Sam: Hello hello uh hi it says bub joined in portrait orientation you may wish to
Sam: tell them to switch to landscape so it matches yours at all i also have no video only audio which is oh no.
Ivan: You don't because i'm oh god.
Sam: What's going on oh.
Ivan: I i i i i i stayed out way too late in vegas.
Sam: Are you still in Vegas? I thought you were flying home this morning.
Ivan: No, I got here yesterday.
Sam: Ah, okay.
Ivan: Mr.
Sam: Bow-partying?
Ivan: It was not my plan.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right.
Ivan: Let's try to do this as fast as we can.
Sam: Hold on, there we go, pull that, oh, why, there we go.
Sam: All right, let me, I'm turning off the AC, turning down the fan, okay, here we go.
Break: All right.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, September 7th, 2024.
Sam: It is 1810 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Minter. Yvonne Bowe is here,
Sam: sort of, kind of. Hi, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hi. How are you?
Sam: You're so peppy.
Ivan: How's everybody?
Sam: You're so peppy, excited.
Ivan: Oh, I'm peppy. Oh, yeah. Peppy. Peppy and cheap. Yes.
Sam: Peppy Le Pew.
Ivan: That's what they call it. Yeah. That's what they call me.
Sam: Oh, God. Okay, so we're going to do our butt first, and then we're going to
Sam: talk more serious topics.
Sam: So I am going to ask Yvonne to, like, elaborate on his condition a little bit.
Sam: But first, right off the top, I just want to note that of the podcast version
Sam: of Curmudgeon's Corner,
Sam: so not counting the WRCT radio show when we were in college,
Sam: this here is the 900th episode.
Ivan: Episode oh wow there you go so big milestone and you know and i and i i decided to arrive,
Ivan: perfectly ready to go okay.
Sam: So i i will have my usual movie later and i said last week it's going to be
Sam: ghostbusters 2 but first yvonne what the hell is going on with you what's what's happening it.
Ivan: I'm in vegas yeah i got here yesterday i didn't i got so because of my work
Ivan: performance in sales you're.
Sam: Getting an award you mentioned that last week.
Ivan: Right and so it was it's here in
Ivan: vegas and so i arrived yesterday for
Ivan: this it's going to be through monday but
Ivan: then i go home my wife didn't come because and understandably i don't know if
Ivan: you remember how jet lagged she was in seattle when we visited probably okay
Ivan: yeah well if you remember like you know yeah she i remember everyone got the flu.
Sam: But yeah i don't remember the jet lag.
Ivan: Oh god the flu and we got
Ivan: the flu but she was very jet lagged and
Ivan: so she was like look this trip we're gonna
Ivan: go there what on a friday and then to come back
Ivan: on monday and i'm like ah no it's
Ivan: okay and so i gotta be honest i was so tired i you know i got sick last week
Ivan: as everybody knows yep that listens to the podcast but not it's not my best
Ivan: week last week and i was like really debating do i really want to go to Vegas.
Ivan: I'm like, I mean, do I really? I mean, I don't care. So, you know,
Ivan: So, okay, fine. Yesterday, I had to get up at a stupidly early hour and go to
Ivan: the damn airport again to get on the damn flight to Vegas, which isn't the short flight. Okay.
Sam: So, wait, your flight was Friday morning? Or this morning?
Ivan: Yeah, Friday morning.
Sam: Friday morning.
Ivan: No, Friday morning. Friday morning, yes, you know, to fly in yesterday.
Ivan: And then one of the things that happened on the way over is,
Ivan: so i've been flying so much that american airlines they charge for wi-fi some
Ivan: airlines don't right now but american does so they have this thing where you
Ivan: either you pay every flight or you sign up for a monthly subscription right
Ivan: right well given how much i've been flying you signed up for.
Sam: The monthly subscription.
Ivan: I signed up for the monthly fucking subscription doesn't make any sense to be
Ivan: paying you know for for every every flight so i got on the plane i logged in
Ivan: and i'm I'm on the internet.
Ivan: But it seemed that everybody else was trying to do it not with a subscription,
Ivan: which is most people trying to pay. It wasn't working.
Ivan: So I'm online and I'd sent some work messages and I was expecting some responses.
Ivan: You know, flight that still got four plus hours to go in the middle of the day.
Ivan: And some people complained they couldn't connect. So the pilot goes and resets the Wi-Fi.
Ivan: All of a sudden I noticed is that my damn connection gets disconnected.
Ivan: After they reset the Wi-Fi, it didn't work at all.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: So I couldn't connect back.
Sam: Beautiful.
Ivan: So I spent four plus hours on the plane, and I'm like,
Ivan: Now, I think I've said this before in terms of, oh, well, I'm not getting bothered
Ivan: by shit. This is nice. That was good.
Ivan: But given the length of the flight, the moment I landed, it's like,
Ivan: I swear to God, it's like I landed into a fucking, you know,
Ivan: four alarm fire of shit that was wrong.
Ivan: And why the hell weren't you answering?
Ivan: We've been looking for you for hours. worry someone because you.
Sam: Used to just be able to say well i was on a plane because you weren't able to
Sam: be contacted on the plane but now everyone expects you to be online anyway.
Ivan: Correct yeah oh i
Ivan: don't know so i got here yesterday and then
Ivan: i had to work for a while
Ivan: and then there was and they did this thing last
Ivan: night this little reception and
Ivan: then i got dragged to dinner and then I got dragged to a club and then I must
Ivan: say I'm saying dragged because it wasn't like that was my plan and then I lost
Ivan: the people that I was with that
Ivan: had taken me there and I said well I'll go to the casino okay so,
Ivan: I'm going to say I did I at
Ivan: one point was up at the blackjack
Ivan: table well over three hundred dollars up okay okay
Ivan: but i will say that i had pulled
Ivan: out a certain amount of money and my point of pulling out
Ivan: a certain amount of money that was not to make money
Ivan: is like okay let's see how long we can make this last well it took a long time
Ivan: but i did get down that i lost all the money okay okay but that took a very
Ivan: very long time And so then after that I got to the roof And now I'm,
Ivan: talking to you.
Sam: Ah, so you pulled an all-nighter.
Ivan: I stayed, I believe, according to my records, I got the bed somewhere like at
Ivan: four in the morning, something like that.
Ivan: I did wake up a little bit ago. I had breakfast and stuff because I knew I was doing this.
Ivan: So I got up and did get some room service breakfast.
Ivan: Thank God that this hotel is Vegas a
Ivan: a good Vegas you know a good Vegas
Ivan: hotel because there's a whole bunch of hotels here that don't even have even
Ivan: like a mini bar or stuff or whatever so there's there's it does have its full
Ivan: service so I was able to get breakfast but up here and I ate so and now so it is the.
Sam: Problem you didn't have enough sleep or is the problem that you like partied hard.
Ivan: It's it's all All of the above.
Sam: Because like, you know, it's here on the West Coast, it's 11 a.m.
Sam: I've been up for a couple hours, but I also I didn't go to sleep till almost
Sam: 4 a.m. last night just because it's a normal Friday night in the winter.
Ivan: Oh, it's. Yeah, but but, you know.
Sam: With the party and all I was doing was sitting on the couch watching stuff with Alex, you know.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: I wasn't drinking. I wasn't like running around. I was just like chilling with
Sam: my son doing stuff. Right.
Ivan: Well, oh, oh, good one. Yeah. Well, no, I wasn't doing that. No.
Sam: So anyway. You sound wonderful. Okay.
Ivan: I sound great. It's sort of second
Ivan: consecutive week that I sound fantastic after a bunch of this quarter.
Sam: Beautiful. Beautiful.
Ivan: I'm getting old for this shit. Okay.
Sam: Okay so you got any other but first stuff or should i jump right to ghost no,
Sam: let's go and i will say as well like
Sam: where you know this i can guarantee you this time that this show is going to
Sam: be on the short side for our normal stuff because i have a hard stop after we're
Sam: recording because i've got a like a i've got a zoom call scheduled with my dad
Sam: you know at a at a certain time so like you know and.
Ivan: I'm not exactly being very peppy.
Sam: No no yeah you don't but but maybe we can get you like aggravated and angry
Sam: and then like that'll like cheer you up there.
Ivan: There you go i am going to the spa this afternoon that was like the thing that
Ivan: i chose as an activity i chose to go to the spa so i i'm,
Ivan: I'm going to do that. I'm going to have them try to see if they can rejuvenate me somehow.
Ivan: I don't think it's going to work. Or maybe it will. Who knows?
Sam: Okay, so Ghostbusters 2. I talked about Ghostbusters last week.
Sam: We watched a little bit later. We watched Ghostbusters 2.
Sam: I guess, how much later was it? I can tell you the speed.
Ivan: What year did Ghostbusters 2 come out?
Sam: I'll get to that. So we watched Ghostbusters on March 24th. We watched Ghostbusters
Sam: 2 on April 13th. So a few weeks later.
Sam: But no, Ghostbusters 1 was 1984.
Sam: And Ghostbusters 2 was 1989. So five years later.
Ivan: OK.
Sam: Five years later.
Ivan: OK, five years.
Sam: And here's the thing. I remember. I've watched the original Ghostbusters more
Sam: than I've watched Ghostbusters 2.
Sam: OK? Like I'd seen both of them before, but I've seen the original Ghostbusters
Sam: more often than I'd seen Ghostbusters 2.
Ivan: Well, my recollection is that it wasn't as good as the first.
Sam: So here's the thing. That was my recollection too. My recollection,
Sam: going back to seeing it in the theaters in 1989, because I remember I saw Ghostbusters
Sam: 2 in the theaters in 1989.
Ivan: Yeah, me too.
Sam: And I remember being disappointed by it.
Sam: And i remember being like you know they they just they messed it up they didn't
Sam: like do it right they like you know ghostbusters was great and like they missed
Sam: some of the things that made ghostbusters good when they made ghostbusters too this.
Ivan: Was the one where they had this river hate thing.
Sam: Yeah going through they had the river of hate thing and they had you know that
Sam: what is his name that somebody the carpenter vigo vigo yes that that's right and but here i i'm.
Ivan: Pretty sure i haven't watched this movie since then so i.
Sam: Don't know i.
Ivan: Remember all this.
Sam: Yeah so so anyway but watching it again my opinion was different like really
Sam: yeah at various points during it i was like i'm not sure is this actually better
Sam: than the first one and and like i think in the end i'm I'm going to say they're,
Sam: roughly similar they have different strengths and weaknesses but like.
Ivan: I think that maybe maybe i think we just
Ivan: said different strengths and weaknesses maybe why it may
Ivan: have been disappointing at the moment but now with time i think we're kinder
Ivan: to it because i think there was something about what you expected as a movie
Ivan: and what you got and it was different and i think that that may be why you know
Ivan: people had a harder opinion of it at the time yeah.
Sam: And actually like there's some things from the original ghostbusters that watching
Sam: it many years later feel kind of cringe like.
Ivan: Oh wow jeez like like.
Sam: You know what what's his name's uh character hold on i'll tell you a second rick moranis like.
Ivan: His character.
Sam: Like i i think like in ghostbusters one.
Ivan: I am the gatekeeper Yeah.
Sam: Watching him later, it's sort of like, okay, I can see why that was funny,
Sam: but it's a little bit cringy.
Sam: And he was in the second one too, but less prominently.
Sam: And I actually think less of him was good.
Sam: Okay. You know, and no shade to the actor or whatever, but, you know, it's the character.
Sam: And there were aspects of the new one that I just felt like were a little bit more fleshed out.
Sam: And I don't know. It's just, there were, I mean, it wasn't like a clear,
Sam: oh my God, Ghostbusters 2 is actually better.
Sam: No, no. But I think it's, like you said,
Sam: whatever disappointment happened when you were sort of expecting an exact rerun
Sam: of the original Ghostbusters and to feel exactly the same way,
Sam: that disappears with this many years since then.
Sam: It was just, oh, okay, this is another good Ghostbusters movie.
Sam: It was fine. It was good. it i i am
Sam: going to actually give it a thumbs up along with the original
Sam: ghostbusters it's it's like there you go you know
Sam: it was it was a fun little movie and
Sam: it did its thing i mean parts of it were stupid but like parts of the original
Sam: that yeah that's that's the whole thing like this is not intended as like some
Sam: serious movie it's it's intended as a stupid comedy and it succeeds seeds at that.
Ivan: It's not a Shakespeare play.
Sam: No, no. And, and, you know, and I enjoyed also, I had forgotten that the,
Sam: oh, what, what, what, where's the, I'm looking at the cast list. Who's the guy?
Sam: The the guy oh peter mcnichol is in
Sam: it and i had seen him in more recent things and had completely forgotten he
Sam: was in this thing so i you know when it came on he's sort of the guy who works
Sam: at the museum and blah blah blah he his character was a little cringe too like
Sam: you know they they had less of rick moranis but peter mcnichol's character was
Sam: pretty crazy because he was.
Ivan: Yeah he was he was the the guy that managed the restoration department i I think.
Sam: You're right. Good, good memory. If you haven't watched this since 89.
Ivan: I fuck, I haven't watched it. I'm sure in 30 years. So I don't know. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. So, yeah, but you know, it was fine.
Ivan: That's where Sigourney Weaver was working. Right. Because yes, that's right.
Sam: That's right. You know? And, and so like, I liked it.
Sam: And, and like I said, I was tempted a few times while watching it thinking,
Sam: you know, this is just as good as the first one.
Sam: Maybe, maybe in some ways it's even better you know and and i know that's you
Sam: know it probably really like i'm sure i haven't done it you like to do it you
Sam: like to go look at rotten tomatoes i am sure this has a lower rating than the first one like i'm what.
Ivan: Does it say i don't know.
Sam: No i don't have it i don't have let's let's let's look it up um data.
Ivan: We need our data.
Sam: Rotten tomatoes data data Data.
Ivan: Data, not the robot data.
Sam: Ghost Busters. Okay. Okay, we got.
Ivan: It's got a 55% Rotten Tomatoes. Not that.
Sam: No, not that great at all. Compared to 95 for the original. I don't know.
Sam: I think that's a little harsh.
Sam: Like, I can see the argument that maybe it's not quite as good as the original, but like half as good.
Sam: No, it's decent. recent
Sam: it's and and like i'm looking at this and i just
Sam: preview i'm not talking about it next week or anytime soon
Sam: probably but we did watch the reboot ghostbusters in
Sam: 2016 with the women and it's up at 74
Sam: and there is no
Sam: way i would put that one ahead of ghostbusters 2
Sam: i mean i don't think it's that that's another
Sam: one that got a really bad rap and i don't think it deserves as bad
Sam: a rap as it got but i think ghostbusters 2 is better so i don't know like i'm
Sam: looking at these various ratings for the ghostbusters and i'm like for the three
Sam: that i've seen and or and or sorry the four that i've seen and i'm like i don't
Sam: i don't quite agree with these rotten tomato.
Sam: Ratings on them i wouldn't rank them in the same way but you
Sam: know whatever different people have different opinions that's the way the
Sam: world works but i enjoyed ghostbusters 2 it was a
Sam: fun little stupid romp just like the first one was a fun little
Sam: stupid romp you could tell in a few places like you know they were they were
Sam: explicitly i mean the whole deal here was the first movie was successful let's
Sam: try to do that again and make some money you know that's what happens.
Ivan: That's that's that's that's what the sequel is for hey.
Sam: Hey listen.
Ivan: We're gonna invest making this movie a hundred
Ivan: billion dollars we got a guarantee you know
Ivan: we got a guarantee that we're gonna make money so how do we you know how do
Ivan: we do that oh great we'll make a sequel you know that's that's That's going
Ivan: to guarantee you the percentages on the sequels make a money or higher than
Ivan: creating just a totally new movie.
Sam: So here we go. I'm reading the critical assessment section of Wikipedia.
Sam: Since its release, Ghostbusters 2 has been labeled as the film that killed the
Sam: franchise because it made less money from a larger budget than Ghostbusters.
Sam: And because the filming experience and resulting reception dissuaded Murray
Sam: from involvement in a third film.
Sam: While some modern critics continue to criticize it as a bad film or inferior
Sam: to its predecessor, others argue that it suffers from being compared with Ghostbusters
Sam: and is otherwise above average.
Sam: In a 2014 interview, Reitman defended the film, saying while it was unfairly
Sam: compared to Batman at the time, he felt Ghostbusters 2 still holds up well against a superhero film.
Sam: Digital Spy defended the film as being as good as or better than Ghostbusters.
Sam: It said the plot of Ghostbusters 2 is arguably better executed than that of
Sam: the first film, with multiple threads coming together in a seamless third act
Sam: with a positive ending that works better with modern audiences.
Sam: Den of Geek compared it to sequels of other genre-specific classics like Back
Sam: to the Future Part II and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,
Sam: which were considered not as good as the original, but as good films in their own right.
Sam: While Ghostbusters 2 is perceived as being a bad film, despite a close similarity to the original.
Sam: Let's see, Deadspin said that like those aforementioned films,
Sam: Ghostbusters 2 darker set pieces and comedy made it more suited for adults than
Sam: children, but that it is better than most people remember.
Sam: Uproxx called it the ideal film to watch during the New Year's period because
Sam: it offers an unsubtle, simple morality tale about the world.
Sam: Yeah, Rotten Tomatoes, 55%. We said that. Thanks to the cast,
Sam: Ghostbusters 2 is reasonably amusing, but it lacks the charm,
Sam: wit, and energy of its predecessor.
Sam: Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, meanwhile, Den of Geek listed it as the
Sam: 18th best Blockbuster sequel of all time. Okay.
Ivan: 18th.
Sam: 18th best Blockbuster sequel. So you're...
Ivan: I don't know. It's not... Yeah, no, no. I find that, you know,
Ivan: giving it the... you know i'm gonna say hey i'm the 18th best something isn't exactly.
Sam: Well and not only so it's a significantly narrowed down
Sam: something so this isn't 18th best movie this isn't
Sam: 18th best blockbuster sequel this is 18th
Sam: best blockbuster sequel yeah so
Sam: anyway it was
Sam: fine and apparently the critical reassessment or whatever
Sam: is sort of like sort of what i was saying like i remember being really disappointed
Sam: when i first saw it but me too but on the rewatch i'm like okay this isn't bad
Sam: i i actually kind of like it so there you go okay that's my so that's my thing about ghostbusters oh.
Ivan: I was gonna say.
Sam: Blockbusters two sorry sorry yeah we did ghost okay okay so now uh now we will
Sam: take a break and then we will do our uh newsy segments after this but i will
Sam: say yvonne i i have a surprise for you.
Ivan: You have a surprise oh wow i'm i'm as you can see i am just oh so ready to jump for joy at a surprise.
Sam: This is a brand new break whoa yeah okay so okay.
Ivan: You got me.
Sam: You're ready it it's it's only about a minute long i think maybe not even i'm
Sam: tingling you're tingling okay uh enjoy this here it comes.
Break: Okie dokie, here it comes.
Break: It's just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make.
Break: Come on, come on, come on. Come on, come on.
Break: I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired.
Break: It's amazing. To get the show on the road. there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road.
Sam: There you go that's it.
Ivan: Okay that break was hilarious,
Ivan: i did not expect that.
Sam: Yeah you know i i could have done more with it but i just like i took a few
Sam: pieces of something we did in our cold open a few weeks ago and and just shoved it together.
Ivan: That sounds pretty good.
Ivan: That's very impressive.
Sam: Okay, well, good. You know, if I had actual skills of some sort,
Sam: I could make an actual song, but unfortunately I do not have those skills.
Sam: So it was just put some stuff together, make the sounds repeat a few times,
Sam: put some effects on it. I did auto-tune your song.
Ivan: Okay, yeah, well, it didn't really help my singing, but, you know, oh well.
Ivan: I mean, my singing is bad, the attitude is not going to fix it, so, oh well.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, Yvonne, why don't we start?
Sam: What newsy stuff would you like to talk to, talk to, talk about for this segment?
Sam: Or are you like, Dad, and just want me to pick everything?
Ivan: I'm looking, I'm actually looking at the risks.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: What newsy thing? Well, you did add today. This thing about the chinks glitch.
Sam: Oh, yes. Thank you for picking this. I have been so amused by this. This is so much fun.
Ivan: The glitch.
Sam: I spent a decent amount of time last night and this morning watching some of these TikToks.
Sam: So for those of you who don't know, come on, you all know, right? There was a trend.
Sam: There was a TikTok trend.
Ivan: Well, let me see. Hold on, because I haven't watched the TikToks.
Ivan: Let me see if I understood what these idiots were saying.
Sam: Okay, okay, go for it.
Ivan: From what I have read, okay? I'm going to give my staff the uneducated staff,
Ivan: which is what I saw is that these guys said, hey, make a check to yourself.
Ivan: Basically, take a picture of it, deposit it, and an amount of the funds will
Ivan: be available immediately.
Ivan: And then you can go and withdraw that money, and voila, you've got money.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: It's just this glitch. which these morons not understanding that eventually
Ivan: Chase will catch up with him and they will deduct the deposit because the Chuck
Ivan: had insufficient funds.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: And, and then just, you know, you will owe all the money.
Ivan: And I mean, I don't understand how these people are this stupid.
Ivan: I guess maybe it's just because we don't use checks as much anymore.
Sam: More so people don't understand it i saw people arguing that that was part of
Sam: it but like i think it goes deeper than that like because obviously these are
Sam: people that had checks to so like yeah because there are lots of people who
Sam: like have never even been exposed to checks right but like in order to do this you had to i.
Ivan: Think that if you open a second account and chase you automatically.
Sam: You probably do you probably do but anyway look so a couple additional elements here,
Sam: so one they're this is relying on the fact that most banks at this point if
Sam: your account is in good standing and blah blah blah and you deposit a check
Sam: they will give you access to some amount of that money right away and then wait
Sam: for the rest to clear right because it's still well.
Ivan: They usually well that's not well let's be clear they'll give you full access
Ivan: to the money up and there is.
Sam: Up to a limit a deposit limit yes that you.
Ivan: Have a daily deposit limit and so say your your deposit limit daily is $2,000.
Ivan: So if you deposit under $2,000, you get access to the funds immediately.
Sam: So what, what happened here? So for like, you know, it is that,
Sam: First, that was going on, but also Chase did apparently have,
Sam: there was a real glitch, which was that that limit was not being applied.
Sam: Okay. So people were doing this with checks.
Ivan: So they were able to deposit amounts in excess. Well, actually,
Ivan: I will tell you what was happening.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: What happened, what was happening is that before checks that are from Chase.
Sam: Yes, that is exactly what was happening. chase.
Ivan: If it was a chase itself transaction they usually will waive the limit because
Ivan: it's like an interbank it's in there inside their bank.
Sam: And so the.
Ivan: Limit will be way.
Sam: Now you'd think in that scenario though they would check the balance because
Sam: their chase and it's internal and they have the ability to instantly tell if
Sam: you have the money for the check but apparently they didn't so people were writing
Sam: 50 and 100 000 checks to themselves with this scam uh okay and they were,
Sam: withdrawing the cash immediately to try to
Sam: get it out and like they were the whole thing was being presented on tiktok
Sam: as like hey there's this glitch just go in you can get your free money isn't
Sam: this awesome blah blah blah blah blah and there are all kinds of videos of people.
Sam: Videoing themselves doing this getting
Sam: like tons and tons of cash and filming
Sam: themselves like dancing with the cash and stuff
Sam: okay and and so here it is almost impossible to overstate how stupid these people
Sam: are okay but yeah like yes first of all apparently and in in watching a lot of these videos.
Sam: There are a bunch of videos out on TikTok.
Sam: A, there's the original videos of the people themselves documenting themselves
Sam: doing this and encouraging other people to do it as well.
Sam: But then there's tons and tons of people dissecting how stupid they are,
Sam: offering their services as lawyers, all kinds of other stuff.
Sam: Because the funny part is first you've got this wave of videos of these people
Sam: saying, oh, there's this glitch, go do it, and filming themselves doing it,
Sam: filming themselves happy with money.
Sam: And then, like, a day later...
Ivan: The wave of regret. It's like being in Vegas, basically.
Sam: Then there's a wave of videos where people are...
Ivan: Oh, look how awesome the party is!
Sam: Yeah, yeah. The wave of... The next wave of... Wait, wait.
Sam: There's multiple waves of videos here, because the immediate next wave,
Sam: after the joyous withdrawal of the money is people showing their apps suddenly
Sam: having huge negative balances and they're like what the fuck chase is taking my money and like what.
Ivan: Chase is taking my money no they're not taking your money they're taking their money back you asshole.
Sam: And then you've got some of them documenting themselves calling Chase customer
Sam: service to ask where their money went and why Chase was stealing their money.
Ivan: Oh, these geniuses.
Sam: Okay. And then, then.
Ivan: And then Chase explained to them, listen, you fucking.
Sam: Yes. Well, and by the way, by the way, Chase, the Chase TikTok account has been
Sam: reposting these videos from all these people.
Ivan: Oh, smart. Okay.
Sam: Okay, but then the third wave is people starting to realize that they have committed federal felonies.
Ivan: Well, it's basically, if I remember correctly, this is check kiting.
Sam: Yeah, this is flat-out check fraud of a kind that has existed for a long time.
Ivan: Well, it's really straight-up check kiting.
Sam: Yes. Check kiting is the name we used for it decades ago.
Sam: It's a sub-form of check fraud.
Sam: It's a sub-form of bank fraud.
Ivan: For all of you not familiar with check kiting, in the past, one of the things
Ivan: that happened was, a lot was, that say you deposited a check from a bank in...
Sam: Yvonne has glitched. Are you still there, Yvonne?
Ivan: I i am here for some reason i'm getting called by an idiot okay okay imagine imagine.
Sam: You had like.
Ivan: Banks on opposite sides of.
Sam: The country back in.
Ivan: The day when things were slow but back in the day so back
Ivan: then for a check to clear from a bank across the other side of the country it
Ivan: it it took sometimes up to a couple of weeks okay it was that was the longest
Ivan: time before all these transactions went because the physical check had to move around it had to be set.
Sam: From place to place it went from your.
Ivan: Your local.
Sam: Bank to a regional center for the bank to a clearinghouse to the other bank.
Ivan: You know it the actual.
Sam: Piece of paper had to like make the cross-country.
Ivan: Journey and things had.
Sam: To go back and forth like back in.
Ivan: The day this stuff was.
Sam: Slow and so it gave you a period of time where potentially if the bank was trusting
Sam: you for that check like we were talking.
Ivan: About about.
Sam: The you know they they would front you some amount as soon as you deposited it.
Ivan: Well i will tell you that if you were really good with the bank they would give
Ivan: you the full amount yeah yeah available immediately it.
Sam: All depends on like.
Ivan: How much.
Sam: The bank trusted you right yeah.
Ivan: And and you had companies that got caught doing this where what they were doing
Ivan: is like move The big fraud part was you had accounts at two different banks.
Ivan: You would be depositing checks from your other account to that account.
Ivan: You knew it would take two weeks.
Ivan: And so what you would do is that you would basically be borrowing that money
Ivan: for that time period up until –,
Ivan: And many times what happened was usually the people would deposit the money
Ivan: by the time that it was needed at the other bank.
Ivan: And so that was the check kiting. E.F.
Ivan: Hutton, which was purchased by Merrill Lynch, which is now part of Bank of America,
Ivan: is one of the biggest retail brokers in the U.S.
Ivan: Ah, yes. But E.F. Hutton talks people with them. Yeah, exactly.
Ivan: They got caught in this fraud where they were doing that repeatedly.
Ivan: It was to the tune of tens of tens, hundreds, I think it was hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ivan: They got heavily fined. They were doing that. There were businesses that did that.
Ivan: My father got caught doing this. okay between a couple of banks okay you know
Ivan: to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars,
Ivan: now the thing is unlike these guys that wound up a negative balance for the
Ivan: most part when they were doing it you would be depositing the money by the time
Ivan: it it was required at the other account right so when you were creating this
Ivan: you were creating this loan yeah you were creating a temporary loan.
Sam: To yourself that you were able to patch back before like it's still fraud just
Sam: to to be clear. It's fraud.
Ivan: But these guys were putting the money in the bank in time.
Ivan: Now these morons, not understanding that, they were creating a check kite,
Ivan: but they were never going to deposit the money.
Ivan: They just thought that, oh, free money. We made money magically out of thin air.
Sam: And look, there are videos of lines at Chase Banks, 20 people deep,
Sam: deep waiting to do this at the ATM, you know?
Sam: And, and so, yeah. So now, now there are these videos of people going, Oh crap.
Sam: Chase has started to like there, there have now been people arrested still relatively
Sam: small number, but they're, they're sort of working where their way through the
Sam: list of everybody who did this.
Sam: I presume they've cause here's the thing. Look, it was another thing to remember.
Sam: Remember, apparently these people thought this was all just,
Sam: oh, free money, glitch, everything's okay, I'm just going to get the free money, no one's going to care.
Sam: But A, yes, federal crime. B, you're stealing from the bank, other federal crime.
Sam: But then you are using your own bank account.
Sam: You're right, you idiot. You are using a check that you wrote.
Sam: Wrote. They have all your information.
Ivan: They have you at their rights.
Sam: There's no, like, I've seen a few people trying to claim that in some way or another it wasn't them.
Sam: Or, you know, this guy just came up to me and gave me a check and told me to
Sam: deposit it. And so I deposited it for him and then gave him the money.
Sam: You know, I, you know, whatever.
Sam: No, no, I, I, I'm sorry. No, like maybe there were a few people out there that
Sam: were smart and were like, Hey, I want to do this, but I don't want to do it myself.
Sam: And so I'll get some random Patsy to do it for me. But most of these people, absolutely.
Sam: We're just doing it themselves thinking it was fine, but all the information
Sam: is right And a whole bunch of you posted the damn thing on TikTok, too.
Ivan: Of course they did. Without posting on TikTok, what would be the fun if you didn't do it?
Sam: They posted the fact that they were going to do it. Then they posted themselves doing it.
Sam: Then they posted videos of themselves spending the money. Hey,
Sam: I'm going to go buy this big screen TV now. You know?
Sam: Dudes. And then there are all these videos of people being like, I'm scared.
Sam: What's going to happen to me? And then there's like lawyers coming on and replying
Sam: to that saying, what's going to happen to you? You are going to jail.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: You are going, you know, the money is God and you are going to jail.
Sam: Talk, get yourself a lawyer right now to see if they can negotiate down how
Sam: much time you're going to spend in jail.
Sam: But you are going to jail. And oh, by the way, once you get out of jail,
Sam: you're never going to have a bank account again.
Sam: And you are never probably going to be hired again by any reputable employer.
Sam: And nobody's going to rent to you and go down the list.
Sam: And so you see these video progressions of the person sort of gleefully doing
Sam: this thing and then realizing what they've done and being like, oh my God,
Sam: what am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Sam: You know, on the one hand, I feel so much money.
Ivan: For these people. But how much money did you see these people do?
Sam: So I have seen everything from, there are a few people who only did like a thousand
Sam: or 2000 bucks, but there are people who did up to a hundred thousand.
Ivan: Oh my God. Well, those are the people that are going to go to jail.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: A thousand bucks. You can, you know, it's, you know, you can figure out, Oh, you pay it back.
Sam: I saw one, I saw one video of a guy who had done this and now has the negative
Sam: balance. And it was like, Chase wants there.
Sam: I, I got scammed. I don't know what I'm doing, but Chase wants $50,000 and they set up a GoFundMe.
Ivan: Wait asshole you had
Ivan: the 50 000 okay i'm sure you know they spent it already it's all like exactly
Ivan: it's not like you you you know the 50 000 was for a medical bill or something
Ivan: or whatever no you went and you took out 50 000 from the bank and you spent it on bullshit,
Ivan: and now you want people to do a gofundme to help you because you fucking like
Ivan: decided to party on stolen $50,000.
Ivan: That's not what GoFundMe is supposed to be.
Sam: Poor. Anyway, I have such mixed feelings.
Sam: On the one hand, I somewhat feel for the ones of these people.
Ivan: Can I go and like, can I do a negative deposit in a GoFundMe?
Ivan: Can I just take money from his GoFundMe?
Ivan: Because that would be the best thing to do to this guy.
Ivan: Just, you know, hey, you know, no, now you owe money on GoFundMe, dick.
Sam: So, look, for the folks here who really and truly seem like they were clueless
Sam: and thought this was fine,
Sam: I feel a little bit sorry for them.
Sam: But at the same time, I'm like, how can you possibly be that stupid? I'm sorry.
Sam: Wow. And then there's like people trying to talk seriously about this and about
Sam: like, oh, this points to how we need better financial education in schools and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Because obviously the education system has failed these people.
Sam: Yeah. You know, and most of these people, by the way, are people who clearly
Sam: were lower on the income scale.
Sam: And like this was like life changing amounts of money. And so they were like,
Sam: a free way to get like thousands of dollars.
Sam: I'm in without thinking any further about it. And it's like, right.
Sam: Oh, man. Really?
Sam: I mean, yeah.
Sam: Um anyway like i i you
Sam: know i don't know like if i if i
Sam: was chase i would i don't
Sam: know like you have to go after some of these people but i would concentrate
Sam: on the ones that really did lots and lots of money and on the low and on the
Sam: and on the lower end like the people who did this with a few hundred or even
Sam: a couple thousand dollars i would be payment plan for that i would
Sam: be like exactly i'd be like look you
Sam: have to pay the money back and by the way some fees and fines
Sam: and things like that but we'll set you up a payment plan
Sam: for it we're not going to try to put you in jail because
Sam: you were just a dumbass okay you weren't trying to commit fraud here or i guess
Sam: you you were trying to commit fraud but you didn't know what you were doing
Sam: you were obviously an idiot so let's let's set you up a payment plan we don't
Sam: have to put you in jail for 20 years,
Sam: but the guy who pulled a hundred grand, you're going to jail. Sorry.
Ivan: I need to, I need to do a meeting where I go with somebody that is obviously
Ivan: an idiot and tell them flat out, you know, Hey, well, I don't,
Ivan: I don't think I've done this.
Ivan: Right. So I said, listen, you're obviously an idiot. Oh, we're going to,
Ivan: we're going to try to help you. Okay.
Ivan: I have not use that line in a meeting but i gotta figure out a meeting where
Ivan: i could use this okay yeah.
Sam: Anyway and chase has not yet you know said publicly how big this thing was like but i've seen.
Ivan: I'm sure it's i mean chase well the reality is and the size of what no no compared
Ivan: Compared to the size of Chase.
Sam: It's going to be tiny because Chase is huge.
Ivan: Right? Trillion dollars in assets.
Sam: I've heard people estimating. Again, Chase is not saying publicly how many people
Sam: have done this, how many people they're going after, or how much money was involved.
Sam: But I've seen people estimating, based on just how much has been posted publicly
Sam: of people admitting to doing this,
Sam: that we're probably talking on the order of $90 to $100 million worth of this.
Ivan: Wow.
Sam: Yeah. Wow.
Ivan: Man. Steve. Wow.
Sam: Because lots of people did it. Lots of people saw the TikTok thread and were
Sam: like excited about the free money and went to do it.
Ivan: Jesus. That's a lot of money.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Well.
Sam: I mean, like you said, for Chase, $100 million isn't that much. But still.
Ivan: But it's still a lot of money.
Sam: Yeah.
Sam: But I will tell you, I.
Ivan: Did you do it?
Sam: Yes. Yes, I did it. I did it. I, you know, that, that guy who got a hundred
Sam: grand cheap, cheap, I, I got like 500, you know, and, you know, and the, the, this.
Ivan: And what are you leaving the country?
Sam: Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I've already left.
Ivan: I mean, that had to be your plan, Bozo.
Ivan: I mean, you know, look, hey, let me get like, you know, a hundred grand and
Ivan: let me just, this is my final act before I flee the country.
Sam: Yeah. And the excuses from these people on these videos is just dumbfounding.
Sam: And these people who still like, there was one video I watched of this woman
Sam: who's like, okay, look, I am going to talk to a lawyer.
Sam: I'm i'm going up right now i have an appointment i'm gonna
Sam: go talk to a lawyer and because all you people on the internet who are replying
Sam: to me telling me that you know this was a crime and i did something wrong well
Sam: you guys aren't lawyers you don't know the law so i'm gonna go talk to a real
Sam: lawyer about it uh and she didn't post another video after that.
Ivan: You know you don't have to be a fucking lawyer to realize that something is a crime.
Sam: Yes several people replied to that and one of them was like you know actually
Sam: i am a lawyer i am a you know i'm specifically a lawyer who specializes in financial fraud and,
Sam: Yeah, you better go talk to that lawyer. And I'm sure the lawyers,
Sam: for the reason there are no more videos, at least there weren't as of last night
Sam: when I checked, the first damn thing the lawyer is going to say is shut the fuck up.
Sam: You know, and the lawyer is going to say, look, you are going to jail.
Sam: I'll see if I can bring it down as low as I can, but sorry, you're going to jail.
Sam: They got you completely. You know, we now just need to minimize the damage.
Sam: Edge or like we said yeah hope like chase is
Sam: from a from a pure pr perspective chase would be well served by going light
Sam: on the small time players who were clearly right right right you know so so
Sam: maybe they'll get lucky but like other people are like no chase is going to throw the book out,
Sam: chase has no no i'm sure.
Ivan: That no i'm sure that the people who are like look if you pay back the money
Ivan: you know but you know because it happens that people get overdrafted you have to pay.
Sam: There were back money there were a few people who posted that said they did
Sam: this and they got a notice from chase saying they have to fix the negative balance
Sam: they've got 30 days to fix the negative balance before chase goes after them.
Ivan: Exactly so yeah if you do it quickly enough it's like you know no harm no foul.
Sam: Yeah they'll add some fines just to be clear right but yeah yeah
Sam: yeah yeah yeah you're gonna pay back what you stole plus
Sam: some but you know right maybe you can
Sam: avoid going to jail if you fix it quick but like
Sam: and you know if you know
Sam: i was gonna say if any of them were smart none of them are
Sam: smart or they wouldn't have done this but like if you
Sam: took the money but didn't spend it
Sam: go deposit it right back
Sam: right now right right now but like if you got got the money and just like spent
Sam: it all already you're you're fucked sorry yeah so yeah anyway anyway uh you
Sam: you got another one or should we take a break and go on and you know it you know nah.
Ivan: Nah yeah take a break and you you gotta pick i did the picking.
Sam: You did the picking it was a very exciting picking um exiting exiting yes as
Sam: you always say okay i will take a break and of Of course, since we didn't do it in the first segment,
Sam: I'm going to do election politics and everything around Trump and Harris and
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: There's other stuff going on in the world. But, you know, hey,
Sam: that's what it's going to be. We'll be back after this.
Break: You were on the floor. Tick-a-tock-a-tick-a-tock-a-tick-a-tock-a-tick-a-tock-a-tick-a-tock-a-tock.
Break: In the box that you found upon my face.
Break: What? Bye.
Sam: Okay, here we are. So, we got a bunch of stuff going on. Let me go through the
Sam: list just sort of in the order that it came up during the week.
Sam: I did have some notes about talking about how the media is handling election
Sam: 2024, but we'll do that some other time.
Sam: We got RFK Jr. and his ballot removal efforts.
Sam: Now that he has endorsed Trump and he's trying to get off the ballot, here's the thing.
Sam: It's interfering with things in a variety of ways because his decision came really late.
Sam: Late so just as an example and
Sam: his success has been different like in some in some states
Sam: they've immediately said okay fine you're off the ballot in
Sam: other states they've said no too late you can't pull yourself off the ballot
Sam: and in others it is actively going back and forth in court right now so it's
Sam: unclear what the result is but he he also specifically decided by the way when
Sam: when he when When he quote unquote dropped out,
Sam: he actually said, I'm not dropping out.
Sam: I'm just endorsing Trump, and I'm going to take myself off the ballot in the
Sam: states where my presence might hurt Trump, okay?
Sam: So he's leaving himself on the ballot in states where he feels like it wouldn't
Sam: make a difference or he would hurt Harris.
Sam: Okay. Which I don't think there's any place left where his presence hurts Harris.
Sam: Because as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, once she took over from Biden,
Sam: basically all of the people who were for him as a placeholder because they didn't like Biden,
Sam: but were basically more left than right, more Democrat than Trumpy,
Sam: all left and went to Harris. us.
Sam: So he was basically hurting Trump everywhere, but he was only really trying
Sam: to get his name off the ballot in swing states where it might make a difference.
Sam: One example that's still, I don't think the court fights are over yet,
Sam: but I was going to have, as one of the things I mentioned on the show,
Sam: that this Friday, Friday, September 6th, the one that just passed,
Sam: was supposed to be The first day that ballots for November actually were mailed
Sam: out, the start of early voting in the first state, which would have been North Carolina,
Sam: the ballots were going to be mailed out, as we're recording this, yesterday.
Sam: All the ballots were printed and ready to go. They were going to be mailed yesterday.
Sam: And they had RFK's name on it. so when
Sam: rfk originally said i want
Sam: my name off north carolina this was in north carolina north
Sam: carolina said sorry no too late
Sam: your name is already on the ballots they're already being printed they are going
Sam: out this week um rfk went to court and got a judge to say nope you got to to
Sam: take him off the ballot and halted the mailing of those ballots.
Sam: And is the, I'm sure this is going to go through a couple more layers of court
Sam: before it's final, but those, those ballots did not get mailed yesterday.
Sam: And as of the current court order, all of these ballots have to be remade and
Sam: reprinted without Kennedy on them, which again,
Sam: And being said, these ballots are printed at the local county level because
Sam: there's all kinds of local races too, right?
Sam: So your ballot is not just like one ballot for North Carolina.
Sam: Every local jurisdiction has a different ballot because you've got mayors and
Sam: state reps and the local whatever, blah, blah, blah, all of these races on them. and and boards.
Ivan: And other stuff and.
Sam: Apparently the way you have to do it there's also like you can't just sort of
Sam: erase his name and leave a gap for whatever reasons they have you have to actually,
Sam: reflow the ballot and redesign the ballot so
Sam: like if you take out that space and that makes things move
Sam: in terms of like what column they're in
Sam: and where they are then you have to redo that and then you
Sam: have to validate that all of the the auto
Sam: ballot counting stuff that you set
Sam: up is still working on the new ballot like
Sam: it should right this the software is good for this stuff but they're required
Sam: steps where you have to validate that all of that is working before you send
Sam: out the ballots in the first place because you want to catch an issue like if
Sam: you've if you've done something stupid on the ballot and the software can't
Sam: read it you want to catch it before you send out the ballots, right?
Sam: Or before you even print them in large quantities.
Sam: And so you've got all of these local jurisdictions that have to do the new ballots
Sam: are complaining because they did not budget for that.
Sam: And this is going to cost across the state of North Carolina millions and millions
Sam: of dollars to redo the ballots at this stage that was not budgeted for.
Sam: So they're They're scrambling for money. They're scrambling to figure out how to do it.
Sam: And you can see why they might not want to do this.
Sam: Because it was just too, like, literally, pallets of ballots were ready to go into the mail.
Sam: Like, and so they're fighting over that.
Sam: But, like, you know, I was going to say, you know, the election has started.
Sam: Ballots are out. People are starting to vote already.
Sam: But no, because it's been delayed by RFK Jr.
Sam: There are a few other states that weren't quite as dramatic as North Carolina,
Sam: but similar battles are going on because deadlines were missed,
Sam: but RFK is trying to get judges to say, do it anyway.
Sam: He's saying, I can't be forced to be on the ballot against my will,
Sam: you know, stuff like that.
Sam: So anyway, that's the RFK thing. Any thoughts? No, well.
Ivan: Well, I mean, I think that at this point,
Ivan: if it's too late, it's too late. It is what it is.
Ivan: I mean, there's not much else that he could do. I mean, he decided to do this,
Ivan: to withdraw from the ballot way, way, way too late down the road.
Sam: So, well, but apparently he's getting like some sympathetic judges in some states
Sam: are saying, yeah, I know you're past the deadline, but you know,
Sam: it's going to have to be changed anyway.
Sam: Way and the states are having to scramble to do it and or
Sam: pay for appeals and so
Sam: regardless there's some delay here like there's some
Sam: early voting that could have been happening as early as
Sam: now that is not going to
Sam: happen quite yet of course this is still i
Sam: mean my god it's september it's the
Sam: beginning of september you know right i
Sam: mean i am i am back i am fine with
Sam: like having a voting period that is
Sam: not a single day like the idea of early voting i have no
Sam: problem with it but two months is is
Sam: still yeah it's pretty long like okay yeah um but there's more states coming
Sam: online like within the next week two weeks they're going to be a bunch of states
Sam: that are already sending out their earliest early vote stuff you know even in
Sam: north carolina like this was
Sam: specifically the people who had registered for vote by mail,
Sam: which in North Carolina.
Sam: Even at the height of the pandemic, was only like 10% or something like that.
Sam: And now is more like 5%, 5% of the vote.
Sam: And regular in-person early vote is later in the process.
Sam: So we're talking small numbers that early vote in September.
Sam: Once we get to October, it starts getting huge, but like, but yeah, so we'll see.
Ivan: Yeah. Uh.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say something. You were like making a noise. I know.
Ivan: No, no, no. Oh, I'm just, I'm sorry. My body is grunting.
Sam: Okay. Next up.
Sam: That's election tangential. Anyway, I,
Sam: I haven't followed this in detail, but I thought I'd be remiss in not mentioning
Sam: the DOJ did an indictment based on another Russian influence operation.
Sam: Where apparently through a number of intermediary organizations,
Sam: basically the Russians were paying a whole bunch of conservative influencers,
Sam: specifically MAGA type influencers,
Sam: all kinds of money to increase their alignment with what the Russians wanted
Sam: to project and to get their message out there.
Sam: Some of this was through RT. Some of it was elsewhere.
Sam: You got a whole bunch of these people like Tim Pool, I think is the biggest
Sam: name that would be recognized.
Sam: There are a bunch of folks that unless you are embedded in, you know,
Sam: the right wing sort of online culture, we probably don't know.
Sam: They're not like the big ones who are on TV and stuff for the most part.
Sam: But like a bunch of them are like we're the
Sam: victims here we had no idea we
Sam: had no idea that this money was coming from russia and we you know whatever
Sam: and you know in some cases maybe they are stupid enough maybe it's like the
Sam: chase glitch people they're just really idiots uh in other cases it's like okay come on you knew no.
Ivan: It's just so stupid.
Sam: And also they're like oh i am such a victim.
Sam: I was getting $100,000 a month and I just didn't look into where it was coming from. I'm such a victim.
Ivan: I mean, Sam, I mean, did you check our Patreon?
Ivan: We weren't getting paid.
Sam: Where's our hundred thousand a month from the Russians? I mean, come on.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: You know, now they, they, for the most, like, correct.
Sam: Like, like I said, I haven't been following this to the degree I should have.
Sam: Are they indicting these actual influencers or just the intermediaries who were paying them?
Ivan: I don't know. No, I know I saw the mentions and I saw the people involved,
Ivan: but I must admit that I did not delve into the details of it.
Sam: I honestly didn't care enough to look into the details.
Ivan: I was just like, no, it just wasn't. So it was like, I think I read it and I
Ivan: kind of like, gee, what a fucking surprise. Not.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: I mean, what the hell?
Sam: Well, and the other thing that the DOJ has said is like they've done this indictment
Sam: on this Russian influence operation, but they've said like, look, they are not alone.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: The Chinese are doing this. The Iranians are doing it.
Sam: There were a number of other countries doing it. Yeah, practically.
Sam: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if every country is doing it.
Sam: You know even even like little bitty countries that don't have that much money
Sam: to spend they're going to do a little bit like try to try to influence the americans
Sam: to like us more i don't know and of course i'm sure we're doing it all over
Sam: the world as well yeah and like this how.
Ivan: I i think that we the way that we do these are different but but are we you know,
Ivan: going and like obviously trying to
Ivan: spread a message that is you know favorable
Ivan: favorable to our interests absolutely but in
Ivan: my you know what i from what i've seen it's more stuff like the straight up
Ivan: like stuff like well voice of america all this other stuff that we we we put
Ivan: you know that we you know we we put these stories out there and so forth and
Ivan: we we spread it we do the public stuff.
Sam: But I guarantee you we're doing the covert stuff as well.
Ivan: The thing is that whenever we are doing covert, it's not in the same brazen
Ivan: method in terms of, hey, let me find that Twitter guy over there.
Ivan: Let me just give him $100,000 a month kind of thing. Probably something more subtle.
Sam: Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if we take people People who are influencers
Sam: across the world who we think are promoting messages that we like.
Sam: And to be clear, this is slightly different from telling them what to say.
Sam: But instead, it is finding people who are already saying things that we like.
Sam: And I think that's what the Russians were doing as well.
Sam: And supporting them. Making it easier for them to get out their message.
Sam: And I mean financially as well.
Ivan: Patreon.
Sam: Patreon.
Ivan: Patreon them.
Sam: Yeah. Dump some money into their Patreon. Say that, hey, we like what you're
Sam: doing and in order to help you do more of it, we're going to give you X amount
Sam: per month. I'm sure we will.
Sam: And some of it publicly and some of it secretly. I'm sure.
Sam: So this is happening all over the place, but apparently just in terms of US stuff, like,
Sam: I mean, I guess this is part of the goal, too, of like, make it so nobody trusts anything.
Sam: But really, I mean, there's no way to, in a good way, know, hey,
Sam: is what you are seeing really truly authentic?
Sam: Or is it some part of some organized influence campaign?
Sam: Either domestic or foreign. You know, it's like, I don't know.
Sam: Unless it's like a particular individual that for some reason you know a lot about and trust.
Sam: I don't know. And even then, like who the hell knows what's going on in their private finances?
Ivan: Who knows?
Sam: So we know nothing. So part of
Sam: that is like a lot of this puts stuff out there or helps get it boosted.
Sam: But this is where it comes to you know when you're looking at stuff you have to also be evaluating.
Sam: Have some sort of method for cross-checking and like i admit sometimes i'm better
Sam: at this and sometimes i'm worse and it depends on how much i trust the source
Sam: and if if my trust is misplaced i can get fooled and a you know a few times
Sam: i've posted stuff that later i'm like oh crap that was
Sam: like bullshit you know and then but alpha
Sam: bag we did not
Sam: fall for alpha bank okay on this show we
Sam: consistently said that alpha bank says bullshit it
Sam: sounds yeah but yeah you know and this is the again coming back to the chase
Sam: glitch if it sounds too good to be true it probably is right you know and you
Sam: know even like i'll go back to the the the steel dossier on on donald Trump.
Sam: I think there's a lot of it that was true.
Sam: There's a lot of it that was not true. There's even more that's never been verified.
Sam: But I think what we do know convincingly at this point is that it was essentially
Sam: stuff that the Russians were intentionally trying to get out there to confuse the issue.
Sam: Yeah, I,
Sam: Disinformation campaigns work now, especially if you go for the stuff that just
Sam: seems plausible, like it matches the narrative. It matches what you think might be true.
Sam: And so and the Steele dossier was explicitly framed as these are just the rumors
Sam: we're hearing on the street.
Sam: Like we haven't been able to verify one way or another.
Sam: Right. And, you know, like I said, it falls in, there were some true things,
Sam: there were some false things and the vast majority and the vast majority are
Sam: things that just can't be proven one way or the other.
Sam: It's just, you know, no, they haven't been verified. They haven't been proven
Sam: false either. They just can't be.
Ivan: That's going to be the, Sam, that's going to be the October surprise.
Ivan: The pee pee tape finally.
Sam: You know, if the P-Tape comes out next month, that would – or indictments about Alpha Bank.
Ivan: Oh, there you go.
Sam: Alpha Bank has proved to be true and – no.
Sam: I don't know. There probably is a P-Tape, right? There may be. There may be.
Sam: The P-Tape is one of those things where he is so germaphobic.
Sam: Like it almost seems like nah that that doesn't quite match he's he's crazy
Sam: he is crazy he is crazy anyway uh enough of the you.
Ivan: Got rfk jr like sawing heads off whales.
Sam: That there was there was
Sam: yeah he saw the head off whale he did the thing with the bear i saw
Sam: a video this morning i don't know if it was new
Sam: or just resurfaced but like it had him like
Sam: in like some room somewhere and he pans his
Sam: like phone camera to the side and there's like this grasshopper
Sam: sitting on like a couch and he's like look this
Sam: thing this is cool it's a it's a so-and-so
Sam: grasshopper i forget the he identified like the
Sam: species of grasshopper whatever right and and
Sam: then he just reaches out and grabs it and he
Sam: holds it up to the camera like in his fist he's
Sam: holding the grasshopper and he care it looks like
Sam: he like did it in such a way that the grasshopper was fine
Sam: the grasshopper was not in distress but he was holding the grasshopper blah
Sam: blah blah up to the camera and talking about the grasshopper and then some guy
Sam: cuts into the video because this was somebody reposting it as like dude you
Sam: know as soon as the camera is off he's gonna eat that thing oh god,
Sam: because he just now has that reputation right you know he's gonna eat the dog
Sam: yeah he's he's he he ended up leaving the bear in central park but apparently
Sam: his original plan was to take it home and eat it,
Sam: I don't know if he was going to eat the whale head or not.
Ivan: But I will get friends with Christie. No, I'm yeah.
Sam: With the yeah. Yeah, probably is. Anyway, enough, enough about the Russian influence op.
Sam: There's it's going on. There were indictments. A lot of conservative hanger
Sam: honors of the constant grift types were implicated in it.
Sam: And there's a lot more going on that there haven't been indictments on.
Sam: And it's just out there. and be as careful as you can, but, you know, whatever. Okay, next.
Sam: The Trump-DC case is finally moving again. You know, so a schedule was set.
Sam: There will be no mini, there's no mini trial scheduled at this point.
Sam: But there are, there's a deadline in late September for the special counsel
Sam: to submit briefings. This is all on like what is or is not changed on the immunity
Sam: because of the SCOTUS immunity decision.
Sam: Obviously, the special counsel already did the superseding indictment that we talked about last week.
Sam: But now they have to make their arguments about like what is what is affected,
Sam: what is not affected and why blah, blah, blah.
Sam: All of that is in. And there is expected to be evidence included in these arguments.
Sam: So not just here's the legal argument, but also here's how it applies to specific
Sam: evidence that we intend to use in the case.
Sam: And then a week or so after the special counsel's deadline on that is the deadline.
Sam: Maybe it's two weeks. I forget. Something like that. Early October,
Sam: there is a deadline for the defense to submit their thoughts on this whole issue,
Sam: including rebuttals to anything the special counsel said.
Sam: And then there will be an actual hearing on the issue, like,
Sam: I don't know, a week before the election or two weeks before the like,
Sam: it's very like end of October.
Sam: And so that's, so that's moving again.
Sam: And there's going to be, you know, there were a lot of people pushing for like
Sam: a whole little mini trial calling witnesses and stuff before the election.
Sam: The judge was not like, this is not the direction she's going.
Sam: She's All of these are going to be done in legal briefings, and then there's
Sam: going to be perhaps a hearing in front of her, but not like all the witnesses
Sam: and stuff. That's all going to be in documents.
Sam: She will decide at that point if she feels she needs that kind of thing before the real trial.
Sam: But, well, not only before the real Trump, before she decides.
Sam: Because the thing that's going to happen on this, by the way,
Sam: just in case it's not clear to everybody, is she has to decide what's in and
Sam: what's out and how she's going to treat all of this stuff.
Sam: But then no matter what she decides, well, especially if she decides against
Sam: Donald Trump, but pretty much no matter what she does, it's going to get appealed again.
Sam: And it's going to go all the way up to the Supreme Court again before it actually
Sam: comes back down. So she also said she's not even going to bother trying to set
Sam: an actual trial date because she's sure that whatever she does here,
Sam: it's going to get appealed.
Sam: And so there's going to be another long delay while this goes up to Supreme Court and back.
Sam: So basically the schedule of this is, you know, we're going to have that hearing in late October.
Sam: She's probably not going to make a decision until after the election sometime in November.
Sam: And then whatever she does, it's going to get appealed again.
Sam: And then we're probably waiting another six to nine months before this thing
Sam: could come back to her again to continue.
Sam: So this, and that's assuming that Donald Trump doesn't win and make the whole thing go away.
Sam: You know, so at the moment it's moving and there are a whole bunch of steps
Sam: and documents and things like that that we're going to see over the next two months.
Sam: But it is what it is. It's moving. Things are happening.
Sam: There's news related to it. There's going to be more news related about it before the election.
Sam: But we're not going to get to like
Sam: even assuming harris wins we're not
Sam: going to get to an actual trial of donald
Sam: trump on the january 6th stuff till probably
Sam: late next year like not even not even early next year probably late next year
Sam: like so these you know again we've talked before about how frustrating like
Sam: all four of these cases but also just apparently our legal system in general It's so fucking slow.
Sam: And Donald Trump is a master of making it go even slower.
Ivan: So that he's definitely shown himself at that. Absolutely.
Sam: OK, since since we're since we're talking his legal cases, the other one was
Sam: the sentencing in the New York trial was also delayed till after the election.
Sam: It was supposed to be like the 18th of September. and the steps were once again
Sam: in this one, Donald Trump is also saying, hey, we need to figure out how the
Sam: immunity decision changes this.
Sam: And there was going to be, you know, they're submitting their briefs on that.
Sam: I believe that's already done.
Sam: The judge was going to give his answer to how the immunity stuff affected this
Sam: case, because in this case, Donald Trump is saying that while While the crime
Sam: itself wasn't necessarily covered by immunity,
Sam: they used evidence that was covered by immunity, so the whole thing needs to be thrown out.
Ivan: Um right so they're and i know that they're going through it and trying to i
Ivan: mean they they did go through all of that and try to figure out what to leave
Ivan: what well no that's the that's.
Sam: The january 6th case we're talking new york now in the.
Ivan: Oh you talk no no no yeah oh that yeah yeah i forgot that yeah this guy you
Ivan: forgot i switched so many i forgot yeah oh so but it's just so many of them
Ivan: moved all of a sudden this week yeah once and.
Sam: So the new york one you know they were he was going to make the decision on
Sam: whether or not the fact that there was some evidence included that could now be argued to be immune.
Sam: There are two questions there. Was that evidence actually immune?
Sam: And if it was, was it substantial enough that it affected the verdict and you
Sam: have to throw out the proceedings so far?
Sam: And so he was going to make that decision on the 16th and then have sentencing
Sam: on the 18th, assuming he didn't dismiss the case.
Sam: But now he's delayed both of those the steps. I expected, frankly,
Sam: that the sentencing would not happen.
Sam: I'd said on the show before that what I expected to happen was that the judge
Sam: would rule against Donald Trump and say,
Sam: no, whatever issues with the evidence were not substantial enough to affect
Sam: the verdict, so we're going to proceed with sentencing.
Sam: And I expected that at that point, Trump would appeal and then everything else
Sam: would be delayed and the sentencing would be put out.
Sam: And apparently the judge has some ability to say whether they can do that intermediary
Sam: appeal or whether they would have to wait.
Sam: But the judge just punted the whole damn thing. He's not even...
Sam: I did not expect the actual sentencing to happen before the election.
Sam: I expected that to be delayed.
Sam: I did expect that the judge would actually make the decision on whether or not
Sam: this evidence tainted the case enough to dismiss it before the election.
Sam: But no, he pushed that out into November too.
Sam: So he's basically like, I'm not deciding anything on this case until we get
Sam: to November, which is in sharp contrast. And he said explicitly,
Sam: like, this is because of the election.
Sam: I don't want any appearance whatsoever that I am making decisions in a way that
Sam: my purpose is to influence the election.
Sam: So we're just going to wait until after the election happens.
Sam: Whereas Judge Chunkin on the January 6th case said exactly the opposite.
Sam: She's like, I don't care about the election. The election is not my concern.
Sam: My concern is these charges, and so I'm going to set a schedule accordingly.
Sam: Like the Trump's lawyer kept saying we need
Sam: to delay all this stuff till after the election and she's like
Sam: no no not doing that and people
Sam: have said the cases are a little bit different based on the phase they are like
Sam: one is pre-trial one is post-trial etc but fundamentally I feel like the same
Sam: arguments could apply and they've taken diametrically opposed positions Chunkin was like.
Sam: I, I am responsible. Like it would, the political thing would be if I let the
Sam: election and the fact that Donald Trump is a candidate in an election affect
Sam: me, that would be being influenced by the politics of the scenario.
Sam: I have to treat him just like any other defendant.
Sam: And like for any other defendant, I don't care what's going on in their job.
Sam: I don't care what's going on in their personal life. That's not part of my problem.
Sam: I'm setting the schedule for all of this stuff just as, Hey,
Sam: you're a person, you're on trial, you've got these crimes, and this is the amount
Sam: of time we need in order to resolve the issues we need to resolve.
Sam: Whereas the New York judge was like, I really don't want to appear like I am
Sam: trying to put my thumb on the election, and so I'm not doing anything more until after the election.
Sam: So, and part of the New York judge's argument as well, and I don't know if this
Sam: was a mistake on the part of the prosecutors in New York or actually intentional on their part.
Sam: When asked for their, like Trump asked for this to be delayed and the New York
Sam: prosecutors had to put in a brief with their opinion as well.
Sam: And rather than argue not to delay, they just said, we leave it up to the hands of the judge.
Sam: And I heard some people at the time praise that as like, look,
Sam: this is the right thing to do.
Sam: They don't want to appear like political.
Sam: They don't want want to put their thumb on the scale either.
Sam: But the judge basically said, look, from what the prosecutors said and the way
Sam: they said it, I think they actually agree and want the delay too. So we're delaying.
Sam: So I heard someone speculate that another factor in all this may also be safety
Sam: because a whole bunch of the people involved,
Sam: I mean, the judge and the prosecution have had steady streams of death threats
Sam: throughout this whole process.
Sam: And maybe they're just actually worried about like if the judge actually sentenced
Sam: Donald Trump to anything other than, you know, a fine and a short probation or something like that,
Sam: that, you know, the judge and his family would actually be in physical danger.
Sam: I don't know if that was part of it or not. He certainly didn't say so,
Sam: but I've heard that speculation as well. Well, so, so we are not having a sentence for Donald Trump.
Sam: And the one other thing I'll say on that is there, there's, there were also
Sam: people talking about, well, you know, can you imagine if he actually went to
Sam: jail before the election?
Sam: He was never going to go to jail before the election. It would have been stayed
Sam: pending appeal regardless, but having, knowing what he was sentenced to might
Sam: make a difference to some people.
Sam: People but in terms of the political effect it's unclear what it would be on the one hand yeah okay.
Sam: Convicted criminal sentenced to jail whatever presumably there are at least
Sam: a few people who would be turned off by that who are currently trump supporters
Sam: but on the other hand it would probably energize and enrage a bunch of them
Sam: make it make them want to vote for him even more so So what effect it would
Sam: have, if any, is completely unclear.
Sam: Any thoughts, Yvonne, or have you fallen asleep?
Sam: Or are you gone? Yvonne? Yvonne?
Sam: Hello?
Sam: Are you there?
Ivan: Can you hear me?
Sam: I can hear you. Did you fall asleep, Mr. Bo?
Ivan: I'm talking now. What?
Ivan: I'm talking now. I'm running out of energy.
Sam: Okay. So you were falling asleep. Okay. Okay, we'll wrap this up pretty quickly then.
Sam: Feel free to nap some more and just chime in if anything entices you.
Ivan: There's not much to say in terms of any of these cases right now,
Ivan: other than the summary that you gave, to be honest.
Ivan: I mean, we had a lot of activity and things all of a sudden happened.
Sam: On these two, and the other two were indefinitely paused.
Sam: The one in Florida, of course, was dismissed. and that's
Sam: being appealed but the schedule for that appeal is going
Sam: to last months it'll be a long time till we get
Sam: you know any sort of result on whether or
Sam: not the florida one gets reinstated and whether or not it
Sam: goes back to judge cannon or to somebody else and the one in georgia is similarly
Sam: like on a long pause while the decision to let fanny willis stay on that case
Sam: is appealed and then it's also going to take months and months and months.
Sam: So like really the only one that was expected to actually come to anywhere approaching
Sam: a conclusion was the New York one and that's punted towards late November now.
Sam: And even then, you're going to have years of appeals on all of these even after you get sentencing.
Sam: But the New York one was the closest to actually getting to an end point And
Sam: it's pushed back a couple months too.
Sam: So, you know, like we had, you know, one of our annual prediction show things
Sam: was how many of these four cases would actually get to a conclusion this year.
Sam: I think you said three and I said two. It looks like by the end of the year,
Sam: we're talking one and that's not going to be before the election.
Sam: But you might actually get to a verdict in the New York case or possibly a dismissal.
Sam: At the end of November. So you will get it this year, just not before the election.
Sam: And the other three, they're going to be going on for years.
Sam: Like, well, again, if Harris wins, if Trump wins, these are done.
Sam: Like, well, if Trump wins, the, the, he's going to dismiss the federal ones.
Sam: Like the, the, the two federal ones, he will make sure the DOJ drops them as soon as he's sworn in.
Sam: The state ones are more
Sam: complicated because he can't dismiss those he can't
Sam: order anything on those however courts in the
Sam: past have on civil cases
Sam: mind you but i don't i i'm almost
Sam: certain they would do the same thing they basically would
Sam: like if he was actually being sworn in as president would
Sam: just pause the case for four years and say
Sam: right we'll get back to this once he's not president anymore
Sam: right so like yeah well
Sam: in theory he can't dismiss the new york and
Sam: georgia cases in practice i think
Sam: both both cases would end up paused now if if he wins and then new york sentences
Sam: him to jail anyway again it's going to be appealed and so the appeals will be
Sam: paused he's He's not going to go to jail before he becomes president.
Sam: He's not going to have to be president from jail, anything like that.
Sam: It would just all be paused for four years.
Sam: And then at the end of that, it gets resumed, assuming he even makes it through
Sam: his four years. He's getting up there. Yeah.
Ivan: I don't know.
Sam: Anyway, okay. Did I have anything else I want to make sure to mention?
Sam: Hunter Biden pled guilty.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Anybody care?
Ivan: That's it.
Sam: And actually, and the important thing is this was not a plea deal with the prosecution.
Ivan: He is just, he just pled guilty period.
Sam: He's just pled guilty and is throwing himself at the mercy of the judge.
Sam: And basically the play here is you're, the judge is going to be like,
Sam: you know, this is the kind of case that normally doesn't even come to trial.
Sam: You know, you, you paid back the money to the IRS. This, this one's the IRS case, not the gun case.
Sam: You, You paid back the money. Normally, prosecutors don't even go after that.
Sam: And so he's hoping the judge will give him a suspended sentence or a light probation
Sam: or something like that, and it's over or fine.
Sam: You know, we'll see how that goes.
Sam: Oh, one other thing to mention, which we don't need to talk a lot about,
Sam: is before next time we talk, the Harris versus Trump presidential debate should
Sam: have happened. It's scheduled for Tuesday.
Sam: Unless there is a last minute, somebody decides not to do it after all,
Sam: we expect to have that happen on Tuesday.
Sam: It is the same rules as that Biden debate.
Sam: So Harris had wanted to try to change it, but it had already been agreed by
Sam: the Biden campaign beforehand, and Trump was not changing it because it worked
Sam: well for him last time, essentially.
Sam: It's no audience, and their microphones are going to be muted when it's not your turn to talk.
Sam: The Biden campaign had wanted that because they thought the crowd would energize
Sam: Trump. Trump turns out the crowd also would have energized Biden and he wasn't as good with no crowd.
Sam: And they were also worried about Trump.
Sam: Bullying and speaking over Biden and winning in that free-form engagement where
Sam: they were just yelling at each other because Trump can yell louder.
Sam: The Harris campaign wanted microphones on the whole time because they figured,
Sam: well, yes, Trump may try to interrupt.
Sam: Harris would also be able to real-time jump in and fact-check and stuff.
Sam: When Trump said something wrong or stupid.
Sam: She could just jump in and say something herself. She could do some interrupting.
Sam: They tried to spin it as Trump's own folks are afraid of having an open mic
Sam: because he might say something stupid.
Sam: And I'm sure that's part of it, but a part of it was Harris wanted to interrupt herself.
Sam: So apparently they've had to reshuffle some of their debate prep because they
Sam: were really hoping mics would be on and they're not going to be.
Sam: So they have to adjust their approach a little bit anyway that's
Sam: it we'll see how the debate goes i expect this will
Sam: go better for harris than it went for biden at
Sam: least i fucking hope so you know
Sam: it would be horrible uh but but i think harris is pretty good at this and trump
Sam: has been deteriorating further over the last couple months and doesn't seem
Sam: like he really knows how the hell to handle somebody like harris And so he's
Sam: been increasingly incoherent.
Sam: There was a long clip of him answering a question about child care policy that
Sam: made no sense whatsoever.
Sam: And that kind of stuff is just repeating. Trillions.
Ivan: Trillions.
Sam: Yeah, he's somehow going to solve...
Ivan: It's so much money.
Sam: Well, he's somehow going to solve child care because of tariffs.
Sam: Tariffs. That are going to...
Ivan: And the deficit is going to be zero.
Sam: Yeah, I mean...
Ivan: They're all just going to pay.
Sam: Reading the whole thing, I actually think I know what it was trying to say.
Sam: Being generous he was saying
Sam: we're going to have such a great economy with so much extra money coming in
Sam: that solving child care won't be a problem i think that's the one sentence version
Sam: of what he was trying to say but the actual reality was a long rambling paragraph of
Sam: nonsense and things that weren't related and things.
Sam: And, and the point is not that one specific thing.
Sam: Maybe I'll, I'll drop the audio of that in after this, after,
Sam: after the closing music, I'll drop the audio of that in if you want to listen to it.
Sam: But it's just that he's increasingly incoherent. And this is just the latest example.
Sam: So I think part of what Harris is hoping is that he goes on his long rambling
Sam: things of nothing, and she can jump in and appear competent and know what she's
Sam: doing and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Now, whether that makes a difference to a lot of people, I don't know.
Sam: Also, Trump has shown in these debates in the past that he can sort of hold
Sam: it together and be reasonable for the first part of a debate.
Sam: He usually doesn't make it to the end, but for the first few questions,
Sam: he can usually be somewhat disciplined.
Sam: He just can't make it the whole 90 minutes, and at some point, he falls apart.
Ivan: Well, we'll see how much medication he's able to take before this one.
Sam: Well, yeah, people always speculate that that's because he's on something, and then it wears off.
Sam: Right. There you go with the unfounded, unverifiable information,
Sam: like misinformation, whatever.
Sam: It's just like, we just put out there that Donald Trump takes drugs,
Sam: performance-enhancing drugs, for the debate.
Sam: There's no evidence of that. But people speculate. So, you know.
Sam: Your sound just went wonky. Try that again.
Ivan: You can't say with absolute certainty that it's not happening either.
Sam: No, you can't. Well, again, and that's your Steele dossier issue.
Sam: Like so much is unverifiable. And a lot of the kinds of things that people who
Sam: are pushing, you know, influence campaigns concentrate on is the things that
Sam: are unverifiable one way or another but sound reasonable.
Sam: So anyway, we are done. Yvonne is falling asleep. I've got a call coming up
Sam: with my dad momentarily.
Sam: A zoom, not even a phone call. I'm doing zoom with my dad now.
Sam: Um, zoom, zoom, zoom.
Ivan: Zoom.
Sam: Oh, you, you, you remember the TV show zoom? I just, since you mentioned it,
Sam: you know, I was thinking of the Mazda commercial.
Sam: Oh, I remember the Mazda commercial too, but there was the zoom.
Ivan: Zoom, zoom. Yeah.
Sam: But you were, do you remember, do you remember zoom? The TV show zoom when we
Sam: were kids? No, no, no. Oh, come on.
Sam: I mean, I mean, I know you watch. watched i remember ghostbusters well and you
Sam: remembered three two one contact when we talked about it a while ago zoom was in this i.
Ivan: Remember three two one contact.
Sam: Zoom was like that kind of a less a less sciencey thing but the same vibe i
Sam: i would say zoom has the same vibe anyway we are done go to curmudgeons-corner.com
Sam: you can find our archives you can find links to all the ways is to contact us.
Sam: You can find a link to our YouTube where we're still doing live streams.
Sam: This time you only saw video of me because Yvonne was afraid to come on camera because of night.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: I don't think anyone watched the live stream this time, but if you prefer video,
Sam: you can show up and you can go and you can watch this on video, the unedited version.
Sam: By the way,
Sam: The thing we use to record this,
Sam: Riverside, does auto-generated AI sort of clips or AI-generated clips.
Sam: Well, the AI isn't generated us talking, but it picks clips from the show for social media sharing.
Sam: And Alex really wants me to start putting some of those on TikTok.
Sam: He put one up and said, hey, if this thing gets, you know, likes more than one
Sam: like, then, you know, we'll make an official curmudgeons corner TikTok and put
Sam: some of these clips on there.
Sam: I don't really want to take the time and effort to do it, but like it got two likes.
Sam: So like you know let let
Sam: me know if anybody one of them was you yvonne let me
Sam: know if uh if anybody out there actually really would
Sam: be interested in seeing an official curmudgeons corner tiktok i liked it i did
Sam: you did you you liked it uh that has like little 30 second snippets of yvonne
Sam: and i talking on video from these shows it's like where the ai thinks that like
Sam: this 30 seconds was really
Sam: cool and interesting and blah, blah, blah. And it's sometimes it's right. And sometimes it's not.
Sam: If there is demand, I may do it. I'm, I don't know.
Sam: I see, I made my editing process a lot shorter, but I don't want to reverse
Sam: that by adding more things I'm doing.
Sam: So anyway, okay, we're done. We're done.
Sam: And you can also find on there, our Patreon where at various levels,
Sam: we will send you a postcard.
Sam: We will send you a mug. We will talk about you on the show, whatever.
Sam: Ever and two dollars a month or more uh we will invite you to our commissions
Sam: course slack where ivan and i and others are chatting throughout the week and
Sam: sharing links ivan do you have anything from the slack you would like to share
Sam: this week before we say no goodbye i.
Ivan: I not this week.
Sam: If we hadn't talked about it earlier i would have done the the chase glitch
Sam: then but then we would have ended up talking about it forever i i will i will
Sam: since you are not i will do one thing from the slack which is a short one not
Sam: not not starlink starliner has landed oh.
Ivan: It landed it landed.
Sam: Yeah without the astronauts they they left the astronauts on the space station
Sam: for safety because they were not sure if it would be safe or not and they sent
Sam: it back uncrewed and it apparently has landed successfully i haven't heard word
Sam: if they've like examined it and it's all
Sam: perfect inside and the astronauts would have been fine, but I presume so.
Sam: It looks like it landed essentially without major incident.
Sam: There was one thruster. They deactivated before it even left the space station because it had issues.
Sam: Right. And apparently there was at least one other thruster that acted up during
Sam: the landing process, but they had plenty of redundancy and it landed anyway.
Sam: So, but you know, you know,
Sam: Whether or not Boeing's going to get another shot at this, still undetermined.
Ivan: Well, actually, my understanding is that Bill Nelson, the director of NASA,
Ivan: is saying that, no, they're going to keep going with this.
Ivan: They definitely need this.
Sam: They don't want to be completely reliant on SpaceX. They want to have alternatives.
Sam: Correct. and like oh yeah and i wouldn't want to be i wouldn't want to be completely
Sam: reliant on elon either right you know right yeah and just the general notion
Sam: that they want redundancy they want multiple systems so that if something goes
Sam: wrong with one they've got something else to fall back on well we got stuck.
Ivan: With with it like for a while when the space shuttle you know.
Sam: Yeah and we had to rely on the russians yeah yeah right yeah okay we are done
Sam: thanks everybody goodbye Goodbye. Have a good week. All that stuff.
Sam: And yeah, stay on after the outro music and I'll include the little,
Sam: little clip of Donald Trump.
Sam: Anyway, we'll talk to you next week. Goodbye. Say goodbye, Yvonne.
Ivan: Bye. Bye.
Sam: Okay, that's it. For the people watching the edited version,
Sam: you'll have the Donald Trump.
Sam: For people watching live, I'm hitting stop. Bye.
Ivan: Bye.
Reshma: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable?
Reshma: And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?
Donald: Well, I would do that. And we're sitting down, you know, I was somebody,
Donald: we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that
Donald: issue. It's a very important issue.
Donald: But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about,
Donald: that because the child care is child care, it's couldn't, you know,
Donald: there's something you have to have it in this country, you have to have it.
Donald: But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm
Donald: talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to,
Donald: but they'll get used to it very quickly.
Donald: And it's not going to stop them from doing business with us,
Donald: but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.
Donald: Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about,
Donald: including child care, that it's going to take care.
Donald: I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time,
Donald: coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all
Donald: of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care.
Donald: I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the
Donald: kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth,
Donald: but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about.
Donald: We're going to be taking in trillions of dollars.
Donald: And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive,
Donald: it's relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in.
Donald: We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people.
Donald: And then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people.
Donald: But we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first.
Donald: It's about make America great again. again, we have to do it because right now we're a failing nation.
Donald: So we'll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.