WEBVTT 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:01.230 Hello, Ed. 00:00:01.930 --> 00:00:07.230 Uh-oh. Oh, I know, just a second. Okay. I have to turn on my headphone. 00:00:07.690 --> 00:00:11.650 Ah, yes. Okay. How you doing? 00:00:12.170 --> 00:00:15.950 I am doing great. Much better than I was a couple weeks ago. 00:00:17.150 --> 00:00:22.650 Good. Now, we're live streaming on video now, so point that at your face so we can see you. 00:00:24.550 --> 00:00:29.210 I gotta move that a little bit more than it will be. You want to see my shirt, too? 00:00:30.070 --> 00:00:31.590 Sure. Oh, yes. 00:00:33.690 --> 00:00:37.810 You may shock your regular participants. 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:42.270 Okay. So are we ready to go? 00:00:42.570 --> 00:00:43.690 I think I am. 00:00:44.630 --> 00:00:49.470 Okay. Let me, a quick note. Okay, here we go. 00:01:09.050 --> 00:01:14.550 Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 3rd, 2024. 00:01:15.230 --> 00:01:20.610 It's just after 1 UTC as we're starting to record. I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bo is not here. 00:01:21.170 --> 00:01:27.930 A few days ago, he let us know that he was going to be doing stuff and traveling. 00:01:27.930 --> 00:01:29.770 I think it's his kid's birthday. 00:01:30.250 --> 00:01:35.330 His note about it just said he, but I'm just assuming he means his son, 00:01:35.410 --> 00:01:40.730 but he didn't actually say that, but I, I think that's what's going on. 00:01:40.830 --> 00:01:44.170 So he's, he's traveling a bit. His son has a birthday. 00:01:44.330 --> 00:01:48.790 They're doing stuff and he is out not only this week, but also next week. 00:01:48.930 --> 00:01:55.270 And for this week we have ad hello, ad welcome back to, yeah, 00:01:55.370 --> 00:01:56.790 welcome back to curmudgeon's corner. 00:01:57.350 --> 00:02:01.230 Let's see, when was your last time? I've got to check this. 00:02:02.190 --> 00:02:03.750 I'm going to guess sometime in May. 00:02:04.880 --> 00:02:07.040 Close. April 13th. 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:09.300 Oh, well, only off by a month. 00:02:09.580 --> 00:02:13.520 Yeah. So pretty, pretty good. And so, yeah. 00:02:13.640 --> 00:02:22.400 So here we are. And as usual, when we have a guest, most of the agenda will be from Ed. 00:02:22.600 --> 00:02:28.340 Now he just told me before we started, he wants to talk about child tax credits, 00:02:28.580 --> 00:02:32.540 tariffs, and the recent prisoner exchange with Russia. 00:02:32.660 --> 00:02:36.600 So we're going to cover those. But given we're like right smack in the middle 00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:41.600 of presidential season, Ed was like, we've talked a lot about Biden lately. 00:02:41.720 --> 00:02:47.000 Let's talk about something else. But I will not be able to resist talking a 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:48.580 little bit about the presidential race. 00:02:48.740 --> 00:02:58.700 We got some stuff going on with how well Kamala Harris is doing in the polls and also the. 00:02:59.460 --> 00:03:03.660 The veep stakes, the whole who will end up being her vice presidential candidate 00:03:03.660 --> 00:03:06.000 has had some additional developments. 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:12.440 But by the time most people listen to this, it will very likely be known already. 00:03:12.700 --> 00:03:16.460 Like I intend to get this out relatively quickly, like on Saturday or something. 00:03:16.940 --> 00:03:21.640 But Harris has said she'll announce the vice president by Monday. 00:03:21.780 --> 00:03:26.540 So if you are not listening right on time, as soon as I get this out, 00:03:26.620 --> 00:03:28.460 you may already know. There are already rumors. 00:03:28.700 --> 00:03:32.660 That it's already a done deal. But anyway, we'll talk about that stuff. 00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:38.960 But as usual, we will also do a little bit of non-newsy political stuff. 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:45.920 Not political, non-newsy, non-political stuff here at the beginning of the show. 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:49.900 I have a movie, and Ed, I don't know if you got, do you have anything in the 00:03:49.900 --> 00:03:53.960 fun stuff category for the beginning, or just news? 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:58.280 Not news. Things that aren't news, or at least not news. 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:01.680 The only movie I've seen lately was pretty bad. 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:06.160 It was something called Long Legs, and advertised as a horror movie, 00:04:06.300 --> 00:04:09.320 and it was disturbing, I would say, more than horror. 00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:14.120 Okay so the only other things happened is since the last time i was on here 00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:22.000 i had a fairly vigorous health scare which i developed a condition called pericarditis in which the, 00:04:22.660 --> 00:04:26.660 pericardium the sack that surrounds your heart becomes inflamed and it fills 00:04:26.660 --> 00:04:30.660 up with fluid and begins suppressing the heart so your heart can't work very 00:04:30.660 --> 00:04:35.900 well i ended up in the hospital three times and having to have a procedure where 00:04:35.900 --> 00:04:40.280 they put a little drainage tube into the pericardium I'm, I'm much better now, 00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:44.220 but I am, it's a, it's going to be, it's going to be a very hard recovery because 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:48.820 I need to start doing a lot more walking and the temperature is 90 to 95 every day. 00:04:48.880 --> 00:04:53.460 So I'm, I am not pushing at age 82 for the walking outdoors too much, 00:04:53.500 --> 00:04:55.800 but I'm getting better. I really feel better. 00:04:56.440 --> 00:05:00.460 Well, I'm glad you had shared a little bit of that on our Commodions Corner 00:05:00.460 --> 00:05:05.460 Slack, and we are very happy that you are feeling better. So good. 00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:12.580 Yeah. And I could put in a plug for a drug that was first discovered somewhere 00:05:12.580 --> 00:05:17.700 around 2000 B.C., which is now the drug of choice for pericarditis. 00:05:17.980 --> 00:05:22.080 I was laying in the hospital hurting all over like you do when you have a real 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:24.180 bad flu, running a temp of 101. 00:05:24.780 --> 00:05:27.920 And they came in, they gave me my first dose of that by mouth. 00:05:28.180 --> 00:05:32.120 And an hour later, my temperature was normal. The aching was all gone. 00:05:32.420 --> 00:05:35.700 My heart was still being pressed and compromised. compromise, 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:40.700 but I immediately, as like someone threw a switch, I felt better. It was incredible. 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.260 If you ever get pericarditis, tell me you want colchicine right away. 00:05:46.030 --> 00:05:52.950 I, you know, I can tell you right now, if, and when I do, I'm not going to remember that. 00:05:54.870 --> 00:05:58.830 Think of it, think of it as gout. This is the drug of choice for gout. 00:05:59.270 --> 00:06:00.110 Oh, okay. 00:06:02.810 --> 00:06:06.570 Anyway, glad you're feeling good, a lot better. So that movie, 00:06:06.710 --> 00:06:10.290 it was long legs again. I take it. That's a thumbs down from you for long legs. 00:06:10.330 --> 00:06:15.770 I would say it was a thumbs down. It was It wasn't as bad as a movie that I 00:06:15.770 --> 00:06:23.270 just saw this week as rated as one of the best horror movies of the past hundred years. 00:06:23.590 --> 00:06:27.090 That was this Blair Witch Project, and it got a number one rating. 00:06:27.290 --> 00:06:31.050 You have complained about Blair Witch on this podcast before, 00:06:31.170 --> 00:06:32.330 and you went and saw it again? 00:06:32.890 --> 00:06:38.810 No, I didn't. Oh, it wasn't as bad. They rated it and saying it was one of the best. 00:06:39.170 --> 00:06:45.450 It's the only movie that I have ever walked out of. it was just terrible but anyway they loved it. 00:06:45.450 --> 00:06:49.790 Okay okay yeah we 00:06:49.790 --> 00:06:54.170 we've talked about uh blair witch on the show before i found i found it okay 00:06:54.170 --> 00:07:00.170 you hated it so there we go and i have now added long legs to my list despite 00:07:00.170 --> 00:07:07.370 your negative review um and we'll see if it ever comes up okay it has nicholas. 00:07:07.370 --> 00:07:08.030 Cage in it. 00:07:08.030 --> 00:07:09.670 Which is kind. 00:07:09.670 --> 00:07:11.390 Of interesting you. 00:07:11.390 --> 00:07:14.270 Know he's fine but like you know 00:07:14.270 --> 00:07:17.010 i i i don't i'm not 00:07:17.010 --> 00:07:19.890 like a particular fan it's like okay it's got nicholas 00:07:19.890 --> 00:07:25.770 cage it's not like something that's gonna weigh on me one way or the other as 00:07:25.770 --> 00:07:33.190 like i want to see this or i don't you know it's just yeah okay fine okay my 00:07:33.190 --> 00:07:37.270 movie one flew over the cuckoo's nest from 1975, 00:07:38.450 --> 00:07:41.990 have you i take it from your reaction you have seen this i. 00:07:41.990 --> 00:07:43.350 Have not seen it i read the book. 00:07:43.350 --> 00:07:47.850 Oh you've read the book okay i've never seen the movie well how was the book 00:07:47.850 --> 00:07:49.290 tell us about the book it's. 00:07:49.290 --> 00:07:53.430 Been a long time but i recall it was it was a fascinating book it was a good read. 00:07:53.430 --> 00:07:58.390 Well worth it well the movie for any I'm gonna, 00:07:59.590 --> 00:08:02.790 I'm torn between sideways and up. 00:08:03.030 --> 00:08:07.430 So that tells you a little bit where it is in the end. 00:08:07.630 --> 00:08:11.290 I guess I'll give it an up. It was a good movie. 00:08:12.210 --> 00:08:15.670 Basically for those who don't know the basic beats, 00:08:15.850 --> 00:08:20.310 it's about a criminal who pretends 00:08:20.310 --> 00:08:23.230 to be insane so that he can be transferred out of 00:08:23.230 --> 00:08:27.090 the prison where he was about to have to do hard labor into 00:08:27.090 --> 00:08:29.990 a mental ward and it's about his 00:08:29.990 --> 00:08:34.210 adventures there with a bunch of other patients and 00:08:34.210 --> 00:08:40.470 he's basically a troublemaker and there's a you know authoritarian type figure 00:08:40.470 --> 00:08:48.110 miss nurse ratchet or who you know keeps control over the ward and he sort of 00:08:48.110 --> 00:08:52.790 disrupts that and causes all kinds of chaos and And things happen. 00:08:53.930 --> 00:08:57.310 And it's Jack Nicholson as the main character. 00:08:58.230 --> 00:09:03.030 And he's good. Jack Nicholson is always good at these things. 00:09:03.130 --> 00:09:07.410 And he especially is good at playing crazy people. 00:09:07.870 --> 00:09:12.090 In this case, it's someone pretending to be crazy. But either way, 00:09:12.370 --> 00:09:18.390 Jack Nicholson is really good at that. And, you know, the, the, 00:09:18.490 --> 00:09:21.170 I had not seen the movie before I'd heard of it. 00:09:21.190 --> 00:09:25.690 I knew some very high level things about it, but I didn't know any of the detailed 00:09:25.690 --> 00:09:28.210 plot points. I didn't know how it ended. 00:09:28.470 --> 00:09:31.610 You know, there, there are a few portions of it that are disturbing. 00:09:32.630 --> 00:09:35.410 The ending is disturbing without giving it away. 00:09:35.550 --> 00:09:42.610 The ending is disturbing, but it keeps your attention. it makes you think and 00:09:42.610 --> 00:09:49.570 it's well done, it's really well done and it won it won all favorites. 00:09:50.880 --> 00:09:55.240 It won all five major Academy awards, best picture, best actor, 00:09:55.340 --> 00:09:58.060 best actress, director, and screenplay. 00:09:58.740 --> 00:10:04.400 And so, and I was watching it because it was on the, the a hundred years, a hundred movies list. 00:10:04.820 --> 00:10:10.220 Let's see. It was as check for check for accuracy. Where was it on the list? 00:10:11.380 --> 00:10:16.940 One flew over the cuckoo's nest in the 1998 version of the list, 00:10:16.980 --> 00:10:17.980 which is the one I'm using. 00:10:17.980 --> 00:10:20.860 It was number 20 it's apparently dropped to 00:10:20.860 --> 00:10:24.880 number 33 in their 2007 ranking but 00:10:24.880 --> 00:10:27.840 i good movie again it's 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:30.820 not one of those like happy jumpy like 00:10:30.820 --> 00:10:35.420 you're just in there having a fun ride movie it's it's a more serious movie 00:10:35.420 --> 00:10:41.300 than that even though there's some comedic moments but it was good good there 00:10:41.300 --> 00:10:46.960 you go any other thoughts on uh sort of the fun stuff before we take a break 00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:49.340 and get back to news and politics. 00:10:49.340 --> 00:10:53.640 No i think that pretty much covers up for me anyway. 00:10:53.640 --> 00:10:56.560 Okay so with that 00:10:56.560 --> 00:10:59.940 then we will take our first break and then 00:10:59.940 --> 00:11:04.280 the first segment will be all the stuff ed wanted to talk about and then the 00:11:04.280 --> 00:11:08.540 second segment will be all the stuff i want to talk about and that'll be a show 00:11:08.540 --> 00:11:16.140 so here we go and appropriately well not because we won't talk about till the 00:11:16.140 --> 00:11:19.820 next one but But the first break is the Election Graphs break. Here we go. 00:11:23.300 --> 00:11:27.780 Do you want to understand what is really going on with the presidential election cycle? 00:11:28.320 --> 00:11:32.100 Then go to electiongraphs.com right away. 00:11:33.040 --> 00:11:37.220 There you'll find charts and graphs covering the nomination processes in both 00:11:37.220 --> 00:11:40.880 parties and the general election race for electoral college votes. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:46.500 For the delegate races, we track not just delegate totals, but also the ever-important 00:11:46.500 --> 00:11:51.580 analysis of how each candidate has to do with the remaining delegates in order to actually win. 00:11:51.880 --> 00:11:56.340 For the Electoral College, we track state-by-state poll averages to categorize 00:11:56.340 --> 00:12:00.620 which states are actually in play and which are not in order to show you the 00:12:00.620 --> 00:12:04.800 range of likely electoral results and how that changes over time. 00:12:05.760 --> 00:12:09.720 Sure, you can get some of this stuff elsewhere, but not in exactly the same 00:12:09.720 --> 00:12:13.780 way. and not from me, Sam, your prime curmudgeon. 00:12:13.860 --> 00:12:20.320 I think my election trackers are better than the rest, so come look at mine, electiongraphs.com. 00:12:23.380 --> 00:12:30.580 Okay, so we are back. Now, Ed, let's start with the prisoner exchange stuff, 00:12:30.760 --> 00:12:36.060 and then we can end up with the tax credits because that'll transition Right 00:12:36.060 --> 00:12:38.540 into the veep steak stuff that I want to talk about. 00:12:38.620 --> 00:12:47.180 So we had the quote unquote biggest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War. 00:12:47.560 --> 00:12:53.440 The U.S. and our Western allies let loose a bunch of Russian criminals of various 00:12:53.440 --> 00:12:59.140 sorts that basically were talking spies and assassins and folks like that. 00:12:59.140 --> 00:13:07.940 And the Russians released a bunch of folks that the West describes them anyway 00:13:07.940 --> 00:13:10.780 as unjustly detained people, 00:13:10.980 --> 00:13:16.160 either on trumped up charges or really minor things that were blown up. 00:13:16.160 --> 00:13:21.080 But basically, journalists and businessmen and on the Russian side, 00:13:21.420 --> 00:13:28.300 dissidents who were basically anti-Putin agitators within Russia. 00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:32.020 And that's the high level outline of the deal. Apparently, they'd been working 00:13:32.020 --> 00:13:34.020 on this for a long, long time. 00:13:34.180 --> 00:13:36.680 And it finally came together this week. 00:13:36.960 --> 00:13:40.920 And the trade happened. So what do you want to add to that, Ed? 00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:46.240 Well, a couple of the interesting things, one of which is that this deal apparently 00:13:46.240 --> 00:13:52.900 was almost completed back in February-March range and included the person, 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:56.640 the assassin that was in prison in Germany, 00:13:56.720 --> 00:13:59.540 was to be exchanged for Navalny. 00:13:59.700 --> 00:14:00.260 Right. 00:14:00.420 --> 00:14:05.720 And then Navalny suddenly died, and that sort of threw a monkey wrench in the 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:11.120 whole thing. And most people expected that it might not occur because that was 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:12.820 a key to the whole exchange. 00:14:13.340 --> 00:14:18.160 What happened, and I can't know if this is absolutely true or not, 00:14:18.260 --> 00:14:24.140 but in the press, what I've seen reported is that Biden personally called the 00:14:24.140 --> 00:14:28.640 chancellor of Germany and explained how important it was to get this trade done. 00:14:28.760 --> 00:14:34.520 And would he make the exchange even though he wasn't going to have Navalny free? 00:14:34.520 --> 00:14:40.580 And he is quoted as having said, I would not have done that for anybody but Mr. Biden. 00:14:40.700 --> 00:14:45.860 I have that much respect for him. That sort of blew me away considering everything we've been reading. 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:52.300 The quote he apparently told Biden directly was, I'll do it for you. 00:14:52.680 --> 00:14:53.160 Yeah. 00:14:54.100 --> 00:15:00.380 And what people have pointed out too is that, yeah, he said he'd do it for him 00:15:00.380 --> 00:15:04.520 as in Joe Biden, but also all of these deals. 00:15:04.660 --> 00:15:10.820 Cause like it wasn't just Germany, Slovenia and I forget which other countries, 00:15:10.820 --> 00:15:13.700 but there were like three or four countries that ended up giving up prisoners 00:15:13.700 --> 00:15:19.240 who were all people that they legitimately had in custody. 00:15:19.300 --> 00:15:24.620 And some cases were convicted on very serious items and they wanted to. 00:15:25.600 --> 00:15:30.380 They wanted to keep them in jail. And those countries were not necessarily getting 00:15:30.380 --> 00:15:32.160 something out of this exchange themselves. 00:15:33.620 --> 00:15:40.540 And so people have pointed out, this is part of having long-term alliances and 00:15:40.540 --> 00:15:47.420 friendly relations with other countries that aren't just transactional on a case-by-case basis. 00:15:48.340 --> 00:15:53.840 So it's not just, hey, Germany, do this for us and you'll get this. 00:15:53.840 --> 00:15:59.520 Yes, it's, hey, Germany, we have a long-term good relationship. 00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:02.200 Please do this for us. 00:16:03.300 --> 00:16:06.640 I'm sure someday down the line, something else will come up, 00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:10.180 but we can't promise you anything right now. 00:16:10.260 --> 00:16:13.500 That's not part of the deal. It's just like, hey, can you help out? 00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:20.620 And the answer in this case was yes. Another thing to point out is on Slovenia specifically. 00:16:20.620 --> 00:16:25.940 Specifically, apparently Biden was on the phone with the prime minister of Slovenia 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:32.100 working this deal one hour before his announcement that he was dropping out of the race. 00:16:32.420 --> 00:16:39.140 So like even like right up into the run run up of like I'm dropping out because 00:16:39.140 --> 00:16:44.340 I can't apparently be an effective person running for president right now. 00:16:44.340 --> 00:16:49.760 Now he was doing the job of president and doing it effectively right through 00:16:49.760 --> 00:16:51.040 then and right through now. 00:16:51.320 --> 00:16:55.780 And of course, you know, we've talked over and over again, you know, 00:16:55.780 --> 00:16:59.180 there are differences between what you need to be president and what you need 00:16:59.180 --> 00:17:01.680 to run for president. And you've got a team behind you. 00:17:01.760 --> 00:17:05.860 And even if he was doing a great job, he was doing horribly in the polls and 00:17:05.860 --> 00:17:10.740 wasn't showing that he could do that. But, you know, hey, it's just credit to 00:17:10.740 --> 00:17:15.600 him that he's he was doing that right on the same day he was making that big announcement. 00:17:15.780 --> 00:17:19.400 Absolutely. He could have just said, well, screw all of you. 00:17:19.460 --> 00:17:23.560 I'm going to go home and and said he's still still doing his job. 00:17:24.060 --> 00:17:24.740 Right. Right. 00:17:25.610 --> 00:17:31.150 And so, you know, with this deal, you know, it was big. 00:17:31.230 --> 00:17:34.990 They exchanged a lot of people. Apparently one of the Russian dissidents who 00:17:34.990 --> 00:17:39.730 was released was like, thank you, but no, thank you. Really? 00:17:39.810 --> 00:17:45.570 Like I actually, yeah, I, I, I didn't, I wouldn't have accepted a deal where 00:17:45.570 --> 00:17:49.430 part of the deal was I had to be exiled from Russia, which is what happened here. 00:17:49.730 --> 00:17:54.170 He's now in the West somewhere. And he's like, you know, I do intend to go back. 00:17:54.170 --> 00:17:59.750 You know, and that's the same as, you know, like Navalny, you know, 00:17:59.750 --> 00:18:04.110 he went back, he went back knowing he would probably be jailed. 00:18:04.290 --> 00:18:08.210 And he did it anyway, because part of it was like, you know, 00:18:08.210 --> 00:18:10.550 to be an effective dissident, I have to be there. 00:18:10.670 --> 00:18:14.510 I can't be doing it from the UK or Germany or somewhere. Yeah, yeah. 00:18:43.730 --> 00:18:44.130 Gives them an incentive to just sweep up more now the US has been telling people 00:18:44.130 --> 00:18:49.570 for years now, don't go to Russia. If you're an American citizen, don't go to Russia. 00:18:49.710 --> 00:18:51.810 It's just not a good time for that. 00:18:52.150 --> 00:18:56.150 But of course, people still do. For various reasons, there's family, 00:18:56.310 --> 00:18:59.850 there's whatever, they need to do whatever. But, 00:19:00.940 --> 00:19:03.900 But it's now like it's there. 00:19:04.060 --> 00:19:06.680 There's still people held, by the way. There's still Americans held. 00:19:06.740 --> 00:19:10.540 There's apparently a teacher that's still in Russian custody right now that 00:19:10.540 --> 00:19:12.960 did did not make the cut to be part of this deal. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:17.960 I guess he had a couple of grams of marijuana prescribed for him by a doctor, 00:19:18.040 --> 00:19:20.980 and he may not get out for 23 years. 00:19:21.580 --> 00:19:25.140 Yeah. And yeah, like it. 00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:31.380 You know, first of all, don't go if you don't have to go. So if you do have 00:19:31.380 --> 00:19:35.960 to go, pay attention to the details of those laws. 00:19:36.180 --> 00:19:42.740 You know, you can't assume that because something is legal in the US and in 00:19:42.740 --> 00:19:47.380 that particular case, medical marijuana is only legal in some parts of the United States. 00:19:47.520 --> 00:19:51.580 But you can't assume that it's okay there, too. 00:19:51.820 --> 00:19:57.840 You know, follow local laws to the fucking letter, you know? Yeah. 00:19:57.840 --> 00:20:04.000 We went on tour through Europe a year ago, one of the Viking cruise ships that 00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:05.420 went through a number of countries. 00:20:05.520 --> 00:20:11.960 I take the CBDs that help my arthritis pain, not marijuana, just the straight CBD. 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:15.820 That's still illegal in a number of countries. The first thing I did before 00:20:15.820 --> 00:20:21.300 I left was to find out if any of the countries on our trip, it would be an issue. 00:20:21.480 --> 00:20:25.620 One or two of them, it was questionable. I left the damn stuff at home. Didn't take it. 00:20:25.900 --> 00:20:28.800 Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. 00:20:29.120 --> 00:20:32.980 People have even had that problem in the US going state to state. 00:20:33.140 --> 00:20:36.660 There was a prominent case I watched. 00:20:36.980 --> 00:20:40.080 I think it was a frontline, but somebody was traveling... 00:20:40.950 --> 00:20:43.970 From one state to another had a prescription for medical 00:20:43.970 --> 00:20:46.930 medical marijuana but got pulled over by 00:20:46.930 --> 00:20:50.070 the cop cops for some like speeding transaction or 00:20:50.070 --> 00:20:56.330 something halfway there in a state where it wasn't legal ended up serving years 00:20:56.330 --> 00:21:02.130 in jail for it you know and it's you know yeah you had the prescription but 00:21:02.130 --> 00:21:09.210 you went through whatever state it was where that was still not okay um and so So anyway, 00:21:09.410 --> 00:21:15.070 but certainly like it, if you're going to Russia, if you're going to like quite 00:21:15.070 --> 00:21:16.450 a few Middle Eastern countries, 00:21:16.670 --> 00:21:22.250 if you know, all sorts of like check, well, even if you're going to a country 00:21:22.250 --> 00:21:26.470 that's got a reputation is super, super friendly, check, 00:21:26.910 --> 00:21:31.710 you know, there there there's, and we're not just talking marijuana. 00:21:31.750 --> 00:21:36.110 We're talking about certain prescription drugs as well that are legal in one place and not the other. 00:21:36.110 --> 00:21:41.890 And, you know, so check everything, like don't, don't make any assumptions, but anyway, 00:21:42.030 --> 00:21:47.090 so Putin pretty much knows, like he's, he's going to be sending, 00:21:47.150 --> 00:21:51.910 they're, they're going to be spies and, and he's all about the assassins. 00:21:51.910 --> 00:21:54.050 He's got like assassins all over Europe. 00:21:54.170 --> 00:22:00.670 I mean, it's a thing like his people have killed people in Germany with a, 00:22:00.690 --> 00:22:04.610 where the one who was released this time was in the UK. 00:22:05.030 --> 00:22:07.170 They've made attempts in other places. 00:22:07.990 --> 00:22:11.470 So they're going to be assassins caught. They're going to be spies caught. 00:22:11.590 --> 00:22:12.770 There's going to be whatever caught. 00:22:13.070 --> 00:22:19.610 And so he knows now that all he has to do is always make sure he's got a handful 00:22:19.610 --> 00:22:22.110 of people in custody that he can trade for them. 00:22:22.490 --> 00:22:26.430 You know, another thing I saw that was interesting about this trade, 00:22:26.550 --> 00:22:31.910 one of the folks that was traded, I can't remember if it was the Slovenian one. 00:22:32.010 --> 00:22:39.370 I think it was the Slovenian one was a pair of deep cover spies of the sort 00:22:39.370 --> 00:22:42.910 that are undercover. cover. They go live there. 00:22:43.110 --> 00:22:49.950 They have a whole cover story life set up and just in the meantime are acting 00:22:49.950 --> 00:22:54.550 as spies, taking back information to the Russians and are working for the Russians, 00:22:54.650 --> 00:22:55.690 doing whatever they need to. 00:22:56.070 --> 00:22:59.850 In this case, they were posing as a couple from Argentina, 00:23:00.410 --> 00:23:07.690 and they had two kids, an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old who had no freaking 00:23:07.690 --> 00:23:12.450 clue As far as they knew, they were from Argentina. 00:23:12.890 --> 00:23:18.770 They did not know Russian. They only knew Spanish and probably some Slovenian 00:23:18.770 --> 00:23:20.530 since they were living in Slovenia. 00:23:21.170 --> 00:23:27.890 And they were told about all this once they were on the plane to Russia to be 00:23:27.890 --> 00:23:29.210 greeted by Vladimir Putin. 00:23:30.140 --> 00:23:33.660 And like, I just, I feel sorry for those kids. 00:23:33.900 --> 00:23:39.280 I mean, like if they didn't already have trust issues, you know, 00:23:39.380 --> 00:23:44.960 you, you find out your whole life has been a lie. Your parents aren't who you thought they were. 00:23:45.380 --> 00:23:50.260 And boom. I mean, they're get it. I saw a couple of the pictures. 00:23:50.380 --> 00:23:51.780 They looked absolutely shell shocked. 00:23:51.900 --> 00:23:55.120 And I guess their parents had been picked up and arrested anyway. way. 00:23:55.440 --> 00:23:59.700 So they may have had some inkling before this because presumably they were doing 00:23:59.700 --> 00:24:03.380 something else, but the kids were part of the trade too, even though, 00:24:03.380 --> 00:24:08.960 yeah, I don't think the kids were in jail, but, uh, yeah, not good. 00:24:09.320 --> 00:24:13.700 I just, that's screwed up. I mean, I know it's done and it's part of the deep 00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:16.120 cover. They had to, they were a family, they had kids. 00:24:16.220 --> 00:24:19.700 It made them seem more trustworthy, I guess. I don't know. 00:24:19.840 --> 00:24:22.620 But like, yeah, anyway. 00:24:23.420 --> 00:24:26.260 So any more about the grand trade? 00:24:27.080 --> 00:24:30.240 No, I think that I just thought it was worthwhile mentioning. 00:24:30.500 --> 00:24:35.240 The only thing from the right side came that Mr. Vance announced that it never 00:24:35.240 --> 00:24:39.120 would have occurred except that Putin is afraid of Trump and wanted it done 00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:40.320 before Trump got in office. 00:24:41.140 --> 00:24:45.420 Oh, yeah. Well, the other thing was Biden's mic drop on this when he held a 00:24:45.420 --> 00:24:50.960 press conference about this trade and was told that Trump was like, 00:24:51.040 --> 00:24:53.860 I could get these people out overnight. 00:24:54.560 --> 00:24:58.620 Biden says, well, then why didn't you do it when you were president? 00:24:58.840 --> 00:25:00.240 And then walks out of the room. 00:25:01.080 --> 00:25:07.900 So anyway, okay, next up, you want to talk policy. So first, tariffs. 00:25:08.660 --> 00:25:12.000 You've talked about tariffs before here. Donald Donald Trump loves tariffs. 00:25:12.580 --> 00:25:15.580 So what's the deal with tariffs? What do you want to? 00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:21.080 I think, yeah, it's probably nothing much new. It's just that it's it's a significant 00:25:21.080 --> 00:25:24.080 difference of opinion on the two sides. 00:25:24.740 --> 00:25:29.420 The actually not just Trump, but an awful lot of the people in the in the megaverse. 00:25:30.470 --> 00:25:33.790 Believe that tariffs are the way to protect our industry. 00:25:34.290 --> 00:25:40.130 And the only thing that, obviously, Biden did not cut back on all the tariffs 00:25:40.130 --> 00:25:42.970 that Trump went in. He cut back on a number of them. 00:25:43.170 --> 00:25:48.650 But industry, for the first time in a couple, three decades at least, 00:25:48.810 --> 00:25:50.910 has been expanding quite a bit. 00:25:51.010 --> 00:25:56.750 And it did it after the infrastructure bill and the other bill that encouraged investment, 00:25:56.750 --> 00:26:01.530 investment federal dollar investments in various factories and businesses one 00:26:01.530 --> 00:26:05.230 of those just came online i think here in pennsylvania that's going to employ 00:26:05.230 --> 00:26:09.290 several hundred people i i remember what i saw in the news earlier this week 00:26:09.290 --> 00:26:12.990 comment that the factory is now hiring and going into operation, 00:26:13.650 --> 00:26:18.510 that has a hell of an impact whereas tariffs all the tariff does is raise our 00:26:18.510 --> 00:26:23.390 cost it doesn't affect the exporters from the other countries at all it might 00:26:23.390 --> 00:26:25.610 slow down their sales well it doesn't Yeah. 00:26:25.790 --> 00:26:30.550 In theory, that's the whole notion of tariffs. 00:26:31.430 --> 00:26:37.290 And look, I think it's stupid, but let me say what the way it's supposed to 00:26:37.290 --> 00:26:45.270 operate is you make the foreign goods so expensive that Americans won't buy them. 00:26:45.270 --> 00:26:52.290 And because of that, A, the foreign company that's doing the making or the country 00:26:52.290 --> 00:26:55.710 involved makes less money because they can't sell to your market. 00:26:55.790 --> 00:27:01.850 But also part of the theory is in response to the foreign products being so expensive, 00:27:02.270 --> 00:27:09.150 you will get domestic people stepping up and producing whatever it is that people 00:27:09.150 --> 00:27:11.430 were getting from the foreign companies before. 00:27:11.430 --> 00:27:17.350 So instead of imports, you encourage domestic production to take their place. 00:27:17.770 --> 00:27:23.410 But if that happens at all, and I think that's probably debatable, 00:27:23.610 --> 00:27:25.390 it's a long-term effect. 00:27:25.850 --> 00:27:30.970 Like if you right now just closed the door and said, we can't get anything from 00:27:30.970 --> 00:27:35.110 China anymore, which is effectively what raising the tariffs, 00:27:35.390 --> 00:27:38.650 I mean, you make the price higher, but if you make it high enough, 00:27:38.730 --> 00:27:40.670 you effectively price them out of the market. it... 00:27:42.260 --> 00:27:48.620 Domestic producers would take years to be able to ramp up and produce the same 00:27:48.620 --> 00:27:50.800 products if they do it all. 00:27:50.920 --> 00:27:53.240 In some cases, they just won't be able to. 00:27:53.380 --> 00:27:56.460 So the short-term effect is just making things more expensive. 00:27:56.720 --> 00:28:02.840 So if you're worried about inflation, for instance, hey, what's a great way 00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:04.240 to make everything cost more? 00:28:04.420 --> 00:28:11.440 Slap huge tariffs on it. You know, and maybe you get a new equilibrium years 00:28:11.440 --> 00:28:15.740 down the line where domestic production takes up that slack, 00:28:16.040 --> 00:28:19.280 but that's at best that's long term. 00:28:19.500 --> 00:28:23.700 And so, you know, and you keep here whenever Donald Trump talks about it, 00:28:23.740 --> 00:28:29.940 he talks about how, you know, we added the tariffs and the Chinese had to pay, blah, blah, blah. 00:28:30.080 --> 00:28:33.180 No, that's not who pays the tariff. 00:28:33.180 --> 00:28:40.580 You know the customer pays the tariff or the businesses that sell the stuff 00:28:40.580 --> 00:28:47.560 pay one or the other the others don't anyway it's a, 00:28:49.500 --> 00:28:56.520 long term it's just another example of how you make inflation worse and punish 00:28:56.520 --> 00:29:02.840 people a lot of the things that we import we don't even make you know you're right Right. 00:29:02.840 --> 00:29:05.380 Not only would it be a long time, there would be a shortage, 00:29:05.480 --> 00:29:08.380 which means when there's a shortage of a product that people want, 00:29:08.460 --> 00:29:11.740 what happens to the price with or without a tariff? It goes up. 00:29:13.280 --> 00:29:21.060 Right. So, look, this is just another example of Donald Trump has no idea what 00:29:21.060 --> 00:29:24.960 he's talking about almost ever in terms of real policy things, 00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:27.040 in terms of thinking it through. 00:29:27.040 --> 00:29:32.500 Like, look, there are some people who will make actual arguments in favor of tariffs. 00:29:32.980 --> 00:29:37.440 They may be wrong, but they understand it and make an argument around it, 00:29:37.460 --> 00:29:38.840 sort of like the one I just made. 00:29:39.900 --> 00:29:44.620 Donald Trump isn't even there. Like, he just thinks, you know, 00:29:44.620 --> 00:29:48.080 tariffs are a way to punish the other country, and it sounds good, 00:29:48.180 --> 00:29:49.900 and I can make it sound good. 00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:56.700 What it actually does, how it actually works, this is not part of his thought process at all. 00:29:57.040 --> 00:30:01.540 I don't think he even cares because I'm sure people have told them that's not 00:30:01.540 --> 00:30:06.300 how tariffs work over and over and over again. He doesn't care. 00:30:07.140 --> 00:30:09.360 You know, that's just not the point. 00:30:09.580 --> 00:30:17.460 In his world, there are winners and losers, and there isn't any negotiation where everybody wins. 00:30:17.460 --> 00:30:23.960 There's winners and losers, and he considers, gee, if I charge a $5,000 tariff 00:30:23.960 --> 00:30:28.200 on every car they import, then our government will get an extra $5,000, 00:30:28.440 --> 00:30:30.520 and that makes me a winner. 00:30:31.750 --> 00:30:37.650 Okay, so your last item. You had mentioned that Governor Tim Walz, 00:30:37.790 --> 00:30:43.450 W-A-L-Z is how you spell it, who's reportedly one of the finalists to potentially 00:30:43.450 --> 00:30:48.290 be Kamala Harris's running mate, 00:30:48.450 --> 00:30:51.910 had some policy proposals that you thought were interesting. 00:30:52.310 --> 00:30:56.910 He was being interviewed or something, probably in relationship to the VP thing, 00:30:57.050 --> 00:30:58.910 and he talked about policy a little bit. 00:30:59.090 --> 00:31:05.550 It was a podcast. When I go on hikes, I put my earphones on and I listen to 00:31:05.550 --> 00:31:07.850 podcasts, including Curmudgeon Corner. 00:31:08.250 --> 00:31:13.050 But on the podcast, it was one of the, I think it was the New York Times podcast. I'm not sure. 00:31:13.450 --> 00:31:18.130 They were interviewing him about a number of things, including his life and 00:31:18.130 --> 00:31:20.870 that sort of stuff. I'm sure it had to do with the vice presidency. 00:31:21.190 --> 00:31:26.710 But really, they were talking about how did you become interested in politics. He used to be a teacher. 00:31:27.050 --> 00:31:33.830 And he said, well, I thought I could fix things. And so I ran and I won in this very red district. 00:31:34.190 --> 00:31:38.630 And then I won. I think he was three or four terms in the state house. 00:31:38.830 --> 00:31:40.310 And then he ran for governor. 00:31:40.690 --> 00:31:44.110 And as governor, he's done a number of things. One thing he did, 00:31:44.210 --> 00:31:48.410 for instance, he put through that the schools would provide free school lunches 00:31:48.410 --> 00:31:52.390 for all students, regardless of their income level or anything. 00:31:52.530 --> 00:31:55.750 The kids go to school, they get fed out of nutritious lunch. 00:31:55.750 --> 00:32:01.770 The other thing he did is there's the child tax credit program that's been a 00:32:01.770 --> 00:32:05.530 federal one for a number of years, but recently has been cut back a little bit. 00:32:05.670 --> 00:32:11.250 In Minnesota, apparently, he made that more effective, expanded it, 00:32:11.330 --> 00:32:16.470 and has really defended it very strongly. And his point on that was there are 00:32:16.470 --> 00:32:19.450 two ways you can encourage people to have children. 00:32:19.650 --> 00:32:24.630 One is to make it possible for them to have children by providing this tax credit 00:32:24.630 --> 00:32:26.590 so they have a little better income. 00:32:26.850 --> 00:32:31.790 Another way is to make sure that there's daycare facilities at a reasonable 00:32:31.790 --> 00:32:37.290 price so that they can afford to have children and on and on and on. 00:32:37.290 --> 00:32:42.410 And he said, the other way to do it is to, you know, charge more tax to people 00:32:42.410 --> 00:32:47.550 who don't have children and to make them feel like they're incompetent or something of that sort. 00:32:48.750 --> 00:32:54.010 He really explained it far better than I'm able to. But I found his ideas on the free lunch. 00:32:54.250 --> 00:32:59.010 The kids, interestingly, one of the things they noticed is within a couple months 00:32:59.010 --> 00:33:03.630 of having the free lunch, so the kids all got a big lunch, was that their discipline 00:33:03.630 --> 00:33:05.410 problems dropped significantly. 00:33:06.290 --> 00:33:10.790 Attendance went up, and the kids' grades started improving. Guess what? 00:33:10.870 --> 00:33:14.110 If a kid's not hungry, he listens to the teacher. 00:33:15.010 --> 00:33:15.650 Shocker there. 00:33:16.190 --> 00:33:17.090 Isn't that amazing? 00:33:17.090 --> 00:33:20.830 Well, it not, not even listening to the teacher, right. Just in general, 00:33:21.010 --> 00:33:26.830 like if, if you're hungry, you're not going to perform as well, 00:33:26.910 --> 00:33:30.970 like in anything, you know, you're going to be distracted by that. 00:33:30.990 --> 00:33:35.890 And it's going to be hard to keep on task and it's going to be hard to think 00:33:35.890 --> 00:33:38.190 about whatever you need to think about. 00:33:38.190 --> 00:33:47.210 Yeah. I know this is true of me, but if I'm hungry, I can go get food. 00:33:47.350 --> 00:33:52.870 It's not a problem for me. For lots and lots of kids, it's a problem. 00:33:53.070 --> 00:33:58.350 Their families can't afford enough, so they're hungry on a regular basis. 00:33:58.730 --> 00:34:05.250 And it's been shown over and over and over again in that various programs to 00:34:05.250 --> 00:34:10.590 make sure kids have access to food at school helps that amazingly. 00:34:11.610 --> 00:34:16.390 And, you know, there, there are some, there, there are some questions on the methodology, right? 00:34:16.470 --> 00:34:21.870 Like there, there are these ones that, you know, the subsidized lunch where 00:34:21.870 --> 00:34:25.710 you have to sort of identify yourself and ask for it and you have a special 00:34:25.710 --> 00:34:29.370 card or something and you stand out from the other kids as, Oh, 00:34:29.390 --> 00:34:31.350 they're the ones that needs the free lunch, 00:34:31.810 --> 00:34:34.090 you know, or the free breakfast or whatever. 00:34:34.690 --> 00:34:38.150 There are others that just try to, they just give it to everybody. 00:34:38.770 --> 00:34:44.730 And those are, I think those are the best variety of those. Cause even the ones that have like, 00:34:45.510 --> 00:34:48.370 you know, where they give you lunch, but 00:34:48.370 --> 00:34:54.110 you run a tab and then you hear these stories about how their kids with unpaid 00:34:54.110 --> 00:34:59.650 lunch bills and their various things that people like you hear stories of like 00:34:59.650 --> 00:35:04.730 the generous person from the community went in and paid the overdue lunch bills 00:35:04.730 --> 00:35:06.270 for all the kids or whatever. 00:35:06.490 --> 00:35:09.370 And it's like, come on, do you really have to structure something? So 00:35:09.370 --> 00:35:16.630 that's even necessary come just just just include it like you know include it 00:35:16.630 --> 00:35:21.430 in what is funded as part of going to school you get your breakfast you get 00:35:21.430 --> 00:35:26.630 your lunch you get some snacks whatever you know i don't know but yeah yeah 00:35:26.630 --> 00:35:28.430 so you don't make them pay. 00:35:28.430 --> 00:35:31.370 For their textbooks in grade school either do we we give. 00:35:31.370 --> 00:35:35.210 Them free textbooks usually yes so. 00:35:35.210 --> 00:35:38.390 Anyway i i really enjoyed listening 00:35:38.390 --> 00:35:43.450 to him and he's seen without accusing anybody or saying anything negative about 00:35:43.450 --> 00:35:48.690 anybody said this is why this works this is why that doesn't work and it was 00:35:48.690 --> 00:35:52.630 a it was a pleasant thing it was a politician who sounded like someone i'd like 00:35:52.630 --> 00:35:56.690 to sit down and have a beer with the obama technique okay. 00:35:59.510 --> 00:36:05.570 So given that i'm going to transition i'll we'll take a quick break and then 00:36:05.570 --> 00:36:10.390 we'll transition i And I guess I'll start with the VP stuff rather than the poll stuff, 00:36:10.510 --> 00:36:17.530 because Walsh is one of the guys who's being considered for the VP slot. 00:36:17.930 --> 00:36:21.670 And so we'll start a little bit, I guess, by talking about him. 00:36:22.070 --> 00:36:26.190 So we will be back after this. 00:36:29.470 --> 00:36:37.230 You're listening to this podcast. Do you like it? No! Do you want to support the show? No! 00:36:38.390 --> 00:36:42.830 Well, after you have subscribed to the show, followed us on Facebook, 00:36:42.930 --> 00:36:49.530 and told all your friends they should be listening to, what else can you do? I won't subscribe! 00:36:50.730 --> 00:36:56.950 You can help fund our Patreon at patreon.com slash curmudgeonscorner. 00:36:57.270 --> 00:37:02.430 Patreon is a way you can throw us a few bucks a month to help out with the expenses of the show. 00:37:02.430 --> 00:37:07.430 You know, web hosting, equipment, a little bit of advertising to promote the 00:37:07.430 --> 00:37:12.410 show, and maybe every once in a while some much-needed sedatives for Yvonne. 00:37:13.130 --> 00:37:16.770 At different contribution levels, you can get a mention on the show, 00:37:16.950 --> 00:37:21.310 our Curmudgeon's Corner postcard, or even a Curmudgeon's Corner mug. 00:37:21.590 --> 00:37:23.730 Fun stuff. Not fun! 00:37:24.370 --> 00:37:29.210 In any case, the contributions help tell us that you enjoy and appreciate the 00:37:29.210 --> 00:37:32.590 show. I really, really hate Commodity's Corner. 00:37:33.090 --> 00:37:35.110 Are we worth a buck a month? No! 00:37:35.930 --> 00:37:41.630 Five bucks a month? No! Or if you are nuts about us, maybe even more. 00:37:42.150 --> 00:37:44.170 100 Billion! 00:37:51.130 --> 00:37:56.550 Worth anything to you at all send it our way at patreon.com slash curmudgeon's 00:37:56.550 --> 00:38:03.490 corner alex hates really really hates curmudgeon's corner that's really mean 00:38:03.490 --> 00:38:09.250 isn't it i hate curmudgeon's corner but i really do okay. 00:38:09.250 --> 00:38:13.810 We are back and before i forget i meant to mention this at the beginning of 00:38:13.810 --> 00:38:18.010 the show because i've mentioned it at the very end of the show the last two 00:38:18.010 --> 00:38:22.350 weeks but this is the last time I'm going to ask this on the show. 00:38:22.630 --> 00:38:29.390 I have been editing the show a little bit differently the last couple of weeks and this week as well. 00:38:29.650 --> 00:38:34.990 I will, right now I'm recording, but when I edit it, I will edit it the same 00:38:34.990 --> 00:38:36.250 way I have the last couple of weeks. 00:38:36.470 --> 00:38:41.990 So I'm asking and have yet to receive any feedback, which I'm going to interpret a certain way. 00:38:42.370 --> 00:38:48.430 A, has anybody noticed any difference in listening to the last couple of weeks 00:38:48.430 --> 00:38:50.570 shows compared to shows before that. 00:38:50.750 --> 00:38:53.210 So I'll ask you, Ed, have you noticed any difference? 00:38:53.670 --> 00:38:57.370 I was just going to say, I keep forgetting to write and comment, 00:38:57.450 --> 00:39:00.870 but I can't say that I've noticed a difference overall. Okay. 00:39:01.470 --> 00:39:06.470 So that that's an answer from Ed. So for all of you listening, 00:39:06.650 --> 00:39:08.850 let me know, have you noticed a difference? 00:39:09.370 --> 00:39:15.250 And then B, if you have noticed a difference, which Ed hasn't, 00:39:15.250 --> 00:39:18.370 so he's not, so my question would be meaningless in that case. 00:39:18.590 --> 00:39:21.530 Do you like it better the old way or the new way? 00:39:22.450 --> 00:39:27.930 And based on any answers I receive, I will determine what to do next week and beyond. 00:39:28.610 --> 00:39:34.530 And if no one tells me they can tell the difference at all, then frankly, 00:39:34.530 --> 00:39:38.090 I'm going to do the way that's easier for me and takes less time for me. 00:39:38.670 --> 00:39:42.250 Regardless that was my recommendation yeah 00:39:42.250 --> 00:39:45.090 so and you you guys may 00:39:45.090 --> 00:39:48.150 not be surprised to know the change i've made 00:39:48.150 --> 00:39:51.170 is a change that makes it quicker and 00:39:51.170 --> 00:39:53.950 easier for me to get the stuff done that i need to 00:39:53.950 --> 00:39:57.110 get done to get the show out the door so if nobody 00:39:57.110 --> 00:40:00.050 can tell the difference then there's no reason not for 00:40:00.050 --> 00:40:03.670 me there's no reason for me not to do it the quick way so there 00:40:03.670 --> 00:40:06.930 you go now if he if people were like yes sam 00:40:06.930 --> 00:40:10.310 i can tell the difference and it sucks now it 00:40:10.310 --> 00:40:15.610 was good before and now it sucks or it was mediocre before now it sucks whatever 00:40:15.610 --> 00:40:20.130 then then there would be a reason to go and keep doing it the way that takes 00:40:20.130 --> 00:40:25.470 me a little bit longer but you know whatever so so far i've got a lot of no 00:40:25.470 --> 00:40:28.230 comments and one person saying they couldn't tell the difference. 00:40:28.370 --> 00:40:29.990 So that tells me a lot. Okay. 00:40:30.390 --> 00:40:36.330 Time for the vice presidential search. So first of all, the final six, 00:40:36.570 --> 00:40:41.250 according to all the reports, are Governor Beshear of Kentucky. 00:40:42.150 --> 00:40:47.350 Pritzker of Illinois, Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Waltz of Minnesota. 00:40:47.650 --> 00:40:53.850 Those are all governors, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg 00:40:53.850 --> 00:40:57.350 and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. 00:40:57.710 --> 00:41:03.570 So those are apparently the finalists. I will add that there have been reports 00:41:03.570 --> 00:41:07.630 that Shapiro in Pennsylvania is the front runner. 00:41:07.830 --> 00:41:12.910 In fact, a few hours before we're recording this show, 00:41:13.070 --> 00:41:22.010 apparently the office of the mayor of Philadelphia released a video that has 00:41:22.010 --> 00:41:25.830 Shapiro as the vice president to Harris. 00:41:25.830 --> 00:41:31.710 And apparently it was a video that wasn't reportedly wasn't supposed to be released 00:41:31.710 --> 00:41:39.610 until Monday as part of the announcement, but it, it, it hasn't been, it wasn't taken down. 00:41:40.410 --> 00:41:43.850 So, and it's like, it was a mistake, blah, blah, blah. It's not real. 00:41:45.410 --> 00:41:49.570 So on the one hand, people are like, well, that's it. And it's Shapiro. 00:41:49.830 --> 00:41:53.650 Like they just accidentally released the information a couple of days early, 00:41:53.710 --> 00:41:59.230 but then other folks are like, Like, nah, this sounds like some sort of aspirational 00:41:59.230 --> 00:42:04.470 video that might have been done to promote Shapiro, but it's not really the decision yet. 00:42:04.610 --> 00:42:07.990 So we'll see. But Shapiro is the front runner in the betting. 00:42:08.230 --> 00:42:12.710 And we'll talk more about him in a second. But since you were just talking about Walls. 00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:17.560 You mentioned a couple of policy things from him. What did you, 00:42:17.560 --> 00:42:20.700 what do you think of him as a potential VP? You listened to the interview. 00:42:20.940 --> 00:42:27.360 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. 00:42:27.880 --> 00:42:32.480 Apparently the more progressive side of the democratic party really likes him. 00:42:32.820 --> 00:42:37.640 He's been really vocal. He, you know, like all these other people on this list, 00:42:37.700 --> 00:42:41.800 he's been out there doing events and people have liked sort of how aggressive 00:42:41.800 --> 00:42:43.340 He was against Donald Trump. 00:42:43.780 --> 00:42:48.640 Apparently the whole weird thing that maybe we'll talk about before we end. 00:42:49.220 --> 00:42:54.060 He was one of the first ones to push that attack on the Trumpies, 00:42:54.120 --> 00:42:55.700 and that's been very effective. 00:42:56.560 --> 00:42:59.540 So what do you think? What do you think, Ed? What do you think of this Walls guy? 00:42:59.700 --> 00:43:04.920 I honestly have paid a little bit less attention to him, but some people seem to really like him. 00:43:04.920 --> 00:43:08.480 I haven't heard much about him either until I listened to this interview. 00:43:08.700 --> 00:43:12.460 I found him very personable and a good sense of humor. 00:43:13.100 --> 00:43:16.760 He did talk about the weird thing. They asked him about that, 00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:19.060 and he said, you know, it just sort of came up. 00:43:19.140 --> 00:43:21.900 I didn't want to say nasty things about people. 00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:27.760 And then I realized that, gee, when they say something that irritates and antagonizes 00:43:27.760 --> 00:43:31.160 large percentages of the population, that's really weird, isn't it? 00:43:31.200 --> 00:43:34.560 And so I just started saying, well, that's really weird what they're doing. 00:43:34.920 --> 00:43:40.880 And I have to agree. I mean, look, that interview that Trump had with the black journalists this week. 00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:47.740 I mean, I can't imagine people of color wanting to vote for that man after that interview. 00:43:49.320 --> 00:43:54.980 So he turned off and antagonized a large bunch of people, I think. 00:43:55.680 --> 00:44:01.900 Well, here's... Yeah, let's tangent to that for a second. Obviously... 00:44:03.140 --> 00:44:07.840 People of color have not been his prime demographic anyway, let's say. 00:44:08.500 --> 00:44:14.280 But there had been repeated reports this year of him making additional inroads, 00:44:14.440 --> 00:44:19.860 of him polling higher among men, and specifically Black men, than he had been before. 00:44:20.600 --> 00:44:24.520 Not of men, of Black people, specifically Black men, than he had before. 00:44:24.920 --> 00:44:30.920 There have been more reports about his percentages in the Hispanic community 00:44:30.920 --> 00:44:36.160 increasing as well. And as Yvonne would always tell us, not a monolithic community. 00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:39.740 It very much depends on which part of that community you're in. 00:44:39.940 --> 00:44:44.940 But he's actually done pretty well in the past in that community and apparently was doing even better. 00:44:44.940 --> 00:44:53.820 And so I don't know that it's – in the big picture, these aren't communities 00:44:53.820 --> 00:44:56.500 that were really strong Trump communities anyway. 00:44:56.620 --> 00:45:04.440 He clearly – his main focus is and has always been white people, 00:45:04.580 --> 00:45:11.360 even more so white men, even more so non-college-educated white men. 00:45:12.140 --> 00:45:16.140 Yep. And, but in a close election, 00:45:16.520 --> 00:45:25.580 like if you had increased your percentage among black people from 5% to 10%, 00:45:25.580 --> 00:45:27.900 that could be a big deal, you know? 00:45:28.180 --> 00:45:31.920 And I think he killed that with this. 00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:37.600 But also, you know, people have talked about like, look, on the one hand, 00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:44.900 yes, this is just this is another opportunity where he shows off that he's dumb. 00:45:45.020 --> 00:45:51.720 He shows off that he's racist and he is and it's just out there for everybody to see. 00:45:51.800 --> 00:45:57.840 And in this new context, maybe that's hitting harder than it has at times in the past. Right. 00:45:59.280 --> 00:46:02.440 Whereas people are saying like, look, he doesn't care. It's attention. 00:46:03.240 --> 00:46:10.280 He's taking the, for the last 12 days, everything has been about Kamala Harris. 00:46:11.600 --> 00:46:15.840 Everything, all the news cycles, everything has been talking about how great 00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:20.820 she's doing and, you know, how, how excited everybody is and blah, 00:46:20.920 --> 00:46:22.760 blah, blah. And that's all that's been in the news. 00:46:22.860 --> 00:46:26.660 All of a sudden he goes and does this and he's in the news again. 00:46:26.660 --> 00:46:29.640 Maybe it's not super positive but he's 00:46:29.640 --> 00:46:32.620 in the news again and the story is once again about 00:46:32.620 --> 00:46:35.480 him and maybe that's what he 00:46:35.480 --> 00:46:38.740 wants out of this um i kind of 00:46:38.740 --> 00:46:42.280 feel like this is i mean 00:46:42.280 --> 00:46:45.340 this is an age-old debate we've had before is is trump 00:46:45.340 --> 00:46:51.540 being like super savvy politically and playing 12 dimensional chess i don't 00:46:51.540 --> 00:46:56.500 think he is i think he's got a certain set of instincts and he goes by those 00:46:56.500 --> 00:47:01.640 instincts and sometimes they serve him well and sometimes they don't but i don't 00:47:01.640 --> 00:47:03.520 think there's a lot of deep thought behind it. 00:47:03.520 --> 00:47:06.920 I'm not sure he's capable of it that's just me. 00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:15.440 And you know we'll get back to the vps in a second i promise but like since since we're on weird now, 00:47:17.280 --> 00:47:25.160 the this is the weird thing has really been hitting in a way that other attacks haven't. 00:47:27.600 --> 00:47:30.900 And, you know, when, when you start to think about it, I'm like, 00:47:30.980 --> 00:47:35.420 okay, look, they've talked about Donald Trump is dangerous. 00:47:36.020 --> 00:47:42.580 Well, lots of people like that. That's why they're like, he's dangerous. That's a good thing. 00:47:43.060 --> 00:47:48.340 Like he'll, he'll piss off the liberals. He'll, he'll be, he'll break down the 00:47:48.340 --> 00:47:50.060 status quo. He'll do things. 00:47:50.640 --> 00:47:55.320 Dangerous is good. We want dangerous. There's a group that feels that way. 00:47:55.920 --> 00:48:00.060 If you talk about him being racist, there's a whole bunch of people who like 00:48:00.060 --> 00:48:01.920 that. That's why they vote for the man. 00:48:02.340 --> 00:48:07.780 You know, same thing if you talk about his misogyny. Well, he's a real man. 00:48:08.100 --> 00:48:12.080 You know, there are people who like that and make that a positive thing. 00:48:12.080 --> 00:48:15.420 All of these attacks, or he's scary. 00:48:15.720 --> 00:48:19.340 Well, good, he should scare the damn liberals. That's why we want him. 00:48:19.440 --> 00:48:28.300 All of these things that have been sort of common attacks on Donald Trump before, that A, 00:48:28.940 --> 00:48:35.900 they take him seriously, and B, are calling out things that are horrific to 00:48:35.900 --> 00:48:42.060 the left side of the spectrum, but are actually appealing to a huge population. 00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:43.520 Portion of Donald Trump's base. 00:48:44.540 --> 00:48:52.540 I think the weird thing is different because the weird thing is not something, at least so far, 00:48:52.720 --> 00:48:56.620 maybe they'll co-opt it, but the weird thing is something that makes them feel 00:48:56.620 --> 00:49:03.120 deeply uncomfortable because part of the whole psyche of the American right 00:49:03.120 --> 00:49:09.300 at the moment is that they represent real America. 00:49:09.580 --> 00:49:15.940 They represent what is good and true and great about America. 00:49:16.260 --> 00:49:23.000 They represent the way things should be, the way that things are good. 00:49:23.320 --> 00:49:31.160 And if you react to that, not with fear, not with, oh my God, 00:49:31.200 --> 00:49:33.160 this is dangerous, this is whatever. 00:49:33.160 --> 00:49:39.560 But instead, you react to it with, what a bunch of fucking freaks. 00:49:39.960 --> 00:49:45.860 They're a bunch of weirdos. They are the outcasts. 00:49:45.860 --> 00:49:52.900 They are the ones who are not acceptable in normal society. You know, 00:49:52.920 --> 00:49:56.920 I think that hits them a very different way. 00:49:57.340 --> 00:50:00.720 It makes them feel deeply uncomfortable. 00:50:01.040 --> 00:50:05.200 It's exactly what they're nervous about. The reason they're reacting in the 00:50:05.200 --> 00:50:11.600 way they are and are so panicked is they see the country moving away from them and their values. 00:50:11.920 --> 00:50:17.600 And this just reemphasizes it and says, no, you're the weirdos. Yes. 00:50:18.280 --> 00:50:19.960 You're the ones who are out of step. 00:50:20.520 --> 00:50:24.200 And I think they're having trouble figuring out how to react to that. 00:50:24.500 --> 00:50:28.960 I should stick in here that that Waltz in that interview made it very clear 00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:32.220 that when he's talking about weirdos, he's talking about the politicians, 00:50:32.400 --> 00:50:34.480 not the people who vote for him. 00:50:34.620 --> 00:50:37.540 He tried his best not to irritate those people. 00:50:37.540 --> 00:50:41.360 Yeah, well, I think that's going to get away from them. But like and I think 00:50:41.360 --> 00:50:48.160 that's OK, because like it makes you like if you get the impression out. 00:50:48.280 --> 00:50:51.420 There and get people actually worried about like no no if you 00:50:51.420 --> 00:50:54.180 support these jackasses yeah you're the 00:50:54.180 --> 00:50:57.580 weirdo you are also the outcast yeah there are people that 00:50:57.580 --> 00:51:00.760 there are people who will double down in response to that but 00:51:00.760 --> 00:51:05.420 there are people who are on the edges who will be like i don't want to be a 00:51:05.420 --> 00:51:10.580 weirdo you know they're right donald trump and jd vance are weirdos they really 00:51:10.580 --> 00:51:16.180 are what why do i want to associate with them and i think that's why this attack 00:51:16.180 --> 00:51:18.020 is hitting differently it's It's a, 00:51:18.340 --> 00:51:22.460 it's mocking them, which has always been, you know, there have been people arguing 00:51:22.460 --> 00:51:27.380 that the right way to attack Donald Trump is mocking him going back to the very beginning. 00:51:27.620 --> 00:51:32.360 And some people tried somewhat unsuccessfully, but I think this, 00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:36.460 this is hitting this time. Now, will it continue to? I don't know. 00:51:37.220 --> 00:51:42.160 I saw some people saying that they, they would have preferred like creepy or 00:51:42.160 --> 00:51:45.340 something than weird because there's good weird too. 00:51:46.160 --> 00:51:50.180 And I've seen a number of good responses to that. 00:51:50.800 --> 00:51:56.320 One person said, look, this is feminine coded. 00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:01.040 If we just say weird, we are talking creepy. 00:52:01.320 --> 00:52:05.840 If we're talking about sort of the cute, lovable geek, that's good weird. 00:52:06.080 --> 00:52:08.300 That's different. And we would say good weird. 00:52:09.840 --> 00:52:13.900 I saw someone else, and I'm sorry I don't have quotes for who said these things. 00:52:13.980 --> 00:52:17.440 They're just random things I saw at Mastodon and such, someone else who said, 00:52:17.620 --> 00:52:25.100 look, if you are told you are weird and you respond with awesome, 00:52:25.380 --> 00:52:27.840 yes, absolutely. I am. That's great. 00:52:27.940 --> 00:52:31.300 I try to be, then that's good weird. 00:52:31.600 --> 00:52:37.260 And you're not who this is aimed at. Part of the whole issue here is these are 00:52:37.260 --> 00:52:43.160 the type of people who, when they're called weird, get all upset about it and all triggered by it. 00:52:43.160 --> 00:52:50.900 And that's bad weird and that's what we're talking about here and the fact that these folks are, 00:52:53.110 --> 00:52:58.250 seemingly through, I mean, look, the whole Trump campaign and Vance and everybody 00:52:58.250 --> 00:53:02.930 associated with it have been completely and totally thrown off their game by 00:53:02.930 --> 00:53:05.270 Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris. 00:53:05.830 --> 00:53:08.330 Um, I'm trying really hard. I'm sorry. 00:53:08.570 --> 00:53:13.650 You listen, you listen to Trump too much. You're copying his pronunciation and this is deliberate. 00:53:14.630 --> 00:53:20.310 Yeah. Well, in any case, they've been thrown off. They don't know how to deal with someone younger. 00:53:20.510 --> 00:53:24.610 They don't know how to deal with a woman. They don't They don't know how to deal with a black woman. 00:53:24.710 --> 00:53:29.470 They don't know how to deal with being mocked and ridiculed and called out. 00:53:29.810 --> 00:53:35.910 All of these are things that Biden never succeeded in doing. 00:53:35.990 --> 00:53:41.730 He made a couple of attempts, but he never was able to do this in the way that 00:53:41.730 --> 00:53:47.830 the Harris campaign is doing this now, including the circle of the vice presidential 00:53:47.830 --> 00:53:50.890 candidates who are all doing this kind of thing at this point. 00:53:51.750 --> 00:53:55.190 And they're reeling right now. They don't know how to deal with it. 00:53:55.290 --> 00:53:57.650 Uh, you know, we'll talk polls in a minute. 00:53:57.770 --> 00:54:02.710 Uh, Trump has been falling in the polls for the last 12 days dramatically. 00:54:03.110 --> 00:54:07.690 And will they figure it out before November? 00:54:07.870 --> 00:54:11.630 Maybe like, I think there are ways to counter this, but it's, 00:54:11.630 --> 00:54:15.430 it's clearly, they don't know how to think about this. 00:54:15.510 --> 00:54:22.030 They were 100% prepared for the entire election to be about Joe Biden is old 00:54:22.030 --> 00:54:26.790 and Joe Biden is senile and he doesn't know what he's doing and he can't handle it. 00:54:27.170 --> 00:54:30.810 And, oh, and maybe a little touch of Hunter Biden is bad. 00:54:31.030 --> 00:54:35.430 And the, the, you know, the Joe Biden crime family or all that nonsense, 00:54:35.730 --> 00:54:40.710 everything, everything they were planning was all about that. 00:54:40.890 --> 00:54:46.830 And so now they don't know what to do. And so you get Donald Trump flailing. 00:54:46.910 --> 00:54:50.670 You mentioned his performance at that Black Journalist Conference, 00:54:51.110 --> 00:54:53.390 the National Association of Black Journalists. 00:54:54.690 --> 00:54:59.630 Part of what he's going on about and has doubled down on since is this whole 00:54:59.630 --> 00:55:02.750 Kamala Harris isn't really black thing. 00:55:03.170 --> 00:55:10.290 It's like, what are you doing? Who is this appealing to? And I know what they're trying to do. 00:55:10.390 --> 00:55:16.350 They're trying to sort of other her and say she's not only not white, 00:55:16.430 --> 00:55:18.670 she's not black either and blah, blah, blah. 00:55:18.850 --> 00:55:25.330 And there's this whole implication they're trying to do with the DEI candidate 00:55:25.330 --> 00:55:30.510 and everything where she couldn't possibly be there under her own merits. 00:55:31.070 --> 00:55:34.050 She's only there because they wanted a black woman. And look, 00:55:34.130 --> 00:55:36.090 she's not even black. She's Indian. 00:55:37.790 --> 00:55:42.370 And whereas this is, and I know it's a strategy of attack someone's strength, 00:55:42.450 --> 00:55:44.450 but frankly, all of that stuff is her strength. 00:55:45.570 --> 00:55:50.230 That's part of what makes her appealing. And I don't know that it's, 00:55:50.230 --> 00:55:54.390 it's just, they don't know what they're doing right now and they haven't figured it out. 00:55:54.410 --> 00:55:58.870 And they, we haven't even got to the democratic convention yet. 00:55:59.370 --> 00:56:04.250 I feel like they've got to, at some point, get their act together a little bit, 00:56:04.370 --> 00:56:08.010 but they certainly haven't yet. They they're just like spinning. 00:56:08.670 --> 00:56:13.070 Well, I think at the time they began recovering from the weird and figure out 00:56:13.070 --> 00:56:16.290 what to do, we should start talking about them being asleep, 00:56:16.550 --> 00:56:20.010 as opposed to they're accusing us of being woke. 00:56:20.830 --> 00:56:27.910 They're asleep because they refuse to have history taught because the history might upset children. 00:56:28.070 --> 00:56:31.770 So we won't teach history of what happened in the country. We'll pretend like 00:56:31.770 --> 00:56:33.670 it just has always been like it is now. 00:56:34.650 --> 00:56:40.430 And we don't want to teach the science of environmentalism because people will 00:56:40.430 --> 00:56:46.570 feel guilty about it. Instead, we want to burn more oil and they're asleep and they refuse to wake up. 00:56:46.610 --> 00:56:51.250 They've turned off the alarm clock and they refuse to wake up and listen to 00:56:51.250 --> 00:56:52.350 the world that's around them. 00:56:52.550 --> 00:56:56.190 So we should talk about them being asleep as soon as they get over being weird. 00:56:56.310 --> 00:56:57.610 They're weird sleepers. 00:56:58.390 --> 00:57:03.030 You're absolutely right. A few people have tried that exact way of saying things 00:57:03.030 --> 00:57:05.710 before and it hasn't really hit. 00:57:05.710 --> 00:57:13.050 But I feel like the Harris campaign can find a way to make it stick because 00:57:13.050 --> 00:57:18.690 that that's the other thing that like Biden and company and sort of your old school Democrats, 00:57:18.930 --> 00:57:22.770 if you like, you hear like James Carville or whoever talking. 00:57:22.770 --> 00:57:28.730 Fucking, they're afraid of this stuff and they automatically sort of get defensive. 00:57:28.910 --> 00:57:33.810 Like somebody's calling them woke. They sort of, Oh, we're not. 00:57:33.910 --> 00:57:35.710 What are you talking about? No, let's talk about it. 00:57:36.050 --> 00:57:39.350 No, own it. Damn right. We're woke. 00:57:40.030 --> 00:57:44.370 You're not, you're asleep. Like you said, and we're woke. And that means we 00:57:44.370 --> 00:57:45.770 know what the fuck is going on. 00:57:46.130 --> 00:57:50.830 How in the hell have they convinced us that we should consider a company that's 00:57:50.830 --> 00:57:55.570 following diversity and equity and what's the I? 00:57:55.850 --> 00:57:56.230 Inclusion. 00:57:56.850 --> 00:58:01.270 Inclusion. That those are bad things. How in the hell are we convinced that? 00:58:01.310 --> 00:58:05.610 That's like saying giving money to a man who's starving to death is bad. 00:58:06.450 --> 00:58:13.570 Come on. DEI? I want companies that are diverse and do indeed include everybody. 00:58:14.150 --> 00:58:19.190 Well, you know, look, DEI is just their code. 00:58:20.160 --> 00:58:23.360 DI is just their code word because they're not allowed to say the N word. 00:58:23.500 --> 00:58:25.260 You know, that's the reality of how they. 00:58:25.260 --> 00:58:26.500 Absolutely. Absolutely. 00:58:26.780 --> 00:58:31.860 You know, it's, it's not actually, I mean, they don't, they don't believe in 00:58:31.860 --> 00:58:34.060 those things anyway. They don't believe in diversity. 00:58:34.420 --> 00:58:40.600 They feel that strength is in uniformity and everybody believing and doing the 00:58:40.600 --> 00:58:45.540 same thing and looking the same, or at least within a very narrow band that 00:58:45.540 --> 00:58:46.420 is considered acceptable. 00:58:46.700 --> 00:58:50.640 They don't believe the strength and diversity. They don't believe in equity. 00:58:50.940 --> 00:58:52.740 They believe that absolutely. 00:58:53.140 --> 00:58:59.040 If you, if you're come from a family who's gotten ahead, then you should be 00:58:59.040 --> 00:59:02.980 ahead, you know, and inclusion, the same thing. 00:59:03.040 --> 00:59:07.200 Like, no, like we want our, we want our walled gardens. 00:59:07.300 --> 00:59:12.600 We want to protect what we've got and keep the external people out. 00:59:12.600 --> 00:59:21.620 You know, so, yeah, like there's a fundamental disbelief in that any of those three things, 00:59:21.880 --> 00:59:28.880 diversity, equity and inclusion are good things, you know, but but and I've said this before. 00:59:28.880 --> 00:59:37.340 The Democrats have to not run away from these culture war things and instead 00:59:37.340 --> 00:59:44.140 own them and be proud of the fact that they are on the right side of these culture war issues. 00:59:44.480 --> 00:59:50.380 Yep. Like, don't don't try to, like, downplay them or run away or, 00:59:50.420 --> 00:59:52.280 oh, let's talk about the economy instead. 00:59:52.280 --> 01:00:01.700 No, the culture war is the major defining aspect of modern politics and own 01:00:01.700 --> 01:00:05.620 it, defend it, be proud of it, be aggressive, 01:00:05.840 --> 01:00:12.120 make it their liability that they want to pull everybody back 50 years, a hundred years, 01:00:12.340 --> 01:00:17.140 whatever, to a world that doesn't exist anymore and shouldn't exist anymore 01:00:17.140 --> 01:00:21.440 because it was bad. You know? Absolutely. 01:00:21.440 --> 01:00:21.820 Yeah. 01:00:22.700 --> 01:00:27.580 So anyway, were we talking about vice presidents? I think we were. 01:00:27.980 --> 01:00:32.480 So we're talking about vice presidents other than Waltz. I like Waltz. 01:00:32.480 --> 01:00:34.600 I like Waltz. I like all of these. 01:00:35.060 --> 01:00:39.560 Any of the people on that list would be fine by me. I think they're all excellent people. 01:00:40.140 --> 01:00:43.440 So let me talk. I don't really have much to say about Bashir. 01:00:43.500 --> 01:00:48.000 I mean, I don't have much to say about Pritzker. I really haven't spent a lot 01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:51.820 of time thinking about either of them or researching them or knowing them. 01:00:52.180 --> 01:00:54.180 I know they're each contenders. 01:00:55.740 --> 01:01:00.680 The three that remain that we haven't talked about are Shapiro, Buttigieg, and Kelly. 01:01:02.460 --> 01:01:05.420 Is Whitmer clear out of the running? 01:01:05.420 --> 01:01:06.940 Whitmer took herself out of the running. 01:01:07.120 --> 01:01:08.620 Oh, that's right. Okay, yeah. 01:01:08.820 --> 01:01:14.840 And so did Cooper from New York. Whitmer took herself out. There wasn't a lot of talk about why. 01:01:15.600 --> 01:01:20.400 Cooper from, not New York, from North Carolina, Cooper from North Carolina pulled 01:01:20.400 --> 01:01:25.180 himself out specifically because he said, Look, I've got a lieutenant governor 01:01:25.180 --> 01:01:30.480 who is an absolute wacko, right winger. 01:01:30.940 --> 01:01:36.000 And the way the law works in North Carolina, if I leave the state, he's in charge. 01:01:36.780 --> 01:01:42.360 And so I would have to leave the state to campaign. 01:01:43.060 --> 01:01:47.040 And I don't want to give this guy the opportunity to screw things up in North 01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:48.320 Carolina while I'm gone. 01:01:49.500 --> 01:01:53.500 So I think it's a guy I should look up his Lieutenant governor, 01:01:53.580 --> 01:01:58.680 but anyway, they're, they're, they're apparently somebody he's worried about. 01:01:59.080 --> 01:02:03.000 Um, there may, there may be other reasons too. That's the, the public reason 01:02:03.000 --> 01:02:08.560 that was given, but of the remainder remainers of the remainder, uh, 01:02:09.820 --> 01:02:14.480 Let's talk Shapiro first. Let me start with your impression. 01:02:14.560 --> 01:02:15.720 You're in Pennsylvania, right? 01:02:16.380 --> 01:02:16.940 Absolutely. 01:02:17.260 --> 01:02:20.940 So you know probably more about Shapiro than I do. 01:02:21.600 --> 01:02:27.660 There have been a couple things in the news in the last day or two that I want to bring up. 01:02:27.720 --> 01:02:30.440 But what's your general impression of the guy? 01:02:31.680 --> 01:02:34.120 Do you advocate his choice? 01:02:34.640 --> 01:02:39.040 Absolutely. He was the attorney general here for a number of years. 01:02:39.820 --> 01:02:44.840 Interesting. I think he was the district attorney here in Bucks County, 01:02:44.960 --> 01:02:47.280 where I live, before I moved here. 01:02:47.440 --> 01:02:49.760 But then he was the attorney general in the state. 01:02:49.960 --> 01:02:54.960 And then when the previous governor retired and went out of office, 01:02:55.260 --> 01:02:59.860 Shapiro ran and the Republicans put up, hell, I can't remember his name, 01:02:59.880 --> 01:03:04.800 but a guy who pulled, I think he ended up pulling around 35, by 40% of the vote. 01:03:05.400 --> 01:03:10.660 Shapiro was very popular here. The people in Pennsylvania, for the most part, 01:03:10.720 --> 01:03:12.880 really like him. He's done good things. 01:03:13.240 --> 01:03:17.520 He's fairly honest. He's open. He doesn't take a whole lot of crap. 01:03:17.840 --> 01:03:21.540 Something bad came out this week. They talked about some sort of an investigation 01:03:21.540 --> 01:03:28.500 in the past on one of his staffs about some sexual abuse that he supposedly quashed. 01:03:28.740 --> 01:03:32.980 I don't know. I don't know if it's true, not true. It's not a good thing to 01:03:32.980 --> 01:03:36.600 have done. if he did it, but I don't know that it's a deal breaker. 01:03:37.000 --> 01:03:42.260 The two things that have come up, that is one of them, is that he has been accused 01:03:42.260 --> 01:03:47.920 in the last few days of, like you said, quashing that investigation. 01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:54.020 And basically, the person who was accused was a member of his staff who was also a friend of his, 01:03:54.260 --> 01:04:02.680 and he kind of made the allegations go away, and not in a way that was the most 01:04:02.680 --> 01:04:04.160 friendly to the woman involved. 01:04:05.370 --> 01:04:11.070 And so people are saying that basically, look, this day and age, that's inappropriate. 01:04:11.430 --> 01:04:15.090 That should be a disqualifier. Please don't pick him. 01:04:15.170 --> 01:04:21.570 The other thing that has been said over and over again about him is that of 01:04:21.570 --> 01:04:23.650 all of these VP contenders, 01:04:23.890 --> 01:04:35.090 he is the most strongly pro-Israel and has said things in the past that can 01:04:35.090 --> 01:04:39.110 be interpreted as actually anti-Palestinian. 01:04:39.650 --> 01:04:46.030 And he served apparently in the IDF as a volunteer in Israel at one point. 01:04:46.630 --> 01:04:52.090 Oh, you know, I saw something like that. He served on one of the farms. 01:04:52.350 --> 01:04:54.470 He was not in the IDF at any time. 01:04:54.690 --> 01:04:57.330 Okay. But he apparently- But he was there. 01:04:57.370 --> 01:04:57.510 Yeah. 01:04:57.710 --> 01:05:02.410 He apparently volunteered. I guess he wasn't called up or whatever, but he wanted to. 01:05:03.070 --> 01:05:10.450 But in any case, a lot of folks, especially on the more progressive side, 01:05:10.770 --> 01:05:14.110 the more Palestinian-friendly side of the Democratic coalition, 01:05:14.430 --> 01:05:22.650 are really, really uncomfortable with the degree of support he has given the 01:05:22.650 --> 01:05:26.130 Netanyahu government over the the last few months since October. 01:05:26.670 --> 01:05:32.490 Basically, still at the 100% back them up, they're going to do what they have 01:05:32.490 --> 01:05:37.530 to do rather than acknowledging some of the problematic aspects, to say the least, 01:05:37.650 --> 01:05:42.310 of how they have approached the situation since October. Now. 01:05:43.320 --> 01:05:47.560 People will say, well, look, he's talking vice president. 01:05:47.780 --> 01:05:51.760 He's going to follow the policies of the presidential candidate regardless. 01:05:52.400 --> 01:05:57.080 And on the one hand, yes. But of course, the whole point of a vice president 01:05:57.080 --> 01:06:00.540 is to become president if something happens to the actual president. 01:06:00.980 --> 01:06:08.520 And so their policy preferences do potentially matter because they may end up being president. 01:06:08.520 --> 01:06:11.240 President now maybe you think about that 01:06:11.240 --> 01:06:14.760 a little bit less with kamala harris 01:06:14.760 --> 01:06:18.800 as the president versus joe biden as the president just because of her age but 01:06:18.800 --> 01:06:24.800 you never know i mean we saw the attempt on trump just a couple weeks ago you 01:06:24.800 --> 01:06:29.800 know something could happen always there could you know there could be an assassination 01:06:29.800 --> 01:06:34.560 there could be an accident you could have a health scare even on a younger person. 01:06:34.920 --> 01:06:36.720 You never know. 01:06:37.260 --> 01:06:42.520 And so, yes, that does matter. And I think the thing to me is like, 01:06:42.580 --> 01:06:50.260 I definitely, I'm not with the most rabid anti-Israel portions of the Democratic coalition. 01:06:50.820 --> 01:06:55.780 But I'm also not with the most pro-Israel elements of the Democratic coalition. 01:06:55.780 --> 01:07:06.140 I feel like this is an area where you need to acknowledge that there's been evil done on both sides, 01:07:06.300 --> 01:07:12.940 and you try to figure that out, and you try to push for a different approach 01:07:12.940 --> 01:07:14.900 in terms of what's going on there. 01:07:14.900 --> 01:07:18.940 And Shapiro, maybe not in that spot, 01:07:19.080 --> 01:07:28.860 but even if I had no concerns about Shapiro's position myself at all, he is the only one, 01:07:29.000 --> 01:07:35.540 the only one of these six where I've heard people saying outright that, 01:07:36.220 --> 01:07:40.800 that if she picks Shapiro, it's a problem for me. 01:07:41.020 --> 01:07:45.240 I have not heard that about any of the other five. 01:07:45.460 --> 01:07:51.500 Now, maybe I'm just listening in the wrong place, but I saw one person post 01:07:51.500 --> 01:08:00.060 earlier today that he's becoming increasingly convinced that if, let's see, who was this? 01:08:00.180 --> 01:08:05.440 It was Dan Gilmore on Mastodon. 01:08:05.440 --> 01:08:10.240 He said, I will vote for and contribute to Harris no matter who is the VP, 01:08:10.480 --> 01:08:16.560 but I'm increasingly convinced that picking Shapiro would be an unforced error on her part. 01:08:17.400 --> 01:08:22.120 And I think that's why. I think that there are these two issues. 01:08:23.200 --> 01:08:29.400 One, his stance on the Middle East is disturbing to a significant chunk of the 01:08:29.400 --> 01:08:34.320 Democratic coalition. abolition and two, whatever this thing is with the sexual 01:08:34.320 --> 01:08:37.000 harassment stuff just does not look great. 01:08:37.120 --> 01:08:40.560 Now, who knows? Something may come up with one of the other candidates that's 01:08:40.560 --> 01:08:41.720 equally bad. We don't know. 01:08:42.040 --> 01:08:48.040 On the flip side of these negative concerns, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. 01:08:48.720 --> 01:08:53.300 He's really popular in Pennsylvania. You said you like him from everything I've 01:08:53.300 --> 01:08:54.900 heard from polling and other things. 01:08:54.980 --> 01:09:01.500 Just in general, he's well-liked. He runs ahead of where Joe Biden was in polls. 01:09:01.960 --> 01:09:08.540 You know, he is more well-loved in Pennsylvania than your quote-unquote average Democrat. 01:09:10.160 --> 01:09:18.100 And Pennsylvania is absolutely like the paths to victory in this election run through Pennsylvania. 01:09:18.100 --> 01:09:21.260 Pennsylvania can you imagine ways to win without Pennsylvania 01:09:21.260 --> 01:09:24.560 sure but all of the really likely ways 01:09:24.560 --> 01:09:27.720 to win involve Pennsylvania you need Pennsylvania 01:09:27.720 --> 01:09:31.660 now the latest polling 01:09:31.660 --> 01:09:36.980 and I'll get to polling in a second in the end but Harris has pulled ahead in 01:09:36.980 --> 01:09:41.900 the poll average in Pennsylvania so maybe she could get Pennsylvania without 01:09:41.900 --> 01:09:47.880 him but she's just barely ahead in Pennsylvania so So it's not like it's a secure lead there. 01:09:48.300 --> 01:09:54.960 And so if Shapiro brings Pennsylvania reliably, maybe that's a good bet. 01:09:55.120 --> 01:10:02.260 The other thing that's been said is Harris has apparently known this guy for almost 20 years. 01:10:02.780 --> 01:10:07.380 She's got a relationship with him. She knows him. She's worked with him before. 01:10:08.660 --> 01:10:12.660 And that's potentially important in picking a vice president. 01:10:12.660 --> 01:10:16.700 And of course we've got these rumors that she's actually already picked him 01:10:16.700 --> 01:10:21.640 and it's just, it leaked out early, but that's what it's going to be. So like, interesting. 01:10:21.900 --> 01:10:26.120 The most recent rumor I heard that was not him. 01:10:27.150 --> 01:10:28.590 And I'm trying to remember who it was now. 01:10:29.270 --> 01:10:29.930 Probably Kelly? 01:10:30.750 --> 01:10:35.030 Yeah, that's right. It was Kelly. I just heard that like an hour or two ago. 01:10:35.110 --> 01:10:38.130 They were saying that they're quite certain it's going to be Kelly. 01:10:38.190 --> 01:10:40.110 I don't think any of us really know. 01:10:40.750 --> 01:10:44.670 And like I said, by the time people listen to the show, you might know already. 01:10:45.130 --> 01:10:49.110 Yeah. It depends how long after I put out the show. It depends when I put out 01:10:49.110 --> 01:10:51.650 the show and how long it takes you to listen to it. 01:10:51.650 --> 01:10:57.350 As far as Pennsylvania goes, I think if we can keep Trump campaigning the way 01:10:57.350 --> 01:11:02.590 he is and keep Harris campaigning the way she does, she will sweep Pennsylvania. 01:11:03.130 --> 01:11:06.630 Fifty five to 60 percent of the vote would be my guess. 01:11:06.970 --> 01:11:11.070 Well, we'll see. I think I don't know. 01:11:11.110 --> 01:11:17.170 Like, I still think like if I had to bet right now, I think I'd still say Shapiro. 01:11:17.170 --> 01:11:23.410 But these two things that have come up in the last couple of days, give me some doubt. 01:11:23.570 --> 01:11:29.530 I feel like maybe it's one of these deals where she kind of wants Shapiro. She knows him. 01:11:29.690 --> 01:11:34.570 He's got Pennsylvania, but she's got to be thinking about these two things too. 01:11:34.970 --> 01:11:40.750 Like that's going to get him negative attention from certain parts of the coalition. 01:11:41.470 --> 01:11:46.810 And can she just avoid that? You know, if she wins, she can always put them in the cabinet. 01:11:47.170 --> 01:11:50.410 You know, there are a number of things she could, she could make him chief of 01:11:50.410 --> 01:11:52.590 staff if she really wants him around all the time. 01:11:52.870 --> 01:11:55.370 I like him here in Pennsylvania as a governor. 01:11:55.770 --> 01:11:57.790 Well, when, when's his term end? How long has he got? 01:11:58.750 --> 01:12:02.170 I, I think he can run two terms with, so that would be eight years. 01:12:02.670 --> 01:12:06.870 Okay. So, so he's, but he's not like right at the end of his term or anything anyway. 01:12:06.990 --> 01:12:09.330 Oh no, no, no. He's in the middle of his term basically. 01:12:09.870 --> 01:12:15.290 Right. So let's hit the other two real quick. We got Buttigieg and Kelly. 01:12:16.970 --> 01:12:20.390 Kelly is the other front runner. I would say, like you said, 01:12:20.410 --> 01:12:22.310 you heard rumors within the last hour or so. 01:12:24.050 --> 01:12:25.710 He's also been pretty good at, 01:12:27.010 --> 01:12:30.290 going on the offensive and making a good case. 01:12:31.050 --> 01:12:35.550 He's sympathetic because of his wife, Gabby Giffords. He was an astronaut. 01:12:36.170 --> 01:12:41.210 He's got a bunch of things going from him. He is also from a swing state. 01:12:41.490 --> 01:12:45.010 You know, Arizona would be really nice for the Democrats to get. 01:12:45.150 --> 01:12:48.970 I think it's less clear that he could deliver Arizona. 01:12:49.750 --> 01:12:56.710 It's, it's a bit redder like Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is like prototypical purple at this point. 01:12:57.870 --> 01:13:02.470 Arizona's a bit more red, but trending blue. Could he bring Arizona over the 01:13:02.470 --> 01:13:04.690 edge? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure. 01:13:06.570 --> 01:13:11.890 But also, you know, the Senate is at play too. 01:13:12.850 --> 01:13:16.610 And even if for the short term, because they've got a Democratic governor at 01:13:16.610 --> 01:13:20.390 the moment in Arizona, he might be replaced in the short term by a Democrat. 01:13:20.790 --> 01:13:23.830 But then they're going to have an election to fill that spot. 01:13:23.830 --> 01:13:27.690 And the Democrats may or may not win that. And you really need the Senate. 01:13:28.110 --> 01:13:35.250 Um, and the, and right now, like the Senate is a really hard ask for the Democrats right now. 01:13:35.310 --> 01:13:39.650 I've said this before in the show, they have to win pretty much every single 01:13:39.650 --> 01:13:44.610 state that is in contention for them in order to keep the Senate. 01:13:44.610 --> 01:13:47.050 They can't lose anything. 01:13:47.990 --> 01:13:53.670 And so, you know, putting another state potentially in play for the Senate, 01:13:53.850 --> 01:13:57.910 it's kind of risky. So like, do you really want to do that? 01:13:58.850 --> 01:14:06.270 But she might because like, he's got some positives to, you know, all of these people do. 01:14:06.270 --> 01:14:12.610 Finally, Buttigieg, as far as I can see, A, there's the risk of like, 01:14:12.830 --> 01:14:20.530 okay, are there some swing voters who will be like, I don't want a gay guy? 01:14:21.830 --> 01:14:28.430 And there might be. I wish that wasn't even a part of the conversation, 01:14:28.690 --> 01:14:30.470 but it still is, unfortunately. 01:14:30.470 --> 01:14:37.950 Unfortunately and but i don't know that you can i don't know if you can run afraid from that. 01:14:38.670 --> 01:14:45.210 At some point you just have to like do it anyway but the time to do it anyway 01:14:45.210 --> 01:14:51.610 is when you got a nice healthy lead and can spare a few points yeah like if 01:14:51.610 --> 01:14:54.970 you're right on the edge and right now Now we're right on the edge. 01:14:55.490 --> 01:15:03.730 Then, you know, maybe it's best to not do the risky thing on the plus side for Buddha. 01:15:03.770 --> 01:15:08.610 He is really, really good. Um, 01:15:09.000 --> 01:15:12.680 at like taking it to conservatives and 01:15:12.680 --> 01:15:17.640 tearing their cases apart like one of the things he's well known for is he is 01:15:17.640 --> 01:15:23.120 one of the few people in the administration that regularly goes on fox news 01:15:23.120 --> 01:15:29.720 and they bring him on fox news every time even though every time he goes on fox news, 01:15:30.360 --> 01:15:33.240 he makes a really damn good case and the 01:15:33.240 --> 01:15:38.140 people interviewing him are often left sort of speechless list of like uh uh 01:15:38.140 --> 01:15:42.780 uh uh because like whatever they said he turned it right around on them and 01:15:42.780 --> 01:15:48.900 ripped it apart and comes off looking good in in front of the fox news people 01:15:48.900 --> 01:15:52.360 who usually don't even see those arguments he's very fast. 01:15:52.360 --> 01:15:53.220 On his feet yeah. 01:15:53.220 --> 01:15:56.760 He's very fast on his feet he can react in 01:15:56.760 --> 01:16:00.880 real time he performs well in interviews um 01:16:00.880 --> 01:16:07.380 and again sort of to lean in on the culture war thing yeah he's a gay guy he's 01:16:07.380 --> 01:16:13.620 a gay guy with kids you know he's got a good well a family that looks great 01:16:13.620 --> 01:16:19.940 on tv his husband is out there on a regular basis also like being supportive and making good, 01:16:20.420 --> 01:16:27.960 interviews of his own you know campaigning everything like he is so if you want 01:16:27.960 --> 01:16:31.720 to lean into to, yeah, we're the new America. 01:16:31.860 --> 01:16:41.360 We're the coalition of the modern America, and the modern America includes gay people. 01:16:41.700 --> 01:16:47.480 It includes gay married people with kids and a family. 01:16:48.100 --> 01:16:53.660 And I know the whole right wing goes into seizures thinking about that. 01:16:54.740 --> 01:16:57.120 Well, I shouldn't even say that. Not really. Not really. 01:16:57.440 --> 01:17:01.220 Like the people in control of the party and the people who are writing like 01:17:01.220 --> 01:17:04.820 Project 2025 and stuff want to roll back all this stuff. 01:17:05.060 --> 01:17:10.880 But at this point, like support for things like gay marriage is almost universal 01:17:10.880 --> 01:17:15.120 on the Democratic side, but it's a majority position even on the Republican side. 01:17:15.420 --> 01:17:17.720 It's about 75, 80 percent nationwide. 01:17:17.940 --> 01:17:24.620 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's like taking the retrograde positions on this 01:17:24.620 --> 01:17:27.020 isn't necessarily a winner, 01:17:27.060 --> 01:17:32.180 as long as the Democrats can actually make a good positive case for it instead 01:17:32.180 --> 01:17:33.940 of running away from it. Yeah. 01:17:34.420 --> 01:17:38.400 Well, I think it's probably time that they do more of that instead of backing 01:17:38.400 --> 01:17:40.280 off on these silly accusations. 01:17:40.680 --> 01:17:44.400 Yeah, that's right. I do believe in gay marriage. 01:17:44.480 --> 01:17:50.060 I do believe in gay citizenship and so on and so forth. What the hell? 01:17:50.160 --> 01:17:51.460 Of course I do. Why wouldn't I? 01:17:51.460 --> 01:17:56.020 Yeah lean into it oh and you are weird for not being for. 01:17:56.020 --> 01:17:57.580 It yeah there you go. 01:17:57.580 --> 01:18:04.180 You are a weirdo freak uh who needs to wake up who is spending too much time 01:18:04.180 --> 01:18:09.920 thinking about what other people do in the bedroom yep you know why are you 01:18:09.920 --> 01:18:15.320 why do you care you're the freak why do you care Nobody reasonable would care, 01:18:15.580 --> 01:18:18.740 you know, it's anyway. 01:18:19.560 --> 01:18:20.760 Um, okay. 01:18:21.700 --> 01:18:27.000 I, I, I, I do want to hit the polling before we finish up. 01:18:27.380 --> 01:18:39.320 So here, here's the fundamental thing on polling Kamala Kamala Harris is absolutely kicking ass. 01:18:39.320 --> 01:18:44.160 Like, I will say once again, I said this at one point last week, 01:18:44.200 --> 01:18:46.080 but I'll say it again here. I was wrong. 01:18:46.520 --> 01:18:51.140 Like, I was completely wrong on this transition thing from Biden. 01:18:51.320 --> 01:18:58.000 Now, I was worried about, like, some sort of battle instead of coming quickly to Harris. 01:18:58.000 --> 01:19:01.980 Harris, but I fundamentally thought even if Harris came out, 01:19:02.260 --> 01:19:07.800 first of all, I thought there'd be a messy transition. There was no messy transition. 01:19:08.100 --> 01:19:10.240 It was like, boom, here you go. 01:19:11.220 --> 01:19:17.460 But also I thought whoever took over from Biden would start out roughly at the 01:19:17.460 --> 01:19:23.480 same place as Biden and maybe they'd be able to better prosecute the case than Biden, 01:19:23.620 --> 01:19:30.440 but it would be a long, hard slog to sort of make up the lost ground and blah, blah, blah. 01:19:30.980 --> 01:19:38.520 No, we are 12 days past Biden dropping out. 01:19:39.790 --> 01:19:45.270 And Harris has taken the lead. You know, I mean, in the national polls as well, 01:19:45.290 --> 01:19:49.010 the national polls either have her neck and neck or just barely in the lead, 01:19:49.130 --> 01:19:53.950 depending on who you look at, what aggregator, whether they count polls that 01:19:53.950 --> 01:19:55.810 have Kennedy in them or not, things like that. 01:19:56.010 --> 01:20:00.090 But basically from national polling, it's now a dead heat. 01:20:00.170 --> 01:20:05.490 Whereas, you know, right before Biden dropped out, he was behind by several 01:20:05.490 --> 01:20:07.450 percent nationwide. wide. 01:20:07.490 --> 01:20:11.350 And looking at all the swing states, I do election graphs. 01:20:11.830 --> 01:20:20.330 And there were a few straggler Biden versus Trump polls that came in after he 01:20:20.330 --> 01:20:22.450 dropped out, reflecting things before he dropped out. 01:20:22.830 --> 01:20:31.630 In the end, my final averages for Biden versus Trump had the tipping point, 01:20:31.870 --> 01:20:35.210 meaning the the margin in the state that would put the winner over the edge 01:20:35.210 --> 01:20:43.630 at a 5% Trump lead in North Carolina with Pennsylvania being even further behind. 01:20:43.670 --> 01:20:46.210 Biden was behind by 5.2% in Pennsylvania. 01:20:47.050 --> 01:20:56.530 And, you know, meanwhile, at this point, like, and Harris, my averages for Harris 01:20:56.530 --> 01:21:01.890 had her start out at like on that tipping point metric behind by about 2.9%. 01:21:01.890 --> 01:21:08.410 Because it wasn't quite where Biden was, but also there weren't a lot of good polls in a lot of states. 01:21:08.550 --> 01:21:13.230 So I figured it would sort of move up towards where Biden was and then maybe start getting better. 01:21:13.330 --> 01:21:17.850 No, it started getting better instantly and it started getting better fast. 01:21:18.330 --> 01:21:22.090 And there's basically been a step change in the polls. 01:21:22.750 --> 01:21:26.990 My average moved over the course of the last 12 days, but if you look at it, 01:21:27.410 --> 01:21:31.770 there's a Harris versus Trump polling before she became She became the actual 01:21:31.770 --> 01:21:36.770 candidate and those had her about where Biden was. 01:21:37.030 --> 01:21:41.490 But then as soon as she became the actual candidate instead of a hypothetical 01:21:41.490 --> 01:21:45.010 candidate, boom, she was doing much, much better. 01:21:45.170 --> 01:21:50.570 And so my averages for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, 01:21:50.710 --> 01:21:55.230 which are the three key states for any victory for the Democrats, 01:21:55.490 --> 01:21:59.030 have all now moved to zero. 01:21:59.810 --> 01:22:05.770 Harris leads, small Harris leads, very small Harris leads, 0.8 in Michigan, 01:22:06.070 --> 01:22:09.290 0.5 in Wisconsin, 0.4 in Pennsylvania. 01:22:09.650 --> 01:22:14.350 But she's taken the lead in all three of those states. And also states that 01:22:14.350 --> 01:22:19.290 were further out that looked like they might not be in contention in a Biden scenario, 01:22:19.730 --> 01:22:26.090 Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina are now also all close. 01:22:26.370 --> 01:22:29.950 They all still have Trump's lead, They all have Trump in the lead now, 01:22:30.010 --> 01:22:33.510 but they're all close now. They were not close before. 01:22:33.830 --> 01:22:36.890 And this has all happened in less than two weeks. 01:22:38.710 --> 01:22:47.390 So I was wrong. Harris is instantly, instantly doing much better than Biden. 01:22:47.390 --> 01:22:52.290 It's like, and you, and you hear like anecdotal things as well. 01:22:52.910 --> 01:22:56.710 Like I've heard interviews with people who are like, yeah, I voted for Donald 01:22:56.710 --> 01:23:01.610 Trump twice and I was kind of sick with sick of him, but there's no way I could 01:23:01.610 --> 01:23:04.610 have voted for Biden, but I might vote for Harris. 01:23:06.370 --> 01:23:10.230 I think she's going to pull in a lot of the people that were in the middle. 01:23:10.550 --> 01:23:12.110 Oh yeah. That's why I'm really. 01:23:12.210 --> 01:23:13.590 She's going to run very strong. 01:23:13.590 --> 01:23:20.350 The quote double hater grouping that's been talked about, it seems like that 01:23:20.350 --> 01:23:23.050 double hater group still hates Trump. 01:23:24.140 --> 01:23:28.800 But it's pretty okay with Harris. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's all you need. 01:23:29.140 --> 01:23:31.860 That's all you need to, to, to change this. 01:23:32.340 --> 01:23:36.000 Um, he is, by the way, I understand in this straw poll they're doing, 01:23:36.080 --> 01:23:39.480 he has already accumulated enough votes that she's got the number. 01:23:39.620 --> 01:23:45.860 Oh yeah. Yeah. She, she, the, they, she had informally before the real vote 01:23:45.860 --> 01:23:50.900 hit, like last, last week, she already had enough people who'd sort of pledged themselves to her. 01:23:51.140 --> 01:23:54.740 But the, the, the, the, virtual 01:23:54.740 --> 01:23:58.120 roll call is what they're calling it that started 01:23:58.120 --> 01:24:00.960 and almost immediately as soon 01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:04.100 as they started the damn thing she was over the top it's going 01:24:04.100 --> 01:24:07.200 to be oh it's going to be unanimous i mean she she was 01:24:07.200 --> 01:24:10.240 the only one who ended up being eligible no one else 01:24:10.240 --> 01:24:13.220 ended up putting in their name so even 01:24:13.220 --> 01:24:16.800 rfk jr not even rfk jr 01:24:16.800 --> 01:24:20.180 not joe mansion not williamson i 01:24:20.180 --> 01:24:23.220 i williamson may have wanted to but she didn't like 01:24:23.220 --> 01:24:26.620 you had to get like a couple a few hundred delegates signing their 01:24:26.620 --> 01:24:29.880 name saying they supported you and yeah right you 01:24:29.880 --> 01:24:34.220 know so no so yes so 01:24:34.220 --> 01:24:41.320 she's there and look this whole thing the energy behind it i mean you know we 01:24:41.320 --> 01:24:45.200 talked last week about how good her first week of fundraising was her second 01:24:45.200 --> 01:24:51.500 week was even better yeah like they just announced i think I think it was like $312 million in July, 01:24:51.720 --> 01:24:58.720 something like that, compared to like $110 or $130 maybe for Trump. 01:24:59.540 --> 01:25:07.180 So they're raking in the money. A lot of it is from first-time donors who have never done this before. 01:25:08.840 --> 01:25:14.160 The excitement is palpable. I've heard anecdotal things as well from... 01:25:15.620 --> 01:25:19.580 Younger people who are in their first or second presidential elections that 01:25:19.580 --> 01:25:27.900 they're voting for, who were really completely unenthused about the Biden versus Trump choice. 01:25:29.400 --> 01:25:34.300 And maybe we're going to vote, but we're really thinking that they would just sit it out. 01:25:34.380 --> 01:25:37.700 Like, there's no way I'll vote for either of those people who are now excited 01:25:37.700 --> 01:25:42.560 about Harris, you know, who are posting things online with like the coconut 01:25:42.560 --> 01:25:44.420 tree meme and things like that. 01:25:44.420 --> 01:25:51.480 Um, and there's, and there are tons of these people signing up as volunteers as well. 01:25:51.580 --> 01:25:54.340 There's just the level of excitement is insane. 01:25:54.520 --> 01:25:59.760 If she doesn't make a bad choice on the VP that pops that excitement in some 01:25:59.760 --> 01:26:05.620 way, you know, there's just, you know, the enthusiasm gap is going to be huge. 01:26:05.760 --> 01:26:10.240 Like we, we had the situation when it was Biden versus Trump that neither side 01:26:10.240 --> 01:26:14.300 was really enthusiastic. Now we have one side that is. 01:26:14.740 --> 01:26:21.420 And if this ends up being just a turnout election where you're not really convincing 01:26:21.420 --> 01:26:25.980 a lot of people, but it's a question of who actually bothers to vote, 01:26:26.140 --> 01:26:28.380 the enthusiastic side wins. 01:26:28.380 --> 01:26:33.340 Yeah now on top of that i think they are convincing some folks like i said there 01:26:33.340 --> 01:26:40.520 are these these double haters seem to be coming to the harris side and there seem to be some. 01:26:41.580 --> 01:26:47.780 Disillusioned republicans who were never ever ever going to vote for biden who 01:26:47.780 --> 01:26:53.580 are at least giving harris a serious look and that that changes everything and 01:26:53.580 --> 01:26:58.140 i don't know like i you know on On electiongraphs.com, 01:26:58.240 --> 01:27:01.480 and I'm not going to make any promises. 01:27:01.900 --> 01:27:05.300 I was thinking of doing another election graphs blog post this weekend, 01:27:05.380 --> 01:27:09.840 even though I did one last weekend, just because Harris took the lead. 01:27:10.020 --> 01:27:18.140 That's a big news thing to say. But if you compare to 2016 and 2020, 01:27:18.620 --> 01:27:28.720 she is still way, way, way behind where Biden was in 2020 and where Clinton was in 2016. 01:27:29.400 --> 01:27:36.640 And we all remember that in 2020, it ended up being super close. And in 2016, Trump won. 01:27:38.120 --> 01:27:43.720 And right now, you know, according to my tipping point right now, 01:27:43.800 --> 01:27:48.020 right now the tipping point is Harris ahead by 0.04%. 01:27:48.920 --> 01:27:55.580 At this same time, in the same number of days, 98 days before the election as 01:27:55.580 --> 01:27:59.700 we're recording this, or actually, wait, no, we're 95 days before the election. 01:28:00.560 --> 01:28:07.140 95 days before the election, 94 in a fraction. We have Harris ahead by 0.04%. 01:28:08.270 --> 01:28:12.570 But Biden was ahead by 4.6% and it was super close. 01:28:13.390 --> 01:28:18.110 And Clinton was ahead by 3.2% and she lost. 01:28:18.830 --> 01:28:25.130 So like, it is not time to get complacent. Now, I don't know that she- Well. 01:28:25.130 --> 01:28:29.930 You've said numerous times that the Democrat needs about a 4% to 5% lead in 01:28:29.930 --> 01:28:33.250 order to win the election because how the electoral college falls. 01:28:33.390 --> 01:28:40.230 I think you're right. Yeah, well, just on an individual state basis, 01:28:40.770 --> 01:28:45.630 the way I do my projections is looking at how the averages have differed from 01:28:45.630 --> 01:28:48.450 the actual results over the last few election cycles. 01:28:48.870 --> 01:28:54.270 And if you average all that out, to even have a 50-50 shot of winning, 01:28:54.570 --> 01:28:58.970 I believe the number, and I should look this up, but I'm not going to, 01:28:58.990 --> 01:29:02.150 I'm going by memory, was about 1.2%. 01:29:02.150 --> 01:29:03.770 Oh, I thought it was more than that. 01:29:03.770 --> 01:29:10.950 Well, the Democrats have to be ahead in the polling average for a state by 1.2% 01:29:10.950 --> 01:29:13.570 to have a 50-50 shot of winning. 01:29:14.130 --> 01:29:19.570 So to what you are saying, to actually feel confident of winning, 01:29:19.830 --> 01:29:21.590 they need to be ahead by even more. 01:29:21.830 --> 01:29:27.350 Like all of these states where you're 2%, 3% ahead, yeah, you're favored, 01:29:27.630 --> 01:29:30.010 but you should not feel at all confident. 01:29:30.170 --> 01:29:33.950 There's a decent chance you could still lose. like famously 01:29:33.950 --> 01:29:37.630 there was one state that like 01:29:37.630 --> 01:29:40.910 clinton was ahead by like eight 01:29:40.910 --> 01:29:44.110 nine percent and she's still lost yeah like 01:29:44.110 --> 01:29:50.430 so the the poll averages were you know way off and i'm i should look up exactly 01:29:50.430 --> 01:30:01.310 how far ahead let me check that you know i like to get my facts correct, 01:30:02.530 --> 01:30:05.370 it was wisconsin she was 01:30:05.370 --> 01:30:08.290 ahead by 7.1 percent in wisconsin 01:30:08.290 --> 01:30:11.010 and still lost the state that was in 01:30:11.010 --> 01:30:18.970 the final poll average that i had for this for wisconsin but so you know i i 01:30:18.970 --> 01:30:24.690 don't i i am very very grateful that harris is now ahead instead of behind that's 01:30:24.690 --> 01:30:30.670 great progress but i I won't feel confident until she's not just a head, 01:30:31.150 --> 01:30:32.970 but a head by a lot. 01:30:33.350 --> 01:30:33.790 Yeah. 01:30:33.910 --> 01:30:37.590 Now, now having said that, which we may or may not get, 01:30:38.650 --> 01:30:44.810 At the moment, I am not yet convinced that she's leveled out yet. 01:30:44.990 --> 01:30:50.370 Like, we are still at the point that practically every new batch of polls shows 01:30:50.370 --> 01:30:52.850 her doing better than the previous batch of polls. 01:30:53.090 --> 01:30:58.390 And I don't think Donald Trump has been helping himself these last couple weeks either. 01:30:59.050 --> 01:31:02.690 And we've got the Democratic Convention coming up very soon as well. 01:31:03.430 --> 01:31:08.350 So I feel like, you know, maybe it's wishful thinking here. But I feel like 01:31:08.350 --> 01:31:11.690 her momentum has not yet slowed. I agree with that. 01:31:12.110 --> 01:31:17.630 At some point, it probably will. You know, we do not live in a country where 01:31:17.630 --> 01:31:23.250 we're going to have polling showing her, you know, winning 70-30 or something. 01:31:23.250 --> 01:31:26.510 That that's we're not going to have you know 01:31:26.510 --> 01:31:33.670 this country is no longer structured in such a way at least for now where either 01:31:33.670 --> 01:31:40.450 party can have like ronald reagan's style landslides where you win every state 01:31:40.450 --> 01:31:45.650 except one or whatever that's it no nothing like that is going to happen it's going 01:31:45.730 --> 01:31:48.950 to be a close election but i think 01:31:48.950 --> 01:31:52.050 like i anticipate that 01:31:52.050 --> 01:31:55.250 she will before things level off and start 01:31:55.250 --> 01:31:58.370 just bouncing around normally i think 01:31:58.370 --> 01:32:03.010 she's going to still improve a little bit from where she is at some point it 01:32:03.010 --> 01:32:07.850 will level off like this initial honeymoon isn't going to last all the way to 01:32:07.850 --> 01:32:13.390 the election but i think she's still in her bounce i you know who knows i could 01:32:13.390 --> 01:32:17.310 be wrong could talk to you like a week from now and Trump's taking the lead again. 01:32:17.370 --> 01:32:21.810 But I feel like she's still got room to grow. 01:32:22.900 --> 01:32:27.980 Where clearly Biden was struggling and, you know, and people like getting behind 01:32:27.980 --> 01:32:30.320 a winner too. And right now she looks like a winner. 01:32:30.460 --> 01:32:33.060 Yep. She's young. She's enthusiastic. 01:32:33.400 --> 01:32:39.420 She's got, it's not just her campaign. Her herself like is exuding positive energy. 01:32:39.600 --> 01:32:46.440 And that's another part of it. Like the whole Donald Trump campaign is about 01:32:46.440 --> 01:32:50.620 grievances and negativity and being upset and mad. 01:32:50.620 --> 01:32:59.200 Bad like kamala harris seems joyful yeah you know and positive and you know 01:32:59.200 --> 01:33:04.360 there's an appeal to that wasn't you know even though even among the sort of 01:33:04.360 --> 01:33:08.340 grumpy middle like you know was. 01:33:08.340 --> 01:33:10.680 It hubert humphrey they called the happy warrior. 01:33:10.680 --> 01:33:15.560 I don't know that was before my time i know i know you're You've been up there, but. 01:33:18.540 --> 01:33:22.020 I can't remember. It's been so long. I can't remember if I voted for him or 01:33:22.020 --> 01:33:28.120 not, but he was a very likable guy and he was always happy to engage in battles. He was always a smile. 01:33:30.560 --> 01:33:36.780 No, like mood makes a difference. And, and, you know, on the, 01:33:36.820 --> 01:33:38.720 you're back to weird stuff. 01:33:38.940 --> 01:33:47.340 I mean, George W. Bush on Donald Trump's inaugural, in his inauguration, 01:33:47.340 --> 01:33:50.280 when he gave his inaugural speech, George W. 01:33:50.360 --> 01:33:55.460 Bush, after it leaned over to Hillary Clinton and said, that was some weird shit. Yep. 01:34:24.840 --> 01:34:25.960 Think, you know, you don't need to gaslight people. by saying that there are 01:34:25.960 --> 01:34:29.820 no problems. I'm not suggesting that at all. There are lots of problems and 01:34:29.820 --> 01:34:30.920 we need to make them better. 01:34:31.040 --> 01:34:37.060 But coming in with that positive, excited mood that's optimistic for the future, 01:34:38.020 --> 01:34:45.640 I mean, that's the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama formula for big democratic victories. 01:34:45.940 --> 01:34:47.100 Yeah, absolutely. 01:34:47.280 --> 01:34:52.720 You know, and that's, you know, Biden won based on a, you got to stop Trump 01:34:52.720 --> 01:34:58.180 message and he managed But that's the other big change is that this, 01:34:58.340 --> 01:35:01.160 like when it was Biden versus Trump, 01:35:01.380 --> 01:35:04.360 it was all about you have to stop Trump. 01:35:04.740 --> 01:35:08.580 There was a little bit Biden was trying to say about his accomplishments, 01:35:08.760 --> 01:35:13.860 but there wasn't a lot about Biden's positive vision or what was good about 01:35:13.860 --> 01:35:17.340 Biden with Harris versus Trump. 01:35:18.260 --> 01:35:24.860 Yeah. With Harris versus Trump, the mood, like the vibe you get from all of 01:35:24.860 --> 01:35:28.960 this is it's not all about, she's not Trump. 01:35:29.200 --> 01:35:37.340 There is lots and lots and lots of excitement around Kamala Harris herself and 01:35:37.340 --> 01:35:39.780 that people are excited about her. 01:35:39.980 --> 01:35:46.620 It's not just a, we have to stop Trump and that It changes the mood entirely. 01:35:46.940 --> 01:35:50.280 And I think that's shown up in the polling, even in 12 days. 01:35:50.480 --> 01:35:52.340 I think you're going to get more of it. 01:35:52.860 --> 01:35:57.000 I don't know how much more you can get, but you can get more. 01:35:57.140 --> 01:36:01.080 Whereas I think that Trump has been bouncing along his ceiling. 01:36:01.800 --> 01:36:06.280 Like Trump's not going to get more support. Like it's a question of turning 01:36:06.280 --> 01:36:12.600 out the people who already like him or, or who are already have a mild preference for him. 01:36:12.600 --> 01:36:17.080 But I think the mild preference people are the ones that are looking at Harris. 01:36:18.000 --> 01:36:25.120 You know, Trump, Trump was, and Trump wasn't even trying like with his, with his JD Vance pick. 01:36:25.620 --> 01:36:28.660 He wasn't trying to bring in anybody who didn't already like him. 01:36:29.040 --> 01:36:29.900 No, no. 01:36:30.060 --> 01:36:35.780 And he make, he makes almost no attempt at it. He's, he's preaching to the people who already like him. 01:36:36.240 --> 01:36:41.540 And his, his gamble was that would be enough because the Democrats are demoralized 01:36:41.540 --> 01:36:43.880 and they're not going to turn out for Joe Biden. 01:36:44.300 --> 01:36:48.940 Well, guess what? We're in a different world now. And we'll see. 01:36:49.260 --> 01:36:56.600 In terms of my back to election graphs for just a second, I have these four probabilistic models. 01:36:56.940 --> 01:37:01.320 Two of them are if the election was today, which it is not. 01:37:01.560 --> 01:37:06.020 Those were my old models. I now have my preferred models that take into account 01:37:06.020 --> 01:37:11.260 the amount of time left before the election. And then I have one that assumes 01:37:11.260 --> 01:37:15.080 like the polling errors are going to be completely independent and all the States. 01:37:15.220 --> 01:37:21.880 So like if the polling is off in Nebraska, it's going to, it can be off in a 01:37:21.880 --> 01:37:24.600 completely different way in Virginia. 01:37:25.340 --> 01:37:30.740 And I guess Nebraska may not be the best example, like, but in Nebraska, 01:37:31.340 --> 01:37:35.740 The other one assumes that the errors are all very highly correlated. 01:37:35.840 --> 01:37:37.420 It actually assumes they're perfectly correlated. 01:37:38.280 --> 01:37:42.280 So if there's a polling error in one place, you're going to have the same kind of error everywhere. 01:37:42.620 --> 01:37:45.920 Now, neither one of those two extremes are true, 01:37:46.080 --> 01:37:52.780 but I've become more and more convinced over the last couple of years that the 01:37:52.780 --> 01:37:57.920 uniform swing one where the errors are the same everywhere is closer to true, 01:37:58.040 --> 01:37:59.960 at least in the states that matter. 01:37:59.960 --> 01:38:09.340 And the reason is, it's the same small group of pollsters polling over and over 01:38:09.340 --> 01:38:11.860 and over again, especially in the swing states. 01:38:12.000 --> 01:38:15.100 Some of the states that are way out there, like if somebody polls Wyoming. 01:38:15.460 --> 01:38:20.560 It might be a Wyoming-only specialist who's polling a local congressional race 01:38:20.560 --> 01:38:24.460 and polls the presidential race while they're at it at something, 01:38:24.600 --> 01:38:26.460 and they may have their own issues. 01:38:26.460 --> 01:38:32.780 But for almost all the swing states, you've got the same relatively small group 01:38:32.780 --> 01:38:35.400 of pollsters polling over and over and over again. 01:38:35.560 --> 01:38:42.400 And so if they have a methodology issue, they're going to be wrong in the same 01:38:42.400 --> 01:38:46.780 way in Wisconsin as they are in Pennsylvania. Yeah. 01:38:46.880 --> 01:38:54.180 And so I've become convinced that the uniform swing one is probably closer to the truth. 01:38:54.320 --> 01:38:59.440 So having said that, the range between those two models for the ones that allows time for the election, 01:38:59.560 --> 01:39:03.500 I'm not even going to look at if the election was today, but the range right 01:39:03.500 --> 01:39:10.960 now is from 13.9% win for Harris in the independent states view to 43% in the uniform swing view. 01:39:11.160 --> 01:39:15.380 And I think the uniform swing view is closer to the truth. If you want to say 01:39:15.380 --> 01:39:17.560 it's not quite there, maybe put it at 40 instead. 01:39:17.980 --> 01:39:21.280 And so you're really looking right now at a 40-60 race. 01:39:21.560 --> 01:39:26.480 So it's really close to a coin toss, but with Trump slightly favored. 01:39:26.700 --> 01:39:32.640 And the reason I am still slightly favoring Trump right now is what we were talking about before. 01:39:33.000 --> 01:39:39.420 Over the last few presidential elections, the polls in the close states have 01:39:39.420 --> 01:39:43.620 tended to underestimate the Republicans by a couple percent. 01:39:44.340 --> 01:39:52.380 And right now, Harris's margin in the close states that matter is like less than a percent. 01:39:52.580 --> 01:39:56.520 So that's why it's like, okay, if the polls are wrong in the same way they've 01:39:56.520 --> 01:40:00.580 tended to be wrong, those polls that say she's ahead like by half a percent, 01:40:01.280 --> 01:40:04.900 probably actually mean Trump's ahead by half a percent or something. 01:40:05.240 --> 01:40:09.060 Either way, it's really close. We're close to a toss-up at this point. 01:40:09.140 --> 01:40:12.480 So I want her to continue strengthening a little bit more. 01:40:13.800 --> 01:40:15.720 But because, you know... 01:40:16.790 --> 01:40:21.850 We expected a nail-biter this year, but I would much rather we get to the end 01:40:21.850 --> 01:40:26.770 of October, beginning of November, with Harris having a fairly substantial lead, 01:40:26.850 --> 01:40:28.970 please, not a nail-biter. 01:40:29.130 --> 01:40:33.070 But I wouldn't be surprised if we have a nail-biter. 01:40:33.390 --> 01:40:37.170 And we've been talking on the Commodions Corner Slack a bit. 01:40:37.350 --> 01:40:44.370 Bob brought up some articles recently about how there are a whole bunch of Republican 01:40:44.370 --> 01:40:46.430 election officials in a whole bunch 01:40:46.430 --> 01:40:51.650 of swing states who are essentially promising not to certify results, 01:40:51.990 --> 01:40:54.350 um, which could cause mischief. 01:40:55.210 --> 01:41:00.810 That mischief matters if it's close. If it's not close, then maybe you don't 01:41:00.810 --> 01:41:02.210 have to worry about that now. 01:41:02.310 --> 01:41:06.310 And I also said, of course, this all depends like if the polls are off in the 01:41:06.310 --> 01:41:08.770 same kind of way they were off the last few election cycles, 01:41:08.930 --> 01:41:11.850 they may well be off in the other direction. Yeah. 01:41:11.930 --> 01:41:15.090 In which case the Democrats are doing even better than we think. 01:41:15.490 --> 01:41:20.450 And the reasons to think that, that might be the case. 01:41:20.510 --> 01:41:24.490 I'm not going to assume it. I'm going to continue assuming that the polls are 01:41:24.490 --> 01:41:28.230 going to be off in the same kind of way as they were that last few elections. 01:41:28.990 --> 01:41:34.990 But all of these pollsters who got it really, really wrong in 2016 and 2020, 01:41:35.290 --> 01:41:41.550 there's no way they didn't modify their methods to try to fix that error. 01:41:41.550 --> 01:41:44.950 And maybe they overcompensated. That's one. 01:41:45.390 --> 01:41:51.650 And two is on all of these, you know, special elections since the midterm, 01:41:51.690 --> 01:41:53.650 the Democrats have been overperforming polls. 01:41:53.870 --> 01:41:58.370 Yeah. So maybe they are here too. So we'll see. We'll see. Okay. 01:41:59.310 --> 01:42:02.650 Any last thoughts, Ed? No, I think that- It's time to wrap things up. 01:42:02.990 --> 01:42:04.290 Yep. Yep. 01:42:05.110 --> 01:42:08.470 Okay. Well, time for the things at the end. 01:42:09.210 --> 01:42:13.370 Go to election graphs. No, not election graphs. Got elections on my mind. 01:42:13.410 --> 01:42:16.790 Yeah. Go to election graphs too, but go to curmudgeons-corner.com. 01:42:16.910 --> 01:42:18.810 You'll find all the ways to contact us. 01:42:19.010 --> 01:42:22.770 You'll find our archives, you know, all that kind of fun stuff. 01:42:22.830 --> 01:42:25.030 You will not yet find a link to our YouTube. 01:42:25.350 --> 01:42:30.550 I mentioned we've for the last month or so, we've been live streaming all of these episodes. 01:42:30.990 --> 01:42:34.610 According to my dashboard, there's been one person who's actually been watching 01:42:34.610 --> 01:42:36.190 for nearly the entire show, Ed. 01:42:36.390 --> 01:42:41.390 Really? So I don't know. I don't know who you are or if you're real or whether 01:42:41.390 --> 01:42:45.930 you're just an artifact of me having checked the stream at the beginning of 01:42:45.930 --> 01:42:47.610 the show and forgot to turn it off or something. 01:42:47.770 --> 01:42:52.390 So maybe it's me. Maybe it's me who's watching. But if it's somebody else, 01:42:52.470 --> 01:42:54.250 thank you for watching the live stream. 01:42:54.650 --> 01:42:59.790 Just a second, Ed. If anybody does want to see it, youtube.com and then you 01:42:59.790 --> 01:43:01.030 can search for curmudgeons corner. 01:43:01.170 --> 01:43:03.810 But if you do that, there's like three curmudgeons corner. You have to find 01:43:03.810 --> 01:43:04.810 the one that's actually us. 01:43:05.130 --> 01:43:08.570 Or it's youtube.com slash at curmudgeons hyphen corner. 01:43:08.950 --> 01:43:15.930 And then you'll find us and subscribe and click the little bell icon for notifications. 01:43:15.930 --> 01:43:19.650 Then you'll get an alert when we go live. Okay, Ed, yes, yes. 01:43:19.930 --> 01:43:27.010 I was going to say, whoever that is that's watching needs to be told that I am wearing shorts. 01:43:27.930 --> 01:43:31.610 Because you keep seeing my bare leg there. I do have shorts on. 01:43:31.670 --> 01:43:33.970 I'm not like in a virtual office. I'm dressed. 01:43:35.130 --> 01:43:35.530 That's right. 01:43:35.670 --> 01:43:40.670 It's over 80 degrees in this room, so I'm wearing minimal clothing. 01:43:40.950 --> 01:43:45.910 And that is true. If you watch the live stream, unlike the podcast, 01:43:46.130 --> 01:43:48.090 you can actually see us while we talk. 01:43:48.350 --> 01:43:53.850 Of course, it's also like, you know, on the podcast, I have tools that automatically 01:43:53.850 --> 01:43:58.310 eliminate ums and ahs and times where we pause and things like that. 01:43:58.390 --> 01:44:00.370 If you're watching live, of course, you get all that. 01:44:00.530 --> 01:44:04.630 So like if you're a fan of ums and ahs, you should watch the live stream. 01:44:05.130 --> 01:44:09.890 You know, or long pauses where we stare at each other while we're thinking about 01:44:09.890 --> 01:44:12.090 what to say next, you know, any of that stuff. 01:44:12.570 --> 01:44:16.830 And also of course, on the site, you will find a link to our Patreon where you 01:44:16.830 --> 01:44:21.850 can donate money to the cause of this great and wonderful podcast at various levels. 01:44:21.930 --> 01:44:24.630 There, we will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. 01:44:24.730 --> 01:44:27.990 We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug, all that sort of fun stuff. 01:44:28.330 --> 01:44:34.730 And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, We will invite you to the 01:44:34.730 --> 01:44:37.630 Commodions Corner Slack where Yvonne, myself, 01:44:37.990 --> 01:44:44.590 Ed, and others are just hanging out through the week, sharing links, talking about the news, 01:44:44.910 --> 01:44:51.250 doing all that sort of fun stuff, having great discussions, sharing cool links, 01:44:51.410 --> 01:44:57.130 both on politics and this kind of serious news and also on tech and fun stuff 01:44:57.130 --> 01:44:59.430 and all of that kind of thing. 01:44:59.650 --> 01:45:04.490 So it's a lot of fun. The more the merrier. Please join us. 01:45:05.700 --> 01:45:09.200 And let's see, Ed, do you have something from the Slack you want to highlight 01:45:09.200 --> 01:45:10.140 or should I find something? 01:45:10.600 --> 01:45:13.860 Oh, I was just going to point out that, oops, I had it here, 01:45:13.940 --> 01:45:19.680 that you posted earlier this week a scientific study finding out which paper 01:45:19.680 --> 01:45:21.300 is the worst for paper cuts. 01:45:21.440 --> 01:45:24.560 And it turns out that it's the dot matrix printers. 01:45:24.880 --> 01:45:28.440 Yep. Now, I have two questions. Number one, why would they study that? 01:45:29.100 --> 01:45:33.320 Number two, who's using dot matrix printers in this day and age? 01:45:33.600 --> 01:45:37.760 You know, they're very, very rare. Like, I think you'd have to hunt for them. 01:45:37.820 --> 01:45:42.220 I think there might be certain businesses that still use them for something 01:45:42.220 --> 01:45:47.560 that for one reason or another haven't updated and are on really old systems still. 01:45:47.820 --> 01:45:53.000 I don't know. Like, you know, the last few times I've heard people talk about 01:45:53.000 --> 01:45:57.940 them, it's been as a novelty or as like, you know, or, you know, 01:45:57.940 --> 01:46:01.660 one of these aficionados of obsolete equipment or something. 01:46:02.640 --> 01:46:07.360 But, you know, now why you would study it. Well, because it's interesting, right? 01:46:07.460 --> 01:46:12.380 They tested all kinds of different kinds of paper and figured out, like, 01:46:12.420 --> 01:46:20.320 which thickness of paper would most effectively cut you and what angle of incidence 01:46:20.320 --> 01:46:24.940 between the paper and your flesh would most effectively cut as well. 01:46:25.120 --> 01:46:31.000 Because if the paper is too thin, it doesn't cut well. 01:46:31.180 --> 01:46:35.460 If it's too thick, it just sort of bends and pushes on you instead of cutting. 01:46:35.700 --> 01:46:40.840 So there's a sweet spot right in the middle where, well, I don't know if it 01:46:40.840 --> 01:46:46.440 was right in the middle, but there's a sweet spot somewhere in that range that, that cuts really well. 01:46:46.520 --> 01:46:50.220 And apparently it's the thickness that old dot matrix printer paper used to 01:46:50.220 --> 01:46:54.700 be, but I'll, I'll tell you like a couple of days ago. 01:46:55.830 --> 01:47:00.510 I cut myself, not on a piece of paper. I cut myself on my laptop, 01:47:00.810 --> 01:47:02.910 on my work laptop specifically. 01:47:03.250 --> 01:47:07.690 And I'm like, how did I do that? I didn't even know it had a sharp surface. 01:47:08.170 --> 01:47:15.170 But I picked up my work laptop and all of a sudden my knuckle was bloody. 01:47:16.550 --> 01:47:16.970 Yikes. 01:47:17.130 --> 01:47:22.010 And I went and put a Band-Aid on it. It's fine. It's not like I needed stitches 01:47:22.010 --> 01:47:25.770 or to go to a hospital or something. But I cut myself on my laptop. 01:47:25.970 --> 01:47:32.550 I can guarantee you my laptop was not the thickness of a dot matrix piece of paper. 01:47:32.890 --> 01:47:38.610 Not even close. I'm sure not. You know, and I know there used to be those Apple 01:47:38.610 --> 01:47:40.870 commercials with the laptop that fit in the envelope. 01:47:41.490 --> 01:47:45.450 Like, this wasn't even a laptop that would fit in an envelope. It was bigger than that. 01:47:45.850 --> 01:47:51.290 So, anyway, but I don't know. I've paper cut myself many times in the past. 01:47:51.390 --> 01:47:52.650 I'm sure I will do it again. 01:47:53.470 --> 01:48:01.350 I am not going to go out and intentionally buy the kind of paper that does the worst cuts though. 01:48:02.110 --> 01:48:03.630 No, no, I might. 01:48:03.670 --> 01:48:08.670 I generally, when I buy paper for my printers, I generally find out which is 01:48:08.670 --> 01:48:10.190 the cheapest and that's the, what I get. 01:48:11.270 --> 01:48:15.750 Well, you know, I honestly, I print stuff so rarely these days. 01:48:16.090 --> 01:48:20.930 Like the, the one printer in my house is it in my wife's home office because 01:48:20.930 --> 01:48:25.390 she uses it more than I do. She uses it to print some stuff related to her campaign 01:48:25.390 --> 01:48:27.670 and things like that. And fine. 01:48:27.810 --> 01:48:30.450 But like, it is so, so rare. 01:48:30.670 --> 01:48:32.970 I mean, at this point, I think, 01:48:34.040 --> 01:48:42.840 like once every three or four months i'll print some stuff out that's all like so it's just rare, 01:48:43.700 --> 01:48:47.840 and uh occasionally i'll need like i'll want to hand write something because 01:48:47.840 --> 01:48:52.120 i want to i want to i don't know take some notes or do a scratch calculation 01:48:52.120 --> 01:48:54.140 or something i can never even find 01:48:54.140 --> 01:48:58.120 a piece of paper so i end up doing my doing it on my computer i get it. 01:48:58.120 --> 01:48:58.800 Out of my printer. 01:48:58.800 --> 01:49:01.700 Well like when i really have had 01:49:01.700 --> 01:49:04.720 to do that i've gone downstairs and pulled something out 01:49:04.720 --> 01:49:07.620 of my wife's printer because i don't have one anymore and i don't have a supply of 01:49:07.620 --> 01:49:10.260 paper in my office like i'll look around and i'll 01:49:10.260 --> 01:49:12.980 find there is paper in my office don't get me wrong 01:49:12.980 --> 01:49:16.400 but it's all none of it's blank paper it's all 01:49:16.400 --> 01:49:21.960 paper with stuff on it so anyway but but like you know and by the way the way 01:49:21.960 --> 01:49:27.460 they did this study they did not use actual hands they used They used fake hands 01:49:27.460 --> 01:49:35.640 made of gelatin that has the same consistency as human flesh. I see. 01:49:35.780 --> 01:49:37.460 Because that picture looks like blood. 01:49:38.360 --> 01:49:45.640 Well, they probably did a picture of a real paper cut or at least a fake real paper cut. 01:49:45.740 --> 01:49:50.300 But for their study, they used artificial skin. 01:49:50.740 --> 01:49:51.480 Fingers. Okay. 01:49:51.780 --> 01:49:55.140 Well, that's good. The other way to do it would have been like, 01:49:55.180 --> 01:49:57.940 I presume this research was done at a college of some sort. 01:49:58.120 --> 01:50:02.480 They could have done the thing where, you know, hey, we need students for a research study. 01:50:02.840 --> 01:50:06.480 We'll pay you five bucks for the study. Oh, what's the study going to be? 01:50:06.560 --> 01:50:09.080 Oh, we're going to slice you open with paper. 01:50:14.450 --> 01:50:17.310 So okay that's his life yep such as 01:50:17.310 --> 01:50:20.270 life well thank you for joining us yet again ed it's 01:50:20.270 --> 01:50:23.350 always good to have you and continue your 01:50:23.350 --> 01:50:27.950 recovery please get well soon uh get the exercise you need to get and all of 01:50:27.950 --> 01:50:33.610 that kind of stuff and we'll you know next week you know next week we're going 01:50:33.610 --> 01:50:36.870 to have another co-host i don't know who's going to be on with me next week 01:50:36.870 --> 01:50:40.550 or you know if If nobody steps up, I will be on my own. 01:50:40.670 --> 01:50:46.010 If you are interested in co-hosting and you have not been one of the last few 01:50:46.010 --> 01:50:52.490 people to co-host, drop me a line at curmudgeons-corner.com has all the ways you can contact me. 01:50:52.770 --> 01:50:57.810 Most of you who might be interested are going to be on an email I send out asking 01:50:57.810 --> 01:50:59.870 for potential co-hosts anyway. 01:50:59.870 --> 01:51:08.010 Anyway, but if you are not, if you are just a listener and have are just interested, drop me a line. 01:51:08.090 --> 01:51:12.090 I may not put you on as co-host right away the first week if we haven't gotten 01:51:12.090 --> 01:51:13.950 to know each other at least a little bit yet. 01:51:14.270 --> 01:51:18.710 But reach out, get in touch. We can get you on the curmudgeon's corner slack. 01:51:18.970 --> 01:51:19.850 You can start participating. 01:51:20.170 --> 01:51:22.830 And then maybe after a while you can be on the show. I don't know. 01:51:22.970 --> 01:51:30.130 Anyway, that's it. Thank you, Ed and Yvonne. I hope you are having fun, whatever you are doing. 01:51:31.170 --> 01:51:36.470 And hey, everybody, stay safe. Have a good week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye. 01:51:37.230 --> 01:51:37.750 Goodbye.