Sam: Greetings, Mr. Bow.
Ivan: Good morning!
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Rise and shine! Your eyes look like it's 8am.
Sam: Oh, I wonder why that might be. Yes, I've been... Hold on. Let's let the livestream start.
Ivan: Your cough is wonderful as usual.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. I'm going to push this button here. Where is this?
Sam: Not yet. Yeah, I've been awake for maybe 10, 15 minutes.
Sam: And after probably only being asleep like four hours, maybe. I don't know. We'll see.
Ivan: Well, you're not doing too bad. Okay. And I have to, because Juana's working
Ivan: early voting, I have a hard stop in one hour and 30 minutes from now, exactly.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Because I have to take Manu to music.
Sam: Okay. So let's get this thing going. Here it comes.
Break: .
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner. I'm messing up already. Seconds in.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. For Saturday, October 26th, 2024, it is just after 15 UTC as
Sam: we're starting to record, which is early for me.
Sam: I'm not, you know, but I'm here.
Ivan: It is quite early for Sam. Yeah. I did request that we do it at this hour.
Ivan: Thanks to exigent circumstances.
Sam: But you know, you could have asked for one or two hours earlier than this.
Sam: And I would have been, I would have done it.
Ivan: Awake. You still would have awake?
Sam: Well, I mean, I wasn't awake for this. I'm not awake right now.
Sam: I'm asleep. I'm asleep at this very moment.
Sam: And yes. Anyway, we're going to do our normal. We'll do a butt first with random crap.
Ivan: And then what did you tell our audience last week? Unfortunately,
Ivan: folks, last week at the last minute.
Sam: All I said, let me finish with we'll do the other stuff and then we'll do newsy
Sam: stuff, which I mean, given the date, given it is the end of October in an election
Sam: year, you know what we're going to be talking about.
Ivan: But college football.
Sam: Exactly.
Ivan: Yes. anyway so no.
Sam: All i told you all i told people yvonne was that you you at the last minute
Sam: were not feeling well and could not make it that's all.
Ivan: Well well that's that's that's an understatement at the last minute okay when
Ivan: i woke up i we i'd agreed with sam to record this on saturday and actually had
Ivan: been because i had not been feeling well all week i'd gone on a business trip and i I felt sick.
Ivan: And I basically worked on Friday when I got back, but I was in bed. I was not well.
Ivan: And Saturday morning, I woke up and it felt instead of better,
Ivan: which I hope, hey, I'm getting some rest and drinking fluids. Fine.
Ivan: It felt way worse. And at that moment, I said, well, I'll go into the emergency room.
Ivan: This cannot be, this is not right.
Ivan: And at first I thought, ah, just give me some medicines and send me back home.
Ivan: Well, they did a CAT scan and they said, no, you're staying here.
Ivan: Because I got a bout of diverticulitis, which is an issue with the lower intestine
Ivan: in which it gets infected.
Ivan: You know, one thing is interesting that I kept reading about it,
Ivan: and nobody really understands why.
Ivan: It's more prevalent in Asian and European men, and the location is not exactly
Ivan: the same for Asian and European men.
Ivan: And it's very painful. and it
Ivan: can and and if if you don't really
Ivan: treat it and i i you know according to
Ivan: the doctor i did notice it i i didn't like you know i didn't wait i went quickly
Ivan: that they noticed that it was like at a very early stage because it in many
Ivan: cases it can require surgery okay it's not good in order to treat it,
Ivan: they have to remove part of the,
Ivan: it require removing part of your lower intestine.
Sam: You don't want that.
Ivan: No, no. Yeah. So, you know, I actually, you know, my last couple of months,
Ivan: I've had some gastro issues.
Ivan: You guys remember a podcast I did late August. I was definitely sick recovering
Ivan: from specifically something about of this. And I have to think that that played
Ivan: a part into this at this point.
Ivan: I don't see how it didn't. I don't think it could be a coincidence.
Ivan: I haven't had a gastrointestinal virus like that in years.
Ivan: And then all of a sudden I get one that's like that bad. And then I wind up with an infection.
Ivan: But the good news is that I'm on the mend.
Ivan: I am not going to say that I am 100% because I am not. I can feel that I'm still a little bit.
Ivan: Lethargic I think that's the right word overall,
Ivan: So, and I have to take, I'm still in the middle of taking treatment because
Ivan: I, okay, they gave me IV antibiotics, but now I have to go in through a round
Ivan: of like 10 days of antibiotics.
Ivan: And then, and I have to go back to my GI for a checkup.
Ivan: And the thing is that, you know, I had a colonoscopy like this year.
Ivan: They didn't really see anything to be worried about.
Ivan: So and you know the doctor said that well hey sometimes
Ivan: this thing happens just like that
Ivan: it just happened in in a snap so but the
Ivan: good news is that i didn't have to get surgery the er here thank god i went
Ivan: to you know was very quick i didn't really they didn't really make me wait i
Ivan: was like there you know i got i got put into an attending room real quick i mean probably i was,
Ivan: i mean in a couple of hours they already had
Ivan: me in the you know you know it's like yeah they
Ivan: did the cat scan they did the ivs and they
Ivan: had put me in a room and the main reason to put me in a room was they just wanted
Ivan: to make sure that i was recovering that uh that uh medicine was taking effect
Ivan: and i will say that the iv antibiotics had took in less than six hours the pain
Ivan: had subsided like I would say 80 plus percent.
Ivan: So, so that was, so that was good.
Sam: So how long were you there for total?
Ivan: Well, thankfully only, I only had to spend, like I got there a Saturday morning
Ivan: pretty early and they let me go Sunday afternoon.
Ivan: They wanted to see that I could have a meal because they saw that the antibiotics
Ivan: were having the effect that they desired.
Ivan: And they, they did a check and they said, you know in the morning and they said okay
Ivan: look let's get you real food now because i
Ivan: had not eaten my god that week i i barely
Ivan: ate um and so
Ivan: i i was able to eat they they
Ivan: what they said is look we're going to give you another round of ivs and
Ivan: then we're going to give you this prescription for bills and
Ivan: then on your way home so so i am here now
Ivan: so yes well i'm not you know usually at this hour
Ivan: on saturdays i go exercise but right now i'm like
Ivan: i said i'm not i can't do that right now
Ivan: i can't do that right now so i i i gotta i gotta get some rest and get a follow-up
Ivan: and hopefully then next week i can i'll try some lighter activity but not you
Ivan: know not like a full workout.
Ivan: So, yeah. But anyway, I'm here. I'm alive.
Sam: Glad you're feeling better. Glad whatever they're doing to you is working.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Glad you didn't need surgery.
Ivan: Oh, God. Yeah, that would have been really...
Ivan: That would have been, but anyway, I mean, I think that's good enough for a,
Ivan: but first Sam, you got a movie?
Sam: No, I still haven't gone through and done the thing, but I do have an update
Sam: for you. An important update.
Ivan: An important update. I like important updates.
Sam: It is related.
Ivan: Just don't do it like my wife. My wife freaks me out by calling me and says.
Sam: We need to talk.
Ivan: We need to talk. And I'm like, oh my God, what? But, you know,
Ivan: I think the ice cubes are, you know, they're kind of stuck.
Ivan: Like, that's what you need to talk about? Sound like somebody's dying.
Sam: No, no, this is an update, but it is media related update. It is on this.
Ivan: On this?
Break: Oh.
Sam: So I normally only talk about a TV show if I've finished it, the whole damn thing.
Sam: But I did want to update you, since I know you have a specific interest in Law
Sam: & Order, that Alex and I have finished Season 1.
Ivan: Oh my God.
Sam: And looking at my notes here, we started Season 1 in, let me make sure I have
Sam: this right, on July 9th, 2023.
Sam: And we finished in the last couple weeks. I would have mentioned this last week. So that took, well.
Ivan: That, that, I mean, that, that, I mean, so, so, so, so watching it like a regular TV show.
Sam: I have done the, I have done the math. It took us 15 months to finish season one of law and order.
Sam: At that rate, if they made no additional new episodes, which,
Sam: of course, they are making new episodes.
Ivan: But if they made no— The problem is that now they started making new episodes,
Ivan: so all of a sudden, you know, this has become—you know, you're like on a moving
Ivan: sidewalk all of a sudden. Right, but like— And you're going slower than the sidewalk.
Sam: But if they made no new episodes, it would take us an additional 26 years to
Sam: catch up to where they are now.
Ivan: Look, at this point, I see you in like some convalescent home and Alex coming to visit you.
Ivan: And you guys are on season, you know, like, I don't know, 18 still.
Ivan: Dad, dad, we still got, come on, come on.
Sam: We
Ivan: Still got we still got we still gotta catch up.
Sam: Come on let's.
Ivan: Go let's do this.
Sam: Yeah yeah so that that's that that's my update like you know because i i don't
Sam: think like you know my rule of like we'll talk about the show once i've finished
Sam: it it'll be a while it'll be a while yet for it'll be a while it'll be quite.
Ivan: A while yes it's gonna you know um.
Sam: I will say we have enjoyed season one Yeah.
Sam: It's a good show. We're now actually a couple episodes into season two. But, yeah.
Ivan: So, I don't know. Out of some boredom the other day, I started, I'm going through.
Ivan: So, I actually have, I'm pretty sure I double checked, but it's correct.
Ivan: On my YouTube TV DVR, I am pretty confident I have every episode recorded right now.
Ivan: All of them. on the Cloud DVR. Because I have not seen one missing right now. I have all the seasons.
Ivan: So I started going back, and I did rewatch season...
Ivan: I've watched season one and that's the one that has, I think George the Zunza is a cop.
Sam: Yes. Yes.
Ivan: Uh, so, so I, I've been like going through it, double checking like,
Ivan: Hey, which episodes haven't I watched?
Ivan: Just double checking. Okay. You know, so I've been like going through it.
Sam: Just making sure.
Ivan: Which was, don't, don't I remember what happened?
Sam: Did you get the pilot?
Ivan: Yes, I have watched the pilot.
Sam: Okay. Okay. Cause, cause sometimes like it was originally aired in the first
Sam: season, but out of order.
Sam: Like they, you know, it was the, and so we watched it properly watching the
Sam: pilot first, but you know, when it was originally aired, the pilot was,
Sam: I don't know, episode four or five or something.
Sam: It was just like stuck in, in the middle and it would have seemed out of place
Sam: because it's a slightly different style than they actually settled on for the show proper. So anyway.
Ivan: So so yeah so so i'm i'm going
Ivan: back through it and uh i i think i'm on uh season six right now okay okay something
Ivan: around there so yeah so yeah so hi well here's the thing i don't know i especially you know i was like,
Ivan: I've been, like, a little bit bored.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Ivan: Let me take that back. I've been super busy with work things or whatever one now.
Ivan: But when I went to sit down and watch any television content,
Ivan: one of the things, there are a couple of shows that I do like and some that have new episodes.
Ivan: But it's not like, okay, okay, I watched third. Okay, they had the new shrinking
Ivan: on Apple TV+, which is a great show.
Sam: I think you mentioned it before a while back.
Ivan: And so they have the new season now. And so, okay, great. But that's,
Ivan: okay, half hour. Okay, I'm done. Now what?
Ivan: Okay, so, all right. Well, let's just go back and fucking watch,
Ivan: you know, old Law and Order episodes. Because I went through all the Air Disasters shows.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: This year. I went back and I watched through every, so I did that. So now I'm back.
Sam: Are you at the point where you're like, God damn it, they need to crash some
Sam: more fucking planes so they can make more episodes?
Ivan: Well, there's actually a whole bunch of, you see, the thing is that Air Disasters,
Ivan: doesn't, in many cases, involves planes that, you know, maybe had bad incidents,
Ivan: not necessarily crashes.
Ivan: So there's a whole bunch of those.
Ivan: But for some reason, they've been very slow in production recently.
Ivan: I don't know if the pandemic impacted that because I know a lot of shows were impacted by that.
Ivan: The last season of Law & Order, for example, wound up being very short because of the strike.
Sam: Yep.
Ivan: Okay? So there's been the pandemic, strike all these things that have slowed
Ivan: down tv production so i don't know if that's this what's going on.
Sam: Yeah i don't know so maybe.
Ivan: Who knows but but you know other than that i now yeah.
Sam: So i don't.
Ivan: Have anything but but you're season one.
Sam: Season one is complete and we've started season two so as you mentioned spoiler
Sam: spoilers people the the one detective from season,
Sam: one was killed in the first episode of season two they killed him off yeah and
Sam: and so they switched so i'm still not used to the new guy they replaced him
Sam: with but you know whatever and i and i haven't looked it up do you know like
Sam: did did did the actor just not want to come back or did they fire him or did he die he.
Ivan: Didn't want to come back.
Sam: Yeah he didn't want to come back okay yeah yeah so he was like uh this is not.
Ivan: What i really signed up for blah blah blah i didn't want to come back so that's
Ivan: the way hey you know what do we do with the doctor well we'll just fucking kill him.
Sam: Right. OK.
Ivan: There was a movie. I still I always loved this.
Sam: Was this nevertheless like the peak of his career and then he never did anything useful again?
Ivan: Basically, as far as I can tell.
Sam: So it's a good choice.
Ivan: That was one of the worst career decisions I've seen, like for somebody. I'll tell you this.
Ivan: You know, there was a movie called Soap Dish that is hilarious.
Ivan: And I that that I don't know. I will say that probably some of the humor right now could not.
Ivan: In retrospect right now there are some
Ivan: choices of humor there that are poor choices but one funny thing is that at
Ivan: one point they decide to try to bring back a character and the character had
Ivan: been written off 30 years ago and one of the writers goes back and because it's
Ivan: a soap the writer goes to go,
Ivan: this is a writer that had not been at the show 30 years before because he's
Ivan: long running soap operas.
Ivan: They run for so long that the people like some of them that are still on the
Ivan: air now, I mean, they're not the same writers or people or shit that actors,
Ivan: none of the people are the same as there were 30 years before.
Ivan: But they want to bring this back, the guy back that was written off 20.
Ivan: You know, whatever, a long time ago.
Ivan: So the writer goes back to see how the hell did the guy get written off?
Ivan: And the guy apparently was in a car accident where he got decapitated.
Ivan: And so the thing is that he's going to the but the
Ivan: producer is adamant about bringing this guy back
Ivan: to the show and i'm like how the hell do
Ivan: we bring this guy back the guy was
Ivan: literally in the show we said he was
Ivan: decapitated he doesn't have a head how do
Ivan: i write for a guy that doesn't have a head he said no we'll say that he went
Ivan: to some clinic in europe and he did they reattached his head and you know everything
Ivan: is fine and by the way the writer was Whoopi Goldberg earlier I'm like.
Ivan: What the fuck am I doing with this? Okay, fine. Whatever. We'll write him back
Ivan: in. He's back from Europe.
Sam: There you go.
Ivan: Apparently, Europe, they can attach your head.
Sam: He was misdiagnosed.
Ivan: Yes, it was misdiagnosed. So, yeah. You know, so this is anyway.
Sam: All right. So, Yvonne has a hard stop today. So, we're going to go ahead and
Sam: cut this short, even though I'm sure we can find more TV to talk about.
Sam: And we will be back to talk about the election for however long it takes.
Sam: I'll probably start with poll updates and then we'll move on to everything else.
Sam: Okay, here we go. This is a wiki of the day break. This is for random wiki of the day.
Sam: And I actually, like, I had selected this to be on the agenda,
Sam: like, last week, and it would have been, no one cares.
Sam: The point is, it is the current random wiki of the day as we are recording this,
Sam: not one I picked earlier.
Sam: Anyway, here we go.
Break: Do do do. Hello, this is Neural Kajal.
Break: I'm here to let you know about Sam the Kamajan's other podcasts,
Break: the Wiki of the Day podcasts.
Break: Wiki of the Day comes in three varieties, popular, random, and featured.
Break: Each highlights a new Wikipedia article each day, they just pick the articles differently.
Break: This week on Random Wiki of the Day, you would have heard this summary for Beta Sabab Rebellion.
Break: The Beta Sabab Rebellion, Turkish, Beta Sabab Esien, Kurdish,
Break: Sir Hildana Elka, was the first Kurdish rebellion in the modern Republic of Turkey.
Break: The revolt was led by Halid Bek Sibran of the Sibran tribe.
Break: Other prominent commanders were Isan Nuri and Yusuf Ziyabe.
Break: Its causes laid in opposition to the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by Adatürk
Break: on 3 March 1924, the repressive Turkish policies towards Kurdish identity,
Break: the prohibition of public use and teaching of the Kurdish languages,
Break: and the resettling of Kurdish landowners and tribal chiefs in the west of the country,
Break: numerous officers of the Turkish army deserted for the rebellion.
Break: The rebellion began in August 1924, when the garrison of Betasabaq revolted
Break: against the Turkish government.
Break: The rebellion proved unsuccessful and ended shortly after it began.
Break: Yusuf Ziyabi was arrested on 10 October 1924 and reportedly accused Khalid Bekzibran
Break: of having been also involved in the revolt.
Break: Khalid Bekzibran was captured in a suram in December 1924.
Break: Both were court-martialed in Beatleys. Although the rebellion was suppressed,
Break: another Kurdish uprising, the Sheikh said rebellion, would begin the next year. That's it. See?
Break: Fun, entertaining, and educational, right? Okay, now look for and subscribe
Break: to the Wiki of the Day family of podcasts on your podcast-playing software of
Break: choice, or just go to wikioftheday.com to check out our archives.
Break: Now back to Kamajan's Corner. Do do do.
Sam: Okay, we're back. So now, first of all, I hope everybody out there listening
Sam: can now fully understand whatever the hell it was they were talking about,
Sam: because I admit I like tuned out.
Sam: After a few seconds and was preparing.
Ivan: For next sentence so i i i was not paying attention well you know was this picked
Ivan: because of our recent discussion about bringing back the ottoman no no.
Sam: No this was random wiki of the day.
Ivan: No that's well i i imagine so that was it's very
Ivan: interesting because our discussion that we had a couple a few weeks ago
Ivan: we were talking about not well wait maybe we should bring back the ottoman empire
Ivan: okay in order to solve the middle east problems of course which we were being
Ivan: facetious we had i really don't think that that would really be a solution but
Ivan: you know it's one of those things but yeah you know no so so.
Sam: And this was the kurds and turkey and stuff like that and but it was it was
Sam: post-ottoman though but it wasn't.
Ivan: No no it was post-ottoman yeah no i know because it was the it was the kurdish
Ivan: rebellion in turkey yeah no i i get that but but it talked a little bit how
Ivan: about it part of this originated with you know, with the fall of the Ottoman empire and stuff.
Ivan: No, the anyway.
Sam: Yeah. Anyway. So let, let, let me start out this sucker.
Sam: So first of all, I'll say on just over 24 hours ago, I posted the latest of
Sam: my blog post updates on election graph.
Sam: So if you go to election graphs.com and hit the blog section, you will see 12 days out.
Sam: What about junk polls? And so let me summarize what was there.
Sam: The situation has not changed in any substantial way since I made this post.
Sam: As I speak, there's probably about six to eight new polls I haven't done the
Sam: data entry for yet that happened since I did it yesterday before now.
Sam: And yeah, I'll get them in after the show, but I scanned through the states
Sam: that they are part of and nothing substantially.
Sam: They're all states that don't matter, you know, which, you know,
Sam: tangent, like the fact that there are states that don't matter in our presidential
Sam: elections is actually a problem, but whatever.
Sam: But anyway, the basic thing I did was the fundamental situation of the polls
Sam: hasn't just not changed since I made this post like a day and a half ago,
Sam: but really has been the same for a long time.
Sam: Basically, for the last month or so, it's been best characterized as too close
Sam: to call with a very slight Trump advantage.
Sam: For the month and a half before that it was too
Sam: close to call with a very slight harris advantage but either
Sam: way it's too close to call you're just maybe the slight advantage to one or
Sam: the other based on current polling but it fundamentally has not changed very
Sam: much in like three months basically harris harris jumped into the race and instantly
Sam: the dynamics changed from when biden was in.
Sam: And then things settled down.
Ivan: Let's be clear. I think that it swung from...
Ivan: Trump with a slight lead to, depending on the averages and the estimates,
Ivan: you have Trump with a slight lead.
Ivan: Others have Harris with a slight lead.
Ivan: But the reality is that it was, I think, almost everybody had consistently Trump
Ivan: with a slight lead before Harris jumped.
Sam: Well, with Biden, it was a little bit more than a slight lead.
Sam: It was not a huge lead. But it was more than slight.
Ivan: It was more than slight. It was probably like a...
Sam: I mean, basically, Harris moving in, Harris taking over from Biden, moved us from...
Ivan: Made it a toss-up.
Sam: Yeah, moved it from Trump has a small but consistent lead to it's a tie race.
Sam: And then, depending on exactly how you're looking at the swing states and exactly
Sam: what the polling is the most recent week, and which pollsters you include and
Sam: which pollsters you don't.
Sam: You'll get, you know, whether you give Harris a slight advantage or Trump a
Sam: slight advantage varies.
Sam: I think most places have, you know, things have moved very, very slightly towards Trump.
Sam: If you compare now to a month and a half ago, like in between it's noisy,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but very slightly towards Trump.
Sam: So like the way, the way I have it has moved from too close to call with a very
Sam: slight Harris lead to too close to call with a very slight Trump lead.
Sam: And that's all about a handful of states. And I'll get into that.
Sam: Well, let me do that first, since we're there.
Sam: If you just take the state averages, like my election graphs averages are based
Sam: on last five poll averages.
Sam: And so most of the swing states at
Sam: this point, that means you're taking approximately the last week of polls.
Sam: Now they're there you know and i i base it based
Sam: on the mid date of the dates the polls were in
Sam: the field not when the polls actually came out so a
Sam: couple of annoying things happen sometimes like there was a there was
Sam: a franklin and marshall poll that came out a big pollster
Sam: well trusted in pennsylvania blah blah blah
Sam: but they used like a two-week time period
Sam: in how long they were in the field so the very
Sam: moment it came out it was already too old to be
Sam: in current included in my current averages you know
Sam: because like there were other pollsters that were out in the
Sam: field for only a few days and put their results out quickly whereas
Sam: franklin and marshall you know had a longer period out there and is careful
Sam: and like double checks their stuff and but the result of that is by the time
Sam: their results were out they were old right but but anyway the bottom line let
Sam: me read you the seven states and this is well Now,
Sam: you know, let me, I was going to read it off the blog post, but let me read
Sam: this one off the live post.
Sam: And this, again, is including everything but like a handful of polls that came
Sam: out in the last 12 hours or so that I have not entered.
Sam: But none of those new polls were in swing states, I don't think.
Sam: So here are the seven swing states right now, according to my averages.
Sam: Michigan, Harris by 0.3%. Wisconsin rounds to Trump by 0.0.
Sam: It's actually like Trump by 0.02 or something.
Sam: You know, Georgia, Georgia,
Sam: Georgia, Georgia by 0.6%, Nevada, Trump by 0.7%, Pennsylvania, Trump by 1.2%.
Sam: Arizona, Trump by 1.2%. North Carolina, 1.3%. Now, the key to all of that is that...
Ivan: I mean, it's a toss-up. Nobody has a clear lead. I mean, all of those.
Ivan: The New York Times did this thing where they had this chart that I shared.
Sam: Yeah, they've had this chart out for the last few months. It's a good chart.
Ivan: Well, last few months, it's a good chart that goes and shows each state that's
Ivan: close and what the biggest recent polling miss was, for example.
Ivan: And it shows the range of what it is. So, so you go say Michigan, for example. Okay.
Ivan: It shows, it shows that the polling miss, the biggest one was in 2022.
Ivan: It was a six point polling miss. Okay.
Ivan: And so, and this was recent.
Ivan: Okay. So it's not like, you know, this is not, you know, not from like 10 years
Ivan: ago or something, but they missed by six points.
Ivan: Okay. So right now, when you're looking at that number and how tight it is,
Ivan: it's basically flip a coin in the fucking air because it's too much.
Ivan: Wisconsin 2020, a nine point miss.
Ivan: Again, not, you know, not Asian history. This is the last election cycles. Okay.
Ivan: Nevada, this one is an old miss. It was four points as a 2012.
Ivan: So that, so they're not showing that that would, but for example,
Ivan: Pennsylvania, again, 2022, a five point miss again.
Ivan: So all of these are so important and And Arizona had a three-point miss in 2022.
Ivan: And if you remember, Arizona, 2020, Trump was supposedly, that was like people
Ivan: had been picking Trump to win and Biden won Arizona.
Ivan: Which is what enraged Trump when it was called that Biden won Arizona early
Ivan: on Fox because that had been, you know, they had thought that they had Arizona in the bag.
Ivan: So we add up all those fucking states and how close they are on those averages.
Ivan: What the fuck recently happened? Basically, it's like.
Sam: Yes. And look, here's the thing.
Sam: With that range, if you take, well, throw Iowa and Maine CD2 into the mix too.
Sam: The range at the moment, if you take all of those states and say they could
Sam: go either way, because right now I have Iowa at Trump up 4.4%,
Sam: that still has been lightly polled.
Sam: There have only been two polls this cycle, but they showed it closer than you
Sam: would have thought. So I'm keeping it in there.
Sam: And then main CD2, Trump by 4.4.
Sam: If you take all of those and say they could go either way, then you go from
Sam: Trump winning by 86 all the way to Harris winning by 114, being well within
Sam: the range of, okay, that could happen.
Ivan: Those could happen. Those could happen.
Sam: Anywhere within that range, you should not be surprised. No.
Sam: You know, it's like, OK, so like and so I hate this election.
Ivan: Sam. I fucking hate this election. I have never hated an election with such passion.
Ivan: This is this has been a crescendo of 2016, 2020.
Ivan: And now we get this whole fucking thing again with with even more razor thin
Ivan: numbers and shit and whatever.
Ivan: I hate it, Sam. I fucking hate it.
Sam: Right. And one thing, since you said razor-thin numbers, I want to point out
Sam: again, razor-thin numbers in these polling does not necessarily mean the actual
Sam: result will be razor-thin.
Sam: It might well be that this whole election hinges on multiple states that are
Sam: within the realm of recounts and it gets really fucking messy.
Sam: But it could easily be the ranges of that extreme.
Ivan: It could be a blowout for all we fucking know.
Sam: It could be a blowout by either side.
Sam: Like, that is very possible. Like, there's so many states that are like within,
Sam: because again, it's not that, oh my God, this state really is 0.03% or whatever the hell it is.
Sam: It's, that's the polling average, but it could be anywhere from one side winning
Sam: by 5% to the other side winning by 5%. Right.
Sam: You know, we just don't know. Polling's not good enough to tell us the difference
Sam: there. So anyway, the bottom line is the overall, there has not been a huge
Sam: movement in that situation in a few months.
Sam: So one thing I did look at, though, because like lots of people,
Sam: lots of people were talking about how, oh my God, the conservative pollsters
Sam: are flooding the zone with crap polls to make it look like Trump is doing better than he really is.
Sam: So I did some looking at that.
Sam: And so I'll go through what I found using using my averages, but also like, yeah.
Sam: And look, there's some people who do it by specifically saying,
Sam: OK, this pollster is a known conservative that has been known to put their thumb on the on the scales.
Sam: And, you know, like Rasmussen or Trafalgar or like a half dozen others.
Sam: I'm like, you know, I'm not comfortable sort of making a case-by-case decision
Sam: of like, okay, these guys are obviously trying to manipulate things. Let's throw that out.
Ivan: Sure, sure.
Sam: But, you know, Handy Dandy 538 runs a set of pollster ratings.
Sam: Their ratings are not based on sort of, are they partisan or not?
Ivan: They're based on accuracy.
Sam: Their quotation is the historical track record and the methodological transparency.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: So basically like it's,
Sam: It's not just how accurate they've been, but also how open are they about how
Sam: do they get the results they do?
Sam: Sure, sure. So even if someone had gotten the exact election results every single
Sam: time, if they're a black box and don't tell you anything, they would lower their rating.
Sam: Okay, so using these ratings, I figured I could filter out my averages.
Sam: Like use my same technique for figuring out the averages, you know,
Sam: last five polls, blah, blah, blah, wait, wait it when they produce multiple
Sam: results, all that kind of crap, but filter it based on those ratings.
Sam: So the first thing I did, and this was like a week and a half ago,
Sam: when somebody asked a question on Max, Max, on Mastodon, um.
Ivan: Max, I want that name though.
Sam: Max, Max, yeah, there you go. That we should, we should build something.
Ivan: We should build something with that. But yeah, I like it.
Sam: Anyway, I used Pennsylvania as an example and used different cutoffs.
Sam: Like 538 scale is on a zero to three scale, basically.
Sam: Whereas three is the best and zero is your utter crap.
Sam: And they actually have like, there are also pollsters that don't get a rating
Sam: at all. And there can be two reasons for that.
Sam: One is they've been expelled from the 538 averages because they just suck so badly.
Sam: And the other reason something could have no ratings is no track record like it's a new yeah.
Ivan: It's a brand new pull yeah yeah.
Sam: Right okay so with that using pennsylvania
Sam: as an example at that time pennsylvania with my average that i i just philosophically
Sam: include fucking everything i don't care i include everything let the averages
Sam: watch it out i had harris up by 0.1 percent If I restricted that to only pollsters rated 1.5 and above,
Sam: it moved to Harris up by 0.4%.
Sam: If I further restricted it to only pollsters 2.0 and above, it went up to Harris up by 0.8%.
Sam: And if I restricted it to the very highest tier, pollsters only 2.5 and above, Harris up by 1.5%.
Ivan: Still within the margin of error.
Sam: Right. Well, the thing is, with the averages, there isn't really a margin of error anymore.
Sam: The margin of error applies to a single poll. But yes, let me say it is within
Sam: the realm of the variation of averages like this.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: Like averages like this differ by more than one and a half percent day over
Sam: day as polls come in and out of the average.
Sam: As a new poll comes in, there's an outlier that does this, whatever.
Sam: Polls move by a couple percent up and down. They vary within a range.
Ivan: I guess a margin of error isn't the right term for that.
Ivan: It's really within the range of what, you know, when I was talking earlier about
Ivan: the range of polling errors that you've had before with the average is all combined.
Ivan: It is within that range of that historic.
Sam: And here's the thing. And I did something better than just looking at one state
Sam: like this. In a second, I'll talk about that.
Sam: But just using that as an example, that is saying that using high quality pollsters
Sam: only made Harris look 1.4% better.
Sam: And as you were mentioning.
Ivan: Like- That's a big boom in terms of averages.
Sam: Well, what I was going to say is, as you were saying, 1.4 is small,
Sam: it's within the margin of error, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But when you have seven fucking states that are less than 2%, 1.4 is huge.
Sam: And so the example at the time that I did that initial analysis,
Sam: it moves like moves the election from Trump winning by 56 electoral votes to Harris winning by 100.
Sam: If you if you move, if you just moved everything by 1.4 percent towards Harris.
Sam: OK, you know, now what I did, though, like that was just one state that was
Sam: like a week and a half ago.
Sam: I redid the analysis, but I did that same exercise for all seven swing states
Sam: because, frankly, the other states, unless we are in one of those blowout situations,
Sam: the other states are not going to matter.
Sam: And so here's what we got from there.
Sam: Like the range, it differed by state.
Sam: And I'm sure this would, if I repeated the analysis like several times,
Sam: I'd get different, like over the course of a week or something,
Sam: I'd get different results because it depends on which pollsters were in the
Sam: field at the moment, blah, blah, blah, which ones I had included in my average, which ones I hadn't.
Sam: But it ranged from helping Harris by 1.6% to helping Trump by 1.4 at 1.5%.
Sam: So like if you averaged out those seven states on average, they helped Harris, but only by 0.2%. Okay.
Sam: But, you know, if you look at, if you look instead at how it would change the
Sam: tipping point, it ends up moving the tipping point by 0.7%.
Sam: And in the case of when I did this blog post, that moved the tipping point from
Sam: Trump by 0.6% to Harris by 0.01%.
Sam: So it moves it from a small Trump advantage to a very small Harris advantage.
Sam: But either way, we are not comfortable.
Ivan: Exactly. It's not comfortable for anybody.
Sam: And we're still in the too close to call situation, no matter what you do with
Sam: these. So like the people who are saying that the junk polls are making it look a little bit better.
Sam: Well, a lot of people are saying ignore the polls of junk, ignore the averages.
Sam: The, the junk conservative polls are making it look much better for Trump than it would otherwise.
Sam: From what I can tell, the junk polls are making it look slightly,
Sam: slightly better for Trump than if you left them out. But either way.
Sam: It's not overwhelming. It's a relatively small change, but it's a small change
Sam: within the realm of too close to call.
Sam: So it's all too close to call no matter what.
Sam: It may shift you from saying too close to call with one side having a slight
Sam: edge to too close to call with the other side having a slight edge.
Sam: But either way, it's too close to call.
Sam: My numbers actually, and going back to at the moment rather than at the blog
Sam: post I had, I have my two models that allow for time left.
Sam: And the more pessimistic of them for Harris gives Harris a 17.8% chance of winning.
Sam: The more optimistic one gives her a 28.5% chance of winning.
Sam: I'm a little bit more pessimistic than And if you look at FiveThirtyEight,
Sam: The Economist, The Hill, which is DDHQ, all of those are much, much closer to 50-50.
Sam: And the reason is very specific.
Sam: Like they all make a going in assumption.
Sam: That the direction of the polling error could be either way.
Sam: Like, and they're not even going to make any assumptions about like equal chances
Sam: of the polling error going towards Harris or the polling error going towards Trump.
Sam: Mine looks at the last four elections and says over the course of the last four
Sam: elections, on average, the polls have underestimated the Republicans.
Sam: So it sort of says the lower chance for the Democrat is based on saying,
Sam: okay, you need the polls to be underestimating the Democrat.
Sam: And that has happened less often than underestimating the Republican over the
Sam: last four elections. That's why.
Sam: Now, having said that, there are a couple things to note.
Sam: One is that, what was I going to say?
Sam: Oh, first of all, even if you, let's say you assume, oh, I'm confusing myself.
Sam: I did want to make one point. If you compare, like I've got this other thing
Sam: that if the election was now, okay, if you go back two or three months,
Sam: these were very different from each other because they allowed for,
Sam: okay, the polling averages can change in the time remaining.
Sam: The events can happen that change people's opinion.
Sam: At this point, those two are very close to each other.
Sam: Like they only differ by like a handful of percent in the odds.
Sam: And that's basically indicating we got like only 10 days left. Okay.
Sam: But here's one thing.
Ivan: Sam.
Sam: Wait, wait, wait. Let me finish my presentation. Let me finish my presentation, and then you can talk.
Sam: No, so what's left, all of these odds at this point are basically –,
Sam: no longer saying things will change. Is there some chance things will change
Sam: in the last week and a half? Sure.
Sam: But for the most part, the odds are now entirely based on what you think might
Sam: happen to the polling errors.
Sam: And so that's why mine is more biased because in the past few elections,
Sam: again, the Republicans have been underestimated more often than the Democrats,
Sam: and my odds reflect that.
Sam: Now, getting beyond that, like moving beyond the polls in time to sort of shift to other things.
Sam: Here's why I think my own numbers are probably more pessimistic for Harris than
Sam: we could say, than like my gut.
Sam: And I've said before, if you waterboarded me, my gut says the polls are underestimating Harris.
Ivan: Okay. I'm going to, we'll hold off on waterboarding you for now.
Sam: For now. Like, and here's, here's the thing.
Sam: Like I, I have a gut And Nate Silver put out a post as well, like this week,
Sam: saying basically, he said, my gut is Trump is slightly favored here,
Sam: but don't trust my gut because nobody fucking knows anything.
Sam: You know, and so, yeah.
Sam: Look, I mentioned last week when Yvonne wasn't here, the enthusiasm gap. That's one thing.
Sam: And I still see that, even though, and I'm sure we'll get into this more,
Sam: the Democrats are wetting their pants right now.
Sam: I'm a little bit nervous myself, but there's still an enthusiasm gap.
Sam: You're seeing the Trump folks just don't seem to have the same level of excitement
Sam: as they did the last couple of times around.
Sam: And that's one big thing. But another that I'll put out there that,
Sam: you know, Yvonne had put on our list of potential topics a while back,
Sam: something we haven't talked about yet,
Sam: which is underestimating female anger.
Sam: And i think this is something where
Sam: like all polling models and i'm
Sam: not not talking about the kind of aggregating models
Sam: that i do to come up with my odds and that 538 and all those are to do i'm talking
Sam: about when you are conducting a poll you have to have a model of turnout that
Sam: transforms your raw polls into what you are actually describing.
Sam: Because like nobody, absolutely no pollsters at this point, call people until
Sam: they get a thousand people to respond and then just divide.
Sam: Okay. Because the problem is if you do that, either,
Sam: you know, either the old fashioned by phone stuff or text or web or whatever,
Sam: You end up with a group that is not representative of the overall population
Sam: because you're looking at the subset of people who are likely to be engaged with polls.
Sam: You know, and that's that's automatically like you're going to get a different
Sam: like breakdown than you would expect in the overall voting population.
Sam: So every single pollster has some form of, they ask those people demographic
Sam: information about themselves, race, gender, education, a bunch of other factors.
Sam: And then they reweight their results to try to match what they expect the turnout to look like.
Sam: But they're guessing at the turnout model.
Sam: And they base some of that on like,
Sam: what if it looks like last time? And I think if you've got an issue,
Sam: I heard one person talking the other day, and I'm not going to be able to give
Sam: a sight, but talking about why exactly did pollsters underestimate Republicans in 2016 and 2020.
Sam: And in 2016, it was basically that Trump's campaign spoke to a group of voters
Sam: who traditionally didn't vote.
Sam: Like there were a whole bunch of disaffected, less educated white folks who
Sam: turned out in 2016 that had not historically turned out in other elections.
Sam: And so all of the pollsters were wrong in their demographic models of who would
Sam: turn out in 2016 because they underestimated that group.
Sam: It 2020 was slightly different.
Sam: It was the Trump campaign specifically was going after a base strategy where
Sam: they were trying to get out the vote in very red counties and get more people,
Sam: more of their sort of base to just come out and vote in, in places that typically
Sam: were not competitive areas, but they just wanted to get the very red places
Sam: to come out and vote and do their thing.
Sam: And so that's why they underestimated those folks.
Sam: My gut, and again, this is my gut, I would never put this directly on election
Sam: graphs, but I'll mention it on the curmudgeon's corner,
Sam: is that this time, the models that pollsters are using are underrepresenting women.
Sam: I think you're going to get a big turnout boost in women and some of the early vote numbers.
Sam: Like, early vote is really, really fucking hard to interpret.
Sam: Because like, you know, so for instance, there are lots of,
Sam: early vote numbers that are coming out in terms of how many Republicans have
Sam: returned their ballots versus Democrats in states where there is a partisan registration.
Sam: But the thing is with that, you're sort of gambling of, okay,
Sam: but what's the messaging this year in terms of how people are going to vote?
Sam: Because on the one hand, it looks like last time around in 2020,
Sam: Democrats were heavily skewed towards early vote and mail-in and all the Republicans
Sam: were doing day of because Donald Trump was going out there saying,
Sam: don't trust anything but day of, go day of.
Sam: And so that was massively skewed.
Sam: And so when you see numbers that say, you know, hey, Democrats are returning
Sam: a lot of return of early vote, you're like, oh, well, that's good for Democrats, right?
Sam: But it's unclear because this time there are a lot of reports that Democrats
Sam: are deciding that they want to vote in person and they don't want to do the early vote as much.
Sam: Whereas this time around, the Republicans are doing all kinds of pushes nationwide
Sam: to get their folks to early vote. So that's more muddled.
Sam: However, there also are some early vote stats on male versus female,
Sam: And it looks like women are participating in early vote at like 55 to 45 at the moment.
Sam: And unlike the Republican versus Democrat, where like the partisan messaging
Sam: of like, should you early vote?
Sam: Should you vote day of whatever muddles things up?
Sam: There shouldn't be a gap there for male versus female.
Sam: Like, and so I, I, I feel, and again, gut feel could be completely wrong,
Sam: but my gut feel is that the, the, the models of turnout are underestimating.
Sam: The angry women about the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Sam: And that will be one factor that makes me bet, well, bet, I don't know,
Sam: makes me think that there's a good chance we're underestimating Harris this time around.
Sam: But again, who the fuck knows?
Ivan: You know, here's one thing that I want to point out.
Ivan: And I made a note that you were talking about the errors and how in 2020 it
Ivan: undercounted the Republicans in terms of absolute votes,
Ivan: especially the margin of victory in like Pennsylvania and a few states that
Ivan: look like they were more Democrat, that look more Democratic according to the
Ivan: polls than the actual final results were. But here's a flip side to that.
Ivan: They misjudged the margin of victory, but not the victory itself.
Ivan: The one thing is that that happened at that election that was interesting from
Ivan: my perspective was those margins didn't change the result because it's based
Ivan: on winner-take-all electoral vote.
Ivan: But what did happen was that all of a sudden we thought both Georgia and Arizona
Ivan: were not going to be, were going to be Republican and both wound up Democratic.
Ivan: And so the one thing about this
Ivan: is that, yes, the 2020 election did underestimate the margins of victory.
Ivan: They were closer in some states that won't, but the changes did not impact the
Ivan: final result in terms of those states. What it did was it made it narrower.
Ivan: But but in in other cases, what we wound up doing is in states that were wound
Ivan: up being probably, you know, you know, that made a made a big difference in
Ivan: what the final result was.
Ivan: It moved a couple of states that people had as Republican and want to moving
Ivan: them, moving them Democrats.
Ivan: So I thought that that was one of the more interesting results of that election.
Ivan: And, of course, the question is, when we talk about this, is how have people
Ivan: compensated for that, number one?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay?
Sam: Well, this is the other thing. I feel like pollsters have said,
Sam: we got it wrong two years in a row.
Sam: How do we fix that? Right. And they've probably overcompensated.
Ivan: And the other part is, like, you reiterated.
Sam: How much of all this argument that we just made over the last couple of minutes
Sam: is us trying to make ourselves feel better?
Ivan: You know, I don't I don't think it's well, I don't I don't feel any better by
Ivan: making any of these arguments. I got to I got to be honest with you.
Ivan: My it goes back to what you were saying yesterday on the Slack.
Ivan: And Sam is like, well, you know, this, that I mean, we're so down or whatever.
Ivan: And I don't think it has anything to do with.
Sam: What I said specifically was that compared to a month and a half,
Sam: two months ago, I was specifically talking about, there was this point in time shortly after.
Ivan: Yeah. Right.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Right. Right. Right around where right around when Harris pick walls,
Sam: right around when the VP choice was the where there's all of there was this
Sam: sort of what was described as the joyous campaign.
Sam: Right. We had like it looked exciting and positive and whatever.
Sam: And Walls was doing their weird thing.
Sam: And that seemed to be hitting. And I'm not talking about on polls.
Sam: I'm just talking about vibes, essentially.
Sam: That method of argument seemed to be getting traction that, hey,
Sam: Trump is dangerous, Trump is scary, had not gotten.
Sam: And then it seems like more recently that that sort of their weird stuff seems
Sam: to be a thing of the past and we're back to sort of trump is scary and and at
Sam: the same time like the like i said the the democrats are wetting the bed they're
Sam: they're but but it's because we're all saying but it's very.
Ivan: Simple here here's.
Sam: It's because it's because no but but i.
Ivan: I think it's also more than that.
Sam: Yeah we're.
Ivan: All what that these motherfucking right-wingers are complaining and bitching and moaning about.
Sam: Right?
Ivan: You know what?
Ivan: No, Harris isn't out there saying that she is going to jail her opponents.
Ivan: She isn't going out there and saying that she's going to take any any of the Republicans rights.
Ivan: None of this shit, whatever straw man they have, they have, they have, they have made up.
Ivan: The reality is that for the Democrats,
Ivan: I mean, this guy is literally said that he wants to turn the U.S.
Ivan: Military against his own people.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Flat out. I mean, you know, you've got women suffering from the health care
Ivan: decisions, from the health care positions that the Republican Party has pushed forward.
Ivan: And, you know, the only hopes to make perhaps a change in the future is not
Ivan: to reelect Republicans like right now.
Ivan: And if you do that, you're entrenching that further. Okay?
Ivan: All of these things. I mean, listen, the attacks on the transgender community, Sam.
Ivan: Fuck, man. If you're a transgender person and you're not petrified of a fucking
Ivan: Republican administration, you're Caitlyn Jenner, basically.
Ivan: That's the only fucking person. Because it's like the same thing as the Peter
Ivan: Thiel's and the Caitlyn Jenner's.
Ivan: They're rich enough that they think, ah, you know, I'll get my taxes.
Ivan: None of that shit's going to affect me.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Those are the people that you know, it's not happening to me you know,
Ivan: fuck them fuck those poor people you know,
Ivan: and I gotta be honest you know, we are in a world right now that even fucking
Ivan: Bill Gates is sick of fucking billionaires,
Ivan: seriously, he basically just flat out said, fuck it take most of my money away,
Ivan: this is not worth it not with all these other clowns fuck this,
Ivan: you know what I'd rather just give up all my fucking money and take their fucking
Ivan: money because they're just fucking everything up.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I mean, that's the fucking world we're in, where Bill Gates basically said,
Ivan: shit, tax me, take it all away. Out loud.
Sam: Right. Okay. So we're moving on at this point from the polls and the horse race
Sam: to all the other campaign related stuff.
Sam: So let's take a quick break and we'll, we'll go through some of the other things
Sam: that are affecting this last 10 days of this race.
Sam: Back after this.
Break: Do, do, do. This podcast is sponsored by AlexMzilla.com.
Break: Alex Mzilla is great. It's on YouTube, and it has lots of fun videos.
Break: Alex Emsola is awesome and great.
Break: I love his videos, and they are obviously better than Curmudgeon's Corner.
Break: While they're funnier, they're more interesting. And frankly,
Break: he seems at least a little smarter than either of the hosts of Curmudgeon's Corner.
Break: Honestly, it's ridiculous how endlessly talented and phenomenal Alex Emsola is.
Break: That's how great his YouTube channel is.
Break: A-L-E-X-M-X-E-L-A dot com.
Break: Yes. Do, do, do.
Sam: Okay, we are back. And real quick, just during the break, I thought of something
Sam: responding to what you were talking
Sam: about in how in 2020, the polls in Pennsylvania underestimated Trump.
Sam: But the polls in Arizona and Georgia underestimated Biden, for instance.
Sam: This is exactly why I have two models, one that's independent states and one that's uniform swing.
Sam: It's because basically, when we're talking about the polling error underestimated
Sam: Trump in 2020, we're talking on average.
Sam: It's actually different state by state. And the difference between my two models
Sam: is the independent states assumes that there's completely no relation whatsoever
Sam: to the errors in every state,
Sam: whereas the uniform swing one assumes that the errors are the same in every state.
Sam: And obviously neither one of those things is actually true. They are correlated.
Sam: Like if the, if, if the same pollsters are doing the same thing in a whole bunch
Sam: of states that are likely going to make the same kind of error,
Sam: but you get this kind of effect where like not every state is going to be the exact same way.
Sam: So that's exactly why I have those two. Now, at some point I'd like to like
Sam: merge them and maybe for 2028, I'll figure that out. Anyway,
Sam: let's hit some of the other stuff.
Sam: So this week we had like...
Sam: John Kelly, who was Trump's chief of staff and had a whole bunch of other things
Sam: that he did before that, but basically he came out on the record.
Sam: We'd heard some of these things off the record before, but he came out on the
Sam: record, on audio, there were recordings of him talking about basically how Trump
Sam: wants to be a dictator, how he loved Hitler.
Sam: He wants his generals to be more like Hitler's generals, how like,
Sam: you know, he had agreed to pay for this one funeral of of a military person
Sam: who had been not killed in combat, but killed on their own base by people beating her up, apparently.
Sam: But like then then he found out how much a funeral would cost and was like,
Sam: you know, it doesn't cost 60,000 fucking doesn't cost $60,000.
Ivan: To bury a fucking Mexican.
Sam: Well to.
Ivan: Be fair okay in his assessment of burying anybody i mean he did bury his ex-wife
Ivan: in his side his fucking golf course.
Sam: Yes he did but look because we all know he's a cheap bastard like oh my god
Sam: but here's the thing like this is another one of those things where in any previous
Sam: universe prior to the last 10 years,
Sam: this kind of thing would be the end immediately for a candidate.
Ivan: Immediately. The candidate would be, oh, it's over. It's over.
Sam: But that is not true of Donald Trump. Like all this stuff.
Ivan: It's so ridiculous.
Sam: You know, this is all sort of baked in, as they say.
Sam: And, you know, I've seen people saying, you know, we shouldn't,
Sam: the whole normalized thing, we shouldn't normalize it, we shouldn't whatever but it's like at this.
Ivan: Point listen people are saying about normalizing it it is blasted you know headlines
Ivan: you know yeah and the kind of blasted headlines in the past brought down a immediately
Ivan: and right now the mega folks are like so what whatever yeah whatever that's.
Sam: Fine well and and part of this and and,
Sam: I've said this before, but it's worth saying again and again and again.
Sam: There's this, the Democrats going back all the way to 2015 when Trump first came down to escalator.
Sam: And hell, at first the mainstream Republicans were doing this too before they all got crushed.
Sam: Kept sort of feeling like all we have to do is expose how shitty a person Trump
Sam: is better. We need to show the bad things he's done.
Sam: We show that he's an asshole, show that he's all the bad things we know.
Sam: And then at some point, all his supporters will abandon him.
Sam: And look, long ago, it became absolutely clear that was never going to happen.
Sam: And the reason is the Trump supporters are not Trump supporters because they don't know this stuff.
Sam: They're not even Trump supporters despite this stuff.
Sam: They're Trump supporters because of this stuff.
Sam: They like it. They want it. So being like, oh, did you know Trump loves Hitler?
Sam: That's not like, oh, crap. Well, I can't support him now. That's like, good. So do I.
Ivan: Look last week i did not not me to
Ivan: be clear i'm not yeah yeah you're you're acting in third
Ivan: person yes let's be clear sam does not like hitler uh let's
Ivan: clarify that for anybody who got confused and maybe all
Ivan: of a sudden we wind up getting a clip of sam out there how he loves hitler which
Ivan: that would be just hilarious but anyway you know i was thinking about how i
Ivan: i think a large subset of people that like Trump are like the,
Ivan: high school clique kind of people.
Ivan: They're really like you know, the guys who.
Ivan: People in high school that used to put down everybody, make fun of people,
Ivan: beat up on the weaker people, kind of a thing. The thing.
Ivan: That's what they did. You had these groups of people who would just get together
Ivan: and just beat up on anybody that wasn't the so-called cool people.
Ivan: And those people, they don't give a shit about the weak.
Ivan: They don't give a shit about the poor. They don't give a shit about these people.
Ivan: And like you said, when Trump comes out and says all these things,
Ivan: these are things that they, that this is what they like.
Ivan: You know, and, and this, this last week, you know, I had mentioned that there
Ivan: was a couple of teenage girls over here that, that, that made their,
Ivan: their got themselves a little bit famous because they're really good at driving a boat.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right. twins young
Ivan: you know there's a
Ivan: whole bunch of people here that watch boats coming in and out of the
Ivan: inlet and some of our inlets are very tricky and man
Ivan: they were really good okay at driving a boat and then you know so i i followed
Ivan: them because it's pretty cool like watching you know they started doing a whole
Ivan: because so many people in the boating industry know about them followed them
Ivan: and they were doing like you know boat shows and stuff and whatnot you know which just,
Ivan: I was like, oh, that's kind of cool, you know, and you know,
Ivan: look, I'm one that drives a boat, and I was just, honestly,
Ivan: I was very impressed with how they drove a boat.
Ivan: I will tell you, better than me, and they were very young, okay? So.
Ivan: And then this weekend, like a whole bunch of them that seem like exactly this
Ivan: kind of high school, like, cool clique together got together.
Ivan: And they're all having this party.
Ivan: And a bunch of them are wearing MAGA hats.
Ivan: And they got Trump flags and all these stuff. And these people are like 20.
Ivan: And a whole bunch of them are like women. And they're all like,
Ivan: you know, oh yeah, Trump is cool.
Ivan: And I'm just like, oh yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's this whole high school thing, man.
Ivan: It's, it's literal. Look, honestly, I've said this before. I'll repeat it.
Ivan: Look, this is like back to the future part two, man.
Ivan: It's really Biff Tannen fucking becoming president.
Ivan: Literally the casino.
Ivan: The, you know, you know, controlling the government, sending us everything.
Ivan: It might as well, you know, fuck. It's exactly the same.
Sam: Because, of course, Biff Tannen was based on Donald Trump in Back to the Future 2. But yes.
Ivan: Wait, are you shitting me?
Sam: No, no. His character was based on Donald Trump. Get the fuck out of here.
Sam: Not in Back to the Future 1 when he was just a kid.
Ivan: But the character that they made him into when he became famous in Back to the
Ivan: Future 2 was based directly on Donald Trump?
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Motherfucking hell!
Ivan: Well, that explains a lot.
Ivan: Shit!
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay. So, yeah! It's that future! I don't know!
Sam: Now, there are... I've seen some polling.
Ivan: But my point... But I didn't finish one thing.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Finish, finish.
Ivan: You know, this group of people, the whole
Ivan: thing is about being the
Ivan: it people you know we're the
Ivan: you know we're the ones that go
Ivan: to mar-a-lago so i've heard some of these people talk what you know and we're
Ivan: we're with the famous people and we're you know and you know we're we're hot
Ivan: you know you know and you know they all like you know dress very you know provocatively
Ivan: and you know and then they visualize trump as some sexy guy,
Ivan: which he isn't because he is,
Ivan: old and fat and out of shape, which I don't understand.
Ivan: I mean, I don't understand how they idealize him in that way when the guy is
Ivan: just an out of shape, fat fuck.
Ivan: I don't get it. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but the thing is that
Ivan: he puts himself out there like some Adonis.
Ivan: His followers literally draw him and caricature him as something looking like
Ivan: that when he is not anywhere like that.
Ivan: And honestly, that's one trait that he shares with Hitler. Because think about Hitler, right?
Ivan: Did Hitler have blonde hair, blue eyes? Was he tall? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No!
Ivan: No, this whole Aryan race that he talked about, he had none of those traits.
Ivan: These fucking people, they drive me nuts.
Sam: Yvonne's about to run out of time. So just on the sort of,
Sam: this is what they like, this is what his supporters like, I have seen some polling
Sam: and a lot of anecdotal stuff about how lots of Trump supporters,
Sam: just don't believe he's going to do the things he says he's going to do that
Sam: people on the other side are all like upset about like oh you know he's going
Sam: to use the military this way he's going to politicize he's going to go after
Sam: his political opponents there is a significant.
Ivan: Number of them that do.
Sam: That are in the large.
Ivan: Yeah i think there is a significant number i'm totally sure of that.
Sam: That they just don't believe it like when they they're like you know oh all
Sam: of these all of these liberals who are crying about,
Sam: Trump derangement syndrome, the death of democracy, Trump's going to be a dictator,
Sam: Trump's going to do this, Trump's going to do that.
Sam: It's all bullshit. And look,
Sam: I certainly hope the worst case scenarios pointed out by liberals will not come
Sam: to true, come to true, not come to reality, even if Donald Trump wins. It will be bad.
Sam: I hope it's not that bad.
Sam: But, you know, the the fact that people are I mean, look, we saw what he did when he was president.
Sam: And I guess the difference is like folks like Yvonne and I think that was an
Sam: absolutely horrid four years where there were bad things happening practically
Sam: every week due to his presidency,
Sam: including, of course, January 6th at the end.
Sam: And it was building.
Ivan: That's the thing.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I think people are missing the point that it was building because at the beginning
Ivan: there were a lot of people that were actively trying really hard.
Ivan: To stop him from doing the worst things. And as time went along.
Sam: People in the administration who were trying to be breaks on him.
Ivan: Yes. And as time went along, he started getting rid of every single person that
Ivan: told him he can't do this.
Sam: Right. And so it was getting worse. And, you know, look, and January 6th denial
Sam: is out there too. I heard...
Ivan: Nobody died on January 6th, Sam.
Sam: Yeah. Except the people who did. Yes.
Sam: I saw one TikTok from somebody who outlined,
Sam: he bumped into an old friend at a grocery store or something like that of someone
Sam: who was a Trump supporter and who asked him why he wasn't because he had like
Sam: Harris hat on or something.
Sam: And he described January 6th and he's like, oh, I'm sorry.
Sam: The other guy was like, January 6th, what are you talking about?
Sam: Nothing happened there.
Ivan: A day of love. A day of love.
Sam: It was just a protest, whatever. And haven't you seen the videos of the police
Sam: letting them in? It's all hyped. It's all made up.
Sam: And he's like, haven't you seen the videos?
Ivan: The videos?
Sam: Of them being violent. And he's like, he hadn't.
Sam: So he pulled out his phone and showed him some of those videos and says,
Sam: by the reaction, it was absolutely obvious that he'd
Sam: never seen any of that and had
Sam: no idea that any of that had happened now he
Sam: ends with like i don't know if i changed his vote or not probably not but like
Sam: at the very least i i was showing him something he had no idea he had zero idea
Sam: because in the media ecosystem he was in which was a doesn't pay attention for
Sam: to news very much and when he does it's Fox.
Sam: That was the description of this guy. And that's the description of lots of people.
Ivan: Lots of people. A lot of people.
Sam: Now, I know you got to go, Yvonne. There are a few more bullet points I wanted
Sam: to hit. I could hit them after you're gone.
Ivan: Well, can we hit quick before we go? I got a few minutes.
Sam: One, there was a report this week that was going through the ecosystem.
Sam: Mark Halperin started this saying that there's a story being shopped around
Sam: of something absolutely devastating to Donald Trump.
Sam: And then further rumors said, wait, let me say this. And then I'll,
Sam: I think I'm where with you are based on Yvonne's making faces.
Sam: There were further rumors that what this was specifically was there was video
Sam: of Donald Trump at a recent fundraising event, groping a teenager, okay?
Ivan: I will say, listen, in terms of devastating, I don't know. But this is kind
Ivan: of like Comey letter type of stuff, okay?
Ivan: So I will say this. If you've got a video that you can circulate of this being
Ivan: true, it has that level of impact, okay?
Sam: Honestly, where I am at this point, it could have that impact.
Ivan: It's a small marginal impact, like all of these, because it's like all of the
Ivan: Christian conservatives will be like, ah, he's still giving my judges.
Sam: Right. And look, like you can imagine also a video that's somewhat ambiguous, right?
Sam: Like maybe there's a video, but like, you know, from the angle,
Sam: it's like, well, was he really doing that on purpose?
Sam: Or look, look, we've had videos of Donald Trump groping his daughter on stage
Sam: at Republican convention and stuff.
Sam: You know, like, did that change anything? No.
Sam: But like, here's the thing. I actually think this is bullshit.
Sam: I don't think there is any such tape. If there was such a tape,
Sam: we would have seen it by now.
Sam: You know, I don't know. This is all just disinformation.
Ivan: I don't know. Here's the answer. I don't know.
Ivan: I will say that it's very plausible that such a video exists.
Sam: It is plausible. It is absolutely plausible. but I mean this guy basically.
Ivan: Said you know in the one that you know didn't bring him that one of the first
Ivan: ones that didn't bring him down how did he say hi to women just grab him by the pussy right.
Sam: Yeah so.
Ivan: What the fuck you know.
Sam: Oh look I I'm sure he is engaged in this
Sam: behavior at various times I I would not it is
Sam: completely plausible that a video exists I'm just saying like if this video
Sam: existed i am surprised like it would be surprising to me that we have not seen
Sam: it already like that we would get all of these rumors about they're shopping
Sam: around this story but no one's taken it maybe somebody's trying to take it.
Ivan: Maybe somebody's just trying to make money off the fucking thing.
Sam: I i could see that too i could see that too like you can have this video you
Sam: go where's my two million dollar give me give me my money yeah whereas reputable
Sam: news organizations of course won't pay that won't.
Ivan: Pay for it right exactly so.
Sam: That so you.
Ivan: Wind up in this situation.
Sam: So somebody would pay that you know i don't know if.
Ivan: I had the money and i could validate it's real i'll fucking pay for it.
Sam: Yeah and and of course like our you
Sam: know maybe validation is part of it too are we sure it's not ai generated you
Sam: know all this kind of stuff you know i don't know but like yeah it falls into
Sam: the category of the other stuff like i mean we are we are 100 percent in i could
Sam: shoot somebody on fifth avenue and it wouldn't change a single fucking vote
Sam: you know and it's true and it's true i.
Ivan: Can't believe how this guy i he was so right about himself in that way.
Sam: I mean there are those marginal folks the the other the other just maybe we shot.
Ivan: Ivanka on stage.
Sam: Well you know if ivanka came out and on camera said, yeah, he molested me my
Sam: entire childhood, maybe that would move.
Ivan: That'll move a few points. Honestly, seriously.
Sam: I know.
Ivan: Oh, it's only a few points.
Sam: Ah, yes. No, I'm not necessarily, I obviously have no evidence about that.
Sam: Yeah, whatever.
Ivan: And I got to be honest.
Sam: But would anybody be surprised?
Ivan: I wouldn't be surprised, but for the love of God, I really wish that that didn't happen.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, obviously.
Ivan: Okay, all right. You know, to be clear. Okay, nobody's wishing that Ivanka was
Ivan: molested by this monster. Okay?
Sam: Right. Absolutely. Okay, real quick.
Sam: Other things that came out this week. both Elon Musk and Donald Trump apparently
Sam: talking to Putin on a regular basis over the last couple years?
Ivan: Well, now we understand why. Now it finally makes sense.
Ivan: Why Elon said in that interview it slipped out that said that the Democrats
Ivan: went, one, that he was worried that he was going to jail.
Ivan: And now it all adds up. Because that son of a bitch had to have that in the back of his head.
Sam: And also, apparently, Donald Trump says he's talking to Bibi almost every day.
Ivan: That's not surprising. I will say that,
Ivan: look, especially from Bibi, because like I said before, Bibi fucking came to
Ivan: Congress to campaign basically against fucking Obama in 2012.
Ivan: He gave a speech against him here. So what the hell is going to make me feel
Ivan: like this has changed in any way,
Ivan: shape or form that he's going and like talking to to Trump, who apparently wants
Ivan: to flatten Gaza and like develop it into some kind of like real estate and just
Ivan: kill all the Palestinians or something like that?
Sam: Yeah, the ethnic cleansing plan is almost completely out in the open now.
Sam: Yeah, it's like it's yeah.
Sam: Anyway, speaking of that, just to toss up a couple of last bullet points,
Sam: Israel did do their attack on Iran.
Sam: It looks like it was relatively limited, military targets only.
Sam: Hopefully, we're done for the moment. We shall see.
Sam: And also, North Korea is apparently putting troops in Ukraine now.
Ivan: Oh, and that's that's such a sign of strength by Putin that he has to grab North
Ivan: Korean malnourished troops to put in the front line in fucking Ukraine.
Ivan: I mean, you want to you want to tell me how this this is? And I guess it's just
Ivan: an exchange. You know, what's his name needs energy and stuff and whatever.
Ivan: And so, oh, well, here, I'll just send some soldiers for you to sacrifice in
Ivan: the front line of Ukraine. Here we go there.
Sam: Yeah. And I don't think either of those two things are going to affect the election.
Sam: It's too little, too late.
Sam: Like whatever's baked in there. I think the whole situation in the Middle East
Sam: probably does not help Harris at all.
Sam: Like the big drop in Biden's numbers actually came after October 7th of last year.
Sam: I don't know. Like there seems to still be that continuous drag from very left-leaning
Sam: people who are like, I can't vote for Harris because she supports genocide.
Sam: That are just withholding their vote entirely, which, you know, I'm sorry.
Ivan: Yeah, to support a guy who has basically made it his banner campaign to go and
Ivan: ethnically cleanse the whole damn place.
Ivan: Yes, that's very helpful. Yes.
Sam: Well, they're either withholding their vote or voting for Stein or whatever.
Sam: And, you know, look, I sympathize.
Sam: Like, the situation is horrible. like we
Sam: should i've i've said on this show we should be withholding military
Sam: support from israel at this point but you still
Sam: have two people to choose from and
Sam: you and one is worse and one is worse i'm sorry i'm sorry like this whole like
Sam: i don't want to pick the lesser of two evils i'm sorry if that's your choice
Sam: you pick if somebody offers you yeah i'm sorry you have to vote for either Hitler
Sam: or Stalin who do you want to be in charge you have you still,
Sam: Jesus Christ you still have to pick like you pick which one you think will be
Sam: least damaging even if they both are horrible I'm sorry that well those are pretty much.
Ivan: Equally bad I gotta be honest can I be honest I mean I would say that I would
Ivan: say more a choice between Hitler Mussolini and probably Mussolini was less worse than Hitler,
Ivan: because if I recall correctly, and I may be corrected the next time,
Ivan: but a lot of the stuff with regards to minorities and stuff and whatever,
Ivan: Mussolini just went along because Hitler was basically egging him on about it,
Ivan: not exactly because he was all jumping up and down.
Sam: So headline out of this show, Ivan is a Mussolini apologist.
Sam: No, you support Mussolini. You think Mussolini was great.
Ivan: No, all I'm saying is if my only choices were Mussolini and Hitler,
Ivan: I guess I'm taking fucking Mussolini.
Sam: Anyway. Yeah. So we'll see. Anyway, I got to go. Yvonne has to go.
Sam: The usual, the curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there for our transcripts,
Sam: our archives, all the ways to contact us, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Including our patreon where you can
Sam: give us money at various levels we will mention you
Sam: on the show we will send you a postcard we will send you a mug all of that
Sam: sort of thing all very fun stuff at two dollars a month or more or if you just
Sam: ask we will invite you to our invite you to our patreon no that's wrong invite
Sam: you to our slack where yvonne and i and a bunch of listeners are chatting sharing
Sam: links doing all that kind of stuff all week long we would love to have more of you,
Sam: Yvonne, do you have a highlight or do you just need to run?
Ivan: No, I need to run. I need to run. No highlight this week.
Sam: No highlight this week. You need to join and then you don't need the highlights
Sam: because you will have already seen them.
Sam: And so for once, this actually is a short show. Amazing.
Sam: But I hope you guys appreciate it. And we will come back next week with a regular show.
Sam: And I think more details next week if it's true. But I think we're once again
Sam: going to live stream election night as the results come in.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So we'll give you more details next week. And that's it.
Sam: Hey, everybody have a great week and stay safe. We'll see you next time.
Sam: Goodbye. Say goodbye, Yvonne.
Ivan: Bye.