of this Walls guy?
Sam: I honestly have paid a little bit less attention to him, but some people seem to really like him.
Ed: I haven't heard much about him either until I listened to this interview.
Ed: I found him very personable and a good sense of humor.
Ed: He did talk about the weird thing. They asked him about that,
Ed: and he said, you know, it just sort of came up.
Ed: I didn't want to say nasty things about people.
Ed: And then I realized that, gee, when they say something that irritates and antagonizes
Ed: large percentages of the population, that's really weird, isn't it?
Ed: And so I just started saying, well, that's really weird what they're doing.
Ed: And I have to agree. I mean, look, that interview that Trump had with the black journalists this week.
Ed: I mean, I can't imagine people of color wanting to vote for that man after that interview.
Ed: So he turned off and antagonized a large bunch of people, I think.
Sam: Well, here's... Yeah, let's tangent to that for a second. Obviously...
Sam: People of color have not been his prime demographic anyway, let's say.
Sam: But there had been repeated reports this year of him making additional inroads,
Sam: of him polling higher among men, and specifically Black men, than he had been before.
Sam: Not of men, of Black people, specifically Black men, than he had before.
Sam: There have been more reports about his percentages in the Hispanic community
Sam: increasing as well. And as Yvonne would always tell us, not a monolithic community.
Sam: It very much depends on which part of that community you're in.
Sam: But he's actually done pretty well in the past in that community and apparently was doing even better.
Sam: And so I don't know that it's – in the big picture, these aren't communities
Sam: that were really strong Trump communities anyway.
Sam: He clearly – his main focus is and has always been white people,
Sam: even more so white men, even more so non-college-educated white men.
Sam: Yep. And, but in a close election,
Sam: like if you had increased your percentage among black people from 5% to 10%,
Sam: that could be a big deal, you know?
Sam: And I think he killed that with this.
Sam: But also, you know, people have talked about like, look, on the one hand,
Sam: yes, this is just this is another opportunity where he shows off that he's dumb.
Sam: He shows off that he's racist and he is and it's just out there for everybody to see.
Sam: And in this new context, maybe that's hitting harder than it has at times in the past. Right.
Sam: Whereas people are saying like, look, he doesn't care. It's attention.
Sam: He's taking the, for the last 12 days, everything has been about Kamala Harris.
Sam: Everything, all the news cycles, everything has been talking about how great
Sam: she's doing and, you know, how, how excited everybody is and blah,
Sam: blah, blah. And that's all that's been in the news.
Sam: All of a sudden he goes and does this and he's in the news again.
Sam: Maybe it's not super positive but he's
Sam: in the news again and the story is once again about
Sam: him and maybe that's what he
Sam: wants out of this um i kind of
Sam: feel like this is i mean
Sam: this is an age-old debate we've had before is is trump
Sam: being like super savvy politically and playing 12 dimensional chess i don't
Sam: think he is i think he's got a certain set of instincts and he goes by those
Sam: instincts and sometimes they serve him well and sometimes they don't but i don't
Sam: think there's a lot of deep thought behind it.
Ed: I'm not sure he's capable of it that's just me.
Sam: And you know we'll get back to the vps in a second i promise but like since since we're on weird now,
Sam: the this is the weird thing has really been hitting in a way that other attacks haven't.
Sam: And, you know, when, when you start to think about it, I'm like,
Sam: okay, look, they've talked about Donald Trump is dangerous.
Sam: Well, lots of people like that. That's why they're like, he's dangerous. That's a good thing.
Sam: Like he'll, he'll piss off the liberals. He'll, he'll be, he'll break down the
Sam: status quo. He'll do things.
Sam: Dangerous is good. We want dangerous. There's a group that feels that way.
Sam: If you talk about him being racist, there's a whole bunch of people who like
Sam: that. That's why they vote for the man.
Sam: You know, same thing if you talk about his misogyny. Well, he's a real man.
Sam: You know, there are people who like that and make that a positive thing.
Sam: All of these attacks, or he's scary.
Sam: Well, good, he should scare the damn liberals. That's why we want him.
Sam: All of these things that have been sort of common attacks on Donald Trump before, that A,
Sam: they take him seriously, and B, are calling out things that are horrific to
Sam: the left side of the spectrum, but are actually appealing to a huge population.
Sam: Portion of Donald Trump's base.
Sam: I think the weird thing is different because the weird thing is not something, at least so far,
Sam: maybe they'll co-opt it, but the weird thing is something that makes them feel
Sam: deeply uncomfortable because part of the whole psyche of the American right
Sam: at the moment is that they represent real America.
Sam: They represent what is good and true and great about America.
Sam: They represent the way things should be, the way that things are good.
Sam: And if you react to that, not with fear, not with, oh my God,
Sam: this is dangerous, this is whatever.
Sam: But instead, you react to it with, what a bunch of fucking freaks.
Sam: They're a bunch of weirdos. They are the outcasts.
Sam: They are the ones who are not acceptable in normal society. You know,
Sam: I think that hits them a very different way.
Sam: It makes them feel deeply uncomfortable.
Sam: It's exactly what they're nervous about. The reason they're reacting in the
Sam: way they are and are so panicked is they see the country moving away from them and their values.
Sam: And this just reemphasizes it and says, no, you're the weirdos. Yes.
Sam: You're the ones who are out of step.
Sam: And I think they're having trouble figuring out how to react to that.
Ed: I should stick in here that that Waltz in that interview made it very clear
Ed: that when he's talking about weirdos, he's talking about the politicians,
Ed: not the people who vote for him.
Ed: He tried his best not to irritate those people.
Sam: Yeah, well, I think that's going to get away from them. But like and I think
Sam: that's OK, because like it makes you like if you get the impression out.
Sam: There and get people actually worried about like no no if you
Sam: support these jackasses yeah you're the
Sam: weirdo you are also the outcast yeah there are people that
Sam: there are people who will double down in response to that but
Sam: there are people who are on the edges who will be like i don't want to be a
Sam: weirdo you know they're right donald trump and jd vance are weirdos they really
Sam: are what why do i want to associate with them and i think that's why this attack
Sam: is hitting differently it's It's a,
Sam: it's mocking them, which has always been, you know, there have been people arguing
Sam: that the right way to attack Donald Trump is mocking him going back to the very beginning.
Sam: And some people tried somewhat unsuccessfully, but I think this,
Sam: this is hitting this time. Now, will it continue to? I don't know.
Sam: I saw some people saying that they, they would have preferred like creepy or
Sam: something than weird because there's good weird too.
Sam: And I've seen a number of good responses to that.
Sam: One person said, look, this is feminine coded.
Sam: If we just say weird, we are talking creepy.
Sam: If we're talking about sort of the cute, lovable geek, that's good weird.
Sam: That's different. And we would say good weird.
Sam: I saw someone else, and I'm sorry I don't have quotes for who said these things.
Sam: They're just random things I saw at Mastodon and such, someone else who said,
Sam: look, if you are told you are weird and you respond with awesome,
Sam: yes, absolutely. I am. That's great.
Sam: I try to be, then that's good weird.
Sam: And you're not who this is aimed at. Part of the whole issue here is these are
Sam: the type of people who, when they're called weird, get all upset about it and all triggered by it.
Sam: And that's bad weird and that's what we're talking about here and the fact that these folks are,
Sam: seemingly through, I mean, look, the whole Trump campaign and Vance and everybody
Sam: associated with it have been completely and totally thrown off their game by
Sam: Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris.
Sam: Um, I'm trying really hard. I'm sorry.
Ed: You listen, you listen to Trump too much. You're copying his pronunciation and this is deliberate.
Sam: Yeah. Well, in any case, they've been thrown off. They don't know how to deal with someone younger.
Sam: They don't know how to deal with a woman. They don't They don't know how to deal with a black woman.
Sam: They don't know how to deal with being mocked and ridiculed and called out.
Sam: All of these are things that Biden never succeeded in doing.
Sam: He made a couple of attempts, but he never was able to do this in the way that
Sam: the Harris campaign is doing this now, including the circle of the vice presidential
Sam: candidates who are all doing this kind of thing at this point.
Sam: And they're reeling right now. They don't know how to deal with it.
Sam: Uh, you know, we'll talk polls in a minute.
Sam: Uh, Trump has been falling in the polls for the last 12 days dramatically.
Sam: And will they figure it out before November?
Sam: Maybe like, I think there are ways to counter this, but it's,
Sam: it's clearly, they don't know how to think about this.
Sam: They were 100% prepared for the entire election to be about Joe Biden is old
Sam: and Joe Biden is senile and he doesn't know what he's doing and he can't handle it.
Sam: And, oh, and maybe a little touch of Hunter Biden is bad.
Sam: And the, the, you know, the Joe Biden crime family or all that nonsense,
Sam: everything, everything they were planning was all about that.
Sam: And so now they don't know what to do. And so you get Donald Trump flailing.
Sam: You mentioned his performance at that Black Journalist Conference,
Sam: the National Association of Black Journalists.
Sam: Part of what he's going on about and has doubled down on since is this whole
Sam: Kamala Harris isn't really black thing.
Sam: It's like, what are you doing? Who is this appealing to? And I know what they're trying to do.
Sam: They're trying to sort of other her and say she's not only not white,
Sam: she's not black either and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And there's this whole implication they're trying to do with the DEI candidate
Sam: and everything where she couldn't possibly be there under her own merits.
Sam: She's only there because they wanted a black woman. And look,
Sam: she's not even black. She's Indian.
Sam: And whereas this is, and I know it's a strategy of attack someone's strength,
Sam: but frankly, all of that stuff is her strength.
Sam: That's part of what makes her appealing. And I don't know that it's,
Sam: it's just, they don't know what they're doing right now and they haven't figured it out.
Sam: And they, we haven't even got to the democratic convention yet.
Sam: I feel like they've got to, at some point, get their act together a little bit,
Sam: but they certainly haven't yet. They they're just like spinning.
Ed: Well, I think at the time they began recovering from the weird and figure out
Ed: what to do, we should start talking about them being asleep,
Ed: as opposed to they're accusing us of being woke.
Ed: They're asleep because they refuse to have history taught because the history might upset children.
Ed: So we won't teach history of what happened in the country. We'll pretend like
Ed: it just has always been like it is now.
Ed: And we don't want to teach the science of environmentalism because people will
Ed: feel guilty about it. Instead, we want to burn more oil and they're asleep and they refuse to wake up.
Ed: They've turned off the alarm clock and they refuse to wake up and listen to
Ed: the world that's around them.
Ed: So we should talk about them being asleep as soon as they get over being weird.
Ed: They're weird sleepers.
Sam: You're absolutely right. A few people have tried that exact way of saying things
Sam: before and it hasn't really hit.
Sam: But I feel like the Harris campaign can find a way to make it stick because
Sam: that that's the other thing that like Biden and company and sort of your old school Democrats,
Sam: if you like, you hear like James Carville or whoever talking.
Sam: Fucking, they're afraid of this stuff and they automatically sort of get defensive.
Sam: Like somebody's calling them woke. They sort of, Oh, we're not.
Sam: What are you talking about? No, let's talk about it.
Sam: No, own it. Damn right. We're woke.
Sam: You're not, you're asleep. Like you said, and we're woke. And that means we
Sam: know what the fuck is going on.
Ed: How in the hell have they convinced us that we should consider a company that's
Ed: following diversity and equity and what's the I?
Sam: Inclusion.
Ed: Inclusion. That those are bad things. How in the hell are we convinced that?
Ed: That's like saying giving money to a man who's starving to death is bad.
Ed: Come on. DEI? I want companies that are diverse and do indeed include everybody.
Sam: Well, you know, look, DEI is just their code.
Sam: DI is just their code word because they're not allowed to say the N word.
Sam: You know, that's the reality of how they.
Ed: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sam: You know, it's, it's not actually, I mean, they don't, they don't believe in
Sam: those things anyway. They don't believe in diversity.
Sam: They feel that strength is in uniformity and everybody believing and doing the
Sam: same thing and looking the same, or at least within a very narrow band that
Sam: is considered acceptable.
Sam: They don't believe the strength and diversity. They don't believe in equity.
Sam: They believe that absolutely.
Sam: If you, if you're come from a family who's gotten ahead, then you should be
Sam: ahead, you know, and inclusion, the same thing.
Sam: Like, no, like we want our, we want our walled gardens.
Sam: We want to protect what we've got and keep the external people out.
Sam: You know, so, yeah, like there's a fundamental disbelief in that any of those three things,
Sam: diversity, equity and inclusion are good things, you know, but but and I've said this before.
Sam: The Democrats have to not run away from these culture war things and instead
Sam: own them and be proud of the fact that they are on the right side of these culture war issues.
Sam: Yep. Like, don't don't try to, like, downplay them or run away or,
Sam: oh, let's talk about the economy instead.
Sam: No, the culture war is the major defining aspect of modern politics and own
Sam: it, defend it, be proud of it, be aggressive,
Sam: make it their liability that they want to pull everybody back 50 years, a hundred years,
Sam: whatever, to a world that doesn't exist anymore and shouldn't exist anymore
Sam: because it was bad. You know? Absolutely.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: So anyway, were we talking about vice presidents? I think we were.
Ed: So we're talking about vice presidents other than Waltz. I like Waltz.
Ed: I like Waltz. I like all of these.
Ed: Any of the people on that list would be fine by me. I think they're all excellent people.
Sam: So let me talk. I don't really have much to say about Bashir.
Sam: I mean, I don't have much to say about Pritzker. I really haven't spent a lot
Sam: of time thinking about either of them or researching them or knowing them.
Sam: I know they're each contenders.
Sam: The three that remain that we haven't talked about are Shapiro, Buttigieg, and Kelly.
Ed: Is Whitmer clear out of the running?
Sam: Whitmer took herself out of the running.
Ed: Oh, that's right. Okay, yeah.
Sam: And so did Cooper from New York. Whitmer took herself out. There wasn't a lot of talk about why.
Sam: Cooper from, not New York, from North Carolina, Cooper from North Carolina pulled
Sam: himself out specifically because he said, Look, I've got a lieutenant governor
Sam: who is an absolute wacko, right winger.
Sam: And the way the law works in North Carolina, if I leave the state, he's in charge.
Sam: And so I would have to leave the state to campaign.
Sam: And I don't want to give this guy the opportunity to screw things up in North
Sam: Carolina while I'm gone.
Sam: So I think it's a guy I should look up his Lieutenant governor,
Sam: but anyway, they're, they're, they're apparently somebody he's worried about.
Sam: Um, there may, there may be other reasons too. That's the, the public reason
Sam: that was given, but of the remainder remainers of the remainder, uh,
Sam: Let's talk Shapiro first. Let me start with your impression.
Sam: You're in Pennsylvania, right?
Ed: Absolutely.
Sam: So you know probably more about Shapiro than I do.
Sam: There have been a couple things in the news in the last day or two that I want to bring up.
Sam: But what's your general impression of the guy?
Sam: Do you advocate his choice?
Ed: Absolutely. He was the attorney general here for a number of years.
Ed: Interesting. I think he was the district attorney here in Bucks County,
Ed: where I live, before I moved here.
Ed: But then he was the attorney general in the state.
Ed: And then when the previous governor retired and went out of office,
Ed: Shapiro ran and the Republicans put up, hell, I can't remember his name,
Ed: but a guy who pulled, I think he ended up pulling around 35, by 40% of the vote.
Ed: Shapiro was very popular here. The people in Pennsylvania, for the most part,
Ed: really like him. He's done good things.
Ed: He's fairly honest. He's open. He doesn't take a whole lot of crap.
Ed: Something bad came out this week. They talked about some sort of an investigation
Ed: in the past on one of his staffs about some sexual abuse that he supposedly quashed.
Ed: I don't know. I don't know if it's true, not true. It's not a good thing to
Ed: have done. if he did it, but I don't know that it's a deal breaker.
Sam: The two things that have come up, that is one of them, is that he has been accused
Sam: in the last few days of, like you said, quashing that investigation.
Sam: And basically, the person who was accused was a member of his staff who was also a friend of his,
Sam: and he kind of made the allegations go away, and not in a way that was the most
Sam: friendly to the woman involved.
Sam: And so people are saying that basically, look, this day and age, that's inappropriate.
Sam: That should be a disqualifier. Please don't pick him.
Sam: The other thing that has been said over and over again about him is that of
Sam: all of these VP contenders,
Sam: he is the most strongly pro-Israel and has said things in the past that can
Sam: be interpreted as actually anti-Palestinian.
Sam: And he served apparently in the IDF as a volunteer in Israel at one point.
Ed: Oh, you know, I saw something like that. He served on one of the farms.
Ed: He was not in the IDF at any time.
Sam: Okay. But he apparently- But he was there.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: He apparently volunteered. I guess he wasn't called up or whatever, but he wanted to.
Sam: But in any case, a lot of folks, especially on the more progressive side,
Sam: the more Palestinian-friendly side of the Democratic coalition,
Sam: are really, really uncomfortable with the degree of support he has given the
Sam: Netanyahu government over the the last few months since October.
Sam: Basically, still at the 100% back them up, they're going to do what they have
Sam: to do rather than acknowledging some of the problematic aspects, to say the least,
Sam: of how they have approached the situation since October. Now.
Sam: People will say, well, look, he's talking vice president.
Sam: He's going to follow the policies of the presidential candidate regardless.
Sam: And on the one hand, yes. But of course, the whole point of a vice president
Sam: is to become president if something happens to the actual president.
Sam: And so their policy preferences do potentially matter because they may end up being president.
Sam: President now maybe you think about that
Sam: a little bit less with kamala harris
Sam: as the president versus joe biden as the president just because of her age but
Sam: you never know i mean we saw the attempt on trump just a couple weeks ago you
Sam: know something could happen always there could you know there could be an assassination
Sam: there could be an accident you could have a health scare even on a younger person.
Sam: You never know.
Sam: And so, yes, that does matter. And I think the thing to me is like,
Sam: I definitely, I'm not with the most rabid anti-Israel portions of the Democratic coalition.
Sam: But I'm also not with the most pro-Israel elements of the Democratic coalition.
Sam: I feel like this is an area where you need to acknowledge that there's been evil done on both sides,
Sam: and you try to figure that out, and you try to push for a different approach
Sam: in terms of what's going on there.
Sam: And Shapiro, maybe not in that spot,
Sam: but even if I had no concerns about Shapiro's position myself at all, he is the only one,
Sam: the only one of these six where I've heard people saying outright that,
Sam: that if she picks Shapiro, it's a problem for me.
Sam: I have not heard that about any of the other five.
Sam: Now, maybe I'm just listening in the wrong place, but I saw one person post
Sam: earlier today that he's becoming increasingly convinced that if, let's see, who was this?
Sam: It was Dan Gilmore on Mastodon.
Sam: He said, I will vote for and contribute to Harris no matter who is the VP,
Sam: but I'm increasingly convinced that picking Shapiro would be an unforced error on her part.
Sam: And I think that's why. I think that there are these two issues.
Sam: One, his stance on the Middle East is disturbing to a significant chunk of the
Sam: Democratic coalition. abolition and two, whatever this thing is with the sexual
Sam: harassment stuff just does not look great.
Sam: Now, who knows? Something may come up with one of the other candidates that's
Sam: equally bad. We don't know.
Sam: On the flip side of these negative concerns, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania.
Sam: He's really popular in Pennsylvania. You said you like him from everything I've
Sam: heard from polling and other things.
Sam: Just in general, he's well-liked. He runs ahead of where Joe Biden was in polls.
Sam: You know, he is more well-loved in Pennsylvania than your quote-unquote average Democrat.
Sam: And Pennsylvania is absolutely like the paths to victory in this election run through Pennsylvania.
Sam: Pennsylvania can you imagine ways to win without Pennsylvania
Sam: sure but all of the really likely ways
Sam: to win involve Pennsylvania you need Pennsylvania
Sam: now the latest polling
Sam: and I'll get to polling in a second in the end but Harris has pulled ahead in
Sam: the poll average in Pennsylvania so maybe she could get Pennsylvania without
Sam: him but she's just barely ahead in Pennsylvania so So it's not like it's a secure lead there.
Sam: And so if Shapiro brings Pennsylvania reliably, maybe that's a good bet.
Sam: The other thing that's been said is Harris has apparently known this guy for almost 20 years.
Sam: She's got a relationship with him. She knows him. She's worked with him before.
Sam: And that's potentially important in picking a vice president.
Sam: And of course we've got these rumors that she's actually already picked him
Sam: and it's just, it leaked out early, but that's what it's going to be. So like, interesting.
Ed: The most recent rumor I heard that was not him.
Ed: And I'm trying to remember who it was now.
Sam: Probably Kelly?
Ed: Yeah, that's right. It was Kelly. I just heard that like an hour or two ago.
Ed: They were saying that they're quite certain it's going to be Kelly.
Ed: I don't think any of us really know.
Sam: And like I said, by the time people listen to the show, you might know already.
Sam: Yeah. It depends how long after I put out the show. It depends when I put out
Sam: the show and how long it takes you to listen to it.
Ed: As far as Pennsylvania goes, I think if we can keep Trump campaigning the way
Ed: he is and keep Harris campaigning the way she does, she will sweep Pennsylvania.
Ed: Fifty five to 60 percent of the vote would be my guess.
Sam: Well, we'll see. I think I don't know.
Sam: Like, I still think like if I had to bet right now, I think I'd still say Shapiro.
Sam: But these two things that have come up in the last couple of days, give me some doubt.
Sam: I feel like maybe it's one of these deals where she kind of wants Shapiro. She knows him.
Sam: He's got Pennsylvania, but she's got to be thinking about these two things too.
Sam: Like that's going to get him negative attention from certain parts of the coalition.
Sam: And can she just avoid that? You know, if she wins, she can always put them in the cabinet.
Sam: You know, there are a number of things she could, she could make him chief of
Sam: staff if she really wants him around all the time.
Ed: I like him here in Pennsylvania as a governor.
Sam: Well, when, when's his term end? How long has he got?
Ed: I, I think he can run two terms with, so that would be eight years.
Sam: Okay. So, so he's, but he's not like right at the end of his term or anything anyway.
Ed: Oh no, no, no. He's in the middle of his term basically.
Sam: Right. So let's hit the other two real quick. We got Buttigieg and Kelly.
Sam: Kelly is the other front runner. I would say, like you said,
Sam: you heard rumors within the last hour or so.
Sam: He's also been pretty good at,
Sam: going on the offensive and making a good case.
Sam: He's sympathetic because of his wife, Gabby Giffords. He was an astronaut.
Sam: He's got a bunch of things going from him. He is also from a swing state.
Sam: You know, Arizona would be really nice for the Democrats to get.
Sam: I think it's less clear that he could deliver Arizona.
Sam: It's, it's a bit redder like Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is like prototypical purple at this point.
Sam: Arizona's a bit more red, but trending blue. Could he bring Arizona over the
Sam: edge? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure.
Sam: But also, you know, the Senate is at play too.
Sam: And even if for the short term, because they've got a Democratic governor at
Sam: the moment in Arizona, he might be replaced in the short term by a Democrat.
Sam: But then they're going to have an election to fill that spot.
Sam: And the Democrats may or may not win that. And you really need the Senate.
Sam: Um, and the, and right now, like the Senate is a really hard ask for the Democrats right now.
Sam: I've said this before in the show, they have to win pretty much every single
Sam: state that is in contention for them in order to keep the Senate.
Sam: They can't lose anything.
Sam: And so, you know, putting another state potentially in play for the Senate,
Sam: it's kind of risky. So like, do you really want to do that?
Sam: But she might because like, he's got some positives to, you know, all of these people do.
Sam: Finally, Buttigieg, as far as I can see, A, there's the risk of like,
Sam: okay, are there some swing voters who will be like, I don't want a gay guy?
Sam: And there might be. I wish that wasn't even a part of the conversation,
Sam: but it still is, unfortunately.
Sam: Unfortunately and but i don't know that you can i don't know if you can run afraid from that.
Sam: At some point you just have to like do it anyway but the time to do it anyway
Sam: is when you got a nice healthy lead and can spare a few points yeah like if
Sam: you're right on the edge and right now Now we're right on the edge.
Sam: Then, you know, maybe it's best to not do the risky thing on the plus side for Buddha.
Sam: He is really, really good. Um,
Sam: at like taking it to conservatives and
Sam: tearing their cases apart like one of the things he's well known for is he is
Sam: one of the few people in the administration that regularly goes on fox news
Sam: and they bring him on fox news every time even though every time he goes on fox news,
Sam: he makes a really damn good case and the
Sam: people interviewing him are often left sort of speechless list of like uh uh
Sam: uh uh because like whatever they said he turned it right around on them and
Sam: ripped it apart and comes off looking good in in front of the fox news people
Sam: who usually don't even see those arguments he's very fast.
Ed: On his feet yeah.
Sam: He's very fast on his feet he can react in
Sam: real time he performs well in interviews um
Sam: and again sort of to lean in on the culture war thing yeah he's a gay guy he's
Sam: a gay guy with kids you know he's got a good well a family that looks great
Sam: on tv his husband is out there on a regular basis also like being supportive and making good,
Sam: interviews of his own you know campaigning everything like he is so if you want
Sam: to lean into to, yeah, we're the new America.
Sam: We're the coalition of the modern America, and the modern America includes gay people.
Sam: It includes gay married people with kids and a family.
Sam: And I know the whole right wing goes into seizures thinking about that.
Sam: Well, I shouldn't even say that. Not really. Not really.
Sam: Like the people in control of the party and the people who are writing like
Sam: Project 2025 and stuff want to roll back all this stuff.
Sam: But at this point, like support for things like gay marriage is almost universal
Sam: on the Democratic side, but it's a majority position even on the Republican side.
Ed: It's about 75, 80 percent nationwide.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's like taking the retrograde positions on this
Sam: isn't necessarily a winner,
Sam: as long as the Democrats can actually make a good positive case for it instead
Sam: of running away from it. Yeah.
Ed: Well, I think it's probably time that they do more of that instead of backing
Ed: off on these silly accusations.
Ed: Yeah, that's right. I do believe in gay marriage.
Ed: I do believe in gay citizenship and so on and so forth. What the hell?
Ed: Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?
Sam: Yeah lean into it oh and you are weird for not being for.
Ed: It yeah there you go.
Sam: You are a weirdo freak uh who needs to wake up who is spending too much time
Sam: thinking about what other people do in the bedroom yep you know why are you
Sam: why do you care you're the freak why do you care Nobody reasonable would care,
Sam: you know, it's anyway.
Sam: Um, okay.
Sam: I, I, I, I do want to hit the polling before we finish up.
Sam: So here, here's the fundamental thing on polling Kamala Kamala Harris is absolutely kicking ass.
Sam: Like, I will say once again, I said this at one point last week,
Sam: but I'll say it again here. I was wrong.
Sam: Like, I was completely wrong on this transition thing from Biden.
Sam: Now, I was worried about, like, some sort of battle instead of coming quickly to Harris.
Sam: Harris, but I fundamentally thought even if Harris came out,
Sam: first of all, I thought there'd be a messy transition. There was no messy transition.
Sam: It was like, boom, here you go.
Sam: But also I thought whoever took over from Biden would start out roughly at the
Sam: same place as Biden and maybe they'd be able to better prosecute the case than Biden,
Sam: but it would be a long, hard slog to sort of make up the lost ground and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: No, we are 12 days past Biden dropping out.
Sam: And Harris has taken the lead. You know, I mean, in the national polls as well,
Sam: the national polls either have her neck and neck or just barely in the lead,
Sam: depending on who you look at, what aggregator, whether they count polls that
Sam: have Kennedy in them or not, things like that.
Sam: But basically from national polling, it's now a dead heat.
Sam: Whereas, you know, right before Biden dropped out, he was behind by several
Sam: percent nationwide. wide.
Sam: And looking at all the swing states, I do election graphs.
Sam: And there were a few straggler Biden versus Trump polls that came in after he
Sam: dropped out, reflecting things before he dropped out.
Sam: In the end, my final averages for Biden versus Trump had the tipping point,
Sam: meaning the the margin in the state that would put the winner over the edge
Sam: at a 5% Trump lead in North Carolina with Pennsylvania being even further behind.
Sam: Biden was behind by 5.2% in Pennsylvania.
Sam: And, you know, meanwhile, at this point, like, and Harris, my averages for Harris
Sam: had her start out at like on that tipping point metric behind by about 2.9%.
Sam: Because it wasn't quite where Biden was, but also there weren't a lot of good polls in a lot of states.
Sam: So I figured it would sort of move up towards where Biden was and then maybe start getting better.
Sam: No, it started getting better instantly and it started getting better fast.
Sam: And there's basically been a step change in the polls.
Sam: My average moved over the course of the last 12 days, but if you look at it,
Sam: there's a Harris versus Trump polling before she became She became the actual
Sam: candidate and those had her about where Biden was.
Sam: But then as soon as she became the actual candidate instead of a hypothetical
Sam: candidate, boom, she was doing much, much better.
Sam: And so my averages for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
Sam: which are the three key states for any victory for the Democrats,
Sam: have all now moved to zero.
Sam: Harris leads, small Harris leads, very small Harris leads, 0.8 in Michigan,
Sam: 0.5 in Wisconsin, 0.4 in Pennsylvania.
Sam: But she's taken the lead in all three of those states. And also states that
Sam: were further out that looked like they might not be in contention in a Biden scenario,
Sam: Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina are now also all close.
Sam: They all still have Trump's lead, They all have Trump in the lead now,
Sam: but they're all close now. They were not close before.
Sam: And this has all happened in less than two weeks.
Sam: So I was wrong. Harris is instantly, instantly doing much better than Biden.
Sam: It's like, and you, and you hear like anecdotal things as well.
Sam: Like I've heard interviews with people who are like, yeah, I voted for Donald
Sam: Trump twice and I was kind of sick with sick of him, but there's no way I could
Sam: have voted for Biden, but I might vote for Harris.
Ed: I think she's going to pull in a lot of the people that were in the middle.
Sam: Oh yeah. That's why I'm really.
Ed: She's going to run very strong.
Sam: The quote double hater grouping that's been talked about, it seems like that
Sam: double hater group still hates Trump.
Sam: But it's pretty okay with Harris. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's all you need.
Sam: That's all you need to, to, to change this.
Ed: Um, he is, by the way, I understand in this straw poll they're doing,
Ed: he has already accumulated enough votes that she's got the number.
Sam: Oh yeah. Yeah. She, she, the, they, she had informally before the real vote
Sam: hit, like last, last week, she already had enough people who'd sort of pledged themselves to her.
Sam: But the, the, the, the, virtual
Sam: roll call is what they're calling it that started
Sam: and almost immediately as soon
Sam: as they started the damn thing she was over the top it's going
Sam: to be oh it's going to be unanimous i mean she she was
Sam: the only one who ended up being eligible no one else
Sam: ended up putting in their name so even
Sam: rfk jr not even rfk jr
Sam: not joe mansion not williamson i
Sam: i williamson may have wanted to but she didn't like
Sam: you had to get like a couple a few hundred delegates signing their
Sam: name saying they supported you and yeah right you
Sam: know so no so yes so
Sam: she's there and look this whole thing the energy behind it i mean you know we
Sam: talked last week about how good her first week of fundraising was her second
Sam: week was even better yeah like they just announced i think I think it was like $312 million in July,
Sam: something like that, compared to like $110 or $130 maybe for Trump.
Sam: So they're raking in the money. A lot of it is from first-time donors who have never done this before.
Sam: The excitement is palpable. I've heard anecdotal things as well from...
Sam: Younger people who are in their first or second presidential elections that
Sam: they're voting for, who were really completely unenthused about the Biden versus Trump choice.
Sam: And maybe we're going to vote, but we're really thinking that they would just sit it out.
Sam: Like, there's no way I'll vote for either of those people who are now excited
Sam: about Harris, you know, who are posting things online with like the coconut
Sam: tree meme and things like that.
Sam: Um, and there's, and there are tons of these people signing up as volunteers as well.
Sam: There's just the level of excitement is insane.
Sam: If she doesn't make a bad choice on the VP that pops that excitement in some
Sam: way, you know, there's just, you know, the enthusiasm gap is going to be huge.
Sam: Like we, we had the situation when it was Biden versus Trump that neither side
Sam: was really enthusiastic. Now we have one side that is.
Sam: And if this ends up being just a turnout election where you're not really convincing
Sam: a lot of people, but it's a question of who actually bothers to vote,
Sam: the enthusiastic side wins.
Sam: Yeah now on top of that i think they are convincing some folks like i said there
Sam: are these these double haters seem to be coming to the harris side and there seem to be some.
Sam: Disillusioned republicans who were never ever ever going to vote for biden who
Sam: are at least giving harris a serious look and that that changes everything and
Sam: i don't know like i you know on On electiongraphs.com,
Sam: and I'm not going to make any promises.
Sam: I was thinking of doing another election graphs blog post this weekend,
Sam: even though I did one last weekend, just because Harris took the lead.
Sam: That's a big news thing to say. But if you compare to 2016 and 2020,
Sam: she is still way, way, way behind where Biden was in 2020 and where Clinton was in 2016.
Sam: And we all remember that in 2020, it ended up being super close. And in 2016, Trump won.
Sam: And right now, you know, according to my tipping point right now,
Sam: right now the tipping point is Harris ahead by 0.04%.
Sam: At this same time, in the same number of days, 98 days before the election as
Sam: we're recording this, or actually, wait, no, we're 95 days before the election.
Sam: 95 days before the election, 94 in a fraction. We have Harris ahead by 0.04%.
Sam: But Biden was ahead by 4.6% and it was super close.
Sam: And Clinton was ahead by 3.2% and she lost.
Sam: So like, it is not time to get complacent. Now, I don't know that she- Well.
Ed: You've said numerous times that the Democrat needs about a 4% to 5% lead in
Ed: order to win the election because how the electoral college falls.
Sam: I think you're right. Yeah, well, just on an individual state basis,
Sam: the way I do my projections is looking at how the averages have differed from
Sam: the actual results over the last few election cycles.
Sam: And if you average all that out, to even have a 50-50 shot of winning,
Sam: I believe the number, and I should look this up, but I'm not going to,
Sam: I'm going by memory, was about 1.2%.
Ed: Oh, I thought it was more than that.
Sam: Well, the Democrats have to be ahead in the polling average for a state by 1.2%
Sam: to have a 50-50 shot of winning.
Sam: So to what you are saying, to actually feel confident of winning,
Sam: they need to be ahead by even more.
Sam: Like all of these states where you're 2%, 3% ahead, yeah, you're favored,
Sam: but you should not feel at all confident.
Sam: There's a decent chance you could still lose. like famously
Sam: there was one state that like
Sam: clinton was ahead by like eight
Sam: nine percent and she's still lost yeah like
Sam: so the the poll averages were you know way off and i'm i should look up exactly
Sam: how far ahead let me check that you know i like to get my facts correct,
Sam: it was wisconsin she was
Sam: ahead by 7.1 percent in wisconsin
Sam: and still lost the state that was in
Sam: the final poll average that i had for this for wisconsin but so you know i i
Sam: don't i i am very very grateful that harris is now ahead instead of behind that's
Sam: great progress but i I won't feel confident until she's not just a head,
Sam: but a head by a lot.
Ed: Yeah.
Sam: Now, now having said that, which we may or may not get,
Sam: At the moment, I am not yet convinced that she's leveled out yet.
Sam: Like, we are still at the point that practically every new batch of polls shows
Sam: her doing better than the previous batch of polls.
Sam: And I don't think Donald Trump has been helping himself these last couple weeks either.
Sam: And we've got the Democratic Convention coming up very soon as well.
Sam: So I feel like, you know, maybe it's wishful thinking here. But I feel like
Sam: her momentum has not yet slowed. I agree with that.
Sam: At some point, it probably will. You know, we do not live in a country where
Sam: we're going to have polling showing her, you know, winning 70-30 or something.
Sam: That that's we're not going to have you know
Sam: this country is no longer structured in such a way at least for now where either
Sam: party can have like ronald reagan's style landslides where you win every state
Sam: except one or whatever that's it no nothing like that is going to happen it's going
Sam: to be a close election but i think
Sam: like i anticipate that
Sam: she will before things level off and start
Sam: just bouncing around normally i think
Sam: she's going to still improve a little bit from where she is at some point it
Sam: will level off like this initial honeymoon isn't going to last all the way to
Sam: the election but i think she's still in her bounce i you know who knows i could
Sam: be wrong could talk to you like a week from now and Trump's taking the lead again.
Sam: But I feel like she's still got room to grow.
Sam: Where clearly Biden was struggling and, you know, and people like getting behind
Sam: a winner too. And right now she looks like a winner.
Sam: Yep. She's young. She's enthusiastic.
Sam: She's got, it's not just her campaign. Her herself like is exuding positive energy.
Sam: And that's another part of it. Like the whole Donald Trump campaign is about
Sam: grievances and negativity and being upset and mad.
Sam: Bad like kamala harris seems joyful yeah you know and positive and you know
Sam: there's an appeal to that wasn't you know even though even among the sort of
Sam: grumpy middle like you know was.
Ed: It hubert humphrey they called the happy warrior.
Sam: I don't know that was before my time i know i know you're You've been up there, but.
Ed: I can't remember. It's been so long. I can't remember if I voted for him or
Ed: not, but he was a very likable guy and he was always happy to engage in battles. He was always a smile.
Sam: No, like mood makes a difference. And, and, you know, on the,
Sam: you're back to weird stuff.
Sam: I mean, George W. Bush on Donald Trump's inaugural, in his inauguration,
Sam: when he gave his inaugural speech, George W.
Sam: Bush, after it leaned over to Hillary Clinton and said, that was some weird shit. Yep.
Sam: Think, you know, you don't need to gaslight people. by saying that there are
Sam: no problems. I'm not suggesting that at all. There are lots of problems and
Sam: we need to make them better.
Sam: But coming in with that positive, excited mood that's optimistic for the future,
Sam: I mean, that's the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama formula for big democratic victories.
Ed: Yeah, absolutely.
Sam: You know, and that's, you know, Biden won based on a, you got to stop Trump
Sam: message and he managed But that's the other big change is that this,
Sam: like when it was Biden versus Trump,
Sam: it was all about you have to stop Trump.
Sam: There was a little bit Biden was trying to say about his accomplishments,
Sam: but there wasn't a lot about Biden's positive vision or what was good about
Sam: Biden with Harris versus Trump.
Sam: Yeah. With Harris versus Trump, the mood, like the vibe you get from all of
Sam: this is it's not all about, she's not Trump.
Sam: There is lots and lots and lots of excitement around Kamala Harris herself and
Sam: that people are excited about her.
Sam: It's not just a, we have to stop Trump and that It changes the mood entirely.
Sam: And I think that's shown up in the polling, even in 12 days.
Sam: I think you're going to get more of it.
Sam: I don't know how much more you can get, but you can get more.
Sam: Whereas I think that Trump has been bouncing along his ceiling.
Sam: Like Trump's not going to get more support. Like it's a question of turning
Sam: out the people who already like him or, or who are already have a mild preference for him.
Sam: But I think the mild preference people are the ones that are looking at Harris.
Sam: You know, Trump, Trump was, and Trump wasn't even trying like with his, with his JD Vance pick.
Sam: He wasn't trying to bring in anybody who didn't already like him.
Ed: No, no.
Sam: And he make, he makes almost no attempt at it. He's, he's preaching to the people who already like him.
Sam: And his, his gamble was that would be enough because the Democrats are demoralized
Sam: and they're not going to turn out for Joe Biden.
Sam: Well, guess what? We're in a different world now. And we'll see.
Sam: In terms of my back to election graphs for just a second, I have these four probabilistic models.
Sam: Two of them are if the election was today, which it is not.
Sam: Those were my old models. I now have my preferred models that take into account
Sam: the amount of time left before the election. And then I have one that assumes
Sam: like the polling errors are going to be completely independent and all the States.
Sam: So like if the polling is off in Nebraska, it's going to, it can be off in a
Sam: completely different way in Virginia.
Sam: And I guess Nebraska may not be the best example, like, but in Nebraska,
Sam: The other one assumes that the errors are all very highly correlated.
Sam: It actually assumes they're perfectly correlated.
Sam: So if there's a polling error in one place, you're going to have the same kind of error everywhere.
Sam: Now, neither one of those two extremes are true,
Sam: but I've become more and more convinced over the last couple of years that the
Sam: uniform swing one where the errors are the same everywhere is closer to true,
Sam: at least in the states that matter.
Sam: And the reason is, it's the same small group of pollsters polling over and over
Sam: and over again, especially in the swing states.
Sam: Some of the states that are way out there, like if somebody polls Wyoming.
Sam: It might be a Wyoming-only specialist who's polling a local congressional race
Sam: and polls the presidential race while they're at it at something,
Sam: and they may have their own issues.
Sam: But for almost all the swing states, you've got the same relatively small group
Sam: of pollsters polling over and over and over again.
Sam: And so if they have a methodology issue, they're going to be wrong in the same
Sam: way in Wisconsin as they are in Pennsylvania. Yeah.
Sam: And so I've become convinced that the uniform swing one is probably closer to the truth.
Sam: So having said that, the range between those two models for the ones that allows time for the election,
Sam: I'm not even going to look at if the election was today, but the range right
Sam: now is from 13.9% win for Harris in the independent states view to 43% in the uniform swing view.
Sam: And I think the uniform swing view is closer to the truth. If you want to say
Sam: it's not quite there, maybe put it at 40 instead.
Sam: And so you're really looking right now at a 40-60 race.
Sam: So it's really close to a coin toss, but with Trump slightly favored.
Sam: And the reason I am still slightly favoring Trump right now is what we were talking about before.
Sam: Over the last few presidential elections, the polls in the close states have
Sam: tended to underestimate the Republicans by a couple percent.
Sam: And right now, Harris's margin in the close states that matter is like less than a percent.
Sam: So that's why it's like, okay, if the polls are wrong in the same way they've
Sam: tended to be wrong, those polls that say she's ahead like by half a percent,
Sam: probably actually mean Trump's ahead by half a percent or something.
Sam: Either way, it's really close. We're close to a toss-up at this point.
Sam: So I want her to continue strengthening a little bit more.
Sam: But because, you know...
Sam: We expected a nail-biter this year, but I would much rather we get to the end
Sam: of October, beginning of November, with Harris having a fairly substantial lead,
Sam: please, not a nail-biter.
Sam: But I wouldn't be surprised if we have a nail-biter.
Sam: And we've been talking on the Commodions Corner Slack a bit.
Sam: Bob brought up some articles recently about how there are a whole bunch of Republican
Sam: election officials in a whole bunch
Sam: of swing states who are essentially promising not to certify results,
Sam: um, which could cause mischief.
Sam: That mischief matters if it's close. If it's not close, then maybe you don't
Sam: have to worry about that now.
Sam: And I also said, of course, this all depends like if the polls are off in the
Sam: same kind of way they were off the last few election cycles,
Sam: they may well be off in the other direction. Yeah.
Sam: In which case the Democrats are doing even better than we think.
Sam: And the reasons to think that, that might be the case.
Sam: I'm not going to assume it. I'm going to continue assuming that the polls are
Sam: going to be off in the same kind of way as they were that last few elections.
Sam: But all of these pollsters who got it really, really wrong in 2016 and 2020,
Sam: there's no way they didn't modify their methods to try to fix that error.
Sam: And maybe they overcompensated. That's one.
Sam: And two is on all of these, you know, special elections since the midterm,
Sam: the Democrats have been overperforming polls.
Sam: Yeah. So maybe they are here too. So we'll see. We'll see. Okay.
Sam: Any last thoughts, Ed? No, I think that- It's time to wrap things up.
Ed: Yep. Yep.
Sam: Okay. Well, time for the things at the end.
Sam: Go to election graphs. No, not election graphs. Got elections on my mind.
Sam: Yeah. Go to election graphs too, but go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You'll find all the ways to contact us.
Sam: You'll find our archives, you know, all that kind of fun stuff.
Sam: You will not yet find a link to our YouTube.
Sam: I mentioned we've for the last month or so, we've been live streaming all of these episodes.
Sam: According to my dashboard, there's been one person who's actually been watching
Sam: for nearly the entire show, Ed.
Sam: Really? So I don't know. I don't know who you are or if you're real or whether
Sam: you're just an artifact of me having checked the stream at the beginning of
Sam: the show and forgot to turn it off or something.
Sam: So maybe it's me. Maybe it's me who's watching. But if it's somebody else,
Sam: thank you for watching the live stream.
Sam: Just a second, Ed. If anybody does want to see it, youtube.com and then you
Sam: can search for curmudgeons corner.
Sam: But if you do that, there's like three curmudgeons corner. You have to find
Sam: the one that's actually us.
Sam: Or it's youtube.com slash at curmudgeons hyphen corner.
Sam: And then you'll find us and subscribe and click the little bell icon for notifications.
Sam: Then you'll get an alert when we go live. Okay, Ed, yes, yes.
Ed: I was going to say, whoever that is that's watching needs to be told that I am wearing shorts.
Ed: Because you keep seeing my bare leg there. I do have shorts on.
Ed: I'm not like in a virtual office. I'm dressed.
Sam: That's right.
Ed: It's over 80 degrees in this room, so I'm wearing minimal clothing.
Sam: And that is true. If you watch the live stream, unlike the podcast,
Sam: you can actually see us while we talk.
Sam: Of course, it's also like, you know, on the podcast, I have tools that automatically
Sam: eliminate ums and ahs and times where we pause and things like that.
Sam: If you're watching live, of course, you get all that.
Sam: So like if you're a fan of ums and ahs, you should watch the live stream.
Sam: You know, or long pauses where we stare at each other while we're thinking about
Sam: what to say next, you know, any of that stuff.
Sam: And also of course, on the site, you will find a link to our Patreon where you
Sam: can donate money to the cause of this great and wonderful podcast at various levels.
Sam: There, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell.
Sam: We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that sort of fun stuff.
Sam: And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, We will invite you to the
Sam: Commodions Corner Slack where Yvonne, myself,
Sam: Ed, and others are just hanging out through the week, sharing links, talking about the news,
Sam: doing all that sort of fun stuff, having great discussions, sharing cool links,
Sam: both on politics and this kind of serious news and also on tech and fun stuff
Sam: and all of that kind of thing.
Sam: So it's a lot of fun. The more the merrier. Please join us.
Sam: And let's see, Ed, do you have something from the Slack you want to highlight
Sam: or should I find something?
Ed: Oh, I was just going to point out that, oops, I had it here,
Ed: that you posted earlier this week a scientific study finding out which paper
Ed: is the worst for paper cuts.
Ed: And it turns out that it's the dot matrix printers.
Ed: Yep. Now, I have two questions. Number one, why would they study that?
Ed: Number two, who's using dot matrix printers in this day and age?
Sam: You know, they're very, very rare. Like, I think you'd have to hunt for them.
Sam: I think there might be certain businesses that still use them for something
Sam: that for one reason or another haven't updated and are on really old systems still.
Sam: I don't know. Like, you know, the last few times I've heard people talk about
Sam: them, it's been as a novelty or as like, you know, or, you know,
Sam: one of these aficionados of obsolete equipment or something.
Sam: But, you know, now why you would study it. Well, because it's interesting, right?
Sam: They tested all kinds of different kinds of paper and figured out, like,
Sam: which thickness of paper would most effectively cut you and what angle of incidence
Sam: between the paper and your flesh would most effectively cut as well.
Sam: Because if the paper is too thin, it doesn't cut well.
Sam: If it's too thick, it just sort of bends and pushes on you instead of cutting.
Sam: So there's a sweet spot right in the middle where, well, I don't know if it
Sam: was right in the middle, but there's a sweet spot somewhere in that range that, that cuts really well.
Sam: And apparently it's the thickness that old dot matrix printer paper used to
Sam: be, but I'll, I'll tell you like a couple of days ago.
Sam: I cut myself, not on a piece of paper. I cut myself on my laptop,
Sam: on my work laptop specifically.
Sam: And I'm like, how did I do that? I didn't even know it had a sharp surface.
Sam: But I picked up my work laptop and all of a sudden my knuckle was bloody.
Ed: Yikes.
Sam: And I went and put a Band-Aid on it. It's fine. It's not like I needed stitches
Sam: or to go to a hospital or something. But I cut myself on my laptop.
Sam: I can guarantee you my laptop was not the thickness of a dot matrix piece of paper.
Sam: Not even close. I'm sure not. You know, and I know there used to be those Apple
Sam: commercials with the laptop that fit in the envelope.
Sam: Like, this wasn't even a laptop that would fit in an envelope. It was bigger than that.
Sam: So, anyway, but I don't know. I've paper cut myself many times in the past.
Sam: I'm sure I will do it again.
Sam: I am not going to go out and intentionally buy the kind of paper that does the worst cuts though.
Sam: No, no, I might.
Ed: I generally, when I buy paper for my printers, I generally find out which is
Ed: the cheapest and that's the, what I get.
Sam: Well, you know, I honestly, I print stuff so rarely these days.
Sam: Like the, the one printer in my house is it in my wife's home office because
Sam: she uses it more than I do. She uses it to print some stuff related to her campaign
Sam: and things like that. And fine.
Sam: But like, it is so, so rare.
Sam: I mean, at this point, I think,
Sam: like once every three or four months i'll print some stuff out that's all like so it's just rare,
Sam: and uh occasionally i'll need like i'll want to hand write something because
Sam: i want to i want to i don't know take some notes or do a scratch calculation
Sam: or something i can never even find
Sam: a piece of paper so i end up doing my doing it on my computer i get it.
Ed: Out of my printer.
Sam: Well like when i really have had
Sam: to do that i've gone downstairs and pulled something out
Sam: of my wife's printer because i don't have one anymore and i don't have a supply of
Sam: paper in my office like i'll look around and i'll
Sam: find there is paper in my office don't get me wrong
Sam: but it's all none of it's blank paper it's all
Sam: paper with stuff on it so anyway but but like you know and by the way the way
Sam: they did this study they did not use actual hands they used They used fake hands
Sam: made of gelatin that has the same consistency as human flesh. I see.
Ed: Because that picture looks like blood.
Sam: Well, they probably did a picture of a real paper cut or at least a fake real paper cut.
Sam: But for their study, they used artificial skin.
Ed: Fingers. Okay.
Sam: Well, that's good. The other way to do it would have been like,
Sam: I presume this research was done at a college of some sort.
Sam: They could have done the thing where, you know, hey, we need students for a research study.
Sam: We'll pay you five bucks for the study. Oh, what's the study going to be?
Sam: Oh, we're going to slice you open with paper.
Sam: So okay that's his life yep such as
Sam: life well thank you for joining us yet again ed it's
Sam: always good to have you and continue your
Sam: recovery please get well soon uh get the exercise you need to get and all of
Sam: that kind of stuff and we'll you know next week you know next week we're going
Sam: to have another co-host i don't know who's going to be on with me next week
Sam: or you know if If nobody steps up, I will be on my own.
Sam: If you are interested in co-hosting and you have not been one of the last few
Sam: people to co-host, drop me a line at curmudgeons-corner.com has all the ways you can contact me.
Sam: Most of you who might be interested are going to be on an email I send out asking
Sam: for potential co-hosts anyway.
Sam: Anyway, but if you are not, if you are just a listener and have are just interested, drop me a line.
Sam: I may not put you on as co-host right away the first week if we haven't gotten
Sam: to know each other at least a little bit yet.
Sam: But reach out, get in touch. We can get you on the curmudgeon's corner slack.
Sam: You can start participating.
Sam: And then maybe after a while you can be on the show. I don't know.
Sam: Anyway, that's it. Thank you, Ed and Yvonne. I hope you are having fun, whatever you are doing.
Sam: And hey, everybody, stay safe. Have a good week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
Ed: Goodbye.