Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, December 21st, 2024.
Sam: It's just after 18 UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bo is here.
Sam: And we're doing something a little different this week than our normal.
Sam: Instead of having our butt first where Yvonne and I just talk about whatever
Sam: stuff, we have like a guest.
Sam: So let me introduce...
Sam: Yes, I know.
Ivan: We do this every once in a while. Sam, we can't treat people.
Sam: Oh, yes.
Ivan: Yeah. Well, yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Seriously.
Sam: We do this every once in a while, but not commonly. So our guest today is Monica Chilton.
Sam: I'll let her introduce herself more fully in a second.
Sam: We have her on because she, this year, was one of Washington State's electors
Sam: for the Electoral College, which voted this last week.
Sam: And I thought it would be interesting to have her on and talk a little bit about that.
Sam: So, Monica, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit more fully?
Monica: Yeah. Good morning, Sam. Good morning, Yvonne. Good morning,
Monica: audience. I'm Monica Chilton.
Monica: I am one of the two what's called state committee members for the Snohomish County Democrats.
Monica: I was previously the chair of the Snohomish County Democrats for four years,
Monica: but I've been in leadership.
Monica: And actually, after this, I need
Monica: to log off and go to an executive board meeting for that organization.
Monica: So always working, as it were, for the volunteer job. I guess we're all a little
Monica: bit cuckoo for democracy, as it were.
Monica: So anyway, it's a pleasure to be here this morning. And yeah,
Monica: anything you want to ask, fire away.
Sam: Sure. And this doesn't need to be a formal interview.
Sam: We can do a sort of conversation, but I'll start off with a few things.
Sam: First of all, I will mention, and I don't know if you know this,
Sam: Monica, but you are the second elector we had on the show.
Sam: Because we had on Chiafalo when he was doing his sort of rogue elector faithless
Sam: stuff and the Supreme Court case. We talked to him after the Supreme Court case as well.
Sam: And now your situation was a little bit different.
Sam: You did not go rogue, I don't believe.
Monica: No, no. And the staff that worked very hard and treated us very nicely,
Monica: was very, very grateful for the lack of drama.
Monica: So, the gallery was substantially not as full as it was in 2016, according to staff.
Monica: And I think that's because, again, the lack of drama. And, of course,
Monica: the result was not as we had hoped.
Ivan: Well, Monica, one question. You talked about the lack of drama.
Ivan: We've been talking a little bit about this in recent weeks with people's reaction
Ivan: to the recent election results.
Ivan: And I guess, I mean, is that your feeling like right now in terms of emotionally
Ivan: that a lot of people are just, I mean, they're like, just, okay, I'm done.
Monica: Well, there are people who have more than rung the alarm bell for years and years and years.
Ivan: Us here.
Monica: Right, right. And black women, and I know a lot of black women in person,
Monica: not your wife, Representative Donaghy, but who just basically decided, you know what?
Monica: I'm going to live my best life. I'm going to sip the tea while Rome is burning.
Monica: And you know what? They have absolutely earned it because I feel like my demographic
Monica: has just been a bunch of, I freely cop to it.
Monica: We're quizlings. We have voted for the wrong side, at least according to me,
Monica: the side that is the autocratic, oligarchic side in the last three elections.
Monica: And that is just really breathtaking.
Sam: You're talking white women specifically.
Monica: Yeah, white women.
Ivan: Yeah.
Monica: And it's just, it's very, very annoying and very, very aggravating.
Monica: So, but I can see it's been, yeah, it's been a drama.
Monica: And we have a whole generation of younger people, especially who didn't have the luxury of,
Monica: our generation did of say a fairness doctrine press.
Ivan: So my god yeah i forgot about that there is a post-fairness.
Monica: Doctrine press there is 24 7 news there
Monica: is misinformation and misinformation being spread all over in all sorts of different
Monica: ways you know slice dice whatever and and i i'm afraid that the kids kids you
Monica: know i mean they're adults but you know to me they're kids they're kids with
Monica: a 28 year old daughter right.
Ivan: But let me tell you something there are more
Ivan: kids than we were and i you know
Ivan: i don't know what why we have done
Ivan: this but i was having this discussion
Ivan: with somebody that that i that i know that their their daughter
Ivan: is like 15 and they were asking about
Ivan: going on their first trip by themselves right because they
Ivan: had and at the end that they were scared of doing that and i'm remembering
Ivan: that shit i was well define trip i was go to
Ivan: i i'm from puerto rico i went to new york by my
Ivan: i went to washington dc basically with one chaperone
Ivan: that we never saw for like a couple a couple of weeks okay
Ivan: all right to row amazing actually like 13 14 you know i was 13 14 and i'm like
Ivan: and that and that wasn't you know i remember amongst my generation i'm like
Ivan: the fullest closure i'm like what 50 gen x i'm 54 i'm dumb on now not yet i'm
Ivan: turning 54 in february let me not get out of myself not yet but i do that on.
Monica: The age the.
Ivan: One yeah but but that wasn't that uncommon back then it happened a lot it's
Ivan: not like it's all and if somebody heard that it happened or like oh okay they
Ivan: weren't teenagers they went on a trip to you know whatever and now it's like,
Ivan: they they man i mean we barely let them out of
Ivan: the house i mean let me let me pull us
Ivan: back for a second for pull us back yeah but but going back
Ivan: to to this young generation specifically you were talking about and what you
Ivan: know but that they're kids i i do think that in certain terms and i've seen
Ivan: especially sometimes in just the perspectives that they carry sometimes i i
Ivan: feel like i i don't know it does feel like we've we've turned them more into kids than they used to be.
Monica: I'm not so worried about them. I mean, they care. That's important.
Ivan: Oh yeah, they care. Totally.
Monica: The thing that worries me is just, there's not as much, what do we say?
Monica: I think we have this fire hose of information and very poorly,
Monica: relatively poorly developed tools of what I like to call discernment and critical
Monica: thinking skills so that we can, so that younger set especially,
Monica: and some of the older set, frankly.
Ivan: A lot of them.
Sam: Yeah, I was just talking to my wife, who was referring to, she had had a,
Sam: you know, a conversation with somebody she knew from way back, who was talking about,
Sam: you know, the presidential race and things they'd heard about, you know,
Sam: Harris being the border czar and all this, which wasn't true at all. It never happened.
Sam: But they were convinced. They were absolutely convinced. Well, I heard it.
Sam: And yeah, so it's definitely a thing.
Sam: I mean, Yvonne and I have talked about this on here quite a few times in terms
Sam: of the information environment and how uninformed lots of people are and information
Sam: silos and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: But I do want to pull us back real quick to the other thing.
Sam: And then maybe we can talk about other stuff for a little bit.
Sam: But back in 2016, I went to the
Sam: state convention and witnessed some of how electors were picked back then.
Sam: And I had some thoughts.
Sam: But how were you picked this time around?
Sam: And has the process changed at all? What do you think about the process to actually choose electors?
Sam: Because, you know, obviously in 2016, we ended up with a bunch of faithless
Sam: electors here in Washington state.
Monica: Oh, four.
Sam: Yes. Well, that's a bunch. That's like one of the biggest number of faithless electors ever.
Monica: That will be a third because there were 12 electors.
Monica: So if that was still the same number of electors, that is a third of the body that would be there.
Sam: So have they changed anything in the intervening years? And specifically,
Sam: how was it done for you? How did you get this part?
Monica: This was actually pretty chill. The state committee had us, if we wanted to,
Monica: write a bio or a statement of Canada to see that sort of thing.
Monica: It's just like you're running for an office or an e-board position or anything like that.
Monica: And I actually wound up penning mine on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision.
Monica: So I kind of used that as a springboard, you know.
Monica: So I thought, I tried to, I tried to write something that pulls people in,
Monica: you know, kind of gets them their thinking rather than, oh, I'm blah,
Monica: blah, blah, you know, that sort of, sort of thing.
Monica: Something that has some gravitas and some meat for them.
Monica: But the, the CD one, that's the first congressional district,
Monica: the one that I live in, that was pretty, pretty interesting because I didn't
Monica: realize at the time that I wrote, I wrote my statement of candidacy and I was,
Monica: thought I was speaking to all of the state committee members who are going to decide.
Monica: And what really happened was it was the state committee members of that specific
Monica: congressional district.
Monica: So there was a grand total of five of them who decided who was going to be the
Monica: elector and who was going to be the alternate. and there weren't really a whole
Monica: heck of a lot of candidates.
Monica: I think there were like three of us and the CD2 one, that was my former district
Monica: that I got to redistrict from and that was a pretty,
Monica: I wouldn't say contentious race, but it definitely had a lot of candidates going for those two spots.
Monica: So that would be like the elector and the alternate and there were some other
Monica: at-large positions as well.
Monica: I think CD2 is the one that wound up with an elector, one of the at-large alternates came from CD2.
Monica: So that's a pretty important congressional district as far as representation.
Monica: But yeah, the state committee members of the congressional district are the
Monica: ones that select the electors for that to represent their congressional districts.
Sam: And then there's some statewide, the at-large ones, right?
Monica: Yeah, at-large, yeah.
Sam: Like in 2016, the at-large ones were picked at the convention,
Sam: at the state convention. Is that what happened this year as well?
Monica: No, that was different. It was all one meeting, all one process.
Monica: I'm trying to remember how long it took. Maybe a couple hours,
Monica: something like that. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, no, that sounds good.
Monica: But it was all amazing.
Ivan: But this year, no drama versus.
Sam: Yeah, the process at the convention in 2016 was the one that really baffled
Sam: me. It was just so chaotic.
Sam: There were people running for it who didn't know what they were running for.
Sam: There were people voting for it who didn't know what they were voting for.
Sam: It was just nuts. and yeah so um so what was the actual experience of being
Sam: an elector like you know obviously harris won washington state.
Monica: And therefore.
Sam: You got to vote but how did how what what are the logistics of of being in this
Sam: position finding out like where you go win and blah blah.
Monica: Blah so the staff was was very good so there was a point of contact and stewart
Monica: jensen reached out to everybody so you know stew basically this.
Sam: Are these like representatives of the actual state or.
Monica: The democratic party or these are actually
Monica: folks with the secretary of state's office so this is all steve
Monica: hobbs is good and yeah so steve was
Monica: there and that was great and anyway let's see so yeah stew you know called all
Monica: the electors and you know made sure that we have like you know the per diem
Monica: expense things which i just finally filled out yesterday and you know because
Monica: you You get like a podium for the hotel,
Monica: if you so choose, meals, if you so choose.
Sam: Because you all have to drive into the state capital or whatever.
Monica: Right. And then, you know, if I came from, I don't know, Walla Walla or Spokane,
Monica: I could have flown in maybe.
Monica: So that would be airfare as well.
Monica: I can't remember. I think they did rental cars, but I can't remember.
Monica: But, yeah, you get that information. You get the paperwork. And it's all very
Monica: professional and interesting.
Monica: Yeah, just very, very, very, very good. And at the parking pass,
Monica: you go in and they had somebody there out there.
Monica: It was raining like crazy all that whole time.
Monica: And she's out there with this humongous golf umbrella, Hannah was,
Monica: to make sure that we were parking in the proper place. Everybody was terribly good.
Sam: And you physically did it at the state capitol building?
Monica: Yeah. So it was really awesome. I mean, I'll never be able to park that close
Monica: to the state capitol ever again.
Ivan: Unless you're going to be an elector again.
Monica: Right. Right. Well, you know, I would love to be able to be an elector and elect
Monica: the first liberal democratic woman president.
Monica: I qualify.
Monica: So
Ivan: Yeah well man.
Monica: Feels like.
Ivan: I mean it.
Monica: And and i have to do i and i'm gonna i'm going to segue a little bit okay well we're.
Ivan: Good at segueing here.
Monica: This is this is the this is the trademark of this show they segue i mean just
Monica: completely go off the yeah yeah my personal feeling is that the two women who
Monica: have been the Democratic nominees were in a position where they were almost set up to fail.
Monica: You look at the fella from, I think, St. Louis who had those 13 factors.
Monica: One of the most interesting things he put in for Hillary Clinton in particular
Monica: is how difficult it is for a person of the same party to win a third in a row election.
Monica: That was a big thing. And beyond all the other stuff, she's still pretty much,
Monica: I mean, if we had gotten rid of the Electoral College, she would have won. No questions.
Monica: This thing with Kamala Harris is...
Monica: She had less than 120 days to campaign, fewer than 120 days to campaign.
Monica: Yeah, she went at it like gangbusters, but it was so quick, and there really
Monica: just wasn't, I don't think, enough time.
Monica: And frankly, if I were in a swing state and I got barraged with all that stuff,
Monica: I probably would have been very tempted to just tune out.
Sam: You know well and you know and you
Sam: know in the end it's perceived as like you know
Sam: a a big loss simply because
Sam: well a it's winner take all in these things uh and and also you know hey she
Sam: lost all seven of the swing states but six of those seven were very close you
Sam: know it would have only taken a relatively small number of changed votes for
Sam: her to win if you look at popular vote.
Sam: It was the closest in like forever.
Sam: Um, you know, so it, it actually was a close race.
Sam: She almost pulled it off, but not quite.
Sam: And there, there are all kinds of things you can point to her.
Sam: We we've had arguments on here about various factors.
Sam: I think we're there and we don't necessarily have to rehash those now,
Sam: but the, but she was close and any one of a number of things changed.
Sam: She could have pulled it off, but she didn't. Um, and that's where we are.
Ivan: Well, one thing is that...
Ivan: Globally and this is not just here i was discussing this repeatedly but there's
Ivan: this entire anti-incumbency thing that isn't just here and and it's an entire
Ivan: mistrust actually did of and.
Sam: And she actually did better than any other major country election for the how much was lost by the.
Ivan: Incumbent party.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, and it's just, and there is this, you know, we're talking a little bit
Ivan: about information, how people are receiving information and so forth and so on.
Ivan: And there is this entire problem with this reality where facts don't matter
Ivan: anymore to a lot of people. It doesn't matter.
Ivan: It doesn't matter. You can, you can.
Monica: It's reality.
Ivan: I mean, man, come on. We got flat earthers walking around like right now. Okay.
Ivan: At this point in time in history, I mean, we got pictures from the moon of the
Ivan: earth showing you how it's round that you can prove they are from the moon.
Ivan: And they still believe on flat earth. These guys are using satellites.
Ivan: Okay. That couldn't operate most of the time if the earth wasn't round.
Ivan: Or if the earth don't understand hey why
Ivan: do we need so many of them well because the earth is
Ivan: round it's not flat so that's
Ivan: why you can't see them it doesn't matter it doesn't matter i mean you can show
Ivan: people hey all these people were saved by these vaccines look we had we had kids' cemeteries.
Ivan: We used, this was a thing.
Ivan: You know, where we saved all these lives. Eh, whatever.
Monica: Or my layperson's research is worth more than your professional expertise.
Ivan: Absolutely. Absolutely. I was telling Sam, and I know he's bored to death about
Ivan: this, about the drama that I had at our condo board here, where I was in charge
Ivan: for, was president for a long time.
Ivan: And that, you know, people were complaining about excessive dues and whatever.
Ivan: And I could show, I told the people I felt like Biden because I could show them
Ivan: that, hey, five years, the last
Ivan: five years, average condo dues in South Florida where I live are up 60%.
Ivan: Ours are only up 30, okay, versus an average of 60.
Ivan: And oh, by the way, we spent millions fixing stuff during that time.
Ivan: And your condo dues are up half the half the median and they're like ah we need
Ivan: to get rid of you i'm like uh fine.
Monica: Be my guest.
Ivan: I i'm like and and that's how i feel yeah i i you know what the thing is i actually
Ivan: won the election but i got so fed up with the attacks i resigned because i just
Ivan: couldn't take it anymore i just i i just i just getting they get these people
Ivan: they get they don't talk to you.
Ivan: They don't look at the facts, and then they get personal and start attacking
Ivan: you like you're a crook, you're a thief.
Ivan: We're going to investigate you all. And it's like,
Ivan: Oh, and here was a crazy tidbit. One of the guys that led this.
Monica: You see what this is?
Ivan: Oh, this is the bizarre thing. He works on his law firm.
Ivan: He works on this law firm. You, for some reason, like, pooh-poohed this fact.
Ivan: He works for an attorney that was one of the biggest defendants of J6ers.
Monica: Really?
Ivan: Yes. Now, that's what we actually expected from him, but he was like.
Monica: Huh?
Ivan: I was like, yeah, whatever. He was one of the guys. And I'm like,
Ivan: I'm not I'm not understanding.
Ivan: Why is why am I explaining facts to this guy? He doesn't listen to anything.
Ivan: And I saw his law firm. And then I click on the link and I see the attorney that he works for.
Ivan: And I see it. I'm like, all of a sudden, oh, shit, look at this.
Ivan: He is a big he's a guy that's defended the most J6ers. This is how this all adds up.
Monica: Well, I mean, as a legal professional myself, theoretically,
Monica: you do have a duty as an attorney to make sure that people get quality representation.
Monica: And if that were the thing, great.
Monica: But if it were a situation where, hey, I really think these guys are great, then yeah.
Ivan: No, this guy thought they're great. These.
Monica: Well, they're not. Yeah.
Ivan: And it's like, you know, he really is all in for quality representation.
Ivan: You know, one thing, there's something, man, now I got to look up.
Ivan: I can't remember the attorney's name, but there was one thing that was very
Ivan: interesting. He had a hearing where he was representing 16 of them in one place,
Ivan: and he did not show up to the hearing.
Monica: Hmm. Interesting if you were an attorney, because I knew there are a lot of,
Monica: I shouldn't say a lot of, there are some people who pose as attorneys.
Ivan: No, no, this guy is actually an attorney. And I looked above,
Ivan: he had actually been part of a law firm where they threw him out,
Ivan: financial, you know, financial issues.
Ivan: One of his law firms went under, then he started another one.
Ivan: It's, but, but it's this entire, what I, what I always, what,
Ivan: what I always brought that up as an example is, is because I see this everywhere.
Ivan: It's, it's like the anger level, man, whether you're driving,
Ivan: whether you're, at school, how teachers get attacked by people, nurses,
Ivan: principals, hospital administrators, the rage at airports, airlines,
Ivan: all of this. I keep seeing this.
Ivan: It's like, this is really permeated. It's not just the elections.
Ivan: It's permeated through society in general and even globally for crisis.
Ivan: It's not just here because these people are bent on certain. it's not just the U.S.
Ivan: It's a global thing that they're trying to work.
Monica: One of the reasons I got involved in democratic politics to begin with was because
Monica: I saw this wave of nationalistic populism and it scared the bejesus out of me.
Ivan: Yeah.
Monica: You know, Assad, Duterte. It's like, people were like, what's he going to do
Monica: if, you know, if Donald Trump becomes president? I said, well,
Monica: all you have to do is look at the Philippines.
Monica: That's what's going to happen. And now I think it's like his son and Aquino's
Monica: daughter or something like that, they're ruling over there.
Monica: And what's his name? Maduro, who is basically Chavez 2.0.
Monica: And the AF Day, who Elon Musk is plumping for?
Ivan: Yeah.
Monica: I mean, alternative for Deutschland. And you're going, what the hell?
Ivan: Maloney and you've got Le Pen in France.
Monica: Yeah, La Pena France, who's decided to make her party a kinder and gentler looking no-death valet.
Ivan: Valet in Argentina. We had Bolsonaro, who got voted out. It's just all over the place.
Ivan: Now, one thing I will say that the Latin American ones, you know, I'm...
Ivan: The one thing is that they all are authoritarian.
Ivan: They all grab at whether it's right-wing ideology or left-wing ideology,
Ivan: but the whole desire of these people is to be an oligarchy, to enrich themselves in one way or another.
Ivan: There is no altruistic thing about helping my people.
Ivan: They really disdain a lot of the supporters that they have, but to them,
Ivan: they are useful idiots and they go around and just, you know,
Ivan: well, think about, for example, oh, we're going to give tax breaks to the rich
Ivan: and the Affordable Care Act.
Ivan: Like, who are the people that benefit the most from this?
Ivan: Most of their voters. and and they are just like yeah yeah yeah we need you
Ivan: to go in there with like take about i'm like uh today what do you what are you doing but i.
Monica: Well no it's basically a situation where
Monica: whoever what i say whoever talks the loudest and the longest yes needs to have
Monica: the the floor and the yeah and the locks you're talking about how the anger
Monica: in the world well this of course started before Trump and before COVID, but I think COVID,
Monica: four years, three, four years of COVID has basically exacerbated what was already a poor situation.
Monica: And I have to say the isolation, while necessary, turned a lot of us feral.
Monica: So we're still, I think, trying to,
Monica: I guess, suss out and navigate how to deal with each other in a one-on-one interpersonal
Monica: in you know physical environment and oh that was the other thing I wanted to
Monica: circle back to is that COVID I mean,
Monica: To be really bluntly honest, if COVID hadn't have broken out and gotten as bad
Monica: as it had, I think we would be looking at the end of the second Trump presidency.
Ivan: I agree with you.
Sam: I think you're absolutely right.
Ivan: I totally agree with you.
Monica: And that was a big factor. I think people forgot how bad it was because a lot
Monica: of people just had the attention span of a gnat.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Like, you see so many interviews.
Ivan: You're a woman after my own heart. Yes, that's exactly the reality.
Ivan: They don't remember anything.
Sam: So they don't remember anything and they misattribute where it was from.
Sam: You talk about like, like if you even ask people about like the pandemic,
Sam: they associate it with Biden, not, you know.
Monica: And Trump cut those checks out of his own.
Sam: Oh yeah, absolutely. And like, and to be fair, the highest spike of the,
Sam: of the pandemic did occur at the beginning of the Biden administration.
Sam: But there are things like people associate one of the, the anecdotes I heard
Sam: that was, first of all, absolutely right.
Sam: They thought that these were personal checks from Donald Trump,
Sam: but also a lot of the COVID aid ended during Biden's administration.
Sam: Now, the actual reality is the Democrats wanted to keep it, keep the aid going
Sam: longer and the Republicans wanted to kill it.
Sam: But people blame the fact that their aid ended on biden because.
Monica: He was.
Sam: President when it happened you know and.
Ivan: Similarly they were saying that they needed to end the aid and the act.
Monica: That's 2018 i mean that 2018 congress really did a lot of good i think and really
Monica: it's 2026 gang and i i get a little impatient with people who are talking about
Monica: 2028 now and i'm thinking,
Monica: You don't understand, gang, if we don't have a 2018 level retake of the House,
Monica: there will not be a 2026 that's worth, you know, that's actually competitive, shall we say.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean 2028, if not 2026.
Ivan: But I will tell you one factor, another one, not just the pandemic,
Ivan: but the one that everybody's memories are terrible, which it was the one,
Ivan: the inflation, which is the one that really, look, inflation historically has upended governments.
Ivan: This is this goes back, you know, go back to the Weimar Republic in Germany,
Ivan: for God's sakes, you know, how they got appended after World War I because inflation
Ivan: was completely out of control, you know, and, you know, and Carter,
Ivan: you know, I mean, Jimmy Carter, one of the things that that that in his administration,
Ivan: you know, inflation was was, you know, raging as well.
Ivan: And that was one of the factors that really threw his administration into problems
Ivan: because of inflation and how interest rates were rising at the time and so forth.
Ivan: I mean, that was definitely a big factor. But they go on to blame Biden also for the inflation.
Ivan: And the reality is I kept talking to Sam during 2020, and Trump's still present during the pandemic.
Ivan: I, I, I'm one that I used to import a lot of containers from China during that
Ivan: time. So the business that I, that I was managing at the time.
Ivan: And the thing is that typical container right before the pandemic would cost
Ivan: me about $4,000 to ship something from China to, to, to anywhere,
Ivan: to, to anywhere in the Americas for the most part.
Ivan: And all of a sudden I'm seeing shipping costs go like north of 20,000 a container, 25,000 a container.
Monica: Please.
Ivan: And I'm, I'm, I'm going and I'm like shortages of everything and shortages of everything.
Ivan: So, so all of a sudden, you know, I'm getting demanded more money for,
Ivan: for anything that we're buying.
Ivan: And I'm like realizing, okay, so that didn't translate to consumer prices immediately,
Ivan: but look, it's, these are all leading factors.
Ivan: And it's like that entire wave started during that moment.
Ivan: It was like, it was during the pandemic. It's when
Ivan: it started and then it's so difficult to explain to people well where the hell
Ivan: is that inflation coming from and i'm like start blaming biden for the damn
Ivan: inflation when i mean it was a pandemic induced inflation that there was all
Ivan: what what the biden administration do is manage it better than every other country in the world,
Ivan: That's the reality.
Monica: And the world sees it, but the
Monica: people in our country, definitely in the heartland, don't seem to see it.
Monica: And I wouldn't call it so much inflation as greedflation.
Ivan: Well, but part of it, look, I'm a business guy. Look, supply and demand,
Ivan: look, when you've got everybody angling to get a container, to put it on a ship,
Ivan: and you're desperate, you're going to start bidding up the prices.
Ivan: It's just, hey, you've got – and it was crazy. I mean, the backup at the ports turned insanity.
Ivan: I couldn't find where the hell my damn shipments were. The people couldn't find
Ivan: them because they said, listen, the port is complete. We don't know where the
Ivan: hell these containers are.
Ivan: They wouldn't wind up. There were so many of them. One of them wound up tracking.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, we dropped it off at the wrong country. I'm like, I'll get the hell out of here. No.
Monica: Wow.
Ivan: The container. Well, yeah, it was supposed to be in Argentina.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah. We dropped it off in Brazil.
Ivan: Sorry. We're going to have it. I'm like, oh, come on, guys. You guys are killing me. OK. Okay.
Ivan: And, but look, one of the things about it, there is part of it that of course,
Ivan: you know, like everything, some people will take advantage of their monopoly
Ivan: situations in order to also increase prices.
Ivan: That, that is always a certainty is why monopolies are bad is why oligarchies are bad.
Ivan: It's why you always been a regulated capital capitalist, because I don't believe
Ivan: that unregulated markets always tend to monopolies period.
Ivan: And the end of story there. It's just, that's just the fact.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: And so but but you had a lot of real factors where you had shortages of stuff.
Ivan: You've got other stuff. And economics, unfortunately, those will drive up prices.
Ivan: And the other problem is that you start putting in artificial price controls.
Ivan: What happens is people say, well, OK, I'm not going to do anything because I'm
Ivan: not going to get paid. I'm going to start losing money because the other people
Ivan: are demanding more money from me.
Ivan: And then you're telling me that I can't pay it for it. So the hell with it.
Ivan: I'm not going to do anything.
Ivan: So it's always, during those times of peaks like that, it's always extremely complicated.
Ivan: But in the end, it happened in 2020 is my whole point.
Ivan: And everybody is like, no, it happened in 2020 and everybody's going,
Ivan: well, Biden is inflation. I'm like, oh, God.
Monica: But that did not affect the price of eggs in this particular.
Ivan: Yes, the famous price of eggs, which, you know, I'm pretty sure that everybody
Ivan: complaining about the price of eggs had not bought a damn carton of eggs in recent memory.
Sam: I saw someone who actually got out the actual, I think it was Jamie Belay,
Sam: who's a columnist for New York Times on TikTok, but he got out a graph of the actual, like,
Sam: stats on the price of eggs over the last few years.
Sam: And there was a pandemic-related spike. And then it went way back down again.
Sam: And then in 2024, earlier in the year, there was another spike due to bird flu,
Sam: where egg prices went up for a little bit.
Sam: But it actually didn't last very long and was well on the way back down again.
Sam: And you still had a situation where by the time we got to the election,
Sam: were eggs higher than they were four years ago?
Sam: Yes, but they were way down from the peak. but people don't
Sam: like recognize that and the story sticks
Sam: now now i i promise we can get back
Sam: to talking about other stuff but i i did want to let monica finish her story
Sam: of the actual being an elector i'm sorry we totally went off oh yeah she got
Sam: oh it's okay it's okay but she we got we went on a tangent oh you you had gotten
Sam: as far as parking in the parking lot And she got in.
Ivan: Yes. Okay.
Monica: It's beautiful. They've decorated it for Christmas. You know,
Monica: there's like, what, marble and everything. And it's gorgeous.
Monica: And they lead you into the Senate chamber.
Monica: And the Senate chamber is very intimate, actually.
Monica: You have your desk and the desk has the, you know, the very nice blue,
Monica: you know, what, like your certificate and your,
Monica: oh shoot, I should have, actually I sent these I think to Brandy and some folks
Monica: where the actual certificate of, yeah, the electors are, you know,
Monica: where you, you know, sign for the vice and the sign for the president.
Monica: And the pen is like just like a it's a ballpoint pen but this like has like the white quill on it,
Monica: i have since misplaced that pen and i'm a little pissed about it i think it
Monica: fell out of something or other because i didn't have a proper portfolio i mean
Monica: this was like a big old what at least,
Monica: 11 and a half by 14 sort of nice portfolio you know cool you know whole paper
Monica: thing that they put in there you know hard paper so i have to figure out okay
Monica: how do i get that you know nicely framed or where am I going to stick that?
Monica: Now, my friend, Jack Aaron's a blessed memory. He was the elector last time for CD2.
Monica: I don't know where he did it, but he had his whole elector shtick nicely framed
Monica: and everything he had in his foyer. It was beautiful.
Monica: But yeah, you had the certificate that you're an elector. You've got another
Monica: beautiful certificate.
Monica: You sign the ballots, the nice ballots that they collect. And those are the
Monica: ballots that are going to go into the boxes that you saw the girls have to,
Monica: you know, tote away from the Senate chamber to get rid of the insurrectionists.
Sam: Right, on January 6th when they saved the ballots or whatever.
Monica: And then there were, I want to say, six copies that we would sign,
Monica: and those would go to different places, among which would be the National Archives.
Monica: And so I'm wondering, oh, gee, do I get to see my own signature if I go back to D.C. later on?
Ivan: Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah.
Monica: And the final thing that we'd signed was a document signed by all of us that basically verified.
Monica: And I think I've kind of lost track of where everything went.
Monica: But, you know, Steve Hobbs, I'm sure, is on it. Maybe you can have him as a
Monica: guest. That would be kind of cool.
Monica: Maybe you get Brandy to say, hey, Steve. you.
Sam: Know i i i've i've tried you know i've i've known you in person which is why
Sam: i felt comfortable asking you but you know we're a small tiny like personal podcast.
Monica: So like i i.
Sam: Haven't felt comfortable asking brandy hey can you get us.
Monica: Guests that actually matter.
Sam: Because i mean we've got like 50 people a week thanks for.
Ivan: Like dunking on.
Sam: Monica sam really appreciate you know no no no no.
Monica: You don't.
Ivan: Want to come out i mean you.
Monica: Know that's what it's all about it's all about relationships and politics
Monica: too i mean that's the thing i mean it's not the smoke-filled room
Monica: but it's also not i mean you're talking about people who are running to be an
Monica: electorate who didn't know what they were running for and people didn't know
Monica: what they were voting for and it is imperative i think upon the people if they
Monica: want to be involved in the democracy You have to educate yourself and not assume
Monica: that your internet research is going to save you.
Monica: You have to ask questions. That's one of the things I did when I got involved.
Monica: I asked questions of people who I might have called the old salts,
Monica: folks that have been around, folks like Linda Toste-Lane, K.O.
Monica: Cholanu, people have been Todd Nichols, professionals who have been involved
Monica: for years and years and years. And, you know, let's see.
Monica: Anyway, but going back to the thing.
Monica: So when you come to the Senate chamber, very intimate space with the desks and all that stuff.
Monica: And the gallery is on, you know, on one side and the other.
Monica: The gallery didn't look too terribly big, actually. But, yeah,
Monica: Shasti Conrad, the state chair, was there.
Monica: And David Green, the vice chair, was there in the gallery.
Monica: And some other folks that I didn't see. Like my first while colleague,
Monica: Lynn Campbell, who is a Skagit County Dems chair, was up there in the gallery.
Monica: And yeah, you cast your votes and you do the Pledge of Allegiance and they certify the minutes.
Monica: Oh, and the guy actually, one of the people at the State, Secretariat of State's
Monica: office, let me use the seal stamper.
Monica: So, yeah, the official, I have a little thing that has, like,
Monica: the official government seal or the state of steel.
Ivan: I love those.
Monica: So, yeah, they use the seal for all of those things that we signed. And it's huge.
Ivan: It's a big one?
Monica: Yeah.
Ivan: Awesome. I love these.
Monica: And then I think the most awesome thing that I thought, though,
Monica: was I looked up and around, so the Senate chamber is a square room,
Monica: and around the ceiling, they have engraved each of the 39 counties' names.
Monica: So that was interesting to see that. And, you know, I had to find Snohomish.
Monica: And, of course, King is right up there by the dais.
Monica: But Snohomish is, like, more towards the right side as you're looking at the dais.
Monica: And we all had our, our microphones. So if we wanted to speak, we did.
Monica: I really didn't think I was going to speak, but then everybody else did before
Monica: me. So I'm like, oh, hell, I'm not going to be the only person who didn't speak.
Monica: So I did. I said my bit and.
Sam: Sam from the future here. I thought this would be an appropriate place to insert
Sam: Monica's actual speech that she just talked about. So here it is.
Monica: Monica Chilton First of all, thank you. Hi, my name is Monica Chilton.
Monica: I am the elector for the First Congressional District.
Monica: Thank you, Mr. Secretary of State. Thank you, Mr. Governor.
Monica: Thank you to all of my colleagues here in this room today.
Monica: I hadn't really planned to speak, but I feel kind of impelled to do so after
Monica: hearing such wonderful remarks from my colleagues beforehand.
Monica: Yeah, I was thinking about rights. And I belong to a generation that has more
Monica: rights than the generation that has them now.
Monica: I was born in 1973, the year that Roe v. Wade was decided.
Monica: And yes, it was my hope that we would be able to elect a woman president of
Monica: the United States twice, you know, but it just didn't happen.
Monica: And I just think it's really important that everybody in this room and those
Monica: of you who are watching, sorry, I'm very moved right now.
Monica: This is a very awesome honor to be in this room with all of you,
Monica: that we all rededicate ourselves to preserving democracy, which is fragile now,
Monica: but with constant engagement can be robust and can stay robust,
Monica: and can champion the right, the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Monica: And finally, I'd like to say a quick word to the memory of my dear friend Jack
Monica: Ahrens, who sat in your position last time in 2020.
Monica: I'm sorry we couldn't keep it up, Jack, but I do pray that you look out for
Monica: us and help us get it back. Thank you very much.
Sam: And now back to our conversation. Do, do, do.
Sam: So, so did you, was it all little speeches about why you were voting for Harris?
Monica: No, not necessarily that. Just, you know, like, for example,
Monica: Julie Johnson, she was, I can't remember what CD she's in, but among other things,
Monica: she's a Native American.
Monica: And she pointed out that there were three indigenous folks among the actual
Monica: electors that were there, which I think is like some sort of a new threshold.
Monica: So, even though it's kind of, in a weird sort of way, it's kind of a dark victory,
Monica: as it were, because even though we've stolen the land, at least now they're
Monica: back there at the table, you know.
Sam: Right.
Monica: Yeah. And that's important. And then we had some folks talk about how,
Monica: gee, I'm happy to be an electorate, but there shouldn't be an electoral college.
Monica: And I get that.
Monica: I understand. Not sure that that's quite the occasion, because one of the things
Monica: that, I don't think it was Steve Hobbs, but I think it was,
Monica: oh, God, maybe whomever served as Sergeant at Arms pointed out was how special
Monica: this occasion was and how important it was to savor it.
Monica: And I did. And it was, like I said, very awe-inspiring and very humbling at
Monica: the same time to know that you had that responsibility, that people entrusted
Monica: you with that responsibility.
Monica: And I know the folks in 2016 felt that they had a different responsibility and
Monica: I think, you know, it is what it is, and that's their choice.
Monica: But my responsibility was to—well, I originally signed up to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Monica: But yes, my responsibility was to elect the Democratic candidate and the running
Monica: mate. And that's all good.
Sam: So just timing-wise, that's interesting to me. They selected the electors before
Sam: the nominee was official for the Democrats?
Monica: Yeah, well, he was basically presumptive.
Sam: No, I know he was presumptive, but imagine it was actually a contentious primary.
Monica: I want to say it was, yeah, it was like maybe a month or so before,
Monica: a month, I would say, before that fateful debate.
Sam: So it was sort of after, like, assuming you had a race like 2016 or something.
Sam: It was after the primaries were over, but before the convention.
Monica: Yes, definitely. Yeah. Well, I think there are some really late primaries that
Monica: are knocking on the door. They go through June. It's kind of interesting, yeah.
Sam: The last primaries are in June.
Monica: Let's see. So I think that was, yeah, it was maybe two hours.
Monica: Oh, the most important part, I shouldn't say most important part,
Monica: but equally important part, is that Governor Inslee invited us to his office.
Ivan: Oh, that's cool.
Monica: Yeah. So we went over there and he had some nice words to say for us and got
Monica: to take a look at his office and he pointed out some things,
Monica: including a picture, a portrait rather, original portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
Monica: And he mentioned how his dad ran for, I think, and didn't win,
Monica: but he ran as a Republican.
Monica: So that was interesting. and you go inside the outside of the governor's office
Monica: and you see all the paintings of the former governors, only one,
Monica: Chris Gregoire, that needs to change, but that's just me. Yeah.
Monica: And, yeah, a bunch of us had our pictures taken, you know, not necessarily with
Monica: the governor, but, you know, in the office, which is, you know, really cool, too.
Monica: And just for giggles, I crossed the hall and poked my head in the Secretary
Monica: of State's office to see what that was all about.
Monica: And as I got in there, they were wheeling in that big seal, which was on a platform
Monica: that they, yeah, it's heavy, so they'd have to put it there.
Monica: It was a lovely experience it was easy to get out it was a little
Monica: tricky to it was easy to get in it was a little
Monica: tricky to get out because uh it
Monica: was a different it's not like the main entrance that they let you into it's like
Monica: a lower entrance and you took the elevator up to the
Monica: main thing and then went into the into the actual senate
Monica: chamber oh funny story so my seatmate
Monica: me too lona wilbur I don't know
Monica: her I couldn't pronounce her her native name but
Monica: she decided that she would go
Monica: ahead and try so they've got these microphones they've also got phones at
Monica: the desk that are outgoing phones she's like
Monica: you know what you'll live once she picks up this
Monica: phone at the senate chambers and the
Monica: senate chambers phone's a friend first friend she
Monica: phones goes right to his voice but voicemail phone's a
Monica: second friend and the second friend answers and says hey what are
Monica: you doing you're supposed to be at the electoral college casting your vote hang up
Monica: i thought well you
Monica: know i i was tempted myself to you know
Monica: look up you know say say your wife and say
Monica: you know call her and you know just say it was kind of a kick and she's like
Monica: well you know it would have been even bigger kick if you'd been in the the house
Monica: chamber and called me for my own desk so yeah you're right but very very meta
Monica: but i just thought that was kind of funny it's like girl or woman rather you
Monica: it took some guts i i am i am impressed.
Monica: So that was a good good experience and i'm probably talking because it's trying
Monica: to reconnect hang on shoot no internet your call cannot be completed.
Sam: As dialed please check the number and dial again uh oh uh.
Ivan: Oh yeah oh.
Sam: Monica's freezing see if she comes back message her yep,
Sam: she says her internet connection went sideways hold on a second okay.
Monica: Okay i do not know what the heck that was fun you're back it.
Ivan: Was uh the the the new administration coming in.
Monica: Yeah i blame them yeah so you.
Sam: Were you were telling the phone a friend story when we.
Monica: Yes yeah yeah yeah so no that was pretty much
Monica: it i just thought it was just kind of cool that she she did that
Monica: i'm like what are you doing you're going to do that
Monica: that was pretty awesome no no
Monica: it's funny as we pay for
Monica: comcast in this particular house household i'm
Monica: surprised that every now and then it will want
Monica: to get xfinity wi-fi rather than the perfectly fine
Monica: perfectly secure home connection very weird
Monica: that's my other thing about monopoly i mean you're talking about you know unrestricted
Monica: capitalism or whatever you know we only have I think two choices and both of
Monica: them are kind of in terms of being able to select internet providers in this
Monica: particular residence. So you're going, you know.
Ivan: So that's one of those things. Yeah, I know.
Sam: So, so any other highlights of the elector experience you want to call out in
Sam: terms of your, your own experience or just general thoughts on how that whole
Sam: thing works or anything like that before we move on to other things?
Monica: Yeah, the day was just really nice. It was, you know, the secretary of state staff was really great.
Monica: I wonder sometimes what it would have been like if say Kim Wyman were there
Monica: and, you know, say a Republican rather, and you have that staff.
Sam: She was the previous secretary of state that, for those who don't remember,
Sam: the fact that Biden picked her for something national, it started the chain
Sam: of events that led to my wife being in the state legislature to begin with.
Ivan: Yeah.
Monica: So that's the other thing. I mean, And we, I think, the Democratic Party invites.
Monica: We don't, you know, we just want things to get done.
Monica: You know, done and done well. I mean, the whole reason that this,
Monica: what, this temporary budget thing actually passed,
Monica: It's because, you know, we basically, we know how to govern, I think.
Ivan: I agree. Look, even John Boehner is one that said it best related to this,
Ivan: that this entire generation of people that are,
Ivan: that have come into government now, they're, you know, in the republic, in his party.
Ivan: It's one of the reasons why he left was precisely because they were interested
Ivan: on getting just attention, grifts, you know, they want it. They want it clicks.
Ivan: Everything they do is all about that. It has nothing to do with fixing any problems.
Ivan: It has everything to do with how they are going to get their grift done.
Ivan: That's it. And everybody else can be damned.
Sam: You tie that to a whole philosophy of government that is that government shouldn't
Sam: do stuff for the most part.
Sam: Like that, you know, and that's not all like some of them are pure grift.
Sam: Like if they thought they could make more money by government actually actively
Sam: doing stuff, they would. Yes.
Sam: But others are sort of philosophically very much in the view of like,
Sam: well, no, government shouldn't be doing anything anyway.
Sam: And so a course of action that leads to nothing is actually preferred.
Monica: And Boehner himself, he's the one who got rid of earmarks, so he kind of reaped the whirlwind.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, this is one conversation I've had a few times in the past.
Ivan: But that one was one that was, you know, I will say that before that happened,
Ivan: the philosophical thought, hey, how do we make government run better?
Ivan: There was a lot of agreement. Oh, getting rid of earmarks will help. Yeah, that was.
Sam: But I think it's actually backfired quite a bit. And I'm not the only one to have said this.
Sam: I heard it somewhere first and then I've repeated it a lot of times because,
Sam: you know, I resonated with it, is that actually earmarks were the grease that helped things happen.
Sam: That's how people made deals that was like, okay, I will give you what you want on this.
Ivan: And I will get our, you know, park.
Monica: Pretty much. I mean, yeah.
Sam: And, and, and in exchange, like policy things that would happen as well,
Sam: it wasn't just like your pork for my pork.
Sam: It's like, I will agree to your policy thing that I otherwise would not in exchange
Sam: for some pork for my district.
Sam: And, and it led to a lot more ability to make deals in bipartisan ways to make things happen.
Sam: Now, of course, there's also been this whole like partisan sorting that's been
Sam: happening. It makes things more difficult.
Sam: But I think that earmarks accelerated, getting rid of it, accelerated that process
Sam: because it took away a major tool that people could use to sort of paper over differences.
Ivan: Yes.
Ivan: So yeah i'm with you on that working today all right i think mine froze again
Ivan: did we lose you yeah yeah she's she's she's either she's stunned by what we
Ivan: said or she's frozen one or the other,
Ivan: well it was kind of stunned she's stunned oh
Ivan: there you're back you're back again we were saying that we were saying that
Ivan: damn it we said something so earth shattering you're just sitting there stunned
Ivan: you're stunned she's like i mean my god i mean look we managed to stun somebody
Ivan: this is what happens when you invite people sam yeah you know no.
Monica: I i was just i was hearkening back to when i was young and in college and so
Monica: i come from west central missouri across the border is on northeast Missouri.
Monica: Back in the day, Harold Volkmer was a FDR Democrat.
Monica: And that horse trading back in the day got a really decrepit bridge that crossed
Monica: the Mississippi River, turned into this nice, pristine Harold Volkmer bridge,
Monica: called for him because he actually lost the election to one of those Newt Gingrich Republicans.
Monica: So-
Monica: So, yeah, I mean, and again, it's my own thesis, and maybe it's because I come
Monica: from a different generation, but you're not going to get people,
Monica: you're not going to hook them on ideology, I don't think.
Monica: It has to be interactional. It has to be one-on-one. It has to be about relationships,
Monica: because if we basically toss somebody out because they have this really peculiar way of thinking,
Monica: still, there's other things you can talk about. There's always a hook somewhere.
Ivan: And the MAGA hook, the number one MAGA hook is is hate. OK, yeah.
Ivan: That's what I hate is an ideology.
Monica: You can't get anywhere with hate. You really can't.
Ivan: I mean, well, well, well, I mean, they can't get anywhere. Look,
Ivan: these bastards just won the stupid election running completely on a platform of hate.
Monica: I mean, there's something about populism. And this is my own my own personal
Monica: theory. Yes, you can organize.
Monica: Yes, you can campaign. Yes, you can even win an election.
Monica: The one thing you can't do, and I'm losing my thing again, which is really annoying.
Ivan: You're still there.
Sam: We still have you.
Monica: Okay. The one thing you can't do is govern. And that's why these things— But they hate government.
Ivan: Listen, they hate government. They think, you know, the absurdity of this weekend's
Ivan: negotiations, for example.
Sam: We're oh yeah we will take a break and actually have that as a topic you.
Ivan: Want to talk about that as a topic all right.
Sam: Yeah no no okay monica can you stick around a little bit or do you need to drop
Sam: why not all right let's take let's then break come on and we'll talk about this.
Ivan: Idiotic negotiations yes.
Sam: Okay we'll take a quick break and then we will be back and we will start talking
Sam: about the whole nonsense with the,
Sam: government shutdown that didn't happen but was delayed and elon musk and blah
Sam: blah blah and all that yes yeah yeah we'll be back right after this okie dokie here it comes.
Ivan: It's just my internet being stupid my internet being stupid is a new song we
Ivan: will make What the fuck is that?
Ivan: What the fuck?
Ivan: I'm just losing more to mind.
Ivan: Come on, come on.
Ivan: I'm tired what's wrong i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing to get
Ivan: the show on the road there's a road there's a road oh my god there's a road that.
Sam: One cracks yvonne up.
Ivan: Every time we oh my god well it's not
Ivan: just that it's that we get a guest for the
Ivan: first time in a long time and this is
Ivan: the we don't get like say the ray lynch break or something no no we get this
Ivan: psychedelic lunacy of a break in order to come in yes which is actually hilarious
Ivan: but oh god okay well well she stepped away for most of it so she may not have heard it,
Ivan: okay well.
Sam: Well we're back anyway so so yvonne why don't why don't you intro what is the
Sam: craziness that have happened.
Ivan: For the last few days. Well, I mean, look, we had an impending government shutdown,
Ivan: okay, that, you know, a deal had been done.
Ivan: And as usual, like the Republicans, you know, one of the, you were talking about how hate doesn't work.
Ivan: One of the things about these kinds of groups of people that they don't like
Ivan: the government is, that they can never honor a deal amongst themselves.
Ivan: Every time what they will wind up doing is, they think that everybody else is
Ivan: a corrupt. They will not trust anybody.
Ivan: So they will wind up the moment they see something. They see an opportunity, they will backstab.
Ivan: Other person. That is a trait. That's how they work.
Ivan: And so this entire thing with the shutdown where they actually have a deal and
Ivan: they agree to a deal and then all of a sudden- There was a deal.
Sam: That had been negotiated over the course of many months.
Monica: A bipartisan deal.
Sam: A bipartisan deal. The Republican leadership was on board.
Sam: The Democratic leadership was on board. How not even just the Republican leadership
Sam: they had. And, you know, I mean, I'm sure the usual people who would vote no
Sam: to anything would vote no, but they had it all set. It was ready to go. And then.
Ivan: And then and then they go and, you know, Trump and Musk. I can't remember which one was.
Sam: It was all Musk.
Ivan: That was Musk first started torpedo, you know, you know, calling for this thing
Ivan: to be to be scrapped, for this thing to be stopped, for this thing, whatever.
Ivan: And then they start demanding a $2.5 trillion cut in the budget in order to accept the deal.
Sam: So wait, wait, wait. You're skipping a few steps.
Ivan: Well, skipping a few steps. Yeah, I was oversimplifying. Okay.
Ivan: So say I'm being the logical Spock guy to my being more like Captain Kirk crazy
Ivan: going, okay? I realized the other day that this is how our dynamic is.
Ivan: I've just realized. Okay, so go ahead.
Sam: So here's the thing.
Monica: I got to play on the color commentator.
Sam: So first Donald, no, so first Elon Musk comes in with a tweet storm lasting
Sam: hours and many tweets talking about how this is a bad bill,
Sam: how he'll go and he'll bankroll primarying any Republican who votes against
Sam: it, et cetera, et cetera.
Sam: And so that initial deal that had been negotiated over months and months died.
Sam: Like they voted for it. It failed utterly.
Sam: And they were also trying to do it, by the way, they were trying to do it under
Sam: a suspension of the rules, which required not just a majority,
Sam: but a two thirds majority to do.
Sam: And so they were nowhere close. They were nowhere close. And then they scrambled
Sam: and came up with a Trump and Musk-approved deal.
Sam: That deal added some stuff with the debt limit because that was what Donald Trump's demand was.
Sam: Donald Trump came in later, by the way. Only after the tweet storm,
Sam: then Donald Trump was like, oh, okay, I agree, this is bad.
Sam: But only after everything Musk had done. And that first one died.
Sam: The second one was a Trump and Musk approved version that added some stuff with
Sam: the debt limit and had some more cuts and blah, blah, blah. Then that died too.
Sam: That one died as well. And then they were like, oh, well, now what do we do? We have no plan C.
Sam: And then eventually on Friday, hours before the deadline, they came up with something again.
Sam: It did not have the debt limit stuff in it.
Sam: And it was basically back to close to what the original deal was,
Sam: although they did take out funding for a few things, some of which got added back separately.
Sam: But for the most part, they took out funding for a few things,
Sam: but it was it was nominal for the most part.
Sam: It was very similar to the original deal.
Sam: And and they got it done. But the John promise is the thing.
Sam: Yes, there are two there are two two things that came out of this.
Sam: What first of all, Donald Trump got a list of 38 Republicans who would be willing
Sam: to vote against him from that middle vote.
Sam: OK, so that did he did get that.
Sam: And then the Johnson promise that you mentioned is that apparently the deal
Sam: to get Republicans on board, to get the reluctant Republicans on board with this final deal,
Sam: and Donald Trump and Musk, was that they basically promised,
Sam: okay, they will do a debt limit increase in six months or whenever that comes up.
Sam: But they promised they'd increase the debt limit by $1.5 trillion,
Sam: but they'd make up for it with $2.5 trillion in spending cuts.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Which which is what the the the elon musk's doge thing has been promising that
Sam: they want to do anyway or what i'm.
Ivan: At a 2.5 trillion or what time frame because that's the other thing i didn't
Ivan: see anybody mention a time frame.
Sam: Nobody ever does they always use they always finesse over those kinds of things
Sam: usually it's the 10-year budget horizon but you know who knows wait.
Ivan: Why are you Like these people, the usual, I'm sure that they are thinking 2.5 trillion in one year.
Sam: There are probably some people who are thinking that and some people who are
Sam: thinking 10, they leave it intentionally ambiguous so everybody can read into it what they want.
Monica: Oh, wow.
Ivan: But it's 2.5 trillion in one year is the most, I mean, hey, do you want to cause
Ivan: the most chaos at a recession?
Ivan: And like, just, I don't know. Listen, you have to cut it. It's just about everything.
Sam: It it it's impossible it's impossible that
Sam: i mean and the thing is there was reporting i believe it was in the hill that
Sam: you know the republicans who agreed to it based on this promise know it's bullshit
Sam: they know it's bullshit they know it but they need the cover of the promise
Sam: in order to be able to say that they agree this.
Ivan: Is the whole thing that you were talking about their lack of interest in any
Ivan: governing whatsoever and that it's just all about fluff and promise and bullshit
Ivan: and And here's another thing.
Ivan: Forget, you know, I realize that Sam always reminds me this again.
Ivan: It doesn't matter to actually do it because even if they don't do it, they will say they did.
Ivan: And lie about it. They will just say, oh, oh, yeah, we cut. Yes,
Ivan: we cut a trillion dollars out of it. They didn't do anything,
Ivan: but they will say they did.
Monica: And people will believe it because basically it's getting to be to the point
Monica: where they tell people what they want to hear.
Ivan: Yep.
Monica: And whether it's the truth or not.
Ivan: I don't know how to go check.
Monica: Yeah, no, even if they could, where would they go?
Ivan: Right. Who's reliable?
Ivan: God. Well, I keep popping tile and all of a sudden every day.
Sam: Because a major part of this is make it so you don't trust anybody.
Sam: Like, they don't mind that you don't trust them because it means you don't trust
Sam: anybody else either. And so you're susceptible to whatever.
Monica: And that's straight out of, you know, Putin's playbook, as it were.
Sam: Yeah, well, replayed from the Nazis. I mean, I think the whole thing about,
Sam: like, flood the zone and make them not trust anything, not trust truth, that was Goebbels.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: So.
Monica: Yeah.
Sam: Oh, anyway, so we have the budget deal, but we've kicked out,
Sam: like Trump wanted to actually get rid of the debt limit entirely,
Sam: which by the way, this is one of those clock stopped things.
Sam: Like we should get rid of the debt limit entirely.
Ivan: Sam, Sam, but wait a second. Hold it. Hold it.
Ivan: Trump said that next year he was going to pay off all the debt.
Sam: He said that a few times in the past. Right. has he said it recently? I don't know.
Monica: I don't think he's talking about the debt. He's going to take care of grocery prices?
Sam: Yeah. He's going to take care of groceries. Although he did in an interview
Sam: last week say that, oh, maybe, maybe not that, that sounds kind of hard.
Sam: But, but no, we have, we have, we have the deal. He did not get rid of the debt limit.
Sam: He had the promise for another debt limit increase.
Sam: Like he's explicitly said he wanted to have this crisis now so it can be blamed
Sam: on biden rather than in nine months when it'll be blamed on him no you know.
Monica: Really nah nah.
Ivan: Nah he would never do that what do you what come on now.
Monica: Two things i'm following right now one is and you've probably got this marked
Monica: in your calendar yvonne is january 15th that is when the deadline for the so
Monica: the longshoremen when they were striking or going to strike.
Monica: They agreed with Biden to go ahead and agree to an extension.
Monica: That extension expires on January 15th.
Ivan: Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah.
Monica: The other thing is the emergence of this bird flu, which seems to be already
Monica: at epidemic levels and may reach pandemic levels very, very soon.
Monica: Now, when is that going to happen? And what are those things that'll look like in a new,
Monica: as i call it trump regime so these people who have the attention sensitive than
Monica: that everything's going to come home to roost probably within two weeks of the new regime being.
Ivan: Installed here here's going to be the thing uh vaccines will be developed again
Ivan: and none of them will take it yeah and you know we'll have to go to canada maybe rfk.
Sam: Will make sure they're not approved anyway for.
Ivan: Any right well we'll have to go to canada or somewhere to get them. Okay.
Ivan: And, you know, here, the one thing is to me is to these people,
Ivan: even with so many dead, always, I had relatives that died in the pandemic. Okay.
Monica: Okay.
Ivan: I mean, some of these people had people die in their families and they still like.
Monica: They don't connect.
Ivan: No, they won't. They can't connect the dots. They can't connect the dots.
Monica: They connect the dots. They connect the completely.
Ivan: Well, they connect the dots that they want to connect.
Monica: Yeah.
Ivan: You know, we'll skip over a few. And like, you know, this looks like a plane.
Ivan: I couldn't help something. I don't know.
Sam: But anyway.
Ivan: Yeah. It's going to be. I mean, I, one of the things that is definitely very
Ivan: scary is what happens in another public, if we get another public health emergency like this.
Ivan: I actually, to be honest, like I, I, I, I'm praying that it doesn't turn it to that.
Sam: Well, just generally any emergency slash crisis, like, you know,
Sam: it just happened that the pandemic was the one that actually hit the previous
Sam: Donald Trump administration.
Sam: But basically, as long as he's coasting on things that are sort of acting normal,
Sam: you know but like as soon as there's a crisis uh.
Ivan: I will i will say
Ivan: one look i i to be
Ivan: to be clear i despise trump to the to to
Ivan: my core and i've done the worst thing is why is
Ivan: i have always sam knows this i was not
Ivan: new to hating trump even before he ran for president i thought
Ivan: trump was a scumbag dating back to the 90s i mean
Ivan: i you know it's just i'm always bewildered by all
Ivan: this trump adulation you know so i i always
Ivan: just like that's the bad's up that's a terrible business man
Ivan: but and so uh i happen to actually have the
Ivan: fortune also of working out for several years with somebody
Ivan: who was a big person in commercial real estate uh
Ivan: in new york at that time okay right
Ivan: who actually was my workout partner for about three or four years
Ivan: and he told me all these stories about how nobody would
Ivan: do business with trump on any deals because they all knew
Ivan: that he was like a fake that everything was just
Ivan: all bullshit and that there was no way to ever do your.
Ivan: Business so i kind of like that background that he doesn't pay
Ivan: he doesn't pay the deals that he that he does
Ivan: are losers you know he'll always welch on any deal it was just it was just well
Ivan: known in the commercial in commercial real estate and so it's one of those things
Ivan: that that had me on that but the one thing that i will say after caveating all
Ivan: that that i i will say that about Trump is positive. He's very gun-shy.
Ivan: Literally in terms of armed conflict. Okay.
Ivan: That is the only thing that I can say that I, I, I, thankfully that he,
Ivan: he showed, because there was a couple of incidents where I do think that if
Ivan: it was a democratic president, they may have launched like airstrikes or done
Ivan: some other stuff or whatever.
Ivan: There was this Iran attack that happened on this base and
Ivan: where we did a very limited response where I
Ivan: know John Bolton was shopping at the bit at launching some
Ivan: massive attack against they're on and trump said no and so that is about the
Ivan: only instinct that i have seen that this man has that i'm like maybe that could
Ivan: avert something okay but other than that the guy is just terrible other.
Sam: Than that we're sort of counting on like i mean if he does everything he said
Sam: he wants to do it would be awful we're sort of.
Ivan: Counting on incompetence.
Sam: Again yeah we're counting on incompetence. And one of the things that have been
Sam: said this time around versus last time around is A, all of the guardrails are gone.
Sam: B, there are some people that he has brought on board that have spent the last
Sam: four years trying to figure out how to actually do it this time.
Sam: But the one thing I'd say is his cabinet choices so far are leaning towards the incompetent side.
Ivan: So So I mean, incompetence likes company, you know, Trump is very good at service.
Sam: Yeah. But speaking of incompetence in this, back to the events of the last few
Sam: days with the budget stuff or the spending stuff, whatever it is.
Sam: Musk a lot has been said about how like musk drove this he started it he pushed
Sam: it like yeah and he got all of the attention and what does this mean in terms
Sam: of and and musk's role going forward and how pissed is trump about it.
Ivan: And and and and that's my thing because at some yes listen number one person
Ivan: that wants adulation is trump if if elon must start stealing the spotlight at
Ivan: some point he is going to turn oh yeah he's going to turn against him i have
Ivan: zero doubts about this no.
Monica: No definitely i mean yeah definitely well i think that was probably musk flexing
Monica: his muscle to see what he could do in terms of influence.
Sam: Well apparently you can do a lot well yeah but the thing is at the end though
Sam: he did well no he he he but he didn't get what he wanted it then,
Sam: although there were a few token things in there, so he can claim he got something.
Sam: But he showed that he was able to throw a wrench in the works and stop something cold.
Sam: The fact that he wasn't able to replace it with his preference,
Sam: okay, maybe shows the limits of that, but he was able to stop it cold and cause
Sam: a 48-hour delay or whatever it was in getting this thing done.
Sam: So he did absolutely flex that he's got a bunch of power right now.
Sam: He kind of showed that maybe he didn't quite understand what all the moving
Sam: bits were and how to actually get something done.
Sam: And I saw people talking about this in terms of a conflict between.
Sam: A Washington DC culture of process versus a Elon Musk text tech bro culture
Sam: of just worry about the result and don't worry about how you get there.
Sam: And, and the, and the clash of cultures that will cause and, and was shown this week.
Sam: Um, but I, I don't know. I think it's, I think there's several dynamics there.
Sam: One is that Elon Musk has shown that he has a lot of weight to throw around.
Sam: It shows that he doesn't know how to use that weight to actually accomplish a goal.
Sam: And it puts him up against Donald Trump because even if Trump hasn't said anything
Sam: yet, this has got to be the kind of thing that pisses him off because there
Sam: are all these memes going around.
Sam: I mean, the Democrats are doing it intentionally, of course,
Sam: calling like President Musk, President-elect Musk, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Oh, Donald Trump's just acting as vice president now.
Sam: Like, Musk is clearly the one in control. And they're doing just to get under Trump's skin.
Sam: And the thing is, it's the kind of thing that does get under Trump's skin.
Monica: He is that shallow. Yeah.
Ivan: Yes, absolutely.
Monica: He shouldn't even have been in charge of his family's business.
Monica: He ran that into the ground. I used to joke, I said, you know,
Monica: that man shouldn't have been allowed to run that.
Monica: He couldn't even run the Bluth Popsicle, a banana stand, much less anything
Monica: else. so i don't know it's just.
Ivan: Very very but.
Monica: The weird thing is that people see themselves in him they get they buy into
Monica: that what they see as glamour what they see as wealth and prestige and they
Monica: think oh i can i can have that i can do that and i can be that that crass jerk
Monica: and get ahead and it just doesn't work that way i.
Ivan: Unfortunately can i can i yeah unfortunately in
Ivan: many cases they to get away with this shit i
Ivan: wish less i wish less did but there
Ivan: is a subset there is a significant subset
Ivan: of these grifters me living i
Ivan: i i unfortunately you know well no i'm not gonna say unfortunately because i
Ivan: like living in pall beach county despite the fact that we've been invaded a
Ivan: lot more by these guys coming in recently okay you know i've met so many of
Ivan: these different real estate developers like this okay that i've had clashes
Ivan: with over certain things in business, okay?
Ivan: And man, they all operate very similar way. They're all slumlords.
Ivan: They all cheat. They don't pay their vendors.
Ivan: They try to like just, you know, snow you with lawyers and shit and,
Ivan: you know, and they will just, you know, spend every dime they can on every lawyer
Ivan: to obstruct everything.
Ivan: And yet somehow, even after criminal actions against them or whatever,
Ivan: they figure out another way to get another hundred million to borrow somebody
Ivan: and bamboozle a whole bunch of other people.
Ivan: But it's a horrible, I can't understand how they, it has to be,
Ivan: how they live with themselves screwing that many people.
Ivan: Because I just cannot, I cannot fathom it, but it's their MO and they double, triple down on it.
Monica: I'm not necessarily talking about those sorts of folks. They're kind of higher up on the Ponzi scheme.
Monica: I'm talking about the rank of file. People say- Oh, those guys. Yeah.
Ivan: Oh, those guys are all useful idiots to them. They're all good.
Monica: Yeah. And I don't, I really haven't figured out how to, we say,
Monica: oh, we want to educate them.
Monica: Now, the new thing is like, oh, well, screw education. That's not going to work.
Monica: We have to manipulate them.
Sam: Well, this brings me back to one of the things that I've said repeatedly on
Sam: the retrospectives of the campaign, and Yvonne's going to be like, oh, there he goes again.
Sam: But the weird thing was working. like
Sam: that i think and i'd actually said this for
Sam: years the way to burst this bubble is
Sam: not by talking about how trump and
Sam: his cronies are dangerous or any of this because people like dangerous yeah
Sam: people want that people want like somebody to to break up the system and bust
Sam: it down no the mocking him and belittling him the the they are weird they're
Sam: weirdos they're the belittling him as like, oh,
Sam: look, he's stupid, he's whatever.
Sam: The mocking in general, the putting him down in that way, the making fun of
Sam: him, the laughing at him, not being scared of them, but laughing at them.
Sam: If you look at, on my electiongraphs.com site, when you look at the odds curve
Sam: for how they were doing for the election,
Sam: the entire time that the Harris campaign was being positive about themselves
Sam: and mocking about the Republicans, they were improving every week.
Sam: As soon as they switched to emphasize the danger of Donald Trump,
Sam: they started losing ground.
Monica: It started to sound a lot like the Clinton campaign. And that really bugged me.
Monica: I mean, half of the Clinton campaign was about, oh, love Trump's hate.
Monica: And you're putting Trump and the damn slogan.
Ivan: Yeah, I know.
Monica: And I'm wondering, I really...
Sam: Yeah, and they made it about him again. And when it's about Trump, he wins.
Monica: And I'm just feeling like, it's like, I think...
Sam: Well, they made it about the danger specifically.
Monica: The Pod Save America gang might not have been the right...
Monica: Call for the Harris campaign, they probably shouldn't end up completely different people entirely.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, they brought in a bunch of Obama people around that time.
Sam: And I think this was their influence primarily.
Sam: And there are all kinds of other factors, but like we said, there were global
Sam: headwinds. There were all kinds of things.
Sam: They might've been in a no-win scenario anyway, but I think they actually came
Sam: close and I think they did rely on the wrong people and took the wrong direction
Sam: in the last like 30 to 40 days of the.
Monica: Campaign and my hope is they don't do what we did after 2016 and went oh yeah
Monica: we sorry uh we need an old way.
Ivan: You can curse i mean jesus we.
Monica: I don't know why we've been on our we can't have a woman run for president i
Monica: mean we had a glut of there were 29 democratic camp candidates in 2020 including telsey gabbard No.
Monica: By the time Super Tuesday ran around, four women United States senators were out of the race.
Monica: I believe, and this might be a minority view.
Ivan: That 2028, if we get there.
Monica: Touch wood, is the prime time to champion a woman candidate.
Monica: Because our people, by that I mean the public, will have had four years of chaos
Monica: and God knows what else, maybe pestilence and all the other four horsemen named hog lips.
Ivan: I always, listen, I will say this. Look, I always liked Joe Biden.
Ivan: Okay, all right? I'm going to be on that camp.
Ivan: Okay, all right. But one thing is that I did not vote for him in the 2020 primary.
Ivan: Okay? I voted actually for Harris. Okay?
Ivan: At the time opportunity.
Monica: Otherwise I would have done.
Ivan: But I voted for Harris and, you know, she didn't get the nomination and,
Ivan: you know, I, you know, one of the things that I, I hate getting into perfectionist
Ivan: squabbles is that, you know,
Ivan: man, Joe Biden is a, is a great person.
Ivan: And I, I had no qualms about the fact that, Hey, if he's, if he's on the top
Ivan: of the ticket, I'm, I'm all for it because he is a great person and showed himself
Ivan: to actually be a great president.
Ivan: You know, that there is no doubt about that. I mean, well, there's no doubt about anybody.
Sam: Even though nobody remembered, nobody cared. Nobody cares.
Ivan: He got a ton of stuff done. Okay. Compared to many other administrations.
Ivan: And so the reality is that for me, for 2028, I'm one that, you know, we, we just, Thank you.
Ivan: And perfectionism is the one thing that keeps getting us into trouble and having
Ivan: these situations like this.
Sam: Like all the people saying that because Biden had the wrong position on Gaza,
Sam: they weren't going to vote at all or they were going to vote for Stein or something.
Ivan: Exactly. And it's just like, OK, you know, you're literally instead of like,
Ivan: OK, you know, you've got one guy that's heading in the same direction you are.
Ivan: Doesn't it's not 100 percent, but it's close. Instead, you choose to vote for
Ivan: somebody who basically will try to do the opposite, who had a son-in-law that
Ivan: basically said that Gaza should be flattened and condos should be built.
Ivan: And I'm like, how is that helpful?
Monica: Again, facts. Facts are irrelevant, as you positioned earlier.
Ivan: Yeah. fuck no i know well i said fuck actually not facts because it's like you
Ivan: know just these people's oh yeah there's that yeah yeah i mean it's like every
Ivan: it's everything is a what the fuck moment every time i hear one of these damn
Ivan: explanations yeah it's true because.
Monica: I mean i i am an i wouldn't say an older older person but i'm a mature person and there are.
Ivan: Some i'm older i'm not gonna say i'm mature, but definitely I'm older.
Monica: Mature years, let's put it that way.
Ivan: Mature years, yeah.
Monica: Not young anymore.
Ivan: That's for sure.
Monica: And I was able to get, I think, a pretty good education.
Monica: I mean, granted, I'm not Yale Law or anything like that, but I had a pretty
Monica: good public school education.
Monica: I got my mother's teachers when they were, I got, my mother's teachers were
Monica: young when she went to high school. I got the older version.
Monica: And then I wound up going to Northwestern, but I transferred back to a Catholic
Monica: college to be closer to the FAM. And I went to law school.
Monica: So I got the education that I think I needed and the skill set that I needed.
Monica: And a lot of folks don't have that these days.
Ivan: But listen, do you understand that these people are like,
Ivan: expertise and knowledge are bullshit now.
Monica: They're all they all you
Monica: know it's like oh gosh i think it's fahrenheit
Monica: 451 isn't it when he talks about how we got how
Monica: the how his part of society wound up getting to the point where they burned
Monica: books right and it was about how they didn't want to marginalize this person
Monica: or that person so they wound up just basically getting rid of everything And
Monica: nobody knew anything anymore.
Monica: And that's kind of where we're headed towards. And it is very, very scary.
Monica: And I tell people, I feel like I'm like the prophet Jeremiah shouting in the
Monica: wind sometimes. I say, you know, don't confuse information with knowledge.
Monica: And don't confuse knowledge with wisdom.
Ivan: And don't confuse people that know how to make money with them being smart.
Ivan: Which is a bigger problem that we have.
Monica: I used to get on my goat a lot of times. I thought to myself,
Monica: why am I not in a huge firm making bank?
Monica: Because I've got the education. What am I struggling for? But then I realized
Monica: money was not what motivated me.
Monica: Education was. Arts were. And the only reason people who are wealthy are wealthy
Monica: is because they are motivated by money.
Ivan: Yeah wait wait wait hold on not totally that okay all right you know there are,
Ivan: you know i will say now i will say this there are and it's not the only reason
Ivan: but the thing is that you have to be multifaceted to do that and the thing is
Ivan: that it that making money doesn't make you the fact that you can make money
Ivan: or you're good at one skill that gets,
Ivan: remunerated greatly, say like a great surgeon.
Ivan: Okay. For example, a great surgeon may be very good at surgery and they may
Ivan: be very good at the procedure and making money in there and they know about
Ivan: the procedure and whatever.
Ivan: It doesn't mean they have general knowledge about everything.
Ivan: And that's a reality of a lot of folks that they may have one skill,
Ivan: which they excel that gets them, that gets them greatly remunerated.
Sam: But, but also, you also got to remember in all these situations when you're
Sam: judging like the person who is successful whether it be wealth fame whatever
Sam: there is also always a huge portion of it that's just plain luck you know there is,
Sam: skill matters but so does including the luck of your birth like yeah no no no
Sam: totally when you were born yeah.
Monica: Generational things i mean i do not come from wealthy people i mean i don't
Monica: come from broke people, but I don't come from wealthy people either.
Ivan: But I think it's just that there is this spectrum of where you've got,
Ivan: different motivations, different sets of skills and, and, and what makes,
Ivan: but, but again, the one thing is that I, I, I, we have so many Americans that
Ivan: idolize just the fact of making money as equating that with any smarts.
Ivan: And, and that, that, that is, that is not, that is not the case.
Ivan: It, you know, it's like, there are so many other things that,
Ivan: that come into play about somebody being, being, being smart.
Ivan: I mean, we, we talk about like, for example, I'm somebody that's business,
Ivan: you know, in terms of knowledge, I, I go and I, and I say that what I have is
Ivan: broader knowledge, but only in depth in certain things.
Ivan: Well, one of the important things about that I say quality of the smartest people
Ivan: that I've met is, is that to know what, you know and to know what you don't know.
Ivan: And so if you're good at saying, well, I don't know about this,
Ivan: I need an expert, then you wind up excelling more than many others.
Ivan: And that's the one thing that I think that a lot of people right now,
Ivan: because they make so much money on one thing, they come to think that,
Ivan: well, they must know about everything.
Ivan: And that's not the case. But the other thing also is, what do you want to balance in life?
Ivan: I have a brother-in-law who works at one of those big
Ivan: law firms okay all right and and is making that kind
Ivan: of money okay and now i
Ivan: will say that i think probably more primary motivation for him is he wanted
Ivan: to to make money but he has six kids one of them with like autism that is very
Ivan: severe and i i think that one of his primary things has been well i need to
Ivan: make sure that they're taking care of that especially you know,
Ivan: that they're taken care of as best as possible, you know,
Ivan: afterwards and make sure that every one of my kids has an education and that
Ivan: every one of them is able to be independent on their own, you know, and those things.
Ivan: And, you know, when you have six of them and you want to like give them all
Ivan: a, as good as, as you can, something as good as your, your father did when you
Ivan: only were two brothers, you know, you only were two or three,
Ivan: it, it, it drives certain things.
Ivan: I think that everybody values, you know, certain things differently. And...
Ivan: Making the money some people value the money just for the money you know uh
Ivan: and that that's those people are for some people.
Sam: It's how you keep score.
Ivan: Yes it's how you keep score.
Monica: What's the most choice wins.
Ivan: Yeah yeah i'm one that i i will say
Ivan: i i do like to make money but at the same time i do
Ivan: it but but sam knows that i'm like i
Ivan: value my quality time i i
Ivan: i like to do to do it in order to i
Ivan: don't know my love my son loves to go to disney a lot and i'm like he's 12 years
Ivan: old he's got autism and i'm like well damn it he doesn't know the difference
Ivan: between one one cent and one billion dollars and i'm like you know what i said
Ivan: fuck make enough money so i can take him as many times as he damn wants you
Ivan: know and that to me is more important than than,
Ivan: than most other things so you know
Ivan: it's always like different uh what motivates and drives people i say sam i know
Ivan: wants to order pizzas delivered so he doesn't have to cook he hates to cook
Ivan: well he doesn't well no he doesn't know i saw him cook well it's not a lot of
Ivan: cooking he does know how to put stuff in a microwave and in an oven sam when we were in college i.
Sam: Have a i have a limited repertoire that.
Ivan: I could conceivably do but sam used to in college go make this massive massive
Ivan: bowl of pasta and stick a pound stick a whole thing of butter in it and that
Ivan: was his meal for 24 hours i learned that from you you're.
Sam: The one who taught me that.
Ivan: That's right but i didn't tell you the whole that that's true
Ivan: i did teach you how to do that and it was like his meal for a while or just
Ivan: just a massive or just massive bowls of popcorn with just like enough salt to
Ivan: basically like you know mummify something you know exactly yeah that was like
Ivan: those things yeah and uh and uh and the frozen rolls the frozen oh.
Monica: Yes yes yes.
Ivan: He had a little like uh crescent rolls and things. He had a little toaster oven.
Ivan: He could put those in the oven. Yeah.
Ivan: He got an endless supply of those.
Monica: Well, that could be an entirely different podcast to what you all cooked when
Monica: your wife was taking care of her mother.
Sam: Oh, we didn't. We didn't. The
Sam: giant bowls of popcorn and ordering food delivered the entire time. Okay.
Monica: I guess that's why the good Lord made Grubhub.
Sam: Yes exactly exactly.
Ivan: Exactly that's you've got now now you understand that you know if you told sam
Ivan: what do i want to make money for so i don't ever have to,
Ivan: go to a store or cook anything ever again. And that would be like, that's his nirvana.
Sam: My, my, my good wife of course disagrees, but I have been quoted before complaining
Sam: on why I couldn't buy a, rent an apartment or buy a house without a kitchen.
Sam: Cause it was the most useless room in the house.
Monica: Well, well, maybe a little kitchenette. I mean, all these things.
Sam: Well, fridge, whatever you can put that into bedroom. Yeah.
Ivan: Maybe a little bit different.
Monica: Well, it'd be like college again, wouldn't it? You have your micro fridge or whatever.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we want. That's all you need. Yeah.
Sam: That's all you need.
Ivan: You need to move back to Hampshire Hall.
Sam: Since we're going off track, shall we take another break real quick and then
Sam: wrap it up with whatever is left?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay. And Yvonne complained last time that the break we had was one with us
Sam: making goofy noises and sound.
Ivan: No, no, I did not complain.
Sam: And he said, if only that break had been the Ray Lynch break,
Sam: because that would be more impressive for Monica.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: As it happens, I pick these breaks randomly, but the next one is the Ray Lynch.
Ivan: Oh, thank God. This is great. We're all complete. Well, we are nuts,
Ivan: but not completely off the rails.
Sam: So here we go. Here's the two minute Ray Lynch break, and then we'll be back
Sam: and I don't know. I'll pick something to talk about and then we'll wrap it up. Here we go.
Monica: Okay.
Sam: Okay we are back okay so
Sam: i i was thinking you know there are a lot of things
Sam: on on the potential topics list you know the the tiktok ban the the funny willis
Sam: the gates report uh the potential speaker race all this kind of stuff but since
Sam: since we have monica i i want to get uh her her take on a little bit.
Sam: Because in terms of what the Democrats are currently doing in Congress nationally,
Sam: one of the things that happened in the last week was this whole thing with AOC
Sam: running for the chair of the House Oversight Committee and Pelosi and company
Sam: actively lobbying against her to get, you know,
Sam: this guy was ahead of her in seniority. He's in his 70s.
Sam: He was just diagnosed with throat cancer.
Sam: He's, you know, but he's part of the old guard. And I'll tell you my take on
Sam: this is that, first of all,
Sam: you know, when AOC first came on the scene, I felt like, you know,
Sam: there are a lot of policy things where I felt like she was very naive and her
Sam: approach was very naive in a lot of things.
Sam: But I felt like she, from the very beginning, had a lot of energy and appeal as well.
Sam: And I think after a few years in Congress, she's matured a lot.
Sam: She's grown up. She knows the ropes a little bit. Now, a lot of people on the
Sam: progressive side seem to think that she's betrayed them in some way because
Sam: she's willing to work the system.
Sam: But at the same time, I feel like this whole Pelosi putting the thumb on the
Sam: scale and them going with the old guy rather than the young blood is a mistake.
Sam: That I think like just in general, the, the old guard that's not,
Sam: not even boomers, we're talking silent generation,
Sam: still like having trouble letting go and not necessarily having the right time.
Sam: Approach to be like, we're about to enter at least two years,
Sam: maybe for where like the Democrats are 100% in the opposition nationally.
Sam: And how do you make the best of that bad situation?
Sam: And I feel like a lot of the old school Democrats are still feeling like,
Sam: okay, well, we'll try to figure out how to work with the Trump administration
Sam: and we'll do this and we'll do that.
Sam: And, and to some degree, like you want to mitigate the damage and to some degree
Sam: that requires negotiations, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But I feel like the just general approach of like, has not been working in terms
Sam: of what they've been doing.
Sam: And for God's sake, it's time to let the new blood in, even if it's,
Sam: even if they aren't going to do exactly what you hope they would do?
Sam: I don't know. What are your thoughts, Monica?
Monica: I think this might be one of those things where we might disagree.
Sam: Okay, that's cool.
Monica: The first thing that I really do wish a layperson would realize,
Monica: and when people say they get on their horse about, oh, why didn't so-and-so
Monica: do this or why didn't so-and-so do that?
Monica: I wonder what sort of things are going on that we are not privy to.
Monica: At all. And I hearken back also to my former congressman, Rick Larson,
Monica: who is the ranking member of the Transportation Committee.
Monica: So he's ranking member of the Transportation Committee. He started being the
Monica: ranking member of the Transportation Committee in 2022.
Monica: Rick was elected to Congress in 2001 or 2000.
Monica: So that's 20 years before you get to be ranking.
Sam: Oh, there's certainly a put-in-your-dues structure.
Monica: That's what I'm thinking.
Sam: And a lot of it, by the way, is deserved because you learn the ropes and you
Sam: learn what works and what doesn't and what's important and how to get things done.
Sam: And so there is a strong argument for put-in-your-dues.
Ivan: Yeah, but I'm also remembering that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama got to
Ivan: be president before they were 50s.
Ivan: Okay frankly i didn't.
Monica: Vote for either of them i.
Ivan: Voted i.
Monica: Voted for barack obama in 2012 but i could never bring myself to vote for bill
Monica: clinton because i hated how he treated the women in his life.
Ivan: Well i was well but but
Ivan: but you know but i'm not even bringing that i'm not saying about about whether
Ivan: one voted or not what my point is the age okay the reality is that this was
Ivan: much they were much younger you know and you know a lot of times i do get the waiting like.
Sam: What less than less than a.
Ivan: Full term in the senate full term in the senate i i do think that i i get for
Ivan: wait looks i do understand how committee assignments and certain things that
Ivan: you want certain people to have certain experience and i get that but i also
Ivan: still see a lot of like not wanting to let go of power and that's the part where
Ivan: i'm just like look guys okay i'm sorry you're already past 80.
Ivan: Okay. Look, I'm like, at least for God's sakes, and maybe, you know,
Ivan: and by the way, Gen X has bored a brunt more of this.
Ivan: And it's not just the government, but across the board and in every,
Ivan: in every, in every, in everywhere.
Ivan: You know, I remember when I joined Hewlett Packard back in the nineties.
Ivan: Okay. And every leader that was in executive positions was in their forties. Okay. Okay.
Ivan: And I still remember how most of those leaders never let go.
Ivan: So we would get those jobs like they just wouldn't at all, ever.
Ivan: They just wouldn't let go.
Ivan: And when they would wind up promoting us into those positions many times,
Ivan: they would wind up giving us half the money that we're getting paid,
Ivan: which I'm just like, well, you're just some young, dumb, whatever.
Ivan: Now you're not making up by you, you, you, you, you, you gotta pay less.
Ivan: And I'm like, what the hell is this? Okay.
Ivan: And I think that I'm one that I get maybe not talking about AOC specifically, just taking that aside.
Ivan: You know, I know that Hakeem Jeffries is right now the leader of the House.
Sam: Yeah. Like Pelosi did step aside. Yeah. Pelosi did step aside.
Ivan: Yeah. But she's still exerting a lot of influence.
Sam: She's still exerting a lot of influence. Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah, it is a thing.
Monica: How much do we actually know that it was Nancy that did it? And the other.
Sam: Thing is— There was a lot of reporting that she was going around with.
Monica: Yeah, reporting. Again, how much of that is accurate? I mean,
Monica: I posit this to you. You have a problem with age right now.
Monica: If we didn't have the problem with age that we have, Joe Biden would be president next month.
Ivan: I'm with you, and I would have voted for Joe Biden in a heartbeat.
Ivan: But here's the one thing. But there's two different things in play here.
Ivan: One is, look, to be fair, by the way, like I said, I love Joe Biden.
Ivan: I'm like, look, I would have voted for a corpse against Trump. OK, all right.
Ivan: You know, literally. I mean, if the candidate had died before and is still on
Ivan: the ballot, I would have voted for the dead guy.
Monica: Sure.
Ivan: OK, so there is this one thing, and it doesn't mean that I don't love it.
Ivan: But I do think that we, look, amongst leadership in this country in general,
Ivan: okay, I'm talking in general.
Ivan: We have had a stint of a generation that basically has held on to many reigns
Ivan: of power, whether it's in corporate America, political America,
Ivan: far longer than previous generations used to.
Ivan: In part because not so many of them lived that long.
Sam: But also, just to be clear, it's not just – yeah, I know.
Sam: It's definitely like there's that population bulge that's working its way out of their system.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: But it's also – it's not just about age. It's also about approach.
Sam: I think part of the problem, and getting back to politics as opposed to business,
Sam: although the same thing may apply in business,
Sam: there's a lot of, you know, this is the way we do it because this is how we've always done it,
Sam: which is not working in the modern
Sam: day and is revealing sort of a lack of understanding of a lot of dynamics.
Sam: Like one of the things that was brought up as a critique of the Harris campaign
Sam: was a lot of emphasis on traditional media.
Sam: Like they were buying tons of commercials everywhere. And whereas a lot of what
Sam: was actually reaching people was Internet stuff that they emphasized less.
Sam: They didn't do nothing, of course, but they emphasized less.
Sam: And does part of that come from just having people in charge who grew up when,
Sam: of course, that's how you do it?
Sam: And one of the criticisms of Biden was he spent way too long trying to get back to, okay.
Sam: The ideal of how we do things is bipartisan deals and we work with the other
Sam: side and we make blah, blah, blah, whereas we have a Republican Party now who's
Sam: not interested in doing that.
Sam: And so maybe he should have jettisoned a lot earlier and said,
Sam: okay, we're going to go full speed ahead with what we can do on our own,
Sam: which he eventually did. But it took him a long time to get there.
Sam: And just in general, that a lot of the leadership that we're talking about,
Sam: oh, they're hanging on longer than they should.
Sam: But part of it is not just, okay, they've been around a long time,
Sam: they're old. It's that they're still pushing old approaches where we really need something fresh.
Monica: You have to balance that, though. Here's what I see.
Monica: I see folks who are very eager to try something new simply for the sake of trying something new.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: True. True.
Monica: And at least specifically the proverbial case at Barr with Representative Ocasio-Cortez.
Monica: Yes, he is very media savvy.
Monica: That is not the same thing as chairing an oversight committee. I don't know.
Monica: It doesn't seem like the fellow that they ultimately selected is all that great either.
Sam: Frankly. Well, the thing is, too, just as a member of the oversight committee, she has...
Sam: Shown on a number of different occasions, the ability to use that platform very, very well.
Sam: And so the idea is maybe because she's done very well as a member of that committee,
Sam: maybe she could do well as a chair. You're right. It's not necessarily the skillset.
Sam: And she can continue to do well as a member, as a member.
Ivan: Well, Monica, I will say one thing. My advocacy for
Ivan: something new is not just because of something new i i
Ivan: i have observed over the last decade
Ivan: plus we talk about the media landscape changing where the
Ivan: biggest influence where the biggest influences in the media landscape are
Ivan: new media not old media and the
Ivan: reality is that the younger generation is a lot savvier than
Ivan: that and for whatever the hell damn reason the the right wingers
Ivan: have been the ones that have been the most adept at
Ivan: using that new media in large part because they
Ivan: used to be listen because their views were so insane
Ivan: that that okay yes we're not going
Ivan: to put nazis on nbc right right because
Ivan: that we're not doing that we're okay you know we're not
Ivan: platforming nazis we're not we're not we're not platforming you know people
Ivan: that hate homosexuals we're not gonna we're not gonna go and like platform people
Ivan: because it it seemed like on a general basis that that seemed especially given
Ivan: from where we came from, the 60s,
Ivan: 70s, and 80s, and this evolution that we did in rights amongst groups,
Ivan: that that's not the right thing to do.
Ivan: Well, all those rails, like you talked about, equal time or whatever, are gone.
Ivan: And the reality is that when you look at the most popular platforms in that
Ivan: space, they're all right-wing.
Ivan: I mean, they're all right-wing. the Infowars, Joe Rogan, all these damn, all these damn people.
Ivan: And I, and I'm just like, look, unless we bring in a generation that is as savvy
Ivan: as using that and using that power and harnessing it to communicate a different message,
Ivan: these people have an advantage right now that is, is difficult to overcome.
Ivan: And that's my thought in terms of bring them in younger that,
Ivan: that are a lot to our cause. They know how to use that platform.
Ivan: We need them to use that platform. We need them to be out there in order and
Ivan: we need to empower them so they can be heard more.
Ivan: That's, that's my thing. And it's not, you know, I, you know,
Ivan: yeah, I'm not trying new things for new things. I'm like, there is some specific,
Ivan: hole that we have right now. And somehow that needs to be filled.
Ivan: And I don't think that I'm going to get Nancy or a whole bunch of people that
Ivan: are from her group to be TikTok stars right now.
Sam: I want to see Nancy Pelosi's TikTok dance.
Monica: So because a person can't dab, they can't be president? Or I don't get it.
Ivan: It's not that they can't. No, it's just, it's not that they can't dab,
Ivan: they can't be president.
Ivan: It's just that I'm not even saying, I'm not saying about the presidential candidate.
Ivan: I'm saying that we need to move more of those people into the forefront of certain
Ivan: leadership positions and places so they can influence the agenda out there.
Ivan: And it doesn't mean that they are going to be the presidential candidate,
Ivan: but it does mean that the social discourse needs to change where only the right
Ivan: wingers are the ones monopolizing it.
Ivan: Even on the Republican side, it's not that those people are the ones that wound
Ivan: up being president. They push for Trump, who couldn't do a TikTok if his life
Ivan: depended on it, okay, and probably needs his daily instructions on how to even
Ivan: post something on Truth Social, okay?
Ivan: So, yeah, no, but either we get that group together.
Ivan: In those positions. I mean, look at the damn people that he surrounded himself
Ivan: with in his cabinet, like guys like Steve Miller, for God's sake, psychopath, lunatic.
Ivan: But the guy, you know, uses that stuff.
Ivan: Alex Jones, Steve Bannon.
Ivan: I mean, who was a pioneer in that space?
Monica: That's, you know, because I do have.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. I was about to say, we're running up against the two hours and Monica
Sam: has somewhere to go. So let's give her the last word on that.
Ivan: Let's give her the last word.
Sam: And then we can do the usual wrap-up of the show.
Sam: So last word on this topic, Monica, you get to close it out.
Monica: I think that we need to do a lot more listening and a lot more learning and a lot less posturing.
Monica: I think it's the time to do some reflection.
Monica: And this particular holiday season, as Kamala Harris said,
Monica: is the time to reflect and to go back with your families and to just think of
Monica: what really matters to you and focus on a couple of things rather than try to fight the fire hose.
Monica: Because it's coming.
Monica: Get your energy, conserve your energy, get your group of folks.
Monica: I mean, don't silo yourself, obviously, but you're going to need your friends
Monica: for the next two to four years, definitely.
Monica: And try to keep your relationships together and take a step back sometimes.
Monica: Because I think a lot of times when we get to this non-legacy media stuff,
Monica: this and when I say nascent media, back, back in the days of the Nazis, it was the radio, right?
Monica: It's, we figured out.
Ivan: Exactly.
Monica: We figured out a way to, to do it. I think to be a little more reflective,
Monica: to be a little more thinking things through, as we talked about earlier,
Monica: rather than, you know, saying, okay, we got to do this. We got to do that.
Monica: We got to do that. But maybe think those things through a little bit further
Monica: and see where kind of the likely things, because we are going to be going up
Monica: against people who, frankly, they don't care about our country.
Monica: They just want to get as much money or whatever they can for themselves out
Monica: of it, which to me is comical because we're only here on this planet for 70,
Monica: 80 years. Then where does it go?
Monica: And so I guess that's basically it. I'm going to try to listen more,
Monica: as I have done here, and try to talk to some folks and see what they have to say, new and old.
Monica: And try to use the brain of mine and hopefully form some conclusions that,
Monica: that will work at least in my own backyard, if not, not nationally.
Monica: But thank you both for letting me come onto your show. It was a lot of fun.
Sam: Oh, absolutely. And you're, you're, you're welcome to join us in the future as well.
Sam: And, but yeah, I had a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming.
Sam: Our wrap-up that we're about to do usually takes about 10 minutes you're free to drop off we have.
Ivan: To do it in like two minutes sam i already got the call.
Sam: Okay we'll do we'll do the speed version of it but anyway thank you mona thanks.
Monica: Very much have a good holiday season.
Sam: You too as well okay we.
Ivan: Have to do the super speedy version.
Sam: Hopefully she remembers to like save the thing uh anyway oh yes so the super
Sam: speedy version first of all i meant to say this at the very beginning of the
Sam: show, but we ended up just jumping into it.
Sam: Next week is our prediction show. Next week, the link is tinyurl.com slash ccpred2025.
Sam: If you want to add things that you want us to make predictions on.
Sam: Ed and Bruce have already added a bunch of stuff, but we need more.
Sam: So if you have not done this yet and you want to contribute and give us things
Sam: that you want us to make predictions on next week. Do it now.
Sam: We haven't decided exactly what day next week that we're going to be doing the
Sam: show, but get it in early.
Sam: Don't wait. As soon as you hear this, jump in and add things to the list.
Sam: And then, yeah, so that's that. And once again, tinyurl.com slash ccpred2025.
Sam: And yeah, curmudgeons-corner.com for the rest.
Sam: All of our archives, our old shows, transcripts, links to our Facebook and email
Sam: and all of this kind of stuff, all the ways to contact us.
Sam: And of course, our Patreon, where you can give us money, various levels.
Sam: We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. We will...
Sam: Do all kinds of other stuff. I'll mention you on the show. And at $2 a month
Sam: or more, or if you just ask us, we will invite you to our Curmudgeons Corner
Sam: Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week.
Sam: And Yvonne, do you have something in mind or do you want to just jump out?
Ivan: No, no, we got it. We got to jump.
Sam: Got to jump out.
Ivan: Sorry, we got to jump today.
Sam: Yeah, sorry. Yvonne's got to go take care of his family.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Who are still hospitalized in their bedrooms.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay. Goodbye, everybody. Everybody. buddy. Goodbye.
Sam: You know what I'm talking about. Have a great week. Stay safe. Have a good time.
Sam: Oh, have a good holiday for anybody who's celebrating holidays.
Sam: And we'll see you next week for The Prediction Show. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Okay, that's it. Hitting stop.
Ivan: Stop.